High Lonesome

by Peter McCurtin

  “If you do deal with me,” Lassiter said, “it’ll have to be all the way. Deal with me and you get rid of Caulfield. That much I can guarantee here and now. You trade Caulfield for me. Like I said, I don’t want to run the whole territory or even all of Socorro County. All I want is to run McDade and anything more than that would be greedy, is how I look at it. Deal with me and there won’t be any more trouble. Unless you start it of course.”

  Turner tried one more time. “You don’t have to make any deals with this cracker. Say the word and I’ll...”

  The Negro was confident he could take Lassiter. And that was good, Lassiter thought, because it was always good to go up against a man who thought he was better than anybody around.

  “Say the word and I’ll shoot his fingers off,” Turner said.

  “Yeah, Colonel,” Lassiter jeered. “Do I lose my fingers or do we deal?”

  Danvers shook his white head sadly. “Why are men so eager to fight?” he asked nobody in particular.

  Lassiter took him up on that. “Because they like it so much, I’d say. Now one more time, yes or no?”

  Danvers turned practical for a moment. “How do I know I can trust you? Why couldn’t this be one more of Caulfield’s tricks?”

  “You don’t know,” Lassiter said. “That is, until I kill the Irishman or run him out of the county. Now let me ask you something, how do I know you and this black terror here don’t have some tricks of your own?”

  Danvers stiffened with indignation. Lassiter didn’t give a damn if he snapped his backbone. He’d had just about enough of the snappy old New Englander and his African bodyguard. “Now don’t bother to tell me,” he said. “A gentleman never goes back on his word once he’s given it. But suppose—just suppose —he does go back on it because he never figured to keep it in the first place. Because the other party to the deal wasn’t a gentleman and therefore not the kind of man who would keep a bargain himself. Suppose—just suppose—that’s what happened. What do you think would happen if you went back on your deal with me after you made it? It’s worth thinking about, I’d say.”

  “Nothing would happen,” the Negro said. “Nothing at all. Because I wouldn’t let it happen.”

  The Colonel didn’t answer Lassiter’s question. It was obvious that Lassiter’s thought had occurred to him too.

  Lassiter answered his own question, just so there wouldn’t be any mix-up about it later.

  “I’d have to kill you, that’s all,” Lassiter informed the Colonel. “And that’s exactly what I’d do, Colonel, no matter how many gunmen you tried to put in my way. Hate to sound so grim, Colonel, but you got a right to know the kind of man you’re dealing with. Just let me say, if you think Caulfield is bad all you have to do is cross me up and you’ll find something a hell of a lot worse. Why, Colonel, I believe I could make the Irishman look like a nice old lady in a poke bonnet.”

  Turner started to say something. Lassiter pointed at him and warned the Colonel. “You tell this retired minstrel here to keep his mouth shut or we’ll go to it right here and now and to hell with you and Socorro County and to hell with everything.”

  Lassiter enjoyed his own fake outburst of anger. He grinned at the Colonel and the Colonel didn’t like it one little bit. He wasn’t supposed to.

  Danvers gestured to the Negro to keep quiet. Lassiter went on calmly.

  “Once again, the deal is you run your end of the county and I run McDade. I don’t care what in hell you do long as you don’t do it in McDade. Set up your own little republic if you have a mind to. Crown yourself king if that’s what you want. I’m going to ask you again, for the last time—yes or no?”

  Lassiter didn’t mind the Colonel taking a little time to make up his mind. What he did mind was standing out in the sun when they could be sitting down in the shade of the church walls. He could hear the black whispering to Danvers. Deal or no deal, he promised himself that he’d get rid of Jefferson Turner the first clear chance he got, probably on some deserted road with nobody around but the two of them. Then they’d see if the black was as fast with his guns as he was with his mouth. If he was, then he must be fast as a rattlesnake.

  Lassiter shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He watched a lizard getting set to send its whiplash tongue after a fly. The lizard’s tongue flashed out faster than the eye could catch, and the fly disappeared. The lizard stayed where it was, quiet as a rock, and lowered its scaly eyelids. Lassiter thought he knew how the lizard felt.

  “The answer is yes, Mr. Lassiter,” Colonel Danvers announced as if he hadn’t taken an awful long time to make up his mind. “The answer is yes and I just hope I’m doing the right thing for the people of this county . . .”

  “You’ll be hearing from me,” Lassiter said.

  “Then it’s a deal?” Danvers said.

  Lassiter grinned at him, then at the black gunman.

  “You bet,” he answered. He turned toward his horse. He had almost reached the animal when a single rifle shot split the silence and Colonel Danvers went down. The Negro grabbed for the Colonel and that gave Lassiter time to palm his gun and cock it. The Colonel was dead by the time Turner lowered him to the ground. Blood leaked out through the hole in his chest and spread across the white shirt front. Lassiter ran up the steps of the church, his Colt ready to cut the Negro down if he made a move to draw. Lassiter knew the Colonel was dead. Probably Turner knew it too, but he didn’t want to face it. The Negro held the dead man in his arms, telling him it would be all right. There were no more shots and Lassiter didn’t think there would be any more. He heard a single horse galloping away behind the sloping red hill facing the church.

  “He’s dead,” Lassiter told the Negro, ready to kill him, thinking maybe he’d better kill him and have done with it. Because no matter what he said or did, the Negro gunman would never believe that he wasn’t a part of the killing.

  “He’s dead, the Colonel’s dead,” Turner said, still holding the dead. Suddenly he raised his head and even Lassiter felt a slight chill at the burning hate in the Negro’s dull eyes. “You killed him, you son of a white bitch.”

  Lassiter knew he should shoot him through the head, not because of what Turner had called him— because he’d have to face him sometime. Without thinking, Lassiter increased the pressure on the trigger. Just a little more pull and the hammer would fall. He told himself to do it, to get rid of one big trouble. He wanted to do it—it was the smart thing to do—but somehow he couldn’t do it. He cursed himself inside, telling himself he was being a yellow-backed bastard.

  Turner made no move for his gun. Lassiter wished the black killer would lay down the dead man and just make one move toward that gun. Instead, Turner held onto the dead Colonel and cursed him with a steady flow of bitter obscenities. In all his years on the dodge, Lassiter couldn’t recall having been in a stranger fix. There was no use trying to tell the Negro that killing the old Yankee wasn’t his idea. Sully had run for cover when the shooting started. Now he crept out from behind a rock and stood there without saying anything. Sully could have shot Lassiter in the back if he’d had a gun, but there was no time to think about that.

  Lassiter didn’t want to take the Negro’s gun. He didn’t want to touch him. Not because he was a Negro—he just didn’t want to touch him. “Take his gun and throw it away,” he ordered Sully, who still didn’t appear to grasp what had happened. “Go on, man, do it!”

  The Negro didn’t move while the little man timidly walked up the steps and took his gun, the hand gun. “Now the rifle,” Lassiter told him, still inwardly cursing himself for not killing the Negro. For not killing Sully as well, then riding out of there with half his problems solved.

  While he was getting ready to climb onto his horse, the Negro said very quietly, “I’ll be coming after you, cracker. No matter how far you go I’ll be coming after you. And you won’t die easy like the Colonel. That’s my promise, cracker, and you can depend on that. You, Caulfield, the women—everybody had a h
and in this.”

  Well, there it was. Lassiter put the boots to his horse and started back for McDade. There was no point in making a big hurry out of it. He knew Caulfield’s bushwhacker—nobody else but Caulfield was behind the killing—could be waiting for him some place along the way. Time enough for that later. It had to be the Irishman or the woman who was behind the shooting. It didn’t matter which. All he knew was, everything had changed with that single bushwhacker’s bullet.

  He knew the smart thing now would be to ride around McDade and out of the territory. Now that Danvers was dead, and even with Turner on the prod, Caulfield would figure he didn’t need him any longer. Or maybe it was Ellen Longley who was doing the figuring. Well, he’d be damned if he’d let them ease him out of the situation as neatly as that. He had put too much thought, too much effort into McDade, to let them push him out. He had made a deal with the Colonel and he’d meant to keep it in his own way. He couldn’t say he’d liked Colonel Danvers, but he’d made a deal with him.

  A little while ago he’d figured to kill Caulfield or run him out. All that had changed. Now all he figured to do was kill the sneaking little Irishman. The woman too, if she wanted it that way. There were two ways of looking at it. One, they could have figured out that he planned to double cross them. If that’s what they thought, they had set him up to be blamed for the Colonel’s murder. Number two, they took his meeting with the Colonel as a god-sent opportunity to kill the old man. If it was Number One, they’d be gunning for him when he got back to McDade, maybe before he got back. Number Two and they might welcome him back as a hero. There was only one way to find out which it was. And that’s what he was’ doing.

  Lassiter urged his horse to move faster.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was getting dark when Lassiter topped a ridge and McDade came into sight. Riding cautious, it had taken him an hour longer to get back. Twenty miles in one day wasn’t much of a ride, but in that kind of country twenty miles was as hard on a man as three times that distance.

  Lassiter thought he’d like a drink before the shooting started. One way or another, he felt sure, there would be some kind of shooting before the night was over. With Danvers dead, it was any man’s guess as to what would happen next. His own personal guess was that Turner and the rest of Danvers’ men would ride in and make a try to burn McDade to the ground, along with everybody in it.

  Even from a distance, Lassiter could tell the town knew what had happened out at the old burned-out church. The two saloons were blazing with light and the tinny music was spoiling the night calm, but Lassiter knew a tense town with he saw it. In a way, he didn’t see it, he felt it. McDade was waiting, ready to explode with gunfire at the first suspicious noise. Lassiter didn’t figure to put himself in the way of all that shooting.

  He had taken the Negro’s field glasses and there was still barely enough light to use them. He eased his horse down into a gulley and tied him there. He might need him later if he had to come back this way. The way things were, it didn’t look like he would. It didn’t matter. Lassiter had seen too many horses shot out from under him to care about any one animal.

  Belly down on top of the ridge, Lassiter scanned what he could see of McDade, about six hundred yards away. It looked normal enough, for McDade. There were lights and horses here and there at the hitching rails and even a few people in the main street. But the horses tied to the rails looked old and the people lounging in the street looked awkward and stiff-legged. It was a trap and not such a bad trap under the circumstances. Lassiter wondered if a gun-wise killer like Turner would fall for it. With all that hate burning in his head, he might just do that.

  Lassiter swung the glasses away from the street. The sun was going down fast, but there was still enough of it left so that he was able to spot the hunched-down shapes of men in the shadows of outlying buildings. By now the light was too thick to make out any one man. Now that the big showdown was about to take place, maybe even the little Irishman was out there directing his forces. Lassiter didn’t think so. Twenty years before in the War Caulfield might have been brave enough. Now more than likely he was holed up in his brick bank with his two Mexican bodyguards. The odds were the woman was with him.

  It was a pretty good trap. Caulfield had deployed his men in military fashion. An outer ring of skirmishers, only a handful of men at most, to draw the first fire, to give the inner defenses time to get set. The outer ring of skirmishers would put up a hot fight, then break and let the raiders through. Then the inner ring of defenders would hold their fire until the raiders were right on top of them. It was a good enough plan, if it worked.

  Lassiter knew the attack, if it came, could come at any time. Riding cautious, it had taken him a long time to get back. True, the Negro would have to get back to the Danvers place to round up the men, and that would take time. After that it was a straight ride on a good trail into McDade. And after what had happened to the Colonel they’d be riding hard. Maybe Caulfield had the advantage. Danvers’ men would have the hate to make a balance.

  It still wasn’t dark enough to go in the way Lassiter planned. While he waited he checked the loads in his gun. He thought about taking the rifle and decided against it. No matter how cagey he moved in the dark, the rifle could clink against a rock and call down a rain of bullets. Anyway, what he was planning didn’t call for a long gun. If what he planned didn’t work a long gun wouldn’t help him much. About fifteen more minutes, he decided.

  While he waited, Lassiter went over the layout once again. The spot most heavily guarded would be the McDade Springs which were fenced off with split-log rails. The Springs were the only reason the town of McDade was built where it was. Caulfield wouldn’t be taking any chances with the town’s water supply. That would be heavily guarded too. So would both ends of the main street.

  The best way to get into town would be through Boot Hill. Like most towns, McDade had put its cemetery some distance from town. The town had straggled out past its original boundaries, and so had the cemetery. Now it was just a short walk—or run —from the end of the main street. A long narrow gully that ran past the graveyard had been used recently as part of Boot Hill. Some of it had been filled in with fresh grave-mounds. It was still deep and empty enough so a man might make it through in the dark. Even that would be guarded though it was on the other side of town from the trail to the Danvers ranch. But not too heavily, Lassiter hoped. At least, if they killed him there he wouldn’t have far to go to find a permanent home.

  It was dark enough. Lassiter eased himself down the far side of the ridge and ran along noiselessly behind it. Every fifty feet or so he stopped and listened. He couldn’t see the town from behind the ridge. He could hear the tinny player-piano rattling away through the open doors of the McDade Paradise. It sounded normal enough even if you didn’t notice the absence of other sounds. The old clockwork piano was playing “Dixie.”

  For a while the ridge ran parallel to the back of the main street. Now it started to slope inward in the direction of Boot Hill. The ridge flattened out before it got to the cemetery. The other gully started about a hundred yards from there. In between the ground was open and flat, with only a few scattered bushes for cover, and the glare from the town lights didn’t make it any easier. Easy or not, it was the only way that gave a man half a chance.

  Lassiter started to crawl, not hunkered-up but flat on his belly with his head down, moving along on his elbows. Once he felt his gut scrape across a piece of broken glass. He kept going. Out there in the dark he felt rather than heard or saw Caulfield’s men crouched down behind their rifles and shotguns. He stopped crawling and listened, raising his head a shade to get his bearings. Once he heard the clink of a gun barrel hitting something hard. He kept going. Twenty minutes after that he reached the beginning of the gully that ran along beside the cemetery. Instead of heading straight into the gully he crawled up along the side of it. That way if there were guards in the mouth of the gully he wouldn’t run bang in
to them. There was nobody there. That meant they were farther back, closer to the end that faced the town.

  As Lassiter edged his way over the top of the gully and downward, the sandy clay cracked under his weight. There was a soft whooshing sound, and he hit the bottom face-forward, his mouth and eyes clogged with dirt. The whole side of the gully was threatening to give way. The first fall had left him half buried. But the dirt on top of him was light and dry. He lay there waiting for the shouting and the shooting to begin. There was nothing except for the hammering of the goddam piano, a lot closer now than when he’d started out along the ridge.

  Lassiter dragged himself out of the dirt and checked his gun. He shook some dirt out of the barrel and blew softly into it. After another short wait, he started crawling again. One thing he had in his favor: they’d be looking for a whole force of raiders, not a man alone.

  Along the gully a bit, he crawled over a grave mound. Then three more. There was a sweet-rotten smell in the bottom of the gully that made him gag. The McDade undertaker, whoever he was, wasn’t sweating over how deep he planted his customers. There was a bend in the gully and when he crawled around it he heard them. If it hadn’t been for the bend he would have heard them sooner.

  The gully wasn’t as long as he’d thought, and from where he lay he could see the end of the main street. From the end of the gully to where the houses began it was only a short, fast run. But first he’d have to get past the guards.

  Outlined against the town lights, there were two of them. They had dragged a wagon into the gully and squatted down behind it. One of them had a rifle in the crook of his arm and every so often he looked into the dark part of the gully where Lassiter was. The other man’s rifle was standing against one of the wagon wheels. Lassiter heard a bottle being uncorked and the man without the rifle in his hands started drinking. “Come on, Mapes, have a drink,” he said thickly to the other guard. “Gets cold on this goddam desert.”