“Steal my wagon now, you son of a bitch!” he growled down at Grolin’s mangled body. Then he looked down the street at Rochenbach, Casings and the Giant. He half raised his shotgun toward them.
Rochenbach raised his hands chest high in a show of peace, and the buckskinned man backed away warily for a few steps. Then he turned and stomped back into the alley, still grumbling under his breath.
“Where’s the sheriff of this town?” Rochenbach asked Casings as he and the Giant walked over and stood beside him.
“The doctor said he’s gone fishing,” Casings replied. “Said he’s been gone all day.”
Rock looked around at the dead men on the ground, then up at the fading afternoon sky.
“This would’ve been a good day for it,” he said. He stepped down from his saddle and looked the two up and down. “I don’t know how some folks find the time.”
“Me neither,” the Giant said.
Casings chuckled and shook his head. “Rock, I got to say, Grolin was right. You’re a hell of a safe man. But things do seem to get crazy when you’re around.”
“What if it rains, Pres?” said Rock. “Are you going to blame me for the weather too?”
“I’m not blaming you for anything,” Casings said. “I want to rob trains, open safes with you, get to be rich desperadoes.”
“Hey! What about Bobby there?” the Giant asked. They looked over and saw Bobby Kane standing with Spiller’s rifle in his hands, a blank look on his face.
“Bobby, put the rifle down,” Casings called out.
Kane looked at them, confused for a second. Then he nodded and tossed the rifle away. He stepped back and wiped his palms on his trousers. The Giant walked over to him.
“Are you doing all right, Bobby?” he asked in his deep powerful voice.
“Just fine,” Bobby said with a dazed grin. “How’s everybody here?”
“Come on with us awhile, Bobby,” the Giant chuckled. He patted a huge hand on the gunman’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I smacked you so hard.”
“Me too,” Bobby said, still wearing the same dazed grin.
“What now, Rock?” Casings said, the four of them turning, walking along the middle of the dirt street, seeing faces appear in windows and shop doors now that the shooting was over. “You got anything lined up?”
“Not right now,” Rock said. “It’s a good time to lie low awhile, I think, until the dust settles over this job.”
“Are you sticking with us, me and the Giant?” he asked.
“Right now I’ve got to send a telegraph, report in,” Rock said.
“Report in?” Casings said. He looked puzzled, but only for a second. “Oh, I get it. You’ve got a woman you’re stuck on somewhere.”
“Something like that,” Rock said, walking on, leading the dun behind by its reins.
“Something serious, is it?” Casings asked.
“Yeah, you could say it’s serious,” Rock replied. “I keep in touch every chance I get.”
He spotted the town telegraph office up the dirt street. He would go there, send a wire to his field office in Denver City, give them Inman Walker’s name and call this case closed. That was that, he told himself.
“Why don’t you and the Giant get out of here, before the sheriff gets back from fishing?” Rock said. “If you get something that looks good, I’ll be in Denver City for a while. You’ll find me there. Ask around at any of the saloons. Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can come up with for us.”
“We could ride there with you,” Casings said.
“No, you two need some rest tonight,” said Rochenbach. “Get your blood back to where it should be. I’m going to take care of my horse, clean my guns and ride out come dark.” He smiled. “Ride all night. Nothing stops me. I’ll be onto something tomorrow.”
“Sounds good to me,” Casings said, he and the Giant walking on along the empty dirt street in the waning sunlight.
Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack is back!
Don’t miss a page of
action from America’s most
exciting Western author,
Ralph Cotton, in
WILDFIRE
Coming in July 2012 from Signet
Arizona Territory
Wildfire raged.
The young ranger Sam Burrack sat atop a rust-colored barb on a bald ridge overlooking a wide, rocky chasm. With a battered brass-trimmed telescope, he scanned beyond the buffering walls of boulder and brush. Long rising hillsides ran slantwise heaven to earth, covered by an endless pine woodlands. He studied the blanketing fire as it billowed and twisted its way north to south along the hill lines. He watched flames the color of hell lick upward hundreds of feet, drifting, blackening the heavens.
Through the circle of the lens he spotted four wolves sitting next to one another along a rock ledge, winded and panting. Their pink tongues lolling, they stared back at the wall of smoke and fire as if numbed, overpowered by it.
At the bottom of the hills, where the woodlands came to an end at the chasm, Sam saw a large brown bear stop in its tracks, turn, and rise on its hind legs. The beast stood erect with its forearms and claws spread wide and raged back at the fire, ready to do battle. Yet even so powerful a beast looked helpless and frail beneath that which lay spoil to its domain. At the end of its roar, the bear dropped back onto all fours as if bowing in submission, and loped on.
The ranger shook his head, noting how little caution the other fleeing woodland creatures paid it as they darted among dry washes and gullies, and bounded over brush and rock with no more than a reflex glance in the roaring bear’s direction. Even the barb beneath him paid no mind to the bear’s warning until a draft of hot smoke swept in from behind. Then the horse skittered sideways and chuffed and scraped a nervous hoof.
“Easy now…,” the ranger murmured, tightening his hold on the reins, and collecting the animal. “We’re not going to get you cooked.” He patted a gloved hand on the barb’s withers. “Me neither, I’m hoping,” he added, closing the telescope between his hands. He looked down at the sets of hoofprints he’d been tracking for three days and gave the barb a tap of his bootheels.
But the barb would have none of it. Instead, the animal grumbled and sawed its head and stalled back on its front legs.
The ranger picked up his Winchester from across his lap. He gave another, firmer tap of his bootheels, this time reaching back with his rifle and lightly striking the barrel on the barb’s rump.
“Come on, pard, we know our jobs,” he said.
This time he felt the barb take his command and step forward onto the path winding down toward the rocky land below. But even as the animal did as Sam asked, he gave a chuff of protest.
“I know,” said Sam. “I don’t like it either.”
Four hundred yards down, the meandering dirt trail hardened into rock and left the ranger with no sign to follow other than the occasional broken pine needles where one of the four men’s horses had laid down an iron-ringed hoof. But that gave him no cause for concern—the old, overgrown game trail lay down the rocky, deep-cut hillside. And now that the fire had moved in across the thick woodlands, there would be no other logical way north except to follow the chasm to its end.
He knew the bottom trail would stretch fourteen miles before coming to water—twenty-six miles farther before reaching Bagley’s Trading Post. By then the men he followed would need fresh horses. They wouldn’t rest their current horses before riding on. That would take too much time, he told himself. Men like Royal Tarpis, Silas “Red” Gantry, and Dockery Latin never wasted time when they were on the move. Out in the open this way, these men moved instinctively as if someone was on their trail, whether they knew it to be a fact or not.