Escape from Fire River

by Ralph Cotton

  Moments later, two newer Border Dog gunmen, Harvey Bowes and Eddie Crew, stopped at the top of the rise and looked down with caution at Shaw’s body lying sprawled on its side, facing toward them in the hot sand.

  “Damn, Eddie, you nailed one!” said Bowes.

  “Yeah, I did, and you didn’t,” said Bowes with smug little snap to his voice.

  “You better make sure he’s dead before we get too close,” said Bowes, ignoring Crew’s remark. “I understand this man is deadly.”

  Eddie Crew had started to raise his rifle and fire another round for good measure. But now he decided against it. “Oh, he’s dead,” said Crew, “no need in wasting bullets. If it ever took me over one shot to kill a sonsabitch I’d go to a different line of work.”

  As they rode in closer and looked down at Shaw, and at the speckled barb standing a feet away, Bowes said, “Hell, I got to shoot something to have a hand in this game.” He raised a Remington from his holster, cocked it and started to aim at the barb. But before he got the shot off, Shaw’s Colt swung up and fired.

  On his horse beside Bowes, Crew saw the shot lift Bowes from his saddle and fling him to the ground in a spray of sand. Realizing he’d not yet levered a new round into his rifle, he let the useless weapon fall from his hands and didn’t even grab for his pistol. Instead he grabbed his reins, turned his horse and headed back over the rise, the horse kicking up a cloud of fine sandy dust behind them.

  Shaw’s next shot punched him mid-high in his right shoulder and sent him twisting from his saddle and landing with a loud thump on the hot sand. By the time Shaw had walked up the rise, his smoking Colt in hand, Crew was bowed on his knees, his cheek in the sand, his right arm hanging limp. With his left hand he tried to push himself to his feet. Shaw stepped over and kicked his arm from under him. Crew rolled onto his back with a pain-filled moan.

  “Oh God, it hurts,” he said, almost sobbing.

  “I bet it does.” Shaw planted a boot on the young gunman’s bloody chest and held him in place, his Colt staring down in his face. “Can you think of any reason why you’re not lying dead beside your pard?”

  “Yeah . . .” The gunman understood. He winced and said through his pain, “But I don’t know nothing.”

  “Everybody knows something,” Shaw said.

  “If I tell you anything . . . will you let me go?” Crew asked.

  Shaw looked at the wide spread of blood on his chest, and at more of it pumping up out of the bullet hole. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked grimly.

  The young man looked away and deliberately didn’t answer.

  “How many guns does Cantro have riding with him after last night?” Shaw already knew, but he wanted to make sure the man wouldn’t lie to him.

  “I don’t know,” Crew said. “We separated from the others . . . last night and rode down . . . a different trail.”

  “That’s why you’re so close, then?” Shaw said, making sense of it.

  “Yeah,” the man said. “We figured . . . it would look good, us getting the jump . . . on everybody else.”

  Shaw only nodded. “Who are the men that beat Jane Crowly?”

  “It . . . it wasn’t me,” Crew said. “I don’t hold with that . . . kind of thing.”

  “Who was it?” Shaw asked.

  “It was Roy Heaton . . . Elvis Pond and Bale Harmon,” the wounded gunman said. “Pond does all of Cantro’s . . . beating and torturing for him. Harmon is . . . just a mean prick.”

  Shaw noted the names, realizing Heaton was already dead. “Cantro had them do it?”

  “Everything . . . is Cantro’s doing. Trent and Arnold Stroud don’t like it, but Cantro . . . is the leader,” the man said, starting to fade from loss of blood.

  Shaw only stared at him. “Where will I find Cantro and these men? Where will I find the main camp?” He could see the gunman was fading fast.

  “You won’t,” the man said. “Best you’ll do is find them at Ciudad de Almas Perdidas. Cantro, he likes to fiesta there.” Shaw saw him drifting away. “I . . . guess I won’t be joining him there. . . .”

  Shaw let his Colt drop into his holster. “The City of Lost Souls,” he said aloud, as if to remember it should he need it for future reference. He walked toward the speckled barb. The horse looked him up and down curiously, as Shaw approached. “Easy, boy . . . ,” Shaw said, reaching out for the horse’s dangling reins. “You didn’t throw me; I jumped.”

  Jane Crowly had ridden back down to the edge of the hill trail and waited for Shaw to arrive. As he rode up, she asked anxiously, “Are you all right, Lawrence? You had me worried to death here.”

  “I’m good,” Shaw said. “I didn’t want them getting too close, nipping at us all the way here.”

  “I figured as much,” said Jane. “That’s why I rode on and let you have them. Otherwise I would have stayed right there and—”

  “I understand,” Shaw said, stopping her. “Those two came down a different trail. The others are still an hour or more behind us, fighting on the run.” He nodded up the trail where he saw the wagon tracks leading. “What’s going on with everybody?”

  “We best get on up there,” Jane said. “Easy John is starting to talk out of his head.”

  “Yeah? How’s that?” Shaw asked, nudging the speckled barb upward onto the rocky trail.

  “He’s talking about turning the gold wagon loose on the desert floor instead of getting all of us killed over it.” She gave a crooked, swollen-faced grin. “There’s parts to his plan I have to say I look upon most favorably.”

  “After all we’ve gone through escaping Fire River with that gold, he wants to give it up?” Shaw said. “I don’t buy it.” He nudged the barb on upward, Jane right beside him.

  “That’s because you don’t care as much for living as some of us might,” Jane said. “But what do I know? I’m just the dumb ole girl on this little swor-ray.”

  Shaw started to tell her he didn’t like hearing her talk that way about herself. But he stopped himself from doing so, thinking, What’s the use . . . ? “So, you’re all for getting out of this alive,” Shaw said instead.

  “Yeah, crazy me, huh?” said Jane.

  Shaw only smiled. On the way up the trail to the turnoff he considered Lupo’s reasoning on the matter until he reached a conclusion.

  As they turned toward the wagon, Shaw watched Lupo, Dawson and Caldwell turn toward him and Jane. Reaching for Shaw’s horse, Dawson said, “Glad you made it, Shaw. We’re just talking about what we ought to do.”

  Caldwell and Lupo gave Shaw a nod as he and Jane swung down from their saddles. “So I heard,” Shaw said, taking an uncapped canteen that Caldwell held out for him and swigging from it. He stared at Juan Lupo and said, “Jane tells me you want to give up the wagon.”

  “Si, I think it is best to do so,” Juan said defensively. “We have done all we can do. It is time we stopped this chase and admit we’re defeated.”

  “I see,” said Shaw, with a slight nod. “Is that why they call you Easy John, because you give up so easy after such a long, bloody fight?”

  Juan flared, but he kept himself under control. “I am only trying to save the lives of you and your friends. Si, I give up easy this time, when everyone’s life is on the line.”

  “I wish to hell you’d been with Santa Anne at the Alamo!” Jane cut in through split and swollen lips. “It would have saved us all a lot of hard feelings.”

  Juan Lupo ignored her and said to Shaw, “What would you have me do? I am letting all of us off the hook!”

  Dawson and Caldwell only watched and listened, having no idea what Shaw was trying to prove.

  “What about your country?” said Shaw. “You said all that mattered was that your poor country get its gold back to maintain its sovereignty and help its struggling people.” As he spoke he walked past Lupo and stopped at the edge of the wagon.

  “Do not question me on this,” Lupo said, his voice growing stronger than Dawson had e
ver heard it. He turned, facing Shaw from ten feet away. Dawson eased forward and stopped a step behind him. “Step away from the wagon, Shaw,” Lupo warned, his hand pausing near the butt of his gun. “I do not value the gold as much as I value the lives of all four of—” He stopped short. A long boot knife appeared in Shaw’s gloved hand, reached out and slashed a rope holding down the corner of the tarpaulin covering the gold.

  “You don’t value the gold, because there’s no gold to value,” Shaw said. He picked up a bag, slashed it with his knife and let a stream of sand and small stone fall to the ground.

  Juan grabbed for his gun butt, only to find his holster empty. He heard the hammer of his revolver cock behind him, felt the barrel jam against his back. “Stand fast, Easy John,” said Dawson. “We’re learning a lot here.”

  Shaw reached down into the wagon bed, picked up a gold ingot and held it up for inspection. “Just enough gold to make it all look real.” He tossed the ingot to Caldwell, who looked at it closely. “What about it, Undertaker?”

  “Yep, it’s real,” said Caldwell.

  Shaw reached back into the wagon, moved a couple of top-layer ingots and picked up a stone and tossed it to the ground. “But this isn’t,” he said. “Neither are the rest underneath the top layer. Easy John just salted the wagon with enough gold to make a getaway if it came to this.”

  “Si, you are right,” Juan said sternly in his own defense, “and now we must all agree that it has ‘come to this.’ ”

  Dawson backed away from Lupo, but kept the gun aimed at him. “You’ve had us escorting a salted wagon full of rocks all the way from Fire River?”

  “No,” said Lupo, “I only switched the gold for rocks the day you two followed the Apache away from us. I had most of the day to do it. Forgive me, but I saw a time when something like this would happen. It was my duty to lead everyone as far away from the gold as I could, in order to protect it.” He looked ashamed but continued. “I had to distract, mislead and deceive everyone in order to save my country’s gold.”

  “Save it for your-damn-self, you mean,” Jane said gruffly. “I ought to beat your brains down to your boot wells!” She took a threatening step toward Lupo, but Caldwell stopped her.

  “Settle down, Jane,” said Caldwell. “He wasn’t trying to keep it for himself. If he was, he would have cut out long before now. He wouldn’t have stuck himself here with us in a slow-moving wagon. Like he said, he was drawing everybody farther away from where the gold is hidden. He could have taken our horses and lit out on us any time, in the night, while he was on guard and we were asleep.”

  “He could have killed us in our sleep,” Dawson added. He rubbed his chin and considered it. “Caldwell’s right,” he said. “I don’t like what’s been done to us, but we’re off the spot.” He looked at Lupo and said, “All right, Easy John, no more tricks. Let’s get the wagon back down the trail and get ready to cut it loose.”

  “Like hell,” said Jane. “Let him ride it down and cut it loose himself. I’ve gotten a belly full of Easy John Lupo and his tricks.”

  “If none of you want to go with me, I understand,” Lupo said. “I am grateful to you for all you have done.” He gestured toward the trail Cactus John and Harrod had ridden down on. “We are told this trail leads all the way to the Ciudad de Almas Perdidas. You are all free to take it and ride away.”

  Shaw looked up the steep rocky trail in dark contemplation. Then he turned to Dawson, Caldwell and Jane and saw the looks on their faces. To Lupo he said, “What, leave now and miss all the fun?”

  Chapter 25

  Perched high on the hillside, Shaw lowered his telescope for a second and gave a sharp whistle down to the others when he spotted the first of Cantro’s men charging hard across the sand hills. The riders followed the wagon tracks toward the jagged hill line. Looking farther back through the glaring afternoon sunlight he saw the Mexican soldiers pressing hard from less than two miles behind.

  At the base of the hills, Dawson turned from looking upward at Shaw and said to Lupo, “Get ready, Easy John, they’re coming.”

  Without reply, Lupo climbed into the wagon seat and released the long wooden hand brake.

  “Get a good look before you give it up,” Caldwell advised with a concerned look on his face.

  Lupo gave him a short grin.

  “And be careful,” Caldwell added.

  “I am always careful, Undertaker,” Lupo said. “You be careful yourself. Someday perhaps we will work together again.”

  “I hope not,” said Caldwell, his rifle in hand. He stood holding the lead team horse by its bridle until they heard Shaw let go the first round with his Winchester.

  “All right, they’re close enough,” Dawson shouted to Caldwell and Lupo. “Get out of here.”

  Caldwell turned loose of the big horses’ bridle, stepped back and slapped his rifle barrel on its rump as Lupo slapped the leather traces to all of the horses’ backs and sent them bolting out onto the desert floor.

  Above on the hillside, Shaw’s first shot had dropped one of the Border Dogs’ front riders dead in the sand. He took close aim for his second shot as Lupo pushed the heavy speeding wagon tauntingly in front of the riders and led them off along the sand hills past Shaw and the others’ line of fire.

  Farther back on the desert ground, Cantro stood in his stirrups and stared through a pair of battered binoculars at the front riders, two of them having been shot from their saddles. “There’s the wagon!” he shouted to the men around him, disregarding the two dead men on the ground ahead of them. “They’re making a run for it!”

  “All right, men! Ride it down!” shouted Arnold Stroud to the men behind him. His horse reared high and came down into a hard run, kicking up a cloud of sand behind its hooves.

  “They’re going for it . . . ,” Shaw murmured aloud to himself, levering a fresh round into his rifle chamber. He took a close aim and fired; another front rider fell, this one taking his horse down with him and rolling forward in a tangle of limbs and hooves. When the horse stood and shook itself off and ran away, the rider lay dead where he’d fallen.

  Cantro led the charge, headed straight after the wagon, most of the men spreading out and following him. With the gold wagon in sight, the Border Dogs threw caution to the wind and raced wildly through a line of deadly fire coming from Dawson, Caldwell and Shaw on the hillside. Behind them the Mexican soldiers pressed down on them, the Border Dogs offering no return fire to protect their rear.

  A thousand yards ahead in the wagon, Lupo looked back and saw Cantro and his men charging hard. Now was the time to abandon the wagon, he told himself, lashing the traces around a wooden rail on the edge of the seat designed for just such a purpose.

  As the six horses thundered as one up over a sand hill and started down the other side, Lupo rose into a crouch. Taking a deep breath, he hurled himself sidelong out of the wagon and rolled a full ten yards diagonally down the soft, hot hillside in a spray of powdery white sand.

  At the end of his roll, he scrambled onto his feet and into a run and disappeared over the top of a sand hill just as the Border Dogs came pounding up over the hill in pursuit of the wagon. Blowing and fanning dust from his face, Juan gave a dark chuckle, realizing no one was coming to look for him. Apparently they hadn’t even noticed his footprints in the sand. “Ah, gold,” he said to himself, closing his eyes for a moment. “It blinds everyone in its brilliance.”

  Standing, he walked up to the crest of the hill and watched the last of Cantro’s men race toward the wagon. He stood at the crest of the sand hill facing the direction of the approaching soldiers. He did not want them to ride over the hill and come upon him all at once and start shooting. Instead he waited until he saw they were within shooting range of him, and he raised his arms high in the air.

  Captain Fuerte, riding hard, spotted the lone figure standing hatless, arms upreached, a hot wind blowing his black tails sidelong. “Don’t shoot,” he bellowed as the men alongside him took aim on L
upo. “We do not kill unarmed men. He surrenders; take him prisoner.” He veered his horse toward Lupo and said to the three men nearest him, “Follow me. I will see for myself what he has to say.” He rode closer, studying Lupo’s face until recognition came to him. “Juan Lupo?” he said, riding closer.

  “Si, it is I, Capitán Fuerte,” said Lupo, feeling better by the minute.

  “Are you hurt? What are you doing out here?” Fuerte asked.

  “I have found the stolen gold, Capitán, and under the authority granted me by Generalissimo Manual Ortega, you and I are delivering it safely back to Mexico City,” said Lupo. “Now, go get the wagon and bring the gold back to me. We have a long ride ahead of us.” He raised a finger for emphasis. “Do this well, Capitán, and we will both stand side by side while you receive the highest medal of valor and honor our country has to offer.”

  “Si, Juan Lupo, it will be done,” said the serious young captain.

  Lupo stood for a moment as the captain and the three soldiers rode away. This was simple enough, he told himself, walking toward an abandoned horse where it stood near the body of its fallen rider. If the captain returned with the wagon, he could be trusted enough to go back and retrieve the gold. If the captain didn’t return . . . well, the gold was still safely buried where he’d left it. Lupo smiled to himself. Life does not always have to be so hard. . . .

  When the firing had moved across their front and continued on across the desert floor, Shaw climbed down to where Jane stood waiting. “I hope Lupo made it,” he said. “That’s about all I’ve got for him.”