Showdown at Gun Hill (15 page)

Sam didn't answer. Instead he ran a hand down one of the horses' withers, inspecting it, taking note of how many were there. A dozen horses? Was that how many men would need fresh horses?

“My dun's worn out. I'm going to need a rested horse to go look for her,” he said. “These are some fine-looking animals.” He rubbed the horse's withers a moment longer and said, “Maybe I can swap my dun out.”

“Pull your hand off that cayuse, Ranger,” said Doyle Hickey, stepping out of the cantina. “These horses ain't for sale.”

Sam looked up, feigning surprise, as if he hadn't known he was being watched. Behind Hickey, Purser stepped out; the two spread apart a few feet, their hands hanging close to their holstered revolvers. Sam recognized the nameless faces from the posters he'd seen. He'd met Doyle Hickey before. The other he would know soon enough. He also knew their connection to Bo Anson, thanks to Sheriff Deluna's posters.

“Too bad,” Sam said. “I'm paying top dollar.” He studied the two men, seeing a whiskey glow on their faces. They stared at him stone-faced.

“I said they
ain't for sale
, lawman,” said Hickey. “Don't you hear good?”

Sam ignored him. He saw them both stiffen as he casually lifted his Colt from its holster. But they settled as he raised the Colt to clamp it under his left arm and lifted his empty holster to get to his trouser pocket. His right hand pulled out some folded bills and spread the edges a little for the gunmen to see.

“Cash?” he said. “American greenback?” He stared at them, his rifle in his left hand, his Colt clamped up under his left arm. Finally he saw the trace of a smile come to Purser's lips. Probably thinking how bold and dandy that would be, Sam decided, selling what might be a stolen horse to an unsuspecting lawman.

“Lawman, I said these horses ain't—”

“Go on, Doyle, sell the man a horse,” said Purser, cutting Hickey off. “We've got plenty.”

“Huh-uh, put your money away,” Hickey said, having none of it.

“I tried,” Sam said, looking disappointed. He tipped the empty holster up and shoved the bills back into his pocket. When the holster fell back into place, he reached over and took the Colt from under his arm. But instead of dropping it into the holster, he held on to it, the tip of the barrel pointed loosely at the two. He tipped the rifle just enough in his left hand to aim it at their bellies. Both the Colt and the Winchester cocked at once. The two gunmen looked dumbfounded, caught off guard, seeing both gun barrels aimed at them.

“I'm through horse talking,” Sam said in a flat, even
tone. “Skin your shooters out real slow and let them fall.”

The two gunmen knew they'd been taken by the Ranger. They stared, smoldering, neither one wanting to feel the bite of the bullets they knew were coming if they didn't do as they were told. Still, Hickey wasn't having it.

“You've got some damn gall, Ranger—” he said. Before he could continue, the Ranger cut him off.

“Let them fall or
fall with them
, Doyle Hickey,” he said grimly, seeing the look of defeat had already come into Purser's eyes.

Hickey stiffened and said, “You know me, Ranger?”

“Not as well as I'm going to,” Sam said. He was through talking, through warning. His next move would be the pull of both triggers.

Hickey saw it too. But it didn't seem to matter to him.

“To hell with this!” he shouted, his hand grabbing his gun butt.

“Doyle, wait!” shouted Purser. But it was too late. The Ranger fired both guns at once. The shot from his Colt slammed Hickey in his chest and sent him flying backward in a red mist. His Winchester bucked as the bullet punched Purser high in his right shoulder and spun him like a broken child's toy. Both men went down. Luckily the townsman Radler had seen the seriousness of the situation and backed out of the way just in time.

“Are—are you all right, Ranger?” he said shakily, in spite of hearing no gunfire except for Sam's.

“I'm all right,” Sam said, both rifle and Colt smoking in his hands. Hickey lay lifeless in a dark pool of blood, and Purser writhed in pain, clutching his shoulder. Sam nodded toward the wounded outlaw.

“Let's get this one inside,” he said to Radler. “See what he knows about Bo Anson and his men.”

Inside the cantina where the air smelled of stale whiskey and mescal laced with wood smoke, Silas Radler and the Ranger helped the wounded gunman to a table and lowered him into a chair. Radler looked all around the empty cantina as if at a loss for what to do next. Behind the bar a short, stocky bartender stood staring, having only cleaned the floor moments earlier.

“My, my,” Radler said, “this is the sort of thing our sheriff always handles so well. We have no doctor here.”

“I'm bleeding bad here,” said Purser, frightened, clearly in pain. “And I wasn't even going for my gun!” He gripped his bloody shoulder. “Hey, am I arrested?”

“Not yet, but keep talking,” Sam warned.

“Sometimes our barber helps out doctoring,” said Radler, touching a finger to his lips in contemplation.

“I don't need a damn haircut! I'm shot!” Purser shouted. He tried to stand up and attack the townsman with a bloody fist. Sam intercepted him and sat him back down.

“Take it easy,” he said. “Carrying on just makes the
bleeding worse.” He stepped over to the bar with an outstretched hand.

The staring bartender reached down and came up with a short stack of bar towels, handing them over as if surrendering something of great value.

Sam stepped back to the table and dropped the towels on it. Radler stood watching wide-eyed. The bartender shook his head and sipped his morning coffee from a thick mug.

“Go get your barber,” Sam said to the townsman. “I'll press a towel on this wound until he gets here.”

“Right away,” Radler said, turning and hurrying out the door. As his boots pounded across the plank walkway, Sam picked up a towel, stuck it up under Purser's bloody shirt and pressed it firmly over the gaping shoulder wound.

“Breathe deep and try to steel down some,” he said to the shaken gunman. “Is this the first time you've been shot?”

The gunman, agitated and nervous, stared angrily up at the Ranger.

“It's none of your damn business how many times I have or haven't been shot!” he snapped.

“All right, then,” Sam said coolly. He turned toward the bartender and said, “I'm obliged if you'd pour me a cup of that good-smelling coffee, barkeep.”

“Coming up,” the bartender said, eyeing the blood that had dripped onto his freshly swept floor.

Sam drew his hand away from the gunman's shoulder, letting the bloody bar towel sag. He turned toward the bar as the bartender poured steaming coffee into a mug.

“What the hell, Ranger?” said Purser, seeing blood spring anew from the bullet hole. “I need some help here!”

“I'm not butting into your business anymore,” Sam said, picking up the mug of coffee, hiking a boot on the battered iron bar rail. He tipped the mug as in salute. “Feel free to bleed on out. I'm just going to have some coffee, watch you take care of yourself.”

“Damn it, Ranger!” Purser shouted, his eyes stricken with terror. “Don't let me die! I need help!” Blood poured freely down his chest. He swallowed hard and said, “Okay, listen . . . yes, this is the first time I've been shot—
satisfied
? Anything else you want to know?” He raised his trembling bloody hand, not knowing what to do for himself.

Sam noted the sarcasm in his voice. He sipped the coffee and looked at the bartender.

“Good coffee,” he said, tipping the raised cup in his direction.

“Gracias,”
the bartender said. The two of them looked back at the frightened gunman. “Are you going to bleed him out all over my floor?” he asked flatly.

“That's up to him,” Sam said.

“Because if you are, I'm hoping you'll—”

“All right, I'm sorry!” Purser shouted, half sobbing, his sarcasm gone. “Don't let me die. I'll tell you anything you want to know. Help me here!”

The Ranger walked over, coffee mug in hand, and stood over the wounded gunman.

“Are you sure?” he said quietly. “I don't want to meddle in your business.”

“I'm sure, just ask me,” Purser said, staring helplessly at the blood flowing down from under the soaked bar towel.

Sam set the steaming mug down, adjusted the bloody bar towel and pressed on it, his other hand atop Purser's shoulder holding him forward.

“To start with, what's your name?” he said.

“James E. Purser,” came the quick reply. “Call me Jim . . . or Jack. Hell, call me Edward if it suits you.” He settled down as he saw the flow of blood slow immediately under the pressure of the Ranger's hand.

“Where'd you steal the horses?” Sam asked matter-of-factly, watching himself press the towel onto the gaping wound.

“Who says we stole them?” Purser replied.

Sam looked at him and relaxed the pressure; fresh blood surged in the towel.

“We picked them up here and there, all along the border—that is,
across the border
, I should say,” he added quickly. Realizing the Ranger had no reason to arrest him yet, he decided to be careful with what he said. He felt the pressure return on the wound. He breathed easier. “It's not like stealing—Mexes do it to us, we do it to them. Mostly we all just keep switching horses around. No harm in it, right?”

“Depends on who catches you,” said Sam. He paused and then said, “And you ride for Bo Anson.” It wasn't a question; it was stated as a fact.

Purser started to deny it; Sam saw it in his eyes. He let up on the pressure, just a little.

“Okay, yes, I ride for him some, me and him both.”
He nodded in the direction of Doyle Hickey's body. “Everybody rides for everybody out here.”

“A dozen fresh horses?” Sam said. “How many men ride with this bunch?”

“I don't know,” Purser replied, “seven or eight right now. Some are always drifting in, drifting out. . . .”

Sam let it go, seeing no solid forthright answer coming to anything he asked. Besides, Purser might be right, the numbers were always changing with these border gangs.

“What are you getting ready to rob?” he asked bluntly.

“I don't know about no robberies,” Purser said, “and that's the damn truth. We were just told to get horses, so we did. We're supposed to catch up to Bo on the trail.”

“Who's
we
?” Sam asked.

“Some ol' boys from here and there,” said Purser. “Gunmen,” he added.

“The ones who've been lying up over in Bexnar?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, them, maybe . . . and some others,” Purser said, looking curious as to how the Ranger knew so much. “Who told you?”

Sam didn't answer. Instead he took the outlaw's free hand, laid it on the bloody towel and pressed it there.

“Keep it tight,” he said. He backed up a step and took a sip of coffee with his bloody hand, watching Purser closely.

“Hey . . . ,” Purser said, seeing that he could do the same for himself that the Ranger was doing. “I can do this? This ain't nothing.” He almost grinned, glancing
up at the Ranger as the sound of boots pounded up to the open doorway.

“It's something I figure you'll need to know,
James E. Purser
,” Sam said as if committing the name to memory, “the kind of company you're keeping.”

“What I
need to know
, Ranger,” Purser said, “is how soon can I get out of this burnt-down pissant town?”

“You didn't go for your gun. I can't prove any horse theft,” Sam said.

Purser grinned and said, “I was what you call
in the wrong place at the wrong time.
”

“When you can ride, you'd do well to clear out of here,” the Ranger warned. “Folks can get tense when their town's been burned down around them.”

“Don't worry, Ranger,” Purser said. “If you hadn't shot me I'd already be gone.”

*   *   *

It was afternoon when the Ranger touched the brim of his sombrero to Silas Radler and a few smudged and haggard townsfolk and turned his copper dun onto Resting's wide dirt street. Taking three days' worth of food and four canteens of water with him, he headed out of town following Sheriff Deluna's buggy tracks out across the sand flats. He'd been given directions to the place she'd ridden out to in order to assist in the childbirth. But something told him she wouldn't be there.

The buggy wheel tracks had already faded a little in the loose sand, yet they remained true to their destination. He followed them to a line of low hills and saw
where they had wound upward out of sight. Higher up on the hillside he saw a small timber and adobe cabin sitting perched on a rocky ledge. Rather than go farther up, he looked around and saw what he decided to be the buggy's return tracks reaching back down ten yards to his right. He nudged his dun in that direction.

He followed the tracks the next half hour and soon saw where the rig had swung off the trail and set out across the flats. Stepping down from his dun, he noted the hoofprints of many horses filled the sandy dirt at this point. Yet only the sets of two horses' prints cut a layer atop the winding wheels.
Following her,
he told himself, finishing his own thoughts.

He looked all around the desolate terrain, picturing the two horses on Sheriff Deluna's trail—late at night, her taking to the sand flats to get away. He put the picture away, stepped back atop the dun and rode on. He followed the buggy prints farther out onto the flats and came upon the woman's battered sombrero lying upturned on its side in the sand. Stepping down, he picked it up and looked all around again as he retied the two loose ends of the hat string.

“We're gaining a little at every turn,” he said quietly to the dun.

Farther on he came to a spot where the buggy had sat long enough to deepen its wheel ruts into the sand. All around it he saw where hooves and boots lapped over a single set of smaller boots that led off across the sand. He followed those smaller boot prints to the rock stand at the water hole. There he saw blood spots, more
boot prints, large and small, and amid them one large bare footprint that stood out above all else. It had two toes missing.

Sam let out a breath, getting a strange picture. Someone was shot here, he decided, from all the dried blood on the ground. He only hoped it wasn't Sheriff Deluna. Or Sheriff Stone, if the missing-toe footprint belonged to him—and what were the odds of it
not
? he asked himself. He turned and stepped back up on the dun and rode on, unaware of the eye watching him through the telescope from the cover of rock and pine in the distant hills overlooking the flats and the water hole.

*   *   *

“Yep, that's him,” said Max Bard, seeing the Ranger and the dun move away among the glaring sand and wavering heat. Bard lowered his old Confederate telescope, closed it and put it away. He rubbed his eyes, then looked around at Holbert Lee Cross, Pete Worley and the others. Then he looked at Rudy Bowlinger, who fidgeted in his saddle, the anvil still chained to his ankle. Close behind Bowlinger sat Parker Fish, Russell Gant and Dewey Lucas.

“Was Burrack trailing you to us too, Rudy,” Bard asked, “but maybe something else caught his attention?”

Bowlinger heard the accusation in Bard's voice. He looked all around nervously at the eyes riveted on him. On the ground lay a man in a ragged black suit and a torn and bloody duster. His hat was missing; his holster was empty on his hip. His breath came fast, labored. But there was no fear in his dark eyes.

“I swear, Max,” Bowlinger said, “I had no idea I was being followed. I figured there was none of the detectives still out searching when Bo Anson turned me loose. I wouldn't get myself followed to our hideout! You've got to believe me. I'd die first. I'd swallowed one of my bullets.”

“Settle down, Rudy,” said Holbert Lee Cross. “If Max didn't believe you, you'd already be dead.”

Max gave Cross a look.

“Crosscut's right, Rudy,” he said. “Anyway, this wounded man might be one of the colonel's detectives, but it wasn't the colonel who put him on your trail. It was Bo Anson.”

Bowlinger looked stunned. He gave the man on the ground a hard stare, bewildered.

“Bo sent him tracking me?” he said in disbelief, looking down at the wounded man. “But Bo set me free. Said to tell you he was doing what you and him talked about doing.”

“Bo Anson is a snake,” said Bard. “He wants to know where our hideout is just as bad as the colonel. Might figure on taking the railroad bounty on us. Why do you think he left that anvil on you to slow you down?”

“I—I never thought about that,” Bowlinger said. “I figured Bo left me chained to it just to be a turd, the way he's prone to be sometimes.”

Max looked down at the man on the ground. Thirty yards back a dead horse lay in the sand where the man had run the animal to death with Bard and his men closing in on him.

“Lucky we spotted him trailing you in, Rudy,” Max said. He said to the detective, “You've led us a long way, made a good run. Now it's over.” As he spoke, he lifted his rifle one-handed, cocked and pointed down at the man. “Who put you on Rudy's trail,” he asked quietly, “Bo Anson or the colonel?”