Tall Rider Read online

  I checked my Colt and started out for town. Calthrop’s town.

  As I rode, I wondered if John and Pete were still hiding out like old man Jebb had told them to. Maybe they’d given up and gone home. Maybe they’d fallen foul of Calthrop. If so, they’d have been bested: horse-drovers are no match for professional gunslingers.

  My thoughts were running on these lines when I heard the howl of coyotes. Seemed like there was a gang of them quarrelling just out of sight over a ridge way off to my left.

  I’d come maybe three miles from Harry’s camp. The sun was sinking fast now and the sky had changed from orange to crimson and was just starting to turn purple. It was that time between lights when a man sees things that aren’t there … and doesn’t see things that are.

  But it wasn’t the light that made my horse nervous but the presence, just over the other side of that ridge, of more coyotes than was natural. I had pulled hard on the reins because my mount sure didn’t want to go where I was telling him to.

  As I crested the rise, I saw a hollow on the other side. There was something in it. It was as long as a man, but what looked like four spokes stuck out of it, so that the whole thing looked like a rimless wheel.

  All around were the dark shapes of the coyotes which never stayed in the same place for more than a few seconds. My horse didn’t like it. I could feel him trembling beneath me. I patted him on the neck and spoke quietly to him.

  Then a voice said, ‘That you, Rube?’

  It sounded like sandpaper, as if it came out of a dry throat.

  ‘Nat?’ the voice said. ‘I knew you wouldn’t forget a pardner!’

  I dismounted, keeping a hold of the reins, and walked into the hollow. The coyotes scattered but quickly regrouped and watched.

  There was just enough light for me to make out a man spreadeagled on the ground. The moon picked out a glint of silver on his chest. But he didn’t turn or move far. He couldn’t. I saw why: he’d been staked out.

  His arms and legs had been tied to wooden stakes which had been driven deeply into the hard ground. It was one way Indians executed their enemies. Sometimes they buried a man up to his neck, walked away and never came back. Other times they laid him out and pegged him flat on his back. Then they left him to the sun or the tender mercies of whatever wild creatures might come by. With his arms tied down, there was nothing he could do bar shout at them to scare them off. I once heard tell of a rattler that settled on a staked man’s stomach, went to sleep, woke up and then slithered off again. But not before the guy had gone mad with fear.

  ‘Now what do we have here,’ I said.

  ‘Who’s there? C’mon, cut the goddamn ropes! You can’t leave me here!’

  ‘Don’t see why not,’ I said. ‘As I recall, you weren’t exactly charitably inclined last time we met.’

  ‘What you talking about?’ the voice croaked.

  ‘I see you’re still wearing your deputy star, Skate. Don’t seem to have done you much good. Calthrop get sick of having you around?’

  ‘Mister, I don’t know who you are,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘but you got to get me out of this. I been here almost a day. I can’t take another.’

  I had a full water-bottle. I unscrewed the top, held it over his mouth and poured. He drank greedily.

  ‘You say you know me?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t say you’ve forgotten, Skate. Two bocarros ride into town offering to sell old man Jebb thirty horses. You and Nat show up, take ’em off to the caboose and before the evening’s out one of them’s got himself kicked to death.’

  ‘That warn’t none of my doing, mister. I never had any part in that stuff. Sure, Rube made me his deputy and gave me a badge, but it was all a joke to him. He’s crazy. When he was in the mood, he’d send me out and tell me arrest somebody. Anybody. Bring ’em back, he’d say, so I can have me some fun. This meant him being judge and jury and executioner. Nat went along with him because he and Nat go back a long way. But me, I couldn’t stomach it. Before the killing started, they’d get good and drunk. They’d try to get me drunk too but I always acted like I’d passed out before they lost control. That way I never killed nobody and they never knew because afterwards they could never remember who’d done what.’

  ‘So why didn’t you walk out on him, Skate?’

  ‘Because no one walks out on Reuben Calthrop. Are you going to cut these ropes?’

  ‘Skate, Eli was killed and it was no accident.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I know. Sure, I recall a couple of out-of-towners selling a bunch of nags to old Jebb. You was unlucky. Rube don’t go wild that often. You rode into town on the wrong day, is all. Look, I’m sorry about your friend but I couldn’t do jack spit to stop it. Are you going to leave me here to die?’

  ‘Could be. I want to know how you suddenly got unpopular and ended up like this.’

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘Me. I’m asking the questions, Skate. I’m the one standing up and you’re the one lying down.’

  ‘All right. But if I tell you, you’ll cut me loose? Deal?’

  ‘Most like. Depends on what you say.’

  ‘They thought I was dumb. But I ain’t so dumb. This Calthrop ain’t happy just sitting round town with a sheriff’s badge on his lapel waiting for travellers, cowboys and bocarros to come by so’s he can have him an hour of fun. He’s a big operator. Got a ranch, thirty hands—’

  ‘—And he robs banks and holds up trains. Skate, you’re telling me things I know already. My rope-cutting knife’s still in its sheath. If you want me to take it out, tell me something I didn’t hear before.’

  ‘And do you know why he pays thirty hands? Sure, some are cooks and house-boys. But most rustle cattle for him, tend them on the range, re-brand them and run them for sale as far as New Mexico. They get a share of the proceeds. Others, maybe a half-dozen, he takes with him when he goes raiding. They’re all gunslingers and pretty hard men. When he gets back from a foray he gives each man his part of the loot. He don’t stint with them. He knows better than to try and short-change men like that. But the biggest share always goes to him and Nat. But they don’t keep their goods at the Bar-T, no sir. They don’t trust them boys that hang around the place. So, they stash it some place else. I seen them. They send the hired hands into town to get drunk then load up a couple or three burros and head out into the desert. When they get back, the burros aren’t loaded no more.’

  ‘So you reckon Rube and Nat bury it in the sand?’

  ‘That’s what I was trying to find out. Last night I saw them ride out, just before sun-up. Had their horses’ hoofs muffled, and were acting cagey. I trailed them this far—’

  ‘But they jumped you—’

  ‘—then worked me over. Rube was out of control and wanted to beat me to a pulp but Nat told him no, said they had business, so why not just shoot me and be done with it. But that’s not Rube’s style. Too quick. So they staked me out and left me to linger. That’s all I know, mister. So, if you’d oblige with that knife of yours.…’

  ‘First tell me this. If you like playing dumb, how come you followed Calthrop and Nat? It was a risky thing to do. Anyway how come you’re so curious about where they keep the goods?’ ‘And how come you know so much about Rube?

  And why are you acting so suspicious? Any rider passing by who finds a white man staked out would think he’d been left out for the coyotes by Indians. First thing he’d do would be to cut him free. Not you. You ask a lot of questions like I was a criminal and want the right answers before you’ll lend a helping hand.’

  ‘I know a lot about Rube because I want him behind bars. You know he killed Eli. But he also shot my brother.’

  ‘Well, we’re on the same side and want the same thing. I ain’t Skate Skerritt. Name’s Tom Earle, Sergeant, United States Army. Now cut me loose, you son of a gun, and I’ll give you the rest of the story.’

  9

  PREPARATIONS

  I cut Sergeant Earle free, sat him on
my horse and, leaving the coyotes to bay to the moon, walked him back to camp.

  While he got some of Rusty’s chow inside him, he told the others what he’d told me and then we filled him in with our side of the story.

  ‘So we all want the same thing,’ said Tom, when we’d finished, ‘which is to see Calthrop stopped. You’ve got your reasons. Well, so has the army. Friend Calthrop’s been getting in the military’s hair for a long time. First it was selling low-grade beef to provision the frontier forts. Then he started stealing payrolls carried by railroad and looting wagon trains and army depots, as well as making our job harder by riling the Indians in all sorts of ways and getting us blamed for all the bad things the white men did. But he’s smart. Whenever we get close, he moves on. However much the generals want to see him behind bars, they got nothing they can pin on him. That’s where I come in. For the last six months, I been out of uniform, special investigator, working undercover, getting close to our man. My orders are to get the goods on him so the military courts can get him put away legal.’

  ‘Save it for the jury,’ said Rusty fiercely. ‘We’re going after him whether you’re on board or not. And all this talking about it don’t show how we’re going to get the son of a gun.’

  ‘Being an insider you’ll have got to know more than we do about how Calthrop operates,’ I said. ‘But we got something you don’t know: the place where he stashes his loot.’

  I told him about the cave. He was impressed.

  ‘It’s what I needed. It links Calthrop to stolen goods. It’s evidence no court in the land could fail to convict on. We’ve got him!’

  ‘Now you tell us the rest of what you know.’

  Turned out he wasn’t as on his own in Berry’s Crossing as I’d thought. Like me, he’d seen more to old man Jebb than met the eye. He’d backed his hunch and come clean, told him who he was and what he was doing in Berry’s Crossing cosying up to Calthrop. Jebb shook his hand and asked what he could do to help nail the skunk.

  Jebb kept his ear to the ground and used his livery men to carry messages for ‘Skate’ back to army headquarters. The old man had told him Pete and John were still hiding up and looking after Billy who was on the mend.

  ‘Where they at?’ I asked.

  ‘At first they holed up in a wreck of a barn old man Jebb used as extra stabling for his horses. They were safe enough there for a spell, but it was too close to the Bar-T for comfort. So they switched to an abandoned homestead on a hill the other side of town. Been there ever since.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll go bring them back here. We need all the guns we can get. There’s three of us.…’

  I caught Rusty’s eye.

  ‘… four of us. Another three wouldn’t come amiss none. Meantime, we need you fit, Sergeant. So bed down and get some rest. You’ve had a busy day, but it’s over. Mine ain’t finished yet. I still got to go find my pardners. I’ll be back around sun-up.’

  The moon was higher and brighter than I’d have chosen for my purposes. The trail was straight and level and there was no real cover. Anything that moved would be visible from a long way off. I felt exposed.

  But I had light enough to see something that brought me up short – a set of tracks left by a large group of riders coming from Berry’s Crossing which forked off left in the general direction of the canyon where Calthrop had buried his plunder. Looked like the riders passed that way a good while before, maybe the previous day. And they hadn’t come back. At least, they hadn’t rejoined the trail that led to town.

  I didn’t know exactly what to make of it. But I had me half an idea.

  About a mile before I got to Berry’s Crossing, I swung left and followed the directions Tom Earle had given me.

  Half an hour later, I made out a hill and, on the hill, a clapboard house.

  The boys were as pleased to see me as I was to see them. But I cut the celebrations short and told the boys to pack up. I wanted us out of there before sun-up.

  Billy was on the mend. Though his shoulder was still pretty sore, he helped load up all the provisions we could carry. We’d need them if we were to use Harry’s camp as a base.

  When we set off, it was still dark and the moon was down. We didn’t see any early birds stirring and no one saw us. By the time we rode into camp, the sun had climbed high and was hot in the sky.

  Harry had the place to himself. But it wasn’t long before Tom and Rusty rode in. The sergeant had wanted to look the canyon over and Rusty had gone with him to show the way. When they got there.…

  ‘You saw a gang of Calthrop’s men, right?’ I broke in.

  ‘How do you know that?’ said Rusty in surprise.

  ‘Saw tracks headed that way. I guessed Calthrop would want the cave cleared. He’d have to bring his boys in to do the job.’

  ‘There were maybe thirty, thirty-five of them,’ said Rusty, ‘formed into a chain, passing out rocks and baskets of rubble which they tipped down the hill. They’d set up camp in the valley bottom.’

  ‘Did you see Calthrop or Nat?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Tom. ‘When we got there, they were directing operations. But they didn’t stay long. We had a good view from the same spot as you were at, halfway up the hill above the defile.’

  ‘Best seats in the house,’ said Rusty with a grin. ‘They should sell tickets.’

  ‘Most of the cattlemen on the payroll were there,’ Tom went on. ‘I guess a few stayed behind at the Bar-T to look after the place and keep an eye on the herd. Calthrop was giving orders to Abe Chisolm. He’s the Bar-T foreman. We were close enough for me to catch some of what he was saying. Told him he had to keep the men hard at it, but that they weren’t to break through into the cave without him being there. He was most particular on that point. Said there were men with guns on the other side of the roof fall and Abe wouldn’t want to mix it with them. Meantime, he and Nat had business to attend to. Said they’d be back in a couple of days. Then he and Nat lit out in a hurry.’

  ‘If Calthrop’s men get curious and clear that fall.…’ I began.

  ‘They’ve won’t. They’re gone,’ said Tom.

  ‘Decamped,’ said Rusty.

  ‘What d’you mean, gone?’ said Harry.

  ‘I couldn’t let them stay there,’ said Tom, ‘and get their hands on the loot. If they got in and found the stuff, they’d have split it up and cleared out. And it’s our evidence, all we’ve got on Calthrop. I didn’t want him flying the coop, not after all the weeks I’ve put in getting this close. So I left Rusty, slipped back out of the canyon, got on my horse and then rode in through the defile as if I’d galloped from town, making a noise and hollering for attention.

  ‘“It’s Skate,”’ I yelled. I said a federal officer with a posse of thirty, forty sworn deputies had shown their faces just before sun-up. Sent by the governor upstate. They’d gone straight out to the Bar-T and locked up all the boys who’d stayed behind in the cookhouse and stood guard over them. They were holding them there until the judge arrived in town. A couple of the boys, Jimmy Toolan and Ephraim Perdue, had put up a fight. They were dead. The marshall had questioned everybody about the boss and Nat. He’d been expecting to find more hands at the Bar-T and asked where the rest were. Way things were going, he’d soon have an answer. I made out I’d managed to get away without being seen. I said I’d come to warn them to get out while they could.’

  ‘You should have seen them scat! Dropped everything and ran for their horses,’ said Rusty, and her eyes laughed at the memory.

  ‘They fought with each other in the scramble to get out,’ said Tom, ‘and when they were through the defile they took off in whatever direction came first. When the canyon was quiet again, Rusty and me took a look at how far they’d got with the job.’

  ‘They hadn’t broken through,’ said Rusty. ‘No way of telling how much further needs to be cleared.’

  ‘If they’ve gone for good—’ Harry began.

  ‘They won’t be back,’ said Tom.

&nbs
p; ‘—then the odds have evened up a lot. There’s almost as many of us now as there is of them.’

  ‘Where’d Calthrop go?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s gone on a job,’ said Tom.

  ‘What job?’

  ‘There’s a couple of army wagons headed out west from Independence, Missouri. It’ll follow the Santa Fe trail as far as the Cimarron Cut then make south-west for Taos, its delivery point. On the way, it passes thirty miles north of Berry’s Crossing. It’ll be carrying a shipment of twenty-five thousand cash in silver dollars the United States Government has pledged to hand over to the Taos Indians in compensation for land transfers. No one’s supposed to know about it. Somehow Calthrop sniffed it out. As well as Nat Ames, he’s got six, no, seven hired guns. So as not to attract attention, the wagons will have only a small escort of ten or a dozen men. I tell you, Calthrop’s boys will take them. They’re good. It’ll be just like drawing money out of a bank.’

  ‘Twenty-five thousand,’ said Harry. ‘I never saw that much money together in one place!’

  ‘It don’t take up a lot of room,’ said Tom. ‘Stack it up and what you’ve got don’t look much different from a couple of dozen boxes of cartridges.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’d like to see it before I die, that’s all I got to say,’ grinned Harry.

  ‘And I sure would like to be there and put a spoke in Calthrop’s wheel,’ I said. ‘But there’s nothing we can do about it now. They got a head start and in any case we don’t rightly know the place where they plan to ambush them wagons.’

  ‘Won’t matter none,’ said Rusty, ‘once we’ve got them lined up in the sights of a rifle.’

  ‘Attagirl!’ said Harry. ‘That’s fighting talk. Tain’t ladylike. But it sure is fighting talk.’