The Loner: Rattlesnake Valley

by J. A. Johnstone

  “How’s that young cowboy Deuce?” he asked Carmelita as she stood at the stove preparing flapjacks. A pot of coffee was brewing and smelled good.

  “Señor Deuce is still alive,” she replied. “That is the best one can say, when he was shot like that. Tres bullets, they go right through him.”

  Carmelita was speaking English all right that morning, The Kid noticed. He didn’t say anything about her apparent inability to understand the language the night before when he asked her about Owen Starbird’s condition.

  “It’s better that the bullets went on through,” he commented. “That way the doctor won’t have to dig them out when he gets here.”

  Carmelita nodded. “Sí. If they did not do too much damage, and if Señor Deuce did not lose too much blood, perhaps he will recover.” She put some of the flapjacks onto a plate, turned and placed it on the table. “Sit. Eat. I will pour coffee.”

  The Kid did as he was told, looking down to hide the quick grin that flashed across his face at Carmelita’s no-nonsense tone. “Do you cook for the hands, too?” he asked.

  The woman shook her head. “No, only for El Capitán and Señorita Diana, and for Señor Rocklin when he joins them. There is an old hombre who cooks for the vaqueros. He used to be one of them, a cowboy. I also clean the house and care for El Capitán.”

  “Yes, I got the feeling from talking to him that he’s very grateful for your help.”

  A snort came from Carmelita. “That one would never say such a thing, not to one such as me. A servant.”

  The conversation was edging into areas where The Kid didn’t want to go. Other people’s emotions were their business. He picked up a fork, poured syrup on the flapjacks, and dug in. The food was excellent. A few minutes later, Carmelita added some bacon onto his plate, and the meal got even better. The Kid didn’t have to fake a hearty appetite and an appreciation for what he was eating.

  Diana came into the kitchen, dressed in the same sort of riding outfit she had worn the day before, but gray instead of brown. The Kid started to get to his feet, but she waved him back into his chair.

  “We don’t stand on ceremony around here, Kid,” she said. “Carmelita, I’m ready for some of your coffee, and that food smells mighty good.”

  “I wasn’t sure I’d see you up this early,” The Kid commented as Diana sat down at the table with him and Carmelita placed breakfast in front of her.

  “Rocklin said we were riding out after those bushwhackers at first light, didn’t he?”

  The Kid frowned. “Yes, but I didn’t know you were going along.”

  “I don’t like being shot at any more than you do, Kid, and it was worse for me because I was attacked in my own home. I’m not going to let Malone get away with that.”

  “If we run into trouble, somebody could get hurt trying to watch out for you.”

  Diana’s coffee cup rattled against its saucer as she put it down with a little more force than was necessary. “Nobody has to watch out for me, as you put it,” she snapped. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. You’ve seen with your own eyes that I’m a good shot with a rifle, and I ride as well or better than half the men who work for Diamondback.”

  The Kid didn’t doubt that, but he didn’t like the idea of Diana going along. It was potentially dangerous. She was half-owner of the ranch, though, so it was her choice to make.

  “All right,” he said, “but if the bullets start to fly, I’m going to be looking to save my hide before I am yours.”

  “Fine. That’s exactly the way I want it.”

  Even as The Kid made the declaration, he knew that probably wasn’t the way things would work out. In the event of trouble, his instincts would force him to protect Diana. He wasn’t going to admit that to her.

  By the time they finished breakfast and left the big house, the eastern sky was gray, with a band of orange along the horizon that signaled the approach of dawn. The Kid took along his Sharps and Winchester. Diana carried her saddle gun, the same carbine she had used to blast the rattlesnake the day before.

  Sam Rocklin and four other men were in the corral, cutting out their horses from the remuda. Rocklin saw Diana walking alongside The Kid and swore. He came over to the corral fence and said, “Miss Diana, what’re you thinkin’ about doin’?”

  “I’m coming with you,” she said. “This is Starbird range, and one of the Starbirds needs to help find out who attacked it.”

  “I know what you’re sayin’, but I ain’t sure it’s a good idea for you to ride with us. Could be some trouble.”

  “I hope so,” Diana said. “That would mean we’ve found the men we’re looking for.”

  Rocklin scratched his beard-stubbled jaw. “I reckon you could look at it like that…” he began.

  “It won’t do any good to argue. I own half this ranch, you know.”

  “Yeah, but your uncle calls the shots most of the time, and he leaves most of the decisions up to me.”

  “I’m coming along, and that’s final,” Diana said.

  Rocklin sighed. “All right. We’ll get your horse saddled and ready to ride.”

  “I can saddle my own horse.”

  “Yes’m. Whatever you want.”

  Rocklin didn’t look or sound happy about the prospect of Diana going with them, but clearly, he knew that arguing with her was pointless. Probably he had tried and failed at that little chore in the past, The Kid thought.

  The buckskin was in one of the stalls in the barn, rather than the corral. The Kid saddled the rangy stallion and slid both long guns into their sheaths. He attached the saddlebags and led the buckskin out of the barn, past the stall where Diana was tightening the cinches on her chestnut’s saddle. She came out of the barn only a minute or so behind him.

  Rocklin and the other hands had their mounts ready as well and had gathered in front of the barn. All five of them were armed with pistols and rifles. They would be a formidable little group, able to handle most trouble they were likely to run into.

  If they encountered a large group of Malone’s hired guns, they would be outnumbered. But The Kid figured Rocklin didn’t want to take the rest of the crew along and leave Diamondback undefended, especially since they were shorthanded.

  “How’s Deuce?” Diana asked as they all mounted up.

  “Seems a mite stronger this mornin’,” Rocklin said. “He was able to sleep some durin’ the night without the pain botherin’ him too much.”

  “That’s good. Orrie should be back from Bristol with the doctor sometime today. With any luck, Deuce will pull through.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Also with any luck, we’ll catch up to the men who shot him.”

  Rocklin nodded grimly. The Kid wasn’t sure if the foreman would consider that lucky or not, since Diana was coming with them.

  The other cowboys looked uneasy, too. The Kid knew that Diana had a lot of pride and just wanted to help out, wanted to step forward and grasp the reins of power like her father or her uncle would have done if they’d been able to. He could understand that, maybe even sympathize with it, but he also knew that these rough-and-tumble cowboys would never really be comfortable about having a lady riding with them after bushwhackers, even a lady boss. Maybe especially a lady boss.

  Diana nodded to Rocklin. “All right, Sam.”

  Rocklin sighed and said, “Yes’m.” He lifted a hand and waved it forward as the bright orange sphere that was the sun began to rise over the desert to the east. “Let’s ride!”

  Chapter 11

  Starting out, they rode only to the trees where the riflemen had hidden to open fire on the ranch. There, in the orange light that began to flood over the valley, they searched for any signs left behind by the bushwhackers.

  It didn’t take a skilled tracker to see the mounds of droppings and the muddle of tracks that marked the place where someone had held the horses. To the experienced eye, the prints left by the horseshoes were distinct enough from each other so that a close
scrutiny of them allowed Rocklin to say, “I make it fourteen horses, give or take one.”

  “That means if we catch up to ’em, they’ll outnumber us two to one, Sam,” one of the punchers pointed out.

  “Yeah, but maybe they ain’t all together anymore,” Rocklin said. “Anyway, the boss didn’t order us to track those bushwhackers down and shoot it out with ’em. He just wants us to find out where they came from.”

  Another cowboy snorted. “Shoot, we know that already! They were Malone’s men!”

  Diana spoke up. “I had the same conversation with Uncle Owen. He wants proof.”

  That ended the discussion. The members of the group went back to studying the ground under the trees. They found a number of cartridges that had been ejected from Winchesters, as well as the butts of a few quirlies, but nothing else. Certainly nothing that would positively identify the men who had opened fire on the ranch headquarters.

  The Kid saw where the tracks led away from the trees. The trail ran straight south toward the Severn River. As Rocklin had predicted, when the gunmen fled, they didn’t try to cover their tracks. All they’d been interested in was putting some distance between themselves and Diamondback.

  As the riders set out to follow the trail, The Kid asked Rocklin, “Where’s Malone’s spread located?”

  “Well south of the river, mostly along the hills that border the valley on that side. But one of the ranches he picked up cheap when the owner wanted to sell out was called the Arrowhead, because of the way it’s shaped. That range comes to a point at the river itself, and the wedge it forms extends across the road. That’s why Malone got the idea he could dictate who comes and who goes in the valley. About a quarter mile of the main trail through Rattlesnake Valley cuts through his range.”

  The Kid shook his head. “That won’t stand up legally…but I suppose Malone isn’t the sort of man who worries too much about things like that, is he?”

  “You got that right, Morgan. Malone don’t care about nothin’ except gettin’ what he wants.”

  As Rocklin spoke, his eyes cut over toward Diana, who was riding on his other side. The Kid noticed that glance and remembered what Diana had said about Malone wanting to marry her as part of his plan to get revenge on her uncle. Obviously Rocklin knew about that, and the rest of the men probably did, too. Malone didn’t strike The Kid as the sort of hombre who would bother to keep his plans a deep, dark secret.

  They followed the tracks to the river. There was no ford there, but from the looks of it, the fleeing bushwhackers had put their horses into the water and made the animals swim across.

  “It ain’t far to the ford,” Rocklin said. “It’s only about half a mile downstream. We’ll cross down yonder, then double back to pick up the trail.”

  “It would save time to swim the horses across here,” Diana pointed out.

  Rocklin nodded. “Yes’m, it would, but it’d be more dangerous, too.”

  “What would you do if I wasn’t along?” Diana demanded. “Would you still go downstream to the ford? Or are you just trying to protect me?”

  Rocklin looked uncomfortable, so The Kid suspected he knew what the foreman’s answer was. As Rocklin hesitated, The Kid spoke up.

  “It’s not like we’re hot on their trail,” he said. “They came through here more than twelve hours ago. Taking an extra half hour to cross where it’s safer won’t have any effect on the tracks.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Diana said, “but I don’t like being coddled.”

  “I think we’ve all got that idea,” The Kid said, ignoring the angry glare she gave him in return. He didn’t work for her, so he could afford to speak his mind.

  The riders turned and headed downstream along the grassy riverbank. They had only gone about fifty yards when a pair of sharp cracks sounded. The Kid recognized them instantly as rifle shots, even as he heard the ugly sound of lead smacking into flesh, followed hard by grunts of pain.

  The shots had come from the other side of the river. As the Diamondback hands began to shout, The Kid wheeled his horse and pulled the Winchester from its sheath. Another shot blasted from a line of trees across the river, and this time a cowboy’s hat leaped from his head as a bullet ventilated it. The Kid whipped the rifle to his shoulder. He sprayed lead into the trees five times, firing as fast as he could work the Winchester’s lever.

  The Kid’s reaction was the swiftest, but as the shots from his rifle rolled out, the other members of the group began to fight back. Six-shooters blasted, and some of the men got their rifles into play, as well.

  Even in the middle of the fight, The Kid’s brain was working. He suspected that the bushwhackers from the night before had left a couple of men behind to see if anyone tried to follow their trail. That was the only explanation that made any sense.

  After a few loud, frantic moments, Sam Rocklin bellowed, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”

  The Kid knew why Rocklin issued that order. He hadn’t heard any more shots from across the river for several seconds. It was likely that the two men over there had taken a few potshots, then fled. Unless, of course, the speedy response from The Kid and his companions had tagged the bushwhackers.

  Rocklin waved his men toward some nearby rocks. “Take cover and keep your heads down until I see what’s over there!” he ordered. “Tend to the fellas who got hit!”

  The Kid saw two men sagging in their saddles. They’d been wounded in the opening volley, and while neither man had been knocked off his horse, they could still be seriously injured.

  As Rocklin put his horse into the water, Diana tried to follow him. The Kid moved so that his buckskin blocked her.

  “Get in the rocks with the others,” he told her. “I’ll go with Rocklin.”

  “Damn it, you can’t order me around!” she blazed at him.

  He leaned over in the saddle and jerked her reins out of her hands. “I’ll take you in there and make you stay,” he threatened, “but if I do that, Rocklin may have to face those bushwhackers alone.”

  She glared at him for a second, then burst out, “Oh, all right, blast it! But I’m not going to forget this, Kid.”

  He didn’t let go of the reins. “Word of honor you’ll get behind those rocks?”

  “Word of honor,” Diana grated out.

  The Kid nodded and released her reins. He swung the buckskin around and heeled the horse into motion. The buckskin lunged into the river, and in a moment the water was deep enough so that he had to start swimming.

  Because he believed the men left behind by the bushwhackers had fled, The Kid didn’t expect any more shots to come from the trees. But he couldn’t keep from steeling his muscles for the impact of a bullet anyway as he followed Rocklin across the river.

  When they reached the far side of the stream, the horses splashed up the bank. Rocklin was in front, but The Kid urged the buckskin alongside the ramrod’s mount. They rode about twenty feet apart as they entered the trees. The Kid guided his horse with his knees and held the Winchester in both hands, ready to fire at a second’s notice.

  His keen eyes searched the sun-dappled shadows under the trees but saw no signs of movement. Once again, the shooting had driven off any birds or small animals, so the area was quiet except for the thudding of hoofbeats as The Kid and Rocklin rode around. After several minutes, Rocklin called, “They must’ve lit a shuck. They ain’t here no more.”

  “That’s what it looks like to me, too,” The Kid agreed.

  Rocklin dismounted to take a closer look at the ground. The Kid followed suit. Rocklin found some tracks and pointed at them, saying, “Look here. I recognize the big nick on that horseshoe. It belongs to one of the hosses we been trailin’.”

  The Kid nodded. “Proof that these two bushwhackers were part of the same bunch.”

  “I never doubted that.”

  “Neither did I, but as Captain Starbird pointed out, it’s good to have proof.” The Kid used the barrel of his rifle to push aside some brush and we
nt on, “Look at this, Sam.”

  Rocklin leaned over and craned his neck to see what The Kid was talking about. He grunted as he saw the splash of dark red blood on the ground.

  “Reckon we must’ve winged one of the skalley-hooters.”

  The Kid said, “Yes, and from the looks of that blood, it might’ve been a serious injury. We know we did some damage, anyway.”

  “It ain’t enough,” Rocklin replied grimly. “It ain’t gonna be enough until Malone and his whole crew of gun-wolves are dead.”

  “Is that what you want? An all-out war?”

  Rocklin glared. “Malone called the tune at this here ball. He can damn well dance to it.”

  The Kid couldn’t argue with that. The results of a man’s actions were on his own head. Trying to make out that a person wasn’t responsible for what he or she did in life was just crazy as far as The Kid was concerned.

  Two sets of hoofprints led away from the trees, headed south. That came as no surprise to The Kid. He and Rocklin stepped out of the trees onto the bank and waved their rifles over their heads, knowing that the men forted up in the rocks would see them. A moment later, Diana and one of the Diamondback hands emerged from the rocks.

  Rocklin cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted across the stream, “They’re gone! Go on down to the ford and meet us there!”

  The cowhand called back, “Junior Pettigrew’s hurt pretty bad, Sam, and Ned Lunsford’s got a bullet hole in his leg!”

  “Can Ned ride?”

  “Yeah, I expect he can!”

  “Put Junior on his horse, and Ned can take him back to the ranch!” Rocklin ordered.

  The cowboy nodded and waved a hand to indicate that he understood. He and Diana disappeared back into the rocks. The Kid and Rocklin mounted up but waited on the riverbank until the entire group came in sight again. The two wounded men, riding double, started back toward Diamondback. Diana and the other two punchers followed the north bank of the Severn toward the ford.

  “There are only five of us now,” Rocklin pointed out as he and The Kid started along the south bank. “The odds against us if we run into more trouble just got a mite higher. That damn pirate’s whittlin’ us down.”