Moon of Cobre (A William R. Cox Western Classic Book 1) Read online

  “I tell you, New York’s the place,” said a red-haired infantryman.

  “Chicago,” said a horse soldier. “Crap on New York.”

  “New York,” said the redhead and aimed a punch at his companion.

  Hancock reached out and caught them each by the collar and brought them sharply together. They cried out in pain and struggled, trying to kick at him. He rammed their skulls against the wall of the law offices until they were babbling incoherently for mercy. He turned them loose and said, a bit out of breath, “Dammit, get back to the fort. It’s too early to be drunk in Cobre, don’t you know that?”

  They cursed him in an undertone, but made for their horses at the nearby rack. He waited until they had, with some difficulty, mounted and started on the east road to Bayard, then he went across Buxton Street, thought of entering the elaborate establishment of Jim Madison, booze, gambling and rooms upstairs, very fancy, the best place in town, decided against it. He had already decided not to go down the alley past Madison’s to Mrs. Jay’s to speak about the girls. He went instead into the livery stable and blacksmith shop of Jeb Truman.

  The wide, bushy-bearded smithy was hammering on an anvil, shaping the ends of a broken whiffletree. It was off a Candlestick wagon which waited lopsided in the yard. Young Neddy Truman, the spittin’ image of his father, waved a hand and his father stopped pounding.

  Hancock said, “I’d like for Neddy to spell me a while. I got to ride out, thought I’d take your buckboard.”

  “You want the roan?” asked Neddy. “He’s rested.”

  “The roan’ll be fine,” said Hancock and the boy went to hitch up the rig.

  Jeb Truman said, “Nice day, Marshal.”

  “It is that.”

  “People still ravin’ about the rails?”

  “Some people.”

  “I got some land on the right o’way, too,” said Truman. “But I dunno. This hell hole of a town, you think the railroad people will come through here?”

  “No more of a hole than Centro,” said Hancock. “It’s six of one, half dozen of t’other.”

  “Them hoors,” said Truman. “I keep tellin’ Neddy, I catch him with them hoors again I’ll kill him.”

  “You just happen to live near them. Why don’t you build over on School Street or some place?”

  “I got my business here, I live here.” Truman was dogged. “Let them hoors move.”

  It was true that the Truman property ran from Buxton through to the short block, Texas Street, which alone separated him from Mrs. Jay’s place. His dwelling was only one empty lot removed from the palace of joy. From thence, Maine Street did an oblique turn to the Mexican section of Cobre. It was the north end of the town, far removed from the more elite establishments of the south end and Jeb Truman was ever bitter about this, feeling himself looked down upon by the banker, the butcher and the candlestick-maker.

  “Jeb, you’re a good man,” Hancock told him. “But you are as stubborn as your best mule. Either you live with your business or you move to the other side of town and live like you think you want to live.”

  “That’s what Ma keeps saying. I swan, you and Ma and Neddy. All alike. Can’t see things. I was here first, wasn’t I? Why can’t the damn hoors move?”

  “They don’t want them on the other side of town, not any more than you want them here.”

  Truman said, “Raisin’ tarnation hell all night. Howlin’ and paradin’ past the windows nekkid.”

  “Keep your shades drawn.” This was an old story, Hancock had been through it many times.

  “Let them keep their damn shades drawed,” roared Jeb. Behind him his son made signs, the rig was ready.

  Hancock said, “Jeb, I do believe you stay up nights peekin’ out your window just to see what’s goin’ on at Mrs. Jay’s.”

  He ducked the swing of Truman’s maul and skipped outdoors, laughing. The smithy was half in earnest, half in jest, he knew. The son was a goodhearted, good-natured, healthy boy of twenty, strong as two oxen. They got into the buckboard and drove back to the marshal’s office through increasing traffic.

  Neddy said, “Good thing Pop didn’t ask about who you got in the hoosegow or he wouldn’t’ve let me come.”

  Hancock dug in his pocket for keys. “See you don’t get caught in the cell with them, now. I’m trustin’ you.”

  “Oh, I won’t get caught,” said Neddy. “And I do thank you for the chance—I mean the job.”

  “The town pays for deputies when I need them,” said Hancock. “Don’t thank me—and make damn sure you’re not caught.”

  He waited until Neddy brought him a rifle and his gun belt and some ammunition, which he put on the seat alongside him. The buckboard was a special, well braced and springy contraption, comfortable on the open road. He drove down to Broadway at the south end of town, turned west to the courthouse at the head of the avenue, then south again on Gary Road. There were mountains all about him, the ever-changing, ever-present clouds formed a brave series of shapes and pictures for his delight. The grama grass grew belly-high on the plain. This was a wide valley or a high plain, whichever one chose to consider it. Cattle grazed within a mile of town, but to the southwest were copper and silver mines. It was conglomerate country, even the Apaches were whimsical, sometimes quiet enough, biding their time before again coming out to devastate unwary outlying habitations. It was strong and rough and beautiful country, poppies growing wild along the edges of the road, mesquite intermingling with green grass, yucca standing high in scattered array like a broken battalion in a war scene.

  This was Candlestick, but just prior to reaching its border were the plots Hancock owned. He had bought them on a tip, a strip of them, one acre wide, and those he could not swing himself he had purchased in the name of Luke Post, who had sent the money posthaste. He could see them from the road and he lifted a hand in fond salute.

  A career on the frontier plying his trade of lawman had brought him little. He was thirty-five and it was time to think of settling down. It was time either to go the way of others he had known, shooting and drinking and whoring, or to marry and raise a family. It came to that.

  He had been a boy in Texas, a drover with Luke Post, going up the trail to Kansas in the earlier days, learning what could be learned from the rough men and the good men and the medium men. Luke had taken to cards and made it big in Denver. Hancock had taken to lawing in Dodge for a while, then the other places as the rails came, making westward, shuffling the cattle business, watching over the cowboy towns to their little deaths. He had gone back to Texas, always moving when the commerce came in and the solid citizens took over. Now he had come to leaving his guns in the office, walking the street like the patrolmen he had seen on his one big bust in New York with Luke.

  This was the way of Cobre, founded on cattle and mining, struggling to be a respectable rail center. The railroad would mean the end of the rough stuff, the end of Ching Hoo and possibly of Mrs. Jay and certainly of such as Jed Buxton and the wild bunch of riders who worked Candlestick. The miles of Buxton fence, starting here south of Hancock’s property, would not be affected, Matt Buxton’s beef would simply be driven to town instead of to the railhead. Not that Matt Buxton worried, he no longer had to fret about money. Matt’s fence stretched for twelve miles along the Gary Trail, Matt’s cows were fat and sassy, Matt himself was fat and sassy.

  Well, Hancock would have money also when the rails came. The Judge and Banker Clark and Abe Getz and all the rest were planning on the railroad, it was as good as built right into Cobre. If the situation just remained normal so that the big-money people could retain their trust in the town’s future, everything would be all right.

  The horse slowed down for a steep grade. Hancock let the reins loose, stretched his legs. It was a good country to settle in, he thought. He had been born in the Southwest, he knew it all, the desert, the mountains, the high plains. He was part of it and it was part of him. Everyone knew him despite his long absences, he was Pa
t Hancock’s son, one of the old families. Even the new people, the farmers and bankers and storekeepers and mining people, knew that Pat Hancock had been killed by Cochise’s Apaches, some said by Cochise himself, as if that was a big honor.

  There was a chance he might run for sheriff. Elias Buchanan was getting old and had never been a real town buster. Buck was a politician, first and last, and the meeting to which Hancock was now making his way was political. The old sheriff had a lot of things on his mind, mainly, as everyone else, the railroad.

  At the top of the rise the ground was rocky, with the poppies defying the stony soil and the yucca brave but scarce. Two miles south was the swinging gate to Candlestick, where the meeting was to be held. There was a break in the barbed wire just below the promontory on which Hancock pulled in to blow the hired horse.

  Hancock reached for his gun belt, donned it. The cut ends of the wire were shiny, brand-new. They had been made not long ago. There were tracks, also fresh and new.

  He pulled the buckboard off the road and tied it to a sapling. He took the rifle and crossed to the break in the fence. He hunkered down and examined the tracks.

  There were three ponies, unshod. Then there was a horse, a big animal with a broken shoe on its left front hoof. It was plain enough that three Apaches were stalking Candlestick beef. It happened all the time, it had nothing to do with warfare on a large scale, the braves were hungry and their women wanted meat for a stew.

  If it had not been for the track of the horse he might have gone to the ranch for help. If he had good sense, he thought, he would do that right now. But the big horse was probably ridden by a white man and since Sheriff Buchanan was expected for the conference at Candlestick it might well be he who had chased in after the Apaches.

  Hancock debated, walking in the tracks. There was a rocky knoll of some height to his right. He climbed it, careful of the way he went, avoiding loose stones. A yucca grew bravely and there was some sparse buffalo grass atop the little hill. The pasture was beyond but he could not get a view of it. He was obliged to go farther to see what was going on. The silence was oppressive, he began to sweat, knowing Apaches, knowing the aging, somewhat clumsy sheriff.

  It would have been better to let the Indians take the beef. Matt Buxton could well spare a steer or two. They needed it or they would not have come in this close—or they were young braves daring each other, making a brave deed of their thieving.

  There were people, maybe a majority of people, who claimed the Apaches were not human, that they were varmints to be extinguished before the country could be safe. It was true that they were “The People” and would not meekly surrender no matter how chivvied and oppressed by the military, indeed often turned to whip a troop to bits. They would have to be decimated and chained and guarded before it was all over and even then, he thought, it would be no cinch to keep them in order. But, after all, this had been their land. He had sympathy for them.

  He came down off the knoll and just then there was the flat crack of a gun and then a yell which was half a moan. Hancock ran back up the hill, the sweat now pouring from him, his ears aching with the sounds he knew were coming. It was Buchanan, all right, by the voice. The high, keening scream could be the sheriff also, as the Apaches closed in on their wounded prey.

  There was no use going in alone and on foot. It was too late, Hancock knew very well. He levered a shell into place and took out his revolver and placed it beside him on the hilltop in case the Remington should jam. He heard the scream again, but the Apaches were in a hurry and the torture would not be prolonged.

  After a while the three of them came down around the hill, riding slowly, defiantly, slaughtered beef in coarse sacks across the rumps of their ponies. They were very young. One of them yipped and waved a bloody piece of hair. Another gave their peculiar, keening war cry. The one in the lead was grinning; he was scarcely more than a boy.

  Hancock shot the boy through the body. Then he threw down on the second rider, the one with Buchanan’s scalp. The Apache fell over backward, slid down the tail of the pony, which bolted. The third got off a shot from an old musket. Hancock felt the wind of it as he shot the Indian point-blank, through the left side of the chest.

  The first Indian was trying to crawl to where his rifle lay. He had a knife in his hand. Blood streamed from his belly but he still crawled. Hancock shot him through the head.

  “Settin’ ducks,” he muttered, wiping away the sweat. “A hell of a thing. Like shootin’ fish in a barrel.”

  Still, there was the sheriff. He scrambled down from the promontory and went past the Indians, cautious, making sure all were dead, knowing how hard they died in battle. There was another slope, which had cut off his view of the meadow. The grass was so high that the bellies of the cattle were hidden by it. Flies buzzed and a buzzard circled.

  They always knew, the black birds, he thought, picking up the tracks again and following through the thick, tall grass. They were on the spot as soon as the deed was done. They were circling to pick out the initial repast of what promised to be a great day for buzzards.

  The big horse was munching at roots. Buchanan lay stretched out on his back. He had worn his hair bushy and thick and now he was bloody-bald.

  They had hit him in the shoulder to knock him off the old roan horse. Then they had stuck an arrow in each eye and sliced away at his testicles and then they had scalped him. Buchanan was not young, he had probably died quickly, before he knew all that happened, Hancock hoped. The Apaches were young and they had their beef and they were in a hurry or it would have been worse.

  There was nothing more he could do. He went back along the way he had come. He walked past the dead Indians to the road. He felt old and weary. He untied the horse and snapped the reins and drove on to the gate over which the Candlestick brand was simulated on a weathered signboard. He drove up the well-worn road to the main house. He was still sweating and the inside of his mouth was dry.

  Matt Buxton had built the best and biggest and most comfortable ranch house in New Mexico, or at least he so boasted, for his wife Virgie. The couple were childless. The house was a byword in the entire Southwest. Brick had been brought from rail’s end, fine glass from San Francisco, tile from Mexico. It was Spanish style, with the patio in the center, two stories high, with a cheerful red roof. Instead of palmetto there were pines from the high plains.

  Beyond was the bunkhouse, in the same fashion, but Spartan, as befitted the station of the riders, and indeed exceeding their fondest desires, since running water was provided from the stream that ran burbling all the way from the Gila River to the west. Even Matt Buxton’s tough home guard appreciated running water, Hancock knew.

  The stable was imposing, unlike most ranch barns, a place to store hay for the Morgans and other fine horses, a place for milch cows, and nearby a pen for hogs and a whitewashed chicken house. One of Matt’s favorite penalties for disobedience was to set his hands to work cleaning that chicken run. The corral was close at hand and it was here that action was taking place as Hancock drew rein and descended, his knees, annoyingly, buckling a little as he moved toward the imposing, bulky figure of the owner of Candlestick.

  The men were yelling, and beyond the spectators and the rail fence Jed Buxton could be seen, atop a bucking, flailing young buckskin, a wild one, it appeared. Jed was high-waisted and wide-shouldered, he took after his mother, and he could twist a bronc with the best of them, Hancock conceded—which was about all he was good for.

  The home guard lined the fence, ordinary enough cowboys, made tough mainly because Matt was tough and Jed was mean; Kit Larson, Dave Pitts, Muley Ward and Sandy Farr. These were what some people believed to be the guns of Candlestick, although they had other titles and indeed Larson was foreman of the ranch, a rawboned man of great physical strength and tenaciousness of character. All were loyal first to Matt, then to the brother. Now they were howling encouragement to the buckskin, in the fashion of the time and place, maligning the rider. Matt paus
ed, staring at Hancock; a fat man, of medium height, with a strong jaw and narrow eyes and long apelike arms ending in huge hands.

  “You seen a ghost, Ben?”

  Hancock said, “Worse.”

  “Better come in and have one.” Matt turned, leading the way through a gate and then through his office and into the patio, where it was cool and water tinkled and the Chinaman named Hip Toy was smiling and producing, as though by magic, a tray with a bottle and fine glasses from some place in Europe. Hancock remembered the architect who had done all this at Matt’s behest, a slim man from Philadelphia, who spoke with a slight lisp but seemed to know all the good things, the material things to make a rich man feel secure in his castle.

  They sat at a tiled table and Matt, always sensitive, asked quietly, “Something real bad?”

  “Over on your west meadow,” said Hancock. He took a drink of the good liquor. “Gettin’ old, Matt. Haven’t seen a dead friend in too long, maybe. Three ’Paches got one of your steers—and Elias.”

  “Buchanan?” Matt’s eyebrows shot up toward his lowering hairline. “What the hell?”

  “Yes, what the hell? Buck didn’t have any sense, we know that. Thought Indians were dumb animals. He went in after them and they stuck arrows in his eyes for luck.”

  “The bastards.” Matt waited, expectant but not questioning.

  “I was a few minutes too late. Reckon that’s what is bothering me. Just a couple minutes, maybe not that if I’d gone dumb-head into the pasture. Took high gun on ’em.”

  “How many?”

  “Only three.”

  “You got ’em?”

  “There’s a mess in your field,” said Hancock. “Better get it cleaned up, there’s buzzards already.”

  “Hip Toy,” said Matt, not taking his eyes from Hancock. “Send the boys with a wagon and some shovels to the south pasture. Bury the Injuns, bring in the sheriff.”

  Hancock took another drink. “Damn, it made me sick. Things have been so quiet, a man forgets how it was. Damn Buck for going in there alone.”