Behind came soft movement from beside the shed and Checker spun to meet it.
A yellow cat.
Checker shook his head and returned to watching the gunmen.
“You look over there, Vince. By that shed.” A tall man with a full beard pointed in the direction of Checker’s position. “Eilert, you go there. The bastards have to be here. Somewhere. Remember Rikor has Wilson’s guns.”
The Ranger watched the lone gunman advance. Everything about the night was bothering the man. Slightly built, he wore a derby over long, stringy brown hair. A long coat glistened with remains of a greasy dinner. It looked as though he was wearing two belted guns; both were tied down. He held a Winchester tightly with both hands. Cocked. His finger was on the trigger. Checker watched him from twenty feet away, careful not to look him in the eye.
The gunman was far too jumpy.
If Checker attacked him now, there would be a good chance the man’s finger would squeeze the trigger the instant Checker hit him, but he didn’t want to leave the man in a position to shoot at him as he advanced.
Silently, Checker left his Winchester propped against a tree, circled to the outside and edged himself directly in back of the gunman, and in line with the bunkhouse. It would appear he had just come from there. The move was risky, walking in the open for a few seconds, but he thought no one would pay attention to another man walking in the darkness. He pulled his hat brim lower to cover his face and drew his short-barreled Colt. Even in the dark, it was easy to see the trigger guard was half cut away, the section gone nearest the barrel and the filed-away barrel sight. Both were designed to help the Ranger shoot faster.
The brown-haired gunman remained with his back to the bunkhouse and had not heard Checker’s careful repositioning. Instead, he was watching the same yellow cat that had surprised the Ranger. Rubbing its back against a tree, the scrawny animal was a welcome diversion. The man’s cocked rifle was cradled in his arms, but his right hand was still wrapped within the trigger guard.
Checker declared his presence in a friendly, offhand manner, “Evenin’. Don’t shoot, partner. The boss sent me. Found them yet?”
The nervous gunman flinched, but the reassuring voice was a comforting sound in the lonely night. He turned and said, “Glad to have the—”
“If you whisper, I’ll blow your head off,” Checker snarled. His Colt barrel lifted the nervous man’s chin to attention as Checker’s left hand slid between the rifle’s cocked hammer and the readied bullet in its chamber. His move was a blur. The hammer hit the back of his hand hard, pinching it against the steel frame, but keeping the strike from reaching its intended target. It was the reflex action he had anticipated.
“Let go of the rifle real easylike. Wouldn’t want that hammer to get any farther, would you?” Checker growled. “Because if there is any noise to bother your friends, you won’t be around to see the fun. Now move over here in the shadows. Walk naturally. That’s it.”
Holstering his revolver, Checker’s hand pulled the rifle from the shaking fingers of the gunman with his right hand; the Ranger’s left hand still blocked the hammer’s path. Carefully removing his hand, he recocked the rifle and returned its barrel to the guard’s neck.
“Tell me what’s going on here. I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“Y-you’re a Ranger, aren’t ya? I’m just doin’ what I was told. P-p-please, mister, I—I—I’ll tell ya the truth.”
In a frightened staccato, he told Checker that Sil Jaudon, Lady Holt’s right-hand man, had led a night attack on the Gardner ranch house. They had taken the youngest when he was milking and used him to get inside by threatening to kill him. Jaudon and three others were holding Gardner and the third son in the ranch house now. Jaudon expected to get Gardner to sign away his ranch.
“What are they waiting for?” Checker asked.
“Oh, two of that old man’s sons got away. They’re around here somewhere, I reckon,” the shaking man said. “Sil’s mad as hell at Wilson for letting them escape.”
He further explained Jaudon and his men would take over the Gardner herd later, probably tomorrow or the next day at the latest. Satisfied the man couldn’t tell him more, Checker delivered a blow to the back of the man’s head with the barrel of his Winchester and he crumpled to the ground.
Checker’s eyes quickly searched the yard for signs of discovery. Nothing. He breathed a deep release of tension. The men were spread out, most of them looking north. He dragged the immobile body behind the shed and into a shallow ravine that ran parallel to the ranch house, so it wouldn’t be discovered easily.
Quickly he removed the man’s pistols, shoved one into his own cartridge belt and threw the rifle and the other revolver into the darkness. He considered slowly eliminating Jaudon’s men as he had the first three. But the other searchers had left the area, moving toward the barn and the main corrals. It would be difficult to do without being discovered. A shootout with those odds wasn’t likely to end well.
He heard someone coming through the brush. From his left. He crouched to wait.
It was his partner, A. J. Bartlett, a medium-sized man in a short-brimmed fedora. He held a double-barreled shotgun. A three-piece brown suit looked as if he had just bought it. His bullet belt and a holstered Smith & Wesson revolver were strapped over his coat. But everything—and every way—about him was precise. Or as precise as he could make it.
Even the shotgun had been carefully chosen because of its firepower and its threatening appearance. He wasn’t nearly as good with a handgun as Checker. Few were. Supposedly, the Confederate cavalryman-turned- outlaw, Rule Cordell, was. So were John Wesley Hardin and Clay Allison. Rule Cordell wasn’t dead as previously reported and was now a preacher, or so Ranger reports had confirmed. Facing each other wouldn’t be anything any of them would want.
“Saw you introducing the fellow to the stars,” Bartlett said, pointing with the gun at the unconscious gunman. “Thought I’d see what you had in mind—and introduce you to a couple of lads I just ran into.”
The Ranger waved and an eight-year-old boy and a lanky young man of eighteen appeared from the darkness. The young man held a Henry carbine in his hands; he looked comfortable with it. A long-barreled Smith & Wesson revolver was shoved into his pocket.
“You remember Rikor, John. And this fine-looking lad is Hans. Looks just like his pa, I do believe.” He continued telling Checker about the situation, then expanded his assessment to tell how much the boys had grown since the last time he had seen them, then wondering if Emmett Gardner’s herds were safe, and then wondering if cattle prices in Kansas were holding up. He finished by saying that his socks had gotten damp and were troubling him.
Checker stopped his wandering assessment by greeting the boys. “Well, good to see you, Rikor. You, too, Hans. The last time I saw you, you were just getting into everything you could reach.” Checker held out his hand to greet both.
Rikor, and then Hans, accepted the handshake enthusiastically. The smaller boy looked him straight in the eye. “They’ve got my pa. An’ Andrew.”
“Yes, I know,” Checker said, and leaned forward. “How many are in the house—holding them?”
Hans glanced away as if seeing the inside of his house once more, then looked back. “Four. Two inside—and two more fellas watchin’ the front an’ back doors. Standin’ outside.” Checker nodded; that matched the number given to him by Vince, the gunman he had just dispatched.
“There were five. One less now,” Rikor said with a grin reaching the corner of his mouth. “These are his guns. Jumped him when we went outside to the outhouse. He’s behind it now.”
“Heard about that,” Checker said. “Good work. You gave your pa time. Us, too.”
Rikor’s eyes brightened with the compliment.
In spite of his favored choice of weapons, the older Ranger was actually much less intense than his younger fellow Ranger, now a gun warrior known throughout Texas. He loved to talk and usually it seemed to fill the silence left when he and Checker rode together. Now it was getting in the way.
“How do you want to play this, John?” Bartlett grinned and recited, “ ‘How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use, as tho’ to breathe were life!’ ”
Checker glanced at his older friend. “I think you made that up.”
“Ah, no, my friend, ’tis
Alfred, Lord Tennyson was Bartlett’s favorite poet and he quoted from his works often.
