by Ralph Cotton
“I’ll tell them you’re this way all the time, rude and belligerent,” said Thorpe with a poker-faced expression.
“I figured you would,” said Mackenzie with the same deadpan look. “Watch your back trail,” he added, stepping over to the rear door.
“Watch yours too,” said Thorpe, looking at him through his spectacles until he disappeared from sight and closed the door behind himself.
Chapter 15
Stanton “Buckshot” Parks awakened slowly, his chin, jaw and both sides of his forehead pounding in pain. He tried to say something aloud to himself, but the bandanna drawn tight around his mouth prevented him from doing so. As he started to reach to loosen the bandanna he realized his hands were tied securely behind his back. In his addled state, he at first thought the dark grainy substance moving past his eyes was the night sky overhead. Yet as he became more coherent he realized that there were no rocks and wagon ruts in the sky—were there?
Of course there aren’t! he told him himself angrily, struggling in vain to get himself upright. When it came to him in a flash that he was riding tied facedown across a mule’s bare lumpy back, he slumped and cursed silently. Then he lay limp for a moment, allowing the events that had happened inside the livery barn to catch up to him.
He looked ahead of him and saw Mackenzie riding along in the moonlight, holding a lead rope to the mule. Not knowing where to find Parks’ horse, the young trail boss had found the mule in the rent and purchase corral behind the barn and left payment for the animal in a tin box set up for just such a purpose. He wasn’t sure how far he should take the knocked-out lawman, but he was certain that with every passing mile he made it that much safer for Thorpe and the others.
“Muumph! Muumph!” Parks raged into the bandanna, causing such a stir that the mule swayed back and forth a step, on the verge of spooking.
“Whoa now, Sheriff!” said Mackenzie, stopping quickly and jumping down from his saddle. He stepped back to the mule, gathering his lead rope, and rubbed its mallet-shaped head to calm it. As the animal settled he stooped down and looked into Parks’ face. “Sheriff, I don’t know how much you know about mules, but if I were you I’d do my best not to send him into a frenzy.”
“Hummm, moompfh foo!” said Parks in his bandanna-muffled voice. He rolled his eyes up and down and jerked his pounding head, gesturing for the young trail boss to take off the gag.
Mackenzie took a hold of the bandanna with his thumb and finger and said, “I’m going to lower this, Sheriff, but you’ll have to promise not to start getting loud.”
“Ummm-huum,” said Parks, vigorously nodding his aching head.
Mackenzie pulled the bandanna down off Parks’ sore chin. Parks spit lint from his mouth and started right in, saying quickly, “Listen to me, you dirty cowpoke! You’re just making things worse on yourself! You better cut me loose—”
“Making things worse?” Mackenzie knew he had the upper hand. He remained calm. “Sheriff, you said me and my pards would hang. How much worse does it get? Was you gonna give us a sound scolding first?” He started pulling the bandanna back up over Parks’ mouth. “If that was all you wanted, I’d rather listen to the coyotes talking.”
“No, wait,” said Parks, causing the young trail boss to stop. “I’ve got to tell you something! You and your pals don’t have to hang! I wish I hadn’t said all that. I was just sort of funning with you.”
“It didn’t seem very funny to me,” said Mackenzie.
He started to raise the bandanna again. But again Parks said, “No, please, listen to me. I’m not really a law—”
“Enough out of you.” Mackenzie jerked the bandanna back up over Parks’ mouth and led the mule up beside his horse. He had stepped up into his saddle when he saw two riders round a turn only twenty feet in front of him and stop and look toward him in the light of a wide full moon.
“Hello the trail?” a voice called warily. “We heard voices,” he added. As he spoke his hand went to the rifle lying across his lap. The rifle hammer cocked slowly. The other rider sidled his horse a step away; his hand also rested on a rifle across his lap. They stared at Parks as he raised his head toward them and began grunting and trying to shout through the bandanna.
Mackenzie froze for a moment. He knew how bad this looked now. He could only imagine how it would look once these two men saw the sheriff’s badge. He wasn’t about to shoot it out with two innocent travelers.
“What’s going on here?” the other rider asked, both men nudging their horses forward slowly.
“Yes, speak up,” the first rider insisted. “Why is that man tied over the mule? Is he ill?”
“Is he your prisoner? Are you a lawman?” the other asked.
There was no way he could explain this, Mackenzie told himself. Unable to think of anything to do that would not cost somebody their life, he dropped the mule’s lead rope and spun his horse quickly. He nailed his boots to the animal’s sides.
“Hold it! Stop!” he heard the men shout behind him. The two spurred their horses forward and stopped where the mule stood with its tied-down rider. “This man’s wearing a badge!” he heard one man say above the sound of Parks’ muffled grunting voice.
“Halt there, or we’ll shoot!” the other rider shouted.
But Mackenzie never looked back. His horse raced away into the moonlit night. The first rifle shot he heard was a warning shot one of the men fired straight up. The next shot whistled past his head. The third shot hit him hard through his right shoulder and knocked him forward onto this horse’s neck. But he held on, managed to right himself in his saddle and keep moving, the horse taking in the rocky trail at a fast dangerous run.
At the mule, one man had slipped his rifle in its boot and leaped down from his saddle. He ran to Parks and jerked the bandanna down from his mouth while the other gave chase for only a few yards before slowing and turning back. Parks had twisted himself up onto his side enough to make sure they had seen his badge when they rode up.
“Gentlemen, it’s a damned good thing you come along when you did,” he said, spitting lint again as he spoke. He motioned for the nearest rider to untie his hands. “That man is a dangerous killer! I was on my way, taking him to jail, when he managed to overpower me!”
“Who is he?” asked the rider still in his saddle.
“That’s none other than Buckshot Parks,” Parks said as the man on the ground worked quickly, un-tying his hands and feet and loosening him from the mule’s back. “He’s truly the baddest of the bad. He makes the James Gang look like a bunch of school-girls. I have no doubt he would have killed me if you two hadn’t come along. He’s the toughest, smartest, most cold-blooded, daring—”
“I’ve head of Buckshot Parks, sure enough,” said the one in his saddle. “But I never heard of him being all that smart or tough. I heard he was a chicken thief and a whore’s towel boy who got lucky and fell in with a bold crowd.”
“Hmmmph.” Parks fell silent and stared coldly up at him as the man on the ground finished setting him free.
“Why’d he have you tied down over a mule?” the man in his saddle continued as Parks slid down from the mule, rubbing his freed wrists. “What was he intending to do to you, Sheriff?”
“Who knows?” Parks said. He looked back and forth between the two of them. “I’m most obliged to you two for your help.” He stared back along the trail in the direction Mackenzie had taken. “I’m going to need a horse.”
“You can swap the mule for one as soon as you get to Creasy,” said the one in his saddle.
“Yep, good idea,” said Parks. He held his hand up to him and said, “Let me take a look at that sharpshooter’s rifle.”
“My long-shooting rifle, what for?” the man replied. He gripped a big fifty-caliber rifle with a brass scope mounted along its barrel.
“Go on and give the sheriff your rifle, Red!” the other man demanded. “Don’t ask so many questions.”
“Begging your pardon, Sheriff,” said the ma
n in his saddle. He handed the big sharpshooter rifle down to Parks. “It’s late and I ain’t thinking.”
“I understand,” said Parks. “Give me your reins.”
“My reins? Why?” the man asked, even as he handed the reins down to him.
Parks took the reins, tilted the rifle barrel up, cocked the hammer and shot him through the heart. He held the reins taut as the spooked horse settled and realized it couldn’t bolt away.
“Oh my God, Sheriff! What have you done? What have you done? You’ve shot him! You’ve—”
“Shut up, idiot.” The rifle bucked again in Parks’ hand. The bullet hit the man high in his chest and flung him backward. He landed flat on his back. He groaned and dug at the ground with his boot heels while Parks stepped into the other man’s saddle. Turning the horse, Parks looked down and spit at the body lying on the ground. “There’s your whore’s towel boy,” he said. Then he gigged the horse soundly and rode away.
For a day and a half Holly Thorpe had rested and regained his strength in the narrow bed inside the home of Dr. Ross and his daughter, Beth Ann. With his renewed strength came an intense restlessness to get back on the trail and rejoin his friends. He couldn’t stand the thought of something bad happening to any one of them while he was laid up. It was almost with a strange sense of relief that he spotted the ranger and Maria from the front window as they rode into Creasy from the south.
In the thin light of early morning, Thorpe caught a glimpse of the ranger’s badge on Sam’s chest. Without wasting another second, he turned from the window and had started to his room in the rear when he almost ran headlong into Beth Ann Ross.
“Oh, there you are,” she said, more than a little surprised at Thorpe being in the front parlor. “I’m preparing breakfast for you. I’m afraid my father won’t be joining us. He was summoned in the night to deliver a baby for the Carlsons.”
“Miss Beth Ann, listen to me, please,” Thorpe said, taking her by her shoulders, his voice deliberately calm, unhurried. “There’s a lawman coming into town. I’ve got a feeling he’ll be asking around about me.”
“You’re—you’re running from the law?” she asked, with an almost hurt look on her face.
“Yes, ma’am, but it’s not like you think. My pards and I haven’t broken any law, but there’s some who think we have.”
“What laws do they think you’ve broken?” she asked hesitantly.
“The law thinks we robbed a stage and killed some folks, ma’am,” Thorpe replied bluntly, bringing a slight gasp from the young woman. “But it’s not true. I give you my word it’s not.” As he spoke he directed her away from the parlor, farther back into the house. “Come with me, please,” he said. “After all you and your pa has done for me, I want to tell you everything. . . .”
On the dirt street, Sam and Maria rode first to the sheriff’s office, where they stepped through a creaking unlocked door. They found a desk stacked high with wanted posters and unopened mail, all covered with a sheen of dust. In a kindling box in a far corner a skinny mother cat raised its head and stared at them above the meowing of a litter of small kittens. “Another town without a sheriff,” Maria commented.
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” said the ranger. “Earl Buckley was sheriff here the last time I rode through. I heard he died last winter.” He looked all around. “Not many takers for a sheriff’s job in a town about to go under.”
“To the doctor’s, then?” Maria asked. Sam only nodded and turned back to the door.
Moments later, Beth Ann stood nervously at the front door when the two arrived. At the sound of the first knock, she opened the door and looked back and forth between the ranger and Maria. Behind them the big cur plopped down on the porch and sat staring, his tongue a-loll.
“Ma’am, I’m Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack,” said Sam, taking off his silver-gray sombrero. “This is Maria.”
“I—I know why you’re here,” Beth Ann replied calmly. “Please come in, and please hear what I have to tell you before you do anything to cause violence in my home.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said, and exchanged a glance with Maria. They both looked past the young woman, their eyes scanning the room, but they kept their hands away from their guns. “But first tell us where they are, so we don’t have any surprises.”
“There’s only one,” Beth Ann said. “He’s waiting in the rear of the house. He knows I’m talking to you on his behalf. When we’re finished he’s turning himself over to you.”
“Fair enough,” Sam replied calmly. “If you’ll be so kind as to explain everything to Maria here?” He stepped past her and started through the house.
“But, Ranger, please!” Beth Ann called out. “Don’t hurt him! He’s innocent!”
“You don’t have to worry about me hurting him, ma’am,” said Sam, even before he’d crossed the room and started into the rear of the large house, “he’s already gone.”
Maria stepped forward and took Beth Ann gently yet firmly by her arm and held her back from following the ranger. “Come. You can tell me everything,” she said, coaxing the young woman.
“Where is he going? Is he going after Holly?” she asked, nodding after the ranger, hearing the rear open and close behind him.
“Is that the drover’s name, Holly?” Maria asked, leading her to a pair of chairs in the parlor.
“Yes, his name is Holly . . . Holly Thorpe,” said Beth Ann. She cast a worried look toward the rear of the house.
“Sí, he will be going after him,” said Maria, sitting the young woman down. “Now, you must tell me everything so I can tell him when I catch up to him on the trail. . . .”
Outside, at the rear of the house, the ranger caught sight of the drover atop his salt-and-pepper barb racing away from Creasy, disappearing into the pines lining the high trail out of town, the same trail Mackenzie had ridden with Parks in tow two nights earlier.
Hurrying around the house to the hitch rail out front, Sam jumped into his saddle and raced away in pursuit, the big cur who had been sitting on the porch running behind him.
Once upon the trail leading up away from Creasy, the ranger put his horse into a fast but measured pace, slowing with caution at every turn, lest he find himself riding into sudden gunfire. “I’m counting on you wearing that horse out real quick, cowboy,” he murmured toward the dust-looming trail ahead.
But after making a turn more than three miles up from town, Sam felt his horse’s rear hoof slip. He felt the animal veer, tense up and immediately reduce its pace to a limping sidestepping walk. “Easy, Black Eye, easy,” he said, slipping down from his saddle while the horse was still moving, and settling the animal quickly.
Rubbing the injured barb’s side with his gloved hand, Sam walked back and raised its rear left hoof. The animal flinched, but it allowed him to work the hoof back and forth gently, enough to recognize the tightness and swelling that had already started forming along its tendons.
“All right, boy, I see what you mean,” he said, answering a low pained whinny from the animal as it turned its head, facing him. “This chase is over for you.” He laid the hoof back to the ground softly, seeing the animal cock it slightly off the ground.
Standing, Sam let out a breath and gazed along the trail ahead. But no sooner had he done so than his hand streaked to his Colt, drew it and cocked it. A lone rider sat slumped on his horse in the middle of the trail. “Raise your hands high where I can see them,” the ranger called out, facing the rider from fifty yards away.
But the man didn’t raise his hands. Instead he wobbled back and forth in his saddle, then flopped off it into the dirt.
Sam dropped the reins to his injured horse and hurried forward, his Colt raised and ready.
He stopped a few feet away and looked down at the man lying sprawled, facedown, his arms spread in the dirt. As Sam stepped even closer he saw a bullet hole in the center of a wide dark bloodstain on the back of the man’s riding duster. The man raised his pale, drawn face toward Sam and sa
id in a weak and shaky voice, “Help me. . . .”
Holstering his Colt, Swam hurried forward, stooped down and rolled the man over onto his back. The man struggled with his words but managed to say, “A—a sheriff . . . shot me.”
“You hang on, mister,” Sam said, “I’m going to get you to town.” He made a quick glance along the trail in the direction the young man had fled. Then he put any thoughts of following the drover right then from his mind and looked down at the face of the wounded man.
As he spread open the bloody duster and shirt, the wounded man looked up at him through weak and hollow eyes and repeated in a rasping voice, “A lawman . . . did this. I saw . . . his badge.”
“You keep still and save your strength, mister,” said the ranger. “It was no lawman who shot you.” He looked all around the trail, thinking of Stanton “Buckshot” Parks and the body of former deputy Fred Mandrin.
“He—he was . . . wearing a badge.”
“I understand,” said Sam, “but it was no lawman, take my word for it.” He gazed again along the trail. “Not everybody wearing a badge is a lawman these days.”
PART 3
Chapter 16
Davin Grissin and his new personal bodyguard, Tillman Duvall, stepped down from Grissin’s private railcar and walked back to the stock car. Both men wore dapper black suits and matching riding dusters, but they differed in headwear. Grissin wore a silk-trimmed silver derby; Duvall wore a black broad-brimmed frontiersman hat, the front brim folded up, fastened to the crown with a silver scorpion stickpin.
Beneath Duvall’s broad-brimmed hat, his face looked like that of a serpent’s chiseled from rough faulty stone. A thick, drooping mustache hung below his chin on either side of his thin, tight lips. “There’s three turds bobbing in the same chamber pot,” he grumbled under his breath, staring ahead along the rail platform at Money Up Siding.
“What’s that?” Davin Grissin asked, staring straight ahead.
