Escape from Fire River

by Ralph Cotton

  No sooner had Kirkland pulled the trigger than bullets whistled past them in return. “Damn it!” said the newer gunman, ducking closer to the ground. “How am I going to know which one I am?”

  Kirkland laughed and shouted above the gunfire, “If you get blown away, you’re the chaff.” He stared in the direction of Arnold Stroud, awaiting Stroud’s signal for them to attack. “But stick close to me; I’ll turn you into wheat,” he added.

  “You got it,” said Prine, his hands trembling but ready, wrapped tightly around his rifle stock.

  At Stroud’s signal, the Border Dogs rose and charged with a fierce rebel yell. From the trail, slipping along quietly, leading the horses, the horse guards looked down at what appeared to be a glittering, loosely formed arrowhead cutting a swath along the sloping hillside through the Mexican gunfire.

  At the head of the wedge, Cantro and Stroud advanced at a trot, firing as they went. In spite of the heavy return fire, the two leaders deliberately measured their pace in order not to get too far ahead of their men. A bullet grazed Cantro’s thigh; another nipped at Stroud’s upper arm. But the two moved methodically, firing as soldiers fell before them and tumbled down over the rocks on the steep sloping hillside.

  Behind, some of their own men fell, but the two led the fiery wedge through the soldiers until Cantro stooped behind a rock where a wounded Mexican soldier lay with both hands holding his bloody abdomen. As Cantro and Stroud peered down at him, their guns smoking in their hands, the young soldier’s eyes pleaded for mercy.

  “Keep quiet, it’ll soon be over,” Cantro said to the soldier, beneath the heavy firing both in front and behind them. Stroud pulled a pistol from beneath the flap of the wounded soldier’s holster and pitched it away.

  “Entiende?” Stroud asked, staring into his frightened eyes.

  “Si . . . I understand,” the young soldier said in a pained voice.

  Having fought their way through the soldiers, Stroud waited for a lull in the firing to pass while many of their men reloaded. When the firing grew intense once again, he stood and shouted out his order this time, instead of relying on a hand signal. “Move out!” he bellowed back along the hillside through the heavy gunfire and the screams of the wounded and the dying.

  From above, the horse guards watched the fiery wedge on the dark hillside as it seemed to flatten and form a flickering, undulating line. Upon Stroud’s order, the men turned as one and began ascending the rocky hillside, fighting behind themselves. The Mexicans offered no letup as the gunmen worked their way upward and began spilling onto the trail. Scattered in the darkness everywhere on the hillside, the pained voices of wounded continued to resound in the night.

  The horse guards hurriedly stuck reins into the men’s hands indiscriminately, knowing they could sort out the horse later. Halfway down the rocky hillside, Cantro and Stroud hurried the men past them and covered them until the last of them topped the edge. “Well done, Arnold,” said Cantro, when he’d given the last man a shove.

  “And you as well, sir,” said Stroud. They ran up and joined the others, not realizing the firing had all but stopped, much of what was left not coming close, but zipping upward ten yards to the side.

  “Sir, have they lost their aim?” Stroud asked as they hurried to the upper edge of the rail and grabbed their reins from a waiting guard.

  “No,” said Cantro. “Fuerte is no fool. He thinks we’ll take him to the gold.”

  “Which we will, if we don’t manage to shake them off our trail, sir,” said Stroud.

  “Indeed we will, Arnold,” said Cantro, “if we make a run for it.”

  “I see, sir,” said Stroud. “But we are making a run for it.”

  “You bet we’re not, Arnold,” said Cantro. “They’re going to have to fight us from their saddles every mile of the way.”

  Shaw stopped his horse at the edge of the wide desert basin. Jane’s horse stopped alongside him on its own. Jane sat slumped in the saddle, as she had for the past half hour, her bruised and battered face shadowed beneath her floppy hat brim. In the east the sun had begun to glow along the edge of the world. It had been a long time since the heavy gunfire in the distance behind them had ceased. But Shaw had still noted random fire now and then coming from along the trail.

  He had a picture of Cantro and his Border Dogs fighting the federales on the run. That was the Border Dogs’ style—guerilla fighters, he reminded himself, and they had sharpened and honed their deadly craft since the great Civil War. There would be riders coming before long. He was certain of it.

  “Janie, wake up, we’re down from the hills,” he said sidelong to her.

  Jane jerked up her head, startled. “Huh? What? I’m not asleep. Where are we?”

  “At the bottom of the hills trail,” said Shaw, gazing out at the rolling sand hills lying ghostly pale and purple in the predawn light. “Whoever the Border Dogs ran into, they’re still fighting up there,” he said with a nudge of his head back over his shoulder.

  “How far back you figure?” Jane asked, trying to wake, but having a hard time with the pain of her injuries still seeking the soothing comfort of sleep.

  “Not far enough,” said Shaw. “Two hours, maybe less. But they’re on us. They have us marked for the gold. They won’t let up.”

  “Then neither will we,” Jane offered with determination. “It’s a full day’s ride across.” She straightened in her saddle, booted her horse up a notch and rode forward onto the beginnings of a coarse white carpet of sand. “We best pick up the wagon tracks before Cantro gets down to us.”

  On the far side of the basin lay another long stretch of blackened hills like the ones behind them. Shaw nudged his speckled barb along behind her, riding the horse at a quarterwise canter, taking a last searching look back into the dark hills behind them.

  Chapter 22

  Riding diagonally, knowing the wagon tracks had to be out there, Shaw and Jane Crowly pushed forward onto the barren desert floor. Reaching into the rolling hills, they traveled across the coarse sand carpet until it grew finer, thicker and whiter beneath their horses’ hooves. By sunrise they had ridden through sand-banked dry washes, patches of creosote, stretches of mesquite and remnants of wind-tossed bracken and wild brush and scattered chimney cactus.

  At midmorning they looked back at their trail while they rested the horses in a shallow dry wash shadowed by an ancient rock shelf lying striped of the sandy earth that had once engulfed it. On the sand at Jane’s feet the unique trail of a snake led up into a crevice in the rock shelf. “Sidewinder . . . ,” Jane commented to Shaw in a dry, tired voice, cautioning him as to the snake’s presence.

  “I see it . . . ,” Shaw replied, echoing her parched, windless tone. He stood staring back through his telescope, scanning their tracks all the way back to the base of the hill line. Above them the sun had taken on its scalding, ovenlike countenance for the day, its glare already too harsh and pressing for the human eye to negotiate for any longer than a few seconds at a time.

  “Any sign . . . ?” Jane asked after a moment. She had poured a few precious drops of canteen water onto the bandanna and sat pressing it gently to her split and swollen lips.

  “Yep, I see them,” Shaw replied.

  “Which bunch . . . ?” Jane asked, rising to her feet with effort.

  “Cantro and his Dogs,” said Shaw, not at all surprised. “But I expect he hasn’t seen the last of the federales. Not if they figure he’s onto the stolen gold.”

  Jane tried to lower her hat brim and stare out with her swollen, naked eyes. But she gave it up and cursed under her breath. “Damned sun . . .”

  Through the glass Shaw saw Cantro and Stroud, both men wearing bandages over their flesh wounds, riding at the front of a strewn-out column of men. Many of the men following them wore similar bandages. One man rode wobbling in his saddle, his hat missing, his blood-stained shirt open wide and a thick, heavily bloodied bandage on his chest.

  “They’re right on our tracks
, Janie, just like we knew they would be,” Shaw said quietly. “They’ll be hard to lose from here on.” He raised his telescope an inch and gazed up the meandering rocky trail leading down to the desert floor. “No sign of any soldiers yet, but they’ll be coming soon enough.”

  Jane picked up the reins to her horse and dusted the seat of her trousers.

  “Yep, they will,” said Shaw. He collapsed the telescope between his palms and stuck it down into his saddlebags. “There should be runoff water still left in the rock tanks,” he said. “We might have to start thinning them down some from there.”

  “We’ll have to let them get awfully close for us to do that,” Jane warned. “Are you sure you want to give away our lead?”

  “They’re on to us anyway,” said Shaw. “When we find the wagon so do they. At least there’ll be less of them to fight once the gold is on the line.”

  “Gold . . .” Jane shook her head. “Except for its glitter and shine, fighting and killing is all I’ve ever seen in it.” She grabbed her saddle horn, swung up and tugged her floppy hat down onto her head.

  “You’ll get no argument from me on that,” Shaw said, swinging up into his saddle beside her.

  They rode on at a diagonal direction until in the early afternoon they’d reached the same coarse, thinning carpet of sand that lined the other edge of the sand hill basin. Feeling the horses growing weary and winded beneath them, they stepped down from their saddles and led the animals over a mile across a strip of barren silver-gray slate that lined the base of the hills.

  Studying the hard rock Shaw noted the scrape of fresh hoof and the wheel marks and with much effort said to Jane beside him, “Here they are, headed for water . . .”

  “Same as us . . . ,” Jane replied with the same breathless effort.

  They scanned the brutal wavering land as they followed the faint signs left by their party, until finally they saw a lone bird lift up from a sunken spot on the flat earth at the foot a steel-gray overhanging hillside.

  The tanks . . . Shaw pointed a tired hand but spoke only to himself, too tired and hot and dry-mouthed to speak aloud.

  When they reached the sunken rock basin they found a shallow pool of water still left from the heavy storm. A stream of braided water that had run down the hillside had already been reduced to a thin trickle. In days the runoff pool itself would be boiled away by the fierceness of the desert sun, yet leaving a shaded store of cool water beneath the earth’s surface.

  “Thank God . . . ,” Jane said in spite of her pain. She let her horse’s reins fall from her hands and staggered the last few feet and dropped onto her knees. With no regard for her battered face she stretched flat on her stomach in the tepid water.

  Beside her, Shaw let the speckled barb drink while he sank two canteens into the water and let them fill. He took off his hat, dipped it full and turned it upside down over his head. “Rest yourself in the shade,” he said to Jane, standing, gazing up the jagged hillside. “I’m going to see what I can spot from higher up.”

  Too tired to respond, Jane only nodded her head and lowered her face back into the soothing water while at her side her horse drew its fill.

  Shaw capped the filled canteens, hung them from his saddle horn and took the telescope back out of his saddlebags. He shoved the telescope inside his shirt up under his poncho. Drawing his rifle from his saddle boot, he let the speckled barb continue drinking as he walked around the water and climbed forty yards, almost hand over foot, up the loose black gravelly hillside.

  From a rocky perch against a standing rock spur, Shaw shoved aside a brittle stand of misplaced mesquite brush and raised the telescope to his eye. At the bottom of the distant hills they’d crossed in the night, he saw a ragged column of soldiers pushing onto the desert floor, an hour behind Cantro’s men, he speculated. Closer in, he saw Cantro and his Border Dogs pushing hard toward the tanks, unwavering from the trail he and Jane had left across the sand basin.

  Swinging the telescope away from Cantro and his men, Shaw searched southwest for any sign of the wagon tracks leaving the hard slate surface and heading on across the sand basin. “Where are you, Dawson . . . ?” he murmured aloud, more able to talk now that he’d gotten some life-sustaining water back into his parched body.

  Giving up on finding any wagon tracks in the sand just yet, he turned back to Cantro, knowing that sooner or later the wagon had to ride off the hard ground and make the crossing through the powdery sand. He had no doubt he would find the tracks farther ahead.

  He raised his rifle to his shoulder and took a practice aim on Garris Cantro riding at the head of the column. Then he lowered the rifle and looked all around. This was the ideal place to start picking men off, he decided. But cover was scarce. He stood and climbed higher and looked down into a deep draw to his left, whose steep wall ran all the way back down to the slate floor. All right . . . He could fire from here, then flee down the other side. Good enough . . .

  Below, Jane finished soaking herself and sat dripping, staring up the overhanging hillside through purple swollen eyes as Shaw turned and climbed down and walked around the water to her. “Any sign of wagon tracks?” she asked, sounding better herself, the water renewing her energy.

  “Not a trace,” Shaw said. “But they’ve got to cross somewhere along here.” He pointed along the hill line. “There’s a cut-in a hundred yards ahead. We’re going to take the horses there and have you wait for me.”

  “Whoa, hold on,” Jane said. “I’ll go take the horses around there with you. But I want to be at your side if there’s shooting to be done. I’d like to get my sights on the sonsabitches who did this to me. Especially that damned Roy Heaton.”

  Shaw saw the determination in her eyes. “Fair enough,” he said evenly, knowing this was not the time to argue. “As soon as Cantro and his men get close enough, I’m going to take down any scouts before we go. It’ll buy us some time and keep them at bay while we look for the wagon.”

  “Are you going to try for Cantro himself?” Jane asked. “It seems like that would set them back on their haunches for a good while.”

  “Cantro’s smart,” said Shaw. “He won’t bring all his men forward, not to a watering hole in open country, not without scouting it out first. He’ll hold his men back out of rifle range until he knows it’s clear here.”

  “He can’t hold back for too long,” Jane said, “not with a column of angry soldados on his tail.”

  “That’s what I’m betting on, Janie,” said Shaw. “The more they kill one another, the less killing we have to do. I’m going to press them against each other as much as I can.” He looked her over, her blackened, swollen eyes, her busted nose. “Are you ready to ride?” “Ready? Hell, I’m waiting on you,” she said.

  When they’d ridden their rested and watered horses along the base of the hill line and turned into the draw, they hitched their reins around a rock spur. Rifle in hand, Shaw climbed upward along a steep path. He offered a hand back to Jane, but she shoved it way and climbed right along behind him.

  Reaching the point where he’d been earlier, Shaw sat down and raised the telescope to his eye. Gazing out he watched Cantro and Stroud lead the men closer and finally slow to a halt before riding into rifle range. Looking out with her swollen, naked eyes, Jane squinted at two riders who left the rest of the column and rode forward.

  “You called it right, Lawrence. Here comes his scouts,” she said.

  “Yep,” said Shaw, “and look at who the one on the left is.” He handed her the telescope for a closer look.

  Careful of her swollen eyes, she looked out through the lens, then said under her breath in a growl, “It’s him, that rotten bastard!” She watched Heaton spread away from the other rider as the two rode closer.

  “What about the other one?” Shaw asked. “Did he have a hand in the beating?”

  “No,” Jane said, “leastwise I don’t recognize him. He wasn’t with the ones who did this.” She lowered the lens and said, “You’ve
got to give me Heaton.”

  Shaw looked at her. “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve never been more sure about anything in my whole damned life,” she said. She lay the telescope on her lap and held her hand out for the rifle.

  “Every shot has to count, Janie,” Shaw cautioned before handing the rifle to her. “Can you do it?”

  “Huh. I expect I can,” she replied haughtily. “I’ve dropped grizzly and running buffalo from farther off than this.”

  “That’s grizzly and buffalo, Janie,” said Shaw, still holding the rifle. “This is a man.”

  “After what Heaton and his pals did to me? Give me that rifle,” she said, snatching the big Winchester from him. “I’ll kill him sure as hell.”

  Shaw watched her cock the rifle smoothly and raise it adeptly to her shoulder. She appeared as familiar with what she was doing as any man he’d seen shoot. “Roy Heaton first . . . ,” she said quietly, relaxing, settling for the shot, a knee cocked and the rifle steadied on it.

  Shaw waited and watched. After a moment of hesitation she let go of her breath and had to take another one and resettle. She cut a glance toward Shaw and said, “I’ve got him now.”

  Shaw watched again as Heaton and the other scout drew closer. “Take your shot, Janie,” he said quietly, in order not to throw her aim off. He continued watching, waiting in silence.

  She hesitated even longer. Shaw saw her having trouble and was ready to reach over for the rifle. Finally she slumped, lowered the barrel and said in a voice close to sobbing, “Hell, I can’t shoot him. . . . I—I just can’t.”

  “Give it to me,” Shaw said, quietly but firmly, taking the rifle from her hands.

  “Adios, Heaton,” he said under his breath, raising the rifle, taking close aim and squeezing the trigger. Jane sat with her head lowered as if in shame as the shot exploded beside her. What felt like two full seconds later, Heaton flipped backward silently from his saddle and rolled in the dirt while his horse veered slightly and began to slow.