by Ralph Cotton
“I should have told you,” he murmured, “it’s not always easy traveling with me.”
For the next few minutes while the roar of the fire overtook the night and the black-streaked smoke moved across the purple starlit sky, the Ranger led the barb along the outside edge of the trail until he found a thin, steep game path leading downward. It was not the best of paths, but it beat the one he and Gilley Maclaine had taken, he reminded himself. Leading the barb to the edge, he coaxed the horse onto the narrow, rocky decline in front of him and followed the surefooted animal, holding on to its tail.
The farther the horse led him down the side of the steep hill, the less he felt the heat of the fire and the choking grip of the smoke—the less he heard the bellowing roar of the fire. So far so good . . . , he told himself, feeling the steepness of the path level a little. Yet no sooner had he thought it than he felt his boot heel slip off the edge and he righted himself just in time, gripping the cub close to his chest.
Do not take this night for granted, he cautioned himself.
Above him, a spewing fire made up of burning brush and timber cascaded out over the edge, showered down the hillside and appeared to rise in an explosion at the bottom. This time there was no water waiting down there to stop it, to turn it into blackness, Sam told himself. This time the fire was free to ride the wind.
The sight of the fire caused the barb to halt suddenly and back-step against Sam’s raised hand.
“Whoa, now, easy, boy . . . easy,” the Ranger said, soothingly, forcing himself to keep a calm voice even as he felt the strength of the barb pushing back on him. He knew there would be no stopping the big barb if it refused to let him settle it. The horse would take him, the cub and itself off the hillside, the three of them plunging down into an endless blackness.
“That’s a boy,” he whispered, feeling the horse settle a little for a moment as he eased around it and sidestepped his way along the thin edge of rock until he stood in front of the horse and drew its attention to him instead of the falling fire. “I’ll take it from here, give you a rest,” he whispered, rubbing its muzzle.
The barb chuffed and settled and blew out a tense breath, smelling the scent of the panther inside the Ranger’s duster, but learning to live with it. Sam eased back between the horse and the rocky hillside, loosened the reins from around the saddle horn and eased back in front of the barb.
“Don’t worry,” he said to both of his weary, frightened traveling companions, the horse behind him, the cub lying once again quietly in his crooked arm, “it’ll get better.”
With the barb’s reins in hand, he walked on, the thin path growing a little wider, a little less steep beneath his feet.
When he led the horse off the path and onto the lower fork of the trail a half hour later, he jerked his canteen from the saddle horn, found a knee-high rock and plopped down on it. He pulled off his sombrero and set it upside down on the ground between his boots. He took a swig of water, swished it around and spit it into the open hat. He shoved the barb’s nose back firmly as the animal stuck it in toward the canteen and nickered under its breath.
“Shhh, don’t wake the cat,” he said as he poured more water into the sombrero and watched the barb lower its muzzle and drink.
Ahead of them the Ranger saw where the fire he’d watched spill from the hillside took hold on a short stretch of flat valley land. The wind would have it swept across the valley floor and headed up the hillsides in only a matter of minutes. It was flanking the trails and hillsides in the same direction he would be taking toward Dutchman’s Gulch.
More of the same the whole way? he asked himself. He sat staring at the smoke and flames for a moment. It made no difference, he decided, cradling the sleeping panther cub. There was nothing he could do about it. He capped the canteen with his free hand while the barb nipped and sniffed at the inside of his sombrero for more. The fire was there to be reckoned with—one more part of the job. He picked up the wet sombrero and put it on.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked the barb, as if the barb might answer. Inside his duster he felt the rattling purr of the panther cub on his chest and forearm. I know you are, little gal, he thought toward the cub, wondering how she would react when she awakened to this new world around her.
* * *
In the morning light, a gunman named big Dave Tierney starred out from atop a ledge overlooking Dutchman’s Gulch. In the southeast he saw the greasy black smoke standing high above its silvery-gray counterpart rolling across the valley floor. Streaking orange flames leaped high inside the smoke. The gunman gripped his rifle tight in both hands.
“I hate fire worse than anything,” he said to a thin, swarthy gunman named Earl Weedy, who stood beside him, staring out through a long naval telescope. “That’s why I don’t want to go to hell when I die,” he added solemnly.
“Ha!” Earl Weedy chuffed as he continued staring out through the lens. “You don’t believe in hell, Big Dave,” he said. “Nobody does, not really.”
“The hell I don’t believe in hell,” said Big Dave. “I might be a no-good sumbitch myself, but I come from decent, God-fearing folks. They believed in hell and they grew me up to believe in it too.”
“Bull,” said Weedy. “Do you think you’re going to hell when you die, Big Dave? Tell the truth.” He gave him an edgy grin behind the telescope.
“I am for sure,” said Big Dave. “I can’t say I’m happy about it either.”
“See,” said Weedy, “if you truly believed in hell and you truly believed you’re going there, you’d be doing everything you could to keep yourself from it.”
“What are you doing, turning preacher on me?” Big Dave offered with an uneasy chuckle, looking out at the bellowing smoke and flames.
“No,” said Weedy, “I’m just saying the truth. Man who knows a gun is pointed at him and doesn’t get out of its way is a fool, don’t you think?”
“I’d say so,” Big Dave agreed.
“Because you believe in that bullet. You know it’s real, you know without a doubt it’ll kill you.” He lowered the scope from his eye and stared at Tierney. “But you see hell coming straight at you, you don’t do nothing to get out of its way?” He shook his head. “I say you must not really believe in it. At least not as much as you believe in a bullet.”
“Give me that,” said Tierney, reaching for the telescope, staring at him with a troubled look on his face.
Weedy held the telescope out to him, but he tightened his grip, not giving it up right away as Tierney tried to take it.
“Repent! Repent, Big Dave, least ye burn in e-ternal hell!” he said in a harsh, mocking tone.
“You’re crazy as hell,” said Big Dave, jerking the telescope free from him. “I believe that.”
Weedy cackled to himself and turned his naked eyes back out across the valley floor.
“Look down there, just this side of the rocks,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”
Tierney searched over to the right spot and looked at the riders coming out of the forward-most veil of the silvery gray smoke.
“I’ll be damned,” Tierney said, “he’s made it. I was wondering if he would, these fires such as they are.” He paused and studied out through the lens for a moment, then said, “Damn, he’s bringing a string of womenfolk with him.”
“That’s what I always admired about Cheyenne,” said Weedy. “He always seems to have plenty of women on hand.”
“Jesus,” said Tierney in surprise, “one of them is Silvia Darnell, Colonel Moser’s own special dove.”
“I don’t understand this,” said Weedy. “Silvia is known to have a head on her shoulders. I can’t see her leaving the colonel for the likes of the Cheyenne Kid.”
“Neither can I,” said Tierney. “But I can’t wait to hear why it’s taken him and his men so long to get here.”
He lowered the telescope and looked out with his naked eyes at the riders who had turned into tiny black dots moving across the valley floor. “Let’s go wake Papa Nulty, tell him there’s company coming.”
The two gunmen turned and half climbed, half slid down a large, land-stuck boulder to where they’d hitched their horses. In seconds they were mounted and gone. They pushed their horses hard, maneuvering the animals through a maze of rock-work and sparse timber down to a stone and split-pine shack hidden by a stand of thick, towering mountain pine.
As they crossed a short stretch of cleared ground and slid their horses down to a halt at a weathered pine hitch rail, a big, burly man with a full black beard stepped out onto the plank porch wearing his gun belt, boots and ragged, graying long johns. He tied his holster down to his thigh. He carried a small empty metal pail looped over one wrist.
“Papa, we were coming to wake you,” said Weedy, springing from his saddle to the ground with the agility of a tree frog. “Cheyenne and his men are crossing the grass flats right now, headed here.”
The thin gunman looked and sounded excited. Papa Nulty straightened from tying down his holster and stared at Weedy evenly as he adjusted his big Walker Colt, loosening it in his holster. He held the empty pail out and shook it.
“Neither one of you sons a’ bitches brought any fresh water up.”
Big Dave Tierney stepped down from his horse beside Weedy. The two gunmen looked at each other and followed the big, ambling gunman across the clearing to where a thirty-foot braided runoff stream slid into the yard and out again into the pines.
“I told Big Dave to bring some in, Papa,” said Weedy, hurrying alongside the big bearded gunman.
“The hell you did,” Big Dave said sorely.
“Anyway,” Weedy said to Papa Nulty, “Cheyenne’s bringing some women up with him.”
“Damn it to hell,” Nulty said, squatting on his haunches at the edge of the stream, sticking the pail down and catching it half-full of cold water. “Bad enough we got wildfire licking at our backs. Now we got women coming?” He bowed his big head and poured the cold water over it.
Weedy gave Big Dave a puzzled look, then turned back to Nulty.
“Papa, we thought you’d be glad to hear it,” he said.
Papa Nulty wiped his face, squeezed his thick beard and blew water from his lips.
“Any time you’ve got women, you’ve got trouble,” he said with knowing finality.
The two looked at each other again.
“Dang, Papa,” said Big Dave, “I never really seen a woman start any trouble.”
“I never said they start it,” Papa corrected him. “They just bring it.” He stuck the pail back into the stream and this time filled it. He stood up laboriously, the full pail in hand. “Any time a woman’s around, men are going to fight over her.” He paused, then added, “If they’re any kind of men at all.”
The two thought about it, following Papa Nulty back to the porch of the shack.
“How many women are there?” Nulty asked over his shoulder.
“Looked like three—three and one Indian,” said Weedy.
“I’d take the Indian,” Papa said absently, “if I were given a choice.”
Weedy chuckled.
“No, Papa,” said Big Dave, “the Indian’s not a woman.”
Papa stopped in his tracks and pointed a thick, threatening finger at Weedy. “You’re supposed to make some things clear when you talk.”
“I’m sorry, Papa.” The grin vanished from Weedy’s thin face.
Nulty turned and walked on.
“Always with the womenfolk, that damn Cheyenne,” Nulty said, shaking his big head. “I thought riding with this new bunch might change his ways. I expect I was wrong.”
“Sounds to me like he’s got the right idea, Papa,” said Weedy. “I wish I had women all the time tagging along with me.”
“No, you don’t, Earl,” said Papa. “You just think you do. Too much woman changes a man in ways I can’t begin to explain. Cheyenne’s fondness for the fairer sex is not something to admire. It’s something to repudiate.”
“Something to what?” Weedy asked.
“Just don’t do it,” Papa said. “Men like that are telling the world they were too soon and too often kicked away from their mama’s teat.”
“Indelicately weaned?” Big Dave added.
“There you have it,” said Papa. “I couldn’t have said it better.” He stopped at the porch steps. “Don’t get me wrong. I love women as much as the next man. All’s I’m saying is there’s something to pity in the man who has to dangle on the strings of every woman’s heart. Too much woman makes a man want to wash himself, change his clothes, his socks. Soon he’s scraping the black from under his thumbnails—sends his whole natural state a-skelter.”
“One of the women is Silvia Darnell,” Weedy tossed in.
For a moment Papa stared at him as if stunned. Then he reached a hand up and absently combed his thick fingers back through his wet hair.
“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” he finally said.
Chapter 22
When Cheyenne and his men rode up the trail past the lookout boulder above Dutchman’s Gulch, he knew Papa Nulty’s gunmen had already spotted them coming and taken the news to their boss. Turning quarter-wise in his saddle, he looked back at the wall of smoke and high-reaching flames on the long, rugged hill line. From his position he could see, even with his naked eye, that every pass had been closed by the fire. For how long the passes and trails would be closed, he had no idea. But for now, there would be no one coming upon him by surprise.
You’ve never been as safe in your life, he told himself.
Beside him rode Silvia Darnell. A step behind her on her other side rode Caroline Udall, silent, brooding. On his other side rode Gilley Maclaine. Silent? Yes, but brooding, he didn’t think so. In fact, he had no idea what went on in her head. As it turned out, he told himself with a sense of regret, he never did.
But this was no time to reflect on what had happened between them and try to set things right. He had tried to kill her; she had tried to kill him. Let it go at that, he advised himself. Things happened between people. Maybe a different time, a different place—
“It looks like you’re taking us right up to the shack in the trees,” Silvia said, cutting into his thoughts.
Cheyenne looked at her, surprised.
“How do you know about the shack?” he asked. “Have you been here before?”
“Heavens no!” Silvia cocked her head as if repulsed by the thought. “Thank goodness I’m a hostage,” she added. “I’d hate for anyone to hear that I came here of my own accord, especially in my present company.”
“Then how do you know about the place?” Cheyenne asked, trying to ignore her jab.
“I’ve heard stories,” Silvia said. “This place is not secret, you know. Every two-bit thief in the territory knows about it. It’s a place to come when a man can’t afford anything better for himself.”
“Oh, I can do better,” Cheyenne said, nodding back toward the feed bag of money tied behind his saddle.
“Of course you can,” Silvia said, sounding skeptical. She looked at the money, then back at Cheyenne, shaking her head now as if she pitied him. “To you this is a lot of money. To a man like the colonel, this is just one night’s pay. Just think, while you’re out there scratching around for your next little bag of stolen money, the colonel is stacking this much aside every night—probably wondering what to do with all of it.”
Cheyenne stared at her, tight-jawed.
Silvia smiled mockingly and said, “That’s why gals like me never spend any more time than we have to with men like you—you’re too cheap.”
“Yeah? You don’t mind raising your skirts, taking our mo
ney,” he said.
“Of course,” said Silvia, “and that’s all it means to us, we raise our skirts and take your money. How hard is that?”
Cheyenne fell silent.
Silvia raised her brow with a bemused expression.
“Oh dear, now I’ve gone and hurt your feelings,” she said, feigning sympathy for him. “I’m so sorry.”
She had hurt his feelings. Cheyenne gave her a look that did nothing to hide it.
“I didn’t really need a hostage, Silvia,” he said. “I brought you along hoping something might happen between us. Hoping we could both find something to—”
“Of course you did,” she said, interrupting him with a cutting laugh. “Men like you always go around thinking simple, stupid things like that—”
“Stop saying of course!” he growled. This time he cut her off. “It sounds like you think you know everything about everything. But you don’t.”
“Of course I don’t,” she said, seeing she had pressed a nerve, wanting to press it harder. “I don’t know everything about everything. But I do know everything I need to about you, Mr. Cheyenne Kid,” she said, “and it took me watching you every bit of five minutes to learn it.”
Cheyenne felt his temper start to boil. He jerked his reins hard right and spurred his horse away from the others to keep himself from losing control—the things she’d said in front of Caroline, in front of Gilley.
The three gunmen riding behind him, along with Caroline and Gilley, had seen Cheyenne and Silvia talking. They couldn’t make out the words, yet they could tell the two were arguing. Now they watched as Cheyenne’s horse slid to a halt a few yards away. Cheyenne sat staring back at the black, smoky horizon.
“Damn, fellows,” said Delbert Pace. “Tell me it’s not like this all the time.” His voice sounded a little slurred from his taking a drink of whiskey every few miles throughout the night.
“It’s not,” Dock Latin said, staring straight ahead, embarrassed by the actions of their leader.
