Red rock crossing, p.1
Red Rock Crossing, page 1
Red Rock Crossing
The San Tomas river is in flood and a mixed bunch of travellers is forced to stay in the decaying township of Red Rock Crossing. There is Jesse Grant a once-successful rancher who is fleeing his enemies, the Santos brothers. Then there are Ben and Marty, a pair of Texas Rangers escorting Hamel, a captured outlaw. A hired assassin named Missouri Sam is also waiting to ply his murderous trade and only one man knows his identity.
Ben and his girl Jane, who lives at the crossing, find themselves engaged in a struggle for survival as the town erupts in murder and violence. At last the flood subsides but a mystery must still be unravelled before Missouri pays for his crimes.
By the same author
Outlaw Vengeance
Warbonnet Creek
Red Rock Crossing
Greg Mitchell
ROBERT HALE
© Greg Mitchell 2007
First published in Great Britain 2007
ISBN 978-0-7198-2364-0
The Crowood Press
The Stable Block
Crowood Lane
Ramsbury
Marlborough
Wiltshire SN8 2HR
www.bhwesterns.com
This e-book first published in 2017
Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press
The right of Greg Mitchell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
CHAPTER ONE
The confrontation came as a surprise to both parties. Texas Ranger Ben Lawton was walking out of a general store in the small town of Sawpit Flat and literally bumped into Eric Hamel, a wanted bank robber who was about to enter. Recognition was mutual and reactions were swift.
Hamel had sworn never to be taken alive and the ranger knew that within a very short space of time, one of them could be dead.
Ben had a parcel containing a couple of new shirts in his right hand and he thrust this in Hamel’s face before letting it go to grab for his gun. The outlaw’s revolver was out of its holster when the ranger seized it by the cylinder with his left hand and struggled to keep the muzzle pointing away from him. Hamel was equally as quick and caught Ben’s gun hand as he drew his weapon. Just in time the ranger twisted sideways and a knee aimed for his groin struck his thigh instead. He retaliated with a head butt to his opponent’s whiskered face. Hamel cursed, snorted blood from his nose and tried to bite his adversary’s face but Ben twisted his head away in time.
For an instant they strained against each other but neither man had the advantage The outlaw was a bigger man but his opponent was younger with equal strength and faster reflexes. Both knew that the first one to get his gun pointed in the right direction would win the struggle. Then luck swung the ranger’s way. Though he dared not look he could feel that Hamel’s gun was a Smith & Wesson Schofield. He moved his fmgers slightly, felt the barrel catch and pressed it. To his great relief he felt the barrel and cylinder move out of alignment with the standing breech. Releasing his hold on the temporarily useless revolver, Ben threw the hardest left hook of his career. It landed heavily right on the point of Hamel’s chin snapping his head sideways and sending him spinning away and causing him to lose his grip on the ranger’s gun barrel. By the time the dazed man hit the ground, Ben had his Colt trained on him.
‘Don’t move, Hamel,’ he panted. ‘There’s a sheriff up in Amarillo who’s rather keen to meet you.’
The man who had sworn never to be taken alive had a sudden change of heart when looking down the bore of a Colt .45. The determination on the face of the dark-haired young man behind the gun was unspoken evidence that the ranger was prepared to pull the trigger. Slowly Hamel raised both hands.
The next day, Ben and his partner Marty Davis, rode north with the sullen prisoner being led on another horse. The sooner Hamel was delivered to the appropriate authorities, the easier the lawmen would breathe. The Hamel gang had lost a few members in a recent foray against a bank that was not as easy to rob as they had thought, but they were still dangerous. Fearing a rescue attempt by some gang members who remained at large, the rangers chose an out-of-the-way route through rough, remote country for the long ride to Amarillo.
Marty’s tanned face, with its drooping, sandy moustache, wrinkled into a smile as he laughingly questioned Ben’s choice of routes: ‘You wouldn’t be going via Red Rock Crossing to see Jane Shelley by any chance?’
‘Of course not,’ his partner said hastily although that idea had occurred to him. At twenty-five Ben was a year younger than Marty but considered himself years behind in worldly experience although he had been longer as a ranger. He was sticking to a subject he knew when he said, ‘Gus Martin and Joe Owens are still on the loose. They would know by now that we have Hamel and chances are they’ll be watching the main road looking for a chance to bust him free.’
The lawmen and their prisoner left Sawpit Flat before daylight in the hope of being unobserved. It was a three-day ride to Amarillo.
Then the rain started.
Mules do not like mud and it took all of Jesse Grant’s efforts to keep the pair in his buckboard moving along the rain-lashed trail that led to Red Rock Crossing. He dared not stop. He needed to be across the San Tomas River before the floods came down. If he timed things right, the floods would be to his advantage. He would be able to cross and lose his pursuers, but he was in a death trap if the floods stopped him on the south side of the stream.
There was a time when this powerfully built, middle-aged man would not have needed to run. His grim face with its cold blue eyes and the hand hovering over his gun butt, had intimidated many a man. As added insurance he had employed a crew of gunfighters when his career was at its zenith. But then he lost a long and bloody range war and things changed. One by one, his gun-toting associates had gone. Some had fled the state; a few were in prison; some had died by the gun. In his bid to become the territory’s most powerful cattle baron, he had made many enemies. Now his empire had collapsed along with the political influence he had once been able to call on and his enemies, unforgiving men with long memories, were circling him like wolves around a sick buffalo. Originally he had hoped that he would be allowed to depart peacefully when he lost the range war, but the winners were bent on revenge. He knew for sure that the Santos brothers were on his trail and there would be others as well. Grant had been ruthless in his rise to power and none knew better than he that the people he had often terrorized were unlikely to forgive and forget.
The rain was cascading from the brim of his sodden hat and that shed by his slicker was draining onto his boots so that his feet were cold and wet. He hoped that the canvas wrapping was keeping the water out of the few possessions he was carrying in the tray of the buckboard. They were all he could salvage and would be useful when he started again somewhere else – if he lived long enough.
The buckboard’s wheels were sinking lower as the trail became more sodden, increasing the load on the already tired mules, but their owner would not allow them to rest until they were safely across the San Tomas. He figured that the river would be less than an hour’s journey away when he looked behind and saw the three riders. They were half a mile back moving slowly, men and horses with heads bent low as the wind-driven rain beat into their faces.
Fear came with a rush. Alone and unguarded for the first time in many years, the former cattle baron wondered if he would ever reach the dubious safety of the crossing. He knew that if his enemies caught him alone, they would try to kill him and the odds were that they would succeed. The best he could hope for was that he could take a few of his attackers to the grave with him. Grant’s hands trembled as he cranked a round into the chamber of the Winchester rifle taken from under his seat and undid a couple of buttons on his slicker to allow easier access to his long-barrelled Colt revolver. If the distant riders were the Santos brothers, he could not let them catch up with him. His best hope for survival was to get across the San Tomas River and defend the crossing until the rising floodwaters made it impassable. But to do that meant staying ahead of the riders until he reached town. It took a great effort of will to refrain from trying to whip more speed from the team but he knew that such action might also cause the mules to jib. Instead he shook the reins and urged on the animals with his voice.
Ben reined in his blaze-faced chestnut gelding when he saw the buckboard in the distance. He turned to his companions and said, ‘Looks like we’re catching up with that buckboard that’s been ahead of us for hours.’
Marty peered through the ears of his tall, black mare and warned, ‘Let’s hang back a bit, we’re nearly at the crossing and that hombre could be nervous,’ He looked at Hamel sitting miserably on a weedy bay mustang. ‘He might think we are some of your friends, Eric. We wouldn’t want him to take fright and start shooting. Folks get a mite nervous sometimes when they see strange riders coming up behind them.’
Neither ranger was happy about the rain. Both feared that if they were stopped on the south bank of the San Tomas, Hamel’s men might be able to find them and attempt a rescue.
‘You know this area better than we do,’ Marty said to the prisoner. ‘What do you reckon our chances are of getting over the river at Red Rock?’
Hamel was in an evil mood and just muttered an obscenity under his breath. In handcuffs with his horse being led, he had no intention of aiding the rangers. Like his captors, he, too, was worried about the depth of the river at Red Rock Crossing but for a different reason.
The south side had once been the better side with a hotel and a collection of houses. But now the town was dying and some of the residences were already abandoned and had fallen into ruins.
Hiram Waldren stood under the veranda of the faded, weatherboard building bearing the name of the Red Rock Hotel. He was a small man with an untidy grey beard and small, dark eyes that gave him a furtive look. His nose at some time had been badly broken and a long scar showed above the whiskers on his left cheek His faded black coat and trousers were stained in places by the ubiquitous red mud. A hundred yards away, between the high banks, a roaring torrent of foaming brown water was sweeping trees, dead livestock and debris downstream. Nobody in his right mind would try the ford under such conditions.
At the sound of a light footstep beside him, the little man turned to see Jane Shelley who, with her parents, ran the hotel. She was a beautiful girl, not tall but exquisitely formed with a pretty face, long, dark hair and bright blue eyes that seemed to be always smiling. There was a kindness in her soft features that belied the brisk manner she adopted when working about the family business. Some said that such beauty was wasted in Red Rock Crossing, but she seemed happy enough. Since her father had recently broken his leg in a riding accident, Jane did much of the hotel’s management while her mother supervised the eating arrangements. All twenty years of her life had been spent at Red Rock Crossing and she had seen the San Tomas in all its moods.
‘I don’t think anyone will be crossing the river today, Reverend,’ she said. ‘It’s bad for travellers, but could be good for business.’
Waldren pointed to the long, low building on the other side of the road. ‘I fear that Dawson’s establishment will profit more than yours. With all this rain it is hard to imagine people being thirsty but some become too much so for their own good, I’m afraid. It’s almost impossible to make such people see reason.’
Jane laughed. ‘Hank Dawson would be a challenge for you, Reverend.’
‘He would at that,’ the little man admitted. ‘But first I must concentrate my efforts on those who want to hear my message. Dawson would not let me through the door of his saloon even if I wanted to enter. From the little I have seen of him, he’s a hard and Godless man.’
They were still talking when Grant drove his buckboard into the street. He halted the weary team in front of the hotel. Raising his hat to Jane, he said, ‘Howdy, ma’am. Would you know the state of the crossing?’
‘You have no chance of getting across, mister. There’s about twelve feet of water over the ford and the river’s a hundred yards wide.’
Grant’s frown deepened. That was the news he had least wanted to hear. He would have to try another course of action. ‘I’m a stranger here. Do you have a sheriff or a peace officer of some kind?’
Jane shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. The Texas Rangers look in here occasionally, but we have no regular lawman. This town is dying and we no longer have the population to support one.’
‘Can anyone else help?’ Waldren asked.
‘Not unless they’re good with a gun, they can’t. I have three riders on my tail and they’re not far behind. I reckon they’re out to kill me. It might be best if you get inside, miss, because there could be a bit of shooting in a minute. They’re not getting me without a fight.’
‘Surely we should not need to resort to gunplay,’ Waldren protested.
‘Try telling that to the Santos brothers,’ Grant snapped. ‘They’ve sworn to kill me but I won’t make it easy for the—’ Just in time he remembered he was in the presence of a lady.
As he spoke, Grant looked back along the trail and saw three riders just topping the hill where the road led down to the crossing. Briefly, panic showed in his face but then he set his jaw, grabbed his Winchester and looked around for a good defensive position.
‘They’re here – best get inside, ma’am.’
Jane looked up the road and laughed. ‘You can relax, mister. I know that horse with the white face. Its rider is a Texas Ranger. You have your lawman after all.’
Grant’s shoulders sagged in relief as the tension went out of his body.
‘You must have been praying mighty hard, my friend,’ Waldren told him cheerfully.
‘I make my own luck,’ Grant said harshly, ‘and when things go wrong I don’t expect no angel to suddenly appear and get me out of trouble.’
The little man in black looked slightly disappointed but said nothing more.
‘That’s Ben Lawton, for sure,’ Jane told them and hoped that the excitement in her voice did not show. ‘You could not want a better man on your side.’ She did not say that the young ranger’s visits to Red Rock Crossing had increased in number since they first met a year before, or that her opinion of him might not have all been related to his ability as a lawman.
Marty saw the girl on the veranda and glanced sideways at Ben. ‘Looks like your girl’s got herself a couple of new admirers,’ he said with a knowing smile on his face.
‘I don’t own her,’ Ben muttered defensively. ‘She’s free to choose any man she wants. Don’t you go saying anything to embarrass her.’
Marty loved teasing Ben. ‘She’s free to choose any man as long as he’s a Texas Ranger with a white-faced horse and a fancy six-shooter with an ivory butt.’
Ben’s Colt was a presentation weapon given to him by the grateful citizens of a town he had rid of a troublesome element and his partner took great delight in telling him that it was a dude’s pistol.
Ben took the bait. When it came to Jane, he always did. ‘You’re just jealous, Marty, because you don’t have a girl.’
‘I’m not ready yet for some female to get her hooks into me,’ Davis said knowingly. ‘Hell, Ben, you need to be careful about women. Just when you reckon they’re eating out of your hand, they kick without even laying back their ears. They’re all the same. Don’t get overconfident.’
Tony Santos looked at the buckboard tracks and chuckled. He was a big man with the dark features of his Mexican father, as harsh and unforgiving as the country in which he had spent most of his life. He was not usually given to humour, but today was feeling good despite the discomfort of riding in the rain. ‘It looks like Grant has left us a good clear track to follow,’ he said. ‘He thought he was real smart picking such an out-of-the-way trail – must have thought we were dumb.’
His brother Ernie showed a gap-toothed smile beneath his large moustache. ‘I’ll bet the sonofa-bitch hadn’t figured on this rain. You only have to spit upstream in the San Tomas and it floods. We’ve got him now.’
‘You might have him,’ said Clem Mandle, the third member of the group. ‘But if he digs in at the crossing he might be a bit hard to get at. He’s reckoned to be pretty good with a gun.’
Ernie growled, ‘If he was that good he wouldn’t have needed that small army of gunslingers he used to have.’
Tony Santos was feeling so good that he even allowed himself another smile. ‘He won’t be any trouble at all to us. I figured he might run in this direction and I’ve hired Missouri Sam to watch for him. He’s already at Red Rock Crossing. Grant won’t know what hit him.’
Ernie and Mandle had never met Missouri Sam but knew of his reputation. He was a man who enjoyed killing; a shadowy figure who came and went and left corpses behind him. He was skilled at his work and so fearless that even hardened gunmen steered clear of him. It was claimed that Missouri operated in many guises and those who thought they would see a typical frontier gunman were disappointed when they first met him. But there was no doubting his results. Much was suspected against him but nothing had ever been proved. Missouri planned meticulously and carefully covered his tracks. Though plenty was whispered about him, little was said openly.
