High Wild Desert (14 page)

Chapter 14

On his way to the rocky stretch of ground behind the Number Five Saloon, Sam heard the faint whimpering one more time. This time he heard it clear enough that it sent a dark chill up his spine, knowing that the sound was not that of a cat, or of any other kind of small animal. It was human, it was female and it was the sound of someone in trouble.
Yes, bad trouble,
he told himself, hastening his steps, his Winchester hanging in his hand.

Fifty feet from the back door of the saloon, he walked along the edge of the recently abandoned public ditch. Since the coming of the newly constructed public outhouses, townsfolk had begun discarding garbage and other worthless items into the ditch in order to fill the wretched twenty-yard cesspool of human waste as quickly as possible. Still the open ditch lay splayed like a violent ax wound welling infection in the belly of the earth.

At a point along the edge—a spot most frequented by patrons of the Number Five Saloon—the Ranger stopped and gazed down into the public ditch, his eyes searching across unsavory streaks of dark waste that had built up over time and spilled into the blackish sludge deepening in the ditch's bottom.

At first he saw nothing, save for a few greasy-coated rats perched on the rock incline, picking at something of a rat's interest. Yet as he started to turn his eyes away, he heard the sound again. He swung to his left, where he saw scratching and scrapings in the dirt just above the pool of dark sludge. He made out a tremor of movement, something that rose and fell weakly in the pool of excrement.

An arm?
he thought, already stepping down over the edge into the suffocating stench. The terrible smell rose around him, a rancid vapory steam engulfing him. But searching the ditch intently in spite of the smell, the fetidness of humanity's leavings, he saw the movement again.

My God, yes,
it is an arm,
he told himself,
down there, in all that . . .

Even as he hurried down the stained, soiled wall of the ditch toward what he now more clearly saw was the outline of a body struggling beneath a layer of waste, he raised his rifle. One-handed, he fired a signal shot in the air, then levered and repeated the action twice for good measure on his way farther down into that terrible trench.

At the edge of the blackish sludge, he set his smoking rifle aside, stooped and reached out for a small, pale wrist coated over in a substance too vile to consider, lest his mind and his hand refuse to engage. Without thought or hesitation, he grabbed the wrist and pulled, feeling the woman come unstuck from the sludge's grasp. She slid upward on her belly onto the rocky ground. When she was out of the sludge, Sam kept her on her stomach as he reached under her face and wiped it as best he could with his gloved hand. The woman coughed weakly, but otherwise lay limp and still, remnants of her dress pressed to her.

“Who's down there?” a voice called out from atop the edge behind him. Sam looked around over his shoulder and saw three townsmen looking down at him.

“It's the Ranger!” another voice replied. “Ranger Burrack, is that you?” the same voice asked as if doubting itself.

“It's me,” Sam shouted up to the townsmen as he loosened his bandana from around his neck. “I need some hands, and some rope. Get down here and help me.”

The townsmen looked at each other.

“Good Lord,” one said under his breath.

With no time to concern himself with what manner of substance he was handling, Sam turned the woman onto her back and propped her onto his knee. He wiped the bandana across her mouth and eyes. Beneath the slime and feces, he saw the bruised and battered condition of her swollen face.

“Ma'am, can you hear me?” he asked. “We're going to get you out of here. You hold on, you hear?”

The woman's breath wheezed and rattled faintly in her chest.

The Ranger looked back up and saw the same three men, still in the same spot, staring down at him.

“Did you hear me?” he shouted at them. “Get a rope, get down here!”

The three townsmen looked back and forth at one another.

“I can't do it,” said one, shaking his head. “I would, but so help me, I can't.”

Looking up, Sam saw Deputy Dankett appear, shoving the other men aside.

“Out of the way, flatheads!” Dankett said to the townsmen. “You'll get him a rope if you don't want to carry your teeth in a jar,” he threatened. Beside Dankett, the Ranger saw Cisco Lang peer down and shake his head in disgust.

“Come on, prisoner,” Dankett said gruffly to Lang. “You're going with me.”

Sam watched the deputy and Lang step over the edge and start making their way down to him.

“And some water, Deputy,” he said. “We need some water bad.”

Dankett looked up over his shoulder as he and Lang continued to make their way down.

“I better see canteens and rope fly over that edge,” he warned the townsmen. “I'm making a heads-to-bust
list here.”

“It's coming, Clow!” a townsman called down to him.

Within a second, a coiled rope flew out over the edge and landed almost at Dankett's feet. Behind it came a canteen, then another. Lang caught the first one with his cuffed hands and snagged the strap of the second midair before it slammed onto the rocks or rolled into the dark soft mire.

“What have we got here, Ranger?” Dankett asked, stooping right down beside the Ranger, appearing mindless of the smell, and of the substance surrounding them.

“I don't know,” Sam said, still wiping the woman's face with the bandana. “We've got to get her up out of here. Does she look familiar to you?”

Dankett wiped his bare thumb across the woman's lips and across her eyes, one at a time.

“Yep,” he said. “I can't swear to it, but she looks like one of the doves from the Number Five.”

“Here you go, Ranger,” said Lang, stooping down with them. He reached out with an open canteen and poured a trickle of water onto the woman's face. Sam wiped her face some more.

“Obliged, Cisco,” Sam said. He looked at Lang as if to question him being there. Although the prisoner had no choice, he might have balked and put up resistance to coming down in the trench with Dankett.

As if reading the Ranger's mind, Lang glanced around the rancid ditch and shrugged.

“Can't say I've ever been in worse,” he said.

Sam washed the woman's face with canteen water. While he did so, Dankett and Lang fashioned a rope sling to carry her in.

“Where are we taking her until the doctor gets back?” Dankett asked.

“You said she works at the saloon?” Sam replied.

“I'm pretty sure,” Dankett said.

“That's where we're taking her,” Sam said, watching Lang reach the rope under the woman. With no regard for the odor and the waste matter clinging to her, he drew the rope snug enough to lift the woman among the three of them without harming her.

“Ready, Ranger,” Lang said.

The three lifted the woman in the rope sling and ascended the steep side of the ditch with her. When they reached the top and hoisted her over the edge, they laid her down on the ground. The townsmen hurried forward with bucket upon bucket of water and poured it over her while the Ranger covered her face with a towel someone brought to him.

Picking her up, rope sling and all, out of the mess the water washed off around her, Sam carried her across the fifty feet of ground and into the saloon through the rear door.

Inside the open rear door, the doves, bartenders and patrons had gathered in anticipation, having heard about the Ranger's find in their waste ditch.

“Oh no!” said the dove named Lila, a pair of barber scissors sticking up from the bodice of her dress. “It's Anna Rose, God help her.” She looked at the battered face of the unconscious woman in Sam's arms.

“Get out of my way. Let me see her,” said Wesley Fluge. The wide, stocky saloon owner pushed the others aside and stepped forward for a look. “I'll be damned, it is Anna Rose,” he said. He looked up from the battered dove's face at Sam. “Found her in the shit ditch, huh?”

Sam gave him a hard look.

“She's one of yours, then?” he said.

“Was,” said Fluge, shaking his head. “But not anymore. She robbed a customer and made her getaway a few days back.”

“Some getaway,” Lang put in, soiled up and down his front, his cuffed hands wet and grimy. Beside Lang, Dankett looked around and saw a billiard stick leaning against a table where a game had been going on.

“Where can I lay her?” Sam asked the owner.

“Anywhere, except in
my saloon
,” Fluge said with a dark chuckle and a half grin. No sooner had he spoken than he let out a pain-filled grunt as the tip of the billiard stick Dankett had grabbed was jammed into his belly.

“What was that, Mr. Fluge?” Dankett asked the owner in a mock voice. “Oh, I see . . . on the faro table, you said. My, but that's kind of you!” He held the stick in both hands, ready to jam it again.

Fluge staggered a step back, one hand clutching his belly.

“Please,” he rasped, his other hand gesturing the Ranger and the wet and battered dove toward a closed gaming table in a corner.

The doves crowded around as Sam laid the battered woman down.

“You and your deputy take your prisoner upstairs, Ranger. Get yourselves cleaned up,” said Lila. She reached out to pat the Ranger's shoulder, but stopped herself. “We'll see to Anna Rose until the doctor gets here.”

“Obliged,” Sam said, looking down at himself for the first time. He winced and turned to Dankett. “Deputy, take the prisoner upstairs. Both of you get scrubbed. I'll watch about the jail until you get done.”

Lila said to Sam, “I was headed to the jail to see about your prisoners, but that will have to wait. We'll send all your clothes over to the laundry and get somebody to scrub your boots too.” Lila shooed her hands at the three of them. “Now get out of here. You're stinking up the place.”

•   •   •

As the Ranger left through the rear door and Lang and Dankett walked up the stairs to one of the rooms that offered a bathing tub, Henry Teague gave Sonny Rudabough a knowing look. They sat at a table in the corner of the saloon.

“Jesus, Sonny, you told me you took care of her,” Teague whispered. “Said she'd never be seen again. Now Coyle is going to know she didn't steal his money.”

“So what if he does? Anyway, I did take care of her,” Sonny whispered, staring toward the crowd of doves round the faro table with a troubled look on his face.

“You didn't take care of her,” Teague said. “You just dunked her like a plug of bread into brown gravy.” He frowned. “Did she see you?”

“I don't think so,” Sonny said.

“
Don't think so
won't dry your leg when you see a noose swing over a limb,” Teague said. “If Hugh Fenderson calls me down over this, what are you going to do to keep me from flying ugly and blowing your head off?”

“Don't threaten me, Henry,” Sonny cautioned the older gunman. “I took care of her once, damn it. I'll take care of her again.”

•   •   •

Inside the unfinished jail, the Ranger sat in silence in Dankett's wooden chair, wearing nothing but a thin ragged towel tied around his middle. Before coming in through the side door, he'd shed his soiled clothing and left it in a pile on the dirt, boots, sombrero and all, to be picked up by someone from the town laundry. He'd wiped himself down with water and a washcloth, then thrown the washcloth away. He'd dried himself, stepped inside the door naked, rifle in hand, and tied the towel around his waist.

Toy Johnson and Randall Carnes had given each other looks of stunned disbelief, then turned stiffly back to the Ranger as he sat down with his Winchester across his lap and stared at them. After a long, tense silence, Toy Johnson cleared his throat and ventured to speak.

“So, Ranger Burrack,” he said, “is it being too forward of me to ask what's going on here?”

“Nothing's going on here, Johnson,” Sam said flatly. “The dove's not coming. We're just waiting for the doctor to get back and patch you two up. Come morning you're out of here.”

“You're not going to charge us for trying to kill you?” Carnes asked in a suspicious tone.

“That stays between us,” Sam said. “If either of you ever comes at me again, I'll make sure you're dead before I even reload.”

The two looked at each other as if suspecting a trick.

“You and the deputy took Harvey Lang out and shot him, didn't you?” Carnes asked in an accusing voice.

“No,” Sam said, witnessing their fear and dark misconceptions at work on them.

“Why are you sitting there naked, Ranger?” Johnson asked.

The Ranger didn't answer.

Johnson stood up defiantly and steadied himself, wincing from the pain in his hip. “Just so you know, I'll die before I'll be put upon to participate in anything contrary to my nature.”