Between Hell and Texas (25 page)

Ellis looked him up and down. “Now, if you don’t have any more comments on the matter, I’ll go look around some. Whatever you do, don’t light a lamp. Anybody riding the trail will see a match strike halfway to the hills.”

“Don’t worry,” said Braden, eating vigorously. “I know better then to strike a match.” He added sarcastically, “I don’t want to give you any ideas.” He let out a short laugh at his own humor.

“Smart son of a bitch,” Ellis cursed under his breath, walking away. He prowled his way to the bedroom, leaving opened drawers and disheveled whatnots and belongings in his wake.

Moon Braden took a large chunk of the
pan dulce
, the opened bottle of wine in his hand and a fresh bottle under his arm, and walked to the front window where he could keep a clear lookout on the winding trail. “Don’t take all night
looking
,” Braden called out toward the bedroom. Chuckling again at his humor, Braden took another long drink, feeling the strong Mexican wine beginning to glow inside him.

But Moon Braden’s words didn’t cause Ellis to get in any hurry. Nearly an hour passed before Ellis came back from the bedroom, carrying his boots in his hand and his gun belt over his shoulder. “Moon, you can go on back there if you want to,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I’ll keep watch for awhile.”

Moon had dozed off leaning against the window frame, but Ellis’s voice snapped him out of it. “Huh? Go where?” he asked, having heard Ellis through a veil of sleep.

“You fell asleep keeping watch, didn’t you?” Ellis asked accusingly.

“I wasn’t asleep,” said Braden. He wiped his blurry eyes and looked Ellis up and down curiously in the pale moonlight coming through the window. “What do you mean ‘
I can go back there awhile?
’” he asked, staring at Ellis’s empty boots and shouldered gun belt.

Ellis set his boots down and began stepping into and pulling them on. “Never mind,” he said with a snap.

Braden looked him up and down again, this time with a disbelieving grin, saying, “What on earth was you doing back there all this time,
Pard?
”

“I was just looking,” said Ellis, adjusting his boots and swinging his gun belt around his waist. “You can go look if you want to…that’s all I was saying.”

“Just looking?” Braden asked. He sniffed the air, catching a scent of women’s lilac cologne. “Are you wearing perfume?”

“You go to hell, Braden!” Ellis snapped. “I might have spilled some on me…it’s too damn dark in here!”

“Yeah, it’s dark, but
still
…” said Braden, his words trailing.

Trying to change the subject, Ellis pulled out a handful of cigars and wagged them back and forth in front of Braden. “Look what I found! I suppose you won’t turn one of these babies down, will you?”

“We can’t light them in here, remember?” said Braden. “We don’t want any light to be seen.”

“I know,” said Ellis, “but give me a match. I’ll go light them out back, then bring them back in here. There’s no reason we can’t be comfortable while we wait.”

“Nothing doing,” said Braden, turning back to the window. “I ain’t trusting you alone with a match. I still wonder what you was doing in that woman’s bedroom all this time.”

Outside, leading the riders around the last wide turn in the trail, Cray Dawson saw the flash of fire in the front window of the
hacienda
and heard the single muffled gunshot. He halted the group and said to the Furry brothers, riding with Carmelita in the buckboard beside him, “Did you see that? It came from inside the house.”

“We all saw it,” said Max Furry. “What does it mean?”

“I have no idea,” said Dawson. But we’re not taking any chances. We’re going to dismount, circle the place and close in all at once.”

Cleveland Ellis came back from the bedroom for the second time, this time bare-chested and hatless with a pair of women’s pantaloons draped around his neck. He finished his second bottle of wine in a long gulp and saved enough of it to spit a stream down
on Moon Braden’s body. “What do you think of this trinket, Pard?” He jiggled a large beaded women’s necklace on his chest. Then he said, mockingly, “What’s that? I don’t hear you giving me any back-talk,
Mister
Braden! Looks like you’ve finally learnt to keep your mouth shut.” He gave the blank, dead face a short kick, causing Braden’s head to rock back and forth on the hard tile floor.

Staggering, he walked back to the pantry and opened another bottle of wine, pulling the tall cork with his teeth and spitting it away. “Care for some more
pan dulce
, Mister Ellis,” he said aloud in a mock feminine voice. Then, tearing himself a large handful of the sweet bread, he lowered his voice to a manly tone and said, “Well, thank you…I don’t mind if I do.” He staggered back to the front room chewing a mouthful of sweet bread as he struck a match and lit one of the cigars.

Out front, seeing the match flare through the window caused Cray Dawson to turn to Carmelita and say, “I’d feel better if you’d stay back here until we get inside. They could have met up with some others. We don’t know how many might be in there.”

“I understand,” said Carmelita. “I will stay back here until it is safe to come in.”

Creeping up silently beside Dawson, Frenchy said, “I checked the barn; there’s only two horses there.”

“Good enough,” said Dawson. “Let’s get it down.” He raised a hand in the pale moonlight and waved the others forward, the circle of armed men moving as one, silent and fast.

Dawson leaped onto the porch and without a second of hesitancy kicked the front door open and charged inside, his Colt cocked and aimed. Behind
him the Double D men spilled into the room and formed another circle, their pistols and rifles pointed at the shadowy figure and the glowing cigar in the center of the room. “Don’t move!” Dawson shouted.

“Don’t shoot!” came Cleveland Ellis’s startled reply.

A tense moment passed as Dawson moved sidelong to a lamp on a table. He picked it up and held it out to Max Furry, who lit it and lowered the globe into place, casting a bright circle of light.

“What the hell?” said Shaney. The rest of the men stared with stunned expressions at Cleveland Ellis, with the pantaloons around his neck, the large woman’s necklace sparkling on his hairy chest, and his eyes wide and red-rimmed from too much wine. “It’s Cleveland Ellis!” Shaney’s eyes went to the body on the floor at Ellis’s feet.

“And there’s Braden! Shot from behind!” Frenchy added, nodding at Braden’s body, with a gaping hole in his chest where Ellis’s bullet had exited.

“Drop the gun!” said Dawson, as surprised as the rest but not allowing himself to be distracted from the task at hand. The scent of women’s lilac cologne wafted heavily in the air. Empty wine bottles lay strewn across the floor, one of them broken, from when Braden fell dead on the floor.

Ellis let his pistol drop onto Moon Braden’s bloodstained belly. “You would never have gotten the drop on me if I hadn’t got drunk, Dawson,” Cleveland Ellis sneered, sticking the cigar into his mouth. Looking at the Double D boys, he said, “I wish I could have managed to kill a bunch of you poltroons before I went down.”

“String him up!” shouted Barney Woods.

“Wait!” Dawson said firmly to Woods. Turning back to Ellis he asked, “Did Lematte send you two after me?” He eyed the badge on Ellis’s chest as he stepped around, picked up the dropped pistol, and shoved it down into his belt.

“Yeah.” Ellis shrugged. “He sent us. I ain’t going to lie about it. Lematte sent us to kill you. We burned your house down.” He nodded down at Moon Braden’s body, then lied shamelessly, saying, “Burning the house was all his idea…I tried to stop him, begged him not to. Burning that house is what started the trouble between us. I told him we shouldn’t have done it. He wouldn’t listen.”

“String him up!” Barney Woods said again.

“Hold on,” said Dawson, stopping Woods from reaching out and grabbing Ellis. Woods stepped back, but he turned to Alvin Decker and said, “Get a rope. Soon as Dawson’s through talking to him, we’re stringing him up!” As he spoke he gave Ellis a cold stare. Ellis swallowed a knot in his throat, sobering quickly.

Carmelita stepped into the room from the porch. Upon seeing the pantaloons and necklace around Cleveland Ellis’s neck, she said angrily, “What are you doing with these things?”

“Yeah, Ellis,” said Barney Woods, “what
are
you doing wearing women’s jewelry and undergarments?”

Ellis looked sick, but he said defiantly, “I don’t have to explain myself to you, Woods!”

Carmelita stepped forward and tried to snatch the pantaloons from him, but Ellis jumped a step to the
side. His eyes darted back and forth wildly. “Carmelita, get back from him!” Dawson shouted, seeing that Ellis was about to make a move. But before Carmelita could even respond, Ellis gave her a hard shove toward Dawson, then turned and bolted straight through the Double D men between him and the rear of the
hacienda
.

“Grab him!” shouted Woods. A shot went off from Eldon Furry’s rifle, but Ellis had shoved the barrel up away from him as he streaked past. “He’s making a break!” Woods barked.

Cleveland Ellis raced along a hallway and out the rear door, the Double D boys right behind him. But he managed to pull ahead of them and make it inside the barn. He gave the barn door a shove and dropped the long wooden bolt into place just as the men ran into it. “
Adios
! You sons-a-bitches!” he shrieked, hearing them pounding and shouldering the doors.

He knew it would only be seconds before some of the men ran around to the rear of the barn, so he rushed to the horses he and Braden had left standing near the rear door. Hearing boots pounding the wet ground around the side of the barn, he grabbed one of the horses’ reins, flung himself up into the saddle and nailed his spurs into the horse’s sides. As the horse bolted away he ducked low in his saddle, slapping the ends of the reins wildly, putting the horse into a full run. Reaching down with his right hand he jerked his rifle from his saddle boot and straightened up enough to turn and fire a shot back at his pursuers.

As the shot sounded, Dawson and the rest of the men heard a loud
thunk
in the darkness and felt a
slight tremor in the ground beneath their feet. “What was that?” Alvin Decker asked, dumbfounded.

“Shhh, quiet!” Dawson said, listening closely to the night. A silent second passed, the only noise being the sound of Cleveland Ellis’s horse’s hoofs slowing to a halt thirty yards away.

“Is he turning, coming back?” asked Frenchy, in a whisper.

“I don’t think so,” Dawson said. He motioned everybody forward with his pistol barrel. They moved quietly and cautiously until they saw a dark lump lying on the moonlit ground beneath the low, out-reaching limb of the live oak tree.

“Lord have mercy,” Shaney said in a hushed tone. “He hooked that low branch!”

“Boy, I’ll say he did,” Frenchy whispered in reply. He had carried the lit lamp with him from the house. He held it out at arm’s length and winced at what the glow revealed.

“He’s broke his damned neck,” said Woods in disbelief.

“Boy, I’ll say he has,” said Frenchy.

Cleveland Ellis lay flat on his back, spread-eagled on the ground, his neck at an odd angle to his body. A trickle of blood ran down from one corner of his mouth. His eyes stared upward with a startled expression.

“He never knew what hit him,” said Alvin Decker. A few feet away Ellis’s horse came walking back slowly, looking down, then poking its muzzle against its downed rider.

“Saved us stretching his neck for him, far as I’m concerned,” said Woods.

“What do you want to do with these two, Crayton?” Shaney asked quietly.

“We didn’t kill them,” said Dawson. “Let’s get them on the buckboard. I’ll haul them to Lematte. They’re his men. Let him figure what he wants to do with them.”

At daylight, on their way to the restaurant for breakfast, Sheriff Lematte asked Karl Nolly, “Where’s Ash?”

“He was just getting up when I left the hotel,” said Nolly. Then, in a critical tone, he said, “I reckon a
big gunman
needs more rest than us common folk.”

“Yep, I suppose that’s it all right,” said Lematte. He smiled to himself, liking the way Mad Albert Ash got under Karl Nolly’s skin. It kept Nolly on his toes, Lematte thought.

“Shouldn’t we be hearing something from Cleveland Ellis and Moon Braden?” Nolly asked.

“Most any time now, I expect,” said Lematte, seeing a buckboard and a single horseman top the horizon, headed toward town. He squinted slightly, studying both the rig and the rider for a moment. “Who’s this coming here?”

“It could be most anybody at this time of morning,” said Nolly. “Why? What’s your concern?”

“My concern is all that dust rising aways back
behind
them. As wet as the land is, it takes a lot of riders to raise this much dust.

“I see what you mean,” said Nolly, craning his neck slightly for a better look.

The two stepped up onto the boardwalk out front of the restaurant and stared out at the lone wagon in the early morning light. “To just be a rig and one rider they sure are leaving a lot hanging behind them,” said Lematte.