High Wild Desert

by Ralph Cotton

  Adele said under her breath, “Harvey, I forgive you right now, this minute, if you’re sincere.”

  “I’ve never been more sincere about anything in my life, Adele,” he said. He gripped the bars with both hands. Adele reached up and cupped her hand over his.

  “Then yes, Harvey, I forgive you,” she said. She paused, then said just as quietly, “The Ranger said you told him what brought you out west?”

  “Yes, I told him,” said Lang. “But you don’t want to hear about it . . . do you?” he asked, almost longingly.

  “Harvey, I’d like to hear anything you want to tell me about yourself,” she said. “As long as the Ranger will allow me to stay, I’ve got nothing but time.”

  They looked toward the door where the Ranger stood snapping the same cuffs he’d used on Lang onto Teague’s wrists. They heard Sam say to him, “Let’s go get this done, Teague.”

  When the door closed behind the Ranger and his prisoner, the two looked back at each other through the bars, their hands entwined around the cold black iron.

  PART 3

  Chapter 19

  Outside the Sand Hill Depot, the big engine and its five-car train sat off to itself on a siding in the purple starlit darkness. The first car coupled to the engine, an ornate custom-made Pullman Plainsman, rested with a single lamp glowing behind its drawn curtains. Coupled behind the Pullman sat a mail car that had been converted to an office and operations center for the Fenderson-Gaines Frontier Investments Company. A lamp burned brightly through the half-drawn curtains of the operations car as a telegraph clerk stepped down from its open door and looked back at the man still on the metal steps.

  “I don’t like waking him, Serg,” the clerk said under his breath as the large man stepped down behind him.

  Sergio Oboe grinned at him through a thick dark beard. He held a glowing rail lantern up for the two of them to see by.

  “Sleeping . . . ? If you think he’s sleeping right now, you must be as dumb as you look, Harkens,” said Oboe.

  “You know what I mean,” said the clerk, Chester Harkens. “I know he’s not asleep. But if I was doing what he’s doing right now, I wouldn’t care if my dog had a wild ape by its ass—tell me about it later.”

  “Yeah . . . well,” Oboe replied in a somber tone. “That’s why he is who he is, and we are who we are. Mr. Fenderson sticks to business. If this was about his dog sinking its teeth in a wild ape’s ass, he probably wouldn’t care either.”

  “I was saying that about the dog and ape just to prove a point,” Harkens said. “I find it odd that you might consider that a plausible situation.”

  “I don’t,” said Oboe. “But I find it equally odd that in a conversation about sticking to business, your mind jumped first thing to a dog biting a monkey on its ass.” He gave a dark chuckle. “See? That’s what I mean about Fenderson sticking to business.”

  “I never said monkey,” Harkens offered sullenly. Then he let it go and raised the folded sheet of paper in his hand. “Think this is true?”

  “I’ve never known Henry Teague’s word to be in doubt,” Oboe said. “I wish I could have gotten ahead of everybody and collected that reward myself.”

  “Me too,” said Harkens as they walked on. “Can you imagine five thousand dollars to kill just one man?”

  “I know,” said Oboe. “I’d kill a whole roomful of folks for half that.”

  As the two men walked forward in the bobbing circle of lantern light, Harkens looked back at the train’s black silhouette against the purple desert sky. Next in line behind the operations car sat a stock car housing the needed horses for Hugh Fenderson himself and the six personal guards accompanying him.

  Behind the stock car sat a car that the guards shared. Behind it, at the rear of the train, sat a red caboose where the train’s oiler, fireman and brakemen resided. Turning his eyes forward again, Harkens said, “How can one man be smart enough to acquire all this?”

  “I can tell you,” said Oboe. “I worked for his pa. His pa gave him a bank full of money and said, ‘Here, take this and make some more with it.’” He chuckled. “How smart does that make him?”

  “He could have lost it,” said Harkens.

  “He did lose some of it,” said Oboe. “Some deals he lost on. Some he won on. The same can be said by any of us, only in his case he had more money to begin with.”

  “I was born wrong,” Harkens speculated.

  “Yep, most of us were,” said Oboe. “Mr. Fenderson thinks he made it, but all he did was buy people smart enough to keep making it for him. I know damned well I could have done that much.”

  They stopped at the dark platform of the Pullman car, where the red glow of a burning cigarette met their eyes.

  “I could hear you two halfway down the train,” said a voice behind the red fiery glow. The glow rose and fell as the man took a draw and let out a swirl of gray smoke. “What’s going on anyway?” he asked.

  “We just now got word from New Delmar, Singleton,” said Oboe to Tom Singleton, the man behind the cigarette glow. “The Ranger is dead.”

  “Yeah?” Singleton said, stepping forward out of the deeper blackness of the platform overhang. “Who got him?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Oboe cautioned him. “Nobody is supposed to know until Mr. Fenderson gives the news. Anyway, that’s all the telegram says. ‘The Ranger is dead.’”

  “Damn,” said Singleton.

  Oboe and Harkens looked over at a fancy buggy sitting with its top up, hitched on the other side of the Pullman car.

  “Let’s get it done, then,” Singleton added. “I’ve been wanting to take a peep inside this car all night.”

  He grinned and rapped a big brass knocker on the Pullman car door. Oboe and Harkens stepped up close, the lantern held up, lighting the platform.

  “What is it, Smiley?” said a winded voice on the other side of the door. “This better be good.”

  “We got a telegram from Henry Teague, sir,” Singleton replied. The three looked at an unlit lantern fixture on the upper side of the car door. The fixture made a half turn and disappeared inside the car. A moment passed. The fixture reappeared in a half turn, this time glowing with candlelight. Oboe lowered his lantern, no longer needing it, as the door opened.

  Hugh Fenderson stood in the doorway in a nightshirt and robe he had hastily thrown on. He eagerly grabbed the folded telegram that Harkens held out to him. Behind him, the men watched two women stand up naked from the bed and walk away behind a dressing screen, their arms around each other’s waist.

  Reading the telegram quickly, Fenderson jerked a fresh cigar from the robe’s breast pocket and shoved it into his mouth with a broad grin. At the end Fenderson checked for and found Teague’s three code words: High Wild Desert. He read it again to make sure his eyes were not playing tricks on him. Then he drew a deep, calming breath.

  “Men, the Ranger is dead,” he chuckled. “D-e-a-d! Dead.”

  The three men nodded in unison.

  “Congratulations, Mr. Fenderson,” said Oboe. “May we ask who killed him?”

  “Oldham Coyle, I’m certain,” Fenderson said. He gave Oboe a look of disbelief. “We’ll find out more when we arrive in New Delmar. I would not have Henry Teague mention names on a telegraph line.”

  “Of course not, sir,” said Oboe. “Shall I have the fireman stoke us up and make ready to roll out of here?”

  “Yes, do that, Serg,” said Fenderson. “Have everyone assemble in the operations car. I’ll get dressed straightaway and join you there.”

  As the three backed out the door and left, Fenderson turned toward the dressing screen and met the two women who stepped out, hitching, hiking, buttoning and straightening their clothes.

  “Ladies, I only wish we had more time to spend together this evening, but I’m afraid business calls.”

 
; As he spoke, Fenderson pulled up two rolls of cash held round by thick rubber bands. He dropped a roll into each outreached hand, turned and swung the door open for them. Stepping out onto the platform behind them, he stood and waved as they walked down to the fancy buggy. Tom Singleton appeared and assisted each of them up into the buggy.

  From the opposite side of the Pullman car, Sergio Oboe stepped back up beside Fenderson. He pulled out a long match, struck it and held the fire to the tip of Fenderson’s cigar.

  Fenderson puffed the cigar to life and blew out a long gray stream of smoke.

  “Thank you, Serg,” he said. He looked the big, burly gunman up and down. “I take it you are ready to help me carry out this little sporting matter I’m involved in?”

  “I’m ready, sir,” said Oboe. “I’ve wanted to kill this Coyle bastard ever since he left us all chasing our tails in Kansas.” He paused, then said, “Can I say something?”

  “Of course, feel free,” said Fenderson, waving again as the buggy rolled away into the darkness.

  “Sir, the thing is, I can’t understand why you didn’t let me kill this Ranger and Coyle both for you.”

  “I said you could say something, Oboe,” Fenderson replied in a stiff tone. “I didn’t say you could question my decisions, did I?”

  “No, sir, you did not. Sorry, sir,” Oboe offered quickly.

  The two stood in silence for a moment in the glow of flickering lantern light from the doorway fixture.

  At length Fenderson said in a more affable tone, “Although I suppose explaining why I’m doing things this way may help you carry out my orders in a more confident manner.”

  “Yes, sir—I mean, if that suits you, sir,” said Oboe.

  “It does,” Fenderson said. “When I learned that an oddsmaker like Silas Horn would set odds on two notable gunfighters facing off on each other, I devised a way to clean up my problem in one swift, easy stroke and make myself a tidy sum of money in the process.”

  Oboe listened intently.

  “When Horn speculated the odds three to one in Coyle’s favor against the Ranger, I decided why not turn Coyle’s gun skills into something profitable and at the same time have him take my vengeance out on the Ranger for shooting my nephew, Mitchell?” He drew on his cigar and blew out a steam of smoke.

  “Being the gambler Coyle is,” he said, “I knew he couldn’t resist the challenge of taking on the Ranger, not when the sporting world had him favored so highly to win.”

  “So,” Oboe reasoned, “instead of us still chasing him all over Kansas, you come up here where he’s not wanted, wave reward money at him for killing the Ranger and he comes right to you.” He grinned. “Not bad, sir.”

  “Thank you, Serg,” Fenderson said coolly. “Now that the Ranger is dead, we go and meet with Coyle to give him his reward, and you and the men chop him to pieces. Him and anybody riding with him.”

  “And you even save yourself the reward money,” said Oboe.

  “Indeed.” Fenderson grinned. “Not to mention the enormous amount I wagered on Coyle with Silas Horn.”

  “Sir!” said Oboe, impressed. “If I might say so, that right there is why this country needs you to run for president. We need a man like you who can think on his feet, and doesn’t mind shedding a little blood if it gets things done.”

  “Nice of you to say so, Oboe,” said Fenderson, again blowing smoke. “Now go hurry those men along. I want to get under way. I’m excited by what awaits me in New Delmar.”

  • • •

  Leaving the telegraph office, the Ranger and Henry Teague walked back toward the jail along the dusty street lit by rows of torchlight on either side. Teague stared down at the cuffs on his wrists, noting the third cuff hanging from a short chain between the two. For a moment he thought of how easy it would be to swing around all at once and launch the chain, cuff and all, into the Ranger’s eye. But as if reading his thoughts, the Ranger touched the tip of the rifle barrel to the center of his back.

  They walked on.

  “Whatever you’ve got up your sleeve, Ranger, you won’t get away with it,” Teague said over his shoulder as they drew nearer to the jail. “Fenderson will see you’re alive and sic his whole guard force on you.”

  “I’m doing my job as it comes to me, Teague. Fenderson is too rich and powerful for me to go chasing after him. This will bring him to me.”

  “That’s your whole plan, Ranger?” Teague said, glancing back over his shoulder.

  “That’s it, more or less,” Sam replied.

  “In that case, you might just as well cut me and Sonny both loose. We’ll be cut loose anyways soon as Fenderson gets here and you’re not lying dead in the street.”

  “After you tell him I’m dead?” Sam said. “You don’t think he’s going to be just a little put out with you for lying, for setting him up?”

  Teague fell silent.

  “I’ve got over a full ten thousand dollars in a bank in Denver City, Ranger,” he said finally.

  “Why are you telling me, Teague?” Sam said. “You wanting to secure a first-class burial?”

  “Come on, Ranger,” Teague said in frustration. “You’re supposed to be a good lawman. Deal with me here!” He almost came to a stop. The tip of the Ranger’s rifle touched his back again.

  “I am a good lawman,” Sam said, prodding him on. “I am dealing with you.”

  “Damn it, you know what I mean, Ranger!” said Teague, trying hard to work a deal with the Ranger as they neared the jail, now only fifteen yards away.

  Before Sam could reply, Oldham Coyle, his brother, Dave, and Chic Reye stepped their horses out of an alleyway and into sight on the Ranger’s left. Reye sat bowed in his saddle, his left arm hugging his lower belly. The bloody bandage on his face had come loose and flopped down his cheek, revealing the ugly open wound.

  “Well, now,” Oldham Coyle said, staring at the Ranger with his hand on his holstered Colt. “Look what we’ve got here. It appears you’ve arrested the man holding the purse strings.”

  On the Ranger’s right, he saw Deak Holder, Karl Sieg and Blind Simon Goss step their horses out of the shadows into the flicker of torchlight.

  “Take him down, Coyle!” said Teague. “Take him down and cut me loose!” He raised his cuffed hands. “Kill him now! Fenderson is on his way here with your money!”

  “Is that a fact?” said Coyle. He stared at the Ranger with a dark smile. “These Hugh Fenderson people sure want you dead, don’t they, Ranger?” he said quietly, his hand still on his gun.

  “So it appears,” Sam replied. As he spoke, his left hand reached forward and took a grip on Teague’s coat collar, the tip of his rifle barrel at the base of Teague’s head. “This one so much he’s willing to die with me.”

  “What did he do, Ranger?” Coyle asked.

  “Public drunkenness,” Sam said flatly. He wasn’t about to tell Coyle right here and now how Teague and Rudabough had jackpotted him.

  “He doesn’t look drunk to me,” said Coyle.

  “Drunks can fool you,” Sam replied, dismissing the matter.

  “Would you rather die than set him free?” Coyle asked.

  Sam only stared coldly without answering.

  “This is what we call a conundrum of sorts, Ranger,” Oldham said. “I kill you, but you kill him. Who will I get my reward from? There’ll be no witness to speak on my behalf.” He ended his words staring at Teague. “This doesn’t sound like such a good deal for me.”

  “We can take him, boss,” Deak Holder put in confidently. “Kill them both. Take the Ranger with us—just his head if we have to. Fenderson has to believe us when we throw his head down at his feet.”

  “Ouch!” Oldham said to Sam with a wince. “Hear that, Ranger? This tough hombre wants to hack your melon off, carry it to Fenderson on a stick, I suspect.”

 
“Let it go, Oldham,” Dave Coyle said quietly beside him. “We need to get this one to the doctor—you said you wanted to talk to that dove. Forget the Ranger.”

  “I need that doctor, something awful,” Chic Reye moaned beside Dave.

  Oldham sat staring at the Ranger, his hand ready. Sam could see him weighing things out in his mind. Any second he could make his play. Sam knew he was in a bad spot. He could kill Teague with the squeeze of the trigger, but then he had to either lever the rifle or drop it and go for his Colt. Reaching for the Colt would be faster, but either move would cost him time . . . precious time, he warned himself.

  “We can take him, boss,” Deak put in. “Just say the word.”

  “And point me where to shoot,” said Simon, a sawed-off shotgun in his hand.

  “You can’t take him, Little Dick.” Dankett’s voice resounded from the darkness of the alley as Big Lucy’s hammers made a hard, slow cocking sound. “Try it, they’ll pick you up with a bucket and a sponge.”

  Deak’s head turned to the dark alley behind him, where Dankett stood back out of sight.

  “Now your deputy wants to get into the mix of things, Ranger,” said Oldham.

  “There ain’t no wants to get,” said Dankett. “I am in the mix of things.”

  “Somebody get me pointed,” said Simon. “If you don’t, I’ll be spraying brains everywhere.”

  “Settle down, Simon,” said Oldham. To Sam he said, “See how game my men are, Ranger? They’re always this way.”

  Sam just stared without replying.

  “Like my brother just said, we’re here to see the doctor and Anna Rose. Maybe I’ll kill you later on.” His hand finally slipped away from his gun butt.

  “Don’t come after me, Coyle,” Sam said. “That’s all the warning you’re apt to get.”

  “Coyle, damn it—” said Teague. Sam jostled him by his collar.