by Lauran Paine
The fight was almost a stalemate. The firing had dropped to a sporadic, almost indifferent exchange by men whose first passion had subsided. The railroad men were hidden. Those who had been careless, once, no longer fired. The cowboys were pressed for targets, weary and almost out of ammunition. The Kid had found a carbine and several boxes of shells behind the bar, on one of his trips back there, and with these the defenders felt a little better, although they were still a long way from being cheered. Two of Carrel’s men had been hit. One was shot through the mouth. The bullet hadn’t even hit a tooth, but it had plowed through the cheek and left a purplish, rapidly swelling wound that was nasty-looking. The other wounded man was the young rider who’d been hit in the upper arm in the first exchange of lead.
In one of the intermittent lulls in the battle, Borein showed himself. He stood, wide-legged, facing the saloon. A .30-30 carbine dangled from his massive paws.
“You, in there!”
The Kid held up a hand and his men held their fire. “Yeah, Borein, what d’ya want?”
“You got my daughter?”
“Yeah. She’s safe enough.”
“She hurt any?”
“No. But only a damned fool would let a girl try a stunt like that.”
Borein’s voice was anxious and edgy. “I didn’t know she was out of the house.” He was quiet for a second. “Let her out, will you?”
The Kid looked at Sam. The older man nodded his head slowly. The Kid smiled gratefully. “All right, Borein, we’ll turn her loose on one condition.”
“What is it?”
“You have your men bring our horses up to the front of the saloon and hold their fire until we’re out of town.”
Two men approached Borein as he started to answer. He swung to hear them. The Kid and his men could see them pointing out over the range behind them. They were arguing vehemently, but Borein shook his head doggedly and swung back toward the saloon.
“All right, Carrel, we’ll bring your horses and give you a clean bill of health until you’re out of town.”
The Kid turned to his men as Borein’s men began to show themselves and several scuttled after the cowmen’s horses. “Don’t shoot, boys. We’ll get out of this hornet’s nest and try to make it back to the ranch, where we can get help in case they come after us.”
Froman got slowly to his feet. “They’ll be after us, you can bet on that.” He jerked his head toward the townsmen. “They can see something coming across the range. Probably the sheriff an’ a posse from Hendrix.”
The Kid turned away and walked behind the bar. For a long moment he fumbled in his pocket for his knife. “Miss Borein, I reckon you heard us yelling back and forth?” She nodded as he knelt down and began cutting the rope bounds. “Well, good luck and...” — he was blushing furiously now — “I sort of wish things had been a little different. I mean, I wish we weren’t on opposite sides.” The ropes fell off her and she sat very still, looking at him.
“I thought outlaws were all killers.”
The Kid’s smile bobbed up and his eyes twinkled. “That’s too long a story to take up here, ma’am. Someday, maybe, I’ll get a chance to explain it to you.” He helped her up. “Ruth” — he blushed again, but he had wanted to call her that — “promise me something, will you?” She nodded calmly, grave-eyed. “Don’t ever pull a stunt like you did today again. The graveyards are full of folks that get reckless and I’d sure hate to think you’d be one of ’em.” He turned away as he spoke and didn’t see the small, capable hand move up, as though to stop him and the full, generous mouth open a little. “Come on,” he said over his shoulder, “the horses are here.”
V
Ruth Borein walked out of the devastated 66 Saloon. She was a little stiff and there were several smudges of dirt on her face, but aside from that she appeared healthy enough. Her anxious father threw a warm arm around her sturdy shoulders as she came up to him.
“Honey, I ought to spank you, but I’m so darned glad to see you alive, I’m weak all over.” He threw a grim, lowering glare over his shoulder at the stiffly mounting, wary cowboys. “Was it pretty awful?”
For the first time Ruth looked up and spoke. Her gaze went slowly, irresistibly to the straight-backed, tense riders, jogging down the main street of Isabelita toward the range beyond. She was so intent in watching one figure that she didn’t sense the hysterical stillness, the deathly, awful tenseness that had settled down over the little town.
“No, Dad. It wasn’t awful.” Ruth was standing there, very sober and small, beside her gray-eyed father, watching the exodus from Isabelita. A rifle poked out of an upper window in the old hotel, followed the retreating riders like a black, avenging finger, then erupted venomously with a noise that echoed and reëchoed across the still, silent reaches and broke the deathly quiet with its treacherous shout that meant it was no respecter of truces. The Gila River Kid sagged, struggled hard to regain his seat, slumped unconsciously, and dropped soddenly to the dusty, hard roadway. For a long moment there was absolute silence. The riders reined up and sat stupified, looking down at their bleeding leader. Sam Froman swung down and knelt by the Kid. In a flash he was on his feet, a snarling, savage oath erupting from down deep in his barrel chest. He whirled on the frozen townsmen, rooted, as they were, by the suddenness of the treachery in their midst. His gun leaped out of its holster, and in the clearness of the silence everyone heard the hammer click back. Borein shook out of his amazed horror.
“Hold it. Don’t anybody move. Claude, Jim, Bob, get the man that fired that shot if you have to kill him to do it.” He waved a big arm toward the hotel, where a smallish cloud of blue smoke was still lazily floating over the assassin’s window. Ed Borein was rigid. He knew that anything, now, could cause the entire fight to reërupt into bloody savagery and he meant to keep that from happening. He elbowed past Ruth and began to walk slowly, evenly toward the cowmen. Froman’s cocked gun was belly high and the foreman’s eyes were deadly. Borein spoke lowly.
“Don’t do it, cowboy. Don’t pull that trigger. Whoever fired that shot will be caught. It was a low-down, sneaky act and whoever did it’ll pay the full cost, believe me. But if you pull that trigger, all hell’ll break loose again.” Borein and Froman were close enough now to face each other over the ugly snout of Sam’s .45. With another curse, Sam holstered his gun and swung abruptly away from the railroad executive and knelt again beside his employer.
Sam’s bandanna, limp and red with the Kid’s blood, was held in his clenched fist when Ed Borein knelt beside the two men. Neither was conscious of the small, roguish little figure that pushed in between them until two small, strong hands went out tenderly and wiped the welling blood out of the victim’s eyes, then they looked. Ruth’s face was ashen and her lips were trembling. Sam looked over her tousled head toward her father as he gently relinquished the Gila River Kid’s upper body and the small, sturdy little nurse took over.
Sam swore under his breath when he looked at the ragged slit over the wounded man’s ear where the bullet had narrowly missed penetrating his skull. “The second time in the same place.” He was shaking his head when Borein, frowning in puzzlement, looked at him.
“What d’ya mean?”
Sam looked up suddenly and scowled guiltily. “Nothin’, not a damned thing.”
Borein was still watching Sam when his men came running up. He turned to face them. “Did you get the bushwackin’ scum?”
“No, sir. He run past us, clambered on a horse, an’ lit out,” one of them said.
Sam let out a savage whoop and leaped for his horse. “Come on, boys, they’s work to be done.” As he whirled away, he looked back at Ruth Borein. “You’ll guard over him, won’t you, ma’am?”
Ruth looked up and Sam noticed the mistiness in her eyes. Before she could answer, the grizzled outlaw touched his hat brim briefly with a massive hand and made a slight, old-fash
ioned bow, then he was gone with his wild, wrathful riders thundering along in his wake like some of hell’s imps astride.
* * * * *
It was late before the Kid opened his eyes. There was a lamp hissing and sputtering on a broad old oaken table with great dragon-footed legs. The Kid closed his eyes quickly. The light hurt. He opened them a squinting bit and fascination showed in his face. Fascination and amazement, because he was in a strange room, with curtains at the windows and pastel colors on the chairs and in the filmy things he saw. With an effort that cost a little pain, the Kid rolled his head gently to one side and got another shock. His eyes literally fell into the anxious stare of a small, sturdy, big-eyed little angel with full red mouth and a small pug nose. The Kid grinned weakly.
“Ruth, if you’re real, you sure are a lot cleaner than the last time we met.”
Ruth made a wry face and smiled in vast relief. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re all right.”
“Honest, Ruth, this isn’t a dream?”
She colored a little and walked over and stood at the side of his bed. “It’s no dream, Kid. I’m real. One of the railroad men shot you as you were leaving Isabelita. Your men are hunting for him.”
“But where am I?”
“In our house. In my bed, in fact.” Again that small tinge of color crept into the creamy cheeks.
“But Ruth, your father’ll raise the devil if he finds me here.” Carrel started to raise up, and Ruth’s hands were flat against his chest as she pushed him gently back.
“Don’t be silly. Dad wanted to bring you here. He’s awfully sorry one of his men broke the parole and shot you.”
The Kid looked down at the small strong hands on his chest; slowly he brought his own bronzed paws up over the counterpane and covered Ruth’s hands. He looked up soberly almost lugubriously in his anxiety.
“Ruth?”
“Yes?”
“Uh...say...uh...how badly shot am I?”
Ruth pulled her hands away and straightened up slowly with disappointment plain on her face. “You’re awfully lucky, Kid. The bullet plowed a nasty furrow just over your left ear. An inch closer and it would have killed you.”
“My left ear?”
Ruth nodded slowly. She understood and smiled. “Kid, when that wound heals, it’ll completely cover the crescent scar. Nobody will ever know you were the Gila River Kid, if you don’t want them to, or...” — she hesitated — “if you don’t go back to the owlhoot trail.”
For a moment their eyes held, then the full significance of his luck soaked in and the Kid grunted softly. “Well, then, Ruth, it’s safe to say what I started to say a minute ago. Will you marry me?”
Ruth’s eyes were misty again and her round chin quivered once. She didn’t trust her voice, so she nodded, and, as she did, the bedroom door burst open and Sam Froman, sweat-streaked, dusty, and red-eyed, strode into the room with Ed Borein beside him. Both men were grinning from ear to ear. Sam yanked up a frail little chair, dropped his torn Stetson on the floor, and sank his big bulk onto the chair, completely hiding it’s dainty framework.
“Kid, me an’ Borein here’s been outside that danged door for near fifteen minutes waitin’ fer you to get up guts enough to say it.” He shook his head doggedly. The Kid looked anxiously from one of the older men to the other. Ruth’s softness fled and in its place was the old fire. She pulled herself up to her full five feet and one inch and her eyes flashed fire.
“You bullies leave him alone. He’s a sick man.”
Sam got up hastily and pushed the little chair in front of him. “Now, now, ma’am, don’t go an’ get sore.” He turned to the Kid. “Watch ’er, hombre, she kicks like a mule.”
The Kid was strangling an urge to laugh when he spoke. “Where’s the snake that plugged me, Sam?”
Sam, still keeping an eye on the diminutive girl, rubbed a plainly thoughtful hand over his blunt jaw. “Dang, it, Kid, that there bushwhacker gave us one hell...uh, pardon me, ma’am...of a chase but we finally got him cornered in a little cañon and he took up a tree like a monkey.” Sam shook his head in sad recollection. “We like to never got him out, either, till one o’ the boys roped him an’ commenced to pull him down.”
Borein, who was following Sam’s story with great interest, frowned. “He didn’t get away, did he?”
Sam shook his head slowly. “No, not exactly, but you know what happened? Why, danged if that there lariat didn’t get all tangled up in the tree and the poor feller’s still hangin’ there.” Sam looked so doleful the others didn’t catch on for a moment, then they all began to laugh, and, when the noise had died down a little, Ruth looked at her father.
“Dad, besides paying the Kid for his dead bull, I have a swell idea.”
Ed Borein squirmed once, then looked resigned. “What is it?”
“Instead of cutting the cowmen off from their other range, across the tracks, you could dig under passes and the cattle could go back and forth as they pleased.”
Ruth’s idea was new and its merit took a little time to appreciate. The men looked blankly at one another for a while, then Sam Froman slapped his leg sharply. “That’s the best danged thing I ever heard of. How about you, Sadler?”
The Kid looked hungrily at the mite of woman by his bed. “It takes brains to think up something like that, Sam, real brains.”
Ed Borein scratched his head slowly and studied his daughter. “Hey, wait a minute. Dang it, it’s bad enough to lose my only daughter to a cowman, but darned if she isn’t beginning to think like a cowman already, and it’s going to cost the railroad money.” He sighed and laughed. “That’s all right, though. I know when I’m whipped.” He winked at Carrel, who returned the wink owlishly.
The Man Without a Gun
I
“Swift,” the warden said, pushing his words out loudly and sharply, “you’ve tamed down considerable since you first came here. For a while we had two men watching you. I’m glad you got hold of yourself. I hate spies as much as the prisoners do, but in here we’ve got to have them.”
The warden swung his head toward a window. “See out there? Those headboards? Well, they didn’t all die of yellow jack. A lot of them didn’t know about our inside spy system. When a prisoner tries to escape from Yuma Prison, the chances are his escape will be permanent.”
The warden returned his attention to the silent man across the desk from him. Some of the harshness left his voice. “Forget all that,” he went on. “It’s behind you. Just a couple more minutes and you can go. You’ve paid for what you were sent here for...horse stealing. I’m glad, Swift. You don’t have to believe that and I don’t give a damn whether you do or not...but I’m glad every time a man walks out of here. The only time I’m off them is when they return. Remember that, Swift. Don’t come back.
“Now then, you don’t want any advice, but you’re going to get it anyway. First off...if you made any friends in here, forget them. Secondly, if you’ve got old friends outside, forget them, too. Break clean, Swift, and start over fresh. You’re a single man and you’re free, so don’t go back where you got into trouble. Going back’s never any good, anyway.
“For a while it’ll be hard on you. Don’t make it any harder by being bitter and vengeful. You had seventeen dollars when you came here three years ago...there it is. The gun you’ll never get back and from now on it’s against the law for you to own one. Remember that, Swift. Don’t pack a gun.”
For a silent moment the warden gazed steadily at the unmoving big man, then he leaned forward and extended a hand.
“Good bye and good luck.”
* * * * *
It was seven miles to the first town, a long walk back. The sun overhead was a malevolent orange disc, and the dust that arose after each step was bitterly alkaline.
Even for a young man the sudden mantle of freedom after three years of restriction was no
t an easy thing to adjust to. He was alone and adrift, a stranger to this big world of summer, and also a stranger to himself. He wouldn’t go back, no, but where would he go? What would he do?
He moved through the waves of heat scuffling dust in too-tight boots. His arms swung easily in the shrunken shirt. Free. And while heat made a smear of distance, he thought back, his mind a gray mixture of strangeness with little threads of sorrow tangled in its workings.
He had been an overgrown kid at twenty-seven. Now, at thirty, he was a full-fledged man. Three years had forced a late maturing. Better to mature late than not to mature at all.
Walking down the empty shimmering road he thought back and let the grayness run on. Nothing. No horse, no saddle, no gun. Yet, there was something — a felon’s stain. Ex-convict Jack Swift. Something else, too. Freedom.
He trudged along, swinging his body and feeling the freedom, knowing the deep-down richness of it. It had taken him three years to learn exactly what freedom was. But he would never forget, not now — not ever again. For a range-bred man confinement was a sort of death. Not until he had survived three years of it did he understand what freedom meant. You felt no humbleness, no appreciation of freedom — until you lost it.
Then, in the first town he came to, striding through the alternate heat and shade, mingling with other free people, he saw their knowing looks, heard the sly comments and felt color rise in his cheeks.
