The Jackals of Sundown (A Bear Haskell Western Book 2)

by Peter Brandvold

  Redfield looked around, too, then laughed. “I’ll be jiggered—look at that! Cal Merritt, Sergio Ramos, Alberto Morata, and Diego Costa—wolf bait.”

  Haskell said, “Who are they?”

  Jordan turned from the bar to glare at Haskell. He was holding the bar towel over his right ear. His shrill voice cracked as he cried, “I am Jordan Tifflin. Ambrose Tifflin is my father, you crazy bastard! Ever heard of him? No? Well, you’re about to!”

  “Yeah, I reckon you’re about to,” Redfield said, giving a rueful snort. “Tifflin’s the big dog in these parts. Runs the Rancho San Rafael for the big English syndicate that bought out the Spanish land grant some years back. Jordan’s Tifflin’s only boy.”

  Haskell scowled at the lawman but gestured at young Tifflin. “Did you know he was here when you sent me over here?”

  “Sure!” the Ranger laughed. “I figured you’d find out sooner or later. Figured later was good enough, I reckon ... if you lived.” He grinned then glowered at Tifflin. “I was hopin’ maybe you’d kill him, though, damnit. Like you done the others. Jordan might have been shit out with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he’s got a heart of coal!”

  Haskell slacked into a chair and dug an Indian Kid out of his shirt pocket. He raked a match across his thumbnail and narrowed an eye at Jordan Tifflin. “You ride for your father, do you?”

  “Hell, he don’t ride for his father,” Redfield chuckled. “He’s no ranch hand. Him an’ these miscreants here ride fer themselves ... rode fer themselves, I should say ... back and forth across the border. Hell-raisers an’ stock thieves is all they are. Were!”

  Young Tifflin glared at Redfield. “Shut up, you old fool!”

  Redfield glared back at him.

  Rosa said, “I’d best fetch a doctor to stitch the little dog’s ear so he doesn’t bleed to death.”

  She glanced once more at Haskell then turned and pushed through the batwings.

  “Could you yell for the undertaker, too, Rosa?” Redfield called after her, politely.

  Haskell looked at Tifflin. “Would have been a hell of a lot easier for you if you’d just answered a few questions. Now look what’s happened. Your pards is dead.”

  “You’re about to be dead, too, when my pa sees what you done to me.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Haskell said, nodding speculatively while puffing the cheroot. Time to ask the question that had brought him to the Cantina San Gabriel in the first place. “Does Jack Hyde ride for your old man?”

  “Who’s Jack Hyde?” the surly younker asked. Either the kid was a good liar or it was an honest question.

  “Who else would the Jackal be ridin’ for?” Redfield said with an angry grunt. “The smaller ranchers couldn’t afford Hyde’s wages.”

  “You don’t know your ass from a sack of hammers, you old fool!” Tifflin laughed with shrill mockery at the old Ranger. “Look at you, Redfield. Your leg’s rottin’ off. An’ you’re drunker’n a snake in a vat full of whiskey. If that snake didn’t kill ya, the hardtails in these parts will. Soon!”

  Redfield glared through his red-rimmed eyes. His cheeks mottled dark with anger. He wheeled himself down the room toward Tifflin standing before the bar. He stopped six feet away from the rancher’s son, shucked the shotgun from the sheath on the right side of his chair, and pointed it over his black toes at Tifflin’s belly.

  The heavy hammers clicked throatily as the Ranger rocked them back to full cock.

  “Was it you who threw that snake into my sleepin’ quarters?” The Ranger shook his head. “Nah, you wouldn’t have the stomach for handlin’ a diamondback. But I reckon you could have dared someone else to do it. Bought it done for tequila ... ”

  Tifflin eyed the double bores bearing down on him. “Stop pointin’ that cannon at me, you old fool. You ... you don’t know what you’re doin’. You’re drunk. Point it away, you hear?”

  Haskell drew on the Indian Kid and watched the old Ranger through the billowing smoke. Bear would like to have seen the old mossyhorn in his heyday, riding hell-for-leather with Henry Dade.

  Redfield glowered at young Tifflin. Finally, his face relaxed. He smiled coldly, depressed the shotgun’s hammers, and returned the big popper to its sheath.

  He turned to Haskell. “What you wanna do with him? Throw him in the icehouse?”

  Haskell blew a long plume of smoke at Jordan Tifflin. “Nah. I think I’m gonna take the boy home to his pa.”

  Redfield tipped his head back a little and to one side, and frowned. “You sure about that?”

  “Why not?” Haskell drew another deep lungful of smoke from the Indian Kid. “The man might be worried about his only boy ... in town all by his lonesome.”

  Redfield looked around at the dead men then turned back to Bear, shook his head, and chuckled darkly. “You sure don’t mind livin’ dangerous—I’ll give you that. Henry told me he was sendin’ a catamount, an’ he wasn’t whistlin’ ‘Dixie’!”

  Chapter Ten

  While the local sawbones sewed up the kid’s ear in the Cantina San Gabriel, Haskell walked over to the town’s sole livery and feed barn, and rented a stout saddle horse—a bright-eyed pinto that looked ready to burn off some of the stable green.

  Bear had the liveryman, an Irishman named Cecil Moore, saddle young Tifflin’s mount, as well. Jordan had been in town longer than his pards, holing up with doxies, and he’d stabled his gelding in Moore’s barn.

  The lawman, who’d retrieved his gear from the hotel, had decided to head out to Rancho San Rafael even though the sun was beginning its slow descent in the west. According to Redfield, the ranch was a two-hour ride west of town, but there was roughly that much good light left. Depending on what kind of time they made, night might or might not fall before Haskell and his young charge arrived at the ranch. If it got too dark for safe travel, they’d camp.

  The lawman saw no reason to let grass grown under him in Sundown. He was doing nothing in town except providing business for the local undertakers, both of whom, two middle-aged Mexican men, were hauling Cal Merrit’s carcass out of the Cantina San Gabriel when Haskell rode up, trailing young Tifflin’s blue roan.

  “You can send the boy out, Cap!” Bear called as he swung down from the pinto’s back.

  Boot thuds sounded inside the cantina. Jordan Tifflin’s blond head appeared over the batwings. He wore a white pad over his right ear. Two red, ragged-edged dots stained the bandage. The kid glared out from beneath the broad brim of his sand-colored Stetson, the silver conchos winking in the golden sunlight.

  The rattle of wheels sounded behind the kid, who lurched suddenly out through the batwings, stumbling and cursing and turning his head to glare behind him. “I’m gonna kill you, you old fool!”

  Redfield pushed through the batwings, using his left hand. He was holding a sawed-off shotgun in his right hand, aiming the barrel over his discolored toes. His right eye twitched, and he said, “I oughta cut you in half right now. Save me a whole lotta trouble in the future!”

  “You don’t have a future!” Tifflin bellowed, red-faced, leaning forward at the waist.

  “Son, that is no way to talk to your elders,” Haskell said.

  Redfield stared at Tifflin while he said to Bear, “This here is what happens when you leave all the branches on your willow shrubs ’stead of puttin’ any of ’em to good use skinnin’ a colicky backside. Let that be a lesson to you, in case you ever have a sprout of your own one day.” He gave Haskell a knowing wink.

  “Good advice.”

  Young Tifflin turned to Bear. “You ain’t gonna have a chance to sow your seed, you big ugly son of a bitch. I doubt you’ll make it as far as the headquarters of the San Rafael. Strangers don’t live too long out that way. Not these days they don’t. Even if you do make it, my old man will see you don’t see another sunrise. Not after what you done to my ear. My old man is partial to the Apache ways of torture. Yessir, he admires the Apaches. He’ll bury you so deep in the sand you’ll be inhalin�
�� ants!”

  “Ambrose Tifflin was one hell of an Apache fighter—I’ll give him that,” Redfield said. “But that was a long time ago, son. You an’ I both know it!”

  To Bear, Tifflin said, “It’s gonna be dark soon. We’d best wait till tomorrow to ride out to the San Rafael. Better yet, why don’t you just send for my pa? Ridin’ out there is suicide. Are you a damn fool or something?”

  “What’s the matter, sonny?” Bear said. “You look fearful.”

  “My problem is I’m not a damn foo—!”

  Tifflin cut himself off. He turned to stare at a half a dozen riders just then riding into town from the west. They were a ragged, dusty, mixed-breed lot—some Mexicans, some Anglos (though it was often hard to distinguish Anglos from Mexicans in this country where the sun and wind burned men raw).

  One definitely had some Apache blood if he wasn’t full. He wore a sombrero, but he wore his blue-black hair in tight braids wrapped in rawhide. He wore deerskin leggings Apache-style—folded down at the knees. The toes of his moccasins curled upward. He wore two cartridge bandoliers crisscrossed on his broad chest clad in green calico.

  “Fuck,” Haskell heard Redfield mutter from his chair.

  “Friends of yours?” Bear asked.

  “Friends, hell.”

  “Which faction do you suppose they work for?” Haskell asked the local lawman.

  Redfield scratched his jaw. “Hard to tell.”

  Haskell looked at Tifflin, who was staring uncertainly at the half-dozen men riding toward him, Haskell, and Redfield. “Who do they ride for?”

  “Hell if I know,” the rancher’s son said.

  As the desperadoes passed, dust lifting from the hooves of their fast-walking horses, they all turned to regard Haskell and then Tifflin and Redfield. One kept his gaze on the younker then pointed at his own ear and said, “Ouch!”

  The others laughed.

  They passed, heading for the other side of the little town and, probably, toward a watering hole.

  “They’ll start at that end of Sundown,” Redfield said, his voice darkly speculative. “Then slowly make their way toward this end. Come midnight, the whores’ll be screamin’, an’ I don’t mean in a good way. That Apache’s name is Hector Valderrama. Half-Mex, Half-Coyotero. His ma is one of Geronimo’s daughters. He runs with a rough bunch from both sides of the border. I’ve seen him along the border but never this far north. Shit!”

  The old Ranger wagged his head bewilderedly, then turned to young Tifflin. “If your old man hired Hector Valderrama and them others, he don’t understand what a pack of broomtails he’s bringin’ into this country. It’s one thing bringin’ men like that in to do your shootin’ for ya. It’s another thing controllin’ ’em and then gettin’ rid of ’em. You tell him that when you see him again!”

  Young Tifflin didn’t appear to have been listening to the Ranger. He was staring after the lobos. He turned to Haskell, his gaze dark. “We’d best stay in town. Crazy bunch ridin’ the range these days. You send someone for my old man. He’ll come to fetch me with a bunch of his best shooters.”

  “If those men ride for your pa, you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  Tifflin just stared at him. Haskell thought he saw a hundred to two hundred half-formed thoughts rolling around in the kid’s eyes.

  “Don’t you know who they ride for?” Haskell asked.

  “That’s right,” Tifflin said, shrugging. “I don’t know who they ride for. All I know is that west of town is too dangerous for only two men to be ridin’ through. These days you don’t ride out there unless you got some firepower.”

  “We’ll be all right.”

  “Give me my guns, at least.”

  Haskell chuckled.

  “Come on,” Tifflin urged, tightening his jaws. “Don’t be a fool.”

  “I don’t intend to be.” Haskell reached into his saddlebags then tossed the kid a set of handcuffs. “Put those on. Nice an’ tight. I’ll be checkin’ your work.”

  “You can’t ride me through that country trussed up like a pig headin’ to market!”

  “I can and I will.” Bear lifted the Schofield from its holster, clicked back the hammer. “You want a matching pair of notched ears?”

  Looking genuinely scared and frustrated, the younker gave a hard sigh, closed one of the bracelets around one wrist then closed the other bracelet around the other wrist. Hands cuffed before him, he just stared at the ground, jaws hard, cheeks flushed, shaking his head. The sun flashing off the silver conchos on his hat band cast reflections across the ground near Haskell’s boots.

  Bear looked at Redfield. “You going to be all right, Cap?”

  Redfield didn’t look a whole lot happier about the situation than young Tifflin did. “Oh, I don’t know.” He wrapped his gnarled, brown hands around the necks of the shotgun stocks sticking up from their leather scabbards. “Let’s just say tomorrow, if it arrives, will be one hell of a gift likely bought with more than a few wads of ten-gauge buck!”

  “Maybe you’d better deputize somebody.”

  “Deputize who?” The old Ranger gave Haskell a hard look. “No man in his right mind would want to side an old, one-legged Ranger in a wheelchair against the toughs who been ridin’ through Sundown of late.” He shook his head. “You go on an’ do your job ... an’ I’ll do mine.”

  Haskell looked toward where the half-dozen riders were dismounting at the far end of town. He didn’t like the idea of his leaving Redfield alone, but, then, he wasn’t here to establish law and order in Sundown. He was here to find Jack Hyde.

  He turned to young Tifflin. “Mount up.”

  Reluctantly, the kid complied.

  Haskell grabbed both sets of reins off the hitch rack and swung up onto his pinto’s back. He pinched his hat brim to the old Ranger sitting in his wheelchair, looking owly as hell, hands still wrapped around his poppers.

  Redfield was staring toward the east end of town, where the six curly wolves were just then entering a low-slung cantina.

  “I’ll be back in a few days,” Haskell said. “Hopefully with the Jackal wearin’ the same jewelry the kid is now.”

  “You think so, do ya?” Redfield growled, not looking at him. “I for one hope so. Then maybe we’ll have peace again in the valley, as the sayin’ goes. Him an’ that Sharps of his sure have caused a lot of trouble. Anyways, go with God, son. Go with God.”

  Haskell reined the pinto around, and, leading the kid’s roan by its bridle reins, booted his mount into a trot, heading west. As he and the kid rode past the little depot building, Orozco La Paz was standing by the silver rails, staring west, a black cheroot clamped between his teeth. A white cat crouched on his shoulders, straddling his head.

  The station agent turned toward Haskell and called in a mournful tone, “You just arrived in our fair pueblito, mi amigo. What causes you to leave us so soon?”

  “Got a lost child here, Oro,” Haskell said as he crossed the railroad tracks via the rough pine planks. “We’ll see you again in a day or two!”

  Orozco gave a courtly bow, the cat arching its back and lifting its tail, balancing on the old Mexican’s shoulders.

  Haskell threw out an arm, turned forward in the saddle, and raked his spurs against the pinto’s flanks, breaking into a lope.

  As he headed west facing a westering sun, he found himself in a sour mood. He hadn’t realized how much trouble he’d been riding into here in Sundown. In light of the range war brewing in and around the town, Jack Hyde seemed a relatively small matter.

  Old Redfield had his hands full just keeping the peace in Sundown. Maybe what Haskell should be doing instead was lending the old Ranger a hand in town, until Redfield could call in more rangers or possibly seat a town marshal and a deputy, to help stem the hemorrhaging of law and order.

  On the other hand, maybe by running Jack Hyde to ground he’d been helping stem the hemorrhaging of law and order out on the range. The town might settle down soon after.
<
br />   Might.

  Bear shook his head. Henry Dade had told him about the range war, but, still, Haskell hadn’t realized the size of the trouble out here, nor about the competing directions he’d feel pulled.

  Bear plucked a piece of folded notepaper out of his shirt pocket, and shook it open, inspecting the map of the route to Rancho San Rafael that Redfield had penciled for him. He looked toward the northwest, identifying some of the landmarks that the Ranger had penciled on the notepaper.

  The San Rafael lay to the northwest, fifteen miles out. The country between here and there was a vast expanse of low, rolling hills covered with chalky dirt and sand and pocked with tough, wiry brush, some of which Haskell recognized as dog cactus, sage, and willow.

  Here and there a yucca or an agave plant bristled out of the thin soil. Prickly pear was almost everywhere, and the wagon trail that Bear and young Tifflin followed meandered around and between the dangerous cactus patches.

  To the south, the Davis Mountains hovered just above the lemon-green desert and the far horizon, which was the blue of storm clouds.

  The heat was still intense. Haskell could feel the moisture being sucked out of his pores. He was glad he’d had the foresight to pack three filled canteens, which he’d rented along with his horse at the livery barn.

  As the pinto climbed the shoulder of a low butte, Haskell glanced behind him. In the far distance, Sundown was dwindling. In the near distance, Jordan Tifflin rode hunched in his saddle, cuffed hands hooked around his saddle horn. The youngster look around warily, blond brows furrowed.

  “What’s got you so damn worried, kid?” Bear asked him. “You look like you think you got a target on your back.”

  “Everybody’s got a target on his back in this country,” the kid said, hipping around in his saddle to stare back toward Sundown.

  “Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you ignite a range war.”

  The kid jerked an angry looked at him. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He gave a shrug and looked away, smiling ironically.

  “I’m gonna ask you again—who do those owlhoots ride for? Valderrama and the others. Your old man?”