Escape from Fire River

by Ralph Cotton

Jane handed him a canteen; he sipped a mouthful and spit a stream. “That’s all you’ve got for him?” Jane asked with a curious look. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means just as it says,” Shaw said, wiping a hand across his lips. He stepped over to his horse and shoved his hot rifle into his saddle boot. “I saw him talking to the Mexican captain the last time I looked. I figure it’s all out of our hands now.”

  “What about Cantro?” Jane asked. “What about what his men did to me? Am I supposed to forget all that?”

  “You tell me, Janie, are you?” Shaw said.

  “That’s no damned answer,” Jane said.

  “It’s all the answer you get,” said Shaw. “When it comes right down to it, I don’t think you’re going to want those men’s blood on your hands from now on.”

  “Like hell I don’t,” she blustered.

  Shaw stared at her. “Do you, Janie? Really?” he pressed. “Because if you do, I’ll take you to them and watch you kill them.” He said it in a way that let her know it would be her doing the killing, and the living with it afterward.

  Jane fell silent for a moment. Without answering him, she asked with another curious look, “Are you leaving, right here, right now, like this?”

  “Yep,” said Shaw. “Right here, right now, like this.” He swung up into his saddle.

  “But what about us?” Jane said. “We were going to talk later, remember?”

  “This is later, Janie. We are talking,” Shaw said. Before he could say any more, Dawson and Caldwell came riding up from the edge of the trail and he turned the barb to face them.

  “We just saw the soldiers take back the wagon from Cantro’s men. They’re headed back to Lupo with it. This is turning out to be a good day for Juan Lupo all the way around.” They stopped and looked down at Shaw. “We’re going to fade back and get out of sight up the next hill trail.”

  “Good luck,” said Shaw, fishing through his pocket for the dented-up deputy badge Dawson had given him. “I’m headed up right here.” He flipped the badge up to Dawson.

  “What do you want me to do with this?” Dawson asked, catching the badge instinctively.

  “Use your imagination,” Shaw said, adjusting his saddle. He turned to Jane. “You’re welcome to ride with me as far as Suerte Buena.”

  “I don’t want to go to Good Luck,” said Jane. “Where are you headed from there?”

  “I can’t say,” said Shaw. His eyes told her a lot, but none of it made her feel welcome.

  Jane turned to Dawson and Caldwell. “Do you mind if I ride along with you two a ways?”

  Dawson looked at Shaw, saw the consenting look on his face and said to Jane, “Sure, Jane, ride as far as you want with us.”

  Jane turned to Shaw, took the speckled barb by its bridle and led it a few feet away for privacy. “Look, Lawrence, I gave things some thought too. I don’t think I’m ready to settle down just yet. I’ve still got lots of places to go and sights to see. You know me, I ain’t ready for anything like everybody else wants, not yet anyway.”

  “I know,” said Shaw, letting her see it her way, make it her parting, not his.

  “No hard feelings? Amigos for always?” she said with a crooked smile on her battered face.

  “You know it, Janie,” said Shaw. He backed the speckled barb a step and began to turn it onto the steep rocky trail.

  “When you want this badge back, it’ll be waiting for you,” Dawson said. “How’s that for imagination?”

  “That wasn’t what I was going to tell you, but I’m obliged,” Shaw said. He touched his hat brim toward Dawson and Caldwell and nudged the horse forward.

  “He’ll be back for it; you watch,” Dawson said quietly between himself and Caldwell. “For some reason, he’s just not wanting to wear it right now. . . .”

  Shaw rode the rest of the evening, taking his time on the rough, nearly washed out trail. He spent the night under the stars without a fire and told himself he didn’t miss Jane Crowly. In the morning he rode on. At a point where his trail gave view of another high trail to the east he watched Garris Cantro and his remaining men pass from sight to sight and disappear on toward Suerte Buena.

  Border Dogs, headed home . . .

  He stayed two days in Suerte Buena, Cantro and his men already gone, ducking soldiers along their way, he figured. When he left, he took supplies with him and spent another night under the stars, this time with a fire, and hot food and coffee. All right, he admitted, he had missed Jane the first few nights, but the loneliness had gotten better now.

  “You’re a hard gal to miss, Janie . . . ,” he said, speaking into his coffee. She was crazy, he told himself, yet so many people he knew would fit that charge, that it was hard to judge her too harshly for it. Anyway, he was glad she was gone.

  For over a week he wandered the high trails, knowing that by now, Lupo and his wagonload of gold should be well on their way to Mexico City. He knew that by now Dawson, Caldwell and Jane were off the far end of the desert and headed back across the badlands toward the border. He knew that by now Garris Cantro and his men were back where the dying gunman had told him he would find them.

  In the afternoon heat, he found himself stopping the speckled barb at the edge of the City of Lost Souls. He gazed along the dusty street and saw a long wooden table set up beneath a faded green canopy out front of an ancient cantina. The tile roof of the cantina had been trimmed with colorful streamers of cloth, with flowers interwoven into it.

  Fiesta . . . , Shaw thought. At the head of the otherwise empty table he saw Cantro sitting, staring at him, surrounded by gunmen backing him on either side.

  Shaw stepped the speckled barb forward, and rode on until he saw he’d ridden close enough to be under Cantro’s skin, but not close enough to unsettle him. He stopped and stared at Cantro, making him speak first. “All right,” said Cantro, “I found out that you’re Lawrence Shaw.”

  “I am,” Shaw said, and he fell silent again.

  “The Fastest Gun Alive,” Cantro said with a bit of a dark chuckle.

  “I am,” said Shaw.

  “I always wondered how any one man can be the fastest,” Cantro said.

  “It’s just how it is.” Shaw’s poncho hung dusty and limp.

  Behind Cantro the men started to spread out a little, but Cantro stopped them with a raised hand. At the doorway of the cantina stood two men Shaw had not seen before. The two stepped out front cautiously and stood watching curiously. “Just how it is . . .” Cantro nodded, repeating him in contemplation. “Well, Fastest Gun Alive, you made a fool’s mistake coming here, after costing us all that gold. I don’t see you getting out of here alive.”

  Shaw ignored his words. “I want Elvis Pond and Bale Harmon.” He searched the faces of the gunmen.

  “The hell you say.” Cantro stood up and leaned on his palms on the table edge. “Just what do you want them for?”

  “For beating Jane Crowly,” said Shaw. “She’s my woman. It was wrong what they did. They have to pay for it.”

  “Hold on, Shaw,” said Cantro. “I’m the leader. I allowed it. Are you going to kill me too?”

  Ignoring his question Shaw searched the faces and said calmly, “Elvis Pond. Bale Harmon. I’m here to kill you. Step out.”

  “Let us blast this fool,” a gunman near Cantro whispered to him.

  “Shut up,” said Cantro, “this is going to be interesting.” To Shaw he said, “Do you realize that one word from me and you’re dead?”

  Shaw met Cantro’s gaze. “Are all your men cowards, or just the two I’m going to kill?”

  “I’m no coward,” said Elvis Pond, stepping away from the others with his gun hand poised near his holstered Colt. “Neither is Harmon,” he said. A few feet away, Bale Harmon also stepped away from the others, his gun hand poised and ready.

  “That’s right, Shaw,” said Harmon. “If you think you can take two at once, make your move. I beat Jane Crowly, so what? She’s not your woman anyway. She
’s nothing but a damned she-male, is what I always heard.”

  “Hold it right there, all three of yas,” said Cantro. “I’m short of men right now. I can’t risk it. I’ll tell you what, Shaw, you ride out of here, we’ll act like you just stumbled in by mistake—”

  “Hold it, Cantro,” one of the two men standing out front of the cantina called out. “What’s this man talking about? Did someone here beat up a woman?”

  “There’s nothing to it, Major Zell,” said Cantro. “It’s all a misunderstanding.”

  The two men stepped forward and looked Shaw up and down. “Lawrence Shaw, eh?” said the one who had spoken out. “I’ve heard of you.” He wore a thick black beard and had a scar down his face. “I’ve always heard you’re a man who travels on his word.”

  Shaw just stared at him.

  “I’m Major Martin Zell,” the man said. “This is Mr. Liam Bowes, my second in command. I lead the Border Dogs. What’s this about?”

  Cantro cut in, looking strange and worried now that Zell and Bowes had stepped in on the matter. “Major, this is nothing. I needed some information. I thought this Jane Crowly woman had it. I gave Elvis and Harmon permission to smack her around some, that’s all.”

  Zell looked at Shaw for a reply.

  “I saw her face. That’s why I rode here,” Shaw said.

  Zell grimaced. “We don’t beat women, Cantro!” He glared at Pond and Harmon. “If you two did it, here’s where it brought you.” He looked at Shaw and said, “Two against one?”

  “It suits me,” Shaw said, turning his eyes from Zell to Pond and Harmon.

  Zell called out to the other men, “Let no one interfere. If these men are all three square with it, so am I.”

  “I’m square,” said Elvis, staring at Shaw. “I want his trigger finger when I’m done.”

  “I’m square,” said Harmon. “Let’s get on with—”

  Two shots exploded from Shaw’s Colt almost as one. Both men flew backward and hit the ground dead, in spite of the bulletproof vests they wore hidden beneath their shirts.

  “Both of them, clean through their foreheads!” a gunman called out, running over and looking down at the bodies.

  “You didn’t give them a chance, Shaw,” Zell said, stunned.

  “I didn’t come here to,” Shaw said. While his Colt was still smoking he swung it up and shot Garris Cantro in the same spot as he’d shot the other two. Cantro flew backward in his big, heavy wooden chair and sprawled dead in the dirt.

  Zell stood speechless as every gun in the street came out cocked and pointed at Shaw.

  “Good Lord, man!” said Zell. “You leave me little to defend you with! He told you he was in charge. He told you he allowed it. You didn’t so much as flinch! Why did you kill him?”

  Shaw stepped over closer, his Colt still smoking, three shots left in it, pointed loosely at Major Zell’s stomach. “Because he was in charge . . . because he allowed it,” he said. Then, in a lowered tone, he said between the two of them, “Killing Cantro is on the house. You don’t even have to thank me.”

  Zell gave him a strange, puzzled look. In the length of a second, Shaw had read why Zell and his second in command were here to begin with. “Everybody, hold your fire,” Zell commanded. “Hold this man blameless for anything that has happened here today. This was all Cantro’s doing. Things are going to be different from now on.”

  Shaw emptied the spent rounds from his Colt and reloaded. When he turned to step back into his saddle, Liam Bowes said, “Shaw, I lost a cousin out there the other day. I want you to know I’m not going to foster any hard feelings over it. Do you understand me?”

  Shaw only nodded. He stepped up into his saddle, turned the speckled barb and rode away. At the far edge of town he looked back on the City of Lost Souls and let out a hard, tight breath. “Damn it, Janie . . . ,” he said to the dusty street and the dead men lying on it. He looked up across at the sky. Unaccustomed as he was to hearing such words come from his mouth, he said under his breath, “Damn it all to hell. . . .”

  Ralph Cotton brings the Old West to life—don’t miss a single page of action! Read on for a special sneak preview of the next Lawrence Shaw adventure,

  GUN COUNTRY

  Coming from Signet in March 2010

  Badlands, New Mexico

  On the cold, wind-stirred desert night, his senses had abandoned him for a time; it was as if he’d vanished into the swirling emptiness around him. He may have fallen asleep in his saddle, for all he knew. During the missing time the pain inside his head had disappeared into a warm, furry blackness. But with the first dark, silvery streak of dawn his senses had returned, and with them the insistent pain.

  He rode on, his aching head bowed and turned against a moaning wind.

  He knew who he was, he reminded himself. He knew his name, his age, flashes of details and particulars of his life. Oh yes, he knew. . . . But he’d had to grapple with it for a time in order to get the information back clearly into his mind. For a time when his memory had come and gone he’d almost hoped he might lose it altogether. But that was not to be the case, he told himself.

  At daylight, Lawrence Shaw, also known as Fast Larry, also known as the Fastest Gun Alive, rode upward into Colinas Secas from the southwest, off the dusty badlands floor. He wore a battered stove-pipe hat and a long, ragged swallowtail coat. A broad, faded red bandanna mantled the bridge of his nose and had shielded most of his face against the sharp wind-driven sand. Behind him the cold desert wind still moaned in the grainy light like a field of lost souls.

  At the edge of town Shaw stopped his speckled barb and jerked the bandanna down below his chin, stirring a rise of dust on his chest. Beneath him the barb chuffed and shook itself off. “Easy, boy,” he murmured to the dust-coated animal. “We’ll get you fed and stalled first thing.”

  He patted a gloved hand to the barb’s withers. Dust billowed. At a hitch rail out front of a dimly lit saloon, Shaw eyed three horses huddled together with their heads lowered against the cold wind. He saw shadows looming in the saloon’s dusty front window. With pain throbbing in his head, he veered the barb away from the saloon and rode on at a walk. He had no idea who the men were inside the saloon, but he had no doubt they were the sort of men who could lead him where he needed to be.

  Inside the window, three gunmen stood sharing a bottle of rye whiskey. Seeing the stranger turn his horse away, one of the gunmen, an Arkansan named Thurman Thornton, said proudly, “Well, well, it appears this drifter doesn’t desire our company.” He wiped his wrist across his lips and passed the bottle sidelong to the other two.

  “I suspect he might be faint of heart,” a gunman named Bell Mason replied, “if just the sight of our horses scares him.”

  “Suppose we ought to wake Dex up and tell him? See what he wants us to do?” Thornton asked.

  “Naw, Dex is passed out with the whore,” replied a third gunman named Roland Stobble. He took the bottle, threw back a drink and passed it on.

  Beside him Bell Mason took the bottle and said, “Hell, he’ll just tell us to run this scarecrow out of town. It looks like we already done that.” He gave a short, dark grin. “We didn’t even need permission,” he added with sarcasm and threw back a drink.

  “Yeah,” said Stobble, eyeing Thornton with a sour expression. “Do you ask Dex’s permission to go to the jake, or do you figure that out on your own?”

  Thornton ignored the remark, still looking out the dusty window. “I can send any scarecrow hightailing. I don’t need no help, or permission.”

  The three watched the ragged dust-covered stranger appraise a seedy hotel from his saddle as he rode on past the saloon and turned the speckled barb toward the livery barn at a tired walk.

  “Ah, look, he’s going to attend to his horse,” said Stobble in a mocking tone. “Ain’t that commendable? You got to always admire a man who puts his horse’s needs ahead of his own.” He gave a dark chuckle, took back the bottle from Mason and threw down a drink
.

  “I’ll tend his horse,” Thornton threatened, staring out toward the livery barn as Shaw and the speckled barb walked out of sight. He adjusted his coat and started to walk toward the front door.

  “Whoa, hang on,” said Stobble, blocking his way with a raised arm. “What’s your hurry? It’s raw and cold out there. Listen to that wind.”

  “So?” said Thornton, stopping abruptly.

  “So let’s let him come to us, if he gets his nerve up.” Stobble shrugged.

  “What if he doesn’t?” said Thornton. “What if he goes someplace else?”

  “Where the hell else is he going to go?” Mason cut in, sounding agitated by Thornton’s slow-wittedness.

  “What’s wrong with you, Thurman?” Stobble asked Thornton with a goading smile. “Are you still floating around on them cactus buttons?”

  “Never mind what I am or ain’t floating on,” said Thornton. He settled back into place and let his coat fall open again. “When he does get here, I’ll send him hightailing out of town, you watch.”

  “Oh, we’ll watch sure enough,” said Stobble. “You can bet on that.”

  “Send him hightailing?” said Mason. “Hell, that ain’t nothing. My poor old grandma could send him hightailing. I thought we might get a chance to see some fireworks.”

  “I can do that too,” said Thornton confidently. “It makes me no difference.”

  “You mean you don’t mind killing a man before breakfast?” Stobble goaded.

  “Before breakfast, after supper, during dinner, I don’t care,” Thornton said. “Dex said not to let any strangers into town. Far as I’m concerned, I’ll drop this saddle tramp when he walks through the door.”

  “All right, that’s more like it,” said Stobble. “To hell with sending a man hightailing.” He gave Mason a knowing grin. “Show us some action.”

  Inside the livery barn, Shaw slapped his hands up and down his coat sleeves; the speckled barb shook itself off again and chuffed and blew as dust swirled about them.

  From inside a stall a man grumbled and coughed and stood up from a blanket spread on a pile of fresh hay. He held a flickering lantern up against the morning gloom. “Damn it,” he said, “drag yourself and that dirty cayuse out back and dust him down! I’ve swallowed too much of this blasted desert as it is.”