by Geff Moyer
Mexican General Luis Torres, an honest man when it benefitted him, had given a few of the Rangers the permission to enter and perform their duties within the district of Sonora. That few included Billy Old and Jeff Kidder. That didn’t bode well with the Mexican police who were tangled in some shifty side businesses. The only thing that pleased Amador and Quías when Jeff walked into Lucheia’s was that he was alone.
Before his eyes could adjust to the dark a voice shouted, “Kidder!” A gun fired and it felt as if someone had slapped a hot branding iron across his left forearm. He fired at the muzzle blast. The cry that came from the darkness told him he had struck meat. Two more rounds exploded. One bullet splintered the bar just inches from his hip as the other sizzled past his shoulder. Again he fired at the muzzle blast. Meat again! Both policemen were down. As his eyes adjusted to the dark room he slowly approached the two wounded men. Quías was unconscious from the bullet that had grazed his skull. Amador was crouched in a corner clamping one hand over his bloody rib cage.
“Fuckin’ Ranger, fuckin’ Ranger!” screamed the wounded policeman.
Just as Jeff reached for the handcuffs looped in his belt, the back door to the same alley Quías and Amador had just come from burst open. Two more men ran in with weapons blazing. A round slammed into Jeff’s stomach, ripping a large exit hole in his back and catapulting him over a table. From flat on the floor he emptied his Colt into the two new fighters. Even with eyes burning from the sulfur clouding the small room he was able to see that both were hit, and that both also wore soiled police uniforms. One was face down on the floor, the sawdust beneath him turning a gooey brownish red. The other, oddly enough, was perfectly seated in a chair with a stunned expression on his face and a red hole in his forehead. It was almost a comical sight, but Jeff knew if he laughed his insides would flood through the growing hole in his belly. It felt like he was dying of thirst, but knew gut shots put a fellow in that state. He also knew that drinking anything with such a wound would simply hurry The Reaper. So first things first: stuff his bandana into the hole in his belly to curb the stream of blood that was darkening his shirt and Levis. Next: reload, which left ten rounds in his belt. Third: get his feet back under him and get the hell out of there. Using chairs and tables as crutches he stumbled and groped his way to the door. The outside steps fooled him and he spilled down them and out into the dusty street.
Darkness was coming, but he wasn’t sure if it was the beginning of nighttime or the end of his own life. It was twenty yards of open ground back to the bridge and across to the safety of the Arizona side of Naco. Vermillion whinnied and stirred and stomped his hooves. Jeff struggled to his knees and tried to grab the nervous horse’s reins. Then a hailstorm of bullets pinged and thudded all around him.
Three more policemen, Moises Alvarez, Diaz Pasco, and the mysterious man Billy knew only as Victoriano, came running down the street, eagerly joining the fight. They, too, knew their target. Jeff rolled behind the empty water trough as a barrage of lead splintered and punctured the rotting wood. A horse screamed in pain. Peeking from his cover he saw Vermillion stagger and collapse, jerking his legs and twitching his body, blood streaming from several bullet holes in his neck. Then all movement stopped.
Another friend was dead.
He fired until there was no more weight to his ammo belt and his revolver clicked empty. Knowing he was too bloodied and weak to make the bridge, he tossed out his Colt and raised one hand.
“Both hands up, cabrón!” demanded one of the Mexican policemen.
Jeff rose to his knees, one hand in the air, the other keeping his guts intact. “Can’t do two, amigo,” he groaned.
The three men grabbed his arms and jerked him to his feet. He screamed in pain and felt the skin around the hole in his belly split even more, giving his guts a wider escape route.
“Hurt, gringo?” Pasco asked with a grin.
As the three policemen dragged the wounded Ranger to the jail they pelted his face and body with their fists. When he’d fold from the blows, they’d kick his ribs and legs and yank him back to his feet. He could feel his insides trying to push their way to freedom. A pistola crashed down against his head and the sickening sound of his skull cracking bounced from one ear to the other. They tossed him into a cell furnished with nothing but rats and straw stained black from dried shit. Left there overnight, his desperate pleas for a doctor, even a Mexican doctor, resulted only in taunting replies of “No comprendo, amigo!”
April 4, 1908
Breaking up mining strikes was never on the official list of duties for the Arizona Rangers. That is until some fat asses up at the territorial seat slid the idea under the table as a sure fire way to grease their own palms. Captain Wheeler had sent Billy up to Patagonia to assist the local sheriff with three troublesome miners who were trying to organize a strike. The sheriff said the presence of a Ranger would be greatly appreciated when he went to “correct the miner’s ways of thinkin.” When the two arrived at the site, sure enough, three pumpkin rollers were perched on a makeshift platform thrown together from some old crates. With the fire and brimstone of a preacher they were spouting union merits to a small cluster of men. The sheriff walked up to the platform and ordered them to disperse. One of the three made the mistake of declaring his right to freedom of speech. The sheriff promptly placed a bullet between the man’s eyes. The small cluster of listeners scattered. The two other union-minded miners scurried off with their navels dragging in the dirt and probably didn’t stop running until they reached Colorado.
With a still smoking six shooter in his hand the sheriff turned to Billy and said, “You saw that fella go fer a shooter, din’t ya, Ranger?”
Since it really wasn’t a question Billy replied, “Very likely.” With the strike threat dead and done, he pointed Orion towards Nogales and whispered in the horse’s ear, “Fog it, Big O!”
It was slow country back to the Nogales Ranger headquarters. He finally rode in a little before midnight. He was surprised to find Captain Wheeler and fellow Ranger John Foster saddling up their mounts at such a late hour. From the look on both men’s faces, he knew something was wrong.
“Don’t bother to bed-down Orion,” stated Wheeler. “We’re headin’ for Naco.”
“Jeff’s been shot, Billy,” explained John Foster.
“Bad?” asked Billy.
“Telegram said bad shot,” replied Captain Wheeler. “That’s all we know.”
“What the hell was he doin’ in Naco?”
“Amador and Quías,” answered Foster.
“Did you send him there after them alone?” Billy fired at Wheeler.
The captain gave Billy a stern look and replied, “The goddamn fool didn’t even tell me he was goin,’ Billy.”
“Why didn’t he wait fer me?” he shouted in frustration at no one in particular. “He said he wouldn’t do nothun without me.”
“Did ya know he was goin’ there?” asked Wheeler.
Billy shook his head in frustration. “Cap’n, he’s been keepin’ me in the dark fer weeks now, too. I done told him how the hell can I cover his back ifin I don’t know where his goddamn back is!”
It was sixty miles to Naco from Nogales and the next train wasn’t until noon the following day. None of them were willing to wait that long, so the ride along the border at night was five hours of danger. The three Rangers arrived in Naco before dawn, April 5. When Billy saw the rat hole his friend had been put in and how he had been left, it took both Wheeler and Foster to keep him from air holing every Mexican policeman in sight.
As he gasped for breath Jeff keep repeating the names “Amador, Quías, Alvarez, Pasco, Victoriano...Amador...” He had half of them out for the fifth time when he went quiet, looked square at Billy and said, “Remember?”
Billy wiped a tear from his eye and replied, “Ya got it!”
Jeff gave his friend one of his tobacco stained smiles then exhaled the little life that was left in him. The three Rangers placed Kidd
er’s body in a wagon. Billy drove it as Wheeler rode to its left and Foster to its right. The lumbering twenty yards to the Arizona side of Naco was accompanied by several taunts, in Spanish of course, by a small gathering of Mexican policeman lined on their side of the bridge.
Wheeler glanced over at Billy and saw the rage on his face and the tears in his eyes. “Easy, Billy. Ain’t nothun we can do on this side a the bridge.”
“The day’ll come, Billy,” stated John Foster. “The day’ll come.”
“Yer fuckin’ right it will,” declared Billy as he whipped the reins to speed up the lazy wagon team. He wanted out of Mexico, out of the sight and earshot of the scumbags lining their way. As the horses hoofs struck the first board of the old bridge he repeated in a harsh whisper, “Yer fuckin’ right it will.”
Jeff’s body was sent by train to his mother in Los Angeles for burial. Less than three days later the greasy Mexican gears were put into motion. The five killers were magically whisked off to various unknown Sonora towns. Someone had helped the scum suckers vanish into seventy-one-thousand square miles of mainly desert. Since it happened below the border, no charges were ever made. Arizona couldn’t and Mexico wouldn’t.
April, 1902
The train screeched, jerked, grunted, and belched smoke as it strained to stop at the Nogales, Arizona depot. Jeff Kidder removed his horse from a boxcar and led the animal from their fourth and final train since leaving Vermillion, South Dakota. Even three wretched days in stuffy and soot-filled passenger cars hadn’t dampened his furor. He had waited a long time for this chance, much longer than most bucks that had the itch to head west. He was twenty-six-years old and college educated. Yet even with all that learning it was the colorful bullshit of the Dime Novels that stirred him. For years he had practiced the quick draw and was fast with the mother-of-pearl handled Colt holstered at his right side. His dream of being a lawman was just a few city blocks away in the headquarters of the Arizona Rangers.
As Captain Harry Wheeler glanced up at the fellow entering his office, his first thought was here’s a shiny new coin that needs a little smudging up.
“Harry Wheeler,” he said as he rose from behind his desk and extended his hand.
“Jeff Kidder,” the coin answered and watched his hand disappear within the big man’s grip. Kidder topped out at around five-foot-ten-inches, but had to crick his neck up to meet the hard eyes in Wheeler’s leathered face. A face he figured had earned every line in it.
“Have a seat,” the captain ordered, pointing to the chair in front of his desk, which just happened to be the only other one in the room.
Wheeler returned to the comfort of his high back swivel chair as Jeff sat down in a stiff, hard-backed wooden chair that was as unpleasant as it looked.
“It’s green up in the Dakotas, ain’t it?” asked the captain.
“Yessir, ‘cept when it snows,” answered Kidder with a slight grin as he shifted to find a tolerable position in the chair.
“So why the hell ya wanna come down to this shithole?”
The blunt question caused Jeff to shift a little more in the hard chair. His back told him to not do it again.
“To make a difference,” he finally managed to say.
“A difference in what?” asked Wheeler.
Jeff watched a clump of grey cigar ash tumble onto the man’s tan shirt. He didn’t bother to brush it off.
“In the life of people who live on the right side of the law,” he replied, pleased with his quick response.
“Ya ain’t one of ‘em shitwad fools who think they’re gonna ‘tame the west,’ are ya? That ain’t ne’er gonna happen.”
“If it were tamed, Captain, there wouldn’t be any need for men like us.”
A little smile formed on Wheeler’s lips. Jeff assumed his answer pleased the man. For a long moment the captain just stared at the anxious recruit, puffing so hard on his cigar that he almost disappeared behind a cloud of smoke. Jeff shifted. Wheeler stared. He had eyeballed this type of fellow before—all shiny and half-cocked with eyes that had never seen the type of trouble he would face as a Ranger.
“Ever kilt a man?” the captain finally asked.
“No sir.”
“Think ya could?”.
“If it comes down to it, yessir!”
“Oh, it’ll come down to it. How’s yer draw?”
“Some folks say I’m fast,” Jeff answered with a confident grin.
Wheeler stood and adjusted his gun belt, stepped out from behind the desk, and crossed to within five feet of Kidder.
“Let’s see it.”
“Right here?” asked Kidder as he gratefully rose from the hard-backed chair.
“Good a place as any.”
“Against you?”
“Ain’t no one else here, son. Let’s see it. Just don’t shoot me.”
Jeff took note that the captain wore his six-shooter up high on his right hip with the butt facing left, which meant he was southpaw. He remembered that the Dime Novels called that a “border draw.” He also recalled that executing such a cross draw usually takes the iron a split second longer to leave leather.
“Uh, should we count to three or anything before...”
“Just draw, son!”
Kidder reached for his fancy pearl handled Colt. Before he even had it drawn and raised to four o’clock, Wheeler’s pistol was winking at his belly button.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“Some folks say I’m slow,” the captain said with a grin then spun his weapon to bed, turned, and with two long strides was once again seated in his padded swivel chair.
“Anyone ever passed that test, Captain?”
Putting pen to a sheet of paper and not even looking up at Kidder, Wheeler replied, “You just came purty near, but all ‘em questions ya was asking ‘fore you finally decided to pull told me ya think too much. When ya gotta draw, son, just do it! Don’t give the other shitwad an advantage.” The captain finished writing on the sheet of paper. “Here’s what I’m gonna do, Mr. Kidder,” he continued. “You take this note to the sheriff in Nogales.” He handed the paper to Jeff. “His name’s Donny Austin, friend of mine, good man. Work with him awhile. Salary’ll be shit, but enough to live on fer a spell.”
“How long of a spell?” Jeff asked, concerned about the limited amount of funds in his pocket.
The captain’s eyes squinted slightly as he answered, “Til I decide if and when yer fit to be a Ranger.”
The Dime Novels had told Jeff all he needed to know about “Nasty Nogales.” Inside he was grinning. He was headed for the streets of one of the most vicious towns in the west and he’d be wearing a badge.
It took eight months of dealing with drunken cowboys, bank robbers, murderers, rapists, angry whores, inebriated Indians, wet stock and wetbacks before Kidder found himself planted back in that ass-hard chair in Wheeler’s office. The captain had finally inquired of his progress with a note to his friend Donny Austin. The Nogales sheriff scribbled on the back of the same piece of paper and returned it to Wheeler.
“The man is not reluctant to pull and use that fancy Colt, barrel or butt end, whichever the occasion requires, particularly on an Injun. Killed one.”
Wheeler noticed the shine he had seen eight months ago had dulled. The recruit’s eyes were colder, more penetrating, more focused. The once clean-cut fellow from Dakota now sported at least a month’s worth of face stubble and was in bad need of a haircut.
“Here ya kilt a man,” the captain finally stated.
“No choice, Cap’n. Him or me.”
“How’d it feel?”
“It was a drunk Apache, Cap’n, and he came at me with knife in hand.”
Twenty-four hours later he was sworn in as an Arizona Ranger and given his first assignment.
January, 1903
The Arizona border town of Pirtleville was just stirring when the Mexican bandito Doroteo Arango and his men ravaged it. They were in and out in less than fifteen minutes
with all the money in the town’s bank, a couple dozen new Winchesters, and a corral full of horses. In their wake they left two burning buildings and three people dead, one of them a ten-year-old boy. For years the notorious robber and murderer had been raiding U.S. money shipments and rustling cattle, always targeting the wealthy. Then he’d slink back across the border and share a little of his loot with the poor. Very little. That sharing also included the Yaquis, which made him an instant amigo to the local tribes. In turn, they showed Arango just about every back trail and shortcut in and around the entire District of Sonora, especially in Yaqui country. He was dubbed by the locals as their “Robin Hood,” though most of them had no idea who “Robin Hood” was.
Captain Wheeler ordered Billy Old, William “Sparky” Sparks, Alex MacDougal, J.J. Brookings, and the newest Ranger Jeff Kidder to track and perforate the slippery eel and as many of his men as possible.
“Rumor has it the oiler seems to frequent the area ‘round the town of Cuauhtémoc,” Wheeler briefed the small group of Rangers just before they were to set out. “In Aztec Cuauhtémoc means ‘He who descends like an eagle.’ The fool likens himself to an eagle soarin’ down on its prey. In this case, places like Pirtleville. Since Cuauhtémoc is southwest of there but southeast of here, ya fellas might be able to cut the beaner off. Ifin so, nail the shitwad and as many of his boys as ya can.”
A day later the small group of Rangers had Cuauhtémoc in sight. They crossed to the east of the town in an attempt to pick up the trail of a body of horses coming from the northeast.
“Whatta ya think, Sparky?” Alex MacDougal asked.
William “Sparky” Sparks was off his mount and down on one knee studying the ground. With his palm hovering about two feet above the earth, he slowly moved it left and right like he could feel the heat from the hoof prints.
