Riding Shotgun

by William W. Johnstone

  “You got ten seconds to open this door, Red Ryan, or I’ll break it down,” Buttons said.

  “All right, all right, keep your shirt on,” Red said. “Hell, Buttons, you sure know how to plague a man.”

  He opened the door, and Buttons gave him a critical glance and said, “You look like the deadest dead man I’ve even seen.”

  “I know. You can hitch up the hearse anytime.”

  “Get dressed,” Buttons said. “Did you pay the girl?”

  “I don’t think so,” Red said. “I don’t have any money left.”

  Buttons took two silver dollars from his pocket, laid them on the table beside the bed, and then shook the girl awake. “For you, young lady, he said.

  The girl sat up, glared at the money, and said, “Is that all I get?”

  “I don’t know,” Buttons said. He nodded to Red, who was struggling into his pants. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Don’t ask me conundrums,” Red said. “My brain stopped working sometime around one o’clock this morning.”

  “You’re a damned skinflint,” the girl said. “I knew that the minute I set eyes on you.”

  Red pulled on his boots, wary of his still aching toe, placed his holed hat gingerly on his pounding head, and said, “Buttons, where’s the Greener?”

  “You don’t plan on doing yourself in with it, do you?”

  “No. I need it for the run.”

  “Well, it’s where it always is. With the stage. Now let’s go.”

  Buttons opened the door, Red stepped into the hallway and behind him the girl with the crooked teeth yelled, “Skinflint!”

  * * *

  Ma’s Kitchen, catering to the early breakfast crowd, was crowded, steamy, and hot and smelled of frying bacon and coffee. Red Ryan’s stomach lurched.

  “Over there, Red,” Buttons Muldoon said, leading the way to a corner table, where a prim-looking young woman sat drinking coffee, a nibbled donut on a plate in front of her. When the girl looked up, Buttons said, “Miss Rachel Tyler, this is Red Ryan, the best shotgun guard in Texas.”

  “Then I’m in safe hands,” the young woman said. Her pretty face concerned, she added, “You don’t look very well, Mr. Ryan. I do hope you’re not ill.”

  Red managed a smile. “My stomach is a little upset. I . . . ate some underdone beef last night.”

  “Ah, then that’s the culprit,” Rachel said.

  Buttons and Red sat and ordered coffee. “You plan on becoming a doctor, Miss Tyler?” Red said.

  “Yes, I do. An odd profession for a woman, to be sure, but I’ve dreamed about being a physician since I was a little girl. My father approves, more or less, but secretly I’m sure he’d prefer me to stay and help him around the ranch.” The woman smiled, “My father owns the Rafter-T, the biggest cattle ranch in these parts. He won’t admit it, but he’s quite rich.”

  Buttons said, “You were born on the ranch, Miss Tyler?”

  “Yes. My mother died giving birth to me. I don’t think my father’s ever gotten over it.”

  “I’m real sorry about that,” Buttons said.

  As Red spooned sugar into his coffee, feeling dreadful, he was suddenly attentive as the girl said, “A gentleman I spoke with earlier was very interested in buying my father’s ranch.” She smiled. “He said he was interested in acquiring property around El Paso.”

  Buttons took the words out of Red’s mouth. “What else did this gentleman say?”

  “Oh, he wanted to know where the ranch was, and how I was getting there. I told him by the Patterson stage, and he seemed very curious about that.”

  Ryan said, “Miss Tyler, what did this man look like?”

  “Look like? Why, I hardly noticed.”

  “Tr y and remember,” Red said.

  “Well, he was tall and well-built, and he wore a revolver. I will say that he did seem roughly dressed to be a property buyer, but then many rich men don’t care what they wear. At the ranch, my father entertained some of the wealthiest men in Texas, some of them worth millions, but they looked as poor as church mice. Appearances can be very deceptive.”

  “Yes, they can,” Red said. “Where is this man now, Miss Tyler? Is he here?”

  “No, he left rather abruptly, said he had some business to attend to.”

  Red and Buttons exchanged glances, each knowing what the other was thinking . . . rich man . . . pretty daughter . . . kidnap . . . ransom . . .

  Suddenly Red was sobering, his hangover only a hellish ninety percent of what it had been earlier. He still couldn’t face bacon and eggs or even a soda cracker.

  “Drink up,” Buttons said, pushing Red’s cup closer to him. “It’s time we took Miss Tyler to meet her pa.”

  Red finished his coffee, and he and Buttons paid their bill and escorted Rachel Tyler out of the restaurant. On the boardwalk outside, the girl stopped, stood on tiptoe, and whispered into Red’s ear, “Mr. Ryan, I’ve been around cowboys enough to know a rye whiskey hangover when I see one.” She smiled. “Underdone beef, indeed.”

  * * *

  The terrain between El Paso and the Franklin Mountains was a flat, high desert plateau covered in cactus, bunchgrass, and bright patches of yellow poppies. The sun rose higher in the bowl of the sky as Buttons Muldoon followed a wagon track across the sandy ground, the blue Franklins ahead of him, soaring seven thousand feet above the level.

  Red Ryan, his hangover rapidly dissipating thanks to the clean morning air and the nearness of danger, as palpable as a man sensing the presence of a threat in a darkened room, sat with his shotgun across his thighs, his eyes constantly scanning the land around him. The stage startled a small herd of mule deer and once he thought he saw the glint of metal or glass in the distance, but it was there, then gone, and it could have been anything, even the sun catching an empty bottle tossed away by a careless puncher. But it troubled Red and honed his awareness to razor sharpness.

  The team had given Buttons Muldoon trouble all morning, mainly because of the inexperienced wheeler he’d substituted for his own horse that had shown signs of lameness after it was wounded in the fight with the Apaches. Buttons had been quiet, concentrating on his driving, breaking his silence only now and then to curse at the green wheeler.

  Now, when he turned his head and talked to Red, his voice was flat, matter-of-fact, a man who had accepted the inevitable. “Dust ahead, coming in from the north.”

  “I see it,” Red said. “Road agents?”

  “What else?” Buttons said. “We’re carrying a valuable cargo.”

  “Maybe it’s punchers driving a herd,” Red said.

  “At a gallop?”

  “Should we turn around and make a run for it?”

  “The team is balky, Red. Those boys would catch up to us pretty fast.”

  Red groaned. “Well, a man with a hangover doesn’t need this.”

  “Neither does a man without a hangover,” Buttons said.

  “How many of them do you think?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. But I’d guess there’s enough.”

  There were four of them, rough-looking men blocking the trail, all of them with rifles at the ready.

  “Drive right through them, Buttons,” Red said.

  “I’d say them boys have done this afore,” Buttons said. “They’ll know all they have to do is shoot a leader and we’re stranded.”

  “All right then, maybe I can talk our way out of this,” Red said.

  “Maybe, but I doubt it,” Buttons said.

  * * *

  “You shut your damned yap and toss away the scattergun,” the black-bearded man said.

  Years later, when El Paso men discussed the Franklin Mountains holdup, the popular opinion was that whiskey fumes from the previous night clouded Red Ryan’s judgment and that’s why he yelled, “The hell with you!” and raised his shotgun. But all agreed that a single shot from a holdup man’s .44-40 Winchester sent Red tumbling, senseless, off the stage.

  He was unconscio
us when he hit the ground hard. The bullet had grazed his skull, but it had the same effect as a blow by a two-by-four upside the head, and although he regained consciousness quite quickly, he remained dizzy and disoriented.

  Buttons Muldoon didn’t like the odds and dropped the reins and raised his hands.

  “Behave yourself, driver, and no one else gets killed,” the bearded man said. “Is that clear?”

  “Clear as mother’s milk,” Buttons said.

  The bearded man turned his head. “Kyle, go fetch the girl. If she struggles, punch her hard and bring her to me unconscious.”

  The man named Kyle, a big, uncurried brute with shaggy black eyebrows, grinned and said, “Hell, I’ll give her more than that, Boone.”

  “No, you won’t,” Boone said. “I don’t want her hurt . . . at least until after we get the money.”

  Kyle swung out of the saddle and stepped to the door of the stage. “You, git the hell out of there, girlie,” he said.

  Those were the last words Kyle ever said, because a .40 caliber ball from a Remington derringer hit him smack between the eyes and wrote FINIS at the bottom of the last chapter of his life.

  The situation deteriorated fast after Kyle fell, and mistakes were made.

  The black-bearded man named Boone made the first one.

  He’d already badly underestimated Buttons Muldoon, by all appearances an affable, harmless gent. Buttons was affable all right, but he was far from harmless. Boone’s mistake was to get angry as a hornet and go after the girl in the stage, and Buttons cashed in on it. As Boone dismounted, Buttons drew and fired, a well-timed shot that hit the bearded man in the belly and dropped him beside his horse.

  Shocked at the violence of the past few seconds, the two other bandits hesitated . . . and hesitation kills men in gunfights. It was another fatal mistake.

  The shot fired by Rachel Tyler and what it implied for his passenger had helped Red Ryan overcome his dazed stupor. Staggering a little, blood streaming from the left side of his head, he grabbed his fallen shotgun and rounded the rear of the stage, just as Buttons gut-shot Boone out of the saddle.

  Red took in the situation at a glance and triggered a barrel at the man closer to him. The buckshot tore into the bandit’s right side and did terrible destruction. With a scream in extremis, the rider collapsed on his mount’s neck and then slid slowly to the ground. The surviving rider made the final mistake of the morning when he raised his arms and opened his mouth to yell his surrender. He never uttered the words because Rachel Tyler, mistaking the bandit’s gesture as aggression, fired at him. She missed, but her shot forced the man to give up the idea of quitting, and instead he threw his rifle to his shoulder and turned to fire on Red. Buttons shot him out of the saddle and shot him again when he attempted to stagger to his feet. The second bullet put the road agent down permanently . . . and silence once again fell on the land.

  Red Ryan’s first thought was for his passenger. He warily approached the stage window and then stopped. “Miss Tyler, it’s me, Red Ryan of the Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company.”

  “I know who you are, Mr. Ryan,” the girl said.

  Red stepped to the window, looked at Rachel and said, “You are not harmed?”

  “No. I’m just fine.”

  Red glanced at the dead man with the bullet between his eyes. “Good shooting,” he said.

  “A girl can’t grow up on a ranch without learning how to shoot,” Rachel said. “I’m sorry I had to kill the man, but he had evil intentions and gave me no choice.”

  “He needed killing,” Ryan said. “No doubt about that.” He admired the girl’s spunk. She had strength and fortitude, the attributes that would one day help her become a doctor in a profession dominated by men. Red saw Buttons walking among the other dead and said, “Recognize anybody?”

  Muldoon shook his head. “They’re all strangers to me. A rough-looking bunch.”

  “Mr. Ryan, I’m feeling a little faint. Can we proceed?” Rachel said.

  “Of course,” Red said.

  “My father will make sure these men are buried decently,” Rachel said.

  “In the end, I guess that’s all an outlaw can hope for,” Red said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Holt Tyler was a big, brown-haired man with wide shoulders and the lean, sun-bronzed face of the high-desert rider. If there was weakness in the man, Red Ryan couldn’t see it. Tyler was tough, and judging by the much-used Colt on his hip, he would be sudden and dangerous when the occasion demanded. But the lines around his blue eyes hinted at remembered laughter, and when he looked at his daughter there was a tenderness in his expression that he reserved for her and her alone. He told Rachel she looked more like her dead mother with every passing year, had inherited all her sweet little mannerisms and that his heart swelled with joy and pride when he beheld her.

  But toward Red Ryan and Buttons Muldoon he was much less sentimental.

  “Why the hell did you two scoundrels put my daughter’s life in such mortal danger?” he said.

  Tyler spoke as a hard-bitten rancher who’d hanged a baker’s dozen rustlers over the years and whose fast Colt had put seven others in the grave.

  Red Ryan did not underestimate him.

  “Mr. Tyler, we had a feeling that something might happen on the trail, but we weren’t real sure,” he said.

  “So you took chances with my daughter’s life?” Tyler said. “Is that it?”

  At that moment, the sooty muzzles of Red’s shotgun looked friendlier than the rancher’s eyes.

  Red said, “Mr. Tyler, it is the policy of the Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company that the safety of our passengers must be a priority. If we were responsible for a lapse in this policy, then I apologize.”

  “Lapse!” Tyler’s face turned thunderous. “You call almost getting my daughter killed a lapse? Why, you—”

  “Father, taking the stage was my idea,” Rachel said. “I knew the Apaches were out and that we could possibly be waylaid by outlaws, but I insisted on leaving El Paso right away. Mr. Ryan and Mr. Muldoon saved my life, and poor Mr. Ryan was wounded by a desperado’s bullet.” The girl frowned. “I think both these gentlemen are to be praised for their gallantry, not ill-used in this way.”

  Tyler visibly grew calmer. “Was that the way of it, Rachel?”

  “Yes, Father, that was the way of it.”

  “Then it seems that I owe you boys an apology,” Tyler said. “Mr. Ryan, where were you wounded? Oh, wait, I see it now. The side of your head is bloody.”

  “It’s just a graze,” Red said. “I’ve got a hard head.”

  “Nonetheless it should be seen to.”

  Tyler stepped to a ranch house window, opened it, and called out to a passing puncher, “Deke, ask Leosanni to come to the house and tell her to bring her medical kit.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” the puncher yelled.

  Holt Tyler closed the window and then said to Red, “I apologize for my temper, Mr. Ryan. Sometimes it gets the better of me. One time when I was angry I hung a couple of boys just like you and Mr. Muldoon. I’ve always regretted that . . . lapse.”

  Red and Buttons exchanged glances, and then Rachel said, “I should warn you that Leosanni is an Apache. But please don’t be alarmed, she won’t harm you.”

  Red nodded. “Thank you, Miss Tyler. That’s a relief to know,” he said.

  * * *

  Leosanni was a plump Chiricahua woman with a kind face and gentle hands. His hangover now a memory, Red Ryan drank a glass of Holt Tyler’s excellent bourbon as she bathed his wound, swabbed it with something that stung, and then bandaged his head so he looked like an Apache himself.

  The rancher insisted that Red and Buttons stay for lunch, and after they’d eaten, he said, “If you boys are ready, I suggest we go take a look at the dead men and see if I recognize any of them. The county sheriff, when we get one, might want names.”

  Red and Buttons allowed that they were ready and thanke
d Tyler for feeding and watering the team. Before they left, Rachel kissed them both on the cheek and said that she might see them in El Paso before they left for Fort Concho.

  “Real nice gal, that Miss Tyler,” Buttons said as he and Red climbed into the box. “She’ll make one hell of a doctor.”

  “She’ll make one hell of a whatever she wants to be,” Red said.

  * * *

  “This man is shot right between the eyes,” Holt Tyler said. “Your handiwork, Mr. Ryan?”

  “No, your daughter’s,” Red said.

  Tyler beamed and nodded. “That’s my clever little gal,” he said.

  After scanning the bodies, the rancher said, “Well, I only recognize one of them. The man with the black beard is Boone Whelan. In the past he’s done some rustling and train robbing and probably a killing or two. For a while he was a lawman up in the New Mexico Territory, got into a couple of shooting scrapes and then came back to Texas. He ran with the Roper brothers for a year or so, and then they had a falling-out of some kind, and Boone went his own way.”

  Red’s ears pricked up at the Roper mention, and he said. “Would one of those brothers be Seth Roper?”

  “Sure would,” Tyler said. “Let me see . . . yeah . . . Seth is the oldest and then there’s Barney, Eldon, and Jake. I suspect that in the past they lifted some of my cattle, but I could never catch them at it.”

  “Seth Roper is in El Paso,” Red said.

  “Is that a fact? Well, I’ve heard that from time to time he poses as a cattle buyer,” Tyler said.

  “He’s posing as a financial adviser to a rich widow woman,” Red said.

  The rancher shook his head and grinned. “Well, don’t that beat all, the worst thief in West Texas telling a widow woman how to spend her money. I got to hand it to him, he’s got gall.”

  Buttons Muldoon said, “Seems that right now would be a good time to hang him, Mr. Tyler. For old time’s sake.”

  The big man laughed. “When it comes to Roper and that breed sometimes I’m willing to let bygones be bygones if they aren’t troubling me none, and now Rachel is home for a while I hanker for the peaceful life.”

  Tyler turned and called out to half a dozen punchers who were standing around a wagon, “Break out the shovels, boys. We’ve got some burying to do.”