Golden Riders

by Ralph Cotton

“Here comes Dayton Short,” he called out.

  “It’s about damn time,” Kane said to the riders gathered around him. “I expected him last night.” He didn’t bother looking around toward the approaching rider. Instead he gazed back out, down onto the badlands floor. He studied the glint of steel rails running straight, dark and shiny on a cleared path through stands of mesquite, prickly pear and short twisted fire barrel cactus standing rigid in the wavering heat.

  “I feel lucky today . . . ,” he murmured to himself.

  “Here he is, Kane,” said Luke Bolten, standing down beside his horse a few feet from Braxton Kane. “Want me to see what took him so long?”

  Braxton gave Bolten a long look, knowing the dislike festering between the two men.

  “No,” he said finally. “I can speak for myself, Bolten.”

  “I know you can, Boss,” said Bolten. “I’m getting overanxious, wanting to do my part here.”

  Kane turned away from him and stepped down from his saddle. He met Short and grabbed his horse by its bridle as Short slid it to halt.

  “Why you riding so hard, Dayton?” Kane asked as Short leaped down from his saddle, his rifle in hand.

  “I rode like this all night, afraid I might miss out on everything,” Short said catching his breath. He jerked his hat from atop his head and slapped sand and dust from his clothes.

  “Is our back trail clear?” Kane asked. “We’re going to be riding it hard in a little while.”

  “Yes it’s clear, now,” said Short. “Just like we thought, that Ranger was following us.” He took an open canteen that Prew Garlet handed him, swigged a mouthful of tepid water, swished it and spat it out. He gave Kane a firm stare. “Cutthroat Teddy Bonsell was riding with him. Notice I’m saying was riding with him.” He handed the canteen away. “I put a slug straight through his blood-pumper.”

  “Cutthroat Teddy, helping lead a lawmen to us . . . ,” Kane mused quietly. He shook his head. “What the hell is this world turning into?” He collected himself and said to Short, “You killed him too then?”

  “Yes I did—I mean no—I mean I don’t know, Brax,” Short said.

  Kane just stared at him.

  “What I mean is, he’s gone,” Short lied. “As soon as I cut ole Teddy down, all I saw was the Ranger’s backside. He was getting out of there.” As he told it, he looked all around with a grin, making sure everybody heard him. “I expect that Ranger thought himself tough until he found himself in the sights of a Golden Rider.”

  The men nodded and murmured in agreement.

  “Ha . . . ! You must be getting squirrelly, Short,” Luke Bolten cut in. “I’ve never heard of Burrack hightailing it from anything or anybody.”

  “Calling me a liar?” Short bristled. His rifle started to swing up in his hands.

  Kane grabbed the rifle barrel and shoved it down before Bolten could answer.

  “I’ve never heard of Burrack hightailing either, Date,” he said. “I hate thinking what he might have done if Bonsell took him through the hideout.”

  “I do too. . . .” Short took a breath and simmered; he let his rifle hang at his side. “You’ve both heard of him hightailing now,” he said. He gestured back at the trail he’d ridden in on. “Either I hit him and he died on the run, or he’s hightailed it and ain’t coming back for more.” He stared at Bolten as he concluded, “You don’t see him dogging me, do you?”

  “You’d better hope you ain’t lying to me, Short,” said Kane. As he spoke he and the others felt the first faint rumble of steel wheels in the rocky ground beneath their boots. “If you are, you know I’m going to kill you.” He gave a look around at the men. “Then we’ll be cutting your share of this gold up between us.”

  “I’m not lying, Boss,” Short said with a sincere expression. Under their boots the rumble of the steel wheels grew more intense.

  “All right, then. We’ll find out more about it later.” He grinned and turned and motioned the men up onto their saddles. “Right now, we’ve got to go catch ourselves a train.”

  The men turned excited. The ones already mounted pulled bandannas up over the bridge of their noses. The ones still afoot hurriedly jumped up atop their horses and gathered their reins.

  In the empty freight wagon beside the Bluebird, Woods reached out and pushed the brake handle forward, unsetting it. He turned and grinned at the Bluebird.

  “You ready to blow something up, Bird?” he said.

  “I am,” said the Bluebird with a nod, only half understanding what Woods had said. As Woods slapped the reins to the wagon horses’ backs, the Bluebird struck a match and lit the big cigar, keeping it away from the long length of fuse coiled around his shoulder.

  Chapter 24

  The Ranger lay on a twenty-foot-wide jut of stone, above the sandy lower slope of a hillside. He’d ridden up off the sand flats only moments ago, after following the ambusher’s tracks all night. At dawn he’d seen he was close enough for the fleeing ambusher to spot his dust if the hard-riding outlaw had slowed long enough to look around. He wanted the ambusher to lead him straight to the Golden Gang, so he pulled back a little rather than take the chance of being discovered and pulled away on a wild-goose chase.

  This would do. . . .

  He waited, ten minutes, maybe longer, he told himself. But that was all right. He would see the ambusher again as he rode back into sight. If he lost him for a while, that would be all right too. He still had his horse’s fresh tracks laid out before him. He stared out through the telescope toward a place where the worn trail led around a wide rocky abutment that stood sunken back against a shorter line of hills. Waiting for the ambusher to reappear, he scanned the length of the new rails running out from Sonoyta. He slowly scanned the lay of the broken hills both short and tall, and—

  Whoa . . . ! What’s that?

  He homed the telescope onto the dust roiling up from behind one of the lower hills. Just in time he caught sight of the riders and the two empty freight wagons riding down onto the flats in a hard run. Far to his left he saw black locomotive smoke streaming along atop another rise of low hills, going straight to the riders.

  Train robbery . . . !

  He started to spring to his feet. He saw he wasn’t close enough to stop the robbery or even warn the train. But with any luck he could start picking off the Golden Gang as they made their getaway. But before he’d risen all the way from the rock, the hard stab of a blunt rifle butt nailed him between his shoulder blades and set him back down. The blow sent his telescope flying from his hand, down over the front edge of the rock and tumbling down the sloping hillside.

  “I hope you move again, gringo,” said a voice behind him, “so I can hit you some more.”

  Sam didn’t try to rise again. But he did turn his head enough to see the dusty, sweat-stained uniform of a federale corporal standing crouched over him, a long French rifle in his hands.

  Still struggling to catch his breath after the rifle blow, Sam spoke over his shoulder.

  “I’m glad to see you, Corporal,” he said. “I’m Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack. I’ve caught a robbery about to take place—”

  His words stopped short as another rifle blow struck him in the same spot, this one not as hard, not hard enough.

  “Do not talk unless you are told to,” the soldier said harshly.

  “That is enough, Corporal Sererro,” said another voice, this one sounding of higher authority. “Get him on his feet.”

  “Hands in the air, gringo!” the corporal demanded. Sam ventured a look around as the corporal grabbed his shoulder and pulled him up off the rock surface. Across the flat-topped rock, Sam saw a tall, lean captain standing with a big French revolver in his hand. On either side of him stood three troopers, all six with their rifles up, cocked and aimed.

  The captain gave a trace of a smile beneath a thin, black mustache, eyeing
the Ranger badge on Sam’s chest. The six-point metal star stood pinned to his vest, half obscured by the lapel of his duster.

  “Tell me my dusty friend,” he said in good border English, looking Sam up and down, “why does an Arizona Ranger take such an interest in our new railroad enterprise?”

  “I just spotted a robbery getting ready to bust loose down there,” Sam said, with urgency in his voice.

  The captain only stared at him, as if in disbelief for a second. He looked out past Sam’s shoulder and into the distance, his view falling short in the wavering heat.

  “That does not tell me why an Arizona Ranger is here, watching our train,” the captain said.

  Sam saw something deeper in the captain’s eyes. These soldiers had not happened upon him by chance. They were out here for a reason.

  “I’m tracking some outlaws,” Sam said, trying to hurry. “I’m allowed to do so under the Matamoros agreement—”

  “I know about the Matamoros agreement, Ranger,” said the captain, cutting him off. “What do you know about this train you were watching?” As he spoke he pulled a French telescope from inside his dusty tunic and stretched it out and looked through it.

  “I don’t know nothing about your train, Captain,” Sam said quickly, “Except that if this bunch is robbing it, it must be carrying a rich load—something that’s going to take two freight wagons to haul away.”

  “Capitán Ameile, I can see smoke from the train,” the corporal said as the captain continued looking through his telescope, searching for the riders and the wagon.

  Sam saw the expression change on the captain’s face as he stopped scanning with the telescope and homed in on the riders and the wagons.

  “Ae-ah . . . !” he said with a start. “You tell the truth, Ranger.” He jerked the telescope from his eyes and collapsed it quickly and shoved it inside his tunic. He stared at Sam, urgency now in his eyes as well. “It is gold, Ranger! The train carries gold! More gold than you or I can imagine! That is why I patrol out here today, to keep watch on the gold.” He waved his men’s rifles down.

  Sam leaned and looked down off the rock behind the captain. He saw a dozen more men on horseback.

  “You must come with us for now, Ranger,” the captain said. “I must see proof that you are not a part of the robbers.”

  “I understand, Captain,” Sam said. He knew better than to waste precious minutes arguing. When the time was right, he’d split away from the captain and the federales and do whatever he had to do to get his sights back on Kane and his Golden Riders.

  • • •

  The short six-car train moved along at a rapid clacking twenty miles per hour across the stretch of sand flat between the rocky lines of hills both low and high. Sitting atop the third car behind the engine, a guard sat scanning the terrain, wearing a pair of wide glass goggles against the wafting black smoke spiraling up and twisting back above the top of his head. He caught sight of the riders moving out toward the train from a narrow pass between two stands of tall canyon rock.

  The guard stood up in a crouch and hurriedly began thumping his rifle butt soundly on the roof of the rail car beneath him. Having given the inside guards his warning, he turned to run along the catwalk on top of the car and duck down out of sight. But before he could disappear a rifle shot hit him high up in his left side at heart level. He crumbled off his feet and rolled limply off the other side of the roof.

  “Good shooting, Bolten!” Kane shouted as the men’s horses raced forward at a full run, the empty freight wagons falling behind, unable to keep up with them. “Kill them! Kill them all!” he yelled, racing on.

  A heavy volley of rifle and pistol fire exploded among the riders as wooden window covers raised and windows swung open. Along the sides of two of the cars, seven soldiers stood up with French rifles and returned fire. But the men on the swaying lurching train with the awkward long-barreled single-shot French rifles were no match for experienced horseback shooters carrying Winchester repeaters and deadly six-guns. They fell from sight one by one, either shot down or dropping for cover.

  Out front of the moving train, Prew Garlet’s horse raced out from a line of rocks and swung along the engine as it passed. Prew steadied his horse at a fast pace, leaned over, grasped his left hand firmly around an iron climbing rung and swung up out of his saddle, his Colt raised in his right hand. He waited until he knew the engineer and the fireman would see his riderless horse veering away from the train. When they did, the fireman leaned out the window and aimed a shotgun down at Prew.

  Prew’s Colt resounded before the fireman could pull the shotgun’s trigger. He flew sidelong out the window in a spray of blood. Prew had to duck as the discarded shotgun bounced against the side of the metal car and spun away.

  Fifty yards back, Kane and the men saw Prew slip though the engine’s side window. Kane smiled to himself behind his bandanna as the train began slowing down.

  “Watch the Mexicans, men,” he ordered his riders as they too slowed alongside the bullet-riddled rail car. “Make sure none of these chicken-soldiers decide to be a hero on us.”

  “I’m thinking they’re all dead,” Bolten called out as the train slowed even more, down to a slow crawl.

  “If they’re not already, see to it they are before I send in the Bird,” said Kane. The train had come to a stop thirty yards past an earthen ramp created for wagon crossings.

  “You got it, Boss,” said Bolten, riding up beside the rail car, his nickel-plated Russian smoking in his hand. He jerked his bandanna down from his face and grinned. “I looove how I live,” he beamed. He stood up in the saddle and pulled himself in through the open car window.

  Kane looked back, judging the distance to the earthen ramp behind the train.

  Faraday and Short stood up in their saddles and climbed in right behind them. Kane looked concerned until several shots resounded from inside the rail car. Bolten gave a dark chuckle and called out, “They’re dead now, Boss.”

  Kane smiled. He turned to the freight wagons just now catching up, the Bluebird bouncing on the seat beside Woods, his lit cigar in his mouth. Jimmy Quince was in the other wagon right behind them.

  “Get in and get ’er blown, Bird,” he called out. “She’s all ours.” He swung down from his saddle and hitched his horse to the rear of the wagon. He saw Prew shove the engineer away and motioned the frightened man out across the sand flats. As the man took off running, Prew walked back from the idling engine.

  “How’s it all looking so far, Boss?” Prew asked in a weak voice. Sweat streamed down his pale face. His eyes looked hollow, blank, confused.

  “So far it’s looking as slick as socks on a rooster,” Kane said with a grin, stepping over toward the door Bolten had opened for the others. His smile went away, seeing Prew’s face more closely. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Prew said. “I drank some bad loaded mescal a while ago. I’m still having trouble shaking it. It keeps coming and going. I see things. I saw you get off your horse . . . it looked like three or four more of you got off behind yourself.” He rubbed his head, realizing how crazy he sounded.

  Kane just stared at him for a moment. Finally he burst out laughing and said, “Jesus! Remind me to find some of that stuff after we get done and safe somewhere.”

  “It’s not something you want to do, Brax.” Prew shook his sweaty head. “I—I think I’m losing my mind sometimes. There’s no end to this stuff.”

  “Listen to me,” Kane said, pulling Prew to the side away from the open door. His voice lowered. “Once we’re done here, you keep the Bluebird in hand, and don’t let him out of your sight. He looks up to you.” He glanced all around. “Everybody else is going their own way. But it’s going to be you, him, and me making our getaway together.”

  Prew knew better than to question Kane at a time like this.

  “
All right, Brax, I’m with you.”

  “Watch your heads!” Bolten shouted from the open door on the other side of the car where he and the men had jumped out and taken cover. Prew and Kane ducked down on their side of the car just as an explosion ripped upward through the roof

  “Whooo-ieee!” Bolten blurted out, jumping up into the car ahead of everyone. He pulled the squeaking safe door open. “Kane, you’ve got to come look at all this gold!”

  Kane grinned at Prew as they stood up dusting themselves off.

  “Well, now, let’s go see what we’ve got here,” he said, delighting in his newfound fortune.

  Bounding up into the car, they looked through the smoke as the men on the other wagon climbed back in on the opposite side.

  “My, oh my! Ain’t it a beautiful sight . . . ,” Kane said in awe, staring at the smoky insides of the built-in safe covering the front half of the rail car. Pallets of gold ingots lay in a row, the ingots stacked over waist high, glistening even in the dark swirl of dynamite residue.

  “And it’s all ours!” Bolten said, excited.

  As if snapping out of a trance, Kane shoved his Colt into its holster and turned to the men.

  “All right, hombres, get those wagons to both doors and load them up high and tight!”

  “When do we split the gold up?” Short asked.

  “Don’t worry about that right now!” Kane snapped, glaring at the Short. “You’ll get your share.”

  The men leaned their rifles against the wall and holstered their revolvers. Woods turned his wagon and pulled alongside one door. The men started filling the wagons as Quince pulled his wagon around and aligned it up to the other door. The men worked feverishly for the next twenty minutes loading the gold onto the wagons from both doors. When the last of the gold was scooped up and carried out, Kane snatched an ingot from a pile in Woods’ arms and sliced it with his boot knife. He examined the fresh cut and smiled.

  “Perfect!” he said, pitching the ingot out to Woods who had stepped onto the wagon and laid down his load. Woods caught it and dropped it onto one of the stacks. “Get the tarpaulins over these loads and let’s get going.” He looked around at the men. “Short, you and Woods are switching places. Bird, Short, Prew and I are going with this wagon.” He pointed to the wagon on his right, the one Woods had been driving. The wagon sat closest to the trail leading to the narrow pass between the two close-standing walls of canyon rock. “Bolten, Faraday, Woods and Quince, you four stay with that one.” He pointed at the other wagon, the one that would have to go back thirty yards behind the train and use the earthen crossing ramp. “Is everybody all right with that?” The tone of his voice left no room for disagreement, neither did his hand lying on his holstered gun butt.