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I couldn't stand to leave that unfortunate body face down in the pool, so I pulled him out and buried him below a field of scree. Then I pulled some of the loose rock down and that was that. My horse was eager for water so I took him to the next upstream pool to drink. Somehow I didn't believe I would ever drink from that bottom pool, even if years should pass.
While walking my mount to a suitable place of refreshment I noticed that the last outlaw had dismounted and gone on up the gulch on foot. This was unexpected, and I had already come to look at unusual events with suspicion, even though I was but a few months with the Rangers.
About midway between the walls of the gulch a series of white flecks caught my eye. Another step and they were gone. So I stepped back and sure enough, a series of chipped rocks pointed out a trail. This time I stayed in line as far as I could and found that I was stepping in the tracks of the outlaw. The chip trail ended on a section of plain flat rock that held no markings. From here the outlaw could have gone in any direction to pick up supplies or cache his loot. When I gave it some thought I was sure the later was the real story. So far the man had broken the normal rules of outlaw behavior so I wasn't surprised that he continued to do so. Few and far between are robbers that actually stash their money rather than spend it as soon as possible.
Oh, well, I figured, it's not my loot. As I mentioned, I had only been with the law a short time and didn't have the rules down at that point. Back at the mouth of the gulch my man turned northeast again. It looked like he might be taking a big loop back to the organized towns to make another heist.
"Must be a man with big plans," I told the horse. "A man with delusions of grandeur often sets up for a big fall."
If the horse was impressed with my philosophy he didn't show it. Well, come to think of it he didn't buck or try to bite me, so maybe he was in agreement. The last time I broke into song he did both so I made it a point to remain tuneless while riding. Most men that spend a lot of lonely time on horseback talk to their animals, whether they admit it or not. I never saw any harm in it as long as you didn't start to hear the horse talking back. I think an animal likes to be spoken to and will respond by helping you in ways you don't even notice, such as staying on a trail if you should drift off to sleep. I will keep talking to my horses.
There was nothing else to do but follow the outlaw's tracks in hopes of catching up someday. If he wanted to go faster he now had a spare horse to shift onto while I would have to stop and rest mine. It would be nice to take a shortcut on him but I didn't know the country and didn't have a clue to his destination.
By the end of the day I thought I knew where he was going. X-ed out on my crude map was a boomtown called Nobleboro. The name had changed to Wooten's Folly just before it was crossed off my map. I had heard the story of what had happened.
It seems like a man named Ben Wooten had found, or said he had found, a promising mix of placer and hard rock, which oozed with gold. He sold lots and shares to a lot of people who wanted to get in on the ground floor and had missed the last big boom. They threw up a haphazard town rich in gambling and whiskey, but the workers in the fields found that the original colors soon played out. A miner could hit just as good a spot as this nearly anywhere in the Southwest.
The miners were growing suspicious even before Wooten got drunk and bragged in too loud a voice about how he had scammed a whole town. He was taken out and hung and left hanging until the buzzards picked him clean. The town was not even taken down; it was just abandoned and it stayed a ghost town such as many that littered the West.
All right, now I could take a cut through the hill to the north and be much closer to the outlaw, providing my speculations were correct. He would undoubtedly follow the north end of a small river for ease of travel. I made good time, considering the roughness of the terrain, but I had no illusions of beating my man to the ghost town. When I felt I was nearing it I took a northern circle to approach from the opposite end.
I left my horse ground hitched in a dry creek bed and gingerly walked in on foot. I didn't believe I was expected, but you never know.
I crept around to see down the length of the only street, and sure enough, there were not two, but three horses. So that meant there were at least two men. Two enemies? Or was this just a chance meeting? One way to find out.
I eased my way along the back of the buildings and found the one that had been the saloon. Voices came from inside but I could not make out what they were saying. A door that entered into a storage room was ajar on one hinge and I crawled in to find the door leading into the bar was solid and closed. Putting my ear to the keyhole I was able to get the drift of the conversation.
"It's good that you didn't bring the others here, but what about the loot? Why didn't you bring it right in the way you were supposed to?"
"Because I don't trust you anymore than I did my other two partners. They're dead, by the way. I killed both of them."
"Oh, you...., but why don't you trust me? Haven't I always been square with you?"
"So far, but I know that you were Wooten's backer. You never lifted a finger to save him. What did you do, clean out the safe and run?
"You did, didn't you? I can tell by your face."
"Well, what would you have done?"
"I would have shot him free," replied the outlaw I had been tracking. "I sure wouldn't have left him swinging in the breeze. What do you think you're going to do now, anyway? All you did is set me up with—WAIT A MINUTE—you set me up with two backstabbers, didn't you. That's why they each made a play to get the loot. I was supposed to make the hold up and they would kill me and bring you the loot."
"No, no, Kid, you got it all wrong. I didn't know those guys from Adam. I was just trying to get you some back up."
"Those guys backed me up the way a rattler warms up your blankets. You...Aha"
The sound of gunfire came through the door and as it did I rammed the door with my shoulder and burst in on the scene. A man clad in black with silver ornamentation stood with smoking gun in hand. On the floor a bald headed man in a suit managed to raise his gun hand off the floor and the Kid blasted him again, then turned his gun toward me and cut loose. His shot splintered the doorframe and then his revolver clicked on an empty chamber. I tried to rush him but he sped out the front and ran down the street.
I stopped to check the man on the floor and found him to be beyond help. Rushing out on the street I saw the outlaw disappear into the mouth of a livery stable. I grabbed the reins of the three horses at the hitch rail and took them out the other end of town. I wanted my man to be on foot to cut the chances of escape.
With the horses out of the way, I slipped across the street and came up the other side in back of those few buildings. A sudden rustling on my left made me draw down on a pack rat, which sat up and looked at me for a second and then scurried away. A slight squeak came from ahead and above and I dove instinctively under cover. That was a sound I had even heard back home. The sound of a second story hatch door opening, as if to load in some hay. Sure enough, a bullet clipped the dirt near my boot heel. I eased around but the man was not in the doorway. It opened the wrong way for him to get a clear shot. Running on tiptoes I made a dash for the corner of the livery and listened for more noise.
I was surprised to see the brim of the man's hat start to emerge when I realized that something was amiss. I looked the other way to see a gun muzzle poking out of a hole in the wall. I dove around to the rear door and rolled into a stall. I knew what the chap had done. A wooden block and tackle still hung from the projecting beam and he attached a single rope through it and attached it to his hat. Then he could pull it out in the opposite direction.
"He must be somewhere right over me, ' I thought. Sure enough, dust started to sift down through the cracks as he moved.
"Who are you?" he hollered. I didn't answer, and I realized the strain of the past few days was weighing heavily upon him.
Again he spoke. His voice was moving to the front. "How come you're chasing me? Are you some kind of a lawman?"
Sometimes I get inspired. Now was such a time. I stuffed my bandana into my hat then covered my mouth with it. Then I simply said, "This IS a ghost town, son. Do you know what that means?"
The feet above me started running for the little door in the rear. He snatched the rope as he flew out and tried to achieve a smooth landing. He neglected to inspect the two poorly wrought square nails that held the pulley in place. The whole business let go and the Kid from California ended up on the back of his neck. Dead.
I had cleaned up a town without firing a shot.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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