The guns of c c ellis, p.17
The Guns of C.C. Ellis, page 17
Scotty chuckled. “The colonel knew I’d go before he even asked you to tell me.”
“I bet he did, Scotty,” said Doc Gray, feeling bad about lying to him. “Say, Scotty, what if I ride along with you?”
“Naw,” said the old trail scout. “I know you’re a good man, Doctor, giving out Blue River medicine to the wounded and all, but on horseback, up in these steep hills, I fear you’d only get in my way.”
Chapter 19
C.C. Ellis looked up at the hand signal from Jackson Hoyt more than a hundred feet up the rocky hillside. Ellis brought the riders around him to a halt and said quietly, “Rider coming.”
He looked back up and saw Jackson sink out of sight, while his riders were disappearing on either side of the trail. Ellis took a position just off the trail and climbed down from his saddle.
A single rider came into sight around the turn in the trail ahead.
“It’s Scotty Dowell, the colonel’s scout,” Ellis announced. “I’ve seen them together.”
In a moment, Scotty came riding in, one hand holding his hat on. “Hoss,” he said to Ellis, “I’m damn glad it’s you!”
He stopped his horse and sat catching his breath. Then he leaned forward with both hands on his saddle pommel. “Colonel Doss had Doc Gray send me to tell you there’re ten railroad security men up ahead fixin’ to ambush you.”
“That makes no sense,” said Ellis. “The security men are the colonel’s men. If he had them all set to ambush us, why would he send you to tip us off?”
“Hmm, I don’t know,” said Scotty. “Doc sent me, said the colonel wanted me to warn you . . . which I did just now as you heard.”
He looked all around with a rye-whiskey-lit smile. “If you won’t listen to me, ride on ahead. Maybe when they start shooting—”
“Wait. I get it,” Ellis said. “Where do you think they are up ahead?”
“Oh, I can show you,” said Scotty. “I saw them not higher up than that one.” He pointed at Hoyt, who was coming down the hillside, feeling his way among the rocks.
“Did they see you?” Ellis asked the old trail scout.
“No, I don’t get seen very often,” said Scotty. “If they saw me, they didn’t let on.”
He paused as Jackson Hoyt made his way to them, taking the reins of his horse from Bailey.
“I’ll tell you something about the colonel,” said Scotty. “He is known as the ambush master. He’s got an ambush they put in one of their military books!”
“Yeah?” Hoyt asked. “Where?”
“Up there at West Point,” said Scotty. “It’s in one of their warfare journals. I once saw a copy of it. It’s called the Captain R. Doss double-back ambush, him being a young captain at the time he invented it.”
Ellis looked around. “Anybody ever hear of it?”
“I have,” said Jackson Hoyt. “It’s a fake ambush. A line of shooters lies watching the trail. But they are only there to fool you. Thirty or forty yards away, more men are waiting on horseback. They wait for the men in front to attack the small number of men already settled in the rocks. Then they ride in behind them, shooting the hell out of them from both sides.”
“That’s it?” said Ellis. “It sounds like a sucker’s bet to me.” He looked almost disappointed. “One more simple-minded way to bait us into a one-sided fight.”
“It’s not perfect,” Hoyt said with a shrug, “but if you’re the attacker, thinking you’ve got the upper hand, and all of a sudden now you’re hit from behind and in front, it can ruin your day. Maybe your whole week.”
“Like I said,” Ellis repeated, “a sucker’s bet.”
He looked at Scotty, who had turned up a swig of rye. “Take us closer to them,” he said.
Scotty corked his bottle. “I can do that,” he said. “But if they see us . . .” He trailed off.
“They won’t,” said Ellis. “We’re invisible. Take us up higher first thing. There’s track up there.” He looked at Hoyt. “Can we see down this hillside without being seen from up there?”
“You bet,” said Jax.
“Then we’re good,” said Scotty. “I’ll ride up there with you and help set it up.”
Jax look at Ellis for his approval.
Ellis said, “Doc Gray tells me Scotty Dowell is the best trail scout for miles around.”
“I do like riding with the best,” Jax said. He eyed the bottle of rye in Scotty’s hand.
“You need a little taste to steady your hand, young fella?” asked Scotty.
“Obliged,” said Jax, “but my hands stay steady. I’m going to wait until we’ve thinned the security force out some.”
“I understand,” said Scotty. “It’ll be right here when you want it.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Jax.
Thirty feet away, Ellis called, “Jax, come over here for a minute.”
“Be right back, Scotty.” Jax turned his horse and rode over to Ellis. “What is it, boss?”
“After you and the others get to the top of this hill and look at the railroad men where they are waiting and how many there are, I want you to change plans at the last minute.”
“What?” said Jax. “You don’t want us to charge them?” He looked very surprised.
“No,” said Ellis, “once you’re up there on the rail tracks, I want you to gather everybody toward New Water Stop One and ride on.”
“Ellis, why? This is a fight we can win!” Jax said.
“We didn’t come looking for a fight we can win or lose,” said Ellis. “We’re headed out to help Sheriff Max Boyd like he asked us to.”
“Yeah,” said Jax, “but this ambush was practically dropped in our laps with a big ol’ ribbon tied around it, you know?”
“I know,” said Ellis. “And how many times in your life or mine has somebody been that good to us?”
“You mean . . . ?” Jax let his words trail.
“Listen to me, Jax,” Ellis said. “I’ve never won a battle by fighting the way my enemy wants me to. Have you?”
Jax thought about the question for only a second.
“Hell no!” he said. “Never have, never will. Wait a minute. Is Scotty in on this?”
“Scotty has been with the colonel a long time. He’s never going to cross him. But the colonel didn’t actually send him. He said the colonel told Doc Gray he wanted him to do this.”
“You’re right,” said Jax, starting to get it.
“That’s how some people lead. They pass along just enough to keep their orders traveling from one to another. If it all works out well, of course that’s what they wanted, and everybody involved was just a part of their plan. If it all goes to hell, they had nothing to do with it. Orders must’ve gotten misunderstood somehow.”
Jackson Hoyt relaxed with a deep sigh and adjusted his hat brim.
“How come I didn’t see all of this right off like you did?” he asked.
“That would take more explaining than we’ve got time for, Jackson Hoyt,” said C.C. Ellis. “Gather up and go while the rain has slackened down some. We’ve got an ambush we’re going to slip past.”
* * *
* * *
In a fine mist, young Reese Donovan led sixteen well-armed Western Express security men through a rail tunnel that had years ago been blasted and bored through a wall of solid stone too thick and deeply embedded to be blown up and hauled by wagon down the high trails.
At the far end of the eighty-foot-long tunnel, they bunched their horses up and gazed back into the dark. The length of the tunnel and the grayness of the day kept the light at the other end obscured.
“I can see a man getting the willies in a place like this,” said one of the riders to another, keeping his voice low.
“Nothing to worry about,” the second man replied. “If we can’t hear a train coming two miles away in here, we might deserve to get run over by it.”
A third man chuckled. “You got that right,” he said. “If you ask me—”
“Everybody, listen close,” said Reese Donovan, getting the men’s attention. “Up ahead, if you look on this hillside, you’ll see our men spread out along the rocks thirty yards up.”
He paused and let the men take in what he’d said. “The reason you can’t see them better is because we don’t want you to,” he continued. “We have it from a reliable source that Sheriff Max Boyd has gotten word to C.C. Ellis that he needs his help in town.”
The man who had chuckled did it again, saying, “What kind of world are we in, sheriffs and outlaws walking hand in hand!”
“If I tell you again to shut up and listen, I’ll take your security badge and send you back to town. From there you can go home. Do you understand?”
“I do understand, sir,” the man said. “Sorry.”
Donovan continued. “The reason we don’t want them to be completely invisible is so when C.C. Ellis’s men spot them, they’ll realize we are about to ambush his outlaws—at which point they will want to take the upper hand and ambush our men first.”
The riders fell silent.
“Here’s where you and I come in,” said Donovan. “When Ellis’s men drop down and try to ambush us first, all of us lying low here in the tunnel and farther up the trail are going to hit them hard from both sides and behind.”
The men remained silent.
“Any questions?” Donovan asked.
“You’ve made it very clear, sir,” said one of the men. “I can’t wait to get my sights on these saddle bums!”
But the way he said it made some men think he was only razzing their young leader.
“I feel the same,” said Donovan. “I also want to tell you that when we get this cleaned up, and I know we will, Colonel Doss will make arrangements with the Gadsen Mine to use their yard switch engine to bring him out here in what is now his medical treatment and supply car.”
A couple of men applauded, but the others showed little interest.
As Reese Donovan rode his horse away at a walk, the man with the sense of humor said guardedly, “Hear that, fellas. Once we bait these outlaws into a fight and get the hell beat out of us, the colonel will come out and show us his new medical car! Oh, boy!”
“Yeah,” said another, “let’s hope he don’t have to show the inside first. The cutting board, the leg saw!”
The men gave a dark laugh and formed up in a column of twos.
* * *
* * *
Sven Handley searched for an hour until he found a brushy game path that led up to the less steep side of a wet hill of broken rock overlooking several wider trails. The first level below him, some seventy or so feet down, supported a rail track meandering through, in and around the foothills, north and northeast of him. He was as near unapproachable as a man could be. He’d known he would be, coming here.
From the tracks below, he had estimated the game path to be a good three-mile ride over tumbled rocky hillside and loose gravel. From there he had rounded to this side of the hill and ridden up to where he now sat, his long-range rifle across his lap. Overall, he told himself, anyone on the tracks below would have to ride no less than eight miles from that spot to this. Their only other option besides riding the rugged wet distance would be to climb straight up by rope hand over hand while he was up here killing them as quick as he could lever a fresh round and fire it.
He had tied his horse’s reins to a jut of rock sticking out from under an ingrown skeleton of an ancient juniper bush that stood high enough to provide the animal some protection from the cold, windblown mist. No such provision for himself, though, he realized. He sat with a blanket wrapped around him and a large green rain slicker pulled down over it. He looked at five different positions of cover available to him along the ridgeline. Every one of the positions seemed to beckon him like a child with a hand raised, eager to be called on.
For two hours his long brass scope searched the distant ridgelines, game paths and rock draws on the wet land stretched out below him. He saw elk and deer herds. He saw a wily panther dogging their trails. For a moment he treated himself to the thought of returning here someday to hunt. But he dismissed the thought, knowing how foolish it was to think he’d ever come back here for any reason. Time and again he would look in the direction of New Water Stop One.
Come out, come out, Colonel Randolph Doss.
He walked back over to the wet horse and took a sip of water from the canteen hanging from its saddle horn. Moving back to the edge, crouching the last few steps to avoid being skylighted, he saw the small horses and their even smaller riders come silent into sight way down below. He looked back along the tracks toward town, hoping to see Colonel Doss’s Pullman car roll into sight. But no such luck.
All right, he told himself.
He wanted the colonel so bad, it was hard to turn the idea loose. Yet he knew he had to. The fates were having none of that today. He crouched and backed away before standing. He looked from one possible firing position to the next.
Next time, Colonel . . . next time, he thought.
Chapter 20
Andrew Maggen and Billy Tobin rode up from a path down below the rail tracks to join Reese Donovan and his men, bringing news that Ellis and the long riders had been spotted.
“Any minute now they’ll see our decoys waiting to ambush them,” Maggen said. “Then the fun will begin.”
“For God sakes, man!” said Reese Donovan from the edge of the long tunnel. “This is not a laughing matter! Men are going to be dying here most any minute now!”
“They are outlaws, Mr. Donovan,” said Andrew Maggen. “Ain’t killing these jakes why we’re out here?”
He looked back over his shoulder at Tobin, chuckling as he spoke.
“Get yourselves in here, damn it!” Donovan tried to shout quietly. “One glance at you two and Ellis’s men will cut out of here. This entire operation will all be for nothing!”
Still five feet from entering the tunnel, Maggen half rose in his saddle as if to say more on the matter, but a glob of thick blood erupted from his open mouth and sprayed horses and riders alike. A powerful crack of rifle fire caught up to the bullet, resounding from the high ridgeline above them. Pieces of Maggen’s forehead fell to the tracks and wooden rail ties beneath them while his Colt flew from his holster and rang out on the steel track. Though safely inside the tunnel, the railroad men hunkered down in their saddles and crowded farther back.
“Who the hell shoots like that?” shouted Reese Donovan.
“I don’t know,” said Tobin. “Let me in before he gets reloaded and shoots at me—”
His words choked in his throat. He had turned his back on the high ridgeline. Now his chest puffed out and exploded from his shirt. Fragments of his heart and lungs peppered the men and their horses. The bullet came out of his chest and buried itself in Donovan’s saddle pommel.
The men cursed and spit warm blood. The horses whinnied and reared and romped madly in the dark confines of the tunnel, their riders struggling to hold them in place.
Enraged, Reese Donovan showed more guts than good sense. He jumped his horse right to the opening of the tunnel and shouted wildly as he emptied his Colt into the hillside, the shots going no more than halfway up the steep rocky hillside.
“C.C. Ellis! You rotten son of a bitch! Come down here and fight like a man, you thieving, craven, murderous coward! You hear me? Fight me like a man!”
“Mr. Donovan, please come inside here,” one of the men coaxed. “You’re our leader! Don’t act like this! C.C. Ellis is a cold-blooded killer! Get the hell in here before he kills you!”
Up on the ridgeline, at one of the five positions he had scouted earlier, Sven Handley peered through his scope and listened to Reese Donovan hurl insults up at him. He didn’t know C.C. Ellis very well, so he wasn’t sure the long rider would appreciate the railroad security men thinking he was up here splattering their ranks all over the tunnel entrance with such ease. They had no idea in the world who Handley really was, alone up here like a voracious bird of prey, ruling his portion of these rugged hills with talons of iron and fire.
“I know you hear me, C.C. Ellis,” Reese Donovan called up the hill, sounding calmer, more in control of himself. “There is no reason you can’t come down here and talk, see if we can’t reach some kind of gentleman’s truce. What say you, C.C.?” he asked as cordially as he could.
Handley raised his rifle butt to his shoulder and looked down through the scope. He saw the men lurking at the tunnel’s edge, Colts drawn, raised and ready, searching futilely for his position. This was too good a chance to let pass him by.
His right eye focused on the young man with his sopping-wet but very new-looking bowler hat tilted up for a better view. Cock hammer, aim well, deep breath in and hold. . . . He squeezed the trigger ever so easily. When the shot went off, it came as a surprise to him.
Perfect, he thought before he felt even the faintest jab of the big rifle’s recoil.
The bullet touched the thin edge of the man’s hat brim, enough to send it spinning up and out over the hillside below the long stone tunnel.
From his towering perch, Handley backed away in a crouch with only a quick glance down that showed the bareheaded Mr. Donovan on his horse moving inside the dark tunnel with caution.
“Damn you, Ellis!” Reese Donovan shouted. “Damn you to hell, sir. Damn you and all of your worthless outlaws!”
Handley wiped the rifle down, disassembled it and slipped both pieces into a sheepskin-lined sleeve. Closing the sleeve, he folded one end over, tied it down and walked to his wet horse and untied its reins.
Two down and two to go.
The two to go were the colonel and his trail scout, Scotty Dowell. And that would be the end of it. He slipped the rifle case under his saddle and snapped it in place. Mounting, he heard no gunfire; Ellis and his men would by then be slipping along the trail, still headed for New Water Stop One.
