Ralph Compton Double-Cross Ranch

by Matthew P. Mayo

  Within half an hour, the two men raced through the little cluster of buildings. With help from a well-rested pack pony, annoyed, Hob told him, as soon as its pasture mate was hauled off for the day by Ty, the rancher was able to form a barrier of sorts with their two wagons, one broke-down old buggy that Ty had intended to repair for Hob for years but never seemed to get around to. All the while he worked arranging the wagons and other props he felt might be of a size usable to hide behind, Ty ruminated on what he might do to stem the tide of blood sure to flow before long.

  He didn’t have proof that Clewt and his little armed mob were going to pay them a visit; it was more of a feeling. But it was feeling enough, bolstered by Hob’s curious reaction, that he felt justified in taking these precautions. And if the expected did not come to pass, if the gunmen failed to show, all the better. He’d have been out only the time and labor he’d expended in setting up these bulwarks.

  “You about done out there?” Hob shouted from the porch. “I got biscuits and beans on. Might as well eat now; there sure as shootin’ won’t be time for a bite later on. Come and get it whilst you can, boy!”

  As if in response, Ty’s gut growled like a two-week-old bear cub under a berry-laden branch just out of reach. “Okay, pony,” he said, turning the beast back into the corral. He wanted all the horses in the corral just in case the expected raiders put torch to the buildings. He could release the animals a whole lot easier from the old corral than from stalls in a burning barn.

  Then with a last glance at the long, darkening hills to the north, he headed to the house for a quick meal with Uncle Hob. He prayed it wasn’t their last together.

  In between bites of their meal that each wished they could have lingered longer over, the two men worked out a rough plan of action. Hob would stay put and hold forth from the front of the house, using the three windows facing the yard. He could unbar the others as need required, with the house windows barred and blocked from the inside and the back kitchen door dead-bolted, blocked, and barred.

  It was decided without words that since he was older, slowed by his obvious infirmity, and less than able to cat-foot about the place, he’d be the draw, the one the attackers might think was the primary target.

  The younger, spryer rancher would be the wild card. It was agreed that he’d range about the place, roving from spot to spot, hopefully getting the drop on the suspected intruders.

  “I figure,” said Ty, sopping up the last of his bean juice, “that I can get at them before they make it down here to the ranch. Trick is, I don’t want to be the first one to shoot.”

  He washed down the bite with piping hot coffee.

  “Boy, you’d best revisit that thought, because you know what’s going to happen. Soon as they find one of us, they’re going to throw a lead party. Ain’t nothin’ in their minds about the good or bad of shooting first. The real trick is to be the one to shoot best.”

  “Yep, I know that. But I do not know just yet how I’m going to avoid shooting first. I might not have a choice, after all. And if I don’t get out there, I’ll never know.” He stood, wiping his mouth again on the napkin, then folded it and set it back down at his place. He hated that every little action seemed to carry with it a sense of finality, as if foretelling their failure. For all he knew, their efforts would gain him nothing more than an overturned ranch and a nerved-up old man ready to shoot at something—anything, in fact.

  But what if he was right? What if those men were already on their way? Now that was something he could understand and hopefully prepare for.

  Hob’s voice, bold and filled with conviction, cracked the tense quiet of the room. “I know why we can’t get the law in here, nor the townies neither. But it don’t mean I don’t wanna have someone here, sort of like witnesses. ’Cause if there is killing and it’s done by us, just like the Mexican, well, you know what I’m driving at.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I do, Hob. Someone’s got to pay. It’s simple, really. But that’s what we’re stuck with. I can’t risk bringing anyone from town out here, least of all the law. They all loved Winstead like he was Father Christmas and a generous banker all rolled into one.”

  Hob nodded. “It’s because he spent money, lots of money, in the town. And he wasn’t shy about spreading his wealth around.”

  “As it is, we’re operating on borrowed time,” said Ty. “Someone’s bound to come out to the Double Cross soon and find that gang of squatters instead of Alton.”

  “How would that be a bad thing?” Hob’s eyes were wide, as if the notion had just occurred to him.

  “I thought originally that it might be helpful, and it still might be, but there’s something more going on there, something I need to figure out. And I’d bet the farm that if a bunch of those well-meaning but foolish townsfolk wandered on in there, bad things could happen. You know the sort of men we’re dealing with.”

  “But what bothers me,” said Hob, “is how a smart girl like Sue Ellen got herself so turned around by him. I never would have thought—”

  “Can we just let that ghost lie, Uncle Hob? At least for the rest of the day. We have a big enough challenge facing us in the next few hours.”

  “You’re right, boy. ’Bout time I get them other shotgun shells from the stable, then see to barricading that back door. I might even bring in the last of the smoked shanks we got in the root cellar. Never can tell when a man’ll get peckish.”

  The remark was humorous because for as long as Ty could remember, Hob hadn’t ever finished a full meal. The man was all stringy muscle and bone, always had been, always would be. “Why don’t you let me get those shells from the stable? You tend to the back door. I have to get a few things from the barn anyway.”

  With that the men nodded at each other, left the kitchen for their respective tasks. On the way to the barn, Ty felt a prickling in his neck, as if he were being watched. He looked up toward the northern hills and just as he did so, in the gray, overcast early-afternoon light, a rider emerged on the ridge top. Then another, and another.

  So, they were already closer than he expected. And judging from a quick flash, they’d glassed him and maybe knew that he’d seen them. What he was unsure of was whether they were aware of Hob yet. Could be the second man from last night had heard Ty yelling to Hob. Or maybe he’d seen him hobbling from the house.

  Ty fought down the urge to dash back to the house. He had to keep calm, pretend as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He’d go to the stable, fetch the two boxes of shells, then calmly walk back to the house, make sure Hob was set and ready. Ready as he’d ever be.

  By that time, the attackers should be down into the thickest part of the ponderosa-covered slopes. The trees should obstruct their views enough to allow him to skedaddle onto Stub and still give him enough time to foul their attempts. Somehow. At least he had an edge over them in that he knew the terrain. It would almost be better if it were nighttime. But beggars can’t be choosers, he told himself as he snatched down the shells and walked as fast as he dared back to the house.

  Just then he saw Hob emerge onto the porch. Ty kept his arms down but said, “Stay inside, Hob. Get back in there. We have company already and I don’t want them to see you—might be you’ll be a surprise to them yet.”

  “Oh, I’ll surprise ’em all right, boy,” he said, chuckling and clunking back into the kitchen.

  Chapter 18

  “Paddy, you rode with the boss back in the Chihuahua days, right?” The man speaking held a sleeve to the side of his long nose and sprayed a trail of snot, just missing his own leg. He rasped the sleeve under his red nostrils and coughed. None of the men wanted to get close to him. The man was forever sick with some sort of dripping-nose affliction that looked foul and sounded worse. They called him “Barn Cat” to his face because farm felines frequently suffered from such snot-faced symptoms.

  Paddy held his course at the point of the
small group of riders, elbows of his ratty frock coat wagging with his mount’s jouncing gait through the winding trail south. He didn’t reply, since Barn Cat and everyone else in the gang knew full well that, in fact, Paddy O’Donnell was the only one of the current gang to have been with the boss back in Chihuahua.

  “So what I am wondering is . . .” Barn Cat coughed again, sent a gob of phlegm groundward. “Why ain’t you his right-hand man? You know what I’m saying to you?” When he got no response, he kept on, working to rephrase the question. “I mean, don’t he confide in you? Must be he knows where this so-called treasure is, right?”

  Finally, Paddy spoke. “What makes you think I don’t? In fact, what makes you think at all?”

  “Hey now,” said Barn Cat. “Ain’t no call to get all uppity on me. I am just trying to pass the time and get a few things straight in my own head afore we go in there delivering our deadly beans, you know?”

  Not receiving anything more than a glimpse of the side of Paddy’s face, jaw muscles bunching, Barn Cat dropped back, shaking his head and trying to catch the eye of any of the other men with whom he might commiserate. But no one wanted to talk with him, especially not about Paddy, who was riding right there in front of them.

  Just because Barn Cat was dumb enough to not be afraid of the Irishman, especially when Paddy wasn’t in his cups, didn’t mean the rest of them weren’t. They’d heard stories, seen a few light episodes of his brutality—the purpled eyes of a barman who served him warm beer, the welts on the face and neck of a fidgety horse.

  But Barn Cat was a different breed altogether—he was dumb like a fox. As one of the newer recruits to the gang, he seemed to the other men initially as if he were too stupid to ride with them. Always asking obvious questions, forever annoying them with his various ailments. But they realized that he was asking questions, pushing the boss and Paddy, and to a lesser extent, the other men, in ways that resulted not a few times in fistfights.

  And when it came time for Barn Cat to defend himself, they saw just what a scrapper Barn Cat was, especially with close-in fighting. And when the scraps finished, which he usually lost, he always smiled as if he had won anyway. He was an odd one, no doubt. But they all paid him careful attention lest they end up a victim of his, somehow.

  The men rode along in silence, brooding on the fight soon to come. Then Barn Cat’s voice piped up again. “Hey, Paddy?” He waited for an answer.

  Eventually the Irishman sighed and said, “Yeah?”

  “Why ain’t we just going to burn this Farraday fella’s place to the ground? That’d be a whole lot easier than goin’ in there and wasting a lot of bullets, putting our lives at risk.”

  “Like you and that foolish Mexican did last night?”

  Barn Cat hung his head. “Aww, look, Paddy, Paco and me, we didn’t mean nothing by that. But truth be told, Paco and me thought we was going to pull an easy one. Make the boss happy. Maybe impress him.”

  Paddy snorted. “Yeah, that worked well, didn’t it? You got your partner killed and your future in the gang ain’t looking too good, I’m here to tell you.”

  Barn Cat continued his long-face, hangdog look, slumping in the saddle, his shoulders sagging as if weighted by sacks of rocks. “Aww, don’t say that, Paddy. I done my best to get him to see the light, to just do what the boss wanted, which was just to follow the man, see where he holes up. I for one did not want to tangle with him.”

  “And yet you did. Forget about it now. The only thing you can do to redeem yourself in the eyes of the boss is to make sure we do just what he wants today. We have to make sure the man who shot Paco dies himself today. You got that?”

  “Yeah, yeah, Paddy. I do. But, Paddy?”

  The Irishman sighed. “What now?”

  “Why ain’t we burning him out?”

  “Is everyone in your family born stupid or do you all have to work at it?” Paddy shook his head. “I’ll say this once, loud enough for you all to hear me: We’ll not be burning the man out. Not yet, anyway. We’re just going to go in there, kill him with knives. And if that doesn’t work, then we’ll shoot him. No burning because the boss doesn’t want to attract anyone from that little pimple of a town, Ripley Flats, back a few miles from here. Or from any other neighboring spread.

  “And why, you might well ask me, would that be a bad thing? Fine, I’ll tell you. Because the boss says we’re very close to finding the treasure. And the last thing we need is to attract notice of the local folks, especially the law. That’s why he’s so steamed about Barn Cat and Paco riding in there on their own. They left him alive. Now that gave him the chance to go to town. But he didn’t. Not yet anyway. So we have to drop him in his tracks. Else he really will bring attention to us and then we might as well give up ever becoming rich men. You hear me now?”

  The men nodded, offered sharp answers of “Yeah, we hear you.” They all had visions of the enormity of the treasure cache. And they all wanted their share.

  Chapter 19

  Henry Atwood knew it had been fifteen days since he left his wife and son back in Dane Creek. But try as he might, he could not figure out what day of the week it was. He could have sworn he had left on a Tuesday, so that would mean this day should be a Wednesday. But that did not feel right to him. Sweet Maria had never hesitated to tell him what day it was should he ask. Her week revolved around attending Mass on Wednesday evenings and again on Sunday mornings.

  Eventually she had worn him down and he had begun attending Mass with her. But he drew the line at twice weekly. Sundays would be just fine. He recalled as a boy going to big, daylong prayer meetings with his family far to the northeast, somewhere on the great grassy sea of the prairie.

  It was so long ago he had no notion of what state or territory it might have been. Nor could he remember what particular brand of religion they had been. Just that no one smiled very much, and not just at church, but anytime. Nor had they worn particularly festive colors—black dresses and shawls, even in the high blazing heat of the summer. Not like the Mexicans.

  Those people knew how to live with heat, to celebrate it with their clothing and their smiles and the colors they wore. Even their food was so much happier-seeming, filled with spices, flavors, and colors that he rarely saw on the tables of the people from which he himself descended. They were dour, thick-faced, bearded men and squat, scowling women in drab clothes muttering about the vileness of nature and cursing their lots in life, praising the old country, never taking time to enjoy themselves. Not like the Mexicans. . . .

  Finally, Henry sighed at the folly of spending so much time thinking of such things. He had to concentrate on the job facing him. Had to stop thinking of his wife and son. Had to become the lawman he wished he could have left behind. If he didn’t, he knew he was all but pulling the trigger on his own death.

  What he had in mind would require all his concentration, all the abilities he had ever learned about defending himself, about protecting other lives, about taking a man’s life. If he didn’t, Henry knew he would not return home to his family. And a man such as himself, older and all but spent, surely owed it to them and to himself to not fritter away this last chance he would ever have at a life of happiness.

  Clewt Duggins. That was the name of the man for whom he risked all. And what’s more, if the vermin didn’t use that name, Henry would recognize the beast anywhere. That limp, that demeaning way of talking, the constant haze of cigar smoke. Henry had no firsthand knowledge of how Duggins came to lose his leg, but he assumed it had been in the war. Hadn’t all men, from young to old, somehow been affected by the terrible, long war?

  Henry certainly had, nearly lost his life—his left hand went up to gingerly touch, as if to reassure himself they were still there, the poorly healed knobs of scar tissue that were his daily reminders of the terrors of war. He had been convinced he was going to die right there on the battlefield. But then he had been
trodden on by two medics stumbling under the weight of a pair of bodies on one stretcher. Henry recalled seeing the canvas, ragged and filthy with the churned guck of the battlefield, and dripping blood as steadily as a leaking bucket wells out its cargo.

  They stepped on his hip and wrist. He felt a thumb snap and it was the best thing that could have happened to him, because the pain of the thumb breaking forced a strangled sob from him. Had it not been for those men thinking he was beyond dead, merely one more battlefield corpse that wouldn’t mind them taking the direct route to the hospital tent, he would have sunk deeper into death. He never would have known when his shredded guts had ebbed the last of him into the mud or death’s clammy embrace had begun.

  But they had pulled from him, inadvertently, a howl of agony, and it was enough to make them stop that day. They bent to him, muttered something, and weak as he was, he figured they would rob him, steal his teeth, sell his hair, take his clothes, his few personal things from his pockets. But he had been wrong.

  The men checked the two bodies they carried on the bloody stretcher, dumped off the top one, just then realizing he was dead. Henry still remembered the sound as the man hit the ground and other bodies, a squelching, final-sounding slap. Then they lifted him none too gingerly by his armpits and legs and dumped him atop the other man, then continued on their way. The pain from his various wounds was so intense he hoped he’d die. If he didn’t, he hoped that at least he’d pass out. That didn’t happen either.

  That had been so long ago, though every time he ventured northward, as he was now doing, the rheumatics that deviled those wounded spots—his scar-knobbed side and his busted fingers—ached all over, as if he had stones in his boots and sores in his teeth.

  Henry soldiered on, alternately riding or sliding stiffly down from the saddle and walking slowly alongside his dog-tired horses, the primary saddle horse and the packhorse, which also served as a mount, though less reliable on the trail. She was prone to skittering at unexpected rock sounds, shadows, wavering jags of branches. Still, she was a decent beast, too. And he was grateful for the two of them as company.