Rubio: The Legend (Ben Blue) Read online

  Rubio

  The Legend

  By Lou Bradshaw

  Copyright 2015 © L. E. Bradshaw

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means without written permission from the author or his authorized representative, except for small portions used for review purposes.

  Rubio is a work of fiction and is the product of the author’s imagination. There is no intent to depict any person living or dead with the exception of known historical figures such as Kit Carson used only as a reference.

  This story is dedicated to my good friend of many years, Charlie Vohs, who made me realize that Rubio’s story needed to be told.

  Books by Lou Bradshaw

  (In order of their release)

  A Fine Kettle of Fish…Humor

  Ben Blue Series ….Western

  Hickory Jack

  Blue

  Ace High

  Blue Norther

  Cain

  One Man Standing

  Rubio

  Forward:

  Rubio speaks a mixture of Navajo, Spanish, and English, so his good friend, Ben Blue listens and translates his words. The time, of which he speaks, was in the late 1820s… long before Ben was born. The Native tribes had no inches or miles to measure with, nor did they have clocks or watches to tell the time. Measurements were often made by the length of a man’s arm or the distance a man could ride a good pony in a day. Time was measured by the daily travels of the sun, moon, and stars.

  At the time of Rubio’s story, the Americans had yet to come to Arizona and New Mexico. The only Europeans in the area were the Spanish, who were considered more of a nuisance and source of horses than a threat.

  Table of Contents:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  My horse smelled something, but I wasn’t aware of it, until he started acting up. The first thing I did was pull my Winchester from the saddle scabbard. Looking around, I saw nothing and started to dismount. I was riding one of my young blooded geldings and he was only about half broke, so the last thing I wanted to do was fire a rifle from the saddle. As I shifted my weight and started pulling my right leg over the horse’s back, I saw it.

  When I had raised up enough to see over a clump of sage, I spotted a blood smeared cougar looking up at me from a young mule deer. I wanted only to get on the ground and have a shot at him. His scream came within a second of our eye to eye meeting. That young gelding knew only one thing to do, and that was to bolt.

  There I was, half in mid dismount. My right leg was up in the air, and all my weight on my left stirrup. That gelding was bunching to take off, and I needed to get my foot out of the stirrup. My rifle was in my right hand, with no time to get it into a position to do anything. The only chance I had was to use my left hand on the saddle horn and vault off.

  The horse was out from under me and I was free, but I was in no position to land. I can do many things tolerably well, but flying is not one of them. So the laws of nature dictated that I couldn’t stay in mid air for very long, and I must come down. Unable to improve my landing position, I landed on my left foot, which immediately turned at the ankle. I hit the ground hard and my rifle went somewhere out there.

  That ankle felt like a herd of buffalo had just run over it, and standing was going to be a tough chore. I wasn’t sure if that cat had taken off, went back to work on that muley, or wanted to try out something different like a big chunk of Ben Blue.

  I was lucky enough to get the thong off my sixgun and get it out. Propped up on my elbows with that throbbing ankle stretched out in front with the other leg, I waited and watched. I was dearly hoping that cat had taken off for the high country, but I wasn’t counting on it. I had the hammer eared back on that Colt, and my eyes were searching in all directions except behind me where I couldn’t turn. I’d have to trust my ears to pick up anything back there and hope I could roll quick enough… I waited.

  The waiting didn’t last too long. I could hear him moving through the Manzanita and sage. For a big animal, he was incredibly quiet, but I could make out the sound of fur on brush. He was coming straight at me, which at least gave me a chance of survival. Had he circled around me, my chances would have been extremely slim. As it was, I didn’t give myself much chance of getting out of here with one whole hide.

  I thought about trying to get up, so I’d at least be in a better shooting position. But if he came for me, somewhere in between up and down, I’d have no chance at all. So there I stayed with a powerful predator closing in. I wasn’t exactly sure where the cat’s heart was, so I would try for a head shot… I knew where that was.

  Then I saw movement behind a large clump of sage. I clamped my jaw tight and steeled myself for that which was about to happen. First, I saw a paw show beneath the brush and then another, which moved on forward. He was coming around the clump on the left side. He was crouched with his belly sometimes touching the ground. The head started to show at the lower edge of the sage, and then it rose up and continued coming until it was almost in full view.

  He was looking at me with those cold yellow eyes, and I was looking right between them because that’s where I wanted to hit him. He was studying me, and I was squeezing the trigger. My shot was a clean miss. I couldn’t believe it. But the cougar disappeared back into the brush.

  Realizing that having my gun hand propped up on my elbow severely restricted the freedom of my aim, I had to get my hand free. I had to get up. He may be gone, but he may be back once he realized that the noise hadn’t hurt him. I wasn’t going to try that shot again if I could help it. Struggling to my feet, I ignored the pain in my ankle. Considering what was out there in the brush, a little broken ankle was nothing.

  Standing there on one leg while trying not to put too much weight on the other, I was still pretty much hampered by immobility, but my hand was free. If I had to turn, I would turn, the ankle be damned. I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to turn… or at least have to turn very fast.

  More faint noise in the brush, this time it was off to my right. I turned my head very slowly, not wanting to cause it to make any sudden moves. It was sticking to the brush just like before, but it was clever enough to come at me from a different direction. Searching low along the bottoms of the brush, I was trying to spot paws or even a belly… anything that would give me a position. My searching almost cost me my life as he came up out of a low spot and between two clumps of sage.

  He hit the ground and leaped. It was all in one quick motion. The leap was a continuation of his landing on level ground. His body was in the air and hurtling at me. Everything slowed down to the point that it seemed that he was in the air for a full minute. He was spread eagled and flying, but all I could see was that open snarling mouth.

  I heard the shots, one right after another, and I saw the blood splatter from his mouth and lower. He kept coming… closer and closer, until he hit me with a force that I wouldn’t have imagined. I went down and the cougar was on top of me. His breath came out in a gust… hot and foul. I was trying to get him off before those hind legs ripped me to shreds. He
was dead from the hips forward, but those rear legs were kicking. They were trying to do as much damage as they could by instinct without any intelligent command.

  After I got separated from him, those hind legs kept kicking, until I was once again on my feet. There was blood everywhere, and the bad part was, I didn’t know if any of it was mine or how much was mine. I knew the cat was dead, but I didn’t take my eye off of him for a second, while I hobbled away a few feet. Coming up against a large rock, I leaned back and exhaled.

  “That verr good shootin’, Benblue.” Came the deep and tobacco roughened voice of that old scallywag, Rubio.

  “It sure was… and thanks. You saved my hide with that rifle.” I called back without taking my attention away from the beast in front of me. I’d always heard that cats had nine lives and I wasn’t about to take a chance that it wasn’t true.

  “I not shoot ‘em, Benblue. You shoot ‘em….No waste bullet on puma… he either eat you, or we eat him.”

  I flipped open the gate on my sixgun, and sure enough, there were three spent cartridges. I only remembered shooting once, and that was when I’d missed him. My nerves had come back to their near normal condition, so I limped up to where I had been seated on my former back rest. Turning around for the first time, I saw Rubio sitting on my horse with his own a few feet behind.

  “You have so many horses, Benblue; you can let a fine one like this run loose?” Dismounting, he took a few steps to his right and picked up my rifle. “Aye, Benblue. You so many rifles, you can toss this one away so you can wrestle a puma?” He then jacked four or five cartridges from the weapon, which he bent down, picked up, and stuffed into his headband.

  “One of these days, you’re gonna have one of those things go off and blow your head off.” I told him, but he just waved it off.

  After putting my rifle back in the saddle scabbard, he walked over to the cat, gave it a good long look and said, “Not verr big one, Benblue, but big ‘nough for white man… You eat puma?”

  “Not yet,” I said, “but I’m sure I will tonight?” He grunted and went to cutting on the carcass.

  I sat on my rock and watched him skin and cut what I assumed were best parts, and wrap them in the skin. Standing up, I started walking over to my horse but only made one step. In all the excitement, I’d forgotten all about that ankle, and it took the opportunity to ambush me. If it hadn’t been for my rock, I’d have been flat on my back again.

  “Woah, Benblue, that puma bite you?”

  “No.” I told him. “I hurt it when I fell off my horse… It might be broke, but I don’t think so.”

  He snorted and said, “Navajo mans no fall off horse. Squaws fall and papooses fall… little ninás fall, but Diné man no fall.”

  He had a good idea what had gone on here and that I probably had a lot going on when that cougar came out of the brush, but he took the chance to needle me a bit… Rubio was a good friend and a good neighbor. We’d seen more than a few campfires and followed more than a few desperate men on the trail. So if he wanted to have some fun at my expense, I could handle it.

  When he had that meat and pelt behind his saddle, he led the horses over to where I sat. Climbing atop my rock, it was no great feat getting into the saddle. It was late in the day and I had planned on spending the night out anyway, so we went looking for a good camping spot.

  We found a likely place and made ourselves at home. Rubio’s wife knew not to worry when he was out and about. If he takes his horse and a rifle, she just naturally assumed that he had business and not to fret about it. It was pretty much the same at the MB. If I took supplies for more than one night, then it was accepted that I’d be gone for at least overnight. I always tried to at least give them some idea where I’d be and what I’d be up to. On this trip, I was working the valley rim for signs of cougars, bears, and wolves. Guess I knew about the cougars anyway.

  When we got our horses unsaddled and picketed, Rubio went about getting a fire started, while I took stock of what was left of my chaps. The way that cat had cut them up, I was thankful to have been wearing them. My next problem looked to be getting my boot off before it was split open from the inside.

  Rubio stood watching me try to ease out of that boot. It wasn’t working out too well, so he started tugging on it, and that…was some serious discomfort. Finally he said he was going to have to cut it open. I stopped him before he started hacking away at my boot. “I’ll cut it myself… thank you very much. That way maybe I can salvage a good pair of boots. I’d be afraid you’d cut my foot off so I wouldn’t need that boot.”

  He grumbled and went back to cutting up some cougar steaks and getting them on sticks above the fire. I took my clasp knife out and got ready to cut along the seams of that boot. Rubio can do many things, he’d just go the easiest route through that boot, and it wouldn’t be worth anything after he finished with it. At least this way, a boot maker or saddle maker can stitch it up again.

  When I got that boot off, we decided that the ankle wasn’t broken, but would take a few days for that swelling to go down enough to put a boot back on. I cut me a walking stick and went about doing what I could to make the campsite a bit more comfortable.

  The Great Rubio, as he was often called by many of his people, especially the younger ones, and I had shared more than a few campfires. We each knew what needed to be done and did our part without direction or complaint. We ate our steaks, which were extremely tasty. I’d often heard that cougar was the choice of many mountain men, and I could understand why. Afterward, we had our coffee and chewed on dried apples for dessert.

  Rubio was an oldish man of the Navajo tribe. He had a large flock of sheep up in the canyons and into the high pastures this time of year. His young wife kept him as happy and well cared for as she did his sheep. They had only been married a few years, but Rubio had a nearly grown grandson from a former marriage.

  In earlier times, Rubio had been famous among the Navajo and infamous among their long time enemies the Mescalero Apache. He had taken many scalps, and had earned a reputation as a tracker without peer. Even at this late date, the law in our area still used him as a guide and tracker when the best was needed. He charged the Sheriff’s department a dollar a day and plunder, which included any horses or weapons that, might come his way.

  He sat there in the firelight with smoke from his pipe rising and circling his red headband. My curiosity got the better of me. There were many stories about his exploits, but some were so fantastic that I could barely believe them. If the stories were true, he was born of a she wolf and sired by a silvertip grizzly. He had been alive for over a thousand years and would live for at least another thousand before the Great Spirit called him home.

  “Rubio, tell me, how old are you?” I asked. As if he had read my mind, he took the pipe from his mouth and pointed it at the rising moon. Then he turned and pointed the pipe stem toward that big white mountain behind him. He was telling me that he was older than the moon and the mountains. His wrinkled old face broke into a wide grin as he replaced his pipe to its former position… clamped in his teeth.

  He held up ten fingers, and then closed his fists and repeated it six more times. Then he held up four fingers and wiggled them. That would tell me that he was seventy three or seventy four. He wasn’t quite sure which. And I guess, at that point, it really didn’t matter much to him or to me. It was a pretty impressive number for a man who never saw a white man’s doctor in his life. That had to say something for his way of living.

  I congratulated him on his longevity and asked, “How did a peaceful old fella like you ever become a scalp hunter? After all the Navajo are a very peaceful lot. They tend their herds and their fields… they just don’t go lookin’ for trouble… how did that all come about?”

  Chapter 2

  He sat there for a few minutes, unmoving. If he hadn’t been puffing on his pipe, I would have figured him to be asleep. “Benblue ask big question. Benblue better fix more coffee and more apples. Story is lo
ng and no for niños.”

  I knew I’d kicked over an ant hill, and there was no way on earth to un-kick it. So I did as I was asked and started water boiling. I dug into my pack and tossed a pouch of dried apples to him. He dipped his hand into the apple pouch and the story began…

  Rubio speaks a combination of Navajo, Spanish and some English, so for the sake of the story, Ben Blue will translate and narrate Rubio’s words.

  Navajo as you call us is not the name we were given by the Great Spirit. It’s the name the Spanish men used because they didn’t know better. Navajo is a Tewa word that means, “fields by a ravine”. Tewas can’t even speak our language, but they told the Spanish that was what we were, and we’re stuck with it. The name given to us by the Great Spirit is Dińe, which means “The People”. There may have been other tribes, but we were the only true people.

  When time began, we lived in the far north with our cousins the Apache, but they were not true people like we were. We spoke the same language and hunted the same beasts, but they weren’t The People. The north was always cold with ice and snow most of the year. It is said that a Dińe man could go back to the land of ice and talk to those who stayed, and we would know each other and could understand each other.

  As the animals moved to the sun in the south, some tribes followed. The Dińe and the Apache followed. Both tribes were hunters and followed the meat. In those days we didn’t have fields, we didn’t plant corn and squash, and we didn’t have sheep or goats. We didn’t have horses to carry us and our belongings. We walked. When the weather was warm, and the animals stopped… we stopped. But when the cold winds started to blow again, and when the snow began to fall, the animals moved again, and we walked.