The Green River
by tallsunshine12
Chapter 1 Fossil Creek
Travers' muscles bunched under his shirt in anticipation until he recognized his own men approaching the canyon. Heat shimmers defined their outlines. Abel Turner, a good man with horses, especially stealing them out of another man's corral. Jesse Byrne, Irish, crook-backed from birth, but with a notable conscience. And last, Texas Pete, of no other name, at least not currently, who rode hunched over in the saddle as if looking at the ground for ants. His eye under the dirty slouch hat was black, nearly as jet black as his hair. With a big square head and huge hands, the kind of hands no one wanted around his throat, he had Mojave Apache in him, and he could kill with scant or no compunction. His hands, his eyes were made for it.
Travers was glad it wasn't the law or the army. As he waited by the corral, a corral full of stolen horses, he saw that another man, not as tall as Pete or as lean as Abel, rode with them. A stranger. Every so often he seemed to pitch forward in the saddle, as if he was sleeping. Turner would throw out a hand to catch him and shove him back.
"That's all I need," Travers murmured to himself, gloomily. "Another army spy."
He already had two of them locked up—at least temporarily—in a cave not too far from the box canyon where he corralled his horses.
"Ho, there!" he called, raising a hand as his men stopped before him. "Who's this, Texas Pete?"
"Caught 'im at the creek," said the big man who had been called Texas Pete. "Had an altercation with 'im."
"Thought water was free," murmured the man, out of breath. He'd had the wind knocked out of him at Fossil Creek in his struggle to retain his freedom. "Didn't know it was a crime in these parts to water a horse!"
Tall, not unlike the unknown man in the saddle, Travers walked up to the stranger's horse and took its cheek piece in hand.
"I'm Travers, Dale Travers," he introduced himself. "You're on my land. Who are you?"
Maverick scowled down at him from the saddle. His face was bruised and he held his right arm across his middle. His Colt .44 revolver had been taken from him at the creek and now graced the belt of Texas Pete.
"Bret Maverick."
"Why didn't you ask to water your horse?"
"No one was about. Thirsty horse."
Travers reached up and dragged the stranger out of the saddle. The latigo buckle digging into his spine, Maverick kept his hands raised. Hurt ribs and a swollen eye made him wary of getting into any more 'altercations.'
"Still ask," said Travers, his nose inches from the stranger's.
Then he laughed and turned him loose, slapping him on the back. Maverick lurched a few steps, blinking in surprise and worrying he'd be in for another beating, like the one at the creek when he argued with the cowboys about water's being free.
Travers reached out and Texas Pete handed him Maverick's Colt .44. "You're here, but this is a very unlucky time for you. You see—" He gestured up-canyon, at the horses.
"So, you're breaking horses. What about it?"
Travers laughed again. He had an easy laugh for a man afraid of both the army and the law. "Whose horses, though?"
"Why should I care?" stated Maverick, firmly, and he really didn't.
"You're not from the army?"
"In these clothes?"
Spare from travel and a lack of steady meals, Maverick knew that apart from his short boots, the rest of his things—jeans, shirt and vest—stained by heat and dust, hung on him loosely, nothing like a close-fitting trooper's uniform.
"A man can change his clothes. Jeans, just the trick-out for a spy."
Maverick ran a hand over his hot face and brushed it through his wet hair. "I'm no spy," he said simply, tiredly.
"Where's your hat?" asked Travers, again in a sudden way.
"Back a-ways. At the creek."
"Jesse, go and retrieve the man's hat. Can't let him die of the sun, can we now?"
Maverick scowled again, trying to figure things out. Rustling was going on here for sure. Horses—even wild ones might belong to somebody. Maybe cattle, too. He'd heard of these operations in the oak hills, many of them run by more or less honest ranchers for a little extra cash—or gold—in their pockets, and now he'd fallen into one. Swell.
In a few days, he'd have joined up with his brother Bart, likewise a gambler, at Flagstaff. Bart had telegraphed him about some cattlemen who had money and some daring to use it as recklessly as possible. Traveling from Yuma, Bret had worked out how to avoid everything on his list—Apaches, desert sun and sidewinders—but he hadn't factored in rustlers.
A cold feeling gripped him as Travers called out to Texas Pete to drag his horse over to the corral. Side by side with Travers, Maverick followed, then both men stood on the sandy hardpan and watched the horse-breakin'. Travers swung his arms about and asked him how he liked this fine sorrel, or the chestnut, or that handsome paint. Maverick nodded they were all fine. And they were, too, great horses, some saddle-broken already, others in need of more working.
His own horse Ollie wandered off to nibble the earth some twelve, thirteen feet away, its reins dangling and its saddle cinch still tight. Though he didn't have his .44, his carbine was still in the boot. He could make a grab for the reins, throw himself in the saddle. He didn't allow himself second thoughts. He decided to try it.
Glancing at the cowboys in the corral, throwing ropes on the half-wild horses, he made a dash for his own horse, catching Ollie's reins and throwing a leg over the saddle. Ducking low over the withers, he spun in a half-circle, facing the open end of the box canyon, and pelted ground. He surprised everybody, even Travers. In seconds, he had ten other guns, including Travers own Colt .44, blazing at his back.
Ollie raced out of there in such a big hurry that he left only a little cloud of dust from each hoof, though they barely touched ground. Headed for Fossil Creek, which drained into the Verde River a few miles away, his rider crouched low as the first shots flew off the rocks.
Tearing through sage and oak brush, his shoulders brushing juniper limbs here and there, Maverick threw a glance back and saw blurs of mounted men, black shapes in the bright heat of midday. What a race! How far could he go before they caught up? Was Travers or his cowboys cold-blooded enough to kill? That question bothered him the most.
Travers jumped on his own mount. Kicking his horse into a brisk run, he speculated on the stranger. He'd told Pete he was just watering his horse, not trying to spy on his operations. But those other two—the army men—in the cave where Travers was holding them had said they weren't spies, too.
Shots interrupted his reverie. Rifle shots. The stranger had turned in the saddle and fired his Winchester repeater, not an easy thing to do. Firing backward from a speeding horse, through all that brush, was nigh unto impossible, even if he had been a crack shot, but he was doing it.
"Do what's necessary!" Travers yelled over at Texas Pete and Jesse Byrne, both men already ahead of a half-dozen others as they flew out of the canyon. "Don't let him escape!"
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Maverick spurred Ollie up a limestone ridge, struggling to make it to the top. Once there, he headed out across the dry sage desert toward Fossil Creek, its cottonwoods still a few miles off. That was where he first met up with Travers' men. Going there would be like replaying a scene at a trial, only this time, he hoped, there'd be a different outcome. From there, he'd head downstream to where Fossil Creek joined the river.
Why he thought the Verde, or Green, River would protect him from the retribution of his pursuers, he couldn't guess. It seemed to be safer to head that way, that's all, a sure bet for a gambling man. Make it to the river, the shiny river—and he could cross it and go free.
A rifle shot kicked up dirt at his horse's legs. He twisted his head around. Two men sat their horses on the same ridge where he had just been. One of them, who looked like Texas Pete, had fired. Ollie kept galloping. Three miles later, at the Verde, Maverick thought he must have lost them. He pulled up in some brush and let his horse blow. Leaning over, he patted one of Ollie's overworked shoulders. Then he heard a scream. A man's scream, ear-splitting but deeper in pitch than a woman's. He looked around suddenly. His eyes, cat-like, took in every nuance of the scene at the creek. He heard the scream again, over there, beyond some willows. Dismounting, knowing he should just keep going before Texas Pete caught up, he took his carbine out of its boot again and crept through the brush towards the sounds. He heard moans now, frightened grunts.
Stopping in some scrub, he could see two half-naked forms standing, gazing directly at him. They had stopped what they were doing—torturing a man to death—and straightened up to listen. One held the yelling cowboy by the hair and there was a knife to his throat. All three, Apaches and the cowboy, had heard Maverick's horse crash through the undergrowth, but the two Mojaves hadn't left their prisoner to go see who it was. Expecting to hear bullets slash through the tangled river scrub like bolts of hot, white lightning, they now stood stock-still.
Maverick raised his carbine and fired high, twice, then fired again at the retreating backs of the Apaches, deliberately missing both of them. They might have fled at the thought that the cowboys were coming to rescue one of their own. When they were well and truly gone, he stepped out of the brush and knelt beside the cowboy, looking over his wounds. Cuts, mostly. None of them appeared too deep. None could have caused the boy's unbridled terror. The fact these men were so-called savages was enough to do that. Bret had probably just saved the young rustler's life, he thought wryly, and in the bargain lost his own chance for freedom. Of crossing the Verde which ran swift and green next to the willows.
As he tried to staunch some of the blood flow from the boy's chest with his handkerchief, a crashing sound hit the trees off to his left. A pistol made itself heard, snapping off a willow twig next to Maverick's right arm. He flinched. It was over. He'd run a good race, but he was on foot. Though armed, he wouldn't—couldn't—shoot and kill the cowboys, even to save his own skin. So, it was just over.
Maverick stood up again. Regarding the bloody man tied up on the ground, he hung his gun barrel low. He was grim, not the picture of a carefree young gambler just then. Maybe his poker-playing days were over for good.
"Drop it, now."
Texas Pete stood there, facing him, literally blood in the eye cold, with pistol drawn. His jaw set, he let the carbine slip through his fingers. Jesse Byrne rode over and fetched Maverick's horse and held its reins.
"Move away from it," said Pete. "I don't want you near it."
"You don't have to kill me."
"Why not?" asked Pete, from behind his gun. "It's got five bullets left. You shouldn't 've run off like that."
"Who is he?" murmured the tortured man, trying to rise off the ground. Jesse Byrnes passed Ollie's reins to Abel Turner, dismounted and went over to him, kneeling down and giving him a hand to sit up.
"Some kind of army spy, just like the other two last week who came here up to no good."
Maverick made a mental note of the 'other two' Texas Pete mentioned.
"I'm not a spy," he said coolly. "I told you that earlier, right here at the creek."
"He saved my life, Pete," said the pale man on the ground, only eighteen or nineteen if a day, wincing as he tried to move again. His hand, clenching his chest, was bloody, but the knife hadn't penetrated far, just scored the boy's chest.
"That's right, Pete. You can't kill him," said Jesse, the Irish-born thief, far from his green shores.
He'd run to America with a price on his head in County Galway for stealing sheep. He'd done it, of course. Had to. Sisters hungry, ma sick. Writing them once or twice in the past year, he'd had no letters in return, for how could he, when he gave no address where they might be sent? His kind of life now made secrecy of his whereabouts a must. But he knew, whatever she was doing now, she could be at ease about him, her only boy-child—cowboy camps, and their songs, his guitar, three squares a day when not on roundup. And no price, as yet, on his head. If she got them, she and his sisters, his letters made up somewhat for his running off.
"You want to let 'im go?" Texas Pete was bristling with a fierce kind of energy.
Jesse, conflicted, looked down at his bloody friend, then up at Maverick, who was only an inch or two shorter than the tall Texas Pete. "I say we tie him up and take him back. That's all."
"Yeah," Abel Turner chimed in, still holding Ollie's reins. "I say we don't kill 'im. He hasn't done us any 'arm, Pete."
Pete lifted his pistol, pointed it, and Maverick braced himself, stiffening his spine.
"Don't do it," Jesse urged, getting up and moving over. He touched Pete's gun arm.
"Didn't Mr. Travers say, do what's necessary?" asked Pete.
"He'd be glad he saved Mitch. Could've died."
Mitch, leaning on his right side, wiped the sweat from his forehead on his shirt and nodded. "Coulda," he echoed.
Pete lowered the pistol and raised it again towards Maverick, lining up the center of his eyes for a good, swift shot. "Travers said—" he began.
"I said do what's necessary. If that meant kill 'im to stop 'im, then so be it. But he's stopped," said Travers himself, riding up on his light bay horse. He was leading the others of his crew he had spared from horse-breaking. "Put the gun away, Pete. Unless he starts somethin'."
"I won't, Travers. Not for now," said Maverick. He breathed slightly out.
"Get on your horse, stranger. Some of you men get back to the corral, finish up there and picket those animals on some grass before bedding down."
Maverick swung himself up into the saddle. "Where to now?" he asked.
Travers looked at him distantly. "My house."
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Over an hour or so later, following the gently swerving Verde River, the party of five men and their recaptured spy-prisoner entered the wide, grassy space of Travers' yard. Beyond the big, two-story house, with its wraparound porch and rail, were his barn, sheds and corrals. It looked like it took a lot of work—and sweat—to build up such a place as this, Maverick thought. But how much of it had been built on stolen beef and horses?
"Take him into the barn," Travers said, indicating the huge building of strong planks to the side of the house. "Use the leg irons. We'll find out later who he is, after supper."
Two or three men yanked him from the horse and pushed him, fighting the whole way, toward the barn's double doors. Swinging one of the doors back, they shoved him inside the dust mote-filled space. His vision swam for a minute as his eyes adjusted to the rich dark of the great, manmade cavern. Before he could see, he was thrust down onto some straw in a stall and fitted with an iron around his ankle, the other iron fastened to a ring bolted well into the heavy planking of the stall. His horse and saddle shared the same space with him.
After they were gone, he sat back in the shadows and wondered how he had come by such luck. Looking at his horse in the feeble light of day as it shot through the chinks in the barn planks, he called to it and Ollie nickered. How he wished he could just get on Ollie and be on his way again before Bart began to worry he'd never show up in Flagstaff and come looking for him.
That evening, he had a surprise that really caught him off-guard. Slightly drowsing, he looked up as one of the big barn doors was pushed inward. It was not Travers or one of his men, but a very expectant lady. She had a tin bucket with a lid, a stoppered jug and a tin cup in her hands. Uneasy on her feet due to her advanced condition, she approached Maverick warily, sliding slightly away from him as he reached for the things she had brought him.
"You must eat," she said, and her voice was as quiet as a cat's whisker moving in a breeze.
"Thank you. Who—who are you?"
She was pretty, far too pretty to be burdened by baby, shawl, dress, the dark night, and far too pretty to be serving a prisoner chained to a barn stall.
"I'm Mrs. Travers. My name's Bessie."
Could this be the rustlers' way, a softer way, of getting information out of him, information he'd already given them?
"Why are you out here, helpin' me? Did Travers send you? He's taking a big risk."
"Dale, no. He didn't want anyone coming out to the barn tonight. Meaning, I guess, he didn't care whether you ate or not. But I care."
"Why?" Maverick pulled the lid off the lunch bucket. With a spoon she handed him, he tucked into the stew. "Awfully good. I was hungry."
"I know what my husband has done to you. I figure, you're just like any other man riding through. You had no evil intention towards us."
"You're right about that. If I had my leg out of this iron, my horse and saddle, I'd be on my way for good, no need to worry."
"But I do worry." Bessie slipped down with a small moan into the straw at Maverick's feet. "Are you a spy for the army?"
He laughed, but all through their talk continued to eat. "No, I'm not a lawman, either. Just a gambler."
"Then I will tell you. You're in some danger here. Dale's about to drive some cattle—not his cattle—into Mexico again. I know who he sees there, and what he does. I don't like his rustling—or that … other thing … very much."
"You can't leave 'im?" From Bessie's few, but pointed words, Maverick realized that Dale Travers had a paramour in Mexico, one not heavy with child.
"Where would I go, where would I want to go?"
He smiled wryly and shook his head. Bart, over the card table, often bragged he could understand them, the fairer sex, but Maverick never maintained that he himself could.
Chewing thoughtfully, he asked, "Do you know what he intends for me?"
"I don't think he'll kill you—he didn't kill those others." She stopped abruptly, a hand rising to touch her lips, as if she'd said too much. She grabbed the stoppered jug in order to be busy and poured him out a cup of hot, black coffee. Looking up again, she said in apology, "I hope you like it without cream. I ran out of it with Dale's coffee."
"If it's like the stew, it'll be good any way."
"I do my own cooking, though only for Dale and me. We have Carla, who helps out. The men cook for themselves, but she makes them doughnuts and other treats sometimes. My husband eats with me, not the boys." She said that with some pride in her eyes.
"Food this tasty, ma'am, it's hard to see why he'd want to take a bunch of beef to Mexico."
Bessie caught the significance of what Maverick had just said. With such a pretty, accomplished wife at home, why would he run to Mexico for some other's affections?
"I must be going." She rose this time quite easily for one in her 'predicament' and before she was gone, he noticed that she was barefoot.
"Do you always run around the ranch barefoot?" he asked, merrily nodding down at her feet. "Especially at night?"
She laughed a little, warmly. "Oh, it was quieter. Hide the bucket and things in the straw. Now I must get back."
With that, she trotted swiftly to the door and was gone. The big door remained open, too heavy for her to pull it to, though she had pushed it open easily enough. He enjoyed the coffee, as well as some biscuits she'd pressed in his hand. At the last moment, she liberated them from an apron pocket. After he had eaten everything, and drank the jug of coffee dry, he buried the tin bucket, the earthen jug and the cup, all of it evidence of her charity, in the straw at the back of the horse stall.