CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Luna Talbot was horrified. She stared at Anse Dryden in disbelief. “No!” She kicked her horse into a startled run and behind her Dryden yelled, “Wait! Don’t go back there!”
But the woman ignored him.
She galloped past the entrance to the mine shaft, swung her mount between the Rafter-K hands and the Rathmore women and children and violently drew rein, forcing her horse to its haunches. Dryden was right behind her, cursing up a storm.
“What are you men doing?” Luna said as she rode up and down the line of tight-faced horsemen. “Have you all gone stark, raving mad?” She waved a hand. “These are women and children. Are you going to shoot down women and children?” She picked out a young puncher and stared into his startled blue eyes. “Which of the children are you planning to kill? The littlest one over there holding the ragdoll?”
The cowboy looked flustered and turned his head away, saying nothing, but Dryden yelled, “They’re Rathmores, damn it! Scum. Trash. They ain’t fit to live.”
“Everybody is fit to live,” Luna said. “Their husbands were your enemy, not the wives and certainly not the children.”
“Mrs. Talbot, stand aside,” Dryden said. “Let justice take its course. Are you men ready?”
A few of the punchers looked uneasily at Dryden and then gaped in surprise as Luna leaped from the saddle, ran to the women, and took a place among them.
“If you kill these people, you’ll have to kill me too,” Luna said, her angry eyes defiant.
“If that’s what it takes,” Dryden said.
“It’s gonna take a sight more than you got, mister.” A woman’s voice.
Dryden swung his head around and saw Leah Leighton and Johnny Teague and his four gunmen, all with guns drawn.
“This is none of your concern,” Dryden said. “And it’s none of Mrs. Talbot’s concern.”
“You threatened to kill my boss, so I’m making it my concern,” Leah said.
“Seems like you got a decision to make, Dryden,” Teague said. “I don’t want to influence your thinking, but you were right about us. We’re mighty rough men.”
Juan Sanchez eyed Dryden and smiled like an alligator. “I’ll kill you first, señor, I think.”
A silence fell on the compound, and tension tied the air in knots as fighting men became fingers looking for triggers. All that was needed to set off an explosion of hell-firing fury was a few spoken words from Dryden or Johnny Teague.
And everybody knew it . . . men, women, and children.
Long seconds ticked past. A horse tossed its head and jangled its bit, and a child cried from fear. Her mother tried to calm her in hushed, soothing tones. The cooking pot bubbled over and water hissed over the coals, raising steam. Above the arroyo, the cloudless sky was as blue as a sapphire.
Buttons Muldoon broke the tension.
Moving stiffly, he stepped out of the mine with Red Ryan in his arms. He read the signs and recognized a Mexican standoff when he saw one. But his only concern was the man he carried. “I’ve got a feller here needs help. Somebody help him.”
All eyes turned to Buttons and the tension leaked out of the atmosphere, pent-up breaths hissing from tight mouths like steam escaping from a boiler.
“Mr. Dryden, stand your men down,” Luna Talbot said. “There will be no massacre of the innocents here today.”
Buttons reinforced that statement by pushing through the horsemen who pulled aside to let him pass. He walked to a grassy area close to the wall and gently laid Red on his back. “Mrs. Talbot, take a look at him. I think he’s real bad and he ain’t thinking straight.”
As Luna kneeled beside Red, Johnny Teague kneed his horse forward and Juan Sanchez, with his significant guns, went with him. He followed Teague’s lead when the outlaw drew rein a couple of feet from Dryden.
“Looks like you’re done here, cowboy,” Teague said.
Dryden’s anger flared. “Who the hell are you, mister?”
“Name’s Johnny Teague, originally out of the Harris County country, but I’ve traveled around a fair piece.”
“I’ve heard of you,” Dryden said. “You’re an outlaw.”
Teague nodded. “And like you said, mighty rough and so wild I can buck in eight directions at the same time.”
Dryden had his back to the wall. He doubted that his men would obey an order to kill the woman and children in cold blood, and he no longer wished to put it to the test. To save face, he retreated into bluster. “Mrs. Talbot, the Cornudas Mountains are now part of the Rafter-K range and those Rathmore women are trespassing. What do you intend to do about it?”
“They can come with me and live on my ranch until they get settled elsewhere,” Luna said. “In the meantime they are grieving for dead husbands, so I suggest you let them be.”
“You’ve got a week, seven days, to get them out of here,” Dryden said.
“I know how many days there are in a week,” Luna said. “I’m attending to a sick man here, Mr. Dryden, so call off your dogs and go. You’re wearing out your welcome.”
Dryden salvaged his dignity. “A week, Mrs. Talbot. Come on, boys. Back to the ranch.”
In later years, Dave Quarrels insisted that if it was not for the presence of Luna Talbot and Johnny Teague, the massacre of the Rathmore women and children could easily have become a grim reality.
“It would’ve taken only one shot from one puncher to commence everybody to shooting,” he told A. B. Boyd. “Nowadays all the talk is about the O.K. Corral street fight in Tombstone back in 1881 and that began with one shot.”
Luna Talbot never talked about the incident nor did Johnny Teague, and Anse Dryden took his silence with him to the grave. The consensus of opinion among historians is that the Rafter-K hands would not have shot the women and children . . . but unless a letter or a diary written by one of the participants turns up, no one will ever know.
“How is he?” Buttons Muldoon said. He’d just watched Dryden and his hands leave, one of them dead and hanging over his saddle.
“Red is very weak, but with proper medical care he’ll live,” Luna said. “I advise you to take him to El Paso, where there are doctors.” She looked up at Buttons. “He was given a dreadful beating.”
“And that’s why I aim to kill Papa Mace,” Buttons said. “He was the instigator.”
“I plan to go after him myself,” Luna said. “He aimed to use me as his slave and do whatever he wanted to me.”
“No, I’ll kill him,” Buttons said. “If it takes me the rest of my life, I’ll rid the ground of his shadow.”
“Mr. Muldoon, right now you’re in no shape to go anywhere, except to a doctor’s surgery with Red,” Luna said. “You were badly beaten and starved into the bargain. Don’t look into a mirror. You won’t like what you see. You’ve been through it and it shows.”
The woman was right. Buttons’s usually ruddy face was ashen and the ordeal he’d experienced showed in his sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. He looked like an exhausted man teetering on the edge of collapse.
“Mrs. Talbot is right, old fellow,” Arman Broussard said. “You need food and rest. Above all, rest.”
Then, a small weak voice said, “Lady . . .”
The women were gathered around Malachi Rathmore, who lay on the ground, leaning on one elbow and staring at Luna. His chest was covered in blood that was already clotting over at least two bullet wounds. “He took all the gold . . .”
Buttons stepped toward him. “Who did? Was it Mace?”
“All the gold . . .”
“Was it Mace?” Buttons said again.
Luna left Red who was unconscious and took a knee beside the dying man. “Did Mace take all the gold?”
Malachi nodded. “Yes, he took it all . . . with my . . . wife.”
“Where did he go?” Buttons said. “Answer me or I’ll put another bullet in you.”
“Please, Mr. Muldoon, let me talk to him,” Luna said. Then, “Do you know where Mace is headed?”
“East,” Malachi said. “He took the gold . . . betrayed us . . .” Those were the last words he’d ever speak. He made a sound in his throat and then fell dead on his back.
“East,” Buttons said. “That’s all I need. No, I need a horse.”
“And a gun,” Johnny Teague said. He carried a couple of gun belts and holstered Colts. Behind him Dave Quarrels held a scattergun. “I found these back there. I guess one of these is yours, huh?”
Buttons nodded and took a gun rig. “Yeah, this is mine. The other belongs to Red. And that’s his Greener. I’ll take it.”
As Buttons checked the loads in the Colt and shotgun, Luna said, “Mr. Muldoon, you’re not in a fit state to go after Mace Rathmore. Look at you. You’re so weak you can barely walk.’
“A horse will do the walking for me,” Buttons said.
“Mr. Broussard, talk some sense into him,” Luna said.
“I’ll go with you, Buttons,” Broussard said.
“That’s not talking sense,” Luna said. “We’ll all go with him.”
The driver shook his head. “No, not today. There has to be a reckoning, and it’s a thing I must do by myself.”
“A man knows his own mind,” Broussard said. “I won’t stand in your way.”
Luna said, “Your mind is made up, Mr. Muldoon. I can see that. Then at least ride a decent horse. Leah, let this stubborn man borrow your paint.”
Leah Leighton smiled. “It’s all yours, driving man. I’ll see that your friend is well taken care of.”
“Thank you, thank you kindly,” Buttons said. Stiffly, he got down on a knee beside Red. “Can you hear me?”
Red’s eyes fluttered open. “I heard you on the brag as usual.”
“I’ll bring you back Mace’s head on a stick,” Buttons said. “And that’s not a brag.”
Red reached out and he clutched Buttons’s thick bicep. “Bring yourself back. You hear?”
“Depend on it,” Buttons said.
A few minutes later, he rode out of the arroyo and turned east at a canter. The sun was warm on his bruised face.