by Ralph Cotton
Dahl raised the telescope to his eyes and looked out across the rocky flatlands. He watched the three men on horseback and the two men in the buckboard ride in and out of sight through the dust. “They’ve brought along the two eight-gauge guns from above the saloon,” he said. “Those things are man-eaters.”
Cutting in, feeling a part of things, Hatton said, “My goodness yes, we’ve seen what those guns can do. They’ll be hounding us from behind.”
“Not if we don’t let them get behind us,” Dahl said as he swung the telescope off the buckboard to see farther out along the trial to where Chicago and the outlaws were disappearing onto the rocky trail that headed up into the pass.
Lane said to Hatton, “They figure we’re already on the same trail following behind Chicago and Candles. That’s where they’d like to get us.”
“Yes, I see,” Hatton said, pondering the idea of being pressed between the two bands of gunmen. “But I take it you’re not going to allow that to happen.”
“No, sir, we’re not,” said Dahl without looking around from the telescope. “We’ll let these town guards get between us and Chicago and Candles. In all that rising dust, they won’t see who they’re following. Let them chew one another up while we lie back and follow them through the pass.”
Lane threw in, “We’ll ride over whatever’s left of the town guards and the deck guns when we reach the other end of Saverine Pass.”
“What about Carlton Farris and Mr. Coots?” Hatton asked, sounding concerned.
“We left them a good ways back in the pass,” said Dahl. “If they’re watching and listening, they’ll know what’s coming.”
“I certainly hope so,” said Hatton, considering the matter.
“We all hope so,” said Dahl. He reached a hand down to Hatton and helped him back up behind his saddle.
Lane gestured toward a lower end of the hills to their left. “While the dust has us hidden from them, let’s get out of here. I spotted a trail over there. Before the dust settles we can be on it and find our way over to the pass.”
“Lead the way,” said Dahl. He gave a light tap of his heels to the bay’s sides.
Chapter 25
James Earl Coots sat slumped in the saddle at the edge of the cliff where Farris stood holding the horse by its reins. Farris had helped Coots to his feet and onto the horse within minutes of Lane’s and Dahl’s leaving them along the trail to rest and recuperate. Riding double most of the way, the two had made good time along the trail.
But upon reaching their present position, the two had stopped when they’d heard all the gunfire. Instead of riding down onto the stretch of flatlands surrounding Robber’s Roost and taking a chance on jeopardizing any plans Dahl and the deputy might have made, they waited out of sight high atop the trail to Saverine Pass.
“It appears the miscreants we’re after are headed this way, Mr. Coots,” said Farris, staring hard, holding his hand above his eyes as a visor. “But I’m afraid I see no sign of Mr. Hatton.”
In spite of the pain in all of his bullet nicks and grazes, Coots had forced himself upright in the saddle, also looking out at the riders. Beyond Big Chicago, Bobby Candles and the others stood a long, drifting rise of dust. Farther in the distance behind them, he watched the buckboard and the other set of riders pound along the trail, leaving a dusty wake of their own.
“It’s best to face facts, Mr. Farris,” Coots said solemnly. “He might be dead. But whether he’s dead or alive, we won’t know until we put these men down and meet up with Lane and Dahl.” He turned his eyes to Farris and added, “At this point whether he’s dead or alive won’t change anything either. I came here for my friend and his dog. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” said Farris. “Do not doubt me, sir. Regardless of Mr. Hatton, I am here until it’s finished, whatever it takes.”
On the trail below, Big Chicago turned to Bobby Candles, who rode beside him, and said above the sound of their horses’ hooves, “I hope you know enough not to turn your back on those water-hole bandits of yours.”
“I know enough not to turn my back on any sumbitch I’ve ever met,” Candles replied, letting Chicago know where they stood. “You’ll do well to always bear that in mind, Chester.”
“It troubles me to see you take this kind of attitude,” said Chicago, “here at a time we all need one another’s help to stay alive.”
“Help . . . ?” Candles looked at him as they rode on. “I don’t need your help, Chicago. The truth is, the best thing could’ve happened to you was Teacher and the deputy arriving and shooting holes in everybody. Another day or two, my bandits would’ve had your boys picked clean.”
Chicago felt his temper starting to boil. He slowed his horse a little and started to say something to Candles. But Russell rode up beside him and said, “Chicago! We’ve got somebody on our tails.”
“Is it Teacher?” Chicago asked.
“Is it the deputy?” Candles cut in.
“No, it’s neither,” said Russell. “It’s three riders and a couple of men in a buckboard. I can’t make them out for all the blasted dust, but I think it’s some of the Shays’ town guards.”
“The town guards?” Chicago looked back over his shoulder, but like Russell he couldn’t see anything on the dusty back trail. “Why the hell would the guards be chasing us?”
Candles said with sarcasm, “Maybe they want to give us our money back, for having to leave town so fast.”
“Russell,” said Chicago, “take one of the desert bandits with you, ride back and see who it is.”
“Right away,” said Russell, cutting his horse sharply and circling back to the others.
“Why one of my men?” Candles asked Chicago, the two still riding along at a fast clip.
“Because that’s how it’s going to be, Bobby,” said Chicago. “One of my men goes, one of your men goes with him. I’m not going to get caught short by you until I see you’ve had a change of attitude.” He spurred his horse ahead on the rocky, dusty trail.
A few yards back, Bart Russell circled his horse back among the men and sidled up among the three desert bandits. Before he said a word, Dad Lodi shouted to him above the horses’ hooves, “Who is that back there?” He jerked his head back toward the three riders and the buckboard obscured by the billowing dust.
“That’s what we want to know,” Russell shouted in reply. “Candles and Chicago told me to take one of yas, ride back and check them out.”
“Damn it to hell,” said Dad Lodi, not liking the sound of it. He looked back and forth from Dorsey to Dirty Foot, and said, “Sucio, go with him.”
“What, because I am Mexican?” Dirty Foot asked, anger flaring in his eyes.
“That’s right, now get going!” said Lodi. He turned back to Russell and said, “If this is a trick you and Candles are pulling, I’ll nut you like a spring pig.”
“Keep running your mouth, sand bandit, you won’t get the chance to do any nutting,” said Russell, pulling his horse away, Dirty Foot right beside him.
Circling back inside the dust behind the others, both Russell and Dirty Foot pulled their wide bandanas up over the bridge of their noses. “Stick on the trail,” Russell said behind his bandana. “We’ll see them better than they see us.”
“This is not the first time I have back-trailed someone,” Dirty Foot said sharply.
“That’s a good thing to know, Dirty Foot,” said Russell. “I expect I won’t have to hear any excuses if you screw things up.”
Staring through the dust as they rode back along the trail, both Russell and the Mexican made out the buckboard at the same time the band of riders drew closer. “I was right,” said Russell. “It’s not Teacher and the deputy. It’s the Shays’ town guards.”
“Why are the town guards chasing us?” Dirty Foot asked.
“I don’t know why,” said Russell. “Did you slip out without paying them whores for oiling your belly?”
“You are a real funny man,” said
Dirty Foot. He stared with hatred in his dark eyes.
Russell chuckled at his own little joke. Staring harder back through the dust, he said, “Nothing says they’re chasing us. Maybe they’re just following us.”
“I don’t think so,” Dirty Foot said, recognizing the deck guns mounted on either side of the bouncing, swaying buckboard. “When I look back and see two eight-gauge deck guns pointed at me, I must think that those people are not my friends.”
“Ordinarily I would agree with you, Mex,” said Russell, “but today, I’m thinking these men are out to tree the wrong coons.” He rode back closer to where the trail dust was much more settled.
“What are you doing, you fool?” Dirty Foot called out to him, holding his horse back in the thicker dust.
“I’m going to let these jakes know who we are,” said Russell. “We’ll find out quick enough if they’re wanting to be friend or enemies. . . .”
Back along the trail, Ulan Hayes half stood from the buckboard seat at the sight of the riders in the tail end of the trail dust, the nearer one staring hard from behind his bandana, a rifle hanging in his hand. “There’s two of them! They’ve spotted us, Victor,” Hayes said, also with a bandana over his mouth.
Driving the buckboard, Victor Andre asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“Swing wide and cut across them,” said Hayes. “Don’t let them ride ahead and warn the others!” Looking at the three town guards on horseback, Hayes waved his good arm at them and said, “Spread out, get around them! Stop the sonsabitches!”
Inside the trail dust, Russell lost sight of the buckboard for a moment. “Where the hell did it go?” he shouted at Dirty Foot, fanning his hat back and forth as if it might help him see through the dust.
“I don’t know where it went!” Dirty Foot shouted in reply, hearing hooves pound along on either side of the trail behind them.
Suddenly Russell heard the buckboard driver let out a loud “Yihii” to the team of horses. Then he saw the buckboard emerge from out of the dust, cutting straight across the trail between him and the Mexican. Without a second to spare, he dived from his saddle and hugged the rocky ground.
“Holy mother of—” Dirty Foot’s voice fell beneath the roar of the two big deck guns firing as one.
One shot picked up the Mexican bandit, horse and all, off the ground and blew them backward fifteen feet. When they landed, the two mangled bodies rolled another ten feet and came to a blood-smeared halt in the dirt.
The other shot had missed both Bart Russell and his horse, the frightened animal having bolted away when Russell dived from its back. But the blast of scrap iron picked up a large scoop of rock and dirt and rained it down the cowering gunman’s back.
“Damn it!” Russell said, his face pressed to the hardened trail. He lay still as stone listening to the buckboard roll on across the trail, out of the dust, and swing forward toward the rest of the outlaws.
Far ahead of the buckboard and the three guards on horseback, Chicago and the others had heard the loud blast of the deck guns as they rounded up off the flatlands and into the cover of rock. “Good Lord, Bobby, was that what I think it was?” said Chicago to Candles as they stopped up on the trail, out of the dust, and looked back on the flatlands.
He jerked the bandana down from across his face.
“If you think it was the two deck guns from the Gold Poke Saloon, you’re damn right it is,” said Candles, also jerking down his bandana.
“But why the hell are they shooting at us?” Chicago asked, staring back, puzzled, seeing the buckboard and horsemen racing in and out of sight through the broken patches of remaining trail dust.
“Damned if I know,” said Candles. “Why don’t you stay here and ask them?” He turned his horse and pounded a few yards farther up the trail, then stopped and looked back out across the flatlands, seeing the bloody smear of Dirty Foot and his horse. Farther to the right he saw Russell running in a crouch, chasing his spooked horse.
“Jesus!” Candles said aloud.
“What do you see?” Chicago asked, booting his horse forward to catch up to Candles, the other men right behind him.
“I see we’re going to have to pick some high ground for cover, and fight these men,” said Candles. “They’re acting like they’ve lost their minds!
“They think they’re shooting at Teacher and the deputy,” Candles said. “They can’t see it’s us.”
“Oh, I think they know it’s us all right,” said Chicago. “I think they’re running amok, like a pack of dogs with no leader. They’re out to kill whoever happens to get in their sights.”
Chapter 26
On a ridge overlooking the trail, James Earl Coots said to Farris, “Here they come, Mr. Farris. Wait until they get right under us. Then let them have it.”
“Right, sir,” Farris said, shaking, nervous, but determined. “Right under us . . . let them have it,” he said, repeating the teamster’s instructions as if to commit them to memory.
Coots nodded. “You’ll be all right,” he said.
On the trail below, Chicago pushed his horse forward and joined Candles. The rest of the men crowded up around the two and looked back toward the buckboard as it slipped out of sight and onto the trail. “Spread out, all of you,” Chicago shouted. “Take position higher up, in the rocks, where it won’t be so easy to aim those big guns—”
His words were cut short as a bullet from Coots’ rifle slammed down into his shoulder and sent him flying from his saddle. “That’s for Norman and Oscar,” Coots yelled from a rocky perch.
“We’re trapped! Take cover!” Candles shouted, his spooked horse racing back and forth aimlessly as he scanned the rugged hillsides above them.
Thatcher jumped down from his saddle as more shots exploded from Coots’ and Farris’ guns and thumped and ricocheted all around him. He grabbed the wounded Big Chicago by his riding duster and pulled him into the safety of rocks.
“Higher, climb higher!” Candles shouted, hearing the buckboard and the pounding hooves of the horses running fast along the trail toward them. For a moment, Candles rode back and forth like some captain preparing his troops. But as gunfire came whining along from down the trail, and raining down from above, the gunman gave up his bold-looking stance and raced away, leaving the rest of the men scattered among the rocks to fend for themselves.
“The sumbitch has run off,” Dad Lodi said to Frank Dorsey as the buckboard rolled up into sight flanked by the three town guards.
Manning one of the deck guns as the buckboard slowed down enough to fire, Ulan Hayes aimed toward the spot only ten yards away where Delbert Garr sat behind a rock firing rounds as quickly as he could lever a fresh one into his rifle chamber. Just as Garr stood up and took aim, Hayes pulled the trigger on the big gun.
“Oh my goodness!” Farris remarked, seeing the blast from where he and Coots lay thirty feet above the melee.
Garr seemed to disappear from the waist up in a red-pink mist of blood, meat and bone matter. The rock wall behind him stood splattered with a blood-dripping imprint. Also seeing the blast, Coots replied to Farris above the roar of heavy gunfire, “I’ve got to get that gun before it gets us.”
“You don’t intend to go down there?” Farris asked in disbelief.
“Cover me,” said Coots, and he was up and gone, running in a crouch along the jagged ledge above the buckboard.
In the buckboard, Hayes jumped over to the other deck gun and fired it toward Dad Lodi and Dorsey’s position. But Lodi and Dorsey had anticipated the big guns coming and scrambled away, farther up the hillside, as Hayes pulled the trigger. “Damn it, I missed,” Hayes shouted, hurriedly reloading the big gun as the buckboard slid around in a complete turn and headed back, Victor slapping a whip to the horses’ backs.
Back along the trail, Shumate, Prine and Albertson raced their horses back and forth, keeping a heavy barrage of fire on the steep, rugged hillside. When they saw the buckboard rolling back toward them, Prine shouted, “He
re comes Hayes, give him room!”
“Pour it on them, Hayes!” shouted Shumate, firing wildly at the men in the rocks.
But as the buckboard gained speed and Hayes busily reloaded the second deck gun, Coots had run down over rock after rock until he’d reached a place ten feet above the rolling buckboard, where he leaped out like a cat. He landed with a loud thump on both feet and caught on to a side rail with one hand and steadied himself. Hayes turned, facing him in time to catch a pistol barrel across his jaw and a shove off the buckboard and down the steep side of the trail.
“Pour it on—!” Shumate had started to call out again, not seeing what had just happened. But when Coots swung the reloaded gun around and pulled the trigger, Shumate lifted from his saddle amid the loud blast and disappeared in a red cloud of flesh, bone and saddle fragments. His horse, catching a nonlethal peppering of sharp iron fragments, ran away whinnying.
Hearing the loud blast streak past him, Victor had jerked around and looked over his shoulder. When he saw Coots standing at the other gun, swinging it around for another forward shot, he let out a scream and leaped from the speeding wagon.
“Good Lord, that ain’t Hayes!” said Albertson to Prine, the two of them seeing Coots leap into the driver’s seat, take the traces and brake the speed of the buckboard down.
Seeing Coots from another position, Big Chicago said to Thatcher, “Get ready to go as soon as he’s fired this next shot and has to stop and reload.”
“I’m already ready to go,” said Thatcher, shaking his head, seeing blood seeping down from under the bandana Big Chicago held to his wounded shoulder. “I never seen anything get so screwed up in my life.”
Chicago said bitterly, “This damned Teacher and his deputy pal. They knew that losing the Shays would be like cutting the head off of a snake. The rest of the body could still wiggle around, but it didn’t know what to do.”
On the buckboard, Coots stood braced behind the second big gun. He held his fire even as Albertson and Prine bored down on him, riding low in their saddles, firing repeatedly. Coots knew that the closer he let them get, the better his chances of blasting them both with one shot. Wait . . . , he told himself. He heard bullets zip past him. Wait . . . A bullet thumped into the front of the buckboard. Now!