Rawhide Flat

by Ralph Compton

  Neither man had felt like talking and for the past hour the only sound had been the creak of saddle leather and the occasional jangle of a bit as the horses shook off flies.

  Now, looking around him, Masterson broke the silence. “If Stark’s men are watching us, I sure don’t see them.”

  “And that’s why we should be worried,” Crane said.

  Masterson looked up at the circling buzzards. “Want to take a look in Sullivan Canyon?”

  “I’ve seen dead men before.”

  Unbidden, he had a vision of another canyon in another place and time.

  An under-strength patrol of the U.S. 11th Infantry had been caught and wiped out by a mixed band of Comanche-Kiowa near Fort Concho. The dead had been stripped of their uniforms and boots and their naked bodies left to rot in the sun, thick with flies, maggots already curling.

  He recalled the swollen bellies, blue tongues protruding from cracked mouths, the eyes that stared at everything but saw nothing.

  Sullivan Canyon would be like that, only worse, and it was not a sight any man should see twice in a lifetime.

  “Up ahead, where the cottonwoods are growing, we’ll stash the sack there,” Crane said. “And that’s where we’ll tell Stark to meet us.”

  Constantly checking their back trail and the rock-faced hills around them, Masterson looked uneasy.

  “Gus, you could hide a regiment among the trees up there on the hills. They could be watching us.”

  The marshal’s eyes scanned the juniper and piñon cresting the hilltops. This was high rim country and serried ranks of aspen grew in the upper elevations.

  “We’ll have to take our chances,” Crane said. “Hiding the money sack is the only way to lure Stark away from the rest of them.”

  “Thin,” Masterson grumbled. “By God, it’s thin.”

  The man was talking to himself and Crane let it go. He didn’t need anyone to tell him how thin it was. He knew.

  Cottonwoods stretched along both banks of a narrow mountain creek that ran, surprisingly cold, over a pebbled bottom. Tufted grass grew among the trees along with scattered wildflowers and a few stands of prickly pear. Bees droned sleepily among the blossoms and the heat lay heavy on the cottonwoods, the sun casting dappled shadows on the grass at their feet.

  “Over there,” Crane said, nodding in the direction of a jumble of sandstone boulders.

  He and Masterson stepped out of the leather and Crane stuffed the sack in a space between two rocks. He answered the question on Masterson’s face.

  “If they’re watching us, they’ll find it. If they’re not, it’s as safe there as anywhere else.”

  “If you say so, Gus.”

  The marshal nodded. “I say so.”

  He stepped to the buckskin and loosed the cinch. “The horses are still tuckered from yesterday. We’ll water them and let them graze for a while.”

  The lawmen led their horses to the creek and let them drink. After a while the tired animals started to munch the rich grass among the trees.

  Crane settled his back against a cottonwood and began to build a smoke. Masterson took a place beside him and tilted his hat over his eyes as the bees sang a lullaby and the chuckling creek provided a drowsy counterpoint.

  The lawmen didn’t know it then, but they had just made a big mistake.

  Chapter 28

  When a general knows his enemy, he reinforces his line where he expects an attack.

  But what of an enemy he neither knows nor expects? If he’s blindsided by a flank attack from this unknown threat and his line is totally unprepared, his only options are to fight and die, or retreat.

  Crane and Masterson were now in that position, but they had only one option—and it wasn’t retreat.

  There were four of them, drifters who had been loafing around Rawhide Flat since the bank was robbed. Warned by some animal instinct, or out of a genuine desire not to endanger their sorry hides, they had elected not to ride with Ben Hollister and had thus escaped the Sullivan Canyon massacre.

  The grinning man who seemed to be their leader was tall and skinny, with a ragged mustache that perfectly matched his tattered, filthy shirt, black pants and mule-eared boots.

  The other three were close copies of the first, just as dirty, but bearded.

  But the guns they carried were clean, oiled and ready for bullet business.

  “Howdy gents,” the skinny man said. “No need for palaver here. We’ll just take the money and then be on our way an’ no harm done.”

  Crane and Masterson rose slowly to their feet.

  “There is no money,” Masterson said.

  “Ah, but isn’t that a bald-faced lie?” the skinny man said. “Have we not followed you from town? Did we not see, with our own two eyes, the marshal, there, stash the fifty thousand dollars in the rocks?”

  “You boys ride on,” Crane said. “You’ve got no need to die here. We told you, there is no money.”

  “Die is it?” The skinny man grinned. “My friend, you two are the ones who are going to die. And, I’ll tell you no lie, it’s truly sorry I am about that.”

  He turned his head. “Jacob, get the money.”

  Whatever the skinny man’s name was, however long he’d lived, whether he had a loving wife and children or a Bible-reading old ma, no longer mattered to him or anyone else.

  He died with Deputy United States Marshal Augustus Crane’s bullet in his brainpan.

  The man called Jacob drew rein and frantically tried to bring up his rifle.

  Crane shot him dead.

  Masterson was firing.

  Another of the riders went down, grunting in surprise as a bullet thudded into his chest and a second nailed him before he hit the ground.

  The fourth outlaw, a big man with streaks of gray in his beard, cursed, swung his horse around and set spurs to its ribs.

  Crane fired twice and emptied the man’s saddle. A drift of gun smoke crept between the cottonwoods like a mist and the ringing echoes of the gunshots seemed to linger in the motionless air.

  Masterson looked at Crane.

  “When it comes right down to it, you’re not a talking man, are you, Gus?”

  The marshal shrugged as he reloaded his Colt. “I’d nothing left to say. They were notified.”

  Masterson checked the downed men.

  “This one’s still alive,” he called out.

  Crane stood and looked at the man. He was the one Masterson had shot.

  “Your time is short,” the marshal said. “Best you make your peace with your maker.”

  “My name . . . is . . . my pa named me for a star . . . Epsilon. It—it means ‘the swallower.’ ” He grinned. “I just done swallowed a heap o’ lead, huh?”

  “Some,” Crane allowed.

  The dying man’s eyes filmed. “I wish . . . I wish I’d never left Texas,” he said.

  Then he was gone.

  “He was game enough,” Masterson said with faint praise.

  Crane nodded. “Yeah, he died game. But if he was planning to rob somebody, he should have put in a lot more practice with the Colt’s gun.” He waved a hand. “All of them should.”

  “Now I come to study on it, I sure thought they would have got their work in better than they did,” Masterson said. “The skinny one that done all the talking should have rode up and plugged you right off, Gus. Dropped you where you stood. I would’ve if I’d been him.”

  “Well, he talked too much, just like you. And just like you again, Masterson, he was a mighty irritating man.”

  The lawmen dabbed loops on the four bodies and dragged them behind their horses up a nearby hill, hiding them among the roots of the trees.

  The marshal checked on the sack again. Then he and the sheriff swung north.

  It’s no easy thing to kill a man, and Crane did not take the deaths of the four hapless robbers lightly.

  But they had taken their chances and it hadn’t worked out for them. They had spit into the wind and in so doing had tr
ied to defy the workings of cause and effect: if you try to do harm to a man, he’s going to do harm to you.

  From long experience, Masterson read the signs. “Those four dead men troubling you, Gus?”

  “Some. I wish it hadn’t happened.”

  “It happened.”

  “They could have been better.”

  “You ever think that if they’d been better we could both be dead?”

  Crane considered that. “I’ll study on that some,” he said finally.

  “Don’t study on it too much, Gus. We’re getting mighty close to Ben Hollister’s range.”

  Night shadows were already gathering in the dips and hollows of the craggy land. The sky was tinged with gold and lilac and already a single star hung like a lantern to the north. Eastward, a ribbon of dark purple loomed over the peaks of the Pine Nut Mountains, its leading edge fraying slightly as it sought to spread west. After drowsing away the hot afternoon, the wind was shaking itself awake, stirring the branches of piñon and juniper up on the blue rock rims.

  When the lawmen reached the southern edge of the Rafter-T range, they discovered that a wide section of fence had been cut and fence posts leveled to allow the passage of the wagons.

  Straight as a lance aimed at Ben Hollister’s heart, the tracks cut across prime pasture in the direction of the ranch house.

  The moon had begun its slow climb into the darkening sky and the newly awakened wind snuffled at Crane and Masterson like a playful pup.

  The sheriff glanced over his shoulder, then turned to Crane. “Riders behind us. Dang, I knew I’d been smelling skunks for the last ten minutes.”

  “How many?”

  “Too many.”

  “Are they keeping their distance?”

  “Seems like.”

  “Then ignore them and keep on riding.”

  “Gus, I always had it planned that if I ever got plugged, I’d rather it was in the front than the back. Looks better at the funeral, like.”

  “They won’t shoot. At least not until we talk to Stark.”

  “Should I go tell them boys that, so we’re all on the same page?”

  “Paul, you’re a talking man for sure, but I never did peg you for a worrying man.”

  Masterson gave the marshal a sidelong glance. “We’re following a wagon road right into hell and there’s a bunch of hard cases on our back trail. Don’t you think I have the right to be worried?”

  Crane smiled. “Like my old pa used to say, never joke with sheriffs, range cooks and mules as they have no sense of humor. Of course you have a right to be worried. And so do I.”

  “Are you worried?”

  “Uh-huh. As a steer in a packing plant.”

  “Thanks. That sure delivers a heap of confidence to a man.”

  Like many Western men, Crane was an enthusiastic reader of Sir Walter Scott, when any of his novels could be found.

  To him, the scattered campfires blazing in the night around the Rafter-T ranch house looked like the encampment of a vast, medieval army, a barbaric display of scarlet, purple and, where the shadows fell thickest and moonlight lingered, fish scale gray.

  Drawing rein, the marshal indicated that Masterson should do the same.

  He turned in the saddle.

  “You boys! Ride on by. We’re giving you the road.”

  There were eight of them, sodbusters astride good horses, but sitting like sacks of corn in their saddles. But these were the men who had wiped out Hollister’s punchers and the marshal did not take them lightly.

  The riders came on, warily. All carried either rifles or shotguns, their faces pale blurs in the waxing moonlight.

  This close to the camp, they seemed content to pass on by, but Crane caused a few to stop as he said, “Tell Stark we’ll meet him outside the camp. We don’t plan on riding in there.”

  “You scared, lawman?” a tall, bearded man sneered. He looked like a hayseed, but under the brim of his hat his eyes burned like coals.

  “Just careful,” Crane said. “You heard what I said. Now tell him.”

  “The Prophet ain’t gonna like it.”

  A sudden flare of anger in Crane. “I don’t give a—” He thought better of what he was about to say, and settled for, “Just tell him.”

  The tall man shrugged. “Your funeral.”

  He rode past and for a moment the marshal’s heart stopped beating in his chest.

  The man had the burlap sack tied to his saddle horn.

  Chapter 29

  Crane and Masterson drew rein about a hundred yards from the Starks’ camp.

  Already armed men were drifting out from the wagons in ones and twos to form a loose skirmish line.

  All this was done in silence. There was no talk.

  A full moon climbed higher into the sky and the rising wind set the campfires to dancing. Tall flames undulated wildly and scattered ruby red sparks into the darkness.

  Crane turned his head and whispered, “The sodbusters have found the sack.”

  Masterson gave an exasperated sigh, then said, “Gus, now you tell me? We should be hightailing it out of here right now.”

  “No, it’s the only chance I’ve got to free Sarah and I have to take it. Maybe I can convince those folks back there that Stark is playing them for fools.”

  “And if you can’t?”

  “Then we cut and run and fight another day.”

  Masterson shook his head. “This isn’t going to work. We’re playing it all wrong.”

  “How else can we play it?”

  “Like I said, get the hell out of here before it’s too late.”

  “We’ll make our try and see what happens,” Crane said.

  He kneed his horse forward at a walk and stopped again when he was twenty yards from the pickets standing outside the wagons, now grown to sixty or seventy alert riflemen.

  Crane stood in the stirrups. “You men,” he yelled, “Reuben Stark has lied to you. This is mountain rangeland, an inch of dirt lying on top of ten miles of bedrock. It can’t be plowed or farmed. All you’ll grow here is rocks, misery and starvation. Surely, you owe more than that to your wives and children.”

  Seventy silent statues stared back at Crane. There was no sound but the dry crackle of fires and the mystified murmur of the wind.

  “Ask Stark about the hundred thousand dollars he’s demanding from the town of Rawhide Flat!” the marshal said. “It’s not for you. He wants the money for himself. He plans to run out on you. All of you, man, woman and child, will be left here to face the law and then prison, and, for some of you, the hangman’s noose.”

  Crane’s eyes scanned the ranks of stoical riflemen. If there was any reaction to his speech he didn’t detect it.

  Defeated, he sank into the saddle.

  Masterson was beside him. “Good going, Gus. That got them on your side.”

  “They don’t believe me.”

  “Or they don’t want to believe you. They set store by Reuben Stark. They don’t want to hear from you or anybody else that he’s a false prophet.”

  The darkness separated, pulled apart like a dusky curtain, and Reuben Stark took center stage, his sons close behind him. He was followed by a large, silent crowd of women and children, their faces like stone.

  When he was yards from Crane, the old man stopped and held up the burlap sack for all to see.

  “I asked these men for money to help my people, the much beloved sons and daughters of the Archangel Michael.”

  A chorus of cries of “Hallelujah!” and “Amen!” arose.

  Stark’s voice became to a hoarse shout. “This was their reply!”

  He tipped out the contents of the bag Crane had filled with trash, bottles and cans clanging and clattering to the ground.

  “Garbage!” Stark screamed. His white beard streamed in the wind. “Yea, verily, in the minds and eyes of the sinners and deceivers we are as garbage in the wind.”

  A roar of rage went through the crowd and the women began to scream
and pelt the lawmen with rocks and the bottles and cans from the sack.

  Crane ducked his head and fought the nervous buckskin.

  Masterson revealed his hot temper and was lifting his rifle, unwilling to take much more of this treatment.

  “Stop!” Stark yelled. Immediately the shower of rocks stopped.

  The man turned his head. “Bring forth the whore.” Stark’s sons were grinning and Jeptha’s eyes were wild, the eyes of a man enjoying the spectacle and eager to kill.

  The night had grown darker and an ominous blackness had crept into the camp like a cloaked thief.

  Crane smelled rain on the wind, but faint and far-off. To the east the sky thrummed with heat lightning, a blush of red trembling in the clouds like a virgin bride.

  A couple of buxom women dragged Sarah to Stark’s side. She was wearing the new nightgown Crane had bought for her. It had been an expensive afterthought addition to Minnie Lewis’ bill that had further strained his meager purse. But now the garment was stained and there was blood on the shoulder from a deep cut at the corner of Sarah’s mouth.

  The girl saw the marshal and hope briefly gleamed in her eyes, quickly replaced by an expression of absolute despair. “Gus, leave here,” she said. “You can’t save me. Nobody can.”

  Stark grabbed Sarah by the back of her neck and shook her into silence. The girl didn’t look scared, just beaten, defeated.

  “Crane!” Stark roared. He drew a bowie knife from his belt and shoved the keen edge against Sarah’s throat. “I told you if the money was not forthcoming the whore would be skun. And I meant it.”

  He looked around and tossed the knife to Jeptha. “Here, boy, carve the hide off’n her.”

  “Sure, Pa,” the man said. He touched his tongue to his top lip, then advanced on the girl. His face was shining with reflected firelight, shifting shades of scarlet and blue, his eyes filled with a lustful hunger.

  “Stark! Tell us what you want,” Crane yelled.

  The old man waved his son away. “Hold your hand for now, Jeptha.”

  Stark looked at the marshal. “What I’ve always wanted. It’s about the money, the money, the money.”