Fighting Men

by Ralph Cotton

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part 2

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part 3

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Teaser chapter

  AN UNEXPECTED ENEMY

  Stepping from the privy room, Dahl broke open the shotgun on his way to the hole in the front wall where the balcony doors had been. Keeping watch on the street below for Big Chicago, he pulled out the two spent loads and replaced them with two fresh rounds from his duster pocket. Catching a glimpse of Big Chicago moving across the street in a crouch, gun in hand, Dahl snapped the shotgun shut quickly and cocked both hammers.

  But as he raised the weapon and took a step forward onto the balcony, behind him he heard Geneva Darrows scream, “You son of a bitch!”

  He turned in time to see her raise Curly Joe’s Colt with both hands and fire. . . .

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, May 2010

  Copyright © Ralph Cotton, 2010

  eISBN : 978-1-101-19772-1

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  For Mary Lynn . . . of course.

  PART 1

  Chapter 1

  Arizona Territory

  Sherman Dahl looked down from atop the high trail at the small cabin standing perched on a rocky turn twenty yards above the braided waters of Panther Creek. He’d observed the cabin and its occupants for the past few minutes, hearing the harsh talk and laughter of drinking men, and a woman’s worried voice rising from within the midst of it.

  Dahl had already slipped his rifle from its saddle boot and laid it across his lap. But when he heard the woman’s voice turn into a plea, followed by a short scream that ended with a resounding slap, he cocked the rifle’s hammer and nudged his big chestnut bay forward on a downward winding path through a tangle of bracken and scrub cedar.

  “You dirty sons of bitches!” Dahl heard the woman cry out as the cabin door burst open. “I hope you all rot in hell!”

  Dahl stopped his horse again and sat still as stone, watching the woman run staggering from the rickety front porch down to the creek’s edge, naked, holding a flimsy wadded-up blouse to the middle of her chest. From the open door, he watched Arliss Sattler step out onto the porch, bare chested, a bottle of rye hanging from his fingertips.

  “That’s right, whore—you wash yourself up some and get back in here,” Sattler called out to the woman. “The night ain’t even started yet.” He laughed heartily; a gold Mexican half-moon ear ornament jiggled on his earlobe.

  Dahl stepped the big chestnut bay sideways enough to conceal both the animal and himself from clear view. Yet, even as he quietly did so, he saw Sattler’s face turn up toward him and move slowly back and forth, scanning the shadowy evening trail.

  From inside the cabin a drunken gunman named Pete Duvall called out, “Don’t let her get away, Arliss. I ain’t had my turn at her.”

  “Don’t worry, Pete. She can’t get away from here until we let her go,” said Sattler as he continued to scan the trail in the grainy evening light.

  “What are you looking at up there, Arliss?” asked a gunman named Lou Jecker.

  “Nothing to concern you, Lou,” said Sattler. “I’m just looking, is all.” He spat, ran his hand across his mouth and finally turned his eyes away from the trail where Dahl sat watching, having eased his Winchester stock up against his shoulder in case Sattler spotted him.

  “Hell,” said Duvall to Jecker, “pay Arliss no mind. He’s been edgy as a damn cat ever since we turned Birksdale on its ear and that rancher’s little gal got shot.” He eyed Sattler as the bare-chested gunman turned away from them to watch the woman splash cold water all over herself and dry herself on the wadded-up blouse. “I think Curly Joe needs to come up with some jobs that require less killing. I’m of a notion that Arliss, here, doesn’t like dirtying his hands with it.”

  “Don’t you concern yourself with what I like or don’t like, Pete,” Sattler said over his shoulder. “I’ll kill anybody that gets in my way, same as any other man in this line of work.” He paused, then added, “Killing that little girl was something that never should have happened. It didn’t make me a dime richer. Did it you?”

  When Sattler’s head turned back toward the open door, on the trail above Dahl took the opportunity to nudge the big bay farther out of sight and down along the trail toward the cabin.

  “No,” said Duvall. He stood up and walked closer to the open door, stuffing his shirt back into his open trousers. “But Curly Joe likes for us to drop one now and then just to keep folks on their toes. Once word gets around, it shows the next town we ride into that everybody best steer clear and let us alone, else we will put somebody in the dirt.” He grinned crookedly.

  “That’s not w
hat it showed me,” said Sattler. “What it showed me was that from now on, we can forget about ever giving ourselves up and going to prison. All that’s waiting for us is a rope.” Then he shouted out to the woman, “Hurry up down there. We’re all waiting to get back to it.”

  “I’m coming—keep your drawers on!” the woman shouted in reply. But as she dipped water in her hand and washed her forearm, she kept her head lowered and searched the rugged, sloping hillside behind the cabin, looking for her best escape route.

  “Let Curly Joe hear you talking about giving yourself up and you’ll wish somebody would hang you,” Jecker said to Sattler.

  Sattler turned enough to give Jecker a dark stare and say in a threatening manner, “I never said a damn thing about giving myself up, and I’ll burn down any sumbitch who tells Curly Joe that I did.”

  “We’re just talking here,” Jecker said, backing away from the matter. He gave a shrug, with a show of his broad, empty hands. “Alls I’m saying is that Curly Joe figures we’re in this until they ride us down. There’s no giving ourselves up. You should have known that when we joined up.”

  Sattler let it go. He shook his head and took a long swig of whiskey. When he lowered the bottle and let out a hiss, he wiped his mouth and said, “Killing innocent bystanders is bad business. The whore says that little girl’s pa is J. Fenwick Hatton.”

  “Do you mean James Fenwick Hatton of the Western Pacific Rail Lines?” Jecker asked, his expression turning to one of dread.

  “Yep, one and the same,” said Sattler. “He also owns one of the biggest cattle operations in this whole territory. His girl was in town shopping with the family’s housemaid. Hatton was off somewhere. But he’s back by now, I expect, to bury his daughter—knowing it’s Curly Joe’s gang who killed her in the street.”

  “So that means . . .” Duvall let his words trail as he contemplated what Sattler had said.

  “It means this time Curly Joe has gone and killed the wrong innocent bystander,” Sattler said, finishing his words for him. “Hatton has a bunch of his men on our trail right now. You can count on it.”

  “A bunch of men?” Pete Duvall ventured a nervous laugh. “What, you mean a posse of range hands? I believe we can fight our way through them, no trouble at all.” He looked around at Jecker and at a silent Chicago gunman named Chester Goines, also known as Big Chicago, for support. Jecker gave him only a worried look. Goines, who had sat quietly listening, continued to do so with a stonelike stare, his black derby hat cocked jauntily on his forehead. Finally he offered, “I wasn’t with you on that job, men, so I’m not worried about it.”

  “But you’re with us now,” said Jecker. “If somebody comes looking for our blood, you won’t run out on us, will you?”

  Big Chicago gave him a look. “I’ve never run out on a pard in my life. I don’t care if Hatton or anybody else sends an army of saddle bums and ranch hands. I’ll stick.”

  “If you think a powerful man like J. Fenwick Hatton only has a few saddle bums and ranch hands working for him, you’re not long for this earth, Chicago,” said Sattler. He turned toward the creek in the evening gloom and called out, “Get on back up here, whore, before I come drag you back by the hair.” He looked back and forth along the darkening creek bank. “Where the hell is she?”

  “A man like Hatton gets whatever kind of help he’s willing to pay for,” Jecker put in, looking around at the faces of Duvall and Goines. “In a case like this, his daughter and all, I’d say he’d hire the devil in hell to ride us down, if the devil’s for hire.”

  “Damn it, the whore’s gone!” said Sattler. He reached inside the open door, snatched his gun belt from a wall peg and slung it over his bare shoulder. “Come on—help me find her!” Seeing the other three rising too slowly to suit him, he cursed, turned and bounded down off the porch and out across the rocky yard.

  A hundred yards from the cabin, the woman heard them coming, running fast. “Oh God!” They were onto her now, she knew, gasping for breath as she pulled herself upward. They would catch her and they would kill her—

  “Stop, whore,” Arliss Sattler demanded, “or I’ll cut your damn throat!”

  She clawed and dragged and kicked her way farther up the steep, rocky hillside, making little headway, like someone trying to run in the midst of a bad dream. She wore no shoes and no clothes, save for the wet, flimsy blouse she’d managed to pull over her head on her way. The whiskey, some of which she’d drunk willingly and some of which had been forced upon her, had her struggling to clear her mind.

  Yet, in what seemed as if only a second later, she heard boots pounding right up behind her through the loose, shifting gravel. “Where do you think you’re going, whore?” said Sattler, grabbing her from behind by her blouse.

  “Turn me loose,” she pleaded drunkenly as the blouse ripped up the back and became a tangle of torn cloth around her neck and under her arm.

  Being larger, more powerful, more sober and more able to run across the rocky ground because of his boots, Sattler had overtaken her easily. He held her firmly as the two slid down a few feet through the sharp, loose gravel. “Yeah, I’ll turn you loose,” he said roughly. He threw her over onto her back and slapped her hard across her face. The world seemed to explode inside her head.

  Behind them, halfway across the yard, Jecker called out, “Give it to her right there, Arliss. Damn her deceitful ass.”

  “Break her damned neck,” Duvall shouted drunkenly, the three men stopping only a few feet apart, their guns drawn and cocked.

  “Step aside,” Jecker called out to Sattler. “I’ll put a bullet in her leg—see how she runs then.”

  “Uh-uh,” said Sattler, dragging the woman to her feet. “She agreed to come out here and spend the night. That’s what she’s getting paid for and that’s what she’s going to do.” He gave her a hard shove down the few remaining feet of rocky hillside and back across the boulder-strewn yard.

  “We always get what’s coming to us, woman,” Jecker said as she staggered past him. He slapped a hard open palm on her bare buttocks.

  “I say we all do her right here, right now,” said Duvall. He swung an open palm at her behind in the same manner, but missed and almost fell before catching and righting himself.

  “No,” said Sattler, “get her inside and keep her there.” As he spoke he looked around warily at the high ridges above them. “There’s something out here that gives me the willies.” He pulled his Colt from its holster and gave the woman a rough jab forward with the hard steel barrel. But as she staggered toward the cabin, he kept the gun out as if he needed the security of it in hand.

  Inside the cabin, Sattler gave the woman another hard shove that sent her tripping to the edge of a low-standing cot topped with a thin, dirty blanket. “Get started, whore,” he said coldly.

  “Plea-please, Arliss,” the woman stammered, gesturing a hand up and down her scratched, scraped and battered body. “Look at me. I’m all dirty. I’m bleeding. Let me get cleaned up some.”

  “Naw, we already tried that. Remember?” said Sattler. “Now hit that cot and get your heels up,” he demanded. Without turning to the others behind him, he said, “Goines, get over here. It’s your turn.”

  But the Chicago gunman neither stepped forward nor replied. Jecker and Duvall both looked back at the wide-open doorway, seeing no sign of Goines, but hearing the sound of hooves pounding away in the growing darkness.

  “Where the hell is Big Chicago?” Sattler asked, turning himself toward the waning sound of the hoofbeats.

  The three froze in place as the door swung shut with a loud screech. From behind the door a tall figure in a long black riding duster stood against the cabin wall, a Winchester rifle in his left hand. He held it at belly level on the three stunned gunmen. In his right hand he held a black-handled Colt cocked and aimed in the same manner.

  “What the . . . ?” said Sattler, his Colt still in his hand. Jecker and Duvall both still held their guns cocked and ready.


  “Hey . . . ,” Sattler managed to say in a calm, even tone of voice, “I bet you’re one of the men Hatton sent to take us down.” To Duvall he said, “See, Pete? What’d I just tell you? This is what comes from killing bystanders.”

  “Yeah,” Duvall said, “I expect you were right about that.”

  Beside Duvall, Jecker took a slow, measured step sideways, noting how the barrel of the stranger’s Winchester followed right along with him. “Yeah, but he only sent one man to take us in? That doesn’t strike me as too smart on Hatton’s part.”

  “He didn’t send me to take you in,” Dahl offered softly. He knew that having their guns in their hands would give them confidence, make them think they had an edge. That was all right. He’d anticipated it. He wasn’t here to talk them down and capture them. He was here only to kill them—nothing more.

  “You sure enough picked a tight place for a fight here,” said Sattler, gesturing with his dark eyes about the small, confined cabin. “Like as not, none of us is going to live through this.”

  “Nothing’s perfect,” Dahl said in a calm, almost soothing tone.

  “This woman will die too,” said Jecker, getting worried, looking down the Winchester barrel from only a few feet away. He felt his whiskey wear off quickly.

  “Maybe,” Dahl said softly. “We’ll have to see how it goes.”

  Duvall started to speak, but before he could form a word, a streak of blue-orange flame exploded from the barrel of the Winchester. There was nothing to talk about, Dahl knew. His bullet lifted Jecker backward and slammed him against the wall above the cot. The woman screamed and tried to roll away as the dead outlaw’s blood sprayed her and his body fell limply on top of her.

  Sattler and Duvall instantly acted as one, their Colts coming up fast and firing. From beneath Jecker’s body, the woman saw a streak of fire reach out from Sattler’s Colt and seem to explode on the stranger’s chest. But the stranger wasn’t the least put off. He fired the black-handled Colt twice, thumbing the hammer back for each shot, taking quick but accurate aim as Duvall fanned three wild shots straight at him, kicking up pine splinters on the wall beside his head.