Crossing Fire River

by Ralph Cotton

  “By God, that’s honest,” said Hewes. His right hand jerked upward on the Remington. Shaw had seen it coming. He’d seen Hewes’ knuckles whiten around the gun butt. He’d seen the sharp, intense look come to the man’s eyes, the look that said he’d just bet his whole roll, heart and soul, on the flick of a wrist, the drop of a hammer. Shaw let him go the distance—no hurry, he thought.

  He watched as if standing detached, somewhere above it all, seeing Hewes’ Remington swing up at him. Shaw thought about those sparrows dancing above the old witch’s fingertips that night in the fire glow. Had that been real or had it all been a drunken dream? Just one of many, he reminded himself. Then he felt the big Colt lift and fire and fall back into its holster as if it had never really left it.

  Hewes slammed back against the freight wagon, a bullet hole appearing in the center of his chest. He stared down at the blood, his Remington falling limply from his hand. He turned his shocked eyes back up to Shaw, the eyes of a man who had just seen everything lying at his fingertips, then watched it all vanish. “Damn . . . ,” he said, and he slid down to the ground and fell forward on his face.

  Seeing Hewes fall, Lori Edelman let out a short scream and came running down from the porch to the wagon. Shaw took a step back and let her run past him to Hewes, but not before kicking the Remington out of reach.

  “Bo? Bo?” She shook him by his shoulders; then she checked the pulse in his wrist until she satisfied herself that he was dead.

  Shaw watched. After a moment, the widow stood up and touched a hand to the side of her forehead. “I—I suppose I should hate saying this, but I’m glad he’s dead. Now I am free . . . at last.”

  Shaw stood watching her in silence.

  “You see, he was making me go with him,” she said. “What choice did I have? I didn’t know what had happened to you. For all I knew, he may have killed you, or had you killed like poor Raul.” She stepped over beside Shaw; he let her. “Anyway, I’m not sorry he’s dead. Now perhaps you and I—”

  “I was here the other night when you and Hewes were in your bedroom,” he said, cutting her off. “I listened through the window.” He stared at her until she felt forced to look away.

  “Then you must know what I had to go through just to keep myself from—”

  “Stop it,” Shaw said, cutting her off again.

  She paused for a moment in reflection of what she and Hewes had said that night. Finally, she said warily, “I heard you say you are a lawman?”

  Shaw just stared at her.

  “Because, if you are, I want you to know, I believe Bowden killed my poor husband. Did you happen to hear me mention that to him?” she said, fishing for what Shaw may or may not have overheard.

  Shaw didn’t answer. If Dawson wanted to know about it, wanted to bring charges, investigate it, whatever, that was up to him, Shaw thought. Instead of answering he stepped forward and bent down over Hewes in order to drag his body clear of the wagon wheel, which had started to rock back and forth, the horses having turned skittish from hearing the gunshot.

  “Tell me something,” Shaw said as he began dragging Hewes a few inches. “Have you ever been to a place in Old Mex called Valle Del Maíz?”

  “Valley of the Corn? Yes, I have been there. Why?” Lori asked.

  “Do you recall ever seeing an old bruja there, who keeps a flock of trained sparrows?”

  “A witch with trained sparrows?” she said. “No, I don’t believe so. Anyway, I don’t think sparrows can be trained.”

  “I wondered that myself,” Shaw said. He stopped and stood up from dragging Hewes’ body. Maybe it had all been a dream after all, he told himself. Then he turned around to face her and saw the open bore of the derringer less than three inches from his right eye, cocked, ready.

  “Good-bye, Lawrence,” she said with cold resolve.

  All right, this was it, he told himself. Right here, in the front yard of the man whose body he had found, whose wife he had slept with both before and after burying him. Right here beside the corpse of Bowden Hewes, a man he’d just killed whose body was yet warm from the living. Fair enough . . .

  “Good-bye, Lori,” he said peacefully.

  The gunshot was loud, but he didn’t flinch. He heard it, but he knew right away that she hadn’t killed him. Had she killed him he wouldn’t still be standing hearing the rifle shot echo across the rolling hills.

  Rifle shot? He felt Lori Edelman’s warm blood on his face as he turned his eyes toward his horse. Beside the speckled barb he saw Jane Crowly. She stood with her mouth agape, her smoking rifle in hand. “Oh my Lord . . . Oh my Lord . . . What have I done . . . ? What have I done . . . ?” he heard her say over and over as if reciting a chant.

  An hour had passed by the time Jane Crowly had settled down enough to take the hot cup of coffee Shaw held out to her. “Look at me, all shook up,” she said, red-faced, sniffling, “crying like some young girl. You’d think I’d never pulled a trigger before in my life.” She brushed a strand of hair back from her face and sipped the coffee. “Obliged, Lawrence,” she said in a softer voice.

  “Killing ought to shake up anybody in their right mind, Jane,” Shaw offered.

  “Well, you never seem too broken up over it,” she replied. “I’ve noted that these past few days.”

  “I don’t claim to be in my right mind either,” said Shaw.

  “True, you don’t.” Jane nodded, accepting his premise. She sipped her coffee and glanced over to where Shaw had laid Hewes and Lori beside her husband’s grave and spread blankets over them. “I—I thought she was the most precious woman in the world.” Her gaze hardened. “Turns out she was just as low-down evil, no-account as the rest of us.”

  Shaw didn’t respond.

  “Did you kill Mean Myra?” she asked quietly, knowing that if he did he would have only done so for good reason.

  “No, one of them did it,” said Shaw. “We’ll never know which, any more than we’ll ever know which one killed the doctor—his own wife or his own brother.” Shaw squinted in grim contemplation. “Hell of a world sometimes.” Then he gave Jane a gentler look. “Did I say obliged for saving my life?”

  “Yeah, you said it, but I ain’t greatly convinced you meant it. You didn’t look none to happy about it.”

  “I was,” Shaw said, still not looking or sounding as if he thought she’d done him any great favor. “Do you still want to ride with me some?”

  She sat silent for a moment, then said, “Yeah, if it’s all right. I’ve got to tell you though, I’m no good. I never have been. So don’t go setting any high expectations on me.” She gave him a bitter but honest look. “I just want to warn you beforehand. There’s been terrible stuff said about me. Lots of it true.”

  “Me too,” said Shaw. “I don’t care.” They sat watching as Dawson, Caldwell and Juan Lupo stepped their horses into sight and nudged them toward the yard. Lupo led the Scotsman and three of the bounty hunters’ horses behind him. Each horse carried its rider’s body lying facedown over its back. “Looks like Iron Head got away,” Shaw said, noting the half-breed’s absence from among the dead.

  “I would not want to haul gold across this desert with Iron Head loose and knowing about it,” Jane said.

  “If I know Dawson he’ll volunteer to escort him,” Shaw said.

  “Where do you and Marshal Dawson know each other from?” Jane asked, eyeing the riders as they drew closer.

  “We grew up together,” said Shaw. “We once loved the same woman.” He surprised himself saying it. He had never said anything like that to anyone before.

  Jane didn’t reply. But after a moment, she said quietly, “Where will we go . . . you and me riding together?”

  “I don’t know,” said Shaw, “back down into Old Mex, I suppose.”

  “Yeah, I like it there,” Jane said. They saw the bloodstained bandage wrapped around Dawson’s upper arm. Juan Lupo appeared to be unscathed.

  On an outside chance, Shaw asked Jane, “Ha
ve you ever been to Valle Del Maíz?”

  “Oh, hell yes, many times,” said Jane. “I got drunk once and fell off the second floor of the hotel there, splattered mud and horse piss all over some local dignitaries and got asked to leave.” She laughed under her breath. “You’re the only person I’ve heard mention that place in the longest time.”

  Shaw watched the three riders look down at the two blanketed bodies on their way past them. “Did you ever see an old bruja there?” Shaw asked her. “She keeps a covey of trained sparrows? Gets them to dance above her fingertips?”

  “You mean old Princess Anne,” Jane said confidently. “Hell yes, I remember her. Witch Anne, I always called her. I never seen anybody get along with sparrows the way she did. Damn, this brings back some memories. . . .”

  Shaw gave a half smile, listening, but not really hearing the rest of what she said. He gazed off across the brutal jagged land and saw the sun sitting low, wavering red and angry in the western sky. “I knew I saw her,” he whispered to himself, feeling his eyes water a bit from the harsh sun’s glare.

  After the gun smoke clears

  and the dust settles, what happens to

  Fast Larry Shaw and the wagon full of stolen gold?

  Don’t miss a single page of action!

  Read on for a special sneak preview

  of the next novel by Ralph Cotton,

  America’s most exciting Western author . . .

  ESCAPE FROM FIRE RIVER

  Coming from Signet in November 2009

  Trabajo Duro, the Mexican badlands

  At the end of a clay-tiled bar, Lawrence Shaw lifted a water gourd to his lips and sipped from it. Outside, the shadows of evening had overtaken the harsh glare of sunlight and left the sweltering Mexican hill line standing purple and orange in the setting sun. In a corner of the Pierna Cruda Cantina Burdel, a guitarist strummed low and easy.

  Yet even as the music seemed to soothe any tension in the warm air, the player doing the strumming kept a wary eye on the three trail-hardened americanos who had arrived only a moment earlier, slapping dust from their clothes. “Like the sign reads, ‘Welcome to the Raw Leg Cantina and Brothel,’ gentlemen,” the owner, “Cactus” John Barker had said, translating the name into English for them as the three stood side by side at the bar. “What is your pleasure at the end of this hot, hellish day?”

  “Rye whiskey if you got it. Mescal if you don’t,” said a man in a no-nonsense voice. A red dust-filled beard covered his face. He wore a weathered duster, and a long riding quirt dangled from his wrist.

  Cactus John quickly set three shot glasses in front of them and filled each from a dusty bottle of rye.

  “The Raw Leg, huh?” said another of the gunmen, casting a sour look all around the cantina.

  “Yes, the Pierna Cruda,” the owner said, beaming proudly. “It’s your first time here, so I’ll tell you: I serve the strongest drink this side of the border. I make it all myself, and I taste it myself, so I know it’s the best.” He gave a toss of his hand as if saluting his distilling abilities.

  “South of the border takes in a heap of land,” the red-bearded gunman replied flatly.

  The three appraisingly eyed a couple of half-naked women up and down and threw back their shots of rye. The man with the red beard motioned for the owner to refill the glasses. “Pour them to the brim,” he said gruffly. “I never liked drinking short.”

  “Yes, sir. I see you fellows have arrived with a powerful thirst,” Cactus John said nervously. He’d immediately taken note of these men. They had walked in from the hitch rail like men who were there for a reason other than to quench their thirsts for strong drink or to sate their visceral needs for female companionship.

  Like the owner and the old guitar player, Shaw had sensed trouble the second the three had pushed aside the ragged striped blanket covering the doorway and stepped inside. He had deftly pulled one corner of his poncho up over his shoulder. Also, like the musician, he had continued on with what he was doing as if they weren’t there. Yet, unlike the guitar player and Cactus John, he had little doubt who these men were, why they were here or what was about to happen.

  “Gracias,” Shaw said to the young woman who had handed him the water gourd. She stood behind the bar, awaiting its return when he’d finished drinking. The three men had ridden with the late Jake Goshen’s gang. They had found the hoofprints of Shaw’s and his pal Jane Crowly’s horses and began following them across the border the day before.

  Their reason for trailing him was not because they wanted to reap vengeance on him for having killed Jake Goshen and leaving him lying in the dirt. They were following Shaw looking for stolen gold—a freight wagonload of it. There had been wagon tracks leading from Bowden Hewes’ spread along Fire River where they had found Goshen’s body. But then the tracks had vanished in the hill country, and only the hoof prints of Shaw’s and Jane’s horses remained.

  The gold had been stolen from the Mexican National Bank in Mexico City more than a year earlier. A week ago Shaw, along with U.S. Marshal Crayton Dawson and his deputy Jedson Caldwell, aka the Undertaker, and a Mexican government agent named Juan Lupo had taken the gold back from Goshen and his gang. They had retrieved the loot just in time, before Goshen had a chance to melt it all down from German sovereign coins into untraceable ingots. But hanging on to the gold had proven to be no easy job. The borderlands were crawling with gangs of gunmen, outlaws intent on having the gold for themselves.

  And here is where they find me, Shaw mused to himself.

  “Puedo hacer más por usted, señor?” The young woman asked Shaw if there was more she could do for him, with a suggestive smile. She wore a string-tied peasant blouse that she kept pulled low and open in front, revealing her wares to the buying public.

  “Gracias, no hoy,” Shaw said courteously, turning her down but thanking her and leaving her offer open for another day. He laid a coin on the bar for the water and wiped his hand across his lips.

  At the end of the bar one of the three gunmen said to the other two in a voice loud enough to make certain he’d be overheard by Shaw, “I hate a place that don’t speak American.”

  The man with the red beard replied, “It is rude and unfriendly in Old Mex, and that’s a fact.” He dropped a gold coin onto the tile bar top. “Once across the border it appears all civil manners go to hell.”

  Facing the three from across the tile bar, Cactus John picked up the money quickly and said, “I myself am a born Texan, but I welcome all kinds of talk here.” He gave a shrug of acceptance.

  “Nobody asked you a damn thing, barkeep!” said the red-bearded gunman. “So keep your tongue reined down, ’less you want to lose it.”

  Cactus John stared back at him coldly, thinking about the sawed-off shotgun lying under the bar.

  The girl standing across from Shaw gasped. She hurried from behind the bar, water gourd still in hand, knowing that at any second bullets would be flying.

  Shaw almost sighed. He knew the gunmen would get around to him shortly. First they wanted to make a strong impression, he decided as he felt their eyes all turn toward him.

  “While we’re here, there will be nothing spoke at us or around us but American,” said the red-bearded gunman. “Everybody got that?”

  Shaw only returned their cold stare.

  “You there,” one of the men said to Shaw. “Is that your speckled bard at the rail?”

  Shaw’s reply was no more than a single nod of his head.

  “Where you coming from?” he asked.

  Shaw didn’t answer.

  “Mister, I asked you a question,” the red-bearded gunman demanded.

  “No hablo,” Shaw said quietly.

  The three gunmen looked at one another. “No hablo?” one of the men said with a dark chuckle. “He must think we’re joshing.”

  “Aw, to hell with this,” said the youngest of the three. “Let’s stop pussyfooting around here.” He stepped back from the bar and faced Shaw with
his hand poised near his gun butt. “You’re one of the lawmen, ain’t you? One of them who raided Hewes’ place over at Fire River. You helped Juan Lupo take back the gold.”

  Shaw made no move, no corrections in his posture, no drop of his gun hand to shorten the distance between it and the big Colt standing holstered at his hip. It had all been done earlier, in unhurried preparation. “Yep,” he said in a calm, flat tone.

  The other two stepped back from the bar and flanked the younger gunman. The one with the red beard said in a tight, angry voice, “You fellows thought you’d escape Fire River with a wagonload of gold? You were dead wrong. Now, where is it?”

  Seeing that this trouble didn’t involve him, Cactus John dropped low and ran in a crouch from behind the bar out the rear door. The guitar player and the half-naked women seemed to disappear into the walls like apparitions. “I spent it,” Shaw said in the same flat tone.

  “You spent—!” the third man started to say.

  But the younger gunman cut him off. “You’re real funny, Mister!” he said to Shaw, his hand grabbing his black-handled Smith & Wesson and raising it.

  “Yeah, for a dead man!” said the tall red-bearded gunman, reaching for his Dance Brothers revolver at the same time. The third man took a step back and made his move a split second behind the other two.

  Outside, Jane Crowly had seen the three sweaty horses that had shown up at the hitch rail while she’d gone to a small general store for a bag of rock candy. She’d returned with a bulging jawful of horehound candy and heard the language turn heated and loud on her last few steps toward the blanket-covered doorway. Oh hell!

  She jerked to a sudden halt when she heard the roaring gunshots resound so heavily that dust rose from the window frames and the plank walkway. Then, recovering quickly, hearing the commotion of falling men and running boots, she raised her shotgun butt and slammed it hard into the striped blanket just as a gunman came fleeing through the doorway.