Dead Trouble

by Jake Douglas

  The men looked dubious.

  ‘Risky, Long,’ said Blackie.

  ‘Sure. But better’n havin’ to close down the whole blame town and clear out – or have it done by Rangers out for blood! It’s our only chance, way I see it. Now get that old has-been sobered-up as much as you can and get him on his feet. Chuck, Mungo, you come with me and we’ll see what we can do for the Ranger till Doc has a look at him.’

  They thought he was mad. But now that McKittrick was dead, Longhair was the most feared man in Red Flats. They moved to obey.

  The drunken ex-sawbones let out a strangled, choking yell as someone tipped a pail of cold water over him. Someone else hauled him out of his chair and slapped his face until his eyes began to focus. Then they shook him, took him out to the horse-trough, dunked him half a dozen times, and dragged him out to the room where five dead men and one dying awaited him.

  They found Longhair and Mungo crouched over Deke Cutler.

  ‘How’s he doin’, Long?’ asked Blackie, holding one arm of the sagging, drenched doctor who was swaying from side to side, wondering what was happening to him.

  ‘Don’t think he’s gonna make it,’ Longhair said grimly. ‘Slap that sawbones around until he knows where he’s at. Do it, goddamnit! If this son of a bitch dies we’re all in more trouble’n you can shake a stick at!’

  Blackie’s hand smacked back and forth across the doctor’s slack face. He moaned and protested feebly but didn’t seem any more aware than previously.

  ‘Ahhh! It ain’t no good, Long! He ain’t gonna help. You ask me, we better bury the Ranger and quit the Flats before a troop comes ridin’ in and kicks us out! We’re finished here!’

  Doctor Hugo Farraday was a burly man who wheezed a lot. His fingers were stained darkly with nicotine, as was the bushy moustache under his large nose. Anyone coming out of chloroform and seeing that face looking down at them could be forgiven for thinking they had ended up in Hell.

  But when he spoke, his voice was soothing, quiet, gentle – as were his big hands.

  ‘Deke? That right, they call you “Deke”?’

  Cutler’s heavy-lidded eyes fluttered a little and he was some time before he nodded. He tried to talk but his voice was too raspy for anything to be understood. Doc Farraday’s right hand pressed him gently back against the bedsheets.

  ‘Try to relax. Just wanted to make sure you were coming out of the anaesthetic. It’ll be some time yet before you can speak or do anything much except lie there and moan and groan.’ He smiled, the yellowed moustache masking much of the smile. ‘My name’s Doctor Farraday. They brought you in from Red Flats. Someone shot you in the back and you’ve taken a bullet in your right arm which has made quite a mess of all the things that go to work it smoothly. I’ve done what I can and you’re too weak to be moved anyplace that can do better, so I’m afraid you’re between that legendary rock and a hard place. Are you understanding any of this?’

  The eyes fluttered partly open again. There was a faint gargling sound and then the slightest movement of the head: a nod.

  ‘You are a very tough man, friend,’ Farraday said with undisguised admiration in his voice. ‘How you survived the ride from Red Flats hanging over a horse, I’ll never know. But I have to tell you, Deke, that’s it’s going to be a long, long time before you get on a horse in any manner. Your left lung has been nicked, splinters of bone have been driven into your muscles. It’s going to hurt like red-hot hell once you try to move things around. But that won’t be yet awhile. Not trying to depress you. I just believe that patients should know their condition and what may or may not happen to them.’

  Deke Cutler continued to look up through slitted eyelids. His left arm was strapped across his chest. His right was heavily bandaged from wrist to bicep. He managed to lift one finger of his right hand, the index one, and he scratched at the sheet several times.

  Farraday frowned.

  ‘You want something?’ A slight sideways movement of the head. Scratch, scratch, scratch! ‘Er … you want to know something? Want me to tell you …’

  A nod.

  ‘I – see. Now what do you wish to know? Of course! How long before you are better? Am I right?’

  Another slight nod and an obvious straining to open the eye further, a quickening of the breathing. Farraday reached down and gently squeezed his right hand.

  ‘I can’t tell, Deke. By rights you should be dead. Whatever you did before – cowhand, stage driver, or whatever – well, I doubt you’ll be fit for even light work under six months.’

  Deke Cutler’s big body went rigid under the sheet covering him. There was a deep frown, the head moved back and forth. Farraday made gentling sounds, leaning over him, drawing the sheet up to his chin.

  ‘Don’t you worry about it – I’ll pull you through, with your help. Just accept that it may – will – be quite a long time and that you might have to think about some new kind of work. It will be easier in the long run if you do that.’

  Deke Cutler’s mind was still too fuzzy and dizzy from the chloroform and he couldn’t have put the words together if he wanted to.

  But something deep down told him clearly that he would pull through and he would go back to Rangering – even if it killed him!

  Even though still only semi-conscious, he felt like laughing at this last. Even if it killed him!

  Christ! His life was already hanging by a thread.

  Mrs Farraday, a plumpish woman with silver streaks in her hair and a smiling face, opened the door to the big, dusty man who wore the circled-star Texas Ranger badge on his vest.

  Her smile warmed.

  ‘Well, you look as if a cup of coffee and some of my biscuits wouldn’t go amiss. Come you in.’

  The big man smiled, hat in hand now, sweat-tousled black hair pasted to his high forehead. He murmured, ‘Thank you, ma’am’ as he shuffled into the room. She led him through to the kitchen and proceeded to get him some vittles. He apologized for his appearance.

  ‘Ridden out from San Angelo, ma’am. My, that coffee sure smells good. Ma’am, I b’lieve your husband has a patient here named Deke Cutler? I’m Ranger Dal Beattie, by the way.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. Yes, we have Mr Cutler here.’ Her smile had faded now. ‘Very poorly, I’m afraid. Fever has him in its grip and Doctor Farraday is afraid the infection will turn to pneumonia.’

  Beattie frowned. ‘We heard he was bad hit – but he’s been here a month or so now, ain’t that right?’

  ‘Yes. But the doctor will explain. You eat up and I’ll fetch him.’

  Doc Farraday shook hands briefly with Beattie as his wife poured him a cup of coffee and left the room. He told the Ranger about Cutler’s wounds.

  ‘By rights, ought to be dead. ’Bout the toughest man I’ve ever seen and I used to work the Cherry Creek goldfields in Colorado.’

  ‘He is gonna make it though, Doc?’

  Farraday obviously didn’t want to commit himself and the Ranger grew impatient as he hedged.

  ‘All right. What happened to him?’

  ‘Brought in by some of the men from Red Flats. They were very eager to stress that they found him lying beside the trail from Big Hat here to their town, but I rather think Deke Cutler was … injured in Red Flats.’

  Dal Beattie’s mouth was taut now as he accepted a fresh cup of coffee from the doctor.

  ‘Red Flats. We been lookin’ at that dump for a long time. Deke must’ve gotten a lead. He was after Kel McKittrick …’ He stood abruptly. ‘I reckon it’s time we closed down that damn outlaw nest.’

  ‘I am surprised it hasn’t been done before, Ranger.’ There was censure in the medic’s voice.

  ‘Well, Doc, it suited us to know of a place where outlaws gathered. We could keep an eye on ’em, but it’s been gettin’ too damn big lately. There a telegraph office in town?’

  Farraday told him how to get to it, wondered why Beattie hadn’t asked to see Cutler. The Ranger merely said he didn’t
want to disturb him.

  He sent off his wire and by noon the eight Rangers who had been waiting at the Butterfield way station on Mad Dog Mesa drifted into Big Hat one by one during the course of the afternoon, a couple arriving after dusk.

  By midnight they were in position around Red Flats, and by sun-up the first fires were started.

  The heavily armed Rangers waited in their hiding-places. They didn’t have to wait long before the raw-eyed men below, nursing rotgut hangovers, began coming out of the trash-built shanties and lean-tos. The smoke made them cough and when they saw how many fires were burning – ten in all – it even pentrated their hangovers that this day brought big trouble, About the same time, the Rangers opened up, shooting to kill, aiming to put Red Flats off the map for ever. The outlaws fell and scattered, running for horses, but found the livery almost totally consumed by now, the horses having been driven out and up the slope to spread out amongst the timber.

  They could only turn and flee.

  It was brief and bloody – and complete. Two Rangers went down, one never to rise again, the other with a leg wound. Longhair seemed to survive right to the end and finally it was he and Dal Beattie who confronted each other behind the charred and still-blazing ruins of the saloon.

  Longhair was bleeding from two minor bullet wounds, one a scalp crease, and his face was streaked with blood as the big Ranger stepped out from behind a charred, sagging door.

  ‘Been a long time since Fort Kelso, Long, you son of a bitch!’

  ‘Not long enough for you, Beattie!’ Longhair triggered his shotgun and Beattie jumped back behind the door. But buckshot chewed a large hunk out of the woodwork and some of the balls took him in the neck and upper body. He stepped out, working lever and trigger on his rifle with the butt jammed against his hip.

  Longhair reeled, trying to reload, snapped the Greener closed too soon, jamming the cartridge. Three slugs stitched across his chest and he went down. Beattie took a step forward and became aware that he was soaked with his own blood. He put up a hand and felt the wounds in his neck. One had torn some kind of artery and he knew he wasn’t going to make it. He’d just had his last gunfight and there was nothing he could do about it – except lie down and die.

  But Red Flats and its inhabitants was no more.

  Deke Cutler eased to his feet from the chair Farraday had placed for him under the red elm-tree not far from the house. He reached for his stick and wavered a little as he walked back towards the house, taking short, slow steps.

  Mrs Farraday was hanging some washing on the line.

  ‘You’re looking better today, Deke.’

  He was gaunt and pale, face knobbly with high cheekbones and hard-cut jawline. His eyes were sunken, smeared darkly underneath. But he managed a small smile for the doctor’s wife.

  ‘Ought to be – getting better – ma’am.’ He was still very short of breath. ‘Over two months now. …’

  ‘Slow and easy, Doctor Farraday says, and he’s right, Deke. Don’t get impatient. Just follow orders.’

  He nodded and although he would never admit it, he was mighty glad to flop on to his bed in a small room behind the infirmary and stretch out.

  When the hell am I going to get on my feet properly? he asked himself, then held up his right arm, trying to flex the fingers but they barely moved.

  Goddamn! And this was my gunarm!

  After the third month, and some visits from fellow Rangers who could find the time to come see him, Cutler confided in Farraday that he was afraid he would never be able to use his right arm in a gunfight again.

  ‘The forearm muscle and nerves have been badly mangled, Deke. There isn’t a lot I can do.’

  ‘That means there is something, doc. I want to try it, no matter how little – or crazy.’

  Farraday studied him, knew here was a man who had lived by the gun for many years – and likely wouldn’t survive if he couldn’t use a firearm again. Anyway, he had brought the Ranger back from the dead, so it was up to him to equip him as well as possible for what might lay ahead.

  It hurt.

  Strengthening the fingers wasn’t so bad – plunging them endlessly into a bowl of rice-grains; later, graduating to loosely-packed sand. That was when it began to hurt – the rough sand, peppered with gravel, tore at the flesh around his nails, got underneath the nails, caused tenderness. But Farraday made him keep on and soon the fingertips and the knuckles became calloused and there was more flexibility in the fingers themselves. Impatient, Deke strapped on his six-gun and tried to draw. He fumbled badly, dropped the gun over and over. Farrady was angry.

  ‘You damn fool! You’re not ready. Trying too soon and failing only makes it worse, brings on depression!’

  Chastened, Cutler returned to plunging his hand into the sand, hour after hour, day after day. At night he sat squeezing a rubber ball. And then Farraday brought in a friend he said would work on the damaged forearm.

  The ‘friend’ was Indian, an old man with white hair under a battered beaverskin hat and smelly animal totems woven into his long braids. His hands looked deformed to Cutler, knuckles bulging arthritically, fingers twisted.

  But when he went to work on Deke’s arm, manipulating, massaging, twisting painfully, even tying the whole forearm in greenhide strips, then wetting them so that they contracted excruciatingly, like a vice, Cutler, miraculously, began to feel the strength returning to the arm. It would never be the same as before but it was improving.

  First, he could shoot his rifle pretty near as well as before and he knew he would improve with practice. Using a six-gun was more difficult and the old Indian almost pulled his trigger finger from its socket, twisting and making the joints grate, before the suppleness returned. His wrist was also manhandled painfully – but effectively.

  Cutler knew he would never be able to draw and shoot like the ‘half-brother to lightning’ as legend had styled him. Something was gone from his gun arm and would never return. But the old Indian’s equanimity and natural composure made him persevere and one day, when he was hitting the target post consistently and he could run the length of the trail up the slope to the dead ruins of Red Flats without undue distress, he announced to the doctor:

  ‘Doc, I’m ready to go back to the Rangers.’

  Farraday looked startled, as if he had forgotten his goal of preparing Deke to return to his old way of life. The Indian lifted a finger up beside his left temple and said in his whispering voice:

  ‘Go well, and with care, Ironheart.’

  Six months and eight days after being shot in the back by Kid McKittrick, Deke Cutler rode out of Big Hat, ready to go a-Rangering again.

  CHAPTER 3

  RED RIVER

  Durango Spain was a man who had just turned fifty. His wife, Karen, was just over twenty years his junior.

  He was a beefy, ruggedly handsome man, running to a little fat now, although he worked his butt off on the Red River ranch that he was buying with partner Deke Cutler. The closest town was Wichita Falls and the spread was only a frog’s leap across the river from the Indian Territory, out of bounds to all state lawmen. It needed a federal warrant or marshal legally to go after a man within the Territory’s boundaries. Which was why so many men riding outside the law made the Territory their home: Badman’s Territory most folk along the Red called it.

  Spain was building some holding-corrals in a high canyon north-west of the ranch with a few of the cowhands when Jimmy Taggart came riding in, looking flushed. He jumped from his horse before it had skidded to a halt and stumbled as he floundered his way to where Spain and Hal Tripp were setting up a top rail between two posts.

  ‘The hell’s your hurry, Jimmy?’ Spain said as the youngster dusted off his hands and came hurrying forward.

  ‘Hell, look at him, Durango!’ said Tripp with a laugh. ‘I swear he’s wet his pants with excitement an’ don’t want us to see!’

  Jimmy paused, getting his breath under control, standing tall now so they could see his
trousers’ front was dry. He scowled at the grinning Tripp, turned to Spain.

  ‘Someone to see you down at the house, Durango,’ Taggart panted.

  Spain frowned – with maybe an involuntary tightening of his stomach muscles.

  ‘Yeah? Who the hell’s rid all the way out here to see me?’

  ‘He ain’t just come from town, he’s come up from San Antone, he says.’

  Spain tensed even more.

  ‘Well, you gonna tell me who it is or stand there being smart-mouth?’

  Jimmy looked slightly hurt at his boss’s tone. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s Deke Cutler. That feller you said was your sidekick when you was a Ranger.’

  Spain was stiff as the oak post he and Hal Tripp had been manhandling now.

  ‘Deke? You sure?’

  ‘That’s who he said he was. Seemed to know Mrs Spain. Was her sent me to get you. “Pronto”, she said, and she don’t usually use words like that.’

  Hal Tripp was sober now, watching Durango Spain.

  ‘Thought Cutler was dead,’ Tripp said carefully.

  ‘That’s what I heard,’ Spain said slowly. ‘Backshot by some kid down in Red Flats, wherever the hell that is. Thought it was odd. Deke was never one to turn his back on anyone likely to shoot him.’ He dropped the chisel he had been using and hooked the hammer over an upright post, slapping his leather work-gloves together, dust flying. ‘Well, I’d best get on down and see this here living ghost.’

  ‘Looks like he’s been poorly for a spell,’ volunteered Jimmy Taggart. ‘Walks kinda slow and keeps rubbin’ at his right arm, like it hurts. Kind of catches his breath every so often. But he looks mighty dangerous.’

  Spain smiled crookedly.

  ‘Sure sounds like Deke.’