West of Tombstone

West of Tombstone

Paul Lederer writing as Owen G. Irons

ONE

West of Tombstone the land turns harsh and bitter, sere and savage. The men who live in that wasteland are no different. Maybe it's the country that makes them so hard. They'll cut your throat for a dollar, or for your boots, and smile as they are doing it. There are coyotes, Gila monsters and sidewinders in the desert, dangerous creatures to be sure, but not so dangerous as the men. They merely live as they were intended to live. As for the men, well, that is the way they choose to live.

You do not cross those deserts alone and expect to survive. They are crossed because a man has no other choice, no other chance for survival. When you have managed to cheat the hangman's rope then even that wild and dangerous freedom is miles ahead of the swift descent to hell you have been expecting.…

Cameron Black rode on.

The sun was sinking in the west and he tugged his hat lower. Beneath him the pinto horse had begun to drag its feet wearily. It wasn't Cameron Black's horse. He had stolen it. As he had stolen the Henry repeating rifle riding in its scabbard under his right knee. Horse stealing was still a hanging offense in Arizona Territory.

But it didn't matter – they can only hang you once.

The sky was flaming scarlet and brilliant orange as it began its slow slide to some resting place beyond the saw-toothed mountains ahead of Cameron. Doves winged their way homeward, cutting quick shadows against the purple sky. A coyote looked up in surprise and slunk away, its prey – a jack-rabbit – in its jaws. At least the coyote would eat that evening. At least the doves would find water. Cameron would have neither.

The paint pony stumbled from exhaustion and Cameron Black halted the weary animal to swing down to the desert sand. There was a breeze, hot and gusting, rising with the sunset. He removed his hat and wiped off his forehead with his shirt cuff. His hair was dry before he put his hat back on. His shirt and jeans were caked white with sweat. The noon temperature had probably been near 110°. It wasn't much cooler now, even with the sun fading to a faintly glowing golden memory. He walked on; there was nothing else to do.

Water was all that he needed. Enough water to keep the paint horse moving. They had to get off the desert floor and into the foothills which bulked against the Arizona sky. Water was life. Without it he and the horse both would end up a pile of bleached bones, torn apart by the scavengers, like the remains he had occasionally passed of oxen some fool wayfarer had tried to drive across this wasteland.

Night had fallen and the darkness was nearly complete. A hazy purple glow illuminated the far mountain range dimly and the stars were bright enough for Cameron to see a few individual stark forms against the sky, like the tall saguaro cactus appearing in the darkness like startled bandits with their hands raised. The volcanic rocks with their jagged edges, the catclaw and the nopal cactus he could not see, and stumbling once into a patch of them he had decided that he had no choice but to stop for the night.

He unfastened the twin cinches on the Texas-rigged saddle and wearily dropped it to the sand. The saddle blanket he placed over it. This was his pillow for the night. Sagging to the earth he looked to the long lonely skies and then hung his head wearily. Later a thin crescent moon would rise above the saw-toothed range, bringing a thin silver sheen to the sandy waste, but it did not matter. He could travel no farther tonight.

There were
tinajas
– stony catch basins – out there, somewhere on the desert, but he did not know the land that well. Stony Harte had known where they were, all the tiny seeps and springs that could keep a man and his horse alive in the wasteland, but Stony was not here. Stony was nowhere at all, or perhaps he wandered somewhere between this world and the netherlands, seeking his gold.

Stony was the reason Cameron Black wandered the broad, lifeless desert, the reason Hell had descended upon him.

A scant twelve days earlier, Cameron's life had seemed bright and full of promise, well, as full of promise as it ever had seemed since he had begun his wandering ways. Since then he had been shot at, arrested, sentenced to be hanged, escaped from prison and become lost on the desert. All thanks to Stony. A man should choose his friends more carefully.

Cameron stretched out on the sand which was still hot and would be crowded with scorpions and night-hunting predators once his presence was sensed. He painfully raised his head onto his saddle and stared gloomily at the suddenly brilliant mass of stars overhead. His eyes closed slowly, inexorably as the tremendous heat of the day faded to the numbing cold of the desert night and he recalled it all before he finally, fitfully, fell to sleep.

‘Stony Harte,' the grinning young man on the leggy gray pony had said, thrusting out his hand.

Cameron had taken it and nodded to the bright-eyed, curly-haired cowboy. They sat their ponies side by side, letting them drink from the thin silver creek. Overhead, willow trees offered their tenuous shade to the travelers. Gnats rose in clouds around them and had to be fanned away. Above the ribbon of bright water, dragonflies, blue and orange, sped this way and that on silken wings. Cicadas sang enthusiastically in the brush.

‘I'm Cameron Black.'

‘Nice to meet you, Cam,' Harte said. He tilted his battered hat back and surveyed the long white land surrounding them. ‘Do you know how far it is to Tombstone?'

‘Maybe thirty miles,' Cameron answered.

‘Well, that's not too bad if Dolly here doesn't get cantankerous on me.' He patted the neck of the big gray mare he rode. The horse had a white mane and tail and a menacing expression in her eye.

‘Is she hard to manage?' Cameron asked.

‘Hard to manage?' Harte laughed. ‘I should say so, but she'll run all day and all night so long as I keep reminding her who's boss. She's a tough old gal.'

‘You have business in Tombstone?' Cameron asked, and Harte laughed again.

‘No, sir, I sure don't. I mean to stay as far away from that town as possible. I was just wondering.'

Black nodded. Had Harte crossed someone there? Was it woman trouble? He didn't know, but in those times it was not considered polite to ask a man what lay behind him. The Civil War and the Kansas trouble were too near in memory. Men on every branch of the spectrum wandered here and there, most of them using assumed names or none at all.

‘I have some pemmican,' Harte said, ‘and a little coffee. Could I invite you to dinner?'

‘You could,' Cameron said. ‘I'm riding to Tombstone with a sackful of beans, a little bacon, a couple ounces of coffee and little more.'

‘You have an opportunity up there?' Harte asked, as the two men led their ponies back into the lacy shade of a clump of towering mesquite where the insects were swarming.

‘No,' Cameron Black admitted. ‘It's just a place to be. Another place to be.'

Stony Harte questioned him no further. He went to the saddle-bags his pony carried and removed the pemmican he had. Pounded venison it was, with some sort of berry Cameron didn't recognize by taste ground into it – sour oak berries, likely, and a hint of sage. They sat on Harte's blanket watching the silver glitter of the tiny stream, eating silently as a coffee pot boiled over dry willow twigs. They could hear quail chuckling to each other in the thick brush. A lone vulture circled overhead, awaiting the death of some unseen desert creature. If the animal it was watching died, dozens, perhaps hundreds of the birds would arrive in a long dark wave from their hiding place.

‘Filthy beasts,' Harte said, watching the huge soaring bird. ‘I hate them.'

He was propped up on one elbow, hat tilted back, sipping his roughly brewed coffee from a tin cup.

Cameron was struck by how much the stranger resembled him. Both had slightly curly dark hair, although Stony Harte's was streaked with thin strands of silver. Similar in height, they both had gray eyes. They could have been brothers. Stony, however, was more outgoing, more prone to laughter. Cameron Black was of a serious nature. He had the right to be, considering his background.

‘So?' Stony asked, stretching his arms, yawning. ‘Ride west together or not? If you don't find me bad company, it might be better for both of us. They tell me the Jicarilla Apaches are stirring up some dust out there.'

‘I've nothing against it,' Cameron said. There was some hesitance in his tone, but Stony seemed not to notice it. Cameron liked the man well enough, but in those days it was still considered reckless to ride the wasteland with strangers. No matter – what did he have to lose, after all? And if the Indians did decide to take a crack at them, two men with guns were definitely better than finding oneself alone on the desert.

‘Good,' Stony said, flashing his bright smile, thrusting out his hand again. ‘That's settled, then.' They unsaddled their ponies and let them pick at the scant grass and the mesquite beans. It was poor forage, but both horses were in good condition and they could survive on what they could scavenge for another day or so. Stony had said that he knew this section of the desert intimately, every seep and
tinaja
where good water could be found. That was all they would truly need. Without water every man, beast and plant was doomed to perish in this country.

Stony's manner was so confident that one could not doubt him. He told stories of hidden meadows and lost springs known only to the Indians, of secret caverns in the red mesas where a man could sit out the torrid heat of the desert day, of friends he had made among the nomadic tribes, and hinted at small Mexican pueblos where he had many
amigos
and lovers with huge dark eyes.

It was easy to believe Stony Harte, impossible not to like this roaming gregarious cowboy. Before the moon had risen, Cameron slept rolled up tightly in his blanket against the chill of the desert night. Something awakened him. His horse pawing at the sandy earth, the far-distant howl of a lonely coyote.… Opening one eye he watched by the faint starlight as Stony Harte slipped from his bed and went to his horse, removing the saddle-bags from its back. When he returned stealthily to his bed, he doubled the bags and, using them as a pillow, lay down again. As he did, the saddle-bags gave out an audible metallic clink and then settled. Cameron Black closed his eyes and considered this, but determining that it was none of his business, he rolled over and fell back to sleep with the cold stars shimmering overhead across the long, white desert floor.

The nudge of a boot toe against his ribs brought Cameron awake. He pawed at his eyes, crusty from the dust off the salt flat and saw a silhouette standing over him, outlined against crystal stars and a blue-black sky. He tensed and reached for his revolver before remembering that he now had a new traveling companion.

‘Stony?' he muttered, relaxing.

‘Who else? Better roll out and saddle your pony.'

‘Good God! What time is it?' Cameron grumbled. There was not a trace of dawn light in the sky; no breeze blew across the long desert. The temperature had plummeted overnight as it does on the desert with no clouds to hold the terrible heat of the day.

‘Just told you,' Stony answered, with a grin Cameron could not see. ‘My friend, it'll be ninety degrees by mid-morning and we have miles to go. Let's hit the trail while we can.'

Sitting up, Cameron rubbed his head and stared unblinkingly at the darkness. Then, shrugging, he rose and with his blanket still over his shoulders went to slip the bit to his reluctant paint pony and saddle it. The smell of coffee was rich and inviting on the morning air as he walked back to the camp. Harte had started a small fire with mesquite twigs and was boiling something less than two cups of coffee. Cameron squatted down beside him, yawing. Harte passed him a tin cup of coffee across the embers.

‘I shouldn't have started the fire,' Stony said, sipping at his own coffee. ‘Out here flame can be seen a long way. The coffee can be smelled almost as far.'