Border Dogs

by Ralph Cotton

  “Here’s my pistol,” Billy said, raising it from his holster and passing it to Durant without facing him.

  “Are you sure about this, Billy?”

  “I’m sure.” Billy’s hands trembled. “So long, pal.”

  Aw, Jesus. Durant tightened his hand around the pistol and watched Billy Dig lean forward, Billy’s arms spreading wide like a man relaxing in a cool sparkling stream. It was simple and quick, and Billy was gone. There was no sound except for the low whir of hot rising wind. Durant stared straight across the open hole in the earth until a full minute had passed. All right, Billy made his choice. Not a bad one at that, all things considered, he thought, reaching behind his back and shoving the pistol into his waistband.

  He’d told Billy Dig straight. Prison would have been no place for that boy—better that he died right here right now. Death wasn’t always the worst thing that could happen to a man. Durant had lived long enough to know that much. But ending his own life wasn’t something he could do. Not just yet anyway. He had too strong a reason to stay alive. He’d get past the Ranger, somehow, someway. And even if he didn’t get away right now, he’d bide his time—wait it out, look for his chance. There was still something Willis Durant had to do; something more important to him than life or death.

  There were men down along the border he still had to find. These were men who’d murdered his wife and son. And Willis Durant had made up his mind a year ago, the day he’d laid their broken bodies in the cold, hard ground. There was nothing between heaven and hell that would keep him from finding those men and killing them in turn, like the dogs they were….

  Table of Contents

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part 2

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part 3

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part 4

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  PART 1

  Chapter 1

  A hot wind licked at the brim of the Ranger’s gray sombrero. He tugged the hat down with his free hand and glanced across the deep canyon. On the far side, in the angry swirl of heat and sand, a lone dust devil rose on the desert floor and careened away, bending low stands of brittle mesquite into brief submission and leaving them swaying twisted in its wake.

  “Never counted on you giving yourself up, Durant,” the Ranger said, letting out a long breath, but staying alert, still watching the man’s eyes. “Figured the next ride you’d make would be facedown across the saddle.”

  “Sorry to disappoint ya, Ranger.” Willis Durant stood with his hands raised chest high, the Ranger moving closer along the thin ledge, the big rifle covering him. “I’m not dead—not even wounded.”

  The Ranger stepped closer to Willis Durant, looking him up and down. “I’m never disappointed when I don’t have to kill a man, Durant. That was just speculation on my part.” He glanced out over the ledge, then back at Willis Durant. “Is Billy Dig down there?”

  “Yep, he done himself over.” Durant’s eyes said nothing, staring caged at the Ranger.

  “That makes no sense at all.” The Ranger shook his head. “His first time up…he’d only have done a few years hard labor. Now you, that’s a different story. You’ll be getting around on a walking cane by the time you finish this stretch. Seems like you’d been the one to take the plunge, if anybody was going to.”

  “But, I didn’t.” Durant bit his words off. A thin lizard crept out from beneath a rock at Durant’s feet. He nudged it back with the toe of his boot. “Why don’t we get down from here before we get et up by rattlesnakes.”

  No, he sure didn’t. The Ranger offered a thin smile, wondering why Willis Durant, for all his grit and daring, had suddenly decided to turn himself in. Well, there could be only one reason, the Ranger thought. Willis Durant had a plan of some sort in mind. He wasn’t giving up this easy.

  On an outside chance, the Ranger said, “I suppose you don’t mind lifting that pistol from behind your back with one finger and flipping it out there over the edge? It’d make me feel a lot better.”

  Durant stared at him for a moment longer, his breath closed in his chest, thinking about it, weighing his odds. No, too risky. If he died here and now, this whole past year would have been for nothing. He let out a breath, slumped a bit, and said, “How’d you know about it, Ranger?”

  The Ranger shrugged, his gloved finger held steady across the rifle trigger. “What’s the difference? I just knew about it. Now raise it up and pitch it away.” He wasn’t about to tell Durant that it had only been a guess—that was bad poker. Let the man wonder about it.

  Durant raised the pistol on one finger, held it out to the side, and flipped it away, it clattered, bouncing and scraping down the long rock wall.

  “If you’ve got any other hardware I oughta to know about, now’s a good time to declare it,” the Ranger said, gesturing Durant forward.

  “No, that’s it, Ranger. I’m clean.” He held his hands out before him, his wrists close together, seeing the Ranger reach around and take a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket. Durant sighed. “I guess you killed Buck and Wandering Joe on your way up here?”

  “Yep. I had to shoot Buck…he didn’t know when to quit. Sheriff Tackett got Wandering Joe.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Durant said.

  “So, you’re the last of the bunch, Willis Durant.” The Ranger snapped the cuffs on Durant’s wrists and pulled him forward, backing along the ledge path until the ground widened beneath their feet. Then he stepped behind Durant and nudged him forward. “What was you thinking anyway, riding with the likes of Wandering Joe and that bunch? Robbing banks of all things. Wandering Joe Gully never pulled off a good job in his life.”

  “He was hiring. I needed the money.” Durant stared straight ahead.

  “Oh…you needed the money,” the Ranger said in a flat tone. He shook his head. “I thought you’d learned your lesson and settled down. Last I heard of you, you had a family somewhere down near—”

  “Leave my family out of this, Ranger,” Durant said, cutting him off. “I just needed the money. Let it go at that. I’ve got nothing more to say to you.”

  Down the path, behind a rock, Sheriff Tackett had waited for the past twenty minutes, listening for the sound of the Ranger’s big rifle. When the sound didn’t come as he’d expected, he’d grown more and more concerned that something had gone wrong. Now, as Durant stepped into sight around a turn in the steep rock path, Tackett almost raised up and shot him before seeing the sunlight glitter on the steel handcuffs.

  “Hold your fire down there, Tackett,” the Ranger called out behind Durant, seeing the sheriff standing up with his pistol cocked and pointed. “Billy Dig took a plunge off the edge of the cliff. Mister Durant here has decided to give himself up. Can you believe that?”

  “I see it, but naw-sir, I don’t believe it,” Tackett said, lowering his pistol and stepping out from behind the rock. “I was just about to come up looking for you, Sam. Why didn’t you let me know what was going on up there? You could have fired a shot or something.”

  “Couldn’t waste a bullet,” the Ranger said. “We’ve run out of everything on this trip.” He and Durant stopped a few feet from Tackett. “But here’s your prisoner, Sheriff…last of the Gully Gang.”

  “Yeah.” Tackett eyed Willis Durant up and down. “And I oughta bust your dang head, robbing my town, causing us all this trouble.” As Tackett spoke, he stepp
ed closer, his pistol drawing back for a swipe at Durant’s head. But Willis Durant didn’t back an inch. He stood eye to eye with Tackett as if daring him.

  “Easy now,” the Ranger said to Tackett, pulling Willis Durant to the side. “He’s your prisoner now. Show some manners.”

  “Manners my aching arse,” Tackett said. “If I did what I felt like doing, we’d leave him stretching hemp out here.”

  The Ranger shoved Willis Durant over against a rock and said to him, “Sit down there. Catch your breath, Durant. We’ve got a three-day ride back to town. Just as well eat some jerked beef and have some tea before we start out.” He turned his gaze from Durant to Tackett as he spoke. “What do you say, Tackett? Looks like you could use something to settle you down.”

  “It’s too danged hot for tea, Sam,” Tackett said, staring at Durant. “I want this snake to tell me why he done me this way. There’s a dozen other towns he could’ve pulled this in…all of them with bigger banks.”

  “Call it the luck of the draw, Sheriff,” Durant said. He slumped a bit, looking at Tackett.

  “Luck of the draw?” Tackett lunged forward a step. “Why you rotten—!”

  “Settle down, Tackett. It wasn’t nothing personal.” The Ranger managed to move in between the two of them. “He said he just needed the money.”

  Durant pulled back a step, then sat down and leaned against the rock, still staring up at Tackett. “That’s right. I needed the money.”

  “Oh? Well, I reckon anybody who’s ever robbed a bank could say that, couldn’t they?” Tackett eased down a bit himself and slid his pistol back into his holster. “But it didn’t have to be my town…my bank.” He ran a hand across his sweaty forehead and let out a breath. “Where’s the money, Durant? It wasn’t on none of the others.”

  Durant hesitated for a second, then said, “Wandering Joe stuck it under some boards, back at that old copper mine where you gulched us the other day.” He looked up at the Ranger. “I’ll take you to it on the way back.”

  “That’s real nice of ya, Durant,” Tackett said with a sarcastic snap, bristling up once more. “For two cents I’d—”

  The Ranger cut him off, seeing his hands ball into fists. “Why don’t you go bring the horses up, Tackett? I’m having myself some tea before we leave here.”

  “Dang it all…” A tense second passed. Tackett shot a glance back and forth between them. Then, grumbling under his breath, he turned and started down the path to the flatlands.

  “He shouldn’t get himself so worked up in this kind of heat,” the Ranger said, watching Tackett move out of sight. He turned back to Durant, raising the dusty brim of his sombrero. “Can’t say I blame him though. Tackett always treated you right.” The Ranger glanced at the body of Wandering Joe Gully on the ground ten feet away. Thirty feet farther down lay Doc Septon, brown dust collecting in his wide open eyes and on his dirty gray hair. “Why did it have to be Tackett’s town? Don’t tell me luck of the draw, or I might crack your head myself.”

  Durant studied the Ranger’s wary eyes. “All right, Ranger, it wasn’t just about the money.” He reached up with his cuffed hands and blotted his forehead on the sleeve of his dusty shirt. “There was more to it. Wandering Joe Gully knew some things…some things I needed to find out about.” Durant stopped and stared away, southward, out through the wavering heat. His expression turned closed.

  “And?” the Ranger asked, coaxing him on. “Did you ever find out?”

  “Yeah, he told me some of it.” Durant lowered his eyes, letting the Ranger know he had nothing more to say.

  The Ranger moved over to the rock and leaned against it, his big rifle cradled in his arms. “Well, whatever it was, I hope it was worth it to you. You’re facing many long years on the rock pile over this.”

  “Damn right it was worth it,” Durant murmured under his breath. He stared at the cuffs on his wrists, working his hands back and forth against the hard steel, as if testing his strength against the strength of the metal. “It was worth every year of it.”

  * * *

  At noon the following day, they rode down to the old copper mine. Inside the darkness of a dusty shaft, they turned over a pile of loose walk boards and lifted the bulging saddlebags full of stolen bank money. Dust streamed off the saddlebags as Tackett raised them and hefted them in his hands. “I won’t count it just now,” he said, glaring up at Durant, who sat on the sweat-streaked dun beside the Ranger. “But you better hope to heaven every last dollar of it’s here.”

  “Don’t worry, Sheriff, it’s all there,” Durant said. “I watched Wandering Joe hide it. We were gonna meet later, split it up, after we shook you two off our trail.”

  The Ranger had taken note of Durant’s tense, resolute attitude ever since the man had given himself up. Something wasn’t right about him. Durant was only partly here, the Ranger thought. A larger part of him seemed to be off somewhere in the distance, not cuffed and facing years in a sweaty prison, but out across the badlands, searching for something in the swirling heat, taking care of important business of some sort. Dark business, whatever it was, the Ranger thought.

  After Tackett secured the saddlebags behind his saddle and stepped up into his stirrups, the Ranger let Durant move his horse forward of them a few yards and drew Tackett back beside him with a subtle gesture.

  “What’s up, Sam?” Tackett asked in a lowered voice, checking his horse down close to the Ranger. Durant’s horse walked on ahead of them, its damp tail hanging limp. Durant slumped a bit in his saddle, the back of his shirt darkened with sweat.

  “How long since you’d seen this man before they robbed the bank?” the Ranger asked Tackett in a quiet tone.

  Sheriff Tackett led the string of tired horses with the dead outlaws’ bodies tied across their saddles. He too gazed ahead at Durant, considering it for a second. “Oh…five years, six maybe. He’s been laying up with a Ute woman over near the Little Red. He’s got a son by her, from what I heard. Why are you asking?”

  “Just wondering, is all.” The Ranger rubbed his stubbled chin, gazing ahead. “He’s got something stuck in his craw. Don’t know what it is, but it’s sure working him. He’ll make a break for the badlands if we ain’t careful.”

  “He ain’t going nowhere, Sam. I promise you that much. Not after all the trouble we had catching him this last time. I’ll drop a bullet in him before I go through all this again. I’m worn plumb down to my toes on him and that whole Wandering Joe Gully bunch.”

  The Ranger looked at him. “I didn’t say he’d get away. I just said he’d try. Usually by now a prisoner’s lost all the shine in their eyes. Not him. He hasn’t given up, he’s just going along. There’s something eating at him…some unfinished business. I’m just curious what it is.” He heeled his white barb forward calling it by name, “Come on, Black-eye,” not letting Durant get too far ahead.

  That evening they made camp on the edge of the sand flats, beneath a wide dome of starlight. They ate dried beef jerky, some scraps of biscuits Tackett had left over from two days before, and washed it down with hot tea. After the three of them had eaten, the Ranger held his rifle trained on Durant while Tackett unlocked the handcuffs and recuffed them behind Durant’s back. Only when Tackett had secured the prisoner and sat him down on a blanket did the Ranger lower his rifle and sit down on a flat rock on the other side of the low fire.

  “So, tell us, Durant,” the Ranger said, sipping his Duttwieler’s tea from a battered tin cup, “how’d you come to hook up with Wandering Joe and his gang of hard cases? I always knew you to be a loner.”

  Willis Durant leaned back against the saddle on the ground behind him. He seemed to measure his words before saying them. “Billy Dig was already riding with me. We caught up with Wandering Joe and his bunch outside of Wakely. I knew Wandering Joe years back, back before he took to bank robbing.”

  Caught up with? Not met, or ran into, but caught up with…The Ranger took note of the phrase as Durant went on. “You know how B
illy was…he’d go along with anything. Wandering Joe said him and the others had planned on robbing the bank the day a big mine payroll came in.” Durant shrugged. “Wandering Joe said they were short two men to do the job…Billy Dig wanted to throw with them. So we did.”

  “Yeah, you did,” Tackett huffed, “knowing danged well it was in my town.”

  Willis Durant lifted his dark eyes to Tackett. “You can’t get past that, can ya, Tackett? I told you it was nothing against you. I just went along with Billy Dig on it. Couldn’t talk him out of it.”

  The Ranger listened, putting it together in his mind, not believing a word of it. Billy Dig never had an idea in his life that didn’t come from somebody else. There wasn’t a way in the world he could have talked Willis Durant into doing anything Durant didn’t want to do. Why was Durant playing it this way? The Ranger wanted to know more about it, but he knew if he pressed too hard, Willis Durant would only cut him off again.

  The Ranger waited, sipped his tea, and after a moment said, as if passing it off, “Well, I suppose it don’t matter now, does it?”

  “No,” Willis Durant said under his breath, “I suppose it doesn’t.”

  The Ranger stood up, slung the last drops of tea from his tin cup, and dusted the seat of his trousers. “But I can’t help wondering about your woman, Durant—the Ute woman? What’s she gonna think when she hears about all this?”

  Durant’s jaw tightened. “I told you before, leave my family out of it.”

  “All right then.” The Ranger stood and looked down at him, the flicker of low flames shining in Durant’s dark eyes. “I’m just wondering what I oughta tell that son of yours, if I ever run into him. He’s just a little boy now, I reckon. But he’ll be grown before you get out of prison. He’ll want to know about his daddy, won’t he?” He watched Durant’s eyes for any kind of sign as he spoke. “I wouldn’t want him coming around and holding any grudges on me.”

  “He won’t,” Durant said. Even Tackett noticed the finality in the man’s voice. He turned his face slightly toward Durant and listened, quiet now, seeing the Ranger was getting close to something here, touching on a raw nerve.