by Ralph Cotton
“Say, you’re not as stupid as you look, cowboy,” said Elton, wearing a cold smile. He fished a coin from his vest pocket and flipped it into the dirt at Mackenzie’s feet. “Here, let me buy the first round. I know you’re all three a little pressed for drinking money.” The other two riflemen chuckled. But Cannidy only stared. It was all he could do to keep from turning and bending his rifle barrel over Elton Long’s head and firing him on the spot. But he kept quiet, and calm.
The youngest drover, Tad Harper, started to bend down and pick up the coin. But Brewer caught him by his forearm and pulled him away. “Let it lie, Tadpole. He meant that as an insult.”
“I want you to know I ain’t happy about doing this, Mac,” said Cannidy.
“You could have fooled me,” Mackenzie said flatly, running his eyes over Elton Long and the other riflemen.
The four drovers mounted their horses and left the Long Pines spread. When they had ridden four miles along the trail toward the town of Albertson, they stopped and sat in silence for a moment until Brewer said, “Well, I’ve got two dollars in whiskey money. What about you, Mac?”
“Four and some change,” said Mackenzie. The two turned to Holly Thorpe.
Thorpe shrugged and looked at them through his wire-rimmed spectacles. “A dollar something.” The three looked at Tad Harper. “What about you, Tadpole?” Thorpe asked him.
“I don’t have any money at all,” said Harper.
“Well, lucky for you, you’re traveling with a flush crowd,” Brewer said with a wry chuckle.
Mackenzie let out a tight breath, seeing the other three had unwound a little. “If we can figure a way to drink on seven dollars for the next week, we can ride all the way up to the Bar Y. Clyde Thompson told me himself he’d be looking to take on trail hands the start of the month.”
“Think it’ll pay better than out last job?” Thorpe asked with mock sarcasm.
“It can’t pay any worse,” Mackenzie replied, reining his horse to the trail. “Let’s go drinking, wash the taste of Long Pines and Davin Grissin from our gullets. I know the livery hostler in Albertson. He’ll stake our horses to keep ’til we get ourselves square.”
“I thought you said a while back that Davin Grissin was a crook and a sidewinder,” said Harper, sidling up to Mackenzie.
“I did say it, Tadpole,” said Mackenzie. “I reckon this is what I get for speaking ill of a man behind his back.”
Brewer spit and said, “Just so you won’t bear that burden of guilt alone, let me say for the world to hear that Grissin is a no-good, thieving, killing, lying, rotten snake—one that was so crooked, he ended up becoming straight.” He turned a look to Harper and said, “You know a man can do that in business, Tadpole. All he has to do is make so much dirty money that after a while people begin to admire him for it.”
Harper looked at Mackenzie and said, “You said at the railheads that cheating on a cattle count is the same as stealing a man’s money from his poke.”
“That is what I said, Tadpole,” Mackenzie answered patiently.
“So, do you believe a man can be so crooked he turns straight?” Harper asked.
Brewer cut in, saying, “Tadpole, why do you always want to know what Mac believes? Look at him. Do you see any golden halo above his hat?”
“He was our trail boss,” Harper replied.
“Was,” said Brewer. He reached his arm out and gave Mackenzie a little shove. “Now he’s as broke and down in the mouth as the rest of us.”
Mackenzie shook his head slightly and said, “Jock is right, Tadpole. It turns out I don’t know nothing after all. If it takes a man like Grissin to get ahead in the world, I don’t know what’s to become of the rest of us.”
“We all end up eating dust and driving cattle if you ask me,” said Holly Thorpe, adjusting his spectacles up on the bridge of his nose. The four rode on into Albertson.
Chapter 2
For more than a week Stanton “Buckshot” Parks had followed back trails and game paths, until he’d located the hideout of two small-time thieves, Henry Moore and his cousin Benson Carnes. For the next week and a half the three had lain low, made plans and lived on bottles of sarsaparilla, cured hog jowl and airtights of beans and sugar beats that Carnes and Moore had stolen out the back door of a trading post nine miles away.
By the end of the second week, Parks had busted a bottle of sarsaparilla on the plank wall and said, gun in hand, “I don’t know about you two, but if I don’t steal something soon I’m going to go dung-dipping crazy. Have you boys got any jobs worth doing, or is talking about it as far you jakes go?”
Henry Moore and Carnes looked at each other knowingly. Finally Moore turned a sharp gaze to Parks and said, “We thought you’d never ask.”
That had been four days ago. Now Parks sat atop his horse, a flour sack with eyeholes cut in it lying on his lap. “What’s going on down there, Hank?” he asked Moore. He drummed his restless fingertips on the butt of the Colt he’d stolen in broad daylight from the same trading post where Moore and Carnes had stolen the food staples.
“There’s plenty going on,” Moore said without turning toward him. A moment later, at first sight of the stagecoach rolling around a bend below, Moore turned, facing the other two as he pulled his bandanna up over the bridge of his nose. “Gentlemen, here she comes, right on time,” he said. “Let’s skin down there and make ourselves some spending money.”
Each of the three wore long riding dusters and wide-brimmed plainsmen hats.
Benson Carnes, as he also pulled up his bandanna to cover his face, said, “I’ve got the shotgun rider. I’ve owed greedy Jim Blanton a blasting for a long time now.”
Parks took off his hat, laid it on his lap, picked up the flour sack and pulled it down over his head. The other two watched him adjust the flour sack until the eyeholes matched his eyes. Then Parks pulled his hat down over it tightly and adjusted the flour sack again.
“Damn, Buckshot,” said Carnes, “why don’t you wear a bandanna like everybody else? By the time you get yourself primed and proper, the dance will be over.” He chuckled at his little joke and looked to Moore for support. “Right, Hank?” he asked.
But Moore didn’t answer. He shook his head and tapped his horse forward onto the steep hillside leading down to the dusty basin below.
“Because I ain’t like everybody else,” Parks replied to Carnes in a stiff tone of voice. “So, mind your own business. I’ve listened to you flap your mouth nigh three weeks now.”
Carnes only smiled to himself behind his bandanna. He waited until Parks put his horse forward behind Moore, then let his animal fall in behind him. “I expect that flour sack is something you learned night-riding in Missouri? I heard all the James Gang wears them.” His voice had a needling edge to it. “Or did you learn it riding with the Stockton Gang? Now, there was a step down, going from the James Gang to Charley Stockton.”
Parks caught the sarcasm and replied over his shoulder, “When we’re done down here, Carnes, I’ll be pleased to discuss the James Gang or Charley Stockton with you, or any damn thing else you’d like to talk about, any damn place you care to, in any damn manner you like to—”
“Shut it, the both of yas,” Moore growled back to them. “Get control of yourselves. We’ve got a job to do here.”
The three rode down the narrow path in silence until they reached a spot where they stood hidden behind a stand of boulders alongside the trail. “When you said ‘spending money,’ ” Parks inquired of Moore, “just how much do you figure we’re talking about here?”
“Yeah, I was kinda wondering that myself,” said Carnes.
Moore considered it. “With any luck we’ll make ourselves a thousand or so apiece,” he said to the other two as they listened intently to the stage rolling along the rocky trail. “Does that suit the two of yas?” he asked with a snap to his voice. “We went over all this before we agreed to do it.”
“Suits me,” Carnes said quickly. “Of course I n
ever used to ride with the rootin’-tootin’ bold-as-hell James-Younger Gang.” He shot Parks a look from above his bandanna mask. “So maybe I ain’t the one to say.”
“Yeah, maybe you ain’t.” Buckshot Parks stared at him through the jagged eyeholes, the flour sack revealing nothing.
Inside the stage, a big spotted cur sat panting in the sweltering desert heat. The animal stared menacingly at the two businessmen seated across from it. Drops of saliva dripped from the animal’s lolling tongue and had formed a wide dark spot on the edge of the seat. The two businessmen had ridden in a stunned silence most of the past fifteen miles since boarding the stage at Albertson.
“. . . then the bastards threw me out!” Seated next to the big short-haired dog, retired army colonel Morgan Tanner sat with his tunic open halfway down his chest, revealing a deep, fierce tomahawk scar. He clenched a bottle of rye whisky in his fist. He had rattled on drunkenly above the creak of wood, the fall of hooves and the rumble of wheel. “Eighteen got-damned years! I fit Injuns. I fit John Reb. I fit Injuns again! Now the bastards threw me out!” At his free hand an Army Colt lay cocked on the seat. He picked it up and wagged it drunkenly toward the big dog. “So me and Sergeant Tom Haines here is going as far as we can ride. I’m going to beg the heathen Sioux’s forgiveness, then put us both to sleep.”
The two businessmen looked at each other uncomfortably. One fidgeted on his seat. He cleared his throat and tried to make more pleasant conversation. “So, that’s the dog’s name, is it . . . Sergeant Tom Haines?” he asked meekly. “A rather unusual name . . .”
“Unusual . . .” The colonel stared at him drunkenly with a malevolent scowl on his weathered face. After a long tense silence he picked up the slack in the dog’s thick leather leash, jiggled it and said, “The dog disturbs you gentlemen, does he not? Eeven with this got-damned leash and collar on him?”
“Oh no, sir! Not at all,” the two were quick to respond. One wiped sweat from his cheek with a handkerchief and ventured, “Although, if you will allow me to interject, I was taken aback upon finding him here. It is not what one will see these days in, say . . . St. Louis, or even Springfi—”
“Then damn St. Louis and muddy Springfield both to hell,” said the colonel. “You see which direction my string runs.” He wagged the Army Colt toward the rugged high desert.
“Indeed, sir, we do,” said the other man, eager to find some common ground. “May I point out that our string runs in much the same direction as yours?”
“Does it, now?” the colonel asked flatly.
“Most certainly it does.” Both men nodded quickly as one.
“God help us all,” the colonel murmured under his breath, looking away in drunken disgust, out across the harsh, barren land.
The dog stared. Saliva dripped. The two men looked at each other as the stage bounced along the rocky trail.
Atop the stage, the shotgun rider, Jim Blanton, first caught sight of the three riders as they sprang out into the middle of the trail, blocking it. “Don’t brake her down, Baggy, you see what this is,” Blanton said, cocking both hammers on the double-barreled shotgun.
“Sure enough!” said the driver, Lionel Baggs. His instincts had sent his hand reaching for the long brake handle. But upon seeing the masked faces of the three riders, his hand went back to the traces in his other hand, raised them high and slapped them down hard onto the stage horses’ backs.
“Damn it, they ain’t stopping!” shouted Carnes, his horse stepping back and forth restlessly beneath him.
“It’s our job to stop them!” shouted Moore, his rifle already up to his shoulder. He fired repeatedly at the oncoming stage as it speeded up toward him. The other two outlaws quickly followed suit.
Inside the coach, Colonel Tanner lunged upward with the forward thrust of the stage. The dog lunged forward beside him. The two businessmen were flung back against their seats. A handkerchief flew from one’s hand. “My goodness! What now?” one of them cried out.
“We’ve got ourselves a melee, gentlemen!” shouted the colonel. A strange fierce look came into his bloodshot eyes; a wicked grin lit his face. He stuck the cork into the whiskey bottle and palmed it tightly. Even in his drunken state he quickly hitched the dog’s thick leather leash around an iron grab bar overhead. “As you were, Sergeant Tom Haines, until further orders!” he shouted above the sound of gunfire.
“What shall we do? What shall we do?” one of the businessmen cried as the stage rumbled through the mounted gunmen, scattering the robbers even as the three fired relentlessly.
“Fight, got-damn it!” Colonel Tanner raged. Another Colt appeared as if from out of nowhere. The colonel pitched it into the man’s trembling hands. “Fight or die!” he shouted with a maniacal laugh. Turning, the colonel hurled himself sidelong halfway out the stage window. With a loud war cry he fired shot after shot at the robbers as the coach rolled past them. The big dog bounced on the leather seat and barked and growled. Saliva flew in every direction.
“Fight or die?” the businessman cried, his eyes wide with terror, his knuckles turning white as he grasped the Colt. The two jerked back and forth violently with the rough riding coach. “Give me that, Fenton!” the other man shouted, grabbing the Colt from him. He shoved his arm out the other side window, closed his eyes tightly and fired toward one of the three riders.
Atop the stage, Jim Blanton slumped low in the seat, his empty shotgun still in hand. He could not force his right hand to loosen its tight grip on the gaping bullet hole in his bleeding stomach. Out in front of the fast-moving stage, Stanton Parks had managed to jump from his saddle and land atop the lead stage horses. He crawled down between the two running horses and began pulling back on their traces while the driver tried desperately to yank the traces from his hands.
“Load up, Jim,” the driver shouted, “he’s dragging us down!”
Blanton struggled with loading the shotgun one-handed, the bleeding too profound to take the pressure off the wound.
“Jim, damn it, man!” shouted Baggs.
“I’m done for, Baggy,” Blanton said, holding the shotgun over to the driver.
Baggs only had a second to shoot him a glance. “Buck up, man! I need you shotgunning!”
“Aw, hell, Baggy, I’m dead here,” Blanton groaned. He collected himself, stuck two fresh loads into the twelve-gauge and cocked both hammers. But before he could get the shotgun up and aimed, a bullet from alongside the stage hit him high in his shoulder. At the same time, a shot from the other side of the stage grazed across Baggs’ lower lip, ripping it away in a spray of blood. His bare lower teeth glared as he kept attending to the horses, yanking at the traces, trying to keep Parks from taking control.
From inside the stage, one of Colonel Tanner’s shots hit Moore in his side, causing him to veer away and struggle to keep from falling off his saddle. On the other side of the coach, the businessman with the Colt fired the gun’s last shot. The bullet hit Carnes in the side of his throat and sent him flying from his horse and rolling into a thick, wide stand of barrel cactus.
On the floor of the coach the other businessman lay dead in a wide pool of dark blood, his forehead agape from a rifle shot. “Fenton, my God!” the other businessman cried, turning from the coach window with the empty Colt in his hand.
“He’s dead, got-damn it!” shouted the colonel, swaying wildly with the bouncing, rocking coach. “You will be too, if you don’t fight!”
“I’m out of bullets,” the terror-stricken man called out above the barking, snarling dog and the insistent gunfire.
“Then by God, prepare yourself to use it as a club, sir!” shouted the colonel. His eyes were glazed and wild with battle.
He’s insane! the businessman noted to himself. Yet, even as he thought it, he turned the Colt around in his hand and grasped the barrel. The two felt the speeding stage began to lurch downward toward a halt amid shouts and cursing from the wounded driver and the equally wounded robbers. “Surrender, you damn fool!” H
enry Moore bellowed at the driver, his own bleeding side causing his voice to sound strained and weakened.
“You shot my mouth off, you sons a’ bitches!” Baggs shouted, his voice distorted by his missing lip. The dog remained in a bouncing, barking frenzy.
Feeling the stage begin to slow down, the colonel looked at the frightened businessman and shouted, “Hold your position! I’m going up!”
“Oh God!” the man cried, clutching the empty Colt to his chest. He watched the colonel slide out of the swaying coach window like an angry snake and disappear up the side of the cabin.
In the driver’s seat, Baggs looked up in time to see the colonel grab him by his shoulders and yank him aside. “What are you doing?” he shouted. Beside them, Moore raced along, his rifle empty, but his Colt out of his holster now, and firing at the colonel from ten feet away.
“I’m getting us out of this!” the colonel shouted, grabbing the traces from Baggs’ hands. Standing crouched in the seat, he lashed the traces wildly up and down, slapping Parks’ face with them and sending the stage horses back into a hard run. “We’re not licked! Not by a long shot!” he bellowed.
A bullet from Moore’s Colt hit the colonel high in his ribs. But he only flinched and kept slapping the traces. Parks fell from between the two lead horses and rolled back beneath the other horses’ hooves. Taking hard glancing blow after blow without losing consciousness, Parks grasped wildly at the bottom of the stage in a cloud of choking dust.
He managed to hold on just long enough to see the dirt and rock disappear from beneath him as the rear of the stage swung out off the edge of the trail for only a second. With a scream he turned loose just as the stage swung back onto solid ground and shot forward. He held on to an armful of rock and dirt and scrub juniper root as the stage rolled farther away, the shooting and shouting and barking dog traveling with it.
Beneath Parks lay a straight drop of more than a hundred feet onto sharp rocky hillside. He clung and clawed and wrestled himself back onto the trail and lay staring up at the sky for a moment, catching his breath. Then he rose unsteadily to his feet and limped on along the trail, his hat gone and one boot heel missing, dust streaming from his clothes and hair. His flour sack mask had ripped across the top and gathered down around his chin.
