by Alan Lemay
But, do you know, it took exactly the opposite effect? When Charley heard this story about Hugh licking the matter and walking off with the girl, at first he couldn't believe it. Finally, when it soaked in, he was stunned. He started to say: "Why, naturally...didn't I tell...?" But he was pale around the gills, and his voice trailed off. That night Charley was very quiet, and looking upset and scared. All the next day he still was not himself. Finally, by the end of the day, Charley quit and faded off on the caboose of the cattle train.
Nobody could understand why the success of his advice had took this effect on Charley. But do you know what I think? All the time Charley Brumbaugh was giving advice, and telling about the hero he let on to be, he was living in an imaginary world of his own, unmarred by any actual facts. And finally, when somebody really took his advice and made it work why, it was just like as if reality had busted into his imaginary world and it come near scaring him to death!
Maybe I should have spared Charlie Brumbaugh this dismay. Maybe I should have told him why it was his advice had worked, and Hugh had been able to gather up this uncatchable girl.
You see, after Hugh had walked off with the girl and I went in the Elite Cafe to pull myself together, I found myself sitting at the counter beside the same denizen of Whinrock who had told me who this girl was in the first place.
"Cowboy," he said, "you look dumbfounded."
"I'm not only dumbfounded, I'm flabbergasted," I admitted. "You know that kid cowpuncher that was with me yesterday?"
"Seems like I recall him."
"Well, sir," I told him, "you'll call me a liar. But that boy just picked up and walked off with Bernice Scott... the daughter of all the Interstate Land and Cattle!"
"When? Now?"
"Within the five minutes. I seen it with my own eyes."
"No," said the Whinrock resident. "No, you never. Because Bernice Scott and her father left Whinrock this morning."
"Look here," I said. "You, yourself pointed that girl out to me as Bernice Scott."
"There was two girls there," he reminded me. "I thought you meant the important one. The good-looking one is some girl that waits on table, over there at the hotel."
Johnny Everett had never interested himself in gunfighting until they woke him up, that night in Lost Creek, to tell him that Sandy had gotten himself killed by Doe Regan. Yet he reached for his gun belt instantly, instinctively, at the word. Sandy had been Johnny Everett's partner for going on three weeks, ever since they had fallen into company on the long lonely trail into the Standing Rocks. And, since they had been in the mining camp of Lost Creek but eighteen hours, Sandy had no other friend. Now that Sandy was dead, it did not occur to Johnny that it was possible to let the matter rest.
Then, because Johnny was no fool, second thought came to him. Johnny had never been in a gunfight in his life. Doc Regan was known as a crack gunfighter from the Madres to the Cinnabars. Putting two and two together, Johnny saw that before he killed Doc Regan there would have to be some changes made. That was how Johnny Everett got started in that extraordinary, dogged study of his. From that hour he was in training to kill a man.
He loaded Sandy's horse with grub and all the cartridges his money would buy, and headed out of town. Someone had told him where to find an unused cabin in the lonely hills. Here, a day's ride from Lost Creek, Johnny offsaddled, set up a row of tin cans, and settled himself to the long job of preparing to kill Doc Regan.
It was slow work at first, while he was alone. At the end of the fourth day he was discouraged to find that a slightly lamed wrist and a blister on his thumb were about all he had to show. Then the fifth day Johnny got his break. A tall man with a rifle over his arm was standing at the edge of the timber as Johnny turned away from knocking over the day's first row of tin cans. "I was kind of figuring to lay over here," Johnny's visitor said. "But if I'll be bothering you, I'll be on my way."
"You won't be bothering me," Johnny said.
"Mind if I watch?"
"Sure not."
The stranger preserved an hour's silence. Perhaps he never would have interfered at all, if Johnny had not asked him how the gun work looked. "Why," the visitor evaded, "do you hook your thumb in your belt just before you go for your gun?"
"Say, look here," Johnny said. "You know anything about this gunfighting?"
"A little."
Johnny Everett considered. "I had a partner killed on me a few days ago," he said at last. "A man can't leave it lie. But I'm terrible. If you got any time to spare, I'd sure like to hear your guess on what I'm doing wrong."
The other seemed interested and pleased. "I don't mind laying over a couple of days," he said. "My name's Bill." And right there Johnny really began to learn a thing or two.
Instead of laying over two days, Bill camped with Johnny a week, then a second week, then a third. He worked with Johnny casually the first day or two, but later he set himself at it in good earnest. Johnny told him one afternoon that it was Doc Regan he meant to kill.
"That's bad medicine, boy," said Bill. "The West is full of fellers that cut their teeth on a gun butt. But not one in a thousand has the natural ability to make a gunfighting name."
"I'm not setting out to make a name," said Johnny. "When I've killed Regan, I'm through killing."
"If you kill Doc Regan, you'll have only begun. Every drunk that wants to prove he's bad will get to thinking what a feather in his cap it would be to kill the man that killed Regan. You'll be a marked man, son, and you'll never get loose from it."
For a moment Johnny wondered if it would be possible for him to go his way and forget Regan. But he shook his head. "I can't help myself."
Bill shrugged. "That's up to you."
As the days passed, Bill seemed to forget his own plans utterly whatever they had been in devotion to his pupil's progress. Bill was a great instructor. He was more than a six-gun enthusiastguns were his passion, his life.
At the end of a month Bill concluded that he had done all for Johnny he could. Johnny's natural wince at the roar and shock of the gun was gone; his draw was quick and smooth. It was time for Johnny to go.
"You work pretty good," Bill admitted, when at last, on a cold gray morning, Johnny saddled to go down after his man. "You'd kill any ordinary man."
"Bill," Johnny said, "tell me one thing...why did you spend all this time and trouble on me?"
Bill's grin was half sheepish. "Aw, well, shucks... I just kind of got interested, I guess."
"I sure appreciate it, Bill." Johnny hesitated. He felt that something had been left unsaid, and he couldn't remember what it was. "Well...wish me luck...I'll be going now."
"Sure, Johnny." They shook hands. "But you don't need to go any place."
"Huh?"
"I'm Bill Regan."
"You mean you're Doc Regan?"
"They call me that."
Johnny stared at him a long time, and his face went red, then white again. All his established order of things seemed to go up in the air like a sun-fishing bronc', but he rallied. The man before him was no longer the patient Bill, but the man he had trained himself to kill. His voice rose high and strained, so that it cracked in the middle. "Why you...you damned...." His gun came into his hand.
It was a good draw Johnny made, smooth and quick, well taught and well practiced. But he never saw just how Doc Regan drew. One gun crashed, and Johnny Everett was swaying on his legs, staring idiotically at the blood that was running down his empty hand.
Through this fog of shock he heard Doc Regan's hard, grim voice: "There's one more lesson, you little fool. And I'd give ten thousand dollars if somebody had given me the like!"
Las Cruces, little old cow town though it was, always drew a good crowd for its rodeo. Today the crowd was a whopper. It overflowed the grandstand, and pressed a thin dense line of people around the whole circle of the wire that hemmed the arena. Because the crowd was never entirely still, the younger of the forty or fifty cow-country riders within the dusty ten acr
es found it hard to forget that they were in the focus of ten thousand eyes. But the old contest hands lounged nonchalantly in their saddles or on the chute gates, indifferent to the impersonal crush outside.
The announcer's voice was blaring out over the loudspeakers: "Chute number five....Pete Reese of Tucson, coming out on the next bucking horse."
Behind the bars of chute number five the red shadowstriped shape of a bronc' named Murdershot jerked and heaved as the bucking strap clinched on his flanks, and his hoofs battered the planking. The forty or fifty riders mostly, cowboys, but with a scattering of girls were the crack ropers and bronc' men of five states. Many of them had witnessed a thousand rodeo events, but they were quiet now, almost to a man, watching the saddling chutes. Knowing their game, they knew things about Murdershot that the crowd did not.
Murdershot was from up back of the Pipe Rock country he had never felt rope until he was five years old and he had been in the man-fighting game only a little time. Before he had got on Jake Hutchinson's contest string, he had been saddled perhaps half a dozen times, and sometimes ridden and sometimes not, but that was without the flanker the thin strap rigged behind the cantle and cruelly cinched so that the fighting bronc' went wild and bucked beyond himself, kicking at the moon.
In the few times he had been contested, something had always been wrong he had smashed his rider's knee against the chute gate; he had popped a cinch; he had fallen and crippled his rider. Nobody knew yet whether the horse could be ridden or not, under rodeo rules. But every rider who had seen the red outlaw in action had him marked as a bucker who would be famous, in another year.
This was the unknown quantity that Pete Reese of Tucson was now about to ride or try to. Pete Reese was a tall youngster made of whalebone and rawhide, and his face was weather-tanned leather. The riders, lounging in their saddles, waited in silence to see what he would do.
Of them all, not one waited with a more watchful attention than Glory Austin, who sat near the chutes on a borrowed buckskin pony. Unless you were a horseman you might not have noticed her there, a slim, straight-sitting girl in black broadcloth and silk. Her soft dust-colored hair and her cleanly made, olive-tanned features, heavily shadowed by her broad-brimmed hat, did nothing to make her conspicuous. Even if you had been near, her heavy-lashed gray eyes might have failed to catch your attention, for there were gates behind them that were closed to you and me.
Glory Austin was not entered in the bronc' riding; her own trick riding work was done for the day, and done well. With the money won, she should have felt relaxed and comfortably weary. But with Pete Reese about to ride, she waited with sharp attention.
Glory Austin had known Pete Reese only a space of months, but she had known the first time she had seen him that he was one in ten thousand perhaps one in the world so far as she was concerned. But for another reason this ride was, to Glory Austin, different from any other Pete Reese had ever made. Glory had never seen the red horse Murdershot until today, but if anybody could read the whole soul of a range-bred horse just by looking at him, Glory could. And she had recognized that Murdershot had been foaled to make a name as a killer. She did not believe it was by accident that Murdershot had somersaulted himself onto his rider at Cheyenne.
The announcer's loudspeaker was bawling: "Pete Reese is about to come out now.... He's easing into the saddle. ...One of the boys is up on the chute to give a last hand on the flank strap."
Lois Bart, Glory Austin's partner they pooled and split their winnings put her horse alongside Glory's. Lois Bart had a mop of red hair, and she wore a green silk shirt and a gold-filigreed belt to set it off; her flair for the spectacular made her a striking figure in any man's arena.
"It'll be a hot one on Pete," Lois offered now, "if that broomtail dumps him." She chuckled. "I'm sure crazy about that man. But maybe a good spin on his neck might do him good!"
Glory Austin said nothing. For a moment she wondered what had ever persuaded her to go partners with this girl, so different from herself. Then she forgot Lois as the gate swung.
"Here he comes!" A galvanized silence held everywhere for an instant as Murdershot gathered himself, whirled, and shot into the open blast of the sun.
Glory's trained eye saw the savage twist of the tall red bronc' as he slammed into his pitch. Murdershot leaned low to the ground, and zigzagged, snapping himself like a quirt. Pete Reese himself was almost unseated on the second jump. On the third and fourth jumps he was fighting to stay with the horse.
Although the horse had as good as lost him with those terrific side-whipping snaps, Glory saw that Pete was raking Murdershot with his tape-covered rowels raking him high and handsome every jump. Murdershot bawled the throaty scream of a fighting horse crazy with anger and the crowd began to roar, for Pete still rode. Ten seconds end an official ride, and now the whistle screamed, signaling in the pick-up men.
It was the job of the pick-up men to swing Pete out of the saddle. Ordinarily it is not a hard job for a practiced man to pick up the rider, but with this horse it was different. He was halfway down the field now, and his erratic twistings made it tough for the pick-up horses. Jack Evers, hazing on the right, jammed his pony in close.
Murdershot whirled in mid-buck, stood on his head, and his heels smashed out at the hazing horse. Jack Evers's horse staggered, and stood still, quivering. Jack was sitting with his head down, half doubled up in the saddle.
Murdershot's whirl had changed his course, and Jack's pick-up partner on the other side of the bronc' was caught as he closed to make his try. Murdershot cannoned broadside into the pick-up pony. The pick-up horse and rider went down.
For once in Glory's life a horse had her afraid. She was obsessed by the idea that Murdershot would not be satisfied with losing his man, but would stop and trample him. The red horse was insane, crazy in the manner of a fighting wolf his smash at Jack Evers showed that.
Glory did not realize that she, also, was racing down the field, her pony hovering on the heels of the bronc', until Lois's voice reached her from behind, frantic with warning: "Glory, you fool, stay out!"
Glory did not stay out. There were other horses coming up, but the nearest on her side was fighting his head and his rider, and now there opened for Glory a brief opportunity. It wasn't a big chance, and it involved no heroism. It was just one of those split-second chances in which a rider can bring a hard-earned skill to bear in the moment in which it is most needed.
Glory cut in fast, spurring her buckskin pony against the flank of the red bucker. She was not trying for the rider, but for the flank-strap buckle, sure from long experience that Murdershot would straighten out, once he was free of the biting flanker. She leaned far out and grabbed at the loose end of the strap.
Murdershot swung away, half dragging her from the saddle, then surged back, his heels smashing at Glory's pony. The buckskin staggered, as Jack Evers's horse had done a few seconds before, and the break jerked in Glory's teeth. But the flank strap was cut loose.
The worst of the crazy fight went out of Murdershot suddenly. He bucked still, but a new rider coming in on the left Tom Hansen this time was able to close in. Hansen picked Pete out of the saddle. Pete swung across the rump of Hansen's horse, and was on the ground.
Glory pulled up, and sat breathing deeply on her shaking pony. She saw Pete Reese on his feet, looking around as if uncertain where his ride had taken him.
"It put two men out of business," Tom Hansen said, "getting you off that pony. Somebody cut loose the flanker ...or, by golly, you'd be on him yet!"
"Who threw that flank strap off?" Pete demanded.
Lois Bart had ridden in between Glory and Pete Reese. Now she turned to Glory, and winked. "I did," she said.
That was the way it always was, always had been ever since Glory and Lois had thrown in together as partners. If there was any scrap of credit to be had, it went to Lois Bart, now and always. As presently Pete Reese, also, would belong to Lois.
Glory Austin rode back to th
e chutes slowly, alone. She had returned the buckskin pony to the cowboy who had lent it to her and was turning away, when Rowdy Kate Hutchinson came up, clamped a mighty hand on her shoulder, and walked her away from the other riders. Big old Kate had long ago ended her own riding days, but she had married a bucking-horse string. Her bass-voiced bellowings were esteemed necessary to half the rodeos of the West as necessary as her broad, towering figure, with its battered hat and rough clothes.
"Honey, are you hurt?" Kate asked.
"I'm not hurt!"
"The hell you ain't!" Old Rowdy Kate was rough and noisy, but she babied the rodeo girls. "The trouble with you Austins, you ain't willing to let on you're human. You sure ain't much like your partner. I've known Lois Bart to leave herself be carried out of the arena....right past the grandstand, of course....when I couldn't find a scratch on her. And here's another thing! The next time you trick ride a rodeo, I want to see...."
"I'm through with rodeos," Glory said.
"What's this, now?"
Glory Austin flared up surprisingly. "I'm through, and I'm through for good. I'm sick of the whole business! I don't care if I never see a rodeo again."
"Why, child, what's got into you?"
"It's show-off!" Glory said fiercely. "I was born and raised on the working ranges, and I don't know anything except horses, and that's what pulled me into the rodeo game. But the crowds, and the everlasting making a show of it... that spoils it all!"
"All of us come from the working range," Rowdy Kate pointed out. "Where else would a body learn to ride?"
"That's just it," Glory said. "The riding and roping is honest and real. But this showmanship stuff makes a sham of the whole thing."
