There wasn’t much talking at all until Mrs. Favor started after the McLaren girl. I saw her watching the girl for the longest time and finally she said, “Are those Indian beads?”
The McLaren girl looked up. “It’s a rosary.”
“I don’t know why I thought they were Indian beads,” Mrs. Favor said. Her voice soft and sort of lazy sounding, the kind of voice that most of the time you aren’t sure if the person is kidding or being serious.
“You might say they are Indian beads,” the girl said. “I made them.”
“During your experience?”
Dr. Favor said, “Audra,” very low, meaning for her to keep quiet.
“I hope I didn’t remind you of something unpleasant,” Mrs. Favor said.
Braden, I noticed, was looking at the McLaren girl too. “What happened?” he said.
The McLaren girl did not answer right away, and Mrs. Favor leaned toward the girl. “If you don’t want to talk about it, I can understand.”
“I don’t mind,” the McLaren girl said.
Braden was still looking at her. He said again, “What happened?”
“I thought everybody knew,” the McLaren girl said.
“Well,” Braden said. “I guess I’ve been away.”
“She was taken by Apaches,” Mrs. Favor said. “With them, how long, a month?”
The McLaren girl nodded. “It seemed longer.”
“I can imagine,” Mrs. Favor said. “Did they treat you all right?”
“As well as you could expect, I guess.”
“I suppose they kept you with the women.”
“Well, we were on the move most of the time.”
“I mean when you camped.”
“No, not all the time.”
“Did they—bother you?”
“Well,” the McLaren girl said, “I guess the whole thing was kind of a bother, but I hadn’t thought of it that way. One of the women cut my hair off. I don’t know why. It’s just now starting to grow back.”
“I meant did they bother you?” Mrs. Favor said.
Braden was looking right at her. “You can talk plainer than that,” he said.
Mrs. Favor pretended she didn’t hear him. She kept her eyes on the McLaren girl and you could see what she was trying to get at. Finally she said, “You hear so many stories about what Indians do to white women.”
“They do the same thing to them they do to Indian women,” Braden said, and after that no one spoke for a minute. All the sounds, the rattling and the wind hissing by, were outside. Inside it was quiet.
I kept thinking that somebody ought to say something to change the subject. In the first place I felt uneasy with the talk about Apaches and John Russell sitting there. Second, I thought Braden certainly shouldn’t have said what he did with ladies present, even if Mrs. Favor had started it. I thought Dr. Favor would say something to her again, but he didn’t. He could have been seven hundred miles away, his hand holding the side curtain open a little and staring out at the darkness.
I would like to have said that I thought Mr. Braden should be reminded that there were ladies present, but instead I said, “I don’t know if the ladies enjoy this kind of talk very much.” That was a mistake.
Braden said, “What kind of talk?”
“I mean about Apache Indians and all.”
“That’s not what you meant,” Braden said.
“Mr. Braden.” The McLaren girl, her hands folded in her lap, was looking directly at him. “Why don’t you just be quiet for a while?”
Braden was surprised, as all of us were, I suppose. He said, “You speak right up, don’t you?”
“I don’t see any other way,” she said.
“I was talking to that boy next to you.”
“But it concerned me,” the McLaren girl said. “So if you’d be so kind as to shut up, I’d appreciate it.”
That was something for her to say. The only trouble was, it egged Braden on. “A nice girl talking like that,” he said, watching her. “Maybe you lived with them too long. Maybe that’s it. You live with them a while and you forget how a white person talks.”
I couldn’t see Russell’s face or his reaction to all this. But a minute later I could see what was going to happen, and I began thinking every which way of how to change the subject.
“A white woman,” Mrs. Favor said, “couldn’t live the way they do. The Apache woman rubbing skins and grinding corn, their hair greasy and full of vermin. The men no better. All of them standing around or squatting, picking at themselves and the dogs sniffing them. They even eat the dogs sometimes.”
She was watching the McLaren girl again, leading up to something, but I wasn’t sure what. “I wonder,” she said, “if a woman could fall into their ways and after a while it wouldn’t bother her. Like eating with your fingers. Or do you suppose you could eat a dog and not think anything of it?”
Here’s where you could see it coming.
John Russell said, “What if you didn’t have anything else to eat?” This was the first time he’d spoken since we left Sweetmary. His voice was calm, but still there was an edge to it.
Mrs. Favor looked from the McLaren girl to Russell.
“I don’t care how hungry I got. I know I wouldn’t eat one of those camp dogs.”
“I think,” John Russell said, “you have to know the hunger they feel before you can be sure.”
“The government supplies them with meat,” Mrs. Favor said. “Every week or so I’d see them come in for their beef ration. And they’re allowed to hunt. They can hunt whenever their rations are low.”
“But they are always low,” Russell said. “Or used up, and there’s not game enough to take care of everybody.”
“You hear all kinds of stories of how the Indian is oppressed by the white man,” Dr. Favor said. I was surprised that he had been listening and seemed interested now.
He said, “I suppose you will always hear those stories as long as there is sympathy for the Indian’s plight, and that’s a good thing. But you have to live on a reservation for a time, like San Carlos, to see that caring for Indians is not a simple matter of giving them food and clothing.”
He was watching John Russell all the while and seemed to be picking his words carefully. “You see all the problems then that the Interior Department is faced with,” he said. “The natural resentment on the part of the Indians, their distrust, their reluctance to cultivate the soil.”
“Having to live where they don’t want to live,” John Russell said.
“That too,” Dr. Favor agreed. “Which can’t be helped for the time being.” His eyes were still on Russell. “Do you happen to know someone at San Carlos?”
“Many of them,” Russell said.
“You’ve visited the agency?”
“I lived there. For three years.”
“I didn’t think I recognized you,” Dr. Favor said. “Did you work for one of the suppliers?”
“On the police,” Russell said.
Dr. Favor didn’t say anything. I couldn’t see his expression in the dimness, only that he was still looking at Russell.
Then his wife said, “But the police are all Apaches.”
She stopped there, and all you heard was the rattling and creaking and wind rushing past and the muffled pounding of the horses.
I thought, Now he’ll explain it. Whether he thinks they’ll believe him or not, at least he’ll say something.
But John Russell didn’t say a word. Not one single word. Maybe he’s thinking how to explain it, I thought. There was no way of knowing that. But he must have been thinking something and I would have given anything to know what it was. How he could just sit there in that silence was the hardest thing I have ever tried to figure out.
Finally Mrs. Favor said, “Well, I guess you never know.”
You never know what? I thought. You never know a lot of things. Still, it was pretty plain what she meant.
Braden was looking at me. He said, “You let anybody on your stage?”
“I don’t work for the company anymore,” I answered. I’ll admit, it was a weak-sister thing to say, but why should I stick up for Russell?
This wasn’t any of my business. He couldn’t help the ex-soldier, saying it was none of his business. All right, this was none of my business. If he wanted to act like an uncivilized person—which is what he must be and you could see it clearer all the time—then let him alone. Let him act any way he wanted.
I wasn’t his father. He was full grown. So let him talk for himself if he had anything to say.
But maybe he even thought he really was Apache. That had never occurred to me before. It would have been something to look into his mind. Not for long. Not for more than a few minutes; just time enough to look around with his eyes, around and back at things that had happened to him. That would tell you a few things.
I started to think of the stories Henry Mendez had told about Russell, piecing little bits of it together now.
How he had been Juan something living in a Mexican pueblo before the Apaches came raiding and took some of the women and children. How he had been named Ish-kay-nay and brought up by these Chiricahuas and made the son of Sonsichay, one of the sub-chiefs of the band. Five years with them and he must have learned an awful lot.
Then, after that, living in Contention with Mr. James Russell until he was about sixteen. He had gone to school there. And he had almost killed a boy in a fight. Maybe there was a good reason he did it. But he had left soon after, so maybe there wasn’t a good reason; maybe he just couldn’t be taught anything.
Then the most interesting part. How John Russell got his next name, Tres Hombres.
He had been with the mule packers on that campaign of the Third Cavalry’s, chasing down into Mexico after the bands of Chato and Chihuahua, and he got his new name in a meadow high in the Sierra Madre, two days west of the village of Tesorababi.
He had gone out looking for these mule packers who had wandered off the trail, hunting them all day and finding them, three mozos and eighteen mules, an hour before dark and a moment before the sudden gunfire came out of the canyon walls and caught them and ended four of the mules.
John Russell, who was sometimes Juan or Juanito, but more often Ish-kay-nay to the older ones of the Apache Police, shot six more of the mules in the moments that followed and he and the mozos laid behind the dead mules all night and all the next day. The Apaches, nine or ten of them, came twice. Running and screaming the first time they left two dead before they could creep back out of range of John Russell’s Spencer. That was the evening of the first day. They came again at dawn, silently through the rocks with their bodies mud-streaked and branches of mesquite in their head-bands. They said that John Russell, with the Spencer steadied on the neck of a dead mule, waited until he was sure. He fired seven times with the Spencer, taking his time as they came at him, and emptied his Colt revolver at them as they ran. Maybe two more were hit.
The packers, their eyes closed and their bodies tight against the mules while the firing was going on, smiled at John Russell and laughed with relief at their fear when it was over. And, when they returned to the main column, they told how this one had fought like three men against ten times as many of the barbarians. From then on, among the Apache Police at San Carlos, the trackers at Fort Apache and Cibucu, John Russell was known as Tres Hombres.
But knowing all this wasn’t the same as seeing things through his eyes. Maybe his past relations with white people explained why he acted the way he did, why he didn’t speak up now, but I’m not sure. Maybe you can see it.
It was colder later on, so I got the two robes from the floor and handed one of them to Dr. Favor. He took it and his wife spread it out so it would cover Frank Braden too. I unfolded the other robe for our seat. There was the soft clicking sound of the McLaren girl’s beads as she raised her hands. She gathered the end of the robe close to her, wedging it against her leg and not offering any of it to John Russell. I even had the feeling she had moved closer to me, but I wasn’t sure.
I heard Dr. Favor say something to his wife; the sound not the words. She told him not to be silly. I asked the McLaren girl if she was comfortable. She said, yes, thank you. Mostly though, no one spoke. It was a lot colder and the canvas curtains, that were all the way down now, would be flat one minute, then snap and billow out with the wind and through the opening you could see the darkness and shapes now and then going by alongside the road.
Frank Braden had eased lower in the seat and his head was very close to Mrs. Favor’s. He said something to her, a low murmur. She laughed, not out loud, almost to herself, but you could hear it. Her head moved to his and she said one word or maybe a couple. Their faces were close together for a long time, maybe even touching, and yet her husband was right there. Figure that one out.
We came in to Delgado’s Station with the slowing, braking sound of the coach coming off the slope that stretched out toward a wall of trees and the adobes that showed faintly against the trees. The coach kept rolling slower and slower and slower, with the sound of the horses getting clear and heavy, and finally we stopped. We sat there in silence and when Mrs. Favor said, “Where are we?” in just a whisper, it sounded loud inside that coach in the darkness. No one answered until we heard Henry Mendez outside.
“Delgado!” he yelled.
Then close on it came the sound of his steps and the door opened. “Delgado’s Station,” Mendez said. He stood there holding his leather bag. Beyond him, a man was coming out of the adobe carrying a lantern.
“Mendez?” The man raised the lantern.
“Who else?” Mendez said. “You still got horses?”
“For a few more days,” Delgado, the station-master, answered.
“Change them for these.”
“You got a stage?”
“A long story,” Mendez said. “Get your woman to make coffee.”
Delgado was frowning. He wore pants with striped suspenders over his underwear. “How do I know you’re coming?”
“Just move your people,” Mendez said. He turned to the coach again. “You wash at the bench by the door. You follow the path around back for other things.” He offered his hand and Mrs. Favor got out. Then the McLaren girl.
“Twice in one night,” Delgado said. “An hour ago we are in bed and three men come by.”
“You should have stayed up,” Mendez said.
Mr. Favor was just getting out of the coach. “Did you know them?” he asked.
“Some riders.”
“But did you know them?”
Delgado looked thoughtful. “I don’t know. I think they work for Mr. Wolgast.”
“Is that usual,” Dr. Favor said, “them coming by this time of night?”
“Man, it happens,” Delgado said. “People go by here.”
By the time I went around back and came out again, just Mendez and Russell were standing there. Mendez took a bottle that looked like brandy out of his leather bag and both of them had a long drink.
Two boys, in shirts and pants but barefooted, came out of the adobe. Both of them smiled at Mendez and one of them called, “Hey, Tio, what have you got?”
“Something for your grease pails,” Mendez said, “and the need of clean horses.” The boys ran off again, around the adobe, and Mendez turned to John Russell again.
“How do you like a mud wagon?”
Russell said something in Spanish.
“How do you like it in English?” Mendez said.
“That again,” Russell said.
“Practice, uh? Then you get good.”
“Maybe if I don’t speak it’s better.”
“And what does that mean?” Mendez asked.
Russell didn’t say anything. One of the boys came running out again with a bucket and Mendez said, “Paint them good, chico.”
“This costs more at night,” the boy said, still smiling, as if still smiling from before.
“I’ll pay you with something,” Mendez said. He took a swipe at the boy with the leather bag, but the boy got past him. Then he offered the brandy to Russell again. “For the dust,” he said. “Or whatever reason you want.”
While Russell was taking a drink, Mendez saw me and offered me one, so I joined them and had a swallow. It was all right, except it was so hot. I don’t know how they took the big swigs they did. Mendez took his turn then handed the bottle to Russell and went into the adobe.
The Mexican boy with the grease pail was working on the front wheels now. The other boy had unhitched the lead team and was taking the horses off. We watched them a while. Then I said, “How come you didn’t tell them?”
He looked at me, holding the bottle. “Tell them what?”
“That you’re not what they think.”
His eyes looked at me another second. Then he took a drink of the brandy.
“You want to go in?” I said. He just shrugged.
We went in then—into a low-ceilinged room that was lighted by one lantern hanging from a beam; the lantern had smoked and there was still the oil smell of it in the room.
The Favors and the McLaren girl and Braden were sitting at the main table, a long plank one in the middle of the room. Mendez stood there like he had been talking to them. But he moved away as we came in and motioned us over to a table by the kitchen door. Delgado’s wife came out with a pot of coffee, but went over to the main table before pouring us some. Mendez waited, looking at Russell all the while, until she went out to the kitchen again.
“They think you’re Apache,” he said.
Russell didn’t say anything. He was looking at the brandy bottle as if reading the small print. Mendez picked up the brandy and poured some of it in his coffee.
“You hear what I said?”
“Does it make a difference?” Russell said then.
“Dr. Favor says you shouldn’t ride in the coach,” Mendez said. “That’s the difference.”
Russell’s eyes raised to Mendez. “They all say that?”
“Listen, you wanted to ride with me before.”
“Do they all say I shouldn’t be in the coach?”
Mendez nodded. “Dr. Favor said they agreed to it. I said this boy isn’t Apache, did you ask if he was? Did you ask him anything? But this Favor says he isn’t going to argue about it.”
Russell kept looking at Mendez. “What did you say?”
“Well—I don’t know,” Mendez said. “Why have people unhappy? Why not just”—he shrugged—“let them have their way? It isn’t a big thing. I mean I don’t know if it’s something worth making trouble about. He’s got this in his mind now and we don’t have time to convince him of the truth. So why should we let it worry us, uh?”
“What if I want to ride in the coach?” Russell said.
“Listen, you wanted to ride with me before. Why all of a sudden you like it inside now?”
It was the first time I ever saw Mendez look worried, like something was happening that he couldn’t handle or have an answer for. He drank some of his coffee, but looked up quickly, holding the cup, as Braden and Dr. Favor rose from the table. Braden went outside. Dr. Favor went over to the bar where Delgado was, and Mendez seemed to relax a little and sip his coffee.
“Is it worth arguing about?” Mendez said. “Getting people upset and angry? Sure, they’re wrong. But is it easier to convince them of it or just forget about it? You understand that?”
“I’m learning,” Russell said.
Right there, again, I’d like to have seen what was going on in his mind, because you certainly couldn’t tell from his tone. He had such a quiet way of speaking you got the feeling nothing in the world would ever bother him.
While we were still sitting there, Dr. Favor motioned Mendez over to the bar where he and Delgado were. Mendez stood there talking to them for a long time, while we finished our coffee and had another. Finally Mendez came back. He didn’t sit down but took a drink of the brandy.
“Dr. Favor wants to go another way,” Mendez said. “The road down past the old San Pete Mine.”
It was a road Hatch & Hodges had used years before when the mine was still in operation. It ran fifteen or so miles east of the main road, through foothills and on up into high country past the mine, then it joined the present main road again on the way to Benson. But I had never heard of anyone taking it these days. The country through there was wild and climbing, harder to travel over. That’s why the new road had been put through after the mine shut down. The only thing you could say about the old road was it was shorter.
But was that reason to take it?
Mendez said why not? Delgado was sure the rest of the stations along the main road had already shut down. At least all their change horses had been moved south by now. Delgado was the only one left with any and his would be gone in a few days. If we have only six horses and there are no more stations, Mendez said. Why not go the short way?
That made sense. We’d have to bring extra food and water, though. Mendez agreed to that. He said as long as Dr. Favor was paying for most of this, why not keep him happy? (Henry Mendez seemed very anxious to keep people happy.)
“Maybe he’s a little worried too,” Mendez said. “He was talking to Delgado again about those people who came by here. What did they look like? Did they say where they were going? Things like that.”
“If he thinks they plan to hold us up,” I said, “they couldn’t. They wouldn’t know a stage was coming by here tonight.”
“I told him that,” Mendez said. “He said, ‘If there is a possibility of being stopped, we should take precautions.’ I said, ‘Maybe, but, if this was the regular stage, we wouldn’t even be talking about it.’ ”
“Maybe he is really worried,” I said.
Mendez nodded. “Like something’s after him. And he knows it.”
A little later, after Mendez had seen about the provisions and water bags, we got moving again. Frank Braden was already in the coach asleep with his feet on the seat across from him. We just let him be. There was room enough with John Russell up on the boot now.
Soon we were alone in the night with the rumbling and creaking sounds. We turned off the road about two miles south of Delgado’s and went through a mesquite thicket with the branches scraping both sides of the coach. Then this trail opened up and you could feel it beginning to climb. We would move through trees, in and out of close darkness, all the time following the winding, climbing road that led on and on, two rutted tracks that were overgrown but I guess still visible to Mendez.
About three hours out of Delgado’s, Mendez and Russell changed the teams, giving the two spares a turn in the harness, and watering them. I was the only one who got out of the coach, though I’m sure Dr. Favor was awake too. I had a drink of water from Mendez’s canteen (this was kept in the driver’s boot; three hide bags of water on the back end were for the passengers and the horses) and then we were off again.
I went to sleep after that, wondering for the longest time if the McLaren girl would say anything if I was to put my arm around her. I never did find out.
With the first signs of daylight and down out of a winding, steep-sided canyon, we came to the abandoned San Pete mine. Mendez and Russell were standing there as we got out, everybody stretching, feeling the stiffness from being cramped up so long, and looking around at the company buildings.
The ones near us were built against the slope so that the front verandas were on stilts and high as a second floor. Out across the canyon the mine works were about two hundred yards off: the crushing mill part way up the slope, the ore tailings that humped in hogbacks down from the mine shaft way up higher. Braden was looking at Mendez. “This isn’t the stage road,” he said.
“We took a different way,” Mendez answered. He was at the back untying one of the waterskins.
“What do you mean a different way?”
I noticed John Russell step away from the horses. He watched Braden move toward Mendez who was lifting the waterskin to his shoulder.
“You take any road you feel like?”
“Talk to Dr. Favor,” Mendez said.
“I’m talking to you.”
Mendez had started for the building, but he stopped. “The others agreed on it,” he said. “You were asleep. But I thought, if he wants to come with us so bad then this is all right with him.”
Braden kept watching him. “Where does it lead?”
“Same places,” Mendez answered. He took the waterskin under the veranda and came out again stretching, looking up at the sky that was still dull though streaked with traces of sunlight above the far end of the canyon. “We eat now,” Mendez said. “Then rest for two hours.”
Dr. Favor said, “If you’re thinking of us—”
“More of the horses,” Mendez said. “And me.”
We ate breakfast under the veranda of the main company building, some of the bread and cold meat and coffee Mendez had brought. And after Mendez took his blanket roll to the next house, the only one besides the main one that still had a roof. John Russell went with him and they slept for a couple of hours.
So there was nothing to do but wait during that time. The mud wagon stood alone with the horses grazing farther down the canyon where there was grass and some owl clover. After a while Frank Braden walked out past the coach, gazing at the slope above the mine works, then looking up-canyon, the way he had come. He went on getting smaller and smaller as he crossed the canyon and got up by the crushing mill. He kept going, finally reaching what looked like an assay shack high up by the mine shaft and you couldn’t see him any more. I wondered if he was waiting for Mrs. Favor to come up. That or he was just restless.
Whichever, Braden was back in plenty of time. He had calmed down and he asked Mendez how long it would take to reach Benson. Mendez told him this way was shorter than the stage road, but we had the horses to consider. So maybe it would take just as long, arriving in Benson sometime tomorrow morning if the road was all right and if nothing happened.
Well, we left the San Pete mine before eight o’clock and by midnight the first if came true.
The trouble was not in following the road, a matter of whether or not the road was “all right.” There was just no road to follow. We crossed a shallow arroyo that came down out of the high rocks, and on the other side, where the road should have continued, there was no trace of it.
Wind and rock slides and flash floods had worn the road away or covered it or wiped it clean from the slope. Mendez had no choice. He took the coach down the arroyo, bucking, fighting down through the yellow palo verdes that grew along the banks waiting for water, then south again, out into the flat brush country to circle the dry washes and rock formations that extended out from the slopes.
The land lay dead in the heat of the sun, bone dry and thick with greasewood and prickly pear and tall saguaro that looked like fence posts growing wild. Henry Mendez did a good job driving through this, but it took forever. You would look ahead and see an outcropping of rock or a scattering of Joshua trees that looked only a few hundred yards off, but it would take even an hour to reach them and after passing them there would be other marks on the land, like a strangely shaped giant saguaro or more Joshuas or yucca, that would take forever to reach and finally pass. There was nothing to look at, nothing to look forward to.
We stopped to alternate the horses once during the morning, discovering only two waterskins on the back end. We had left one, more than half full, at the San Pete mine.
We stopped again at noon, all of us standing by the coach waiting for the coffee water to boil, Mendez unhitching the teams and feeding them from morrals, Mendez probably waiting for one of the passengers to say this was crazy and why didn’t we go back to the stage road? Lose a day, but at least not have to put up with this. But no one said it.
It was strange. There was Mrs. Favor saying it was hot, saying it different ways, but not seeming to mind it. She would glance now and then at the McLaren girl, probably still wondering what the Indians did to her, then look at Braden who had turned quiet today and seemed a different person, as if the effects of whisky had worn off him (though I am not saying he showed any signs of drunkenness the day before). There was the McLaren girl, seeming to be the most patient, aside from Russell (how could it bother him to be out here), and Dr. Favor who watched Mendez, trying to hurry him with his eyes. Nobody asked Mendez if we might get lost or break down. Nobody seemed worried at all. Not even about having left some of our water behind at the San Pete.
We went on, and it was afternoon before we got out of that flat country. Mendez saw the road again up on the slope, a trace of it cutting through the brush, and headed for it. You could see the hills getting bigger and clearer as we approached, shadowed and dark with brush and washes, but up above the peaks looked bare and silent in the sunlight.
We got up to the road and followed it easily for a while, but then it started to climb again, getting higher up into the hills, and finally Mendez pulled in the team.
He leaned down and said, “Everybody takes a nice walk. To the top of the grade.”
We got out, all of us looking up, seeing a pretty steep section ahead. Russell was already walking up it, I guess making sure there weren’t any washouts we couldn’t see from here. The slope wasn’t too steep, but Mendez, you could tell, was thinking of the horses.
So we waited until the coach and trailing horses were past us a ways and then started up. Dr. Favor took his wife’s arm as if to help her walking, but I think it was so she wouldn’t wander off. Frank Braden stood there to make a cigarette, so I fell in with the McLaren girl, thinking hard of something to say. But I didn’t have to think for more than a few steps.
She said, “He doesn’t look Apache, does he?” as if she’d started right in the middle of her thoughts.
But even that abruptly I knew she was talking about Russell. No question about it. She was squinting a little in the sunlight, looking at him way up on the road.
“You should have seen him a few weeks ago,” I said.
She looked at me, waiting for me to explain, and I was a little sorry I’d said it. Still, it was a fact.
“He looked like any other Indian on Army pay.”
“Then he is Apache?”
“Well, maybe you can’t answer that yes or no.”
She was frowning a little. “Mr. Mendez said he isn’t. That’s what I don’t understand.”
“Well, he wasn’t born one. But he’s lived with them so long, I mean by his own choice, that maybe he is one by now.”
“But why,” she said, “would anybody want to be one?”
“That’s it,” I said. “Wanting to be one is just as bad as being one. Maybe worse.”
“But wanting to live the way they do,” she said.
“You’d have to see things with his eyes to understand that.”
“I think I’d be afraid to,” she said.
I wanted to say that I didn’t think she’d be afraid of anything after what she’d been through, but then thought it best to stay wide of that subject. It could be embarrassing for her. She had talked a little about it in the coach and hadn’t seemed embarrassed, but still there could be touchy things. It was like being with a person who has a great big nose or something. You don’t want to get caught looking at the nose or even saying the word. (I hope no one reading this who might have a big nose will take offense. I wasn’t making fun of noses.)
The trailing horses were still on the grade, but the coach had passed over the crest and stopped. You could only see the top part of it at first. The road leveled into pinyon and a lot of brush, and on the right side, slanting down at the coach, was a steep cutbank about seven or eight feet high.
“I guess we can get in again,” the girl said.
I heard her, but I was watching Mendez. He was looking up at the top of the bank.
We walked around the trailing horses and I looked up there too. My first thought was, what is Russell doing sitting up there? And where did he get the rifle?
Then I saw Russell, not on the cutbank but beyond the Favors and up by the teams. Near him, at the banked side of the road was another man, holding a revolver. I guess the McLaren girl saw them the same time I did, but she didn’t let out a peep.
What is there to say, for that matter? You walk up a road out in the middle of nowhere and there are two armed men waiting for you. Even though you know something is wrong, you act as if this happens every day and twice on Sunday. I mean you don’t get excited or act surprised. You just hold yourself in and maybe they will go away if you don’t admit they are there. You don’t think at the time: I am afraid. You are too busy acting natural.
The man on the bank came down to the edge and squatted there holding the rifle (it was a Henry) on us until we were up even with the coach. Then he jumped down to the road, almost falling, and as he stood up I recognized him at once.
It was the one named Lamarr Dean who rode for Mr. Wolgast. And the other one up by Russell, sure enough, was Early. The same two who had been at Delgado’s the first time I ever saw John Russell.
What if they recognize him, I thought. Not—what’s going on? Or what are they doing here? But—what if they recognize him? I couldn’t help thinking that first because I remembered so well how Russell had broken that whisky glass against Lamarr Dean’s mouth. Lamarr Dean must have remembered it even better. But he hadn’t recognized him. Early hadn’t either, else he wouldn’t have just been standing there holding that long-barreled revolver.
Mendez, looking down at Lamarr Dean, said, “You better think before you do something.”
“Step down off there and don’t worry about it,” Lamarr Dean said. Mendez climbed down and Lamarr Dean looked over toward us. He waited; I didn’t know why until Braden came up past us and Lamarr Dean’s eyes followed him. He said, “We like to not made it.”
“I kept thinking,” Braden said, “they got some catching up to do once they find the way.”
“When you didn’t come by the main road.” Lamarr Dean said, “we went back to Delgado’s early this morning. I said to him, ‘Are we hearing things or was that a coach passed us last night?’ He said, ‘You must have been hearing things; there was a coach but it wasn’t on the main road.’ ‘Which way did it go?’ I said and that was when he told me you’d taken this other way and I’ll tell you we done some riding.”
I kept looking at Braden all the time Lamarr Dean was talking. Maybe you aren’t surprised now why Braden took the stage in the first place and was so anxious to be on it when we left Sweetmary. It is easy to think back and say I knew it all the time. But I’ll tell you I couldn’t believe it at first. Braden was not a person you liked, but he was one of us, a passenger like everybody else, and, when he showed himself to be part of this holdup, it must have surprised the others as much as it did me. Though at the time I didn’t look to see their reaction. Too much was going on.
Early came over, not saying anything, his face dark with beard growth. He was prodding Russell ahead of him.
Then another man appeared. He looked like a Mexican and wore a straw hat. He was mounted and walked his horse out of the trees, leading two other saddled horses, and stood there in front of the teams. I noticed he wore two .44 revolvers.
Lamarr Dean stood with his hand through the lever of the Henry, his finger on the trigger, but the barrel pointed down and almost touching the ground.
“Old Dr. Favor’s pretending he don’t see us,” Lamarr Dean said.
He moved me aside and motioned the McLaren girl over against the cutbank. “You all spread out so I can see my old friend.” Dean was looking directly at Dr. Favor then. “Things start to close in on you?” he asked.
“I’m afraid you’re beyond me,” Dr. Favor said, though not sounding surprised.
“Ahead of you,” Lamarr Dean said. “I’ve seen this coming for two, three months.”
“You’ve seen what coming?”
“Frank, he’s still pretending.”
Braden came up beside Lamarr Dean. “He’s used to it.”
“We’re going to Bisbee,” Dr. Favor said. “On business. We’ll be there two days at most.”
“No,” Lamarr Dean said. “You’ll be there just long enough to get a ride south. You’ll hole up in Mexico or else get a boat in Vera Cruz and head out.”
“You’re sure of that,” Dr. Favor said.
“That’s how it’s done.”
“And if I deny it, tell you we’re going back in two days?”
“What’s the sense?”
“He should be over here with a gun,” Braden said.
“No,” Lamarr Dean said. “He uses his ink pen. All you do is write down a higher beef tally than what comes in. Pay the trail driver U.S. government scrip for what’s delivered and keep the over-payment. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”
“Like he never saw you before,” Braden said.
Lamarr Dean looked at Mrs. Favor. “You pretending too?”
“I know you,” she said, pretty calmly, considering everything. “But I don’t remember him,” nodding to Braden.
“No, Frank wasn’t anywhere near. He was still in Yuma then.”
“I guess that’s enough,” Braden said. “We got things to do.”
“I was just trying to understand it,” Mrs. Favor said easily. Her eyes shifted to Lamarr Dean who she knew by now was the talker among them. “You were working for the man who had the contract to supply beef.”
“Mr. Wolgast.”
“And you found out about my husband.”
“Audra,” Dr. Favor said, sounding unconcerned but hardly taking his eyes from Lamarr Dean or Braden, while the rest of us couldn’t help but watch him. (My gosh, the things we were learning all of a sudden!) “Audra,” he said, “you know we don’t have to talk about our personal business to these people.”
Braden moved away. “Let’s get to it,” he said and nodded to Early who started unhitching the team horses. As he stripped off the harness and brought them out, slapping them and keeping them moving, the Mexican, who was still mounted, bunched the horses and started them along.
The road formed two tracks out across a grassy meadow that was wide, pretty wide across and stetched on at least a mile with slopes rising up on both sides. As soon as the Mexican was off a ways, Early mounted up again and started after him.
Braden was behind the coach now and we saw just part of him as he yanked down the canvas and started pulling the bags off.
Lamarr Dean started looking us over then, I mean to see if we were armed. He took a revolver from inside Dr. Favor’s coat, a small caliber gun that he studied for a minute then threw off into the brush on the other side of the road. He went on to Mendez, passing Mrs. Favor and the McLaren girl, and Mendez opened his coat to show he was unarmed.
“What about up in the boot?” Lamarr Dean asked.
“A shotgun,” Mendez said.
“See it stays there and you here,” Lamarr Dean said. He came on to me and I opened my coat as Mendez had done.
As Lamarr Dean looked me over Mendez said, “You think it’s worth it? You won’t be able to show your face again.”
“I appreciate it,” Lamarr said, “but don’t give me no advice please.”
“I would bet you’re dead or arrested in two weeks,” Mendez said.
Lamarr glanced at him now. “You won’t have nothing to bet with.”
“All right, then remember it,” Mendez said. “You already have witnesses.”
“I don’t see any,” Lamarr Dean said. Braden came from behind the coach with a leather satchel. “Frank, you see any witnesses?”
“Not here,” Braden said. He knelt down to open the satchel.
Lamarr Dean moved on to Russell. “This one doesn’t look like any witness to me. Mister,” Lamarr said, “are you a witness?” He pulled Russell’s Colt as he said it and flung it backhanded, high up so that it glinted with the sun catching it, and down the road, bouncing and skidding way down it.
But Lamarr Dean wasn’t watching the gun. He was staring at Russell, up close to him and squinting, looking right in his face.
“I’ve seen you somewhere,” Lamarr said. The way he said it you knew it bothered him. He waited for Russell to help him, but Russell didn’t say a word. They stared at each other and every second you expected Lamarr to remember that day at Delgado’s, and you could just imagine him suddenly swinging that Henry rifle up and giving Russell the same thing Russell gave him, or worse.
Or Braden might say something about “the Indian” and then Lamarr Dean would remember. You waited for that to happen too. But, when Braden looked up, the bag open on the ground in front of him, he said, “I’d say it was a good day’s pay.”
Lamarr Dean looked from Braden over to Dr. Favor. “How much you steal so we won’t have to count it?”
Dr. Favor didn’t say anything. He was a man in a dark suit and hat standing there watching, with one thumb hooked in a vest pocket and the other hand at his side. The McLaren girl, Mrs. Favor, Mendez, John Russell—all of them in fact just stood there patiently, as if they had stopped by to watch but didn’t have anything to do with what was going on.
“He figures he’s helped out enough without giving us a tally,” Braden said. He rose, handing the satchel to Dean who took it and transferred the currency to his saddlebags.
“About twelve thousand I figured,” Lamarr Dean said.
“Somewhere around it,” Braden said.
“He did all right,” Lamarr Dean said. “But I guess we did better.” He saw Braden looking at the two horses that still trailed the coach on a line. “What do you think?” he said then.
“I guess they’ll do.” Braden looked up at the coach. “And the two saddles.”
Lamarr Dean looked at him. “What do you need two for?”
“You’ll see,” Braden said. He motioned to me. “You get them down.”
That’s how I came to be up on the coach when they rode out. I threw down Braden’s saddle, then Russell’s, looking at him as I did.
Russell watched, not saying a word as Braden freed the line and pulled in the horses and slipped the hackamores off them. He put his own saddle on one horse and told Russell to put his on the other.
Right then I thought, they’re taking Russell along as a hostage. It made sense; they hadn’t bothered us up to now, but they certainly weren’t going to be so kind as to just ride off. Which turned out to be right. Only it wasn’t Russell they took.
It was Mrs. Favor. Braden brought the horse over to her and said, “I thought you’d come along with us a ways,” sounding nice about it.
And just as nice she said, “I’d better not,” as if they were discussing it and she had a choice.
Braden held out his hand. “You’ll be all right.”
“I’ll be all right here,” Mrs. Favor said.
Braden stared at her. “You’re coming, one way or the other.” And that was the end of the discussion.
He helped her up, Mrs. Favor holding the skirt to cover her legs as she sat the saddle, and they moved off down the road. Braden stayed close to her and neither of them looked back. We all kept watching, nobody saying anything. Dr. Favor in fact didn’t say anything even before, when Braden was forcing his wife to go with him.
Lamarr Dean mounted up then. He sat there cradling the Henry across his arms, looking down at the people there and finally up to me, thinking about something, maybe wanting to be sure he hadn’t made any mistakes.
He thought of one thing. “The shotgun,” he said. “Open it up and throw it away.”
I climbed down to the driver’s seat and did as I was told, emptying both shells before heaving the gun off into the brush. Lamarr Dean nodded. He wheeled around and took off after Braden and Mrs. Favor, not hurrying though.
By now Braden and Mrs. Favor were about a hundred yards off, out in the wide-open part of the meadow. Way off beyond them there was just dust to show that Early and the Mexican were up there somewhere driving the horse teams.
I felt the coach shake; I remember that. But I didn’t look around till a moment later. When I did, there was John Russell kneeling on the roof right behind me unbuckling the cartridge belt from his blanket roll. He glanced up, keeping an eye on Dean who was taking his time moving away from us. Russell slipped the Spencer out, looking at Lamarr Dean again, and that was when he spoke.
He said, “How do they get that sure of themselves?”
I didn’t know what he meant, and certainly couldn’t believe he intended to shoot Lamarr Dean. I said, “What?”
“How do they get that sure with the mistakes they make?” Already he was slipping a cartridge into the breech, loading it quick for single fire. I guess I didn’t say anything then.
He was busy and it was like he was telling it to himself. “Luck then,” he said. “They think they know how to do it, but it’s luck.” I saw him slip three cartridges from the belt and hold them in his left hand. All of a sudden he held still.
I looked around and saw Dean riding back toward us. Braden and Mrs. Favor, two hundred yards off, had come around and reined in as if to wait for him.
Lamarr Dean had put his rifle in the saddle boot, but now, as he approached us, he drew his Colt.