High Wild Desert

by Ralph Cotton

  The Coyles watched Dankett almost fall over as the bullet slammed into his side. They watched Sam run to his deputy and help him to his feet. They saw Sam looping Dankett’s arm across his shoulder and hurrying away. Sam still fired and levered his Winchester one-handed as they fell in behind a thick stack of nail kegs standing on the boardwalk of the town mercantile store.

  “This is just the kind of break I was hoping for,” Oldham said almost to himself.

  “What are you talking about, brother?” Dave said. “I was hoping after a night’s sleep you’d put all this craziness out of your mind, we’d ride out of here.”

  “I have one thing to do, brother Dave,” said Oldham. “I’ll do it now while everybody’s painting the streets with each other’s brains.”

  “I don’t like the sound of it,” Dave said. “But I’ll go along with it, if it’ll get us out of here and back to robbing something.”

  “You and Sieg go get Simon and Reye,” said Oldham. “Meet Deak and me at the livery barn with our horses saddled, ready to ride.”

  “You got it, brother Oldham. Now you’re making sense,” Dave said with a look of relief.

  • • •

  Inside the jail, Lang and the woman sat huddled at the front corner of his cell, listening to the sound of the gun battle raging three blocks up the street. In the neighboring cell, Teague and Sonny Rudabough sat listening too, passing a look of awe and trepidation between them each time Dankett’s big shotgun let out another earth-shaking blast.

  “I’ve got to get myself one of them,” Rudabough remarked quietly after the shotgun fell silent for a reloading.

  Outside, they heard big boots run along the boardwalk in a long stride, followed by a rapid, lighter sound a few yards behind. They saw Oldham Coyle swing the front door open, rush inside and keep the door open for Deak Holder. Deak ran in a second behind Oldham, panting, struggling to catch his breath.

  “Jesus!” said the dwarf, gasping, bowed at the waist on his short legs. “I didn’t know we were racing.”

  Oldham glanced at Lang and the woman in passing, then looked at Teague and Rudabough, who stood staring in return.

  “All right! Coyle, amigo! Get us out of here!” Henry Teague said right quickly. “There’s still time for me to straighten all this out and make things right.”

  “Amigo? Huh-uh,” said Oldham, his rifle hanging in his left hand. “I’m here to make things right, Teague.” He held his Colt down at his right side, cocked and ready.

  Behind Coyle, Deak leaned against the desk, still panting, watching the door. He kept his short fingers lying on the butt of his big belly pistol.

  “Make things right? What are you talking about, Coyle?” Teague said, appearing not to see Oldham’s Colt. He stepped over to the cell door and rattled it with both hands. “Hurry up, let’s get going,” he said. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to Yuma over this mess.”

  “You’re right about that,” Oldham said. He raised the Colt level to Teague’s chest through the bars.

  Rudabough hugged back against the plank wall as shot after shot walked Teague backward haltingly to the rear wall. Teague slid down the wall and settled onto the floor beneath a long smear of blood.

  “Okay, I have no qualms with you doing that,” Rudabough said wide-eyed, flattened back against the wall. “Whatever he did to you, he deserved to die for it, far as I’m concerned. I don’t know why you did it. I don’t even want to know. Lots of folks thought him and I were friends, but we never were—”

  “It was over what happened to the dove, Rudabough,” Oldham said, cutting him off. In the other cell, Lang had shoved his arms through the bars and held Adele pressed as close as he could.

  “The dove?” said Rudabough, as if having to probe his memory for anything on the subject.

  “Yes, the dove. The one you beat nearly to death and threw in the public ditch,” said Oldham. “I killed him just for knowing you did it. Imagine what I’m going to do to you.” He dropped the two remaining bullets from his Colt and pitched it through the bars onto the plank floor.

  “Oh, what? Give me an empty gun?” Rudabough said wryly. As the two spoke, Deak rummaged in the desk for the cell key, standing slightly on his toes to see into the open top drawer.

  “There’s plenty of bullets for it inside a saddlebag,” said Oldham, “on a black-and-white paint horse . . . waiting for you behind the Number Five Saloon. All you’ve got to do is get there and load up before I can kill you graveyard dead.” Speaking over his shoulder he said, “Deak, how about that key?”

  “Coming up, boss,” Deak said, bent over at the waist, his short arm searching back in the open bottom drawer. He stood up, the key raised in his hand and a smile of satisfaction on his face, and walked it quickly over to Oldham Coyle.

  At the front corner of the other cell, Lang and Adele looked at each other in surprise at the sight of the cell key in Deak Holder’s small hand.

  Oldham looked down at the two as he unlocked the door to Rudabough’s cell.

  “What about it, Cisco?” he called out. “Here’s your chance to ride away.” He held the key up.

  Lang started to stand up, but then he slumped down and shook his head.

  “Obliged, Coyle,” he said. “But I’m not Cisco anymore. I’m just Harvey Lang, ready to do my time.”

  “Are you sure, Cisco?” said Oldham. “You can ride with me and my bunch. Stop being the man holding the horses. Make yourself a real long rider, eh?”

  Lang looked at Adele, then at Oldham. Without saying anything, he shook his head, as if words might fail him.

  “Suit yourself,” said Coyle. He swung the cell door open and pitched the key over atop the desk.

  But Rudabough didn’t move from the wall; instead he hugged back tighter against it.

  “I’m not playing this game, Coyle,” he said. “How do I know that paint horse is there? How do I know what you say is true?”

  “First off, I have never lied to you. Second, did I say you had a choice?” Coyle said through jaws clenched tight with anger, stepping inside the cell. The rifle bucked in his right hand; the bullet ripped splinters from the plank wall an inch from Rudabough’s side.

  Deak jumped up and down laughing, waving his short arms, as Rudabough bolted from his cell and headed out the front door. Oldham Coyle stopped at the front door long enough to lever a fresh round into his smoking rifle.

  “If you change your mind, Cisco, have her get the key. Get yourself out of here. The Ranger and his deputy are pinned down. Like as not, they’re going to die out there. This town won’t pay your fare to Yuma. They’ll shorten your trip on the end of a rope.”

  “Oh my God!” said Adele, clasping a hand to her mouth.

  “Wait!” said Lang as Oldham Coyle disappeared out the door behind Deak, in hot pursuit of Sonny Rudabough.

  “My God, Harvey,” said Adele. “Would they do that? Hang you, I mean?”

  Lang looked at her long and hard, thoughts racing through his mind. Finally he said, “Adele, get the key, let me out of here.”

  “But, Harvey, what about us?” she said. “What about you making amends and straightening your life out—?”

  “Adele,” he said, cutting her short. “You heard him. You heard what he said! I can’t just sit here and do nothing. Get the key, let me out!” He stood and gripped the bars with both hands.

  She hurried to the desk, picked up the key and ran back and unlocked the cell door.

  “What if they’re not going to come hang you afterward?” she said, stalling, the key half turned in the lock. Gunfire still exploded three blocks away.

  “Adele, look at me. Listen to me!” he said, reaching through the bars and turning her hand along with the key. “I’m not talking about what Coyle said about me hanging. I’m talking about the Ranger and his deputy being pinned down!”

&nbs
p; The gunfire grew more intense, as if to emphasize Lang’s words.

  “What are you saying, Harvey?” Adele said as he ran past her to the gun cabinet, grabbing a Winchester and a box of ammunition. “That you’re going to risk your life trying to save the Ranger and his deputy?”

  He looked at her as he feverishly broke open the box, grabbed a handful of bullets and loaded the rifle. He looked at the remaining bullets in the box, knowing it wasn’t enough, not if the two lawmen were pinned down.

  “Yes, Adele, I have to go. I have no choice,” he said. “I told you, I’ve seen what I am, and I don’t like it. I want to make myself right.”

  “I understand you wanting to do that,” said Adele. “And I admire you for it. But not like this! What if it’s too late to help them? What if you only manage to get yourself killed?”

  “Then I’ll die a better man, in a better place than I was a week ago,” Lang said. “With no small thanks to you and Sam Burrack.” He levered a round up into the rifle chamber.

  “Harvey . . . ,” Adele said. She stood watching with tears on her cheeks as he walked to the front door and swung it open. He stopped for a moment.

  “I can’t be half right, Adele. It’s all or none. I won’t sit here feeling new and righteous while two good men die in the dirt. Neither you nor I either one could live with that.” He gave her a thin smile of regret and said, “I love you, Adele . . . I have all along, I just wish I’d known it sooner, instead of being the no-good stupid son of a bitch I was—if you’ll pardon my language,” he added. He touched his fingers to his bare forehead in farewell.

  Adele stood with her fingertips pressed to her lips and watched him step out and close the door behind himself.

  Lang turned on the boardwalk, the sound of gunfire still going strong. Instead of running toward the gun battle, he looked back and forth, then ran in the opposite direction, to where a two-horse buckboard sat out in front of an essaying office. Without a second of hesitation, he jumped into the driver’s seat and slapped the reins on the horses’ backs.

  Ducked down behind a large ore barrel inside the essay office, a miner raised his head and watched his buckboard go racing away, leaving a stream of dust twisting in the air behind it.

  “Damn it all! One of them is getting away in my wagon!”

  “Stay down, forget your damn wagon!” a voice called out from behind another ore barrel. “They’re killing each other out there!”

  Chapter 23

  The gunfire had grown far too hot and heavy for the Ranger and his wounded deputy. During a short lull while Fenderson’s gunmen reloaded, Sam had looped Dankett’s arm over his shoulder and dragged him from behind the wooden nail kegs to a building still under construction three doors up and across the street. Bullets from the gunmen followed the two lawmen as they fell through the open storefront. Sam guided Dankett through sawdust and discarded nails, until they stopped behind a stack of boards. He stripped the bandolier of ammunition from Dankett’s shoulder.

  “Don’t worry about me, Ranger,” Dankett said. “I’m just bleeding a little.”

  Sam didn’t answer. He untied the deputy’s bandana from around his neck, wadded it up and stuffed it inside Dankett’s shirt against the wound in his side. He planted Dankett’s hand on it.

  “Keep this in place, Deputy,” he said as gunfire began to erupt heavier from the alleyways and cover on either side of the restaurant.

  “How am I supposed . . . to shoot Big Lucy?” Dankett said.

  “I’ll take care of her, Deputy,” Sam said. “You lie still for a minute, try to stop bleeding on us.” As he spoke, he noted how few loads were left in Dankett’s bandolier.

  Seeing the Ranger looking at the low shotgun ammunition, Dankett gave a crooked smile beneath his lowered hat brim.

  “I put out a powerful barrage, Ranger,” he said weakly.

  “Yes, you did, Deputy,” said the Ranger. “Now lie still.”

  Both of them ducked down as a rifle round whined through the empty storefront and thumped into a workman’s ladder leaning against a wall. Checking his own ammunition, Sam realized that he too was running out of bullets.

  “Listen to that, Deputy,” Sam said, taking note that after their reloading, the gunmen were not firing as heavily as before. “It sounds like we’re not the only ones running out of bullets.” He looked around, then said, “Can you hold out here awhile, Deputy? I need to get to the window and throw some fire back at them, else they’ll get bold and try rushing us.”

  “You go ahead, Ranger, and take Big Lucy with you. I’ve still got this ol’ six-shooter,” Dankett said, growing weak from losing blood. He patted his holster, then drew his Colt and laid it across his lap.

  “Good man,” Sam said. He stood in a crouch, bandolier and shotgun in one hand, his Winchester in his other, and ran to a large open window frame at the front of the store, where he dropped behind a knee wall and took position.

  “There he is,” said Sergio Oboe to the men huddled beside him inside the restaurant. He had shot a glance through the front window and seen the Ranger drop out of sight in the storefront across the street.

  “Where’s the other one?” Dade Burke asked, a bandana tied around his upper arm where he’d taken the deep bullet graze.

  “Dead, most likely,” Oboe said. “I put one in his side, saw him go down with it.”

  Oboe looked all around the disheveled, bullet-riddled restaurant. The back door stood open, the way fleeing customers had left it. Among the last ones making an escape through the back door had been Tom Singleton and Hugh Fenderson.

  “The boss is out of here,” he said. “I say we rush him, right now while we can.”

  “We’re awfully low on bullets,” said Harkens, huddled beside him, against the restaurant’s front wall.

  “Right,” said Oboe. “And if we are, so are they.” He levered a round into his rifle. “I still want that reward money, even if I have to split it with you buzzards.”

  Burke looked puzzled and asked, “Why is it he wants the Ranger dead? I forgot.”

  “The Ranger killed his cousin,” Harkens said, reloading his six-shooter, the barrel still smoking and hot in his hand.

  “No,” said Oboe. “It was his nephew, damn it. And he didn’t kill him, just sent him to Yuma Penitentiary to rethink his future. What’s wrong with you men, you can’t remember why you’re killing a sumbitch?”

  “I’m killing him for the bounty on his head,” Harkens said. “Plain and simple.” He clicked his loaded gun shut and wagged it in his hand. “That’s as much reason as I ever need.”

  “Amen to that,” said Sergio Oboe. “Let’s rush him, then. Get this done, have Polly Corn boil us up some coffee afterward.” No sooner had he spoken than a rifle shot exploded from across the street, sending a bullet slicing through the restaurant’s open window, slamming into the far wall. “Damn Ranger!” he cursed, ducking his head, jumping away from the window frame.

  “It ain’t the Ranger, Oboe. Look at this!” said Harkens, managing a peep over the window ledge.

  “Damn!” said Oboe, peeping around the corner of a bullet-riddled window frame. “He’s got help coming.”

  Another bullet sliced through the open window. The gunmen looked out and saw the buckboard racing up the street, fishtailing toward them in a twisting spiral of dust.

  “Who the hell’s this?” said Oboe. “I thought everybody here knew better than to get involved against Hugh Fenderson.”

  “I know him,” said Harkens, raising his rifle, leveling it out over the edge of the window frame. “It’s Cisco Lang—some idiot who thinks he’s an outlaw.”

  “An outlaw?” said Burke in disbelief. “What’s he doing helping the Ranger?”

  “Beats me,” said Harkens, taking aim at Lang, who stood in the buckboard, reins in his left hand, firing and levering a Winchester in h
is right. A large satchel hung by a strap from Lang’s shoulder.

  “Beats me too,” said Oboe. “Kill the son of a bitch, before he breaks his own neck.”

  The gunmen laid down a deadly barrage of gunfire on the approaching buckboard. The two wagon horses, nicked by the bullets slicing past them, veered and made a hard, sharp turn in the street. Lang wasn’t able to control them with the reins. As the horses made their turn, the buckboard jackknifed and slid sidelong in the dirt, raising dust. Lang flew from the buckboard and landed hard, the upturned buckboard barely missing him as it sailed over his head and landed tumbling in the street in front of him.

  From the open window frame, the Ranger winced at the sight of Lang rolling in the street; he saw the freed wagon horses in flight down an alleyway.

  “Cisco, you fool . . . ,” he said under his breath. As the gunfire from the restaurant waned, Sam ran from the protection of the storefront to where Lang lay dazed, yet struggling to rise onto his feet.

  “Stay down!” Sam shouted. He knocked Lang back to the dirt as two bullets whizzed past them. Big Lucy was strapped down his back and his rifle in hand. “Follow me,” he said, crawling, half dragging Lang a few feet until they found shelter behind the buckboard lying on its side in the middle of the street.

  “What are you doing out here, Cisco?” the Ranger asked, looking him over for any gunshot wounds. “I left you in a cell.”

  “Yes, you did,” Lang said, getting his breath back after being hurled from the buckboard. “Coyle killed Teague and chased Rudabough out the door. He left the key, said you were pinned down out here. I brought you this.” He swung the satchel from around his neck, shoved it out to the Ranger and pulled the flap open. “You’ll need to talk to the mercantile owner, tell him I wasn’t robbing him.”

  Sam’s eyes brightened at the sight of the ammunition boxes. Then he looked back up at Lang as he grabbed a box and opened it while bullets thumped into the buckboard and whizzed overhead.