The High Sheriff of Dog Knot

by Gary Clifton

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

Garcia swung by the livery for a bag of water, then cantered Pedro south into the dust and rising August heat. The Rio Grande was only eighteen miles away, and the river was down in the summer drought. Fording the stream would be less complicated than in other seasons. A bag of grain wasn’t necessary for such a short trip unless Kramer planned to ride farther or to provide grain for horses that the fleeing men had not had time to tend to.

Although he was an expert tracker, so much traffic had traveled the rough trail south that it made tracking impossible. Then at about five miles out, he spotted the first blood droplets, then more. A pair of tracks had veered off the path into a clump of buck brush. A blood-soaked shirtsleeve which had obviously been used as a bandage was discarded on the ground. Bull Mendez had hit something in addition to the slain bandit.

Garcia poured water into a nose bag. He slipped the bag onto Pedro and walked around the scene. A few yards south, a third rider had passed the brush, then apparently realized he’d missed a rendezvous and cut back to join the two bank robbers. All three riders had left, undoubtedly together. Garcia estimated that he was no more than a half hour behind the three, at least one of whom was possibly shot and leaking blood.

The riders’ tracks showed they’d left the area running their horses. With five miles in the dusty heat to the border remaining, Garcia knew they’d have had to slow the pace or walk part of the way. He cantered Pedro at a manageable pace. He estimated he was three miles from the river when he saw that the tracks of the three riders had turned toward another stand of brush. He tethered Pedro to a mesquite bush and, with Colt drawn, walked warily behind the horses’ path.

He was startled to come upon Kramer, sitting on the ground leaning on a large rock, grinning broadly at him. The front of his shirt was saturated with fresh blood that had been exposed to outside air briefly enough that the stench of decay was not yet overpowering. The grin was in reality a grimace resulting from the large dirk extending from the left side of his neck.

A worn gray gelding stood nearby, obviously exhausted. Blood droplets trailed from a wound in its breastplate. Mendez must have put one of his buckshot into the animal. Blood loss and hard riding had worn the horse out.

Kramer’s saddle lay discarded in the dust; his murderers had traded saddles. Kramer’s nag would be outfitted with a rig unknown to Garcia. Garcia knelt and examined the saddle. Additional blood on the saddle horn had to mean that the rider had stopped some lead himself.

He led the wounded animal to the main trail and tied him to a sapling. The horse, like the one the dead bandit had been riding back in Dog Knot was an excellent specimen with thoroughbred lines, and worth salvaging. Someone would take him... and possibly determine his rightful owner.

He spurred Pedro. In a half hour, he was riding past battered haciendas and other signs of the border at the tiny, unincorporated hamlet known as Hector’s. The name stemmed from a trading post saloon at river’s edge, operated by a squat, former Mexican Federale, Hector Jose Morales Alfaro-Gomez.

Alfaro-Gomez, distinctive for the patch he wore over his missing left eye, was known to cater to any thief or cutthroat who had the dinero to buy his wine or tequila.

Garcia figured the best chances for Lalo and his companion, with one or both possibly wounded, was to ford the shallow river and try to disappear into Mexico. He also knew the pair could be hiding in one of the sparsely situated buildings strung around the area. Little occurred in the area that Hector didn’t know about. Walking into a dive frequented by dangerous men was chancy, but no horses were tied to Hector’s rail or in sight nearby. He hitched Pedro to the rail and pushed warily through the front door.

Three men, hunched over tequila at a rear table sprang to their feet. “Garcia!” one whispered hoarsely. All three crashed out the back door. Two other men remained at a table near the front. None of them were the men Garcia sought.

Hector, standing behind the bar, said, “No quero las problemas, Garcia.” His clothing was soaked with sweat in the heat, his massive belly protruding well below his waist.

Garcia slid against a wall, preventing access to his back. “If you’re hidin’ Lalo and his partner, Hector, you got plenty of problems... and they gonna get worse, amigo.”

In heavily accented English, Hector said, “Both passed through less than an hour ago, sheriff. Lalo and a gringo. I never spoke no word to neither one. One, the gringo, had a buckshot in his shoulder blade. They stopped to seek help from the midwife back up the way, then crossed to Mexico. As you see, the river is low. It is August. You shoot ’im?”

“Naw, he robbed the bank in Dog Knot. Somebody fought back.”

“I know Lalo is your son, sheriff. It is very bad.”

Garcia didn’t feel the need to clarify his family relationship. He approached the bar, arms folded across his chest. “On your life, amigo, do you swear they are not hiding nearby?”

Genuinely frightened, Hector said, voice shaky, “I did not actually see them enter the river, sheriff, hand to God.” He tapped his right hand on his stomach, then to his forehead, concluding with a pose pointing a finger skyward.

“The greater the oath, the greater the lie, Hector.” Watching the fat man from a corner of his eye, he backed out onto the rough boardwalk. Over the gusting wind, he felt he might have heard his name called out.

As he turned, the two shots behind him were nearly simultaneous and too close. A bullet shattered the doorframe a foot above his head. Snatching at his Colt, he dove back through the doorway, sprawling on Hector’s roughhewn, rarely swept floor.

Hector ducked behind the bar. The two men hunched over a table fled out the back. Garcia rolled sideways to take advantage of any cover the thin walls provided, then peeked around the open door. Twenty feet into the center of the road, a man lay on his back, motionless, staring at the sun. Garcia concluded he was dead. From the distance, he could see it was the man he had released a day before in Dog Knot.

Off to his left, in the direction of the river, a rider was pushing his horse hard for the border. Garcia sprang to his feet, intent on using the Winchester in Pedro’s saddle scabbard to bring him down. But Pedro had broken loose, frightened by the gunfire, and was now grazing on an isolated patch of grass a hundred feet back to the north. It would take ten minutes to catch him, plenty of time for the fleeing man to reach the Mexican side.

Inside, Hector cautiously peeked over the bar. Through the open doorway, he could see the gringo bandit on his back in the dust and mistakenly concluded Garcia had killed the man. At the first shot, he’d hoped that Lalo and the gringo bandit had put one in Garcia’s back, but something had definitely slid sideways.

When Hector heard Garcia call out to his horse, he considered bolting out the back as his patrons had done. Hector, a hard man, but not stupid, opined that no way Garcia could learn he had agreed with the two fugitives to try to mislead the lawman as to their direction of flight. They would then hide in an old adobe ruin across the road and bushwhack the lawman as he passed by.

Studying hard, he mumbled to himself, “That punk Lalo hadda know the man chasing them would be Juan Pablo Garcia, his own blood kin. I did not. Now both wanna kill me. Dio mio, I’m a dead man.” He stifled a sob.

As Garcia trudged in the heat up the dusty roadway after his horse, he was surprised to see an hombre anciano sitting in a chair leaning on its rear legs against the wall of a dingy shack. The man appeared to be asleep and hopefully not murdered by the two bandits. Garcia pointed to his badge. “Yo soy la ley, señor.”

The old man thumped his chair to all four legs and said, “I know you’re the law, Garcia... and I speak English.”

Garcia, searching for the man’s face in his memory, asked, “Tell me what you just saw in the street?”

“Two hombres spend time at Hector’s. I dunno why. As you backed outa Hector’s, the pair of ’um walked out of that old building across there... an Anglo and a vaquero. The Anglo was packin’ a Winchester. He spoke to the vaquero, but I couldn’t hear. The young man seemed surprised and shouted, ‘Garcia didn’t say that.’ Then the cowboy leveled his rifle at you. The young man drew a pistol... the fastest thing I ever saw and shot the man holding the rifle. He picked up the rifle, ran across to the old building and came out on horseback like el Diablo was after him. Rode south toward the river.”

“You see him in the river?”

“Nope. You don’t recognize me, do you, Garcia?”

Garcia held the old man’s gaze without comment.

“I’m Doc Smith, from Amarillo. Rode with the Caldwell Yarders and you for a while. I was there the day you gunned Caldwell and LaBeef. They needed killin’. Found me a good woman; she works as a bargirl for Hector. Keeps me in frijoles and tequila. Roof don’t leak, not too much.” He gestured to the shack behind him.

Garcia managed to catch Pedro and headed for the nearby Rio Grande, half expecting to spot Lalo in the distance on the other side. But he needn’t have searched so far. His prey hadn’t reached the river. From a clump of brush on the American side, a slender figure stepped out into his path. The normally unflappable Garcia was shocked. Facing him was an exact copy of himself. Behind the man Garcia could see a black horse prone on the ground. The animal, writhing in pain, must have stepped in a hole, because it had broken a front foreleg.

“I swear on my mother’s grave, uncle, I didn’t know it was you chasin’ me. I woulda stopped, and we coulda had tea.”

“Better finish off that poor animal, Lalo,” Garcia pointed to the injured horse.

“Can’t do it uncle.” He turned to face Garcia squarely, his hand near his pistol in the “ready” position.

“Lalo, you’re under arrest. Bank robbery and murder.”

“Can’t let ya do that, either, uncle.”

“Lalo, don’t do what you’re thinkin’.”

“You don’t think I can shade the mighty Juan Pablo Garcia, slayer of fifty men?”

“Don’t let it come to that, Lalo. Surrender now.”

“And rot in a cage until the gringos hang me?” At that, the kid pulled the Colt holstered at his waist.

Garcia saw with the resolution of a dying man the most lightning-fast movement he’d ever seen, the thumb drawing back the hammer, the trigger pull with the barrel centered on his chest, the hammer falling against the cartridge. The kid had beaten him to the draw. Juan Pablo Garcia was finished.

In an instantaneous reflex, Garcia drew his Colt at the same time, going through the same procedure. His pistol roared and he saw the bullet register just over the young man’s heart. Lalo was dead before he hit the ground. Had they killed each other? Garcia climbed down from Pedro and examined himself. He was uninjured. He strode over and reached down for his nephew’s pistol. The hammer had fallen, but the chamber was empty. The weapon had not been fired.

Hector waddled up from his saloon a hundred feet away, followed by a crowd of others. Hector blurted, “He tried to buy pistol ammunition from me. I didn’t have no bullets for that old Long Colt.”

“Dio mio,” a voice said from the crowd, “he meant to die.”

“Suicide?” said another voice.

Garcia said sharply, “Some of you go back up the road to the fallin’-down adobe across from Hector’s. I believe you’ll find an old red roan mare tied up. Bring her to me and load Lalo’s body across her.” He pointed to two fat men. “You and you, and now!”

As they waited, Hector began to move away from the crowd. Garcia said softly, “Afraid I’ll figure out you tried to help Lalo and his Gringo friend assassinate me? You said you hadn’t talked to him and now he tried to buy ammunition.”

“Mother of God, no, Sheriff!” He yanked at a small pocket pistol stuffed in his rear waistband.

Garcia beat him to the draw with margin to spare but didn’t pull the trigger. “Hand it over, fat man. I’ll wait for some of your border trash customers to let the air outa you one day, sooner or later.”

He pocketed Hector’s pistol, and watched the two men struggle Lalo’s body over Kramer’s roan, roping the hands to the feet beneath her barrel. In minutes, he’d started the ride back north. He waited almost an hour before he allowed himself a few tears for the terrible loss of his sister’s son, for which he was responsible. With a little luck, he’d be back in Dog Knot by sundown.

It had been a very long day.