High Wild Desert (3 page)

All right, Sam thought, if this reward story was true, and he saw no reason yet to doubt it, he still had a list of names that had to be attended to; he still had a prisoner to deliver to Yuma. He raised the mug to his lips and finished his coffee. He'd watch for more signs of a bounty being on his head on his way back down across the Painted Desert. If there were professional bounty men out to kill him for a reward, so be it.

By the time he turned in Lang at Yuma, he'd know for certain if the story was true. And the minute he decided it was true, he wouldn't wait around for a string of gunmen to call him out in the street, or shoot him in his sleep. No, he thought, feeling his hand draw tight around the thick coffee mug. If it came down to that, he'd ride straight to the source, drag Hugh Fenderson out from behind his big desk and shoot him dead,
powerful
wealthy man
or not.

“Can I pour you some more coffee, Ranger?” Adele Simpson cut into his thoughts, walking back into the small kitchen from the empty saloon. As she spoke, she picked up the coffeepot from atop the woodstove.

“No, ma'am. Obliged, though,” Sam said, catching himself, realizing he'd taken his eyes off Lang for too long. Luckily, Lang hadn't realized it would have been a good opportunity to make a move on him. Sam's Winchester was leaning against the table beside him, but it would have been an awkward move, swinging the rifle into play, had Lang lunged suddenly across the table while he'd been concentrating on Fenderson and the reward on his head.

Pay attention,
he chastised himself.

“What about me over here, Miss Adele?” Lang cut in. “Or do I not count for nothing?”

Without a word, Adele stepped around the table with the coffeepot and poured more coffee into Lang's cup. As she poured the coffee, Sam caught a look pass between the two.
What was that . . . ?
Then he watched Adele step back from the table and set the pot down on the stove.

“I'm afraid the miners have brought me some bad news,” she said quietly, showing an air of reserve.

“Oh?” said Sam, still wondering about the look he'd seen her and Cisco Lang exchange.

“Yes,” she said, folding her arms in front of her. “The last of the Shambeck mines northeast of here are shutting down. Those two miners made it a point to come tell me, on their way to New Delmar, looking for work.”

The Ranger and Cisco Lang looked at her. She was clearly shaken and upset. Sam stood and pulled out a chair for her.

“Sit down here, ma'am,” he said, guiding her. “Can I get
you
some coffee?”

“No, thank you, I'm fine,” Adele said, sitting. “The fact is, the Shambeck mines were all that's allowed me to hold on here. Once they're gone, I'll have to shut the doors on the Desert Inn for good.”

“I'm sorry, ma'am,” the Ranger said, sitting back down and laying his rifle across his lap.

The woman only nodded.

“Thank you, Ranger,” she said. “I have to admit there's a certain amount of relief—I've been expecting this for a while.” She took a deep breath of resignation and said, “May I ride along with you, Ranger, as far as the New Delmar Rail Depot?”

Sam looked back and forth at Lang and her. He wasn't going to spend the next three nights wondering what was between these two.

“I'm going to say yes,” the Ranger replied. “But before I do, I want to know what it is that keeps the two of you passing each other looks when you think I can't see it.”

Lang stared blankly; Adele Simpson looked surprised. Sam had only noticed it happen once, but he played that one time as a hunch that it had happened before.

After a second of silence, the woman sighed.

“All right, Ranger,” she said, “the truth is, Cisco and I used to be
close
, I suppose is the best way to put it.”

Lang chuffed and looked away.

“I should have told you right off,” she continued. “But there was no reason to mention it. I knew the two of you would ride away, and that would be the end of it.” She paused, then said, “But if I'm riding with you to New Delmar, I understand you need to know who you're riding with.”

There it was, Sam thought, looking back and forth between the two of them.

“Everything is over now?” he asked them both, wanting to see each of their reactions.

Lang chuffed again, shook his head and looked away. He mumbled something under his breath.

“Dead and buried,” Adele said, “and none too soon.” She started to say more, but Sam raised a hand, stopping her.

“Excuse me, ma'am. That's enough for me to know,” he said. “We'll spend the night, give you time to get ready. We'll leave here come first light.”

He looked back and forth again. What else could he do? he asked himself. He couldn't let the woman travel that long desert trail alone.

Chapter 3

New Delmar, the Painted Desert

A surge of red and silver-gray desert dust blew along rows of colored hills, strewn out to the distance like striped tepees. Winds whispered low and mournful through endless stands of spiral stone, past totemlike hoodoos. Flat plate-stones rested slantwise and haphazard atop them like hats on careless drunkards.

Five dust-covered horsemen rested their horses, having just climbed a winding game path. They looked back down at the broad canyon floor and the intersecting trails snaking throughout it. Purple-gray tumbleweeds rolled, bobbed and bounced along like herds of strange creatures stirred into chase. Above the canyon, overhead, the men watched red-streaked winds rise and rejoin as one. Once whole, the wind swirled and twisted and raced across blue cloudless skies.

“I hate this damnable place,” said one of the riders, a Kansas gunman named Chic Reye.

“You hate every damned place that ain't Kansas,” a gunman beside him named Karl Sieg put in. The three other gunmen looked at each other; one spit and ran a hand across his dry lips.

“I allow there's some truth to that,” Chic Reye agreed, eyeing Sieg narrowly, swishing a canteen of tepid water around in his gloved hand.

Atop a recessed ledge, tucked back among more tall twisted rock—much of it broken trunks of ancient trees turned to stone—the horsemen fell silent for a moment, watching a long red spin of trail dust rise and spread away behind the oncoming stage.

One of the men, a dwarf named Deak “Little Deak” Holder, finally let out a short laugh.

“I don't know about the rest of yas,” he said. “But it's hard for me to be this close to a moving stagecoach and not ride down there hell-for-leather and rob it.”

“I know the feeling,” said the leader, Dave Coyle. “But contain
yourself for now, Little Deak. My brother, Oldham, will soon have us some robbing work lined up.” He held the reins to two horses, his own under saddle and tack, and a bareback buckskin with black stockings and mane, wearing only a hackamore bridle.

“Don't worry about me. I'm good with all this,” Little Deak said quickly. “I'm always one for the making of
light
conversation.” He turned to the man seated on a bay beside him and said, “Ain't that right, Blind Simon?”

“Yeah, he's a huckleberry, this one,” said the older, gray-bearded gunman, Blind Simon Goss. “Loves to converse,” he added. Goss' eyes wandered aimlessly behind a pair of black-lens spectacles as he spoke. “Sometimes he carries on so much you sort of want to smack him backward.”

The dwarf gave the blind man a surprised look, but then he grinned and shook his head. His hand fidgeted with a length of rope he carried slung over his shoulder, a small loop tied in either end.

“Simon's only kidding about that,” he said.

“No, I'm not,” said Simon.

But the dwarf ignored him and grinned as he looked almost straight up at the others towering above him.

“The two of us have been riding together now the past six or seven months. If we didn't get along, I expect we'd have already killed each other.”

“Let me ask you something, little fellow,” said Chic Reye, sounding as if something had been on his mind for a while.

“It's
Deak
, not
little fellow
,” the dwarf corrected him.

“Yeah, okay,” said Chic, shrugging it off. “What the all-fired hell are you two doing out here anyway?”

“What are you asking, Reye?” said the dwarf, stiffening at the gunman's question. He kept both his small hands near the butt of a Colt double-action Thunderer in a holster strapped across his belly. The gun, though a shorter model, looked almost as long as Deak's arm.

“Take it easy, Chic,” Sieg said beside him.

“No, I mean it,” said Reye. “We've all wondered. I'm just the one coming up to ask. No offense,” he said to Deak, “but you're not big enough to fart above a whisper, and your pard there is as blind as a damn cave bat. What are you doing riding this long-rider trail? Ain't there a circus or something somewhere—?”

“Watch your mouth, you
son of a bitch
,” Blind Simon cut in, his right hand gripping a big Dance Brothers revolver holstered on his waist. He dropped his horse's reins and stepped forward, stumbling a little over a small rock that his tapping stick failed to detect for him.

“Look at this,” Chic Reye said in disgust. “Pull your hand up off that smoker, blind man, else I'll put a bullet in your hide.”

“Let it go, Simon,” Little Deak said. The dwarf stepped out in front of the blind man in order to stop him, but Simon plowed over him, almost falling himself.

“Everybody calm the hell down,” shouted Dave Coyle. He stepped over beside Reye. “Why'd you have to go and say something like that, Chic? The man's blind, but Oldham said he's a damn good gunman.”

Reye gave a short disbelieving laugh.

“Check what you just said, Dave,” he chuckled. “Blind, but a damn good gunman? He can be one or the other, but he can't be both.”

Before Dave Coyle could say any more, Simon stepped in closer, dropping his hand from his revolver but balling his fists at his sides.

“I'm not blind, damn it,” he said, “leastwise not all the way. I can see shadows, images and the like.”

“I call that
blind
,” said Reye, “no matter whatever else you want to call it, if all you're seeing is
shadows and the like.
”

“I'm not so blind that I can't draw this smoker and burn you down right there where you're standing,” said Simon, moving in even closer, his face turning back and forth trying to single out the sound of Reye's voice in the strong constant purr of wind.

“Ah, hell, I ain't drawing on a blind man,” Reye said, settling down a little. “Forget I said anything.”

“I'm not forgetting nothing. Draw, damn you to hell,” said Simon.

“I said no, I ain't drawing on a blind man,” Reye said, ignoring the blind outlaw's cursing.

“I'll make you draw!” Blind Simon shouted. “I'll spit in your damned face.” He let go a foamy string of spittle and wrapped his hand on his gun butt, ready to draw. “Now, what are you going to do about it,
coward
?”

“Oh no,” Little Deak murmured.

The rest of the men fell silent as stone.

“Jesus, Simon,” Dave Coyle cut in, “you just spit on my horse.” Coyle's dusty bay gave a low grumbling chuff and swung its head away.

“See what I mean?” Reye murmured. He shook his head in disgust.

“Hell, Dave, I didn't mean to do that,” Simon said. He raised his hand from his gun butt and reached out for the horse's muzzle. “Sorry there, horse,” he said, missing the horse, mistaking Dave's face for the horse's muzzle.

Dave ducked his face away from Simon's reaching hand.

“Can you come get him, Little Deak?” he said. The men milled in place and looked away.

“Simon,” said Reye with a tinge of remorse, “I don't know what the hell I was thinking, saying all that to you and the little fellow, about the circus and all.”

“Where are you, Reye?” Simon asked, turning his head back and forth.

Reye sidestepped farther away from Simon before answering.

“I'm trying to apologize here, Simon, damn it,” said Reye, “to both you and the little fellow.”

“It's
Little Deak
,” said Deak, correcting him again.

“All right,
Little Deak
, then,” said Reye, relenting his sarcastic position.

Hearing Reye's voice, Simon turned to hone in on it. But Reye sidestepped even farther way without speaking.

“Stage is almost there,” said Sieg, drawing their attention toward the rise of red bluish dust drawing closer on the trail below.

“All right, everybody mount up,” said Dave Coyle. “Let's get down there first. My brother don't like being kept waiting.”

The men turned to their dusty horses and stepped into their saddles. Little Deak grabbed the rope from his shoulder and flipped one looped end deftly up and over his saddle horn. He stepped up into the loop with his left foot, into his stirrup with his right. Chic Reye and Karl Sieg watched him swing his short leg over the saddle.

Beside Little Deak, Blind Simon adjusted himself atop his horse and shoved his walking stick down into his rifle boot beside his Spencer carbine.

“There's some things takes me a whole lot to get used to,” Reye said sidelong to Sieg, eyeing the two. “Other things . . . it ain't ever going to happen at all.” The two turned their horses along with the others and rode away.

•   •   •

At the stage depot on the valley floor, Oldham Coyle stood up from the space he'd cleared for himself on the rear luggage rack and shook thick red dust from the breast and sleeves of his duster. Rifle in hand, he lifted his hat from his head, slapped it against his thigh and put it back on. As the shotgun rider stepped down and helped four disheveled women passengers off the big Studebaker coach, Coyle reached into the luggage compartment, dragged out his saddle, shoved his rifle down into a saddle boot and shouldered the load. Dust billowed.

As if from out of nowhere, a hooded four-horse double buggy rolled up to the four women and stopped with a jolt. Coyle stood watching, his coated face and mustache appearing as if molded out of red-blue clay.

Assisting the women into the large, stylish rig, the shotgun rider shut the buggy door and turned to Coyle.

“Stranger,” he said to Oldham Coyle, “we're mighty obliged to have you riding our tailgate. As much trouble as we've had with road agents of late, I can't seem to keep watch on everything at once.”

“Don't mention it.” Coyle smiled and touched his hat brim.

“I'm Wilson Tash. I didn't catch your name,” the shotgun rider said, looking him up and down.

Coyle let his thumb fall over his rifle hammer as he looked back and forth between the women and Willie Tash.

“I'm North . . . Joe North,” he said, seeing a weathered sign pointing north toward the main street of New Delmar. Oddly, he had used the name Joe North before. The fact that the sign had brought the alias back in his mind struck him as a good omen.

“Well, Mr. North,” said Tash. “I want you to tell the bartender at the Number Five to stand you a bottle of rye and see me for its value.”

“Obliged, Willie Tash,” said Coyle.

A light giggle came from the women in the buggy.

“Tell him to send you up for a tight go-round with Utah Della, and see me for the value,
cowboy
,”
said a willowy brunette with a lewd grin and a smeared black beauty dot above her lip.

“Oh, or with Lila too,” said another woman, this one a hefty middle-aged blonde with lips the color of calf liver, lipstick mixed with red silt from riding eighteen miles along a string of red-layered buttes through a hard-pushing wind.

Beside the voluptuous blonde, a young woman giggled and batted her eyes.

“Or, don't forget Betty, cowboy,” she said. “You can ride tailgate for me any time.”

“Ladies, I am nothing but,
nothing
but
, obliged,” Coyle said, sweeping his hat from his head in a grand gesture and holding it to his chest as he made a slight bow. Then he pointed at each woman in turn. “Let's see . . . that's Della, Lila and Betty, and . . . ?” His finger moved toward the fourth woman, a small, fine-featured redhead who sat staring at him with a coy smile.

“Don't be wagging that finger 'less it's the best thing you've got, cowboy,” she said. “I'll whisper my name in your ear when you come see me.” Her eyes played up and down his dust-caked clothing, his face and hat. “Once you get some of this countryside scrubbed off yourself, that is.”

“I can't wait.” Coyle smiled.

“Well, gals,” Willie Tash said almost sullenly, “you sure know how to pale a bottle of rye, I reckon.” To Coyle he said, “But the bottle is there for you when you want it. It's no small thing, guarding a stagecoach when you got outlaws like we've got up here.”

“Real killers, I hear,” said Coyle, touching his hat brim again and looking off toward five bands of dust following his men down the last few hundred yards of trail into the old Delmar depot.

“Something awful,” said Tash, shaking his head.

“Don't forget us, cowboy,” said Lila from the buggy. “We're getting tired of humping these rock crackers.”

“I'd have to be a straight-out fool to forget you, ma'am,” Coyle said, turning away as he spoke.

•   •   •

At the head of the five riders, Dave Coyle slowed his horse down to a trot, then down to a walk the last few yards. When he reined the horse to a halt and turned it sidelong to his brother, Oldham stood up from leaning against a corral fence. The rest of the men sidled their horses in around Dave Coyle.