Ralph Compton Death Along the Cimarron Read online

“Or what?” said Jorge defiantly. He dropped his hand to the pistol on his hip. Then he called out to Cherokee Earl as he kept his eyes on Dirty Joe. “Hey, Boss, I got something to tell you.”

  “You son of a—” Dirty Joe’s words were cut short by the blast of the shotgun from where the sheriff lay dying on the ground. The shot lifted Jorge a foot off the ground and hurled him sidelong up onto the boardwalk. Ellen jumped back a step but stayed calm, seeing Earl, Dirty Joe, and Avery McRoy turn as one, their pistols coming up cocked from their holsters.

  They fired with accuracy, but their shots were powerless against the old sheriff. He lay dead, a slight smile of satisfaction on his weathered face, his eyes staring blankly upward at the wide, dear sky.

  Cherokee Earl turned slowly to Avery McRoy, his pistol cocked and still smoking. “You stupid sumbitch! You kicked that shotgun right back into his hands! I ought to blow your empty head off!”

  “Boss, it was empty! I never meant for something like this to happen! I swear to God I never. Who the hell would have thought that old man was going to be able to do anything but go on and die?”

  “Yeah, he went on and died, but not before he killed Jorge,” said Earl, his temper easing down to a simmer as he lowered his pistol and stepped up onto the boardwalk where the Mexican lay dead. “One more mistake out of you, McRoy, I’ll drive a barrel spike through your ears and leave you nailed to a tree somewhere.” He stooped down beside Jorge Sentores. “This man was not only one hell of a thief and gunman, but he could stick on a horse better than any man I ever saw, white or colored. Now some flea-bitten lawdog has gone and sent him straight to hell.” He looked around at the pillaged town, a sadness in his eyes. “I don’t even feel like burning nothing else right now.” Down the street, flames licked out and upward from the telegraph office. Farther down the street, the livery barn boiled in a cloud of black smoke.

  McRoy and Dirty Joe looked at one another. “That ain’t like you, Boss,” Joe offered.

  Cherokee Earl didn’t answer.

  Ellen Waddell stood back by the horses, a cold gaze in her eyes as she stared from one face to the next. When Dirty Joe looked at her, she softened her expression enough to offer a trace of a guarded smile just between the two of them. Then, as he turned his eyes back to Jorge’s bloody body, Ellen’s eyes stabbed at his back like sabers. She knew she had gained some ground for herself by the way that she had resisted Cherokee Earl without putting up a struggle. No matter what she had done, Cherokee Earl would have overpowered her and taken what he wanted anyway. All a struggle would have gotten her was a beating, and that might have been exactly what an animal like Earl would enjoy. She had no time to nurse a broken nose, battered ribs, or worse.

  No, thanks, she thought. She could force herself to play this game. She just had to keep her head and bide her time. She had to keep control of her faculties at all times. She had to keep from showing any emotion, no matter what the situation. The main thing was to stay alive. But if that wasn’t possible, she promised herself that, like the old sheriff lying dead in the street, she would not go down without a fight.

  When Cherokee Earl turned a gaze toward her and saw the way she was staring at them as the gathered around Jorge’s body, his face grew tight with anger. “What the hell are you looking at? This man was a good friend of mine! I reckon you think the more of us that dies, the better your chances of getting away—is that it?”

  Ellen didn’t answer. Instead, she stared down at the ground, letting her helplessness show.

  Cherokee Earl took a step toward her, noting her meek demeanor, and noting as well the way that Dirty Joe and Avery McRoy were watching him. “You ain’t fooling me, woman!” Earl growled. “I see through your way of acting pitiful ... thinking somebody is going to speak up and come to your rescue!” He stalked closer, tightening a fist at his side. “But it ain’t going to happen, do you hear me? It ain’t about to happen!” He stopped short at the sound of Dirty Joe behind him.

  “Boss, leave her alone,” Dirty Joe said.

  A deathlike silence fell around them. Earl turned slowly, his eyes fiery with rage. “What did you say to me, Dirty?”

  Avery McRoy cut in before Dirty Joe could speak. “Boss, he means we ain’t got time to fool around with that woman. We’re down to three of us now till Frisco and Billy meet up with us. We got folks on our trail ... and more coming once word gets out across the Territory. Let’s get moving. You can smack her around anytime.”

  Earl looked at the body of Jorge Sentores lying on the bloody boardwalk. McRoy was right, and Cherokee Earl knew it. This was no time to go shooting one of his own men, no matter what the situation. He looked the woman up and down. All right, he’d had her, and so far all she’d been was a disappointment. Whatever he decided to do with her would have to wait. “You’re right, McRoy, we got to get moving.” His eyes went to Dirty Joe, but only for a second, and only long enough to give him an admonishing look. Then he said to McRoy, “Avery, you take the lead rope for a while.... I got to do some thinking.” He rubbed his sore shoulder, the one he’d used leading Ellen’s horse by its reins before he’d taken the time to stop along the trail and tie the short lead rope to the horse’s bridle. He’d never seen a woman have so much trouble keeping a horse moving.

  Ellen saw Dirty Joe stiffen a bit at Earl’s words. But she knew this was no time for Joe to say anything. She saw jealousy in Joe Turley’s eyes as he watched Avery McRoy step forward and say, “Sure thing, Boss.” Then Avery stood before her and jerked his thumb toward her horse and said, “Okay, ma’am, up you go. Let’s get you into the saddle.”

  Ellen shot a quick glance to Dirty Joe as if to say there was nothing she could do about it. Then she stepped over to the horse, hiked her dress slightly, and said to Avery McRoy in a modest tone of voice, “I can’t reach it on my own.... You’ll have to give me a hand.” As she swung up into the saddle, she saw the seething expression on Dirty Joe’s face. Looking down at Avery McRoy, she took a second longer than she needed to turn loose of his shoulder. “Thank you,” she said softly, giving him a slight squeeze before letting go.

  When the rest of them had mounted and headed north along the street out of town, Dirty sat rigid in his saddle, staring straight ahead at Cherokee Earl’s back. He said to Avery McRoy out the side of his mouth in a harsh whisper, “I saw how you was making up to her.”

  Leading Ellen’s horse by the short length of rope, McRoy replied in the same tone of voice. “Making up to her? Jesus, Dirty, Boss asked me to help her up and lead her horse. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Huh-uh,” said Joe. “He asked you to lead her horse. He never said nothing about lifting her up that way, taking your time, putting your hands all over her!” His words grew stronger as he spoke. He actually leaned closer to McRoy, so close that McRoy stepped his horse away from him.

  “Take it easy, Joe!” said McRoy. “This ain’t nothing to get worked up over.”

  “I ain’t worked up, damn you!” Dirty Joe said, his voice getting loud now.

  Five yards ahead of them, Cherokee Earl turned in his saddle and looked back. “What the hell’s going on back there? Are you two scuffling about something?”

  “Uh—no, Boss,” McRoy offered, collecting himself and leveling his hat brim. “Just a dispute over which one of us was the best friend to poor Jorge is all.”

  “Arguing over the dead,” Earl said flatly. He shook his head as he looked forward. “Let the dead bury the dead—that’s what the good book says.”

  “The hell does he know about the good book,” Dirty Joe whispered.

  “The hell does any of us?” McRoy chuckled. The two looked at one anther and laughed quietly, the storm between them having passed for now.

  Close behind Avery McRoy, Ellen Waddell sat with her eyes lowered, looking down, not missing a word they said. She kept a slight tension on the reins in her hands, causing her horse to drag a bit, just enough to keep McRoy’s arm having to constantly stay in a strain, keeping
the horse from lagging.

  McRoy gave a jerk on the rope and caused Ellen to have to let the horse come forward, almost beside him. “Lady, you can’t ride worth a damn!” McRoy said to her.

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” Ellen replied meekly, “I’m not used to—”

  “Leave her alone, Avery,” said Dirty Joe. “She’s just a woman. You can’t expect her to ride like a man, can you?”

  McRoy took a deep breath, not wanting to start arguing with Dirty Joe all over again. “No, I reckon not,” he said. They rode on, Ellen once again letting the horse lag back on the lead rope.

  Chapter 9

  Black Mesa, Indian Territory

  Danielle drew Sundown to a halt and looked forward along a saddle of rock above the winding trail. On the other side of the trail stood a short stretch of jagged rock, not as tall, perhaps no more than thirty feet, but just as impenetrable. A perfect ambush spot, she told herself. She drew the chestnut mare sidelong and sat waiting for Stick and Dave Waddell to catch up to her from thirty feet back. She looked down at the two sets of horse tracks they had been following. The tracks belonged to Frisco Bonham and Billy Boy Harper.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Dave Waddell, seeming eager to keep moving. He nodded down at the hoofprints. “They’re leading straight ahead.”

  “I know,” said Danielle. “Nothing’s the matter. But we’re going to swing wide here and take shade beneath the mesa until the sun drops behind us. It’ll only be for three or four hours.”

  “Three or four hours? What for?” asked Dave, looking back and forth between Danielle and Stick as he halted his horse.

  “Because she said so,” Stick cut in gruffly, having little tolerance for Dave Waddell.

  Danielle was more patient. “Because that’s a bad stretch of trail.” She nodded ahead. “One rifle along that ridgeline can drop one or two of us or our horses pretty easily, and that would just about put this man-hunt out of business.”

  “But what good is waiting going to do us?” Dave asked, still not seeing the point in wasting precious time. “This sounds like you’re both afraid to catch up to these people!”

  Danielle reminded herself not to let him upset her. She tipped her hat brim back and wiped her gloved hand across her wet forehead. “Because, Mr. Waddell ... right now, with the sun high, we make a clear target going along that trail from the west. But once the sun drops behind us, anybody looking down along a gun barrel is going to go about half-blind from sun glare.”

  Dave Waddell considered what she’d said, his face growing red because he hadn’t realized it in the first place. He saw Stick give a smug grin and spit a stream of tobacco. “Well,” Dave said, still unable to give up his position, “I don’t see how that’s going to help. If somebody’s up there, they can still shoot us, sun glare or not.”

  Danielle nodded slowly. “That’s true, Mr. Waddell. But it’s all about who gets the best advantage, them or us. Stick and I are going to take shade, rest the horses, and ride in with the sun to our backs. If you feel like you’ve got to do it a different way, I understand.... We’ll pick your body up when we come through.”

  Turning Sundown, Danielle stepped the mare off the trail, Stick following close behind her. “Wait, please,” said Dave. “I didn’t mean to be testy with you. I’m going along with you on this. Hey, I never claimed to know a lot about this sort of thing.”

  “Leave him behind,” Stick said to Danielle. “I don’t trust that peckerwood.”

  Danielle grinned but slowed her mare enough to let Dave Waddell catch up. “Neither do I, Stick. But it is his wife they’ve taken. I reckon that alone can cause a man to act a little crazy.”

  Stick slowed a bit beside her. “All right, whatever you say.” He looked back as Dave Waddell hurried his horse forward. “I just can’t get a good picture of how he says things happened. Maybe I just slept too many nights with my head on a cold saddle.”

  Danielle grinned. “Maybe you have at that,” she said and heeled her mare forward.

  They rode around the base of the tall mesa and into a shaded area. Even though the air was still dry and hot, the heat was not nearly as violent as it was on the open, sun-beaten flatlands. While they rested themselves and their horses, they ate jerked beef and hardtack and chased it down with tepid canteen water. The horses stood picketed, grazing among clumps of wild grass less than twenty feet away. Stick took this rest period as an opportunity to dean and inspect his shooting gear. His pistol lay broken apart on a blanket he’d spread before him on the dirt. Danielle sat watching the animals as she chewed on a long blade of grass.

  “I just can’t stand waiting here doing nothing,” said Dave Waddell. He’d turned even more restless after he’d eaten. While Danielle and Stick had rested for an hour and a half, he’d spent much of the time pacing back and forth, raising a small cloud of dust around his feet.

  Stick looked through the barrel of his pistol, blew through it, and wiped it with a worn bandanna. “You were given a choice, Waddell, remember?” he said calmly.

  “I know, I know,” said Dave. “I’m just nervous by nature, I suppose. I just can’t stand the thought of my poor wife being with a rotten piece of work like Cherokee Earl!”

  “Thought you didn’t know the man,” said Stick, paying Waddell little interest.

  “I don’t personally,” said Waddell. “But I don’t have to personally know a skunk to know how bad it smells.”

  Stick nodded. “I agreed with that.” He picked up the cylinder to his pistol and rolled it back and forth slowly between his palms, inspecting it.

  Dave Waddell stopped and let out a breath, then said, “Look, I know that neither one of you has much use for me. You don’t trust me, and I don’t know why. But that doesn’t really matter. All I’m after is getting my wife back alive.”

  “That’s what we’re interested in also, Mr. Waddell,” said Danielle. “So what’s eating you?”

  “I think you could tell me more about what’s going on,” said Waddell, “instead of leaving me in the dark until the time comes to decide things.” He jerked a thumb back toward the trail they’d been riding. “Like back there a while ago. I had a right to know why you wanted us to pull off out of the sun. Once I knew it, I went along with it, didn’t I?”

  Stick and Danielle looked him up and down. “Okay,” said Danielle, “what is it you want to know?”

  It took Dave Waddell a moment to realize she meant it. Then he said, “All right, for starters, when these men’s trail split up before you followed the five horses to my place, how did you know which set of tracks to follow? What made you think Cherokee Earl was still with the five horses you followed to my front yard instead of the two horses that went up into the hills?”

  Danielle took the length of grass from her mouth and tossed it away. “It’s an old Apache trick they’re doing, Mr. Waddell,” she said. “They’ll drop off one and two at a time until you’re left looking at an empty trail if you’re not careful. In this case, there was only seven of them to begin with. The two that split off had to either draw us off the others’ trail or ambush us. They pulled up above us. Then they watched our move. Once they saw we weren’t going to split off after them ... they began to look for a good spot to hit us from.” She nodded at the jagged hill line along the trail ahead. “My bet is, that’s it.”

  Dave Waddell swallowed a dry knot in his throat. “And all we can do is ride into it?”

  “Any better ideas?” asked Danielle.

  “What about one of us riding up, getting around the hills behind them?” Waddell asked.

  “No good,” said Stick, fitting his cleaned pistol back together and wiping it with the bandanna. “On flatland like this, they’ll see us split up long before we get into their trap. All they’ll do is light out, make us chase them. While we chase these two, the rest get farther away.”

  “And so does my wife,” Waddell said, sounding helpless.

  “Yep, that would be the case,” said Stick.
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  “So all we can do is get the sun to our backs and ride in there like tin ducks at a shooting gallery?” Dave asked.

  “Well, maybe not,” said Danielle. She looked back and forth between the two men, then said, “I’ve been giving that some thought while I was sitting here. They’d see us if one of us split off now. But once we get inside the narrow trail between the rocks, it’ll be a different story.” She considered something, then said, “I’d sure like to take them alive, hear what they’ve got to say about your wife.”

  Dave Waddell didn’t answer, realizing that these two were most likely Billy Boy Harper and Frisco Bonham, and that they had already split off from the rest of the gang before Cherokee Earl came to his spread and took Ellen.

  “There’s no way a horse can climb off the trail up into that hill line,” said Stick, neither he nor Danielle noticing Waddell’s silence.

  “No, but a person can on foot,” said Danielle. “If I can find a blind spot along the trail, I can slip up out of the saddle with a rifle and get up along the high ridges before anybody knows what hits them.”

  Stick shook his head. “No, Danielle, that’s too dangerous. Anybody climbs up there it’ll have to be me, or Waddell here.”

  “Me?” Dave Waddell looked sick all of a sudden.

  “No, I’ll do it,” said Stick.

  “It’s my idea. I’m the one who’s going to do it,” Danielle insisted.

  Dave Waddell looked relieved.

  “No, it’s a bad idea,” said Stick. “Too risky. Besides, if you climb all the way up and they’re not up there, all you’ve done is worn yourself out for nothing.”

  “If that’s how it turns out, so be it,” said Danielle. “But I’m going, and that settles it.” She looked back at the sun, gauging it. “It’s a half-hour ride to the hill line. By the time we get there, the sun ought to be dropped about right.” She stood up, dusting her trouser seat, and walked away toward the horses.

  Waddell and Stick stood looking at one another for a moment. Then Stick said, “Well, you heard her. What are we waiting for?”