by Ralph Cotton
She reached out for Durant’s arm as he lowered the rifle, gazing at the crest of the rise where Payton Parker had just seemed to sink into the ground. But Willis Durant jerked his arm away from Prudence’s hand, staring straight ahead. “I prefer doing both,” he said.
They walked on. Willis Durant loaded another round into the Frenchman’s long rifle and cradled it in the crook of his arm. As they walked, Prudence asked Durant what could Payton Parker have done to make him want to torture him this way? “I mean, just kill him if you have to and get it over with,” she said. “Why do this to him?”
“You wouldn’t understand, ma’am.” Durant looked at her, this young, wealthy, pale-skinned woman, whose father had raised her on silver-threaded cushions throughout her life. What did she know about pain and suffering? Yet, for some reason, by the time the two of them had reached the dead horse and started up the rise of sand, he had told her everything—spilled the whole story of his wife and son as if ridding himself of some terrible weight bearing down on his shoulders.
When he’d finished, they stopped at the crest of the sandy rise and looked down at the blood trail leading off along the dry wash, the wash itself looking familiar to her. “I know how ugly and wrong this all sounds to somebody like you, Miss Vanderman,” Willis Durant said. “But you asked…and now you know.”
At the floor of the dry wash, Durant hitched the big horse to a stand of brush in the shade of the dirt bank. He moved forward along the wash and said to Prudence, “Stay back here. He’s still got some fight left in him.”
“Then why are you walking straight into him? Do you want him to kill you? Is that what this is? You want to die? Will that make things right in your head? Will that take away the picture of your family lying dead in the dirt? Who killed them, Willis Durant? Him…or you?”
Willis Durant swung his intense, dark eyes to her, Prudence shying back a step from the heat of his stare. His nostrils flared; his shoulders seemed to rise like the hackles of some creature at bay. “Ma’am—” He bit on his words, trying to keep control of his boiling rage. “You best stay back here…you don’t want to see this kind of killing.” His hand went down to his boot well and came up with the knife blade glistening in the sunlight.
Chapter 26
The Ranger had ridden hard atop Leo Parker’s big dun horse, leading McCord’s horse and the white barb behind him. He’d spent the dun out, cut it loose, and rode the other spare until he reached the spot on the trail where another set of hoofprints had bored in from the right. He had been switching his saddle over to his white barb when he heard the sound of gunfire not too far ahead. But from here, the roll of the land cut his vision short a few hundred yards out. He heeled the white barb forward, bearing left up onto a higher pitch of land, hoping to get above the flats before the waver of noon heat began to swell and boil. Somewhere out there he hoped to see the woman, or Parker…or Willis Durant—perhaps all three before the day was over.
From along a higher level of sandy ridge line, the Ranger raised the big rifle and looked out through the scope, using it as a field lens, trying to spot someone out there from where the shots had come. In a blur, he saw only one lone figure riding beyond a dip in the land. He homed in on it and made out the wavering image of the old man—the last of Zell’s riders—moving down out of sight. There was a deep dry wash down there, he thought, the one Maria had told him about, the place where she’d hidden the gold.
“Come on, Black-eye,” he said to the white barb, “let’s get around to where we can see something.”
While the Ranger circled wide, gaining sight of the dry wash, on the belly of the wash old man Dirkson slipped down from his bloody saddle and fanned his horse away. He dropped to his knees, tightened the bloodstained bandanna around his hand, took the long pistol from his waist, and checked it. Then he moved along the wash, edging up, getting closer to the black man and the woman he’d seen go down in it only moments before. The woman had brought the man here to pick up the federale gold—no doubt about it.
When he heard a sound in the wash beneath him, Dirkson stopped, crouched behind a stand of rock, and waited. He heard the sound of boots moving on loose stone down the center of the wash. There they came, the big black man, a knife in one hand, a rifle in the other. The Frenchman’s rifle? It damned sure was! Behind him, the woman struggled to keep up. Yep, they were headed for the gold—he’d bet on it. Old man Dirkson grinned to himself, pressing a hand against the wound in his chest. He still had some play left here. All he had to was bide his time. He stayed in the cover of rock, ten feet above them, watching….
Willis Durant heard a sound ahead of him and turned around in the dry wash. He said over his shoulder in a low tone, “He’s there. For the last time, ma’am…get on back out of the way.”
Prudence stopped, looking all around at the rocky ground beneath their feet. She lifted her face at some rancid odor adrift on the air and said just above a whisper, “What’s that smell?”
“Something’s dead around there,” Durant said. He looked down at Payton Parker’s blood trail, stopped, and listened, then slowly stepped forward around the turn in the wash. Five feet in front of him, the remains of Juan Verdere lay scattered on the rocky ground where the scavengers had left it. A small creature struggled with a piece of a bloody boot, dragging it backward into a dark hollow space beneath a rock.
Durant lifted his eyes up the wash, following Payton Parker’s blood trail. “Come on out, Payton. You’ve got one good hand left. I know there’s a gun in it. Get out here and use it.”
Moving up behind him, Prudence looked around at the scraps of Juan Verdere and at the bloody smear where he had leaned back against a flat rock in the bank of the dry wash until the scavengers began their feast. Her eyes went across the wash to the standing stump of the cottonwood tree, recognizing it. Her eyes flashed back to the rock. Was that it? The rock where Maria had hidden the saddlebags of gold? Yes! It had to be!
“What do you say, Payton?” Durant called out. “Want to come out here? Do this like a man? Or sit in the rocks and bleed to death like a rat?”
A pistol shot exploded, kicking up sand and loose rock at Durant’s feet. “You don’t look too spry yourself, Willis,” Payton Parker called out from the side of the wash. “You’re still pissed off over Leo and me killing that Injun woman and her half-breed brat, I reckon? I don’t know why—she wasn’t all that much when we got down to it.” He chuckled, low and ugly.
Willis Durant had spotted where the shot came from. He moved forward, crouching, following Payton’s voice. Laying the rifle aside and gripping the long skinning knife tight in his hand, Durant crawled up onto the bank through brush and spilling sand.
Farther back in the wash, Prudence kicked a few bloody scraps of clothes and bones out of her way and clawed around the edge of the flat rock with her hands, digging fervently like a dog. She scratched out a good hand-hold for herself, and with one foot against the bank, she pulled and grunted until the rock came forward and fell over onto the ground. “Sweet Jesus,” she exhaled in a hushed tone, falling to her knees. There it was…the gold! The saddlebags had been pressed back against the sandy bank, but as she stared at them, the weight of the gold pulled them loose, and they fell over at her knees in a puff of dust.
Looking down at the saddlebags, she heard a raspy voice behind her say in a whisper, “One down…one to go.” She jerked her head around. But all she saw was the glint of the pistol barrel as old man Dirkson swiped it around and hit her across the forehead.
Dirkson dropped down, hefted the saddlebags over his shoulder, and moved back up onto the edge of the bank. Once there, he crouched behind the cottonwood stump and waited with his pistol in his hand. He wasn’t leaving here with this black man dogging his trail.
“No! Willis! For the love of God!” Payton Parker pleaded, loud and long, until his pleading turned into a long, loud scream. Old man Dirkson listened, winced, and let out a sigh of relief when the scream stopped short
and silence fell across the dry wash. There went Payton Parker, Dirkson thought. Good riddance. He rose slightly, the saddlebags over his shoulder and his gun hand braced against the side of the stump.
Willis Durant staggered out of the brush, the skinning knife hanging from his bloody fingertips. His breath pounded in his chest. In the loose sandy bed of the dry wash, he dropped down to his knees and bowed his head to calm himself for a moment; then cupping his hands, he scooped up sand and wiped it up and down his forearms, cleansing himself of Payton Parker’s blood. It was finished. He could suddenly breathe now, without the oppressive tightness that had clutched his chest these many months.
When he’d finished cleansing himself, he pitched the knife away, stood up, and took a deep breath. But just as he stood up, old man Dirkson above him took aim, now at less than twenty feet. When the shot went off, Durant only had time to flinch and duck his shoulders, the bullet whistling past his ear. He heard the rustling in the sandy dirt above him and turned to it, braced, his pistol already out and cocked. What the…?
Old man Dirkson stood there with a strange, bemused smile on his face, the pistol hanging from his hand, the saddlebags draped heavily across his shoulder. Willis Durant suddenly saw him rock forward a step, catch himself, then topple forward like a downed tree, falling headlong, the saddlebags coming up off his shoulder as he landed facedown at Durant’s feet. Dark arterial blood rose in a low braid from the hole in the back of the old man’s neck. Durant stared down at it and saw the blood flow dwindle down and stop, as if a hand had just turned off a spigot.
Durant looked all around, hearing the echo of the shot from a long ways off. There was only one person could’ve fired that shot, from that far away. He scanned the endless land. Then he looked down at the saddlebags, seeing where one of the flaps had come open. He knelt and just stared, his pistol still in his hand. He didn’t hear Prudence stumble and catch herself on the other bank as she moved up behind him. “It’s…it’s the gold,” she said in a halting voice, a hand against the swollen whelp on her forehead.
“Yes…I see it is.” Durant stayed down on his knees. After a pause, he shook his head slowly and said, “You can’t imagine the things I would have done in the past just to get my hands on this.”
As he spoke, Prudence moved forward closer behind him, her head clearing now, her hand lifting the bloody straight razor from up under her arm. “This gold is mine,” she said.
“I stole for it”—Willis Durant went on, not hearing her—“I schemed for it. Killed for it…even went to prison for it.”
“It belongs to me, and nobody else,” Prudence said, opening the straight razor, moving closer to his broad back.
“And now,” Durant said, still not hearing her, “I look at this, and I realize…it’s nothing anymore.”
Behind him, Prudence had started to reach out with her free hand, the razor drawn back, ready. But she stopped, waiting for a second. “I gave up on this,” Durant said. “Because I found something better. Found a woman I loved…a woman who loved me. A son…” She saw his broad shoulders tremble as he stopped and shook his head again. “Now they’re gone…and this falls into my lap.” He let go of a long breath and sat back on his haunches, away from the saddlebags. “Well, it means nothing to me now.” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “You take it, Miss Vanderman…not that you need it. But there’s no sense it just lying out here.”
He ran a palm across his watery eyes and turned the rest of the way around, seeing her, and the straight razor in her hand. She lowered the razor, closing it into its pearl casing as Durant looked up into her eyes, a curious expression on his dirty blood-streaked face. She smiled, seeming to let go of something inside herself. “You’re right, there’s no point in it lying out here. I’ll take it.” She smiled. “See that it gets a good home.”
Durant looked down to the closed razor in her hand, then he lifted his eyes back up to hers. She saw the question there; and she bounced the razor on the palm of her hand and said, “Oh, this?” She reached her free hand down to help lift him by his broad shoulders. “Come on,” she said as he stood up. “I have a canteen on the horse. You look like you’ve been dragged through a slaughter house. Go wash your face.” She placed the razor in his hand. “A shave wouldn’t hurt either. We have a long ride ahead of us.”
“We do?” Willis Durant just looked at her. “Miss Vanderman, I have no place in mind. You take the horse…you’ll need it to get out of here.”
“Nonsense…and my name is Prudence, not Miss Vanderman. Come along now.” She took him by his shirtsleeve. “You’re not leaving me alone in this hellhole, carrying these bags of gold. Do you think I’m a fool?”
Willis Durant drew his arm away. “Ma’am, it goes without saying, you and I are a long ways from one another…”
She smiled. “Oh, not as far as you might think, once you know more about me. But we can talk about that some other time, some other place…say, Mexico City?” She cocked her head to the side.
“Mexico City?” Willis Durant considered it, gazing off toward the northeast as if collecting his dark memories from the wavering heat in that direction.
“Leave them. Let them rest in peace,” Prudence said. “There’s nothing back there, nothing you can change.”
“But…” Durant ran a hand across his dirty face, searching for something to say, something to justify keeping the bad memories alive.
“No,” she said, “leave them behind. We always leave something behind.” And she gazed off into the distance with him, but only for a moment. Then she turned with him, and together they picked up the saddlebags between them and walked back toward the horse.
* * *
Above the crest of the sandy rise, the Ranger watched the two of them ride up from the dry wash atop the big horse and head up the slope of sand, going west. He’d seen everything from up here through the small round circle of his rifle scope. He’d watched old man Dirkson stand up, taking aim on Willis Durant. Now we’re even, Durant, he’d thought as the rifle butt slammed his shoulder and old man Dirkson pitched forward, out of the small circle of the scope. A moment later, he’d watched the woman move up behind Durant, the razor open in her hand. At that point he’d centered the scope on her too. But something had told him to wait. So he’d waited, then relaxed the rifle when he saw her move back a step and close the razor. Willis, Willis…you hardheaded peckerwood.
The Ranger smiled to himself. The rifle lay on his lap now as he saw the horse carry them out of sight across the roll of the land. Nothing remained but the rise of their dust; and the Ranger turned the white barb before they lifted back into sight on the next sandy rise. He didn’t know what he would tell Sheriff Tackett when he saw him. Tackett sure loved that pistol Willis Durant was carrying.
But Tackett ought to realize that’s how things go out here, he thought, heeling the white barb forward. “Come on, Black-eye.” Raising a hand, he tightened down the brim of his tall gray sombrero against a hot gust of wind. You lose something here, win something there…and in the end, all that’s left is the last hoofprint in the drifting sand. He’d get on back to Maria now, hear what else she had to say. He’d never admit it, but, God, he loved the sound of her voice. And he’d think of something to tell Tackett once they got back across the border. He wasn’t sure what, but he’d think of a good story. Something would come to him. Something always did….