The Man Without a Gun

by Lauran Paine

  “You daft, comin’ here tonight? Boy, Logan’s just found out that the kid’s been found.”

  “How could he know that?”

  “Simple. You talked to some miners when you was lookin’ for him. They told Logan’s men about it today right here in town. They even seen you an’ the kid comin’ down out o’ the hills.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh, hell,” Buck said, greatly agitated. “Logan’s got another warrant out for you for stealin’ his nephew. Hoyt Farmer took a posse out about half an hour ago, lookin’ for you.”

  Jack grunted. “He won’t get me.” When Buck continued to spout, Jack told him of the meeting with Sheriff Farmer on the hilltop. Buck subsided, scratched his head, and screwed up his face.

  “Well,” he said. “That beats hell. Now, why’d Hoyt do that for you?”

  Jack smiled. “Amy,” he said.

  Buck considered this and finally agreed. Then he said: “But you got to light out, son. An’ this time don’t come back.”

  “We’ve got to have another rendezvous, Buck.”

  “All right. You name it and that’s where it’ll be, but you got to leave, an’ right now.”

  “Do you know where that glass rock is, west of the Merton place?”

  “Sure I know.”

  “I’ll be there waiting.”

  Buck looked puzzled. “Waiting? Waiting for what?”

  “For Rob. You put him on a horse and send him out there tonight.”

  Buck recoiled. For a second he was stonily silent, then he began to swear. “Jack, I figured you had some sense. Why, Logan’s men’ll be watching every road from now on.”

  “I’m not leaving without him, Buck.”

  “Jack, they’ll get him sure as God made green apples. Then everything’ll be for nothing.”

  “Then I’ll take him with me now,” the big man insisted.

  “You can’t.”

  “Why not? You’ve got a horse he can ride and....”

  “He ain’t here.”

  Jack turned to stone. His stare was bleak and still. Buck’s face contorted. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Amy took him to her place. She’s got him hid in the attic.”

  VIII

  Jack left Buck’s barn via the alley. He went as far north as a narrow dogtrot between two buildings and beyond there emerged onto the town’s main plank walk. There was some evening traffic but not much. The roadway was a quagmire of mushy gumbo. From Cardoza’s Saloon midway down the square, southward, came the strident noises of an out-of-tune piano. Directly across from him was Herd’s major mercantile emporium. Behind him, as yet undiscovered, was the dark and watchful silhouette of a man who had followed him from the alley behind Buck’s barn.

  He crossed the roadway finally and started north toward the Southard place. Where the plank walk changed, at the end of Herd’s business buildings and the beginning of the residential area because the houses were farther back from the road, he made the customary right turn before the plank walk straightened out again. It was while he was navigating the drafty opening of an alleyway here that he caught sight of a moving shadow deep in the alleyway. With every reason to be cautious this fading apparition inspired him to continue on past the Southard home, walking faster, until he came to the empty, littered ground by the Cavin shack. There he turned in, skirted the darkened house, and hastened into the north-south alley beyond.

  With darkness dripping on him from board fences and woodsheds, he waited. For a while there was neither sound nor movement, then he heard someone pushing across Cavin’s rear yard and pressed deeper into the gloom.

  A man appeared, cautiously at first, then more boldly, in the alleyway. He was straining to see. Jack stood like stone. The stranger took a few tentative steps southward then halted, drew out a match, struck it, and, holding it cupped, studied the ground. Twenty feet away and motionless, Jack waited until he saw the stranger’s sputtering light find his fresh tracks and turn to follow them. Then he moved with a speed rarely found in men of his size. The stranger dropped his match and whirled — but only in time to be sledged under the jaw and dropped as if pole-axed. He did not move.

  Jack blew on his knuckles as he regarded the unconscious form, then he knelt swiftly, rifled the stranger’s pockets until he found the railroad pass, and straightened up again. Logan was missing no bets. He had undoubtedly had men watching Buck’s barn.

  Jack stepped over the downed man and proceeded southward as far as the Southards’ back fence. There, he entered the rear yard and moved fluidly as far as an old horse shed before stopping. Long minutes passed. Farther south and well beyond Southards’ was the alley where he had seen the man shadowing him. Logan might or might not have another guard at the Southards’. He meant to take no chance.

  Time passed, agonizing moments during which Jack knew the man he had stunned would have revived and gone to raise the alarm. He considered abandoning his plan, by now doubly dangerous because Logan would know he was — or had been at least in town. If Logan’s railroaders had been on guard before, they would be even more fully alert now.

  He longed to smoke. He also longed to see Amy Southard. Both desires were destined to go unrewarded; two men approached the Southard house from up along the front plank walk. Jack saw them pass briefly. Later he heard them pound on Mrs. Southard’s front door. One of them he had recognized as Hoyt Farmer. The other he thought was Josh Logan. There was nothing left for him to do but get out of Herd as fast as he could.

  When he left the Southard yard, he did not go north again, but hurried to the east-west alleyway, cut through it with more haste than caution, went directly across the roadway and to the spot where his horse was tied. There, with one foot in the stirrup, he was frozen into immobility by a sharp snippet of sound — once heard never forgotten — the cocking of a single-action revolver.

  “Easy now,” a husky voice said softly. “Keep your hands up on the saddle like that, Swift.”

  A gradual twisting of the head revealed his captor. He was a middle-size man in a rumpled windbreaker. He looked no more dangerous than a snarling dog except for the cocked pistol in his right fist.

  “Who are you?” Jack demanded. “What do you want?”

  “Well now,” the soft-husky voice said affably. “My name’s Cavin. Ernie Cavin. I work for Mister Logan, an’ I want the three hundred dollar reward he’s got on you dead or alive.” Cavin flicked the gun. “Take your hoof outen the stirrup. That’s better. Now turn around where I can get a good look at you.”

  Jack turned and looked down into Cavin’s face. It was a whisker-stubbled, liquor-reddened countenance with no depth of feeling to it one way or another. A weak face, but also a sharp-featured one.

  “Five hundred if you put that gun away, turn around, and walk out of this alley,” Jack said.

  Cavin considered, licked his lips, then shook his head. “Nope. With Logan I got a future. With you...after the five hundred’s gone...I got nothing.” The gun did not sag or waver. “Where’s Rob?”

  “For three hundred dollars go find him.”

  Cavin smiled. “You ain’t very smart, big feller. Logan pays dead or alive. I got a feelin’ he’d rather have you dead.”

  “Then how would he find the kid?”

  Cavin licked his lips. “I don’t care whether he finds the kid or not. All I care about is the three hundred bucks.”

  “In that case,” Jack said, “shoot.”

  Cavin wagged his head negatively. “I got a better idea,” he said. “You just walk down to the end of the alley an’ we’ll go to Mister Logan’s office an’ wait for him. He’ll twist it out of you...where you got the kid hid out.”

  Jack dug his heels into the mud and let his weight ride forward. It was a crazy thing to do in the face of a cocked pistol and a steady hand, but he had to do it.

  “Go on,” Cav
in said, motioning with his gun hand. “Turn around an’ let’s go.”

  Jack sprang.

  Cavin’s reflexes were slow. He did not give the frantic tug that exploded the bullet until Jack was on him. The deafening sound shattered every vestige of the alley’s stillness but it was the burst of dazzling light that blinded the big man. He had Cavin’s coat with one hand when the blinding flash came. The other hand was locked around Cavin’s gun wrist. He forced the gun hand down and out, then spun Cavin around and brought the arm up between Cavin’s shoulder blades, wrenched until the gristle tore and Cavin screamed, and the gun fell in the churned earth at their feet. With his free hand he whirled Cavin and lashed out. Pain, like an electric shock, ran to his shoulder when his fist crashed into Cavin’s jaw. The smaller, older man crumpled without a sound.

  Jack stepped over the blur at his feet, vaulted into the saddle, and raced southward down the alleyway. At the rear entrance to Buck’s barn he glimpsed a startled, white face, then it was lost in the gloom.

  He was well south of Herd before full sight returned. He halted, examined his clothing, found shredded burned cloth where powder scorch had damaged his coat, but he was not wounded. After that he rode more slowly. Anger was growing in him, a kind of anger he had experienced only once or twice before in his life. Killing anger. He stopped finally, near the east-west turn of Herd Creek, and listened for pursuit. There was none. He made a cigarette and smoked it down to a stub, waiting. No one came. He flung the cigarette down and gathered up the reins. A man on the defensive accomplishes nothing and so far Josh Logan had had things his way, had kept Jack Swift on the run, had done it with no peril to himself.

  The horse fidgeted, tired of standing. Jack ran a hand along his neck and spoke. “All right, pardner, we’ll see how the boot fits on the other foot.”

  He rode around Herd northeasterly. When Buck’s knoll showed, dark against the velvet night, and the road loomed up, he crossed the latter and put the former behind him. Ahead, dim but bulking large, was the granite ridge overlooking Logan’s rail’s end camp. He by-passed the ridge, too. Went out, around, and down behind the camp, left the horse, and continued on afoot as far as the powder house. There, by working boards loose with his hands, he got inside. Cases of dynamite and oilskin-wrapped coils of black fuse were neatly stacked. He took eight sticks of powder and a long length of fuse, went back to his horse, and rode as far as the granite ridge. There it took him nearly an hour to prepare the explosives.

  Twinkling fitfully below him, the railroad camp was reflected in the light of many lanterns. He studied it for a while to confirm what he knew of its layout, then rode leisurely down off the ridge toward track’s end.

  A little wind had risen. Lanterns flickered and the canvas tops of hutments sucked in and puffed out. Jack set his charge five hundred feet behind the little work engine, tamped earth over it, lit the fuse, and rode away with a smaller bundle of sticks in his hand. As he neared the freshly piled ties, he looked back. The first fuse was spluttering closer to the dynamite; he did not have much time.

  It didn’t take much to set the second charge beneath the racked-up ties. After he lit this second fuse, he vaulted into the saddle and rode hard for the granite ridge. When he halted near the top, his horse was grunting from the climb. He moved forward more leisurely. By the time he was atop the ridge and well beyond harm’s way, the little wind had turned into a steady blow.

  When the blasts came, they were less than a minute apart. Afterward the camp was in a turmoil. Men ran forward, holding lanterns high. Others yelled for guns and horses. A few stood rooted in the mud outside their huts, staring down where splintered railroad ties were scattered. Behind the engine, where the largest charge had gone off, was a hole twenty feet deep. There the greatest cries of indignation arose; aside from having to repair the damage, the work engine could not go back for more rails until the hole had been filled and fresh track laid.

  Jack did not wait any longer. He left the ridge, heading for Herd. If anything would bring Josh Logan to rail’s end, this would do it.

  On the outskirts of town, with the wind turned gusty again, Jack sat in the darkness smoking and waiting. It was not a long wait; four riders pushing their mounts hard came pounding out of the northeast down the roadway. Railroaders. He inhaled, smiled, and exhaled. There was no hurry; the railroaders could not rouse Sheriff Farmer and Josh Logan in less than half an hour. He dismounted, let his horse graze nearby, and found a dry place to sit and wait.

  Logan was vulnerable, too vulnerable really to undertake a war of attrition against Jack Swift. If he retaliated, the only serious harm he could do Jack would be to destroy his saddle and harness shop. Jack, on the other hand, could harass the railroad camp until Logan’s schedules were hopelessly delayed. There would be an investigation by the railroad company’s stockholders and Logan would find himself in deep trouble.

  These consoling thoughts were brief, though. He thought of Rob. He also thought of Amy and Buck. Before Josh Logan was defeated, he would strike at them, too. This sobering realization was still bothering him when he heard a number of mounted men loping northward out of town. When they passed, a quarter mile west of where he watched, he recognized only one of them—Sheriff Hoyt Farmer.

  Four railroaders had entered Herd. There were nine men in the party that rode out; four would be the same railroaders who carried the news of disaster to Logan. Two more would be Logan and Hoyt Farmer. The others would be Logan’s men from town, perhaps Cavin and the other railroader Jack had fought.

  He got to his feet, thinking Logan could not have left many men in Herd. He went toward his horse, thinking it was a good thing. Now he could get Rob and leave. In the saddle another thought came. If he left Amy and Buck, Logan could still get his vengeance. With a black frown on his face he reined for town. Buck wouldn’t leave. He knew the old man that well. He had his home, his business, and a mile-wide stubborn streak. He would never leave Herd.

  And Amy, she couldn’t leave without her mother. Perhaps she could, he thought, but she wouldn’t. Not after placing her mother in the way of Logan’s wrath.

  He balled up a fist and smashed it down upon the saddle horn. He could think of no way out for all of them and bone-tiredness swept over him. He would have to get some rest and, later, some food. It was impossible to think straight right then, and after what he had done to Josh Logan he was going to need every bit of thinking power he possessed.

  The wind was rising, growing stronger and warmer. He studied the sky as he approached Herd from the west. It was as clear and cloudless as glass. There would be no rain. He thought of riding to the glass-rock rendezvous but decided it was too far and headed instead for the back alley where he had met Ernie Cavin. Once there, he turned Buck’s horse loose and watched it trot toward the barn with a livery animal’s infallible homing instinct. Then he waited a full hour before heading toward the shadowy runway of the stable himself. The night hawk was not in sight when he slipped inside. He wanted to get to the loft and the fragrant hay beyond its overhead opening but dared not; the nighthawk might come out of the harness room at any moment. He settled for an alternative and bedded down in the grain room, which was not only accessible to the back alley, but was also an easier place to escape from if the need arose.

  He was asleep almost before his head hit the barley sacks. The granary was a tight little room, as dark as night and rarely visited — never at night — and usually only by Buck himself. But if it had been in the middle of Herd’s main thoroughfare, he still would have slept like a stone.

  * * * * *

  Elsewhere, particularly at rail’s end, there was no thought of rest. Sheriff Hoyt Farmer, surveying the damage with Josh Logan, was grimly silent. His companion, ashen with rage, scarcely heard his foreman’s recitation of what had happened. Finally Logan spoke, tightly drawn lips hardly moving.

  “I want that man, Sheriff. I want him killed.�
�

  Farmer’s drowsy eyes raised. “What man, Logan?”

  “Swift! You know what man as well as I do!”

  The sheriff returned his gaze to the yawning hole that severed the track behind the work engine. “You got proof it was Swift, Logan?”

  “Proof!” Logan roared explosively. “By God, look at that! Look at the stack of reserve ties! Ruined...every damned thing ruined. There’s only one man who would do that and I want him. If you don’t get him, I will.”

  Sheriff Farmer turned to gaze at the cluster of white faces around them. His glance rested briefly on Ernie Cavin and another man with a bruised jaw beside Cavin. “Hell, Logan,” he said quietly. “Anyone could’ve done that. Swift isn’t the only enemy you’ve got.” He started to push past the listening men. “Another thing, too,” he added. “You’ve been tryin’ your darnedest to catch Swift and haven’t done it, so don’t tell me you’ll get him if I don’t.”

  Logan spun around. “This time I will get him. If it breaks me, I’ll get him!”

  Sheriff Farmer paused in mid-stride, looked long at Logan, then shook his head and continued on toward his horse.

  A second man detached himself from the throng and followed along. When he and Hoyt Farmer were back where the saddled horses stood, the second man said: “You don’t think it was Swift?”

  “Sure it was Swift,” the sheriff replied, gathering his reins and toeing into the stirrup preparatory to mounting. “But we’ve got to have better openers than that, Will. You’ve been a deputy long enough to know it.”

  Deputy Spencer mounted and waited for the sheriff. “I know something else, too,” he said quietly. “If I was Jack Swift and had something in mind, I’d want to get Logan out of town while I did it.”

  The sheriff settled across his saddle and seemed to consider Spencer’s words a moment, then he loosened his reins and swore. “I got a god-damned feeling we’re heading for some real trouble, Will. Real trouble.”