Maria's Trail (The Mule Tamer) (27 page)

“Well, this is a fine spot.” Arvel smiled at
Dick as the man uncased his Winchester. “What do you say you flank left and
I’ll go right, and we’ll see what can be done about this mess?”

“No, I think I’ll  stay with you, Arvel. Those
old timey guns of yours might get you in trouble. You might need me to take
care of you.”

They moved along the depression to the left,
placing themselves between the sun and the bandits. There was an outcropping
large enough to afford a good vantage point into the bandit camp. The posse
began to return ineffectual fire which at least served to keep the bandits
occupied.

Dick and Arvel made it to the high place.
“There’s room for just one shooter. Go on up there, Arvel. I’ll keep the rifles
loaded.” He handed Arvel his Winchester and held out his hands, fingers laced
together, to give Arvel a leg up. “Hold on, Cowboy, give me your cartridges,
that relic of yours takes rimfires.”

Arvel leaned Dick’s rifle against the rock
wall, pulled out a handful and pushed them into Dick’s palm.

“What the hell are they covered in?”

Arvel looked down, “Sugar. Pilar gave me some
pan de muerto,” he smiled at the irony of his cook’s food selection, “I guess
they got covered in sugar. I had ‘em in the same pocket.”

“My God, Arvel, you are something. They’re
going to gum up your Henry.” He stuffed the coated cartridges into his coat
pocket.

Arvel grinned, “Come on, I’ve got ruffians to
shoot. Lick ‘em clean before you load ‘em.” He stepped up into the stirrup made
by Dick’s sugary hands.

Arvel slid forward on his belly, took up a
steady position where he could look directly down onto the bandit camp. He
placed Dick’s Winchester beside him and proceeded to pour deadly fire into the
group, first with his Henry, then with Dick’s Winchester. Dick reached up and
grabbed the Henry and worked on reloading it. The bandits, panicked, began to
break from cover, allowing the rest of the posse to hit their marks.  One
bandit saw Arvel on the perch overhead. He turned, dropped his rifle and put
his hands up, screaming to Arvel that he would give up. Arvel shot him in the
forehead with Dick’s Winchester, noting in his mind that it shot an inch high
at that range. The man dropped as if he had fallen through a trapdoor.

When the shooting finally stopped all the
bandits were dead except for Hedor. He lay, moaning and holding a loop of gut
forcing its way through the gash made by Arvel’s rifle.

“I am sorry for the low shot, son. You jumped
up just as I was firing, otherwise I’d have killed you clean.”

The man looked up at Arvel. He did not know
what to say. He looked back down at his blood soaked hands and the gray loop of
gut, like uncooked sausage, uncoiling from his abdomen. “Oh, that’s all right.”

He winced, cried out. He could not catch his
breath. He watched as the blood flowed out onto the ground beneath him. “I
ain’t never been shot before.” He curled his body. “I want to tell you boys, I
didn’t have no part in all that yesterday.” He gritted his teeth.  “I ain’t
tellin’ you I don’t deserve to be shot. I’m glad you killed me. I can’t keep
livin’, seein’ those folks go the way they did and ever time I close my eyes,
that’s all I see.” He bent forward again, and let out a groan. “I didn’t do
anything for ‘em, and shame on me. I will go to hell for it, sure enough.”

“You a praying man?” the reporter spoke up. He
looked at Arvel and Dick for approval.

“I, I guess.”

“Well, you may atone for your sins and see
where it gets you.” He regretted, as a man who used words for a living, the
inarticulate way he was stating it, but he was not certain what fate awaited
the dying man. He felt better when Hedor seemed to take comfort at the thought.

The deputy pushed past them. “Get him on a
horse; we’ll take him back for trial.”

Incredulous, Arvel replied: “He won’t live
another hour.” The dying man begged for water, he looked down at the ribbon of
gut, squeezing between his fingers. His eyes darted back and forth, first at
Arvel and then to Dick.

“He’s been gut shot, don’t give him water,
it’ll only make his situation worse,” said the deputy, with authority.

Arvel pulled out his canteen and gave the man a
drink. He glared at the deputy.  Hedor drank, but just barely, the color fading
from his face. He cried out again.

“Get him on a horse.”

Arvel faced the deputy again: “He will not be
moved.”

“And I say he will,” the deputy put his hand on
the grip of his six shooter. He hoped for some live prisoners. At least he
would have one. He stared back at Arvel, who was no longer smiling. Arvel knew
the man’s game. He was driven by greed for recognition and any potential
bounty. Arvel had no great compassion for the miscreant, he knew he would soon
be dead, but there was no call to add to his suffering.

“I say…” Arvel was interrupted by a shot from
Dick’s Winchester. The bullet pierced the desperado’s heart. The deputy looked
at the two old-timers. He swore, and marched off.

“Well, there’s an end to it,” said the reporter
from under his derby.

The deputy should have been pleased. All the
bandits were dead. None of his posse suffered so much as a scratch. It was true
that they did not get Gold Hat but, with his reputation, it was unlikely that
he would have waited around for any posse to catch up to him. He was simply too
slippery. The deputy was angry, nonetheless. More likely, it was because he was
disappointed in himself. He’d lost his nerve. He knew the score, and he didn’t
like it much. The reporter did not help as he chattered incessantly about the
two real heroes of the day.

As the deputy sauntered back to his horse, the
little man encountered Sally, quietly resting among the horses. He pushed her
on the flank, and when she did not move, thumped her smartly across the neck
with his quirt. She hee-hawed and jumped aside.

“Whoa, there, cowboy,” Arvel stiffened at his
mule’s cry. “You don’t touch my mule, son.”

The deputy’s face reddened. He kicked the
ground and jerked the hat from his head. He swatted Sally with it, then pushed
her all the harder. “Then get this goddamned beast out of my way.”

“Partner,” Arvel softly said, “you molest that
animal one more time, and I swear I’ll put a ball in you.”

The young deputy scoffed and continued to
attack the mule. “I
hate
mules! They are worthless beasts!” raising his
quirt. Before he could hit Sally again, Arvel pulled out his Navy Colt and shot
the deputy in the toe.

Falling over, the deputy let loose a stream of
obscenities. He held his foot, rolling about on the ground. “You son-of-a-bitch,
you shot me!” He looked up at Arvel, fury and pain welling inside, and reached
for his revolver. Before he could clear leather, Dick buffaloed him senseless,
blood now pouring from the gash on his head as well as the hole in his boot.

Arvel attended to Sally, holding her face and
speaking softly to her. He kissed her on the muzzle. He did not look at the
deputy again.

By now the others had had enough of the young
upstart, and they looked at him with disdain. No one blamed Arvel. They would
not blame him if he’d shot the man dead. They admired his restraint. Arvel was
a legend for his love of his mules. He’d even been known to buy mules back from
people whom he thought did not deserve them, or who had misused them in any
way. He often balked at selling them to the Army, as there was no guarantee
they’d be treated properly.

“Well, I guess we can’t just leave him here,”
the reporter finally said. A couple of the men threw water on the young deputy,
who regained his senses. They bandaged his foot, now absent one toe, and put
him on his horse. One of the young men rolled up the toe in the deputy’s big
scarf, stuffed it in his bloody boot and tied the whole affair with a piggin
string onto their former leader’s saddle horn. Half of the detail escorted him
back to town. The other half stayed to arrange the corpses and collect their
traps. They would later inform the undertaker who would bring out a wagon and
retrieve the bodies.

Arvel and Dick stayed with this group, deciding
it best to avoid any further dealings with the new amputee. Arvel thought of
the Mexican girl as he looked amongst the dead men’s belongings. He felt a
little cocky. The evil Sombrero del Oro did not seem so difficult to beat. He
was ultimately disappointed when he realized the leader was not among the
corpses. The bandit leader had once again slipped away.

Dick talked the whole way back to town. It was
how he unwound from battle. He liked to talk to people he liked and this was
incongruous with his otherwise stoic demeanor. He laughed about Arvel’s shot.
He spoke of the good shooting, and teased Arvel about his Henry rifle, his old
fashioned gun. “Guess those old-timey shootin’ irons still work.”

They rode a little farther, Dick continued:
“Did you smell that white boy’s breath? My God.”

“I thought that was from his intestines, you
did notice they were mostly in his hands.”

“Nope, nope, that was definitely his breath. I
definitely discerned breath.”

Arvel was preparing to drink from his canteen
and remembered giving a last drink to the dying man. He upended the container,
draining it onto the ground, lifted the opening to his nose and sniffed
doubtfully. He recorked it and put it back on his saddle horn. “I’ll boil that
later.” He took it back off his saddle horn, “On second thought,” he flung it
into the desert. “I’ll just get another one.”

The posse met up at the saloon later that day.
They convinced the two old-timers to join them in celebration. Most of the town
folks and all of the inhabitants of the nearby ranches seemed to be jammed in
the saloon and overflowing onto the streets. Even Miss Edna, the church
organist, made an appearance, pounding out some happy tunes on the
establishment’s upright. They all were celebrating the end of the bandit gang.
It would not bring the Knudsens back, but at least some solace could be gained from
the fact that the bad men were all dead.

This was a quiet town which never attracted the
rough company such as what was seen in Tombstone and Bisbee. No gamblers found
it worth their time, no cowboys had business there. Most of the men were
married, or well enough settled that whore houses could not be sustained. But
today, the townsfolk were giving the saloon good commerce and the beer and
whiskey flowed freely.

The younger men talked and joked and
backslapped their comrades. It was only in such a life and death struggle that
one could form this kind of bond. Many of these men were tough, tough from
living on the land, living rough, but few had experienced the sting of battle,
as they were born after the war. Certainly they had been in the occasional bar
fight or disagreement at the branding fire, but none had yet experienced mortal
combat.

They all spoke excitedly of the two old-timers.
They had never seen shooting like this. They each took up Arvel’s old Henry
rifle, which most of them had never seen before. The men began pressing the
veterans about their time in the war. They wanted to know where they had fought
and how many men they had killed. Arvel just smiled and told them that it was
too long ago to remember and that Dick was the man with the most battle
experience.

Finally, when everyone was sufficiently drunk,
the reporter stood up and offered a toast: “To the great toe-shooter of the
East. Boot makers fear him, chiropodists revere him!”

The younger men looked on silently. Most did
not understand the joke and wondered if it was not an insult. Finally, Arvel
began to laugh, and everyone cheered. He patted the reporter on the back.
“Anyone who can weave a chiropodist into a toast has my undying respect, son.”

As the drinking continued, and the conversation
inevitably deteriorated, Arvel seized the opportunity to slip out. He headed
home. He rode alone and began to feel a little melancholy. He regretted
shooting the boy in the foot. He always regretted doing things out of anger. He
did not mind killing the bandits.

Soon, he would be back to the mule ranch. He
preferred the company of mules to people. He hoped that there would now be an
end to the little excitement, and that he could go back to his simple
uneventful existence.