Ralph Compton Double-Cross Ranch

by Matthew P. Mayo

  Immediately the hat jittered in his hand as it took a bullet that once again zipped by his waiting head. But this bullet hadn’t been aimed at his head, because they were still expecting his face to appear somewhere near the same spot on the rim.

  And he was going to show them.

  Just as soon as the bullet hit the rock and kept on going, Ty pulled in as far and as low as he could, then peeked, and finally thrust the serious end out over the edge.

  He hoped to land a solid punch. Once more he indulged his childlike side, albeit it was far less risky than sticking his head out. Another bullet whanged off a rock, but Ty barely pulled back. Instead he took his time, dipped the revolver over the edge, squinted an eye shut, sighted down where a slight cloud of gun smoke was just drifting skyward, and squeezed the trigger. A second later he heard a scream and a man’s voice saying, “Gaaah! Oooooooh, my eyes! I’m blind! I’m blind. . . .”

  The bullet had ricocheted off the smooth rock wall and spattered rock chips straight into the man’s eyes. The stricken man lurched into sight, stumbling and screaming, his hands clutched to his face. Streams of blood welled out from between his fingers as he ran, shaking his head as if in disagreement with someone. His shouts had dwindled to a steady moaning scream.

  “Shut up yer cryin’!”

  The voice came from someone still hidden, and there was a lilt to the words. The Irishman who’d been lounging on the steps the day before. He had borne a look of some import among the other members of the little band of outlaws. Perhaps a second-in-charge.

  The wounded man kept right on running in circles. At one point he pumped his legs faster and ran smack into the rock wall, only to bounce backward, still clutching his face, still screeching that awful, garbled, crowlike sound before struggling no-handed to his feet again to whip his head slower now, but no quieter.

  “Shut up, man, I tell ya. You’ll be heard clear to Ripley Flats!”

  Still the man howled. Pangs of guilt nibbled at the edges of Ty’s mind, slight, like twinges of hunger a working man feels an hour before dinner. The crack and rolling echo, quickly diminished, of a gunshot accompanied the blinded man’s last lurch and spin. He stiffened, his legs twisting together as if his boots were held together while some unseen giant hand twisted his body in a circle. Then he dropped to the ground, his shoulders spasming even as his head bounded off the unforgiving stony ground.

  Ty shouldn’t have felt as shocked as he did, but he didn’t want to believe that these men were as ruthless as that, brutal enough to kill their fellow bandit for squealing too loud in his agony. And yet there was the pooling of the bloody truth. From the looks of it, if there was an upside to any of it, the shot had been clean, in the back, straight through the man’s heart.

  All of this happened in mere seconds, but before Ty could draw back fully from the edge, he heard a slight sliding and scuffling sound close behind him. He spun, thinking of the man who he suspected would be circling around behind him, cursing himself for not paying more attention. And then there he was, one of the Mexican-looking men from the porch. The middle-height fellow carried a revolver straight out in front of him as if it were a barely held dancing snake in his fingers. The way he advanced and the half-nervous look twitching his swarthy features told Ty that here was one fellow afraid of heights. But before Ty could use that in his own behalf, he had to bring his own pistol into play.

  Not as easily done as said, since it was still clutched in his hand, and that was propped back close to his side. He had no leverage to squeeze a shot, since he’d have to thumb back the hammer first. And the nervous man before him was fully cocked and advancing. And Ty realized at the same time the back of his head, perhaps also his shoulders, had to be visible from below. That Irishman could surely place a killing shot from down there.

  Time to move, he told himself, and rolled hard to his right, raising the pistol at the same time, thumbing the hammer back to the deadly position even as the Irishman sent a volley of shots skyward. Too late, thought Ty, as he rolled toward the inside wall of the precipice, close to his rifle, cocked and waiting.

  Another shot, this time from the nervous man, seared a trail along Ty’s outstretched arm, plowing a slight furrow up his arm from the outer elbow, barely ridging the meat of the arm almost to his shoulder. It stung immediately, and his Colt toppled to the rock face as his arm jerked.

  “Got you now, jackass,” said the nervous man. And though he was still half smiling, his gun-hand shook uncontrollably. He glanced at it as if he were seeing a terrible dream come to life. His red-eyed gaze skittered from the shaking hand to the open-air view beyond. It seemed as if he had forgotten Ty, who took full advantage of the moment to snatch up his pistol and crank his hammer back once more.

  “Don’t do it, mister,” Ty said to the shaking man, whose face had lost its color, as if drained somehow. That caught the man’s attention, and he jerked his gaze back to Ty.

  “Get up!” he hissed, his gun hand shaking less. “Get up.” Still nervous, he forced the words through his teeth.

  “No,” said Ty. “Come and get me.”

  “I don’t need to. I only have to shoot you now.”

  “And yet you haven’t. Why is that?” Ty held his gun firmly on the man’s torso. He didn’t trust himself to aim any higher. A shot to the head would be too good for this man, but from his awkward position he might well miss. Better to wound than miss.

  “I . . . I could take you to the boss myself. Skip Paddy and get more of the treasure for me. Then the boss would see I was the man did the job.”

  Treasure? thought Ty. What treasure? That’s what this is all about? “Oh, I’m not so sure your boss cares if I’m alive, so long as you can prove to him that I’m dead, right?” Ty hoped this would confuse the fool enough that he could rise up to squeeze the trigger with accuracy.

  Then the man surprised him by taking a step forward, almost as if he were being ruled by the thought of the glory he could attain by getting in the boss’s good graces. In doing so, he ignored the dangers before him.

  Another half step and . . . there it was, the man’s curious half smile became capped by raised eyebrows. His mouth formed into an O and his gun fired even as he pitched forward, glancing down briefly to see that Ty’s boots had snaked around his own, tripping him and sending him falling forward.

  The pistol dropped before he did. There was no stopping him, even if Ty had wanted to. The man’s momentum was too great, the edge of the rock, forty or more feet from the little canyon’s unforgiving floor, came up fast to meet him, and his face drove right into the edge, bounced up high, sending blood and fragments of his rotted teeth and pulpy matter from his smashed nose outward in a time-slowed spray, clouding and raining down on the screaming man as he fell.

  Ty looked over his left shoulder, saw him drop like a sack of stones. He heard a slapping sound as the man hit the rocky floor hard, sitting up; a quick snap as the man’s spine broke, whipping his torso, weighted by his big greasy head, forward to slam on the rock between his legs, before it collapsed back in a bloody mess.

  Silence was broken only by the soughing of a slow breeze. Ty felt it on his face, stinging in the wound grazed along his upper arm; then he heard boots on stone from down below.

  “You might as well give up, Mr. Farraday!” The shout echoed down the small canyon’s rock walls. “The boss man, he’s surely disposed of the woman by now. That’s right.”

  Ty could hear the smile in the man’s voice. The bum was enjoying this.

  “She’s told him all he came here for and that makes her useless to him. Or nearly so, anyway!” A cackle of a laugh capped off the gruesome sentence. Ty knew the Irishman was trying to goad him into poking his head out of hiding, yet he sorely wanted to rush down there, sure he’d find the fiend lurking around the corner. He’d give anything to drill the devil in the forehead with one quick shot.

&nbs
p; He closed his eyes a moment, pulled in a deep draft of air, then rolled to his left, snatching up his hat and jamming his Colt back into its holster.

  His arm throbbed, but he was pleased to note it had already stopped bleeding—sure to leave nothing more than a painful scar as a reminder. He hoped so, for then it would mean he’d lived through this mess.

  He heard a sharp crack, as if someone were slapping something open-palmed. This was immediately followed by the churning clatter of hooves on stone. He rolled back onto his chest and peered over the stony edge—just in time to see a man in a ratty black wool coat and a bowler hat tucked low thundering south down the narrow declivity, straight toward the ranch. Had to be the murdering Irishman.

  Ty jerked his rifle before him, levered a round, thumbed the hammer, and didn’t bother aiming, just squeezed the trigger—chasing the devil a finger snap too late. He rounded a far bend that marked the end of the small canyon and opened up to the trail leading to the ranch. Ty knew he’d missed, but maybe the shot had put some bit of fear into the Irishman, though he doubted it.

  By the time Ty made it back down to Stub—relieved to see the bold horse still stood where he’d tethered him—he was more determined than ever to get to the Double Cross. He hoped he wouldn’t be too late. Hob was right; he had to face it alone. And he had to do it now.

  Chapter 21

  Meanwhile, back at the Double Cross . . . After he watched the men depart, Clewt headed back into the ranch house. A grin spread wide on his craggy features, like a slick of spilled lamp oil.

  “Oh, woman! Woman?” he shouted, standing in the open doorway. He spread his arms wide and laughed, a rasping, coughing sound, the result of years of smoking cheroots down to the nub, pulling the dark thick smoke deep into his lungs, holding it there, savoring the burn, then expelling it.

  It always made him feel a little like a dragon pluming smoke and flame into the sky. He recalled, now and again, his grandmama reading a story to him about a man who slew a great winged beast that flew all over the countryside, making life miserable for everyone he came across. Then a strange man had slain her, with young Clewt hiding under the bed, gnawing his own knuckles to keep from crying out at the sounds of his grandmama’s pain.

  The thrashing the man had given her, the almost crushing feeling of the bed pressing down on him, again and again, his grandmama’s cries growing fainter all the while. Then her hand had dropped over the side of the bed, blood trailing from it, dripping before him on the wood floor of the safest place he had ever known.

  Clewt remembered wanting to hold her hand as the fingers trembled their last, but he was too afraid to touch it, all the blood, the man still there. Then he saw the boots slam to the floor, and the sagging weight of the bed suddenly lifted off Clewt. The man opened the wardrobe, slammed around in the chest of drawers, tossing about grandmama’s precious things. Clewt had brought his hands tight to his face, only his other senses taking in what was happening.

  But then he smelled smoke, something that was not fire but a cigar. He had seen men sucking on them in the streets, in the fancy parlor where grandmama went to work. And the smoke made him think that the man must be a dragon, a dragon in boots, making life miserable for everyone, and somehow it had been their turn.

  Clewt could not utter a peep. Dared not. . . . Even for hours after the big leather boots slammed out of the room, after the smell of smoke faded away, after the boots stomped down the steps, the sound of crunching gravel becoming less and less.

  The thought that the man must have been a dragon gave Clewt much comfort, and he recalled always wanting to be that dragon, wanting for years as he grew up to be that great and mighty beast, spraying trouble all over the countryside, making people hurt and scream and shout and sometimes even fight back.

  Sometimes they even said, “No! You shall not do this thing! I and I alone will stand up to you!” And yet every single time, Clewt and his lesser dragons, the ones who trailed behind, mewling for scraps and squabbling among themselves, always came out on top, leaving great, vast stretches of countryside a smoking wreckage behind.

  Wasn’t that the case with that wretched little lawman down in that tiny border town that had the silver strike? What was the name of that place? Dane Creek? Yes, he was almost sure of it. Not positive, though, because he’d been drunk much of the time they were there. And the opium! Oh, that was something to remember—too bad he couldn’t recall much.

  But he remembered that lawman, all right. Remembered how he came to them, the entire gang lined up there at the bar in that glitzy place with the brass cuspidors, fancy mirrors, and girls in colorful dresses. They had even had a full mariachi band. But that lawman had visited them, hat in hand, practically begging them to reconsider their evil ways, to give thought to the children of the town. The children! Ha. He had asked them to leave the town alone, to ride on out and to not bother his people.

  Yes, that was right, Clewt now recalled. The man had called them “his people.” What a fool. He remembered asking if the man was married. The lawman had taken his time in replying, considering, no doubt, whether to tell Clewt and the boys about his personal life. Finally the man had said yes, indeed, he was a married man. With a child.

  “How,” Clewt had said, “does your wife put up with your simpering?”

  That brought a hearty round of laughter from the boys, sure, but also from the entire bar full of miners, women, and gamblers—his sort of people. Workers who would drink and become careless with their pokes so that before the end of the night arrived, he and the boys had seen nearly every poke, knew every person they would waylay outside. One of his men at a time following one or two stumble-down-drunk gambling miners on out the door, knocking them in the heads, slicing throats wide open if need be.

  The lawman had become angry then, had turned on his heels, tugged his hat low on his head, and headed back through the batwings. Then he stopped, turned red-faced, and said, “You will regret that, sir. You will regret it.” Then he’d turned and walked on out. They didn’t hear a peep from him for the rest of the night. And they had a long, good laugh at his expense.

  But even through all the fun, Clewt remembered that threat the lawdog had made. It hung around his neck all night, festering like the rotting carcass of a small animal. By the wee hours, he had begun to grin, and Paddy had nudged him. “What’s doin’, boss? We on for something? That look . . . I’ve seen that look, boss.” But Paddy was smiling, too.

  And by the time the sun’s first rays touched the Sunday-morning town of Dane Creek, Clewt Duggins and his boys were long gone, struggling at first to stay in their saddles from the drink and debauchery they so prized. But after a time, they rode hard and well, laden with silver, gold dust, cash, anything of value. And those who refused to give it up—why, they did anyway. It just took more convincing. The sharp-edged sort. Of course they had to bring along a number of fresh horses as pack beasts in order to divvy the load and not tire out any beasts before their time was due.

  And as the first puffy-eyed inhabitants stepped out onto the boardwalks, shielding their eyes from the day’s first rays . . . they saw the poor, unfortunate dead of the town, how many Clewt could no longer remember, among them a few waifish looking creatures who may well have been children, women and men, too. Even a few old ones. And now that he thought back on it, one had been a lawman of sorts, a deputy, if he recalled correctly.

  It had been a necessary rampage that the dragon had got up to. One that he relished for many days to come. That tingle that had trailed along his spine like a cold fingernail dragged upward into his hair, that had made it all worthwhile.

  How long ago had that been? Months? A year past? Hmm, not that it mattered much, but he did occasionally wonder what that foul little lawdog had thought of it. Clewt hadn’t had to leave any sort of note, no calling card other than the line of neatly laid out bodies in the street. Still, it would have been extra de
licious to see the lawman’s face that sunny Sunday morning, as the weight of realization dragged his features downward, from rage to grief to guilt, the lowest form of feeling a man could indulge in.

  Clewt breathed deep, coughed at the hitch in his lungs—small price to pay for being a dragon, he thought—and smiled as he stuffed the end of a cheroot between his lips and thumb-nailed a lucifer alight. Ahhh, that first long pull of fresh smoke was still a treat. Made him feel positively impressive. And knowing he was about to become wealthy beyond his wildest dreams put a little extra spring in his step.

  “Oh, woman.” He peeked around the doorframe leading into the kitchen. “Clewt the Dragon’s here. . . .” He blew out a thick plume of smoke that just reached her face. She jerked her head to the side but couldn’t avoid the blue-gray cloud. Though her mouth was bound and gagged, she still sneezed and blinked her eyes to dispel the foul stink.

  Clewt smiled and waggled his eyebrows. “And he’s come to tell you”—he stepped close and looked down at her—“it’s now, or it’s never.”

  He shucked the long, gleaming blade from his belt sheath and flipped it end for end in the air. The staghorn handle landed smack in his hand with a satisfying thunking sound. He grinned and waved the blade tantalizingly, like the mesmerizing tail of a scorpion, before her pulled-back face. “I expect all this playacting over the past couple of days has left you feeling as though you just might figure a way out of this. Why, it must be a nightmare to you.” He canted his head to one side and adopted what he guessed was a look of pity. Not having much experience with such things as offering pity, Clewt only guessed at the expression. “I’m here to tell you that you will never, ever escape me. You understand, woman?”

  Sue Ellen squinched her eyes shut tight, and thin tears squeezed out. But the rest of her face was resolute. And when she opened her eyes she stared right back at the smiling face of the killer, the man who had killed her husband.