Authors: Ralph Cotton
The French-Canadian gunman gave a toss of his hand.
“You will not kill me now,” he said. “It is too late. You lawmen are all alike. You must defend your precious law at all costs, even when it is not in your best interest.”
“Keep it up,” the Ranger said quietly. “I bet you can talk me into it.”
“All right, I will stop. Maybe I am wrong about you,” said Stampos, now wary that the Ranger might just pull the trigger. “But if you try to get me to betray my friends, you will not succeed. I will tell you nothing.”
“I understand,” Sam said. “Your pal here already told me the men I'm looking for were through here the other day. I don't need to ask you anything. We both know there're going to be gunmen waiting for me everywhere between here and Braxton Kane's hideout.”
Henri Stampos gave the Ranger a short crafty smile and eased up onto his knees and stopped there. His thick right hand fell down his side and laid easily, close to his boot well. Sam took note, but said nothing.
“Yeah, you know there will be gunmen waiting along the trail for you,” he said. “But you don't know how many, do you?”
“No,” Sam said quietly, “you've got me there.” He took his eyes off Stampos for a second. “I'll just have to wait until they come out and make their moves on me.”
“Aw, and by then it will be too late, Ranger,” Stampos said with the same crafty smile. His right hand moved quickly. It went into his boot well. Sam heard the metal on metal cock of a gun down there. He saw a Colt .36 caliber pocket gun come out of the boot and swing up at him. But the gun never came up enough to take an aim; Sam's big Colt bucked in his hand, still smoking. The bullet hit the large French-Canadian in his wide chest and sent him sinking backward onto his calves. He bobbed there, swaying, trying to catch himself as blood spewed through the bullet hole in his shirt and ran down his broad belly.
“Why . . . ?” he lamented. “You saw what I was . . . doing. You could have . . . told me to stop.”
“Yes, I could have,” Sam said, and he fell silent.
He sat staring at Stampos for a moment, seeing the question swirl deep in his dark eyes. He let the Colt slump at his side.
“It was better this way,” Sam said finally, fresh smoke rising from his gun barrel, caressing the back of
his hand like a silver-gray serpent's tongue. “I don't have time to take you in.”
He watched as the big man rocked again on his under-turned calves, then toppled onto his side and seemed to melt onto the rocky ground.
Yep, this is how it is going to be,
he told himself. There would be gunmen positioned along the trail all the way to wherever he would find Braxton Kane.
So be it. . . .
Maybe Kane would run out of gunmen before he got there. He stepped over and picked up the big LeMat. Nine .42 caliber rounds and a twenty-gauge shotgun blast to boot. He hefted the big, heavy gun in his hand and shook his head. He turned and walked away, back to his three waiting horses.
Toby Delmar and his twin sister, Lindsey, finished burying their father deep in the sandy soil. They spent the next half hour rolling rocks over from the sloping hillside and covering the grave to keep out desert scavengers. While they worked, the mule, Dan, stood hitched to the small covered wagon that contained everything they and their father had owned in the world. The mule watched them and chewed hungrily on a clump of wild grass that grew sparsely strewn along the base of the rocky hills.
“Go easy on that water, Sis,” Toby cautioned the slim, auburn-haired girl. “We don't want to run out before we find more of it around here.”
“I'm just touching it to my lips,” the girl replied. She watched as Toby sat down on the rocky ground and untied rawhide strips from around his worn-out shoes. As he untied the strips, the thin soles of the shoes gapped like the mouth of some strange land animal. He pulled the shoes off and cast them aside. He yanked up his dirty ragged socks, tucked the holes of the sock toes
under his feet, and then stuck his feet into his father's heavy miner's boots.
Lindsey looked away across the desert floor as Toby stood and stamped his feet in the big boots.
“ItâIt don't seem right you wearing Pa's boots. Not this soon anyway.”
“Sis, I'm going on sixteen years old,” Toby said quietly, being as patient with her as he could under the circumstances. “I need footwear that I don't have to keep looking back to see if I've walked out of.” He stepped over closer to her. “If Pa could say something right now, he'd tell me to take these boots and wear them. You know he would.”
Lindsey didn't reply. Instead she looked back out across the desert floor to the stretch of hills lining the far side.
“What are we going to do now?” she asked pointedly. “Pa's dead. His claim and map are no good. We've got no provisions. Dan is thirsty and falling off with hunger. He'll likely die of starvation, if the wolves don't eat him first.”
“Whoa, now, Sis,” said Toby. “Don't try prettying things up on my account.” He gave her a look. “Sounds like you think we're in bad straits here.”
The girl shook her head and gave a thin, sad smile in spite of herself.
“You sound just like Pa, Toby,” she said. “Always hoping for a gold mine while your belly growls out loud that there's none to be found.”
Toby, having heard the same thing recited so many
times he managed to join in and finish her words along with her.
She stopped talking and looked at him.
“Now guess who you sound just like, Sis,” he said.
“I know,” she said, “but Ma was right. Pa
did
put too much into searching for
what's not there
.”
Again her brother finished her words right along with her, and gave her a look.
“It's not funny, Toby,” she said.
“It's not funny,” Toby mimicked.
“I mean it. Stop it,” she said. “It's not funny at all.”
“I'm not laughing,” Toby said, turning more serious. He reached out, took the canteen from her, capped it and walked it to the small covered wagon. He pointed toward a tall stand of rock farther along the hill line beside them. Afternoon shadows had begun to stretch long across the desert floor. “There's the water hole we come to on the way out here,” he said. “Pa called it Dutchman's Tanks. We need to get there before dark.”
“Are you sure that's it?” Lindsey questioned. She held a hand above her eyes as a visor against the afternoon sun glare.
Toby took a deep patient breath.
“That's where we left it, Sis,” he said. “These water holes hardly ever move around.”
Lindsey looked at their trail behind her, then back toward the stand of rock.
“Every critter in the desert will be there tonight,” she said warily.
“Good,” said Toby. “I'll shoot one and we'll eat it.”
“One what,” Lindsey said, “a
wolf
,
a
coyote
?”
“I was thinking more of a jackrabbit, or a fowl of some sort,” said Toby. “But if it's a coyote you want to cook, I'll see what I can do.”
“It's not funny, Toby,” said Lindsey.
“I'm not laughing,” Toby replied again. “Come on; let's see if we can get Dan on the move again.”
Lindsey turned with him and stepped over to the mule. She stood by the lank animal and rubbed a hand against its tall, upright ears.
“Look at him. The poor thing is starving to death before our eyes,” she said.
“He could use a good graining or two, that's for certain,” Toby said. “But he's a long ways from starving. So are we. We've just got to keep our heads and keep moving. Long as we keep moving we'll come upon something.”
“I hope you're right,” Lindsey said. She reached down and plucked a twist of wild grass, as if the mule could not reach down and do it for himself. The mule stared at her, already chewing a mouthful of grass.
Toby reached into the driver's side of the small wagon and picked up a battered, long-barreled shotgun and lay it up over his shoulder. To conserve the mule, they had not ridden in the wagon for the past week. But they had hauled their father's body in it when he'd died yesterday evening on the way down from their hillside claim.
“I am right, Sis,” Toby said, his tone turning more serious. “I will get you through this. You're my look-alike twin. Anything happens to you, it happens to me too. I won't let nothing happen to you, not ever.”
“You'd better not,” she said in a mock threat. She managed to give him a trace of a smile. Standing beside the mule she took Dan's wagon reins with one hand and one of his long ears with the other. The mule balked a little, but then stepped forward reluctantly, as if having to first pull his hooves free from the ground. “Come on, Dan,” she said. “You heard Toby, we're in
good hands
. Let's get you watered. . . .”
“I'm not joking, Sis,” Toby said, hearing her. “I mean it.”
“I know you do, Toby,” said Lindsey as the mule stepped forward grudgingly.
Four gunmen from the Golden Riders had met with the Garlets, Cleary and Bonsell two days earlier and agreed to come out and set a trap for the Ranger or any other lawmen on their trail. The four had crossed the border, rode all night the night before and arrived at the Dutchman's Tanks in the early afternoon. They brought a long telescope with them. They set up against a large boulder behind a lower stand of rocks overlooking the desert trail, knowing that any rider coming from the same direction as the Garlets would have to come this wayâcome this way or die of thirst somewhere on the water-barren trails ahead.
“I wish you'd look who's coming here,” said a gunman named Arnold Pulty, staring out through the telescope. “We've got pilgrims coming, one of them looking as sweet as candy.”
“We see them,” said a Kansas gunman named Roy
Mangett. “Hell, we can see them
without
a telescope. You must be near blind, Arnold.”
“The hell I am,” Pulty retorted.
A young blond-haired Texas gunman named Joey Rose shifted slightly and looked out and down across the top of the rock at the small covered wagon as it came into sight on the desert floor.
“What do you think they're doing out here?” He checked all around the small wagon, seeing no one else in sight, just the two figures trudging through the sand, one on either side of the gaunt mule.
Sitting back from the others, a disgruntled gunman named Chris Weidel coughed hard, spat and wiped a wadded bandanna across his parched lips.
“They're damned fools, whatever they're doing,” he said without looking toward the desert floor. “So are we, you want to know the truth. I've swallowed enough dust I'll soon be leaving bricks behind me.”
“Nobody made you come out here, Chris,” said Roy Mangett, the self-appointed leader of the group. He stepped over as he spoke, took the telescope from Pulty and looked out.
“Nobody told me not to either,” said Weidel, his words ending in another cough. “I hope to hell the Garlets appreciate us doing all this, without even paying us.”
“It ain't just the Garlets we're doing it for,” Mangett said over his shoulder, watching the mule, the wagon, the young man and woman. “We ride out and watch each other's back trail every time Brax gathers us in.”
“Yeah, Chris,” Pulty said to Weidel, “and every time we do it, you carry on like it's griping your ass plumb up to your elbows.”
“Only this time, we're not just watching a back trail,” said Weidel. “We're fixing to kill us a lawman.” He spat again and blotted his lips.
“So . . . ?” said Mangett. “You saying that's a bad thing? Is this your first lawman?” He lowered the telescope and handed it sidelong to Joey Rose.
“No, I'm not saying it,” Weidel snapped, “and it won't be my first. . . .” Standing up from the rock where he sat, he moved over among the others in a crouch, staying out of sight from the desert valley below. “But I never killed any lawman in my life that made me a dime better off.”
“Arnold,” Mangett said to Pulty, “have you got a dime?”
“Might have,” Pulty said, staring out with his naked eyes onto the desert floor.
“Give it to Chris so he'll stop bellyaching,” said Mangett.
“Sonsabitches,” Weidel growled to himself. He sat down in the dirt, his rifle across his lap.
“What about these two,” said Joey Rose, the telescope to his eye. “Looks like they're coming here.”
“Hell, of course they're coming here,” Weidel groused. “You see any other water nearby?” He waved his hand holding the wadded bandanna all around.
“I'm just saying, is all,” Joey Rose said in a stiff tone. He turned back to Mangett with an expectant look.
Mangett breathed deep and stared out across the desert floor as if in contemplation.
“Let them get watered and get on out of here,” he said. “We've got a lawman coming most any time. We want things looking smooth and ordinary here.” He turned his eyes to Arnold Pulty, singling him out. “I see you looking at the woman with your hands in the wrong place, I'll chop them off,” he warned.
Pulty's face turned red-blue. “I don't do that no more,” he said.
“You're damned right you don't,” said Mangett. He looked all around at the men bunched together against the side of the boulder.
“Jesus . . . ,” he said, “
Damn it!
All of you spread out and get out of sight somewhere. You want them thinking they've come to a birthday party?”
Toby and Lindsey Delmar led the mule up a short rock slope half circling the water hole and with their last ounce of strength, they collapsed onto their knees at the water's edge. Toby pitched three empty canteens in the water in front of him to fill them up. Turning to his sister, he wobbled in place and gave a weary grin.
“See, Sis?” he said. “I told you we'd be all right.” Then he dropped forward onto his chest and stuck his face down into the tepid, yet soothing water. Lindsey did the same, letting the mule's reins fall from her hand. Dan stepped forward into the water up to his knees and stuck his muzzle down into the water. Silence fell around the water hole for a long moment as the three drank and slaked their thirst.
Lindsey, coming up first, gasped in a breath of air and propped herself on her elbows, her long auburn hair hanging in wet strands, water running down it. She looked around, seeing the mule still drinking, her brother's torso lying limp and bobbing, his face still under the water.
“Toby?” she said. She stared at him. When he didn't make a move, she said, “Toby . . . ? Are you all right?”
She looked at him warily. The water around him took a red sheen.
“Toby!” Frightened, she started to reach over and grab him. But just before she could, he came up suddenly, noisily, and slung his wet hair back and forth.
“Whoo-ieee!”
he said loudly, propping up on his palms. Water ran from his chest, his face, his hair. “I had to
come up soon
or drown,” he said. He gave his sister a half-silly smile. But seeing the look on her face, his grin vanished. “What is it, Sis? What's wrong?” he asked. Rising up, he awkwardly knee-walked the short four-foot distance to her.
“Nothing . . . ,” Lindsey said, a relieved tone to her voice. She glanced back at the red sheen on the ripples in the water, noting now that it was only sun glare. “I'm just tired. I'm not thinking straight.”
“Well . . .” Toby raised the filled canteens, held them out and let water run off them. “While you rest
some
, why don't I go scout around and see if I can rustle us something to eat.” He held the canteens closer and began capping them.
“Remember, Pa never liked firing the goose gun unless we had to,” Lindsey reminded him.
“I know that,” Toby replied patiently, “and I
won't
, unless I have to. But we've got to eat, Sis.”
Toby walked the dripping canteens to the small wagon, reached over and lay them inside the bed. He picked up the long-barreled shotgun and propped it up over his shoulder.
“Wish me luck,” he said, turning and walking along a game path around the water hole.
Lindsey watched until her brother stepped out of sight into a stand of brush.
“Good luck . . . ,” she whispered to herself. Her stomach tightened just thinking about food. But she put her hunger aside as her father had taught her and her brother to do. She made herself think of something else, anything but food.
She reached around and unbuttoned her dress and stooped back down at the water's edge. She cupped a handful of water and raised it as she lowered the front of the wet dirty dress. She sighed to herself, washing herself with her hand, feeling relief as water cleansed the crusted perspiration from her breasts.