Gunsights

1

Dragoon Mountains: April, 1888

The smell of the mares was on the wind, but the stud did not seem to like this graze as a place to breed. He lowered his head, giving the signal, and the mares and the stallions skitting around them followed after as the lead mare moved off.

Seven days Dana Moon had been tracking this herd, gradually, patiently moving the wild horses toward a barranca they'd fenced off with brush; a week of watching, getting to know them, Moon thinking on and off: If you were the stud, which one would you pick to mount first?

It would be hard. There were some good-looking mares in that bunch. But each time he wondered about it Moon found his gaze cutting out the palomino, the golden-haired girl, from the rest of the mares. She attracted the most overtures from the stallions who'd come sniffing her flanks. Moon would watch the palomino jump gracefully and give the boys a ladylike kick in the muzzle-saving it for the stud.

Out here a week tracking with his six Mimbre riders, former members of the Apache Police at San Carlos, now mustangers working for the Dana Moon Remount & Stage Team Supply Company-if anyone were to ask who he was and what he did.

Though it was not the answer he gave the fool who came riding upwind out of the sun haze. There he was, a speck of sound and smell and the herd was gone, like it would run forever, the Mimbres gathering and chasing off through the dust to keep them located. The fool, two black specks now, came clopping across the scrub waste, clop clop clop clop, leading a pack animal, not even knowing what a goddamn fool he was.

Yet he appeared to be a rider himself, sweat-dirty Stetson down on his eyes, someone who should know better.

A little bell rang inside Moon's head.

Pay attention.

“Are you Dana Moon?”

An official tone. A policeman verifying the name before saying you're under arrest. Or a messenger boy from somewhere.

“You just wiped out a week of tracking,” Moon said. “You know it?”

“I guess it ain't your day,” the man said and drew a pistol and immediately began firing at Moon, shooting him in the thigh, just above his right knee, shooting his horse through the neck and withers, the horse screaming and throwing its head as Moon drew his Colt's and shot the man twice through the chest.

He was a fool after all, not as real as he appeared. But who was he?

One of Moon's Mimbre riders, who was called Red, came back to find his boss sitting on the ground twisting his polka-dot scarf around his leg. The leg looked a mess, the entire thigh bleeding where the bullet had dug its way through Moon's flesh to come out just below his hip bone.

“I never even saw him before,” Moon said. “See if he's got a wallet or something.” He knew the man lying by his horse was dead; he didn't have to ask that.

There were seventeen dollars in a wallet and a folded soiled letter addressed to Asa Maddox, c/o Maricopa Cattle Company, Bisbee, Arizona Territory. The tablet-paper letter said:

Asa Maddox:

That was good news you sent that you have finally got him located. If you do not want to wait for us I cannot stop you, but then we will not wait for you either and will proceed with our plan to get the other one. I think you are wrong in doing this alone instead of with us, but as I have mentioned I cannot stop you nor do I blame you much for your eagerness.

Good luck.

(Signed)

J.A. McWilliams

Moon said, “Who is Asa Maddox? Who in the hell is J.A. McWilliams?”

Red, hunkered down next to Moon, looked at him but did not say anything.

“Well, shit,” Moon said. “I guess I'm going to Benson a week early.”

2

Florence: May, 1888

The cowboy standing at the end of the Grayback Hotel bar said, “Are you Captain Early?”

From his midpoint position, Bren Early's gaze moved from his glass of cold beer down in that direction.

“I am.”

“There is a man here looking for you.”

The man who stepped out from behind the rangy cowboy, a large-framed man himself, wore a dark business suit, a gold watch chain across the vest, a gray Stetson that looked like it had just come out of the box.

“Are you Mr. Johnson?” Bren Early asked. It was the name of the party he was supposed to meet here in Florence.

Instead of answering, the man walked over to a Douglas chair against the back wall where a maroon felt traveling bag sat waiting.

Bren Early liked businessmen hunters who were conscientious about the clause “Free in Advance” and handed it over before they shook hands and said how much they'd been looking forward to this expedition. Raising his cold beer, Bren Early looked up at the clock on the wall between the back-bar mirrors. It was 11:48 in the morning. He liked the idea of putting five hundred dollars in his pocket before noon. He liked the quiet of a morning barroom-the heat and heavy work left outside with Bo Catlett and the light-blue hunting wagon. He'd bring Bo out a glass of beer after.

The cowboy was still sideways to the bar, facing this way. Like making sure he wasn't going to leave. Or so that he'd see the pistol stuck in the cowboy's belt. Why was this cowboy staring at him?

The man in the business suit was bending over his open traveling bag, taking a lot of time. Why wasn't the money on his person?

Bren Early put down his glass of beer. He heard the man in the business suit say, as the man came around, finally, with the pistol:

“This is for Jack McWilliams, you Indin-loving son of a bitch-”

(Though, the bartender testified at the Pinal County Sheriff's Inquest, the gentleman never got to say the last word.)

Bren Early shot the man with a .44 Smith & Wesson, the slug exploding from the barrel, obliterating the word and taking the man cleanly through the brisket…shot the cowboy dead through the heart, heard him drop his weapon and fall heavily as he put the Smith on the man in the business suit again, not 100 percent sure about this one.

The man was slumped awkwardly in a pole-axed daze, half-lying-sitting on the maroon travel bag, bewildered, wondering how his plan had suddenly gone to hell, staring up at Bren Early with maybe ten minutes of life remaining in him.

“You rehearsed that, didn't you?” Bren Early said. “I'll bet it sounded good when you said it to a mirror.”

Blood seeped out between the man's fingers pressed to his rib cage, trying to hold himself together, breathing and hearing the wound bubble and breathe back at him, sucking air, the man then breathing quicker, harder, to draw air up into his mouth before the wound got it all.

“You should not have begun that speech,” Bren Early said. “But a lot of good it does advising you now, huh?…Has anybody an idea who this man is?”

J.A. McWilliams of Prescott, a supplier of drilling equipment and high explosives, according to identifying papers. The cowboy with him remained nameless-at least to Bren Early, who left Florence with Bo Catlett and their blue hunting wagon as soon as he was cleared of any willful intent to do harm.

McWilliams. It was a somewhat familiar name, but did not stir any clear recollections from the past.

3

Benson:May, 1888

For nearly a month Dana Moon lived in Room 107 of the Charles Crooker Hotel, waiting for his wound to heal. With the windows facing east it was a hot room mornings, but he liked it because it gave him a view of country and cottonwoods along the river. In the evening he listened to train whistles and the banging-clanging activity over in the switch yard.

He had planned to come to Benson a week later to visit the whorehouse and maybe call on Katy McKean and see if there was a future respectable possibility there.

Now Katy McKean was calling on him. The first time she came he wondered: Will she leave the hotel room door open?

No, she didn't. She sat in the big chair between the windows, and Moon, sitting upright in bed, had to squint to see her face with the sun glare on the windows. He couldn't ask her to pull the shades. After her second visit he got up and struggled one-legged with the horsehide chair, moving it all the way around the bed and after that, when she came, the good view was to the west.

Well, how have you been?…Fine…I hardly recognize Benson the way it's grown…Has it?…You live with your folks?…Yes, and three young brothers; a place down the river a few miles…Bren ever come by to see you?…Now and then.

It required three visits from her before he asked, “How come you aren't married with a place of your own?”

“Why aren't you?”

“It hasn't been something I've thought about,” Moon said. “Up till now.” (Why was he saying this? He had come to town to visit the whorehouse and look at possibilities only.)

“Well, I haven't met the man yet,” the McKean girl said. “They come out, my dad looks them over. The best he gives is a shrug. The drag riders he won't even speak to.”

“Your dad,” Moon said. “Whose choice is it, yours or his?”

“He knows a few things I haven't learned yet,” the McKean girl said. She wore boots under her cotton skirt, the toes hooked on the sideboard of Moon's bed, her knees raised and a little apart. He couldn't see anything, but he was aware of her limbs and imagined them being very white and smooth, white thighs-Jesus-and a patch of soft hair.

Moon sat up straight in bed, the comforter pulled up to his waist over his clean longjohns, his hair and mustache combed, bay rum rubbed into his face and wearing his polka-dot scarf loosely for her visit. He was seasoned and weathered for his thirty-four years, looking closer to forty. The McKean girl was about twenty-three, a good-looking woman who could have her pick but was in no hurry; knew her own mind, or her dad's. Bren Early was thirty one or thirty two, closer to her age, liked the ladies and they liked him. Why, Moon wondered, did he always think of Bren when the McKean girl was here? Hell, ask her.

“Are you interested in Bren?”

“Interested? You mean to marry?”

“Yes.”

“What's he got to offer? A wagon painted blue to look like a Conestoga, a string of horses…What else?”

“I wasn't thinking of what he owns.”

“He's full of himself.”

“He's got potential.”

“Who hasn't?”

“What's your dad think of him?”

“My dad says time's passed him by.”

“What's your dad do, whittle and say wise things?”

“He runs a cattle outfit and drives here twice a year,” the McKean girl said. “When I got home from Old Mexico he rode up to San Carlos to shoot that one-eyed Apache dead, but they'd already shipped him off to Indian Territory.”

“You have a deep fondness and respect for your old dad, haven't you?”

“He's the only one I got and he isn't that old.”

“Man that marries you has to measure up to him?”

“I'd be a fool to choose less, wouldn't I?”

“I got to meet this dad of yours,” Moon said.

“I'll fetch you in a buckboard,” the McKean girl said.

During his third week Moon went downriver to a cluster of adobes, the McKean homestead, and sat out under the ramada in the early evening with her dad. They discussed gunshot wounds, reservation Indians, cattle, graze and wild horses. After a little while McKean invited Moon to share some corn whiskey with little specks of charcoal in it.

“You want to marry my daughter?”

Maybe important decisions were made like any other. Without thinking too much. “Yes, I do.”

“I don't see what in the hell you got to give her.”

“Me,” Moon said.

“Well, you present more in person than any I've seen, including General Early; but what does she do, camp with your Mimbres and eat mule?”

“I'll think of a way,” Moon said.

The next day when the McKean girl came to visit, and before she could sit down, Moon pulled her to him, felt her hold back till he got her down on the bed, lying across it, felt a terrible pain in his wounded thigh from the exertion and sweat break out on his forehead.

She said, “How're you going to do it?”

He thought she meant perform the act of love. “Don't worry, it can be done.”

“You're gonna leave mustanging?”

“Oh,” Moon said.

“And settle someplace?”

Moon nodded solemnly and said, “I love you,” the first time in his life hearing the actual statement out loud.

“I hope so,” the McKean girl said. “We can kiss and you can touch me up here if you want, but that's all till I see what my future is.”

“It's a deal,” Moon said.

He never did make it to the whorehouse. In fact, he swore he would never visit one again as long as he lived.

4

Apache Pass Station: September, 1888

This trip Bren Early had taken a party from Chicago, three men and the wife of one of them, south of the Pass into the Chiricahua Mountains for mule deer and a look at some authentic Apache Indians. The eastern hunters remained in camp while Bren and Bo Catlett drove the blue wagon to Apache Pass to pick up whiskey and supplies shipped down in the stage from Willcox. Bren was happy to get away from his five-hundred-dollar party.

He was in the back of the wagon, yawning and stretching, waking up from a nap, as Bo Catlett pulled the team into the station yard, Bo yelling at the agent's three kids to get out of the way. There were riding horses in the corral and, on the bench in front of the adobe, three saddles where they usually kept the wash basins. An olla of water hung from the mesquite-pole awning. Going inside, Bo Catlett noticed the saddles.

Three men who looked to have been sleeping as well as traveling in their suits of clothes were playing cards at the near end of the long passenger table. Edgar Watson, the station agent, said, “Where's the Captain?”

Bo Catlett didn't answer him. One of the men at the table stood up and moved to the door to look out. Edgar Watson was at the window now. He said, “There he is.”

Looking past the man in the door, Bo Catlett could see Captain Early coming out of the wagon, climbing over the tailgate. The man in the doorway said to Edgar Watson, “Tell your kids to come inside.” The other two were also standing now, both holding rifles. A shotgun lay on the table.

Pretending not to notice anything, Bo Catlett said, “Mr. Watson, draw a glass of beer if you will, please.”

Edgar Watson, seeming bewildered, said a strange thing, considering what was going on in this close, low-ceilinged room. He said, “You know I can't serve you in here.”

Bo Catlett believed he was born in Arkansas or Missouri. He was liberated by Jayhawkers and, at age fifteen, joined the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteers at Camp Jim Lane in February, 1863; saw immediate combat against Rebel irregulars and Missouri bushwhackers and was wounded at Honey Springs in June of '63. He guarded Confederate prisoners at Rock Island; served with the Occupation at Galveston and saw picket duty on the Rio Grande before transferring to the Department of Arizona where he drew the 10th Cavalry, Fort Huachuca, as his last regimental home in a twenty-four-year Army career. Some white officer-before Bren Early's time-dubbed Benjamin Catlett the beau sabruer of the nigger outfit and that was how he'd gotten his nickname. Bo Catlett was mustered out not long after the Sonora Incident-which did not affect his record-and had been working for Captain Early Hunting Expeditions, Inc. almost a year now. He liked to hear Bren Early talk about the war because the Captain was like a history book, full of information about battles and who did what. It didn't matter the Captain was still a little seven-year-old boy when fifteen-year-old Bo Catlett was getting shot through the hip at Honey Springs, or that the Captain didn't get his commission till something like ten years after Appomattox Court House. The Captain knew his war. He told Bo Catlett that he had never objected to colored boys being in the Army or killing white men during the war. But he would admit with candor his disappointment at being assigned to the Colored 10th rather than the “Dandy 5th,” George Rosebud Crook's fighting outfit. No, the Captain had nothing against colored people.

There were sure some who did, though.

And there were some who had it in for the Captain, too.

Bren Early, standing by the tailgate of the wagon, wasn't wearing his revolvers. But as soon as he saw the three saddles on the wash bench and heard Edgar Watson call to his kids, Bren reached over the wagon gate, pulled his gunbelt toward him and was in that position, left arm inside, his fingers touching one of his revolvers, when the man's voice said, “We didn't expect you for a couple more days.”

Bren looked over his right shoulder at the three coming out from the adobe, two rifles, a shotgun in the middle, and said to himself, Shit. There wasn't any way to mistake their intention.

The man with the shotgun, wearing a hat, an old suit and no collar or tie, said, “I'm R.J. Baker.”

Bren Early waited. Yes? Why was that supposed to tell him anything? He said, “How do you do?” seeing Bo Catlett coming out of the adobe behind them: his dear friend and fellow cavalryman, the twenty-four-year seasoned campaigner he hoped to hell was at this moment armed to his teeth.

The man with the shotgun said, “It's time to even a score, you wavy-haired son of a bitch.”

Wavy-haired, Bren Early thought and said, “If you intend to try it, you better look around behind you.”

“God Almighty, you think I'm dumb!” the man named Baker said, as though it was the final insult. He jammed the shotgun to his shoulder; the barrels of the two rifles came up, metal flashing in the afternoon sunlight, and there was no way to stop them.

Edgar Watson, the station agent, had told his wife and children to stay in the kitchen. He heard the gunfire all at once, at least four or five shots exploding almost simultaneously. Edgar Watson rushed to the window by the bar and looked out to see the three cardplayers lying on the hardpack, Bren Early standing out by his wagon with a smoking revolver; then the colored man, Bo, who must have been just outside the house, walking out to look at the three on the ground.

When they came in, Edgar Watson drew a beer and placed it on the bar for Bren Early. He was surprised then when the colored man, Bo, raised an old Navy Colt's-exactly like the one kept under the bar-and laid it on the shiny oak surface. The colored man said, “Thank you for the use,” before Edgar Watson realized it was his own gun. Bren Early told him to draw a beer for his friend Bo and Edgar Watson did so. Upon examining the Colt's, he found two rounds had been fired from the gun. Still, when Edgar Watson told the story later-and as many times as he told it-it was Bren Early who had shot the three cardplayers when they tried to kill him.

5

McKean's Ranch on the San Pedro: October, 1888

Moon rode up in the cool of early evening leading the palomino on a hackamore. He dropped the rope and the good-looking young mare stood right where she was, not flicking a muscle.

“She reminded me of you,” Moon said to the McKean girl, who replied:

“I hope not her hind end.”

“Her hair and her eyes,” Moon said. “She answers to Goldie.”

The McKean girl's mother and dad and three brothers came out to look at the palomino, the horse shying a little as they put their hands on her. Mr. McKean said the horse was still pretty green, huh? Moon said no, it was the horse had not seen so many people before at one time and felt crowded. They kidded him that he was bringing horses now, courting like an Indian.

Moon told them at supper he had been offered a government job as agent at White Tanks, working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He would be paid $1,500 a year and given a house and land for farming.

All the McKeans looked at Katy who was across the table from him, the mother saying it sounded wonderful.

Moon did not feel natural sitting there waiting for approval. He said, “But I don't care for flat land, no matter if it has good water and will grow anything you plant. I'm not a grain farmer. I told them I want high graze and would pick my own homesite or else they could keep their wonderful offer.”

The McKeans all looked at Katy again.

“They're thinking about it,” Moon said. “Meanwhile I got horse contracts to deliver.”

“When'll you be back?” Mr. McKean asked.

“Not before Christmas.”

“You wait too long,” McKean said, “this girl might not be here.”

“It's up to me when I get back and up to her if she wants to wait.” Moon felt better as soon as he said it.

6

St. Helen: February, 1889

Bren Early said hadn't they met here one time before? Moon said it was a small world, wasn't it?

Moon here delivering a string of horses to the Hatch & Hodges relay station. Bren Early here to make a stage connection, out of the hunting expedition business and going to Tucson to sleep in a feather bed with a woman and make all the noise he wanted.

He said, “Do you know what it's like to make love to a woman dying for it and have to be quiet as a snake lest you wake up her husband?”

“No I don't,” Moon said, “but I'm willing to hear about it.”

There was snow up in the Rincons, a wind moaning outside, a dismal, depressing kind of day. But snug inside the relay station. They stood at the bar and had whiskey before Bren shed his buffalo overcoat and Moon peeled off his sheepskin and wornout chaps. Then sat at the plank table with a bottle of whiskey and mugs of coffee, smelling meat frying; next to them were giant shadows on the plaster wall, dark twin images in a glow of coal-oil light. Like two old pards drinking and catching up on each other's life, wondering how they could have spent a whole year and a half apart. Neither one of them mentioned the McKean girl.

The main topic: Was somebody shooting at you? Yeah-you too? And getting that business finally cleared up. Bren saying he had come out here to be an Indian Fighter and so far had killed nine white men, counting the first two from the bunch in Sonora (the two Bo Catlett had shot), and two he would tell Moon about presently. Moon, not digging up any bodies from the past, said, Well, you're ahead of me there.

But what about this loving a woman and not making any noise?

“Something happens to those women when they come out here,” Bren said. “Or it's the type of woman to begin with, like to put a Winchester to her shoulder and feel it kick.”

“Or the wavy-haired guide giving her his U.S. Cavalry look,” Moon said. “You wear your saber?”

Bren straightened a little as if to argue, then shrugged, admitting yes, there was a point in that he was a man of this western country; and the woman's husband, out here with his gold-plated Henry in a crocodile case, was still a real-estate man from Chicago or a home builder from Pittsburgh.

“Get to the good part,” Moon said.

Bren told him about the party he took up into the Chiricahuas: the man named Bert Grumbach, millionaire president of Prudential Realty in Chicago; his colored valet; a young assistant in Grumbach's company who wore a stiff collar and necktie, as the man did; and the man's wife Greta, yes indeed, who was even rounder and better-looking than that French actress Sarah Bernhardt.

As soon as he met them at Willcox with the wagon and saddle horses, Bren said he could see what kind of trip it was going to be: the man, Bert Grumbach, one of those know-it-all talkers, who'd been everywhere hunting and had a game room full of trophies to prove it, considered this trip not much more than going out back to shoot rabbits. The wife, Greta, was quiet, not at all critical like other wives. (“How many times you gonna tell that tiger story?” Or, “You think drinking all that whiskey proves you're a man?”) No, Bert Grumbach would be talking away and Bren would feel Greta's eyes on him. He'd glance over and sure enough, she'd be staring, giving him a calm, steady look with her eyes. Christ, Bren said, you knew exactly what she wanted.

She did not try to outdo her husband either, though she was a fair shot for a woman, dropping a mule-deer buck at two hundred yards with a clean hit through the shoulders.

Moon asked if they left deer laying all over the mountain and Bren said no, the guides took most of the meat to the fort Indians at Bowie.

It wasn't all hunting. Time was spent sitting around camp drinking, eating venison steaks, talking and drinking some more, Grumbach belittling the setup and the fare. Bren said he would perform a routine with his .44 Russians, blowing up a row of dead whiskey bottles, which the Eastern hunters usually ate up. Except Grumbach wasn't impressed. He had a matched pair of Merwin & Hulbert six-shooters, beauties he took out of a rosewood box, nickle-plated with carved ivory grips. He'd aim, left hand on his hip, and fire and hit bottles, cans, pine cones at twenty paces, chipmunks, ground squirrels, ospreys and horned owls. He was a regular killer, Bren said.

“And he caught you with his wife,” Moon said.

“Not outright,” Bren said. “I believe he only suspected, but it was enough.”

What happened, Greta began coming to Bren's tent late at night. The first time, he tried in a nice way to get her to leave; but as she took her robe off and stood bare-ass, she said unless he did likewise she would scream. There was no choice but to give in to her, Bren said. But it was ticklish business, her moaning and him saying shhh, be quiet, his nerves alive as another part of him did the job at hand. Five or six nights, that was the drill.

The morning of the final day of the hunt, Bert Grumbach walked up to Bren, slapped his face with a glove and said, “I assume you will choose pistols. May I suggest twenty paces?”

Moon had an idea what happened next, since Bren was sitting here telling it; but he did not interrupt or even pick up his whiskey glass as Bren continued.

Bren said to the man, Now wait a minute. You know what you're doing? The man said he demanded satisfaction, his honor being abused. Bren said, But is it worth it? You might die. Grumbach gave him a superior look and had his assistant draw up a paper stating this was a duel of honor and if one of the participants was killed or injured, the other would not be legally culpable, hereby and so on, attesting with their signatures they were entering into it willingly and pledging to exonerate the other of blame whatever the outcome.

Bren said they stood about sixty feet apart, each with a revolver held at his side. Bo Catlett would fire his own weapon, the assistant holding a rifle on Bo to see he fired up in the air, and that would be the signal.

“Yeah?” Moon said, hunching over the plank table.

“Aiming at a man and seeing him drawing a bead on you isn't the same as shooting chipmunks,” Bren said, “or even wilder animals.”

“No, it isn't,” Moon said. “He hurried, didn't he?”

“He dropped his hand from his off hip, stood straddle-legged and began firing as fast as he could. Having to protect myself, I shot him once, dead center.”

“What did Greta do?”

“Nothing. We rolled Grumbach up in a piece of canvas, had a coffin made in Willcox and shipped him home with his legal papers. Greta said thank you very much for a wonderful and exciting time.”

“Well,” Moon said, “you have come to be a shooter, haven't you?”

“Not by choice,” Bren said. “There was another fella at Bowie tried his luck when I sold my wagon and string. Announced he was an old compadre of one Clement Hurd. How come they all tracked after me and only one of them tried for you as a prize?”

“You advertise,” Moon said. “Captain Early, the great hunter and lover. When did you get promoted?”

“I thought it sounded like a proper rank to have,” Bren said. “Well, I've bid farewell to the world of commerce and won't be advertising any more. It's a good business if you have an agreeable nature and can stand grinning at people who don't know hotcakes from horseshit.”

“I'm leaving my business, too,” Moon said. “Gonna try working for the government one more time.”

Bren Early was off somewhere in his mind. He sighed, turning in his chair to sit back against his shadow on the plaster wall.

“Down in Sonora that time, we stood at the line, didn't we?”

“I guess it's something you make up your mind to,” Bren Early said, “if you don't care to kiss ass. But my, it can complicate your life.”