Between Hell and Texas (32 page)

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Authors: Dusty Richards

BOOK: Between Hell and Texas
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“Will you stop before you go out on the stage?”
“No. It would be too damn hard.”
Marge buried her face in his vest. “Thanks, anyway. I have some wonderful memories.”
“Good night.”
He rode Dyer on home. He'd get Heck ready and they'd head east.
Chapter 31
Chet and Heck sat on the bench under the light coming from the smeared office window over their shoulders. The boy on his right with a short haircut and new clothes looked handsome. Night mountain air had cooled on Chet's windburned face.
Before them sat the Black Canyon stagecoach, without horses, in front of the office. Canvas sacks of mail were ready to be loaded. The express box, under lock, had been loaded with gold bullion and mounted in the floor of the coach. A shotgun guard stayed alert, standing in the area of the passenger door.
“Did the ticket man say I can ride on top?” Heck asked.
“Just so you don't fall asleep and roll off.”
“I won't do that.”
“Good. 'Cause I need you to keep me straight going home.”
“Ha, what could I do?”
“I figure you learned a lot cowboying up here.”
“I did learn some things. There's two kinds of girls in this world.”
“Don't share that with your aunt.”
“Oh, I won't. I learned I could dance with girls, which was nice. I can rope good as most cowboys. And when I get older I'm going to ride broncs. Real tough ones.”
“You should do well. I want you to get some more book-learning so you can make a living with your mind as well.”
“I'll try that.”
“Good. They didn't say much in that last letter, did they?”
“No. I hope things are going that well.”
Chet drew a deep breath. So did he. The jingle of the harness on the dancing teams coming from the stables behind the office told him they were near ready to head south.
Three men hooked them. The agent brought a nicely dressed woman out and loaded her into the coach, and then waved the two of them over. “Get aboard, gents. Now don't you fall off the top, young man.”
“I won't, I'm too excited to do that.” Like a circus monkey, Heck mounted the side and was soon sitting cross-legged on the roof.
Chet thanked the man and waved at his nephew before he joined the woman on the seat facing the back. Two more drummers came out of the office and took the back seat. They grumbled a little about how the stage should be leaving at a decent hour, and one of them coughed hard once he was seated.
The woman's name was Olive Ramsey and she spoke like she came from the piney woods, despite her fashionable clothes.
“We's barely got space for two people to sit 'chere,” she said to Chet.
“Ain't no room and no comfort in these dang coaches,” the fatter man complained.
“If'n my mama weren't dying, I'd never got on this rickety thang,” she drawled.
“Oh, I'm sorry to hear that,” Chet said.
“Well'n I'm going. I hope I survive this one.”
The driver rocked the rig, and then the guard did the same thing getting up into his place as well. They left Preskit with the man on the reins shouting at his teams and cracking a whip. They were off for Phoenix and then places east.
Chet even managed to sleep some. Then somewhere in between his dozing off and waking, a shot shattered the night.
“Hold up or die!” someone ordered.
The driver applied the brakes and whoaed them.
“Oh my Gawd—” the woman said, sucking in her breath. “Don't you let them rape me,” she pleaded with Chet.
“I won't.” He wondered why she thought they'd do that to her. Most holdup men wanted money, not sex.
She clutched his arm. “Say I'm your wife. Maybe they won't do it to me then.”
What time was it? Close to dawn, by his calculation. He heard a familiar voice demanding they get down and not try any tricks. The voice cued him. He knew that person. It was the Kid. Where was his partner? What was his name? Cecil Crown was it. They'd gone from stealing horses in Texas to robbing stages in Arizona. Chet stepped out under the stars and then helped her down. She was trembling.
The Kid took Chet's six-gun out of his holster and pushed them a few feet away from the coach.
“You all get down on the ground.” That was Crown's voice, and there were two more sitting on horses, wearing flour-sack masks. “Don't try anything.”
One of them got off his horse and unhitched the back team, then did some more unhitching. Crown climbed into the coach and shot the lock off the strongbox. The boiling gunsmoke made everyone cough and their eyes smart. It burned Chet's to the core.
“Damn bullion, boys,” Crown said in disgust, holding a candle. “No, there's some coins in here.” He began filling his pockets while the Kid searched everyone. He found some money on Chet, who appreciated that, in the darkness, they had not recognized him.
The woman screamed when the Kid intentionally felt her breasts.
Chet halfway stepped toward him. “Unhand my wife.”
“Sure. Sure, I'm looking for where she's hiding it.”
“She has none. You have my money already.”
“Damn sure ain't much,” the Kid grumbled.
Chet again felt grateful for the darkness. He still had not recognized him. Good.
“I've got all the coins. Here, take some of these gold bars.” Crown handed out some. “We can sell them someplace.”
“You boys ready?” he asked the others.
“Yeah.”
“Take that boy along, so they don't get the urge to follow us. We can leave him off on the road somewhere.”
Chet's heart stopped and fell out. Not Heck....
Chapter 32
The riders shot off a few shots in the air and spooked the horses. Then the outlaws thundered off in the night.
“Oh, thank God, mister. I am so grateful to you. I was raped once by some highway men and my husband divorced me for letting them do that to me. I ain't none too sure this one I got now wouldn't do the same gawdamn thing to me.”
Chet agreed, and asked the guard if there was a loaded rifle up in the boot.
He nodded.
In a bound, Chet was up there and had it in his hands. He checked and found, in the growing light, it was loaded. He swung down.
“Where you going, mister?” the driver asked.
“I'm going to catch a horse from the teams and follow them. That's my nephew they took.”
“They said they'd leave him in the road somewhere if we didn't follow them.”
“Bullshit. Those two I know are killers.”
“But you ain't got a saddle. No provisions. You're going on a wild goose hunt.”
“Tell the sheriff I went after them. My name's Chet Byrnes. He knows me and will send help.” At that, he took off running down the mountain to find himself a horse. The purple of sunup was coming over the tall range to his left.
Where were those outlaws headed? He spotted two horses in the road still in harness. From a sheath behind his back, he took out his large knife and began to stalk them. They looked wide-eyed and ready to spook some more.
“Whoa. Whoa,” he kept coaxing them, getting closer and knowing they were still in a high state of fear. They bolted away and then stopped again, fifty feet from him. Out of breath from his run off the slope, his heart pounded like a hammer under his rib cage. He swallowed and found himself about to shake from all the tension. Talking quietly to his goal, he slipped closer. This time putting down the rifle and gathering a trailing rein, and setting his heels in the gravel.
When they tried to take off again, Chet brought the left horse around. Moving in between them, he slashed the harness loose and cut the strap holding the left horse's collar off him. The animal spooked backwards when it swung off his neck and fell at his front feet. But he had the bridle rein and soon led him over to pick up the rifle.
In a fast swing, he was on the horse's back. Not once had he even thought that the horse might not be broken to ride. He urged him on, and the horse left, crow-hopping. Holding his rifle and reins plus a hank of his mane, Chet needed two more hands to draw his head up. Instead, he shouted at his mount and the horse broke into a run.
His green-broke horse soon settled into a short lope and he wondered how far ahead the highway men might be. He didn't need to burst in on them. They might blow him to kingdom come or kill the boy.
Mid-morning, he saw them way off, or at least their dust, headed for the Bradshaw Mountains. He wondered if they could see him. He eased his big horse down to a walk and settled in. He had their hoofprints memorized. If he overran them—it would be too bad for him. But if he waited till the sun went down, he'd have half a chance of getting Heck back safely.
Chet wished he knew this sparse country where the tall cactus began to appear. And where they were going.
At the next crossroad under the stair-step range, he saw the sign H
ORSE
T
HIEF
B
ASIN—TWELVE MILES WEST.
H
AYDEN'S
M
ILL—SIXTY MILES SOUTH.
P
RESCOTT
—the miles weren't plain—to the north. The temperature felt over 100 degrees.
Chet watered at a small ranch. The stern woman of the house held a.22 rifle on him the entire time the horse drank and he washed his face. He politely thanked her and rode on. The day was finally going down. The sun was beyond the range and he could see their tracks plain as day. How far would they go?
On a flat bench at last, with several tall juniper trees spotted across the near-level land, he discovered a horse. It had a wet spot on its back where the saddle and pad had once been. They must have stopped. He went to hide his own horse in a cluster of the trees. Was it them or someone else simply stopped for the night on the dim ruts some might call a road? No telling. His horse hidden and grazing, impatiently he waited for dark. His stomach barked at his backbone.
The smell of their campfire gnawed at him. At last with the sun down, he crawled and ran, low like an Indian, to get closer. At last he could hear their voices. Resting on his belly under a pungent juniper, he heard the Kid laugh.
Chet buried his face in his arms. No sound of Heck's voice. Did they still have him?
Damn, he better be there. Chet's wind came back and he edged closer. He found his hands were shaky, holding the rifle stock and edging closer. Somehow he must stop that weakness.
Still no sign of Heck as he viewed them in the campfire's light. They were busy eating and had no guard out. Cussing and fussing about the lack of much loot, Crown was standing up telling them every robbery wasn't perfect.
Right. Including that last one.
On his knees and ready with the rifle in his hands, he told them to put their hands in the air. He shot Crown, first in the upper body, then took out another fool who went for his gun belt. The third man was running and he cut him down. The fourth man rose, screaming, “I give up!”
Chet advanced on him. Gunsmoke burning his eyes, he came toward the firelight one step at a time.
“Where's the boy?” he demanded.
“He ain't here.”
He could hear the man's voice trembling. Damn, what had happened? Heck had not been on the road that he followed them on. “Where in hell is he?”
“I don't know, I told you.”
Chet jerked the .44 out of his holster. “What happened to him?”
“I don't know.”
“Yes, you know.” He turned the six-gun over in his hand. Just another cap-and-ball gun, with caps on the nipples. “You better tell me, or I'm going to shoot you in the left foot, then the right one. Then in the knees and then in the hip, until you tell me where my boy is at.”
“Way back there the Kid done it.”
“Did what?” Chet jammed the muzzle of the sixshooter into his guts.
“I-I-I didn't do it. I swear, mister, I never had nothing to do with it.”
“What did they do to him?” Chet raged. He stuck his own gun in his waistband, then he jerked the man's revolver out of his holster. To press his point, he forced the man backward with the muzzle of the Colt. Hammer cocked, his trigger finger twitched.
“They cut his throat and threw him over the cliff.”
“Tell me one more time what they did to that boy.” His teeth were so tightly clinched that his jaw hurt.
“They cut his throat and threw him off a cliff.”
“Damn you!” Chet pulled the trigger with the muzzle in the man's chest.
Gunsmoke boiled up. The man screamed, “No!” He staggered backward each time that Chet pulled the trigger until the last bullet struck him as he lay on the ground. Shaking, Chet clicked the trigger two more times on empty. He went to Crown's body and jerked him up to his face by a handful of his bloody shirt.
“Did you kill that boy?”
No answer.
Disgusted, he went to where the Kid lay, rolled him over and knelt on the ground to draw him up to his face. “So you killed that boy, huh?”
The Kid's eyes looked glazed over, his face white as marble. His head was loose on his shoulders and rolled around when he shook him. “Did you?”
No answer.
He went to the last man he had shot in the back, and turned him over. “Tell me how they killed him. Where is he at?
“A long steep side—off a ...” The man's life escaped him and he went limp.
Chet staggered back to the fire and cried. The pain in his chest was like a knife stabbing him over and over again. He hurt so bad he wanted to shoot himself and be over with it all. How could he ever tell the family?
How could he go on living—letting them kill that innocent boy?
Oh, dear God please forgive me for bringing him out here. For letting these worthless bastards kill a boy who'd had enough hell in his life.
He tossed more fuel onto the fire.
No way Chet could eat. No way he could face anyone or anything. The cross he must bear was to find that boy's body come daylight and have a funeral for him. Oh, did he even have the strength? This must be one of those nightmares that ruined his sleep. No. He could feel the heat of the fire on his face. No, Heck Dale Byrnes was dead. But where?
Haggard, without any food or sleep, at first light, Chet saddled and rode one of the outlaws' better horses and searched off both sides of the route that they had taken off the far range to their camp. Then he saw the gathering buzzards circling high in the sky in the distance. Way down the road—he swung into the saddle and raced the horse to beat the scavengers to Heck's body.
Maybe he was still alive—no, he couldn't expect that. Whipping and lashing the horse over and under with the reins, he thundered off the mountainside. Skidding him to a ruthless stop, he bailed off the horse in the road and looked straight down the steep side into the canyon. Good grief. It was too great a dropoff to simply go down it. He'd need to take the side down. Then, hand over hand, he let himself down the bluff, looking for sight of it. He lost his footing. A juniper branch he caught in the nick of time tore into his palm, and soon blood began to appear. The way grew easier to descend and he could see the corpse. When he looked up, the way back was too steep to go up. No matter, he would have the boy's body and they wouldn't.
Chet rolled the limp body over, and beneath the dirty face he saw the wide rip under his chin. Sonsabitches! A shame Kathren didn't kill them all. Or the night in Mason when they beat him up that he didn't kill them then. He gently took Heck up in his arms and looked for the best way back up to the road.
It was a long, grueling hour or so for him to get back up to the top. He found the horse grazing, gathered the reins, and stepped up into the saddle, holding the boy in his arms. Then he headed east for the stage road.
An hour later, Chet met Sheriff Sims and his posse. The man dismounted and came over to look at the boy. “We can take him for you.”
“No, I'm going to do that. Those men you want are all dead. We had a shoot-out up on that road to Horse Thief. They told me that the Kid cut his throat and threw him off a bluff. I found him about an hour ago. The gold they robbed is up there. So is one of the stage line horses with the rest of theirs.”
“Thanks. Some of us can go with you. We want to help you. We're sorry they killed him.”
“No, thanks. I can take him.” He swallowed hard. “I'm sorry he's dead, too.”
Chet booted the horse on before he cried.
Two hours later on the road, he saw a buggy coming from Preskit. The dust about obscured it, but he saw it was Marge's rig. They soon met in the road. Chet's vision was blurred and his mouth too dry to hardly talk. She was in tears when she took the body from him, and collapsed in the road with Heck sprawled over her lap.
Chet tried to jump down, but ended up falling from the saddle to the ground. The sun was blazing in his eyes. He crawled on his hands and knees.
“They killed him.” He was on his knees, half blind, too groggy to think. Maybe like Rocky had been, out there looking for those siblings that the Comanche took.
“I can see that. Oh, Chet, what will you do?”
“Find a preacher—take him to the ranch. That's Byrnes land now. We can bury him there. He fought for it like they fought for the bar-C and was the—first to die.”
In the dust, Chet began hugging and kissing her. My God, where was he at? How did she know to come for him?
“Chet. Chet, you fainted. Can you help me put him in the buggy?”
“Sure, sure,” he slurred. “How did you know about this?”
“Harold came and told me you had gone after the robbers. The posse was already gone. Did they get them?”
“Yeah, that's another story.”
“You can tell me later.” She struggled to get the corpse into the buggy, and finally he found his sea legs and helped her put him on the floor between the seats.
“Now you get in.”
Clumsy as a bear cub, at last he was on the seat. She ran around to get on, and took control of the team. They made a wide turn and headed north.
“My gosh, Chet, how did this all happen?”
“Stage robbers in the night stopped the coach. Some lady riding with me was so afraid they would rape her, she wanted my help.”
“Why did she need your help, for Heaven sakes?”
“'Cause the last time she was held up, the bandits raped her. Her first husband divorced her over letting them do that and she was afraid this one might, too—”

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