Escape from Fire River

by Ralph Cotton

  “Perhaps,” the townsman agreed, then said, cautioning the old German, “But he is not drunk. He is as wide-awake as we are.”

  “Even so,” said Herzoff. “We came here to do a job and so we will. If he gets in our way, it will be his mistake.”

  From within the dark shadow of an alleyway, River Johnson stood within listening range, chewing on a long unused wooden match. He smiled thinly to himself upon hearing them discuss him. He didn’t care. He had no dog in this fight, he reminded himself—at least none that he held any attachment to. He backed a step as the group walked forward and the flickering glow of torchlight moved past the corner of the alley. . . .

  Inside the cantina, Red Burke opened only one eye, halfway, when he felt Falina’s hand shaking him roughly by his shoulder. “Por favor, Daddy! Wake up! Wake up! There are men here!”

  Burke mumbled groggily, unable to pull himself together. “Tell them . . . come back . . . ,” he moaned.

  “Daddy, they have a rope!” Falina said, sounding shaky and alarmed.

  “Whoa!” said Burke, snapping up into a sitting position, both eyes wide open. His hand went instinctively for the gun beside the pallet, but he felt only an empty holster lying there.

  As one, the rest of the knocked-out gunmen awakened and tried to rise. To their shock they found themselves held down in place by the rounded tip of machetes pressed firmly to their chests. Sergio, realizing his guns had been lifted from his side, stared up at the men standing over him and said, “Swing your blade, old man. You better hope to the saints that you can kill me with one blow—”

  “Shut up, Sergio Alevario. You and your brother’s reign of terror in this desert is over,” Herzoff called just as the old man with the machete pushed the blade more firmly.

  “Fellas, I’m afraid there’s been a terrible mistake here,” said Red Burke, his hands spread wide in a show of peace. “The Alevario brothers and I came here to see what it’s going to take to help this community get back up on its—”

  “Hang them quickly,” Herzoff said, cutting Burke off. He dealt Falina and Malina a searing stare. “You twins are going to watch this, and I hope that seeing it changes what you both have become.”

  “Damn it all,” Burke said, rising from the pallet with two of the old men pulling him to his feet. His loose trousers dropped to his knees. “What’s everybody so damned angry about? You’re all acting like somebody pissed in your whiskey!”

  “You murdered our deputy!” said the old German. “And for that you will hang!”

  “Easy does it,” said Burke, glancing all around, taking close note of their situation, who was there and who wasn’t. “I shot that lawman in self-defense, fair and square. He drew first.”

  “He carried a shotgun,” Herzoff countered. “You do not even remember the circumstances!”

  “Yes, you’re right, a shotgun, and he intended to kill me with it, that’s the gospel truth,” Burke said quickly as one of the townsmen jerked his hands behind his back and tied them tightly with a stripe of rawhide.

  “You can tell all of your lies to the devil when you get to hell,” the townsman behind him cut in, pushing him forward toward the door. From all corners of the cantina the other townsmen shoved the bound gunmen forward until the drunken half-naked outlaws stood in a lineup on their way out the door.

  “We will hang them at first light,” said Herzoff, shoving the outlaws forward to the street, “so all can see and know what we do to those who harm one of our own.”

  Chapter 8

  Out front of the livery barn the old German and the rest of the townsmen lined up all the outlaws except Red Sage Burke along a corral fence rail. They ran one long rope behind the outlaws’ backs between their tied wrists and tied them all as one to the corral. Next to the outlaws they tied the twins and two other young women who had spent a night of drunken debauchery at the cantina. The young women stood naked save for whatever shawls or blankets or table-cloths they’d managed to grab and pull around themselves on their way out of the cantina.

  “You still have time to ask God for forgiveness for the wrongs you have down, Senor,” a religious townsman said to Burke.

  “I wouldn’t know where to start,” Burke replied with a tight, devilish grin. He stood alone, barefoot and shirtless beneath a lifting timber sticking out from the roof of the barn with a hemp rope hanging down from a large pulley. A noose hung around his neck.

  By dawn, the township had gathered at the barn to watch the hanging and along with it the beheading that would follow. As the first glimmer of sunlight rose along the eastern line of the earth, Herzoff stepped away from Burke and gave a nod to three of the elderly townsmen holding the working end of the hemp rope.

  Feeling the rope pull him up slowly, Red shouted to the other outlaws watching, “So long, you bad sonsbitches . . . my brothers in arms, the meanest, dirtiest best bunch of sonsabitch—” His words ended in a squawk as the rope lifted him two inches off the ground and continued higher.

  “Wait—” he managed to croak as he began kicking back and forth, his bare toes searching and scratching toward the ground beneath him.

  “My God, the church is on fire!” a woman screamed. All eyes turned from the hanging to stare at the tall licking flames reaching up from the adobe church’s modest steeple.

  “So is my cantina!” shouted the cantina owner. As one the townspeople turned and bolted toward the two raging fires boiling upward fifty yards away.

  “Tie him off,” Herzoff shouted at the three men holding the rope to the pulley, Burke dangling and kicking on the other end only six inches off the ground.

  Quickly the three townsmen reached down and tied the rope to a thick ring on the end of a long iron tie-off stave driven deep into the ground.

  “Pleaaa—!” Burke managed to grunt, his eyes bulging, his face turning a deep red-blue.

  But the men didn’t even hear him. They turned and ran toward the fires.

  Along the corral the unattended outlaws began immediately struggling with the long rope holding them to the fence rail, their tied wrists rendering their hands useless. “Hold on, Red!” shouted Sergio. “We’re coming! We’re coming to you!”

  “Yeah, but when?” River Johnson replied calmly. He stepped out from around the corner of the barn with a cigar in one hand and a rifle in his other. “I don’t believe ole Red here can hold out much longer.” He stopped in front of Red Burke, looked him up and down and asked, “Can you?”

  “Waghhgahh—” Burke rasped, his bulging eyes pleading with Johnson. Bloody saliva swung from his twisted, gaping mouth.

  “Cut him loose, damn you!” shouted Sergio. The others strained against the rope. The four young women watched in rapt horror.

  Johnson blew out a stream of smoke and stepped closer to Burke. He looked up at him with a flat expression and said quietly, “I’m still looking for work. Got anything for me today?”

  “Waghhgahh—,” Red repeated. “Cuuut-meee-loo—” He grunted.

  Johnson took his time. He turned to the other outlaws and asked Sergio, “Did you understand any of that?”

  “Cut him loose, damn your eyes! Cut him loose! You will ride with us!” shouted Sergio.

  “Well, all right then,” Johnson said coolly. He reached down, grabbed the loop of a knot holding the rope and jerked it quickly. Burke hit the ground with a solid thud and rolled onto his back, wheezing, gasping and gagging violently.

  Johnson stuck his cigar in his mouth, stepped forward and stood over Burke as he pulled a big knife from under his long buttoned coat. With his boot toe he rolled Burke onto his side, reached down and, with one slash, severed the rawhide binding his wrists together. “I hope things don’t always go this way, riding with you boys,” he said.

  Burke rolled up onto his behind, yanked the noose from around his neck and sat choking and rubbing his throat with both hands. “Come cut us all loose,” Sergio shouted to Johnson. “Hurry, before someone returns!”

  River Johns
on seemed not to hear him. He stuck the rifle barrel down and tapped it on Burke’s shoulder. Burke looked at it, then realized it was offered to help him to his feet. He grabbed the barrel with both hands and pulled himself up, still gasping and wheezing.

  “You . . . ever, slow walk me like that again . . . I’ll kill you,” he rasped at River Johnson. He swallowed a hard, bloody-tasting knot in his throat, looked at Johnson with red, watery eyes and said, “Obliged.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Johnson. He walked to where Sergio stood straining against the long rope. “I stashed all of your guns back behind the barn.” He slashed the long rope holding them all to the corral fence, then shoved Sergio around backward and slashed the rawhide binding his wrists. “Figured once you got freed up, you might want to do a little shooting on the way out of town.”

  “Oh, si! Indeed we do! You can bet your mother’s ears we do!” Sergio growled, staring toward the running townspeople who were busily fighting the fires. He rubbed circulation back into his raw wrists and walked hurriedly to the barn, where the townsfolk had taken their horses. “Follow me, all of you! Now the killing is going to start!”

  The small church in Suerta Buena sat off to itself in a wide sandy fenced lot, making the flames easier to contain. But the cantina sat in a crowded block-long stretch of buildings. Three of the buildings had thatch roofs instead of tin or clay tile. Those buildings had ignited like dry fire kindling. Within minutes, even as a bucket brigade brought the fire inside the cantina under control, the rest of the block lay beneath a long blanket of licking flames.

  Running back and forth from the church to the cantina, trying to carry water and keep everybody fighting the fire, Herzoff shouted aloud, “Fortunate for the old padre that he is dead. Seeing this church burn would have broken his heart.”

  “What about my poor Suerta Buena Cantina?” the cantina owner cried, running along beside Herzoff with a bucket of water. “It has always been an important part of these people’s lives!”

  “It’s gone now,” the old German shouted, arriving at the burning building.

  “I must rebuild!” shouted the sobbing cantina owner even as the fire had begun to wane inside the adobe structure.

  “And I will help you,” said Herzoff. “We will all help you!”

  “Gracious,” said the cantina owner. But no sooner had he gotten the words out of his mouth than he turned with the empty bucket and staggered backward as a rifle shot exploded and slammed into his shoulder.

  “Holy Hannah!” the old German engineer shouted, seeing the storm of angry, yelling riders swoop down on the defenseless townsfolk from the direction of the livery barn. “Now we will all die.”

  Out front of the burning church, three men and a woman turned to run when they saw the outlaws coming. Red Burke led the charge, riding shirtless and barefoot, yet firing the rifle with deadly accuracy. “Kill them all!” Sergio shouted. He fired three shots in a row and watched two of the three men and the woman fall to the ground.

  While Burke and the others rode back and forth wildly, firing and killing at random, River Johnson walked along at his leisure, leading his horse behind him, whistling to himself. When a man appeared in an open doorway and pointed an ancient shotgun at him, Johnson turned and fired three shots rapidly, sending the man scrambling back inside.

  “Hose! Look at River!” shouted Rollo Barnes to Little Jose Montoya. “He’s cooler than a fat rattler!”

  “Si, a fat rattler,” said Hose with a puzzled look, having no idea how cool a fat rattler might be. But he didn’t contemplate it for long. Instead he shrugged, let out a yell and drew aim on a man running at them waving a machete in the air.

  Rollo Barnes fired with him, and the two watched the man fall and roll and slide the last few feet, the machete flying from his hand and bouncing across the dirt. “Yi-hii! That’s just what I’ve been looking for,” said Rollo. He bolted his horse past the machete, dropped down low on the running animal’s side, snatched up the long, sharpened steel by its handle and sat upright swinging the wide blade overhead.

  “Look out!” Hose warned. He fired at a man who ran toward Rollo with a raised shovel and sent him sprawling in the dirt.

  “Yes, sir! This place is Good Luck!” Rollo grinned wildly, still swinging the blade. “Now, where’s the son of a bitch who was going to hang us and cleave off our heads? I want him to step up and get himself some of this!”

  River Johnson watched the gunmen race past him, firing, killing, trampling over the bodies of the wounded and the dead alike. “What did you old people expect,” he murmured with disgust, “trying to fight off a bunch like this?” He took out an unused wooden match and stuck it between his teeth.

  By the time he arrived at the burning church, the fight was nearly over. The gunmen were busily herding the townsfolk into a circle in the middle of the street. Herzoff put himself between the townspeople and the gunmen and spread his hands as if that would protect them. “Do not kill them,” he said boldly for a man with no power to stop or change anything. “None of this was their idea. It was all mine. I talked them into this! Let it be me who dies, not they!”

  “There’s my ole pal,” said Rollo Barnes, gigging his horse in closer to the old German. He reached down with the machete and flipped Herzoff’s black cloth cap from his head, revealing a pile of stringy snow-white hair. “Hold real still, I’m betting I can swath off your head with one swipe.” He reached down and grabbed a tight handful of Herzoff’s hair. “Hang me, you flathead old son of a bitch.” He drew back his arm in a wide arch. The old German stood rigidly and closed his eyes.

  “Let him go, Rollo,” Burke said in a hoarse voice. He rode in fast and slid his horse to a halt.

  “Naw, sir, Red,” said Rollo. “I aim to dabble my fingers in this old turd’s brain pan—”

  Before he got his words out, he was on the ground, the German falling with him before Rollo could turn loose of his hair. “I said turn him loose, damn it to hell!” said Burke, barely able to speak with his injured throat.

  “Yes, sir, Red, there, he’s loose,” said Rollo, seeing the killing rage in Red Burke’s eyes. “I meant no harm. I was just going to cleave his head off. I figured it was all right with you.”

  The gunmen fell silent and watched, their guns aimed at the remaining townsfolk. “Kill somebody else. Not him,” said Burke, staring coldly at the old German. He rubbed his reddened throat for the old man to see. “Nobody wants him dead worse than I do.” He had held his rifle pointed at Herzoff. But he tipped it up and fired a shot in the air as if to release some of his rage.

  “Kill me if you will,” said the old German, not flinching, not backing an inch. “But I die proud of what I did to you here today. The federales will be coming. They will see to it you pay. You will not get away with what you do here.”

  “Yeah, the federales.” Red Burke seemed to calm down some. “About them . . .” He looked all around, singled out an old man standing a few feet away from the others, raised his rifle and shot him down. Women screamed; men cursed under their breath and stood staring with frightened looks on their drawn and weathered faces. “You tell them what happened here. Tell them I’m one of Garris Cantro’s Border Dogs . . . one of his main men.”

  “I will tell them, make no mistake about that,” the old German said with bitter determination.

  “Just to make sure . . .” Burke gave a harsh grin, turned the rifle on the old man and sent a bullet slicing through his foot. “There, that ought to seal the deal.” Burke laughed.

  The old man had let out a loud grunt as he hit the ground. But once in the dirt he clenched his teeth and refused to reveal his pain. Instead, he struggled to his feet, shooing away two townsmen who reached out to help him. Managing to stand on his own, blood running freely from the bullet hole in his foot, he jutted his chin in defiance, as if nothing had happened.

  “You’re a hardheaded old sonsabitch.” Burke laughed aloud. “Be sure and tell the federales that Garris Cant
ro knows there’s too many of us for them to handle. Tell them the Border Dogs said if they know what’s good for them, they’ll turn tail and run back home to their women. . . . Tell them Cantro says to leave the fighting for all us real hombres.”

  Standing back a few feet, River Johnson watched and listened curiously. With a slight shake of his head in disbelief, he stepped up into his saddle, smoothed back his dark well-trimmed hair atop his bare head and nudged his horse forward. “That’s one surefire way to get the federales on your ass and keep them there,” he said under his breath.

  From the cantina, Falina came running, still wearing only a flimsy shawl pulled around her. She carried Burke’s boots under an arm. In her other hand she carried the rest of his clothes wadded into a dusty ball. “Wait, Daddy! Don’t go!” she yelled, afraid he might leave without his clothes.

  Red Burke swung his horse around and looked at her, seeing her breasts bob and jiggle wildly as she bounded along the dirt street. “Twins . . . ,” he said, smiling in reflection. “Damn, it’s hard to leave here.”

  He reached out a bare foot and Falina rolled his dirty sock on, then shoved a boot onto his foot. As she circled to his other foot, he asked Sergio, “Which way to the next town?”

  Sitting atop his horse, reloading his smoking revolver, Sergio pointed southeast. “That way, to Mal Vuelve.” He closed the freshly loaded revolver and looked at Burke. “But it is wise to ride around Mal Vuelve. A high-ranking capitán has family living near there.”

  “Does he, now?” Burke grinned. “Then I’d consider it a pleasure to go meet those good people.”

  Finishing with Burke’s other boot, Falina looked up and pleaded with him, “Take us with you, Daddy, por favor, take us with you. My sister and I will be beaten and treated badly for being so friendly with you.”

  “Is that fact?” Burke eyed the old German, who stared back at him coldly and unafraid. “All right, darling,” he said to Falina. “Swing up here. We’ll find you some clothes along the way.” He reached down and helped her scurry up behind him. She readjusted the shawl to cover her nakedness.