Rawhide Flat Read online

  “You’ll still be alive, Gus. You’re too all-fired mean and ornery to die.” He smiled weakly. “You made a promise, Gus, and I’ll hold you to it. If you renege, I’ll come back and haunt you.”

  Crane said nothing.

  The oppressive day was pushing down in on him and he squinted against the hard, bladed sunlight that lanced into his eyes.

  Rawhide Flat was silent, drowsing in the heat; yet the town seemed strangely off-kilter, tense, as though at any second it would wake up, screaming, from a nightmare.

  Ben Hollister’s closing of the railroad was now only a memory and a train clanked into the station, followed by a screech of brakes and a loud snake-hiss as the locomotive jetted steam from between its wheels.

  The crew and passengers, if there were any, should be warned that they’d just entered a battlefield. Crane could neither muster the energy nor the will. Maybe by-and-by.

  But it seemed others would do it for him.

  Five men Crane didn’t know had left the barricades and were walking quickly toward the station, dropping their rifles in the dust.

  Reddy ran after them. “You men, get back to your posts!” he yelled.

  One of them called out over his shoulder, “You go to hell, General. We ain’t waiting to be massacred like what happened to Ben Hollister’s punchers.”

  His face blazing with fury, Reddy drew a cap and ball Navy Colt and fired into the air.

  The five men broke into a run.

  Reddy watched them go. The revolver dropped to his side, his shoulders slumped in defeat and his head bowed. In his Confederate gray, he looked like he probably had when he stood outside Wilmer McLean’s house at Appomattox and watched Robert E. Lee come down the steps after his surrender.

  Crane moved to the edge of the boardwalk. “They wouldn’t have stood anyway, General,” he said. “Good riddance to them.”

  Reddy turned to the marshal. “Now we don’t have near enough men, do we?”

  “We didn’t have near enough to begin with.” The mayor looked up at the sun-bleached sky as though seeking a solution to his problems there. Apparently he didn’t find one because he trudged dejectedly back to the barricade.

  Brigadier General Reddy had suffered one crushing defeat before and it seemed likely that he was anticipating another.

  It did not bode well.

  Crane returned to Masterson’s side and looked down at him. “The rats are deserting the sinking ship,” he said.

  The sheriff nodded. “The no-accounts are always the first to quit.”

  The man had been marked for death and it was branded on his face. His skin was tight to the bone, eyes burning with blue fire, and the shadows in his cheeks had grown darker.

  Masterson was struggling to breathe, chest rising and falling in pained shudders as his open mouth grasped at the thick air.

  A man with the bark on him, he was dying hard, struggling every step of the way. But this was one battle he was fated to lose.

  “How you feeling?” Crane asked.

  Masterson’s eyes lifted to the marshal, but he obviously did not think his question was worth an answer. Now he asked one of his own that he knew could have no constructive reply either.

  “Where the hell is Stark?”

  “Out there, someplace. Who knows?”

  “Go find him, Gus. You’ve got no call to stay here and nurse me.”

  Crane smiled. “And if I find him, then what?”

  “Stir up the hornet’s nest, throw him off balance. Up until now he’s pretty much had things all his own way. It’s time we took the fight to him.”

  “It’s a thought, I guess.”

  Masterson took a swig of whiskey, then wiped off his mustache with the back of his hand. “Gus, Sarah’s life and this town’s existence are on the line. You don’t have the luxury of wallowing in depression, nor the time.”

  A quick anger flared in Crane, but he immediately let it go. Calmly he said, “I’m open to suggestions, Paul. Or do you want me to go it alone?”

  Masterson jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Roust out them idle gamblers. At one time or another each of them has killed his man. They’re good with guns and they’ve got fast horses.”

  “Fast horses go with the profession,” Crane said. He thought aloud. “I could round up the pickets. That would be seven men, including myself.”

  “Seven men won’t scare Stark, but it might be enough to at least inconvenience him.”

  By an effort of will Crane freed himself from the seductive embrace of the dark succubus that had been wooing him for hours. He said, “I’ll talk to the gamblers.” He hesitated, looking at Masterson.

  Anticipating what the big man was about to say, the sheriff said, “I’ll be all right.” Then, as Crane turned away, he added, “Gus, be careful what you say in there. By times those boys can be touchy.”

  The marshal nodded and stepped into the saloon.

  Three men sprawled at a table, glasses at their elbows, a bottle standing between them. The gamblers were unenthusiastically playing poker, no chips or money on the table. It was a friendly, if unexciting, game between professionals. The real thing was reserved for the suckers and rubes.

  “Howdy, boys,” Crane said, remembering Masterson’s warning.

  The men looked up at him but said nothing. One of them, a lean, cadaverous man, reached inside his frock coat and conspicuously adjusted the hang of his shoulder holster.

  “I need three volunteers,” the marshal said. He was smiling, trying to appear friendly and at ease.

  The lean man said, “You’re Augustus Crane, ain’t you? Made quite a stir in Texas a few years back.”

  “And other places,” Crane replied. “You must be new in town.”

  The man shrugged. “No, but I sleep a lot.” He studied his cards, then lifted his eyes to the marshal again. “What’s the job?”

  “Go after Reuben Stark. Shake him up some.”

  A younger man wearing a gray frock coat with a velvet collar frowned and said, “The old man sets himself up as a preacher. I hate preachers.” His cold eyes moved to Crane’s face. “I hear Stark has two, three hundred men backing him.”

  The marshal nodded. “Uh-huh, and chances are you’ll be seeing all of them real soon.”

  “You want to slow him down, huh?”

  “Yeah, and make him realize that taking Rawhide Flat isn’t going to be as easy as he thinks it is.”

  The cadaverous man threw down his cards. “Hell, anything’s better than sitting here in an empty saloon. Even the bartender’s out there at the barricade with a six-gun he don’t know how to use.”

  He rose to his feet and stuck out his hand. “Name’s Clinton Thorp. The feller in the fancy coat is Jack Palmer and the one over there who doesn’t talk much is Silent Sam Chase.”

  After Crane shook hands with them, the other gamblers rose.

  “I guess we’ll ride along,” Palmer said. “Give us something to do.”

  Silent Sam lived up to his name and said nothing.

  Fifteen minutes later the four men left Rawhide Flat and swung north.

  Chapter 35

  The sun was dropping lower in the sky, but as yet the coming of evening was just a vague promise and the heat remained a scalding liquid that pooled around the four riders and their horses.

  Crane had seen no sign of Reddy’s pickets, nor of the ten flankers that were supposed to surprise Stark’s hordes from the rear.

  Maybe all of them had run away and were hiding out in the hills.

  A carrion stench rose from Sullivan Canyon as the marshal and the others passed and now they slowed their pace, guessing that Stark must be close.

  Only Crane carried a rifle, the old Henry in the boot under his knee. The others carried short-barreled Colts in shoulder rigs, adequate for close work but not for a long-range fight.

  The marshal had only the merest fragment, fraction, morsel of a plan, and now, with the effectiveness of his artillery in doubt, he sough
t to modify it.

  He did not succeed. The plan, such as it was, broke apart in his mind and crumbled into dust.

  So much for sniper fire.

  “Smoke ahead.”

  Silent Sam had broken his vow of silence.

  “Where away?” Thorp asked, his use of the nautical term suggesting a youth spent on board a ship.

  “Straight ahead,” Sam said. He clamped his mouth shut like a man who’d just decided that his talking was done.

  “I see it,” Crane said. “It’s coming from the Rafter-T.”

  “Cookhouse, maybe,” somebody suggested.

  “No, it’s from a heap of campfires. Damn it, Stark hasn’t moved.”

  Clinton Thorp sat his dun like a sailor, looking lumpy and uncomfortable in the saddle. “What’s he waiting for?” he asked.

  “Beats me,” Crane answered.

  “More men?” Thorp said.

  “I doubt it. He knows he’s got more than enough already.”

  The marshal shook his head. “What is Stark up to?” None of the gamblers attempted to answer that question.

  But then Jack Palmer, young, sharp-eyed and intelligent, said, “He’s waiting for something. An item he thinks he needs.”

  Crane was willing to clutch at straws, at any suggestion. “What might that item be?”

  “I don’t know,” Palmer said. “But I’m willing to bet it’s being delivered to him and he doesn’t have it yet.”

  “By wagon? Pack mule? A man on a horse?” Crane asked.

  Palmer smiled. “Marshal, I don’t have a crystal ball. If I did, I’d be at the gaming tables in Denver, not Rawhide Flat.”

  The marshal watched a hawk fold its wings and dive on something skulking in the long grass. Then a shriek. It was a small death that would have gone unnoticed had he not been there.

  “Whatever Stark thinks he needs will come from the north,” Crane said after some thought. “Probably out of Carson City or Virginia City.”

  “Whores?” Silent Sam suggested.

  Crane shook his head. “Stark has set himself up as a holy man. Holy men don’t import whores.”

  “There’s Gardnerville to the south,” Palmer said. “It’s a fair-sized town.”

  “Sodbuster town,” Thorp said. “Nothing there, unless Stark’s bringing in food supplies.”

  Crane thought that unlikely, but he was not willing to take a chance.

  “Palmer, you and Sam stay here and keep a watch to the south. Thorp, you come with me. We’ll swing wide of the ranch and scout to the north.” He looked around at the sallow, hard-faced men. “Unless one of you has a better idea?”

  “You called it, Marshal,” Palmer said.

  “Then let’s get it done.”

  Crane and Thorp headed east for an hour, then swung north, riding parallel to El Dorado Canyon, the limit of Ben Hollister’s range. Carson City was now almost due west of them and that meant they had miles of country to cover.

  Unless luck was on their side, it might well prove to be an impossible task.

  The heat of the day still hung heavy on the broken land, but the afternoon light was fading and shadows were slanting longer under the high ridges. Unused to riding, Thorp looked tired and irritable. “This is impossible, Crane,” he said. “Hell, it’s like trying to sweep sunshine off Ma’s front porch.”

  The marshal readily agreed. “It’s a heap of ground to cover for two men.”

  “Heap of ground to cover for a cavalry regiment. Up here the Piute rode rings around the Army for years because it couldn’t find them in these hills.”

  “We have to try,” Crane said. “Whatever Stark is waiting for must be all-fired important. If we get to it first maybe we can upset his plans.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “Not entirely. But I’m holding on to it because it’s all I got.”

  “Then what’s your call?”

  Aware of Thorp’s pained expression as he shifted in the saddle, the marshal said, “I’ll scout to the west and you stay here and keep watch. If a rider or a wagon or whatever shows up, hold it here. I’ll be back.”

  “Suits me,” Thorp said. He swung out of the saddle, then rubbed his rump. He looked like a very uncomfortable man.

  Crane reached behind him and took his field glasses from his saddlebags. “These will help.”

  Thorp nodded and took the glasses. “Ride careful,” he said. Then, with a smile that reminded Crane of Paul Masterson’s wide grin, he said, “A tall man on a tall hoss can be seen for miles, and you ain’t exactly anybody’s idea of Dan’l Boone.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” the marshal said, annoyed.

  When Crane estimated he was about six miles east of Carson City, he rode along the broad, rocky spine of an arroyo that rose steadily upward in a gentle incline.

  The slope was covered thickly with juniper, piñon, and, unusual at this elevation, a few cedar. Bunchgrass grew among the trees and clumps of sagebrush.

  The wall of the arroyo topped out at about fifty feet above the flat, then leveled off for a hundred yards before beginning a sharp descent.

  Crane rode to the end of the level area of the spine and dismounted. From here he could see for several miles in all directions, but the day was hazing a darker blue and when night came it would rob him of his eyesight.

  He had two hours, maybe less, to accomplish what he’d come here to do. He looked around, his eyes reaching far, but the empty, still land mocked him with its breathless silence.

  Crane led the buckskin into the trees and let the animal graze on the sparse bunchgrass. He squatted on his heels and built a smoke.

  To the west, the wild country still brooded and held its counsel.

  Night fell, drifting downward from the dusky sky like black soot. The wind picked up and a desert cold chilled Crane to the bone.

  But, contrary to its secretive nature, the darkness extended the marshal a helping hand.

  Anyone who has traversed a lonely land knows that a light of any kind can be seen for miles, unless it’s cleverly hidden by canny men.

  But the men who had built the campfire that glittered like a red star in the distance had made no attempt to conceal it. Why should they? The Indians were all dead or in captivity, and though this was outlaw country, getting fat and sassy from the easy pickings of the Comstock, few were night riders.

  Crane allowed himself a wry smile. Thorp and Masterson before him had been right—he was no Dan’l Boone.

  Some deputy marshals, a different breed, were chosen for their tracking skills and woodsmanship. Others, like him, because they were what they were, were named gunfighters who would brace a man straight up, take their hits and keep on a-comin’.

  He grudgingly accepted the distinction, but now it did not help him calculate how far away the campfire was. A mile, two miles, halfway to the end of the earth? He had no idea.

  He rose to his feet. There was only one way to find out.

  Chapter 36

  Crane led his horse down the spine of the arroyo to the flat.

  The moon was out, but from where he stood he could not see the campfire. He swung into the saddle, trusting the sure-footed buckskin to find its way through the pressing darkness.

  When the marshal topped a rise, the campfire came in sight. When he dropped down to a hollow or wash, it disappeared again. But, like the three Wise Men of old, he kept following his glittering star.

  The camp was much closer than he expected, so close that he almost rode right into it.

  Crane crossed a creek with a high bank, a broken-down section next to a wide dogwood tree visible in the moonlight. Ducking his head, he rode under the lower branches of the dogwood, and when he raised it again the camp was in sight.

  Immediately drawing rein, he sat his saddle and studied the layout.

  A man sat at the fire, his back to the marshal. Off to the right, half-hidden among trees, a light freight wagon was parked, its tongue raised. Nearby was a tethered team o
f four rangy mules.

  After a few moments, Crane rode closer, then stopped again. The delicious odors of frying bacon and simmering coffee assailed his nose.

  “Hello the camp!”

  The man at the fire immediately sprang to his feet. He turned, then faced into the darkness, silhouetted by the fire.

  The marshal pegged the man for a pilgrim to expose himself that way, but there was nothing of the rube about his harsh, shouted challenge.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  “Smelled your coffee,” Crane said.

  “Then ride on. I have only enough for myself.” He hesitated a moment, then added, “I don’t plan on feeding every saddle tramp who rides up to my camp.”

  “Unfriendly sort of cuss, ain’t you?” Crane grinned.

  “Ride on, or I swear I’ll take my whip to you.”

  “I don’t advise that.”

  Something in the tone of the marshal’s voice gave the man pause. But he decided to bluff it out. “I said ride on, and be damned to ye.”

  Crane kneed his horse closer.

  The man by the fire inched his hand closer to the gun in a cross-draw holster buckled to his waist.

  “I told you, I don’t advise that.”

  Swinging out of the saddle, Crane advanced on the man. Even in the uncertain light, he saw the mule skinner tense, getting ready to make a play.

  Crane’s Colt came up smooth and fast.

  “Drop the gun belt and kick it over here,” he said. Crane heard the sizzle of bacon in the pan and the soft crackle of the fire.

  The man looked startled. Then he said, “You’re a lawman.”

  “Deputy United States Marshal Augustus Crane. I can’t say I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.” His voice hardened. “Now, do as I say and unbuckle the gun belt or I’ll drop you right where you stand.”

  “But lawmen don’t do that to innocent folks.”

  “This one does.”

  Hastily, the man unbuckled the belt and let it fall around his ankles.

  “Now kick it over here.”

  He did as he was told.