Golden Riders

by Ralph Cotton

  Sheriff Schaffer stood with his weight steadied on a walking cane, his left arm in a sling, salve covering his red, raw forehead and the back of both hands. His eyebrows and lashes were gone; his head was covered with fresh white gauze. One bootless foot had a thick bandage covering it almost up to his calf, his trouser leg ripped open up the seam to accommodate it.

  “To tell the truth, Ranger, you’re ready to get on the trail, aren’t you?” he said to Sam as if it was confidential between the two of them.

  Sam stared straight ahead, seeing a Mexican lead a reluctant mule loaded with fresh adobe brick on its back.

  “To tell the truth, yes, I’m ready to get on the trail,” he said. “But not until the doctor says you’re in shape to get back to work.”

  “Fact is, I’m as right as a spring peach, Ranger,” the sheriff said, his mustache and goatee gone. He pointed his cane at a large ragged saloon tent standing in a vacant lot. “The saloon’s back in business, but there’s no piano, no billiard table anymore. That’s where most trouble always comes from. Men can’t hear music and not fight. Can’t seem to hold a stick for long without swinging it at one another—it’s born in them,” he confirmed.

  “Obliged, Sheriff,” Sam said. “But make sure you’re up to it, before I cut out of here.”

  “Like I said,” Schaffer reiterated, “I’m right as a spring peach.” He pounded himself lightly on the chest with his bandaged forearm in the sling. “Did you ever get anything out of that Garlet idiot?” He gestured a nod toward the doctor’s clapboard building behind them.

  “No,” Sam said. “Nothing yet. I’ll talk to him again before I leave.”

  “And if he won’t give up their hideout?” said Schaffer.

  “I rode out into the hills and looked around some while you were unconscious,” Sam said. “I found some tracks that were riding wide off the trail, headed south.”

  “So, that’s why you’re suspecting some of these men might still be alive?” Schaffer asked.

  “Bonsell’s horse was wearing store-bought shoes, has a nick in one the size of my thumbnail. I saw that nick while I was looking around.”

  “Could be the horse was running away from the fire,” said Schaffer.

  “Could be. But whether they’re alive or not, it’s as good a place as any to start looking,” Sam said. “They were headed south when I took up the hunt. They did a change around when I started getting close. I figured they did it to lead me away. From what I hear, Braxton Kane is not a man who’d stand for his riders bringing the law down on him.”

  Schaffer looked him up and down and nodded.

  “That he ain’t,” he said. “Nor is he the kind of man who’ll shy away when somebody’s killed his kin. I can’t say that enough, Ranger,” he added.

  “Obliged, but you needn’t warn me, Sheriff,” Sam said. “I don’t want him shying away. I want him coming at me full bark-on. Killing Cordy might be the only way I can flush Braxton out and take him down.”

  Schaffer shook his head warily at the Ranger’s methods.

  “That’s playing too fast and loose for my blood anymore,” he said. “I expect I’ve lost my stomach for that kind of hard killing.” He turned as he spoke and gestured his walking cane toward the side door to the doctor’s building. “Come on, I’ll question John Garlet with you,” he said. “I’ll wear this stick out on him—make him cooperate, if you want me to.”

  “Let’s see how it goes,” Sam said, walking in front of the sheriff and opening the door for him. “What is Dr. Croft saying about this one?”

  “Says he’s lost his mind,” Schaffer said. “Says the blast didn’t help any, but he thinks he was poisoned from the mescal and it’s boiled his brain. Aside from the peyote, cocaine and God knows what else is in it, Doc says it might be full of metal from up around the mines where it was made. Metal poison alone can eat a man’s brain plumb out of his skull.”

  Sam just stared at him, listening.

  “Anyway,” said Schaffer, “I’m glad we’ve seen the last of that stuff around here. No telling how many it’s sent into raving madness. Still they like to drink it, seeing how strong it is. The more they hear about it, the more they have to try it.”

  As the two stepped inside and saw John Garlet stretched out in a corner, his arms out spread-eagle, thickly bandaged and strapped down on splint boards to keep his broken bones in place. His legs were also strapped to boards and bandaged. His feet rested in slings that hung from thin cables on pulleys attached to a metal frame that stood over the bed. A wooden frame mantled his shoulders and held his head in place on a round board, held there by rigid wires screwed in place. His head was covered with thick bandage, his face partially concealed by gauze.

  “Did you . . . think to bring me . . . a gun?” he asked from within a dazed laudanum stupor.

  “No gun, Garlet, you can’t hold one anyway,” the sheriff said. “It’s me, Sheriff Schaffer, and the Ranger, Sam Burrack. The Ranger wants to ask you some questions.”

  “I don’t know . . . anything about it,” Garlet said groggily.

  “About what?” the sheriff asked.

  “About . . . nothing,” said Garlet. His mouth hung gapping in a crazy half smile.

  “See?” Schaffer said to the Ranger. “Still doesn’t have the sense God gave a goose.” He shook his head and said to Garlet, “All the same, talk to him, Garlet. It might make you feel better.”

  “Can I . . . have a gun . . . one bullet?” John Garlet asked, adrift on the laudanum. His dark eyes swirled in madness. Saliva ran from his mouth down his chin.

  Sam stopped short before walking any closer.

  “It’s useless talking to him,” he said. “Dr. Croft is right. He’s lost his mind.” He stepped back to the door. “I’m leaving come morning.”

  “I’m holding him here and putting him on the jail wagon from Yuma when it gets here,” said Sheriff. “He’s a danger to himself. They’ll stick him in a lunatic cell.”

  Sam looked at John Garlet again and shook his head. Then he and the sheriff stepped out the door and closed it behind them.

  • • •

  After the first two weeks of riding northwest through a succession of frontier mining settlements and hill towns, the three Garlets, Bluebird, Cutthroat Teddy Bonsell and Jake Cleary stopped at every opportunity to search for arms and ammunition. One of the first had been Poco Fuego. In the wispy first light of dawn they had ridden scorched, singed and blistered into the high border town and spilled into a small cantina owned by a one-legged Confederate war veteran named Virgil Piney.

  There they spent a week lying in the cool water of a shallow creek and eating anything Piney and his old Mexican man-servant Jeto would kill, chop and roast for them.

  Being the only one fully armed and carrying money, Prew bought two of Virgil Piney’s spare guns, a long-barreled muzzle-loader shotgun and a battered—but still vicious—nine-shot LeMat revolver. The big French-made horse pistol hosted a twenty-gauge shotgun barrel beneath its long .42 caliber pistol barrel. The shotgun he gave to his brother Tillman, the LeMat to Jake Cleary who had carried one like it when he’d ridden with a band of Alabama guerillas in the great civil conflict.

  When the men had finished their week’s stay and prepared their horses for the trail, Foz saw Cleary check the big LeMat and shove it down into its worn saddle rig hanging beside his knee.

  “What about me, Prew? Hadn’t I ought to get a gun?” Foz asked his brother.

  Prew studied his brother’s eyes for a moment, scrutinizing him closely.

  “How you feeling now?” he asked.

  “What do you mean how do I feel?” said Foz, a little taken aback.

  “I mean have you gotten your senses back yet?” Prew said bluntly.

  “Hell yes, I’ve got them back,” said Foz, sitting upright in his saddle. “What are you saying, that
you don’t trust me holding a gun?”

  “Last night you said you were seeing things, things that had you shaking and carrying on,” said Prew. “How’s that going now?”

  Foz jerked angrily on his roan’s reins as the animal began getting restless beneath him.

  “Last night I was seeing things,” he said. “Today I’m not seeing them. Do I look shaky to you?”

  Prew just stared at his brother’s hairless, browless smudged face.

  “Next guns we come upon, you get first pick,” he said, placating Foz. “Does that suit you?”

  “That’ll suit me,” Foz said. He looked all around at the other faces as he spoke. “I’m warning everybody here and now, if I keep hearing you whispering and laughing about me behind my back, somebody’s going to die, gun or no gun.”

  The men, except for Tillman, sat staring blackly at him. Tillman sat looking off into the distance with a dreamy wistful look on his face.

  “Take it easy, Foz,” Prew said quietly, seeing his brother getting agitated.

  But Foz would have none of it.

  “Don’t deny it,” he said, ignoring Prew. “You’ve all been doing it, haven’t you?” His eyes stopped on the Bluebird who upon seeing Foz’s lips move, nodded his head, agreeing with the delusional outlaw although he hadn’t heard a word he’d said.

  “Jesus . . . ,” Prew said under his breath. He turned his horse to the trail. “Come on, Foz, you and Tillman ride beside me a while. I want to hear more about what to expect from this jug of mescal I’ve got here.” He gestured toward his saddlebags. “Tell me what you all were seeing last night.” He took Tillman’s inattentive horse by its bridle and pulled it alongside him until Tillman seemed to snap out of a trancelike state and collect himself.

  Bonsell and Jake Cleary gave each other a guarded look and slowed their horses to fall behind the three Garlets.

  “This is worrisome, the way they’re acting,” Cleary said under his breath.

  “I hear you, Jake,” said Bonsell. He nudged his horse forward, following the Garlets. He stared forward at the jug bulging in Prew’s saddlebags. “This keeps on I’m going to start getting curious about that stuff myself.”

  The Bluebird rode beside the two, staring ahead at the endless Mexican hill country. And they rode on.

  By that afternoon they had made a camp on a hillside in the shelter of tall pines and rock. The next day, in the early afternoon, they arrived at an ancient nameless Mexican trade settlement overlooking a wide stretch of Sonora desert valley. There they gathered more guns, gun leather and ammunition from a Mexican gunrunner named Sibio Alverez, who was known to show partiality to the Kane brothers and anybody associated with the Golden Gang.

  The settlement had become a stopping point for any of the Golden Riders to lie low and lie the trail grow cold behind them. At Alverez’s cantina, two such men, Lester Stevens and Mason Gorn, had been drinking and carousing with four loose women who made their living off passing gunmen along the border badlands trails. Looking out through a window they recognized the six riders moving their horses along the dusty street.

  “All right,” said Stevens, grinning, staring through the wavy window glass. “It’s about time we had some company show up.” He threw back his shot of rye and set his glass down hard and snatched the bottle by its neck. He and Gorn walked out front and met the men as they rode up to the hitch rail and stepped down from their saddles. The four women ventured out behind them and stood hanging and leaning on to the two and staring at the newcomers. In the doorway, Sibio Alverez stood chewing on a short black cigar. He grinned across gold teeth and raised a hand in welcome.

  “Look real pretty, senoritas,” he said in border En- glish, “these hombres can do for you what your daddies never could.”

  As the riders climbed down from their saddles, both Stevens and Gorn stepped forward, Stevens holding out the bottle of rye as a welcoming gesture. But upon seeing the men’s condition, the two stopped. Stevens let the bottle hang down his side.

  “Jesus, Prew, what the hell has happened to you fellows?” Stevens said, staring at their singed hairless faces, their scorched clothes. They looked at Cutthroat Teddy Bonsell’s bandanna-wrapped hand.

  “Too much to talk about out here,” said Prew, reaching out and motioning for the bottle, which Stevens handed to him. Prew turned up a long swig of whiskey and passed the bottle to Jake Cleary standing nearest to him.

  “Then do come inside,” said Sibio Alverez with a sweeping gesture of his hand. “Let these lovely senoritas show you some sympathy.”

  The Bluebird, knowing his place, stayed at the hitch rail with the horses as the bedraggled men filed into the cantina and took up position along a long, ornately carved bar. The four women sidled into their midst, ignoring the men’s condition, the smell of burnt hair, of charcoal and gunpowder. Slipping around behind the bar, Alverez set up shot glasses and a row of three new bottles for the arriving gunmen. He filled the shot glasses and began filling beer mugs from a tap as the men threw back their first shots and refilled them as if in reflex.

  Prew glanced at one of the women who suggestively rubbed up against him and eased her hand inside his sweaty shirt. She looked up and gave him a smile.

  Prew turned his attention from her to Lester Stevens.

  “We had a robbery go bad on us,” he said grimly.

  “My God, they set you on fire?” said Stevens, looking along the line of charred gunmen.

  “No,” said Prew. “The Mex-Injun out front is the Bluebird, he blows stuff up. You ever hear of him?”

  “Yes, I have,” said Stevens. “He did all this?”

  “Him and I did this, getting my brothers out of jail. The explosion went bad too. My brothers turned into idiots on bad mescal.” He nodded toward Tillman and Foz who stood staring at their empty shot glasses as if in deep contemplation. “It’s been one mess after another this whole trip.” He shook his head in despair.

  “Jesus . . . ,” said Stevens. He looked at Gorn on his other side, then back at Prew. “Brax sent us here to watch for any of our bunch and guard their back trail if they need it. I expect you fellows need it?”

  “Oh, yes, we need it,” he said. “We’ve been riding for over two weeks, getting away from the Midland Settlement and heading to the hideout to tell Brax his brother is dead.”

  “Cordy, dead?” said Gorn, looking around Stevens at Prew.

  “Yep. Killed by Ranger Sam by-God Burrack, according to Bonsell and Cleary there,” he said bitterly. He threw back his shot of rye and set his glass down hard. “We’ll be leaving here come morning. If Burrack comes through behind us, kill him.”

  “We’d love to, Prew,” said Stevens, him and Gorn both nodding in agreement. “And so you know, if he slips around us we’ve got gunmen in every little town between here and the hideout. Nobody’s getting through this stretch of hills.” He raised a shot glass as if in toast. “Here’s to killing Rangers,” he said, “be it for good reason, or just good sport.”

  “Damn right,” Prew agreed. He raised his refilled shot glass and drank it down. “That aside . . . ,” he said, looking back at the woman’s hand inside his shirt. “Little darling, how would you like to give me an all-over bath and send my clothes out to get boiled and beaten clean?”

  She gave him a red-painted smile.

  “For two dollars, I’d be both thrilled and delighted,” she said. “What about your friends?”

  Prew looked along at the bar at the miserable, stinking gunmen, realizing that he was the only one with any money. He thought about it, then said, “Yeah, why not? You gals get them all cleaned up and smelling better. Me first though”—he drew her against him—“in case you run out of water too soon.”

  Chapter 7

  In the morning, Prew stepped from the front door of a dusty plank and adobe hotel onto the even dustier street. The men following
him stopped and watched as Prew looked down at the Bluebird sitting wrapped in a ragged blanket, leaning against the front wall. The flat brim of the Indian’s hat hid his face.

  “Wake up, Bluebird,” Prew said. He reached his boot sideways and jingled his spur near the Bluebird’s ear. The Bluebird didn’t move. “Hey . . . ,” said Prew, a little louder. He tapped his boot against the Bluebird’s leg. The Indian stood up—too quickly to have been sleeping—Prew thought, and turned and looked at him from beneath his hat brim. “Let’s eat and get out of here,” said Prew.

  The Bluebird nodded his head, unwrapped himself and held the ragged blanket over his shoulder.

  “Look at this, Prew,” said Cutthroat Teddy. He nodded at the horses lined along the hitch rail, saddled and ready for the trail. A few loose grains of feed lay in the dirt at their hooves. The night before, the men had unsaddled the animals and lined their saddles along the edge of the short boardwalk.

  “My, my,” said Prew, “but I do like a Mex-Injun who’s willing to pitch in and help out a little.” He looked at the Bluebird as he spoke. The Bluebird nodded and walked to his horse. The men walked to their respective horses and looked them over good, pleased to see that the animals had been well attended to the night before.

  “I believe we ought to let the Bluebird take care of the horses from now on,” Bonsell chuckled. He looked at the Bluebird who saw his thin smile, saw his lips moving as he looked at him. “What do you say to that, Senor Bluebird?”

  The Bluebird only nodded again. “Yes, even so . . . ,” he said tightly. Again, he nodded.

  “Whoa, did you hear that?” said Bonsell as if taken aback at the sound of the Bluebird’s voice. “This Mex-Injun can talk after all!”

  “Don’t act like an ass, Bonsell,” Prew said. “We all knew he could talk.”

  “I swear I didn’t,” said Bonsell with a shrug. “I knew he had a hinge on his neck, kept his head bobbing up and down. But I haven’t heard him talk till now.”

  “Don’t make a big thing of it,” Prew said. “Maybe he don’t feel like jawboning all the time.”