by Ralph Cotton
“Get him!” Quinn shouted at Fellows and Longworth, realizing this might be his only chance to ever get even with the ranger for what had happened between them. But as Quinn’s gun came up, Fellows threw his hands in the air and hurried backward.
“Don’t shoot!” Fellows shouted.
Sam didn’t even get a chance to turn toward Quinn. As Quinn swung his gun up toward Sam, Longworth’s Colt streaked up from ten feet away and shot the corrupt sheriff square in his forehead. Quinn hit the ground beneath a red mist of blood. “He’s down,” Longworth called out to Sam, spinning his Colt down into his holster, letting Sam see that his hand was empty.
Sam took a breath of relief. Maria and the drovers stood looking stunned at Clayton Longworth. “I hope you’ve got yourself some paperwork, Chief,” Sam called out to him.
Longworth stepped forward. “I certainly do,” he said, reaching inside his lapel and coming out with a folded document. “It explains what I’m doing here . . . legally signed by the president of Midwest Detective Agency himself.”
As he walked over to the ranger and Maria with the folded paper in hand, Sam stepped over to where Davin Grissin lay dying in the dirt, a trickle of blood running down from the corner of his mouth. With a weak dark chuckle, Grissin said, “You . . . tricked me . . . Ranger.”
“I didn’t trick you, Grissin,” Sam said quietly. “I laid out two choices for you. If the money wasn’t stolen, an innocent man would have walked away. If the money was stolen, you knew you had to kill me.” As he spoke he took out the broken paper money band and let it fall from his fingertips.
“Sounds . . . like a trick . . . to me,” Grissin said in a struggling voice. He watched the four drovers move in and stand around him in a half circle. In an act of contrition he looked at the bloody money bag and said to Sam, “Give . . . these drovers what I . . . owe them.”
“We can’t take it,” Mackenzie cut in firmly.
“Why—why not?” Grissin asked, his eyes fading, his voice growing more and more shallow and blank.
“You still don’t get it, do you, Grissin?” the ranger said quietly.
Grissin only stared, unable to comprehend it.
“Tell him, trail boss,” Sam said to Mackenzie.
Mackenzie took off his hat out of respect for a dying man in spite of all the trouble that dying man had caused him and his pals. “We can’t take the money,” he said in a humble tone, “it’s not ours to take . . . it’s not yours to give.”
Grissin stared at the drovers in disbelief. “Damn . . . fool cowpokes . . . ,” he said. “No wonder . . . none of you are worth anything. . . .” His words became a whisper that trailed and died on his lips.
Mackenzie stooped down and closed Grissin’s eyes. Sam glanced at Clayton Longworth, then looked down at the letter Longworth had placed in his hand. He read through it and passed it back to Longworth. “I expect I’m not too surprised. I never figured you for riding with the likes of Davin Grissin and this bunch anyway.”
“I’m obliged to hear you say it, Ranger,” said Longworth. “I used you shooting me as a good way to get in with him. He thought I had some vendetta to settle with you. So my agency agreed that I should play up the idea of being a detective who was tired of always chasing the money, and ready to get out on the other side of the law and make myself some for a change.”
“You don’t look like a thief,” said Sam, appraising the young detective. “But then, neither did he.” He nodded down at Grissin.
“Thanks,” said Longworth. “It was working. But I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t played a bluff on him. He was as cool as they come—a hard man to pin anything on. When you came up with that part about the money bands, I saw a chance to nail him, and I jumped on it with you.”
“I’m glad to hear you’re still on this side of the law,” Sam replied.
“There’s only one side of the law for me,” said the detective. “I’m old-fashioned. I still believe a man is only what he holds himself to be.”
Sam nodded, liking what he heard. He looked over to where Chester Cannidy had worked himself up onto his feet and stood wobbling in place. In the distance, Antan Fellows rode away fast at the head of a long stream of dust. “Help me . . . please,” Cannidy pleaded, clutching his bloody chest with both hands. “I’m shot . . . I need some water. . . .”
Sam, Maria and Longworth watched the wounded drovers walk over to the wounded ranch foreman and sit him down carefully out of the sun against the front of the cabin.
“Let me look at that wound, Chester,” Brewer said, opening the wounded man’s shirt. To Harper he said, “Tadpole, go get a canteen and a bandanna. Give him some water . . . I’ll clean this bullet hole up some and see what it looks like.”
“Look at them,” Maria said softly. “They let their own wounds go, yet they help the man who led trouble to their door.”
“What can you say?” Sam replied.
“It looks like the good guys won,” Longworth commented, watching the drovers take care of Chester Cannidy.
“The good guys will always win if I can have my say in it,” Sam said. He dropped his gloved hand to the dog’s head as the big cur loped over and sat down beside him. The dog had quickly made his rounds, sniffed and examined and probed until he found the area to his satisfaction.
“Yeah, me too,” said Longworth.
The two lawmen watched Maria walk over to the drovers and bend down to help them attend to Cannidy. She took the canteen from Harper’s hands and lifted it to the wounded ranch foreman’s bloody lips.
“I owe you an apology for shooting you, Longworth,” Sam said between the two of them. “I saw no other way to go at the time.”
Longworth didn’t look at him. Instead he watched Maria closely for a moment. Finally he let out a breath and said, “I understand, Ranger. I would have done the same.”