by Ralph Cotton
“What’s going on? What was the shooting?” the English dove, Rita Spool asked, sitting up in the bed with a sheet pulled across her breasts.
“Nothing’s going on—what shooting?” Rudabaugh said in a hurry, yanking his trousers up, stuffing his shirt down into the waist.
“I heard shooting,” Rita said firmly, not to be put off.
“Okay, the sheriff shot some fellows, it sounds like—”
“Rudabaugh . . . ,” the sheriff’s voice called out again. “Don’t be shy. I’ll do all the work.”
“That son of a bitch,” Rudabaugh growled, yanking on one boot, then another. He stamped them into place and threw on his dusty black linen suit coat.
“He’s talking to you, isn’t he, then?” Rita said, cocking her head curiously.
“Yeah, sort of,” said Rudabaugh. He grabbed his gun belt hanging on the bedpost. He started to swing it around his waist, then changed his mind and threw it up onto his shoulder. “Look, I’ve got to—got some business to take care of.”
“Are you going down there like he said?” she asked.
“Probably, maybe, I haven’t decided yet,” he said, grabbing his hat. He stopped and took a deep breath. “Don’t ask so damn many questions. I’ll be back real soon.”
“I can hardly wait,” Rita said, sounding a little insincere. She’d spent most of the afternoon with him—hadn’t made a dime for herself. The house charged for her services and paid her half—in Rudabaugh’s case it was half of nothing, so far.
“Neither can I,” Rudabaugh said on his way out the door.
Bounding down the stairs and toward the rear door, he looked over at the two bartenders who stared at him from behind the empty bar, the customers having left to investigate the shooting.
“Look after this place until I get back, Phil,” he shouted, crossing the floor. “You’re both doing a fine job.” He slung the rear door open, looked back and added, “Keep up the good work.”
The good work . . . ?
The head bartender, Phillip Jones, and his younger brother, Ellis, looked at each other.
“I’ve never seen a man fall apart so fast,” Phil said. As he spoke he took out a pencil stub and pocket notebook. “He’s like a kid turned loose in a candy store.” He scribbled something into the notebook and closed it and put it in his hip pocket.
“We need to get our own place,” said Ellis. “That’s all there is to it.”
• • •
Mae Rose had heard the gunshots as she tied her two carpetbags together and threw them up over the rump of the big speckled gray, a rented horse she’d arranged for earlier with the livery hostler. The shotgun and following pistol explosions caused her to hurry. Stone had told her to keep going and not look back—all right, she would do just that.
She’d rented the horse earlier from the livery hostler and paid extra to have it returned to Big Silver when the opportunity presented itself. She had changed out of her brothel attire and put on some no-nonsense trail clothes. She carried a .36 caliber Navy Colt shoved down in her waist that Stone had given her for protection a year ago. The trail to Secondary was known as nothing more than barren sand, rock and dry washes, but she wasn’t taking a chance on coming across a stray panther or a wolf in the moonlit night.
She hurriedly tied the bags down with some short lengths of rope and had started to lead the horse from the barn when she halted, seeing Silas Rudabaugh run in through the open doors.
“Everything’s all right, miss,” he said, seeing the frightened look on her face. He held up a hand as if it would reassure her. “Some trouble on the street. Nothing to worry about.” He took hold of the gray’s bridle and held on to it.
“Turn loose of my horse,” Mae Rose said flatly. She jerked on the horse’s reins, but Rudabaugh held firm. She thought about the Colt shoved down in her waist, but she decided against grabbing for it. If she pulled it she knew she’d have to use it, and this wasn’t the time or place.
“Hey, you’re one of our Silver Palace gals,” Rudabaugh said, finally recognizing her in the faded trail clothes. “Where are you going?” He looked suspicious of her.
“Back to Denver City,” Mae Rose said. “My mother is ill. I’ll be gone a month, maybe longer.”
“Yeah?” said Rudabaugh. “I’ve never met a dove yet who really had a mother—least not one aboveground.” He nodded at the bulging carpetbags. “Looks like you’re taking everything you own.”
“Maybe I am, what of it?” said Mae Rose. “Turn loose of my horse.”
“Huh-uh, not just yet,” said Rudabaugh. “You’re not leaving here until I see that your account is settled. Can’t have you running off owing the Palace money, can we?”
“I don’t owe the Palace anything,” Mae Rose said. “My account was clear when Edsel Centrila bought the place—go check for yourself.”
“Oh, I will,” said Rudabaugh. He added with a stiff grin, “In my own sweet time.” He stepped in closer and said, “You’re one of the couple of gals I haven’t managed to get well acquainted with the past couple of days.”
“I know,” said Mae Rose, settling down, seeing she would have to deal with him. “I’ve seen so much of you in the hall I thought you were wallpaper.” She smiled coyly. “My feelings were getting hurt that you hadn’t come to visit me yet.”
“We don’t want your feelings hurt, do we?” said Rudabaugh.
“No, we don’t,” said Mae Rose. “As soon as I get back, I’m going to come looking for you.”
“I’d like that—” Rudabaugh suddenly caught himself and glanced back in the direction of the sheriff’s office. “Which way are you headed?” he said. He noted the livery’s brand on the gray’s rump and knew it was a rental horse.
Mae Rose gave a shrug.
“To Secondary,” she said. “I’ll take the stage from there.”
“I’m going with you,” said Rudabaugh. “It so happens I’m headed that way myself,” he lied. “I can bring this cayuse back for you.”
“I already paid extra to have it brought back,” Mae Rose said.
“Look at me, little darling. I’m your boss, in a manner of speaking,” said Rudabaugh, moving in toward her. He glanced again in the direction of the sheriff’s office, then back at her. “If I say I’m going with you, guess what that means?”
All right. . . . She got it.
She only nodded. She followed him as he led the gray to a stable where his horse stood looking at them over the stall gate. She wasn’t about to let her bags—one of them carrying her gold coins in it—get out of her sight.
Rudabaugh tied the gray’s reins to the stall rail and gave an extra-hard yank on them to make them more difficult to loosen.
Stay cool, she told herself. She was stuck with this overbearing rube for the time being at least. She would have to settle down and play things out to suit herself. She knew his name, his reputation, having heard of him from Rita and the other doves he’d managed to weasel his way into bed with. She watched him step inside the stall and hurriedly saddle his horse, a dark blaze-faced bay. Every now and then, she’d see him looking warily out the open door in the direction of the main street of Big Silver.
“So, what was the gunfire I heard out there?” she asked as he slipped the bridle up onto his horse’s muzzle.
“Can’t say for sure,” he said. “I heard some of the townsmen say it was Sheriff Stone, drunk again, shooting at anything that got in front of him.” He looked around and gave her a grin. “I expect somebody might have stopped his clock by now. I hope so anyway,” he added. “Stone and I don’t get along very well.”
“You don’t say so,” said Mae Rose. He had his back to her now. She knew this was her best chance to draw the Colt and shoot him. But she decided against it. Maybe riding along with him wasn’t a bad idea. She could handle him; she was certain.
&nbs
p; “I sure do say so,” Rudabaugh replied. “Lucky for him he hasn’t caught me in a cross mood. I’m a professional stock detective. I’d put a bad hurting on him.” He turned to her and gave what she thought he considered a dashing grin.
“Oh my, I believe you would,” she said. “I’ve heard you detectives are not to be messed with.”
“You heard right, ma’am—Mae Rose, is it?”
“Yes, it is,” she said. She reached and playfully slapped his arm. “There, you see? You even know my name and still haven’t come to my suite.”
“I am nothing but sorry for that, Mae Rose,” Rudabaugh said.
“That’s okay,” she said, noting that he was quick to warm up to any show of affection. “We’ll make up for it when I get back.”
“You can count on it,” Rudabaugh said. Again the attempt at a dashing grin. “Another thing they say about us detectives is that we are all born women pleasers.”
“I already knew that,” she said with a wide sparkling smile of her own. Bang! she said to herself, envisioning drawing the small Colt and firing a round into his spine when he turned his back on her again.
“Ready when you are, Mae Rose,” he said in a cavalier gesture, pulling his horse forward from the stall.
Mae Rose only smiled and gestured for him to loosen the gray’s tightly tied reins from the railing.
He loosened the reins, but instead of handing them to her, he nodded toward his horse and said, “Why don’t you ride my horse a ways, just until we see how hard this rented horse is to handle?
She thought about her pouch of gold lying inside one of the carpetbags. She started to object, but something told her it would do no good—probably only make him suspicious of her belongings.
“Why, thank you,” she said sweetly. “That’s most considerate of you.” She took the reins to his horse; he assisted her up into the saddle.
“After you, then,” he said, stepping back as she put the horse forward at a walk. He mounted the gray and left the barn right behind her.
Chapter 17
As a thin ribbon of light mantled the hill lines in the east, the Ranger rode onto the main street of Big Silver and brought his dun to a walk toward the sheriff’s office. Three townsmen standing at the corner of a building stepped into the street. They looked up at Sam and waved him to a halt. Sam looked all around, his rifle lying across his lap. Several men stood out in front of the Silver Palace; more yet were scattered here and there in the grainy morning light.
“Ranger, thank God you’re here,” one of the men said barely above a whisper. “It’s Sheriff Stone. He’s gone back to drinking, crazy as the last time you had to come settle his hash.”
Sam looked at the body lying half out the open door of Stone’s office. He saw the other body hanging down out the broken front window.
“They’re men who work for Edsel Centrila, Ranger,” the same man said. “We knew there’s bad blood between Centrila and the sheriff, but we weren’t expecting this.”
“He hasn’t come out of there since this happened,” another man said. “Lucky for us you’re here.”
“I was camped nearby,” Sam said, eying the situation, the darkened sheriff’s office, the two bodies, broken glass. “I heard the gunfire.”
“Are you going to need our help?” a man asked, slipping in off the street with a rifle in his hands.
Sam looked at him, saw the long, pointed sleeping cap hanging down to his shoulders.
“No,” he said firmly, “everybody stay back.” He swung down from his saddle and struck his rifle down into its boot. The townsmen moved away as he led the dun closer to the darkened adobe building and hitched it out in front of a mercantile store twenty yards away.
He walked to the middle of the street in front of Stone’s office and raised his gloved hands chest high. He saw someone move inside the broken window. He caught a glimpse of a shotgun barrel.
“Don’t shoot, Sheriff Stone. It’s me, Sam Burrack,” he called out to the open doorway. “Can I come in?”
There was a silent pause, but only for a moment.
“Of course you can come in, Ranger,” Stone called out in a friendly tone of voice. “You can lower your hands too, unless you think your gloves will fall off.”
“They’re good,” Sam said, lowering his hands. He took a deep breath and walked toward the open doorway, seeing Stone appear and step over the dead gunman. The shotgun still hung loosely from his hand, but he’d reloaded it earlier.
“Are you drinking, Sheriff?” the Ranger asked. He stooped and picked up the gun and gun belt from under the hitch rail on his way.
“What kind of question is that, Ranger?” Stone asked. “Do I look like I’m drinking? Do I sound like it?”
“No, you don’t,” Sam said, relieved. “But what about all these empty rye bottles?”
“I just needed two or three of them to help me do my job,” Stone said.
“I see,” Sam said.
He slipped the revolver up from its holster enough to see it was a battered unloaded relic. He shook his head, shoved it back in its holster and stopped only a few feet from the open door. Handing Stone the gun belt and range pistol, he looked all around and sniffed the air. “It smells like a distillery here.”
“I know it does. It’s driving me crazy. Come on inside,” Stone said, looking back and forth along the grainy lit street as he stepped backward inside the dark office. “I’m expecting Silas Rudabaugh any time, soon as he gets his bark on.”
“What happened here, Sheriff?” Sam asked, stepping over the body of Three-toed Delbert Swank.
Stone gave him a look.
“This is that trouble you seemed to think I was imagining with Centrila,” Stone said.
The Ranger only nodded.
Stone said, “I saw it coming. I even saw Harper Centrila riding this way early yesterday morning.”
“Hold it,” said Sam. “It’s likely you did see Harper.”
“That’s what I just said,” Stone replied flatly.
“His father’s men broke him out,” Sam said.
Stone nodded.
“That figures,” he said. “I saw a fight coming. I tried taking it to Rudabaugh and some other Centrila gunmen at the saloon. But they saw the shape I’m in and tried to rattle me, goad me out—try to cause me to make mistakes. So I decided if I couldn’t take the fight to them, I’d best make them bring the fight to me.” He swept a hand about the blood and the bodies. “You can see it worked out better this way.”
As Sam watched, Stone picked up a wooden bucket full of rye and walked it to the rear door. He opened the door and swung the bucket, emptying it into the alley.
“It breaks my heart doing that,” he said, turning, setting the empty bucket down. “I sat here smelling rye all night, singing out loud, making them think I was drunk and crazy. Bad as I wanted a drink, I never took one.”
“That’s good, Sheriff,” Sam said.
“Now, then,” Stone said as if settling things in his mind. “Next time I tell you Centrila is out for payback, are you going to believe me?”
“I believed you all along, Sheriff,” Sam said. “I just needed to see it start to play out some.” He looked around at the blood, at the dead still waiting to be removed. He shook his head.
“All this just to even a score?” he said. “Judge Long hasn’t even brought the bribery charge forward yet. We don’t even know that he will. Neither does Centrila.”
“It doesn’t matter to Edsel Centrila, Ranger,” Stone said. “He thinks I crossed him. He wants even. Never stopped to think I was just a lawman doing my job. Anybody doesn’t do what he wants is his enemy.”
“No chance he’ll hear what happened here and back away?” Sam asked.
“No chance in the world,” said Stone. He toed a bloody buckshot-riddled chair out of their way. “
This is only the start, Ranger,” he said, gesturing a hand at the dead. “If I know Centrila, it’s going to get a whole lot bloodier before it’s over.”
Sam gave the matter some thought. He walked around the office to a blood-splattered woodstove and held his hand near the stove’s cold belly. He raised the lid of a blackened coffeepot, looked inside and set it back down. Watching him, Stone gave a thin smile.
“Had I known you were coming, I’d have boiled a fresh pot,” he said.
Sam nodded.
“How long are you willing to wait for Silas Rudabaugh to show up?” he asked.
“As long as it takes,” Stone said.
“And if he doesn’t show?” Sam asked.
“Then I’ll be very disappointed,” Stone said.
“I’ll get some fresh water and boil us a pot,” Sam said, picking up the cold coffeepot.
“You don’t have to wait here with me, Ranger,” said Stone.
“I know I don’t,” Sam replied. He turned and walked out the front door.
• • •
Rudabaugh kept Mae Rose riding in front of him across the flats and up onto the hillsides trails. They rode in silence as morning sunlight gathered its strength and began to scorch the rugged terrain. After leaving Big Silver they’d ridden in almost total silence until they reached a fork in the trail, where to their right lay the trail toward Secondary. Without looking around, Mae Rose turned the horse at the fork, only to hear Rudabaugh sidle up close to her and take a hold on the horse’s bridle, keeping it going straight ahead.
“Change of plans,” he said firmly as Mae Rose turned her head quickly and looked at him.
“What are you talking about?” she said, trying to keep her voice calm and level. “I’m going to Secondary. I’m taking the stage from there. You knew that—”