Gunsights - Leonard Elmore John - Страница 36

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A man by the name of Gean was brought down in a two-wheel Mexican cart lying cramped in the box with his new straw hat on his chest, both legs shattered below the knees by a single .50-caliber bullet. He said he felt it, like a scythe had swiped off his legs, before he even heard the report; that's how far away the shooter was. He said he should never have left the railroad. If he ever went back he would be some yard bull, hobbling after tramps on his crutches, if the company doctor was able to save his legs.

The one who had guided the cart down out of the mountains was Maurice Dumas. The Chicago Kid was tired, dirty and irritable and did not say much that first day. He took Gean to the infirmary where there were all manner of crushed bones from mine and mill accidents, some healing, some turning black, lying there in a row of cots. It smelled terrible in the infirmary and the reporters who came to interview Gean handed him a bottle and asked only a few questions.

Had Sundeen found Moon?

Shit, no. It was the other way around.

Moon was carrying the fight now?

Teasing, pecking at Sundeen's flanks.

Was it Moon who shot him?

Get busted from five hundred yards, who's to say? But it's what he would tell his grandchildren. Yes, I was shot by Dana Moon himself back in the summer of '93 and lived to tell about it. Maybe.

How many men did Moon have?

A ghost band. Try and count them.

What about the Mexicans?

They'd come across women and children, ask them, Where they at? No savvy, mister. We'd burn the crops and move on.

And the colored?

The niggers? Same thing. Few Indin women and little wooly-headed breeds. Where's your old man at? Him gone. Him gone where? Me no know, be home by-'m-by. Shit, let's go. But it was at a nigger place the sniping had begun…riding off from the house after loading up with chuck and leading a steer…ba-wang, this rifle shot rang out, coming from, I believe, California, and we broke for cover. When we looked back, there was one of ours laying in the weeds. After it happened two times Sundeen had a fit, men getting picked off and all you could see up in the rocks was puffs of smoke. But he took care of that situation.

How did he do that?

Well, he took hostages so they wouldn't fire at us. I was walking up a grade toward a line shack, smoke wisping out the chimney, I got cut down and lay there looking at sky till one of your people found me and saved my life. Though I won't pay him a dime for that bed-wagon ride back here; I been sick ever since.

What else-how about Indians?

Shit, the only Indians he'd ever seen in his life was fort Indins and diggers. The ones rode for Moon were slick articles or wore invisible warpaint, for they had not laid eyes on a one.

The company doctor took off Gean's right leg. Gean said he could have done it back home under an El Paso & Southwestern freight car and saved the fare from New Mexico.

My, that Gean has the stuff, doesn't he? Tough old bird.

Maurice Dumas said to Bill Wells of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, “Everybody was so taken with his spunk, or anxious to get out of there, they didn't ask the right question.”

“About what?”

“The hostages. He said they took hostages, then started talking about how I found him and put him in the cart.”

“What about the hostages?”

“They shot them,” Maurice said.

He wasn't sure he was going to tell this until he did, sitting with Bill Wells in the New Alliance. Like one reporter confiding in another. What should I do? Should I reveal what happened or not?

Why not?, was the question, Bill Wells said. “Are you afraid of Sundeen?”

“Of course I am,” Maurice said.

“We have power, all of us together, that even the company wouldn't dare to buck,” Bill Wells said. It was a fact, though at the moment Bill Wells was glad they had come to this miners' saloon rather than mix with the crowd at the Gold Dollar. “Tell me what happened.”

Maybe Sundeen thought it would be an easy trip: march up there with his hooligans and run the people off their land, burn their homes and crops, scatter the herds-like Sherman marching to the sea. Sundeen did have an air about him at first, as though he knew what he was doing.

But there were not that many mountain people to run off. And how did you burn adobe except to blacken it up some? Tear down a house, the people would straggle back and build another. The thing Sundeen had to do was track down the leaders and deal with them face to face.

But how did you find people who did not leave a trail? Even the cold camps they did find were there to misdirect and throw them off the track. Sundeen's men began to spit and growl and Sundeen himself became more abusive in his speech, less confident in his air.

They had burned a field of new corn when one of Sundeen's tail-end riders was shot out of his saddle. The next day it happened again. One rifle shot, one dead.

Sundeen came to a Mexican goat farm early in the morning, tore through the house and barn, flushed assorted women and kids, ah!, and three grown men that brought a squinty light to Sundeen's eyes. He tried to question them in his Sonora-whorehouse Spanish-no doubt missing his old segundo-and even hit them some with leather gloves on, drawing blood. Where's Moon? No answer. Smack, he'd throw a fist into that impassive dark face and the man would be knocked to the ground. The women and children cried and carried on, but the three men never said a word. Sundeen tied their hands behind them and loaded them into that two-wheel cart with a mule to pull it and had them lead his column when he moved on.

But then, you see, he didn't draw any sniper fire and that seemed to aggravate him more than having his men picked off.

Soon after taking the hostages they woke up in the morning to find half their horses gone, disappeared from the picket rope. Sundeen sent riders to Sweetmary for a new string. They came back to report the story of the survey crew being hit.

It was in a high meadow facing a timbered slope and a little shack perched up in the rocks above that Sundeen, all of a sudden, reached the end of his skimpy patience. It was no doubt seeing the smoke coming out of the stovepipe. Somebody was up there, a quarter of a mile away. And he was sure they were in the timber also, in the deep pine shadows. There was not a sound when he began to yell.

“Moon! Come on out!…You and your boogers, Moon!…Let's get it done!”

His words echoed out there and faded to nothing.

Sundeen pulled the three Mexicans from the cart and told them to move out in the meadow, keep going, then yelled for them to stop when they were about forty yards off. They stood in the sun bareheaded, looking up at the timber and turning to look back at Sundeen who brought all his riders up along the edge of the meadow, spread out in a line.

He yelled now, “You see it, Moon?…Show yourself or we'll blow out their lights!”

Nothing moved in the pines. The only sound, a low moan of wind coming off the escarpment above.

The three men, bareheaded and in white, hands tied behind them, didn't know which way to face, to look at the silent trees or at the rifles pointed at them now.

“I've given him enough warning,” Sundeen said. “He's heard it, isn't that right? If he's got ears he heard it.” If he's up there, somebody said. “He's up there, I know he is,” Sundeen said. “Man's been watching us ten days, scared to come out. All right, I give him a chance, haven't I?” He looked up and yelled out once more, “Moon?” Waited a moment and said, “Shit…go ahead, fire.”

“And they killed them?”

Maurice nodded.

“But if he knew you were a witness-”

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