by Ralph Cotton
Stop it, she said to herself.
Last night had been real and terrible, but nothing had gotten any better with the coming of daylight. She was alive, that meant something. But Toby was still back there somewhere, hurt, maybe dead for all she knew. Thinking of him, she pushed herself up from against the rock. She had to follow this main trail along the bottom edge of the hill line and get back to where the path ran up to the water hole. She looked all around. She had to do all this and at the same time stay out of sight. For all she knew the gunmen could come back looking for her. She’d heard them say they were riding on, but she couldn’t trust it. She couldn’t trust anything, she reminded herself.
She walked down the last few sloping steps of the sandy hillside to the main trail. She stayed along the inner edge of the desert trail and walked back to where she knew they had turned up on the path to the water hole. She kept the rocky hills near her side should she suddenly need their shelter.
She had walked steadily, nonstop for an hour when she came upon the sound of thrashing in the dried brush a few yards up on the sloping hillside. Stopping and freezing in place, she stared in terror, expecting to see the wounded gunman who had somehow circled above her and lay in wait. Yet, as she stood watching, she saw a large, bloody wolf—one of the losing combatants in last night’s contest over Arnold Pulty’s corpse—step out of the brush and stand staring down at her, its fangs showing.
Oh God . . . !
She backed away a slow step. Wolves never came out in the daylight, she told herself. Did they? She backed another step, the wolf stalked forward slowly. She saw a deep, bloody tear in its fur. No, they don’t, she answered herself, not unless something was wrong. She backed another step, telling herself not to run. If this monster saw her running, it would strike out after her. But she only moved slowly, quietly, showing no threat—
Oh no . . . !
The wounded wolf leaped forward, charging down at her in a full run—limping in its hindquarters, but running all the same.
Lindsey ran with all her strength along the sandy lower edge of the hill line, veering out every step farther onto the desert floor. She had no idea where she was running to, she only knew to run, put distance between herself and the wolf. For how long or far she didn’t consider, to what inevitable end she dare not imagine.
The harder she ran out onto the barren desert floor, the more the deepening sand slowed her down. She looked back, seeing the big limping wolf gaining on her. Beneath her, she felt her feet moving as if she were running in a bad dream, running hard, getting nowhere.
She screamed. It made no difference to the wolf.
“Get away!” she shrieked, but the wolf ran on, getting closer, too close. She heard the panting rattle of its breath, heard its paws striking the sand. When she looked back again, she knew it was over. The big animal made a long final leap, as was its instinctive move when it knew it had its prey.
Lindsey stumbled to her knees, rolled in the loose, hot sand, trying to cover herself with her arms. The wolf had her; she knew it. But then she heard the animal let out a terrible yelp. As she looked through her protecting arms, she saw it fly sideways, its direction changed in midair, a ribbon of fresh blood streaking from its side. Then the blast of a rifle shot caught up with itself from among the rocks along the lower hillside. In the sand, the mortally wounded wolf dragged itself forward, its fangs snapping at her foot. Lindsey scooted quickly forward away from it, the wolf’s paw digging at her, striking against her shoe. She struggled to her feet on the run, looking back wide-eyed. She’d gone three steps when the wolf’s body bucked hard in the sand and seemed to melt there. The report of a second rifle shot came down from the rocks and echoed out across the desert floor.
Lindsey felt a sudden rush of relief, but also the dizzying press of heat, of thirst and exhaustion. Even as she tried to focus on the figure standing atop the line of rock in a drift of smoke where the shots had come from, she felt the world spin around her, and she fell backward, limp onto the burning sand.
• • •
The Ranger looked out across the desert floor from up in the rocks atop a narrow cliff. He saw the wolf dead in the sand; he watched the young woman fall to the ground. With his Winchester in hand he climbed down among a stand of boulders, walked around to where he’d left the horses, and led them along a slim path to a downhill trail. At the bottom of the sloping hill line he stepped up into his saddle and shoved the Winchester into its boot.
Riding the easygoing buckskin, leading the black-point copper dun and the big paint alongside him, he raced out through the sand to where the young woman lay collapsed beneath the hot morning sun. She struggled up onto her elbows as the sound of the horses drew closer. Seeing the rise of dust from the three horses, not realizing it was a lawman riding toward her, she struggled the rest of the way to her feet and started running all over again.
Sam kept the horses pounding straight at her across the sand. As he drew closer, he let go of the lead rope to the two horses and leaned off low to the side. On his way past her, he swept her up across his lap and held her there. She kicked and screamed and lashed out at him with her fists, managing only to hit him on his leg.
“Easy, Miss Lindsey, easy,” Sam called out. “I’m Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack. Your brother Toby sent me. I’m here to help.”
Hearing her name, hearing her brother’s name, she settled a little and looked up at the Ranger. Seeing the badge on his chest she settled the rest of the way. Tears filled her eyes.
“Toby sent you?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am, he did,” the Ranger said. He lifted her and sat her more securely onto his lap as he brought the buckskin to a halt.
“He’s—he’s all right then?” she asked, her eyes already full of tears.
“He’s on the trail behind me,” Sam said. As he spoke he raised a canteen from his saddle horn. He uncapped it and held it to her lips. She drank thirstily. “Now that I’ve got you, we can ride back and join him.” He pulled the canteen away and capped it.
Lindsey cried against his chest as Sam turned the buckskin and rode over and gathered the lead rope to the other two horses.
“You just rest a spell,” he said quietly. “Everything’s all right.”
When he’d gathered the horses and she’d collected herself and stopped crying, Sam nodded at the dried blood on her hands, the front of her dress.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes, I am . . . now,” she said, sniffling. “This is not my blood. Are you the lawman they were waiting to ambush at the water hole?”
“That would be my guess,” Sam said. “Whose blood is it?”
“A gunman they call Joey Rose,” she said. “He was going back to look for my brother, but I stopped him.”
“Did you kill him?” Sam asked gravely, again noting all the dried blood.
“No,” she said. “I meant to, but he drew his gun. I barely got away alive.” She paused and took on a troubled look just thinking about the morning’s events.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Sam said. He looked her up and down. “You’ve had a rough morning. Are you able to ride?”
“Yes, I can ride,” she said.
“Good,” said Sam, before she’d hardly gotten the words out of her mouth. “Here’s a horse for you.” He scooted back off his saddle and slipped expertly over from the back of the buckskin onto the paint.
“There,” he said, “you even get a saddle.” He looped a length of the lead rope into a makeshift hackamore and leaned forward and slipped it onto the paint’s head and muzzle.
Lindsey adjusted herself in the saddle, her ragged dress gathered above her skinned knees.
“All set, Ranger Burrack,” she said.
“Then let’s go find Toby,” he said, sitting bareback on the big paint beside her. “He’ll be glad to see you.”
Cha
pter 12
Toby Delmar spotted his sister and the Ranger when the two had ridden their horses as far as the winding hill paths would allow. They had stepped down from the horses’ backs and led the three animals around a large boulder when Toby saw them and stood up in the cover of a downed juniper.
“Sis, over here,” he called out to Lindsey, limping forward, his hand to the bandanna covering his belly wound.
Sam reached a hand out in time and took the buckskin’s reins as Lindsey pitched them to him and ran to her brother. The two met with a hug in spite of their wounded, battered conditions. Sam stood watching, glad he’d been able to help. Yet, now that these two were together, both of them alive, reasonably well after the situation they’d been through, he realized their welfare would have to come first. He had to attend to getting them safely off the desert floor and find them help and shelter before turning his attention back to Braxton Kane and his Golden Riders.
So be it. . . .
That was the job, he reminded himself. Besides, in a strange roundabout way, these two had kept him from facing an ambush. He nodded to himself, watching the reunited twins. When they turned and walked back to him he was stricken by how much they looked alike regardless of their difference in gender.
“Ranger Burrack,” Toby said gratefully, “you did it. You found my sister and brought her back, unharmed.” He smiled and hugged his sister on his good side.
“And you found Toby,” Lindsey put in, gesturing toward her brother’s bloodstained side. “You saved his life.” She smiled, tearfully, and swung an arm toward the mule, who stood to the side chewing on dry wild grass. “You even saved Dan.”
“We can never thank you enough,” Toby said.
Sam touched his hat brim, a little embarrassed, not accustomed to hearing thanks from anyone, save for perhaps some town sheriff when he’d saved the town the cost of a hanging, by shooting an outlaw dead in the street.
“You’re both very welcome,” he said. “Now we need to get over this hill—get back to the water hole and get your wagon.”
The two nodded in agreement.
“Are you going to be able to ride?” Lindsey asked her brother, noting his wounded lower belly.
“Sis, I’ve been riding,” Toby replied. “The Ranger says this ricochet sliced through me clean, never hit anything.”
Lindsey looked at Sam as if for affirmation.
“It appears so,” Sam said. “Had it hit anything vital we’d have known before now. He’s been riding the mule on these hill paths all day.”
Lindsey looked relieved.
“All the same,” Sam added, “we need to get him to Alto Cresta and have a doctor look him over.”
“Yes,” Lindsey said nodding.
“These men you’re after, Ranger,” said Toby. “Will they get away now, while you ride with us to Alto Cresta?”
“No, they won’t,” Sam said, “not for long anyway. I’ll catch up to them. I’ve been tracking them for a while. I have an idea where they’re headed.”
“I don’t want us holding you back,” Toby said.
“You’re not,” Sam said. “I’ve got a notion Alto Cresta is in the direction they’re headed.”
“So, you might catch up to them there?” Toby said.
“That’s possible,” Sam said. He saw something at work in the young man’s mind.
“And you’ll take them prisoner, right there in the street?” he asked.
“Prisoner . . . ?” said Sam. “That’s not likely. I’ll give them a chance to turn themselves in. But the kind of men I hunt usually don’t choose to go to prison.” He paused, then said, “Likely as not these men would rather die.”
“Or else kill you?” Toby offered.
“Toby Edward Delmar!” Lindsey said, aghast by her brother’s words. “Don’t say such a thing as that.” She gave Sam an apologetic look.
“That’s all right,” said Sam, “it’s true. It’s not some fact I’m unaware of.”
“Then—then, you will kill them. . . .” Toby said, seeing they had eliminated any other option. “That is what lawmen do, if need be?”
“That is the calling,” Sam said. He gave the appearance of wanting to dismiss the matter.
Lindsey started to say something more, but Toby cut her off.
“Come, sit down, Sis,” he said. “Rest a few minutes before we go get the wagon.” He looked at Sam and asked, “Is that all right, just for a minute or two?”
“Yes,” Sam said, “rest a few minutes.” He led the horses away from the twins and stopped and looked out across the desert floor. He saw the body of the wolf stretched out in the sand. The big ferocious animal was now only a black speck in the wavering heat from where he stood. Or else kill you, he recounted the twin saying only a moment ago.
“That is the calling . . . ,” he repeated quietly, this time to himself. He turned his eyes from the body of the wolf and looked off along the distant hill line in the direction of Alto Cresta.
• • •
It was close to midnight when Chris Weidel sprang up on his blanket. Colt in hand he looked all around the darkened campsite, a bed of orange glowing coals smoldering inside a wide circle of stones. No sooner than he’d sprung up, the sound of the Colt cocking caused Roy Mangett to do the same on the other side of the glowing coals.
“What the hell, Chris?” Mangett said in a harsh whisper. He jerked his Colt from its holster lying beside him. He fanned it back and forth, cocked, staring into the dark shadows of boulder and rock that blocked out the purple moonlight.
“I heard something,” Weidel whispered in the same tone. “Heard it plain as day. A horse I believe. . . .”
The two sat listening on their blankets. After a moment Mangett stood up, flipping his blanket aside.
“I’m going to check around,” he whispered.
Weidel also stood up, picking up his rifle that lay along his side.
“I’ve got you covered,” he said quietly, a gun in either hand.
As Mangett started across the campsite into the darkness, a breaking of brush resounded out among the rocks. Turning toward the sound with their guns drawn, they saw Joey Rose’s horse step into the campsite and stand looking at them. Joey Rose lay slumped on the horse’s back, his bloody face lying forward on its neck, covered with blood.
“Holy Jim and Gilbert,” said Weidel, “it’s Rose! Look at his face.” Blood had streaked down the horse’s withers and dried there, thick and black all the way to its knee.
“Please . . . ,” Rose said in a pained voice. “I’m dried here.”
“Damn,” said Weidel, seeing strands of the horse’s mane matted to Rose’s face. “He’s ruint!”
“Help me get him down,” said Mangett, lowering his Colt, shoving it down in the waist of his trousers.
“This poor son of a bitch. We’ve got to put him out of his misery,” said Weidel. He stepped around and helped Mangett pull strands of mane from the deep slash wounds on Rose’s face.
Rose tightened at the sound of Weidel’s suggestion.
“Shut up, Chris,” said Mangett. “Help me get him unstuck.” To Rose he said, “Take it easy, Joey. Nobody’s putting you out of your misery.”
“I’m cut . . . all to hell, Roy,” Rose groaned.
“Yes, I’d say you are,” Mangett said.
“Which one did this to you, pal?” Weidel said with very little sympathy. “Don’t tell us that skinny gal, or you’ll never hear the end of it.” He gave a dark chuckle.
Rose didn’t reply.
The two gunmen lowered him from the horse and carried him over beside the glowing coals. Loose, blood-matted mane hair hung from his face like some strange and scraggly beard.
“I—I checked my belly,” Rose said in a strained distorted voice. “I’m . . . not hanging out nowhere.”
�
��Lucky you,” Weidel quipped darkly.
“Am I . . . ?” Rose asked, uncertain.
Laying the wounded Rose on the ground, Mangett pulled the front of his shredded shirt open and peeled it loose from the dried blood covering his chest, his belly. As he looked Rose over good, he spoke to Weidel over his shoulder.
“Stoke up the fire, get his bedroll down here,” he said. “Get your canteen from your saddle.”
“Why my canteen, Roy?”
Mangett gave him a scathing look.
“Because I’ll kill you if you touch mine,” he said flatly. When Weidel turned to Rose’s horse without another word on the matter, Mangett called out to him, “There’s a Captain Marcy emergency kit in my saddlebags somewhere. Get it.”
“Needle . . . ?” Rose managed to say.
“Yes, a needle, Joey,” said Mangett. “You need some tucking in and closing up here and there.”
“I’m not . . . hanging out nowhere am I?” Rose asked again, this time running a blood-crusted hand over his belly, feeling the slick, fresh blood atop older dried layers.
“No, Joey, all your guts are where they should be,” Mangett said. Looking more closely at the young outlaw’s carved-up face in the dim light of the glowing coals, he added, “But your chin’s hanging half over on your jaw.”
Joey sobbed and groaned at the news.
“You’d best hope he can sew it on, Joey boy,” Weidel said in a taunting voice, getting the items from Mangett’s saddlebags. “If he can’t he’ll have to cut it off.” He gave his dark chuckle. “Think how that’s going to look.”
Rose groaned again.
“Don’t listen to him, Joey,” said Mangett. He looked around at Weidel. “Chris, enough’s enough. Get the fire stoked and let’s put this poor bastard’s face stitched back together—leastwise till we can take him to town.”
“Whatever you say, Roy,” said Weidel, pitching Rose’s bedroll onto the ground beside him. “I’ll get the fire stoked up good and bright. I want to see every bit of this.” He pitched the emergency tin and the canteen down next to the bedroll.
