Lawless Trail (21 page)

Hardaway saw the women scurry out the front door, one with the key in her hand, not waiting until they unlocked their shackles.

Hardaway jerked his Winchester, cocked and ready, up from the bar with a wicked grin.

“Stop them women!” shouted the one with the black beard. “This Rebel money ain't worth nothing!”

“Stay where you are,” Hardaway warned. “I'll kill the three of you.”

“Like hell you will,” said the one with the dirty yellow beard, stepping forward, his hand going to the butt of his gun.

“Come and get it.” Without hesitation, Hardaway pulled the trigger. But the hammer only fell with a heart-stopping click.

Oh no!
He levered the rifle quickly and tried again, but no empty shell flew out of the chamber and no fresh round moved into it. Hardaway pulled the trigger anyway, hoping against hope. It only clicked again.

“This son of a bitch ain't loaded!” shouted the one with the red beard. The three moved forward quick, not even drawing their guns.

“Beat his head till shit squirts out his ears,” said the man with the red beard, flipping the leather wallet over his shoulder.

Damn you, Ranger!
Hardaway shouted to himself as realization set in. He looked all around, catching a glimpse of the old man walking in from the
cocina
with a steaming bowl of beans in his hand. Seeing what was going on, the old Mexican stopped and backed out of the doorway.

Hardaway awakened with a drum pounding painfully inside his head and a hand trying to stave off the pain by pressing a cool wet cloth on his forehead. Before opening his eyes, he lay still for a moment recounting what had happened before the three slavers picked him up and slammed him down hard atop the bar. He'd seen the glistening blade of a boot knife raised above his chest. He'd heard gunshots. Then his thoughts had gotten jumbled. He'd felt something wet and warm splatter all over him. But that was as far as his recollection could take him.

He opened his eyes and saw the woman with the slouch hat sitting beside him on the edge of the wooden table where he lay. Sitting up slowly, he looked all around until his eyes came to rest on Carter Claypool sitting in a wooden chair, which was pushed back against the wall. He recognized his Winchester rifle sitting across Claypool's lap, beside Claypool's own rifle.

“You awake?” Claypool asked.

“Yeah, I'm awake,” Hardaway said with a thick tongue. He rubbed his face and looked around. The bodies of the three slavers lay sprawled in a corner beneath the buzzing flies. “You killed them?” he said.

Claypool rocked his chair forward slowly and stood, both rifles in his hands. He didn't answer Hardaway. Instead he motioned the woman toward the open doorway and spoke to her in Spanish. The woman moved away and out the door, the chain no longer on her ankle. The other two women who'd been sitting huddled against the front wall rose and followed her. Claypool walked to the doorway and stared out, seeing the women help each other atop the slavers' horses. Two of the women rode double, the one behind leading the supply mule. The one in a hat kissed her palm and waved it toward the doorway. Claypool only nodded at her.

“Let me ask you something, Fatch,” he said quietly, turning back to Hardaway. “Why did you stick your nose in, start a fight with that buzzard bait?” He gestured toward the bloody bodies of the slavers.

Holding his ribs on his left side, Hardaway shook his bowed head and shoved his hair back from his eyes.

“There's just something about a damn slaver always makes my skin crawl,” he said. He raised his bloodshot eyes to Claypool, whose own battered face was healing right along. “I'm obliged you killed them before they killed me.”

Claypool walked back to the chair and sat down and placed both rifles across his lap. He raised the leather wallet from his lap and looked it over, turning it back and forth.

“I see you're still trying to pass your Dixie dollars,” he said.

“Yeah,” Hardaway said, managing a crooked smile, his lower lip swollen and split. “I don't know why, though—call me sentimental, I guess. I've never had anybody fall for it.” He paused and touched his fingertips carefully beneath his swollen eye. “What're you doing here anyway?”

Claypool sat staring skeptically at him for a moment.

“I'm over here scouting out anybody who might've known about this shortcut and come looking to catch us by surprise.” He continued staring and said, “Guess who I found.”

“Huh-uh, you're wrong, Carter,” said Hardaway. “I didn't bring the Ranger here. I admit I was riding with him, thinking very seriously about leading him on up, sticking him in your front yard. Fact is I couldn't do it.”

Hardaway saw his own revolver stuck down in Claypool's waist beside the big Starr he'd taken from Folliard.

Claypool just gave him a questioning look.

“The Traybos and you never did anything to me,” Hardaway continued. “I couldn't reconcile myself to doing it. I had too much respect for all of you.”

“That's a real fine thing to say, Fatch,” said Claypool. “But I'd be more moved hearing it if I hadn't seen the Ranger riding right behind you on my way here. It would be easy for me to think you two had this set up this way.”

“What?” Hardaway snapped his eyes up; he glanced toward the doorway as if he might see the Ranger standing there. “That can't be. I left a trail so light a mountain cur couldn't follow—”

“He's stuck to you like a burr,” Claypool said, cutting him off. “I put him here in about an hour, more or less. So . . .” As he spoke he casually raised his short-barreled Colt from his fast-draw holster and rested its butt atop his thigh.

“You've got to be joking,” Hardaway said, stunned.

“Tell me if this sounds like a joke,” Claypool said, cocking the short-barreled Colt.

“Wait! Damn it!” said Hardaway, starting to talk faster. “I didn't bring him here! I came here to tell you he's coming and he's got the money!”

“What money?” Claypool asked, the Colt still cocked, the hammer ready to drop with a slight touch of his finger.

“The bank money from Maley. What money do you think?” said Hardaway.

Claypool grinned tightly.

“Nice try, Fatch,” he said. “But I've seen the money. It's headed right up the trail—should be arriving along about now.”

“No, you didn't see the money, Carter,” Hardaway insisted. “You saw the sacks it's in. But you never saw the money, did you? Hell no, you didn't, because a Mexican sergeant switched it to feed sacks and buried it before you boys came and took it back.”

Claypool considered it; his short Colt sagged a little in his hand. His thumb moved up and rested easily over the cocked hammer.

“I don't know why, but I about halfway believe you, Fatch,” he said.

“It's the truth,” Hardaway said. “The Ranger and I followed the sergeant back to the ruins. Another soldier killed him. Then a Mexican fellow killed the other soldier—the Ranger killed the Mexican. Anyway, I saw the money with my own eyes when some of it fell out of one of the sacks. I couldn't stand it. I made a play for it and the Ranger stopped me. He told me to tell the Traybos he's got the money. If they want it, guess what they've got to do to get it. I was coming to tell the Traybos.” He gestured a hand toward the dead slavers. “Then all this . . .”

Claypool took a deep breath and let down the Colt's hammer.

“I don't think you could have made all that up,” he said. “Not on the spur of the moment.” He gestured toward a bowl sitting at the far end of the bar. “Your beans are getting cold.”

Hardaway watched him stand up again, holding both rifles, and slip the short-barreled Colt into its low-cut holster.

“So, then,” Hardaway said hesitantly, “you are not going to shoot me? I mean, I'm sitting there eating, all of a sudden—”

“I'm not going to shoot you, Fatch,” said Claypool. “Not yet, at least. But you do not want me taking you to the Traybos to find this is all part of some shenanigan you've dreamed up.” He raised a finger to emphasis his warning. “I will wear you out with a rake before I kill you.”

Hardaway stood up sorely and walked to the bar, his hand clutching his left ribs.

“An observation, Carter,” he said in a pained voice. “I'm not an old man by any means, but beatings have got to where they hurt lots worse than they used to.”

“You're not telling me a thing,” Claypool said. “I'm getting over one myself.” He stood at the bar and watched as Hardaway ate hungrily in spite of his banged-up condition.

“I've got to ask,” he said. “What are you doing riding with a lawman anyway?”

Hardaway shook his head and drew his wrist across his sore lips.

“That's a whole other story in itself,” he said. “I killed a saloon owner named Lonnie Lyngrid—something you never want to do in Texas, by the way. It's worse than killing an ordained preacher.”

“I've heard that.” Claypool nodded.

“Anyway, I killed him, burned his salon down around him.” He shrugged. “I figured that's the end of that, or so you would think.”

“But no, ol' Lonnie had a rich family and they raised a stink, so I had to cut out down here. I took over a place called the Bad Cats Cantina. Not a bad business, but I got sick of dealing with whores and idiots day in, day out. I made a deal with the Ranger. He would check to see if I'd cooled off any. Which I had. In return I agreed to lead him to you boys.”

“And you did,” said Claypool.

“Not exactly,” said Hardaway. “Although I admit I was wrestling with the notion.”

Claypool shook his head with a disgusted look.

“You could have crawfished,” he said. “Breaking your word to a lawman never meant much to anybody in our business.”

“Crawfish?”
said Hardaway. “Hell, I had him set up to be shot down in the street! But then he tells me Lonnie Lyngrid had a bounty on his head. So, instead of me getting hung for killing him, I've got a reward coming all the way from Ohio.”

“All right,” said Claypool, indicating he was with him so far.

“But here's the drawback,” Hardaway continued. “I've got to have the Ranger attest to me having rightful claim on the money before Cleveland, Ohio, will send it to Cottonwood and I can get it.” He paused, stuck a wooden spoonful of beans in his mouth and chewed, giving Claypool time to unravel it all out.

But Claypool only stared at him, appearing to not even try to understand.

“And you believed all that mess?” he asked.

Hardaway stopped chewing.

“The Ranger is not known to lie,” he said. But a doubtful look spread across his face. “I mean, it sounded truthful enough.”

“You're an outlaw, Hardaway,” said Claypool. “You think a lawman cares any more about lying to one of us than we do about lying to one of them?”

“Jesus,” said Hardaway. “Now I don't know what to believe.”

“Maybe that's been a problem of yours,” said Claypool. He shook his head and rapped a knuckle on the bar for a bottle of mescal. As the old Mexican appeared with the bottle and two brown-filmed shot glasses, Claypool related Hardaway's story to him in Spanish. The old man listened as he pulled the cork and laid it beside the bottle. When Claypool reached the end of the story, the old man cackled aloud, so fiercely that he slapped both hands onto the bar top, coughed and wheezed and grasped the bar for balance.

“All right, gawl-damn it, that's enough,” Hardaway said, getting testy.

When the old man walked away, Hardaway simmered and said to Claypool, “You know, come to think of it, Burrack unloaded my rifle. That's what nearly got me killed here.”

“There you have it,” Claypool said with resolve.

•   •   •

Moments later, atop their horses, the two turned from the hitch rail and rode a half mile up a steep, narrow path. They sat behind the cover of rock and brush and looked back along the trail through a battered naval telescope Claypool carried in the bottom of his saddlebags.

“Here you go, Fatch,” said Claypool. After staring down through the lens, he held the telescope over to Hardaway. “Watch the distant line of pine. You'll see Ranger Burrack moving along the trail as the trees thin out. What you won't see is any sacks of money.”

Hardaway scanned the ground through the telescope for a few seconds until he spotted the Ranger in the circling lens, appearing no more than a few yards away. Hardaway jerked his head away from the lens and blinked as if clearing his eye.

“Son of a bitch!” he said. “There's no way he could keep on my tracks that well. Mine's not the only tracks down there.”

“Yeah, but they might be the best,” Claypool said. He swung down from his saddle and stepped back behind Hardaway's horse and stooped and looked at his hoofprints. “Did you ever have an X on your horse's front shoes?”

Hardaway turned in his saddle and stared back at him.

“No, hell no,
never
,” he said.

“You do now,” Claypool said.

“Jesus! You're joking!” said Hardaway, swinging down quickly from his saddle.

“I'm not
Jesus
, and I'm not
joking
,” Claypool said as Hardaway stomped over from his horse. “Why do you keep asking me that? Do I look like a man prone to frivolity?”

Hardaway didn't answer. Instead he stooped down beside Claypool and studied the tracks, then cursed and stood up. His face reddened with embarrassment as realization set in.

“I'm a damn fool, Carter,” he said. He collapsed the telescope between his palms and handed it to Claypool as Claypool stood up and dusted his knee.

Claypool only nodded without coming out and saying he agreed.

“It's an old manhunter's trick, Fatch,” he said. “You're not the only man who's ever fell for it.”

“Yeah, but he just told me he used it to track the Mexican sergeant back to the ruins,” said Hardaway.

“Then you might have at least expected it,” Claypool said.

“And I didn't,” Hardaway said with self-contempt. “All right, he got me.” He looked all around and spread his hands. “What do I do now? If I had pullers, I could yank the shoes, but then he'd know to follow unshod tracks.”