Gunman

by Lauran Paine

  “Oh…?”

  Mitchell pushed down under the quilts. “Funny thing about women. Sort of like green colts. If you rough ’em up a little, they seem to respect you more’n if you gentled ’em.”

  Mitchell was watching the lanky silhouette with his appraising glance twinkling a little. He expected Ray to ask questions but the younger man stood silently still without saying anything for a moment longer, then faded beyond the doorway.

  Ray filled a flour sack half full of tinned foods and left Mitchell’s dwelling as he had entered it, by the window. The yard beyond was without movement. For a moment he considered the little log house set slightly apart which was the foreman’s residence, before heading out for the forest fringe where the buckskin was waiting.

  It took a little time to wrap the flour sack in a blanket to disguise its whiteness, and then he untied the buckskin, turned him once before mounting after the custom of all experienced riders, and started to raise his left leg.

  “Hold it!”

  He grew stiff, recognizing that he had been taken by a wily gun hand. The safest time to brace a man on the run was when his left hand had the reins and mane in it and while his right hand was curled around the saddle horn preparatory to swinging up; both his hands were as far from his gun as they could be.

  He eased the foot back down, kept both hands in plain sight, and turned. It was too dark among the trees to make out his companion, but he could make out the highly polished shine of a pistol barrel, and it was that sight which made him relax.

  This gun barrel was not blued; it was nickel-plated. Only one person on JM that he had encountered carried a little nickel-plated short gun.

  “Well,” he said irritably, vexed at being caught like that by a girl, “you going to stand there all night? You got me dead to rights. I’m not going to make a play.”

  She moved out of the darkness slowly, displeasure visible on her face when she stopped less than fifteen feet from him. “Was that all you stole?” she demanded, flicking the pistol’s barrel toward the rolled bedding behind his saddle. “No money?”

  The darkness hid his quickly mantling angry flush when he answered her. “No money,” he drawled in that deadly tone. “And if you were a man….”

  “Don’t let that stop you,” she snapped across his words, firming up her grip on the pistol.

  He sucked in a big lungful of air and let it out in small pinches. They stood there regarding one another like bristling dogs taking each other’s measure, thinking thoughts, discarding them, and considering fresh ones. Ray had never before looked upon a woman as a man’s equal in a showdown, nor did it occur to him now that he was considering her in this light although he definitely was; she was, at least for this moment, his match, this tall lithe girl with her uncommon beauty and her bitter, flinty stare.

  “Why did you come back?” she asked coldly.

  “For food,” he replied, deciding that since she thought he was no more than an outlaw, he would let her go on thinking that to protect Joe Mitchell. But he saw immediately that she was his match here, also.

  She shook her head at him. “Not likely. You passed other ranches getting up here. Just for once try telling the truth.”

  His anger came up again. “That is the truth,” he said in that same very mild tone.

  “Part of it,” she said. “What is the rest of it?”

  “That’s enough for you,” he snapped.

  She studied his face. “I can guess the rest, Mister Kelly. Now tell me why you didn’t take the regular trail out of the mountains when you left JM?”

  “How do you know I didn’t take it?”

  “Because I followed you…that’s how.”

  “All right,” he said thinly, “I’ll tell you. Because after I whipped your pa, he sent word to Salter I was in the mountains, knowing Salter’d set up an ambush and try to get me killed.”

  Something dark moved into the background of her stare and flamed out at him there. “You’re a liar! My father never had a man dry-gulched in his life!”

  “Ask him,” Ray said stonily, feeling pleasure over having jarred her. “Ask him if he didn’t send out word I was here.”

  “He may have done that,” she said. “You’re an ex-convict, an undesirable, but he’d never send word to anyone to shoot you down.”

  “Listen, Grace, when a man sends word to Mort Salter an enemy of his is in the country, he’s signing someone’s death warrant. You’d never convince me you’re naïve enough not to know that much about Salter.”

  “My father is an honest man!”

  “Maybe. I don’t know him that well.” Ray smiled; he had her on the defensive and meant to keep her there. “I’ll tell you one thing about him, though…he sure can’t fight.”

  He saw her heavy underlip grow thin with pressure, her eyes turn smoky in a smoldering way, and her blouse rise and fall with the dull rhythmic slugging of her heart and knew he had touched her where doubts lived.

  “Before you take me,” he said, his voice turning quiet and normal again, “tell me how you happened to find my horse up here in these trees to night?”

  “I didn’t find him here. I heard you riding north around the valley when I went for a walk after visiting Joe to night. I didn’t know who it was, but I didn’t think it was one of our boys, so I kept back a ways and trailed you on foot. When I located your horse, you were already gone. I waited.” She suddenly lowered the gun, letting her arm drop back to her side. “You can go,” she said, gazing steadily at him. “Go on…ride off.”

  He was puzzled and made no move toward the horse. “You aren’t going to take me in…?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s my business. Just mount up and head out.” She spun, and, before he could speak, call her back, she disappeared through the trees. He mounted slowly, forehead puckered in thought, and reined slowly away from JM, riding south.

  Chapter Seven

  From the JM down past Welton to the neighborhood of Tanque Wells was sixty miles. A long ride at any time without a change of horses, but in the darkness it was even longer. Ray was cautious only as he skirted around Welton; afterward, he pushed the buckskin horse as hard as prudence dictated, conscious that he would also have to rely on the tough and ugly animal to bring him back to the mountains again.

  He had only two advantages over the man he sought. He knew where Duncan Holt would be, in a general way at any rate, while Holt would not know where Ray was, and the second advantage was that he rode only at night, using the darkness as his friend and ally.

  Dawn of the first day out found him deep in the eroded desert country between Welton and Tanque Wells. He made for another water hole, not as large or pop u lar as the Tanque, which suited him perfectly, and there he hobbled the buckskin to graze upon sparse bunch grass while he slept. The blasting midday sun awakened him with its pitiless burning. He washed, drank deeply, took his carbine, and walked out as far as a barren rise to study the country ahead and behind. There was no sign of movement in any direction. He ate some beans, smoked a cigarette, and waited with that peculiar depth of Indian-like indifference to the passage of time he had acquired at Yuma Prison for the sun to set.

  He also thought, and the thing that kept returning to puzzle him was Grace Fenwick’s refusal to take him back to her father. Had she been fearful for him or had she been afraid that what he had told her was the truth, and considered him less important than the truth about Mort Salter and her father?

  There could be no answer, he knew, until he talked again with her, but this did not hold out any promise of pleasure; he was, without thinking of it in that light, again viewing her as he might have considered a man. She was dangerous to him, and, while he acknowledged to himself that she was beautiful, this was no part of what existed between them.

  The sun eventually dropped westerly in a reddening way, sending burnished banners dagger-like across the sky. Shadows crept out from beneath chaparral bushes and rocks
, short and fat at first, then drawing out longer, thinner, as the light of day faded still more, and over everything was the strong, acrid desert scent, the yielding up by the earth of a great, silent sigh as the heat lessened, a time of hush and blessedness and coming coolness redolent with an odor of creosote bush, of peyote, and cooling rocks. It was as pleasant to a man who had not smelled it as the stronger fragrance of the uplands, equally as missing from his life for the past five years.

  He was in no hurry and therefore lingered a while longer, enjoying a desert sunset before saddling and riding southerly again, down the long, broad corridor of badlands beyond which lay Mexico, speculating on the manner of Mort Salter’s dealing below the border. He could, he thought, find out how Salter operated in Mexico, but it would take more time than he liked to think of spending south of the border. Furthermore, in the end it was not relevant to his plans, and finally he had an idea anyway, from what he had learned at Joe Mitchell’s place.

  Salter, in the past at least, had rustled cattle from cow outfits around Welton, blamed the thefts upon the mountain cowmen, then had either sold or traded the stolen beef deep in Mexico where the likelihood of discovery was non ex is tent, and in this fashion had grown both wealthy and powerful. It was, Ray thought as he threaded his way down the night, a simple enough operation, one that would appeal to the Mexicans, and in the end, because he also knew Mexican cowmen, he was riding now to implement a notion that he felt sure would disrupt Salter’s operation and greatly amuse—and enrich—the Mexicans.

  Around seven o’clock Ray started easterly where the north-south cattle trail lay. At nine o’clock he cut the trodden pathway and swung southerly along it, riding easily and carefully. He considered it likely that Holt’s herd could not be far below him.

  The land heaved away beneath a moonless sky in a kind of broken and irregular monotony of brush, boulders, and arroyos of no great depth. Far back and dimly discernible against starshine stood the mammoth mountains of the uplands, higher and therefore blacker than anything else in this dead world of stillness and silence. On ahead there was nothing but desert, but by ten o’clock Ray scented cattle, and shortly afterward he heard them. Not loud or even continually bawling as driven animals would do, but lowing with weariness, with dumb-brute protest as though bedded down for the night.

  He dismounted when the sounds and smells became sharper, tested the air for direction, then went forward afoot until he saw distantly the briefly swelling glow of a cigarette tip, then its gradual ebbing. By lying flat he could make out the hard cut of a mounted man’s shape against the skyline. He got back to his feet and very carefully circled the bedded herd, searching out additional riders.

  There was a small fire burning low where horse shapes stood thickest, and fitfully exposed, when the fire sparked, were the lumpy shapes of four sleeping men upon the ground.

  He walked nearly a mile back out away from the bed ground, mounted up, and sat thoughtfully still for a while. He had been unable to locate Duncan Holt but knew there were six riders with the herd. He estimated the cattle to number close on 700 head, and, reflecting upon the kind of cattle they were, he knew they would stampede readily enough, trail-weary or not. He knew this because of the distance Holt’s night hawks kept between them and the herd, plus the view he’d had of a few wicked-horn steers standing guard, keening the night from time to time with raised heads, on guard. He smiled to himself, unlimbered his handgun, balanced it lightly for a moment, then urged the buckskin horse forward.

  He came down on the bed ground from the north in a choppy lope and fired the first shot while still 500 yards out. His second shot lanced the night when he was only 100 yards off and into its shattering echo came the loud click of horns as cattle sprang up in alarm. After this shot, too, came the angry protest of Holt’s men near the dying fire. They were also springing up.

  Out of the west a horse man loomed, suddenly calling a hard curse forward. Ray spun away as this man rocketed ahead, short gun dimly shiny in the gloom, angry enough to fire but reluctant to do so. It took a moment to shake this hard-riding wraith, and, when Ray cut loose the third and fourth shots, he was coming directly in upon the herd from the east.

  Two thunderous explosions so close to them started the cattle crashing forward into one another and within a matter of seconds the desert quivered from charging hoofs. Now Holt’s men no longer held their fire; the stampede was on and nothing but gunshots could quell it, but even a few shot critters dumped in the path of their fear-maddened companions did not ordinarily stop a cattle stampede in the dark.

  Over the gunfire and the roll of nearly 1,000 panicked cattle came men’s thin yells from time to time as Salter’s crew sought to stay along the flanks of the herd to hold contact until the beasts had winded themselves. Ray was there with them, pushing the buckskin close and firing over the backs of Salter’s orry-eyed Mexican critters that were heading as straight as an arrow back for the country where they had been raised.

  Not until he heard a familiar booming voice calling for the men to drop back, to let the cattle run themselves out, did Ray veer off, loping easterly to be clear of discovery. A half mile out he drew down to a walk, letting his mount recover its wind. He reloaded his gun and holstered it. Far ahead but clearly audible was the powerful reverberation of stampeding cattle. He finally halted, seeking to pick up the sound of shod horses; he knew that Duncan Holt, experienced as he was, would not wear out horses trying to stem that red-backed tide, but in the interim would certainly waste no time in seeking the gunman who had caused his present dilemma. Reining farther easterly, Ray thought it helped considerably, knowing your enemy.

  He was not through yet, though, and on the dawn side of midnight pushed southerly until he located a few run-out critters nosing through the chaparral. He left them to search out the main herd, and, after finding it and satisfying himself that the cattle had recovered their wind, he charged out of the night a second time, firing and yelling like an Indian, effectively starting a second panicked stampede. This time, with no riders close by, he got the cattle well away before turning off, reversing his course and starting at a rapid walk back northward again.

  He had accomplished what he had hoped to achieve; it was a long way back to Mexico but some of Salter’s herd, perhaps a third of them, would return to their former ranges, and, if Salter recovered them, since it was not the practice to trail-brand herds for so short a drive, he would have to buy them back, and this would gratify the Mexican rancheros equally as it would enrage Mort Salter.

  Additionally, since the herd was badly scattered, Salter would have to keep at least six riders searching for them, and this was primarily what Ray wanted to accomplish. It would lessen the odds against him from fifteen to one, to perhaps something like nine to one, still rather great odds but, by whittling, he expected to lessen it considerably over the next few days.

  By daybreak he was back at the isolated water hole again. There, he left the buckskin to graze and drowse, took his flour sack of food to the sentinel knoll he had used the evening before, and alternately slept, ate, and kept watch for riders heading back toward Welton with the news for Mort Salter of what had happened to his herd.

  Late in the afternoon, before sunset, he struck out for the uplands again. A little short of midnight he passed far to the west of Welton, heading leisurely north toward the foothills, but he stopped shy of them when the night came alive with the faint echo of swiftly moving horse men, waited until the sound had diminished far behind him, then skirted the hills westerly for nearly ten miles before cutting up into the depths of shadows that hid him completely, and there, with pine needles muffling the sound of his passage, he bore steadily to his right until he got back to the high mountain meadow he had ridden down out of several evenings before to have his talk with Joe Mitchell.

  The buckskin horse badly needed a rest and he got it. For three days Ray lazed in the quietly fragrant highlands, making a few sorties afoot in the direction of JM, finding grim s
atisfaction in the number of riders who passed in and out of the mountains now. The evening of the fourth day he slanted back down to the plain heading for Mort Salter’s cow range. There, as he had expected, he found heavily armed cowboys patrolling both the foothill approaches and, southerly, the open country leading away into the desert. Salter, he thought, was expecting another raid. It was obvious by the strong force he was posting to prevent it that Salter, thinking as a rustler would think, considered it likely Ray would hit his herds hard in a second attempt to drive his cattle down into Mexico.

  He drew back into the foothills, off-saddled, and reconnoitered the country behind him, waiting for sunup. When the first rays came of a fresh, new day, he had his retreat figured and dozed fitfully until the day crew loped up to relieve the night men. He sat there idly, carbine across his lap, watching the riders and the grazing cattle, and not until mid-afternoon did he see what he was waiting for.

  Twin spirals of dust hung heavily in the wake of a swiftly moving, wheeled vehicle far out. When the rig was closer, sunlight flickered off spinning wheels. Ray got up, smiling. If you knew how a man thought, you could anticipate him, and a man who had spent five years with rustlers and outlaws knew how such men figured.

  He led the buckskin behind him into the longest spit of forest where it thrust forward a short distance out onto the range, and there he rested the carbine in a tree crotch. The range was too great, he had known it would be, but what only Ray Kelly, of all the people who knew he was back in the country, was certain of at that moment was that it was not his intention to assassinate Mort Salter at all.

  Five years had added some girth to Morton Salter. It had also enabled him to dress exceedingly well and it had paled his skin. Ray could make out these details if he could not see Salter’s bloodless lips, his hot and vicious glare as he climbed down from the buggy, but from memory he had no trouble at all recalling them.