by Ralph Cotton
“Keep quiet,” the sweaty soldier snapped at him. “It is only fair that he does so.”
Sam continued. “It’s up to you whether you go to Rio Santo and report what happened out here, or skin out somewhere else and be deserters.” He stared at the soldiers.
“Sí, Ranger, it is up to us,” the sweating soldier said, calmer now, seeing they might stand a chance. “We will go to Rio Santo and report to the commander. You have our word.”
* * *
When the Ranger and the women had ridden on a full two miles, too far for the three soldiers to catch up with them after having to scour the hillside for their bullets, Sam slowed his dun and looked back along the trail.
“Do you think they will go to the fortress at Rio Santo, Ranger?” Ria asked. “Can you count on them, after what they were going to do to us?”
“I don’t know,” Sam replied. “They were in desperate straits. Fear and desperation make a man do a lot of things—things he wouldn’t do otherwise.” He turned back to the trail and put the dun forward. “Soldiers are trained to obey orders,” he said, riding on, leading the cart, the women right beside him. “Take away the orders they’re used to getting, some of them don’t know what to do.”
“That does not excuse them for what they had planned for us,” the woman said. “Had you not put your gun under his chin, they would have killed us without batting an eye. They would have ridden away on these horses and left our bones to the desert floor.”
“Maybe,” Sam said. “Luckily we’ll never know.”
They rode on in the darkening hills until the sun was gone and stars began dotting the purple sky. They did not stop again until they found themselves on a narrow trail skirting around a moonlit valley where bodies of man and horse alike lay strewn about, being pulled and picked upon by a pack of frenzied wolves.
“Stay back here,” the Ranger said. “Hold the cart.”
“Santa madre de Dios!” the woman whispered. She crossed herself and sidled her horse closer to the cart where Ana sat on the board, a blanket wrapped around her. The mule had grown fearful and balked at the cart reins as Sam held them over to Ria. Both horses shied back from the sound and the scent of the wolves. Even at thirty yards the sound of snarling and eating filled the night.
“They’re too busy to care about us right now,” Sam said. He swung down from his saddle in the purple moonlight and handed Ria his dun’s reins. “Ana, throw out something I can use for a torch.”
“I will get it,” Ria said quickly.
“No,” Sam said firmly, “you hold the animals.”
Ria stayed in her saddle; Ana hurriedly gathered an old shirt and a slim pick handle and pitched them over the side of the cart.
No sooner had Sam fashioned the wadded shirt and the pick handle into a torch and lit it than he heard a faint voice coming from a stand of rocks to his left. Instead of venturing closer to the wolves to count the dead, he walked sidelong to the rocks, his rifle in his right hand, his left hand holding the torch burning above his head. As he neared the rocks he heard the voice again. This time he saw a soldier’s chewed-up boot reach from among the rocks and scrape at the ground. He hurried over to it.
“Por favor, help me, señor . . . ,” a weak voice moaned as the torchlight spread down over the rocks brokenly.
Hearing the man speak English, Sam said, “Keep quiet. Wolves are everywhere.” As he whispered, he stooped and dragged the man from under the rocks where he’d burrowed himself a den from which to fight off the scavengers. As Sam dragged him into sight, he saw the bloodstained bandages around his waist; he saw the chewed-upon fore-stock of the French rifle that the man had used to jab at the wolves’ muzzles when they tried to dig him from his lair.
“Thank God, thank God, thank God . . . ,” the soldier chanted in a rasping whisper until his voice trailed away.
Sam laid the torch down long enough to lift the man over his shoulder. At the cart, Ria and Ana watched him rise and carry the wounded man, torch, rifle and all, beneath the flickering dome of firelight.
“Ranger, they see us!” Ria said, struggling with the nervous horses and the balking mule.
“They’re not bothering with us just now,” Sam said. “They’ve taken an easier meal.”
Ana had hurried to the tailgate of the cart and pushed it open. Sam laid the wounded man into the cart, lifted the gate and held it while Ana slipped the iron gate pin back into place.
Sam stepped back and held the torch close to the ground, examining the many hoofprints scattered in the dirt. He saw no unshod prints, only the iron shoes of the soldiers’ horses.
“Ranger, we must leave!” Ria said.
Sam turned and took his dun’s reins from her and swung up in the saddle, the torch above his head. The dun was steady enough, but tense, agitated by the wolves, the fire flickering so close above its back.
“Get moving, ma’am,” Sam said to Ria. “I’m right behind you.”
As Ria turned the barb and pulled the mule by the cart reins, Sam rose in his saddle, drew the torch back and heaved it in the wolves’ direction. The torch fell well short of the thirty yards, but it hit the ground and caused the feeding animals to hunker back. In the shadowy firelight Sam caught glimpses of arrows sticking up from the dirt, from the bodies of the dead, both men and horses alike. Then he turned the dun and rode away behind the cart.
“Thank our Holy Mother they will not follow us,” Ria said as he rode up beside her and took the cart reins.
“So far they haven’t,” Sam said, keeping the mule moving along at a quick but safe pace.
Farther along the trail, they stopped where the moonlight shone full and unobstructed. Sam and Ria met Ana at the back of the cart and stepped inside when she opened the rear gate.
Ana kneeled beside the soldier and poured a trickle of canteen water onto his lips. Sam stooped down beside him.
“Did Apache attack your patrol?” he asked, already having begun to form an opinion of his own.
The man shook his head weakly.
“No Indians . . . scalpers,” he managed to say. “They capture . . . my captain. The woman from the . . . Mockingbird Cantina. She stab . . . him in the heart. . . .” His voice trailed; his eyes closed. Sam gave Ana a nod and she poured another trickle on his lips and wet a cloth and laid it on his blood-crusted forehead.
“He hides there in the rocks ever since the battle?” Ria asked as if in disbelief.
“I would say he did,” Sam replied, “first from the ambushers, then from the wolves.” He shook his head slowly at the enormity of it. “He must’ve seen everything that happened back there.”
“I did . . . ,” the wounded man whispered.
Seeing his eyes open a little, Sam leaned in closer.
“Take it easy, we’re going to get you to Iron Point,” he said. He adjusted the wet cloth on the soldier’s forehead.
“She stabbed . . . my capitán,” he whispered. “The leader . . . hit her in the face . . . for stabbing him. . . .”
“The mercenary leader hit her for stabbing the captain?” Sam asked, trying to make sense of it.
“He hit her . . . ,” the soldier said. Again he closed his eyes. This time there was a sense of finality to his action. He tried to grip the Ranger’s forearm, but his strength failed him; his hand fell to his side. A long breath escaped his lips.
Ria and Ana both crossed themselves.
“You risked your life to save a dead man,” Ria commented quietly.
Sam just looked at her.
“He wasn’t dead at the time,” he said. He stood up in the cart and dragged the dead soldier out of the cart to the side of the trail. As he picked up rocks and laid them over the body, he reminded himself that he was here in pursuit of one man, Ozzie Cord. The rest of these men, scalpers . . . mercenaries, whatever they wanted to call themselves . . . were th
e Mexican government’s concern. After all, it was the government who employed them.
He stopped covering the body and looked off across the purple sky above the rugged badlands. This was a bloody land. He knew it coming in. A man with no solemn reckoning of death had no business here, he reminded himself.
“Amen,” he said silently to the pile of stones. With that, he turned and walked to the dun and stepped up into his saddle. In moments the small party of travelers was gone. Above the desert a moon lay golden and silent in the purple velvet night.
Chapter 9
In Iron Point four dead soldiers lay in the trail at the main gates to the fortress. Alpine and his men had lifted the soldiers’ scalps the afternoon before. But he’d left the bodies sprawled in the dust overnight. The dead served as a message to the townsfolk to do as they were told, and as a reminder to Turner Pridemore what a good day’s work he and his men had done in their leader’s absence.
Inside the battered, crumbling wall of Iron Point, most residents were still afraid to go about their daily business. A factor that Pridemore liked to see.
“You could never pull these shenanigans in, say . . . Texas, California . . . or anywhere else, I don’t expect.” He chuckled, looking all around the streets, all of them empty save for his men and a few hard-case border outlaws. “Ornery Americans wouldn’t stand for it.”
“That’s a fact, Bigfoot,” Darton Alpine said, feeling proud of himself.
Standing by the front gates grinning, Pridemore rolled a dead soldier’s scalped head back and forth a little with the toe of his tall Mexican boots.
“You know what’s wrong with this country, Dart?” he said, tilting his chin to take in the aroma of a young pig cooking slowly on a spit out in front of the Mockingbird Tent Cantina.
“A lot of things I can think of,” Alpine said.
“Not enough guns,” Pridemore said. “These folks barely have enough armament to hunt dinner, let alone fight Apache.” He shook his head and looked down at the soldiers. “Course, they’re stupid to boot,” he added, again rolling the scalped head back and forth. “Look at these poor sumbitches. They ran here fleeing the Wolf Hearts.” He chuckled. “The Wolf Hearts have cleared out. We whupped them so bad they’ll not be seen for weeks—months even.”
Pridemore walked back through the open gates and stood before the public well staring down at Diamond Jim’s sun-curing face. “Now, see, this right here is why it’s always good to have an old hand like Deacon Sickles around. This strikes the fear of God in everybody in town.”
“No question about it,” said Alpine, looking at the face, the flies walking on it.
Pridemore cocked his head, looking down at the face. “I’m told the English pay high for these kinds of American keepsakes. Ol’ Deacon might be onto something here.”
Alpine couldn’t see the potential. But he kept quiet about it.
Pridemore looked all around, stretched his back and looked over where Bertha Buttons supervised an elderly Mexican turning the pig on its spit.
“What other news you got for me, Dart?” he asked. “All of it good, I hope?”
“It’s not all good, Bigfoot,” Alpine said cautiously. “While we were getting this town braced and broken, that idiot Ozzie Cord lit out of here. Nobody is saying, but I get the feeling these townsfolk would like to gut-shoot him.”
“Tell them to fire away. I’ve heard worse news than that in my life,” Pridemore said, again the grin. “Good riddance, idiot,” he called out to the surrounding hillsides.
“The thing is, your son, Fox, lit out with him.”
That stopped Pridemore.
“Fox . . . rode out with Ozzie Cord? You don’t mean it, Dart,” he said, surprised. “Now, that’s a different thing altogether. Are these folks down on him too?”
“I get that feeling, Bigfoot,” said Alpine. “I saw grumbling and whispering going on when the two walked down the street. Of course everybody shut up when I asked about it.”
“Maybe you didn’t ask hard enough, Dart,” Pridemore said pointedly. “Sometimes you need to ask with a whip in your hand, acting like you already know the answer.”
“I’ll start at one end of town and whip my way to the other, if you want me to,” Alpine said.
Pridemore seemed to consider it for a moment.
“This town is ours to do with as we see fit,” he said. “They might hate us for some things, but they damn sure worship us for keeping the Wolf Hearts out of their rectums.”
“They’ll stay out of our way and leave us alone—that’s for sure,” said Alpine. “Want me to ask around easylike what that idiot Ozzie and Fox might have done?”
“Not just now,” Pridemore said. “Fox is good at looking out for himself. If he lets an idiot like Ozzie lead him astray, I reckon he’ll have to account for it. He’s been itching to get away on his own for a while now.”
“I can send some men out to look for him,” said Alpine. “Leave Ozzie nailed to a tree if you want me to.”
“Keep that ‘nailed to a tree’ thought,” said Pridemore. “Let’s see if they come back. I know my son. If Ozzie ain’t careful, Fox’ll get enough of his foolishness and stick a bullet in his brain—”
Pridemore stopped talking when Philbert Ohiola trotted past the guard at the main gaits and came toward them.
“Top of the morning, Ohio Phil,” Pridemore said, his hand resting on the butt of the big Walker Colt sticking up from his waist. “The way you come running up, I was thinking Ol’ Dan Webster here might have to greet you.” He tapped his fingers on his Colt and eyed the rifle Ohio Phil carried across his chest at port arms.
“Sorry, Bigfoot,” Ohio Phil said, letting his rifle slump to his side. “There’s two riders on horseback and a mule cart just cleared up onto the trail. One’s a white man wearing a badge. Pusser saw it through his spyglass.”
“White man wearing a badge, you say . . . ?” said Pridemore. He looked at Alpine with a grin, then back at Phil Ohiola. “Think somebody ought to tell this fool he’s not in Texas?”
“Seems like we should,” Alpine said, going along with his boss’s wry humor.
“All right, I just come to tell you,” said Phil Ohiola. “Pusser’s still out there keeping an eye on them.”
“Good work, Phil,” Pridemore said. “You and Pusser pull back and let them past you.”
“It could be that Ranger,” said Alpine.
“I hope it is,” said Pridemore. “I ought to thank him. Hadn’t been for him killing Erskine Cord, I might be back at the trading post, swatting flies off rattlesnake meat, serving it for chicken soup.”
“I’m just saying . . . ,” Alpine replied.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Pridemore. “He’s not after any of us. If Ozzie was here I’d hand him over to the Ranger just to watch him wiggle.”
“Anything else . . . ?” Phil Ohiola asked in his deep, solemn voice.
Pridemore looked the hatless half-breed up and down, noting his shaved head.
“Tell me, Phil,” he asked amicably. “When are you going to let your hair grow out?”
“No time soon, Bigfoot,” said the serious half-breed. He rubbed his shaved and weathered cranium.
Pridemore nodded back toward the gates.
“That’s all, Phil,” he said. “You and Pusser stay sharp out there.”
“If it is the Ranger, I can drop back out of sight and stick a bullet in him,” Alpine said as Ohio Phil trotted away, his rifle dangling at his side.
Pridemore had taken a thin black cigar from inside his buckskins and stuck it in his mouth. He eyed Alpine up and down.
“You’re doing good work here, Dart,” he said. “Stop trying too hard to please me.” He pulled out a long match, hiked a knee and struck it down his trouser leg. “I had a whore in Abilene acted like that. Turned out she tried to nut me in
my sleep.” He held the flaming match to the cigar but stopped first. “You would not want me showing you the scar.”
“No, I wouldn’t, Bigfoot,” Alpine said.
“Good,” said Pridemore. He puffed the cigar to life and flipped the match into the dirt. “Go gather a few men around us. Tell Chase to goad whoever this is wearing a badge. We’ll see what he’s made of.”
“Got it,” said Alpine.
But before he could turn and leave, Pridemore stopped him. “If this is the Ranger, I want to first off try to make him feel welcome.” He gave a skeptical grin. “Maybe he’ll even tell us about gutting Wilson Orez with his own knife.”
Alpine gave him a curious look, then nodded and moved away.
* * *
It was midmorning when the Ranger and the women made it up the last few yards of the trail with the creaking, slow-rolling mule cart. As the animals climbed to the old fortress on the craggy hill, Sam was a little surprised to find no guards standing at the open gates. He entered the town ahead of the woman and the cart, and came to a halt, rifle in hand, seeing the throng of buckskinned mercenaries lounging against the town well facing him.
At the center of the rugged-looking group, Turner “Bigfoot” Pridemore sat in a large, high thronelike Spanish chair as if awaiting him. The Ranger looked around warily as the women and the cart stopped beside him. Ria sidled the barb over closer to him. She and Ana sat staring in silence.
“Top of the morning, lawman!” Pridemore called out, hoisting a tall Spanish goblet that sloshed liquid over its rim as he raised it out toward Sam. He wore a wide scowl of a grin on his face. “I’m betting every dollar in the bank that you be Arizona Ranger Samuel Burrack.” As he spoke he waved a hand, inviting Sam to step down and come forward.
“You bet right,” said the Ranger. “I am Sam Burrack.” He handed Ria his dun’s reins and swung down from his saddle with his thumb across the hammer of his rifle. He nodded at Pridemore walking toward him. “You’re the man they call Bigfoot—owned the trading post over on the edge of the sand flats.” He stopped a few feet away.