Red Rock
by Willailla
~New Mexico, 1870's~
Chapter 1: A Stranger Rides In
A dead Indian hung from the limb of a cottonwood over a dry creek bed. There was
a flurry of large wings as a rider slowly approached, and reddish-colored hawks
lifted their engorged bodies sluggishly into the air with a chorus of kreeing
sounds and began to circle leisurely overhead.
John Green clicked his tongue softly and the pinto he was riding came to a stop
at the edge of the shallow clay bank on the opposite side. It was past June when
most stream beds had dried up. He lifted his, wide-brimmed hat from his head and
wiped the back of his hand across his sweaty brow. His face was streaked with
grime. His blue shirt and tan buckskin pants were covered in a thin coating of
alkali from days of trekking up the Jornada del Muerto, a waterless waste of
blistering sand and sagebrush.
He wore a holstered pair of Colt .44-40s with the ivory butts pointed forward on
two criss-crossed cartridge belts. Hanging from his pommel by a shoulder strap
was a leather case. Inside was a Sharps .52 caliber buffalo rifle. The throat of
his shirt was open underneath a yellow bandana, and the sleeves were rolled up
deeply tanned arms to the elbows. He looked to be a man in his mid-twenties with
black, curly hair and piercing blue eyes.
He squinted against the hot glare of the noonday sun and, after a moment, placed
the sweat-stained Stetson back on his head.
The Indian, a boy, had been dead some considerable time. The body was bloated
with gas. The lower portion, from the hips down, was coal black where the blood
had settled. Decay had caused the torso to turn a reddish black. Clots of dried
blood hung in black strands from the nostrils. Shit had fallen to the ground
beneath, but it had long since dried, and no flies buzzed around it. The eyes
were gone from their sockets. The mouth hung open; the tongue was chewed away as
well as the lips by the hawks. The cock was missing, too. Either eaten . . . or
cut off. Whoever had hanged the boy had mutilated him; the belly had been cut
open. The uncoiled gut hung to the ground like a long, withered snake.
Green guessed he had been dead at least twenty-four hours. The rope used to hang
the Indian was a Mexican-made maguey, a light string good for calf roping. It
had been tossed over the limb of the cottonwood and, after the Indian had been
hoisted up, secured around the trunk of the tree. There were many hoof prints in
the sandy creek bottom around the boy. Maybe half a dozen riders.
Green wiped his sweaty palms on his thighs and took out a draw-string pouch of
tobacco from his shirt pocket and rolled a smoke, lighting it with one of the
few remaining matches stuck in the yellow band. He inhaled the smoke deeply
smelling sulfur fumes mixed with the faint stench of the Indian. He didn't want
to get any closer.
Whoever had hanged the boy wanted his body to be seen, for it was in plain sight
of the stage route Green had been following. He nudged his silver spurs gently
against the pinto's flanks and continued on across the creek bed avoiding the
body by a wide margin; the hooves of the horse clopped on a bed of sandstone
near the center. Green knew that the circling hawks would draw attention from
far off, and he didn't want to be around when the boy's relatives showed up, for
he had, most likely, been killed by whites; the hoof prints he had observed near
the body had been those of shod horses.
He moved on off and after awhile came to the top of a rise where stretched out
before him was a panorama of red-cliffed mesas and deep canyons interspersed
with wide, open plains. Scraggily pinons and other various pines and junipers
clung to the nearby slopes, surging up through cracks in the reddish rocks.
Prickly pear and sagebrush dotted the landscape. Below on a stretch of open
ground, he could see a small cluster of twenty or thirty buildings mostly of
adobe. A few of two stories. He looked around at the low outcroppings of rocks
on either side of the road. Several hundred feet to his right was a rocky
overhang adjacent to a wide-spreading juniper. He guided his horse toward it and
dismounted. The tangy odor of the juniper itched his nostrils. Behind the tree,
he inspected the outcrop. Near the bottom was a narrow fissure running several
feet horizontally and several inches wide vertically. He got down on his hands
and knees and peered into it; after a moment, he stood back up and took the
leather case holding the Sharps rifle off the saddle and fitted it into the
fissure. It went back far enough to be out of sight.
Mounting up once more, he returned to the stage route and headed down the gently
sloping rise toward the small cluster of buildings. On the outskirts he passed a
cemetery on a hillock and a pine marker leaning into the ground with a panel
nailed to the top that read 'RED ROCK'. An Apache arrow was stuck in the post.
The sign had several bullet holes in it.
The first building to his left, a barber shop, had a 'closed' sign hanging in
the window. In a lot next to it were some hay stacks of grama grass and a corral
behind a gabled livery of pine logs. Next to this a general store of adobe, with
a doctor's office above, according to the sign over the porch walkway. On the
slightly inclined roof sat a man holding a Winchester rifle in his lap. At the
bottom of some side stairs that led up to the doctor's office was a buggy with a
yellow canvas top. A black medical bag was sitting on the seat. Farther down,
another sign on a small adobe building proclaimed it to be the jail.
In front of the general store, two men were loading a buckboard with supplies.
Green noticed that both were heavily armed with pistols and knives. On the seat
of the buckboard leaned two Winchester rifles. He also noted that the walls of
the adobe buildings were pitted with bullet markings. As well as the logs of the
livery which were splintered and punched full of holes. A few arrows stuck out
just beneath the roof.
To his right, across from the barber shop, was a two story adobe. The 'Loomis
Hotel' according to the sign. A vacant lot sat next to it; farther down was a
hardware store. All the buildings had small windows and heavy shutters that
could be closed in a hurry if need be. Typical of western towns periodically
besieged by Indians.
Continuing on he passed another adobe building to his right. A pretty woman with
blonde hair braided up in coils on the top of her head was leaning in the
doorway observing him without expression, her arms crossed over her breasts, one
foot extended out in front of the other on the plank walkway. On the front of
the two-storied adobe an arch of black letters stated that it was the 'Red Rock
Lantern'. A few buildings farther down was a cantina, also of adobe with bright
red shutters on its two front windows, one on each side of the door. A canvas
awning overhead held up with poles served as a porch. A drunk, with his
wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes, was kicked back in a chair against
the wall next to the door sleeping one off.
As he dismounted in front of the livery, a strongly built man with close-cut
gray hair beneath the brim of his black fedora stepped out of the alleyway. He
was puffing on a curved pipe and pushing a wheelbarrow full of manure. The
pitchfork handle stuck out in front like the jib pole of a ship. His shirt was
blue and white stripped underneath a dark-gray vest. The sleeves were rolled up,
revealing muscular forearms. His trousers were of blue denim.
When he saw Green he sat the wheelbarrow down and tipped his hat back.
"What can I do for you, mister?" he asked, taking the pipe from his mouth and
cupping it in the palm of his dark-brown hand.
"Need to put my horse up for a day or two," Green replied.
The liveryman's narrow eyes sized him up, glancing at the makeshift rope
hackamore on the pinto.
"Indian pony, huh." He lowered his eyes. "Not shod."
Green nodded. "Couple of bucks jumped me a few days back." He spoke slowly,
softly, meeting the man gaze. "Killed my horse. I caught this one . . .
afterwards; the other spooked and got away."
"Un, huh," the liveryman said, He glanced at the ivory handled Colts on Green's
hips. He didn't feel a need to ask what happened to the two Indians. The eyes of
the stranger were cool and watchful like a rattler before it strikes.
"Probably some of Gray Wolf's renegades," the liveryman said. "They've been
hitting us pretty hard lately. Last stage through was two weeks ago. Indians
killed a passenger and the guard. Hasn't been one since."
Green nodded slightly.
Pocketing his pipe the liveryman stepped off to the side of the pinto and cupped
it's muzzle in his hand. The horse didn't shy off. He stuck his finger in the
side of it's mouth and pushed up the lip to examine its teeth.
"About four years old," he said. "Tall for a paint, a ripper, good sixteen
hands." He patted it shoulder. "Good slope but not too much. Good cow pony;
large chest, healthy lungs and a big heart; holds his legs nice and straight
under him; he'll be clear-footed. Got a short back, won't ride as comfortably as
the long back, but he'll be stronger and quicker. Firm looking hooves, no
cracks." He glanced at Green. "Probably need to shoe him if you plan on doing
much riding. Lots of rough ground around here."
He straightened and took his pipe back out of his vest pocket. "I'd say the
Indians did you a favor with that'un."
"Could've been worse," Green replied. "Got a blacksmith in town?"
"You're lookin' at'm." "OK. How soon?"
"Won't take long. I'll put him in the paddock, let him cool off some, and have
at it as soon as I finish loading that wagon." He nodded toward a nearby work
wagon. "Won't take more than an hour." Then he added. "Taking a load out to the
Widow Holbarth's place tomorrow. She puts it on her garden."
The woman's name meant something to Green, but only a slight flicker of his
eyelids gave notice under the shadow of his hat brim.
"No hurry," Green said, handing him the rope reins of the hackamore. "I won't be
needing him until tomorrow." He untied the apron strings and retrieved his
bedroll, saddlebags and canteen.
Walking back toward the Loomis Hotel, shouldering his gear, he saw the blonde
woman still watching him from the doorway of the newspaper office. His spurs
made a chinking sound as he crossed the hard packed clay of the street.
