Midnight Rider

Chapter 6

It the gray darkness of morning, Denton Spiller, Pres Casings, Turley Batts and the Stillwater Giant walked abreast along the empty street, making their way to the livery barn. As they arrived and started to go inside, a fifth man, an outlaw named Lonnie Bonham, came trotting along behind them on foot.

“Wait up!” Bonham called out, causing the four to stop at the barn door and look back at him. He trotted forward and stopped, his rifle hanging in his hand.

“Well…?” said Spiller, looking the younger outlaw up and down.

“He’s not there,” said Bonham.

“You went on up to his room?” asked Turley Batts.

Bonham gave him a searing look.

“He’s not there,” he repeated. “I checked inside Turk’s Restaurant on my way here. He’s not there either.”

“Now what?” said Spiller, looking all around. “I don’t like being nursemaid to this bastard.”

“Maybe he went to the Nut first thing,” said the Giant. His voice sounded like the rumble of low cannon fire deep inside a large cave.

“Maybe he fled away in the dark of night,” said Batts. He grinned and said to the Giant, “You said him and you had some words…?”

Giant gave him a wide, big-toothed grin.

“Yeah. It wouldn’t be the first time I scared somebody off by just staring down at them,” he said.

“He strikes me as a runner, this law dog,” said Bonham.

The four looked at him curiously. Batts spit and shook his head.

Bonham shrugged slightly. “I mean… I’ve never met him,” he said, “but from what I’ve heard yas say—”

His words shopped short as the barn door swung open, barely missing Spiller’s shoulder on its way. In the open doorway, Rochenbach stood with his horse standing saddled and ready beside him, it reins in his gloved hand. He led his horse forward through the open door.

“Jesus!” said Spiller, surprised, his hand almost going to his holstered Colt.

“We were just talking about you, Rock,” Casings said, also caught by surprise.

“Yeah, I heard,” Rochenbach said flatly. He looked at the Giant. Then he looked Turley Batts and Lonnie Bonham up and down.

“We—we never met last night, Rochenbach,” Bonham offered clumsily. “I rode in with Stillwater. I’m Lonnie Bonham. Most folks call me Lon. This is Turley Batts.”

Rochenbach nodded at the two and touched his fingertips to the brim of his new slouch hat.

“Ready to ride, Lon?” he said quietly, walking past the five, stopping, turning to his horse.

“Hell no, he’s not ready to ride!” Spiller cut in, sounding irritated. “None of us are. You can see we just now got here.”

Rochenbach just looked at him. He swung up into his saddle and turned his horse toward the main street.

“Why don’t I ride on ahead, make sure there’s no low-hanging limbs?” he said.

Casings and Batts stifled a laugh; Spiller fumed, the side of his forehead still raw and swollen.

“Hey. You don’t even know where we’re headed, fellow,” the Giant called out to Rochenbach in his big, booming voice.

“Central City,” Rochenbach called back without turning in his saddle.

The Giant gave the others a bewildered look. They returned it.

“How’d you know that?” the Giant called out.

“I didn’t,” Rochenbach said, his horse moving on at a walk.

“This son of a bitch,” the Stillwater Giant growled under his breath. “I wish Grolin would let me bounce his head around a little.”

“Damn it to hell,” said Spiller, “Grolin said not to let him out of our sight. Hold up, Rock! Give us a few minutes!” he shouted.

But Rock’s horse turned the corner out of the alley and onto the main street.

“Damn it!” Spiller said, hurrying into the barn with the other four. “How are we supposed to deal with this man? It’s like trying to corral a hardheaded tomcat!”

“Come on, Dent, hurry up,” Casings said. “We let him get too far out of sight, Grolin will have our hides on a pole.”

Spiller sidled in closer to Casings and whispered between them, “What’s wrong with him? I thought we’re partners, the three of us.”

“I don’t know,” said Casings. “I’ll talk to him first chance I get.”

They quickly bridled and saddled their horses and led them out of the barn.

“Hell, he’s halfway to Central City by now!” said Spiller. As he swung up into his saddle, he said to the Stillwater Giant, “Why the hell did you tell him where we’re headed?”

“I didn’t tell him!” said the Giant, but he didn’t sound completely sure of himself. Turning to Casings, he asked, “Did I, Pres?”

In his saddle, Casings gathered his reins and tightened his hat down onto his forehead.

“Yes, you did,” he said. “But it wasn’t your fault. Not exactly anyway.”

“He played you, Giant! Didn’t you see it?” Spiller said harshly, jerking his horse around toward the main street. “Let’s go, before we lose him altogether and have Grolin down our shirts!”

They booted their horses forward at a fast gallop along the alleyway and onto the street. A pedestrian had to leap out of their way as the five rounded the corner and raced away along the street out of town. A watchdog appeared out from under a boardwalk in front of a mercantile store, barking and jumping back and forth on the end of a chain as they galloped past.

At the corner of the next alleyway, Rochenbach sat just out of sight, his wrists crossed on his saddle horn. When the five had passed in a thunder of hooves, he tapped his dun forward and fell in twenty yards behind them at an easy gallop.

“Where the hell is he?” Spiller shouted at Casings, the two of them riding hard in front of the Giant.

Beside the Stillwater Giant rode Turley Batts, followed by Lonnie Bonham.

Bonham rode along as hard as the others. But when the younger outlaw happened to look back over his shoulder for no particular reason at all, he saw Rochenbach following them leisurely.

“Jesus! He’s riding behind us!” he said, already reining his horse down as he shouted to the others.

The other four slid their horses to a halt and spun them in the middle of the street.

As he stared at Rochenbach, Spiller’s hand went instinctively to his gun before he caught himself and turned it loose.

“Damn it, Pres,” he growled to Casings, who sat his horse beside him. “See what I mean, this son of a bitch?”

Casings shook his head and kept himself from chuckling aloud.

“Come on, Dent. Can’t you see he’s just doing all this to get to you?” he said as Rochenbach rode closer and reined his dun down into an easy, sidelong gait.

“I’m just about there, Pres,” Spiller said, barely under control. “I’m just about there.…”

Rochenbach stopped in the street ahead of them and looked back.

“Are we going or what?” he said quietly.

The Giant booted his horse forward.

“I’m about there with you, Dent,” he said sidelong to Spiller.

Watching the men ride toward him, Rochenbach turned his horse back to the trail ahead. He knew he had them stirred up like a hornet’s nest. That had been his intent. But now it was time to let them cool out a little, get himself on Casings’ and Spiller’s good side. That shouldn’t be hard to do since he’d kept his mouth shout about them to Grolin.

It was nearing noon when the six riders moved off the trail and rested their horses in a dry wash under a tangle of brush and rock. The Stillwater Giant stepped down from his tired horse’s back and turned to a shoulder-high cluster of rocks that stuck into the side of the wash.

“Look at this!” Batts said in amazement as the Giant yanked a small boulder out of the cluster, turned around with it against his wide chest and dropped it on the ground. It landed with a powerful thud.

“Daaa-mn…!” said Bonham, he and the others watching the Giant sit down on the rock and dust his big hands together.

The Giant grinned and flexed his powerful arms inside the sleeves of his coat.

“Anybody else need a rock to sit on?” he offered. As he asked, his eyes went to Rochenbach and stayed there. “If you do, I can pick one up and throw it on the ground for you easy enough.”

Rochenbach ignored him. He had stepped down from his saddle a few feet away from the others, rifle in hand, and poured a small amount of water from his canteen into the crown of his slouch hat. He stooped onto his haunches and held the upturned hat to the dun’s muzzle.

The horse drew the water in one breath and stood licking the inside of the hat when Casings walked up and kneeled down beside Rochenbach.

“Pay no mind to the Giant,” he said quietly. “He’s used to people naturally kowtowing to him because of his size.”

“Size…? I didn’t notice,” Rock said.

“Right.” Casings grinned. “Fine dun you’ve got here, Rock,” he said. He reached out and patted the dun’s neck.

“Yep,” Rochenbach said. He turned slightly toward him, knowing the outlaw hadn’t walked over to talk about his horse or the Giant. He stared at him expectantly.

“Okay,” said Casings, “the thing is, Spiller is asking me what’s got into you since our talk on the trail back from Bell’s place.” He paused. “I told him it was because you overheard the group talking about you while you were in the barn.”

Rock didn’t answer. Instead, he shook his slouch hat off, placed it atop his head and stood up, his rifle in the crook of his arm.

“That was it, wasn’t it?” said Casings, standing up beside him.

Before Rochenbach could answer, the Giant called out from where he sat watching the two.

“Hey, Rock, you need a rock. I can get you a rock, if you want a rock, Rock,” he said, goading.

Rochenbach stood staring back at the Giant as he said sidelong to Casings, “Is something wrong with his mind?” As he spoke, he stared past the Giant at the big hole in the wall of the wash where the boulder had been.

Casings chuckled and replied, “No, he just don’t always know what’s going on around him. It makes him act peculiar.”

Rochenbach’s eyes narrowed, looking past the Giant and to the side of the wash. “Then he’d better start paying attention,” he said.

The Giant stood up and called out to Rock in a surly tone, “Don’t talk about me over there, law dog. I will jerk you up by the top of your head and stick my arm down your—”

His words stopped short; his eyes widened in terror as Rochenbach threw his rifle up to his shoulder, pointed straight at him.

“Wait, Rock!” Casings shouted.

But Rock paid him no attention as he took aim and squeezed the trigger. The other men scattered in every direction.

The Giant’s mouth opened wide in fear as he saw the shot explode from Rock’s Spencer rifle. He heard and felt the bullet whistle past his head. Behind him, crawling down the fresh-turned earth where the Giant had unseated the boulder, a large bull rattler had raised its head, ready to make a strike at the back of the Giant’s neck.

“Holy God!” shouted Casings, seeing Rochenbach’s bullet snap the big rattler’s head off in a bloody mist.

The snake’s thick body flew up from the side of the wash, spun whipping in the air and landed limply over the Giant’s right shoulder just as the Giant had started to draw his holstered Colt.

Seeing the snake suddenly dangling down his chest, the Giant screamed shrilly in spite of his usually deep, powerful voice. Instead of snatching the dead snake and tossing it away, the Giant lost all control of himself and jumped up and down on his tiptoes, screaming, his big hands flopping uselessly beside him.

“Jesus, run, Giant!” shouted Casings, seeing three more snakes spill down from their disturbed resting place among the cluster of rocks.

In his hysteria, the Giant caught a glimpse of one of the snakes slithering past his feet. He ran screaming in a wide circle, the dead snake flying from his shoulder as he plowed through the already spooked horses. The bloody bull rattler landed atop one horse, sending it into a wild kicking, whinnying fit.

“We need to stop him,” Rock said quietly, watching in rapt fascination.

“Not me,” said Casings, knowing what a job it would be wrestling the big man to the ground and holding him there.

The Giant, still screaming out of control, ran smack into another horse. His massive body knocked the animal to the ground as he bounced back from it, right into the kicking hooves of the horse with the dead snake flopping up and down in its saddle. A wild kick gave the Giant a glancing blow to his head and sent him staggering in a zigzagging line for a few feet while his thick legs seemed to slowly melt beneath him.

“Well, there’s that,” said Casings as the Giant slammed the ground with the same powerful thud as the boulder he’d thrown down in a show of strength.

Shots rang out as the other men hurried and killed the other awakened rattlers.

“Yes,” said Rochenbach, “there’s that.”

He stepped forward and looked down at the Giant lying knocked cold in the dirt.

“He had to show off for everybody, lift that big rock,” said Casings, stepping up beside him.

Rochenbach only nodded, wondering if this would soften the Giant’s attitude toward him.