by Ralph Cotton
Chapter 3
On the trail back to Gunn Point, Summers and the deputy rode a few feet ahead of the posse. Summers led his three-horse string; Deputy Stiles had tied the saddlebags of money behind his saddle and led the wounded Rochenbach and Jackie Warren’s body on their horses beside him. Avrial Rochenbach rode slumped and half conscious from his loss of blood. His good hand held the bandanna up against his bloody shoulder. He still reeked of whiskey from the punctured flask.
Beside him, Jackie Warren’s body lay across his saddle, both arms dangling toward the ground. Stiles had pulled the dead man’s bandanna back over the bridge of his nose, hiding his face. Summers had watched him cover Warren’s face, but he didn’t ask why.
“Things must have changed fast since my last trip through Gunn Point,” Summers said as they rode along the snow-streaked trail.
“Too fast, according to some,” Stiles replied. “I shouldn’t complain, though—the town has grown so quick the past year it’s caused Sheriff Goss to hire me on as his second star.”
“All owing to this Warren fellow opening a bank and buying into mining operations,” Summers commented, based on everything the deputy had told him along the trail.
“Yep, for the most part, that’s what made it happen,” said Stiles. “They say that Latimer Gunn wanted a bank here from the time he founded this town near twenty years ago. Jack Warren made it happen. He owns everything he can buy his way into. Cattle, mining, banking. You name it, he owns it. He’s a powerful force.”
“Why would a man rob his own father’s bank?” Summers asked.
Stiles gave a shrug, saying, “They don’t get along, I’m told. They’ve had some run-ins, but nothing like this that I know of. Old man Warren has bought Jackie out of trouble before. No matter what Little Jackie done, I reckon old man Warren figured he’s still his only son.”
“And I just killed his only son…,” Summers reflected grimly.
Stiles looked at him and said, “While he was robbing his own father’s bank, don’t forget. And don’t forget, Little Jackie had already fired on you—killed one of your horses, right?”
“That’s right, he did,” Summers said firmly, realizing the deputy was scrutinizing everything he said to see if his story changed any.
Stiles nodded and said, “Don’t mind me, Summers. I’ve been wearing this badge a few months now. It makes me question everything and everybody. Sheriff Goss has taught me well. I’m not about to let him down.”
Summers nodded and said, “Goss is a straight shooter. I’ve always admired him for it.”
“Admire him?” said Stiles. “I love the man. He’s been like a father to me. He’s done more for me than I can ever thank him for. If he’s dead, I won’t rest until I hang the men who killed him. See why I take all the questioning so serious?”
“I understand, Deputy,” Summers said. “But you can question me till we’re both blue in the face. My story won’t change any. I happened on to the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s not a hanging offense.”
“Look at it from our position, mine and my posse’s,” said Stiles. “What if we let you go and found out later you really were one of the robbers? Say we found out you decided to turn against the others—keep all that money for yourself?”
“Then why would I stick around here?” Summers said. “Why didn’t I take the money and get my knees in the wind before you showed up?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet,” said Stiles, “but I’m thinking on it. I’ll put it all together, if it’s true.”
“It’ll take some strange thinking to put that story together, Deputy,” Summers said. “But I can see how you might get there.” He glanced at the three-horse string. “Any thieves with any sense usually plant some fresh horses somewhere along their trail.”
“Exactly,” Stiles said. Before he could offer any more on the matter, Horace Dewitt came galloping up beside him from a few yards back.
“Parley—I mean, Deputy Stiles,” the engineer said, correcting himself, “if you need me to, I can keep watch on this one and the other piece of trash while you rest some.”
“Obliged, Dewitt, but I’m all right,” Stiles said.
Other piece of trash…? Summers stared at him.
Dewitt returned his stare for a second, then turned back to the deputy.
“If you’re worried about me handling the job,” he said, “I can promise you, either one tries to make a break for it, I’ll put a bullet through his spine quicker than a cat can kill its dinner.” He turned his gaze back to Summers for a second. “This man is not the only one who knows how to fire a rifle.”
“Drop back, Dewitt,” said Stiles. “I’ve got everything under control.”
“All right, Deputy. I’m just saying, is all,” Dewitt replied. He jerked his horse’s reins around and batted it back toward the other posse men.
“I suppose Sheriff Goss would frown on me bending a rifle barrel over that man’s jaw,” Summers said evenly.
“Probably so,” Stiles said. He looked away and scanned the distance hills for any sign of the other two robbers as he spoke. “The damn fool doesn’t mean any harm. He’s just strung up tighter than fence wire—all of them are. It’s not every day they get shot at, get their bank robbed.”
“I can understand that,” said Summers. “But I’m just an innocent passerby. I’ve lost a horse, been shot at myself, saved your bank’s money and dropped two of the men who stole it. Yet I get the feeling I’m looked at like a suspect.”
“You’re not,” said Stiles. “Put it out of your mind. We just need to get to town, get everybody settled down and see what Sheriff Goss has to say.”
“That sounds like a suspect to me,” Summers said.
“You’re not,” said Stiles. “I can’t help how it sounds to you.”
Summers looked closer at him.
“So, if I want to,” he said, “I can just turn my horse and my string and ride away? Go on about my business?”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Stiles said, staring straight ahead.
Summers only nodded, getting the picture. All right, he told himself. They were only a couple more miles from town. He could go along with whatever he had to. Sheriff Goss would straighten everything out, he was certain.
They rode on.
Five miles away, in the shelter of the rocky snow-streaked hills, a gunman named Cole Langler sat hunkered down beside his horse and the four saddled horses standing beside it. He warmed his gloved hands over a low smokeless fire while he waited, looking off in the direction the gunfire had come from ten minutes earlier. He watched the flatlands as the two fleeing gunmen rode into sight. After a moment, realizing the other two weren’t coming, he shook his head in disgust.
“Damned idiots,” he growled to himself. “Sister Betsy could’ve robbed that bank.”
He took a tin of tobacco from inside his long overcoat, opened it, pinched out a measured wad and stuck it inside his jaw. He didn’t bother to stand when the two finally rode in close and stopped only a few feet away.
“We got jackpotted something awful back there,” Grayson said, sounding as winded as his horse. He held a cupped hand and wadded-up bandanna to the side of his bloody head where his ear used to be. Fallon halted his horse beside him looking back warily over his shoulder, his rifle in hand.
“I heard it,” Langler said, sounding unmoved by Grayson’s excited tone of voice. He spit a stream into the low fire and stared at the spot where it hit and sizzled in a bed of glowing embers. “Are you shot in the head?” he asked without looking up at the wounded outlaw.
“No, but my ear is gone,” said Grayson, “most of it anyway.” He lowered the wadded bandanna, examined it and put it back to the side of his head.
“Losing an ear’s nothing,” said Langler with no sympathy in his voice.
Grayson smoldered in anger, but he managed to clench his teeth and keep himself in check.
“I thought much the same way myself,” he said,
“back when I had two of them.”
“So losing one has changed your outlook on the world around you?” Langler said.
“Jesus…,” Grayson said under his breath, casting Fallon a look, and replied, “All’s I’m saying is, we could have used some help over there.”
“It sounded like it,” Langler said unmoved. He spit again, still looking into the flames.
“It got a little hair-raising, is what he’s saying,” Fallon put in.
Grayson glared at him.
“He knows what I’m saying. I don’t need you restating a damn thing on my behalf.”
“I didn’t mean to say—” Fallon started to explain himself, but Langler cut him off impatiently.
“Where’s the Rock?” he asked without looking up at the two outlaws.
“Dead,” Grayson said with finality.
“Little Jackie?” Langler asked.
“Dead,” Grayson repeated.
“The money?” Langler asked.
“Gone,” said Grayson.
Langler chuffed, shook his head and spit into the fire.
“I mighta known,” he said. “Were they shot in the back, or the front?” he asked.
“The hell kind of question is that?” Grayson asked, getting more and more irritated. “What difference does it make? They are both dead!”
“Makes all the difference in the world to me,” said Langler. “The way we had this planned, I can’t figure how a posse got so close to you fellows so soon.” He stood up slowly. But when he turned facing them, a big Walker Colt appeared in his right hand and leveled up toward them, at arm’s length. “Maybe you best explain.”
“Damn, Cole!” said Grayson, talking fast, his hand still cupped to the side of his head. “You heard all the shooting! We got hit by surprise!”
“By what you call an interloper!” Fallon put in quickly.
“A what?” said Langler, cocking his head with a curious look.
Grayson also stared curiously. Fallon looked to him as if for permission to continue speaking. Grayson gestured with a nod toward Langler.
“By all means, tell him, son,” he said to Fallon, not as easily offended now by the younger outlaw explaining on his behalf.
“An interloper,” Fallon said, “somebody who butts in when things are—”
He stopped short, seeing Langler cock the big Colt and home it in on his chest.
“It was no posse shot Little Jackie and the Rock,” Fallon said, talking fast, hoping not to get himself killed.
“That’s what I figured,” Langler said tightly. His hand tightened on the gun butt.
“Wait, listen!” said Fallon, speaking even faster now. “It was a man leading a string of horses! Little Jackie killed one of his horses. He shot hell out of us!”
“One man? Not the sheriff’s posse?” Langler asked, eying him closely.
“One man,” said Fallon, “that’s the gospel.”
“What was this interloper man riding?” Langler asked. His hand on the Walker Colt appeared to ease a little—but only a little.
Fallon had to consider it quickly. “A big gray. A dapple maybe,” he said.
Langler let out a breath and lowered the Colt a little. He eased the hammer down with his thumb.
“I saw that man yesterday, coming up a trail across the valley from me,” he said. “Looked like a horse swapper by the name of Will Summers to me.”
“Might be,” said Grayson, looking relieved. “Anyways, he killed them both.” He gave a tired sigh and looked at the low flames flickering sidelong on a cold breeze.
Fallon watched them both, noting that Langler’s Walker Colt was down at his side, but not back beneath his long brown overcoat.
“I can sure use some fire…some coffee too, far as that goes,” said Grayson.
“I was just getting ready to boil some,” Langler said. “I can cook you eggs—gravy too if you’re hungry.”
“Hungry? Lord yes!” said Grayson, starting to swing down from his saddle. “Eggs sounds wonderfu—”
“Stay your ass in that saddle, fool!” Langler growled, cutting him off, cocking the big Colt all over again.
These two…, Fallon said to himself, watching.
“What?” Grayson said, bewildered, his hands going chest high at the sight of the big Colt pointing up at him.
“You come in here, two men dead…the money gone. You want me to cook you a nice sit-down meal! You’re lucky I don’t empty your heads all over your horse’s rumps!”
“I’m not hungry,” Fallon said quietly.
“Good for you, Mr. Interloper,” said Langler. He turned enough to grab the lead rope to the four fresh horses and jerked the string over to Fallon. “Here, make yourself more useful, less informational.”
“Where we going?” Grayson asked.
“After our money, damn it!” said Langler.
“But the posse,” said Grayson. “They’re there by now, already seen what went on and got back onto our trail. We’ll run dead into them, going back.”
“And you wanted to stop and eat?” said Langler in disgust.
Grayson had no reply.
Langler said, “We’re not riding back the same way you came. We’re swinging wide, going around.”
“Why are we going there at all?” said Grayson. “Whoever that was shot Little Jackie and the Rock is gone by now, money and all.”
“His tracks are still there, fool,” said Langler, once again lowering the big Walker Colt. “We get on his trail and ride him down. He’s got our money and gone with it. You can bet your wool drawers on that. I’m not risking prison just to have somebody ride away with my money, are you?”
Grayson and Fallon looked at each other for a moment.
“Are you going to tell?” Fallon said finally.
“Tell me what?” Langler insisted, getting impatient again. He had started to put the big Colt back beneath his overcoat. But he thought better of it, looking back and forth between them.
“Little Jackie killed the sheriff in the street,” said Grayson.
“Shot him down like a dog,” Fallon added. “So it’s not about prison now. This is a hemp waltz we’re looking at.”
Langler stood stunned, staring in bemused silence for a moment. Grayson winced and looked away in shame.
“Good God!” Langler raged, finally. “This was supposed to be easy. Didn’t you idiots do anything right?”
“Damn it to hell, we got out alive!” Grayson said, getting more than his fill of Langler’s bullying, superior attitude.
“Not yet, you haven’t!” Langler countered. “Now turn your horses and stay in front of me!” He wagged the big Colt at his side. “If you hear this gun go off, count yourself dead.”
The two outlaws gave each other a guarded look. When Langler half turned from them, stamping and rubbing the fire out with his boot, Fallon let his hand tighten around his rifle. His finger went inside the trigger guard. His thumb eased over the hammer to cock it.
But catching a warning gesture from Grayson, he let his thumb ease off the hammer and slipped his finger from the trigger.
When Langler had put out the fire and pulled his gloves on, he stepped up into his saddle and motioned the two ahead of him. In the distance he saw no sign of the posse raising snow in their wake. Either they had given up the chase or they were riding awfully slow, he told himself. Either way was fine by him. He nudged his horse along behind the two outlaws.
“Swing south,” he said, shoving his big Walker Colt down into a brace of leather holsters draped across the pommel of his saddle.
“How far south?” Grayson asked without looking back.
“Until we’ve got past whatever other mess you two jakes left behind you,” Langler said.
“This son of a bitch…,” Grayson whispered to himself.
They rode south along the hill line for nearly an hour before cutting back across the flatlands to the spot where the shoot-out had occurred. Once they were there, Langler rode aroun
d slowly taking in the prints of many horses in the trampled snow until he finally looked in the direction of Gunn Point.
“I don’t believe this,” he said, gesturing the other two over beside him. “Looks like the damn fool rode back with the posse.” He gave a dark chuckle. “Wonder what young Deputy Parley Stiles thought about that.”
“Jesus…,” said Grayson, “all that money, gone.”
“Watch your language,” said Langler. “Money is never gone. It’s just been misdirected. We play our cards right, maybe we get it back. Maybe we kill this sumbitch who messed everything up for us. Either way we’re not folding—we’re staying in the game.”
Chapter 4
It was later in the afternoon when Summers, Deputy Stiles and the six-man posse rode onto the main dirt street running through the town. Instead of running straight from one end to the other, the main street took a forty-five-degree turn out in front of a large sprawling clapboard building with a large ornately painted sign that read CASTER STEMS’ MAPLETHORPE SALOON.
Heads turned toward the riders as soon as they entered town. Seeing one dead outlaw hanging over his saddle and another sitting slumped forward almost onto his horse’s neck, a townsman named Philbert Clancy stepped out in front of the rest of a gathering crowd of onlookers. He stood staring for a moment with his fists clenched at his sides.
“Get a rope,” he said aloud to anyone listening.
“Dang, Phil!” said a telegraph clerk named Charlie Stuart. “We can’t hang them if they’re already dead.”
“The hell we can’t!” said Clancy, turning enough to give the clerk a hard stare.
“Looks like one is still barely alive,” said another townsman. “We can hang him, if we hurry.”
“Who’s that riding beside the deputy?” a young saloon girl named Cherry Atmore asked.
“He’s not one of the robbers,” said a townsman as the gathering crowd shifted onto the street, drawing closer to the riders as they turned toward the hitch rail out in front of the sheriff’s office.
“What makes you say so?” Cherry Atmore asked. She wore a long wool coat over a short gaudy saloon dress. She held the coat closed at the throat with one hand. In her other hand a freshly rolled cigarette stood in the scissors of her fingers.
