Between Hell and Texas

by Ralph Cotton

  In the middle of the street, Mike Cassidy was still alive and struggling through the mud toward the other side of the street. Ash hurriedly finished reloading and cocked his Colt, taking aim. But Lematte stopped him, saying, “Let him go, Ash. He’s done for anyway.”

  “Mercy is low on my list of virtues,” said Ash. Yet he lowered the gun and looked around at the other men rising up from the mud.

  Lying dead on the Double D side were Jimmie Turner, Sandy Edelman, Gains Bouchard, and Stanley Grubs. Of Lematte’s deputies only Rowland Lenz lay dead, his blank eyes staring skyward, a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. As the rest of the wounded deputies arose, Delbert Collins stayed balled up in the mud, his hands gripping his bloody crotch as he sobbed and moaned loudly. Lematte winced looking at him, then said, “Somebody get him on his feet! Get him to the doctor’s.”

  “No, please!” Collins sobbed. “I can’t stand up!”

  In spite of Collins’s pleading, Hogo Metacino pulled him up, saying, “We’re all wounded, Delbert, stop your bellyaching!”

  Across the street, out front of the hotel, Mike Cassidy had managed to pull himself up the side of his horse and roll himself up into the saddle. While Lematte and his men were busy taking stock of themselves, Cassidy managed to ease the horse around into an alley and along the back of the town.

  Inside the hotel, Tinsdale and Deavers had seen Cassidy slip away. “I hope to God he makes it,” Deavers said. “Maybe he’ll bring the rest of the Double D boys back with him to avenge Bouchard.”

  “Good Lord, man!” Tinsdale remarked. “A vengeance war is exactly what we don’t need here right now—not on top of everything else!”

  “After what we’ve both just witnessed in the street,” said Deavers, “I think the only way we’ll get rid of Lematte and his band of murderers is to kill them where they stand.”

  “Take hold of yourself, Deavers,” said Tinsdale. “We’re civilized men! We can’t stoop to murder. That makes us no better than Lematte.”

  “You’re right, Tinsdale,” said Deavers, giving it some quick consideration. “We can’t stoop to his level. We have to act fast. We have to get the Double D cowhands on our side while their blood is boiling over what these men did to Gains Bouchard. I’m sure we can count on them now.”

  Tinsdale nodded. “And don’t forget Cray Dawson. I understand he and Bouchard were real close.”

  “Then that has to be our next move,” said Deavers. “We have to appeal to the Double D and Cray Dawson; see if they’ll take up our fight. That’s the only civilized way to do this sort of thing.”

  Dawson and Carmelita had arrived early at the old Dawson place and spent most of the day hanging curtains, sweeping the floors, and checking the place thoroughly for rattlesnakes. The rain had quit at dawn, leaving the land sodden and strewn with wide puddles of muddy water that would take days to seep down into the sated land. Only the trail was dry, the sun having spent the day baking it back to its hardened state.

  They had spoken very little since the night Dawson had told her about Suzzette. But now that they had gotten out and gone about cleaning up the old, weatherbeaten house, Dawson could see Carmelita’s attitude softening a bit. By the time they had finished with the house, mounted up, and taken the Old Spanish Trail back toward the Shaw hacienda, Dawson could see she felt better about things.

  “Tell me this, Cray,” she said as they rode along easily through a cut of high-reaching rock walls. “If you were not with me, would you be staying with this woman?”

  Cray looked her up and down, seeing she was getting over any bad feelings she’d had, but still working things over in her mind. “No,” he said. “She is a good woman, I think, in spite of her profession. But we had already talked it over…I had no interest in staying with her. I don’t think she really had any interest in being with me. She had a friend who took up with a gunman. She told me she thought it would be a good life.”

  “A good life with a gunman,” Carmelita said, pondering it to herself. “I watched how my sister and Lawrence Shaw lived. I do not think she had a good life.”

  “I know,” said Dawson, not wanting to think about Rosa Shaw right then; certainly not wanting to talk about her. “I tried to tell Suzzette that life with a gunman was no way to live. She didn’t want to hear it.”

  Casting him a sidelong glance, Carmelita said as if in some sense of personal reflection, “So, you left this woman for her own good?”

  “I left her because I didn’t have the feeling a man ought to have for a woman before he takes up living with her,” Dawson said bluntly. “I could see no good ever come from me lying ‘bout it.”

  “I see…” Carmelita rode beside him quietly for a second, then asked, “And do you have this kind of feeling for me, Cray Dawson?”

  “Yes, I do, Carmelita,” said Dawson. They rode on in silence for another moment, then he asked her, “What about you? Do you feel as strongly toward me?”

  “Si,” she said, “I feel very…strongly for you.”

  Dawson smiled to himself, noting how they both had carefully avoided saying they loved one another. He started to stay something more on the subject, but the sound of a hoof against a rock along the trail ahead caught his attention. He halted his horse and gave a hand gesture, cautioning Carmelita to stay behind him.

  “What is it?” she whispered, drawing the red mule over between Dawson and the rock wall.

  “Someone on horseback, I think,” said Dawson, staring forward where the trail bent out of sight. They waited quietly as the sound of slow hoofs against rock grew closer. When the horse finally turned into sight, Carmelita gave a short gasp, seeing the rider lying limp in the saddle, bowed forward on the horse’s neck. His right arm hung down the horse’s side, dripping blood.

  “It’s Mike Cassidy! Wait here,” Dawson said to Carmelita. He heeled Stony forward, still looking around warily until they reached Cassidy’s horse.

  “Easy, fellow,” Dawson said, calming the jumpy dun. Reaching down he picked up the dangling reins, then stepped down from his saddle.

  “Daw—Dawson, is that you?” Cassidy said in a weak, broken voice.

  “Yes, Mike, it’s me,” Dawson replied, reaching up and pulling him down from the saddle into his arms. He laid him gently onto the ground and motioned for Carmelita to ride forward. “What’s happened to you, Pard?” he asked the wounded drover, opening Cassidy’s shirt and seeing the gaping wounds in his chest and shoulder. The lower half of Cassidy’s ear was dangling and caked with thick, dried blood.

  “Lematte…and his men,” Cassidy rasped. “They killed everybody but me. Bouchard…Grubs, Turner, and Sandy, all of them dead in the street.”

  “Take it easy, Mike,” Dawson said, taking a canteen from Carmelita as she stepped down from the mule, uncapped it, and handed it to him. “We’re going to get you to the ranch, get you taken care of.” He poured a trickle of water on Cassidy’s dry lips.

  Cassidy gripped Dawson’s forearm. “I won’t make it to the ranch, Crayton.”

  “Sure you will,” said Dawson. “You’re going to be all right, Mike, hang on.” He gave Carmelita a doubtful look, then asked Cassidy, “What was all this about, Mike? What started it?”

  “Lematte killed one of the saloon women,” said Cassidy.

  “Why?” Dawson asked, stunned.

  “Because he’s a rotten…bastard,” Cassidy gasped. Gripping Dawson’s arm he added, “And he beat up Suzzette, real bad.”

  “He beat up Suzzette? How bad?” Dawson asked, concerned about her condition.

  “I never saw her…” Cassidy said weakly. “Jimmie Turner went wild…called Lematte out on it.”

  “Mike, listen to me,” said Dawson, seeing him fading. “I’m going to take you on out to the ranch. We’ve got to get you some help. Can you try to stay in your saddle, if I lay you in it?”

  “I’ll try…but I ain’t going to make it, Crayton,” Cassidy whispered. “Get Lematte for me,” he pleaded, “for Bou
chard, for all of us…” He slumped onto the ground, his eyes going empty, his jaw slack.

  Dawson checked his pulse. “He’s dead,” he said to Carmelita. Prying Cassidy’s clenched hand from his shirt sleeve, Dawson stood up and said, “I’ll take him on out to the Double D. You can take the mule and go on home. I’ll be along later, as soon as I can.”

  “Si,” said Carmelita. “I will be waiting for you. But please do not go to town looking for vengeance.”

  “I won’t go looking for vengeance,” said Dawson. “But I can’t promise you that I won’t get involved in this thing. Bouchard and his men would have done the same for me.”

  “I understand,” said Carmelita, deciding this wasn’t the time to talk about it. She watched him stoop down and close Cassidy’s eyes. Then she walked to the mule, mounted, and rode away.

  Dawson laid Cassidy’s body over the dun’s saddle and led the horse by its reins along the Old Spanish Trail until he rode up to the closed gates of the Double D Ranch. Sonny Wells had spotted him coming from a long ways off, with the body lying over the dun’s back. He had opened the gates and stood watching in dark anticipation as Dawson halted Stony, looked down at him and said, “It’s Mike Cassidy, Sonny. But I’m afraid I’ve got more bad news.”

  Sonny Wells took the reins to the dun and led it along as Cray Dawson relayed the news about Gains Bouchard and the others being dead. Shaney the cook and his helper, Frenchy, stood up from the tailgate of his chuck wagon in the side yard and watched Dawson and Sonny walk along the path to the house.

  “Boys, this ain’t looking good,” Shaney said to the drovers who began to walk over from the corral and the bunkhouse yard to see what was going on.

  Arriving at the chuck wagon, Dawson touched his hat brim and said howdy to the old cook.

  “What happened to him?” Shaney asked, recognizing Cassidy. He wiped his hands on his grease-spotted apron as he stepped around and took a closer look, shaking his head grimly.

  Dawson said, “Let everybody draw around first, Shaney. I only want to have to tell this once.”

  As the rest of the drovers came in and circled close to the dun, taking off their hats and looking at Cassidy’s body, Dawson called out to them, saying, “Pards, Mike Cassidy is not the only one dead. Gains Bouchard, Sandy Edelmen, Stanley Grubs, and young Jimmie Turner are all dead.”

  A low murmur went up from the drovers. Then they settled down respectfully and listened to Dawson relay to them what Cassidy had told him. When he’d finished telling them, Broken Nose Simms said, “Jimmie Turner could never stand seeing a woman mistreated, even if she was a whore.”

  “Gains Bouchard showed the world that he’d stand with his men and die with them if need be,” said a seasoned drover named Alvin Decker.

  “Everybody keep their heads,” Dawson cautioned them, seeing the anger flare.

  But Alvin Decker would have none of it. “Boys,” he said, “I’ve heard enough talk. I say we go take Somos Santos apart and put it back together, without Sheriff Lematte and his murdering rats in it!”

  A cry of support arose from the drovers until Shaney raised a hand and called out for silence. When they quieted down, he said, “I’m just as upset about this as the rest of yas. But before we go shooting up the town, we’ve got some other important things that has to be done first.”

  “Yeah? Like what?” said Broken Nose Simms testily.

  Shaney said firmly, “Like getting everybody’s body back here and giving them all a proper burial! That’s what!”

  “You know he’s right, men,” said Dawson, stepping down from his saddle. “Bouchard loved this place. He wouldn’t want to be buried anywhere else. And none of the others would want to be laid in boot hill, if they had any say in the matter.”

  The drovers stood watching silently as Dawson helped Sonny Wells lower Cassidy’s body onto a wool blanket that Frenchy had run and grabbed from inside the chuck wagon. Finally Barney Woods called out what had been on all their minds, “Are you going to ride with us to take on these murdering bastards, Dawson?”

  Sonny Wells stepped forward before Dawson could answer, saying, “Crayton Dawson is one of us! Don’t none of you ever forget that! He’ll do what he knows is best…the way Bouchard would do if he was here!”

  Barney Woods stepped back, giving Dawson a repentant look, saying, “Sorry Dawson, you know how I am. I get riled and don’t always think real clear. I meant nothing by it.”

  “I know that, Barney.” Dawson gave him a nod, then said to everybody, “Listen up, men. I don’t know what will happen to the Double D now that Gains Bouchard is dead. He was a prudent man, so I’m thinking his attorney in Houston has a will, and some sort of plan for this place in the event of Bouchard’s death. We’ll notify his attorney, but for right now, until we hear otherwise, somebody is going to have to take charge here.” He looked around at Shaney, and called out, “I think Shaney’s the man Bouchard would pick, since his foreman died with him.” He looked all around. “Does anybody say otherwise?”

  Heads shook back and forth slowly. But Shaney called out before Dawson could continue, “Men, I’m a cook. I don’t claim to know how to run an outfit. I can feed, doctor, punch boils, and cut snakebites. But I can’t keep this place together full time and I ain’t ashamed to admit it. I’ll run things until we hear from Gains’s attorney, but when I write to his attorney I’m going to ask to be relieved.”

  “You’re quitting us?” Frenchy asked.

  “No, idiot, I ain’t quitting!” Shaney barked at his helper. “I’ll still cook…but I won’t run this spread.” He looked straight at Cray Dawson and said, “All of you know that I thought the world of Sandy Edelman, both as a man and as a foreman. But you all know as well as I do that had Cray Dawson been here when Bouchard appointed a foreman, it would have been him running this crew instead of Sandy.”

  “Wait a minute, Shaney,” said Dawson, seeing where this was going.

  Ignoring him, Shaney said, “So I say we all ask that Cray Dawson be appointed to run this spread until such time as a heir or a new owner shows up to take over. Who agrees with me?”

  Dawson looked around at a unanimous show of hands. “All right, we’ll see,” he said. But first things first. I’m taking a buckboard to Somos Santos to pick up Bouchard and the others. I’m going to bring Suzzette back with me if she’ll come. I want two men to go along with me.”

  “Only two?” Shaney asked.

  “That’s right, only two,” said Dawson. “I don’t want to turn it into a fight. I just want to get our dead and get them back here. If I take more men, it looks like I’m coming for a showdown.”

  “I say I ought to be one of the men you take with you,” said Barney Woods, stepping forward, “and I say Alvin Decker ought to be the other.”

  “You’re not going with me, Barney,” said Dawson. He gave Alvin Decker a look, stopping him from coming forward. “Neither are you Alvin. You’ll both lose your tempers. That’s what we don’t want to happen.” He looked around; then, spotting the Furry brothers, he said, “Eldon, Max. Can I count on you two keeping cool heads in town?”

  The Furry brothers looked at one another blankly, then back at Dawson. “We’ll try, Crayton,” said Eldon, the older of the two.

  “All right then,” said Dawson. “That’s all I ask. We’ll leave right now and ride through the night. The quicker we get the bodies out of there the better.” He looked at the others, then said, “I want the rest of you to ride with us until we get a quarter of a mile from town. I know the land is still wet, but the sun has already dried the trail. Raise as much dust as you can, so they’ll get the idea we’ve got men coming if we need them. But everybody will stay out of Somos Santos unless you hear shooting.” He looked straight at Barney Woods. “Is that clear, Barney?”

  “Yeah,” said Barney Woods, sincerely. “I’ll stay in line, Dawson. You’ve got my word on it.”

  “Mine too,” said Decker.

  “That goes for everybody he
re,” Dawson said, looking from one drover to the next as if asking each one for their word. “We’ve got burying to do…let’s do it with respect.”

  PART 3

  Chapter 17

  Cleveland Ellis and Moon Braden sat atop a ridge and watched the Dawson house for a full hour before deciding to ride down and take a closer look. Afternoon shadows stretched long across the land as they rode cautiously into the yard and stepped down from their saddles with their pistols coming up from their holsters, cocked and ready. “Hello, the house,” Ellis called out, motioning for Moon Braden to put some distance between them as they approached the front porch. Stepping up quietly and crossing the porch, he slowly shoved the door open a few inches, then looked inside. He turned back to Braden, taking a breath of relief.

  “Just like we thought, Moon,” he said. “There’s nobody here. But it looks like there has been.”

  “Are you sure this is the old Dawson homestead?” Braden asked, looking down at the fresh prints that Stony and the red mule had left behind.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” said Cleveland Ellis. “One of the hands from the Double D showed it to me once when we was pushing some steers past here.”

  “Then these must be his tracks,” said Braden. “It looks like there was two riders here.” He pointed at the ground near the hitch rail and added, “They weren’t just passing by either. They hitched their mounts.”

  “All right,” said Ellis, still holding his pistol, but uncocking it. “Let’s go inside, see what we can learn about mister hotshot gunman.”

  After a close look at the newly hung curtains, scrubbed floors, and cleaned hearth, Moon Braden said, “Looks like Dawson is about to move back in and set up housekeeping here.”

  “Not if you and I have anything to say about it.” Ellis grinned. “Come on, give me a hand.” He picked up an oil lamp, shook it to see if it was full, then unscrewed the cap.