by Will Keen
But that had ended yesterday, and McClain’s face was thoughtful and contemplative as he lifted his glass and took a long, refreshing draft of cool beer. The last stage of what McClain would forever think of as an epic ride had been across the Rio Grande at Laredo and on to the settlement of Lo Tranquilo, a sprawl of dwellings along the shores of the Laguna that McClain considered to be little more than shacks. Inhabited by . . . well . . . it was difficult to categorise the few men he had seen. All looked like lean, hungry range tramps, wearing rags for clothes, donned some time last year and slept in every night since. Unshaven, probably drunk most of the time, but nevertheless they were alive and, somewhat unsettling for McClain, their eyes seemed to miss very little.
And now Carter was away, getting the feel of an area of southern Texas he had last seen way too many years ago, and making damn sure he got close to the one person he could trust to tell him all he needed to know about the violent Skelton clan.
Elizabeth Kent. Liz, to Don Carter. The woman who had been old all those years ago. McClain couldn’t help wondering if that old woman was still alive and still capable of charming the rattles off snakes – whatever the hell that meant.
Carter returned late in the afternoon. McClain was still sitting in a rattan armchair on the rotting gallery behind Rankin’s place, the rear section that had given him those impressive views over Laguna Madre and the distant storms over the Gulf for most of the day. The Irish owner, Ray Rankin, had kept him supplied with beer and had joined him for a lunch of bread and dry, stringy beef around midday. After that McClain had tried hard to stay awake, but failed. He came back to life when Carter came clumping around the gallery from the front of the saloon, and gave McClain’s chair a hefty kick.
‘If that had been one of the Skelton boys,’ he said, dropping into a chair as McClain jerked to wakefulness, ‘you’d be a dead man.’
‘That’s a statement needs some elaboration. How many are we talking about? Did Liz bring you up to date?’
‘Let’s keep it simple. The two that concern us are Hedrick and Marty, and they rode into town more than a week ago.’
‘Town?’
Carter grinned, but it couldn’t hide his unease. ‘OK, so Lo Tranquilo makes Red Creek look like Phoenix. Point is, those boys rode south in a hurry. Killing my horse from ambush gained them time. They made the most of it. They were three weeks on the trail. That’s given them a clear seven days to rest up and talk to their kinfolk.’
‘And that’s a concern?’
‘If you intend sitting on your backside for the foreseeable, well, no—’
‘Cut it out.’
‘My business went up in flames, McClain, and there wasn’t a thing I could do because in Lo Tranquilo there is no law. No law means the lawless rule the roost. And nothing’s changed.’
‘Until now. Now, there’s you and me.’
‘Really? You think flashing an Arizona badge is going to save you when those drunken Skeltons come roaring out of the night wielding knives and guns?’
‘Hedrick and Marty are home and dry, they’ll lie low. You say the extended Skelton family controls this stretch of coast. Those two killers, brothers, sons, whatever the hell they are, will have ridden into town and told the tale, boasted about what they’d done. How we rode into an ambush, lost a horse and beat a hasty retreat, tails between our legs. The Skeltons won’t be worried about us. My guess is they’ll have sat tight, waiting for us to turn up. Now we’re here they’ll go about their unlawful businesses and wait for us to make the first move. If I’m wrong, well, we’ll make damn sure we’re ready.’
‘Yeah, once a sucker is enough for me,’ Carter said. ‘But first they’ve got to find us.’
McClain cocked an eyebrow. ‘They saw us ride in. I’d guess one or more of them were in here, up against the bar soaking up Rankin’s fine whiskey. They’ll know we took rooms here and spent the night; they probably know what we had to eat, what time we went to bed, what time we got up.’
‘I agree. So we let ’em think that’s going to continue. It just so happens I’ve got a little something up my sleeve—’
He broke off as the sound of a pistol being cocked cut through the sultry late-afternoon heat. McClain’s reaction was instantaneous. He threw himself out of his chair, landed on the creaking boards of the old gallery and rolled towards the rails. He hit them with his back, heard wood splinter and felt sharp edges rake his neck. If he fell through the rails, it was a ten-foot drop to a hard rock shelf that sloped steeply to the sand of the beach. But if he chose to stay on the gallery. . . .
Carter had not moved.
The man who’d caught their attention by cocking his pistol had come around the gallery on what McClain figured was the east side of Rankin’s place. His move had been a diversion, a distraction, made even more effective by McClain’s explosive reaction. As McClain rolled, hit the rails and drew all eyes, the second gunman had walked swiftly around the gallery on the west side of the saloon. He now stood alongside Carter, the muzzle of his cocked six-gun pressed hard against the marshal’s temple.
The first gunman was grinning.
‘You should have bust clear through the rails, McClain, and cracked your skull on those rocks. Would have saved us the trouble.’
‘You think this is over. Just the two of you? You think you’re good enough?’
‘With the drop on you, that gives us the upper hand,’ the gunman said. ‘Two cousins, inside right now keeping Rankin quiet, doubles the odds in our favour.’
‘You must be the runts of the litter, scarce out of short pants,’ Carter said scathingly, and he shrugged himself away from the pistol, came out of his chair and glared as the gunman stepped back unperturbed.
‘Yeah, not born when your place went up in smoke, which makes you an old man, Carter. That story gets told and retold. Not just an old man, but a loser.’
‘What are you, Skeltons or hired guns?’
‘Since when have Skeltons needed any help?’
‘So . . .’
‘I’m Mill, he’s Reb. Pa’s dead; Amos, remember him? Joel’s our great Grandpa.’
‘What do you want with us?’
‘You’re Arizona lawmen who got some notion Hedrick and Marty are killers, and aim to take them back to a hang rope. That’s not going to happen.’
‘You talk to much, Mill,’ Reb Skelton said. ‘All they need to know is they’re finished here; an hour from now they’ll be on their way back to Arizona.’ His eyes were ugly when he added, ‘Always supposin’ they’re still able to climb onto a horse.’
He stepped back so that the way was clear to go back around the gallery to the front of the saloon and impatiently waggled the six-gun.
McClain was up on his feet. He could feel a trickle of blood under his collar. His talking big hadn’t altered the situation. Yet again they’d been found wanting, caught cold with their pants down. The two Skeltons had weapons out and cocked, and neither McClain nor Carter could draw fast enough to beat a squeezed trigger, the fall of a hammer. To make matters worse, there were two more Skeltons holding Rankin in his own saloon.
‘Before we move,’ Mill Skelton said, ‘we need to get rid of those six-guns. Take ’em out with finger and thumb, fellers. Let’s hear them hit the boards.’
Carter grinned sourly. He took his six-gun out and tossed it carelessly so it bounced off Mill’s boots. McClain took his out, let it drop, and waited.
‘Now we get out of here. Reb goes first, you two follow. I’ll be right behind. A wrong move and someone dies.’
McClain and Carter exchanged glances. The unspoken message was that single file along the gallery gave them a slim chance – maybe their last, before the odds doubled. Reb would be in front, his back to Carter and McClain. Jumping him would be risky, but the two Arizona lawmen were both big and their bulk would block Mill Skelton’s line of sight. If Carter went for Reb, McClain could then feign a stumble, as if fighting for balance fall back towards Mill.
&
nbsp; Jaw tight, nerves singing, McClain watched Reb head off down the side of the saloon – and saw at once that the Skelton kids were taking no chances. Instead of walking, Reb jogged ahead of them as far as the front of the building, then turned, pistol poised. Without turning, McClain knew that Mill would have taken the reverse precaution: he’d have hung back, so that McClain and Carter would walk the length of the gallery with neither gunman within reach.
Ahead of McClain, Carter was of the same opinion and was cursing softly.
Then he went over the rail.
He took one step to the side, slapped a hand on the top and went over in a clean vault. The saloon was built on stilts. At its sides there was a drop of some six feet to sandy soil. Beneath the building there was a dark space inhabited by spiders, snakes, scorpions – hell, what did Carter care when above him there were snakes of the two-legged kind? McClain heard a scuffling, a scrabbling, a thud that brought a savage grin to his face as he imagined Carter underneath and hitting his head on the overhead boards that were the saloon’s floor. The big marshal would go in deep under the building. He would be daring anyone to follow and would have a choice of weapons – rocks, baulks of waste timber, empty whisky bottles – and he would know that even without a six-gun the advantage was now his.
Then, suddenly, McClain was down on one knee. A cracking blow to the side of his skull sent a jagged white light flaring behind his eyes. Pain shooting through his jaw, his neck, and leeched all the strength from his legs. Down, teeth clenched, groaning, he knew Mill Skelton had seen Carter make his bid for freedom and acted fast. He’d stepped in close, and McClain had suffered a vicious pistol-whipping.
Standing over him, Mill Skelton said, ‘Carter don’t matter much; in some ways he’s one of us, Laguna Madre in his blood. According to Hedrick and Marty, you’re the real danger.’
‘I don’t know how they arrived at that conclusion,’ McClain gritted, ‘but believe me, they’re right.’ He dragged himself to his feet, stood swaying.
‘From a man in your position,’ Mill said, nudging him with his toe as Reb came back along the gallery, ‘that comes across as plumb loco.’
Chapter Twelve
They took him out into the late sun supported on both sides because his legs wouldn’t hold him with any steadiness. They were joined there by their two cousins, where the heat of the day was kicked up with the dust of the street. Leaning on the shaded front gallery’s rail, short, stocky Rankin was a brooding figure with angry eyes and a red wheal high on one cheekbone, the hint of new lameness in his awkward stance. He shook his head as he caught McClain’s eye – though what message was intended was lost in McClain’s dazed senses.
He and Carter had overnighted their horses in a rickety three-sided barn of Rankin’s a few yards from the saloon. One of the cousins led McClain’s out, saddled, the animal blinking in the bright light. They dragged McClain over, watched while he struggled into the saddle. The thought was in him to refuse, but he knew that would bring another blow to the head. Or he’d end up across the saddle, belly down, trussed like a chicken. To invite either would have been unwise. Strength would be needed later, for sure – but outnumbered four to one, what were his chances?
And where the hell was Carter?
He was hanging on to his saddle horn in the middle of the group of four, stirrup to stirrup with those on either side as they rode out of town in a direction that would, if followed, take him to Laredo and the Rio Grande. It was to make clear their intention, he surmised. When they’d finished with him he was to keep on riding, never to return to the Gulf coast. Which, he thought bleakly, was an order he could not accept. The ride out towards the wide river, yes, if he was still capable of sitting astride a horse and they were watching. But he and Carter hadn’t ridden the better part of a thousand miles to see Hedrick and Marty Skelton get clean away with murder.
He estimated they rode no more than five miles out of Lo Tranquilo. All the way the evening sun was in their eyes, and dust was a constant irritation for McClain riding jostled in the centre of his four-man escort. Then Mill Skelton snapped a command and the group turned off the trail, the horses’ hoofs crunching through dry earth and parched growth as they rode up a slope into a level area of rough scrub encircled by live oaks.
All the way up McClain was kept in the centre of the group, hemmed in, with no way of breaking out. He knew then, with the beginnings of despair, that his chances were nil.
No more words were spoken. The four Skeltons drew rein and dismounted, let their horses wander to graze if they could find any green grass. One of the cousins reached up, gripped the still-dazed McClain’s shirt with both hands and dragged him off his horse. His condition made him clumsy. He landed awkwardly on one shoulder, grunted as the impact sent pain shooting through his neck and skull; he was vaguely aware of the cousin slapping the mare so that it tossed its head and trotted away, snorting.
Then all four men were crowding him. Two stepped in close and used their boots, swinging fierce kicks into his ribs and his belly, the blows driving the breath from his body. The effort, the irrational hatred, was there in their grunts as they rained kicks on his dead weight. McClain, sick to the stomach, bleeding from the mouth, rolled into a ball in the dust. He folded his arms over his head, pulled up his knees. One of the others had found a broken branch. He moved in. Using it like a club, he beat McClain mercilessly. The blows were directed at his head. Most were taken by his forearms, his elbows. He felt his muscles weakening, his arms limply unfolding. They fell away, left his face exposed. A punishing blow glanced off his forehead, tore skin off his nose.
It went on to the stage were pain was replaced by numbness, consciousness began to drift towards a state between somewhere and nowhere. But they judged the beating well: if it had gone on for too long they would have been kicking a dead man. When it ended, the half-conscious McClain was hardly aware. They were there, then gone, fading away like wood smoke. No words – but no words were needed. The message had been clear.
He lay there unmoving, in a bad way, testing each of his limbs in turn, but only in his thoughts: Will this one move? Is this one broken? The hissing of his pulse in his ears was faint and fast, raindrops falling rapidly on a red-hot skillet. Was that good, or should he be worrying? He recalled hearing above the hammering of his pulse hoofbeats receding into a distance, which would have been the Skeltons heading for home.
Then after some time had passed there were others, more horses, faster and closing. Fear prickled inside him as he lay curled and suffering. The arrivals halted in a rush, metal jingling, the creak and snap of leather. There were words, loud enough, anxious, enquiring perhaps, but beyond McClain’s comprehension or ability to answer. Footsteps approached. He tensed. Strong hands grasped his shoulders and lifted him. McClain’s head fell back. Then all apprehension was gone as the world spun and he sank dizzily into the waiting blackness.
Chapter Thirteen
McClain got stiffly out of bed on the second day. If it hadn’t been for the nagging pain of his cruelly beaten limbs, muscles that were patterned with purple bruises and a split lip, a prize fighter would have admired in a steamed-up mirror that they would have been pleasant days. The first he had spent in a bed worthy of the name since leaving his home in Macedo’s Flat. The sheets were white, the pillow duck down, and the one thin blanket that was all he needed in that climate was clean and soft. A south-facing room, he guessed. For most of the daylight hours after he had regained full consciousness, the sun poured in through the single window. Too hot at times. He had mentioned that to the woman who always bore the refreshing scent of lavender, his voice weak but clear enough, and Liz had pulled down a thin blind that did the trick.
Liz Kent. Her house, but maybe not her home, because McClain got the feeling that there was the one bedroom, a living room maybe, and not much more. In poor condition. From the quality of the light, somewhere high up. Away from the coastal settlement where she was more likely to live, for outside the hou
se there had been no human sounds. But where exactly was this place located? he thought with some unease. In particular, where in relation to the Skelton family, members of which had beaten him unmercifully and left him for dead, and presumably now thought him long gone? Hadn’t Carter told him the Skeltons had a cluster of shacks out in the scrub country? Well, OK, scrub country in these parts could refer to just about anywhere a stranger cared to look – but Skeltons sold bootleg liquor: they wouldn’t want to be too far away from customers. From McClain’s admittedly brief observations, he gathered that most people tended to congregate in the coastal areas where year-round high temperatures were at least a little alleviated by sea breezes.
Did that include the enigmatic Liz Kent?
For a while before the beating, knowing she was a ghostly figure from Carter’s past, McClain had been speculating on the woman’s age. After seeing her, he was none the wiser. Fifty going on eighty. She was tall but looked weightless, veins like thin blue cords under the soft skin of her hands, her white hair pulled back and tied with a red ribbon to hang in a tail between her shoulders. Old trying to look young, or not caring either way? She was erect as a West Point graduate, wore a plain loose cotton frock that hung like a becalmed ship’s sail from bony shoulders and touched nothing on its way to her feet. Her eyes were a weak blue, but bright, her smile even more warm and infectious than could be imagined from Carter’s description.
As for Carter, he was yet to be seen. For all McClain knew the marshal was still down there, food for the scorpions and spiders in the dark and the dirt under Rankin’s floor. And there had been no mention of the Skeltons.
Until now.
‘If they know you’re here,’ Liz said, handing him a steaming tin cup of coffee, ‘you’re a dead man. And they’ve got noses keen as hunting hounds.’
‘They left me for dead, off the trail to Laredo. Why would I be a cause for concern?’
