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Sands of Sedona
Copyright 1982-2003 TrixiePixGraphics
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Sands of Sedona -- Western Fiction
Approx. 67962 Words
Chapter One
John Hannal held the outlaw against the cold earth. Both men could feel the night rain and the rough, wet sandstone on their skin. The desperado struggled, but John pushed him harder into the ground. The man stopped and looked up at John with a grizzled, contorted face.
"You'll never get away with this," he growled. It was part whine, part threat, and part resignation. "If the boys catch you, they'll tear you apart like a rabbit in a pack of wolves!"
John considered the comment with mild amusement, and said quietly, "If."
"By God--" the man shouted and made a last-ditch effort to throw the two hundred and forty pound bulk of John Hannal off him. "By God I'll do it myself!" He landed a lucky punch square on John's jaw as he wrestled to get up.
John countered with a right that left the man limp, his form draped over the low contour of a half-buried sandstone boulder.
John relaxed and straightened up, and regarded the bandit who lay before him. The flames of the campfire, diffused through the misty rain, flickered across the outlaw's face. John realized that he seemed almost boyish. Innocence can sometimes be seen in sleep, whether it exists or not. How could a man with the potential to be good, choose to be so bad? John wondered how he had gotten himself into such a dirty job, in such a dirty, no-count place.
The man gasped once and stirred. He looked at John for a moment without recollection; then his eyes focused and the knowing and hatred returned to his glare. He remembered what he had done and he remembered the spot he was in. He knew he was too weak to attempt another getaway. Perhaps reason would work-- or downright begging.
"Look John," he began shakily, "I've got a woman. And a kid. A boy. I have a son, John. He needs a father. And I need him. Maybe there's some good in that boy. Hell, maybe there's some good in me. Maybe together with that Apache woman and the boy, maybe we--I can change. Hell, I ain't so bad. I ain't done so much that others ain't. I'm just a man, and I got a woman and a kid to take care of. I'll never set foot on your range agin, John. I swear it. And I ain't gonna steal no cows. I just wanna go home and try to put a life together." The man's voice broke. He turned his eyes away and refused to meet John's gaze. That was his mistake.
"It isn't cows or trespassing I'm worried about." John spoke hoarsely through clenched teeth. "It's a matter of too many souls you've took, Joe. You took 'em or you ruined 'em or you sent 'em to hell where they didn't belong. You take and you take and you take, and by God you aren't gonna take anymore. You've been takin' women and takin' lives through this whole territory for years. If it weren't for what you did to my family, it would be for what you've done to a dozen other families in these parts." John hesitated for a moment, almost breathlessly. He was seething with a quiet rage. Then he continued more calmly, as though this was something he owed the man; it was an explanation, or a justification.
"There's some that says we live more than one life." John's voice was almost gentle, but his grip on the outlaw remained strong. There was a quiet intensity to his voice, and a masked sadness, as if he felt it important for the outlaw to understand, but knew it was futile. John looked at the man intently.
"It could be that we start out as a bug or a small critter, and we work our way up to being human over dozens of lifetimes. Some of us even make it to be a man, Joe, but you wouldn't know anything about that. You never made it that far." John paused again, but only for a moment. He looked off into the night rain, then he turned back and looked Joe straight in the eyes, and that small hint of compassion was gone from his voice. Its tone was now curiously dead.
"I'm hopin' good things for you Joe. I'm hopin' that next time you come back as a coyote." John's voice grew rough and his eyes grew hard. "It's a damn sight further than you ever made it this time around!"
The man gasped and stiffened, seeing the look in John's eyes, sensing his decision. John plunged the Bowie knife through Joe's middle and filleted him like a carp.
The corpse was jerking spasmodically when John stood up and stepped back. He wavered. Then he bent down and wiped the blade across a patch of bunch grass. He sheathed it and walked slowly through the sticky mud to his horse, hidden behind a sandstone bluff.
The mustang, unaware of the plots and deeds of men, nickered softly as he approached. John touched it gently on the nose and paused for a moment without knowing why. He felt as though he weighed a thousand pounds.
John returned to the campsite and tied his horse close to Joe's camp. Then he pushed the saddle from Joe's mare, dropped the bridle from its head and gave it a brisk pat on the neck. It turned with a snort and trotted off into the night. The mare would slough her shoes when it was time.
John loosed the tie rope on his own animal and slipped into the old, familiar seat. It felt good to be in the saddle again.
Chowder took a few steps toward the fire but John reined him up. He sat and looked upon the scene, collecting his thoughts, taking responsibility for his actions and shouldering it upon his eternal soul. Right or wrong, he owned up to what he did.
He asked himself if he felt regret. He could find none in his heart. He found only a sadness that such chores must be done at all, and that they sometimes fell to him to do.
The corpse stopped jerking, though thick blood continued to roll slowly across the dry dirt next to the fire, toward the low areas of the footprints around the campsite.
The overcast cleared for a moment. The whites of the Joe's eyes fairly glowed in the dull moonlight. Then a colder wind sprung unexpectedly through the scrub pines and rain came in unwelcome spats, tossed by the gusts. John pulled up his collar and turned his bronc away from the scene, but stood still another moment, wondering absentmindedly if there was something he had forgotten.
He thought of burying the man.
Instead he gritted his teeth and whispered hoarsely to his mount, "go," and the pony moved out faithfully, down the dark trail. Somewhere in the distance a lone coyote whooped. Most of John Hannal's thoughts had already turned to matters more important.
The Eastern horizon was glowing faintly when Chowder shuffled into the squalid town of Paydirt. It was a mining village etched into the side of a clump of low mountains. The first buildings there had enjoyed a stable perch on a small bench of solid ground four acres in area, but all subsequent businesses were forced to stick like moss to steep hills and near cliffs. When the spring winds howled, it seemed as though the buildings would blow right off the hill.
The mustang picked up his head, sensing that a warm stall and feed were near. The horse squished carefully through the greasy clay of the main street, each hoof becoming twice, then three times its original size as the mud stuck like glue. During the late summer Monsoon in West Central New Mexico it was nearly impossible to travel, but early spring was bad enough. Chowder could barely stay on his feet, and he often made several tries to pluck a foot out of the sticky muck. John hoped his mustang wouldn't slip and go down, as horses in those conditions sometimes did.
As John made his way painstakingly down the street, he noticed a man squeezing ferret-like into the newspaper office. The man was crisply dressed and his boots were clean; he had not been out in the street. He was wearing spurs too, which meant that he'd had plans of riding. Had he been on his way out of the office, but upon seeing the lone rider in the street, decided to go back inside, unnoticed? Or had he come from some other store along the boardwalk and was merely going about some legitimate early morning business? John listened to his instincts; the man had an unnaturally furtive air about him. Still, John shrugged it off. The town was a haven for backbiting weasels. Someone was always trying to do something unto someone else without getting caught at it. Most towns have an element of that kind of thing-- but Paydirt was one for the books. It was a wonder, John thought, that the town didn't hold an annual parade in honor of the citizen who managed to be the biggest shyster of them all through the preceding year. Hell, he mused; maybe they did.
Chowder caught the scent of the stable at the end of the street and began struggling more earnestly through the mud, but John turned off and made him side-pass to the edge of the boardwalk. There he dismounted and, while standing on the dry walkway, tied Chowder to the hitching rail in front of the Sheriff's office.
Chowder put his ears back and glared, disappointed to not be going to bed after a hard night's ride through rough country and violent thunderstorms. The mustang stood three-legged at the rail as the cold wind whipped him, then turned and looked longingly toward the stable.
John disappeared into the office.
A thin, unshaven deputy with bad conformation was just pulling on his pants. He'd not intended to get up this early, but had been awakened by John's boots on the boardwalk outside his office.
Two prisoners were in adjoining cells. One slept soundly. The other man mumbled obscenities at the intrusion and turned over in his bunk. The deputy threw a rag at the cell bars, tried to cover a grin, and told the man to shut up.
The deputy was pulling his suspenders over his shoulders when he turned to confront John, thinking he needed only to resolve a piece of early morning trivia brought to his attention by some local sod buster. He started to speak in a gruff and condescending tone but stopped short. John's eyes were alive with fire.
John said nothing but stood still, taking in the scene, allowing his eyes to adjust to the relative darkness. The deputy started to speak again with a new attitude, one that would take control of the moment. Finding that tone inadequate or unwise as well, he only opened his mouth and said nothing at all.
The two men stood there, not three feet apart. John held his steely stare. It was an inviting look, a taunt. He held it too long. The deputy broke away first, but before he could get fully focused on the floor, John's right hand shot forward and slammed a small, hard object onto the desk. His left hand hovered dangerously near his Colt.
The deputy did not re-engage John's steely stare even though his curiosity was aroused. The deputy sneaked a quick glance at the object on the desk but couldn't see it clearly. John held the moment again, not moving. The deputy gathered the guts to speak again. After all, what could be so dangerous about a crazy man putting something on the desk and leaving? He started to say---
At that instant and without sound, John stepped back a foot allowing a dim light to fall onto the desk, and he moved his left hand to an even more threatening proximity to his six-gun. The deputy took notice of the new stance and was careful not to move suddenly; then he chanced a good look at the object on the desk.
He couldn't help it-- he convulsively sucked half a breath. He hoped his face hadn't betrayed him as well. His mind reeled for an instant. When he regained a shred of composure he looked up to confront the mysterious rider full on. He knew he must show only an appropriate interest in the object, and he knew he must demand to know what it was. But when he looked up he saw only the tails of John's slicker as he went through the door. The door closed with a slam behind him.
The deputy watched through the window as John went to his horse and untied it.
Now he was free to examine the object on the desk. He picked it up-- the broken corner of a custom carved Ivory gun grip. He swore openly. Then he went to a locker and removed a carefully wrapped bundle. From it he took a Hopkins and Allen thirty-two. It was a shiny, highly polished and meticulously engraved revolver; it was a dude's kind of weapon, or a lady's. It looked almost too delicate to be fired. He laid it gently on the wrapping on the desk, and next to it he placed the broken piece of Ivory. The piece fit perfectly into the butt of the gun. But that was impossible....
The deputy shook his head in anger and disbelief. The ramifications were unthinkable. Then he had a brighter thought: Sure, the tall rider had brought this piece directly to him. Maybe the man knew something, and maybe he didn't. He suspected; that was obvious. But what good were suspicions? --Especially in a town that held many loyalties to the deputy? If the rider had known anything for sure, he would have shown his hand then and there and forced the issue. It was obvious he wasn't afraid of the deputy and if he'd known anything for certain he'd have pushed it. Instead he had just left. It had all been a bluff. All the deputy had to do was maintain the story that he'd never seen the piece of gun grip before, and that it was a crazy man who'd brought it to him, apparently to cause trouble in the sleepy community. If there was one thing the Sheriff's office wouldn't stand for, it was trouble brought by outsiders.
The deputy smiled. It was a good angle. He had what it took to see it through. He'd done so many times before. He instantly felt better. It was just a small problem, after all.
The deputy began to wrap the gun and the broken piece back up in the rag together when something caught his eye. He looked up to see the dim silhouette of John Hannal staring squarely at him through the window five feet away. He must have been there all the time.
The deputy jumped and dropped the gun out of the bundle. It hit the floor and he watched numbly as a second piece of Ivory broke off the grip and skittered away under the desk. When he looked up again the mysterious rider was gone.
Sands of Sedona, Chap 1
Sands of Sedona, Chap 2
Sands of Sedona, Chap 3
Sands of Sedona, Chap 4
Sands of Sedona, Chap 5
Sands of Sedona, Chap 6
Sands of Sedona, Chap 7
Sands of Sedona, Chap 8
Sands of Sedona, Chap 9
Sands of Sedona, Chap 10
Sands of Sedona, Chap 11
Sands of Sedona, Chap 12