Curly Bill and Ringo by Van Holt Page B

Scar-face snuck in earlier and talked to the Bishop kid. Found out it was Ringo we saw ridin’ out of town when we was holed up in the brush. Pike said we should plug him just in case it was Ringo, but he was afraid we’d miss him in the dark.”
    “I can understand his thinking,” Curly said. “If you miss a man like Ringo you ain’t likely to live to tell about it.” Then he asked, “What happens if he rides back in, and you out here all by yourself?”
    “I’m only here to keep watch and warn the others if I see him,” Bear said. “I wouldn’t try nothin’ by myself.”
    He sounded shaky and scared—scared that Ringo might slip up on him in the dark.
    “Well, don’t you go to sleep, Bear,” Curly said. “You might not wake up.”
    Bear made a nervous sound in his throat and shifted his feet, glancing over his shoulder. He wiped his sweaty hands on his trousers and got a better grip on his rifle.
    Curly remembered that he and Bear weren’t exactly friends, and he didn’t feel comfortable with the big man standing there in the alley behind him with that rifle. So he strolled on, smoking and humming as if he had already forgot about the bearlike man.
    He found Cash and Beanbelly in the Bent Elbow, drinking and sulking.
    “Think I’ll go for a ride,” Curly said. “Maybe try to find Ringo and keep him out of town till Pike and them leave. He’s liable to try to take them all on at once and get himself killed.”
    Cash shrugged. “Might be the best thing that could happen if he did. Then we wouldn’t have him or them either to worry about. Not all of them anyway.”
    The same thought had occurred to Curly, but he didn’t want to dwell on it.
    As he stepped outside he saw Mad Dog Shorty trying to mount his horse in front of the Road to Ruin. Curly stopped to watch him. Shorty seemed drunk or addled. His foot slipped out of the stirrup a couple of times but he finally made it into the saddle and turned his horse in the other direction. Curly watched him ride out of town, sitting like a lump in the saddle.
    That night while Curly was out combing the desert in search of Ringo, Mad Dog Shorty was taking his last ride.
    Shorty was afraid he might run into Ringo on the road, so he took a roundabout way through the hills. He thought he was safe among the boulders and brush and he was bobbing along without much attention to his surroundings. The first warning of danger came in the form of a tall rider sitting his horse on a rocky knoll off to his right, silhouetted against the night sky. The horse and rider were as silent and motionless as a statue and it seemed to him that there was something deadly and sinister about them. Something terrifying.
    He screamed as if he had been shot and sank his spurs in his horse. There was a sudden blast and the horse also screamed, reared high in the air and raced away with an empty saddle, for Shorty had lost his seat and spilled to the ground. He scrambled away on all fours, trying to keep out of sight in the brush. There was another blast and another scream, and Shorty crawled on, whimpering in pain and dragging one leg, the other also partially disabled by the load of buckshot.
    He found himself in what seemed to be a tiny rainwater streambed, now dry and sandy, and he dragged himself along it under the overhanging brush that grew on either side. The channel, growing hard and rough and rocky, climbed an eroded slope and then disappeared through a narrow gap in the rocks. Once through the gap, he found himself in a small opening that was completely walled in by tall rocks. It was almost like a room without a roof.
    Shorty pulled himself across the hard ground and sat with his back against the far wall. He gritted his teeth against the pain and carefully straightened his shattered leg out on the ground before him. Then he sat very still and listened. For a time he heard nothing but the wind and his own painful breathing.
    Then, right outside the rock wall, he heard the