Gun Country

by Ralph Cotton

  “Don’t you concern yourself with what I like or don’t like, Pete,” Sattler said over his shoulder. “I’ll kill anybody that gets in my way, same as any other man in this line of work.” He paused, then added, “Killing that little girl was something that never should have happened. It didn’t make me a dime richer. Did it you?”

  When Sattler’s head turned back toward the open door, on the trail above, Dahl took the opportunity to nudge the big bay farther out of sight and down along the trail toward the cabin.

  “No,” said Duvall. He stood up and walked closer to the open door, stuffing his shirt back into his open trousers. “But Curly Joe likes for us to drop one now and then just to keep folks on their toes. Once word gets around, it shows the next town we ride into that everybody best steer clear and let us alone, else we will put somebody in the dirt.” He grinned crookedly.

  “That’s not what it showed me,” said Sattler. “What it showed me was that from now on, we can forget about ever giving ourselves up and going to prison. All that’s waiting for us is a rope.” As soon as he’d spoken, he shouted out to the woman, “Hurry up down there. We’re all waiting to get back to it.”

  “I’m coming—keep your drawers on!” the woman shouted in reply. But as she dipped water in her hand and washed her forearm, she kept her head lowered and searched the rugged, sloping hillside behind the cabin, looking for her best escape route.

  “Let Curly Joe hear you talking about giving yourself up and you’ll wish somebody would hang you,” Jecker said to Sattler.

  Sattler turned enough to give Jecker a dark stare and say in a threatening manner, “I never said a damn thing about giving myself up, and I’ll burn down any sumbitch who tells Curly Joe that I did.”

  “We’re just talking here,” Jecker said, backing away from the matter. He gave a shrug, with a show of his broad, empty hands. “Alls I’m saying is that Curly Joe figures we’re in this until they ride us down. There’s no giving ourselves up. You should have known that when we joined up.”

  Sattler let it go. He shook his head and took a long swig of whiskey. When he lowered the bottle and let out a hiss, he wiped his mouth and said, “Killing innocent bystanders is bad business. The whore says that little girl’s pa is J. Fenwick Hatton.”

  “Do you mean James Fenwick Hatton of the Western Pacific Rail Lines?” Jecker asked, his expression turning to one of dread.

  “Yep, one and the same,” said Sattler. “He also owns one of the biggest cattle operations in this whole territory. His girl was in town shopping with the family’s housemaid. Hatton and his wife were off somewhere. But they’re back by now, I expect, to bury their daughter—knowing it’s Curly Joe’s gang who killed her in the street.”

  “So that means . . .” Duvall let his words trail as he contemplated what Sattler had said.

  “It means, this time Curly Joe has gone and killed the wrong innocent bystander,” Sattler said, finishing his words for him. “Hatton has a bunch of his men on our trail right now. You can count on it.”

  “A bunch of men?” Pete Duvall ventured a nervous laugh. “What, you mean a posse of range hands? I believe we can fight our way through them, no trouble at all.” He looked around at Jecker and at a silent Chicago gunman named Chester Goines, also known as Big Chicago, for support. Jecker only gave him a worried look. Goines, who had sat quietly listening, continued to do so with a stonelike stare, his black derby hat cocked jauntily on his forehead. Finally he offered, “I wasn’t with you on that job, men, so I’m not worried about it.”

  “But you’re with us now,” said Jecker. “If somebody comes looking for our blood, you won’t run out on us, will you?”

  Big Chicago gave him a look. “I’ve never run out on a pard in my life. I don’t care if Hatton or anybody else sends an army of saddle bums and ranch hands. I’ll stick.”

  “If you think a powerful man like J. Fenwick Hatton only has a few saddle bums and ranch hands working for him, you’re not long for this earth, Chicago,” said Sattler. He turned toward the creek in the evening gloom and called out, “Get on back up here, whore, before I come drag you back by the hair.” He looked back and forth along the darkening creek bank. “Where the hell is she?”

  “A man like Hatton gets whatever kind of help he’s willing to pay for,” Jecker put in, looking around at the faces of Duvall and Goines. “In a case like this, his daughter and all, I’d say he’d hire the devil in hell to ride us down, if the devil’s for hire.”

  “Damn it, the whore’s gone!” said Sattler. He reached inside the open door, snatched his gun belt from a wall peg and slung it over his bare shoulder. “Come on—help me find her!” Seeing the other three rising too slowly to suit him, he cursed, turned and bounded down off the porch and out across the rocky yard.

  A hundred yards from the cabin, the woman heard them coming, running fast. “Oh God!” They were onto her now, she knew, gasping for breath as she pulled herself upward. They would catch her and they would kill her—

  “Stop, whore,” Arliss Sattler demanded, “or I’ll cut your damn throat!”

  She clawed and dragged and kicked her way farther up the steep, rocky hillside, making little headway, like someone trying to run in the midst of a bad dream. She wore no shoes and no clothes, save for the wet, flimsy blouse she’d managed to pull over her head on her way. The whiskey, some of which she’d drunk willingly and some of which had been forced upon her, had her struggling to clear her mind.

  In what seemed as if only a second later, she heard boots pounding right up behind her through the loose, shifting gravel. “Where do you think you’re going, whore?” said Sattler, grabbing her from behind by her blouse.

  “Turn me loose,” she pleaded drunkenly as the blouse ripped up the back and became a tangle of torn cloth around her neck and under her arm.

  Being larger, more powerful, more sober and more able to run across the rocky ground because of his boots, Sattler had overtaken her easily. He held her firmly as the two slid down a few feet through the sharp, loose gravel. “Yeah, I’ll turn you loose,” he said roughly. He threw her over onto her back and slapped her hard across her face. The world seemed to explode inside her head.

  Behind them, halfway across the yard, Jecker called out, “Give it to her right there, Arliss. Damn her deceitful ass.”

  “Break her damned neck,” Duvall shouted drunkenly, the three men stopping only a few feet apart, their guns drawn and cocked.

  “Step aside,” Jecker called out to Sattler. “I’ll put a bullet in her leg—see how she runs then.”

  “Uh-uh,” said Sattler, dragging the woman to her feet. “She agreed to come out here and spend the night. That’s what she’s getting paid for and that’s what she’s going to do.” He gave her a hard shove down the few remaining feet of rocky hillside and back across the boulder-strewn yard.

  “We always get what’s coming to us, woman,” Jecker said as she staggered past him. He slapped a hard open palm on her bare buttocks.

  “I say we all do her right here, right now,” said Duvall. He swung an open palm at her behind in the same manner, but missed and almost fell before catching and righting himself.

  “No,” said Sattler, “get her inside and keep her there.” As he spoke he looked around warily at the high ridges above them. “There’s something out here that gives me the willies.” He raised his Colt from its holster and gave the woman a rough jab forward with the hard steel barrel. But as she staggered toward the cabin, he kept the gun out as if he needed the security of it in hand.

  Inside the cabin, Sattler gave the woman another hard shove that sent her tripping to the edge of a low-standing cot topped with a thin, dirty blanket. “Get started, whore,” he said coldly.

  “Plea-please, Arliss,” the woman stammered, gesturing a hand up and down her scratched, scraped and battered body. “Look at me. I’m all dirty. I’m bleeding. Let me get cleaned up some.”

  “Naw, we already tried that. Remember?” said
Sattler. “Now hit that cot and get your heels up,” he demanded. Without turning to the others behind him, he said, “Goines, get over here. It’s your turn.”

  But the Chicago gunman neither stepped forward nor replied. Jecker and Duvall both looked back at the wide-open doorway, seeing no sign of Goines, but hearing the sound of hooves pounding away in the growing darkness.

  “Where the hell is Big Chicago?” Sattler asked, turning himself toward the waning sound of the hoofbeats.

  The three froze in place as the door swung shut with a loud screech. From behind the door a tall figure in a long black riding duster stood against the cabin wall, a Winchester rifle in his left hand. He held it at belly level on the three stunned gunmen. In his right hand he held a black-handled Colt cocked and aimed in the same manner.

  “What the . . . ?” said Sattler, his Colt still in his hand. Jecker and Duvall both still held their guns cocked and ready.

  “Hey . . . ,” Sattler managed to say in a calm, even tone of voice, “I bet you’re one of the men Hatton sent to take us down.” To Duvall he said, “See, Pete? What’d I just tell you? This is what comes from killing bystanders.”

  “Yeah,” Duvall said, “I expect you were right about that.”

  Beside Duvall, Jecker took a slow, measured step sideways, noting how the barrel of the stranger’s Winchester followed right along with him. “Yeah, but he only sent one man to take us in? That doesn’t strike me as too smart on Hatton’s part.”

  “He didn’t send me to take you in,” Dahl offered softly. He knew that having their guns in their hands would give them confidence, make them think they had an edge. That was all right. He’d anticipated it. He wasn’t here to talk them down and capture them. He was here only to kill them—nothing more.

  “You sure enough picked a tight place for a fight here,” said Sattler, gesturing with his dark eyes about the small, confined cabin. “Like as not, none of us is going to live through this.”

  “Nothing’s perfect,” Dahl said in a calm, almost soothing tone.

  “This woman will die too,” said Jecker, getting worried, looking down the Winchester barrel from only a few feet away. He felt his whiskey wear off quickly.

  “Maybe,” Dahl said softly. “We’ll have to see how it goes.”

  Duvall started to speak, but before he could form a word, a streak of blue-orange flame exploded from the barrel of the Winchester. There was nothing to talk about, Dahl knew. His bullet lifted Jecker backward and slammed him against the wall above the cot. The woman screamed and tried to roll away as the dead outlaw’s blood sprayed her and his body fell limply on top her.

  Sattler and Duvall instantly acted as one, their Colts coming up fast and firing. From beneath Jecker’s body, the woman saw a streak of fire reach out from Sattler’s Colt and seem to explode on the stranger’s chest. But the stranger wasn’t the least put off. He fired the black-handled Colt twice, thumbing the hammer back for each shot, taking quick but accurate aim as Duvall fanned three wild shots straight at him, kicking up pine splinters on the wall beside his head.

  Dahl’s first shot hit Sattler in the heart and sent him backward onto the foot of the cot, causing the woman to scream and kick wildly, as two dead men were now on top of her. As the cot broke under the weight, Dahl’s second shot, deliberate and well aimed, hit Duval squarely in his forehead as the black outlaw wildly fanned his fourth and final shot, and sprawled dead on the dirt floor.