Elmore Leonard - Gunsights

Kate said she was glad she didn't have to read it. She would go home and light the fire. He watched her take off across the pasture toward the brushy slope and start up the switchback trail that climbed through the field of saguaro, watching her until she was a tiny speck, his little wife up there on the mountain, and said to himself, “You know how lucky you are?” He was anxious to get home to her. Maybe he'd look at the mail but check on the reservation people tomorrow.

He sat down at his desk though, to read the letter from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Interior Department, Washington, D.C. It took him about a quarter of an hour to find out all the two and a half pages of official language actually said was, he was fired…would be relieved of his duties for disregarding such and such, as of a date three months from now. Fired because he hadn't brought his Indians down off the mountain, failing to comply with directive number…some long number. The fools. They could have said it in two words.

He'd go home and tell Kate and watch her eyes open-Kate poised there, not knowing whether to show relief or rail at the imbeciles in the bureau, pausing and then asking, “Well, how do you feel about it?”

How did he feel?

Relief, yes, able to wade out of the official muck, walk off. Or would he be walking out, leaving the reservation people when they needed him? Well, they may need somebody, but he wasn't doing them a hell of a lot of good, was he? And what difference did it make now, since he didn't have a choice but to leave? Thinking about all that at once, blaming himself for not having thought of an answer sooner…and hearing the bootsteps on the porch, the ching-ing sound, without first hearing a horse approach-

The Mexican stood in the open doorway. The one from Sonora. The one from Duro's yard with the white flag. Hesitant. Raising his hands from his sides.

“You didn't walk here,” Moon said.

“I didn't want to startle you. Maybe you come out shooting you hear me,” Ruben Vega said. “Listen to me and believe it, all right? I don't work for Sundeen no more, but he's up on the mountain.”

“Where?” Moon came out of his swivel chair.

“Going to your house.”

“When was this?”

“Last night, very late.”

Moon came around his desk and Ruben Vega had to get out of his way. He followed Moon out to the porch.

“Wait. I want to tell you something. I didn't see him up there, I heard it, where he's going.”

Moon, at his horse gathering the reins, looked up at the Mexican. “Tell it quick.”

“See, I quit him. I went to Benson. I was going to go home, but I decide after all the years, after all the bad things I done-”

Moon stepped up into his saddle.

“I came back here to do some good, be on the good side for a change-whether you believe me or not.” He saw Moon's look. “Listen to me, all right? I came back, I stop by this place where I believe his men have been waiting, the J-L-Bar, an old, wornout place. Yes, there they are. They say, where you been? Listen-”

Moon was reining, moving out.

“They say to me Sundeen comes tonight and we go up the mountain to get the man name Moon. You hear me?” Shouting it.

Ruben Vega ran to his horse ground-tied in the pasture. Maybe he would catch up to Moon already racing for the brush slope, maybe he wouldn't.

She'd say to him, “Come on to bed.” He'd say, “It's daytime.” She'd say, “I mean to sleep,” after riding most the night-God, she had been glad to see him coming out the road with the lights of Sweetmary behind him. She wanted at least to hug and kiss him awhile, touch him, make sure he was here.

Kate built a fire in the stove and put on a pot of coffee before going outside again to tend Goldie. She led the palomino around the house to the corral that was made of upright mesquite poles wired together. This pen was attached to a timber and thatched-roof structure open at both ends that served as a horse barn. Kate heard the sound-a horse hoof on gravel…a soft whinny…then silence-as she was leading Goldie across the corral.

She looked through the barn to the back of the property where open graze reached to a brush thicket and a tumble of boulders. There the ground began to climb again. An Apache could be passing by. Even when Moon said they were close she rarely saw one, unless they were coming out and wanted to be seen. They kept to themselves. Red, the little bow-legged chief, was the only one she had ever spoken to; the women just grinned when she tried talking to them in Spanish learned from Moon. Yes, it could be an Apache going by. Her gaze raised to the escarpment of seamed rock standing against the sky. Or they might be up there watching over her.

But she had the feeling someone else was much closer. She turned to Goldie, patting her as she moved back to the saddlebags, raised the leather flap close to her face and drew the .38 double-action revolver Moon had given her that time in Sonora and had given to her again in the past month.

Someone was watching her. Not Apaches, someone else.

Kate led Goldie back to the mesquite-pole gate, dragged it open enough to let them through. As she prepared to mount-looking over the saddle and through the open-ended barn again, she saw the four riders coming out of the brush thicket, walking their horses, looking right at her. Kate stepped into the saddle kicking, turned the corner to the front of the house and reined in, not knowing what to do, Goldie sidestepping, nervous, feeling Kate's heels and the reins and, between the two, Kate's indecision.

Sundeen sat his mount with two riders near. A bunch more were by the adobe wall and coming through the gate on foot, all of them holding rifles.

“Well, it's been a long time,” Kate said, resigned.

“What?” Sundeen studied her, not knowing what she meant.

“You don't remember, do you?”

Sundeen, squinting now, shook his head.

“One time, I was twelve years old playing by the river,” Kate said. “You come along, tried to pull my britches down and I smacked you with a rock.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sundeen said, “down Lanoria.”

“You were grown then, too, you dirty pervert.”

“Yeah, I believe I recall that-hit me with a big goddamn rock.” He looked at one of his riders who was wearing a vest and derby hat. “Thing musta weighed five pounds. Hit me square on the forehead with it.” Sundeen nudged his horse forward. “So you're the one, huh? You should've give in that time and seen the elephant at an early age.” Still coming toward her. “Or I could give you another chance while we're waiting around.” He pulled in then. “Hey now-but you better throw that gun down first.”

Kate raised the .38 from her lap. “Or I could put a hole in the other side of your face, match the one you already got.”

“Sweetheart,” Sundeen said, “before you could aim that parlor gun I'd have sent you off to the angels. Now let it fall.”

Of course, the man was thinking of his wife. Ruben Vega realized this. He should have realized also-knowing something about Moon-the man would control his emotion and not ride blindly up the ravine to be shot from his saddle. So Ruben Vega was able to catch up with the man once they were in the high rocks, somewhere north of the ravine, perhaps on an approach to the side or back of the house; Ruben Vega wasn't exactly sure where they were when he reached Moon. Or when the Apache appeared ahead of them, waiting in the trail. One moment the steep terrain ahead empty, the next moment the dark little half-naked man standing there with a carbine and a cartridge belt around his skirt. A headband of dark wool, as dark as his dark-leather face; he could be an old man, or any age.

The Apache, Red, motioned and went off through the towering outcropping of rocks, through a seam that became a trail when they dismounted and followed, winding, climbing through the rock and brush until the trail opened and the entire sky seemed to be close above them, a very clear soft blue. A beautiful day to feel good and be alive, the Mexican was thinking. Except for the situation, the man's wife-Moon and the Apache, and now three more Apaches who had appeared from nowhere, were looking down the wall of rock…as though from the top of a church steeple, the Mexican thought, seeing the stone side of the house below, the thatched roof of a barn, a corral, riders in the front yard…the glint of the woman's blonde hair in the sunlight close to Sundeen…Yes, it was Sundeen and two others…four more coming from the corral side of the house…the rest of them out by the adobe wall, watching the approach from the ravine.