by Ralph Cotton
Staggering, he walked back to the pantry and opened another bottle of wine, pulling the tall cork with his teeth and spitting it away. “Care for some more pan dulce, Mister Ellis,” he said aloud in a mock feminine voice. Then, tearing himself a large handful of the sweet bread, he lowered his voice to a manly tone and said, “Well, thank you…I don’t mind if I do.” He staggered back to the front room chewing a mouthful of sweet bread as he struck a match and lit one of the cigars.
Out front, seeing the match flare through the window caused Cray Dawson to turn to Carmelita and say, “I’d feel better if you’d stay back here until we get inside. They could have met up with some others. We don’t know how many might be in there.”
“I understand,” said Carmelita. “I will stay back here until it is safe to come in.”
Creeping up silently beside Dawson, Frenchy said, “I checked the barn; there’s only two horses there.”
“Good enough,” said Dawson. “Let’s get it down.” He raised a hand in the pale moonlight and waved the others forward, the circle of armed men moving as one, silent and fast.
Dawson leaped onto the porch and without a second of hesitancy kicked the front door open and charged inside, his Colt cocked and aimed. Behind him the Double D men spilled into the room and formed another circle, their pistols and rifles pointed at the shadowy figure and the glowing cigar in the center of the room. “Don’t move!” Dawson shouted.
“Don’t shoot!” came Cleveland Ellis’s startled reply.
A tense moment passed as Dawson moved sidelong to a lamp on a table. He picked it up and held it out to Max Furry, who lit it and lowered the globe into place, casting a bright circle of light.
“What the hell?” said Shaney. The rest of the men stared with stunned expressions at Cleveland Ellis, with the pantaloons around his neck, the large woman’s necklace sparkling on his hairy chest, and his eyes wide and red-rimmed from too much wine. “It’s Cleveland Ellis!” Shaney’s eyes went to the body on the floor at Ellis’s feet.
“And there’s Braden! Shot from behind!” Frenchy added, nodding at Braden’s body, with a gaping hole in his chest where Ellis’s bullet had exited.
“Drop the gun!” said Dawson, as surprised as the rest but not allowing himself to be distracted from the task at hand. The scent of women’s lilac cologne wafted heavily in the air. Empty wine bottles lay strewn across the floor, one of them broken, from when Braden fell dead on the floor.
Ellis let his pistol drop onto Moon Braden’s bloodstained belly. “You would never have gotten the drop on me if I hadn’t got drunk, Dawson,” Cleveland Ellis sneered, sticking the cigar into his mouth. Looking at the Double D boys, he said, “I wish I could have managed to kill a bunch of you poltroons before I went down.”
“String him up!” shouted Barney Woods.
“Wait!” Dawson said firmly to Woods. Turning back to Ellis he asked, “Did Lematte send you two after me?” He eyed the badge on Ellis’s chest as he stepped around, picked up the dropped pistol, and shoved it down into his belt.
“Yeah.” Ellis shrugged. “He sent us. I ain’t going to lie about it. Lematte sent us to kill you. We burned your house down.” He nodded down at Moon Braden’s body, then lied shamelessly, saying, “Burning the house was all his idea…I tried to stop him, begged him not to. Burning that house is what started the trouble between us. I told him we shouldn’t have done it. He wouldn’t listen.”
“String him up!” Barney Woods said again.
“Hold on,” said Dawson, stopping Woods from reaching out and grabbing Ellis. Woods stepped back, but he turned to Alvin Decker and said, “Get a rope. Soon as Dawson’s through talking to him, we’re stringing him up!” As he spoke he gave Ellis a cold stare. Ellis swallowed a knot in his throat, sobering quickly.
Carmelita stepped into the room from the porch. Upon seeing the pantaloons and necklace around Cleveland Ellis’s neck, she said angrily, “What are you doing with these things?”
“Yeah, Ellis,” said Barney Woods, “what are you doing wearing women’s jewelry and undergarments?”
Ellis looked sick, but he said defiantly, “I don’t have to explain myself to you, Woods!”
Carmelita stepped forward and tried to snatch the pantaloons from him, but Ellis jumped a step to the side. His eyes darted back and forth wildly. “Carmelita, get back from him!” Dawson shouted, seeing that Ellis was about to make a move. But before Carmelita could even respond, Ellis gave her a hard shove toward Dawson, then turned and bolted straight through the Double D men between him and the rear of the hacienda.
“Grab him!” shouted Woods. A shot went off from Eldon Furry’s rifle, but Ellis had shoved the barrel up away from him as he streaked past. “He’s making a break!” Woods barked.
Cleveland Ellis raced along a hallway and out the rear door, the Double D boys right behind him. But he managed to pull ahead of them and make it inside the barn. He gave the barn door a shove and dropped the long wooden bolt into place just as the men ran into it. “Adios! You sons-a-bitches!” he shrieked, hearing them pounding and shouldering the doors.
He knew it would only be seconds before some of the men ran around to the rear of the barn, so he rushed to the horses he and Braden had left standing near the rear door. Hearing boots pounding the wet ground around the side of the barn, he grabbed one of the horses’ reins, flung himself up into the saddle and nailed his spurs into the horse’s sides. As the horse bolted away he ducked low in his saddle, slapping the ends of the reins wildly, putting the horse into a full run. Reaching down with his right hand he jerked his rifle from his saddle boot and straightened up enough to turn and fire a shot back at his pursuers.
As the shot sounded, Dawson and the rest of the men heard a loud thunk in the darkness and felt a slight tremor in the ground beneath their feet. “What was that?” Alvin Decker asked, dumbfounded.
“Shhh, quiet!” Dawson said, listening closely to the night. A silent second passed, the only noise being the sound of Cleveland Ellis’s horse’s hoofs slowing to a halt thirty yards away.
“Is he turning, coming back?” asked Frenchy, in a whisper.
“I don’t think so,” Dawson said. He motioned everybody forward with his pistol barrel. They moved quietly and cautiously until they saw a dark lump lying on the moonlit ground beneath the low, out-reaching limb of the live oak tree.
“Lord have mercy,” Shaney said in a hushed tone. “He hooked that low branch!”
“Boy, I’ll say he did,” Frenchy whispered in reply. He had carried the lit lamp with him from the house. He held it out at arm’s length and winced at what the glow revealed.
“He’s broke his damned neck,” said Woods in disbelief.
“Boy, I’ll say he has,” said Frenchy.
Cleveland Ellis lay flat on his back, spread-eagled on the ground, his neck at an odd angle to his body. A trickle of blood ran down from one corner of his mouth. His eyes stared upward with a startled expression.
“He never knew what hit him,” said Alvin Decker. A few feet away Ellis’s horse came walking back slowly, looking down, then poking its muzzle against its downed rider.
“Saved us stretching his neck for him, far as I’m concerned,” said Woods.
“What do you want to do with these two, Crayton?” Shaney asked quietly.
“We didn’t kill them,” said Dawson. “Let’s get them on the buckboard. I’ll haul them to Lematte. They’re his men. Let him figure what he wants to do with them.”
Chapter 19
At daylight, on their way to the restaurant for breakfast, Sheriff Lematte asked Karl Nolly, “Where’s Ash?”
“He was just getting up when I left the hotel,” said Nolly. Then, in a critical tone, he said, “I reckon a big gunman needs more rest than us common folk.”
“Yep, I suppose that’s it all right,” said Lematte. He smiled to himself, liking the way Mad Albert Ash got under Karl Nolly’s skin. It kept Nolly on his toes, Lematte thought.
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nbsp; “Shouldn’t we be hearing something from Cleveland Ellis and Moon Braden?” Nolly asked.
“Most any time now, I expect,” said Lematte, seeing a buckboard and a single horseman top the horizon, headed toward town. He squinted slightly, studying both the rig and the rider for a moment. “Who’s this coming here?”
“It could be most anybody at this time of morning,” said Nolly. “Why? What’s your concern?”
“My concern is all that dust rising aways back behind them. As wet as the land is, it takes a lot of riders to raise this much dust.
“I see what you mean,” said Nolly, craning his neck slightly for a better look.
The two stepped up onto the boardwalk out front of the restaurant and stared out at the lone wagon in the early morning light. “To just be a rig and one rider they sure are leaving a lot hanging behind them,” said Lematte.
“Think I better get the deputies together?” Nolly asked, without taking his eyes off the buckboard.
“Yes, I think you better,” said Lematte, “as much craziness as there’s been going on lately.”
As Karl Nolly left and headed back toward the hotel, Hogo Metacino came walking over leisurely from the other side of the street staring out in the same direction, toward the buckboard, as he adjusted his silver-studded leather gauntlets on his wrists. “Who’s this coming here, Boss?” he asked Lematte.
“I don’t know, Hogo,” said Lematte, “but we’re going to find out.” He nodded at three horses standing at a hitch rail. “Take one of these hay-burners and ride out close enough to see who this is raising all the dust.”
“Whose horses are these?” Metacino asked, looking the animals up and down.
“I don’t give a damn,” said Lematte. “We’re borrowing one in our capacity as peace officers.”
“Sure thing then.” Metacino grinned. He unhitched one of the horses, stepped up into the saddle, and heeled the animal out toward the approaching wagon. Lematte watched him ride out fast, three hundred yards, then turn short of reaching the wagon and race back. As he watched Metacino return, Nolly came back from the hotel with a perplexed look on his face.
“Where’s Ash?” Lematte asked without facing him. He stared at Metacino as he spoke to Nolly.
“He’s shaving!” said Nolly. “Told me he’d be along when he’s done.”
“Did you tell him why I sent for him?” Lematte asked.
“I told him there was a wagon and a rider coming to town raising a lot of dust. He said to tell you that if he don’t get his shave first thing in the morning he’ll be cross and irritable all day long.”
Lematte gave Nolly a strange look.
Nolly shrugged. “I’m saying what he told me to tell you. If you ask me, he’s not—”
“I didn’t ask you, Nolly,” said Lematte cutting him off, seeing Metacino ride in hard and slide the horse to a halt in front of the boardwalk.
“Boss, it’s that gunman, Crayton Dawson, and a couple of other men,” Metacino said. “Looks like they’ve got the whole Double D crew riding a quarter of a mile behind them.” Metacino dropped down from the saddle and spun the horse’s reins around the hitch rail.
“Damn it,” said Lematte, “I figured it might be Dawson.
“Why do you suppose he has the Double D boys riding so far behind him?” Nolly asked.
Lematte pulled a fresh cigar from his lapel pocket. He bit the end off of it, blew it away, and adjusted the cigar in his mouth as he searched for a match. “It’s his way of showing he’s not coming here looking for trouble,” he said.
“Good,” said Nolly. “If he’s wanting to talk, maybe we can all get something settled between us without any bloodshed.”
“Ha!” said Lematte, “If you think he’s wanting to do that, you’re easily fooled. He’s got something up his sleeve. Keep your eyes open.”
“I always keep my eyes open,” said Nolly, looking at him curiously. “But I don’t think he’s got anything up his sleeve, Sheriff. If you want my opinion on the matter.”
Lematte ignored his comment and said to him and Metacino, “Both of you round up the men. I’ll see what Dawson has to say. Tell everybody to be prepared for anything he does. He’s full of surprises.”
As the two men turned and hurried away to gather the rest of the deputies, Metacino said to Nolly, “Is Lematte going loco because of this gunman?”
“It’s sure starting to look that way,” said Nolly. “He can’t seem to put things to rest between them. I don’t think Dawson wants anything but to be left alone. Lematte can’t seem to get a grip on how to do that!”
In the window of his hotel room overlooking the street, Mad Albert Ash stood back far enough to keep from being noticed as he looked out on the street below. Seeing the wagon roll into town with the two canvas covered bodies in its bed and Dawson riding alongside it, he smiled to himself and murmured quietly, “Dalton, You beat all these eyes have ever seen.” He wiped the remaining streaks of shaving soap from his cheeks and tossed the towel aside. “I’ll just let you and the good sheriff jaw things over while I get dressed.” His smile widened. “Nothing like a dramatic entrance I always say…”
On the boardwalk, Sheriff Lematte spread his coat open, making sure Dawson could clearly see his badge. A few townsmen began to gather cautiously, eyeing the covered bodies as soon as Dawson brought Stony to a halt out front of the restaurant. Beside him, Max Furry stopped the wagon. Lematte stood tall and silent and looked out at Dawson, then down at the wagon. He saw a shotgun in the hands of each of the Furry brothers. Dawson’s right hand rested on the big Colt on his hip.
“We’re not here looking for trouble with you, Sheriff,” Dawson said, seeing him eye the two shotguns. “We’re here to pick up the bodies of Gains Bouchard and his men…and drop these boys off to you.” As he spoke, Eldon Furry reached a gloved hand back and flipped a corner of the canvas, uncovering the blue-white faces of Cleveland Ellis and Moon Braden.
Seeing his deputies coming across the street from different directions, Lematte grew bold. “You killed them both!” he said, holding his hand poised near his gun butt as if it took all his effort to keep from grabbing his pistol. “I heard that you gave them some trouble, cost them their jobs at the Double D!”
The Furry brothers waited in silence, their thumbs across the shotgun hammers.
Dawson said calmly, “Yes, I had some words with them awhile back out at the Double D, but nothing came of it. I didn’t kill them.” He stared coldly in Lematte’s eyes. “I would have killed them though, had I came home and found them waiting to ambush me, the way they had planned.”
“Then what happened to them?” Lematte asked impatiently. Dawson turned slightly and nodded down, first at Cleveland Ellis then at Moon Braden. “This one blew his pardner’s brains out, then he hung chin on a tree limb trying to get away from me and the Double D boys.” He nodded toward the distant sheen of settling dust. “They’re out there waiting for us to bring back the bodies for burial.”
Lematte bit the inside of his lip, not seeing any sign of Mad Albert Ash, and not wanting to push a fight with Dawson and the Double D boys right then. Finally, as the deputies came gathering around in the street, half circling Dawson and the buckboard, staring down at the bodies, he said, “All right, Dawson. You’ll find Gains Bouchard and his gunmen’s bodies in the shed behind the livery barn.” He turned to his deputies and said, “Get Ellis and Braden out of there. Take them to the barbershop; get them looked after.”
“This is the third man of ours he’s killed!” said Hogo Metacino, “and we ain’t going to do nothing about it?”
“He says he didn’t kill these two!” Lematte snapped at the deputy. “Now unless you’d like to take over my job, get these bodies out of there!”
“You heard him, men,” said Karl Nolly, stepping forward, throwing off the large sheet of canvas.
The deputies stepped in, Hogo Metacino grumbling under his breath, and lifted the bodies from the wagon bed.
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sp; Dawson gave Lematte a questioning look, saying, “What’s he talking about, the third man of yours I’ve killed?”
“Dawson,” said Lematte, “I could arrest you right now for the murder of Jewel Higgs. But since I’m so busy and it would take all my time to prove you did it, I’m not going forward with any charges against you right now.” He looked out toward where the Double D cowhands were waiting for Dawson. “I believe in holding down trouble whenever I can. If you stay out of my town, away from my deputies, and keep your nose out of Somos Santos’s business, I’m going to overlook Higgs’s murder.”
“If you’re talking about one of the three men I caught spying on me awhile back, Lematte,” said Dawson, “he was alive and well when I let him go.” Dawson looked around among the deputies and said boldly, “If your deputies say I killed him, they’re lying through their teeth.”
Lematte said quickly, “The two deputies with him said somebody shot him with a rifle. You were the only person out there.”
“If I were you I’d be asking those deputies if they had anything against the man,” said Dawson. “Maybe they’re the ones who killed him. Next time I catch anybody sneaking around where they don’t belong, there won’t be any doubt who shot them. It’ll be me.”
“Those men were out there in their official capacity, Dawson, keeping an eye out for any undesirables headed toward town,” said Lematte.
“They had no business out there doing what they were doing, and you know it, Lematte,” said Dawson. “Send them again. Badge or no badge, I’m going to send them back to you facedown.”
“Careful, Dawson,” said Lematte. “You just made a threat on officers of the law.”