THE PAPAGO KID

The Beginning of a Western Novel

CHAPTER I

A sudden rush of rain-drops did quick finger-taps on my hat, living up to the promise of the bulging clouds that hung low above the desert. Reaching around, I pulled the draw-strings holding my slicker and shook it out.

The first rush of rain went off across the desert, stirring dust as it fell. Shrugging into the slicker brought an end, for the moment, to the rain. A last few reluctant drops falling, amused by my struggles.

Well, I was ready. If it was going to rain, let it come.

Along the horizon mountains lay like a heap of rusty scrap-iron and the nearby desert was salmon-pink dotted with sage-brush gray and the shabby green of greasewood. Under the low sky the wide valley before me lay empty and still. Hugh had certainly known what he was talking about when he told me I’d meet nobody on this route…he knew I wanted to avoid travelers.

The only spot of real green anywhere in sight was the sharp, strong color of pines showing from a notch in the rust-red mountains, and that was the place I’d come from Texas to find.

This was where I could hole up and rest until Hugh Taylor sent word for me. It was something great to have a friend like Hugh to give you a hand when the going was rough. When I returned from Mexico to find myself a fugitive from justice, he had been very quick to offer help.

It was like Hugh Taylor to know of such a place as this. He had taken off from home when only a youngster, riding far and wide upon the land and he seemed to have connections everywhere.

The drops came again, and then a rushing downpour that made me turn up my collar and tug down on my hat. This looked to be settling in for a hard, long rain.

Rowdy, my big black gelding, was beginning to feel the rough going of the past few weeks. It was the first time I had seen the big horse even close to weariness, but it was no wonder. We had come out of Dimmit County, Texas to the Apache country of Arizona, and the way had been long and hard.

The trail puzzled me. It was rough, but many Western trails were, and it was too good a path not to be better known or traveled. In three days of riding I had seen nobody, not a person, not a ranch, not a mine shack. Most trails led to towns, to where people were, but not this one.

The camps were good, and they were spaced right for a hard riding man. At every camp there was grass, water and fuel. At every camp there were signs of occasional use, horse droppings and the ashes of fires, often places where small herds had been held.

There were no tracks of wagons on any of it, and no recent travel. The trail held to low ground, winding among buttes, up dry washes, an easy route on the whole, and a hidden one.

Several times I pulled up to study the lay-out of the country. It was not the first time I had ridden such trails, nor probably the last. Most of them were made by Indians who did not want to be seen, and were traveling only from water-hole to water-hole.

The red rocks of the mountains began to take on form and line, to shape themselves from the stuff of distance. Here and there were the raw cancers of washes that ate into the face of the plain, and the deeper scars of canyons. Here or there lines of gray or green climbed along creases in the rock, evidence of underlying water or of gathering places for run-off from the higher peaks.

The trail curved north, skirting mountains toward the waiting pines. “Ride right to the Tin-Cup Ranch,” Hugh Taylor had said, “and ask for Bill Keys. He’ll be in charge, and he’ll take care of you until this blows over. I am sure we can get this straightened out, and you’ll be free to come home.”

Suddenly the mountains seemed to crack wide open on my left, and the trail went gently up a slope into the pines and along the side of the canyon. Blue gentians carpeted both sides of the trail and crept almost up to the trees in a mass of sky blue. The trail was faint here, rarely used, but two riders had gone ahead of me not long ago, headed right into Tin-Cup Canyon.

It was a time to be careful. This was the kind of country frequented by outlaws, and even honest ranchers were suspicious of strange riders coming in out of wild country. Nothing in my years had bred carelessness in me, so I drew up in the deepest shadow and waited, listening.

And then I heard a shot.

It rapped out, a sharp, bitter sound, ugly in its finality.

A single shot, then silence.

My rifle rode right ahead of my right leg. I was doing no roping on this trip so I carried that rifle where I could draw it almost as fast as a six-shooter. It slid into my hand, and I waited.

Rowdy knew what a shot meant as well as I did, and he stepped forward, light and easy, ears up, nostrils wide. So it was that we first looked down into the little hollow that was the Tin-Cup, a stone barn, a stone house and two pole corrals adjoining. Near them were two riderless horses.

Then I saw them. The air was clear and they were not more than two hundred yards away. There were three men, but one was sprawled on the ground near another horse.

The man standing over the body turned it with his boot toe and I heard him swear. Then he yelled at the other man, who waited under the porch. “No, it ain’t him!”

And then they both saw me.

Panic must have hit them at the same instant. One made a break for his horse, the other for his gun. Honest men do not start shooting when a stranger rides up and my rifle was ready.

The nearest man fired. I was not worried as the action must have been sheer impulse and he was much too far away for accuracy with a pistol.

He sprang for his horse and I waited until he was down in the saddle. He lurched like he was hit and I saw his six-gun fall into the rocks, and then both of them were getting out of there. Holding my fire, I let them go.

Rowdy was not gun-shy. With me in the saddle he had no cause to be for we had been through a lot down Sonora way. That had been part of my life that even Hugh knew nothing about, and to him I was just a quiet kid he had seen grow up on our uncle’s ranch, the XY.

We had always been friendly, but Hugh was not a man with whom one became close. He was handsome, fine looking in every sense, and he carried himself well, but he did not confide in me and did not invite confidence. Older than I, he had been a fine horseman, a good hand with cattle, and good enough with a gun for most purposes. Often when he wanted to ride off to town to see some girl or other I had done his work as well as my own, but never minded. I admired him, and he knew it.

Occasionally, he brought me presents. A fine new hat, a pair of boots, and another time some Mexican spurs. Whenever I tried to thank him or pay him he just brushed me off saying, “Oh, forget it, kid! You’ve done a thing or two for me.”

With the two riders gone I rode up to the man on the ground and swinging down, felt his pulse. He seemed to be dead, all right, and I had guessed as much before I got down from the saddle. No man with a hole in him of that size was going very much farther.

Two holes…

The first shot was a little high, and there had been some interval between shots for the blood around the first wound had coagulated.

A horse’s hoof clicked on stone, and I turned to face them. My rifle was in my hands but you don’t try anything fancy when you’re facing four men at that range.

“What did you kill him for?” The speaker was a squat, broad-chested man with a square red face and hard blue eyes. He looked as tough as a long winter in the mountains, and at least two of the riders with him looked just as mean.

“Don’t jump your fences, stranger. I didn’t shoot this man, and I don’t even know who he is. When I rode into The Cup two men were standing here, and one of them right over him. They took a shot at me and then high-tailed it out of here.”

“We heard shootin’,” the square-faced man said. “He’s dead an’ you’re here.”

My eyes went over them, sizing them up. Nobody needed to burn any brands on this hide for me. Here I was on the dodge from one killing, which I had not done, and now I’d run into another. Nobody had seen the other riders but me, so a lot depended now on who and what these men were.

My quick glance at them told me only one of the four would be inclined to believe me. He was a nice-looking young fellow with brown eyes and dark hair. He looked smart and he looked honest, although a man can be fooled on both counts.

That square-built man who had started the talking seemed to be the man in charge, if there was one. “Who are you,” he demanded, “and what brings you here?”

Something in the way he asked that question decided me that I had better be careful. I was downwind of an idea that had not quite come home to me. The last thing I intended to tell them was that I was Wat Bell.

“They call me Papago Kid,” I said. “I’m from down Sonora way.

“As for what brought me here, it was this black horse and a lot of trails strung together. I’ve been a lot of places before this, and when I decided to ride out, nobody stopped me.”

He didn’t like that. This was a man who liked riding rough-shod over things. His lips kind of thinned down and the look in his eyes was not a pleasant one, but suddenly I wasn’t feeling worried anymore; I should have been. A man ought to think of himself in a spot like that, but something about trouble makes me light-hearted.

This man believed he was tough. He wore a gun and he was prepared to use it, and I was a stranger and fair game. Yet when I told him my name a funny thing happened to his eyes and I had the feeling he had expected to hear another name. The idea was there and ready for branding, and it slowed him down a little.

The truth of the matter was that in Dimmit County, Texas, I was Wat Bell, and in Sonora I was the Papago Kid. The first name I’d been born to, and the second had been sort of tacked on me during some scuffles down yonder.

The young man interrupted. “Lynch, let’s get in out of the rain. I liked Tom Ludlow too much to see his body lying there like that. We can just as well talk over coffee, anyway.”

Lynch had no liking for me and was itching for trouble, but he shrugged, and turned to the others. “You two pick up Tom’s body and carry it to the stable. Better put the horses up, then come on in.” He paused a moment, then added, “Don’t leave anything undone, Bill.”

When I heard the name a suspicion stirred, but I did not look up or give any sign that the name meant anything. Of course, Bill was a not uncommon name. Still—

My question was answered almost at once when one of the men took the dead man by the shoulders. “Grab his feet, Keys.”

Lynch led the way to the stone house, and I followed with my horse. There was no talk in the stable, and I gave them no chance to have a look at my outfit. Taking my horse into the stall I put down some hay for him and then taking my rifle and saddle-bags I followed them into the house.

Lynch had removed his slicker and I got a shock. He wore a badge.

“The coffee was your idea, Dolliver,” Lynch said. “You want to make it?”

Dolliver agreed, glancing at me. He had noticed my reaction to the badge and was obviously curious. He turned to the shelves and began taking things down like he knew the place, and in the meantime I was doing some fast thinking. It was time to scout my trail and figure out what kind of situation I had gotten into.

Hugh Taylor had told me to ride to the Tin-Cup and ask for Bill Keys. Yet when I arrived there was a dead man who wasn’t Bill Keys but who was apparently the owner of the ranch. Keys appeared to be riding for the sheriff, for what reason I had no idea.

The cabin was neat as an old maid’s boudoir and the smell of coffee that soon filled the room gave it a warm, cozy feeling. The fireplace was huge, the copper utensils all bright and well-polished.

Dolliver was quick and sure in his movements, but he was missing nothing, either. Taking off my slicker I hung it over a chair within easy reach of my hand. I had not unsaddled, nor had any of the others. Obviously they were going on, and what I would do remained a question.

Lynch had dropped astride a chair and started to build a smoke, but when I took off my slicker his fingers stopped dead still for a moment. I was wearing two guns…not a common thing, one being expensive enough, and something about me disturbed him. It was not the guns, and he was not afraid. It was the fact that I was wearing them that seemed to bother him, not what I might do with them.

“You call yourself Papago Kid?” Lynch’s question was sharp.

My eyes held his. Lynch and I were not going to be friends. For some reason he was distinctly irritated, and with me. I had the feeling he had expected to find somebody here, and that I did not fit the picture of the man for whom he looked.

“I’ve been called that, sheriff,” I said easily. “I’m not a Papago, but they are a good people and the name’s an honor. I got called that because I rode through their country a couple of times.”

“You say you saw the two men who shot Ludlow? Did you get a good look at them?”

“I saw them, but they were too far away. One of them ran for his horse, but the other one grabbed for his gun. Naturally, with a dead man on the ground and a man about to take a shot at me I didn’t waste any time looking him over.”

“How many shots did you hear?”

“One.”

Dolliver turned around from the coffee. “I heard three.”

“That’s right,” I agreed. “One shot apparently killed the old man. Then one of these men shot at me and I shot back. As you saw, the old man was shot twice. The way it looks to me is he was shot elsewhere, then they trailed him back to his own ranch and shot him again.”

“What gives you that idea?” Lynch demanded.

“If you noticed, sheriff, the rain had not washed out the old man’s tracks. They came from the corral. Even from where I stood I could see he’d fallen down twice before he was finally killed.”

It was obvious that the sheriff had seen nothing of the kind, but he studied me carefully. I was doing my own thinking. The reason the sheriff had not seen those tracks was because all his attention was centered on me. Now that was natural enough, considering that I was there with the dead man, and was a stranger. Still, he should have looked around. He should have noticed.

Dolliver, whose attitude I liked, brought coffee to the table, and cups. He was a clean-cut youngster and no fool. I had a hunch that had he not been present I might have been in a lot more trouble than I was.

It struck me as faintly curious that Sheriff Lynch was making no effort to pursue the possible killers nor even to see in which direction the tracks led. Did he already know?

The thought was unbidden, but once in my mind it would not leave. His actions worried me. It was as if he had decided who was guilty or who he intended to prove guilty and that he had no further intention of investigating.

This was strange country to me, and I knew no one here. The man I had been told to find, and who was supposed to give me a place to hide out, was now standing with his back to the fireplace and his attitude was not friendly.

Nobody needed to tell me that I was in serious trouble. Nor had I any desire to shoot my way out of a situation such as this even had it been practical. I had committed no crime, although I was wanted for one, as Hugh Taylor had warned me. I did not wish to break any laws or get in any deeper. Every sense I had warned me to move carefully.

I tasted my coffee and it warmed the chill from me. Dolliver filled his own cup and sat down. I had an idea he knew I was in trouble and intended to stay close.

“You ever been in this country before?” Lynch asked.

“Never. When I left California I crossed into Arizona near Yuma. Then I headed off down into Mexico. I worked there for a spell, then decided to drift.”

“How’d you find this place? It ain’t the easiest spot to find.” He stared at me suspiciously, but I put on my most innocent face.

“Did you ever cross the desert right behind here? The only spot of green you can see is right in the notch back there, so I headed for it. I figured where things were that green there’d be water, and more than likely people who could set me on the trail to a town.”

That was obvious enough even to him, but he was not satisfied.

“You come from California? You sound like a Texan to me.”

“Hell,” I said carelessly, “it’s no wonder! That outfit I rode for in Mexico all talked like that. Fact is, out in El Monte where I come from half the people who settled the place were from Texas.”

That was plausible, too, but he still was not ready to accept it or me. He spooned sugar into his cup and stirred it around, then drank with the spoon still in his cup.

“What’s the problem, sheriff?” I asked. “Is this a posse?”

“We’re huntin’ a Texas outlaw name of Wat Bell,” he said, grudgingly. “We got word he was headed west so we’re cuttin’ all trails.”

“Bad weather for riding,” I sympathized. “Is this Bell a bad hombre? Will it take four of you?”

Dolliver chuckled. “I am not one of them,” he said. “I have a small ranch right over the mountain from here. I joined these boys back in the pines to see who was shooting who. My ranch is the Tumbling T.”

COMMENTS: In the introduction to this volume I mentioned that Dad took us on an extended trip around England and Ireland in the late 1960s. Rural Ireland was a different place in those days; Gaelic was still occasionally spoken, to the exclusion of English in a few places, and electricity, telephones, and central heating were rare in many of the towns and farms at which we stopped. While our hotel in Dublin was pretty fancy in an Old World sort of way, it still had blackout curtains on the windows from the time of World War II.

Somewhere in our travels, we came to the ruins of a huge old stone house. The story I remember was that, hundreds of years ago, it had been sort of a local execution chamber. If you wanted someone killed off, and had enough clout, the man who owned the house would issue an invitation…and visitors never returned. There was also a version in which the invitation was given to the wrong person—or perhaps it was given by the intended recipient to a friend or family member—leading to the death of the wrong man. It was a long time ago and my memory is not what I’d like it to be. Regardless, Dad loved the possibilities associated with such a setup.

I get the feeling that the Tin-Cup Ranch in this tale is that same sort of place and a similar situation is being played out. For that reason and based on the style of the writing, I would set the era of this fragment to sometime in the 1970s.