Payback at Big Silver (11 page)

Bennie Eads fidgeted in place under Seadon's cold, insane stare.

“What . . . ?” he said after an uncomfortable moment.

“What
what
?” Seadon countered, raising the Colt that hung loosely in his hand.

Eads shrugged and tried to look at ease.

“We did what we were told. I expect we can ride on now,” he offered. “Get up behind the Ranger and chop him down, like Harper said?”

“I don't see how I can trust you,” Seadon said to Eads, letting go of the woman's arm but keeping her near him with a hand on her shoulder. “You heard Harper tell me not to kill the wrestler, or this
puta.
” He shook Dafne by her shoulder. “I split the wrestler's noggin. I'm getting ready to kill this one too.” He shook his head and said, “I can't have you telling Harper about it,
huh-uh.
Mama Lori never raised no fools.”

“I'm not going to say anything to Harper about it, Bill,” said Eads, feeling a nervous sickness down deep in his guts. “You've got my word on it!”

“Your word,
ha!
” said Seadon. He leveled the Colt at Eads and pushed the woman away. “I don't trust none of you! Every one of you is going to hell today. Starting with you, Bennie—!”

“Drop the gun, Crazy Bill,” said the Ranger, stepping out from behind an adobe wall.

The Mexicans, the woman and Eads all froze in place, seeing the cocked rifle in the Ranger's hands. Seadon kept his Colt leveled at Eads but turned his head, facing the Ranger.

“So you saw through us, law dog,” he said. “What was it gave us away?”

What gave us away?
Sam thought about the tracks left in the sand, so clear that nobody could have missed them. The imprint of the chain. The fear in the old Mexicans' eyes . . .

“I'm not going to talk to you, Crazy Bill,” Sam said quietly. “I wouldn't know how. Drop the gun and I won't kill you. That's all you get here.”

“Let me tell you a couple of things,” said Seadon. “First off, nobody calls me Crazy and lives to tell about it.”

Sam just looked at him.

“Seadon,” the Ranger said quietly, “everybody calls you Crazy Bill. It's all I've ever heard you called.”

“Not to my face, they don't!” Seadon shouted. “Second, I am not dropping this gun!”

Sam could see that the wild-eyed gunman was on the verge of making a play of some sort. He waited, ready, poised, his finger on the trigger of his rifle.

“Third!” Seadon shouted. “This right here is none of your business. You've got no business even being down here, pushing around ol' boys like me.”

“That's three things, Crazy Bill,” Sam reminded him.

“Number
four
, any killing done here, I'll do it, Ranger,” said Seadon. He cackled with crazy laughter and pulled the trigger on his leveled Colt. The bullet hit Bennie Eads dead center and sent him flying backward. Still laughing, Crazy Bill swung the Colt toward the woman, who had already turned and started running for cover.

The Winchester barked in the Ranger's hands. Seadon fell backward as Sam levered a fresh round. Seadon rose onto his knees and tried to take aim, but the Ranger's second shot nailed him in the chest and sent him flat onto his back as the Colt fired straight up in the air. The Mexicans watched as the Ranger walked forward and looked down at the dead gunman and kicked his Colt away just in case.

“He—he said if we told you he was here, he would kill us!” the thin Mexican said.

Smoked curled from Sam's rifle barrel as he turned and walked to where Eads lay on the ground clutching his wounded chest. “Don't worry,” Sam said to the thin Mexican. “You told me he was here. That's what brought me back.”

“Smart trick, Ranger,” Eads said grudgingly, nodding off toward the rise of dust stretching toward the distant water hole. He lay against a low rock wall circling a tall saguaro cactus where the old Mexicans had dragged him out of the harsh sunlight. The Ranger stooped beside him and held out a gourd full of water. The old Mexicans and the woman stood off to the side watching, listening. Other villagers watched from farther away.

“No trick,” the Ranger said, watching him take a sip of the tepid water. “All I did was turn them loose and cut away under the dust. They always head for water out here.”

“That's . . .
real
good to know,” Eads said painfully. “I'll pass that along . . .” There was a dark wry irony in his voice that the Ranger had come to recognize in dying men—men who had played their hand out against the law, only to lose everything. Blood formed at the corners of his mouth. His head drooped; his eyes began to close.

“Look at me, Eads,” Sam said firmly, getting his attention. “You need to talk to me before you go.”

Eads' eyes opened. He looked at the Ranger closely.

“Why,” he said, “so everybody knows what a foul man I've become?” He coughed and tried to give a thin, weak smile. “You can tell them all about me. Make it up, far as I care. . . .”

The Ranger ignored his bitter words.

“Who came to you, who brought you in on this?” he said, jostling Eads' shoulder a little. “How many am I following?” He already had a good idea of their numbers. But it never hurt to ask.

“There was ten of us,” Eads said brokenly. “Now there'll be eight. Charlie Knapp . . . came to me. Said old man Centrila wanted his boy sprung.” He coughed, gripping his bloody chest; blood trickled from his lips. “I needed the money.” He shook his head a little. “Turns out I never even got paid. Can you beat that?”

Sam considered it as he listened. Edsel Centrila had given money to Sheriff Stone to bribe Territorial Judge Albert Long for keeping his son, Harper, from going to prison. Instead of offering the bribe money, Stone had gone to the judge and initiated a charge of bribery against the wily old cattleman. Centrila had now resorted to breaking his son out of custody. Bennie Eads had been greedy enough and fool enough to fall for it.
Simple enough. . . .

“All you did by taking Centrila's deal was get two good men killed,” Sam said. “Not to mention yourself. Why would they give you money when a bullet would settle the account?”

Eads' head drooped again. A string of red saliva hung from his lips. His voice weakened even more, like that of a man drifting farther out to sea.

“I know that
now . . .
,” he murmured, his breath leaving his chest for the last time.

Sam stood and looked down at the dead guard turned outlaw. He stood for a moment pondering Bennie Eads' situation—his grasp for quick and easy money, and where it had taken him.

“Señor Ranger . . . ?” whispered the thin old Mexican who had walked up and stood at his elbow. “
Por favor
, tell us what you would like us to do about the dead. We can dig for them some graves, if that is what you wish.”

Sam turned to face him, the empty gourd still in his hand. The Mexican took the gourd and waved in another Mexican, who took it and hurried to a large clay urn, poured water into it and put a lid over it.

“Take care of them for me,
por favor
,” Sam said flatly, already knowing some money would have to change hands to bring it about. He fished a gold coin from his vest pocket and placed it on the old man's upturned palm.

“
Sí
, we will take care of them,” the old man said. “Do you wish for me to decide how—so you can be on your way?”

“Yes, you decide,” Sam said. “I have horses waiting at the water hole.”

“Do you wish us to put up markers?” the old man asked. He closed his thin fist over the coin.

Noting something curious in the man's voice, the Ranger eyed him closely.

“How bad have things been in Mejores Amigos?” he asked, putting the question of grave markers aside.

“Very bad,” the old Mexican said. He gestured a hand at a sparse flock of skinny chickens scratching in the dirt. “As you can see we are very poor. Even our animals go without—those which cannot forage for themselves.”

Sam looked around again and back at the old Mexican. He saw a secretive glint in the old man's eyes.

“I understand,” he said. He turned to the bay that a thin elderly woman led in from where he'd hitched it out of sight behind a dilapidated barn. “Markers would be good. But I don't see family ever coming to visit. Do what's best for all concerned.”

“
Sí
, that is what I will do,” said the old man.

The Ranger stepped into his saddle, adjusted his reins and looked down at the dead outlaws.

Two down, eight to go. . . .

He turned the bay and touched the brim of his sombrero toward the villagers. The old Mexican stood watching him ride away as the old men gathered around him.

“Did you explain to him?” one old man asked quietly.

“No, I did not,” the old Mexican said. “I did not have to. He knows.” He stood staring at the fresh rise of dust in the bay's wake, headed out toward the water hole.

“How do you know he knows?” the same old man asked.

“Enough of this,” another old man cut in. “If he says the Ranger knows, then he knows.
Sí
, Miguel?” he turned his question to the thin old Mexican.

“Sí,”
the old Mexican replied without taking his eyes off the Ranger, who grew smaller crossing the stretch of sand flats. “We will do what is best for all concerned. If he comes back to Mejores Amigos, he will not ask.” He paused and murmured to himself, “Because he knows. . . .”

The Mexicans looked at each other and nodded. They turned in pairs and gathered the bodies of Seadon and Eads between them and carried them away toward the far edge of the village. As they reached an open wallow of dust, they heard loud squeals and grunts and saw the dust-covered snouts of the few village hogs probing toward them. They dropped the bodies, removed their boots and clothes quickly. The half-feral animals whirled and bounced in a wild frenzy. The men rolled the bodies down the side of the wallow among the squealing hogs, then crossed themselves and turned and walked away.

•   •   •

It was near evening when the Ranger gathered the string of team horses and the copper dun at the water hole. The first thing he did was strip the saddle and bridle from the bay and let it drink while he tossed the saddle atop the dun and untied it from the string. He checked the rested dun over good, then stood with its head in the crook of his arm and rubbed its muzzle. The horse still chewed on a wad of pale wild grass from the far side of the water hole.

“I suppose you kept these wagon pullers in line while I was gone?” he said. The dun blew out a breath and nudged its nose against him. The team horses stood nearby and watched with their eyes caged against the red lowering sun.

Sam looked off in the direction the riders had taken and considered his move as he continued rubbing the dun's muzzle.

Eight gunmen were a lot to be following, he told himself, especially when they knew it wouldn't be long before someone came after them. But the number didn't stop him. They were headed into good fighting land for him. Southwest, in both the wide-open Mexican desert flats and hill lines, with a good long-range rifle, he knew he could start trimming the number down quick enough. He looked at the tracks leading away southwest into Mexico.

If that's where they're headed,
he said to himself. He had a nagging doubt that they weren't.

He turned loose of the dun and walked to the water's edge, where he sank two canteens and looked away southwest again as they filled. Ernest Shule had thrown the outlaws off their plans when he forced them to ride to Mejores Amigos to slip their chains. They had ridden straight and hard across the soft sandy flats to get there, so straight that they had been careless and paid no regard to hiding their tracks among any rock paths or higher hill trails.

He picked up the filled canteens and carried them to the dun. Now that the prisoners' chains were off, they would be more careful, he told himself. Yet, careful or not, he couldn't see Harper Centrila headed deep into Mexico. No, as soon as the younger gunman thought it safe, he'd ride onto the rocky hills, swing wide and circle back to the territory. The Centrilas had paybacks to settle with Sheriff Stone. That was where he and his men would be headed.

“Us too,” Sam said aloud, thinking about Sheriff Stone there by himself—not even a deputy to watch his back.

He hooked the canteen straps over his saddle horn and looked at the dun, who upon hearing his voice had turned its head toward him and was giving him a curious look.

“Just thinking out loud, Copper,” he said, taking up the reins draped over the dun's withers. “You ever do that?”

The dun only pricked its ear a little and scraped a hoof on the sandy ground.

“No, huh?” the Ranger said. He pulled on his gloves as the spoke. “Do you ever see things before they happen?”

The dun chuffed out a puff of breath and stood looking at him.

“I didn't think so,” Sam said quietly. He let the bay finish watering and tied it into the string with the team animals. Then he gathered the rope to the string and stepped into his saddle and rode on. He watched as far as he could on either side for fresh tracks leading back toward the border.

He rode until the desert darkness swallowed the land. By the time a strong three-quarter moon had risen and a sky full of stars came forward out of the endless dark, he had made a dark camp at the bottom of a rising hillside. He slept the night wrapped in a blanket against a sunken waist-high boulder, and was back on the trail before dawn.

He followed the same group of hoofprints until he started up a higher trail and stopped when he looked to his left and saw the same fresh tracks on a thin trail below him headed back down toward the flatlands.

Backtracking. . . .

“Looks like we were right, Copper,” he said to the dun. “They've made their run, and now they're going home.” He turned the team horses and the bay and rode down the way he'd come. “At least we saved ourselves climbing this hill.”

At the bottom of the hill line, he rode along its sloping bottom edge until a mile to his right he found where the thin trail met the desert floor. There the hoofprints spilled onto the sand and led back in the direction of the border. By midday as the white sunlight performed its daily ritual of scorching the land and its inhabitants, he brought the horses to a halt under the shadowed edge of a cliff overhanging a deep dry wash.

Here he rested the sweaty animals out of the worst part of the day's heat. There was no great hurry now. It was time to pull back some. They would be checking their back trail the way men on the run always did. He had the hoofprints well in his sights. He would not lose them.

Anyway,
he told himself, gazing out across the endless swirl of heat and burning sand,
even if you did, you know where they're headed.

•   •   •

Harper Centrila set his horse's sore hoof back on the ground and dusted his hands. Charlie Knapp sat atop his horse looking out along the thin desert trail they'd followed back toward the border.

“What's it look like?” Knapp asked without looking down.

“He's done for,” said Harper.

“Too bad,” said Knapp. “There's a Mexican relay station not ten miles from here. You can double up with somebody until we get there.”

Double up? Not hardly.

“Look at me when we're talking, Charlie,” Harper said. The mounted gunman brought his gaze around from the rugged desert terrain. Harper went on. “I don't ride double with
nobody.
What are you looking for back there anyway? It's too soon for somebody to be on our trail.”

“Just being cautious,” Knapp said. He looked the young man up and down. Harper thought he saw contempt in the steely eyes of the older gunman.

“There's such a thing as being too cautious,” he said. “If anybody was already back there dogging us, we'd've seen them by now.” He gestured a hand toward endless miles of white desert sand broken by hill lines spaced as if to deliberately expose the hunter to the hunted.

“Not if they didn't want us to see them,” Knapp replied. “Apache have been hiding here a hundred years. Sometimes the army rides right past them.”

“Good for them,” Harper said. He looked back at the empty trail and swirling heat looming on the desert floor. “We might want to get something straight here and now, Charlie. I know you take orders from my papa, Edsel. But now that I'm out and ol' Papa Edsel ain't here, guess who you take orders from?”