Elmore Leonard: Gunsights

Outside, Moon raised his arm. He saw Loco stop about a hundred yards off: the Apache deciding how much he wanted water or if he could win a race if he turned and ran. He saw the roan horse behind coming up next to Loco-yes, blond hair stirring, the McKean girl. Then saw something he didn't expect: the girl twisting in her saddle and shoving the Apache hard with both hands, sending him off his horse to land hard and lie there a moment while the girl reached to unhitch the lead line for the Indian's saddle; and now she was kicking her roan out of there, not bothering to look back as Moon yelled at her, “Wait!…Hey, come on back!” Then turning, getting out of the way as he called to Bo, “Get her!”

Bo Catlett came out of the door chute, chin pressed into the horse's mane, rose up in the yard and pressed down again as the horse cleared the four-foot adobe wall-Loco standing now, watching for a moment, then gathering his reins and coming on, not interested in the two horses racing across the pasture toward a haze of mountains.

They sat inside the doorway of the house with no furniture: Dana Moon and Loco with cups of sweet black coffee, the square of outside light between them on the earth floor. Bren Early came over from the fireplace where the coffee pot sat on a sheet of tin over the smoldering mesquite sticks. He stood looking out the window that was behind the Apache.

Loco said in Spanish, “Tell him I don't like him there.”

Moon looked up at Bren. “He asks you to join us.”

“Tell him he smells.”

Moon motioned to him. “Come on, be sociable.” To Loco he said in Spanish, “So, here we are.”

Squatting down, Bren Early said, “Ask him, for Christ sake, what he did to the girl.”

The Apache's one eye shifted. “Did to her? Did what?” he said in English.

“Is she all right?” asked Moon.

“She needs to be beaten,” the Apache said. “Maybe cut off the end of her nose.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bren Early said. He got up and stepped to the window again.

“He speaks of Hey-soo Cristo.” The Apache paused and said, using Spanish again, “What is the matter he can't sit down?”

“He wants to do battle,” Moon said.

The Apache stretched open his one eye, raising his brow as if to shrug. “Wouldn't it be good if we could have what we want? I take all the mountains sunrise of the river San Pedro. You take all your people and go back to Washington”-pronouncing it Wasi-tona-“be by your big chief, Grover Cleveland. Man, he was very fat, do you know it?”

“He eats good,” Moon said.

“Yes, but he gave us nothing. We sat in a room in chairs. He didn't seem to know why we were there.”

“You liked Washington?” asked Moon.

“Good water there,” Loco said, “but no country or mountains that I saw. Now they are sending our people to Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Is it like Washington?”

“I don't know,” Moon said. “He served there one time,” looking up at Bren Early.

“I believe it,” the Apache said.

“It's like San Carlos, but with more people and houses.”

“With mountains?”

“I don't think so,” Moon said. “I've never been there. I've never been to Washington either. I've been to Sonora…Santa Fe, in the New Mexico Territory.”

“The buildings in Washington are white,” Loco said. “There are men made of iron on horses also made of iron. Many buildings and good water. You should go there and live if that's what your people like.”

“I like mountains, as you do,” Moon said. “I was born here, up on Oak Creek. I want to stay here, the same as you do. But there's a difference. They say, ‘Put Loco and his people on the train to Fort Sill.’ I can say, ‘Put him on yourself, I won't do it.’ And somebody puts you on the train. It's too bad, but what can I do about it?”

“Jesus Christ,” Bren Early said, listening to them talking so seriously and understanding the drift but not the essence of what they were saying and feeling.

Moon raised his eyes. “We're looking at the situation.”

Bren Early made a gun out of his right index finger, aimed it at the back of Loco's head and said, “Pow. That's how you solve it. You two're chatting-last week he shot four people dead. So we send him to Oklahoma for a vacation.”

“It's the high part of his life to raid and steal horses, since the first Spaniard came up this valley,” Moon said. “What else does he know? What's right and what's wrong on his side of the fence?”

“My life is to meet the hostile enemy and destroy him,” Bren said. “That's what I know.”

“Listen to yourself,” Moon said. “You want a war, go find one.” He began gathering Spanish words again and said to Loco, “When your men arrive, tell them to get all of your people here in the mountains and bring them back to San Carlos. You go with us. It's the way it has to be for right now.”

“Maybe it won't be so easy,” Loco said. “There are others coming too.”

Yes, the dust from the west, eight or ten riders. “Who are they?” Moon asked.

Loco touched the dirty red pirate bandana covering his head. “The ones who take hair.”

“You're sure of it?”

“If they're not of you, or not the soldiers of Mexico, who are they?” the Apache said.

Bo Catlett came back with Katy McKean, the girl eyeing them with suspicion as she rode into the yard, sitting her roan like they'd have to pull her off it. Then sitting up there feeling left out, because they didn't have time for her those first moments. Bo Catlett began telling them about the riders coming. He said it looked like they had scattered the Indian herd and the two sides had exchanged gunfire, Bo Catlett hearing the reports in the distance. Now some of them for sure, if not all, were coming this way and it wouldn't be too long before they'd see the dust.

Bren Early studied the girl as he listened, thinking to himself, My, my, my, the poor sweet young thing all dirty and tattered, like the savages had rolled her on the ground and torn at her dress to get it off.

He said, “Miss,” helping her down, taking her by the arm, “come on inside out of the hot sun.” She pulled her arm away, giving him a mean look, and Bren said, “What're you mad at me for? I just want to give you some coffee.”

“I ain't going in there with him,” the McKean girl said, looking at Loco standing in the doorway. “Less you want to loan me one of your guns.”

“Don't worry,” Bren said. “He gets familiar with you again, I'll make the little heathen marry you. But how are you, all things being equal?”

The girl said, “What do you mean again?”

“I was just teasing,” Bren said, “showing you there's nothing to worry about.”

“He tried things,” the Mckean girl said. “I hit him in his good eye and kicked him up under his skirt where it'd do the most good. But I ain't going in that room with him. I still got his smell in my nose.”

Dana Moon took her gently by the arm. She looked at him but didn't resist as he said in his quiet tone, “You been through something, lady, I know; and we're going to watch over you.”

“Thank you,” the girl said, subdued.

“But you got to do what I tell you for the time being, you understand? You can kick and scream when you get home, but right now try and act nice.”

Who were they? was the question: Watching from the windows as they had waited for the Indian, Moon and Bren Early with their glasses on the riders raising dust across the old pasture.

“Seven, eight,” Bren Early said. “Like cowpunchers heading for town.”

“Starting to hang back, sniff the air,” Dana Moon said. What did those people out there know, looking this way? First, trailing Apaches with a horse herd and a white woman. Then, seeing a man in a derby hat riding off with her. They would have to be confused.