Border Dogs

by Ralph Cotton

  Zell’s men knew what their major wanted from them. A half dozen riders came forward, spreading out behind Zell and Bowes, the others swinging wide of the half circle, not yet seeing the soldiers’ muzzle flash. Donnely held their fire until shots began whistling past him and thumping into the dead horses along the front of his line. Some of them were already inside the half circle. He would take what he could get. These men would charge straight through, the others would circle behind, firing on the troops as they made a dash past them.

  “Fire!” Donnely yelled as he dropped onto one knee, bringing his own rifle into play as his firing line exploded around the oncoming riders. Zell’s men in the rear spread wider now, coming around from outside the half circle, seeing the muzzles flash and firing on them as they went. Every other soldier in the firing line turned with the riders, giving them a hard hail of bullets as their dark shadows streaked across the sand.

  At the center of the half circle skirmish line, Donnely fired his rifle empty at the onrush of man and horse coming at him in the darkness. From both sides, the soldiers poured it on Zell and his riders, Zell’s return fire lessening now as his men and their horses tumbled forward in a spray of sand and blood. Horses bellowed and whinnied, their pitiful pleas drowned beneath the roar of rifles.

  Donnely raised his army Colt, firing it, then dropped down, snatching a spare rifle from the ground beside him. Still Zell’s riders came, hard and fast, through the gantlet of fire. Donnely saw the dark shadows approach, fifteen yards, then ten, the horses’ hooves jarring the ground. Too close! He held his fire, knowing these last few would be charging over them any second.

  And so they did. Zell and Bowes held their fire, only a couple of men still with them now. They needed the darkness as they broke over the line. Both their horses went up at the same time, going high over the dark forms before them. One soldier stood up and fired, and before Donnely could reach out and pull him down, a hissing sound swept across him as Zell and Bowes’s horses came over them and touched down, moving on without missing a beat.

  Donnely rose on his knee and fired at the backs of the fleeing riders. Beside him, the soldier who’d just fired stood screaming, his chest split wide and deep from shoulder to hip by Zell’s long saber. “Oh, God, Rodney!” another soldier screamed, running to him.

  Fifty yards farther out on the sand flats, Sergeant Baines lay flat on his stomach, seeing and hearing the rise and fall of battle. He had shed his rifle now, carrying only his pistol in his holster and the big knife from his boot well. Ahead of him, the sound of hooves thundering across sand came closer, and the sound of a man whimpering in pain. The firing back along the line had wound down now. Baines strained his eyes in the darkness until he could make out the black forms moving across the pale dark sand. He moved sidelong, crawling on his belly, to where the riders’ path would lead past him.

  Zell and Bowes slowed their horses to a halt and listened behind them for any sound of coming soldiers. They heard none. “Are you hit, Mr. Bowes?”

  “Nothing serious, sir. How are you holding up?”

  “Fit,” Zell said; yet his voice sounded strained, weak. From both sides, riders came in out of the greater darkness and formed around them. “How many men have we left,” Zell asked, trying to make out the faces.

  “Four here, sir,” said a voice, moving closer from the side.

  “Five here, sir…but three badly wounded,” another voice called out in the darkness.

  “One coming in here,” another voice said, this one moving up behind where Baines lay flat on the ground. Baines turned on the sand toward the single rider. Here was the horse he needed, along with whatever else the man carried on it.

  “Then let’s move out, men,” Bowes said. “Keep spread out in a single file. I’ll take the rear and cover us. We won’t stop until we’ve crossed the border and headed to Diablo Canyon. The old man will meet us there. Any wounded who needs attention, drop out to the left. I’ll stop for you as I come by.”

  The single rider’s horse moved closer as the riders formed up and turned away. At no more than ten feet from the other riders, Baines came up with the big knife, swept over the horse’s rump and behind the man as the horse sidestepped beneath the new weight on its back. The horse nickered as Baines’s arm went around the man’s face and drew it back against him, the blade of the knife going in between his ribs and searching upward into his heart.

  The horse nickered again when Baines eased the body down off its side and let it drop to the sand. “What’s wrong with that animal?” a voice asked from ten feet away, blinded by the darkness. “Is he hit?”

  “No”—Baines spoke in low tight tone—“just spooked a little. He’s fine.”

  “Then keep him quiet,” Bowes said. “Come on, get in front of me.”

  Baines looked around in the darkness, then rode past Bowes and fell into the slow-moving line. He would have to slip away the first chance he got and follow at a safe distance. He knew what he needed to know. Diablo Canyon. That’s where they were headed.

  Chapter 12

  When Willis Durant awoke in the night from a restless sleep, he saw the Ranger sitting beside the low fire with a cup of Duttwieler tea in his hand. Durant wiped a hand across his face, sitting up on his blanket. “Figure I’ll make a move on you if you doze off, Ranger?”

  “If I did, you’d be hog-tied right now, Durant. This Mexican ground just ain’t made to sleep on,” he said, slapping a hand down on the blanket.

  Durant’s eyes flashed around in the low glow of firelight. “Where’s the old man?”

  “He’s gone,” the Ranger said in a quiet voice.

  “Gone?” Durant looked at him as the Ranger raised the cup to his lips. Calm, seeming to be in no hurry—the Ranger’s demeanor threw him for a moment. “You mean you let him get away?”

  The Ranger lifted his eyes over to the empty blanket on the ground, then back to Durant. “Yep. About a half hour ago.” The Ranger rose up with the cup in his hand and slung the last drops out on the ground. “Don’t get the wrong idea, Durant. This doesn’t change anything between you and me. I don’t need him or you either to show me how to follow wagon tracks. I just let him get out in front of us. We’re close to where those men are taking the wagon, ain’t we?”

  Durant sighed. “Yeah, we are. But you’re going have to give me something to shoot with, Ranger. If you don’t, all we’re gonna do is die once we catch up to them.”

  The Ranger gave a slight smile. “I’ve given it lots of thought, Durant. So far you’ve been straight with me. But I can’t trust you when it comes to meeting up with these men. You’ve said yourself, you don’t care what happens to you so long as you kill the Parker boys. That makes you too dangerous for me to trust. You’d risk the women’s lives if they got between and your revenge.”

  Durant thought about it and realized the Ranger was right. He replied with a straight face, shaking his head, “No, I want the Parker brothers, but I wouldn’t get careless with the hostages’ lives.”

  “It’s not a chance I can afford to take, Durant. If you did, I’d have to kill you. You got careless before. That’s what got you into this mess. You let the Parkers into your family’s lives and it got them killed. Now it’s eating you up. I don’t think it’s all that important whether they kill you or you kill them. Either way, I figure you’d call it justice.”

  Durant didn’t answer for a moment. When he finally spoke, he’d dismissed the subject. “So…what do you want to do now?”

  “We’ll lag back a few more minutes, then follow the old man. He won’t waste time following the tracks. He knows where the wagon is headed. He’ll go straight to it.”

  Durant only nodded.

  The Ranger stepped over and looked through the thin light of a quarter moon onto the dark flatlands forty feet below them. They’d made their camp up on the first level clearing in case Zell and his men should get past the soldiers early and come riding this way in the night. When old man Dirkson h
ad slipped over and eased the horse away from the other two, the Ranger had lain feigning sleep, watching carefully from beneath the lowered brim of his sombrero.

  Dirkson had at first gone to the white barb, but the barb shied back and lowered its ears, having none of it. Then the old man had moved to the Ranger’s spare. Before he’d left, the Ranger watched him venture toward them, leading the horse. For a moment, he could tell the old man thought about making a move for the rifle lying alongside the Ranger. Had he reached for it, the Ranger would have had to kill him, flat out. But then the old man must have thought better of it. He turned, led the horse away from the camp, and moved along the rocky ledge. The Ranger had lain still and listened, hearing the soft click of hooves moving across the rocky ground.

  “He stayed high up for a good ways,” the Ranger said, turning to Durant. “Figured we’d go straight down and look for his tracks. That would take up our time.”

  “How do you know he didn’t cut back and join Zell? That would make sense, wouldn’t it?”

  “He knows we’ll catch up to him pretty soon. Whatever he’s going to do, he knows he’s got to do it quick. He won’t waste time looking for Zell out there among all the army troops when he knows where the wagon’s headed.”

  Durant checked the cinch on his horse’s saddle, then dropped the stirrup. “He’s pretty spry for an old bull with a hole through his shoulder.”

  “I expect he’s been fighting and scratching like this his whole life,” the Ranger said. “Nothing more dangerous than an old fighting man still looking to carve out a place for himself.”

  The Ranger stood with his rifle in his hand, watching Durant lead both the horses over to him. He handed the Ranger the reins to the barb. “An outlaw’s just an outlaw, far as I’m concerned.” The Ranger took the reins and ran a hand down the white barb’s muzzle. “But it always pays to try and know why a man does what he does.” He paused, considering something. “I get a feeling this was going to be his last big move—his retirement job, so to speak.”

  Durant stepped up into his saddle. “Oh? What gives ya that notion?”

  “Just a hunch,” the Ranger said. “Maybe something I saw in his eyes, no different from what I’ve been seeing in yours.” He stepped up atop the white barb and righted it toward the thin path leading around the rocky ledge. “Something tells me this is the last thing he has to do in life. He’d rather die getting it done than to live letting it go.”

  “Maybe it’s your own eyes you see this in, Ranger,” Durant said.

  “Yeah, maybe it is.” The Ranger glanced at him, then looked away, getting a picture of Maria out there somewhere in the hands of killers. Durant saw the hollow look in the Ranger’s eyes as they turned their horses and put them forward on the narrow path.

  The only light burning in the little Mexican town of San Carlos came through the dusty window of the crumbling adobe cantina. Payton Parker, his brother Leo, and McCord eased their horses along the rutted street, past a sleeping hog that only raised its dirty head and grunted, then dropped back in its bed of dust as the three riders moved on. A goat bleated somewhere in the darkness, and they heard its small hooves click away deeper into the velvet night.

  “I bet ole Delbert’s got one of the women pinned and poked by now,” McCord said, pushing up his battered hat brim as they edged over to a hitch rail outside the cantina. “Hell, maybe both of them.” They got down and spun their reins.

  Payton Parker looked around in the darkness, then stretched his back. “Well…he can pin and poke all he wants. When we get back, it’s our turn.”

  Leo Parker looked embarrassed. “That’s no way to talk, Payton. Those women ain’t done us no wrong.”

  “Wrong?” Payton shook his head. “What’s wrong got to do with it? I’m just talking about us getting what’s coming to us. They’re women, we’re men. It’s only natural we’re going to do what men do, huh?” He jostled his crotch, nudging Leo with his elbow. “They’d think there’s something wrong with us if we didn’t.”

  “That’s right,” McCord said. “They’re wondering why we haven’t already. They might even think we don’t like them.”

  Leo looked back and forth between them as they walked toward the open door of the cantina. “She said she’d kill you if you laid a hand on her. I believe she meant it.”

  “Leo, Leo.” Payton shook his head, threw an arm across his brother’s shoulder, and chuckled. “They all say that. But they never mean it. It’s just a woman’s way…but deep down, they’re wanting it just as much as we do, maybe more. You and me are gonna have a long talk once this is all over.”

  “Still, I don’t like it,” Leo said. “They’re served their purpose. Now we oughta let them go.”

  “Their purpose?” Payton and McCord laughed as they walked into the cantina and across to a bar made of boards spread between two wooden barrels. Payton raised his voice a bit to the old man behind the bar. “Juan, hola, mi amigo! Bet you’d just about given us up.”

  “For three nights I have kept this place open, waiting to hear something.” His voice was wary, agitated. “Where is Bowes? Always he comes with you, no?”

  “Oh…” Payton Parker took his time, looking around the filthy cantina. “Not this time. Bowes and Zell got caught up in a little problem. They sent us three to handle the deal.”

  There were only two men in the cantina. One was the owner, Juan Verdere. The other man was Juan’s partner and bodyguard, a Frenchman named Paschal. He stood at the far end of the bar with a double-barrel shotgun lying along the rough boards. The fingers of his dirty gloves were worn off back to the second knuckle, his fingers grimy, the same color as the stained leather. One hand lay near the shotgun, the other hand rested around a wooden cup of wine.

  Paschal chuckled, saying in a thick, gravelly voice, “We have heard of Zell’s problem—and it is no little problem either. He is holding two women hostage, one is the daughter of a very wealthy man. Maybe we wait and deal with Zell, after his problem is solved, eh?”

  The three had spread along the bar, and as they spoke, Juan slid three wooden cups forward and placed a bottle of mescal before them. Payton Parker bowed his head over the bottle, then turned his face sidelong, looking at Paschal. “You know, every time I see you, Frenchy, I get this real strong urge to start shooting holes in your head.” He spread a tight, harsh smile. “Why is that, you think?”

  Paschal shrugged. “Who can say?” His right hand drifted up onto the grip of the shotgun, his grimy fingers tapping it lightly. “Perhaps it’s because you are tired of this life and would like me to send you on to the next?”

  Payton Parker’s hand moved down from the edge of the bar. Juan Verdere glanced back and forth with nervous eyes. “Enough. You have come to do business…let us do it.”

  “That’s what I say.” Payton, still smiling, raised his right hand forming it into a pistol, and clicked his thumb up and down at Paschal, squinting one eye. Then he turned to Juan. “We’ve got everything your federales want—except we’re a little short on the kegs of powder.”

  “How short?” Juan stared at him.

  “Just a dab. We’ll adjust the price down. The main thing is, we got to get settled up tonight.” He shot a glance at Paschal, then back to Juan. “If you know about the problem, then you also know we’ve got to make some quick moves here. The wagon’s out near Diablo Canyon.”

  “And our finder’s fee? Zell always pays me and Paschal first.” He tapped a finger straight down on the bar. “Then we tell the federales where to find you.”

  “Ordinarily that would be the way,” Payton Parker said. “But this ain’t ordinarily. You send them pepper-poppers on out, they pay us, and we’ll pay you afterward.” He reached over, took the bottle of mescal from McCord’s hand and threw back a drink. He let out a hiss, holding Juan’s suspicious gaze.

  “No, no, no.” Paschal wagged a finger, taking up the shotgun and moving closer along the bar, his big belly bouncing beneath his loose, ragged
shirt. “I see you have been sleeping too long with your head on a cold rock. We get all that is coming to us,” he said as he rubbed his grimy thumb and finger together in the universal symbol of greed, “or you can take your wagon back and try selling it to Jameson Vanderman. Perhaps he will be glad to—”

  “Please, Frenchy, don’t come no closer.” Payton Parker cut him off with a raised hand. “The air’s bad enough here already.” He looked back at Juan Verdere. “That how you feel? Because if it is, we’re gone. You can tell the federales you blew the deal, got them the guns…but can’t get them no ammo. They’ll get a big kick out of that, won’t they?”

  A tense silence passed as Juan Verdere wrestled the deal in his mind. Payton Parker let out a breath, snatched the bottle from the bar, and said, “Well, boys, let’s go. I see we’ve got no business here.”

  “No, wait!” Juan Verdere cocked his head to the side. “We will do it your way, just this once.” He raised a long finger for emphasis. “But Paschal and I will go with you. The federales are camped not far from here. We will go to them and take them with us. Paschal and I will be there when they give you the gold. This is the only way, sí”

  “Since you don’t trust us, yeah, I suppose that’ll work.” He looked at Leo and McCord and winked. “But I have to admit, our feelings are hurt.” He turned to Paschal. “If you’re coming along, stay aways behind us, Frenchy…you’ll spook the horses.”

  “You joke and have your fun,” Paschal said, falling in behind them as they turned toward the door. “But if you are not careful, someday I will raise you up on a sharp stick and watch you wiggle.”

  “Oh? Planning a dinner party?”

  Outside, as the three of them waited for Paschal and Juan Verdere to go around back and get their horses, Leo said to his brother Payton in a hushed voice, “You shouldn’t fool around with that ole Frenchman none. When he trapped fur up in the Rockies, they say he once got snowed in and et—”