Once a Ranger by Dusty Richards

Author:Dusty Richards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

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BEFORE DAWN GUTHREY found a woman cooking in the town’s street. She made him a large flour tortilla, filled it with meat, beans, chili, and a sauce for a dime. He gave her two dimes and then went for his horse. The hostler saddled Cochise for Guthrey. They talked softly about the need for the monsoons to start, the cool air sweeping out the canyon that formed the sides that Nogales huddled in. The rich, spicy contents of the burrito tasted good to him.

He swung into the saddle, thanked the man, and tossed him a quarter for his troubles.

“Anytime you come back, senor, look for me. My name is Agnos.”

“I will, Agnos. Thanks.”

The air was cool in the predawn. Guthrey, wondering how this day would turn out, checked his anxious horse, who also acted like he understood things were going to happen soon.

Noticing a stranger in the yard, the goats stampeded away in a panic away when Guthrey got beyond the gate of Lucia Contreras’s house. Then, filled with curiosity, they came back to check him out. None of the dogs even barked, and once he had the horse hitched securely, he checked around. He went across the ground to the adobe jacal, hoping the goats wouldn’t follow him too soon.

He made the house and the goats had begun bleating. Six-gun in his hand, Guthrey went to the green, peeling-paint door and jammed it wide open with his boot.

“Don’t go for a gun!” Guthrey shouted. But he saw the figure diving for a holster and he shot in that direction. The man screamed.

The woman yelled, “You’ve killed him!”

“Don’t move or you’re next.” Breathing loudly through his nose, Guthrey stepped around the bed in the thick gun smoke. Two children on pallets were crying. He jerked the woman away from the outlaw to stop her from getting a gun and tossed her aside on the bed. She shouted, cussed in Spanish, and charged him on all fours.

Guthrey gave her a rap on the head with his gun barrel, and she went facedown on the rumpled blankets. Guthrey never liked to hit a woman, but she wasn’t taking his orders. He caught Looman by the collar of his underwear suit and dragged him outside, the outlaw screaming that he was shot and dying.

Guthrey had to handcuff him, then go back in to get Looman’s gun. The woman might recover and try to use it. Looman was lying facedown in the dirt with the cuffs on his wrists, crying, “I’m shot. I’m shot. You’re killing me.”

“I’ll do worse than that.” Guthrey straightened in the midst of all the curious goats that were jumping all over each other trying to back away.

Looman’s left arm was bleeding and there was a tear in the sleeve, but Guthrey couldn’t see any other wounds on his dust-floured union suit. That outlaw ought to be grateful to be alive, but his kind considered freedom their only salvation.

“Stay put,” he ordered and, holding the six-gun in his fist, he went back inside.

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