Last Stand at Papago Wells (1957) (17 page)

Jennifer stared at him, wide-eyed and frightened. "What is it, Logan? What's happening? What's wrong? There's something strange."

"It's the storm." Cates turned swiftly. "Lonnie, Kimbrough, fill all the canteens, and make it fast. Lugo, hobble the horses, and get them down into the bottom."

"What about the Indians?" Junie asked.

"Don't think about them. They'll be having troubles of their own. Hurry!"

They worked swiftly, driven by a sort of panic, feeling the strange, vast stillness, feeling like tiny things at the bottom of a huge bowl. Of them all, only Cates and Lugo knew what they faced, and there is no worse thing than a sand storm in a desert of loose sand.

Vast dunes of it lay to the south of them, and there were dunes to the west and north, and some to the east, vast quantities of loose sand awaiting the hand of the wind. Cates led the horses into the bottom of the arroyo, working with the Pima. Feverishly the others worked, filling the canteens. Maria sat stolidly, seemingly unaware ... and at the last moment when the others had gone below, Cates came to her. "Come, Maria, we're going below."

She looked up at him with wide, liquid eyes. "No, not yet."

He hesitated, then turned away to carry a last canteen of water and an armful of hastily gathered wood from the remains of the big fire.

Grant Kimbrough came up through the rocks and looked quickly around. There was no one, only Maria, and she was staring at the vast yellow sky. Dropping swiftly to his knees he scooped the gold into a heap and gathered in handfuls to throw into the saddlebags he had hastily concealed in the rocks when carrying his saddle below. It was the work of a few seconds, and in that time Maria did not turn to look or give any evidence that she heard the faint, small sounds of his working. Quickly, he carried the saddlebags below and placed them near the mouth of the wind-hollowed, shallow cave that was their only shelter.

The cave offered only a few feet of overhang, and partial shelter from a clump of mesquite. Behind this clump they held the horses, tied tight against lunging.

Cates looked up suddenly and straightened to his feet listening. There was a faint, far-off sound, a sound that as he listened grew into a vast and mammoth roaring. "It's coming," he said, "get back against the rocks."

He started for the path to the upper arroyo. Jennifer ran after him. "Logan, no!"

He had to shout to make her hear, although the sand was still distant. "Maria!" he shouted.

Wheeling, he ran up the path and she followed, at the top they looked around. There was nobody, anywhere. Maria was gone!

Appalled, he sprang to the top of the rocks and looked quickly around. Then he pointed. Jennifer stared in consternation and horror. At least two hundred yards away, walking south into the desert, was Maria. She was walking quietly along, her square and heavy figure, shoulders somewhat stooped, but carrying a dignity all her own, acting as if nothing more serious impended than an afternoon stroll. She walked steadily, plodding through the sand, headed south in the wild, unbelievable loneliness toward Pinacate and the Gulf.

Cates shouted, throwing his voice into the awful roar of the wind, but she could not have heard him. And if she did, by some freak of the wind, she did not turn or look back.

"Logan!" Jennifer cried. "We've got to get her! We must!"

"We couldn't!" he shouted. "There isn't time!" He pointed to the open desert. There, only a mile or two away, and roaring toward them, was a wall of sand that towered thousands of feet into the sky; before it tumbleweeds rolled and bounced, and before it came a strange chill, frightening after the heat of the earlier day.

Catching Jennifer's hand, he ran back to the path. Cowering to catch a breath in the shelter of some rocks, he shouted into her ear, "Think of it! What is there left for her? She'd be arrested for robbery, probably murder! It's better this way!" And he pulled her toward shelter.

They stumbled down into the hollow under the arroyo bank. And then the wind came.

Junie huddled close in Lonnie Foreman's arms, her coat wrapped about her, a blanket over her hair and face. Grant Kimbrough stared at them, his face expressionless, showing neither emotion nor feeling of any kind. He drew his hat down hard and turned up the collar of his frayed frock coat, gathering a blanket around him. Lugo huddled in a blanket of his own near the horses, only his eyes visible, and when Jennifer Fair cuddled into a blanket with Logan Cates neither he nor anyone was surprised. He held her close, feeling her warmth, knowing suddenly this was the way it must be, not only now, but always.

And the wind blew.

It was like no other wind, it was like no other sound, it was a vast, mighty roaring, a sound beyond understanding that filled all the space between the mountains, and over them the sand blew, shutting them into their hollow, ripping shrubs from the earth, rolling stones that echoed down the wash with great, hollow, knocking sounds. Sand sifted into their eyes and ears, it choked their throats, and the air grew colder still, colder and thinner, until they gasped for every breath, fighting to stay alive, fighting to avoid suffocation.

All sense of time was lost; they clung to each other as drowning people cling, frightened, cold, and alone. The earth seemed to rock beneath them, and still they clung together, and after that, a long time after, when minds, nerves and bodies were too weary to stand any further strain, they slept.

Logan Cates awakened, chilled to the bone, to hear a faint stirring. He parted the blanket and sand cascaded from him. Huddled together as they were, they had been half buried in the blown sand. Tony Lugo was saddling a horse.

Cates got stiffly to his feet and began digging the firewood from the sand. "Going somewhere?" he asked.

"I think better I ride," Lugo said quietly. "Soon white men come." He twisted the rope in his hands. "Maybe they from Yuma."

"All right, Tony." He brought a twist of grass, hastily ripped up the night before, from his pocket. Thrusting it under the wood he cupped a match in his stiff fingers. The grass caught, then a bit of hanging bark, and soon a fire was crackling.

Then Tony Lugo's words penetrated.

"There are white men coming?"

The Pima nodded. "They far off, one, two hour. I see them."

Lugo paused as if searching for words, then glanced meaningfully at the still huddled shape of Grant Kimbrough. "Gold gone," he said.

"Covered with sand, probably."

"No."

Logan Cates considered that. Had there been a slight move from Kimbrough? Was the man listening? "No matter," he said. He glanced at Lugo. "Did you want it?"

If Lugo could have looked amused, he would have. "No, I have horse, gun, maybe two dollars, I get drunk. Man have gold, he runs too fast. All the time run fast before maybe somebody catch up." He stepped into the saddle. For a moment he hesitated. "You good man, Cates."

He put the horse up the path and was gone. Logan looked after him, then knelt to stroke his fire, and when he looked around, the others were stirring, getting out of their blankets. Jennifer brushed her hair back and went to the waterhole, then up the path to the others. She came back, running.

"Logan! The water's gone! It's all dried up and the holes are half full of sand!"

"I know. That's why I had the canteens filled. The air in those storms is so dry it sucks up any water that's left."

Grant Kimbrough folded his blanket and picked up his saddle. Jennifer glanced at him, then at Cates, who said nothing. Kimbrough saddled his horse.

Lonnie and Junie were folding the little gear there was left.

Jennifer stood over the fire, warming herself, and Logan Cates waited, spreading his fingers over the flames.

Kimbrough finished his saddling and turned on them.

"Why don't you say something, Cates? You know I got the gold. Why don't you say something about it?"

Logan Cates lifted his eyes. In that moment he knew that what was to come could not be avoided. He was glad that Jennifer was out of the line of fire, but wished she were further away. The kids against the back wall were all right.

"I don't say anything about it, Kimbrough," he said quietly, "because I don't care."

"You don't care?"

"Why should I? It doesn't belong to me, and I don't want it. As far as that goes, it won't do you any good, either. If you stop and think about it, you know it, too."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You may have some bright ideas about investments, but that just won't be. You'll gamble it, lose a little, win a little, and finally lose it all."

Something inside Kimbrough died. Suddenly he knew that what Logan Cates had said was true. He would gamble it away, and if he had married Jennifer he might, sooner or later, have gambled that away, or let it waste. He knew it and hated Cates for making him know it.

"You're wrong, Cates," he said, and his voice sounded strange in the hollow of the bank. "You're wrong about that, and wrong about a lot of things. You believe you'll ride out of here with Jennifer, but you won't. Only one person is riding out of here, and that's me."

Logan Cates heard Lonnie turn slowly around, and hoped Lonnie would stay out of it.

Kimbrough said, "Don't look for your gun, kid. I've got it. I took it last night when the wind was blowing. I'd have taken yours, Cates, only you I want to kill."

"Grant! What are you saying?" Jennifer pleaded. "You can't mean that! Take the gold. We don't want it."

"How far would I get with it? Don't be a fool, Jen. I've thought it all out. That Indian won't talk, they never do, and I'll make sure the rest of you don't do any talking."

Kimbrough looked at Cates. "I've waited for this for a long time, and this time there won't be anybody to keep you from having to face the issue. This time nobody else has a gun."

Logan Cates stood very tall and still. He stood with his feet a little apart, waiting, simply waiting. "Kimbrough, in this like everything else, you're a tinhorn."

Kimbrough was very sure of himself. "What are you going to do, Cates, when I go for a gun?"

It was then they heard the horses. They heard a sound of hoofbeats, and someone called out loudly.

Kimbrough went for his gun and Logan Cates shot him.

It was that simple and that quick. Cates was firing before Kimbrough's gun came level, and his bullet smashed the gambler halfway around and the second bullet punctured his lungs from side to side. His gun went off into the sand, and he fell, face down and hard, the pistol flying from his grip. He tried to get up, an almost spasmodic effort, then fell back and rolled over.

"You ... you beat me, Cates. You beat me."

Logan Cates looked down at him. "Sorry, Kimbrough. You should have known better. I was doing this when I was sixteen."

Grant Kimbrough tried to speak, then relaxed slowly, and he was dead ...

The riders came down the trail and drew up before the opening. Logan Cates looked up and knew at once that the big, gray-haired man was Jim Fair.

"Who're you?" Fair's voice rumbled. It was harsh, commanding.

"I'm Logan Cates," he replied shortly. "I'm the man who's marrying your daughter."

Jim Fair stared at him, his eyes hard. "All right, get on your horses and let's get out of here." Fair glanced around at Jennifer. "You all right, Jennifer?"

"I'm fine, Dad, but I want to go home."

Fair jerked his head at Cates. "It this your man?"

"He is."

"You're a lot smarter'n you were," Fair said grimly. He glanced at Lonnie Foreman. "You punch cows?"

"Sure."

"You got a job."

After the horses had gone, the wind blew a light sifting of sand over the clearing, and that was all. The sand blew and exposed an arrowhead that lay there, an arrowhead that might have been a thousand years old. The wind blew, the sand sifted, and there was nothing more.

The waterholes at Papago Wells would fill again when the rains came, and others would come and some would live and some would die, but the Wells would always be there in the changing of years.

The sand sifted before the wind and somewhere out in the mesquite a quail called inquiringly into the night.

About the Author

"I think of myself in the oral tradition -- of a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered -- as a storyteller. A good storyteller."

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.