CANYON DIABLO

By Atonia Walpole

(Picture creations also by Atonia)

Part 10

Ben, Cort, Egan and East opened up on the posse, driving them back down the hill. Their element of surprise now gone, they were looking for cover. The gunfight lasted most of the day with only a pause now and again. By the end of the day the only thing shot was Ben’s hat, a bullet through the crown had sent it flying off his head.

Night and the shooting had stopped, neither side wanting to take a chance of hitting one of their own. Jincy started out in the crevice but she had edged out enough to get a few shots off herself. The only wounds being from flying shards of rock, she dabbed at them with a wet piece of bandage, cleaning as best she could.

“That ought to have a stitch in it,” she said, cleaning Ben’s right cheek. “One more inch and it would have been your eye.”

“Aw, it’ll be all right.” He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “Tomorrow if there’s any way to get you outta here, I want you to go. I don’t want anything to happen to you.

Jincy saw something in his eyes that made her catch her breath. He cared about her. “I’m not gonna leave you here like this. Who’s gonna wash the blood off of you?”

“There ain’t gonna be no blood tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

“I don’t never make no promises I can’t keep, but I will promise you this…we get outta here, you’ll have that bath and that clean dress.”

“I’m going to hold you to that so…make sure we get out of here.”

“I’ll do my best.” He hadn’t realized he’d been holding her wrist. He let his hand drop.

A pattern began to emerge. The gunfight lasted from sun up until sun down. It was intense at times and Ben wondered how long this could continue. Four days now the battle had raged. They were pinned down in the spot they’d chosen. On the fourth night he made a decision.

“Tomorrow before sun up we’re gettin’ off this ridge. We’ll break up if we have to.” He looked around at the men. East had been wounded, a bullet grazed his temple. They were all scratched and cut up. “East, I want to put you in charge of Jincy. You an Egan get her outta here back to the crossing.”

“I don’t want to go across there,” she spoke up. “I wouldn’t have a chance! They’d marry me off.”

“I’ll take her home,” East said quietly.

“Yeah, take her home.”

“What about you and Father Cort?”

“We’ll take care of ourselves. We can do that, can’t we, Cort?”

“I reckon we can.” He met Ben’s look.

“Well, when this is over,” Jincy stared into the fire, “and I’m back home I want you all to know you’re welcome to come there. I’ll be waiting for you to show up in Tucson, big gray house on the corner. There’s a fence around it and a wide front porch. Doc Shumpert’s place, everybody knows where it is.”

“Thank you for the invitation, Jincy. We might just do that.” Ben stretched out his legs and lay back on his saddle.

“You’ve been a big help to all of us, Jincy. I’m not sure we coulda made it this far without you. I’ll be praying for your safe journey home.”

“I’ll be praying for you too, Father Cort, and for your mission.”

Cort smiled and squeezed  her hand. There would be no mission for him. He didn’t expect to see her again.

Four thirty the next morning they made ready to pull out. Ben threw his saddlebags over Jincy’s horse. “I’m gonna let you keep what’s in there for me, spend what you need to.” He stepped back, eyes still locked on hers. She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him and he held her for a moment against him, then let her go.

“Take this,” Cort took the cross from around his neck, “for a safe journey home.” He put it over her head.

On impulse Jincy placed a soft kiss on his lips. “Live,” she whispered.

As soon as they began to move the posse opened fire. East raced away with Jincy and Egan while Ben and Cort drew the fire away from them. Egan rode up beside her and reached over and took her reins. She was crying so hard she couldn’t see, much less rein her horse.

Ben and Cort had slowly been moving away from the direction East had ridden. The sun was now coming over the horizon and they made their break, riding along the canyon wall. Cort’s horse was shot out from under him and he went over the wall, falling fifty feet to a ledge below. Ben stopped, dismounted and leaned over, figuring he was dead. He thought he saw a movement but gunfire directed at him quickly turned him around. He shot his round and holstered his gun. He was through.

“I give up!” he shouted, his voice echoing through the canyon, repeating itself over and over. The posse moved up and took him into custody. One of O’Neill’s men climbed down to the ledge and called for a rope. The man was still alive, he said.

Cort was conscious. He’d survived the fall miraculously without a broken bone. God wasn’t through with him yet.

East, Egan and Jincy arrived at Lee’s Crossing. Their horses were spent and East took them to the livery stable and procured three more. Egan had been especially quiet since they left Wahweep Canyon.

“I don’t reckon we’d better hang around,” East said as they mounted fresh horses.

“Which way are you goin’?” Egan asked.

“Down the Mormon Road as fast as we can travel. What are you doin’?”

Egan looked down toward the ferry. “I’m goin’ to Utah.”

“You gonna turn Mormon?”

“Nah, I’ll get to Texas…I’ll get there.” He and East looked at each other a long time.

“Good luck, mate. Maybe I’ll see ya there one day.”

“Yeah, I’ll need a good wrangler.”

“I’m your man.”

Egan said his goodbye’s to Jincy and rode toward the ferry. It was loading when he got there and he paid his fee and dismounted, leading his horse onto the ferry boat. A small child was too close to the side and he stooped down and picked her up just as the ferryman came on board checking his passengers. Later he would tell O’Neill there wasn’t anything but families crossing today.

East and Jincy shopped the trading post before they left, filling their saddlebags. “I don’t figure it will take us as long to get back cause we’ll be on the road.”

Jincy was numb. She looked at East as he buckled up her bags. “East, won’t they be looking for you?”

“Yeah, but  I ain’t looking for them. Me and you, we can travel together okay. We’ll travel more at night than daylight. Just the two of us we can make good time on down the road.” He looked up at her  from under the brim of his hat. “Reckon you can ride all day and tonight?”

“East, I reckon I can do anything.” She pulled herself together. She hated the loss of Egan on top of the loss of Ben and Father Cort.

He grinned and mounted his horse. Turning to look at her a moment, he led the way out of the settlement.

O’Neill and his men spent two days at the settlement combing the area for East and Egan while Cort recovered from his fall. He and Ben were locked together in a jail cell.

Ben paced like a caged animal. Cort lay on the narrow cot. “I reckon they’re lookin’ for  ‘em. That’s why we’re still here.”

“I pray they made it far enough away.”

“I trust East to get Jincy outta here. I don’t know about Egan but I wish him well.”

“What don’t you know about him? I think he proved his mettle on the ridge if not before.”

“He’s a quiet feller. You always gotta look out for them. Don’t know what he’s thinkin’ half the time.”

“He’s not an outlaw, Ben…probably why you can’t read him.”

Ben looked around at him and then back at the barred window. “I was gonna quit this life. I’m tired of it. That’s why I never put together a real gang after Contention. Things have a way of pullin’ you back, though. Always seem to go back to the only thing I know.”

“Is it the money?”

“No, it ain’t the money. I got more than I’ll ever spend…or live to spend. What made you hit up the church? Was you hidin’ out?”

“No, like you I was sick of it, too. I got away from it long enough to feel some satisfaction with myself and then Herod came and dragged me back. Then he was dead and I had a chance to turn my life around. I was free of him for the first time, really free. And then you came along.…”

“You make yourself out to be a victim and you always will be till you do something to change that. This ain’t gonna make you feel any better but Miss Elda had instructions to put Jincy on that stagecoach if we didn’t come back. I might be rotten to the core but I got standards, Cort. You believed me and I knew you would. I don’t just read outlaws. You got a soft heart and that’ll get you in trouble every time.”

“What about your heart, Ben? You ever found it?”

“I don’t look for it. Better that way.”

Part 11

Jincy looked over at the spot where the trail they’d traveled joined the Mormon road, Navajo Springs it was called but East didn’t stop. They’d ridden all day and half the night before he found a place they could fall out for awhile, the end of a canyon called Waterpocket because the water filled the end, making a nice little pool before going under the rocks and continuing on. The rode until they almost reached the end of it where the ground sloped gently down to the water. It was a good five miles off the road, perfect spot to get some rest. The only problem was someone else was already there. Two men were breaking up their camp.

Warily they rode down to the edge of the water and their horses drank thirstily. Jincy slid off her saddle with her canteen and saw one of the men walk over not ten feet away and urinate in the water. She stood up to see a grin on his face and she raised her shotgun.

“What did you go and do that for?” she asked.

“Ah, it’ll be all gone now,” he laughed a little.

“Jincy…” she heard East’s low voice and his horse moving up behind her. He had his hand on his gun.

“Hey, I didn’t mean no harm.” The man wasn’t laughing any more and his partner was urging him to the horses.

She kept her gun pointed on them until she saw the tail end of their horses moving up the hill.

East dismounted and came over to her and took the gun from her hands. “What was you gonna do, Jincy, shoot ‘im?”

She turned and looked at him. “Yeah…I was.”

“You don’t need to be shootin’ nobody, girl. Besides, don’t you realize a shot will echo through these canyons for days?”

“I’m tired, East, I’m tired of people messing with us, chasing us down like a pack of dogs, peeing in my water. I’m not gonna take much more.”

He looked around at the campsite the two men had just left. “Over there...I’ll put your bedroll down, fill your canteen and you get some rest. I’ll stand watch till you wake up, and you can do the same for me.”

“You’ve got to be as tired as I am.”

“I’m okay.” He unstrapped her bedding and laid it out under the overhang of a rock to give her some shade.

Jincy went out like a light and East busied himself building up a fire in the still-hot embers left in the fire ring by the men. He unsaddled the horses and brought their things around the camp, chewed a piece of jerky, drank some water. Later he found himself nodding off and through his half-lidded eyes he looked at the water remembering home…remembering .…

Jincy slept for three hours and when she was awake enough to sit up East was nowhere to be found. The horses were gone, too. She grabbed her gun and stood up. “East! East, where are you?” Quickly she looked around. All their things were there including the saddle bags, the saddles. “East...?” She walked along the water’s edge until she saw him in the pool. She sat down and watched him with the horses in the water. She was twenty-one years old and had never seen a naked man before.

Once she got over the fact that he was naked she smiled at his pure joy. Why, he was playing with them! She put her hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh.

It was a while before he realized he was being watched. “Hiya! Why don’t you come in?”

“That water’s got to be freezing.”

“It’s not bad once you get in. Can you swim?”

“No.”

“I won’t let you drown.”

She looked away, grinning. Could she do it? It wasn’t a bath tub but to be clean again.…

“I’ll send the horses out…tie ‘um up and come in.”

She shook her head.

“I’ll come and get you and throw you in,” he threatened with a grin.

She scrambled to her feet and he sent the horses up on the bank. She tied them to a tree and took her boots off. “Don’t look!” she said to him.

She pulled off her layers of clothing down to her camisole and knickers then walked to the edge of the water with her arms around her breasts. “It’s too cold.”

“You know you’re gonna do it. It’s not deep where you are.”

Jincy inched her way out into the water, stopping every once in a while. Feeling the bottom rocks with her feet, she finally came to soft sand. It took her breath when she went under and came up sputtering and shivering. East was out in deeper water but he swam closer and reached out, taking her hands, pulling her along with him.

“I can’t touch bottom!” She squealed.

“I can. I’ve got you. Now, don’t it feel good?”

“Oh, yeah.” She lay back in the water, letting her hair float out around her. East pulled her around for awhile, playing with her and noticing her dark nipples beneath the near transparent wet camisole.

He’d taken the bandage off his temple and she looked up at the wound, blue and puckered and reached up to touch it. East’s hands went under her bottom, holding her up and her legs went around his waist. She looked into his eyes and kissed him, not knowing where it came from but she wanted to.

“Jincy….” He was breathing heavily.

“It’s all right. I wanted.…” He kissed her deeply, arms around her back, his tongue finding its way into her mouth.

She felt hot all over. It was going to happen, that thing Maria told her would happen on her wedding night…it was gonna. Her underpants were down around her thighs. "I never ….never done this before.”

He kissed her again and entered her hard, causing her to cry out. “Oh!” She held him around the neck, her heels digging into his buttocks. When it came, that exquisite release, she lay back from him in the water ,still with her legs around him. She opened her eyes and looked up at the sky and then at him. He was wearing a little smile and she smiled back. He took her to the bank and set her up on the rocks.

Jincy found her clothes and dressed, leaving off the wet underthings. When she turned around East had his pants on, pulling on his boots. Neither of them spoke about what had happened. Jincy didn’t know what to say and for East it was as natural a thing to have happened as taking a pee.

He lay down in his blankets and went to sleep without a word to her.  She watched him sleeping for awhile then got up and started preparing a meal for them. She hung her wet things up to dry in the sun, still trying to get her mind around what had happened between them. Did this mean he loved her? Would he ask her to marry him? What did she feel about him? They were friends…were they still friends?

Later when he woke up she served him the bacon she’d fried and Mormon bread they’d bought at the trading post, dipped in bacon grease. She was eating her food slowly, looking up at him now and again.

“East, you haven’t said anything about what happened.”

“What happened?” He looked up innocently.

“In the pool…what we did.”

“What should I say?”

“Well, I don’t know what people say after such a thing. I haven’t had any experience in that area.”

“They say thank you.” He took a drink of coffee.

“Thank you…and that’s all?”

“What more do you want?”

“Are we still friends?”

He smiled, “Yeah, we’re friends.”

She took a breath. “Then we don’t have to get married or anything?”

“No…I’m not the marrying kind, at least not for a long time. That was good.” He finished with his meal. “I’ll clean up if you want to have another go at your bed.”

“Not sure I could sleep.”  But she did get into her blankets and thought about him, how cold he could be and yet how gentle his touch had been, how he felt inside of her, how his tongue felt in her mouth. He wasn’t the marrying kind. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift…it drifted to Ben Wade.

Part 12

They stood outside the jail at Lee’s Crossing, waiting on two of the lawmen to get back with a horse for Cort. O’Neill had been talking it up, how they’d chased these desperados all the way from Canyon Diablo. Ben noticed how he never mentioned the two that got away. He respected O’Neill, a tough customer in any fight. An equal, he thought, but on the opposite side of society.

“Only a matter of time,” O’Neill was saying until the other two would be caught and brought to justice.

He’d seen his own wanted posters hanging around towns before and surely East would be recognized but as far as he knew, Egan was an unknown to O’Neill. He hoped they made it out and hoped to see them again someday.

“Think you can ride that 600 miles again all beat up like you are?”

Cort turned. “I can ride. Might be easier going back.”

“Yeah, I ‘spect we’ll travel the road. We’ll go to Prescott, I reckon, be tried for our sins and shipped off to Yuma.”

“You’ve been there…?”

“Yeah, I been there. Broke out, too. I’m sure they’ll be happy to see me back.”

“Why did you give yourself up, Ben?”

“End of the road. I figured you was dead or busted up too bad to live. I was tired of fightin’.”

“I’ve been in jail before and got busted out by Herod’s men and I busted a few out myself. Never went to prison though.” He looked down at the shackles on his wrists, he still bore the scars from the last time when Herod had him chained in Redemption.

“Them was the good ole days,” Ben smirked, “when we was free.”

Egan had ingratiated himself with a couple of families during the long ten-mile trek into Utah.  He’d introduced himself as John Shill. His first thought was that it didn’t look any different than Arizona, same barren landscape of canyons and mesas. He’d respectfully declined the offer to join the larger family and took off riding toward the east with a Navajo and his son. They were going to work on the railroad and Egan, as John Shill, joined them.

It wasn’t long before he found himself back in Arizona, traveling through the Navajo reservation.

“Where is this railroad?” he asked.

“Navajo Springs,” was the answer and Egan dropped his head. They’d passed not twenty miles from there on their way to Utah.

Ben and Cort were also surprised when O’Neill led them to Navajo Springs. Ben turned to Cort. “We coulda been in New Mexico by now.” He asked O’Neill if they weren’t going to Prescott.

“Nope, going to Tucson. You’ll be tried in Tucson.” His answers were always short and to the point.

“Tucson,” Ben repeated and looked at Cort. He thought about East on his way there now with Jincy. Jincy…he closed his eyes, remembering how she felt against him.

At the makeshift depot in Navajo Springs Ben learned the tracks were being laid to Canyon Diablo. Once again he allowed himself a little regret for the train robbery at Canyon Diablo. Progress. By now they’d have the bridge span and it wouldn’t be long until you’d be able to travel from one end to the other across the country. His way of life was fast coming to an end. He could see it now. It was time to get out. But this wasn’t the way to do it. Grimly he boarded the train.

Cort and Ben were placed across from each other on the train with a deputy behind each of them. Cort was resigned to his fate. God still must have a purpose for him, he thought. He hadn’t died when he fell from the cliff so something must be out there for him. He looked out of the window, thinking about what Ben had said about allowing himself to be victimized. Whatever God’s plans were for him now he would stand up and hold to his convictions. There was nothing anybody could ever do to him again that would come near what he’d already experienced.

Ben was looking out of the window, too, and listening up the aisle where Buckey O’Neill was being interviewed by a Tucson Star reporter. “Worst desperados that ever operated in this western county.” Ben smiled.

At 1 am with everybody on the train asleep in their seats, Ben Wade,  still shackled, jumped through an open window with the train going full speed at Raton Pass, near Trinidad, Colorado. He made his way to the Santa Fe trail which ran nearly parallel to the tracks and stole a horse while it’s owner lay sleeping under a tree.

Embarrassed by the escape, O’Neill sent two of his men back from Cimarron, NM to look for Ben Wade. Meanwhile he held Cort in the county jail under heavy guard.

Egan joined the railroad gang. They were still talking about the train robbers who had boarded the train with the sheriff and his posse. So they had lived. He felt good about that and threw himself into the work for a short while. He wasn’t recognized by the railroad officials who came and went and finally he decided it was time to move on. The next time the train came into the station he was standing on the platform.

The train stopped in Trinidad, Colorado and among the passengers boarding was one of the posse members, empty-handed. Ben Wade was not to be found. Egan spotted him and slid down in his seat, pulling his hat over his eyes. The other posse member, a detective by the name of Black, was on the Santa Fe Trail. Over the course of the trip to Cimarron, Egan learned of Ben’s daring escape from the train at Raton Pass.

Ben emerged in the town of Cimarron in the dead of night. He’d been on the Mountain Trail mostly used by tradesmen, salesmen and others. He’d persuaded someone to remove his shackles and he was also now armed. Moving through the town, he passed by the jail, picking up the trail again to Santa Fe.

He was arrested in Rayado by two US marshals and in their company delivered to Tucson.

Egan was arrested in Cimarron by O’Neill himself and put on a train with Cort to Tucson.

The last night on the trail East and Jincy spent was near Canyon Diablo. She’d really got to know East in the last two and a half weeks and not just sexually. But he wasn’t the marrying kind. He’d told her so. Jincy began to think about what she was going to do when she got home. She was no longer pure as a bride should be. No man would want her for a wife. She was twenty-one, with no prospects and half in love with East. The other half of her dwelt on a fanciful dream that would never be. She imagined him still alive, that he made it out of Wahweep Canyon and was riding now across the canyons to freedom.

“East, how long did you know Ben Wade?”

“Ah, about two years.”

“Why did you stay with him?”

“Ya know, I think it was because of mutual respect. I never had nothing, Jincy, that wasn’t passed on to me by somebody else. I grew up in the stables by myself. All I ever knew was horses and later on drinkin’. I never had no education. I can’t read, can’t write nothing but my name. Ben give me a chance to be somebody, to have somethin’ and what I was before didn’t matter. It was what I could do for him.”

“But what you were doing for him, East, killing and robbing, wasn’t right.”

“I was good at it. That’s where I earned his respect and he knew he could trust me like I could trust him. He ain’t never let me down, Jincy…never. He’s like that with somebody he likes and trusts.”

“What are you going to do without him?”

“Go back to horses ,the only other thing I know. I’ll get myself to Texas.”

“You reckon he’s still alive?”

“I don’t know. I hope so. Like to think he’s out there somewhere.”

“Yeah…me, too.”

East rolled over and snuggled against her. “I think you’re sweet on ‘im.”

“No, I never got a chance to be.”

The next morning they rode to Canyon Diablo and to Miss Elda’s. Jincy’s trunk with her trousseau was still there in a storage room.

“You have no idea, Miss, how hard it was to keep the girls out of that trunk.” Elda leaned over Jincy’s shoulder while she pulled out clothes.

“I just want some clean clothes. You can have the rest. I won’t be needing all those embroidered linens and the wedding dress now. Thanks for looking after it for me.”

“The train will be here in the morning. I wish you luck, Jincy Shumpert.”

“I’m gonna need it.” She smiled and headed for that hot bath.

ON TO PART 13

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