Zack Forrester moaned and cursed and slammed his fists down against the bunk. The man holding his shoulders put more weight on them and the one sitting on his legs shifted uncomfortably. Sweat streamed from Forrester’s face as Chuka Cox, tongue between his teeth, probed none too gently for the bullet in the outlaw’s chest.
“Gimme that bottle!’’ gasped Forrester desperately, writhing in agony, almost out of his mind with pain.
Link Magee, the man holding his shoulders, glanced at Cox and the man nodded, taking another track with the knife-blade and opening up more flesh.
“God rot you, Chuka!’’ roared Forrester, then drank deeply from the whisky bottle that Magee held against his lips. He let out one more yell and sagged back on the bunk, panting, as Cox held up the misshapen lead slug in bloody fingers. “Stop the bleedin’, damn you! Don’t admire that goddamn thing!’’ gasped the outlaw leader and Cox grabbed rags hurriedly and began mopping up his handiwork. Magee released Forrester’s shoulders and the man snatched the whisky from him and gulped down the remainder of the liquid in the bottle while Cox worked.
“Hell, I hope I never get shot again with only you around, Chuka!’’ Zack told the man. “I’ve seen rheumaticky butchers do a better job!”
"You’re alive, ain’t you?’’ Cox growled, tying the padded rags in place over the wound.
Zack nodded slowly. “Yeah. Which is more’n Lem is.”
Ashen-faced now, after his ordeal and the crude surgery, Zack sat up groggily on the bunk and leaned back against the wall of the adobe shack that served as the gang’s hideout. “Goddamn that yeller-haired son of a bitch! Half-brother to a bolt of lightnin’!”
“What started the ruckus in the first place?” Cox asked.
Forrester’s mouth curled. “Bray wantin’ more dinero. Reckoned the Wells Fargo report claimed we got over a hundred-thousand out of that Alamogordo express car and he wanted ten thousand in a lump sum.”
“Great day! We didn’t get anywheres near that, did we?” Clem Lester asked.
“Closer to sixty grand,” growled Forrester. “He still wanted a bigger cut, anyway. Reckoned he was tired of livin’ on his niece’s charity. Seems it’s her house and so on. He had somethin’ wrong with his lungs, too. Been coughin’ blood for a spell and the sawbones told him he didn’t have a lot of time left. So he aimed to do some travellin’ and high-livin’.”
“At our expense!” Link Magee put in.
“Yeah. He laid it on the line: pay up or he’d take us in and notify the Rangers. So’s he wouldn’t be involved, I guess he aimed to shoot us down while ‘tryin’ to escape’ ...”
“He always was a tough hombre in his early days, Luke Bray,” opined Chuka Cox. “Helluva hard man. Guess there was still a spark in him.”
“Not any more. Goddamn yeller-haired polecat hornin’ in!”
“Who is he?” Magee asked.
“Dunno. Never seen him before and didn’t hear his name. But he’s fast. Damn near finished me as well as Lem.”
“Think he could be a Ranger, mebbe?” suggested Cox, and his words brought a thoughtful frown to Forrester’s pain-lined face.
“Hell, it’s possible! Bray could’ve set us up, but we made our move just a mite faster than he expected and the other feller didn’t come in till it was near too late. Might be that way. Bray reckoned that feller he killed a couple weeks back looked like an undercover Ranger to him, which is why he prodded him. If they’re nosin’ around this area, they’re gettin’ a mite too close and we ain’t gonna be able to get rid of the gold like we’ve been doin’.”
“Aw, Rangers and Wells Fargo’ve been checkin’ all along the border for weeks, Zack,” Cox pointed out.
‘‘Sure, but if the hombre Bray downed was an undercover Ranger and this yeller-haired hombre is one, as well, that makes two they’ve sent out in a few weeks. Means they must figure they’re onto somethin’ in this neck of the woods, don’t it?”
The others had to agree it looked that way.
Forrester rubbed gently at his bandages, frowning worriedly. ‘‘We’ve gotta get that gold across to Valdez. With Bray gone, likely the Rangers’ll put one of their own men on the checkpoint and we’ll never get it past him.”
‘‘We’re only guessin’,” Cox said. ‘‘That hombre who shot you mightn’t be a Ranger at all.”
‘‘Well, we better make sure what’s goin’ on in town, anyways. You ride in and take a look-see, Chuka.”
Cox stiffened. ‘‘Not me!”
There was sudden silence in the room and Forrester’s eyes narrowed.
“Why not you?” he asked quietly.
‘‘Judas, you know I don’t like towns!” protested Cox. ‘‘Too many Wanted dodgers out on me! Wells Fargo’ve been after me for close on two years and they keep puttin’ up the bounty. They suspect I’m in on these express car robberies because they know my work with dynamite!”
Forrester stared coldly at him. ‘‘It’s gotta be you, Chuka. I’m hit, Link and Clem are meltin’ down the gold and pourin’ it into nuggets. That’s their specialty, same as the explosives are yours.”
‘‘What about Adams or Taggart?” Cox asked.
Forrester shook his head again. ‘‘No good. They rode with us on a flat fee, which we paid.”
‘‘Yeah, but they was only goin’ back to their ranch at Sierra Blanca ...”
‘‘They ain’t got any ranch at Sierra Blanca. That was to throw anyone off the trail. They’ve gone back to New Mexico, around Socorro, so we can forget ’em. Looks like it has to be you, Chuka.”
Cox stood up, breathing fast, licking his lips. ‘‘I ain’t doin’ it, Zack! Too risky!”
Suddenly he was staring down the muzzle of Forrester’s six-gun: the man’s wound hadn’t impaired his gun-speed any. The hammer clicked back to full notch.
“You're elected, Chuka. You go or I blow you apart right now. And you come back with the right information or I’ll hunt you down. Savvy?”
Cox swallowed: he knew Zack never forgave an injury and would never give up searching for him if he let him down.
“I savvy, Zack,” he breathed.
Forrester lowered the gun hammer slowly but his eyes were still deadly. “And find out if they gave Lem a decent burial. And how I can get at that yeller-haired bastard and square things with him!”
~*~
Most of the town attended the funeral of Luke Bray and those who couldn’t get out to Boot Hill or to the church, sent their representatives. He had been a good lawman, the folk of Ojo Medina said, and he had kept the peace well in their little border town.
Sure, there had been the odd ruckus and shoot-up, but that was to be expected along the Rio, and Bray had never hesitated to go out with his gun and square-up to the miscreants. He had had a way with words, too, could often talk a liquored-up cowpoke into handing in his gun before someone got killed. Sometimes he gun-whipped the law-breaker into submission and, on a few memorable occasions, he had shot it out and walked away from the gunsmoke. Most folk knew he had some kind of chest trouble, but only the doctor knew how serious it had been. And no one at all knew that Luke Bray had been taking bribes from the Forresters, though there had been gossip from time to time.
After the burial, Burns walked Ellen back in the blazing sunshine to the house on the hill and helped her receive the streams of townsfolk who came to offer sympathy. He brewed coffee in the kitchen and served it and when he saw Ellen was near breaking point, he hustled everyone out, thanked them for coming, and asked them to tell the rest of the townsfolk that Ellen was not receiving any more visitors this day. A couple of vinegar-faced women in stovepipe bonnets began to protest but took one look at Burns’ rocky face and folded arms as he stood squarely in the doorway and the protests died away.
Inside the parlor, Brad found Ellen dabbing at her eyes with a cambric handkerchief and she looked up and gave him a wan smile.
“Thank you for all you’ve done, Brad,” she said huskily.
He shifted his feet uneasily. “Still wish I’d gotten down to that bar just a mite earlier …”
She stood up, a small woman, the top of her head reaching only to his chest and she tilted her face up to look at him. Her hand touched him lightly.
“Brad, you mustn’t blame yourself. People have told me that there were at least three earlier occasions when it looked like blowing-up into a shooting match but Uncle Luke was able to head it off. By the law of averages he couldn’t hope to do that all the time. And it just happened that when you arrived, all the talking and arguing had been done and there was nothing left but guns, for men like the Forresters.’’
Burns nodded slowly. He would like to believe that. “Too bad the other brother got away, but I’ll get out Wanted dodgers on him, ask the town to post a reward. The way folk thought so highly of your uncle, I reckon there won’t be any trouble gettin’ ’em to do that.’’
She nodded, still standing close against him and he stirred uneasily as he caught a whiff of her delicate perfume. He knew it to be English lavender water, for he had seen the fancy, cut-glass bottle on her dressing table when he had gone into her room with two townswomen to take her to the funeral. He had also glimpsed some of her underwear draped around the room on chairs or on the bed: petticoats with lace trim and little colored flowers embroidered on them; lacy, long-legged bloomers; silk stockings.
The perfume conjured up a vision of her room and her intimate things and he began to sweat. She was surely a beautiful woman, Ellen Bray, and he was all too aware that they would be sleeping under the same roof.
And then it hit him: why he had been getting so many disapproving looks from the vinegary old maids and some other townswomen.
“Listen, Ellen,” he said abruptly, taking her small shoulders in his big hands. “When you—ah—asked me if I’d like to stay here ... well—uh—your uncle was alive then and still livin’ in this house. Now there’ll only be the two of us ...”
His voice trailed off as he groped for words. She frowned slightly, looking up into his face. “Yes, Brad?”
He made a helpless gesture and moved his neck uncomfortably in his collar that was drawn tight with a black-string tie. He loosened it hurriedly.
“Well, maybe folk’ll talk,” he said somewhat lamely.
“About what?”
“Us ... livin’ here under the same roof. Just … you and me ...”
She searched his face carefully. “Will it bother you, Brad?”
“Huh? Me? Hell, no! I mean ... well, I was thinkin’ about you. You’ve got to teach the kids of this town and if their parents get it into their heads that you’re ... you’re—”
She smiled. “For a writer, you’re not very good at finding words, are you?”
He flushed angrily. “Damn it, don’t make fun of me! I know what these small towns are like!”
She touched his arm again, said earnestly, “I’m sorry, Brad. I shouldn’t have made fun of you. But what other people think doesn’t bother me unduly. We’ll know they’re wrong, won’t we?”
“Well ... sure. Sure!”
“Then that’s all that matters. Don’t give it another thought.”
He frowned. “You’re sure, Ellen? I mean it’s your town. You’ll have to go on livin’ here long after I move on ...”
Her eyes searched his face carefully and she gave a small sigh before nodding slowly. “Yes, I’m sure, Brad. And I—hope it’s quite—some time before you do—move on ...”
She said the last huskily, turned swiftly and hurried out to the kitchen where he heard her starting to wash up the coffee cups and plates. He frowned. He hadn’t really thought about how long he would stay in Ojo Medina, only had some vague notion about getting the book sorted out and maybe the first rough draft penned.
But now he found himself thinking that maybe, if this lawman’s job worked out, he could stay on here long enough to finish the book and get it away to the publisher in Philadelphia.
The prospect of a longer stay than he had originally planned suddenly appealed to him. As he walked across the room towards the stairs leading to his room above, he caught another whiff of Ellen’s perfume.
He started to whistle softly as he climbed the stairs.
~*~
The youth in the stables at Sierra Blanca had been right about the big bay gelding being fast, Clay Nash reckoned as he rode along the trail to Ojo Medina. It had taken him out of the town and into the hills without any trouble and had been eating the distance at a steady lope ever since without showing any signs of tiredness.
There had been a posse of sorts come after him but he had only glimpsed them from afar and had easily lost them in the Sierras. Long ago he had learned to cover his tracks as well as any Indian. He figured it was time to rest up a little before heading into the border town. He didn’t want to draw too much attention to himself, arriving on a lathered horse for which he couldn’t produce a bill of sale. He wanted time to look around.
He came to a stream amongst a stand of thick timber and allowed the bay to drink. He figured he would make a noon camp here, allowing the bay to rest up, then ride into Ojo Medina around sundown, a good time to arrive and in keeping with his cover of a man on the run.
Nash allowed the horse to drink its fill, walked it out belly-deep so it could feel the coolness of the water, and then turned it back towards a flat rock where he planned to build his campfire and brew coffee while he cooked the bacon and beans which he had bought at a Mexican store along the way.
But he never did reach that flat rock. A shot blasted from upstream where there was another ford. The bullet went close and Nash threw himself sideways out of the saddle, dragging the rifle from its scabbard as he went. The bay lurched and jumped forward and Nash hit the water with a fan of spray. As his boots scrabbled on the slippery bottom for purchase, two more bullets zipped into the creek at his side. He held the rifle out of the water, triggered one-handed and heard the lead ricochet from a rock but he had no idea where.
He lunged for the bank on the opposite side to the flat rock and water spurted in a rough triangle in front of him as the drygulcher opened up in a fast volley. Nash moved to the left, then the right in a zigzag that was slowed down by the knee-deep water. He stopped dead to further throw off the marksman, got off two fast shots at a vague pall of gunsmoke hanging above the rocks upstream, moved back two feet then hurled himself headlong for the bank. He heard the rifle hammering from upstream but didn’t see or hear where the lead landed.
Nash grabbed at the short grass on the bank and hauled his body up out of the water, rolling fast, away from the creek. Dirt filled his mouth as a bullet landed only a scant inch from his face and he jerked back instinctively. Hell! The bushwhacker had his range! Clay Nash doubled his legs, somersaulted backwards as the rifle blasted again, and landed on his feet, rising and lunging for the thick brush a few yards away.
There were no more shots before he made the shelter and he figured the rifleman was reloading. But he had no sooner hunkered down in the brush than four fast shots raked his cover and he winced as broken twigs stung his cheek. From here he could see the rocks upstream and this time he was able to pinpoint the bushwhacker’s position by the spurting powdersmoke as the man fired a volley. Nash stayed on one knee, steeled himself to ignore the lead crashing through the brush all around him, and sighted on that smoke, moved his point of aim back a shade and up a little, between two rounded boulders where he figured the killer must be lurking.
Nash squeezed trigger carefully and, almost before he saw the gray streak laid by his lead on the inner face of the boulder, had another shell levered into the chamber. He fired again, levering even as he watched his lead zing and ricochet from boulder-face to boulder-face with a mad buzz that reached him like a demented swarm of bees. The rifle barrel back there jerked up into the air and was withdrawn hurriedly. He sent a third shot into the same break in the rocks, listened to the ricochet, then got his legs pumping, running out of the brush cover but keeping it between himself and the killer’s rocks.
He knew those bullets of his must have been close to the drygulcher, close enough to force him to hunt fresh cover. And that was what Nash wanted.
He ran, crouched, along the leaf-strewn path through the brush, not caring how much noise he made, for he knew the killer would be clambering over the rocks and making enough noise of his own to drown out his racing footsteps. He pounded around a hackberry, leapt over a deadfall, used the rifle butt to smash aside a low branch and then burst out onto the bank directly opposite the boulders at the ford There was a man over there all right, his left arm hanging limply as he clambered down the boulders and stumbled across river stones as he made for new cover, rifle in his right hand. He almost fell and, as he straightened, he turned his head slightly and saw Nash.
The killer threw himself flat on his back, bringing his rifle around one-handed, firing wildly. It was a fast, instinctive movement and the shot was a lucky one: it slapped the brim of Nash’s hat and threw his aim out so that his bullet merely struck sparks off river stones between the killer’s feet, ricocheting away. Nash was thrown off-balance and by the time he had regained his footing and got the rifle up to his shoulder again, the man over there had stood up, braced the butt of the rifle into his hip, and levered and triggered a fusillade of wild shots that had bullets whining and zipping and buzzing all around Nash, forcing him to throw himself flat.
The drygulcher dropped the rifle and snatched at his six-gun as Nash rolled off the low bank into the shallows, and the Colt and Winchester boomed as one. Nash was momentarily blinded by the lead-sprayed water in his face. He savagely screwed knuckles against his eyes, saw the man over there was hanging against a rock, his wounded arm trying to support his weight as he sagged slowly, leaving a smear of red down the gray stone. But he was game and he tried to bring up his six-gun for a final shot.
Nash levered, aimed carefully, and shot him through the head. The man jerked and slumped in an untidy heap.
Clay Nash stood up and waded across the river ford, dripping, hatless, rifle with a chamber round cocked and ready. He wasn’t taking any chances at all and when he reached the dead man he took time to kick the Colt from nerveless fingers before using a boot toe to heave the man over onto his back. He stared down at the sightless eyes and tried to make out the features under the blood and grit smearing them.
“Well, I’ll be ...!’’ he exclaimed quietly. “Chuka Cox!”
To be sure, he knelt and went through the killer’s clothes and found enough evidence to confirm the identification. Two old letters, a bill of sale for dynamite caps, a knife with the initials C.C. burned into the handle. Nash hunkered down on his haunches looking at the man.
“Must’ve been on the trail into Ojo Medina when he spotted me,” he mused. And they had known each other from way back ...
Cox had long been on the Wells Fargo ‘wanted’ list and now Nash figured that maybe he was in the right area for the train robbers if Cox was around these parts. He was an explosives’ expert, a man who knew more about dynamite than any living man. If anyone could place those charges precisely under the express cars, it was Cox, the expert. Chief of Detectives Jim Hume would breathe a sigh of relief to know he had been nailed at last.
Another thought struck him. If Cox was part of the Forrester gang, now that he was dead, they would be short of an explosives’ expert. And a, man with the reputation of Matt Dundee would be welcomed with open arms.
The thing was to spread the word around that Cox was out of circulation for good. That ought to be easy enough. He could tote the body into Ojo Medina, still using his cover identity of Matt Dundee, and dump it on the steps of the law offices. Sheriff Bray would have plenty of Wanted dodgers on Cox, he figured. It wouldn’t much matter if he was seen leaving the dead man or not, though it would be better if he could just dump it anonymously. But, if someone saw him, even Bray himself, he would simply tell the truth that Cox had tried to bushwhack him but he had nailed the outlaw first.
If the Forresters were around and interested, he would soon know about it. Explosives’ experts weren’t easy to come by. There were plenty of men who could shove a stick of dynamite into a hole and blow a crater in the ground, or even derail a locomotive, but it was the man who really knew what he was about who was in demand.
And he figured Matt Dundee must fall into that category, for he was one of the elite.
~*~
Brad Burns patrolled the streets just before sundown with one hand on his gun butt. He wasn’t taking any chances. Someone had told him that Zack and Lem Forrester were as close as twins could be and that Zack, if he were still alive, would come back and square things with Burns for having killed his brother.
No use being a dead hero, Brad figured. He’d take no chances.
He ambled back down Main Street towards the law office where he hadn’t yet lit the porch lantern but figured to do so before going back up the hill to Ellen Bray’s house. He would leave a note on the door where he could be found should he be wanted in his official capacity. Burns still found it strange to be wearing a badge. He hadn’t had much respect for the law or its enforcers after being wrongfully imprisoned, and he had taken hard beatings in jail when that chief warden was wrongly convinced he had a heap of loot stashed away someplace. As far as Brad was concerned, his opinion of the law dropped to zero after that, and he included Clay Nash in his criticism, in spite of the Wells Fargo agent’s efforts to undo the wrong that had been done to Brad. His obsession about Clay Nash was as strong now as it had ever been.
One day they would meet again, he told himself, and it would be settled, one way or another. That was why he had kept up his practice with his gun, a skill which must help him now that he had taken the lawman’s badge. He knew from his association with the trail hands under Longhorn Tommy Loveless that someone would have to try out the new sheriff, see if he was as good as folk said he was. And he would have to be better or he would have one hell of a hard job enforcing the law in this town.
He was feeling for a vesta in his shirt pocket when he stiffened, looking out into the shadowed street. A rider had come around the corner, a man forking a big bay and leading another horse with what looked like a dead man roped across the saddle. A small bunch of townspeople straggled after him to see what had happened.
Clay Nash silently cussed the mob jogging along behind, throwing questions at him, but he didn’t answer. He had hoped to slip into town and dump Cox’s body on the porch of the law office and then go back into town without being seen. But two men repairing a horse trough had spotted him and yelled out and that was it. People on the boardwalks had come running and it was too late then to dodge back. He had to ride along Main and every step of the way he was hoping the sheriff would not be in the office.
When he had first come around the corner and seen the law building in darkness he had figured his luck wasn’t so bad after all, but then he spotted the tall man in the shadows of the porch, fumbling for a vesta to light the lantern, and he swore softly. He had not heard about Sheriff Luke Bray’s death, of course, and was expecting to see a middle-aged man reflected in the flare of the vesta as it burst into flame and the lawman reached out to touch it to the lantern wick.
Nash reined in abruptly, freezing, belly knotting up as the amber light washed over the hawk-like features of the new sheriff, glinting from the long yellow hair showing under the man’s pushed-back hat.
“Great Godfrey!” he murmured to himself.
That was a face he would never forget: the face of the last man he wanted to see at this moment. Brad Burns! His old enemy, the unforgiving young man who had saved him from a terrible death at the hands of two outlaws only so he could have the pleasure of killing Nash himself at some future time.
And the way the young lawman was standing, stiff with tension, right hand hovering over his gun-butt as he stared in disbelief, recognizing Nash, he figured it possible that time was now!
The whole deal would be shot to pieces, Nash thought, his brain racing as he nudged the bay slowly forward again. If Burns called out his name, it would blow his entire plan to hell! Even if he got a chance to explain afterwards it would be too late once Burns had mentioned his real name. The ‘Matt Dundee’ cover would be useless.
Well, the obvious thing to do was to shut up Brad Burns pronto before he could shout Nash’s name. There were two ways he could do it, and one of them was with a gun, though he wasn’t any too sure that he could beat Burns to the draw, after seeing him outgun those two outlaws, months ago.
There was another way: jump Burns right now and get into a knock-down, drag-out brawl with him, making it look really good but allowing the man to win, get the drop on him and then throw him in the cells. Then, in the privacy of the jail, he could tell Burns the truth, ask him to cooperate and not blow his cover ...
His conscience wouldn’t allow him to gun down Burns, even if he could. He had done the man wrong, caused him a lot of grief and the man had saved his life, even if reluctantly. So it had to be the second way and it had to be mighty fast for he could see Burns stepping forward, a bitter smile twisting his lips.