Nightfall at Little Aces

by Ralph Cotton

  Chapter 12

  In the middle of the night, Sheriff Gale eased quietly through the door of his office and walked to Emma’s house, staying in the darkened shadows out of the moonlight. When he tapped softly on her back door, she answered it immediately.

  “My goodness, what took you so long?” Emma whispered anxiously. She hurried him inside, then looked back and forth as if to make sure no one was watching. “I’ve been waiting, listening for a gunshot.”

  “I came back here as quick as I could, Emma,” Gale said, slipping his arms around her, “and I have to get right back over there.”

  “Well? Did you get it done?” she asked, squeezing his arm in anticipation.

  “No,” said Gale, “I didn’t kill him, I just couldn’t do it.”

  “What?” She looked stunned. “You mean you haven’t had a chance to set it up?”

  Gale let out a breath. “I had the opportunity, Emma. But I’m a lawman, not an assassin. I tried as hard as I could to do it. But I can’t kill a man in cold blood.”

  “Even a man like Frank Skimmer?” Emma said. “He’s a hired gun and man killer, Vince! We both agreed this had to be done! I killed his brother. He’ll kill me if he ever finds out.”

  “I know that,” said Gale. “He as much as said so himself.”

  “He said what?” Again his words stunned her. “You two were talking about it?”

  “No,” said Gale. “But I asked him what if his brother had been killed by a woman in an act of—”

  “Oh my God, you didn’t?” Emma said.

  Gale saw the terror in her eyes and held her firmly by her forearms. “Your name was never mentioned. I asked him about a couple of possibilities. That was just one of them. Besides, there’s no way for him to know for sure that his brother is dead. Anyway, I wanted to see if he was a man who’d listen to reason, if his brother died committing a crime.”

  “And his answer was…?” She left her question hanging.

  Gale looked troubled. “He said if his brother is dead, he’ll find whoever killed him and have his vengeance. He didn’t seem to think it possible his brother would force a woman against her will.” He searched her eyes, but only for a second. It really didn’t matter now if she’d told him the truth or not. He’d gone this far, helping her cover up a crime.

  “Oh, my God, you asked him that?” Emma gasped, her hand going to her mouth. “Why in the world did you tell him that?”

  “I told you why,” said Gale. “I wanted to see if he was a man who would listen—”

  “Is Lloyd at the jail?” Emma asked with determination, cutting him off.

  “No, he’s not. I thought it best to not bring Lloyd into this,” Gale replied. “The less people involved the better.”

  “Good. Give me your gun, Vince,” Emma said in the same determined voice.

  “Settle down, Emma,” Gale insisted, still holding her arms, giving her a bit of a shake. “We’re all right. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Didn’t I give you my word?”

  “But you agreed you’d kill him,” Emma returned. “He’s the only thing left to take care of in this mess. If he’s dead nobody will ever care what happened to Omar. He’s got to die.”

  Gale looked into her eyes. “You’re scared, and I don’t blame you, Emma,” he said. “But you’ve got to trust me. I’m a lawman. I can see us both through this. Stay calm and keep your wits about you. You’ve got the law taking care of you.”

  Keep your wits…? Emma only stared at him. He had no idea who he was talking to, where she’d been, what she’d been through. But he was right, this was no time to do something rash. Keeping the sheriff on her side was important, for now anyway. She thought about Memphis Beck. Maybe she should have trusted him instead. She could have packed a bag and left, let the people of Little Aces decide for themselves what a dead man was doing lying backward in her kitchen chair. All right, stay calm….

  “You’re right,” she said with a submissive sigh. “What do we do now, Vince?”

  “Colonel Elgin will want to get out of here come morning. Frank Skimmer is one of his top guns. I’ll turn Skimmer loose only under the condition that he leaves Little Aces and never comes back.”

  “But will Skimmer agree to that?” Emma asked, playing naïve, realizing that it made no difference to Skimmer what he agreed to.

  Gale smiled confidently. “He’ll do what the colonel tells him to do. If he does come back later on…” Gale shrugged. “Who knows, maybe you and I will be long gone by then.”

  There it is, Emma thought, feeling the world tightening around her. Gale would take her over. At the end of this, she would belong to him with no way out. “If you say so, I suppose that’s the best way to look at it,” she forced herself to reply.

  “I do say so.” Gale gave her a smile, tilting her face up to his. “In a few days this will all blow over. We’ll have the rest of our lives to spend together.”

  Emma almost cringed at the thought. Avoiding his attempt to kiss her, she said, “You never told me what you did with Omar.”

  “That’s something else you don’t have to worry your pretty head over,” Gale said. “I took him to the highest point in the hills and dropped him off of a trail down a steep ravine.” His smile widened. “He could be still falling for all I know.”

  “A ravine?” she asked. “I thought you said you would bury him.”

  “I started to, but I needed to get back to town if I was to make it look like I was only gone for supper.” He shrugged. “It makes no difference, though, he’ll never be found.”

  “Are there any trails in and out of the ravine?” Emma asked.

  “None,” Gale said with firm conviction. “He’s lying somewhere alongside a stream where every critter in the wilds goes for water of a night. Odds are, by morning he’ll be nothing but rags and bones.”

  Odds are…? This was her life they were talking about! Emma didn’t like it. But she made herself remain silent on the matter.

  Memphis Beck had traveled north up into the hill country most of the night. He hadn’t pushed the red roan hard, but he’d kept a steady pace, riding one of the meandering trails that lay halfway up the steep hillsides. In the blue light of morning, he stepped down from the saddle and led the roan to a small waterfall that spilled from a rock cliff three feet above his head and splashed off over the side of the narrow trail.

  Beck had stooped to fill a canteen when suddenly a sound above him caused him to instinctively snatch his Colt from its holster as he looked toward what he took to be the sound of someone running quickly downhill toward the edge of the cliff above him. Beside Beck the roan also heard the sound and shied sidelong, spooked, just as Beck saw a man spring from the edge of the cliff, arms spread wide, and descend upon him.

  Beck’s reflexes sent him falling away just in time. A streak of fire split the grainy morning light as his shot hit the man squarely in the chest. Beck came to his feet, his Colt cocked and ready to fire again, the half-filled canteen still in hand. But there was no need to fire again. The man lay facedown in the mud, the water from above splashing onto his lifeless back.

  “Close call…,” Beck whispered, crouched, looking all around for any signs of other ambushers. They were everywhere, these detectives, he reminded himself. The roan had backed away with a loud whinny, and stood shaking itself off. Beck backed a few wary steps, gathered the frightened animal’s reins, led it forward, and rolled the body over with the toe of his boot.

  “What’s this?” he asked, puzzled, staring down at the cut and battered corpse of Omar Wills. The corpse stared blankly up at him, Omar’s mouth and eyes still wide open, a long twig of juniper jammed up his nose. Bits of small rock and splinters of downfall pine and juniper had embedded itself in the corpse’s face, hands, and bare chest. The shirt and trousers lay in shreds. One boot had been washed away, Beck guessed.

  “Man, oh man!” he said, letting the hammer down on his Colt. Seeing the black gaping bullet hole in the co
rpse’s forehead, he knew that this man had been dead long before he came hurling out over the cliff above.

  Looking up cautiously and taking a step back in case more dead came swooping down on him, Beck turned and tied the roan’s reins to a pine sapling. “I won’t be drinking this,” he murmured, turning the canteen up and pouring the water from it.

  Walking back to the corpse, he reached into the downpour of water and dragged it a few feet, onto drier ground. He propped the body onto his knee and searched through the pockets, both shirt and trousers. But he found nothing that revealed the man’s identity. In the noise of the waterfall, Beck did not hear the two horses trotting at a brisk clip until the animals had rounded a turn in the trail and were almost upon him.

  “It’s Beck, kill him!” shouted Jack Strap. His horse reared; so did Vlaktor Blesko’s beside him.

  Dropping the corpse from his knee, Beck fired wildly as he ran to the roan, unhitched it, and jumped into the saddle. The two detectives also fired wildly, having come upon Beck so quickly. But as Beck batted his heels to the roan’s sides and sent it racing away, he felt the sharp hot pain of a bullet slice deep into his side.

  But the side wound didn’t prevent him from turning half around in the saddle and firing back at the detectives, hard enough to cause them to pull back after only chasing him a few hundred feet along the treacherous winding trail. “Hold it, Vlak!” Strap shouted, reining his horse down and pressing a hand to a bullet graze along the side of his head.

  “But I hit him!” Vlak shouted in reply. “He’ll fall soon!”

  “I’m not riding off this damned mountainside for nobody!” Strap said with finality. His head throbbed from the bullet grazing it. “How does this look?” He sidled his horse over to the Romanian and took his hand from his bloody head.

  “Not so bad,” Vlaktor said impatiently. “I hit him. Ve should stay on him, press him until he falls!”

  “No, we’re going to follow orders!” said Strap. “We were told to catch up to the posse as soon as we got to our horses. It’s bad enough we made a wrong turn and spent the night lost! This will save face for us, if we play it just right.”

  “But if ve finished him off now and took his body to the colonel—”

  “Listen to me, Vlak,” said Strap, cutting him off. “I wasn’t looking forward to explaining how the blazes two seasoned trail scouts get themselves lost. That’s what the colonel was going to want to know.” He shook his head in self-disgust. “That would have looked bad on us, especially after having our horses taken from us by the ranger.”

  “But Beck is vounded; let’s kill him!” Vlaktor insisted.

  “I’m bleeding, in case you haven’t noticed,” said Strap. He took out a wadded handkerchief and pressed it to his head. “We’re going on into Little Aces and tell the colonel what happened. We’ll take credit for being the ones that killed Beck, don’t worry about that. It makes no difference if we find his body, or if the whole posse finds it. We’re still the ones who did the killing. Filo Heath will take our photograph…us standing with our rifles up, holding the body between us.” He grinned thinking about it. “This is going to make up for a whole lot of things, Bloody Vlak. Oh yes, indeed….”

  A mile along the trail, Beck slowed the roan and looked back over his shoulder. The pain in his side throbbed mercilessly, so much so that upon seeing no one close behind him, he slumped in the saddle, pressed a hand to his wounded side, and let the horse walk along at its own pace. At a place where a narrow path led down along a steep ridge below, he reined the horse off the trail and let it pick its footing until he could look up and see nothing above him but towering rock.

  Pointing the roan south, back in the direction of town, he murmured in pain, “Sorry, Emma…it looks like I’m bringing…my trouble to you.”

  Chapter 13

  The ranger sat atop Black Pot in the morning sunlight, looking down at the wide dirt street of Nickels, New Mexico. At a hitch rail out in front of a ragged saloon tent stood the horses of the three men he’d spotted on the high ridges the day before. Two of the animals had saddlebags strapped down behind their saddles; one did not. Sam took note of it and understood right away.

  Once he’d realized where the three were headed, he’d made a camp for himself on a hillside of towering pine and fallen asleep gazing at the starlit heavens. Now, with a good night’s sleep behind him and a hot breakfast of jerked elk and coffee, he nudged the Appaloosa forward down the path, his rifle standing from his thigh.

  Inside the ragged tent, Bennie Drew and Tom Cat Weaver stood at a makeshift bar still tossing back shot upon shot of whiskey. A bottle of cloudy white mescal stood between them. Beside the mescal a rawhide bag lay open on its side, exposing a streak of fine brown powder that had spilled from inside it. Beside Bennie Drew, a young prostitute stood slumped against his side, her head hanging limply on his chest.

  Tom Cat Weaver spooned up a mound of brown powder on the tip of his boot knife blade and snorted it up his nostril. “Whoa!” he said, his red-rimmed eyes snapping open even wider. Sniffing and plucking at his nose with his thumb and finger, he looked all around the tent, nudged Drew, and said between the two of them, “Look at this loco dandy. There is an unnatural sight if I ever saw one.”

  Bennie Drew looked around at Collin Hedgepeth, who sat at a table a few yards away, still drinking from the same bottle of rye he’d started out with the night before. At his feet sat his saddlebags. On the tabletop in front of him, a deck of cards lay spread out in a half-played game of solitaire.

  “Damned shame, ain’t it?” said Tom Cat.

  “Watch this,” Drew said. He called out to Hedgepeth, “Hey, English. You better get over here and stick your nose into some of this before it gets all worn out.”

  English Collin Hedgepeth turned a glance toward the two men and saw them grinning at him like wild-eyed lunatics, brown residue smeared on their mustaches and cheeks. “I’ll pass,” Hedgepeth commented, uncertain if Bennie Drew was referring to the Mexican cocaine or the slumbering prostitute. He picked up a thin black cigar from an ash tin, puffed on it, and blew out a long stream of smoke.

  “All I ever see you do is play that damned card game against yourself, English,” said Tom Cat. “What I want to know is, do you ever win?”

  “Yeah, and if you do win,” said Bennie Drew, “how much?” The two drunken outlaws roared with laughter.

  English Collin only gave them a curious look and said calmly, “One who challenges himself and never wins is a fool. One who challenges himself and never loses is a cheat.” He gave them a brief trace of a smile and said almost under his breath, “As in any game, what one wins is a matter of what one wagers.” He turned his attention back to the cards. “Thus far I have always managed to break even.”

  Drew and Tom Cat looked at one another blankly for a moment. “Did you understand any of that?” Bennie Drew asked.

  “Not a word, thus far,” Tom Cat said mockingly. “But I’ll give it some more thought.” He laughingly tossed back another shot of whiskey and took a long gurgling drink of mescal.

  The two laughed and turned back to the bar. As they talked between themselves, neither saw the old white-haired Mexican joyero slip in through the rear fly of the tent and bend down to Hedgepeth’s ear.

  When the old Mexican finished whispering, Hedgepeth nodded and whispered, “Gracias,” in reply. Taking a gold coin from inside his dapper brocaded vest pocket, he handed it to the old man. “For your watchfulness,” he said.

  “Mí gracias a usted!” the old Mexican replied, examining the coin. “In my country I make rings and necklaces.” He smiled and whispered, “But here I make money many ways.” He closed his weathered hand over the gold coin and slipped away as quietly as a ghost.

  At the bar, Drew shoved his little finger into the rawhide bag, brought out a mound of brown powder, and snorted it deeply. Wiping his nose back and forth on his shirtsleeve, he poured both his and Tom Cat’s shot glasses full of whiskey and
said, “Cat, the only game I like to play is the one where I win. Maybe that makes me a cheat, I don’t know. But it damn sure makes me a winner!” As he spoke he raised his glass as if making a toast.

  “Saludos, mí amigos!” said Tom Cat. “And the only thing to win is big money!”

  “Damned right!” Drew laughed with his glass still raised. “To bank money!”

  “To stagecoach money!” Tom Cat Weaver shouted joyously.

  “To railroad money!” came Drew’s response. “Ain’t that right, English?” he called out. But when the two of them turned and looked, Hedgepeth had left the tent. His thin cigar lay in the ash tin, smoke curling upward from it. In the center of the table lay the deck of cards, neatly stacked as if to say game over.

  “Where the hell…?” Drew looked back and forth. So did Tom Cat.

  “He must’ve had to go something awful,” said Tom Cat, lowering his upraised glass and putting it to his lips.

  Drew only shrugged. He shoved his little finger back into the bag, brought it out, and held it over to the young sleeping prostitute. “Breakfast time, darling, wake up, wake up,” he said playfully.

  Out in back of the tent, Hedgepeth had not stopped for a second. Saddlebags over his shoulder, he’d walked quickly from the rear of the tent without looking back. The old jeweler stood at the open gate of a small corral, holding the reins to a rested, saddled, trail-ready silver-gray barb. He handed Hedgepeth the reins.

  Hedgepeth swung his saddlebags to the old man, who in turn swung them up behind the ornate silver-trimmed Mexican saddle and tied them down. “You will like this horse, senor,” the old Mexican jeweler said, turning, as Hedgepeth swung up into the saddle.

  “Yes, I already do,” Hedgepeth said, tightening his expensive derby hat down onto his forehead. “Good day to you, sir,” he said, heeling the big horse away toward a thick stretch of woodlands lining the hillsides behind Nickels.