Crossing Fire River

by Ralph Cotton

  “Bo, don’t shoot! It’s me, Jesse!” Burkett called out, seeing the dark figures strew out abreast before him.

  Hearing the pained, stiff voice, Hewes said with a dark chuckle, “Everybody stand down. I’d recognize this beat-up sonsabitch’s voice anywhere.” He called out, not knowing Burkett was the only one left of the three-man scouting party, “All of yas get in here and tell me what’s going on in there.”

  “This is all of us,” said Burkett. The wagon rolled closer until he pulled back on the long brake handle and brought the rig to stop a few yards in front of Hewes.

  “We heard shooting and was on our way,” Hewes replied, stepping his horse forward to meet him. “What do you mean that’s all of yas?” He craned his neck for a better look in the pale moonlight. “Where’s Web and Mitchum?”

  “They’re lying back here dead,” said Burkett, giving a toss of his battered head toward the wagon bed behind him.

  Hewes and the men gathered around the wagon, looked in and saw not only Web and Mitchum, but the other three dead gunmen as well. “For God’s sake,” Hewes exploded. “Who is this drifter?”

  “He’s no drifter,” said Burkett. “The son of a bitch is a straight-up lawman.”

  “What makes you say that?” Hewes asked, already turning away from the dead and looking at Burkett, seeing the bloody, swollen chin.

  “He told me so,” said Burkett. “I figure he’s got no reason to lie about it.” He winced at the pain throbbing in his face.

  “Why are you still alive?” Hewes asked in a demanding tone.

  Burkett sounded humiliated, saying, “He said he needed somebody to drive the wagon.”

  “That does it. We’re riding in and finishing him off once and for all,” said Hewes.

  “Wait,” said Burkett, “hear me out. This man wants all of us dead. He knows about the gold and he wants it for himself.”

  “What?” said Hewes. “How does he know? Did you tell him?”

  “Hell no, Bo, you know me better than that,” said Burkett. “But he knows; take my word on it. He said he was out at your place and saw everything being set up in the big barn.”

  “Jesus . . .” Hewes fell silent in grim contemplation, realizing someone had slipped past his men and spied on his operation. This wasn’t going to sit well with Jake Goshen. Hewes had taken the responsibility for keeping the gold smelter a secret. He cut a glance toward Dean “Quick Draw” Vincent, who had sat staring in silence.

  But now Vincent nudged his horse forward. He stopped beside Hewes and looked down at the bodies. “This drifter has seen our whole setup?”

  “All that means is that we have to kill him before he starts any more trouble for us,” said Hewes.

  Burkett continued. “He says he aims to have that gold, and he aims to kill you firsthand. Says we can ride in and face him, and he’ll kill you there. Or he’ll ride out and kill you in your own front yard. It makes no difference to him.”

  “This is only one man we’re talking about?” Hewes inquired.

  “That’s all I saw,” said Burkett, sounding like a man beaten down and resolved to defeat. “That crazy she-male Jane Crowly is with him. She’s prouder than a game rooster over all this. Other than Crowly, I believe he’s all alone there—not that it seems to bother him any.” He touched his fingertips gently to his throbbing chin. “I have to admit he’s the fastest man I’ve ever seen when it comes to gun handling.”

  “You’re easily impressed, Burkett,” Hewes said in an angry voice, jerking his horse around toward the rest of the men. “All right, everybody heard it. This drifter thinks he’s bigger than all of us together. He thinks he can take our gold from us, like we’re a bunch of newcomers or something!” His voice rose as he spoke. “Can he do it? Are we going to let him do it?”

  “Hell no,” said a voice among the men.

  “Hell no, is right,” said Hewes. He settled down and said to Max Cafferty, “Take half the men and ride in and kill this son of a bitch. I’m riding back with Vincent and the other half to make sure this lawman didn’t draw across the river while some other lawdogs snuck in on us.”

  “Hold it,” said Quick Draw Vincent. “If this man is as fast as we’re hearing he is, I want to meet him face-to-face.” He looked at Max the Ax and said, “Any objections?”

  Cafferty only shrugged.

  “But what about Goshen?” said Hewes. “He’ll want to know why you’re not with me.”

  Vincent gave him a smug grin. “Tell him I had to take a few minutes, ride into Banton and do what the rest of yas can’t seem to get done.”

  Chapter 22

  Shaw stood at the bar in a dim glow of light from an overhead lantern. He stared into an unopened bottle of rye, his hands spread along the edge of the bar. “Tell them I’m a lawman. Tell them it’s been a long night and it ain’t over yet,” he said over his shoulder to Wheatis Buckley, who stood, hat in hands, beside Jane Crowly a few feet away.

  “I’m—I’m afraid that simply won’t do,” said the nervous barber, kneading his hat brim. “These good people demand answers. Their street has been littered with dead outlaws. They have been cowering in their homes this entire night.”

  “Where the hell else would they have been?” Jane cut in, giving him a curious stare.

  “You keep out of this, Janie,” Buckley said to her, his demeanor turning prickly. “This is just the sort of thing a wom—a person like you thrives on. But the rest of us aren’t here to see how low we can sink or how hard and deviated we can live.”

  “Deviated?” Jane said, turning prickly herself. “Just what do you mean, a person like me?” she demanded. “What the hell sort of person am I?”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t want to speculate,” the barber said, sorry he’d mentioned it and trying hard to bypass the subject altogether. To Shaw he said, “And what about those other two men lurking in the alleyways. Who are they?”

  “They’re lawmen too,” Shaw said flatly, offering nothing more on the matter.

  “Lawmen indeed,” said Buckley. “If you truly are a lawman, like I myself am, then where is your badge?” As he spoke he thumbed the tin badge he had pinned on the lapel of his coat.

  “I’m not that kind of lawman,” Shaw said, repeating what he’d earlier told the outlaws in the street. He kept his eyes on the full bottle of rye. “But since you are wearing a badge, and do seem bent on seeing the law upheld, go grab your shotgun and whatever rifle or six-shooter you can find. We’ll deal you in this hand.”

  Buckley’s face tightened in fear. “I will not participate in some government endeavor to stir up trouble along our western border. This town makes its livelihood from both sides of the border. We know terrible things go on along this border, but why must we dwell on all this negativism?”

  “Go home and get some sleep, barber,” Shaw said, not wanting to talk about it, knowing better than to think he might change Buckley’s mind. “Leave the killing to the kind of lawman I am. Tomorrow you can get up and run your business.” He gave a thin smile. “Even get up and wear your badge all around if it suits you.”

  Seized by frustration, the barber cursed under his breath. His hands trembled so bad that he dropped his hat onto the dusty floor. Jane reached down and snatched it up before he could. She brushed it and handed it to him with a sharp grin. “Here’s your hat. Now get the hell out of here before we lose our tempers.”

  Buckley clenched his teeth. But he snatched his hat from her hand and shoved it down onto his head. Turning stiffly on his heel, he walked out the door and into the flicker of oil pots. In the east the first rays of sunlight glowed silver beneath the distant horizon. “Why’s he complaining?” said Jane, stepping over beside Shaw at the bar. “He got paid for attending the dead outlaws. Hell, he’ll probably get paid for attending some more before this is over.”

  “He’s like lots of folks,” said Shaw. “He doesn’t want to see a problem until somebody comes to fix it. . . . Then he blames them instead of the on
es causing it.”

  Jane studied his face from the side, seeing how intently he stared at the dark, rich whiskey. “You ain’t going to start drinking on us, are you?”

  “If I am, are you going to talk me out of it?” Shaw replied.

  “Well, I reckon I would try,” Jane said.

  Taking a breath, Shaw reached out and pulled the cork from the bottle. Jane watched him intently. He picked up a clean shot glass from a row of clean glasses stacked upside down along the inside edge of the bar. At the far end of the bar a bartender sat dozing on a tall ladder-back stool.

  “Save your breath,” Shaw said quietly. He filled the shot glass, corked the bottle, then slid the drink over in front of Jane. “Once I’m sober, I don’t go around craving it. Whiskey doesn’t tell me who I am,” he said as if he’d long and carefully considered it and knew the answer. “I drink it when I don’t want to know.”

  “Well . . . I’m glad to hear that, I reckon,” Jane said quietly. She wrapped her gloved fingers around the shot glass and stared at him. Fast Larry Shaw, the fastest gun alive . . . She didn’t want to become the voice of influence one way or another on a matter as deep and complex as this man’s inner demons. After a moment she picked up the glass, turned it up and tossed it back in one shot. She let out a whiskey hiss.

  Shaw stepped back from the bar. “Sometimes I wish I did have a craving for it,” he said, his right hand resting on the big Colt on his hip. “I could say I felt something for something.”

  Jane wiped the back of her gloved hand across her lips. She had to say something. Hell, it was not her nature to keep silent, not when someone was lost in the dark and a word from her might guide them, she told herself. “What about the widow?” she said. “Didn’t you feel something with her, even if it was only for a little while? ’Cause sometimes a little while is all we can hope for.” She shrugged a buckskin-fringed shoulder. “Hell, we’re lucky to get it at all.”

  “I don’t feel it now,” Shaw said. His voice took on a slight bitterness as he added, “If I don’t feel it now, I expect I never did.”

  “Whoa now, this ain’t the time to go getting dark and morose on me,” she said.

  Shaw stopped before turning to walk out the door. “Are you going to be around?”

  “What do you mean?” Jane asked. “I said I’d stick with you fellows. I meant it.”

  “I mean after?” Shaw asked.

  “Yeah, I thought I might, if I’m not dead,” she said. Her face reddened. “Are you wanting me to?”

  Shaw didn’t answer; he turned and walked away.

  “You’ve heard what they all call me, what they all say about me, haven’t you?” she called out.

  Shaw stepped out the door and disappeared into the flicker of the oil pots.

  “I’m not saying it’s true,” she called out, raising her voice to the outside. “But I’m not saying it ain’t either.”

  When Shaw was out of sight, she pulled the cork and poured herself another drink. “Barkeep!” she said toward the dozing man. “Get over here!”

  “What now, Jane?” the bartender said in a sleepy voice. He stood up and walked to where she stood leering at him from across the bar, above the shot glass of rye whiskey. A drop of whiskey dripped from the glass; he reached out with a damp bar towel and wiped it up.

  “There’s a fight coming, that’s what, you pig-nosed turd,” she said.

  Used to her insults, the bartender ignored her pet name for him. “It’s none of my business,” he said. “I’ll sell drinks to the winners.”

  Jane gave him a look of pure scorn. “Give me the shotgun you keep down there.” She nodded at the bar top.

  “What for?” the bartender asked. “You’ve already got a gun.” He gestured a nod himself, at the Colt shoved down in her waistband.

  “Did you not hear me, or are you just being belligerent?” she asked in an angry voice. She drew the Colt and pointed it at him.

  He reached down, pulled out a shotgun by its barrel and handed it to her butt first, shaking his head. “There, don’t lose it.”

  “Well, I’ll do my best,” she said, checking the short-barreled gun and shoving it up under her arm.

  In the grainy darkness the gunmen had spread out silently around the small town. Dean Vincent and Max Cafferty waited while the rest of the men hitched their horses to trees and posts and crept along alleys and darkened side streets.

  Cafferty turned and looked at Vincent as the arrogant gunslinger struck a match and lit a thin black cigar. “They saw that sure as hell,” Cafferty said.

  “So?” Vincent blew a stream of smoke and said sidelong to him, “Don’t you suppose they know we’re coming by now?”

  “No need in shouting it out to them,” Cafferty countered. “Our men are in there, trying to take up a position without being seen.”

  “To hell with the men,” said Vincent, blowing another stream of smoke. “This is not something you and these gunmen are going to fix. It’s all going to come down to him and me, man to man, one on one.” He let go another thin stream of smoke and murmured studiously, repeating himself in Spanish, “Hombre tripular, uno en uno. . . .”

  Cafferty eyed him dubiously. “You take that name Quick Draw awfully serious, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.” Vincent gave a thin smile, staring straight ahead. “So should you.”

  “Maybe it’s time somebody—” Cafferty’s words stopped half-finished as he saw the Colt appear in Vincent’s hand, cocked and pointed at his belly.

  “Time somebody, what?” Vincent asked pointedly.

  Cafferty stared at him, measuring his words, not giving an inch. “I came here to kill a sumbitch who’s out to cause us trouble and cost us our gold, Vincent. Do you aim to stop me from doing that?”

  “No, go help yourself,” said Vincent, giving a wag of his gun barrel toward the town, the flickering oil pot-lit street in front of them. “I’ll be along when it comes time to kill this bummer.”

  “Lawman, is what he told Burkett,” Cafferty corrected him.

  “Bummer, says I.” Vincent gave a short, confident grin and gave another wag of his gun barrel.

  Cafferty nudged his horse forward onto the dirt street. His and Vincent’s job was to call the man down onto the street, into the open, where the rest of the men could strike from the cover of darkness. But now he would have to go it alone, not knowing if Vincent was really looking for a one-on-one fight, or if he was just finding himself a way to back out altogether.

  All of this over one damn man, Cafferty told himself. Riding forward at a slow walk, he saw the dark figure step out into the middle of the dirt street facing him. All right, let him have it, he said to himself; and he nailed his spurs to his horse’s sides and sped forward, rifle in hand, cocked and ready.

  Shaw saw the lone rider coming, heard him let out a loud yell. But he knew the rider was only here to draw him out for the kill. No problem, Shaw thought, here he was. He only sidestepped slightly as gunfire exploded from the darkened doorways, alleys and side streets. From a rooftop above him he heard Dawson’s Winchester go to work, shot after shot, the bullets probing the darkness like some night creatures thirsting for blood.

  Max Cafferty saw shots streak orange-blue in the grainy darkness. “Kill this sonsabitch!” he screamed, firing as he raced forward, knowing that the lone figure should have already been shot down, or at least driven to cover by the hail of bullets. But that wasn’t the case, and it was too late for him to change things, he thought. In the course of a split second he saw Shaw’s gunshot blossom in a fiery circle before him. The bullet sliced through the air between his horse’s lowered ears and hit him squarely in the center of his chest.

  Seeing the horse and rider tumble forward, Shaw turned to his next target, a gunman crouched down in a doorway straight across the street from him. He fired as a bullet from another direction zipped past his head. His shot picked the rifleman up in the doorway and flung him through the large window beside him.r />
  In the street, Cafferty’s horse rolled back up onto its hooves and raced away wildly. But Cafferty’s body had flown forward and knocked out a wooden support post beneath a long boardwalk overhang. The overhang crashed to the ground in a billowing cloud of dust. The barber’s battle-weary cat shot across the street with a long loud screech from beneath the boardwalk where it had been hiding.

  From his perch atop the roofline, Dawson shot a rifleman as the man stepped into the open and took aim at Shaw. The bullet pounded the gunman backward to the ground. From his position in an alley across the street from Shaw, Caldwell shot at a gunman and missed when the man dove behind a stack of shipping crates out front of a mercantile store.

  “Look out, Jed!” Shaw shouted, seeing two riflemen step forward and fire. Having stepped forward himself into the light of an oil pot in order to make his shot, Caldwell ducked back. But he wasn’t quick enough. The two riflemen fired at once before Shaw’s Colt silenced one and Dawson’s rifle nailed the other.

  As the two fell dead on the ground, Caldwell jerked sidelong when one bullet hit him high in his shoulder and the other sliced through his upper thigh. Seeing the lawman fall to the boardwalk as more bullets sought him out, Jane ran forward shouting a string of profani ties at the hidden gunmen.

  “I’ve got you covered, Undertaker! I’ve got you covered!” she shouted and cried, grabbing Caldwell and nestling him to her flat buckskinned bosom as if protecting a child. She waved the shotgun back and forth. “Stay back, you sonsabitches!” she screamed.

  But a gunman named Lem Wright rushed in from out of nowhere and shouted, “Turn him loose, Jane. I’m killing him!”

  “No!” she screamed. She swung the shotgun around one-handed, ready to fire. But a rifle shot from Dawson bored through the middle of Wright’s back and sent him falling over atop Jane and Caldwell. “I would have shot him!” Jane bellowed through her tearful blood-splattered eyes. “I was going to shoot! He didn’t think I’d shoot him! But I would!” She rocked back and forth, Caldwell pressed against her breast.