Drift! (A Larry & Stretch Book 1)

by Marshall Grover

  “We have to make Nash City by two-thirty tomorrow,” he pointed out.

  “I ain’t forgettin’ that,” nodded Stretch. “I’ll be back inside an hour or so. Meantime, this water won’t be enough for your horses. They’ll be mighty thirsty. You too. I figure it’s safe for you to go down to the bank an’ water ’em. Just don’t show yourselves any more’n you can help ... in case some o’ Sharkey’s mob’re still hangin’ ’round.”

  “Where do you think you’re going to cross?” queried Wilkes.

  “Right where Miss Lucille an’ me just drank,” decided Stretch. “Seems to me it’s only ’bout three feet deep there. If I make it okay, that’s where we’ll all be crossin’, when we move on. Be seein’ you, gents. Keep an eye on the little lady.”

  He mounted and rode back along the track he had taken with the girl. At the river, he walked his horse into the stream, noting that the water came up to his knees. Yes. This would be the place for a crossing ... after he had found out what became of Larry Valentine.

  Reaching the opposite bank, he followed it downriver, heading for the direction from whence had come that muffled, ominous sound. For forty-five minutes, he rode along the bank, keeping out of sight in the mesquite. Then he was at the gorge, staring upward at all that remained of the old landmark. At either side of the span, jagged hunks of railing still adhered. The center section of the structure was gone and, by now, the debris that had tumbled into the river had drifted far downstream.

  Stretch dismounted and, still staring upwards, rolled himself a cigarette and lit it.

  He was thinking about his partner now, and his long face wore a very grim expression. If Valentine had died in that blast, the life of every Sharkey rider would be forfeit. The stringy, irresponsible Texan would exact retribution from each and every one of them ... collectively or individually, they would pay for Valentine’s life.

  He began a search of the bank, his narrowed eyes seeking some clue to his friend’s disappearance. Soon he discovered the tracks, the marks left by Valentine, when he clambered out of the water. He followed the tracks for a moment, then came to the tree on which the missing man had left his mark. A pleased grin spread across his face. The hastily carved initials and pointing arrow told him all he needed to know. Valentine, by some unknown means, had survived and was headed downriver. For a moment or two, Stretch debated with himself, as to whether he should follow ... then decided against it Valentine wouldn’t want it that way. He knew where to find Stretch and the others. When he returned there, he would, no doubt, have valuable information for them. Meanwhile, Stretch had an obligation to help guard the girl.

  He remounted and rode back the way he had come.

  Six – Larry on the Prod

  On foot the going had been tough. Larry Valentine’s feet were sounding a bitter protest, telling him he had walked many long miles. But that was only the natural reaction of a man who had spent most of his life in the saddle. His keen, observant mind told him that he was still but a few miles from the gorge.

  He had found the secret hideout of the Sharkey gang. At this moment, he was stretched along the bough of a tall cottonwood, at the entrance of the narrow fissure in the rocky hillside. Straight ahead, he had a clear view of the crumbling ruin of the cabin where Gil Sharkey and his men were, even now, holding a council of war. Small wonder that the opening was so hard to find. The cottonwood grew at the mouth of the fissure, its foliage completely concealing it. From the rocks above, a lookout would have ample warning of the approach of an enemy.

  But no look-out was in position at this moment. Sharkey had called all his men into the cabin. In the small corral beside it, Valentine counted fourteen horses. He could account for those horses now. He had been pursued by ten riders. Two men had lain in wait at the bridge. The remaining two would be the men left here, to guard the hideout. Fourteen horses. A crooked grin spread across Valentine’s face and he made a mental promise to himself. He would not be making his return journey on foot!

  He was wondering at the delay, wondering as to just what was being decided, within the cabin. It had occurred to him to try sneaking closer, in the hope of eavesdropping, but he had ruled against it. Right now, he could afford to take no risk of encountering the gang. He must wait and learn what he could, then go back to Stretch and the others.

  Men were coming out of the cabin now. Valentine watched them mounting, his eyebrows raised in wonderment. Gil Sharkey and his men were wearing store clothes. Three of them had beaver hats rammed on their heads, the type favored by judges and carpetbaggers. The twelve who mounted and walked their horses to the opening bore little resemblance to the men who had pursued Valentine across the desert. He lay very still, his ears strained to catch some shred of conversation that would give him a clue to their next move.

  And now they were riding slowly through the opening, passing directly beneath his position. Gil Sharkey was in the lead, and still talking.

  “ … just spread ourselves around an’ wait,” Valentine heard him say. “If that blamed jury don’t git him released … that’s when we move in ...”

  The rest of it was mumbled and unintelligible; but another man’s comment came up distinctly to the hidden listener.

  “ ... all decked out in these town outfits. Gil sure uses his head … gonna pass us off as extra Pinkerton guards …”

  Valentine heard ... and understood. The Sharkey gang was taking no chances. Their supposed disposal of the vital witness was only the first step in their strategy. They meant to be on hand at the trial. If the absence of Lucille Furness failed to swing the odds in Curt Sharkey’s favor, his brother and eleven other killers, disguised as townsmen, would move in to attack. The trial could well result in a bloodbath!

  They had moved out of earshot now. The two men left behind were standing below the cottonwood, watching the departure of the other twelve. When the mounted group were almost out of sight, one of them turned back toward the cabin, calling to his companion to stay at the entrance.

  “You better keep your eyes open, like Gil said,” Valentine heard him say. “I’m goin’ back an’ open that bottle they brought us.”

  “Save some fer me,” growled the second man.

  “Won’t do you no good, friend,” thought Valentine. “You’ve had the last drink you’re gonna have ... for quite a spell!”

  He waited until the first man was inside the cabin. Below him, the other guard leaned against the cottonwood trunk, his eyes on the distant dust cloud left by the Nash City bound riders. Gently, Valentine eased his Colt from its holster and reversed it, clutching it by the muzzle. The guard came away from the tree, with the obvious intention of climbing to the top of the rocks. When his shoulders were directly beneath the bough, Valentine shifted his weight, dangled by his left hand for an instant, then dropped.

  He landed astride the man’s back, the impact of the fall hurling both of them to the hard ground. The guard got no chance at sounding the alarm. Valentine slugged him across the back of the skull with his pistol-butt, twice. The man gave a choking groan and lay still.

  The Texan threw a hasty glance toward the shack. No challenging shot rang out. He guessed that the other man was absorbed in the pleasing chore of opening the whisky bottle. Valentine seized his victim by the shirt collar and dragged him out of sight of the cabin. Working quickly, he removed the man’s cartridge belt and buckled it over his own, slinging the holster onto his left hip. Then he unbuckled the belt that supported the unconscious man’s pants and used it to secure his hands behind his back. A hasty expedient, he realized, but it would have to do.

  Hefting the stolen gun, he clambered to the top of the rocks. Seuff marks from the boot-heels and discarded cigarette butts told him that this was the regular lookout position. He gazed toward the cabin, now only fifty yards away. Silence. Okay, then. Time to separate the other outlaw from the bottle and bring him out into the open.

  He crouched down and yelled, knowing that his voice had no similarity to
that of the man he had downed. His time was running out. He had to count on the other man showing himself at once. A yell is a yell. The guard’s mind would not be on the possibility of an intruder.

  “Come on out here!” yelled Valentine.

  And the man came, blindly, like a lamb to the slaughter. He dashed out of the cabin with the bottle in one hand and his six-gun in the other, dashed toward the opening, babbling a stream of startled questions.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you, Luke?” he called. “Yellin’ an’ setting up all that racket ... you a’feared I’m gonna drink your share ...?”

  Valentine raised his head and shoulders ... and his gun-hand.

  “You gonna drop that gun?” he queried. “Or do we do this the hard way?”

  The guard chose the hard way. He crouched and swung his gun around to cover Valentine. The Texan threw himself to the right, as two slugs whined past his head, then triggered one shot at the other man. His bullet found its mark, hitting the outlaw between the eyes. An expression of stunned surprise was still fixed on the dead man’s face as the body lurched over backward and fell to the ground.

  Valentine climbed down from the rocks and hurried to the corral. Singling out a sorrel, he led it to the cabin door. Inside, he found two saddles stowed in a corner. Within a few minutes, he had saddled the sorrel and stuffed the saddlebags with canned food that had littered the cabin table. Mounted, he rode toward the entrance, pausing beside the dead man to take possession of another gunbelt and another gun.

  “Gonna need plenty guns an’ ammunition when we hit Nash,” he mused. “An’ it won’t do no harm to have some extra vittles.”

  As an afterthought, he separated the dead man’s fingers from their grasp on the bottle. It had spilled, but was still three-quarters full. He returned to the cabin, found the cap, screwed it on, and stowed the bottle in the saddlebag and rode on.

  He made the ride to the rendezvous in quick time; but it was close to four o’clock when he arrived there. They heard him crossing the river and, when he rode into the tiny canyon, three guns were trained, unerringly, on his heart. Stretch gave him a crooked grin, nodded, and shoved his right-hand gun back into its holster. The frowning detectives followed suit. Lucille simply stood where she was, her grave eyes on the disheveled Valentine. He nodded to her, climbed down from his horse, grinned at Stretch, and said, “Howdy.”

  “Howdy,” returned Stretch. “You okay, runt?”

  “Toilworn,” Valentine told him, “but still kickin’.”

  “Figured you was,” grunted the lean man. “I cut your sign, downriver a piece. You been huntin’ or somethin’?”

  “Kind of,” nodded Valentine. He produced the cans and bottle from the saddlebag and added, “We got time to eat, before we move on, folks ... an’ it’s okay to light a fire. The Sharkey gang is headed for Nash City.”

  “Are you going to tell us what happened?” growled Shannon, “before Wilkes and I burst a blood-vessel apiece?”

  “I don’t aim to keep it a secret,” grinned Valentine. “But we might just as well eat, while I’m talkin’.” He looked at Lucille and said, “Howdy, ma’am. You all right?”

  “I’m fine,” replied the girl. She wasn’t smiling. Her steady gaze was taking in every detail of his battered appearance. “Mr. Emerson told us about the bridge,” she murmured. “Were you ... I mean ... did you ...?”

  “I was there when they blasted it,” he assured her. “Guess I got no right bein’ alive, but I am ... an’ that’s what counts.”

  “Yes,” agreed Lucille Furness, fervently. “That’s what counts.”

  The meal was a scratch affair. They kindled a fire and heated the canned beans, and the whisky bottle was passed among the four men. Keeping his account to the barest details, Valentine reported his movements, from the chase across the sands to the shooting at the outlaws’ hideout. Stretch listened to him placidly, his long face calm. To him, the chase, the dynamiting of the bridge, the trailing of the outlaws and the fight at the cabin were routine matters. His partner had done all the normal things and was now back by his side. Everything was fine ...”No call to git het up.”

  Lucille listened with her eyes glowing, her rapt attention on the laconic Valentine. She was a genteel woman, well educated and fastidious. On her standards, Larry Valentine was an uncouth, ruffianly cowhand with a disarming grin and a ready gun-hand. She knew the breed well ... and reflected that she had the best protection any woman could wish for. The Pinkerton men were doing their duty, stolidly, humorlessly, but with courage and fortitude. The Texans would play their part, too, hanging on to the bitter end, uneducated and cheerfully contemptuous of all authority. In the parlor of her aunt’s home, at Coyote Creek, they would be ill at ease, fumbling and out of place; but in moments of peril, they would be on familiar ground, their callused trigger-fingers deadly efficient, the roar of their guns a murderous challenge to every danger that threatened her.

  Shannon and Wilkes listened in a stunned silence. They were no strangers to peril; but the events Valentine related, so tersely, caused their mouths to open in amazement. Shannon waited for him to finish, then leaned forward and said, “You say Gil Sharkey’s crowd are all dressed in town suits?”

  “Uh huh,” nodded Valentine. “I didn’t hear much o’ their talk, but, from what I did hear, I’d say they’re gonna stake out in town. They’ll hang around the courthouse, amakin’ out they’re more Pinkerton men, extra guards for the trial ...”

  “Cunning as rats,” scowled Wilkes. “They’re not missing a thing.”

  “How many of your outfit are in Nash?” frowned Valentine.

  “Six,” Shannon told him. “All the other guards will be from the sheriff’s office, deputized citizens.”

  “Vigilantes huh?” mused Stretch. “Seems to me, if there’s gonna be shootin’ ...”

  “It’ll be bad,” finished Valentine. “A dozen Sharkey killers, in town clothes ... they’ll look just like everybody else ...”

  “A lot of innocent people could be killed,” muttered the woman.

  “Too bad about the wagon,” fretted Shannon. “We could have waited for the trial to begin, then drive it clear up to the courthouse steps and hustle her inside ... before Sharkey’s men got a chance to pull a gun.”

  “How about if we try taking her in tonight?” suggested Wilkes, “under cover of darkness. How about that?”

  Shannon shook his head.

  “Too risky,” he growled. “Every Sharkey man knows what she looks like. That shyster lawyer would have taken care of that. Miss Furness is mighty famous, right now. And that’s our biggest worry.”

  “Say, Valentine,” asked Wilkes. “How long do you figure it’d take us to reach Nash City anyway?”

  “We could make it by nightfall,” the Texan told him. “Or we could hide in the woods, on the south edge of town, ’til morning’.”

  Shannon thought about that for a while, then stood up and said, “For the time being, we’ll move on. I think it would be best if we get as close as possible to the town, then lay low and figure out how to get our witness in quietly.”

  The others got to their feet. As Valentine turned toward his stolen horse, Lucille came to his side and placed a hand on his arm.

  “There’s something I want to ask you,” she murmured. He nodded and stood waiting. She colored slightly and bit her lip.

  “I know how they ... persuaded you to help us,” she told him.

  “You mean ... about Stretch an’ me bein’ in jail an’ all?”

  “Yes ... and the way they forced you into signing that contract.”

  “Shucks,” grinned Valentine. “They didn’t force us. We were real tired o’ Borden’s jail, anyway.”

  “No doubt,” frowned Lucille. “But you didn’t know what you were getting into, did you?”

  “No,” he confessed. “We didn’t know we’d finish up as bodyguards.”

  For a moment, she was tempted to leave the question unspoken. T
hen, summoning up all her courage, she looked ton squarely in the eye and asked it.

  “If you were ... released from your obligation under the contract, if you were told to forget it, that you were free to ride away and leave all the protecting to those detectives ... what would you do, Mr. Valentine?”

  Valentine lowered his eyes, studied his boots, and growled, “You sure ask the damnedest questions, don’t you?”

  “If you’d rather not answer ...”

  “No. I don’t mind tellin’ you. Uh ... well, it’s this way, Stretch an’ me ...”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, when we start somethin’, we always go through with it. We don’t like no unfinished business. We don’t think it’s right for a lady to git shot at. That’s all.”

  She had to be satisfied with that. As she went across to her own horse and swung into the saddle, she was thinking about his answer ... and wandering whether or not to be pleased.

  With the Texans in the lead, they rode down to the bank and swam their mounts across to the other side.

  “Better we stay off the trails,” Stretch advised the detectives. “We’ll head fer them cottonwoods on the south end o’ town an’ we’ll do it by ridin’ a half-circle.”

  “Lead on, Emerson,” nodded Shannon. “We’ll do it your way. There’s no point in advertising.”

  Through the gathering dusk, they rode on.

  ~*~

  Gil Sharkey lounged at a corner table in the Crystal Palace, Nash City’s largest saloon, and looked at the crowd. At this moment, he had good cause to appreciate his anonymity. Throughout their violent career, his elder brother had always insisted on his men masking their features. When the Sharkey gang struck, their bandanas were always pulled up to cover the lower parts of their faces. The precaution had paid off. To this day, nobody had been able to offer a sworn identification of any Sharkey rider. In Nash City, the twelve owlhoots were strangers, innocent-looking strangers in store clothes. No local citizen could identify them as members of the most notorious gang of outlaws in the territory of Arizona.