by Ralph Cotton
“Are you sure that’s it?” Lindsey questioned. She held a hand above her eyes as a visor against the afternoon sun glare.
Toby took a deep patient breath.
“That’s where we left it, Sis,” he said. “These water holes hardly ever move around.”
Lindsey looked at their trail behind her, then back toward the stand of rock.
“Every critter in the desert will be there tonight,” she said warily.
“Good,” said Toby. “I’ll shoot one and we’ll eat it.”
“One what,” Lindsey said, “a wolf, a coyote?”
“I was thinking more of a jackrabbit, or a fowl of some sort,” said Toby. “But if it’s a coyote you want to cook, I’ll see what I can do.”
“It’s not funny, Toby,” said Lindsey.
“I’m not laughing,” Toby replied again. “Come on; let’s see if we can get Dan on the move again.”
Lindsey turned with him and stepped over to the mule. She stood by the lank animal and rubbed a hand against its tall, upright ears.
“Look at him. The poor thing is starving to death before our eyes,” she said.
“He could use a good graining or two, that’s for certain,” Toby said. “But he’s a long ways from starving. So are we. We’ve just got to keep our heads and keep moving. Long as we keep moving we’ll come upon something.”
“I hope you’re right,” Lindsey said. She reached down and plucked a twist of wild grass, as if the mule could not reach down and do it for himself. The mule stared at her, already chewing a mouthful of grass.
Toby reached into the driver’s side of the small wagon and picked up a battered, long-barreled shotgun and lay it up over his shoulder. To conserve the mule, they had not ridden in the wagon for the past week. But they had hauled their father’s body in it when he’d died yesterday evening on the way down from their hillside claim.
“I am right, Sis,” Toby said, his tone turning more serious. “I will get you through this. You’re my look-alike twin. Anything happens to you, it happens to me too. I won’t let nothing happen to you, not ever.”
“You’d better not,” she said in a mock threat. She managed to give him a trace of a smile. Standing beside the mule she took Dan’s wagon reins with one hand and one of his long ears with the other. The mule balked a little, but then stepped forward reluctantly, as if having to first pull his hooves free from the ground. “Come on, Dan,” she said. “You heard Toby, we’re in good hands. Let’s get you watered. . . .”
“I’m not joking, Sis,” Toby said, hearing her. “I mean it.”
“I know you do, Toby,” said Lindsey as the mule stepped forward grudgingly.
• • •
Four gunmen from the Golden Riders had met with the Garlets, Cleary and Bonsell two days earlier and agreed to come out and set a trap for the Ranger or any other lawmen on their trail. The four had crossed the border, rode all night the night before and arrived at the Dutchman’s Tanks in the early afternoon. They brought a long telescope with them. They set up against a large boulder behind a lower stand of rocks overlooking the desert trail, knowing that any rider coming from the same direction as the Garlets would have to come this way—come this way or die of thirst somewhere on the water-barren trails ahead.
“I wish you’d look who’s coming here,” said a gunman named Arnold Pulty, staring out through the telescope. “We’ve got pilgrims coming, one of them looking as sweet as candy.”
“We see them,” said a Kansas gunman named Roy Mangett. “Hell, we can see them without a telescope. You must be near blind, Arnold.”
“The hell I am,” Pulty retorted.
A young blond-haired Texas gunman named Joey Rose shifted slightly and looked out and down across the top of the rock at the small covered wagon as it came into sight on the desert floor.
“What do you think they’re doing out here?” He checked all around the small wagon, seeing no one else in sight, just the two figures trudging through the sand, one on either side of the gaunt mule.
Sitting back from the others, a disgruntled gunman named Chris Weidel coughed hard, spat and wiped a wadded bandanna across his parched lips.
“They’re damned fools, whatever they’re doing,” he said without looking toward the desert floor. “So are we, you want to know the truth. I’ve swallowed enough dust I’ll soon be leaving bricks behind me.”
“Nobody made you come out here, Chris,” said Roy Mangett, the self-appointed leader of the group. He stepped over as he spoke, took the telescope from Pulty and looked out.
“Nobody told me not to either,” said Weidel, his words ending in another cough. “I hope to hell the Garlets appreciate us doing all this, without even paying us.”
“It ain’t just the Garlets we’re doing it for,” Mangett said over his shoulder, watching the mule, the wagon, the young man and woman. “We ride out and watch each other’s back trail every time Brax gathers us in.”
“Yeah, Chris,” Pulty said to Weidel, “and every time we do it, you carry on like it’s griping your ass plumb up to your elbows.”
“Only this time, we’re not just watching a back trail,” said Weidel. “We’re fixing to kill us a lawman.” He spat again and blotted his lips.
“So . . . ?” said Mangett. “You saying that’s a bad thing? Is this your first lawman?” He lowered the telescope and handed it sidelong to Joey Rose.
“No, I’m not saying it,” Weidel snapped, “and it won’t be my first. . . .” Standing up from the rock where he sat, he moved over among the others in a crouch, staying out of sight from the desert valley below. “But I never killed any lawman in my life that made me a dime better off.”
“Arnold,” Mangett said to Pulty, “have you got a dime?”
“Might have,” Pulty said, staring out with his naked eyes onto the desert floor.
“Give it to Chris so he’ll stop bellyaching,” said Mangett.
“Sonsabitches,” Weidel growled to himself. He sat down in the dirt, his rifle across his lap.
“What about these two,” said Joey Rose, the telescope to his eye. “Looks like they’re coming here.”
“Hell, of course they’re coming here,” Weidel groused. “You see any other water nearby?” He waved his hand holding the wadded bandanna all around.
“I’m just saying, is all,” Joey Rose said in a stiff tone. He turned back to Mangett with an expectant look.
Mangett breathed deep and stared out across the desert floor as if in contemplation.
“Let them get watered and get on out of here,” he said. “We’ve got a lawman coming most any time. We want things looking smooth and ordinary here.” He turned his eyes to Arnold Pulty, singling him out. “I see you looking at the woman with your hands in the wrong place, I’ll chop them off,” he warned.
Pulty’s face turned red-blue. “I don’t do that no more,” he said.
“You’re damned right you don’t,” said Mangett. He looked all around at the men bunched together against the side of the boulder.
“Jesus . . . ,” he said, “Damn it! All of you spread out and get out of sight somewhere. You want them thinking they’ve come to a birthday party?”
• • •
Toby and Lindsey Delmar led the mule up a short rock slope half circling the water hole and with their last ounce of strength, they collapsed onto their knees at the water’s edge. Toby pitched three empty canteens in the water in front of him to fill them up. Turning to his sister, he wobbled in place and gave a weary grin.
“See, Sis?” he said. “I told you we’d be all right.” Then he dropped forward onto his chest and stuck his face down into the tepid, yet soothing water. Lindsey did the same, letting the mule’s reins fall from her hand. Dan stepped forward into the water up to his knees and stuck his muzzle down into the water. Silence fell around the water hole for a long
moment as the three drank and slaked their thirst.
Lindsey, coming up first, gasped in a breath of air and propped herself on her elbows, her long auburn hair hanging in wet strands, water running down it. She looked around, seeing the mule still drinking, her brother’s torso lying limp and bobbing, his face still under the water.
“Toby?” she said. She stared at him. When he didn’t make a move, she said, “Toby . . . ? Are you all right?”
She looked at him warily. The water around him took a red sheen.
“Toby!” Frightened, she started to reach over and grab him. But just before she could, he came up suddenly, noisily, and slung his wet hair back and forth.
“Whoo-ieee!” he said loudly, propping up on his palms. Water ran from his chest, his face, his hair. “I had to come up soon or drown,” he said. He gave his sister a half-silly smile. But seeing the look on her face, his grin vanished. “What is it, Sis? What’s wrong?” he asked. Rising up, he awkwardly knee-walked the short four-foot distance to her.
“Nothing . . . ,” Lindsey said, a relieved tone to her voice. She glanced back at the red sheen on the ripples in the water, noting now that it was only sun glare. “I’m just tired. I’m not thinking straight.”
“Well . . .” Toby raised the filled canteens, held them out and let water run off them. “While you rest some, why don’t I go scout around and see if I can rustle us something to eat.” He held the canteens closer and began capping them.
“Remember, Pa never liked firing the goose gun unless we had to,” Lindsey reminded him.
“I know that,” Toby replied patiently, “and I won’t, unless I have to. But we’ve got to eat, Sis.”
Toby walked the dripping canteens to the small wagon, reached over and lay them inside the bed. He picked up the long-barreled shotgun and propped it up over his shoulder.
“Wish me luck,” he said, turning and walking along a game path around the water hole.
Lindsey watched until her brother stepped out of sight into a stand of brush.
“Good luck . . . ,” she whispered to herself. Her stomach tightened just thinking about food. But she put her hunger aside as her father had taught her and her brother to do. She made herself think of something else, anything but food.
She reached around and unbuttoned her dress and stooped back down at the water’s edge. She cupped a handful of water and raised it as she lowered the front of the wet dirty dress. She sighed to herself, washing herself with her hand, feeling relief as water cleansed the crusted perspiration from her breasts.
She let the front of the dress fall and washed her sides, her neck, under her arms. She stood up and thought for a moment, then decided to push the dress down, to step out of it.
But a sound caught her attention and she looked around quickly. On a thin, steep path leading up between two large rocks she saw dirt and fine, small gravel trickling down. A coyote . . . ? An animal of some sort? No! She didn’t think so. She heard a muffled grunt like someone who’d fallen and was trying to keep it quiet.
Grasping her dress, she yanked it up and held it against her.
“Who’s there?” she said in shaky voice. More dirt and gravel spilled down. “Who’s up there?” she demanded, in a louder tone of voice.
“Don’t be scared, little lady,” a thick voice called out from up the path, more dirt and small rock spilling down. “I’m not going to hurt you any.”
Lindsey saw a large bare head appear around the side of the rock beside the path of spilling dirt. A bare arm reached out and waved at her. A broad grin appeared through a thick ragged beard. “I’m just looking at you, is all.”
“Who are you? What do you want?” She called out, backing away as she spoke, hoping her brother would hear her and come running with the goose gun.
She stared in terror as the man stepped out naked onto the thin path and stood with his hairy arms spread wide. His organ stood out short and stiff, bobbing as if on a spring.
“Don’t worry none. I’m just plain ole Arnold here,” the man called down to her, stepping forward into full sight. “Nekked as the day I’s born!”
Lindsey let out a scream.
Thirty feet away, two more men stood up from behind a cover of rock.
Lindsey screamed again. She watched the two men stare at the naked man as if in disgust and disbelief.
“Arnold, you son of a bitch! I warned you!” she heard one of the men call out. She saw him raise a pistol toward the naked man. He cocked the gun and took aim. But before he fired, the second man grabbed his wrist and pulled the gun down.
“Don’t shoot him, Roy!” she heard the second man call out. “We don’t want gunshots!”
Chapter 9
Toby Delmar, hearing his sister’s shrill screams had turned from his unsuccessful hunt and ran loping down the hillside like a deer, bounding over brush and rock to get to her. Falling, he slid down a path on his rump the last twenty feet, then rose into sight at the water’s edge. He saw his sister run to the side of the wagon and climb inside quickly, still screaming. He saw her through the open front of the canvas cover as she rummaged wildly among the wagon’s meager contents.
The naked man advanced across thirty feet of rock ground toward her.
Without hesitation, Toby threw the goose gun to his shoulder and fired. The sound of the blast rolled and echoed out across the desert floor. As soon as he fired the big single-shot shotgun, he pulled a fresh load from his pocket and fumbled with it, trying to hurry and reload.
Among the rocks on the hillside, Roy Mangett slumped, his cocked Colt still in hand and watched the large naked gunman take the shotgun blast in his chest and fall backward onto the ground, blood flying.
“Damn it to hell,” Mangett said to Chris Weidel standing beside him. “There goes keeping things quiet.” The two looked down the hillside at Toby reloading the shotgun. Shaking his head, Mangett raised his Colt as Arnold Pulty struggled up onto his feet, bleeding all over from the load of buckshot.
“Yep,” said Weidel, “it don’t matter now.” He raised a big Remington he’d drawn and held down his side.
“Adios, Arnold, you crazy bastard,” Mangett said under his breath. He pulled the trigger on his Colt just as Toby finished loading the shotgun and raised it to his shoulder. Before Toby could pull the shotgun’s trigger, he heard three shots in close succession and watched the naked man bounce backward a step as each bullet nailed him hard in his bloody chest.
“Damn, Roy, that was good shooting!” remarked Joey Rose, standing up from among the cover of rock on the hillside.
“Yeah . . . ,” said Roy, “you keep that in mind, before you ever go acting a-fool like that.” He nodded down at Arnold’s body in the dirt.
“Jesus, Roy,” said Joey Rose, an offended look on his face. “I’d never do nothing like that—”
“You up there,” Toby called out, the shotgun still raised and pointed up the hillside. “Drop your gun . . . keep your hands where I can see them. Walk down here, real slow.”
Mangett and Weidel looked at each. They gave guarded grins and looked downhill at Rose, then at the young man holding the shotgun pointed up at them.
“I know we’ve made what you might call a real bad first impression,” Mangett called down to Toby. He gestured a nod at Arnold’s bloody, naked body in reference. “I’m wishing we can start all over and forget that fool ever skint out of his pants.” As he replied, he started walking slowly down the hill path. Weidel followed a step to his side. Mangett slipped his cocked Colt down into the holster on his hip.
“Hunh-uh, mister, stop right there,” Toby demanded, advancing forward, closer to his sister as he spoke. “I didn’t say holster it, I said drop it!” His eyes and gun barrel moved back and forth quickly among the three, seeing the older gunman step farther away as the two descended the last few feet of the hillside.
Feeling a little safer now that she saw the big naked man was lying dead in the dirt, Lindsey stepped down from the covered wagon bed, a long butcher knife in her shaking hand.
Instead of stopping, instead of raising their guns from their holsters and dropping them, the three men remained spread out, and walked slowly closer to the wagon. Toby hurried. He got to the wagon first and stood close to his sister’s side, the shotgun held firmly in his hands.
“I got this side covered, Roy,” said Joey Rose.
Mangett only nodded.
“I’m warning the three of you!” he said loudly. “Not one more step.” He placed his face on the gun stock as if to take aim.
“Now you see, young fellow,” Mangett said calmly, without slowing a step, “we’re not going to drop our guns. That would be foolish.” He raised a finger as if for emphasis. The three stopped fifteen feet away. They kept spread out a few feet between them. “We saw what that idiot did,” he said, “and you saw how we dealt with it.” He gave a slight shrug. “That’s all you get.” He looked from Toby to Lindsey, then back. “You might have guessed, that ain’t the first gun that’s ever pointed at us.” He nodded at the barrel of the goose gun.
“Don’t try nothing,” Toby warned, unrelenting, but looking a little shaky about his situation.
Mangett shrugged again.
“We won’t,” he said. “Like I told you, I wish we could start all over. All we want to do here is water our tired cayuses, and ourselves. Then we’re gone.” He nodded, looking back and forth between the two closely, curiously. “Say, you two look just alike, except that—”
“We’re twins, mister,” said Toby, cutting him off. “This is my sister.” He still held the shotgun up, but he let the barrel slump, easing his grip a little. Mangett took note of it and stepped in closer.
“Twins, you say?” he gave a thin smile, eyeing them each up and down. “Well, I’ll be damn—” he caught himself. “Darned, that is,” he corrected quickly, touching his hat brim toward Lindsey. He noted the big butcher knife in her hands. She gripped it tightly.
