Lawless Trail

by Ralph Cotton

  “Damn,” Hardaway said quietly. “It’s going easy enough so far. He must think you’re a priest.”

  “Hush up, Fatch,” the Ranger said sidelong. He said to Iyo, “The money you have is stolen. You can’t keep it.”

  “Oh, but yes, I can keep it,” the young man said, starting to speak faster. “I see how things work when it comes to money. The desperadoes who first stole it killed the people and took it from them. They come to Méjico and the soldiers take it from them. Then the sergeant takes it from the soldiers, and Carlos takes it from the sergeant.” He paused. The Ranger saw a familiar look come into his eyes.

  “Slow it down, Iyo. I see what’s coming,” he warned. He pulled his barb a step away from Hardaway, letting him know to keep his rifle out of play unless it became necessary.

  But Iyo would have none of it.

  “This money does not know who it belongs to,” he continued, still talking faster, getting himself ready. “Now I take it from Carlos, and I keep it! Now it belongs to me!”

  The Ranger saw his hand go behind his back. Iyo reached for the pistol he had stuck there instead of carrying it in the flap holster. His thin hand moved quick, quick enough for the Ranger to realize that he was no stranger to pulling a gun and firing it at a man without a second thought or hesitation.

  As the big revolver swung around cocked and ready, the Ranger’s Colt bucked once in his hand. With a sound of finality the shot sent Iyo flying backward from his saddle, over the sacks of money through a red mist of blood. Iyo’s body rolling over the horse’s rump spooked the animal—sent it high-stepping sideways so wildly that it lost its balance and fell onto its side. The ties holding the money sacks loosened as the horse flailed its hooves trying to right itself. The Ranger sprang forward on his barb, grabbed the horse by its bridle as it stood up and held it firmly, circling with it on the barb until the horse settled.

  “Jumping Moses!” Hardaway shouted, settling his buckskin. “To start out easy, that sure took a foul and ugly turn.”

  The Ranger didn’t comment. He only shook his head as he held the horse’s reins and loosened the one sack left tied behind the saddle. Then he turned the horse loose to chuff and shake itself out and collect its shaky nerves. On the ground he picked up some stacks of money that had spilled out. Hardaway watched him with a crooked little grin as he picked the money up and stuffed it back into the sack.

  Bent over to pick up the sacks, the Ranger stopped with his back to Hardaway.

  “Let me ask you something, Fatch,” he said quietly, suddenly frozen in place. “Are you going to shoot me in the back, or let me turn around and face you before you pull that trigger?”

  “I don’t want to shoot you at all, Ranger,” Hardaway said, sounding sincere. “That’s the gospel truth.”

  “But you will, for the money,’ the Ranger said.

  “Damn it, yeah, if I have to,” Hardaway said, sounding unhappy with himself. “I was all right, until it spilled out and I got a good look at it.”

  The Ranger straightened and kept his back turned to him.

  “Well, I expect you did the best you could,” the Ranger said with resolve.

  “I believe I did,” Hardaway said. “I truly do.”

  “Let me ask you something else before we get started throwing down,” the Ranger said.

  “Go on and ask. But there ain’t no throwing down to it, Ranger,” Hardaway said. “Just stand there. I’m taking the money and I’m out of here—don’t make me kill you and I won’t.”

  The Ranger continued as if he hadn’t heard him. “Was you ever going to really lead me to the Traybos?”

  “That’s a tough one,” Hardaway said. “I was trying to, but I was glad every time we got sidetracked from it. I wrestled with it over and over. Now that it turns out like it has, I might admit to myself that I never was going to. Those ol’ boys are just too damn good to go down this way. I’ve never jackpotted a pard in my life. Can you understand that?”

  “I believe I can,” the Ranger said.

  “All right, move aside from that money,” Hardaway said.

  “Huh-uh,” said the Ranger, “you’re not taking it. It’s going up the trail with me. I’ll find the Traybos on my own some way, and I’ll tell them if they want it, guess what they’ve got to do to get it.”

  “Jesus, Ranger,” said Hardaway. “If you’re not the most hardheaded, damnedest person—”

  “Let’s not call names and hurt each other’s feelings,” the Ranger said, cutting him off. “You know the game. You’re either in or you’re out.”

  “Don’t do it!” Hardaway shouted, seeing Sam turn toward him, his right hand bringing up his big Colt, cocking it on the upswing.

  Raising the rifle halfway to his shoulder, Hardaway hesitated at the last second. Instead of firing, he jerked his buckskin’s reins hard as a bullet from the Ranger sliced through the air.

  As the buckskin spun and bolted forward, another shot exploded from the Ranger’s big Colt. Hardaway bowed low in his saddle and sent the horse thundering away through the brush. Standing near the dead Mexican, Sam raised his Colt again and fired another shot wildly in the air, as he had the shot before it.

  He stood for a moment in the ringing silence; then he picked up both bags of money, walked over and tied them back atop the settled horse. As he led the horse over to his speckled barb, the barb chuffed and grumbled toward the other horse and stamped its hoof in disapproval.

  The Ranger patted the barb, but said firmly, “Don’t you start. It’s time we get on out of here—see if we can’t get ourselves some work done.”

  Chapter 20

  Fatch Hardaway didn’t slow his buckskin down until he reached a place where the trail wound upward and he could look back and down at the rise of dust he’d left looming in the air behind him. When he finally did stop and step down from his saddle, out of breath, he took down his canteen from his saddle horn, sat down on a rock and uncapped it.

  That was close. Too close, he told himself.

  He threw back a long thirsty swig from the canteen and swallowed it before he realized that instead of water, he’d drunk down a mouthful of last night’s bitter leftover coffee, grounds and all.

  “Damn it to hell!”

  He threw the canteen away, stood up and spat several times. Still the bitter aftertaste lingered. He wiped his shirt cuff across his mouth and paced back and forth. All right, he told himself, the shoot-out with the Ranger had rattled him—no denying it. He looked at his right hand, saw it tremble a little. Jesus . . . He lowered his hand and looked all around as if concerned that someone might have seen him so thrown out of sorts.

  But a miss was as good as a mile, he told himself, pacing again, keeping an eye on the lower end of his back trail. He didn’t know what had come over him back there. He never should have figured the Ranger would give up the money just because he got the drop on him. Sam Burrack was not that kind of lawman. He had already seen enough to know that. The sight of all that money had overwhelmed him. Now he was left with nothing. No reward money—huh-uh—that was out of the picture now.

  “Damn it!” he cursed, causing his buckskin’s ears to pique at the sound of him railing aloud at himself. What in the living hell had he been thinking? Well . . . that was clear enough, he thought, settling down as he slowed his pacing and tried to do some clear thinking. He’d made a play for the money—big money, had he been fortunate enough to pull it off. He settled down some more and shrugged. He couldn’t blame himself for trying. It would have been worth risking his life had it turned out well from him.

  But since he did go for it, he should have had it already settled in his mind to kill the Ranger flat out, not pussyfoot around about it. That had been his problem. He should have shot the Ranger from the get-go when he had him in his sights. He took a deep calming breath and let it out. Now, if he left matters as they stood
, he’d lose out on the reward money and the stolen bank money too. He couldn’t do that. The only way he could square things for himself and make something on this deal was to go to the Traybos and take a chance on them not killing him.

  He’d have to face Wes and Ty Traybo straight up, and tell them what the Ranger had said—that he was coming to them with the stolen money and guess what they would have to do to get it from him.

  That was the deal, he decided. It wasn’t the best plan he ever had, but it was the only way he was going to make up for losing out on the reward money. At least if he took the deal to the Traybos, he might still get his hands on a piece of the stolen bank money.

  He took up his reins and stepped back up into his saddle. The Traybos would most likely kill the Ranger getting their money back, but Hardaway took some solace in the fact that he wouldn’t be the one doing the killing. He had to admit, riding with the Ranger, he’d come to respect him some, enough that he couldn’t bring himself to kill him when he had him cold. But once he brought in the Traybos, the killing would be out of his hands.

  Good enough . . .

  Now that the Ranger wasn’t riding with him, he knew a shortcut off the main trail that would cut his time getting to the Traybos by nearly half. It was time to put the Ranger out of his mind. After all, he was an outlaw, damn it—what did the Ranger expect? Anyway, Ranger Burrack knew the game, he told himself, nudging the buckskin forward.

  But damn it, he liked that Ranger. To tell the truth, he felt bad about all this. Easy, he cautioned himself. This was all about money, big money; and he’d never seen it fail. Big money managed to outweigh bad feelings every time.

  He rode on.

  Pushing the buckskin hard throughout the day, knowing the big horse could take it, he only stopped twice along the meandering empty trail, each time to water himself and the horse at a runoff. He doubted if anybody could track him across some of the rough, rocky, overgrown terrain he had just crossed, but had the Ranger done so, Hardaway was certain he’d thrown him off by now.

  The Ranger was good, but nobody was that good. He stopped for a moment and looked back over his shoulder across the rugged endless peaks and deep shade-blackened valleys he’d crossed as if in affirmation. Yep, he was off anybody’s tracking ability.

  So long, Ranger, he said to himself, finally satisfied that he was riding free and clear.

  He smiled to himself and put the frothed and dirt-streaked buckskin forward on the last three miles to where his shortcut looped over and onto a long upper bend in the main trail.

  • • •

  It was afternoon when he reined his horse up at a crooked wooden hitch rail out in front of an adobe and scrap-wood hovel he remembered from one of his few preceding trips through here when he’d ridden with the Traybos. The hovel sat perched in a bowl of fine-stirring dust on a wide spot in the narrow hill trail. The rear of the building stood against a sheer wall of layered stone that stretched upward three hundred feet.

  At the rail stood three filthy, fierce-looking horses and a brush-scarred supply donkey. Hardaway cocked his rifle across his lap, noting that one of the horses wore a scalp hanging from its saddle horn. Flies circled and whined over the scalp and a hanging machete streaked with black dried blood.

  Hitching his buckskin next to the stinking animals, Hardaway swatted his hat through a greater cloud of flies and stepped onto a short-plank boardwalk. A goat bleated at him from the corner of the hovel. He stepped over a big gray shaggy dog lying stretched flat on its side, appearing from all outward signs to be dead. Yet as Hardaway continued on in through an open doorway, the dog raised its head three inches, looked at him, then let its head collapse back to the sun-bleached planks.

  “Bienvenido, amigo,” said an ancient Mexican as Hardaway stepped inside, relieved to be out of the harsh afternoon sunlight. With outstretched arms as thin as hickory kindling, the old man waved him farther in with long, knobby fingers.

  “Gracias,” Hardaway said, remembering the old man from past ventures. “I see you are still here.”

  “Where else would I be?” the old Mexican asked with a baffled expression. He shrugged his thin shoulders, then spread a single-toothed grin.

  “You’ve got a point there,” Hardaway said, looking all around as he walked to a low rickety bar and laid his rifle atop it. The tip of his rifle barrel pointed, not by coincidence, in the direction of the three horses’ owners.

  Without asking, the old Mexican stood a corked bottle of mescal on the bar top; he stood a gray-filmed glass beside it and brushed away a nosy fly.

  “We have beans, amigo,” the old man said.

  Hardaway shoved the glass aside and pulled the cork from the mescal bottle.

  “Dump some on a plate,” he replied. He wiped the dusty rim of the bottle and took a long drink, feeling eyes from the end of the bar staring at him.

  As the old Mexican stepped away toward a side doorway leading to an outside cocina, Hardaway drew a wrist across his lips, stared down-bar at three bearded men in greasy fringed buckskin and wide sombreros.

  “What?” he said flatly, his hand resting between the standing bottle and the prone Winchester.

  The men continued to stare, their gun hands resting down their sides, near the butts of revolvers holstered there. Lying strewn along the floor against the bar sat bundles of ragged blankets and hides. A battered slouch hat lay tilted atop one of the bundles.

  “We just was wondering, cousin,” said one of the men, this one wearing a thin, wispy black beard, looking as filthy and as fierce as the horses standing out front. “How would you like to lie down with a woman awhile?”

  Hardaway gave them a curious look, his head cocked slightly.

  “Which one of you’s a woman?” he asked.

  The men looked taken aback for a moment. One started to snarl and reach for his gun, outraged. But the spokesman settled him with a look and waved a dirty hand back and forth in front of them.

  “No, no, no, you’ve got us wrong, cousin,” he said quickly. “We’re none of us women.”

  “Thank God,” said Hardaway. “I was worried.” He eyed them with repulsion. Leaving his rifle hand in place on the bar top, he lifted the bottle with his left hand.

  “We’ve got women here, fool,” said the one who had taken offense. This one wore a thick red beard. He gestured a grimy hand at the bundles of blankets and hides on the dirt floor along the bar. In the shadowy light, Hardaway saw one of the bundles move a little and realized that the blankets and hides covered three women huddled together, their heads bowed as if they were seeking to turn invisible and disappear.

  “We was thinking you might could stand a turn or two,” the third man offered with a lewd grin. “They’re every one fresh from the southern border, sweeter than plums.”

  “Slavers, huh?” said Hardaway, looking the men up and down again, not hiding his contempt.

  “That’s not a name we like hearing,” said the third man.

  “No offense,” Hardaway said with a hint of sarcasm. “I meant to say, men of a sporting nature?”

  “Yeah, that’s us, all right,” said the third man. Long dirty yellow hair hung past his shoulders; his beard was a tangle the color of dried sage.

  Hardaway just stared at the three men.

  The man with the thick red beard grabbed one of the women by her blanketed shoulder and dragged her to her feet.

  “Stand up there, little princes, show this pilgrim what you’ve got covered up.”

  “Sit down,” Hardaway said to the frightened girl before she could open her blanket. The girl stood trembling, not knowing what to do; a chain ran from her ankle to the girl next to her.

  “How much for the three of them?” Hardaway asked. He lifted a thick leather wallet from inside his coat and dropped it on the bar.

  The men looked at each other.

  �
�For how long?” the one with the red beard asked.

  “For good,” Hardaway said. “How about a hundred a head, no haggling, no questions asked?”

  “We can get more from the brothels across the border,” said the man with the wispy black beard.

  “You can feed them all the way there, hope none of them get snakebit or run off in the night,” said Hardaway. “I’m talking three hundred right here and now.”

  “Three hundred American?” the man with the yellow beard ask.

  “Is there any other kind?” said Hardaway.

  “What are you going to do with them?” the red-bearded man asked with a suspicious look.

  “What do you care?” Hardaway said with a serious look. “I might want to raise them like they’re daughters of my own.”

  The three chuckled.

  “I bet,” said the one with the red beard.

  “The fact is I own a place southeast of here, on this side of the border,” Hardaway said. “I can always use new girls.”

  “Three hundred . . .” The three looked at one another. One fingered his black wispy beard.

  “Hell yes, let’s do ’er up,” said the one with the red beard. “Give us the money.”

  “Give me the women,” Hardaway countered.

  The man gave the standing girl a shove and kicked at the blankets and hides on the floor, saying, “Get on down there. You girls have been boughten.”

  “Get going, vamanos!” The man with the black beard clapped his hands loudly at the women as they scurried down the bar and stopped near Hardaway and sank back to the dirt. A chain rattled from ankle to ankle.

  “The money,” the man with the red beard said firmly.

  “The key,” Hardaway said in the same tone. He picked up the wallet and held it ready to pitch down the bar top.

  The man with the black beard pulled out a key and slid it along the bar. Hardaway caught it and slid his wallet down the bar in return.

  The man with the red beard clamped a thick hand down on the sliding wallet, stopped it and picked it up with a grin. Hardaway tossed the key down to the young woman wearing the hat and whispered to her in Spanish, “Sal de aquí rápidamente, pasa, llega a casa.”