by Jory Sherman
“What it says on the barrel. That is a curse. If you break its promise, that gun will kill you.”
Crudder looked down at the pistol, then at John.
“What’s he talkin’ about, Logan?” he asked.
Savage felt the intensity of every man in the room. They all had their gaze fixed on him. Even Ben, who seemed to be holding his breath.
“It is a kind of curse,” John said, speaking slowly, as if measuring every word. “My daddy said it meant bad luck if I broke that vow he etched onto the barrel of that pistol. He said he put it there to keep me from being hotheaded. He wanted me to think twice before I took a man’s life. I guess it was good advice . . .” John’s voice trailed off into a softness of tone that gripped every man in the room. Including Ben.
“Wh—what the hell you getting at, Logan?” Crudder asked.
“My—my pa, he—he shot a man with that pistol before he gave it to me . . .” Again, John left his words floating, the sentence seemingly unfinished.
“And what happened to your pa?” Crudder asked, his voice a strangled croak issuing from his throat.
“Right after he shot a man to death, Pa’s horse threw him. Pa broke his neck.”
“Aw, that don’t mean nothin’,” Crudder said. But there was a quaver in his voice, like a man whistling in the dark when he passes a cemetery.
“Maybe,” John said, fixing Crudder with a hard gaze. “But Pa’s gunbelt was dangling from his saddle horn at the time. Pa’s foot got tangled in the stirrup. The horse bucked and the gunbelt looped around my pa’s neck. Then the horse dragged him through a mile of brush and the gunbelt caught on a rock and snapped my pa’s neck. When we found him, that gunbelt looked like a noose around his neck and the pistol was right under his jaw.” John paused to let his words sink in. There wasn’t so much as a breath in the room. “Just like a hang-man’s knot.”
Crudder swore and the gunbelt turned hot in his hands. He looked down at it as if he held a poisonous snake in his hands. Then he lifted the rig with both hands and hurled the bundle at John, who caught it.
“Keep your damned gun, Logan,” Crudder said.
Ward’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Savage. His lips arced in a faint curve that resembled a knowing smile.
Jubal Mead broke the silence.
“Let’s get at them vittles,” he said. “I’m so hungry I could eat the south end of a northbound horse.”
Horky belched out a nervous laugh.
“Hell, let’s eat,” Ward said, and the tension in the room subsided.
Horky tossed Ben’s gunbelt to him as he rose to his feet. Ben caught it. He wore a surprised look on his face. The look vanished as he strapped on the rig, adjusting the holster so that it nestled like a cup in a saucer to his leg.
“They’s bowls aplenty here,” Cruddy said. “Help yourselves. Horky, get us some spoons, will you?”
The men ate while Crudder explained to John and Ben about the spring that fed a well, giving them an abundance of sweet water. They had found eating utensils in every hogan and ollas filled with corn and flour.
“It was like all the people here left in the middle of the night,” he said. “Just packed up and left, leavin’ behind blankets and goods. We didn’t find this place, but we heard about it. Some waddy stumbled into this maze of canyons by accident and marked his trail when he come out. It sounded like a good hideout, so we come here a few days ago.”
“It appears to have everything you need,” John said. “Were you chased here?”
Crudder laughed.
“We was chased, all right. Couple of men wearin’ stars on their chests and a pack of trigger-happy galoots they rounded up in a Tucson cantina. None of ’em had the brains of a pissant.”
The other outlaws laughed.
“They were Injuns,” Ward explained. “Superstitious. We heard later that they refused to follow our tracks in here. Run off and left the deputies scared of their own shadows.”
More laughter.
John was beginning to get a picture of the outlaws, but it was sketchy, murky, like trying to find color in a pan full of mud. He was interested, though, because he wondered about men like Hobart who chose a life of crime instead of pursuing legal means to earn money. These men seemed content with their lot in life, but it was a rootless, restless life that offered few rewards in the long run. He wondered why they had chosen to become outlaws. He wondered why Hobart was such a cold-blooded killer. The puzzle was too enormous to comprehend or unravel that night, but he was bound to learn all he could about these men and, at the first opportunity, to get as far away from them as possible. He was sure that Ben felt the same. For now, however, they both had to play along with Crudder and his bunch, or their lives might not be worth a plugged nickel.
When the meal was over, they all scraped their bowls with dirt and Horky rinsed them and their spoons, then stacked them on a flat stone next to a wall. The men all walked outside to smoke and look at the stars. Ward stayed behind, telling Crudder he’d be along in a while.
“You don’t smoke, Logan?” Ward said to John.
“No. I never picked up the habit.”
“Ben?”
“I smoke a pipe now and again,” Ben said.
Then Ward did a curious thing. He stepped close to John and whispered in his ear.
“I know who you are, John Savage.”
Ben just barely heard the name “Savage” and walked over, his knees quivering as if they were filled with jelly.
John stiffened, but his expression did not change.
“You must be mistaken,” he said.
“Look at me, John. Don’t you recognize who I am?”
John studied Ward’s face. There was something vaguely familiar about it. But he did not recognize the man as someone he knew. He shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” John said. “I don’t know you.”
“Don’t I look familiar to you?”
“A little,” John admitted.
“I never met you, but I heard my brother talk about you. He mentioned your name in a couple of his letters. That is, if your pa was Dan Savage. And, your ma, she was named Clare. And you had a little sister named Alice. Just a tadpole, my brother said.”
Ben swore under his breath. A light of recognition flashed in his eyes. He slapped his knee and let out a long breath.
“You’re Jesse Ward’s kid brother, ain’t you?” Ben said.
Before he answered, John knew who he was.
“Sure,” John said. “Jake Ward. Jesse told us about you. He was mighty proud of you, in fact. What happened to you? How come you’re an owlhooter?”
“Hell, John, I think we’re both after the same man,” Ward said.
“What?”
“Hobart. When I got news of what happened up at your diggings, I took off on a week’s drunk. Then I rode out to Denver, took up in Cherry Creek, and started hearing stories about you hunting down the men who killed your family. And my brother Jesse. I been huntin’ Hobart ever since. These boys here think I’m just like them, but I ain’t.”
“You mean you’re just playactin’?” Ben said.
Ward grinned sheepishly.
“Never thought of it that way, but sort of, I reckon. I threw in with these jaspers and I’ve learned a lot.”
“They in with Hobart?” John asked.
Ward smiled.
“No time to get into that now. They’ll get suspicious if I don’t go out there and chew the fat with ’em. ’Sides, I need a smoke. You two just sit tight. We can talk in the mornin’ maybe.”
Ward left before John could ask him another question. He scrunched up his face in disappointment.
“I can see it now,” Ben said, his voice still pitched to a low whisper.
“What?”
“His resemblance to Jesse. Jake’s a younger copy of his brother.”
“Jesse always scraped his face every morning. Jake’s got a three-day beard. That threw me off.”
“Y
ou reckon we’re going to get out of here alive? Hell, I couldn’t find my way back out if my life depended on it.”
“The way it looks, if Jake plays it straight with us, we’ll ride out with Crudder and the others. Maybe he’ll lead us right to Hobart.”
Ben sucked in a breath, held it for a moment, then let out a long sigh.
“A lot of ifs, you ask me.”
“We have no choice, Ben. We’re in the pickle barrel. At least we have our shootin’ irons strapped back on.”
“Yeah, well, we’re outnumbered, less’n you count Jake Ward.”
“I don’t know if we can count on Jake Ward just yet. He’s green as a willow branch.”
“He wants Hobart bad as we do, Johnny.”
“Maybe. But I don’t know what he’s made of yet. I don’t know if his backbone has iron in it or just tallow.”
“How are you going to find out?” Ben asked, genuinely puzzled.
“The only way you can see a bear’s teeth is to make him mad as hell.”
“You aim to make Jake mad?”
“I’m going to tell him just how Hobart gunned down Jesse. He’ll see it like we saw it and he’ll smell the blood and hear his brother scream. By the time we get to Tucson, I’ll know if we can count on Jake’s help.”
“If we get that far with this bunch,” Ben said.
“We’ll get that far,” John said.
Ben shook his head. “Feels like we’ll be riding straight to hell with these owlhoots. One sniff of who we really are and what we aim to do and they’ll gun us down without batting a damned eye.”
“So play along, Ben. And stay away from Jake.”
“Why?”
“If anything gives us away, it’ll be him. Like I said. He’s green as a young crab apple.”
“You got me worried now, John.”
“Good. Stay that way.”
“You ain’t worried?”
“For the first time in weeks, I feel real good, Ben. These boys are going to lead us straight to Hobart.”
“And then what?”
“And then, I’m going to send Ollie Hobart straight to hell.”
7
JUBAL MEAD PULLED OUT THE MAKINGS FROM HIS POCKET, GRABBING the loop of the string with one tooth as he fished out the papers. He unfolded the packet, wet the tip of his finger, and stuck it to the top layer of thin paper. In his left hand, he formed a trough of the paper. He put the paper packet back in his pocket, stuck his index finger in the sack opening until it widened. He shook tobacco into the paper and leveled it with his thumb. Then he pulled the loose string taut until the sack closed. He put the sack back into his shirt pocket. Then he rolled the paper back and forth until he had the right consistency, folded the short end inward, rolled it up to the other end, held the ends tightly, and licked the seam with his tongue. When he was finished, he stuck the quirly into his mouth.
“You got a lucifer, Cruddy?”
“I gave you a box of matches yesterday, Jubal.”
“Yeah. Left ’em in my other shirt.”
Crudder handed him a small box of matches.
The men smoked, their faces barely lit by the fire inside the hogan. Mead struck a match, lit his cigarette, and handed the box back to Crudder. He looked up at the diamond-strewn sky. It seemed close in the clear air, the Milky Way a vast carpet of silver clusters that blinked like signal mirrors.
“What do you think of those new men, Jubal?” Crudder asked.
“Not much.”
“You think we could use ’em?”
“For what?”
“Ollie wants a bunch of men, he told me. Got something big planned.”
“Ollie scares hell out of me,” Mead said.
“You don’t trust him?”
“About as far as I could throw a damned anvil.”
“He’s fair with his men, I hear.”
“Yeah, then how come he don’t have none?”
“The ones he had with him made some mistakes, got themselves killed.”
“That bothers me some,” Mead said.
“Luck of the draw,” Crudder said. His face was covered with lumps as if he had been bee-stung. The lumps moved when he talked, giving some the impression that there were worms or some other flesh-eating bugs under those doughy bulges.
“Your tally goes a long way with me,” Mead said, his florid face wreathed with blue smoke from his cigarette. He had a barrel chest and a thick neck that had a goiter bulge in it from drinking too much beer and eating too much fat. He was never far away from an open bottle of one kind or another.
“Ollie is a gold hound,” Crudder said.
“Huh?” asked Ward.
“He can smell gold.”
“Oh, I get it,” Mead said. “Like a bloodhound. Only he smells gold.”
“That’s what I mean,” Crudder said, sparks from his cigarette wafting off the tip like golden fireflies.
“Gold has no smell,” Horky said.
“For Ollie it does,” Crudder said. “He don’t dig it or pan it, though. He finds them what does and then takes it. You heard what he done up in Coloraddy?”
“I heard,” Mead said. “Got him quite a poke.”
Ward stiffened at the mention of the massacre that involved the death of his brother. These men did not know he had any connection to that slaughter and robbery. But he was interested in what Crudder had to say about Hobart. He had never met Ollie, but he wanted the man to pay for what he had done to all those people, including his brother, Jesse.
John and Ben came outside, their shadows stretching long ahead of them. The outlaws stopped talking and watched as they came up, joining them under the canopy of stars.
Ben pulled out his pipe, filled the bowl with tobacco, and tamped it tight. Crudder struck a match and held it out to him.
Ben put the pipe in his mouth and leaned forward. Crudder touched the flame to the pipe tobacco. Ben’s cheeks caved in as he drew on the stem.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You don’t smoke, John?” Crudder said.
“Never picked up the habit.”
The other men laughed.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Mead said.
“Yeah,” Ward said, “a sore throat, a morning cough, a bad taste in your mouth.”
All of the man laughed.
“It all goes away with a swaller of whiskey,” Mead said, and the men laughed again.
“We got us a kind of storehouse over yonder,” Crudder said, pointing to one of the adobe dwellings. “You get yourself some candles and pick out an adobe to sleep in tonight.
“They can bunk with me,” Ward said. “I’ve got candles, plenty of room to lay out their bedrolls.”
“All right,” Crudder said. “If they can stomach your snoring, Jake.”
More laughter from the group.
“I don’t snore,” Jake said. “Those are rats you heard.”
“Rats don’t sleep at night,” Mead said. “They’re too busy gnawing at my nuts.”
The men laughed some more.
John thought they were pretty much at ease in the dark canyon with its brooding walls and total isolation. They didn’t act like outlaws, but maybe that was because none of them possessed a conscience. Like Hobart’s men. He couldn’t understand how such men could live happy lives, always on the run, always looking over their shoulders. No jobs, no homes. Maybe the life appealed to certain kinds of men, but not to him. He wanted to get rid of Hobart and hang his gunbelt on a wooden peg and grab a pair of plow handles, turn the earth, and plant seeds. Maybe find a nice girl, marry her, and raise cattle and corn and such. He wasn’t much better off than these owlhoots right now, he thought. He was on the run, too, homeless, rootless, chasing a murdering man who had caused him so much grief.
At the moment, he thought, he was no better than any of the men around him. He just had a different purpose in life, that was all. But maybe he wasn’t any better than they. He wanted to kill a man, rob him o
f his life. The line between him and the outlaws wasn’t so thick after all. In fact, it was as thin as a reed.
“Well, I’m going to turn in,” Crudder said, dropping the last of his cigarette to the ground. He pressed it flat with the heel of his boot and started walking toward one of the dark adobes.
“Good night, Cruddy,” Mead said.
“Yeah, good night,” the others chorused.
“Come on, John and Ben,” Ward said. “We’ll get your bedrolls and get us some shut-eye.”
The group broke up. Horky and Mead slept in the hogan where the cook fire basked, keeping the fire alive during the night. John and Ben carried their bedrolls to Ward’s adobe. He lit candles and they found places to sleep.
Jake lit three candles, handed one each to Ben and John.
“We won’t talk tonight,” Jake said. “Our voices carry too much in this canyon. See you in the morning.”
“Good night, Jake,” John said.
“Good night,” Ben said.
“I wouldn’t try to run off if I were you,” Ward said. “For all his joviality tonight, Crudder would kill you as soon as look at you.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” John said.
“You wouldn’t get far.”
“I know.”
“And one more piece of advice, John. Don’t take your boots off tonight. I killed a bark scorpion yesterday morning in here. Shake out your bedroll in the morning and check it tomorrow night if we’re still here. The little buggers like to hide in blankets, boots, and dark places.”
“Thanks, Jake,” John said. “I never saw a scorpion before. Did you, Ben?”
“Yeah, back in Missouri. Little bitty things. They got a stinger on their tails.”
“They’re as deadly as a rattlesnake,” Ward said. “So watch your step.”
Ben and John scoured the place where they lay their bedrolls before laying them out on the ground.
Ward lay down, placing his pistol close at hand. He blew out his candle and laid it on the ground within easy reach. He turned over and closed his eyes.
Ben and John lay down, their heads close together. John held a finger to his lips and mouthed the word “wait.”
Ben nodded.
John blew out his candle. Ben snuffed his out with his finger, waxing the tip and part of the nail. The oily smoke hung in the air for several moments. John heard Horky and Jubal talking, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Soon, they stopped and it grew quiet.
