Lawless Trail Read online

  “Look, Mr. Traybo,” said Bird. “I meant nothing saying what I said. It’s simply one of those cases where—”

  “Maybe you will have to butt-smack him, Ty,” said Wes Traybo, stepping forward, shoving the banker toward the open door in the long counter.

  “I’m going to cooperate with you fellows,” Bird said in a shaky voice, “I swear I am.”

  “That’s a good attitude, Bird,” said Wes. “Now fly your ass back there and open that big ol’ safe for us,” he said to the banker.

  The clerk, unseen, dropped down on all fours behind the counter and crawled away to a small stockroom as the two outlaws walked through the open door behind Phillip Bird and shoved him to the front of the large vault. The shopkeeper and the woman stood back out of the way, watching intently, their hands half raised.

  “Whoa, look at this!” said Wes with a smile, seeing the door to the safe standing open a few inches. “This safe was just standing here waiting to be robbed.”

  Ty Traybo swung the big safe door wide open and quickly stepped inside.

  “My, my, look at all this handsome cattle money,” he said.

  “Better hurry it up some, Ty,” said Wes. “The cattle will be storming through here any minute.” He took two folded unmarked canvas sacks from under his duster and tossed them into the vault at his brother’s feet. He looked Widow Jenkins up and down.

  “Ma’am, you can lower your hands,” he said quietly to her.

  “Thank you, young man,” said the widow, lowering her hands and folding them in front of her.

  Wes Traybo kept his big Remington pointed at Bird and the frightened bank manager. “So,” he said calmly to the two men, “how’s the fishing been around here?”

  “The fi-fishing?” said Bird, visibly shaking.

  “Iz not so bad,” the shopkeeper cut in. “I do good in spring, higher up.” He pointed northeast toward a rugged mountain range. “But not so good down here. Iz too hot, too dry.”

  “Too bad,” said Wes, with a shrug. He stood in silence for a moment, then looked toward the open vault where his brother, Ty, hurriedly stuffed money into both canvas sacks. “How’s it going in there?” he said, hearing the rumble of hooves draw closer, the sound of pistol fire exploding above it. “We’re not spending the day here.”

  “Oh . . . ?” said Ty, stepping out of the big vault, pitching the two stuffed sacks at his feet. “In that case, brother, we’re all done in here.”

  “Just in time,” said Wes, stooping, picking up one money-filled canvas sack, hefting it over his shoulder. “Sounds like our cattle’s coming.”

  “Good,” said Ty, hefting up the other sack of money.

  The two started to step out the thick door from behind the teller counter. But Ty stopped and looked all around.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Where’s that clerk who was back here a while ago?”

  Wes looked all around too. Their eyes went to the open door of a stockroom, the only plausible spot for the man to have gone. A dark wariness swept over Wes like a chill.

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go!” he said quickly.

  “Like hell it doesn’t matter,” said Ty, taking a step toward the small stockroom. “I don’t want us getting shot in the back while we’re leaving—”

  His words stopped short when the bearded man stepped out of the stockroom with a short double-barreled shotgun and stood braced, his feet spread shoulder-width apart.

  “Detective Ted Ore, railroad security!” he called out. “Drop your guns! You’re under arrest!” Yet, even as he shouted, the shotgun bucked in his hands.

  The first blast of the shotgun slammed Ty Traybo in his shoulder and hurled him backward. Wes, seeing his brother fall, wasted no time. Dropping the sacks of money, he swung his Remington up and blasted the young detective with three shots. Each shot sent the detective staggering backward into the stockroom in a thick red mist.

  “Oh God!” shouted the bank manager, falling to his knees, scrambling across the floor into the open vault.

  As the detective staggered his last backward step into the stockroom, his shotgun hit the doorframe and fired the second barrel.

  The wild shot hit Widow Jenkins squarely in her face and blew her backward against the shopkeeper, who had ducked down instinctively. Brains and blood flew. The woman’s body lay limp and faceless, sprawled atop the bloody shopkeeper.

  His smoking Remington in his hand, Wes hurried to his wounded brother and raised him to his feet. Blood ran braided and thick from the tips of Ty’s fingers and formed into a puddle and spread onto the plank floor.

  “You’re going to be all right, Ty,” Wes said, trying to sound convincing. He looped Ty’s bloody arm over his shoulder and led him out through the big wooden door from behind the counter, dragging his canvas sack beside him.

  “He . . . shot the hell . . . out of me,” Ty murmured in stunned disbelief, looking at all the blood. His good hand held on to his canvas money sack. “This is bull—”

  “Shut up, Ty. Let’s get you out of here,” said Wes.

  Halfway across the floor, they saw the front door fly open and a man jump inside with a Winchester up and cocked. He fanned the rifle back and forth, ready to fire.

  Wes Traybo lowered his cocked Remington at the sight of the rifleman.

  “Help me with him, Carter,” he called out to the gunman who’d stood on the boardwalk to guard the front door. “He took a bad blast in his shoulder.”

  “I’m there,” said Carter. He hurried forward, seeing Wes struggling with his wounded brother and the stuffed canvas sacks through a cloud of gun smoke.

  • • •

  On the wide main street of Maley, townsfolk had at first frozen in place and listened as the rumble below their feet drew nearer. But they suddenly came back to life and bolted for cover when three hundred head of wild-eyed, bawling cattle thundered up into sight from the direction of the rail pins. The freed cattle pounded along in a swirl of dust; a sea of long cattle horns pitched, bobbed and swayed like a scene of hell set loose and rising.

  Out in front of the store overhangs, roofs collapsed and were hastily broken up and devoured beneath the pounding hooves. Empty wagons, durables, barrels and wooden cargo crates rose and fell and flattened to the dirt. A black-hooded street buggy rose, broken free from its dead and trampled horse. The buggy appeared to roll along for a moment atop the sea of horns until at length its broken black hood folded within itself; its spine and frame twisted and snapped like the brittle bones of some winged creature in the hands of a mindless monster.

  Behind the herd, gunfire streaked orange-blue straight up through the curtain of dust, keeping the bawling animals at a full run. Only a few yards ahead of the herd, three horses raced along abreast as if leading the frightened cattle. Broken lengths of hitch rail still tied with their reins bounced alongside the fleeing horses. Townsmen and young boys appeared like apparitions on rooftops and looked down helplessly on the spectacle through the thickening curtain of dust.

  As the cattle neared the bank, Wes Traybo and Carter Claypool made it off the boardwalk into an alley just in time—the wounded Ty Traybo hanging between them, the sacks of money slung over their shoulders. As the two shoved Ty up into his saddle, broken planks and slats from the boardwalk flew into the air and fell around them.

  “Look out, Wes!” shouted Claypool.

  Wes turned and fired at a steer that had cut away from the stampede and made a run for the alley. His shot only grazed the steer on the hard rise between its horns, but that was enough to send the animal spinning wildly, racing back toward the passing herd.

  “This was a railroad setup! Let’s go before we get ourselves killed here,” Wes shouted, firing again, this time just to keep the steers racing past them instead of into the alleyway.

  “Get your brother out of here! I’ll keep them back!”
Claypool shouted above the rumble. He slung one of the sacks up over his cantle, jumped into his saddle and put his horse between the Traybos and the stampede. He fired his rifle straight up and levered another round.

  “I don’t need nobody . . . nursemaiding me,” Ty Traybo said weakly, swaying in his saddle.

  “The hell you don’t,” shouted Wes, pitching the other sack atop his horse in the same manner as Claypool. “Sit still and hang on to your horse,” he demanded.

  “Bull . . . I don’t need it,” Ty said, his voice sounding weaker still. He tried to pull his reins free from his brother’s hands as Wes turned their horses toward the far end of the alleyway.

  Watching, firing and relevering until the Traybos rode away and rounded the far end of the alley, Carter Claypool backed his horse a step and jerked it around to follow them. But just as he batted his bootheels to its sides, a shot sliced through the heavy billowing dust and nailed him in his shoulder from behind.

  Damn it! Not now!

  Claypool flew sidelong off the horse’s back as the animal bolted forward and raced away in the same direction of the two fleeing outlaws. As he hit the ground facedown, he felt the air explode from his lungs. He struggled to get up onto his feet, but he couldn’t do it. Through a watery veil he saw his rifle lying in the dirt a few feet in front of him and tried to push himself toward it.

  No good, he told himself. He shook his head to clear it of whatever had crept down around him. But his head wouldn’t clear. Instead it seemed to get worse. A darkness had him; it wasn’t letting him go. He fought against it like a man struggling to keep from falling asleep.

  The warm blood oozing wider and wider all across the back on his shoulders seemed to press him down, keep him pinned in place, like a heavy boot clamped down on him.

  Hell, you’ve had it, son, he told himself. This was how it felt being dead.

  He relaxed, gave in to the darkness, watching a dirt beetle crawling along in the dirt only an inch from his face. The beetle had no interest in anything that had just gone on in the world of man. This damn bug . . . Behind him the rumble of the herd lessened and passed. In another moment it fell away along the far end of the wide dirt street. He hoped his horse, Charlie Smith, had gotten away all right—a good horse, Charlie Smith. . . .

  Here it is, he thought, closing his eyes, knowing he was dead, knowing that when he opened them again he’d be in hell—find himself facing the devil. Well, that was how he’d played out his string, he thought, feeling smaller, going away.

  Chapter 4

  As the last of the freed cattle trampled along the main street of Maley, two outlaws, one older and one young, ducked their horses away into an alley and left town at a run. They didn’t stop and look back until they had reached a wide stand of cottonwood trees on a rocky hillside. There the two men stopped their horses alongside a thin stream. While the dusty sweat-streaked horse drank, the two men pulled bandannas down from their faces and sat staring back toward the thick cloud of dust engulfing the town. The herd had spilled out the other end of town and begun spreading out and slowing down. Mounted horsemen rode among them, trying to calm and gather the spooked animals.

  Baylor Rubens, the older outlaw, had only pulled the grimy bandanna down below his chin, but the younger outlaw, Hatton “Bugs” Trent, had untied his and jerked it from around his neck and shook it vigorously. Dust billowed.

  “Cattle have never brought me nothing but bad luck,” said Baylor Rubens. He spat and ran a hand across his dry lips. “I should say until today, that is. I expect to make myself a strike today.”

  “The day I run off from home, I swore I’d never spend a minute more of my life chasing a cow’s stinking ass,” said Trent. “Now look at me.” He shook the bandanna again, twirled it between his hands, draped it around his neck and tied it. “You know I nearly went under back there. If I had been trampled to death, I’d have been known forever for dying while rustling a herd of stinking cattle.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have, Bugs,” said Rubens. “I’d’ve seen to it you were known to be killed participating in a bank robbery.” He gave a thin wisp of a grin.

  Trent smiled himself and nodded.

  “I’d have been obliged to you for it,” he said. He hawked up dust from deep in his throat and spat it out on the ground. “Blasted damn cattle,” he growled.

  The two looked off at two streams of dust approaching them in a wide half circle from the far end of Maley.

  “This ain’t good,” Rubens said sidelong to the young outlaw. “It looks like somebody didn’t make it.” He noted how the two riders at the head of the streams of dust rode closely together. “No, sir, it ain’t good at all,” he added.

  Bugs Trent squinted into the sunlight and dirt.

  “It’s Wes and Ty,” he said. “They both made it. But Carter’s not with them.” He paused, then said, “No surprise, I reckon. If we lose a man, it won’t be one of these two, huh?”

  “Watch your mouth, Bugs,” cautioned Rubens. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “I know that kin stick together no matter what,” Trent said as the two riders drew nearer. “That’s just the way it is.”

  “Did you just hear me tell you to shut up?” Rubens asked, his tone turning sharper.

  The two stared hard at each other for a moment while the Traybos came up the narrow stretch of trail on the hillside toward them. Finally Bugs Trent gestured a nod toward the two.

  “Look,” he said quietly to Rubens. “Ty’s bloodier than a stuck hog.”

  “Jesus,” growled Rubens, jerking his dun’s head up from watering. He batted his boots to the dun’s sides and splashed across the stream toward the Traybos. Trent booted his horse along behind him.

  “What the hell, Wes?” said Rubens, cutting his horse sidelong and sidling up beside Ty, who sat slumped and bloody on his saddle. He noted the single canvas sack of money lying over Wes’ saddle cantle.

  “Shotgun,” said Wes. “He took a load close up. I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t.” He continued forward, leading Ty’s horse close beside him toward the stream’s edge.

  “He means . . . I should have . . . ,” Ty said in a weak voice without raising his lowered head.

  “If I meant that I would have said so,” Wes said to his brother, stepping down from his saddle beside the stream. He pitched the money sack on the ground. Rubens helped Ty down from his saddle, seated him on the gravelly bank and leaned him back against a large rock beside the stream. Bugs Trent stepped down, took the reins to the Traybos’ horses and held them while the animals drank.

  “Where’s Claypool?” Bugs asked, watching Wes open his brother’s bloody trail duster and pull it off carefully.

  “Carter didn’t make it,” Wes said over his shoulder. “This whole deal was a railroad ambush.” He said to Ty, “We’ve got to get a doctor for this wound.”

  “I’m not going to no damn doctor, Wes,” Ty said, his voice getting weaker.

  “I never said you’re going to one,” said Wes. “I’m going to have a doctor come to you.”

  Ty shook his head and gave a halfhearted chuckle.

  “That’s good. You do that, brother,” he said. “Be sure and bring me some whiskey and a dark-eyed señorita while you’re at it.”

  “I’ll do that,” Wes said. He adjusted the blood-soaked bandanna he had pressed against his brother’s gruesome wound earlier. He gave a dark, thin smile. “I’ll bring you a new shirt and a hat too.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Ty said weakly, his voice strained under the pain in his chewed-up shoulder.

  “What do you mean he didn’t make it?” Bugs asked Wes, still thinking about Carter Claypool. “How come he didn’t make it?”

  Wes turned facing him, his brother’s blood on his hands and his trail duster.

  “I’ll tell you more as soon as
I know more myself,” he said in a flat tone. “Meanwhile, you and Rubens take care of my brother while I go find out.”

  “Whoa, hang on, Wes,” said Ruben. “You don’t aim to ride back to Maley, not after all this?”

  “Yes, I do,” said Wes. “I intend to get a doctor for Ty, and I need to find out what happened to Claypool so I can come back and tell Bugs here.” He gave Trent a hard stare. “Right, Bugs?”

  Bugs relented, not knowing what to make of the look in Wes Traybo’s eyes.

  “Aw, come on, Wes, I didn’t mean nothing,” he said. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

  “It’s not too late to start,” Rubens cut in. He turned back to Wes and said, “You don’t need to go back, Wes. This is a hard game of ours. Claypool knows how it’s played. He wouldn’t ask you to come back for him.”

  “He stayed back to cover for Ty and me,” said Wes. “That’s what he does.” He gave Rubens a firm look. “Anything more you want to say on the matter?”

  “Damn it,” Rubens said. “Go on, then. We’ll take care of Ty until you get back.”

  “Well, thank you, sir,” Wes said, giving Rubens a look. He turned to his horse and took the reins from Bugs’ hand. The young outlaw stepped in close.

  “Wes, I didn’t mean nothing. I swear I didn’t,” he said. “I’ve got no damn sense sometimes.”

  “I didn’t think you meant it, Bugs,” said Wes. “If I did, one of us would be dead right now.”

  “I’m going with you,” Bugs said suddenly, wanting to make up for what he’d said. “There could be a bunch of guns waiting for you there.”

  “Do like I said, Bugs,” Wes said. “Stay here with Rubens and watch my brother.”

  Trent and Rubens stood staring as Wes climbed atop his horse and gathered his reins.

  “Stay alive for me, brother Ty,” he said. He spun his horse sharply and booted it back toward Maley.

  Turning to Rubens, Bugs saw the condemning look on the older gunman’s face.

  “What?” he said, giving a shrug. “You heard me tell him I don’t have any sense sometimes.”