by Ralph Cotton
“That I did,” said Dawson. “I just gave all of you a warning; now let’s see if you’re smart enough to listen to it.” He heeled Stony forward slowly. Max Furry jiggled the reins to the team of wagon horses, sending them forward as well.
Feeling his face redden in embarrassment, Lematte stood watching in silence, seeing Dawson and the wagon turn in a wide loop and head toward the street alongside the livery barn. Stepping up beside Lematte, seeing the anger and humiliation on his face, Karl Nolly said, “Let it go, Sheriff. He’ll take the dead and leave.”
Lematte snapped his head around, facing Nolly with rage in his eyes. “Did I ask you for any of your half-assed opinions, Nolly?”
“No, Sheriff,” Nolly said, backing off. “You sure didn’t.”
“Then kindly keep your stupid mouth shut!” Lematte hissed at him. “I know how to handle this gunslinger!” He looked all around wildly, then asked, “Where the hell is Ash?”
“Still shaving,” Nolly said bluntly.
With the bodies of Gains Bouchard and the others in the buckboard, Max Furry reined the wagon back out onto the street, following Dawson until he stopped Stony out front of the Silver Seven Saloon. Across the street, Lematte still stood watching, Nolly standing back behind him, and most of the deputies gathered in front of the boardwalk. “What’s he doing now?” Lematte asked no one in particular.
“Maybe he wants a couple of drinks before he leaves town,” said Nolly, working at keeping the bitterness out of his voice.
“He’s going to that whore!” said Lematte. “Can you believe this? Brazen as all get-out!” He looked toward the hotel again. “What the hell is keeping Ash?”
“Maybe he needed to trim his toenails too,” said Nolly.
But as they looked, Mad Albert Ash stepped out of the door of the hotel and stood for a moment, smiling, taking in a long, deep breath of morning air.
“It’s about damn time,” said Lematte.
“What is it you want Mad Albert to do, Sheriff?” Nolly asked, taking a chance on getting yelled at again.
“Lematte didn’t answer again, as if having to think it over first. Finally he said, “I want to see Dawson show me some respect.”
“Good luck,” said Nolly.
“What’s that suppose to mean?” Lematte asked.
“It means, Dawson has no respect for you, Sheriff. He’s got no respect for you, me, or any of us. So what? To hell with him. Let’s put him out of our mind and go on with business.”
“You’re starting to show me a side of you I don’t like, Nolly,” said Lematte. “You’re acting just a little too weak to suit me.”
“Sheriff, I’m just trying to go on with business, not let this man get under my skin. This ain’t worth all the—”
Nolly tried to continue, but Lematte cut in, saying, “Come on, let’s see if meeting Albert Ash face-to-face will take some starch out of Dawson’s attitude.”
Leaving the Furry boys in the wagon with their shotguns ready, Dawson went inside the Silver Seven Saloon and walked straight across the floor to the stairs. “Hey, you can’t go up there!” the bartender called out, seeing him start walking up the stairs. But Dawson only gave him a sidelong look without slowing his pace. The bartender shrugged, saying to himself, “So, what the hell?” Then he went back to polishing shot glasses with a clean white bar towel.
Dawson didn’t have to knock. Suzzette had seen him through the window as he rode into town. Her ribs and stomach were bruised and sore. Her face was swollen and blue, with a bandage over the cut left by the pistol barrel. But she had hurried as fast as she could and gotten herself and Angel Andrews dressed. She met Dawson at the door, ducking her face slightly, although unable to conceal her injuries from him.
“What the—” Dawson was taken aback by the sight of her. Dawson looked at her, then past her to where Angel Andrews sat on the side of the bed, dressed and wearing a thin traveling duster. At her feet sat their luggage. “Who did this?” Dawson demanded. But he really didn’t have to ask.
“Let’s just go, Cray,” Suzzette said, her voice sounding shaky. “All I want is to get out of this town and forget I was ever here.”
Dawson asked, “What about your baby, Suzzette? Is everything all right?”
She had a guarded expression as she replied, “Yes, I’m all right…or I will be, as soon as I get away from here.”
Dawson looked at Angel Andrews, seeing her bruises, seeing that she seemed to be addled and unaware of what was going on around her. “What about her? Is she all right?”
“She’s coming too,” said Suzzette. “Is that all right? I can’t leave her here. Next time he might kill her.”
Dawson felt himself hesitate, but only for a second. Then he said, “Sure, she’s coming too.” He stepped over and picked up the luggage. Turning, he said to Suzzette, “I wasn’t able to find you a place. You’re going to stay with us, Carmelita and me that is.”
“Have you talked this over with her?” Suzzette asked.
“Yes, we talked about it on the way here,” said Dawson. “It’s all right with Carmelita, you staying with us. She even helped me fix up my old family house for you, but some of Lematte’s men burnt it down.”
“Is that who the two bodies were?” Suzzette asked. “I saw you ride in with two bodies in the wagon. Is that the two men who burned it? Did you kill them?”
“Yes, that’s them,” said Dawson, “but it’s a long story how they died.” He looked Angel Andrews up and down, then said to Suzzette, “Can you help her along? We need to get out of here before Lematte or his men do something else crazy.”
Chapter 20
Coming through the doors of the Silver Seven Saloon, Dawson stopped and found himself standing almost nose to nose with Mad Albert Ash. “Well, well, look who’s here,” Ash said, wearing an almost friendly grin. “How come every time I see you you’re on some kind of tight spot, Dalton?”
Dawson saw Lematte and the rest of the men in the street behind Ash. In the buckboard the Furry brothers had stood up back to back, their shotguns pointed and ready. With both hands full of luggage, Dawson kept calm and said to Ash in a flat manner, “Who said I’m on a tight spot?” He set the luggage down and straightened up, showing no fear.
On the street Lematte whispered sidelong to Karl Nolly, “See how arrogant he is? That’s what I can’t stand about him!”
“What the hell is he supposed to do?” Nolly whispered in response. “Between him and those shotguns, he’s got no reason to crawl.”
Realizing that Dawson wasn’t going to back an inch, Ash chuckled and turned toward Lematte, saying, “It looks like Dalton here is leaving, taking all your whores with him! Whatever shall we do now for entertainment?”
“Those two whores aren’t going anywhere!” said Lematte, stepping forward boldly. They still owe me for transportation and expenses, bringing them here!”
“It’s a free country, Lematte. They can come and go as they please,” said Dawson. “Figure up what they still owe you. If it’s a reasonable amount I’ll pay you back. You’re holding my marker on it.”
“Your marker is no good with me, Dawson,” said Lematte.
“Then you best consider the debt paid, Lematte,” Dawson replied. “You’ve already killed one of them. I’m not leaving these two here to be beaten and misused by a tub-of-guts coward like you.”
“Coward?” Lematte bristled, his hand coming close to reaching for his Colt. But he saw that Dawson’s temper had started to flare, and he eased down, not liking the look Dawson suddenly had in his eyes. Mad Albert Ash and the rest of the men in the street saw that look as well. The men took a short step away from Lematte. But Mad Albert didn’t let it affect him.
“Whoa, Dalton!” he said, still being playful, but taking Dawson more seriously. “You’ve been a good friend to me, saving my life and all. But damn, son! Calling a man a coward? A tub of guts? I can’t let you stand here and offend my employer that way! How does that make me look?”
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“I have no concern how it makes you look, Ash,” said Dawson, straight and bluntly. “Step out of my way; they’re leaving with me.”
Something flickered in Ash’s eyes. His hand almost snapped to his gun butt. But then he caught himself, stopped, and said to Lematte, “What say you, Sheriff? Should I kill him? Yea or nay?”
Dawson’s cold stare moved from Ash to the Furry brothers and their shotguns, then to Lematte. Without Dawson saying a word, Lematte got the message loud and clear from the cold determination in Dawson’s eyes. No matter how quickly Ash killed Dawson, Lematte could see himself lying dead before Dawson hit the ground. “Let them go,” Lematte said meekly, sounding defeated.
“What was that, Sheriff, I didn’t hear you. Speak up!” Ash said sidelong, teasing Lematte as he also stared steadily into Dawson’s eyes.
“I said, let them go,” Lematte repeated, feeling more humiliated, the eyes of all his men upon him.
Another short silence passed before, “Whooie!” said Ash, speaking so suddenly that Lematte and his men were taken aback by him. “Now that’s what I call a tense moment of self-revelation!”
Letting out a short breath, Ash grinned and half turned toward Lematte, leaving Dawson and the women room to get past him without appearing to have stepped aside or backed down. He watched Dawson and the women walk across the boardwalk and step down into the street. Lematte’s men moved slowly aside, unsure of what they should do. Seeing the look of uncertainty on the faces of all the men, Ash called out as if in amazement, “Dalton, I declare, you seem to have won the day!”
Dawson didn’t answer him as he helped the women up onto the wooden seat of the buckboard. Suzzette took the reins to the team of horses. The Furry brothers still stood rigid in the wagon bed, the canvas-covered bodies at their feet. Dawson took Stony’s reins and stepped up into the saddle. He tightened his hat down onto his head and said to Lematte, “Don’t send your men out spying on me, Lematte.” He paused for a second as if to let it sink in. Then he said, “I’ll be coming to Somos Santos on occasion for supplies and such. Advise your men to leave me be, or I’ll hold you responsible.” Then he gave Suzzette a nod and she slapped the reins to the team of wagon horses and rode the rig forward on the dirt street. Dawson rode beside it, keeping Stony cantering quarterwise for a few yards before turning his back on Lematte.
“There goes my whores,” said Lematte flatly. Mad Albert chuckled under his breath, looking at the sour expression on Lematte’s face.
“Why didn’t you stop him, Ash?” Nolly asked, stepping up beside Lematte. “You’re the gunman here!”
“Indeed I am the gunman here,” Ash replied, still grinning, staring at Nolly with his hand resting on his pistol butt. “I make it a point to always follow my employer’s orders.”
“He’s right, Nolly,” said Lematte, sounding deflated. “I should have told him to stop Dawson…I didn’t.”
“There now, you see?” Ash said to Karl Nolly. “The sheriff should have asked, but he didn’t.” He turned and looked out at the wagon as it rolled onward, growing smaller and smaller. “And so Mister Dawson departs from us driving a wagon loaded with dead men and whores. How poetic.” Ash seemed to ponder things for a moment, then added, “But don’t worry, Sheriff, I’ll still kill him for you when the time comes. Next time be more sure of yourself.” Ash turned and grinned to himself as he walked away along the boardwalk.
“And that time will come,” Lematte said quietly, “I’ll see to it.” He waved the waiting deputies away. “All of you back to your jobs!” The men walked away slowly, some of them shaking their heads.
Beside Lematte, Nolly said, “Sheriff, this is a good place to stop everything.”
“Oh, yeah,” Lematte growled. “What about the money it cost bringing those whores here?”
“There’s plenty more whores where they come from,” said Nolly. “We’ve got a good thing going here; let’s not let it fall apart on us.”
“You mean the way I let it fall apart in Hide City?” said Lematte, taking offense.
“Sheriff, I don’t know anything about Hide City except what I’ve heard from you and from folks who were there. Alls I know is sometimes a man can be so careful about not making the same mistake twice, that he makes it over and over.”
Lematte stared at him with a disgusted look. “That makes less sense than anything I’ve ever heard in my life.” He turned and walked away, leaving Nolly alone on the boardwalk.
When Dawson and the buckboard arrived back at the spot where the Double D cowhands awaited them, Max Furry stood up and wiped an exaggerating hand across his forehead and grinned, letting the men know what a tense situation it had been. Dawson stepped down from his saddle and into Carmelita’s arms. “Are you all right?” she asked him, the two embracing for a moment while Suzzette and Angel Andrews looked on.
“Yes, I’m all right,” Dawson whispered to her. Turning to the wagon, he introduced Carmelita to the women as the Double D men gathered respectfully, hats in hand, around the bodies on the buckboard.
Dawson and the three women waited quietly until the men stepped back and turned to their horses. Shaney spoke for the men, saying, “Dawson, Lematte and his men have to pay for this. We’d be both honored and obliged if you’d join us.”
“First things first, said Dawson, nodding at the bodies as Eldon Furry flipped the corner of the canvas back over the blue, dead faces. “Let’s get on out to the ranch.”
The first few hundred yards Carmelita rode double on Stony, sitting across Dawson’s lap. “Are they really going to ride into Somos Santos and take their vengeance?” she asked in a secretive tone.
“Yes,” said Dawson, “I expect they will.”
“And Lematte and his men…how dangerous are they?” she asked, searching Dawson’s eyes.
“They’re as ruthless and dangerous as any gang of armed killers, Carmelita,” Dawson replied. “There’s one man there that I hadn’t expected to see. He’ll be the big problem. I don’t think any of these Double D men are prepared for the kind of gunfight he’ll give them.”
“He is the man you will face,” Carmelita said with resolve, as if she already knew without asking.
“Yes, that’s how it will play out,” said Dawson with equal resolve.
“There was no way you could reach an understanding with the sheriff?” Camelita asked, hoping against hope.
“I told him to keep his men and himself away from me, but he won’t,” said Dawson. “It was all like talking to the wind. I just did it so I could say I tried.”
“If we left this place…if we moved somewhere far away, perhaps to my country,” Carmelita said, “you would not have to ever cross this man’s path.”
“Maybe,” said Dawson, “but I’ve done all I can do short of running. And I won’t do that.”
“I know,” said Carmelita, “and I understand. Still I tell myself in my heart that I must try to stop you. It is what a woman must do for someone she cares strongly for.” She allowed herself a slight smile at her choice of words.
Dawson returned her smile. “I’ve played it over in my mind too many times to count,” he said. “But the fact is, sooner or later Lematte or his men will make a move on me. If I wait, all I’ll be doing is giving him the first strike…something you never want to give a rattlesnake.”
They rode on in silence for a moment, Carmelita with her head against his chest. Finally, as if having run the matter through her mind one last time and finding a way to accept it, she sighed and nodded at the two women in the wagon. “Did he do this to them because of you?” she asked. “Because he knew about you and her?”
“That’s probably the biggest part of it,” said Dawson. “But when a man does something like that to a woman, there’s always more than one reason why he did it. The simple answer is that Lematte is a man who has to crush what he can’t control. He has to overpower what scares him.”
“And you scare him,” Carmelita said with finality.
> “Yes, for some reason only he knows about, I scare him something awful,” Dawson said.
Carmelita nodded as if having everything in perspective for herself. “Let me go ride with the women,” she said. “It will make it easier for all of us to stay together if we can all three talk.”
Without commenting on it, Dawson veered the horse over, alongside the wagon, and motioned for Suzzette to stop the team horses while Carmelita climbed down from his lap and got up beside her and Angel Andrews on the wagon seat. Dawson sat still atop Stony and watched the wagon roll forward. Beside him Shaney slowed his horse as he rode past and, nodding toward the three women, said jokingly, “Your luck with the fairer sex has changed a lot since the last time I saw you, Crayton.”
Dawson nodded, realizing that Shaney had no idea about him and Rosa Shaw, and what losing her had cost him. “Yep, I’m one lucky fellow,” he said, in ironic reflection.
For reasons he could not have explained, Dawson saw himself more clearly than he had for a long time. He stared forward at the soles of the dead men’s boots as their bodies rocked and swayed with each turn of the wagon’s wheels, moving forward under no power of their own, at the mercy and the whim of a cold dark world.
A reckoning was on its way, he told himself, a gunfight that never should have come about. A gunfight that could have easily been avoided had someone only offered the right word or made the right move, or possessed the right presence of mind to stop it. But now it was too late for words, actions, or deeds. The fight was coming and all he could do was try to come out of it alive. It was as simple as that.
“Take up, Stony,” he said quietly to the horse, giving only a slight touch of his boots. He spent the rest of the ride back to the hacienda planning what he knew he would have to do when that time came.
Chapter 21
The following morning Cray Dawson took Carmelita, Suzzette, and Angel Andrews to the Double D in the buckboard to attend a service for Gains Bouchard and the men who had fallen at his side. With no minister to lead the service, the Double D men stood with their hats against their chests while Shaney read a few lines from a large leather-bound Bible Gains Bouchard kept on a nightstand beside his bed. The imprint of Bouchard’s long-barreled Colt showed clearly on the front on the Bible, from years of Bouchard laying the gun there night after night.