December, 2009       Issue #3

Windward Rock
by Greg Camp

Dowland sat fingering the butts of his Navy revolvers, wondering how much longer he would have to wait. He was sitting on a shelf of rock a man's height down from the top of the mesa, looking out at the rolling hills and sloping plateau a hundred feet below. The shelf jutted out into the air from the nearly vertical western wall.

Below, the sheriff's men worked their way toward him. They were well out of rifle shot—two miles, at least—but still crouched low and darted from juniper tree to rock to new juniper tree. Did they think that this cover kept him from seeing them or were always cowards under the light of the sun?

That sun was three hours from setting. The sheriff and his twenty sucklings would surround the mesa soon enough and sit out of range until dark. Only then would they attack, and Dowland knew that whether or not Morrison showed up, it was going to be a long night.

He stood and stretched, thinking about calling out a greeting when Sheriff Carver got within earshot, but figured that neighborliness had no part to play here. He had seen to it that the sheriff knew where to find him, and he was in no mood for any more gifts. He might have offered the sheriff a horse, like the Saracen knight that he had read about in his history lessons, but someone had already killed his, and that score would be settled tonight along with the total bill.

He climbed from the shelf to the top of the mesa. Had he had his choice of where to fight it out with the sheriff and his men, this mesa would not have been it. There were three easy ways to the top and not much cover, but Dowland smiled, remembering the wisdom that his father had shared with him eighteen years ago that if we could choose the time and place of all of our battles, we would never get around to fighting them.

Of course, his father had said this on the day that the younger Dowland had passed the bar examination, but there were many kinds of battles, and this coming fight was of his choosing. He had led the sheriff out here, rather than letting him be distracted by the possibility of doing greater mischief elsewhere. There were times when a man had to be ready to take a bullet or to give one. Dowland had survived four years of that kind of time, and after coming west, he knew that he would see such times again.

He had had no immediate thought that this was one of them when he was passing through Santa Fe on his way to somewhere else. He just happened upon his friend, Billy Morrison, one evening outside of town.

As he did every day, he had gone out of immediate civilization for a session with Alpha and Omega. That late afternoon, he had set up a coffee tin on the branch of a juniper tree and a spent whiskey bottle on another, both thirty paces away. His first shot at the can had tipped it on its side. The next three, fired in rapid succession, knocked it about on its way to the ground. The last shot flung the battered metal back into the air.

He had Alpha broken down before the can landed. Resting the pieces on a rock, he scrubbed them out and wiped them clean, then reassembled the pistol and loaded five chambers one by one, pouring in a measure of powder, pressing down a wad, and ramming home a ball. He smeared lard across the front of the chambers and capped each nipple. His hands had worked this process so many times that he could do it without looking. His gaze darted about the terrain.

With Alpha cleaned and reloaded, he was about to smash the bottle with Omega when he caught sight of someone approaching. In the dimming light, Dowland did not recognize the man. He grabbed Alpha and brought both revolvers to bear on the man, thumbing back the hammers as the barrels rose.

“Stranger,” he said, “I'm just out for practice, but if you're looking to join me, I can accommodate you.”

The man's open hands lifted slowly into the air beside him. “Your eyes need the practice if you don't know me.”

“Morrison, is that you?”

“The Morrison who was with you when Old Jubilee took us around Washington in Sixty-four? The Morrison who shot off that Yankee's bayonet so as to keep your shirt from having an extra hole in it? I've heard that he might be in these parts.”

Dowland lowered the hammers and shoved his guns into his belt and ran over to take Morrison's hand. “So you're still with us in this world of sin.”

“Where else would I be?” Morrison asked. The two of them walked over to sit on a large rock. “Actually, it was about sin that I needed to talk to you.”

“Don't tell me that you've found religion. Remember when you brought me back to health after I got shot at Sharpsburg? If I didn't repent my ways when it looked as though that Yankee lead was going to send me to my maker, why would I do it now?”

“It's not the repentance that I want to talk about,” Morrison said. “It's more on the subject of punishment.”

“What have you done?” Dowland asked, not that the answer would make a difference, but just for general calculation. They had known each other for sixteen years now, meeting as new recruits to the Army of the Potomac. They became the Army of Northern Virginia, having already become friends, and fought against McClellan and Pope and Meade and Grant, occasionally each other, and always the rains, the marching, the wounds, and the increasingly poor food and drink.

Regarding that last enemy, Morrison had proved himself adept at appropriating better supplies without too much concern as to their origin. Bacon, eggs, cheese, and beans were all good in their way, but the one essential was coffee, and that became increasingly hard to get as the war dragged on. The chicory that they often used as a substitute was hardly better than plain hot water. Morrison, though, could feel the presence of coffee beans from miles away. They had saved each other's lives time and again, but that hardly counted in comparison.

Dowland had been thinking that Morrison's current trouble stemmed from some new expression of his friend's old talent, but he realized that things were much worse than just some angry householder chasing him with an aging squirrel rifle. Morrison had the sheriff and his men hot for finding him.

There was no choice: Dowland had to help. Sheriffs were little better than the carpetbaggers who had ruined his home after the War. He hated to see any man put himself above another, whatever the reason. A sheriff's badge made him hungry for vengeance, and seeing that his friend had run afoul of one was just pouring gravy on a good steak.

“Will you help me?” Morrison asked finally.

“Help you? I'd kill him myself if I didn't think that it would rob you of the satisfaction.”

“I'll need a horse for now.”

“It just so happens that I have one,” Dowland said.

“After that, keep your eyes open. Carver has men all over these days.”

“My eyes can tell a skunk from a rat, even in this light,” Dowland said. The sun had set, and the stars were beginning to shine. The moon would be up shortly. “You wait here, and I'll go get my horse.”

It took him an hour to walk into town and bring his horse back. On his return, he offered Morrison a rifle and one of his revolvers, neither of which Morrison needed, and good luck. He watched his friend ride away into the darkness.

On his walk back into town, he passed by the saloons and brothels, figuring that there would be no useful information to be had there until morning. He found the county jail at the end of a line of saloons. The land agent's office sat on the opposite side of the street. A person could get drunk, fined, and propertied all in the space of a few steps, three conditions that he considered to be much the same.

He settled between a saloon and the land agent's office. Pulling a bottle of whiskey out of his bag, he poured it over himself and let the bottle roll a few feet away to come to a rest against a rock. He then lay back with his head on his bag and his rifle and revolvers concealed under his blanket and went to sleep.

The sound of shouting and heavy feet woke him. The sun was just coming up, casting its rays between the buildings. He opened his eyes slightly to see a crowd gathering around what he concluded was the sheriff and his men. They were shoving Morrison, who was tied and hooded, into the jail.

Dowland remained still. The crowd waited outside, looking for more excitement, but when nothing appeared to happen, everyone drifted away, heading off to get an early start on the day's duties in the nearby buildings. Once the crowd was gone, the sheriff and his men came out.

Carver glanced around for a moment with a guilty look. “We've got him, but there's the one more that we need, and then we'll be done with the lot of them. I want them hanged and cold by tomorrow night. Roberts and Mitchell, you stay here, and keep watch over the one we have. Patterson and Oakes, you two go south, and have a look around. If you find anything, one of you come find us. The rest come with me.”

Roberts and Mitchell went back inside the jail, and the others left. Sheriff Carver looked around again, briefly contemplating the sleeping drunk that he apparently took Dowland to be, before following his men northward up the street.

Dowland stood and stretched. He gathered up and repacked his belongings. He wanted to charge straight in and rescue Morrison, but he held himself back. The sheriff was not that far gone, and the two guards would still be alert. Better to wait a few hours to give Roberts and Mitchell time to get tired of watching for trouble, tired of arguing over cards, tired of spending the day sober and relatively unemployed.

He hid his rifle in some weeds and then, after turning to the left down the street and walking a few paces, entered the saloon that sat on the side opposite the jail. He took a seat with his back against the wall and his eyes on the jail, which he could see through the window. A girl came up to pour him some coffee and take his order. He supposed that she might have been getting herself born while he was fighting Meade's Yankees at Gettysburg fourteen years ago, but he was probably being more generous with years than was warranted.

By the time his bacon, eggs, and cornbread had arrived, he had drunk his first cup of coffee. A couple passed the window during that time, but otherwise the street had been empty. The two appeared to be from back east, the type that come out to the desert to find what they thought could not be had back home. Dowland felt smug about this, until he realized that he had done the same thing. He had left a lot unfinished in the War, most of it inside himself.

He ate his food and drank more coffee. To give himself an excuse for taking his time, although hardly anyone else was in the saloon at that hour of the morning, he ordered a piece of pie and flirted with the girl, while stealing glances through the windows at Roberts and Mitchell as they busied themselves with the list of things that he had assigned to them earlier.

The jailors' whiskey bottle came out some three hours after Dowland had taken his seat in the saloon. The two had drunk a glass each and filled another before he stood slowly and walked over to the bartender to settle his bill. On his way out, he dropped a dollar into the girl's pocket as he kissed her on her cheek, making sure that no one saw him do the former.

He strode across the street and opened the door to the jail. Roberts and Mitchell glared at him, looking angry that he was interrupting their day. He pulled the door shut with a bang.

The one he took to be Roberts stood and pulled out his revolver, one of Mr. Colt's new Peacemakers. He was a squat, heavyset man with a face that seemed to have collected some beard in a passing wind. “What's your business here?” he demanded.

“I heard that you'd caught this Morrison here,” Dowland answered, waving his hand toward his friend in the cell across the room, “and so I wanted to add some of my own grievance to his score.”

Mitchell arose and came over to stand next to Roberts. He had not drawn his own revolver, but he kept his hand on the butt.

“Before we get into that,” Roberts said, “you'll need to hand over those guns of yours. We don't want you getting any ideas.” Dowland lifted his Navys up from his belt with two fingers a piece, then worked his index fingers into the trigger guards, and pulled the guns out. They hung loosely in front of him. Roberts put his own gun back into its holster and reached out his hands. “I think you'll be pleased to know that this one's going to be hanged just as soon as the sheriff returns.”

“Ah,” Dowland said, “it turns out that I have other plans.”

In a smooth motion, he flipped his guns over, cocked the hammers, and fired. Roberts and Mitchell both fell to the floor as the merging clouds of smoke drifted over them. Dowland's ears rang as he relieved the bodies of their guns and picked up the keys that were lying next to the two glasses on a desk against the wall. He tossed the keys to Morrison and continued gathering up whatever looked useful.

Morrison released himself and collected the one rifle in the rack and the boxes of rifle and revolver cartridges sitting on a shelf underneath. Dowland pulled open drawers, but Carver and his men apparently had taken most everything of use, and he and Morrison needed to leave sooner than would allow for a ransacking. Roberts and Mitchell had not been dead a minute, and already Dowland could see blinds being drawn and doors being opened.

He and Morrison stepped casually outside. Dowland could feel himself being watched. He walked across the street to collect his own rifle, then the two of them went around the side of the jail to make their escape.

“I heard the sheriff say that he was taking most of his men north.”

“That's because I live up that way,” Morrison said. “Too bad for him, I already got there before he found me. Thanks for the loan of your horse, by the way. One of Carver's men shot him out from under me, if you're wondering what happened.”

“This sheriff likes running up a big tab, I see,” Dowland said.

“That's right, and this time, I'd like to see that he pays it.”

They made their way on foot into the tablelands to the west of town. Dowland thought about stealing horses, but it was against his nature, and the local populace was now too watchful for that anyway. The land grew ever rougher, which pleased him, since it discouraged the idle townsfolk from following them any farther. There was no doubt, though, that word would get to the sheriff as to where they had gone, and Carver and his men did have horses.

“We'll be in for a hard time of it tomorrow or the day after,” Dowland said. He leaned back against the rock under the overhang that they had found. It was the middle of the day, and they were taking a break from the sun. Out in the light in front of them, the rocks of the dry creek bed glinted.

“That we'll be,” Morrison agreed. “Most people in town can't stand Carver, but some of them are beholden to him.”

“What about your boy?” Dowland asked. “Would anyone turn him in?”

“I've been worrying about that myself. He'll be safe where I left him for a while, but I'd feel better if I could move him. I know a family to the south that are decent folks, but the sheriff doesn't know that I know them. They'd take care of Henry for me.”

“My namesake,” Dowland said softly. He picked up his canteen and tossed Morrison another strip of jerky to fill the moment.

“I couldn't think of a better,” Morrison said. He bit off a piece of jerky and chewed it. “You still haven't asked me what she was doing with the sheriff and his men.”

“I figured that you'd tell me as much as I needed to know. Not that it would change anything, since I can't think of an honorable reason to kill a man's wife.”

“It's worse than that. They kidnapped her, trying to get me to sell my land cheap to the sheriff. It seems that Carver wants to make himself a little kingdom out here, but my ranch stands in his way. His men took Susan while young Henry and I were digging a new well. When we got back to the house, I found a letter from the sheriff nailed to the door, telling me that I had a day to sell out.”

Morrison picked up a stone and threw it. It skipped across the rocks in the creek bed and came to a rest in the dust on the far side.

“I have to thank you for killing Roberts and Mitchell for me. They're the reason that Susan is dead. It seems that they. . . they. . .”

“You don't have to say it,” Dowland said.

“Well, Carver figured that he had to kill her afterwards. He had planned on letting her go before his men violated her, but after that, he figured that I'd be too angry ever to let the matter rest and he'd have to kill all of us. I had to listen to him talk out his thinking while he and his men were dragging me to the jail.”

“I wish now that I'd have taken longer in killing those two.”

“They were fools,” Morrison said. He spat out a thoroughly chewed piece of gristle. “It's Carver who's at the center of it all.”

“And his name gives me ideas. I can think of hours of work to do on him.”

Morrison looked back darkly for a moment before packing his things. They followed the creek bed until it led them down a cut in a low cliff and out onto a flat expanse.  Dowland saw a mesa in the distance that looked promising. The hard ground beneath his feet seemed even more so.

“The sheriff and his gang will be coming from the north, right?” he asked. Morrison nodded. “Then let's use this land to our advantage. We're not leaving much of a trail here. If you turn back now and head off to get your boy, no one would be the wiser from this ground. I'll carry on and make some signs of my passing, enough for two men. Then I'll occupy that mesa over yonder and wait for you—and for the sheriff.”

“He'll find you sometime tomorrow night, I reckon,” Morrison said.

The two of them shook hands, and Morrison headed back the way that they had come. Dowland was alone once more. That evening, he made a fire, having come back among the juniper trees. He crossed a shallow creek, and as the water was running rapidly over the rocks, he filled his canteen.

His fire burned steadily on the other side of the creek. He sat with his back against a rock and his several guns at his side, glancing at the flames, but mostly at the land to the north. He dozed for a few hours, waking often, though. Something felt wrong.

Just after midnight, Dowland awoke to the sound of horses coming from the south. He was already concealed by the junipers and only shifted a bit to have a clear view of the glowing embers.

Two men rode toward the dying light, making a show of scanning the ground. Making a show was all that they were doing, since they had been loud enough in their approach to give the deafest of armies alarm and time to disperse. With his right hand, he held up the Peacemaker that he had taken from the jail, wanting to test its qualities on the two whom he figured to be Patterson and Oakes. Omega rested in his left hand, waiting to argue against innovation. One of the men spoke, though, and Dowland held himself from firing.

“It's just as Tarpley said,” the man insisted, pointing at the fire. “I see the marks of two men here, and they look to be going west. We've got to ride on to find the sheriff and tell him.”

Dowland covered the two with Omega and the Peacemaker as they crossed the creek and rode closer. His trigger fingers twitched, but the rest of him was still. He held his breath as the horses passed by only ten feet away. He waited until the two men rode out of range, then lowered the hammers reluctantly. He had to let them go, so they would report to Carver. Dowland had to work things for Morrison's benefit, no matter how inviting other actions might be.

Lying back against the rock, he concluded that nothing else would need his attention that night and went to sleep.

He awoke with the sun, ate a piece of jerky, and drank some water. There would be a chance for a good meal on top of the mesa, a meal of coffee and bacon and cheese to lure even the stupidest of sheriffs. He worried for a moment that he was laying too much of a trail and would make Carver and his men suspicious, but the performance of the two last night did not speak well for their powers of observation, leaving him to wonder if he ought to paint a sign.

He reached the mesa by mid-morning. The top was a long oval with a dome of bare rock on the far end. Plenty of juniper trees were growing, or trying to grow and failing in the drought, so making a fire would not be a problem. The trees were dry enough, in fact, that he would have to be careful not to set the woods alight.

Dowland built his fire at the top. It was the safest spot to have one, and it made certain that Carver and his men would see it. After only an hour, he saw them approaching from the northeast. At first, they were just a knife's edge that cut open the ground and released an exhalation of dust, but as the day wore on, he could make out the shapes of horses and men. They were riding hard and would be tired when they arrived, yet twenty-one men did not have to be the most alert against one man.

On the western edge of the mesa, beneath the steepest part of the dome, he found a shelf of rock that jutted out from the vertical wall. He wanted Carver to come to the land that spread out below this pulpit. The eastern side sloped down at a shallow angle toward the flat land, and from that side, as well as from the north and the south, the climb to the top gave no pains worth mentioning. He had to draw the sheriff and his men around to the western side, at least for the beginning of the fight. What would happen through the night was too far into the future to plan.