Border Dogs Page 21

  Verdere struggled up a bit, a pained look on his face, adjusting his back against the rock. “My compañero…he did this to me.” Verdere’s voice was strained, weak and fading. Beneath him, blood had spread like a dark shadow on the floor of the dry wash. “He betrayed me.”

  “Some partner,” the Ranger said, bending down beside him now.

  “Can you believe it, señor?” Juan Verdere struggled to speak. “For years…we have been together…now he does this to me.”

  “You’re tied in with the men I’m tracking, aren’t you?” The Ranger reached out and raised Verdere’s hand from the bleeding wound as he spoke.

  “Sí…if you are after the Parkers.” Verdere looked into the Ranger’s eyes. “They caused all of this.” He gestured around him with his bloody hand.

  “Where are the women?”

  “I do not know…San Carlos perhaps, if the Parkers have not killed them already.” Verdere lifted the canteen from his bloody chest and took another drink.

  “How much farther is it to San Carlos?” the Ranger asked.

  “In this heat…three hours.” Verdere’s eyes moved up across the white barb, then back to the Ranger. “On a good horse, perhaps less.”

  “He’s a strong horse…I cooled him out a little.” The Ranger lifted the canteen from Verdere’s hand and stood up.

  “A little? Then he and you will die out there,” Juan Verdere said.

  “What about you? Are you going to make it?”

  Juan Verdere shook his head slowly. “No…I am stabbed deep. I will die here.”

  “Then I’ve got to get going,” the Ranger said.

  “He would not…have done this, my compañero…if it were not for the gold.”

  “I understand,” the Ranger said. “What’s his name?”

  “Paschal…he is a Frenchman. A big man. He will be with the Parkers…I think.”

  “What makes you think it?” The Ranger reached back as he spoke and looped the canteen on his saddle horn.

  “Because…if I were him…that is where I would be.” Verdere offered a tired, thin smile. “Gold does strange things to a man, eh?”

  “Yep.” The Ranger led the white barb over beside the other horse, lifted its reins and pulled it away from its scrapings. The horse looked fresh, streaked white with dried sweat but rested, having been cooling in the thin shade of the dry wash while its owner lay dying. He led it over to Verdere and looked down at him.

  “Take him with you.” Verdere raised a bloody hand toward the horse as if to stroke the animal one last time.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Better he goes with you.” He nodded, then lowered his head, fresh blood rising on his stomach above the black coating of dried blood clinging to his shirt.

  “Gracias,” the Ranger said in a lowered tone. He turned, took the canteen down again, and pitched it over beside Juan Verdere. Then he stepped up onto Verdere’s horse and, leading the white barb, moved off along the dry wash to a step-up onto the sand flats. Giving the horse his boots heels, he rode off into the eddies of heat in the afternoon sun.

  A mile across the scorched desert floor, Willis Durant had moved up onto the low buttes for a quick look around at whomever might be moving across the sand flats on the other side. He found water for his two horses in a shallow rock basin. Loosening their cinches, he stood them at the basin’s edge. While the horses drew water and blew themselves out, Durant topped off his single canteen and lay down flat, looking back across the wavering endless stretch of sand, rock, and scrub brush through a set of field lenses he’d found in the saddlebags of his spare horse.

  Durant spotted a low rise of dust and adjusted his lens on it. Ahead of the rise, he saw the Ranger, riding at a strong steady pace on another horse now, leading the white barb behind him. Less than a mile behind the Ranger, he saw what was left of Zell’s men, and they too were coming on hard, two of them splitting off ahead of the others, coming his way. Damn it!

  He saw what they were doing. They’d spotted the Ranger’s dust and sent two men out in front, over to the buttes. These two men could make it if they pushed hard enough. They could get around the Ranger and cut him off as he looped wide to the right and headed on to San Carlos. Durant lowered the field lens from his face and rubbed the sun glare from his eyes. Well…so what? There was nothing he could do. The Ranger would have to find out for himself.

  He stood up, moved back to the horses, and led them back from the basin of water. Damn it! Drawing the horse’s cinches, he looked back over his shoulder and out past the edge of the butte. Every minute he spent here was a minute more in favor of the Parkers getting away. He caught a remembered glimpse of Payton Parker’s laughing face, caught a stronger, more painful memory of his wife and son lying dead in the evening sunlight, a circle of buzzards high in the air above them.

  Don’t do this. Don’t think about it…

  The heat pressed down on him, and he wiped a hand across his face and shook his head, trying to clear the terrible scene from his mind. He saw himself standing there in his yard, heard his own scream and the sound of his pistol as he drew it and fired, sending one of the big grizzly birds away in a batting of wings and a flurry of dust. He was too close to the Parkers now—he couldn’t let anything get in his way. Yet…damn it all!

  Durant snatched the rifle from the scabbard on the spare horse and gathered both of the horses’ reins and walked them over to the edge of the butte. He levered a round up into the rifle chamber, and without raising the rifle to his shoulder, fired and levered, firing two more shots. All right, he thought, three shots should tell the Ranger something was up. Behind him, the horses had shied against their reins at the sound of the rifle; they pulled back from the drift of powder smoke on the air.

  “That’s all you get, Ranger,” Durant whispered to himself. He stood watching for a moment without the field lens, seeing the tiny dot at the head of the rising dust—the Ranger—and seeing the dust of the two men coming on farther behind the Ranger, veering over, farther away from the others. Durant turned, settled the horses, stepped up into the stirrups of one of them, and heeled away, leading the other, his rifle still in his hand.

  Down on the sand flats, the Ranger heard the three shots and brought his horses down in a spray of sand. He turned in a circle, gazing first toward the stretch of low buttes where the shots came from, then all around him. Three shots in a row? Warning shots? Sun glare kept him from seeing anything atop the buttes, but following them back he caught sight of the rising dust. Squinting, he saw the two riders swinging wide of him to his left, a long ways off yet working hard at getting past him on the sand flats. Zell’s men? He’d bet they were.

  His eyes went back to where he’d heard the shots. There was nothing more there, only a white glow of sunlight glistening like melting iron. All right, those shots were definitely a signal, he thought. He saw the two men moving around him now. That had to have been Willis Durant up there, telling him to watch his flank. Ahead of him, the Ranger saw where the trail moved off to his left toward the thin black line in the distance, shrouded by the shimmering waves of heat. That would be San Carlos. Those two men were circling him, trying to cut him off as he made the turn toward town.

  The Ranger heeled the horse he was riding forward, the white barb jumping out with them, rested now without the Ranger’s weight on its back. As he rode, he drew the white barb up alongside him, reached under the bedroll behind the saddle, and unfastened the leather case. Laying the rifle case across his lap, he took out the big Swiss rifle and fitted it together, one piece at a time—the barrel, the butt, the front stock, and last the brass-trimmed scope.

  By the time he’d snapped the scope into place and reached over to hang the rifle case on the barb’s saddle horn, the two riders had pushed nearer to the stretch of buttes, stopping near the turn in the trail toward town. They’d seen him fall in behind them now, his dust moving closer and closer until it had to dawn on them that he had taken up position. Now they h
ad to make a plan, having already seen what the big rifle could do.

  The Ranger took out his two last cartridges and put them into the rifle, then drew his horses down when he saw the riders’ dust had stopped at the end of the stretch of buttes. He spun the horse in a quick circle, stirring up a flurry of dust, then walked them upwind a few yards. Stepping down, he looked back and saw the rest of Zell’s men behind him, closing hard. He didn’t have much time.

  At the far end of the buttes, Tommy Neville and Odell Sweeny swung down from their horses and pulled them in behind the cover of a rock spill. “Damn it to hell,” Tommy Neville said, rubbing his wounded arm. “We had him cold! Now he knows we’re waiting on him.” His eyes searched upward and back along the edge of the buttes. “Who was it up there warning him?”

  “I don’t know,” Odell Sweeny said, coming down beside him, looking back toward the Ranger’s swirl of dust. “But sit tight. He’s got that big rifle. Bowes and the others will hit him from behind. He can’t sit there forever. He’s dead now, he just don’t know it yet.”

  “Yeah, I hear ya,” Tommy Neville said. “If they push him to us, we’ve got him. He can’t shoot through rock. If he sits there, Bowes and them will eat him up.” He pushed up his hat brim and relaxed. “It’s about time something went our way.”

  “Kind of like a chess game right now,” Odell Sweeny said, grinning as he squinted into the wavering heat. “I’ll just get our canteens and we’ll—”

  His voice stopped short at the sound of a pistol cocking behind them. “Real easy, boys,” Willis Durant said, sitting atop his horse, the other horse standing beside him. “Empty your hands before you turn around.”

  “Says who?” Odell spoke without turning, his rifle tight in his right hand, a round already in the chamber. “I don’t drop my gun for nobody.” As he spoke, Sweeny’s left hand inched to his belly, to where the .45 Colt sat high in his waist belt.

  “You do now,” Durant said, “one way or another.”

  “It’s…it’s that colored man!” Tommy Neville cried out, having caught a sidelong glimpse of Durant. “Listen, buddy,” Tommy Neville added, talking fast while Sweeny’s hand made its way around to the butt of the pistol, “it makes no sense, you dropping us this way. The old man said you was that Ranger’s prisoner—said he wished he could have said something to you, let you know that we ain’t that much different, you and us.”

  “That’s right,” Odell Sweeny joined in, his face still turned away from Durant, his hand ready to make a move with the pistol. “You’re on the wrong side here. We get to town, we’ve got gold waiting to be had. Think about it, boy. What’s that Ranger got for ya? Not much, I bet.”

  Durant took note of the man’s hand moving out of sight, his left shoulder braced, ready to make a move. “Some things money can’t buy,” Durant said, his thumb lying tight across the cocked pistol hammer. “Now either swing ’em or drop ’em—I don’t give a damn which.”

  From his position on the open sand flats, the Ranger had taken stock of his situation and had already made his decision when he heard the three pistol shots ring out almost as one from the far end of the buttes. With just two cartridges left, his only choice had been to take out two of the riders coming up behind him, then ride out hard and take his chances on the two men ahead of him when he got there. But those pistol shots had caught his attention. They could change everything for him.

  The Ranger stayed kneeling, listening to the shots echo across the stretch of buttes, the big rifle cradled across his right arm, ready to bring it into play. He waited for a long, tense second until he heard three rifle shots in a row, coming from the same direction as the pistol fire. There it was, Willis Durant again, telling him something. The Ranger stood up, dusted his knee, and swung up onto his saddle, this time mounting the white barb, giving the other horse a breather.

  He rode fast, stretching the barb out beneath him, the horse wanting to run even in the heat of the afternoon. When the Ranger reached the rock spill at the end of the low buttes, he expected to find Willis Durant. But Durant hadn’t waited around for him to cross the mile or more of sand flats. Instead, the Ranger saw the two dead men, one lying across the rock where he’d fallen, the other stretched out on the ground, a pistol lying only inches from his hand. Their horses had been stripped of their saddles and bridles, and they milled about a few yards away, grazing on a single clump of pale, dry grass.

  The Ranger got down from his saddle long enough to break down his big rifle, put it away, and walk over to the two bodies. He turned the one on the ground over with the toe of his boot and saw the large bullet hole in the man’s forehead. The other body, lying back over the rock, stared through dead and hollow eyes into the blazing sun. A bullet hole in the chest had spread dark and thick, and blood ran down over the rock into the sand beneath it. One man shot in the head, the other man in the chest. That accounted for two of the pistol shots. But what about the third shot he’d heard?

  In the distance, Durant’s dust stood high and drifting. The Ranger looked at it for a second, then turned and looked back across the flats at what remained of Zell’s men; three figures came into view, thin wavering ghosts from out of the stark white sunlight. Stepping back up into the saddle, he noticed the dark spot of blood on the sand less than fifteen feet away from the bodies. He moved his horses over to it.

  That was the third shot—Willis Durant had been hit. The Ranger moved his horses along slowly, looking down at the ground at the next spot of blood ten feet away, then at another ten or more feet beyond it. However bad he’d been hit, the Ranger knew it made no difference to Willis Durant. He wouldn’t stop until he either found the Parkers or fell dead from his saddle. “Come on, Blackeye,” the Ranger said, heeling the white barb forward, leading the other horse by its reins. “See if we can find this man before he bleeds to death on us.”

  On the other side of the long stretch of buttes, a ten-man federale patrol had heard the shots and turned toward them, taking the same trail upward that Willis Durant had taken to the basin of water. From atop the low butte, the leader of the patrol looked down at the three riders moving across the sand flats below. The patrol had been sent out earlier when Captain Marsos Gravia and his men had not returned from last night’s meeting with the men who had brought the ammunition.

  Now the leader, a young captain who had not wanted to head up the search party to begin with, turned to the others and said in Spanish, “These men come from the direction of Diablo Canyon. Surround them. We will take them back to camp for questioning. It will be better than spending the day out in this wretched heat.”

  A sergeant beside him said, “If these men are Border Dogs, part of the ones we have been buying rifles from, they will be hard to surround, and even harder to take in for questioning if they do not want to come.”

  “These are three gringos, Sergeant Gomez,” the young captain said without facing him. “Are you saying ten of us are no match for these Border Dogs as you call them?”

  “I am saying it would be wise of us to see what they have to say without making threats or giving them orders. They are some bold hombres…these men.”

  “Nonsense.” The young captain sawed his reins back, turning his horse to the trail that twisted down the side of the low butte. “Follow me. I am not wasting time out here. They are going back with us. We will find out what has become of Marsos and his men.”

  On the sand flats, old man Dirkson was the first to see the patrol working their way down toward them. “Mr. Bowes, on our left. Looks like federales.”

  Bowes, Dirkson, and Chance Edwards reined their horses down together and stopped them on the bare open land. When the young captain led the men at a fast trot across the sand, Chance Edwards cocked his head a bit and said to Dirkson beside him, “This fellow looks like something has him upset.” He chuckled under his breath and added, “You still happen to have that scattergun under your bedroll?”

  “Yeah, why?” Old man Dirkson spoke to Edwards
, but kept his eyes pinned on the federale captain.

  “Just something telling me this ole boy ain’t going say one word we’ll want to hear.” Chance Edwards let his hand drift to the pistol sitting high in his waist belt. He drummed his fingers idly on the pistol butt. “What about it, old man? Mind if I hang on to that scattergun awhile? I won’t get it dirty.”

  “Uh-uh, I might want to hang on to it myself,” the old man said, seeing both the haughty expression on the captain’s face as he came forward, and the men behind him starting to spread out, riding abreast now and checking their horses down at a distance of fifty feet.

  Liam Bowes sat silent, but moved his horse a step forward of Chance Edwards and the old man.

  “Saludos, buenas tardes,” old man Dirkson called out, raising his left hand, waving. Leaning back in his saddle a bit, his right hand went back behind him and slid the sawed-off ten-gauge shotgun from beneath his bedroll. “He’s one pissed-off-looking peckerwood,” the old man added under his breath, letting the shotgun hang down alongside his leg.

  The butt of the shotgun had been cut off and shaped into a pistol grip, its double barrel no more than a foot long. His thumb went across the hammers and cocked them back. Hearing the shotgun cock, Liam Bowes said to the other two in a lowered voice, “Mark time, gentlemen, let’s hear what the man has to say.”

  “They’re spreading out, Mr. Bowes,” old man Dirkson said, smiling at the federales as he whispered his words.

  “I see it,” Bowes said, his hand lying on the rifle across his lap. The federales moved closer, spreading into a semicircle, coming slow and steady. But at thirty feet, before they could get the three men surrounded, Liam Bowes called out to the young captain, “Hold your men right there.”