Lawless Trail (16 page)

“That's Doc, up there,” Wes said. “We found him on our way here. He's covering us.”

“Suits the hell out of me,” said Rubens. Bullets began slicing through the air.

Stepping out of the roofless adobe where he slept, Captain Torez moved into the firelight with his nickel-plated revolver raised and ready. He looked all around courageously. Two riflemen stood guard over the sacks of money.

“Where is Sergeant Malero?” he asked. “He should be here by my side.”

“He was here, but now he has left,” said one of the riflemen. “He said he must check on a matter of urgency.”

“Damn it!” said Torez. “Here is his urgency.” Looking around, he didn't see the prisoners. He only saw two wounded soldiers crawling across the dirt, the body of the dead rifleman lying out in front of the adobe where the prisoners were kept. He heard the pounding of hooves and stood stunned as the last of the soldiers' horses disappeared into the night.

“They are escaping,
Capitán
!” said one of the riflemen flanking him a few steps behind.

“I see that, you
imbécil
!” shouted the captain. As he spoke, he caught a rifle flash in the growth on the hillside. A soldier fell on the ground, yelling. “They are up there!” Torez shouted, turning his revolver and firing on the orange-blue flash of fire. Yet, on the hillside, Dr. Bernard had already backed into the foliage and moved away in a low crouch to his new position.

Torez's soldiers sought whatever cover they could find around the darker edges of the campfire.

“Capitán!”
shouted the soldier Juan. “They are everywhere! They ran that way.” He gestured his rifle barrel in the direction of the darkness behind the adobe where prisoners had been.

“I don't give a damn which way they ran,” shouted Torez. He gestured his gun barrel upward along the hillside. “They are up there in the
sin valor
vines! Charge the hillside! Get up there and kill them. Kill them all!” He stared back and forth and yelled, “Sergeant Malero! Where the hell are you?” But he heard no reply from anywhere around the clearing.

Turning to the two riflemen just as a bullet from Dr. Bernard thumped the ground at his feet, Torez jumped and hurried back into the open doorway of his dark adobe. Stepping away from a revealing shaft of pale moonlight cutting slantwise through a rear window, he stood in his long johns and jerked on one of his boots and spoke.

“You, go catch our horses for us,” he said to the rifleman standing at the doorway. “If you see my sergeant, send him to me!”

“Sí, Capitán,”
said the rifleman. He stepped outside warily and ran in a crouch around the dark fronts of the adobes, leaping over piles of scattered brick.

“You, guard the money with your life!” he bellowed at the other soldier, gesturing his pistol barrel toward the two sacks lying in a corner. “Nothing must happen to the money!”

When the soldier only wobbled in place and remained silent, the captain straightened rigidly, boot in hand, and stared at him angrily.

“Are you deaf, you fool? Do you not hear me?” he bellowed in the young soldier's face.

Only then did he see the soldier's dead eyes staring in stunned surprise at something far away from the captain, or from anything of any mortal importance. The soldier's body sank to the ground. Shaken, Torez dropped his other boot when he saw Carter Claypool standing behind the fallen soldier, his bloody knife in his hand.

Beside Claypool, Rubens' hand raised his confiscated revolver to the captain's head from three feet away.

“This is for Bugs, you stiff-necked turd,” he growled. He started to squeeze the trigger. But Wes Traybo's hand came out of nowhere and clasped tightly over the gun's hammer, stopping him.

“Wait, Baylor,” he said. “We're going to have the good captain here go with us to our horses—see if his men like him enough to not shoot holes in him.”

“Horses?” said Rubens.

“Yeah, Baylor, our horses,” Wes said with a dark little chuckle. “Did you think we walked here?”

“Baylor needs a drink, sure enough,” Claypool said as he turned the captain around roughly and gathered a handful of his long johns at the nape of his neck.

“Thank you, Carter, for noticing,” Rubens said wryly. He looked back around at Wes. “Tell me what you want, before I get too damn sober to do it.”

“Get on the other side of the window with me,” said Wes. “Carter, shove the captain to us,” he said to Claypool.

Outside they heard the sound of soldiers breaking through foliage and vines as they climbed the dark overgrown hillside.

“I—I have no clothes, no boot,” the captain pleaded. “Let me dress. It will only take a—”

“You might not be
needing
any,” Claypool said, pressing the blade of his knife along the captain's throat. “Now keep your mouth shut and keep reminding yourself how bad we all want to kill you.”

He turned the captain toward the rear window as Wes pulled himself onto the window ledge and held his hand down to help Rubens get a start. Rubens scrambled up the short distance, climbed over between Wes and the window edge and dropped to the ground on the other side.

From higher up the hillside, above the charging soldiers, they heard two rifle shots fire simultaneously. Wes and Claypool looked at each other.

“Think the doc is all right up there?” Claypool asked.

“I believe the doc is all right no matter where you find him,” Wes Traybo said.

He pulled the captain up and dropped him down to Rubens. The older long rider caught him and pinned his back to the wall with the revolver jammed to his chest. Inside, Claypool threw the sacks of money, one after the other, to Wes, who caught them and dropped them at Rubens' side.

As the sacks hit the ground with a solid thump, Rubens grinned close to the scared captain's face.

“You son of a bitch,” he said proudly. “You ain't never been robbed by the likes of us.”

•   •   •

Dr. Bernard fired his last two shots at the shadowy figures moving up the hillside through a tangle of vines and overgrown adobe ruins. As soon as return fire whipped through the foliage, he abandoned the empty rifle on the ground and moved quickly yet quietly around the hillside and down in the direction of where they had left their horses.

Once he had made his way off the hillside, he looked back at the sudden sound of rifles and saw streaks of gunfire zip through the deep green foliage. He smiled to himself and kept moving, the pistol hanging in his hand, his medical satchel still looped over his shoulder. By the time he reached the hitched animals, he swung his pistol toward the sound of men moving quickly toward him from the direction of the ruins. Dark figures moved into sight against the grainy purple starlight.

“Who's out there?” the gruff voice of Baylor Rubens called out to the other dark figures.

Dr. Bernard crouched and remained silent. Although it was Rubens' voice, he didn't know who might be listening in the darkness.

“Hold it, Baylor,” said Wes in a hushed tone. He asked the silent darkness in a whisper, “Is that you, Doc? It's okay, we're all over here.”

“It's me,” the doctor replied in the same restrained tone. He straightened some and watched them in the darkness.

The men moved forward, closer, until Dr. Bernard saw the Mexican captain in his underwear, his balance compromised by his uneven footwear and Claypool's prodding from behind.

“Is that you they're shooting at, Doc?” Wes asked as they gathered around him. Rifle shots still zipped wildly on the hillside.

“I think so,” the doctor said, all of them turning toward the waiting horses.

“Glad you made it,” Wes said sincerely, one of the sacks of money on his shoulder. Rubens was carrying the other sack.

Dr. Bernard looked at the captain as they made their way the few last yards to the horses.

“You got your money and captured their leader too?” he said, sounding impressed.

“Yeah, we cleared accounts,” Wes replied. “Thought we'd better bring this one along, just in case.”

The captain's hands were pulled behind his back and bound with a belt. Claypool held the long end of the belt like a leash. A bandanna had been drawn around the captain's mouth and tied behind his head.

At the horses they mounted up double, Claypool behind the captain, Rubens behind Dr. Bernard, one arm clamped around the money sack. Wes rode alone, in the lead, a sack of money over his lap. As silent as ghosts, they turned their horses at a walk and slipped away down the path and across the main trail. They followed a shallow ditch alongside the main trail for fifty yards until Claypool spotted the woman's stocky silhouette sitting atop a horse in the shadowy starlight. She held a hastily rigged string of three horses beside her.

“I have to admit I had some doubts,” Rubens said quietly to the others as Wes led them closer to the woman.

“I didn't,” Wes said, seeing the dark outline of his brother sitting slouched in the saddle in front of Rosetta.

When they stopped, Rubens dropped down from behind the doctor and hurried to the string of horses. The doctor stepped his horse over and sidled up to Ty and the woman.

Ty opened his eyes and gave the doctor a weak smile.

“I never seen a man take so long to relieve himself,” he said in a shallow voice.

“I'll try to be quicker next time,” the doctor said drily. As he appraised the bloody shoulder wound in the pale moonlight, he swung the satchel around onto his lap and pulled up a roll of medical gauze and a thick cotton pressure pad. Without taking time to remove the old bandage, he had Rosetta hold Ty's arm up. Then he pressed the pad against the blood-soaked bandage and wrapped a firm three layers of gauze around it, unwinding the gauze roll under Ty's arm and around over his shoulder.

“How's he coming along, Doc?” Wes asked. Rubens and Claypool had gathered in close, Claypool with the captain on the leash. Claypool had picked up one of the straw sombreros lying in the adobe and jerked it down over the captain's eyes.

“Not good,” the doctor said. “If you don't get him to a place where he can lie still long enough to let this wound start healing, he's going to die, plain and simple.”

“We're headed there now, Doc,” said Wes. “We'll be there by midmorning.”

“If we're all through with this bastard, can I go ahead and kill him?” Rubens asked, nodding toward the Mexican captain. The captain whined behind his gag.

“Do what suits you,” Wes said. “No gunshots, though.”

“Suits me,” said Rubens. He took the knife and the end of the belt from Claypool and shoved the captain along in front of him to where the edge of the trail cut across a high bluff. There the ground dropped away at a steep angle. The captain whined pitifully, jerking back and forth on his leash as Rubens stood him facing out over the bluff and reached the knife around to slice his throat.

“Hold still, you coward!” said Rubens. “This is for Bugs.”

Rubens tried hard to make a deep slice across the captain's throat, but he found he had no stomach for it right then. After a moment of listening to the captain struggling and whining, Rubens cursed his own cowardice under his breath, stepped back and booted him off the edge. Dead was dead, he told himself, no matter how it came about. He heard the sound of thumps, breaking brush and sliding rocks. Then silence.

“There you are, Bugs. We're all square,” he murmured.

“Baylor, hurry up, come on,” Wes called out in the darkness even as Rubens turned away from the edge and came back out of the darkness at a trot. “Carter says we've got riders coming at a run.”

“They rounded up their horse that fast?” Rubens said, climbing up onto one of the stolen horses.

Claypool reached over and took back his knife, noting the blade was clean.

“I don't think it's the soldiers,” he said.

“Who else, then?” Rubens asked, turning the horse to the trail along with the others.

“I don't know,” Wes said, gigging his boots to his horse's sides. “But we're not sticking around here to find out.”

•   •   •

On the trail a mile below the ruins, the Ranger and Hardaway had pulled their horses to the side and sat looking back in the purple night at the sound of horses running toward them. Across the trail from them, a narrow winding path ran southwest off the hill line.

“You can bet it's Garand's posse,” Hardaway said. “They heard all the shooting, same as we did.”

The Ranger crossed his wrists on his saddle horn and listened ahead toward the ruins. The gunfire had gone silent some minutes earlier. He had a feeling that was the last they would hear of it. Whatever had gone on at the ruins was over and done.

“What do you want to do, Ranger,” Hardaway asked, “get ahead of them or let them get there first—arrive unannounced so to speak?”

“We're not going to try to stop them. The way they're riding, we'd be lucky if they didn't run over us,” the Ranger said. “Either the Traybos are lying dead in the ruins or else they got the better of it and moved on. Let's sit tight here, see what Garand and his men can tell us once we let them pass.”