by Ralph Cotton
They stopped, and the captain leaned over to the sergeant beside him for a second and spoke to him Spanish. Then the sergeant moved his horse a few feet closer and said, shrugging, “My captain only wants us to talk, señor.”
“That’s close enough for talk.” Liam Bowes moved his horse around sidelong to the federales. “What’s on his mind?”
“Get ready,” old man Dirkson whispered to Chance Edwards.
“I been ready,” Chance Edwards replied. “What’re you loaded with?”
“Nail heads, both barrels,” the old man said without looking at him. “I’ll take the honcho out, first thing, then work my way to the left.”
“Got ya,” Chance Edwards said, smiling to the federales as he spoke. “I’ve got the right half covered.” He chuckled. “Not a lot of shade out here…gonna get awfully hot.”
“Not as hot as where we’re headed,” old man Dirkson whispered, chuckling as well. Then his expression turned serious as he spat and ran a hand across his mouth.
“We come in search of a missing patrol,” the federale sergeant said. “They have been missing since last night. Perhaps you have seen them?”
“Yes, we saw them,” Liam Bowes replied.
“Oh…” The man turned and looked at the captain as if not expecting such an answer. The captain nodded him forward, and the man heeled his horse a step closer. “Tell me, señor, do you ride with Major Zell? Have you come with the ammunition?”
“Major Zell is dead, sir,” Bowes said. “Had you been watching toward Devil’s Canyon earlier you would have seen the ammunition gone up in smoke. We’re all that’s left of the Border Dogs.”
“I see.” The man gave Bowes a curious glance, then turned and spoke again with the captain in Spanish. When he turned back to Bowes, he looked apologetic. “It is too bad about that ammunition. My captain asks, if you are all that remains of the Border Dogs, what good will you be to us in the future?” He offered a cautious smile and shrugged again. “It is only a question, of course.”
“Of course,” Bowes said. “Does your captain not speak English, or is he just talking through you to annoy me?”
The sergeant squinted and smiled. His voice lowered a bit. “Sí, I think maybe he does it to annoy you. He is very upset about Captain Marsos and his men being missing. He does not like searching for them in this heat.”
“I see.” Bowes turned to old man Dirkson and said, “Tell this sergeant to inform his captain that I see no way in hell we’ll be any good to him in the future.” Bowes paused and moved his horse a bit to one side. “And tell him that the captain and the patrol he is searching for are lying back in Devil’s Canyon, feeding the buzzards by now.”
Old man Dirkson cackled, raising the shotgun into sight and propping it up on his thigh. “Mind if I tell him in German?”
“That is not necessary. He hears you,” the sergeant said, raising a cautious hand, moving his horse back a few steps. “I think he wants you three to accompany us back to our camp. He has many questions, and it is far too hot to talk out here, no?” He fanned his grimy face and once more tried to offer a smile, this time the smile looking thin and troubled.
Old man Dirkson looked at Chance Edwards, winked and grinned, the shotgun tight in his hand. “Damned if this ain’t the only way to go.”
“Captain,” Liam Bowes called out, all the polish and manner now gone from his voice. He bypassed the sergeant and stared across the thirty feet of wavering sand into the young captain’s face. “I want you to take a good long look at us. Do we look like the kind of men who’re going to do one damn thing just because you ask us to?”
Rifle bolts clicked, pistol hammers cocked, horses shied and blew and grumbled under their breath. The young captain flashed a look back and forth among his men. He sat erect and raised a hand, either to keep them back or send them forward. No one would ever know which, as the shotgun exploded in old man Dirkson’s hand and a belch of smoke and a spray of sharp hot nail heads lifted the captain, his horse, and the horse and rider nearest him, sending them backward, twisting sidelong in a bloody red mist.
Chapter 20
The Ranger had heard the gun battle rage in the distance behind him, less than three miles back, he figured. But he pressed on without so much as a glance over his shoulder. He had followed Willis Durant’s trail around the end of the buttes and on toward San Carlos, the town coming into better view now as long evening shadows stretched across the flats.
In the west the sun stood low, red and watery, its fiery mantle streaking the dome of the sky. He’d found no more blood on Durant’s trail since the first few spots back near the bodies. Either Durant had stopped the flow, or else he’d bled himself out. Judging the steadiness of the hoofprints in the sand, Durant was holding his own. But for how long?
At an island of rock on his left where the hoofprints led into a spate of black shadows, the Ranger heard the low nicker of a horse. He moved closer and was about to call out Durant’s name when Durant’s voice spoke from within the darkness. “Stay back, Ranger. I don’t need your help.”
“How bad is it?” The Ranger did not stop, but he slowed the horses and let the white barb step sideways, the other horse shying a bit at the sound of Durant’s voice.
“I’ll do,” Durant said. “Needed to cool these horses out for a second.”
“All right,” the Ranger said. Durant’s voice sounded strong enough, but the Ranger still had his doubts. “I’ll just come take a look at it.”
A pistol cocked within the shadows. “I said stay back, Ranger.”
“Can’t do it, Durant,” the Ranger said, moving the horses closer, fifteen feet, twelve, then ten. “We’ve both got more important business than to stand off out here against one another. If you shoot me, I swear I’ll kill you. Then we both lose—the Parkers win.” As the Ranger spoke, he stepped down from his stirrups and lifted his other canteen strap from around his saddle horn.
“If I hadn’t wasted time on you,” Durant said, the Ranger seeing his eyes glinting within the shadows now as he moved closer, “I’d be heading into San Carlos by now. Instead, I’ve caught a bullet in my side.”
“I didn’t ask you to waste time on me,” the Ranger said, in the darkness with Durant now, seeing him slumped against a stand of rock. Durant’s face was lined with long streaks of sweat.
“I know it, and I shouldn’t have,” Durant said. His left hand pressed a blood-soaked bandanna to his side. His right hand held Tackett’s pistol up toward the Ranger, the hammer cocked, his thumb not too steady across the hammer.
“I wish you’d uncock it,” the Ranger said, nodding at Tackett’s pistol. “You’re not looking real spry. I’d hate getting shot on a mishap.”
“I…I can’t,” Durant said, his eyes moving to the pistol, then back to the Ranger.
“Easy then.” The Ranger stepped to the side, out of the line of fire, reaching a gloved hand over, letting his thumb down in front of the hammer. “Just turn it loose.”
Durant let it go and slumped farther down the rock. The Ranger uncocked the pistol and shoved it into Durant’s holster. “Let’s see what you’ve got here.” He lifted Durant’s bloody hand away from the wound, then peeled the soaked bandanna from it. Turning Durant slightly, he looked at the long stain of dark blood down his hip. “You’re lucky—it went clean through.”
“Hell, I know that.” Durant resisted the Ranger’s hand; but the Ranger held firm and loosened the bandanna from around his neck with his free hand.
“Take it easy, Durant. The quicker we can get you patched up, the better.” He hooked a finger in the hole on Durant’s shirt, ripped it open, shook out the dusty bandanna, and pressed it to Durant’s lower back. “Hold this right here for me.”
Durant drew in a painful breath, reached a hand around, and pressed the bandanna against his back. “What was the shooting about back there?”
“Beats me,” the Ranger said, ripping the back of Durant’s shirt away, then tearing it into lon
g strips for a bandage. “Federales, if I had to guess. They must’ve run into the body of the snake.”
“The snake?” Durant eyed him as the Ranger wrapped the strips of cloth around his waist.
“Yeah, the snake. I figure Martin Zell didn’t live through Diablo Canyon. He was the head of the snake. Once he died, the rest of the snake just crawled off with no direction—looking for a place to spend itself out and die. Sure sounded like they found it.”
Durant drew a breath and held it while the Ranger tightened the bandage around him and tied it off. “There, that’ll keep you from losing any more blood. I’m surprised you haven’t bled yourself dry already.”
“I won’t die before I settle up with the Parkers. I swear it,” Durant said in a solemn voice.
The Ranger reached down, picked up the canteen from the ground, uncapped it, and handed it to him. “I believe you, Willis Durant. You’re the most hardheaded man I’ve seen in a while.”
“Yeah, I suppose I am.” Durant tipped back a drink of tepid water, wiped the back of his bloody hand across his mouth, and said, “Now let’s get going.”
“No, you sit down for a minute—give that wound a chance to clot up some.” He saw Durant tense, and he added, “It’ll be dark soon. We’ll slip into San Carlos. Go on now, sit down.”
Durant let out a breath and slid down the rock to his haunches, a hand against his bandaged side. “Don’t think I’m going to pass out and let you leave here without me, Ranger. It’s not going to happen.”
“It never crossed my mind,” the Ranger answered, lowering himself down on one knee, taking his big pistol from his holster and checking it as he spoke. “Since you haven’t passed out by now, I expect you’re not about to.” He rolled the cylinder of the pistol down his forearm, clicked the action back and forth with his thumb, then let it rest across his knee. “There’s no point in me trying to talk you out of it, I reckon.”
“You’d be wasting your breath, Ranger.”
The Ranger pushed up the brim of his dusty sombrero and shook his head. “Yep, I sure would be.” He stood up, raising the big pistol. “Sorry, Durant.” With a quick, hard swipe, he backhanded the barrel across Willis Durant’s forehead. Durant’s head jerked to the side and fell slack. He slumped farther down and fell over on his side. “I just can’t risk it, the shape you’re in.”
The Ranger shoved the big pistol down in his holster, bent down to cap the canteen, and righted Durant back against the wall. He laid the canteen on Durant’s chest and checked Durant’s horses to see that their reins were well fastened around an edge of rock. Then he stepped up onto the white barb and turned it toward town.
In a stable built of broken adobe blocks, scrapes of sun-bleached wood, and covered by a ragged tarpaulin, Maria and Prudence stood looking out across the dirt street of San Carlos into the gray evening light. Maria ran a hand down the horse’s side. “The horse is still tired, but he has rested now.” Beside the horse, two desert burros stood crunching on grain, their nuzzles deep down in the wooden feed trough.
“Have you ever ridden one of these things?” Prudence asked, looking the burros over with a skeptical expression.
“Of course I have ridden burros…long before I ever rode a horse. In the mountain country they are favored over horses. We will be all right, you’ll see.”
“I’d feel better staying here,” Prudence said.
“And so would I,” Maria agreed. “I had hoped the Parkers would be crazy enough to ride in today, this afternoon, with the sun to their faces.” She studied the shadows on the land outside of San Carlos, then turned back to Prudence with her rifle cradled in her arm. “But I was wrong. It will be dark soon. The Parkers knew we would see them a long ways off during the day…that is why they have waited. Tonight, with the darkness on their side, they will come. You can count on it.”
“Then Payton’s not as crazy as we thought,” Prudence said. She too began searching the long shadows across the desert floor.
“He is as crazy as we thought,” Maria said, “but even a raving lunatic knows to protect himself.” She turned and stepped around to the burros. “Come, we must be out of here before they arrive. The boy, Hernando, will keep a lantern burning in the window throughout the night. He will brighten it when the Parkers ride in.”
They drew the burros away from the feed trough and out through the back of the stable. Using the late evening shadows as cover, Maria led the way, her rifle ready in her arm, going from one darkened area to the next until they reached the blackened side of an abandoned hovel on the far outskirts of San Carlos. “We will sit here until it is fully dark.” Maria nodded toward the string of jagged cliffs in the upreaching foothills a hundred yards north of town. “From up there we can watch Hernando’s lantern. The terrain will be too rough for anyone to sneak up on us.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Prudence said.
“I know what I am doing. On higher ground, with this rifle and these pistols, we will be safe until morning.”
“But then what?” Prudence looked around at the darkening land and hugged her arms across her bosom.
“Then, we see what tomorrow holds for us.” Maria reached onto the back of one of the burros, took down a rolled-up blanket, shook it out, and threw it around Prudence’s shoulders. “For now, we have food, water, ammunition, and most important, our freedom.” She offered a firm smile. “We have come a long way since the train robbery.”
A mile back in the falling darkness, on the other side of San Carlos, where the sand flats ended, the Parker brothers, McCord, and Paschal stepped down from their horses and stood gazing at the few pale lights that had begun to glow in dusty adobe windows. “The women are there all right,” Payton Parker said to the others, pushing up his hat brim. “I can feel ’em.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” asked Leo Parker. “Let’s get in there and get them.” He’d already turned to step back onto his horse when Payton caught his shirt-sleeve and yanked him back.
“Don’t make me smack you, Leo,” Payton said. “We’re not charging in there half-cocked and get ourselves shot out of our saddles. Why do you suppose we’ve been hanging back the past couple hours?”
Leo looked confused. “Waiting for it to get dark?” he scratched his head up under his hat brim.
“Right. We’re gonna wait till it’s good and dark, then ease in and make our play. Jesus, Leo, don’t make me say it again.”
“Payton’s right, Leo,” McCord said. “Anybody can see us from two miles out in daylight. We’d have been sitting ducks for a rifle out here.”
“Well, thank you, Mr. McCord,” Payton said in a mock tone. He turned and lifted a canteen loop from around his saddle horn, uncapped it, and took a mouthful of tepid water. Then he spat it out with a sour expression. “This water’s starting to taste like horse piss from a dirty jar. We don’t get some whiskey pretty soon, I’m gonna shoot somebody just for the hell of it.”
Paschal grunted. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m starting to get hungry.”
Payton chuckled, giving the Frenchman a dark glance. “If you say that loud enough, Frenchy, there won’t be an Injun left in the territory come morning.”
Paschal seethed, his dark eyes turning away from the others as they laughed among themselves. “Stupid bastards,” he cursed under his breath, stepping back to his saddlebags and taking out a moldy piece of jerked beef. Wiping it on his dirty trousers, he tore a bite off with his teeth.
After a moment, Payton Parker turned to him and said, “Don’t get too comfortable on us, Frenchy. I need you to ride in and do a little scouting for us.”
“Scouting?” Paschal spoke over a mouthful of stiff jerky. “But you just said a person with a rifle—”
“I know what I said. But it’s dark now—dark enough you can get in there and find something out.”
“Why me?”
“Because most these people know you, damn it! They’re used to smelling you all ov
er town. If they happen to see your stinking arse drifting around, they might not think nothing of it.”
“I don’t like it.” Paschal shook his head, finishing off the jerked beef and wiping his hands on his shirt.
“I don’t care if you like it,” Payton said, cocking his head with a dark smile. His hand rested on his pistol butt. “You like it better than me putting a slug in your greasy face, don’t ya?”
Paschal raised a hand chest high, easing Payton down. “What am I looking for?”
“All you need to do is see if the women’s horse is there. They had to be riding one of the federales’ horses. Look around for a Mexican army saddle—you can do that much, can’t ya?” Payton wiggled a hand through the air. “Just sort of sneak in, then sneak out. If it looks like we might be here a little longer, bring us a bottle of something from ole Juan Verdere’s cantina. Something he ain’t got spiked with rat heads and lizard shit.”
“Aw, that is what you really want, eh?” Paschal nodded. “You send me to pick up some whiskey.”
“Well?” Payton spread his hands. “It beats having you here fouling the air for all of us.”
“Maybe this is not a good idea,” McCord offered.
“Don’t you start your crap, McCord,” Payton said, swinging toward him. “I brought you in with us because you’re supposed to be some kind of real hard-nut…a big gun out of Texas. Ha! You ain’t shown me shit. My aunt Bertha coulda done what you’ve done so far, and she’s got a wooden leg.”
Leo cut in, “Aunt Bertha ain’t got no wood—”
“Shut up, Leo! It’s just a saying!” Payton spun in a circle and stamped a foot in the sand. “Now damn it to hell, boys!” he screamed at them. “We’re going in there directly! Get the women! Get the gold! Kill the women! Take the gold! Then we’ll get ourselves out of this damn blast furnace and go somewhere and live like white men ought to!” His breath heaved. “But first!” He settled down and held up a dirty finger for emphasis. “First! I want me one damn good drink of whiskey.” He turned his eyes from one to the other, each of them moving back a cautious step. “Does anybody else need to comment on that?”