Ralph Compton - Down on Gila River

“Stay there,” Sam said. Then, thinking about it: “If Dan Wells comes around, tell him I’m dead.”

“Where are you going?” Hannah said, her voice rising in alarm.

“I’ll scout around. You stay right where you’re at.”

“Is it Wells?”

“I don’t know.” He tried to smile. “Maybe we’re so scared that we’re hearing things, huh?”

Hannah shook her head. “No, Sam. I’m sure I heard a horse.”

“Yeah, me too. I’ll go take a look.”

“Be careful.”

Sam made his way down the gradual slope toward the riverbank. Flies buzzed around the open wounds on his cheeks and he had to swat at them constantly.

He went slowly, kept to the trees, and avoided open, grassy areas. Once he even wormed his way through thick brush, the feeling of a malevolent presence so close by driving his fear.

Sam bellied behind a small U-shaped rock ridge rising from a soft carpet of grassy earth. He had a clear view of the riverbank, and what he saw made his heart jump in his chest as the granddaddy of all scares spiked at him.

Dan Wells sat his horse, a rifle across his saddle horn. The man’s eyes searched the rise, probing the trees, his outlaw’s sixth sense ringing his alarm bells.

Sam swallowed hard.

He knew. Dan Wells knew .

After the passage of about a minute, Wells swung out of the saddle and stepped to the bottom of the rise. He stood and his eyes scanned the slope, his body tense.

Sam’s mouth drew tight in a bitter line.

Yeah, you son of a gun, you know we’re here and you’re coming for us.

He watched Wells work his way up the incline, one careful step at a time, the Winchester slanted across his chest.

When the man passed close by, Sam flattened himself against the earth, his nose pressed in the dirt. He heard the fall of the man’s boots come near. Then, as he walked higher up the slope, they faded and finally stopped.

Hannah’s little yelp of surprise and alarm followed.

Trying to move as little as possible, Sam craned his head around until he saw Wells. The man was talking.

“Where is he?”

It took a few moments before the woman answered, “Sam is dead.”

“How dead?”

“He broke his neck when we fell down the slope in the dark and rain.”

“I didn’t see his body.”

“No, you wouldn’t. I dragged him into the trees.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want to leave the man I love out in the rain.”

“Woman, if you’re lying to me, I’ll flay the hide off you with a dog whip.”

“Look around you,” Hannah said. “Sam’s not here.”

Wells was silent for a few moments, then said, “You come with me.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“My brother wants you for his woman. I told him I’d bring you back.”

“I won’t go with you,” Hannah said.

Sam heard her break and run, the scrape of her skirt through the underbrush, then the pounding of Wells’s boots as he followed.

Shifting position, Sam eased onto his back. His hand moved and brushed against something hard . . . that rolled away from him.

Without lifting his head, he scrabbled around and his fingers closed on a smooth rock about the size of his fist.

The rock gave him a glimmer of hope, like a man seeing a single patch of blue in a black sky.

The one thing in all his life he could do well was throw a rock.

He stared upward through the tree branches . . . remembering . . . years past . . . when he was a younker . . .

“Hey, Sam,” big Dallas Frazer, ramrod of the Circle D, said, “how come that dun hoss has only one eye?”

“Son of a gun wouldn’t go into the corral, so I chunked an apple at him,” young Sam said.

“You th’ow a mean rock, Sam,” Frazer said, “’cept now you’re the proud owner of a one-eyed hoss. Come payday you’ll find your wages ten dollars shy.”

Despite the fear racking him, Sam smiled to himself. Now he was about to chunk an apple at another, bigger, son of a gun and he hoped his aim was still as true.

One thing for sure, he was a lot better with a rock than he was with a six-gun—even if he was as blind as a coil of barbed wire.

Sam heard the rush of feet through brush. Then he heard Hannah’s terrified, protesting shrieks as Wells grabbed her.

Slowly, carefully, he raised his head.

Wells had a bunch of Hannah’s hair in his fist, and was dragging her down the slope.

Sam let the man get past, then rose to his feet, his battered body punishing him all over again.

The rock in his hand, he cat-footed after Wells and the woman.

He had one shot, and then he was done. No, worse than done—he was dead.

When Sam got within throwing distance, Dan Wells had his back to him, his left hand tangled in Hannah’s hair as he dragged her after him.

But the gunman has the instincts of a cougar, and Wells turned suddenly and let go of the woman at the same time.

For a split second, he clashed eyes with Sam. Then he brought up his Winchester in one fast, smooth motion.

Sam let the rock fly, aiming for the white blur that was all he could make of Wells’s face.

Wells fired, a hurried, uphill shot that missed and rattled through the trees.

Sam didn’t miss.

The rock hit the gunman smack between the eyes and Wells went down hard, the rifle spinning away from him.

Ignoring Wells, who was struggling to get to his feet, blood from his busted nose running down his face, Sam dived for the Winchester.

He’d had his share of luck, but now it ran out on him.

He grabbed the rifle, but his momentum took him over a dirt ledge undercut into the hillside. Sam fell about four feet, bounced once, then tumbled head over heels down the slope.

But when he hit the flat, he still had the rifle in his hands.

Groggy from his fall, Sam sat up and saw Dan Wells, Colt up and ready, coming down for him, the sides of his boots digging into the soft earth.

Sam stood and levered a round into the chamber of the Winchester.

Wells was about twenty feet away, and at that distance all Sam saw was a vague, man-shaped blur striding toward him.

“You’re dead, you old buzzard,” Wells said, his scarlet-stained face twisted and ugly. “You get it right in the belly.”

He brought up the Colt for a killing shot and Sam triggered the Winchester. He’d no idea where the bullet went.

Hannah saved his life yet again.

She launched herself from the slope and crashed on top of Wells, as he was about to pull the trigger. Both of them fell to the ground, and Wells’s shot went wild. Cursing, he slapped the woman away from him and struggled to regain his footing.

Sam had closed the distance between him and the gunman and he fired a second time.

This time the range was shorter and his aim was better. Wells staggered as the bullet hit him just above the belt buckle. Sam fired again, and again, working the lever as fast as he could, and Wells dropped to his knees.

The outlaw held up his hands. “No more,” he said. “I’m done. I’m hit hard and I’m out of it.”

But there was no mercy in Sam Sawyer that day.

“Die, you Injun-eatin’ varmint,” he said.

He pumped bullets into Wells until the rifle ran dry; then he threw it on top of the man’s lifeless body.

“Damn you,” Sam said, all his pent-up fear turning to hate. “Damn you to hell.”

Chapter 42

Skate Santos drew rein outside the Wellses’ saloon and swung out of the saddle.

Higher up the slope, a flock of piñon jays scouted a stand of hardwoods and he watched them for a while until they settled among the branches.

Santos eased the guns in the holsters, then opened the door and stepped into the rank stench of the saloon.