by Ralph Cotton
“Shame, shame . . .” Cleaver dropped his eyes and shook his bowed head, still gripping his wounded hand. “I expected better treatment from an Arizona Ranger, is all I’m saying.”
The ranger stopped gathering supplies long enough to speak to Beck. “I ought to tell you, there’s a man hunter prowling this area. I figure he must be sniffing around, looking for you and some of your sidekicks.”
“Obliged,” said Beck. “Any idea who he is?”
“Conning Glick,” Sam said in a solemn tone.
“Glick the Dutchman,” said Beck, with a sigh. “I was hoping he’d have dropped over dead and turned to dust by now.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” said Sam, “but he’s alive and kicking. I found three detectives it looked like he’d poisoned and left sitting around a campfire.”
“Three detectives?” Beck gave a short smile. “I suppose even Glick has some good in him.”
Sam didn’t return the smile. “According to the detectives, the railroads have a big push on to clean up Hole-in-the-wall.” He paused, then said, “I suppose I shouldn’t be telling you. . . .”
“I appreciate your telling me, Ranger,” Beck said wryly. “I won’t take it as a sign that you’ve changed sides and started consorting with outlaws.”
“Good, because I’m not,” Sam said flatly, finding no humor in that sort of exaggeration.
Cleaver cut in, “It’s not a big thing anyway. The fact is, the railroad has a big push to get rid of all us ole long-riders about this time every year. They never manage to get it done.” He grinned widely.
“Anyway,” said Sam, “Glick is out there, somewhere. He’s got a young couple with him, Stanley and Shala Lowden. They’re a team of trappers and game hunters down on their luck. I think it was one of them who shot me.”
“If you’re telling me not to turn my back on Glick or anybody riding with him, thanks for the sound advice,” said Memphis Beck, “but I already trust a rattlesnake more than I would the Dutchman.”
While Sam and Beck talked, Clarimonde and Hector walked over to where Cleaver stood holding his bleeding hand. “She’ll patch him up. Then we’ll have some coffee while you rest those horses,” Beck said quietly to the ranger. “I’ll keep him with us a couple of days until he’s ready to hike out of here on his own. That’ll keep him from getting to Sabott before you do and telling him who the stallion belongs to.”
“That’ll help,” said Sam, “and so will some hot coffee before I go.” Gathering both horses’ reins, he followed Beck to the shade of some tall pines at the bottom of the steep hillside beneath the high trail. As Beck poured water from a canteen into a battered coffeepot, Sam nodded toward Hector and Clarimonde while the woman busily attended to Cleaver’s hand. “How’s Clarimonde doing, after all that happened to her last summer?” Sam asked.
“Oh, Clair’s doing fine, Ranger,” Beck said. “She goes by the name Clair Stewart these days. Folks are starting to know her as Lady Dynamite.”
“I see. . . .” Sam made no further comment, but it was clear to Beck that he didn’t like the idea that the woman had thrown in with the lawless element.
“Look at it this way, Ranger,” Beck said in a quiet tone, “she’s doing a lot better than she would have with Suelo Soto.”
Sam leveled a hard gaze at Beck. He felt like reminding him that Suelo Soto had died a bloody death, an outlaw’s death, and that it was likely Beck would do the same. But he respected Beck, so he only nodded and looked at the coffeepot in the man’s hands. “I’ll be looking for the three of you on the high trail,” he said, “if you can manage to dodge all the detectives out to kill you.”
“I’m an old hand at dodging railroad bulls,” Beck said confidently.
Sam nodded. “I know you are,” he said, wishing there was something he could say that might set a man like Memphis Beck on a straighter path.
As if reading his mind, Memphis Beck looked him in the eye and said, “We all are what we are, Ranger Burrack. I’ll never let anything happen to Clair. She’s safe with me.”
“I know that too,” Sam said. He looked off toward Hector and the woman as the two walked toward them, Cleaver tagging behind, holding his bandanna-wrapped hand.
Chapter 10
Conning Glick peered out across a deep ravine from the cover of rock and bracken and whispered aloud in a dramatic, poetic tone, “Oh my, oh my. Look what wondrous things this day has brought upon us.”
“Do you suppose they’re who caused the blast we heard?” Stanley whispered beside him, hunkered down out of sight. Shala held the horse and mule a few yards back into a wood row alongside the high trail.
“Could be,” said Glick, staring intently across the ravine as he identified from memory the single file of horsemen riding by.
“Who are they then?” Stanley asked.
“You wouldn’t know if I told you, boy,” Glick replied without taking his eyes off the line of riders. He watched them move along uphill, keeping their horses at a slow walk. Steam wafted in the breath of both man and animal.
Stanley just stared at him blankly.
“Their leader is a cutthroat land pirate, by the name of Angelo Sabott,” Glick said somewhat crossly. Then he settled and grinned. “I expect you’ve got a right to know the man you’re fixing to kill.”
“Kill?” Stanley’s voice turned shallow. “Is he one of the holers? I mean, you know, one of Memphis Beck’s men?”
“He’s a holer, but he’s not what you’d call one of Beck’s, unless he recently became one,” said Glick. “The army had chased him into old Mexico for a while. But I heard last summer he’d struck up a gang of border trash and commenced cutting a swath across Texas and New Mexico territory. So now he’s back.” Glick grinned again, this time lapping his lips like a wolf. “His big ole greasy head’s still worth some money to the Adam’s Express Company.” Glick looked closely at the other men passing in and out of sight. “Lord,” he said with a chuckle, “there’s enough high-priced heads there to buy a farm in Rhode Island. I hope your cutting arm is rested up and ready.”
Stanley swallowed a knot in his suddenly dry throat and said, “I—I expect it is.” He paused, then asked, “Isn’t there some other way to go about this?”
“Oh, how do you mean?” Glick asked, looking around and down at him with a hairless cocked brow.
“I don’t know,” said Stanley. “Just something that’s more . . .” He searched his thoughts.
“Humane?” Glick snickered quietly.
“Well, yes,” Stanley said, “come to think of it. There has to be something more human than cutting off their heads and hauling them around.”
“I expect there might be,” said Glick. “But then nobody asked them to break the law, rob, maraud and murder, now did they?”
“But still,” said Stanley.
“Still nothing,” said Glick. “They’ll be dead when we bob ’em, most of them anyway . . . or damned near it.” He inched back from observing the men and dusted his pale hands together. “You cut heads off all the game you kill, don’t you?” He chuckled, and said in astonishment, “Hell, maybe you don’t. Maybe that’s why the two of yas was in such sore condition when I found yas—couldn’t even afford to gather your horse out of livery.”
“Of course I cut the heads off game,” Stanley replied, ignoring the cutting remark about his financial condition. “But that’s different, a lot different.”
Glick spit and shuffled over toward the horses, eyeing Shala’s thigh through her snug trousers as she turned his reins over to him. “Different how?” he asked, swinging stiffly up into his saddle, trying to do so effortlessly for the young woman’s benefit. “Dead meat is dead meat, human or otherwise. Slice a knife through it, bag it and turn it in for money. That’s the greatest respect will ever be paid to the likes of these gents.” He ticked his head toward the distant riders. Settling in his saddle as Stanley mounted, the Dutchman said to Shala, “You might need to toughen this boy up some, if he�
��s ever to make you a husband worth his salt.” He looked her up and down. “It might make folks begin to wonder just how much wife you are.” At the end of his cutting words, he grinned good-naturedly, making it a harsh but harmless joke.
Neither Shala nor Stanley found the old man’s words humorous or friendly or anything other than crude and tasteless. Yet they both held their tempers the way they had agreed to until they could find a tactful way of ridding themselves of the disgusting old assassin. Stanley looked a bit shocked when Shala said in a suggestive and challenging tone, “Nobody who’s ever known me has any doubt the kind of ‘wife-ing’ I can do.”
“Dang, young lady, I believe you.” Glick chuckled, turning his horse back to the trail.
Stanley looked back and forth between the two, not liking the exchange he’d just heard. “All right, where are we headed?”
“We’re going to do some head-hunting, lad,” Glick said over his shoulder, “as soon as we can locate ourselves a crossing.”
“We’re not going up to the hole, after Beck?” Stanley asked, wanting to do anything right then other than take on the gang of gunmen he’d seen on the other side of the ravine.
“We’re going to do both,” said Glick. “We’re going up to the hole. But never let it be said that Glick the Dutchman saw three thousand dollars on the hoof and didn’t stop and take it.”
“Three thousand dollars?” the Lowdens said to one another in unison, both looking impressed. Then Stanley recovered and asked, “You mean if we could take all of them down without getting ourselves killed, which sounds awfully unlikely to me—”
Almost before Stanley could get the words out of his mouth, Glick swung his horse quickly back beside him, reached over with his pale knuckled hand and rapped Stanley roughly yet jokingly on the crown of his hat. “Hello in there. Anybody home?” he asked. “Does Stanley Lowden live here?”
“All right, that’s enough, Mr. Glick.” Stanley jerked his head away in humiliation, wanting to throttle the old man. But he managed to keep his temper in check, partly out of respect, yet partly out of fear. Old or young, Glick was a murderer. Stanley had to keep that in mind.
“See, I’m not talking about taking on the whole gang, killing all of them for three thousand dollars, Stanley boy,” Glick said with a wide, sickly grin. “I’m talking about snaring one or two of them away from the rest. That’s what’ll get us three thousand dollars.” He shook his head at Stanley’s ignorance. “Hell, we’re igits, leastwise I’m not.”
Now Stanley and Shala really looked impressed. “You mean two of them are worth three thousand dollars?” Shala asked.
“Oh, yes,” Glick said confidently, staring straight ahead. “The two bringing up the rear, Buddy McQuin and Earl Thomas Boland, are both worth three thousand dollars. Boland is worth two thousand by himself. But together they make up a nice rich stew, don’t you think?”
“That’s a lot of money,” Stanley said, trying to get a grasp on the matter.
“An awful lot,” Shala put in. Then she asked, “So, just supposing we could take down the whole gang, Mr. Glick. How much would that come to?”
Glick thought about it with a slight shrug. “I’m thinking, upward over ten thousand, keeping in mind a few might not be wanted at all.”
Shala and Stanley looked at each other again. “We never gave any thought to how much money men like those are worth,” said Shala.
“That’s because they’re not worth anything to us if we end up dead,” said Stanley, becoming more practical on the matter. “They don’t lie down and allow themselves to be caught, now do they, Mr. Glick?”
“Indeed, they do not,” Glick tossed back over his shoulder to them. “This is not tolerable work for fools or cowards. But let me ask the two of yas, how much damage can a wounded buffalo or a hot-tailed grizzly heap on yas, given the right circumstances?”
“Still, there’s a lot to be thought over before jumping out after a gang of wanted gunmen,” Stanley said in resistance.
“Then think on it all you want to, foolish boy,” Glick said without turning and facing the two. “While you’re thinking on it, I’ll be storing up heads like a squirrel stores hickory nuts.”
“That is a lot of money, Stanley,” Shala said under her breath, sidelong to her husband.
Stanley stared at her but didn’t reply.
Glick had heard her well enough to get the gist of her words. Umm-hmm . . . He grinned to himself, spit sidelong and rode on in silence, booting his horse into a gallop. The Lowdens did the same, following his lead, just the way he’d intended.
Two hours later, on the other side of the ravine, Buddy McQuin and Earl Thomas Boland rode a few yards back, the two of them having let their horses lull while they took the time to roll themselves a smoke from McQuin’s bag of chopped tobacco. While McQuin put his tobacco pouch away, Boland ran his cigarette in and out of his lips, firmed it up, struck a match on his saddle horn and cupped it in his hands.
“I avoid making mention of it very often,” McQuin said quietly, taking his hat off and resting it on his lap, “but I have a couple of kin who are lawmen.” He leaned sidelong in his saddle and took a light from Boland’s match. Then he shoved his long, dirty blond hair aside, let go a stream of gray smoke and tacked on, “Don’t know why I’m telling you, except I figure what the hell, we’ve rode together awhile now, both of us on the dodge and all.” He gathered his hair back and put on his hat.
“Yeah,” said Boland, “who am I going to tell, and why, as far as that goes. We can’t help who we’s born kin to. I had a third cousin—third cousin, mind you—was killed dead as hell whilst wearing a woman’s dress, petticoats, breast strappings and all . . . and he had a beard thicker than mine or yours.”
“Jesus, God,” said McQuin, wincing at the picture it conjured up in his mind.
“Yeah, I know,” Boland said. “Do you think I mention that very often, to any damned body?” He drew on his cigarette and blew out a stream. “But like you said, we been together awhile—”
“Not that long, we haven’t,” said McQuin. “You could have kept that secret to yourself. It wouldn’t have bothered me none.”
Boland shrugged. “I figured since we was swapping family stories.”
“No,” said McQuin, “that still ain’t the sort of thing to tell, even on a third cousin.”
Boland just stared at him. “I ain’t saying he was off-natured or anything,” he said squarely. “He had posed as a bearded lady in a circus up East. I reckon it just grew to be a habit to him.”
“That’s off-natured enough,” said McQuin. “Come on, let’s catch up. I feel like I ought to wash my hands in a creek somewhere.” He turned his horse and nudged it along the trail.
“Hey, you ain’t going to say nothing to nobody about it, are you?” Boland said, having second thoughts in confiding in him.
“Hell no,” said McQuin, “I’d be embarrassed to. I’d advise you never to either.”
“Shit,” Boland whispered to himself, riding along right behind him.
Before the pair had ridden forward twenty feet, just as the rest of the men turned out of sight on the trail ahead, McQuin turned around in his saddle. “What is that?”
“I just said, sh—,” Boland tried to reply.
“Oh no!” said McQuin, interrupting him. He stared past Boland with a look of terror in his eyes at a thick pine log as long as the width of the trail swinging down from the trees and sweeping along at them, shoulder level above the ground.
“What the hell?” Boland asked, seeing the look of fear on McQuin’s face. But before either man could make a move or utter another word, the heavy log hit them with the impact of a runaway freight wagon. Boland took the log flat across his back, knocking him forward over his horse’s head with a loud snap of bones. The heavy log didn’t slow down. It swung full force into McQuin’s chest, crushing him and hurling both men from their saddles onto the rocky trail.
No sooner had both men landed in t
he dirt than the Dutchman and Stanley hurried out of a wood row beside the trail, knives still in hand from cutting the stays on the log and letting it swing. “Holy Mother of—” Stanley stopped short, looking down at the damage the log trap had inflicted.
“Grab him. Let’s get going,” Glick said in a harsh whisper, “before one of them comes back looking.” He shooed the two riderless horses back in the opposite direction along the trail.
On the ground, Boland, whose shoulders and spine had snapped like tree branches, lay limp with his neck at a peculiar angle. He stared up at Stanley through glazed, stunned eyes, his mouth gorged with arterial blood. “I can’t feel . . . noth-nothing,” he gasped in a wet, muffled voice.
Stanley couldn’t bear looking at the man. Yet he reached down and grabbed him by his shirt collar and dragged him off the trail, down out of sight into a leaf-strewn coulee. Glick kicked Boland’s hat off the trail, grabbed McQuin by his collar and dragged him down beside the other injured gunman. Shala walked up quietly, leading the horse and the pack mule. Glick looked at her and chuckled proudly under his breath. “How’d that suit you, young lady?”
Shala stood staring speechless at the men’s condition. McQuin was clearly dead, his chest flat and bloody, his eyes staring straight up blankly at the wide blue sky. Boland lay babbling mindlessly, “I can’t feel it . . . can’t feel it.”
“Carve his head off,” said Glick, “before he gets enough air in him to holler out.” As he spoke, he reached down with his knife and sliced back and forth into McQuin’s throat as he twisted the dead man’s head farther and farther back by the long yellow hair; the head pulled free of the trunk and McQuin’s body fell back onto the ground with a spill of blood.
“Oh, Jesus, I can’t,” Stanley said, watching Glick in wide-eyed disbelief.
On the ground, Boland called out in a strengthening voice, “I can’t feel it!”
“Stanley, you’ve got to,” Shala said, firmly. “Mr. Glick is right, he’ll soon start hollering.”
