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Authors: Ralph W. Cotton

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BOOK: Lawman from Nogales (9781101544747)

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Walking back inside the adobe, to the window where the candle sat burning on the sill, he stood and listened closely until he heard the sound of hooves moving across the desert floor.

“Time to go to work,” he murmured to himself, stepping away from the open window.

When Teto and his men were close enough that they could see the window framing the glowing candlelight, they slowed to a stop and sat staring for a moment at the abandoned adobe, checking their rifles and the pistols on their hips.

“Everybody spread out,” Teto said in a lowered voice. He nudged his horse forward at a walk. “Nobody shoots until we find out what this is.” He looked over at Carrico. “Wade, flank us like earlier. Get behind the house, but don't get an itchy trigger finger.”

“I never do,” Carrico said, pulling his horse away from the others.

With their mounts spread a few feet apart, Carrico off covering their left flank, the five horsemen advanced their horses forward slowly and stopped again twenty yards from the glowing candlelight.

“Wait here,” Teto said to the other four horsemen. He gigged his horse forward and rode on to the front of the adobe.

“
Hola
the house,” he called out to the open front door, seeing the flickering candlelight dimly throughout the abandoned hovel.

He waited for a tense, silent moment. The men sat their horses, staring at the candlelight, guns in hand, ready to fire.

“Erin, my Irish princess!” Teto called out, mocking her pet name. “I know you are in there. I followed you as soon as you left. Come out!”

Another silence. Then Teto said to the adobe, “I will come and drag you out if I have to. Or you can come out on your own. You can tell me everything and I will forgive you.”

Another silence.

“Damn it, what's he waiting for?” Paco Sterns said sidelong under his breath.

“He's
loco
for the woman,” Jete Longley whispered back from a few feet away. “Him and Luis both were always crazy over her.”

“You need to keep that kind of talk to yourself, Jete,” said Blake.

“I've been thinking,” Teto called out to the shadowy hovel, “the squirrel didn't get himself loose. You cut him loose. You and him partnered up on the moneyâdon't try denying it!”

“Jesus,” Sterns whispered, “has he lost his mind?”

No one replied. The men only stared and listened.

“My brother was not lying,” Teto called out. “You stabbed him! Were you sleeping with my brotherâmy brother who I killed for you?”

“Je-
sus
!” Sterns whispered again, this time with more emphasis. “We trusted these two holding our money?” He shook his head in disbelief.

Behind the house, Carrico had climbed down from his horse and looked all around on the ground.

“Teto, I've got two sets of hooves leading away from here,” he called out. He hoped his information would shut Teto up. Nobody wanted to hear this kind of raving from their leader.

“Damn it to hell!” Teto shouted. He hammered his bootheels against his horse, sending it recklessly bolting in the open front door of the abandoned hovel.

The men looked at each other in the silvery darkness of dawn.

“She's gone!” Teto called out, appearing at the window in the candlelight, down from his saddle, his rifle in hand. His horse milled a few feet behind him. “But she was here! So was our money!” He held up the empty feed sacks. “I found these . . . and I found three gold coins lying on the floor!”

“All right, Teto!” Carrico called out from behind the house. “I've got their tracks! What the hell are we waiting for?”

“You heard him, damn it!” Teto shouted, still standing in the light of the candle. “Don't just sit there. Let's get after theâ”

The men heard a rifle shot reach in out of the darkness and cut Teto Torres' words short. They saw the impact of the bullet pick their leader up and hurl him backward like a limber scarecrow. Teto hit the wall on the other side of the room and slid down, trailing blood.

The men took control of their spooked horses before the animals could rear and bolt away. Turning his horse quickly, Paco Sterns pointed at the gray sliver of smoke thirty yards away.

“There's the shooter!” he cried out, pointing with his big Remington revolver.

The three other men turned their horses in time to see a streak of blue flame explode from Sterns' gun barrel. But as Paco Sterns' shot blasted out, so did a second shot from the Ranger's Winchester rifle. This time, his shot came from a different spot, twenty feet to the left of the first looming curl of smoke.

The Ranger's second shot flung Sterns backward out of his saddle and sent him rolling limp on the ground.

Truman Filo saw the flash from the Ranger's shot.

“It has to be that damned lawman!” he shouted to Jete Longley and Ludlow Blake. “Ride him down!”

The three horsemen bolted out across the sandy ground toward the second curl of rifle smoke standing in the grainy darkness. But as their horses pounded forward, Filo drew his horse back from between them, circled wide of the adobe hovel toward Wade Carrico, who had remounted his horse and was pointing it in the direction of Hector's and Erin's hoofprints.

“
Wade
! Wait for
me
!” he cried out.

Carrico turned in his saddle just in time to see a streak of fire reach out ten yards to the left of the Ranger's second curl of smoke. The shot hit Filo in his back and sent him tumbling forward, horse and all, end over end in a cloud of dust.

“Damn
this
!” cried Wade Carrico. He sent his horse pounding out along the set of hoofprints.

Longley and Blake spotted the Ranger's muzzle flash in time to start firing before he could take a new position on them.

“There he is!” shouted Longley. “Kill him!”

The two rode hard, firing repeatedly. Their pistol shots whistled past Sam's head as he dropped onto one knee and took aim in the gray-silver dawn.

Two shots exploded from the Winchester and the two riders went down, leaving their saddles as if they'd been snatched up from behind by some large, vengeful hand.

Sam straightened up from his position on his knee and looked all around. Hearing something close behind him, he swung around, the rifle ready and cocked. Then he let out a tight breath, almost in silent prayer.

“You were supposed to
stay
,” he said to the coppery, black-point dun.

The horse sawed its head, chuffed and pawed a hoof at the ground.

Sam looked at the big Swiss rifle he'd assembled and left tied down atop his bedroll just in case he needed it.

“Oh, I see,” he said, stepping over the dun. He uncocked the smoking Winchester and shoved it down into the saddle boot. He slid the Swiss rifle from under its tie-downs and swung up into the saddle.

Riding toward the hovel, he circled the dun to the left, getting the house out from between himself and his fleeing target. Seeing a brownish gray rise of dust climbing upward toward the horizon, he stopped the dun and reached his hand far down its left rein. As he gripped the rein short and drew it back tight, he raised his left knee and pressed it down firmly on the horse's withers.

The dun obeyed his command, sank onto its front knees and rolled easily down onto its side. As the horse lay down, Sam stepped out of his saddle, Swiss rifle in hand, and also lay down. He stretched himself out on the ground, holding the rifle out across the dun's side.

He put the rifle's scope to his eye and studied the rising dust in the distance until he saw the outline of the rider move up into the early sunlight. At this distance, even through the scope, the rider looked smallâthe shot hard to make.

Sam settled himself in. He reached his left hand out, rubbed the dun's neck and patted it, telling it to keep still. Then he put his hand back to the front of the rifle stock and eased his breathing into the same rhythm as that of the horse.

He pinned the scope to the center of Wade Carrico's back and let his rifle barrel drift up and down with the steady rise and fall of the dun's sides.

In the soft, silver glow of dawn, he squeezed the trigger on the barrel's rise, seeing the circle of the scope climb from the small of Carrico's back to a point between his shoulder blades just as the rifle bucked against his shoulder.

The dun did not stir. But Sam laid his left hand back over its neck as if to calm all the same.

“Easy, boy,” he whispered.

He studied the target and watched Carrico stiffen for a second before he slumped to one side, spilled from his saddle and rolled away in the dirt.

Sam let out a breath and stood up, the big Swiss rifle smoking in his hand. He gazed out as the horse continued to climb without its rider into early sunlight. After a moment, he picked up the dun's reins and tapped his boot to its rump. As the horse rose to its hooves, Sam swung a leg over its back and slipped easily into his saddle.

The dun shook out its mane as Sam laid the Swiss rifle across his lap. Sam turned the horse toward the hovel and patted its withers with his left hand.

“You're as good as I've ever seen,” he said quietly to the dun.

Inside the hovel, Teto Torres had crawled to the rear door and sat gazing off into the swell of sunrise. He clasped an empty feed sack to his bloody chest. In one blood-streaked hand, he squeezed the loose gold coins he'd found on the floor. When he heard the Ranger lead the dun through the house up behind him, he didn't try to turn around.

“So, lawman,” he said, “did you finally kill everybody?”

Sam didn't answer. He noted how strong Teto's voice sounded for a man who'd taken a bullet dead center.

“How bad are you hit?” he asked, stopping two feet behind the wounded outlaw leader, his Colt hanging in his hand, the big rifle back beneath its tie-downs.

“Oh, I am what . . . they call . . . a goner,” Teto said, pain in his halting voice in spite of its strength.

Sam stepped forward into the doorway and looked down over Teto's shoulder, making sure there was no gun in his hands.

Seeing the Ranger standing over him, Teto opened his bloody hands and exposed the large bullet hole in his chest.

“See . . . I'm dead,” he said quietly. He clamped his right hand back over the wound to steady a flow of blood, but he opened his left hand and showed Sam the blood-smeared coins. “She . . . left me these.” He gave a chuckle that turned into a deep cough. “Just something . . . to remember her by, eh?”

Sam only stared down at the coins. He couldn't say if Erin had left them for Teto, or if maybe Hector had simply dropped them while stuffing the saddlebags. But the man was dyingâlet him believe what he needed to believe.

“Lawman,” Teto asked after a moment of silence, “have you ever loved a woman?”

Sam looked up, off in the direction of the hoofprints.

“Yes, I have,” he said.

Teto heard something in the Ranger's voice that caused him to raise his face and look up at him. Blood trickled down the corner of his lips, but he managed a weak smile.

“Ah, she . . . got to you too, eh?” he said.

Sam didn't answer.

“You can tell me. After all,” Teto said, managing to shrug, “what can I do?”

“How well did you know her?” Sam asked.

“Well enough,” Teto said. “She is
Mejicana
. Did you know that?”

Sam didn't answer; instead he said, “She told you?”

“She did not have . . . to tell me,” said Teto. “I am
Mejicano
. . . so I know.” He smiled. “But I never . . . let on to know. She likes . . . to think she is
all
Irish. And she wants to be
Americana . . .
” He shook his head. “I don't . . . know why. You
Americanos
. . . are nothing but trouble. Still, everyone wants to be
you.
”

Sam only stared down at him and let him talk. He'd stop talking soon.

A silence set in while Teto shook his head and regained his thoughts. “You slept with her,
sÃ
?” he said.

“No,” Sam said. “It wasn't that way.”

“My brother slept with her,” Teto said. “But it is my baby . . . she will bring into the world.”

Sam only listened.

“And it is I who she loves . . . not my brother, not you, no one but me,” he said. He held up the coins. “This is why she left
me
these, to tell me . . .”

Sam only nodded and said noting.

“You do not believe me, do you?” Teto said. “I can tell you do not.”

“It doesn't matter what I believe, Teto,” Sam said quietly. “I came here to do a job. Our paths crossed, hers and mineâ”

BOOK: Lawman from Nogales (9781101544747)

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