Dark Horses

by Ralph Cotton

  “Easy, mister. You’re not the only one heeling a scattergun,” Summers cautioned, seeing Darren getting more and more and out of hand. “I shot you before. I’ll shoot you again.” Without taking his eyes off Darren, he said to Dad, “Rein him in, Mr. Crayley! This is all about to go bad on us!”

  “Bad on us?” Darren shouted. “I’ll show you bad on us!”

  “Get back here, idiot!” Dad demanded to his raging son.

  But it was too late. Darren cocked the hammers back on the sawed-off and swung it toward Summers. But before he got the gun level, Summers’ shotgun belched a blast of fire and smoke that lifted Darren from his saddle and sent him flying backward. His shotgun went off sidelong, both barrels, and blasted Tubbs’ head to pieces. Hearing Dad Crayley let out a scream, Summers didn’t hesitate on where to go next. He swung the gun at Dad and fired. Dad left his saddle like a broken rag doll. A red mist hung in the air.

  Hico Morales jerked his rifle up from across his lap, but he had to duck Summers’ smoking shotgun as Summers hurled it at him. By the time he’d knocked the empty shotgun away and gotten his rifle to his shoulder, Summers had grabbed the pack of money, his Colt up and firing. As bullets nipped at him, he fell back through the front door, which Ted Ford had thrown open for him. Bullets thumped into the thick door as Ted threw the bolt into place.

  “That could have gone better, Will,” he said, helping Summers to his feet.

  “I know,” Summers said. “I’m still learning—working on it.” He threw the pack of money aside.

  “Are you hit?” Ted asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Summers said. Upstairs, Lonnie, Rena and Bailey Swann had started firing from the gun ports. Outside, bullets still hit the front of the hacienda, shots still exploded, but the sound of hooves dwarfed all else.

  “They’re pulling back into the brush!” said Ted. “Likely as not they’ll try burning us out, the way Rizale and Tate aimed to do Lonnie—”

  “Huh-uh,” Summers said, opening his Colt and letting his spent rounds fall to the floor. “Not this bunch. They came to collect anything of value. They got a sniff of this money. They’re not going to burn it up.”

  “Then what now?” Ted asked.

  Summers nodded at the large front window ten feet away. Like with all the other windows, its thick shutters where closed. This window looked out onto the whole front yard. It was large enough to support two gun port openings. Its bottom ledge stood knee-high.

  “We’re going to wave the money in their faces and start negotiating all over again,” Summers said somberly. “We’re stuck in this game, Ted. The only way out is to win it.”

  “Lonnie and me, we’re just hired hands. But you tell us how to play it, Will, and we’ll win it with you, I promise you,” Ted said. He patted the Colt standing in its holster on his side.

  “Good men,” said Summers, grabbing the money pack and walking to the shuttered window. “First, let’s see who answers when I ask who’s in charge now.”

  “What if we give them the money and they don’t give it to Finnity and Baines?” he asked, helping Summers unlock the big, thick shutters. He picked up a rifle leaning beside the big window and checked it.

  “To tell you the truth, Ted, I don’t much care,” Summers said. “The Swanns are not innocent victims. This is their world. Everybody else is just visiting.” He opened the thick shutter on the right and looked out toward the brush. “Everybody I’ve come across here, the Belltraes, the Swanns, all these gunmen out here, they’re all a string of dark horses. The only righteous folks I’ve met have been Bedos and Rena and you and Lonnie. Everybody else is ready to stab each other in the back.” He shook his head. “Hadn’t been for you four, I’d have taken my string of bays back home and called all this a misdeal.” He raised the pack of money and held it out for the men in the brush to see.

  Beside him, Ted stood ready with the rifle.

  “All right, out there,” Summers shouted, “who’s in charge now?”

  A silence ensued. Summers stood ready to jump back with the money at the sound of gunfire. But after a moment, he called out, “Who do I give this money to?”

  This time only a second seemed to pass.

  “I’m in charge,” said Hico Morales. He stood up halfway behind a rock. “I have a bullet graze on my arm.”

  “Tough break,” Summers called out. “Can you carry a backpack full of money, or am I talking to the wrong man?”

  “You are talking to the right man,” Hico said. “How do I know you won’t shoot me when I come to get it?”

  “You don’t,” Summers said flatly. “This much money takes cojones. If you don’t have them, send somebody else.”

  Beside Summers Ted gave a nervous chuckle.

  “You beat all, Will,” he said.

  The two watched as Hico walked forward warily from the brush. When he stopped ten feet from the front porch, Summers swung the backpack and hurled it to the ground at Hico’s feet.

  Without another word, Hico picked it up and backed away the first fifteen feet. Then he turned and walked back to the brush. Ted and Summers closed the big shutters and bolted them. They stood listening. In a moment they heard laughter and hoots of delight, then the sound of hoofbeats as they looked out and saw the men riding away. The empty hay wagon sat at the edge of the front yard.

  “Is that it? They’re gone?” Bailey Swann asked, walking halfway down the stairs.

  “Let’s hope so,” Summers said. At the head of the stairs, he saw Rena looking wary, a rifle in her hands. “I believe they’ll go on back to town now,” he said. “There’s no reason for them not to.” Rena and Bailey both looked relieved. They turned and walked back to Ansil Swann’s office, where Lonnie still stood looking out a gun port.

  Behind them, Summers and Ted walked in as the sound of hooves faded beyond the low rise. Lonnie turned from the window and leaned against the wall in relief.

  “What now, Will?” he asked.

  Summers looked at Rena Reyes. She gave him a slight nod.

  “Rena and I are leaving,” he said. “We’re taking the doctor’s rig back to him. Then we’re gone to Wind River.”

  “I’m leaving too,” Ted Ford said. “Maybe I should ride with you to the doctor’s, just in case?”

  Summers glanced at Rena for a look of approval and got it.

  “You can ride with us,” he said.

  “Me too?” Lonnie asked. “For a little ways?”

  “Yep,” Summers said.

  “What about me?” Bailey Swann asked.

  They all looked at her.

  “Take care of your husband,” Lonnie said. “We’ll tell the doctor to come see about him. He’ll know somebody willing to work for you.”

  “And I’m stuck here until then?” Bailey asked in a tense voice, struggling to keep herself in check. A nerve twitched at her jawline. Ansil Swann sat in his wheelchair, the same blank expression on his face, the same lost and hopeless eyes staring at the floor.

  “Afraid so,” Lonnie said.

  The four of them looked at one another, then turned, walked out the office door and down the stairs. They started for the front door, but Lonnie stopped, let out a breath and turned around. He started back up.

  “Where are you going, Lon?” said Ted.

  “I can’t leave him here with her. She won’t take care of him. Send the doctor when you get to town—” His words stopped short at the sound of a gunshot from upstairs. Everybody froze. Lonnie recovered quickly and bound up the stairs, the other three right behind him. At the top of the landing another shot exploded. They rushed into Ansil Swann’s office and froze again.

  “My, my . . . ,” Lonnie whispered, in dread and in awe.

  Bailey Swann lay dead in a pool of blood on the office floor, a bullet hole through her heart. Her dead eyes stared straight and mindlessly
across the office floor. Ansil Swann lay facedown on his desk, blood and brain matter running down the wall on his left. His right hand lay near the frozen engraved Colt on his desk. Smoke curled from the gun’s barrel and rose and weaved its way into the cloud of smoke hanging overhead.

  “Oh no!” Rena said. She clasped her hands to her mouth and tried to step forward. But Summers slipped his arm around her and gently but firmly drew her away. He turned her away from the grisly scene and led her out the office door. “Let’s go downstairs, Rena,” he whispered to her. “There’s nothing you can do here. You don’t work for them anymore.”

  Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack is back!

  Don’t miss a page of action from

  America’s most exciting Western author, Ralph Cotton.

  GOLDEN RIDERS

  Available from Signet in October 2014.

  The Badlands, Arizona Territory

  Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack rode a thin, steep game trail up through a maze of large, squat boulders and tall-standing chimney rock. At the top of the trail there would be four gunmen waiting for him. He was certain of it. There had been five gunmen starting out last week, but yesterday he had reduced their numbers by one when he put a well-placed bullet squarely in the back of Cordell Kane—right between the shoulder blades. It was the best shot he could get, so he’d taken it, knowing that one less gun to face in the end could make the difference between dying and staying alive.

  Now for the other four. . . .

  Two of the gunmen waiting up ahead for him were bank robbers Cutthroat Teddy Bonsell and an old ex-lawman turned outlaw, Jake Cleary. The other two were brothers by the name of Cundiff, Willie and Joe Cundiff. They would all be waiting, guns in hand, and this part of his hunt would be over—here atop a rocky hillside in the blazing sun. This was where their trail had brought him, Sam told himself, looking all around. Here was where their lawlessness would stop.

  Beneath him, the barb, a coppery black-point dun, took the trail at an easy walk, raising its muzzle now and then and sniffing the air up ahead. Sam thought it reasonable to believe that as long as he and the dun had been trailing these two miscreants, the horse had come to know their scent as well as it knew the scent of a bear, a coyote. It was just a notion he’d come to consider, knowing that horses were not always given credit for being as smart or as crafty as, say, a dog, a wolf or a mountain cat. Yet, he reminded himself, it had to be noted that the equine species had managed to survive among its many hungry predators for long ages past. That has to speak well for these fine fleet animals. Doesn’t it? he asked himself.

  Of course it does.

  He patted a hand on the dun’s neck; the horse sawed its head a little and blew out a breath, as if in some silent agreement with him. They rode on another three hundred yards through twists and sharp turns, around land-stuck boulders and now and then past a lank and sparsely clad pine whose very presence implied that God had a strange sense of humor. Finally the top of the trail revealed itself against a cloudless blue sky. There the Ranger brought the dun to a halt and stepped down from his saddle, rifle in hand.

  “Here’s as far as you go, Copper,” he said to the dun. The barb took a sidestep away from him as if to protest his decision and continue on in pursuit. But Sam held the reins firm-handed and rubbed the horse’s nose. “You think so now, but what if it doesn’t come out to suit us?”

  The horse chuffed and slung its sweaty head a little but then settled under such sage reasoning.

  “That’s what I thought,” Sam said, cradling his Winchester in the crook of his elbow.

  He led the horse a few feet to a lank pine, where he loosened the cinch and dropped his saddle from the horse’s back. He slipped the bit from the horse’s mouth and spun one of the reins around a stub of a pine limb and tied it in a loose slip hitch that the horse could easily pull free if it needed to.

  The coppery dun stared at him almost warily, Sam thought, as he peeled the trail glove from his right hand and shoved it down behind his gun belt.

  “Don’t start being a worrier on me,” he said with the trace of a wry smile. He raised his big Colt from his holster, checked it and let it hang down at his side, his thumb over the hammer. “I plan on coming back for you.”

  • • •

  At the top of the trail, Cutthroat Teddy Bonsell eased down behind the hot boulder he’d been lying on. His shirt glistened wet, covered with sweat from the heat of the boulder standing exposed with no shade on its sides or face. He pulled his shirt free from being stuck against his wet chest and fanned it back and forth as if to cool himself.

  “Man!” he said to Jake Cleary, sitting on the ground beside him in the boulder’s shade. “If hell’s any hotter than that, I pity the devil.”

  “The devil ain’t in hell,” said Cleary, idly scratching his salt-and-pepper beard. “He’s smart enough, he’s lying somewhere in a cool stream. Did you see the lawman?”

  “I saw him. He’s headed up,” said Cutthroat. “He’s riding slow, watching the ground.” He gave a thin grin. “Riding right into our laps.”

  Cleary shook his head. “What’s he still watching our tracks for? Where else could we be but here?”

  “Ask him that when he gets up here,” said Cutthroat, levering a round into his rifle chamber. He looked along a line of rock where the brothers leaned, waiting, watching him, all four tired horses standing on their other side. Cutthroat Teddy raised his arm and swung it back and forth and pointed toward the trail on the other side of the boulder.

  “No hurry yet,” said Cleary, seeing Teddy and the Cundiffs quickly preparing to meet the Ranger. “The way I figure, he’ll leave his horse down there a ways and ease up the rest of the way up the trail on foot.”

  “The way you figure . . . ,” Cutthroat said flatly. He gathered the front of his shirt and squeezed sweat from it. “Let me tell you something, Jake. I’m the one who lay up there on my belly watching for him. We’re going by what I figure. He’ll be riding up here any minute. You’d best be ready to tell him hello.”

  “I am ready,” Jake Cleary said, jiggling his rifle in the crook of his arm. He spat and wiped his hand across his mouth. “You never seen me when I was unready.”

  Teddy settled a little. “Riding, walking, I don’t care how he gets here. I just want the man dead and off our backsides.” He raised his hat and wiped sweat from his forehead. “I figured killing Cordy would have been good enough for him, the way these lawmen are,” he added in disgust.

  Cleary just looked at him.

  “How are they?” he asked.

  Teddy shrugged, leveled his hat back atop his head.

  “You know what I mean,” he said. “I figured he’d got himself a dead outlaw to show all the folks in Nogales. That’s all he cares about.”

  Jake Cleary looked bemused, cocked his head curiously and gazed coolly at him.

  “Are you sure you’ve ever heard of Ranger Sam Burrack?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes, I heard of him,” said Cutthroat Teddy. “He killed Junior Lake, a couple of other second-rate saddle bums. So what?” He gave a shrug. “It ain’t going to get me all wrought up and worried inside.” He gave a lopsided grin. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get around this boulder, be ready for him when he gets up here.” His grin widened. “Maybe he’ll tell you the story of how he killed Junior Lake and his gang of desperadoes.”

  “I ain’t making him no bigger than he is,” Cleary grumbled, following Teddy around the large boulder.

  “Hell, old man, everybody makes him bigger than he is,” said Cutthroat Teddy. “I expect I just ain’t as easily impressed as the rest of yas.” The two stopped on the other side of the boulder and waited as the Cundiff brothers walked over closer to them.

  “I never said I was impressed with him,” Cleary said in a gruff tone. “I’m just saying what I know. He’s a tough nut, and a man ought to ke
ep that in mind before trying to kill him.”

  “Duly noted, Jake,” said Teddy with a smug grin. “However tough he is wouldn’t have meant spit once Brax found out he killed his brother, Cordy.” He tapped his forehead proudly. “See, I figure we’re doing Brax a favor when we kill this fool.”

  “You mean if we kill him,” Cleary put in grimly.

  “Don’t cast doubt on me, old man,” Teddy warned. “I will split your gullet like a Christmas goose.”

  Cleary grumbled under his breath, but he turned away to watch the trail the Ranger would be coming up. Teddy turned to the Cundiffs. As the two drew closer he waved them to a halt.

  “What the hell are you doing, coming over here?” he said in a harsh whisper. “This ain’t no church gathering! I need you both spread out, over there, the other side of the trail.”

  Without even stopping, Joe and Willie Cundiff turned a tight circle and walked away toward the other side of the trail.

  “Damn it,” Willie whispered sidelong to his younger brother, “I knew we should’ve gone on over there in the first place. Now we’ve made ourselves look like a couple of rubes, him having to tell us where to go.” He paused as they walked on, then said, “Makes it look like this is our first ambush or something.”

  • • •

  To be on the safe side, the Ranger had left the trail a hundred yards below the top of the hill. There had been too many places where he knew he could be seen by anyone keeping watch above him. A hundred yards or less put him in a dangerous position. He didn’t like moving forward with the threat of rifle sights beading down on him, even though climbing around the rocky hillside off the trail was no less dangerous in itself.

  The last hundred yards had taken him over half an hour, but upon easing up out of the rocks and brush behind the big boulder, he realized the extra time had been worth it. As soon as he stepped up and slipped around the side of the boulder, he looked down and saw the Cundiff brothers sitting huddled in a stretch of brush. Ready, waiting for him, he told himself.