Border Dogs

by Ralph Cotton

  Below him on the canyon floor, the Ranger sighted the first rider coming into range. He was a long ways back, but just where the Ranger wanted to make his shot. The big rifle exploded, slamming into the Ranger’s shoulder and sending the man and his horse upward as the he flew from his saddle with the reins still tight in his hand. The horse rolled sidelong into Zell, sending Zell into a swerve as the Ranger leveled his rifle scope on him. The shot went past Zell, missing him by an inch, taking down another horse and rider in a spray of dust and loose rock.

  “Lord God!” Old man Dirkson yelled, seeing the damage caused by the big rifle. He also swerved as Zell sidled into him. Bowes, beside him, dropped his horse back, coming down from his saddle as his horse reared. He scrambled behind the cover of a broken boulder on the canyon floor. The Ranger had recocked and he fired another round, sending a rider backward from his saddle and into the rider behind him. From either side of the canyon’s edge, Durant and Baines fired in rapid succession.

  As soon as the Ranger’s shot hit the rider and sent him out of his saddle, Bowes bolted from his cover. He sprang to the middle of the canyon floor to where Zell wobbled in his saddle, his horse spinning, spooked and with no direction. While the Ranger recocked, Bowes snatched Zell from his saddle and hurried with him back to the cover of rock.

  “He ain’t even letting us within range!” Dirkson shouted, grabbing Zell, pulling him down beside him. Bowes fell to the ground, snatching up his rifle, rolling onto his side, and firing a round up toward the Ranger’s rifle smoke.

  “Of course he’s not,” Bowes said. “Would you if you were in his position?” Bowes shot fell short by twenty yards, the bullet whining off a large rock.

  “Damn it, I reckon not.” Old man Dirkson jerked down on his hat brim and checked his pistol.

  “Didn’t you see he had the big rifle with him?” Bowes shouted at Dirkson above the sound of rifle fire erupting from both sides of the canyon. “You were with him! Didn’t you see it?”

  “No! Hell, no! I didn’t see it! All I saw was an ordinary repeater rifle in his saddle boot. How was I to know about this?”

  “We’re pinned here,” Bowes called out. He turned to Zell beside him, whose breath labored, the wound in his chest reopened and bleeding heavily. “Major, can you hear me?”

  Zell swung his eyes to Bowes, and Bowes saw the trickle of blood dribble from his lips. “Attack,” Zell said in a shallow voice. Bowes and old man Dirkson gave each other a guarded glance and lay still behind the broken boulder.

  The Ranger held his fire, hearing the sound of shots from either side of the canyon edge still going on. He knew from the start that Durant and Baines would take a hard hit, each of them outnumbered four to one if Zell did what Baines said he would, and split his force into three squads. Now it looked like Baines had been right.

  Up on the right edge, Durant looked out from his position, and through the tangle of mesquite, he saw two men lying dead in the sand beneath a drifting rise of dust. Beyond them, the other two men had felled their horses on the flatland and had taken cover behind them. They fired on him, but their shots were only kicking up sand.

  Okay…I don’t have all day to fool with these two. Durant scooted out of his shallow scraping still beneath the cover of brush. With pistol in hand, he belly-crawled backward a few feet until he reached the crest of a slight drop in the silty soil. Once behind it, looking along its sandy edge, he saw it snake off and turn back toward the two men. Good enough…He wasn’t going to wait around here and let the Parker brothers get away. He would circle around these men, taking his chances. He had nothing to lose.

  Along the left edge of the canyon, Baines had fired his rifle empty. One of the four men went down, and two others had raced away, emptying the rifles around him, sand stinging his face as they rode off out of sight. One remained now, down behind a rock twenty feet from him. Baines checked his pistol and waited. When the man rose, firing his rifle, Baines remained still, tense, waiting for just the right second, counting each shot of the rifle.

  When the last shot was fired, and Baines jumped up and aimed, he caught a glimpse of the man disappearing out of sight, running away from him. Only when Baines dropped back down to the ground did he feel the warm blood spreading over his chest. Only then did he feel the deep, searing pain high up in his ribs…the numbness closing in around it.

  Uh-uh, not yet…Now that the pain had come upon him, he didn’t want it to leave. Once the pain was gone, he knew he would be gone with it. No! Not now! He shook his head clear, and turned to crawl over the edge of the canyon wall. He wasn’t about to die…not yet, not until his job was finished.

  From his cover behind the broken rock, Bowes saw the big sergeant coming down the eastern wall of the canyon. He managed to rise and fire a shot, then drop back down in time to hear the Ranger’s bullet whistle overhead. Bowes’s rifle shot kicked up a spray of dust near Baines’s boot as he dove across the sand beyond the campfire, crawling around into the crevice where the crates and kegs of ammunition lay in the shade.

  Damn the blood. Sergeant Baines staggered to his feet in the cover of the rock crevice. His hand was wet and slick when he raised it from his chest to look at it. What’s a little blood more or less, he said to himself, stripping the yellow cavalry bandanna from his neck, shaking the dust from it, and pressing it against the wound. He needed only a few more minutes here—surely any merciful, right-thinking God would give him that.

  Baines staggered to the small open keg of gunpowder, hefted it up under his arm, and spread a stream of it from the pile of ammunition to the outer edge of the crevice where dust-filled, rays of slanted sunlight seemed to dance there among the dead. “I’m done in, Ranger,” he called up toward the Ranger’s position. “You and the black man get out of here.”

  The Ranger heard him and called down. “We won’t leave you, Baines. How bad are you hit?”

  “Take my word for it”—Baines’s voice faltered—“I won’t be leaving here.”

  “No. I’m coming down, Baines. Cover me if you can.”

  Bowes and the old man heard them calling back and forth to one another and got ready to fire. Zell had managed to collect himself and pulled himself up beside Bowes. They listened intently.

  “Don’t try it, Ranger,” Sergeant Baines called out. “My fight will end here. You go on—get the women.”

  The Ranger called down, hearing Baines’s voice grow weaker, more shallow, “Are you sure about this, Sergeant?”

  “Go!” Baines called out. Then he collapsed against the rock crevice wall, the keg under his arm, spilling powder onto his boots.

  From their cover, Bowes and old man Dirkson glanced out toward the campfire. When they jerked back, Bowes looked past Zell and said to the old man, “See those bodies?”

  “Yeah, federales,” the old man replied. “And that looks like Delbert dripping down the wall.”

  “Think the Parkers managed to make the switch? Got the gold and got out with it?” Bowes stared across Zell and into Dirkson’s eyes.

  Old man Dirkson shot a glance up along both edges of the canyon, hearing no more gunfire. “That’s possible, I reckon.

  “What do you think? We could back out of here and get on their trail.”

  Old man Dirkson let out a breath, raising his eyebrows. “It beats sitting here.”

  They both looked at Zell. “Major,” Bowes asked, “what do you think? We might have one more play for the gold.”

  Zell managed to chuckle low in his shattered chest. He wheezed and said in a broken voice, “The only thing worse…than me dying here without the gold…is for me to die with it at my fingertips.”

  “Then we stay, sir,” Bowes said with finality.

  Old man Dirkson slumped, dejected, against the rock.

  “No,” Zell said just above a whisper. “You two go on…find the gold. I’ll hold this position.”

  “No, sir, we’ll all three—”

  “That is an order, Mr. Bowes.” Zell�
��s voice found some strength. He sat up straighter against the rock. He reached over and clasped Bowes’ arm. “We’ve had…a bold run at it. They never beat the Border Dogs.”

  “But, Major, sir—”

  “He’s right,” old man Dirkson cut in. “He’s told you what he wants. Don’t deny him, for God sakes!”

  “Listen to…the old man,” Zell said, a faint smile moving across his lips. “Get out of here, Mr. Bowes.”

  Bowes swallowed back the dryness in his throat, looked at Dirkson and nodded.

  Above the canyon on the right, Durant stood up with a bloody knife hanging from his hand. At his feet, the man’s boot quivered for a second, then went slack in the sand. The horse had stood up on its own in a drift of dust, and Durant caught its reins and settled it. He looked across the ground at the other body twenty yards away, the horse beside it now up from the ground, still shaking out its mane and poking its muzzle down near the blood on the man’s lifeless chest. Dust drifted in long sheets.

  He led the horse over, picked up the reins to the other horse, and led them both to the edge of the canyon. Looking down at its far end, Durant saw the two men move back from behind the cover of rock, out of pistol range. There was a rifle on one of the horses behind him, but Durant saw no point in wasting bullets he would need later. Besides, those two men were backing out. They’d had enough. He looked across the canyon and saw the wake of dust left by two horses moving in a hurry, believing it to be all that was left of Zell’s men.

  Looking toward the other end of the canyon, Durant saw the Ranger coming up from his perch among the rocks, the big rifle held out to his side, headed to where Durant knew the white barb and the other horse stood waiting. On the canyon floor beneath the Ranger, Durant saw Baines leaning against the edge of the crevice. He saw the dark blood spreading on Baines’s chest and the small open keg of powder under his arm.

  Baines looked up, saw Durant, and motioned him away. Durant hesitated for a second, and Baines raised his arm and shooed him away once more. One hard old soldier…This time Durant raised his arm in reply, waved it once above his head, and stepped back from the edge. Well, Durant thought, he’d done what he promised the Ranger he’d do. Now he had business of his own to attend to. He stepped up into the saddle, swung the horse around and kicked it out across the flatlands, leading his spare horse by its reins. The Ranger would just have to understand.

  Bowes and old man Dirkson had made it back forty yards along the canyon floor when they came upon their milling horses, having moved back as soon as they’d shed themselves of their riders in the hail of rifle fire. Once atop their horses, they rode fast along the rocky narrowing trail until they came upon Chance Edwards and the two riders with him, who had just rounded down along the east edge of the canyon. “There you are, you sons a bitches,” Dirkson yelled out to them. His hand went to the pistol at his waist as he and Bowes reined their horses down. “For two cents I’d blow your damn heads off!”

  “Stand down, old man!” Bowes shouted, seeing that Chance Edwards and the other two were ready for whatever Dirkson had to offer. “These men did their job. They swept their side of the canyon.”

  “That’s right, we did,” Chance Edwards said, glaring at the old man. “It ain’t like we had the numbers we use to, you know. I lost a good man up their to that damn Yankee soldier.” He spat and looked around. “Where’s the major? He didn’t make it?”

  “No, he’s back there,” Bowes said. He gestured a nod back into Diablo Canyon. “He sent us out. Did any of you happen to see what’s lying in there?”

  “I got a look over the edge,” Chance Edwards said. He nodded and added, “Saw three dead federales. You thinking what I’m thinking? Maybe the Parkers pulled it off?”

  “It’s a strong possibility,” Bowes replied, “strong enough that I’d like to catch them and find out.” He gave Chance Edwards a questioning look.

  Chance offered a tight smile, looked around at the other two, and asked, “Odell? Tommy? What do y’all think? Feel like checking out the Parkers? See if we can come up with some gold out of all this?”

  “My arm’s shot plumb to hell,” Tommy Neville said, “but it’s only my left one.” He took a deep breath, let it out, and straightened in his saddle. “Yeah, I say let’s get to it.”

  “Me too,” said Odell Sweeny. “Gold or no gold, I’d like to put both my thumbs in Payton Parker’s eyes and see what squirts out. We owe that much to the major.”

  “So, there you have it,” Chance said, turning back to Liam Bowes with a tired smile on his face. “Looks like the Border Dogs ain’t finished yet. You’re in charge, Mr. Bowes…tell us what you want done.”

  As they turned their horses back along the trail leading up on the west side of Diablo Canyon, old man Dirkson sidled up near Chance Edwards. “I shouldn’t have said what I said awhile ago. Reckon I was just testy about all that’s gone wrong. Hope you’ve taken no offense.”

  “I did,” Chance said, “but I’m over it. We’re all back together, same as always. You can call one offense a slip of the tongue.” He looked hard at Dirkson. “But call the next one suicide, old man.”

  They moved single file in the heat of the morning sun, each man going over his weaponry, checking pistols, rifles, cleaning and reloading them as they rode on up toward the flatlands and on into the wavering heat toward the town of San Carlos.

  Zell had seen the Ranger move up along the canyon wall and out of sight. That had been a few minutes ago; and now Zell gathered his failing strength and looked down in his lap at his personal belongings. An old photograph of the woman he’d married back before the great civil conflict lay in his bloodstained hand. He glanced at a faded letter she’d written him years ago, telling him of a son he would never see.

  After a moment of silence, Zell put the picture and the letter back inside his bloody shirt, looked up at the swirling sunlight and out across the sky. Then he rose to his feet, brushed dust from his shoulder, and stepped forward, calling out in a resolved tone, “Major Martin Zell, sir. Whoever you are…I trust you’ve waited a long time for this occasion?”

  Sergeant Baines didn’t answer, not from this far away. He knew his breath would fail him. Instead, he stepped from the edge of the crevice and offered a weary salute. Zell moved forward, a bloody hand on the pistol butt in his waist belt. Instead of returning Baines’s salute, Zell waved it away with a weak hand. His voice faltered as he said, “I take it you’re the one…who has hounded me ever since my raid on the train?”

  “Aye, Major, that would be me…Baines, sir. First Sergeant Baines, United States Army.”

  “I see.” Zell looked around at the dead federales, gathering his breath. “Then I was mistaken to think a young lieutenant could have maneuvered so well. I should have known.”

  Baines only nodded, the keg of powder under his arm causing him to bow slightly, the dark circle of blood on his chest widening, a trickle of it running down his thick forearm.

  Zell looked at the small powder keg, the line of powder leading back and around into the rock crevice. “And the ammunition? I take it you have it in there?” Before Baines could answer, Zell added, “What a pity. Had my men only known…” His words trailed off. Then he added, “But of course, you never would have given it up.”

  “You knew it was there, Major,” Baines said. After a moment’s pause he added, “And you knew I wouldn’t give it up.”

  “Perhaps,” Zell said. “They were good men, my Border Dogs. Hard fighters every last one.” He looked at the low flames in the short licking fire. “What about the Ranger? What was his stake? The women?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Baines said. He staggered a step, but caught himself.

  “No…it doesn’t.” Zell drew his pistol from his waist. “What about you, Sergeant? How far back do we go?”

  “All the way back to Peach Orchard,” Baines said. “You owe me for two kid brothers…and a lot of good troopers.” He righted his footing a bit and stared at Z
ell through weak yet determined eyes.

  “A pity about your brothers, Sergeant.” Zell sounded sincere. He cocked the hammer on his pistol, pointing it downward. Blood ran from his open wound, across the top of his hand, dripping from the pistol barrel into the dirt. “We all lost someone…” His free hand went to his chest, pain racking him for a second, until he gathered himself. “Now we shall both die as all good soldiers must.” He staggered, raising the cocked pistol toward Baines across the low flames. “Ready, Sergeant?”

  “Aye, sir.” Baines struggled, raising the keg from under his arm. He stepped forward to heave it into the flames, but then faltered and rocked back a step, the keg coming down onto the ground beside him.

  Zell clenched a bloody hand to his chest wound, uncocked the pistol, and shoved it back down into his waist belt. “Here, Sergeant,” he said, everything about him starting to tilt and swirl as he moved in halting steps around the low licking fire, “let me give you a hand….”

  On the western edge of the canyon, moving farther away, the old man said to Chance Edwards and the others behind him, “Don’t look back. It’s the way the major wanted it.” Ahead of him, Liam Bowes rode on without so much as a glance backward when the sound of the explosion trembled the ground beneath their horses’ hooves. In the distance, a wall of dust stood high, drifting on the horizon.

  In front of that wake of dust, the Ranger gave the white barb his boot heels, moving fast now. He had also heard the explosion, and looked back for only a second, long enough to see the five riders move up from the canyon trail.

  A mile to the left of the Ranger and a thousand yards behind him, Willis Durant saw the Ranger’s dust as he rode farther away from him, around a long stretch of low buttes that would end near the town of San Carlos.

  PART 4

  Chapter 18

  The sun stood high overhead, scorching hot, torturing the desert floor. Heat wavered in an angry swirl by the time the women reached the outskirts of San Carlos. The horse trudged behind Maria as she pulled it by its reins. Prudence staggered along beside her, having torn away a long section of her dress and fashioned it about her head for protection from the scalding white rays of sunlight. Their last canteen of water lay empty a mile back in the sand.