Louis LAmour - Last Stand at Papago Wells

Contents

S URVIVAL OF THE F ITTEST

Z IMMERMAN MOPPED A big hand over his face. Youyou think we got a chance, Cates?

Were alive, arent we? Sure, weve got a chance.

Taylor was staring at the saddlebags. Whats in them? he asked.

None of your business! Big Maria flared.

Zimmerman squatted on his haunches. Ill tell you whats in em, he said. Its gold. And its stolen gold, too.

Stolen? Taylor spoke sharply. Maam, youll have to turn that gold over to me. I am an officer of the law.

Big Marias face was sweaty and dust-streaked. One stocking was down and her clothes were all awry, but there was no nonsense about the shotgun. You want it, you come an get it.

You dont have to go after it now, Zimmerman scoffed. Just wait... whoever lives through this can ride out of here a rich man.

Thats enough of that talk! Cates interrupted. You have enough trouble without stirring it up among you.

Taylor stalked over to them. Cates, you order that woman to turn that gold over to me.

Taylor, youre a businessman who was deputized to join a posse, thats all. Out here youre not even that, youre a man whos fighting for his life. How she got that gold is none of my affair. My only concern is getting us out of here alive, if I can.

Where we get out of this, Taylor said maliciously, Im going to have the law check on your background, Cates.

You ride with the wrong herd.

Chapter 1

H E HAD STOPPED last night in the Gunsight Hills, making dry camp because others had reached the water hole before him and he preferred to avoid other travelers. At daybreak he came down out of the hills and made a little dust as he struck westward with Yuma Crossing in his mind.

Logan Cates had the look of the desert about him, a brown, seasoned man with straight black hair above a triangular face that was all bone and tight-drawn, sun-browned hide. His eyes, narrow from squinting into sun and wind, were a cold green that made a man stop and think before he looked into them a second time.

He was a tall man, wide in the shoulder and lean in waist and hips, an easy-moving man with none of the horsemans awkwardness in walking. He moved like a hunter when on his own feet, and had been a hunter of many things, men not least among them.

His hat was black and flat-crowned and flat-brimmed, held beneath his jaw by a loose thong. His shirt, once red, had faded to an indeterminate rose. His vest was of black cowhide, worn and scratched, and over his black jeans he wore fringed shotgun chaps. He wore a tied-down Smith & Wesson Russian .44 six-shooter, and the Winchester in his saddle-scabbard was the vintage of 73.

The horse he rode, a long-legged zebra dun, had a wicked eye that hinted at the tough, resilient and often vicious nature within. A horse of many brands, he had the speed of a frightened coyote and an ability to go without water equal to any camel or longhorn steer.

Logan Cates was a man without illusions, without wealth, place, or destination. In the eighteen years since his parents died of cholera when he was fourteen he had driven a freight wagon, punched cows, hunted buffalo, twice gone over the trail from Texas to Kansas with cattle, scouted for the Army and had ridden shotgun on many stages. Twice, also, he had been marshal of boomtowns for brief periods. He had lived without plan, following his horses ears and coping with each days problems as they arose.

Not an hour out of the Gunsight Hills he drew rein in the bottom of a dry wash and crawled to the lip of the wash to survey the desert. Lifting his head among some small boulders to keep from skylining it, he studied the situation with care, having long ago learned that vigilance was the price of life in Indian country. Far away toward the line that divided Mexico from Arizona was a dust cloud.

Ten, he judged, maybe twelve riders.

The knowledge was disturbing, for when so many men came together in this country it spelled trouble, and no news had come his way since riding out of Tucson almost four days before. And he knew enough of the desert to the south to realize no man would ride there without desperate reason.

A dozen men could mean a posse, a band of outlaws, Indians, or any Army patrol out of Fort Yuma. The latter was highly improbable as there had been no trouble in the area for some time, and the Apaches rarely came so far west.

Yet, with Churupati in the field no dependence could be placed on that guess, for his mother had been a Yaqui, giving him ties in western Sonora.

Returning to the saddle, Logan Cates resumed his westward trek, moving more slowly and trying to lift no dust. Considering this group of riders to the south and the three who had last night stopped at Gunsight Wells the country was becoming too busy for comfort. The three at Gunsight had been too far away to distinguish details but their fire had been far larger than any Indian would build.

The trail he followed lay fifty yards off to his right, for Logan Cates had an aversion to leaving his tracks where they might be easily seen. As it was, his trail was unlikely to be found unless by riders coming into the trail from the south.

A LL TRAVEL IN this western Arizona desert was circumscribed by the necessity for water, and the fact that in several hundred square miles there were only a few widely scattered water holes, and none of these reliable in a dry season. No matter what route a man wished to take his trail must at some time touch these water holes, for without them he would die.

Ahead of him and at least twenty miles from his camp of last night lay one of these water holes. It lay in the gap through which went the trail west, but he had been warned in Tucson that the water hole might be empty and it could in no case be depended upon. The nearest water beyond the gap was at Papago Wells on the edge of the lava beds to the south, a good twenty miles further. Unless all signs failed he would find company at one or both water holes, but there was no help for it.

This was a land of little water and less rain, where trails were indicated by the bones of men and animals that had died beside them, and all lines of travel were dictated by the urgency of water. Trails from all directions would converge on the water hole in the gap ahead of him, and if that tank proved dry then he must ride at once for Papago Wells, a grim and lonely place with its three dark pools lying in their basins of bluish-black basaltic rock.

Beyond this place the nearest water was at Tule Tank, thirty miles further on the Yuma trail, although an Indian had once told Cates of a place called Heart Tank in the Sierra Pinta north of Papago Wells. Nobody else he knew had heard of Heart Tank and Cates knew how slight were the chances of finding water without adequate directions. Such a tank might exist high in the rocks as at Tinajas Altas, where men had died within a few feet of water they could not find, or who lacked the strength for the climb to its place among the high rocks.

It was very hot... Logan Cates squinted his eyes against the shimmering heat waves and studied the dust of the riders who had camped last night at Gunsight Wells, who were also heading due west... a glance to the south indicated the larger group had drawn closer, but were still distant by many miles. It would be well to ride up to Papago with a ready gun, for in this country many a man had been murdered for his horse.