Gunsights

1

Phil Sundeen looked at the notice with the big word “WARNING” at the top like it was a birthday present he had always wanted. He read it slowly, came down to Armando's name at the bottom, said, “That's the one I want,” and sent Ruben Vega out on a scout, see if the notices were “for true.”

That Monday morning Ruben Vega rode a fifteen-mile loop through the west foothills, spotting the little adobes tucked away up on the slopes; seeing the planted fields, young corn not quite belly-high to his horse; seeing the notices stuck to saguaro and white oak and three times drawing rifle fire-Ruben Vega squinting up at the high rocks as the reports faded, then shaking his head and continuing on.

He made his way up through a mesquite thicket that followed the course of a draw to a point where he could study one of the videttes crouched high in the rocks, sky-lined for all to see, a young man in white with an old single-shot Springfield, defending his land. Ruben Vega, dismounted, circled behind the vidette to within forty feet and called out, “Dígame!”

The young man in white came around, saw the bearded man holding a revolver and fired his Springfield too quickly, without taking time to aim.

Ruben Vega raised his revolver. “Tell me where I can find Armando Duro.”

Thirty dollars a week to frighten this young farmer and others like him. It was a pity. Ruben Vega said to the man, who was terrified but trying to act brave, he only wanted to speak to Armando Duro and needed directions to his house. That was all. He nodded, listening to the young farmer, holstered his gun and left.

Yes, he told Sundeen, the notices were “for real.”

“They shoot at you?”

“They don't know what they're doing.”

“I know that,” Sundeen said. “I want to know if they're good for their word.” When Ruben Vega told him yes, they had fired, though not to hit him, Sundeen said, “All right, let's go.”

He paraded out his security force: his prison guards, railroad bulls and strikebreakers; most of whom wore city clothes and looked like workingmen on Sunday, not one under thirty years of age, Ruben Vega noticed. Very hard men with big fists, bellies full of beer and whiskey from their first weekend in town, armed with Winchester repeaters and revolvers stuck in their belts. Sixteen of them: two had quit by Monday saying it was too hot and dusty, the hell with it. One was dead of knife wounds and the one who had killed him was in jail. Ruben Vega knew he would never be their segundo, because these men would never do what a Mexican told them. But that was all right. They could take orders directly from Sundeen. Ruben Vega would scout for them, stay out of their way and draw his thirty dollars a week-the most he had ever made in his life-which would make these men even uglier if they were. But he didn't like this work. From the beginning he had not liked it at all.

He didn't like Sundeen waving off the few news reporters-one of them the young one who had been with Early-who had hired horses and wanted to follow. He didn't like it because it surprised him-Sundeen not wanting them along to write about him.

He asked, “Why not bring them?”

“Not this trip,” Sundeen said. “Get up there and show us the way, partner.”

Ruben Vega followed his orders and rode point, guiding Sundeen and his security force up into the hills where the WARNING notices were nailed to the saguaro and white oak. There. Now Sundeen could do what he wanted.

Looking over his crew of bulls and headbusters sweating in their Sunday suits, the crew squinting up at the high rock formations, Sundeen said, “Who wants to do the honors, chase their pickets off that high ground? I'd say there's no more'n likely two of'em up there-couple of bean farmers couldn't hit shit if they stuck their weapons up their ass. How about you, you and you?” And said to the others, “Get ready now.”

More than two, Ruben Vega thought, because they know we're coming to see Armando. Maybe all the guns they have are up there now. Guarding the pass to the man's house. Ruben Vega nudged his mount up next to Sundeen's.

“They'll have plenty guns up there,” he said quietly.

Sundeen turned in his saddle to look at him and smiled as he spoke, as though he was talking about something else. “We don't know till we see, partner. Till we draw fire, huh?” Then to the three he had picked: “Go on up past the signs.”

Another show to watch, Ruben Vega thought, seeing the three men moving their horses at a walk up through the ocotillo and yellow-flowering prickly pear, reaching the sign nailed to a saguaro…moving past the cactus…twenty feet perhaps, thirty, when the gunfire poured out of the rocks a hundred yards away: ten, a dozen rifles, Ruben Vega estimated, fired on the count, but the eruption of sound coming raggedly with puffs of smoke and followed by three single shots that chased the two riders still mounted, both of them bent low in their saddles and circling back. One man in his Sunday suit lay on the ground, out there alone now, his riderless horse running free. The one on the ground didn't move. Sundeen was yelling at his security force to commence firing. Then yelled at them to spread out as their horses began to shy and bump each other with the rifles going off close. “Spread out and rush 'em!” Sundeen yelled, pointing and then circling around to make sure they were all moving forward…Ruben Vega watching, wondering if Sundeen knew what he was doing…Sundeen pausing then as his men charged up the slope firing away…Ruben Vega impressed now that these dressed-up shitkickers would do what they were told and expose themselves to fire. Sundeen hung back, grinning as he looked over at Ruben Vega now sitting motionless in his saddle.

“Still riding the fence, huh?”

Ruben Vega said, “Well, you got a man killed.”

“Three'd be better,” Sundeen said, “but one's enough to inspire them.”

It didn't take much to push the farmers out of the rocks. They reloaded and got off a volley, hitting nothing, then fell back from the steady fire of the Winchester repeaters, some of them running, others making their way back to Armando Duro's place where they would be forced to make a stand.

Sundeen and his people circled to high ground and found good cover in a fairly deep wash rimmed with brush. From here they looked down on Armando's house and yard: a whitewashed adobe with a roof of red clay tiles that had come from an old church in Tucson, a flower garden, a latticework covered with green vines, heavy shutters with round gunports over the windows. A snug cottage with thick walls up here in the lonesome.

Sundeen said, “Well, we can starve him out or maybe set the place on fire, but we'd never get home for supper, would we?” From a saddlebag he pulled out a towel with Congress Hotel printed on it and thew it to Ruben Vega, saying, “Hey, partner, make yourself useful.”

Tied to a mesquite pole the towel was the truce flag Ruben Vega waved above the brush cover and held high in front of him as he walked down to the yard, unarmed, doing something for his thirty dollars a week.

He called to the house in Spanish, “Do I address Armando Duro?…Look, I have no gun. Will you come out, please, and talk like a gentleman? We have no fight with you. We come to talk and you begin shooting.” He paused. “Before anyone else is injured please come talk to the man sent by the company. He has something important to explain.”

“Say it now,” a voice from the house said.

“I'm not the emissary of the company,” Ruben Vega said. “Mr. Sundeen is the one. He wants to explain the company plan of making this a township…if you would honor us and agree to become the alcalde and administer the office.”

“Where is he?” the voice asked.

“You come out and he'll come out,” Ruben Vega said, beginning to feel relief now, knowing he was almost finished.

There was a long pause, silence, before the voice said again, “Where is he?”

“Up there,” Ruben Vega said, pointing with his truce flag.

“He must come with no weapons. All of them must show themselves with no weapons,” the voice said.

“Of course,” Ruben Vega said, thinking, He's a child; you could offer him candy. As he saw the door open, Ruben Vega began to move away, turning to wave to Sundeen to come down, calling out, “All right…Come with your hands in the air, please!” Looking back at the house, still moving off to the side, he said in Spanish, “Your men come out too, please, everyone without weapons. We meet at this sign of truce and speak as gentlemen,” thinking, Yes, isn't it a nice day and everybody's friends…Smile…but get your old ass out of the way as soon as you can, without hurrying, but move it.

2

Moon handed the glasses to Bo Catlett and picked up his Sharps rifle from the Y of the cliffrose branch in front of him.

“They all got suits on,” Bo Catlett said, with the field glasses to his face. “Coming with their hands in the air. They surrendering?”

“You see the white flag?” Moon said.

“Man moving out of the way.”

“I saw him do it once before,” Moon said. “Something like this. What would you say's the range?”

From this position, where Moon and Bo Catlett, Red and three of his Mimbres crouched in the outcropping of rock and flowering cliffrose-high up on a slope of scrub pine-they had a long downview of the red-tile postage-stamp roof of the house and the tiny dark figures coming down to the yard, approaching the tiny figures in white coming out of the house.

Bo Catlett continued to study the scene through the field glasses, saying now, “You got…three hundred fifty yards' tween us and them.”

“Close,” Moon said, “but more like four hundred,” and sighted down the barrel of the Sharps. “It looks shorter aiming down.” He lowered the big-bore rifle to adjust the rear sight and put it to his shoulder again to aim, both eyes open.

“Wearing suits,” Bo Catlett was saying. “All dressed up to pay a visit, huh?”

Moon said something in slow Spanish, as though explaining carefully, and the Mimbres raised their Springfields and Spencers. He waited a moment and then said, “Listo?”

The Mimbres were ready. Bo Catlett continued to watch through the glasses.

“The one with the silver belt buckles,” Moon said.

“His holster's empty,” Bo Catlett said. “None of them appear armed.”

“Come up here with their coats on,” Moon said, “account of it's so cold. Only about ninety degrees out. Watch Sundeen, he'll do something. Take off his hat, something to give 'em a sign.”

“Talking,” Bo Catlett said. “Moving around some…Mexicans standing there listening to him, Armando, shit, look at him with his big hat on, arms folded, standing there…Sundeen looking up at the sky now, looking around…looking back at Armando…hey, yelling something…they drawing guns! He going for the Mexican!”

Moon fired.

The Mimbres fired.

The sounds hitting hard and flat in the stillness, echoing…the hard sounds hitting again, almost covering the popping sounds of pistol fire coming from the yard, where tiny dark figures and tiny white figures were left lying on the ground as the lines of figures began to come apart and scatter. The rifles echoed again, cracking the hot air hard, and in a moment the yard was empty but for the figures lying motionless: three dark figures, four white figures. A single white figure was being dragged, carried off by a crowd of dark figures.

Bo Catlett followed them through the glasses until they were out of sight, beyond a rise and a line of brush. He wasn't sure which one they'd dragged off until his gaze inched back to the yard, past the figures lying there, and saw the big Mexican hat on the ground.

“They got Armando,” Bo Catlett said.

3

C.S. “Buck” Fly, who was a gentleman and had never been known to say an unkind word about anyone, paused and said, “I already shot that rooster.”

“We went to very much trouble to get him,” Ruben Vega said. “Rode all the way up there to talk to him.”

“Is he coming here?” C.S. Fly asked, not wanting to give the Mexican a flat no, but not wanting to take the other Mexican's picture either. The other Mexican, Armando, was impatient and difficult to pose, because he thought he knew everything, including photography. C.S. Fly also had a lot on his mind. His wife was in Tombstone, where business was not too good; he had opened a gallery in Phoenix that wasn't doing much better; there was not much going on here in Sweetmary at the moment; and he was trying to make up his mind whether or not he should run for sheriff of Cochise Country on the Republican ticket next year, as some of his friends were urging him to do. What did he want to take a picture of a pompous, officious Mexican land-granter for?

“You have to bring your picture machine to where he is. I'll show you,” Ruben Vega said.

“Well, as I've mentioned, I already have Armando on file,” Mr. Fly said. “One of him is plenty.”

“But do you have him talking to Mr. Sundeen of the mine company, settling the difference between them, the two sides shaking hands in a picture you can sell to all the newspapers in the country?” Ruben Vega asked.

“No, I don't believe I have that one,” C.S. Fly said. “Where is it they're meeting?”

Ruben Vega told him, a ranch out of town only a few miles, the J-L-Bar, owned by a man named Freels, a neutral ground between the mine and the mountains. Mr. Fly said all right, had his assistant load camera and equipment on a buckboard and they were on their way-heading out LaSalle Street, when the young news reporter Ruben Vega had met before rode up to join them, asking what was going on. Ruben Vega said come on, and asked where the other reporters were. (Sundeen had not said anything this time about keeping reporters away.) The young fellow from Chicago, Maurice Dumas, said they most always took a nap after their noon dinner and that's probably where they were. When he asked where they were going, Ruben Vega told him Mr. Fly was going to take a picture of an important occasion, a meeting between Sundeen and Armando.

Because his luck or intuition had been so keen lately, Maurice Dumas believed him, patting his pocket to make sure he had a pad and pencil. It looked like another Chicago Times exclusive coming up.

About three miles out of town, having come around a bend in the road that was banked close to a steep slope-with still a mile or so to go before reaching the J-L-Bar ranch-they saw something white hanging from a telegraph pole.

Was it a flag of some kind? There was no wind stirring it. As they approached, seeing it straight down the road now, maybe a hundred yards away, Maurice Dumas thought of a bag of laundry. Or, could it be a mail bag out by the Freels place? Something white-as they drew closer-tied to the pole about ten feet off the ground…No, not tied to the pole, hanging from a rope…Not a bag of laundry either. A man. Maurice Dumas heard the Mexican say something in Spanish. He heard C.S. Fly say, “Oh, my God.”

It was Armando Duro, hung there by the neck, the rope reaching up and over the crossbar where the wires were attached and down to the base of the pole where the rope was lashed securely. Armando's head hung down, chin on his chest, his face so dark he looked like a Negro-which was why Maurice was not sure at first who it was. His hands were so much lighter in color, and his bare feet hanging there, toes pointing toward the ground. It looked as though someone had taken his boots.

Maurice heard Ruben Vega saying, “He told me, he said they'd bring him to the ranch,” the Mexican not protesting but speaking very quietly. “He said they'd hold him there and take a picture, see, to prove he was being held and was unharmed.”

C.S. Fly was busy setting up his camera in the road, tilting the box upward, then getting down behind it to look, then adjusting it a little more. C.S. Fly didn't say a word.

“That's what he told me,” Ruben Vega said. “They would hold him there and threaten to kill him, yes, if his people didn't move away somewhere else. But he never said he would do this. Never.”

Was he telling them something or talking to himself?, Maurice Dumas wondered.

Yes, it sounded more like he was trying to convince himself.

Was it an act, though, for their benefit?

No-listening to the Mexican's tone more than the actual words, Maurice Dumas believed the man was honestly surprised and telling the truth.