The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [111]
There was a sign on the door of the adobe office which described it formally. It read:D.J. MERRITT—AGENT, JICARILLA APACHE SUBAGENCY—PUERCO, NEW MEXICO TERRITORY. It was a startling announcement to post on the door of a squat adobe sitting all alone in the shadow of the Nacimentos. My Apaches preferred higher ground and the closest jacales were two miles up into the foothills. The office had to remain on the mail run, even though the mail consisted chiefly of impossible-to-apply Bureau memoranda.
Just before supper Tudishishn returned. He came in at a run this time and swung off before his pony had come to a full stop. He was excited and spoke in a confusion of Apache, Spanish, and a word here and there of English.
Returning to the reservation, he had decided to stop off and see his friends of the Puerco Agency. There had been friends he had not seen for some time, and the morning had lengthened into afternoon with tulapai, good talking, and even coffee. People had come from the more remote jacales, deeper in the hills, when they learned Tudishishn was there, to hear news of friends at the reservation. Soon there were many people and what looked like the beginning of a good time. Then Señor McKay had come.
McKay had men with him, many men, and they were looking for Mickey Solner—the squaw man, as the Americans called him.
Most of the details I learned later on, but briefly this is what had happened: McKay and some of his men were out on a hunting trip. When they got up that morning, McKay’s horse was gone, along with a shotgun and some personal articles. They got on the tracks, which were fresh and easy to follow, and by that afternoon they were at Mickey Solner’s jacale. His woman and boy were there, and the horse was tethered in front of the mud hut. Mickey Segundo, the boy, was honored to lead such important people to his father, who was visiting with Tudishishn.
McKay brought the horse along, and when they found Mickey Solner, they took hold of him without asking questions and looped a rope around his neck. Then they boosted him up onto the horse they claimed he had stolen. McKay said it would be fitting that way. Tudishishn had left fast when he saw what was about to happen. He knew they wouldn’t waste time arguing with an Apache, so he had come to me.
When I got there, Mickey Solner was still sitting McKay’s chestnut mare with the rope reaching from his neck to the cottonwood bough overhead. His head drooped as if all the fight was out of him, and when I came up in front of the chestnut, he looked at me with tired eyes, watery and red from tulapai.
I had known Solner for years, but had never become close to him. He wasn’t a man with whom you became fast friends. Just his living in an Apache rancheria testified to his being of a different breed. He was friendly enough, but few of the whites liked him—they said he drank all the time and never worked. Maybe most were just envious. Solner was a white man gone Indian, whole hog. That was the cause of the resentment.
His son, Mickey the Second, stood near his dad’s stirrup looking at him with a bewildered, pathetic look on his slim face. He held on to the stirrup as if he’d never let it go. And it was the first time, the only time, I ever saw Mickey Segundo without a faint smile on his face.
“Mr. McKay,” I said to the cattleman, who was standing relaxed with his hands in his pockets, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to take that man down. He’s under bureau jurisdiction and will have to be tried by a court.”
McKay said nothing, but Bowie Allison, who was his herd boss, laughed and then said, “You ought to be afraid.”
Dolph Bettzinger was there, along with his brothers Kirk and Sim. They were hired for their guns and usually kept pretty close to McKay. They did not laugh when Allison did.