Last Stand at Papago Wells (1957) Read online

  The approaching dust hung almost still in the desert air. Not all the group could be horsemen, they moved too slowly for this. Was there a hint of blue in the dust? Logan Cates studied it through the glasses but could not be sure.

  A boot scraped on the rock behind him and he recognized the shadow as that of Jennifer Fair. She was shading her eyes toward the dust column, and he got to his feet, his rifle in the hollow of his arm. “I think it’s the Army,” he said, “and in bad shape.”

  “There’s a girl with them.”

  He knew it was none of his business but something impelled him to ask, “Are you really going to marry him?”

  Her eyes when she turned to look at him were level and cool. “I believe that is my business, Mr. Cates.”

  “Of course.”

  “He’s a gentleman,” she added, and was immediately angry for defending him. “He has breeding.”

  “So has his horse … but I wouldn’t pick him to ride in this country.”

  “I don’t intend to live in this country.”

  “Then you should do all right.” Her comment rankled, and he said irritably, “What’s wrong with this country? Your father likes it. He helped to open it up.”

  “I’ve seen how a country like this is opened up and I don’t like it. I doubt, Mr. Cates, if you could understand how I feel.” She looked directly into his eyes. “I know the kind of man you are.”

  “Do you,” He narrowed his eyes as they swept the lava and sand. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe you know anything about a man like me or a country like this. It takes rough men, Miss Fair, to tame a rough country; rough men, but good men. Your father is in that class. As for you, I don’t think you’d measure up, and you’ll do well to leave it. You’re a hothouse flower, very soft, very appealing and very useless.”

  “You aren’t very complimentary.”

  “Should I be?” He glanced at the end of his cigarette, then his eye caught a flicker of movement and he held himself very still, keyed for action until he saw it was a tiny lizard, struggling with some insect at the edge of a bush. “In the world you are going to, men want pretty, useless women. They want toys for their lighter moments, and we have those women out here, too, only we have another name for them. We want women here who can make a home, and if need be, handle a rifle.”

  “And you don’t think I could?”

  “You’re quitting, aren’t you? You’re running away?”

  “My father can get along without me. He has done so for years.”

  “And probably during all those years he has been looking forward to the day when you would be with him. What do you suppose a man like your father works for? He worked for you, for your children … if you ever have any.”

  He was angry and he knew he was saying things he should not say, that were none of his business. “And what about him?” He jerked his thumb toward where Kimbrough lay sleeping. “He’s running, isn’t he? Why didn’t he stay and face your father? Why didn’t he stay there and tell your father he was going to marry you and if he didn’t like it, he knew what he could do.”

  “You don’t know my father.”

  Cates grinned, suddenly amused that she should cause him to become so angry. “I know his type, and it would take more than Kimbrough has to face him. You know what I think, ma’am? You feel the same way.”

  She was stiff with anger. She wanted to walk away but did not want him to believe her defeated. She desperately wanted the last word and could not find it. The soldiers were near enough now so their faces could be seen, and one of them stumbled and fell, pulling himself up with an effort.

  “Why don’t you go down there and help them, if you are so self-sufficient? Why don’t you do something?”

  “My grandfather went out to meet some men in uniform once, ma’am, and they turned out to be Indians in uniforms they’d taken from dead soldiers. I’ll wait until I can see the whites of their hides.”

  He dropped his cigarette to the lava rock and carefully rubbed it out with the toe of his boot. She had often seen her father do the same thing in the same, identical way, and it angered her.

  Cates laid the barrel of his Winchester across the top of a boulder. “All right.” He did not seem to speak loudly yet the ragged little column swayed to a halt. “Hold up, down there! Who are you?”

  The dust settled around them. The square-built man stepped forward. “Sergeant Sheehan, United States Cavalry, four soldiers and two civilians. Who are you?”

  “Come on in, Sergeant! And welcome to the family!”

  Foreman, Beaupre and Kimbrough were on their feet, watching the soldiers come in. With a shade of impatience she noticed that Grant was the last to leave his blanket and it infuriated her that Cates noticed it also. She glared at him but he merely grinned and looked away.

  Logan Cates remained where he was, hearing the excited conversation as they compared notes with the soldiers. He did not need to talk to them to understand what must have happened; their appearance spoke for itself. So much time was wasted in idle chatter, and he knew this was a dangerous time, when Indians might attack, knowing the excitement of the new arrivals would distract the defending forces. Nothing of the kind happened, however, and he sat watching the desert, remembering other times like this, and thinking of Jim Fair.

  He knew the rancher by reputation only, but he had a name for being a hard man as well as a good one. He could understand such a man, for he had an idea that Jim Fair was much like himself. There is nothing easy about building a cattle outfit in a wild, barren country, nothing easy about fighting Apaches and outlaws, and it can be a hard, lonely life, far from the refining aspects of feminine society. The home a man would want, the comfort, the ease, the little things, the nice things, these a man alone on the desert could not have, and it took a woman to bring them to him. What he had told Jennifer Fair was, he believed, the truth. Jim Fair had undoubtedly longed for the return of his daughter, for the home she could make for him, and for the pleasure of seeing her marry and rear children. Cates had seen too many of those bluff, hard old frontiersmen not to know the breed.

  Lonnie come up to relieve him and he went down and walked right into trouble.

  Jim Beaupre was standing off to one side, his big hands hanging at his sides. He looked then just what he was, a hard old man. Taylor faced him.

  “If that’s how you want it,” Taylor was saying, and he would have reached for his gun.

  “Stop it!” Cates’s voice rang with command. “Don’t you damn fools realize we’ve trouble enough!”

  “This man’s wanted in Yuma!” Taylor replied stubbornly. “He was one of them we were chasin’ when we ran into the Indians.”

  “Save your shells,” Cates advised. “You’ll be glad of each other before we get out of this.”

  “Are you taking up for this outlaw?”

  “When we’re out of this if you two still want to kill each other, just have at it. Now you’ll listen to me.”

  “And who the hell are you?”

  “Mr. Taylor,” Sheehan interposed, “I’d listen to this man if I were you. We can’t have any trouble here. Not now.”

  Taylor was not convinced. A stubborn man, he had been sworn in as a deputy and the fact that he alone survived meant little to him. He had started to do a job and he intended to finish it. “I’m in the right,” he insisted, “this man Beaupre is wanted by the law.”

  “Bein’ right can get you killed,” Beaupre said.

  Logan Cates shot him a glance. “Shut up!” he said harshly. “And Taylor, why don’t you go get some coffee?”

  Taylor’s face was flushed and angry, but he turned abruptly away and walked to the fire.

  Jim Beaupre stared after him, then bit off a corner of his plug of tobacco. “Thanks, Logan. If those folks at Yuma would keep their trouble-happy kids in line there’d have been no trouble. They jumped Lugo an’ me because we were strangers an’ fair game.”

  “Your problem,” Cates replied s
hortly. “Only as long as we’re in trouble here, try to keep shy of him.”

  He crossed to the rocks and sat down with his back to them, knowing this was only the beginning. Once the fighting started all would be well, but until then they could expect only trouble.

  Sheehan squatted on his heels. “Hotheaded fools. I’m glad you stopped that.”

  “The first thing we’ve got to watch,” Cates said, thinking ahead, “is our horses. They’ll try to stampede ‘em if they can, and set us afoot, so what we’ve got to do is build a corral. If we lose those horses we’ll never get to Yuma, Indians or no Indians.”

  Sheehan nodded wearily. “You’re right, but my men are all in, dead beat.”

  Cates got up and spoke loudly enough for them all to hear. “We’ve got to build a corral to hold the horses. Any volunteers?”

  Jim Beaupre was the first man on his feet, and Taylor, determined not to let Beaupre out of his sight, also got up. Kimbrough, Conley and Zimmerman followed. Cates led the way into the arroyo and finding a thick wall of brush, he started breaking off wands of ocotillo to thread into the brush. Tying branches of the brush together, weaving the spiked wands of ocotillo and other branches into the brush, they soon had woven a tight fence against stampede. Seeing what he was doing the others had caught on quickly, Lugo among them.

  It was very hot in the deep arroyo. They worked steadily and their combined efforts soon had created a solid wall of brush that not even a bull could crash through. Where there were gaps in the defenses around the edges of the arroyo they filled in with stones.

  When they had finished their work, Sheehan dropped to the sand beside Cates. The heat was stifling. “You Army?” Sheehan asked.

  “Once, briefly.”

  “Somebody’s got to be in command.”

  “Kimbrough was a Confederate colonel, I think.” Cates was noncommittal.

  “We need an Indian fighter.” Sheehan looked down at his hands. “I seem to recall a Cates who was chief of scouts with Crook.”

  “It was for a short time only.”

  “Good enough for me. Crook knew Indian fighters better than any of them. If you were good enough to scout for him, that’s all I need to know.”

  “It was just a campaign along the border and into Mexico.”

  “Crook was the best of them all.” Sheehan got up. “Maybe we should put it to a vote.”

  Sheehan proposed it. They needed one man to lead, a man who knew Indians, a man who could command. He suggested Logan Cates.

  “Grant Kimbrough,” Jennifer said. “I believe he would be the man. He was a colonel in the Confederate Army.”

  “Cates is good enough for me,” Beaupre said.

  Taylor’s head came up sharply. “Kimbrough,” he said.

  Conley was half asleep, but he opened his eyes and let them go from one man to the other. “Cates,” he said, and closed his eyes again.

  Zimmerman voted for Kimbrough, but Junie nodded to indicate Cates. “Him,” she said, “I think he’d do fine.”

  Styles indicated Kimbrough. “I’ll stick with the Army,” he said, “Union or Johnny Reb.”

  Kimbrough glanced at Cates, smiling a little. “Well?”

  Sheehan got up and dusted the sand off his breeches. “Nobody has asked the kid up there.” He turned and looked up at the rocks. “Hey, up there! We’re votin’ for a commanding officer! It’s Kimbrough or Cates. Which do you say?”

  Lonnie Foreman never took his eyes from the desert. “Cates,” he said.

  Kimbrough shrugged. “Looks like a draw,” he said.

  Beaupre jerked his head to indicate Lugo, who had not spoken. “What about him? He ain’t voted yet.”

  “The Injun?” Taylor was startled. “When could an Injun vote?”

  “If he can shoot,” Sheehan said, “he can vote.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Kimbrough said. “What do you say, Lugo?”

  Tony Lugo was digging in the sand with his fingers. He glanced up, his black eyes, like flakes of obsidian, revealing nothing. “Him,” he indicated Cates, “I think he know Indian.”

  Grant Kimbrough glanced at Cates, his face unreadable, then he shrugged. “All right, Captain,” he said, “what are your orders?”

  “Two men with the horses at all times. Nobody outside the circle of defense without orders, the lookout to be relieved every two hours, all rifles checked at once, two at a time.” He turned to Sheehan. “Sergeant, check the ammunition and food. I want an actual count, no guesses.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Beaupre climbed the rocks to relieve Foreman, and when Lonnie came down, Cates intercepted him. “If you get a chance,” he said softly, “talk to that girl. She’s lonesome and scared.”

  “I’m not much hand—not talking to women.”

  “She’ll listen to you.” Cates hesitated. “She’s a kid, Lonnie, and she’s trying to play the woman. She’s trying very hard, so help her out. Just talk to her … it doesn’t matter what about, help her loosen up, help her get rid of that fear. She’s been scared, kid, and those Indians are still out there. Just don’t talk about her or about Indians.”

  “I never talked to no girl. I wouldn’t know what to say.”

  “You’ll think of something. She’s scared, Lonnie, and tied up tight as a fiddle string inside. You … you’re closer to her age, like boys she’d meet at a dance or somewhere. You’ve got to help her.”

  “Well … all right.”

  Cates climbed the rocks and looked over the desert, refusing Beaupre’s offer of a chew of tobacco. “Thanks,” Beaupre said, “for pullin’ Taylor off me. That was a fair shootin’ back yonder.”

  “Stay away from him.”

  “Taylor’s one of those sanctimonious blisters who believe any accused man is guilty. Hell, I don’t want to kill him, but he’s got it in his craw and his kind won’t quit.”

  “It’ll work out.”

  Logan Cates was far from sure. Taylor was a tenacious man sure of his own rightness, and not one to back away from trouble. It was this quality in him that could get him killed.

  Restlessly, Cates scouted the small perimeter of their position. The three pools lay in the arroyo which fell away gradually from the upper to the lower. The difference in the levels of the first two was slight, the third greater, and from there the arroyo widened to almost a hundred feet. Below it was still wider, much of it choked with brush, while the edges of the arroyo were also a dense thicket. The lookout place chosen was just above the higher and smaller of the tanks. There, among the lava boulders, was a good observation point and an excellent firing position. Lower down the arroyo was the freshly made wall of ocotillo branches and woven brush to corral the horses. The position occupied was extensive, but easily defended, for it was accessible from the outside at few points, and without worming through dense brush it was impossible to see into the corral where the horses were kept. Yet there was much cover for an attacking force as well, cover such as Indians knew well how to use.

  Nevertheless, the situation could scarcely be improved. They had water, enough to last for weeks, they had some food, they had ammunition, and they had some good fighting men.

  It was almost dusk before Lonnie managed to get close enough to Junie Hatchett to talk. She was drying her hair, which she had washed in water scooped into a rock hollow which served as a basin.

  “Sure is good to have a woman around,” Lonnie suggested tentatively. “Miss Jennifer likes it, too, I reckon, her being alone with us before.”

  Junie said nothing, keeping busy with her hair, not even glancing his way. He watched the shadows on the darkening water.

  “Mighty pretty here,” he said, “an’ quiet, too.”

  She was using the pool for a mirror, but her face was only dimly visible now and soon it would be too dark to see.

  “I figure California to be a comin’ country,” he said, “a man could make a start. Maybe get himself a piece of land.”

  She sat back on her heels,
but did not look at him. Cates, some distance off, was sure she was listening.

  “Ain’t like I had anybody to go back to,” Lonnie said. “I can stay out here easy as not. I like to have me a few cows and some fruit trees. A little place. Somewhere with good water, and a house I build myself. I helped build two, three houses an’ I figure I can build me a good one.”

  Junie looked at herself in the water, but even the dim outline was losing itself in the dark. She felt she was like that, lost in the dark somewhere, and no way out. Only there was a single bright star in the sky over the edge of the lava cliff, and Lonnie Foreman was talking to her.

  “Maybe I could find a place near the mountains, somewhere with trees and grass. I like to have a place like that.” He paused, looking at the star’s bright lantern over the rocks. “Kind of a lot to do … a man alone like that.”

  He was silent for several minutes. “You know what I miss out here? I miss jelly an’ jam. Back to home we always had it. Ma, she put it up an’ when fall come there it was, all in jars in the cellar catching dust, but just waitin’ to be et up. I used to like to go down there when I was little, just to see the light from the lantern on those dusty jars full of peaches and cherries and the like. Don’t expect I’ll ever see jelly like that again. Or jam.”

  Junie fingered her drying hair and tried to straighten her dress.

  “I like it with hot biscuits,” he said. “Just thinkin’ of it makes me hungry.”

  Logan Cates looked out over the desert, feeling the coolness, remembering hot biscuits he had known as a boy, and remembering so much else along with it. A man lost a lot, growing up, a lot he could never regain. He shook his head, melancholy, and filled suddenly with a nameless longing.

  “I never could talk to girls,” Lonnie sounded his defeat. “I never know what to say.”

  “You talk all right,” Junie said.

  Chapter Six

  When he heard the quail call he knew their time of waiting would soon be past, for this was no true quail. He could not have told how he knew, it was one of those things a man learned, something he absorbed as he lived in wild country. It was like finding a lost trail in the dark, or one of those prehistoric Indian trails you could not quite see but you knew was a trail just the same.