So the reporters filed embroidered stories based on heresay and sketchy information they accepted as fact. They wrote that Bren Early had been court-martialed following the Sonora Incident and cashiered out of the Army. Since then he had been:
A hunting guide.
Road agent.
Convict in a work gang.
Gold prospector.
Had shot and killed anywhere from ten to twenty men.
All this before selling his claim to LaSalle Mining and joining the company. Great stuff, plenty of material here to work with.
Dana Moon's background wasn't as colorful, though it was solid ground to build on. After Sonora he had been fired from his position as Assistant Supervisor, San Carlos Indian Reservation, and had entered the business of mustanging: supplying remounts to Fort Huachuca and stage horses to Hatch & Hodges, before they shut down their lines. He was known to be a rough customer who had shot and killed a few men himself. Now, and for the past few years, Dana Moon was in charge of the Apache sub-agency at White Tanks.
Yes, Moon and Early had crossed paths several times since the Sonora Incident, which is what made the “angle” of these two eventually tearing into each other a natural. Headlines, with facts slightly bent, practically wrote themselves.
Beginner's luck, the other news reporters said.
2
Was it luck? Or the fact Maurice Dumas had trained himself to jump out of bed each day at 6:30 A.M. and immediately check his list of THINGS TO DO. At seven he walked into the Congress Hotel dining room and there was Brendan Early, alone: the first time Maurice Dumas had ever seen the man without a crowd around him.
“Excuse me, but would you mind if I interviewed you?” Nervous as hell.
Brendan Early looked up from his T-bone steak, tomatoes and scrambled eggs. He looked different than he did in the C.S. Fly photos: his face was thinner and he now wore a heavy mustache that curved down around his mouth and was darker than his hair.
“Let me hear your first question.”
“Well-were you chucked out of the Army or did you retire?”
“You mean you are asking instead of telling me?” Brendan Early said. “Sit down.”
Both surprised and encouraged, Maurice Dumas took off his cap and did as he was told. He couldn't believe it.
“I quit, resigned my commission,” Bren Early said.
“What did you do right after that?”
“I rested.”
“Thought of what you would do next?”
“Thought of staying alive. I thought quite a lot about it.”
“Meaning you had to make a living?”
“I thought of ladies somewhat. But most often I thought of staying alive.”
“I believe you advertised your services to lead western hunting expeditions. In Chicago and other eastern papers?”
“It's true. The advertisement said, ‘Ladies welcome…Your dear lady will be well protected and taken care of.’”
“How long were you a hunting guide?”
“I wasn't guide, I hired guides to do the work while I led the expeditions.”
“How long did you do that?”
“Till I got tired of smiling.”
The news reporter wasn't sure he understood that; but he preferred to cover ground rather than clear up minor points. He watched Mr. Early take a silver flask from inside his dark suitcoat and pour a good slug into his coffee.
“Is that whiskey?”
“Cognac. I don't drink whiskey in the morning.”
“May I continue?”
“Please do.”
“It's said you've killed between ten and twenty men. How many exactly did you?”
“That's not the question to ask.?”
Maurice Dumas thought a moment. “Did you know their names?”
And saw Mr. Early pause over his breakfast and look at him with interest.
“That's the question. How did you know to ask it?”
“It seemed like a good one,” the reporter said.
Brendan Early nodded, saying “It's interesting that some of them-I don't mean the backshooters, of course-would announce themselves with the sound of death in their tone. ‘Mr. Early…I am R.J. Baker.’ Then stare with a hard, solemn look, like I was supposed to faint or piss my britches.”
“Really? What happened that time? The one said his name was Baker.”
“Don't you want some breakfast?”
“I'll just have some of this coffee, if I may.”
Eating his steak, watching the young reporter pour himself a cup from the silver pot on the table, Brendan Early said, “Are you sure you're from a newspaper? You aren't like the rest of that snotty bunch at all.”
“Chicago Times,” Maurice Dumas said. “There are so many things I want to ask you about.” Including the mysterious Mrs. Pierson, who lived over on Mill Street. Was she just a friend or what?
“Don't be nervous.” Brendan Early looked through the doors to the railroad clock in the hall. “We got till I get tired of talking or you decide you know more that I do. This morning I'm going shooting.”
“You mean-up there?”
“No, I'm gonna step out into the desert and limber up my revolvers and test my eyesight.”
“Getting ready for the showdown,” Maurice Dumas said, squirming in his chair a little.
“You're starting to sound like the others,” Brendan Early said. “Don't tell me things. Ask me.”
“I'm sorry. How come you're going out to limber up your revolvers?”
“Today and tomorrow. I intend to shoot off several boxes of forty-fours. Because sometime soon, I've been told, an acquaintance from long ago will arrive in Benson by train, get here somehow or other, and I don't know his present frame of mind.”
“You mean somebody who wants to kill you?”
“Ask him that one. Fella by the name of Phil Sundeen, come back from the dead.”
Maurice Dumas frowned. What was going on? He said, “Sundeen. I don't believe I've heard that name before.”
“Well, write it down. It could be an item for your paper.”
4
1
The smell of the mares was on the wind, but the stud did not seem to like this graze as a place to breed. He lowered his head, giving the signal, and the mares and the stallions skitting around them followed after as the lead mare moved off.
Seven days Dana Moon had been tracking this herd, gradually, patiently moving the wild horses toward a barranca they'd fenced off with brush; a week of watching, getting to know them, Moon thinking on and off: If you were the stud, which one would you pick to mount first?
It would be hard. There were some good-looking mares in that bunch. But each time he wondered about it Moon found his gaze cutting out the palomino, the golden-haired girl, from the rest of the mares. She attracted the most overtures from the stallions who'd come sniffing her flanks. Moon would watch the palomino jump gracefully and give the boys a ladylike kick in the muzzle-saving it for the stud.
Out here a week tracking with his six Mimbre riders, former members of the Apache Police at San Carlos, now mustangers working for the Dana Moon Remount & Stage Team Supply Company-if anyone were to ask who he was and what he did.
Though it was not the answer he gave the fool who came riding upwind out of the sun haze. There he was, a speck of sound and smell and the herd was gone, like it would run forever, the Mimbres gathering and chasing off through the dust to keep them located. The fool, two black specks now, came clopping across the scrub waste, clop clop clop clop, leading a pack animal, not even knowing what a goddamn fool he was.
Yet he appeared to be a rider himself, sweat-dirty Stetson down on his eyes, someone who should know better.
A little bell rang inside Moon's head.
Pay attention.
“Are you Dana Moon?”
An official tone. A policeman verifying the name before saying you're under arrest. Or a messenger boy from somewhere.
“You just wiped out a week of tracking,” Moon said. “You know it?”
“I guess it ain't your day,” the man said and drew a pistol and immediately began firing at Moon, shooting him in the thigh, just above his right knee, shooting his horse through the neck and withers, the horse screaming and throwing its head as Moon drew his Colt's and shot the man twice through the chest.
He was a fool after all, not as real as he appeared. But who was he?
One of Moon's Mimbre riders, who was called Red, came back to find his boss sitting on the ground twisting his polka-dot scarf around his leg. The leg looked a mess, the entire thigh bleeding where the bullet had dug its way through Moon's flesh to come out just below his hip bone.
“I never even saw him before,” Moon said. “See if he's got a wallet or something.” He knew the man lying by his horse was dead; he didn't have to ask that.
There were seventeen dollars in a wallet and a folded soiled letter addressed to Asa Maddox, c/o Maricopa Cattle Company, Bisbee, Arizona Territory. The tablet-paper letter said:
Asa Maddox:
That was good news you sent that you have finally got him located. If you do not want to wait for us I cannot stop you, but then we will not wait for you either and will proceed with our plan to get the other one. I think you are wrong in doing this alone instead of with us, but as I have mentioned I cannot stop you nor do I blame you much for your eagerness.
Good luck.
(Signed)
J.A. McWilliams
Moon said, “Who is Asa Maddox? Who in the hell is J.A. McWilliams?”
Red, hunkered down next to Moon, looked at him but did not say anything.
“Well, shit,” Moon said. “I guess I'm going to Benson a week early.”
2
From his midpoint position, Bren Early's gaze moved from his glass of cold beer down in that direction.
“I am.”
“There is a man here looking for you.”
The man who stepped out from behind the rangy cowboy, a large-framed man himself, wore a dark business suit, a gold watch chain across the vest, a gray Stetson that looked like it had just come out of the box.
“Are you Mr. Johnson?” Bren Early asked. It was the name of the party he was supposed to meet here in Florence.
Instead of answering, the man walked over to a Douglas chair against the back wall where a maroon felt traveling bag sat waiting.
Bren Early liked businessmen hunters who were conscientious about the clause “Free in Advance” and handed it over before they shook hands and said how much they'd been looking forward to this expedition. Raising his cold beer, Bren Early looked up at the clock on the wall between the back-bar mirrors. It was 11:48 in the morning. He liked the idea of putting five hundred dollars in his pocket before noon. He liked the quiet of a morning barroom-the heat and heavy work left outside with Bo Catlett and the light-blue hunting wagon. He'd bring Bo out a glass of beer after.
The cowboy was still sideways to the bar, facing this way. Like making sure he wasn't going to leave. Or so that he'd see the pistol stuck in the cowboy's belt. Why was this cowboy staring at him?
The man in the business suit was bending over his open traveling bag, taking a lot of time. Why wasn't the money on his person?
Bren Early put down his glass of beer. He heard the man in the business suit say, as the man came around, finally, with the pistol:
“This is for Jack McWilliams, you Indin-loving son of a bitch-”
(Though, the bartender testified at the Pinal County Sheriff's Inquest, the gentleman never got to say the last word.)
Bren Early shot the man with a .44 Smith & Wesson, the slug exploding from the barrel, obliterating the word and taking the man cleanly through the brisket…shot the cowboy dead through the heart, heard him drop his weapon and fall heavily as he put the Smith on the man in the business suit again, not 100 percent sure about this one.
The man was slumped awkwardly in a pole-axed daze, half-lying-sitting on the maroon travel bag, bewildered, wondering how his plan had suddenly gone to hell, staring up at Bren Early with maybe ten minutes of life remaining in him.
“You rehearsed that, didn't you?” Bren Early said. “I'll bet it sounded good when you said it to a mirror.”
Blood seeped out between the man's fingers pressed to his rib cage, trying to hold himself together, breathing and hearing the wound bubble and breathe back at him, sucking air, the man then breathing quicker, harder, to draw air up into his mouth before the wound got it all.
“You should not have begun that speech,” Bren Early said. “But a lot of good it does advising you now, huh?…Has anybody an idea who this man is?”
J.A. McWilliams of Prescott, a supplier of drilling equipment and high explosives, according to identifying papers. The cowboy with him remained nameless-at least to Bren Early, who left Florence with Bo Catlett and their blue hunting wagon as soon as he was cleared of any willful intent to do harm.
McWilliams. It was a somewhat familiar name, but did not stir any clear recollections from the past.
3
Now Katy McKean was calling on him. The first time she came he wondered: Will she leave the hotel room door open?
No, she didn't. She sat in the big chair between the windows, and Moon, sitting upright in bed, had to squint to see her face with the sun glare on the windows. He couldn't ask her to pull the shades. After her second visit he got up and struggled one-legged with the horsehide chair, moving it all the way around the bed and after that, when she came, the good view was to the west.
Well, how have you been?…Fine…I hardly recognize Benson the way it's grown…Has it?…You live with your folks?…Yes, and three young brothers; a place down the river a few miles…Bren ever come by to see you?…Now and then.
It required three visits from her before he asked, “How come you aren't married with a place of your own?”
“Why aren't you?”
“It hasn't been something I've thought about,” Moon said. “Up till now.” (Why was he saying this? He had come to town to visit the whorehouse and look at possibilities only.)
“Well, I haven't met the man yet,” the McKean girl said. “They come out, my dad looks them over. The best he gives is a shrug. The drag riders he won't even speak to.”
“Your dad,” Moon said. “Whose choice is it, yours or his?”
“He knows a few things I haven't learned yet,” the McKean girl said. She wore boots under her cotton skirt, the toes hooked on the sideboard of Moon's bed, her knees raised and a little apart. He couldn't see anything, but he was aware of her limbs and imagined them being very white and smooth, white thighs-Jesus-and a patch of soft hair.
Moon sat up straight in bed, the comforter pulled up to his waist over his clean longjohns, his hair and mustache combed, bay rum rubbed into his face and wearing his polka-dot scarf loosely for her visit. He was seasoned and weathered for his thirty-four years, looking closer to forty. The McKean girl was about twenty-three, a good-looking woman who could have her pick but was in no hurry; knew her own mind, or her dad's. Bren Early was thirty one or thirty two, closer to her age, liked the ladies and they liked him. Why, Moon wondered, did he always think of Bren when the McKean girl was here? Hell, ask her.