the Lonely Men (1969) (17 page)

Flames stabbed from every side, and then we were through the camp and racing away down the bottom of the barranca.

My black was running all out, and I turned a little in my saddle. Rocca was still coming, riding loose in the saddle, his hat on the back of his neck, held by the string of his chin-strap which had slipped to his throat.

Spanish was off to my right -- or so I thought -- and we charged on into the night, some of the horses running wild ahead of us, others scattered to left and right.

We raced on, and somehow the horses found a winding trail to the cap rock and slowed to climb it. I called out, but there was no reply. Finally the black struggled over the rim onto the mesa. There was more light there, under the high stars.

I drew up. Here and there I glimpsed a horse, but none that carried a rider.

Slowly I rode on, talking to the horses and hoping the others would follow.

Daylight was still far away, but none of us would dare to stop. If they were alive they, too, would keep on.

There was no use to try to find anybody. In the darkness a body could be missed, and any one of us would shy from any other rider for fear he was facing an Indian.

Through the night I rode, once lifting my horse to a trot for a few miles, then slowing again to a walk. I reloaded my gun, checked my rifle. Once, worn out as I was, I dozed in the saddle.

Finally, in the gray light of day, I stopped. Carefully, standing in my stirrups, I looked in every direction. I could see for a good distance on all sides, but there was nothing but desert and sky. Wearily, I started the black horse on again, heading north.

By noontime, with nothing in sight, I got down and stumbled on, leading the horse. There was no telling when I might need all that horse had to make a run for it.

There were no tracks. There was only silence. Overhead a buzzard swept down the sky, returned and circled widely above me. After that he stayed with me, and I figured a buzzard had pretty good judgment about where he might get a meal.

The sun was hot, and no breeze stirred. My canteen had been holed by a bullet and was empty. I stumbled along like a sleepwalker, dead on my feet, yet not daring to stop. Finally I gave up and climbed into the saddle again.

Ahead of me, almost lost in the blue of distance, the cap rock seemed to break off. There were mountains beyond, behind me and to the east there was nothing.

Water ... I had to have water, and so did my horse. Under a desert sun a man cannot live long without water.

The mesa ended abruptly, but there was no trail to the rough, rolling land below. Here there was another stretch of the rimrock, nowhere less than thirty feet of sheer wall, then a steep, rock-strewn slope.

Far off I thought I could see a patch of green in a fold of the earth. Skirting the cliff, I rode on. Suddenly I saw the tracks of shod hoofs.

The tracks were familiar. They were the tracks of a horse that Spanish Murphy had ridden, a tough, mountain-bred horse, larger than the average mustang, and weighing almost a thousand pounds. Turning into the trail, I followed it along the rim. We came abruptly to a cleft where the rock wall had broken away and there was an easy though steep descent to the valley below. We made it.

We rode on, the black and me, with the black quickening his pace so as to come up with his friend. Sure enough, we'd gone not over five miles when we saw the bay mustang ahead of us. He had stopped, and was looking ahead, ears pricked.

Well, I shucked that Winchester before you could say aye, yes, or no, and I eared back the hammer and walked the black right up alongside that mustang. I spoke easy to him, and he didn't do more than side-step a mite, knowing my voice. Then I looked where he was looking.

There was a thick clump of ironwood beside the way we were taking, and a horse was standing head down there, just waiting, and sitting up on its back was a man. He was sitting there, hands on the pommel, head hanging like the horse's, and when we started forward, he paid us no mind.

Good reason why. It was Tampico Rocca, and he was dead.

Even before I got to him I could see by the blood on his vest that he'd been shot at least twice, but he'd lived long enough to lash one hand to the saddlehorn and tangle the fingers of the other hand in the turns of the rope.

Rocca had said that if he got into the saddle he would stay there, and he meant it.

Chapter
15

There was no need to stay close to him, and I was wary. Had the Apaches seen me coming, it would have been like them to leave Rocca there, and I wanted no traps.

An arroyo offered some shelter, and after a quick glance I rode into it and waited there, listening.

For several minutes I watched Rocca, the horse, and the rocks around. Mostly, it was the horse I watched, for the actions of the horse would warn me if there was anyone close by.

Following the arroyo a little further, I saw a clump of brush and low trees near the lip of the draw, so I rode up the bank in their shelter. After a while, reasonably sure that it was safe, I went back to the horse and its burden.

The trailing bridle had caught in the brush, and I let it stay there while I lifted Rocco from the saddle after freeing his hands. There was nothing with which to prepare a grave, so I found a shallow watercourse, placed him in it, and covered the body with brush and rocks.

But first, I had taken his guns and ammunition, to leave nothing for the Apaches if they found him. There was a full belt of ammunition as well as some loose cartridges. And there was a swallow of water in the canteen.

In his pocket I found a stub of pencil and some old papers on which he had been learning to write his name. He had gotten somebody to write it for him, or had taken it from something addressed to him, and had practiced, over and over again, on many different surfaces. I had never seen him do so, nor likely had anyone else, for he was a proud man, ashamed to let us know he could not write, and that he cared.

There was no address, nothing to show that there was anyone to whom he belonged.

But there had been a girl he had talked of, so I took what money he had, only a few dollars and some pesos, to give to her.

Scarcely twenty minutes was used in burying the body. Then, leading the spare horse, I went back to the arroyo and followed it for perhaps a mile, the soft sand leaving no tracks that could be recognized. When I came out I started across country.

The sun had gone down by now and the desert was cool. Off in the distance I could hear a quail call ... I hoped it was a real quail.

I felt stiff and cold now, and I worked my fingers to keep them easy for my gun.

Shifting to Rocca's horse, I rode on into the night. There was no trail, but I went ahead, all the time looking for water. The green place I'd seen from afar should be near.

The black horse pulled up alongside me, and Rocca's horse quickened its pace.

They smelled it.

An arroyo opened on my right and I found my way into it, listened, then walked the horses on, knowing the arroyo would end where the water was. The arroyo gaped, and I looked into a small oasis darkening with the cool of evening.

There were a dozen cottonwoods, some mesquite and willows, and slopes green with grass, and through the trees a glimmer of water. I could hear birds twittering.

The horses tugged at their bits, wanting to go forward. Winchester in hand, I walked them slowly, ready with a spur if need be.

Suddenly my way was blocked by a low stone wall that looked to be a part of one of those trincheras the ancient people built to terrace and till their land, or sometimes for dams. I'd seen a lot of them in Mexico.

Dismounting, I led the horses around it and down to a broken place in the wall, and saw something dark and shadowy through the trees. There was no sound but the water, and the rustle of the cottonwood leaves. I walked ahead to an opening among the trees, and came to an ancient ruin. It had once been a considerable structure, built right from the edge of the pool back to the cliffs where it joined the native rock.

Only the floor remained, and a corner of a wall that reached up to six feet, slanting down to no more than three feet near the water. There was green grass all around, and a stillness that came from utter isolation.

First off, I let the horses drink sparingly, and drank myself, and then filled Rocca's canteen. All the while I kept my ears tuned for any sound. But there were no tracks around that I could see, no signs of campfires, nothing to show anybody had been here at all in years.

Picketing the horses, I found a corner of the wall that protected me on two sides. A pile of fallen adobe bricks mingled with chunks of rock that had been used in the walls formed a partial breastwork on the other sides.

Tired as I was, there was no sleep in me. Places like this made a man sort of sad. Somebody had lived here, and judging by the look of the place, different people at different times. There had once been a building of native stone. It had fallen in and been rebuilt with adobe and rock, and it looked as if the last time was no more than thirty, forty years back. Indians had perhaps built the place first, and rebuilt it, too. Later white people had settled in here until driven out.

It was a quiet place. A small garden patch had been worked at one time, and there was a meadow where hay might have been cut, but nobody could live long in such a place with the Apaches on the rampage.

I settled down, and after a while I slept. I awoke when the morning sun began to filter through the leaves. Everything was as quiet as before. I watered the horses, saddled them, and prepared to move out, but first I had scouting to do.

There were crude steps cut from the rocks at one side, taking advantage of natural steps left by the erosion of rock layers. Climbing these, I found a natural hollow that had been shaped by hand into a lookout of some comfort, with a view in all directions.

For several minutes I studied the desert, but saw nothing. Back down below again, I dug into my saddlebags for the small packet of coffee I always carried for emergencies. Often I carried some jerky and flour, but now there was only the coffee.

I built a small fire, and rinsed out an old clay jar I found. When I'd made coffee I filled a cup and prowled around, and finding some chia, I gathered a handful of the seeds and ate them. Then I went up for another look.

Off to the north I glimpsed a buzzard. There might be a dead steer, or it might be one of my friends, and buzzards do not always wait for a man to die.

Due north I rode, then I swung wide to the east, cutting for a sign. Whatever was up ahead must have left tracks getting there, and I wished to find out what I was up against.

"Tell," I told myself, "you better ride easy in the saddle. I think you're headin' into trouble."

That black nicked an ear at me as if to show he agreed. A lonely man a-horseback in wild country gets to carryin' on conversations with his horse, and some horses become right knowledgeable and understanding.

No tracks. I rode up on the east of where the buzzard circled, and swung in closer. Standing in my stirrups I looked the country over, and at first I saw only a lot of prickly pear around, and some clumps of cholla, all white thorns on top, brown underneath.

Then I saw the horse -- a horse down, a saddled horse.

Circling around it, rifle in hand, I taken a chance and called out: "Spanish? Is that you?"

A couple of buzzards roosting in a palo verde tree nearby looked mighty upset with me, and one of them dropped his wings as if to scare me off or stampede my horses.

No answer came back. So I cut a little closer, then drew up and looked around.

It was all just as it should be, sunlit and still.

My black was curious, too. He could sense something I could not, and though it made him curious, it was something he shied from. Probably it was the dead horse.

I walked him slowly forward, the hammer of my Winchester eared back for trouble.

The shirt was what I saw first, men the boots, and the Mexican spurs with the big rowels. It was Spanish.

I swung down and, having tied the black to a mesquite, I walked up to him.

He was lying face down in the sand, but he had pulled his saddlebags across his kidneys, so he'd been alive and conscious when he hit the ground. He knew that buzzards went for the eyes and the kidneys first, so he'd rolled on his face and pulled those saddlebags over him. They might not help much, but getting them off him might bring him to enough to fight the buzzards off.

Lifting the saddlebags free, I rolled him over.

There was blood all over the front of him, dried blood that seemed to come from a shoulder wound. And there was blood lower down that came from some place in his middle. But he was breathing.

We were right out in the open, and those buzzards could attract more than me, so, good for him or not, we had to move.

He muttered something, so I tried to let him know who was with him. "It's all right, Spanish," I said. "You'll see that girl in Tucson yet."

There was no time for fixing him up at all. Gathering him into my arms, I went with him to the spare horse and put him in the saddle, then I lashed his wrists to the pommel and his boots into the stirrups. I taken his saddlebags, although what was in them I didn't know. Then I checked his horse, but the animal was dead. There was a rifle in the saddle scabbard, so I took it along. There was no canteen.