by Ralph Cotton
Thorn seemed to not hear him. He stepped sidelong away from the barn doors as if partly allowing Shear to gain entrance. “I have seen lowly cowards take innocent hostages all over this world, Shear. But this is the first time I have ever seen it here, in these United States of America.”
“I see what you’re doing, sailor. It isn’t going to work,” said Shear. “I’m going to count to three—”
“Do you really suppose that we are going to allow you to step onto that wagon with a woman in tow and ride away from here?” said Thorn, cutting him off. He almost grinned. “Are you so scared you’re not thinking straight? Is that it?”
“I told you it’s not working, sailor,” said Shear, moving sidelong toward the open barn doors. “Come on, Duckwald, we’re leaving.”
“This is not going well, Big Aces,” Duckwald said.
“You’re right,” said Thorn. “And it’s only going to get worse.” He held a hand up, signaling Sandoval. “Watch this.”
Above them on the boulder, Sandoval saw Thorn’s hand go up. He saw the position of everyone involved. Sam had moved around to be able to take out the other outlaws as soon as he made his shot. All right, here goes. . . .
He looked down the sights at the thin two inches of space he had between Shear’s head and the woman in front of him. But then he lowered the sights away from Shear. A head shot wasn’t what this called for. As Thorn’s hand dropped, Sandoval aimed the rifle lower and squeezed the trigger.
Shear and Duckwald stood twenty feet apart with their hostages. The big rifle resounded overhead and kicked up a five-foot spray of rock chips and dirt on the stone surface halfway between them. Each outlaw turned and jerked his hostage around toward where the shot had hit. In doing so, Cleary Jones, who had regained her consciousness, tore herself free from Duckwald’s arm, fell and scrambled away on hands and knees.
Sandoval had his shot now, but he waited, seeing the ranger call out to Duckwald, “Over here, Rudy.”
Duckwald swung around, his Colt up and cocked. But the Ranger’s shot hit him in the heart and knocked him back onto the stone shelf.
Shear had given Thorn a clear target as he’d spun toward Sandoval’s rifle shot. Thorn’s Colt bucked once in his hand. The bullet sliced past the woman as she tried to pull away, and punched through Shear’s left shoulder.
The impact threw Shear sideways, pulling the woman around with him as he managed to stay on his feet. But in the end he had to turn the belt loose to keep from falling himself. As soon as the belt left his hand, Thorn recocked the horse pistol and stepped forward, intending this next shot to be his last.
Shear’s Remington had fallen to the ground. He dropped onto his hands and knees and tried to reach it, his wounded shoulder not helping. “It’s over, Shear,” said Thorn, stepping closer and closer, the horse pistol aimed down at him.
“This is . . . crazy,” Shear lamented. With all his strength he began raising the Remington. “I can’t be dying here . . . killed in the high desert . . . by a sailor of all things?” His bloody thumb managed to cock the hammer.
“Marine. . . .” Thorn’s pistol bucked again while the smoke of the first shot still curled from its barrel.
Shear collapsed dead, the morning sunlight reflecting off the moon and star pinned to his vest.
Epilogue
In moments the two shaken young women had been helped to their feet and led inside the cabin. Sam flipped over the feather mattress and helped the old couple to their feet and took off their cuffs. He said to Freddie, “If you want to do something for your friends, gather them up. These men will be taking them to town and turning them in for their bounty. That’s better than dragging them off for the buzzards.”
“By myself?” said Freddie. “I’m an old man. They weren’t that good friends anyway, now that I think about it.”
“Go gather them up Freddie,” Lilly demanded. “I’ll boil these two doves some coffee.”
“How—how did you know we’re doves?” said Cleary Jones, still trembling, and her eyes red from tears.
Lilly gave a wry smile. “Oh, just a wild guess.”
“I’d rather have whiskey,” said Emma Fay, “if you’ve got any.”
Lilly chuckled and shook her head and walked to the hearth. “No hard feelings, Ranger,” she said. “Shear was a friend when he was alive, but now that he’s dead, he’s just one more dead outlaw.”
“I understand,” said Sam, punching out empty shells from his Colt and replacing them with bullets from his belt.
The gambler seated himself at a battered table and clutched his forearm around his wounded side. When Sandoval walked inside, his Swiss rifle in hand, Tinnis looked back and forth between Thorn and his son and asked either of them, “So, this is what you’re planning on doing for a living now, hunting bounty?”
Before Sandoval could reply, Thorn said, “Not my son, Mayes. Sandy’s going back to his regiment.” He gave Sandoval a look. “Isn’t that right, son?”
Sandoval looked surprised that Thorn even knew the idea had been on his mind for a while. He hadn’t mentioned it.
“I might,” he said, “if that fits in all right with your plans,” he said. “I mean, I don’t want to leave you shorthanded?”
Thorn looked at Tinnis and said to Sandoval, “I don’t think I’m going to be shorthanded. I believe the gambler here is just itching for this sort of work, once he’s sober and his side is healed.”
“Really, now?” said Tinnis. “What makes you suppose that I’m just itching for this sort of work? Do you think I’m crazy, Captain Thorn?”
“A little, perhaps,” said Thorn. “But more importantly I believe this is the best use of your training and talent. The question is, can you stay sober enough for me to count on you?”
Tinnis considered it. “Most of the time, yes, I believe I can do that.”
“Then it’s settled,” said Thorn. He looked at Sam. “Ranger Burrack, I considered recruiting you to join me, but I believe you have been a ranger too long for me to turn you into a marine.”
“Obliged, Captain,” Sam said. He eyed the older bounty hunter. “I considered asking you to join me, but I decided you’d been a marine too long for me to ever turn you into a ranger.”
Thorn smiled. “Good return, Ranger,” he said.
Sandoval walked over to the ranger and held out the big Swiss Husqvarna rifle. “Ranger Burrack, I’ve seen how you look at this rifle of mine. I’ll be going back to my Springfield when I rejoin my regiment . . . so, this is yours. I know you’ll only use it for the best of purposes.”
The ranger stood speechless for a moment; then he took the rifle. “Dee Sandoval, I am much obliged. I only hope I can one day shoot it as well as you do. . . .”
The four men turned silent for a moment as if paying tribute to something they now all held in common among themselves.
An hour later, the ranger had broken down the big Swiss rifle and placed it in its wooden carrying case. The two bounty hunters and Tinnis Mayes stood on the porch as he tied the wooden case down beneath his bedroll and stepped up into his saddle.
When he’d backed the big Appaloosa stallion from the hitch rail, Sam looked down at Thorn and Sandoval, who had followed him out onto the porch. Mayes stood in the open doorway, leaning against the frame.
“Until we meet again, best to each of you,” Sam said.
As he turned the stallion, Mayes raised a three-finger gesture with his hand.
Sandoval said, “Adios, Ranger.”
“Keep an edge on, Ranger,” said Thorn. He jiggled the handle of the big sword at his side. “Semper fidelis.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Sam replied. He tapped the stallion into an easy gait and touched his fingertips to the brim of his sombrero. Semper fidelis . . . , he said to himself. And he put the stallion forward, out, across the stone cliff, down the high trail, toward the badlands, where sunlight and sand wavered and swirled as far as the eye could see.
Don’t miss a page of
action from America’s most exciting Western author, Ralph Cotton
CITY OF BAD MEN
Coming from Signet in February 2011.
Little Ester, the Mexican Badlands
Lawrence Shaw rode the dusty switchback trail upward nearly a mile, then stepped his big bay over onto a rock ledge and looked down, checking his back trail. Beneath him the speckled bay chuffed and shook out its damp mane in a gust of dry, warm wind. Overhead lay a wavering white-hot sky. Below, a desolate, broken world of stone, gully, hilltop and cut-bank lay carpeted over with sand—a harsh, unaccommodating fauna that showed no welcome toward humankind.
Home . . . he told himself wryly.
The bullet wound in his head had mended slowly but steadily for the past four months. The doctor who had most recently examined him declared Shaw’s being alive a miracle of medical science. Shaw supposed it was true. Leastwise, he himself had never known anyone to take such a shot and live. As far as it being a miracle, he couldn’t say. Miracles didn’t come around much, the way he saw it.
He wasn’t even completely certain who had shot him, and, for some reason he himself did not understand, he didn’t care. It was the young woman though, an inner voice told him. He gazed out from his saddle across endless rolling hills bathed in a harsh glare of sunlight and wavering heat. Deep inside, he knew it had been her.
Now put it away . . .
Being a gunfighter, being known as the fastest gun alive. There were more people wanting to kill him than he ever cared to think about. Getting shot was something he’d learned to take in stride long ago, a part of the life he’d chosen for himself. So was getting killed if it came to it, he reminded himself, watching a big, lone hawk swing in a lazy circle high above him. He tried not to make a big thing of it, getting shot. It happened to everybody now and then.
His memory was not clear on what circumstances had drawn him back here to the fiery Mexican badlands, but it was good to be back all the same, gunshot wound or no. His pal U.S. Marshal Crayton Dawson had called this his kind of place—“Gun Country,” he’d said. And he’d been right, Shaw realized. There was solitude here. This was a good place for a man like himself. Anyway, here he was . . .
The bay scraped a hoof and tossed its head. Shaw touched back on its reins.
The bullet had hit him at almost point-blank range, so close that the blast of powder had burned his hair off. But instead of entering his skull, the big .45 caliber slug had only fractured it. Oddly enough the bullet had flattened and crushed its way upward and bored a path across the top of his head. It split his scalp like a dull hatchet, leaving in its wake a long furrow of cracked skull bone along the way, and came out on the other side. He winced, thinking about it.
A miracle? Maybe . . .
He turned the big speckled bay and rode back onto the dusty switchback, reminding himself once again not to think about it. But more than likely, it had just been a bad bullet, a weak load. Hell, who knew . . . ?
The bullet wound had not left him unscathed. Even now he went about his day-to-day life with much of his consciousness still partially mired in a dark, dreamy numbness that refused to turn him loose. Peculiar though he found it to be, there were days, even weeks at a time that he could not account for. Then, out of nowhere, his memory seemed to catch up with him in some jumbled, unsteady fashion, as if he’d been traveling somewhere far ahead of it.
It was strange, he told himself, nudging the bay forward. But he’d gotten used to strangeness in his life a long time ago.
Home . . . he told himself again, this time without the irony. Finally, he forced himself to dismiss all thought on the matter and gazed off across the rocky hilltops and into the endless breadth of earth and sky. He took a deep breath and let it out.
“We’ve still got a long way to go,” he said down to the bay. Yet, in truth he had no real destination in mind, only a deep, persistent need to keep moving.
He wore a long corduroy riding duster with leather-trimmed pockets and collar. Beneath the open duster front, his big Colt stood in its holster on his right hip. His headwear was a large black bandanna pulled back and tied at the base of his skull beneath a tall sand-colored sombrero. The sombrero was plain, but with a fine line of green embroidery the color of pale wild grass on its high, soft crown.
His boots were caballeria style, high-welled, battered and scuffed to the desert hue. The right boot was plain seasoned leather, but the left boot bore a wraparound carving, tooled in fine detail, of two wild stallions locked in a death battle.
When he arrived at Little Ester, the first town in a string of ancient Spanish-settlement remnants, he stepped down from his saddle beside a short stone wall surrounding the town’s watering well. He hitched the bay to a thick iron ring attached atop the short wall. Reaching down under the bay’s belly, he loosed its cinch and let it drink.
As the thirsty horse drew water, Shaw pulled a gourd dipper up from an oaken bucket sitting atop the stone wall and drank from it himself. Behind him an elderly man appeared from the dark shade between two adobes, a frayed straw sombrero in his knobby hands.
“Bienvenidos a Pequeña Ester, señor,” he said. Welcome to Little Ester.
“Gracias,” Shaw replied. He wiped a hand across his lips and dropped the gourd dipper back into the bucket.
The old man paused, looked Shaw up and down, taking particular note of his finely tooled boot.
“May I ask what brings you to Little Ester?” he asked in stiff English.
Shaw turned facing the smiling old man. “Passing through,” he said.
“Aw, sí, passing through,” said the self-appointed town greeter. “I understand.” His eyes went back to Shaw’s boot, then back to his face. “Always when men come to Little Ester from the east, they are passing through.” He offered a smile, seeing that Shaw had little conversation for him. Shaw glanced at the shade between the two adobes the old man had walked out of.
But as the old man turned to walk away, Shaw said out of the blue, “Tell me, senor, is there a witch here who carries a covey of trained sparrows?” As soon as he’d asked, he’d realized it had been a mistake. But it was too late; he had to let it play itself out.
“A bruja?” the old man said, curiously. “With trained sparrows?” He considered the question and he rubbed his goatee for an answer.
“Never mind,” Shaw said, wanting to let it go. It had been over a year since he’d seen the witch and her covey of dancing sparrows. And it hadn’t been here in Little Ester. It hadn’t even been close. These were the kinds of things that concerned him about himself lately. This was his head wound talking, he thought.
But the old man did not know what the term never mind meant. He studied the question for a moment longer, then raised a thin knobby finger and said, “Ah, wait! But, yes, I do know of such a bruja.”
“You do?” Shaw said. Then he said quickly, “It’s not important.”
“She does not come here,” the old man continued all the same. “She travels the hills south of here across the desert basin.”
“Yes, gracias,” said Shaw, “I remember now.” He didn’t manage to hide the look of concern on his face.
The old Mexican tilted his head and asked, “May I ask why you seek her, senor?”
“I’m not seeking her,” Shaw said. “I was just curious, is all.”
“Oh,” the old man said, only appearing to half believe Shaw. “I thought you seek her because she is from your country.”
“From my country?” That got his interest. “She’s American?”
“Sí, Americano. Did you not know that about her, senor?” the old man asked.
“No,” Shaw said, “I didn’t know that.” He stepped over closer to the bay and loosened its reins from the iron ring.
“It is a good day when a man learns something new,” the old Mexican said, grinning over bare gums.
He wanted money.
Shaw reached into his trouser pocket.
It had been in the dusty adobe
village of Valle Del Maíz that he’d seen the old witch wrapped in a ragged black cloth. She had tossed her covey of paper-thin sparrows upward in a circle of glowing firelight and appeared to orchestrate their movements with the tips of her bony fingers. An American . . . ? That was a surprise.
“Tell me, amigo,” Shaw said, dismissing the witch and her sparrows, “have two American lawmen passed through here?” He took out a small gold coin and placed it on the old man’s weathered palm.
“Americano lawmen . . . ?” The old man closed his palm over the coin as he gave the matter some thought.
“Yes,” Shaw said, “one is called Dawson. The other one is called Caldwell—some call him Undertaker. They track outlaws along the border.” He reached down under the bay and fastened its cinch.
“Ah, yes, I have heard of these men,” the Mexican said, tapping a finger to his head. “But no, they have not been to Little Ester. This I would know, if they had.”
“You’re certain?” Shaw said. He tested his saddle with a gloved hand.
“Sí, I am certain,” he said. He stepped back from Shaw as if in caution. “Are they hunting you, maybe, these lawmen?”
“No,” Shaw said, not wanting to offer any more about himself or the two lawmen than he needed to. He swung up into his saddle. “Maybe I’m hunting them.”
“Oh . . . ,” the old man said. Shaw saw the man’s eyes go once again to the tooling on his left boot, then back to Shaw’s face as he turned the bay and put it forward along the stone-lined trail.
No sooner had Shaw ridden out of sight than three gunmen walked out of the same dark shade where the old man had stood before venturing to the well.
“Who is he, old man?” a young Mexican named Dario Esconza asked. He stood expectedly with a bottle of mescal in one hand. He held his other hand loosely shoved down behind his gun belt, close to the big bone-handled Starr revolver holstered low on his hip.
