Ghost Colts

Peter Brandvold

Pete Brandvold has come a long way in a short time. He is currently considered one of the bright new stars of the western genre, with two series being published by Berkley, the Marshall series and the Devil series. Like Ed Gorman’s story later in this collection, this one has a decidedly eerie quality to it.

The Ranger halted his paint between two high red-granite ridges cloaked in the gray muslin of winter storm clouds. Hunkered low over the horse’s neck, he held the collar of his patched buckskin coat closed and squinted against the wind-driven sleet and snow.

Ahead, a handful of shabby buildings rose from the swaying chaparral tufting the canyon. Three stood tall, with false fronts, two facing the third across the trail. The Ranger took a deep breath. Piñon and cedar smoke laced the wind.

The Ranger—a big red-haired man with a red goatee and a broad-brimmed Stetson with a snakeskin band—turned to look at the chestnut mare he was trailing on a lead line. His prisoner lay belly down across the chestnut’s saddle, handcuffed hands tied to his feet. The man’s sandy hair whipped this way and that, as did the tied ends of the bloody bandage wrapped around his head.

“It’s more than you deserve, Renfrow,” the Ranger said beneath the wind, “but I’m about to find you a bed. I want you well rested for the judge.”

The prisoner gave no response beyond lifting his head slightly, then letting it rest once again against the horse’s belly.

The Ranger lightly spurred his horse forward, jerking the chestnut along behind him. A minute later, he reined up at the hitchrack before a sprawling gray building with the windows on both sides of the door lit from within. A sign swaying beneath the awning read YSLETA MERCANTILE/SALOON in large faded-green letters to which several clumps of snow stuck. Another, smaller sign to the right said simply ROOMS.

The Ranger lifted his gaze above the sign, blinking against the stinging sleet and wind-driven sand. It was only three or four in the afternoon, but the gunmetal clouds hovered low, making it look like twilight.

The Ranger dismounted with a weary sigh, quickly tied the reins of both horses to the rack, and mounted the three wobbly wooden steps to the boardwalk. The chinging sound of his spurs was drowned by the wind and the signs squawking overhead.

He glanced in the window right of the door, then stepped inside the building, causing the bell over the door to ring.

He paused and looked around with the caution of a lawman in unfamiliar territory. A dozen or so round tables were scattered about the long, narrow room before him, to the right of a mahogany bar. At two tables sat six men drinking whiskey or beer and playing cards. One was a well-groomed young cavalryman in crisp, gold-buttoned blues.

Behind the bar stood a young, pretty woman wearing a man’s checked shirt. Her features slack with boredom, she was drying glasses with desultory swipes of a towel. Her thick, wavy hair hung down her back in a ponytail.

The air smelled richly of burning piñon and of wet leather, liquor, and tobacco. The card players had positioned themselves near the black bullet-shaped stove in the room’s right-center; the stove ticked and sighed. The Ranger felt its welcoming heat, like a soothing blanket.

“Come in and shut the door, Ranger,” said a pigeon-chested bandy-legged oldster with heavy-lidded eyes and thin gray hair. He was playing cribbage with a brawny bull of a shaggy-headed man, with a heavy nose thrusting high between dark eyes, a buffalo robe thrown over the back of his chair. The two sat separate from the other four. “You’re lettin’ all the heat out.”

The Ranger closed the door, let his hand fall away from the butt of the Peacemaker .45 on his right hip, and turned to the young woman who’d looked up from her work when he’d entered. “Miss, you run this place?”

“Don’t I look like it?” She offered the others a faint conspiratorial smile. Several glanced up and chuckled, as though it were a joke between them. To the Ranger, she said, “Name your poison.”

“Later,” the Ranger said. “I’d like to get a room for an injured prisoner I have outside. The rest of his gang—eight men—could be behind us. I think I shook ’em off my trail last night.” He drew a deep, tired breath. “Like I said, my prisoner’s injured. In this weather, I don’t think he’d make it back to San Antone alive, and I need him alive.”

The young woman’s face remained expressionless as she glanced at the card players.

“Wake up and buck the tiger,” one of them said to another. The Ranger wondered if they’d heard him. The blonde set aside her glass and towel and returned her eyes to the Ranger.

“I wouldn’t turn a man away in this weather,” she said. She turned to a small jar containing several keys on the bar behind her. “Fetch your prisoner, Ranger. I’ll open room three for you. Second door on the left at the top of the stairs.”

The Ranger slid another curious glance to the card players, engrossed in their game, as though they’d forgotten he was here. Finally he went out and came back a few minutes later, his prisoner draped over his shoulder. The prisoner groaned, his gloved hands sweeping the floor as the Ranger kicked the door closed, then wove a course through the tables, heading for the stairs just beyond the bar.

The card players looked up from their pasteboards to regard the Ranger dully, as though he were crossing the room with a mere potato sack.

The half-conscious prisoner was nearly as big as the Ranger, and the lawman crouched beneath the weight, wincing as he grabbed the newel post, hiked his load higher on his shoulder, and mounted the stairs.

He stepped aside when a towheaded boy of about twelve appeared at the top of the stairs. The boy brushed past the Ranger on his way down, his high-topped miner’s boots hammering the scarred planks. The youngster gave the Ranger a timid glance but said nothing. The Ranger continued to the top of the stairs, walked a few feet down the smoky hall in which most of the heat from below had collected, and turned into the second door, open on the left.

The young woman was there, kneeling beside a small sheet-iron stove and balling a yellowed newspaper in her hands. She glanced at the Ranger’s load and arched a brow.

“What happened to him?”

“Had a little heart-to-heart with my rifle butt,” the Ranger grunted under the weight.

“Go ahead and lay him on the bed,” the woman said. “It’s one of the few I keep made up. Don’t get many travelers through here these days, since the gold pinched out and the stage line rerouted.”

When the Ranger had deposited his load, the prisoner falling onto the bed with another groan, the Ranger said, “Much obliged to you, miss. I hope I haven’t brought trouble.”

The woman struck a match and held it to the pile of paper and pine bark she’d arranged inside the stove. “I doubt you could bring any more trouble than we could handle,” she said tonelessly as the flame grew. “Between Injuns and outlaws, there isn’t much we haven’t seen.”

She stood and extended her hand. “I’m Ann Coleman, owner and manager of the Ysleta Mercantile and Saloon, though the mercantile part burned down two years ago and we saw no point in rebuilding.” She offered another soft, bland smile, her blue eyes pretty but oblique, her lips thin and straight. “You can call me Ann.”

The Ranger shook her hand, which was small but strong, the palms lightly callused—the hands of a woman who knew her way around a barn and feedlot as well as a kitchen. “I’m Tim B. Armstrong, ma’am. Special Troops, Texas Rangers.” He smiled and pinched his hat brim. “As soon as I’ve got this man secured to the bed here, I’d like to stable my horses, if that’s possible. I saw a barn across the road…”

“There is, indeed,” Ann Coleman said, “but your horses are already taken care of. I sent my son to bed them down with fresh hay and oats.”

“I saw the boy,” Armstrong said. “I didn’t realize he was your son.”

She’d knelt before the stove again and was adding kindling to the growing fire. The corners of her mouth stiffened slightly as she read Armstrong’s mind. “Everyone thinks Michael’s my younger brother.” She grabbed another piñon stick from the apple crate that served as a kindling box, and added it to the fire, which was already nudging the chill from the room.

She lowered her head for a better look inside the stove. “We drop ’em young out here, I reckon.”

“I didn’t mean to be forward, ma’am.”

“I didn’t take you to be, Mr. Armstrong. We’re just jawing. I don’t often have many people to talk to…besides Dad, that is. My father’s the gray-headed old reprobate you saw downstairs.” She poked one more kindling stick into the stove, closed the door, then stood and slapped her hands against her thighs. “I’ll fetch more wood. When I saw the storm coming, I covered a whole cord with a tarp.”

Armstrong was removing his prisoner’s high-heeled riding boots. “I can do that, ma’am.”

“I don’t have much to do around here anymore,” she countered from the door. “You and the men downstairs are the first customers I’ve had in a month of Sundays, and this weather doesn’t help.”

She nodded to indicate the snow slanting and ticking against the room’s single window. Then she turned through the door and walked away down the hall.

The Ranger handcuffed his prisoner’s wrists and ankles to the tarnished brass bed frame, then cast a glance outside, seeing little but the weather-obscured barn across the trail and the tiny white javelins of snow and sleet driven by the keening wind. He ran another glance over his unconscious prisoner, then walked from the room, leaving the door open for the woman.

Downstairs, Ann’s father was pouring drinks at the bar while three of the four others played cards. The big bearded man—round-faced, barrel-chested, and wearing a big bowie knife in a sheath around his waist—stood warming his backside at the stove. A thin cheroot smoked between his teeth.

The other men regarded the Ranger with only passing interest as he crossed the room to the window between the door and the bar. Peering out, he looked up and down what had apparently been the town’s main road. Now, with most of the town died off, its buildings either dismantled or in ruin, the street was just a trail between the saloon and the yellow ’dobe post office and the wooden livery barn.

When the wind shifted he caught a fleeting glimpse of the red sandstone ridge behind the disheveled buildings.

Satisfied Renfrow’s gang hadn’t caught up to him, Armstrong shrugged out of his wet, foul-smelling buckskin. He shook the beaded moisture off, then draped the coat over the back of a chair near the window. He tossed his hat on the table, angled the chair so that it sat sideways, affording him a view to the east, and slumped down with a weary sigh.

The old man delivered drinks to the card players. When he’d handed a beer mug to the big man by the stove, he turned to Armstrong. “You look like you could use a toddy, Ranger.”

Armstrong lifted a shoulder and ran his hands through his thick red hair combed straight back from a sharp widow’s peak. “A whiskey might cut the chill. ’Specially if it was backed up by a beer.”

“Comin’ up,” the old man said.

He limped off behind the bar and stepped out from behind it a minute later, carrying a filled shot glass in one gnarled hand and a beer schooner in the other. When he’d set the shot and the beer on the table before Armstrong, the Ranger leaned back and reached into a pocket of his wet denims.

The old man shook his head. “On the house. We appreciate you Rangers standin’ up to them curly wolves. Seems like every time you turn around, we got Mex or American bandits collarin’ stolen beef, runnin’ down stagecoaches, or robbin’ banks. They’ll shoot a lawman on sight, no questions asked.”

“I wish we were makin’ more headway against ’em,” Armstrong said. “There’s plenty more where the lobo upstairs came from.”

The old man put his gnarled hands on a chair back. “Outta what hole’d you smoke the snake upstairs?” He lifted his chin, indicating the second story above the room’s pressed tin ceiling.

“A roadhouse near Eagle Pass. Him and his gang was stompin’ with their tails up last night, havin’ too much fun to post guards.”

The big bearded man, now sitting on a hide couch near the door that led into the mercantile, said, “Bole Renfrow. I’d recognize ole Hatchet Face anywhere. Leads an arm of King Fisher’s band.” His gaze settled on Armstrong with interest. “You take him down alone, Ranger?”

Armstrong nodded. “He was on the back stoop, tendin’ nature. I didn’t realize another man was out there till me and Renfrow were ridin’ away. The man gave a yell to alert the others, and Renfrow came up with a hideout gun. That’s when I introduced him to my rifle butt.”

Just then, footsteps sounded on the stairs. All heads turned as Ann came down, vagrant strands of blond hair wisping about her cheeks.

“Your prisoner’s fast asleep, Ranger,” she said, her eyes finding Armstrong’s. His stomach tightened, her gaze reminding him of another young woman in his past. Swinging her gaze around to the others, she said, “I’ll bring out a pot of soup in a few minutes.”

Brushing tree bark and sawdust from her shirt, she strolled past the bar and disappeared through the swinging door behind it.

 

“Shoulda shot the son of a bitch,” said one of the four men playing cards, taking up the conversation where it had left off before Ann had appeared. He was a tall, slim man with a pitted beak nose and sweeping salt-and-pepper mustaches. He wore a calico shirt, suspenders, bull-hide chaps, and large-roweled spurs.

“That’s Chess Burgenreich,” said the old man. “He used to ranch out that way till Fisher’s gang cleaned him out, shot several of his cowboys, and ran his herd clear to the Sierra Madres.”

“Shoot ’em all twice,” Burgenreich grunted around the twisted quirley protruding from his mustache. He studied his cards and said, “Lieutenant, I’ll see your nickel, and I’ll raise you a dime.”

The old man said to Armstrong, “The man to Chess’s right is Jake Magoon out of Corpus Christi…”

“And headin’ back that way,” Magoon said, flicking his blue eyes at the window behind Armstrong. “As soon as this weather clears.” Magoon was dressed in the fawn-colored vest, trousers, and claw-hammer coat of the professional gambler. He had the pallor of one who spent most of the daylight hours in smoky gambling dens and bucket shops.

“The feller across from Magoon is Jeb DeRosso,” the oldster continued. “He hunts buffalo with Big Bill Morgan, over there on the sofa.”

“Jeb answers to One-Eye,” Morgan growled over his beer mug, one high-topped boot resting on a knee.

When DeRosso looked at Armstrong, the Ranger saw that the buffalo hunter’s left eye appeared perpetually swollen and milky, spoiling an otherwise handsome face.

“The Kiowa brave woulda fixed my other’n for me if’n Big Bill hadn’t jumped in and thrown the hot tar on his powwow.” The hider held up his rawhide necklace, trimmed with what looked like two shrunken marbles and dried potato skins but could only have been the Kiowa’s eyeballs and ears. “That brave’s now stumblin’ around blind and deaf in the next world.” DeRosso wheezed, snorted, and returned his attention to the fan of cards in his hand.

The soldier sitting to DeRosso’s right looked over at Armstrong. He was a tall, well-groomed redhead with a cavalry mustache and piercing blue eyes. He couldn’t have been much over twenty-five. “Lieutenant George Paine at your service, Ranger,” he said with a noble air. “I was on my way to Fort Bowie when the clouds blew in.”

Lifting a long thin cigar to his lips, he tossed a nickel into the pot. “Let’s keep the bets low, eh, fellows? My trust fund disappeared with my old man’s shipping business.”

“I’m Lowell Hart,” the old man said to Armstrong, pulling out a chair from the Ranger’s table and sitting down heavily. “Couldn’t tell it by lookin’ at me, but I’m Ann’s father.” He poked a finger at the ceiling.

“She told me,” the Ranger said. He turned his head from the window, where he’d been keeping one eye on the trail, and extended his trunk-like arm across the table. “Tim B. Armstrong, Special State Troops, Texas Rangers.”

“McNelly’s Viking,” the oldster said with an admiring smile.

“Been called worse.”

“I’ve heard of you. Tough area you’re workin’.”

“I’d heard you folks were burned out.” Armstrong glanced around the room and grinned. “Reckon I got some bad information.”

“Several ranches been burned hereabouts. That’s what you musta heard.”

“Who was it? Coon Davis? Tiburon from across the border?”

“The snake you got upstairs,” Hart said, lifting his chin at the ceiling again. “Him and his gang been raisin’ hob ever since Munson and Prewitt swore out affidavits against ’em in Austin. Been ridin’ roughshod, killin’, rapin’, burnin’, and collarin’ beef to sell in Mexico.”

“They get themselves a herd together and disappear south of the Rio Grande for a few weeks at a time,” said Big Bill Morgan. “Then they’re back, killin’ and burnin’. They won’t stop till they’ve stolen every cow between the Jackrabbit and Duck Creek, and killed every man who spoke against ’em.”

The Ranger sipped his beer and wiped the foam from his mustache and spade beard with the back of his wrist. “What about Munson and Prewitt?”

“Hanged outside their ranch houses and roasted over mesquite fires.” That was the rancher, Burgenreich. He spoke without turning in his chair, lazily pondering his cards, a cigarette smoldering in the ashtray near his elbow.

“You alone out here, Ranger?” Hart asked darkly, slowly rolling a cigarette from a hide sack he’d set on the table.

Armstrong nodded and cast another wary glance eastward out the window. “My company split up outside Tepehuanes.” His upper lip curled without humor. “Reckon the other Rangers lost the trail.”

He reached into his coat pocket and produced his own hide makings sack. He set it on the table, dragged out the soggy papers, and cursed under his breath. Hart tossed his own sack to Armstrong, who nodded his thanks.

He was rolling a smoke when the door opened suddenly, the bell chiming. It caught Armstrong by surprise, and he had his Peacemaker half out of his holster when he saw the towheaded boy turn and close the door behind him.

Michael doffed his sleet- and snow-dusted cap, slapped it against his thigh, and turned to Armstrong, who settled the six-shooter back down in its holster. “Your horses are bedded down, Ranger. Watered, grained, and curried.”

“Much obliged, boy.” Armstrong was about to flip the boy some coins. As he walked past the Ranger’s table, Michael shook his head. “We don’t take money from Rangers in these parts, Ranger.” He hung his patched denim coat on a peg behind the bar and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Good boy,” the Ranger said, reaching across and setting two twenty-cent pieces on the table before Hart. “Give those to him later, will you?”

The old man nodded and deposited the coins in a shirt pocket. “He’s had a tough time of it, but he’s turnin’ out all right.”

The old man had invited the question, so Armstrong snapped a match to life and lit his quirley, saying, “No pa?”

Hart shook his head. “Killed in the mine behind this place, when Michael was two years old. We came out here together from Missouri—Ben, Ann, Michael, and me. We were lookin’ for El Dorado.” He glanced ironically around the saloon. “Well, here we are!”

The Ranger’s blood warmed as he remembered another boy and another woman, the remains of whom he’d found in the yard of his one-cow ranch operation in the rich bottomlands flanking Corazon Creek. The boy had been shot in the belly and left to die while his mother was savaged in the tall grass near the spring house, before the Mexican bandits had shot her in the left temple and taken the horses.

His wife, Mary. His son, Paul.

He ran a hand down his broad, weathered face, rubbing the memory from his mind, and turned his dark gaze to Lowell Hart.

“You boys armed? If Renfrow’s roughs picked up my trail, you’re gonna want to be.”

Armstrong shifted his gaze from Hart to the others. The other men returned his look, then glanced at each other bemusedly. Hart got up, walked around behind the bar, then returned with a black leather cartridge belt coiled around two holsters housing pearl-handled pistols. Hart set the double rig on the table and grinned.

“Won those two beauties off’n Magoon,” he said, showing a half-set of tobacco-stained teeth and jerking his thumb over his left shoulder. “Last time he come through on his way to the riverboats at Yuma.” Hart snickered. “He set down four kings and a trey and was ready to scoop the pot into his saddlebags, when I spread out four aces and a six!” Hart slapped the table and guffawed.

Armstrong glanced at Magoon, who turned toward Hart with arched eyebrows. “You’re a real student of the picture cards, Mr. Hart.”

The old man was delighted. “Well, I called your bluff!”

“One of these trips, I’m going to win those pretties back,” the gambler growled.

“Oh, I’d never be fool enough to throw these ladies in the pot, Mr. Magoon.” The oldster unsheathed one of the Colts. In both hands, he turned the silver-plated, hand-engraved pistol to the wan light pushing through the window behind Armstrong. “Ranger, you ever seen a finer six-shooter?”

Armstrong took the Colt from the old-timer, tested the balance, fingered the high-toned hammer and trigger and the glassy silver finish decorated with scrolled oats around the barrel. The initials J.D.M. had been carved into the silver band beneath the pearl butt.

Giving the well-weighted gun an appreciative finger twirl, Armstrong handed the weapon back to Hart. “Nope, can’t say as I have. But it doesn’t shoot itself, you know…”

“Don’t worry about me, Ranger,” Hart said, standing and wrapping the fancy belt and pistols around his slender waist. He gave a knowing smile and notched the tongue. “I been practicin’ in the ravine out back.”

He stepped back from the Ranger’s table, crouching, holding both wrinkled hands above the guns. His jaw slackened and his eyes darkened with concentration. Suddenly he jumped, spun, and came down on both feet facing the card players, clawing both pistols from their holsters.

“Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!” he barked, extending each gun in turn, snapping off imaginary rounds.

Startled, all the card players except for the gambler, Magoon, had scrambled to the floor, ducking down behind the table.

When old Hart had snapped off a few more shots, he cackled wildly at the three gray faces peering at him over the table top with disgust. Magoon sat calmly holding his cards in one hand, cigar in the other, and regarding Hart with one arched brow.

“You’ve been out here too long, Mr. Hart. Maybe it’s time you and your daughter and grandson returned to civilization.”

Big Bill Morgan, who’d been nodding off on the sofa, chuckled and extended his finger to indicate the sheepish look on his partner’s one-eyed face. One-Eye DeRosso pushed off a knee, grabbed his chair, and sat down, regarding the old man warily and muttering curses under his breath.

“Crazy old codger,” growled the soldier, George Paine. “You’re liable to get shot, pullin’ such a stunt out here.”

Hart only laughed at the lieutenant’s indignation and blew at the imaginary smoke curling from his pistols.

Intruding on the old man’s merriment, his daughter’s voice rose from the kitchen. “Dad, would you give us a hand in here, please?”

Dropping the pistols back into their holsters and letting his laughter simmer to a slow boil, the oldster shuffled toward the kitchen. Grumbling with annoyance, the card players went back to their game while Big Bill Morgan finished his beer, clawed at his bushy beard, and chuckling once more at the old man’s stunt, stretched out on the sofa for a nap.

Armstrong stood, donned his hat and coat. “Reckon I’ll have a look around,” he grunted as he strode to the door.

The wind caught the door, nearly jerking the knob from the Ranger’s grip and nearly ripping his hat from his head. Holding his hat down with one hand, Armstrong fought the door closed with the other. When he’d latched it, he turned toward the yard, raising his collar and looking around, squinting against the snow that bit into his face like sand.

It was nearly dark on the ground, the gauzy sky hovering low and spitting gray snow and sleet and occasional rain at the buildings and shrubs. On one of the buildings across the trail or in one of the abandoned shacks flanking the saloon, something had torn loose and was slamming against a wooden frame. The wind howled, cold as though blown across some northern snowfield. It chilled the Ranger right down to his soul.

Seeing no movement but the slanting precipitation, the Ranger ducked his head against the onslaught and ran across the trail to the livery barn. The wind moaned and sighed through cracks between the building’s whipsawed boards. When the Ranger got one of the two heavy doors open, pulling hard against the wind, a horse inside whinnied fearfully and knocked against its stall.

Stepping inside, Armstrong pulled the door closed behind him, fighting the wind to latch it. He unholstered his Peacemaker and turned to the barn’s musty darkness relieved by four windows, the gunmetal light showing the beams, joists, and stalls—black geometric shapes trimmed with the more ambiguous outlines of shovels, pitchforks, and tack.

The Ranger stood quietly, listening, the pistol extended before him. If and when the gang came to free its leader, they’d no doubt hole up in the barn while they reconnoitered the saloon.

He listened, hearing nothing but the wind rattling the windows and creaking the walls, mice scuttling in the loft. His paint whinnied again, and the Ranger moved down the dark alley between the stalls. The horses were stabled side by side, their heads hanging over the alley, silhouetted by the gray windows behind them.

“Just me, Puma,” the Ranger said, running a calming hand down the paint’s neck as he peered around the dusky barn. The horse blew and stomped nervously, its withers rippling. The horse shook its head and twitched its ears.

“It’s all right, Puma,” he said, turning to Renfrow’s chestnut. Appearing as nervous as Puma, the chestnut, bobbed its head and whinnied loudly enough to rattle the Ranger’s eardrums.

The Ranger froze again, looking around, listening, trying to pick out suspicious sounds beneath the horses’ loud breaths and the wind threatening to tear the walls apart.

“What the hell’s the matter with you two?” Armstrong said, puzzled. “Ain’t nothin’ here to trouble you ’cept the storm. You’re safe in here.”

He patted each horse gently—long, calming strokes. Probably just the weather. Nothing like a fierce wind and a rickety barn—a strange one to boot—to put horses on edge.

When he’d made sure both mounts had plenty of hay and water, Armstrong fought his way back outside. Head tipped against the wind, he tramped around the barn to the rear, pausing near a dilapidated corral choked with snow-dusted bunchgrass. He squatted down behind a stock trough and squinted against the stinging sleet.

The wind tore and blew at him, throwing him off balance. Snow and ice quickly coated his buckskin, a thin sheen like a metallic finish.

He saw nothing but grass, sage, and creosote tossed about like waves on a storm-wracked sea. The wind sawed at a rotten corral post, adding an eerie creaking to the storm’s cacophony.

Armstrong lifted his gloved hand, wiped ice from his brow. In this weather, the gang had probably holed up miles away, if they’d even cut his trail after he’d lost them in the brasada last night. If they were out here, they’d have shown themselves by now.

The cold wind lancing him, making his cheeks burn and his toes ache, Armstrong turned and jogged back along the barn toward the hotel and saloon, the buttery windows beckoning and promising warmth. He was nearly to the porch when he stopped suddenly and turned back to the barn, frowning.

He’d seen only his and Renfrow’s horses. Where were the other men’s mounts?

A sudden scream from inside the hotel interrupted his thoughts and lifted the hair on the back of his neck. It was no victory yelp from among the card players. It was a man’s cry originating from the second story—a shrill exclamation of genuine horror.

Armstrong leapt onto the porch, punched the latch, and pushed through the door.

 

The heat from the glowing stove hit Armstrong like a gloved fist.

He was crossing the room as the old man, Hart, rose from his chair near the stove, staring toward the stairs. “Ann?”

Confused, his Colt extended before him, Armstrong took the stairs two at a time. He’d taken two strides down the hall now lit by a single smoking bracket lamp when the door to his prisoner’s room opened. The boy, Michael, stepped out, Ann behind him. The boy’s face was strangely expressionless. Ann saw Armstrong and smiled.

She didn’t appear to be hurt. Who had screamed?

“I guess he didn’t like my soup.” She shrugged, and Armstrong saw the soup bowl in her left hand, a plate of crusty bread in her right. The boy was carrying a black coffeepot and cup.

Hart ambled up behind Armstrong, his raspy voice tremulous. “Daughter, what in blue blazes?”

“I thought I’d see if our Mr. Renfrow could eat anything,” she explained to Armstrong in an ironic, humorous tone. “One look at my soup, though, and he let out quite a bellow! I guess you heard.”

Armstrong stared at her, amazed she could be so composed when the scream had nearly made him jump out of his boots. Frowning, he peered around the young woman, trying to get a look into the room.

“The soup’s good,” Hart said, incredulous. “Me and the other men are eatin’ it. I ain’t heard no complaints.”

“He’s out of his head,” Ann said. “He might be hungry later.” She gave Michael a gentle shove, and the two of them brushed past the Ranger, heading for the stairs.

Armstrong nudged the door wide and stepped into the room, aware of Hart shuffling up behind him, wanting to check out Renfrow himself.

The prisoner was cuffed as the Ranger had left him, but now his eyes were open. He looked at Armstrong, gaze brassy and enervated. He opened his mouth to speak, but then his eyes found Hart. His lids snapped wide. His face crumpled with fear.

“Oh, Jesus, you!” He twisted, pulling against the cuffs. “Get that old bastard outta here! What the hell’s goin’ on around here? What’re you tryin’ to do to me?”

Armstrong felt his face warm with anger. “Hey, watch your mouth, mister, or I’ll—”

“That’s all right, Ranger,” Hart said, glancing down distastefully at Renfrow. He offered a humorless laugh and turned away. “I don’t think ole Hatchet Face ever did have much for manners, but ’pears to me he’s gone loco to boot.”

With that, Hart snorted and shuffled out the door.

Armstrong stared down at the prisoner. “The lady was only offering food, which is a hell of a lot more than most people would have done for you.”

Renfrow gazed up at him, his chest rising and falling heavily. “Ranger,” he wheezed. He licked his lips, glanced at the open doorway, returned his wretched expression to Armstrong. “This…this ain’t right. Somethin’s bad wrong here.”

“Shut up,” Armstrong said, turning. “You’re out of your head. Nobody’s done nothin’ to you.”

He’d taken two steps when Hatchet Face Renfrow bent his knees and twisted his hips, as though in great pain and making a bizarre noise—half moan, half wail.

“No, Ranger…you don’t understand.”

In spite of himself, Armstrong turned to hear what he had to say. Something about the outlaw’s fear was strangely compelling…chilling.

The prisoner sobbed, pulled against the cuffs. His eyes slitted, and in a bewitched undertone he whispered hoarsely, “We killed these people!”

Armstrong just stared at him. His chest felt tight, but then he realized the man had gone mad, and his mustache rose with a slight grin. When he didn’t say anything, Renfrow swallowed and said, “’Bout seven, eight months ago. Me and the boys, we rolled through here…killed ’em all…took the cattle and horses…”

He paused to check Armstrong’s reaction. A sudden wind gust slammed against the window, making the curtains billow and the room’s single lamp gutter.

“That girl,” Renfrow continued, pulling against the cuffs, making the bed shake, the springs squeal, “I took her into the kitchen…then slit her throat before I burned the place down!”

Armstrong stared down at the man, his broad cheeks pinched up into his eye sockets with disgust. His hands balled into fists as images of his own wife and boy flashed in his mind, murdered by outlaws of the same ilk as Renfrow.

Finally he squatted down on his haunches and swallowed his bile. He regarded the prisoner reasonably. “I don’t doubt your sins, Renfrow. That’s why you’re gonna hang. But obviously you weren’t here, or these people wouldn’t be givin’ us shelter…much less bringing’ soup to your room.”

“She wasn’t bringin’ me soup cause she was worried I was hungry,” Renfrow said, his voice quivering as he stared wild-eyed at the Ranger. “She was tryin’ to scare the hell out of me!”

Armstrong chuckled and shook his head. There was something satisfying in seeing a man like Hatchet Face Renfrow reduced to a sniveling coward. Slowly the Ranger shook his head. “Man, I did whack you too hard. Just lay here and keep your mouth shut, or I’ll whack you again. We’ll be pullin’ out in the mornin’.”

With that, Armstrong turned toward the lamp. He was about to blow it out when the prisoner said in a pinched tone, “Leave it! Leave the damn light!”

Armstrong stopped, shrugged, and strode to the door. “Ghosts, eh?” he said, slowing drawing the door closed behind him. “You know, Renfrow? I think your conscience has finally come callin’. Don’t worry. You’ll be dancin’ with the devil soon.”

“Just keep them demons away from me!”

Grinning at the image in his head of Renfrow dancing beneath a San Antonio gallows, Armstrong latched the door and went downstairs.

 

The Ranger swallowed the last of his antelope stew and dropped the spoon in the empty bowl. Brushing his hands on his jeans and scraping back his chair, he fought down the strange, nettling anxiety he’d been feeling since he’d heard Renfrow’s scream, and said, “For a ghost, you sure cook good, ma’am. Thank you.”

Ann Coleman stood behind the bar, drawing another beer for Lieutenant Paine. She smiled her baleful smile. “There’s more. I made a potful. No tellin’ how long this storm will last.”

“I’m padded out just fine, ma’am. Much obliged.” Armstrong glanced out the window behind him, seeing little but darkness and snow. He crossed the room to one of the two windows in the east wall, saw little he hadn’t seen from the window behind his table: darkness and snow through the frosted glass, the silhouette of an ice-encrusted tumbleweed flashing past.

He turned to the room. Hart and Big Bill Morgan were again playing cribbage and sipping whiskey. The other men—Burgenreich, Morgan, DeRosso, Magoon, and Lieutenant Paine—were back playing five-card stud and blackjack…for matchsticks now, as Magoon had nearly cleaned the others out.

Tobacco smoke hung in heavy weblike layers, wanly lit by the room’s two ceiling globes, two bracket lamps, and a bull’s-eye lantern perched on the bar. There was as much shadow as light, and the shadows danced when the wind gusted, causing the flames to flicker.

From the cordwood stack near the stove, Ann and the boy kept the fire humming, so that the stove’s black door was mottled gold. The wind howled like wolves just beyond the saloon’s creaking, shuddering walls.

Armstrong was edgy. What made him edgier was the fact the others didn’t seem edgy at all. But then, none were tinhorns. They knew the dangers of the frontier. And they were all armed, even Magoon. The gambler may have lost his prized Colts, but he wore a Bisley on his hip, and the sizable bulge under his clawhammer coat bespoke a revolver in a shoulder holster.

Armstrong wasn’t so much worried about the men as the woman and the boy. He’d hate like hell for anything to happen to them because he’d led Renfrow’s gang to their doorstep. He wished he would have kept riding, held up in a cave somewhere.

“Poker, Captain?” Lieutenant Paine asked. He yawned as the rancher, Burgenreich, was shuffling the cards to deal another hand. “You can take my place. Might put your mind at ease.”

“No, thanks,” Armstrong said. “Think I’ll have another look around outside.”

“Wouldn’t do that if I was you,” Burgenreich said as he dealt the cards and blew smoke around the quirley in his teeth. “McNelly’s Viking or not, you run into trouble out there alone, you might pick up the brandin’ iron by the hot end.”

“Have another drink and relax, Ranger,” Big Bill Morgan suggested, picking the pasteboards off the table. “I’ll buy.”

Armstrong ran his gaze across the men, puzzled by their calm. He’d seen sunning dogs more nervy. Either they didn’t think the gang would brave the storm or they were damn confident of their own ability to hold them off.

“I’ll take my chances,” the Ranger said finally, shrugging into his coat with a rueful snort. “You hear any shootin’, douse the lights.”

Outside, Armstrong walked to the west end of the stoop, right of the window. He raised his collar against the cold wind and squinted against the lancing snow.

The snow covered the ground, laying heavily on the sage and creosote shrubs. He looked for tracks. Seeing no hoofprints corrupting the virgin layers of churning snow, he walked to the stoop’s east end.

He’d stood there for about three minutes, watching and listening as the wind blasted him, and was about to turn back for the door when he heard something between wind gusts.

A distant horse’s whinny.

He turned left, watching, listening, not realizing he’d reached for the Colt until he became aware of it there in his right hand, aimed northeast, into the storm. His pulse throbbed in his temples and his heart leapt in his chest.

He waited, listening hard.

Beginning to wonder if the sound had been only the wind, he stepped off the stoop and walked along the building, passing the two lit windows on his left. The wind was so loud he couldn’t hear his boots crunching snow. He kept his hat tipped low as he looked around, catching glimpses of thrashing sage and mesquite branches between dancing snow curtains.

Crouching against the wind, pistol extended in his right hand, he weaved a path through abandoned, dilapidated settlers’ shacks, half of them roofless and without doors or windows. The wind moaned through the cracks between the logs, caught at some hide curtains and flapped them hard against the window frame.

He was walking along the west side of a crumbling ’dobe stable when he caught the scent of mesquite smoke. Could be from the saloon but the wind was in the wrong direction. Had to be ahead of him, from one of the cabins.

A woman’s voice whispered his name in his left ear.

He wheeled left, expecting to see Ann there, having come out looking for him to convince him to return to the saloon.

But she wasn’t there. Behind where he’d expected to see her, a shadow stepped out from a tree—a tall, lean shadow capped with a funnel-brimmed hat tied down with a muffler. Part of the shadow broke away from itself. And then vagrant snow light glistened dully, and Armstrong threw himself behind a post.

The gun flashed and snapped beneath the wind. The bullet was a furious blackfly buzzing over his right shoulder, a thin whistle instantly drowned by the storm. Armstrong heaved himself onto a knee and fired at the flash. He fired again, and then again the Colt jumped in his hand, the powder smoke tearing around his face and gone.

He squinted into the darkness around a wind-battered pecan less than twenty yards away. The shadow was no longer there.

Armstrong looked around, then slowly rose, cautiously stepped forward. When he drew abreast of the tree, the storm-battered branches snapping and cracking above his head, he saw the man on the ground. His hat was gone. Already the snow was dusting him.

Armstrong knelt, saw the two small holes in the gray deerskin coat. The man was wearing too many clothes for the blood to have yet seeped through the layers, but from his open, staring eyes Armstrong knew he was dead. He was in his mid-twenties, with a bushy black mustache and muttonchops, a round, dark face.

Oscar Jiminez, one of the half-breed bandits who rode with Renfrow. Low man on the totem pole, but one of Hatchet Face’s boys, just the same.

The blood running wild through Armstrong’s veins, he wheeled around. They were here.

Where were the others?

No matter now. They were here. Only thing to do was get back to the saloon, douse the lights, and watch the windows…and wait.

The black hulk of the saloon had just come into view before him when he remembered the woman’s voice in his ear. He turned and looked behind. Nothing but snow-blown darkness and the whistling, jagged bulk of the derelict barn.

The woman had warned him of Jiminez’s presence. He was sure of it. But who was she and where in the hell was she now?

 

Armstrong leapt onto the stoop drifted with snow and pushed through the saloon’s front door, announcing himself. The men were still playing cards.

“They’re here,” Armstrong said, closing the door on the wind that caused most of the lamps to nearly flicker out. “Let’s get these lights blown.”

He was heading for one of the bracket lamps when the ceiling creaked as though under a footfall. He froze. The others were moving toward the lamps, Ann and the boy hurrying behind the bar.

“Who’s upstairs?”

“Renfrow,” Lieutenant Paine said, regarding the Ranger with an incredulous frown.

Armstrong bolted for the stairs, took the steps two at a time on the balls of his feet. The wall lamp was still lit, wavering against the chill drafts swirling about the hall, and belching black smoke. Still treading lightly, Armstrong regarded the outside door at the end of the hall. It was closed, but flakes of melting snow lay before it, glistening in the lamplight. Heart thudding, Armstrong shucked his Colt and moved slowly to the closed door of his prisoner’s room, leaning close to listen.

Inside, two men were whispering, voices pinched with concern. “How am I s’posed to get the damn things off?” one said.

Slowly Armstrong turned the doorknob, then brought his right boot back and forward, connecting soundly with the door, just left of the knob.

“Hold it!” he yelled when the two men took shape, one on the bed, the other beside him, turning toward the Ranger now, mouth agape.

The newcomer had a pistol in his left hand. He raised it quickly, but before he could fire, Armstrong shot him, throwing him back against the dresser with a groan. A stone pitcher fell to the floor with a crash.

The man groaned again, clutching his side and again raising his pistol.

Armstrong fired again, taking the man through the middle of his shaggy bear coat. He grunted, twisted, dropped to both knees, and fell on his back with a thud that made the whole room jump.

“Shit!” Renfrow shouted, jerking the handcuffs and leg irons and making the bed squawk.

Armstrong was stepping into the smoky room when he felt a sudden, powerful draft. Footsteps sounded on the stairs. The Ranger wheeled back toward the door. A gun popped twice. Lieutenant Paine stood in the doorway facing the opposite end of the hall.

He quickly raised his Colt Army. A man at the other end of the hall cursed loudly. The lieutenant fired three quick, angry shots.

Smoke wafted around the soldier’s grinning face.

Wary, holding his own gun down near his belly, Armstrong moved through the door. At the end of the hall, before the open door through which snow swirled, a man lay motionless in a growing blood pool.

“Good shootin’, soldier,” he said, turning back to Paine. He ran his gaze along the lieutenant’s long, lean frame. “You hit?”

Paine bunched his lips and shook his head as he snapped the cover over his Colt. Cool disdain deepened his voice. “He missed me both times. I suspect he’s a much better shot when his opponent is unarmed…defenseless…taken by surprise.”

Vaguely puzzled by the soldier’s passionate response but with more pressing concerns on his mind, Armstrong turned to the stairs. The other men were grouped about the steps, looking around with wary curiosity. “Y’all go down and keep an eye on the windows and the front door. If there’s a back way in, watch it, too. The gang was probably wantin’ to get Renfrow out quietly before they hit us. Now that their plan soured, there’s no tellin’ when they’ll hit us next.”

When the others had gone back downstairs, Armstrong walked to the end of the hall, cast a cautious glance outside. Seeing little but the swirling snow, he pulled the dead man out of the way, closed the door, and went back into Renfrow’s room.

He was unlocking the cuff on the outlaw’s right wrist when Renfrow said, “What’re you doin’?”

“Takin’ you downstairs where I can keep an eye on you.”

“Somethin’ damn queer’s goin’ on here, Ranger. You gotta believe me. Damn peculiar. I never used to believe in ghosts—”

“Shut up.”

“Jesus, no!” Renfrow’s face screwed up. “I don’t wanna go down there. No tellin’ what they’ll do…”

“I said shut up.”

“Oh, Jesus!”

When Armstrong had unlocked the leg shackles, he drew his revolver, extended the weapon at the outlaw’s face, and ratcheted back the hammer.

“One attempt to escape, I blow your brains out.”

The enervated Renfrow just stared at him, his eyes bulging, lips forming a hard line across his face. “Please,” he whispered.

Armstrong backed away from the bed and indicated the door with his Colt’s barrel. Renfrow grimaced as he tenderly swung his feet to the floor. Grunting and touching his fingers to his head, he grabbed the dresser, heaved himself to his feet, and moved to the door.

Armstrong trailing him from about six feet away and prodding the outlaw’s back with the Colt, Renfrow descended the stairs. At the bottom, he stopped and glared warily across the dimly lit room in which all the lights had been doused but one.

A heavy silence hung while Renfrow stood looking around, pale as a corpse. The wind growled in the wood stove’s flue.

“Boo,” Lowell Hart said finally, standing with both his pretty Colts drawn, right of the front window. Lieutenant Paine crouched across from him, his long-barreled .44 drawn as he peered into the storm’s wrath beyond the frosted glass. Without turning, the soldier snorted.

The others chuckled. Ann and the boy weren’t there; they must have been in the kitchen.

Armstrong directed Renfrow to a stout, square-hewn ceiling post in the shadows at the back of the room. He ordered the outlaw to sit, then knelt to handcuff the man’s hands behind the post.

Keeping his voice just above a whisper and clutching Armstrong’s sleeve with his cuffed hands, Renfrow said, “See those two Colts that old man’s got in his hands?” When Armstrong squinted at him, listening, the prisoner continued: “Billy Styles took ’em off the old man’s body. Billy, he was killed by a Mex several days later, and his brother, Bob, knowin’ how Billy favored them guns, tossed ’em into the grave. Fancy shell belt and all.”

Armstrong locked the cuffs and gave Renfrow a skeptical stare. The man was giving him the creeps, and he was tired of it. He didn’t have time for Renfrow’s madness. His main concern was the prisoner’s gang outside in the storm.

He patted the outlaw’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Hatchet Face—in just a few days, Judge Pleasants in San Antone’s gonna put you out of your misery.”

Armstrong went back upstairs, made sure no other hard cases had slipped into the building, and rammed a heavy wardrobe against the door atop the outside stairs. He was pleased to find that none of the second-story windows was accessible from the ground.

Back downstairs, he positioned each of the men at main room windows and before the front door. He made sure Ann and the boy were safe in the kitchen, then returned to the main room and took up his own position at the window nearest his prisoner.

He and the others settled in for what doubtless would be a long night, with only one lamp lit, shunting shadows this way and that as the wind tore drafts about the room. The walls shuddered and the flue knocked, the fire humming, logs thumping against the stove walls as they burned.

In the kitchen, to keep busy, Ann made doughnuts and boiled coffee. She brought the fresh pastries and coffee out to the men, keeping to the shadows so she couldn’t be seen from outside. Morgan, One-Eye DeRosso, and Lowell Hart had nodded off when she brought the pot out again around midnight.

“Any movement out there?” she asked Armstrong as she refilled his cup. The Ranger sat on the floor, his back to the wall, rifle between his upraised knees, revolver on the straight-back chair to his right.

Armstrong shook his head. “They probably won’t attack until morning, but letting our guard down is a good way to get ourselves killed.”

“Yes, it is,” she said in a thoughtful tone.

She set the coffeepot on a table and sat down with her back to the wall, a few feet away from the Ranger. Nearby, Big Bill Morgan snored in a chair backed up to the wall, a beat-up Spencer rifle canted across his chest. Burgenreich and One-Eye DeRosso talked quietly, desultorily, after waking.

“I apologize for bringin’ trouble,” Armstrong said, rubbing his jaw sheepishly. “I should’ve kept goin’…holed up in a cave somewhere.”

“You’d have found no caves for miles. And if you had, you might’ve had to fight a Comanche for it.”

Armstrong opened his mouth to speak again, but she cut him off with, “It was meant to be, Ranger. It was all meant to be.” That strange knowing tone again…confident, resigned. He didn’t know why, but it pricked at the back of his neck. And then he remembered the woman’s voice he’d heard outside.

He looked at her across his left shoulder. “Ma’am, was that you outside earlier?”

“I’ve been out to fetch wood for the stoves.” The bridge of her nose wrinkled slightly. “Why?”

“I thought I heard a woman’s voice a second before the drygulcher would’ve drilled me” The chill crept down the back of his neck and along his spine, all the way to his backbone.

“The wind,” Ann said. “In this canyon it can sound like many things. Sometimes I think it’s my dead husband calling to me from his mine in the foothills.”

Armstrong didn’t say anything. He was remembering the sound of the voice.

“Your wife is worried.”

He looked at Ann, frowning. Had it been a question or a statement? Must’ve been the former. He shook his head and rubbed a cold-itch on the back of his left hand. “Mary and my boy are dead. Killed by men like him.” He nodded toward Renfrow sitting there in the shadows, head tipped back against the post, eyes open, staring at Ann as at a demon flung from hell.

“I’m sorry.”

Armstrong shrugged. “It’s why I took up Rangerin’.” He laughed. “Sure as heck didn’t do it for the money!”

Neither of them spoke for a time, just sat listening to the wind and the icy snow tick against the saloon’s creaking walls. The heat from the stove radiated nicely. Big Bill Morgan snored.

It felt nice to have a woman this close to him again. If it were only another time, another place…

As if reading his mind, she said suddenly, “Of course it is none of my business, but you should marry again. Build another family.” She paused, then continued quietly, almost absently, “Your wife would want you to. So would your son.”

He hadn’t considered the possibility of remarrying, but he found himself considering it now, with Ann sitting here only a few feet away, the soft yellow light and shadows playing about her fair skin and freckles, limning her long, slender neck above the collar of her plaid shirt.

“What about you? ’Pears you’re in the same boat.”

Ann only smiled, glanced off as though uncomfortable. Armstrong silently cursed himself for his bluntness.

“I best check on Michael,” she said, and gained her feet.

She’d started walking back toward the kitchen when Armstrong remembered the other question he’d wanted to ask her. “Ma’am, where are the other horses?”

She swung half around to him, the coffeepot in her hand—a slender silhouette against the room’s swaying shadows. “They’re hidden,” she said edgily. “We’ve had problems with rustlers. Men from the area who ride with gangs. Men like him.”

She turned her eyes to Renfrow, who jerked against the post now, startled. Apparently he’d been dozing.

“We used to run a few cattle to help make ends meet, but they were taken, too,” Ann said. “One night Dad recognized two of the rustlers and rode over to the county seat to report their names to the sheriff.”

“The sheriff take care of it?”

She paused, sliding her eyes to Armstrong. “Not yet, but your own mounts should be safe for the night,” she added, then turned and headed toward the kitchen.

When the kitchen door had swung shut behind her, Renfrow whispered, “You take me outta here, Armstrong, I’ll make you a rich man.”

“Shut up,” Armstrong growled.

“Rich!”

The Ranger picked his revolver off the chair, aimed it at the prisoner, and thumbed back the hammer. “I won’t tell you again.”

Renfrow let his head fall back against the post.

Armstrong dozed fitfully, keeping his ears skinned for voices and footsteps outside the saloon’s wind-wracked walls. His half dreams were haunted by wind and snow and women’s voices singing his name. And then the songs were wolf howls and he was running through woods, hearing the beasts panting behind him.

“Daddy!” his son called. “The badmen are chasing me!”

He didn’t know how long he’d slept when he woke with a start, grabbing the gun from the chair. He looked around the dim room. Renfrow and the other men were all asleep, slouched against the wall or the sofa or slumped uncomfortably in the Windsor chairs by the front window. A milky sheen pressed through the windows.

Armstrong turned and peered out the window to his right, saw a faint flush of gray in the east, through the canyon’s mouth. The storm had cleared, and stars shone, but he could feel a hard chill permeating the whipsawed boards of the wall. Hoarfrost bled through the cracks.

He peered around what he could see of the yard—still mostly dim shadows. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he moved toward the front of the room, causing Big Bill Morgan to jerk awake on the sofa, reaching for his Spencer rifle.

“What is it? What is it?”

“Dawn,” the Ranger said as he slid a cautious glance out the front window.

In the right corner of his vision, something flashed. The window broke with a glassy pop and rattle. Feeling a glass shard scrape his jaw and hearing the lead slug crack into a tintype hanging on the adjacent wall, Armstrong swung back away from the window and cursed.

He slid another glance around the frame. A man ran along the inside of the front corral rails, crouched low, a rifle in his hand. He ducked down behind a wheelless wagon.

As the other men in the room cursed, scuttled toward the windows, and jacked shells into their rifle breeches, Armstrong quickly stepped to the other side of the window. He edged another look around the frame, gazing east. Two more shadowy figures ran amidst the rabbitbrush, rifles in their hands, positioning themselves for an attack.

Lieutenant Paine kicked a chair aside and shouldered up to the window across from Armstrong, his long-barreled Army Colt in his hand. Armstrong said, “Hold your fire.” To Hart, crouched on the other side of the room, he said, “Back door?”

“Through the storage room yonder,” the oldster said, throwing a glance to a small, wainscoted door at the main room’s rear, where several barrels and crates were stacked. “I barred it, though. They won’t get in thataway!”

The old man’s sentence was punctuated by another rifle crack. The slug tore through Hart’s window and whipped across the room, shattering a bottle on the back bar. Two more quick shots plunked through the front door and through Armstrong’s window, both slugs buzzing about the room before smashing into a wall and a ceiling joist.

“Damn their eyes!” One-Eye cried.

“Send Renfrow out, Ranger!” a thick voice called from across the road. “Throw him out or we’ll burn the place to the ground!”

Armstrong walked to the door, lifted the heavy wooden bar, and dragged the door open a crack. “Renfrow’s tied to a joist, and he ain’t goin’ nowhere. You burn this place, you burn your leader!”

The man hooted mockingly. “At least he won’t be alive to give no judge our names!” A rifle cracked, the slug chipping loudly into the door six inches left of Armstrong’s face.

Cursing again, Armstrong slammed the door and barred it.

“Your life ain’t worth spit even to your own, Hatchet Face,” Jake Magoon said to Renfrow. The gambler was hunkered down behind the freshly stoked stove, mismatched pistols in his hands. He grinned at the outlaw, who spit at him, the spittle falling two feet short.

Armstrong rubbed his jaw and eyed the bullet holes in the door, the broken windows. The saloon’s whipsawed plank walls would hold back slugs little better than tar paper. In a fire fight, he and the others would be shredded in minutes. If the outlaws stormed the place and threw a kerosene-soaked torch through a window, the place would go up like well-seasoned kindling sticks.

He eyed the room’s rear door thoughtfully. Finally, hurrying down the length of the saloon, he said, “You men stay put, keep an eye on the yard. I’m gonna try to swing around behind ’em.”

Renfrow threw his head back and opened his mouth. “Hey, fellas, watch your—!” but the Ranger had anticipated Renfrow’s warning yell. He slung his rifle across a table and slapped his open hand across the man’s face then quickly lifted the outlaw’s bandanna over his mouth and tied it taut behind his neck.

Renfrow kicked and grunted against the gag as Armstrong grabbed his rifle, bolted across the room, and slipped through the wainscoted door. The storage room boasted no windows, so he crossed the cramped cold room slowly, feeling his way, knocking against crates, trunks, old bed frames and other dilapidated furniture. The timbered outside door was a dark-gray frame in the rear wall. He lifted the bar, cracked the door, and peered into misty, snowy shadows, cobwebs clinging to his beard.

Seeing nothing but blue snow drifted against the rabbitbrush and the distant hulks of abandoned cabins and corrals, Armstrong stepped slowly outside and drew the door closed behind him. The cold was like an invisible ice robe closing around him, pinching his lungs and stinging his cheeks. The temperature had to be near zero; he hadn’t felt air this cold since cowboying as a youngster up Montana way.

Looking carefully around and deciding that none of the outlaws was flanking the saloon, he ran crouching west, then south through the rabbitbrush, weaving a trail between shrubs and abandoned shacks.

A few minutes later he was jogging behind the corral flanking the barn when a man bolted up from behind a hay crib. Armstrong saw the man’s whiskered face and wide, glistening eyes too late. A half second later a brass-plated rifle butt smashed savagely into his forehead.

Armstrong stumbled back in the snow, tripping over his own feet, falling hard on his back. Just before the world went black he heard a man’s chuckle and fading footsteps crunching snow.

 

When the Ranger opened his eyes, the dawn had grown only slightly. He winced against the pain wracking his skull like tomahawks and slowly rolled his head to the right. Must’ve been out only a few minutes. He rolled his head gently left, trying to determine the damage. Blood trickled from his lacerated temple, made a wet streak on the side of his cheek.

Fetid smoke touched his nostrils, and he froze.

A rifle cracked. Then another and another until a veritable fusillade clamored on the other side of the barn.

He peered that way, and his shoulders stiffened as his eyes widened. Black smoke boiled up above the barn’s peak, turning the morning’s soft blue sky the color of oily rags.

Lips drawn painfully back from his gritted teeth, he grabbed his rifle, levered a shell, and climbed to his feet. Slipping in the foot-deep snow and pushing off a corral post, he made his way north along the corral toward the barn.

Ahead, the rifles popped and cracked, ricochets twanging. Men whooped and hollered with glee.

He dragged his left hand against the barn’s east wall for support as he ambled heavy-footed through the snow, holding his rifle barrel forward in his right hand. His head throbbed, sharp pain lances stabbing down from his temple and into his neck and back. He swallowed down his nausea, squinting and blinking to clear his double vision. The throbbing grew so intense it buckled his knees, and he had to pause for a moment, steeling himself against the onslaught, before willing himself into a labored shuffle forward.

He felt more than saw the front end of the barn. To his left, the rifles made a cacophony that intensified his ear-ringing, tooth-grinding misery. He turned that way, dropping to his right knee, and stared. He blinked, clearing the fog.

Eight or so gunmen stood shoulder to shoulder in the gray-white trail before the barn, firing into the saloon’s burning, bullet-pocked facade. Clad in frost-rimed hats and bulky coats, their breath puffing before their faces, they triggered their weapons casually, like boys plucking wooden ducks off a mill pond.

Pine resin popped as smoke and flames stabbed from the cabin’s windows, the conflagration roaring as it grew.

Armstrong wheezed as a pain lance stabbed lengthwise down his spine. He dropped to a knee, then onto his right shoulder. He cursed and snarled, extended the rifle, tried picking one gunman from the pack.

Something moved before the burning cabin; he slid his gaze that way.

He froze, staring, transfixed.

The front, bullet-riddled, flame-limned door had swung wide, and out stepped Lowell Hart. Behind him was his daughter, Ann, and then the boy, Michael, followed by Lieutenant Paine, Jake Magoon, One-Eye DeRosso, Bill Morgan, and Chess Burgenreich—all lining up shoulder to shoulder, along the smoke-obscured stoop. They carried rifles down casually at their sides—all but Hart, who clutched his pearl-gripped Colts in his gnarled hands, barrels aimed groundward.

Together and all at once, they faced the gunmen, who had suddenly stopped shooting. From this angle, Armstrong couldn’t see the expressions on the shooters’ faces, only the straight lines of their taut backs as they stood in the trail, frozen in mid-motion, some with rifles to their shoulders, some with the long guns only half raised.

No one said a word. The cabin burned, smoke licking and spiraling up from the windows.

The gunman turned to each other stiffly, eyes wide. Then suddenly they all wheeled back to the cabin and commenced firing.

Armstrong’s jaw dropped and his eyes snapped wide, horrified. It was like a firing squad…only the firing squad’s victims weren’t dropping. The eight just stood staring coldly at the shooters as the bullets caromed right through their bodies and smashed into the wall and windows behind them.

One by one the gang’s rifles clicked empty, and they stood hang-jawed, backs once again taut, facing straight ahead at the eight people who should be dead.

“Jumpin’ Jehosaphat!” one of the shooters yelled suddenly above the humming flames, “we done killed you people!”

Another took one step straight back and exclaimed, “I told ye this was the place!”

Slowly Lieutenant Paine raised his rifle to his shoulder. Paine’s Spencer stabbed flames as it cracked and jumped in the soldier’s arms. The second shooter who’d spoken was blown backward off his feet and landed in the trail with a grunt.

The others virtually jumped out of their boots. One man dropped his rifle. He turned to run as the others on the stoop, including Ann and Michael, raised their pistols and rifles. They extended the weapons with slow assurance, curling their lips, squinting their eyes, taking aim, and firing.

The explosions rose above the thundering flames, the slugs tearing through the shooters as though through rats in a trash heap, blowing blood out behind the men while tumbling the men themselves backward across the snow, rolling them up into snarling, whimpering piles.

Shooting their rifles and pistols over and over, the eight people from the saloon stepped slowly off the porch and closed the gap on their victims, shooting the men again and again while the gang members screamed and wailed and held their bloody hands before their heads as if to shield their faces from the lead.

The bullets cut through the upraised hands and smashed into skulls, smashing the heads back into the snow and silencing the wails with the mouths still drawn. One man, his coat soaked with blood, climbed feebly to hands and knees and crawled slowly toward the barn. Young, towheaded Michael approached him slowly from behind. The boy stopped over the man, raised his rifle to his shoulder, squinted down the barrel, and fired.

The man’s head jerked and bobbed. His limbs gave, and he slumped to the trail, dead.

Armstrong spied movement toward the cabin’s rear and turned his gaze that way. A man knelt behind the saloon, his back heaving as he coughed. Armstrong’s handcuffs hung from the man’s right wrist; Renfrow clutched a revolver in that hand. Somehow the outlaw had slipped his left hand free of the cuffs, and he’d grabbed a spare pistol off one of the tables. He turned to look over his shoulder, and it was just light enough now that Armstrong could see Renfrow’s wide, impassioned eyes and angular, hatchet face.

The outlaw heaved himself to his feet and scrambled north of the saloon, coughing and disappearing amidst the brush and abandoned shacks. Armstrong pushed to his feet, fighting to keep his eyes open, and tramped wide around the burning saloon, heading north after Renfrow. At the saloon’s rear he picked up the scuffed boot prints and followed the trail between two derelict cabins. Beyond a house-sized boulder the tracks turned east and descended a shallow, snowy arroyo.

Armstrong moved heavily along the arroyo, tripping over hidden stones and shrubs, keeping one eye skinned on the fresh boot prints, another on the twisting course of the cut. He brushed at the blood dribbling down his face and winced against the nearly unbearable pain that occasionally caused his vision to double and blur, turning his knees to putty.

“Tim!”

It was a woman’s voice, spoken clearly as though from only a few feet away. It was his wife’s voice, turning him sharply right.

But it was not Mary standing there on the arroyo’s lip, only ten feet away. It was Hatchet Face Renfrow, an old-model Sharps revolver extended toward Armstrong. The voice had frozen Renfrow for a split second.

The Ranger dropped to a crouch as the outlaw’s revolver jumped and spoke. Raising his own Colt, Armstrong drilled two closely spaced holes in Renfrow’s chest.

The outlaw gave a grunt and crumpled against the base of a tall pecan tree. He ground his heels into the earth as though trying to stand, then collapsed with a long sigh.

Armstrong straightened and, his face a deep-lined mask of pain and anxious expectation, looked around for Mary. He saw nothing but snow-dusted catclaw and piñon. After a quarter hour of searching, the only tracks he found along the arroyo were those of Renfrow.

But her voice had been so real.

Dazed, he slogged back through the shrubs and weaved a course through the abandoned shacks, chicken coops, and falling-down barns, the gray wood turning gold now, the snow sparkling, as the sun rose above the eastern horizon.

As he came around the old stable near the saloon, he looked up and stopped suddenly. His eyes round, he ran his gaze over the charred timbers and mounded ashes of the saloon…buried under a foot of fresh snow!

He stumbled forward, dropped to his knees, and shoved his gloved hands into the snow, rooting out a foot-long chunk of charred board…as cold as the snow that had buried it.

He looked at the board dumbly, dropped it, and heaved himself to his feet. His heart thudded. His vision swam. He muddled around the saloon’s snow-mounded ruins to the trail, paused over the bodies of the outlaws strewn there as though dropped from the sky, blood from the fresh wounds glistening in the brassy light of the rising sun.

He knelt over one of the bodies, placed his hand on a chest. Still warm.

Looking around, his gaze fixed on something amidst the snow-limned shrubs right of the barn. He heaved himself to his feet. Stepping around the bodies, stumbling over a rifle, he moved through the shrubs south of the trail, stopped, and stared at the ground. His mouth sagged. Deep lines cut into the corners of his eyes.

Before him lay eight snow-covered mounds and stone slabs. Heart wheeling, Armstrong dropped to a knee, brushed the snow from one of the stones, and stared at the writing chiseled into the stone’s face.

Trembling, he staggered to the next stone and brushed the snow away. He read the inscription, moved to the next stone…and then the next…until all eight stones stared up at him. Gently he pushed the snow away from the last one and touched the inscription with his gloved fingertip:

Ann Coleman. Killed by the Renfrow Gang, Summer 1874.