Rawhide Flat

by Ralph Compton

  Thrown forward, Crane tried to right himself, failed, and plunged onto his face, the gunman’s body on top of him. As he fell, the marshal’s wrist hit the edge of a step and his gun thudded away from him.

  Swearing, Crane kicked free of the body and struggled to his feet.

  The gas lamps in the hotel foyer had not been extinguished by the kidnappers and the marshal hunted around, found his Colt and lunged for the door.

  Behind him voices were raised in alarm.

  A door slammed. A woman screamed.

  He was through the door and outside.

  Under a moon that floated in the sky like a white flower, four riders were galloping north along the street, kicking up a screen of dust.

  Crane lifted his gun, but did not fire. Sarah was with them. He dared not risk hitting the girl.

  Suddenly Paul Masterson was beside him, his gun drawn. Like Crane he was wearing only his underwear and hat.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “They took Sarah.”

  “Stark?”

  “Probably. There’s one of them inside.”

  “Let’s get after them, Gus.”

  “We’d never find them in the dark. I’ll track them at first light.”

  Crane turned and stepped back into the hotel and Masterson followed.

  Several hotel guests and the manager, a small, bald, perpetually dyspeptic man, saw Crane and said, “He’s dead, Marshal.”

  Crane pushed the crowd aside. The dead man lay on his back, his eyes wide-open, still stunned by the fact of his dying.

  “I think I only winged him with my first shot,” Crane said with a professional gunfighter’s detachment. “But he rode my second bullet into hell. Recognize him?”

  Masterson nodded. “Yeah, that’s Eli Stark, the youngest of Reuben’s boys, and his favorite.” Blue gaslight flickered on the steely angles of the sheriff’s face. “Now the old man will give you no rest.”

  Crane smiled. “Good, then he’ll come to me.”

  His eyes moved to the hotel manager. “I guess you’d better get rid of that.”

  The little man gulped, then nodded. He rushed out the door to wake the undertaker as though all the devils of hell were on his heels.

  The marshal looked around him at the circle of faces. Half a dozen men and a couple of women were looking at him in horrified fascination, as the ordinary citizens of ancient Rome must have once stared at a successful gladiator.

  Gun violence was rare in the Old West; named gunfighters rarer. Shooting scrapes were mostly confined to saloons and dance halls where armed men gathered and festering enmities, real or imagined, fueled by raw whiskey, made them fighting drunk.

  Violence seldom affected the lives of respectable citizens like those around Crane who were probably seeing a gunshot man for the first time and the terrible effect of the .45 caliber bullet on the human body.

  To them, the man who had pulled the trigger was something less than human, a dangerous, killing animal to be shunned and avoided at all cost.

  Crane smelled the stench of their fear and saw the dread in their eyes, and the dark angel enfolded him in its wings and embraced him.

  His Colt hanging by his side, he said with flat emotion, “Go back to bed, all of you.”

  The hotel guests stared at him, uncomprehending, statues with eyes that did not see.

  Depression drifting through him like black smoke, Crane glanced around, then pushed through the crowd. A tall man wearing only long johns and a battered hat, he climbed the stairs slowly, feeling lonelier than he’d ever felt in his life.

  In his mind he saw Sarah.

  Laughing.

  Face aglow, excited by her new clothes.

  Giggling like a child at the perceived luxury of her hotel room.

  But now she’d be terrified, riding through darkness with an old man who smelled of lust and hate.

  Crane stepped into his room and threw himself on the bed.

  Would the light of morning never come?

  Crane saddled his horse while the night had yet to surrender to the dawn.

  The air was still cooled by starlight and an errant wind prowled through the stable, sniffing in every stall and corner.

  Once in the saddle, the marshal stopped outside the barn doors and, like a chess player, thought out his next moves.

  Stark had headed north, but Crane was sure the old man would have looped around town and headed for his hideout in Sunrise Canyon. His followers were there and he’d be protected.

  Waiting for the dark to shade into light, Crane built a smoke. He was wishful for coffee but had none— the pot and a sack of Arbuckle were in his saddlebags. Once he was sure of Stark’s intentions he would stop and light a fire.

  He smoked one cigarette, then another.

  The violet night turned gray with age and the sky took on a rosy hue to the east. Somewhere a rooster welcomed the dawn and the little calico cat padded out of the stable, stretched, its claws extended, then sat looking up at him with iridescent eyes.

  Crane kneed the buckskin into motion and rode north, past the railroad station. Almost immediately he picked up the tracks of Stark’s horses. The old man and his sons had stayed close to the rails for about a mile, then headed east, as the marshal had suspected they would.

  After another mile, Stark had swung south, giving Rawhide Flat a wide berth.

  Although Crane lost it a few times on rocky ground, Stark’s trail was easy to follow, heading straight as an arrow to the south.

  There was no question of playing catch-up. The old man was probably in the canyon by now. As to what was happening to Sarah, Crane refused to think about it. That would only sprinkle salt on an open wound.

  The coffee craving nagging at him, the marshal drew rein when Mineral Peak came in sight, unveiled by the brightening morning. He looked around him at the wakening land, then headed toward a clump of cottonwoods and willows that suggested a creek.

  The creek was narrow, no more than a stream, and the trees were stunted and few. But there was water and wood enough, and that was all Crane needed.

  He loosened the cinch on the buckskin and let the horse graze before building a hatful of fire.

  When the coffee boiled the marshal poured himself a cup and then fetched up to the trunk of a cottonwood. His back against the trunk, he lit a cigarette and tried to let the peace and beauty of the day lift the melancholy that dwelled inside him like a malignant spirit.

  Crane’s depression was profound, the sort that makes a man look at a beautiful face and see only a grinning skull. He was aware that his melancholy was a form of self-pity that ate at his soul and destroyed his ability to construct a future.

  Now he tried desperately to shake it off, recalling that for him, depression was only a short step from a killing rage that in the past had caused him to destroy men who should still be alive.

  What was the kid’s name in Abilene that summer?

  He couldn’t remember.

  But he could and should have walked away from it.

  Everybody in the saloon knew Augustus Crane had nothing to prove and he could have stepped away with his honor and reputation intact. The kid, with his tied-down guns and his sneer, would’ve been left to stand there looking flat-footed and foolish.

  But Crane didn’t.

  Fired up with whiskey, the blackness riding him, he’d answered the kid’s boneheaded challenge with one of his own.

  The kid drew and died.

  That was three years ago, or was it four? No matter, Crane hadn’t ever drunk whiskey in a saloon since, nor would he ever again.

  The coffee was hot and bitter, the tobacco harsh on his tongue. He lifted his head and glanced up at the cottonwood. He thought the leaves looked like Irish lace adorning the blue silk dress of the sky.

  A blue dress . . .

  What was happening to Sarah?

  Thinking about the girl dragged Crane out of his despondency. Concern for another drives a man into action, no
t depression, and the marshal felt a breeze as the dark angel’s wings left him. And folded.

  Rising to his feet, Crane poured himself another cup of coffee, then stood, looking into the hazy distance of the day.

  In a land where all was still, any movement caught the eye. It looked like a black dot moving across the plain, disappearing, then showing again as it headed north between the low hills.

  Crane laid his cup at his feet and retrieved his field glasses from his saddlebags. He focused and the far-off country rushed up to meet him.

  A buggy carrying two nuns was traveling slowly, drawn at a walking pace by a single horse. Crane could not make out the faces of the sisters, but he knew where they were going.

  They were headed for Sunrise Pass . . . and Reuben Stark.

  Chapter 19

  Crane lowered the glasses, his face troubled.

  Reuben Stark believed, or so he told his followers, that the Archangel Michael would wreak a terrible vengeance on the sinful Comstock.

  Nuns were also in the business of ending the careers of the ungodly. Were the two joining forces to rid Nevada of evil when the trumpet of doom sounded?

  It was a possibility, an unpalatable one certainly, but there was an eerie, diabolical logic to it.

  Crane threw the last of the coffee on the fire, then stepped into the saddle.

  There was one way to find out: talk to the nuns.

  Skirting the lower reaches of El Dorado Canyon, Crane swung north, keeping Mineral Peak to his right. The rolling country ahead of him was empty and he saw no sign of the nuns.

  The morning was hot, the sun well up in the sky, and a sheen of sweat slicked the marshal’s face. Creaking saddle leather and the steady fall of the buckskin’s hooves were the only sound, and the silence embraced Crane like a friend.

  It was still early in the summer and the grass was green, rainbows of wildflowers growing in profusion everywhere, reminding those who had the eyes to look that spring was writing a fresh new chapter in the book of Genesis.

  But beautiful though it is, nature is indifferent and makes no distinction between good and evil. Some instinct told Crane to move out from the open and ride nearer to the Pine Nut foothills.

  Closer to the arroyos and sheltering gullies, he felt more at ease, but he rode with the Henry across his saddle, his eyes restlessly scanning the land ahead.

  The singing was borne to him on the wind.

  Because of the crystalline clarity of the morning, the words and tune of the hymn were plain to hear, long before he saw the singers.

  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

  He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

  He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;

  His truth is marching on.

  Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

  Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

  Stunned, the marshal drew rein.

  It seemed that hundreds of voices were raised loudly in song, men, women and children, and in the distance a great dust cloud rose into the air, coming at Crane like the billowing sails of a mighty war fleet.

  He reached behind him for the glasses and searched the beckoning distance.

  Wagons, three or four abreast, were emerging from the drifting dust, a dozen horsemen riding point.

  As Crane looked, more and more wagons appeared, many of them prairie schooners with canvas tops, a sight that hadn’t been seen in the West since the great migrations of thirty years before.

  The singing was louder now and to the marshal it seemed that an entire people was on the move, grinding across the land like locusts, determined and unstoppable.

  Awed by the sight and made uneasy by their sheer numbers, Crane swung his horse into a narrow arroyo. He stepped out of the saddle, then slapped the buckskin on the rump, sending the animal trotting deeper into the gulch.

  The walls of the arroyo were fairly steep, but clumps of brush and bunchgrass made climbing easy and Crane scaled to the top, then lay flat on his belly. His clothing was neutral in color and his body would fade into the grass around him.

  He raised the glasses to his eyes.

  The wagons were much closer, the singing very loud. He scanned the point riders. Reuben Stark rode in front, flanked by his sons and a dozen other riders.

  There was no sign of Sarah.

  Crane made an instant decision. He had come here for Stark and to free the girl and that’s what he would do. He was one man against many, but he had it to do.

  He began to ease back from the ridge but stopped when something cold and hard shoved into the back of his head.

  “Stay right where you’re at, Marshal,” a man’s voice ordered. “Or I’ll scatter your brains.”

  “I knew you’d be up to some damned tomfoolery, Gus. I wonder that you’ve lived this long.”

  Without turning Crane asked, “You planning to gun me, Paul?”

  “Nah, I’m saving your life. If I’d let you ride out there and brace Stark, you’d already be lying dead on the grass. He’s got a dozen men with him, for God’s sake.”

  “You followed me from Rawhide Flat?”

  “An easy thing to do, Gus. You build fires, send up smoke, ride out in the open, back straight, looking ahead like a cavalry colonel with a regiment behind him. A few years ago the Piute would have lifted your hair quicker’n scat.”

  “If you don’t intend to kill me, why are you doing this?”

  “Saving you from yourself, Gus. Despite everything, I like you, even if you’re none too bright.” Masterson made a shushing noise. “Now, be quiet. We got company and a lot of it.”

  Stark and his riders were passing the arroyo. All of the men carried rifles, butt down on their thighs, except for the old man who held a Bible to his chest, his head thrown back as he bellowed the hallelujah chorus of the hymn.

  Slowly, the wagons rumbled past, most of them drawn by straining ox teams. Shrouded in gray dust, the prairie schooners looked like sailing ships in a fog, seeking a foreign shore.

  It took an hour before the last wagon creaked by; then came the stragglers. First horse-drawn rigs of every kind, then worn, sunbonneted women walked beside their menfolk, who trundled two-wheeled carts loaded with odds and ends of furniture and sometimes children. Older youngsters walked with their mothers, their faces gray with dust and fatigue.

  Finally the last of Stark’s people vanished into the distance and their upraised voices gradually faded like far-off birdsong.

  Crane heard a soft thud as Masterson holstered his gun. His voice held a note of awe.

  “My God, Gus, how many of them?”

  The marshal rose to his feet. “Hundreds. Maybe a thousand.”

  “Where do you think they’re headed?”

  “I don’t know. Rawhide Flat? Could be Stark plans to take over the town.”

  “Take over what? A few saloons and stores and an empty bank? Not much profit in that.”

  Crane shook his head. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Aren’t we going to follow them?”

  “No. I saw a couple of nuns headed this way. I didn’t see them with the wagon train stragglers, so they’ve got to still be at Sunrise Pass. I’ve got some questions to ask those sisters.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like are they tied up with Stark in some way? And if they are, why? I’m sure the nuns also know where he’s headed.”

  “Mind if I tag along, keep you out of mischief?”

  “I have the strangest feeling you want to keep me in sight and under your gun.”

  Masterson smiled. “Wrong, Gus, at least for now. I haven’t quit the law yet, and I want to see Reuben Stark and his boys dead as much as you do. Call what I’m doing cooperation between branches of law enforcement or call it professional courtesy. Call it what you like, but I want Stark any way I can get him.”

  Something had to be said and no
w Crane said it. “You saved my life, you know. If you hadn’t stopped me, I’d have gone off half-cocked and got my fool head blown off.”

  “Seems like. You’re long on sand, Gus, but short on savvy.”

  “You were mistaken about one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If there had been Piute around I wouldn’t have made a fire and I wouldn’t have rode out in the open.”

  Grinning widely, Masterson said, “You’re noisy, Gus, even when you try to be quiet. The Piute would have followed the racket and got you for sure.”

  “Damn it, Masterson, but you’re an irritating man!” Crane snapped.

  The sheriff’s grin grew wider. “Listen to yourself, Gus! You’re still making noise.”

  “Let’s talk to the nuns.” Crane scowled. “And I promise, I’ll be as quiet as a snowflake on a feather.”

  Chapter 20

  Coyotes have a deep-seated fear of humans and will not venture close to a healthy man or woman.

  But they are carrion eaters when no other food is available, and they have a fine nose for the dead, animal or human.

  A hunting pair stood on a flat, rocky outcropping jutting out from a mountain slope. The animals were intent on something below them in a sandy arroyo made deeper and wider by winter rains and spring snowmelt.

  Wary, but driven by hunger, the coyotes leaped from the rock onto the low wall of the gulch, then dropped lower, vanishing from sight.

  “See that?” Masterson asked.

  Crane nodded. “Something dead or dying in there, all right.”

  “Could be a burro.”

  “Could be. Or a deer.”

  The marshal slid the Henry from the boot under his knee. “Let’s take a look-see.”

  “Up there,” Masterson said.

  Crane followed the sheriff’s lifted eyes. Buzzards were circling lazily in the polished blue sky, patiently biding their time, knowing that in nature everything comes to those who wait.