by Ralph Cotton
Mangett gave him a harsh look.
“What?” said Weidel. “You never know, I might have to do the same thing someday.”
“Spread his bedroll out. Let’s get him on it,” Mangett said looking away from him. “Find a strong piece of wood for him to bite down on.”
“Hear that, Joey boy,” said Weidel. “I’m going to get you a piece of wood to bite on.” He grinned cruelly. “Meaning, this is going to hurt like a sumbitch.”
• • •
At a corner table in Chavez’s Cantina, Tillman and Foz Garlet sat sipping rye whiskey while their brother, Prew, Cutthroat Teddy Bonsell and Jake Cleary stood at the bar talking with a Golden Rider named Ed Dorsey. The four looked over at Foz and Tillman, whose faces had taken on a greenish pallor ever since they’d left Poco Fuega. Their eyes were still bloodshot, brown and watery. Their eyebrows and all other facial hair were gone owing to the blast set off by the Bluebird in Midland Settlement. The Bluebird stood out on the boardwalk staring onto the dusty street, his arms folded across his chest. Behind the bar, Bruno Chavez stood watching, listening, pouring rye, keeping their shot glasses filled.
“Looks like you Garlet boys have rode a hard trail getting here,” said Dorsey, having heard about their jail break, the loaded mescal, and the Ranger being on their trail. He raised his shot glass to his lips. “Nothing I can do about those two being mescal-poisoned, but as far as the Ranger, if Roy Mangett and his three gunnies don’t stop him back there”—he jerked his head toward the desert hills—“we’ll stop his clock right here if he shows his face.” He set his empty shot glass down hard on the bar top. Chavez filled it.
“Mangett and his pals are good,” Prew said with shrug. “So, I’ve got a feeling the Ranger is already dead in the sand. My brothers and I are riding on to Kane’s hideout.” He looked at Cutthroat Teddy and Jake Cleary. “What about you two, Bonsell?” he asked.
“I’ve got to go shake the snake,” Bonsell said. He turned toward the rear door, but answered on his way, “Oh, we’re going to stick here a while longer, just in case Mangett and his pals don’t take care of the Ranger.”
“Come to think of it I’ve got to shake the snake myself,” said Dorsey. He shoved his shot glass forward; Chavez filled it as he followed Bonsell out back to the jakes.
Cleary started to follow the other two, but he stopped and stayed at the bar when Prew directed the conversation to him.
“That’s what you think Brax would want you and Bonsell to do, wait here?” he asked Cleary.
Cleary shrugged.
“Once he hears about his brother being dead he might come riding this way himself, just to make sure the Ranger’s dead. I would if it was my brother,” Cleary said. “We’ll stick here in case he does.”
Prew nodded and tossed back his shot of rye. Chavez refilled his glass.
Bonsell and Dorsey walked back through the rear door and reclaimed their places at the bar. Bonsell took another shot of rye and considered things for a moment. The others looked at him as he let out a breath and drummed his fingers on the bar.
“This is a bad time to be having all this trouble,” he said. “Brax losing his brother, your brothers poisoning themselves on loaded mescal. All of it while we’re getting ready to pull off a big job.”
“How big a job, you suppose?” Ed Dorsey asked. He raised his glass and he asked.
“Awfully big, I figure,” Prew Garlet put in. He nodded toward the boardwalk out front. “That’s why Brax has me bringing the Bluebird to him.”
“That’s the Bluebird . . . ?” Ed Dorsey looked around toward the front door, then back to Prew.
“Yep,” said Prew.
“I’ve heard of him,” said Dorsey. “He’s said to be the best there is at blowing things up.”
“So they say,” said Prew. “I don’t mind saying I’ll be glad to get rid of him, let Brax deal with him.”
“Peculiar, huh?” said Dorsey.
“Damned peculiar,” Prew emphasized. “All I can get out of him is a nod now and then, if that. He’s supposed to be a Mexican-Indian half-breed. I don’t think he understands a lick of English, Spanish or anything else.”
“From what I hear the Bluebird could blow the doors off hell if the devil locked himself out,” said Bonsell. He grinned; his eyes shined in the cantina’s dim lantern light.
“Locked out of hell. . . .” Ed Dorsey raised his shot glass with a wide half-drunken grin. “I’ll drink to that. The Bluebird too, and all the money he’s going to make for us.”
“Hear, hear,” the other three gunmen said in unison, raising their glasses.
Chapter 13
As the four men stood drinking, Prew getting ready to take his brothers and the Bluebird on to meet up with Braxton Kane, they all looked around when the Bluebird stepped inside out of the evening light and stood off to the side. Behind him came Roy Mangett with Joey Rose hanging limp at his side, Rose’s bloody arm looped over Mangett’s shoulder. The men watched in silence as Mangett walked over to a wooden chair where Tillman and Foz sat nursing their rye. He dropped Rose into the chair and stepped back and looked down at him.
“Take a good look,” Mangett said. “This is what a slip of a woman can do with a butcher knife if she takes a mind to.”
“A woman . . . ?” said Ed Dorsey.
“That’s right, Ed, a woman,” said Mangett. “Not a very big woman at that.”
“You men went out to set up an ambush for the Ranger,” said Dorsey.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me, Ed,” said Mangett, his hand falling near his holstered Colt. “I said, this is what a woman can do with a butcher knife. I didn’t mention any Ranger, now did I?” He gave Dorsey a scorching stare. “We never even saw the Ranger.” He looked over at Prew Garlet at the bar, at the two Garlet brothers sitting at the table. “We’re getting Joey here patched up. We’ll take care of the Ranger when he gets here . . . if he even comes here at all.”
Outside the door they heard boots walking across the boardwalk. As they turned and looked, Chris Weidel shoved the white-haired town doctor, Davies Milton, inside the cantina and followed him across the floor. The doctor, red-eyed, his hair disheveled, saw Joey Rose’s bloody, sliced and stitched-up face and stopped ten feet away.
“Yep, that’s your patient, Doc,” said Weidel with a cruel little smile.
The doctor stepped right over to Rose.
“My, my,” he said, “let’s see what we have.” He lay his black medical bag on the table and flipped it open as he studied Rose’s face. Noting many of the slashes on Rose’s face had been stitched shut, yet many were still open and bleeding even though crusted heavily with blood, the doctor asked the two gunmen, “Who did the sewing, and why did you stop?”
“I sewed him,” said Mangett. “I stopped when I ran out of thread.”
“If it needs doing over, Doc,” said Weidel, staring at Rose as he spoke, “we can always pull these stitches out and let you go at it anew.”
Rose groaned and tried to shake his head.
The doctor ignored Weidel as he took off his shiny, black suit coat and pitched it over a chair. He rolled up his shirtsleeves.
“I’ll need some hot water, some soap and some fresh clean bar towels—plenty of them,” he said to Chavez who stood watching from the edge of the bar. Chavez turned to do the old doctor’s bidding. The doctor leaned in and began peeling a wadded blood-soaked bandanna from one of the unstitched wounds on Rose’s chest.
“That’s where I ran out,” Mangett said, watching the doctor work.
The doctor only nodded. As he reached over and dropped the bandanna onto the tabletop, he glanced at Foz and Tillman Garlet, who sat staring blankly, their glasses of rye in their hands.
“What’s wrong with these two?” he asked.
Hearing the doctor, Foz straightened in his chair.
�
�Not a damn thing, sawbones,” he said, appearing to bristle at the doctor’s question.
Prew stepped over from the bar and held a hand out toward Foz as if prepared to shove him back down into his chair.
“They got ahold of some loaded mescal, Doc,” he said. “They’re about over it now.”
“They don’t look about over it,” the doctor said, seeing the greenish pallor to the Garlet brothers’ skin, the empty leer in their bloodshot, watery eyes.
Foz started to rise again; again Prew held his hand out at him, keeping him seated. Tillman only sat staring.
“Doctor, maybe when you get Rose sewn up you can look these two over good?” Prew asked.
“I can do it now while I’m waiting for water to boil,” said the doctor. He stood at a spot where he could place a palm out on each of the Garlet brothers’ foreheads. Foz started to object, but Prew grabbed him by his shoulder and gave him a warning stare.
“Neither of them’s running a fever,” Dr. Milton said. “Always a good sign.” He stooped a little and looked at the brothers’ eyes more closely, in turn.
“What do you think, Doc?” Prew asked.
“No signs of severe vomiting or dysentery?” the doctor asked.
“No,” said Prew, “none of that. What does that mean?”
“It means most of the poison has worked its way out of their bellies,” said the doctor.
Prew looked relieved.
“But it’s still in their blood,” the doctor said. He paused, then said, “Once it’s completely out of their blood we’ll be able to determine whether or not their mental condition is going to improve.”
“You mean . . . they could both be idiots for the rest of their lives?” Prew asked.
The doctor looked at him with a flat expression.
“That’s putting it bluntly, but yes,” he said, “that is a possibility. There have been folks who’ve poisoned themselves on mescal and never been the same afterward.”
“Hey, don’t call me a damned idiot, me sitting right here listening to every word,” Foz said, staring coldly at the old doctor.
“He didn’t, Foz,” said Prew. “I did.”
Foz looked sidelong at Tillman, who sat staring blankly, then off at the far wall.
“All we need is our horses under us,” Foz grumbled.
“What can we do to help them over it?” Prew asked the doctor.
“At this point, nothing,” the doctor said, “except let them ride it out. Drinking lots of water helps. Back east they’ve been giving folks tincture of mercury for similar poisoning.” He shook his disheveled head. “I’m of a belief that mercury might do as much harm as it does good. But you can’t tell the experts nothing.”
Chavez carried a pan of water and set it down on the table. Beside it he took clean towels from over his forearm and laid them beside the pan.
“Mescal improperly prepared is bad enough, sir,” the old doctor said to Prew. “But mescal loaded with cocaine, peyote and God knows what else, poisons both the body and the brain. People die from it all the time.” He shook his head. “Still, they drink it. I’ll never understand.”
Prew looked at his brothers, then the men standing at the bar, then at the Bluebird who stood off to the side with his arms folded.
“Get up, Foz, Tillman,” he said. “Mescal poison or not, we’re headed out of here. We’re delivering the Bluebird to Braxton Kane. I’m telling him what happened to his brother.”
Cutthroat stood at the bar, watching, his eyebrows gone, hair missing from the backs of his hands.
“Make damn sure you tell him me and Jake here are the ones who told you about Cordy,” he said.
Prew didn’t answer. He watched his brothers struggle to their feet and walk mindlessly toward the front door.
• • •
It was after dark when the Ranger and the twins stepped down from their saddles in an alley behind the doctor’s house on the main street of Alto Cresta. The Ranger and the young woman quietly hitched the horses and the covered wagon to a hitch rail. The two helped Toby down from the wagon on which he’d ridden the last ten miles of their journey. Owing to the pain in his wounded belly, the Ranger looped the young man’s arm over his shoulders and helped him walk to the rear porch, Lindsey close beside them.
Opening the rear door, Sam called out in a guarded tone before stepping inside the darkened house. Hearing no reply, the three walked farther inside, down a shadowy hallway to a room where soft lamplight spilled out onto the wooden floor.
Before Sam could call out again, a Mexican woman stepped into the hallway rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Que est la . . . Qué est . . . ?” she said in her native tongue.
“Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack, ma’am,” the Ranger said. “We’ve got a man here who needs the doctor to treat a belly wound.”
“Dr. Milton is not here,” said the woman. “He goes to the cantina earlier to treat an injured man.”
Even as she spoke the woman led the three into the room and gestured for them to lay Toby down on a surgery table. Looking at Toby’s face, then at Lindsey’s, she gave a short smile.
“Gemelos, sí?” she said.
“Yes, we’re twins,” Lindsey replied, fluffing a pillow and adjusting it under her brother’s head. “How long do you think the doctor will be?”
“I do not know,” the woman said. She had moved in close and began taking the big boots from Toby’s feet. “But I will get the wound washed, so when the doctor arrives he can immediately see your brother’s condition.”
“Gracias,” Sam said before Lindsey could answer. To Lindsey he said, “I’ll go to the cantina and look inside, see how long he might be.”
Lindsey looked concerned.
“But, you said there could be Golden Riders here,” she said.
“Yes, I know,” Sam said. “Don’t worry. I’m not going in. I’ll find a window or a back door—I’m good at watching without being seen.” He gave her a reassuring smile and turned and walked toward the door while the Mexican woman peeled Toby’s shirt from his bloody belly.
Outside, Sam had started down the street toward the cantina, staying in the darker shadows close to the storefronts. The street lay empty except for an occasional pedestrian arriving at a hitch rail for their horse or buggy. As Sam walked the last fifteen yards to the cantina he saw the stooped, elderly doctor walk out onto the boardwalk, his medical bag in hand, and head toward him.
Good . . .
Sam slowed his pace almost to a stop and allowed the doctor to reach him. When the doctor looked at him and gave him a courteous nod, he saw the badge on Sam’s chest. Before the doctor could acknowledge him, Sam fell in beside him and walked along the boardwalk.
“Dr. Milton, I’m Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack,” Sam said. “I have a young man with a belly wound waiting at your house.” As he spoke he shifted his eyes past a darkened alleyway across the street.
The old doctor grumbled and shook his head as the two of them walked on.
“Belly wounds, liquor poisoning, stabbing and cuttings,” he said under his breath. “They don’t need a doctor here, they need a battlefield hospital. . . .”
• • •
As the Ranger and Dr. Milton walked on toward the doctor’s house, across the street in an alley the Cundiff brothers, Joe and Willie, sat with the horses in a dark corner and stared in silence. Neither spoke until the doctor and the Ranger were out sight. Then and only then did Joe Cundiff pull his rifle up from its saddle boot, check it and hold it propped up on his thigh. His thumb pulled the hammer back. Out of sight they heard a hound bellow out as the Ranger and the doctor approached it in the darkness.
“I’ll be damned and go to hell,” Willie Cundiff whispered beside his brother, his right hand wrapped around the butt of his holstered revolver, his left hand gripping his reins and his sad
dle horn. “We have run all this way to get him off our trail, and the son of a bitch is right here waiting for us?” He stared around at his brother in awe and amazement. “There is something just ain’t natural about all that.”
“I know,” Joe whispered back in a defeated tone, his hand tight on his rifle. “It makes you wonder why even try.”
“Don’t go getting moody on me, goddamn it,” Willie said harshly. He drew his Colt, half cocked it and spun the cylinder making sure it was fully loaded with a round lying up under the hammer.
“I’m trying not to,” Joe said. “But it ain’t easy, after all we went through getting rid of him.” He sat rigid, staring out of the alley in the direction the doctor and the Ranger had taken.
“Well . . . , we’re taking a stand right here in Alto Cresta,” said Willie. “We never should have run in the first place.” He gave his brother a hard look.
“What . . . ?” said Joe. “It wasn’t my idea to run.”
“The hell it wasn’t,” said Willie. “I saw rabbit in your eyes the minute the shooting started.”
“Hunh-uh,” said Joe. “Don’t even start blaming me. You said run; I ran.” He gave a shrug.
Willie let out a tensed breath, considering everything.
“All right,” he said. “It’s of no matter now just whose idea it was,” he said. “We both see now that we can’t shake this devil loose. We’ve got to kill him.”
Joe stared at him in silence for a moment.
“You meant just the two of us?” he said.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” said Willie. He started to nudge his horse forward.
Joe stopped him, reaching over, taking his horse by its bridle with his free hand.
“Wait,” he said. “What about first we round up whoever’s here and have them give us a hand? Everybody is gathering up. There’s bound to be some of the gang here. Alls we’ve got to do is tell them—”
