by Ralph Cotton
Trueblood and Weeks glanced at each other questioningly. “You sure know a hell of a lot about the man for not knowing him.”
“I want to know all I can about any sumbitch who’s out to kill me,” Kitty said. “Anyway, we’ve got a problem,” she added, gesturing her gun barrel toward the dead horse.
Weeks grinned. “The way I see it, you’re the one with the problem. We’ve got saddles beneath us, ready to ride.”
Kitty didn’t answer. “Which one of you am I riding with?”
They both grinned. “What’s in it for us?” asked Weeks.
“What’s in it for you?” She pushed up her hat brim again. “How about this? I won’t tell Silva that neither of you offered me a ride out of this hellhole after I lost my horse.”
“The thing is”—Weeks grinned—“if we leave you afoot out here, we don’t have to worry about what you tell the Snake—not ever again.”
Kitty looked at the rifle in Trueblood’s grip. Then she looked away for a moment, knowing he was right. When she looked back at the two outlaws her countenance had changed. She gave them both a coy smile. “All right, fellows, I think we all know what’s in it for you. The question is, when and where?”
“It can’t be soon enough for me,” said Trueblood. “I got cut short back there with my whore.”
“Yeah, me too,” Weeks said with a hungry look in his eyes. “There’s a water hole up ahead.” He nudged his horse over, reached a hand down and helped her swing up behind his saddle. “I’ve been craving a piece of you for the longest time.”
“Silva can’t hear about us doing this,” said Kitty, settling in behind him.
“Hear that Weeks?” said Trueblood in a mock tone. “Don’t you ever tell the Snake what we’re about to do.” He nudged his horse forward on the narrow high trail.
“What? Tell Silva Ceran we both crawled into his warm spot?” said Weeks. “Do I look that crazy to you?”
Chapter 2
Out in front of the cantina, the ranger rummaged through the saddlebags on Wheeler’s horse, looking for any sign of the stolen payroll money from Poindexter. He took out a small leather pouch and shook its contents into his gloved palm. Watching him with curiosity, the old cantina owner stepped in closer for a better look at the pouch’s contents.
“Welcome to Wild Wind, Ranger,” he said, translating the name of the town into English. He gestured toward his cantina. “Anything you want, it is free.”
“Gracias,” the ranger said absently, without turning his gaze from the palm of his hand. Gold teeth . . . He shook the bloodstained teeth back and forth in his hand.
Beside him, the old cantina owner stopped an inch away and craned his neck down. “Aw, sí, gold teeth,” he said as if answering the ranger’s thoughts.
The ranger turned a stern look toward him; the old man stepped back. But he shrugged, then said, “I only try to see if this is enough to pay for his burial. Am I wrong to do so, Ranger?”
The ranger didn’t answer. Instead he considered his findings. Since there was no cash in the dead outlaw’s saddlebags, it had to mean one of two things. Either Silva “the Snake” still had the gang’s robbery money, or else they had stashed it somewhere for safekeeping in the badlands between here and Poindexter.
Handing the few bloodstained gold morsels over to the old man, he said, “Here. This should cover it.”
“Sí, gracias,” said the old cantina owner, inspecting the teeth, moving them around in the palm of his hand with a long, knotted finger. “If not, perhaps I will sell his horse and—”
“Do what suits you,” said the ranger. He gazed out toward the hill line in the direction the three riders had taken out of town. He doubted Ceran would have stashed the money and taken the chance of one of his men coming back and getting it without his knowing. No . . . The Snake still had the money. He’d bet on it.
Before leaving Vientos Salvajes, the ranger watered Black Pot at the town well and stood the animal in the shade of a tall saguaro cactus, rubbing him down with a handful of dried grass. While he rubbed the big Appaloosa, the young woman from the cantina walked over to him. Her black hair had been brushed and she wore a clean dress, her other dress having been soaked with Wheeler’s blood as he’d held her against him.
“I come to thank you for what you did,” the woman said to the ranger, her English reasonably good. “If you had not been there . . .” She shook her head slowly, letting her words trail.
The ranger turned from rubbing the stallion. He touched the brim of his sombrero. “Begging your pardon, señora,” he said, “but had I not shot him, it wouldn’t have happened.”
The woman looked bewildered for a moment. Then she touched her long, glistening hair and said, “My head is sore, where he pulled me by my hair.”
Not knowing what else to say, the ranger nodded and said, “Well, he won’t do it again.”
“No, he will not do it again,” the woman said. She smiled. “I am Ramona.”
“Pleased, Ramona,” the ranger said. “I’m Ranger Burrack, Samuel Burrack.”
“I am pleased to meet you as well, Samuel,” she said with formality. “And I still thank you.”
“You’re welcome, then,” Sam said.
“I work at the Belleza Grande,” she said. “The Grand Beauty.”
“Yes, I understand,” he said. “Next time trouble starts, you need to duck down and get away from it.”
“Sí, the next time I will,” she said with a smile that told Sam he was wasting his breath trying to warn her of the hazards involved in the sort of work she did.
Ramona shrugged. “Anyway, Don Emilio said I can thank you for the rest of the day if I wish to.” She smiled again.
“Don Emilio, eh?” The ranger looked over at the Belleza Grande Cantina. The old man stood looking back at him, waving the gold teeth in his closed hand as two men carried Wheeler’s blood away on a two-wheel cart.
“He is not a real padrone,” the young woman said in a lowered tone, “but he likes us to call him one.”
“And he sent you here,” Sam said, “to thank me?”
“No. I asked him if I could come, and he gave me permission,” she said. She stepped in closer. “I can thank you longer than all day if you like. If you are staying the night . . .”
“Señora”—the ranger, letting out a breath, avoided saying her name—“I’m obliged. But I can’t stay the night. I can’t even stay the day. The fact is, I’m leaving here as soon as this fellow’s attended.” He gestured toward the stallion.
The woman brushed a strand of hair from her cheek that a warm breeze had swept there. “You go to kill those others who were with him?”
“That’s the probable outcome,” Sam said.
She had trouble with his words.
He saw it and said, “If they put up a fight, I will kill them.”
She paused in contemplation for a moment. “You would prefer to go and kill them instead of staying here with me?”
“No, señora, I do not prefer that at all,” Sam said, shaking his head. “I would much prefer staying here with you. But this is my job.” He dropped the handful of straw and picked up his saddle, which lay on the ground at Black Pot’s hooves.
“Your job?” She looked confused. “It cannot wait while you and I—”
“No, señora, it can’t,” he said, cutting her off as courteously as he could. He spread Black Pot’s saddle blanket.
“That makes no sense, Samuel,” she said, half smiling, half pouting.
“No, señora,” he said, looking her up and down, “none at all.” Then he turned and pitched the saddle up onto the big stallion’s back.
In moments the ranger had ridden out of Vientos Salvajes, following the three sets of hoofprints left by the fleeing outlaws. He had traveled halfway across the desert floor when he heard the single gunshot resound in the distance. By the time he reached the trail leading up into the hills, he saw four buzzards move in high above the ridgeline and begin circling i
n a wide, lazy swing. Two more of the big scavengers appeared as he nudged the Appaloosa up the last few yards of steep, rocky trail.
He stopped when he spotted the dead horse lying fifteen feet away. Three thieves, two horses . . . This changed things. No outlaw on the run wanted to share his horse, especially out in this rugged, sun-scorched terrain.
He looked all around. Then he swung down from his saddle, rifle in hand, and walked over and stood above the dead animal. His eyes followed the remaining two sets of hoofprints off along a narrow, rocky trail. After a moment he stooped down, flipped open the exposed saddlebag on the dead horse’s rump and rummaged through it, seeing what he might learn about the animal’s owner.
Overhead, the buzzards swung in lower, but kept a cautious distance as the ranger pulled out items and laid them on the ground. A handful of bullets, a hairbrush, a dirt-streaked riding blouse that smelled of perfume, a weathered, folded paper envelope. Kitty Dellaros was the one left horseless, he now knew, opening the folded envelope and shaking out a cheap tin locket on a thin chain. For how long?
Pulling off a glove, the ranger opened the locket and examined the tintype of a smiling young girl inside. Kitty Dellaros as a child? Could be, he thought, studying the picture as the chain dangled from his fingertips.
If this was Kitty Dellaros, he imagined all the things life had led her through from that time to this. Staring at the photograph, he shook his head. You never expected it would be this way, did you? he said silently to the innocent face smiling back at him. After a moment he closed his hand around the tin locket and snapped it shut. Then he stood up, mounted the big Appaloosa and rode away.
An hour later he stepped back down from his saddle atop a high ridge overlooking a small pool of runoff. With his naked eye he was able to see the three outlaws through a thin stand of pine and mountain cedar. But for a better look, he led the stallion back out of sight and drew the telescope from beneath his bedroll.
When he’d settled in behind the cover of a rock, he stretched out the telescope and began scanning the trees.
At first sight of the woman through the sparse pine branches, the ranger jerked the telescope down from his eye. He blinked as if his eyes had tricked him. Through the lens he had seen her standing naked to the waist. He hadn’t expected this. He put the telescope back to his eye in time to see her step out of her trousers and toss them onto a blanket spread alongside her discarded blouse.
Not wanting to take advantage of a woman’s private moment, Sam moved the lens away, scanning through the pines to the edge of the watering hole. There he saw Trueblood and Weeks talking back and forth. The ranger could tell they had reached an agreement of some sort when both of them nodded and stepped back from each other. He watched Weeks fish a coin from his vest pocket and shake it back and forth in his closed hand.
Flipping a coin? He continued watching.
On the edge of the water hole, Weeks stopped shaking the coin and said to Trueblood, “Call it.”
“Uh-uh,” said Trueblood, “you call it. I never win when I call it.”
Weeks grinned. “That’s good to know. Call it.”
“I told you, I ain’t calling it,” Trueblood insisted. “You call it.”
“You want me to flip it and call it?” Weeks asked.
“That’s right,” said Trueblood.
“Okay then, I’ll call it.” Weeks shrugged and flipped the coin. “Heads,” he said, while the coin still rose and spun in the air.
The two made room for the coin to fall to the ground between them. They loomed over it.
“Heads it is. You lose!” Weeks said.
“Damn it to hell,” said Trueblood, sounding bitter in his disappointment. “I never win anything.”
“Tough knuckles, you unlucky son of a bitch,” said Weeks, laughing, picking up the coin from the dirt.
“Flip it again,” said Trueblood.
“I’m not flipping it again. Are you crazy?” said Weeks, his laughter waning as he realized Trueblood was serious.
“If it was the other way around, I’d flip it again for you,” Trueblood said.
“That just shows the difference between the two of us,” said Weeks.
“Shit.” Trueblood brooded. “I just wanted to go first for once.”
“What difference does it make? I won’t wear nothing out,” he said, still grinning.
“None,” said Trueblood.
“Then why do you want to be first?”
“I just do,” said the sulking gunman. “I’ve not got any luck—never have had, never will.”
“Then I best not say something like Better luck next time, had I?” Weeks grinned.
“It’d be wise not to,” said Trueblood.
Pulling off his hat, Weeks spit in his palm and ran his hand back across his tangled hair. “How do I look?” he asked.
“Go to hell,” said Trueblood, turning and flopping down onto the ground.
At the edge of the stand of pines, Kitty Dellaros called out, “Let’s make some sparks fly, boys. The day is getting away from us.”
“Oh my God,” Trueblood said, his voice raspy with anticipation as he stared at her naked body. She cupped one hand at a firm, round breast; the other hand she held loosely over her most private area.
“Whew-iee,” said Trueblood, turning and looking at her from twenty yards away. “If the Snake ever hears about us doing this, he’ll sure enough kill us both, and Kitty too.”
“Damn it to hell. Why would you mention the Snake at a time like this? You’re just trying to spoil this for me,” Weeks said angrily. “You losing son of a bitch.”
“Sorry,” said Trueblood. “Get on in there and hurry it up.”
“Hurry it up?” Weeks laughed excitedly. “You’re talking out of your head.”
“Of course, if you boys would just as soon forget about it . . . ,” Kitty said, turning and walking back into the pines toward the blanket.
“Whoa, hold on. I’m coming!” shouted Weeks, bounding across the rocky ground behind her, sailing his hat away and yanking out his shirttails as he went. “Don’t even think we’re not going to do it!”
Atop the ridge, the ranger stood up from behind the rock and collapsed the battered telescope between his palms. He had a good idea of what was about to happen down there. This is my best chance to take Weeks and Trueblood, he thought, dusting the seat of his trousers on his way back to the big stallion. The woman . . . He had nothing on her—no wanted posters, no outstanding charges against her. She was Silva Ceran’s woman.
But being an outlaw’s woman was no reason to arrest her, he reminded himself. She had no witnesses placing her at the scene of any of the gang’s robberies. If she played her cards right, she could walk away when he finished with the two outlaws. If not, well . . . he’d have to see how it went. He stepped into his saddle and turned the big stallion toward a slimmer rocky trail that looked as if it would cut his time in half.
“Come on, Black Pot. Looks like we’re going to interrupt everybody’s party,” he said, nudging the Appaloosa forward.
Chapter 3
Trueblood sat at the water’s edge, wishing he’d taken a twist of tobacco from his saddlebags before this thing got started. Now that the show was under way, hot and heavy on the blanket, he couldn’t just walk past them to get to his horse and his saddlebags. Even though the reason would be honest enough, he knew both Weeks and Kitty would think he was trying to watch, which, to be honest, he just might be, a little, on the way there and back.
After a few minutes longer, he began to fidget in place, getting anxious, impatient. He wanted a chew; he wanted the woman. Damn, how I want the woman. “Hey, hurry it up in there, Andy. I want my tobacco.” As soon as he’d spoken, he caught himself and said, “Hell, you both know what I want. Now hurry up.”
“Wait your turn, Delbert,” Kitty called out, sounding out of breath. “You’ll get yours.”
“Damn right I will,” Trueblood said in firm tone. “But if I don�
��t get it soon, I might not be able to . . . for a while anyway.”
“Just . . . take it easy,” Kitty called out, in the same breathless voice.
Jesus . . . The sound of her voice and the image of what was going on over there caused Trueblood to get all the more impatient. He waited for a few more minutes, until he couldn’t stand it any longer.
“To hell with this,” he said, rising to his feet and adjusting the crotch of his trousers. “I’m coming in. It’s my turn. You better both think about it. If I get cut out, what’s to keep me from telling the Snake about the two of you out here?”
He waited only a few seconds for a reply. When he didn’t get one, he turned and started toward the trees. “By God, I’m coming in and getting my part,” he called out, jerking his Colt from his holster, just in case Weeks wanted to turn this into a fight.
He walked into the trees along the path the two had taken. He stopped when he saw Weeks’ pale, naked feet sticking out from behind the trunk of a slender pine. “You can’t blame me, Andy. I see what’s going on here. I know when I’m being cut out.”
When Weeks didn’t answer, he walked on. He stopped at the pine tree and looked down at the rest of Weeks’ pale, naked body lying stretched out on the blanket, his dead eyes staring straight up at the sky. A wide, bloody gash made a semicircle on Weeks’ throat from ear to ear.
“Good Lord, Andy!” Trueblood gasped in shock, but the Colt became poised and tensed in his hand. He backed up a step and looked warily all around, as if expecting to see the woman’s dead body as well. He almost called out Kitty’s name. But then he caught himself as he heard the sound of both his and Weeks’ horses running out of the pines and pounding away along the narrow trail.
“He-iih,” Kitty called out to the animals, spurring the one she was riding and leading the other along beside her by its reins.
