down by Muddy Creek, show ’em some country, maybe find a bull elk or some muley, and check the herd down that way—my line rider quit two weeks back—let ’em push a few dogies, then bring ’em back here and we’ll send ’em back to the U.P. depot with their ear-splittin’, putrefyin’ horseless carriages. Give you some time in the open country. Got to beat muckin’ stalls. Do a good job, maybe I’ll let you be my line rider down yonder.”
With a final spit, the foreman held out his hand.
Sighing, Garrett clasped the extended hand, knowing he should have quit, knowing he was making a mistake.
He just didn’t know how big.
Jason C. Hughes, Seth-Thomas-Like-The-Watch-Company, and the two other dudes—one named Todd and the other Abraham, although Garrett couldn’t remember which was which—were advertising a leather shop in their chaps, brand-spanking-new boots, dressed like they had stepped off the cover of one of those dime novels. Sam and the wrangler had put the boys on the gentlest horses the Aurora had, and then sent Garrett, pulling a pack mule, toward Muddy Creek.
“Bring ’em back in a week,” Sam Cahill had instructed him, and with a wink added, “and try to bring ’em back alive.”
He kept the pace easy, pointing out a golden eagle, some curious coyotes, and letting the dudes chase after a handful of mustangs. At dusk, he watered and grained the livestock, boiled the coffee and fried the bacon, and even scrubbed the dishes while Abraham, or maybe it was Todd, fetched a flask from his saddlebags, and the dudes started drinking.
“Ever seen anything like this?” Jason C. Hughes asked.
“I’d be obliged,” Garrett said, “if you wouldn’t point that rifle in my direction.”
Hughes laughed. “It ain’t loaded.” He swung the barrel toward Seth Thomas and pulled the trigger. It clicked loudly. “You’re dead, Seth,” he said, and all the boys laughed.
He held the rifle up to show Garrett, worked the bolt, and laughed. “It’s brand-spanking new, old man. A Mauser, and I got the scope sighted in, so I’ll be able to drop an elk from more than a thousand yards. Dumb animal’ll never know what killed it.”
“That’s mighty sporting of you,” Garrett said.
“What’s that on your hip, Garrett?”
“An old Colt.”
“Old?” Todd or Abraham sniggered, pulling one of those newfangled hammerless automatic pistols from a holster. “That’s an understatement. This is what a Colt looks like now.”
“You learn that from The Virginian?” Garrett said. “Thought you boys wanted to live the West. We don’t carry toys like that in this country.”
That seemed to shut them up, and he poured a cup of coffee for himself, wishing he had thought to have brought along a flask. Six more days, he thought.
By the third day, he had had enough.
When Jason C. Hughes aimed the Mauser at the pack mule, Garrett charged across the camp, jerked the rifle from the New Yorker’s grasp, and heaved it into the arroyo. He wanted to scream at the kid, to tell him he had warned him about pointing it, that all weapons should be considered loaded, and that he wouldn’t tolerate this foolishness anymore. Yet all he could do was put both hands on his knees and try to catch his breath. The effort pained him more than getting dusted by a horse.
“You crazy old man!” Jason C. Hughes leaped to his feet, scrambling into the arroyo, kicking up red dust. “Do you know how much money that Mauser cost my father?”
As he filled his lungs, a shadow crossed over him. “Better watch yourself, old-timer,” a voice told him. “We don’t want you to keel over from a heart attack.”
Garrett instantly straightened, and smashed Todd’s nose. Or maybe it was Abraham’s.
A second later, the gunshot ripped through the camp, echoing across the countryside, and Garrett lay on his back, spread-eagled, thinking how this was a bitter end to sixty-five years. Killed by a bunch of greenhorns in the middle of nowhere for a miserable job that paid him thirty a month and found, the same wages he had drawn forty years earlier, only back then he had worked with and for men he had liked.
“Criminy, Abraham, put that thing away!”
“Hey, what’s all that shooting?”
“Abraham has killed the old fart! Fool almost broke my nose!”
The mule screamed, and hoofs stomped. More voices, but Garrett couldn’t understand the words.
Seth Thomas knelt over him, his face ashen, lips trembling.
Garrett flexed the fingers on his right hand, blinked, moved the hand and placed it on his chest. He felt blood leaking down his side, then slid a finger into the vest pocket, pulling out the shattered remains of the Aurora watch. Slowly, he sat up.
“He isn’t dead!” one of the dudes screamed in a nasal voice.
Garrett looked across the camp. Abraham sat on his bedroll, mouth open in surprise, the Colt automatic on the ground beside his boots. Todd stood over his friend, holding a rag against his bloody nose. Well, now he could tell those two apart. Jason C. Hughes had climbed out of the arroyo and wiped the dust off the Mauser with a handkerchief, more concerned about his rifle than Garrett’s health.
“You all right?” Seth Thomas asked.
He nodded. The .25-caliber slug had smashed the watch, then cut a nick across a rib before it spent off somewhere. The wound wasn’t much, although he’d have a hell of a bruise come morning. He smelled whiskey, realized Seth Thomas had unscrewed a flask and was offering him a drink, which Garrett accepted.
After pulling himself to his feet, he forced himself to walk over to Todd and Abraham, and just stood there, right hand on the butt of his old Colt. He kicked the automatic pistol into a clump of cheap grass. “Last person who shot at me got killed,” Garrett said.
Abraham swallowed. “It just went off. I didn’t mean—”
“That’s why I warned y’all about not pointing them things.”
“Old man,” Jason C. Hughes said, “you attacked Todd. Abraham was protecting our friend. Thought you had gone crazy.”
What he wanted to do was draw his .44, but he kept thinking about Sam Cahill, and kept remembering how cold winter got in Wyoming, how the bunkhouse stayed pretty warm, and that he needed a job. Criminy, it was an accident. The dude didn’t mean to shoot him, had just been scared. Let it go. Give you something to laugh about during the long winter. Then Seth Thomas’s voice sounded.
“My lord…you’re Lin Garrett, the famous Arizona lawman.”
He fingered the circular piece of tarnished silver, now punctured by a .25-caliber bullet, and could barely make out his name. He could see far just fine, but close-up, well, that was another story.
To Marshal Lin Garrett
From the People of Flagstaff, A.T.
The
