the Trail to Crazy Man (1986)

by L'amour, Louis

  Rafe slugged a right to the wind and took a smashing blow to the head. They backed off and then charged together, and both men started pitching them-short, wicked hooks thrown from the hips with everything they had in the world in every punch.

  Rafe's head was roaring, and he felt the smashing blows rocking his head from side to side. He smashed an inside right to the face, and saw a thin streak of blood on Shute's cheek. He fired his right down the same groove, and it might as well have been on a track. The split in the skin widened and a trickle of blood started. Rafe let go another one to the same spot and then whipped a wicked left uppercut to the wind. Shute took it coming in and never lost stride. He ducked and lunged, knocking Rafe off balance with his shoulder and then swinging an overhand punch that caught Rafe on the cheekbone.

  Rafe tried to sidestep and failed, slipping in a wet spot on the floor. As he went down, Dan Shute aimed a teriffic kick at his head that would have ended the fight right there, but half off-balance, Rafe hurled himself at the pivot leg and knocked Dan sprawling.

  Both men came up and walked into each other, slugging. Rafe evaded a kick aimed for his stomach and slapped a palm under the man's heel, lifting it high. Shute went over on his back, and Rafe left the floor in a dive and lit right in the middle of Dan Shute and knocked the wind out of him. But not enough so that Dan's thumb failed to stab him in the eye.

  Blinded by pain, Rafe jerked his head away from that stabbing thumb and felt it rip along his cheek. Then he slammed two blows to the head before Shute heaved him off. They came up together.

  Dan Shute was bleeding from the cut on his cheek, but he was still smiling. His gray shirt was torn, revealing bulging white muscles. He was not even breathing hard, and he walked into Rafe with a queer little bounce in his step. Rafe weaved right to left and then straightened suddenly and left-handed a stiff one into Shute's mouth.

  Dan went under a duplicate punch and slammed a right to the wind that lifted Rafe off the floor.

  They went into a clinch then, and Rafe was the faster, throwing Dan with a rolling hiplock. He came off the floor fast, and the two went over like a pinwheel, gouging, slugging, ripping, and tearing at each other with fists, thumbs, and elbows. Shute was up first and Rafe followed, lunging in, but Dan stepped back and whipped up a right uppercut that smashed every bit of sense in Rafe's head into a blinding pinwheel of white light. But he was moving fast and went on in with the impetus of his rush, and both men crashed to the floor. Up again and swinging, they stood toe to toe and slugged viciously, wickedly, each punch a killing blow. Jaws set, they lashed at each other like madmen. Then Rafe let his right go down the groove to the cut cheek. He sidestepped and let go again, then again and again. Five times straight he hit that split cheek. It was cut deeply now and streaming blood.

  Dan rushed and grabbed Rafe around the knees, heaving him clear of the floor. He brought him down with a thunderous crash that would have killed a lesser man.

  Rafe got up panting and was set for Shute as he rushed. He split Dan's lips with another left and then threw a right that missed and caught a punch in the middle that jerked his mouth open and brought his breath out of his lungs in one great gasp.

  All reason gone, the two men fought like animals, yet worse than animals, for in each man was the experience of years of accumulated brawling and slugging in the hard tough, wild places of the world. They lived by their strength and their hands and the fierce animal drive that was within them, the drive of the fight for survival.

  Rafe stepped in, punching Shute with a wicked, cutting, stabbing left. And then his right went down the line again, and blood streamed from the cut cheek.

  They stood, then, facing each other, shirts in ribbons, blood streaked, with arms a-swing. They started to circle, and suddenly Shute lunged.

  Rafe took one step back and swung a kick from the hips. An inch or so lower down and he would have caught the bigger man in the solar plexus.

  As it was, the kick struck him on the chest and lifted him clear of the floor. He came down hard, but his powerful arms grabbed Rafe's leg as they swung down, and both men hit the floor together.

  Shute sank his teeth into Rafe's leg, and Rafe stabbed at his eye with a thumb. Shute let go and got up, gabbing a chair. Rafe went under it, heard the chair splinter and scarcely realized in the heat of battle that his back had taken the force of the blow. He shoved Dan back and smashed both hands into the big man's body. Then he rolled aside and spilled him with a rolling hiplock.

  Dan Shute came up, and Rafe walked in.

  He stabbed a left to the face, and Shute's teeth showed through his lip, broken and ugly. Rafe set himself and whipped up an uppercut that stood Shute on his toes. Tottering and punchdrunk, the light of battle still flamed in Shute's eyes. He grabbed a bottle and lunged at Rafe, smashing it down on his shoulder. Rafe rolled with the blow and felt the bottle shatter over the compact mass of the deltoid at the end of his shoulder. Then he hooked a left with that same numb arm, and felt the fist sink into Shute's body. The strong muscles of that rock-ribbed stomach were yielding now.

  Rafe set himself and threw a right from the hip to the same place, and Shute staggered, his face greenish white. Rafe walked in and stabbed three times with a powerful, cutting left that left Shute's lips in shreds.

  Then, suddenly, calling on some hidden well of strength, Dan dived for Rafe's legs, got him around the knees, and jerked back. Rafe hit the floor on the side of his head, and his world splintered into fragments of broken glass and light, flickering and exploding in a flaming chain reaction. He rolled over, took a kick on the chest, and then staggered up as Shute stepped in, drunk with a chance of victory. Heavy, brutal punches smashed him to his knees, but Rafe staggered up. A powerful blow brought him down again, and he lunged to his feet.

  Again he went to his knees, and again he came up. Then he uncorked one of his own, and Dan Shute staggered. But Dan had shot his bolt. Head ringing, Rafe Caradec walked in, grabbed the bigger man by the shirt collar and belt, right hand at the belt, and then turned his back on him and jerked down with his left hand at the collar and heaved up with the right. He got his back under him and then hurled the big man like a sack of wheat! Dan Shute hit the table beside which Gene Baker was standing, and both went down in a heap. Suddenly, Shute rolled over and came to his knees, his eyes blazing. Blood streamed from the gash in his cheek, open now from mouth to ear. His lips were shreds, and a huge blue lump concealed one eye. His face was scarcely human, yet in the remaining eye gleamed a wild, killing, insane light. And in his hands he held Gene Baker's double-barreled shotgunl He did not speak just swept the gun up and squeezed down on both triggers!

  Yet at the very instant that he squeezed those triggers, Rafe's left hand had dropped to the table near him. With one terrific heave he spun it toward the kneeling man. The gun belched flame and thunder as Rafe hit the floor flat on his stomach and rolled over to see an awful sight.

  Joe Benson, crouched over the bar, took the full blast of buckshot in his face and went over backward with a queer, choking scream.

  Rafe heaved himself erect, and suddenly the room was deathly still. Pod Gomer's face was a blank sheet of white horror as he stared at the spot where Benson had vanished.

  Staggering, Caradec walked toward Dan Shute.

  The man lavcom on his back, arms outflung, head lying at a queer angle.

  Mullaney pointed. "The table!" he said. "It busted his neck!" Rafe turned and staggered toward the door. Johnny Gill caught him there. He slid an arm under Rafe's shoulders and strapped his guns to his waist. "What about Gomer?" he asked. Caradec shook his head. Pod Gomer was getting up to face him, and he lifted a hand.

  "Don't start anything. I've had enough. I'll go." Somebodv brought a bucket of water, and Rafe fell on his knees and began splashing the ice-cold water over his head and face. When he had dried himself on a towel someone handed him, he started for a coat. Baker had come in with a clean shirt from the store. "I'm sorry about that shotgun
," he said. "It happened so fast I didn't know." Rafe tried to smile and couldn't. His face was stiff" and swollen. "Forget it," he said.

  "Let's get out of here." "You ain't goin' to leave, are you?" Baker asked. "Ann said that she-was "Leave? Shucks, no! We've got an oil business here, and there's a ranch.

  While I was at the fort I had a wire sent to the C Bar down in Texas for some more cattle." Ann was waiting for him, wide-eyed when she saw his face. He walked past her toward the bed and fell across it. "Don't let it get you, honey," he said. "We'll talk about it when I wake up next week!" She stared at him and started to speak, and then a snore sounded in the room. Ma Baker smiled.

  "When a man wants to sleep, let him sleep, and I'd say he'd earned it!"

  The End