AZUL WATCHED WHILE Shelby got dressed and checked through his medical bag, then escorted the doctor to the rear of the house, where Tie had a horse and a buggy stabled. With the problem of making a decision removed, Shelby seemed a lot happier about going. It seemed almost as though he was anxious to help Taggart, but afraid of the consequences, so that Azul’s enforcement of the journey saved him from arguing with himself.
They got the horse settled in the traces and Azul hitched the pinto behind. The doctor took the reins, and they moved out on to Main Street.
That early in the morning, the place was still mostly empty. The old men had finished sweeping off the sidewalks and were gone in to get their breakfasts. The deputy had disappeared and the only sign of life on the street was the brown and white mongrel dog that glanced up from its scratching and issued a half-hearted bark.
‘Lucky you come in when you did,’ Shelby remarked. ‘A mite longer and this town’d be full of Fogarty people.’
‘Who’d stop you visiting Jody Taggart.’ The way Azul said it made the sentence a statement, rather than a question. ‘You want to tell me why?’
‘Jesus! I thought you knew.’ The old man sounded genuinely surprised. ‘You mean you really came in blind?’
‘Like I told you.’ Azul was getting tired of repeating it by now. ‘I never saw Jody Taggart before yesterday. I found him shot up an’ I took him home. That’s all I know, except he owns some prime horses.’
‘Best horses this side of Kentucky,’ nodded Shelby, ‘that’s half the problem.’
Azul shrugged, not really interested.
‘So what’s this Fogarty got against horses?’
‘Ain’t so much the horses as how they got there and who owns them,’ said Shelby. ‘You want to hear the whole story?’
‘May as well.’ They were outside of Comstock now and the half-breed was relaxing a little. ‘Seems like I rode into something a whole lot bigger than I thought.’
‘Damn’ right you did,’ Shelby agreed. ‘Now why don’t you reach inside that bag of mine an’ find the bottle I got here. I’ll need to lubricate my throat to tell you the whole thing.’
Azul reached down to open the medical bag. Inside, wrapped round with bandages, was a whiskey bottle. He pulled it out and drew the cork, then passed it to Shelby. The doctor took a long swig and handed the bottle back.
‘Help yourself or just hold it,’ he shrugged, ‘it was like this …’
Daniel Fogarty had come west from Texas seven years before. He brought with him a sizable bankroll and five hundred head of prime cattle. The land north and east of Comstock was owned by no one—unless you counted the Apaches, which Fogarty didn’t—so he staked v: and began to herd his cows. He imported Hereford bulls to put more meat on the bones of the rangy longhorns and got himself established as the biggest rancher in the territory.
He had chosen his location well. The bulk of the Texas cattle trade was aimed eastwards, going up the Goodnight Route or the Sedalia Trail to Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri. The old Goodnight, Loving Road went due north to Denver and Cheyenne. Fogarty’s holdings were positioned where it was a comparatively short drive to California and Nevada, even less distance southwards into Mexico. In the short time since he arrived, he had established a near monopoly on the western trade; and spread his land out in all directions.
Comstock had grown as a result, spreading in equal proportion to the success of Fogarty’s Flying F Ranch.
Daniel Fogarty was a widower. He had gotten married early and his wife had been killed in a Comanche raid. Mary Williams was the daughter of a saloon-owner in Comstock. Fogarty had taken a shine to her and begun a clumsy courtship, one aspect of which was the purchase of her father’s saloon.
Then Jody Taggart came on the scene.
He had a few hundred dollars and a pure-bred Arab stallion. He was ten years younger than Fogarty and had a way with the ladies. He staked himself a claim on the western slopes of the Mogollons and began to trade horses with the Apaches living there. Before long he was trading the best horses west of the Mississippi. He also talked Mary Williams into marrying him after her father died.
That upset Fogarty on two counts. The first was that Jody Taggart had got the woman he wanted; the second was that Jody refused to sell out.
‘That’s no reason to hire guns,’ Azul remarked. ‘Cattle and horses can live together.’
‘Animals can,’ grunted Shelby, helping himself to more whiskey. ‘It seems like humans ain’t capable of the same understanding.’
Azul nodded, knowing what he meant.
It was strange to one raised in a Chiricahua rancheria, this insistence of the pinda-a-lick-oyi to own things. The Apache lived free, drifting with the seasons, hunting and fishing and growing what little they needed, then moving on when the grass got dry or the season too chill. They had their tribal areas, certainly. It was recognized that the Chiricahua and the Mimbreño, the Jicarilla and the White Mountain Apaches all reserved portions of the Southwest for themselves. But the individual family groupings moved freely amongst the hills of Apacheria. A group might build its hogans and plant com in one particular place, but there was no question of fencing in those fields, or of denying some wandering group hospitality. There was no question of owning the land the way the white man needed to own it.
It was a division of his nature—one occasioned by his mixed birth—that he could see both sides of that argument. His father had taught him to read and write in the language of the whites, and in so doing had taught him much of white thinking. Yet he had grown u p a Chiricahua warrior. Had listened to his mother’s people—the shaman, Sees-Both-Ways, and the hunter, Sees-The-Fox—and had accepted their teaching in equal measure.
He had taken and passed the rigorous tests that allowed a young man entry into the brotherhood of warriors. He had gone on raids against the Mexicans who persecuted the Apache; and the white men when it was deemed necessary. Yet he had been seldom accepted in full measure: his blue eyes and fair hair marked him as a pinda-lick-oyi, and he had needed to fight for the right to stand up and be counted amongst the warriors of the Chiricahua.
Similarly, he was not accepted amongst his father’s people.
He could speak English as well as most of them and read the language better than many. Yet the set: of his face and the clothes he chose to wear marked him ;is different in the same way his hair and eyes set him apart from the Apache youths.
He was a man caught between two worlds. One foot in each, and no place to call his real home. He could understand what Shelby meant.
It was mid-morning by the time they reached the Taggart spread. The sun was gleaming out of a sky that looked like polished gunmetal and the air felt thick enough to cut. Mary Taggart was out front, shading her eyes as she watched them approach.
Her face was pale and drawn, the eyes rimmed by dark shadows, and when she recognized Shelby she appeared close to weeping.
‘He’s bad, Mort. Near dead. Thank God you came.’
‘Wouldn’t have but for him.’ The doctor gestured at Azul. ‘Dragged me out of bed and pointed a gun at me. Let’s see the patient.’
The woman looked at the half-breed and smiled, then turned towards the house, forgetting him as she hurried the doctor inside. Azul climbed down from the buggy and led the horse round to the back of the cabin. He set his mustang loose in the corral and then slipped the doctor’s gelding free of the harness. He fed both horses a measure of oats and checked the water in the trough.
Out of habit and sympathy, he saw that the other animals were fed and watered, pausing to admire the stallion.
This one, he guessed, was the original Arab Shelby had spoken of. It was taller than the shot horse back on the ridge, and prouder. It was a pale brown with a lighter mane, almost a palomino, but somehow smoother and swifter looking. It had about it a mixture of grace and arrogance mingled with an impression of speed and strength. It was the finest horse he had ever seen.
He stood for a while, admiring it, then went back to the cabin.
There was coffee boiling on a black stove and he took a cup, settling into a chair while he drank the bitter, black liquid. He was accustomed to riding for hours at a time, but now he had been in the saddle for close on a day and a half, and was beginning to feel the effects.
He realized that he was hungry and went back to the cupboards mounted on the wall over the stove to find some food. There was a loaf of bread and a can of beans. He took them both back to the table at the center of the room and used his Bowie knife to open the tin and carve the loaf.
Morton Shelby came out of the rear room with a worried look on his face and blood on his hands.
T fixed his shoulder and leg,’ he said softly, most of his former aggression gone, ‘but I need to operate. I’d sooner do it back in Comstock, but there’s not that much time. I’ll need you to help.’
‘Why?’ Azul asked. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Someone’s got to hold him down. I don’t have any kind of drug that’ll kill the pain, and Mary’s not strong enough.’
Azul shrugged and stood up. ‘Maybe you were right.’
‘About what?’ Shelby looked confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Leaving him,’ Azul grunted. ‘I thought I was getting a gift horse. It’s beginning to look like a work horse.’
Mary Taggart scrubbed the table and began to boil water. Azul helped Shelby carry the wounded man through and set him on the makeshift operating platform. They tied his arms and legs down and set a pillow under his head. Shelby stuck a piece of leather between his teeth and injected him with as much morphine as he carried with him.
It wasn’t enough, and the first time the knife cut into Taggart’s flesh, the rancher began to scream and kick.
Azul remembered a trick old Sees-The-Fox had taught him, a thing the Chiricahua hunter had learnt from a Navaho. He set both hands around Taggart’s neck and pressed his thumbs against the base, where, the thick muscles lifted up from the shoulders.
Taggart’s screaming stopped.
His head fell back on the pillow and his eyes closed. Azul released his grip: the last time he had used it, the Federate sentry he was trying to silence had never woken up. Shelby nodded and went back to probing for the bullet.
It was settled deep in the rancher’s intestine and it took the doctor the better part of an hour to locate it and work it clear. He patched the wound and motioned for Azul to loose the bonds.
They carried Taggart back to the bedroom and set him on the mattress. Shelby spread a blanket over him and went out to wash his hands. Azul joined him.
‘I don’t think he’ll live.’ The doctor kept his voice low so that the woman shouldn’t hear. ‘That slug tore up his insides too bad for anything but a real hospital to help. I done what I can, but he’s bleeding internally. He’ll most like be dead tomorrow. If not, then he’s bedridden for the next few months.’
‘So who looks after this place?’ Azul said. ‘I’ve not seen any hands around.’
‘Fogarty ran them off.’ Shelby shrugged, wiping his hands dry. ‘There were a couple of Mexicans until Daniel put the pressure on. That was six months ago.’
‘So now there’s no one?’ Azul was surprised. ‘Just Taggart and the woman?’
The doctor nodded and went over to his bag. He took the whiskey bottle out and swallowed two fast slugs.
‘Mary and Jody. That’s all.’
‘How many hands does Fogarty call?’ Azul asked.
Shelby shrugged.
‘Thirty? Maybe forty. Depends on what you call hands. He keeps around five permanent gunhawks on his payroll. All they do is kill anyone who argues Fogarty land.’
‘So why the trouble getting Taggart off?’ Azul asked. ‘How come Fogarty hasn’t shot him before now?’
‘Christ! I don’t know for sure,’ Shelby said. ‘It could be Mary, or it could be that he doesn’t want to make legal trouble. It might be he’s afraid of the Apache. Taggart was pretty friendly there, so maybe a raid on his spread would mean the Indians hit the Flying F.’
Mary Taggart came out of the bedroom then and they stopped talking.
‘He’s sleeping,’ she said. ‘Thank you both.’
Shelby shrugged and emptied his glass. Azul stood up and said:
‘I’d like to take a bath. You got anywhere I can do that?’
The woman nodded and pointed to the door.
‘There’s a tub in the bunkhouse. We fixed a pump up when we moved in.’
‘Thanks. I’ll sleep there if you don’t mind.’
She stared at him: ‘You’re staying?’
‘I wasn’t headed anywhere special.’ He paused at the door. ‘And it sounds like you need some help.’
‘Thank you.’ Her eyes got wide and very attractive. ‘Thank you.’
Azul went out on to the porch and picked up his saddle. He slung the leather over his shoulder and humped it down to the bunkhouse, wondering why he was doing it. For the dying man?
For the woman?
For the shot horse?
Maybe just because he didn’t like to see people pushed around. It had happened too often to his mother’s people when white men decided they wanted Apache land. And the results had been bloody. Now it seemed that one more representative of white supremacy was pushing his own private land-grab through.
The half-breed smiled coldly and began to pump water into the wooden tub.
He cleansed his body and dried himself on a blanket, then dressed again and returned to the house. Shelby was preparing to leave, setting out medicines and bandages and explaining to Mary Taggart how she should apply them. When Azul came in, the doctor looked up.
‘You really staying?’ He shook his head when Azul grunted an affirmative: ‘Crazy. All of you.’
‘What should we do, Mort?’ The woman sighed. ‘You said Jody’s too sick to move. I can’t leave him, so what choice is there?’
‘Hire yourself an army,’ Shelby said. ‘That’s about all that’s gonna protect you from Fogarty.’
Mary Taggart smiled. She looked tired. ‘An army costs money, Mort. You know we don’t have much.’
‘Crazy,’ the old man repeated, ‘all of you. Crazy.’
He closed his bag and picked up his hat. Azul went to fetch his buggy, bringing it round to the front. Shelby climbed on to the seat still muttering to himself. Azul watched him ride away and then turned to face the woman.
‘How much stock do you have?’
‘Thirty head up on the north pasture. Why?’
‘Thought I’d check them out,’ he said. ‘Make sure they’ve not been run off.’
‘You’re really going to stay?’
He nodded. ‘I said so.’
‘Why?’
‘I like animals. They don’t ask so many questions as people.’