by Ralph Cotton
“Why doesn’t Don Manuel come get the gold?” he said. “Take the risk himself for a lesser price?”
“Oh, he wanted to,” said Bailey. “But Ansil wouldn’t trust him, not now that Don Manuel has plenty of manpower and we only have Kerns and Little Ted working for us.”
“I understand,” said Summers. “The most guns win.”
“Exactly,” she said. She leaned out to him and took his hands in hers as she studied his eyes.
“Go with me, Will,” she said. “Take charge for me. Help my ranch hands and me take the gold to Don Manuel and I’ll pay you five thousand dollars.”
Five thousand dollars? Summers stared at her.
“How much cash and gold are we talking about?” he asked.
“A lot,” she said. “I honestly can’t say how much. But a fortune, according to Ansil, and Ansil doesn’t think small.” She studied Summers’ eyes intently.
“Do Lonnie and Little Ted know about this?” he asked.
“No, not yet,” she said. “They don’t need to know until we’re well under way. Then I’ll tell them where we’re going. Once we arrive I’ll tell them why.”
A careful woman, Summers reminded himself.
He took a deep breath and let it out, considering her proposition. For a lot less money he’d been nearly hanged bringing four bay fillies to the Mexican hill country. Looking into her pale blue eyes, he saw the wild desperation there, the willingness to do whatever it took to keep from losing everything she owned. “How far are the strongbox and the gold from here?” he asked. “How far is it to Don Manuel’s?”
“The gold is a day’s ride,” she said. “From there to Don Manuel’s, three days, four at the most with a slow-moving wagon.”
Summers nodded, considering it.
“All right,” he said after a moment.
“You’ll—you’ll do it?” she stammered, surprised.
“I’ll do it,” he said quietly. “But you’ll have to pay Kerns and Little Ted more than ranch-hand wages for this. If you don’t you’ll be taking the chance of them turning on you. When we go to the mine, you need to clear the air with them. They need to know their reward as well as their risk.”
“Yes, yes, I agree,” she said, sounding excited. She squeezed his hands in hers. “And, Will, I want you to know,” she added, gesturing sidelong at the bed she sat on. “This? What we were going to do before the Belltraes interrupted? I wasn’t going to lie with you just to entice you into doing this for me. It was more than that—”
Summers doubted it, but he wasn’t going to say so.
“It doesn’t matter what we might have done here tonight,” he said, “but for now, we’d best stick to business.”
Again, he thought he saw a look of both relief and disappointment come to her eyes.
“Will,” she said, still holding his hands in hers, “please tell me you’re not doing this only for the money. Please tell me, if only because I need to hear it?”
“It’s not only for the money, Bailey,” Will said. He slipped his hands from hers. “Nothing I do ever is.”
• • •
At first light in Dark Horses, Evert “Dad” Crayley, walked into the doctor’s office flanked by two gunmen. The three men who’d ridden with Darren to the Swann hacienda stood up quickly, like soldiers called to attention.
“Where is that son of a bitch son of mine?” Dad asked. All three pointed a finger down a long hallway. Dad and his two flanking gunmen walked on without stopping. The three waiting gunmen stood and watched in silence, then gave one another wary looks. Dad and his two flanking gunmen walked straight down a hallway to a recovery room where a young Mexican girl sat picking buckshot from Darren Crayley’s shoulder with a long pair of tweezers. She dropped the buckshot onto a bloody cloth laid out beside the wounded man. On another gurney against the wall lay Tubbs, the wagon driver. Two large bloody bandages lay covering his wide, fleshy chest.
“Morning, Dad,” Darren said in a weak voice, turning sad eyes up at his father. Bloody patches of cotton gauze dotted the side of his face.
“I’ll ‘morning’ your lousy hide,” Dad Crayley growled, his fists clenched at his side. “You’re lucky I don’t beat you with a chair right in front of everybody!”
The Mexican girl cowered away in fear, the tweezers in her bloody fingertips.
“What—what did I do?” Darren said, also cowering, pulling away on his gurney. He raised a hand as if to protect his face.
“You didn’t do a gawl-damn thing, evidently!” Dad shouted. “I sent you and three men out with a wagon, and Tubbs to help you load it! You didn’t bring back a damn thing—no furnishings, no bay fillies, nothing.”
“Jesus, Dad, we were attacked,” said Darren. “Look at me. I was shotgunned! Look at Tubbs. He nearly died on the way here.”
“Give me that chair!” Dad reached around for the straight-backed chair as the young Mexican girl jumped away from it. He grasped the top edges of the chair to swing it back, but one of his gunmen, a Tex-Mexican named Hico Morales, raised a hand, attempting to stop him.
“Facil, facil, Dad, do not beat him now,” he said, almost touching Dad’s reaching hands. “You will kill him.”
“So?” said Dad. “Are you taking his side?” He looked sharply at Hico’s hands. Hico withdrew them and held them chest high.
“I take your side, Dad, as always,” said Hico in a rough but soothing voice, trying to defuse the volatile gunman leader. “If you kill him now you will never know what happened.”
Dad calmed a little, took a deep breath and rubbed his red face with both hands, removing them from the chair back. On the gurney, Darren looked relieved. The girl stood back against the wall.
“You’re right,” Dad said to Hico. He turned to Darren and said, “I warned all of you that was no parlor game I sent you out on. I told you I needed results!”
“He shot me, Dad!” said Darren. “It’s hard to load a wagon with a face full of buckshot.”
Dad calmed a little more; he motioned the girl back into her chair.
“Who shot you?” Dad asked.
“It was the horse trader Dallas Tate warned us about,” said Darren, “the one bringing the bay fillies to Ansil Swann. We rode up, I told him what we were there to do—he shot me right out of my saddle. The Swanns’ ranch hands shot Tubbs. I’m telling you, Dad, I was lucky to get out alive. So was Tubbs.”
Dad looked around at Tubbs on his gurney, watching. “Tubbs, are you ready to go back and get those horses and furnishings?”
Tubbs thought about it, but only for a second; then he swallowed a tight knot in his throat.
“Soon as I can walk, I’ll go, Dad, sure enough,” he said.
“You ain’t going nowhere until I say you can,” said a gravelly voice.
At the door to the room, a bent and aged doctor with a head of wild white hair stood leaning on a hickory cane. Blood smeared a white apron he wore over his suit trousers. He looked from Tubbs to Dad Crayley and said, “These men have lost too much blood to do anything today.”
“When can they ride?” Dad asked. He stood glaring back and forth between Tubbs and his son. “I need men, not convalescents.”
A gunman named Leon Yates pushed his way past the doctor into the room.
“Dad, Sheriff Miller and his posse are back, riding in right this minute. Looks like they’ve all had a rough trip. The sheriff is riding bowed over like he’s got shot.”
“Good,” said Dad, “I wish the Belltraes had killed them, probably saved me the trouble.” He looked at his son. “Get yourself up and well. We’re going back to the Swanns’ spread as soon as you can sit on a horse.”
“All right, Dad,” said Darren Crayley.
Dad looked at Yates, Hico and the third gunman, former Abilene town marshal Jasper Trent.
“You three
men come with me. It’s damn time we sent Swann’s worthless sheriff packing—put one of my own security men in to replace him.”
The three men followed Dad outside and walked with him, all four of them abreast, up the stone-tiled street where Sheriff Miller, his deputy, Endo Clifford, and the other posse men crawled down from their horses. Two of the Mexicans had lowered Miller from his saddle. They stood him between them and looped his arms over their shoulders. They helped him toward his office as Dad and his men arrived.
“Hold it right there, Miller,” said Dad, pointing a finger at the bowed half-conscious sheriff. “You left here chasing the Belltraes and that racing stallion. Where the hell are they?”
Sheriff Miller gasped and coughed. Dad saw the dried vomit on the front of his slicker, his lower trouser legs and boot tops.
“I don’t know . . . and I don’t give a damn,” Miller rasped, the two Mexicans keeping him from falling.
Dad looked at the sheriff’s pale white face, flecks of dried sickness in his beard stubble.
“What the hell happened to you, Miller?” Dad asked. Then, as he looked at the others, his expression soured. “What happened to all of you for that matter?”
“We damn near drowned, Dad,” Red Warren said, sounding sick and exhausted himself. “Hadn’t been for these vaqueros, I expect we all would have. The sheriff took the worst of it, swallowed half the Río Azul and caught water fever.”
“Take the sheriff inside,” Endo said to the Mexicans, stepping forward as if taking charge. To Dad he said, “He spent the night shaking, puking and carrying on. But to answer your question, we lost the Belltraes at the river crossing.” Behind him the Mexicans led the sheriff into the adobe office building.
“Did you at least see the stallion?” Dad said as the office door closed. They heard a gagging sound come from inside.
“Oh yes, we saw him,” said Endo. “Saw what was left of him anyway. Those horse-eating sons a’ bitches gutted him and boned him asshole to appetite. We tried to bring his head back with us, but wolves got ahold of it. I hate telling Ansil Swann about it. He loved that stallion like it was close kin.”
“To hell with Swann,” said Dad. “That stallion was the property of Finnity and Baines. I was taking possession of the racing stallion soon as you brought it back.”
Endo just stared upon hearing Dad’s words.
“That’s right,” Dad said. “Ansil Swann is broke. Everything he owned is now the property of Finnity and Baines, north of the border and south.” He gave a nasty grin. “That also means you and Miller are out of jobs. I’m appointing a new sheriff here.”
“Who—who do you figure you’ll appoint?” Endo asked.
“Whoever damn well suits me, Endo. Why,” he said, “you interested in holding the office?”
“I am,” Clifford said flatly. “Just because Miller is gone doesn’t mean I want to be. To tell the truth, him and I ain’t in agreement on how to uphold the law. He let the Belltraes get away when he should have hanged them first thing. He did the same thing with one of their pals, Will Summers. The Swann woman showed up, and Miller let Summers ride right off with her and her cowhands, free as a bird. Bay fillies and all.”
“You don’t say. . . .” Dad gave a glance toward the doctor’s office, then back at Clifford, putting two and two together in his mind. Finally he looked back at Clifford with a sharp expression. “Endo, this might be your lucky day. If I pin a badge on you, are you going to do everything I say, when I say it, so help you God?”
“You got it, Dad,” said Endo.
Crayley gave a chuckle.
“Consider yourself sworn in,” he said. “First thing you need to do is go inside and yank Miller’s badge off his chest and pin it on yours.” He looked around Dark Horses. “Then get right back out here. We’ve got lots of changes to make here. I’m running this town for Finnity and Baines, but by thunder, I intend to make them proud.”
“Just one question, Dad,” said Clifford. “If Miller gives me any guff over taking his badge, how far can I go to straighten him out?”
“Hell, Endo,” said Dad, “you’re the sheriff now. You go as far as you think is necessary.”
Endo Clifford grinned and hiked up his damp, dirty trousers.
“I was hoping that’s what you’d say,” he said, loosening his Colt up and down in its holster as he turned toward the sheriff’s office door.
“Stand here, watch this, you want to know how to get ahead in this world,” Dad said to Jasper Trent, Hico Morales and Yates, who had now joined them. “You too, Red, Buster,” he said to Red Warren and Buster Saggert, who he knew had been listening, “unless you’re both all set to throw in against us.”
“Against you, hell no,” said Warren. “I shoot for whoever pays the most.”
“And lets us run the biggest bar tabs,” Buster Saggert put in with a stonelike expression.
“That’s me on both counts.” Dad grinned and added, “Listen up now.”
The two Mexicans stepped out of the office at Clifford’s command and stood at the closed door with grim looks on their faces.
From inside they heard Sheriff Miller, yell, “No! Please, Endo!”
A single shot rang out inside the office; Dad gave a dark chuckle and shook his head slowly.
“And there it is, men,” he said. “A man who takes orders usually ends up giving them. Let that be a lesson to all of you.”
Endo Clifford stepped out of the office with a crooked grin and his Colt smoking in his hand.
“He gave me guff,” he said. “I straightened him out.”
Chapter 12
Will Summers called Lonnie Kerns and Little Ted aside when the two had ridden back to the bunkhouse at daylight. He explained to them that they would need to empty loose hay and other items from the spread’s large freight wagon and prepare it for the trail. The wagon sat inside the work barn near the bunkhouse. While the three got the wagon ready, Bailey, Summers and Rena Reyes went through the hacienda picking and sorting through furniture, silverware, ornate platters and gold candleholders, anything of value that would serve to cover the real treasure they would have loaded beneath the household goods on their return trip.
“Why today?” Kerns asked. “It’s looking like we’ve got more rain coming in.”
“Because today we’ve still got wagon horses,” Summers said, nodding at the team of large powerful-looking wagon horses standing to the side. “The collectors could take them any day.”
“Not without a fight,” Kerns said.
“True,” said Summers, “but it’s better this way. Why fight if we don’t have to?”
“Can I ask why we’re taking this big, heavy freight wagon?” said Little Ted, he and Kerns standing beside the wagon, watching mice run and dive from the wagon bed as Summers swept it out. “We’ve got a buckboard that will carry a load of furniture just as well. It’d only take one horse, and it doesn’t need cleaning out first.”
“No, you can’t,” said Summers.
“Can’t what?” asked Little Ted, looking confused.
“No, you can’t ask why,” said Summers, starting to sweep out the wagon bed with a broom. “I’ll tell you when we get the load of belongings to where we’re taking them.”
Ted gave a sly grin and looked at Kerns.
“I get it now,” he said. “We’re going to hide the load from the collectors. And Mrs. Swann doesn’t want us to know where until we’re nearly there.”
“She doesn’t trust us?” Kerns asked Summers.
“Look at it this way,” said Summers, “wouldn’t you rather not know, just so if the collectors found out, nobody could suspect you telling them?”
“Makes sense,” said Kerns.
“Ha! So I was right,” said Little Ted. “We are going to hide the load?”
Summers just looked at him, poker-faced
.
“How’d the practice go?” he asked, instead of acknowledging his question.
“Don’t ask,” Little Ted said, looking disappointed. “Lonnie wouldn’t let me practice on him last night while we were watching the trail.”
“I’m not getting my arm wrenched out of my socket,” said Kerns. “I saw the shape Dallas Tate was in after getting flipped.”
“I wasn’t going to flip you, fool,” said Ted, “just grab your gun hand when you drew on me.” He looked back at Summers. “Anyway, I practiced by myself, acted like a gun was drawn on me, grabbed the make-believe hand and held it up and twisted as I stepped under it.” He went through the motion as he spoke. “It wasn’t like having a real person to practice on, but it’ll do.”
Summers stepped down from the swept wagon, broom in hand, and stood with the two ranch hands, looking the freight wagon over good.
“Would you like to know how to take a knife away from a man trying to stab you?” he asked Little Ted.
Little Ted’s eyes turned excited. So did his voice.
“Oh man! How I would!” he said to Summers. “I have always wanted to know how to do that! I saw an army scout do it to a fellow in a saloon one night in El Paso—knocked him cold as a wedge with his own knife handle. You can show me how it’s done?”
“Yep, I’ll show you,” Summers said, “if you’ll stop asking questions until we get to where we’re going.”
“Deal,” said Ted.
“Yep, deal,” said Summers. “Now go get the four bays ready for the trail while Lonnie and I take the wagon up to the hacienda.”
“The four bays are going with us?” said Little Ted, curious. “Why are we taking them—” He caught himself and stopped when he saw the look Summers gave him. “I didn’t ask,” he said quickly. “I started to, but I didn’t.” He turned and walked to the stalls where he’d placed the bays last night. The fillies stood in a row, watching, chewing hay.
“I might like to learn that trick myself, how to take a man’s knife away from him,” Kerns said as he and Summers walked to where two large team horses stood chewing hay, ready to be hitched to the freight wagon tongue. “Will you teach me too?”