by Ralph Cotton
“Lord, I’m glad to get out of there,” Epson said, gazing out across a wide rocky valley in the dim silver-blue morning light. The valley lay harsh and foreboding before them, strewn with towering chimney rock, looming saguaro cactus, breakaway cliffs and cutbanks. A wind roared in off the valley floor, filled with stinging sand and bits of sharp brush stems.
“Yeah, me too,” said Duckwald. He raised his bandanna from around his neck up over the bridge of his nose and gave another dark chuckle. “It’s a stroll through a garden from here on.”
Mingo Sentanza spotted Elmer Fisk and the other riders in the early-afternoon sunlight through a long Union army telescope. “Crazy Elmer . . . ,” he remarked more to himself than to the other guard, Ben Longley, who sat atop the rock perch beside him. He had ridden with Fisk long enough to conclude that the man would be no match for him with gun or knife. As with all men he’d ridden with, Sentanza had sized the gunman up early on.
“Yeah?” said Longley. “Who else?”
“I can’t make them out, their faces are covered,” said Sentanza, still gazing out through the wavering heat.
“Let me see,” said Longley, reaching out for the telescope.
“Take it easy,” said Sentanza. “I’m making sure they’re not being followed.”
“With all that dust boiling behind them, how could you tell if they are?” said Longley.
“I can tell,” Sentanza said absently, “provided everybody shuts up and lets me look.”
Longley settled down and waited in silence.
“Good enough,” said Sentanza after a few moments of checking along the trail behind the riders. He lowered the lens from his eye and passed it over to the waiting outlaw’s hand. “It’ll still be hours before they get over here to us.”
“I know that,” said Longley, grasping the telescope. “I just like looking.” He took the lens and raised it to his eye.
“Happy to oblige,” Sentanza said flatly. He looked the outlaw up and down, judging how easy Longley would be to kill should the situation ever arise.
Seeing Crazy Elmer Fisk, riding along in the lead without his bandanna raised against the hot swirling dust, Longley shook his head. “Is he as crazy as they say he is, Mingo?”
Sentanza turned from his dark speculations and stared out at the riders, squinting his naked eyes. “Some of the things I’ve heard and seen, I’d say he’s worse,” the serious half-breed replied.
Longley scanned the other riders with the telescope, and came back to Fisk. “For instance . . . ?” he asked.
“Never mind for instance,” said Sentanza. “Why don’t you watch him a while? You’ll be able to make up your own mind.”
“Callahan says crazy or not, Elmer Fisk is one of the fastest guns he’s ever seen in his life,” Longley said without lowering the telescope. He watched as the other two riders drew closer up behind Fisk.
“Yeah, well . . .” Sentanza spat and ran the back of his hand over his mouth. “Dolan Callahan is easily impressed, in my opinion.”
“He’s from Missouri,” said Longley. “He knows all about them big gunslingers.”
“Suit yourself,” said Sentanza. He reached over for the telescope. “Come on. Let’s go tell Shear they’re coming. I don’t know about you, but I’d ready to go rob something.”
“I always am ready, amigo,” said Longley, handing him the telescope. “What about you?”
Amigo . . . ? Sentanza made no reply, but he decided that if it came down to it, Longley would be an easy kill. Like Fisk he would be easily caught off guard, and he would die quickly. He would fight back, of course, as all men would, Sentanza told himself. But in the end he would be no contest for a skillful killer like himself.
The two scooted down the side of the rock, stepped up into their saddles and turned their horses toward a trail along the edge of the valley floor. Sentanza let Longley ride ahead of him a few feet on the tough rocky trail, the clack of their horses’ hooves the only sound to be heard save for a low whirring wind.
As the two rode, Sentanza lifted his Colt from his holster and leveled it at the center of Longley’s back. If Longley looked around at the sound of the gun cocking, he would kill him, plain and simple, Sentanza told himself.
Yet, as the trigger came back beneath Sentanza’s thumb, the unsuspecting Longley rode on staring straight ahead.
For just a split second something in Sentanza’s mind urged him to pull the trigger and watch the man drop dead to the ground. But then he would have to answer to Brayton Shear for his action, and explaining himself to Big Aces was something he never wanted to do. Besides, Ben Longley wasn’t so bad to ride with. He’d ridden with worse—for a short time anyway.
He lowered the Colt, uncocked it, holstered it and heeled his horse forward up beside Longley. It was easier riding with a man once you reminded yourself that you could end his life any time you chose to.
On a plank front porch out in front of a low-standing earth, sod and pine log cabin, a rifleman, Ballard Swean, watched the rise of dust move toward him from across a wide wasteland of brush, rock and cactus. When the outline of the two guards rose into sight, he reached sidelong and kicked the boot of the man slumbering on a wooden bench.
“Hey, Pickens, wake up,” he demanded. “Go tell Big Aces our guards are riding in.” He stared hard across the wasteland. “One of them is waving his hat.” He jacked a round into his rifle chamber. “You know what that means?”
“Yeah . . . ,” said Dave Pickens, waking up quickly and bolting onto his feet. “It means we’ve got company coming.” He turned to the open doorway.
“Stay where you are, Dave,” said Brayton Shear who stood in the open doorway, a large black cigar hanging between his fingers. “I’ve been watching their dust myself.” He studied the two guards through the wavering heat and the hot gusting wind. “If the company is Fisk and the others, we’ll be taking the train down quicker I expected.”
Chapter 7
The first dim gray light of morning had brought with it a stirring in the upper bough of a tall, sparse pine whose roots clung to the rock hillside. As Tinnis Lucas’ senses came back to him from within a deep, mindless darkness, he raised a careful hand and felt the thick-crusted blood on his right cheek. His body throbbed all over with pain. Somewhere in the distance he heard thunder roll on the horizon. A storm? Now . . . ?
The memory of what had happened came back to him slowly—the cliff, the doomed and neighing horse, the scraping of hooves on stone, the plunge and the endless falling through the purple night. “Lord God . . . ,” he moaned quietly.
His trembling fingertips followed fresh, wet blood upward from the crust on his cheek until he found the open flap of scalp hanging down from atop his head.
“You’re . . . still alive,” he managed to say to himself as if in awe of his discovery. Then he gazed down the sheer rock hillside that stretched hundreds of feet below him. He winced and shook his aching head. For whatever that’s worth. . . .
In the distance, lightning twisted and curled. The mindless darkness crept back in and surrounded him.
When he awakened again, the midmorning sun lay buried in a black-gray swirl. As the pine swayed on the air, he clutched the tree’s bough and realized for the first time what had happened to him. In his fall, he had landed twenty feet farther up against the tree and slid down into a triple fork of limbs that wasn’t about to drop him.
That’s good news, at least . . . , he told himself. Then he gave a dubious look upward at the low, swollen sky.
He searched himself and came out with the battered whiskey flask. He shook it a little, uncapped it and raised it to his lips. “Here’s to . . . weather,” he said, glancing up with wry defiance. Thunder rumbled as if in reply.
When he’d swallowed a drink, he looked down and all around at the harsh rocky terrain, the deep abyss below and the thin air surrounding him. A hundred feet down the falling rocky slope, he saw the body of his horse hanging limply, impaled on the brok
en tip of another shorter, swaying pine.
The sight of the ill-fated animal made him look away. He hurriedly swigged more whiskey and clung against the rough tree bough until he felt his mind and innards settle. Then he looked down again at the distant rocky ground swaying back and forth beneath him.
“Now, how will you get yourself down from here, Tinnis?” he said to himself, capping the flask and putting it away.
Realizing that the soft soothing glow of whiskey wouldn’t last long, Lucas looked down the tree at the next limb sticking out ten feet below him. Here goes. . . . Without thinking too long about it, he slid carefully off the edge of his safe forked nest, wrapped his low-cut town boots around the rough trunk and slid himself down until he felt the broken limb firmly beneath his feet.
“My God, sir,” he said aloud to himself, wheezing, gasping for breath as he looked down and realized how much farther he had to climb. “This simply will not do.” He noted that the closer he got to the ground, the farther the protruding limbs would be spaced apart.
You have no choice . . . , he told himself. Taking a few deep breaths, he lowered himself onto his rump, slipped off the limb and shinnied on down, this time fourteen feet before finding safe purchase. As he hunkered down to catch his breath on the next limb, he felt the first drop of rain land atop his bare head.
Over the ridge above him, Lucas heard a hard-blowing rain march across the hillside and begin to pound down onto him as if with a vengeance. What did I ever do . . . ? he asked with an upward glance, taking out the flask with a sigh. He uncapped the battered flask, drank it empty and let it fall from his hand. He wiped a dripping strand of hair back from his forehead and slipped himself down off the limb, back around the rough, wet tree trunk. “While lightning licks boldly in the sky . . . ,” he said, as if quoting the scene in a story of his life.
On the trail a half mile away, Cadden Thorn lowered the naval telescope from his eye and gave the ranger and Sandoval a bemused look. “I have found the gambler,” he said, handing the lens over to Sam.
The ranger took the lens and aimed it in the direction Thorn had pointed. Through the obscuring rain traveling toward them, he spotted Lucas shinnying down the pine like some slow, methodical man-ape. Without lowering the lens he moved it to the left and saw the buggy horse hanging limply on the shorter pine. Sam winced at the sight of the horse, but continued searching back and forth on the hillside for signs of any other fallen riders. Seeing none, he lowered the lens and handed it on to Sandoval.
“He rode off a high trail in the night,” the ranger said, with no need for further speculation on the matter.
As Sandoval raised the lens and looked out through it, the wall of heavy, blowing rain reached them, announced by a clap of thunder that shook the hillsides like cannon fire. “It looks like it’ll be a while before he touches ground,” he said, framing Lucas’ wet, blood-streaked face in the circling lens.
“We’ll want to be there when he does,” Sam said, turning his stallion’s reins back onto the slick narrow trail. Rivulets of water were already braiding their way downhill toward them. “Whatever hoofprints this rain washes out, maybe he can fill in for us.”
“Right you are, Ranger,” said Thorn, swinging his horse around behind him. Sandoval collapsed the big naval telescope and heeled his horse along behind them.
A half hour passed as the storm continued to rage. When Lucas reached the lowest limb, he straddled it, exhausted, and let the rain pour down on him, without so much as raising a tired raw hand to wipe his face. Only ten feet to his right, the vertical rock wall stood facing him. But there was no handhold, no foothold, no crack or crevice in reach. Even if he could hurl his spent and aching body that far, there was nothing to stop him from plunging another forty feet straight down the wet rock hillside to the stone trail below.
“All right, I give up . . . ,” Lucas gasped, the loose flap of ripped scalp bleeding anew, the rain having washed away the dried, crusted blood. Tears fell with the streaks of water and blood down his face. “Lord, what the hell do you want from me?” he said, pleading to the swollen black sky. “I’m ragged, bloody, done in, and I’m all out of whiskey.” He raised his hands in submission. “What am I to do? Tell me something here!”
Lucas’ sobbing voice grew in intensity as he spoke, yet a passing streak of lightning followed by a waning sound of thunder was the only reply he heard. Shaking his head, he wept openly. “No wonder I never believed in you,” he shouted at the low, growling sky.
On the trail below, Thorn, the ranger and Sandoval looked at one another as their horses walked into sight around a blind turn in the trail and stopped. “Then who are you talking to, Lucas?” Sam called out through the storm.
The gambler’s bloodshot eyes turned straight up in reflex, momentarily believing that he had heard this voice being called out from an angry sky. But then he turned, following the voice to its origin, and saw the three men staring up at him from the turn in the trail. “Oh my, Ranger Burrack, and the soldiers of the sea . . . ,” he said with relief. He quickly wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Marines,” Sandoval corrected him.
“Yes, marines indeed,” said Lucas, recovering quickly from his hopelessness and getting back to his scheming self. Even the storm seemed to lessen its intensity. The rain slacked off, if only a little; the thunder had moved past overhead and began to slowly drift off across the hillsides. “How fortunate you three are to have found me out here,” he said with a tone of arrogance.
“Oh, how so?” Sam and the two bounty hunters sat with their wet gloved hands crossed on their saddle horns.
“I’ve decided I might be persuaded to work with you,” Lucas said.
The ranger and the bounty hunters looked at one another, unimpressed. Sam shrugged. “We’re not interested,” he said. “Throw down you gun.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Ranger,” Lucas said, trying to take control.
Sam stared up at him, then started to turn away.
“Wait, Ranger! I can take you to where the Black Valley Riders are holed up,” Lucas called down through the pouring rain.
Sam called up to him, “I suppose you could, if you weren’t sitting up in a tree.” He paused, then added, “If you don’t throw down the gun, I’ll have to shoot you down from there.”
Lightning streaked, moving away but still too close for comfort. “Ranger, this is not the time for foolishness,” Lucas said, sounding serious. “Here is my offer. Get me down from here and I’ll lead you to a hidden passage through the hillside. Otherwise you’ll never find it on your own.”
The three only stared up at him. Sam reached down and drew his Winchester from its boot.
“Wait! I’m trying to make a deal here!” Lucas called out. “Let’s talk about this some.”
Sam levered a bullet into his rifle chamber, stepped his stallion forward in the pelting rain and said up to him, “Either drop the gun down or I’ll shoot you down from there, gambler. I’m placing you under arrest for horse theft.”
“Horse theft?” Lucas looked stunned and incensed. “You can’t be serious, Ranger. You three have larger issues to address than me borrowing that lady’s buggy for a limited time.” With a look of disgust, he jerked his Colt Thunderer out of his shoulder harness and pitched it down onto the muddy trail.
“Borrowed for a limited time?” Sam looked up at the grizzly scene, the dead buggy horse hanging impaled on the pine. “You left the buggy sitting in the trail for the Desert Weasels to scavenge. You rode the horse off of a cliff and killed it.” As he spoke he stepped down from his saddle, picked up the gambler’s Colt and shoved it down behind his gun belt. Then he opened his saddlebags and pulled out a coiled vaquero-style rawhide lariat.
Seeing the lariat, Thorn cut in, saying loud enough for Lucas to hear, “Are we going to hang him now, Ranger Burrack? Isn’t that what they do to horse thieves out here?”
“Often, yes,” Sam said. He looped the leather lariat from one
hand to the other, gauging its length and limbering it in the falling rain. “But in weather like this, we always wait until after coffee,” he said, dropping the coiled lariat over his saddle horn. He took the stallion’s wet reins and turned him on the trail.
“Coffee . . . ? Wait, Ranger!” Lucas shouted above the rumble of dissipating thunder as the three men turned their horses as one and rode back out of sight around the turn in the trail. “Drop the stolen horse charge and I’ll take you to them! This is no joking matter! Look at this lightning! I’ll get struck dead up here, Ranger!” he called out. “Throw me the damn lariat. That’s all I ask. You’ve got my gun! I’m harmless. Just throw the damn lariat up here!”
Harmless . . . ? Sam wondered. He and the two bounty hunters stepped down from their saddles and led their tired, wet animals under the partial cover of a cliff overhang, still hearing Lucas pleading from around the run in the trail.
A half hour later, Lucas still sat huddled against the trunk of the tree, his arms wrapped around his knees, shivering, wet and streaked with blood. The rain had all but stopped; the thunder had rumbled off into the west, taking the remaining streaks of lightning with it. Runoff water had slackened to thin streams alongside the trail and down the hillsides.
“Hello, the tree,” Sam called out to the trembling gambler as he stepped his big stallion back around the trail. Even as Sandoval had boiled a pot of coffee, the ranger had remained within sight of the gambler stuck up the tree. But he wasn’t about to let Lucas know. “Are you about ready to come down now?”
Lucas raised his trembling face and stared down at him. Forcing himself to speak in a calm, even voice, he said humbly, “Yes, Ranger, I am. If you will throw me up the godda—” He stopped and got himself back under control with a deep, calming breath. “That is, if you will please throw up the lariat?”