by Ralph Cotton
The two turned forward in their saddles and had started to nudge their horses when they saw four dark figures step into sight, forming a half circle around them on the trail.
Bonham raised the saddlebags and sat ready to hurl them away.
“Don’t do something stupid,” said a deep voice. The man moved closer, coming more clearing into sight in the pale light of the moon.
“Christ in a canoe!” said Turley Batts. “It’s Dirty Dave Atlo.”
Dirty Dave gave him a slim, evil grin, holding a double-barreled shotgun pointed and cocked up at him.
“See how smart you are, Batts, when you apply yourself?” he said. He looked past Batts at Bonham and said, “Lonnie, you stinking little bastard. I hope you do try to throw that money over the cliff, so I can air your guts out for you.”
“Sit tight, Lon!” Batts ordered, knowing Bonham well enough to anticipate that he would drop the saddlebags and go for his gun. To Dave Atlo he said weakly, “What money are you talking about, Dave?”
“Jesus, I can’t believe I let you Denver City idiots beat me out of money,” said Dirty Dave. The shotgun bucked in his hand, lighting his face blue-orange in a blossom of firelight.
Batts flew from his saddle as the bulk of the scrap iron load sliced through his chest and face. His horse screamed loud and long. Catching some of the perimeter of the shot in its neck and withers, the animal reared high and fell away onto its side. But before it fell, as it stood on its hind hooves between Lonnie Bonham and Dirty Dave, Bonham made his move.
Slinging the bags over the edge of the trail, he jerked his Colt from its holster and fired furiously, one of his shots flinging Dirty Dave from his saddle. But the other three shotguns blossomed and exploded in the darkness, pounding Bonham mercilessly.
“That’ll do!” shouted Macon Ray Silverette, rasping and choking in the looming broil of burnt powder. He called over to Dirty Dave, who stood bowed at the waist on the far side of the trail from him, “You hit, Dave?”
“Hell yes, I’m hit, you damn fool!” Dave growled as Macon Ray reached and gently took the shotgun from his hand. “I’m gut-shot… belly to backbone!” he gasped, and added, “I feel blood running down my ass.”
“Now, there’s a picture I would not pay to look at,” said Ray, lifting Dave’s Colt from its holster and shoving it down behind his belt.
“Wha-what are you doing?” Dirty Dave asked, in a distrusting voice.
“Lightening your load, Dirty Dave,” said Macon Ray.
“I won’t need no lightening, once I’m in the saddle,” said Dave, pain coming to his voice. “And don’t call me Dirty Dave. I’ve warned you enough!” he managed to growl.
“Dirty Dave, your warnings don’t impress me the way they used to, say… an hour ago?” Ray grinned. He patted Dave on the back. “Anyway, I’m lightening your load so you don’t have as much to carry, bringing the saddlebags up to us.” He gestured a hand toward the edge of the trail, beyond the bodies of the two outlaws—beyond one dead, and one dying, thrashing horse.
“Are you—are you kidding me?” said Dave as Albert Kinney walked in closer from across the trail, his shotgun still smoking in his hands.
“Joe,” said Macon Ray with a dark chuckle, “he wants to know if I’m kidding him.”
Joe Fackler pitched a rope on the ground at Dave’s feet.
Dave shook his bowed head and said, “You can’t expect me to climb down that cliff. Look at me.” He held a bloody hand up from his belly.
“I told you I was winning on that cockfight, Dirty Dave,” Fackler said in a sullen tone.
“Well, there you have it,” Macon Ray said, patting Dave’s bowed back. “Tie that rope around your waist. We’ll help you skin on down the cliff side. You just tie the saddlebags onto the rope and give it a yank, and we’ll pull them up.”
“I’m no fool,” said Dave, his voice sounding more pained. “What about me? Are you pulling me back up too?”
“That’s a tough one to call right now, Dave,” said Macon Ray. “I’d like to tell you we will, but knowing our outlaw nature…” He let his words trail.
“If you’re not throwing the rope back down for me, I’m not going down,” Dave said firmly.
“Suit yourself, Dirty Dave,” said Ray. He looked at Joe Fackler. “We can’t waste time here. You can bet Grolin’s men are trailing the money.” He looked back along the dark trail. “Air him out, Joe,” he said.
“My pleasure,” said Fackler, breaking open his shotgun, plucking out two spent shells and reaching into his pocket for fresh rounds.
“Please, Joe,” said Dave Atlo.
But Fackler only stared coldly at him as he reloaded.
“I had just won twenty dollars on one fight,” he said bitterly, snapping the shotgun shut.
“All right, wait! Hold it!” said Dave, forcing himself to straighten up. “I’ll go down and send the money up. If you don’t throw that rope back down for me, may you all rot in hell.”
Fackler and Ray grinned.
Moments later, Ray stood watching, smoking a cigarette, rifle in hand, keeping an eye on the back trail as Albert Kinney and Joe Fackler lowered the wounded outlaw over the edge and down the steep rocky hillside.
“He’s got it!” Kinney called back over his shoulder.
“Haul it up,” said Macon Ray, walking over to the edge and staring down at Dave’s shadowy, wounded figure standing on a ledge staring up at him.
“Here it comes!” said Kinney, pulling the rope up until the saddlebags flopped over on to the edge of the trail.
Ray chuckled and flipped his cigarette butt out over the edge. He stopped and untied the saddlebags, opened them and looked inside with a widening smile, Fackler and Kinney crowding his elbow as he untied the rope.
“Boys, here’s your cockfight,” he said. Shaking the stacks of money in the bags, he closed the flaps, tied them and slung the bags over his shoulder.
“What about him?” Kinney asked, gesturing down into the darkness.
“Tie it off on a tree and throw the rope back down to him,” said Ray, feeling generous. “He won’t live the night either way.”
On the ledge below, one hand holding his bleeding belly, Dave stared up toward the sound of their voices.
“What about… that rope?” he called up in a failing voice.
“Here it comes,” said Macon Ray.
Dave saw and felt the rope lash down the steep hillside and dangle beside him. Grabbing it quickly, he tied it around his waist.
“All right, give me a pull,” he said, holding on to the bite of the rope with both hands. “Ready when you are,” he added, after a moment of silence from the edge above him.
“Ray…? Joe…?” He stood with blood running down him front and back. “Damn it to hell,” he said finally, hearing the sound of horses’ hooves move off quickly along the rocky trail.
Chapter 10
No sooner had Macon Ray and the other two ambushers fled out of sight down the mining trail into Central City than Rochenbach, the Stillwater Giant and Pres Casings rode around a turn in the trail and slid to a halt, seeing the bodies of Bonham and Batts and the dead horse lying in a heap. The wounded horse raised its head from the ground and whined pitifully.
“Who the hell could have done this?” Casings asked, turning his horse back and forth on the trail, the Giant doing the same right beside him.
“Nobody knew about this but us,” said the Giant, swinging his rifle up as he scanned the steep, dark hillside.
Casings nudged his horse along the trail a few feet, then turned it and nudged it back. He looked all around, rifle in hand, cocked and ready.
Rochenbach drew his Remington and cocked it as he stepped his horse over to where the wounded horse lay suffering.
Both the Giant and Casings flinched as a shot from the Remington exploded behind them and the horse fell silent.
“Somebody must’ve known something,” Rock said, turning his dun, looking at the other two. Hi
s voice sounded suspicious.
“Don’t go getting the wrong idea on us, Rock,” said Casings. “We’re as bewildered by this as you are.”
Rochenbach looked at both of the dead horses and saw no sign of the saddlebags. This was bad. The safe money was gone—money that he personally took responsibility for.
“Rock! What’s that?” Casings asked, interrupting Rochenbach’s thoughts. He gestured toward the rope tied to a scrub pine and drawn tight over the rocky edge of the cliff.
“I’ll check it out,” said the Giant, nudging his horse closer to the edge, then stepping down from his saddle and testing the tension on the rope with the grip of his huge hand. “Somebody’s down there,” he said to the other two. Then he called down the steep darkened hillside, “Hey, who’s there?”
“It’s me, Giant…,” said Dirty Dave Atlo in a weakened and defeated voice.
“Give me a name before I start putting bullets in your shirt pockets!” the Giant warned, leveling his rifle down into the darkness.
“It’s Dave Atlo, Giant,” Dave called up to him. “I—I recognized… your voice.”
“That doesn’t make us pals, Dirty Dave,” said the Giant. But he lowered his rifle now and looked to Rochenbach and Casings for direction.
“Ask him what he’s doing down there on the end of a rope,” said Casings.
Rochenbach sat watching, sliding his Remington back into its holster.
“What are you doing down there on the end of a rope?” the Giant called down, repeating Casings’ question word for word.
“We robbed your boys and killed them,” Dave said. “Bonham threw the money down here… put a bullet in my belly before he died. Macon Ray Silverette double-crossed me—sent me for the bags, left me down here to die.”
“Ask him who put them on to us,” Rock said to the Giant.
“Who put you on to us, Dirty Dave?” the Giant called down the hillside.
“Nobody,” said Dave in a pained voice. “I—I saw you ride into Central City, knew somebody was about to get robbed.” He paused, then said, “Suppose you could pull me up, Giant? I’m hurting something awful.”
Rochenback and Casings looked at each other.
“Tell him we’ll pull him up,” said Rock, “but if he doesn’t tell us where they’re headed, we’ll throw him right back down there.”
Giant called out, “We’ll pull you up, Dave, but if you—”
“I heard him, Giant,” said Dave Atlo. “Pull me up. I got no reason to hold out on yas… not for Macon Ray’s sake. Him and them other sons a’ bitches left me here to die. I’d be a fool to stick with them.”
The Stillwater Giant looked at Casings and Rochenbach.
“Pull him up, Giant,” said Casings. “Let’s hear what he’s got to say.”
Dave Atlo grunted and groaned in pain as the Giant pulled effortlessly, hand over hand, on the rope. When Dave’s hands gripped the edge of the rocky trail, the Giant stood looking down at him.
“Hel-help me on up. Please?” Dave whined.
The Giant reached down with one large hand, grabbed him by the nape of his neck and raised him over the edge. He held him up at arm’s length, dangling in the air, kicking his feet, screaming out in pain, both hands going to his bloody belly. Then he dropped him flat on the hard ground. Dave let out another pain-filled scream.
“Was this all because Andrew Grolin beat you out of your money last year?” Casings asked. He sat his horse sidelong to the downed outlaw leader, his rifle loosely pointed down at him.
“You bet it was,” said Dave, pain-stricken, clutching both forearms across his bleeding stomach wound. “I—I expect it wasn’t a wise thing, looking back on it.”
“Damn Grolin,” Casings whispered to Rock. “He caused this, cheating one of our own.”
Rock only nodded, watching, listening.
“Where is our money headed?” Casings asked Dave Atlo.
But Dave continued reflecting. “I should… have forgotten what Grolin did to me, as it turns out.”
“Get him on his feet, Giant,” said Casings, seeing Dave was starting to drift and fade.
The Giant pulled the wounded outlaw up and steadied him for a second, then stepped back.
“Dirty Dave, look at me,” said Casings, in a firmer voice. “Where is Macon Ray Silverette headed with our money?”
Dave sighed and shook his head, looking up at Casings.
“I was heading us up the gulch, north of Black Hawk,” he said. “The Apostle Camp—been deserted for years, except for some old road agents who lie low there.”
“The Apostle Camp, where the Toet brothers ate a squaw years back?” Casings asked.
“Yep,” said Dave. “Regular folks shy clear of the place. But Macon Ray and I hide there all the time. We toss the old-timers some whiskey to keep them happy.”
“Did you get a chance to count that money?” Casings asked. Rock sat listening in silence.
“No,” said Dave, “didn’t you?”
“I figured around nine or ten thousand,” said Casings.
“Damn, that would have lasted me a long time,” Dave said with regret.
“Any reason to take you into town?” Casings asked pointedly.
“No,” Dave said grimly, “I’m done for. I just didn’t want to die down there—not that it matters, I reckon.”
“What do you want, Dirty Dave?” Casings asked, staring intently at him.
“Hell, you know what I want,” said Dave. He shook his head and mused. “This was crazy of me. I was sitting in Central City, drinking, diddling a young whore. Now look at me.”
Casings stared at him solemnly. “You should have kept on diddling,” he said. His rifle bucked once across his lap. Dirty Dave flew backward off the edge as the bullet bored through his heart. The sound of the shot echoed off into the black distance.
“He’s right back down there,” Giant said, looking down the dark hillside.
“Yeah,” said Casings, “but now we know what happened. We can tell Grolin where the money went.” He started to turn his horse as the Giant climbed into his saddle.
“Wait a minute,” Rochenbach said in surprise. “What about the money?”
“Forget it, Rock,” said Casings. “Grolin said make the practice job, then ride straight back, get ready for the big job.”
“Forget ten thousand dollars?” said Rochenbach.
“We don’t know it was that much,” said Casings.
“However much it was, I can’t let it slide away from me,” Rochenbach said. “This work is not my hobby. I’m in it for the money.”
“I’m telling you what Grolin told me,” Casings said. “Don’t think I like riding away from this.”
“Then don’t,” Rochenbach said flatly. He turned his dun and started to put it forward ahead of them.
“What are you saying?” said Casings.
“What I’m saying is, do what suits you best,” said Rock. “I’m going after my money.”
“All right, I’m in with you,” said Casings, he and the Giant catching up to him. “But what about Spiller, Penta and Shaner? They won’t know what happened to us.”
“They’ll have to figure it all out as they go,” said Rochenbach, gigging his dun up into a gallop on the rocky hill trail.
Riding alongside Rochenbach, the Giant said in his deep voice, “Grolin is going to be madder than a hornet at us.”
“If Grolin gets mad when we hand him a saddlebag full of money, we shouldn’t be working for him anyway, Giant,” said Rochenbach. He gave Casings a knowing look as he spoke.
“Yeah,” said the Giant with a wide grin, “that’s what I say.”
Macon Ray Silverette and the other two ambushers swung wide around the main street of Central City, but they stopped long enough to load up on bottles of rye whiskey at a small trading post along the trail. While a bleary-eyed store owner concentrated on tallying the whiskey, Macon Ray wrapped a hand around a thick bundle of cigars and shoved them inside his
coat.
“I saw that,” the owner said, raising his eyes.
“No, you didn’t,” said Macon Ray, feeling full of himself after the night’s robbery. “You just think you did.” He drew his Colt and cocked it arm’s length in the clerk’s face before adding, “Otherwise you’d be calling me a thief and a liar right to my damn face.”
“You’re absolutely right, sir!” said the badly shaken man as Kinney and Fackler both followed suit, raising their guns, cocked and pointed in the clerk’s face. “I—I don’t know what must have come over me!”
“That’s what I thought,” said Macon Ray. “You two grab that whiskey,” he told Kinney and Fackler. “This man all but called me a thief; he’s got to make recompense for it.”
They gathered the bottles of whiskey and left without paying, while the owner stared helplessly at them, grateful to still be alive.
With their regular saddlebags stuffed with whiskey bottles, they rode on in the night through the mining town of Black Hawk and on through Gregory Gulch, a stretch of scrub, craggy cliff and ledges strewn with torchlit hard-rock mines. The odor of wood smoke and burnt sulfur loomed in the chilled air above glowing smelter mills.
When the last flicker of torchlight and furnace glow fell away behind them, the three riders turned onto a narrow path leading up to a long-abandoned mining camp perched on a sawtooth ridgeline. At the edge of a clearing hidden behind a stand of pine, Macon Ray brought Joe Fackler and Albert Kinney to a halt behind him, seeing a dark figure standing on the porch of a run-down mining shack.
“Who the hell goes there?” an unfriendly voice called out from the dark porch.
“Hobbs, it’s us,” Macon Ray called out across the small clearing. “Ray Silverette, Albert Kinney and Cockfighting Joe Fackler.”
Fackler eyed Macon Ray in the dark.
“Nobody’s ever called me that, Ray,” he said.
“I just thought it fitting after what you did to Dirty Dave,” Macon Ray said with a dark chuckle.
From the porch, Parnell Hobbs called out, “Where’s Dave Atlo?
“In hell, I expect,” said Ray. “But that’s a long story, best told closer up.”