by Ralph Cotton
“Hold up,” Dawson said. He looked over at Juan Lupo and said to him, “John, you need to be hearing this.”
Lupo had just finished watering the team horses. When he walked over and joined the three of them, Shaw recounted everything that had happened while he and Jane Crowly scouted the trail surrounding their expedition. He told Lupo about the shoot-out in Agua Mala. Then he went on to tell the three of them about tracking Red Burke to Suerte Buena, and about Burke taking up with the Alevario brothers in order to get the gold for himself.
“But now these Alevarios are dead, yes?” Juan asked when Shaw paused.
“The Alevarios, yes,” said Shaw. “But Red Burke, I don’t know. The last I saw him he was still alive, riding away in the dust.”
“And . . . you are going after him?” asked Lupo. He watched Shaw take a sip from the canteen Dawson handed him.
“That’s right,” said Shaw, taking a tin plate of unheated beans from Caldwell, “just as soon as I’ve got enough grub to hold my belt up.”
“You figure now that he sees he missed his shot at the gold for himself, he’ll try to get back to Cantro with the news?” Dawson anticipated.
Shaw only nodded, eating hungrily. Beside him Caldwell held up an unopened airtight of beans and said, “I’ll stick these in your saddlebags for the trail.”
“Gracias,” said Shaw. “I’ll find a chance to stop and eat after I know I’ve got Burke where I want him.”
Juan Lupo gave a troubled look out across the desert floor and up along the hills above them. “Cantro and the Border Dogs . . .” He shook his head slowly.
“It’s not getting any easier, is it?” said Caldwell, seeing the grim faces around him.
“There’s more,” said Shaw. “The man I kept alive to get information from got away from Jane. She shot him, but didn’t kill him. If he went back and told Cantro everything, we could have the Border Dogs already breathing down our necks.” He chewed a final spoonful of beans, took another sip from the canteen and wiped a hand across his mouth.
“How are the team horses?” Dawson asked Juan Lupo.
“They are holding up good,” said Lupo. Again he gazed off and up along the rocky hills.
“Good,” said Dawson. To Shaw he said, “We’ll get this wagon across the desert as fast as we can, and get out of everybody’s face.”
“You do that,” said Shaw, already turning to his horses. “I’ll keep myself between the wagon and everybody wanting a bite of it.” He swung up into the speckled barb’s saddle and took the reins to the other horse in hand. “The next time you see me, I hope to have Jane with me, healed up and kicking high.”
“Watch your back trail, my friend,” said Caldwell, touching his hat brim toward Shaw.
“And ours as well, scout,” said Dawson.
Touching his hat brim in reply, Shaw said, “You can count on it.” Then he spun the speckled barb and horse beside him, and rode away, around the rock and back down to the desert floor. Moments later the three watched him stir up a rise of dust below as he rode out onto an endless carpet of sand and was soon swallowed by the wavering heat.
“With so many wanting our wagon,” said Juan Lupo, “perhaps the best thing to do is to let them see it.”
The two American lawmen looked at him, then at each other, with a questioning glance. “How soon before we get in range of some federales you know you can trust, Easy John?” Dawson asked.
“Very soon . . . I hope,” Juan replied. “Meanwhile, I trust no one but the three of you.”
Chapter 17
The billowing dust on the desert floor had settled when Shaw rode back to where he had last spotted Red Burke. From there he followed the hoofprints of Burke’s horse. Near the edge of the sand basin he saw Mexican Carlos’ horse still dragging Carlos around aimlessly in the sand. As he drew close, he slowed to a halt and stepped down from his saddle. Hearing a faint choking sound and seeing Carlos’ body tremble violently, he jerked his canteen from his saddle horn and walked over, keeping watch for Burke lurking anywhere nearby.
“Wat . . . wa-water . . . ,” Carlos moaned in a quivering, dying voice.
Shaw first freed Carlos’ boot from the stirrup, then stooped down, twisted off the canteen cap, wet his fingertips and touched them to his burned lips covered over with a black crust of dried blood. “Try to lay still, Mister, I’ve got plenty,” Shaw said quietly to the dying man, seeing the sore condition the sun and the dragging across the burning sand had left him in.
Holding the canteen a fraction away from the blistered, scalded lips, Shaw poured a thin trickle of water into Carlos’ open mouth. Carlos strangled a little but managed to swallow and try to hold his face upward for more. Shaw slipped his free hand beneath the raw, hairless head and poured another thin trickle. As he poured the water, Shaw could see no shade, no place out of the baking evening sun.
“Gracias . . . ,” Carlos managed to whisper. With a burned and trembling hand he gestured toward the Colt in Shaw’s holster. With a new round of shivering and convulsion, he gave Shaw a pleading look.
Shaw knew what the man was asking him to do, yet he gave no answer. Instead he held Carlos still and poured another trickle of water. Then he laid Carlos’ head down gently and stood up. As Shaw picked up the tired horse’s reins and pulled the animal aside, Carlos struggled to murmur “Gracias” again, this time in a weak and fading whisper.
As Shaw capped his canteen, he watched Carlos close his eyes and try to hold back another convulsion. Without another word, Shaw raised his Colt, cocked it and fired. The bullet struck Carlos in the center of his forehead. Carlos’ head relaxed into the sand as a red puddle began to widen beneath it.
Shaw stepped back and took stock of the horse. “All right,” he said, judging the horse to be hot and thirsty but otherwise sound, “you can tag along with us.” He stripped the horse’s saddle and bridle and dropped them both in the dirt. “But you’ll have to keep up.”
Taking the reins to the speckled barb, he walked the horses along for the next ten minutes, letting the three animals get used to one another before stepping back up into his saddle. He heeled the barb to a walk, leading his spare horse. The third horse followed a few feet behind as they moved along, tracking the hoofprints in the sand.
By dark they had traveled up off the sand basin and into a stretch of sparse wild grass. The third horse began falling farther and farther behind, grazing and sniffing the air to the west where the hills supported small herds of Mexican mustangs. Soon the horse had wandered off on its own and disappeared from sight. Shaw looked back for it only once. Then he rode on, moving slow but steadily, tracking Burke throughout the night in the light of a wide full moon. . . .
Fifteen miles ahead of Shaw, Red Burke continued to push his horse harder and harder. But more than halfway through the night, when he saw the tired animal losing ground in spite of spurring and whipping it with his wrist quirt, he finally stepped down from his saddle. “Lazy sonsabitch,” he growled at the weary animal, jerking it forward.
He continued along the trail until he reached the rope bridge; then he tied the animal to a tree and slept like a dead man. In the morning he awoke to a rumbling sound of horses’ hooves on the bridge’s plank walkway. “What the hell . . . ?” he whispered in amazement, crawling stealthily through the brush. At the edge of the trail he peeped out and saw the column of Mexican federales riding single file across the creaking, trembling bridge.
“Damn you, Paylo,” he whispered gruffly, seeing the bridge still intact. “If you wasn’t dead, I’ll gut you sure as hell.”
He watched in silence until the last of the soldiers had crossed. As two rear guards rode out of sight around a turn, he said, “That’s right, get out of here!”
Standing, he dusted his knees and said to his horse standing tied to the tree, “Well, at least we don’t have to ride all the way around.” He walked over, untied the horse and jerked it roughly away from the tree and stepped up into the saddle. “Come on,
I’ll swap your worthless hide for a fresh mount as soon as we get back to Agua Mala.”
Looking carefully both ways for any more federales , he nudged the horse out onto the bridge and started across at a walk. He could still feel vibrations from the crossing soldiers. Yet halfway across, Burke stopped the horse suddenly as he heard a loud snap and saw the planks at the far end of the bridge flip up wildly into the air.
The main ropes broke, whipping upward like an angry serpent. The whole bridge twisted to one side as another rope broke, and Burke’s horse reared high with a loud whinny and turned on its hooves. Burke struggled to hang on as the animal spun and began running back in the opposite direction. But with the bridge bucking and twisting violently, Burke lost his seating, flipped up out of his saddle and slid down over the horse’s rump.
Grabbing on to the fleeing animal’s tail and holding on tightly, he screamed at the horse, “Go boy!”
Burke’s spinning feet hit the walk planks at a hard run. He heard more planks flipping up behind him while the rest of the main ropes snapped and twanged and whistled in the air. As the horse raced off the doomed bridge, Burke felt the whole structure collapse and begin falling from beneath his feet. Still clinging to the horse’s tail, he could see the animal taking him closer to safety with each step. But just as the horse’s front hooves pounded onto solid ground, its rear hoof dealt Burke a solid kick and sent him flying backward.
He realized in a flash that the bridge was no longer beneath him. Eyes bulging, Burke caught a fleeting glimpse of the running horse’s tail as the horse abandoned him. He let out a loud, echoing scream as he grappled with whipping, tangled ropes and flying oak walk planks.
Clawing, screaming, grasping, falling, Burke felt the collapsed structure drop straight into the open mouth of the deep chasm. Above him, as he fell, he saw more than half of the broken rope bridge writhing and undulating as it dropped and swung back toward the shear wall of jagged rock. His fall slowed, then stopped suddenly with a hard jerk as a tangle of rope encircled him and held him in it. He almost breathed a sigh of relief, yet, before he could, the bridge slammed against the rock wall and the impact of it snapped him upward in the tangle of rope like something tied to the end of a bull whip.
When his upward flight ended and fell, much of the tangled rope holding him unraveled downward, spinning him like a top. When it stopped, Burke stared down at a spinning world of jagged rock and rushing water still lying more than a hundred feet below him. On a rocky bank he saw the body of Ted Hugh, the man he’d hurled off the bridge, lying broken in a dried circle of blood. “Oh no!” Burke said aloud, “I can’t die here . . . not like this.” Broken planks and loosened rocks and dirt rained down around him.
At the end of a long loop of rope circled under his arms he swung back and forth slowly above the rushing stream, ten feet out from the receding rock wall. When the swinging slowed and finally stopped, he stared straight up, from the end of his rope at the end of the fallen bridge, bobbing like an ill-handled puppet.
“By God,” he said in a disbelieving voice, “I’m—I’m still alive!”
But no sooner had Burke’s words left his mouth than his upturned eyes widened in terror as he caught a glimpse of a rock the size of a goose egg hurtling downward. The rock dropped suddenly and mercilessly, smacked him squarely in his forehead and knocked him cold. As he slumped unconscious, his feet dangling, one of his boots slipped free of his foot and tumbled to the water below.
A full two hours passed before Red Burke opened his eyes and the memory of his situation came flooding back to him. He’d awakened with a start, feeling a heavy weight and sharp points atop his bowed head. When his eyes opened he stared into the upside down bald face of a black buzzard perched atop him, its talons gripping his forehead as it leaned forward and craned its neck at a steep angle. The carrion hunter’s fierce yellow eyes peered into his with a questioning stare.
Burke screamed, kicking and shaking his head spasmodically, and sent the big bird flying away in a flurry of batting wings. He looked down at the swaying world beneath him, a single bare toe standing out through a hole in his dirty sock. His head pounded from the large bloody whelp the rock had left between his eyes. But he ignored the pain and began searching his wits and the terrain surrounding him, looking for a way out of his dilemma.
If he raised his arms high, he could wiggle free of the loop of rope and drop to the water below, but it was too far, and too rocky. After a moment of silent thought, he decided his only hope was to swing himself against the rock wall, get a grip on it and climb upward through the tangled remnants of the collapsed bridge.
His head pounding, his left boot missing, Burke struggled until he began to swing in and out toward the rock wall. After several full minutes of hard work, he managed to get close enough to the wall to kick himself out for a deeper swing to it. When he swung back to the wall, this time he grabbed on to the walk boards and rope railings lying flat down the steep rocks.
Once he’d secured a footing for himself among the broken oaken planks, he wiggled out of his long loop of rope, but held on to it and climbed upward a few feet and stepped his bare foot over into the loop and pushed himself upward for another foothold. After a moment of consideration, he tied a knot higher up in the loop of rope, stuck his foot into it and pushed himself farther up.
Using the dangling rope and the collapsed bridge for his support, with each hand over hand and foot over foot, he inched himself higher up the side of the rock wall like a slow-moving spider, weaving and creating his rope web as he went.
After two hours of climbing and struggling and knotting the rope, he found a narrow ledge in the rock wall and crawled onto it. He lay panting and aching, and closed his eyes against the pain on his forehead. Dying would be easier, he thought, gasping, drenched with sweat.
He’d already loosened his long riding duster and let it fall. He reached around up under his shirt to untie the wet, heavy bulletproof vest, but his fingertips could not reach the strings. To hell with it . . . , he told himself, giving up. He might need the vest anyway, if he managed to get out of this hole alive. The vest might be as important to him as the Colt on his hip, he thought, and he sure as hell wasn’t chucking that away.
His hands and bare foot bloody from the jagged rock and oak splinters, he arose from the ledge, reached out and grabbed on to the rope and bridge debris and started climbing again. After another full hour of gut-wrenching pulling and tugging, with loose dirt and rocks pelting down around him, he took heart as he felt a breeze and looked up to see the edge of the crumbled bridge only another fifty feet above him.
Burke stopped long enough to cling to the wall and look down. He chuckled aloud to any unseen entity that might be listening. “It takes a hell of a lot more than this to lick ole Red!”
With a renewed energy he climbed faster, harder, and within twenty minutes he swung his arms over the upper edge onto solid ground and hung there, catching his breath and feeling relief surge through him.
“Damn it to hell. I’ve done it . . . I’ve done it,” he said under his breath, shaking his head slowly. With all of his strength he heaved himself up over the edge and rolled up onto his feet. Standing in a crouch, his palms on his knees, he took deep breaths, laughing to himself. “Red Sage Burke,” he said proudly, “what sonsabitch can stop you now?”
“What took you so long?”
Burke straightened with a snap, his hand poised near his holstered Colt. Shaw sat on a rock a few feet away, calmly holding an airtight of beans in his left hand.
“You do not want to touch that gun, Burke,” Shaw said quietly through a mouthful of beans, “not after working so hard to stay alive.”
Burke stared at him, knowing no bullet could harm him. He saw Shaw’s two horses as well as his own standing calmly beside the rock.
Shaw swallowed his beans and set the airtight down on the rock next to him, a spoon handle sticking up. “I got tired of waiting, thought I better eat something.”
“I best tell you,” said Burke, feeling cocky and self-confident, “whatever you think you’re getting from me, you ain’t getting. Not after what I just went through.”
Shaw wiped a hand across his mouth. “I don’t want anything from you, Burke. Those men you were riding with are all dead. I just came here to finish things up, make sure you’re dead.”
“Uh-uh. There again,” said Burke, raising a ragged, bloody finger for emphasis. “It ain’t going to go the way you think it is. I can take any-damn-thing you can shoot at me.” His hand poised tense at the butt of his Colt. “Your bullets ain’t sending me to hell. I’ll send you.”
Shaw gave him a bemused look. “You talk like a man with a handful of aces. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost speculate you’re wearing a bulletproof vest.”
“What I’m wearing is none of your damned business.” As Burke spoke, his hand made its play for his Colt.
Shaw’s revolver came up and fired. The first bullet slammed Burke in the chest. The outlaw fell back a step, but he only gave a grimace, then a dark grin. Shaw’s shot only knocked his aim off a little, he thought. But his bullet streaked wildly past Shaw’s head. Before he got another shot off, Shaw fired again, the bullet striking almost in the same spot.
Burke grunted and staggered farther back with the impact. But he almost laughed aloud at Shaw for not realizing that a shot in his chest wouldn’t kill him. He cocked his gun and aimed it unsteadily at Shaw. “So long, fool!” he said, ready to pull the trigger.
“Adios,” Shaw replied. His third shot again hit the outlaw in almost the same spot. Burke couldn’t believe this man hadn’t learned by now. But again the impact of the slug pushed him back a step, and before Burke could pull the trigger, his bare foot stepped back off the edge and the outlaw fell from Shaw’s sight wearing a stunned expression. This time there were no ropes or walk planks to stop him.
Shaw walked to the edge and looked down just as Burke hit the stream. The rushing water caught his body and swept it away over jutting rock, leaving a streak of blood widening in its wake. Shaking his head, Shaw returned to his rock, sat down, picked up the airtight and finished the remaining beans. When he’d finished eating, he stood up, gathered the reins to the speckled barb, his spare horse, and Burke’s horse and swung up into his saddle. Riding the long way around the trail, he set out for Mal Vuelve.
