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Sands of Sedona
Copyright 1982-2003 TrixiePixGraphics
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Sands of Sedona -- Western Fiction
Approx. 67962 Words
Chapter Ten
John remembered his name and where he was and sat up. There were paper sandwich wrappers swirling in the dust around him. There was an empty canteen with a bullet hole through its middle. Kelly, Joey and Kelly's gelding were gone. The tracks of three horses were fresh and distinct, leading off to the south.
Chowder stood fifteen feet away. A small amount of blood trickled steadily from a small, distinct hole in his butt, and he kept trying to put weight on his left hind leg.
Apparently John had only been out a couple of minutes; he remembered feeling what must have been the hoof of Kelly's bucking horse hit him in the back of the head. He looked at his leg; there was a neat hole through the calf, in one side and out the other. The hole in his leg was even cleaner than had been the hole in that pony's forehead when he was eight.
He could even see the bullet that had gone through his leg. It was lodged into the alkali crust. He dug it out with his thumb and put it in his pocket. It was caked with white dust which had stuck to the blood.
John shook his head to clear it, but shaking it hurt like hell. Blood ran from the back of his head. His ears rang. His tongue felt thick inside his mouth. He wanted to go home. He wished he had a home. He wished he could go home to Wendy and the girls. The fine dust of the alkali flat blew by John in swirls, as ever before.
John grabbed up his broken Winchester and limped to his horse. The more his head cleared, the more he recognized the need to hurry. On his first attempt to mount, Chowder fell halfway down, and that scared the horse. John calmed him-- it took several moments-- they were moments he did not wish to squander, but if the bronc panicked now and broke away, Kelly and Joey would be lost. They might be lost anyway, he thought. He believed that he was lost, and that his horse was lost. They would all die anyway, but he intended to go out fighting.
"I'm sorry," he told the mustang. "I don't see that there's much of a choice." The horse looked straight at him and listened. The horse always listened to John. "Ain't neither of us going to live forever. You weren't planning on that, were you boy?"
Chowder stood still and John struggled into the saddle. He knew his calf wound would not kill him-- he assumed whoever had taken Kelly and the boy would accomplish that, but he could not believe how much a non-fatal wound could hurt. Dying, he figured, would not hurt a great deal more than the pesky hole in his leg. It was the cleanest wound he had ever seen; it bled almost not at all. How could such a neat hole hurt so much?
He spurred Chowder hard toward the fresh tracks. Though he wore spurs always, he almost never spurred his horse. Chowder knew that if he didn't answer a cue in a timely and professional manner he'd be spurred. He had learned that when John taught him everything else he knew, when they'd first met, and he had never forgotten. Chowder didn't like to be spurred, so he had become a horse who was sensitive to his master's requests. Sometimes he thought about misbehaving when John asked him to move out and he didn't especially feel like moving out. Sometimes he thought about those spurs for two or three seconds before defaulting to John's wishes that he move out. On this occasion, John could not afford the two or three seconds that Chowder might take in thinking about those spurs, especially in his tired and wounded condition. John spurred him right off, and this shocked the horse, who then leaped straight into a dead gallop without hesitation. John thought he might kill the horse, but they were both dead anyway.
Chowder galloped hard across the bald expanse. By the time he reached the edge of the alkali flat John thought he could make out some colors, incongruous with the terrain, disappearing over a low, brushy sand dune.
Chowder was hoping that the edge of the alkali flat meant he could slow down-- Often before, a change in terrain meant he could slow down. But John threatened him with the spurs again and he flew up the small incline and over the top of the same low dune. John was sure he was gaining on the riders ahead; they could be none other than Kelly and Joey, and whoever had tried to kill him.
As he rode he tried to piece together what had happened. One minute life had seemed to be improving. The next instant it was a dark and worrisome thing again. He wondered why the shooter had left him. At the range the bullet came from, he doubted that whoever had shot could be sure of only wounding a man. A shooter who was intent only on wounding a man would not take a chance on killing him accidentally. More likely, he thought, the shooter had tried his best to kill him, but the man's shot had fallen victim to the wind and only struck his leg. Why then, had the man left him with only a hole in his leg?
John felt the back of his head. It felt like something was attached there-- but it was only the lump that was growing. He could feel blood still running down the back of his neck. The blood was gritty with alkali dust. Then it came to him: The shooter thought he was dead! He'd taken the hoof print in John's skull for a mortal wound by gunfire. John imagined the conceit the shooter would feel at believing he had nailed John square in the back of the head from a mounted position, at four hundred yards through a swirling dust storm. The shooter would think himself quite a shot, and might be over confident.
John doubted the kidnappers knew he was closing on them. That gave him an enormous advantage. He would take all the edge he could get.
Chowder felt to John as though he was near collapse. John slowed him to a lope, but pressed him on through the low humps that had once been a swamp around the edge of the dry lake bed. He chambered a round in his rickety rifle. If he had an opportunity to shoot it, he would have to do so free handed, for it could not be aimed.
Chowder loped up the side of a short hill-- and right in front of him, not seventy feet distant, were three horses. John doubled Chowder's head back into his lap to turn the horse around. Chowder was shocked by such rough treatment but not unhappy to be allowed to stop running. John spurred him back down the hill until he was sure he wasn't visible from over the crest. He leaped from his horse and scrambled to the crest of the hill in three strides. There he settled behind a tumbleweed and looked upon the party.
He had assumed they'd seen him-- he couldn't imagine how they had not. He was ready for a gun fight; he would make all of his three rounds count.
The party was walking away from him now, just poking along. Kelly and Joey rode Kelly's gelding and were last in line. Kelly's gelding was led by the second man, a heavy, sloppy rider. Kelly's hands appeared to be lashed to her saddle horn. Joey sat behind her. The boy turned around and looked exactly at the spot where Chowder had blundered over the hill. He looked for a long minute. Then he turned back and faced forward. John thought he saw the boy whisper something to his mother for she cocked her head slightly. Then they were out of sight behind another small lump of sand.
Chowder stood sucking breath in ragged convulsions. His eyes were wild. John thought he might die on the spot. He wanted to be with his horse if he died. The horse looked like he had never been cared for. Chowder was a brilliantly white horse and when they were both younger John had washed him often so that he was almost luminescent in the bright sunlight. The blood that now ran in a dust caked stream down Chowder's flank seemed an insult to the animal. The mustang was filthy; his right breast was swollen grotesquely; his left buttocks was wounded severely. The horse hardly had any sound limbs left to stand on. It occurred to John that he had done enough to this fine animal. On an impulse he jerked loose the cinch of his saddle, unclipped the breast collar and flank cinch and crupper, dropped his bridle and told the horse he was sorry. It seemed an indignity to the animal to set him free at such a late date, after all he had done to the faithful beast, but it was the only gesture John could think of. He left Chowder standing there, wheezing, trembling, sagging toward the ground-- The horse was on its knees when he last looked back.
John turned and ran along the side of the sand mound. If he was lucky, extremely lucky, as slowly as the party ahead of him was traveling he might get close enough for a shot.
John ran until he thought his own lungs would burst. He was surprised how far ahead horses could get who were just poking along. He was afraid to run upon them like he had almost done with Chowder and get himself blown in half, but he was afraid of losing them too. At any moment, he realized, the party could kick their horses into a trot or a lope and in his condition he would never catch them.
The two men must believe that Kelly and the boy had seen them kill John. As witnesses, they couldn't be left alive. Whatever the two men had in mind, it could not be good.
When John thought he could not run another step he spotted some color ahead. He followed more cautiously, trying to formulate a plan, but before he could get ahead of the riders they left the area of mounds and sand humps and moved onto higher, flatter ground. The terrain now offered no cover whatsoever. John's hopes of ambush evaporated.
He stopped behind the last sand hump on the edge of the flats and watched the three horses walk away from him. He thought of trying to take a shot from there but the party was in single file. Kelly and the boy were last in line and he could not aim his Winchester properly anyway. It would have to be a close shot. Even then he'd be reduced to shooting from the hip.
He thought of running up behind the group but they would surely see him coming and kill him.
Then he had another idea. Perhaps he could walk up behind the group! The men were just riding along, not concerned in the least with their back trail. They knew John was dead, shot through the head. They felt safe. If anyone turned around it would be Kelly or the boy; he felt either of them were savvy enough not to slip and call his name. On an impulse he began walking up the trail behind the horses, staying low and making no sound.
He knew that even though the men didn't seem predisposed to turning around, they could do so at any moment. If they did, the show would be over. They could chase him around until he expended his three bullets and then do whatever they wished. Perhaps they would kill Kelly or the boy right in front of him as punishment for being alive. Then they would shoot him through the head. That was the kind of behavior he had come to expect in New Mexico.
There was nothing he could do but walk, and make no sound, and hope that neither of the men turned around. If he'd maintained a great deal of hope for getting out of the thing alive, he might have been scared. As it was, he figured he was on borrowed time anyway. Every step he took up that trail behind those men was another moment of life that he'd not been meant to have. He felt like a thief, stealing little moments of life, and for a time he felt almost giddy. No man has ever known such freedom as that which comes from facing almost certain death, and from having nothing left to lose.
John was amazed at how much closer he was able to get to the men. One of them turned to look off to the side once. He didn't risk the movement to crouch down but just froze in his tracks. The man looked about in a leisurely manner, waving his hand; then he spoke to the man in the lead. Then he went back to staring at his saddle horn, or the back of the leader's shirt, or whatever else it was he was looking at as they rode.
John could see now that Kelly was definitely tied to her saddle horn and no one expected little Joey to leave his mom. He was barely weaned yet.
John kept walking. He gained as quickly as he could on the group but he couldn't risk any quick movements or noise. At one point he almost laughed out loud. How stupid the men must be! He was now forty feet behind them; he intended to kill them, likely as not, and yet they rode on, oblivious to it all, confident and smug. He was in plain sight on a flat and open desert. All they had to do to see him was turn around. He wondered how many times wild animals, bears or cats, had stalked him at such close range, and he had not been aware of them either. He vowed that if he ever made it out of this alive he would be more vigilant in the habits of his travels.
All at once Joey turned full around. He had heard something. John saw his eyes grow wide, then his mouth grew wider, but thank God he didn't speak. Joey jerked back around and grabbed his mother's side. She cocked her head again. Joey was whispering to her excitedly. Before he finished she stiffened in the saddle but did not turn around.
John continued to walk up behind the horses. He was close enough now that he could use Kelly and her horse for cover when the trail took little bends and turns. He was amazed, and he was beginning to believe he might walk right up and dismount one of the men before they knew he was there. He still had a knife-- that would save his bullets, but such a tactic was unsure and he might risk Kelly or her son for the sake of saving one round for his carbine.
John decided that his first action should be to put a slug through the middle of the second man's back. Some men, he knew, might have preferred to confront the man, to give him a fair chance, but John did not intend to give him a fair chance. Killing the second man in the line outright and without warning would cause him to drop the reins of Kelly's horse and that would give her and Joey the best possible chance.
John knew that Kelly and Joey were ready for something. They could not expect John to walk up behind them and to still avoid a bloody confrontation. If Joey was particularly sharp he could grab up their horse's reins from behind his mother when John dropped the second man and Joey could guide the horse away from the scene.
John supposed he would try to shoot the man in the lead as well, after that, but he knew that by the time he chambered his second round the man in the lead would have drawn. It would be a close call either way.
John saw a turn in the trail coming ahead. He moved up close behind Kelly's horse-- so close that its tail brushed against him as he walked. The horse had seen him coming; there was no danger of spooking the well mannered gelding. The horses of the men had seen him coming too but they were not men who paid attention to their horses, and they had missed the clue.
When the party began to negotiate the curve in the trail John dropped down onto his stomach and lay behind a clump of low sage. He aimed his shattered Winchester as best he could; he knew that from that range he could take the one man out no matter what. He waited as seconds ticked by and the horses plodded along. He did not want his line of sight to run close to Kelly and the boy, just in case his shooting was off, or in case the barrel of the rifle had been bent and it was not shooting true.
Just a little more, he thought-- a few more feet. He cocked the hammer; he took up the slack in the trigger. He squeezed. He heard a faint click.
Just then the second man turned around and exclaimed, "What the hell!" The man quickly drew his rifle from the scabbard, leveled it, and fired well over John's head. John was shocked for a second-- how could the man have missed so completely? Then he heard hoofbeats. John rolled on his back and looked down the trail from where he'd come; it was Chowder, tail in the air, trotting up the trail to find him.
Chowder had veered off the trail at the sound of the shot. He trotted out along a course more parallel to the riders. He was cocking his head, wanting to trot up to them, probably thinking one of them was John, but also not wishing to approach the source of the gunfire or the excited, unfamiliar shouts that now came from the two men.
"I got his horse!" The second man yelled. "Looky that! I shot his tail clean off!" He had been aiming for Chowder's head.
John raised himself to peer over the tops of the sage; most of Chowder's tail was gone. The horse skittered his hind end this way and that trying to get away from the pain.
"Watch this," the second man said, leveling his rifle for a careful shot. It was just sport for the man. "I'm gonna blow his middle clean into Tuesday." He chuckled and cocked his hammer to fire. Chowder was twenty feet from the man now, and broadside to him. It was a child's shot to put a bullet through the mustang's heart.
John jumped from the brush and screamed "NO!" He ran toward the second man. John worked the action of his pathetic rifle. Perhaps the second round would fire. The second man saw John coming and was duly surprised; he lost his bead on Chowder and tried to realign on John. John ran straight at him, now fifteen feet away. The second man fired; the bullet grazed John's head. It stopped him. He stood and shook his head trying to clear it. His ears rang. His teeth hurt. His eyes were full of grit and black powder soot. He thought he'd fallen down and was surprised to discover that he was still on his feet.
John looked up to see the second man almost on top of him. The horseman had his pistol out. His horse lunged forward and closed the gap. The muzzle of the barrel inadvertently poked squarely into John's left eye. John thrust his Winchester into the man's belly button. They fired at nearly the same instant. There was a horrendous explosion. Bloody flecks of skin spattered John's face. He fell back onto the ground even as the second man dropped from his horse.
John opened his eyes to see Kelly and Joey staring in shock, their mouths open, and their pony's reins trailing on the ground.
"Get the reins, Joey!" John shouted.
Joey scrabbled for the reins as the first man ran his horse over John. The horse passed over him and kept going. The rider reined his hard horse. For a second, the man had his back to John. John tried to chamber another round in his Winchester before the man could turn around, but the action on his gun wouldn't work at all; the lever stuck open.
The man spun quickly and leveled a Remmington at John's chest. He could have shot then but he wanted a better grip on the pistol. He looked strangely familiar to John, like an apparition from some long forgotten nightmlare. The man loosened his pistol in his hand for an instant and got a better bite of the butt, and it was at that instant John remembered. The man was Danny Lewis.
Before Danny could fire there was a pop from behind them. Kelly had taken a pot shot at Danny; the small caliber bullet lodged in the back of Danny's horse's head. The horse reared and fell over backward. Danny fell under the horse and the bronc seemed to land full on top of him, then it rolled off and scrambled to its feet. Danny also got to his feet, though John didn't understand how he could still be conscious or alive.
John remembered Danny's Remmington; it must be somewhere close. Both men danced in the dirt, trying to uncover it with their feet. Just fighting with fists was not enough for them; neither were satisfied unless they could kill the other.
Another small bang ran out from Kelly's gun; this time it hit Danny in the back of the shoulder. It was an unlucky shot. It caused a trivial wound. Danny still had a hold of the reins of his horse. He weighed his odds briefly. Could he find the gun and kill John? Could he get to Kelly before she shot him again? Or could he remount and get away? He chose to run.
John lunged as Danny pulled himself into the saddle, but was only able to pull off a boot. Danny kicked his terrified horse and it sprung to a gallop and was gone.
John lay on the ground another minute, collecting his thoughts, rubbing the powder burns near his eye. Chowder limped over to him and nickered and sniffed John's hair.
"Look!" Joey shouted as he made a halter for Chowder out of his belt. "He's got no tail! He ain't got no tail at all!"
Chowder nickered softly again and pawed at John's hand.
John had to rest. It didn't matter how close the gunman might be. Kelly dismounted and told him to take her horse; she and Joey would lead Chowder back to town. Joey was busy examining the bloody stump where Chowder's tail had been. "Maybe we could find it," Joey suggested. No one answered.
"Those men," Kelly said. "I know them."
John met her gaze.
"They are two of the men you look for. I heard them talking about your family in the stable after you left town. I was hiding. They said they were going to kill you for trying to catch them. They said they would never hang for your family. Then they started talking about little girls. I stopped listening. I thought once that they heard me in the hay, but they started talking again. They talked about how they would catch you and what they would do to you. They said they were tired of you asking questions around town. When they left I saddled my horse and rode out to find Joey. I thought he would be with you. I think the men must have followed me."
John looked at the ground for a moment. Kelly went on.
"This one," she said, kicking the dead man on the ground, "he is Bubba Knudsen. He has--" she stopped and looked at him again. "He had some sheep outside of town. He lived there like an animal. His father gave him the sheep when he died. Since then the herd has gotten smaller, not bigger. His sheep are diseased. No one will buy them. They starve. Sometimes he gets drunk and shoots them for fun. He does not like sheep."
"He won't be shootin' any more sheep," John said. He looked at the man on the ground. A hunk of flesh was missing from his plump belly. He wanted to shoot him some more.
"The other one," Kelly went on. "The other one is very dangerous. His name is Danny. He knows you and I think you knew him, a long time ago. He has been a very bad man here for a long time. No one could seem to kill him. No one tried very hard. When those men took us, Danny said something about your horse. He shot your horse and laughed. Then he said, 'Now that old flea bag is just like mine.' He laughed again and took us away. He thought you were dead and he laughed hard about that. He was going to shoot you again as you lay on the ground but Joey distracted him and he forgot about it. Danny said your horse was now just like his. I looked, but his horse did not have a bullet hole in its rump," Kelly concluded, perplexed.
John was no longer perplexed. He didn't mention to Kelly that he'd known Danny since childhood. Danny's horse did have a bullet hole in its rump-- when he and John were eight.
John sat for a moment, putting things straight in his mind. It came to him that Danny and Bubba were the two men who'd come looking for him in the stable that first morning; they were the ones who'd slapped Chowder's rump just to watch him spook. John wished he would have recognized Danny at the time. He wished now that he could have confronted them then.
"Here. You will need this," Kelly said, handing John a small, shiny lady's gun with a chipped Ivory grip. John reached for it but drew back when he recognized it. He could not take it at first.
"Where'd you get that?" He asked.
"It is mine," she replied. "It has always been mine. Joe gave it to me for protection after we came to Paydirt. He said it was a rough town and that I had to be careful. Then, when I made him go away for good, he came back and stole it from my things. I think he lost it to Erin in a poker game. The Sheriff gave it back to me the night you killed Erin in the jail. It is the only gun I have. You will need it. Your gun does not work too well. I will try to find Danny's gun in the dirt."
John nodded and took the small weapon. He wouldn't have thought it capable of killing a cat, yet it had done its share of killing so far. He felt strange to have the gun in his pocket that had probably killed some of his family. He wondered if Wendy had seen that very gun, just before she was killed, or perhaps the girls. Had they been threatened with that gun? He promised himself to destroy it when he no longer needed it so desperately.
John mounted Kelly's horse. He hated to leave them alone and not properly mounted, still ten miles from Paydirt. He knew there was a chance that Danny would double back and try to get her again. There was a better chance John would get to him first and when he did, he would need a gun, even a tiny gun that only went bang.
John rode away and left Joey and his ma. He was hot on the fresh trail of a man who was bad.
Five miles on, John found Danny's horse. It lay on its side in the sand; its eyes were wide open but the wind had covered the moist eyeballs over with alkali dust. The horse lay there dead, looking but not seeing. The small bullet from Kelly's gun had killed it, even though it took several miles to die.
John looked ahead at the trail Danny left as he ran on toward town. He nudged his mount and it moved out through the sage.
On the edge of town John spotted Danny ducking behind the stable barn. Danny hopped along, his one stocking foot now bare and raw. He looked back furtively and saw John crest a small hill at a dead gallop. Danny dashed around the barn and into the undertaker's shed. John thought that would be a convenient place for the man to stay and wait for him. And a convenient place for him to die.
John charged his horse across the arroyo near where the town dumped its trash, and around the barn, and straight into the undertaker's shed. He kept his little lady's gun in his hand, ready to shoot on sight, but the undertaker wasn't even there. The shed was empty but for several coffins and some strange looking equipment.
John spurred the horse out of the shed and down the middle of the main street. By his manner alone passers by knew there was trouble. The lady's gun he held in his hand confirmed it.
As he swung into the main street he thought he saw Danny duck into the Elkhorn. Old Sid had left it to a whore, and she ran it now. John kicked his horse to a gallop and covered the remainder of the main street as folks scattered and horses at the hitching rails reared; then he reined up onto the boardwalk and right into the bar. The swinging doors flew open-- one broke from its hinges and went sliding across the floor. The patrons cursed but scattered.
John looked quickly from man to man in the bar for Danny may already have found a gun and would be waiting to shoot him. Kelly's gelding stumbled on the uneven floor of the bar. A hoof broke through the punky boards and the horse almost went down.
Danny was no where to be found so John kicked the horse around behind the bar. A man was crouching there; the whore had been too scared to point him out. He lunged at John's horse and cracked a whiskey bottle over its head-- he had not been able to locate a gun.
The horse reared and stumbled back. One of its front hooves hooked on the back of the bar as it was coming down. It took long enough to extricate itself that Danny slipped out past the one swinging door that hung awkwardly on one hinge, and again ran up the middle of the street.
"Give me a gun!" He yelled as he ran. He reached and grabbed at folks as he stumbled past. But no one would give him a gun.
Danny ran in front of an approaching wagon; its team spooked and veered into the path of an oncoming wagon. The two collided and the teams became tangled. They fought to free themselves; one of the wagons capsized in the street, spilling several children onto the hard-baked clay. A farmer yelled at Danny and tried to hold him, but Danny kept running.
John rode his horse out of the bar soon enough to see Danny disappear into the hardware store. Danny thought he could find a gun there. John's horse galloped down the boardwalk; loose boards flew into the air behind it. John reined up hard; his horse skidded on the boardwalk, trying to stop at the door of the hardware store. The horse almost sat down as it tried to stop. As he slid past the door, John noticed that Danny was behind it, holding it closed. He could see Danny's grimaced faced pressed against the glass.
John's horse finally stopped abreast of the big window of the store; the gelding was already set back on its haunches, well collected. John cued the horse to spin to the right and when it had spun ninety degrees he spurred it hard. The horse grunted in shock but shot straight ahead, through the main window of the store. Goods flew as the horse landed between the aisles. The big gelding tried to turn in a narrow aisle and knocked down one whole row.
John looked to his right, to locate the man he intended to kill. Customers had been standing at the counter asking questions or waiting to pay; it took John a few seconds to figure out which of the people was Danny. When he finally spotted him, Danny had a new revolver; he'd taken it from behind the counter. Even then he was jamming shells into it. He and John were eight feet apart.
Danny closed the loading gate on the Colt-- he'd managed to get three shells into their chambers-- and was swinging it up to bear on John's chest. John was still astride the frantic horse but it leaped around and tried to buck in the cramped confines of the store, and for a moment John was busy just staying in the saddle..
Danny fired in haste with a great boom and missed completely. A jug of apple cider burst on an adjacent shelf. Ladies screamed. John's horse had upset a sack of flour and the fine white dust filled the air.
John finally came to bear with the small, Ivory handled gun. He shot. It went bang. It sounded like a book smacking the floor. John saw the bullet enter Danny's shirt but it didn't even jolt the man.
Danny looked down at the small hole in his shoulder. It was nothing serious at all. How ironic, John thought, that the lady's gun could kill an innocent horse with one lucky shot, but could not slow down one small man. John tried to cock the cheap little gun again but it balked. Danny raised his new Colt once more. He would blow John right out of the saddle.
There was another tremendous boom in the small store and smoke filled the air. Then there was silence. Someone coughed. Then Danny slumped to the floor. A larger hole could be seen in his front side, just below the breast bone at about center point. A young man stood behind John's horse with a smoking gun held limply in his hand.
The boy was obviously stunned. He hadn't even heard his own gun discharge. He didn't quite understand how the man in front of him came to have a hole in his gut, if he had never fired his gun. He didn't even remember drawing it, but there it was, in his hand, and that realization made him suspect that he might actually have fired it as well. It was one of the new models, though it looked well traveled.
A well dressed, stately old man, obviously a rancher of some stature, stepped forward and gently took the warm revolver from the boy's hand.
"Here son," he said almost kindly, in a mild southern drawl, "Let me take care of that for you." John's horse snorted gently in the smoky haze that filled the store but it was otherwise deathly silent.
The boy offered no resistance. He numbly let the gun slip from his hand to the old man's. He still hadn't fully comprehended what had happened but it was beginning to dawn on him. It was like realizing that your nightmlare was still there when you woke up.
A greasy, narrow eye'd customer, an old whoring partner of Danny's, took the opportunity to step forward and loudly proclaim that he had seen the boy draw first. The dead man was merely trying to defend himself, he asserted. The boy countered shakily, "No, I didn't!" The man scowled at him for the boy was calling him a liar, but he made no more comment and the boy slipped back into a stupor. Everyone had seen Danny shoot first.
The Sheriff was still out of town. He'd enlisted Charlie, a retired pig farmer, as deputy. Charlie was his brother in law. Charlie knew nothing. Charlie put the boy in jail right along with John. He planned to keep them both there too, until the Sheriff got back, whenever that might be. It might be weeks-- the Sheriff had been gone four days as it was and had left no word except with Charlie that he was even leaving. Some had seen him just riding out of town with a good pack horse loaded to the gills.
The rancher from the hardware store had a word that counted for something, however. He insisted on signing his statement which got both John and the young man out of jail. Charlie wasn't sure he should let either of them out and once he did, he tried to spy on John in case he had to arrest him again. He was as ineffectual at that as he was at all his legitimate duties.
The young man from the hardware store explained to John that Danny had rustled his cows three years before. He'd seen Danny and several other men do it and he knew where the cattle had been taken, but he was unable to convince the Sheriff to do anything about it. He didn't know why the Sheriff wouldn't do anything about it. He and his young family had almost been forced to leave the territory after the loss but they were building back up again now.
His wife, he said, also had trouble with the outlaw Danny, as had most of the women in the territory. When the shooting was about to start in the hardware store the young man had known Danny to be bad; John on the other hand, was an unknown quantity. He'd had to choose, and he chose to drop Danny. John was glad he did.
Once out of jail John went to the Elkhorn and to the hardware store and paid for the damage. "I was riled," he explained bluntly. "And I apologize for the inconvenience." The owner of the hardware store was understanding and thanked him. The whore who now owned the Elkhorn black-balled him forever, but took the money anyhow. That was just as well, John thought. He had no use for places like the Elkhorn. It was going to be clean living from now on.
John met Kelly, Joey and Chowder back at the stable. They'd had no trouble leading the mustang in though it took them until well after dark to do it.
John and Kelly doctored the horse together, night and day for the first week. John slept next to Chowder's stall and got up in the night at any provocation or sound to make sure he was all right. Chowder slowly recovered-- but he recovered. The bullet hole in his butt offered no complication at all and healed nicely, unlike Danny's pony when John was eight.
John played with Joey and talked with Kelly. Kelly no longer appeared to dislike John but she did not seem go out of her way to be overly friendly either. Still, he thought he caught her looking at him from time to time. He knew he looked at her. He had come to regard her as a woman somewhat attractive--no more than that, he told himself. Certainly no more than that.
John healed and Chowder healed. Joey incessantly begged to go back and look for Chowder's tail.
"What would you do if you found it?" John asked him. "You can't stick it back on, and it would just smell up the place, and to be honest I'd just as soon not be reminded of it. Okay?" Joey always said okay. But within a few days he had always brought it up again. John finally told him that if he wanted a tail from a critter that badly they would go cut the one off his donkey's skinny butt. It was not as long and luxurious as Chowder's but it was still a tail. It would be better, John told him, that he have a tail off of his own critter anyway, instead of from someone else's. John told him it would mean more that way. Joey didn't understand why it needed to mean anything at all. He just wanted a tail.
Joey had laughed at first when John suggested docking his donk, but when John came back with a pair of big hoof nippers and headed resolutely for Bill's stall, Joey suddenly became quite serious. He ran after John begging him not to cut his donkey's tail off. John had relented only at the last possible second and little Joey let the matter of Chowder's lost tail drop completely.
In time, John thought, Chowder would likely grow some hair out from the stump and it wouldn't look so bad as it did right now. John had always been disgusted by critters who'd been relieved of the dignity a proper tail provided, by some misguided master. Perhaps, as Joey suggested, someone could fit the horse with some manner of fake tail. Joey had almost convinced him it was worth a try.
The afternoons were quiet and hot. Paydirt didn't seem to be such a bad town after all. At least, John thought, it had been two whole weeks and no one had shot at him. That counted for something.
During the lazy afternoons John taught Joey to shoe his own horses. It took the boy a whole day to shoe one of Chowder's feet, but he did it right. When John was eight he'd been prevented from riding his old mare until he learned to shoe her. He remembered that it had taken him about a day per foot then, too. Now he did all four in an hour. Joey didn't believe he would ever learn to shoe a horse in an hour. The task was something Joey loathed and it almost....made riding horses not worth the trouble. John's father maintained that a man who couldn't shoe his own bronc had no business ridin' a bronc. John had grown up believing that. Joey didn't know if he agreed with that or not.
Kelly was trying hard to teach Joey to read but was meeting with limited success. Joey would rather play with his donk. Someday, he told everyone, Bill would be able to do all the tricks that Chowder could do, and Chowder was something of a legend around the stable, for all his silly tricks.
A school had been started in Paydirt by a whore, but it was mostly disastrous. She was a kind enough old woman-- too old to be whoring any longer-- and most of the townsfolk didn't begrudge her that she was a whore. Most of them were worse. The fact was she could barely read herself and she could only count if she had money right in front of her-- she couldn't hold any figures in her head. Some thought she was insane to boot. Still, a school was a school.
The attendance dropped off sharply however, when it was learned that she sometimes resorted back to whoring in the schoolhouse, early in the mornings, before the children arrived. She'd lost her looks enough that she starved trying to be a full time whore, and she was not very good at being a full time schoolteacher either, so she took what she could get. The morals of even a town like Paydirt insisted, however, that she choose one or the other. She finally chose whoring again, and the schoolhouse closed.
Joey and John played like two kids. They became closer every day. John had the irksome habit of making duck sounds with his mouth-- he did it fairly well, well enough, in fact, that if there were any ducks in the area they'd answer him. John often threatened Kelly with it when they were out in public. Kelly was mortified by it, as it caused folks to look at John as though he were of limited capacities.
Joey wanted to know if he could learn to make duck sounds too. John told him he was sorry; that was the one thing he could never teach Joey. Joey wanted to know why. John replied that he could make duck sounds so well because he also had a little bit of duck blood, along with his Injun blood. He said that many Indians also had duck blood, but that apparently Joey's Indian blood did not include it, for Joey obviously could not make the sound of the duck. Joey knew it was hogwash and asked John repeatedly to prove that he had duck blood.
John finally agreed. He solemnly took Joey into a dark area in the back of the barn. He explained that what the boy was about to see could never be talked about. John told him that inside his boots he had duck's feet, and it was time Joey saw them for himself.
Joey laughed at first and demanded to see John's duck's feet, but when John began quacking loudly and seemingly uncontrollably, Joey's eyes grew wide. Still, he sat and waited while John unlaced his boots. With great ceremony John began to slide one off, cautioning Joey to not be afraid. Joey however, was afraid. There was no humor in John's voice, nor could Joey find any in his eyes.
The tension became too much, and Joey finally jumped up and ran from the barn, pushing past Kelly as he did. Kelly gave John a quizzical look, but John just laughed.
"Just testin' the boy's resolve," he said, and went on his way.
Joey knew, of course, that John did not really have duck's feet. He was virtually completely convinced. Still, there was the curious phenomenon of the duck sounds, and curiouser still was the fact that the ducks answered John. Joey sometimes thought he'd come up with a good representation of John's duck sounds. That would prove that John was a fake, for Joey knew he was a fake at making the sounds, and if his duck calls sounded as good as John's, then John might also be a fake. But the ducks never answered Joey's duck sounds, and that perplexed him.
To help Joey with his reading, John took to writing little clues on notes and leaving them around the barn for Joey to find. If Joey could read the clue and figure it out, it led him to a piece of candy. John often used candy as an incentive in teaching meaningless tricks to his horses. As a result of that practice, Chowder had become especially fond of butterscotch-- so much so that John often threatened the horse with a change of name to Butterscotch. It was an idle threat however, for no real western bronc could live down a name like butterscotch. Still, Fi Fi hadn't objected to her ridiculous name. John thought he might do it if the horse ever really acted up.
Kelly was surprised to see that Joey took a renewed interest in learning to read. It was not so much for the candy, which he seemed to be able to take or leave. Usually he took it and gave it to his donk, who didn't really care for it either. But more, Kelly thought, it was that a small challenge had been placed before him. John was a wise enough man to keep the challenges small, so that the boy could master them, and that strengthened him for the larger challenges to come. Kelly decided it was John that inspired the boy to read. Reading meant interaction with John, who had become Joey's invincible hero.
John reprovisioned himself at a leisurely pace. He'd had to buy a new saddle-- his was discovered chewed to bits by critters out on the range. He bought a brand new Winchester and thought himself lucky to find another Walker. He paid an exorbitant price for it and even then it needed a small amount of work to make it reliable. The gun was considered obsolete by most modern standards. Why, it was almost the twentieth century-- that was the comment on the lips of many merchants hoping to push a growing line of modern goods. Still, the Walker cost him dearly. It seemed some things that were not modern still had value.
He also bought a Colt cartridge revolver and traded it to Kelly for the little lady's gun with the chipped Ivory grip. He took that gun to the blacksmithing shed and flattened its barrel with a hammer, and threw it in the Rio Puerco where it sank deep into the quicksand.
Next Chapter
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