by Ralph Cotton
And there it was. . . . He wiped a palm beneath his eye.
He sat at the rocky edge Fozlo Garlet had fallen from the night before when his brother’s bullet split his brain—the same bullet that had given him back his hearing for a time. Yes, it had been a strange and puzzling night, he reminded himself, staring at the sunlight, getting his share of the sun’s raging energy before it grew too bright and hot for him to stand. He’d decided he would call last night, La noche de los hermanos blancos—the night of the white brothers.
He didn’t hear Prew Garlet struggle to his feet and look all around the campsite. He didn’t hear the footsteps across the ground behind him. Yet, he was not startled when he felt Prew’s hand take him by the shoulder. He turned and looked up at Prew’s face. He knew he was being spoken to, but the words were too distant for him to understand.
“Goddamn it, Bird!” said Prew, looking down at the dark, flat stare. “What? Are you ignoring me now? You forgot how to speak English, again?”
The Bluebird only nodded in agreement and rose to his feet. He gestured toward the rekindled fire where a pot of fresh coffee sent a strong aroma wafting on the morning air.
“Hell, yes . . . ,” Prew whispered painfully, raising a hand to the side of his head. As he turned toward the fire, he saw Foz’s blaze-faced roan standing off the side, alone, tied to a rock spur. The big horse milled restlessly hoof to hoof, back and forth, whinnying, stirring dust. The other horses stood calmly where they’d been hitched all night. His own horse had been saddled, so had the Bluebird’s, its saddlebags bulging with dynamite. Foz’s and Tillman’s saddles still lay in the dirt near the campfire.
“My God, no . . . ,” Prew said under his breath, raising his other hand to his head as well. He staggered in place, then straightened and looked at the Bluebird. “I remember what happened, but only sort of.” He looked all around, at the blood in the dirt, but he didn’t see Tillman’s body. All he saw were the marks of bootheels where the Bluebird had dragged the dead outlaw to the rocky edge and flung him over it.
“You . . . took care of everything?” he asked haltingly, looking at the Bluebird.
The Bluebird only nodded and followed him to the campfire. Prew looked at the ground a few feet away and caught a flash of Foz’s roan lying dead in a pool of dark blood, its throat slit, a deep bloody gash revealing windpipe and tendons. Jesus . . . ! So real was the image, he had to bat his eyes and shake it from his sight. He looked over at the big roan to assure himself, seeing it still milling, agitated and restless.
All right, he told himself, that’s enough of that. . . . The mescal was still at work in his brain. But he wasn’t going to give in to it.
Turning to the Bluebird as they walked on to the campfire, he asked, “Had you ever drank any stuff like that before?”
The Bluebird, seeing Prew’s lips move, not able to make out the distant muffled sound of his voice, only gave his usual nod, and walked on.
“Hell, what am I asking, sure you have,” Prew said.
At the fire the two sat down and poured hot coffee into tin cups and drank in silence until Prew heard the sound of horses drawing near them from along the hill trail. He picked up his rifle and checked it. Seeing him stand, looking across the campsite where the trail entered the water hole, the Bluebird also stood up and turned with Prew, gun in hand toward the sound of the horses. As they watched, two horses rode into sight and stopped. The riders sat staring for a moment. Finally one nudged his horse a step closer.
“Hello, the camp,” he said. Then he called out, “Prew Garlet, is that you?”
Prew recognized the two outlaws, Lester Stevens and Mason Gorn, from the old Mexican trade settlement. The Bluebird stood staring blankly.
“It’s me all right,” Prew said. “Howdy, Lester. Howdy, Mason. Last I saw you two, I recall you saying you had us all covered at the settlement if any lawmen came snooping.”
“We did say that,” said Stevens. “The fact is no lawman ever showed up snooping.” He grinned. “I reckon our reputation must be growing.”
“Are you going to call us in, or what?” Gorn said.
“Yep, come on in,” said Prew, lowering his rifle. “We’ve got coffee boiled, if you brought a cup.”
“We’ve got one,” said Stevens, the two of them nudging their horses closer. At ten feet away, they stopped the animals, stepped down from their saddles and rummaged tin cups out of their saddlebags. “Had we known it was you up here, we’d have rode up last night. We heard shooting from half across the flats. For all we knew it was Apache bucks drunk on trade liquor, shooting at one another for practice—crazy as Apache are.” He looked the Bluebird up and down and said, “No offense.”
“He’s not Apache,” Prew said, seeing the Bluebird only staring at the two.
“Oh . . . ,” said Stevens. “Anyways that’s what we figured, so we didn’t butt in.” As he spoke the two walked forward, tin cups in hand. Looking all around they saw black dried blood on the dirt.
“Is everything okay here?” Gorn asked.
“It’ll do,” Prew said. He felt a tightness at the back of his neck. Watching them, he caught a flash of them both dead on the ground, their horses turning and racing away. Knowing it was the mescal playing tricks on him, he squeezed his eyes shut, then flung them open wide. The two gunmen were still walking toward him. They stopped and turned to the fire. Gorn picked up the coffeepot and filled his cup.
“Dang, Prew, you look like you’ve been up chasing the moon all night,” said Stevens. “Where’s your brothers, anyway?”
“What’s it to you, Stevens?” Prew said heatedly. As soon as he’d heard his voice turn angry, he regretted it, but it was too late.
“Hey, I’m just asking, is all,” said Stevens, his attitude also changing, his smile falling away from his face. “Don’t go getting high-hat on me.”
“I didn’t mean to get testy,” Prew said. As soon as he’d said that he realized that too was a mistake. Once he’d spoken in anger he never should have come down from it. With men like Stevens and Gorn, it paid to stand your ground no matter what.
“Hear that?” said Gorn with a flat, unfriendly grin. “Prew’s apologizing. I believe he’s had himself a change of heart.” He stood with his thumb hooked in his gun belt only inches away from his gun butt.
“Is that what you’re doing, Prew Garlet?” said Stevens. “You apologizing for acting cross with me? Are you having a change of heart, or just a weakness of nerves?”
“Don’t push it, Lester,” Prew said. The Bluebird stood watching, trying to make out what might be expected of him. After misunderstanding Prew’s signal last night, he wanted to be sure of himself before he acted.
“What . . . ?” said Stevens, in a dark, serious tone. “Did you just say, don’t push it?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Prew replied.
He stared at Stevens, his hand also poised near his holstered Colt. As he stared, he caught another quick flash of the two gunmen lying dead in the dirt, their horses spooked, racing away in a rise of dust.
Damn . . . ! What was all this . . . ?
He forced himself to blink and try to clear his foggy mind. All right, now that things were back as they should be.
“Something’s wrong with him, Lester,” Gorn cut in. “Look at him. He acts like he’s losing his mind.”
Stevens didn’t answer right away. He glanced at the drag marks in the dirt left by the Bluebird when he’d pulled Tillman over to the edge and tossed him out. As his eyes followed the marks so did he. He stopped at the edge and looked down and did a quick double take. Then he turned back to Prew and the Bluebird and with a nasty grin as he spoke to Gorn.
“Come over here, Mason, and take a look at this,” he said.
Gorn stepped over warily, keeping his eyes on Prew and the Bluebird. At the edge beside Stevens, he stared down and was
taken aback.
“Uh-oh,” he said. “I see feet sticking out down there.”
Stevens chuckled and cut back in.
“Has somebody been naughty here?” he said. “Prew, am I wrong in thinking that you two have done something untoward?” He let his hand fall away from his gun. “Because, if that’s the case, it’s no skin off—”
Prew’s Colt came up, cocked and aimed. The shot hit Stevens before he could even finish his sentence. He spun with the impact and flopped to the ground face-first. Beside him, Gorn started to make a move, but Prew’s Colt swung to him and fired before he cleared his gun from its holster. He flipped backward, tried to rise, but then collapsed in the dirt. Both of their horses, spooked by the sudden gunfire, spun and bolted away. Prew stood watching as though frozen in place, wondering what had prompted him to kill these two. It was none of their business what had happened here the night before, and it was likely Stevens had been on the verge of telling him so. But it was too late now. He stood watching as the Bluebird trotted off after the horses as they slowed to a halt a few yards away.
Jesus . . .
He looked down at the smoking gun and turned it in his hand as if in a trance. For a moment he had a hard time realizing which image had been real and which one had not. As the Bluebird ran back leading the two horses and stood before him, Prew had to bat his eyes, close them for a second and reopen them, testing himself.
The Bluebird stood with a trace of a tight grin on his face, the reins to the dead outlaws’ horses in hand. He nodded at the two bodies on the ground.
“Throw them over the cliff?” he asked.
Prew stared at him for a moment, then nodded in reply.
“Yes, get rid of them,” he said. “Turn all these spare horses loose. We don’t need any Golden Riders coming by and finding any of them.”
“No . . . we don’t need that,” the Bluebird said, seeming to understand him perfectly. He started to turn away, to where Foz’s, Tillman’s and the other two dead gunmen’s horses stood bunched together.
“Hey. Hold it, Bird,” said Prew. When the Bluebird turned back to him, he asked, “How come you’re understanding what I’m saying now?”
The Bluebird gave him a flat, blank stare.
“I hear things better around you,” he said.
• • •
At the end of a winding hill trail Braxton Kane sat his dapple-gray horse between his two right-hand men, Dayton Short and Earl Faraday, two former guerilla riders from the Missouri-Kansas border wars. The two guerilla riders had thrown in with Kane and his Golden Riders when the law had gotten too hot on them everywhere except Colorado Territory. Most of his other men referred to Short and Faraday as Kane’s Bulldogs. When Kane needed something special taken care of, these two were his top men to get the job done, no matter how bloody the work.
“Something bothering you, Boss?” Short asked, seeing how Kane studied the trail below with a concerned look on his face.
Kane didn’t answer right away. He gave Short a grim look and waited, as if settling something in his mind.
“You men recall it ever taking this long to get everybody gathered in for a big job?” he said finally.
The two gunmen nudged their horses closer to the trail’s edge on either side of him.
“Now that you mention it,” said Short, “Earl was just saying the other day how it seems like it’s taking your brother Cordy and some of the others a long time to get here.” He grinned beneath a long, drooping black mustache. “I went so far as to say there ain’t enough whores twixt here and Abilene to keep a man from one of our big jobs.”
“So, you both think there’s something holding them?” said Braxton.
“Well,” said Faraday, “if they ain’t here, there must be something holding them up. Usually by this time you’ve got yourself, twenty–thirty men here, easy enough.”
“Not to mention Cordy and his rowdy pals,” said Short. “You think me and Earl ought to ride out, see who’s in El Ricon, see if we can find out what’s keeping everybody?”
Kane sat silent again for a moment; the two gunmen gave each other a look.
“Yeah, I think so,” Kane said, finally. “I’ve got a big job waiting for us—requires a good dynamite man. I sent for the best in the business. A Mex-Injun called the Bluebird. You ever heard of him?”
“The Bluebird?” said Faraday. “Sure I’ve heard of him. Like you said, he’s supposed to be the best blowup man in the business. Learned his trade from the South American Suala Soto.”
“That’s him,” said Kane. “I’ve got the Garlet boys bringing the Bluebird up here. Sniff around, see where the hell they are.”
“You’ve got it, Boss,” said Faraday.
“I’ve heard of the Bluebird too,” Short cut in. “Always heard he’s the best. I heard he blew up everything from Chihuahua to the Honduras for the Mexican-German mining companies.” He grinned again, his face pale behind his black mustache. “I’d be honored to have him open a big ole safe for us, let me run my fingers through some fresh U.S. greenbacks.”
“How about some bright yellow gold ingots?” Kane said quietly. He gave the two a secretive sidelong glance.
“I can live with that too,” Short said. “I have never had a minute’s trouble turning ingots into cash money.”
“So, Boss,” said Faraday, “when do you want us to head out, see if we can find out what’s keeping everybody?”
Kane gave the two another sidelong look, then gazed back out across the Mexican hill line.
“Ain’t you gone yet?” he said.
Chapter 17
El Ricon, the Mexican Badlands
It was dark the following evening when Short and Faraday, having traveled all day and most of the night before, rode into the small, dirty town and stepped down from their horses at a hitch rail out front of the Luna Loca cantina and brothel. Laughter, guitar and accordion led by the blare of a trumpet reached out and met them as the two stepped onto a plank boardwalk toward the blanket-draped doorway.
Firelight flickered from iron firepots filled with wood, refuse and fuel oil standing in front of the Luna Loca and along the half-empty street of the small mining community. Five yards away, two half-naked brothel girls stood smoking thin black cigars and sharing a bottle of rye with a drunken teamster. They disregarded the two newcomers and concentrated on their easier prey.
“Well, well, look who’s here, pals,” said a voice in the darkened shadows just out of the firelight as Short and Faraday walked closer.
Another voice replied as two more men stepped forward from the shadows into the flicker of the street fire.
“Dayton Short and Earl Faraday, as I live and breathe,” the voice said.
“Howdy, Luke, howdy, Quince . . . Woods,” said Short, he and Faraday both touching their hat brims, recognizing the three.
Luke Bolten, Jimmy Quince and Hank Woods touched their hat brims in return.
“We were talking about you two earlier tonight,” said Luke Bolten, a tall, wiry gunman with a reputation for being fast with a six-gun. “Wondering if your man Braxton’s got any gun work that might need doing.”
Short and Faraday stopped and looked at the three figures lounging against the front of the adobe building. Short turned to Faraday with a look, then turned back to Bolten.
“I would ordinarily tell you to speak to Brax himself about gun work. But it turns out you might be getting here at just the right time.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Bolten, his interest piquing. He and the other two stepped closer. “Something told me we might be hitting here at the right time. What have you got planned?”
“That would be for Braxton and us to know,” Faraday said a little sharply. He eyed the big nickel-plated Russian revolver glinting in the firelight in Bolten’s cross-draw holster.
“But the thing is,” Shor
t cut in, “we’ll take you there, make sure he knows you’re available.”
“And we’re all obliged for your help,” Bolten said for the three of them. “It is damn hard talking to Braxton when he’s got something big planned.”
“It won’t be for you, not this time,” said Faraday. “We’re looking around for some men right now. But you fellows be ready to ride when we come back through here.”
“Whoa, Short. We’re ready to ride right now,” said Bolten, not wanting to take a chance on the two leaving without them and not coming back. “What say we ride along with you wherever you’re headed? You never know out here when you might need some guns backing you up.”
Short considered it for a moment, then nodded.
“All right then, come with us,” he said. “The first place we’re headed is right through that blanket to get us some rye whiskey. Then we’re headed up out of here.”
Bolten grinned and looked at the other two gunmen.
“And you can rest easy, knowing that me and Quince and Woods here will have you both covered while you drink it,” the outlaw said, only half joking.
“I feel better already,” said Faraday as the five of them filed inside the Luna Loca and walked through the blaring music to the bar.
Seeing the five men walk to the bar, knowing that Short and Faraday rode with Braxton Kane, the bartender wasted no time standing a bottle of rye and shot glasses along the bar. He had already poured the rye when Short and the others stopped at the bar. Short gave him a nod.
“Obliged, Cooney,” he said to the red-nosed bartender. As he and the others raised their glasses, he asked Ned Cooney, “Has any of our hombres come through here today?”
“No,” the bartender said, “just these fellows.” He nodded at the three gunmen standing with Short and Faraday. “I figured them for Golden Riders soon as I laid eyes on them.”