Crossing Fire River

by Ralph Cotton

  “With pistol shots it might’ve been some drunken cowhands, but not with rifles,” said Shaw. He paused in grave contemplation, then said, “I knew that Hewes and his men might be prowling around. We should have stopped Raul from leaving tonight.”

  “Raul is a proud man. He wouldn’t have stood for us telling him what to do,” said Lori. “Besides, he knows this country better than most anyone. He can travel without being seen.”

  “Yes, but I figure so do Hewes and his men,” said Shaw. He’d already turned from the window and reached for his clothes lying on a chair. The widow stood watching. “Anyway, I’m going to make sure he’s not in trouble out there.”

  “I think it’s going to be nothing but a waste of time and sleep,” Lori offered.

  “I hope it does turn out to be a waste of time and sleep,” Shaw said in earnest. “But I won’t know until I get out there.”

  “All right, then . . . I’m going too,” she said, her decision sounding like retaliation of some sort.

  “Uh-uh.” Shaw buttoned his fly and sat down and picked his socks up from his boot wells. “I’ll make better time alone. Besides, if Hewes or any of his men are out there, I can’t risk getting you hurt.”

  “Bo Hewes’ men wouldn’t dare harm me,” Lori said confidently.

  “Maybe not,” Shaw said, “but a stray bullet answers to nobody.” He pulled on his socks. “I’d feel better if you waited here.”

  “All right . . .” Lori seemed to have to force herself to comply with him. “But if you’re not back soon, I’m hitching the buggy and riding out looking for you.”

  “There’ll be no need for that,” Shaw said. He pulled his boots on in turn, then stood up and looked at a pocket watch lying on a nightstand beside the bed. “Raul’s been gone a little over three hours. He’s taking his time. If I push hard I can cut his time by half.”

  He took his gun belt from the headboard, swung it around his waist and buckled it. He deftly slipped the Colt from its holster, checked it and spun it back into its leather, all in what appeared to be one sleek quick motion.

  The widow watched his hand as if awestricken. Then she said in lowered voice, “There’s lot I don’t know about you, isn’t there?”

  Shaw didn’t answer. Instead he asked, “How do I get to Hewes’ place?”

  “No, you don’t want to go there, Lawrence, believe me,” she said, shaking her head at the idea of it.

  “I don’t want to go there,” Shaw said, “but I want to know where it lays, so I’ll know what direction to avoid if I lose Raul’s tracks.”

  “That makes sense,” she conceded. “Twenty miles east off the main trail, there’s a valley trail leading down to the left. It stops at Río Del Fuego.”

  “Fire River,” Shaw said, translating the words.

  “Yes, and once you cross the river everything you touch has Hewes’ name branded on it. Once you cross Fire River, any trail you take leads to Bo’s ranch.” She looked at him closely. “The word is that no stranger has ever crossed Fire River and came back to tell about it.”

  “Sounds like my kind of place,” Shaw said, unimpressed. He bent, wrapped the strip of rawhide around his thigh and tied his holster down.

  “Promise me you won’t take Bo and his men too lightly, Lawrence, please,” Lori said.

  “I don’t take anybody too lightly, Lori,” he said, straightening and adjusting his holster. He stepped over to the wall where his rifle leaned beside the saddlebags he’d taken from Shank’s speckled barb. He checked the rifle, slung the saddlebags over his shoulder and picked up his battered top hat.

  Lori watched, holding the sheet around her. “I’ll just dress and walk you to the barn,” she said.

  “No,” Shaw said firmly. “I can be on the trail by that time.”

  She didn’t argue, instead she stepped closer and gave him a light kiss on his cheek. “Hurry back to me,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Shaw said, tugging his top hat down and giving a slight tip of the brim.

  He quickly saddled the speckled barb, walked it out of the barn and onto the trail starting at the edge of the yard. When he’d stepped up into the saddle and nudged the animal forward, he turned and looked back at the bedroom window. As he looked back he saw the lamplight dim until it turned black.

  Back to bed and back to sleep, he thought to himself; and for some reason he wondered just how much any of this really meant to her. The Widow Edelman had a striking beauty and intelligence to her, so much so that it had taken a while before he’d begun to feel her cold detachedness. What they did for each other in bed was good, but there was nothing beyond that.

  Maybe that’s good. . . . He turned back to the trail ahead of him and booted the speckled barb up into an easy run.

  The woman felt nothing for him. Shaw knew she was using him only to make a point to Bowden Hewes. She saw he was tough and hard to scare. That was what she needed right then. Had she known he was Fast Larry Shaw it might have impressed her more. But she didn’t know, he reminded himself.

  Had her situation with Hewes pressuring her not existed, he would never have been invited into her bed, not in his sore and struggling condition. But so what? he thought. People used one another every day in every way, didn’t they? He raced ahead in the purple moonlit night, thinking things over as the sound of the barb’s hooves sounded out strong and fast on the hardened trail beneath them.

  After two hours of steady riding along the hill trail the effects of the whiskey had worn off. Ned Gunnison, Carl Pole and Devlin Mackey had sobered and turned surly and ill tempered with one another. When Pole slowed almost to a stop at a narrow turn in the trail, Gunnison turned in his saddle and looked back. “You best keep up, Carl. We’re not going to nursemaid you this whole damned trip.”

  Pole gigged his horse forward with a snarl, leading Raul’s paint with Raul’s body tied down over its back. “I’ve been leading this dead man the whole way. I don’t see why we’re taking him back with us.”

  Mackey and Gunnison didn’t answer.

  “I don’t see what our damned hurry is, either,” said Pole. “The drifter ain’t going nowhere. So we end up killing him at midmorning instead of at the crack of dawn. Who cares?”

  “I care,” said Gunnison, staring straight ahead, Mackey riding alongside him. “If the drifter heard the gunfire, we don’t want him skinning out of there, and cause us to miss killing him altogether.”

  “But for all we know he didn’t even hear the rifle shots,” said Pole, catching up to them, and riding on Gunnison’s other side.

  “A man like this drifter heard the gunshots,” said Gunnison. “What do you say, Devlin?” he asked Mackey, looking for support.

  “Oh yeah, the drifter heard the shots, no matter how fast asleep he was,” said Mackey. “We’ll be lucky if he ain’t hightailed it out of there by now. He might be tough, but only a fool would take a stand not knowing how many guns were coming after him.”

  “There, you see?” Gunnison said to Pole. “Listen to us; you might learn something.”

  “Yeah.” Mackey grinned tauntingly. “Nobody needs to stay stupid all their life.”

  Pole gave him a dark glare but kept quiet as they rode along. An hour later the three stopped at a thin runoff in the rocks lining the trail beside them and let the horses drink while they filled their canteens with cool water. Mackey and Pole dropped down in the rocky sand to rest. “We should have brought along more whiskey,” said Pole, taking out a bag of chopped tobacco and rolling himself a smoke.

  As he worked on his fixings Raul’s horse finished drinking and wandered a few yards farther along the trail. Pole didn’t try to stop the horse.

  “There goes Raul,” Gunnison observed, watching the paint horse.

  “He ain’t going far,” Pole said with a shrug, knowing he could collect the horse and its dead rider when they rode on.

  “We might just get some whiskey when we get to the Edelmans’,” Mackey said, sprawling backward on
the ground with his hat pulled low over his eyes.

  “Doc always kept a bottle or two in his desk,” said Gunnison, still standing, leaning back against the rock where the runoff water ran down in a thin stream. “I expect the widow might still keep one there.” He gazed off along the dark trail in reflection. “If that drifter ain’t already taken it over and drank it up.”

  “I bet Doc’s whiskey ain’t all the drifter has taken over,” said Mackey, his voice muffled under his hat. “I can see him rooted up between the widow’s long white thighs as clear as a bell.”

  “I can see you dead ‘clear as a bell’ if Bo gets wind of you saying something like that,” Gunnison warned. Pole puffed on his cigarette and listened to the two of them.

  Mackey chuckled under the hat brim. “No reason for him to ever know I said it, is there?”

  Ned Gunnison didn’t answer. Instead he stared off along the trail, his ears piqued toward the sound of hooves coming toward them.

  Hearing no reply from Gunnison, Mackey tipped his hat up enough to look at him and said, “Well, is there?”

  “Shhh, hush up, damn it,” said Gunnison. “I hear a rider coming.”

  Mackey sat up and shoved his hat back down onto his head. He and Pole looked at each other and listened intently for a moment. “If that’s the drifter, he sure as hell didn’t hightail it out of there, did he?” Pole said to Mackey. The two stood up and hurriedly dusted the seats of their trousers, Pole’s cigarette hanging from his lips.

  “Hold it! Whoever it is, he’s stopped!” Gunnison said, keeping his voice lowered. Hearing the hooves clack to a quick shuffling halt on the trail, he crouched and squinted in the darkness for a better look. “You two get across the trail and take cover, before he sees you and lights out of here! Pole, kill that damned cigarette!”

  Pole dropped his cigarette and crushed it beneath his boot heel. He and Mackey hurried off the trail, pulling their horses along with them. “I got a feeling if it’s him, he ain’t likely to be lighting out of here,” said Pole sidelong to Mackey.

  “Get ready,” said Gunnison. “If it’s him, we’re taking him down, here and now.” He ducked out of sight into the rocks alongside the trail, rifle in hand. Across the trail the other two did the same.

  Thirty yards ahead, Shaw sat as still as stone atop the speckled barb, listening and staring intently for any further sight or sound coming from the darkness ahead of him. He had seen a faint glow of cigarette for only a second. But a second was all it took.

  No sooner than he’d stopped the barb to sit and listen, he’d heard the rustle of boots and the scraping of the horses’ hooves as the two gunmen had pulled the animals to cover. All right, he told himself, somebody is there. Someone heard me coming. . . . Silently he slipped his rifle up from its boot and nudged the barb forward at a slow walk.

  From their cover behind rocks along the edge of the trail, Mackey and Pole listened to the soft clop of hooves moving toward them. “Stupid sumbitch thinks we can’t hear him,” Mackey whispered, cocking his rifle hammer slowly and quietly, getting himself ready. Beside him Pole did the same. Keeping their eyes on the dark trail, each of them raised their rifle butts to their shoulders.

  Across the trail, Gunnison sat waiting, watching, his own rifle resting over a rock in front of him, cocked and ready. But just as he could make out the dark shadowy figure clopping forward in the black purple night, he saw the speckled barb’s empty saddle and said in a raised voice to Mackey and Pole, “Hold your fire, boys. It’s just a stray horse wandering along.”

  Mackey let out a relieved laugh, stood up and said loud enough for Gunnison to hear him, “A damned stray? What’s the odds on that? Looks like some poor sumbitch must’ve got himself thrown and—”

  Shaw’s first rifle shot nailed him in the center of his chest and sent him flying backward, dead before he hit the ground.

  Chapter 14

  “He’s killed Mackey!” Pole shouted, jumping to his feet and firing blindly. Across the trail Gunnison had seen the streak of gunfire coming from the middle of the path ahead of them. Rising slowly from behind the rock, Gunnison took aim at the dark outline walking toward them. But before he got his shot off, Shaw’s second bullet sliced through him and sent him backward, his rifle flying from his hands.

  Hearing Gunnison let out a loud grunt and hit the ground hard, Pole fired three more wild shots before Shaw’s rifle honed in on his muzzle flash and shot him dead.

  After a silent moment Shaw walked forward, emerging out of drifting rifle smoke and the purple darkness like some apparition from a netherworld. He led Raul’s paint horse by its reins, the Mexican’s lifeless arms swinging back and forth with each step of the animal’s hooves.

  A few feet ahead of him Shaw saw Gunnison lying back against a rock, trying with all of his waning strength to lever a round into his rifle chamber. A large circle of blood covered Gunnison’s chest, and more pumped out in a braided stream with each beat of his heart.

  “I . . . knew it was you . . . drifter . . . you sonsabitch,” he said haltingly. His blood-slick hands could not get a grip on the rifle and make it do his bidding. Finally his right hand gave up on the weapon and went to the big Dance Brothers revolver on his hip. But by the time he’d managed to get a grip and slide the pistol up from its leather, Shaw was less than three feet from him and kicked the pistol from his hand.

  “You killed Raul for no reason,” Shaw said flatly, his tone not revealing how bad he felt about it. He had his rifle cradled in the crook of his arm. His Colt was in his right hand, cocked and loosely pointed.

  “He made . . . his choice,” Gunnison said. “Damned fool pulled . . . a worthless gun . . . just to warn you.” Now that he knew his rifle and pistol were of no use to him, he clutched his shattered chest with both hands. Blood spilled from between his clasped fingers.

  Shaw couldn’t help but wince at hearing what Raul had done. It had been foolish of the Mexican, yet he didn’t want to think of it as a foolish act, not here, not now. Raul had performed an act of heroism in order to save his life, or so the brave Mexican must’ve thought. That was the only way Shaw wanted to think of it right now.

  Stooping down beside the dying gunman, Shaw pulled out the gold coin he’d found in the dirt the day he’d rifle-butted Jesse Burkett. “You ever see these kinds of gold coins before?”

  “No . . . never,” Gunnison said, yet his expression told Shaw he was lying. “You ain’t . . . just some . . . no-account drifter, are you?”

  Shaw didn’t answer. He reached out and ran his hand down into Gunnison’s pocket.

  “You’re already . . . picking over . . . my bones?” said Gunnison, his voice getting weaker as he spoke. “Are you the law?”

  Shaw still didn’t answer. He pulled out two gold coins from Gunnison’s trouser pocket and looked at them in his palm. “Why are so many of these stolen coins showing up among Hewes’ men?” he asked.

  “Yep . . . you’re law. . . . I can smell it.” Gunnison chuckled with blood running down from his lips and added, “Now, go to hell . . . lawdog.” He spit dark blood at Shaw.

  “I’ll find the rest of the stolen coins across Fire River, won’t I?” he asked, knowing whatever he had to ask he’d best do it quickly. Gunnison was fading fast.

  “So what . . . if you do?” Gunnison gasped and managed a belligerent grin. “You won’t know . . . what you’re looking at.” He chuckled again, this time coughing more blood as he did so.

  “What do you mean by that?” Shaw asked, leaning in closer.

  “I mean . . . I mean—” Gunnison gasped. He never finished the words he’d tried to start. His head tipped back and to one side, and his eyes stared upward blankly into the dark heavens. Shaw stood and pocketed the gold coins and walked slowly, his Colt hanging loosely in his hand.

  It’s time to get back to work. . . . He was sober, he had spent some time resting, getting his wits back. He’d brought the doctor’s body home and slept with his widow. What more can
a man ask for? he thought, with a grim opinion of himself. He looked at Raul’s body and shook his head slowly. While he and the Widow Edelman had slept together warm and naked, a good man had died.

  Moments later, he had dragged each of the dead gunmen to their horses and tied them down over their saddles. As the first glimmer of dawn light spread in a silvery line on the horizon, he made up a lead rope to the four-horse string, stepped up atop the speckled barb and rode east, following the hill trail until it came to the fork Lori had told him about.

  Turning onto a narrower trail, he rode onto a wide valley floor. Across the rocky, sandy valley he rode, until the trail stopped at a low wide river that snaked away north into a stretch of hills the color of rusty iron and strewn with blue-green cactus. To the south the river ran between deeper banks and disappeared out of sight. “Fire River,” he said aloud.

  Stepping down, he separated Raul’s paint horse from the string and tied its reins to a spindly cottonwood. Stepping back into his saddle, he led the three horses into the river and across, the depth of the slow-running water never reaching above the horses’ bellies.

  On the other side of the river, Shaw stepped down and tied the three horses in a loose line, then slapped their rumps, sending them galloping forward on a trail leading off over a rolling hillside. “See you soon, Bowden Hewes,” he said. He remounted the barb and rode it back across river. He unhitched Raul’s paint horse from the tree and rode away in the direction of Banton, leading the dead Mexican behind him.

  Across Fire River, the three horses walked along the winding trail like some bizarre funeral procession, their heads lowered in the heat of the day. When the string topped a short rise and headed down onto a wide draw, two range guards looked up from where they sat atop their horses watching a small herd of cattle graze on sparse clumps of wild grass.

  “Well, bust my jaws,” a red-bearded Nebraskan outlaw named Terrence Web said, his wrists crossed on his saddle horn.