Curly: A Tale of the Arizona Desert

by Roger Pocock

The Flying W. inquired if my three riders was a case of triplets, or only an unfortunate mistake. Then my boys produced their six-guns and allowed they'd been whelped savage, raised dangerous, and turned loose hostile—and I only arrived just in time to save them from being spoiled for further use on earth. I challenged the Flying W. to race their best pets against my "mangy" ponies, and both sides agreed to have a drink with me, instead of wasting mounted funeral pageants on such a one-horse town as little Lordsburgh.

So while I was playing nursemaid, herding all those kids, who should roll up the street but young Onate, of Holy Cross, on the dead run with a letter from Jim. The more kids, the worse trouble. Well, when I had swallowed Jim's letter, I fired off a batch of telegrams and soon had a wire back from the Albuquerque sheriff. "Will impound them cattle," says he, "pending advices from Bryant." So I sent Onate streaking after Bryant, and went on playing at nursemaid until I was plumb scared that I'd be sprouting a cap of ribbons. Anyway, I didn't have time to think until the evening train pulled into Grave City. By that time my three babies were dancing a fandango upon the roof of the car. When the train stopped I hauled them down by the legs, petted them some with my boot, and told them to go away home. They went, with a bet between them, which would be first at my ranch.

Just for the sake of peace and quietness I stayed that night in Grave City, and sat around next morning smoking long cigars while I made my poor brain think. There were points in Jim's letter, and facts I had picked up casual at Lordsburgh, and words of gossip dropped in the hotel; but to put them all together would have puzzled a large-sized judge. Still, by all the tracks, the signs, the signals, and the little smells, I reckoned that Mr. Ryan was mighty near reaching a crisis, and apt to break out sudden as dynamite. First, here was Sheriff Bryant with two deputies, his wife, and a medicine-man, camped down at Holy Cross. Now Bryant would scarcely take deputy-sheriffs down there to nurse a sick lady. Had Holy Cross been seized at last for Balshannon's debts? That smelt of Ryan.

Secondly, Jim had gone to heaps of trouble gathering all the breeding-stock of Holy Cross, for a party named Jabez Y. Stone to steal them convenient. Jabez Y. had once been a bar-tender in Ryan's hotel—so that smelt of Ryan, too.

Thirdly, here was poor Balshannon being held with a string round his leg at the Sepulchre saloon, by the two crookedest gamblers in Arizona, the same being Low-Lived Joe and Louisiana Pete. Once, Joe, being gaoled for killing a Mexican, Ryan had put up money for a lawyer to get him released. So if these two thugs were instructed to hold and skin the Dook, that likewise smelt strong of Ryan.

Fourthly, here was young Michael Ryan in his private car from New York, burning the rails to reach Grave City by ten o'clock this night. The smell of Ryan surely tainted the whole landscape. Now just throw back to the words of Ryan's letter which fourteen long years before he had nailed upon the door of Holy Cross:—

"The time will come when, driven from this your new home, without a roof to cover you or a crust to eat, your wife and son turned out to die in the desert, you will beg for even so much as a drink of water, and it will be thrown in your face. I shall not die until I have seen the end of your accursed house."

So this was Ryan's plan—the work of fourteen years; industrious a whole lot, and plenty treacherous, but coming surely true. He had waited until he knew the lady was mostly dead, then turned her out of Holy Cross to die in the desert. The cattle were stolen, Balshannon was tied down for slaughter, and Michael would come to see the finish at ten o'clock to-night.

I began to reckon up Balshannon's friends, cowboys and robbers mostly, scattered anyway across the big range of the desert. They would not hear me if I howled for help.

But Ryan was respectable. He was Chairman of the Committee of Public Safety which lynched bad men when they became too prevalent with their guns. Ryan was our leading citizen, heaps rich, and virtuous no end. The Law would side with him, and as to the officers of the law, judges, and City Marshal, and the police—they'd got elected because he spoke for them. He owned the city, could bring out hundreds of men to take his side. What could I do against this Ryan's friends?