Black Valley Riders

Tinnis Lucas had stopped the bareback buggy horse and turned on the narrow trail, forcing Rudy Duckwald and George Epson to have to stop abruptly behind him. “Damn it to hell, gambler!” Duckwald cursed. “Either keep up or drop the hell out.”

Ignoring the angry gunman, Lucas said, “Listen . . .” He’d gazed back through the darkness back toward the distant sound of gunfire. “Bless their hearts.” He gave a wicked grin in the shadowy moonlight. “That’s the sound of Charo and his Comadrejas de desierto. They’re killing our enemies for us.”

“Says you,” Espon growled. He’d had to jerk his horse to the side to keep from bumping into Duckwald or the gambler.

“Yes, says I indeed,” Lucas retorted. “Planting that whiskey along the trail, I put the Comadrejas right up the three law dogs’ shirts for us, gentlemen.”

“I thought they were two bounty hunters and the territory ranger,” said Duckwald, as if skeptical of Lucas’ whole story.

“Jesus, what’s the difference?” said Lucas. “Bounty hunters, rangers. They’re all law dogs if they’re out to nail us to the wall.”

“I wouldn’t brag about anything I did with the Desert Weasels,” said Duckwald. “They are about as low and cowardly a bunch as hell ever collected.”

“But good at killing law dogs,” Lucas pointed out, not the least fazed by the burly gunman’s sarcasm.

“Like hell you planned any of that,” Elmer Fisk said over his shoulder, stopping when he’d heard the three horses bunch up behind him. “You got drunk and lost most of your load. Now you say this so you don’t look so foolish.” He spat to the side in contempt. “Damn the Comadrejas.” He turned back to the dark trail ahead.

“Yeah? Well, anyway,” said Lucas, “they just took care of our trail hounds for us. No need to thank me, though.”

“From what I heard, it couldn’t have been much of a gun battle,” said Fisk without looking back. “It didn’t last as long as a shirt in a bear fight.”

“That’s right,” said Lucas, heeling his bareback horse on in front of Duckwald and Epson. “Clato Charo has too many warriors for a couple of bounty hunters and a ranger to stand up to.”

Lucas shook his head. Grinning to himself, he lifted a shiny metal flask he’d filled from one of the bottles of rye. In a toast to himself, he raised the flask and drank from it. Without offering the flask to the two riding behind him, he capped it and put it away.

“Gentlemen, I see that this lackluster conversation is going nowhere,” Lucas said, adjusting himself on the buggy horse’s back. “Please awaken me when we get to where we are going.”

“Leave him be, George,” said Duckwald. “When the drunken sumbitch walks his horse off a cliff, let him fall.”

“Yeah, George, let me fall. . . .” Lucas chuckled to himself behind closed eyes as the four rode on through the grainy night.

At the lead, Elmer Fisk led the three men a full hour farther along the high trail. As Lucas slept, Fisk turned onto a narrower winding trail and continued downward in the darkness. When another hour had passed, the riders meandered with caution around the side of a steep craggy hillside until they stood before a tall, thin crevice at the end of a sloping cliff overhang.

“Man, oh, man,” said Duckwald, staring out through cloud-swept darkness. The sloping cliff fell away sharply for forty feet, then lay broken off above a yawning black hole. “If a man’s horse lost its footing up here, it’d be a week before he’d hit bottom.”

Epson said, “I best wake this fool before we ride around this edge.” He reached out and started to shake Lucas by his arm.

Duckwald cut his brother-in-law off, saying in a whisper, “You heard him, George. Let the man sleep.”

Elmer grabbed the reins to Lucas’ bareback horse and jerked it forward onto the steep sloping cliff. The animal protested with a loud whinny, but bolted forward as Duckwald slapped its rump with his leather riding quirt and shouted, “Hee-iii!”

“Jesus!” said Epson, watching the frightened neighing animal make a short circle in the pale moonlight, its ironclad hooves slipping and clacking, raising sparks on the stone cliff.

Lucas let out a yelp as the animal began to quickly lose it balance. But he had no time to hurl himself from its back before it started a wild, deadly dance off into the bottomless blackness.

As the three sat staring in the darkness, the clacking of the horse’s hooves fell silent. A short scream came from Lucas; a terrifying neigh resounded from the animal as it plunged downward through thin air. For what seemed like a long time, they heard only the waning scream of the horse as it thrashed and twisted futilely in thin air. Then they heard the cracking, splitting, breaking of pine boughs echo up to them from a thousand feet below.

“Jesus . . . ,” Epson repeated, his gaze fixed on a wisp of low cloud looming at cliff’s edge.

“I never liked the son of a bitch much,” Fisk said, turning his horse carefully to the dark crevice.

“Me neither,” said Duckwald. “I’ve wanted to kill him ever since I first laid eyes on him.” He turned his horse behind Fisk and followed him into the thin black crevice.

“But what about Shear?” Epson asked, turning his horse and booting it along behind Duckwald.

Before Epson could answer, Duckwald said, “It would be different if we left the gambler lying on the flatlands with his belly in his hands.” He chuckled. “But hell, any drunk can ride his horse off a cliff in this kind of country.”

“Yeah, besides,” said Fisk, “everything he told me, I can tell Big Aces myself. I could have shot this turd anytime. I just thought hearing him scream might be a little more fun.”

Stopping his horse a few feet inside the narrow pitch-black crevice, Fisk said, “Give me your reins. Get back there and sweep out our tracks with some brush.”

Duckwald and Epson handed him their horses’ reins and did as they were told. When they returned, tossing aside their handful of dried brush, they stepped back into their saddles. “Good enough?” said Duckwald.

Fisk didn’t answer. He struck a long hearth match and spotted a row of three short-handled torches leaning on a rock ledge. He took one down and rolled its blackened tip back and forth in the match’s flame until the fire took hold.

“Holy Moses . . . ,” Epson said, awestricken, he and Duckwald looking past Fisk and forward down a steep rock path. The corridor of rock lining the trail was barely wide enough for the horses to pass through. “I’ve heard rumors about this place, but I never thought I’d see it.”

“Neither did Lucas,” Duckwald said with a dark laugh, his voice sounding strange rolling along the rocky passageway, “but he was right.”

Duckwald held the flickering light while Fisk rummaged through his saddlebags. Fisk took out a fresh short-handled torch and laid it up on the ledge beside the other two for the next Black Valley Riders who rode through the crevice entrance toward the Black Valley hideout.

“How far is it from here?” Epson asked, staring along the crevice, the closeness of it causing an unsteady feeling in his chest.

“It’s still better than a day’s ride once we reach the end of this path,” said Duckwald.

“Does it—does it get any wider than this?” Epson stammered, trying not to sound too concerned.

“No,” Duckwald replied over his shoulder to him with a dark grin. “But don’t worry. It doesn’t get any tighter either.”

“Shut up, both of yas,” Fisk said almost in a whisper, watching a rattlesnake wind its way out of sight when the glow of torchlight crept onto it.

The three rode on, circling downward on the narrow path for over a half hour before Fisk stopped and put out the torch and laid it on another rock shelf at shoulder level. Heeling his horse forward, the two men close behind him, he stopped a few yards ahead as Duckwald and Epson felt the coolness of fresh air on their faces.

“Lord, I’m glad to get out of there,” Epson said, gazing out across a wide rocky valley in the dim silver-blue morning light. The valley lay harsh and foreboding before them, strewn with towering chimney rock, looming saguaro cactus, breakaway cliffs and cutbanks. A wind roared in off the valley floor, filled with stinging sand and bits of sharp brush stems.

“Yeah, me too,” said Duckwald. He raised his bandanna from around his neck up over the bridge of his nose and gave another dark chuckle. “It’s a stroll through a garden from here on.”

Mingo Sentanza spotted Elmer Fisk and the other riders in the early-afternoon sunlight through a long Union army telescope. “Crazy Elmer . . . ,” he remarked more to himself than to the other guard, Ben Longley, who sat atop the rock perch beside him. He had ridden with Fisk long enough to conclude that the man would be no match for him with gun or knife. As with all men he’d ridden with, Sentanza had sized the gunman up early on.

“I can’t make them out, their faces are covered,” said Sentanza, still gazing out through the wavering heat.

“With all that dust boiling behind them, how could you tell if they are?” said Longley.

“I can tell,” Sentanza said absently, “provided everybody shuts up and lets me look.”

“Good enough,” said Sentanza after a few moments of checking along the trail behind the riders. He lowered the lens from his eye and passed it over to the waiting outlaw’s hand. “It’ll still be hours before they get over here to us.”

“I know that,” said Longley, grasping the telescope. “I just like looking.” He took the lens and raised it to his eye.

“Happy to oblige,” Sentanza said flatly. He looked the outlaw up and down, judging how easy Longley would be to kill should the situation ever arise.

Seeing Crazy Elmer Fisk, riding along in the lead without his bandanna raised against the hot swirling dust, Longley shook his head. “Is he as crazy as they say he is, Mingo?”

Sentanza turned from his dark speculations and stared out at the riders, squinting his naked eyes. “Some of the things I’ve heard and seen, I’d say he’s worse,” the serious half-breed replied.

Longley scanned the other riders with the telescope, and came back to Fisk. “For instance . . . ?” he asked.

“Never mind for instance,” said Sentanza. “Why don’t you watch him a while? You’ll be able to make up your own mind.”

“Callahan says crazy or not, Elmer Fisk is one of the fastest guns he’s ever seen in his life,” Longley said without lowering the telescope. He watched as the other two riders drew closer up behind Fisk.

“Yeah, well . . .” Sentanza spat and ran the back of his hand over his mouth. “Dolan Callahan is easily impressed, in my opinion.”

“Suit yourself,” said Sentanza. He reached over for the telescope. “Come on. Let’s go tell Shear they’re coming. I don’t know about you, but I’d ready to go rob something.”

“I always am ready, amigo,” said Longley, handing him the telescope. “What about you?”

Amigo . . . ? Sentanza made no reply, but he decided that if it came down to it, Longley would be an easy kill. Like Fisk he would be easily caught off guard, and he would die quickly. He would fight back, of course, as all men would, Sentanza told himself. But in the end he would be no contest for a skillful killer like himself.

The two scooted down the side of the rock, stepped up into their saddles and turned their horses toward a trail along the edge of the valley floor. Sentanza let Longley ride ahead of him a few feet on the tough rocky trail, the clack of their horses’ hooves the only sound to be heard save for a low whirring wind.

As the two rode, Sentanza lifted his Colt from his holster and leveled it at the center of Longley’s back. If Longley looked around at the sound of the gun cocking, he would kill him, plain and simple, Sentanza told himself.

Yet, as the trigger came back beneath Sentanza’s thumb, the unsuspecting Longley rode on staring straight ahead.

For just a split second something in Sentanza’s mind urged him to pull the trigger and watch the man drop dead to the ground. But then he would have to answer to Brayton Shear for his action, and explaining himself to Big Aces was something he never wanted to do. Besides, Ben Longley wasn’t so bad to ride with. He’d ridden with worse—for a short time anyway.

He lowered the Colt, uncocked it, holstered it and heeled his horse forward up beside Longley. It was easier riding with a man once you reminded yourself that you could end his life any time you chose to.

On a plank front porch out in front of a low-standing earth, sod and pine log cabin, a rifleman, Ballard Swean, watched the rise of dust move toward him from across a wide wasteland of brush, rock and cactus. When the outline of the two guards rose into sight, he reached sidelong and kicked the boot of the man slumbering on a wooden bench.

“Hey, Pickens, wake up,” he demanded. “Go tell Big Aces our guards are riding in.” He stared hard across the wasteland. “One of them is waving his hat.” He jacked a round into his rifle chamber. “You know what that means?”

“Yeah . . . ,” said Dave Pickens, waking up quickly and bolting onto his feet. “It means we’ve got company coming.” He turned to the open doorway.

“Stay where you are, Dave,” said Brayton Shear who stood in the open doorway, a large black cigar hanging between his fingers. “I’ve been watching their dust myself.” He studied the two guards through the wavering heat and the hot gusting wind. “If the company is Fisk and the others, we’ll be taking the train down quicker I expected.”