From time to time after leaving Santos, Lassiter would look over his shoulder to see if he could spot any threatening riders. He was as sure that the Texas sun burned down on the back of his neck as he was that Hobart had gotten word to Sanlee about the money. At the bank, when he had turned the money back in, it had shown on Hobart’s face—mostly in his eyes.
Well, he’d soon be home and to hell with any possible threat this day from Sanlee. He urged the team to a faster pace. It was the rattle of the hack wagon wheels and the pounding of hooves from the team that drowned out sounds of approaching horsemen.
But at last, where the road struck a long stretch of sand and the sounds of the wagon and team were diminished, he heard them coming. As sharp as a sudden clap of thunder on a still day was the ominous rush of hoofbeats.
Looking back, he saw them, three riders charging diagonally along a game trail through the brush, avoiding overhanging mesquite branches. Their hat brims were turned up from pressure of wind against their faces. He recognized them instantly—Doane because of his enormous size, burly Joe Tige and Pinto George with the whitish hair and pale eyes. Each of them bent low in the saddle of speeding mounts.
With his wagon moving at a good clip, Lassiter transferred the reins to his left hand and leaned down to pick up his rifle from the floorboards. Putting the rifle stock between his knees like a vise, he worked the loading lever with his right hand. He was about to fire single-handedly as if it were a pistol when two things happened simultaneously.
The road made a sudden sharp bend. And the whirling right front wheel hit a deep soft spot. Lassiter felt the speeding wagon tilt. With a chill in his gut, he was flung out as if fired from a cannon. For an instant he had an upside-down view of the sky, then of earth. He let his rifle go in midair. Although deep sand broke his fall, he still struck with enough force to daze him and jar breath from his body. Just as he came down he had enough presence of mind to clamp his right hand to his holstered gun. Holding it in place as he rolled, he barely managed to escape the overturning wagon. The wagon tongue was wrenched loose in the spill. He had a distorted view of the team running madly up the road. A great cloud of dust and sand shot into the sky from the tongue they were dragging.
Two of the riders started to fire at him, but Doane bellowed, “I want him alive!”
It was Joe Tige who was nearest, mounted on a red roan. Firing at a gallop threw off his aim. It did the same for Pinto George. Geysers of sand stung Lassiter’s cheek. A reminder of an evening when bullets into a dirt floor had temporarily blinded him.
He threw up his forearm to shield his eyes from the sand. Then he rolled aside as the red roan was leaping toward him. He fired, the bullet plowing into the roan’s neck and on into Tige’s chest. As the roan flashed past, blood pumping from the neck wound, it stumbled and went down head first. Tige was thrown like a bundle of rags.
Momentum had carried Doane and Pinto George some distance beyond the overturned wagon. Now they were reining in. Sand spurted as they turned their horses. Doane had a big knife clamped in his teeth, giving notice of what he intended to do with it. Agleaming .45 was gripped in his oversized hand.
Lassiter sprang for the wagon, which rested on its side, one splintered wheel still turning slowly. He fired twice but Pinto George was reining toward some mesquite. The shot missed. And as he drew a bead on the man for another try, there was a flurry of hoofbeats from the east. Buck Rooney appeared suddenly in the road. Because he was directly behind George and Doane, Lassiter was forced to hold his fire. He yelled at Rooney to get away.
Rooney could not quite comprehend the scene thrust upon him so suddenly. He pulled up and then started a belated try for his holstered revolver. But Doane rammed in the spurs. With a squeal of pain, his big Morgan lunged. It put Doane close enough so that one huge arm swept Rooney out of the saddle and dumped him in the sand. At that moment, Pinto George resumed firing. Bullets crashed through the underside of the wagon where Lassiter had taken refuge. Mingled with waves of dust was a layer of blue-black gunsmoke.
“Rooney . . . duck!” Lassiter shouted at him. He was afraid to fire at Doane and perhaps risk putting a bullet in Rooney. But in the next second or so, Doane was out of the saddle. He landed behind Rooney, who was dazed but sitting up.
“Hold it, George!” Doane yelled, allowing only a wedge of his face to project beyond Rooney’s heavy shoulder. “Lassiter, throw down your gun, or I’ll kill Rooney. Hear me, I’ll kill him!”
Rooney cried out in pain as Doane rammed the barrel of his gun into the rancher’s ear and twisted it.
In that moment, Lassiter saw Pinto George, twenty feet away, grinning from the saddle of a sweated sorrel. A wisp of blue smoke trailed from the barrel of his revolver. Tige, on the ground nearby, had moved his arm and was trying to sit up. A stain across the front of his gray wool shirt had widened. His head hung loosely and he seemed to be in pain. Behind Rooney, Doane was huddled, the knife no longer clamped between his large teeth but stuck in the sand. What could be seen of the blade glittered in the sunlight. He drew Rooney’s gun and threw it over his shoulder into the brush.
As Lassiter looked on, he saw Doane’s big thumb cock the gun held at Rooney’s ear. Rooney’s face was slack and in his eyes was an awareness of imminent death.
“Let Rooney go,” Lassiter called, knowing he had no choice.
“Rooney rides out, but you stay!” Doane shouted. “Drop that gun!”
Unless he wanted Rooney’s blood on his hands, Lassiter knew he had to obey. Slowly, he got to his feet and let his gun drop.
“Turn him loose,” Lassiter said, holding his two hands shoulder high so Doane could see that he was up to no tricks.
Satisfied, Doane hauled Rooney to his feet and walked him to the wagon that was tipped on its side. His small eyes searched the ground. “Where the hell’s the money?” he yelled suddenly.
“I turned it back to the bank,” Lassiter said. “It looks like Hobart didn’t get word to Sanlee in time to let him know the change in plans.” He was stalling for time because Rooney was now blinking his eyes, taking deep breaths as he recovered his senses. He had been dazed since Doane’s long arm had swept him out of the saddle.
Doane kept twisting, grinding the barrel of the .45 into Rooney’s ear, making the man grimace with pain.
“Leave him alone,” Lassiter said in a dead voice. “I’ve told you how it’ll be.”
“It’ll be you dead . . . slowly.” Scars danced on Doane’s face as he broke into a wide grin. “You cost us too damn much to let you off easy.”
Rooney stiffened his shoulders and cranked his head around to look back at Doane. “You’ll never get away with killin’ him,” Rooney said in a voice trying desperately to be firm.
Doane gave him a rude shove while keeping his eyes on Lassiter beside the upturned wagon. Pinto George was searching the edges of the clearing for the money.
“Ain’t a sign of it, Shorty,” he said finally with a shake of his head. His bony frame with its minimum padding of flesh was covered with a striped shirt and canvas pants. His boots were worn, as was the stained sombrero tipped back from a fringe of whitish hair. The next thing Lassiter knew, George was ramming a gun against his back.
“What’d you do with the money?” George demanded.
“I told you,” Lassiter snarled, not looking around.
“Likely he seen us comin’ an’ throwed it out,” Doane said. “Go back a ways an’ have a look.”
“An’ leave you here with the two of ’em?” George shook his head. “I’ll bust Lassiter over the head, then go have a look.”
But Doane said, “Hold it, Pinto. I want Lassiter able to talk, at least for a while.”
“Yeah,” George agreed. “The easy way is to make Lassiter talk about the money.”
Doane gave Rooney another shove. The rancher took a few stumbling steps toward Lassiter.
“Don’t forget our agreement, Doane,” Lassiter reminded heavily. “Rooney goes free.”
Doane failed to reply. He holstered his gun and plucked the knife he had returned to his boot top. “Keep a gun on him, Pinto.”
Gripping the knife, Doane came plodding toward Lassiter, brushing past Rooney, who looked on fearfully. “I ask you once again about the money,” Doane said ominously as he halted in front of Lassiter.
“And I told you. . . .”
Quick as a striking snake, the knife flashed out. The blade, glittering in the sunlight, flicked across Lassiter’s throat—not a deep cut, just through the skin. Blood ran down Lassiter’s neck and into his shirt. But his cold blue eyes never wavered.
“Let Rooney ride away,” Lassiter said again.
But he could see that Doane had no intention of honoring their agreement. Lassiter braced himself as Doane, baring large, yellow teeth, lifted his right arm slightly so that a wine-colored stain on the blade could clearly be seen. Doane held the weapon like a swordsman, which announced that he was an experienced knife fighter.
Pinto George had eased off the pressure of the gun against Lassiter’s backbone but was still behind him. Lassiter felt cold sweat dampen his armpits but no fear showed on his face. One thing was for sure, he had no intention of standing still and allowing Doane to cut him a second time, which he was intending to do. Lassiter could read it in his narrowed eyes. It would be better to have his spine shattered by a bullet than to go out like a stuck hog, bleeding his life away into the sandy Texas soil.
One moment was all it took for this to pass through his mind. And then he was doubling up, hurling himself at Doane’s knees. He felt the massive forearm brush across his shoulder blades, the knife came that close to cutting him again. Then the two of them were tumbling across the ground. The blade of the stained knife flashed like a diamond in the sun when it was jarred from Doane’s hand.
Tension threw a barb of pain across the back of Lassiter’s neck as he braced for the slam of bullets from George’s gun. The man’s gun did explode, but not at Lassiter. Rooney had taken the opportunity when Lassiter and Doane were on the ground to leap and try to seize George’s gun. The force of two bullets in Buck Rooney’s chest hurled him against a mesquite. As he toppled to the ground, Lassiter was throwing himself behind the wrecked wagon. His outstretched hands broke his fall, but he came down as intended, near the rifle he had dropped in the sand. Although it might be fouled with sand and explode in his face, he had to take that chance.
Doane, who had been knocked flat on his back, was just picking himself up. Pinto George raced around behind the upended wagon, his pale eyes reflecting rage at Lassiter’s trickery.
Lassiter threw himself to one side, but knew he was too late. He felt a jarring shock in his left shoulder as George fired. But he managed to lift his rifle. He heard a gritty sound of sand on metal when he touched the trigger. Nothing happened. Although he knew the weapon was fouled with sand, he tried again. Still nothing. It was then that he became aware of George yelling something to Doane about riders coming. Then Lassiter was aware of a drum-roll of hoofbeats from the direction of Box C. Riders were coming at a dead run.
Intent only on saving their own necks now, Doane and George leaped into the saddle. Doane was swearing at George, who answered, “Hell, you told me you wanted Lassiter alive!”
“Not now I don’t.” And as Doane flashed by the spot where Lassiter had last been seen behind the wagon, he fired three quick shots. But Lassiter had withdrawn into a mesquite thicket. He heard the bullets make thunking sounds into wood.
Hardly had George and Doane disappeared at the bend in the road before Luis Herrera and five Box C riders were drawing rein in a great cloud of dust.
“We heard shots!” Herrera shouted when Lassiter stumbled from the brush where he had taken refuge. “We came as fast as we could.”
The eyes of Herrera and of his riders widened when they saw the thin cut across Lassiter’s throat, the blood-soaked shirt, and a soggy wetness at the top of the left shoulder.
Lassiter looked at the spot where he had last seen Joe Tige lying on the ground. But sometime in the interim the wounded man had somehow managed to stagger to his horse and ride away, unnoticed.
Some of the men were already looking at Rooney, who lay crumpled beyond the wagon. Lassiter stumbled over and knelt beside Rooney. The man was still alive, but barely. His face and lips were bloodless and his eyes reflected pain and shock. Although Lassiter felt light in the head from the loss of blood, he managed to give Herrera a brief account of what had happened.
“We’ll go after ’em,” Herrera said with an oath and turned for his horse.
But Lassiter shook his head. “Let ’em go. For now.”
Then he was giving orders. Somebody was to catch Rooney’s horse, which had wandered off down the road.
Rooney’s eyes were open and there was even a faint smile on his pale lips. “You jumpin’ Doane saved our bacon,” he said in a voice so low that Lassiter had to bend down to hear him. Lassiter smiled encouragement but wondered just how much good he had done for Rooney by the bold move.
It was evident that the rancher was in bad shape and might not even last the two miles to Box C. He didn’t. After half a mile, he nearly toppled from the saddle. Lassiter—riding on one side, Herrera on the other—saved him from the fall. But a quick examination showed there was no pulse. Rooney was dead.
An enraged Lassiter helped tie the body over the back of the horse. Death of the neighbor at the hands of Diamond Eight men was almost too much.
At the ranch, he cut around in back of the barn, hoping to avoid Millie until he could get cleaned up. But she happened to be in the yard and saw his shirt stained a deep red. A fist flew to her mouth. Then she stiffened in shock as she saw the body roped to the back of a sorrel.
“Somebody’s dead,” she said in hushed tones. “Who is it?”
“Rooney,” Lassiter answered.
“Oh, my God.”
Herrera had given Lassiter a hand down from the saddle. As soon as he stood shakily on solid ground, Millie, unmindful of the bloodied shirt, flung an arm around Lassiter’s waist.
“You’re coming to the house,” she announced firmly, “where I can take care of you.”
By then he was so tired, in such low spirits because of what had happened to Rooney, that he didn’t argue with her. While she tried to put him into one of the spare bedrooms, he chose instead the big sofa in the parlor. He sank down and stared blankly at the big stone fireplace. Millie had hurried to the kitchen to heat water, her pretty face taut with strain.
Soon she had his shirt off, his long johns pulled to the waist and was sponging off the blood. Although the wound at his throat was superficial, she cringed when mentioning that a little more pressure on the knife and Lassiter would have been dead.
What had caused the most blood loss was a gash at the top of the left shoulder where a bullet cut through the flesh. Fortunately, the slug had not lodged in the wound but continued on its way.
As she applied bandages to the wounds, she asked him to tell her in detail just what had happened. When he finished relating the attack in the brush, he said, “My fault, damn it. Your brother got wind that I was goin’ to carry money home. But what he didn’t know was that I’d changed my mind. I had a strong hunch something like that might happen.”
“You only did what you thought was right.”
“When you came home and told me Hobart wouldn’t honor the bank draft, I wanted to shove it down his throat.”
“I can understand that. . . .”
“But I went too far in taking the money.”
“But what else could you do, Lassiter? He refused to accept the bank draft.”
“Well, he’s honoring it now, which I should’ve made him do in the first place.”
“Don’t blame yourself.”
“But I do. If Doane and the others hadn’t been after the money they thought I had, Rooney would still be alive.”
She sank back on her heels, looking grim. “I repeat, it wasn’t your fault, Lassiter. Not at all.” Then she picked up a pan of pinkish water and carried it out the back door.
His first chore was to clean his weapons. The rifle had malfunctioned, having been fouled with sand. He couldn’t afford to let it happen again. He had to be ready for the showdown that had been postponed much too long.
Millie returned after a few minutes, carrying one of his clean shirts and his razor. “You’re going to stay in this house where I can keep an eye on you.”
He shook his head. “What would the men think?” he asked with a wry smile.
“I don’t give one damn what they think.” Her lips trembled and she seemed close to tears. She reached for Lassiter’s hand and gave it a squeeze. But he did not respond. He was thinking of what they had to face. Word would have to be sent to Sheriff Doak Palmer up at Tiempo about Rooney’s death instead of reporting it to a local deputy. The long-time deputy in Santos had died six months before and the sheriff had not gotten around to appointing a replacement—due to Diamond Eight, some hinted. Sanlee wanted more or less of a free hand until he had his cattle empire intact.
There was also Rooney’s funeral to face.
“Does Rooney have any relatives?” he asked Millie.
She said she didn’t think so. “At least none of them ever came for his wife’s funeral. Frankly, I think he was alone in the world. And now he’s gone, poor man.”
When he started to dismantle his weapons for cleaning, his hands shook so much that he had to give it up for the present. But he did brace himself for the task of writing to Sheriff Palmer, explaining the death of Rooney, naming the man responsible, Pinto George. Lassiter always suspected the name was an alias. His handwriting was shaky and when he had finished there were numerous ink blots. He started a letter to the undertaker but had to give up. Millie finished it for him.
One of the men would be sent to Santos with the two letters. The one to the sheriff would go north on the morning stage.
He was on the mend and soon he would be ready for any eventuality. . . .