The Backstabbers

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Something stirred in Red’s addled brain and he said, his voice weak, “As a representative of the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company, I forbid you to do that. He’s a passenger and under our protection.”

  “Red, he ain’t a passenger,” Buttons said. “Your mind’s in a fog.”

  Broussard smiled at this exchange and stepped out of the mine entrance. To his left a line of mounted cowboys, rifles in hand, faced a group of women and children who had their backs to the wall of the arroyo. The woman seemed frightened, clutching children to their skirts, and the tension in the breathless air was as taut as a fiddle string. Broussard, a rational man, could not think the unthinkable. As far as he was concerned the women and children were temporary prisoners, nothing more.

  When heads turned to look at him, he said, “I need to borrow a knife. Got some ropes to cut.” When none of the punchers acknowledged him, he said, “Any kind of knife will do.”

  Finally a man tossed him a Barlow and said, “Bring it back, you he’ah?”

  Brossard nodded. “I will. And thank you kindly.”

  The puncher waved a dismissive hand and turned to renew his watch on the women and children.

  It was the work of a moment to cut Buttons and Red free of their bonds, but it took several minutes of trying before Buttons could stand again. Stiff and sore from rope burns, he watched Broussard gently stretch Red’s arms and legs, working to get circulation back, and he was impressed that the gambler cared.

  “I heard the shooting,” Buttons said in a friendlier tone than he’d used before. “Did they get Papa Mace?”

  Without looking up from his task, Broussard said, “I don’t know. I saw dead men, but I don’t know if he was one of them.”

  “If he ain’t dead, I want him,” Buttons said.

  Broussard smiled. “Get in line, stage driver.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Luna Talbot was horrified. She stared at Anse Dryden in disbelief. “No!” She kicked her horse into a startled run and behind her Dryden yelled, “Wait! Don’t go back there!”

  But the woman ignored him.

  She galloped past the entrance to the mine shaft, swung her mount between the Rafter-K hands and the Rathmore women and children and violently drew rein, forcing her horse to its haunches. Dryden was right behind her, cursing up a storm.

  “What are you men doing?” Luna said as she rode up and down the line of tight-faced horsemen. “Have you all gone stark, raving mad?” She waved a hand. “These are women and children. Are you going to shoot down women and children?” She picked out a young puncher and stared into his startled blue eyes. “Which of the children are you planning to kill? The littlest one over there holding the ragdoll?”

  The cowboy looked flustered and turned his head away, saying nothing, but Dryden yelled, “They’re Rathmores, damn it! Scum. Trash. They ain’t fit to live.”

  “Everybody is fit to live,” Luna said. “Their husbands were your enemy, not the wives and certainly not the children.”

  “Mrs. Talbot, stand aside,” Dryden said. “Let justice take its course. Are you men ready?”

  A few of the punchers looked uneasily at Dryden and then gaped in surprise as Luna leaped from the saddle, ran to the women, and took a place among them.

  “If you kill these people, you’ll have to kill me too,” Luna said, her angry eyes defiant.

  “If that’s what it takes,” Dryden said.

  “It’s gonna take a sight more than you got, mister.” A woman’s voice.

  Dryden swung his head around and saw Leah Leighton and Johnny Teague and his four gunmen, all with guns drawn.

  “This is none of your concern,” Dryden said. “And it’s none of Mrs. Talbot’s concern.”

  “You threatened to kill my boss, so I’m making it my concern,” Leah said.

  “Seems like you got a decision to make, Dryden,” Teague said. “I don’t want to influence your thinking, but you were right about us. We’re mighty rough men.”

  Juan Sanchez eyed Dryden and smiled like an alligator. “I’ll kill you first, señor, I think.”

  A silence fell on the compound, and tension tied the air in knots as fighting men became fingers looking for triggers. All that was needed to set off an explosion of hell-firing fury was a few spoken words from Dryden or Johnny Teague.

  And everybody knew it . . . men, women, and children.

  Long seconds ticked past. A horse tossed its head and jangled its bit, and a child cried from fear. Her mother tried to calm her in hushed, soothing tones. The cooking pot bubbled over and water hissed over the coals, raising steam. Above the arroyo, the cloudless sky was as blue as a sapphire.

  Buttons Muldoon broke the tension.

  Moving stiffly, he stepped out of the mine with Red Ryan in his arms. He read the signs and recognized a Mexican standoff when he saw one. But his only concern was the man he carried. “I’ve got a feller here needs help. Somebody help him.”

  All eyes turned to Buttons and the tension leaked out of the atmosphere, pent-up breaths hissing from tight mouths like steam escaping from a boiler.

  “Mr. Dryden, stand your men down,” Luna Talbot said. “There will be no massacre of the innocents here today.”

  Buttons reinforced that statement by pushing through the horsemen who pulled aside to let him pass. He walked to a grassy area close to the wall and gently laid Red on his back. “Mrs. Talbot, take a look at him. I think he’s real bad and he ain’t thinking straight.”

  As Luna kneeled beside Red, Johnny Teague kneed his horse forward and Juan Sanchez, with his significant guns, went with him. He followed Teague’s lead when the outlaw drew rein a couple of feet from Dryden.

  “Looks like you’re done here, cowboy,” Teague said.

  Dryden’s anger flared. “Who the hell are you, mister?”

  “Name’s Johnny Teague, originally out of the Harris County country, but I’ve traveled around a fair piece.”

  “I’ve heard of you,” Dryden said. “You’re an outlaw.”

  Teague nodded. “And like you said, mighty rough and so wild I can buck in eight directions at the same time.”

  Dryden had his back to the wall. He doubted that his men would obey an order to kill the woman and children in cold blood, and he no longer wished to put it to the test. To save face, he retreated into bluster. “Mrs. Talbot, the Cornudas Mountains are now part of the Rafter-K range and those Rathmore women are trespassing. What do you intend to do about it?”

  “They can come with me and live on my ranch until they get settled elsewhere,” Luna said. “In the meantime they are grieving for dead husbands, so I suggest you let them be.”

  “You’ve got a week, seven days, to get them out of here,” Dryden said.

  “I know how many days there are in a week,” Luna said. “I’m attending to a sick man here, Mr. Dryden, so call off your dogs and go. You’re wearing out your welcome.”

  Dryden salvaged his dignity. “A week, Mrs. Talbot. Come on, boys. Back to the ranch.”

  In later years, Dave Quarrels insisted that if it was not for the presence of Luna Talbot and Johnny Teague, the massacre of the Rathmore women and children could easily have become a grim reality.

  “It would’ve taken only one shot from one puncher to commence everybody to shooting,” he told A. B. Boyd. “Nowadays all the talk is about the O.K. Corral street fight in Tombstone back in 1881 and that began with one shot.”

  Luna Talbot never talked about the incident nor did Johnny Teague, and Anse Dryden took his silence with him to the grave. The consensus of opinion among historians is that the Rafter-K hands would not have shot the women and children . . . but unless a letter or a diary written by one of the participants turns up, no one will ever know.

  “How is he?” Buttons Muldoon said. He’d just watched Dryden and his hands leave, one of them dead and hanging over his saddle.

  “Red is very weak, but with proper medical care he’ll live,” Luna said. �
�I advise you to take him to El Paso, where there are doctors.” She looked up at Buttons. “He was given a dreadful beating.”

  “And that’s why I aim to kill Papa Mace,” Buttons said. “He was the instigator.”

  “I plan to go after him myself,” Luna said. “He aimed to use me as his slave and do whatever he wanted to me.”

  “No, I’ll kill him,” Buttons said. “If it takes me the rest of my life, I’ll rid the ground of his shadow.”

  “Mr. Muldoon, right now you’re in no shape to go anywhere, except to a doctor’s surgery with Red,” Luna said. “You were badly beaten and starved into the bargain. Don’t look into a mirror. You won’t like what you see. You’ve been through it and it shows.”

  The woman was right. Buttons’s usually ruddy face was ashen and the ordeal he’d experienced showed in his sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. He looked like an exhausted man teetering on the edge of collapse.

  “Mrs. Talbot is right, old fellow,” Arman Broussard said. “You need food and rest. Above all, rest.”

  Then, a small weak voice said, “Lady . . .”

  The women were gathered around Malachi Rathmore, who lay on the ground, leaning on one elbow and staring at Luna. His chest was covered in blood that was already clotting over at least two bullet wounds. “He took all the gold . . .”

  Buttons stepped toward him. “Who did? Was it Mace?”

  “All the gold . . .”

  “Was it Mace?” Buttons said again.

  Luna left Red who was unconscious and took a knee beside the dying man. “Did Mace take all the gold?”

  Malachi nodded. “Yes, he took it all . . . with my . . . wife.”

  “Where did he go?” Buttons said. “Answer me or I’ll put another bullet in you.”

  “Please, Mr. Muldoon, let me talk to him,” Luna said. Then, “Do you know where Mace is headed?”

  “East,” Malachi said. “He took the gold . . . betrayed us . . .” Those were the last words he’d ever speak. He made a sound in his throat and then fell dead on his back.

  “East,” Buttons said. “That’s all I need. No, I need a horse.”

  “And a gun,” Johnny Teague said. He carried a couple of gun belts and holstered Colts. Behind him Dave Quarrels held a scattergun. “I found these back there. I guess one of these is yours, huh?”

  Buttons nodded and took a gun rig. “Yeah, this is mine. The other belongs to Red. And that’s his Greener. I’ll take it.”

  As Buttons checked the loads in the Colt and shotgun, Luna said, “Mr. Muldoon, you’re not in a fit state to go after Mace Rathmore. Look at you. You’re so weak you can barely walk.’

  “A horse will do the walking for me,” Buttons said.

  “Mr. Broussard, talk some sense into him,” Luna said.

  “I’ll go with you, Buttons,” Broussard said.

  “That’s not talking sense,” Luna said. “We’ll all go with him.”

  The driver shook his head. “No, not today. There has to be a reckoning, and it’s a thing I must do by myself.”

  “A man knows his own mind,” Broussard said. “I won’t stand in your way.”

  Luna said, “Your mind is made up, Mr. Muldoon. I can see that. Then at least ride a decent horse. Leah, let this stubborn man borrow your paint.”

  Leah Leighton smiled. “It’s all yours, driving man. I’ll see that your friend is well taken care of.”

  “Thank you, thank you kindly,” Buttons said. Stiffly, he got down on a knee beside Red. “Can you hear me?”

  Red’s eyes fluttered open. “I heard you on the brag as usual.”

  “I’ll bring you back Mace’s head on a stick,” Buttons said. “And that’s not a brag.”

  Red reached out and he clutched Buttons’s thick bicep. “Bring yourself back. You hear?”

  “Depend on it,” Buttons said.

  A few minutes later, he rode out of the arroyo and turned east at a canter. The sun was warm on his bruised face.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Papa Mace Rathmore was aware of the limitations of the horses and didn’t push them hard. They’d fed on grass and not much of that and were not in good shape. He didn’t expect a pursuit and was content to hold them to a walk.

  Ella turned her pretty but hard-bitten face to Mace and said, “What do you think happened back there, Papa? That sure as hell was gunfire we heard.”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Mace said. “Maybe Malachi shot the prisoners.”

  “He used a lot of cartridges to kill two men,” Ella said. Mace had given her Red’s plug hat and she wore it tilted back on her head, her dirty blond hair falling over the shoulders of her dress.

  “Malachi ain’t much of a shot.” Mace took a cigar from a silver case with the initials TL engraved on it, lit the smoke, and passed it to the woman. He lit another for himself and said, “When we reach Fort Worth, we’ll turn this gold into cash and then set up in business. I got it all planned.”

  “Is whoring still part of it?” Ella said, frowning. “I figured I was all through with that.”

  “Yeah, but only for a while, until we’re well set up, and then you can quit.” He gave her a sidelong look. “We all got to make sacrifices, Ella. You sell your body, and when I’m working a con, I sell my words. In the end it’s all the same.”

  “Maybe, but you’ll get out and meet hifalutin folks,” Ella said. “All I’ll do is lie on my back and count the cracks in a boardinghouse ceiling. That ain’t the same.”

  “You’ll meet folks,” Mace said. His great belly juddered with every step of the horse. “I already promised you, no two-dollar tricks. You’ll be a lady whore, the kind that makes the big money.”

  “I wish I was in Fort Worth already, away from this damned desert, making big money and wearing all them nice clothes like they do,” Ella said from behind a blue curtain of cigar smoke.

  “Soon, my love, soon,” Mace said. “There’s a long, dusty trail ahead of us and not much grub, but when we arrive in Fort Worth, we’ll look back and say, ‘Well, there was value in every miserable mile we rode to get here.’” Mace smiled, “Yup, value all right. Fort Worth is a burg with snap, and it’s crying out for sporting folks like you and me, Ella.”

  By noon the sun was a fireball in the sky that scorched the wasteland and all who were foolish enough to move across it. Papa Mace removed his frock coat and tied a rust-colored bandana around his bald head before replacing his hat. He sweated like a pig, and his thick-lipped mouth was open, gasping for air. And he smelled rank.

  Not for the first time, Ella thought him a repulsive creature, and the thought of his dank hands exploring her again made her skin crawl. But, at least for the time being, he was a necessary evil. She made up her mind to dump him at the first opportunity . . . after he’d cashed in the gold. She clenched her cigar between her teeth and smiled inwardly at the thought she’d just had . . . Killing him is not out of the question.

  * * *

  The afternoon wore on, and Ella Rathmore and Papa Mace drowsed in the saddle, the only sound the creak of saddle leather and the soft fall of the horses’ hooves.

  Something made Ella jerk wide awake. A woman’s intuition perhaps.

  She looked uneasily at Mace, but his head nodded in sleep, his many chins rolled around his throat like a string of sausages. Ella turned and studied their back trail . . . and spotted a thin column of dust behind them.

  She shook Mace awake and said, “Dust behind us.” She looked again. “And it’s coming on fast.”

  Mace drew rein, swung his horse around and stared.

  “Do you see it?” Ella said.

  “Hell, yeah, I see it,” Mace said, irritated. “I’m not blind.”

  “Who could it be?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Mace said.

  “Malachi. It could be Malachi.”

  “Whoever it is, he’s seen us,” Mace said. “We can’t outrun him on these horses. They’re about done for the day as it is.�
�

  “Can you kill him?”

  “Yeah, I can kill him.” Mace slid the Winchester from the boot under his knee. “I can kill him easy . . . and I plan to do just that.” He held his rifle at the ready and watched the rider come on at a run. What he needed was the patience to make sure of his shot. Around him the silence was so profound he heard the short, nervous gasps of Ella’s breathing.

  The rider closed the distance. He carried some kind of long gun, held straight out at his side, and a ribbon of dust trailed behind him.

  Soon . . .

  Papa Mace threw the scarred stock of the Winchester to his shoulder . . .

  And it was then he made the biggest mistake of his life.

  * * *

  Mace recognized the blue coat with the silver buttons and the stocky shape of the rider. It was Muldoon, the man he’d left to die of thirst in the mine shaft. The feller was still alive and bearing down on him. What had happened back there?

  Papa Mace was a man filled with hatreds, and he directed all of that hate at the stage driver. In that moment, Mace’s loathing for the man possessed him like a form of insanity. Muldoon had to die . . . and Mace had to watch him die . . . and gloat . . . and torment him as he drew his last breath.

  Mace screamed in demented fury and fired. A miss. The rider galloped closer.

  Shrieking curses, Mace raked his big-roweled spurs across his mount’s flanks and the abused horse lurched into a run. As he rode, the fat man levered shot after shot at Buttons but scored no hits. Buttons held his fire, closing the distance.

  A hit!

  A bullet burned across Buttons’s left shoulder, gouging deep, drawing blood. It would have made a careful man wary, but Buttons threw caution to the wind and relentlessly advanced on Mace.

  The two riders were madmen, each bent on destroying the other, roaring curses, eyes blazing with crazed anger. Then a disaster struck Mace that he’d not anticipated.

  The hammer of his rifle snapped on an empty chamber. He levered again and again . . . Snap! Snap! But there could be no retreat. He was too close to the hated Muldoon.