Fighting Men

by Ralph Cotton

  “If I had any say, you would ride away from here altogether,” she replied. “If Big Chicago rode in and warned him the way you said he’d do, there’s no telling how many guns Curly Joe will have waiting for you.”

  “I’ve considered that,” Dahl said quietly. “But his gunmen have been waiting since before daylight. By now they’ll be ready to let down their guard a little.”

  “Maybe,” said Lilly, “but I wouldn’t stake my life on it if I were you.”

  Dahl didn’t answer. Instead he said, “I plan to ride around and get above town and rest awhile. Would you care to join me?”

  “Yes, I’d like that,” said Lilly. “Curly Joe is going to be all over me as soon as I ride in, and so will Eubanks. I’d just as soon put it off as long as I can. I don’t want to slip up and say something that could get you hurt.” She paused for a moment and considered her next words before saying them. “Besides . . . I like being with you, Sherman Dahl.”

  “And I with you, Lilly,” Dahl said as he eased back down into his saddle and looked her in the eye. He kept a gentle gaze directed at her for a moment, then kept the mood of conversation from straying any further by pointing out across the sky to a higher ridgeline above the far side of town. “Is there a good trail leading up there?” he asked.

  “Depends on what you call good,” said Lilly, changing the mood right along with him. “I know some miners used to use it when they worked the passes on the other sides. Now they come in on the main trail.” She eyed him curiously. “You want to go up there and look down on Pine Ridge?”

  “Yes, that’s where we’ll wait out the day,” Dahl said. “I’d like to get above town and watch the comings and goings—get a feel for the place.” He nudged his chestnut bay forward.

  Lilly rode along beside him. On their way from the cabin, he had told her why he was in pursuit of Curly Joe and his entire gang. Now that she’d had time to think things over, she asked, “What if you only killed Sattler, Duvall and Jecker? What if Curly Joe heard someone was coming for him and he managed to get away?”

  “Then I would not have completed the job I set out to do, would I?” Dahl replied.

  “You mean you wouldn’t get paid?” she asked.

  “It is not for pay alone that a man does this sort of work,” Dahl said. “It only starts once a price is agreed to. But from there the money becomes, by far, the lesser issue.”

  “So I would be wasting my breath trying to talk you out of riding into Pine Ridge and facing whoever Curly Joe has lined up against you?”

  “Reasoning is never a waste of breath, Lilly,” Dahl said. “There is always something to be said for honest discourse, whether its content be taken to heart or rejected out of hand.”

  “Is there an answer there somewhere?” Lilly asked, uncertain of what he’d just said.

  “No,” said Dahl. He looked at her with his cropped smile. “It’s only an attempt to keep you talking. I enjoy the sound of your voice.”

  She returned his smile. “Yet you’re paying no regard to what I asked?”

  “I’ve considered every word,” said Dahl. “But your question is the one I had to resolve for myself long ago, before I considered carrying a gun for hire.”

  They rode on.

  “Once resolved, you can never change your mind?” she asked. “Even if doing so might save your life?”

  “I can’t only carry out a job when it’s safe and convenient to do so,” he continued. “It’s when the work gets dangerous and difficult that my principles come into play. Therein lies the difference between common thugs and fighting men. When I go on a job, the person who pays me knows that if I don’t come back it will be because I’m dead, not because I have given up.” He looked her up and down, then faced the trail ahead.

  “Fighting men . . . ,” she murmured under her breath, as if having difficulty accepting the kind of life he had revealed to her.

  Midmorning had turned to early afternoon by the time they reached the high ridgeline on the far side of Pine Ridge and rode upward on a narrow trail overlooking the town. At a place where the trail widened and flattened behind a low rim of rock, they stepped their horses into the thin shade of a ledge overhang and rested out of the high, scorching sunlight.

  She watched Dahl stand at the edge of the shade and stare down at the trail in and out of Pine Ridge through a long, battered army field lens. “What if Curly Joe isn’t even there? What if he left before daylight and you’ve missed your chance altogether?” she asked, knowing he was watching for any sign of Curly Joe riding out of Pine Ridge.

  Without turning to face her, he said, “Curly Joe’s still there. If he has a woman there, he won’t want to leave unless he has a better idea what happened out at the cabin. He has his place in town marked, like a pack leader. He’d look foolish riding out on Chicago’s word alone and finding out later there was nothing to be worried about.”

  Lilly shook her head slowly, considering his words. “I don’t know if all this waiting is making Curly Joe edgy, but it sure is working well on me.” She sipped water from a canteen. “When will you ride in? I see that I can’t say anything that will talk you out of it.”

  “Soon,” said Dahl, still gazing through the field lens, watching an old man walk into town alongside a two-wheel donkey cart. Moments earlier he’d watched another old man walk in from the south trail, also accompanied by a two-wheel cart. “As soon as I’m certain his gunmen have stopped expecting me.”

  “What makes you so certain they will stop expecting you?” she asked.

  “They won’t stop expecting me altogether,” Dahl replied. “But they’ll tire of waiting for me, especially since they have no idea what to expect.” He put her question aside and asked, “Tell me about these old men with their donkey carts?”

  Lilly stood and put a hand above her eyes as a visor and looked down at the trail, the old man and his donkey cart looking as small as insects to her naked eyes. “They are what’s left of the only independent miners left around here. Most everybody has sold out to the big companies. These old men dig for gold, silver, tin, anything that has a scale value on it. There’s an assayer office in town who buys their diggings from them.”

  “So everyone here is used to seeing them come and go?” Dahl asked.

  “Yes, you could say so,” Lilly replied. “Why do you ask?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Instead he lowered the battered army telescope, closed it between his palms and held it down at his side. He continued to stare down at the town through the wavering sunlight.

  Chapter 5

  Across the street from Eubanks Fair and Square Saloon, a burly gunman named Bart Russell said to a smaller, thinner gunman standing bedside him, “Don’t look over there now, Thatch, but Curly Joe is watching us from up on Geneva’s step-out.”

  “Aw yeah . . . ?” said Morris Thatcher. He managed a quick glance up at the small balcony on the upper side of the Fair and Square. “Must be making sure we’re doing our job.” He grinned and jiggled the shotgun cradled in the crook of his left arm.

  “Which I’ll admit I’m a little puzzled as to just what that job is right about now,” said Russell, also cradling a shotgun. “I don’t know if we’re watching for two damn men or two damn thousand. Chicago said ‘posse.’” Russell grinned. “So it has to be more than three or four.”

  “That’s my thinking too,” said Thatcher. “But at daylight this morning, I expected we’d be dusting somebody’s hide before breakfast. Now it’s getting on toward sundown, and we ain’t killed nothing but time. So I ain’t sure what to expect.”

  “Me neither,” said Russell. “I don’t mind killing time either, so long as Curly Joe’s paying for it. I can kill more time than you ever saw, if the price is right.”

  “Yeah, me too,” said Thatcher. “And for Big Chicago or Curly Joe, either one, I can swing hell out of this shotgun if I’m put to the task.”

  “So can I,” said Thatcher, “just so’s we understand one
another. Whoever rides in after Curly Joe will take a double load of scrap iron from me.” He patted the shotgun affectionately.

  On the balcony above the saloon, Curly Joe Hobbs stood barefoot and shirtless, rolling a black cigar in his mouth. He stared at one of the independent miners leading his donkey cart onto the main street. The miner slowed and seemed to return his stare for a moment, then lowered his face and walked on. Inside the open doors from the balcony, Geneva Darrows lay on the bed wearing a flimsy nightgown, having not bothered to dress with Curly Joe in town.

  “Why can’t you keep your nose inside this room, Joe?” she asked in exasperation. “You have men paid to keep watch. Let them keep watch.”

  Curly Joe didn’t answer. But under his breath he said to himself, “If Chester Goines has lied to me, I’ll feed him his own liver.” He looked again at the approaching miner, then down at the two men with shotguns standing across the street in the shade, then at Big Chicago, who’d just stepped out of the barbershop with a fresh shave and haircut, his derby under his arm. “Sonsabitches . . . !” Joe growled. Giving Big Chicago a dark look, he snatched the cigar from between his teeth, turned and stomped back inside.

  “Joe, stop it,” Geneva demanded when he stepped inside. She looked up at him and spread open the top of her gown. Her large breasts spilled forward. “Come down here, hold these for me. It’ll settle your nerves. . . .”

  On the street, Chicago had stopped and said, “What the hell?” seeing the angry stare Joe had directed at him from all the way up on the balcony. Now that Joe was out of sight, he looked all around as if searching for what was wrong. Spotting Thatcher and Russell standing across the dirt street from the Fair and Square Saloon, he walked straight to them and said, “Hey, what are you two doing over here? You’re supposed to be keeping watch out front of the saloon.”

  “We can’t see nothing from there but the sun,” said Russell. “We figured this time of day we best get over here in the shade, give ourselves an advantage.”

  “You figured, eh?” said Big Chicago angrily.

  “Yeah,” said Thatcher. “We can’t keep watch if we can’t see.”

  But Big Chicago wouldn’t listen to reason. “Let me tell you both something,” he said, pointing a thick finger at their chests. “Neither one of yas is paid to figure anything. I do the figuring, you do the watching. Now get back over there before Curly Joe jumps down my shirt.”

  Looking past the angry outlaw, Russell noted the man walking toward them with his donkey cart. “Hey, Chicago, take a look at this. It’s one of the miners. . . .”

  Big Chicago turned and saw the man walking toward them, his head lowered, his hat brim hiding his face. The man had broken from the usual path to the assayer’s office and led the donkey cart across the dirt street, coming straight toward them. Seeing the ragged striped serape covering the man from his shoulder to his knees, Chicago called, “Hey you, Mexican, hold it right there.”

  The man didn’t speak, but he stopped in the middle of the street and spread his hands.

  “Watch for a trick, men,” said Chicago, looking all around warily as he stepped out of the shade toward the man and his donkey cart.

  “Watch for a trick . . . ?” Thatcher said under his breath to Russell as Big Chicago walked out onto the otherwise empty street. “What kind of trick have you ever seen out of one of these old geezers?”

  Russell spat and stepped forward. “First time for everything, Thatch,” he said, also taking on a wariness toward the man with the lowered head and empty hands. “It’s what you don’t expect that gets you every time.”

  In Geneva’s bedroom, Curly Joe stood up from the edge of the bed, still barefoot and shirtless, when he and Geneva heard the knock on the door. “Jesus,” Geneva said in disgust. Her gown lay spread open all the way down the front. She pulled it closed in a huff. “Just when I was starting to feel tingly all over.”

  “Who the hell is it?” Curly Joe growled, raising his Colt from his gun belt slung over a chair back.

  “Joe, it’s Chicago. I’ve got something you’ve got to hear for yourself,” said the outlaw.

  Curly Joe swung the door open, Colt in hand, and said in no pleasant voice, “You’re starting to really aggravate me, Chicago. What is it?”

  “One of the miners is downstairs,” said Chicago. “He says he has something to tell you—a message from out at the cabin.”

  “From the cabin? All right, what’s the message?” Joe asked, impatiently. He shot Geneva a look as she turned over on the bed with a show of interest.

  “He wouldn’t tell me,” said Chicago. “He’s scared half out of his wits. He says he’ll only talk to the boss, meaning you.”

  “I don’t like this,” said Joe. “Who is this man? A Mexican? A Yank?”

  “I can’t say,” said Chicago. “He’s too afraid to even lift his face. He’s standing down there right now, shaking in his boots.”

  “You mean in his sandals?” Geneva asked warily.

  “Boots, sandals, either way he’s shaking over being here,” said Chicago.

  “Don’t go down there, Joe,” Geneva said quickly. “I smell a trap bigger than hell.”

  “A trap?” Joe let his pride step out and take over. “If it’s a trap, Geneva darling, let’s get it sprung. I’m not worried about any sumbitch who shows up leading a donkey cart.”

  “You needn’t worry, Miss Geneva,” Chicago offered. “I’ve got him covered. So does Russell and Thatch. If anything starts to look—”

  “Hey!” Curly Joe said, cutting Chicago off in a sharp tone of voice. “She doesn’t need to hear a damn thing from you.”

  Chicago backed off quickly. “No offense intended, Joe,” he said. “Hell, if this is all about J. Fenwick Hatton’s girl getting killed, I wasn’t even there. I don’t even have a dog in this fight. I’m only here to do whatever you want done.”

  “Then shut up and get behind me,” Joe snapped. “Let’s go see what this miner has to say.” Carrying his Colt, he left his gun belt over the chair back and stomped barefoot out the door and down the side stairs to the street.

  At the corner of an alley where the stairs met the dirt street, Russell and Thatcher stood with their shotguns ready in hand, the hammers already cocked and waiting. “Keep him covered, boys,” Chicago said under his breath as he stepped past them.

  “What have you got to say to me, old man?” Curly Joe demanded as soon as he approached the stranger, who stood beside his donkey cart, his head bowed beneath a ragged flop hat. “Look up so I can see your face.” Joe stopped less than eight feet away, his Colt cocked and poised.

  “Plea-please, Mr. Hobbs,” said a nervous voice, “I don’t want any trouble. I was told to say these words to you, from a man I don’t even know.”

  “You know me, old man?” Curly Joe asked.

  “I’ve seen you many times,” the old miner said. “I’ve been digging in these hills and coming to this town for many years.”

  “And now you’ve become a messenger,” said Curly Joe. “So, messenger, what have you got to tell me, from this man you do not know?”

  The old miner raised his head slowly and glanced quickly and cautiously into Joe’s face, then lowered his frightened eyes back to the ground. “He told me to tell you that he has killed your three friends, and now he’s waiting to kill you, outside of town at the fork in the high trail. He said come alone.”

  “One man is waiting for us?” Curly Joe looked all around the wide dirt street with a sly grin.

  “He said come alone, Mr. Hobbs,” the old miner repeated.

  “Yeah, right, I heard you,” said Curly Joe. His sly grin widened. “Only one man, you say?”

  “One is all I saw,” said the miner. His expression said he wanted to be done with this and get on his way.

  Curly Joe turned to Goines. “What do you say, Big Chicago? Was it only one man out there? Could one man kill those three?”

  “I heard lots of shooting for only one man,” said t
he gunman, staring hard and skeptically at the old miner as he spoke. “As drunk as they were, I can see how one man might do it if he caught them off guard.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Curly Joe. He stared off in the direction of the fork in the trail south of town for a moment, then said, “But we’re not drunk, and we’re not off guard.” He turned back to the old miner. “What does this man look like?”

  “He’s young,” said the miner, “long yellow hair, a mustache. About as tall as I am.”

  Observing from the balcony above, Geneva called down, “Watch him, Joe. How do you know that’s not him you’re talking to?”

  “Say! You’re not him, are you?” Curly Joe said in a harsh tone. His Colt came up quickly, the tip of the barrel jammed against the miner’s cheek.

  “That’s real damn funny, Joe,” Geneva said with disgust. She turned in a huff and walked back inside her bedroom.

  The old miner’s knees buckled slightly. He almost fell. “Please, Mr. Hobbs, I don’t want no troub—”

  “Yeah, I know you don’t want no trouble,” said Hobbs, cutting him off again. “You already told me that.” He laughed gruffly and gave the miner a push with his gun barrel. “You’ve delivered your message. Get out of my sight.” As the miner turned to flee, Curly Joe gave him a rough kick in his behind. “Stick to mining, old man. Delivering messages ain’t your strong suit.”

  Russell, Thatcher and Chicago joined Joe in laughter as the miner hurriedly gathered his donkey and cart and scrambled away, one hand on his sore rear. Along the dirt street the donkey brayed wildly and struggled against its lead rope.

  “What do you say, Joe?” Chicago asked. “Are we going out there?” As soon as he’d asked, he glanced up to see if Geneva was still on the balcony, listening.

  “What are you looking up there for?” Curly Joe asked sharply. “It’s not up to her to say where we’re going. I’m the boss here. Keep your eyes on me.”