Golden Riders (25 page)

Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack is back!

Don't miss a page of action from America's most exciting Western author, Ralph Cotton.

MESA GRANDE

Available from Signet in January
2015

Mesa Grande, Arizona Territory

Sheriff David “Bronco Dave” Winters worked the ramrod on the barrel of his cap and ball Army Colt and seated the final lead ball into the cylinder. Once the gun was loaded he kept its hammer at half cock and shoved a fingertip of pasty cornmeal batter down over the front opening of each chamber. The cornmeal paste, once dried, served to keep a loose spark from igniting all the other chambers at once, causing a dangerous chain-fire and making the gun blow up in his hand. With the ball of his thumb he pressed a firing cap onto each of the gun's six iron nipples.

This being the seventh cylinder he'd loaded, he left it in the gun, spun it and lowered the gun's hammer between two chambers for safety. Then he lay the big gun aside. Hearing a dark chuckle coming from an occupied jail cell, he looked up and saw the bushy-headed prisoner, Sherman Geary, standing with his hands wrapped around the bars, grinning at him. Geary's eyes looked huge behind a pair of thick eyeglasses.

“Holy Joe and Mary, Sheriff,” Geary said. “That's
forty-two shots
you've made up. Are you expecting a war to break out in Mesa Grande? Who are you scared of?”

Sheriff Winters eyed the prisoner, his bruised forehead, his swollen right jaw. Then he turned his gaze to his battered desk. Six extra cylinders he'd just finished loading stood shiny and black, with the same daub of cornmeal batter drying in their chambers.

Scared? Ha. . . .

“There's a saying, Sherman,” the sheriff said. “‘I'd rather
have it
and not need it, than to need it and not
have it
.'”

“Yeah? Well here's another saying for you,
Bronco Dave
,” said Geary, taking on a darker tone. “‘Let a man out of his cell, and he'll whop you worse than you've ever been whopped in your life.'”

“Never heard that one,” the sheriff said, going along with him.

“You've heard it now,” said Geary. “Let me out, I'll show you how an ass-whopping works.” His eyes loomed large and swirly.

The sheriff gave a half smile and shook his head.

“Sherman, Sherman,” he said in a patient tone. “If I had a dollar for every time you got drunk and tried to
whop
me, I wouldn't need this job.” He paused, then said with a level gaze, “How's the welt across the back of your head coming along?”

Geary's hand went to the back of his sore head.

“You never hurt me none, if that's what you're thinking.”

“That's too bad,” said the sheriff. “I'll remind myself to swing a little harder next time.”

Seeing the sheriff start to stand up from his desk to go make his rounds, Geary shook his cell bars with both hands.

“Come on, let me out of here. I'm sober now. Look at me,” he said.

“I don't have to look. I can tell when you're sober,” the sheriff said. “When you stop talking about fighting me, you'll be sober. Right now you're still drunk. I don't want you falling off your horse and breaking your neck on the way home.”

“Damn it,” Geary grumbled, turning away from the bars. “I swear to God, if I don't whop you senseless there ain't a dog in Georgia.”

The sheriff just shook his head, used to it.

On the corner of his desk lay a rawhide bandoleer with six empty compartments for the extra cylinders he'd loaded. He picked up each cylinder one at a time, inspected it and placed it into its respective compartment and closed the flap and snapped it shut.

There. . . .

He hefted the bandoleer full of cylinders in his hand, looking at them. If he found himself needing a fast reload, here they were, loaded, capped, ready to fire. He would unpin the barrel from the gun's frame, slide off the empty smoking cylinder, slide on a loaded one, replace the barrel, set the pin, and he'd be back in the fight. He could do the whole thing in less than thirty seconds if he had to. Twice in his life he'd
had to
, he
reminded himself. He caught a glimpse of those times, dead men, both white and Apache lying all around him, the battle still raging. . . .

He hoped he'd never
have to
again, he told himself, rising from the chair. He picked up the Colt lying on his desk, holstered it and carried the heavy bandoleer to the gun rack and hung it from a peg.

“Geary, can you eat something?” he asked the prisoner. “It might help sober you up.”

The prisoner didn't answer. Instead, he cursed and flopped down onto his cot.

“You need to send that ole smoke wagon to the Colt factory,” he called out to Winters. “They'll convert it to a
modern-day
gun for you for seven dollars—send you a box of bullets to boot. No real lawman carries a cap and ball. It's an embarrassment. Makes you look like from the days off—”

“Suit yourself,” said Winters, cutting Geary short. “I'll bring you some food anyway, if your jaw's not too sore to chew.”

“Don't worry about my jaw,” Geary snapped back. “Worry about your own when I get out of here.”

Sheriff Winters stepped away from the gun rack and picked up the loaded repeater rifle leaning against his battered desk.

“Any fool needing forty-two pistol shots is in worse trouble than he knows,” Geary called out.

“You might be right about that, Sherman,”
the sheriff replied, levering a round into the rifle chamber. He smiled thinly. “But that's why God made the
Winchester.” He added a warning, “Don't be smoking while
I'm gone, Sherman. Town can't afford to build a new jail. I'd hate to throw you in the smokehouse next time you get your bark on.”

Geary didn't answer.

With the rifle hanging in his left hand, Winters took his Stetson and the cell key from a peg beside the door. He snapped the large brass key ring at his waist and placed the Stetson atop his head. He adjusted the hat brim to the time of day and opened the door into a white glare of sunlight. But before he could step all the way out and close the door behind himself a bullet slammed into his chest, flung him backward back into his office and over the top of his desk.

His rifle flew from his hand; he left a bloody smear across the desk, clearing it of paperwork and incidentals, and landed broken and unconscious against a row of cell bars as the sound of the shot still roared along the street.

“Lord God!” Geary shouted. Springing up from his cot, he leaped over to where the sheriff lay sprawled against the cell bars. He adjusted his glasses quickly as if not believing his eyes. Flattened down on the floor lest another shot ring out, he reached through the bars and shook the downed sheriff by his shoulders.

“Sheriff! Wake up!” he shouted. Rolling the sheriff onto his side, Geary saw the gaping hole in his chest, the pool of blood forming and spreading on the dusty floor beneath him. “Don't you die, Sheriff, damn it! Don't you die!” he shouted, seeing frothy blood rise and fall in the sheriff's open lips.

“Hel-help me . . . ,” the sheriff murmured in a waning whisper.

Help you . . . ?
Geary looked at the blood pouring from the sheriff's chest. Then he shot a glance toward the open door, seeing people gathering in the street looking all around.

“Lie still, Sheriff,” he said, even though the wounded lawman wasn't moving. Geary ran his right arm through the bars and took the cell key from the sheriff's belt. “I'm out of here sooner than you
thought.”