by Van Holt
A pale rage flared in Wyatt’s eyes and almost choked him. He thrust the Buntline out as if to fire, but managed, somehow, not to pull the trigger. He even managed, somehow, to get his temper back under control. “What if I told you he was my brother, Curly?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t believe you!” Curly said flatly.
“Here’s something you can believe, Curly.” Wyatt’s jaw knotted and his left eye began to twitch. “If Ringo’s in that grave, you’re going to dig yourself one beside it. I promised him I wouldn’t kill you, but I made myself another promise that overrules the one I made him.”
“What if he ain’t in the grave?” Curly asked.
“Just keep digging, Curly,” Wyatt told him. “I ain’t decided yet. The thought of you standing beside an empty grave, already dug, would be a pretty big temptation. And I figure you deserve killing just for what you tried to do to him.”
Curly’s voice shook a little as he said, “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I didn’t know that Hatcher boy had a bead on Ringo with his rifle. That wasn’t my idea.”
Wyatt’s eyes seemed frozen with hate, except for the little twitch at the corner of the left one. “You don’t expect me to believe you, do you, Curly?”
“It’s the truth, whether you believe me or not. Just because I lie most of the time, that don’t mean I lie all the time.”
Wyatt stared at him in silence for a long moment. “You’ve even got the gall to admit it.” He slowly shook his head, took a deep breath and let it out through his teeth. He glanced at the Appaloosa standing patiently beside the road, its dark eyes gentle and friendly. “I’ll bet you even lie to your horse, and he may even believe you.” Then his face turned almost beet red. “Only it ain’t your horse, is it, Curly? I had to kill some Apaches to save my hair, when it was your hair they were really after. You nearly got me killed, you bastard.”
“I’d sure hate for anything like that to happen.”
“Just keep talking, Curly.”
It was not the words, but the tone that warned Curly.
He glanced at his old enemy in fear and wonder, and although he was afraid he would be blasted into hell, he couldn’t help saying, “You should see your face. You’ve developed a twitch in your left eye, did you know that?”
“Just be glad the twitch ain’t in my trigger finger,” Wyatt told him.
Curly glanced at the fearful Buntline Special. “Hell, you developed a twitch in your trigger finger a long time ago, Wyatt.”
“It’s getting worse, Curly,” Wyatt said. “It gets a little worse every time you open that big mouth of yours. I suggest you shut up and dig.”
Curly shut up and dug, although afraid he himself would end up in the grave, or one beside it.
When Miss Sarah looked back and saw the three Hatcher boys coming at a gallop, she urged Don Juan to try to outrun them. But the old Mexican shook his head and even slowed the horses down a little. He knew how dangerous and hopeless flight would be. Horses pulling a wagon over a rough road couldn’t outrun horses carrying riders. It would be better not to get the wild boys all excited by trying to outrun them.
When they were alongside the wagon, the Hatcher boys pulled their horses to a walk and pointed their guns at the old Mexican.
“You got a gun, greaser?” Cash asked.
The old man shook his head. “No gun, senor. We are not armed.”
“It’s a good thing you ain’t,” Cash said. “Now you just drive along slow and easy and do like we say and we may decide to let you live a while longer.”
“What do you want with us?” Miss Sarah cried. “Haven’t you done enough to us already?”
“We ain’t done nothing to you yet, lady,” Cash said.
“Lady, hell,” Beanbelly said, with a dirty grin. “She sure looks good in black, don’t she?”
“I think she’d look better without anything on,” Cash said.
The old Mexican looked at him out of pleading dark eyes. “Please, senor. Do as you wish with me, but do not harm Miss Sarah. She has done you no wrong.”
Cash cocked his gun and pointed it at the old man’s big sombrero. “You just shut your greaser mouth, old man. I been wanting to put a bullet in you a long time now.” He glared at the old Mexican almost a minute and then said, “I wish Curly hadn’t broke my rifle. It would be fun to put that old bastard off a ways and use him for target practice.”
Miss Sarah’s face was pale under the black veil and her lips trembled when she spoke. “Why are you doing this?”
“We got tired of them girls at the Road to Ruin,” Cash said. “They’re ugly as hell, except for Blondie, and she won’t have nothing to do with anyone except Curly. She’s damn near as stuck up in some ways as you are. But your stuck-up days are just about over, lady.”
“I keep telling you,” Beanbelly said, “she ain’t no lady. She got real friendly with Ringo as soon as he hit town, and now she was going off with that old greaser. I don’t know why she’s always been so stuck-up with us good looking boys.”
“Hey, greaser,” Cash said, “there’s a wash just ahead. When we get down in it, I want you to turn that way”—he pointed south—”and drive up it a piece. You got that?”
“Si,” the old Mexican said.
He braked down the sloping bank of the wash and then turned left along its sandy bottom as he had been told to do. The Hatcher boys, walking their horses alongside the wagon, kept their guns on him every minute of the time. They moved along the wash almost without a sound except when a wheel hit a rock in the sand, and because of the high banks there was little danger of being seen, in the unlikely event that anyone got that close in this empty land.
Miss Sarah glanced at the high crumbling banks and then looked up the wash with frightened eyes. “Where are you taking us?”
“You just keep quiet, lady,” Cash told her. “You’ll know soon enough.”
“Hell, this is far enough,” Beanbelly said.
“Just around that bend,” Cash said.
The old Mexican silently crossed himself and drove around the bend in the wash, and then Cash told him to stop the wagon.
“Now get down, greaser, and unhitch them horses.”
“What are you going to do?” Miss Sarah asked.
“What do you think, lady?” Cash said, and Beanbelly snickered.
Miss Sarah’s face was pale with dread and twisted with scorn and bitterness. But she didn’t say anything else, knowing more questions would be answered with more insults.
The old Mexican got down and unhitched the horses, moving too slowly to suit Cash.
“Hurry it up, dammit. We ain’t got all day.”
The old man’s hands trembled as he finished unhitching the horses. Cash motioned with his gun for him to lead them away from the wagon. The old man obeyed and then stood holding the horses, watching Cash for further instructions.
“Kill them,” Cash said.
Beanbelly and Comanche Joe began firing their pistols and the two horses screamed and reared. The old Mexican was still holding the reins and he looked up in alarm as one of the dying horses descended toward him with wildly thrashing hoofs. He managed to get back out of the way while the Hatcher boys laughed. Then Cash raised his gun and shot the old man in the chest.
“Hell, I’m better than I thought I was with one of these things,” he said in surprise. “I didn’t think I could hit him.”
Miss Sarah had been watching in horror from the wagon seat. When she saw the old Mexican go down pawing at the bright red spot on his chest, she leapt up and screamed.
Comanche Joe jumped into the wagon from the back of his horse and pulled her backward off the seat into the wagon box. She screamed again and kicked wildly as she fell and Cash and Beanbelly saw her beautiful tapering legs exposed we
ll up her thighs.
“Let’s get her,” Beanbelly said excitedly. Cash nodded agreement and they got off their horses and climbed into the wagon, throwing her things out to make more room. Comanche Joe was sitting on her and holding her arms down with his hands. She was turning her face from side to side with her white teeth bared in pain, and Comanche Joe was gazing down at her in a kind of wonder.
“You never saw a woman like her before, did you” Beanbelly asked, grinning.
Comanche Joe looked a little embarrassed. He would have preferred to be off somewhere by himself thinking about the woman. He got off her, still holding her arms, and said, “You can go first.”
“Hell, I planned to,” Beanbelly said. “Ain’t I the oldest?”
“It was my idea,” Cash said.
Comanche Joe was facing toward the rear of the wagon. He looked past his brothers and a strange look of dread came into his eyes. Without a word he suddenly jumped from the wagon onto his nearby horse and spurred away up the wash.
“Hell’s wrong with him?” Beanbelly grunted.
Cash twisted his head around and peered down the wash. What he saw put terror in his own eyes. A black horse was approaching at a slow trot, making no sound in the deep sand of the wash. Cash raised his eyes to the black-garbed figure in the saddle, and he almost fainted when he saw the hard face and cold blue eyes. There was something so grim and deadly frozen into that face, a hatred so relentless that even death itself could not have stopped it. Cash felt certain of that and he did not even try to draw his gun. Beanbelly was not so perceptive and he reached for his.
The black horse kept coming at that slow, deliberate trot. The set, frozen expression of the rider’s face did not change. He didn’t even seem to move. But suddenly, somehow, there was a gun in his hand. Without seeming to take aim he shot Beanbelly through the head, and Beanbelly grunted and fell over the side of the wagon.
Then those frozen blue eyes were on Cash and there was death in them. In his horror Cash forgot he was standing in the wagon, he didn’t know where he was. He turned to run, and as he did so the horseman shot him twice through the body and he fell across the wagon seat.
The man on the black horse rode on past the wagon, still moving at that slow, somehow sinister trot. His cold terrible eyes were on Comanche Joe, who was coming back down the wash at a furious gallop to avenge his brothers. He had his gun in his hand and he was bent low over the horse’s neck. When he was forty yards away he started firing.
The man on the black horse kept riding to meet him at that slow relentless trot, sitting straight and tall in the saddle, a perfect target. But Comanche Joe’s bullets went harmlessly past him. Then the tall man’s gun roared and Comanche Joe was torn from the saddle. His riderless horse galloped on past the black horse, and the man in the saddle raised his gun and shot Comanche Joe again where he lay on the ground.
Then he turned the black horse and rode back toward the wagon, reloading his gun.
Miss Sarah had stood up in the wagon to watch him. When she saw that he was all right, she sat down on the seat and did not move or look at him when he rode up and drew rein.
His blue eyes, suddenly anxious, studied her pale face. “Are you all right?” he asked in a surprisingly gentle voice.
She shrugged, still not looking at him. “They didn’t get a chance to hurt me, if that’s what you mean.” After a long moment she added, “I think they thought you were Ringo.”
“It wasn’t the first time they thought that,” Wyatt Earp said, his face grim.
“We let his horse go,” Miss Sarah said in a quiet, still voice. “Somehow I felt it was what he would have wanted. It just trotted off down an old trail, almost like Ringo was in the saddle. It gave me the strangest feeling.”
“I saw the tracks,” Wyatt said. “I turned Curly’s horse loose at the same place, figuring it might go back to the Apaches he stole it from. I left the saddle on it as a sort of gift and to keep those thieves around Boot Hill from getting their hands on it. But the last time I saw the horse, it was going down that old trail like he was following Ringo’s horse. I reckon they got acquainted at that livery stable back in town, and it ain’t unusual for horses to track other horses they know.
“I scooped out a shallow grave for Curly by Ringo’s. When he saw Ringo in that box, he knew his goose was cooked anyway and went for his gun. I didn’t have any choice but to kill him. But I’ve got a notion that was the way he wanted it. I think he wanted to go with Ringo, even if it was to hell. Ringo once said that when he went to hell, Curly would probably try to tag along. He wanted to go with him everywhere else.”
Wyatt’s worried blue eyes searched the woman’s face.
“But what about you, Josie? Do you think you’ll be able to live without Ringo now?”
She blinked away tears, but when she spoke her voice was calm. “I guess I’ll have to. What about you, Wyatt? Are you going back to Colorado?”
The most famous fighting man of the West suddenly looked tired. There was a stillness in his eyes, a stillness in his voice. “No, I think I’ll go on out to California. That’s where my brothers are. The ones that are left. What about you? What will you do now?”
“I don’t know,” she said, sitting on the wagon seat in the hot dusty wash, in the middle of the Arizona desert. “I just don’t know.”
The ghost of a smile played over Wyatt’s face as he watched her. She was not quite the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Yet somehow, to him, she was the most attractive. And a lot of men had shared his opinion, most of them men who had seen but never known her. “Well, there’s plenty of time to decide, Josie. You don’t mind if I call you that, do you?”
“No, that’s my name too,” she said. “Josephine Sarah Marcus. I always hoped to add an Earp to the end of it someday.”
“Well, maybe you still can, Josie,” he told her. “If you don’t mind settling for second choice.”
She shrugged with an odd resignation. “I always knew I’d end up with one of you, and I think I had a feeling it would be you, because I always knew Ringo would get himself killed sooner or later. My heart sank when I heard the name of that town, because I always knew Ringo was headed for Boot Hill. I just didn’t know the whole town would be called that. Him and Curly too. That’s where they’ve both been headed for a long time.”
After a moment she added in a puzzled tone, “It’s hard to believe, but apparently Curly never saw me when I was in Tombstone. I saw him a few times, but if he ever saw me, he must have been too drunk to remember me. He told me once in Boot Hill that Ringo had some trouble with Doc Holliday over a woman, but he seemed to think it was Doc’s woman, not yours. But later he said it didn’t have anything to do with a woman.”
“Curly never could keep his lies straight,” Wyatt said. “But I’m glad Ringo never told him about taking you away from me. Curly would have got a real kick out of that.”
Wyatt saw that Miss Sarah wasn’t listening. There was an odd look on her face and her wide dark eyes were fixed, as if hypnotized, on the east rim of the wash. When Wyatt saw what she was looking at, a strange feeling came over him.
Ringo’s black horse and Curly’s almost white Appaloosa stood side by side on the rim of the wash looking down toward the wagon. It was almost as if the two horses had heard the shooting and come to see if they were all right.
After standing there motionless for a time, Ringo’s black horse swung its head and trotted away along an old road that paralleled the wash. Curly’s Appaloosa followed suit, ranging alongside the black.
Wyatt and Miss Sarah looked at each other with puzzled, haunted eyes, then turned their attention back to the two horses trotting slowly away along the rim road. The saddles were empty, but the horses behaved as if they were being ridden.
“I never knew you could get there on horseback,�
� Wyatt said.
“I don’t think that’s where they’re going,” Miss Sarah said.
VAN HOLT’S WORLD OF MYSTERIES
Tired of silly comedies and look alike cop shows? Let Van Holt’s tough private detectives entertain you. Mark Dash, Nick Price, Rod Kane, Hugo Wade, Rick Fite, Red Hale and Jake Card. Card thinks of himself as the last Destino detective because detectives who go around talking on cell phones seem to him more like cell phone donkeys than detectives.
Want to go back in time to the old West? Meet Mad Dog Shorty, Curly Bill, Ringo, Rose Wilder, Miss Sarah, Wyatt Earp and others that live in the old western novels, affectionately called the Hellbound Westerns.
Mr. Van Holt’s author page is here: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B009H9RJ90, or scan the codes below to go directly there on your smartphone.
www.3knollspub.com
