High Lonesome

by Peter McCurtin

  Sully was shaking his head. “The Colonel don’t go anyplace nowadays without that black gunfighter. Even if he tries to, Turner tags right along. Good thing too.”

  Lassiter pointed the Colt at Sully. “Just so’s the black man is all he brings. Now you get ready to ride out there. You fix the time and the place and I’ll be there. You come back to town and let me know. Don’t worry about getting shot. I’ll pass the word.”

  After Sully washed some of the blood off his face, Lassiter walked him downstairs and told Ketchell to get a horse saddled up.

  Chapter Nine

  Major Caulfield was excited. The little Napoleon himself had come over to the jail to see Lassiter off for his meeting with Colonel Danvers. The Irishman was wearing a well-made suit of fine broadcloth. The shoulders looked as if they might have been padded more than was necessary. The Irishman was chewing on a dead cigar and he kept spitting out shreds of tobacco while he talked.

  Ellen Longley was with him, looking pale and complacent as usual. It was a little hard for Lassiter to recognize the wild female animal who had shared his bed the night before.

  Lloyd Ketchell had been saying what a mistake Lassiter was making in this prearranged meeting with Danvers. He didn’t like being told to shut up. It seemed to Lassiter that he might have to keep an eye on the ex police lieutenant from St. Louis.

  “My, but you’re a sly one,” Caulfield was telling Lassiter. “You figure to get Danvers away from his men and shoot him down like a dog. Tell me, that’s exactly your plan, isn’t it?”

  “Could be,” Lassiter said casually. “I’ll let you know when I get back.”

  “Watch out for that nigger, I’m telling you,” the Major advised. “They say Danvers don’t go anyplace without he totes that nigger along. I mean, he doesn’t go . . .”

  “You worry about the grammar,” Lassiter said. “I’ll worry about the nigger.”

  Caulfield didn’t like the remark about his grammar. His annoyance passed immediately as he considered the possibility of Danvers lying dead with Lassiter’s bullet in him.

  “Do this for me, Lassiter, and you won’t be sorry,” he promised. “With that blue nosed Yankee son of a bitch in his grave I’ll—we’ll—run this whole side of the territory. Maybe the whole territory. Why not, eh man?”

  Ellen Longley was looking at Lassiter very hard. She was thinking about what he was thinking, Lassiter knew. She had brains, that woman. Brains and ambition and a mighty fine body when the notion took her. Lassiter still hadn’t figured out a place for her in his scheme. He hoped he could find a place for her, that is if she wanted it that way. Because that’s how it would have to be. She would have to fit into his plans or she would have to die. Running her out of town wouldn’t solve anything. Ellen Longley, as she had told him herself, had put too much time into her dream of being rich to let anyone take it away from her. Not alive anyway.

  “You’re looking well this morning, Miss Longley,” he said to her.

  “Thank you, Lassiter,” she said.

  “Let’s go,” Lassiter said to the little cougher, George Sully, who had come back to McDade an hour before. According to Sully, he had ridden out to Colonel Danvers’ ranch and told him about the deal Lassiter proposed. The black gunfighter had been there. He’d made some strong objections to the proposal that the Colonel and Lassiter get together for a talk. Finally, the Colonel had put Turner back in his place. Now Sully said the meeting was all set, the time, the place. All Lassiter had to do was ride out with him and see for himself.

  Sully refused to tell Lassiter where the meeting place was until they were out of town. Sully had a good point, Lassiter knew. If he knew, then he could tell Caulfield. Lassiter told the cougher that later would be time enough. He also told Sully that he’d blow a hole in his skull at the first sign of double-dealing.

  “Don’t try to have me followed, Major,” Lassiter warned the Irishman before he rode out of town with the cougher. “I said I had to do this my way and that’s what I’m doing.”

  Caulfield assured Lassiter that nothing so devious had crossed his mind. “Don’t forget what I said, Lassiter. Do this for me and you won’t regret it”

  Lassiter cringed inside when the Irishman called him, “Lassiter, old pal.”

  Ellen Longley didn’t say anything at all after the first few words with Lassiter. Maybe Caulfield didn’t suspect him. Ellen Longley probably did. She was that kind of woman.

  They rode out of McDade at a fast clip, George Sully out in front where Lassiter could watch him. Lassiter had taken away the cougher’s gun. There was no point in taking any chances, even with the likes of Sully. If the black came along with Danvers —and Lassiter felt pretty certain he would—well, then, there was trouble enough right there. So why add to it?

  More than likely, Lassiter figured, the Yankee Colonel would live up to any bargain he made. About the black there was no way of knowing.

  It was still early in the morning but already the sun was good and hot. The country outside McDade wasn’t spectacular desert high country the way it was farther west. It was hilly and rutted with deep gullies, with clumps of thorn bush scattered thickly here and there. Off the main trail, it was difficult country to travel. What Lassiter didn’t like was you couldn’t be all that sure you weren’t being followed.

  Lassiter told Sully to rein in his animal. “Get to the point, little man. Where are we going. Make it fast and truthful.”

  Sully looked around. There wasn’t a sound except for the high country wind, hot and lifeless. Nothing moved out there in the red hills.

  “We’re supposed to meet the Colonel at the old Swedish church,” the cougher explained “The Apaches burned it down about fifteen years ago. The walls are still standing. Nobody ever goes out that way anymore.”

  Lassiter touched his gun butt. He didn’t think he had to show any more proof that he wasn’t fooling.

  Three hours later the church came into view. It was about ten miles from McDade, about halfway to the Danvers place, but way off the main trail. The foothills of the Sangre Mountains rose up, it looked like, from right behind the burned-out mission church. Enormous rocks bigger than wheat country silos loomed above the abandoned church, dwarfing it. The huge rocks were gray-white in the sun. It was silent and dreary around the church. Lassiter would have considered it depressing, if he had been the kind of man who thought in such terms. He wasn’t. He just didn’t like it much. First, there was the look of the place, and that was bad enough. Then there was the location, and that was worse. A hundred bushwhackers could hide up in those rocks with no trouble at all.

  There was no sign of Danvers or the black gunman. Sully told him they’d be inside the church, watching out for whoever rode up. Lassiter got the feeling that all he had to do was make any kind of sudden movement and he’d be dead in his saddle.

  With Sully out in front, they edged their way toward the church. Most of the rough-rock walls were still standing. Even the steps up to the front of the church were still more or less intact.

  As Lassiter expected it to, a voice called out, “Stay right where you are, mister. Come ahead slowly and keep your hands above your head. Sully will take your gun.”

  “No,” Lassiter answered with flat finality. “Nobody takes my gun. Not now and not later. We made a deal. I kept my part of it. If you want to bushwhack me, then go ahead and do it. But nobody’s taking my gun.”

  Lassiter waited for the voice to start again. It sounded like a black man’s voice but the way it echoed in the hollow church it was hard to tell.

  Nobody answered for a while. If they came to the wrong decision, Lassiter knew it would be all over before he could get off a single shot. A man out in the open was no match for a rifleman in cover. And there had to be at least two of them in the church,

  The upland desert wind blew hot and dry. There were places in the Southwest where it hadn’t rained for fifty years. This looked like it might be one of them.

  Another voice
called out. Even with the echoes, there was no mistaking the sharp New England accent. “This is Colonel Danvers,” the Yankee voice twanged. “No need for any trouble, Mr. Lassiter. I simply want to advise you not to try anything that might. . .”

  Danvers and the Negro had walked their horses inside the church. That was smart, the sort of thing Lassiter would have done himself. That was so nobody could spook the animals and leave the two men boxed up inside the crumbling walls without water. With the horses inside, they could at least make a run for it when the going got too tough.

  Lassiter looped his reins around the trunk of a bush growing out of the church steps. Sully didn’t get off his horse. The Yankee voice told him dismount, and he did.

  It looked like they weren’t all that eager to show themselves. That could be the black’s runaway smartness or the Colonel’s army habits.

  Lassiter waited at the bottom of the stone steps. It was, he reflected, about the closest he’d been to a church for a good many years. And they still were shy about showing themselves.

  Lassiter was getting sick of it. People who played it too safe always made him sick. “Look, Colonel,” he yelled. “Do we talk or do I climb back on my horse and ride out of here. I don’t have an awful lot to do, but I’d just as soon do it someplace else.”

  “You do what the Colonel tells you, cracker,” Turner’s old-plantation voice warned him from hiding.

  Lassiter grinned at that. A lot of people had called him a lot of things. Some of those who did the name-calling died shortly afterward. Nobody, as far as Lassiter could tell, had ever called him cracker. He thought for a moment of calling Turner “nigger” just to get him going. Maybe he would later, but not now. There was a time and a place, even for getting a man worked up enough to try to kill you.

  There were two slit windows on either side of what had been the main door of the church. That was where he figured they were. Over the years, the wind had sifted seeds into cracks in the stone walls, and now the slit windows were partly grown over with weeds. The Colonel and his black gunfighter might be there or then again they might not.

  The Yankee Colonel spoke again. “Move over to the center of the steps, Mr. Lassiter. Then we’ll talk and decide if we really have anything to talk about.”

  Lassiter went to the center of the stone steps and looked up. At the top of the steps, still in shadow, he saw the Colonel and the Negro taking up new positions on both sides of the door. The Negro had been scanning the countryside with field glasses. He said something to Danvers that Lassiter couldn’t hear. It sounded like, “Don’t be too sure, Colonel.”

  Danvers wasn’t pointing the Winchester straight at Lassiter, but it wouldn’t take more than a muscle twitch to line it up and fire. The black’s rifle was slung over his shoulder with a piece of rawhide. Between them, they had the drop on him.

  The Colonel continued. “Just stay on the bottom step, Mr. Lassiter. You, Sully, stand out of the way.”

  The little cougher, so lippy to everyone else, did what he was told.

  Danvers, even with the wide-brimmed hat, didn’t look Western. He looked hard and efficient and campaign seasoned, but all that was more Army than Western. He looked and sounded like a man accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. Lassiter didn’t have much truck with words like “gentleman,” but that’s what the Yankee Colonel seemed to be sure enough.

  The Colonel’s hair was white and his face was brick-red, the way so many Eastern faces stay no matter how long they’ve been in the Western sun. He was tall and probably not feeling as square-shouldered as he pretended. And that New England twang was something to listen to. It was as sharp sounding as a circular saw biting into metal.

  Jefferson Turner was dressed completely in black, pants, boots, shirt, vest. Even his gunbelt and gun butt were black. It was the sort of outlandish get-up that was supposed to strike terror into mortal men. To Lassiter, it was the kind of rig he despised. That didn’t mean the man who wore it was a faker. One look at Turner told him the Negro was a killer. A big mail with a sullen baby face, though he couldn’t be less than thirty, Turner stared at Lassiter with dull, hostile eyes.

  “This wouldn’t seem to be much of a way to talk,” Lassiter said. He didn’t blame Danvers for not wanting to trust anybody who worked for the Irishman. He just didn’t feel much like standing out in the hot sun and talking.

  “It’ll just have to do, cracker,” Turner said.

  “You do the Colonel’s talking, do you?” Lassiter wanted to know.

  Turner looked at the Colonel. “No,” he said. “I just look out for him. I try to see he don’t get killed by white trash like you.”

  The black was really pushing it. Lassiter hoped the Negro wouldn’t push so hard he’d have to do something about it. He hadn’t ridden all this way for a showdown with an ex slave. But there was only so much bad-mouthing he would take from any man, black or white or anything at all.

  “For the moment this will have to do, Mr. Lassiter,” the Colonel said. “Mr. Sully here told me all about your conversation last night. I believe Mr. Sully asked you why a man like me would want to deal with a man like you. I say a man like you because that’s what you would seem to be if Mr. Sully is telling the truth. Correct me if Mr. Sully isn’t telling the truth or has made some kind of mistake.”

  Lassiter shook his head. “No mistake.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you why I might be willing to deal with you, Mr. Lassiter,” the old Yankee continued. “It’s just as you said yourself—because I want to bring an end to the trouble—the killings, the burnings—in these parts. I wouldn’t have been willing to deal with you three months ago. I would have said let’s clean up McDade and Socorro County once and for all, no matter what it costs. Clear out the rustlers and the brand changers, the gamblers and the gunmen and the bad women.”

  Maybe Caulfield was right about one thing, Lassiter reflected. The Yankee Colonel was a fanatic about some things. Bad women!

  Lassiter enjoyed what he said next. “Doesn’t seem to have worked, does it. Your plan, I mean. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be talking to me.”

  Turner didn’t like that. “The Colonel is talking to you, not with you,” the Negro said.

  Lassiter said, “Why don’t you go eat your water melon and shut your liver-lipped mouth.”

  It sure as hell wasn’t the smoothest thing to say. It made him feel better just the same.

  Turner’s dull eyes got duller, sluggish as a snake’s. There was no anger on the surface. It was easy to tell he was kill-crazy inside.

  Danvers touched the Negro lightly on the arm.

  The black shook himself free of the Colonel’s restraining hand, “This is where you die, cracker,” he drawled, very calm, very sure of himself.

  Chapter Ten

  The high desert wind blew dry and lifeless and Lassiter waited for Turner to make his move. He’d be damned to hell if he let the black push him into drawing first. The time had passed for any more insults. Lassiter said nothing. He wasn’t sure he could beat the ex-slave. He was never sure that he could beat anybody until the other man had thrown down his gun or was lying dead in front of him.

  The seconds, then the minutes dragged by. Lassiter hoped to hell they’d get it over fast so he could have a drink of water or ...

  “Jefferson,” the Colonel was saying. “Listen to me . . .

  Danvers once again touched the Negro on the arm, not so much that he’d be in the way if he wanted to draw but to let him know who was talking to him.

  “Jefferson, wait,” he said, then saying something else that Lassiter couldn’t make out. Turner didn’t take his dead-looking eyes off Lassiter. Some of the stiffness went out of him. Lassiter really didn’t want a shoot-out with the Negro. He was ready for it if that’s what it had to be.

  Still watching for Turner’s reaction, the Colonel said to Lassiter, “Next time you talk like that to Mr. Turner may be your last, Mr. Lassiter. You Southerners never learn, do you?”

/>   Lassiter hadn’t thought of himself as a Son of Dixie since . . . well.. . since the Civil War. It didn’t occur to him to start thinking of it again at this late date. But he said, “That’s right, Colonel. We Southerners never do.”

  The Colonel had Turner under control for the time being. He got back to the business at hand.

  Lassiter was getting as tired of the Colonel as he had been of the stinking little Irishman.

  “I can’t say I approve of you or what you’re doing, Mr. Lassiter,” Danvers jawed on. “I thought when I came down here to start a cattle ranch that I could make this part of the country into something fine. Where men could be better than they hoped to be when they started out.”

  Lassiter, hard-bitten though he was, wanted to laugh for the first time. He thought, who in hell ever appointed this Yankee bluenose to come out West and try to reform it? Being what they were, in their ways, there wasn’t much to choose between the crooked little Irishman and this holy-Joe New Englander. Lassiter decided that if he had to make a choice, if someone put a knife to his throat and told him to make a choice, well then he’d probably choose the Yankee Colonel. That didn’t mean he’d rather, say, spend a life term in Yuma Prison with only Colonel Danvers for company. All it meant was that he didn’t think the Yankee would cut his throat while he was asleep.

  Danvers was still talking about making New Mexico a better place to live, but he wasn’t saying anything Lassiter hadn’t heard before from cranks and sky-pilots.

  “. . . a land where I’d hoped men would discover their better natures. The better nature of man ...”

  Lassiter interrupted the flow of words. “What’s it going to be, Colonel. You already heard my side of it from Sully here. Least I hope you got it straight. Do you go ahead for a showdown with the Irishman, which means a lot of killing with everybody the loser? Or do you deal with me, imperfect nature and all?”

  Danvers didn’t like flowery words turned around and fired back at him. His red face flushed even redder than it was. Turner didn’t move or say anything more.