Triple Peaks

by John Glasby

  He led the way down into the thickly tangled brush, through the stunted bushes and trees that grew in a wild profusion here. In places, the trail was virtually nonexistent, yet Turrell rode forward without hesitation, always cutting up to the higher ledges and ridges that loomed over them in the late afternoon light. He did not bother to look back and check on the posse on their trail, but was content to ride ahead, secure in the knowledge that they had nothing to fear from those men.

  The shadows were long over the gorges and rugged rocks by the time they entered the canyon leading up to the old mine workings. Past the big wooden cyanide vats used for extracting the gold and silver from the ore, they tethered their mounts near the shack and went inside. By now, Tragge could scarcely stand. He had lost a lot of blood during the day-long ride out from town and he made no move to resist as Turrell got him into a chair and stripped the blood-stained shirt from his body, tossing it on to the floor.

  ‘Kreb. Start a fire and get me some boiling water. I’ll try to get this slug out of him and patch him up.’

  ‘He looks in a bad way now,’ said Dufray harshly. He stood staring down at Tragge, sprawled in the chair. ‘You sure you know what you’re doin’?’

  ‘I’ve had to doctor more men with gunshot wounds and carryin’ slugs inside them than you’ve ever dreamed of,’ he said with a faint note of contempt in his voice. Ignoring the other, he cleaned the wound with cold water, waited while Kreb had the fire started. Then he took out the long-bladed bowie knife and placed it in the flames.

  Tragge opened his eyes at this, stared down at the knife for a moment and a visible shudder ran through his frame. For a second, he struggled to get to his feet, but he was so weak that he couldn’t make it and flopped down in the chair again, his head lolling to one side. He was scarcely conscious.

  Kreb said tightly: ‘He looks as if he’s passed out, Patch Eye.’

  Turrell gave a brief nod. ‘Maybe that’s best,’ he said. ‘He won’t feel too much that way.’

  Without proper doctor’s instruments and with only the learning he had picked up the hard way along the trail, he knew that there was always a good chance that Tragge would not live, even if he managed to get the piece of lead out of his shoulder. It was a nasty wound. The slug had hit him obliquely, tearing in through the flesh, before embedding itself close to the shoulder bone. Whether or not it had actually chipped and splintered the bone he could not tell as yet. If it had, then it was going to be even more difficult to get the slug out and patch the other up.

  ‘Get me the knife,’ he said sharply. Kreb went over to the fire and withdrew the knife, bringing it over to him. Turrell waited for the blade to cool, wiped away a little blood which still oozed from the gaping wound, and probed with the knife tip into the torn and mangled flesh.

  Even in the depths of his unconsciousness, Tragge moaned deep within his throat and a further shudder went through his body. His teeth sank into his lower lip, and there were flecks of blood on it as Turrell probed further.

  ‘You’d better hold him down,’ he said, motioning to Kreb. The black-bearded giant came forward, stood with his huge hands grasping Tragge’s shoulders, pinning him motionless to the chair. It was doubtful if the other could have moved even if he had been conscious.

  ‘That’s better.’ Turrell went on with his task. The wound began to bleed again, making it more difficult to see what he was doing. More than once, he was inclined to stop it, to bind up the other’s shoulder with strips of cloth torn from his shirt and patch him up as best he could that way. There had been men he had heard of who had lived for years with a piece of lead inside them. But he put the thought out of his head whenever it came into his mind. He had started and it was up to him to finish it.

  Again, the other moaned, would have twisted in the chair had it not been for Kreb’s hands holding him immobile. At length, Turrell felt the tip of the knife blade touch something hard, yet yielding. He bent forward a little, continued to probe, easing the object out of the wound. It came slowly out, a dulled piece of metal, just recognizable as a bullet.

  ‘There,’ he said tightly. ‘Now we can patch him up.’ He knew that there was sweat on his forehead, but did not wipe it off. ‘Soak me some strips of cloth from his shirt in that boiling water,’ he ordered, without lifting his head. ‘I can do no more for him now. The rest is up to his own constitution.’

  He finished binding up the other’s shoulder, then straightened his back. ‘That ought to do it,’ he muttered. ‘Now let’s check that gold.’

  Tragge slept uneasily most of that night, but by morning, when he wakened, he was conscious and clear-minded. His shoulder was stiff and ached with a numb agony. As Turrell came into the assay shack, he asked: ‘Did we manage to throw off that posse?’

  Turrell nodded briefly. ‘They must’ve followed up to the edge of the brush and then decided to go back. Relax, they’ll never find us here. We’ve outwitted them once and we can do it again.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Kreb, standing in the doorway.

  Turrell grinned viciously. ‘One more big haul like yesterday’s and we’ll be set for life. We can split what we have and head south for the border. A life of ease and luxury for all of us.’

  ‘Why not go right now?’ put in Dufray tersely. ‘The whole territory is sure to be hummin’ like a hornet’s nest by now. They won’t sit around and wait for us to strike at some other bank. They’ll be settin’ up traps all over the place, for us to ride into. I’ve heard of it happenin’ that way before. Don’t see why it should be any different for us. That Jessup ain’t no fool, whatever else you might think he is.’

  ‘Mebbe not,’ Turrell agreed. ‘But we’ll lay low for a little while and then, when the time is right, we’ll hit the last place on earth they’ll expect us to attack.’

  Kreb raised his brows a little. ‘Where’s that?’ he asked tautly.

  Turrell’s grin broadened. ‘The bank at Triple Peaks — where else?’ he said challengingly.

  Chapter Seven: The Wild Breed

  Garth Martinue rode into Culver City shortly before ten o’clock in the evening on the second day after leaving Triple Peaks. He tied his mount in front of the sheriff’s office and started for the steps, but at the walk, he glanced out of the corner of his eye and noticed the lawman heading towards him from the far side of the street.

  ‘Saw you ride into town,’ said Cantry. ‘Figured you might be along sooner or later. Come on into the office and rest yourself. It must ’ve been a long, hard ride across that desert.’

  ‘It was,’ Garth agreed. It felt good to sit down in the high-backed chair in the lawman’s office and stretch his legs out in front of him. The other brought a glass of whiskey, set it in his hand, poured one for himself, then sank down into the chair at the back of the long, score-marked desk, and placed his feet on top of it, tipping his hat on to the back of his head.

  ‘I got a message from Jessup in Triple Peaks askin’ about you.’ The other took out the sheet of paper from the drawer in his desk, spread it fiat in front of him. ‘He seems mighty suspicious of you. Any reason why?’

  ‘I figure he’s suspicious of everybody who rides into town these days. That outlaw band that’s operatin’ from there is givin’ him a mite of trouble. But I guess it’s mainly because he doesn’t like the job he’s been landed with now that there’s some real trouble broken out there.’

  ‘I can guess his feelings,’ acknowledged the other. ‘From what I’ve heard this is some mean outfit. We’ve been hit ourselves once. They got away with plenty, I can tell you. They’re cunning and smart. They know just how to go about it and they hit us before we were aware of it.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here. I got a lead on the leader of this gang from the singer in one of the saloons. Seems this hombre rode into town, saying his name was Smith, booked in at the hotel, then pulled out without warning on the very mornin’ that the stage was held up for the first time. From what I found out, he had b
een hurt pretty bad by a bullet that must’ve creased his skull. He’d had it bandaged up and I found out that it was the doctor in that cowtown along the trail who tended him.’

  ‘You sure it was the same man?’ Interest sparked the other’s tone.

  ‘No doubt about it. That crease in his skull had affected his left eye. The doctor finally admitted that the chances were this hombre wouldn’t be able to use it after a little while. Something about damage to a nerve. But it fits this outlaw who leads this gang. He wears a patch over his left eye.’

  Cantry nodded his head slowly. Surprise showed momentarily on his face. ‘We had a brush with an outlaw, a killer named Turrell. He was headed up from Texas with half a dozen posses ridin’ his trail. We lost him in the desert, but I’m sure one of my men hit him on the side of the skull, nearly knocked him out of the saddle. If he kept on ridin’ the same way, he’d end up in Triple Peaks.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  Cantry pursed his lips, stared down at the whiskey bottle, ‘About a month, maybe a mite longer.’

  ‘So it could be the same man,’ mused Garth. ‘I’ve heard of this hombre Turrell. His gang was smashed a while back down near the Texas border. He was the only one to get away.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Cantry opened another drawer in his desk, rifled through the papers there, then pulled out a faded wanted poster, slid it across the desk to Garth. ‘That’s him. He may be changed a little by now. That eye patch will make a difference, although it’s bound to be distinctive.’

  Garth studied the man’s face intently. It was a cruel face, with no spark of humanity showing in any line of it; the sort of face he would have expected an outlaw killer like this to have. After he had perused the picture for a few moments, he slid it back to Cantry.

  ‘Sooner or later this killer is goin’ to make a mistake and I intend to be around when he does,’ he said ominously.

  ‘He’s a dangerous man,’ warned the other, sliding the picture back with the others inside the desk. ‘He must be to have led that outlaw gang down near the border for so long and still get away when the Rangers closed in on him.’

  Garth nodded musingly. He bit the end off a cigar, lit it and blew out the smoke through narrowly parted lips. ‘And what are you goin’ to do about the message that Jessup sent?’

  Cantry grinned faintly, stared down at the paper in front o him. ‘I’m not sure what to do. I guessed you might be ridin’ into town and I held off sending any answer until you did.’

  ‘I’d be obliged if you merely said that you knew nothin’ about me at all for the present,’ Garth said, after a brief pause. ‘The less Jessup knows, the better.’

  ‘You think he may be workin’ with these outlaws?’

  ‘No — I’m sure he isn’t. But he’s scared, deep down inside. If he could see a way of throwing up this job, he’d do it like a shot now that he knows what it can really mean, that there’s a chance of him gettin’ killed in the furtherance of his duties as sheriff.’

  ‘I’ll send that message off tonight,’ nodded the other. Fishing for a pencil, he wrote it out, got to his feet and walked to the street door, calling to somebody in the shadows. Out of the corner of his eye, Garth saw the oldster who came out of the darkness, took the note which Cantry handed to him and then vanished again into the night. The sheriff came back and seated himself in the chair once more, relaxing. ‘Jessup will get that sometime tonight,’ he said, grinning. ‘In the meantime, what are your plans?’

  ‘I’ll stay here overnight, then pull out in the morning. I’d like any information at all you can give me on Turrell or any of the other lawless breed who you know to be hidin’ out in this part of the territory, particularly in those hills.’

  ‘You figure that Turrell got the men to follow him from that bunch?’

  ‘It makes sense, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose you could be right.’ Cantry poured a second drink for them, tossed his own down in a single gulp as if he needed it. ‘Those hills are several miles long and over a mile wide, full of old Indian trails and abandoned mine workings, left there since before the War. Even if you had a half dozen posses, you wouldn’t find them in there in a year. They know every inch of those trails and you could ride within a couple of feet of them without even knowin’ they were there.’

  ‘That’s the way I had it figured. That’s why I reckon the only way we’ll ever force a showdown with them is to lay a trap of our own. Get them to ride into Triple Peaks and seal off every exit. That way, we can finish them.’

  ‘Could be that this has no bearin’ on the problem,’ said the other slowly, after a reflective pause. ‘But I did hear there was a deep rift between the cattlemen of the Bar X ranch, the biggest in the territory and the townsfolk of Triple Peaks.’

  ‘What inference are you drawin’ from that?’ Garth asked.

  ‘Just that if Turrell wanted to bring in more recruits to swell his ranks and make sure that he could outfight any posse you could bring against him, he wouldn’t be short of men. The Bar X men would side with him right away.’

  ‘I had considered that, but I doubt if he’ll have had time to lay any plans like that. Besides, the more men he has, the more shares with the spoils. He’ll want to keep as much of the gold and dollar bills for himself as he can.’

  ‘Could be,’ admitted the other thoughtfully. He stretched himself in his chair, gave Garth an oblique glance. His forthright gaze was blacker now and unfathomable. He sat still for a further moment, then said: ‘Reckon you’ll be ready to hit the hay, Garth. I’ll walk over to the hotel with you. Don’t worry about your horse. I’ll get one of the boys to take care of him for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Getting to his feet, Garth waited while the other gave his orders to the man lounging against the upright outside the office, then they walked slowly along the street. It was virtually deserted now, most of the men being in the saloons or the eating houses spaced at intervals along the sides of the main street. Culver City was an up-and-growing place. A few years before it had been merely a collection of wooden shacks, but now that the railroad had moved up to it and there was a railhead there for shipping cattle back east to the markets, it had grown overnight into a big, brawling place of more than seven thousand head. Soon, unless he missed his guess, it might be one of the biggest and most important towns in this stretch of territory.

  ‘I’ll see you in the mornin’ before you pull out,’ Cantry said as they parted just outside the entrance of the hotel. ‘You’ll be all right here.’

  ‘I’m sure I will,’ Garth nodded. At that moment, all he wanted was to get his head down and sleep. The other waved his hand in salute, turned and walked out towards the outskirts of town, making his rounds of the place. Not that much was likely to happen there so long as the outlaws kept themselves further west, Garth mused as he went inside.

  *

  Garth ate his breakfast with the three other guests at the hotel, washed the well-cooked food down with two cups of hot, black coffee, smoked a single cigarette and when he had finished, stepped outside into the cool air of the street. The sun had just risen and there was a pale, overall red glow in the thin, winey air.

  Cantry appeared a hundred yards away, came towards him. He said: ‘Saddle up when you’re ready and I’ll ride part of the way with you. There’s somebody I have to see along the trail a piece.’

  Garth went over to the livery stables for his horse and gear, threw the saddle on to the animal, tightened the cinch, checked the Winchester in its scabbard behind the saddlehorn, then swung up and rode out of the stables into the street. Cantry was outside the sheriff’s office as he drew level with the building. He finished his conversation with a couple of deputies, then moved out on to the street, climbing into the saddle, and wheeled his mount alongside Garth’s.

  Together, they rode out of town, heading west, cutting out into the rough country that lay just beyond the town, where the trail ran up into a shelving area of ground, covered wit
h flinty stones that made going difficult and treacherous for their horses. Cantry was silent for some time, his face set as he sat tall and easy in the saddle, staring straight ahead of him. Then, presently, he turned and threw Garth a quick, enigmatic glance.

  ‘If you do succeed in smashing this outlaw band, what do you intend to do then, Garth?’ he asked. ‘Keep on ridin’ over the hill? Out west?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said quietly.

  ‘We have a hard time getting good men to stay in these parts when we’re lookin’ for men to keep the law. Wouldn’t you consider that?’

  ‘You’re forgettin’ that I already have a job with the Rangers?’

  ‘No, I’m not forgettin’. But I thought that you might think it over. It’s no skin off my nose what happens in Triple Peaks. But it does seem to me that they need a man there who could keep the law. Jessup is no use at all.’

  ‘And you think the townsfolk there might elect me in his place?’ asked Garth with a faint smile.

  ‘I think there’s a good chance of it, if you’d indicate that you were willin’ to take the job. And I also think there’s an excellent chance that Jessup would be only too glad to give it up, if he had the chance.’

  Garth pressed his lips firmly together, his eyes speculative under the straight-drawn brows. It was something he had not considered. The job of a Ranger was the only thing that had seemed right for him after he had left the Army with the end of the war that had ravaged the states. He did not like or dislike Triple Peaks. It was as good and as bad as a score of other towns he had known along the trail. Certainly there came a time when a man felt the urge to put down roots, to stay in one place and not be continually riding a different trail. For a moment, his thoughts strayed to Rosarie Glynn, but he put the idea out of his mind almost at once, although he would have liked to dwell on the girl. There was a curious sense of warmth in his body when he thought of her, picturing her as she had been when he had last seen her, imagining again the warmth that had been in her voice when she had thanked him for saving her life and her father’s.