Once a Ranger

ALL TIED UP

Guthrey and Randal started out on foot in the twilight, dodging cactus and mesquite until they drew close to the two horse silhouettes circling the herd in the growing darkness. The boys were well apart on their horses, keeping the settled ponies in a loose bunch. Guthrey and the young cowboy knelt in the grass to plan how to get their prey. The first boy came close by. They jerked him off his horse and, his mouth clamped shut by Guthrey's hand, smothered a short yell. Randal quickly tied the boy's arms and legs with heavy twine. Then Guthrey gagged him. Satisfied they had that one, he moved low toward the other herder.

“Sanchez! Where are you?” the boy cried out in Spanish.

“Right here,” Guthrey said and pulled him off the horse. Quickly he covered the boy's mouth. “No yelling or I'll cut your throat. Whose horses are these?” he demanded in Spanish.

“Montoya's.”

“Who is he?”

The frightened boy did not answer.

Guthrey shook him. “What is his first name?”

“Royal.”

“
Bueno
.” He spoke to the boy in Spanish. “If you and your herder friend get untied before sunup and run to Royal, I will come back and cut both your throats from ear to ear. You savvy?”

Berkley titles by Dusty Richards

THE HORSE CREEK INCIDENT

MONTANA REVENGE

THE SUNDOWN CHASER

WULF'S TRACKS

CHAPARRAL RANGE WAR

ONCE A RANGER

ONCE A RANGER

Dusty Richards

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

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ONCE A RANGER

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2014 by Dusty Richards.

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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-13787-5

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley mass-market edition / March 2014

Cover illustration by Bruce Emmett.

Cover design by Edwin Tse.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ONE

T
HE PNK-PURPLE GLOW
of predawn backlit the distant Chiricahua Mountains. Seated on his good saddle made by a famous San Antonio saddle maker, the new sheriff of Crook County, Arizona Territory, Phillip Guthrey, rubbed his shirtsleeves. The temperature had fallen to the depths of a desert night—to feeling downright cold. This would not last very long—the coming sun would soon raise the mercury to one hundred degrees or higher.

Beside him, deputy Noble McCoy, an older man with white whiskers bristling his firm chin, held a Winchester across his lap and sat on a stout bay gelding. He cleared his throat and hocked up some phlegm. He spat it aside.

“They're going to be surprised we got up this early,” Noble said under his breath, sounding amused.

“Yeah, let's go arrest them. They may give us a fight.”

Noble nodded he'd heard the warning, then booted his horse forward. The loud sound of their horses' iron shoes crushing the gravel blended with the whit-woo crowing of the topknot quail scurrying nearby in the desert vegetation. A sharp smell of creosote from the greasewood brush was heavy on the soft breeze stirring the new day to life.

At her first sight of them coming, a woman screamed, and Guthrey charged his horse forward. “You all are under arrest. Throw down your guns or my posse surrounding you will shoot every one of you.”

Two men, half-dressed, stumbled out of the palm-frond squaw shade and threw their hands in the air. The screamer was a Mexican teenage girl and, wide-eyed, she gave up too.

“Go around back,” Guthrey said to Noble with a toss of his head. He kept his six-gun trained on them, watching carefully for any others as he stepped down.

“Who else is here?” Every nerve ending in his body tingled when his boot soles hit the gravelly surface, and he studied the three of them and the area around the ramada.

“Ain't no one else here but us,” the heavier-set man said, holding his hands up as Guthrey circled the shade and went over to check them for weapons. They appeared to be weaponless.

“You can put them down.” Guthrey holstered his six-gun.

“What the hell do you want from us?”

“Your name is Bergman?”

“Yes, Del Bergman. Why?”

“You sold a horse to Humbolt's Livery in Soda Springs that you stole from the Three Y Ranch at Sonoita.”

“Not me.”

His deputy went over and shoved the rifle in his scabbard. “There's four other horses in the corral out back.”

Guthrey nodded. “What's your name?” he asked the younger man.

“Nelson Mercer.”

Guthrey made a note of his name with a pencil in his tally book along with Bergman's name. “I need the information on the horses in the pen too.”

“I'll get it,” Noble took his book, and in a bobbled walk he left them.

Quickly Guthrey handcuffed the two men and told them to sit on the ground. He turned to the scared girl. “You the cook?”

“
Sí
, senor.”

“Wash your hands and make us something to eat.”

“I can heat frijoles and make some flour tortillas.”

“That will do. What is your name?”

“Nannia.”

“You live around here?”

“No, I live in a Sonora village, St. Joseph.”

“Fix the food. We have a long day's ride to get back to Soda Springs.”

“
Sí
.” She turned in her too-short dress and the garment showed too much of her shapely brown legs.

Guthrey had no interest in her, but he knew she was a teenage
puta
that Bergman had picked up on the border, probably near where he rustled the horses. Such a female had little future in such a small village but to become a wife and child bearer in poverty, so many of them passed up that opportunity and sought a dream.

Guthrey was satisfied they had arrested the real horse thieves. It was a very busy trade in the entire region of the Mexican border country. Most such animals went to Tombstone, where the market for any form of transportation was high. It was obvious no one in law enforcement there was doing much about horse stealing in their jurisdiction, but Guthrey promised the people of Crook County he'd do his best to make such horse thieves feel unwelcome in the legal confines of his district.

“Those three all belong to the same ranch,” Noble said, indicating the other mounts.

Guthrey nodded and took back his book. The old man did a good job of putting the descriptions of the horses and their brands in his notes, facts Guthrey would need for the two new prosecutors sent down by the governor to clear up the mountain of cases, the ones that were brought on by his sweep of all the lawbreakers rounded up when he started his first day on the job less than a month earlier.

After eating the meal the girl prepared for them, Guthrey put the prisoners on horses and let the girl pick one of them to ride too. All the time he was eating the spicy burritos, he considered the squaw shelter on this abandoned camp. The structure probably needed to be destroyed so as not give shelter to any other trash like these two rustlers going through the country.

“Who owns this camp?” Guthrey asked Noble.

“I don't know. The spring dries up here by the middle of summer. Probably why folks abandoned this place.”

“I think we should burn it. And have one less hideout setup.”

“Good idea, Captain. No one will complain.”

“I'll do that before we leave.”

The housekeeping gear was stowed in two tow sacks and tied on the horse the girl rode bareback. Guthrey told her the gear and the horse were hers to keep.

She smiled and thanked him.

By eight
A.M.
on his pocket watch, they headed out for Soda Springs. En route, he sent the girl on her way. They arrived, alone, in midafternoon. The Crook County jail was inside a sprawling adobe building that was one story and served as the county offices. Cam Nichols, the big man who ran his jail, registered the prisoners on the jail log. A veteran jailer, he came looking for work when he heard Guthrey had taken over the office of sheriff. His past experience as a jailer made things run smoothly. With a cook and four other deputies on duty around the clock, the jail had a military air about it and smelled clean.

The territory prison wagons had kept the road to Yuma busy. And the last trials held there were sweltering hot in the improvised courtroom similar to the squaw shade of palm fronds he'd burned behind them earlier that morning. But the convicted felons would be a lot hotter in Yuma Prison.

He spoke to Tommy Glendon, the young man who operated the town's telegraph key in the county offices.

“You got another two rustlers?” the young man under the celluloid visor asked.

“Yes. We found two more. What's happening?” Guthrey asked.

“There is a New York news reporter here wants to talk to you. I knew you'd love that. Right now he's over at the trial being held against Curt Slegal. Three women are going to testify to the jury about him raping them.”

Guthrey nodded. “That is serious in the case against him. I had a hard time getting those women to even talk about this matter, but it's very important. I'll go by and listen. What's the reporter's name?”

“Albert Gooding.”

“Gooding. I'll try to avoid him.”

Tommy nodded and Guthrey headed over to hear a portion of the case.

Two of his new deputies were there to keep order. Teddy Baker and Ramon Zamora stood at the back. Both were veterans of New Mexico law enforcement. They came with letters from their past employer, the sheriff at Socorro, as good men with a record of perfect conduct.

In a whisper, Guthrey asked Zamora, who stood in the back, how the trial was going.

“This woman up there now is very forceful. Her name is Sally Landers.”

Guthrey nodded. “I had a hard time getting them to file charges.”

Zamora agreed. “I'd bet this jury finds him guilty.”

“I hope so. Have the others testified?”

“Another woman did before lunch.”

With a quick check over the crowd, Guthrey asked, “This crowd peaceful?”

“No trouble. They came to see these criminals get what they deserve. This place must have been hell before you took over. Night riders really scaring everyone or running them off.”

“There was no law. Now there is. I need to go home. My wife may think I've died, I've been gone so long. But I'll be back. If anything goes wrong, send word. I can be back here in a hurry.”

“Yes, sir.”

He walked back to his horse, watered him at a public trough, then cinched him up to head for home. In the saddle, he reined his mount around and left the county seat in a long trot for the Bridges Ranch. Cally, his new wife of six weeks, would be looking for him.

He short loped the horse up the lane to the ranch house in the last hour of daylight. A fiery sunset blazed in the west, burning out behind the last tall mountain range. He slid to a stop at the sight of Cally coming out of the log adobe house. Busy drying her hands, his redheaded wife burst into a run and tackled him.

They were both on the ground kissing and laughing like a pair of hound pups.

“I am so glad to see you,” she declared.

“You could of got hurt doing that.” He tousled her hair.

“No, never. I have been trying to keep busy with everything. How's Noble?”

“That old cuss is fine. We arrested two horse thieves early this morning who stole those horses at Sonoita and they're in jail now. The trial for Slegal is going on. Two or three women already testified about his raping them. He'll be put away for a long time. Another week of trials and then all of them will be behind bars in Yuma.” He kissed his pretty young wife, now sitting on his lap. “Now I need to clean up.”

“Just sit here and let me hold you. You had supper?”

“No.”

“I'll get up and fix you some. Then you and me can both take a bath.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

“But you need to eat first.”

“Yes, mother.”

“Hey, I don't get to boss you around very much.”

“Where's your brother?”

“Oh, in town. You didn't see him?”

“I was at Soda Springs, not Steward's Crossing. Was he back at that big house?” He called the house of ill repute in Steward's Crossing the big house.

“I guess he's just young and restless.”

“Let's forget about everything but us.”

“Good.” She pulled him up by the hand.

“Are they going to settle with Killion returning twenty thousand dollars to the county for the charges of misdeeds when he was on duty?”

“I told the county council that was their decision to make and I'd honor it. With my payroll of deputies, they are going to have to raise some money. They really didn't save much by not having law in the county.”

“That's been like a nose on your face,” she said. “You ought to know sooner or later it would cost to have a peaceful place to live.”

He agreed and she set in to fix his supper. Sitting at a chair at the table, Guthrey wrote in his log about his wants and needs for his job. He didn't realize where the time went when she told him, “Food's ready.”

She served him frijoles and fresh corn bread. Seated across from him at the table looking mischievous, she crossed and recrossed her legs several times. “I always wondered what was so great about being married. I am a believer now.”

“This job will keep me away from you a lot.”

“No, it will fulfill your life. You aren't a cowboy, you aren't a farmer; you worry about people and how they are being treated. Behind that badge you are where you need to be.”

“I once was a cattle drive boss. My last trip up there, so many men died or were killed. That trip left me so upset I went into hiding. Then I took up the Ranger business and liked it, but they never paid us all our money. In the end I resigned a job I enjoyed but could not afford to keep.”

“I'm just glad you came along here because I now have a husband I love. Let's go shower.”

“You sure don't have much in me.” He stood up and kissed her. Then, armed with towels, they headed for the sheepherder shower under the drum filled by the windmill and heated by the sun. Laughing and teasing, they managed to wash their bodies under the pull-down chain on the showerhead, and then they dried themselves as the sun set in the west.

He'd never had such a free relationship with any woman. Despite the age difference of more than a dozen years, Cally was so grown-up and such a good person at heart. He considered himself lucky to have found her. It all turned out so neat. He knew she loved her irrigated garden and all the things about the ranch, but maybe they should move to Soda Springs so he could be around her more. Time would tell.

Later in bed that night, they continued their honeymoon.