by Ralph Cotton
Short gave a chuckle.
“Hear that, hombres? He took you three for part of our bunch soon as he saw you.”
The three gunmen only nodded, staring at the bartender. Looking nervous, Cooney swallowed a knot in his throat.
“Did I—did I do something wrong?” he said.
Short downed his drink and shook his head.
“No, Ned, you done good,” he said. He wrapped a hand around the bottle to pour himself another shot.
The bartender looked relieved.
“Thank you kindly,” he said. “I hope you mentioned me to Braxton Kane. I can be ready to ride anywhere he wants me to, anytime he wants me to.”
“He knows that, Cooney,” said Short with a stare. “I ain’t forgot about you. Now why don’t you get on away from here whilst me and my pals talk.” As Short spoke the trumpet player blew out a long string of loud sharp notes.
“Damn . . . !” said Faraday with wince. He said to Cooney, “If you want to be useful how about raising your scattergun and shooting that fool’s horn out of his mouth?”
The bartender looked trapped and worried.
“Well . . . I suppose I—that is, if he’s bothering—” His words stuttered and halted, but even so his hand reached down under the bar.
“Easy, Cooney,” said Short, “he’s just joshing you.”
The bartender let out a tense, tight breath.
“Now go on, let us talk,” Short said.
As the bartender hurried away along the bar full of drinkers, Bolten chuckled and shook his head.
“Why’d you stop him? I believe he would’ve done it.”
“So do I,” said Short.
“It shows you how bad everybody wants to throw in with us Golden Riders,” said Faraday.
“Finding gunmen has never been hard to do,” Bolten came back quickly. He looked sidelong at Hank Woods and Jimmy Quince, then gave Faraday a narrowed look. “But finding three good ones like us is a whole different story.”
“Alls I’m saying is—” said Faraday.
“Besides,” said Bolten, cutting him off, “If gunmen are wanting to ride with you that bad, where are they?” He gestured around the smoke-filled cantina. “All I see is you and us”—he nodded down the bar toward Ned Cooney—“and some half-simple cork puller, ready to shotgun a horn player because he’s too stupid to tell you was joshing with him.”
Short reached over with the bottle of rye and filled Bolten’s glass before Faraday could offer a comeback.
“Right you are, Luke,” he said. “Pay Earl no mind. We’ve been letting him piss so close to the house he’s starting to think he’s smarter than the barn dwellers.” He gave Faraday a glance, letting him know to shut up. “The fact is we should have more men here right now than we do.” As he spoke he looked at the others’ glasses, making sure they were full. Then he set the bottle aside, picked up the cork and corked it. “What say we all drink up here and go find out why?”
• • •
When the five men left the Luna Loca they rode in purple-gray moonlight until well after midnight, seeing not a single campfire in any direction. Overhead, a deep rounded blanket of stars lay glittering across a velvet Mexican sky. As the trail sloped upward into a labyrinth of random stonework, black slices of shadow reached out and down from the tops of jagged hill lines. On the edge of a cliff, the five men bunched their horses close together. They looked out across a silver-streaked ocean of sand strewn with islands of stone, of tall saguaro cactus, their spiky arms raised as if being robbed.
“Maybe most of your Golden Riders won’t risk a fire, the Apaches being what they are in Ole Mex, these days,” said Luke Bolten.
Short and Faraday eyed Bolten in the grainy moonlight. Quince and Woods looked out on the desert floor, their hands crossed on their saddle horns. After a silence Faraday addressed Bolten quietly.
“I believe after riding with us a while,” he said, “you’ll find that Golden Riders don’t fear anything, Apache or otherwise. Them with fear are best advised to seek other means of employment.”
A silence ensued, then Bolten turned slightly facing Faraday who sat right beside him.
“Let me ask you something, Earl,” Bolten replied quietly, recalling Faraday’s attitude back at the Luna Loca cantina. “Are you the hardheaded sumbitch whose ass I’m going to have to trounce soundly to make a place for myself among this bunch?” He’d pulled off his riding glove as he spoke.
“I just might be,” Faraday said, coming back quickly. “Slide that saddle from under you, we’ll find out.” He spun his reins around his saddle horn, ready to leap to the ground.
But Bolten reached over, jammed his first two fingers up Faraday’s large nose and crooked them forward, hard. Faraday shrieked, bucked and flopped. He tried to reach for his gun, but Bolten had him. Every move Faraday tried to make, Bolten jerked his head farther forward and down, twisted it askew until the hapless outlaw’s face lay over above Bolten’s lap.
“Jesus, turn him loose, Bolten!” shouted Short, his hand on his gun butt. But upon seeing Woods and Quince also gripping their side arms, he pulled his hand away.
“Naw, he’s all right,” Bolten said confidently. He twisted Faraday’s head a little more, roughly. Faraday’s thrashing and threatening rage turned into a sob, a plea for mercy. The former border guerilla eased his big Smith & Wesson Russian from its holster, held it up and cocked it. Knocking Faraday’s hat out of the way with the gun barrel, he shoved the tip of the barrel straight down into Faraday’s ear.
“Take ’er easy now, hoss,” he said down to Faraday. “You’ve just seen how fast I can turn ugly.”
“Damn it, Luke!” said Short. “Let him go! We’re too noisy up here.”
Bolten took his time.
“Woods?” he said. “If I shoot him from here, am I risking a bullet in my leg?”
“Yep,” Woods said without having to look any closer. “Either that, or you’re going to ruin a good horse.”
“That’s what I thought,” Bolten said. He lifted Faraday’s face toward his, jerked his fingers out of his nostrils and gave his nose a solid thump with his palm. Faraday’s head snapped back. Before he could recover, Bolten reached down expertly and flipped his Colt up from its holster even as Faraday’s hand grappled for it. “Hunh-uh, now,” he chuckled in dark warning. “Everything you do will likely put you in more pain than you already are.”
“Son of a bitch . . .” Faraday said hoarsely to no one in particular, bowing forward, his nose bleeding into his cupped hand. His hat hung sidelong from his head by its string.
Bolten gave a smug grin to Woods and Quince and reached over, took the hat and straightened it atop Faraday’s head.
“Surprising as hell, wasn’t it?” he said to Faraday. He patted the outlaw’s slumped shoulders, then looked at Short. “Will that do it? That’s how I use to do things before I got civilized.”
Short only stared at him for a moment. Then, before he started to speak, he heard a sound from farther along the trail and turned in his saddle toward it.
“Whoa, what was that?” he asked in a hushed tone. The gunmen sat quiet, listening intently.
“I heard it,” Quince whispered.
“So did I,” said Woods. Faraday was too absorbed with his bleeding, throbbing nose to notice anything.
“It’s no critter,” said Bolten. “It sounds like a person—a person in pain.” He gave Faraday a sidelong glance. “What say you, Earl?” he taunted.
“Come on, follow me,” said Short, unwrapping Faraday’s reins from his saddle horn and holding on to them. Turning his horse, taking the lead back from Bolten, he pulled Faraday’s horse alongside him. They nudged their horses away from the cliff at a quick walk, single file. As they moved like ghosts along the trail Short heard the sound again. This time they all heard it.
�
��Yep, that’s no critter,” Bolten confirmed. He booted his horse up alongside Faraday’s, reached over and stuck the bleeding gunman’s unloaded Colt down into his holster. “Don’t be aiming this at things that aim back,” he whispered in a condescending tone. He rode side by side with Faraday and Short until they slowed their horses to a halt and sat watching a lone figure struggling and groaning, dragging itself along the trail toward them on its belly.
“My God . . . ,” Earl Faraday managed to say with a stuffed nasal twang. “Somebody’s lost all their legs. . . .”
Bolten gave Faraday a sidelong look and shook his head. Before Short could get collected and step down from his saddle, Bolten pitched his reins to Woods who’d sidled up to him. “Everybody sit tight, I’ve got this,” he said. Short sat staring, smoldering, holding Faraday’s reins in his hands.
Down from his saddle and walking forward, Bolten held his nickel-plated Russian out and cocked down his side. As he moved forward, Short stepped down from his saddle, pitching Faraday’s reins to him. The others stepped down too and walked forward, spreading out on the narrow trail.
“Say now, ole pal, where you headed?” Bolten asked half cordially. He planted a boot firmly down in the dirt only inches from the crawling man’s face. He held the Russian cocked and pointed at the man’s bloody head.
“Thank—thank God. You found me . . . ,” the man rasped, dropping his jaw onto the rocky dirt.
“Yeah . . . ?” Bolten cocked his head a little. “You might want to thank us instead, if you’re wanting a ride out of here.”
“Help me . . . ,” the man said in a waning voice.
“Damn, he’s one of ours,” said Short, stepping in beside Bolten, rolling the man’s head with the sole of his boot and taking a better look.
“One of ours, sure enough?” Bolten said in a bemused tone. He shook his head at the bleeding man on the ground, then back along the dark trail.
“What . . . ?” said Short, catching a critical edge to Bolten’s question.
“Oh, nothing . . . ,” Bolten said. He slid the barrel of his Big Russian behind his duster lapel and down into this cross-draw holster. Seeing Short stare at him for a reply he said, “To be honest, so far your bunch ain’t exactly impressing the hell out of me.” He only uncocked the Russian after he’d seated it in its leather. “That one’s got his nose broken, this one appears to be shy of transportation. No wonder they haven’t showed up—” He gazed out along the dark trail, the wide sand flats below. “They could all be wandering around lost out there.”
Chapter 18
In the low rising morning sunlight, the Ranger and Cutthroat Teddy Bonsell eased their horses around a turn on the high trail and stopped at the charred remnants of a campsite. Across the campsite, a line of buzzards stood along the rocky edge. The big scavengers divided their attention between the bodies of three dead men lying on the rocks below, and on one of their own species flopping on the ground a few feet away, its head stuck tightly inside an empty bean tin. The big buzzard appeared exhausted in its struggle, as if having spent the night in such a state of blind captivity.
“Holy Moses . . . ,” Bonsell whispered. “I know I still ain’t seeing things exactly right,” he said sidelong to Sam, not taking his eyes nor his fascination off the head-locked buzzard, “but please tell me there’s a buzzard over there wearing a tin can over his head.”
“Yes, I see him too,” Sam said. “It’s not so much that he’s wearing it. I think he got nosy and it grabbed him and won’t turn loose.”
“That helps me a little,” said Bonsell, still staring at the big, flopping bird, “but not a whole lot.”
“Get down from your horse,” Sam said. “Let’s see what we can do.”
“Do about what?” Bonsell asked, swinging his leg over, stepping down from his saddle.
Sam didn’t answer. Instead he swung down from his horse and gathered both horses’ reins.
“Wait. You’re not stopping to help a buzzard, are you?” Bonsell asked, amazed.
“I’ve helped worse,” Sam said, leading the horses as the two walked closer to the stuck bird. Growing nervous, the buzzards along the edge gave up their roost and flew away with a powerful batting of wings.
“All right, I understand,” said Bonsell, as if having a change of heart. “I don’t like seeing an animal suffer myself. Go ahead, I’ll stay back here out of your way.”
“Staying beside me would be best for you,” the Ranger said, stopping and reining the horses to a low rock stuck in the ground.
“Best for me how?” Bonsell asked.
“It’ll keep you from feeling a bullet hit you when you try to make a run for those rocks,” Sam said calmly. He nodded toward a stand of rock on the far side of the campsite.
Bonsell was taken aback.
“Make run for it, on foot? Hunh-uh, Ranger,” said Bonsell. “I’d have to be crazy making a run for it out here, no horse, no gun, a bloody shoulder wound trying to heal?” He gestured at the bandage under his bloodstained shirt.
“That would be crazy, wouldn’t it?” the Ranger said.
“Yep, it for sure would,” said Bonsell, his eyes still bloodshot and sunk in his forehead.
“Keep telling yourself that while you sit here with only one boot on.”
“One boot on?” Bonsell looked down making sure he wasn’t missing some footwear. Then it came to him what the Ranger was saying. “Aw hell, are you joshing me?”
“Have I ever?” the Ranger asked, his voice getting a little sharper.
“All right,” said Bonsell, “here goes.” He sat down in the dirt and took a boot and held it up. Sam took it and pitched it a few feet away.
“Stay sitting there, and watch,” he said to the outlaw. “We get this bird straightened out, we’ll see why his cousins are so interested in the rocks down there.”
On the ground ten feet from them, the buzzard had stopped flopping and batting the dirt, its greasy-looking talons stopped scratching at the bean tin. Sam saw its heartbeat pulsing hard all the way down in its belly. Sam made his few footsteps silently, knowing the bird was not fooled, but also knowing that as worn out as it was, he might get close enough to grab its talons out from under it before it could stop him. And then what . . . ? He wasn’t sure, but he’d know in a minute, he told himself.
Bonsell watched him swipe a hand out and around, catching the tired buzzard’s legs in his gloved hand and quickly upending the odorous fowl.
“I can’t believe this . . . ,” Bonsell said under his breath. He watched the exhausted bird still try to flap its wings as the Ranger held it upside down for a minute. Then he stooped onto one knee and laid the bird out in way that seemed to settle it.
“Tell him you mean him no harm, Ranger,” Bonsell called out cynically. “Tell him you’re only here to help him.”
Sam gave the gunman a sharp look. He huddled over the bird, twisted the tin back and forth gently, examining the bird’s neck closely.
“Cut the other end out of it,” Bonsell called out. “Shove it on down, he can wear it around his neck.”
“Shut up, Teddy,” Sam called out, keeping his voice down. Holding the bird, he lifted the can as he turned it back and forth, careful of the sharp, inner edge.
“I’ll be dipped,” Bonsell said in surprise, seeing the tin can come loose and the big buzzard’s head snap at the Ranger’s gloved hands. “You did it, Burrack! You set that gut-plucker free!” He stood on one boot and his sock foot. “If I ever see a buzzard caught in a tin can, I’ll know to send for—”
“Sit down, Teddy,” the Ranger warned, his free hand going to his holstered Colt. Bonsell dropped like a rock.
Sam pitched the bird aside on the ground as it clawed and bit at him. Instead of flying away as Sam thought it would, the bird hurried away, one wing dragging the dirt, and huddled and gasped for air. Sam dropped the can,
crushed it flat under his bootheel and walked back toward Bonsell.
“Ranger, I’ve never seen anybody befriend a buzzard,” he chuckled.
“I’m better at catching buzzards than I am at setting them free,” Sam said flatly.
“That’s real funny, Ranger,” said Bonsell on a sour note, catching Sam’s meaning.
“On your feet, Teddy . . . Get your boot on,” said Sam, reaching down, untying the horses from the rock. Overhead, buzzards circled in large numbers, begrudging two humans the use of their abandoned roost. Sam led the horses over to the rocky edge and looked. Behind him, Bonsell had straggled back putting on his boot. As he walked closer, Sam pointed along the edge ten feet away. “Stay that far off my side, Teddy,” he said.
“Afraid I’ll push you over it, Ranger?” Bonsell asked boldly.
“No,” said Sam. “I’m afraid you’ll try to end up down there with them.” He gestured down at three bodies lying in the rocks below. A half-dozen buzzards stood on the dead men’s backs, their feasting, pulling and plucking beaks causing the bodies to jerk and move as if still alive.
“Recognize any of them?” Sam asked, watching the twitching, writhing corpses. Along the steep hillside four saddles lay strewn about in the rocks.
“I might recognize that one,” Bonsell said with sarcasm, “if he had a little more face left.”
Sam only nodded and watched with a grim expression.
“Poor sonsabitches,” said Bonsell in a hushed tone. “See? That’s why I never helped that buzzard.”
“A buzzard didn’t kill those three men,” the Ranger replied quietly. “The birds just showed up for the feed.”
“They’re still buzzards, Ranger,” Bonsell said. “If I had my way I’d kill every one of them on earth.”
The Ranger looked up at the sky full of slow circling scavengers.
“You’re ambitious, Teddy, I’ll give you that,” he said.