by Ralph Cotton
When they reached the Ranger, he was sipping water from his canteen and standing beside Black Pot, who was sipping from a stream. He had dragged the gunman’s body to the edge of the trail, picked up the rifle, unloaded it and pitched it out over a deep ravine. He did the same with the big Smith & Wesson as the two bounty hunters arrived.
Sam waited until they rode over to him, then said, “He told me it was his job to blow the canyon walls. Said somebody was supposed to shoot one of us. Then he was supposed to set off the blast.”
“Somebody . . . ?” said Thorn. “He means Tinnis Mayes.”
“Could be,” said Sam. “If he was supposed to shoot one of us, Shear is going to be mighty disappointed.” He shook his head, thinking about it, then said, “Mayes did some pretty good shooting, for a drunk.”
“I would expect no less of him, drunk or sober, Ranger,” Thorn said with pride. “I know where he learned it.”
“Nevertheless, he’ll have to answer for it when Shear finds out,” said Sandoval.
“Then let us get there forthwith,” said Thorn. “If Mayes did all this to save our lives, we can do no less for him in return.”
Hearing Thorn, Sandoval turned his horse and rode on ahead of them scouting the steep trail.
Sam wondered if the gambler really had done all this to save anybody’s life, or if he had some other motive in mind. But this was something between Thorn and the gambler to reckon with, he thought. When Thorn turned his horse back to the trail, Sam swung up atop his stallion and fell in beside him. The three rode on.
PART 3
Chapter 17
Nuevo Oro, New Mexico Territory
Big Aces Shear stared at the three riders until they drew close enough for him to recognize them. When he saw it was the gambler, Lasko and Barnes, he gave a faint smile. Beside him sat Mingo Sentanza, Crazy Elmer Fisk, Rudy Duckwald and George Epson. The rest of the men sat gathered in the dirt street, roasting a calf on an open spit in front of an adobe hotel and brothel in the lawless rail town now called New Gold Siding.
“Look who’s coming here,” said Shear, rising from his wooden chair in the midst of the four men. “Right on time too.”
Up the street, a crew of railroad workers loaded firewood onto two large-frame buckboard wagons. On a third large-frame buckboard sat a large item covered by canvas and held in place by drawn steel chains. Six armed guards stood stationed in a circle around the third buckboard. The number of guards had doubled when Shear and his men rode in three hours earlier.
Beside Shear, Sentanza said, “Tomorrow is the day all dogs get fed.”
“Fed indeed,” said Shear, staring out at the three newly arrived riders as they entered town and turned their horses toward the iron hitch rail. Turning his eyes to the street, Shear said to Ben Longley, “Ben, ride on out and make sure everything’s going good with our road crew.”
“On my way, boss,” said Longley, standing, throwing down a rib bone he’d been gnawing on. He wiped his hands on his leather chaps and hurried to another hitch rail a few feet up the dirt street.
“I love this time, right before pulling off a big job,” said Shear to Sentanza. He took a deep breath and let it out. “Everybody is pepped up, willing and eager to do their part.” He grinned and looked at Sentanza and added, “Ready to kill any son of a bitch that gets in our way.”
“We’ve got the town nervous, that’s for damned certain,” Sentanza said, gazing off up the street at the armed guards circling around the buckboard.
“Yes,” said Shear as the three riders stepped down in front of him, “if that buckboard wasn’t so cleverly disguised with canvas, a fellow might suspect there’s a safe hidden underneath it.”
Shear laughed; the men standing around laughed along with him.
“I’m glad we caught you in a good mood, Big Aces,” said Lasko. Barnes and the gambler stood right behind him tying the horses’ reins to the hitch rail.
Shear’s smile fell away, replaced by the darkness of a thunderstorm. “Why are you glad you caught me in a good mood, Lasko?” he demanded. “What happened back there? What went wrong?” His hand went to the black-handled Remington on his hip.
“Whoa, nothing happened!” said Lasko, freezing up for a second in fear.
“Leastwise nothing went wrong, Big Aces,” Tinnis cut in, using the leader’s name now that he was one of the Black Valley Riders. “On the contrary, everything went smooth as Chinese silk.” He gave a wide, dust-streaked smile. “I made the shot of my wicked life, and we left everybody lying under a canyon full of rocks.” He swept a hand theatrically and gave a slight bow at the waist. “How much sweeter can life get than that, sir?”
Shear stared at him, then broke out in a smile and said to Lasko, “There, why couldn’t you have told me that way, instead of making me near blow your head off?”
“Sorry, Big Aces,” said Lasko with a whipped look on his lowered face.
“Is that how things went . . . just like the gambler says?” Shear asked.
“Pretty much, it is,” Barnes cut in, not wanting Lasko to say anything that might start trouble for them. “The ranger and the bounty hunters are dead. The canyon is sealed off.” He shrugged. “End of story.”
“Damn, that’s good news,” said Shear. He turned to Tinnis. “No whiskey beforehand, or after?”
“Not one drop, Big Aces,” said the gambler, beaming, his head still pounding and his body aching for a long, hard shot of rye.
Shear looked at Barnes and Lasko.
“It’s the truth, Big Aces,” said Lasko. “He never drank a drop.”
“I vouch for him on it,” said Barnes. “He’s stayed stone sober all day.”
“Good man,” said Shear to the gambler. “No more crumbs from the table for you, my friend. You’re one of us now.” Reaching behind his back, Shear took a double-action Colt from his belt and held it out to the gambler. “This isn’t nickel-plated like yours was. But I hope it’ll make you feel at home.”
“My goodness . . . ,” said Tinnis, looking genuinely moved by Shear’s gift, and the way in which Shear had presented it to him. It had been a long time since the gambler had felt himself a part of anything except the trash the bar swampers swept out of the saloons after a hard night of drinking.
“I’m most obliged, Big Aces,” Tinnis said in a quiet tone.
“Aw, hell, it’s nothing,” said Shear, waving the matter aside. “I’m sick of looking at that empty shoulder rig of yours. Stick the gun in it and shoot it in good health, now that you’ve decided to be a killer instead of a damn drunk.”
Tinnis looked all around at the others with a smile, holding the gun in a way to show it to them.
“Show us your stuff, Lucas,” said one of the men at the fire, a cup of coffee in one hand, a slab of roasted calf in his other.
“Watch closely,” said Tinnis, “but don’t let it blind you.”
The men watched as he twirled the gun into a blur on his trigger finger, flipped it shoulder high, cocked his hip and caught the gun in his lowered palm as if catching it in his holster.
“Whoo-iee,” said Longley, slapping his hands, goading him on.
Tinnis flipped the Colt up, snatched it out of the air with his other hand, twirled it and tossed in back and forth as it spun. As he worked the gun expertly, the men whistled and cheered. He tossed the gun back and forth, once, twice—but on the third time, he fumbled and almost dropped it to the dirt.
“All right, that’s enough for one night,” he said jokingly. “Come see me a month from now when the demons have ceased to claw on my brain.”
Behind Shear and off to one side, Fisk leaned over and whispered to Duckwald, “I’ll claw his brain. . . .”
Shear stared off at the guards around the buckboard wagons. “All right, everybody,” he said in a lowered voice, “they’ve got a good idea who we are and what we’re doing here. Be on top of your game in the morning. We’re following them out of here to the Skull Rock trestle.”
Tinnis shoved his new Colt down into his shoulder harness and closed his lapel. He glanced past Elmer Fisk, but pretended not to see the harsh angry stare Fisk directed back at him.
Late in the night, the hotel had fallen silent. Only a few oil pots sat burning themselves out along the empty street. The only signs of life in the far end of town were the six railroad guards still posted in a wide circle surrounding the heavily loaded buckboard. From the front of the hotel to the other end of town, the only sign of life was Crazy Elmer Fisk walking back and forth, twenty yards in each direction. Each time he stopped in front of the adobe hotel, he stared over at the gambler, who lay leaned back against the front of the hotel with a ragged blanket over him.
Feigning sleep, the gambler kept watch on Fisk for a full hour. At the other end of the boardwalk, Dave Pickens sat tossing a pocketknife into the walk plank in languid repetition. Finally, the slow steady thumping sound of the knife blade stopped and Tinnis knew Pickens had at last lain back and fallen asleep.
Thank God. . . .
Gazing through lowered lids, Tinnis waited until Fisk made his next pass, his cradled rifle in arm, and headed back away from the hotel. Then the gambler arose silently, flipped his blanket aside and moved as silently as a dark spirit around the corner of the hotel and into a long alleyway behind it.
At the loaded buckboard, one of the railroad guards, a Nebraskan Mormon named Oran Wadley, said to the closest guard to his left, “Psst . . . Riggins. Did you see something move down there?” As he spoke he stepped sideways, keeping his eyes on the boardwalk full of sleeping gunmen.
“No,” whispered a Kansas rail detective named Lionel Riggins. He turned more attentive to the dark adobe hotel flickering in the dim glow of oil-pot flames. “But if you see it again, tell me. I’ve been expecting something out of this bunch of trash ever since they started gathering in here.”
“Yeah, I know,” whispered Wadley. “It’s like somebody tipped them off, what it is we’re doing here.”
“Oh? Do you think so?” Riggins whispered with a twist of sarcasm in his voice.
Wadley ignored the sarcasm, and asked, “Do you think they can tell we’ve got a safe under the canvas?”
“Jesus, Wadley,” said Riggins. “My horse can tell we’ve got a safe under here.”
“Well . . . I best get back to my spot, keep an eye on things,” Wadley said, wanting no more conversation with the prickly Kansan.
“Good idea,” said Riggins.
On the dark street, Fisk walked out of the glow of the last oil pot and continued at a steady pace. At the dark edge of town, he tuned and started walking back. As he passed close to a stack of empty wooden shipping crates out in front of the soon-to-open mercantile store, he did not see the dark figure swing around in front of him until he felt a wiry hand clamp over his lips and muffle his voice.
“So long, Crazy,” the gambler whispered only inches from his ear.
Fisk felt a cold, sharp, blinding pain run deep into his chest. The severity of it forced him up onto his tiptoes. He remained there for a moment as if suspended in air, impaled, up to the hilt of the dagger the gambler had thrust upward into his heart. Then he relaxed into the gambler’s arms.
From the buckboards, Oran Wadley called out to Lionel Riggins again, “Pssst, I think I saw something else, farther down the street.”
“Quit making that sound, Wadley,” said Riggins. “It makes you sound simpleminded.”
“You said to tell you if I saw anything else,” Wadley said.
“Okay, you’ve told me. Now shut up,” said Riggins.
Hearing the two, another guard named Chester Gerst chuckled under his breath. He shook his head and said to the other guards, “Keep me covered. I’ll walk down and take a look.” He adjusted a faded black sombrero atop his head.
At the dark end of the street, Tinnis saw the long-haired, thick-bearded rifleman coming toward him, walking in and out of the glow of flickering oil pots. As the man drew closer, the gambler quietly and quickly pulled down two wooden crates, dragged Fisk’s body in between them and restacked them back in front of him. With the crates back in place, he rubbed a boot back and forth over the dirt to hide his footprints, then backed away into the alley as the rifleman walked up and looked all around in the darkness.
“Who’s there?” Gerst asked toward the pitch-black alleyway, hearing the slightest sound of what he thought to be footsteps on the hard-packed ground. After listening intently for a moment, he shrugged and walked back toward the buckboards. Out in front of the hotel, he saw a figure on the boardwalk adjust a blanket over himself and turn onto his side.
“See anything?” Wadley asked just as soon as Gerst walked back to the buckboards.
“Not a thing,” Gerst replied. He took off his battered hat and ran his hand back along his shoulder-length hair.
“Maybe I was mistaken,” said Wadley.
“Maybe you were,” Gerst said in a harsh tone, a grim look on his bearded face.
From the darkened hotel window overlooking the empty street, Shear stood naked, save for a pair of high-reaching black socks. He had not seen Fisk disappear from walking guard, nor had he seen the gambler go about his gruesome handiwork. All he had arrived at the window in time to see was the lone bearded rifleman walking down to the far end of town, and back.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Shear. Can’t you sleep?” asked a naked young whore lying on the bed behind him.
“Don’t want to sleep, Louise,” said Shear over his shoulder.
“In that case, you just bring yourself right back over here,” said the woman. “We can stay awake together all night if you want to.”
Shear gazed down at the empty street for a moment longer, then grinned to himself, turned and walked back to the rumpled bed. “Why not?” he said.
The naked woman wrapped her arms and legs around him as he lowered himself onto her. “I know you are on your way somewhere to do important business,” she said. “But when you return, you must allow all of your men to stay inside and visit the doves.”
“Yeah, I will do that, on the way back,” said Shear, his voice muffled by her large, firm breasts.
“Tell me, what is this business you and your men are going to do?” she asked, drawing slow circles on his thick chest with her fingertip.
“Shut up, Louise,” Shear said, “and do what you’re best at.”
Chapter 18
An hour before dawn the riflemen had changed guards at the buckboards. Shear’s men had already begun to slowly rise along the boardwalk and form around the blackened fire site in the middle of the street. Ballard Swean scratched his disheveled head and looked up from preparing to boil coffee.
“Where’s Fisk?” he asked.
“That’s what I was asking myself,” said Dent Phillips. “He was prowling the streets like a bobcat when I bedded down. Said he’d stand guard all night, like he often does.”
“Crazy bastard,” said Swean. He looked back and forth, then added, “But it ain’t like him to not come sniffing around for coffee, first thing.”
Tinnis sat up from against the front of the adobe building and wiped his eyes with his knuckles and looked all around.
Having heard the conversation on his way to the front door, Shear stood in the open doorway and looked back and forth, his hands on his hips. “I don’t like this,” he said with suspicion, turning his eyes to the wagon guard at the far end of the street.
Rudy Duckwald stood and walked closer to the gambler and looked down at him. To Shear, he said, “Why don’t you ask this sneaking gambler where Fisk is?”
“Rudy, I appreciate neither your implication nor your attitude,” said Tinnis, standing as he spoke and picking up his suit coat from the planks beside him.
“Yeah?” the big gunman snarled. “Maybe you’d like to do something about it.”
“No, sir, not before breakfast,” said Tinnis, slipping on his coat and straightening it down the front. “I would bring myself bad luck kil
ling an idiot on an empty stomach.”
Duckwald’s eyes filled with rage. “I’ll blow your brains out—”
“Rudy! Get your bark off!” Shear shouted, seeing the gunman’s big hand ready to go for his pistol, Tinnis seeming to not take Duckwald’s threat seriously. “We’re looking for Fisk, remember?”
“Elmer’s probably gone to the jake,” Calvin Kerr cut in. “He spends more time sitting in a jake than any man I ever seen.” He gave a shrug. “I don’t know what he does in there.”
Duckwald had settled down, but he hadn’t let go of his accusations. “I say this gambler has done something to him.”
“Shut up, Rudy,” said Shear. “Tinnis Lucas is one of us now. He gets the same respect as the rest of us.”
Duckwald stared hard at the gambler; the gambler didn’t back an inch.
“Sentanza,” said Shear, “go check some of the jakes along the alleyways. If he’s in one, tell him to get himself out here. We’ve got a busy day coming. I want everybody sticking close together.”
Sentanza left with his rifle cradled in the crook of his arm. He swatted at buzzing flies as he searched along the alleyway, one outhouse after another. Other men went off searching the livery barn, a bathhouse and the town dump. Ten minutes later when Sentanza was finished in the long alleyway, he walked back with his hat hanging from his hand.
“I checked them all,” he said. “Fisk ain’t back there.” Sunlight had crept over the edge of the horizon and spread slantwise along the dirt street.
Shear only nodded and looked off along the street at the buckboards. “Never trust a railroader,” he said to no one in particular.
“What?” Sentanza asked.
But before Shear could say anything else, Dent Phillips called out loudly from the soon-to-be mercantile store.
“Big Aces, down here! It’s Crazy Elmer! He’s deader than hell.”
The guards around the buckboards heard Phillips call out to Shear. They looked at one another uncomfortably as Shear’s gunmen gathered in front of the mercantile where Phillips had pulled out the shipping crates hiding Fisk’s body.
