“What past hurt did you do him?”
“I’d just as soon not say. I expect you already think low enough of me, no sense addin’ to it. Not that I care particularly . . . or maybe I do. Hell, I don’t know.” He turned back to face Bob. “All I know is that what Brock has in mind for me won’t have nothing to do with the law and it ain’t right that he’s using a badge to get to me.
“Whatever else, I see you as a man who takes the law and things like right and wrong serious. That’s why I’m beggin’ you not to turn me over to Brock.”
* * *
When Fred got back, Bob sat down with him to hear what he’d found out, if anything, and then to update him on some conclusions the marshal had come to as far as how they would do some things in the foreseeable future.
For Fred’s part, he hadn’t found out a whole lot from the men Stuben had played cards with other than their talk had covered a standard range of topics. Included in the mix, not surprisingly, was some rehashing of the raid and attempted bank robbery and how the town was a little bit on edge about the possibility of another visit from the outlaw gang. Stuben had seemed mildly interested, but not any more so than in most of the other things they’d talked about.
While Fred ate the food Consuela had brought, Bob broke it to him that might it be the last good meal he’d be enjoying for a while.
“Maybe I’m being too gullible or just plain spooking too easy,” Bob said, “but Sanders—and Brock, too, a little bit—has got me convinced that his gang is bound to make a try at busting him out of here. The Stuben fella showing up to do some fresh nosing around only adds to the likelihood. That means we’ve got to stay on guard and be ready around the clock. The best way I can see to do that is to fort up right here at the jail—you, me, and the new deputies that are coming on board tomorrow. We’ll go out on rounds and such in pairs while the other pair stays right here at the jail. You or me will always be one of the ones here.”
Fred wiped at his mouth with a napkin. “Wow. You really are taking this serious.”
“You’d better believe it. If Sanders’s gang does show up, we’ll make believers out of them, too.”
Fred frowned. “You mentioned Brock, that U.S. marshal. Aren’t you gonna turn Sanders over to him?”
“No,” Bob said bluntly. “Number one, if you read those telegrams that came in you saw how Cheyenne is telling me to hold off doing anything until they have a chance to review the situation. Apart from that, something about Brock strikes me as fishy. He’s too damn eager to get his hands on Sanders. I’d be reluctant to hand the prisoner over to him, regardless.”
“So he won’t be joining us in this forting up we’re gonna do, either.”
“Not likely. Not unless something changes. For right now, him and me ain’t exactly seeing eye to eye.”
Fred set aside his empty plate. “Okay. So what do we need to do to get ready? Make that, what do I need to do?”
Bob set his jaw. “Well, I can’t see Sanders’s gang trying anything right away. For the time being, if we’re right about what Stuben was doing in town, they’ll be waiting for him to get back with his report. Once they figure out he ain’t coming back, they’ll have to decide what their next move is. That means sometime after tonight. If they make up their minds that they’re still gonna try to free Sanders, I’d guess they won’t wait too long to go for it.”
“What about the bank? You think they’ll make another try for that, too?”
“They’ve only got five men left . . . unless they found a way to add more, and that don’t seem likely.” Bob shrugged. “Be a big bite to chew if they think they can pull off both at once . . . but we’ll have to try and stay ready for anything.”
Chapter 21
Reese Modello wore a deep, concerned frown as he gazed out from a high point partly up the wall of the hideout canyon where the remains of the Sanders gang were holed up. He could feel the knot of tension growing tighter in his gut. What was more, he could also feel the growing tension ebbing up from the rest of the men. The gray, descending shadows of dusk seemed to fit the mood descending on all of them.
The scrape of a boot heel on rock and the puff of labored breathing behind him caused Modello to look around. He saw Salt River Jackson climbing up to his position.
“Christ A-mighty,” the older man panted as Modello reached down to assist him the last few feet. “You think you’re a damned eagle or something, perched way the devil up here?”
“Just wanted a good lookout spot to watch for Stuben,” explained Modello.
Jackson squinted out through the thickening murkiness. “You been up here near an hour. No sign of nothing?”
“Not a puff of dust or shiver of a bush,” Modello said grimly. “Damn it. He should’ve showed long before this—when there was still plenty of daylight left.”
“What are you thinkin’?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.” Modello took the makings from his jacket pocket and started building a cigarette. The evening air was cooling rapidly and a wind was picking up, fluttering the rolling paper. He carefully spread some tobacco. “All I know is that him not showin’ can’t be anything good.”
“Way I see it, there can only be a couple likely explanations. Either he somehow got spotted for being part of us, or he decided things was fallin’ apart and it was time to light a shuck while he had the chance.”
Modello raked a lucifer match across a slab of rock and cupped the flame to the tip of his cigarette. “No,” he said, streaming smoke, “Pete wouldn’t bolt like that. He’s too solid, rode with us too long. If he decided it was time to make dust, he’d say it straight up and tell us adios to our faces.”
“You don’t reckon he got caught up in the cards and the booze—maybe a floozie turned his head—and the damn fool has just lost track of time?”
“That’d be more likely than the other,” Modello said. “But I can’t hardly see that neither, not with so much on the line. Much as I hate to think it, I’m favorin’ that he gave himself away somehow and they either shot him or threw him in the clink. One way or the other, we got to figure he ain’t comin’ back.”
Jackson’s eyes narrowed. “Where does that leave the rest of us, then? If he’s still alive, you think he’d blow on us, on where we’re hidin’?”
Modello took a long drag on his quirley. “It wouldn’t come easy out of him, but you and me both know that if you put the screws hard enough to a man, he can be made to spill.”
“So what does that leave?”
“For starters, we’ll make ready to move our camp first thing in the morning. Try to leave no traces we were ever here and make double damn sure we leave no sign that can be followed where we move to. In these rocks and blind canyons, that should be possible.”
Jackson nodded. “We got Johnny Three Ponies, remember. He not only can track a pissant through a pine forest but knows about erasin’ our own sign to boot.”
“By the time we get relocated, we’ll have to have made up our minds on hittin’ that town again or not.”
“Which way you leanin’?” Jackson said.
Modello finished his cigarette, dropped it, and crushed it underfoot. “My loyalty to Arlo should go without question. I hope you, above anybody else, knows that.” He gave the older man a look but went on without waiting for a response. “I think you also know that, as a group, we are on pretty hard times when it comes to basic supplies—food, ammo, fresh horses, right down the line. And the money pot for restockin’ any of it is about as empty as anything. We were in bad enough shape when we came here to hit that bank in the first place. And now, with lost time and damages, it sure as hell ain’t got no better.”
“I think most of the fellas are aware we’re scrapin near bottom, though maybe not quite how close.”
Modello looked over his shoulder and down at the campsite below, the crackling fire with the three others gathered close. “Well, then I reckon it’s time to make ’em full awar
e of how it is. I hope they’ll understand why I’m gonna recommend we go in and make another try at that bank.”
Jackson looked uneasy. “And leave Arlo in jail?”
“If he’s in the jail, and if he’s in any condition to ride if we did bust him out,” insisted Modello. He glared at Jackson. “You were the one who raised those questions in the first place, remember? You said if we hit that town again we had to do it smart. So the smartest thing, the way I see it, is to go for the bank. We need a score too bad to do anything else and, with only five of us now, making a try on the bank and the jail would spread us too thin and risk queering the chances to succeed at either one.”
Jackson licked his lips. “You’re right. You’re flat right, ain’t no two ways about it. But it’s a bitch of a decision to make.”
“Tell me about it,” Modello said with a rueful twist to his mouth. He shifted his stance to face Jackson full on. “I reckon the boys see you and me, together, since we been part of this pack from the start, as sorta bein’ in charge of things with Arlo out of the picture. You agree?”
“I’d say they do, yeah.”
“So you gonna side me on this?”
“Ain’t like we got a lot of options,” Jackson said glumly. “I agree, what you’re sayin’ is the smartest play left for us.”
Modello heaved a sigh. “Not that I’m lookin’ forward to it, but let’s go down and pitch it to the rest and see how it goes.”
Chapter 22
That night, on the cot in the storeroom off the cell block, the dreams Bob had been expecting the previous night came calling very vividly . . .
Texas, six years earlier
It had long been suspected that Sheriff Tom Garwood and his chief deputy, Sam Ramsey, were bought and controlled by Cameron Bell. There’d been more than one instance where it was pretty damn evident to some, yet the majority of folks around Calderone still refused to believe it.
Bob Hammond had been fairly convinced the two lawmen were corrupt, but couldn’t prove it beyond a doubt. However, the night he heard Garwood declare him “under arrest for murder” immediately after Bob shot and killed Willis Breen in a fair fight—the same circumstances under which Breen had shot Ramos only a few hours earlier yet was left to freely go about his business—he knew the corruption was real and that it ran deep.
With a chilling certainly, Bob also knew something else. If he allowed Garwood and Ramsey to put cuffs on him and lead him off to jail, he would never live long enough to see a fair trial or have any chance for exoneration.
With the same enraged decisiveness that had brought him to face Breen in the first place, he once again did what he saw as his only choice.
He broke free.
When Ramsey stepped close and reached to put a pair of cuffs on him, Bob spun around and kicked him in the groin as hard as he could. As the deputy doubled over, bug-eyed and gagging in pain, Bob snatched away the shotgun Ramsey had tucked under one arm in order to handle the cuffs and whipped its twin barrels in a savage, slashing arc to the side of Garwood’s head.
With the two lawmen sprawled on the ground, Bob swung the confiscated shotgun in a slow sweep, covering the men who’d spilled out of the Broken Spoke Saloon to initially watch him and Breen shoot it out.
“You all damn well saw the truth of what happened between Breen and me,” he said through clenched teeth. “But just like none of you have had the guts to stand up to Cameron Bell or his corrupt sheriff or any of the rest of the wrongs you’ve watched take place all around you, I don’t expect any of you to speak up for me. That’s fine. I advise you to keep being gutless. Don’t try to stop me when I ride out of here or it will go mighty hard on you.”
So saying, Bob backed slowly, cautiously to where he’d left Ramos’s horse tethered. Keeping the shotgun trained on the men from the saloon, he swung lithely into the saddle, pointed the shotgun skyward, and triggered both barrels in a thunderous roar. Flinging away the smoking weapon, he spurred off into the night.
* * *
An hour later, in the kitchen of the main house at the Hammond ranch, Bob sat partly in shadow from a single lantern burning low in the middle of the table and related to his family the events that had taken place in Calderone.
“I’ll be branded an outlaw now,” he summed up in a dull voice, “so that’s how I’ll live, what I’ll become. They’re the ones who set the ball rolling, but I’m the one who’s gonna keep it in motion. They don’t know what they started yet, but by the time I’m done, they will. I mean to make ’em pay and pay hard. And I mean to make ’em sorry.”
“But what kind of life will that be for you ?” said Priscilla.
“Better than one spent crawlin’ under the likes of Cameron Bell and everything he has influence over,” insisted Bob.
“And what will it mean for Bucky and me, and for your whole family?”
“I know it will be tough on everybody,” Bob said. “As long as I stay clear, no one will bother you. Retaliation against any of you on account of me would be too obvious, too blatant. Bell is smart enough to realize that the so-called law-abiding citizens who’ve looked the other way from some of his shenanigans would balk at something like that.”
“But surely you’re not intending to be an outlaw and a fugitive forever,” said Bob’s father.
Bob shook his head. “No, not forever. Just long enough to raise so much hell and harass everything and everybody corrupted by the Liberty Bell brand that the Texas Rangers will eventually have to be called in. When they arrive and start digging, they won’t stop until they uncover the truth about the things Bell has been getting away with through intimidation and bribery and all the rest. Just like turning over a big rock and watching the bugs and crawly critters scatter for fresh cover, that’s what the Rangers will cause to happen. Then Calderone County will be clean again, a place where decent folks can live and prosper without having to lick the boots of somebody like Cameron Bell in order to get by.”
“Why not go to the Rangers now?” said Bob’s mother. “Tell them what’s going on, plead your case, have them come investigate now.”
Bob shook his head once again. “The time’s not right, Ma. It’s too soon. Bell has too many layers protecting him. Too much money, too many reputable people he’s bought or blackmailed or just plain cowed who will lie and cover for him. I’ve got to first shake those layers apart, wreck some of them if I have to, so they’re no longer solid enough to stand up under a tough, fair investigation.”
“The only way to do that is to become an outlaw?” said Priscilla.
“That’s how I’ve already been branded. Not by any properly administered law, but by crooked yellow dogs who are supposed to be upholding it,” Bob replied bitterly. “Being outside the law when that’s who represents it—yeah, maybe it is the only way!”
And so it began.
* * *
For the next several months, Bob Hammond lived the wild, lonely life of an outlaw. In a wide variety of ways and over a wide range of countryside, he plagued Bell’s interests tirelessly—stampeding cattle, blowing up irrigation dams, setting fire to grain storage bins, tearing down holding pens, and scattering stock gathered and ready to ship to market. Known associates to Bell were posted with warnings—break with Bell or face the consequences.
Attempts to trap or chase down Bob always met with the same results. He would disappear into the wilderness along the Devil’s River, where he and Ramos had trapped and hunted since they were barely dry behind the ears. Even though everyone well knew who the perpetrator of such acts actually was, many took to calling him the Devil’s River Kid. The name stuck and the tales of his exploits grew. Before long some compared him to a Texas Robin Hood.
But not the local law and sure as hell not Cameron Bell. No romanticized interpretation of his deeds clouded their minds. They saw Bob as a pain in their collective butts, an elusive marauder, a growing threat not only to an expanding sphere of Bell influence but to the existence of what was already
established. Plain and simple, they saw him as a troublemaker who had to be stopped. No matter what it took.
From the start, he tried not to make any more killing a part of his strikes against Bell interests. He clung to the belief that, since his shooting of Breen had been justified, if he refrained from gunning any more men, he still stood a chance of being cleared once the Rangers came in and got to the bottom of things. Any additional men he killed would make it that much harder to reach such a conclusion.
Bell started bringing in more hired guns, making it increasingly difficult for Bob to keep from being captured or killed without defending his hide with lead.
It also got harder and harder to sneak in visits to his wife and son, and his folks. While Bucky was growing like a weed, Priscilla appeared more worn down and frail each time he saw her. Alberto Diaz, Ramos’s father, passed away in the fall . . . from grief over his son, many speculated. Consuela naturally took those losses very hard, but endured them largely by immersing herself in the care of Bucky and tending Priscilla in her state of steadily declining health.
The life he was leading began to take its toll on Bob as well, from exhaustion, improper nourishment, and worry over Priscilla’s worsening condition. What was more, his plans to shake apart the layers of protection surrounding Cameron Bell seemed to be failing. As long as Bob was unwilling to kill, those under Bell’s thumb were evidently more fearful of falling out of favor with the cattle baron than suffering harassment from the Devil’s River Kid . . .
* * *
Marshal Hatfield jolted awake and out of the dreams tormenting his slumber. He swung his feet to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed, dragging the palms of his hands down over his face. It was dark in the windowless room except for a vertical line of soft light where the door was slightly ajar, leaking in from the low-burning lantern mounted on a wall of the cell block. Also leaking in from the cell block was the familiar buzz of Arlo Sanders’s snoring, accompanied by the less regular, half-snorting, half-roaring snores of Fred Ordway, who was occupying a cot in the block’s second cell.
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