by Paul Lederer
‘He’ll make it, I think. But I don’t want him over there alone. Will you watch him for me, Ike?’
‘What if they come back?’ he asked, his wide forehead furrowing.
‘Why would they? There’s no reason for it. I just want someone there with Cal.’
‘I don’t know if … I’ve got things to tend to, Lang.’
I reached into my pocket. ‘Ten dollars cash.’
‘Maybe I could get one of my boys to do it,’ Ike said, shifting the small gold coin from my palm into his pocket.
I was saddled and on my way out of town in minutes. The last color was gone from the sky, and out on the desert it would be black as a grave. There was no chance at all of finding the escaping men’s tracks, and with the earlier rain, there would be no dust, not even a scent of it in the air to follow.
It made no difference. I would find them somehow.
I rode on into the heart of the vast, empty land. They should never have gunned the kid down.
SEVEN
After midnight the stars hung brilliantly clustered in the desert sky. The stray light they cast silvered the woody twigs of brush and illuminated scattered patches of drift sand so that they shone like mercury, but the desert trail remained dark and desolate, long-running and aimless.
I had thought first of the Hatchet Ranch when I trailed out after the gang, but they had passed Reg Kent’s place by and headed out onto open desert in the direction of far-distant Socorro. Perhaps the outlaws knew of watering-holes hidden away in the folded hills out there, of tiny isolated pueblos where they could water their horses or trade them for new mounts. I did not. I was riding in the dark, mentally as well as physically, with the only light that from the angry fire burning within.
I thought now that Reg Kent had not broken his two men out of jail, but then just because they were riding away from his ranch did not mean he was not behind it. He wouldn’t have wanted the responsibility laid at his doorstep.
Probably, I considered, the lid had come off in Montero now that the word had gotten around that I was gone and the town once again was lawless. I felt only vague responsibility for that. As I had told the citizens of Montero the day Les Holloway had been gunned down, they shared the blame for the state of the town. They had allowed the festering to continue, turning the other way unless the lawlessness directly affected their own prosperity.
The sorrel heard something. Or sensed it. I had been advancing at a walk to save its energy. Now I let it come to a halt. I watched as its ears twitched and it turned its head eastward. Could it have heard a distant horse nicker? Possibly there was an animal scent in the air too faint for my own senses. On a hunch I started the sorrel forward, letting it have its head.
I did expect to come up on the outlaws sooner or later. Once they had put distance between themselves and the town, they would draw up weary horses and rest. They would have to. For one thing, Cheyenne Baker was in no condition to ride fast and hard. I, however, would not rest. They should have known me that well, but they did not.
For now, crowded together against a featureless sandstone ridge I saw the figures of at least three horses. I halted the sorrel again, watching, studying the night The faintest of breezes had risen, drifting light sand past at knee-level, carrying the pungent scent of creosote with it.
I heard a voice on the wind. Rather, a whisper. My mouth was tightened in a taut, grim smile. I shifted the shotgun I held across my saddlebow and walked my pony nearer, circling toward the low rise where the outlaws had sheltered.
I could still make out only three horses – one of them shifted its feet impatiently as I watched. They were still saddled, ready for a quick remount, and the horses didn’t like it. Where were the others? There should have been six or seven riders. I considered that a few of the men might have participated only in the raid and then intended to slip back into town, the picture of innocence. It could also be that they were in the head-high brush beside the trail, just waiting for an easy shot at me.
I drew back the double hammers of the shotgun and continued forward.
I still saw only three horses. Three men. Which three? Maybe Cheyenne, wounded as he was, had needed to stop. Then, would Indio have remained behind with him? Likely. No matter – I would find out soon enough who was waiting for me in the night.
‘Look out!’ The voice seemed as loud as rolling thunder and one of the three men ahead of me leaped to his feet, opening up with a wildly aimed barrage of fire from his six-gun. Bending low across the withers, I heeled the sorrel hard, let it take a dozen long strides and cut loose with the scattergun.
Someone howled in agony and a second gunman went to the ground, firing up at me awkwardly as I reached the camp and touched off the second shotgun barrel. As it recoiled with a heavy jolt against my shoulder, I was already dragging my Colt out of leather, letting the shotgun fall where it may.
From his prone position, the outlaw with the rifle could not elevate the barrel of his weapon for a good shot. I winged two bullets from my .44 in his direction, not knowing if I struck him or not, but by then my sorrel was on top of him, and I rode him down, hearing the sickening sound of bone cracking. Ahead of me a third man was backed up against the sandstone bluff and I switched my sights to him.
‘For God’s sake, Lang,’ he screamed, flinging his hands into the air, ‘hold your fire! I surrender!’
I slowed and then halted my nervous, side-stepping horse, keeping my sights trained on the bandit who had given up.
‘Where are the others?’ I demanded.
‘Gone. I swear it, Lang!’
By the glimmer of starlight I could now make out his face. It was Frank Short. So he had not gone to Santa Fe, but only told Ike Kimball that to cover his intentions. I swung down and marched deliberately toward Short. I glanced at the other two men. Neither was going to rise. Short was trembling. He had thrown his gun away.
‘Who are they?’ I demanded, nodding toward the dead men.
‘The one you got with the shotgun was Brad Wilkie,’ Short told me, mentioning a petty thief and gambler I knew vaguely. ‘The other,’ he said unhappily, ‘that’s Indio you rode down, Lang. You killed Indio dead.’
‘If my deputy dies, you’ll be dead as well, Short. I’ll personally see that you’re hanged for it.’
‘I didn’t shoot him! It was—’
‘I don’t care who did it! You’ll all hang if he dies. Turn around, Frank.’
‘What are you going to do?’ His eyes were fearful white orbs in the starlight, his expression bleak as if he were already standing on the gallows.
‘Turn around,’ I repeated roughly. Then I checked him for a hideout gun and slipped his bowie knife from its sheath at the back of his belt, winging it away. I turned him around to face me and asked:
‘Where’s Cheyenne?’
‘He couldn’t make it, Lang. We left him in one of them old mine shacks up along Potrero.’
‘Dying?’
‘I don’t know … he couldn’t sit a saddle anymore.’
‘So you just left him? You’re a real friend, Frank. Where are the others?’
‘They’re townies. I talked them into helping me bust Indio and Cheyenne out. It wasn’t hard to find men. They were eager to volunteer, saying it would serve you right.’
‘Why’d you use townies? Couldn’t Reg Kent spare any more men?’ I asked.
‘Kent didn’t have a thing to do with it. I did it myself, Lang!’ Frank said with a flush of pride. ‘Planned it on my own.’
‘You need to learn to plan better,’ I said glancing at the dead men again. ‘Unsaddle two of those horses, slip their bits and let them go. The Apaches can always use a few more ponies. Then you are riding back with me. You can tell me on the way who else was in on the jail break, or you can wait until you’re locked up and I have the time to sweat it out of you.
‘With luck,’ I told him, glancing at the sky, ‘we’ll hit Montero by daybreak. Enjoy the free air tonight, Frank. You won
’t be seeing the sky again for a long time.’
There was a carpenter working on the front door of the jailhouse and about four men standing around supervising when I trailed up in front of the adobe building, a hint of red dawn still coloring the eastern sky, leading a somber Frank Short. Instead of gathering around to hear the gossip as you might expect, the onlookers backed away as I unloaded Short from his pony and steered him past the working man into the jail’s interior.
One of Ike Kimball’s sons – I couldn’t tell which; he had four all pretty much identical – sat behind my desk, a rifle laid across it. He glanced up, seemingly unsurprised.
‘How’s Cal doing?’ I asked reaching for the cell keys.
‘He’s better. Talked to me for a few minutes earlier.’ He was reaching for his hat. ‘I got to get back over to the stable, Marshal, if you can do without me for now.’
‘All right,’ I said across my shoulder as I unlocked the door to Frank Short’s accommodation. ‘Take my sorrel with you, it’s worn to the nub. Might as well take Short’s mount as well. Cool them down and grain them. Tell your father I’ll need to borrow a fresh horse – Cal’s bay will do. If he can spare you, or one of your brothers, bring the bay horse back over and watch the office again for awhile. The pay’s the same, tell him.’
The kid nodded and went on his way, jamming a greasy hat on his head. I untied Frank Short and nudged him into the cell. The barred iron door swung shut and latched itself with that sound of finality that seemed to always puncture a bad man’s bravado.
I looked in on Cal who was deep in sleep, not feverish. I hoped he would make it. It was my fault, after all, that he had been shot down. I mentally shrugged off the twinge of guilt and went to my desk, tossing the bandolier aside, and got down to business. I filled out most of a page on my yellow tablet covering Frank Short’s charges and tossed the one with Indio’s crimes into the waste basket.
Leaning back in my chair, hands behind my head, I stifled a yawn and let my eyelids slowly begin to drop. The rumble of a huge freight wagon stacked with new lumber moving past along the street brought me fully awake. The second one in two days. What were they doing with that much lumber? I walked to the door, eased past the carpenter and watched the massive wagon with its six-foot high wheels roll eastward.
Kimball’s son was already returning, though he was not leading Cal’s bay. I wondered at his eagerness, then remembered and reached for a ten-dollar gold piece. Ike would not pass up the opportunity to line his pockets.
It wasn’t the same son, I saw, as he drew nearer. No matter, for my purposes they were interchangeable. I asked the kid when he halted before me, ‘Who’s moving all that lumber?’
‘That?’ He looked toward their dust. ‘Why that’s a part of that Mr Alvin Meredith’s crew. We’ve been tending some of their horses.’
‘Who is he?’ I asked blankly.
‘The big railroad man,’ Kimball said, as if I were totally ignorant. It seemed that I was. What railroad? Who was Alvin Meredith?
‘What is he up to?’ I asked. I got an incredulous look in response.
‘You mean you don’t know…? You can ask him yourself, Marshal. That’s him there, going into the Coronet.’ He pointed out the tall man with the flowing black mustache entering the restaurant. Where had I seen him? Oh, yes, in the courthouse attending the judge’s ’emergency session’.
‘Keep your eyes open,’ I told the temporary deputy, giving him the ten-dollar gold piece. Then I stepped out onto the street and crossed to the Coronet. Something was going on. Something I should have been aware of long ago and intended to find out now.
Hostile eyes welcomed me as they had on my last visit. I paid no attention to the faces, except to glance over them to look for the townies Frank Short had implicated in the prison break. But these, I guessed, would have taken to their heels, fled town at the first word of my return reached them.
Hatless, trail dusty, I walked across the wooden floor, boot-heels clicking, and seated myself without being invited across the table from Alvin Meredith. The man wore a nicely cut gray suit. His dark hair was just beginning to thin with middle age. His hands were narrow and white, but did not look weak. The third finger on his right hand was decorated with an emerald ring. Meredith lifted his gray eyes with a shadow of surprise as I scooted the wooden chair toward the table.
‘Hello, Marshal Lang,’ he said, touching his long black mustache with thumb and forefinger.
‘You know who I am then.’
‘You’ve been pointed out to me. And I know you by reputation,’ he said easily. The waitress approached, but I waved her away. ‘What can I do for you, Lang?’
‘You can do what the important men in Montero won’t. You can tell me what in hell is going on. What, exactly are you up to, Mr Meredith?’
He didn’t like my manner, I could tell. I didn’t care much for it myself, but I had been shot at, run ragged and had my land stolen from me over the course of a few days. My disposition wasn’t the best.
Meredith narrowed his eyes a little and answered, ‘The railhead, of course. I was sure that Judge Plank and Mayor Patterson had informed you of the details.’
‘They haven’t even given me the general outline,’ I said, leaning my forearms on the table. ‘What railhead, Mr Meredith?’
‘The one we’re building right now!’ he said with mild disbelief. Did he think that I was pulling some sort of joke on him? He seemed genuinely astonished that I could not know what was happening in my own town.
I had a feeling, a knowledge really since it was the only thing that made any sense, of what he was going to reply to my next question, but I asked it anyway.
‘Where?’
‘Where is the construction?’ His eyes remained narrowed. ‘Along the easement. It’s adjacent to the property that I believe you once owned. On a strip of land Reg Kent sold the railroad. Called, I believe—’
‘The Panhandle,’ I provided. The missing 200 acres. Somehow Reg Kent had ended up holding that land when the deeds were juggled.
‘Yes, that’s it,’ Meredith agreed. ‘It’s the only suitable place along the easement for miles. Hard rock, a solid building foundation, unlike the sandy soil surrounding it.’ He reached into his pocket. ‘I have our new survey of the property with me. You might have seen our surveying crew out in the vicinity.’
I believed I had. The three strangers. I told him, ‘I don’t need to see the map, Meredith. I know my own property.’
His hand halted halfway out of his pocket. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said The Panhandle is my land, not Reg Kent’s. They wanted the railroad to come into Montero and they knew I wouldn’t sell out. Knowing me, they also knew that I couldn’t be moved off my land by force and so they concocted an elaborate scheme to steal it from me legally. To remove me they drew up a fake deed and gave the bulk of my property to a woman who is either a conspirator or plain gullible – I haven’t decided which yet.
‘That is, all of my land except for the two hundred or so acres fronting the easement, the only place along it where there is bedrock, a solid foundation for water tower, depot, warehouses, whatever you have planned to build. That, Kent somehow ended up with.’
Meredith’s puzzlement slowly changed to defensive belligerence. I could understand that; he had been sent to do a job, thought he had completed it satisfactorily and now had me pop up in his path.
‘Your suppositions are quite incredible, Lang,’ he said softly, but not without malice. ‘The mayor, Judge Plank, Reg Kent have all assured me that the railroad’s purchase is absolutely binding, legally unassailable. I admit that I am a newcomer here—’
‘That’s right!’ I said, so loudly that the heads of nearby diners turned our way. ‘You are a newcomer to Montero. It’s a rotten town, Meredith, filled with snakes and cunning, slinking predators.’
‘Let’s not descend to personalities,’ Meredith said in a controlled voice. ‘The facts are simple. Reg Kent had tit
le to the land. He sold it to us. Assuming you ever did have a claim to that land, you lost it when the new owner of the Rafter L acquired the ranch. Tell me where I’m wrong?’
I wanted to spit. The man was right as far as it went. He wasn’t finished.
‘As a representative of the law, it is your responsibility to uphold legal decisions, not to assail them on personal grounds,’ the railroad man said.
‘I was appointed marshal only to remove me from my property. Maybe they were planning to set me up to be gunned down in the streets of Montero. Maybe they really did want me to clean it up so that when the railroad big-shots toured the town it wouldn’t wear its violent face and scare them off. Either way they would win.’
‘If you don’t want this job … I can always speak to the mayor.’
‘You won’t have to do that,’ I told him. I unpinned the badge from my shirt and let it fall to the floor. ‘I’m done with this town. All of it. I’ll warn you, Meredith. Don’t try to build on my property. And don’t try to run me off: you don’t have enough people for the job.’
‘I think we might,’ Meredith said smoothly, the threat behind his words obvious. ‘This morning’s newspaper will be out soon, a banner headline will announce to the town that the railroad is going to come to Montero. Just how many townspeople do you think will allow one man to stand in the way of progress?’
‘I suppose we’ll find out,’ I said. I was at a loss for a better answer. I was holding deuces and the players across the table already had aces showing. I rose slowly, not angrily, but Meredith was a shrewd player and he knew that I was not ready to throw in my hand. I would run my bluff and see how the final cards played out.
I stepped on my badge as I rose, smiled and walked out past the vacant faces in the restaurant. I saddled the bay horse, the horse meant for Cal who might now never get the chance to ride it, turned its head eastward and rode from the town into the clean, open desert, shaking off the stink of Montero.
Matti and Virgil were both in front of the house when I reined up. Virgil noticed first that I was not riding the sorrel, Matti that no silver shield shone on my shirt.