Dead Aim

by Dusty Richards

  “I told you—”

  “No doubt you’re right. They hung someone and no one discovered it.”

  Long looked around. “I’d bet his name was Harold Terry.”

  “What now?”

  “We’ll report the crime to the law and let them solve it.”

  They rode back to camp. Johnny and Anthony rode in as well, too.

  “His count looks close to what he told you,” Johnny said. “What did you find?”

  She shook her head. “We think someone hung Harold Terry a long time ago. The noose is still up there and varmints scattered his bones.”

  Anthony looked pained by the news. “Any close neighbors?”

  “None on our maps.”

  “Kind of spooky wasn’t it?” Anthony asked.

  “We checked the house. No one has been in it in a long time. Then I noticed the rope hanging down. She discovered his skull.”

  “Scare you?” Johnny asked her.

  “Like you two said, it was very spooky.” She hugged her arms and shuddered again.

  “As for the other ranch we saw, we will inherit that ranch from a couple I’d met years back when we tried to get back Comanche captives. They lost a son to them.”

  “They’re giving you their ranch?” Johnny asked.

  “They have no one to leave it to.”

  “Come eat; it won’t be good cold,” Jimmy said.

  “What’s for tomorrow?” Johnny asked.

  “Two places west of here. Y-Seven-X and the Tooke’s Ranch. I never have been to either I know about,” Long said.

  Johnny nodded and they washed up after her and they sat down at the setup the cook’s crew fixed for them.

  Later in their bedroll she asked him if he’d thought any more about the lynching.

  “No. All I can think about is my lovely wife.”

  “You big galoot, you flatter me to death.”

  They both laughed hard. She was still fun after a long day in the saddle, even though there was not enough progress to suit him. Jobs like this taught him the patience he didn’t have enough of. This wife was like frosting on a cake—she sweetened any, especially the worst, deals that came their way.

  CHAPTER 8

  The next day they found the Y-7-X but no one was at home. People lived there and were either out or gone to town. He left them a note to contact Harp when they went into town, and then Long and his crew rode on to Tooke’s Ranch.

  A Mexican segundo who ran that ranch for the obvious absentee owner met them at his yard gate. The foreman’s name was Alex Contreras.

  “Señor Tooke, he lives in Fort Worth,” the man said. “He seldom comes down here. Tell your wife my wife is inside . . . she can speak some English.”

  “You hear him?” Long asked her.

  “Gracias, señor,” Jan said, smiled, and went to find her while the four men settled in the warmer sun to talk some more.

  Alex told him he hoped his patron did not sell the ranch. It was his living and also for the two vaqueros who worked for him. Long never saw his wife and decided to have their accountant contact Tooke by mail.

  Jan rejoined them and they started back to camp on their horses.

  “What was his wife like?”

  “He just married her she said. Really I think she was only twelve or thirteen years old. She said something about he sent for her to save face. Whatever that means. I believe she was sold to him, but what can you say?”

  “Nothing, but I am very glad I found you.”

  “Would you want a girl that young?”

  “No.”

  “Good huh, guys?”

  “If Long doesn’t want you, Anthony and I would have you.” The pair were nodding their heads in agreement and grinning while they rode along for camp.

  They laughed for a long time about her having both of them. She shook her head at them each time they did. Long rode in closer and hugged her shoulder, then said, “Well, at least I have substitutes.”

  Another day gone. Maybe he should have had his brother do this sorry job. He was much better at rounding up cattle. That, at least, showed more progress. They were back in camp that afternoon when a messenger from Chaw rode into camp.

  The boy, in his teens, spoke to Long. “Chaw said for me to tell you for all of you to come in. Some shooters attacked one of our cow camps last night and told them to leave. He’s sent for Harp and told me to come get all of you.”

  Long shook his head. What next? Trouble already. “We better load up and get over there.”

  Their upset cook, Jimmy, shook his head at the news. “How do I feed you?”

  “Well, we better save our backsides and eat later. They don’t know who the raiders were?” Long asked the boy.

  “No, sir.”

  If Jan hadn’t been along, he’d have gone looking for them. The business of threatening any O’Malley needed to be stopped right then.

  It was after dark when his outfit reached Chaw’s place. His wife Calamity came and hugged Jan like they were old friends. She was really glad to have a woman to talk to. Right off Long could see that the rebel in their bunch had found himself that girl of sixteen or seventeen who was a real sweet person. The two women talked for a brief time.

  “She has food, men,” Jan told them.

  “We get unhooked and parked we will be there,” Long told her as several of the ranch hands showed up to assist them.

  “You all right?” Chaw arrived out of breath.

  “I’m fine. What are you so winded from?” Long laughed.

  “Last night a bunch rode into the cow camp south of here, shooting. We were on—” He bent over for more air. “Hell, I have three of my best men posted out here so they can’t attack the ranch and us not be warned, so they attacked the cow camp.”

  “Take it easy. I know you are upset. You did the right thing. How are the men in that camp doing?”

  “No one hurt serious. They’ll be fine. But I knew she was with you—”

  “You did the right thing. How many shooters?”

  “Somewhere between six and nine. It was dark and they didn’t leave anything, but the men were off guard on our own ranch land for cripes’ sake.”

  “We will simply have to post guards.”

  “Chaw,” his wife called out. “Long has not ate. Talk to him at the table.”

  “We will, honey.” Chaw shook his head. “Best damn deal I ever made—marrying her.”

  “I know how you feel. I feel the same way.”

  They both laughed and went toward the lighted house. Long’s crew was seated and they made room for him. Jan brought him a plate.

  “You eating?” he asked her, concerned she wasn’t seated.

  “When everyone is fed. I won’t lose any weight.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “Harp is here,” someone said from the front porch.

  “I’ll welcome him,” Chaw said, getting up.

  “Hello, brother,” Harp said from the doorway.

  “About time you got here. Why, I beat you up here by five minutes,” Long said, rising.

  Jan shook her head at him, busy serving more plates of food to the others.

  “It’s all right, Jan,” Harp said. “I knew he’d be here. He hasn’t missed many meals in his life. Did they bother you, too?”

  “No. But Chaw was worried and called us in. Not a bad idea since we have no idea who these attackers were.”

  “Have you eaten?” Jan asked Harp.

  “Yes, and I was about to go get some sleep.” He stretched and yawned. “Where do we start?”

  Long waved at him. “They are up and gone is what I was told. I don’t know how to find them. They left no trail they say.”

  Harp nodded, taking a chair and asking two hands to scoot aside some to make room for him. “Were any of the raiders shot up?”

  “No.”

  “If one of them had been shot, they might go to town to get the wound attended to,” Harp said, shaking his head over the myste
ry of it all.

  “We never had a chance,” one hand said. “It was over before it really started. They shot things up, threatened us, and rode off.”

  Long looked around for any of the men in the room to say something else. Everyone nodded that they never had a chance to shoot back.

  “Did they threaten any of you?” Harp asked.

  “Told us get the hell back to town or we’d die.”

  “They said next time they’d kill us in our bedrolls if we came back.”

  “None of you recognized anything about them . . . how they talked or rode a horse?” Long asked again, not believing that someone didn’t see something that they could use to trace the night riders.

  “It was dark last night. The moon had set. We didn’t expect them. Hell I woke and thought they’d already killed me. They appeared to be wearing masks, like Klux Clansmen was what I could see, and I knew they had rifles ready to shoot us. This guy told us to get back to town and not come back, because next time they’d kill all of us.” Mike was a tough cowboy in his thirties by Long’s appraisal. The raiders caught him and the others asleep, unaware of their presence until they shot, woke them, and imposed their threat on him and the others. It made no sense, but he wanted to hire the best tracker money could buy on the job and quick.

  Harp was talking about what they needed to do for their safety.

  Long stood up. Harp turned to him. “What do you say?”

  “I want the best tracker we can find out here tomorrow to go and sort out their trail.”

  “Who is it we need?” Harp asked them.

  “I know two men who could do that,” the horse wrangler Tonto said.

  “Who?”

  “Jude Crown, he was an army scout, and Red Temple. Jude is a full-blood and Red is half but they know tracking.”

  “Can you get them up here by tomorrow? We can pay them a month’s full wages and our horses to ride,” Harp said, nodding about Long’s plan.

  “I’d do my damndest, Harp.”

  “Boys, get some fresh horses for them to ride back up here on. We need those two men well provided with good horses and armed to find these no accounts.”

  “Right,” Long said. “No one rides alone. Three or more together and everyone have a loaded rifle and pistol.”

  Long held up his hands in the lighted room. “No one needs to go back to that camp and mess up any telltale tracks until the trackers have a chance to look at it. We will take a pause and repair your torn clothing, wash them, and be ready to ride at an instant. If we find them I feel they need to be arrested and tried for the illegal threatening of our people.”

  Everyone agreed.

  Harp reminded all of them, “By the way, keep this quiet or we will have black troops all over our ranch. They won’t catch any of those men who did this. I want them arrested and tried.”

  Everyone agreed.

  “If that boy, Tonto, can convince them to come track for us we will have a slim chance of finding them.”

  The crew agreed.

  Jan told Long the crew had their tent set up. He checked with Harp to make sure he had a place to sleep.

  “Yes. Chaw’s wife has an extra bedroom upstairs. Thanks. You two sleep now.”

  Jan nodded and hugging Long’s arm, pulled him along. “We are going to sleep.”

  In the tent he told her he had spoken to their team a few minutes earlier, and in the morning they were going to circle around the area where the incident occurred. “I want you to stay here until we get a handle on them. I know you want to go, but give me a few days looking for them. It may be like finding a hornet’s nest if we catch up with them.”

  She hugged him. “You know I’d like to go—”

  “I know, but I want a wife to come back to.”

  At that she nodded and kissed him. He squeezed her tight. Good . . . she understood how serious he was about ending this threat business. The issue was settled.

  The next morning, early, she and Jimmy made breakfast and coffee before the sun even peeked up. Long kissed her, promised to be careful, and he, Johnny, and Anthony rode out.

  “You have any ideas?” Johnny asked him before they began to trot their horses.

  “No, but they are people. Someone saw them. Someone knows them. The trackers may find them and they may not. We can’t do our job of settling with the landlocked owners until they’re stopped.”

  Both agreed and they set their horses into a trot. Long wanted to look around wide of the camp for places where they might be hiding. There were some places on Horse Creek he knew about, where people camped out deer hunting. That would be the first place he wanted to check. They reached that area mid-morning. They found little trace along the small stream, but the wagon track road was on the hills that ran parallel to the creek and required they ride individually, down off the hill to examine the beach area and then ride back up to the road through the cedar and live oak.

  They’d searched several sites riding along on the ridge road when a whiff of smoke found them. Anthony said, “Smoke.”

  All three nodded.

  Long stuck out his hand to stop them. “It might be anyone. No need to tell anyone our business. We are simply checking the places.”

  They agreed.

  As the three rode off the ridge, Long saw someone down there run off through the trees for some reason. He checked the handle on the .45 in his holster and they all shared a nod. He booted his good Comanche horse just ahead of the men and when they reached the clearing, he saw two men with rifles in hand facing them. Long saw there were family members, staying over under a tree-stretched canvas cover, including women and children.

  “Good morning,” Long said. He hoped these two hard-eyed men didn’t plan to try something.

  “What are you looking for?” the shorter one demanded.

  “I own this land. What are you looking for?”

  The two men frowned at each other.

  “How do we know that?” the taller one asked.

  “Tell him, guys.”

  “He really owns this land. He asked what you were doing here,” Johnny said.

  “Just camping.”

  “You wouldn’t know about some raiders riding around here?” Long asked.

  “We—”

  “Shut up, Grate. He’s some rancher’s enforcer,” the short one said.

  “I asked you a simple question. What do you say?” Long demanded.

  “No. We ain’t seen a damn thing.”

  “Then I have some advice. Load up and leave here or you will be arrested as trespassers.”

  “That’s bullshit; this is state land.”

  “No, sir. This belongs to the H Bar H Ranch.”

  “You ain’t threatening us. We’ve got our rights.”

  “Listen. There are women and children here, but we are not putting up with your remarks. Be gone in twenty-four hours or suffer the consequences.”

  That said, Long gave a head toss for them to leave and turned his horse.

  “What’s your name?” the short one called out.

  “Long. Long O’Malley.”

  The skin crawled on his neck. Would they shoot him in the back? Hardcases, they may or may not be hired guns? One thing he was pleased over—his wife was safe back in camp. Thank God.

  On the ridge road again, unscathed, they headed west, discussing the two tough men.

  Long said, “I don’t know if they worked as hired guns or not.”

  Anthony agreed, but he seemed amused. “They don’t have much of anything but kids.”

  “There are enough deer around here to feed them, which, no doubt, must make up a big part of their diet,” Johnny said.

  “Someone rode from the west to that camp recently and then went back.” Long pointed to the hoofprints in the road leading in and out of the trace down to their camp.

  His men agreed.

  “Keep an eye on those tracks. They may tell us something.”

  “Two horses,” Anthony said.r />
  Long agreed. “We may learn something ourselves.”

  “Are you thinking the men we just saw may have been part of the raiders’ party?” Johnny asked.

  Long nodded, riding on. “They have no way to make a living up here unless someone is paying them. Maybe they are wanted, too.”

  “They were pretty damn tough acting.”

  “I thought something was wrong. They were close to asking for a shoot-out, but with them dead we’d not learn one thing. So I dropped it. The three of us could have taken them out.”

  The two men agreed.

  A few miles farther, they found where more horse tracks went off the road onto another trace that led to the river. Those two could be in this mix of shoe prints.

  “Let’s stash the horses out of sight and slip down there to see.”

  They took the horses off the ridge on the far side and hitched them out of sight in the cedars and live oak. Then, armed with their rifles, they went back over the ridge road on foot, being careful not to attract any attention.

  Slipping through the trees, they made their way halfway down the hill and stopped. Long could see the camp in his field glasses. By his count there must be two dozen gun hands in that camp.

  “We may have found them,” Long whispered, and handed Johnny the field glasses. “I don’t know a soul from the faces I saw.”

  “Who could they be?” Anthony asked him.

  “Either outlaws or the raiders or both.”

  “They look tough enough to be both.” Johnny handed the glasses to Anthony. “What now?”

  “We better go back and get some help. That’s more than the three of us can handle easily down there.”

  “Good,” Johnny said. “Though, I figured you planned to bust right down there.”

  “Let’s say I am older now.”

  “I can see why our boys didn’t jump up and fight them,” Anthony said. “There are a couple of dozen down there.”

  “Boys, they have near an army here. Someone is serious about us not taking charge of this land of ours.”

  They slipped out and carefully retraced their tracks. Close to sundown they were back at Chaw’s house, and Jan ran out to kiss him.

  “You’re safe.”

  “Unscratched. Where is my brother?”