Gunsights

“Are you interested in Bren?”

“Interested? You mean to marry?”

“Yes.”

“What's he got to offer? A wagon painted blue to look like a Conestoga, a string of horses…What else?”

“I wasn't thinking of what he owns.”

“He's full of himself.”

“He's got potential.”

“Who hasn't?”

“What's your dad think of him?”

“My dad says time's passed him by.”

“What's your dad do, whittle and say wise things?”

“He runs a cattle outfit and drives here twice a year,” the McKean girl said. “When I got home from Old Mexico he rode up to San Carlos to shoot that one-eyed Apache dead, but they'd already shipped him off to Indian Territory.”

“You have a deep fondness and respect for your old dad, haven't you?”

“He's the only one I got and he isn't that old.”

“Man that marries you has to measure up to him?”

“I'd be a fool to choose less, wouldn't I?”

“I got to meet this dad of yours,” Moon said.

“I'll fetch you in a buckboard,” the McKean girl said.

During his third week Moon went downriver to a cluster of adobes, the McKean homestead, and sat out under the ramada in the early evening with her dad. They discussed gunshot wounds, reservation Indians, cattle, graze and wild horses. After a little while McKean invited Moon to share some corn whiskey with little specks of charcoal in it.

“You want to marry my daughter?”

Maybe important decisions were made like any other. Without thinking too much. “Yes, I do.”

“I don't see what in the hell you got to give her.”

“Me,” Moon said.

“Well, you present more in person than any I've seen, including General Early; but what does she do, camp with your Mimbres and eat mule?”

“I'll think of a way,” Moon said.

The next day when the McKean girl came to visit, and before she could sit down, Moon pulled her to him, felt her hold back till he got her down on the bed, lying across it, felt a terrible pain in his wounded thigh from the exertion and sweat break out on his forehead.

She said, “How're you going to do it?”

He thought she meant perform the act of love. “Don't worry, it can be done.”

“You're go

“Oh,” Moon said.

“And settle someplace?”

Moon nodded solemnly and said, “I love you,” the first time in his life hearing the actual statement out loud.

“I hope so,” the McKean girl said. “We can kiss and you can touch me up here if you want, but that's all till I see what my future is.”

“It's a deal,” Moon said.

He never did make it to the whorehouse. In fact, he swore he would never visit one again as long as he lived.

4

Apache Pass Station: September, 1888

This trip Bren Early had taken a party from Chicago, three men and the wife of one of them, south of the Pass into the Chiricahua Mountains for mule deer and a look at some authentic Apache Indians. The eastern hunters remained in camp while Bren and Bo Catlett drove the blue wagon to Apache Pass to pick up whiskey and supplies shipped down in the stage from Willcox. Bren was happy to get away from his five-hundred-dollar party.

He was in the back of the wagon, yawning and stretching, waking up from a nap, as Bo Catlett pulled the team into the station yard, Bo yelling at the agent's three kids to get out of the way. There were riding horses in the corral and, on the bench in front of the adobe, three saddles where they usually kept the wash basins. An olla of water hung from the mesquite-pole awning. Going inside, Bo Catlett noticed the saddles.

Three men who looked to have been sleeping as well as traveling in their suits of clothes were playing cards at the near end of the long passenger table. Edgar Watson, the station agent, said, “Where's the Captain?”

Bo Catlett didn't answer him. One of the men at the table stood up and moved to the door to look out. Edgar Watson was at the window now. He said, “There he is.”

Looking past the man in the door, Bo Catlett could see Captain Early coming out of the wagon, climbing over the tailgate. The man in the doorway said to Edgar Watson, “Tell your kids to come inside.” The other two were also standing now, both holding rifles. A shotgun lay on the table.

Pretending not to notice anything, Bo Catlett said, “Mr. Watson, draw a glass of beer if you will, please.”

Edgar Watson, seeming bewildered, said a strange thing, considering what was going on in this close, low-ceilinged room. He said, “You know I can't serve you in here.”

Bo Catlett believed he was born in Arkansas or Missouri. He was liberated by Jayhawkers and, at age fifteen, joined the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteers at Camp Jim Lane in February, 1863; saw immediate combat against Rebel irregulars and Missouri bushwhackers and was wounded at Honey Springs in June of '63. He guarded Confederate prisoners at Rock Island; served with the Occupation at Galveston and saw picket duty on the Rio Grande before transferring to the Department of Arizona where he drew the 10th Cavalry, Fort Huachuca, as his last regimental home in a twenty-four-year Army career. Some white officer-before Bren Early's time-dubbed Benjamin Catlett the beau sabruer of the nigger outfit and that was how he'd gotten his nickname. Bo Catlett was mustered out not long after the Sonora Incident-which did not affect his record-and had been working for Captain Early Hunting Expeditions, Inc. almost a year now. He liked to hear Bren Early talk about the war because the Captain was like a history book, full of information about battles and who did what. It didn't matter the Captain was still a little seven-year-old boy when fifteen-year-old Bo Catlett was getting shot through the hip at Honey Springs, or that the Captain didn't get his commission till something like ten years after Appomattox Court House. The Captain knew his war. He told Bo Catlett that he had never objected to colored boys being in the Army or killing white men during the war. But he would admit with candor his disappointment at being assigned to the Colored 10th rather than the “Dandy 5th,” George Rosebud Crook's fighting outfit. No, the Captain had nothing against colored people.

There were sure some who did, though.

And there were some who had it in for the Captain, too.

Bren Early, standing by the tailgate of the wagon, wasn't wearing his revolvers. But as soon as he saw the three saddles on the wash bench and heard Edgar Watson call to his kids, Bren reached over the wagon gate, pulled his gunbelt toward him and was in that position, left arm inside, his fingers touching one of his revolvers, when the man's voice said, “We didn't expect you for a couple more days.”

Bren looked over his right shoulder at the three coming out from the adobe, two rifles, a shotgun in the middle, and said to himself, Shit. There wasn't any way to mistake their intention.

The man with the shotgun, wearing a hat, an old suit and no collar or tie, said, “I'm R.J. Baker.”

Bren Early waited. Yes? Why was that supposed to tell him anything? He said, “How do you do?” seeing Bo Catlett coming out of the adobe behind them: his dear friend and fellow cavalryman, the twenty-four-year seasoned campaigner he hoped to hell was at this moment armed to his teeth.

The man with the shotgun said, “It's time to even a score, you wavy-haired son of a bitch.”

Wavy-haired, Bren Early thought and said, “If you intend to try it, you better look around behind you.”

“God Almighty, you think I'm dumb!” the man named Baker said, as though it was the final insult. He jammed the shotgun to his shoulder; the barrels of the two rifles came up, metal flashing in the afternoon sunlight, and there was no way to stop them.

Edgar Watson, the station agent, had told his wife and children to stay in the kitchen. He heard the gunfire all at once, at least four or five shots exploding almost simultaneously. Edgar Watson rushed to the window by the bar and looked out to see the three cardplayers lying on the hardpack, Bren Early standing out by his wagon with a smoking revolver; then the colored man, Bo, who must have been just outside the house, walking out to look at the three on the ground.