Hanging in Wild Wind

by Ralph Cotton

  Cadden, himself wounded in the forearm and above his left knee, crawled over to Price and shook his shoulder gently. “Wake up, brother. Are you all right?”

  “I’m . . . all right, brother . . . but I’ve been dreaming that I’m dying,” mumbled Price, and unleashed a wet, bloody cough. He shook his head. “I don’t know . . . which is worse: the nightmare I had, or the one I’ve woke up to.”

  “I know,” said Cadden. “We’re horseless. Are you able to walk out of here once I get you onto your feet?”

  “I might be,” said Price, “if these . . . sonsabitches will stop shooting at me.”

  “It’s been a while since I heard the rifle,” said Cadden. “I’m thinking they’re out of bullets.”

  “But so am I,” said Price. He managed to shake his head again. “We’ve been here . . . shooting all night. It ain’t got no better.”

  “Sit tight, brother,” said Cadden. “I’m going to tell her this is enough. We’ve got to get out of here, some way.”

  He crawled back to Kitty and said, “He’s empty. How are you fixed?”

  “I’m down to my last few shots,” said Kitty. “I’m not counting; it’s bad luck.”

  “Bad luck?” said Cadden in disbelief. “You’ve had us counting our rounds all night.”

  “And look at the two of you,” Kitty said. “You’re both shot all to hell, and your horses are down.”

  “Jesus,” spat Cadden. “You mean to tell me we’ve been counting rounds and you’ve been holding off, putting all the bad luck onto us?”

  “Not all,” Kitty said, “I’m hit too.”

  Before Cadden could answer, the ranger’s voice called out from a few yards above them, “Drop the rifle, Kitty. You’ve been at it all night. It’s time to put this thing to rest.”

  Kitty swung the rifle toward him, but she stopped suddenly. The ranger’s own rifle was cocked, leveled and waiting. “All right, Sam. You win.” She let her rifle fall from her hands and raised her tired arms as high as the bloody wound in her upper shoulder would allow.

  “It’s Ranger Burrack to you,” Sam said, stepping down toward her and Cadden Cullen.

  “All right . . . Ranger Burrack, it is,” she said with resignation.

  “Tell your posse not to shoot, that we give up, Ranger,” Cadden said.

  Sam stood over the two. He kicked Kitty’s rifle out of reach, stooped down and picked up the Colt lying beside Cadden Cullen. “That’s not my posse,” he said. He gestured Cadden toward his brother Price. “Go help him over here. Go for a gun, and it’ll save me having to take you back to town.”

  “That’s a hell of a cavalier attitude,” said Cadden, but he rose and limped over to where Price sat slumped and drooling.

  “It’s not your posse, Ranger?” Kitty asked.

  “No, ma’am,” said the ranger. “I had no idea you and the Cullens even broke jail. I heard the shooting while crossing the flatlands last night. I came to take a look-see.”

  “If it’s not a posse from Wild Wind, who the hell is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Sam. “Why don’t we ask?” He stepped away from Kitty and without revealing himself to the gunmen below, he called down over the rocky narrow trail, “This is Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack. Who’s down there? Detective Longworth, Chief Bell, is that you?”

  “Hell no,” Paco Stazo called back in a dry, raspy voice. “It is not the law down here. It is I, Paco Stazo and Huey Buckles. I have been trying to tell her this all fucking night long. The crazy bitch would not listen to me!”

  “Oh, Christ . . . ,” said Kitty. She shook her bowed head and said, “It really is Paco Stazo. . . .”

  “Well, now that we know who everybody is,” Sam said to Kitty. He called down to Paco and Buckles, “Stand up, both of you. Walk into sight with your hands raised.”

  “I cannot do this for you, Ranger,” said Paco, “I have a dead horse lying atop me. If not for this horse I would have fled from this madness long before now.”

  “What about you, Huey Buckles?” said the ranger. “Any dead horses lying on you?”

  Huey actually looked himself up and down as if to make sure before he answered. “No,” he said drunkenly. “None that I know of.”

  Sam gave Kitty a faint, wry grin. “None that he knows of,” he said. “Sounds like all of you had a hard night.” He gestured her up onto her feet and cuffed her hands in front of her.

  “Am I the only one you’re going to cuff, Ranger?” she asked.

  “Yep,” said Sam.

  “Does that mean I’m the only one you don’t trust?” she asked pointedly.

  Sam didn’t answer. He looked at the Cullens and realized they weren’t going anywhere on their own. “All right, now. Are the three of you able to walk down to the trail?”

  At midmorning the weary, wounded band of prisoners walked off the hill trail onto the flatlands. The ranger led Black Pot, who carried Price Cullens, the only one the five who could not walk. The wicker basket of whiskey bottles hung from Black Pot’s saddle horn. In front of the ranger, the other four limped and staggered along. Cadden Cullen used a piece of twisted scrub cedar as a walking stick; Huey Buckles kept a hand on his rear to keep the dirty, ragged bandage in place beneath his seatless trousers.

  Kitty and Paco Stazo had bickered back and forth since dawn. “How was I supposed to know it was you?” she said to the half-breed, who limped along painfully, staring straight ahead, refusing to look at her.

  “How would you know it was me?” Paco asked. “How about this? I said most clearly, ‘It is I, Paco Stazo!’ Did that tell you anything?”

  “You know what I mean, Paco,” said Kitty. “Under these circumstances you couldn’t expect me to just throw down my rifle and say, ‘Oh, it’s Paco!’ Now, could you?”

  “I could expect you to at least investigate and make sure of who it was,” Paco said. “Instead of firing as if you’d lost your mind.”

  “Keep it down out there,” the ranger cautioned the two.

  “Lucky for me, I was already wounded,” Buckles said to Cadden Cullen, “or I’d be in one hell of a shape right now.”

  “What happened to your behind anyway?” Cadden asked, limping along beside him.

  “I was stabbed and set afire,” Buckles said.

  “Jesus,” said Cadden. He craned his head back and took a look at the bandage showing through the missing seat of Buckles’ trousers. “You smell like burnt hair.”

  “I expect I do,” Buckles replied. “I’m noticing it more as the whiskey and laudanum wears off.”

  “Hold up, everybody,” said the ranger, seeing Longworth and a group of townsmen riding up out of the sage and cactus. “It looks like a posse from Wild Wind.”

  “It’s about damn time,” Cadden whispered under his breath to Buckles. “I’ve been so glad to see a law posse in my life.”

  “Not me,” said Buckles, sober enough to remember what he’d done to the doctor, and what he and Paco had done to the detective. “Instead of burning, my ass is going to be swinging from a rope.”

  Longworth and the six townsmen riding with him slowed their horses to a walk and formed a half circle around the prisoners. Longworth himself rode forward, stopped and looked down at the ranger.

  “I don’t know how you did it, Ranger Burrack,” he said, pushing up his hat brim, “but I’m glad you caught all these murdering dogs.”

  Murdering dogs . . . ? Kitty gave Paco a glance; he turned away from her. She looked back at Cadden Cullen. He shrugged. He had no idea what the detective was talking about.

  Selectman Tyler called out to the ranger, “It looks like they put up quite a struggle, but you managed to thrash them soundly, eh, Ranger?”

  “No,” Sam replied, “I haven’t fired a shot. There are two groups here. They did all this to each other.”

  “Two groups?” said Longworth. He looked the five wounded prisoners over. “I had decided the three who broke jail had these others helping them. You me
an to tell me that’s not the case?”

  “Apparently not,” said Sam. “These three were shooting it out with these two. Each of them thought the other was the law.” He nodded toward the prisoners who were afoot. “As you can see, they beat each other up pretty good.”

  “Good Lord,” said Tyler, looking bemused as he and the others rode forward and gathered around the ranger, staring at the prisoners as if they were remnants of some ragged circus parade. “The irony is that they killed the one man they will all need once we get back to Wild Wind.”

  Sam looked at Longworth for an answer.

  “Doc Ford,” Longworth explained. “One of them cut his throat so deep they almost cut his head off.”

  Sam started to look at Kitty, but caught himself. He thought about her razor, which he’d put in a desk drawer as evidence. He had no definite reason to suspect that she’d used it on the doctor, and he knew this was not the time or place to make any guesses. The townsmen were still reeling from the events of the night before; he could see it in their eyes.

  “They killed Chief Bell too,” said Longworth. “It was a bloody night in Wild Wind.” He scanned the dirty, blood-streaked faces of the five prisoners, not allowing himself to show the rage he harbored for them.

  But Sam saw it. And he understood what the young detective was going through. “But it’s over now,” he said quietly.

  Longworth continued to stare intently from one face to the next. The five saw that they were on dangerous ground with the detective and his posse. “They knocked me out, Ranger,” Longworth said, the resentment in his voice apparent.

  “I understand,” said Sam.

  “They locked me in my own jail and pulled my britches down,” he said. “They ransacked the town, burgled the cantina. Killed the doctor, killed Chief Bell—the man sent to report back on my progress here.” He continued staring and shook his head. “They left me cuffed and gagged, locked in my own jail, with my britches down,” he repeated.

  “You said that,” Sam offered quietly. To get things back on task, he said, “We need to share horses with them. If we don’t it’ll take all day to get them back to Wild Wind.”

  “My own jail, Ranger.” Longworth turned his gaze from the prisoners to the ranger.

  “We’ll talk more back in town,” Sam said.

  “Lynch ’em,” said a tough-looking livestock broker named Fred Elliot. He stepped his horse in closer. “I’m not sharing my horse with any of this trash.”

  Sam looked up at him. “What did you say?”

  “I said, I’m not sharing my horse with any—”

  “No, before that,” Sam said.

  “I said lynch—”

  Sam grabbed Elliot’s shin with both hands and hurled him upward off his saddle. As the man hit the ground, Sam was around the horse and upon him, his Colt out of the holster. The barrel made a wide swipe and left a welt on the man’s forehead. The big man crumbled, senseless, flat on his back.

  “My God, Ranger!” said Longworth.

  Sam stood half crouched, his Colt still in hand, glaring at the rest of the townsmen, who had drawn back in shock.

  “Does everybody here understand my position on lynching?” he said, glaring from face to face. The townsmen sat stunned, staring down at him from their saddles. “I don’t even want to hear the word said, not even in a whisper.”

  “Easy, Ranger,” Longworth said, his voice cautious. To the townsmen he said, “You all heard him. Let’s get doubled up and get back to town before this sun bakes all our brains.”

  “Oh, goody,” Kitty said, “I’m riding with the ranger.”

  “No, you’re not,” Sam said, slipping his Colt back into its holster. “You’re riding with him.” He reached down, dragged the slowly awakening townsman to his feet and helped him stand wobbling in one spot. “Get in the saddle, Kitty. I’ll help him up behind you.”

  “What about these,” Kitty asked, showing him her cuffed wrists.

  “Make do,” Sam said. He helped her and the wobbling Fred Elliot onto the horse. Then he swung up onto Black Pot’s back behind the saddle, and behind Price Cullen, who sat slumped, barely conscious. “Don’t bleed on me, Price,” he said, taking the reins around the sweaty, bloody outlaw. “I don’t like this any more than you do.”

  PART 3

  Chapter 16

  The townsmen took turns sharing their horses with the prisoners in order to keep all of the animals equally rested. Halfway back to Wild Wind the ranger and Longworth shifted Cullen and Stazo over to ride with two of the townsmen and dropped back together in a position that allowed them to see prisoners and townsmen at all times. The townsmen were not happy about riding double. But they all managed to keep their mouths shut about it after what the ranger had done to one of their own.

  “The one thing I can’t get figured out,” said Longworth, the two having discussed the jailbreak and the murders for the past half hour, “is how they managed to get the key off the wall.”

  Sam asked, “You found no string, no scrapings across the floor, where they might have snagged the key and dragged it over to them?”

  “No, nothing,” said Longworth. “I checked. Believe me, the whole time the blacksmith was getting me out of that cell, I had a good long look at the floor.” His face reddened in humiliation just thinking about it.

  “You hadn’t gone into the cell earlier for anything?” Sam asked.

  “No,” said Longworth. “With these new cells you seldom have to go inside them. There’s a tray slot built into the bars on the door for passing food through. There’s a small slot at the floor level just big enough to fit a short bucket for waste.”

  “So, you didn’t go inside when you fed them their supper?” Sam asked.

  “No,” said Longworth. “In fact, with these food slots, we have a waitress from the restaurant come deliver their food; then she comes back later to take the trays away.” He considered it for a moment, then as if dismissing any doubts, he said to Sam, “But she had nothing to do with this. The townsfolk will tell you, Shelly has been waiting tables in Wild Wind since she was fourteen years old. Anyway, I saw the key on the wall after she’d left for the night.”

  Since she was fourteen . . . Sam considered it silently.

  Longworth looked him up and down. “Do you suppose we’ll have any more talk about, you know . . . ,” he said, leery of even saying the word himself.

  “You mean, lynching?” Sam said, lowering his voice a little.

  “Yeah,” said Longworth. “Do you suppose it’s all done with? I hope so.”

  “No, it’s not over,” said Sam. “Putting a pistol barrel to that man’s head only stopped it for a while. As soon as we get back to town and everybody has time to get a drink or two of whiskey and think things over, the talk will start again.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Longworth said. “I wouldn’t have guessed Fred Elliot saying such a thing. He’s a quiet fellow; tends to his business and keeps to himself.”

  “Maybe he learned a lesson,” said Sam. “But be prepared for somebody to bring it up again. Wild Wind is hurting. They’ve lost their town doctor. Doc Ford was a good man, from what I know of him. I don’t blame them for wanting to hang whoever killed him. But it’s for the judge to decide when he gets here.”

  “I know,” said Longworth. “I’m glad you’re here in that regard. It might be hard to get them to listen to a paid detective who works for Western Railways. You represent Arizona Territory. That means more to them.”

  “I know it does,” said Sam. “It shouldn’t, but it does. So I’m going to be sticking close until the judge gets to town.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that, Ranger.” Longworth sounded relieved. “I’ve never dealt with a town wanting to hang somebody, vigilante style.”

  “We’ll be all right,” said Sam. He wasn’t about to admit that neither had he. “Being young doesn’t make us wrong. After all, we represent the law.” As he nudged Black Pot forward to go check on Pr
ice Cullen, who sat slumped against a townsman’s back, he said quietly, “We’ll keep our heads cool and Colts handy.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I say,” said Longworth, not wanting to appear weak or worried.

  When Sam rode up beside Price Cullen and started to shake him gently by his shoulder, the wounded outlaw’s eyes opened slightly. “I’m awake, Ranger,” Price said in a weakened voice. “I ain’t dead yet. . . .”

  “That’s good,” said Sam, “I don’t want anybody dying on us.”

  “Is that . . . an order?” Price Cullen asked, one hand gripping his bandaged chest. His eyes closed as his head crept forward and rested against the townsman’s bloodstained back.

  “Yes, that’s an order,” Sam said. He asked the townsman, a realty speculator named Thurman Parks, “How are you holding up, mister?”

  Parks, recalling the way the ranger had turned on Fred Elliot so quickly, wasn’t about to complain, even though Price had bled all over the back of his shirt and down onto his bedroll. “Oh, I’m fine, Ranger. Can’t wait to get home and get out of these clothes, but otherwise fine and dandy.”

  “You can tell Western Railways they owe you for the shirt,” Sam said.

  “No, sir, Ranger. I wouldn’t dream of it,” Parks said quickly. “I’m here doing my part for Wild Wind.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Sam said, and nudged Black Pot forward.

  When he passed Cadden Cullen, the outlaw looked at him from behind a townsman and asked, “Is my brother going to be all right, Ranger?”

  “If we get him to town and get him treated,” Sam replied.

  “Yeah, but don’t forget, we no longer have a doctor in Wild Wind,” the townsman said sarcastically over his shoulder. Seeing the stoic look on the ranger’s face, the man quickly added, “Although we do have a damn fine horse doctor. I expect he can dress a wound as well as the next fellow.”

  Sam nodded and rode away.

  “Look at him,” Kitty said under her breath to Fred Elliot, who was now in the saddle with her riding behind him. “He thinks he’s the cock of the walk. After what he did to you, he should be ashamed to hold his head up.” She had looped her cuffed hands up over his head and lowered them into his lap earlier. She had stroked his crotch moments earlier, but she’d gotten no response from him.