Taggart (1959) (3 page)

Five miles away and three thousand feet lower was Tonto Creek, a faint green lin
e
indicating its course. Beyond the valley of the Tonto, the Sierra Anchas were a wal
l
across the sky. Taking his time, fighting the weakness brought on by thirst, hunger
,
and exhaustion, Swante Taggart worked out a course that would take him to the ol
d
Apache trail that lay alongside Greenback Mountain and toward the peak of Lookout
,
which lay beyond.

To the south, at least twenty miles away, the Four Peaks of the Mazatals bulked dar
k
against the sky.

If there was no water in Tonto Creek, he must try for Turkey Spring, and once i
n
the canyons of the Cherry Creek country Shoyer would never find him. He knew tha
t
country.

But he was fooling himself if he believed he would ge
t
I
f
arther than the Tonto without water. If there was no water there, he would do a
s
well to make a stand there, for he would die anyhow. His horse would go no furthe
r
than the Tonto .. . if he made it that far. And a man without a horse in this countr
y
was a dead man.

Nothing moved but the wind. His hand carelessly brushed a rock exposed to the sun
,
and it burned like a red-hot iron. His eyes searched the desert again. He shoul
d
be moving on, yet he was reluctant to stir, and when at last he started to mount
,
he stopped, frozen in place.

Not two hundred yards away an Apache warrior sat on a spotted pony.

Swante spoke softly to his horse and waited, holding very still, for to move wa
s
to be seen.

The Apache started his pony and walked it slowly forward, crossing the very trai
l
Taggart would have taken had he gone forward at once. And had he gone on withou
t
stopping, the Apache would now be on his trail, for his tracks would have been seen.

He heard the movement before he saw them, and when they came up out of the junipe
r
and ocotillo along the slope there were at least forty of them, including childre
n
and squaws. No less than seventeen were fighting men.

Holding his breath, he waited, careful not to look directly at them for fear he migh
t
draw their attention. They moved slowly, for with them was a travois with a sic
k
or wounded man upon it.

When they had gone by he sat down on a rock in the shade and waited there for wha
t
might have been twenty minutes. When he did start moving he walked beside the steeldus
t
to lower the silhouette they would make against the sky.

No sound disturbed the blazing afternoon. He was sodden with weariness and weavin
g
as he walked. Behind him the led gelding stumbled, and he knew that even the toug
h
mountain horse was nearing the end of its strength. If there was no water in Tont
o
Creek that would be the end of it ... they could go no further.

When they had walked what he believed to be a mile, he paused. There was no air stirrin
g
below the rim of the hills, and it was stifling. It was, he guessed, more than
a
hundred and twenty in the shade, if a man could find shade.

The green line marking the creek was nearer now, but he could see no gleam of wate
r
among the trees.

His shirt was stiff with caked sweat and dust. He started on, and the horse, afte
r
one complaining tug on the reins, followed after.

Taggart was hard put to keep his feet. Heat waves shimmered before him, and at time
s
he had difficulty in bringing his eyes to a focus. He was a big man, unusually quic
k
on his feet, and when he started to stumble he knew he was in trouble. And then h
e
fell.

For a long minute he lay sprawled on the ground. Then he got his palms under hi
m
and pushed up, getting to his knees, and then to his feet, where he stood swaying.

The green line of the creek was weaving weirdly before him.

He had been in trouble before. Swante Taggart could remember few times when he ha
d
not been in some kind of trouble. Born in a Conestoga wagon on the Sweetwater i
n
Wyoming, during a wagon-train fight with Cheyennes in 1848, he had lived the followin
g
twelve years drifting with his parents from one boom mining camp in California t
o
another. When his father died his mother took him back to the Middle West, and the
y
arrived in Minnesota to live with relatives, just in time for his mother to be massacre
d
by Little Crow's warriors, along with several hundred others.

Young Swante had escaped by hiding under some roots at the edge of a river, and ha
d
been found there by Lieutenant Ambrose Freeman when he led his company of Ranger
s
to the relief of Fort Abercrombie. A good hand with a rifle and already a man grown
,
young Swante rode along.

After the massacre Swante Taggart rode west hunting the Sioux who had killed hi
s
mother, for he had seen them all and knew he would remember them. There had bee
n
four in tha
t
particular group, although there were more outside and around, but it was those fou
r
he wanted.

He killed one of them near the edge of a slough not far from Birch Coulee, and tw
o
weeks later he found two of the others together near a bend of the Missouri. He kille
d
one and the other got a bullet into Swante and hung around two days while Swant
e
waited in a buffalo wallow.

When a troop of cavalry appeared, the Sioux tried to leave, but Swante's first bulle
t
dropped his horse and the second nailed the Indian as he got up from where he ha
d
been thrown when his horse fell. A doctor with the Sibley command fixed Swante up
,
and he returned to Fort Lincoln in an army ambulance.

In the years that followed he herded cattle, hunted buffalo, scouted for the Army
,
and rode shotgun on a stage. While he was holding down this last job, a party o
f
Sioux approached the stage north of Hat Creek Station in Wyoming, and one of the
m
was the last of the four who had killed his mother. They knew each other, and Swant
e
told the others what he wanted. While the stage waited, Swante fought the warrio
r
with a knife and killed him, and then got back up on the box and the stage rolle
d
on to Deadwood.

In New Mexico he found a spring with a good flow and two meadows that lay below it.

He filed on the land and settled down to fight Apaches and live happily ever after.

The Apaches gave him no trouble, but after almost a year of peaceful living the Bennet
t
brothers drove six thousand head of cattle into the area and found the range the
y
wanted ... only Swante Taggart sat right in the middle of it by the biggest spring
,
and with several hundred acres of sub-irrigated land. The three Bennetts and thei
r
gunfightin
g
segundo rode over to suggest that Swante move, but Swante was not accepting suggestions.

Threats followed and Swante sat tight. He owned two hundred head of cattle and
a
few horses, and he was contented. He asked only to be left alone.

Then there had been a "difficulty." Young Jim Bennett d
e
cided the time to act was now, and with Rusty Bob Blazer, who had kille
d
three men in Texas, he rode over to move Taggart.

The shooting was sudden, offhand, and Jim Bennett and Rusty Bob lay dying on th
e
grass, and the only witnesses were Bennett riders.

It was a bad time for gun trouble. New Mexico was in a ferment over the activitie
s
of young Billy Bonney, who was rousting around in the middle of a shooting war u
p
in Lincoln County. The Bennett brothers had money, cattle, and strong political influence
,
while Swante Taggart had only a fast horse. A man must use what he has.

Outlawed by the state for what had been a justifiable killing, Swante Taggart an
d
his fast horse headed west. A pack horse carried what supplies were at hand whe
n
the dream ended.

The stop at Knight's Ranch had been his mistake. Until that time he had avoided trails
,
but by the time he rode within sight of Knight's he was out of coffee, out of food
,
and he desperately needed sleep. Until then nobody had any idea what had become o
f
Taggart.

Two days later when Pete Shoyer came in, returning from delivering a body to th
e
sheriff in Silver City, he heard Taggart was wanted and discovered a man of the descriptio
n
had been at Knight's.

Crown King had seemed the obvious solution for Taggart. It was a mine, a scatterin
g
of other prospect holes, and a few buildings. Scarcely a town, it was off the mai
n
trail and offered a job for a man who could use a single-jack and drill. Taggar
t
had learned how to do that in California when he was ten, and he was doing all righ
t
until Pete Shoyer rode into town.

Within minutes, while Shoyer was cutting the dust from his throat in the Crown Kin
g
saloon, Swante Taggart rode out. He went up Poland Canyon, switched back down Horsethie
f
Canyon, rode through the Bradshaw Mountains, and watered his horse in the cold water
s
of Agua Fria opposite Squaw Creek Mesa.

Half a dozen canyons open in the raw side of Squaw Creek Mesa, each seeming to offe
r
a means of escape, but actually th
e
only trail led up the wall and not through the inviting canyons. He believed he ha
d
an hour's lead and he might have more, and what hoof-prints the horse might leav
e
in the clear stream bottom would be gone by that time, so Swante Taggart had ridde
n
upstream for two miles and left the water on a ledge of rock. He camped that nigh
t
close to Shirt-Tail Springs, with Turret Peak looming to the northwest.

It was here only a few years earlier that Major Randall's soldiers had scaled th
e
fortress-like peak in the night to surprise a band of Apaches in their seemingl
y
invulnerable hiding place.

That had been several days ago, and now he was here, weaving heavily down the lon
g
slope toward Tonto Creek with the heat waves dancing weirdly before him, with cracke
d
lips, a parched throat, and a prayer for water in the Creek. His head ached, throbbin
g
heavily, and the sun blazed in the brassy vault of the sky. The ground was hot beneat
h
his boots.

The Apache came out of the ground as if born from it, and he came shooting, but eve
n
an Apache can be wrong. The mistake killed him.

The dust-brown figure leaped, the sunlight caught on his rifle barrel, and Swant
e
Taggart, who had used a fast draw before this, felt the gun buck in his hard palm.

The mountains tossed the sound like a bouncing ball. Then the sound faded and died
,
and Swante Taggart stood staring at a dead Indian and knew he had been lucky. Ther
e
had been no time for thought ... his reaction had been instantaneous, the resul
t
of years of practice and awareness of danger.

The Apache pony hated the white man's smell and drew back from him. There was n
o
water skin on the pony, and Taggart took time only to secure the rifle and ammunition.