Gunsights

1

A news reporter told how he had knocked on the door one evening and when Mrs. Pierson opened it he said, “Excuse me, is this a whorehouse?” The woman said, “No, it isn't,” not fazed a bit, and closed the door.

Someone else said, “It may not be a house for whores, but she is little better than one.”

“Or better than most,” another news reporter at the Gold Dollar said, “or he wouldn't have set her up as he did. She is a doggone good-looking woman.”

None of the reporters had known about Mrs. Pierson until Maurice Dumas turned the first stone and then the rest of them began to dig. Maurice Dumas himself, once he saw where the story was leading, backed off so as not to pry.

When the door of the house on Mill Street opened this time, the news reporter took off his hat and said, “Good afternoon, I'm William S. Wells, a journalist with the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. I'd like to ask you a few questions.”

The good-looking dark-haired woman in the black dress stepped back to close the door. William S. Wells put his hand out, his foot already in place.

“Is it true Bren Early killed your son?”

Mrs. Pierson did not fight the door, though her hand remained on the knob. She looked at the journalist with little or no expression and said, “My son was killed while robbing the Benson stage by a passenger named Mr. DeLisle.”

“If Bren Early did not kill your son,” the journalist, Wells, said, “why did he buy this house for you?”

“He didn't buy this house for me.”

“I understand he assumed the mortgage.”

“Perhaps as an investment.”

The journalist said, “Let's see now…the poor widow is running a boardinghouse, barely making ends meet following the death of her husband in a mill accident. Mr. Early comes along, pays off the note, gives you the deed to the house and you get rid of the boarders so you can live here alone…some of the time alone, huh?” The journalist produced a little smile. “And you want me to believe he bought it as an in vestment?”

Mrs. Pierson said, “Do you think I care what you believe?”

“Bren Early was on the stage your boy tried to hold up. The same Bren Early who owns this house.”

“I rent from him,” Mrs. Pierson said.

“Yet you're a widow with no means of support.”

“I have money my husband left.”

“Uh-huh. Well, you must keep it under your mattress since you don't have a bank account either.”

The journalist put on his grin as he stared at Mrs. Pierson-yes, a very handsome lady with her dark hair parted in the middle and drawn back in a bun-knowing he had her in a corner; then stopped grinning as the door opened wider and he was looking at Brendan Early, the man moving toward him into the doorway. The journalist said, “Oh-” not knowing Bren was here. He backed away, went down the three front steps to the walk and said then, “I see an old friend of yours is in town.”

Bren said nothing as he slammed the door closed.

“Why were you telling him all that?”

“What did I tell him? He seemed to know everything.”

“You sounded like you were going to stand there and answer anything he asked.”

The woman shrugged. “What difference does it make?” and watched Bren as he moved from the door to a front window in the parlor. “You said yourself, let them think what they want.”

Holding the lace curtains apart, looking out at the street of frame houses, he said, “We can't stop them from thinking, but we don't have to answer their questions.”

“They don't have to ask much,” she said. “It's your house-the arrangement is fairly obvious. But as long as it isn't spoken of out loud then it isn't improper. Is that it?”

Bren wore a white shirt, a dark tie and vest; his suitcoat hung draped over the back of a chair where his holstered revolvers rested on the seat cushion. He had been preparing to go out this afternoon after spending last night and this morning with her: preparing, grooming himself, looking at himself in the mirror solemnly as if performing a ritual.

As he turned from the window now to look at her she waited, not knowing what he was going to say.

Then surprised her when he said, “Do I sound stuffy?”

She relaxed. “You sound grim, so serious.”

“I'm not though. Not with you.”

“No, the hard image you present to everyone else.”

He came over to the chair where his coat was draped. “Maybe what I should do, put a notice in the paper. ‘To Whom It May Concern…I'm the one wants to get married, she's the one wants to keep things as they are.’ See what they ask you then.”

“In other words,” Janet Pierson said, “let them think what they want, as long as there's no doubt about your honor.”

“I didn't mean it that way at all.”

“But it's the way it is,” the good-looking dark-haired woman said. “If you're going to spend your life standing on principle, you want to be sure everyone understands what the principle is.”

He picked up his coat and pushed an arm into the sleeve. “You keep saying I worry about what people think of me, when I don't. All I said was, why tell that fella our personal business?”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “You're right.”

He pulled the coat down to fit smoothly as he turned to her. “I don't want you to say I'm right, I want to know what you're talking about.”

“You get mad if I tell you what I feel.”

He said, “Oh,” and turned to the chair again to pick up his gunbelt and holsters.

“Are you coming back for supper?”

“I was planning on it. If we can have an evening without arguing.”

“Are you pouting now?”

She shouldn't have said it-seeing his jaw tighten and hearing him say maybe he'd see her later, or maybe not-but sometimes she got tired of handling him so carefully, keeping him unruffled. Out in the street where he was going now, closing the door behind him, he was the legendary Bren Early who had shot and killed at least ten men who'd tested his nerve; a man whose posed photographs were displayed in the window of C.S. Fly's gallery on LaSalle Street and who was being written about by journalists from at least a dozen different newspapers. Bren Early: silent, deadly, absolutely true to his word.

But she could not help but think of a little boy playing guns.

He was a little boy sometimes when they were alone, unsure of himself.

He had come to her two and a half years ago, told her who he was and how he had met her son. He returned several times to visit, to sit in this parlor with her over coffee, and finally one day handed her the deed to the house-mortgage paid in full-asking nothing in return. Why?

He had not killed her son. A false rumor. He had, in fact, tried to prevent her son's death. But had failed and perhaps it was that simple: he felt responsible, owed her something because of his failure. He had said, “Don't ask questions. I like you, I want to do something for you.” All right, and she liked him and it was easy enough to take the sign down and change the boardinghouse back to a residence. It seemed to happen naturally as they saw more of each other. He wanted a woman in town and she responded. Why not? She liked him enough.

Janet Pierson, at forty, was at least five years older than Bren. She was attractive, had maintained her slim figure, they enjoyed one another; so age was not a consideration. Until he said he wanted to marry her.

She asked why and felt early suspicions aroused. He said he wanted to marry her, that was why in itself; he loved her. Yes, he had said he loved her. And he had also said, many times, “You think too much,” when she told him he really didn't want to marry her but felt an obligation or was afraid of what people thought. He had said over and over that people had nothing to do with it, goddamn it, people could think whatever they wanted; what he wanted was to be married to her. Then she had said the words that made him stare at her and then frown, perplexed, and finally get angry, the words he would never understand and she couldn't seem to explain.

She had said, “I think what you want to do is take the place of my son. You want to make up his loss.”

And he had said, “You believe I think of you as my mother?”

Yes, but she would not admit that to him: the little boy who came in the house when he was finished playing his role on the street. She didn't understand it herself, she only felt it. So she referred to him being like a little boy without referring to herself as a mother or using the word.

There was risk involved, to tell the man who had been a cavalry officer and had stood his ground and shot ten men, that he was still, deep down, a little boy and wanted his own way. He would pound his fist down or storm out (See? she would say to herself), then calm down or come back in a little while and say, “How do you get ideas like that?”

And she would say, “I just know.”

“Because you had a son? Listen, maybe what you're doing, you're still playing mama, Jesus Christ, and you're using me. I'm not doing it, you are.”

Blaming her. Then saying he loved her and wanted to marry her and be with her always. Yet they very seldom went out of the house as a couple. Sitting together in a restaurant he was obviously self-conscious; as though being seen with her revealed a vulnerable, softer side of him. The only thing she was certain of: Bren Early didn't know what he wanted.

2

Maurice Dumas stood in the doorway of the Chinaman's place on Second Street. He had been waiting an hour and a half, watching toward Mill Street and, every once in a while, looking in at the empty restaurant wondering how the Chinaman stayed in business…then wondering if Mr. Early had forgot or had changed his mind. Twice he'd run back to the corner of Second and LaSalle and looked across the street toward the Congress Hotel. The news reporters were still waiting on the porch.

When finally he saw Early coming this way from Mill Street, Maurice Dumas felt almost overwhelming relief. In the time it took Early to reach him-Early looking neat and fresh though it was quite warm this afternoon in May-Maurice Dumas had time to compose himself.

He nodded and said, “Mr. Early.”

“He arrive?”

“Yes sir, on the noon shuttle from Benson.”

“Alone?”

“I believe there was a Mexican gentleman with him.”

It was something to stand close to this man and watch him in unguarded moments, watch him think and make decisions that would become news stories-like watching history being made.

“They went up to the mine office first and then to the hotel,” Maurice said. “I guess where he's staying. Everybody thinks you're there, too, I guess. Or will come there. So they expect the hotel is where it'll happen-if it's gonna.”

Bren Early thought a little more before saying, “Go see him. Tell him you spoke to me.” He paused. “Tell him I'll be in this quiet place out of the sun if he wants to have a word with me.”

It was the Mexican, Ruben Vega, who came to the Chinaman's place. He greeted Early, nodding and smiling as he joined him at a back table, away from the sun glare on the windows. They could have been two old friends meeting here in the empty restaurant, though Bren Early said nothing at first because he was surprised. He felt it strange that he was glad to see this man who was smiling warmly and telling him he had not changed one bit since that time at the wall in Sonora. It was strange, too, Bren felt, that he recognized the man immediately and could tell that the man had changed; he was older and looked older, with a beard now that was streaked with gray.

“Man,” Ruben Vega said, “the most intelligent thing I ever did in my life, I didn't walk up to the wall with them…You not drinking nothing?”

“Is he coming?” asked Bren.

“No, he's not coming. He sent me to tell you he isn't angry, it was too long ago.” The Mexican looked around, saying then, “Don't they have nothing to drink in this place?”

They sent Maurice Dumas out to get a bottle of mescal, which the Mexican said he was thirsty for. Bren had beer, served by the Chinaman, and drank several glasses of it while they talked, allowing Maurice to sit with them but not paying any attention to him until he tried the mescal and made a terrible face and the Mexican said to Bren, “Your friend don't know what's good.”

“If you like a drink that tastes like poison candy,” Bren said, though he tried a short glass of it to see if it was still as bad as he remembered it was the first time he drank it in the sutler's store at Huachuca. “That could kill you,” he said.

“No, but walking up to the wall where you and the other one stood, that would have,” Ruben Vega said.

“You might have made the difference,” Bren said.

“Maybe I would have shot one of you, I don't know. But something told me it would be my last day on earth.”

“How did you keep him alive?”

The Mexican shrugged. “Tied him to a horse. He kept himself alive to Morelos. Then in the infirmary they cleaned him, sewed him together. He has a hole here,” Ruben Vega said, touching his cheek, “some teeth missing”-he grinned-“part of his ear. But he's no more ugly than he was before. See, the ugliness is inside him. I say to him, ‘Man, what is it like to be you? To live inside your body?’ He don't know what I'm talking about. I say to him, ‘Why don't you be tranquil and enjoy life more instead of rubbing against it?’ He still don't know what I'm talking about, so I leave him alone…Well, let me think. Why didn't he die? I don't know. From Morelos I took him to my old home at Bavispe, then down to Hermosillo…Guaymas, we looked at the sea and ate fish…a long way around to come back here, but only in the beginning he was anxious to go back and saying what he's going to do to you when he finds you.”

“Others tried,” Bren said.

“Yes, we hear that. Then time pass, he stop talking about it. We do some work in New Mexico for a mine company, bring them beef. Then do other work for them, make more money than before.” The Mexican shrugged again. “He's not so ugly inside now.”

“He must've paid you pretty well,” Bren said. “You stay with him.”

“I'll tell you the truth, I almost left him by the wall in Sonora, but I work for his family, his father before him. Yes, Sundeen always pay me pretty well as segundo. If I'm going to be in that business, stealing cows, running them across the border, I'm not very particular who I work with, uh? But he isn't so bad now. He doesn't talk so much as he use to.”

Bren said, “How's he look at this job he's got?”

“Well, we just come here. He has some men coming the company hired. I guess we go up and drive those people off. What else?” He raised his mescal glass, then paused. “But we hear your friend is up there too, the other one from the wall. How is it you're here and he's up there, your friend?”

“It's the way it is, that's all,” Bren said. “This land situation, who owns what, is none of my business.”

“You don't care then,” Ruben Vega said, “we go up there and run him off.”

Maurice Dumas' gaze moved from the Mexican to Bren Early and waited for the answer.

“You say run him off and make it sound easy,” Bren said. “It isn't a question of whether I care or not, have an interest, it's whether you can do it and come back in one piece. I'm like Maurice here and all the rest. Just a spectator.”

3

It was after five o'clock when Ruben Vega returned to the Congress Hotel. The men who had been pointed out to him as journalists and not a part of a business convention were still on the front porch and in the lobby. They stopped talking when he came in, but no one called to him or said anything.

He mentioned it to Sundeen who stood at the full-length mirror in his room, bare to the waist, turning his head slowly, studying himself as he trimmed his beard.

“They know I come with you, but they don't ask me anything. You know why?”

“Why?” Sundeen said to himself in the mirror.

“Because they think I shine your shoes, run errands for you.”

“You saw him?”

“Yes, I talk to him, tell him you're not mad no more.”

“Wavy-haired son of a bitch. He look down his nose at you?”

“A little, holding back, not saying much. But he's all right. Maybe the same as you are.”

Sundeen trimmed carefully with the scissors, using a comb to cover the deep scar in his left cheek where hair did not grow and was like an indentation made with a finger that remained when the finger was withdrawn, the skin around the hole tight and shiny.

“Instead of what you think,” Sundeen said, “tell me what he had to say.”

“He say it's none of his business. He's going to watch.”

“You believe it?”

“Now you want to know what I think. Make up your mind.”

Sundeen half-turned to the mirror to study his profile, smoothing his beard with the back of his hand. “His partner's up there, but he's gonna keep his nose out of it, huh?”

Yes, they may be somewhat alike, Ruben Vega thought. He said, “The company pay him to work here, whatever he does, not to go up there and help his friend. So maybe he doesn't have the choice to make.”

“What does he say about Moon?”

“Nothing. I ask, do you see him? No. I say, why don't they leave instead of causing this trouble? He say, ask them. I say well, he likes to live on a mountain-there plenty other mountains. He don't say anything. I say, what about the other people up there, they live with him? He say, you find out.”

Sundeen looked at his body, sucking in his stomach, then picked up a shirt from the chair and put it on. “I think somebody's selling somebody a bill of goods. All we have to say to them is, look here, you people don't move out, this is what happens to you. Take one of 'em, stick a gun in his mouth and count three. They'll leave.”

“Take which one?”

“It don't matter to me none. 'Cept it won't be Moon. Moon, I'm gonna settle with him. Early too. But I got time to think about that.”

Ruben Vega was nodding. “Threaten them seriously-it look pretty easy, uh?”

“Not hard or easy but a fact of life,” Sundeen said. “Nobody picks dying when there's a way not to.”

Ruben Vega would agree to that. He could say to his boss, And it works both ways, for you as well as them. But why argue about it with a man who did not know how to get outside of himself to look at something? It had happened to him at the wall. It could happen to him again. Ruben Vega said, “Well, I hope you get enough men to do it.”

Sundeen said, “Wait and see what's coming.”

It was already arranged, since his meeting with Vandozen in Las Cruces, Vandozen asking how many men he'd need. Sundeen saying he'd wait and see. Vandozen then saying it was his custom to know things in advance, not wait and see. So he had already recruited some twenty men, among them several former Yuma prison guards, a few railroad bulls and a good number of strike-breakers from the coal fields of Pennsylvania: all hired at twenty dollars a week and looking forward to a tour of duty out in the fresh air and wide open spaces.

Today was Tuesday. A message waiting for Sundeen when he reported to the company stated his bunch would all arrive in Benson by rail on Friday. Fine. Let them get drunk and laid on Saturday, rest Sunday and they ride up into the mountains on Monday.

Sundeen said to the Mexican, “If that's all you got, you didn't learn much.”

“He thought you were dead,” Ruben Vega said. “I told him you should be, but you stayed alive and now you're much wiser.”

Looking at him Sundeen said, “The fence-sitter. You gonna sit on the fence and watch this one too? Man, that time in Sonora-I swore I was gonna kill you after, if I hadn't been shot up.”

“I save your life you feel you want to kill me,” Ruben Vega said. “I think you still have something to learn.”

4

Bren had not realized he was tense. Until walking back to the house on Mill Street he was aware of relief and was anxious to be with the woman again. He had not told her about Sundeen. He didn't like to argue with her or discuss serious matters. She was a woman and he wanted her to act like a woman, one he had selected. He did not expect continual expressions of gratitude; nor did he want her to wait on him or act as though her life was now dedicated solely to his pleasure. But she could make his life easier if she'd quit assuming she knew more about him than he did. Women were said to “know” and feel things men weren't able to because men were more blunt and practical. Bren believed that was a lot of horseshit. Women took advantage of men because they were all sitting on something men wanted. If they ever quit holding out or holding it over men's heads everybody would be a lot happier.

Not that Janet Pierson ever bargained with him that way. She seemed always willing and eager. He only wished she would quit thinking and analyzing why he did things and saying he wanted to be like a son to her.

Sometimes though he would bring it up, because it was on his mind, or to convince her she was wrong-as he did now, entering the front door and hearing her in the kitchen, coming up quietly behind her, pulling her into his arms, his hands moving over her body.

“I missed you,” she said, resting against him.

“I missed you too. You think I'd do this to my mother?”

“I hope not.”

“Unh-unh.” Kissing her now, brushing her cheek and finding her ear with his mouth. “No…What you feel like to me is a young girl…soft and nice-”

She said, pressing against him, “That's what I feel. You make me aware of being a woman and it's a good feeling.” This way acknowledging and appreciating him as a man, but knowing that what he needed now was to be comforted and held. Protected from something. The little boy come home-but not telling him this.

After they made love she would put her arms around him and hold him close to her in the silence and soon he would fall asleep. Then, as she would begin to ease her arm from beneath his shoulder, he would open his eyes for a moment, roll to his side and fall asleep again, freeing her. Though if she moved her hand over him, down over the taut muscles in his belly, they would make love again and after, this time, he would get out of bed as Bren Early: confident, the man who wore matched revolvers and loved her when it occurred to him to express it or when he felt the physical urge…not realizing the simple need to hold and be held and to believe in something other than himself.

Sometime soon she would talk to him and find out what he believed and what was important to him. And what was important to her also.

5

Was it luck or was it instinct? Maurice Dumas hoped the latter. There was always something going on when he set out to get a story: this time not at the White Tanks agency but several miles up the draw at Dana Moon's place.

The luck was running into the Apache at the agency office and letting him know through sign language-trying all kinds of motions before pointing to the office and then sticking his tongue in his cheek to resemble a wad of tobacco-that he was looking for the agent, Dana Moon.

They climbed switchbacks up a slope swept yellow-green with brittlebush and greasewood, through young saguaros that looked like a field of fence posts and on up into the wide, yawning trough of a barranca with steep walls of shale and wind-swept white oak and cedar. They climbed to open terrain, a bare crest against the sky but not the top, not yet. A little farther and there it was, finally, a wall…first the wall, and beyond it a low stone fortress of a house with a wooden porch and a yard full of people, horses and several wagons.

What was this, another Meat Day?

No, Maurice Dumas found out soon enough, it was a war council.

He felt strange riding in through the opening in the adobe wall with all eyes on him. Though there were not as many people as he originally thought-only about a dozen-they were certainly a colorful and unusual mixture: darkies, Mexicans and Indians, all standing around together and all, he observed now, armed to the teeth with revolvers, rifles and belts of cartridges. Specifically there were three hard-looking colored men; four Mexicans, one in a very large Chihuahua hat and bright yellow scarf; and the rest Apache Indians, including the one who brought him up here and who, Maurice Dumas found out, was named Red, an old compadre of Moon's.

“I hope I'm not interrupting anything,” Maurice Dumas said, as Moon came down from the porch to greet him, “but there is something I think you better know about.”

“Sundeen's arrival?” said Moon, who almost smiled then at the young reporter's look of surprise. “There are things we better know about if we intend to stay here. Have his men arrived yet?”

Maurice Dumas, again surprised, said, “What men?”

“You'd know if they had,” Moon said. “So we still have some time. Step down and I'll introduce you to some of the main characters of the story you're gonna be writing.”

The man seemed so aware and alert for someone who moved the way Moon did, hands in his pockets, in no hurry, big chew of tobacco in his jaw: just a plain country fellow among this colorful group of heavily armed neighbors.

First, Maurice Dumas met Mrs. Moon, Kate, and felt he must have appeared stupid when he looked up and saw a good-looking lady and not the washed-out, sodbuster woman he'd expected. When she learned where he was from, Mrs. Moon said, “Chicago, huh? I'll bet you're glad to get away from the stockyards and breathe fresh air for a change.”

The news reporter said he didn't live near the yards, fortunately, and noticed Moon looking at his wife with an amused expression and then shaking his head; just a faint movement. The man seemed to get a kick out of her. He said, “What do you know about Chicago stockyards?” She answered him, “I visited there with my dad when I was little and have never felt the urge to go back.” Strange, having a conversation like that in front of everyone.

Moon said, “Maurice, shake hands with a veteran of the War of the Rebellion and a cavalryman twenty-four years.”

This was the young reporter's introduction to Bo Catlett, whom he had already heard about and who did not disappoint him in his appearance, with his high boots and felt campaign hat low over his eyes. Bo Catlett's expression was kindly, yet he was mean and hard-looking in that he seemed the type who would never hold his hat in his hand and stand aside or give an inch, certainly not give up his horse ranch. The other two colored men wore boots also, standing the way cavalrymen seem to pose, and appeared just as fit and ready as Bo Catlett. There were three more former members of the Tenth up with their families or tending the herds.

Red, the little Mimbre Apache, said something in Spanish to Moon and Moon said, “He thought, when you rode up and commenced making signs, you were asking him how old he was, how many moons, till you stuck your tongue in your cheek.”

The Apaches sat along the edge of the porch, Maurice Dumas noticed, while all the others stood around. (Did it mean Indians were lazy by nature?, Maurice wondered. Or smart enough to squat when they got the chance?)

The news reporter wouldn't have minded sitting down himself in one of those cane rocking chairs. But first he had to meet Armando Duro-and his young son Eladio who was about eighteen-and this introduction turned into something he never expected.

Maurice had a feeling Moon had saved Armando until last out of deference, for he seemed especially polite and careful as he addressed him in Spanish, nodding toward Maurice as Maurice caught the words Chicago Times. Was the Mexican impressed?

The young news reporter was, for he had heard the name Armando Duro before, though he had not known this fiery champion of Mexican land rights was living in these mountains.

Here he was now rattling off Spanish a mile a minute, his son and his companions nodding in agreement while Moon listened intently at first, then seemed to get tired of hanging on and shifted his weight from one foot to the other as Armando went on and on. When there was a pause Maurice said quickly, “I'd like to interview Señor Duro if I could.”

Moon said, “If you can get a word in.” Armando's eyes darted from the news reporter to Moon. “And if you-si puede hablar en Español. Can you?”

“Doesn't he speak English?”

“When he wants to,” Moon said. “It depends if he's in one of his royal pain-in-the-ass moods or not.”

If the Mexican could understand him, how come Moon was saying this in front of him? Evidently because Moon had only so much patience with the man and had run out.

Following Moon's less than kind remark, Armando turned to the young news reporter and said in English, “Will you print the truth for a change if I give it to you?”

What kind of question was that? Maurice Dumas said the Times always printed the truth.

“The twisting of truth to fit your purpose,” Armando said, “is the same as a lie.”

Maurice didn't know what the man was talking about because the paper had hardly ever printed anything about Armando Duro or Mexican land rights to begin with. It was an old issue, settled in court, dead and buried. But since the man did represent the Mexican community here, some eighty or ninety people living on scattered farms and sheep pastures, Maurice decided he'd better pay attention.

He said, “Well, I suppose you see this present situation as an opportunity to air your complaints once again, bring them into the open.” Maurice heard Moon groan and knew he had said the wrong thing.

Sure enough.

Armando started talking, taking them back to the time of Spanish land grants and plodding on through the war with Mexico and the Gadsden Purchase to explain why their acreage, their sheep graze, their golden fields of corn and bean patches belonged to them as if by divine succession and not to a mining company from a state named for a small island in the English Channel (which Maurice Dumas had not realized before this).

Bo Catlett and the colored troopers shuffled around or leaned against a wagon. Moon would continue to shift from one foot to another. His wife, what she did was shake her head and go into the house. Even Armando's son and the other Mexicans seemed ready to fall asleep. Only the Apaches, sitting along the edge of the porch, stared at Armando with rapt attention, not having any idea what he was talking about, even though Armando would lapse into fiery Spanish phrases every so often. He reminded the young news reporter of every politician he had ever heard speak, except that Armando talked in bigger circles that included God and kings.

“How am I going to write about all that?” Maurice said to Moon, after.

Moon said, “You picked your line of work, I didn't.”

Armando got a rolled-up sheet of heavy paper from his wagon and came over to the news reporter opening it as you would a proclamation, which is what it was.

“Here,” Armando said, handing it to Maurice, “show this to the mine company and print it in your newspaper so anyone who sees one of these will know it marks the boundary of our land.”

The notice said, in large black letters:

WARNING

Anyone venturing onto

this land uninvited is

TRESPASSING

on property granted by

Royal Decree and witnessed

before God. Trespassers

are not welcome and

will be fired on if they cross this boundary.

Armando Duro

and the

People of the Mountain

Later on, just before Maurice Dumas left to go back down the switchback trail, he said to Moon, “Does that man know what he's doing?”

“It's his idea of the way to do it,” Moon said.

“But that warning's not gonna do any good. You think?”

“Warning?” Moon said. “It reads more like an invitation.”

“Can't you stop him, shut him up?”

“I suppose,” Moon said, “but the sooner it starts, the sooner it's over, huh?”

6

Moon, Bo Catlett and Red, the leader of the Mimbres, packed up into the high reaches to shoot some game, drink whiskey, have a talk and get away from their women for a few days. Moon said that's all they would have, three days. On the piney shoulder of the mountain where they camped, they could hear the mine company survey crew exploding dynamite as they searched out new ore veins: like artillery off to the west, an army gradually moving closer, having already wiped out several of the Mexican homesites.

Armando Duro had drawn the line and posted his trespass notices, giving himself a printed excuse to start shooting. But how did you tell a man like Armando he was a fool? Armando was not a listener, he was a talker.

Moon, in the high camp, took out a roughsketch map he'd drawn and laid it on the pine needles for Bo Catlett and Red to look at, Moon pointing: little squares were homes and farms, though maybe he was missing some; the circles were graze. X's marked the areas where the survey crews had been working.

Here, scattered over the pastureland in the Western foothills, the Mexican homesteads. How would you defend them?

“No way to do it, considering they farmers,” Bo Catlett said. “They ever see more than three coming they got to get out…Maybe try draw them up in the woods.”

Moon shook his head. “Armando told them, don't leave your homes. Something about leaving your honor on the doorstep when you flee.”

“I'm not talking about they should flee,” Bo Catlett said. “But they start shooting from the house, that's where they gonna die. They don't have enough people in one place. Like you-” Bo Catlett looked at the map. “Where you at here?”

Moon pointed to the square on the Eastern slope, the closest one to the wavy line indicating the San Pedro River.

“You no better off'n they are,” Bot Catlett said, “all by yourself there.”

“I got open ground in front of me and high rock behind,” Moon said, “with Red and some of his people right here, watching my back door. Nobody gets close without my knowing. So…around here, both sides of the crest, the Apache rancherías. Red, that's you right there. Coming south a bit, these circles are the horse pastures…Here's the canyon, Bo, where you got your settlement.”

“Niggerville,” Bo Catlett said. “Some day they put railroad tracks up there, you can bet money we be on the wrong side.”

“Here's the box canyon,” Moon continued, “where you gather your mustangs. I'm thinking we might do something with that blind alley. You follow me?”

“Invite 'em in,” Bo Catlett said, “and close the door.”

“It'd be a way, wouldn't it? If they come up to Niggerville and you pull back, draw 'em into the box.”

“If they dumb enough, think I'm a black lead mare,” Bo Catlett said.

“We'll find out,” Moon said. “Red's gonna be our eyes, huh, Red? los ojos.” And said in Spanish, “The eyes of the mountain people.”

The Apache nodded and said, also in Spanish, “It's been a long time since we used them.”

Moon said, “Him and a bunch were gonna summer up at Whiteriver, visit some of their people, but Red's staying now for the war. That's what they call it in town, the Rincon Mountain War.”

Bo Catlett seemed to be thinking about the name, trying it a few times in his mind. “We got any say in it?”

“We're still around when the smoke clears,” Moon said, “I guess we can call it anything we want.”