Black Valley Riders

by Ralph Cotton

  “You jakes heard him,” said Dave Pickens, gesturing with his cocked Colt, “put your iron in the dirt or we start chopping yas down!”

  Shear called out to the open windows, “Anybody left in there?”

  A couple of heads came out the windows, hands first, raised and empty. Shear grinned and jumped to the ground beside Oaks.

  “That’s what I like to see,” he said, “willing participants . . . everybody doing their part to see to it nobody else has to die.” He turned back to Oaks with a dark laugh and smacked him across the jaw with the big Remington. Oaks flew sidelong, but Shear caught him by the shoulder and jerked him back into place.

  “Plea-please, sir, no more . . . ,” said Oaks, blood running from a gash the Remington’s front sight made on his cheek.

  “All right, Ronald,” Shear said, “what do you think of us angels now?” He shook him and said close to his ear, “Now you tell everybody here to not do anything stupid. If they do I’ll stick this gun straight down your neck and pull the trigger.”

  “Any-anything you say, sir,” said Oaks.

  “That’s real good, Ronald. Now you talk to them, tell them how it is.” He gave a dark grin, looking at the Gatling gun, then at the firewood wagon. “Have them get this wagon unloaded. You can even keep the firewood.”

  While Oaks explained to the men that to resist would cost them their lives, Shear’s men hurriedly searched the railroad men, collecting their weapons, tossing them in big burlap feed sacks.

  “What if we get set upon again by that bunch of Desert Weasels?” a guard asked Longley, knowing once the firewood was unloaded the Gatling gun was going onto the wagon.

  “Run like hell, I guess,” Longley said, shrugging, snatching the man’s rifle from his hand. Beside him Papa Dorsey laughed and slapped his leg.

  “Dorsey, how can you do this to us?” the railroad man asked. “You’ve been with us every day for all these years.”

  “Hell,” Dorsey laughed even louder, “you just answered your own question.”

  When the firewood was unloaded and the railroad men were back in a line, Shear had his men pass the big gun down and set it up. Then he waved the second wagon forward—the one carrying the big safe. As soon as the canvas was loosened and thrown off, the men loosened the chains holding the big safe upright and tight to the wagon bed.

  With all their effort four men rocked it back and forth until it toppled off the wagon and landed with an earth-shuddering jar and rolled and slid twelve feet down the gravel-covered hillside.

  From the engine, Barnes came back behind the engineer and his fireman, his rifle aimed at their backs.

  “All you railroad men stay lined up,” said Shear.

  “You—you’re not going to kill us, are you?” said Oaks, looking ill and shaky.

  “Naw, don’t be scared, Ronald,” said Shear, as if he found the thought ridiculous. “We won’t kill you, unless you force us to, that is. We’ve killed so many railroad hogs today, we’re all sick of it.”

  One of the guards looked back and forth at how many men the outlaws were keeping covered. “This is humiliating,” he said, stepping forward. “I won’t stand for it!”

  “I don’t blame you, mister,” said Shear. “Rudy, kill him.”

  Duckwald pulled the trigger on his rifle without so much as lifting it to his shoulder. The man slammed back against the express car and fell dead on the ground.

  “If anybody else feels humiliated, now is the time to step forward and get yourself shot,” said Shear. “The buzzards out here will thank you for it.”

  As Shear spoke, his men had climbed into the express car and began carrying heavy crates of gold coin and ingots out and stacking them on the empty wagon.

  “Swean, show me something,” Shear said.

  The gunman broke open a crate lid with his pistol butt and raised a handful of gold coins and let them fall through his fingers.

  “God, how I love stealing,” Shear said, on the verge of getting emotional about it.

  Papa Dorsey had walked to the engine, climbed up and fired blast upon blast of shotgun loads into the boiler lines, blowing them apart. He came walking back with a satisfied smile on his white-bearded face.

  When the last of the crates were staked on the wagon, Shear’s men gathered and mounted their horses, three of them carrying burlap bags full of firearms. Before turning to his horse, Shear held his Remington out at arm’s length, the tip of it against Oaks’ head. “Ronald, I wish I didn’t have to do this—”

  “Oh God, please! No!” the frightened man begged, sobbing, terrified.

  “Get a grip on yourself, Ronald!” said Shear. “I meant, I wish I didn’t have to say good-bye. You boys have been so hospitable.”

  The mounted men hooted and laughed as Oaks’ trembling knees gave out and he fell to the ground. Shear climbed into his saddle and said to the railroaders, as he turned dead serious, “All of you remember, we could have killed you but we didn’t. Think about that before you decide to come after us. We will kill you then.”

  Chapter 21

  Sandoval had ridden a mile ahead of the gun wagon and found the massacre in the canyon along the rock-cut trail. But instead of riding back to tell Thorn and the ranger, he stepped down from his saddle and led his horse up a steep path to the cliffs from which Shear and his men had launched their attack on the wagons. At the top of the cliff trail, he looked back and forth, then down the canyon wall behind him.

  The bodies of Calvin Kerr and Dent Phillips lay battered and broken twenty yards apart among the rock. Walking a few steps farther along the high trail, he spotted two loose horses milling in a narrow strip of pale wild grass, their muzzles to the ground. Farther along he saw a lone horse standing with a man’s bloody arm reaching up from the ground, gripping its stirrup.

  Sandoval walked closer, his rifle half leveled in his hands. Taking the loose horse’s reins, he looked down and into the face of Tinnis Mayes. The wounded gambler struggled to raise his eyes toward him.

  “Do—do you have . . . a drink, sir?” the gambler managed to murmur.

  Holding the reins to the horse, Sandoval reached down and loosened Tinnis’ hand from the stirrup. He pushed the horse’s flank; it sidestepped out of the way. He stooped and rolled Tinnis onto his back and looked at all the dark blood on his side, his chest, his bloody right hand gripping the Colt Thunderer.

  “I happen to have a bottle in my saddlebags,” he said, reaching over and lifting the Thunderer from the gambler’s grasp.

  “I’ll . . . just wait . . . right here,” Tinnis said, looking up at him.

  Sandoval retreived the bottle and a rolled-up blanket. Stooping down again, he stuck the rolled blanket under Tinnis’ head and uncorked the bottle. He held the man’s head up a little more and guided him through a drink of the fiery rye.

  “How bad is it?” he asked, noting that even in the gambler’s weakened, wounded condition the whiskey went down smooth and effortlessly.

  “Not . . . so bad,” Tinnis said. He offered a weak half smile and added, “Want to . . . see my wound?”

  Sandoval returned the half smile, going along with him, and said, “Sure, I’ll take a look.” He started to cork the bottle, but Tinnis wrapped a bloody hand around it.

  “Do you mind?” he asked, sounding stronger somehow now that the whiskey coursed through him.

  Sandoval turned loose of the bottle and unbuttoned the gambler’s blood-soaked shirt and spread it open. He saw the bullet hole just beneath Tinnis’ right ribs. Fresh red blood still oozed slowly but steadily. He reached beneath the gambler and felt the bleeding exit hole straight through his side.

  “There’s no bullet in you,” Sandoval said.

  “Now, there’s . . . a stroke of luck,” Tinnis said wryly, struggling to raise the bottle to his lips. Sandoval helped him take another drink. This time he made sure to take the bottle from him and cork it and set it aside.

  “You’ve lost lots of blood, gambler,” he said.


  “Us Lucases have . . . always been free bleeders.” He struggled upward a little, craning his head like a turtle in search of the bottle.

  “Keep still,” said Sandoval, pressing him gently back to the ground. “You’re not a Lucas.”

  “How . . . dare you, sir?” the gambler said. “Are you questioning . . . my mother’s virtue?” His bloody fingers crawled across the dirt in search of the bottle, like some craving spider.

  “I know your real name,” said Sandoval, ignoring the gambler’s quips. “It’s Mayes . . . Tinnis Mayes.” He reached over and set the bottle farther out of reach from Tinnis’ hand. Then he loosened Tinnis’ bandanna from around his neck for a bandage and shook it out. “Captain Thorn knew that all along.”

  The gambler’s hand slumped on the ground, as if in surrender.

  “I suspected as much,” Tinnis said. “Thorn is . . . a crafty old fox. But I suppose . . . everyone in the corps has heard of . . . the infamous Rebel Marine.”

  “I had heard of you,” said Sandoval. He ripped a section of Tinnis’ shirttail away, tore it into strips and tied the ends together. “But I wouldn’t say your name was infamous or even tarnished.”

  “Oh?” said Tinnis. “Are you saying . . . time has . . . forgiven my transgressions?”

  He watched the young bounty hunter lay the folded bandanna against the wound’s entrance and press the gambler’s hand down on it to hold it in place.

  “Maybe time has forgiven. Maybe you haven’t,” said Sandoval, without looking up from his work. But he did see Tinnis’ fingers crawl toward the bottle again, and he moved it even farther away.

  “My God, man . . . pass me that bottle,” Tinnis said. “That’s something one marine . . . always does for another.” He coughed and added in a strained voice, “What will it hurt, a drink before dying?”

  “I don’t think you’re going to die,” said Sandoval. “If the bullet had struck any vital organ, you’d have been dead before now.” He reached up, loosened his own bandanna for a dressing to place on the exit wound.

  “Hallelujah, then. Allow me . . . to celebrate,” said the gambler. His fingers crawled again toward the bottle.

  Sandoval stopped and looked down at him. As if reconsidering, he said, “You’re right, what can it hurt?” He reached over, picked up the bottle, pulled the cork and pitched it aside. “Here, drink it. Drink it all. Maybe you’ll be dead before my father gets here. He’d prefer seeing a dead marine to one drowning in self-pity.”

  Tinnis snatched the battle eagerly. But he stopped and said, “Your . . . father? Cadden Thorn?”

  “Yes, he’s my father,” said Sandoval. “He’s a real marine. He’s never been afraid to take a knock-down blow and stand back up and rally a charge.” He gestured with bloody fingers toward the bottle. “Drink up, Mayes. Drink it all. My father, the Captain, is an old salt. He might care. I’m a younger marine. Were it not for the honor of the corps that binds us one and all together, you never even existed.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” said Tinnis in a critical tone. He raised the bottle toward his lips with a weak hand. But before he could take a drink, the two of them spotted the gun wagon rolling onto the high trail, Thorn and the ranger having followed the hooves of Shear’s men, rather than following the firewood wagon tracks into the canyon.

  “Oh hell, now the captain . . .” Tinnis sighed, letting the bottle slump in his hand.

  When the ranger and Thorn rolled up, stopped and climbed down from the wagon, the gambler eyed the Gatling gun and said, “I bet I can tell you where you acquired that wicked-looking contraption.”

  “I bet you can too,” Thorn said. He looked down at the bloody bandanna bandage, then at the bottle in the gambler’s hand.

  “Don’t even try taking this from me,” said Tinnis, tightening his hand around the bottle.

  “Not even for a drink?” Thorn said, reaching down with his gloved hand.

  “This is not a trick, is it?” Tinnis asked warily. But upon seeing the look on Thorn’s face, he relinquished the bottle to him and watched him turn up a shot and wipe a hand over his mouth. Tinnis looked a little surprised when Thorn handled the bottle back to him.

  “Your son and I . . . had ourselves a . . . nice little chat, Thorn,” he said. “He tells me you know . . . my real name and what happened to me at the war’s end.”

  “I do,” said Thorn. “You didn’t get the pardon President Lincoln intended for you to have, but at least you didn’t hang as a Southern spy.”

  “Better that I had hanged, Captain,” the gambler said with a bitter twist to his voice. He looked away as if in shame. “I brought dishonor . . . not only to myself, but to the corps itself.”

  “No, you’re wrong Mayes,” said Thorn. “If that was true I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. You’re a Southerner. You chose to fight for the South. Nobody judged you harshly for it. You became a spy for the South. Nobody judged you for that either. The only thing your fellow marines ever judged you for was losing faith in them.”

  “I never lost faith in the corps,” said Mayes. “I thought it was they who lost faith in me.”

  “It comes to the same thing,” said Thorn. “Only your lack of faith would question the faith of your brothers.”

  Mayes raised the bottle toward his lips, but he stopped, considering what Thorn had said. He seemed to have grown stronger with some whiskey in his belly and the bleeding stopped. For a moment he stared at the bottle, lost in thought.

  Finally he said, “What’s the difference? I stopped being a marine . . . a long time ago. I’m a drunkard now.”

  Sandoval and the ranger watched in silence as the two continued.

  “Indeed you are a drunkard, Mayes,” Thorn said. “But you were a damn good marine—you always will be.”

  “Stow it, Captain,” said Mayes. “I don’t even . . . want to hear it. The past is dead and gone. Good riddance to it, I say.” He raised the bottle as if in a toast. But Sam noticed he lowered it without taking another drink.

  Thorn stepped closer and loomed over the wounded man. “Are you going to die any time soon, Mayes?”

  The gambler gave a nod toward Sandoval and said to Thorn, “Ask my doctor.”

  Thorn looked at the younger bounty hunter. “What do you say, Sandy? Is Tinnis Mayes going to die from this wound today?”

  “No, Captain,” said Sandoval, “I believe he stands a good chance at living this day out. It would be better if he left the whiskey alone for a while.”

  “Aw, forget that,” said Thorn, sweeping the possibility aside with his gloved hand.

  Mayes raised himself up stiffly on his good side, the bottle still in hand. “What is your growing interest in whether I live or die, Captain?” he asked.

  Thorn thumbed toward the wagon. “We have a Gatling gun, plenty of ammunition and all the bad men a fellow would ever want to shoot at.” He stopped and let his words hang in the air.

  “Are you asking me . . . if I’d like to join the three of you, Captain?” Mayes said. “Go fight Shear and Lord knows how many of his men?”

  “Only if you think you can gird up and make a worthy showing for yourself,” Thorn said. He stood with his hands down at his sides, waiting for Mayes to make a move to rise.

  “Oh, I think once upon my feet, Captain, I might even surprise myself,” Mayes said, reaching his bloody hand up to Thorn.

  “On your feet, then,” said Thorn. He offered a hand and lifted him to his feet, giving no regard to the wound in the man’s side, or the pained expression Mayes struggled to keep from showing on his face. The open bottle was still in his other hand, but he made no attempt to drink from it in spite of his pain of his wounds—both old and new.

  “I’ll pull the wagon over closer,” said Sandoval.

  “The wagon . . . ? Nonsense,” said Mayes, “I’m perfectly able to ride this horse.”

  He handed Sandoval the whiskey bottle, turned, took hold of the saddle horn and pulled himself up, favorin
g his wounded side until he settled onto the saddle.

  “Keep up the good work,” Thorn said proudly to him. He stepped quickly over to the wagon and came back leading his horse. “I’ll ride along beside you for a ways, if that suits you. We can rehash the battle that had taken place here.”

  “It suits me fine, Captain,” said Mayes. “I always enjoy good company.”

  When the two had started off along the thin high trail, the ranger and Sandoval stepped up into the wagon and rode along a few yards behind him.

  “Mayes seems all right now,” Sam said, “but how’s he going to do when we get off this trail onto the flatlands and start making some time?”

  “We’ll just have to see,” Sandoval replied quietly, staring ahead.

  “You said he was going to live,” Sam said.

  “I said he stands a good chance,” Sandoval reminded him.

  “What are his chances?” Sam asked.

  “Fifty-fifty,” said Sandoval, “probably no better or worse than for the three of us. But if I hadn’t said what I did, Thorn would not have left a wounded man behind.”

  “So you told them what they wanted to hear?” Sam asked.

  “I told them what they already knew,” Sandoval replied. He slapped the horses’ rumps lightly with the traces, keeping them moving slowly but steadily. “Anyway, it goes without saying, he’d prefer to die in a battle than bleed out drunk on a blanket. What warrior wouldn’t?”

  The ranger didn’t answer. He only nodded and stared at the two riders in front of them. He saw the gambler slump sidelong in his saddle; and he watched Thorn reach over and help him straighten up.

  They rode on.

  In the brutal afternoon heat, as the four riders crossed the sandy flatlands toward Skull Rock Pass, they spotted in the distance two men walking unsteadily toward them. By the time Thorn had brought out his long telescope and raised it to his eye, gunshots began echoing across the broad expanse of desert. Through the circle of the lens, he focused just in time to see a dozen Comadrejas converge on the two lone strangers and shoot them down.