The Trail West (2 page)

 

Dooley Monahan dozed, half asleep beside his dying campfire, beneath the pewter-gray of a barely-dawn sky in the piney Arizona mountains. He’d been dreaming a warm dream twenty-some years old, dreaming of Kathy and soft quilts and that old feather bed, when he was roused by the crawling sense that somebody was staring at him.

He grabbed his Colt before his eyes were all the way open, sat bolt upright, and swung the muzzle straight into the face of the intruder.

He checked himself just in time. It was a dog. A dog was staring at him, its mouth open in a grin and its tongue lolling. A dog with blue eyes, which he had mistaken for wolf yellow.

The dog just sat there, looking at him. Panting softly, expelling faint clouds of vapor, it appeared to be smiling at him—maybe laughing at an old man for being so dad-blamed jumpy.

Monahan slowly lowered his pistol.

The dog barked softy, just once, pushing out only enough air with the utterance to flutter its lips.

“Funny,” Monahan muttered. “You’re a real card. Go home.” He put his gun away.

The dog continued to look at him.

“Well, now that you woke me up, I gotta piss,” he stated crankily, and then wondered why the hell he was talking to a dog when he didn’t much like talking to people.

He stood up slowly, checking the trees ringing the old beaver meadow in which he’d made camp, and found nothing out of the ordinary. At least, there was no sign of those hounds-on-a-scent, the Baylor boys, and that was a blessing.

The morning air in the mountains was still cold and crisp, which was hard on the bones of a man who had a lot more miles behind him than in front of him. Seemed like it took forever to get his liver-spotted old body awake anymore, since it didn’t wake all at one time. Aside from the general soreness he attributed to too many years of sleeping on hard ground, there were his old wounds.

His left shoulder woke first with a sharp, quick stab fading to a dull, lingering ache, where he’d taken two Mescalero arrows about fifteen or sixteen years back. A man would have thought there was a tiny little bull’s-eye painted on his shirt, those arrows were so dang close together.

At least, that was what the doc had said when he was digging them out.

The way Monahan figured it, that sawbones had dug out about half his shoulder joint while he was in there. Least, it had felt like that was what he was doing. The son of a gun had enjoyed it, too!

Monahan’s shoulder had never worked all that good again, but at least it was on his left side. He would have been out of work and down to sweeping saloons and emptying spittoons if it had been on his right.

His legs woke next. His right thigh complained with throbs in the places where he’d broken it, once by sailing ass-over-teakettle off a raw bronc, and once by falling down a ravine when he was out after strays.

Last to wake up was his head. Too many insults had left him with a permanent throb and ache. Sometimes it robbed him of his memory, other times, just part of it. But either way, it hurt worse in the mornings.

As he walked toward the trees, Monahan gave thought to his left hip. He’d never turned in the voucher from Marshal Tobin, although he still carried it in his hip pocket on the side that still ached from Jason Baylor’s bullet. He figured it’d be bad luck—in more ways than one—to mess with bounty money. He’d been right, too. He’d worked all over the west since then, and hadn’t heard a blessed word about the Baylor boys since the shooting.

Until six months past, leastwise. It had come to him that Dev and Alf Baylor were looking for him. Fortunately, he heard they were looking in Utah. But recently, he’d got word they were headed south into Arizona. He’d quit his job soon after and moved on, taking his cramps and his throbs and his soreness and his old hurts with him.

And so, on that crisp mountain morning while the dog watched, he took inventory of his aches and pains, and waited for them to stop their hollering.

At least half the time his left foot woke up numb, and he hadn’t a clue why, although stomping on it for two or three minutes seemed to bring it around. And his neck always had a crick in it, from the time he took a bad fall off a bronc up in Wyoming.

He managed to hobble off a few feet and relieve himself, buttoned up, and had another look around at the trees, just in case. Another look at the dog revealed it hadn’t moved more than an inch.

If that.

Monahan knew dogs like that one. He’d seen them, here and there, on cattle spreads. Well, on a few sheep operations, too, but sheep weren’t something he liked to think about, at least not before he’d had his coffee. Old Billy Toomey at the B-Bar-T had a pair, an odd-eyed red merle and a brown-eyed black and tan, and he used them to work cows up from the range.

“Stand up,” he said to the dog.

It yawned and lay down, stretching itself beside the fire.

“Well-trained, ain’t you?”

Sighing happily—or perhaps with exhaustion—the dog closed its eyes.

The dog was a male, and bobtailed. Probably born that way, if it was what he thought it was. Its coat was longish and rough and as wild-colored as a jar full of jawbreakers. Even in the thin, early light, he could tell that much. The color was called merle: a bluish gray broken with patches of black, like somebody had slopped watery bleach over a black dog. Additionally, it had white feet and a white chest. Bright coppery markings covered its lower legs and muzzle, and a thumbprint-size smudge of copper hung over each eye.

He’d heard dogs like this called Spanish Shepherds or Australian Shepherds, or California or Arizona Shepherds, or Whatever-State-or-Territory-They-Happened-to-Be-In Shepherds. The folks calling them by any one of those names got awful touchy if somebody happened to call them by the wrong place.

He played it safe, and stuck with calling them plain old cow dogs. Of course, the Indians didn’t call them that. They called them ghost dogs, the ones that had blue eyes, anyhow. Folks said as how Indians steered clear of those who had even one.

It struck him that this particular dog must belong to somebody. It looked like somebody had been feeding it regular, anyhow. He should have thought of it before.

“Where’s your people?” Monahan asked, stomping his left foot on the ground rhythmically. The feeling was starting to come back. “Ain’t you got no people?”

The dog opened his eyes and yawned, then went back to panting softly.

“Seems queer, you out here by your lonesome,” he muttered, and his eyes flicked once again to the trees. Nothing. He was getting as spooky as an old woman.

Slowly, he walked through the tall, dewy, meadow grass toward a pine at the edge of the clearing, pausing to pat the neck of his hobbled bay gelding, General Grant. “Good mornin’ to you, old son,” he said softly. The horse looked up from his grazing just long enough to snort softly.

At the pine, Monahan untied his rope from the trunk and lowered his chuck bag, which he’d stashed up the tree in case of bears. He made his way back to the fire—and the cow dog—and slowly eased himself down again in his place across from the fire.

He added a few twigs to the embers and gave them a stir. “Ain’t heard no folks. You run off from somebody?”

The dog sat up again and just looked at him.

In no time, Monahan had bacon sizzling in one skillet and biscuits baking in another.

The dog drooled steadily, watching his every move, but it didn’t offer to snatch any from the pan.

“You got decent table manners, anyhow,” Monahan muttered, and started the coffee.

When the biscuits were done, he broke one in two, the long way, and as the steam and that good smell rose on the cool morning air, he poked a piece of bacon inside it and made ready to pop it in his mouth.

Softy, the dog whined.

“Wait your turn.” Monahan inched the biscuit closer to his mouth.

The dog’s gaze followed that biscuit like a man’s eyes, when he’s fresh off a long trail, will watch a pretty woman.

“Oh, hell,” Monahan grumbled, and tossed the little sandwich arcing over the fire. The dog caught it in his mouth, chewed twice, then swallowed. He licked his chops and stared again at Monahan.

“Don’t try to fool me,” Monahan said sternly. “I know how you dogs are. Even if you’d just ate a whole steer, you’d still be beggin’ for cake.”

The dog stared at him expectantly across the fire, a string of the ever-present drool slowly dripping from one corner of its mouth.

Monahan fixed a second biscuit, then averted his eyes and ate it himself . . . and damned if he didn’t feel guilty!

“I just got enough for two more, dog.” He looked at its face more closely. The light had come up enough that he could see faint grizzle on the dog’s muzzle. It was old, or at least middle-aged . . . kind of like him. He figured it had to belong to somebody.

“They’re little!” he said in his defense for wanting to eat both sandwiches when the dog lifted a paw and whined. “What do you weigh, anyhow? Can’t be more ’n fifty, sixty pound. I’m three times bigger ’n you!”

He fixed a third biscuit with bacon and ate it, at which point the dog sat straight up on his haunches and waved his front paws in the air. Monahan heaved a sigh, fixed the last one, and tossed it to the dog, who caught it in midair.

“Happy now?”

Two chews and a gulp and the biscuit was gone. Its front feet on the ground again, the dog looked at him expectantly.

“Ain’t no more.” Monahan poured himself a cup of coffee.

The dog whined softly in anticipation and shifted its weight from one front foot to the other.

“That’s all there is,” Monahan said more firmly.

The dog whined again, a high-pitched sound winding down three or four octaves to a low, rumbling groan.

Monahan shook his head. “I ain’t never heard anything so pitiful! Dang it, anyhow! If I feed you full, will you go on home and let an old man be?”

Ever since his old yellow dog Two-Bits died, Monahan hadn’t had the urge to own another. Two-Bits had got something terrible wrong with his hindquarters. First it was just a little limping now and then, but over time the poor critter howled every time he so much as stood up or took a step.

One morning, Two-Bits couldn’t get up at all, anymore. Monahan had to shoot him to put the poor thing out of his misery. A whole decade later, he still felt awful bad about it. He couldn’t remember what he’d been calling himself then, or what state or territory they’d been in, but he still dreamed about it sometimes. Those brown eyes had stared up at him right until the end, full of trust and terrible pain. He didn’t want to go through that again. “Will you leave?” he asked the blue dog again.

The dog huffed quietly and waited.

“Hell’s bells!” Monahan muttered, and dug into his grub sack for more biscuit-makings and bacon.

After he’d fried up and fed the dog nearly a pound of bacon and a full pan of biscuits—good ones, whose dough had been rising all night beside the fire—and the dog showed no signs of decreasing hunger, Monahan finally threw up his hands. “You’re a bottomless pit, that’s what you are, dog. I believe you’d like me to fry up General Grant and serve him on cornbread! Well, I ain’t gonna waste no more vittles on you.”

He drank his final cup of coffee and dumped the last of the pot on the fire, then walked down to the stream cutting through the center of the meadow. He rubbed the skillets clean with cold, clear water and a handful of weeds, packed up his cooking things, and moved on to General Grant, who’d been grazing quietly. In the clear light of full morning, he brushed down, then tacked up the horse, and made ready to leave.

The dog had followed him from the ashy remains of the dead fire to the creek and back. He stood a short distance away, watching as Monahan worked.

“You can just go on home, now,” Monahan said as he gave General Grant’s cinch strap a final tug and let down the stirrup. The dog’s rump wiggled. “This here kitchen’s closed. Me and General Grant, we got business down Phoenix way.”

Actually, the “business” was north of Phoenix at Tom Sykes’s ranch, where he hoped to find work through the summer. Monahan had been employed for the past year up near Flagstaff at the Rocking J, but when old man Jensen had up and died, his good-for-nothing son sold off all the cattle directly after spring roundup, put the land up for sale, and headed for San Francisco right about the same time Monahan had heard about the Baylor brothers heading south.

However, none of that was worth saying to the bobtailed, biscuit- and bacon-eating cow dog.

“I’m askin’ you again, dog. You leavin’?”

The dog studied him, cocking its head. Its blue eyes were more startling now that the sky was fully light.

Monahan stepped up on General Grant. “Suit yourself, then.” He gave the horse a nudge with his knees, and General Grant moved out at a slow jog, across the meadow and into the trees.

The dog followed.

Two hours later, Monahan was nearly out of the thinning pines when he came to an old stagecoach road.

The dog had traveled quietly twenty to thirty yards off Monahan’s left flank, nosing at deer droppings or pausing for a moment to mark a tree. But he raised a commotion at the precise moment Monahan reined General Grant onto the rutted road and started south.

Swiftly, Monahan reined General Grant 180 degrees, certain the Baylor boys were closing in fast, but saw exactly nothing. He checked the tree line. Nothing but trunks. He took a deep breath and waited for his heart to settle back in his chest, then leaned the back of his wrist on the saddle horn.

He looked down at the dog. “What? Iffen you live that a way, go on home and quit talking’ about it. Quit givin’ people apoplexies.” Then he added coaxingly, “Reckon you’ll get a second breakfast.”

The dog ran about twenty feet to the west, then turned and faced Monahan again. He barked out several yips, sounding for all the world like questions, or maybe pleas.

“Get goin’,” Monahan yelled. “Crazy fool of a dog, scaring me half to death like that! Go back to your folks!” He checked the road one more time, then clucked to General Grant and started south at a soft trot.

Immediately, the dog charged to a point square in front of Monahan and stopped right in his path.

Monahan reined General Grant to the side, and the dog moved, too. Monahan moved the horse another step to the right and the dog did the same. Every time the horse moved, the dog followed suit. Finally running out of moving room, Monahan reined General Grant to a stop, lest he run smack over the furry no-tail cur.

“You quit that!” Monahan shouted, shaking a fist. “Consarned beast! Just ’cause I fed you some breakfast don’t give you no call to go bossin’ my General Grant around. Me, neither!”

The dog stood still, staring at him intently.

In frustration, Monahan reined his horse to the left with the intention of simply going around the fool critter. No sense in getting himself worked up about a dang dog, and a crazy one at that.

General Grant had taken no more than two steps when the dog leaped to the side and faced him off again.

Belatedly, Monahan recognized the dog’s posture—head lowered, eyes riveted to the horse, legs tensely splayed in preparation to jump in any direction at a split-second’s notice. That crazy dog was trying to work General Grant like a balky steer that wouldn’t go through the chute!

General Grant stopped on his own quickly and flung his head in the air with a dull clank of bit against teeth. Monahan had to grab for the saddle horn as the horse’s head nearly smacked him in the face.

Whether it made any sense to get worked up over the situation or not, Monahan reckoned he was. His jaw set, he reined General Grant over to the right, sternly pointing his finger at the dog. “You stay there, gol-dang it!” he shouted. “I’ve had about enough o’ your foolishness. You just stay right the hell over there!”

Again, the dog moved to block his path, and General Grant came to another sudden halt. Monahan sat there and steamed for a minute, then scratched the back of his neck. Angrily, he said, “What am I gonna have to do, dog? Shoot you?”

The dog just stood there, head low, his tongue lolling, his eyes intent.

 

 

Staring at the cur, it dawned on Monahan that the dog hadn’t nipped at General Grant as if it were pushing livestock. It was sure as shooting pushing him, but it hadn’t so much as growled or lifted a lip. It wanted to go west and take him along with it—dead set on it, as a matter of fact—and was trying to convince him as friendly as it knew how. But west wasn’t where Monahan was going.

In a calmer but still firm voice, he said, “Listen here, blue dog. You’re gonna make me late for my business appointment.” There didn’t seem to be any sin in making it sound fancier than it was. After all, only the dog and the horse were there to hear him. “You just go on back to your folks and leave me and General Grant alone. Be a good ol’ blue dog. Go on home, now.” Monahan swung his arm toward the west. “Git!”

At last the dog moved grudgingly to the side and out of his path.

With some degree of self-satisfaction, Monahan said, “There. That’s a good fella. That’s the idea, boy. Your people are probably missin’ you somethin’ fierce by now.” He gave General Grant a nudge, and before they had taken three steps down the road, the dog all of a sudden jumped at the horse and snagged Monahan’s right rein in his teeth, ripping it right out of his hand!

Monahan was so shocked he couldn’t think of a dad-blasted thing to yell—nothing that was evil enough—until the dog had backed nearly ten feet toward the west, leading the confused General Grant off the road by a taut rein.

“Hold up, you bilious bag o’ bones ’n’ fangs!” Monahan shouted at last, leaping down from the saddle like he had a bawling calf on the end of his rope. It was still pretty fast, despite his years.

“Of all the sneakin’, scrofulous, mule-headed tricks!” he ranted as he marched out in front of General Grant. He snatched his rein back from the dog, shouting, “Leave go!”

If he’d been thinking, he would have been ready for a fight, but the dog didn’t offer one. It released the rein, turned, and ran about twenty feet to the west before stopping and barking twice. Trotting back, the dog came right up to Monahan—who hadn’t so much as offered to pet it during their acquaintance, let alone get within arms’ reach—and snagged his pants leg, tugging for all it was worth.

“Hey!” Monahan shouted, hopping on one leg and leaning backward. “Stop that!”

But the dog kept on yanking, and nearly pulled Monahan’s leg right out from under him before Monahan threw his hands into the air and cried, “All right, for cripe’s sake! I ain’t gonna shoot you, and you won’t give me no peace till I go with you, so I’m goin’! You hear me? I said I’m goin’, so let go!”

The dog let go with no warning, which caused Monahan to sit down hard and fast. He watched as it trotted off about ten feet, then paused and looked over its shoulder, waiting.

“It just better not be far, that’s all I gotta say,” Monahan muttered as he fingered his trouser knee. “I’m gonna dun your folks for a new pair of britches, that’s what I’m gonna do.”

The dog had bitten right through the cloth, leaving four small puncture marks. Monahan poked his pinkie finger through one and out another. “Dang it, anyhow! These is practically new! I only had ’em a year, you no-account excuse for a hound.”

The dog barked at him again.

“All right, all right, don’t get yourself in a tizzy!” Monahan climbed creakily to his feet, which was easier said than done. Any more, his knees felt like they were filled up with gravel.

He brushed himself off, gave his sitting place a hard rub, and stepped back up on General Grant. The moment he started the horse moving off the road and toward the west, the dog took off at a dead run. It stopped about fifty yards out and turned, staring back through the sparse trees to make certain Monahan was following, then turned and ran again.

“I ain’t never seen a hound so gol-danged single-minded, General,” Monahan muttered, and pushed the gelding into an easy lope. “Ain’t seen many people that mule-headed, ’less it’s them Baylor brothers. ’Course, I ain’t exactly seen ’em yet, either.”

As he left the trees behind and headed out through the low scrub, he kept thinking he was going to ask—demand—those folks for new britches money, and then he was going to have them tether that dad-blamed, wild-colored, blue-eyed dog to a tree until he was in the next county.

But he also thought something must be awful wrong, somewhere, for the dog to act the way he was acting.

And that surely did nag at Monahan.

 

 

By the time he had covered six or eight miles and the dog showed no signs of stopping, Monahan had invented all sorts of dire reasons for the dog’s behavior. Some miner owned the dog, he reasoned, and was trapped in a cave-in. Or somebody was in a gully with his leg broke. Mayhap it was some rancher’s wife, stuck in a creek tryin’ to save a spring calf from drowning!

Dogs could be awful loyal. He’d heard of heroic dogs pulling children from rushing flood waters, heard stories of dogs saving folks from house fires and such. Of course, old Two-Bits had been with him the spring he broke his leg for the second time, and he’d tried and tried to send that dog back to the ranch to get somebody. But the old fool wouldn’t leave him, and finally they’d just huddled together for warmth till another hand came looking for them.

It seemed like the old cow dog was more the go-for-help type, although why the dog had settled on Monahan as its provider was a mystery.

“You’da thought he’d find somebody younger,” Monahan muttered. “I can still pull a calf out of an arroyo. Might take me longer than some, but I can still do it. But I sure ain’t up to diggin’ some feller out of a mine all by my lonesome.”

Although the dog had slowed its pace somewhat, going quickly from a dead run to an extended trot eating up the ground like nobody’s business, it just kept on steadily heading someplace specific. It was single-minded, he’d give it that. Keeping General Grant to a moderate trot about twenty or thirty feet back, Monahan shouted, “This had best be important, you mangy old blue dog! I ain’t got no time for sightseein’! I’m a busy man, and I ain’t gettin’ no younger!”

The blue dog twisted an ear back toward him, so Monahan knew it had heard. But it didn’t seem impressed by a man’s pressing appointments, and it didn’t slow down.

Another two miles or so sped by under paw and hoof and Monahan thought he’d best bring General Grant down to a walk for a while, then break out the water. It wasn’t all that hot, yet. It was too early in the season for the man-cooking heat that came to the flats around late May and stayed till September. Monahan, however, was of the opinion it was best for man and beast alike to drink before they felt the thirst come over them.

He’d give that dog a drink, too, if he could only get it to stop for a minute. The blasted thing must have legs made out of cast iron was all he could figure.

They’d traveled over gently rolling hills all morning, going slowly but steadily down in altitude, and had come into a hilly landscape devoid of trees, but thick with spring-green grasses and the occasional thicket of plump prickly pear. He was just about to rein in the General for a well-deserved break when the dog barked excitedly, picked up speed again, and disappeared over the crest of a hill.

“Aw, cripes,” Monahan muttered under his breath. “Well, we’ve come this far, General. I reckon we’d best see what’s got his knickers in such an all-fired twist.” He nudged the horse into a lope.

Less than ten seconds later, he found out.

Breasting the hill, Monahan heard the dog barking, wild and rapid. It was far ahead and down the other slope, racing along the wide flatland below and heading for a distant cluster of buildings at a flat-out run.

Not much was left of the buildings. As General Grant skidded down the hill and hurried closer, Monahan could see wisps of smoke coming from what was left of the barn and a shed. They had fallen in on themselves in a black, smoky rubble.

The house was only partially burnt, with a blackened hole in the roof. A dead longhorn shot full of arrows lay in the yard and a spring calf with a spear in its side had fallen just in front of the barn. It was already beginning to bloat.

“Aw, damn,” Monahan whispered as he slouched in the saddle and slowed the General to a walk. There was no need to hurry, no matter what the dog thought. Monahan knew he wasn’t going to find anybody alive.

The dog had disappeared by the time Monahan rode into the yard and dismounted. “Hello!” he shouted, just in case. “Anybody here?”

No one answered but the breeze.

He ground tied General Grant and reluctantly walked toward the corral. His boots scuffed the dust, raising little clouds. “Hello!” he called again. “Dog? Where’d you get to?”

No answer.

He found another cow—a milker—partially butchered on the other side of the barn, and a more grisly discovery out back.

It was a man, or what was left of one. The rancher’s face had been mutilated beyond recognition, and his private parts and fingers had been cut off. Monahan swallowed hard and turned his head away, a surge of ancient hatred mixed with sorrow flooding his veins.

The poor sod. Monahan hoped he’d been dead when those heathen bastards started whittling on him.

He left the body where it was and started back toward the house, calling, “Dog? Blue dog!”

A soft whine came to his ears when he was halfway across the yard, and he followed the sound into the house. It had been ransacked. Broken crockery crunched beneath his boots along with shards of dishes, bowls, and the pretty little things women liked to set around just for show.

Blue gingham curtains had been ripped from their moorings and clothes had been scattered from their dresser drawers. Furniture was overturned and smashed. A pot of stew had burned to a solid cinder in the fireplace. Fueled by a straw mattress, fire had swept up one corner of the place and burned a hole in the roof, but it had gone no farther. Unlike the barn or the shed, the house was made of adobe and pretty near impossible to burn.

In the opposite corner, the dog pawed gently at something behind an overturned easy chair, still whining softly. Monahan clenched and unclenched his fists for a moment. He had a good idea what the dog was fussing at, but he hated like hell to look. He’d lived west of the Mississippi for most of his grown life, almost forty-four years and he’d seen more than enough of what was left after Indians came marauding.

Eventually, he took a deep breath and made his way through the rubble.

A woman was hidden behind the chair. She was on the floor with her back pressed hard against the wall. There was a pistol in her hand and an arrow deep in her breast. She hadn’t been messed with, and that was a blessing, but her lifeless arm was curled about a little boy, maybe seven, maybe eight.