Rancho Del Muerto / and Other Stories of Adventure from «Outing» by Various Authors
RANCHO DEL MUERTO, By Charles King, Capt. U. S. Army
FIRST PART
NO denying it – there was something uncanny about the place at the very first glance. The paymaster admitted that to himself as his ambulance slowly drove in, and his escort of half a dozen troopers came clattering after. It was his first visit to the spot, and he shrugged his broad shoulders and murmured a word of caution to the silent clerk who sat beside him:
“I want you to keep eyes and ears open here, Staines. We’ve got to make a night of it. You remember that this is where Sergeant Dinsmore was murdered, and I’ve heard nothing but bad accounts of the people for the last six months.”
Mr. Staines was apparently a man who wasted no words. Acquiescence with him may have been expressed by silence. At all events he made no reply.
“Were you ever at the ranch before, when you made the trips with Colonel Forte?” asked the paymaster.
“No, sir, it’s – all strange to me hereabouts.”
“How far are we from Canyon del Muerto now, sergeant?” asked the officer of the bearded trooper who rode close alongside.
“Sixteen miles, sir, on a bee line, but at least twenty by the road. We’re off the direct trail now. We could have got through the canyon and reached the camp before this if that mule hadn’t gone lame.”
“Major,” said Staines in a low tone, “I can get a saddle horse or mule here, no doubt. Had I not better ride right on? I can reach Captain Rawlins’ camp by 9 or 10 o’clock. He will be mighty anxious at your non-arrival.”
“I was thinking of sending one man ahead; I don’t like to let you go. It will wear you out for to-morrow’s work.”
“Indeed it won’t, sir; I’m feeling fresh enough, and the change from wagon to saddle will just suit me. I think I’d better go.” And there was an eager look in Staines’ clear-cut face.
“I’ll think about it” was the dubious answer. “These cavalry men are the proper ones to send, not a paymaster’s clerk. If anything befell you on the route I would be crippled in making payments.”
“Nothing would be apt to befall me, sir; I know that road well.”
“I thought you said all was strange to you hereabouts” said the paymaster quickly. But the clerk showed no discomfiture.
“I said here, around the ranch. The direct road lies off there nearly nine miles to the southwest, sir. That is the one we always took going to Tucson.”
The paymaster relapsed into silence. It is all very well to have subordinates who know far more than does the senior officer, yet the latter does not always find it agreeable. His own clerk having resigned some six months previous and returned to the East, when Major Sherrick was ordered from San Francisco to Arizona he had employed Mr. Staines at the urgent request of the officer whom he relieved. Staines had property interests in the Territory, he was told, and wanted to remain. He was a man profoundly versed in his duties; accurate, temperate, reliable and of unimpeachable character, said his recommenders. Sherrick was glad to get him, for he himself had no head for figures, and had been made a paymaster from civil life simply because his uncle the Senator found him a failure in every other capacity, and demanded the appointment of an Executive who could not deny him, though he felt like kicking himself when he looked at the long list of grizzled, war-tried captains who were wistful applicants for the longed-for promotion.
A tall Mexican stepped forward with much urbanity and grace of manner to assist the paymaster to alight as the ambulance stopped in front of the ranch, and Major Sherrick looked with emotions of surprise upon Pedro Ruiz, the proprietor.
“You don’t mean to say that’s the scoundrel we heard so much bad talk about at headquarters?” he whispered to Staines at the first opportunity.
“The very same, sir; the most accomplished cutthroat in Arizona, if we can believe our senses and disregard evidence.”
“Where are his men? He seems alone here, all but that old greaser yonder.”
“Dios sabe,” answered the clerk briefly, though his eyes glanced quickly away toward the purpling range to the south. “But we shall need our guards every moment we are here, sir, that’s certain.” An hour later night had settled down upon the broad valley, black and forbidding. All day long the wind had been sighing about the corral, whirling clouds of dust from the loose, sandy soil and sifting it in through many a chink and crevice over the floor of Pedro’s ranch. The great ranges to the northwest, the Sierras to the south, were whitecapped at their lofty summits, but all over the arid miles of surrounding desert the sun had been hotly blazing from noon to the dewless eve, and not until it sank behind the western wave did the wind sweep down untempered. Through its shallow bed the Gila rolled, a lazy, turbid current, not a rifle shot away. Quicksands and muddy pools flanked its course for miles and barred all attempts at crossing except at the point where thrifty Pedro had “corduroyed” the flats with boards that had formerly done duty at the agency building, and, having originally cost the paternal Government something in the neighborhood of $1 apiece, had now come down to the base uses of daily trampling under foot. The stage to the Gripsack Mines, the huge ox teams and triple-hitched wagons, the nimble pack mules, even the buckboard with the United States mail, paid reluctant tribute into Pedro’s dingy palm, though the owners mentally damned him for a thief.
Everybody in that part of Arizona well knew that in the unprecedented rise of the Gila, a few years back, two of the agency storehouses had been floated away down the stream, accompanied by a dense flotilla of joists, scantling and clapboards, which had been piled up on the river bank after weeks of laborious transportation from Plummer’s saw mill in the San Gabriel. So, too, had sundry casks of bacon, barrels of beans and bales of Indian goods; and while portions of this flood-swept assortment were found stranded and scattered along the winding shores as far down as Pedro’s bailiwick, not so much as a solitary shingle had passed beyond, and the laws of flotsam and jetsam had received at the hands of this shrewd “greaser” their most liberal construction. More than once had the Federal authorities been compelled to proceed to stringent measures with Pedro and arraign him before a jury of his peers on charges of having robbed and defrauded the General Government, and more than once with prompt and cheering unanimity had the jury pronounced him not guilty, a service which he never failed to requite in kind when Garcia, Gomez or Sancho came up for his turn. And now the old Mexican was proprietor of a goodly ranch, built mainly of adobe, it is true, as were his roomy corrals and storehouses, yet roofed, floored, partitioned, doored and menu for either breakfast, dinner or supper, at a charge of $1 a head for any and all travelers who sought to appease their appetite at his table. He kept a bar, too, and dealt out villainous “tanglefoot” and windowed, too, by the unwilling contributions wrung from Uncle Sam.
For three years he had furnished bacon, frijoles and fried eggs, the unvarying fiery mescal to such stomachs as could stand the onslaught and the tax of two bits a thimbleful. He ran a “brace game” of monte whenever the packers were drunk or strangers fool enough to play. He was a thorough-paced rascal in the opinion of every “gringo” who passed that way, and a man of unimpeachable character according to all records in the case. He was a “greaser” of whom everything had been said and nothing proved; that is, to the satisfaction of an old-time Arizona jury. But Mr. Whitlock, the new United States District Attorney, was said to be “laying” for Pedro, and between those who knew them both and were aware of the possibilities of finding twelve better men and truer outside of Maricopa County, bets were even as to the result.
“Just let me get that thieving greaser across the line into Yavapai,” said a local luminary, “and I’ll find a jury that will hang him on sight or lynch him on general principles.” But Pedro knew better than to venture northward along the tempting shores of the Hassayampa. Even the chance of collecting a bad debt from a fellow countryman, known to be lurking in Wickenburg, failed to lure Pedro thither. He smiled suggestively, showing his white teeth and waving aside the blue smoke of his cigarrito with sinewy brown hand. “A – Wickenburg is too damn close to Yavapai, and Yavapai to ‘ell,” he remarked. And it had more than once been said of Pedro that he spoke English