“But I still don’t understand. If you ride with me tonight I can give you a vast reward.” Romero paused, searching for the right inducement. “Rangle, you come with me to crush Antigua and I shall give you half the entire ranch. Now is that not reason enough for you to join me?”
“It sure as hell ain’t. I told you at the start, all I’m interested in is gettin’ the stake. Well, I’ve got my stake and I’m not gettin’ my boys shot to ribbons just so you can play ranchero, Mex. Besides, rustlin’ beeves ain’t takin’ on a big ranch, mister. That caper just leads to the long rope.” He spun on his heel. “C’mon, boys, let’s get movin’.”
“No, do not leave,” Romero shouted. “You must fight with us! I will pay five hundred dollars to every man who fights with me.”
Bo Rangle halted and his eyes were dangerous. “You tryin’ to buy my men off me, Mex. I said we’re goin’.”
“But you must not go.” Juan Romero seemed in the grip of an emotion stronger than himself as he spread his hands and tried to make them understand. “Rangle, the Antigua is mine by right of birth. It was stolen from my forefathers by American guns. For years I have worked and slaved and been called greaser and lived under the gringo heel, only so that one day it would be mine again as it was my forefathers. Can you understand what it has been like for me? To know that I am only kept on at the ranch because I work harder than any two men there, to risk losing the woman I love to the first good-looking gringo who comes along, to ...”
He broke off as Bo Rangle’s harsh laugh sounded again.
“Boy, you got more wrinkles than a rattler, Romero. Now it’s Benedict you’re after. You can’t make up your mind ...”
“No!” Romero cut in fiercely. “He’s not important. Only the ranch is important.”
Rangle spoke quietly. “Take a word of friendly advice, Romero. Saddle up and git gone just like we’re aimin’ to do. When a hand’s played out, it’s played out. Okay, boys.”
The outlaws turned to go. Juan Romero stared after them with blazing eyes for an electric second, then suddenly swept out his gun.
“Rangle!”
Bo Rangle’s face was glacial as he turned slowly to stare at the naked Colt. He lifted a restraining hand as his men made instinctive moves towards their six-guns.
“Just take it easy, boys, Señor Romero ain’t goin’ to plug anybody, are you, Romero?”
Romero curled back the hammer of his gun with an ominous click. “Only if you make me, Rangle. You shall stay.”
“Not a chance.” Bo Rangle shook his head. “I’m goin’, Mex, just like I said.”
“Then I shall kill you.”
“Maybe you will. Maybe you won’t.” Rangle’s deep voice was totally even; cowardice was not one of his many weaknesses. He started to back slowly towards his men. “Okay, boys, like Señor Romero says, he might kill me. If he does, then this is my last order. You’re to shoot every mother’s son, compre?”
A score of hard heads nodded, twenty violent hands rested on gun butts, twenty pairs of eyes drilled at Juan Romero ...
Rangle backed away five paces. Another five. Behind Romero, the fighting cream of Rancho Antigua waited in sweaty tension, each man aware that the bullet that killed Bo Rangle could kill them all.
A shot rang down Ghost Canyon.
But Juan Romero’s gun remained unfired, and he, along with every other man, swung his gaze north along the canyon where the shot had come from. In the echoing wake of the gunshot, they suddenly heard the rumble of many hooves.
Juan Romero lowered his gun slowly, shaking his head. “No, it couldn’t be ... they couldn’t have found the entrance yet …”
“You want to believe that, you believe it, Mex,” Bo Rangle shouted, his gun in his fist now as he led his men for the horses. “Us, we’re makin’ dust.”
Romero didn’t even glance their way. His eyes were fixed along the canyon. Even the swift clatter of Rangle’s riders as they swept away couldn’t completely drown out the increasing rumble of hooves heading towards them somewhere through the vast black caverns of moon shadow. It was the Antigua men. Another minute and they would be here ...
For a moment Juan Romero’s wide shoulders slumped and there was a taste like ashes in his mouth. But only for a moment, for suddenly he was realizing that he didn’t really need Bo Rangle. Certainly the cavalcade of riders sweeping towards him through the night was thirty strong. But thirty what? Vaqueros, laborers, house servants. Certainly they had the numbers, but he had the quality ...
His shoulders straightened and the light of hope kindled in his eyes again as he turned and looked at his men. They were the cream of Rancho Antigua, men whose pride matched his, who shared his dream of restoring Rancho Antigua to its rightful owners. Its rightful Mexican owners.
“Companeros,” he said quietly. “It is the hour of decision for us. You have shared my dream, followed my leadership and believed in ultimate victory. You are warriors like I am a warrior and the time has come to fight, to run or to die. What is it to be?”
A long moment of silence with the drum roll of hooves growing rapidly closer passed. Then Francisco Semora, Romero’s hatchet-faced segundo, stepped forward.
“I fight with you, companero.”
“And I.”
“And I, companero.”
Every man stepped forward, and Juan Romero exulted. He made a sweeping gesture. “All right, companeros, let us fight then. For Rancho Antigua! We shall fight for it, we shall win it, and we shall hold it by the same manner that Nathan Kendrick has held it, with our strength and our purpose.”
The words set his men afire. Swiftly and purposefully they drove their horses back into the caves, grabbed up their rifles and took up positions. In each man now burned Romero’s Mexican dream of triumph over the gringo, and over their rifle sights they watched the first of the Antigua horsemen sweep into range.
“Tonight we fight for our heritage, companeros!” Juan Romero cried from behind a tall, yellow finger of stone a little above them. “Fire!”
Ten guns crashed as one, their voice like a thunderclap from the gods as it smashed and rolled down Ghost Canyon.
Riders fell to their left and right under that first snarling volley, but shoulder to shoulder, Benedict and Brazos thundered on. They flashed by dark rock patches and gleaming mescal, six-guns drawn but yet unfired. Behind them a horse screamed in bowel-torn agony and horse and rider went crashing over, spilling and breaking down a slope. A man cried out in a high falsetto and a glancing bullet made a sound like a screaming train whistle. The air was alive with whipping lead and death and men screamed without knowing they screamed, and men died without a sound.
A dozen men fell in that first, bloody half-minute, and from his high point Juan Romero watched and waited for them to falter.
They didn’t falter. Alone they might have, but now with their guns fiercely answering back Romero’s fire, Benedict and Brazos were there to lead, to inspire, to keep them coming on when every screaming nerve and death fear wanted them to reef their horses’ heads about.
Had the attackers hesitated, all would have been lost, but behind the flaming guns of the two tall gringos, they kept on even as more men and horses went down. The gringos obviously were mad, but their madness was infectious ... and companero do you not notice there is something glorious in their madness also ...?
But Hank Brazos and Duke Benedict weren’t mad. They merely believed that the end of their long and bloody hunt for Bo Rangle was at hand. That was the spur that drove them through that lethal rain of lead and death, right up the rocky slopes of the outlaw hideout itself.
Romero’s men began to panic in the face of the relentless charge as the swarming riders swept in close. One jumped cover and ran. Duke Benedict’s gun flared, the man leapt high into the air like a shot antelope, somersaulted, and vanished into the black pits of shadow far below. Francisco Semora and Jose Mariano made a break back for the caves, firing from the hip as they ran. Hank Brazos, huge
and frightening in the moonlight, burst around a rocky cleft and shot Semora through the head. Mariano’s gun coughed back spitefully and Brazos spun out of the saddle, smashed hard against the unyielding stone, then bounced and rolled behind the protection of a corpse. Ignoring a bloody shoulder, he blasted a running Mexican into eternity then ducked as vicious lead came hunting him from Juan Romero’s gun.
Now the entire rocky slope before the cave was fogged with gunsmoke, the air thick with the screams of the wounded and dying. In a shattering minute, Juan Romero saw his lifetime’s ambition crumble and fall, broken apart on the iron guns of the two gringos.
Suddenly Romero glimpsed Benedict spurring after one of his fleeing men and driving him into the ground with his gun barrel. Somehow in that moment, the dashing Benedict seemed to represent to the defeated man, all the American enemies of his life, the crystallization of all his hate. He had lost, but to take Benedict with him would be to salvage something ...
Benedict didn’t even see Romero leaping from cover. All he heard was a warning shout from Brazos, then felt the bullet smash into his horse. With a scream, the animal reeled sideways, lost its footing and plummeted over a fifteen-foot drop. Benedict hit the ground with stunning force, rolled, tried to get up but couldn’t make it. Above, Romero was sprinting towards the edge of the drop with a hungry gun. Fifty yards away, Brazos was getting to his feet, knowing even then that it would be too late. Romero reached the edge, breathed some fervent curse in Spanish and swung his gun towards the stunned figure sprawled on the rocks below.
A rifle spoke from below and beyond where Duke Benedict lay. Juan Romero shook, gun tumbling from his fist to strike a rock and bounce and land at Benedict’s feet. He hugged himself as though terribly cold, lifted his face to the moon, then spun slowly and fell, his body landing with a dead-meat thud across Benedict’s horse.
By the time the panting Brazos had reached the top of the drop, Duke Benedict was back on his feet and Brenda Kendrick, a rifle in her hands, was climbing up towards the ledge, her face a white mask of grief and shock.
“Did I ... did I kill him, Duke?” she cried. “Is he ...?”
“Yes, Brenda,” Benedict said quietly. “He’s dead. You ... you saved my life.”
The rifle dropped with a clatter from the girl’s hand. “I couldn’t let him kill you. He was wrong ... Juan was terribly wrong ... but I did love him so ...”
She went to the dead man then, and kneeling beside him, took his head in her lap. Benedict looked down at her with a haggard face for a long moment, then turned and made his way slowly up to where Brazos stood. The shot that had killed Juan Romero had been the last of the battle. Romero’s men were all dead or fled and the gunsmoke was rising eerily against the moon. Men moaned in agony, others lay quiet waiting for death. Figures stumbled about with a look of glazed shock, and some knelt to help those who had fallen.
“Well, we won,” Brazos said quietly without a hint of triumph in his voice as he packed a bandanna inside his shirt against his shoulder to staunch the flow of blood.
“Yeah,” nodded Benedict, his tone matching the others as he looked slowly about them. “We won ...”
“Rangle ain’t here. That must have been him we seen kickin’ up the dust as we was comin’ in. But he can’t be far gone. We goin’ after him?”
Brazos fully expected the answer to be yes, for when it came right down to cases, Duke Benedict was more fervently dedicated to the cause of running down Bo Rangle than himself. His face broke into a smile when Benedict, after a long, difficult moment of decision, shook his head.
“No, we’ll have to let him go. These people need us here.”
Brazos rested a hand on his shoulder. “You know, Yank, sometimes you just about convince me you’ve got a heart after all.”
Duke Benedict made no reply, and for a long time after Brazos had turned and shambled away to help with the wounded, he remained looking down at the bowed figure of Brenda Kendrick holding her dead lover in her arms.
It was hot in Henry Gordon’s office despite the fact that the windows and door stood open to catch any small breeze. Wearing a high starched collar and a wondering expression, Gordon sat totally absorbed in the strange tale of Rancho Antigua.
Duke Benedict sat opposite the desk, in tailored suit, bed-of-flowers vest, highly polished tan boots and an aromatic Havana. Benedict’s clean-shaven face glowed with perfect health, revealing nothing of the rigors of the two weeks since they had last sat in this office.
When Benedict was finished, Gordon shook his head and sipped at his coffee which had been brought in minutes before by Miss Hunter who’d almost spilled a pot of coffee in his lap while smiling at Benedict.
“An amazing story ... truly an amazing story. One can almost feel a sympathy for Romero despite the fact that what he did was criminal and wrong.” He set his cup down. “Well, Mr. Benedict, the least I can say is that you’ve conducted this whole matter in a way that can only reflect the highest credit upon Southwest Insurance and all the high ideals it stands for.” He reached into a drawer and drew out two manila envelopes. “I contracted to pay you fifty dollars a week, Mr. Benedict. In view of what you have achieved however, here is two hundred dollars in cash apiece. By the way, where is Mr. Brazos now?”
“He’s across the street talking to Miss Larsen,” Benedict replied, putting the money in the inside pocket of his coat. “I appreciate your generosity, Mr. Gordon. This money will take us a long way on Bo Rangle’s trail.”
“Still determined to hunt that renegade, Mr. Benedict?”
“Why, of course.”
Gordon got to his feet and slid his fingers into his waistcoat pockets.
“Mr. Benedict, I have a proposition I’d like to put to you, but first do you mind if I’m a little frank with you?”
“Certainly not.”
“Well, that day you gentlemen first came to my office, I must admit I had grave misgivings about putting you on the Southwest’s payroll.”
Benedict smiled easily as he rose and picked up his black hat.
“Quite understandable, Mr. Gordon.”
“But my misgivings have proved to be totally without foundation. You resolved this difficult and perplexing affair in a manner totally in keeping with the highest standards set by this company. The question I want to put to you, is would you be prepared to forsake your hunt for Rangle and consider working for Southwest Insurance on a permanent basis?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Gordon.”
Gordon’s face fell.
“You won’t accept my offer?”
“Not won’t, Mr. Gordon. Can’t.”
Gordon managed to conceal his disappointment, but as they made their way through the office to the street, he was sharply aware that but for a man named Bo Rangle, Southwest might have acquired two men who had capabilities to become the best investigators Southwest had ever had.
Seated at the front window of the Silver Spoon Eatery, Brazos saw Benedict and Gordon emerge from the insurance company and heaved a sigh of regret.
“Well, Miss Helen, there’s my pard. Looks like it’s time to ride.”
Helen Larsen, a far different girl from the grieving young woman who’d sat across this very table from him two weeks ago, reached out and touched his big brown hand.
“I’m very grateful to you, Hank. For everything.”
“Shucks, I didn’t do so much, Miss Helen. And like I say, it was Benedict who nailed your brother’s killer.”
“And your telling me that only confirms my first opinion of you, Hank. You’re a fine, good and honest young man.”
Brazos couldn’t help but blush.
“Heck, Miss Helen, them’s mighty nice words, but I don’t see as how they fit somehow.”
“No, I really mean it.” She smiled. “Do you have to leave so soon? I mean, you have been through a lot, and you’ve been wounded. Couldn’t you stay on in Summit just a few days? I promise I would take good care of you.”
Fo
r a moment as he met her blue eyes, Hank Brazos wavered. But then he dragged his gaze away and looked across the street. Benedict was already mounted up, the appaloosa was stamping impatiently at the rack. The trail was waiting ... the trail of Bo Rangle, and a king’s ransom in gold ...
“I’m sorry, Miss Helen, but I can’t.”
Somehow she seemed to understand. They rose in silence and went out onto the porch. Brazos adjusted the black calico sling on his arm, perched his battered hat on the back of his head and looked down at her. Suddenly she rose on tiptoes and kissed him on the lips. He lifted his big rough hand and touched her cheek wonderingly, then abruptly swung away and tramped across the street.
Reaching his horse, he glanced back and was surprised to see Bullpup still standing on the porch beside the girl.
“Come on, drat you,” he said almost angrily. “Don’t you understand we got to go.”
Bullpup lifted his scarred and ugly head and stared up at the girl. She crouched down and patted his head. He licked her hand with a big pink tongue, then jumped down off the walk and followed the two riders pulling away from the hitch rack.
“Some towns seem harder to leave than others, Reb,” Benedict murmured, looking back at the girl.
“Some towns are plain painful to leave,” Brazos growled back, and heeled his horse into a trot.
Henry Gordon crossed the street to stand with the girl watching them go, and as the horsemen crossed the river bridge, the little businessman felt a sharp pang of regret. Somehow those two tall men had brought into his neat and ordered life, a smell of something bigger, of wild and open places and a life of high adventure that rich little insurance men only ever dreamed about ...
A big freighter wagon loaded with buffalo hides passed behind the receding riders, throwing up a billow of thick yellow dust. Henry Gordon and Helen Larsen strained their eyes for a last glimpse as the dust slowly blew away, but Hank Brazos and Duke Benedict were gone in the heat and the haze of the Apache Plains.
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