Crossing Fire River

by Ralph Cotton

  “I don’t know.” Wallick sat staring, not knowing what to do.

  Myra composed herself quickly and smiled as the man came riding up on them in the silver morning haze, his rifle in hand. “You-hoo,” she said, waving a hand back and forth. “I sure hope you’re not some highwayman come to rob me or have your way with me!”

  Sheves stared curiously until he got closer and recognized both her and Wallick. “Myra? Mean Myra Blount?” He gave a bemused half smile. “What the blazes are you doing out here?”

  Seeing how lathered and steamy his horse was, Myra thought quickly and said, “The same as you, no doubt. I came here to get some peace and quiet—all that shooting and killing going on in town. Lord, what a mess!”

  Sheves gave a nod to Wallick and eased his hand on his rifle stock. “A mess don’t come close,” he said. “But that doesn’t explain you riding all the way out here. Hewes ain’t fond of company, you know.” He eyed Wallick.

  “Well, I’ll swear,” said Myra, acting suddenly hurt and put out. “He told me anytime I wanted a place to stay, I was welcome here. I hope he meant it. I hate to think I rode all this way . . .”

  “Pay me no mind, neither one of yas,” said Sheves, taking off his tall Montana-crown hat and wiping his wet brow. “I’ve been running hard all night. If I don’t miss my guess, there’s going to be law swarming here before the day’s over. You might want to ask yourselves if this is a place you want to be. Especially you, Wilbur. I know you’ve had your ups and downs with the law of late.”

  “Obliged for telling us,” Wallick said, “but I promised Myra I’d escort her, so I’m going to do it.”

  “And I’m going to be grateful to him from now on for doing it,” Myra pointed out.

  “Yeah . . . ?” Sheves pondered the benefits of having the gratitude of a young woman like Mean Myra. “How can I help too?” he asked.

  “Well, since you asked, Eddie,” Myra said with a warm smile, “maybe you’ll lead us across the river and show us the shortest way to the hacienda?”

  Sheves considered, then looked back along the trail behind him. “Well, yeah, I can do that. But let’s hurry it up. This is not a place to be right now. There’ll be gunmen running here all morning, half spooked. A person could get shot by mistake—that’s something that’s concerned me my whole life.”

  “We’ll just have to be careful, then, won’t we, Eddie?” Myra said.

  “Yes, we will,” he replied, returning her smile. “We get to any of the trail guards you let me do all the talking.”

  “Of course,” Myra said. She gestured a hand toward the river running before them and asked, “Shall we?”

  They crossed the river before any more fleeing gunmen arrived from Banton. On the opposite side, Sheves led them past a campsite where two riflemen sat sipping coffee in the first light of morning. “Who’s that with you, Eddie?” one of the men asked without even standing up.

  “Boys, it’s Myra, from town,” said Sheves. “Hewes invited her. This is Wilbur Wallick riding with her.”

  “Myra, Wilbur,” said the men, touching their hat brims toward them as they continued riding past them at a walk.

  “Morning, boys,” Myra called out. Wallick only touched his hat brim in return.

  To Sheves one of the men said, “We’re told there’s going to be law coming from Banton. Three men already rode in a while ago, said it didn’t go well for Max and some of the others there.”

  “You heard right,” said Sheves, riding on. “Keep an eye peeled. I expect they’ll be riding here before the day is over.”

  Once past the guards, Sheves gave Myra a grin and a wink and said, “See how easy it is, when you know somebody. I hope you don’t forget what I did for you.”

  “How could I, Eddie?” Myra said. She looked all around, noting they were passing through a stretch of sparse woods and brush. “If you wasn’t in a hurry, I’d do something real nice for you right now.”

  Sheves stopped his horse with a sudden jolt and said in rushed voice, “I’ve got a few minutes far as that goes.”

  “Oh good!” she said with a playful laugh. “Help me down, and carry me over to those trees.”

  Sheves gave Wallick a look; Wallick only shrugged and sat with his wrists crossed on his saddle horn. He watched as the two disappeared around a cottonwood tree and a wide stand of juniper and dried brush. “Is here all right?” Sheves asked, already letting her stand down from his arms and loosening his gun belt.

  “Yes, this is fine,” said Myra. She stopped him from opening his fly and said, “Take your shirt off, Eddie.”

  “My shirt, why?” he asked.

  “I like feeling you against me,” Myra said with a pout. “Is that so bad?”

  “Naw, that ain’t bad,” Sheves said, grinning. He tossed his tall hat to the ground, unbuttoned the bib of his shirt and lifted it over his head. Before the shirt cleared his face, he felt a deep, harsh burn run across his throat. “Oh God,” he said, or tried to say, in a gargling voice, feeling the rush of hot blood spill out and cover his chest.

  “Careful, Eddie, watch the trousers,” Myra said, standing beside him and bending him forward as the blood spewed. Sheves struggled to get the shirt the rest of the way off, over his head. . . .

  Moments later, Wallick stared as he saw the tall-crowned hat bobbing out of the brush. “Where’s Myra?” he asked, looking farther back toward the small clearing beneath the cottonwood.

  “Right here,” Myra said, pushing up the hat brim and grinning up at Wallick.

  Wallick looked confused for a moment. “Where’s Sheves?” he asked, searching the brush in the early light.

  “Sheves is no longer with us,” Myra said.

  It dawned on him what she must’ve done. “Did you—I mean, is he—?”

  “Yes, I did, and yes he is,” said Myra, stepping up into Sheves’ saddle. She took the reins to her horse and jerked the animal up alongside her, then looked at Wallick from beneath the wide hat brim. “Are you ready?”

  “Aw hell, Sheves was not a bad fellow,” Wallick said with a sorrowful look.

  Myra sidled over to him. “Listen to me, Wilbur. You and I are going to leave here with enough gold to move to England and build ourselves a castle. Do you understand? Only, you’ve got to pay attention and do what I tell you. Will you do that?”

  “I don’t want no castle,” Wallick said.

  “But you do want gold, don’t you?” said Myra. “You do want plenty of this?” She gestured a nod toward her lap.

  “Yes, I do,” Wallick said, turning a bit breathless at the thought.

  “All right then, pay attention,” said Myra. “We’re past the guards. All we’ve got to do now is find the gold, figure out how to take it and watch for our chance.”

  “You think it’s that easy?” Wallick asked.

  “Yes, it’s that easy,” said Myra. “So let’s not go making it any harder than it is.” She turned the horse and nudged it forward, leading the other horse behind her. Wallick followed with a stunned look on his face.

  The front yard of Hewes’ hacienda had been hastily set up like a battle encampment. Two overturned wagons lay end to end, forming a barrier and firing position between the large house and anyone approaching from the direction of the river. When Myra and Wallick rode up and stopped and looked around, Hewes shouted at them from a front porch full of gunmen.

  “What the hell are you waiting for, Sheves?” he said. “Get your horses around to the barn and see if Goshen needs you back there.”

  With the tall, crowned hat mantling her forehead, Myra gave a slight wave and nudged her horse toward the barn. As she and Wallick rode around the house, Hewes called out again, “Is that Wilbur Wallick riding with you?”

  Wallick called back before Myra had to answer, “Yep, it’s me, Bo. I ran into Sheves, thought you might need an extra gun out here.”

  Hewes called out, “Good man, Wilbur,” and turned away toward three men he’d been talking to.

>   As they headed toward the barn, Myra nodded toward a stand of spindly pine thirty yards away. “There’s where we need to be,” she said to Wallick under her breath. As they veered their horses away in the direction of the pine cover, she noted a large heavily loaded freight wagon sitting near the rear barn door.

  Once inside the tree line, the two dropped from their saddles, hitched their horses to a dead, fallen pine and crept back to a pile of brush for a better look. “Do you think that’s it?” Wallick asked in a whisper, staring at the freight wagon.

  “I’m betting it is,” Myra replied, studying the wagon. There were six horses hitched to it, and next to it, through the half-open rear barn door, she could see the workers moving about inside.

  “Are we going to take off with it now?” Wallick asked, wearing a troubled expression on his face.

  “Sure we are,” Myra said. “That way we’d make it about ten feet before every gun on the place chopped us up like kindling.”

  “So we’re going to wait?” Wallick asked.

  Myra stared at him for a moment, realizing this was how it would always be with him around. Then she searched along a trail filled with hoof and wheel prints from the wagon riding in on it. “Come on, Wilbur,” she said. “I’ve got a notion the wagon is going out the same way it came in. We’ll get down along the trail and wait for it.”

  Inside the barn, Jake Goshen called a gunman named Grady Dotson to the side and said, “You and Weasel Joe get ready. We’re slipping away from here in a few minutes when Hewes calls everybody together. We’re going to leave without making any big deal of it.”

  Dotson looked at a row of three-pound gold ingots lying stacked on a wooden pallet on the dirt floor. “What about the stuff we already melted down?”

  “Leave it,” said Goshen. “Let it keep cooling. Leave the sacks of coins waiting over by the furnace too. It’ll keep everybody busy in here while we cut out. The rest of the men are busy getting ready for the law coming.”

  “What about Hewes?” Dotson asked.

  “Hewes and I planned it this way. He knows we’ve got to move this gold out of here,” said Goshen. “We’re just doing it without any fanfare. The less men knowing about it, the better. Now get Weasel Joe and be ready to slip out back. I’ll meet you both at the wagon when the time comes.”

  Hidden in the trees, Myra and Wallick spent the next twenty minutes watching more harried gunmen arrive from the direction of the river. The gunmen straggled in, one, two and three at a time, looking back over their shoulders. Finally, they watched Hewes step out away from the porch and stand beside the overturned wagons. He raised a hand and called out, “I want all of yas right here where I can see you when I talk to you.”

  As the men gathered around Hewes, on cue Grady Dotson and Weasel Joe Karr walked out of the barn and stepped up into the big wagon. “Looks like Hewes might be drawing everybody’s attention while these men slip away with the gold,” Myra mused under her breath. “I reckon nobody trusts nobody here.”

  A moment later, Jake Goshen walked out of the barn, pitched a shotgun up to Weasel Joe and walked back to where his horses stood hitched to a fence rail. “Yep, they’re making a run with it,” said Wallick. “I wonder how much gold is there.”

  Myra looked at him and said, “A lot, Wilbur—one hell of a lot, if it takes six horses and a freight to pull it down the trail.”

  “How are we going to get away with so damned much gold as that?” Wallick asked, now that he’d seen what was involved and the enormity of it began to sink in.

  “We’re taking as much as we can right now and hiding the rest for another time,” said Myra. She looked off up into the low jagged hills. “We’ll stash it somewhere up there. That’s the best I can think of right at this minute.”

  “Think we might buy a place somewhere and raise some sheep?” Wallick asked.

  “Sheep?” Myra gave him a look. “Don’t start spending it just yet, Wilbur,” she said. “We’ve got some serious business to take care of first.” She watched the wagon and Goshen on horseback move away along the back trail. “Come on,” she said, turning toward their horses, “we’ve got to get ahead of them, then get them to stop for us.”

  “How are we going to get them to stop for us?” Wallick asked, following close behind her.

  “Damn it, Wilbur,” she said, getting more put out with his constant questions, “I’m going to show them these!” She stopped suddenly and spun around facing him, the bib of the shirt open and her large firm round breasts squeezed together between her hands.

  “Lord God!” said Wilbur, too stunned to move.

  “There, you see how well these work? It stopped you, didn’t it?”

  Wilbur couldn’t speak. He shook his head and followed her on to the horses. When they had mounted, they rode wide of the trail and circled through stretches of brush and trees until they had gotten over a mile ahead of the heavy slow-moving wagon. “This will do it,” Myra said, looking all around at where they sat atop their horses at a blind turn in the trail. “We’ll wait right here for them.”

  From the direction of Fire River, past Bowden Hewes’ hacienda, the sound of gunfire suddenly erupted. “I’d say that’s the lawmen from town meeting up with some of the trail guards,” Myra speculated. They listened for a moment, the gunfire not letting up, but rather growing more steady, more intense. “This makes everything a little easier for us,” she said. “With the lawmen on their backs they won’t have time to run back here to see what the shooting’s about.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Wallick asked.

  “Get down off your horse. As soon as they round this turn, cut loose on them,” she said with a grin. Reaching up, she buttoned the bib of her shirt. “I might not need you girls after all,” she whispered down to her breasts.

  On the trail, Jake Goshen turned in his saddle and looked back toward the sound of gunfire in the distance behind them. “Damn, Hewes,” he growled, “this is all on his head.” He turned forward and gigged his horse up alongside the wagon as Dotson maneuvered the heavy rig around the turn.

  In the wooden seat beside Dotson, Weasel Joe sat with the shotgun lying loosely across his lap. “When this is over I ought to stick this shotgun in his ear and see what he’s been using for brains—”

  Before his words were complete, Wallick and Myra opened fire at a distance of ten feet. Wallick’s first shot killed Weasel Joe where he sat. Myra’s shot hit Goshen in the head, but it only grazed him and knocked him from his saddle. He hit the ground, knocked out cold. Dotson let the traces fall from his hands and grabbed for a Colt on his hip, but both Myra’s and Wallick’s next shots hit him dead center.

  “Grab the horses!” Myra shouted. But she didn’t wait to see if Wallick would make the move. Instead she flung herself from her saddle over onto the seat beside Weasel Joe’s limp, bloody body. “Got them,” she shouted, grabbing the traces and sitting back hard on them to keep the frightened horses from bolting out of control. “Yiii-hiiii! I was born for this kind of work!” she shouted with jubilation.

  “I was getting them,” Wallick said.

  “You wasn’t fast enough, Wilbur,” she said in an excited voice. Looking down at the loaded wagon bed, she said, “Oh my God! We did it! We got the gold!” Then she dropped onto the seat, saying, “Grab my horse, Wilbur, the other horse too! Let’s take all of our gold and get the hell out of here!” Half standing, she slapped the reins to the big horses’ backs and put them up into a run across along the trail toward the hill line.

  On the ground, Jake Goshen felt the ground rumble beneath him as consciousness returned to him slowly. “Damn it all!” he grumbled, lifting himself to his feet and standing, wobbling in place, watching the big wagon roll over a rise and out of sight. He jerked his Colt from his holster and started to fire just as the wagon appeared to be swallowed by the earth.

  “Son of a bitch . . .” Goshen looked down at Dotson’s body lying dead in the dirt; then he looked up at the rise of
dust in the wagon’s wake, feeling a striking pain inside his forehead like that of a hammer against an anvil. Now what . . . ? He cupped his palm to the long, bleeding gash running above his right ear. Now he had to have a horse, he told himself, turning back toward the sound of gunfire beyond the hacienda.

  Chapter 25

  Before crossing Fire River, Dawson, Caldwell and Shaw, Jane Crowly, Juan Lupo and the bounty hunters had gathered at the edge of a trail where they could see fresh hoofprints headed down into the water. Looking from one face to the next, Dawson said to the others, “Shaw here is the only one of us who’s seen the setup at Hewes’ place. We need for him to make a straight run for the gold, get his eyes on it and not let it out of his sight. Any objections?” He looked at Juan Lupo.

  “None,” said Lupo. “But I doubt the gold will be there. They knew we were coming. They have had time to haul it away.”

  “Then I’ll follow it,” said Shaw. “It won’t be hard to track, if the rest of you can keep Hewes’ and Goshen’s gunmen off my back.”

  “I say we all make a run for it, and grab it as quick as we can,” said Bobby Freedus. Then, seeing Lupo’s and the lawmen’s eyes on him, he added, “I mean, get it and hold it until Easy John here arrives, so’s he can take it all back to Mexico.”

  Lupo and Dawson exchanged a glance, as if neither had to warn the other about the bounty hunters. “Are we in agreement about keeping Shaw covered while he makes a run for Hewes’ barn?”

  “Yes, we are in agreement,” Lupo said.

  Turning to their horses and mounting, Shaw and Dawson watched Lupo swing up into his saddle. “I’d advise Easy John and the Scotsman to keep those three in front of them at all times,” Dawson said just between the two of them as Jane helped Caldwell into his saddle.

  “That’s some good advice for you to follow too,” Shaw said. “Once they get a whiff of that much gold, I’ve got a feeling it’ll go to their heads. They won’t even be able to trust each other.” He swung up into his saddle, drew his rifle and checked it. Then he turned his horse and nudged it toward the river.