The Comancheros

by Stephen Lodge

  More than a few of the men spoke their agreement to Charley’s plan.

  “So it’s Charley’s plan,” said the sheriff. “You, Brady, Clemmons, and Stillwell, take Holliday and Roscoe on around ta the other side of this rock pile. Charley, you and the rest of the boys stay here with me. We’ll do the shootin’, because it only makes sense that they’ll run for the river once they hear our shots fired.”

  “First,” Charley cut in. “Don’t you think it might be wise to send someone in there to scout the situation before we commence with the shooting?”

  The men exchanged questioning looks.

  “That way, we’ll at least get an idea of how many they are.”

  “An’ I s’pose you’re the one wants ta go,” said the sheriff.

  “Everyone stay right here,” said Charley. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

  He reined around. There was a moment of thought, then he reined his horse back to facing them.

  “Henry Ellis,” he called out.

  The boy rode his mount over to where Charley was.

  “Yes, Grampa,” he answered.

  Charley leaned in to the boy, as close as he could get.

  “If anything happens to me, the ranch belongs to you. Understand? It was supposed to go to your mother, but that ain’t the way it’s worked out, is it?”

  He reached over and put his hand on the back of the boy’s neck and gave Henry Ellis a squeeze.

  “I love you, son. But you already know that.”

  He looked directly into the boy’s eyes for a long moment, then he turned and rode away toward Dead Cat Rocks.

  Henry Ellis followed his grampa with his eyes, until the old Ranger disappeared behind a huge, granite boulder.

  Charley nudged Dice deeper into the cluster of giant boulders, until he came across several pair of tracks that crossed the narrow path he had chosen.

  He decided to follow the tracks, and he reined Dice in their direction.

  The hoofprints went along for about one-fifth of a mile, before the ground in front of him turned from dirt to gravel.

  Charley could still make out the shapes of the horseshoes in the small stones, so he kept on following.

  Suddenly the prints disappeared. To the right, a flat rock veered off, leading to another passageway. Charley urged Dice up onto the even surface, and when he got to the other channel between the rocks, he picked up sign of the hoofprints again, he dismounted, then kept on following.

  Back where the posse was stopped, one of the townsmen who’d been deputized called over to the sheriff.

  “Just how long are we gonna wait fer Sunday, Sheriff? What if something’s happened to him?”

  Roscoe moved in quickly, puffing his chest out and almost knocking the man down.

  “Ain’t nothin’ happened ta Charley Sunday, mister,” he said. “And if ya can’t come up with something positive ta say, don’t say it.”

  Roscoe moved over to Henry Ellis, putting his arm around the boy.

  “And next time ya open yer mouth with somethin’ distasteful, pay attention to who just might be listenin’.”

  The sheriff turned to Roscoe.

  “That won’t happen again,” he said. “I promise you that, Roscoe.”

  The townsman nodded, pulling down the brim of his hat.

  Deep in the rock formation, Charley was moving along slower. Every so often he would hear strange noises, causing him to hesitate.

  As he rounded a slight bend in the pathway between the boulders, something caught his eye and he ducked back, so not to be seen.

  Charley slid down to his belly. A closer look from ground level revealed the entrance to a large cave. It was from this opening that Charley heard the noises of restless horses, plus low mutterings of men talking.

  He realized he had to get around to the opposite side of the cave’s entrance before he could see better what was going on inside. And he knew he’d have to climb the almost sheer surface of the rocks beside him in order to do so.

  He reached down and pulled his boots off, one by one, slipping his Walker Colt inside one of the stovepipes for safekeeping. Then, he started climbing up the rock to his left, with his fingers and toes both clinging as best they could to prevent his slipping. He finally reached a ledge he knew would take him where he wanted to be.

  He crawled along slowly on the outcrop, stopping completely one or two times as a pebble came loose and bounced down the sides of the rocks, landing on the path below.

  When he was finally opposite the cave’s entrance, he lowered his head as far as he could, then looked across the gap, peeking inside.

  He could only make out one horse and one guard, just inside the opening. But beyond the one guard there was a fire going. Its flames lit up the walls of the cave, revealing it to be much larger than Charley had expected.

  He counted fourteen horses tied to a makeshift picket line. Plus, there were just as many men, it appeared, sitting around the fire, talking and drinking coffee.

  Beyond the fire, it looked to Charley as if the grotto went on forever, at least until the fire’s light began to fade. It eventually went to black, completely.

  Charley watched for a while. He counted again and noticed there were two men less than there were horses.

  “Hold it right there,” came a voice from directly above him. “Hand me your gun, an’ start climbin’ down. There’s someone in that cave who’ll be wantin’ ta meet you, mister.”

  “Ain’t got a gun,” said Charley. “It slipped outta my hand while I was climbing and dropped into a crevasse that was too deep for me to retrieve it.”

  “An’ what happened to your boots?” said another voice. “Did they drop inta the same cre—”

  “I took ’em off so’s I’d get a better grip on these rocks,” said Charley. “I don’t remember where they are. Down there somewhere.”

  He indicated the path below.

  “Well, you start climbing down, mister, and keep your hands where we can see ’em.”

  “Where else could I keep ’em, you two are above me,” said Charley under his breath.

  He slid himself backward across the shelf he had crawled over to get there. Then he turned himself around and began descending in the same manner he’d climbed up. When he got to the bottom, very close to where he’d discarded his boots, he planted his two feet and looked up.

  The two gang members had already started down behind him, with the second man laying back to keep Charley covered.

  When the first man’s boots hit solid ground, he drew his gun and aimed it at Charley. Then he called out to his friend who was still up in the rocks.

  “I got him covered, Pete,” he said. “You can come ahead now.”

  As the man started his climb down, the other one appeared to be watching his friend’s every move. That was when Charley spoke.

  “Mind if I put my boots on, fellas?”

  Those inside the cave heard the two shots echo back and forth between the walls of the narrow rock canyons that made up the Dead Cat rock formation. They all stood up and went for their horses.

  Outside, Charley waited for the gang to show themselves. He could hear their horses whinnying and snorting as the gang members mounted up, and the sounds of the horses’ hooves as they began galloping.

  But they weren’t galloping toward the cave’s entrance. They were galloping toward the back.

  Charley got to the entrance just in time to see the final few horses disappear into the blackness at the back of the cave.

  Even though he was still in his bare feet, Charley ran as fast as he could after the outlaws, firing off a few more shots in their wake. And when he rounded a bend in the darkened tunnel, he could see the light of another opening—the gang’s escape route—with the last rider breaking away into the outside gloom, doing his best to catch up with the others.

  Charley’s final shot hit the reluctant rider dead center, and he tumbled out of his saddle, hitting the dirt—along with several cac
tus plants—as he rolled to a stop.

  The sheriff decided that the posse would camp at the base of Dead Cat Rocks for the night. Charley had appeared, leading Dice, with two bodies slung over his saddle. After he dropped them off, he mounted up, then with Rod riding with him, they circled the rock formation until they came to the cave’s other entrance, hidden behind more giant boulders to keep out prying eyes.

  They found the third body about sixty yards from the cave’s second entrance.

  “How did you manage to hit this one?” said Rod. “You told us you had to leave your horse behind, and you never said anything about taking your rifle with you.”

  “I used my Walker Colt,” said Charley. “Samuel Colt never made a better sighted pistol.”

  That night, after another nice meal prepared by Roscoe and Kelly, the posse sat around talking about Charley’s chance meeting with the Cropper Brothers’ Gang. And how, if that rear entrance had been on the eastern side of the Dead Cat rock formation and not the western side, they would have had them all in custody right now, hands down.

  Someone had brought along a harmonica, and another had concealed his fiddle in a bag that he tied to his saddle. By the time the mess kits had been cleaned the music got under way—and the men, along with Charley, Henry Ellis, and Kelly, sang old cowboy songs into the wee hours of the night.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  It stayed dry all night, so finding the tracks of the Cropper Brothers’ Gang wasn’t that difficult to do.

  Following them was a different story. Not because it had started to rain again, and the heavy drops were beginning to wash away the hoofprints, but because the tracks led directly to the banks of the Rio Grande.

  When the posse arrived at the river, they all knew the game was over. Even so, the Cropper Gang had set up their own camp on the Mexican side, and they jeered the posse from across the water’s flow, knowing there was nothing the Texans could legally do about it.

  “But there’s something I can do about it,” Charley was telling the sheriff. “I can go in alone—”

  “No, you can’t, Charley,” said the sheriff. “You’ve been deputized, and the law says—”

  “The law says that I can’t, because officially, I’m part of a law enforcement agency. And law enforcement in our country ain’t supposed to cross international borders while in pursuit of anyone.”

  “That’s right, Charley,” said the sheriff. “Sometimes I forget that you were in law enforcement yourself for a lot of years.”

  “Un-deputize me, Willingham,” said Charley with a stern look.

  “What?” said the sheriff.

  “Un-deputize me . . . and while you’re at it, un-deputize Roscoe, Feather, Holliday, and Rod. I just can’t stand here while the lawbreakers that we’re after are as close to us as they are, Willingham.”

  “It can’t be done, Charley,” said the sheriff. “It’s gotta be done official-like . . . when our hunt is all over.”

  “Either you un-deputize us, Willingham, or we’ll un-deputize ourselves. Now, what’ll it be?”

  The sheriff shook is head. Then he called the rest of the outfit over. Kelly and Henry Ellis came along out of curiosity.

  When they were all standing in front of the sheriff, facing him, the law officer raised his right hand.

  With some confusion, the others followed his lead.

  The sheriff lowered his hand.

  “Put yer hands down. That’s only fer the swearin’-in ceremony, damn it. I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed ta do ta un-deputize ya.”

  “How ’bout if we take off our badges and hand ’em back to you, Willingham?” said Charley. “Think that’ll work?”

  While the sheriff was getting even more flustered, five deputy badges landed in the sand at his feet.

  “So that’s it?” he said.

  “Pretty simple, wasn’t it, Willingham?” said Charley. “Now if you want to take the others and head back to Juanita, go right ahead.”

  “I want to go with you, Grampa,” said Henry Ellis.

  “Me too,” added Kelly. “When you speak of the Texas Outfit, you can’t leave me and Henry Ellis out of it. We’re part of the outfit, Charley. We want to go along with you. Like always.”

  “All right,” said Charley. “You can be your husband’s responsibility, Miss Kelly . . . but who’s gonna watch after Henry Ellis?”

  A big smile was growing across the woman’s face.

  “That’s why I’m going to be there,” she said. “To watch over Henry Ellis.”

  Charley smiled. He shook his head.

  “Sometimes you can be very conniving, Miss Kelly.”

  He winked.

  “And so can you, Mr. Sunday,” she said, winking back.

  When the posse turned for home, heading for the road on which they had come, they had to pass Dead Cat Rocks to get there. As they rode by the rear entrance to the gang’s hideout cave, Charley and the outfit split off from the others and spurred their mounts straight into the stony hillside, which appeared to consume them all, as if the rock formation were a living creature.

  By the time the remainder of the posse was passing the ruins of Sam Marley’s adobe, a quick look over the shoulder showed Dead Cat Rocks was standing just as silent and foreboding as it had been when they’d first observed the unique stone configuration.

  Inside the cave in Dead Cat Rocks, Charley led his outfit through the darkness until the gray light from the inside entrance lit up the old camp used by the Cropper Gang.

  Charley told everyone to loosen their horses’ cinches but not to unsaddle them. Then he had them tie the animals to the rope picket line the robbers had left behind in their haste.

  They all spread their bedrolls on the floor of the cave, following Charley’s example.

  “All right,” said Charley. “You can all sleep until dusk, then, after we eat, we’re goin’ across the Rio and get those hombres.”

  “We gonna ride ’em down right there in Mexico?” asked Roscoe, “or are we gonna just chase ’em back over here where we got legal jurisdiction?”

  “We don’t have legal jurisdiction on our side of the river anymore, Roscoe. We un-deputized ourselves . . . Remember?”

  “Then, what do you aim to do, Charley?”

  “We’ll just follow ’em on across the river and bring ’em back the same way,” said Charley. “Just like we done when we were Rangers.”

  “But we was still breakin’ the law when we done that back in the old days,” said Roscoe. “How’s this time gonna be any different?”

  “Roscoe,” said Charley. “Ain’t it true that no one ever bothered us about that law, once we got whoever we were chasing back across the border and into our custody?”

  “That’s true, Charley,” said Roscoe. “But that was in the middle of the 1880s . . . we’re in the twentieth century now.”

  “Just the wee early part of the twentieth century, Roscoe,” said Charley. “Still feels like the nineteenth to me.”

  “Well, I’m still goin’ with ya, pardner, whether I like what yer doin’ or not.”

  “Why, thank you, Roscoe,” said Charley. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  They left the protection of the cave just a little after nightfall. As they urged their horses out of the cavern’s rear entrance—the way that they had entered—an icy blast of stinging sleet battered them head on. They knew it was still cold outside the confines of the cave, but they weren’t expecting this.

  Henry Ellis rode up beside his grampa, blinking away the ice crystals that the sleet was depositing on his lashes. A knitted neck scarf had been wrapped tight around his neck, something Kelly had done, and his right hand was gloveless.

  “Where in tarnation is your right glove, son?” Charley asked gruffly.

  The boy looked up to him. He appeared to be holding back tears.

  “I musta lost it, Grampa,” he answered. “I musta left it back in the cave somewhere.”

  “Well, here,�
� said Charley, slipping off his own right glove and handing it to the boy. “Take this one . . . but don’t lose it, for heaven’s sake.”

  They rode along in the sleet for another few yards before Charley continued.

  “Now get yourself back to where Miss Kelly is. I don’t want you up here where you could get hurt.”

  The boy reined around and went back to where he had come from in the column of riders. Charley blew on his bare right hand, then he stuck it in the pocket of his sheepskin coat, which he wore underneath his oil-skin slicker.

  The sleet made seeing anything at a distance nearly impossible. When they came to the river’s edge there was no way of knowing the depth of the water, so Charley just took a chance and spurred Dice into the near-freezing current.

  He moved out into the river’s flow with the rest of the outfit following. God had been with him in his choice for a crossing, because the water never got deeper than the bellies of the horses.

  As they came out on the Mexican side, with the horses’ hooves clattering as they slipped and slid on the shoreline pebbles, Charley signaled once again for the group to gather around.

  “All right,” he whispered. “We’ll be attacking on foot, so everyone’ll have to dismount. Kelly, Henry Ellis? I’m putting the two of you in charge of the horses.”

  Charley dismounted. The others did the same. Charley had more to say. He continued in his low whisper.

  “Rod, Feather, you two go wide around to the left. Roscoe, Holliday . . . you two go to the right and stay wide of the gang’s camp. I’ll stay right here until you’ve all had enough time to get into your positions. Then I’m going to fire off a shot as a signal, and I want every one of us to charge that camp a-whooping and a-hollering, just like we Rebs done in those final battles we had with the Yanks.”

  “Ya sure ya don’t want us ta fire our guns, Charley?” whispered Holliday.

  “No sir, I don’t,” answered Charley. “I don’t want us taking any chances of hitting our own people in this damn storm. I figure we’ll surprise ’em enough with our rebel yells, and that should give us enough time to fight our battle on foot . . . with our fists and Bowie knives.”