Dark Angel Riding

by Paul Lederer

  Dark Angel Riding

  Paul Lederer writing as Logan Winters

  ONE

  From his upstairs window in the Brownsville Hotel, John Dancer looked out across the whitesand desert, watching the shadows beneath the thorny ocotillo plants and scattered mesquite bushes stretch out before the glare of orange light cast by the rising sun. A mockingbird perched briefly on his window ledge, cocked a surprised head at him and quickly flew away, its throat filled with scolding sounds.

  Dancer smiled faintly and returned to his rumpled bed where he sat for a long minute staring at the blank wall of the room, the white pitcher and washbasin on the bureau, the clouded oval mirror which reflected only another blank wall.

  He looked with a pang of trepidation at his boots, dreading the moment. He had been wearing only soft moccasins on his feet for a long while. Now his sturdy, scuffed boots presented a significant challenge. He had risen in the early pre-dawn hours and managed, with infinite care and spasms of pain to dress himself in the faded red shirt and black jeans he now wore. Each movement caused jagged torment to flare up in his tightly wrapped ribcage. The broken bones were nearly mended, but they violently objected to any movement that was not carefully planned, gently executed.

  Dancer had no choice but to move on. He had been staying in the hotel for two months now, half the time flat on his back; now his funds were exhausted. If he was careful with his few remaining dollars he had enough to provision himself, pay for his horse’s board and stock his saddlebags with enough ammunition to do what must be done.

  Broken, his body was still unwilling, but his spirit raced with fiery determination. Two months is a long time to remain a dead man. It was time to return.

  With a sigh, he leaned to pick up his left boot. His ribs complained again at the small exertion. Dancer cursed the demons of pain to silence. Tugging at the mule-ear straps he drew his calf-high boot on. The easy part, then, had been accomplished. Now he morosely studied the other boot, and then his swollen, shattered right foot. On either side of the ankle was a knob where displaced bone had reconstructed itself grotesquely. The doctor who had strapped him into his encasing rib bandages had examined the deformed ankle and shaken his head. ‘It’ll never be any good again,’ was the physician’s unnecessary prognosis.

  ‘Amazing what a .44-40 slug can do to the human body,’ the youngish doctor said. ‘Tendon, bone, flesh.’ He was not callous, but only candid. ‘You’ll never walk again, Mr Dancer. Not without extreme pain.’

  ‘I’ll ride, then,’ Dancer had told the physician with stony certainty. The young doctor’s eyes flickered behind his spectacles as he studied the expression on his lanky, curly-headed patient’s face. ‘There’s places I have to go,’ Dancer told him. ‘I’ll get there if I have to crawl.’

  The doctor, a mild man from the East, saw the fire in Dancer’s faded blue eyes and began wrapping the swollen, broken ankle. He believed Dancer. Believed he would be able to do whatever it was that he had planned, and was glad that he himself was not going to be standing in John Dancer’s way.

  Now Dancer delayed. He wiped back his dark hair with the fingers of both hands, took a deep breath and thrust the toes of his foot into his boot. As he gripped the straps perspiration began to bead his forehead. He stifled a cry of pain as he tugged steadily, strongly at the boot, watching the swollen, misshapen object that was his ankle slide into his boot, inch by tormenting inch until, rising, he silently groaned and stamped his foot down hard, his heel settling into the boot.

  Then he slumped back onto the bed, the throb and ache searing through his ankle, the whole of his left leg. A soft rap on his door brought Dancer instantly upright and he snatched his Colt revolver from the bureau top, earing back the blue-steel hammer.

  ‘Who is it?’ Dancer asked in a low growl.

  ‘Me, Sadie, Mr Dancer.’

  Dancer lowered the hammer of the Colt and hobbled to the door. Upon opening it he found the tiny chestnut-haired maid who had taken care of him these last long weeks. Sadie Fairchild stood at the threshold of the room, towels folded over her arm, a steaming bucket of hot water in her free hand. Her dark eyes were inquisitive, growing anxious as she studied John Dancer from his freshly washed dark hair to the tight-fitting high boots he now wore.

  ‘I came for your soak,’ she said, a slight tremor in her voice. ‘But I see. …’

  ‘Come on in,’ Dancer said, leaving the door open as she passed him and placed the bucket of water on the floor, the towels on the bureau. Beyond the window the sky was losing its dawn tint, fading to a clear blue-white. Sadie remained standing, her arms crossed beneath her breasts.

  ‘I guess they didn’t tell you,’ Dancer said. ‘I’m leaving this morning.’

  ‘They didn’t tell me,’ Sadie replied softly.

  Since the night John Dancer had dragged himself into the hotel and taken a room, Sadie Fairchild had been tending to his needs. Each morning she brought a bucket of hot water to pour into the basin so that John could soak his damaged ankle. When he needed meals delivered, mail sent, aspirin or – occasionally – whiskey to dampen his pain, she cheerfully provided these services.

  Sometimes at night she would read to him, seated in a wooden chair beside the bed where the wounded man lay, her voice tender and low. Though he did not know it, at times Sadie would sit and watch him sleep, long after the book had been closed and the night crept past, stroking his forehead when the occasional nightmare swam through his unconscious mind.

  ‘Is it money, John?’ she asked, studying him intently. He had unintentionally mentioned to her that his funds were nearly exhausted. ‘If that is all it is, I can. …’

  Dancer waved a careless hand. ‘It’s not that, Sadie. It’s just that it’s time to go. I have matters to attend to.’

  ‘Your foot is no better!’ she said with impulsive heat.

  ‘I can ride.’

  ‘You can be killed,’ Sadie said, her voice lowering. She shifted her eyes away from his. They had spoken together for long hours over the months; they knew more than they needed to know about each other’s troubles.

  Sadie Fairchild had been only a child when her family, trekking westward, had been raided by a band of Comanches west of Brownsville. Through a small miracle she had been left alive, lost and hungry, fearful and small on the wide prairie until discovered by an army patrol. The owners of the hotel, Guy Travers and his wife, Tess, had taken the orphaned child in. Sadie had remained in their service for years. She found that she feared the wide land deeply and could never again even consider venturing out onto the empty plains. Also, her devotion to Guy Travers – shark though he was – and to Tess, was unshakeable. She was their child, they the only parents she had known.

  ‘A lot of men,’ Sadie tried again as Dancer belted on his Colt revolver, bracing himself heavily on his left leg, ‘live full lives, rewarding lives without guns. Without carving a path into Hell.’

  Dancer didn’t quite smile. There was nothing amusing about Sadie’s words or her fear, but the corners of his broad mouth did lift slightly as he responded.

  ‘You’re right, of course. You are a wise woman, Sadie.’ Somberly, he added, ‘But when a man is given no choice, he will charge Hell with a pocketful of stones if he must. Or he relinquishes the right to call himself a man.’

  ‘You mustn’t do this. …’ to me, is what she nearly blurted out, but refrained from saying. She performed meaningless habitual rituals now as she kept her moist eyes turned away from Dancer’s – opening the window, stripping the bed of its linen, straightening the braided rug at the foot of the bed. When none of these small distractions could longer disguise her fear, she spun to face Dancer and said furiously:

  ‘For God’s sake, John! She is onl
y another woman!’

  Immediately she regretted her outburst. John Dancer seemed not to have heard her. He was packing his few belongings into his saddlebags, not so much as glancing at her. Sadie felt diminished, as if her outburst had shrunken her in his eyes, made her sound like another jealous female – jealous about a woman she had never met or seen, described only through Dancer’s eyes on those long, quiet, somehow comforting nights when she had seated herself close to him, wanting to know him, to find an anchor, a polar star in her life beyond the security of the Travers family.

  Sadie felt at once rejected and, as one who has made a fool of herself, as causing her own rejection.

  John Dancer said, ‘Have Guy make up my bill, and if you could send young Toby to the stable for my horse. …’ He fumbled in his pocket for a pair of silver dollars to offer her, saw that even that gesture was offensive to Sadie, and let his words stumble to a halt.

  ‘I wasn’t meaning to treat you like. …’

  ‘A servant?’ Sadie suggested. But that was all that she had been to John Dancer, it seemed now. Dancer didn’t reply. ‘I’ll send Toby for your gray,’ she promised. Moving like an automaton now, Sadie gathered her pail and towels and started toward the door. Dancer took her arm in passing, turned her and held her briefly by the shoulders, searching for words. None came. This time had passed – all too quickly, but it had passed. They dwelt in different worlds; they had different expectations.

  ‘Please let me go,’ she said without raising her eyes to Dancer’s. He released his hands slowly and watched as she trudged purposefully down the carpeted hallway. Dancer’s mouth tightened with emotions he refused to pause to define, and he returned to the room stiffly to plant his gray Stetson on his head, look around briefly for forgotten items, snatch his Winchester rifle from the corner of the closet and limp down the corridor himself, saddlebags over his shoulder, his ankle throbbing with pain at each step. The boot acted as a sort of splint, preventing further damage, but Dancer doubted that he could withdraw his foot from it again without cutting the leather away. His ankle crackled and grated as he walked. His teeth, as he started down the stairway toward the lobby, were gritted.

  The hotel lobby in the cool early hours was dark, musty. Two Texas cattlemen in range clothes sat sagged into overstuffed chairs, watching with whiskey-blurred eyes as Dancer walked past them. Guy Travers’s small brown-and-white dog, head resting on its paws, opened one eye to watch Dancer as he approached the counter.

  There was a bell on the scarred desk and, placing his rifle on the counter, he rang it. Guy Travers, smelling of bay rum and shaving soap, his white shirtsleeves held up with red garters, appeared from the back room of the office, smiling uneasily. He eyed Dancer nervously, placed both of his stubby hands on the desk and said, ‘Tess is making out your bill, Mr Dancer. I’m sorry to ask you to leave before you were fully ready, but. …’ He shrugged.

  ‘Business is business,’ Dancer said.

  ‘I realize with your medical problems. …’

  ‘It was time to leave anyway,’ Dancer said without a smile. He leaned against the counter, turning his eyes away from the pathetic hotel-keeper. He wondered how Sadie had managed to endure all these years in his employ. Tess Travers bustled in from the rear office, a yellow slip of paper fluttering in her hand. She was short, round and constantly harried. A woman who seemed always to be apologizing for herself … or for her husband. Dancer took the hotel bill and studied it. It was a dollar over what it should have been, but he wasn’t going to waste the time to haggle over it.

  Counting out his money, he found that he was closer to being totally broke than he had previously estimated. Travers nodded, scraped the money from the counter. Tess Travers smiled nervously and murmured, ‘We hope to have you stay with us again, Mr Dancer.’

  Dancer’s face was expressionless. He picked up his rifle, shifted the weight of his saddlebags from one shoulder to the other and walked toward the hotel door. He would not be passing this way again.

  Just before he stepped through the green door into the glitter of the desert morning he saw, from the corner of his eye, the chestnut-haired girl with those sad green eyes, watching him from a deeply shadowed corner of the lobby. Dancer stepped outside, closed the door firmly and hobbled toward the stable.

  Toby Waller was a cheerful, bright-eyed kid. He wore hand-me-down shirt and trousers two sizes too large, a torn hat and a toothy grin. His shoes were scarred and misshapen, one ear was slightly folded. He was rooted in poverty, unschooled and totally affable. He rose from the water barrel he had been perched on and waited, arms akimbo, to greet Dancer in a chirruping voice.

  ‘Mr Dancer! Sadie told me you’d be coming today!’

  ‘And here I am,’ Dancer said, resting his big hand on the boy’s slender shoulder.

  ‘I’ll hate to see Washoe leave,’ Toby said. ‘Me and that big gray horse have had some mornings. I was just getting ready to take him out for his exercise when Miss Sadie told me you were on your way. He’s fit and ready. I readjusted the stirrups for you.’

  In the darkness of the stable it took a minute before Dancer’s eyes adjusted well enough for him to be able to make out the familiar figure of the gray horse with three white stockings, the full chest and devilish eyes.

  ‘He didn’t give you any trouble?’ Dancer said as they reached the stall where Washoe waited. Dancer stroked the big horse’s muzzle.

  ‘Naw!’ Toby reconsidered, ‘Well … he can be a little feisty in the mornings.’

  ‘He can be,’ Dancer agreed, opening the stall gate to run a hand along the tall gray’s flanks. Curried and well-fed, Washoe looked to be in splendid shape.

  ‘You didn’t break a gallop on him, did you?’ Dancer asked. Toby looked slightly offended.

  ‘No, sir, Mr Dancer! You told me not to let him run flat out, and I gave you my promise.’

  Dancer had slipped his rifle into its saddle sheath, now he was tying his saddlebags down.

  ‘He looks fine, Toby. I thank you.’ He fished into his pocket and pulled out a silver dollar which he gave to the boy.

  ‘I almost feel bad about taking this,’ Toby said gazing at the cartwheel. ‘Mornings I couldn’t wait to get to work when Washoe was here. Now. …’

  ‘Have you got a stool, Toby? The kind some of these young ladies need to climb aboard?’

  ‘For you, sir?’ Toby asked with disbelief.

  ‘For me. I’m just a little game still,’ Dancer answered.

  Washoe did not act up on this morning, perhaps sensing his master’s difficulty. Once in leather, the pain in Dancer’s ankle settled to a slow throb. It was from horseback that he paid the stablekeeper what was owed for his horse’s care. Then, ducking his head, Dancer rode out into the sun-bright street, slowly walked Washoe up the center of Main Street, the gray’s prancing hoofs kicking up small puffs of white sandy dust. Past the saloons, past the restaurant, past the gunsmith’s. Past the hotel and along the length of the street until it faded, broadened and disappeared, merging with the endless salt flats of the long white desert.

  The morning was already warm. By noon the temperature would be in three figures. At The Wells, just beyond the town, he paused. There were several Mexican women in striped skirts and white blouses filling ollas with water for their cooking and household tasks. Dancer didn’t risk swinging down to fill his canteens. Instead he gave one of the women a few pesos to do it for him.

  This was going to be hell, he thought, as he watched a few young dark-eyed kids running, playing tag with each other, a half-dozen scrawny pups yipping at their heels. The doctor had told him he would never walk normally again. Dancer had already known that – had known it as soon as the bullet tagged his ankle on that blazing day. A man proceeds as best he can. He could no longer walk more than a few hundred feet at a time.

  But he could ride and he could shoot. He could find the killers and exact his revenge. His mood grew darker, his expression bitter as he started forward out onto t
he treacherous desert. He was determined, and a deadly desire for vengeance rode with him.

  His ankle might be broken and useless, but it made no difference. He would descend upon the killers not like a man afoot and hobbled, but like a dark angel riding.

  TWO

  Three months earlier, when John Dancer had trailed into this country out of Alamogordo, it had been the dead of winter, or what passed for winter in this bleak desert country. The nights could grow bitter cold, but the daytime temperatures seldom topped the high eighties. It wasn’t the blazing white sun that troubled a man at that time of year, but the sheer bleakness of the long desert, the sense that the empty land ran on to infinity.

  Dancer had not known the country then, but a man named French who had once tried hard-rock mining up this way had drawn him a crude map. The low, slate-gray hills to Dancer’s left were where he had expected to find them. These were rugged, folded desolate hills with only a hint of green at their peaks – probably stunted weather-tortured piñon pines. His campsite was intended to be Wildcat Canyon. If he could discover it. There, French had told him, shallow pools of water could usually be found and shelter from the not uncommon, fierce sandstorms.

  The day on which it had all begun lived in vivid recollection. …

  The sun, low in the western sky, spread a rose-colored flush across the white sand. The dusk had been rushing toward darkness; there was a last line of beaten gold along the formless horizon and a smear of burnt orange in the higher sky mixed with hazy vermilion. The horse was weary, moving with its head down, plodding through the sand and scattered volcanic rock.

  Cresting out a low rise, Dancer heard the keening sound, and he frowned, slowing his gray horse still more. ‘What was that, Washoe?’ Dancer asked quietly. ‘Didn’t sound like coyotes.’ It didn’t sound like any cry that he could remember hearing. Indians? He thought the Yaquis and the Yuma Indians were not found this far north and east, but of course he couldn’t risk being wrong.