Gunman

by Lauran Paine

  “You knew I’d be along, Joe.”

  “Ummmm, reckon I did, at that.” Mitchell’s crowing became more discernible, as though he had moved out from what ever he had been hiding behind. “Hear that, George? I tried to tell you the boy wasn’t no….”

  “I heard,” Fenwick said sharply. “We can argue that out some other time.”

  Fenwick might have said more but at that moment a slug crashed through a window to the accompaniment of tinkling glass and struck with a whacking sound into the fireplace mantel.

  “Keep down,” Joe squeaked. There was a sound of hasty scuttling in the direction of his warning. “Blast them idiots…wagin’ a confounded war right in my front yard!”

  Grace reached forward, found Ray’s arm, and closed her fingers over it as he prepared to move door-ward. “Don’t go,” she said swiftly. “Stay here.” He peered around at her face. The very vague light shone darkly red in her hair, and her expression, tight with anxiety, was frankly concerned. “Please stay….”

  He did not know what prompted him to do it, then or afterward, but he faced back, reached out, and brought her close against him, and kissed her squarely on the mouth. For a moment she was passive, taking the brunt of his pressure without resistance or reciprocity, and then she raised both arms, encircled his neck, and drew him closer, returning his ardor with an equal passion and possessiveness. Then, equally as unexpected, she pushed him away.

  “Go on,” she said unsteadily. “But come back, Ray….”

  He did not move at once, not until she turned her face away, then he crept close to the doorway, went flat, and inched beyond the opening with his belly knotted, expecting a shot that did not come.

  The battle was dwindling. Over its blasting rattle and in the brief interims between, he heard a horse-man, then another, breaking away eastward. Try as he might, however, he sighted no one.

  He heard a great shout of exultation from down near the bunk house, then Perry Smith’s voice bellowing: “Hold it! Hold it, boys! No sense in shootin’ one another. They’re gone.”

  He waited until cautious shapes began advancing upon the house, evasively moving and holding forth drawn and ready weapons, then he called the sheriff’s name, identifying himself.

  “Here!” Smith called back. “Over here, Ray.” And to his posse men: “Don’t shoot toward the dog-gone house, boys. No more shooting!”

  He met the first posse men and exchanged curious glances with them, moving past toward the heavy harshness of the sheriff’s voice. When he could make Smith out, there were three men with him, two of whom were grinning from ear to ear and prodding forward another man whose arms were rigidly sky-ward.

  “Recognize him?” Smith asked, as Ray came up.

  “No.”

  “He was one of ’em,” a posse man said quickly. “Me ‘n’ Art got around behind him an’ he plumb give up.” Other members of Smith’s posse came trooping up to glower at the captive. Someone suggested profanely that the captive be strung up then and there. Sheriff Smith fixed the exponent of this idea with a hard look and said nothing.

  “Anyone hurt?” Ray asked.

  Smith snorted. “Too dark to see who a man was shootin’ at except for muzzle flares.” He squinted forward. “Did you get Mort?”

  “Get him,” Ray replied acidly, “I didn’t even see him. As soon as the shooting started, he lit out through the back of Joe’s house.”

  “Sounds about right,” Smith growled. “What was he trying to do up here?”

  “Bait me.” Ray had no sooner uttered the words than he remembered Salter’s two bound and gagged sentinels and told the sheriff where they were. Smith sent men to seek and bring them forward, then he made a cigarette, lit it, rubbed his eyes, and grunted.

  “I’m tired enough to sleep standing up,” he told Ray, and started past. “Well, let’s talk to Joe.”

  Ray stopped him with an outflung arm. “Perry,” he exclaimed, “we can talk to Joe later! Salter’s the important one right now. If we hit the trail, we can probably come close to overtakin’ him before he gets back to his ranch.”

  Sheriff Smith exhaled smoke from his nostrils and screwed up his face into a painful expression. For a moment he continued to regard the younger man in dour silence, and then he said: “Listen, I’m not made of iron. Neither are these fellers with me. We’ll rest a mite while we’re talkin’ to Joe…then go after Mort.”

  “He’ll be out of the country, Perry,” Ray said with protest. “He’ll head for his lawyer at Yuma or over the line into Mexico, if he thinks we’ve got enough on him.”

  “Let him head where he wants to, Ray. Dog-gone if I’m going….”

  “Let me take some of your men, then.”

  Smith balanced this in his mind for a moment, then shrugged. “If they’ll go…go ahead. Take all of ’em if you want to. When I’m through here, I’ll meet you over at Salter’s. All right?”

  Ray moved off without replying. He searched out the posse men who were herding forward three of Salter’s men, including the two he had left tied in the trees, and told them of Sheriff Smith’s decision. Only two of the eleven men demurred and these Ray left to help Smith take the prisoners back to Welton. The others he sent after their mounts while he in turn trotted out where his ugly buckskin was drowsing, pulled the animal loose, swung across him, and waited for the posse men to come up. Afterward, he led them north until he struck the driven cattle trail, then southeasterly down through the forested night toward Salter’s range.

  Behind Ray the posse men spoke softly, intermittently among themselves. They were pleased with the results of the fight in Joe Mitchell’s yard and some of them, the bolder or more blustery, Ray did not know which, anticipated an equally triumphant meeting at Salter’s ranch. Ray kept his mouth closed; he did not feel as confident as they did. Most of them, he reflected now, knew Mort Salter as a big cowman, a man of substance and wealth and power. They considered him only in this light. They did not recognize, being small men themselves, the menace, the wiliness, and savagery that had enabled Salter to rise above them in a financial way. But Ray did. He knew as surely as he knew anything at all that Morton Salter was a long way from being whipped. That the closer Salter’s back was driven to the wall, the more deadly he would become. Five years of living among human wolves of the same variety as Salter had planted this certain knowledge deeply within him.

  He thought it was just as well the posse men did not know; he would need every one of them now, and whether they were brave men or simply ignorant ones did not matter. The showdown fight with his enemy was nearing and every gun he had would shortly be needed.

  There was really nothing else in him as he rode down the darkness now except the pinched-down concentration on this meeting with the man who had sent him to prison. In fact, until he had kissed Grace Fenwick, this vengeance hunger had overshadowed everything else, had changed his life, had changed his heart and his mind without his even knowing it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  They came down from the uplands in a tight clutch and would not have halted except for Ray. He drew up, blocking the trail, gazing, slit-eyed, through the gloom, suspecting that Mort Salter would not have passed up so excellent an opportunity to establish an ambuscade, for here, where the forest ran out and ended against flat-thrusting cow country, a rider emerging from the trees would make an excellent target.

  “Go on!” a man called impatiently, his voice carrying well beyond the last fringe of forest.

  “Shut up!” Ray said curtly. “Maybe you want to get picked off like a sitting duck, but I don’t!”

  The posse men turned silent, considering Ray, each in his own way thinking about caution, about prudence, and generally concluding to abide by Ray’s orders. They waited.

  There was nothing actually to make Ray wary except the knowledge he had concerning men like Salter. In fact, it was the very stillness, the long depth of hush ahead that decided him finally to rein westerly and skirt along through tree shadow
s for nearly two miles before cutting out into the open.

  There was a little grumbling but not much. What the posse men failed to comprehend was that it was not really in Ray Kelly to wait, either. He had already waited five years, and, even for a man who had been forced to learn patience, there was an end to waiting. But, too, there was a wily blending between patience and impatience; it was the difference between men of reckless bravado and a man like Ray who never deviated, never slackened or wavered in purpose, and therefore stood the best chance of succeeding.

  He led his posse southeasterly in a steady lope. Night coolness pushed against him, strong-scented, and overhead the stars spread a paling ferment across a moonless sky. He was lower now and had a feeling that the entire desert country tipped from north to south, ending, so far as he was concerned at any rate, over the line in Mexico. And he felt weary. There was an ache in his side that added up to numbness. His thoughts felt the weight of each facet of his situation here on Mort Salter’s range. The men at his back did not greatly cheer him, either; he could have longed for a tougher crew because he knew how rough Salter’s men would be. Southerly was the full flow of open country—Salter’s route of escape, if indeed the rustler chieftain decided to run for it, while in the direction he was riding was Mort’s ranch itself, his destination.

  They had been riding a full hour when the land buckled slightly, throwing its shoulders easterly in a long, wide swale that terminated at the big spring where Salter’s home ranch was located. Again the possibility of ambushers came up. This time Ray detached two of the likeliest-looking townsmen and sent them on ahead as scouts. They faded into darkness almost immediately, each riding far out in skirmish style on either side of the posse. It was this tactic that brought home to his men that peril might be close and inclined them toward silence and watchfulness.

  Off in the east, a pale but luminous rind of watery light appeared inches above the world’s farthest rim. It did not lighten appreciably until they were in sight of Salter’s ranch buildings, and then its brightness was little more than watered-down steel-gray. It did, however, background Salter’s buildings, showing them darkly squat and roughly functional upon the slumbering land.

  Here, Ray sent forward to recall his scouts. When they returned, he detailed them both as horse holders, dismounted his men, and, carbine up and ready, led his band forward afoot.

  There was here, too, that peculiar hush, that pregnant stillness permeating everything. He was very conscious of it and halted his men when the buildings were close enough to loom menacingly.

  “Lie flat,” he ordered.

  “Ain’t nobody there,” a man whispered loudly.

  With patience Ray said: “The reason that ranch is so dark is because the men over there know better’n to light a lamp. Every ranch in Arizona has a kitchen and bunk house lamp lit by this time o’ the morning.” He waited for the man to speak again. When he did not, Ray turned to studying the buildings. There were horses in a corral; he could not see them, but he heard their nose blowing and stomping; each sound carried clearly.

  The number of men at Salter’s ranch troubled Ray. He was not a soldier in any sense, and additionally he disliked the idea of leading his Welton men closer, where the experienced gun hands could cut them down. But what remained uppermost in his mind was the number of men Salter had on ahead, waiting.

  He had deliberately scattered that Salter herd near Tanque Wells to strip Salter of the riders it would require to gather the stock again, and he had also taken those two shots at the cowman for the same reason, knowing Salter would detach other riders to patrol the upland trails and the approaches to his home ranch.

  At JM, Salter had had with him only six men. If that number was close to what remained of his hired hands, the odds were still greatly in his favor because six good men with guns were worth ten Weltonites who were not experienced in gunfighting. There was, he finally concluded, only one way to find out what he was up against. He left the posse with orders to remain where it was until he returned or until the men heard firing on ahead, and then went fluidly forward, blending with the night.

  He expected to find hidden assassins as he had at Joe Mitchell’s place, but he did not. In fact, he got up into the yard without making a sound or hearing one, either, then dropped flat upon the earth, straining to see.

  Here, the stillness was deepest, most menacing; here, also, he knew, there were other men equally as straining as he was. He groped for a pebble, located one, and flung it against a nearby shed. Nothing happened. He threw a second stone, this one landing fully upon the verandah of Salter’s home where it rolled with a distinct and cutting echo and came to rest.

  From the huge log barn an owl hooted. A second owl answered from Salter’s home, and, as Ray was wiggling back the way he had come, a third owl hooted from the bunk house. He knew what he had come up to find out; Salter’s men were spread out so that they commanded each approach to the ranch yard. It was, he thought as he arose and started back to the posse, a good disposition, but in another way Salter’s dispersal was an advantage for Ray.

  He found the men from Welton, hunkering together in conversation. They arose to crowd forward around him expectantly. He told them what he suspected and detailed them, all but the horse holders, to take positions around the buildings. His specific instructions were to prevent any of Salter’s men from leaving the buildings they were in for any reason, even if they wished to surrender. Then he led them forward as far as the ranch yard’s beginning and there pointed out the barn, the bunk house, and Salter’s residence. It was an unnecessary precaution actually; there was not a man among them who had not at one time or another visited Salter’s ranch. Finally he took two men with him, sent the others forward, and with his companions skirted widely around the yard to come down behind Salter’s house. When he knew the others would be in place, he threw a large rock against the rear of the house and called out.

  “Salter! Come out here! The sheriff wants to talk to you!”

  There was a long echo but no reply. Ray’s companions inched closer. One of them said: “Fire a slug into the house, that ought to fetch him out if he’s goin’ to come at all…which I mightily doubt.”

  Ray tried again: “Hey, Salter! You can save some fighting by walking out here.”

  That time he got a reply, a blisteringly profane and guttural roar of defiance. “Come an’ get me, Kelly!” the rustler yelled fiercely. “You jailbird whelp, you! Poke your face out where I can see it!”

  Ray’s face colored at the string of epithets following Salter’s words and he said nothing until the last echo died away. “All right, Salter!” he cried back. “I’ll walk out into the middle of your yard and you do the same! All I want is a shoot-out with you anyway. No sense in these other fellers getting shot up.” He paused, waited, and, when no answer came back, he added: “I’m waiting, Salter, or are you too yellow to face me?”

  A gunshot flamed wickedly from a rear window and both Ray’s companions dropped to the ground where they flattened out and grew very still. Ray cocked his carbine and fired from the hip, levered up another cartridge, and moved sideways as he squeezed off the second shot. There came into the dwindling echo a tinkle of shattered window glass and before another shot was fired he called forward again.

  “Salter, you made a tomfool move splittin’ your men up. Every building is surrounded.”

  He got back an immediate answer. “Yeah? Well, you try to chouse us out of here, Kelly. You’re trespassing and I’ve already sent for help. Before I’m through, you’ll wish you were back in your stinkin’ cell at Yuma.” Salter’s voice grew thin with fury. “This time I’m going to watch you get it, Kelly. This time I’m going to stand there and watch my boys shoot chunks out of you!”

  Salter’s obvious rancor was drowned out by a sudden and unexpected flurry of gunshots around front of the house. Ray beckoned his companions up off the ground and led them along through the soupy light where they could see across the yard. Wink
ing gun blasts from the barn’s interior showed where the fighting was. He tried to get far enough northward to join in by facing the open doorway but the bullets were thick there, and he retreated with his two men as far as the woodshed where he stopped.

  Salter’s men in the log bunk house tried to support their friends in the barn but the angle of their building was wrong for that, and, after firing a few rounds, they contented themselves with alternately calling encouragement to the besieged men in the barn and cursing their attackers savagely.

  “We could slip around behind the bunk house,” one of Ray’s men said swiftly, his face alight with excitement. When Ray did not reply, he repeated it and looked frowningly upward. “Hey, you gone deaf or something?” he said at last, shaking Ray’s arm for attention.

  Ray shook off the man’s hand. “Go get your horse,” he said sharply to the Weltonite, “and ride back to town. Tell Perry Smith that Salter’s sent riders for the rest of his crew, and we’re going to be chewed up here unless he can round up more men and get over here in a cloud of dust.”

  “Huh?” the man said in a rising way, frowning. “How d’you know he’s sent for help?”

  “Dammit,” Ray said, giving the man a quick push. “Do like I told you. Didn’t you hear Salter say he’d sent for help?”

  “No,” the man said frankly and honestly, “I didn’t.”

  “I did,” the other Weltonite chimed in. “You better do like Kelly says,” he told his friend. “And you’d better make sure Sheriff Smith gets back here soon, too, ‘cause the way I calculate it…Salter’s messengers been gone damn’ near long enough to round up the rest of his crew and start back.”

  The posse man said not another word. He trailed his carbine, spun about, and began zigzagging widely around Salter’s house, his every movement full of grim resolve and urgency.

  The remaining Weltonite faced around from watching the messenger fade out in the murky light, his face tightened with anxiety. “Maybe you’d best send another man in case he don’t make it,” he told Ray.