Ride to Hell's Gate

by Ralph Cotton

  In spite of his thin smile, the look in his eyes said something different. ‘‘Are you happy?’’ she asked, seeing through him.

  Shaw looked at her. She was still the same, strong beautiful woman surrounded by her wealth and all that came with it. Yet now she was a woman like every other woman, he thought, and she needed to hear from the man she’d given herself to.

  Was he happy . . . ? Hell, he’d forgotten there was such a thing as happiness. He managed to prop up his thin smile for her sake. ‘‘I’m very happy,’’ he lied, raising her hand to his lips and kissing it.

  ‘‘Good,’’ she whispered, having to take his words at face value. She reached over and brushed a strand of hair from his forehead. ‘‘I know that what happened today happened suddenly, and it has caught us both unprepared. But it is time I come out of mourning.’’ She paused in reflection, then said quickly as if to keep from wrestling with her decision, ‘‘I want you to move your things into my room tonight, that is, if you feel the same—That is, if you would like to . . . ?’’ Her question trailed.

  Looking at the glass of wine in Anna’s hand, he swallowed against a tightness in his throat that the coffee had not been able to loosen. He needed to tell her about Rosa, didn’t he . . . ? ‘‘Yes, Anna,’’ he said sincerely, ‘‘I would like to do that. I would like to very much.’’

  She studied him closely, then said, ‘‘Something troubles you, Lawrence. Please tell me what it is so I can make it go away.’’

  Here goes. . . . ‘‘Anna,’’ he said, ‘‘I know this sounds strange, coming from a man. But I too have been mourning the loss of someone I love . . . and it’s been much longer than—’’

  ‘‘Shhh,’’ she said, stopping him. ‘‘You do not have to tell me this.’’

  ‘‘I feel like I should,’’ Shaw said, ready to tell her everything, how she reminded him so much of Rosa Shaw that he had felt guilty—had almost called her by his wife’s name when they’d made love earlier in the shade of the desert hillsides.

  ‘‘Gerardo Luna told me about what happened to your wife,’’ she said before he could continue. ‘‘He told me how much she and I look like one another.’’

  Shaw sat in silence, not knowing what to say next. Did she already realize how he felt? How when he looked into her eyes or touched her or breathed her fragrance, it was not her but another woman?

  ‘‘He told me that you lived with her sister, Carmelita, after Rosa’s death,’’ she said, as if she had thought the whole thing out and drawn her own conclusions before ever giving herself to him today.

  ‘‘I just don’t want to be dishonest with you, Anna,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t want to be dishonest with anyone anymore. I’m weary of dishonesty, of lying to a woman to get what I want from her, of trying to put up a false front and pretend things I don’t feel.’’ He shook his head.

  ‘‘I understand,’’ she replied quietly, ‘‘and I feel the same.’’ Her eyes changed slightly; Shaw saw there were secrets lying there. ‘‘Time is too short for dishonesty, for deceit between two people who care for one another.’’

  ‘‘Yes,’’ Shaw agreed, ‘‘I learned that the hard way.’’

  ‘‘As did I,’’ she said. She closed her eyes as if in reflection of regret. But when she opened her eyes her expression brightened. ‘‘But that is the past, and we must not let the sadness of the past hold our future for a ransom we can never pay, must we?’’

  ‘‘That’s a good way of putting it, Anna,’’ Shaw said, he himself feeling the regret and sadness lift from him. ‘‘If I can just keep that thought in mind.’’

  ‘‘You must keep it in mind, Lawrence,’’ she said. ‘‘You cannot feel guilty and responsible for that which you can no longer change, but only for those things that can still be changed by you. Once something is done, all you can do is learn from it. It is all God asks of us, and all we can ask of ourselves.’’

  Shaw stared at her. ‘‘You’re right’’ he said, realizing it was just the sort of thing Rosa would have said to him. But knock it off, he warned himself; it was also something anyone with good reasoning and a sense of human compassion would say. He squeezed her hand gently and pressed it to his cheek. ‘‘I—I want to feel that way about things. It’s just so hard sometimes.’’

  ‘‘I know,’’ she whispered, responding warmly to his touch, ‘‘and at those times when it is so hard to live with the past, please let me be there, to remind you of the present.’’

  ‘‘Yes, I want you here in the present, Anna—’’ Shaw’s words cut short at the sound of gunfire coming from the direction of the stables.

  ‘‘Ernesto!’’ Anna cried out. She leaped up from her chair as more gunfire erupted. She had turned toward the door when Shaw grabbed her and pulled her back.

  ‘‘Stay here, Anna!’’ he said firmly.

  ‘‘But Ernesto! His family!’’

  ‘‘Stay put! I’ll get to them!’’ Shaw demanded, standing quickly, snatching up his rifle and heading out the door. In his haste he left his hat and gun belt behind; but he knew he had fifteen shots in his rifle chamber. ‘‘There’s my Colt. If you need me, fire a shot!’’ he said over his shoulder. But Anna only glanced at the big gun with fear in her eyes.

  Outside the small adobe house where Ernesto, his wife and his two sons lived, Titus Boland, Leo Fairday, Tomes and McClinton pulled out of the circling riders and rode wide into the darkness. The four men pushed six of the Cedros Altos horses ahead of them from the broken gates of the corral. The Barrows brothers and three other men continued circling and firing at the small adobe house while four others shooed the horses out of the corral, and from the stalls inside the large barn.

  A gunman named Billy Elkins jumped down from his saddle, grabbed up a dusty saddle blanket from a rail and set fire to it with a wooden sulfur match. ‘‘This will get out any stragglers,’’ he said. He lit a thin cigar butt he pulled from behind his ear, giving the flames a few seconds to grow and lick up along the blanket.

  ‘‘What the hell are you doing, Billy?’’ a gunman named Teddy Barksdale shouted as he raced his horse up close and slid it to a halt. ‘‘These horses are no good to us roasted!’’

  Billy laughed. ‘‘Then you best hurry and get them out of there. I’m firing this place to hell on earth!’’ Across the yard from the barn, the gang kept a constant barrage of gunfire on the house. A shot through the broken window struck an oil lamp, overturned it and sent a streak of fire across the floor. Ernesto’s eldest son, Tecco, ran out screaming through the front door, flames blazing the length and width of his back.

  ‘‘Damn, Billy-boy, you might have the right idea after all,’’ said Barksdale, watching as bullets sliced through the young man and left him facedown, burning in the dirt. He quickly reached down, snatched the burning saddle blanket from Elkin’s hand and rode away, his horse starting to spook at the sight of the flames dancing so near its side.

  ‘‘Give it back, damn you to hell!’’ Elkins shouted above the raging gunfire and screams from inside the burning house. But Barksdale raced his horse inside the barn where other riders were shooing horses out the open rear door. Without a moment of hesitation he hurled the burning blanket up into a hayloft filled with fresh, dried wild grass.

  ‘‘What the hell, Teddy?’’ said an older gunman named Fred Townsend. ‘‘You want to burn us all alive?’’

  ‘‘No, but I damned sure got you busy, didn’t I, ole Freddy?’’ Barksdale shouted, turning his horse and racing out of the barn among the spooked and fleeing Cedros Altos horses.

  ‘‘Smart sonsabitch,’’ Townsend growled under his breath, gigging his horse along and twirling a three-foot length of lariat to keep the horses moving.

  ‘‘Get going, Freddy. That damned fool set the loft on fire!’’ shouted a gunman named Drop the Dog Jones as he pressed close behind Townsend, having shooed three ranchero horses out of their stalls and toward the rear barn door.

  ‘‘I know,’’ said Towns
end, ‘‘I saw him do it!’’

  Out front of the burning house, Redlow and Eddie Barrows rode back and forth in front of the other men, all of them gathering together now that they heard no more gun shots coming from within the raging fire. ‘‘Hold your fire,’’ Eddie called out, waving a hand back and forth. ‘‘They’re all done for inside!’’

  ‘‘Everybody get behind the horses. Keep them moving close and tight until we can get somewhere to split them up and string them!’’ Redlow called out as he dropped six spent cartridges from his Colt and reloaded. He grinned at his brother in the flickering firelight. ‘‘This wasn’t half bad, was it?’’

  ‘‘Easy as you please,’’ Eddie replied. He gave a quick look toward the shadowy horde of horses and riders disappearing at a fast run across the sandy ground. Turning his horse toward two nearby riders named Lying Earl Sunday and Phil Gaddis, he said, ‘‘You two ride over and make sure the corral is empty. Then ride like hell and catch up to the others.’’

  ‘‘You got it, Eddie,’’ said Phil Gaddis. But as he and Lying Earl turned to heel their horses away toward the corral, a rifle shot lifted him from his saddle and slung him backward to the ground.

  ‘‘What the—?’’ Eddie and the others ducked in their saddles and looked toward the muzzle flash just in time to see the blossom of blue-red fire as Shaw’s next shot hit a gunman named Brady Lawton full in the chest and rolled him backward to the ground. ‘‘Get out of the firelight!’’ Eddie shouted as the men raised their weapons and shot round upon round into the darkness.

  Fifty yards away, bareheaded, down on one knee, Shaw took aim as the men dispersed and rode out of the flickering light. He knew he could get off one more shot as bullets whizzed past him like angry hornets. But upon seeing the house ready to fall beneath the flames, the blazing barn not far behind it, he held his shot. In a second, the guns fell silent; he heard hooves pounding away across the sand.

  In the shelter of darkness he hurried forward, in a crouch, his eyes searching into the flames as he hoped beyond hope that someone had made it out alive. He risked calling out, ‘‘Ernesto,’’ into the darkness surrounding the house and barn. When he heard no reply he tried again. ‘‘Anybody!’’ But the only sound was the crackling of burning barn timbers and the roar of flames.

  He had not taken the time to run to the small barn beside the hacienda and get his horse. In his urgency he had run the hundred yards on foot, firing at the riders from half that distance when he’d seen what they were up to. Now he stood helplessly looking all around, knowing the horses were gone, knowing Ernesto and his family were dead and knowing there was nothing he could do about any of it right then.

  He opened and closed his right fist, feeling the stiffness in the length of his right arm. He breathed deep, catching his breath. Whoever the men were, they were gone now, he thought, taking stock of the situation. He turned and started walking back toward the hacienda. He needed to get to the small barn, get his horse saddled and get onto their trail. Luckily for him they were headed in a direction that would allow him to swing off their trail long enough to ride into Matamoros, where he knew he could rely on Gerardo Luna to join him.

  But before he had walked ten feet, he heard the sound of three rapid-fire gunshots come from the hacienda. ‘‘Oh no! Anna!’’ he shouted, breaking into a hard run, his voice muffled by two more shots.

  Out front of the hacienda, Titus Boland grinned toward the glow of candlelight from the open door and holstered his pistol. Seeing what he thought was the body of Lawrence Shaw lying slumped dead in the doorway he said, ‘‘I got you this time, Fast Larry. Now rot in hell.’’ He jerked his horse around and rode off fast, in order to catch up with the other three men and the six stolen horses.

  Lagging back, waiting for him fifty yards up the trail in the pale moonlight, Leo Fairday called out, ‘‘Did you get him, Boland? Did you kill that drunken sonsabitch?’’

  ‘‘Oh, yes,’’ Boland said, barely slowing his horse as Fairday sidled up alongside him. ‘‘I killed him this time. Make no mistake, he’s dead and in hell.’’

  ‘‘You faced him right down—did the job on him, did you?’’ Fairday asked eagerly, wanting details.

  ‘‘Yep,’’ Boland lied. ‘‘I faced off from him about ten feet and put three in his liver before he could get a single shot off. He never cleared leather.’’ He gave a smug grin.

  ‘‘But I heard five shots,’’ Fairday said.

  ‘‘Yeah,’’ Boland said, realizing he had fired wild and relied on luck and the cover of darkness, rather than taking a chance and getting up close, making sure his victim was dead. ‘‘I stepped in and put two in his head, just to make sure he’d never breathe again.’’

  ‘‘Good work!’’ said Fairday, excited by the prospect of any man killing Fast Larry Shaw, let alone out-drawing him and killing him up close. ‘‘Hot damn! I’m riding beside the hombre who killed the Fastest Gun Alive!’’ The two hurried their horses along in the darkness until they saw the outline of Tomes and McClinton in front of them. ‘‘I call it a feather in my cap, bringing you boys to join up with us.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, I suppose it is at that,’’ said Boland, feeling more than just a little pleased with himself. He batted his heels to his horse’s sides. ‘‘You still carrying that pigsticker I saw you with the other day?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘I always keep it handy,’’ said Fairday.

  ‘‘Good, I want to borrow it for a spell,’’ said Boland, reaching his hand out toward Fairday.

  Fairday gave him a leery stare and asked, ‘‘You ain’t fixing to stick me with it are you?’’

  ‘‘No,’’ said Boland, getting impatient. ‘‘Now hand it over.’’

  ‘‘I always like to ask first,’’ Fairday said, drawing the knife from his boot well and laying it in Boland’s hand. ‘‘Who you wanting to stick with it?’’

  Boland didn’t answer. Instead he said, ‘‘You want to take a ride with me as soon as we take these horses to Redlow and Eddie?’’

  Fairday gave him a suspicious look. ‘‘I guess so,’’ he said hesitantly.

  ‘‘Good,’’ said Boland, gigging his horse up into a run, getting into a hurry. He had one more stop to make along the trail. . . .

  Back at the hacienda Shaw kneeled in the doorway with Anna Reyes Bengreen in his arms. His hands trembled as he brushed a strand of hair from her face. ‘‘Oh no, God no!’’ he sobbed, seeing her struggle for every shallow, waning breath. ‘‘Please don’t die, please don’t die,’’ he said, resisting the urge to shake her, as if to awaken her from sleep. But this was not sleep, he knew, seeing the trickle of blood run down from the corner of her lips.

  ‘‘I—I tricked them?’’ she said in a broken voice, trying to smile. ‘‘You’re . . . safe? I saved you?’’ Shaw looked at his hat lying a few feet away, where it had fallen from atop her head when the bullets hit her. In the dirt beside her lay his Colt.

  ‘‘Yes, you tricked them, Anna,’’ Shaw said, holding her tightly, seeing life fade from her eyes. ‘‘I’m safe. You saved me.’’

  Anna gave a faint smile and relaxed in his arms, as if death were no more than a long, peaceful sleep.

  Chapter 11

  In Matamoros, Gerardo Luna stood up from the cot in the empty cell. Outside, the first promise of morning lay stretched along the hills to the east like a thin silver wreath. At his bare feet a skinny cat appeared as if from nowhere. The hungry animal purred and meowed as it rubbed itself back and forth against his ankle. ‘‘Paciencia, my friend,’’ he said. ‘‘You are always hungry, eh?’’

  He moved the cat aside with a gentle nudge of his foot. He dressed, pulled his boots on and walked over to the potbellied stove in the front corner of the small, dusty office. He put a pot of coffee on top of the stove and fed the cat a few crumbled pieces of jerked beef from a canvas bag. ‘‘Now go outside, and let me awaken without you giving me any more orders,’’ he said, reaching down and rubbing the cat al
ong its knobby back and picking it up.

  He walked to the front door, unlatched it, opened it, set the cat out on the sandy ground and watched it loop away into the grainy darkness. Then he walked to his desk, sat down and took the time to clean his sawed-off shotgun while he waited for his coffee to boil.

  In a narrow alley behind the adobe jail, Titus Boland slipped back down into his saddle. He had been standing atop his horse and looking in through a small, barred cell window above the cot where Luna had slept. He grinned at Fairday and whispered, ‘‘You can’t know how satisfying this is going to be.’’ He rubbed his sore chin in dark reflection. ‘‘Today I settle accounts with this lawdog for good.’’

  Fairday handed him the reins to his horse, which he’d been holding for him. ‘‘Alls I ask is that you don’t leave my pigsticker hanging in him when you’re done,’’ he whispered. The two eased their horses away from the window and along the building to the edge of the alley.

  At his desk, Luna stood up and walked to the door when he heard the cat scratching to get back inside. ‘‘Already you want back in?’’ he said to the closed door, as if the cat could both hear and understand him. ‘‘You are getting to be more trouble than an old woman,’’ he added, swinging the door open, looking down for the cat to come lopping in at his feet.

  But instead of seeing the cat, he saw the wild-eyed face of Titus Boland staring grimly at him. Behind Boland’s left shoulder he saw the same expression on the face of Leo Fairday. ‘‘Give it to him,’’ Fairday hissed.

  Before Luna could make a move to protect himself, Boland plunged Fairday’s knife into his chest and watched the lawman stagger backward, both hands clutching the knife handle.

  Boland stepped inside; Fairday followed, closing the door behind them. ‘‘Not that you asked, Lawdog,’’ Boland said to the stunned peace officer, ‘‘but my chin is mending right along.’’ He rubbed his chin. ‘‘I can’t say much for my broken teeth though.’’