It seemed to help, because the man nodded, bent back to his task, though he kept a watchful eye on the captives. His knife was sharp and he made quick work of the hemp ropes.
Ty rubbed his chafed wrists, then offered a hand to the cramped Sue Ellen. “Why are you doing this, fella?”
“What? Oh, uh, my name’s Rufus.”
“Didn’t ask you your name, Rufus. I asked why you’re freeing us,” Ty said as he glanced about the dim chamber without result, looking for a dropped weapon, maybe his skinning knife, something more they might use. But to no avail.
But the man was backing up the short tunnel, still pointing his revolver their way. “I got to go. Boss is somewheres around. . . .” Then he bolted from sight. Ty grabbed Sue Ellen’s wrist and pulled her, stiff-legged, up the passage. “C’mon. We can’t waste any more time.”
“Ty, where can we go? It’s broad daylight and Duggins has to be around somewhere.”
“Who cares where we go, as long as it’s not locked up in there anymore. We have to get out of here.” They stopped at the doorway, blinking into the bright, midday light, looking left and right. “I don’t see anyone,” said Ty. “Let’s make for the trees up back of this hill. We’ll circle around to the other side of the house—I’m hoping Stub will still be there. If not, we’ll hoof it overland.”
“To your place?”
“Yep. If Hob’s okay.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
They switchbacked up the scree-laden slope above the root cellar, breathing hard and angling as fast as Ty could urge them toward the too-spaced stand of ponderosas. They’d have to get deep into the trees before risking their wide arc toward the southwest. They made it to the trees, ducked low to avoid sparse, long, drooping branches. Ty felt fully visible from the sprawling ranch house not far below them. Not far at all.
“Ty, you’re hurting me. I have to stop.” Sue Ellen’s voice came out in a gasping whisper.
He looked back at her. He hadn’t been aware that he’d been all but dragging her along, her rope-raw wrist clamped tight in one of his gore-spattered hands. He let go of her. “We have to keep going, Sue Ellen. No time, no weapons.” They were both breathing hard, and Ty was aware that at any moment Duggins might see them from below. Or maybe he already had and was tracking their progress, drawing a sight on them.
She was bent double, with her hands on her knees, her work dress a begrimed, ripped mess, her hair hanging in her face, dirt and blood smeared on her high cheeks and her bold chin. Ty thought she’d never looked lovelier and he knew, more so than he had at any time in the previous ten years, that he had never gotten over her.
“Ty?” She was looking at him. “Don’t you think that was—I don’t know—too easy?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it was too convenient. Think about it—Duggins just leaves; then a while later one of his fools comes in, without much of an excuse at all, and just lets us go?”
She was right, of course. In his haste to make sure she was okay, he’d overlooked the fact that it had all been too easy. “That man, Rufus.” Ty nodded. “His answers were odd. I just thought he was nervous . . . and stupid.”
“I think he was both. But he was also told to free us. I’d bet this so-called treasure on it.”
“So what do you think we should do?” Ty asked as he tugged off his right boot.
“I know we don’t have time to kick off our shoes and relax.”
He held up his boot knife, a folding cutter that had served him well for a number of years.
“Hey . . .” Recognition bloomed on Sue Ellen’s face. “Didn’t I give you . . . ?”
“Yep.”
“You kept it all these years.”
“When something’s reliable you stick with it.” He turned from her, aware that his remark had barbs, and led the way northward, still crouching low, hurrying deeper into the sparse tree cover.
After a few dozen yards she said, “I don’t think we should try to get back to your place.”
“Where do you suggest we go?”
“Head west, toward . . .”
“The treasure,” he said. Sue Ellen nodded.
“And lead Duggins to it?”
“Why not? I don’t care about it. I just want him to leave and never come back.”
Ty stopped again and looked at her. “You really think he’s going to just let us go? Even if he has the treasure—whatever it may be? And besides, you’re not even sure it’s there. Or if it even exists.”
She didn’t reply.
“By that logic,” said Ty, “he’ll be tracking us, following along like a starving wolf after a sickly elk calf, waiting for us to lead him to it.” He smiled at her. “Okay then, let’s be that calf. And lead that wolf to something he won’t ever forget.”
Chapter 28
Henry and Crazy Horse Ranch Woman—though he’d never address her as such to her face—headed north on the Piker Road. The direction was as much she would tell him, which he already knew. They rode for hours while the near-full waning moon lit the roadway, a well-traveled track, as evidenced by dung and deep wagon ruts. Near as he could tell it was pushing midnight, and she showed no signs of stopping for a rest.
Henry hated to admit it, but he felt rotten all over, as if he had come down with the ague. He hoped it was just tiredness and some sort of rank feeling left over from the bullet wound. He also didn’t care much anymore what she thought. He slowed his mount and packhorse to a stop. “I am loath to admit it, ma’am, but I have to climb down. Maybe grab a few minutes of sleep.”
“Fine,” she said over her shoulder. “When you get enough of your precious beauty sleep, then you can hurry on up the trail and catch up to me.”
He sat his horse, watching her slowly disappear into the night ahead, not seeming to care one whit. Finally he sighed, tapped his heels, and the little packhorse made a disappointed sound from low in its throat, but kept on trudging. “I know how you feel, horse. But I can do nothing about it. She claims to know where we are going and I do not.”
Over the next hour he tried to engage her in conversation, but she refused to answer him. Finally she said, “Why do you talk so much? No wonder my two men shot you. They told me they thought you were one of the men who had attacked us. But that you had gone insane. Now I see what they mean.”
“I am not crazy. I am, however, tired and sore and annoyed. With you, if you must know. I demand to know where we are headed. Those men are fugitives and I am the law, and it is my job to uphold the law by bringing them back to Dane Creek.”
“You ain’t the law. You said yourself that you are a former lawman. Now, in my book that doesn’t make you law anymore.” She turned in the saddle and looked at him. The moonlight shadows made her look a little spooky to him, as if she had no eyes.
“Fine, then I am no different than you. I want revenge on those men. Plain and simple.”
She halted her horse and waited until he rode up beside her. The moonlight still made her look spooky to him, but a little less so this close up. “It’s about time you were truthful with me, Mister Henry Lawdog. That’s all I was waiting for.”
He regarded her with suspicion a moment longer, then said, “So you’re going to tell me where we are headed?”
“Yeah, but first we need to make camp. A few hours of sleep will be good for your sore arm.”
Henry sat there atop his horse, shaking his head in disbelief while Crazy Horse Ranch Woman climbed down from Lilly and led her into a clear patch just off the road. He followed suit, stripping off saddles and tending the horses. She kindled a small fire and made hot soup in a tin pot she’d tied to his packhorse’s saddle back at the ranch. She also produced biscuits and jerky.
While they sipped at the thin soup, she said, “I heard tell they were he
aded to find a man who had done them all kinds of wrong.”
Henry paused, holding his tin cup in both hands. “Please tell me you have more information than that.”
“I do.” She sipped, chewed a bite of biscuit as slowly as a cow might its cud wad.
“And?”
She sighed. “My word, Mr. Henry, you are a nervy thing. Duggins himself said the man they were looking for goes by the name of Winstead now. Something like that. And that he has a ranch near some town called Ripley something-or-other.”
Henry could hardly believe it. After all this time, the first real bit of information he had. The first bit—and she had known it the entire time. “All this time and I could have been on the road toward Duggins? And you let me just lie in bed?”
“No you couldn’t, and no I didn’t. My men hadn’t mistaken you for a crazy bad man and shot you, you wouldn’t have come under my care. You’d have kept right on babbling and raving and wandering and the good Lord only knows where you would have ended up. Likely bear bait somewhere. And as for you lying around in bed, I had to let you rest up for a few days. Elsewise you’d be of no use to me.”
Henry ate the rest of his meal in silence, stewing but elated, too, because he finally knew where they were headed. Even if he didn’t know exactly how to get there. Finally he said, “I still don’t know why you didn’t just go on your own.”
“Truth is I was preparing to when my boys shot you. I had to tend you before I could go. It wasn’t an easy choice, Mr. Henry. I wanted to leave you be. But your wound would likely have putrefied. I figured that Duggins was in a longish sort of way guilty of you being shot too. So I didn’t see any reason why another innocent man should die for his sins.” She began cleaning the few utensils they’d used. “Not yet anyway.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Means I need you whole and alive and able to pull a trigger when we get there. Strength in numbers, Mr. Henry.” She smiled, then unrolled her blankets, lay down with a knee-popping groan, and said, “Night.”
Henry sat there for long minutes, watching the flames of the small fire dwindle, thinking of his wife and son and wondering if he’d ever be able to pull a trigger again, even on a man like Clewt Duggins.
Chapter 29
“You did good, Rufus. Very good.” From the shadows on the east side of the Double Cross ranch house, Clewt stared up at the top of the ponderosa-topped slope. He ran the tip of his tongue across his teeth, played with the gap where the canine tooth had split right up the middle when that nasty woman on the horse ranch had rammed her head into his face. Good that he’d left Paddy behind to take care of her. Otherwise the dragon would have had to leave more of a mess behind.
“Okay, boss. I’m not sure what I did that was so good, but . . . okay, if you say so.” Rufus would only look at his big ol’ boots, not meet Clewt’s eye.
Clewt flinched. Here was a man who had just done his bidding but who it was quite obvious wasn’t pleased at all with having done it. Now why was that? “Rufus? Look at me.”
Again the tall man hemmed and hawed, swung that big horsey head to and fro.
“Rufus?”
Finally he looked up, to find Clewt smiling. At him. The biggest pie-eating grin he could muster. “Now see? That wasn’t so bad.” He draped an arm around Rufus’s shoulder. The tall man shrunk even more in on himself.
“You see, Rufus, there comes a time when a man has, how can I put this? He’s fulfilled his earthly duties and there really is not much more he can do for the good of mankind. You follow me, son?”
“I . . . I can’t say I do, no, boss.”
“Well, let me put it this way.” With a quick movement that surprised and pleased even himself, Clewt Duggins upthrusted a long, thin-bladed melon knife into Rufus’s midsection, just under the point where the ribs joined in the middle of the tall man’s breadbasket. At the same time, Clewt tightened his shoulder-draping arm and pulled downward on Rufus’s frame, forcing the blade deep.
The tall man’s eyes widened impossibly, matched with his O-shaped mouth. Red blood soon streamed in strings from his mouth, making his lips look grotesquely shaped.
“Now, son,” said Clewt in Rufus’s ear in a low, hoarse whisper. “Take no offense in this, and know that I take no pleasure in it. Well, maybe a little.” He chuckled. “But it’s really needed doing for some time. You are not suited to this life. Everything I’ve asked you has been a painful decision for you. And that’s just not good. I need people who understand me, people who will snap to at a moment’s notice and not feel as though what I have asked might or might not be a good thing. You see?”
Rufus’s eyes began to glaze over. Clewt leaned close to the man’s long, collapsing face. “What’s that? You say you understand? You say you take it all back? You say you’ll be more like the other boys, less apt to drag those big ol’ feet of yours?” Clewt straightened, slid his knife free of the man’s body, and pushed him backward.
Rufus wavered at full height, then slowly fell backward, like a fresh-chopped tree not yet aware that it had been cut through. His left leg buckled at the knee and he collapsed sideways, not raising his hands to stop his fall.
Clewt looked down at his right arm, coated in a sleeve of glistening blood. “Oh dear, now that is messy. And unfortunate for you that you didn’t speak up sooner.”
The far-off sound of hoofbeats drawing closer pulled his gaze toward the hills to the southwest. A rider crested, then galloped down the last ridgeline before the ranch. “Looks like someone’s headed back.” But Clewt’s smile faded. “Where are the rest of them?” He watched the horse’s progress a moment more, his features darkening with each passing moment he did not see other riders trailing behind.
A gagging sound that turned into a long, final wheeze rose up from the man at Clewt’s feet. “Oh, shut up,” said the boss, driving his boot into the man’s back. Rufus didn’t move.
Clewt stomped off toward the barn and thrust his arm into the water trough, rubbing the blood from his arm, sluicing it off the knife blade. Every few seconds he glanced toward the approaching horse, his breathing coming faster and harder, his mouth setting into a tight, firm line and a growl rising from his throat.
He stood by the trough watching the horse approach. Water ran from his soaked arms, the long, thin-bladed knife still gripped in his right hand. Something was off about it. Was that shimmering heat? A rider? Could be, but the man looked to be fighting to stay in the saddle, swaying from side to side. Was it Paddy, with his Appaloosa, that dark coat, and wide-shouldered torso? Had to be. But why was he alone, and what in the heck was wrong with him?
“Whatever it is, he’d better hurry up,” Clewt said in a low voice. “Have to trail the woman and her rescuer.”
The horse finally slow-stepped to a stop just under the arch. And that’s when Clewt saw there was no man in the saddle at all. He squinted, tried to see across the few hundred yards to the gate, wondering where Paddy was. Why? It’s not like he needed the man, nor did he particularly want him around. He had planned on killing him anyway, as soon as he found the treasure. Maybe the crazy Irishman didn’t make it through the task he’d sent them on. Maybe they’d run into some sort of trouble at Farraday’s. He knew the rangy rancher hadn’t been there the entire time because he’d been here, at the Double Cross, killing Clewt’s snakes and getting himself tied up.
Clewt smiled, canted his jaw to the side. Maybe the second man at Farraday’s place, whoever he was, was more than a match for his men. Hadn’t he wanted them to die off anyway? Save him the trouble of having to gut them like ol’ Rufus here. Clewt looked down at the man sprawled halfway across the yard. He’d not taken any great pains to hide the body, nor to kill him where he could easily be gotten rid of. Why bother?
Clewt knew that since he’d gotten out of prison, he had been pleasantly surprised by the lack of people willing to stand up to h
im and his newly recruited boys—new, that is, save for Paddy. There had been a time when loyalty to one of his men, such as the crazy Irishman, had been important to him. But that had been so long ago, was so far buried in his blood-slick past that Clewt could no longer recall when it had been that way. Or why, come to think on it.
The way he figured it, he owed nothing to anyone, save himself. The dragon needed no one and nothing—except maybe a fortune in stolen Mexican gold, a treasure that should have been his all along. The thought of it stashed somewhere, just waiting for him somewhere in the dark, not being allowed to glint and glisten in the sunlight, drew a groan of frustration from him. He’d follow through with his plans—arm himself, pack a saddle horse, and trail the woman and Farraday. They’d been gone long enough, anyway, for them to think they’d really escaped from him.
Clewt smiled and began to hum, not even aware he was doing so, mumbling out the ragged fragments of something his grandmother used to sing to him. If he’d been aware of what he was doing he might well have paused in his work, drifted back to a more pleasant time, back before that first dragon flapped into his life, belching smoke and flame and blood.
But he didn’t give it much thought. To him the sounds he made were random, tuneless snatches, noises to make while he prepped his horses for what he knew would be his final ride on this long search.
Much of this quest had not gone the way he’d dreamed about it, from his dark, rat-crawly cell in Mexico. But then again, when in life did everything go according to plan? Not often, he was willing to wager. And all in all, considering the payoff in gold he was soon to find, it could all have gone so much worse.
“At least Alton had had the foresight to marry. Elsewise, I’d have killed him and would have had nobody to lead me to the treasure. Or whatever is left of it.”
That had been the one flaw in his plan. He had no way of knowing just how much of the treasure that back-stabber had spent over the years. Alton finished strapping onto a second horse a pack saddle with ample collapsed canvas panniers—they would hold a mighty amount. Then Clewt paused, brow furrowed once more.
Ralph Compton Double-Cross Ranch Page 20