"And you don't know who you're talking to," Tilghman said. "I'm a deputy United States marshal. It's probably not very smart to be threatening me like that."
"A deputy marshal . . . ! You're the one my brothers told me about."
Tilghman stiffened. There was only one reasonable explanation for the man's words.
By a stroke of pure luck, he had captured the very man he was looking for.
Cal Rainey, the ringleader of the rustlers.
Chapter 10
Tilghman smiled thinly in the darkness.
"Your brothers," he repeated. "I reckon you mean the mayor and the marshal of Burnt Creek."
Rainey must have realized that his anger had caused him to blurt out too much information. In a truculent voice, he said, "I don't know what the hell you're talking about."
"Sure you don't. You can deny it all you want, but I won't have any trouble finding folks in Burnt Creek who can identify you, and with my own ears I heard you admit to conspiring with Martin and Dave. All three of you will be going to prison for organizing this rustling ring . . . or to the gallows to pay for the men you murdered in your raids."
"You're loco, old man," Rainey growled. "I don't know what you're talkin' about. I never killed anybody, and I never stole any cattle."
"What about that herd I saw you and your boys driving along the canyon?"
"That's my herd. You can check the brands on them. Boxed CR, every one."
"And if I shoot one of the varmints and peel the hide off it?" Tilghman said. "What'll I find then, Rainey? Evidence that the brands were tampered with? I haven't searched your saddlebags yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if I found a running iron in them."
Rainey's sullen silence told Tilghman he had probably guessed right about both of those things.
Evidence could wait, though. Right now the important thing was to get out of the hills and head back to Burnt Creek. Tilghman thought he could get there by dawn. If he could take Dave Rainey by surprise and get the drop on him, he could lock up Cal and Dave both in the local marshal's jail, then head over to the Drovers Hotel to round up Martin Rainey. With all three of the brothers behind bars, he could send word to Evett Nix asking for the reinforcements he would need to wrap up the job.
Tilghman picked up the gag he had discarded earlier and said, "Open your mouth, Cal."
Rainey responded with a vile suggestion of several things Tilghman could do with the makeshift gag.
"You see, that's exactly why I don't want to have to listen to your filthy comments all the way back to Burnt Creek," Tilghman said. He took hold of Rainey's hair and jerked his head up. Rainey opened his mouth to yell, and Tilghman shoved the rag back in.
"It's your own fault," he pointed out. "I gave you a chance to act like a civilized human being."
Rainey just grunted furiously through the gag.
Tilghman mounted up and rode on, leading Rainey's horse. He steered by the stars and knew he was going in the right direction. Soon he would be out of the flat-topped hills and ridges and back on the open prairie, and then he could move even faster toward Burnt Creek.
A half-moon rose, spreading silvery illumination over the stark landscape. Because of that, Tilghman had a little warning when he spotted a moonbeam glinting off of something up ahead that wasn't a slab of gypsum. He leaned forward sharply as a rifle cracked. The bullet screamed through the air near his head, and he knew that if he hadn't ducked, he'd be dead right now.
He yanked his horse to the side and dug his heels into its flanks. The animal leaped ahead. Tilghman tightened his grip on the trailing horse's reins as he galloped toward some slabs of rock that had broken off from one of the hills in the past and slid down to form a cluster at its base. Those rocks wouldn't provide much cover, but they were better than nothing.
More shots blasted. Tilghman saw orange flame spurt from gun muzzles. None of the bullets came close to him, though. Hitting a swiftly moving target by moonlight was next thing to impossible. That first shot, when one of the bushwhackers had had time to draw a bead on him, had been their best chance.
The odds were still against him, though, and he knew it.
"Hold your fire, hold your fire!" a man shouted, his voice echoing back from the hillsides. "I think he's got Cal with him!"
Now they thought of that, Tilghman told himself with a faint, wry smile as he brought his mount to a skidding halt among the boulders. They were lucky they hadn't killed their boss already with a stray bullet.
For that matter, Tilghman realized, he didn't know if Cal Rainey was still alive. There hadn't been time to check.
He dismounted almost before his horse stopped moving and wrapped the other horse's reins around his saddlehorn, then pulled the Winchester from its scabbard. A slap on the rump made his mount move deeper into the rocks, taking the other horse with it. As they trotted off, Tilghman heard Rainey still making noises through the gag, so he knew the rustler chieftain was still alive.
Tilghman crouched behind one of the stone slabs. His keen eyes scanned the moon-dappled landscape that lay between his position and the next ridge. It was mostly open ground, but there were hummocks and rocks and gullies where bushwhackers could hide.
He had one small advantage over the rustlers. He knew he didn't have any allies out here, so any movement he saw would be that of an enemy.
Because of that, when he spotted a shape flitting through the shadows, he was able to press the rifle's trigger without hesitation. The weapon cracked, and he saw the moving shape tumble out of control. A howl of pain ripped through the night. From the sound of it, Tilghman knew he had hit the man, but probably hadn't wounded him mortally.
The shot drew plenty of return fire. Tilghman had to crouch even lower as slugs splattered against the rocks. Some of them bounced and whined off into the darkness. Some spent their force in a series of tinkling impacts and then clattered across the ground. It was a storm of lead, and Tilghman knew he would be lucky to come through it unscathed.
After a few nerve-wracking moments, the guns fell silent. The hush that followed as the echoes died away in the hills was eerie. In that tense quiet, Tilghman heard one of the men ask, "You think we got him?"
Tilghman thought about snapping a shot in the direction of the voice, but he eased off the pressure on the Winchester's trigger. If he fired, they would know for sure that he was still alive. This way he made them wonder about it. He might lure them into making a mistake that would turn the tide of battle.
For a long moment, nobody answered the rustler's question. Then another man called, "Garza! Scanlon! Work your way up along the flanks."
Scanlon, thought Tilghman. The young man Casey Spencer loved and wanted to marry, unless there was another Scanlon in the gang, which was possible, of course, but seemed unlikely to Tilghman. He had promised Casey he would do what he could for Scanlon, if he got the chance, but given the fact that the young man more than likely had just been doing his best to kill him, that possibility seemed pretty far-fetched at the moment.
Still, he didn't know for certain that Boone Scanlon had been one of the men shooting at him. The youngster could have held his fire.
Now Scanlon was one of the men ordered to catch him in a crossfire. Tilghman couldn't let that happen, no matter what he had told Casey. He watched for movement again, and after a moment he spotted a human shape wriggling across an open stretch of ground like a giant snake.
Tilghman put a bullet into the dirt less than a yard in front of the crawling man's head.
The rustler let out a startled yelp and leaped to his feet, clearly too startled to think straight. He had just made himself an even better target.
Tilghman didn't kill him, though. Instead he sent a round whistling through the air near the man's head and made him leap for cover. Tilghman didn't know if he was shooting at Boone Scanlon or the rustler called Garza.
Either way, that moment of mercy might well come back to haunt him.
"Well, that tells us whether or n
ot he's alive," the man who had spoken earlier said. He raised his voice and went on, "Mister, I don't know who you are, but can you hear me?"
They already knew where he was, so he wouldn't be giving anything away by answering. Staying low, he called, "I hear you! And I'm Deputy U.S. Marshal Bill Tilghman!"
That must have given them pause, because no one replied and there were no more shots for the moment. They were probably turning over the information in their brains, trying to figure out if they wanted to keep trying to kill a federal lawman or light a shuck out of there while they still could.
Finally, the spokesman called, "That's our boss you've got over there, Tilghman. Let him go and you can ride away from here."
A burst of muffled protest came from farther back in the rocks where the horses were. Tilghman figured Cal Rainey was disagreeing violently with that proposal.
"I'd say it's pretty unlikely you boys would do that," Tilghman replied. "I know what you've been up to and where your hiding place is. You're not going to let me live."
"You're wrong," the rustler said. "I'll be damned if I want a whole pack of federal lawdogs on my trail from now on, and that's what'll happen if we kill you. Might be time to cut our losses."
More likely, the man was thinking that he and his friends could drive the hidden herd north to Kansas as fast as they could, sell the cattle for whatever they would bring, and then scatter across the West. It wasn't a bad plan. Tilghman couldn't take on the whole gang and recover all that rustled stock by himself. By the time he could get any help, the outlaws would all be gone.
But he didn't trust any of the rustlers for a second, and anyway, it went against the grain for him to let a prisoner go, especially one like Cal Rainey who had been raising hell for quite a while and was responsible for the deaths of innocent people.
He had one card he might be able to play. He called, "Boone Scanlon!"
The silence that greeted the name had a shocked quality to it. A long moment ticked by, then a youthful voice shouted back, "How do you know who I am, Marshal?"
The rustler who had been doing all the talking snapped, "Shut up, Scanlon!"
"He already knows who I am, Jonah," Scanlon replied. He addressed Tilghman again. "What do you want, Marshal?"
"I talked to that gal of yours in town, Scanlon. Pretty little Casey Spencer. She wants to marry you, and I promised her I'd do what I can to see that that happens. But I can't help you as long as you're mixed up with this bunch of thieves and killers."
"By God, Scanlon, don't listen to him," the rustler called Jonah raged. "He's tryin' to turn you against us!"
And evidently there was a chance he might be able to do that, Tilghman thought. Otherwise Jonah wouldn't be so upset. Maybe Boone Scanlon was worth salvaging after all if his fellow outlaws didn't fully trust him.
"I'm telling you the truth, Boone!" Tilghman said. "My word carries a lot of weight in this territory. I can convince a judge to take it easy on you, as long as you haven't done anything too bad. But if you go along with the rest of this bunch, you'll wind up at the end of a hang rope just like them!"
"There's nothing I can do to help you, Marshal," Scanlon replied, but judging by the miserable sound of his voice, he wished that wasn't true. "You never should've come riding into the Devil's Hand!"
Tilghman was about to make another try at convincing the young rustler to switch sides, when he heard something behind him. Rocks slid and bounced, and that was enough to make him whirl around with the Winchester ready in his hands.
He caught a glimpse of a shape lunging toward him and knew that one of the gang had managed to get behind him and come down the hill. Tilghman fired, and at the same time Colt flame bloomed in the darkness, practically right in his face, blinding him. The shot was deafening. Combined, those two things plunged him into a world where he couldn't see or hear and could only strike out wildly with the faint hope of hitting anything.
An instant later, something smashed into the side of his head. The impact drove him back against the boulder behind him. His strength deserted him. He felt his legs folding up underneath him, but there was nothing he could do to stop himself from sliding into black oblivion.
Chapter 11
Terrible heat pounded into Tilghman's face like a fiery fist, and the glare of leaping flames assaulted his eyes when he forced them open. For a second he thought he was dead and in Hell, which didn't seem right. He had tried to lead a moral, God-fearing life.
But he had killed a number of men in the course of his work, and even though he considered those deaths justified under man's law, the Good Lord might not feel the same way. After all, the Bible said, "Thou shalt not kill," and didn't set out any exceptions to that rule.
The Bible also specified an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and made it plain that those who lived by the sword would die by the sword, which Tilghman had always figured applied by extension to six-guns, too.
None of that theological pondering mattered, he realized, because he wasn't dead after all. He had flinched a little from the flames, and that brought a bray of laughter from somebody nearby.
"It's about time you woke up, Tilghman," a familiar voice said. "I told you I was gonna burn you like the Apaches do, but I want you to know what's goin' on when your brain starts to fry."
That would be Cal Rainey, thought Tilghman. He squinted through narrowed eyes that were starting to adjust to the garish firelight. Several tall, man-shaped figures loomed around him. He realized that he was lying on the ground, looking up at them.
As his vision cleared even more, he began to make out his captors' faces. The one standing in front of him, leering down at him with such a cruel, satisfied expression, had to be Cal Rainey. With the red, flickering light from the fire washing over his rawboned face, Rainey looked positively Satanic.
Three more men stood nearby. One of them was short and chunky, with a rust-colored beard. Another was a half-breed wearing a hat with a low, round crown and a turquoise-studded band. A blood-stained bandanna tied around his thigh meant he was probably the man Tilghman had winged earlier.
The final man was the youngest of the bunch, with a shock of black hair and a worried face under a pushed-back Stetson. Tilghman pegged him as being Boone Scanlon. He was the only one who looked like a cowboy recently gone bad. The others were veteran desperadoes.
The night was still black except where the fire burned. Tilghman found the half-moon in the sky. He could tell by its location that he had been unconscious for quite a while.
His head pounded from the blow that had knocked him out. He didn't know if a bullet had grazed his skull or if he'd been walloped by a gun or some other weapon. In the end, it didn't really matter, he supposed.
His arms were twisted awkwardly and uncomfortably behind him. When he tried to move them he found that his wrists were tied securely. So were his ankles. They had trussed him up good and proper. This was about the most hopeless position in which he had ever found himself.
He wished he'd had a chance to tell Flora goodbye. But they had always known that whenever he rode away from the ranch on law business, there was a chance he wouldn't be coming back.
That despairing thought went through his brain, but the next second he angrily shoved it away. Thinking about regrets meant that he was giving up, and he wasn't going to do that as long as there was breath left in his body.
Cal Rainey said, "Garza, you head on back to the others and let them know what's going on. We'll catch up with the herd once we're finished with the marshal here."
The 'breed nodded solemnly, his bronzed face expressionless. He turned and limped over to some horses, swung up into the saddle of one of them, and rode away.
Rainey went to the horses, too, and came back with a coiled lariat. It was the same one Tilghman had used to tie him onto his horse. Rainey must be taking some pleasure from that irony, the lawman thought.
Whistling a tuneless air between his teeth, Rainey hunkered beside Tilghman's bound feet a
nd fastened one end of the lariat around his ankles. The outlaw with the rust-colored beard, who had to be Jonah, stood watching stolidly, as did Scanlon.
When Rainey had the rope tied to his satisfaction, he stood and tossed the other end over a big slab of rock. They had built the fire at the base of that rock.
"All right, you two," Rainey said. "Go around on the other side and haul him up. I'll lift him on this side so you won't drag him through the fire. We don't want this gettin' over with too soon."
When the Apaches suspended their torture victims head-down over a fire, they usually built some sort of platform from which to dangle them, or else used a tree limb. There weren't enough trees out here to do either of those things, so Rainey had come up with another method for taking his cruel revenge on Tilghman.
It ought to work, too. The rock was about twelve feet tall. The two men on the other end of the rope would be able to lift him high enough that he wouldn't burn right away. Instead he would roast slowly over the flames until his brain burst. And he would be awake and aware for most of it.
It would be an awful way to die.
"Come on, kid," Jonah said.
Tilghman said, "You don't have to do this, Boone. Think about how Casey would feel if she knew. You reckon she'd still want to marry you?"
The toe of Rainey's boot jabbed into Tilghman's side in a brutal kick.
"Shut up, lawman," Rainey said. "Ol' Boone here knows who his friends really are. He wouldn't ever double-cross us. Ain't that right, Boone?"
Scanlon swallowed hard and licked his lips. He said, "I'm sorry, Marshal. Like I told you before, you shouldn't have come out here huntin' us."
"Get goin'," Rainey snapped. "I'm ready to see this badge-toter get what's comin' to him."
Tilghman said, "Your brother's a lawman, too, Rainey, don't forget that."
Another burst of harsh laughter came from Rainey.
"Just because an hombre pins on a badge don't mean anything, and politicians are bigger crooks than all the rustlers and road agents put together. My brothers are livin' proof of that!"
West of the Big River: Boxed Set of Eight Western Novels Page 6