by Ralph Cotton
“Don’t worry, sir,” he said toward the bloody patch of hair fluttering on the breeze, “I will see it stays safe until the men return from town. No one will take it. . . .” He paused, looking out along the distant swirl of dust still standing in the riders’ wake. What was he thinking? If the robbers should return for any reason, they would kill him as easily as swatting a gnat!
Oh my God! “I’ve got to get out of here,” he murmured aloud.
Dragging, kicking, tossing the sacks along the dirt street frantically to the livery barn, he hurriedly saddled a mule and started to load the sacks onto the animal’s bony rump. No, that’s no good, he told himself, near panic in his fear and desperation. He looked all around for a good safe place to hide the sacks. But he couldn’t settle on anything until his eyes moved up the ladder leading into a half-full hayloft.
There . . . ! Yes, that would do it. It took only one trip to get two of the bags up the ladder. But when he climbed down and reached for the third, something stopped him from taking it up with the other two. After a pause, he took a deep breath, left the third bag lying beside the mule and climbed the ladder into the loft. He looked down for a few seconds at the third bag on the floor below. Then he dragged the two bags to the far corner of the loft.
He burrowed down to the plank floor through the remaining dry bales of last summer’s wild grasslands crop, shoved the two bulky sacks into the quickly created nest and covered them with loose hay. The money would be safe here for as long as he needed it to be.
Hurrying back down the ladder, he grabbed a short-handled shovel, climbed atop the mule and batted his feet to its sides. His first thought had been to ride to the small trading town five miles down the hillside. But not anymore. He was certain someone would have heard the blast and would be arriving soon. Meanwhile, he wasn’t about to risk riding onto the trail and running into the robbers again.
Veering the mule toward a stretch of steep hillside, he slapped its withers with the reins and sent it bounding up into a deep stand of tall pine and thick juniper amid a natural fortress of jagged rock and half-sunken boulders. “If those outlaws find us in all this,” he said to the flopping ears and mallet head as it bobbed before him, “we deserve to be caught.”
Chapter 16
Outside of the mining complex, back on a path leading up to the main trail, Angelo Sabott rode with a grim expression on his face. Riding single file behind him, toward the end of the line, Shelby Boyd sidled up to Al Heakland and said under his breath, “It’s time to pay up, Al.”
“Like hell, I will,” Heakland whispered in a stern tone.
“Like hell, you won’t,” said Boyd in the same tone of voice. “You made the wager—nobody twisted your arm. Now, get me settled up.”
“Keep on fooling with me, I’ll settle you up for good,” Heakland warned.
But Boyd wasn’t going to be put off. His voice grew a little louder. “I welcome you to try it, you lousy, bet-welching son of—”
“Damn it, Boyd, keep your voice down,” said Heakland, cutting him off. “The mood Angelo is in, we’re lucky he ain’t killed one of us already. Take my advice. This is not the time to pursue the matter.”
“I want my money,” Boyd said firmly. “This is the best time I know of.”
“All my part come to was a little over three hundred dollars,” said Heakland.
“Then three hundred it is,” Bloyd replied, unrelenting. “Now, give it up.” He rubbed his thumb and finger together.
Heakland looked at Boyd’s hand gesture and shook his head. “Damned if money ain’t all any-damned-body thinks about anymore. What’s happened to comradery, brotherhood among men?”
“If you was my brother, my pa would have bashed your head in before the steam rose off your naked ass. Now, give me my damned money.” His voice grew louder.
At the front of the line, Sabott turned in his saddle and looked back with an angry scowl. Both men saw him and settled down as if nothing were going on between them. “All right, you two sonsabitches. The next word I hear from either of yas, Lou here is going to put a bullet in your gullet.” He looked at Crazy Lou Ozlow. “Is that clear, Lou?”
“Clear as frogs,” said Crazy Lou, giving the two men a blank stare.
As frogs? Sabott just looked at him. “Until or unless I say otherwise, all right?”
“You got it, boss,” said Crazy Lou.
Sabott turned his eyes back to the trail ahead, cursing under his breath, “See how you sonsabitches like that.” But no sooner had he taken a breath than a short yelp, a thud and a rustling of snapping tree branches grew louder on the hillside to his right. Before he could turn to look upward, the sound tumbled down toward him.
Rolling the last few yards through some smaller saplings and dry brush, Phil Lindsey, one of the fleeing guards from the mining complex, gave a grunt, a hard bounce and flopped out onto the trail in front of Sabott. The Appaloosa stallion jerked back but didn’t spook, even though the man landed only inches from his hooves.
“Don’t—don’t shoot, Sabott! It’s me!” shouted Lindsey, scrambling onto his scraped and dirt-streaked knees, his dirty hands chest high.
“What the hell is this? Whispering Phil?” said Sabott, veering the Appaloosa to the side, out of his men’s line of fire. Sabott’s own Colt was out and cocked toward the fallen man.
Lindsey scrambled the rest of the way to his feet, a look of fear on his face, but a little relieved that at least Sabott had recognized him. “Damn, I nearly broke my neck,” he offered, out of breath from the long, rocky fall down the steep grade.
“What are you doing up there, Whispering Phil?” Sabott asked, a suspicious look on his face.
“We were trying to get away from you, Sabott,” said Lindsey. “Me and Frankie Farrel was working shotgun guards for that mining company back there until we saw you show up to rob the place. So we lit out.” As he talked, his hands lowered to his sides, but stayed a respectable distance from his gun butt.
Sabott turned a gaze up into the steep hillside and said with a half grin, “Francis, are you up there holding a rifle pointed at us?”
“It’s Frank, gawldang it,” a voice called down from among rock and brush. “It’s not Frankie. It’s not Francis. It’s Frank! And yes, I am holding a rifle pointed down, but it was just until I see how things are going to go between us.”
“You boys have been shadowing us up there all this time?” Sabott called up to him.
“Yep,” said Farrel, “and you’d never have known it if Phil hadn’t busted his ass all over the hillside.”
Whispering Phil cut in. “Not that we meant any harm, Angelo. We was more or less wondering how to approach yas, us having been guards and all. We didn’t want you thinking we was out to spoil your deal.”
“What in God’s name was those Havelin people thinking, making you two payroll guards?” Sabott asked.
“I don’t know that they were doing much thinking at all, Angelo,” said Lindsey. “They’re corporation men, mostly. Sage hired us. I expect he couldn’t find nobody else.”
Sabott called out up the hill, “Lower that rifle and circle on down here, Frank. I feel better when I’ve got the two of yas in clear sight.”
“It could take a while to get down there,” Farrel called down to him.
“That’s all right,” said Sabott. “I’ll feel better knowing you’re on your way.” He looked down at Lindsey, lowered his Colt onto his lap and said, “How long did you two work for Havelin Mining?”
“Going on four months now,” said Lindsey, stooping a little and brushing dirt from his knees. He stepped over to his hat, which had fallen along behind him. Picking it up, he slapped it against his leg and said, “I tell you, it was pure hell, seeing all that payroll, and all we could do was stand and watch it get handed out.”
“I bet,” said Sabott. “How come you two didn’t steal it, that being your occupation and all?”
“Oh, we had it all staked out, sure enough,” said Lind
sey. “We were just biding our time, you might say, waiting for the weather to break. Nobody wants to be traipsing across this high country midwinter, a band of lawmen on your backs.”
“That’s true,” Sabott agreed. “I would not have come this time of year had I thought the winter wasn’t breaking for us.”
Lindsey paused, then said in speculation, “Of course, for the amount of money this time, I expect it would have been worth it even if the weather wasn’t starting to turn better.”
Sabott stared at him. “Are you trying to goad me, Whispering Phil?”
“Hell no, I’m not,” said Lindsey. “This was the biggest money we’ve seen here for a while. They sent up three months’ pay in advance this trip, so’s it would be on time come payday in case the weather didn’t break. Those Cornish diggers will walk off if they don’t get paid when they’re supposed to, weather or no weather. They’re not like the Chinese.”
Sabott cocked his head and squinted, trying to understand. “You’re calling this a big piece of money, what we just got back there?”
“Oh yeah, powerfully big,” Lindsey said, placing his hat atop his head and adjusting it. “We saw it all stacked up on the shelf of the safe right before we left. It looked like enough money to keep me and Frankie living high from now on.”
“Then something’s not right,” said Sabott, mulling the situation over in his mind. “We took less than five thousand dollars out of that safe.”
“No,” said Lindsey, “that can’t be. Somebody has jackpotted you.”
“I’ll damn well say they have,” said Sabott.
Lindsey asked, “Did you kill them both, Sage and his young flunky, Lockhart?”
“We killed a stubborn baboon wearing a suit and a red goatee,” said Sabott, eyeing Lindsey closely. “I didn’t see any young flunky.”
“Davey Lockhart, that sneaking little weasel,” said Lindsey. “He’s the one who got you, I’d bet my whole roll on it. He’s one of them real religious kind, acts like he’s too good to go to hell with the rest of us. You know the type. All the while he’s in there rooting and gouging for everything he can get his arms around and haul off.”
“Yeah, I’ve known those kind of people, and I hate them something awful.” Sabott’s grip tightened on his reins. He looked back in the direction of the Havelin Mining complex. “For two cents, I’d go back, find this Lockhart and rip his head off.”
“You can’t do that,” Lindsey threw in. “That blast was heard for miles. There hasn’t been any blasting gone on there in years. By now everybody and their brother is riding in to see what’s what, most of them armed and expecting trouble.”
“You’re right,” said Sabott. He looked around at his men who had been hearing every word. “Don’t worry about it, none of yas,” he called out to them. “Things don’t always go the way we want them to.”
The men grumbled quietly, but made no complaint out loud. But at the end of the line, a gunman named Jesse Sparks eased his horse back a few steps away from the others and off the trail.
Ahead of them Frank Farrel had ridden down a path from the higher trail, leading Lindsey’s horse by its reins. He came riding toward them as Sabott eased down and put any thought of returning to the mining complex out of his mind. “Where were you two headed?” he asked Lindsey.
Lindsey shrugged. “We’ve got to start looking for something else to rob, I expect.”
As Farrel rode closer and drew his dun down to a stop and handed Lindsey the reins to his horse, Sabott said to them both, “We’re riding four men short, if you two want to throw in with us.”
“I’d like to,” said Lindsey. He looked up at Farrel and said, “What about you, Frankie—I mean Frank?”
“I’m for it,” said Farrel. “After all that guarding work, I need to do something to get my mind and guts moving again.”
“All right then,” said Lindsey to Sabott. “Where are we headed?”
“We’re heading over to meet up with Bobby Zackarow, rob some trains and whatnot,” said Sabott. He gave a devilish grin. “Then we’re going to duck back into Hole-in-the-wall, like every other wise desperado does.”
Lindsey and Farrel looked at each other with a nod of approval. “Have you got anybody dogging you yet?” Lindsey asked.
“Nobody worth mentioning,” said Sabott. “Mount up, I’ll fill yas in on the way.” He turned the ranger’s stallion back to the trail and gave it a tap of his heels.
In the brush off the trail, Jesse Sparks waited until he heard the men ride away. Then he turned his horse back toward the mining complex and spurred it hard. Maybe Angelo Sabott could ride away from that much money, but not him, he told himself.
The ranger had followed the hoofprints of Sabott and his men along the high trail, past a wooden board nailed to a tree, pointing travelers in the direction of the Havelin Mining complex. When he’d heard the tremendous blast, he knew from the very unrestrained volume of it, that it wasn’t the sound of legitimate mining practice or land excavation.
Knowing that Sabott had his hands on the stolen cache of Memphis Beck’s fresh dynamite was enough to caution the ranger and send him circling above the complex for a reconnoitering look before riding in. With his telescope to his right eye, the ranger scanned the dusty street of the mining complex.
He watched the newly arrived men jump down from a wagon and look all around at the debris, the blown-out front of the office building, the overturned safe with its door blasted open, and the bodies of the three men on the ground. He shook his head slightly at the sight of the still-smoldering shoe lying in the middle of the street.
Searching through his narrow circle of vision, Sam found the gathering of horses’ hooves in the dirt where Sabott’s men had mounted and rode away. He followed the tracks away from the complex, upward and out of sight into the rocks and pines. Knowing that one set of those tracks belonged to his stallion, Black Pot, he collapsed the telescope between his gloved hands and stood up, dusting himself off.
As if speaking to the miners at the distant complex, the ranger said, “There’s nothing I can do for you there. But I’m right behind these murdering dogs.”
A muffled sound in the brush behind him caused Sam to turn quickly. His Colt came up from his holster. He paused, his ears piqued toward what he took to be the sound of a shovel blade against rocky earth, somewhere deeper into the brush. Raising a calming hand to the two horses standing near him, he reached out and wrapped the reins and lead rope around a short knurled cedar bush and stepped silently into the brush. . . .
Twelve yards into the tangled brush, jagged rock and boulders, David Lockhart dug frantically with the short-handled shovel he’d brought with him from the mining complex. This wasn’t right, a voice inside him protested. He should have left the third bag with the other two. What had he meant doing a thing like this?
But another voice inside him replied in angry silence, what had he really done wrong? He could have taken all three bags for himself, and kept riding until nobody knew or cared where he came from, or how he’d come by so much money for a young man his age.
Even in the cool air, he sweated as he dug; his lips moved as he argued silently with himself. So intent was he with his digging, and his mental disagreement with himself, he did not hear the ranger ease into the small clearing with his Colt drawn and cocked. “Nobody has to know. Nobody ever will,” he murmured as he stabbed at the hard, rocky ground. “Build a church. Help a poor orphanage. Feed hungry people. There’s a lot of things a person who will be—”
“Let that shovel fall, and raise your hands,” Sam said after a few moments of listening intently.
“Oh my!” Lockhart said, startled. “Don’t shoot!” The shovel fell from his hands as if it were suddenly red-hot.
“Now, stand and turn around,” Sam said.
“Plea-please don’t kill me, Mister,” said Lockhart, doing as he was told as he spoke.
Turning to face the ranger, he saw the badge on his chest. “You�
��re a law officer, not one of the robbers?” The sight of the badge brought relief to his face, but only a little.
“That’s right, I’m Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack,” said the ranger. “Now, who are you? Why are you out here talking to yourself and burying a sack of grain?” The wry look on the ranger’s face told Lockhart the ranger knew there was something more than grain in the lumpy white sack.
Chapter 17
After identifying himself and telling the ranger where he worked and what had happened, Lockhart gestured toward the shovel and the bag of money. “This is not what it looks like, Ranger Burrack. I was going to bury this sack of money. I hid two more bags in the mining complex.” He paused, realizing it made no sense that he’d hidden two bags inside the complex, and now another one out here. “Let me assure you, my only concern is keeping the money safe.”
“Oh . . . ?” Sam stepped forward, uncocked his Colt and lowered it a bit. “I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Lockhart,” he replied, “else I’d be standing here having grave doubts about your character.” He stooped and opened the sack as if to make certain of its contents. Peeping down at the stacks of bills, he gave a sigh and stood up and looked back at Lockhart. “The first thing a young man like yourself needs folks to see in him is good character. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes, of course, I couldn’t agree more, Ranger Burrack,” Lockhart said, his gaze finding reasons to avoid Sam’s eyes. “I’ve been a loyal employee of Havelin Mining ever since my arrival here with the company.”
“Oh,” said Sam, “have you quit them?”
“No, sir!” said Lockhart. He gave Sam a questioning look, this time not avoiding his eyes.
“You said you have been a loyal employee,” Sam quoted him. “I wondered if maybe you’d decided to leave your job.”