by Lauran Paine
But the gunshot, the bull-like howl Ringo had made just before he’d been killed, gave Jim Howard all the room he’d needed. He flung down the little tobacco sack in his right hand, dropped low, and went for his .45 at the same time he whirled away.
Reed fired from up in the rocks but Perc still didn’t dare fire because now Sam was moving, crab-like, to the side and swinging to shoot it out with deadly Jim Howard.
Reed’s first shot missed wide. He bawled out a thunderous warning to Logan to which Sam did not pay the slightest heed, and fired again. That time Reed’s bullet tore the brim of Howard’s hat, leaving the gunman bareheaded but still concentrating fully upon Sam Logan.
Howard, as Perc saw without breathing, was lightning fast with his gun. He had it out and tilting upward before Sam had struck down over where he’d jumped away from Ringo’s falling body.
Then Perc saw an amazing thing happen. Sam’s gun with its fancy mother-of-pearl handle was in his right hand. As he hit the ground after jumping away from Ringo’s tumbling body, he fired once, flipped the gun into his opposite hand to clear Ringo’s fall, and fired again with scarcely any interlude between those two shots. It had, in a way, been not unlike the famous border-shift some expert gunfighters used, but under these circumstances is was even more daring because Sam had to have been thinking faster than the gun was firing to allow that fraction of a second to pass between the time Ringo stumbled forward and the time he got off those two shots. Perc was staggered by such gunmanship.
Jim Howard was also staggered, but from something a lot more lethal and damaging than a vision of unexcelled speed and forethought. Both of Sam’s bullets struck Howard. He dropped backward from the impact but did not fall. Up in the rocks John Reed was no longer shooting. Perc, still unable to risk a shot for fear of striking Logan, was also silent. The entire battle now hinged upon which of two of the deadliest gunmen in the West should get off the next shot.
But no other shot was ever fired.
Howard tried. He had his mouth open, his neck muscles corded from the effort, and his slumping body fighting with every resource left to it. But that weighted-down right hand could only raise a few inches; it was rapidly turning numb. Howard’s co-ordination was slipping away fast. He gasped and strained until his eyes bulged from the effort. Still his gun arm would not come high enough. The leaden weight of the heavy six-gun kept it hanging too low, too useless, for him to get off his shot.
Sam stood like stone, waiting, watching, his own gun cocked and dead-leveled. But he did not pull the trigger. He could have. He could’ve drilled Jim Howard through the heart or the head. He didn’t. He watched the dying man without flinching or firing. When Howard sobbed an unsteady curse and his fingers gradually opened to let his gun fall, Sam Logan eased off the hammer of his own .45, dropped the weapon into his holster, and straightened up to his full, slightly less than average height.
“Take it easy,” he said softly to Howard. “It’s all over … take it easy, Jim.”
John Reed was scrambling down out of the rocks making enough noise to be heard a long way off. Perc took his cue from the older man and also got up to start hastily down into the meadow. Both of them got down and trotted over to where the loathsome stench of burned gunpowder was very strong.
Howard was down in a sitting position with both hands clasped across his middle where a welter of shiny wetness was oozing around his clenched fingers. He looked blankly at Perc, looked up at John Reed, and said: “You lousy old turncoat, John. I should’ve killed you the first day I laid eyes on you down in Arizona.”
Sam Logan was down on one knee beside the dying man. “A heap of things all of us should’ve done different, Jim,” he murmured. “Rest easy. You want a smoke?”
Howard turned his head heavily and regarded Logan. “That was a good switch,” he muttered. “Sam, I always said there was only one man on this stinkin’ earth who just might beat me with guns. You.”
“Perc,” muttered Logan. “Make him a cigarette.”
Perc went to work with the last of his tobacco. As he did this, he said: “Howard, Pete Miller killed Frank Rawlings while Frank was lying down drinking at a water hole. Shot Frank in the back.” He finished the cigarette, lit it, and stuck it between Howard’s gray, slack lips. “I ran onto Miller tracking you fellows up here this afternoon, broke his leg, disarmed him, and left him at a water hole. Thought you’d want to know.”
Howard closed his eyes and seemed to have trouble lifting the leaden lids again. “Sure, Deputy,” he muttered, and drew in a shaky breath. “Rawlings is no loss. Neither is Miller. But Charley is … Charley was a pretty good man … Sam?”
“Yeah, Jim?”
“Charley used to say he’d kill you someday because you wouldn’t pot an unarmed man. Used to say he’d let you disarm him, then kill you with his hands … Sam?”
“I’m here, Jim.”
“Charley sure guessed wrong, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, he guessed wrong, Jim. Where’d you put the money, over in the rocks across the meadow?”
“Yeah. Buried it under some rocks an’ leaves … John, you old Bible banger, you … We were pretty good friends in the old days, weren’t we?”
“Yes,” rumbled Reed. “Don’t worry about it, Jim. I’ll say the right words for you.”
Perc saw the cigarette smoke drift up. He also saw the milkiness of Jim Howard’s dying stare. He said: “Sam … John … he’s dead.”
Neither of the older men moved. They exchanged a look that Perc couldn’t fathom. He got up and turned to go back after their horses. He wanted of a sudden to get away from this place, to get down out of these dark, brooding hills. The still warm air seemed suffocating to him. He walked swiftly out where they’d all left their animals, got the beasts, and stood in total darkness beyond the little meadow for a while deeply breathing and allowing those four older men in there, two dead, two alive, to do whatever such men did at their last rendezvous. Then he took the horses back into the meadow and found John Reed standing with his fierce old beard tilted skyward, silently praying over the two bodies at his feet.
Sam Logan was over across the little meadow, scuffling in the rocks. He’d twisted up a dry-grass torch and was using it to see by. Perc went over to help but he needn’t have. Logan had found the freshly turned earth and rocks without any trouble and was holding up a sweat-stiff saddlebag that looked insignificant enough until he opened it and the wild, swirling light shone in upon all that crisp money.
“Eighty thousand dollars,” Logan mused, and handed the bag to Perc as he dropped his torch and stamped on it. “Deputy, did you ever wonder what a man’s life is worth?”
Perc did not answer. He buckled the saddlebag closed and flung it across his shoulder. Over across the clearing where a dying fire sullenly glowed, John Reed was calling his God to witness the passing of two outlaws. Logan raised his head and also gazed over there.
“For those two,” Logan continued in the same vein as before, “their lives were worth forty thousand dollars each. For the two harmless men they murdered on the road between Wolf Hole and Saint George … their lives weren’t worth any more than a couple ounces of lead would bring. Sometimes it makes a man wonder, doesn’t it?”
They walked back over and silently bent to hoist Charley Ringo over a horse. They then bent and heaved Jim Howard over another saddle. Perc looked at the brands of these animals that Sam Logan had caught and rigged out in Perc’s absence. Two more Cross-Quarter-Circle horses. He shook his head, said nothing, and fell to making the bodies fast on one side while Logan also wordlessly worked on the other side. When they finished, John Reed went over to the creek, washed his hands and face, and continued to kneel for a little while, until Sam softly called to him, then old John got upright and walked back.
“The last trail,” John said to Sam Logan. The ex-lawman gravely inclined his head and gave Reed look for
look. “I’ve got a vexing question in my mind, Sam,” went on the massive ex-outlaw. “Why did you keep getting between me and Jim?”
“Just didn’t think, I reckon,” muttered Logan, and turned toward his own horse.
“Sam!”
Logan halted and turned back. Again those two gravely considered one another.
“No, Sam,” rumbled Reed. “Maybe you could tell Perc that. Or anyone else. But not me … remember? We know each other too well. Tell me why you did it, Sam.”
“What difference does it make,” growled Logan. “It’s like you just said … our last trail. It’s over and done with.”
“The acts are over, Sam, but the memories will never be over for any one of us who was here. Why, Sam?”
Logan’s brows dropped straight down. “You’re beginning to make me mad,” he told Reed. Then he said, with a rough shrug: “All right. You want the record set straight and the memory cleared up. Because, John, it doesn’t look right … a parson killing even renegades like those two. With me it’s different. I figure something like this as a duty. It’d never give me a sleepless night or a moment of remorse. I did it so you not only couldn’t shoot ’em, but also so’s you wouldn’t even dare try. You want a new life as a man of the Lord. I just handed it to you, John. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
Logan mounted up, bent to catch the reins of Jim Howard’s horse, and rode on. He kept his face averted from both Perc and John Reed as he started ahead.
Perc mounted next and took Charley Ringo’s beast in tow. The last of them to heave himself up over leather and ride wearily out of the meadow with its stillness and its dying little red-glowing fire was John Reed.
The only time either of the older men spoke after that, until they reached town again, was when Sam Logan twisted and said to Perc: “Where’d you leave that other one?”
Perc took the lead after that and kept it until they found Pete Miller. He hadn’t moved; his leg was terribly swollen, and he was in agony. They piled him unceremoniously atop one of the horses carrying the dead men and resumed their way.
Along toward sunup Perc, in the lead again, spotted a band of hard-riding men racing upcountry toward them. “That’ll be Johnny West and his Snowshoe men,” he told the others, and proved he was correct when the cowboys slid their horses a half mile out and sat like stone as the living men went on past, leading the dead and injured men.
Johnny would have spoken to them but Perc looked straight over at West and shook his head. The Snowshoe men let them ride on. Only old Boots glared at Perc and moved his lips. None of the others had a single word to say.
The sun was well up by the time they came within sight of Ballester. The usual powder-fine sprinkling of dust was beginning to rise up down there where people were beginning to stir, to brace themselves for the rigors of another summertime hot day.
Perc hung back until he was riding between the pair of older men. He said: “Parson, about that church meeting …tomorrow’s Sunday again. I’ll spread the word.” He watched John Reed’s red-rimmed tired eyes soften a little. “And about leaving town … forget it. Ballester needs a church. More than that, it needs a good parson.”
“Even though he was once a jailbird and before that …?”
“Maybe,” broke in Perc quietly, “that’s exactly the kind Ballester needs, Parson. I don’t reckon a man’s ever been very successful fighting the devil until he’s once known him. Wouldn’t you say so, Sam?”
Logan nodded and slowly smiled. “For a thick-skulled young buck, Deputy, you got a pretty fair set of brains on you at that. You’re plumb right.”
“It takes a lot of money to build God’s house in the wilderness, Perc,” rumbled old John Reed, looking solemn as they came near the west side of town.
“You’ve got enough, Parson. About twenty-five hundred dollars ought to do it, hadn’t it?”
Both Logan and Reed looked closely at Perc. Neither of them seemed to grasp what he was talking about. He told them.
“Miller’s worth five hundred from Arizona. Jim Howard’s worth at least three times that in different places. Ringo’s worth about as much as Howard. The only one I don’t think has got a price on him was Rawlings. He hardly counts anyway. It’s all yours, Parson. Build us a church here in town and maybe buy yourself a little house in town to boot.”
Sam Logan bent and peered around Perc at the bearded, burly man on Perc’s far side. “There you are,” he said with strong emphasis. “I never heard of reward money being put to half as good a use, John. What say?”
Reed was silent a long while. They were passing in behind the nearest houses before he raised a massive fist and dug at his eyes with it. “Dust in the air,” he growled a trifle unsteadily. “The Lord’s will be done, boys. The Lord’s will be done. We’ll raise up our church here, and we’ll use it to remind others where waywardness leads. You’ve convinced me.”
Perc left Logan and John Reed, made his way out back to Doc Farraday’s place, routed out the medical man, and left him with two corpses and an outlaw with a broken leg. Before Farraday got over his initial surprise, Perc turned and loped on down the alleyway past the Reed wagon to Ab Fuller’s livery barn. There, he left his tucked-up horses with orders for Ab to give them the best of everything, then he headed straight over to the boarding house for a bath, a shave, some clean clothes, and then a return trip to the Reed wagon to have a talk with Abbie.
A lot of things had happened, but as is the way with life all of them were concluded, all that remained were some loose ends—and the future. Abbie, he promised himself, was going to be part of that future, or his name wasn’t Perc Whittaker.
the end
About the Author
Lauran Paine who, under his own name and various pseudonyms has written over a thousand books, was born in Duluth, Minnesota. His family moved to California when he was at a young age and his apprenticeship as a Western writer came about through the years he spent in the livestock trade, rodeos, and even motion pictures where he served as an extra because of his expert horsemanship in several films starring movie cowboy Johnny Mack Brown. In the late 1930s, Paine trapped wild horses in northern Arizona and even, for a time, worked as a professional farrier. Paine came to know the Old West through the eyes of many who had been born in the 19th Century, and he learned that Western life had been very different from the way it was portrayed on the screen. “I knew men who had killed other men,” he later recalled. “But they were the exceptions. Prior to and during the Depression, people were just too busy eking out an existence to indulge in Saturday-night brawls.” He served in the U.S. Navy in the Second World War and began writing for Western pulp magazines following his discharge. It is interesting to note that all of his earliest novels (written under his own name and the pseudonym Mark Carrel) were published in the British market and he soon had as strong a following in that country as in the United States. Paine’s Western fiction is characterized by strong plots, authenticity, an apparently effortless ability to construct situation and character, and a preference for building his stories upon a solid foundation of historical fact. ADOBE EMPIRE (1956), one of his best novels, is a fictionalized account of the last twenty years in the life of trader William Bent and, in an off-trail way, has a melancholy, bittersweet texture that is not easily forgotten. In later novels like THE WHITE BIRD (1997) and CACHE CAÑON (1998), he showed that the special magic and power of his stories and characters had only matured along with his basic themes of changing times, changing attitudes, learning from experience, respecting Nature, and the yearning for a simpler, more moderate way of life.
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