by Ralph Cotton
* * *
In the flickering glow of a campfire, Little Foot watched the Ranger and Gilley clean and dress Segan’s countless wounds. As he observed them, he cut a corner of cloth off his own shirttail, pressed it to the wound in his side and left it stuck there in his blood. He told the Ranger everything, about Segan being forced to ride out and start the fires while the Cheyenne Kid held Caroline Udall hostage.
Hearing the story, Sam looked down into Segan’s eyes searching for confirmation.
“He—he gave me his word nothing would happen to my wife,” he said as Gilley stayed busy bandaging cuts on Segan’s face, arms, hands, stomach, legs, shoulders, back and head. “I’ve got to get to Caroline, Ranger,” he said, hurting so bad he couldn’t keep from shaking violently all over. “You ca-can’t hold me here for anything. I ha-haven’t broken any law.”
Little Foot cut in, saying, “You have burned down the frontier, you fool!”
“There’s no la-law against it,” Segan replied sharply. “This is wilderness. It belongs to the government, but there’s no law against starting a fire anywhere I want to start one.” He stared up at the Ranger, shivering in pain, sweating feverishly. “Tell him, Ranger, tell him,” he said.
“There’s no law saying a man can’t start a fire out here anywhere he sees fit,” Sam said. “This is a free country.”
“Then, I’m fr-free to go when the woman is finished with me?” he asked.
“You’re out of your head, mister,” Sam said. “You’re not going anywhere until we get you treated proper. These rags and bandanas aren’t going to keep you from bleeding to death for long.” He turned to Little Foot and asked, “How far are we from Mandell Settlement?”
“Three hours at the most,” said Little Foot, “if we don’t run into fires—” He glared down at Segan. “If some madman hasn’t burned the settlement to the ground.”
Sam stared at Gilley in the firelight. She glanced down at Segan’s scarcely dressed wounds and shook her head slightly in appraisal of the bandages. There was no hiding the severity of his wounds.
“He needs treating quick,” she said. “His belly is the worst. There’s not much holding him together there.”
Sam looked up at the clear purple sky, at a three-quarter moon standing overhead. He stood and took off his duster, then his shirt. He threw the shirt to Gilley.
“Tear it into wide strips,” he said to her. “Bind him good and tight.”
“We’ll need more than this,” Gilley said, already ripping the shirt apart.
“I’ll get the shirt we tied around the horse’s muzzle,” Sam said. As he picked up his duster and put it back on, he looked down at Little Foot pointedly.
Little Foot shook his head.
“This is the only shirt I own, Ranger,” he said. “Anyway, I don’t know if this fool is worth it.”
“We need your shirt,” he said quietly. “I’ll see to it you get a new one at the settlement.”
Little Foot stood up, grudgingly unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. The cloth he had pressed to the wound on his side had already begun to dry in place.
“Every time I deal with a white man, I lose my shirt,” he said in a stoic voice. He threw the shirt down beside Gilley and stared at the Ranger. “I’ll just get our horses ready,” he said.
“I’ll help you,” the Ranger replied.
“Don’t you trust me, Ranger Burrack?” Little Foot asked as he limped along beside the Ranger. He sounded the least bit offended.
“Yes, I trust you,” Sam said. “I trust you every bit as much as you trust me. Does that square us up?”
Little Foot smiled thinly to himself.
“Yes, we’re squared up,” he said. “But when I get my new shirt, I want a bottle of whiskey for my trouble.”
“You’ve got it,” Sam said.
Little Foot looked at Sam as they walked along.
“The woman rides a horse I’ve been feeding at Bagley’s for the past month. Both of your saddles come from there.”
“That’s right,” said Sam. “We lost two of our horses and both our saddles to the fire on our way there.”
“Has the fire reached Bagley’s?” he asked.
“It was getting close when we left there last night,” Sam said.
“What about Bagley and Fritz the bartender?” he asked. “Did they leave?”
“No,” Sam said. “The Cheyenne Kid shot Bagley in his guts. Bagley said he was staying there to die. He had a Remington ready on the table for when the fire got too close. I figured it was his choice.”
Little Foot considered it.
“You did good, Ranger,” said Little Foot. “It is a warrior’s death.”
“Bagley was no warrior,” Sam said. “He was a merchant . . . and an outlaw as it turns out.”
“A man does not have to live as a warrior in order to die like one,” Little Foot said, limping along on his small, withered foot.
“I suppose that’s true enough,” Sam said. “A man does not have to be a warrior to have a warrior’s heart.”
“Yes, a warrior’s heart.” Little Foot nodded in agreement, limping beside him, his chest out, his chin up. “That son of a bitch Cheyenne,” he said. “I should ride with you and take his scalp, as vengeance for shooting my friend Bagley.”
“Don’t push it, Little Foot,” Sam said. “I’m not out for vengeance. I’m out to uphold the law.”
Chapter 14
In the middle of the night, the Ranger and Gilley Maclaine rode into the frontier mining settlement of Mandell. During the moonlit ride, the Ranger had made sure to keep Little Foot and Segan Udall in front of him where he could fix an eye on them. Segan sat limp and wobbly in the saddle the entire trip. When they arrived at the settlement, Gilley jumped down from her horse and ran into a part-shack, part-tent saloon; it was the only structure in Mandell with a lamp still glowing at that hour of night.
“What the hell . . . ?” said a half-drunken bartender who stood behind a makeshift bar shaking a leather dice cup in his hand as Gilley entered suddenly and held the tent fly open wide. Two bleary-eyed miners turned and stared as the Ranger and Little Foot carried Segan through the open fly.
“Is there a doctor in the settlement?” Gilley asked the bartender.
“No,” the bartender said, “our doctor quit us and went to Denver three months back.” He stared past her at the sight of what appeared to be a blood-soaked mummy. The Ranger had helped Segan lie down on a battered faro table. “What happened to this poor soul?” the bartender asked. Segan’s right arm fell off the edge of the table and swung back and forth like some bloody, ragged pendulum.
“A panther got him,” Gilley said, a little out of breath. “He needs sewing up, bad.”
The bartender gave a dark grin, still staring at the bloody, bandaged man on the gambling table.
“Hell, I can sew him up, far as that goes,” he said. Seeing the badge on Sam’s chest, he called out to him, “Always willing to help the law.”
“Obliged for your offer,” Sam said, “but who’s been tending your miners since your doctor left?”
“That would be Madeline Moorham,” the bartender said, pointing off into the darkness. “She’s a nurse—lives in the last tent on the right nearest the mine trail. Be careful how you wake her. She sleeps heeled,” he said, turning to Gilley, who had already walked toward the open fly.
“Do you serve Indians?” Little Foot asked, limping to the bar, bare-chested, wiping his palms on his trousers.
“No, we don’t,” said the bartender, “leastwise not wild blanket Indians.”
The two miners stared drunkenly.
“He’s not a blanket Indian,” Sam said. “He’s with me. He gave up his shirt for bandages.”
The bartender looked at Sam a
nd picked up a bottle from a shelf behind him. Turning to the two miners, he asked, “What say you, fellows? Give an Indian a drink?”
The two miners looked Little Foot up and down.
“I know him,” said one. “He works for Bagley at the trading post.”
“I don’t know if that’s a sound endorsement or not,” said the bartender. He chuckled and poured a shot glass of rye, then slid it across the bar to Little Foot. As Little Foot drank, Sam walked out the tent fly to the horses. He looked off in the direction the bartender had pointed Gilley and saw her and another woman walking hurriedly back to the tent saloon. He took the saddlebags from behind his saddle and draped them over his shoulder.
Gilley eyed the saddlebags as she and the woman passed the Ranger and walked inside the tent.
Sam followed the two women inside the tent and stood to the side as the tall, broad-shouldered nurse set a leather bag on the table beside Segan and leaned over him for a better look.
“Good Lord Almighty! A mama-cat done all this?” she said to Gilley, shaking her head at the bloody mess stretched out before her. “What was he trying to do to her?”
“You might be getting too damn personal, Madeline,” the bartender said with a dark, drunken chuckle.
“I need hot water, Russell, not jokes,” the nurse said to him over her shoulder. She turned back to Segan and began loosening his bloody bandages and dropping them to the floor.
The two miners and Little Foot stood observing, drinking their whiskey.
“You want a shirt?” one miner asked Little Foot.
“No,” said Little Foot, feeling the surge of warm whiskey in his belly. “I might want to become a wild blanket Indian. I need no shirt.”
“Suit yourself, then,” said the miner. To the other miner he said, “Maybe I ought to go wake some of the boys up. They wouldn’t want to miss this.”
The other miner only nodded.
“You’re Ranger Burrack, eh?” Madeline said over her shoulder to the Ranger.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam replied, watching her work.
“I’m Madeline Moorham,” she said, “since none of these jakes have the good manners to introduce anybody.” She peeled the bandages from Segan’s face as she continued. “My hunch is you’re on somebody’s trail?”
“Your hunch is right,” said Sam. “I’m after the Cheyenne Kid and his gang, for bank robbery.”
Madeline nodded as she worked.
“The Kid and his men rode through here yesterday morning. They robbed the mine office and lit out.” She shrugged. “They must’ve needed money awfully bad to rob the office in the middle of the month. Russell here should have told you.”
“Obliged to you for informing me, ma’am,” Sam said. He gave the bartender a cold stare.
“I’m sorry, Ranger,” the bartender said. He gave a shrug. “I’m drunk. I plumb forgot.”
Sam stared at him.
“This is Russell Gandelo,” said Madeline Moorham, giving a nod toward the bartender. She continued. “Anyway, come daylight you’ll have no trouble seeing their tracks leading away from town. I’ve seen these men ride through here before—the Kid too. But this is the first time they rode through here together. First time they done anything like this.” She shook her head, staring at Segan’s bloody chest. “Damn fire got everything and everybody going out of their heads.”
Sam and Gilley looked at each other. Gilley gave him a guarded smile, knowing that Cheyenne needed to replace the money she’d stolen from him.
“How much money did they get?” Sam asked.
“Not enough to brag about,” Madeline said, shaking her head. She wiped Segan’s face with a wet cloth. “Forty-eight dollars, is what I heard. They should have come the first week of the month when everybody’s getting paid.”
Good to know. . . . The Ranger nodded to himself as she spoke.
Forty-eight dollars was a long way from what the outlaw leader needed to cover up for getting himself robbed. Sam thought about the nearest town with a bank in it.
Nawton, he decided. It would only be a short distance out of Cheyenne’s way to Dutchman’s Gulch. He gazed at Little Foot, who stood drinking at the bar. When he caught the Indian’s eye, he nodded him toward the horses.
Little Foot cursed under his breath, feeling his wound throb with pain. He watched the Ranger stoop and slip away unnoticed through the tent fly while Gilley and Madeline Moorham tended to Segan. He hated to miss the good part, leaving just as the nurse began threading a long needle. But he threw back the last of his whiskey, set his glass on the bar and eased himself away, limping out of the tent behind the Ranger.
At the horses, Sam turned to Little Foot.
“How well do you know the trails from here to Nawton?” he asked.
“Better than anybody,” Little Foot said, already feeling the whiskey warm in his chest. “Want me to take you there?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Sam. “Somewhere along the trail to Dutchman’s Gulch, Cheyenne and his gang are going to break away toward Nawton. Any idea where they might do that?”
Little Foot considered it for a moment.
“Yes, I know the trail they will take,” he said. “We can be there by sunup if we do not run into fires.”
“Good,” said Sam. “Cheyenne is going to be thinking the fires killed off anybody tracking him. I’m hoping to catch him and his gang by surprise.”
Little Foot gave him a questioning look and nodded toward the saloon tent.
“Yes, Gilley’s going with us,” Sam said. “I’m only leaving her here right now to help the nurse while we water and grain the horses.”
* * *
In the town of Nawton, under the dark of night, Henry Dowers, the manager of the Nawton Bank and Trust Company, awoke to the sound of tapping on his bedroom window. He swung up onto the side of the bed, lit the lamp on his nightstand and trimmed it low. He pushed himself to his feet. On the other side of the feather bed, his wife, Marletta, a woman fifteen years younger than himself, stirred just long enough to pull her pillow closer to her head.
Henry looked at his sleeping wife and sighed to himself. He trudged to the half-open window in his long nightshirt. His sleepy brain tried to identify the source of the tapping. A pesky bird, no doubt, he thought.
But when he pulled back the thin curtain and looked out the window, instead of a bird, he saw the open bore of a rifle barrel pointed in his face, only a thin layer of wavy glass separating them. While he froze and stared wide-eyed, behind the rifle a bandana-masked face stared back at him. A hand reached in below the half-opened window, snatched the front of his nightshirt and jerked him forward.
“Don’t move, Mr. Banker,” said Dock Latin, the rifle in his other hand as he held the banker in place.
“Ple-please! Don’t shoot,” the banker said, his voice suddenly trembling. “What do you want here?”
“Stand real still and I’ll tell you,” Dock said, barely above a whisper.
From the big feather bed, Marletta called out, “Henry, what’s going on?”
Dock Latin whispered, “Tell her nothing’s going on. Tell her to go back to sleep.”
“Nothing’s going on, Marletta,” the banker said, following orders. “Go back to sleep.”
“Now stand real still for a minute,” Dock whispered, opening the window farther, gun in hand, while he held on to the frightened man’s nightshirt.
“Something’s going on,” Marletta said. “I hear you talking to someone.”
“No, you’re wrong, stay back!” Henry said, hearing the bed squeak as his wife stood up.
Behind him, he heard his wife gasp, almost scream before her voice cut off behind Cheyenne’s gloved hand over her mouth.
“Got it,” Cheyenne said toward the window as he picked up the big Starr
pistol from atop the nightstand beside the bed.
Dock turned the banker loose, gave him a shove backward, climbed into the bedroom and stood with his gun aimed at Henry’s chest. Behind Dock, Royal Tarpis climbed in and stepped to the side, also wearing a bandana pulled up over his nose, also pointing a gun at the banker. But the banker just stared at Cheyenne, the masked man who held Marletta against him, a gloved hand over her mouth, the Starr revolver to the side of her head.
“Oh God, don’t hurt her, mister!” he pleaded.
“I’ll kill her graveyard dead, banker,” Cheyenne said, the woman shivering against him, “if you don’t do like I say.”
“Anything!” said the banker. “Anything you say!”
“I’m going to stay here with your wife, to make sure you don’t get feisty while my pards here take you to the bank and have you empty the safe into a feed sack and bring it back here.”
“But my wife!” Henry Dowers said, looking as if he might become ill any second. “How do I know you won’t . . .” He let his words trail.
Cheyenne cocked his head slightly and said, “Oh, you want to argue with me?”
“For God’s sake, don’t argue, Henry,” Marletta pleaded. “Do what he says!”
“Don’t worry, Henry,” Cheyenne said mockingly, “you have my word nothing’s going to happen to her if you do like you’re told.”
“Let’s go, Henry,” Dock said, stepping behind him, “or would you prefer we call you Hank?”
The banker moved away across the bedroom and out the door.
Behind Marletta, Cheyenne waited until he heard the front door close. Standing behind her, he slid his gloved hand down the open top of her gown and cupped her warm breast.
“I told you I’d be coming to see you soon,” he whispered in her ear, nuzzling her.
She continued to tremble out of control, but she closed her hands over his and offered the side of her neck to his lips.
“I should be furious, you bastard,” she said. “This was dangerous. Someone could have gotten killed.”
“Shhh,” he said, silencing her. “I remembered everything you told me—the gun beside the bed, everything.”