Showdown at Gun Hill

by Ralph Cotton

  “Still . . . I lost one,” Stone said in a pained voice. “No need . . . softening it any.”

  “Whatever you say, Sheriff,” said Sam. “Lie easy here.” He walked over to the horses, gathered their reins and led them back. Stone raised his head and looked at him almost in surprise.

  “Aren’t you going . . . after him?”

  “He’ll keep,” Sam replied; he took down his saddlebags and tossed them on the ground beside Stone. “First, we get your bleeding stopped, see what kind of shape you’re in.” He pitched a canteen down beside him.

  “I’m in good enough shape, Ranger,” Stone said, sounding strengthened by having a point of contention. “I’m still . . . kicking, ain’t I?”

  Sam only looked at him.

  “I mean it, Ranger,” said Stone. “Get on after him. I’ll tend to myself.” He gripped the canteen and pulled it to him.

  “Soon enough, Sheriff,” Sam said. “Keep quiet for now, help me get the bleeding stopped.” He pulled out a clean cloth bandage and folded it to a size that would cover the bullet wound. He reached to place the bandage on the sheriff’s back.

  “Wait, what’s that?” Stone said, stopping him.

  The two froze and listened close until they heard a weakened voice call out from where the bullet had dropped Rudy Bowlinger to the dirt.

  “It’s Bowlinger. He’s alive,” Sam said in surprise. “Here, hold this.” He pressed the bandage to the sheriff’s back, drew Stone’s hand around and pressed it firmly over the wound. Then he rushed out into the clearing to where Rudy Bowlinger had pushed himself up with his cuffed hands and sat swaying back and forth unsteadily. His bloody hands gripped a bullet hole high in his shoulder.

  “Ranger . . . who shot me?” Bowlinger asked, his voice sounding stunned, half-conscious.

  “It looked like the colonel’s men,” Sam said. “Let’s get you on your feet, get you behind cover.”

  “Is—is Parker . . . shot?” he asked, making no attempt to rise even with the Ranger trying to help him.

  “No, he’s not shot,” Sam said.

  “Where . . . is he?” Bowlinger asked, looking around aimlessly.

  “He’s gone,” Sam said. “He lit out of here.”

  “Left . . . me?” said Bowlinger. “That lousy bastard . . .”

  Sam looked at him, seeing from the look in his eyes, the amount of blood all around him, that it wasn’t going to help trying to get him onto his feet. He would likely pass out from the loss of so much blood.

  “Stay down,” Sam said. He stepped behind him, hooked his hands under his arms and dragged him over to where Stone lay watching.

  “How bad a shape . . . is he in, Ranger?” he asked, his voice still weak and halting.

  “You’re both alive, Sheriff. Let’s see if we can keep you that way,” Sam said, reaching out for the canteen Sheriff Stone held in his hand.

  * * *

  In the late afternoon the Ranger was sitting sipping a cup of coffee when he heard the sheriff moan and begin to stir from his deep sleep. As Stone raised his head, Sam lifted a small pot of jerked elk he’d heated into a broth over the small fire. He poured the simmered broth into a tin cup and stooped down beside the waking lawman.

  “Seems I’m spending a lot of time waking up lately, Ranger,” he said, his voice sounding a little stronger. He noted the cup in Sam’s hand.

  “Waking up is good for you,” Sam said wryly. He held the cup out to Stone’s mouth. “Drink this. It’ll help you get some of your blood back.”

  Stone propped himself up on an elbow and sipped the broth. He looked over at Bowlinger.

  “Is he alive?” he asked.

  “He is,” Sam said. “I don’t know for how long if the colonel’s men keep dogging us.”

  Both lawmen turned when they heard Bowlinger’s raspy voice.

  “I can . . . still fight, Ranger,” he said weakly. “Get me on . . . my horse.”

  Sam looked at the cup of broth and at the sheriff. Stone nodded him toward the wounded outlaw.

  “Go on, give him some,” he said. “He needs it lots worse than I do.”

  “You both need it,” Sam said. He handed Stone the cup; he stood and walked back to the low-burning fire. He emptied his remaining coffee from his cup, filled it with broth and carried it to where Bowlinger lay with his eyes half-closed. He stooped down and raised Bowlinger’s head.

  When the outlaw had taken two sips of the broth, Sam eased his damp head down onto the blanket. Bowlinger coughed and stirred and kept his eyes open.

  “I’m . . . going to die here, ain’t I, Ranger?” Bowlinger asked as if having already resolved himself to his fate.

  “You’ve got a chance, Bowlinger,” the Ranger replied. “The bullet nicked a vein, but it went through your shoulder clean. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “More than that one?” Bowlinger asked, gesturing his head toward the sheriff.

  “Yes, more than him,” Sam said.

  “Just my damn luck,” Bowlinger said, his strength seeming to surge a little. “A lawman lives . . . a man like me dies. What’s the use? If I don’t die now, I’ll dance on a hangman’s rope.”

  “A man like you?” Stone called out from his blanket ten feet away. “You mean a thief and a low-handed poltroon?”

  Bowlinger ignored the sheriff, batted his eyes and raised himself onto his elbows. He looked all around at the waiting animals and asked, “Where’s my cayuse?”

  “Fish took him,” Sam said.

  “That rotten . . . no-good bastard,” said Bowlinger. “He cut out on me . . . took my horse?”

  “He did at that,” the Ranger said.

  Bowlinger fell silent, but only for a moment.

  “You want to know where . . . they hide out? All right, Ranger, I’ll show you where—those dirty sons a’ bitches. I don’t owe none of them nothing.”

  Sam didn’t reply. He heard the outlaw talking himself into betraying his gang; he wasn’t going to say anything and take a chance on stopping him.

  Bowlinger seemed to consider the matter a moment longer as if trying to figure how he might gain something for himself in exchange for the information.

  “You keep me alive, Ranger . . . and let me go free,” Bowlinger threw in as an afterthought, “I’ll tell you everything you want to know about where they hole up over there.” He gestured a weak nod toward the Mexican border. “I give you my word on it.”

  “His word, ha!” Stone called out.

  Sam didn’t bother replying. Instead he half stood up, as if to cut the conversation short. But Bowlinger stopped him.

  “Wait, Ranger,” the wounded outlaw said, his strength appearing to wane as quickly as it had surged. He dropped onto his back and coughed and settled himself. “All right . . . will you tell the judge to go easy on me?” He paused, then said, “I had a terrible time growing up. You wouldn’t believe—”

  “I’m done with you,” Sam said, cutting him off. He stood the rest of the way up. “I’ll tell the judge you cooperated—gave us valuable information about the Bard Gang. That’s all you’ll get from me.”

  Bowlinger sighed and closed his eyes.

  “That don’t sound like much,” he said.

  “Then how about this?” Sam said. “I’ll keep the colonel’s men from killing you all the way to Yuma.”

  “And I’ll help him do it,” Stone put in, his strength also starting to wane.

  Bowlinger kept his eyes closed. The wounded sheriff and the Ranger only stared at him.

  “So what? That’s your job. . . . You’ve got to do that anyway. . . . ,” Rudy said, his voice trailing, slurring as he drifted back to sleep.

  “Wake that bummer up—wear his head out with a gun barrel, Ranger,” Stone said, still up on his elbows, but starting to look a little shaky again. “Help me up. I�
�ll do it.”

  Sam watched the sheriff melt back onto his blanket, his voice trailing away into a low grumble.

  With both wounded men back to sleep, the Ranger emptied broth from his coffee cup, refilled it with strong black coffee and sat watching the sun drop low on the jagged western hill line. He wasn’t going anywhere tonight. Three men on two horses, two of the men wounded, traveling at night with the smell of blood on them.

  Huh-uh . . . too risky, he warned himself. His best move would be to ride to the nearest mining town or Mexican hill village and get whatever help was available there for these two. Whatever reckoning was to come between him and the colonel’s men would have to wait for now. The main thing now was to keep both the sheriff and the outlaw alive, if it was within his power to do so.

  He sipped the coffee and watched the red fiery sky fade under a cloak of darkness. But the reckoning was coming, he reminded himself, as surely as the coming dawn. Colonel Hinler and his men were not above the law. They had shot a lawman. Whether the act was intentional or by slip of chance in the heat of battle, that would not stand, he told himself, staring out at the far edge of the darkening sky.

  No, that would not stand.

  Chapter 8

  When the four black-suited detectives left the spot overlooking the ambush site, they rode three miles without stopping, hoping to catch up to Parker Fish, whom they’d seen ride away. When they gave up on catching the fleeing outlaw, the fourth detective, Bo Anson, stopped his tired horse beside Duke Patterson and looked out over a rugged rock valley.

  “I say let the fool go,” he said. “Like as not a rattlesnake will spike him before nightfall.” He crossed his wrists on his saddle horn and spat a stream of tobacco. Dust covered his long, drooping mustache.

  But Duke Patterson was having none of it.

  “Like hell we’ll let him go,” he said angrily. “The colonel said kill them both. That’s what we’re going to do.”

  “Then you go on and chase him through there, Duke,” Anson said with a dark chuckle. “I’ll have myself a nice dinner of jackrabbit, ride back come morning and tell the colonel what a fine job you done out here.” He nodded at the jackrabbit hanging down the side of his horse by a strip of rawhide. Then he turned and looked at the two detectives behind them with a flat grin. “What about you fellas? How does some rabbit on a spit sound to you?”

  “I could eat my saddle,” said Thurman Bain in a serious tone.

  The other recently hired detective, Quinton Carlson, nodded in agreement.

  “We come to kill two thieves,” he said. “One out of two ain’t so bad.”

  “Not for you maybe,” said Patterson, “but I’ve got to answer to the colonel, tell him why one of them got away.” He looked at the rifle lying across Anson’s lap, a long brass scope running the length of the barrel. “I’ll also have to explain how the sheriff got shot.”

  Anson gave a dark chuckle and spat again.

  “I’d like to hear that myself,” he said. He and Carlson both laughed. Bain sat watching.

  “I see nothing funny about it,” Patterson said angrily.

  “I can see how you wouldn’t,” Anson said, “you being the one who shot him.”

  “In all that shooting how can you say I shot him?” said Patterson. He nodded at the rifle with its long scope. “How do you know it wasn’t your bullet that hit him?”

  “Because I didn’t aim at him,” Anson said, stifling a laugh. He gave Carlson a look; Carlson grinned and looked away.

  “Neither did I!” Patterson raged.

  “That’s even worse,” Anson said coolly. Again he grinned, the lump of tobacco in his cheek twisting his face sideways. “Maybe he’d been safer if you had.”

  “I’ve had enough of this,” said Patterson. “I’m in charge, and I say we’re going in there after him.” He gestured toward the endless tangle of brush and up-reaching stone.

  Anson and Carlson only stared at him with grins frozen on their faces. Patterson looked away from them, at Thurman Bain.

  “What about you, Bain? Are you coming?” he barked.

  “Righto,” Bain replied, putting his horse a step forward.

  Righto . . . ?

  Anson and Carlson gave a chuckle at Bain’s snappy reply.

  “Then let’s go,” said Patterson, jerking his horse around toward the trail. But he hesitated for a moment, then slumped a little in his saddle. Anson and Carlson gave Bain a look that stopped him.

  “All right . . . ,” Patterson said. “Maybe it would be a good idea to rest these horses overnight—get a fresh start come morning.” He backed his horse a step and looked at the three men. “I expect what the colonel don’t know won’t hurt him.”

  Bo Anson spat tobacco and grinned as he raised a black-handled Colt from the holster on his side.

  “You should have said something sooner, amigo,” he said. He fanned three shots into the detective’s chest. Patterson, wide-eyed, flipped out of his saddle and landed facedown on the rocky ground.

  Thurman Bain started to swing his horse around and make a run for it, afraid he was next. But Carlson’s big Smith & Wesson slid free of its holster, cocked and aimed at his belly.

  “Not so fast, Righto,” Carlson said. “When the colonel asks how this fool died, what’s your answer?”

  Bain looked back and forth at the two in terror.

  “We—we got caught up in a shooting with the lawmen and their prisoners! A wild shot killed him?” he offered quickly.

  “Did you believe that, Bo?” Carlson asked Anson.

  “Not for a minute,” Anson replied. He turned his horse as he spoke. “Go on and shoot him. I’ll go skin this rabbit and rustle us up a cook fire.”

  “Wait!” Bain pleaded as Anson rode away at a walk. “I can say something else. Tell me what to say—!”

  Anson grinned to himself, hearing the young detective’s voice cut short beneath two rapid gunshots.

  “Want me to tie them over their saddles, Bo?” Carlson called out, seeing that Anson wasn’t going to slow his horse a step.

  “Naw, leave them where they’re lying,” Anson called back. “All that shooting, dry-gulching and carrying on, we were lucky to get out of here with our lives—don’t you see?”

  Carlson watched as he stopped his horse a few yards away before riding out of sight around a boulder.

  “Yeah, I see. But do you think the colonel will believe us?” he called out.

  “That’s hard to say, Quinton,” Anson replied with a slight chuckle. He picked the rifle up from across his lap and propped it on his knee. “I might have to wing you a little just to make it look real. Sit real still now.”

  Carlson stared, stunned for a moment.

  “That’s not a damn bit funny, Bo,” he called out. “Don’t fool around!” He fidgeted in his saddle seeing the rifle come up in Anson’s hands.

  “You’re right, Quinton, ol’ pal,” he said, taking aim through the long brass scope. “The colonel’s too smart to fall for a winging story.”

  “Jesus, Bo!” said Carlson. “Stop joshing me. This ain’t the least bit fun—” His words stopped as the rifle bucked in Anson’s hands and smoke billowed up around the barrel. Anson lowered the smoking rifle. He stared at where Carlson lay limp in the dirt, his horse shying back a few feet in confusion. He studied the area, then spat tobacco and smiled in satisfaction. “Yeah, that looks about right,” he said. Then he turned his horse and rode away, the dead rabbit flapping at his horse’s side.

  * * *

  Dewey Lucas and Russell Gant, the two outlaws who’d managed to escape the battle at the rail siding, lay high on a rock ledge watching the four detectives on the trail below. They both looked at each other in surprise when they saw the familiar face of Bo Anson. Their surprise heightened when they saw him raise a gun from its holster and shoot the lead detective ou
t of his saddle. From their rocky, lofty perch they lay in rapt silence as he rode off a few yards and blew Quinton Carlson from his saddle with his big scoped rifle.

  “Holy thunder!” Russell Gant said after a moment, watching Anson ride away with his rabbit swinging at his knee. “What the blazes are Anson and Carlson doing riding for the railroad?”

  Lucas scratched his scraggly gray beard stubble, contemplating what they’d just seen.

  “Beats the devil out of me,” he said, still staring at the bodies on the trail below. “I’m stuck at seeing Bo kill ol’ Quinton. They was best of pals, I always thought.”

  “Ol’ Quinton must have aggravated him about something,” said Gant, rising from his stomach onto his knees, dusting the front of his shirt and his brush-scarred jacket. “Bo could never stand much aggravation, as I recall.”

  “Well,” Lucas said, standing, dusting himself off and adjusting his battered gray cavalry hat, “whatever that was, we’ll have to jaw about it on the trail. I’m just glad this bunch won’t be dogging us all the way home.”

  “I expect somebody will be dogging us, though,” said Gant, the two of them walking back a few steps to where their tired horses waited. “Colonel Hinler only does the bidding of Curtis Siedell—–King Curtis we call him. Siedell ain’t giving up until we’re all lying dead somewhere. The colonel is just his striking rod.”

  As the two stepped into their saddles, he turned and looked at Lucas. “I’m new here, Dewey,” said Gant. “You’ve been with this bunch from the start. I’ve heard stories, but just how strong is this grudge between Bard and Curtis Siedell?”

  “It’s as strong as it is long,” said the older gunman. “It started when we all rid guerrilla for the Galveston Raiders back in the war. The colonel was no different than the rest of us then. He was a guerrilla to the core, same as us. We robbed Northern trains, payrolls, gold shipments and whatnot together,” he explained. “But then the colonel got himself captured and got himself converted, turned into a Yankee. I can’t blame him none, sitting there in Andersonville, waiting to hang—eating rats when he could catch one. It turned him into a galvanized Yankee.”