by Ralph Cotton
“Now let’s see if it works,” he murmured up to the roan with some measure of satisfaction. The horse stood with its head cocked, looking down at him curiously as Sam levered a round out of the chamber and caught it. He let out a sigh, then stepped back from the roan and pointed the rifle into the air and pulled the trigger. The rifle bucked; an orange-blue fire streaked from the wet barrel. “All right, we’re armed,” Sam said, standing, looking the rifle over in his hands. Smoke curled from the wet barrel. “Let’s see what that shot brings in.”
The shot caused the roan to jerk back a step as the rain turned on the rising wind and blew in hard against them. Sam took the short stub of the rein and held the roan in place.
“We’re getting down out of these rocks,” he said. “There’s a big cat up here prowling around for breakfast.”
The roan turned its head against the cold rain and chuffed and stood pawing at the rocky ground.
“I don’t like it either,” Sam said. “Get some rest. I’ll be needing a ride out of you before the day’s over.” The weather was getting worse, but he knew he couldn’t let it dictate terms to him. Orez was out there using the weather to whatever advantage he could. Sam knew he could do no less himself, not if he wanted to put an end to the man once and for all.
The roan grumbled and jerked on the broken rein, as if it understood the Ranger’s proposition and would have none of it.
Sam checked the horse over for any injuries, then stooped, picked up the muddy saddle, saddlebags and all, and hefted the load onto his shoulder. Standing, he took the short broken rein and turned in the rain. He weaved and sloshed his way down through the wet rocks, the roan at his heels. In the gray-black distance thunder rumbled out behind a sharp streak of lightning.
When the Ranger and the roan descended the rock hill and crossed a muddy plane of swirled flattened wild grass, Sam stood the reluctant horse at the edge of a sloping gravel pan. The horse started to venture a step forward, then stopped short, drew back and stood, head lowered in the blowing rain, watching the Ranger walk the last forty feet out through the soft mud to the water’s edge.
Broken Winchester in hand, Sam stood above the man’s wet leather shoulder satchel and flipped it over in the mud with his rifle barrel. He had hoped beyond logic that the wrapped gun and gun belt were still there, but no such luck. He looked all around until he knew for certain the gun was not lying nearby, then followed the muddy edge to where a long black swallow-tailed dress coat lay spread on the ground, partly covered with settled gravel, silt and mud. But he didn’t care.
He picked the drenched coat up, shook it out, wrung it between his hands, shook it again and put it on. He buttoned it, feeling it cold across his wet chest. It’ll have to do, he told himself, knowing his body heat would serve to warm it a little.
He turned and walked a few yards along the muddy edge, noting that the roan also turned at the edge of flattened grass and walked along with him. When he stopped, the horse stopped; it stood once again pawing the wet ground with its head lowered against the rain.
Sam looked all around among the strewn articles of clothing and spotted a man’s pair of leather braided gallows linked at the middle and a short dress boot lying sole up in the mud. He picked up the gallows on his rifle barrel and stuck them down in his coat pocket. He turned the boot over with his rifle barrel, picked it up and slung mud and water from it. Shoving it under his arm, he turned and walked back to the roan. There he put the wet boot on and cut the link holding the gallows together. He tied the two gallows end to end, then tied one end to the roan’s broken rein. Rain blew harder, whipping the swallow-tailed coat around his thighs.
“Let’s get out of this mud,” he said. “Go shoot this rifle one more time.”
But almost before he got the words out of his mouth, a shotgun blast resounded from farther down the stream of runoff water. The roan pricked its ears; the Ranger froze for a second, staring in the direction of the shot.
Maynard Dawson, the shotgun rider? Sam thought.
“Come on,” he said to the roan, grabbing the saddle and throwing it up onto his shoulder. He led the horse away from the mud and onto the gravelly apron below a short stretch of low hills. Not wanting to spare another bullet, especially now that he knew someone had heard his shot, he walked to the high end of the gravel apron, where he could see beyond a low rise to another lower land break.
“And there you are . . . ,” he said, seeing Maynard Dawson struggling forward, his short-barreled shotgun hanging from his hand, Dan Long draped over his shoulder. Footprints led snaking back out of sight along the path of last night’s flood runoff.
Sam whistled loud and long through the blowing rain, but was unable to make himself heard from so far away.
“All right,” he said, as if giving in. “One more bullet.”
Before firing his rifle in the air, he looked all around and walked to a place where he knew he was free from shadows, provided Dawson could see him at all through the harsh weather.
Waiting until the wind and rain lulled for a moment, Sam raised the rifle, fired it and began waving it back and forth slowly over his head. He saw Dawson stop at the sound of the shot and look all around in the right direction.
“Now see me up here,” Sam said, still waving the broken rifle. Beside him the roan watched curiously.
The Ranger had all but given up when suddenly he saw the shotgun rider lift his shotgun above his head and wave it back and forth slowly in reply.
Sam stopped waving the rifle and pumped his arm up and down in the rain. Before losing sight of the man in the rain, Sam saw him lower Long from his shoulder, look up and pump his shotgun up and down, mimicking Sam’s movements.
“Good for you, Dawson,” he said as if the shotgun rider could hear him. Wind and rain lashed harder than it had all morning, washing the shotgun rider from sight, but Sam had seen enough to know they had spotted each other. That was good enough for now, he thought.
“Stay where you’re at, Dawson,” he said aloud to himself, causing the roan to prick its ears again and stare at him quizzically. “We’ll come down to you as quick as we can.”
Thunder rumbled again, this time louder, moving closer. The roan tensed and chuffed and tried to toss its head. But Sam held the makeshift rein firmly. Once again rain slammed in sidelong, sharply, like a handful of darts. Overhead the sky blackened.
Chapter 6
By the time the Ranger reached the shotgun rider on the lower terrace, the brunt of the present storm had passed on. The wind had fallen off; the rain had dissipated to a fine, cold mist. Yet, on the low, dark horizon, another front had already begun forming up, gathering itself like some vengeful army ready to mount another assault. A low rumble of thunder resounded along the curve of the earth. The roan chuffed and grumbled as if cursing the thunder and rode on at a labored gait with kicked-up mud clinging to its belly and legs.
Atop the roan Sam studied the dark sky and guided the horse around a muddy basin that had receded overnight only to begin rising again throughout the morning. As he rode closer to the shotgun rider and the body of Dan Long lying on the wet ground, the old coachman stood up where he’d seated himself on a rock and stared grimly toward him.
“I never expected to see you or your horse again, Ranger,” the shotgun rider said as Sam brought the roan to a halt and stepped down from the saddle.
“Nor I you,” Sam replied, leading the roan closer.
“When I heard your shot, I had to think long and hard before I fired my last load,” Dawson said.
“I’m glad you did fire it,” Sam said. He looked down at the muddy shotgun leaning against the rock, then at Long’s body on the ground at Dawson’s bare, bloody feet. “I see your driver didn’t make it,” he added respectfully.
The shotgun rider’s eyes grew watery as he shook his head and spoke.
“I found him adrift and p
ulled him out of the floodwater,” he said. “It wasn’t the water that killed him, though.” He gestured a nod down at Long, showing Sam the deep wound in the coach driver’s abdomen. “He had a piece of iron railing from the top edge of the coach stuck through him.” He paused and added, “I pulled it out so’s I could carry him better—couldn’t stand looking at it sticking in him anyway.” He took a deep breath.
Sam looked at the long trail of bare footprints weaving across the wet desert long behind the shotgun rider. He looked down at Dan Long’s wet boots. Then he looked at Dawson’s bloody, mud-smeared feet.
“Oh, I know what you’re thinking, Ranger,” Dawson said. “Why didn’t I leave him there and come back for him later? I couldn’t do it, leave ol’ Dan’l that way. This desert is full of lobos and coyotes. Dan’l would never have let me hear the end of it if I let them eat him.”
“I understand,” Sam said quietly, knowing the old man was deep in his grief. “I was just wondering. . . . Think your pard would mind if you wore his boots? You can see he’s got no more need for them, can’t you?”
“Oh yeah, I can see that,” Dawson replied. “I know he’s dead and all. But Dan’l was a strange one when it come to his stuff. I can see him not liking the idea of me wearing his boots.” He looked down and wiggled his thick bloody toes. A cactus needle stood stuck atop his mud-streaked foot. “The thing is, I couldn’t bring myself to take them off him.” He looked off northeast. “Anyways, Nogales will be sending somebody out for us any time. They always do when a storm like this hits and they have a coach out in it. Especially when they know there’s passengers.”
Sam nodded and looked off in the direction of Nogales for a moment.
“What about those passengers?” he asked. “Did you see what become of them?”
The old coachman shook his head.
“Not a sign,” he said. “But it was so dark, they could have drowned right beside me. I’d never seen it unless lightning flashed on them.” He shook his scraggly head again, reliving the night’s experience. “I’ll tell you what. That’s the closest to hell I’ll ever be until the real hell comes along.”
“They have to be down along there somewhere,” Sam said regarding the two passengers.
“I’d say so too,” said Dawson. “But I never seen them. I found dead coyotes, dead lizards, dead coach horses—even found a foreleg of one where the poor thing must’ve got it wrenched off between some rocks. But no passengers, not yet anyway.”
“How long do you suppose before somebody will come looking for you?” Sam asked.
“They could already be on their way,” said Dawson, picking at the seat of his wet trousers as he looked off toward Nogales. “That is if the weather ain’t as bad in that direction.”
“We’re a far ways off the trail,” Sam said, considering things. “It could take them some time finding us.”
“A situation like this, they’ll look for smoke or fire all up along the rocks,” Dawson said. “Trouble is, where are we going to find any dry wood, except under some overhang higher up?” He looked up the steep rocky hillsides. “You like to climb as much as I do?” he added wryly.
“Come on,” Sam said, noting the gray-black sky moving closer overhead. “Let’s get your pard across the horse’s back and get on up there. It looks like this blow’s not finished with us yet.”
“Blasted damn desert,” said Dawson, standing in the rain. “One minute a man’s ready to sell his soul for enough water to wet his tongue. Next minute he’s fighting for his life to keep from being washed off the earth.” As he spoke, lightning twisted white-gold in the black sky; thunder rumbled in closer and exploded overhead.
“I’ve got his feet,” Sam said, stepping over to Long’s body on the ground and stooping down to pick him up.
Dawson scooped Long up carefully beneath his wet limp shoulders, and the two lifted the body and laid it over the roan’s wet saddle, Sam taking pains to be extra careful owing to the shotgun rider’s feelings toward his fallen comrade.
As the two prepared to leave, Dawson stood beside the horse and patted Long’s wet back.
“I believe you would like Dan’l had you two got to know each other, Ranger,” he said quietly.
“I’m sure of it,” Sam replied. Before the shotgun rider could say any more on the matter, Sam pointed off toward a long shelf of rock halfway up a rocky hillside.
Dawson only stared at him curiously.
“Once we get up there and get a fire going, we’ll both feel a lot better,” Sam said. “You can tell me all about him.”
The old coachman chuckled gruffly and drew his shoulders up against the rain, the wind starting to rebuild.
“I know I talk too much, Ranger. Dan’l tells me that—I mean he told me that all the time,” he said, correcting himself. “Sometimes I get to talking and just get carried away in it. Dan’l always said I’d make a good politician, preacher or such—”
“I understand,” Sam said, gently cutting him short. He took the roan by its single rein and turned it toward the hillsides, his shortened rifle in hand. “We can talk while we’re walking. We don’t want to get caught in this blow that’s coming.”
“I’m with you on that,” Dawson said, following alongside him, limping a little on his bloody feet. “I’ve had enough rain and wind to last me a lifetime.”
They walked on as the rain and wind grew more intense, the storm moving up onto the far edge of the earth, ready for another hard round.
• • •
It was midafternoon when the two sloshed upward among the rocks through a hard, wind-driven rain no less violent than the one they’d survived the night before. Thunder and lightning moved up close on their trail as they reached the ledge running along the hill line and stepped into shelter beneath it. Beside the Ranger, the roan hugged close to the inner rock wall of the overhang and slung his wet head. Long’s body lay draped across the saddle. Water ran down and dripped from his purple fingertips.
“It looks like it falls back deeper up there,” Sam said, gesturing ahead of them along the stony overhang. Water drained from his drooping hat as he spoke. He took the hat off and slapped it against his leg and put it back on. Beside him, he couldn’t help noticing how Dawson eyed the hat with close attention.
“Is this your hat, Dawson?” Sam asked. “If it is, you’re welcome to it. I found it alongside the floodwater.”
“It belonged to the drummer,” Dawson said. “He was wearing it when Orez started working him over with his pistol barrel—poor sumbitch.” He winched just picturing the incident. “I never saw it after that.”
Sam took the hat off and looked it over. It didn’t look like the sort of hat he usually saw traveling drummers wearing. It looked more the sort of Western wide-brimmed hat a man wore in open country to keep the sun from frying him. He turned it in his hand and put it back on and funneled the front of the wet brim as best he could. Lightning caused the roan to flinch and nicker warily under its breath. Sam held its rein firmly and rubbed its muzzle to calm it as thunder crashed, shaking the whole hillside.
“Let’s keep moving, keep this horse settled,” he said to Dawson, stepping forward, leading the nervous roan.
Dawson picked up twigs and small weathered tree branches from along the dry inner wall as they moved on, the overhang widening for them as they went.
“I know Orez pistol-whipped Weir to make you and Long take him back to town,” Sam said. “But why him, you suppose? Why not you or Long?”
“Good question,” Dawson said. He was stooped down on the ground, picking up more scraps of pine needles, small branches and twigs blown in over time off the desert floor. “Must have been the drummer gave him some sass, I reckon. Dan’l and I watched him walk over to Orez bold as brass and start talking to him. Don’t know what he said, but Orez commenced using his head like a piñata.” Dawson shook his head recount
ing the matter. “Orez’s own men tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t hear of it—kept beating Weir until he was on the ground, still as death. I thought sure he’d killed him.”
Sam only shook his head, recalling the drummer’s face, how badly beaten it was. “Orez could have beaten the poor man half that bad and still served his purpose,” he added, thinking out loud.
“I don’t know how lucky Weir was after all, Ranger,” Dawson said, a nice pile of twigs and needles forming in the crook his arm. “I’d as soon died from the beating than get my head sewed together just in time to get washed away in a flood. Would have saved him a lot of pain, and the rest of us some good whiskey.”
“Yeah, I suppose it would at that,” Sam said, looking back down at the rushing floodwater rising again on the desert floor.
They walked on in silence, the overhang deepening into the hillside, until they came to a spot where the roan stopped all of a sudden as if to say he would go no farther.
“What’s happened to him?” Dawson asked, giving the roan a peculiar look.
“Wolves,” Sam said. He pointed at the ground with the tip of his rifle barrel. The faded paw prints of many wolves ran back and forth on the dusty stone shelf beneath them. Atop the faded prints, new fresh prints stood out. The fresh prints appeared to stop abruptly, circle short and turn back the way they came.
“I hate wolves,” Dawson whispered, his voice lowering with caution. “I expect the storm’s got them stirring about in the daylight.” He glanced around at the gray-black overcast pall, the shadowy blackness beneath the overhang. “If you can call this daylight, that is.”
Sam looked out and around through the heavy silver-threaded rain, the gray endless sheets of it spraying, swirling and spinning away in the wind. In the direction of the trail leading back to Nogales, he saw nothing. But he knew the trail was there, and he knew that between these passing storms a fire and its smoke could be seen should anyone be searching for the stagecoach.
