Dead Warrior

by John Myers Myers

  In my eagerness to grasp the chance to vent my snarl of emotions, I took several steps toward him, my hand fondling the stock of Barringer’s revolver. “Damn you,” I roared, “this is Shorty with a gun talking. You’ll do what I say, or you’ll be pitched in that mine shaft after all.”

  That was no more than jangled feelings speaking, but Sparks was convinced. “You didn’t look that touchy,” he placated me. “Of course, the man that owns the stage has a right to do the seatin’, when you get right down to thinkin’ about it.”

  Having cooled off, I was embarrassed about sharing a seat with a man I had threatened so drastically, but Sparks was above such petty considerations. He borrowed a cigar from me, though to chew on rather than to smoke, and by the time we were wheeling at a fast clip down the Socorro road, he was keeping me informed as to all that passed through his mind.

  “That Charlie Barringer ain’t a glad man about tanglin’ with us.” Somehow he had transferred himself into the action, although he accepted Miss Tandy and myself as allies. “He put a lot of store by that fellow Clinker we killed, and when we brought that bronco down, I think Charlie busted his arm.”

  “It looked that way to me, too,” I nodded. “Still, Barringer got what he really wanted, which was money and control of the gambling back there.”

  “He got money from us,” Roy conceded. “He got nine dollars and four bits from me alone; but I don’t know as he’ll have control of the gambling or anything else in Midas Touch from now on. You know what I’d do, if I was in his boots.

  “I’d skedaddle,” my companion went on, after I had expressed ignorance. “Camps’ll stand for a lot, but when it comes to hangin’ a gal that ain’t done nothin’ but deal as tricky a game of faro as I ever see, they draw the line. When word gets back of what he tried to do to me and Dolly Tandy, he’d better be on his way, or there’ll be the quickest lynchin’ since the Can Can vigilantes hung Potluck Mulligan by mistake.”

  “How did that happen?” I was incautious enough to ask.

  “You ain’t heard about that?” Sparks spat out a loose fragment of the cigar and put the soggy end back in his mouth. “Well, Can Can was a hide hunters’ camp up in east Wyoming, back before the northern buffalo was killed off. The boys there made a lot of money while the hunt was good, but I don’t say all of ’em was always good theirselves. There was a real he-coon under every other hat, and there ain’t nothin’ in the Bible against some of the things them fellows’d do, because they hadn’t been thunk up until buffalo hunters was whelped. Charlie Barringer wouldn’t ’ve been nothin’ but a outlaw’s chore boy in that camp.”

  “How did you get along there?” I inquired.

  “Nobody wants to tangle with the head rooster,” Sparks observed, “but other gents found trouble enough to go around. There was somebody killed by buffalo hunters most every night, and lots of time they done better than that. Well, I let it rack along that way for a while, and then I formed the Can Can vigilantes. I’m a little more easy-goin’ now, or things wouldn’t ’ve got out of hand in Midas Touch the way they done; but in them days I didn’t have no more use for wrongdoin’ than a she-snake has for shoes with silver buckles.”

  Seeing a gadfly on one of my leaders, I reached for the whip. Practice had made me handy with the lash, and I succeeded in scaring off the tormenting insect without touching the horse.

  “That was neat,” Sparks commented, before he went on. “Now old Potluck Mulligan wasn’t a buffalo hunter, as he never went lookin’ for nothin’ but bottles, and he never killed nobody as he couldn’t spare the time from drinkin’ to pick a fight that amounted to any thin’. So he was one of the most law-abidin’ fellows in Can Can, but every now and then he’d land in jail, because the marshal had to arrest somebody — to make a showin’, you know — and Mulligan was one of the only two gents in camp who’d sit still for it, the other bein’ Red Dog Grimes. Did you ever meet Red Dog, Baltimore?”

  I had been wondering whether we had gone far enough to make it safe for us to halt for breakfast, but I concluded that we had better push on for a ways. “No,” I said.

  “Well, he was the second-best drunk in Can Can but only a run-of-the-mill horse thief, so I didn’t see why the vigilantes should bother him, and they didn’t want to theirselves at first. After a while, though, we begun runnin’ out of likely fellows to stretch, and I see somethin’ I’d noticed about vigilantes before.”

  Not having had any experience with such voluntary law enforcement groups myself, I was mildly curious as to the nature of his findings. “What was that, Roy?”

  “Now I’m not like that,” he informed me, “but you take the average vigilante, and once he gets to hangin’ folks, it’s like eatin’ peanuts. He can’t lay off, and if there ain’t nobody handy that really needs to be stretched, he’ll start lookin’ around for somebody that only kind of deserves it.

  “Well — ” The coach careened to jam Sparks against me, and he had to claw his way back to his own side of the seat. “Well, when we run out of good stock at Can Can, I wanted to quit, but the boys begged for one last hangin’, so I says, ‘Okay; just one more, but who you goin’ to swing?’

  “ ‘We’ll take Red Dog Grimes out of the jug,’ they says.

  “ ‘He wouldn’t have took that horse they calaboosed him for this time if he’d ’ve been sober, it not bein’ a very good bronc,’ I says. Still I couldn’t think of nobody better to hang, so that night a few fellows went to fetch Grimes while the rest of us made for the big cottonwood just outside of town which we always stretched our men from.

  “Now this Mulligan gent didn’t know what we was up to, Baltimore, bein’ drunk as usual. But him and Red Dog was pretty good friends on account of havin’ been in jail so often together, so old Potluck decides that the right thing to do is to take Grimes some drinkin’ liquor, and he goes to the jug that night.

  “There wasn’t nobody to stop him, as the marshal was dealin’ Spanish monte for the jailer, so Mulligan takes the key off the hook, walks into Grimes’s cell, hands him the quart he’s brung along — and then flops down on the floor and starts to snore. I got that part straight from Red Dog hisself, who said he got tired of it and walked out.”

  Catching me in the act of looking back for signs of pursuit, Sparks waited until he had my attention again. “Well, Grimes timed it pretty good, for it was just about then that the vigilantes come along. There was only a candle in a tin can for light in the cell, and old Potluck was lyin’ there with his back to the door. He was still snoring, but he stopped right quick when the vigilantes jumped on him, throwed a sack over his head and tied him up. Then they hustled him to the cottonwood where me and the others was waitin’. Well, I took the sack off, so the prisoner could say his last words and all, and of course it turned out to be Mulligan instead of Red Dog.

  “ ‘Where’s Grimes?’ I says.

  “ ‘This is who we found in his cell,’ one of the crew which had gone after Grimes tells me, ‘and there ain’t no other in that there jail.’

  “Them other vigilantes was so disappointed they didn’t know what to do, Baltimore, but I was thinkin’ fast. I’d promised ’em this hangin’, and I knowed that if they didn’t get it I’d lose my hold on ’em. I’d been runnin’ the camp too long to take to that idea, so I says, ‘Wait a minute, boys, there’s a way out of this.’

  “ ‘How’s that, Roy?’ one of ’em says.

  “ ‘Look,’ I says, ‘everybody in Can Can knows we figgered to have a hangin’ tonight, and we’ll be the laughin’ stock of Ooh-la-la Street if we misfire. All right then,’ I says, and with them words I jammed the sack back over Potluck’s head again, ‘Gentlemen,’ I says, ‘tried and true vigilantes found this criminal in Red Dog Grimes’s cell, so it’s only reasonable to figger that he is Red Dog Grimes. Haul away, boys!’ So they all give a cheer and done it.”

  While the ill-starred Potluck Mulligan was being hoisted into eternity in substitution for horse-stealing Grimes, I was t
urning the stage off the road. The breakfast we belatedly made in an aspen grove was nothing fancy, but we felt the better for it, as we pressed on into country which grew progressively rougher. In the meantime the sun got lost in the clouds which piled up above the sharp, barren hills.

  The plan had been to spend the night in a town called Nutmeg, of whose existence I had learned from Roy. At an estimated fifteen miles short of this place, though, the clouds made good on their threat. For ten minutes the water came down like the tide coming in.

  Such was the dryness of the climate that a half an hour after the sun again shone the clothes of Sparks and myself were no more than a trifle damp. As far as the road was concerned, the moisture but made the sandy surface easier to negotiate. Not so much could be said for the torrent which filled a so-called dry wash a mile or so farther on.

  “It ain’t goin’ to go away until it’s all run into that crick,” Roy said. He waved his hand toward the line of trees which marked the course of a stream off to our right. “We’d ought to be able to get across by mornin’, though.”

  For once he was dealing in facts, and I descended to report conditions to our companion in the coach. “I’m afraid we won’t be able to go any further now, Miss Dolly.”

  “Not without wings,” she agreed, peering out at the thirty-foot stretch of rushing water. “I didn’t see how we could miss running into a flash flood.”

  It seemed to me that she did not understand all the implications of our predicament. “Er — it looks like we’ll have to be here all night,” I apologized.

  “Um-huhm.” She was looking over the terrain with a practiced eye. “Well, we’ve got water, good grazing for the horses and firewood over by the creek yonder. We couldn’t have found a neater place to camp.”

  She turned out to be a good cook, making a far better job of preparing biscuits, coffee and the venison Sparks brought in than I could have done. Although we ate in the silence of the physically weary, she appeared thoroughly at ease. I was therefore astonished when she requested my revolver, as I was putting my blankets in the coach for her.

  “I hope you know that — er — you’ll be all right,” I told her.

  She flashed me an appreciative smile, then examined the pistol to make sure it had its normal load of five cartridges. “Thank you, Mr. Carruthers; but I sleep better if there’s a weapon handy.”

  It was still only dusk when Sparks and I stretched out on my tarpaulin, with the fire to ward off the cold which darkness brought. Not having slept at all the previous night, I was able to ignore other discomforts, my slight wounds included, as long as there was warmth. The first two times that the chill crept in, rousing me to build up the dying blaze, my bedfellow was beside me. The third time, I not only found myself alone; my rifle and shotgun were likewise gone.

  That was all I needed to know. Grabbing my ax, which could be as good a weapon as a gun in the blackness beyond the firelight, I went on the warpath toward the stage.

  The coach had been left on the edge of the bosky, where the stars gave enough light to tell substance from shadow. Sparks was there all right, and I heard the stage door creak as he opened it.

  Swift though I was in my rage, I didn’t move fast enough to be in on the play. As his head poked through the open door, I heard him gasp in astonishment. An instant later I heard a noise which sounded like someone thumping a watermelon. I was then near enough to have caught Sparks, if I had wanted to. As it was, he slumped to the ground and lay where I had to step over him in order to stammer explanations into the coach’s dark interior.

  “You were too tired to notice,” the girl’s voice comforted me, “but I knew from the way he was ogling me this evening that he was considering ways and means. Would you mind dragging him away, Mr. Carruthers? They sometimes snore.”

  Sparks was indeed beginning to breathe stertorously when I had dropped him at the edge of the firelight, where he wouldn’t freeze but would yet soak up an uncomfortable amount of chill. He was resting better than I could hope to, at that, for I was too upset to make further sleep possible. What I badly wanted was a slug of whiskey, but as removing the bottle from the stage was out of the question, I decided to have some coffee. The fire had died to fitful flames, but I split a log into kindling and soon had a lively blaze working on the pot.

  While I was dejectedly waiting for it to boil I heard a noise which snapped my head around. A moment later Dolly Tandy stepped into view, wrapped in her cloak and with the flames picking out lights from the hair which hung around her shoulders.

  “I couldn’t sleep myself,” she remarked. “I hope you’re making more than one cupful.”

  “Oh, there’s plenty.” After rising to acknowledge her presence, I didn’t look at her but sat gloomily watching the fire.

  “Don’t feel bad about that incident,” she said after a moment. “I haven’t had a suitable chance to mention this before, but it’s because of you that I’m alive.”

  “And because of you that I am,” I reminded her, kicking a hole in the ground with one boot heel. “I didn’t have sense enough to know what to do until you told me.”

  “But you were quick to catch on.” She was no longer the marble woman I had seen dealing at the Taj Mahal. Her glance was so sharply vital that it would have struck me as challenging rather than friendly, except for the tone of her voice. “I was so afraid you wouldn’t, but you seemed to pick it out of my mind almost before I had spoken.”

  That was exaggeration. At the same time I had reacted swiftly, and her recognition of the fact made me feel better.

  “How did you know where the rifle was, and how did you manage to keep it in mind with that loop in the lariat waiting?”

  “Gamblers have to learn to keep everything usable on the surface of their minds.” Then she answered my first question. “It kept sliding out from under the seat and hitting my foot, and when I put a toe on it I could tell by the size of the barrel that it wasn’t a shotgun.”

  I looked at the slim foot she waggled as she said that. If it had not felt a shotgun then, it had later sent one flying through the air.

  “Here’s one more for you,” I said, “and then I won’t ask you anything but how you like your coffee. How did you know I was on your side, to begin with?”

  “You looked too much like I felt to be one of Barringer’s men.” A moment later she glanced at me sidewise from under long lashes. “But I would have known it anyhow, just as I knew about Roy Sparks. After all, I had hardly finished fleecing you at faro.”

  I winced at the thought of my vanished fifty dollars. “But I was only one sucker in many.”

  “Professional gamblers don’t play to lose.” She responded to my expression before my words. “Out of sixty-eight men there was only one who looked as if he wasn’t aware that it was a woman who was picking his pockets. I let you go a little longer than I might have — it’s silly to make yourself a sitting bird by backing the same cards all the time — while I made up my mind whether you were nearsighted or well-bred.”

  The glow of the fire was not bold enough to outshine the flush she had raised by her cool professional advice. She saw that and put her hand gently on my arm.

  “There are things that happen to people which merge with the bloodstream, and that look we exchanged after Barringer gave me leave to speak was one of them. Even if we never see each other again, we’re a part of each other’s lives and will stay so. I think the coffee’s boiling.”

  How she felt as we sat sipping the strong, hot brew there was no word from her to indicate. I felt poised between intimacy and utter loneliness. The diameter of the known world was ten yards. Somewhere in the infinity of benighted wilderness around us wolves howled, and nearer at hand coyotes voiced a shriller excitement. Above us a pre-dawn breeze made the leaves talk in spook tones. Sharing the isolation thus emphasized was a girl of exquisite daintiness while, barely within the perimeter of light, the victim of her violence was discernible. As for her and myself, she had exactly
defined the terms of our relationship. We would not forget each other, but in another day she would be as lost to me as everybody else I had met on the frontier.

  “Where do you wish me to take you?” I asked, when I had filled our cups a second time.

  “Just Socorro.” She stressed the words sufficiently to let me know that I should offer nothing else. “I have enough money tucked away in my effects to cover the stage fare to Santa Fe. It’s a good gambling town, and I can buck the tiger until I make a stake and can bank for myself again.”

  “You won’t have to do that,” I said. “I had been planning to hold off until tomorrow; but if you’ll wait a minute, I’ll show you what I mean.”

  There was a shank of late-rising moon to help me locate the bag I wanted. Knowing just where I had put McQuinn’s envelope, I was back with it in short order.

  “I was told to give you this and tell you it came from Colonel Peters, either to gamble with or spend at your discretion.”

  “Ten thousand dollars.” Her face, as her eyes searched mine, was still and wary. “And am I to understand that you received this from Colonel Peters himself, sir?”

  “No, ma’am.” Reacting to her suspicion, I, too, grew formal. “A Mr. McQuinn gave it to me.”

  I had been wondering how she would respond to that name, but I didn’t learn anything. “And where did you meet him, sir?”

  “Along the trail.” It was not my business to tell her that Terry had been on the run from the law. “He found out I was traveling more or less in this direction, and asked me to deliver that, if I ran across you.”

  It wasn’t much of an explanation, nor did it satisfy her. “You must be a very good friend of his,” she probed, continuing to study my face.