by Ralph Cotton
The frightened animal spun but settled under the Ranger’s grip. Ignacio, whose other foot had stuck in his stirrup, slung around and slid to a dusty stop right under the tip of Sam’s rifle barrel. His brother, Lyle, started to draw his gun, but froze at the sight of Sheriff Stone’s Colt up and cocked and aimed at him.
“Just so you know,” Sam said, repeating Ignacio’s words down to him. “Every time you show up dogging us, you’ll get this kind of welcome. Only it’ll get a little worse each time.” As he spoke he grabbed the stunned gunman’s shirt and yanked him to his feet.
“I—I think you’ve splintered my shinbone,” Ignacio said, staggering under the pain.
“Good, now get out of here,” Sam said in a low warning tone. “Don’t stop until I see you’re across the flats.”
“All right, we’re going,” said Ignacio, crawling up his horse’s side into his saddle. “But you need to know what this is all about. Your sheriff pal there took money to get a man out of going to prison. Then he crawfished.”
“You want to make it two cracked shins?” Sam said.
“You saddle tramp son of a bitch,” Stone shouted, walking forward, his Colt up and aimed. Sam wondered if he’d forgotten the gun wasn’t loaded. But before Stone could get any closer, the two gunmen spun their horses and gigged them into a run back down onto the trail. Sam and the sheriff stood watching until the horses headed out across the flats the way they’d come.
“Here’s the deal,” Stone said in a calmer voice. “I was drunk. I took money from Centrila to bribe the judge with, to get Centrila’s son, Harper, out of going to prison. I was going to present the money and the deal to the judge and tell him everything, see if he could charge Centrila for trying to bribe a territory judge.”
“Where’s the money?” Sam asked, still watching the two gunmen ride away, dust roiling up behind their horses.
“It’s in a strongbox where I hid it under the floor of my office,” said Stone. “I put it there as evidence, until I had all this ready to present to the judge.”
“When were you going to present it?” Sam asked.
“Three months ago,” said Stone.
“Three months ago?” Sam said. “What happened? Why didn’t you do it?”
A tense pause set in. Finally Stone let out a breath and said in a tone of regret, “I was drunk, Ranger . . . and I kept forgetting to.” He jammed his Colt down into his holster angrily, as if all of it was the gun’s fault.
“You kept forgetting to . . . ,” the Ranger said in a lowered tone.
“It’s the truth,” said Stone. “I meant to turn in the money and tell the judge all about it. You’ve got to believe me.”
“I believe you, Sheriff Stone, for what it’s worth,” said Sam. He looked him up and down, then turned his eyes back out at the two riders. “But this is all something you and Judge Long need to square up between you.”
“I’m getting sober, Ranger,” Stone said with more determination than Sam had heard so far. “I’m not the kind of man you’re seeing. But I’m going to show you, I’m still the lawman I always was—” His words stopped short. He swung away suddenly and ran off a few feet and heaved and gagged, bowed at the waist. The Ranger looked at him, then turned and gathered the horses. It was going to be a long ride to Yuma, he reminded himself again.
Chapter 3
Gun Hill, the Arizona Badlands
At daylight eleven gunmen reined their horses to a halt behind a rise of sand and rock. Three other riders booted their horses up a path and stopped atop the rise. The three pulled their horses abreast and sat looking out across the sand flats, getting a view of the town and the long stretch of hills standing a few miles behind it to the northwest. On the trail leading into the town, they saw two ore wagons moving along slowly. Four sorrel mules pulled each lumbering high-sided wagon. On the other end of the desert town, a locomotive sat idling. Puffs of black smoke belched from its stack like the breath of a sleeping dragon.
Their horses settled atop the rise, a thin hard-faced Georgian gunman named Holbert Lee Cross, aka Crosscut, stared at the scene in the near distance and gave a trace of a sneering half grin beneath a fine mustache. He wore a dusty pin-striped suit beneath a ragged yellow rain slicker. The slicker lay too wide across his narrow shoulders and caused his sleeves to droop low on the backs of his hands. A bandanna circled his neck atop a black string tie.
“There it is, boys,” he said to his cohorts. “Pretty as a painted picture for you.”
In the middle of the three, their leader, a Missourian gunman named Max Bard, rested his crossed wrists on his saddle horn and studied the town with a look of approval on his face.
“Good reconnaissance, Crosscut,” he said to the Georgian gunman after a moment of scrutiny.
Cross gave a single nod of his head, letting the compliment pass.
“Siedell building all these rail spurs is going to be the best thing ever happened to us,” he said.
“What was the man thinking?” said Bard, staring out at the bleak, weathered badlands town.
“Must be thinking he wants to make us all rich,” the third rider, Pete “Kid Domino” Worley said on Bard’s left.
“As rich as he is, Kid?” Bard asked idly.
“Well . . . maybe not that rich,” said Worley, the youngest of the three. He gave a short grin. “Maybe just rich enough to go away and leave him alone.”
Bard and Cross looked at each other.
“Is that ever going to happen, Crosscut?” Bard said.
“Not that I can rightly foresee.” Cross shook his head. “He owes us far too much for us to stop robbing his vast enterprise.” As he spoke he pulled the drooping bandanna up over the bridge of his nose and smoothed the tail down, covering the lower half of his face.
“Consider this just one more payment, Kid,” Bard said to Worley, also pulling his bandanna up over his face. “We’ve still got a lot more due us.”
“Let’s get collecting,” Worley said, following suit. As he adjusted the dusty bandanna over his face, he backed his horse into sight of the riders waiting below for a signal.
“All right, Dewey, sound a charge,” he called down, his voice muffled by the dusty mask.
“Ready, Kid!” Dewey Lucas, who’d been with the Bard Gang since the war, raised his fisted hand to his lips as if blowing a bugle, took lead of the riders as they turned in unison and rode around the rise onto the flatlands where Bard, Cross and Worley had ridden down to meet them.
The fourteen men rode single file at an easy gallop toward the rail siding where the big steam locomotive sat idling. The deep pulsing sound of the engine seemed to mark time steadily to the rise and fall of the horses’ hooves. Yet they started fanning out abreast and speeding up as they drew closer. Seeing express clerks stop in their tracks and look out toward them, Bard called out, “They’ve spotted us, men! Give ’em hell—get that money!” He booted his horse into a hard run as all around him his men’s rifles and handguns erupted, their voices rising amid the pounding gunfire.
* * *
On the long wooden freight platform, an old freight hand named Cleveland Ballard stopped pulling his freight wagon when he first saw the riders’ rise of dust moving toward town. Behind him his coworker Dan Jennings stopped too. He squinted and looked out through the wavering heat at the curtain of dust spreading wide on the desert floor.
“The hell’s this?” Jennings asked Ballard. “A dust devil kicking up?”
“I wish it was,” said Ballard, dropping the freight wagon tongue to the wooden dock. Then he raised his voice and shouted loud and long for the entire rail station to hear, “Riders coming! Riders coming fast!”
As pistol shots fell short of the platform and kicked up dust thirty yards out, rifle shots whistled past the workers and hammered and ricocheted off the idling locomotive and the iron-trimmed rail cars.
; “We’re in a bad place, Dan!” Ballard called out, crouching, scanning all along the wooden platform for safe cover. He grabbed Jennings’s arm and said, “Come on, let’s hightail!”
Stunned, Dan Jennings would have none of it. He stood staring squinty-eyed at the advancing riders, hearing their loud, seamless war cry.
“Listen at ’em! They’s heathen Injuns!” he shouted. Squinting harder, he added, “Injuns wearing white man’s clothes!”
“That’s a rebel yell! They’re rebels, you fool!” shouted Ballard, pulling him along harder. “Don’t make me knock you in the head!”
“Rebels? Rebelling against what?” Jennings shouted in disbelief above the hammer of bullets against wood and iron.
“Take your pick!” Ballard shouted in reply. “And I don’t want to get gut-shot wondering about it!” He jerked harder on Jennings’s arm. “Come on!”
Jennings gave in and ran alongside his coworker in earnest when a bullet whizzed past his nose. The two hurried for cover behind a stack of whiskey barrels that stood on the platform bound for Gun Hill’s saloons. Amber streams of rye arched out of bullet holes and splattered on the platform. The two rail workers began to slip and slide in the spilled whiskey. But they scrambled on until they flung themselves safely behind the leaking kegs.
From their cover the two peeped out and saw the riders drawing near, in full view now even with dust swirling around them. Ballard saw bullets pounding the express car where just inside the open door a clerk in a long leather apron stood crouched in fear.
“Close the doors, Charlie!” Ballard shouted at the clerk.
“I can’t!” the clerk shouted in reply.
“What’s he mean, he can’t?” Ballard shouted to Jennings huddled beside him.
But before Jennings could offer an answer, armed railroad guards began spilling out of the express car onto the platform, rifles blazing in their hands.
“Holy Joseph, Dan! We’ve got us a battle now for sure!” Ballard shouted.
“I’m going to get a gun and shoot me a couple of these yammering idiots!” Jennings shouted, looking all around as the marauders flew from their saddles and got swallowed up by the looming dust. He tried to rise, but Ballard grabbed his arm and yanked him down.
“You stay down and keep out of it! These rail guards know what they’re doing,” he said.
They stayed low and watched the battle from behind the rounded bellies of the whiskey kegs. The armed guards had caught the bandits by surprise with more than a dozen well-armed riflemen running out of the express car onto the platform. At several points surrounding the station, other riflemen rose from cover and slammed the riders with gunfire. Even as bullets cut and sliced and punched through the bandits, they fought back like trapped wildcats. A rail guard flew backward into the express car as a bullet from Max Bard ripped through his heart and left a mist of blood swirling on the air behind him. At the same instant, a bandit’s horse reared as its rider fired upon the rail guards. Then both horse and rider were felled by a deadly barrage of rifle fire.
“Whooiee, Dan! It looks like these boys’ robbing days are done for,” Ballard shouted with joy. They watched as man and horse alike fell beneath the heavy rifle fire. Those men who were not shot from their horses threw themselves to the ground willingly and scrambled in every direction to find cover, firing as they went. Guards fell on the platform under the bandits’ fierce return fire. Thick black smoke and red-brown dust spun and loomed and drifted above the embattled rail yard like some scene from a raging day in hell.
For a moment Max Bard and Holbert Lee Cross were the only two bandits left mounted. When a lull in the guards’ firing ensued, the two reined their horses back and forth, looking all round for a way out. While their frightened horses reared and spun, Bard scanned along the sitting train until he spotted a stock car with the doors wide open on both sides. He could see straight through it.
“Grab Worley and follow me, Crosscut!” he shouted. On the ground Worley fumbled all around at his horse’s side, unable to see, blood filling his eyes. A bullet wound bled freely on his forehead at his hairline. As Bard turned his horse toward the stock car door, Cross jerked his horse over to Worley and grabbed the reins from his bloody hands.
“Come on, Kid,” he said.
With Worley’s horse secured, he reached down and pulled the bleeding bandit up by his shoulders. Firing grew heavier; the remaining bandits raced and stumbled about, grabbing for any horses left standing.
“You all get the hell out of here!” shouted Cross. He turned his big roan sharply. Pulling Worley’s horse by its reins behind him, he gigged his frantic horse hard and raced off behind Bard toward the open stock car. Bard only glanced back once, making sure the other two were coming. Then he faced the platform sidelong and fired his big Starr repeatedly as he raced toward the stock car.
Looking forward at the car, Cross saw the stock ramp reaching down from the edge of the door to the ground. Salvation! All right, Max, I see it! he said to himself. Behind him, Worley held on to his saddle horn and tried to wipe blood from his eyes with the sleeve of his riding duster.
“Hang on, Kid!” shouted Cross. “We’re going up and down real fast!”
“I’m held on!” Worley shouted, struggling unsuccessfully to see through his pouring blood.
He batted his bloody eyes and wiped them clear long enough to catch sight of the looming stock car and its ramp jarring and bouncing beneath the hooves of Bard’s horse racing ahead of them. He caught a blood-smeared glimpse of Bard and his horse streaking up into the car and dropping immediately out of sight on the other side.
Gripping his saddle horn, tightening his legs on his horse’s sides to brace himself, he felt and heard the creaking of the stock ramp threatening to break under the weight of his horse’s hooves at any second. But then the bouncing stopped; hooves rumbled loud and hard across the width of the wooden floor of the car. The world beneath him felt smooth and easy as his and Cross’s horse took flight out the opposite car door. Then he felt the hard slam of hooves meeting ground and he gripped his horse tighter to keep from being thrown forward over its head as they raced on.
Bullets still exploded behind them on the other side of the stock car, but the three had escaped out of the brunt of the ambush. Ahead of Holbert Lee and Worley, Bard rode hard across a wide corral filled with horses. A rifleman sprang up among a row of horses standing saddled and ready for the trail. But before the rail guard could get a shot off at the three riders pounding toward him, Bard raised his big Starr revolver and sent a bullet through the man’s shoulder, spinning him like a top.
Seeing Bard slide his horse sidelong to a halt at the corral gate, Cross did the same. So did Worley.
Without leaving his saddle, Bard grabbed the loop of chain holding two wide corral gates closed at their middle. He raised the chain and flipped it aside.
“Get them out of here, Crosscut!” he shouted as he swung the gates open.
Seeing what Bard was up to, Cross circled back among the corral horses, firing his gun in the air, shooing them through the open gates. In his saddle, Worley managed to get his bandanna raised and drawn firm around his forehead. Batting his eyes, he raised and fired his pistol, sending all the spooked horses galloping out of the corral. Bard pulled the knot out of the rope line and freed the saddled horses to join the fleeing herd.
“What about the others?” Cross jerked his head toward the battle still raging on the other side of the train.
“Leave them or die with them,” Bard said harshly without looking toward the gunfire. He jerked his horse around and pounded away among the corral horses.
Seeing that Worley was back in the game, Cross pitched him his reins.
“Keep up, Kid,” he warned, even as he turned his horse to ride away.
“You got it,” said Worley. The two gigged their horses into the fleeing herd and follo
wed Bard toward the distant hill line. As their horses galloped away, to their left Bard saw two of their men, Dewey Lucas and Russell Gant, hightailing it away in the opposite direction. Bullets from rail guards struck the ground behind their horses’ hooves. At the platform the fighting raged.
That’s it, Dewey. Get the hell out of there, Bard told himself, riding on.
Chapter 4
Seeing their panicked horses running freely out across the desert floor, Detective Colonel Cooper Hinler, who was following the three bandits, stopped in the middle of the dirt street. Standing among the dead and wounded, smoking rifle in hand, he lifted a bandolier of ammunition from around his shoulder and slung it to the dirt at his feet.
“Damn it! Damn it all to hell!” he raged. “There go our horses! What fool left a loading ramp in the stock car door?”
“Leon Foley?” said Duke Patterson, one of his black-suited detectives, standing beside him. “Where’s Foley?” he shouted over his shoulder at the rail guards following him and Hinler. The rail guards stopped and gathered and looked out at the fleeing bandits, the detectives’ own personal mounts following their lead.
“He’s supposed to be at the corral,” a rail guard said.
“Exactly,” said Patterson. He gave Hinler a look. “And that explains the ramp, Colonel. No doubt he put it there. Foley’s an idiot. I should have said something.”
“But you didn’t, did you, Duke?” Hinler said venomously.
“There’s Foley,” said a guard, pointing toward a staggering man who walked out of a thick swirl of dust inside the empty corral. His hand clutched a bleeding shoulder wound. “He’s shot!”
“It’s a damn good thing he’s shot,” Hinler said under his breath to Patterson. “I would wear out a gun barrel over his head.”