by Ralph Cotton
The Ranger didn’t answer. He and Hardaway stood watching as the Maley townsmen stepped quickly to the horses and began mounting. But Folliard wasn’t through yet. He moved in close and faced the Ranger from only three feet away. He tapped a finger to a welt across his forehead the shape of a rifle butt.
“Ranger, I understand you’re the son of a bitch who butt-smacked me across the forehead,” he said.
“Whoa! Bad idea,” said Hardaway with a dark, thin chuckle. He swung his rifle around toward the other detectives in anticipation.
The Ranger ignored the insult and looked past Folliard to Garand.
“We don’t have time for this,” he said quietly to Garand. “Are you going to call him off?” As Sam spoke, the Maley townsmen turned their horses and filed past them toward the trail back to town.
Seeing part of his posse leave, Garand gave a slight shrug.
“You did give him quite a nasty whack, Ranger,” he said.
Sam stared into Folliard’s bloodshot eyes, the cloth gone from around his jawline now, his face showing its bruises and welts.
“Why don’t you stop this while you’re still on your feet, Detective?” he said quietly, letting Folliard see him brace his rifle in both hands.
“Don’t think you’re going to catch me off guard with that rifle butt again,” Folliard said. He stood in defiance, in a fighting stance, his feet shoulder width apart. He turned his head sideways and spat on the ground in contempt. “I don’t get tricked twice,” he growled. “I’m no damn fool.”
“I can see that,” said the Ranger. Yet even as he spoke, he feigned a quick, short jerk on his rifle, just enough to draw Folliard’s attention to it. Folliard instinctively flinched and ducked his head away.
Hardaway, Garand and all the gathered detectives winced in unison at the sight and sound of the Ranger’s boot toe burying itself up deep into Folliard’s crotch.
“Whoa!” Hardaway said again, this time as Folliard lifted high on his tiptoes, jackknifed at the waist and landed on his side in the dirt, his hands cupping himself. “I felt that all the way over here!” said Hardaway, his rifle covering the detective as the men stared as if in agony at their fallen comrade.
“If you’ll keep your men in check, Garand,” the Ranger said in an unchanged tone of voice, “Hardaway and I will get up the hillside, see if we can keep the Traybos’ shooter from killing any more of you.”
Without reply Garand stepped back and gestured a gloved hand toward the rocky hillside. He stood watching as the Ranger and Hardaway led their horses up a steep game path and into the rocks on the hillside.
In the dirt, Folliard groaned and reached a seeking hand up for Rio DeSpain—Spanish Rivers, the rotten son of a bitch—to help him to his feet, but DeSpain only gave him a sour look and stepped over him to Garand’s side. Fain Elliot and L. C. McGuire stood watching Folliard drawn up and writhing in a ball of pain. Earl Prew stood on his wounded, thickly bandaged foot, using his rifle as a crutch.
“I can’t help you, Folliard,” said Prew. “Hell, I can’t help myself.”
Finally Elliot and McGuire looked at each other, stepped in and pulled Folliard to his feet. Folliard stood bowed at the waist.
“We don’t have to take this, Mr. Garand,” DeSpain said. “Say the word and I’ll put a bullet in both their backs before they reach the top of the hill.”
“No, no, Rio,” said Garand. “Leave them be for now. They’ll take us to the Traybos. Let them be our shield between the Traybos’ shooter and ourselves. After that, if he hasn’t killed them, we will. Either way, they’re both graveyard dead.” He looked Folliard up and down and said to Elliot and McGuire, “Fain, L.C., straighten this jackass up. I won’t have a man bowed over like his guts are on fire.”
Folliard let out a painful wail as the two gunmen yanked him upright by his shoulders.
“Let’s get ready to move out,” said Garand, walking away toward his horse.
• • •
Atop the steep path, standing on a bald cliff, the Ranger looked down at the hoof marks and boot prints the two had been following for the past twenty yards. They had first found the lone boot prints at the spot where Carter Claypool had lain against the rock and calmly killed two men from a remarkable distance. Even more remarkable, Claypool had directed a round through a third gunman’s foot.
Now, gazing out along the trail atop the cliff in the direction the hoofprints on the ground indicated, the Ranger considered the masterful shooting as he scanned the thin trail ahead.
“We best get off this cliff, Ranger,” Hardaway said, also looking around, but doing so in a wary manner. “We’re sitting ducks here, as good as Claypool is with rifle.”
“As good as this man is, we’re sitting ducks from anywhere in his sights,” Sam replied. On his gloved palm he bounced an empty cartridge brass he’d found down by the rock. “But a good trail scout never stays too long away from the ones he’s protecting. Don’t forget he’s got the trail in front of them to keep an eye on too.” He paused, then added as he closed his hand around the empty cartridge, “And in this case, that trail runs straight into Mexico.”
“That doesn’t mean he can’t stop long enough to send a couple of bullets back our way,” Hardaway said.
Staring out at the trail, the Ranger realized the rider had slipped away so easily that he’d been able to take his time, make certain he left no dust looming in the air.
The man was good, he told himself. He had to give him that.
“No, he’s gone on,” Sam said. “He’s cleared their back trail for them. His shots let them know he’s finished back here. He’s gone on to make sure the trail into Mexico holds no surprises for them.”
Hardaway eyed him closely.
“Yeah?” he said. “What if you’re wrong? What if he does drop down and fix his sights back in our direction?”
“Then I expect we’ll both be dead and gone and won’t have to worry about it,” the Ranger said. He stepped forward, leading the barb off the hard stone surface onto the dirt trail.
“I find that’s one hell of an attitude,” Hardaway said, leading his horse alongside him. “I don’t like knowing odds are that I’m walking into a gun’s sights.”
“Neither do I,” the Ranger said. “But the job doesn’t stop because the odds get narrow.” He gave the thin trace of a smile. “It just gets more interesting.”
Chapter 12
Carter Claypool pushed himself up from the stream on his palms and swung his wet hair back and forth. On his downstream side only three feet away, his big dun drew water, its hooves six inches deep in the stream, as if to cool them after the long midmorning ride. Giving the dun time to replenish itself, Claypool picked up his canteen from the water, scooted back from the edge of the stream and leaned against a rock stuck in the gravelly cutbank.
His face had begun healing from the beating the detective had given him, but it was going to be a while before the swelling was gone and the purple mask had faded from around his eyes. Other than that and a few closing cuts, a pained jaw and some ribs that dealt him a shooting pain that ached when he moved a certain way, he was mending right along.
Soon be good as new, he told himself, running a hand along his lumpy, beard-stubbled jawline. He gave himself a crooked grin. “Just capital!” he said aloud, noting the dun’s ears twitch at the sound of his voice.
He chuffed a little to himself, capping the canteen, and relaxed back against the rock in reflection. The fact that he hadn’t killed Artimus Folliard when he had the chance still nagged at him, especially now that blood had been spilled in Maley and killing was in the game. It wasn’t like him to forgo vengeance. He had every right to kill the man and he should have. Yet he hadn’t, damn it!
All right, don’t start, he told himself. When the next opportunity came along, he’d kill Folliard and be done with it—all would be w
ell with the world.
He leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment, pleased with how smoothly things were going now that they’d gotten Ty Traybo cared for and gotten out of Maley before daylight. Like clockwork. Smoother than a Cincinnati timepiece.
He smiled to himself and caught himself drifting off, until the sound of the dun grumbling under its breath caused him to open his eyes with a start. In front of him stood two Mexicans, one holding the dun’s dripping reins. The other man held a cocked rifle one-handed, pointed at his chest.
“Ah, señor, did we wake you?” the one with the pointed rifle said in a sympathetic voice. He jerked his head toward the other man. “This one is so noisy. Always I tell him, ‘You can be noisy, or you can be a good sneak thief.’” He gave a wide grin and wagged his finger. “But you cannot be both, no, no. Eh, amigo?”
“Sounds right,” Claypool said calmly, having frozen in place with his right hand lying on the ground at his side, close enough to his short-barreled Colt to make a play for it. He considered it, asking himself what the sound of his gunfire would signal to the Traybos. He held himself in check.
“I have money,” he said.
“Oh, do you?” the rifleman said, feigning pleasantry. “You also have a bloody shirt,” he added with a curious expression.
Claypool ignored the short remark. He started to raise his left hand toward his buttoned shirt pocket. “I’m always willing to pay my way through.”
The Mexican’s hand tightened on the rifle; Claypool’s left hand froze at his pocket button.
“Take your hand down, meester, or I will blow your head off,” he said, his mask of cordiality gone. “We will take your money when the time comes and you will have no say about it.”
So that’s how it is. Claypool saw no way to keep from firing the Colt.
“First you tell us what the gunfire was about,” the Mexican insisted.
“How would I know?” said Claypool, getting an attitude now that he knew the two had no intention of letting him leave here alive. “I heard it myself.” He gave a shrug.
“I get the feeling you know,” said the rifleman, eyeing Claypool’s bloody shoulder. “Miguel, do you get the feeling he knows?”
Holding the reins to the dun, the other Mexican stood gripping a big battered French revolver down his thigh.
“Sí, I get a feeling he does,” he said.
“Gunfire could mean anything. What do you care?” Claypool asked, relaxed but ready to make a move at just the right time.
“What do we—?” The Mexican halted, taken aback. He shook his head and continued. “Let me ’splain to you, gringo. You would never guess it, but Miguel and I are banditos, eh?” He stepped closer. Claypool stared up at him.
Perfect.
“Because we are banditos, it is ’portant to us what we hear along this trail. On this lawless trail, we must be well informed—be prepared to meet federales, gringo lawmen, long riders, all that sort of thing.” He shook his head as if in regret.
“Lawless trail, huh?” Claypool looked back and forth. The man liked to talk, so he’d keep him talking.
“Sí, it is what my people call it. Because it is a lawless trail, filled with lawless men,” the Mexican said. “Men like us . . . men like you perhaps?” His rifle barrel sagged, only slightly, but enough for Claypool to take note. “It is a terrible thing, this way that we must live.” He shrugged in resignation. “But what can we do?” he sighed. “Now tell us about the shooting so we can kill you and take your—”
His words stopped short beneath the blast of Claypool’s short-barreled Colt; the bullet sliced upward in a streak of blue-orange fire, ripped through his chest and left a red streak of blood and matter jetting upward in the air behind him.
Before his accomplice hit the ground, the other Mexican swung the big French pistol up and fired, the gun giving off the strange tinny sound of cheap metal. But even as his bullet struck the rock beside Claypool’s shoulder, Claypool’s Colt blazed again. The bullet cut through the Mexican’s chest and grazed Claypool’s dun along its rump.
“Oh no, Charlie Smith!” Claypool shouted as he leaped to his feet.
The dun screamed in pain and jerked its reins free from the second Mexican’s hand. The Mexican staggered wildly, backward into the stream before falling with one large and final splash.
Claypool, his short Colt smoking in his hand, made a wild grab for his dun’s reins as the spooked horse spun in a wild full circle and bolted away. The Mexicans’ horses jerked their reins free from a nearby tangle of scrub juniper where the men had rein-hitched them and fell in with the fleeing dun.
“This is all I need,” Claypool said sourly. He gazed out to where the second Mexican’s body had bobbed away fifteen yards downstream and draped itself over a rock. In the ringing silence, Claypool looked off through the hilltops, following the direction the gunshots’ echo had taken.
There goes the Cincinnati timepiece, he told himself, seeing a flock of birds rise from a stand of pine on a distant hillside and bat away across the white sunny sky. Turning, he ejected the two spent rounds from his Colt. Sighing, he replaced them with fresh rounds from his gun belt and started walking through the dust stirred up by the horses’ pounding hooves.
• • •
Rubens walked up to Wes Traybo, who stood gazing back along the main trail they’d ridden across the border. They had made a camp on a high, sloping hillside in the shelter of pine and bald grounded boulder. Rubens arrived at Wes’ side and looked out across the hills with him, sharing the leader’s concern for the whereabouts of Carter Claypool since they’d heard the distant pistol fire.
“He’ll show, Wes,” said Rubens. “He always does.”
Wes cut him a glance, then looked back out in the direction the gunshots had come from, as if some clue would soon reveal itself from that spot.
“I hope so,” Wes replied. “We’ll give him a while longer. If he hasn’t shown, I’m sending the rest of you forward and riding back to see why.”
Rubens squinted and scratched his whiskered chin.
“Not to be contrary, Wes,” he said. “But ain’t the whole idea of having a man like Claypool out there watching our trail, is to allow us to get away while he takes on whatever’s coming?”
Wes Traybo turned and looked him up and down.
“I suppose you didn’t hear me, did you?” he said, half joking, yet with a look that invited no questions on the matter.
“Yeah, I heard you just fine,” said Rubens, seeing Wes turn away and look back out along the winding trail. “I’ll have the doc and the woman get Ty up and ready to ride. I’ll go ahead and saddle your horse and bring it to you—I figure you’re going back.”
“Obliged,” said Wes. “And, Baylor?” he said as Rubens turned to walk away.
“Yeah?” said Rubens, stopping, looking back at him.
“Things didn’t go well for us this time,” Wes said quietly, not facing him.
“I sort of noticed that,” Rubens said wryly. “But we still got out with the money.”
“What I’m saying is,” Wes went on, “if you and Bugs want to ride away when I get back, you’ll both get your share and nobody’ll say anything.”
“Damn these ears of mine,” Rubens said. “A minute ago I heard you just fine . . . now I can’t make out a word you’re saying.”
Wes Traybo studied the back trail. He nodded slowly.
“Good man,” he said under his breath, even though Rubens had already turned and walked away.
Moments later, Wes heard his horse clopping toward him at a walk across the hard ground. But when he turned, instead of seeing Rubens leading the animal, he saw Rosetta smile at him and hold out the reins.
“Where’s Rubens?” he asked, staring past the woman toward the campsite where Rubens stood staring and gave an uncertain shrug.
&nbs
p; “Don’t be angry with him, por favor,” she said, seeing an irritated look on his face. “I asked him to let me bring your horse to you. I hope that was all right?”
Wes let out a breath and eased his expression.
“It is now,” he said.
“Your brother says he is well enough to ride on his own now,” she said. “I asked the médico—I mean, the doctor,” she corrected. “He said it is not so. I come to ask you if I have done something wrong that makes your brother not want me to take care of him?”
Wes saw hurt in her eyes as he took the reins to his horse.
“No, Rosetta, you’ve done nothing wrong,” he said. “My brother is a proud man. He wants everybody to know he can take care of himself.” As he spoke he instinctively looked his horse over before mounting it and putting it on the trail. “I’ll talk to him some when I get back.” He looked her up and down. “Meanwhile, I’m sure you can charm him enough to keep him in line.”
“In line?” she asked, not familiar with the term.
“Keep him smiling,” he said, stepping up, swinging his leg over the saddle.
“Ah, sí, of course,” she said, sounding reassured.
He settled into his saddle and looked at her, seeing she had more on her mind.
“We’re in Mexico now,” he said, anticipating her thoughts about leaving. “But I’d like to get closer to where we’re going before you take off.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I still have a long ride. It can take me weeks—perhaps months—to get home. It is better I travel with someone as long as I can.” She paused and then added, “I am a long way from home.”
“What part of Mexico are you from?” Wes asked.
“I am not from Mexico. I am from Guatemala. I live in Tera Paz, a small village near the Mexican border. That is where the slavers stole me.”
