Chapter 6

Eddy had disposed of that last Comanche, but he had pulled loose the stitches on the knife wound in his side. It was a cinch that he would not be going anywhere for a few days, so we were stuck where we were until Eddy could travel. Eddy was a part of our family, so there was no way we weren’t going to do everything we could to help him recover.

This brought up the problem of water. As usual with those things, this arroyo was dry as a bone until the next flash flood. That meant that I was going to have to find a source of water nearby enough to do us some good. Fortunately, Ann had seen a line of trees about a mile and a half away, so there was probably a stream there. I was going to check it out, but Ann would have to stay here to make sure that Eddy was quiet. If we both went, Eddy would insist on accompanying us, and that would only aggravate his wound.

It was a little bit tricky, but I managed to lead my horse out of the arroyo. I mounted and rode toward the trees that Ann had seen. I got there with no difficulty and found several items of interest. Yes, there was water, but there was also a buckboard. The horse that had been pulling it was nowhere to be seen, but there was evidence of a major fight within the last week or so. That buckboard was going to be a life saver for Eddy. Our pack horse was also trained to pull a wagon, so he could be given the job of pulling the buckboard with Eddy loaded in the back. I was elated at my find, but I was also surprised when I heard a low, but determined, growl.

Under the buckboard was a bitch with four puppies. The puppy’s eyes were open, but they had not been weaned, yet. I didn’t recognize the breed, but the bitch was a very large dog, though not as tall as Eddy. She was mostly black, but she had some yellow-brown, almost orange, fur on her face and chest. The dog was obviously malnourished, but she was still producing milk, so the puppies were OK for now.

I couldn’t abandon the dogs, I’m just too tender hearted for that, but I had to work something out with Ann. As I turned around, to head back to Ann, I spotted a jack rabbit staring at me. Now, I’m not one to look a gift horse, or a gift anything else, in the mouth, so I drew my rifle and shot the rabbit. Let me tell you, I had to be very careful with that shot, because a hit anywhere but in the head by a .44-40 bullet would have rendered that jack rabbit useless. Well, I am that good a shot, so I was able to retrieve the rabbit carcass and give it to the bitch to eat while I went to talk to Ann.

While I was about it, I swung by the camp of the dead Comanches and retrieved the horses that were there, along with part of a deer carcass that Eddy could munch on for the next couple of days.

Ann was concerned about the shot, but had seen that I was apparently OK, so she was standing on the edge of the arroyo when I rode up. I gave her the complete story, including about the dogs, and she was as interested in helping them as I was.

I suggested that we move to the clump of cottonwoods in stages. I planned to lead the packhorse to the buckboard and unload the packs from him to the buckboard. I would load the dogs onto the buckboard and use the horse to pull everything back to Ann and Eddy. We would load Eddy into the buckboard with the other dogs and all return to the cottonwoods. That was a lot of back and forth, but it seemed to me to be the safest thing to do. Ann agreed, so that’s what we did.

When I got back with the dogs, Ann recognized the bitch as a Rottweiler, and said that she would make a wonderful mate for Eddy if they didn’t kill each other, first! It took the rest of the day to get moved and get the new camp set up, but all of the dogs seemed to get along well, so everybody relaxed. In fact, the bitch was licking Eddy’s wound by the end of the trip.

We speculated that the original owner of the buckboard and the dogs had run into some Indian trouble and had used the horse to escape, leaving everything else behind. The Indians must have seen the dogs and decided that it was prudent to stay out of reach, so they rode off without taking action against the dogs.

Now that we had five new dogs, we had to think of names. Ann had no trouble coming up with the names, so I just accepted her thoughts on the subject. She named the mother Queenie, and the puppies Hilda, Janice, Abe, and Sonny. Frankly, I had a little trouble telling the puppies apart, so I figured I’d mix up the names until they got a little bigger.

We stayed at the cottonwood camp for a week, and Eddy was able to get around pretty good by then. Queenie still kept an eye on him and wouldn’t let him push too hard because of his wound. She licked it every day, and that seemed to do it a lot of good. I used Ann’s .38-40 Winchester to hunt rabbits every day for the dogs, so both started to put on a little fat. Eddy looked like he appreciated the pampering, but he would be ready to run as soon as Queenie would let him.

I managed to find an elk for us, so we did well, too, though we did start to run a little low on coffee.

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I talked over my quest for the two boys with Ann, and we came up with a strategy to hunt for them more systematically than I had been doing. I had been kind of fluttering around hit or miss, and not getting anywhere, so we decided a better strategy would be for us to start at the site of the kidnapping and work out in a spiral until we hit the limits of Navajo territory. I figured that if the boys could not be found inside of one more year of looking, there was no point in continuing the search. By then, either they would be dead or completely Navajo and not willing to leave even if I did find them.

With that scheme in mind, we packed up and headed back toward Prescott. The original kidnapping had taken place at a ranch about 20 miles southeast of Prescott, so we were going to start there. I had already been over that area pretty thoroughly. I had found where a number of Navajo had headed almost due south from the ranch, and I had followed them for about 25 miles. I lost them there because a bad sandstorm had come up and wiped out all trace of the trail for miles around. The fact that I was a good two weeks behind the raid didn’t help matters, either.

That was when I started wandering kind of aimlessly as a hunch guided me, so I had made damned little progress. Since we still had the puppies to be concerned about, we were stuck with the buckboard for now. Ann and I accepted the necessity of it and just made do as best we could. By the time we got to the ranch, Eddy and Queenie were spending most of their time out of the wagon, and the puppies were running around some, too. I figured that all of the dogs would be strong enough to give up the buckboard in about a month, but I wondered if that was really going to make a significant difference.

The Navajos believed that they were the lords of all they surveyed, so they could be expected to stick to the roads and easy-to-travel country. They figured that they could take care of practically anybody that gave them a hard time, and they were right. The Navajos didn’t get the publicity back East that the more flamboyant tribes got, but anybody who knew them wasn’t going to pick a fight he could avoid.

Ann had found herself a cushion, so I think she preferred the buckboard to riding a horse, and there were times when I didn’t blame her. There were times when my ass and legs got sore, but she seemed to be getting along fine. Anyway, I think that we will stick with the buckboard for the foreseeable future.

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Eddy is back in good form. The two weeks of moderate exercise and Queenie working on his cut has him ready for action. He has gone back to doing his own hunting, and Queenie has started going with him. The puppies still aren’t fully weaned, but Queenie has been encouraging them to eat some of the rabbit she brings home each night.