Golden Riders (7 page)

“Look real pretty, senoritas,” he said in border En- glish, “these hombres can do for you what your daddies never could.”

As the riders climbed down from their saddles, both Stevens and Gorn stepped forward, Stevens holding out the bottle of rye as a welcoming gesture. But upon seeing the men's condition, the two stopped. Stevens let the bottle hang down his side.

“Jesus, Prew, what the hell has happened to you fellows?” Stevens said, staring at their singed hairless
faces, their scorched clothes. They looked at Cutthroat Teddy Bonsell's bandanna-wrapped hand.

“Too much to talk about out here,” said Prew, reaching out and motioning for the bottle, which Stevens handed to him. Prew turned up a long swig of whiskey and passed the bottle to Jake Cleary standing nearest to him.

“Then do come inside,” said Sibio Alverez with a sweeping gesture of his hand. “Let these lovely senoritas show you some sympathy.”

The Bluebird, knowing his place, stayed at the hitch rail with the horses as the bedraggled men filed into the cantina and took up position along a long, ornately carved bar. The four women sidled into their midst, ignoring the men's condition, the smell of burnt hair, of charcoal and gunpowder. Slipping around behind the bar, Alverez set up shot glasses and a row of three new bottles for the arriving gunmen. He filled the shot glasses and began filling beer mugs from a tap as the men threw back their first shots and refilled them as if in reflex.

Prew glanced at one of the women who suggestively rubbed up against him and eased her hand inside his sweaty shirt. She looked up and gave him a smile.

Prew turned his attention from her to Lester Stevens.

“We had a robbery go bad on us,” he said grimly.

“My God, they set you on fire?” said Stevens, looking along the line of charred gunmen.

“No,” said Prew. “The Mex-Injun out front is the Bluebird, he blows stuff up. You ever hear of him?”

“Yes, I have,” said Stevens. “He did all this?”

“Him and I did this, getting my brothers out of jail. The explosion went bad too. My brothers turned into idiots on bad mescal.” He nodded toward Tillman and Foz who stood staring at their empty shot glasses as if in deep contemplation. “It's been one mess after another this whole trip.” He shook his head in despair.

“Jesus . . . ,” said Stevens. He looked at Gorn on his other side, then back at Prew. “Brax sent us here to watch for any of our bunch and guard their back trail if they need it. I expect you fellows
need it
?”

“Oh, yes, we need it,” he said. “We've been riding for over two weeks, getting away from the Midland Settlement and heading to the hideout to tell Brax his brother is dead.”

“Cordy, dead?” said Gorn, looking around Stevens at Prew.

“Yep. Killed by Ranger Sam
by-God
Burrack, according to Bonsell and Cleary there,” he said bitterly. He threw back his shot of rye and set his glass down hard. “We'll be leaving here come morning. If Burrack comes through behind us, kill him.”

“We'd love to, Prew,” said Stevens, him and Gorn both nodding in agreement. “And so you know, if he slips around us we've got gunmen in every little town between here and the hideout. Nobody's getting through this stretch of hills.” He raised a shot glass as if in toast. “Here's to killing Rangers,” he said, “be it for
good reason
, or just
good sport
.”

“Damn right,” Prew agreed. He raised his refilled shot glass and drank it down. “That aside . . . ,” he said, looking back at the woman's hand inside his shirt.
“Little darling, how would you like to give me an all-over bath and send my clothes out to get boiled and beaten clean?”

She gave him a red-painted smile.

“For two dollars, I'd be both thrilled and delighted,” she said. “What about your friends?”

Prew looked along at the bar at the miserable, stinking gunmen, realizing that he was the only one with any money. He thought about it, then said, “Yeah, why not? You gals get them all cleaned up and smelling better. Me first though”—he drew her against him—“in case you run out of water too soon.”

In the morning, Prew stepped from the front door of a dusty plank and adobe hotel onto the even dustier street. The men following him stopped and watched as Prew looked down at the Bluebird sitting wrapped in a ragged blanket, leaning against the front wall. The flat brim of the Indian's hat hid his face.

“Wake up, Bluebird,” Prew said. He reached his boot sideways and jingled his spur near the Bluebird's ear. The Bluebird didn't move.
“Hey . . . ,”
said Prew, a little louder. He tapped his boot against the Bluebird's leg. The Indian stood up—too quickly to have been sleeping—Prew thought, and turned and looked at him from beneath his hat brim. “Let's eat and get out of here,” said Prew.

The Bluebird nodded his head, unwrapped himself and held the ragged blanket over his shoulder.

“Look at this, Prew,” said Cutthroat Teddy. He nodded at the horses lined along the hitch rail, saddled and ready for the trail. A few loose grains of feed lay in the dirt at their hooves. The night before, the men had
unsaddled the animals and lined their saddles along the edge of the short boardwalk.

“My, my,” said Prew, “but I do like a Mex-Injun who's willing to pitch in and help out a little.” He looked at the Bluebird as he spoke. The Bluebird nodded and walked to his horse. The men walked to their respective horses and looked them over good, pleased to see that the animals had been well attended to the night before.

“I believe we ought to let the Bluebird take care of the horses from now on,” Bonsell chuckled. He looked at the Bluebird who saw his thin smile, saw his lips moving as he looked at him. “What do you say to that, Senor Bluebird?”

The Bluebird only nodded again. “Yes, even so . . . ,” he said tightly. Again, he nodded.

“
Whoa
, did you hear that?” said Bonsell as if taken aback at the sound of the Bluebird's voice. “This Mex-Injun can talk after all!”

“Don't act like an ass, Bonsell,” Prew said. “We all knew he could talk.”

“I swear I didn't,” said Bonsell with a shrug. “I knew he had a hinge on his neck, kept his head bobbing up and down. But I haven't heard him talk till now.”

“Don't make a big thing of it,” Prew said. “Maybe he don't feel like jawboning all the time.”

“Yeah,” Cleary cut in, giving Bonsell a look. “There's some of us here who could take a lesson from it.”

“Go to hell, Jake,” Bonsell said. He turned and looked at the Bluebird and said, “I didn't know if he couldn't talk or was just being half-cross with us.” He
grinned at the Bluebird. “No offense intended though.” He shook his head a little.

The Bluebird shook his head along with him.

“See? He's as good-natured as the next fellow,” said Cleary, also gathering his horse's reins.

Bonsell chuckled, looking the Bluebird up and down.

“Did you mean it, Bluebird, offering to take care of our horses for us?” he asked.

Looking at Bonsell, the Bluebird nodded and backed his horse onto the street with Tillman and Foz.

“Yes, even so . . . ,” he said in a short tone. Prew and Cleary backed their horses and turned them beside Foz and Tillman.

“See?” said Bonsell. “Now that he's started talking you can't shut him up.” He chuckled under his breath and looked at the others and shook his head. Backing his horse, he turned it in the street and rode up alongside the Bluebird. “You even rubbed this cayuse down for me!” he said, running a hand along his horse's clean withers as if amazed. He looked at the Bluebird.

The Bluebird nodded.

“Yes, even so,” he said.

Bonsell laughed aloud and slapped his thigh.

“I like you, Bluebird,” he said. “We're going to be pals, you and me.”

Hearing Bonsell, Cleary looked down and shook his head.

“Listen up, everybody,” said Prew, booting his horse to the front of the riders.

“I did,” Foz said for no reason, sitting slumped in his saddle, Tillman beside him, riding in the same manner.

Bonsell and Cleary looked at Foz and Tillman. So did Prew with a concerned expression. Then, ignoring his brother's remark, he turned from his brothers and looked around at the other two gunmen.

“We're riding all day and night till we get where we're going. We're making sure we've got some gunmen waiting in each place we stop. The way we always do when we gather up for a big job.”

Bonsell and Cleary both nodded, acknowledging him. The Bluebird, Foz and Tillman rode looking straight ahead.

“It just ain't getting no better out here,” Prew said to himself under his breath. He batted his boots to his horse's sides and they rode on. Behind them, Stevens and Gorn looked at each other.

“I'm not going to stay here and face that Ranger, are you?” Gorn asked.

“Ha, I ain't that stupid,” said Stevens. “Soon as the dust settles, I'm headed up out of here. We can tell Braxton Kane whatever suits us. The shape that bunch is in, they'll be lucky if they even get there.”

“That's what I say,” said Gorn. He grinned and spat and stared after the riders until they fell out of sight in their own wake of dust.

The Ranger left the Midland Settlement atop his black-point copper dun, leading two spare horses alongside him on a lead rope. One of the horses, a big brown-and-white paint, carried two canvas bags across its back, one carrying grain for the horses; the other carried enough provisions and extra ammunition to get him
across the badlands hill country and deep into Mexico if the trail led him that far. He switched the supply sack from the paint horse to a big, easygoing buckskin every few hours to keep both horses fresh when he'd ridden his black point out and needed to switch his saddle to one of the spares.

When he'd first ridden out to where he'd found the fresh tracks the day after the jail break, he looked down at those tracks only in passing, noting how much three weeks of dry, hot breezes had caused them to fade into the rocky earth. Yet, luckily, there had been no rain up here, he reminded himself, or else he would have found no tracks at all.

So far, so good . . .

It never hurts having luck on your side,
he told himself, looking out and down across the sloping sand rises where the presence of both jagged rock and smooth rounded boulder appeared to compete for the desert floor. Beside him the copper dun pushed its muzzle against his arm and chuffed.

“All right, I'm coming,” he said. “You don't mind if I look around some . . . ?” He rubbed the dun's muzzle with a gloved hand. The two spare horses gathered closer, their muzzles pushed out toward him. He'd rubbed them in turn. Then he'd stepped into the saddle, collected his reins and the lead rope and rode until late afternoon.

At dark, Sam stopped at a water hole to let the horses cool and drink their fill and he grained them with feed from the canvas. He rested himself and the animals until a three-quarter moon revealed the desert hills in
broken shadows and purple moonlight. Then, with his saddle on the paint and the supplies atop the buckskin, he set out without benefit of track or sign to follow along the rocky hill trail. But at this point it made no difference. He'd seen the faded hoofprints enough to know that these were not runaway horses fleeing a fire.

The tracks, however obscure, were not meandering. There were riders on these horses' backs, keeping them regimented, he was growing more certain of it. Ahead of him, he knew the only logical direction for men would be through a few small mining camps dotting the trail. They would stop and rest at the old Mexican trade settlement, then on to Poco Fuego
—Little Fire—
then on to Alta Cresta
—High Ridge
—he decided. He knew he could save time by riding up and bypassing the Mexican trade settlement. So he did.

Switching and resting his horses in turn, he kept moving fast and steady. When he reached Poco Fuego it was midmorning and he was met in the dusty street by Virgil Piney and a French-Canadian gunman named Henri Stampos. A burly gunman, Stampos rode with the Golden Gang now and then when he was beckoned in by Braxton Kane. He had shown up a day after the Garlets and the others had left. With Stampos rode a Texas killer known as Shotgun Lloyd. Kane had sent the Texan to bring Henri Stampos to him. Shotgun Lloyd stood at a corner of an alley, his ten-gauge shotgun hanging down his side.

When the Ranger saw the two men standing in the street, he was riding the buckskin. He brought the buckskin to a halt, his Winchester rifle across his lap.
As the other two horses bunched up beside him, he looked ahead along the rooflines of shacks, of crumbled adobe ruins and hovels standing on either side of the trail.

“I'm surprised you made it this far, lawman. But you won't be riding through here tracking my pals,” Piney called out in a harsh voice. “Not alive anyway.” He stood holding another big nine-shot LeMat with both hands, the saddle mate to the big LeMat he'd sold Prew Garlet.

The Ranger saw the third man standing at the alleyway. He turned his three horses in the narrow street, rode the buckskin over to a hitch rail and stepped down from his saddle. He walked back to the middle of the street, his rifle half raised in his left hand.

“You three need to stand down, Virgil Piney,” he called out boldly. “You're interfering with an Arizona Ranger in the pursuit of his job.”

“Job, ha!”
said Piney. “You mean in pursuit of killing men who are good friends of mine—” He stopped short and gave the Ranger a curious look. “How do you know my name, Ranger Sam
son-of-a-bitch
Burrack?”

The man had just set aside any doubts he may have still had about the Garlets and his two prisoners being alive and riding this way. Piney had just admitted they did. He kept his Winchester half raised in his left hand.

“There's no need in that kind of name-calling, Piney,” Sam admonished him. “It's a weakness of mind and spirit. And yes, I've heard of you, Piney,” he finally replied. “I know you're a bird dog for the Golden Gang.”

“Now who's name-calling?” Pine said venomously.

“
Bird dog
is not so bad,” Sam said quietly. As he spoke he starting drawing his Colt up from its holster slow, easy, as if with no ill intent. “I've heard much worse—”

“
Whoa! Whoa!
Hold it right there!” Piney shouted, taking his left hand off the LeMat and pointing his finger at the Ranger. “You ain't pulling that trick on us!”

“What trick is that?” Sam asked calmly, still raising the Colt smoothly, clear of his holster. He cocked the big gun and let it hang down his side, his finger over the trigger.

“That trick
right there
, damn it to hell!” Piney shouted, enraged, realizing the Ranger had pulled the gun trick even as the angry outlaw warned him not to. Piney let his finger drop as if exasperated. He gave Stampos a sidelong look. Stampos just shook his head, as if he could not believe he'd let the Ranger get the drop on them. He stood stone still, his hand poised at his holstered gun.

“Tell your shotgun pal in the alley to come out here in the street with the rest of us, Piney,” the Ranger said, both his rifle and Colt cocked and ready.

“And if I don't?” said Piney defiantly.

“Then I'm going to put a bullet in you the next words out of your mouth,” Sam said calmly. He called out to the alley, “You over there. Either show yourself or get out of here.”

Shotgun Lloyd took a step forward onto the street.

“Stay there, Lloyd!” Piney barked. “This man ain't giving orders—”

Piney's words stopped short as the Ranger's big Colt
swung up and a shot exploded along the street. The bullet hit Virgil Piney in the dead center of his chest and sliced though him, sending him flying backward. A bloody mist hung in the air for a second as did his left boot as it flew from his foot. The big LeMat hit the ground and sent a twenty-gauge blast of buckshot pellets into Stampos' right leg. His leg flew straight back out from under him with such force that it caused him to slap the rocky ground face-first like a man who'd slipped and fallen on ice.

Sam fired at Shotgun Lloyd as Stampos struggled and yelled, rolling back and forth on his big round belly, unable to stand. Shotgun Lloyd grunted and fell to his knees as the Ranger's shot hit him high in his shoulder. He fired the ten-gauge straight at the Ranger, but the out-of-range buckshot only scooped dirt along the street fifteen feet short of its target.

“Drop the shotgun. Stay down,” Sam warned, taking aim with his smoking Colt cocked and ready.

“Like hell!” Shotgun Lloyd shouted. He dropped the shotgun on his way up to his feet, his left hand clutching his bleeding shoulder. He tried reaching for his six-shooter at his waist, but the Ranger fired his Colt again. This time the shot hit Lloyd in his chest; he did a backflip and settled, relaxed, dead in the dirt.

Sam stepped forward, the Colt out in front of him smoking in his hand.

“Stay down, mister. You're not going anywhere,” he warned Henri Stampos. But when he got to the large gunman, Stampos had managed to push himself to his feet with much effort. Yet, as Sam stepped closer, he kicked
Stampos' good leg out from under him and watched the large man fall with a grunt. “Now stay down there, or we'll keep doing this all day,” Sam said. He reached down and took a Remington from its holster and stuck it down behind his gun belt.

“For your information, you did not shoot me, Ranger,” Stampos said stubbornly. “He did.” He gestured toward Piney lying dead in the dirt. “Had he not shot me in my leg, you would be dead this very minute. I am not a man to take lightly. You should have killed me while you had the chance.”

Sam just stared at him for a moment. Then he leveled the cocked and smoking Colt at the big man.

“It's not too late right now,” he said.