by Ralph Cotton
“It is a peach of a place—that’s for sure,” said Ty, taking whatever glances he could, weighing the odds, seeing what kind of move to make when the time was right.
• • •
Dr. Dayton Bernard had led his bareback horse around behind one of the towering granite boulders and left it standing unreined as he walked off into the brush to relieve himself. He’d finished and started back to his horse when the sound of the Mexican officer’s booming voice had caused him to drop down in the cover of brush and venture forward on his belly. He made his way to a place at the edge of the trail where he could see the Mexican officer and the sweat-streaked, tan-uniformed riflemen surrounding the riders.
As he looked, Dr. Bernard heard a soldier call back to the officer from only a few yards away where he had left his horse standing by the boulder.
“He is not down here, Capitán Torez,” the soldier Heco said. “Only his horse.”
The doctor pressed himself down to the dirt in brittle spiky brush and watched and listened.
The captain sat staring at Ty Traybo as he spoke to the soldier.
“Then find him, Heco,” Captain Torez called out. “Find him and kill him quietly,” he added. “You will catch up to us on the trail.” He grinned at Ty and said, “Always when there is americanos, there is a big sack of money. But always when there is a sack of money, I find there is more americanos following it.” He gave a laugh at his little joke. “Why this is, eh?” he chuckled.
Ty shrugged and managed to lower his hands just a little.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We just all love that stuff.”
“Ah yes, I think that is it,” said Torez, as if having just come to a great realization. He looked at the soldier Juan and gestured toward the place up on the hillside where the soldiers had reined the rest of their horses. “Bring our animals,” he said. “Leave Heco’s horse beside the trail for him. We will move away from here and go count the money. Sergeant Malero is meeting us at the ruins.” He turned in his saddle and scanned back and forth along the trail. Dr. Bernard instinctively inched back in the brush.
He watched through the brush as the soldier called Juan left, and returned within moments with the horses. He watched the men mount, and he lay flat—as still as death as the soldiers and their prisoners filed past him.
No sooner were they out of sight than he turned and looked toward the sound of a machete swinging back and forth through the brush, pitching the reaping of its swath from side to side as it moved closer.
“Chew-mus-com-out-now. Chew-mus-com-out-now,” the soldier Heco taunted, chanting lyrically with each swing of the machete blade. “Chew are unarmed. My machete will find you,” he added in a singsong voice.
Some deadly child’s game, Bernard thought, listening.
Yet he only stared calmly as his hand pressed the lapel of his coat and felt the sheathed surgical blade standing there, like some dutiful servant waiting to be called upon. Then the doctor’s calm hand searched the ground around him and closed over a rock the size of a croquet ball.
Just right, he told himself, hefting the rock in his hand as the sound of the chanting and the chop of the machete moved closer, seemingly homed on him through some mystic sense known only to those bound to one another by murderous circumstance. In the stir of such dark and grim thinking, he resolved to sit still—not budge an inch—and wait in the path of the swinging blade.
You’ve been here before, he told himself. You have never run from death.
His left gripped the rock; his right hand reached inside his lapel and drew the surgical blade, flipping the sheath from the blade deftly with the tip of his thumb.
Dr. Dayton Bernard, M.D. Healer of man, he told himself with black irony. He gripped the instrument in his fist, his thumb pressed firmly against the flat back of the blade. He would wait; the taunting chant would continue; the machete would move steadily closer. When it swung so close—close enough he could kiss the passing blade—he would spring up and forward like a panther.
Yes, that’s the plan, he told himself. It’s the only plan you’ve got.
Chapter 14
Wes and Claypool were riding double, Claypool leading his dun behind them, when they saw the rider approaching them at a fast pace. A saddled paint horse followed on a lead rope behind him. The two horses raised dust along the trail that could be seen for miles in three directions. The rider appeared to have spotted them and kicked up the horse’s gait the last two hundred yards. Wes, rifle in hand, turned his horse off the edge of the trail.
“Looks like one more person not wanting to be indoors,” Claypool said.
“I believe he’s seen us, but he’s riding right to us,” Wes said studiously. He looked closer. As the rider closed the distance between them, he said, “Hell, it’s the doctor.”
“Running out on us, you think?” Claypool asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Wes said, seeing the dark front of the doctor’s white shirt. “Like I said, him and the woman don’t seem real eager to leave.”
“Something’s got him spooked,” said Claypool. “I better get up high enough to see if anybody’s chasing him.” He dropped down from the saddle and handed Wes the reins. Drawing his Winchester from its boot, he climbed quickly up the hillside over broken boulders and jagged rocks until he could see a good distance all around the approaching rider.
Wes sat with his rifle butt propped on his thigh as the doctor slid his horse and the paint to a halt a few feet away. Dust billowed and swirled around the horses. Wes saw the dark dried blood on the doctor’s shirtfront. He saw a dusty straw soldier sombrero hanging behind his shoulders on a length of hat cord.
“What are you doing out here, Doc?” he asked, glancing back along the dusty trail behind him. “How’s my brother?”
“Soldiers have him,” said Bernard. “They captured everybody.” He nudged his horse over closer. Wes saw a black flapped military-style holster belted around his waist. A bandolier of ammunition hung from his saddle horn. A battered rifle butt stood from a Mexican saddle boot.
“Everybody except you,” Wes pointed out. “You’ve found a saddle for your horse, I see.”
The doctor didn’t answer about having switched the Mexican’s saddle to his bareback horse.
“I was in the brush when they overtook us,” Bernard said, speaking fast. “They left a man behind to get me. I killed him.”
Up the hillside, Claypool had looked all around, found the trail clear in both directions and climbed back down. He stood listening, catching up on what he’d missed of the conversation.
“You armed yourself too, and brought along a spare horse, I see,” Wes said to the doctor.
“I thought I better,” the doctor replied. “I didn’t know how far I’d have to ride to find you—if I found you at all.”
“And if you didn’t, you were going to ride on?” Wes asked.
“I think that goes without saying,” Dr. Bernard replied, looking back and forth between the two.
“How many soldiers?” Claypool cut in, already walking around, looking the paint horse over.
“Ten—nine now,” Bernard answered, “plus their leader.”
“He’s wearing one on his shirt,” Wes put in.
“I heard it,” Claypool said. He stepped over to his dun, loosened its saddle and brought it over and pitched it atop the paint horse.
“They’re after the money,” Dr. Bernard said. “That’s all the leader was interested in.”
“I figured as much,” said Wes, turning his horse as Claypool finished saddling the paint horse and swung up atop it.
“Ten’s not so bad, if we can just get there in time,” he said, his mind already at work, calculating what kind of move to make once they caught up with the soldiers.
“We’ve got to get there in time,” Wes emphasized. “Once these buzzards ge
t their hands on the money, they’ve got no reason to leave anybody alive.”
“We’ll get there, Wes,” said Claypool, putting the paint horse forward beside him. Dr. Bernard rode alongside the two, pulling the straw sombrero up atop his head against the glaring sunlight, his medical satchel bouncing on his side. “I figure they’ll head for the old ruins,” said Claypool.
“That’s a big place,” said Wes. “It’s hard to find anybody in there that doesn’t want to be found. You know of any shortcuts there?” Wes asked, nudging his horse up into a faster gallop.
“No,” said Claypool, he and the doctor staying up with him. “But these soldiers won’t get in any hurry to kill them tonight. They’re going to want to try and find out where the money came from—and who might be on the trail looking for it.”
“But once they know all that, they will kill them,” Wes said.
“That’s the game,” said Claypool.
The two long riders fell grim and silent as the horses’ hooves pounded beneath them. Dr. Bernard, who had been listening closely, turned forward and rode on.
• • •
As dusk was falling in on them, the captain, his soldiers and their prisoners came to a halt out in front of a roofless and crumbling adobe, which stood in a cluster of ancient two- and three-sided structures of the same condition. Red eyes of coyotes had popped up in the shadowy blackness as the contingent rode into sight. But the ruins stood silent and vacated as the soldiers stepped down from their mounts and hitched the tired animals to a row of pitted iron hitch rings still warm from the day’s scorching sun.
Rosetta had been riding double with Ty Traybo leaning on her the whole way. When they came to a halt, Rosetta stepped down quickly and eased Ty down beside her. She caught him when he almost collapsed to the ground; she leaned him against her, his wrists bound together with strips of binding rawhide.
“Capitán, por favor,” she said. “This man is dying. Can you not see it?”
Captain Torez gave a dark chuckle among his men.
“Sí, of course I see it. He is dying, I have no doubt of that,” he said knowingly.
His men laughed under their breath, all of them realizing their prisoners’ lives would soon come to a bloody end.
Stepping down from their saddles, their hands also bound, Bugs Trent and Baylor Rubens hurried over and assisted Rosetta, steadying their barely conscious comrade between them.
“Can she fix him some hot beef broth, Captain?” asked Rubens. “I’ve got some jerked beef in my saddlebags. It’ll gain him back some strength.”
“He does not need his strength where he is going,” the captain said, still enjoying his black humor. “He will need a fan.” He laughed and fanned his hand back and forth in front of his face.
Rubens and Bugs gave each other a guarded look.
“You are some funny sons a’ bitches,” Bugs Trent blurted out, suddenly stepping forward, his bound hands out like claws toward the captain’s face. “See how funny you think this is—!”
A soldier stabbed a hard sideward blow to his ribs with a rifle butt. Bugs hit the ground with a painful grunt, but he didn’t lie there long.
Rubens winced as he watched Bugs struggle to his feet.
“My,” Bugs rasped, “but ain’t you some tough turds?” He held up his bound hands. “Cut these off, let’s see if any of you has the guts to stand up uno a uno—”
The rifle butt stabbed out again; Bugs doubled up and hit the ground.
“Jesus, Bugs, shut the hell up!” said Rubens.
But Bugs would have none of it.
As the Mexicans laughed and jeered, they cheered him on, daring him to stand up again.
“Stay down, damn it, Bugs!” Rubens yelled at him.
The injured young gunman continued to ignore Rubens’ pleading. He struggled, this time taking much longer to get to his feet, but finally managing to do so. He staggered in place and took a step forward, watching out of the corner of his eye as the same rifleman stalked alongside him, ready to strike again.
“Try it again, you son of a bitch,” he snarled. “You hit as weak as your mother—”
The riflemen jabbed again, seeming to grow bored with his harsh game. But this time when he jabbed the rifle butt, instead of Bugs taking the blow in his ribs, he sidestepped fast, throwing the man off balance. Before the man could withdraw the rifle butt, Bugs caught it with his tied hands, jerked it enough to regrip it at the small of the stock, cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger as the rifleman yanked the rifle way from him. Fire exploded from the barrel; the rifleman jumped away as the bullet sliced past his belly.
The shot went wild, but the soldiers thrust their rifles up and cocked them quickly. The captain stared at Bugs with fire in his eyes. The silence he’d maintained throughout the ride was gone, shattered far across the night.
Hearing the soldiers cock their weapons, Rubens jumped forward with his hands raised high.
“No! Don’t shoot!” he bellowed, turning back and forth. But his words went unheard beneath the bark of the rifles.
Bugs flew backward with the impact of four bullets hitting him at once. Rubens heard Bugs let out a defiant yell, almost a mocking laugh. He even thought he saw a crazy smile on the young long rider’s face before the bullets carried him away.
Rosetta screamed and held Ty to her bosom as if he might be next. In the swirl and drift of rifle smoke, Rubens allowed himself a deep breath, knowing the look he’d seen in Bugs’ eyes only a moment before.
Loco little bastard. You beat me to it, he said brokenly to himself, seeing Bugs Trent’s body lying still in the dirt.
The captain’s eyes fixed on Rubens curiously as the riflemen turned their rifles on the older long rider. He caught a look of strange satisfaction on Rubens’ face.
“Fire at will, Capitán,” Rubens said. He spat on the ground in contempt.
“Wait! Do not shoot! Torez’s voice boomed at his men. “This is what they want, these stupid damn gringos.” He glared at Rubens in the pale-purple-shaded night.
“Figured that out, did you?” Rubens said. He grinned sadly at Bugs’ body, then looked back at the captain, leveling his shoulders, feeling a surge of invincibility. “Then I expect you must be smarter than you look.”
• • •
In the dark, the three riders had stopped at a place on the trail where the hoofprints they’d been following vanished across a wide ledge of rock. Wes Traybo and the doctor stood holding the horses. Carter Claypool kneeled close to the ground a few yards ahead, one of his last remaining matches burning down to his fingertips. When the single rifle shot caught their attention, he dropped the hot match and stood up. Only a second passed before the sound of the shot drew a sudden volley of return rifle fire.
“There it is, Carter, the ruins—just like you said,” Wes called out to Claypool. He and Dr. Bernard turned and stepped back up into their saddles. Claypool ran back toward them. He caught his horse by its saddle horn and swung up into the saddle as the two rode past him.
“How far do you make it?” Wes called out to him above the sound of their horses’ hooves across the rock shelf.
“They’re damn close,” Claypool called out in reply. “Less than three miles, I make it.”
Wes looked at the doctor riding on his other side.
“When we get there, Doc, you best stay back—keep down out of sight,” he said.
“I’ll do whatever I must to stay alive,” the young doctor said in a firm tone.
Wes just looked at him as they rode on along the shadowy trail.
“I mean it, Doc,” he emphasized.
“So do I,” the young doctor replied.
But as they neared a thin path leading up into the ruins, stopped their horses and stepped down from their saddles, Bernard pulled the dead soldier’s battered rifle from the boot and check
ed it.
Wes and Claypool looked at each other. Wes gave a slight shrug and gestured toward a spiky downed oak lying alongside the path. As they stepped over and hitched their horses, Claypool gazed off into the black shadows of countless half-fallen structures, where the glow of a campfire flickered barely visible between breaks in a crumbling adobe wall.
Claypool nudged both the doctor’s and Wes’ arms, drawing their attention toward the thin firelight.
“What is this, Doc? Give us your opinion,” Wes whispered, as if testing Bernard.
The doctor looked back and forth.
“Either we’ve caught a stroke of good fortune or we’re getting ready to walk into a trap,” he whispered bluntly.
The two long riders looked taken aback.
“Not bad, Doc,” Wes whispered.
“How do we find out?” Dr. Bernard asked in a whisper.
“That’s my job,” Claypool said. Without another word, he turned and appeared to vanish into the darkness toward the silhouettes of the standing ruins.
“He seems to have lots of jobs,” the doctor whispered.
Wes only looked him up and down appraisingly.
“Are you sure you’re up for this, Doc?” he asked. “If you’re not, now’s the time to step away.”
The doctor stared at him in stony silence. On their way up the lower trail, he’d shown them the body of the Mexican soldier he’d killed.
“All right, you’re up for it,” Wes conceded. He looked down at the battered rifle in Bernard’s hand. “Did you check the rifle?”
“What do you think?” the doctor whispered with a snap.
Wes nodded. “But you haven’t fired it. You’re going into a gunfight with an untried weapon.”
“That’s the game,” the doctor whispered, repeating what he’d heard Claypool say earlier.
Wes considered it, liking the doctor’s attitude.
“I’ve got to get in a close position and wait until Carter checks them out,” he said in a lowered voice. “How quiet can you be, slipping in there with me?”
