West of the Big River: The Sheriff Page 2

  “C.P., eh? That’ll do. C.P. you are.”

  “Obliged for the water,” Jim said. “We’ll ride on over to the ranch. I been away a while and the old man don’t know I’m coming. Surprise, I’d say.” He chuckled. “Come on, Commodore, let’s ride.”

  “Good to know you, Fred,” I said. “I’ll be around, I reckon. Maybe we’ll meet up somewhere.”

  “So long,” said Fred. He turned back toward the station house. Then he hollered at us as we rode on west toward Jim’s dad’s ranch. “Hey, you all. If you need a job, you can hire on here and go get them horses back from the Induns.”

  We hied on down the road toward the Houck ranch, Jim talking up a storm and me thinking about the flat condition of my wallet, if I’d of had a wallet.

  “Jim? Jim? Is that you, Jim?” The girl who came running out of the ranch house was comely and dressed modestly. Jim piled off his horse and she flang both arms around his neck and give him a kiss that probably made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. When they got through smooching, Jim turned to me. The girl hung on to his arm.

  “Commodore, this here’s my wife Bessie,” he said. “We ain’t been married even a year yet.”

  “’Bout time you come home, Jim.” The statement come from a tall man, a little stooped in the shoulders with some white showing in his sideburns.

  “Pa! Pa! How in Hell you been doing?”

  The man came up short. “James. I know you’ve been gone for some weeks, but we don’t go for swearing at this ranch. You know that.”

  Jim ducked his head like a kid. “Sorry, Pa,” he said. Bessie stood off to the side, but I could tell by the look on her face that Jim Houck was gonna be awful busy keeping her satisfied, at least for a while.

  “Pa,” he said, “This here’s Commodore Perry Owens. He cowboyed for the Rogers outfit in the Nations, and him and me met up in Albuquerque. He was looking for a place he might like, and I told him Arizona was as near to heaven as he was likely to get here on Earth. He come along to see for himself.”

  “Howdy, Commodore,” Jim’s Pa said. “If Jim says you’re a cowboy, most likely you are. What do you figure on doing here?”

  That’s when I made my mind up. “Seems Fred Adams needs someone to go look for some Fargo horses,” I said. “I’ll just shamble on over to Navajo Springs and see if I can’t get them horses back for him. Looks like Jim’s got some catching up to do here at home. I’ll come back by to see what’s going on after I’ve found them plugs.”

  “No need to rush off,” Jim said, but his eyes was on Bessie.

  “You know me, Jim. Gotta be doing something. Fred sounded like he wanted some help and I’m footloose. I’ll just go back and talk to him, maybe sign on for a while.”

  “Git off that hoss,” Jim said. “You need something to eat.”

  It was too early for supper. “Cup of coffee would be good,” I said. “Then I’ll git along over to Navajo Springs.” I dismounted and tied my two horses to the front hitching rail. Jim was already in the house, and I figured maybe he didn’t want me busting in on him.

  “Jim say you worked for the Rogers spread?” Jim’s Pa was still outside, too.

  “I did. Spent half a dozen years or so there.”

  “Uh huh.” He wanted to hear more, but I wasn’t talking. That judge in the Nations had me not wanting to talk too much about bygones.”

  “Don’t mind working with dogies, but I'm right fond of horses,” I said. “That’s one reason why I’m gonna go back to see Fred Adams at Navajo Springs. Don’t think he wants to lose them Fargo horses.”

  “This here’s good horse country, and there’s a prime place over to Cottonwood Seep. Be a good homestead because it’s off railroad land.”

  “That right? Maybe I’ll have a look at it after I get the horses back.”

  “Be glad to show you around. Come on back when you get a chance.” Jim’s Pa was right friendly, but then, in those days people didn’t come around to visit very often. Then Jim and Bessie came out with a coffee pot and cups for me and Jim’s Pa, and good coffee it was.

  It was less than ten miles from the Houck outfit to Navajo Springs, so I got back some time before sundown. Nobody out front, so I hollered. “Hello the house. Anybody home?”

  Fred Adams come outta the station house wiping his hands on a flour sack. “Hey, you’ll be C.P.,” he said.

  “I will be. You still want me to go get those Fargo horses back for you?”

  “You can do that?”

  “I can give her a good try. I learned a bit about trailing and tracking in the Nations, working with Chickasaw and Cherokee.” I climbed off my gray. “Could I hobble this gray and turn him loose around here? Or would the Navajo make off with him?”

  “Should be all right.”

  I put the rig on my hefty Morgan and stripped the Winchester out of the saddle scabbard. “Borrow a seat for a while? I’ll clean my Remington and my Winchester before I light out after them Navajos,” I said.

  Fred had a good look at my Winchester when I set it on a table while I dug the cleaning stuff outta my saddlebag. “That there’s a one-in-a-thousand ’76, ain’t it?”

  “Reckon so.”

  “Cost seventy-five dollars over to Saint Johns. I seen one there. They say them rifles shoot awful straight.”

  I gave Fred a nod. “That gun puts the bullet wherever I point it. But if I don’t point it at the right thing, it don’t hit nothing. What I’m saying is, it ain’t the rifle what shoots straight, it’s the man pulling the trigger.”

  “No shit.”

  “I can hit what I point that rifle at. That’s for sure. Now. Where’d be a good place to start looking for them lost Fargo horses?”

  “Best chance would be going north till you hit Bonito Creek. Look around there for prints with lugs on the shoes. All the Fargo horses got lugs on their shoes, front and back.”

  I gave him a short nod and went to cleaning my weapons. Fred just sat there and watched. A man’s guns, long and short, gotta work every time he pulls the trigger else life’ll get mighty short. Going after those horses, I might need firepower bad. I was making sure I had it when I needed it.

  Finished, I put the weapons back in their holsters and went out to hobble my dapple so he could graze but not get too far away. “Got any grain, Fred?” I hollered.

  “Some.”

  “Oughta give my Morgan some before going to look for the Fargo horses. Spare a bait?”

  Fred didn’t look happy, but he went into the stable and got a morral of oats for Morg. While the bay was eating, I took a look around. Sure enough, all the stage horses had lugs on their shoes. Didn’t help a man tell one stage nag from another, but the tracks would stick out like a sore thumb on some creek bank.

  Back at the station, I asked Fred where the horses had been when the Indians took them.

  “Funny thing,” he said. “They was right there in the holding corral. Had two span put in there for a change when the stage come in. Them Induns took three of ‘um.”

  “Why not all four?”

  “When you ketch up with ‘um, you can ast ‘um.”

  Lot of help Fred Adams was. I threw a leg over Morg’s back and we started making circles around Navajo Springs. If you get up on a little rise anywhere around Navajo Springs, you can see quite a ways. Off to the south there were a few hills, and the Little Colorado River wasn’t too far off to the north. I was on my third circle around the stage station, widening out the part to the north every time I went around, when I come across the trail of six horses. Three ponies and three big horses with lugs on their shoes. The ponies wore shoes, but I knew from the Nations that Indians put shoes on their horses whenever they could, usually at some reservation Indian agent place. Me and Morg, we just naturally followed those tracks.

  The six horses moved north and a little east from Navajo Springs stage station. I had no trouble tracking them to the Puerco River, and though they waded upstream in the shallows for some distance
, I found where they left the river, crossed the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad tracks, and headed up a wash that dribbled a little water. Later I found out they called it Carrizo Creek.

  Horse droppings and so on along the trail told me the Navajos were about two hours ahead of me, and as I didn’t know the country, all I could do was stick to that trail. Off to the west, hills and mesas and washes rolled away in a riot of colors that’s a little hard for an uneducated cowboy to explain. I heard an army man by the name of Ives called it the Painted Desert. I believe it. It was all red and white and purple and pink, and when the sun hit it just right, it surely looked like all of the good Lord’s angels had taken to them hills with paint brushes. But I was chasing Navajos who’d stole Wells Fargo horses, so I didn’t spend much time thinking about beautiful scenery.

  That Navajo land is a hard one. Never any extra water. Not much moisture falls from the skies. There was a trickle of water in Carrizo Creek, so me and Morg had no problem with drying out. Still, we didn’t catch up with the Fargo horses until the morning of the third day.

  2

  Kit Carson and the Army took a big bunch of Navajos off to Bosque Redondo in east New Mexico back in ’64. But they were back now. I didn’t know much about Navajos, but my years in the Nations let me see how red men think. And most of them think in terms of horses when calculating the worth of a man. The three Fargo horses those Navajos was leading into Navajo territory meant a good deal. Not only the worth of a horse, but the worth of a horse stole from the white eyes.

  I followed the tracks of the stolen horses until it got too dark to see them any more. I found a good patch of grass, staked Morg where he could eat all he wanted of that good grass, and set down to a dry camp. Were I off Indian land, I’d have built a fire for coffee and maybe a bit of frybread, but out here with only myself for company, I made no fires.

  The night was cold in that high dry country, but I always carry a blanket and my slicker, so it wasn’t all that bad. I had a bit of bacon and some hardtack, so I dined somewhat like a king, meaning that I didn’t starve. I even managed to catch a wink or two while Morg stood guard.

  Dawn came early, so I was on the trail of those Fargo horses nearly an hour before the sun showed its face. I reckon those Navajo braves figured they was nigh home, because they made not a single attempt to hide those lug-shoe hoofprints, or go by any roundabout way. And that beeline of hoofprints went straight to Emigrant Springs.

  Not far from there’s where I seen the first Navajo.

  The land around Emigrant Springs ain’t all that rough. And where there’s permanent water, there’s bound to be some kind of camp or settlement nearby. Now your plains Indian, Cheyenne or even Comanche, he’ll live in a teepee. But the Navajo, he settles permanent like, and builds him a hogan, usually six-sided walls of juniper logs fitted one on top of the other and packed with adobe mud all around. Well, I’d never seen a Navajo hogan before, even though I spent some months in New Mexico.

  Up on the flat north of Emigrant Springs, there was four of those squat hogans. Couldn’t see no one around, but that didn’t mean no one was there. A man only sees a Indian if the Indian wants him to. Leastwise that’s how I always found it. Besides, one of those mudhut-looking hogans had smoke coming out the top. That meant someone was home. But there were no horses. And no dogs. Made a man wonder if anyone actually lived in them hogans.

  I let Morg drink his fill at the pool below the springs. I sipped from my canteen while he was drinking, then pulled my Winchester ’76 from its scabbard, just in case.

  No one came out of the hogans, but them being Indians, I figured they—if there was anyone home—they’d know I was there.

  Sure enough, the minute I turned Morg’s head toward the hogans, a man come out from behind the wool blanket that served for a door. He held a single-shot Springfield in the crook of his left arm. I held my Winchester across the saddle bows.

  He let me ride up close, but there could have been someone else watching from somewhere. It’s hard to spot an Indian what don’t want to be spotted.

  Up close, I saw that the man was old enough to have streaks of gray in his black hair, which he wore long and tied in a kind of bun at the back of his head.

  “Looking for stole horses,” I said, raising my voice so the old man could hear.

  He shook his head.

  I didn’t know if he meant that he couldn’t hear me or that he didn’t understand. Maybe both. I snicked at Morg, and he took a couple of steps toward the Navajo, head up and ears pricked forward. Morg’s attention was focused on the old man, so I figured there might not be anyone else close around. Certainly not the horse thieves.

  “Horses!” I hollered.

  The old man just shook his head.

  I touched a finger to the brim of my hat to salute the old man, then went back to Emigrant Springs to look for the tracks of those lug-shoed Fargo horses.

  The tracks were there, but they didn’t lead to the hogans. Instead, they sidled off to the east and took a little arroyo that could well have hidden them from view of the hogans. At least if no one was looking, no one would have noticed.

  I was after the Fargo horses, so I followed the tracks. Simple as that. And them what took the horses weren’t expecting nobody to come after them, so they took no pains to hide the tracks.

  A little over two miles on, I topped a little rise and looked down on a pretty little swale. I say little, but it was well over a hundred acres in size. There must have been underground water there because the grass of the swale was belly high to a 16-hand horse. I could tell because there was twenty-three head of stock grazing in that swale. Three of them were the Fargo horses. They still had their halters on and they were the only horses in sight with harness marks on their hides.

  Two Navajo boys rode herd on the horses. They carried boy-sized bows and a few arrows.

  I reined Morg around the edge of the swale rather than ride him through the horse herd. I knew a bit of the Indian sign language what they called hand talk, and I hoped it would let me talk to those boys. I truly did not want to have to shoot either one of them.

  The boys came together on the far side of the herd as Morg and I started around. I signed that I came in peace.

  They ignored my hands. Maybe Navajos didn’t know the hand patois of the plains.

  I kept Morg moving around the edge of the herd, which ignored me. Good grass was a lot more important to them than a lone rider who made no dangerous-looking moves.

  One of the boys nocked an arrow and moved his pony so he was facing the direction I came from. The other boy retreated back around the swale, putting fifty or sixty yards between himself and the other boy.

  I signed “peace” again.

  The boy with the nocked arrow watched me through squinted eyes.

  At the place nearest the Fargo horses, I dismounted.

  The Navajo boy’s pony did a nervous dance. I signed “peace” again, then took my lariat from the saddle.

  The pony danced closer.

  I ignored the boy and walked to the Fargo horses, talking nonsense to them in a soothing voice. In no time, I had all three linked together with the lariat. They’d follow, trusting the years of training they’d gotten pulling Wells Fargo stagecoaches across Arizona.

  The boy with the nocked arrow screeched as I started to move the Fargo horses away from the herd. I signed “Peace” and “my horses.”

  He gigged the pony around the herd in my direction. I ignored him and mounted Morg. I took the retaining loop off the hammer of my Remington. I didn’t want to kill that boy, but he could kill me just as easy and just as dead as could a full-grown warrior. What’s more, the herd was his responsibility and I had cut out three of what to his mind were his horses. To him, I was the horse thief, not the other way around.

  “Tai akwai-i,” he shouted, bow drawn and arrow nock at his cheek. “Tai akwai-i!”

  He let the arrow fly and I naturally palmed my Remington, cocking it as it cleared
the holster, and shot him in the chest. Wasn’t time to do anything else.

  The boy toppled from his pony. I didn’t stop to see if he was dead. I hauled on the lariat lead line to those Fargo horses and made for Navajo Springs as quick as I knew how.

  The other boy didn’t chase me. Maybe he was too young. Probably not more than six or seven years old.

  Me and the Fargo horses, we headed back the way we come, taking almost the same trail back as we did coming to Emigrant Springs. The Fargo horses were used to running and so was Morg, so we made it almost to the Atlantic & Pacific Railway tracks before the first bullets from irate Navajos crashed in.

  Don’t know if they was too mad to hit what they shot at or what, but none of that Navajo lead seemed to even come close. Morg and me hit a gallop, and the Fargo horses came right along behind. Course they wasn’t pulling a ton of stagecoach either.

  Once we got across the tracks, I pulled the ’76 from its scabbard and snapped a shot or two at the Navajos, without really taking aim. They hollered, and pulled back on their own reins, giving me and Morg and the Fargo horses a little more time.

  On the south side of the tracks, an arroyo ran down towards the Puerco River, and it was deep enough to hide me and the horses from the five or six Navajos chasing after us. As soon as Morg took me out of sight below the rim of that arroyo, I piled off, leaving the lead rope to the Fargo horses tied to Morg’s saddle horn. I snaked up to the edge of the arroyo and waited for a Navajo to come into sight.

  They were a bit hesitant to follow me because I’d dropped out of sight. I’d took my hat off and weighted it down with a hunk of sandstone so its shape and color would not stick out and show the warriors where I was. My hair’s pert near sandy in color anyway, so I don’t reckon my head stuck out all that much. Leastwise, it didn’t seem like the Navajos knew precisely where I was.

  The ’76 had a shell in the chamber, and its hammer was eared back, so all I had to do was wriggle it between two rocks so it was pointing Navajo way.

  A bullet spanged off a rock about six inches from my head and sprayed me with chips of sandstone. A puff of smoke showed where the shot had come from, but that meant little. Any fighting man knows he’s got to change positions after a shot, or stand up to a hail of lead.