Hanging in Wild Wind

The ranger ate a late dinner of jerked elk, hoecake and coffee, then continued on after dark. He followed the trail back halfway across the flatlands, eventually reaching the spot where he’d stopped tracking Delbert Trueblood and instead detoured to Wild Wind to leave Kitty Dellaros for the town law to deal with. It was an easy flatlands trail, and he’d made good time in the moonlight. But he stopped the big Appaloosa when rifle fire resounded in the distance, and drew his eyes to the blinking bursts of fire along the black line of jagged hills.

Staring off at the sight and sound of the raging gun battle, he patted a gloved hand on the stallion’s withers and said, “What do you think, Black Pot, huh? Should we check it out?”

The big Appaloosa understood only the sound of his name. But upon hearing it, he shook his mane, blew out a breath and sawed his big head up and down.

“Yeah, me too,” the ranger said quietly, still gazing off toward the flashes of gunfire. He turned the stallion and rode off at a quickened pace across the flatlands, straight to the black hill line where the battle continued to rage with no sign of letup.

An hour later, the ranger rode up off the flatlands and ascended a narrow, rocky trail that cut his time sharply. Still, it was nearing daylight in the east as he heard two pistol shots followed by a return round of rifle fire. “Maybe it’s starting to wind down after all,” he said to the stallion, nudging it upward, closer toward the sound of gunfire.

On the rocks, Paco lay pinned beneath his dead horse, which had taken a bullet and collapsed atop him an hour earlier. Paco had struggled to free himself, but the saddle had him snared and he could neither loosen it nor his legs from beneath the weight of the animal.

“Crazy bitch!” he cried, his voice gravelly from shouting throughout the night over the pounding of rifle fire. He would have made a run for it long ago had the horse not fallen atop him. He felt as if his leg might be broken. Dark blood was smeared across his face and clotted in his eyebrows from a bullet graze on his head.

“What’s the use?” said Buckles. “She’s probably half deaf from all the gunfire.” He sat holding the empty Remington in one hand, his six precious bullets long since spent. His free hand was pressed to a bad shoulder wound that had already cost him a great deal of blood. The whiskey and the laudanum, however, left him cloaked in a warm, fuzzy glow.

“Yeah, what’s the use . . . ,” Paco repeated to himself in defeat. “I’m saving two bullets. One is for her when and if she ever decides to come down here. The other I will use on myself, if I cannot get out from under this horse.”

“I—I would help you if I could,” said Buckles, barely able to speak from the loss of blood and the effects of booze and narcotics. “But I’m too weak . . . to do any big pulling.” Beside him on the ground sat the wicker basket. Drained whiskey bottles were strewn all around it, and the empty blue laudanum bottle lay broken in the dirt.

Up on the hillside, Kitty looked past one dead horse and one badly wounded one that nickered pitifully from its spot on the bloody ground. Next to the two animals sat Price Cullen, sprawled back against a rock, slumped, his head bowed onto his bloody chest.

“Then go see,” said Kitty. “If he is, see if he’s got any bullets left. And shut that poor horse up.”

Cadden, himself wounded in the forearm and above his left knee, crawled over to Price and shook his shoulder gently. “Wake up, brother. Are you all right?”

“I’m . . . all right, brother . . . but I’ve been dreaming that I’m dying,” mumbled Price, and unleashed a wet, bloody cough. He shook his head. “I don’t know . . . which is worse: the nightmare I had, or the one I’ve woke up to.”

“I know,” said Cadden. “We’re horseless. Are you able to walk out of here once I get you onto your feet?”

“But so am I,” said Price. He managed to shake his head again. “We’ve been here . . . shooting all night. It ain’t got no better.”

“Sit tight, brother,” said Cadden. “I’m going to tell her this is enough. We’ve got to get out of here, some way.”

“Jesus,” spat Cadden. “You mean to tell me we’ve been counting rounds and you’ve been holding off, putting all the bad luck onto us?”

Before Cadden could answer, the ranger’s voice called out from a few yards above them, “Drop the rifle, Kitty. You’ve been at it all night. It’s time to put this thing to rest.”

Kitty swung the rifle toward him, but she stopped suddenly. The ranger’s own rifle was cocked, leveled and waiting. “All right, Sam. You win.” She let her rifle fall from her hands and raised her tired arms as high as the bloody wound in her upper shoulder would allow.

Sam stood over the two. He kicked Kitty’s rifle out of reach, stooped down and picked up the Colt lying beside Cadden Cullen. “That’s not my posse,” he said. He gestured Cadden toward his brother Price. “Go help him over here. Go for a gun, and it’ll save me having to take you back to town.”

“That’s a hell of a cavalier attitude,” said Cadden, but he rose and limped over to where Price sat slumped and drooling.

“No, ma’am,” said the ranger. “I had no idea you and the Cullens even broke jail. I heard the shooting while crossing the flatlands last night. I came to take a look-see.”

“I don’t know,” said Sam. “Why don’t we ask?” He stepped away from Kitty and without revealing himself to the gunmen below, he called down over the rocky narrow trail, “This is Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack. Who’s down there? Detective Longworth, Chief Bell, is that you?”

“Hell no,” Paco Stazo called back in a dry, raspy voice. “It is not the law down here. It is I, Paco Stazo and Huey Buckles. I have been trying to tell her this all fucking night long. The crazy bitch would not listen to me!”

“Well, now that we know who everybody is,” Sam said to Kitty. He called down to Paco and Buckles, “Stand up, both of you. Walk into sight with your hands raised.”

“I cannot do this for you, Ranger,” said Paco, “I have a dead horse lying atop me. If not for this horse I would have fled from this madness long before now.”

Huey actually looked himself up and down as if to make sure before he answered. “No,” he said drunkenly. “None that I know of.”

Sam gave Kitty a faint, wry grin. “None that he knows of,” he said. “Sounds like all of you had a hard night.” He gestured her up onto her feet and cuffed her hands in front of her.

Sam didn’t answer. He looked at the Cullens and realized they weren’t going anywhere on their own. “All right, now. Are the three of you able to walk down to the trail?”

At midmorning the weary, wounded band of prisoners walked off the hill trail onto the flatlands. The ranger led Black Pot, who carried Price Cullens, the only one the five who could not walk. The wicker basket of whiskey bottles hung from Black Pot’s saddle horn. In front of the ranger, the other four limped and staggered along. Cadden Cullen used a piece of twisted scrub cedar as a walking stick; Huey Buckles kept a hand on his rear to keep the dirty, ragged bandage in place beneath his seatless trousers.

Kitty and Paco Stazo had bickered back and forth since dawn. “How was I supposed to know it was you?” she said to the half-breed, who limped along painfully, staring straight ahead, refusing to look at her.

“How would you know it was me?” Paco asked. “How about this? I said most clearly, ‘It is I, Paco Stazo!’ Did that tell you anything?”

“You know what I mean, Paco,” said Kitty. “Under these circumstances you couldn’t expect me to just throw down my rifle and say, ‘Oh, it’s Paco!’ Now, could you?”

“I could expect you to at least investigate and make sure of who it was,” Paco said. “Instead of firing as if you’d lost your mind.”

“Lucky for me, I was already wounded,” Buckles said to Cadden Cullen, “or I’d be in one hell of a shape right now.”

“Jesus,” said Cadden. He craned his head back and took a look at the bandage showing through the missing seat of Buckles’ trousers. “You smell like burnt hair.”

“Hold up, everybody,” said the ranger, seeing Longworth and a group of townsmen riding up out of the sage and cactus. “It looks like a posse from Wild Wind.”

“It’s about damn time,” Cadden whispered under his breath to Buckles. “I’ve been so glad to see a law posse in my life.”

“Not me,” said Buckles, sober enough to remember what he’d done to the doctor, and what he and Paco had done to the detective. “Instead of burning, my ass is going to be swinging from a rope.”

Longworth and the six townsmen riding with him slowed their horses to a walk and formed a half circle around the prisoners. Longworth himself rode forward, stopped and looked down at the ranger.

“I don’t know how you did it, Ranger Burrack,” he said, pushing up his hat brim, “but I’m glad you caught all these murdering dogs.”

Murdering dogs . . . ? Kitty gave Paco a glance; he turned away from her. She looked back at Cadden Cullen. He shrugged. He had no idea what the detective was talking about.

Selectman Tyler called out to the ranger, “It looks like they put up quite a struggle, but you managed to thrash them soundly, eh, Ranger?”

“No,” Sam replied, “I haven’t fired a shot. There are two groups here. They did all this to each other.”

“Two groups?” said Longworth. He looked the five wounded prisoners over. “I had decided the three who broke jail had these others helping them. You mean to tell me that’s not the case?”

“Apparently not,” said Sam. “These three were shooting it out with these two. Each of them thought the other was the law.” He nodded toward the prisoners who were afoot. “As you can see, they beat each other up pretty good.”

“Good Lord,” said Tyler, looking bemused as he and the others rode forward and gathered around the ranger, staring at the prisoners as if they were remnants of some ragged circus parade. “The irony is that they killed the one man they will all need once we get back to Wild Wind.”

Sam started to look at Kitty, but caught himself. He thought about her razor, which he’d put in a desk drawer as evidence. He had no definite reason to suspect that she’d used it on the doctor, and he knew this was not the time or place to make any guesses. The townsmen were still reeling from the events of the night before; he could see it in their eyes.

“They killed Chief Bell too,” said Longworth. “It was a bloody night in Wild Wind.” He scanned the dirty, blood-streaked faces of the five prisoners, not allowing himself to show the rage he harbored for them.

But Sam saw it. And he understood what the young detective was going through. “But it’s over now,” he said quietly.

Longworth continued to stare intently from one face to the next. The five saw that they were on dangerous ground with the detective and his posse. “They knocked me out, Ranger,” Longworth said, the resentment in his voice apparent.

“They locked me in my own jail and pulled my britches down,” he said. “They ransacked the town, burgled the cantina. Killed the doctor, killed Chief Bell—the man sent to report back on my progress here.” He continued staring and shook his head. “They left me cuffed and gagged, locked in my own jail, with my britches down,” he repeated.

“You said that,” Sam offered quietly. To get things back on task, he said, “We need to share horses with them. If we don’t it’ll take all day to get them back to Wild Wind.”

“Lynch ’em,” said a tough-looking livestock broker named Fred Elliot. He stepped his horse in closer. “I’m not sharing my horse with any of this trash.”

Sam grabbed Elliot’s shin with both hands and hurled him upward off his saddle. As the man hit the ground, Sam was around the horse and upon him, his Colt out of the holster. The barrel made a wide swipe and left a welt on the man’s forehead. The big man crumbled, senseless, flat on his back.

Sam stood half crouched, his Colt still in hand, glaring at the rest of the townsmen, who had drawn back in shock.

“Does everybody here understand my position on lynching?” he said, glaring from face to face. The townsmen sat stunned, staring down at him from their saddles. “I don’t even want to hear the word said, not even in a whisper.”

“Easy, Ranger,” Longworth said, his voice cautious. To the townsmen he said, “You all heard him. Let’s get doubled up and get back to town before this sun bakes all our brains.”

“No, you’re not,” Sam said, slipping his Colt back into its holster. “You’re riding with him.” He reached down, dragged the slowly awakening townsman to his feet and helped him stand wobbling in one spot. “Get in the saddle, Kitty. I’ll help him up behind you.”

“Make do,” Sam said. He helped her and the wobbling Fred Elliot onto the horse. Then he swung up onto Black Pot’s back behind the saddle, and behind Price Cullen, who sat slumped, barely conscious. “Don’t bleed on me, Price,” he said, taking the reins around the sweaty, bloody outlaw. “I don’t like this any more than you do.”