“People, people,” the photographer called out to the crowd. “If any of you want your picture took with these here desperados, why, step up here now, give me a quarter, and I’ll take your picture with them. You can pass them onto your grandkids someday, tell ’em you’re the one that kilt ’em. By then nobody will ever know the difference.”
Matt was surprised to hear such a blatant lie proposed, but scores of people crowded forward to take Gilbert up on his dishonest offer.
“Mr. Jensen, you are aware, are you not, that there is a bounty on these three men?” Sheriff Williams asked.
Matt shook his head. “A bounty? Well, I can’t say that I am surprised, but no, I didn’t know anything about a bounty. I’m not a bounty hunter, Sheriff, so I don’t keep up with such things.”
The sheriff chuckled. “Uh-huh. Well, we’re talking fifteen hundred dollars here—five hundred on each of them. I don’t reckon you’ll be turnin’ that money down, will you?”
Matt chuckled as well. “No, Sheriff, I won’t be turning the money down. I understand from the driver that the guard was married.”
“Pinkie was married, that’s true.”
“Give a thousand dollars of the reward to his widow.”
“I can see her getting five hundred dollars,” Sheriff Williams said. “I mean, seein’ as how Pinkie got one of them. But you don’t need to give her a thousand dollars.”
“I know I don’t need to. I want to,” Matt said.
Sheriff Williams stroked his chin and nodded. “All right,” he said. “I reckon you are as good a man as they say you are, Matt Jensen. By the way, I’m pretty sure these men you killed this mornin’ are the same sons of bitches that got all our Indian problems started in the first place,” the sheriff said.
“By Indian problems, you are talking about Delshay, not Geronimo, right?”
“That’s right,” Sheriff Williams said. “You know Delshay? I didn’t think anyone outside Arizona Territory had ever even heard of the son of a bitch.”
“The reason I know about him is because I scouted for General Crook for a while,” Matt said. “I’ve never exactly met Delshay, but I have seen him.”
Matt recalled his run-in with Delshay—remembering how the Indian had sat calmly on his horse, as if defying the army.
“I know Delshay rode with Geronimo. I didn’t know he had gone out on his own, though, until I read in the newspaper about one of his raids,” Matt said.
“You’re right, he did ride with Geronimo for a while. But then, for some reason, he decided to come back to the reservation. I think if it hadn’t been for Meechum and these galoots here”—he pointed toward the three dead outlaws, alongside whom the citizens of the town were coming up, one by one, to brandish a pistol and pose for photographs—“Delshay would still be living just real peaceable-like out there.”
“What makes you think these men had anything to do with Delshay leaving the reservation?” Matt asked.
“It’s something Gene Baker told me, and I just put it together,” Matt said. “Baker is the Indian agent out at San Carlos. It seems that Delshay and his cousin, Chandeisi, were going into the town of Picket Post to do some honest trading. They left their squaws and their children waiting for them on blankets just outside of town. The squaws were watchin’ over the trading trinkets—you know, silver and turquoise necklaces and the like. But when Delshay and Chandeisi came back, their squaws and their children was dead and their trading goods was gone. Baker says he thinks that’s what sent Delshay and Chandeisi and the others they was able to recruit out on the war trail.
“Anyway, a few weeks ago, right after that happened, Meechum and these three galoots showed up in Phoenix looking to trade silver and turquoise Indian jewelry. It ain’t that far a stretch to figure that these is the same ones that killed the Indian squaws.”
“If there was a bounty on them, why didn’t you arrest them as soon as they came to town?” Matt asked.
“I wasn’t in town when they came in,” Sheriff Williams said. “I was down in Maricopa. And by the time I come back up to Phoenix, all four of them boys was long gone.”
“Excuse me, Sheriff Williams?”
The man who spoke to the sheriff was the same one who had come for the guard’s body a few minutes earlier. He was back, but this time he was driving an open wagon.
“Yes?” Williams replied.
“I wonder, Sheriff, if you would kindly call a halt to the circus Mr. Gilbert is conducting around the deceased so that I may get on with my business.”
“Mr. Jensen, this here is Abner Prufrock. Mr. Prufrock, as you can tell by his attire, is the undertaker. Mr. Prufrock, your business with the county is compliments of Matt Jensen. He’s the one who killed them.” Sheriff Williams laughed. “Maybe you ought to give him a cut of your fee,” he teased.
Prufrock cleared his throat. “Yes, Sheriff, well, I’m sure you are having fun with all this. But the truth is, regardless of whether these men were outlaws are not, common decency requires that they be given a proper burial.”
“All right, I’ll get your bodies for you,” Williams said. “Gilbert, that’s enough picture takin’,” the sheriff called. “It’s time to let Mr. Prufrock here get on with his business.”
“If you say so, Sheriff,” Gilbert answered.
“Kindly take them off those planks,” Prufrock said as he walked over toward the bodies.
“I tell you what, Mr. Jensen, you do have my thanks and the thanks of the town,” Sheriff Williams said, continuing his conversation with Matt. “You stopped a stagecoach robbery and, from what some are saying, you may have even saved a few of the passengers’ lives as well.”
