The E.R. Slade Western Omnibus No.1

by E. R. Slade

  Riley, now aboard his unruly bay, looked up at Lee, who was still training his rifle on him.

  “Stranger,” he said. “I don’t know who you are, but you done bought yourself a one-way ticket to boot hill.”

  And then they rode, slowly, down the arroyo a hundred yards, and up the bank on the far side and away to the southeast.

  Lee lowered the Winchester only after they had gone at least twice its effective range. Then he thrust it back into the scabbard on the saddle and led the tired animal down the bank into the wash.

  Chapter Two

  After the stranger had gone down into the arroyo out of sight, Riley drew up, sat his horse lankly, and fished his pockets for makings. When he had a cigarette alight, and in its customary place at the corner of his mouth, he coughed once or twice and looked to see how much day was left. The sun had at least four hours more to the horizon, he estimated.

  Beside him, on a sprightly little mustang, sat his brother Albert. Baldy Al, he was known as, even to his face, since he had been bald since his middle twenties and had gotten used to the nickname then. He was heavyset and looked very unlike his brother, except for the prominent nose. He had a tendency to whine when things didn’t go just right.

  “It’s two days to water,” he said now, his voice taking on the irritating whine. “Who the hell is he?”

  “Shut up,” Chuck Riley said automatically. Though he was thinking of the very question his brother had raised. Who was this who came from nowhere and interrupted twelve armed men in something that was none of his business? Or was it his business? No man who made it this far into the desert bought trouble, having either that natural inclination or having been taught the lesson without dying of it.

  He moved his lips, and the end of the hand-rolled cigarette flicked up and down.

  “We got to get our water back,” Al said. “Two days is too long without water.”

  “Shut up.”

  Chuck Riley raised a hand and waved at his men to follow. He swung his horse in a semicircle and rode back for the arroyo, keeping his eyes squinted, the smoke from his cigarette marking his progress through the hot, still, dust-dry air.

  He pulled them up when they were within fifty yards of the edge of the arroyo. They could not yet see to the bottom of it.

  “Okay, boys, git off your horses. Leave them here. Foller me.” They all dismounted and, with Riley in the lead, approached the rim of the arroyo at a crouch. Then they spread out and lay flat behind the dry clumps of gramma grass and small rocks. Down below, a scene that would affect all their welfare was being acted out.

  ~*~

  Lee halted beside the prone form of the woman. She was whimpering and moaning and holding her side. She did not seem to be aware of his presence beside her as yet. Almighty pretty, was his first thought, upon a close-up inspection of her. She was clear-featured, and looked pure Spanish. But she had cried out in English. She looked young, perhaps as much girl as woman.

  He dropped the sorrel’s reins to the ground, so that the well-trained animal wouldn’t leave, though the poor creature was highly unlikely to go frisking away in the condition it was in. Then he knelt beside the girl.

  “Let’s have a look,” he said, pulling her hand gently from her side. The blood was already clotting. She watched him steadily, without saying anything, as he took one of the canteens from the pile left by the men he’d run off, and wet his neckerchief. He took the canteen along with him when he returned to the girl, and offered her water. She looked into his eyes with an expression that was not encouraging. A man might think from it that she was merely tolerating him. The more he thought about what he’d done, the less he liked it, and the more he inwardly cursed himself for getting into this.

  She accepted the water as if she distrusted him. When she started to drink, he used the dampened neckerchief to clean off the wound as best he could. She did not flinch or take notice until he pressed a little too hard on the break in the skin. Then she yelped and hit him in the face with her fist.

  “Hold on there, little filly,” he said, and backed off a bit to see what she was going to do next.

  “Don’t you call me names!” she said fiercely.

  He took the canteen from her, since she was no longer drinking from it, and then looked around the rim of the arroyo as he drank deeply of the lukewarm water. He saw slight movements along the eastern rim and realized that the scene was being observed. Riley and his pack of wolves had returned to watch the cougar with their kill. It was not enough that he was armed and they were not. It was a dozen to one. Long odds made longer when you considered these men had no water, and needed it. They would never leave his trail until they got their water and guns back. Out here it was their only chance, if water was a long way off.

  Lee went to the sorrel, removed his stained and battered Stetson, poured it half full of water from the canteen, and let the animal drink. Then he emptied another canteen into the hat and let the horse drink that, too. The animal could have gotten down a whole lot more, but too much water wouldn’t be good for such a played-out animal in all this heat. He decided the best bet was to stay right here for now, give the sorrel a rest, give it more to drink, and then ride out.

  He sat down beside the girl and leaned against the shaded side of a rock, tipping his hat down over his eyes.

  The guns and canteens were fifteen feet away in a pile, the girl five feet away, the sorrel ten, looking more perky than it had in some time. The sound of munching, as the animal cropped a dry little clump of grass, was pretty well the only sound for some minutes.

  Lee didn’t appear to, but he was watching the rim very carefully. The first nose that showed was going to get shot off. No noses showed.

  “Get out of here,” the girl demanded suddenly. He didn’t care for her tone of voice, or the attitude she was showing towards him. Still, nobody had given him an invite to the party, so he couldn’t see where he had much right to go complaining.

  “Reckon we’ll just stay right here for now, ma’am,” he said briefly, and then lapsed into silence.

  “What do you want from me?” she demanded. When she got no answer, she said, “They will come back, and they will kill me. They’ll kill you too.”

  “They are back,” he said softly. “Don’t get jumpy. They cain’t do a thing, settin’ up there on the rim. I got all the firepower. I could knock ’em all down before they got into the wash, even if they came all to once. Don’t you fret, little filly.”

  “But there’s twelve of them. And I don’t even know you. And don’t call me a filly. It’s not proper.”

  He thought that one over, and spoke. “See, ma’am, it’s like this. I made a mistake. I should ‘a’ left well enough alone. But no, I decided to buy trouble. Well, it’s done now. There ain’t no backing down. So we’re stuck with each other until I can find somewhere to leave you.”

  There was no further conversation. A long, hot hour and a half went by. Lee watered the sorrel four times and considered what should be done about the guns. There was no way he could haul along all that hardware. Yet, he couldn’t very well hide it here, not with all of them watching from up there. As soon as he rode out, they’d be down here getting themselves armed, and it wouldn’t be more than an hour before he’d have considerable lead in him. Maybe the girl, too, though maybe not, if they wanted her to talk about something.

  Lee considered both trying to disable the guns, and hiding them after chasing off the observers. He rejected the first possibility for lack of tools and rejected the second because in what little time he could gain by chasing away the Riley gang, he wouldn’t be able to hide the guns well enough. Lee finally figured the only way would be to wait for nightfall.

  The girl’s wound was but slightly discolored, and had not bled since he’d washed it. She sat with her back to another rock, her arms around her knees, watching the rim, and then him, and then the rim again.

  The sorrel cropped grass, the time went by, and the sun made the shade from
the west bank of the arroyo grow longer, creeping out to engulf them, stealing across the wash towards the far bank. On top of the bank, the Riley gang still waited.

  Chapter Three

  As the sun set in a glorious explosion of color, Baldy Al was still mumbling softly about the lack of water.

  “If’n you stopped a-waggin’ that tongue of yours, your mouth wouldn’t dry out so quick,” Riley advised his brother.

  Chuck Riley was already tasting the dryness himself, and at least ten times in the long four hours that had passed he had been on the point of trying to storm the single man who held the water and the guns. But he had never been stupid, and he didn’t figure to start being so now. The man down there had evidently realized he couldn’t haul all that hardware with him, and couldn’t hide it while being watched, and so had opted for staying put. For how long? Most likely until sundown. Then the man would move the guns under cover darkness to some hiding place that wouldn’t be any closer to the present position than he could help, and he and the girl would leave, hoping to have the jump on their pursuers. They wouldn’t be able to carry away all that water either, and most likely would dump what they couldn’t carry. That wasn’t a pleasant thought, but in spite of the hardship, two days without water to Golden Gap was not really a problem. What concerned Riley more was the loss of the girl. Because she was the only one who knew where her father had hidden the gold. He hadn’t talked and had been shot when he tried to escape. There was no one else left who knew.

  But the real question was what the stranger knew. Why had he stepped in? He had to know something. No one that made it this far into the desert asked for trouble without a reason.

  Night had fallen across the desert by the time Riley had thought this through. He could see very little down in the wash.

  “Pass the word,” he said softly, putting out the last of the long succession of cigarettes he’d been smoking all afternoon. “Nobody makes a sound. No more cigarettes. I’m going down. You wait for me to come back.”

  With that he slipped down the bank, keeping low and moving slowly. In a minute’s time he was behind a rock within sight of the dim form of the stranger’s horse. The horse had not yet sensed his presence, and went on cropping grass. Riley watched carefully for a long time and finally saw a shadow emerge from another, larger shadow and move stealthily across to the pile of guns and canteens. Then there was the glugging of water. Riley suppressed a great natural urge to try to save the water, knowing he could only succeed in making the situation worse. They could go without water. But it was to be hoped they would not have to go without guns.

  The shadow began to move away from the pile of weapons and canteens. Riley moved silently after, catlike. Years of scouting for the army, together with the teaching of an Apache uncle, came in handy at times such as this.

  The shadow stopped. Riley also stopped, sensing his presence had been suspected. Then, after an interminable period of time, the shadow moved again, and Riley followed.

  They proceeded up the wash a short distance and then over to the western bank of the arroyo. Here the shadow stopped once more. Riley heard thunking of metal on rock, pictured guns, heard scraping of stone against stone and the sound of someone digging into gravel. Riley smiled and waited for the shadow to finish and leave. When he was quite sure the shadow had had enough time to get out of hearing range, Riley slipped silently to the place where the rocks and gravel had been moved around. He felt the stones and the ground, found the space behind a biggish rock and reached in to touch metal ...

  There was a sharp metallic click, and then a soft voice.

  “Canteens,” the voice said sardonically. “That’s all. Empty canteens.”

  ~*~

  Up on the bank, Baldy Al and the one-eyed ex-pirate next to him were engaged in conversation.

  “How long you reckon we ought to wait?” Pirate Olberg, the ex-pirate asked. He sounded dubious.

  “Until Chuck gets back.”

  “He’s been quite a while. What do you reckon is taking him so long?”

  “I don’t know. I figure he wants to see where the stranger will put the guns. Maybe he’s still waiting for the man to make his move.”

  “Or maybe he’s double-crossing us. Wouldn’t put it past that treacherous Apache.”

  “Lay off him, will you? One of these days he isn’t going to put up with you anymore. Anyway, why should he double-cross us? He doesn’t know any more than we do.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I’m just sure, that’s all. I know my own brother.”

  “He wouldn’t even own up to you being his brother the last time somebody tried to kill you, remember? That fast-draw gun-proud kid back in Weed Town. It was old Pirate who stepped in, not Chuck.”

  “I remember,” Baldy Al said irritably. Then, after a long pause, “Had time enough to go clear to Golden Gap, pretty near. Maybe I’ll just go down and check around.”

  “Yeah?”

  But baldy Al did not budge.

  “I ought to go down there,” he said later. No one answered. No one else offered to go. They waited. Baldy Al’s bald pate glistened just a little in the starlight. They couldn’t make out anything below.

  There was a disturbance among the horses, hobbled off in the night. A man had been assigned to see to them. They heard him shout once and then no further sound from him.

  Baldy Al and Pirate, together with the others, jumped up and ran for the animals. The commotion was over by the time they arrived. The horses were grazing peacefully. But Jackson, the watchman, lay still, his face on the ground.

  Baldy Al straightened up from the silent form, with even more sweat beading up on his bald pate than before.

  “Dead,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “Three horses missing,” someone said tersely. “I don’t like this at all.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Pirate said, more of a command than a suggestion. “Everybody mount up, double up where you have to. Then follow me.”

  No one cared to argue with him. In three minutes everyone was aboard a horse.

  The ex-pirate spat into the dust and led the way back towards the bank of the arroyo. He did not pause at the rim, but sent his mount sliding and skittering down to the wash. The others held back for a few seconds, but then followed.

  The arroyo, they discovered, was empty of human life, horseflesh, guns and water.

  Chapter Four

  The glory of sunrise on the desert a day and half later found three tired riders and four tired horses emerging from the trackless desert onto a stage road. Not long afterwards the road led them between two of New Mexico’s sparsely-treed, humplike hills and down into Golden Gap.

  After having the good fortune to capture Riley, Lee had been quick to take advantage of the situation, changing his plans a little. He had made Riley lead him to where the horses were hobbled and then attract the watchman’s attention. It had been unfortunate that Riley tried to warn the watchman, because it had become necessary to strike the watchman with the butt of his pistol when he cried out and started to pull his weapon. It had been a little too hard, and the watchman had died. At any rate, they had led off three of the best horses, two of which now carried Riley and the girl, with the third carrying the weapons and canteens.

  They had made a normal two-day trip in a solid day and a half trek with only a few short stops to rest the animals. Riley had told him of the existence of Golden Gap and the direction to reach it—southwest—after being threatened with death. Once he knew that, Lee wanted to get all this over with as quickly as possible. The idea was to go to Golden Gap and dump the whole problem in the sheriff’s lap.

  Now the exhausted trio rode down the dusty, dingy main street of Golden Gap, gold town. The little double row of false fronts with the gritty-dust street in between was not showing many signs of life yet. Like many gold towns, it was most likely given to partying late at night, and no one who stayed up for the parties would be around too early the
next morning. On the other hand, the miners, if they had to work today, would be at it already in the hills, you could be sure of that. Mine owners weren’t ones to waste much time getting out their gold, silver, or whatever they mined.

  About halfway down the street, on the right, an adobe building of substantial proportions carried the wording over the door: SHERIFF’S OFFICE JAIL.

  Lee dismounted, swung the reins of the sorrel around the hitching rail a couple of times and then did the same for the other three animals. He helped the girl from her mount—he still didn’t know her name, but didn’t figure it mattered now anyway, since shortly he’d be shut of the whole mess—and then motioned Riley down at gunpoint. Riley’s hands were tied, but he seemed to have little trouble dismounting without using them. He was sullen and had not spoken a word that hadn’t been threatened out of him. Lee was looking forward eagerly to finishing off this last stage of the trouble he’d bought. He was feeling very fortunate that he had come out of this as well as he had.

  Lee opened the door to the sheriff’s office and motioned the outlaw inside, then looked at the girl, who still mistrusted him. One thing he did admire about her was the way she’d been able to keep her composure throughout the whole trip back. It must have hurt to ride that long with the spur-rowel wound in her side.

  “You can go to the sawbones anytime to you want,” he said her as she went past him into the sheriff’s office. But she ignored him. Who could tell, maybe it wasn’t as much of a wound as it had appeared. It was true it hadn’t bled very much that he’d noticed.

  As he stepped in afterwards, he heard the startling sound of laughter. It turned out to be Riley’s laughter. Almost immediately afterwards Lee heard the girl gasp. Then he saw the cause: a man with a sheriff’s badge pinned on his shirt sat back in his chair, head lolling to one side, eyes vacant. Just under the badge was a red-stained bullet hole.

  ~*~

  The doctor was a beaten-looking man who wore a vest that had the aspect of having undergone a cattle stampede sometime in its past. He did not appear to be especially happy to see them.