Golden Riders (12 page)

Sam kept the horses pounding straight at her across the sand. As he drew closer, he let go of the lead rope to the two horses and leaned off low to the side. On his way past her, he swept her up across his lap and held her there. She kicked and screamed and lashed out at him with her fists, managing only to hit him on his leg.

“Easy,
Miss Lindsey
, easy,” Sam called out. “I'm Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack. Your brother Toby sent me. I'm here to help.”

Hearing her name, hearing her brother's name, she settled a little and looked up at the Ranger. Seeing the badge on his chest she settled the rest of the way. Tears filled her eyes.

“Toby sent you?” she said.

“Yes, ma'am, he did,” the Ranger said. He lifted her
and sat her more securely onto his lap as he brought the buckskin to a halt.

“He's—he's all right then?” she asked, her eyes already full of tears.

“He's on the trail behind me,” Sam said. As he spoke he raised a canteen from his saddle horn. He uncapped it and held it to her lips. She drank thirstily. “Now that I've got you, we can ride back and join him.” He pulled the canteen away and capped it.

Lindsey cried against his chest as Sam turned the buckskin and rode over and gathered the lead rope to the other two horses.

“You just rest a spell,” he said quietly. “Everything's all right.”

When he'd gathered the horses and she'd collected herself and stopped crying, Sam nodded at the dried blood on her hands, the front of her dress.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes, I am . . . now,” she said, sniffling. “This is not my blood. Are you the lawman they were waiting to ambush at the water hole?”

“That would be my guess,” Sam said. “Whose blood is it?”

“A gunman they call Joey Rose,” she said. “He was going back to look for my brother, but I stopped him.”

“Did you kill him?” Sam asked gravely, again noting all the dried blood.

“No,” she said. “I meant to, but he drew his gun. I barely got away alive.” She paused and took on a troubled look just thinking about the morning's events.

“We'll talk about it later,” Sam said. He looked her up and down. “You've had a rough morning. Are you able to ride?”

“Yes, I can ride,” she said.

“Good,” said Sam, before she'd hardly gotten the words out of her mouth. “Here's a horse for you.” He scooted back off his saddle and slipped expertly over from the back of the buckskin onto the paint.

“There,” he said, “you even get a saddle.” He looped a length of the lead rope into a makeshift hackamore and leaned forward and slipped it onto the paint's head and muzzle.

Lindsey adjusted herself in the saddle, her ragged dress gathered above her skinned knees.

“All set, Ranger Burrack,” she said.

“Then let's go find Toby,” he said, sitting bareback on the big paint beside her. “He'll be glad to see you.”

Toby Delmar spotted his sister and the Ranger when the two had ridden their horses as far as the winding hill paths would allow. They had stepped down from the horses' backs and led the three animals around a large boulder when Toby saw them and stood up in the cover of a downed juniper.

“Sis, over here,” he called out to Lindsey, limping forward, his hand to the bandanna covering his belly wound.

Sam reached a hand out in time and took the buckskin's reins as Lindsey pitched them to him and ran to her brother. The two met with a hug in spite of their wounded, battered conditions. Sam stood watching, glad he'd been able to help. Yet, now that these two were together, both of them alive, reasonably well after the situation they'd been through, he realized their welfare would have to come first. He had to attend to getting them safely off the desert floor and find them help and shelter before turning his attention back to Braxton Kane and his Golden Riders.

So be it. . . .

That was the job, he reminded himself. Besides, in a strange roundabout way, these two had kept him from facing an ambush. He nodded to himself, watching the reunited twins. When they turned and walked back to him he was stricken by how much they looked alike regardless of their difference in gender.

“Ranger Burrack,” Toby said gratefully, “you did it. You found my sister and brought her back, unharmed.” He smiled and hugged his sister on his good side.

“And you found Toby,” Lindsey put in, gesturing toward her brother's bloodstained side. “You saved his life.” She smiled, tearfully, and swung an arm toward the mule, who stood to the side chewing on dry wild grass. “You even saved Dan.”

“We can never thank you enough,” Toby said.

Sam touched his hat brim, a little embarrassed, not accustomed to hearing thanks from anyone, save for perhaps some town sheriff when he'd saved the town the cost of a hanging, by shooting an outlaw dead in the street.

“You're both very welcome,” he said. “Now we need to get over this hill—get back to the water hole and get your wagon.”

The two nodded in agreement.

“Are you going to be able to ride?” Lindsey asked her brother, noting his wounded lower belly.

“Sis, I've been riding,” Toby replied. “The Ranger says this ricochet sliced through me clean, never hit anything.”

Lindsey looked at Sam as if for affirmation.

“It appears so,” Sam said. “Had it hit anything vital
we'd have known before now. He's been riding the mule on these hill paths all day.”

Lindsey looked relieved.

“All the same,” Sam added, “we need to get him to Alto Cresta and have a doctor look him over.”

“Yes,” Lindsey said nodding.

“These men you're after, Ranger,” said Toby. “Will they get away now, while you ride with us to Alto Cresta?”

“No, they won't,” Sam said, “not for long anyway. I'll catch up to them. I've been tracking them for a while. I have an idea where they're headed.”

“I don't want us holding you back,” Toby said.

“You're not,” Sam said. “I've got a notion Alto Cresta is in the direction they're headed.”

“So, you might catch up to them there?” Toby said.

“That's possible,” Sam said. He saw something at work in the young man's mind.

“And you'll take them prisoner, right there in the street?” he asked.

“Prisoner . . . ?”
said Sam. “That's not likely. I'll give them a chance to turn themselves in. But the kind of men I hunt usually don't choose to go to prison.” He paused, then said, “Likely as not these men would rather die.”

“Or else kill you?” Toby offered.

“Toby Edward Delmar!” Lindsey said, aghast by her brother's words. “Don't say such a thing as that.” She gave Sam an apologetic look.

“That's all right,” said Sam, “it's true. It's not some fact I'm unaware of.”

“Then—then,
you
will kill
them
. . . .” Toby said,
seeing they had eliminated any other option. “That is what lawmen do, if need be?”

“That is the calling,” Sam said. He gave the appearance of wanting to dismiss the matter.

Lindsey started to say something more, but Toby cut her off.

“Come, sit down, Sis,” he said. “Rest a few minutes before we go get the wagon.” He looked at Sam and asked, “Is that all right, just for a minute or two?”

“Yes,” Sam said, “rest a few minutes.” He led the horses away from the twins and stopped and looked out across the desert floor. He saw the body of the wolf stretched out in the sand. The big ferocious animal was now only a black speck in the wavering heat from where he stood.
Or else kill you,
he recounted the twin saying only a moment ago.

“That is the calling . . . ,” he repeated quietly, this time to himself. He turned his eyes from the body of the wolf and looked off along the distant hill line in the direction of Alto Cresta.

It was close to midnight when Chris Weidel sprang up on his blanket. Colt in hand he looked all around the darkened campsite, a bed of orange glowing coals smoldering inside a wide circle of stones. No sooner than he'd sprung up, the sound of the Colt cocking caused Roy Mangett to do the same on the other side of the glowing coals.

“What the hell, Chris?” Mangett said in a harsh whisper. He jerked his Colt from its holster lying beside
him. He fanned it back and forth, cocked, staring into the dark shadows of boulder and rock that blocked out the purple moonlight.

“I heard something,” Weidel whispered in the same tone. “Heard it plain as day. A horse I believe. . . .”

The two sat listening on their blankets. After a moment Mangett stood up, flipping his blanket aside.

“I'm going to check around,” he whispered.

Weidel also stood up, picking up his rifle that lay along his side.

“I've got you covered,” he said quietly, a gun in either hand.

As Mangett started across the campsite into the darkness, a breaking of brush resounded out among the rocks. Turning toward the sound with their guns drawn, they saw Joey Rose's horse step into the campsite and stand looking at them. Joey Rose lay slumped on the horse's back, his bloody face lying forward on its neck, covered with blood.

“Holy Jim and Gilbert,” said Weidel, “it's Rose! Look at his face.” Blood had streaked down the horse's withers and dried there, thick and black all the way to its knee.

“Please . . . ,” Rose said in a pained voice. “I'm dried here.”

“Damn,” said Weidel, seeing strands of the horse's mane matted to Rose's face. “He's ruint!”

“Help me get him down,” said Mangett, lowering his Colt, shoving it down in the waist of his trousers.

“This poor son of a bitch. We've got to put him out
of his misery,” said Weidel. He stepped around and helped Mangett pull strands of mane from the deep slash wounds on Rose's face.

Rose tightened at the sound of Weidel's suggestion.

“Shut up, Chris,” said Mangett. “Help me get him unstuck.” To Rose he said, “Take it easy, Joey. Nobody's putting you out of your misery.”

“I'm cut . . . all to hell, Roy,” Rose groaned.

“Yes, I'd say you are,” Mangett said.

“Which one did this to you, pal?” Weidel said with very little sympathy. “Don't tell us that skinny gal, or you'll never hear the end of it.” He gave a dark chuckle.

Rose didn't reply.

The two gunmen lowered him from the horse and carried him over beside the glowing coals. Loose, blood-matted mane hair hung from his face like some strange and scraggly beard.

“I—I checked my belly,” Rose said in a strained distorted voice. “I'm . . . not hanging out nowhere.”

“Lucky you,” Weidel quipped darkly.

“Am I . . . ?” Rose asked, uncertain.

Laying the wounded Rose on the ground, Mangett pulled the front of his shredded shirt open and peeled it loose from the dried blood covering his chest, his belly. As he looked Rose over good, he spoke to Weidel over his shoulder.

“Stoke up the fire, get his bedroll down here,” he said. “Get your canteen from your saddle.”

“Why
my canteen
, Roy?”

Mangett gave him a scathing look.

“Because I'll kill you if you touch mine,” he said flatly. When Weidel turned to Rose's horse without another word on the matter, Mangett called out to him, “There's a Captain Marcy emergency kit in my saddlebags somewhere. Get it.”

“Needle . . . ?” Rose managed to say.

“Yes, a needle, Joey,” said Mangett. “You need some tucking in and closing up here and there.”

“I'm not . . . hanging out nowhere am I?” Rose asked again, this time running a blood-crusted hand over his belly, feeling the slick, fresh blood atop older dried layers.

“No, Joey, all your guts are where they should be,” Mangett said. Looking more closely at the young outlaw's carved-up face in the dim light of the glowing coals, he added, “But your chin's hanging half over on your jaw.”

Joey sobbed and groaned at the news.

“You'd best hope he can sew it on, Joey boy,” Weidel said in a taunting voice, getting the items from Mangett's saddlebags. “If he can't he'll have to cut it off.” He gave his dark chuckle. “Think how that's going to look.”

Rose groaned again.

“Don't listen to him, Joey,” said Mangett. He looked around at Weidel. “Chris, enough's enough. Get the fire stoked and let's put this poor bastard's face stitched back together—leastwise till we can take him to town.”

“Whatever you say, Roy,” said Weidel, pitching Rose's bedroll onto the ground beside him. “I'll get the
fire stoked up good and bright. I want to see every bit of this.” He pitched the emergency tin and the canteen down next to the bedroll.

Mangett gave him a harsh look.

“What?” said Weidel. “You never know, I might have to do the same thing someday.”

“Spread his bedroll out. Let's get him on it,” Mangett said looking away from him. “Find a strong piece of wood for him to bite down on.”

“Hear that, Joey boy,” said Weidel. “I'm going to get you a piece of wood to bite on.” He grinned cruelly. “Meaning, this is going to hurt like a sumbitch.”

At a corner table in Chavez's Cantina, Tillman and Foz Garlet sat sipping rye whiskey while their brother, Prew, Cutthroat Teddy Bonsell and Jake Cleary stood at the bar talking with a Golden Rider named Ed Dorsey. The four looked over at Foz and Tillman, whose faces had taken on a greenish pallor ever since they'd left Poco Fuega. Their eyes were still bloodshot, brown and watery. Their eyebrows and all other facial hair were gone owing to the blast set off by the Bluebird in Midland Settlement. The Bluebird stood out on the boardwalk staring onto the dusty street, his arms folded across his chest. Behind the bar, Bruno Chavez stood watching, listening, pouring rye, keeping their shot glasses filled.

“Looks like you Garlet boys have rode a hard trail getting here,” said Dorsey, having heard about their jail break, the loaded mescal, and the Ranger being on their trail. He raised his shot glass to his lips. “Nothing
I can do about those two being mescal-poisoned, but as far as the Ranger, if Roy Mangett and his three gunnies don't stop him back there”—he jerked his head toward the desert hills—“we'll stop his clock right here if he shows his face.” He set his empty shot glass down hard on the bar top. Chavez filled it.

“Mangett and his pals are good,” Prew said with shrug. “So, I've got a feeling the Ranger is already dead in the sand. My brothers and I are riding on to Kane's hideout.” He looked at Cutthroat Teddy and Jake Cleary. “What about you two, Bonsell?” he asked.

“I've got to go shake the snake,” Bonsell said. He turned toward the rear door, but answered on his way, “Oh, we're going to stick here a while longer, just in case Mangett and his pals don't take care of the Ranger.”

“Come to think of it I've got to shake the snake myself,” said Dorsey. He shoved his shot glass forward; Chavez filled it as he followed Bonsell out back to the jakes.

Cleary started to follow the other two, but he stopped and stayed at the bar when Prew directed the conversation to him.

“That's what you think Brax would want you and Bonsell to do, wait here?” he asked Cleary.

Cleary shrugged.

“Once he hears about his brother being dead he might come riding this way himself, just to make sure the Ranger's dead. I would if it was my brother,” Cleary said. “We'll stick here in case he does.”

Prew nodded and tossed back his shot of rye. Chavez refilled his glass.

Bonsell and Dorsey walked back through the rear door and reclaimed their places at the bar. Bonsell took another shot of rye and considered things for a moment. The others looked at him as he let out a breath and drummed his fingers on the bar.

“This is a bad time to be having all this trouble,” he said. “Brax losing his brother, your brothers poisoning themselves on loaded mescal. All of it while we're getting ready to pull off a big job.”

“How big a job, you suppose?” Ed Dorsey asked. He raised his glass and he asked.

“
Awfully
big, I figure,” Prew Garlet put in. He nodded toward the boardwalk out front. “That's why Brax has me bringing the Bluebird to him.”

“That's the Bluebird . . . ?” Ed Dorsey looked around toward the front door, then back to Prew.

“Yep,” said Prew.

“I've heard of him,” said Dorsey. “He's said to be the best there is at blowing things up.”

“So they say,” said Prew. “I don't mind saying I'll be glad to get rid of him, let Brax deal with him.”