Golden Riders

by Ralph Cotton

  “Don’t worry, folks,” he called out to the gathering townsfolk. “I’m Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack. These are men who are wanted for crimes all over the territory.”

  Farther back on the street, he saw Lindsey Delmar watching with a shocked look on her youthful face. She stood wrapped in a large wool blanket from the doctor’s supply closet. As Sam approached her, she stepped back and looked at him as if seeing him for the first time.

  “How’s Toby?” he asked as he and his wounded prisoner walked past her.

  “He’s—he’s all right, Ranger,” she said, seeming to snap herself out of some stalled state of mind. Yes, this was the man who had saved her and her brother’s lives, she reminded herself. She walked alongside the Ranger. Looking up at him, she ventured to ask in a quiet tone, “Are you all right?”

  Sam looked at her and nodded his head.

  “I’m back to work, Lindsey,” he said. “This is what I do.”

  “I understand,” she said, and she walked on beside him to the doctor’s clapboard house.

  PART 3

  Chapter 15

  Somewhere in the passing night the Garlets’ trail lead them across the border onto the Mexican badlands. At a small water hole atop a short hill line above the desert floor, Prew helped his brother Tillman gather dried wood and mesquite brush and build a sheltered fire behind the largest boulder in a broken line of other such boulders standing like monuments in the rocky earth.

  Prew cut open a tin of beans with his boot knife, raised the edge of the tin to his lips, poured in a mouthful of beans and juice, and passed it on. When it had made its rounds and back to him, Prew finished the beans and tossed the can aside. With a steaming tin cup in his hand, he sat on his blanket across the small fire from his two brothers. The three sipped fresh hot coffee in silence. Somewhere in the distant night a coyote yelped out to fellow denizens of the desert hills.

  “I make it we’ll be getting there tomorrow,” he said, studying his brother’s face as he spoke, looking for any sign of improvement.

  “Good,” said Tillman, sounding normal enough. He paused for an uncomfortable moment, feeling Prew’s eyes on him. Finally he ventured to ask, “Getting where?”

  “To Kane’s hideout, damn it,” Prew said, feeling his hope slip a little. “Jesus, Till, are you no better at all?”

  “I’m all right,” Tillman said. “I just lost you for a minute there.” He looked at Foz, then back at Prew. The Bluebird sat watching the brothers from a few feet away, out of the glow of firelight. “The fact is, I think I’m over the poisoning.” He gave a short, proud smile and nodded. “Yep, I am, I’m sure of it.”

  “That’s good, Till,” said Prew. He looked at Foz. “What about you Brother Fozlo? Are you getting over it?”

  Foz just stared darkly at him for a moment.

  “You had no right or reason to say some of the things you said about me, Prew. Don’t even think I’m going to forget about it.”

  Prew studied him closely as he spoke.

  “We can talk about all this some other time and place, Foz,” he said, keeping his words clear and deliberate. “Right now, before we get to Kane’s, I want to know, are you feeling any—”

  “Calling us idiots in front of the others,” Foz said, cutting his brother off. His eyes shone like black, wet glass in the purple darkness. “You’re lucky I don’t have a gun. I’d kill you.”

  “Whoa, easy, Foz,” said Tillman. “Prew didn’t mean none of that; did you, Prew?”

  Prew didn’t answer. He sat in silence for a moment, staring at Foz, seeing a strange look of hatred mixed with madness in his younger brother’s eyes.

  Finally, without taking his eyes off Foz, he spoke to Tillman.

  “Let me ask you something, Till,” he said quietly. “Both of you drank about the same amount of that stuff. Is that right?”

  “That’s right,” Tillman said. “The barkeep said he told us we drank it too fast—”

  “Then how come you’re getting over it and Fozlo here is still looking and acting like he’s half out of his mind?”

  “There you go again belittling me,” Foz said. He started to rise from the ground. Tillman reached over and pressed him down by his shoulder.

  “Easy, Foz,” he said. In answer to Prew he shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I expect it treats everybody different.”

  Prew stared at Foz.

  “Is that it, Foz?” he said calmly. “It treats everybody different?”

  “Yeah, I guess, if Till says so,” Foz said, scowling at his older brother. “Are you accusing me of something?”

  “You tell me,” said Prew. Still staring, he reached around to his bulging saddlebags, opened one and pulled up the jug of mescal. He held the jug out in front of him and shook it. “My, my,” he said in mock surprise. “It was full when I left Midland Settlement with it. Now it’s half empty.”

  “And you’re saying I drunk it,” said Foz.

  “Only if you tell me you didn’t,” said Prew, holding the jug, staring harder at Foz.

  “Hey, wait a minute, Prew,” Tillman cut in. “This is not the time to go turning against each other. Hell, who can say what—”

  “Shut up, Till,” said Foz. He sat returning Prew’s stare, his eyes glassy, a string of drool hanging from his lower lip. “I drunk it, Prew, so what? Every damn time you wasn’t looking I drunk some more. There, you satisfied?”

  “Brothers, let’s not let this thing turn ugly on us,” Tillman warned. “Hell, ain’t we all blood here?”

  “How much have you drank, Foz?” Prew asked.

  “I don’t know,” Foz said. “Whatever ain’t there I reckon.” He gave Prew a defiant look.

  Prew stirred the jug around, gauging its contents.

  “No wonder Till’s getting better and you’re not,” he said. “What is it about this stuff that you can’t leave it alone?”

  “I don’t know,” Foz said. A wicked little grin came to his drawn hairless face. “But I love it. The harder it hits me the better I like it.”

  “Why?” Prew said, still stirring the jug around in his hand.

  Tillman sat staring; so did the Bluebird.

  “Why hell. Try it yourself, you want to know why,” Foz said to Prew.

  “What does it do for you that whiskey don’t?” Prew asked.

  Foz chuckled in a dark tone.

  “Makes me see things!” he said in a lowered voice. “It’s got me seeing things right now—unholy things! I see screaming devils riding terrible beasts, the likes of which could only rise from hell to earth!”

  “Take it easy, Fozlo,” said Tillman. He looked at Prew. “He’s joshing you now, Brother; you know he is.”

  “Am I?” Foz said on a dead serious note. He looked back at Prew. “I’m not going to quit drinking it,” he said. “I’ll drink it until it kills me.” He held a hand toward Prew over the low fire. “Give it to me. I druther die drinking it than live without it.”

  “Stop acting crazy, Fozlo,” Tillman said quietly.

  “Get your hand down, Foz,” Prew said. He pulled the cork from the jug. “I expect it’s time I see what all this is about.”

  The three sets of eyes around the fire watched Prew turn up a swig from the jug, lower it, and make a sour face.

  “Holy Joseph . . . !” he said. “That tastes even worse than I thought it would.”

  “Give yourself a couple minutes,” Foz said, reaching for the jug, “you won’t be saying that.”

  Prew looked at the outreached hand as he thought of everything his brother had said, including making a threat on his life. He took a breath and let it out slowly, with a look of resolve.

  “Help yourself, Foz,” he said, passing the jug. “You too, Till.” He looked back and forth between his brothers. “The quicker it’s gone, the better for all of us.” The
Bluebird sat staring, his blanket drawn around him.

  “That’s what I say,” said Foz, lifting the jug. He took a long swallow and passed it to Tillman, who studied the jug before deciding to take a short swallow. When he lowered the jug he also made a sour face and passed it to the Bluebird. The Mex-Indian took a long, gurgling drink, lowered the jug without so much as a blink and handed it full circle back to Prew.

  The four men spent the next hour passing the jug around from hand to hand, until at length the Bluebird finished it off. Clearly, Prew and Tillman had drunk much less of the strong liquor than the Bluebird and Foz.

  “And that’s the end of it,” Prew said with finality. He pushed himself to his feet and caroused aimlessly about the campsite. He felt buzzing inside his head, and twice he thought he’d seen shadows of someone, whose skin was the color of a frog, dart in and out of the shadows outside the firelight. But he shook it off, reminding himself of having seen things in the past when he’d spent an evening in an opium parlor. He looked down at Tillman.

  “How do you feel now, Till?” he asked.

  “I feel . . . just like I should,” Tillman replied with a pleasant smile. Prew noted his eyelids were drooping as he spoke.

  Prew looked over at Foz, then back to Tillman.

  “You don’t feel like killing me dead?”

  “Heee-eell, no,” Tillman said, his head bobbing. “I couldn’t kill a fly right now, if it was talking bad about our ma.”

  Prew looked at the Bluebird, who sat the same as before, though the pupils of his eyes were larger, blacker, and shinier.

  “How about you, Bird?” he asked. “You feeling all right? Not wanting to kill nobody?”

  “Yes . . . even so,” said the Bluebird, nodding his head.

  Prew chuckled a little. He swatted at what he thought was a brightly colored moth circling his head, then reminded himself he was only imagining it. He laughed out loud, staggered a step and caught himself.

  “Damn, it is strong stuff, I’ll give it that,” he said. He steadied himself on his feet and looked at Foz. “You still packing a mad-on for me, Fozlo?”

  “No,” said Foz, dreamily. “But if I had a gun I’d still kill you.” He laughed out loud, pushing himself to his feet. Prew and Tillman looked at each other and laughed along with him. The Bluebird nodded and gave a trace of a tight smile, not hearing a word of it.

  “I’ll tell you something . . . ,” said Foz. He staggered in place, caught himself and almost stumbled into the fire. Prew caught him by his arm and stopped him. But Foz rounded his arm away from Prew and turned and walked away to the edge of the water hole and stared into the shimmering moonlight on the water. The others watched as he sighed and turned away and walked to the edge of the hillside and looked down onto the sandy valley floor.

  “I’m ready to go,” he sang out, spreading his arms as if to take off flying. He leaned out dangerously on the rocky edge.

  Behind him, Foz heard Tillman shout, “No! Please! Don’t do it, Prew!”

  “Prew . . . ?” said Foz, his eyes closed, smiling. “Hell, Till, I ain’t Prew—”

  Foz barely finished his words when the gun in Prew’s hand bucked and a shot resounded. The tip of the barrel only an inch behind Foz’s head, the blast sent an blue-orange fire exploding through the back of Foz’s head and streaking out through the front, spreading a black mist of blood across the purple night.

  • • •

  At the sound of the shot in the quiet night, the horses reared and whinnied and fought against their tied reins. Foz’s blaze-faced roan ripped its reins free and ran wildly all around the campsite. At the same time, Tillman had come to his feet and ran forward, screaming his younger brother’s name. The Bluebird stood and walked along behind him trancelike, his blanket held closed at his chest.

  “Foz! No! Jesus no!” Tillman shouted at the rocky edge of the hill. He stared down seeing no sign of his brother, only a steep, craggy hillside. Below it, silvery-white sand lay spread in every direction, glowing in the creamy, purple starlight.

  “Easy, Till,” said Prew, grabbing Tillman’s arm and holding him back, as if he himself might plunge out into thin air. “I had to kill him,” he said gently, evenly. “You saw how it was with him. He was gone on mescal, he wasn’t coming back.”

  Tillman jerked free of the hand on his arm and stepped away from him.

  “I didn’t see that, Prew!” he shouted, his eyes shining large and black. “He was just talking, talking is all!”

  “No, Brother,” said Prew shaking his head. “I wish it was so, but it ain’t. Twice he said he’d kill me if he had a gun. You saw the whole thing. You heard him.”

  “I heard him, Prew, but he didn’t mean it! He was riding high on mescal—just like we are right now!” He backed farther away; the blaze-faced roan ran and whinnied and reared and pawed wildly at the air. “Look at you, Prew. The stuff has you loco as a cave bat right now; me too! You didn’t have to kill him.”

  Prew stood staring calmly at Tillman, his Colt hanging smoking in his hand.

  “Listen to me, Till,” he said in a cool, rational tone of voice, taking a step closer. The Bluebird stood four feet behind Tillman, staring shiny-eyed across his shoulder at Prew. “It’s true the mescal has my brain boiling a little some. But I’ve got it under control.” He pointed a finger up as if poking a hole in the wide, starry sky. “I’m way up there, looking down on us and what we’re doing here. This has all been made clear to me. I knew what I had to do. Can you understand that? Mescal ain’t got me, I’ve got it.”

  “God almighty, Prew, listen to yourself,” Tillman said. “You’ve gone flat-out crazy on that stuff! What now? Are you going to kill me too?”

  “No,” Prew said, still calm, thinking he had a good grip on his faltered faculties. “I’ve done all I had to do. Now, we’ve got to go on like nothing happened.”

  “I can’t do that, Prew! Damn it, you killed Foz! Can’t you realize what you’ve done?”

  “We’re through talking about it, Till,” Prew said. “Now cut it out”—he slashed a hand across his face under his chin—“before one of us does something we regret. . . .” His words trailed to a halt as he watched the Bluebird step up closer behind Tillman. As if taking Prew’s slashing gesture to heart, the Indian reached a big boot knife around under Tillman’s chin and opened his throat with one long vicious slice. Dark, arterial blood spewed and cascaded down his chest in braided streams.

  “You—you killed him!” Prew said, puzzled, as if struggling to sort through the lingering incidentals of a terrible dream.

  The Bluebird stared at him, the bloody knife in hand. Tillman fell to his knees, then toppled over onto his face, his hands clutching against a river of blood. The Bluebird, shiny-eyed, his face tightly drawn under the powerful effects of the mescal, clenched his teeth and nodded his head.

  “You signaled me,” he said.

  “Damn you, Injun!” Prew bellowed. “I didn’t signal you to kill him!” He raised the smoking gun and aimed it at the Bluebird’s chest.

  The Bluebird looked confused by Prew’s actions. He dropped his knife, let his blanket fall to the ground.

  “Don’t shoot,” he said, stiffly. He pointed out at the rocky edge where Foz had fallen. “Brother Foz, no drink all the mescal.”

  Prew paused, stunned.

  “What? He didn’t . . . ?” His gun barrel slumped an inch. “He—he said he did. . . .”

  The Bluebird shook his head.

  “No, he did not drink it,” he said. “I see the Golden Riders drink it. Say they go to jake—they go around cantina, drink mescal.”

  “Then”—Prew paused again—“then why did Foz say he drank it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said the Bluebird. “Mescal make him crazy, I think.”

  Prew shook his lowered head, then looked back up at the Bluebird
.

  “And why are you talking so much?” he asked. “All of a sudden you understand English?”

  The Bluebird shut his lips clamlike and stared at Prew, seeing the big Colt move away from him and fall back to Prew’s side.

  “I shut up now,” he said.

  Chapter 16

  The Bluebird was still up as the first rays of sunlight mantled the eastern hill line. The sound of Prew’s gunshot had sparked his hearing for a while the way loud noises sometimes did. It was waning now, but while it lasted, it had been glorious. His hearing, coupled with the powerful effects of the loaded mescal, had brought his spirit to a level seldom found. He’d spent the night listening to any sounds, intricate or inane—sounds of night and of life on these dry desert badlands. He was there, a part of those things and their sounds once again, if only briefly.

  He’d heard the sound of coyotes, of a lone and distant wolf. He’d heard the wings of flying creatures batting and dipping, stirring and muddling the veil of night’s darkness without leaving their print. Their sounds had spun inside him a siren’s message of willfulness and need, sounds of the spinal mindless procurement of life here in this arid wilderness whereupon every struggle, every hoof, paw and footprint led inevitably to the devout certainty of death’s cold embrace.

  Yes . . . even so . . .

  He’d heard the soft scrape of a lizard’s nails across a stone and its red eyes blinked as the lizard turned and skittered off along the far edge of the water hole.

  During the night he’d relished and savored the crackle of the fire as it sought out what elements of life remained in the desert wasteland. He’d listened and watched as the once familiar sound of porous wood, long dried and dead, came to life for a short time as if summoned upon to its final purpose—its last waltz down on the hardpan belly of the earth. He’d heard the flames bow and rustle.

  Sound moved through his heart as it never had before he’d lost it. And now he breathed deep, testing the reverberation of his warm breath back in his nasal cavity. It had been there throughout the night. Now it was gone. His breath was no longer audible to him. Inside his skull there was once again only flat, white silence.