Showdown at Hole-In-the-Wall

by Ralph Cotton

  The ranger had heard the single gunshot resound in the night from the trail high above him. He knew it could have meant any number of things, including the three detectives shooting at game. Yet, because the trio had ridden up there earlier, and because he’d heard someone up there even before that, he decided to ride up in the cover of darkness and take a look around. After all, he’d reminded himself as he saddled the paint, it was from up there that he’d been ambushed.

  In the quiet, purple darkness he traveled upward on the same narrow path the detectives had taken. When the path up the snow-streaked hillside turned onto the high trail, he left his saddle long enough to stoop down with a long wooden match burning in his gloved hand. He closely checked the direction of hoofprints left by the three horses. No, make that four, he said silently to himself, his fingertips touching the hoofprints of what had been Glick’s horse moving in the same direction.

  There was too much going on up here for this time of year, he told himself, stepping back into his saddle. Drawing his rifle from its boot and laying it across his lap, he nudged the paint forward, leading his pack mule behind him.

  He rode on for the better part of an hour before seeing the glow of a campfire off among the scrub cedars to his left. This time when he stepped down, he tied the mule to a tree, lest the animal turn noisy. Then he led the horse in closer, hitched it in the brush twenty yards from the flickering firelight and moved forward the rest of the way on foot, with the stealth of a hunter.

  When he stopped again, he crouched low, staring through the cedars and the brush and bracken at the detectives. You’re up awfully late, aren’t you fellows? he said to himself.

  Ratliff and Beecham sat near the fire, their rifles across their laps. Beecham stared intently toward him through the brush, as if having heard Sam in spite of Sam’s effort. Ratliff sat a few feet away, his head bowed over a tin cup in his hands.

  Realizing there was no further need for secrecy, Sam stood up, allowing himself to be seen, rifle in hand, and called to Beecham, “Hello the fire, Detective.”

  Beecham only stared.

  Sam watched and listened for a long, silent moment. Finally, getting no reply and wondering if something was amiss, he called out, “It’s me, Ranger Burrack. I’m walking in.”

  He watched Beecham continue to stare intently at him as he moved through the brush and stopped at the outer circle of firelight. “Am I welcome here, Detectives?” he asked quietly. Then, looking away from Beecham and Ratliff, he saw Clement Emory lying in the dirt in the outer circle of flickering firelight. No blanket, on a chilled night like this?

  He stepped closer, with caution, realizing that Emory wasn’t asleep. He was dead. Proof of it became more clear as Sam eased into the firelight and noted the black blood covering the detective’s chest, the wide puddle of blood on the dirt beneath him.

  “What happened here?” Sam asked, turning back to Beecham and Ratliff. But upon looking back at the detectives, and Beecham’s blank eyes, seeing how they stared past him into the endless distance, he said in a quieter tone to himself, “If I expect an answer from you, I’ll be waiting a lifetime.”

  Ratliff and Beecham sat like any other two men at a campfire. Their Colts were back in their holsters; their rifles were across their laps. Ratcliff’s finger had been stuck into the handle of a tin cup. A dead man having coffee . . . ,” Sam mused grimly. A large wet spot on Ratliff’s trouser leg showed where he had sat, helplessly drooling into his lap.

  Sam looked all around, making certain no one else was there. Stepping over to the campfire, he looked down at Beecham, seeing the detective’s dead thumb lying over his cocked rifle hammer. His other hand lay closed around his rifle fore stock, as if at any second he would raise and fire the weapon.

  “Glick,” Sam murmured to himself, “this has your name written all over it.”

  He walked over to where Clement Emory lay dead in the bloody dirt. He looked back and forth and all around at the boot marks on the ground, at the base of the cedar tree, trying to get an idea of what had gone on. Was this the gunshot he’d heard? he asked himself, looking down at Emory. He noted the dead detective’s trousers loosened and flared open at the fly, exposing him to the flickering firelight.

  Sam sighed and looked at Emory’s gun belt lying a few feet away, his rifle lying back a few more feet where Beecham had dropped it. He noted two more sets of boot prints in the dirt. The Lowdens? Several versions of what might have happened ran across his mind, but nothing he could discern with any certainty. These three detectives, Glick the Dutchman . . . It had all made for a deadly night on the Outlaw Trail, he told himself. Now for the burying . . .

  He turned to walk back and gather the paint horse and the mule. But he stopped cold when he saw three riflemen facing him from the other side of the fire. “Don’t try it, Mister,” said the rifleman standing a few feet in front of the other two.

  Sam had instinctively started to swing his rifle up toward them. But he saw not only these three riflemen facing him, but even more men standing back in the shadows, out of the firelight. Seeing the ranger let his rifle slump a bit at his side, a man wearing a battered top hat with a black cigar stub between his teeth stepped forward from the shadows and said to Sam, “Now that’s a wise decision, Mister.” He glanced with a nod toward the two dead men sitting at the fire. “Is this your idea of a joke? Are you some sort of sick lunatic?”

  “This wasn’t my doing,” said the ranger, his rifle lowered but still ready if he needed it. “I heard a shot hours ago from down there.” He gestured downhill, in the direction of the lower trail. “I came to see what it was. This is what I found.”

  One of the three riflemen stepped over to Beecham’s body and looked closely at the dead detective’s face. “I recognize this sumbitch,” he said. “He hounded me and Buck Early all over the Wind River last year.”

  “Is that him? Let me see!” said another man, stepping forward from the shadows for a better look at Beecham’s blank face. “I’ll be damned, it sure is that dirty railroad detective.” He chuckled and waved his hand back and forth in front of Beecham’s dead eyes. “He looks like he’s sitting here watching everything going on.” Amazed, he said to the man wearing the top hat, “Angelo, come look at this. You’ve never seen nothing like it.”

  Angelo “Black Hand” Sabott . . . Sam connected the name and the top hat right away. But he remained silent, watching the big man walk over closer and look down at Beecham. With a dark smile the man looked back at the ranger and said, “It wouldn’t bother me much if you were the sumbitch who killed them. These men are railroad detectives—the worst kind of lawdogs.”

  “I know who they are,” said Sam. He looked at the others gathering in closer as he spoke. There were no less than eight of them, he tallied, all armed, all ready, all waiting for word from their leader. “They were at my camp earlier.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Angelo, “and just who the blue hell might you be?” As he spoke he stepped back a few feet from the dead detectives.

  Sam weighed his words, but only for a second. “I’m Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack,” he said firmly, his hand poised and ready. He’d go down with a fight.

  “Wait!” said Sabott, seeing the men around him ready to fire, seeing the ranger ready to take whatever came to him. He looked at Sam’s pearl gray sombrero. “You’ve got some damned nerve, riding up here into my country without me inviting you.”

  “If your country means Hole-in-the-wall, I do have an invitation,” Sam replied, not loosening his grip on his rifle. “I’m on my way into the hole right now. Memphis Beck knows I’m coming.”

  “Knowing Beck cuts no ice in my book.” Sabott grinned menacingly. “Him and I were recent neighbors , but you might say it was in name only.”

  “Beck knows I’m coming, and he knows I mean him no harm.” Sam kept his gaze level and cold. “That goes for you too, unless you force my hand.”

  “Force your hand, eh?” Angelo chuckled aloud, and so did
his men. Taking the cigar stub from his mouth, he spit a fleck of wet tobacco from his lip and said, “Tell me, Ranger, if I force your hand, how many do you think you’ll get before we chop you down to your boot tops?”

  “I’ll get you, Angelo Sabott,” Sam said with strong resolve. “That’s the only thing I know for sure.”

  Sabott cocked his head to one side with a surprised look. “Hey, you know my name.”

  “That’s right,” said Sam. “I recognize you from an old Texas wanted poster.

  “Whoa,” said Sabott, “I’m not wanted in Texas. I had a lawyer out of San Antonio clean up that mess for me a long time ago.”

  “Even so,” Sam replied quietly, his rifle still poised and ready, “that’s how I recognized you.” Was this man changing the subject, trying to catch him off guard? Yes, he was, Sam decided.

  Sabott seemed to read his thoughts. He shrugged and said, “Well, I suppose I’ll have to wire that lawyer and scold him soundly.”

  Standing near the dead detectives, a gunman stared coldly at Sam and spoke to Sabott. “He’s a lawdog, Angelo. Let’s kill him where he stands.”

  “Hear that, Ranger?” said Sabott with the same menacing grin. “Ole Bert here wants to kill you. I fear if I tell him no, it’ll hurt his feelings. Am I right, Bert?”

  “That’s right,” said Bert Hicks. “I love killing law-dogs.” He nodded sidelong at Beecham sitting blank faced, staring out into nothingness. “I wish this sumbitch was alive, so I could kill him too.” He turned slightly and spit a stream of thick tobacco juice into Beecham’s blank face. The brown spittle ran down and dripped from the dead detective’s chin onto the cocked rifle hammer. “The only thing I hate worse than a lawdog—”

  A blaze of fire streaked from the barrel of Beecham’s rifle. The bullet nailed Hicks in the scrotum, picked him up off his feet and hurled him fifteen feet away. Hicks landed screaming, his hands collapsed to a braided fountain of blood spewing from his crotch.

  “Jesus!” said one of the outlaws. They stood staring dumbfounded at the lifeless corpse for a second as a curl of smoke wafted from the barrel of the rifle in his dead hands.

  “Shoot him!” Sabott shouted, not knowing what else to say. His cigar stub flew from his lips. As one, without question, the gunmen fired a hail of bullets into the dead detectives. Sam caught a glimpse of the two corpses jerking and bouncing in place, but a glimpse was all he had time for. Seeing one of the outlaws swing his rifle in his direction, Sam fired quickly. His shot hit the man dead center. But one shot was all the ranger would get. The rifle going off in the dead man’s hands was a break he hadn’t expected—the only chance Sam would have to save his own life. So he took it, and disappeared before the outlaw he shot had hit the ground.

  Having fired seven fast shots into the dead detectives, Angelo Sabott swung his rifle in the direction of the ranger. But the ranger had already flung himself backward out of the firelight, rolled to his feet in a crouch and vanished silently into the dark brush, only a few yards from the campsite.

  “Burrack’s getting away! Kill him!” Sabott shouted, sounding rattled by having lost two men, one of them killed by a dead man.

  With his back pressed against a cedar tree, the ranger listened as bullets sliced past him in the dark. After a moment when the firing stopped, he heard one of the outlaws ask Sabott, “Want some of us to go in there and flush him out, Angelo?”

  “No, to hell with the ranger,” said Sabott. “After all that shooting, he’s either dead or damned near it. Forget about Burrack. Let’s haul out of here. We’ve got more important business to take care of.” He nodded toward the deep brush and trees where they had left their horses and two heavily loaded pack mules. “Don’t forget what we’re carrying, and why.”

  “I’m not forgetting what it is we’re up to,” said the outlaw, “but what about him shooting Simon Gerry?”

  “Yeah,” said another gunman, “are we going to forget that too?” He gestured toward the outlaw lying dead with a bullet hole in his bloody chest.

  “No,” said Sabott, “but you heard the ranger. He’s headed to the hole to see Memphis Beck. It sits bad with me, Beck taking up with a lawdog. I say if Beck brought him up here, it’s Beck’s fault Simon is dead.” He looked all around in the flickering firelight. “Anybody think otherwise?” As he asked, he levered a fresh round into his rifle chamber and looked all around from man to man with a fierce glare in his eyes.

  Chapter 7

  In the darkness, Sam stood in silence, waiting and listening until he realized the gunmen had backed away and left the campsite. Then he ventured back in slowly, rifle cocked and ready as he walked among the dead. “Well, you finally got to shoot somebody,” he murmured down to Beecham’s bullet-riddled corpse, remembering Beecham’s attitude when the detectives had ridden into his camp.

  Beecham and Ratliff’s bodies lay filled with bullet holes, although very little blood trickled from their gaping wounds. The blood of dead men, Sam thought. Yet upon closer examination, he noted a bit more blood oozing from Beecham’s wounds than from his dead companion. He also noted something that piqued his curiosity.

  Earlier he’d seen the blank, slack-jawed expressions on both men’s faces. Yet, now somehow, Beecham’s eyes seemed focused on something closer. Before, Beecham seemed to be staring into a great, endless void. Now his eyes appeared to have refocused, as if looking into the ranger’s eyes. Didn’t they? Sam cocked his head slightly. He also saw that Beecham’s dead face seemed to have taken on a faint smile of satisfaction, even with a bullet hole in one cheek and a smear of tobacco juice down the other.

  Stop it, Sam thought, cautioning himself. Dead men don’t smile; they don’t change the focus of their eyes. But as soon as he thought it, he had to also remind himself that dead men didn’t bleed, either. Yet this one did, he believed, looking back and forth between Beecham and Ratliff’s bodies, comparing them.

  He grimaced a bit thinking about it as he stooped down over the dead detective. Had Beecham been alive, barely hanging on to life, his heart barely beating, still pumping, still trying to live when he’d found him? He didn’t like thinking it, but he couldn’t completely shake the idea. He knew Glick was an infamous user of poisons. What kind of poison would put a man in such a condition before killing him? What kind of low, merciless fiend would use something like that?

  Had Beecham been sitting here, paralyzed but still alive when he’d found him? Had the dying man watched Glick saddle up and ride away, leaving him and Ratliff to suffer this kind of silent, frightful death? Sam imagined the dying detective had watched him walk into the flickering campfire light earlier. He envisioned Beecham wanting to say something, wanting to plead for help, yet unable to do anything but sit there as helpless as a man frozen in ice. Was it the tobacco juice running down on the gun hammer that caused it to fire, or had Beecham, even through the paralyzing effects of the poison, managed to rally one last move from his dying body, enough to pull the trigger?

  Sam had to shake the feeling from his mind, realizing this was one of the things in life that he could ponder from now on but never really know. “Well, you’re dead now,” he murmured, in resignation. He reached out with his gloved hand, closed Beecham’s eyes and stood up. He looked off toward the high trail, the direction he knew Glick would have taken. Poison, Sam reminded himself, the weapon of the assassin, or the coward . . .

  What did Glick have in mind here? After killing these men, he had posed them as if the three had been sitting here having coffee, talking over the day’s events the way fellow travelers do. Did this serve some inner need of a madman, or was it just Glick’s way of having fun with whoever found them? Sam let out a breath and reminded himself that he was not up here on business. He was on his way to get his stallion, nothing else.

  He tried to put Glick the assassin out of his mind. But it wasn’t easy. He couldn’t help thinking about the Lowdens, wondering if they had any part in this. If not, he wondered if the young ragged couple
had any idea what they were fooling with, riding with a man like the Dutchman.

  “We’ll find out,” he said. Lowering the hammer on his rifle, he turned once again to go gather the mule and the paint horse. “Now, back to the burying . . .”

  In the silver-gray hour of dawn, Glick slipped quietly into the new campsite, hoping to find the Lowdens wrapped in their blankets and fast asleep near the small fire. But the events of the night had left both Shala and Stanley awake and vigilant. Glick had led his horse out of the shadowy blue mist, only to hear Stanley call out to him from behind a rock.

  “Who’s there? Stop where you are!” Stanley said in a strong but nervous voice.

  It was not the voice but rather the sound of a rifle being cocked that gave the old man killer pause and caused him to reply quickly. “It’s me, Stanley boy. Careful where you point that thing.”

  Glick heard Shala say to her husband from a few feet away, “Don’t be so jumpy, Stanley. Who did you think it would be?”

  Stanley didn’t answer her. Instead, he said to the Dutchman as the dark figure walked closer, leading his horse behind him, “I’m sorry, Mr. Glick. We—we heard a lot of gunfire. I didn’t know if you had run into trouble—”

  “Ah, so you were worried about me, eh?” Glick said, cutting Stanley off with a soft chuckle. He walked past him as the young man stood up, rifle in hand, and followed along beside him. Stopping close to the fire, Glick stooped down and held out his gloved hands, warming them above the short, licking flames. He glanced across the fire and saw Shala stand up from behind another rock and walk toward the fire.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact we were starting to worry about you,” she said, circling the fire and stopping and stooping down a few feet away. “We didn’t know what those men might try to do.”

  “I heard that gunfire myself,” said Glick. “I don’t know who it was, but I can swear it wasn’t from those two detectives.”