by Lauran Paine
SIX-GUN
CROSSROAD
Lauran Paine
Copyright © 2016 by Lauran Paine Jr.
E-book published in 2018 by Blackstone Publishing
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-4708-6107-0
Library e-book ISBN 978-1-4708-6106-3
Fiction / Westerns
CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Blackstone Publishing
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Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
Chapter One
In most ways Sam Logan was nondescript. He didn’t stand more than five feet eight inches and in heft he didn’t top the scales at more than 160 pounds. If that was not insignificant enough he was gray over the ears, probably was forty or better in age, and dressed like any other range rider, with the possible exception that Sam’s .45 had a mother-of-pearl handle.
Most men were content to wear their .45s with the black rubber stocks that came from the factory. A few, usually young buckaroos full of swagger and vinegar, saved up and got handsome ivory butts. Now and then a rider came down the line with a carved walnut grip on his six-gun. But the men who sported genuine mother-of-pearl handles were rare.
Still, beautiful grips on a man’s gun didn’t make him one inch taller or an inch broader. They didn’t make him handsome if nature hadn’t so endowed him, and they surely couldn’t peel off a single one of those forty-odd years, so Sam remained just another drifter, but with a mite more age on him than most drifters had. That warm and fragrant June afternoon he came along the westward trace into Ballester, Utah Territory, a few years after the last Indian scuffle, a few years before the steam cars came panting into the territory, and actually into a sort of deep vacuum between what had once been and what was not quite yet.
Sam’s hundred and sixty was well proportioned. His arms were thick and powerful, his shoulders heavy, his chest deep. His face was open and candid and there was a little humorous lilt to his wide-lipped mouth. He was one of those men who seem so very ordinary that folks scarcely looked at him twice, and toward whom they warmed at once without any reservations. Sam Logan had made his share of enemies through life, but rarely had it been necessary for him to make them if he’d only stepped aside now and then. But that wasn’t like Sam Logan. He had his ideals and his convictions, and did not compromise with either.
Still, in Ballester, folks accepted him as just another cowboy. In springtime every town got its share of them, mostly restless after the enforced restrictions of a cold winter. They were mostly gregarious and generous, and sometimes a little raw around the edges, but that wore off after they got work and sweated out their pent-up meanness. Yet when Sam Logan killed two men in a little more than twenty-four hours after his arrival in Ballester, that made a difference.
Not, as folks said, that the killings weren’t justified. Neither of those men was popular around Ballester and both, so said the bartender up at the Golden Slipper Saloon, were surly, brutish men. But still, killings shocked folks, worried them, made them a little indignant and a lot uneasy. If line riders could drift into a place and shoot folks down, there was no telling who was safe or what this dratted world was coming to. So, because Sam Logan was also a stranger in town, people began to eye him askance and mention to the deputy sheriff stationed at Ballester that, justified or not, maybe Sam ought to be told to move along.
No doubt the worst part of it was that none of the cattle outfits would hire Sam. He sat over in front of the livery barn and endlessly whittled, or else he sat up at the Golden Slipper upon a tilted-back chair in a gloomy corner, his hat pushed back, his feet a foot off the floor, and sipped beer.
He still smiled easily, though, when folks nodded or spoke as they passed by, still appeared as friendly as a mongrel pup. But once a man has killed in a town folks can’t forget it. Regardless of what other virtues a man might display, before or after, it was always the killings people remembered. Moreover, as time passed and Sam made no attempt to ride on but became instead almost a permanent fixture on the bench in front of the livery barn, or up at the Golden Slipper, mothers told their children to use the opposite side of the road. Tough cowhands from the outlying ranches stepped widely around Sam, and the liveryman himself told the deputy that Sam was ruining his business, sitting out there on his bench whittling those darned fool little dolls all the time.
How the killings had come about was simple. Sam, being a lot less than a six-footer, received the easy and condescending treatment big powerful men usually reserved for lesser men. He was at the bar one afternoon hiding from the sun, which got really hot in Ballester in June, when a Snowshoe cowboy named Forrest Banning had come in to take on a load of buffalo sweat. Forrest was a good-natured enough man unless he’d been drinking. By 5:00 he wasn’t good-natured and he wasn’t drinking. He’d decided, for some reason no one ever found out, that he resented Sam Logan, standing down the bar from him. He didn’t like Sam’s mother-of-pearl pistol grips. He didn’t like Sam’s easy, pleasant look, and he particularly didn’t like Sam’s less than magnificent size. Twice the barman had told Forest he’d better get on back to the Snowshoe, and twice Forrest had told the barman to mind his own business. The third time Forrest had spoken it had been to Sam. He said disagreeably that he’d once known a dance-hall girl over in Kansas who’d used mother-of-pearl on her garters, and it seemed to him that no man worth being called one would use the stuff—unless, of course, he was more woman than man.
Sam hadn’t gotten angry then, as the bartender had later stated at the coroner’s hearing. He’d simply smiled and offered to buy Forrest Banning a drink.
Forrest had then said he wouldn’t be caught dead drinking with a man who lived off cheap women, and that, related the barman, had done it. Sam stopped smiling and gazed for a long time at Forrest. Finally he said: “Cowboy, the trouble with you is that you can’t drink. I reckon you’d better do like the barman told you a while back … get out of here.”
Forrest had then let off a bawl like a bravo bull, had jumped clear of the bar, and had gone for his gun. There were not, according to the barman, any other patrons in the saloon at the time; it was too late for the morning drunks and too early for the drinkers at day’s end. So the only one around to duck had been the barman himself. That, he explained, was how he had come not to witness the actual shooting. He dropped down behind the bar and heard a gunshot—just one. He’d remained out of sight until Sam Logan had quietly told him it was all right, he could stand up again. He did, he told the court, and looked over his bar, and there lay Forrest Banning with that purple-puckered little hole between his eyes as dead as a post and flat on his back.
Had Forrest drawn his gun? the judge asked. All the bartender could say was that the .45 was out of Forrest’s holster on the floor. It could have been drawn out or it could have fallen out when Banning hit the floor. But of one thing that barman was dead certain. Forrest Banning had never gotten to fire it. This, the deputy sheriff later averred from the same chair at the hearing, was the truth. Banning’s gun hadn’t been fired.
The barman undoubtedly had told the pure truth. Just as undoubtedly he had saved Sam Logan’s life.
The second killing had been two days after the first one. In a way, so the deputy had philosophized at the second hearing, it was a predictable killing. When asked to elaborate on that interesting statement, he had said that when a man like Forrest Banning was killed, since he was an ordinary cowbo
y and had usually his share of friends, there was predictably at least one of them who was a partner to the dead man, either on the trail or around the branding fires, and this partner, after a day or two of grief and brooding, could often be counted upon to ride in and seek out his friend’s killer.
It was this statement as well as the circumstances surrounding that second killing that saved Sam Logan the second time.
He had been sitting in the morning sun over in front of the livery barn when Vestal Johnson had ridden in from the Snowshoe range with his gun tied down and murder in his eyes. Most folks around Ballester had encountered Vestal a time or two. He’d been a steady hand out at Snowshoe for over a year. He was a quiet, distant kind of man, neither more nor less friendly whether he’d been drinking or whether he was stone sober. The men liked him the way they liked any other top hand. It was actually more a matter of respect for a fast rope, a light rein hand, a steady grip on the hot iron, than any equation of warmth toward an individual. Some of the subpoenaed cowboys even said Vestal was surly and easily roiled, but mostly the range men simply shrugged and stated that Vestal was just another pretty good cowboy.
But being a pretty good cowboy wasn’t nearly enough the morning he dismounted in front of the livery barn in plain sight of the whole town, looped his reins at the tie rack, stepped away from the horse, and made a slow, meticulous study of Sam Logan, over where Sam was diligently carving with his Barlow knife in the pleasant morning sunlight.
Sam said he’d seen the rider come up and get down, but he also said he hadn’t paid any attention because he was carving a particularly fine model of a Morgan stud horse for one of the kids around town and had been very engrossed in his work.
Then Vestal had said: “Shorty, get up from there.”
Twenty solemn witnesses including seven woman shoppers who had been passing nearby at the time, recalled those exact words under oath. They also recalled how Sam Logan had slowly raised his head and gazed out where Vestal Johnson had taken his stand, some ten or fifteen feet to the right of his tethered Snowshoe horse.
“What for?” Sam had asked.
“Because,” Vestal had said, adding to it a fighting designation that cast doubts upon Sam’s legitimacy, “you done shot a good friend of mine when he was too drunk to help hisself. That’s why, you yellow damned whelp … now get up from there!”
Abner Fuller, the liveryman, recounted under oath what had happened next. He had been loafing just inside the doorless opening to his barn, and until Vestal called Sam Logan that name, he hadn’t really thought there was going to be trouble. Afterward, he related, he’d been too petrified to move. Sometimes, he stated, the slightest movement caused men to draw and fire at a shadow when they were keyed up to it. He’d stood there sweating a river and hoping against all hope Sam Logan would figure some way to wiggle out of having to fight.
But Sam hadn’t. He’d closed his Barlow knife, put it carefully into a pocket, leaned over without arising from the chair to place the wooden horse he’d been whittling on out of harm’s way, then he’d straightened back up—still making no move to stand up—and studied Vestal Johnson a minute. “You better forget it,” he’d said, speaking very distinctly and quietly. “Your pardner forced that fight. I didn’t even know him. I don’t know you either, and I sure don’t want to kill you.”
Vestal called Logan that name again, Abner Fuller related, then, with Abner’s eyes straight on him, Vestal had dropped his right shoulder, arm and hand straight down. Sam dropped off the end of the bench, hit the dirt, rolled half over, and was firing his mother-of-pearl .45 before he’d even stopped rolling. Vestal took two of those slugs head on. One in the brisket that knocked him backward six or eight feet with its frightful impact, and the second one through the head before he hit the ground. His hat flew all the way across the road and landed up against the far plank walk where some men were standing. Those men, Abner said, seemed to explode. They ran in every direction.
“And …?” the judge had prompted Abner.
“Well, sir … Your Honor … I couldn’t hardly believe me eyes. That short feller got off both of them shots before Vestal even got his gun out, and believe me when I sit right here and tell you … sir, Your Honor … his damned fingers was closing around the Forty-Five’s butt before this here Sam Logan even flung himself off my bench.”
Other witnesses, less observant, farther away, or unwilling to state what they’d plainly seen because no one would ever believe them, only stated that they’d seen Sam Logan shoot and Vestal Johnson hit the ground.
That was the end of the inquiry into the second killing—that of Snowshoe’s rider, Vestal Johnson. Twenty witnesses had solemnly trooped up to the witness chair, been sworn in, and had candidly told how they’d seen Vestal ride up and deliberately provoke Sam Logan into a gunfight. The outcome of both the hearing and the gunfight was salutary for Sam Logan.
Two weeks later he was still over in front of Abner Fuller’s livery barn, carving things with his Barlow knife, and the town of Ballester was in a quiet turmoil because no one knew what to do about it. Not even the deputy sheriff to whom everyone protested and complained and grumbled.
Chapter Two
Percy Whittaker was one inch under six feet tall but weighed close to a couple hundred pounds. He was one of those men whose breadth made him sometimes look a yard taller than he was. Perc had been a cowboy for seven years before he took up the deputy’s job at Ballester. He didn’t know much legal law but he knew his share of common-sense law. He’d wade into a cage of lions bare-handed or a brawling clutch of range riders, there wasn’t much difference. He had a punch that could break a jaw or, aimed lower, could put a man on a boiled milk diet for a week.
The folks of Ballester both liked and respected Perc. The cattlemen respected him, too, but did not always like him. For one thing, having been a cowboy himself, he knew exactly when a big blow-off was coming and would be there to put a damper on things. He was a tolerant man, good-natured and even, and it was hinted a mite lazy. What folks around Ballester were beginning to learn was that this combination made the best peace officer.
Percy Whittaker was less than thirty years of age. He’d never said how much less and folks hadn’t really cared enough to inquire. He had gray eyes and brown hair, a sort of perpetual pucker around the eyes and a square, thrusting iron jaw. He was good with the .45 he wore, but, although he’d been stationed in Ballester several years, he’d never shot anyone.
Not that Ballester was a quiet town. It wasn’t, not with the big Snowshoe outfit west of town, the Rainbow outfit—sometimes called the Big Half Circle—north of town, and the Mexican Hat outfit east of town. In places where there were immigrants and considerable through travel, trouble usually came in small unrelated doses, maybe a shooting over a card game or an argument at a tie rack, or maybe some imagined insult in the roadway. Isolated instances beyond the mainstream of orderly existence that lawmen handled with such dispatch that frequently most of a town’s residents didn’t even know there’d been trouble.
But in a place like Ballester it was diffèrent. The town itself sat squarely in the middle of nowhere. It had grown slowly from an old-time trading post into what it now was simply because the big cattle outfits had grown up around it, making it their hub for supplies and recreation. Ballester had no other earthly reason for existence. If Snowshoe and Rainbow and Mexican Hat had moved on or folded up or curtailed their expansive operations, Ballester would have withered on the vine.
The stage road passed through, true enough, but rarely indeed did any one alight at Ballester except salesmen—called drummers—plying their trade among the local stores and merchants, or some cowboy lugging a saddle and bedroll and looking for employment.
Therefore, when trouble erupted in Ballester, everyone was in some way and to some degree involved. Those killings by Sam Logan, for example, had Abner Fuller sweating bullets. As he’d complain
ed bitterly to Percy Whittaker, Sam sitting in front of his livery barn, day in and day out, was hurting his trade. Folks didn’t enjoy passing a killer every time they wished to hire a hack or rent a horse.
The proprietor of the Golden Slipper Saloon, Everett Champion, a raw-boned old miserly type in his sixties who watered his whiskey and, it was rumored, stacked his card decks, told Perc that while Sam’s presence in the Slipper didn’t actually hurt trade—it even seemed sometimes to make it better because men rode in from miles around to get a look at the fellow with the mother-of-pearl gun grips—it nevertheless made Everett feel uncomfortable, having Logan perched back there in the shadows on his tipped-back chair, watching everything Everett did.
There were some other complaints, too. For example, Johnny West, range boss for the Snowshoe outfit, rode into town to arrange for the planting of Vestal Johnson, as he’d also done for Forrest Banning, and he told Perc that his men were aggravated by Logan’s presence. Every time they rode into town, there he was, either sitting in front of the barn when they went across to put up their horses, or perched on that chair in the shadows up at the Slipper.
Johnny West was a thick-set, nut-brown, hard-working man who said exactly what he meant, always, and was primarily loyal to the outfit that paid his wages. His men liked him and Perc Whittaker did, too, which was more than could be said of other range bosses around the country. But then Johnny never threw his weight around just because he bossed a big crew of riders, or because his word was law on ten thousand acres of land. The Snowshoe outfit was owned by a syndicate of Denver businessmen. It ran a lot of cattle, a large crew of top hands, and was a good money-maker. It also spent a sizeable sum every year in Ballester so the merchants always listened when its representative—Johnny West—spoke.
Perc listened, too, but for a different reason. He’d once worked for West out at Snowshoe. In fact, that had been his last cowpunching job before signing on as resident deputy in town, so when Johnny appeared at the jailhouse the day he made arrangements for Vestal Johnson’s burial with his complaints against Sam Logan, Perc sat and listened and was sympathetic. But he was also non-committal.
