Riding Shotgun

by William W. Johnstone

  “It’s dark,” Red said. “I didn’t even see the damned rock. I think it’s broke. I’m sure my big toe is broke.”

  “Well, no matter, you’ll have run on it. We need to get out of here,” Buttons said.

  Then Ma Buck’s voice, echoing into the darkness like the hoarse cawing of an enraged crow, “Get them! Kill them!”

  More shots shattered into the night, one so close that it almost trimmed Red’s mustache. “The hell with this,” he said. He pulled his Colt from the holster and dusted off five shots in the direction of the dim glow of the Buck firelight. Then to Buttons, “That will keep them honest for a spell.”

  “Go, go, go!” Buttons said. “Follow me.”

  Red followed, hobbling on his tormented left foot, his every step accompanied by a painful, “Ow!” Ow! Ow!”

  Buttons made his way through the gloom that was once again getting punctured by shots, and then, grazing in a patch of moonlight was a ground-tied horse, one of the big, strong wheelers from the stage stripped of its harness except for a bridle. With surprising alacrity, Buttons jumped on the horse and pulled Red up behind him. “Ow!” Red said. Buttons kicked the horse into a flat-out run, and he and Red were pursued by a few parting shots from the outraged Bucks . . . but they fired blindly into the darkness and came nowhere close.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Stomping through the thin light of dawn, Lucian Carter was riled up, and Red Ryan was the target of his anger.

  “Damn it, Ryan, get this show on the road,” he said. “We’ve wasted enough time already because of your foolishness.”

  Red ignored the man, looked at Buttons Muldoon, and said, “I got my boot on, but I don’t know if I can get it back off.” And then, shaking his head, “A busted toe is a considerable misery.”

  Buttons nodded, glaring at Carter. “And if that wasn’t enough, Red, now you got a pain in the ass to contend with.”

  “Yeah, very funny,” Carter said, his eyes tight and mean. He wore his guns butts forward under his armpits. “I want to reach Fort Bliss this side of Christmas, so you two do something about it.”

  Red sighed and said, “You ladies please get in the stage. I’m sorry you’ll have to forgo breakfast, but the Mountain Meadows stop is just five hours ahead of us, and they serve lunch.” Red smiled. “There’s no mountain and no meadows but you’ll meet some personable folks there, and Stan Evans is a good cook.”

  “More rancid salt pork and beans, you mean,” Carter said.

  Red smiled, determined to be a model Patterson & Son employee. “It’s the specialty of the house,” he said.

  Seth Roper tied his mount to the back of the stage and then took his position on top. He looked down at Red. “What happened to your hoss?”

  “Those Bucks I was telling y’all about took it,” Red said.

  “Seems to me that you and Muldoon should’ve killed them all and took it back,” Roper said.

  “We were a tad outgunned, you know, and then I broke my toe.”

  “A busted toe is a sorry excuse for letting a bunch of raggedy-assed rubes steal your horse,” Roper said.

  Red held his temper in check. “I’m sure you would have done better, Roper.”

  “Damn right I would,” the man said. He studied the sky to the north. “Looks like a big storm is headed our way.”

  “Sooner or later, I’d say,” Red said.

  Roper smiled and nodded, knowing exactly what the other man meant.

  * * *

  The thunderstorm hit when the stage was still an hour out from the Mountain Meadows station. Red Ryan and Buttons Muldoon donned their slickers and Seth Roper was allowed to sit inside at no cost.

  Yelling above a howling wind, Buttons called down to the passengers, “Hold on, folks. We’re in for a bumpy ride!”

  He gave the horses their heads and the stage careened through the roaring day under a turbulent sky that was as black as midnight.

  Thunder bellowed, and lightning scrawled across the sky like the signature of a demented god as the stage rolled into the station. Stan Evans and his four gangly sons were there to greet Muldoon and his tired, battered passengers.

  The team was quickly unhitched from the stage and led to the barn, and the hungry travelers quickly herded into the warmth and shelter of the cabin.

  About twenty-five yards distant, built on a shallow rise, stood a slender wooden structure about three stories high, a platform on top fortified on all four sides with sod walls topped by timber boards nailed to posts. Spaces had been left between the boards for riflemen to shoot from cover under the Confederate-banner flying proudly from a tall flagpole. Evans called his tower The Citadel and claimed it had never been taken by Apaches, Comanches, or by outlaws either.

  Red Ryan thought the structure vulnerable to fire, but he’d never told Evans that, and he secretly harbored a doubt that the Citadel had ever beaten off an attack by determined Indians of any tribe or outlaws of any stripe. Seth Evans would tell folks otherwise, but he was prone to big windies, probably to set at ease the minds of nervous stage passengers.

  Thunder crashed and lightning shimmered in the murky interior of the cabin as Evans had the ladies stand around the stove to dry their damp clothes. Red noticed that Seth Roper stood very close to Stella Morgan, closer than propriety allowed, but before he had time to study on that, Evans called everyone to table.

  The food was surprisingly good, salt pork and beans as Ryan had predicted, but the staple stage station fare was accompanied by good sourdough bread, a crock of butter, and buttermilk to drink, courtesy of the cows that Evans kept in an enclosure near the barn, and there was a generous soda-cracker pie for dessert.

  After eating, Red Ryan excused himself and stood on the narrow porch outside the cabin, built himself a cigarette, and then stared at the teeming rain falling from a bruised sky. Hanging on the inside of a support post was a Patterson & Son stage schedule that covered mostly East Texas routes, but the Fort Concho to El Paso run wasn’t mentioned, and that indicated to Ryan where he and Buttons stood with the company . . . pretty damned low on the totem pole.

  Red lit a second cigarette and watched the rider come.

  The man wore a slicker and a wide-brimmed hat and rode a mouse-colored grulla horse. Oblivious of the downpour, the rider drew rein at the porch, studied Ryan from the toes of his boots to the crown of his derby and then said, “Howdy.”

  “Howdy right back at ya,” Red said. “Kinda wet, huh?”

  “Seems like,” the rider said. “I got to say that I don’t much cotton to lightning when I’m the tallest thing on the prairie.” He was a young, blue-eyed man but his great dragoon mustache made him look older, and that might have been its purpose.

  “Name’s Red Ryan. I ride shotgun for the Patterson stage.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Red. My name is Josh Gentry, make that Sergeant Gentry of the Frontier Battalion, Texas Rangers.”

  Red touched the brim of his hat. “A pleasure, I’m sure. Ran into Rangers a time or two.”

  “Uh-huh,” Gentry said, a comment that could have implied anything. Then, “Is Evans inside?”

  “He sure is. Supper’s over, but I’d guess that there’s plenty left.”

  “Send Evans out here,” Gentry said.

  Ryan summoned Evans to the porch and he and the Ranger exchanged greetings. “Come inside and set, Josh,” Evans said.

  “Don’t have the time to get comfortable,” Gentry said. “I have to pick up a prisoner in Niceville. Sack me up some grub, Stan, while I take care of my horse.”

  “There’s oats in the barn,” Evans said. “Cost you two bits a scoop, though.”

  “I’ll write you a Ranger scrip for the oats and the grub,” Gantry said.

  “I was afraid of that,” Evans said, his face falling.

  The Ranger waited until a crash of thunder rolled across the sky and then said, “Apaches are out, Stan.”

  “I know,” Evans said. “And I’m more than r
eady for them.”

  “Saw some of their handiwork south of here,” Gentry said. “It wasn’t pretty.”

  He swung his horse away and headed for the barn. On a hunch, Red Ryan stepped into the rain and followed him.

  Red waited until Gentry forked hay for the grulla and then scooped oats into a feed bucket. The Ranger said, “He ain’t much to look at, but this little horse will go from cain’t see to cain’t see without a complaint.”

  “Good hoss,” Ryan said. “What did you see south of here?”

  “What did I see? I saw dead people, or what was left of them.”

  “Four women and the same number of men?”

  “Sounds about right,” Gentry said. He found a piece of sacking and began to rub down the grulla.

  “That was Ma Buck and her brood,” Red said.

  “Is that a natural fact? Well, it’s good to have a name for my report,” Gentry said. “Seems that nowadays Rangers do more writing than riding.” He turned to Red. “Them Bucks kinfolk of yours?”

  “No.” Then, unwilling to speak ill of the dead, Red said, “I met them on my way here. Were they—”

  “The Apaches took their own sweet time with them,” Gentry said. “That answer the question you were about to ask?”

  “Yeah, I guess it does.”

  “There was a lot of anger there. I could tell from the state of the bodies. I’ve seen the results of Apache torture before, but it seemed to me that them hostiles were mad as hell about something.” Gentry managed a ghost of a smile. “If there’s a heaven, then those folks are in it. They sure spent their time in hell.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Worse than you can ever imagine, shotgun guard.” The Ranger’s blue eyes turned to ice. “Now let it go. Some things a man has seen are best forgotten and not talked about.”

  “I can’t find fault in that thinking,” Red said. Then, to firmly change the subject, “The town you mentioned, Niceville, I never heard of it.”

  “That’s because it isn’t a town. Well, maybe it’s part of a town,” Gentry said. “If you consider a hotel that doubles as a saloon and cathouse, a blacksmith forge, a general store, and a livery is a town, then it’s a town. If you don’t, then it’s just another robber’s roost frequented by outlaws and other frontier trash. Niceville’s only claim to fame is that one time Clay Allison stayed overnight at the hotel. Heard of him?”

  “Yeah, a fast draw out of Colfax County in the New Mexico Territory. Does some ranching but runs with a hard crowd.”

  “I don’t know how fast Allison is,” Gentry said. “But if I ever catch up with him I guess I’ll find out.”

  “What about your prisoner in Niceville,” Ryan said. “He a badman?”

  “Bad woman, according to the wire the army sent us. It was a cutting by a whore. Seems like a feller lost all claim to manhood while he was passed out drunk.”

  “That sets my teeth on edge,” Ryan said.

  “Mine too.” The Ranger saddled his horse, tightened the cinch, and said, “Well, it’s been good talking with you, Red.” He smiled as lightning flickered in the barn. “I guess before I go I should mention that the Rangers don’t hold the killing of Brazos Bob Benson against you.”

  Red was surprised. “How did you . . .”

  “It took me a while, but then I remembered your name,” Gentry said. “The shooting scrape was in Galveston, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, in front of the Orphans Home,” Ryan said. “Brazos Bob was not a reasonable man, and he drew down on me.”

  “He needed killing, or that’s what I heard.”

  “You heard right. At the time, I was working for C. Bain and Company as a guard on the San Antone to Fort Concho route. Benson held up my stage a day out from San Antone, wounded me, and killed one of my passengers. As soon as my wounds healed, I went after him and tracked him down to Galveston, and me and him had it out in the street. Brazos Bob was nasty and mean as all get-out, but he wasn’t as fast on the draw as he thought he was.”

  Gentry said, “Learned that the hard way, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, I read to him from the book that day.”

  “Well, like I said, Ryan, just so you know, there’s no hard feelings as far as the Rangers are concerned. Let bygones be bygones.” He led his horse out of the stall. “Now, will you give me the road?”

  Red stepped aside and said, “Good luck, Ranger.”

  “Yeah, you too, shotgun guard. Good luck.”

  * * *

  Stan Evans had no overnight accommodation available for stage passengers, so the ladies commandeered the cabin, and Buttons Muldoon and Lucian Carter, lugging his carpetbag, stretched out inside the stage. Red Ryan thought he’d try his luck in the barn. The thunder was gone but the rain persisted, a steady drizzle that soaked everything and turned the trampled ground in front of the cabin to mud.

  Buttons’s stentorian snoring punctuated the night quiet as Red walked in the direction of the barn. He stepped around an enormous sleeping hog and then passed a malodorous, pyramid-shaped dung pile. A frontier stage stop would never be mistaken for the Ritz. Then a sound halted Red in his tracks. Ahead of him he heard a woman moaning, a series of little, gasping groans, of pain or pleasure, he couldn’t tell. He pulled his Colt and walked forward on cat feet, his wary eyes probing the darkness. Then what he saw brought him to another halt and made him blink in surprise.

  Stella Morgan, her dress hiked up around the waist, her bodice unlaced, stood just inside the barn with her back to the wall. Seth Roper was jammed against her, moving, his mouth hungrily on hers. The woman kept up her steady chorus of moans and Roper, breathing heavily, grunted in tune.

  Red backed away. He’d seen enough to know this did not bode well . . . it spelled trouble with a capital T.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Red Ryan spent an uncomfortable night on Stan Evans’s porch under a leaky roof and in the company of an agitated packrat. The rain cleared shortly before breakfast that Stella Morgan attended, telling the concerned army wives that she’d spent the night in the barn. Seth Roper showed up a short time later, ate his bacon and beans, and went out again. He didn’t speak to anyone and studiously ignored Stella.

  Buttons Muldoon kept his strong, experienced wheelers but changed the rest of his team and then sought out Red. “We’re ready to hit the road,” he said. “The horses are rested.”

  Red finished his coffee and said, “We need to talk. Outside.”

  They stepped away from the cabin, and Red told Buttons what he’d seen in the barn.

  “And here I thought Carter was the only one sparkin’ Miss Stella,” Buttons said.

  “And I bet so does Carter.”

  “You mean Roper has taken his place?”

  “Seems like, don’t it?”

  Buttons shook his head. “Red, this kinda thing always leads to a shooting.”

  “Yeah, you’re right about that. So we got to make sure it doesn’t happen, not on this run. What Carter and Roper do in Fort Bliss is their business and no concern of Patterson and Son or its employees.”

  “I don’t like it, Red. I don’t like it one little bit,” Buttons said.

  “I don’t either. But in the meantime, we got to live with it.”

  Buttons’s homely face took on a puzzled expression. “Why do folks love to muddy up the water and make their lives so durned complicated? Take you and me, now. I drive a stage and you ride shotgun, an’ that’s it. Nothing knotty about us.”

  Red smiled. “We’re shining examples of simple men, Buttons.”

  “Damn right we are,” Buttons said. “Now round up the passengers and let’s be on our way. As far as I’m concerned, the sooner we reach Fort Bliss, the better.”

  * * *

  Rolling under a burning sun, the stage was two hours out from Evans Station when the Apaches emerged from a shimmering heat haze, thirty mounted warriors painted for battle, led by a young man on a beautiful paint pony.

  At first the
Mescalero and their Chiricahua allies were content to ride parallel to the stage, well outside of effective rifle range. Then ten warriors separated from the main band and galloped ahead of the stage before deploying to their left while keeping a distance of a hundred yards between themselves and Buttons’s cantering team.

  The Indians had seen Seth Roper on top with his rifle and Red Ryan up in the box, cradling his shotgun, but they didn’t know how many other guns were inside, and for the moment they were wary. Red figured that the Apaches must soon test the stage’s defenses. The younger warriors would make feints, all sound and fury, to draw fire while the older men counted the defending guns. Sizing up your enemy before a big fight was a tried-and-true strategy that had worked well for the Apache in the past.

  Red leaned over and called out, “Carter, you see them?”

  “See them? I can’t hardly take my eyes off them,” the man answered.

  “When the Apaches attack, get down and don’t shoot,” Red yelled. “They want to count guns, and I aim to surprise them. You’re my ace in the hole, Carter, understand?”

  “Yeah, I got it,” Carter said. “How will I know when it’s the real attack?”

  Red’s smile was grim. “Believe me, you’ll know,” he said.

  * * *

  Buttons Muldoon held the team to a fast trot. If he had to make a run for it, he didn’t want the horses exhausted, though he knew full well that the lumbering coach couldn’t outdistance the tough Apache ponies at any speed.

  “They’re coming!” Seth Roper called out from his perch on top. “Ryan, get ready!”

  “I’m ready,” Red yelled. And then to Buttons, grinning, “As I’ll ever be.”

  A dozen warriors detached themselves from the flanking group and charged at an angle, aiming to cut off the stage’s forward progress. Roper saw the danger, and his rifle roared three times as quickly as he could work the lever. The range was far, his targets moving fast, and he scored no hits. A few of the Apaches returned fire, shooting their Winchesters from the shoulder, but a galloping horse is not a steady gun platform, and their shots went wild.

  More confident with a scattergun than he was with a rifle, Red Ryan gripped his Greener tight and bided his time. He didn’t have to wait long. An Apache swung his mount and rode directly at the stage. When the warrior was close enough, Red saw the blue and yellow stripes across his nose and cheekbones that marked him as a former army scout. The Apache’s intention was to kill the guard, and at a distance of twenty-five yards, he fired. A miss. The bullet plowed into the sideboard at Ryan’s feet. Twenty yards . . . the buck cranked his rifle . . . fifteen yards . . . ten . . . the Mescalero and Red triggered at the same time. Two barrels of buckshot slammed into the Apache’s chest, causing fatal damage, as the warrior’s own shot went yards too high. The Apache’s horse shied away from the rocking stage, and its rider was thrown from its back, a dead man before he hit the ground.