Midnight Rider (Ralph Cotton Western Series)

by Ralph Cotton

  “Harmful…? Yes, I understand why,” the doctor said. “Good thinking, sir.” He shook his bald head a little and wiped crusted blood from another wound with a wet cloth.

  “Ready, Doc?” the Giant asked.

  “Yes, hold on to the table edge, Mr. Garth,” the doctor said. “Here we go again.”

  The Giant’s huge hands gripped the tables’ edges tightly. He took a deep breath as the probe went inside the nearly bloodless bullet hole and slid deeper until the doctor felt it clink against a stone.

  “Oh, I felt that!” the Giant said through his big clenched teeth.

  “I bet you did,” said the doctor. He laid a folded patch of gauze on the wound and pressed it gently but firmly until a thin seepage of blood held it in place.

  Casings lay back on the gurney and stared up at the white ceiling, exhausted from the loss of blood, but feeling better already now that his wound had been attended and bandaged.

  As the doctor probed, he spoke to both men.

  “Not meaning to pry, gentlemen,” he said, “but were the two of you involved in the shooting that went on along the high trails earlier?”

  “What if we were?” Casings asked.

  “If you were, then I feel it only fair to warn you there’s an angry teamster roaming the range with a shotgun. He’s looking for the men who knocked him unconscious and stole his freight wagon.”

  “Obliged for the warning,” said Casings, “but that wouldn’t be us. We just arrived in town a few minutes ago—came here first thing.”

  “I see…,” the doctor murmured, concentrating on pulling out another creek stone and dropping it into the metal pan. “There was a train robbery not far from the high trails,” he said, wiping the wound with the wet cloth and inspecting it. “The robbers managed to steal an engine and three railcars. One was a shipment from the Denver City Mint.”

  “You don’t say?” said Casings. He and the Giant looked at each other.

  “The telegraph came in this morning,” the doctor said as he set another gauze patch into place and pressed on it. He shook his head. “This modern world we’re living in, you hear of these things every few weeks, sometimes more frequently.…”

  “It’s amazing,” Casings said, relaxing, “no doubt about it.”

  When the doctor finished removing stones and bullets from the Giant’s wounds, he dressed the wounds with clean cotton gauze and wound his huge body with strips of cloth to hold the gauze in place. As he finished, he looked down at the Giant’s trousers and noted that two large pairs of trousers had been sewn together into one. As he helped the Giant put on his shirt, he saw it had been made out of a large wool blanket.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. Garth, you are the biggest man I have ever seen,” the doctor said in amazement.

  “I don’t mind,” said the Giant, his huge fingers buttoning the bib of his shirt. “I’m glad to hear it since I was the runt of my family.”

  “My God,” said the doctor, “you can’t be serious!”

  The Giant grinned and didn’t answer.

  “I am the biggest man in the world, Doctor,” he said.

  “How do you know that to be true?” the doctor said.

  “I’ve asked around,” said the Giant.

  Casings chuckled under his breath, drew coins from his pocket and placed them on the doctor’s desk. The doctor looked at them and nodded his approval.

  As the two left the doctor’s office and walked to the hitch rail out front, each with a rifle in his hands, they slowed to a halt, seeing Andrew Grolin, Heaton Swank and their remaining men standing in a wide half circle around the front of the doctor’s white clapboard-sided house.

  “Well, well, well-well-well!” said Grolin, with a wide, menacing grin.

  A few feet from Grolin, Dent Spiller had his rifle aimed at the two gunmen. Silas Dooley stood flanking Spiller with ten feet between them. Swank was a few feet from Spiller on his right. Bobby Kane stood off to the side, still looking confused, but appearing to be a little more aware of what was going on around him.

  Grolin’s left fist rested on his cocked hip, while his right hand wrapped around the butt of a big holstered Colt.

  “Tell me something, Pres,” he said. “How many times do I have to kill you two before it’s going to stick?”

  Chapter 27

  Casings and the Stillwater Giant stood four feet apart in the dirt street, their shadows stretching long in the afternoon sunlight. Grolin looked them up and down, noting the bandage on Casings’ head. Neither of them had offered an answer to his question moments ago. They had no doubt he would kill them this time.

  Spiller took a step forward, his rifle aimed and cocked toward the two wounded gunmen.

  “Don’t talk to these two poltroons, boss,” he said to Grolin. “Give me the word, I’ll chop them both down right now where they stand.”

  “Not before I wring your head off like a chicken!” the Giant growled at Spiller. He stepped forward; rifles cocked. Casings grabbed him by the tail of his coat.

  “Take it easy, Giant,” Casings said loud enough for Grolin to hear. “Don’t do it. This is what they want us to do!”

  “Try me, Giant!” said Spiller, taking a stance with his rifle toward the big man. “I’ll kill you quicker than—”

  “Relax, Dent, we’re talking here,” Grolin ordered, cutting Spiller off. He chuckled a little. Knowing the two wounded gunmen were outnumbered, he was in no hurry. This time he had them. They weren’t leaving here alive. He looked at Casings.

  “Believe me, Pres,” he said, “if I wanted you both dead right now, you’d both be lying bloody in the street right now.” He looked past the two, his eyes searching the doctor’s porch, the front door.

  “What do you want, then?” asked Casings. Both he and the Giant stood with their right hands on the butt of their Colts. Rifles hung ready in their left hands. Still, they both knew the odds were against them.

  “I want the son of a bitch who fouled everything up for me!” Grolin said angrily. “That’s what I want!”

  “Then you’re out of luck,” Casings said. “Rock’s dead.”

  “You’re lying, Pres,” Grolin said.

  “Hell yes, he’s lying,” said Spiller. “Let me blow his head off.”

  “Wait, damn it to hell!” Grolin said to Spiller, losing patience, giving him a scorching stare. He shot a look back at Casings and said, “What do you mean he’s dead? Didn’t he kill Shaner when I left him to take care of him?”

  “Yeah, he killed Shaner,” said Casings. “But we found him dead on the trail. Evidently the posse made quick work of him.”

  Grolin chuffed and relaxed a little. He let out a breath.

  “Hell,” he said, “I never thought I’d be this happy to hear about a posse killing a long rider.” He let his hand come off his gun butt, go inside his coat and come out with a fresh cigar.

  Around him, the men eased down a little, except for Spiller. Itching for a fight, he kept his rifle aimed and cocked.

  “Who the hell were they anyway?” he asked Casings. “Railroad men or what?”

  Casings only shrugged. He and the Giant kept their right hands on their holstered Colts and watched as Grolin bit the tip off a fresh cigar and blew it away.

  “I don’t know what they are,” Casings said. “But I see you didn’t get all the gold from them.”

  “Not all,” said Grolin, “not yet anyway. But I will get it all. Swank and I are partnered up on it.” He gestured a nod toward Heaton Swank, who stood watching, listening, his hand also resting on his holstered gun butt. “We’ll get it all before it’s over.”

  “Yeah? Well, we’ve got news for you, Andrew,” said the Giant, a wide grin coming to his big face. Knowing he was going to die anyway, he couldn’t deny himself the satisfaction of seeing the look on Grolin’s face when he found out the ingots were not real gold at all, only cheap gilded metal. “Tell him, Pres,” he said, turning it over to Casings.

  �
�Keep quiet about it, Giant,” said Casings. “We don’t need to tell him anything.”

  “Tell me what, Pres?” Grolin said.

  “Nothing,” Casings said. He stared hard at Dent Spiller, the man who used to be his close friend. To the Giant he said, “Let them all find out for themselves.”

  From inside his coat, Grolin took out a match, struck it and lit his cigar. He puffed on it, shook out the match and held the cigar between his finger and thumb.

  “If there’s something you want to tell me, Pres, get to it,” Grolin said. “If not, I see no reason in standing here just to watch the sun go down.” He gave Spiller a nod and flipped the spent match away.

  “It’s about damn time,” Spiller growled under his breath. He raised his rifle, ready to fire.

  “Grolin! Look at this!” said Silas Dooley.

  Grolin, Spiller and the others all turned as one, seeing Rochenbach ride slowly toward them right up the middle of the dirt street.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Grolin.

  The Giant grinned and said to himself, “Ol’ Rock! Right on time!”

  As the Giant spoke, he and Casings drew their Colts instinctively while the others’ eyes were turned for a second toward Rochenbach.

  Grolin clenched his teeth tightly on his cigar.

  “This son of a bitch!” he growled. He swung back toward Casings and the Giant. “Don’t think—” His words stopped as he saw their guns out, leveled and cocked. But then he continued. “Don’t think this is going to help you any. We’ll kill him too. In fact, it will be a pleasure”

  “It’s already helped us some,” Casings said, ready to start squeezing the trigger himself.

  Grolin and the others stood in silence as Rochenbach rode up, stopped fifteen feet away and turned his dun to them in the street. He held his big Remington resting along his right thigh. As soon as the dun had settled, Spiller stepped closer with his rifle half raised, his finger on the hammer.

  “Rochenbach!” he shouted. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited for you and me to stand off toe-to—”

  His words stopped short beneath the sound of Rochenbach’s big Remington resounding along the empty street. The shot nailed Spiller squarely in the chest and sent him flying backward through a heavy mist of blood. His rifle flew from his hands and landed at Bobby Kane’s feet. Kane stared down at it as if he might or might not know what it was.

  For the captain, Rock told himself. The big Remington stood smoking in his hand.

  The gunmen aimed their weapons toward Rochenbach. But then they froze, tense, waiting. Rochenbach calmly lowered the smoking Remington and stared at Grolin before he pitched an ingot to the ground at Grolin’s feet.

  “What the hell?” Grolin managed to say. Swank stepped over, stooped down, picked it up and looked it over in his hand.

  “Well…?” Pres Casings called out to Swank, liking this sudden turn on things. “Tell him what it is, Heaton,” he said as Swank looked at the cut corner of the glittering ingot.

  “Casings is right, Grolin,” said Swank, a sour look coming to his face. “This is a damned phony—a chunk of lead, pig iron… something. It’s sure as hell not gold!” He shoved the ingot to Grolin, again fixing his angry eyes up at Rochenbach.

  Grolin looked at it, his face twisted and confused.

  “I don’t know where you got this, Rochenbach,” Grolin said, “but it’s got nothing to do with the ingots we took from the train—”

  Rochenbach cut him off, saying, “I got it from one of the ingot crates you’ve got stashed in the stall with the Belgium,” he said, gesturing a nod toward the livery barn a block away.

  “No, you didn’t! You’re lying!” said Grolin, gripping the ingot tight in his fist. “Lou the Dog is guarding that gold!”

  “He was,” Rochenbach said calmly. “Maybe he will be again when he wakes up.”

  Grolin gritted his teeth; his thick hand tightened on the butt of his Colt, the only gun still in its holster. But he dared not draw the Colt, not now—not with Heaton Swank’s eyes burning a hole in him.

  “Rochenbach, you son of a bitch!” he shouted. “You’ve done nothing but mess up everything I’ve tried to do since you’ve been here!”

  “What’d he do?” Swank asked pointedly, staring hard at Grolin.

  “He did what he was supposed to do,” Casings called out. “He did what Grolin told him to do, just like the rest of us always do. Hell, he’s the best safe man we’ve ever seen.”

  “Shut up, Casings,” said Swank. He turned back to Grolin. “Well, Andrew? What did he do?” he demanded.

  Grolin looked stuck for an answer. He stalled, threw his cigar to the ground, grabbed his temples with his thumbs and fingers as if suffering from a terrible headache.

  “Damn it, Swank! I can’t pinpoint every least little thing he did. He’s been… unruly, undermining, divisive!”

  Swank gave him a look of disbelief.

  “Unruly? Undermining…?” he said. “What the hell is this, a school yard? The man’s an outlaw. Didn’t he tell you?”

  “I told you it’s hard to explain!” said Grolin. “But he’s ruined this whole big job for all of us—ruined it from the start!”

  “You’re losing your damned mind, Andrew,” said Swank. “I’ll tell you something he didn’t do. He didn’t get none of my men shot up over a damn load of fake gold ingots!” he snarled. “You didn’t have the sense to check the load, make sure it was real gold?”

  “Don’t crowd me on this, Heaton, I’m warning you!” Grolin shouted.

  “Crowd you, Grolin? You’re lucky if I don’t kill you!” Swank shouted in reply.

  Rochenbach watched calmly from his saddle. Casings and the Stillwater Giant stood pat, their guns drawn, cocked, ready for anything, rifles in their other hands.

  They’re good.

  Swank snatched the ingot from Grolin’s hand, threw it to the ground and shot a hole through it. It broke in two. Both pieces of metal bounced ten feet in the air. Bobby Kane watched with a half smile as the pieces spun and glittered in the afternoon sunlight.

  When Swank turned back to Grolin with the smoking Colt in his hand, Grolin mistook the move. Thinking Swank meant to shoot him next, he jerked his Colt up from its holster and fired at a distance of less than three feet.

  Swank rose onto his boot toes as the bullet ripped through his belly. He staggered back a step, but caught himself and returned fire. Grolin took the bullet in his chest and wobbled on his feet, but he continued firing. Rochenbach watched intently; so did Casings and the Giant—two gunmen shooting each other back and forth repeatedly on the dirt street.

  Jesus…

  Rochenbach shook his head a little, seeing Heaton Swank go down beneath a gray rise of smoke. Grolin staggered back another step and wobbled back and forth, waving his Colt, gripping his belly, blood spewing from his lips.

  Seeing Swank dead, knowing the gold ingots were worthless, Silas Dooley murmured to himself, “To hell with this!” He backed away a few feet, then turned and ran off while all eyes were set on Grolin.

  “Don’t nobody… try to stop me!” Grolin warned mindlessly, no longer interested in Rochenbach, the gold or anything else. He turned and staggered off toward the livery barn a block away, leaving a bloody trail behind him.

  Rochenbach, Casings and the Giant stood watching.

  Grolin had made it fifty feet up the center of the empty dirt street when suddenly a loud shotgun blast exploded from an alleyway and hit him from the side. The buckshot lifted him up like a rag doll and flung him sidelong ten feet. He landed dead and bloody in the dirt.

  A big bearded man in buckskins walked out from the alleyway carrying a smoking double-barreled shotgun. A bloodstained bandage covered his otherwise bare head.

  “Steal my wagon now, you son of a bitch!” he growled down at Grolin’s mangled body. Then he looked down the street at Rochenbach, Casings and the Giant. He half raised his shotgun toward them.

  Rochenbac
h raised his hands chest high in a show of peace, and the buckskinned man backed away warily for a few steps. Then he turned and stomped back into the alley, still grumbling under his breath.

  “Where’s the sheriff of this town?” Rochenbach asked Casings as he and the Giant walked over and stood beside him.

  “The doctor said he’s gone fishing,” Casings replied. “Said he’s been gone all day.”

  Rock looked around at the dead men on the ground, then up at the fading afternoon sky.

  “This would’ve been a good day for it,” he said. He stepped down from his saddle and looked the two up and down. “I don’t know how some folks find the time.”

  “Me neither,” the Giant said.

  Casings chuckled and shook his head. “Rock, I got to say, Grolin was right. You’re a hell of a safe man. But things do seem to get crazy when you’re around.”

  “What if it rains, Pres?” said Rock. “Are you going to blame me for the weather too?”

  “I’m not blaming you for anything,” Casings said. “I want to rob trains, open safes with you, get to be rich desperadoes.”

  “Hey! What about Bobby there?” the Giant asked. They looked over and saw Bobby Kane standing with Spiller’s rifle in his hands, a blank look on his face.

  “Bobby, put the rifle down,” Casings called out.

  Kane looked at them, confused for a second. Then he nodded and tossed the rifle away. He stepped back and wiped his palms on his trousers. The Giant walked over to him.

  “Are you doing all right, Bobby?” he asked in his deep powerful voice.

  “Just fine,” Bobby said with a dazed grin. “How’s everybody here?”

  “Come on with us awhile, Bobby,” the Giant chuckled. He patted a huge hand on the gunman’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I smacked you so hard.”

  “Me too,” Bobby said, still wearing the same dazed grin.

  “What now, Rock?” Casings said, the four of them turning, walking along the middle of the dirt street, seeing faces appear in windows and shop doors now that the shooting was over. “You got anything lined up?”