Riders From Long Pines (2 page)

“Are you all right?” Sam asked her.

“Sí,
I am all right,” Maria assured him. She gestured toward Longworth, who lay clutching the front of his bleeding shoulder. “He is going to need a doctor.”

“And here I am,” said the man who had been thrown from his buggy. Dusting himself off from his fall into the dirt, he walked toward the downed detective. “I take it this man is not one of the robbers?”

“No,” Sam said, “He's a detective with Midwest Detective Agency. His name is Clayton Longworth.”

Longworth looked up at the ranger with a strange expression. “You—you shot me, Ranger? Didn't you . . . recognize me?”

“A lot was going on, Chief Longworth,” Sam said. “Be glad I didn't hit you dead center.” He paused, avoiding Maria's eyes, then asked the wounded detective, “What are you doing working alone anyway, with as many men as you've got?”

“I wanted . . . the Stockton Gang myself,” Longworth said in a pained voice as the doctor attended to him. “The fact is . . . most of my detectives have gone over to the Pinkertons. It's hard keeping good help . . . these days. Some of them have turned to outlawing, themselves.”

Sam shook his head and looked at Maria, who stood staring at him. “You shot him knowing who he was,” she said quietly just between the two of them.

Sam didn't answer.

“I would have taken care of it,” Maria said.

“I know you would have,” he replied flatly.

When she saw he would offer nothing more on the matter, she said in an even quieter voice, “I cannot have you shooting an innocent man to protect me.”

“I didn't kill him,” Sam offered.

“You could have,” she said.

The ranger just looked at her.

She eased up. “All right, you didn't kill him. But I would have taken care of it.”

“I know you would have,” he repeated in an unyielding tone.

Before either of them could say any more on the matter, a townsman ran up and said to the doctor, “The one in the street is shot something awful, Doc Wilson! The one in the mercantile is cut to pieces and got a pitchfork through his belly!”

“Tell them I'll be along directly,” the doctor said calmly.

“Directly . . . ?
But they'll be bled to death, Doc!” the man said excitedly.

“That would certainly save us all some time and trouble, then, wouldn't it, Willard?” he said over his shoulder.

“What about Buckshot Parks?” Maria asked the ranger while the townsmen hurried back and forth, gawking at the aftermath of the bank robbery gone wrong.

“He outran his shadow getting out of here,” said the ranger. ”We'll stay on his trail, but I expect he'll hole up for a while. When he sticks his head up, we'll be on him. Parks is a natural-born thief. He won't sit still for long.”

 

At the Cleland Davis spread three cowhands milled about out in front of the bunkhouse, awaiting the return of their trail boss, Jet Mackenzie. When they spotted Mackenzie walking toward them from the big house with four riflemen flanking him, Jock Brewer, the most experienced of the three drovers, pulled his knife blade from a post he'd been throwing it into and said in speculation, “Boys, it looks like the news ain't good.”

The three gathered and stepped forward as Mackenzie and the riflemen stopped ten feet away. Mackenzie raised a hand toward the three and said, “Don't none of you boys go flying off the handle when I tell you this.”

“We ain't getting paid,” Jock Brewer anticipated before Mackenzie could finish speaking.

Chester Cannidy, the leader of the four riflemen, gestured toward Mackenzie and said to Brewer, “This man was your ramrod. Let him talk.”

“I'll handle this, Cannidy,” said Mackenzie, seeing Brewer eye the rifleman with a stare of hatred.

“Then get to handling it,” said Cannidy with a no-nonsense look. “Mr. Grissin wants you out of here.”

“Yeah, you make the yard smell like cattle dung,” said another rifleman, Elton Long.

“That's enough out of you, Elton,” Cannidy said to the grinning rifleman.

The three young drovers had flared, but Mackenzie spoke up to keep things from getting out of hand. “All right, here's the deal,” he said to the three drovers. “Long Pines is no longer Cleland Davis' spread. Davin Grissin bought him out while we were on the drive. Grissin has his own men, so we've been let go.”

“I told you something was up when they didn't pay for the herd in cash at the railhead,” Brewer said to the other two. Then he said bluntly to Mackenzie, “What about our pay?”

Mackenzie swallowed as if to push down a bad taste and replied, “According to Davin Grissin's bookkeeper, we've got no money coming, leastwise not from Grissin. The bookkeeper says Cleland Davis owed us our wages, but he beat us out of our money. He made no arrangements for us to get paid before he left for California.”

“That's bull,” Brewer cut in. “Clel never cheated a man in his life. Grissin's bookkeeper is lying.”

“Keep your mouth shut, Brewer,” Cannidy warned. “This ain't the time to spin your opinion.”

“I want to talk to Davin Grissin,” said Holly Thorpe, another of the three trail hands.

“No, you don't,” said Cannidy. “That wouldn't be a smart thing to do, the mood you're in.”

“I can try to talk to the man without raising a ruckus,” Thorpe insisted.

“You can catch a handful of your teeth too, if you keep on,” said Elton Long.

“I said that's enough, Elton,” said Cannidy. But then he turned back to Mackenzie. “Finish up and get moving,” he said. “I'm sorry. I'm just trying to keep down any trouble here.”

“Well, there it is,” Mackenzie said, also trying to avoid any trouble. “If we want our pay, we'll have to go collect it in California. Clel is living there with his daughter, Ida.”

“Dang it all!” said Jock Brewer. He yanked off his dusty Stetson and slapped it against his thigh. Dust bellowed.

“You boys don't feel no worse than I do,” said Mackenzie. “Being trail boss, I feel responsible for—”

Thorpe cut him off, saying, “We don't blame you for nothing, Mac.” He fidgeted with his wire-rimmed spectacles, adjusted them on the bridge of his nose and cut a dark glance toward Cannidy and the other three looming riflemen. “We all know who dealt us this dirty hand.”

“Don't talk about it here,” said Brewer, before Mackenzie could respond. He gave Cannidy and the riflemen a hard stare. “I say we go to town and pull some cork over this. These snakes are itching to show Grissin how tough they are.”

“Say, you're not as stupid as you look, cowboy,” said Elton, wearing a cold smile. He fished a coin from his vest pocket and flipped it into the dirt at Mackenzie's feet. “Here, let me buy the first round. I know you're all three a little pressed for drinking money.” The other two riflemen chuckled. But Cannidy only stared. It was all he could do to keep from turning and bending his rifle barrel over Elton Long's head and firing him on the spot. But he kept quiet, and calm.

The youngest drover, Tad Harper, started to bend down and pick up the coin. But Brewer caught him by his forearm and pulled him away. “Let it lie, Tadpole. He meant that as an insult.”

“I want you to know I ain't happy about doing this, Mac,” said Cannidy.

“You could have fooled me,” Mackenzie said flatly, running his eyes over Elton Long and the other riflemen.

The four drovers mounted their horses and left the Long Pines spread. When they had ridden four miles along the trail toward the town of Albertson, they stopped and sat in silence for a moment until Brewer said, “Well, I've got two dollars in whiskey money. What about you, Mac?”

“Four and some change,” said Mackenzie. The two turned to Holly Thorpe.

Thorpe shrugged and looked at them through his wire-rimmed spectacles. “A dollar something.” The three looked at Tad Harper. “What about you, Tadpole?” Thorpe asked him.

“I don't have any money at all,” said Harper.

“Well, lucky for you, you're traveling with a flush crowd,” Brewer said with a wry chuckle.

Mackenzie let out a tight breath, seeing the other three had unwound a little. “If we can figure a way to drink on seven dollars for the next week, we can ride all the way up to the Bar Y. Clyde Thompson told me himself he'd be looking to take on trail hands the start of the month.”

“Think it'll pay better than out last job?” Thorpe asked with mock sarcasm.

“It can't pay any worse,” Mackenzie replied, reining his horse to the trail. “Let's go drinking, wash the taste of Long Pines and Davin Grissin from our gullets. I know the livery hostler in Albertson. He'll stake our horses to keep 'til we get ourselves square.”

“I thought you said a while back that Davin Grissin was a crook and a sidewinder,” said Harper, sidling up to Mackenzie.

“I did say it, Tadpole,” said Mackenzie. “I reckon this is what I get for speaking ill of a man behind his back.”

Brewer spit and said, “Just so you won't bear that burden of guilt alone, let me say for the world to hear that Grissin is a no-good, thieving, killing, lying, rotten snake—one that was so crooked, he ended up becoming straight.” He turned a look to Harper and said, “You know a man can do that in business, Tadpole. All he has to do is make so much
dirty
money that after a while people begin to admire him for it.”

Harper looked at Mackenzie and said, “You said at the railheads that cheating on a cattle count is the same as stealing a man's money from his poke.”

“That is what I said, Tadpole,” Mackenzie answered patiently.

“So, do you believe a man can be so crooked he turns straight?” Harper asked.

Brewer cut in, saying, “Tadpole, why do you always want to know what Mac believes? Look at him. Do you see any golden halo above his hat?”

“He was our trail boss,” Harper replied.

“Was
,” said Brewer. He reached his arm out and gave Mackenzie a little shove. “Now he's as broke and down in the mouth as the rest of us.”

Mackenzie shook his head slightly and said, “Jock is right, Tadpole. It turns out I don't know nothing after all. If it takes a man like Grissin to get ahead in the world, I don't know what's to become of the rest of us.”

“We all end up eating dust and driving cattle if you ask me,” said Holly Thorpe, adjusting his spectacles up on the bridge of his nose. The four rode on into Albertson.

For more than a week Stanton “Buckshot” Parks had followed back trails and game paths, until he'd located the hideout of two small-time thieves, Henry Moore and his cousin Benson Carnes. For the next week and a half the three had lain low, made plans and lived on bottles of sarsaparilla, cured hog jowl and airtights of beans and sugar beats that Carnes and Moore had stolen out the back door of a trading post nine miles away.

By the end of the second week, Parks had busted a bottle of sarsaparilla on the plank wall and said, gun in hand, “I don't know about you two, but if I don't steal something soon I'm going to go dung-dipping crazy. Have you boys got any jobs worth doing, or is
talking
about it as far you jakes go?”

Henry Moore and Carnes looked at each other knowingly. Finally Moore turned a sharp gaze to Parks and said, “We thought you'd never ask.”

That had been four days ago. Now Parks sat atop his horse, a flour sack with eyeholes cut in it lying on his lap. “What's going on down there, Hank?” he asked Moore. He drummed his restless fingertips on the butt of the Colt he'd stolen in broad daylight from the same trading post where Moore and Carnes had stolen the food staples.

“There's plenty going on,” Moore said without turning toward him. A moment later, at first sight of the stagecoach rolling around a bend below, Moore turned, facing the other two as he pulled his bandanna up over the bridge of his nose. “Gentlemen, here she comes, right on time,” he said. “Let's skin down there and make ourselves some spending money.”

Each of the three wore long riding dusters and wide-brimmed plainsmen hats.

Benson Carnes, as he also pulled up his bandanna to cover his face, said, “I've got the shotgun rider. I've owed greedy Jim Blanton a blasting for a long time now.”

Parks took off his hat, laid it on his lap, picked up the flour sack and pulled it down over his head. The other two watched him adjust the flour sack until the eyeholes matched his eyes. Then Parks pulled his hat down over it tightly and adjusted the flour sack again.

“Damn, Buckshot,” said Carnes, “why don't you wear a bandanna like everybody else? By the time you get yourself primed and proper, the dance will be over.” He chuckled at his little joke and looked to Moore for support. “Right, Hank?” he asked.

But Moore didn't answer. He shook his head and tapped his horse forward onto the steep hillside leading down to the dusty basin below.

“Because I
ain't
like everybody else,” Parks replied to Carnes in a stiff tone of voice. “So, mind your own business. I've listened to you flap your mouth nigh three weeks now.”

Carnes only smiled to himself behind his bandanna. He waited until Parks put his horse forward behind Moore, then let his animal fall in behind him. “I expect that flour sack is something you learned night-riding in Missouri? I heard
all
the James Gang wears them.” His voice had a needling edge to it. “Or did you learn it riding with the Stockton Gang? Now, there was a step down, going from the James Gang to Charley Stockton.”