Ralph Compton Rusted Tin

by Ralph Compton

  Realizing he wasn’t going to say any more without being prodded a bit, Emma asked, “Did you gaze into her eyes? When you saw her lips, did you just want to plant a wet kiss on ’em?”

  He looked over his shoulder to find Emma wearing a big, sloppy smile that was as bright as it was contagious. Turning back to the window, he replied, “Nothing so sappy.”

  “It had to have been like that.” Feeling the slam of the front door as well as a parade of footsteps from the first floor, she tossed her pencil at the sheriff’s back. “It sounds to me like you had a revelation after looking into a set of pretty eyes. It’s all right for a big, rough lawman to get a taste of something sweet as that.”

  With the footsteps downstairs growing louder by the second and Sam’s voice drifting closer to the stairs, Wolpert draped his coat over his arm and took a few steps toward the office door. Resting his hand upon the knob without turning it, he said, “It wasn’t a revelation. It was just a moment that opened my eyes.”

  “If you’re dead set on crossing a man like Burt Sampil, I’d think whatever happened to you was more along the lines of a miracle. Whatever it was, it must have been something big.”

  “Some of us don’t bother looking for miracles or waiting for big revelations. We jump at little divine glimpses that other folks might allow to pass them by. For some of us,” he said while pulling open the door, “it’s all we deserve.”

  Chapter 13

  Sam had worked a lot faster than Wolpert had expected, gathering several locals from stores near the bank or the street who’d witnessed the robbery. The entire group converged upon the Third Street Hotel like a mob and assaulted the sheriff with their accounts of the day’s events. After hearing their frenzied reports, Wolpert could delay no longer. He pulled on his coat and hat, collected his horse from the small stable next to the hotel and rode out of town.

  Every story but one said the robbers had headed west while making their getaway. The one account of the robbers riding north was either a mistake or a lie, because Wolpert had told Juan to lead the other two westward. A few of the more enterprising locals volunteered to ride along with him, but Wolpert refused on account of it being too dangerous. On his way out of town, he took several glances over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being followed.

  Fortunately, those volunteers weren’t as tenacious as he’d feared.

  If Juan led the others to the proper spot, Wolpert figured he should catch up to them in under an hour. Then again, judging by the gunshots that popped in the distance, he might catch up a lot quicker than he’d planned. Wolpert snapped his reins and leaned down low over his horse’s back. The gelding tore across the landscape with a vengeance after having been cooped up in town. Even the staccato crackle of gunshots wasn’t enough to slow him down.

  Knowing the terrain well enough to navigate the uneven slopes, Wolpert rode beside a little creek that trickled toward Chimney Lake. His horse’s steps thumped against the cold, packed dirt with more than enough force to send jagged cracks through the layers of ice on top of the water. When he caught sight of smoke hanging in the air like mud smeared upon a chilled windowpane, the sheriff steered his horse in that direction, cleared the creek in one jump and tapped his heels against the animal’s sides.

  In no time at all, he closed in on the source of the gunshots. There was a small cabin near a thin stream, its warped, neglected walls sagging beneath the weight of a partially collapsed roof. From a distance, Wolpert could see three horses clustered near the back of the cabin. As more shots were fired, he traced the puffs of smoke to two sources. The men were shooting at the cabin from different angles. One had sought refuge behind a stand of trees and the other was lying on his belly in the snow. As Wolpert drew closer, the man in the trees fired a shot over his head.

  “Do that again, Mike, and I’ll return fire!” Wolpert shouted.

  The man on his belly rolled onto his side to get a better look at the approaching horse. “That you, Sheriff?”

  “It is. Mind telling me what the hell you’re shooting at?”

  Mike was a tall, lean man in his late twenties with a face that was hardened by a combination of scar tissue and harsh prairie sun. Dressed in dark brown clothes and a tattered coat, he blended in nicely among the trees. His rifle was almost as skinny as he was and remained propped against his shoulder as he hollered, “Didn’t you hear? The bank was robbed!”

  “Of course I heard! How do you think I knew where to look for you two?”

  “You’re here to lend us a hand? Ain’t that just perfect! You hear that, Johnny?”

  The man on his belly looked like a bear that had been dropped by Mike’s rifle. Short, thick legs were sprawled out behind him and his barrellike body had undoubtedly already made a trench in the ground. A floppy hat covered his head, but several clumps of wiry hair still managed to poke out from beneath it in several spots beneath the brim. He had a newer-model Winchester rifle in his hands as well as several shotguns lying on the ground within arm’s reach. “You missed the fun, Sheriff,” he said. “We chased these boys straight out of town. Saw they was cuttin’ to the west, so we circled around to catch ’em before they crossed the old Cherokee trail.”

  Wolpert hadn’t even known about that shortcut. Maybe the vigilantes weren’t complete buffoons after all. “You got them cornered in that cabin, then?”

  “Yep,” Mike said. “Been shooting plenty of holes through the walls. Thought we might check on ’em to see if we hadn’t already done ’em in.”

  Just then, something rustled within the cabin and a muzzle flash lit up one of the small square windows. A bullet drilled through the tree a few paces away from Mike, causing the tall man to hold his rifle close and press his back against the tree he’d been using for cover. “Guess we need to make a few more holes, Johnny!”

  Before Wolpert could say a word about that, both of the other men took aim and pulled their triggers. Between the two of them, they sent enough lead through the air to stop an elephant. Mike fired his rifle again and again, working the lever to chamber fresh rounds with impressive speed. Johnny lay on his belly, dug in like a tick and fired even faster. When his rifle ran dry, he grabbed the closest shotgun and sent two thundering blasts into the cabin.

  “Will you two hold your fire?” Wolpert shouted. Since his words were drowned out by the echoing shots, he waited for a lull and tried again. “Hey! Lower those weapons!”

  “What’s the matter, Sheriff?” Johnny asked through a wide, sloppy grin. “Skin that pistol and join on in!”

  Wolpert hurried over to the prone man and stepped on the shotgun so its barrel was flat against the ground and the stock wedged Johnny’s hands in place. The vigilante let out a pained groan and squirmed like an earthworm that had been caught by a cat’s paw. “Listen for a second, will you?”

  “I am listening!”

  “What do you think you’re doing, Sheriff?” Mike asked from the trees.

  Keeping his foot in place and his pistol pointed at the cabin, Wolpert said, “I’m saving you men some ammunition. And I swear, Mike, if you’re pointing that rifle at me, there’s gonna be hell to pay!”

  Like any vigilantes, these two were thirsty for blood. Mike snarled to himself and lowered his rifle as though he were going against nature herself. “I’m listening!” he said.

  “Me too,” Johnny grunted. “But I don’t hear nothin’.”

  “That’s just it. They’re not even bothering to shoot back at you,” Wolpert pointed out. “Could it be they’re just inside waiting for the storm to pass?”

  Looking up at him while still pinned to the ground, Johnny said, “Or it could be we hit the bastards. What do ya think of that?”

  Wolpert didn’t have to answer, because the men in the cabin did it for him. One of the last bits of glass in the windows was knocked out so a pistol could be propped against the sill and fired. The cabin’s door creaked open just enough to allow another couple of gun barrels to poke out and spit fire at
the vigilantes. Wolpert was also in that same line of fire, so he hopped off the gun barrel and dropped to lie in the dirt next to Johnny. The frozen ground was so hard it knocked a good portion of the wind from his lungs on impact.

  The first few rounds had felt perilously close to hitting their target. After that, however, Wolpert could tell the men in the cabin were aiming too high to kill anything but a bird that had forgotten to fly south that winter.

  Too excited to be upset about butting heads with the lawman just a few seconds ago, Johnny asked, “What do you think we should do, Sheriff? Go straight in or circle around and then go in?”

  “I’m gonna get closer to that cabin and you two are staying behind.” Raising his voice enough for it to carry over to the trees, he added, “You hear that, Mike? I’m going in!”

  “That mean we’re deputized?” Mike asked.

  Suddenly, Johnny grinned like a kid with his nose pressed against the window of a candy shop. “Yeah! Does that make us deputies?”

  Even in his most crooked days as a so-called peacekeeper, Wolpert wouldn’t have made a mistake as big as deputizing the likes of those two. Doing his best not to let that show on his face, he replied, “That makes you members of a posse. I don’t have time for the rest. Just keep firing and I’ll see what I can do about flushing those three out of there.”

  “All three are in there? Did you see them?”

  “Yeah,” Wolpert lied. “Through the window. Now give me till the count of twenty and start firing some more.” With that, the lawman patted Johnny’s shoulder and pulled himself up to his feet. Hunkering down, he circled around to the left of the cabin in a wide arc. There was another door near the spot where the horses were tethered and Wolpert scurried toward that while putting on a show of trying to stay out of sight. The vigilantes were either fast counters or ignorant in their numbers, because they opened fire about five seconds too soon.

  As much as he wanted to shove his way into the cabin, Wolpert wasn’t of a mind to get himself shot full of holes by a bunch of jumpy outlaws. Instead, he crouched down next to the back door and rapped on it with his knuckles. After some rustling within the little structure, the door was pulled open and Tom glared out over the barrel of his Schofield.

  “Where the blazes have you been?” the big man grunted. “We damn near got shot by those two crazy sons of—”

  “Shut this door and tell the others I’m here,” Wolpert cut in. “I’m making a lot of noise when I come through this door again, so I want plenty of noise in return. I don’t want to get shot, though, you understand? Do. Not. Shoot. Me!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Tom grumbled while kicking the door shut.

  Wolpert took a few steps back and drew a breath. It wouldn’t take much time for Tom to pass the warning along, but that didn’t make him feel any better about charging in. Letting out something close to a howl, he threw himself at the door and smashed it open with his shoulder. Wolpert fired a shot into the ceiling, took a quick look around and then fired another through a wall where nobody was standing. As he’d figured, the three outlaws were low and behind the thickest portions of the house with some old furniture thrown against the front wall for good measure. They shouted something back at him and returned fire, but were careful to shoot everywhere but a spot that might hit anyone else in the cabin.

  “Get to your horses and get out of here,” Wolpert hissed. When they didn’t move, he raised his voice and fired again to mask it. “Go!”

  Tom and Cade were more than willing to head outside, but Juan stayed behind. No amount of gunfire from outside could distract him as he squared up to Wolpert and said, “We went to the spot you told us and those two pigs showed up instead. What happened?”

  “I gave you a simple job to do and you couldn’t get it done and get away before those two pigs caught up to you!” Wolpert shot back. “I’d like to know what happened myself.”

  “Those lunatics know this terrain so well they were ahead of us before we even know where we were going!”

  “Well, I didn’t see any horses out there, so now’s your chance. Try not to linger or mess it up like you did at that bank.”

  Juan spat a few profanities at the sheriff as he moved past him. Since he wanted to make sure the exit was convincing, Wolpert kicked the outlaw in the backside on his way out. Sure enough, Juan turned and started firing at the cabin while shouting like an enraged wild man. Wolpert was sure to get out of the way and even ducked behind some of the cover the outlaws had already laid down. “I got ’em on the run!” he shouted.

  The others were already in their saddles and turning their horses away from the cabin. Wolpert strode outside, motioned in the direction he wanted them to go and fired a few more shots in the air. Not only did the cabin provide excellent cover for their escape, but the shots acted better than a swat to each horse’s rump.

  “I’m coming around to fetch my horse,” Wolpert announced. “Don’t shoot!” He raised his hands and ran around the cabin to find both vigilantes on their feet.

  “Did you kill ’em?” Johnny asked.

  “I wounded a few of them, but they were ready for me.”

  Mike hurried over from the trees and said, “We was gonna bust in there ourselves, but they held us off. I thought you had it that time, Sheriff!”

  “So did I,” Wolpert said while climbing into his saddle. “You men watch this spot in case they double back and I’ll go after them.”

  “We didn’t come this far to stand around and wait,” Mike said. “We’re comin’ along with you!”

  “By the time you get to your horses, they’ll be long gone.”

  “Nonsense.” With that, Mike let out a shrill whistle that cut through the air like a tomahawk. Before Wolpert’s ears could stop ringing, a pair of horses stood up from the tall grass where they’d been hunkered down. He’d seen a few Indians and even fewer bounty hunters who’d taught their horses to lie down low like that, but he’d never expected the likes of Mike and Johnny to have such well-trained animals. Both horses shook the dirty snow from their coats and ambled toward their riders.

  Trying to hide his reaction to that unwelcome surprise, Wolpert snapped his reins and said, “Well, these robbers have gotten a big enough head start already. If you can catch up, you’re more than welcome to join the hunt.”

  “Don’t worry about us, Sheriff!” Johnny shouted. “We can chase these boys all the way to Old Mex if we have ta!”

  “Knowing my luck,” Wolpert grumbled under his breath, “that’s probably true.”

  He pushed his gelding as hard as he dared, riding as if he were the one with a posse gunning for him. Wolpert steered for a winding little trail that would allow him to catch up to the other three, but he didn’t fool himself into thinking that would be enough to call the day a success. Within a few minutes of tearing across the tree-studded terrain at a full gallop, the three outlaws slowed their horses to a walk and waited for him to catch up.

  “Don’t stop!” Wolpert shouted as he frantically waved them forward. “Those vigilantes are right behind me! Keep going!”

  “Go where?” Tom shouted. “This whole thing was your damn plan and you never mentioned a thing about no damn vigilantes!”

  “Just get moving, will you?”

  “Can we at least shoot them two?” Cade asked.

  Wolpert’s first instinct was to give a quick yes to that request. But, he reminded himself, those old instincts had brought him into the spot where he worked with known outlaws and killers on a regular basis. “Shoot at them,” he said. “Don’t kill them. The last thing we need is more men coming after us. That’d only punch holes through the plan we already got going.”

  Cade groused and the other two weren’t any happier, but they all seemed ready to follow Wolpert’s lead. That suited the lawman just fine. He did have a plan in motion, and having his partners be happy about it wasn’t the most integral piece.

  They followed the river west and then turned south. It wasn’t long befor
e Wolpert heard the sound of other hooves beating the ground behind him. He shifted in his saddle to get a look and found the vigilantes racing to catch up and then warned the outlaws by firing a shot that hissed through the air between Cade and Tom. When both men reflexively turned and pointed their guns at him, the sheriff waved and fired another shot that sailed well over Juan’s head.

  The outlaws weren’t the only ones to take that as a cue. Both Mike and Johnny let out their own warbling war cries and started firing. Wolpert was pleased to see that Juan, Cade and Tom didn’t need any more prompting to take appropriate action. They split up in three different directions while snapping their reins and urging every bit of speed they could from the horses. Every now and then, they turned and fired back. While their bullets were cutting through the cold winds in the general direction of their pursuers, their eyes were firmly fixed on Wolpert. That was enough for him to get a feel for what was surely going through their minds. They would play along with this for a little while, but weren’t about to get killed just to spare a couple of loudmouthed vigilantes.

  To be honest, Wolpert couldn’t blame them. Being shot down by men like Johnny and Mike was as embarrassing a way to pass on as splitting your skull open after running into a brick wall on a dare. The only problem was that he couldn’t think of another good way to get clear of the vigilantes without shooting them. They might not be the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they wouldn’t give up any time soon. And then, Wolpert caught sight of something that was another one of Emma’s little revelations.

  He snapped his reins and let out a barking yelp that was too loud to be just incentive for his horse. Sure enough, Cade turned and looked back at him just in time to see Wolpert swing his arm toward the frozen section of stream that glittered in the sunlight. To keep up his appearances with the vigilantes, Wolpert fired a shot and waved again. The message was received and Cade led the other two outlaws toward the stream.