Cheyenne Pass

by Lauran Paine

  But the stage driver made no move to lift his lines. Instead, he gazed solemnly up where the sheriff and deputy were sitting.

  “How about it?” he called to those two.

  Klinger’s hand visibly tightened on his reins. He eased his animal forward at a slow walk. MacCallister rode along beside him and stopped when Klinger did, ten feet behind that line of silent DeFore men blocking the road.

  This was the moment they were all awaiting, particularly Clem and his companion perched upon the stagecoach’s high seat, for they’d known down in town that Klinger and MacCallister would be up here when this confrontation occurred.

  Down the coach’s side, a rickety door opened, and a man got out. He was dressed in the small-brimmed hat, the long frock coat, and the polished boots of a town-dweller. But there was something about this man that put the others in mind of leashed violence.

  He was tall, slightly over six feet tall in fact, and he was whittled down to rawhide toughness. Those fancy clothes did not conceal anything about him. Particularly, they did not conceal the chilling fact that he wore two ivory-butted six-guns belted around his middle and lashed to his legs. His face was bronzed, and it was set in an expression of scorn. He stood there beside the coach, facing that full roadway of mounted men, looking from either side of his high-bridged, hawklike nose at them. His eyes were pale, spaced wide, and as hard as wet iron.

  “You,” this stranger said to Browne, “move your men out of the way.”

  For an interval of surprised silence, no one moved or spoke. Every eye was upon that tall, shiny-booted stranger. Men of his obvious calling were anything but rare in Colorado, but with the possible exception of the stage driver and the shotgun guard, not a one of those men, including Sheriff Klinger and Deputy MacCallister, had expected to have a professional gunfighter step out of the coach.

  They all sat still, looking but saying nothing.

  The stranger reached up, thumbed back his narrow-brimmed hat. He then made a practiced backward sweep with both elbows clearing his coat away from those matched .45s he wore. He gave the lawmen and DeFore’s men a challenging look, both his hands hanging within three inches of his ivory-butted Peacemakers.

  “Mister,” he said, again addressing Browne, “I told you to clear your riders from in front of this coach.”

  The DeFore range boss eased forward slightly in his saddle as he continued to regard the two-gun man. He slowly turned his head, threw a look up where Clem sat, gave his head a little sardonic wag, and looked on out where John Klinger and Ethan MacCallister sat.

  To the lawmen he quietly said: “One’s too old, one’s too green … so they bring in a professional.”

  Browne’s meaning was clear. He was impugning the courage and the ability of the sheriff and his deputy.

  Klinger’s face darkened at Browne’s insult, but when he spoke, it was to the tall gunfighter.

  “Mister, stay out of this. I don’t know who hired you and I don’t care … just stay out of this.”

  The gunfighter raised one eyebrow. “I don’t think I can, Sheriff. You see, I’m an employee of the stage line, too, and my job’s simply to protect company property from highwaymen.”

  “These men aren’t highwaymen,” stated John Klinger, “but, even if they were, it’s the law’s job to …”

  “Sheriff, I’d say they were highwaymen,” broke in the gunfighter, his sulfurous gaze steadying upon Klinger. “They stopped this coach. They’re armed and they’re obviously bent on interfering with the established operation of the stage line. Furthermore, this is a public road and …”

  “Shut up, stranger,” MacCallister barked. Up until the minute he said that, he had been ignored by the others. “Move your hands clear of those guns,” he instructed.

  Browne, Clem the driver, even Sheriff Klinger swung astonished looks at the deputy. MacCallister was making fight talk and this was a very bad time to do that because not a one of those men was a professional, except the two-gun man, and while the odds might be greatly against the gunfighter, the rest of them were fully exposed should a fight commence.

  Then MacCallister moved his right hand the slightest bit and the others saw why the former sheriff was making his fight talk. While Browne and the gunfighter had been warily considering one another moments before, and while MacCallister himself was unobserved, the deputy had drawn his right-handed .45. The solitary black snout of that gun now lay lightly over Ethan’s saddle swell, bearing straight upon the chest of the two-gunman.

  The gunfighter saw that pistol barrel but he did not immediately obey the deputy. Instead, he ran a slow look from the tilted muzzle on up to MacCallister’s face.

  For about ten breathless seconds those two steadily and silently regarded one another.

  Then the gunfighter gently let his arms come forward, let his frock coat drop back down, once again concealing the ivory butts of his guns, and he said without any trace of amusement: “Deputy, you took a long chance, and for nothing. This doesn’t change anything.”

  MacCallister’s slitted eyes never wavered, never blinked. “Mister, get in the coach,” he ordered, “and enjoy the ride back to town. I won’t disarm you. I don’t believe you’re the sniping kind. Just climb back up into that coach, sit back, and take in the scenery.”

  The deputy raised his eyes a little, his tone of voice remaining soft and commanding as he told the stage driver: “Clem, it’s time to turn the coach around and head on back to town.”

  The driver wrinkled his nose at MacCallister and Sheriff Klinger. “Which side you boys on?” he asked.

  “Not on the side of an outfit who’d do what your company just tried,” answered MacCallister. “Gunfighters aren’t the answer, Clem. You tell Hank Weaver at the stage office I said that, too. You tell him we’ll be along to see him when we get back to town. Now turn the coach and head on back.”

  Clem leaned out to peer around and down where the gunfighter still stood. Clem’s physical movement was the thing which seemed to break all that stiff tension. Travis Browne’s riders still blocking the road shifted in their saddles, looked gravely at one another, then on over to where Browne was again sardonically gazing at the tall, well-dressed professional gunman.

  “Mister, don’t buy in,” Browne warned the gunfighter. “This is a sort of private feud. If the stage line imports gunmen, my boss will no doubt find it necessary to import some.” Browne drifted his look up to Clem. “You tell Hank Weaver he’s a damned fool for trying this. Mr. DeFore’ll hear about it.”

  Clem was blushing. He seemed uncomfortable and embarrassed as he gathered his lines and said a trifle sharply to the two-gun man: “All right, mister, get in like the deputy said, and we’ll head back.”

  The gunfighter ignored Clem for a moment. He kept studying Ethan MacCallister, still with one eyebrow slightly raised, still with those wet-iron eyes of his with their look of controlled violence. Finally, though, he turned, grasped the door, started to step up, but paused to say over to MacCallister: “Deputy, you’re kind of old for making damned fool plays like that. Next time, I’ll know you. Next time, you won’t even clear leather with that gun of yours.”

  Clem whistled at his horses. Browne’s riders broke away left and right to allow the stage teams to make their big roundabout turn. Slowly the stagecoach went out, around, and returned to the roadway, southward bound.

  While the others were thoughtfully watching all this, Sheriff Klinger leaned over and said: “Ethan, you were the only one who kept his head.”

  Watching the coach, MacCallister made a short answer. “That damned fool of a Hank Weaver … sending a gunfighter up to force a passage?”

  “He almost did it,” observed Klinger.

  “No, he didn’t. Travis was making up his mind to fight. If Weaver had had a lick of sense, he’d have sent three or four. Then Travis wouldn’t have tried it. But sending just that
one man … hell, there’s no six-range riders on earth who’d ever let one danged gunfighter back them down. All Weaver did was come close to provoking a battle. That’s what happens when store clerks and their kind start playing at being strategists.”

  Browne ran a slow, flinty look over where the sheriff sat with his deputy, saying nothing, not even giving the men a nod. Instead, he jerked his head at the DeFore riders and led them eastward off the roadway and back into the rugged hills the way they had come down.

  None of those cowboys looked back. Klinger and MacCallister sat there, as alone now as they’d been two hours earlier when they’d been atop their little vantage point, waiting to see what was going to come of old Richard DeFore’s fierce ultimatum that from now on, Cheyenne Pass was his private toll road.

  “Let’s go home,” MacCallister announced, and started riding down through the gray-dun cloud of dust the stagecoach had left in its wake.

  Chapter Three

  The town of Winchester had once had another name, but that had been a number of years earlier, when it had been established as a supply depot for the army during those interminable punitive expeditions against the Indians, and there weren’t many folks still around who even recalled that name now.

  Winchester lay in its rich, long valley with mountains all around it, seemingly dependent upon the north-south roadway for survival. But actually there were a number of big cow outfits in the hills, some ore mines, and even a little logging to make up the bulk of Winchester’s economy.

  Most of its buildings were less than twenty years old, but some, like the log jailhouse, which had been an army post stockade, the livery barn, which had been a big mess hall, and the only log saloon in town, which had been the officers’ quarters, were left over from those earlier times when the whole place had been an army town.

  The jailhouse was huge, built of enormous logs set one atop the other, notched at the ends, and stoutly chinked. It had steel-barred windows and an oaken door, ironbound and thick enough to withstand anything but the direct hit of a cannonball. It had been built for strength and for no other purpose. In summertime it was like an oven. A man standing and considering it from any angle would deem it massively ugly. But in some scarcely definable way, it seemed to point up, by its very forbidding exterior, the might and determination of the law.

  When Sheriff Klinger and MacCallister got back to Winchester from Cheyenne Pass and sent word they wanted to see Hank Weaver, the local stage manager, at the jailhouse, Weaver came at once. The law around Winchester commanded that kind of respect.

  Weaver was a bean pole of a man with a nervous tic—he batted his eyes when he was under stress. He was getting bald, and this, coupled with his perpetual look of astonishment, sometimes put folks in mind of a startled crane when they looked at him.

  Weaver entered the office where Sheriff Klinger was waiting. He shot a look past him to Ethan MacCallister, with whom he’d been friends since both were in their twenties. Weaver batted his eyes.

  Klinger gave Weaver no chance at all. He said roughly: “What in the devil were you trying to do today, Hank? Whatever made you think sending that gunfighter up to the pass was going to do any good?”

  Weaver stood uneasily by the door and looked from one lawmen to the other. “Two weeks back,” he explained, “when all this came up, I wrote the head office down in Denver. Yesterday, this gunfighter showed up in town with a letter from one of the bosses, which he gave to me. According to the letter, he had orders to break any deadlock which might exist up here.”

  “So you sent him up there today?” questioned Klinger.

  “No, I didn’t,” contradicted Weaver. “He came by this morning when I was getting the coach ready, informed me no other passengers were to ride out this morning, got aboard, and told Clem to whip up the horses.”

  MacCallister was over by the gun rack, listening. Now he said: “Hank, you didn’t give that fellow any orders at all?”

  “You gotta understand,” stated Weaver shrilly, “I have no authority to tell him anything. The Denver office sent him up here, and, if anything, he acts like he’s the boss, not me. When he said no one else was to ride that coach, I had four people to make refunds to.” Weaver emphatically shook his head at MacCallister. “I got no authority over that fellow at all, and I’ll tell you something else, too … I don’t want no authority over him. I’ve seen his kind before. I’m a peace-loving man. Gunfighters aren’t my notion of the kind of folks I care to associate with.”

  “Where is he now?” asked John Klinger.

  “Down at my office. He won’t leave, just sits there, staring at me, smoking a big, long cigar, and looking like the cat that just ate the canary.”

  Klinger twisted to look back at MacCallister. Clearly, the young sheriff didn’t quite know what to do next.

  MacCallister stepped away from the gun rack, strolled over to the stage-line manager, and said: “Hank, what’s he waiting for?”

  “An answer to that telegram he sent, I guess. I didn’t ask him. As far as I’m concerned, I wish he’d go sit somewhere else … in one of the saloons maybe, or over at his room in the hotel. He makes me plumb nervous … him and his fancy clothes and his dead-fish eyes.”

  “He sent a telegram?” the sheriff asked.

  Weaver’s eyes batted. His head bobbed up and down swiftly. “To the head office down in Denver. I’ll tell you boys something. He didn’t like it one little bit when you turned that coach back instead of letting it go on through.”

  The deputy made a wry little smile at Weaver. “That’s not what he didn’t like, Hank. He didn’t like having someone get the drop on him. No gunman likes to be backed down in front of other folks.”

  Weaver’s eyes widened. “You?” he said breathlessly. “Ethan, you threw down on him … and didn’t get shot?” He stared at the deputy, then blew out a ragged breath and wanly shook his head. “You didn’t recognize Ray Thorne … either of you! He’s killed men from here to California.”

  Klinger and MacCallister exchanged a long look. “Ray Thorne,” said the sheriff. “I’ve been hearing about him since I was a kid. Hank, is that what that letter said … that he was sure enough Ray Thorne?”

  Weaver whipped his head up and down in strong confirmation. “Listen, Sheriff, do me a favor. Figure some quick way to get this right-of-way business settled. Or at least figure out some way to get Thorne out of Winchester … out of my stage office. Unless we can start sending the coaches out within the next few days, we might as well lock up the office and the barn. There won’t be any business. And with him hanging around, folks are going to quit even coming in to pass the time of day. So do me a favor … get rid of him. Please.” Weaver stood there wringing his hands, batting his eyes, and looking on the verge of tears.

  The deputy sheriff responded with: “Thanks for coming down. We’ll do what we can. See you later, Hank.” He stepped past, opened the road-side door, and held it open until Weaver had departed. He turned back into the room, let out a sigh as he closed the door, tipped back his hat, and put a slowly gathering frown upon the sheriff.

  “Ray Thorne here in Winchester,” MacCallister said as if he couldn’t believe it. “I remember hearing that like most gunfighters, he had a specialty. Some of them represent big cattle interests. Some do dirty work for the railroads. I once heard it casually said that Thorne is a stage-line specialist.”

  But Klinger wasn’t thinking about the notorious gunman when he said: “DeFore will explode when he hears the stage company is ready to fight him over that damned road.”

  MacCallister watched his son-in-law pass across to their shared desk and drop dejectedly down in the chair behind it. The sheriff was finally beginning to appreciate the ramifications that accompanied that badge he wore.

  The deputy sheriff was silent for a long time. Trouble had a way of sobering hotbloods, of tempering them into what they afterward be
came, if they remained in law enforcement work—good lawmen. But there was nothing Ethan could do to expedite that process for his son-in-law, and he knew it. All he could do was hope to guide Ruth’s husband, which was exactly what he’d proposed to do from the day John had been elected sheriff of Sherman County. So he stood there now, studying the younger man’s troubled expression, saying nothing.

  After a while Klinger looked up and said: “Ethan, there’s just one thing worse than making a mistake. That’s refusing to admit that you made it in the first place.”

  “I’d agree with you on that,” MacCallister commented.

  “Well, I never should’ve run for sheriff. This morning, if you hadn’t been there, I’d have forced a fight up in the pass.”

  “Oh, hell,” the former sheriff said. “It didn’t come to a fight, and that’s the important thing.”

  “I never should’ve run for sheriff. That was a mistake, and I’m admitting it to you, Ethan.”

  A slight feeling of uneasiness began to firm up in MacCallister’s mind. He was afraid what his son-in-law might say next, so he spoke up hastily, hoping to avert anything unpleasant between them. As a lifelong law enforcement officer, Ethan MacCallister didn’t believe there were many occupations which equaled the lawman’s profession.

  “Listen, John,” he said, “no one’s born knowing exactly what to do in every situation. But sometimes men are born too stubborn to learn, and when that happens they’re not going to be successful at anything. You aren’t that bullheaded. This morning up in the pass, you listened, and you acted about right. As for being sheriff … take my word for it, son … you’re going to be one of the best this county ever had. I know. I been following this line of work all my grown-up life, and if there’s one thing a fellow learns as sheriff, it’s how to size up other men.”

  “But because we made the stage turn around and head back for town,” Klinger stated forcefully, “DeFore will think that we’re favoring him in his dispute over the right of way, and that’s not the way it should be.”