Golden Riders (6 page)

“Doc Croft, we need you here, quick!” the voice said.

The doctor clamped his black bag to his side with an elbow and gave one last look down at Garlet.

“Somebody get this one to my office, too,” he called out. He gave Sam a level gaze.

“I expect you'll be the law here until our sheriff's back on his feet?” he asked pointedly.

Sam looked off into the black smoke and fire still shrouding most on the long block of burning buildings, at bucket brigades hastily formed, made up of men and women alike who passed buckets of water from the water troughs along a row of waiting hands. In the street a half block away a fire wagon stood with its hose rolled into the smoke and flames. A townsman held the team of frightened fire wagon horses in place while two men
worked frantically, turning the pump handle that fed water from the wagon's supply tank.

“I'm here for as long as I'm needed, Doctor,” the Ranger said, the raging firelight glittering in his eyes. Even if the ones who'd blown up the jail were still alive and had made their getaway, he couldn't leave here now. Rounding up the Golden Gang would have to wait, he told himself, seeing what destruction the pursuit of his prey had wrought upon this unsuspecting town.

Seven miles out of Midland, lying in the dirt beside a narrow creek, the six blackened and smoked outlaws dropped from their saddles and fell to the ground at the water's edge. Jake Cleary coughed and hacked and spat up black-gray saliva. His hair had been singed from the front and both sides of his head. His eyebrows were missing. His beard was frayed and ragged. While his horse drank its fill, Jake stuck his blackened face down into the water and swished it around and raised it. He stared at the Bluebird three men down from him as the Indian cupped water to his face with both hands and washed black sweat from his cheeks.

“I want to kill this son of a bitch . . . worse than I've ever wanted to kill anybody in my life,” he wheezed in a broken voice. He stared hard at the Bluebird. “He's come damn near . . . blowing us all to hell.” As he spoke he rubbed his bare hip where his gun would ordinarily be holstered. Unable to hear Cleary's threats, the Bluebird didn't even look around.

“Take it easy, Jake,” Prew Garlet said to the scorched
and blackened gunman. “Nobody wants to kill him more than I do. I've got a brother missing back there.”

“I hate to tell you, Prew, but your brother John is dead,” Cleary said, his voice still raspy from smoke. “If he's not, he's wishing he was. Last thing I saw was him riding a piece of jail bars out through the front wall.” His words ended in a hard cough.

Foz and Tillman both raised their faces from the water at Cleary's news. They looked at their brother Prew, then at the Bluebird. The Indian continued washing black sweat and grit from himself, not realizing he was the topic of bitter conversation.

“Don't kill him,” Prew warned. “Brax wants him. Says the Bluebird here is the man to have with us if we need something blown up.”

“I can sure as hell believe that,” said Cleary with dark sarcasm.

“This Mex-Injun worked setting up explosives for mining companies blowing down whole mountains—learned to make his own dynamite from the South American Suala Soto. I expect you've heard of him.”

“I've heard of him,” said Cutthroat Teddy, also in a raspy voice. “I've heard he's dead—blew himself up somewhere.”

“Brax wants the Bluebird,” Prew said, “so we're taking him to him.” He shook his head and added, “Anyway, what happened back there is the jail wall blew into the mercantile and the mercantile must have had lots of gunpowder on hand.”

“Maybe so,” Bonsell replied, “but the jail wall
wouldn't have blown into the mercantile if this fool hadn't used so damn much explosive.”

“I don't know how that happened,” said Prew, unable to deny it. “I think he doesn't
habla Ingles
so good.” He looked over at the Bluebird and said, “Ain't that right, Bird? You don't understand English?”

The Bluebird didn't even look around.

“Jesus . . . ,” said Cleary. “Now I think he's just ignoring you.”

Foz wiped water from his blackened face and looked around at his brothers, Tillman and Prew.

“I don't know if it's the blast or that damned mescal, but I'm still not right in the head,” he said.

“There're some would say you never have been, Foz,” Prew said, rising to his feet. “I heard all about that mescal. I even brought some along in case I want to see for myself how strong it is.”

“Don't drink it, Prew,” Foz warned, also pushing himself to his feet. “It's ruined me.”

“I won't,” said Prew. “Not now anyway.”

Foz stared at Prew grimly and said, “I ain't joking. There's something wrong with that stuff.”

Prew gave his brother a dismissive chuff under his breath.

Cleary and Bonsell stood up, water running from their scorched faces.

“If that damned Ranger ain't dead, he's going to be after us,” said Bonsell.

“He won't be for long,” said Prew. “There're plenty of Golden Riders between here and Kane's hideout. One of us will kill him before he gets too close. If not,
Brax will stop his clock when he hears about him killing Cordy.” He turned to his horse and picked up its reins. The horse's tail was frazzled and burnt on the ends. “Either way, Burrack is now just a killing waiting to happen.” He swung up into his saddle. The men swung up as well, except for the Bluebird who sat staring out across the night sky.

“Let's go, Bluebird,” said Bonsell. Then he repeated himself in Spanish. Still, the Indian just sat staring. As Bonsell stepped his horse closer, the Bluebird saw the dark shadow of the animal stretch out on the water. Looking around he saw the men atop their horses, and stood up himself.

Bonsell looked at Prew and said, “Just one more hardheaded Injun is what I think.”

“Might be,” said Prew turning his horse away from the water toward the trail. “Let's go get ourselves some guns and take the Bluebird to Kane's hideout.” He nodded at the Bluebird's bulging saddlebags. “I don't like traveling with dynamite behind
me.”

For three full weeks the Ranger kept the law in Midland Settlement while Sheriff Schaffer recuperated from his injuries—the burns, broken ribs and numerous cuts and contusions the explosion had inflicted on him. During that time, marshaling town law had not been difficult. The people of the settlement were too busy rebuilding their town to participate in the drunkenness and brawling that might ordinarily take up much of a sheriff's time. It helped that for the first week and a half the saloon itself had been closed for repairs, due to the domino effect the explosion had created racing along the main street.

“I don't mind telling you, Ranger,” he said, “I'll never sleep at my desk again—if I ever have another desk, that is.”

“You'll have a desk, Sheriff,” Sam said. “I ordered you one up from Texas. Should be here in a month.”

“Obliged, Ranger,” said Schaffer. He sighed. “By my estimation, we lost a full third of our businesses right there,” he said, gesturing a bandaged forearm toward the new buildings under construction across the street
from where they stood out front of the doctor's office. “Not to mention my jail and office building,” he added. “When the jail blew, the explosion ripped through the mercantile stockroom. Smitty, the owner, said he had four and a half kegs of black powder stored there. That did it. We're lucky we didn't all land in Mexico.”

Sam only nodded, gazing along the row of unpainted flat-plank-and-adobe buildings. Almost miraculously, a band of Mexican adobe craftsmen had shown up from across the border and began constructing the structures with blocks made from mud mixed on-site in the charred, blackened earth.

“We only found one body sifting around the jail site,” Sam said, staring in that direction. “We'll never know who it was—it could've been the prospector.”

“Could've been that they all blew into pieces and burned in the street,” Schaffer said, looking at the countless black charred spots on the wide dirt thoroughfare.

“Could be . . . ,” Sam replied deftly.

“But you don't believe it?” said Schaffer.

“I can't allow myself to,” Sam said, his thumb hooked in his gun belt. “Not just yet anyway. Besides, even if the Garlets and my prisoners are all dead, there's still Braxton Kane. Still enough Golden Riders to keep me busy for a while.”

Sheriff Schaffer stood with his weight steadied on a walking cane, his left arm in a sling, salve covering his red, raw forehead and the back of both hands. His eyebrows and lashes were gone; his head was covered with fresh white gauze. One bootless foot had a thick
bandage covering it almost up to his calf, his trouser leg ripped open up the seam to accommodate it.

“To tell the truth, Ranger, you're ready to get on the trail, aren't you?” he said to Sam as if it was confidential between the two of them.

Sam stared straight ahead, seeing a Mexican lead a reluctant mule loaded with fresh adobe brick on its back.

“To tell the truth,
yes
, I'm ready to get on the trail,” he said. “But not until the doctor says you're in shape to get back to work.”

“Fact is, I'm as right as a spring peach, Ranger,” the sheriff said, his mustache and goatee gone. He pointed his cane at a large ragged saloon tent standing in a vacant lot. “The saloon's back in business, but there's no piano, no billiard table anymore. That's where most trouble always comes from. Men can't hear music and not fight. Can't seem to hold a stick for long without swinging it at one another—it's born in them,” he confirmed.

“Obliged, Sheriff,” Sam said. “But make sure you're up to it, before I cut out of here.”

“Like I said,” Schaffer reiterated, “I'm right as a spring peach.” He pounded himself lightly on the chest with his bandaged forearm in the sling. “Did you ever get anything out of that Garlet idiot?” He gestured a nod toward the doctor's clapboard building behind them.

“No,” Sam said. “Nothing yet. I'll talk to him again before I leave.”

“And if he won't give up their hideout?” said Schaffer.

“I rode out into the hills and looked around some
while you were unconscious,” Sam said. “I found some tracks that were riding wide off the trail, headed south.”

“So, that's why you're suspecting some of these men might still be alive?” Schaffer asked.

“Bonsell's horse was wearing store-bought shoes, has a nick in one the size of my thumbnail. I saw that nick while I was looking around.”

“Could be the horse was running away from the fire,” said Schaffer.

“Could be. But whether they're alive or not, it's as good a place as any to start looking,” Sam said. “They were headed south when I took up the hunt. They did a change around when I started getting close. I figured they did it to lead me away. From what I hear, Braxton Kane is not a man who'd stand for his riders bringing the law down on him.”

Schaffer looked him up and down and nodded.

“That he ain't,” he said. “Nor is he the kind of man who'll shy away when somebody's killed his kin. I can't say that enough, Ranger,” he added.

“Obliged, but you needn't warn me, Sheriff,” Sam said. “I don't want him shying away. I want him coming at me full bark-on. Killing Cordy might be the only way I can flush Braxton out and take him down.”

Schaffer shook his head warily at the Ranger's methods.

“That's playing too fast and loose for my blood anymore,” he said. “I expect I've lost my stomach for that kind of hard killing.” He turned as he spoke and gestured his walking cane toward the side door to the doctor's building. “Come on, I'll question John Garlet with
you,” he said. “I'll wear this stick out on him—make him cooperate, if you want me to.”

“Let's see how it goes,” Sam said, walking in front of the sheriff and opening the door for him. “What is Dr. Croft saying about this one?”

“Says he's lost his mind,” Schaffer said. “Says the blast didn't help any, but he thinks he was poisoned from the mescal and it's boiled his brain. Aside from the peyote, cocaine and God knows what else is in it, Doc says it might be full of metal from up around the mines where it was made. Metal poison alone can eat a man's brain plumb out of his skull.”

Sam just stared at him, listening.

“Anyway,” said Schaffer, “I'm glad we've seen the last of that stuff around here. No telling how many it's sent into raving madness. Still they like to drink it, seeing how strong it is. The more they hear about it, the more they have to try it.”

As the two stepped inside and saw John Garlet stretched out in a corner, his arms out spread-eagle, thickly bandaged and strapped down on splint boards to keep his broken bones in place. His legs were also strapped to boards and bandaged. His feet rested in slings that hung from thin cables on pulleys attached to a metal frame that stood over the bed. A wooden frame mantled his shoulders and held his head in place on a round board, held there by rigid wires screwed in place. His head was covered with thick bandage, his face partially concealed by gauze.

“Did you . . . think to bring me . . . a gun?” he asked from within a dazed laudanum stupor.

“No gun, Garlet, you can't hold one anyway,” the sheriff said. “It's me, Sheriff Schaffer, and the Ranger, Sam Burrack. The Ranger wants to ask you some questions.”

“I don't know . . . anything about it,” Garlet said groggily.

“About what?” the sheriff asked.

“About . . . nothing,” said Garlet. His mouth hung gapping in a crazy half smile.

“See?” Schaffer said to the Ranger. “Still doesn't have the sense God gave a goose.” He shook his head and said to Garlet, “All the same, talk to him, Garlet. It might make you feel better.”

“Can I . . . have a gun . . . one bullet?” John Garlet asked, adrift on the laudanum. His dark eyes swirled in madness. Saliva ran from his mouth down his chin.

Sam stopped short before walking any closer.

“It's useless talking to him,” he said. “Dr. Croft is right. He's lost his mind.” He stepped back to the door. “I'm leaving come morning.”

“I'm holding him here and putting him on the jail wagon from Yuma when it gets here,” said Sheriff. “He's a danger to himself. They'll stick him in a lunatic cell.”

Sam looked at John Garlet again and shook his head. Then he and the sheriff stepped out the door and closed it behind them.

After the first two weeks of riding northwest through a succession of frontier mining settlements and hill towns, the three Garlets, Bluebird, Cutthroat Teddy Bonsell and
Jake Cleary stopped at every opportunity to search for arms and ammunition. One of the first had been Poco Fuego. In the wispy first light of dawn they had ridden scorched, singed and blistered into the high border town and spilled into a small cantina owned by a one-legged Confederate war veteran named Virgil Piney.

There they spent a week lying in the cool water of a shallow creek and eating anything Piney and his old Mexican man-servant Jeto would kill, chop and roast for them.

Being the only one fully armed and carrying money, Prew bought two of Virgil Piney's spare guns, a long-barreled muzzle-loader shotgun and a battered—but still vicious—nine-shot LeMat revolver. The big French-made horse pistol hosted a twenty-gauge shotgun barrel beneath its long .42 caliber pistol barrel. The shotgun he gave to his brother Tillman, the LeMat to Jake Cleary who had carried one like it when he'd ridden with a band of Alabama guerillas in the great civil conflict.

When the men had finished their week's stay and prepared their horses for the trail, Foz saw Cleary check the big LeMat and shove it down into its worn saddle rig hanging beside his knee.

“What about me, Prew? Hadn't I ought to get a gun?” Foz asked his brother.

Prew studied his brother's eyes for a moment, scrutinizing him closely.

“How you feeling now?” he asked.

“What do you mean
how do I feel
?” said Foz, a little taken aback.

“I mean have you gotten your senses back yet?” Prew said bluntly.

“Hell yes, I've got them back,” said Foz, sitting upright in his saddle. “What are you saying, that you don't trust me holding a gun?”

“Last night you said you were seeing things, things that had you shaking and carrying on,” said Prew. “How's that going now?”

Foz jerked angrily on his roan's reins as the animal began getting restless beneath him.

“Last night I
was
seeing things,” he said. “Today I'm
not
seeing them. Do I look shaky to you?”

Prew just stared at his brother's hairless, browless smudged face.

“Next guns we come upon, you get first pick,” he said, placating Foz. “Does that suit you?”

“That'll suit me,” Foz said. He looked all around at the other faces as he spoke. “I'm warning everybody here and now, if I keep hearing you whispering and laughing about me behind my back, somebody's going to die, gun or no gun.”

The men, except for Tillman, sat staring blackly at him. Tillman sat looking off into the distance with a dreamy wistful look on his face.

“Take it easy, Foz,” Prew said quietly, seeing his brother getting agitated.

But Foz would have none of it.

“Don't deny it,” he said, ignoring Prew. “You've all been doing it, haven't you?” His eyes stopped on the Bluebird who upon seeing Foz's lips move, nodded his
head, agreeing with the delusional outlaw although he hadn't heard a word he'd said.

“Jesus . . . ,” Prew said under his breath. He turned his horse to the trail. “Come on, Foz, you and Tillman ride beside me a while. I want to hear more about what to expect from this jug of mescal I've got here.” He gestured toward his saddlebags. “Tell me what you all were seeing last night.” He took Tillman's inattentive horse by its bridle and pulled it alongside him until Tillman seemed to snap out of a trancelike state and collect himself.

Bonsell and Jake Cleary gave each other a guarded look and slowed their horses to fall behind the three Garlets.

“This is worrisome, the way they're acting,” Cleary said under his breath.

“I hear you, Jake,” said Bonsell. He nudged his horse forward, following the Garlets. He stared forward at the jug bulging in Prew's saddlebags. “This keeps on I'm going to start getting curious about that stuff myself.”

The Bluebird rode beside the two, staring ahead at the endless Mexican hill country. And they rode on.

By that afternoon they had made a camp on a hillside in the shelter of tall pines and rock. The next day, in the early afternoon, they arrived at an ancient nameless Mexican trade settlement overlooking a wide stretch of Sonora desert valley. There they gathered more guns, gun leather and ammunition from a Mexican gunrunner named Sibio Alverez, who was known to show partiality
to the Kane brothers and anybody associated with the Golden Gang.

The settlement had become a stopping point for any of the Golden Riders to lie low and lie the trail grow cold behind them. At Alverez's cantina, two such men, Lester Stevens and Mason Gorn, had been drinking and carousing with four loose women who made their living off passing gunmen along the border badlands trails. Looking out through a window they recognized the six riders moving their horses along the dusty street.

“All right,” said Stevens, grinning, staring through the wavy window glass. “It's about time we had some company show up.” He threw back his shot of rye and set his glass down hard and snatched the bottle by its neck. He and Gorn walked out front and met the men as they rode up to the hitch rail and stepped down from their saddles. The four women ventured out behind them and stood hanging and leaning on to the two and staring at the newcomers. In the doorway, Sibio Alverez stood chewing on a short black cigar. He grinned across gold teeth and raised a hand in welcome.