High Wild Desert (17 page)

“You
want to be
a bad man, Cisco,” Sam said before Lang could go on any further about any alleged criminal exploits. “I've watched and listened, and I've figured you out,” he said as if in conclusion. “What puzzles me is
why
you want to be a bad man.”

Lang grew sullen and silent, anger boiling inside him. Dankett drew in closer on the Ranger's other side to better hear them both.

“I figure maybe you came searching for your sister and because you never found her, you figured you failed her.”

“Leave my sister out of this, Ranger,” Lang said, but Sam heard no threat, no conviction in his words, just a weak defense against a truth.

“But you didn't fail her,” Sam went on. “You failed yourself. The West showed you that you weren't the tough young man you thought yourself to be. You tried to prove you are by mistaking toughness for meanness. You picked the wrong people to look up to, and now here you are, on your way to prison for what I figure was you holding the horses while some real bad men did the robbing.”

“You're wrong, Ranger, dead wrong!” said Lang. He settled himself when he saw Dankett's shotgun rise an inch.

Sam shook his head and said, “Wherever your sister is, Cisco, I wonder how she would feel, knowing that searching for her played a part in bringing you to where you are.”

Dankett chuffed under his breath and laid his shotgun back across his lap.

“Well said, Ranger,” he murmured.

The three fell silent. They rode onto the main street of New Delmar, and followed it through long slices of evening shadows to the hitch rail out in front of the jail.

“I don't hear any hammers,” Dankett said, stepping down from his saddle.

Yet upon walking through the front door, the three found a straight and sturdy wall of shiny new bars crossing the floor where only the chalk line had been before.

“With two whole cells,” Dankett whispered as if in awe. At the desk, they heard Dr. Starr snoring, his head down, the nearly empty rye bottle standing at his elbow. Bedside the desk lay the heavy iron ball. Inside one of the two cells sat Carnes and Johnson on two short stools, smoking freshly rolled cigarettes.

“We didn't do nothing to him,” said Johnson. “He just drank until he fell over.”

Sam looked beside the bottle of rye and saw a large metal key on a brass ring. Picking up the key, he gestured Lang toward the cell door. When he started to unlock the door, he found it already standing an inch ajar.

“If it's all the same, Ranger, you said we could stay until morning,” Carnes said.

“That is what I said,” Sam replied. He opened the door, took off Lang's handcuffs and motioned him inside the other cell.

Lang walked into the cell without protest and turned and faced Sam through the bars.

“I'm thinking about what you said, Ranger. Maybe there's some truth in it,” he offered quietly. Then he turned away.

Sam only nodded and shut the door. Locking it, he walked back to the desk and dropped the key on it.

Dankett stood in the middle of the floor still looking in wonderment at the new wall of shiny black bars.

“I don't think I'll know how to sleep tonight, not sitting in a wooden chair,” he said.

“Good,” said Sam. “You can go with me to Number Five, help me make some new friends. How does that sound?”

“It sounds like more fun than sleeping,” Dankett said, grinning beneath the wide brim of his Montana-crowned hat.

Chapter 17

Looking in the dusty window of the busy Number Five Saloon, the Ranger and Deputy Dankett picked through the crowd until the deputy spotted the two railroad gunmen. Henry Teague and Sonny Rudabough sat at the table they had staked out for themselves along a side wall. A tall bottle of whiskey stood on the tabletop between them.

“That's them?” Sam asked, his face close to the glass.

Just to be certain, Dankett huffed his breath on the wavy windowpane and rubbed his coat sleeve around on it, making a large circle on the thick glass.

“Yep, that's them, Ranger,” he said sidelong to Sam. “The same men, the same table.” He hiked the shotgun cradled in his arm. “Want me to walk Big Lucy in, have her bat their heads around some?”

Sam looked at Dankett for a moment until he decided he was serious.

“No, Deputy,” Sam said. “In a crowded place like this, it's best we keep down any trouble if we can.”

“Too bad,” Dankett said, glancing down at his shotgun.

“First thing, I want to see if the dove is able to tell me anything. Then I need you to stand to the side, watch my back for me while I talk to these birds.”

“All right,” Dankett said, sounding a little disappointed. “Where do you want me and Lucy?”

“Keep between me and their table when we go upstairs,” Sam said, drawing his big Colt, checking it, and lowering it back into its holster. “Stay to my left when we come down and I go talk to them.”

“You've got it, Ranger,” Dankett said. He turned and followed Sam inside and across the crowded floor, the player piano rattling, jumping and bouncing wildly, like some lunatic on visiting day.

Having seen the Ranger eyeing the piano, Wesley Fluge, the stocky saloon owner, grinned behind the bar and stood with his stubby hands spread along the bar's edge, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows.

“She a beauty, eh, Ranger?” he said to Sam, raising his voice above the loud twangy music. Before Sam could reply, he said, “Had her made and shipped here from Philadelphia—fellow by the name of McTammany built her. A
genius
, that man.” He slapped a hand down and said, “I know Deputy Clow here doesn't drink, but what can I get for you?”

“I want to see Anna Rose,” Sam said, keeping an occasional glance toward the wall table.

“Ranger, you might want to pick somebody else tonight,” said Fluge. “Anna Rose is not what I'd call back to working at her
usual quality
?” He gave him a wink.

“He wants to talk to her, you fool,” said Dankett. “About what happened.” The deputy leaned against the edge of the bar top. Sam saw that at any moment he might reach over and grab the saloon owner by his throat.

Fluge jumped back a step; his face lost its color.

“I—I know that, Deputy Clow,” he stammered. “I was being humorous, trying to get a laugh, is all.”

“You want to get a laugh, pour kerosene over your head and stick a match to it,” Dankett said.

“Easy, Deputy,” Sam said in a calm tone.

“Right up there, Ranger,” said Fluge, gesturing a nod up the stairs, “second room on the left. Lila's with her. Tell her I said let you in.”

“The Ranger is our sheriff,
fool
,” said Dankett. “He gets let in, no matter what.”

“Obliged,” Sam said to Fluge. He gave Dankett a look as he turned to the stairs.

“What?” said Dankett. “Was I still a little harsh?”

“A little, maybe,” Sam said, “but not bad.” He turned and walked through the crowd and up the stairs, Dankett right behind him.

At the door to Anna Rose's room, Lila answered Dankett's knock and gave him a wary look. Seeing the Ranger beside him, she stepped back and said, “Come in, Ranger—or
Sheriff
, whichever one you want to be called.”

Sam stepped inside and looked across the darkened room at the bed where the young woman lay under a blanket. He took off his sombrero and held it in front of himself. Seeing the Ranger's display of respect for the injured dove, Dankett took his hat off as well and held it in the same manner.

“How is Anna Rose doing?” Sam asked quietly. He could smell the lilac water and other assorted scents and balms that had been used to help extinguish the terrible odor of the public ditch.

“Not so good, Ranger,” Lila said. “She wakes up for a while, but goes back out. I hoped that was the doctor knocking.”

“He's at the jail, ma'am,” Sam said. “I'll send him over as soon as he finishes up there.” He slid a knowing look past Dankett. The deputy only nodded.

“Can I see if she'll wake up and talk to me?” Sam asked.

“Just don't push her, Ranger,” Lila said. “She took a bad beating.”

Sam and Dankett stepped over to the bedside.

“Anna Rose,” Sam said quietly, “can you hear me?”

To everyone's surprise, the young dove partly opened her swollen eyes and turned them to the Ranger.

“Yes . . . I hear you, Joe,” she whispered in a painfully weak, dreamlike voice. “I lost . . . your money . . .”

Sam didn't offer to correct her; he leaned in close and took her hand as she tried to raise it from the bed.

“That's all right, Anna Rose,” Sam pressed. “Can you tell me who did this to you?”

“No . . . ,” she replied, already drifting away again.

“Please, Anna Rose, help me,” the Ranger said. “Help me catch the man responsible.”

“It's my . . . fault, Ranger . . . ,” she said, dropping back into unconsciousness.

“Let her rest, Ranger,” Lila said. “She's not making much sense right now.”

“Has she been able to tell you anything at all, ma'am?” Sam asked quietly.

“Not much, but some,” Lila said. “She rambled about losing the winnings she was holding for a drifter named Joe North.”

“Did she say how much?” Sam asked.

“No,” said Lila. “But Ozzie White, the poker dealer, can tell you. He was dealing the night the fellow North won it.”

“Is Ozzie White working tonight?” Sam asked.

“Ozzie White is always working,” Lila said. “What time he's not dealing for the house, he's playing for himself.”

“Which table does he work?” Sam asked.

Lila passed a look at Dankett, realizing he already knew most of the answers to the Ranger's questions.

“Ozzie's not hard to find. He always sits on the platform table where the whole place can see his game,” she said. She passed Dankett another look and said, “Clow here knows all this, Ranger.”

Dankett gave a slight grin.

“I know,” Sam said. “But I wanted to hear it from you.”

“Oh, I get it,” said Lila, “you wanted to see how cooperative I am.”

“Lawmen get tired of only hearing each other's voices,” Sam replied without admitting his motive. “Sometimes it's good to hear what others have to say.”

“I'll cooperate any way I can to help catch whoever done this to Anna Rose,” Lila said.

“I'm obliged,” Sam said. He looked up at Dankett as he played an idea through his mind. “For Anna Rose's sake, it might be best that no one knew how much or how little she might already have said about what happened to her.

“Deputy, let's go downstairs and talk to Ozzie White. It's time we start turning over some rocks,” he said, “see what comes crawling out.”

•   •   •

At the poker table on the raised platform in the Number Five Saloon, Ozzie White gathered in the loose cards from the last hand. He worked them into a deck, shuffled them three times and neatly laid the deck on the tabletop for the player next to him to cut. Yet, as the player reached over to cut the deck, the butt of Dankett's shotgun came down with a slight thump and rested there.

Sam gave Dankett a look, not expecting him to make such a move. Then he shot a glance at the dealer, who sat staring up at them.

“Ozzie White,” Sam asked, “we need to talk.” As soon as the Ranger spoke, he looked around the table at the faces of the three other players. Their chairs scooted back almost as one.

“Have a drink at the bar on me, fellows,” Ozzie White said. “This shouldn't take long.” He looked up at Sam and asked, “Should it, Ranger?”

Dankett started to make a remark, but a look from Sam stopped him cold.

“Only a minute, White,” said the Ranger, realizing the man was busy making his living. He waved Dankett's shotgun butt away from the deck of cards. “Lila says you were dealer the other night when a fellow named Joe North won a few hands,” he said.

“More than a few hands,” said White. “He was on a streak, at first anyway.”

“How much do you say he won?” Sam asked.

“Three thousand, easy enough,” White said. “Is this about the money taken from Anna Rose?” he asked.

“It is,” Sam said.

“Then I'm glad you're here, Ranger,” White said. “North had a healthy pile of chips and cash. Anna Rose cashed in half the chips while North talked to those two men over at the table by the wall.” He gestured toward the table with only a nudge of his head. Dankett and the Ranger managed not to look in that direction.

“Go on,” Sam said.

“I knew North would be coming back when he didn't have Anna Rose cash in all his chips. He did come back, but it was with a couple stacks of cash—superstitious, I guess.”

Sam just looked at him, listening.

White shrugged and said, “Anyway, he ended up falling apart, lost all his cash and went up to get the rest of his winnings from Anna Rose. That's when they found out Anna Rose was gone. So was the rest of North's money—all of it in chips.” He gave the trace of a thin, knowing smile.

“Are you beating around the bush, Ozzie?” Dankett said angrily, stepping in close, gripping the shotgun tight in both hands. “Because if you are—”

“Stand down, Deputy,” Sam said firmly, stopping Dankett's advance. “Let the man talk.” He looked back at White. “Go on,” he said.

“Jesus, Clow,” White said to Dankett, looking him up and down. He turned his eyes back to the Ranger. “I figured whoever had those chips would show up sooner or later to cash them in. They're not good anywhere but here.”

“Good thinking,” Sam said. “Has anybody who wasn't in a game cashed in a large amount of chips?” he asked.

“No,” said White, “not a large amount.” He sat staring up at the Ranger for a moment. “But the younger fellow at that wall table has been pestering me three or four times a night, cashing in just a few now and then.”

“You don't say . . . ,” said Sam.

“I sure do say so,” White said. “The thing is, he hasn't played a hand of poker since he's been in New Delmar. I asked around some of the other dealers about him.” White shook his head slowly. “‘No,' they all told me the same. None of them have seen them at their tables.” The thin, knowing smile came back to his face. “He had to get those chips somewhere.”

“That's interesting,” Sam said, deliberately not looking toward the wall table, knowing the two men there would be looking toward him and his deputy. “Now, I'd be obliged if you would turn around and point the deputy and me toward the side door.”

“What?” said White.

“It's for your benefit as well as ours,” said Sam. “They won't think you've told us anything, and we'll be able to talk to them without upsetting the whole place.” As Sam spoke, he raised a coin from his vest pocket and laid it on the table without being seen. “I'll take one of them for myself,” he said nodding at the tray full of house chips.

White nodded. Without another word, he slid a chip onto the tabletop. Sam picked up the chip and put it away. Dankett watched curiously as Ozzie turned in his chair and pointed toward the side door.

“I like how you did this,” Dankett said, turning toward the side door with the Ranger, “giving the wrong signal to those two watching us.” They walked on across the crowded saloon toward the side door leading out to an alley.

“When you know you're being watched,” the Ranger said, reaching for the door, “you take the advantage by showing them only what you want them to see.”

“I'll remember that,” said Dankett, hurrying to keep up with the Ranger. Once they were in the alley, Sam hurried around to the front door and went back inside the busy saloon. Dankett followed and moved away slightly to his left where Sam wanted him to be.

Henry Teague's and Sonny Rudabough's attention was still focused toward the side door as the Ranger and Dankett crossed the floor. Customers scurried aside and out of their way. Sam's big Colt leveled out at arm's length, the hammer cocked and ready.

By the time Teague caught a glimpse of the two advancing lawmen, it was too late to get an upper hand. He'd seen them as he'd reached down and raised his whiskey glass toward his mouth.

“Damn it!” he murmured, the glass stopping, suspended two inches from his lips.