Ralph Compton - Down on Gila River

Jake Wells slept at a table, his head on his arms. His splinted leg was out in front of him, resting on a three-legged stool, and a half-empty whiskey bottle stood at his elbow. So did a .44-40 Colt.

Santos’s eyes swept the room. There was no one else around and the tick of the railroad clock behind the bar was loud in the silence.

Rats scuttled in a corner where the brothers kept piles of clothing for sale, pants and shirts and a few pairs of lace-up boots stocked for miners.

Santos walked to the bar, silent in moccasins, and found the cigar box. He selected a Havana, lit it, and then again stepped in front of the sleeping Jake.

Surrounded by a haze of blue smoke, the breed studied the man, smiling. Jake looked like filth, overgrown with hair, his hands and face grimed with ancient dirt. And he smelled like an outhouse.

Still smiling, Santos kicked out the stool from under the man’s leg.

Jake woke with a shriek of pain as his foot slammed onto the floor. Then his bloodshot eyes widened as he saw the breed standing over him and he reached for his gun.

But Santos’s twin Remingtons were suddenly pointing at him, the muzzles as big and black as train tunnels.

“I wouldn’t, Jake,” the breed said. “Or at least I’d take it under consideration before I moved my hand another inch toward the iron.”

“You scared me,” Jake said. He bent over and tried to rub the knifing pain out of his leg. He lifted his head and looked at Santos. “Why did you do that?” he said.

“Because I don’t like you, Jake.”

“I never done you no harm, Santos.”

“Maybe not. But I saw the way you looked at my woman, and that was harm enough.”

Jake poured himself whiskey, drank it down, then poured another.

“You hurt my broke leg,” he said. “You hurt it real bad.”

“I told you, Jake, I don’t like you.”

“Are you here to kill me, Santos?” Jake said.

“No.” Santos holstered his guns. “I think Sam Sawyer will do that.”

Jake Wells laughed, revealing rotten teeth. “That old coot ain’t gonna kill me,” he said. “Dan is out hunting him right now, and when he brings him back, I’m gonna skin him alive.” Jake grinned. “He’s bringing me his woman too,” he said. A sliver of saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth. “So don’t go lookin’ fer me for a spell. I’m gonna be right busy.” He looked at the breed with rodent eyes.

Santos said, “I think Sawyer will kill you before nightfall, Jake. That’s what I think.”

“An’ I told you, the old man can’t take me, not on his best day, he can’t.”

“You underestimate him, Jake. He’s a tough old buzzard.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he’s a lot more dangerous than you think.” Santos reached down, grabbed the Colt from the table, and tossed it into a corner. “I got to be on my way,” Santos said. “I don’t need a bullet in the back to push me out the door.”

Jake twisted around in his chair. “How am I gonna get my gun? My leg’s broke and I think you made it a lot worse.”

“Crawl over there into the corner, Jake, and hope you make it before Sam Sawyer gets here.”

“He won’t come. He’s got a yeller streak a mile wide.”

“If he has, then he hasn’t shown it much,” Santos said.

“He won’t come. He’s yeller, I tell ye.”

“Then time will tell if he is or isn’t, won’t it?”

Santos stepped to the door, then stopped and turned. “Oh, by the way, Jake, I plumb forgot to tell you because it skipped my mind—Dan is dead.”

Jake’s face showed shock, then disbelief, and then anger. “You’re a liar, Santos.”

“Suit yourself, Jake.”

“I don’t like liars.”

“Suit yourself again, Jake.”

Santos saw wheels move behind the other man’s eyes.

“What in blazes happened?” Jake said.

“He got shot.”

“Dan’s fast on the draw. There ain’t nobody can best him in a fair fight.”

“Oh, the fight was fair all right, and he did get bested.”

“Then who did it? Give me a name.”

“Sam Sawyer, of course.”

That last stopped Jake cold.

When he managed to speak again, a lump in his throat thinned his voice. “How do you know this?”

“I saw it, late this morning.”

“Where was you?”

“High up, in the hills.”

“Then how the hell did you see it? Maybe you was mistook.”

Santos smiled. “I’m a wolf, Jake, remember? I can see a long ways, day or night.” His face took on a sad look as he pretended sympathy. “Face it, Jake. Your brother Dan, as fine a gentleman who ever lived, is deader’n hell in a preacher’s backyard. Good news for the Comanche, though. They’ll start to get fat again now that the Indian-eater ain’t around.”

Jake’s voice thinned further, into a whine.

“Take me with you, Santos. Be true-blue an’ saddle me a horse. Don’t leave me a-settin’ here with a broke leg.”

“Your gun is in the corner, Jake. Like I already told you, crawl over there and pray you get to it before Sawyer finds you.”

“Santos, please. At least give me back my iron.”

Santos shook his head. “Go get it, Jake. There’s a good boy.”

“You dirty breed buzzard, one day I’ll kill you for this.”

“So long, Jake.”

Santos opened the door and stepped outside, Jake’s curses following him like a flock of frantic birds.

Chapter 43

Birds rustled in the aspens, and the Gila murmured to itself as Sam Sawyer stripped Dan Wells of his cartridge belt and holster and buckled it around his waist. He retrieved the man’s fallen Colt and, breaking the habit of a lifetime, loaded all six chambers.

He dropped the revolver into the holster and looked at Hannah when she talked to him.

“We can take Wells’s horse and get out of here, Sam,” she said.

“It ain’t over,” Sam said.

“But Dan Wells is dead.”

“Yeah, but Jake’s shadow still lies on the ground,” Sam said.

“Sam, his leg is broken. He won’t come after us.”

“He scared me, Hannah, scared me bad, and then he cut me. I can’t step away like it never happened and live with that.”

Hannah said nothing for a while. Then her eyes narrowed.

“You’re talking about pride, Sam, stupid male pride. Jake Wells scared you—”

“And cut me.”

“And now you have to kill him to prove you’re still a man.”

“Something like that. I’m still scared, scared right now, but don’t chide me, Hannah. It hurts, like you’re making me swallow a roll of bobwire.”

The woman’s voice took on a pleading tone. “Sam, you can’t beat Jake Wells in a fight. A broken-down man with a cut-up face isn’t going to put the fear of death into him.”

Sam glanced at Wells’s body, then looked at Hannah, his face no longer clouded. “Take Wells’s horse and go back to little Lori. Tell Lorelei and the Kiowa that I’ll catch up soon.”

“When, soon?”

“When my work here is done and Jake Wells is dead.”

He saw Hannah shut down, not wanting to hear any more, but Sam persisted. He touched the scabbed-over cuts on both cheeks with his fingertips. “I owe Jake for this, if nothing else. If I coward out now, do you really think I could ever again be at ease in the company of men?”

It took the woman a long time to answer, and when she did she blindsided Sam and cut into him deep.

“I love you, Sam,” she said. “And I don’t want to lose you. Am I asking too much of you to love me back and leave this terrible place forever?”

Sam shuffled his bare feet. He was a man who’d never known how to talk pretties to a woman.

Finally he said, “Later, Hannah. We’ll discuss the . . . love . . . stuff . . . later.” Before Hannah could speak again, he said, “Now, get on the hoss and tell the others I’ll be back quicker’n scat.”