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  “Close your eyes for a few minutes,” Sam said.

  “I don’t mind if I do, Ranger,” Ailes said, lying down stiffly. “If I go to sleep and don’t wake up, obliged for all your help.”

  Sam patted his shoulder and helped position him in a way that looked less painful for him. Sam stepped back as Audie Murtzer sidled up to the cot. Audie looked over at the head of the spike standing atop Ailes’ skull and winced. A few feet away came the sound of the horses crunching grain two men had poured on a canvas cloth laid on the ground before the hungry animals.

  “I swear I can’t stand looking at this man for more than a quick glance,” Murtzer said in a lowered voice.

  Sam only nodded.

  “He’s going to die soon, don’t you figure?” Murtzer continued.

  “I figure,” Sam said quietly. The horses crunched their grain and chuffed in appreciation.

  “You can leave him here,” said Murtzer. “We can’t do no more than this for him.” He gestured toward the cot where Ailes lay. “But at least we’ll make him comfortable.”

  “Comfortable?” said the Ranger. He glanced around. “Things as they are, a man in this shape decides his own comfort. I expect he’d sooner die riding to the doctor than waiting for the doctor to come riding to him.”

  “There it is, then,” said Murtzer. He stood in silence until a Mexican townswoman hurriedly brought them an armful of towels from the barbershop with a tall hat sitting atop them.

  “Gracias,” said the Ranger.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Murtzer, watching the Ranger take two of the towels and step over to Ailes’ cot.

  “I’m going to wrap his head and hope it helps some,” Sam replied.

  Murtzer winced again, looking down at the protruding spike.

  “Saint Jude . . . ,” Murtzer whispered under his breath. Then he said to Sam, “Is there anything I can do to help, without touching Bob here, that is?”

  “He feels like whiskey helps him some,” the Ranger said.

  “Whiskey, coming up,” said Murtzer, turning toward the open-air saloon.

  “Here, let me do that,” the Mexican woman said, seeing what the Ranger was attempting to do. She stepped in, took the towels back and stooped down with them beside Ailes’ cot.

  “Gracias,” Sam said, stepping back, gratefully letting her take over.

  Chapter 16

  The rain still held off as the Ranger and Ailes rode out of Trade City, Ailes with his head thickly wrapped and insulated, spike and all, by a thick layer of white barber towels. Over the thick towels, he wore a large frontier-style hat with a tall crown. The Ranger had sliced the hat open from the band halfway up the rear of the crown, widening it to better accommodate Ailes’ terrible injury. Across the rump of Ailes’ horse hung a set of saddlebags, bulging with bottles of rye whiskey.

  The Ranger looked over at Ailes every few minutes, checking on him. Surprisingly, now that the railroad man’s head, as well as the rest of him, was warm and dry, his face took on a better color, Sam noted, almost wanting to flinch each time Ailes took a slight rise and fall with his horse’s hooves.

  “It doesn’t hurt, you know,” Ailes said, as if reading the Ranger’s thoughts. He had reminded him several times throughout the day. Turning stiffly, he looked at the Ranger with a slightly whiskey-lit expression. “I realize I’m dying, but I am honestly in no pain at all.” He paused and seemed to think about it, then added, “I mean, nothing like you’d think I’d be.”

  “That’s good to hear, Bob,” the Ranger said. “When we catch up to Orez, find cover and stay down.”

  “Why?” Ailes said flatly. “He can’t hurt me.”

  Sam nodded, considering the matter.

  “If I had a gun, I might even be of assistance to you.”

  “Obliged, but I don’t think so, Bob,” said the Ranger. He was glad to see that the wounded man appeared to be feeling better, yet he knew it was only temporary. He didn’t want to see him wielding a loaded gun.

  They rode on quietly until they reached a place where the posse had run into Orez and his men.

  “Wait here,” the Ranger said to Ailes. Bob Ailes only shrugged and did as he was told, although he couldn’t see why.

  Following a thick, layered path of horse’s hooves and boot prints trampling up around a large boulder, the Ranger stopped and smelled the lingering odor of burnt gunpowder. Proceeding forward with caution, he paused again and let out a breath at the sight in front of him.

  There atop a short rock that someone had rolled into place against the larger boulder sat the sprawling body of a man Sam took to be one of Orez’s accomplices, riddled with bullet holes.

  “One down,” Sam said quietly to himself.

  Stepping forward, he saw the dead man had been holding a gun in either hand. Or rather, each had been tied there by torn strips of cloth. One hand had shed its binding and lay hanging over the side of the rock, the long strip of cloth hanging toward the ground, the gun lying on the ground beneath it, cocked and ready to fire. When Sam bent to pick up the strip of cloth from the dead, bloody hand, he looked closer at the face, the gaping mouth, the wide-open eyes. Recognizing the man from an old wanted poster, he unwrapped the strip of cloth from around his hand and stood up with it between his thumb and fingers.

  “Freeman Arridicus Manning,” he said, from memory. “Jasper City, Texas. Fast gun, hired gun, a known associate of Tom Quinton, Barclay Owens and Evan Hardin—murderers and thieves to the man.”

  Tom Quinton? Was that who the initials TQ on the big Remington he’d found earlier belonged to? Of course it was. . . . Another one bites the dust, he told himself, dismissing the matter, inspecting the strip of cloth between his fingers.

  From the woman’s clothes? he asked himself, noting the same color of cloth as the thread he had found twice along the trail. He had a hunch it was. She had found a way to leave a trace of herself behind. Good thinking. He leaned down and saw more loose thread in the mud beside the rock, one piece still part of a short strip she hadn’t used to tie the guns into Freeman Manning’s hands. She hadn’t given up, Sam told himself. That was good.

  His thoughts were cut short by the sound of a horse behind him. He spun toward it, his Winchester coming up fast, cocked at his side, pointed at Bob Ailes, who had stopped short. He led the two horses behind him, Sam having left one of their three horses in Trade City.

  “Whoa, don’t shoot me,” Ailes said, his eyes lit and bloodshot from the rye he’d been drinking steadily. “Don’t waste a bullet on this discounted hide.”

  “Bob . . .” Sam let out a breath. “You should have waited back there with the horses. You didn’t need to be climbing that path.”

  “It doesn’t seem to have bothered me any, Ranger.” He looked around. “Although I wouldn’t mind sitting and resting a spell without a horse under me.”

  “Yes, let’s get you seated,” Sam said. He stepped over and took the horses’ reins from him.

  “Mercy,” Ailes said, looking over at the bloody body sprawled on the rock. “Things can always be worse, can’t they?” He staggered slightly in place; the neck of the rye bottle stood up from the pocket of his newly acquired coat.

  “Yes, they can,” the Ranger said. He led Ailes by his arm over to another rock, this one lying by itself off to the side. There was a muddy boot print on it and the stub of a cigar on the ground beside it, where one of the posse men had sat smoking earlier.

  Seating Ailes, the Ranger stepped back and looked down at him for a moment. Ailes swayed in place.

  “Bob, I say we camp here for the night,” the Ranger said. “We’ve got food. I’ll build us a fire and cook us a meal. What do you say to that?”

  “Yum,” Ailes said with a slight whiskey slur.

  Keeping an eye on him while Ailes weaved slightly on the rock with his huge bandaged hea
d bowed, the Ranger took down the canvas bag of food the townsfolk of Trade City had packed for them. Without the benefit of dry wood for a fire, the Ranger opened two tins of beans and gave one to Ailes. They ate by raising the tins to their lips and drinking in a mouthful of beans. Ailes washed his beans down with sips of rye whiskey; Sam sipped tepid water from a canteen the townsfolk had given him.

  When they had finished eating, the Ranger took off Ailes’ hat while he sat slumped over on his side. Seeing no fresh bloodstains, Sam set the hat aside and stepped back quietly. He drew the horses in closer for the night and sat watching over Ailes until he was convinced he was asleep. When Ailes lay on the rock on his side with the whiskey bottle in hand, the Ranger relaxed in the pale light of a half moon showing through a break in the dark clouds and allowed himself to drift to sleep as well.

  • • •

  On the grainy silvery cusp of dawn, the Ranger awakened to the loud squall of a big cat somewhere on the hill above them. A moment later as he stood, rifle in hand, he heard the sound of padded paws moving swiftly over rock and wet brush across the hillside, traveling upward and farther away from him every passing second until the shadowy hillside once again turned silent. No sooner had the sound of the fleeing cat diminished into the distant hills than another sound took its place.

  From the trail below, he could make out horses moving along, sloshing through mud and puddles of water. In a moment he listened as the horses stopped. As he heard what sounded like two horses split away from the others, he stepped over to Ailes and shook his shoulder gently.

  “Bob, wake up,” he whispered.

  He waited for a second and shook him again when he saw he didn’t stir.

  “Bob?” he whispered, looking closer at Ailes’ face in the pale grainy light. “Are you all right? Bob?” He shook him a third time as he heard the horses move toward the thin path leading up toward them. He saw the bottle of rye slip from Ailes’ hand and land softly on the ground.

  Detecting no sign of life, he stooped and looked at Ailes’ shadowed face.

  “Adios, Bob Ailes,” he whispered softly. But as he stood up and let out a sigh, Ailes raised his bandaged head an inch and looked up at him.

  “Are you leaving me, Ranger?” he asked.

  The Ranger quickly placed his hand over Ailes’ mouth, catching a strong smell of rye.

  “Quiet, Bob,” he whispered. “Somebody’s coming up the path.”

  Ailes nodded and remained silent. He stood when the Ranger removed his hand from his mouth. The two left their horses standing but walked quietly over and took cover out of sight around the edge of a sunken boulder.

  In the darker shadow of the boulder, they waited as the footsteps of man and horses rose along the path and started to walk past them. As one man leading two horses froze at the sight of the two horses staring at him in the grainy darkness, the Ranger stepped out beside him and stuck the Winchester against his side.

  “Make a sound, I’ll drop you where you stand,” the Ranger whispered near his ear. “Are you with the posse?”

  “Uh-huh,” the man said quietly, nodding.

  “What’s the name of the doctor riding with you?” Sam asked, testing him.

  “That’s—that’s Dr. Menendez,” the voice whispered. “They sent me to gather the body we left here—”

  “I’m Ranger Samuel Burrack, from Arizona Territory,” Sam said, cutting him off. “Tell them I’m here, introduce us, real easy-like.”

  “Bradford,” the man called out.

  “Yeah, Holden, what?” a voice called up from the trail below.

  “There’s a Ranger here by the name of Burrack. He’s got a rifle against my side.”

  A tense silence fell around the hillside and the trail.

  “Oh? Why is that, Holden?” the voice said, sounding suspicious.

  Sam called out, “Because I didn’t want everybody to start shooting first and feeling bad about it later.”

  “Makes sense,” said the voice. “What do you want from us, Ranger?”

  “The folks at Trade City told me Dr. Menendez is riding with you. I’ve got a man here who was hurt in the twister. He needs a doctor real bad.”

  Another tense silence passed. Finally the same voice called out again, “We’re coming up. You’d better be an Arizona Ranger and there’d better be a man there needing the doctor’s help.”

  “I’ve got a spike stuck in my head,” Ailes called out in a strange, half-drunken voice.

  “You’ve got what?” said the voice below.

  “Let it go, Bob,” said the Ranger. “They won’t believe it until they see it.” Then on Ailes’ behalf, Sam called out, “Never mind, come up and see for yourself.”

  Even as the sound of horses moved onto the path, the voice called out, “Holden, what’s it look like up there?”

  Sam gave the man a nod, letting him know it was all right to answer.

  “I can’t say how bad he’s hurt, Bradford,” the man said. “But his head is bandaged up bigger than any pumpkin I ever saw.”

  Sam listened as the men stepped down from their horses. A lantern light came on and Sam watched as it lit the path and the men led their horses up the last few yards and stopped again. In a moment the posse leader, Gans Bradford, stepped into sight. Light from the lantern he carried filled the small clearing around the boulder and shone harsh and gruesome on the body of Freeman Manning.

  “All right, let’s see what we’ve got,” the posse leader said, looking the Ranger up and down, then seeing Phil Holden standing stiffly with a rifle aimed loosely at him. Looking at Ailes, he asked, “Don’t I know you?”

  “I’ve been in Trade City many times,” Ailes said.

  “Yep, I’ve seen you. You’re one of the scouts for the new rail spur,” Bradford said.

  “That’s me,” said Ailes.

  The posse leader relaxed a little.

  “It’s okay, Doc,” he said. “I know this one from town. It’s all right to take a look at him.”

  Sam relaxed too. He lowered his rifle as a middle-aged Mexican stepped forward, carrying a medical bag. He looked around, holstered his revolver and examined the bandages on Ailes’ head.

  “You are in no pain, I take it?” the doctor asked him in perfect English.

  Ailes looked taken aback at the doctor’s voice and appearance.

  “None to speak of,” he replied. Then he said, “You look Mexican, but you don’t sound like it.”

  Menendez only smiled thinly in reply. The posse leader stood watching as the doctor seated Ailes back on his rock, unwrapped the towels from his head and turned him around into the lantern light. Two other posse men stepped into sight leading their horses. One wore a bandage much like Ailes’, only not as thick. A red circle of blood shone through on the side of his head.

  “As you can see, Ranger,” Bradford said, “we’ve got some wounded of our own—” His words stopped short. “Good Lord God in heaven!” he said, seeing the spike sticking out from the top and bottom of Ailes’ skull. The rounded spike head glinted in the lantern light an inch above the railroad man’s blood-matted hair. The two newly arrived posse men almost reeled at the sight. Dr. Menendez looked curious and attentive, yet otherwise unimpressed. The posse men tightened their breath, seeing the doctor’s hand reach and touch the spike on both ends and examine Ailes’ head all around the wound.

  “What say you, Mexican doctor?” Ailes asked in a cynical whiskey-blurred tone. “Can you yank this thing right out? Should I expect to pull right through this?”

  The doctor was having no part of his wry, flip manner.

  “No, you shouldn’t expect to,” he said. “But you can live. You don’t have to die from it.”

  Sam looked doubtful. So did the posse men.

  “What we’ve got to do is get you back to town. I’m without facility at this t
ime, but we’ll get settled into a tent where I can observe this wound for a day or two, decide whether I need to remove it or let it stay.”

  “Let it stay?” said Ailes.

  “Yes,” the Mexican doctor said in perfect English. “If I start to remove it and the blood and fluid begin to disclose too greatly, it will be best to leave it in place for the time being and continue observation.”

  “I’ll never have to pay for another drink as long as it’s stuck there,” Ailes said.

  “The drinking stops now,” the doctor said firmly. “I’m going to wrap this back up and we’re going to get under way to Trade City immediately.”

  “My life is in your hands, Doctor,” Ailes said with a shrug.

  The doctor stepped back from Ailes and left him staring away from the gathered posse men. He motioned the Ranger to his side and spoke to him under his breath.

  “Were you with this man when it happened, Ranger?” he asked.

  “No, Doctor, I found him washing his socks in some floodwater not long after the twister came through.”

  “Has he acted the same since you’ve been with him?” he asked.

  “Pretty much,” Sam said. “At first he was confused, but he soon got over it.” He paused, then asked, “Did you mean it, that he might live?” he asked.

  “I have Civil War medical journals showing accounts of others having lived through similar injuries,” the doctor said. “He’s up and around. There appears to be no brain damage at this time. We’ll have to get him to Trade City and wait and see. But yes, he may very well live.”

  “I’m turning him over to you, Doctor,” Sam said. “I’m in pursuit of Wilson Orez, same as you are.” He gestured a nod toward the body of Freeman Manning, then at the wounded posse man. “I see your paths have crossed.”

  “Yes, and to dramatic consequence,” the doctor said. “We stopped here to pick this body up on our way home.”

  Gans Bradford stepped over, joining them.

  “We have two wounded of our own, and a prisoner to take back with us,” he said.