by Ralph Cotton
Minnesota Fred sat up, looked at him and sniffed the air. He whispered in a harsh tone, “You crazy sumbitch, you’re hoot-owl drunk, ain’t you.”
“That’s a—matter of opinion,” Hargrove whispered, muffling both a short laugh and a hiccup. “I’ve got whiskey.”
“Jeez!” said Minnesota, wiping his hands up and down his trouser leg. “Then give me some of it. I’ve been lying here wishing either I or the whole rest of this miserable world was dead.”
“Now, now,” Hargrove teased, “you don’t want to get in trouble, do you?”
“Willard, if you’ve got a bottle, you best come up with it. I ain’t in no mood,” Martin whispered in a threatening manner.
Hargrove handed over a tall, half-full bottle of rye and asked under his breath, “Are we pards, Minnesota, or what?”
“Oh, Lord God, yes,” said Martin, taking the bottle. He jerked the cork and threw back a long guzzle. He let out a muffled whiskey hiss. “I always said you was strictly tops in my estimation.”
“I’m going to bed myself down now,” said Hargrove. “You stand guard and take care of my friend here, all right?”
“Like it was my very own child,” Martin said, patting the bottle of whiskey lovingly.
Behind the cover of a downed ash tree less than ten feet away, the ranger and Memphis Beck listened intently. When Hargrove staggered away and lay down and rolled up in his blanket near the fire, Sam started to stand in a crouch and follow Fred Martin over to where Hargrove had been sitting close to the horses. But Beck reached over and put a hand on his arm, stopping him.
Once Minnesota Fred was over by the horses, seated on a pine log, Beck whispered close to Sam’s ear, “We’re in luck. That’s Minnesota Fred Martin. He’s a bigger drunk than Willard Hargrove. Give him a few minutes, he’ll be knocked out.”
Sam eased back down and waited. After a few minutes, Beck gave him a nudge, and the two crawled away in a wide circle. When they circled back in, they stopped only a few feet from Minnesota Fred and watched in the pale moonlight as Martin raised another long swig of whiskey. A moment later he reached down and stuck the empty bottle beneath the pine log.
“There’s my stallion,” the ranger whispered, staring through the darkness, barely able to make out the big Appaloosa’s white-spotted rump in the pale moonlight. The stallion stood at the end of a long line of horses hitched to a rope stretched between two trees.
“Go get him,” Beck whispered. “I’ll keep an eye on Martin. When you’re out of there, I’ll ease in and find the dynamite.”
Sam nodded. “Here goes.”
First crawling, then coming up into a low crouch, he moved along silently. He stayed just inside the edge of the woods until he stepped out at the long line of horses. Using his raised hand to keep the horses settled, he worked his way to Black Pot. The big stallion piqued his ears at the sight of the ranger, but remained quiet as if he knew something was afoot.
Easy boy . . . Without a word, Sam unhitched the stallion and led him away. When he stopped twenty feet deep in the shelter of the woods, he stooped down and watched Beck’s dark silhouette move along in a crouch across the sleeping campsite. Hurry it up, Beck. . . .
Past the line of horses and deeper into the camp, Beck found the mule tied to its own tree, away from the sleepers and a safe distance from any crackling sparks from the campfire. Halfway around the large spruce from the animal, the dynamite lay in a pile, four large packs covered by a heavy sheet of canvas.
Hurriedly but silently Beck carried the first pack around the tree and hefted it up onto the mule’s back. The animal stood as still as stone and watched Beck go back and return with the second pack. But this time when he laid the pack up on the mule’s back, the animal flew into a fit of braying and kicking its heels wildly.
“Oh, no!” Beck said to himself, seeing the two packs of dynamite hit the ground and roll a few feet away. He tried to quiet the animal, but he realized it was too late. Hearing the camp come alive with shouts and cursing, followed by gunshots, all he could do was turn and make a dash for the woods, firing his Colt back as he ran.
Sam held the stallion and tried to give Beck cover with his big Colt. But he realized that two Colts against a camp full of rifles wouldn’t be able to hold out long. “Come on, Beck,” he shouted, seeing Beck stumble and slow down for a second in the darkness. Then, he saw that even as Beck continued running to him, his gait wasn’t the same. Knowing the outlaw had taken a bullet, Sam said beneath a hail of bullets, “How bad is it?”
“I’m done for. . . . Get out of here, Ranger,” Beck said, half collapsing to the ground before Sam managed to catch him by his arm.
“You’re coming too,” Sam insisted. Looping Beck’s arm over his shoulder, Sam fired his two last shots at the blossoming gunshots, then turned and hefted Beck up over the stallion’s bare back, jumped up behind him and batted his heels to the stallion’s sides.
Waiting with the horses, farther back in the wood-lands Hector could tell things had gone wrong. As he listened to the sound of the hooves pounding through the woods, he jumped into his saddle but held his ground long enough to see that it was Beck and the ranger on the big stallion.
“Don’t shoot, Hector,” Sam called out, when he first saw the rifle up and aimed in his direction. But as Hector’s rifle exploded, Sam realized that the Mexican was returning fire at the many guns blazing from the campsite behind them.
Jumping down from Black Pot’s back, Sam pitched Hector the reins, and said, “He’s hit. Take him and go.” He jerked his rifle from the saddle boot on the horse he’d rode in on and said to Hector as the Mexican turned his horse to lead Beck and Black Pot away to safety, “Watch for me atop the ridge.”
“You can’t stand them off!” Hector called back to the ranger as he rode away, bullets slicing through tree limbs around him.
But Sam didn’t answer. He ran in a crouch, straight back toward the campsite, staying low, not firing right away, lest he reveal himself to the gunmen. “Get them horses saddled, damn it to hell!” he heard Sabott shouting as he stopped behind the cover of a thick ash tree and stared into the campsite, seeing some men hurriedly saddling their horses, others firing repeatedly into the woods toward him.
Knowing it would be only a matter of seconds before the whole camp was mounted and on their backs, Sam laid his rifle butt into position, using the tree to steady it, and scanned back and forth until he found the packs of dynamite lying on the ground where the mule had slung them off.
“Martin, you drunken son of a bitch, that was Memphis Beck!” he heard Sabott scream like a madman at Minnesota Fred. “I’ll kill you!” But before Sabott could make good his threat, Sam locked on to his target in the flicker of firelight, cocked his Winchester and pulled the trigger.
The gunfire was swallowed by an earth-shaking explosion. Before the ranger could even duck down, he saw man, animal, saddles, boots, blankets and gear flying high in the air, rolling in a huge orange-blue ball of fire. For a moment all he could do was lie huddled against the tree, his spine still ajar, his hands clasped over his aching ears.
Yet, when the explosion had ended and bits of debris began falling down through the treetops, Sam heard the pack mule braying wildly and saw it race past the tree with smoke streaking in its wake, and he knew it was time to go.
He stood up and steadied himself against the tree for a moment to get his balance back. Then he levered a fresh round into his rifle chamber and hurried away through the woods.
Chapter 24
Hector and Memphis Beck were waiting back in the darker shadows of the woods when Sam topped the edge of the cut bank. Without seeing them, the ranger called out in a hushed voice, “Hector, it’s me. Where are you?”
“Back here, in the trees,” Hector replied. “What set off the dynamite?”
Sam didn’t answer until he stepped the barb into the wood row. “I took a chance and fired a shot into it. I didn’t know if it would go off or not.”
> “It must’ve been . . . already fused and ready,” Beck said in a strained voice.
The ranger looked at Beck in the darkness, but asked the Mexican, “Is he going to be all right?”
Beck answered for himself. “I will be. But you two need to . . . get out of here . . . right now.”
“Uh-uh,” said the ranger. “We all three go, or we all three stay.” He stepped down from the barb and over to Beck, who sat slumped on the bareback stallion.
“I tried to stop the bleeding with his bandanna,” said Hector, “but I don’t think it is helping much.”
“We need light, to take a look at it,” Sam said.
Regarding the blast, Hector said, “The explosion almost knocked us from our horses. Do you think it killed everybody?”
“No, not everybody,” Sam replied, helping Beck down from Black Pot and up onto the saddled barb, giving the wounded man something to hold on to. “I expect whoever is alive is gathering horses right now to come after us. One thing for sure, they won’t be robbing trains tomorrow.”
Listening, Beck replied weakly, “I don’t want the last thing I ever do . . . to be stopping a train robbery.”
“It’s not the last thing you’ll ever do, Beck,” said Sam.
Beck said in a failing voice, “If you . . . see Clair, tell her . . . tell her.”
“Hush,” Sam said. “We’ll get you up to Hole-in-the-wall. You can tell her yourself.” Turning to Hector he said, “Let’s get him out of here. We need to see what we’re doing. We’ve got to get this bleeding stopped.”
With Beck slumped over his saddle horn, Sam climbed atop Black Pot and the three rode away, the ranger leading the barb by its reins. As they rode deeper into the woods, they began hearing shouts and cursing from the lowlands behind them. Looking back as if in awe, Hector saw a high tower of gray smoke looming in the night sky.
On the ground in the midst of the smoke and dust, Angelo Sabott stood looking around at the residual flames clinging to the sides of trees, and at bits of debris burning here and there on the ground. “My God, what a mess! Somebody get me a horse! Where the hell are all the horses?”
In the shadowy glow of hazy firelight, Bobby Zackarow walked across the upturned campsite, a Colt in one hand and a broken rifle in the other. His face was covered with dark soot, except for the white circles around his eyes. “Was it Memphis Beck?” he asked in a smoldering tone.
“Yeah,” said Sabott, “I got a look at him when he turned and ran away.” He stared off through the woods in the direction Beck had taken. “He’s a dead man as soon as I catch him. He’s not getting away with this.”
Bobby Zackarow spit and ran the back of his soot-darkened hand across his lips. “What the hell did you expect, stealing a man’s dynamite?”
Ignoring Zackarow, Sabott asked, still staring into the woods, “Are you going with me?”
Zackarow looked all around at the devastation. “Hell yes, I’m going. So’s any men of mine that’s still alive, soon as they gather some horses—if there’s any horses left.”
“If I have to walk, I’m going after him,” Sabott vowed. “I’ve been gypped out of a lot of money, not getting to do this job. It’s all Beck’s fault. He’s got to pay for what he’s done.”
Zackarow just looked at him.
Al Heakland came walking up in a hurry, leading three horses by their reins, his face the same smoky soot color as Sabott’s and Zackarow’s. Out of breath he said to Sabott, “Shelby Boyd is dead. So is Whispering Phil, and Farrel’s kid brother, Bud.”
“Jesus,” said Sabott.
To Zackarow, Heakland said, “Half of your man Fannin is hanging up in a tree. I don’t know where the rest of him is. Minnesota Fred is missing—he just seemed to vanish. Your other men are all right. Hargrove’s staggering around from the blast. Most all of the horses are okay, just spooked all to hell. I told everybody to chase one down and follow us.”
“Good.” Sabott grabbed a pair of reins and climbed up onto the horse’s bare back.
Zackarow took one of the other two horses, climbed onto its back and slapped bits of leather and wood from its mane. “Let’s get after that son of a bitch,” he growled.
“He’ll head straight for the hole,” said Sabott.
“Then so will we,” said Zackarow.
At daylight, in spite of Beck’s wound, the three had put twenty miles between themselves and the blown-up campsite. Once they saw that Sabott and his men had gained very little ground on them overnight, the ranger broke away from the other two and rode to a small trading post, from where he brought back bandages, food and canteens of water.
Beck had lost a lot of blood, but the bullet had gone all the way through and left a clean wound. Before they’d stopped at dawn, the bleeding had already slowed to a thin trickle. Upon Sam’s return, with fresh bandages front and rear, Beck looked up from against the trunk of a tree where Hector had sat him.
“You two make good nursemaids,” he said, his voice sounding stronger, yet still weakened from his loss of blood.
“Here, eat this. It’ll build your blood up,” Sam said, stooping down, stirring hot water into a tin cup of pemmican he’d brought back from the trading post.
After the ranger had spoon-fed him a few bites, Beck looked up at him and said, “Maybe you best cut away before we cross the red wall and get inside the hole, Ranger.”
“I’m not leaving as long as Sabott and his men might still be trailing us,” Sam replied. “I saw dust up along the high trail on my way back with supplies. I’m betting it’s them.”
“They’ll stay right on me,” said Beck. “Sabott knows where I hole up. He won’t stop until we have our reckoning.”
“Then that’s how it will be,” said Sam, lifting another spoon of pemmican from the tin cup.
“But you might not be so well received at Hole-in-the-wall,” Beck cautioned him. He gave a thin, weak grin. “Not everybody there consorts with lawmen the way I seem to of late.”
“A while back you told us most of your men are spread out across the country right now,” Sam said.
“Yeah, but there are plenty of others there that would just as soon not see a badge riding toward them. Even though you’re with me, they might shoot first and say howdy later.”
“I’ll take my chances,” said Sam. “I’ve never run out on a fellow in my life.”
Beck closed his eyes, feeling weak again. “Worried about your reputation, eh?”
The ranger just looked at him.
“You must hurry. It is time to go,” said Hector, stepping in with the reins to the horses in hand. While Sam had fed Beck the pemmican, the Mexican had rearranged the saddles, taking Sam’s off the barb and putting it on Black Pot. When Sam helped Beck to his feet, he helped him up onto his own horse that Hector had been leading along with Sam’s spare.
“I figure we could try to lose them, and lie low somewhere while you heal up,” said Sam. “But if they ride on to the hole, that could endanger Clarimonde.”
“You bet it would,” said Beck.
“But if we ride hard,” Sam continued, “cut across some rough country, we can be inside the hole in four days. Are you up to it?”
“Three days,” said Beck, trying to sound stronger than he really was. “I’m up to it and I know the fastest way. I don’t want the word getting out among the railroad bulls that I’m wounded. I’ll have to swat them off like flies.”
“Then three days it is,” said Sam. “Lead us there at your pace.” He stepped atop Black Pot. In spite of the situation, it felt good having the big Appaloosa back beneath him. He turned the stallion and nudged it forward, out of the woods and across a stretch of rolling grasslands, headed north.
For two and a half days, they pushed themselves and the animals hard, swapping saddles to the barb and the other spare horse when they needed to rest one of their mounts. At one point, seeing Beck buckle forward and lie slumped on his horse’s neck, Hector sidled over to him quickly and helped him r
ight himself. Then, seeing Sam ride over to them, he said, “Ranger, he will kill himself if we allow him to keep this up.”
“What do you say, Beck?” Sam asked, reaching over and raising Beck’s coat and shirt to examine the wound front and back for any sign of fresh bleeding.
“How does it look back there, Ranger?” Beck asked, his voice having grown weaker throughout the ride.
“It looks the same,” Sam replied, “but looks can fool you, even on a clean-through wound.”
“Then let’s keep going,” Beck said, almost before Sam had finished answering him.
Later that evening, the three sat staring out the wide gap in the long stretch of high red earth that formed a long, steep red wall.
“So that’s it,” Sam said.
“S’í, it is the entrance to Hole-in-the-wall,” said Hector, having spent the winter there with Beck and Clarimonde. Beside him, Beck lay barely conscious in his saddle, Hector leading his horse by its reins. “But it is still a long ride from here to Beck’s cabin.”
“Do you know the way?” Sam asked.
“S’í, I know the way,” said Hector. He nodded toward Beck. “We need to get him there quickly, so Miss Clair can look after him. He is not doing so good maybe.”
“You’re right, he looks bad,” said Sam, turning in his saddle and looking back toward the winding trail that ran down over a rise less than two miles away, “and I’ve got a feeling Sabott is right behind us.” No sooner had Sam spoken than he saw the first three riders come up into sight as if rising from the ground.
“Uh-oh,” said Hector.
Before turning and nudging the stallion on behind Hector, who turned quickly and booted his horse into a run, leading Beck behind him, Sam counted four more riders come into sight. This was bad, he thought. Even once they got to Beck’s cabin, then what? he asked himself.
They rode on at a hard pace as the sun moved down out of sight before them; then onward throughout the night, across rocky, treacherous ground, stopping only long enough to water the horses amid a wide shallow stream.
