by Ralph Cotton
“You don’t tell us what to do—” Hardaway tried to cut in.
Sam stopped him with a cold look. Hardaway shut up, giving a resolved shrug.
“The trail’s all yours, Garand,” Sam said. “I won’t step in front of a man’s hunt.”
Garand studied his face for a moment, deciding if he believed him. Then he nodded and said, “That’s fair of you, Ranger.” He turned and walked to his horse. “Does that mean you won’t be coming after them at all?”
“I’ve got to think about it some,” Sam called over to him. “Make sure I don’t ride off half-cocked.”
“Yes, you go think about it some, Ranger,” Garand said haughtily. He collected his reins. His detectives and posse men mounted and gathered around him. “Meanwhile, we’ll go skin these thieves, bag their heads up and throw them at your feet. Right, men?” he called out to the riders around him. The men rallied a reply.
The Ranger and Hardaway stood watching as they turned their horses and rode away, their torches bobbing above their heads.
Chapter 8
The Ranger and Fatch Hardaway stood in the circle of the campfire, watching until the last glow of torchlight turned black along the trail. Hardaway let out a tense breath, shouldered his rifle and pushed his hat up on his forehead.
“What an asshole,” he said toward the darkened trail. “If you were going after the Traybo Gang, would you let him muscle ahead of you this way?”
“You saw his bunch,” Sam said. “Where would you rather have them riding, in front of you, or behind you?”
“Good point,” Hardaway said.
“But the fact is, I am going after the Traybos,” the Ranger said quietly.
“What? Right now? You’re joshing,” said Hardaway.
“Yep, right now,” said the Ranger. “And it’s no joshing matter.” As he spoke, he turned and walked over, picked up his blanket from atop a bundle of brush he’d laid there and shook it out, seeing the fresh bullet hole through it. “Call it fate or call it coincidence,” he said, draping the blanket over his shoulder, “but when you find yourself this close to the men you’re after, you go after them, straightaway.”
With a curious expression, Hardaway followed Sam as he picked up his saddle and walked to the horses.
“Where does that put you and me?” he said. “Showing you where the Traybos hideout is one thing. Dogging their trail with you is a whole other.”
“You’re free to ride away,” Sam said, pitching his saddle up atop the speckled barb. “I’m not holding you to nothing.”
“Not holding me—?” Hardaway cut himself short. “Well, that’s mighty damn decent of you,” he said. “I am nothing but obliged!” he said sarcastically.
“Don’t mention it,” Sam said flatly, drawing the saddle cinch and testing the saddle with a hand.
“We’ve got an agreement,” said Hardaway. “If I don’t go with you, what about my reward money?”
“What about it?” Sam asked sharply. He turned, leading the barb, and walked to the campfire. Hardaway hurried alongside him.
“Specifically,” said Hardaway, “if you go after the Traybos, when do I get it?”
“When I meet you in Cottonwood,” the Ranger said.
Exasperated, Hardaway said, “Oh, and what if you catch up with the Traybos, say you stop a bullet or two with your forehead?” He firmly tapped his forehead as an example.
“Then I won’t meet you,” Sam said matter-of-factly. He reached out and rubbed out the campfire with the sole of his boot.
“Damn it!” Hardaway cursed. “In other words, if I hope to ever get my money, I best go with you.”
“That’s one thought,” Sam said in the same quiet tone. “You know me, and you know the Traybos. You do the odds.”
“Damn it, damn it, damn it!” Hardaway said loudly, pacing back and forth.
“Easy,” Sam cautioned him. “Don’t spook the horses.”
Hardaway stood watching as the Ranger stepped up into his saddle and turned the barb onto the Traybos’ back trail.
“Hey, which way are you going?” he called out as Sam nudged the barb into a walk. “Aren’t you following Garand’s posse?”
“Nope,” Sam said over his shoulder. “They’re wasting their time and horsepower.”
What the hell? Hardaway looked back and forth in the dark, seeing the silhouette of the Ranger and the barb against the purple starlit sky.
“You heard Garand,” he called out. “They tracked him this way from where they found an empty buckboard.”
“Yep, I heard him,” the Ranger said beneath the slow clop of the barb’s hooves. “They might have tracked them this way, but this is not the way they’re going.” The Ranger rode on at a slow clip, leaving Hardaway stopped in his tracks.
A half mile down the trail, he heard Hardaway’s line-back buckskin clopping along behind him.
“Don’t shoot, Ranger. It’s me,” Hardaway called out as he drew closer.
Without slowing the barb, Sam rode on at the same pace until Hardaway caught up and slowed his buckskin beside him.
“What makes you say that?” the gunman asked, taking up the conversation right where they’d left off.
“Say what?” Sam replied.
Hardaway drew a patient breath.
“Say that the Traybos aren’t headed the way Garand is tracking them?” he said.
“Because they’re not,” Sam said.
“All right, I’m riding with you,” said Hardaway. “How long are you going to keep giving these tight-lipped, one-word answers?”
Sam gave himself a faint grin in the darkness. He didn’t say so, but even though he would be tracking a fresh trail, if he lost the Traybos, he’d still need Hardaway to lead them to their lair the way they had planned.
Without answering Hardaway, he said, “I don’t know which way the Traybos are headed, but it makes no sense they would stay on this trail knowing the detectives would be riding down their shirts.” He looked sidelong at Hardaway. “You know them. Does this sound like something they’d do?”
“No, it doesn’t, come to think of it,” Hardaway said.
“Wes rode back to town and freed his man from the detectives,” Sam said.
“He’s that kind of fellow,” Hardaway cut in. “I told you he’s not like most of these saddle bums posing as long riders. He’s the real kind, to the core.”
“And while he’s there, he takes the town doctor hostage,” Sam continued. “So it’s reasonable that whoever the detective shotgunned in the bank is alive—badly wounded, I make it.”
Hardaway considered it.
“Usually the brothers themselves go inside,” he said. “Carter Claypool guards the front door along the boardwalk. Rubens and any others hang close out front for backup, just in case some snooping bystander comes along sticking their—” He stopped himself and stared at the Ranger. “I mean, so I’ve heard.”
“I understand,” Sam said. He nudged the barb up into a safe but quicker pace. Hardaway rode alongside beside him.
“I hope I haven’t said anything that might implicate me in any kind of illegal or untoward behavior,” Hardaway said pointedly. “Have I?”
“You can relax from here on,” Sam said. “Anything you say to implicate yourself, most likely you’ve already said it.”
The two rode on in silence through the quiet night until they reached the spot where the buckboard sat at the edge of the trail. They both stepped down and the Ranger took a small tin oil lantern from his saddlebags and lit it with a long wooden match. Hitching their horses to the side of the wagon, they walked along the trail a few feet, the Ranger in a crouch, holding the lantern down closer to the hoofprint-covered ground.
“You’ll never make nothing out of this mess, Ranger,” Hardaway said. But Sam continued on, cutting across the trail to th
e inner side beneath an upreaching hillside.
“I already have,” Sam said, stopping, stooping down and holding the lantern out at arm’s length. “Look along here.” He gestured toward a single set of tracks running along the lowest edge of the hill, just off the trail from all the others. Layered atop the prints, they saw a single set of prints running back the other way.
“I see them. What about them?” Hardaway asked.
“These belong to a single rider,” Sam said. “Someone traveling alone, staying off the trail, keeping out of sight.”
“Yeah?” Hardaway looked on in interest.
“I call them scouting tracks,” Sam said quietly, as if the owner of the tracks might hear his words. “Whoever made them went that way, looked things over, then backtracked, the way he come. That’s the way a trail scout does.”
“How do you know it’s the Traybos?” Hardaway asked. “Could be one of the posse.”
“You met their two scouts,” Sam said. “This wasn’t them.” He stood and walked back to the wagon and held the lantern over into the empty bed.
“No sign of blood,” Hardaway remarked in the lantern glow.
“Whoever’s wounded wasn’t in the wagon,” Sam said, looking around in the purple darkness. He snuffed out the tin lantern. “Wes Traybo only brought the wagon along to make his hostages easier to handle.” He stepped back from the wagon bed. “You think the wounded man is his brother, Ty?”
“That would be my first pick,” Hardaway said. “Like I said, the two always go inside, take the money themselves.”
“Who’s the most likely one to be scouting their trail?” Sam asked, still looking around at the jagged edges of black hillside silhouetted against the starlit night.
“That would be Carter Claypool, no question,” Hardaway said without having to consider it. “You’ve heard of all-around cowboys? Claypool is your all-around long rider. Anything risky and bold the Traybos need done, they look to Claypool. He keeps them covered, back trail and front alike.”
“So these would be his tracks?” Sam said, already walking to his speckled barb.
“That’s my call,” Hardaway said, walking alongside him. “Where we headed now?”
“We’re going to track him as far as these prints will take us,” said Sam. “You’ve got me curious to meet the man.” He put the tin trail lantern away and stepped atop the barb. Hardaway followed suit.
• • •
As the two rode away in the darkness, higher up the hillside, Carter Claypool let the hammer down on his rifle and rode his horse quietly across the trail. He’d taken close aim on the Ranger only moments ago and been ready to drop the hammer on him. But then the lantern had gone out. He shook his head.
“You got lucky tonight, Ranger . . . ,” he whispered aloud toward the dark trail. Nudging his horse forward, he climbed down through brush and rock to the same trail winding lower down the hill. He had a hard ride to make back to Maley. But he had to let the gang know the Ranger was on their trail. More importantly, he had to let them know that their former pard Fatch Hardaway was riding beside him.
• • •
In the small empty barn behind the doctor’s large clapboard-sided house at the edge of town, Bugs Trent listened closely, hearing the first sounds of men’s muffled voices and footsteps moving along the empty street from the far end of town. Without hesitation, he slipped out of the barn across a short path, up onto the back porch and in through the back door of the large darkened house.
Wes Traybo, the doctor and Rosetta heard his footsteps coming toward the room in the center of the house where they stood watch over the wounded, sleeping outlaw. Wes drew his Colt and stood with it pointed and cocked. Bugs burst through the door and closed it quickly behind him to keep the dim lamplight from seeping outside the room.
“Townsmen coming!” Bugs whispered, drawing his holstered Colt as he spoke. “They’ll be here any second!”
“Get to the front window,” said Wes. “You and Rubens hold them off while I get my brother to the horses.” He hurried to the cot where his brother lay sleeping and reached down to scoop him up in his arms.
“Wait!” Dr. Bernard said. He looked Bugs up and down quickly, as if sizing him for a suit. “Most of the town knows I have a secret friend who sometimes arrives here late at night. They’ve never seen him up close, but the barber knows his name is Burle . . . Burle Minton.”
Wes and Trent turned to each other; then they gave the doctor a curious look.
“A secret friend?” said Wes.
The doctor didn’t respond to Wes’ question.
“Listen to me,” he said to Bugs. “Burle is about your size.”
Bugs stared at the doctor as he turned to Wes Traybo.
“Wes, what’s this sumbitch asking me to do?” he said in an almost shaky voice.
Wes nodded at the doctor, getting it right away.
“Get your gun belt off, get yourself out front, Burle,” he demanded. “You’re going to get yourself caught.”
“Caught? Then what?” Bugs said, unbuckling his belt even as he asked. He shoved his Colt inside his shirt behind his trouser waist.
Wes opened the door and gave him a push toward the front room. Rubens was already on his way back through the hall to warn them.
“Make it up as you go, Burle,” Wes said. He gave a short dark chuckle in spite of the tight spot they were on. “Just don’t accept no gifts from them,” he added. He reached down and turned the door handle.
“Son of a bitch! Wait!” said Bugs as Wes pushed him out the door. Bugs tried to shove the door open, but Wes had already closed it firmly from the inside.
From the street, a voice called out, “Hold it right there, fellow!”
Bugs turned on the porch, facing four townsmen armed with rifles. He heard what sounded like steel crickets as rifle hammers cocked on the street.
“Oh my God!” he said in a terrified voice, his hands raised high above his head. “What did I do?”
“Step down here where we can see you good,” said an older townsman named Barnes Coomer. “Who are you and what’re you doing here?”
Bugs took a breath and stepped forward and down the porch steps as the four men moved forward in a half circle around him.
“I’m—I’m a friend of Dayton’s—Dr. Bernard, that is,” Bugs corrected himself quickly. “I came to see if he was home and maybe wanted to play some two-handed Parcheesi. . . .”
From the inside of the front door, Rubens stood listening closely. He grinned at Wes and whispered in surprise, “Ol’ Bugs is good at this—”
“Keep quiet,” Wes warned in a whisper, him and the doctor leaning against the wall bedside the doorframe.
Out front the townsmen gave each other a knowing look.
“Two-handed Parcheesi, I bet,” one townsman whispered to the others.
“Oh? What’s your name, then, young man?” the barber, Lyle Medford, asked shrewdly.
“Burle,” Bugs said tight-lipped. He stopped there.
“Your last name, Burle?” a townsman asked.
“I’d rather not say,” Bugs said.
“You better say,” a townsman threatened, raising his rifle.
“It’s—it’s Minton, sir,” said Bugs in a frightened voice. “I live over near—”
“Never mind where you live, young man,” the barber cut in, feeling sorry for him. “You’ve answered enough.” To the others he said under his breath, “He’s telling us the truth. The doc told me his name a while back.”
The townsmen gave him a curious look.
“We barbers hear a lot,” Medford reminded them.
“All right,” said a townsman named Albert Hasp. He bounded up onto the porch. “I’ll take a little look-see while we’re here, make sure everything’s up-and-up.”
As Bugs heard the fro
nt door open, he almost made a grab for the gun from under his shirt and started blasting. But he kept himself cool and waited.
Hasp stepped back outside after looking all around inside the house from the open doorway.
“Everything looks all right,” he said. He stepped down off the porch and noted the bulge behind Bugs’ shirt. “Wait! What have we here?”
“It’s a gun, sir,” Bugs said meekly. “I—I arrived here earlier and saw loose cattle milling everywhere, the town looking like it had been attacked by savages. I was frightened. I took this gun from Dayton’s desk and loaded it. It was foolish, I suppose.”
“Yes, it was,” said the townsman, moving away from him with a slight mocking grin. “You might have shot a toe off.”
The townsmen chuckled, but began losing interest. Their rifles were lowered and uncocked.
“In a sense, we were hit by savages, Burle,” the barber said. “But these were white savages.” He stepped forward and laid a hand on Bugs’ shoulder. “I’m afraid we have some bad news for you, Burle. Dr. Bernard has been kidnapped. We’re all hoping he’ll be returned safely, of course.”
“Oh no, oh no!” said Bugs, clamping a hand over his mouth. He swooned sidelong; Medford caught him and steadied him. The townsmen looked on with strange expressions. A couple of them stifled a quiet laugh.
Medford slipped his arm up around Bugs’ shoulder and told the other townsmen, “Go on home, fellows. I’ll look after young Burle.”
As the townsmen turned and drifted away, Bugs said sidelong to the sympathetic barber, “You can go too, mister. I’ll be all right now.” He moved a little to the side to get out of the barber’s arm. But the barber kept it across Bugs’ shoulders.
“Nonsense, Burle,” Medford said softly, leaning a little too close to Bugs’ ear. “I’m not about to leave you all alone in that big dark empty house. I’ll stay right here with you.”
Bugs pulled his head sideways away from Medford, and slipped a hand around his side to a hideout knife he carried sheathed beneath his shirt. He stood silent for a moment until the other townsmen were out of sight. “Mister,” he said, “you’d better get your arm off me just as fast as you can, you ever want to cut hair with it again.”
