The Last Stand Read online

  She gave him a long slow look with those lovely dark eyes. “I ride Harleys, city boy. Desert riding. Big bumps, long jumps. Sick I don’t get.”

  Joe grunted. Harleys touched the ground. They rode over bumps. They never had the sky fall out from under them or got tossed almost upside down by a freakish windblast. He just said, “It’s different at altitude.” Then he climbed in the front cockpit, buckled down, set up for takeoff and when Pete was clear, he started the engine.

  The trim was set, the mags checked out okay, and he eased the throttle forward, revving up faster than usual. Until the wings took on lift he could feel the softness of the sand under the wheels, then, with a gentle touch of the stick, there was air under all of old 819 and she was back in the blue where she belonged, alone in the sky with not even a contrail from the great airliners to scar the perfect day.

  To check on his passenger, Joe tilted the mirror over the cowling. Running Fox wasn’t looking back. Her eyes were on the ground, reveling at the sight of miles of land, totally enjoying the expanse set before her. Her head went from side to side, looking in admiration at the place where she lived, the stark beauty of what so many others thought of as barren and uninhabitable.

  Banking into a slow turn, Joe let her see the world suddenly tilt, then rolled the plane into a tight one-eighty, pulling a couple of G’s. In the mirror, her expression was that of a kid on a roller coaster. No fear, no anticipation of sudden disaster, just wonderful fun that she never wanted to stop.

  Before he could take his eyes away, he saw her suddenly jerk her head, stare down a moment, then try to see behind her. Joe picked up the mike and touched the button. “You spot something?”

  Without speaking she pointed abruptly downward and Joe wheeled the plane around. He cut the speed, gradually retracing their route. Below, clumps of foliage cropped up like an unruly haircut and hillocks of sand made lumpy mounds that cast small shadows, but nothing was recognizable until Running Fox started to bang on the instrument cowling in front of her and pointed downward.

  Then Joe saw it. Legs. Arms. It looked as if it were a body cut in half. On the second, lower pass over the area he saw it was a body, all right, but blowing sand had covered the middle part of it. An even closer run over it showed an empty whiskey bottle in one protruding hand and when 819 thundered by, the hand jerked.

  Running Fox had the mike in her hand and was trying to talk, but Joe had to indicate to her to hold the speak button down. When she got the message, she blurted, “That’s Miner Moe down there! We have to get to him!”

  With a flick of his wrist, Joe put his mike back on the hook. Talking to her now would be useless. He wasn’t going to land in that sand. The only alternative was going back to the handmade runway and putting down there. He pulled up to a thousand feet, spotted his touchdown area, made an old-fashioned approach and set the BT 13 down in a perfect three-point landing.

  Running Fox unbuckled and jumped to the ground before Joe did. Her words, half English, half her native tongue, were unintelligible to him, but he got their significance. Both men tried to get her slowed down, then Pete held her by the shoulders, and said, “Hush!” His sister looked at him, startled a moment, then said, “Damn, I’m sorry.”

  “Okay, Sis, okay. Just quiet down and spell it out straight.”

  She took a deep breath and told him. “Miner Moe’s out there in the desert. He’s alive, we both saw him move, but he has a whiskey bottle with him, he’s out in the sun, and if he stays out there like that, he’ll be dead by sundown.”

  “How far?” Pete asked.

  “We can make it by truck in a half hour,” Joe said. “He’s at a heading of thirty degrees from here. From the air, it looked like it was all sand and the truck tires should handle it with no trouble.”

  “How about the plane?”

  “It stays right here. Who’s going to steal it anyway?”

  * * *

  Miner Moe was alive. Drunk and incoherent, but alive. His fingers had to be pried from the empty bottle and he could only mumble through sun-dried lips. He was limp when they lifted him into the bed of the pickup, wetted him down under the shade of an old tarp they had rigged up, ChapSticked his parched lips, and gave him a gentle massage while they tried to make sense of the fragmented words he was mouthing.

  Finally Pete said, “Hell, he’s swearing. Listen close. He’s cursing somebody out.”

  For a few seconds, Pete stopped wiping the sweat from the old man’s face. “Something’s wrong here.” He looked up at his sister. “I thought he was off this stuff.”

  “He was. He hadn’t had a drink for two years. When the doctor told him another binge could kill him, he went cold turkey. Nobody ever saw him take another drink after that.”

  “Somebody did,” Joe said.

  Pete’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Why?”

  “He have anything of value?” Joe asked him.

  “Nothing worth killing him for,” Pete said. His frown deepened. “But this is a heck of a way of doing it, isn’t it? Moe wouldn’t wander around the desert all alone. Hell, he always had his horse with him.”

  Joe said, “I remember an Indian feller whose horse left him alone out here. Young guy, too.”

  Pete let out a grunt, then said, “Moe’s horse never would have left him. Those two were practically married.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “If they got Moe really plastered they could have dumped him way out here to die. You’d find an empty bottle and that would be all. Miner Moe just went out the way he used to live.”

  Running Fox reached out and felt Miner Moe’s pulse and gave a nod of satisfaction. “Which brings us back to the original question.” She glanced up at the two men. “Why?”

  “Could he have found some more of those gold artifacts?” her brother asked.

  “The penalty for murder is still pretty steep for a few chunks of metal.”

  “Didn’t he seem to have a line on how that stuff got here?” Joe asked. “He wasn’t a newcomer to the desert scene and he’d know enough to keep his mouth shut if he found anything valuable enough to get killed for.”

  Running Fox suddenly held up her hand. “That’s the answer, White-eyes,” she said quietly.

  Both men looked at her and she ran her fingers over Miner Moe’s mouth, separating his fiercely chapped lips. They were both bruised and cut, but the wounds had dried. Blood still stained his teeth and the gums around his lower incisors were torn and one tooth was loose in its socket.

  “Moe didn’t drink that rotgut,” she told them. “Somebody forced a bottle in his mouth and made him swallow it. It didn’t take much to work his body up to a total alcoholic stage and he was absolutely helpless.” She paused, flipped an eyelid up and felt his pulse again. “We got him just in time.”

  “How long you think he has been out here?” Joe asked her.

  “Hours,” Running Fox said. “It wouldn’t be the sun that would kill him. He was pretty well suntanned up. It was the booze that would do it. He’d lie there and choke on his own vomit. Nobody would ever call it murder.”

  “There’s got to be tracks where they left him,” Joe said.

  “Not the way this sand blows around,” Pete said. “See any tracks from our truck?”

  Both of them looked out the way they had come. Only the faintest tire marks were visible.

  “They got a good start on us,” Pete said.

  “Uh-huh,” Joe agreed. “But they don’t know they dropped him right in our laps. You suppose we ought to keep him hidden?”

  Running Fox cut in. “We need to get him to a doctor. Let’s get Moe over to Mama White Bird’s house where he stays, get someone to look at him.”

  “Harry Hamilton always comes in for the big shebang,” Pete said.

  “He’ll do,” Running Fox said.

  * * *

  For two hours Sequoia Pete kept the pickup’s speed as high as the terrain would permit. They came on a well-tracked area t
hen and followed the old worn path of other vehicles and pack animals; they even spotted the bootmarks of the lone hunters who were always scouring the desert, hunters looking for anything that could be turned into a souvenir.

  In the bed of the pickup Miner Moe twitched, made some gurgling sounds and Running Fox wetted his lips again. His hands, crossed over his stomach, knotted and came free, then drooped uselessly. Joe’s eyes met hers and he said, “He’s in a bad way.”

  She nodded, her face taut with worry. “Somebody tried to murder him. Somebody knew how he was and deliberately tried to kill him.”

  “Who knew about his condition, Fox?”

  She shrugged. “Everybody.” She lowered her head for a moment, then looked up at Joe again. “Alcoholism is one hell of a sickness on the rez. Civilization took away everything we own and gave little back.”

  “You and Pete are doing okay,” Joe reminded her.

  “There are always exceptions,” she said. “Not everybody gets caught in the booze trap. Some of us wise up and walk a straight path. We own property and have bank accounts. We have educations and can drive the slickers who try to beat us out of our property right up the wall.”

  Joe gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “What’s really going on here, Fox?”

  She gave him a half-shrug and said, “I don’t know. I can feel it, that’s all.”

  “You feel something but you won’t talk about it?”

  Her tongue wet her lips and a slight scowl touched her brows. “I could be wrong.”

  “There’s a nearly dead man in the truck here, Running Fox. He’s an old man who can use all the help he can get. What about him?”

  Very slowly, her eyes drifted up to his. They were clear and determined, not misty but stark with thought, and she said, “Something’s definitely going on.”

  “I figured that,” Joe told her, “but what?”

  “What makes the world go ’round?”

  Joe didn’t have to think about that.

  “Money,” he said.

  * * *

  Mama White Bird was one big Indian. She stood about five ten, was built like a wrestler and weighed close to two hundred pounds, but had a face that belied the fierceness you might expect. She picked Miner Moe from Joe’s arms like he was a baby and nodded for the others to follow her into the house. Unlike the other buildings on the rez, Mama White Bird’s home was as orderly and clean as a Good Housekeeping advertisement. The only odd part was that it had an astringent odor and one bedroom painted creamy white with a pair of hospital beds at either end.

  Joe had a quizzical expression. Running Fox said, “Mama White Bird is a registered nurse.”

  “And Miner Moe stays here with her?”

  Running Fox nodded. “Eight years ago Moe kept her from being robbed by a couple of punks from outside. One had a gun.”

  “What happened?”

  “Moe jumped in front of Mama and took the shot. Damn near killed him. But Moe had a snake-gun in his boot, pulled it and hit the punk. The rez police came in and nailed them. Mama took Moe home and wouldn’t let him leave until he was well and sobered up. He came back whenever the booze got too much for him.”

  Pete used the phone in the house to put a call in to Harry Hamilton, and just a few minutes later Hamilton’s car skidded to a stop outside the house, sending up a cloud of dust that made Mama White Bird shake her head. The doctor was a weather-beaten desert type in a big sombrero and well-worn boots and if he weren’t carrying an old, worn medical bag, he would have looked like some beat-up cowhand.

  With a nod of her head, Mama White Bird indicated the sole hospital room and they went in together and closed the door.

  It took an hour before Harry Hamilton came out of the room. Through the open door Joe saw Mama White Bird bending over the bed, tenderly covering up Miner Moe with a woven blanket.

  Before being asked, the doctor said, “He’ll come out of this one all right, but one more battle with the bottle and Moe’s going to be looking for a six-foot fall. His insides are real shaky.”

  “Is it okay for him to stay here?” Running Fox asked him.

  “Mama won’t let him out of her sight for at least two days. Let him sober up and he’ll be back on the sand again.”

  “Think he’ll ever sober up?”

  “You see his mouth?”

  Running Fox gave Joe a glance before she nodded.

  “He didn’t get drunk because he wanted to,” the doctor told her.

  “We noticed it,” she told him.

  “Who’d want him dead?” the doctor asked them. “Hell, he hasn’t got any money.” Neither spoke and the doctor’s eye narrowed. “So he knows something,” he mused, then added, “or somebody thinks he knows something, and around here that can only be one big piss pot of loot.”

  “They think,” Joe said.

  “You know anything about this?” the doctor asked sharply.

  “I just got in,” Joe replied.

  “Staying around long, sonny?”

  Joe’s eyes barely flicked toward Running Fox, but she saw it and heard him when he said, “That all depends.”

  When Mama White Bird closed the door behind the doctor, she said, “Moe is under sedation and he’ll be sleeping for a good ten hours or so. I’ll make sure nobody comes near him. Now, can you tell me what the hell is happening on this rez?”

  After a quiet moment, Running Fox said softly, “Trouble, Mama.”

  “It’s got to be about gold,” Mama said. Neither of the pair said a word. “It’s about those damned gold feet, right?”

  “Sort of,” Running Fox said.

  Nobody had to go any further. The unspoken word was as loud as a lion’s roar. Mama White Bird simply nodded knowingly, then looked at Joe Gillian and asked very matter-of-factly, “You the one Big Arms is going to kill at the powwow?”

  Joe didn’t know why he smiled but he did and very stoically said, “No way, ma’am.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Pussycats don’t kill tigers,” he told her.

  * * *

  On the way to the pickup Sequoia Pete nudged Joe and said sarcastically, “Tiger!” He shook his head. “You’d better act like a greyhound.”

  “Why?”

  “When word gets out you called him a pussycat you’ll need to run fast.”

  “Who’s going to tell him?”

  “There were two heads outside the open window in there, pal.”

  Joe said quietly, “Great.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “A horse,” Joe said.

  Pete gave him an exasperated side glance and shook his head. “Man, you planning to ride off this rez? You think…”

  “I’m thinking about Miner Moe’s horse, pal. There weren’t any tracks around where we found him.”

  “The wind would have covered…”

  “Bullshit,” Joe said. “That was Moe’s horse. He had him a long time, didn’t he?”

  “Maybe ten years,” Pete replied.

  “You think that horse would have just left him there in the desert?”

  After a moment’s thought Pete shook his head. “Hell no,” he said. “That old nag was like a dog, always at Moe’s heels. When Moe walked, the horse would nudge him along if he stopped at all. One time…”

  “Where would the horse be, Pete?”

  “Only one place he could be, if he’s not with Moe: out at Long Weed’s place on the other side of town. Old Long Weed and Moe are two of a kind, borrow from each other, share a hogan, grubstake each other. A couple of loners enjoying this earth.”

  “Let’s take a look.”

  “Man, you don’t want to go through town, flyboy. Old Big Arms will get the word and won’t be waiting for the powwow to nail you, and believe me, you won’t be pulling any smart stuff on him again.”

  “I got you to back me up, haven’t I?”

  “Man, I’m an Indian. You White-eyes. You scalpable. You think I want to get squa
shed on your account?”

  * * *

  A new trailer park had sprung up on the east side of town. Only one old sedan stuck out among the collection of pickup trucks. All seemed to be the same color—desert dust. Festivities hadn’t started formally yet, but a few groups were having a happy time around a big tub that shimmered and sparkled in the sunlight.

  “Beer party,” Pete muttered.

  “Where’d they get the ice?”

  “Boy, you big city types think we’re really uncivilized out here, don’t you?”

  “So where’d they get the ice?”

  “Billy Sheepherder’s got an icemaker in the back of his store. Now don’t be a wise guy and ask where the utility poles are… Billy has a gasoline engine that operates a generator.”

  A pair of almost-teenagers saw the two of them and although their expressions said nothing, the curiosity in their eyes was plain enough. There was neither surprise nor derision there, but interest in the courage that would enable an outsider to come so calmly to his gravesite. Big Arms’ reputation had been well established and though the outcome of a clash between this white-eyes and their champion was a forgone conclusion, silent applause had to be given for the courage that was being displayed.

  Pete said, “You’re a cooked goose now, partner.”

  “He’s got to kill me before he cooks me buddy.”

  Pete turned his head and stared at his friend. “You know, you’re nuts.”

  “Thanks for the confidence.”

  “No, I mean that. You are plain, stinking nuts, flyboy. You are walking straight into a bear trap, you know it’s there, you don’t pay any attention to it at all and you’re not even scared.”

  “The hell I’m not.”

  “Yeah? What are you scared of?”

  “Of Big Arms not showing up.”

  A couple of teenagers rode by, their horses churning up a cloud of dust, and Joe let the cloud settle before continuing down the street. The crowd was still coming in, no shouting or jostling, simply small groups, men in one, women in another. Children herded by their mothers and the older ones forming teenage cliques, boys acting out their roles in front of girls.