by Ralph Cotton
The gunman, agitated and nervous, stared angrily up at the Ranger.
“It’s none of your damn business how many times I have or haven’t been shot!” he snapped.
“All right, then,” Sam said coolly. He turned toward the bartender and said, “I’m obliged if you’d pour me a cup of that good-smelling coffee, barkeep.”
“Coming up,” the bartender said, eyeing the blood that had dripped onto his freshly swept floor.
Sam drew his hand away from the gunman’s shoulder, letting the bloody bar towel sag. He turned toward the bar as the bartender poured steaming coffee into a mug.
“What the hell, Ranger?” said Purser, seeing blood spring anew from the bullet hole. “I need some help here!”
“I’m not butting into your business anymore,” Sam said, picking up the mug of coffee, hiking a boot on the battered iron bar rail. He tipped the mug as in salute. “Feel free to bleed on out. I’m just going to have some coffee, watch you take care of yourself.”
“Damn it, Ranger!” Purser shouted, his eyes stricken with terror. “Don’t let me die! I need help!” Blood poured freely down his chest. He swallowed hard and said, “Okay, listen . . . yes, this is the first time I’ve been shot—satisfied? Anything else you want to know?” He raised his trembling bloody hand, not knowing what to do for himself.
Sam noted the sarcasm in his voice. He sipped the coffee and looked at the bartender.
“Good coffee,” he said, tipping the raised cup in his direction.
“Gracias,” the bartender said. The two of them looked back at the frightened gunman. “Are you going to bleed him out all over my floor?” he asked flatly.
“That’s up to him,” Sam said.
“Because if you are, I’m hoping you’ll—”
“All right, I’m sorry!” Purser shouted, half sobbing, his sarcasm gone. “Don’t let me die. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Help me here!”
The Ranger walked over, coffee mug in hand, and stood over the wounded gunman.
“Are you sure?” he said quietly. “I don’t want to meddle in your business.”
“I’m sure, just ask me,” Purser said, staring helplessly at the blood flowing down from under the soaked bar towel.
Sam set the steaming mug down, adjusted the bloody bar towel and pressed on it, his other hand atop Purser’s shoulder holding him forward.
“To start with, what’s your name?” he said.
“James E. Purser,” came the quick reply. “Call me Jim . . . or Jack. Hell, call me Edward if it suits you.” He settled down as he saw the flow of blood slow immediately under the pressure of the Ranger’s hand.
“Where’d you steal the horses?” Sam asked matter-of-factly, watching himself press the towel onto the gaping wound.
“Who says we stole them?” Purser replied.
Sam looked at him and relaxed the pressure; fresh blood surged in the towel.
“We picked them up here and there, all along the border—that is, across the border, I should say,” he added quickly. Realizing the Ranger had no reason to arrest him yet, he decided to be careful with what he said. He felt the pressure return on the wound. He breathed easier. “It’s not like stealing—Mexes do it to us, we do it to them. Mostly we all just keep switching horses around. No harm in it, right?”
“Depends on who catches you,” said Sam. He paused and then said, “And you ride for Bo Anson.” It wasn’t a question; it was stated as a fact.
Purser started to deny it; Sam saw it in his eyes. He let up on the pressure, just a little.
“Okay, yes, I ride for him some, me and him both.” He nodded in the direction of Doyle Hickey’s body. “Everybody rides for everybody out here.”
“A dozen fresh horses?” Sam said. “How many men ride with this bunch?”
“I don’t know,” Purser replied, “seven or eight right now. Some are always drifting in, drifting out. . . .”
Sam let it go, seeing no solid forthright answer coming to anything he asked. Besides, Purser might be right, the numbers were always changing with these border gangs.
“What are you getting ready to rob?” he asked bluntly.
“I don’t know about no robberies,” Purser said, “and that’s the damn truth. We were just told to get horses, so we did. We’re supposed to catch up to Bo on the trail.”
“Who’s we?” Sam asked.
“Some ol’ boys from here and there,” said Purser. “Gunmen,” he added.
“The ones who’ve been lying up over in Bexnar?” Sam asked.
“Yeah, them, maybe . . . and some others,” Purser said, looking curious as to how the Ranger knew so much. “Who told you?”
Sam didn’t answer. Instead he took the outlaw’s free hand, laid it on the bloody towel and pressed it there.
“Keep it tight,” he said. He backed up a step and took a sip of coffee with his bloody hand, watching Purser closely.
“Hey . . . ,” Purser said, seeing that he could do the same for himself that the Ranger was doing. “I can do this? This ain’t nothing.” He almost grinned, glancing up at the Ranger as the sound of boots pounded up to the open doorway.
“It’s something I figure you’ll need to know, James E. Purser,” Sam said as if committing the name to memory, “the kind of company you’re keeping.”
“What I need to know, Ranger,” Purser said, “is how soon can I get out of this burnt-down pissant town?”
“You didn’t go for your gun. I can’t prove any horse theft,” Sam said.
Purser grinned and said, “I was what you call in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“When you can ride, you’d do well to clear out of here,” the Ranger warned. “Folks can get tense when their town’s been burned down around them.”
“Don’t worry, Ranger,” Purser said. “If you hadn’t shot me I’d already be gone.”
* * *
It was afternoon when the Ranger touched the brim of his sombrero to Silas Radler and a few smudged and haggard townsfolk and turned his copper dun onto Resting’s wide dirt street. Taking three days’ worth of food and four canteens of water with him, he headed out of town following Sheriff Deluna’s buggy tracks out across the sand flats. He’d been given directions to the place she’d ridden out to in order to assist in the childbirth. But something told him she wouldn’t be there.
The buggy wheel tracks had already faded a little in the loose sand, yet they remained true to their destination. He followed them to a line of low hills and saw where they had wound upward out of sight. Higher up on the hillside he saw a small timber and adobe cabin sitting perched on a rocky ledge. Rather than go farther up, he looked around and saw what he decided to be the buggy’s return tracks reaching back down ten yards to his right. He nudged his dun in that direction.
He followed the tracks the next half hour and soon saw where the rig had swung off the trail and set out across the flats. Stepping down from his dun, he noted the hoofprints of many horses filled the sandy dirt at this point. Yet only the sets of two horses’ prints cut a layer atop the winding wheels. Following her, he told himself, finishing his own thoughts.
He looked all around the desolate terrain, picturing the two horses on Sheriff Deluna’s trail—late at night, her taking to the sand flats to get away. He put the picture away, stepped back atop the dun and rode on. He followed the buggy prints farther out onto the flats and came upon the woman’s battered sombrero lying upturned on its side in the sand. Stepping down, he picked it up and looked all around again as he retied the two loose ends of the hat string.
“We’re gaining a little at every turn,” he said quietly to the dun.
Farther on he came to a spot where the buggy had sat long enough to deepen its wheel ruts into the sand. All around it he saw where hooves and boots lapped over a single set of smaller boots that
led off across the sand. He followed those smaller boot prints to the rock stand at the water hole. There he saw blood spots, more boot prints, large and small, and amid them one large bare footprint that stood out above all else. It had two toes missing.
Sam let out a breath, getting a strange picture. Someone was shot here, he decided, from all the dried blood on the ground. He only hoped it wasn’t Sheriff Deluna. Or Sheriff Stone, if the missing-toe footprint belonged to him—and what were the odds of it not? he asked himself. He turned and stepped back up on the dun and rode on, unaware of the eye watching him through the telescope from the cover of rock and pine in the distant hills overlooking the flats and the water hole.
* * *
“Yep, that’s him,” said Max Bard, seeing the Ranger and the dun move away among the glaring sand and wavering heat. Bard lowered his old Confederate telescope, closed it and put it away. He rubbed his eyes, then looked around at Holbert Lee Cross, Pete Worley and the others. Then he looked at Rudy Bowlinger, who fidgeted in his saddle, the anvil still chained to his ankle. Close behind Bowlinger sat Parker Fish, Russell Gant and Dewey Lucas.
“Was Burrack trailing you to us too, Rudy,” Bard asked, “but maybe something else caught his attention?”
Bowlinger heard the accusation in Bard’s voice. He looked all around nervously at the eyes riveted on him. On the ground lay a man in a ragged black suit and a torn and bloody duster. His hat was missing; his holster was empty on his hip. His breath came fast, labored. But there was no fear in his dark eyes.
“I swear, Max,” Bowlinger said, “I had no idea I was being followed. I figured there was none of the detectives still out searching when Bo Anson turned me loose. I wouldn’t get myself followed to our hideout! You’ve got to believe me. I’d die first. I’d swallowed one of my bullets.”
“Settle down, Rudy,” said Holbert Lee Cross. “If Max didn’t believe you, you’d already be dead.”
Max gave Cross a look.
“Crosscut’s right, Rudy,” he said. “Anyway, this wounded man might be one of the colonel’s detectives, but it wasn’t the colonel who put him on your trail. It was Bo Anson.”
Bowlinger looked stunned. He gave the man on the ground a hard stare, bewildered.
“Bo sent him tracking me?” he said in disbelief, looking down at the wounded man. “But Bo set me free. Said to tell you he was doing what you and him talked about doing.”
“Bo Anson is a snake,” said Bard. “He wants to know where our hideout is just as bad as the colonel. Might figure on taking the railroad bounty on us. Why do you think he left that anvil on you to slow you down?”
“I—I never thought about that,” Bowlinger said. “I figured Bo left me chained to it just to be a turd, the way he’s prone to be sometimes.”
Max looked down at the man on the ground. Thirty yards back a dead horse lay in the sand where the man had run the animal to death with Bard and his men closing in on him.
“Lucky we spotted him trailing you in, Rudy,” Max said. He said to the detective, “You’ve led us a long way, made a good run. Now it’s over.” As he spoke, he lifted his rifle one-handed, cocked and pointed down at the man. “Who put you on Rudy’s trail,” he asked quietly, “Bo Anson or the colonel?”
The man let out a breath, knowing he was dead regardless of how he answered. He’d gotten too close, seen too much trail in the direction of the hideout just across the border.
“Bo Anson,” he said. “I’ve been riding for the colonel and Curtis Siedell for peanuts. Anson and I have been keeping tabs on the reward money on you fellas. It’s gotten high. You can’t blame us.”
“What’s your name?” Max asked.
“Mallard Trent,” the detective said.
“Mallard Trent, the tracker?” Max asked. “Used to ride for General Crook?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” the man said. He let out a deep breath. “I was big hoss riding for Crook. Look where I’m ending up.” He shook his head. “Soon as we collected the railroad bounty, we were all set to start robbing Siedell’s operations ourselves. I’ve got all kinds of information about his business, his comings and goings. Fat lot of good it’s going to do me now.”
Bard leveled the rifle a little, but he looked at Cross and Worley and saw them give him a slight shrug.
“You gave us a hell of a run, Trent,” he said down to the detective. “Learned to ride like that fighting the Apache, I expect?”
Trent stared up at him, sensing a fine crack opening in what he’d considered his sealed fate.
“Yeah, I expect,” he said. He continued to stare, barely daring to breathe as he saw the wheels turning in Bard’s mind.
“I heard the general’s a son of a bitch to ride for,” Bard said. Checking him out, Trent decided.
“I never rode for a blue-leg general who wasn’t,” Trent said.
“So you say?” Bard motioned him to his feet with his rifle barrel. Trent stood up, noting that Bard’s finger was off the trigger. “Let me ask you something, Mallard Trent,” he said, eyeing him closely. “Was that blue-leg remark something you said just because you know us ol’ boys are all guerrilla rebels? You figured maybe saying it might save your life?” His stare hardened. But it seemed not to bother Trent. The detective reached a hand back and dusted the seat of his trousers.
“I don’t know,” he said. He paused for a moment, then said, “If it was . . . did it work?”
Max looked at Cross and Worley and gave a short little chuckle. Seeing their approval, he turned back to Trent and lowered the rifle and said, “Yeah, why the hell not?”
The men gave a short round of laughter; Bard uncocked the rifle and laid it back across his lap.
“Ride up front with me, Trent,” he said. “Let’s talk about Curtis Siedell some.”
Trent looked all around.
“I’d like to oblige, but I’m without a horse,” he said.
“Help Rudy get that chain off his ankle. He’ll likely double up with you until we get somewhere.”
Bowlinger eased his horse over, dropped the anvil off his lap and watched the length of chain play out. He climbed down behind the anvil as soon as it hit the ground.
“I’m glad to be getting shed of this heavy bastard,” he said.
As Max Bard backed his horse away and sat watching, Cross and Worley sidled to him.
“If we’re taking Trent into our fold, I figure we’re never going back to our old hideout again?” Cross said.
“That’s right,” said Bard. “It was time to give that place up anyway.” He watched as Bowlinger handed Trent a rifle. Trent laid Bowlinger’s chain out across a rock, stood back a couple of feet and took aim.
A shot rang out and the chain jumped up from the rock, landing in two pieces.
“Where are we headed now?” Cross asked, seeing Bowlinger grab up the shorter piece of chain still attached to his ankle. The freed outlaw danced all around on the ground.
“We’re headed back to Gun Hill, robbing King Curtis’s railroad like we set out to do.” Bard added, “We’re going to kill Bo Anson before he gets any bigger, and we’re going to have to kill this Ranger before he gets any closer.” He looked at Cross and Worley and gave a thin, flat smile. “Always somebody that needs killing,” he said.
“Don’t forget King Curtis himself,” said Worley, eyeing the colonel’s stallion Bard was mounted on.
“I haven’t forgot him, Kid,” Bard said. “We’re just biding our time, waiting for him to stick his head up.” He turned his horse toward the trail and nudged it forward. “That’s where Bo might be able to help us out a little. He’s after Siedell and nothing will stop him.” He smiled. “We’ll let him flush him out for us.”
“No chance we might be able to trust Bo a little?” Worley asked.
“No way, Kid,” said Bard. “Bo is stone crazy. He gets on a mad tangent and de
cides he wants everything—the only thing can stop him is a bullet in his head.”
Part 3
Chapter 16
It was midafternoon when the Ranger heard two rifle shots from up in the hills above the sand flats. He’d been riding the flats for the past hour, following the hoofprints of three horses that lay stretched out before him leading right up in the direction of the shots. The sheriff’s battered sombrero hung from his saddle horn by its repaired string.
“Let’s go, Copper,” Sam said down to the dun, raising its pace to a gallop at the touch of his boots to its sides. The dun closed the last half mile quickly, the sand flats billowing behind them, only tapering its pace back down when the flats sloped upward onto the rocky hillside. The Ranger touched back on the reins and slowed the horse even more, searching the ground beneath them for the hoofprints that were now going to be more difficult to follow.
With the dun climbing upward on a stone path, Sam reined the animal back and forth, leaning down its side, searching for the hoofprints, for scrapes and markings on an unyielding surface. Nothing. But as he straightened in his saddle and nudged the dun forward, he saw rock and dust kick up from the ground a few yards off the path to his right. Behind the kick of dust came the sound of a rifle far up on the hillside. Jerking the dun to a halt, he leaped down from his saddle, rifle in hand, and pulled the dun to safety behind a tall cactus. High on the hillside he saw the glint of a rifle being turned deliberately back and forth in the afternoon sunlight. Then he saw and heard another shot come from the same position. This time the kick of dirt was farther away to his right than the first shot.
Again he saw the repeated back-and-forth glint of metal in the sunlight.
All right, I get it.
He took off his sombrero, held it out to the side and waved it up and down. A moment passed and he saw the signal again. “Here goes,” he said to the dun. Leaving the animal in the cover of the cactus, he stepped out into full view of the high ridgeline from where the shots had come. After a tense second the glint of metal came again. This time the signaling didn’t stop even as he pulled the dun from behind cover and led it up to the right of the rocky path toward the flashing signal.