Dark Trail

by Ed Gorman

The crowd at the corral were already shouting and running back in their direction.

  Sarah was on her back on the ground, crying softly. There was no anger or fear in her now, just a gentle melancholy.

  He went over and knelt next to her and said, “I’m sorry, Sarah. I didn’t mean to—”

  She reached up and took his hand. He held it tight for her. He did not need to hold it long.

  “Sarah,” he said. “Sarah.”

  He looked at her shuddering there on the grass, her dress soaked now, the scent of hot blood steely in his nostrils.

  “Goddammit, Sarah,” he said. “Goddammit. You shouldn’t have tried it. He wasn’t worth it and neither was I.”

  Behind him, a male voice said, “She’s dead, friend. She’s dead.”

  And it was only then that Rittenauer put her hand down.

  “Goddammit,” he said again, though to whom and exactly about what he had no idea.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Five minutes later, Guild dismounted, ground-tying his animal and walked quickly to where the crowd had gathered on the side of the house. Torchlight lent the staring faces a certain forlorn quality. Here and there you could hear a woman crying.

  Sheriff Carter put a big hand on Guild’s shoulder. “You just stay calm, Guild, and let me handle this.”

  But Guild paid no attention. Inside the crowd now, he saw Frank, Beth, and Ben. He no longer had to wonder what had happened.

  When he reached the front of the crowd—how pretty they smelled on the cool night air—he found her.

  A small bald man in a dusty black suit bent over her. Obviously he was a doctor and obviously he was searching for vital signs, and just as obviously he was finding none.

  Adair and Hollister stood on the other side of Sarah’s body. The doctor looked up at them and shook his head. He closed his bag and stood up.

  Guild paid the doctor no attention. He just kept staring down at Sarah. The contrast between her sweet, peaceful face and the blood spreading across her chest and stomach startling him.

  Ben Rittenauer stepped up. “I’m sorry, Guild.”

  Guild continued to stare at her, but he spoke to Rittenauer, “You did it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Couldn’t you have goddamn shot her in the hand or something.”

  “I tried, Guild. I honestly did. She had a gun on me and she moved and—”

  Guild shook his head. He wished he were alone with Sarah. Finally he glanced up at Rittenauer and knew the truth. There was genuine grief in the man’s face. He hadn’t wanted to kill Sarah.

  Two chunky Mexican men came with a stretcher and a gray woolen blanket. They forced the crowd to stand back and laid the stretcher on the dark grass and they picked Sarah up by the shoulders and the feet and then set her on the stretcher.

  As Guild watched them, Frank came up.

  “I’m sorry, Leo.”

  “I’ll bet you are.”

  “Whatever you might think, I cared about her.”

  Guild turned and faced him. “You ever think that maybe this is your goddamn fault?”

  Frank Evans sighed. “Leo, I didn’t ask her to come out here.”

  “She was trying to protect you, you stupid bastard.”

  “I didn’t ask her to protect me.”

  “Well, she wanted to anyway because she loved you. Doesn’t that make any sense to you?”

  Adair stepped into the center of the crowd. He stood on the bloody grass where Sarah had lain. “People, I’m sorry for this. It certainly isn’t how I planned the evening to transpire.”

  The guests stood in the flapping light of the torches and the deep shadows of the evening, looking eager to forget about what they’d just seen. A gunfight between two male equals was one thing; the death of a once-pretty, older woman was quite another. She could have been their sister or mother or wife.

  Adair smiled. All his arrogance was in that smile. Guild wanted to go up to him and slap him around. “But if the participants are still willing, I’m ready to see a good old-fashioned gunfight. Right, Mr. Hollister?”

  And with that, Hollister stepped forward with a small strongbox. Adair flipped back the lid and then held the strongbox up so everybody could see. There was no mistaking what was inside: good Yankee greenbacks.

  “Ten thousand dollars,” Adair said. “Ten thousand dollars to the man left standing at the end of the fight.”

  Ben Rittenauer looked over at Frank Evans. Between them passed a barely perceptible nod. Frank’s eyes found Guild’s then and dropped.

  Guild said to Adair, “There won’t be any gunfight tonight.”

  “Oh?” Adair said. “Is that right, Mr. Guild?”

  “That’s right. She came out here to stop it and we should at least give her that.”

  Beth took a small, elegant step forward and said, “Guild’s right. We owe Sarah that.” She looked at Ben Rittenauer. “I don’t want you to fight tonight.”

  Adair said, speaking directly to the crowd, “I say let the invited guests decide. How does that sound, folks?”

  At first only a few people applauded. But over the course of the next half minute, many others started clapping and shouting for a gunfight. Within a full minute, virtually the entire crowd was clapping and chanting, being silly in the way drunken adults are silly, eager now for activity that would make them forget the woman who’d just been killed.

  “Do you hear that, Mr. Guild?” Adair had to shout above the din. “I’d say they want a gunfight.”

  Adair turned to Rittenauer and Evans. Hollister brought over the strongbox.

  Frank Evans put out a hand and touched the money.

  “Feels nice, doesn’t it, Mr. Evans?”

  Guild started for Adair then. If he had his way, there’d be no gun­fight tonight. It was the only thing left he could do for Sarah.

  But as he stepped forward to grab Adair, he felt the unmistakable shape of a gun barrel pushing into his back.

  The sheriff leaned forward and said, “You’re coming with me, Leo. And no goddamn argument, you understand?”

  There was no sense arguing. Guild let himself be turned around and pushed back through the crowd.

  The lawman took him to the far side of the house where it was quieter. They stood three feet apart. The lawman kept his Colt trained right on Guild’s chest.

  The first thing he said was, “Give me your gun, Leo.”

  The second was, “Now I want you to find your horse and get the hell out of here as fast as you can. Do you comprehend me, my friend?”

  And that was when Leo hit him, a good clean shot to the side of the face, enough to knock the man to his knees, enough that Guild was able to retrieve his own Colt and hurry down to the corral where the crowd was now seating itself and where the two gunfighters were taking their places.

  Unless Guild acted very quickly, the gunfight was going ahead as scheduled. He hurried through the shadows and the dewy grass.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tom Adair stood in the center of the corral, which now functioned as a circus ring. The huge torches set in the top boards of the corral shed a dancing, feverish light on everything inside the circle. At Adair’s feet lay the strongbox, its lid open. Even from the grandstand you could see the greenbacks.

  Ben Rittenauer stood at the extreme west end of the corral, Frank Evans at the east end. Both men kept their shooting hands hovering just above the handles of their weapons.

  Adair said, “You all know why we’re here tonight. No reason to make a speech.” He waved a hand westward. “In case you didn’t know, this is Ben Rittenauer.” He waved eastward. “And this is Frank Evans.” He folded his hands over his stomach and said, mournful as a minister now, “We had some unpleasantness a little while ago, but now I want everybody to forget that and enjoy the night.” He looked to Rittenauer and then to Evans. “Gentlemen, when I give the command, draw your guns.”

  Guild felt someone tug on his sleeve. Beth had come up to him. The shadows from
the flickering torchlight were not flattering to her and when she spoke, her voice was harsh from crying. “You’ve got to stop them,” she said. “There’s no sense in either one of them dying.”

  “That’s just what I’m going to do,” Guild said, and started to move from the side of the grandstand to the corral itself.

  This time the gun barrel was pushed right into the back of his head.

  “I owe you one, Leo,” the sheriff said. “You turn around.”

  And when Guild did, the lawman hit him.

  He had a good right hand, at least as good as Guild’s. Guild’s head slammed back against the side of the grandstand. For a moment, pinpricks of light filled his vision. He’d been hit hard.

  “You said you were going to stop them,” Beth said through the murk of Guild’s semi-blindness.

  “Nobody’s stopping nobody,” the lawman said.

  Guild, his sight returning clearly now, rubbed his jaw and said, “I thought you were against this.”

  The sheriff smiled. There was no arrogance in it, but neither was there remorse. “I have to make noises that might lead you to believe I’m against it, but actually Tom Adair is a good friend of mine.”

  And that was when Tom Adair shouted, “Are you ready, gentlemen?”

  The crowd was silent now. They were about to see a death. They wanted to savor it.

  ‘Ready, set, go!” Tom Adair shouted.

  They started moving toward each other, Rittenauer and Evans. Their hands still hovered over the handles of their guns. Closer, closer now.

  “Oh, God!” Beth said, pulling on Guild’s arm like a child trying to drag her father to rescue a pet. “Can’t you stop them?”

  Rittenauer drew first and fastest.

  The gunfire had a harsh, echoing quality on the chilling evening.

  The first bullet got Frank Evans in the arm, the second in the ribs, and the third in the other arm.

  He got off a few shots himself before he pitched forward, but they weren’t much at all.

  Ben Rittenauer walked toward the center of the corral. The strongbox was there and so was Frank Evans, facedown now.

  Tom Adair and Hollister came over to Rittenauer. Adair held up Rittenauer’s arm. “That was some shooting, wasn’t it, folks?” he said.

  The crowd showed its appreciation with applause and whistles and foot-stomping.

  Beth left Guild and the sheriff and ran into the corral. In moments, she was within Ben Rittenauer’s arms.

  “Imagine they’ll have a good time spending that money,” the sheriff said.

  “I imagine.”

  “Sorry about your ladyfriend.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She seemed decent.”

  “She was decent.”

  Adair was now holding up the strongbox and showing the contents to Rittenauer. He might have been a proud papa showing off a new infant.

  The three of them stood in the center of the ring. Off to their left lay the body of Frank Evans, still facedown in the dust.

  Adair was giving a speech. Maybe there was some truth to the rumor that he was considering running for office someday soon. He sure seemed to be practicing for it tonight.

  “You should be a little happier now, Guild,” the lawman said as the first of the people in the grandstand started down the steps toward the corral. They’d want to go over and shake Ben Rittenauer’s hand and look at the corpse for themselves. There was something fascinating about a corpse.

  “Why’s that?” Guild said.

  “Frank Evans being dead.”

  “I didn’t want him dead.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No, I wanted him alive and taking Sarah with him.” He looked wearily at the sheriff and shook his head. “I just wanted her happy.”

  And that was when he saw it. One moment the body of Frank Evans was absolutely still there in the center of the corral, then the head and neck and torso of the body began angling upward.

  Frank had his gun in his hand. And was pointing it.

  “Watch out!” Leo Guild yelled to Rittenauer. “Watch out!”

  But there was too much noise for Rittenauer to hear. And so Frank Evans got off his first shot. He shot Ben Rittenauer right in the center of the spine.

  They quit talking then, of course, the crowd. Screams split the night as Frank Evans attempted to squeeze off just one more shot before death came.

  That shot came just at the moment Beth threw her arms around Ben to keep him from collapsing to the ground. The bullet got Beth in the side of the head.

  Guild saw her jerk with the gunshot. It was ugly, the quick harsh way she died, and he wished he hadn’t seen it at all.

  Guild wasn’t sure who killed Evans. Somebody in the crowd had a gun and they put two shots in Frank’s face. Even from here, Guild could see what a mess Evans was now.

  The screaming was almost intolerable.

  “Son of a bitch,” Guild said.

  “This is when I wish I was a railroad man or a haberdasher,” the sheriff said, pushing forward to the corral. “You coming?”

  “I’m taking your advice,” Guild said.

  “Oh?”

  “I’m getting out of here, fast.”

  The lawman frowned and shook his head. “Can’t say I blame you.”

  There were at least half a dozen women crying now in the pandemonium in the center of the corral.

  The paper lanterns Guild passed on his way back to his horse looked lonely in the night. He ducked under them and got the reins of his horse and swung up on the animal and started moving right away and as fast as possible.

  Even when he was five minutes away, the darkness of the night vast and empty now, he thought he could hear them crying, the rich women standing next to the bodies.

  But maybe he couldn’t. Maybe the cries were just inside his head.

  He spurred the horse and rode faster, faster away.