The Third Western Novel

by Noel Loomis

  “I’ve got an idea you had Albuquerque in mind when you put Ferris up to swearing he’d talked to Porter there—when he’d not been anywhere near the town. Right, Leftwick?” Quist flexed the fingers of his hands, clasped over his sombrero.

  “Quit it!” Leftwick rasped. His gun barrel moved a trifle. “Don’t move your hands.” Quist said rather meekly that he was sorry. Leftwick continued. “You’re right, the Albuquerque postmark tied in with Ferris’s story. Made it seem true. Trouble was, that dumb Ferris could only fake an address on Ventoso Street. With all the Spanish names there are, he had to think of Ventoso. Anyway, his testimony got everybody confused as to whether Porter was alive or not.”

  “Not for long,” Quist denied. “I figured Ferris lied. But you were getting worried too, Leftwick. You wanted a man named Leftwick considered dead, in case your name got connected with Porter’s murder. So you had Deray dig up the body of the real Arbuckle with Leftwick identification papers and bring it to town. And that was supposed to make us all confused and think less about Porter.”

  “Maybe it didn’t work so well,” Leftwick conceded carelessly, “but it don’t matter now. After I return to town, I’ll hang around a spell, and then just leave. When the time’s right, I’ll slip in some time and get the opium. There’s just one thing I want to know. When did you first suspect I wasn’t Arbuckle?”

  Quist smiled thinly. “I rather doubted it from the first, when you claimed it took five hours to bring in Porter’s body. I knew about where you were supposed to have found it, and five hours sounded too long. Again, you claimed you found no ‘sign’ about. That didn’t sound like a real ranger. You tried to patch up things at the inquest by saying it took about three hours to bring in the body. You’d done some more thinking in that direction. I’ll admit you had me fooled now and then. You staged a good act when dealing with the Lombardy crowd. One day I listened in on one of your messages to Captain Craig of the Rangers. It sounded right genuine, until it occurred to me any name can be signed to a telegram. I’ll bet you never sent any written reports.”

  “You’re pretty smart, Quist, but I—”

  “I made a trip to Ventoso, talked to Diego Cubero. He has a fine memory for faces. He made one sketch of a man named Leftwick. So then I knew for sure you were a fake ranger.” Leftwick swore harshly. Quist went on, “Meanwhile, Duval Sloan had lost his nerve. He’d heard I was in Clarion City and decided to see me and confess the whole business. He was almighty afraid of you, but even when you saw him, you didn’t dare do anything to him, right in town. And he managed to slip away from you and stay hidden until I’d returned. Finally he saw me coming out of the Amber Cup and he followed me to talk to me. Trouble was, you’d been hunting him all day with an extra gun and a scheme to get rid of him and make yourself solid with me at the same time. When he followed me down Railroad Street, in the dark, you shot him and dropped that extra gun near his hand.”

  “You’d have a hell of a time proving that in a court.” Leftwick blustered. “He shot at you and then I plugged him—”

  “Why lie at this stage of the game, Leftwick?” Quist said wearily. “When you’ve heard as many gun reports as I have, you’ll learn there’s always some slight difference in the sounds of the explosions, even from guns of the same model. You fired once, waited a second, then fired twice more close together. The shots all sounded the same. I picked up that gun you claimed was Sloan’s. The barrel was cold. Maybe you overlooked that little detail. Incidentally, if you’ve wondered what happened to Gilly Deray, I left him down in Ventoso. He got too interested in my business.”

  Leftwick growled. “You’ve been a damn’ busy man, Quist. Too busy for your own good—”

  A tremendous crash of thunder interrupted the words, a splitting rending sound, seeming almost at the cave entrance. It swelled to a deafening roar as the noise rushed through caves and tunnels, shaking the Devil’s Drum with vibrations that carried on and on—brrumph-h-h!—brrrummmphh!—brruuummph-h-h!—like the rolling of some huge percussion instrument under gigantic drumsticks, the mighty rumbling shaking the earth beneath the feet of the three.

  Leftwick cursed and cast a half-fearful glance toward the cave entrance. And at that moment, Kate with a deft flick of one hand sent her heavy flat-crowned Stetson sailing through the air toward Leftwick. Straight toward the man’s body, the sombrero flew, curving upward toward this head. Leftwick snarled something unintelligible and dodged to one side, firing as he moved, but his bullet flew wide and high.

  Quist’s hands flashed down, his right darting within his coat and emerging again with smooth swift precision. Flame and lead spurted from the muzzle of the Colt .44, the violent impact of the heavy leaden slugs whirling Leftwick off balance, as the man’s second shot flew wild. Quist shot him again, even as he was falling, the jolting detonation of the shots blending with the final crash of thunder.

  Dust was shifting down from the cave roof. The acrid odor of burned powder stung eyes and throat and nostrils. A gust of wind and rain swept through the entrance of the cave, clearing the air of swirling smoke. Quist cast a quick glance at Kate and saw she had retrieved her own gun from the floor, and was now lowering it again.

  He moved in swift strides across the earth, and stood gazing down on Leftwick who lay stretched on his face. The man’s booted toes drummed spasmodically against the ground for a moment, then he lay very still. Quist stood above him, methodically plugging out spent shells and reloading. He said to no one in particular, “These fools who allow themselves to be sucked into a conversation. I’d been dead ten times over, if crooks would shoot first and talk afterward.”

  He turned back toward Kate, looking steadily at her a moment, until a faint smile touched her lips. “I owe you a lot, girl. And I won’t have to worry over you any longer. You’re steady, steady as a rock when the showdown comes.…”

  CHAPTER 22

  CONCLUSION

  It was night when Quist reached Clarion City. It had ceased raining. Stars shone brightly in the velvety indigo sky above. Yellow lights from a few buildings were reflected in small puddles along Main Street. A lamp burned in the sheriff’s window. Quist turned the buckskin in toward the hitchrack, and lowered his drenched form to the soaked earth. Corliss appeared in the doorway, form silhouetted against the light in his office.

  “That you, Greg?” he asked anxiously.

  “’S’me,” Quist grunted, rounding the tierail, and stepped up on the small porch before the door. Corliss backed inside, eyes curious. “I’ve got a job for you, Lish,” Quist said.

  “Yes?—Say, where’ve you been, Greg? I’ve been sort of bothered—haven’t seen Fred Arbuckle since early morning, either.” Puzzled excitement showed in the sheriff’s eyes. “Say, there’s a Ranger Captain in town. Jim Craig. He’s looked at Leftwick’s body, down to Cromlech’s, and he swears the body is that of one of his rangers, named Fred Arbuckle. It’s a hell of a mix-up. Craig is waiting at the hotel for you. I tried to tell him he was bad mistaken, that we knew Fred—”

  “Captain Craig’s right, Lish. I sent for him to come here and identify the body. The man named Leftwick is dead in a cave up in Devil’s Drum. I had to kill him. You’ll hear the whole story from Kate. She was with me. You’ll have to go up there for the body. We brought his horse down—”

  “Hell’s-bells!” Corliss’s eyes were bulging. “What’s happened?”

  Quist told the story as briefly as possible. The sheriff’s jaw sagged. Quist went on, “Now the rest is up to you, Lish. There’ll be a couple of government agents arriving to clean things up, but you get into the record with your part. Gather a posse of men you can depend on, ride to the L-Bar-D, and place every man there under arrest. Get busy tonight, when you can catch them all there. Maybe they’re not all guilty of smuggling, but I doubt it. Tell ’em Leftwick is finished and they’ll give in fast, I’m betting. I doubt you’ll have any trouble—”

  “But what you aiming to do, Greg?”

  �
�My job here is finished. I’ve got just about enough time to get to the hotel, find some dry clothing and then catch that 11:43 train to El Paso.” He was moving through the doorway while he talked. Corliss was still asking questions. Quist cut him short: “And, Lish, just the first minute you find free, you ride out and see Kate. Ask her again to marry you. And don’t make the mistake of telling her how much money you’ve saved, or how much you intend to have when you’re fifty years old, or of the position you hope to attain in politics. Just tell her you love her. I think that’s all she’ll want to hear.”

  He returned to the hitchrack, got the buckskin and left it at the livery stable, then started at a swift walk toward the hotel. In the hotel lobby he found Captain Jim Craig of the Rangers, talked to him about ten minutes, then shook hands and wearily mounted the stairway to his room.

  A short time later he was repacking his satchel. With his belongings stowed away, he cast a last glance around the room. Lamplight shone on a brown bonnet covered with artificial purple violets, which lay abandoned on the table. Quist picked it up, studied it a moment, then dropped it into his open satchel.

  A wry smile curved his lips. “Souvenir,” he said softly. “A souvenir of a very courageous lady.…”

  GUNSIGHT TRAIL, by Alan Le May

  Copyright © 1931 by Alan LeMay.

  Chapter One

  Clay Hughes, cow hand, awoke with the full knowledge that something was wrong. A glance at the slow wheel of the stars—very near and bright, there in the high Sweetwaters—told him that morning was only a couple of hours away; but the stars and the hour he noticed unconsciously, without attention, for all his faculties were concentrated upon the faint whisper of sound which had awakened him.

  Something was moving slowly through the thick underbrush which overgrew the up-canyon trail. It was an old trail and disused, so that the unseen advance was made audible at every step by the scrape of twigs. And he knew at once that the approaching thing was neither horse nor cow, nor any other creature having any right there.

  He listened to the slow approach with an impersonal curiosity modified by the high-keying which victimizes a man who is awakened by the unexplainable, the unknown. Nothing whatsoever had ever moved along a brushy trail by night in just the way this thing was moving toward him now.

  He thought, “It sure sounds like a steer with web feet.”

  As he searched his mind for some commonplace explanation, the movements came close enough so that he thought he could distinguish beneath them the sound of short and curiously heavy breathing. At this he leisurely chucked his blankets aside, tossed fresh tinder upon the coals of his fire, and stirred up a lazy new flame of light.

  He remembered now something that he had heard earlier in the night. He had off-saddled an hour before the quick dusk of the Sweetwaters, and thrown down his bed-roll in the mouth of this timbered gash. It was called Crazy Mule Canyon, though, of course, being a stranger in the Sweetwaters, he did not know the name of the place at the time. When he had chucked his worn soft-leather chaps into his spread-out bed-roll, out of the way of porcupines, he had made himself comfortable with bacon, bread, and coffee, all cooked in the same frying pan, one after the other; and after that he had sat for a long time smoking brown paper cigarettes, waiting for sleep.

  He remembered thinking then, as he sat smoking, that the mountain night was uncommonly still. No least breeze stirred the stand of lodgepole and aspen in which he camped. The canyon’s slender stream ran horizontally here, so that the rush of tumbling waters was soft and far away; and he had found himself listening for sounds a long way off.

  Presently, far up the canyon, a mule had brayed with the preposterous distance-defying voice common to mules; and though the echoes were deceptive, he had estimated that his neighbor was perhaps four miles away. He speculated about this for a little while before the sharp air of the high country drove him into his blankets; for the range was not of the sort in which mules choose to run, and he had noticed no fresh tracks entering the Crazy Mule as he turned in.

  It was a long time later, but he was only just dropping off to sleep, when the report of a gun—that queer, flat flutter of sound that is made by a gun fired within canyon walls—spoke abruptly far above; and Clay Hughes had raised himself upon one elbow, listening. A gun shot in the mountains is nothing to arouse comment by day, but—at night it is a different thing, uncommon enough to make him wonder what had happened, and what the explanation might be. A vague uneasiness made him reach for his rifle, with some notion of inspecting its action; but he had grinned at himself sardonically and drawn back his hand. In the end he had smoked another cigarette; and presently went to sleep.

  Now, remembering that up-canyon shot, it was in his mind that his visitor might be some prowling bear that had been wounded at the camp of his unknown neighbor. A wounded bear can make trouble. Hughes pumped a shell into the chamber of his rifle and, cross-legged on his blankets, waited with sleepy interest.

  The approach drew near slowly; for a long time he listened to it while it seemed, uncannily, to advance perpetually without getting closer. This lasted so long that he considered going out to meet the thing, to get it over with. Then at last, out of the shadows beyond the reach of his firelight, a dim tall form moved; and Hughes saw that his unaccountable visitor was a man.

  “Howdy,” said Hughes.

  The man from up-canyon did not answer, but continued to advance, his steps slow and uncertain. The fire was between Hughes and his visitor, partly dazzling Hughes’ eyes; but behind the slender, fire-tinted thread of smoke he could see the man’s face clearly. It was expressionless, but strangely drawn. The upward striking light of the fire made the shadows upon the face unnatural, and gave the eyes a look of hard glaze. He came so close to the fire that Hughes thought he was going to walk directly over it; and the cowboy saw that the man’s hands were locked upon his breast in a curious position, as if he carried something there.

  “What do you say?” Hughes spoke again.

  The stranger’s lips moved grotesquely as he made an effort to speak, but no sound came, other than the rasp of his choking breath.

  And now the little twisting thread of bright smoke from the fire swayed aside and Hughes saw that the man’s shirt was so wet with a dark stain that it clung to his lower ribs and the lean muscles of his stomach, showing them in glinting relief.

  Hughes sprang up. “What’s the matter, pardner?”

  As Hughes stepped toward him the man swayed; then suddenly crumpled forward, his body crushing out the blaze.

  The sudden quenching of the light was followed by a moment of what seemed utter blackness, before the starlight came creeping back, faint and blue in contrast to the orange light of the vanished flame. Hughes dragged the fallen man clear of the fire, the movement sweeping the embers into a fan-shaped spread of broken coals that lay winking dimly beside the limp form of the stranger.

  The cowboy picked up the long, sprawled body of the unknown man and carried him to the stream. Here he poured a couple of hand-scoops of water upon the stranger’s face; then fumbled in his pocket for a match.

  The stranger stirred and spoke audibly for the first time.

  “Who is it?”—a choking whisper.

  “Easy,” said Hughes. “You’ll be all right in a minute.”

  He struck a match on his Levi overalls and crouched above the other.

  “Listen,” said the stranger’s husky whisper. “Listen.” He raised a heavy hand and clutched the shoulder of Hughes’ shirt in a grip which, in spite of a hard grating tremor of the fingers, was surprisingly strong. By the flickering light of the match Clay Hughes saw a twisting contortion cross the features of the stranger, as if the face were a mask distorted by wires jerked from within. The man’s eyes were starting from his head with his terrible effort to speak. Once more the colorless lips formed words, and though no sound came, Hughes, watching the stranger’s lips, thought he made out the beginning of a sentence.

  “
Get—that damn—”

  He almost heard the ghostly murmur of words unspoken, so plainly did he see the syllables form upon the stranger’s silent lips. Then abruptly the tiny flame of the match went out.

  The stranger’s convulsive grip upon his shoulder tightened, and for a moment more Hughes, fumbling for a fresh match, knew that the man was trying to speak. Then the hand fell away, and the new match showed Hughes only a face from which all expression had gone.

  With quick hands he sought to do whatever might be done for this man. Against the stranger’s breast still clung the wad of moss which he had clutched with both hands against his wound, but the bleeding had stopped. His visitor was dead.

  Hughes stood up, a sudden weariness upon him; and with that weariness was fused a strange, bottomless sense of loneliness, an unaccustomed sense of hopeless desolation. It was the first time in his life that a man had died in his very hands.

  He went to the stream and washed. Afterward he covered the body of the stranger with one of his own blankets, leaving him in the spot where he had died; then with practiced hands assembled his meager cook outfit and his bed-roll. For a few moments he considered the advisability of catching up his horse at once; but the long-legged blue roan which he rode could hide like a deer, and to try to catch the horse in the dark was hopeless. He rolled a cigarette and waited for the near dawn.

  * * * *

  The millions of bawling white-faced cattle which fill the stockyards of the world still have to be calved some place. Notwithstanding the heavy motor traffic upon a couple of transcontinental highways, the west still has whole states where range horses outnumber the human population by five to one; where ranchers in need of supplies drive fifty miles to the nearest store; where roads are few and poor, and the herds which graze the vast quadrants of mountain and plain can be worked by the cow pony alone.