by Ralph Cotton
“Did one of the riders wear a black swallow-tailed suit coat and have stitches in his head?” Thorn asked.
“Yes, that is correct,” said Wright, sounding a bit winded from rattling on nonstop in a steady singsong voice.
Inside the shadowy root cellar, Sam pulled a ragged sheet back off Fisk’s dead bloodless face.
“Crazy Elmer Fisk,” Sam said, recognizing the dead outlaw. He looked closely at the dagger wound in the pale bare chest.
Thorn looked at the body knowingly.
Seeing his expression, Sam said, “Tinnis Mayes?”
“Could be,” said Thorn. “Whoever did it knew how to do it right. No bruises from a struggle, just one quick stick in the right place. This man went down fast and never made a whimper.”
Sam studied Fisk’s wound for a moment. Dropping the sheet back over the corpse, he turned and walked out the cellar door. Thorn walked beside him.
“We’ll carve him a plank if you’ll tell us what name to put on it,” said Wright. “Everybody was a little shy to approach his pals, if you know what I mean.”
“His name was Elmer Fisk,” Sam said. “How long ago did these men leave?”
“It was early this morning, right after daylight, give or take,” said Wright. “They left a few minutes behind the firewood wagons. Do you think they were trailing the wagons? It looked to me like the railroad guards acted awfully suspicious of them.”
Sam and the bounty hunter shook their heads and walked on. “I know you don’t agree, Ranger,” Thorn said, “but I feel good knowing Mayes is still in there, keeping these killers at arm’s length.”
“With all respect, Captain, you’re right—I don’t agree,” said Sam. “The farther he goes with these men, the worse he looks to me.”
“And the better he looks to me,” Thorn said with a thin smile. “Don’t forget, Ranger. I know this man.”
“Sorry, Captain, but no, you don’t,” said Sam. “You knew him a long time ago and a long way from here.” He looked at Thorn. “This country can twist a man until he doesn’t even know himself.”
“Not Tinnis Mayes,” said Thorn. “I still have faith in him.” He gave the ranger another thin smile beneath his gray, straight mustache. “We’ll find him. I’ll prove it to you.”
“I hope you’re right, Captain,” said Sam. “And I hope we find him alive. But those two hopes are at long odds with each other. If his hands are still clean, he can’t keep them that way long with this bunch. If he does they’ll kill him.”
From a rock-protected position atop the cliffs, Sentanza and the gambler looked down at the one-sided battle raging below. “Whoo-ieee!” said Sentanza, levering a round into his rifle chamber and raising the butt to his shoulder. “This is the kind of action I always dream of!” He fired repeatedly into the men and horses below.
The gambler only stared down in grim observation, his fists gripped tight at his side, knowing he was powerless to do anything to stop the slaughter. On the lower rock trail, the first wagon lay on its side, the load of firewood having spilled over onto the ground. The four horses pulling the load had broken free and now ran back and forth wildly as bullets punched and nipped at them.
After his fourth shot, Sentanza turned to Tinnis and said, “What’s the matter, my friend? Don’t you want some of this?”
“It’s not my style,” said the gambler without looking up from the bloody carnage.
“What?” Sentanza asked, unable to hear him clearly above the den of gunfire.
“I’m out of range,” Tinnis said, changing his reply to something more acceptable to a man like Sentanza. He patted the double-action Colt under his arm. “I don’t have a gun that’ll reach that far.”
“So?” said Sentanza. “Find a closer target. Shoot whoever you want to shoot, eh?”
He gestured with his gun barrel toward some of the wounded guards who had abandoned their fallen horses and began climbing frantically up the rock walls seeking any cover they could find.
“Good idea, Mingo,” Tinnis replied amid the fierce shooting. He pulled the Colt from his holster.
“Always listen to me, mi amigo!” Sentanza said with a wide, excited grin. He tapped a finger on his forehead. “I know about these things—”
His words cut short as the Colt Thunderer bucked twice in the gambler’s hand and two bullets ripped through his chest. The impact knocked him backward onto the outermost edge of the cliff, where he tittered back and forth, his rifle flying from his hands and clattering down the rock wall.
“I didn’t mean . . . for you . . . to shoot me!” he cried out, stunned, in disbelief.
Whoever I want to . . .
Tinnis watched him fall off the edge and bounce and slide, then bounce some more, brokenly, for a hundred feet, until he splattered in every direction on the stony bottom trail. “So long, Mingo . . . ,” he said, expressionless.
When Sentanza had landed, Tinnis let out a breath, turned and walked up the steep rock incline to the place where they’d left their horses. He swung up onto his saddle and rode away, with no more direction in mind than the day he’d suddenly ridden away from the ranger and the two bounty hunters. Except this time he was sober, he reminded himself—sober enough to realize that he had no idea where he was going . . . or why.
He rode along the edge to the spot where he’d seen Dent Phillips and Calvin Kerr firing mercilessly down onto the railroad men. Leaving his horse on the trail, he slipped down from his saddle and walked calmly down over the rocks until he stood staring at the two men from behind.
“Phillips, Kerr! Back here!” he shouted above the melee.
As the two men turned facing him, he began pulling the trigger on the double-action Colt.
Kerr flew backward off the cliff with a yell as a bullet slammed into his chest. But Phillips didn’t go down as easily. He got off a shot with his rifle just as the gambler’s bullet hit him high in his shoulder and spun him around. It took another shot to send him flying out off the rocky edge.
But the bullet from Phillips’ rifle had nailed the gambler in his side and bowed him at the waist. He staggered backward and dropped down onto a rock. Then he toppled off the rock onto the hard ground.
What the hell were you thinking, Tinnis Mayes, pulling a stunt like that . . . ?
He stared up for a moment, clutching his side, watching the blue sky toss and swirl, then turn black above him.
Chapter 20
Skull Rock Canyon, New Mexico Territory
On the rear platform of the train’s caboose, two riflemen stood looking off into the line of hills rising up in the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range. It had been well over an hour since they’d heard the last of the sporadic gunfire resound in the distance, yet that fact offered them no solace. In fact, the lapse of time only made them even more wary, more apprehensive—more expectant of trouble coming their way.
“What are we doing here? None of this makes sense to me,” one guard said to the other, an older man who wore a thick red beard, a permanent tobacco stain down one edge of his mouth.
“Really?” said the older guard. He grinned and spat off the side of the platform onto a bed of gravel lining the tracks. “Say railroad,” he instructed the younger guard.
“Railroad . . . ?” the younger guard said, complying with him.
“See, once you say railroad,” the older guard advised, “you can grab making sense by its tail and throw it right out the window.”
“Is that all you’ve learned, fifteen years with the railroads?” the younger man asked, going back to scanning the hills, the open trails leading upward out of sight.
“It’s all you need to learn, carrying a gun for these people. They didn’t hire us ’cause we’re smart.” The red-bearded guard gestured at the rifle in his hands. “They figure if we were smart enough to understand anything at all, we’d be too smart to work for them.” He spat again and chuckled. “That’s why if you get too smart they’ll fire you, or leastwise jerk your gun out of your
hand and stick a pencil in it. They do not want a man armed and smart, huh-uh.” He shook his head.
“Damn railroad,” the young guard said. He paused, then said, “Think about this. We’re sitting dead-still here, exposed, in ambush country, waiting for a safe, so we can put gold in it that we’ve already got locked inside a rail car with armed guards sitting on it.”
The older grinned knowingly. “That one, I know the answer to.”
“Yeah, why?” asked the young guard.
“Because the generalissimo Ceballos wants his gold delivered to him in a safe. What the generalissimo wants, he gets these days.”
The young guard shook his head. “They’ve had three presidents in the past year. Mr. Hargrove must figure that General Ceballos is next.”
“It’s no wild guess on Hargrove’s part,” said the older guard. “This gold might just be the thing that cinches the deal.”
The guard gave a sigh. “Imagine having enough money to make a man president.”
“Imagine what making him president will do for Hargrove and his railroads,” said the older guard. He spat and added, “Hell, he might give us goose every Christmas.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” said the young guard. The only goose he’d give us is his big thumb up our—”
An arrow thumped into the caboose beside his head. “Jesus H. Johnson . . . ! Comadrejas!” shouted the older guard as more arrows whistled past them and thumped into the train. He threw his Winchester to his shoulder and began levering shot after shot at the horde of whooping, yelling warriors riding down on them, following the rails down out of the canyon behind them.
“Man, we are dead!” shouted the young guard.
“Shut up and shoot something!” shouted the older guard, still levering out rounds.
From along both sides of the train, guards leaned out the window and began firing. Clato Charo, the leader of the Comadrejas, waved a recently acquired Spencer rifle above his head and divided his riders, sending half along one side of the sitting train, and half down the other.
The older guard slung open the door of the caboose, shoved the younger man inside and slammed the door as a bullet tore through it and showered them with splinters. “Take the window!” he shouted, gesturing the young guard to a rear window on one side of the door while he took the other one.
As the two guards fired repeatedly and other guards inside the train continued to fight from the open train windows, the front door of the caboose swung open and shut and a former trail scout turned railroad guard stood with his rifle in hand. He gave a thin cavalier smile. “I thought you men might need a hand back here.”
“Not if you just come to grin and talk!” shouted the older guard.
“Oh, I come to fight,” said the buckskinned man. As he spoke he took his time pulling on a pair of gauntlet gloves with Indian bead braiding on their cuffs. His yellow hair hung to his shoulders, William Cody-style. “That’s Clato Charo’s Comadrejas out there. They’re not the best fighters, these Desert Weasels, you know?”
“I don’t give a damn if it’s Marco Polo. They’re trying to kill us! Start shooting!”
“I will, but first I’m going to try talking to them,” said the former scout. He walked to the door and grabbed the handle. “Hold your fire,” he added coolly, leaning his rifle against the wall.
“Don’t open that door—” the older guard shouted. But he was too late.
The buckskinned man threw the door open wide and stood in the open doorway, his left arm raised high in a fist, a show of peace he’d learned years ago on the high mountain range.
“My brothers!” he called out in a loud voice.
Three arrows laced across his chest; two bullets ripped through his belly. A third bullet nailed him squarely in his forehead and sent blood and brain matter splattering all over both guards as they ducked away to avoid it. The buckskinned man flew backward the length of the caboose and fell dead against the front door.
“The most ignorant son of a bitch I ever seen!” said the older guard, wiping a streak of blood from his face as he jumped over to slam the door. “Nobody can talk to Comadrejas . . . all you can do is kill them.”
But as he closed the rear door, he caught sight of two loaded wagons and a number of riders coming along the track beyond the raging warriors, charging them from behind with a barrage of rifle fire. In the front wagon he recognized Papa Dorsey’s white beard. Slamming the door, he leaned back against it with a sigh of relief.
“Boy, our bacon just got saved,” he said.
Rolling along in the front wagon, Brayton Shear spread a wide smile and chuckled aloud. As the Comadrejas broke away into a hasty retreat, not even firing back over their shoulders, Shear looked at Ted Lasko, who drove the wagon.
“Sometimes, Lady Luck just jumps up and slaps you cockeyed,” he said, his big black-handled Remington smoking in his hand.
“Yeah,” said Lasko. “I thought maybe and you and Charo planned it this way.”
“You can’t deal with Comadrejas,” Papa Dorsey cut in, standing in the wagon behind the seat.
“But this could not have worked out better if we had planned it,” Shear said. He stood up and waved his hat back and forth at the train, where cheers and shouting and waving hats came out of the open windows.
As Lasko rolled up beside the express car, two riflemen and a tall man in a pin-striped suit ran back to meet them. “Goodness gracious, sir! You must surely be angels!” the man in the suit said. He jerked off a black derby dress hat to reveal hair neatly parted down the middle. His brown mustache was heavily waxed and sharply pointed.
“Angels . . . ? No, sir,” Shear said modestly. “Just good men doing what good men do.” He touched his hat brim toward the man and said, “You must Mr. Oaks?”
“Indeed I am, but not to you, sir,” the man said, bubbling over with gratitude. “Call me Ronald, I must insist.”
“Well, Ronald,” said Shear, emphasizing the man’s first name almost playfully, “I’m Byron Braynard, security chief for your very employer, the Great Western Frontiers Railway. You can call me Chief.” He’d seen the name on an identification card inside a dead man’s wallet after they’d ambushed the wagons.
“Bless you, bless you, sir,” said Oaks, appearing ready to bounce on his tiptoes with joy.
Shear gestured toward the second wagon pulled up behind him, and the armed riders surrounding it. “As you can see, we have brought the safe, all the way from St. Louis, as requested.”
Along the side of the train, two riflemen pulled the body of one of their own from where it lay hanging out the open window, its arms dangling toward the ground, bleeding down the side of the passenger car.
“If you’ll open the express car door, Ronald,” Shear said, “we’ll get under way. I don’t mind saying, this is a most dangerous spot. I look all around and see the potential for terrible consequence.” His eyes slid over his own men as he spoke. He almost smiled.
“Yes, right you are, Chief Braynard,” said Oaks. He hurried over to the large thick express car and gave a series of knocks. At the sound of a steel bolt sliding back inside the door, Oaks grinned at Shear and said, “Had I not given that rapping sequence, the door would still have opened, but when it opened you would not have liked the welcome.”
“Now, that is darn good thinking, Ronald,” said Shear. He looked down at Lasko and said, “Write that down first chance you get. These are the kinds of ideas I want to be hearing from my men.”
Along the side of the train, riflemen had stepped down and began to gather around the wagons. As the big door slid open, Oaks said to the riflemen, “Don’t crowd Chief Braynard and his men.”
“Chief Braynard . . . ?” said the older rifleman from the caboose. He squinted hard at Shear.
“That’s quite all right, Ronald,” said Shear. “The more the merrier.”
“I only hope someone is left to keep an eye out for those heathen Comadrejas,” Oaks called out.
Shear
said, “Whoa! My goodness!” as the door opened and he found himself staring down the barrel of another Gatling gun, just like the one he himself had set up at Hatchet Pass. “I dare pity those Comadrejas had their attack been successful.”
Seeing Oaks and the rest of the men gathered around the wagon, the man behind the Gatling gun turned loose of the handles and stood. Beside him his loader grinned and took his hat toward Shear and Oaks.
“Chief Braynard . . . ?” the older guard repeated, looking all around at the other riflemen around him. “Hell, he ain’t Braynard—”
“Of course he’s Chief Braynard, you old fool,” Papa Dorsey snapped at the older guard. “Didn’t you hear him introduce himself?”
“I’ve known Big Balls Byron Braynard fifteen years, and by God this—”
One shot from Dorsey’s Colt stopped him cold. The bullet hurled him and flipped him so quickly that one of his boots spun up in the air. He lay stretched out dead, a naked toe shining through a hole in his sock.
“My God,” Oaks gasped.
But even as he did so, Lasko sprang up from the wagon seat and put a bullet in the man standing behind the Gatling gun. He fell forward onto the gun and lay there, his arms dangling.
On the ground, Swean stood with his rifle pointed and cocked at the second man in the express car. “Hands high, loader!” he said.
The loader did as he was told. All along the train Shear’s men had the railroad men covered.
“Now jump down,” Shear said to him.
As the loader jumped to the ground, Swean jerked his sidearm from his holster and pitched it away. “Go stand over there by your railroad pals,” he ordered him.
“Skin them all down, men,” Shear called out to his riflemen.
