Crossing Fire River

by Ralph Cotton

  “I hope you don’t think me a terrible person,” she said, “poor Jonathan lying dead, not even in the ground yet, and me taking liberties with the man who brought him home to me.”

  Shaw looked at her. “No, I don’t think you’re a terrible person.” He thought about himself and how he had reacted when he’d learned his wife was dead. “People do what they do to keep from going crazy sometimes.”

  She gave him a closer look. “You sound like you know from experience.”

  “Yes, Lori, from experience.” He didn’t want to talk about his precious, long-dead Rosa, not while seated naked beside a woman on her bed, her husband’s remains waiting in an outbuilding while Shaw had made love to his widow. “They say experience is the worst teacher,” he added.

  “The best teacher, is what they say,” Lori corrected.

  “Best . . . worst.” Shaw gave a wry grin and a short shrug. “What the hell do they know anyway?”

  Lori gave a slight smile in response, reached over and brushed a lock of hair back from his forehead. “If you ever want to talk about it,” she said, “I’ll listen without judging, I promise.”

  “That’s the best offer I’ve had for a long time,” Shaw said. As he spoke he reached up and took his gun belt down from the corner of the headboard and laid it beside him.

  “I mean that sincerely,” Lori said.

  “So do I,” Shaw replied. Slipping the big Colt from its holster, he checked it deftly and closely. “And I’ll keep your offer in mind.”

  He cocked and turned the cylinder with his thumb, feeling and listening to the sleek action. He looked at her as he slipped the Colt back loosely into its holster, then stood and stepped over to the chair, where his clean clothes lay.

  “I took the liberty . . . ,” she said, regarding the clean trousers, which he raised, inspected and stepped into.

  “Much obliged,” Shaw said, buttoning the trousers at the waist. “Now let’s take a couple of minutes and talk about why I’m here,” he said.

  Lori looked surprised and confused. “You’re here because you brought Jonathan—”

  “No,” Shaw said, pointedly, cutting her off. “I mean, why am I here, in your bed?”

  She looked even more surprised and confused. “I—I don’t know how to answer. You said yourself, ‘Peo ple do what they do sometimes to keep from going crazy.’ ”

  “I know what I said,” Shaw replied. “But you didn’t invite me to your bed when you still thought I was just some harmless drunken saddle tramp who happened upon your dead husband.”

  “Whatever are you talking about?” Lori asked, standing and walking away from him, not facing him.

  “I’m talking about you overhearing Jane Crowly and I talking about how I killed two outlaws and her telling you how I handled Jesse Burkett. It was after all that when I became a whole other person to you, one fit for your admiration, and affection.” He gestured a hand toward the disheveled bed.

  “All right, perhaps I had no respect for you when I saw you as a drunken saddle tramp standing in my yard. I was grateful to you for what you did, but that was all.” She stood rigid and stared away from him. “The rest . . . I don’t know why. If learning that you’re a dangerous man had anything to do with it, perhaps it did. But if it did, it was without being consciously aware of it.”

  Shaw heard her voice turn tearful. He eased down and walked to her from behind and put his hands on her shoulder. “Look, I’m sorry. I should not have brought it up. I’m a gunman. In my world people use one another. Nobody offers anything without expecting something in return.”

  “That’s not just your world, Lawrence,” she said quietly. “I’m finding that to be the case in my world as well.”

  “All I’m saying is, if you’re expecting something in return, let’s be honest about it, put it out on the table, so to speak.” He paused, then said, “I’m not above being used. None of us are, most especially those of us who can admit how much we’ve used others.”

  She turned, facing him; he dropped his hands from her shoulders to her waist. He saw a welling of tears in her eyes, but now they had stopped as quickly as they’d started. “It’s Bowden Hewes.”

  “I had a feeling it was,” Shaw said. He held her not at arm’s length, but not against him either.

  “You don’t know what it’s been like with him,” Lori said. “Every time he comes here he gets more insistent. I have put him off as best I could. But I know how he’s going to be when he finds out that Jonathan is dead.”

  “You could leave here,” Shaw said, just to find out how committed she was to this place, this weathered house in a rocky valley along the edge of a blazing desert.

  “This is my home, Lawrence,” she said, “and these are my people. I’m their doctor now, their only doctor. They need me.”

  “And you need them?” Shaw interjected.

  She looked at him.

  “I mean, since you’re not a doctor, at least not like your late husband. This is one place where you can carry out the profession without the credentials.”

  “Yes, that’s true, I suppose . . . if you chose to look at it that way,” she said. “I am every bit the doctor Jonathan was, credentials or no.”

  “I see.” Shaw nodded. She had convinced herself of her situation. Nothing he said was going to alter her thinking in any manner. “You think that my being here with you might put off Bowden Hewes?” he asked. “You figure that just the presence of another man will send him on his way, out of your life?”

  “Yes, it would,” she replied firmly, as if she had given it much thought and had convinced herself.

  Shaw gave her a pointed and knowing look.

  She relented but only a little. “I mean, yes, it could . . . it should,” she said, bravely defending her position.

  “It could, it should,” Shaw said, “but what if it doesn’t?” He watched her eyes closely. “What then?” He knew where this was headed, whether she consciously knew it or not.

  “I don’t know what then,” she said, looking away from him again. “I only know that I have a profession and a home, and my own way of life here. I must do whatever it takes to protect that. I cannot allow myself to be overpowered by someone like Bowden Hewes.”

  “Do you want him dead?” Shaw asked flat out, tired of sparring over the matter.

  “Kill him?” She looked startled by the very mention of such an act. “No, nothing like that,” she said. “I mean, I’m certain things would never go that far.” She paused, then asked with hesitancy, “Would it?”

  “By now Hewes knows what I did to his man, and he knows why I came here. So I expect we’ll be finding out soon enough,” Shaw said.

  “Don’t think that I really want you to kill . . .” Her words trailed.

  “Forget I mentioned it,” Shaw replied. “Maybe I’m still not thinking straight from all the whiskey I’ve poured through me.” He knew there was no use going over it again. He was here, sleeping with a woman Bowden Hewes considered his own. He had struck the first blow by rifle-butting one of Bowden’s riders. Likely as not, it wasn’t a matter of whether he would kill Hewes, he told himself. It might only be a matter of when.

  PART 2

  Chapter 10

  Bowden Hewes and his top gunmen had been traveling back to his sprawling ranch in Fire River Valley when his front riders spotted Max “the Ax” Cafferty, Collie Mitchum, Bennie Ford and Jesse Burkett riding toward them at a loping pace. Burkett flopped back and forth in his saddle, still a little addled and half out of his head from the hard lick he’d taken. His lips were still swollen to twice their size, and as purple as overripe plums.

  Watching the four approach across a stretch of rolling sand hills dotted with sparse wild grass and barrel cactus, a Wyoming gunman named Ned Gunnison said under his breath to the two men riding alongside him, “Bo ain’t going to like them riding out to meet us. He told everybody to lay low ’til we get back and get things set up.” He stared past the rise of dust beh
ind the four riders, looking to see if they’d been followed.

  “Jesse rides like he’s been wetting his whistle. Maybe all four of them are drunk,” said one of the men beside him, a man named Carl Pole.

  “That ought to make for an exciting day,” Gunnison said dryly.

  The third man, a young Irish American named Danny Grimes, nodded toward one of two covered wagons rolling along the trail behind them. “Want me to wake Bo up, so’s that we can watch the fur fly?” he said with a devilish grin.

  “I expect we might just as well,” said Gunnison, watching the four riders draw nearer.

  But as the four turned and looked back toward the heavily loaded wagons, they saw the four-horse teams come to a halt. “I’m betting Foster already woke him,” said Grimes.

  At the first big wagon, Bowden Hewes stepped out from behind the front flap and down onto the ground, an open canteen in his hand. His black tie hung loose around his neck; his shirt collar lay open. He carried a black flat-crowned hat in his other hand. From behind the first wagon the driver of the second wagon hurried down from his wooden seat and unhitched a saddled horse from behind his wagon. He came running forward, leading the horse to Hewes at a trot.

  Without a word of thanks, Hewes put his hat on, took the horse’s reins, swung up into the saddle and booted the big silver, black-legged bay forward. He arrived among the three front riders as Max and the others drew closer, slowing to a walk, then to a halt.

  “Bo, I know you said lay low, and we did,” Max called out from thirty feet away, waiting for word from Hewes before coming any closer. “But we’ve had a hell of a thing come up all of a sudden.”

  “Get in here, Max,” Hewes called out with a jerk of his head. Looking at Burkett, he said to Gunnison beside him, “Is that son of a bitch drunk?” But getting a better look at Burkett, seeing his battered, swollen face, Gunnison winced and replied, “If he ain’t, he should be. Looks like somebody fed him a boot for breakfast.”

  Carl Pole muffled a chuckle. A cold stare from Hewes silenced him. Then Hewes looked closer at Burkett’s face as the riders drew to another halt ten feet in front of them. “Jesus, man,” Hewes said, examining Burkett’s grotesque purple mouth. “Someone should have warned you about sneaking up behind a range mare.”

  Pole snickered again, but this time it was all right with Hewes.

  Jesse Burkett raised his face and tried to speak, but it sounded like a man talking over a mouth full of chewed potatoes.

  Eyeing Burkett closely, Hewes asked Max, “What the hell did he say?”

  “I don’t know, Bo,” said Max, shaking his head. “Something about killing the sumbitch who done this to him.”

  “Who did do this to him?” Hewes asked. Then, before Cafferty could answer, he asked, “What the hell are you doing out here? I gave orders.”

  Cafferty said, “I know you did, Bo, and believe me, I thought long and hard before coming out here. But I’ve news that can’t wait.”

  “Yeah?” Hewes stared curiously. “Then let’s have it before it becomes old news.”

  “They found your brother’s body,” Cafferty said. “We run into Jane Crowly. Her and some drifter was on their way to the Edelmans’ with the doc’s body. I knew you’d want to know, so I took a chance and we came on out.”

  “Jane Crowly, damn her twisted female hide,” said Hewes. “She’s always sticking her lousy nose where it don’t belong.”

  “But she’s not the one who found the doc,” said Cafferty. “It was some half-wit mute, looks like he fell out a whiskey barrel. He’s the one who did this to Jesse. He butt-smacked him straight in the mouth—harder than I ever seen a man hit in my life.”

  Burkett made a guttural sound that drew their attention to him. “I . . . never . . . saw . . . a . . . thing,” he said in a muffled tone, taking his time to try and form the words with his split and swollen lips.

  “The fact is none of us really saw it,” said Cafferty. “But I saw a blur; then I saw a rifle pointed at my guts. The sonsabitch had us cold. He took our guns, else we would have shot him full of holes for what he done—”

  “Hold it,” said Hewes, eyeing Burkett, then looking back at Cafferty. “Some half-wit, as you call him, did this to Jesse, than held the rest of you at gunpoint, took your guns?”

  Cafferty’s face reddened. “You had to see it to believe it, Bo,” he said. “He was faster than anything human I ever seen. Now that we got our guns back, far as I’m concerned I’ll ride out to the Edelmans’ and splatter his brains all over the yard. All you got to do is say the word.”

  Hewes just looked at him. After a moment of contemplation on the matter, he asked the four sitting in front of him, “None of yas ever saw this man before? You saw nothing familiar about him?”

  They shook their heads, Burkett doing so extra slowly to keep from moving his pain-throbbing face.

  “But you did see Doc Jon’s body?” He looked from face to face.

  “Well, no, not what you’d call per se,” Cafferty said cautiously. “But Jane said it was the doc. I expect she’d know.”

  Hewes stared at him, his grim expression growing darker as Cafferty spoke. Finally he said to Cafferty and Burkett, “Both of yas get out of my sight before I empty this gun in your bellies.” His black-gloved hand wrapped around the butt of a big Smith & Wesson revolver strapped to his thigh.

  Cafferty and Burkett jerked their horses away from the other two and raced out of sight over one of the rolling sand hills. When they were far enough away for comfort, Cafferty jumped down from his saddle, took a few deep breaths and leaned against his horse’s side. He took a few more deep breaths to calm himself. “Hell, I knew he was going to take this bad,” he said. Burkett sat in his saddle in silence, his face throbbing harder after riding away at a hard run.

  Back at the wagons, once the two were out of sight, Gunnison shook his head and asked Hewes, “What do you want us to do about this man?”

  Hewes murmured aloud to himself, “Of all the damned times for this to happen.” He gazed away into the distance in the direction of the Edelman house.

  “We can go calf rope this jake by his ankles and drag him back to you, if that suits you.”

  “No, that’s not the way for now,” Hewes said, still giving everything some thought. “We need to keep things cool here until we’re finished with the gold.” He glanced back at the heavily loaded covered wagons with a look of concern. “All right, here’s the deal,” he said to Gunnison, “you, Pole and Mackey come with me.” He turned to Bennie Ford. “Once I’m out of sight, go tell Cafferty and Burkett to get back on here. The four of yas escort this equipment the rest of the way. Start setting it up in my barn.”

  “Sure thing, Bo,” said Ford.

  Hewes stared at him as if in afterthought. “Did everything happen like Max said?” He raised a gloved finger for emphasis and warned, “Don’t lie to me, Bennie, or I’ll cut your tongue out.”

  “Yeah, Bo,” said Ford, a meek, worried look coming onto his face, “it happened just about that way. The man was fast, and it wasn’t the first time he ever swung down on a man—you could tell by how he handled himself.”

  Hewes looked at the other rider. “Collie?” he asked in a firm tone.

  “He was not a half-wit like Max said,” Collie Mitchum ventured. “This ragged top-hat wearing bastard knew his way around a rifle butt.”

  “What would you call him, then?” Hewes asked, staring at him.

  “Me?” Mitchum looked at Ford, then back at Hewes and said without fear of reprisal, “From what I saw, I’d call him a son of a bitch.”

  Shaw had finished digging the grave in the yard before the sun had reached its highest, hottest point in the sky. When he’d returned to the barn, he carried his shirt thrown over his shoulder, along with his gun belt. At a plank workbench inside the barn, he hung the shirt and gun belt on a row of wall pegs beside his ragged poncho and the battered top hat.

  As he wiped off his sweat with a cloth th
e widow had sent with him for just such a purpose, he heard a menacing voice say from within the dark shadows of the barn, “Make one false move, Senor, and you will die! Now raise your hands, pronto!”

  Shaw turned his attention slowly toward a Mexican who had slipped out of a stall and stood holding an ancient flintlock pistol out at arm’s length. The man stalked closer and stopped ten feet away. In a shaft of light at the open rear barn door, Shaw saw a burrow standing with its head lowered. Past the burrow stood a sweaty desert barb.

  “Oh . . . ?” Shaw said calmly, taking his time, looking the man up and down. “Everybody dies.” He studied the gun closely, noting the cocked hammer, but seeing no flint in the striker.

  The man looked surprised by Shaw’s lack of fear. “Do not test me, Senor. I am not bluffing,” he said firmly. “I will shoot you dead.”

  “Not with that gun, you won’t,” Shaw said with confidence.

  The man fidgeted in place, looking suddenly unsure of himself. “Why—why do you say that?” he asked, his face looking nervous beneath the brim of his wide straw sombrero.

  “No flint,” Shaw said, though he raised his hands chest high, complying with the man’s demand.

  The man almost sighed with regret, as if to admit that Shaw had him cold. The ancient pistol slumped in his hand; he caught himself and jerked it quickly back up. But before he’d collected himself, Shaw’s Colt was out of the holster, cocked and pointed at him.

  “Was that your only plan?” Shaw asked quietly.

  The man looked dumbstruck by how quickly he’d lost what he’d thought was the upper hand. “Si.”

  Shaw nodded. “Uncock it and put it away,” he said.

  The Mexican sighed again, but did as he was told, shoving the big bulky pistol down into his waistband beneath his own poncho.