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Sands of Sedona
Copyright 1982-2003 TrixiePixGraphics
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Sands of Sedona -- Western Fiction
Approx. 67962 Words
Chapter Twelve
Charlie, the new deputy, had been told to rustle a posse first off when the Sheriff was discovered gagged and locked in his own cell. Charlie had only found the Sheriff when he brought the whore who owned the Elkhorn there. He thought it would be deserted. It had taken some while to find the keys to the cell. The Sheriff had galloped out of town by himself, following the fresh trail left by John and the Apaches. Charlie was unable to find anyone to go with him until just before daylight, and only then because it had taken the men in the Elkhorn that long to get drunk enough to find the courage to go.
Shortly before noon the posse arrived at the hollow. Kelly and Joey had followed in one of Kelly's rental wagons. The Apaches had all left, sparing the Sheriff, who waited in agony from his wounds until he finally passed out about daybreak.
The two handcuffed Apaches who remained alive had escaped by cutting the hands from their dead companions. It had been hard work, taking several hours to accomplish. They did not know about the keys for the handcuffs that the Sheriff had in his pocket. Frankly, the Sheriff had been too preoccupied with the worry of his own death to think of telling them.
The Sheriff came to when the posse arrived. The men from Paydirt, mostly beer boozers and crooks, cleaned up the mess, but only because the wounded Sheriff threatened to arrest them if they didn't. The only dead Apaches were the three John had handcuffed and killed, and the one who had walked into the battle grinning. Two of those who had killed his family were still at large.
The Sheriff had been with John when he died. John had come to understand in his final moments that he loved Kelly more deeply than words could express to her. The Sheriff delivered John's last message to Kelly. He'd said, simply, "Tell Kelly......I would have married her in Sedona." Then John was gone.
Kelly stayed with John for a long time. She just lay on the ground with him while the other men worked about the scene. She spoke to no one. She did not cry.
There had been much debate over whether the Sheriff could be moved at all. Finally, when he passed out again and no one was left in charge, they loaded him in a wagon. It was dark by the time they were packed up and ready to go. Even then, Kelly rode in the wagon with John's body.
Joey wanted to stay with Chowder. The horse was not quite dead, but lingered in desperate pain, in and out of consciousness. Charlie, under orders from Kelly, finally deputized two men somewhat against their wills, and commanded them to stay with the boy-- no one believed the Apaches would be back-- their trail pointed for Mexico. Then the wagons rolled for town.
The two men remained with Joey only two days, then they sneaked away. Joey remained alone for two more days before anyone knew it. Still he refused to leave the horse. Kelly came herself after that, or paid men, mostly drunks from the Elkhorn, to stay with him. She wished the horse would hurry up and die, just to be out of its misery. Joey would not let anyone shoot it between the eyes. Kelly finally agreed to let the boy stay until the horse could walk, if it was to recover at all. But she knew it would die soon anyway.
At night the boy slept with his arms around Chowder's neck. If the horse was in particular pain, Joey stroked it and talked to it all night-- he had often watched John talk softly with the horse, back in the shadows of the barn, when no one was around. Chowder had stood still and quiet and listened to John's voice for as long as he spoke. Sometimes, when Joey was alone, and when he felt especially lonely in the night, and when Chowder seemed to be finally slipping into death's arms, Joey would cry. He would sob into the great horse's mane until there were no more sobs in him. His tears would soak the mustang's neck and he would beg God for Chowder's life. In the morning he would wake up to find that Chowder had somehow pulled through another night.
Joey kept his camp next to the wounded horse and fed it from his hands for over two weeks before it even tried to stand. Kelly brought supplies, bandages and water to Joey, and hay and grain to Chowder. When Kelly came to be with Joey she helped him boil a gruel which Joey fed to Chowder with his hands.
Joey would not leave the horse, and now Kelly had no valid argument with which to bring him home. The horse was standing. That was a miracle in itself. It was two more weeks before Chowder took a few tentative steps.
Finally Joey led Chowder as the bronc limped into town. Chowder was still weak and unsteady on his feet. He was winded just walking up the muddy street. He had lost one eye altogether. His hide was scabbed. Knots of scar tissue covered his body and in some places he was never able to grow hair again. A bone in his foot had broken during the attack; it healed crooked, and the foot turned club.
The saloons emptied and folks lined the street when Joey and Chowder came through town on their way to the stable. Mostly folks were drunk; they waved scarves and yelled and whooped. A few of the patrons of the Elkhorn fired guns in the air, and that seemed to confuse the horse. He balked and snorted, and shied from things that weren't there. Still, Chowder had been saved, and time would heal him more. Joey felt good. Several men offered him whiskey. An ugly whore told him to come and see her later. Then Joey did not feel so good.
The morning after Joey and Chowder returned to the stable, Joey found a note pinned to the stall of his donk. Kelly had left it there for him all that time. Joey removed the note from the stall board. It was signed by John. It read:
Always remember Joey, it's not the deeds we do in life that matter;
it's what we become from doing them.
Joey kept the note and read it often, but it was many years before he was able to unravel the clue.
Joey cared for Chowder for the rest of the horse's life. Chowder lived a long time, though he was never ridden again.
The Sheriff always intended to run down the two remaining Apache killers. He talked about it at first, and made plans, and bought provisions and practiced shooting his gun a lot. In the end he became a drunkard, sipping beer all day in the Elkhorn, and retelling the one big story of his life-- the Indian fight, as it came to be known, at Three Rock Hollow.
Kelly ran the stable for two more years. Joey was out back of it one afternoon, next to the arroyo where the town dumped its trash, prodding a little rattlesnake with a stick as it tried to wriggle away. He jumped to hear a man's voice behind him.
"Don't kill that snake, son," the voice said. Joey turned around. The man was an Eastern dude that he'd never seen around before. "My name is Jerry, by the way. Jerry Wilson." The dude extended a soft hand. Joey wiped his own on his pants and shook hands with the man. He shook hands enthusiastically, even though he was not sure it was a man he was glad to meet. The man shook hands like a salesman.
"Oh, I never kill them mister," Joey answered. Then he added thoughtfully, "Not anymore."
"That's good," the man said in a friendly tone. But in the years to come, Joey was never sure if the man was against killing snakes out of a compassion and understanding of them, or from a colossal misunderstanding of the West and of life in general.....and of rattlesnakes. He was, after all, from the East.
Kelly married the dude named Jerry. They moved to Sedona and opened a hardware store. That's where Jerry had been headed when he stopped for the night in Paydirt and met the handsome little fair skinned Indian girl who ran the stable.
Jerry refused to sell guns in his store. It occurred to Joey that outside of that one illustration of unbelievable short-sightedness, Jerry Wilson from the East was not stubborn at all.
In time Kelly refused to work in Jerry's hardware store. She started a school instead.
Joey helped his step-dad with his riding; the man wasn't much good at it. After a while Joey didn't think he liked the man very much. It was hard to respect a man who could not figure out the mind of a horse.
One day, a year after arriving in Sedona, Kelly went outside and scooped up a handful of pure, clean red sand. She put it in a clear vase along with a couple of pretty agates, and she put the vase on the window sill above the kitchen sink. It was never to be moved she said, and she never put a flower in it. It was a mystery to Joey and his step father both. It stayed there until her death, forty years later. Then it was thrown away as junk by someone who couldn't possibly understand.
As Joey grew into his teens he took on horse training jobs for the locals. He always taught their horses a trick or two before turning them back to their owners. It was his trademark. His customers came to be mostly Easterners. Joey reflected that, more and more, it wasn't the horse that needed training at all, it was the Easterners. Few of them could even shoe their own horses and in time, Joey came to do that for them as well.
Kelly had two more sons by her husband. The boys blossomed and thrived. They played and frolicked in the warm sun, in the clean, red sands of Sedona.
She was careful that neither of them ever played with worms.
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