Between Hell and Texas
His words cut short as a rifle shot exploded from a ridgeline above them. The shot ricocheted off a rock and whined upward an inch from Jewel Higgs’s ear. “Jesus!” Higgs shouted. His horse spooked and reared high as he ducked away from the whistling bullet.
Joe Poole snatched for his pistol with one hand as he tried to settle his horse with his other. Above them, a succession of rifle shots exploded, kicking up dirt and loose rock around the hooves of the already spooked horses.
“Run for it!” screamed Eddie Grafe. “They’ve got us surrounded!”
Twenty yards above the trail, Cray Dawson stood up, watching the gunmen race their terrified horses along the widening trail toward Somos Santos. Dust billowed high in their wake. Dawson raised his rifle to his shoulder….
HELL AND
TEXAS
SIGNET
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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,
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First Printing, March 2004
Copyright © Ralph Cotton, 2004
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-101-65084-4
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCAREGISTRADA
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For Mary Lynn…
of course
.
PART 1
Cray Dawson had taken a partial load of buckshot in the back of his shoulder the day he and Lawrence Shaw killed Barton Talbert and his gang on the streets of Brakett Flats. But the pellets were small and it only took the town doctor a few minutes to remove them with a pair of long tweezers and the point of a sharp surgery blade. Within three days both Dawson and Shaw stepped up into their saddles, ready to ride away. The third man who had stood with them in the Talbert shootout, a young undertaker by the name of Jedson Caldwell, had already left town, headed for New Orleans he’d said. Lawrence Shaw hadn’t made it clear where he might be headed, but for Dawson the decision came easy. He’d said all along that once the Talbert Gang had been taken down he would head back home. Home being Somos Santos, Texas.
“Tell anybody who needs to know that it’ll be a while before I get back there,” said Lawrence Shaw.
“I’ll tell her,” said Dawson, giving Shaw a look. He knew Shaw was referring to Carmelita, the sister of Shaw’s dead wife, Rosa.
“She needs to go on back to her people,” said Shaw.
“I’ll tell her that too,” said Dawson.
“Obliged. Watch your backside, Pard,” Lawrence Shaw told him, the two of them stepping their mounts back from the hitch rail. “You’re going to find life a little different now that you’ve gained a reputation as a big gun.” Shaw gave him a flat smile.
“I’m not a
big gun
,” said Dawson. “Gunfighting’s over for me. All I want is a front porch facing south.” He touched his fingers to his hat brim, watching Lawrence Shaw do the same, Shaw having to raise his arm slightly from a sling to do it.
“We’ll see,
amigo
,” Shaw said in parting. “Reputations are like guns; they’re easier to pick up than they are to put down.” Then he raised a glance to the southwest, where a black cloud boiled low on the distant horizon. “Got a storm coming…
un tormenta Mexicana
.”
“It’ll pass,” said Dawson. “
Adios
, Shaw.”
But for the rest of the day the storm pounded Dawson as he made his way toward the Quemado Valley, taking higher paths above rising creeks and run-off water. At a railroad settlement he stopped in the late afternoon and took dry shelter with a six-man survey crew that’d been mapping a route through the hillsides. After introducing himself to the surveyors he sat down with them and ate a plate of beans and salt pork. Then he sipped a steaming cup of coffee, feeling their questioning eyes upon him until finally he asked the leader, a fellow from Ohio named Robert Daniels, “Is there something on your mind, Mister Daniels?”
Daniels looked stunned at first, but then he let out a breath and said with a red face, “Well, yes, there is, if you don’t mind me asking. Are you the Crayton Dawson who had the shootout with the Talberts in Brakett Flats?”
It had already started, Dawson reminded himself. “Yes, I am,” he said reluctantly, going back to the coffee; raising it to his lips hoping the questions would stop there. But he knew that wouldn’t be the case.
“My goodness, Mister Dawson!” said Daniels, pulling his wire-rim spectacles down the bridge of his nose, taking a closer look at Dawson above the thick lenses. “It certainly is an honor meeting you…we heard all about the fight. And we heard how you had also shot three gunmen over in Turkey Creek!”
Dawson said quietly, “Two of those men I shot in Turkey Creek weren’t involved in the gunplay. One got shot by a secondhand bullet, the other was a pard of his who drew on me. I wish I hadn’t shot him. But I can’t change it.”
“Well,” said Daniels, as if he hadn’t heard a word about the particulars surrounding the shooting, “it takes nerves of iron to face even
one
man with a gun, I’m sure, let alone
two or three
!” He nodded at the other surveyors for support.
They nodded in agreement. One asked, “What was it like standing side by side with Fast Larry Shaw?”
“I’d known Shaw for years,” said Dawson. “We grew up together in Somos Santos, rode herd together soon as we were big enough to lift a rope. So I reckon I never gave it much thought, riding with him this time.”
“My goodness,” said Daniels, repeating himself, “you rode a vengeance trail with the fastest gun alive and thought nothing of it! That in itself says a lot about you. You are quite a gunman, sir, and I salute you. Indeed, we all salute you, right fellows?”