by Ralph Cotton
“I suppose so.” The young man gave a shrug. He didn’t know.
Bobby Vane took a battered tin whiskey flask from his pocket, opened it, sipped from it, and passed it to the young man. Looking back at the dead in the street and the raging fire, Vane let out a long breath. “Let me ask you, Chris Denver the Third. If we sent your pa a letter telling him he’d better send us fifty thousand dollars, else we’d kill you…think he’d send it to us?”
The young man gave him a strange look. “Who do you mean when you say us?”
“Us,” said Vane, “you know, you and me?” He grinned slyly. “Think he’d pay up?”
“I don’t know, why?” said young Denver, considering it.
Vane looked him up and down. Seeming to have decided for himself, he said, “Never mind, I was just thinking out loud.”
“I suppose if Father thought I was in immediate danger, he might consider such a transaction.”
“Yeah, right.” Vane nodded and took his flask back from the young man. “Do us both a favor, Denver. From now on when you’re around me, just don’t say anything.”
Standing in the darkness of a boardwalk overhang, the colonel took a step forward and looked up the long dirt street. Holding a bloody bandanna to his shoulder wound, he said to the men gathered nearby behind what cover they could find, “Men, I’m counting on you. I’m bleeding, and I want this matter ended. There’s an additional five hundred to whoever kills Burrack.” He looked off along the street, not knowing how many of his men were still alive, taking cover in the darkness.
Listening from atop a roof two buildings away, Sam peeped down back and forth from one end of town to the other. The main street below lay awash in dim flickering firelight. From the rooftops the ranger still had an advantage, but he knew it couldn’t last, especially with the colonel upping the ante five hundred dollars.
In a crouch, the ranger walked along the roofline quietly, keeping close to the facade, hoping to get into a better firing position. But before he’d made it halfway across the roof, Jack Strap and the Romanian stood up on a rooftop across the street and began firing.
“There he is, up there, Colonel!” Vane shouted, standing and firing, having caught a glimpse of the ranger as Sam returned fire. Hearing Vane, Sam turned to run for cover now that his whereabouts were known. But as he ran down the slanted roof to the rear of the building, he felt the boards beneath his feet grow weaker with each step.
By the time he’d reached the center of the wide roof, the boards began cracking and breaking apart. Before he could do anything to stop himself, he felt himself fall helplessly amid a cloud of splinters, broken boards, and tarpaper. As he clawed the air instinctively for something to hold on to, his rifle flew from his hands.
When he landed amid a pile of broken shipping crates, he did not lose consciousness, but the breath had been knocked out of him and he lay stunned for a moment, hearing the sound of boots running along the boardwalk toward the building. Then he heard those same boots kick the door in and come running toward him. He tried to draw his Colt, but before he could he felt Bobby Vane’s boot clamp down on his gun hand.
“No, you don’t, Ranger,” Vane said, his gun pointed down at the ranger’s face. “I got you fair and square. You just made me fifteen hundred dollars.” He cocked the hammer of his big Smith & Wesson revolver and started to pull the trigger.
But from the doorway the colonel called out, “Hold it, Bobby! I want to see his face when you send him straight to hell.” He walked forward, holding his bandanna to his wounded shoulder, Pale Lee limping along beside him. Behind them Roundhead Mitchell hurried in, his pistol-grip shotgun in hand, the engraved ivory-handled Colt in his belt.
Stepping in and nudging Vane aside, the colonel looked down at the ranger and held his wounded shoulder forward for Sam to see. “Look at it, you son of a bitch, this is what you did to me! This alone is reason enough to kill you.”
The ranger didn’t answer; he lay still, trying to collect himself, get his breath back, and look for a way to make a stand for himself. His rifle lay a few feet away, atop a pile of rooftop debris, covered with dirt and splinters, but ready to fire if he could only get his hand on it and cock the hammer.
Colonel Elgin straightened and said bitterly, “Before you die, tell me something, Ranger. Are you any better than my men and I? We hanged your prisoners without a trial. But you took vengeance for us hanging them when you had no proof we did it?”
“No, I’m no better than you, Elgin,” Sam managed to say, regaining his breath, feeling his strength coming back. “But the railroads gave you power and put you above the law. The bigger you get the further outside the law somebody will have to go to stop you. I figured I ought to give it a try.”
“Yes,” said the colonel, with a smug grin of satisfaction, “and just look where it got you.”
“I didn’t make it,” Sam said, “but I’m hoping I brought attention to it.”
From outside, Jack Strap and the Romanian ran in through the open doorway, out of breath, having climbed down from the roof across the street. “Let us through, we want to see this,” Strap demanded as they maneuvered their way through the few remaining men, up alongside Pale Lee and the colonel.
The colonel gave a dark chuckle at what the ranger had said. “Do you think anybody is going to give a damn that I hanged those two rogues without benefit of a trial?”
“Probably not,” Sam replied. He resisted the urge to look at the rifle again, yet tried to judge how quickly he could grab it, given the opportunity. “But I couldn’t turn it loose just because they were nobodies. That’s not how I lived…it’s not how I’ll die.”
“Well spoken, Ranger,” the colonel said with sarcasm. He turned to Bobby Vane and Pale Lee and said, “It will be daylight before long. Take him out in the street. We’ll kill him in the dirt where he belongs.”
Sam knew if he ever made a move for the rifle, it had to be now before the two gunmen reached down to lift him to his feet. But before he could make a move, he looked through the crowd and saw a bloody figure appear in the open doorway. Gale…? Before he’d even fully recognized the sheriff, he saw the raised gun buck in his bloody hand and heard the blast rattle the windows on the building.
“Colonel!” Pale Lee shouted in disbelief as the colonel’s blood and brain matter splattered all over the men, the wall, the debris, and the ranger. Even as the impact of the shot hurled the colonel’s body past him, Sam scrambled sidelong in the rubble from the falling roof and grabbed his rifle.
Rolling into a firing position, the ranger swung the rifle first toward Roundhead Mitchell just as the detective turned his sawed-off shotgun toward the sheriff. Sam’s first shot hit Roundhead in his side, causing his shotgun to jerk toward the large window when it went off. A wide spray of glass and buckshot killed one of the men who had come running when he’d seen the sheriff stagger from the alley across the street.
Hearing the ranger’s rifle shot, Pale Lee swung his gun away from Sheriff Gale, but only in time to have Sam’s second shot hammer him in his stomach, picking him up and flinging him backward as he jackknifed at the waist. His gun fell from his hands as he grabbed his belly. Levering a round quickly, the ranger turned his rifle toward Strap and the Romanian as they both fired at him, their shots missing by only inches.
Amid their fire, Sam’s next shot hammered Strap backward as a shot from the Romanian sliced across the ranger’s forearm. The ranger’s next shot silenced Blesko, sending him sliding backward in the rubble on the floor.
The wounded sheriff wobbled unsteadily in the open doorway. Sam swung his rifle toward Bobby Vane just as the sheriff and Vane traded shots. Vane’s shot hit Gale in the side. The sheriff’s big Starr bucked again and sent Bobby Vane spinning on his way to the floor with a gaping bullet hole in his forehead. Chris Denver the Third ran across the debris-littered floor, leaped through the window frame, and ran away into the darkness. Two other new men ran out through the rear door without fir
ing a shot.
Sam scrambled to his feet, ran to the sheriff, and pulled him inside and down onto the floor. Then he ran back to the open doorway in time to see a gunman from across the street sliding to a halt. The man dropped his rifle and raised his hands chest high, seeing the ranger’s rifle pointed at him. “Don’t shoot! I’m done, Ranger! You win!”
“Tell anybody else out there that the colonel is dead,” Sam called out as the man backed away into the darkness. “Tell them to go home. There’s no money on my head now.”
“I’ll tell them, Ranger,” the man said. “It’s all over. We don’t want no more.”
Sam listened to the sound of a bucket brigade forming out on the dirt street as he kneeled on the floor, cradling Sheriff Gale in his arm. The telegraph clerk had ventured up to the open doorway, looked all around inside, and said, “My goodness. I better go get some help.”
Sam had only nodded. He loosened the bandanna from around his neck and wiped the sheriff’s bloody face. He pulled the front of Gale’s shirt open for a look at the chest wound. He felt a little relieved not seeing any foamy blood. “Looks like it missed your lungs, Sheriff,” he said quietly.
Gale gave a faint ironic smile and said in a weak voice, “My…ain’t I…the lucky one?”
Sam didn’t answer. Instead he said, “I wasn’t expecting you back. You most likely saved my life, Sheriff.”
“I had to…come back, Ranger,” he said in a halting voice. “I felt bad…leaving you the way I did.”
“How’s the woman?” Sam asked.
“She’s gone, Ranger,” he said. “I thought I…saw her leave in a buggy…Memphis Beck’s horse behind it…but I’m not sure.”
“The telegraph clerk went to get help,” Sam said, seeing by the look in his eyes that yes, he was sure. “You lie still until it gets here.”
“I’m sorry…I left you when I did, Ranger,” he said, already drifting out of consciousness.
“It’s all right,” Sam said. “You showed up at the right time. That’s the main thing.” He held the sheriff for a moment with his head bowed, weariness starting to catch up to him.
He looked up moments later when he heard footsteps crossing the boardwalk from the street. He saw the telegraph clerk walk away from the open doorway. Behind the young clerk, Emma Vertrees stepped inside and stopped. “Look who I found riding into town,” the clerk said.
She only gave the ranger a passing glance before looking down at the sheriff, asleep, his head resting in the crook of Sam’s arm. “Is he…?” Her words trailed.
“He’s alive,” Sam said. He watched her walk over slowly, then stop and look down at the two lawmen. “He said he saw you leaving town.” Sam’s eyes searched hers. He wouldn’t ask why, but he wanted to know.
“Yes, I—” She started to give him a story, but she couldn’t come up with any she thought he’d believe. “I was leaving, Ranger,” she said, “but I changed my mind.” Speaking over her shoulder to the clerk as she dropped her shawl and unbuttoned her dress sleeves, she said, “I need some bandages and some water. Please hurry.”
No sooner had the clerk left than Sam leaned sideways a little, enough to see the big dun standing at the hitch rail out front. He recognized it at once in the flickering firelight. “That’s Warren Beck’s horse,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” Emma said flatly. “He gave it to me.” She stooped down and pulled the sheriff’s shirt open carefully, examining the wound. “Memphis Beck and I were once friends—” She caught herself and shook her head. “No, we were much more than friends, Ranger.” She cut Sam a guarded glance. “I was leaving here with him when Vince saw me.”
“Oh?” Sam just listened. Whatever she said was up to her.
“But we got out there, and I thought about who I am, where I am, where I’ve been the past few years.” She paused, then said, “Anyway, I decided I couldn’t leave here. I suppose I’ve been too long in Little Aces.”
Sam watched how skillfully she attended to the wounded sheriff. “Vince is a good man, Ranger,” she said.
Sam watched and listened, wondering if she was trying to convince herself that his being a good man was enough.
“We were young, Memphis Beck and I, when we were together,” she offered softly, her fingers touching injured flesh gently, as if she understood it. “Time changes everything, especially a persons perspective.” She sighed. “So, Memphis and I said good-bye, and he rode off to meet some of his friends, go off on his next adventure…and here I am. Right back in Little Aces. But I’ll say one thing—I sure managed to snap out of mourning. Does this all sound crazy and strange to you?”
“No,” said Sam, “I understand.”
“Do you, Ranger?” she asked. “Do you really?”
“Yes, I believe I do,” he said. “Memphis Beck belongs to a world you stepped out of. You miss it, the way a person always misses the past. You wanted to step back into it, but you know now that the past is best seen in memories.”
She looked at him a bit surprised. “So you do understand?” Sam noted the tears well up in her eyes, her fingers busily at work with the bandages. “I have to tell Vincent everything…just like I had to tell Dillard before we married and took up our lives together.” She touched the shoulder of her dress to her eyes and kept on working. “Do you suppose he’ll understand?”
“Why not?” said Sam. “I did.”
She looked up at him, then looked off through the front door into the dark night away from Little Aces toward the trail she’d ridden back in on. “Yes, why not?” she said. She looked at Sam with a wry smile. “After all, you’re both lawmen.” She shook her head. “And you lawmen are all alike.”
Sam nodded and returned her smile. “I suppose that’s true.” He looked out through the open door, across the street where Curtis Clay stopped at a hitch rail and stood with his face toward the waning fire. A few inches in front of him, Little Dog limped to a halt and sat down in the dirt. “Maybe we’re all the same in lots of ways, men and women alike,” Sam said quietly. “We all need to prove to ourselves that we’re alive now and then.”
He watched her nod in agreement and go back to cleaning the sheriff’s wound. Gale let out a soft moan, as if he recognized her gentle touch and somehow knew he would be all right now.
I expect you are the lucky one at that…, Sam thought, looking down at the sheriff’s sleeping face.