THE PLACE WAS called the Forgotten Well by the Pima Indians who first discovered it. The Pimas were long gone now, driven off by the fiercer Apache and the ever-increasing numbers of white settlers. Colonel Jonathan Sibley had heard about it from a Mexican bandit called Hernando Batista when he rode down into Chihuahua with a bunch of Texas Rangers on his tail.
Like many a rebel before him, Sibley had moved south to Texas when the war ended. He had refused to sign the amnesty offered to the confederate border raiders, continuing to fight a guerrilla campaign that the Union victors called an outlaw rampage. It depended on a man’s point of view. Sibley’s father had been a full-blood Cherokee and he had taken his white wife with him when the government ousted the tribe from its homeland in the mountains of north Georgia and Alabama with promises of a new country to the west. The Trail of Tears, they called that journey, and every mile of the long road from Georgia to the Oklahoma Territory was marked with the Cherokee dead. A third of the people died before they reached the Indian Nations and a lasting hatred was born in the heart of the small child called Two Trees: one of the unmarked graves held the body of his mother. His father, Owl, had accepted the inevitable, taken the patch of land the white men gave him and built a farm. He was a good farmer, and disappointed that his son showed no interest in the land. The boy was bright enough, quick to learn his mother’s tongue, and sufficiently like her to pass for white. When he was thirteen years old he had ridden in to the trading post to deal for a pony. The trader had accepted the skins the boy offered and watched him ride away. Two days later a United States Marshal had come to Owl’s farm. A piebald pony was reported stolen from the trading post, taken by Two Trees. No papers had been signed to notify the deal, so the Marshal took the pony and the boy back to Clearwater.
The lawman never finished the journey. Three days out from the farm, Two Trees finished gnawing through the cord binding his wrists. He waited until the marshal fell asleep, sneaked the man’s Henry carbine from under his blanket and shot the lawman in the face.
He was tall for his age and the dead man’s clothes fitted him well enough to look store-bought. He rode away from the camp dressed like a white man, with a Henry carbine, a Colt Dragoon, and two horses. He rode directly to the trading post and shot the factor three times in the stomach. Then, as he had done with the marshal’s body, he gouged out the eyes and hacked off the right hand. That way the spirit would be blind and defenseless in the after-world.
Two Trees rode on with three hundred dollars in gold coin stowed in his saddlebags, a pack horse loaded with provisions and a new name. His mother had been called Joanna Sibley. He used her surname and, with grim humor, picked the Christian name of the trader. He was now Jonathan Sibley.
He drifted up into Kansas, moving on to Nebraska and then into Iowa. He earned a living punching cows until he got bored with his surroundings and moved on. In Council Bluffs a gambler insulted him. And died with two bullets from the old Dragoon tearing through his heart before his own gun cleared the holster.
After that Sibley went south into Missouri. He met a man called James Lawrence who spouted fire and brimstone about the coming war. ‘Bloody Jim’ they called him, and he gathered about him a pack of raiders sympathetic to the growing cause of the confederacy. It gave Sibley a chance to kill white men: he took it with unconcealed eagerness.
The border war flared for long months before the cannons blasted Fort Sumter, and Bloody Jim’s cut-throat band became official soldiers of the Confederate States.
Bloody Jim died with a Union saber stuck through his chest and Sibley assumed command of the guerrillas.
After that they earned themselves a new name: Sibley’s Hundred. They raided over the Missouri/Kansas border; struck down into Arkansas; rustled Texan cattle herds; hit the Union forces wherever it hurt. most.
Jonathan Sibley came to be mentioned in the same breath as William Quantrill and the James brothers. He became a border raider, a wanted man. His likeness was posted through Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and New Mexico. The man who killed Jonathan Sibley could expect to pick up four thousand dollars.
But Colonel Jonathan ‘Cal’ Sibley couldn’t be found.
Texas got too hot for him, so he moved down into Mexico, raiding north over the border into Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Along that blood-stained route he heard about Forgotten Well. And a plan began to crystallize in his hate-molded mind. He had sided with the Confederate forces for no other reason than killing whites. The Trail of Tears and the word he got of the Seminole being pushed from their homeland, the steady encroachment of settlers on the territory of the Comanche and the Sioux, persuaded him that open resistance by the Indians was pointless. Satanta, Mangas, Crow King, they all fought in the old ways. And lost. The Confederacy had made Stand Watie a general, and Sibley—Two Trees—had seen a clear way to killing more whites than would ever be possible on the traditional warpath.
He chose to kill the white man’s way.
Late one August afternoon he led Sibley’s Hundred—by now cut down to no more than thirty—into El Paso. Four tellers, three ranchers, two women and a six-year-old girl died in the raid. The gang rode out with nine sacks of coin, adding up to seven thousand dollars, and a bunch of angry Rangers in hot pursuit. It was the land of fighting Sibley enjoyed. He ran for a while, halted, shot down seven Rangers and crossed the Rio Grande. The Texas Rangers were too fighting mad to let the border stop them: they went across. And lost nine more men in Sibley’s carefully-planned ambush.
A hundred miles into Mexico the Rangers gave up. Sibley took his men on down to Chihuahua where he met Hernando Batista. They teamed together, raiding from Fort Yuma to San Antonio. Forgotten Well gave them an excellent base.
The hollow was a natural fort, far enough off the stage lines to escape notice, close enough to the border to permit a fast escape. Sibley spent most of his share of the El Paso money on the fortress-wagon, and the Gatling gun he had mounted on a swivel tripod inside the tail. Somewhere deep within the recesses of his warped mind he knew that his luck must run out one day. When it did, he wanted the protection of the bullet-proof wagon and a full clip in the magazine of the Gatling.
Hernando had laughed at such caution. Sibley had laughed when a Texas Ranger halted his pony on the American side of the Rio Grande and hauled out a Sharps .50 caliber buffalo rifle, aiming at the fleeing raiders. He had been careful to keep his horse up front of Hernando’s, yet even then he had felt the impact of the expended slug that came out through the front of the Mexican’s chest. It went through Batista’s body like an express train, the velocity raising a fist-sized bruise on Sibley’s back after losing most of its impetus tearing out of the Mexican’s ribs.
He had stayed quiet for a month or two after that, thinking.
Forgotten Well was still a good hide-out. And a town was growing nearby, a little place called Endurance. It was far enough away from the main stage routes and railroads that neither law nor Army could get there fast. It was a white man’s town and it held money, not much, but enough. Sibley began to think about taking it over.
It would be one hell of a blow to the people who organized the Trail of Tears: to learn that a Cherokee renegade held a town to ransom. The idea formed over the months in Mexico. When the winter snow set in, Sibley moved his renegade band north across the river. They reached Forgotten Well and settled in. The one link Endurance had with the outside world was forged by the H & T stage line. Sibley began a gradual campaign against the link. He kept it quiet, hitting the coaches just often enough to discourage travelers. Come the Spring he felt it was time to liven things up: if the H & T line folded, Endurance would be cut off. He issued fresh orders: stop and kill.
A month or so of that, he figured, would be enough to close the thing down. And leave the town wide open.
But the last two attacks had gone horribly wrong. Three of his men had been killed by a stranger. The frighteners he had sent into Endurance were both dead, and now he faced the five men he had sent to stop the Tucson stage.
The robbery had gone exactly as planned. Until Billy-Jo fell back with a lamed horse. There was no reason to expect pursuit, so the five had ridden on. After a while, they had gotten worried and headed back. They found Billy-Jo with his feet blown off. More than that they couldn’t say: they hadn’t waited around to find out who could creep up on Billy and use both barrels of a scattergun to send him footless into hell.
Sibley told them exactly what he thought of them and ordered patrols out. He didn’t like the idea of some mysterious stranger killing off his men. He didn’t like anything that upset his plans.
Azul followed the tracks at an easy lope. The horsemen were moving faster now, and though it was difficult to keep up with them, they were riding a straight line. That alone offset the problem of their speed. The line went straight and clear towards the ridge shading purple in the dusk and it didn’t need any great skill to guess they were heading for a camp in that direction.
What he saw when he finally topped the ridge surprised him.
The horsemen went into a narrow canyon that looked too confined to be safe for an intruder: Azul turned away, scrambling up the bluff. It was a hard climb, and he left the shotgun halfway up, but it was worth the effort.
The bluff dropped down on the far side into a green meadow. Fires showed around the central hollow, but the thing that caught Azul’s attention was the wagon parked in the center of the place. He had never seen anything like it, had little idea of its purpose. What was clear, though, was the overall purpose of the encampment. Just as an Apache warband would seek a lonely and defensible place, so this gathering of white outlaws had chosen the lonely canyon.
He waited, flattened out upon the rimrock, as he counted the men below. Then, silent as the creeping coyote, he slid away, dropping down the steep rock face until he was back on flat ground. Then he began to run.
The H & T stage reached Tucson without further upset. Link Bawdry reported the hold-up and the passengers recorded their complaints. There was talk about forming a posse, but too few volunteers showed to make it worthwhile, so the sheriff decided to let the matter go. If the half-breed guard showed up again, then well and good. If not: tough luck for him.
Link picked up a fresh parcel of mail and a new set of travelers. He opted to ride without a shotgun guard, guessing that a stick-up both ways was unlikely.
He was surprised to see Azul when he got back to Endurance because he had thought the ‘breed would be shot to pieces by then. Finding him in conference with Ma Harvey and Nate Whitman was a shock. One that grew a whole lot bigger when Ma Harvey bustled him out onto the sidewalk, explaining that she had important business to talk over with her friends, and would Link please clear his person the hell out of her office until she hollered for him.
It wasn’t that Ma Harvey didn’t trust Link, she knew he’d keep his mouth shut. At least until the whiskey got to his tongue and set it to wagging out too good a yarn to keep to himself. The fewer people who knew about the half-breed’s news, the better in Ma’s opinion.
Nate Whitman was of the same mind, even though he found it hard to believe the story. If Gunn—or whatever the hell he called himself—was telling the truth, there was something big going on. Big enough to make Nate real uneasy. He stared deep into his glass and wondered why he had ever accepted the appointment as marshal. He’d been eight years younger then and it seemed like a good way to boost business: jail ’em, hang ’em, and then bury ’em. Trouble was the eight years had seen a change, in Nate and in the town. While he had slowed down, Endurance had speeded up. A nice, quiet little settlement that didn’t hear the sound of gunfire much except on the Fourth of July had got a whole lot bigger and wilder, and being its law officer was getting to be a real job.
Nate downed his whiskey, coughed, and wondered what to say.
‘You sure of yore facts, Mr. Gunn?’ Ma Harvey broke the awkward silence. ‘Seems positive unlikely that a gang of thirty-odd wild killers could hole up right on our doorstep without our noticin’ them.’
‘You noticed some already, ma’am,’ said Breed wryly. ‘You got two stages attacked in as many days, and the marshal told me there’ve been hardcases drifting through a few weeks now.’
‘That’s for sure.’ The old woman nodded her head. ‘I never gave it much thought before now. Figgered it for some passin’ thing.’
‘Figgered it fer drifters comin’ up from Mexico,’ interrupted Whitman, anxious to re-establish some degree of authority. ‘Lot o’ them wild ones winter down south o’ the border an’ then start driftin’ north again come the springtime.’
Breed shrugged. ‘I saw what I saw. There was some kind of big wagon with thirty or more men camped around. I trailed the bunch back to the canyon. The one I stopped talked about a renegade Confederate he called Jonathan Sibley.’
Discreetly, no one asked what had happened to the man Gunn had talked with. Something about the pale blue eyes said that the outlaw had given out as much information as could be extracted.
‘Sibley?’ Whitman shrugged, shaking his head. ‘Don’t mean a thing to me. You, Ma?’
Ma Harvey shook her white head in turn. ‘Never heard the name before, an’ I’ve been around here longer than most.’ She broke off, a thought crossing her mind. ‘Except one: Mose Curran.’
She stood up, a little old lady in a black dress and old-fashioned, high-button boots, and bustled over to the inner door. She disappeared into the rearward quarters, then, after a few moments, called for the others to join her.
Breed and Whitman found her seated beside the wounded driver. Mose still had his arm strapped across his chest, though he looked healthy enough and his face was flushed with excitement.
‘Tell ’em, Mose,’ urged Ma Harvey, ‘just like you told me.’
‘Waal,’ Mose settled back against the pillows, enjoying the attention, ‘so you ain’t never heard o’ Callous Jo Sibley? Never heard o’ Sibley’s Hundred?’
‘Blabbery old fool!’ Ma barked irritably. ‘Get on with it. If they’d heard of him, they wouldn’t be waitin’ for you to spout yore piece.’
‘Alright, Hannah.’ Mose looked hurt. ‘Hand me a glass an’ I’ll start tellin’.’
He took a long swallow, held his hand out for more and settled into his story.
‘I first heard of Sibley back about ’68, maybe ’69. Tears he was a Missouri pistol man took on the grey when the war offered him a bigger an’ better chance o’ killin’ folks. After Appomattox he took the Texas trail along o’ Josey Wales an’ all them others. Only when the others faded away, Cal Sibley kept right on goin’. He dropped outta sight down towards Mexico fer a few years, which is most like why you ain’t heard o’ him.
‘If he’s somewhere around these parts, you better look fer big trouble. Sibley’s just about the meanest bastard ever stood up on two legs. An’ he’s got a habit o’ pullin’ in the worst kinda gunhands to ride with him.
‘If Gunn here is right, I’d head fer Yuma come dawn an’ bring the Army in.’
Ma Harvey looked at Marshal Whitman, waiting for him to say something. Breed’s face remained impassive, though his mind was working furiously: if Mose was right, then Sibley was just the kind of man to draw in Nolan and Jude Christie. The way carrion draws in buzzards.
Whitman cleared his throat, doing his best to look like a man making big decisions; rather than one scared near witless by a situation he couldn’t understand.
‘I guess,’ he said slowly, reluctantly accepting his responsibilities, ‘that I better go take a look. No offence to you, Gunn, but I better.’
He wished with every fiber of his tired body that he didn’t, that there was some way around it. But he couldn’t think of one.
Matthew Gunn guessed what was running through his mind and grinned.
‘I’ll ride out with you. Show you the way.’