Midnight Rider (Ralph Cotton Western Series) (28 page)

Silas Dooley and the Dog fought on fiercely for a few minutes longer, until they saw Dent Spiller ride down a thin path and across the trail twenty yards away and keep on riding.

“What the hell was that?” Dooley cried out as shots still whistled past them.

“That was the last of our rifle cover running out on us!” said the Dog.

“Damn it!” said Dooley. He looked down the trail toward the empty wagon, then back to the Dog as two more bullets sliced past them. “What the hell are we waiting for?”

“Beats me,” said Lou. “I’ve been ready.” He turned and ran in a crouch in the same direction their spooked horses had taken toward the turn in the trail.

“That bastard Swank!” said Dooley, running right beside him. “He led us right into this—made it sound easy, talking about taking the gold away from Grolin and his men!”

“He shoulda hit a little harder on what we’d have to do to get it from these fellows
first
!” shouted Lou.

The two continued running away even as the firing slowed to a stop behind them.

Rochenbach caught sight of the two fleeing gunmen as he rode from the ridgeline back down onto the trail. But he didn’t have time to raise his rifle and fire at them before they’d disappeared out of sight around the turn to where their horses stood beside the trail. Instead, he booted the chestnut on to where his big dun stood at the foot of the path he’d sent it running down.

“Glad to see you made it,” he said to the waiting horse.

He picked up the reins from around the dun’s saddle horn and had started to lead the animal away when he saw Trooper Lukens spring out of the brush on the other side of the trail with a rifle pointed at him.

“All right, Smith, drop the gun! Drop it now!” the young soldier said, his voice sounding nervous and uncertain. He stood pale-faced and covered with fresh blood. But upon closer look, Rochenbach saw no signs of a wound on him.

“Do you hear me, Smith?” the trooper said. “Drop that rifle before I shoot!”

Rochenbach ignored his order and let out a breath.

“Where’s the captain, Trooper?” he asked, seeing the young soldier squeeze his hand tight around his saddle carbine.

Lukens’ strong demeanor appeared to almost melt at the mention of the captain. His face took on a worried look.

“He’s—he’s down off the side of the trail with the horses,” he said. “He’s been shot
bad.
”

Oh no.…

Rochenbach winced and swung down from his saddle and led both horses toward the edge of the trail.

“How bad?” he asked as he led the two animals into the cover of rock and brush.

“I told you to drop that rifle, Smith!” Lukens shouted suddenly, trying to take charge. He looked all around, frightened.

“Well, I’m not going to, Trooper,” said Rock, “so shut up about it and let’s see about the captain. How bad is he?” he repeated.

“As bad as ever I’ve seen, Smith,” Lukens said, swallowing a knot in his throat.

“You know there’s a doctor in Dunbar,” Rochenbach said, gesturing the young soldier in front and following him down the hillside.

“I’m thinking he’s past doctoring, to be honest with you,” Lukens said.

Rochenbach winced again.

In the small clearing where the soldiers’ horses
stood, the wounded captain raised his head and looked up from where he lay slumped back against a tree. The center of his chest was covered with dark blood. His right hand held a blood-soaked bandanna against the wound. An open canteen rested against the side of his leg.

“A soldier… should not die… out of uniform,” he rasped, seeing Rochenbach walk toward him.

Rochenbach stooped down beside him. He lifted his hand and the bandanna a little and examined the wound closely, seeing the severity of it.

“You’re a soldier, Captain, uniform or not,” he said. “There’s no doubt about that.”

“I—I saw you,” Captain Boone said, clutching his forearm with his other bloody hand. “You were up there… shooting at them. You were on our side.”

“Don’t tell anybody,” Rochenbach said. “You’ll ruin my reputation.”

“Who are you, Smith?” the captain said. “I know there’s more to you… than you told me.”

Rochenbach saw the man was dying. He tossed a glance up toward Lukens. Captain Boone caught the look.

“Trooper… go look the wagon over good,” he told Lukens. “We’ve got… to load the gold when the others arrive.”

Lukens looked hesitantly at Rochenbach.

“Go on, Trooper,” urged the captain. “This man is no longer a prisoner.”

“Yes, sir,” said Lukens, looking a little relieved. Turning on his heel, he hurried away through the brush and toward the trail.

“You’re hauling that gilded junk out of here, are you, Captain?” Rochenbach asked as soon as Lukens was out of sight.

“Of course… we are,” said the wounded captain with a crooked, bloody smile. “That’s the mission.” He coughed and looked back at Rochenbach. “Now, who are you, Smith? I don’t want to die wondering.”

“Remember the identity code you asked me for? I told you I’d forgotten the four numbers?”

Boone nodded his head weakly, a knowing look coming upon his pale face—a look of satisfaction.

Here goes…,
Rock told himself.

“My name is Avrial Rochenbach, Captain,” he said in a low voice. He glanced around, then leaned in closer and whispered the four numbers into the captain’s ear.

Boone gave a smile of recognition. “I knew it. I was right… you’re the
government man.
”

“
Shhh,
” said Rochenbach. “My reputation.”

“Yes, of course, your reputation…” Boone managed another bloody smile. “Tell me, Avrial Rochenbach. Did we do… this right, all of us, together?” Boone asked, his voice fading fast.

“We did it all the best we could, Captain, under the circumstances,” said Rochenbach. “We always do, folks like you and me. We’re fellow countrymen.”

“Fellow countrymen. That’s good… to hear,” said Boone. His grin turned to a faint smile as more blood seeped from his trembling lips. “I’m going on now…,” he whispered.

“Captain?” Rochenbach started to shake him a
little, but he stopped himself, seeing it would do no good.

Captain Boone’s eyes glazed over. His hand fell away from Rochenbach’s forearm.

Adios, Captain.…

Rochenbach wasn’t about to tell the dying captain how foolish he thought this had been, men dying over worthless plated gold. All this just so he could ferret out the name of one man—a man in a position of public trust, who used his position to steal from the very people who had bestowed that trust upon him.

Shame on you, Inman S. Walker.

He reached out and closed the captain’s eyes.

“He was felled by the last shot fired from up on the ridgeline,” Trooper Lukens said, walking up quietly behind Rochenbach.

Rochenbach considered it, picturing Spiller running to his horse, his rifle in hand. He reached down and pulled his Remington from the captain’s belt and stood up, letting the gun hang down his right side. In his left hand he held his rifle.

“I’m leaving,” he said flatly, giving Lukens a flat, determined stare.

“Go on, then,” said Lukens. “Captain Boone said you’re not a prisoner anymore. That’s good enough for me.”

Rochenbach turned to get his horses.

“You best hurry on, Smith,” said Lukens. He gestured a nod upward toward the trail. “I saw Sergeant Goodrich and a couple others limping along the trail,
headed this way. They’re chewed up, but they might shoot you on sight.”

“Obliged, Trooper,” Rochenbach said. He walked back through the brush to where the two horses stood waiting. He left the blaze-faced chestnut where it stood, stepped up atop the big dun and rode away, down through the trees toward the trail leading to Dunbar.

Pres Casings lay on a gurney in the surgery room of the doctor’s office in Dunbar. Afternoon sunlight spread slantwise across the floor through an open window. The Stillwater Giant, being too large for a gurney, was stretched out on two dinner-sized tables standing along the wall to keep from blocking the whole room. The doctor stood over his massive chest with a pair of long, tapered surgery tongs.

“My goodness,” the bald, middle-aged doctor said, staring at the round stone he’d pulled out of the Giant’s chest with the tongs. “This is most unusual.” A long, dark strand of congealed blood hung from the stone.

“What is, Doc?” the Giant asked, raising his head a little and staring along with the doctor.

“I probed for a bullet, but I pulled this stone from between your ribs.

“Oh, that…,” said the Giant, laying his head back down. “I stuck it there.”

“You stuck a stone in your chest wound?” the doctor asked in disbelief.

“I just wanted to see if it would stop the bleeding,”
the Giant said with a big-toothed grin. “It stopped it, huh?”

“Well… yes, it appears that it did,” the doctor said. He dropped the stone into a pan.

From his gurney, Casings listened and smiled to himself.

“Doc, he stuck rocks in his wounds when we stopped to water our horses at a creek. That’s why he wanted you to attend to me first. Right, Giant?”

“Yep,” the Giant said proudly. “I was in no hurry once the bleeding stopped.”

The doctor looked at the Giant’s other wounds, bullet holes crusted over with dried blood.

“So, am I to believe I’ll be finding more of these stones inside you, Mr. Garth?”

“Yep,” the Giant said. “There’s one stone per bullet hole. I didn’t stick them in too deep, but riding might’ve stuck them deeper.” He grinned. “I thought about sticking more than one in a couple of the holes. But I was afraid it might be harmful.”

“
Harmful…?
Yes, I understand why,” the doctor said. “Good thinking, sir.” He shook his bald head a little and wiped crusted blood from another wound with a wet cloth.

“Ready, Doc?” the Giant asked.

“Yes, hold on to the table edge, Mr. Garth,” the doctor said. “Here we go again.”

The Giant’s huge hands gripped the tables’ edges tightly. He took a deep breath as the probe went inside the nearly bloodless bullet hole and slid deeper until the doctor felt it clink against a stone.

“Oh, I felt
that
!” the Giant said through his big clenched teeth.

“I bet you did,” said the doctor. He laid a folded patch of gauze on the wound and pressed it gently but firmly until a thin seepage of blood held it in place.

Casings lay back on the gurney and stared up at the white ceiling, exhausted from the loss of blood, but feeling better already now that his wound had been attended and bandaged.

As the doctor probed, he spoke to both men.

“Not meaning to pry, gentlemen,” he said, “but were the two of you involved in the shooting that went on along the high trails earlier?”

“What if we were?” Casings asked.

“If you were, then I feel it only fair to warn you there’s an angry teamster roaming the range with a shotgun. He’s looking for the men who knocked him unconscious and stole his freight wagon.”

“Obliged for the warning,” said Casings, “but that wouldn’t be us. We just arrived in town a few minutes ago—came here first thing.”

“I see…,” the doctor murmured, concentrating on pulling out another creek stone and dropping it into the metal pan. “There was a train robbery not far from the high trails,” he said, wiping the wound with the wet cloth and inspecting it. “The robbers managed to steal an engine and three railcars. One was a shipment from the Denver City Mint.”

“You don’t say?” said Casings. He and the Giant looked at each other.

“The telegraph came in this morning,” the doctor
said as he set another gauze patch into place and pressed on it. He shook his head. “This modern world we’re living in, you hear of these things every few weeks, sometimes more frequently.…”

“It’s amazing,” Casings said, relaxing, “no doubt about it.”

When the doctor finished removing stones and bullets from the Giant’s wounds, he dressed the wounds with clean cotton gauze and wound his huge body with strips of cloth to hold the gauze in place. As he finished, he looked down at the Giant’s trousers and noted that two large pairs of trousers had been sewn together into one. As he helped the Giant put on his shirt, he saw it had been made out of a large wool blanket.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. Garth, you are the biggest man I have ever seen,” the doctor said in amazement.

“I don’t mind,” said the Giant, his huge fingers buttoning the bib of his shirt. “I’m glad to hear it since I was the runt of my family.”

“My God,” said the doctor, “you can’t be serious!”

The Giant grinned and didn’t answer.

“I am the
biggest
man in the world, Doctor,” he said.

“How do you know that to be true?” the doctor said.

“I’ve asked around,” said the Giant.

Casings chuckled under his breath, drew coins from his pocket and placed them on the doctor’s desk. The doctor looked at them and nodded his approval.

As the two left the doctor’s office and walked to the hitch rail out front, each with a rifle in his hands, they slowed to a halt, seeing Andrew Grolin, Heaton Swank and their remaining men standing in a wide half circle around the front of the doctor’s white clapboard-sided house.