West of Nowhere

by Alan Lemay

  Only Monk Connolly was where you might think he would be, and he was down in a heap just where he had stood, with one leg twisted under him so queer that even in the first glance I knew he was dead. I saw all that instantly, in a split second. It was Sundown Palmer who was the main figure in that room.

  Sundown was in the strangest position of all. He was on one knee, his gun up and ready in his right hand, but somehow he had got turned around, so that he no longer faced Jim Flood but was facing the door. Almost in the instant that the match flared, he whirled as if he got his bearings instantly with the light, and his gun swung on Flood.

  I should have fired on Sundown then, if only to try to break his arm, for I still had one cartridge left. Instead, I threw my gun at him from a distance of about ten feet, and it caught him under the ear just as he fired. The match went out as I threw the gun, and I fumbled after another one and lighted it.

  Jim Flood still stood against the wall where he had stood before, but there wasn't any gun in his hand. Sundown was crumpled up, breathing very hard, in the middle of the floor.

  Now I found the other lamp that had not been lighted when the posse came up. And I lighted it, clean forgetting that Jack Healy was unaccounted for and might be laying outside to put a gun in from the dark. It was only afterward we found he was gone.

  When I turned around again, Jim Flood was pulling his brush jacket on, slow and deliberate. He looked white.

  I began to choke up on what had really happened there. Monk Connolly was dead, sure enough, shot three times; but when I looked in the jamb of the door, I found my own four bullets planted high and loose they hadn't hit anything or done any good. Then I saw the man called Buck open one eye, and I took his gun away. Nothing was the matter with him except he was shot through the thigh. That bullet was Jim Flood's, too. Now I did what I should have done in the first place, which was to disarm Sundown Palmer, for he was beginning to come to.

  "We've done it now," I said to Flood. "Once we might have got by with a jury trial, but now...it's the wild bunch for us both, from here out."

  "Yes," he said.

  It seems crazy that I said what I did then, but it seemed the one thing I could say, at the time. "You still figure to pick a bone with me?" I asked.

  "Yes," he said again.

  "Then let's get it over with."

  "I'm ready."

  "Then go ahead and draw."

  "Draw yourself," he said, looking me in the eye. "I'll be there, all right. Pull, if you're not too yellow!"

  I thought I was against the tie-in of my life, and my hand dropped to my gun, and I drew...but I didn't fire.

  Flood still stood motionless. His hand was still in his pocket. "You're yellow," he said. "Why don't you shoot?" He was standing with his back against the wall, the pack box between his knees, and I saw him slide gradually down, and then his head slumped forward. He toppled, and, if I hadn't caught him by the shoulders, he would have fallen off the box.

  I hauled his brush jacket off. His right sleeve was soaking wet, for he had been shot through that arm. To save his life, he couldn't have made a draw, or even laid a finger on his gun. Even to get that hand to his pocket, he must have used his other hand. Yet Flood had dared me to draw, taunted me to draw, and then taunted me to fire!

  I stopped the bleeding with strips of his own shirt, and then I tied up Buck's leg wound. Finally I got Sundown Palmer started off down the trail, with Buck whimpering with his wound, and Monk tied crosswise of his saddle. Only first I picked out their two best horses for Jim and me, and gave them ours.

  I saw them off to the head of the trail Sundown very black and grim as he led Monk's horse. He never looked at me or spoke. Then I went back to the cabin, knowing that we wouldn't have long to get on the move.

  Kit Palmer was there when I got back. I guess she was dissatisfied with the way I had tied up Flood's arm, for she was re-bandaging it all, fresh and clean. Flood seemed to have explained to her what had happened, for they weren't talking, and she seemed to know all about it.

  I stood and watched her work. Somber and broken as that night was, it seemed to me that I had never seen anything as sweet and as lovely as that girl, and it was strange to see her here in this place that still reeked of gunsmoke and battle. I can see yet the gentle, quick movement of her hands. The tears were running down her face all the time she worked, and somehow I blamed myself and Jim Flood, both, that this girl should ever have to be made to cry.

  As she finished, he tried to kiss her, and she wouldn't let him. She just said: "Not now...not now."

  Suddenly as I looked at her, it seemed to me the night air was fresh and clean, and I filled my lungs with it. All at once I found that I was feeling like a new man. The ugly feel of death and destruction went out of the night, and with it fear went out of me. I wasn't tired, and I wasn't discouraged.

  I had no future, and a defeated past, and I was hopelessly outlawed, with no friend anywhere, no more than Flood. But I knew that someday all accounts would be squared, and that the Salinas crowd with all its greed and spite and hate would be showed up and broken, and those of us who had opposed them would be in the saddle again.

  I knew that I would come back, and that someday I would win this girl. There wasn't a reason in the world to think all that, or to feel that way, but I somehow knew.

  "We're on our way for a little while," I told Kit, when Jim Flood and I took to the saddle. For Jim had given in by then, and saw that his only chance was to ride for it, until his arm should heal. "We may be gone from here some little time, but in the end we'll be back."

  "I hope so," Kit said.

  I turned in the saddle and waved to her as we made the turn of the up trail. She was still standing, looking after us, and she waved back. But Jim rode facing straight ahead, very pale. I don't think he believed we'd ever be back.

  Along about dawn, high in the granites, I noticed Flood was looking at me very peculiar. I realized then that I had been singing-singing, by God!

  "You feel good, don't you?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "You think you're coming back, and that this Salinas bunch can be beat?"

  "Yes," I said again.

  "You're gone on Kit," he accused me.

  And I answered yes to that, too.

  "You realize Kit's my girl? Yet you think you can take a girl from me?"

  "Maybe I can."

  Seemed like he didn't know what to think of that. "I'm the better gunfighter," he told me, as if he was sizing me up all over again. "I'm a better cowboy, a better man with a bronc'."

  "Yes," I said.

  "Yet you think you can get my girl!" he said, as if he couldn't believe it.

  "Jim, that's just what I'm going to do."

  It seemed strange to be saying that, me an outlawed 'puncher without a dime or a hope, riding off a range because I was hunted off and with small chance of even getting clear. But there in that dawn, dog-dirty, unshaven, and weary, I knew that what I told him was true.

  "Maybe you and me better ride together a while, until things clear up," Jim said at last.

  "OK, boy."

  In the first daylight we topped One-eye Pass, and began dropping down into the badlands of the Walloon. Below us the hot shimmer of early sun on red rock was talking about bad days ahead, but in my eyes was a picture of a slim, straight girl with windblown hair, and I knew I was coming back.

  Old Man Coffee's three callers did not arrive together. Sheriff Pete Crabtree, with Mart Mosely trailing along behind him, came up the main trail while Bat Girard, starting from McTamahan considerably later, took the rough cutoff and by smoky riding was able to arrive a few minutes ahead of the others.

  Girard wasted no time in bursting into words. "Look here, Coffee...look here! That crooked bunch from downcountry have framed you up. They're going to make you look like a horse thief!"

  "I don't deny," said Old Man Coffee amiably, "a slight facial resemblance to the lower classes. Howsoever... I misdoubt if they
can prove it."

  "They don't have to prove it," fumed Bat Girard. "You know what they want. They're dead set on sending Billy Johnson up for horse stealing, and you're his only witness! They're fixing to discredit you in front of the jury. And I just now found out what they've done. They've planted evidence on you! They've tooken a horse with Mosely's Feed Box brand on it, and they've tooken a knife and doctored it over into your Rocking Chair brand."

  "Who done the doctoring?"

  "I don't know for certain. Mart Mosely himself, most like... he sure must have had experience at it before he was run out of the Panhandle. This horse had one of these light-run brands that just shows as a ruffle in the hair. By curling the hair with your knife, you can add onto a brand like that so's you can't hardly tell it."

  "I can show up a curled brand in two minutes," said Old Man Coffee contemptuously.

  "How does that help you? That's just what they aim to do! And they've planted this horse not two miles from here. You know that old corral up Split Canon? They've hid it there."

  "There wasn't no horse there yesterday," said Coffee.

  "They hid it last night!"

  "What kind of looking horse did they use, I wonder?"

  "It's that old sorrel Mosely generally rides to town on."

  "Oho," said Coffee. "So that's the one. You sure of it?"

  "Yes, dead sure, but...."

  "Then I've got him!" Coffee exulted. "By God, Johnson goes free!"

  "But how the devil...?"

  His voice was drowned by the hammer of hoofs as Sheriff Crab tree came up. He dismounted and approached Old Man Coffee.

  "There ain't anything personal in this," Crabtree apologized. "A couple of the boys rode in this morning with a crazy fool story, and certain parties have made a howl. So I've just rode up here to satisfy 'em more than anything else."

  "That's nice of you," said Coffee.

  "It seems a couple fellers rode through Split Canon yesterday," Pete Crabtree went on, "and they seen one of Mart Mosely's horses hid in that old corral there. They claim they seen your brand on it."

  "In short," said Coffee, "it's supposed to look like I stole a horse." He gazed pointedly at Crabtree's companion, and Mosely stirred restlessly.

  "That's the way certain people seem to make it out."

  There was a long, uneasy silence. "I think," said Coffee, "we better go take a look."

  A curiously strained procession of riders now wound its way down the tortuous trail to Split Canon. Presently the gray ancient bars of the disused corral became visible, then, beyond the bars, the shape of a bony sorrel.

  An exclamation burst from Mart Mosely. "That's my horse! If Coffee's brand is on that horse...."

  "Wait a minute," said Old Man Coffee. "First let's see this Rocking Chair brand."

  He dropped to the ground, crawled through the fence, and caught the horse. He turned the animal, slowly, until the off shoulder was visible to the rest. Then Bat Girard gasped, and Mart Mosely's jaw dropped.

  Upon the sorrel hide stood out a single brand, plain and clear, but it was the Feed Box brand of Mosely himself, undoctored and unchanged.

  "How come you to look so surprised, Mosely, to see your own horse bearing your own brand?"

  "Why, durn it...," Mosely began.

  Coffee bore him down. "I'll tell you why. You were scared my testimony would get Billy Johnson off, weren't you? You had to discredit me. So you took this horse of yours, and you took your knife, and you curled your brand to look like my own. Then you had this horse hid near my place, and here he is...but still with your brand. Surprise is natural."

  It took a moment or two for Sheriff Crabtree to digest that.

  "But if he done all that, like you say, where is this fake brand you claim he put on?"

  "I can explain that, too," said Old Man Coffee. "There aren't but two ways this horse could have come here last night. One way is the trail past my cabin.. .but nobody passed there. The other way means swimming Little Bear Creek. Seems like the fellers that Mosely sent with the horse forgot something... a knife-curled brand comes out and is lost altogether as soon as it gets wet. Naturally Mosely didn't know about the fake brand getting spoiled while swimming Little Bear Creek in the dark, and.. .picture his surprise!"

  "It's a bale of horse feathers," Mosely sputtered.

  "You've got me mixed up," said Pete Crab tree. "Maybe Mosely did fake your brand onto his horse with the view to getting you in trouble, and maybe the fake brand did wash out while swimming the creek, but it don't look like you can prove it, Coffee, so I guess there the matter rests. I'm free to admit," he concluded, "that there's no evidence against you as the thing stands now."

  "You'll admit more in a minute," said Coffee. "Mosely, I offer three hundred for this sorrel horse."

  "I didn't come up here to trade no...."

  The old lion hunter's eyes bored into Mart Mosely like picket pins. "Maybe I want this horse because he carries my memory back," he said. "Maybe that horse looks to me a whole lot like one I knew a few years back, over in the Panhandle... a horse with what we called the Hog Eye brand. I offer five hundred."

  There was a short silence.

  "You think you recognize that horse as from somewhere else?" Crabtree asked.

  "It's easy proved if I do," said Coffee. "Leave me remind you something about horse brands. If ever that sorrel horse bore the Hog Eye brand, and later that brand was changed ...the original brand will show plain and clear on the inside of the hide, soon as that horse is skinned. Maybe I'm buying this horse because I want to read both sides of his hide!"

  "What?" Mart Mosely blustered. "Sell a good horse to have him shot...."

  Pete Crab tree suddenly laughed. "That's a hot one," he said. "You turn down five hundred dollars? Hell!"

  Old Man Coffee chuckled grimly. "It's a pretty pickle now," he told Mosely. "You don't dast sell this horse... and you don't dast refuse!" He turned to Sheriff Crabtree. "Yeah, that's right...look at him. He's the man you want in place of Billy Johnson, who's going free!"

  For a moment Old Man Coffee watched Crabtree as the sheriff studied the face of Mart Mosely. Then the lion hunter relaxed into a satisfied grin.

  Pete Crabtree had reached out and possessed himself of Mart Mosely's gun.

  All up and down the West, I don't suppose I ever saw the beat of Charley Brumbaugh. I have worked stock from Oregon to Arizona, and south of the line into Sonora all through that high desert country between the Rockies and the Coast Ranges, where the range cattle have gone to, now that they have disappeared from Montana and the Great Plains. And I have seen some very queer characters on horseback. But it still seems to me that Charley Brumbaugh overtops them all.

  He was six foot three, and he had one of those kind of overflowing figures, shaped like a Bartlett pear; and we used to say that Charley and the little scrub pony he rode weighed exactly the same to the pound. On top of all this he had a kind of funny, round, square face with curly strawcolored hair, a little snub nose, and a mouth that was plenty ample for him to stick his foot in it. Though, now that I think of it, I suppose Charley hardly ever caught sight of his feet.

  But the really grand, magnificent thing about Charley Brumbaugh was his opinion of himself. To hear Charley tell it, he was not only just one huge mass of muscle and the best horseman in the West, but also the most courageous man he had ever seen, and the most intelligent. He was the boy who could tell you how to break the horse, or shoot the wolf, or make love to the girl. I never yet heard anybody ask Charley for his opinion, and I never yet knew Charley to hold it back.

  Once, just once, there was a boy that really took Charley's advicejust deliberately went out and tried to do what Charley suggested. And of all the peculiar things that always seemed to follow Charley Brumbaugh around waiting for a time to happen, this case was the one that really got me down.

  This young cowboy, Hugh Kerry, was maybe the last one you'd ever expect to see take any advice from anybody, let alone Charley Br
umbaugh. Hugh was still short of twenty years old, and about six foot high, very lean and wiry. The minute you looked him in the eye, which were a blue color, you knew that he was made all in one piece of very good sound stuff. Excessive youngness was really his worst fault, and many of us figured that this would probably be overcome by time.

  This youngness often caused Hugh to play a little ahead of himself. He could ride a bronc' right along with any working cowboy, so, of course, he would go to work and get on some contest bucker that had thrown everybody, and he would get bucked down, and blame himself. And that applied to most things he did.

  Hugh Kerry had been in a run of this kind of hard luck as we drove our Half Circle D steers up to the loading chutes at Whinrock. What corrals there was for holding stock was already filled up with S Bar Bar cattle from over in the Standing Horse country, so we bedded down alongside the railroad, and the big end of us went on into town.

  Hugh Kerry and I went rolling down Whinrock's one little main street, with much loud ringing of spurs, which we had kept on for this purpose, and feeling very much our selves as cow hands are liable to do when finally they get to town. We hadn't gone very far when Hugh Kerry ran into the little circumstance that doubled him all up.

  There were a couple of girls standing on the walk in front of the little hotel, talking. One of them was just about the prettiest girl I had ever set eyes on up to now. It wasn't so much anything in particular, like the color of her eyes and hair, for I'm not real sure I remember such although right now I see her standing there just as plain as life. Sometimes I hope I will always be able to see her clear in my mind as she stood there then, and sometimes I hope I will plumb forget.

  The sun was going down behind the Capitan range, and flooding all the desert with a light the color of pure, free gold in the pan. The world seemed kind of still, resting a moment in all that red-gold light that in a minute would be gone. Something about this girl made it seem like she was the center of all this desert country and all this dimmingout golden light. So that it seemed like she was the one thing we had been looking at for all the long time, when we didn't know just what we was after.