Chapter Thirty-eight
The tracks of the four renegades and the lumbering milk cow across the late summer grass were easy to read, and Red Ryan and Sage Barnard covered three miles in the first hour, Red setting a brisk pace. They walked in open country, here and there occasional stands of scrub oak and piñon, and a few cottonwoods growing on the banks of dry streambeds.
In the middle of the second hour, the pace of the pursuers slowed a little. Neither Red’s boots nor Barnard’s elastic-sided congress gaiters made for cross-country walking.
Finally, Barnard stopped, wiped off his face with the large white handkerchief he’d taken from his pocket, and said, “Ryan, I reckon those boys are setting a faster pace than I expected.”
Red was also glad to stop. “They’ll camp soon,” he said, taking out the makings. He started to build a cigarette. “Getting on to sundown earlier than I thought, too.”
Barnard waited for Red to light his smoke before he held out his hand for the tobacco sack and papers. He deftly rolled his own cigarette, passed the makings back to Red, and then said, “Give me ten minutes and we’ll hit the trail again. As you say, those four can’t be that far away. This past half hour I thought the tracks looked a sight fresher.”
“They are,” Red said. “We’re catching up . . . slowly.”
Then, through a cloud of blue smoke, Barnard said, “How many men you killed since you became a shotgun guard, Ryan?”
“A few,” Red said. “I don’t like to boast of it.” Then, “You?”
“Seven before our run-in with the Rayner brothers,” Barnard said. “All of them in saloons. Bad whiskey and sore losers are a bad combination.” He shrugged, a typically Cajun gesture. “Goes with the gambler’s vocation, I guess.”
“Buttons Muldoon and me saw you kill Flynn Mayfield in the Ruby saloon in Galveston that time,” Red said. “We were pretty new to stagecoaching then. Well, I was. Buttons had been driving for a spell.”
“Did we talk?” Barnard said.
“No. It wasn’t exactly what you’d call a social occasion.”
“Flynn Mayfield was a fool,” Barnard said. “He fancied himself a shootist, but he’d never shaded anybody with a reputation. Called himself the new John Wesley Hardin, but he didn’t even come close.”
“He drew down on you, Barnard,” Red said. “I saw that.”
The gambler nodded. “Mayfield had been notified, but blunders were made.”
Barnard took a last draw on his cigarette and crushed out the butt under his heel. “Well, shall we resume our delightful promenade?”
“Suits me,” Red said. “I wish I could say the same for my feet.”
* * *
The day was slowly shading into night, and scarlet banners streamed in the sky when Red and Barnard saw a fire glimmer in the distance directly ahead of them.
Trusting to the growing darkness to conceal them, the two men advanced slowly on the camp, set among an isolated thicket of piñon and brush. The dusky blue twilight was tinged with pale bronze from the sky, and the air smelled faintly of coffee and broiling meat. The grass underfoot made a soft swishing sound as Red and Barnard stepped closer to the camp.
Then Red stopped and waved Barnard into a crouch. The thickest brush grew to his right, and it would offer cover, but it was too dense to penetrate quickly and Red dismissed it as an attack route. For a long minute or two, he studied the layout of the camp. Men passed in front of the fire, dark silhouettes in the gloom. He saw no sign of the woman.
Damn it, there was no cover, no way to walk closer unseen. The only option Red had was to get down on his belly and crawl. This was no time and place for foolish bravado. He dropped on his front and motioned for Barnard to do the same.
But the gambler had other ideas. His gun held low, close to his leg, he straightened from his crouch, walked forward like a man out for a Sunday stroll, and when he was just a few yards away he said, “Howdy, boys.”
The reaction was immediate.
Four men, two in the garb of Mexican vaqueros but wearing Stetson hats, and a pair of Apaches in their usual shirts, breeches, and headbands, scrambled to their feet and, guns drawn, faced their unexpected visitor.
Red silently cursed Barnard but got to his feet and stepped closer to the camp on the gambler’s right.
He held his shotgun, unwavering muzzles pointed in the direction of the foursome, and said, “Fine evening, ain’t it.”
The renegades didn’t like that one bit. They didn’t like it that two men had walked up to their camp unnoticed, and they didn’t care for the scattergun. Later Red would say that they should have gone to their pistols right away, but instead they wasted time on palaver. It would prove to be a fatal mistake.
One of the white outlaws, a tall man with a large dragoon mustache, stepped forward and said, “What the hell do you want? There’s nothing here for you.”
The Apaches had picked up their rifles. The cow carcass, freshly butchered, lay at the far side of the camp. Lumps of meat were broiling on sticks suspended over the campfire.
“There is something here for us,” Red said. Where was Effie Morton? “We want the woman.”
“What woman?” the man with the mustache said.
“The woman you took from the Morton cabin after you killed her husband,” Red said.
“Are you the law?” the man said.
“No, we’re not the law. We just want the woman,” Red said.
“The woman is over there, by the trees,” the mustached man said. “Go over and have at her if you want. She ain’t much to look at.”
“Bring her over here,” Red said.
The renegade turned his head, his eyes never leaving Red. “Jake, bring her over here,” he said to the other white man.
The man called Jake was short and stocky, and his eyes were reckless. “To hell with you, Frank. I want that woman for my ownself.”
Frank said, “You can share her with this gent, Jake.” He said to Red, “Does that sound fair to you, mister?”
Then Sage Barnard spoke, his voice angry in the quiet. “The hell with this! You all know this is headed for a shooting, so cut the chitchat and strike up the band.” He raised his Colt and fired: two quick shots that slammed into the Apaches. One dropped, the other got a shot off with his rifle at Barnard. Red ignored the Indian and concentrated on Frank and Jake, who’d drawn and were shooting at Barnard. Red triggered the Greener and Jake took two barrels of buck in the belly that just about cut him in half. Red dropped the shotgun and drew his revolver. Barnard was hit and was down on one knee, but he fired steadily at Frank, who took several bullets before he fell to the ground. The surviving Apache swung his rifle on Red, and both men fired at the same time. But the Indian had been shot earlier by Barnard, and he was unsteady on his feet. His bullet went wild, but Red scored a hit and the man staggered, tried to work the lever of his old Henry, but didn’t have the strength. Red fired again and again, and the Apache dropped.
A gray pall of gunsmoke hung in the camp as Red rushed to Sage Barnard, who was lying on his back, his Colt still in his hand.
The gambler looked into Red’s face and said, “Damn it all, Ryan, it’s bad. I can’t believe it, but I reckon I’m done for.”
Barnard had a chest wound, dead center, and could not be expected to live.
“Where’s the woman?” he said.
“She’s fine,” Red lied. He hadn’t seen Mrs. Morton yet.
“That’s good, made it all worthwhile,” Barnard said. He smiled. “Saving a lady in distress and all.”
“You did well,” Red said. “That was some shooting.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Barnard said. “I could use more practice. I was too slow on the shoot.”
“You were faster than I could ever be,” Red said.
Barnard was silent for a while, the light in his eyes fading. “I’m leaving soon, Ryan,” he said. “Take off my boots. There’s a good fellow.”
Red did as the gambler asked.
“Are . . . they . . . off?” Barnard said.
“Yeah. They sure are.”
“That’s good,” the gambler said, “It’s how a man should die.”
Barnard smiled . . . then all the life that was in him fled.
Red felt a pang of regret. He’d asked Barnard to accompany him and was indirectly responsible for the man’s death. Not only that, but Sage Barnard was a fare-paying passenger of the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company, the first Red had lost to outlaws. He would have to explain his dereliction of duty to Abe Patterson and accept whatever punishment the old man saw fit to impose on him. It would not be a pleasant meeting, because Abe was a stickler about passenger safety.
Red rose to his feet. That was for the future. Right then his responsibility was to the living. He had to comfort Effie Morton.
But the woman had gone.
Red searched around the area of the camp and found nothing. Then, snagged on a thornbush he discovered a scrap of blue cloth, likely torn from the woman’s skirt. Fresh tracks led through the underbrush toward the open prairie, and he followed them.
After a few yards, the tracks lost themselves in darkness and Red called into the gloom, “Mrs. Morton! Effie Morton!” There was no answer. Perhaps the woman stood out there too afraid to respond, thinking that he was one of her kidnappers.
“Mrs. Morton, this is Red Ryan, shotgun messenger with the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company, and I’m here to rescue you,” Red yelled. “The renegades who took you are all dead. You heard the shooting, huh?”
The ensuing silence mocked him.
Red tried again, louder. “Mrs. Morton! Effie!”
No answer. Nothing but the crackle of the campfire and the whisper of the wind in the long grass.
Red returned to the fire, where a coffeepot simmered on the coals. He found a cup and drank coffee that was black, bitter, and scalding hot. Around him lay the bodies of five men, unmoving in death, all of them gunned down in the space of a couple of minutes. And this for a woman who’d walked into the prairie and was now out there alone in the darkness.
Red built a cigarette, smoked, called out again for Effie Morton, smoked another. Then he dropped his head and dozed, wakened constantly, and again and again shouted the woman’s name and as before was rewarded by silence.
Just before sunup, Red saddled one of the renegades’ picketed mustangs, a hammer-headed steel gray, and let two of the others loose. He drank more coffee, and at first light swung into the saddle and went in search of Mrs. Morton. After two hours of riding in ever-increasing circles around the camp, he had found nothing, and a rising wind had erased any tracks. It seemed that Effie was a small woman, and she’d left no mark on the land. She could be anywhere, hiding in the long grass, not wanting to be found. Probably, after seeing her husband killed and the ordeal she’d suffered, she was no longer in her right mind.
As late as 1904, a couple of cowboys reported seeing, at some distance away, a ragged woman walking across the range. They tried to reach her, but she vanished from sight. Mrs. Effie Morton or the ghost of some long-dead prairie wife? The mystery woman was never seen again, so we will never know.
* * *
Red Ryan brought Barnard back to the Patterson stage across the back of a mustang. To the shocked, questioning faces that greeted him, Red said, “There was a gunfight, and Sage Barnard got hit.” Then, so they’d know that it was something of great importance, “He didn’t die with his boots on.”
Buttons Muldoon read the emptiness in his shotgun guard’s expression and said, almost gently, “And Mrs. Morgan?”
Red shook his head. “I don’t know. She wandered off into the prairie, and I don’t know where she is.” Red continued to sit the mustang and said, “Barnard dead, four other men dead, and the woman gone. I did real good, didn’t I?” His eyes found John Latimer. “Mister, now I know how you feel.”
Buttons said, “We buried Bill Morton, and Sage Barnard can lie beside him. They’ll keep each other company.”
Red swung out of the saddle. “Yeah, we’ll do that, and then we’ll head for New Orleans. I plan to get drunk.”