Terror at Hellhole (2 page)

He would adopt the white man's ways and live as they did, vowing one day to buy his bride a real house, to take her from the mud-covered
jacal
, that hovel they shared in the desert with her father and mother. Here along the Gila River bank, life was easy for Honas and his father-in-law, for the two women planted their pumpkin and melon seeds, and, sometimes, wild maize. And when the river overflowed its banks, as it usually did each year, their crops were irrigated and they thrived.

And from May until fall, before the crops were ready to harvest, they lived on mesquite beans, which the women made into a bread, and fish from the river. Sometimes he and Palma would forage on the desert, filling the strong canvas sack they habitually carried with wild seeds or small game they were able to snare.

But Honas was not content with his present lot. Thinking back to the great drought that had swept his homeland, a drought so severe that not even their leader could produce rain or control the force or direction of the wind that blew the powdery dust choking the vegetation in the land, nor were any of their leaders able to acquire such power through a dream. He recalled how his toil-worn mother had taken him as a small boy and joined a caravan trekking over the mountains seeking food, until they reached San Sebastian. There he remained with the remnants of the tribe after she had died, to be educated by the kind friars at the mission until he became eighteen.

Yet in spite of the friars' teachings, he retained much of his native beliefs and these Quechan ways were still strong within him and his dreams frequently were about returning to his homeland. And when a particularly realistic dream moved him, the young Quechan bid the friars good-bye, and he struck eastward to the Colorado River, then south to Yuma.

Tom between his Quechan heritage and his desire for a better life, he made his choice, asking Palma to work with him. He would willingly assist the white man in his silly game of crime and punishment for there was money to be earned at the high-walled prison and at the sheriff's office. Tracking down outlaws or bringing back escapees for the prison superintendent paid well, which was more pay than an Indian could earn in months of backbreaking work. Escapees usually left a path that was easy for a Quechan to follow.

And Honas almost always brought back his prisoners alive, which pleased the authorities. Bringing in live prisoners pleased Honas, too, not that he had a soft spot in his heart for escapees because of his training, but a live prisoner could walk while a dead one had to be buried or carried.

Hearing the raucous snort from one of the bandits at the water hole below, Honas's mind returned to his work. He eyed the sun again, guessing that a half hour had elapsed since Palma had gone back for the posse. He lay quietly, stoically, not taking his eyes from the two outlaws lounging in the shade of the brush surrounding the pool, listening to them argue with mild interest, even though the nearness of water caused his lips to tighten.

“Dammit, now I says we better head up to Ehrenburg. We kin cross the Gila an' be gone befo' that posse gits back this way,” Print said, waving a long arm in the air. “Right now, I'll bet they's coverin' the water holes along Coyote Wash, then they'll go to the
Tinajas
befo' they start up here on the Gila.”

A tight grin twisted Honas's lips because the big man was right, that's where the posse was heading; Palma was trying to catch up and bring them back. Too bad, he laughed to himself, that Print didn't know how an Indian figured things, didn't know that even now a Quechan was listening to him brag, watching his every move.

“Hell, Print, yore just guessin' that's how they'll go,” Jake Laustina sneered. “Let's make a run for Mexico so we kin spend some of this money.”

“Guessin' or not,” Print growled, “that's what I'd do if I was leadin' that posse—cut off the water hole routes to Mexico first. I knows this land better'n anybody!”

“Anybody? Shee-it, them Quechans could find yuh even if they was blindfolded on a pitch-black night,” Laustina growled. “But have it yore way.”

“You're damn right, 'specially since I've got the only horse,” Print snapped, eyeing his burly companion to see if there would be any further dissent. “All right then, we'll cross the Gila and head northwest until we reach the Colorado, then we'll follow it up to Ehrensburg.”

“Hell, let's rest our ass for another hour,” Laustina growled resignedly. “Especially if we got as much time as you say. With a little rest, we can go anywhere yuh say for all I give a damn!”

Print nodded, satisfied that Laustina had agreed. “They ain't no water 'tween here an' Ehrensburg so we gotta stay near the rivers.”

Honas permitted his lip to tug into the semblance of a grin. Maybe, just maybe, he thought, the big man would get his wish. He'd stay near the rivers for a long time because the Territorial Prison at Yuma was located on a rocky hill at the confluence of the Colorado and the Gila rivers.

Behind him, he heard a faint sound and slowly turning his head, he was able to see Palma with six men cautiously spreading out to flank both sides of the ravine. Outnumbered and surrounded as they were, Honas knew that the two bandits would have to surrender or die resisting capture hopelessly. Neither of the men looked that foolish, and Sheriff Waringer was a man who would force just such an issue.

When all his men had crawled to a position at the edge of the ravine, the lawman gave a signal and the posse men stood up, their rifles aimed down at the two surprised outlaws resting at the water hole.

“What's it gonna be, Print?” Waringer shouted. “Give up or do we drag in dead meat?”

Hands raised, the startled bandits came slowly to their feet, eyes squinting at the many rifles pointed down at them. They were quickly brought up from the ravine.

“How the hell yo' find us so quick?” Print asked, disbelief set in hard lines on his shiny black face.

Waringer jerked his head at the two Quechans. “Honas, there, could find you blindfolded in pitch dark,” he said, ironically using the same words Laustina had spoken earlier.

“Shee-it!” Laustina spat irritably, his angry face screwed up in a nasty sneer when he looked disdainfully at the puzzled Negro. “What the hell did I tell yuh, Print! They can smell horseshit an' tell yuh how old it is!”

But Hedgemon Print's stark brown eyes were only for Honas Good, and the livid hatred there forebode an evil reckoning with the hawk-faced young Quechan.

Sheriff Waringer took his lariat from his saddle and passed the loop over Print's head, drawing it up against his neck. “Clasp your fmgers and straighten your arms,” he ordered, then he ran the rope from the neck down to the man's wrists and tied them firmly together. He tossed the end of the lariat to one of his deputies. “Tie that to the saddlehorn, then throw me your rope.”

With the deputy's rope he put a loop over Laustina's neck, tying the outlaw's wrists in the same manner. He handed the end of the rope to another posse man before he mounted his horse.

He addressed the two prisoners: “We're gonna take us a nice long walk back to Yuma. Keep your hands on that rope and maybe your neck won't get rubbed raw. You try to get your hands loose and I'll have the horses running, I promise you. And I don't think I need to tell you what'll happen to your necks.”

The two prisoners exchanged glances wordlessly, then the big Negro's eyes returned to pour their hatred at Honas when the strange procession moved forward.

Yuma lay twenty miles west, twenty sandy miles sparsely covered with grease wood and dusty, gray-green cactus bleakly hanging on to the waterless existence. They moved slowly through the blinding glare of the brassy sun and the day's heat pounded down on the grim caravan slowly wending its way toward Yuma.

Somewhere along the way Laustina's hat had fallen from his head while he dragged stumbling feet in the dusty wake of the deputy's horse. No one stopped to retrieve, nor did he ask for its recovery.

Honas glanced across Waringer's saddle to find Print's eyes boring at him, saw dark lips clenched in hardened black cheeks. Pure venom blazed in the prisoner's eyes.

He looked at the hatless Laustina's face, noting the ashen-gray flush creeping over it in spite of the heat. He knew that the man was close to coming undone, that a heat stroke was near.

“Aaaah,” Laustina cried. “Yuh shit-eatin' badge toter! Can't yuh treat us like men!”

Stern featured, Sheriff Waringer rode with eyes straight ahead. If he heard the prisoner's babbling, he gave no sign, nor did any of the posse turn or pay heed to the man.

“Yuh bastards weren't good enough to find us—yuh had tuh get these Indian dogs tuh sniff-shit at us. Yuh burnin' bastards, take this rope off an' give me a gun, an' I'll face all of yuh, here an' now!” Laustina shrieked.

Stumbling, he staggered before regaining his balance, then he screamed at the two Quechan trackers: “Dirty whore-born, red-faced scum! I'll git even with yuh if it's the last thing I ever do. I swear it, do yuh hear?”

Honas's dark eyes drifted over to Print. The Negro's eyes still blazed wordless hatred at him and in his heart he knew that the outlaw was thinking the same things as Laustina was mouthing in his half-demented raving.

But slobbering and ranting, the bull-like Laustina did not break; his fence-post legs were still plowing dust when the group turned into the city street at Doten's Blacksmith Shop. And Honas Good was surprised at the burly outlaw's stamina. He knew that the man's hatred would be equally as great, and his vengeance as pronounced.

Back at the Yuma jail after the prisoners had been safely locked into cells, Sheriff Waringer called Honas into his office. He held out an official-looking envelope.

“Honas, I'm empowered to pay a hundred dollars for leading us to Print and Laustina, and the Wells Fargo people threw in two hundred dollars for you,” he said expansively, “because we recovered seven thousand dollars from Print's saddlebags—Wells Fargo money that was taken from the stage during the holdup. Split with Palma anyway you see fit.”

Honas took the envelope containing the money without a word, while the lawman moved around behind his desk and sat down.

“Don't know how you do it, Honas, but you always seem to manage to keep them alive,” the sheriff said. “Now you take that ehato, he'd just as soon have killed them as not—and he generally does. Why, just last week he killed an escapee down by the river. Hear tell that he could've taken him alive real easy.”

“The Flatnose Apache enjoys killing,” Honas said. “Nor does he care that a dead man can't walk. I keep them alive so that I do not have to carry them back.”

Waringer's smile faded slowly when he saw that Honas was serious. “Never gave that much thought. I only considered takin' them alive gives us a chance to punish them, make examples of them.”

“Death is the final punishment, it needs no example,” Honas said. “Nor does the same offender ever commit another offense. Why not kill them where you find them as Chato does.”

Waringer tilted back in his chair, feeling satisfied now that the chase was over. “I didn't know that you felt that strongly, Honas.”

Hawk-faced, Honas straightened to his full height. “There is great evil in the men you call Laustina and Print, an evil that only death can erase.”

The sheriff thumbed his hat up from his eyes, a grin spreading over his rough features. “I'm glad that you're not the erasin' kind. The judge should be hangin' those two, an' no doubt he will because the stage driver died last night. But even if he don't string them up, you can bet they'll do a long term behind the Big Wall on the hill,” he said matter-of-factly.

Honas stood silent, his young face expressionless for he had long since decided to play their little game of capture and punishment as long as it was to his financial advantage.

Waringer scrubbed a palm over the stubble on his loose jaws, then he returned to his earlier theme. “Too bad old Flat-nose is such a bloodthirsty Apache. We've already got too many bounty hunters who shoot first rather than go to the trouble of herdin' them in.”

“That is how it should be,” Honas said. “Perhaps Chato has his reasons for bringing them in dead.”

“But killin' an escapee makes the tracker a judge an' jury,” the lawman argued, “if he is allowed to kill any man he's after.”

“Has not judgment been passed the moment a crime is committed?” Honas asked fiercely. “Who, then, has a better right to kill than the tracker who suffers the rigors of the trail, and who is consistently faced with death from ambush in the doing?”

Waringer took new interest in the intense young Quechan, then shook his head. “You're too profound for me to argue with. Anyway, I'm glad that you're doin' it my way, Honas. I'm glad that I can count on you.”

Stone-faced, Honas nodded, then turning, he left the office, moving with soundless moccasins.

The lawman took off his hat and dropped it on the floor beside his desk, readying himself for the paperwork at hand, but his mind kept straying back to Honas and what he had said. Glad he was that the Quechan worked for him. Already there were far too many trackers who didn't understand, Indians who were too anxious to get their man.

Bemused, he shook his head. So far a few of them had brought in innocent citizens mistakenly, some of them even dead. And that got to be plumb embarrassing for a lawman. Then his thoughts strayed back to the hooded death he had seen in the young Quechan's eyes, and his mouth tightened into a straight line.

“I'm damned glad he ain't after someone for a personal reason,” he muttered aloud, “an' I damn sure hope he's never after me.”

Yet an ominous foreboding pervaded his mood as he settled down to work.

Colorado City was founded in 1850 on the south bank of the Colorado River just west of its junction with the Gila, at the site of a ferry crossing. When the community grew, the name of the town was changed to Arizona City, and in 1862, a flood destroyed the mud and adobe structures. As more and more emigrants passed through the area, the town was rebuilt using a variety of permanent materials.