Gunsights Read online

  Gunsights

  Elmore Leonard

  The first in a series of collections of the author's westerns, written early in his spectacularly successful career, contains "Bounty Hunters," "Forty Lashes Less One," and "Gunsights," featuring a Bonny-and-Clyde pair of gunslingers. Original. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

  Brendan Early and Dana Moon have tracked renegade Apaches together and gunned down scalp hunters to become Arizona legends. But now they face each other from opposite sides of what newspapers are calling The Rincon Mountain War. Brendan and a gang of mining company gun thugs are dead set on running Dana and "the People of the Mountain" from their land. The characters are unforgettable, the plot packed with action and gunfights from beginning to end.

  Elmore Leonard

  Gunsights

  1

  The gentleman from Harper's Weekly, who didn't know mesquite beans from goat shit, looked up from his reference collection of back issues and said, “I've got it!” Very pleased with himself. “We'll call this affair…are you ready? The Early-Moon Feud.”

  The news reporters in the Gold Dollar shrugged and thought some more, though most of them went on calling it the Rincon Mountains War, which seemed to have enough ring to it.

  Somebody said, “What's the matter with the Sweetmary War?” Sweetmary being the name of the mining town where all the gawkers and news reporters had gathered to watch the show. The man from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat wanted to call it the Last of The Great Indian Wars. Or-he also mentioned to see how it would sound-the Great Apache Uprising of 1893. Or the Bloody Apache Uprising, etc.

  The man from the St. Louis newspaper was reminded that, first, it wasn't an uprising and, second, there weren't just Apache Indians up in the mountains; there were also some niggers. The man from St. Louis, being funny, said, “Well, what if we call it the Last of the Great Indian-Nigger Wars?” A man from Florence said, “Well, you have got the chili-pickers in it also. What about them?” Yes, there were some Mexican settlers too, who had been farming up there a hundred years; they were also involved.

  What it was, it was a land war.

  The LaSalle Mining Company of New Jersey wanted the land. And the Indians from the White Tanks agency, the colored and the Mexicans-all of them actually living up there-wanted it also.

  Dana Moon was the Indian Agent at White Tanks, originally established as a reservation for Warm Springs Apaches, or Mimbreños, and a few Lipan and Tonto-Mojave family groups. The agency was located sixteen miles north of Sweetmary and about the same distance west of the San Pedro River. The reservation land was not in dispute. The problem was, many of Moon's Apaches had wandered away from White Tanks-a bleak, young-desert area-to set up rancherías in the mountains. No one, until now, had complained about it.

  Brendan Early worked for LaSalle Mining, sort of, with the title Coordinating Manager, Southwest Region, and was living in Sweetmary at the time.

  It was said that he and Dana Moon had been up and down the trail together, had shared dry camps and hot corners, and that was why the Harper's Weekly man wanted to call it the Early-Moon Feud; which, as you see, had nothing to do with the heavens or astrology.

  Nor was there any personal bitterness between them. The question was: What would happen to their bond of friendship, which had tied them together as though on two ends of a short riata, one not venturing too far without running into the other? Would their friendship endure? Or would they now, holding to opposite principles, cut the riata clean and try to kill one another?

  Bringing the land question down to personalities, it presented these two as the star attractions: two well-known, soon-to-be-legendary figures about to butt heads. It brought the crowds to Sweetmary to fill up both hotels, the Congress and the Alamosa, a dozen boarding houses, the seven restaurants and thirteen saloons in town. For several weeks this throng swelled the normal population of about four hundred souls, which included the locals, those engaged in commerce, nearby farmers and ranchers and the miners at the Sweetmary Works. Now there were curiosity seekers, gawkers, from all over the Territory and parts of New Mexico.

  (Not here yet were the hundred or more gunmen eventually hired by the company to “protect its leases” and quartered at the mine works. These men were paid, it was said, twenty dollars a week.)

  There were newspaper representatives from the Phoenix Republican, Phoenix Gazette, Yuma Sentinel, Safford Arizonian, Tucson Star, Florence Enterprise, Prescott Courier, Cococino Sun, Clifton Copper Era, Graham County Bulletin, Tombstone Prospector, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Chicago Times and the New York Tribune.

  Harper's Weekly had hired the renowned photographer C.S. Fly of Tombstone to cover the war with his camera, the way he had pictorially recorded Crook's campaign against Geronimo and his renegade Apaches.

  C.S. Fly set up a studio on LaSalle Street and there presented “showings” of many of his celebrated photographs of Indians, hangings, memorial parades and well-known personages, including Geronimo, former president Garfield and several of Brendan Early and Dana Moon. The two photos that were perhaps best known showed them at Fort Huachuca, June 16, 1887, with a prisoner they had brought in that day.

  There they were, six years ago:

  Brendan Early, in his hip-cocked cavalry pose. First Lieutenant of the 10th at Huachuca but wearing civilian dress, a very tight-fitting light-colored suit of clothes; bare-headed to show his brown wavy hair; a silky-looking kerchief at his throat; a matched pair of Smith and Wesson .44 Russians, butt-forward in Army holsters, each with the flap cut off; cavalry boots wiped clean for the pose; Brendan holding his Spencer carbine like a walking cane, palm resting on the upraised barrel. He seems to be trying to look down his nose like an Eastern dandy while suppressing a grin that shows clearly in his eyes.

  In contrast:

  Dana Moon with his dark, drooping mustache that makes him appear sad; hat brim straight and low over his eyes, a bulge in his bony countenance indicating the ever-present plug of tobacco; dark suit of clothes and a polka-dot neckerchief. Dana's .44 Colt's revolver is in a shoulder rig, a glint of it showing. He grips a Big-fifty Sharps in one hand, a sawed-off 12-gauge Greener in the other. All those guns for a man who looks so mild, so solemn.

  Between the two:

  Half a head shorter is a one-eyed Mimbreño Apache named Loco. What a funny-looking little man, huh? Black eyepatch, black stringy hair hanging from the bandana covering his head, he looks like a pirate of some kind, wearing an old dirty suit-coat and a loincloth. But don't laugh at him. Loco has killed many people and went to Washington to meet Grover Cleveland when times were better.

  The caption beneath the photo, which appeared that year in Harper's Weekly, reads:

  Lt. Brendan Early Loco Dana Moon

  Two Famous Heroes of the West with a Captive

  Red Devil

  There was also a photo of the Two Famous Heroes standing on either side of an attractive fair-haired young lady in a torn and dirty cotton dress; she is wearing a man's shirt over her quite filthy attire, the shirt unbuttoned, hanging free. The young lady does not seem happy to be posing for her picture that day at Fort Huachuca. She looks as though she might walk up to the camera and kick it over.

  The caption beneath this one reads:

  Lt. Brendan Early Katherine McKean Dana Moon

  Following Her Ordeal, Katy McKean

  Gratefully Thanks Her Rescuers

  In the Harper's Weekly article there was mention of a 10th Cavalry sergeant by the name of Bo Catlett, a Negro. Though he did not appear in either of the photographs, Sergeant Catlett had accompanied the Two Famous Heroes in their quest to apprehend the Apache warchief, Loco, and shared credit for bringing him in and rescuing the McKean girl. In the article, Sergeant Catlett was asked whe
re he had gotten the name Bo. “I believe it short for ‘Boy’, suh,” was his reply.

  Not many days before the photographs were taken by C.S. Fly, the five principals involved-Early, Moon, the McKean girl, Loco and Bo Catlett-were down in Old Mexico taking part in an adventure that would dramatically change their lives and, subsequently, lead to the Big Shootout known by most as The Rincon Mountain War.

  2

  1

  St. Helen and Points South: June, 1887

  Dana Moon had come down from Whiteriver to guide for Lieutenant Early and his company of 10th Cavalry out of Huachuca. They met at St. Helen, a stage stop on the Hatch & Hodges Central Mail Section route, where the “massacre” had taken place: the massacre being one dead swamper, shot several times and his head shoved into his bucket of axel grease; the driver of the stage, his shotgun rider and one passenger, a Mr. R. Holmes of St. David. Four were dead; two passengers caught in the gun-fire and wounded superficially; and one passenger abducted, Miss Katherine McKean of Benson, on her way home from visiting kin in Tucson.

  Loco was recognized as the leader of the raiding party (How many one-eyed Apaches were there between San Carlos and Fort Huachuca?) and was last seen trailing due south toward the Whetstone Mountains, though more likely was heading for the San Pedro and open country: Loco, the McKean girl and about twenty others in the band that had jumped the reservation a few days before.

  “Or about ten,” Dana Moon said. “Those people”-meaning Apaches-“can cause you to piss your britches and see double.”

  Brendan Early, in his dusty blues, looked at the situation, staring south into the sun haze and heat waves, looking at nothing. But Brendan Early was in charge here and had to give a command.

  What did they have? In the past month close to 150 Warm Springs people had jumped the San Carlos reservation, women and children as well as bucks, and made a beeline down the San Pedro Valley to Old Mexico and the fortress heights of the Sierra Madres. Loco's bunch was the rear guard, gathering fresh mounts and firearms along the way. Maybe Bren Early's troopers could ride like wild men a day and a night, killing some horses and maybe, just maybe, cut Loco off at the crossing.

  Or, a lieutenant in the U.S. Cavalry might ride through the scrub and say, “What border?” even after ten years on frontier station, cross leisurely with extra mounts and do the job.

  Dana Moon-sent down here by Al Sieber, Chief of Scouts at San Carlos-waited, not giving the lieutenant any help. He sat his chestnut gelding, looking down from there with the tobacco wad in his jaw. He didn't spit; he didn't do a thing.

  While Lieutenant Early was thinking, Then what? Track the renegades, run'em to ground? Except his troop of U.S. Cavalry would be an invading army, wouldn't it? having crossed an international boundary contrary to treaty agreement and the mutual respect of foreign soil, customs, emigration, all that bullshit.

  “Lord Jehovah protect us from dumb-ass officialdom,” said the lieutenant out loud to no one in particular.

  All soil west of the Pecos looked the same to Bren Early-born and raised in Monroe, Michigan (adopted home of George Armstrong Custer), before matriculating at West Point, somehow getting through, one hundred seventy-ninth in a class of one ninety-two-and there was no glory standing around a wagon yard watching civilians bleed.

  Dana Moon read sign-grain shucks in horse shit, and could tell you where the rider had come from and how long ago-and sometimes he could read Bren Early's mind. He said, “You're gonna hurt your head thinking. You want to do it, I'll take you four and a half days' ride southeast, yes, across the line toward Morelos, and on the sixth day Loco and his fellas will ride up to our camp. But not with all your troopers. You and me and Bo Catlett to handle the cavvy if he wants to come, six mounts on the string, grain and water. If you don't want to do it I think I'll quit government work; I'm tired looking over the fence and watching dust settle.”

  “On the sixth day,” Bren Early said, nodding. “And on the seventh day we'll rest, huh?”

  He bought the tight-fitting suit of clothes off the St. Helen station agent for seven dollars, and for three more got Bo Catlett a coat, vest and derby hat. Hey, boy, they were going to Old Mexico like three dude tourists:

  Rode southeast and crossed into Sonora at dusk, guided by the faint lights of a border town, against the full-dark moonside of the sky.

  2

  Dana Moon's plan: ride straight for a well he knew would be on Loco's route; get down there in the neighborhood, scout the rascal and his band to make sure they were coming; then, when they arrived, parley with the thirsty renegades, keeping their guns between the Apaches and a drink of water. Talk them out of the McKean girl first-if she was still alive-then talk about the weather or whatever they wanted, gradually getting the discussion around to a return trip to San Carlos for everybody, all expenses paid.

  Or commence firing when they draw within range, Bren Early thought, seeing it written up as a major skirmish or, better yet, the Battle of…whatever the name of this rancho used to be, sitting in the scrub oak foothills: three weathered adobes in a row like a small garrison, mesquite-pole out-building and corral, part of an adobe wall enclosing the yard.

  Out fifty yards of worn-out pasture was a wind-mill rigged to a stock tank of scummy water. From the end house or the wall, three men could cover the tank and a thirsty traveler would have to get permission to drink if the three men didn't want him to.

  The Battle of Rancho Diablo. Give it a hellfire exciting name. Who'd know the difference?

  On the sixth day Dana Moon rode in from his early-morning scout, field glasses hanging on his chest. He said, “What ever happens the way you expect it to?” He did spit right then.

  Bren Early saw it. He said, “Duty at Huachuca.”

  “They split up,” Dana Moon told him and Bo Catlett. “It looks to be Loco and the young lady coming ahead. They'll be here by noon, the ones with the herd maybe an hour behind. And some more dust coming out of the west.”

  “Federales,” Bo Catlett said.

  “Not enough of 'em,” Moon said. “Some other party; maybe eight or ten.”

  They brought the spare horses and feed into the middle adobe, three saddled horses into the building closest to the stock-tank end of the yard, and went inside to wait.

  Hoofprints out there meant nothing; people came through here all times of the year travelling between Morelos and Bavispe and points beyond, this being the gateway to the Sierra Madres.

  Still, when Loco came, leading the second horse and rider they took to be the girl, he hung back 300 yards-the horses straining toward the smell of water-and began to circle as he approached the rancho again, coming around through the pasture now, keeping the wall between him and the adobes.

  “We'll have to wing him,” Bren Early said, flat against the wall with his Spencer, next to a front window.

  Moon watched through the slit opening in the wooden door. He said to Bo Catlett, “Mount up.”

  Bo Catlett did and had to remain hunched over in the McClellan, his derby hat grazing the low roof.

  “That one-eyed Indian is a little speck of a target, isn't he?” Bren Early said.

  “Tired and thirsty,” Moon said. “I'm going out.” He looked up at Bo Catlett. “He flushes when he sees me, run him down. There won't be any need to shoot.”

  Bren Early, dropping the stock of his Spencer to the dirt floor, said, “Shit. And parley awhile.” He didn't like it; then thought of something and squinted out past the window frame again.

  “I wonder what that girl looks like,” he said. “I wonder what the one-eyed son of a bitch's been doing to her.”

  Moon said, “Probably looks at her and thinks the same thing you would.” He glanced up to see Bo Catlett showing his yellow-white teeth, grinning at him, and Moon thought of his mother telling him a long time ago why colored people had good, strong teeth: because they ate cold leftovers in the kitchen and couldn't afford to buy candy and things that weren't good for you.

&nbs
p; Outside, Moon raised his arm. He saw Loco stop about a hundred yards off: the Apache deciding how much he wanted water or if he could win a race if he turned and ran. He saw the roan horse behind coming up next to Loco-yes, blond hair stirring, the McKean girl. Then saw something he didn't expect: the girl twisting in her saddle and shoving the Apache hard with both hands, sending him off his horse to land hard and lie there a moment while the girl reached to unhitch the lead line for the Indian's saddle; and now she was kicking her roan out of there, not bothering to look back as Moon yelled at her, “Wait!…Hey, come on back!” Then turning, getting out of the way as he called to Bo, “Get her!”

  Bo Catlett came out of the door chute, chin pressed into the horse's mane, rose up in the yard and pressed down again as the horse cleared the four-foot adobe wall-Loco standing now, watching for a moment, then gathering his reins and coming on, not interested in the two horses racing across the pasture toward a haze of mountains.

  3

  They sat inside the doorway of the house with no furniture: Dana Moon and Loco with cups of sweet black coffee, the square of outside light between them on the earth floor. Bren Early came over from the fireplace where the coffee pot sat on a sheet of tin over the smoldering mesquite sticks. He stood looking out the window that was behind the Apache.

  Loco said in Spanish, “Tell him I don't like him there.”

  Moon looked up at Bren. “He asks you to join us.”

  “Tell him he smells.”

  Moon motioned to him. “Come on, be sociable.” To Loco he said in Spanish, “So, here we are.”

  Squatting down, Bren Early said, “Ask him, for Christ sake, what he did to the girl.”

  The Apache's one eye shifted. “Did to her? Did what?” he said in English.