Spanish Crossing

by Alan Lemay

  "I'll high lord you all right! I'm ready to prove what 1 said, but that will come later. Just a minute ago you gave me the lie. Heston, my lad, you're about to have that remark jammed right back down your throat."

  "Wait a minute," Heston snapped. He turned and ran for his saddled horse at the far end of the corral. As he turned toward them again, they saw that he was buckling on his gun belt. "Now come on with it," he raged. "You talk big, standing there with your gun on, to an unarmed man. Come on with your...!"

  "You make me sick," said Porter. He strode forward, his gun swinging idle against his thigh, and with his right hand slapped Lee Heston's face with such a swinging crack that Heston reeled backward against the fence.

  It must be said for Heston that he was neither a coward nor a fool. He shot one glance at Porter's still idle gun, then let his own alone, put his hands in front of him, and came on.

  Between those two was not enough ring science to fill a glove. They swung long, full-armed blows, pouring in punishment with the fury of fighting dogs. Under their trampling boots a fine haze of hoof-ground corral dust rose, thickening the obscurity of the twilight. Jess Alexander and two Circle Slash cowboys came up on the run to offer unheeded cries of advice.

  Abruptly, without forecast to the watchers, Lee Heston's rushing attack was brought up as sharply as if he had run into a braced timber, and his whimpered curses were checked in mid-word. He was thrown reeling backward, and brought up against the pole corral.

  Madge Alexander screamed: "Bob, look out!" She had not moved from her seat upon the top rail, or uttered any sound, but now she was the only one of them who saw Lee Heston's right hand grope and find his displaced gun. Porter, who had turned away, whirled and once more drove in upon his man. He wrenched the bright .45 from Heston's grip as it came from its leather, and threw the gun into the horse corral. Then as Heston's hands came up once more, Porter brought his right to the jaw in one last knee-lifting jolt. Heston's head snapped back, and his whole weight seemed to lift. He swayed dizzily for an instant, then went down in the dust like a dropped saddle.

  "Throw some water over him," said Bob Porter thickly, "and stick him on his horse."

  "That was a right interesting brawl," said Jess Alexander. The cowboys were untangling Lee Heston, who was out sufficiently cold.

  Porter hunted around for his hat. When he had found it, he stood for a moment before Madge Alexander, holding the battered Stetson in his two hands. "I'm sorry to bust loose this way," he said, "but it was needful, I guess. And 1 couldn't seem to get hold of him any place but here."

  "That's all right," Madge said.

  "I'll be drifting along now," he told her. "I'll just say this. Everything I said to him was true." He turned away.

  Madge Alexander caught her father's eye, and they held each other's gaze in a long, sidelong interchange, without words. "1 don't know," Madge said, "but what the boy has got his gumption back."

  "1 don't know," Jess Alexander agreed conservatively, "but what he does seem more like himself."

  Madge slid down from the fence. "Wait a minute! I believe I'll be riding your way, a little piece."

  They were silent on their idling horses for a mile, two miles. The afterglow was draining away, leaving behind it a starlit desert night.

  "I've got something 1 want to talk to you about," Bob Porter said.

  "1 thought maybe you did."

  "I arrived back here from my general tour of the cow belt kind of out of guts," he confessed.

  "I noticed that," she agreed.

  "I was looking for a place where I could set up my own stand. After 1 found it, 1 meant to come back and get you to throw in with me. 1 don't know as I ever mentioned that in so many words."

  "I don't know as you did," Madge said. "Still, you did kind of leave me with that general impression."

  "There isn't any such place as I was looking for," he declared. "For a while after 1 found that out, it seemed to me there wasn't any room for a fellow to go ahead with anything any more, and that was the way 1 was feeling when I got back here."

  "Anybody can see that things have changed," Madge said. "Anybody that wants to bet that they haven't, or that they won't ...he's sunk, that's all."

  "It's just lately come to me," Bob said, "that there's one more bet open, yet I'm willing to bet now that times will change again."

  "What way, Bob?"

  "Madge, bad as conditions are, we've got our hooks in an almighty power of land here. It won't always be Public Domain. Some day those of us that stick it out will make these ranges our own. And by that time something else will have happened, too...a cow on the hoof is going to be worth some money then!"

  "I thought you were going in for sheep."

  "Sheep? I'm going to strip this range of sheep. I've put up all 1 had, and everything 1 could borrow at the bank, to make first payments on the Double 0, and I'll put that range in cows. 1 don't know how we're ever going to see it through. But somehow we're going to have to hang on, and keep on hanging on, till that day comes."

  "We?"

  "You and me," he told her.

  That was the time Pete Crabtree, the Frying Pan country sheriff, got backed down into his hole and recommended to pull the hole in after him, which he done. And what made it so bad, this here was on a late Saturday afternoon in the hot, slack season, so that pretty near everybody was in McTarnahan to see it. Even yours truly, Old Man Coffee, was there, which was unusual, because lion hunting for bounty leaves me very little time to fool away in towns.

  But the thing that made it the toughest for Pete Crabtree, sheriff of the Frying Pan country, was that Edith Prescott was there, too, and saw it all.

  A buckaroo name of Homer Chamberlain had rode in from over by Lordstown on a zebra dun that was easy the best horse there that day, and it kind of looked like to me, when the rider got off this horse, that maybe he figured he had some extra rights, too, by reason of being the best man. 1 saw him two, three times in the course of the afternoon, and he was drunker every time. And it was an ugly drunk, the kind where a man goes quiet and kind of stiff, but means to stand on his rights against man, mule, or automobile.

  And then I seen him the fourth time, and that was the time he brung himself to the attention of all of McTarnahan and all those fellers gathered there, and most especial to the attention of Pete Crabtree.

  1 was standing in front of Crosby's store, talking to Art Dwyer and Doc Garrett. Art Dwyer was a little bowlegged feller with a kind of a hatchety face, and an eye to politics. So far, he was only deputy sheriff, but he was always trying to soap somebody up, with a view to laying aside a vote, and that's how come he was talking to me. Doc Garrett was more of a refined, sad-looking sort of feller, with a long horse face - one of the few fellers called "Doc" because he was a doctor.

  As we was standing there, old Johnny Hall come rackwheeling up to the hitch rack on a slattery buckboard and shoved in next to Homer Chamberlain's horse, and one of those wobbling wheels tipped the dun on the hock. The dun pony whirled and let fly both heels at old Johnny's horse, and Johnny let go with a rope and that made fur fly on the dun, taking most of the gunpowder out of him thereby.

  Then, as Johnny climbed down over the wheel, Homer Chamberlain had him by the scruff of the shirt. "You son-ofa-bitch," Chamberlain said, "1 seen that. Who give you leave to run down my horse? You get your buckboard out of here, and you keep it out!" With that he heaved old Johnny aboard.

  "Now get gone," Chamberlain says, and old Johnny, who hasn't worn a gun in fifteen years, just backed out and drove away, looking a whole lot like a turkey in the rain.

  I looked at Art Dwyer. He was watching Chamberlain so green-eyed that it come to me that maybe Art had tangled with Chamberlain himself, some place. Doe Garrett was looking pretty ugly, too, about the ugliest 1 had seen him look, which was plenty ugly, he being a sour cuss. Still, nobody did anything; and after a minute Art Dwyer kind of growled and drifted off through the crowd.

  But now Pete
Crabtree come forward through the ring of folks that had gathered 'round. Pete's real job was that of sheriff, but old Tim Wiley, the regular town marshal, had busted a leg, and Pete was filling in for him. He was looking uneasy and red in the face, like he always did whenever he tackled somebody.

  "1 don't know," he said, "but what you're going to cause trouble, acting thataway around here. Come to think of it, 1 don't know but what you better let me take that gun, and check it aside where you can get it when you leave."

  Hardly anybody ever wears any guns any more, unless they just happen to be riding along with one in hopes of shooting a coyote or a snake. But every once in a while the law officers was accustomed to take a gun off a drunk.

  Chamberlain turned slowly, and he looked Pete up and down with an eye like a cold-fried egg. Pete Crabtree was a good big strapping boy with very quick-working hands and a straight eye, but this Homer Chamberlain was not impressed. "God bless my soul," he said at last, and the way he said it, it was the most insulting darn' thing I ever heard.

  "I'll take that gun," said Pete again, very stubborn.

  Chamberlain kind of showed the edge of his teeth in a little smile, like a stallion that's fixing to reach for you, and there was quiet for quite a little minute more.

  "Go ahead and open it up," said Chamberlain at last. "Do you want to fight or not?"

  "No," said Pete. "All I...."

  "Then reach up your hands," Chamberlain said.

  1 don't think Pete Crabtree was scared. He was no more than a youngster, a big rope-and-saddle type of kid, but already he had made something of a reputation for himself. Especially when he went out and took the two Gormson brothers, the time they killed the three men breaking jail; and again when he walked two hundred yards across the open floor of Blanket Cut, with Walt Hanrahan shooting at him all the way, and buffaloed Walt with the barrel of his gun when he got to the other side. Only, for all that, Pete was none too fast in the head, and in Chamberlain's case it may be Pete first figured it wasn't right to kill a man just because that man was drunk.

  "Reach, 1 said," Chamberlain told him again, and Pete Crabtree's hands come up, real slow.

  Pete's gun was in his waistband, and now Chamberlain jerked it out and stuck it in his own. "Now stick your tail between your legs and get out of here," Chamberlain said.

  Pete turned and went, walking slow through all that halfdrunk crowd that had gathered 'round. He was looking dazed and flabbergasted. 1 believe it was only then that he was beginning to see what he had done and how tough it was going to be for him to recover the ground he had lost with the people of McTarnahan. The crowd yelled and cheered and whooped, taking the side of the top man, like they'll always do if the underdog turns tail. And when 1 looked around, there was Edith Prescott standing in the doorway of Crosby's store.

  Edith Prescott was a kind of a tall slender girl, with a lot of black hair, and eyes as blue as ever 1 see. The first time 1 ever saw her she was a mighty scared, lost-looking youngster who had landed in McTarnahan, God knows how, except that something seems to keep pushing these Irish-looking people all over the world, whether they like it or not. To look at her then, you wouldn't have thought that she could take hold of things and run them like a man. Old Mrs. Hepmeyer gave her a job washing dishes, out of sympathy. And the next thing 1 heard, Edith Prescott was up at the Crown King, contracting the feeding of more than eighty men and making a pile of dough!

  She had also made a lot of changes in Pete's life, such as causing him to sweep out his office, and wear a necktie on week days, though 1 hadn't heard whether he had made any special impression upon her thereby. But now as I looked at Edith Prescott's face, 1 saw that maybe he had, for she looked as if she had just seen one of her main landmarks come down, one that she had counted on and marked her trail by.

  1 walked over to her. "Things don't always mean what they look like they mean," I told her.

  After a minute or two she glanced at me as if she hadn't heard what I said, and didn't give a hoot, either. "Mister Coffee," she said, "1 can't hardly believe my own eyes." There was a quiver in her mouth, and you could hardly hear her voice at all.

  "There's times when it's a mistake to believe your own eyes," 1 said. And then suddenly she pushed past me and got away.

  It was getting dusk by this time, and I went and had supper, meaning to find Pete afterward and point out to him the ways of the righteous. Near as I could see, the one thing left for him to do was to get another gun and then go and get Homer Chamberlain, dead or alive, drunk or sober. But after supper 1 met Art Dwyer, Pete's deputy, and found out that advice from me wasn't going to be any use.

  It seems, while 1 was eating supper, Pete Crabtree had set out to get Chamberlain, all right. Only, he had met Edith Prescott on the way. Art Dwyer didn't know what was said. He didn't know even if Edith had spoke to him at all. But anyway, all Pete Crabtree's good intentions had flopped like a calf hitting the end of the rope, so that he just let Chamberlain slide. Having seen Edith with all the life and color gone out of her face, but still the loveliest thing in the Frying Pan country, I could understand what had folded Pete up. It must have been an awful thing for Pete when it finally soaked through his head how bad his play had looked to everybody. And when he found out that not even Edith believed in him, I guess it took the starch out of him altogether, so that he wasn't the same man at all as when he had taken Walt Hanrahan.

  I didn't know at the time where Pete Crabtree spent the next two hours. Afterward, I found out that he'd just been skulking around, drinking fairly steady, and keeping out of people's way.

  But at about ten o'clock a gun spoke somewhere in McTarnahan, and most of the town stopped to listen, and, as they listened, the gun spoke three times more, fast as a man could pull. And it wasn't fifteen minutes before the whole town had word of what had happened. Homer Chamberlain was dead.

  1 walked up the street toward Old Man Hepmeyer's rooming house, where Homer Chamberlain had been killed. There was a considerable crowd out in front by the time 1 got there. This house was a one-story affair, and people was tramping all around it and trying to look in the windows, and the room where Homer Chamberlain had been killed was all lighted up and full of men. And some was saying that any officer of the law who would shoot a man in the back through a window deserved to be strung up, and that, if McTarnahan had any men in it any more, by God, he would be strung up, and before sunup at that.

  "Pete? Why pick on Pete?"

  "Why, nobody could have done it but...!"

  "But just one of three men," 1 said.

  "Three...?"

  "After all," 1 said, "this has turned out to be a pretty simple case. It shouldn't be any trouble at all to figure out which one of the three it was."

  "Where do you get this three?" Art Dwyer demanded to know. "It looks to me like..."

  1 didn't hear what it looked to him like. 1 had opened the door and was looking up and down the street, and 1 didn't like what 1 seen there at all. Down in front of the sheriff's office a big crowd had gathered.

  Art came to the door.

  "Damn the day that made me deputy," he said real low, at last. "1 don't mind going out to take a man the law wants, but this darn' thing...."

  His voice trailed off. I never realized what a kid Art Dwyer was till 1 seen him looking so gray and scared.

  "Come on," 1 said. He came trotting at my heels as 1 went down toward the sheriff's office at a running walk.

  Doc Garrett stepped out in front of me, looking mighty serious. "Coffee," he said, "something terrible is going to happen here. I just want to say that if you and Art think of any way to keep order here, you can count on me."

  "Good," 1 said, snapping him up quick. "If it comes to a fight, that adobe-walled house of yours is as good a stand-to as we could want. You and Art go on up there, and I'll bring Pete Crabtree. Hump, now!"

  They hesitated a little bit, but after a minute or two they went.

  1 went on down to the sheriff's office, a
nd wormed through the crowd. And 1 tell you, for a man that was not a part of it, that crowd was enough to make your blood run cold. They was set on getting Pete Crabtree.

  I went straight into the sheriff's office. Crabtree was there, and he had Old Man Hepmeyer backed up in a chair, trying to pry out of him stuff that wasn't in him to start with. Pete was looking mighty anxious.

  As 1 came in, he turned on me, savage. "Get out of here," he said, very barb wire, and I turned and got out.

  Maybe 1 would have tried to reason with him, but it just then come to me that 1'd started wrong end to. The one person who had been able to make all those free-hand changes in Pete Crabtree's life was the only one who had a chance of handling him now. So I broke into a dead run and set out to look for her.

  1 didn't have far to look. I had set out to see if she wasn't with old Mrs. Hepmeyer, but on the way I run into her hurrying along the walk.

  "You got to do what 1 ask you, and do it quick," 1 told her. "If you don't, it's all up, that's all."

  "What is it you want?" Edith said.

  "Write a note to Pete," 1 said. "Tell him you're at Doc Garrett's house. Tell him to come there and come quick." She stood and looked at me for a minute. Then she took the pencil 1 gave her and did as 1 said.

  "Now," I told her, "go there and be where you said you'd be. Wait! If and when Pete and I get there, you tell him to listen to me." She nodded, turned, and was gone.

  The crowd had drawn in closer in front of the sheriff's office, and that droning, buzzing noise that a mob makes was louder now. I elbowed through, and pushed up to the sheriff's office again. Pete had the door locked this time, but 1 showed him Edith's note through the window, and he let me in.

  "What's this now?" he snarled at me.

  I let him read it for himself.

  "All right," he said, "I'll go."

  To get away from there we had to walk out through that mob. So we walked straight out, and it worked, partly because a mob is the slowest-thinking thing on earth. They didn't even follow us, right then. Yet, as I looked them over, it seemed to me it couldn't be more than a matter of minutes until hell would bust.