Stallions at Burnt Rock (West Texas Sunrise Book #1): A Novel

by Paul Bagdon

  The Drovers’ Inn showed the only light on Main Street. The businesses, the café, the livery stable had long since been closed and locked. There was an eerie quality to the darkened street and the hulking, silent structures that lined it on both sides. Marshall Ben Flood knew well, however, that he had nothing to fear from the darkness—the real danger waited for him where light shone out to the street through batwing doors.

  The tinkling of Zach’s piano had stopped, Ben noticed as he ran toward the saloon, and no sounds emanated from the place—no drunken laughter or curses, no yells or whoops. Ben stopped ten yards from the Drovers’ Inn and took a couple of deep breaths, releasing them slowly. He picked up his Colt .45 until its barrel almost cleared his holster, and then dropped it, letting the weapon settle itself. Next, he walked toward the light and the silence that seemed louder than the usual profane racket that issued from the bar. He hesitated for a moment, standing to the side of the batwings. The time it took to acclimate his eyes to the partial light here and the brighter illumination inside could save his life.

  Ben entered the room. Everyone and everything in the saloon was unmoving and silent. Even Zach was motionless, his fingers still poised over the keys.

  Ben took in the scene quickly: a man dressed in the black coat, white shirt, and string tie of a gambler stood with his back to the wall at the rear of the saloon. There was a gaping, jagged hole through the flimsy wood about a foot left of his head. The gambler held a pearlhandled Colt in each hand, with the barrels slowly swinging back and forth, pointing like accusing fingers at the entire room. On the floor near the bar, a man lay facedown, either unconscious or dead, a Sharp’s 44.40 Buffalo rifle next to him with its lever at half stroke. Under an overturned table, another prone figure lay surrounded by silver and gold coins and a few bills of paper money.

  Ben had spent too many years as a lawman in the West to ask what had taken place. The gambler, either cheating or accused of cheating, had been called out by the man under the table. The gambler had taken him down and was fired at by the fellow at the bar with the Sharp’s—probably a friend or relative of the first man to hit the floor. Before the rifleman could fully recock his weapon, the gambler had shot him.

  The silence in the saloon was sepulchral. The slight hissing of the hanging lanterns provided the only sound until Ben spoke.

  “Put ’em down and you’ll walk out of here,” he said. “I’ll guarantee that. If these two men on the floor are there because you defended yourself, you’ll ride out of Burnt Rock a free man.”

  “And if I don’t put them down?” The gambler’s voice was cool and level, betraying no emotion or fear.

  “If you don’t, you face me,” Ben said.

  “Seems like I’m facing you right now, Marshall—and it seems like I’ve got the upper hand.”

  Ben held the gambler’s eyes. Now the twin Colts were trained on him, barrels steady.

  “Put down the guns,” Ben said. “I don’t want to have—”

  “Shut up!” the gambler snarled. “I’ve put more of you jerkwater-town lawmen in the ground than I can remember. You do what I say and you might live through this. You don’t, you’re dead.” A hard smile cut the gambler’s face. “If you’re counting on help from this bunch of scum, you’re even more stupid than most of your mongrel breed. These animals would pick your pocket as you fell, Marshall, and laugh as they did it.”

  “You going to do something or just stand there and flap your mouth?” Ben’s eyes had dropped from the gambler’s eyes to his thumbs. His pistols, Ben could see, were double-action weapons, requiring the hammer to be drawn back and then the trigger squeezed in order to fire. Whole graveyards of men had died because they hadn’t taken advantage of the newer single-action handguns that came out toward the end of the War Between the States.

  But Ben realized the gambler was no amateur. He’d hit the rifleman at thirty feet within a fraction of a second after being fired upon himself—and after dropping the man he’d been playing cards with.

  The two Colts were held perhaps a foot apart, the left one slightly higher than the right. The gambler’s thumbs rested lightly on the hammers, not pressing against them but maintaining constant contact.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” the gambler said. “You draw your pistol with your thumb and forefinger and drop it in front of you, and then back away from it. I’m walking out of here to my horse. You understand?”

  Ben swallowed hard enough to make it obvious and forced a note of submission into his voice. “Suppose you take me down as soon as I’m unarmed? How do I know you won’t do that?”

  “You don’t,” the gambler said, grinning. “Do it now.”

  Ben’s prayer was quick and not fully articulated—more like a flash of a request in his mind—and then time slowed down. He seemed to have stepped back from the confrontation, become an observer, yet he was completely aware of each of his physical motions. He felt his thumb and forefinger tug his pistol upward and out of his holster, and he heard the barrel whisper against the leather. He felt the smoothness of the bone grips as he raised his hand. And he felt his right middle finger move alongside the weapon as he lifted it, and the quick jerk that flicked the pistol to his waiting left hand. The impact between his left palm and the grips made a slight slapping sound, and then the air was thick with gun smoke. The blasts of the three reports sounded almost as one. Behind Ben a slug tore into the wall and another slammed into the ceiling a few yards in front of the gambler as he fell.

  “Get Doc!” Ben barked at the string of men along the bar.

  “Ain’t no reason to do that,” the bartender said. “Even Doc can’t do nothin’ for dead men.”

  “I said, ‘Get Doc.’ I meant it.”

  The bartender nodded to one of the men. “Do like he says.”

  Zach approached Ben. “Let’s go outside for a bit.”

  The level of noise in the Drovers’ Inn increased as soon as the two men left. Before they’d taken more than half a dozen steps, drunken laughter erupted from the saloon.

  “Fancy move, Ben. I’m sorry you had to use it,” Zach said. “I’d heard about the border shuffle, but never seen it done.” There was a long pause as the men walked side by side along Main Street, headed nowhere. “You saved some lives in there,” Zach went on. “That gambler was crazy. He’d have opened up on the crowd if you hadn’t shown up. You did what you had to do.”

  Ben stopped and faced his friend. “Times like this, I wonder when some gunhand is going to be better and faster than I am, and I’ll be the one on the floor—and if all the men I’ve killed deserved to die.”

  “I can’t answer that,” Zach said gently. “You took the job to enforce the law, and that’s exactly what you do.”

  Ben drew his sidearm, replaced the fired bullets with fresh ones from his gun belt, and held the weapon loosely in his hand. After a moment, he sighed and holstered it. “After a few more years, when Burnt Rock calms down and the West becomes less treacherous, I’m going to quit the law, Zach. And I’ll never touch a gun again for the rest of my life.”

  Zach was silent for a moment, then nodded. “I hope that happens for you,” he finally said. “I hope and pray that it does.”

  They headed back toward the saloon, comfortable in the silence between them.

  Then Ben sighed. “I hope nothing else happens tonight,” he said. “There’s been enough trouble and dying already. I need some time alone.”

  The telegram was on his desk when he walked back into his office. He read it, folded it carefully, and put it into his vest pocket. Then he went out the back door to saddle his horse. He would get the time by himself that he wanted—for as long as his ride to the Busted Thumb took.

  Snorty covered ground effortlessly, his lope as comfortable as the motion of a well-made rocking chair. The night air was sweet, and the scents of the prairie a gentle reminder of the goodness of the earth. But the closer Ben came to the Busted Thumb, the more he dreaded arriving th
ere.

  The very edge of the sun was at the eastern horizon as the marshall slowed Snorty to a fast walk and turned on to the rutted wagon road leading to the ranch. Light already flowed from Carlos’s home and from the bunkhouse, and a lamp shone through the kitchen window at Lee’s house.

  Ben rode directly to the barn, dismounted, and stripped his tack from Snorty. He briskly rubbed the horse with a burlap sack from a pile of them in front of an open stall. Snorty grunted with the massage and then snorted wetly as Ben allowed him a half bucket of water and closed him into the stall. The bedding was fresh, and Ben knew it wouldn’t be long before Snorty was rolling in it, digging in his shoulders and grunting like a sow pig in mud.

  The walk from the barn to Lee’s front porch seemed too short to Ben. He approached the door and knocked. Lee opened it almost before the rap of his knuckles died away. The welcoming smile faded from her face as she looked at her friend.

  “Ben—what ... ?”

  “Let’s go inside,” Ben said. “I’ve got some bad news for you—for all of us.”

  Lee’s hand trembled as she brought it to her mouth. She turned and led Ben into the kitchen. They didn’t speak as they walked.

  Once in the kitchen, Ben said, “Sit down, Lee.”

  The screech the chair made as Lee pulled it out seemed as loud as the yell of a mountain cat. “What is it? What’s happened?” she asked, her voice breaking.

  “Lee ... I don’t know a way to say this that won’t break your heart. Jonas was shot and killed yesterday. The marshall from over there wired me, asking me to let him know if I’d heard anything. I’m ... I’m awful sorry, Lee. He was a good man.”

  The shock—the sheer impossibility of what Ben had just said—seemed to block Lee’s tears. Ben pushed back his chair, stood, and walked to her side. Wordlessly, she too stood, and he put his arms around her, drawing her close. Then the tears came.

  Carlos sat at the table, his eyes showing his anguish. Maria bustled about the kitchen, topping off coffee mugs, offering more biscuits or more preserves, touching Lee’s shoulder with compassion each time she passed her younger friend and employer. Lee wasn’t crying now, but the hint of tears made her eyes glisten. Ben sipped his coffee—the fourth mug since he’d told Lee what happened.

  They prayed together, the four at the table, asking for strength and guidance. They spoke about Jonas Dwyer. They spoke about his sense of humor and the love he had for his friends and his employees, for animals, and for the wildness and beauty of Texas land.

  Finally, Ben stood, nodded wordlessly to the others, and turned to leave the kitchen.

  “Ben,” Lee said, calling him back. “I don’t want how Jonas died to become common knowledge just yet. Can you hold back the part about him being murdered? And Carlos—don’t tell the men about it either—just tell them Jonas died.”

  Ben nodded. “Sure. Whatever you say.”

  “Maria and I weel tell no one that our good friend wass murdered,” Carlos assured her. “Ben, I’ll walk out with you.”

  In the relative coolness of the barn, Carlos said, “I dunno ’bout the race, Ben. I hate to talk business right now, but I dunno what to do.”

  Ben settled Snorty’s blanket carefully and eased his saddle over it. “I don’t know either,” he said. “Maybe it’d be best if we shut the whole thing down right now—get out telegrams, make up some new posters.” He secured the cinches and slid the bridle over his horse’s head. He sighed. “But it’s too late. The town is crawling with hard cases now, and there’s a herd more on the way.”

  Carlos nodded. “Wass a bad idea from the start. We should ’ave known ...”

  “It was a good idea to sell horses and give the townsfolk some fun,” Ben corrected. “It was my job to realize what sort of men a race between such well-known horses would bring. I failed you and Lee and Jonas and the whole town.”

  “Ees no true,” Carlos protested. “The pistoleros—the gunmen an’ gamblers—are the trouble, no you or the race. You din’t have no way to know.”

  “Maybe,” Ben said, leading Snorty out of the stall and the barn. “But I know the West, and I know how the minds of the gunmen and gamblers work: Where good horses run, the cheats and back shooters cluster like buzzards over carrion, knowin’ there’s fast money to be made.”

  Carlos stroked Snorty’s neck. “I’ll be with you the days of the festival,” he said. “I tol’ Lee that.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Don’ tell me what I can no do,” Carlos interrupted. “You thin’ I’m a fat old man who can no shoot? After thees is over, we’ll shoot some targets, no? You see then how a fat torro handles the pistola.”

  Ben stepped into a stirrup and swung into his saddle. “Thanks, Carlos.” He reached down, and the two men shook hands. Then he turned Snorty and put him, once again, into his mile-eating lope. Burnt Rock would already be wide awake.

  The sun fell on horse and rider as if it were determined to melt them both. Ben brought the speed of Snorty’s lope down a couple of notches to a gait barely beyond a canter. Still, the horse was dripping with sweat—and so was Ben. The prairie seemed to have no limits. Extending into infinity in all directions, the line of the land was broken only by the occasional stunted cluster of desert pines or patches of dried buffalo grass. The air they pushed through was so still and heavy that it offered none of the slight cooling that ordinarily accompanied motion.

  Ben rubbed his hand across his face and shook off the fat drops of moisture. The stubble on his chin was prickly and uncomfortable, and his eyes smarted from the salt of his sweat. Shimmering clouds of heat drifted up from the prairie floor and hung in the air like faraway images of cool water. Ben pinched a bit of Snorty’s hide between his thumb and forefinger and then released it. He knew that if the hide were slow to return to its natural state, then Snorty was losing too much water and needed immediate rest. The test showed the horse was doing just fine.

  Ben sighed with fatigue. The night before, he’d killed a man he didn’t even know, and then he’d ridden miles to bring news of a tragedy to good friends. He recalled for a moment how good it had felt to hold Lee, even under such circumstances, and then guiltily chased the thought from his mind. He hadn’t slept in over a day, and he badly needed rest.

  He sighed again. The festival and the race weighed on him like a debilitating illness. Trouble was inevitable. Exactly what form the trouble would take was the real problem. There’d be drunkenness and gambling and fighting, of course. But would there be gunplay? He knew that the drifters, confidence men, and gamblers drawn to the race were prone to settle disagreements with guns rather than fists.

  He shook his head in frustration. The lawmen in the towns within a couple days ride of Burnt Rock had their own problems. The citizens of Burnt Rock were good people, but merchants and clerks and farmers couldn’t be called upon for help in what could become a shooting war.

  He reflected on the logistics of the coming race. The course Carlos and Jonas had marked over a month ago was closer to twenty miles in length than the originally discussed ten. The army, as Lee, Carlos, and Jonas had reasoned over coffee in Lee’s kitchen, wanted horses with heart, with the ability and willingness to travel over almost any sort of terrain and do it quickly.

  The route had several long, barren stretches that on a hot day would send waves of stultifying heat upward as a mirror reflects sunlight. There were no major rivers in the vicinity, but a water crossing at the widest part of a sluggish but year-round arroyo was the halfway point of the course. And there were several hard climbs and difficult descents that could, depending on the weather, be either hard riding if dry or genuinely treacherous if slick with rain.

  Ben knew that pure speed wouldn’t win the race. The first horse across the finish line would be the strongest, the healthiest, and the one with the most heart—what cowboys and horsepeople referred to as “bottom.” The race would be a grueling contest of endurance that would call for skill, ability, and courag
e from both horse and rider. And the rules stipulated that the riders would not see the course before the day of the race.

  There’d be at least three hours, and probably closer to four, between the start of the run and when the winner thundered across the finish line. Those hours would be the hardest ones in Burnt Rock. Liquor would flow steadily at the Drovers’ Inn, and the tension generated by the betting and the whiskey and beer would fray the hair-trigger nerves of the gunmen and gamblers. The hard cases at the festival would probably have their own hidden supplies of booze. There was no way to prevent that except to search each man, and doing so would be sure to cause gunplay and bloodshed. Ben had never felt so puny, so inadequate as a lawman.

  He reined in and dismounted. He had to hold onto the saddle horn for a moment as dizziness overtook him. When his head was clear, he took off his Stetson and poured two-thirds of his canteen into it. Snorty sucked the water noisily. Ben drank the remaining third from the canteen. The water was flat, sickly warm and metallic, but right then it tasted as good as a tall glass of O’Keefe’s lemonade.

  Ben swept sweat from Snorty’s chest, flanks, and rear with the edge of his hand. The moisture barely touched the parched earth before it was sucked up. He then leaned his head against Snorty’s neck and closed his eyes.

  He hadn’t been able to figure out a solution to his problems, so he turned to God for help. He stood there for a few moments and prayed. When he mounted, the sun didn’t seem quite as burdensome.

  Wade Stuart lifted Slick’s left front hoof and inspected it carefully. Just as he’d found with the previous three, the frog was firm and healthy and the walls of the hoof were cupped evenly and smoothly. The shoe was set perfectly; the blacksmith had done a fine job. Wade gave Slick his hoof back and rubbed his muzzle.

  Things had been different around the Busted Thumb that morning. Miss Morgan hadn’t been out to the barn yet, and the other men were wondering about that. Carlos hadn’t made his morning rounds either, and that confused the men even more. And Wade had heard crying from Miss Morgan’s kitchen as he walked to the barn.