by Luke Short
Riling poured two drinks, and they lifted their glasses, nodded to each other and drank. Afterward Riling took one of the cigars, lighted it, inhaled its tip to a glow and clenched it in his teeth. All the while his face was bland, but Jim knew he was studying his approach.
In other times Jim had had to steel himself against the breezy persuasiveness in Tate; it had been a hard thing to be stubborn in the face of his reason. All that was gone now; he knew his man.
Jim sat indolently in his chair, eyes veiled, amused and watchful and faintly excited. He had never been farther from anger, never more certain of what this night would bring. It was this last that he looked to with a deep pleasure.
Tate leaned back in his chair and began: “On the level, Jim, what are you doin’ here?”
“Runnin’ out,” Jim murmured.
Riling frowned. “You must have a pretty good reason.”
“Two. Their names are Shotten and Riordan.”
Riling grinned swiftly. “I heard about that. I never saw you take water from a pair like that.”
“No, you never did.”
“Then why?”
Jim moved his glass in a circle, looking steadily at Riling and talking slowly. “Those lovelies were primed to kill Lufton, Tate, when I stepped in.”
“I’m glad you did.”
Jim smiled faintly. “Are you? When I told Shotten to drift he mentioned that you’d told him to go through with it.”
They stared at each other a long moment. If Riling was cornered it didn’t show on his face. He said finally, “When I hired Shotten and explained the layout I told him the wage I’d pay. He was surprised at the amount. I said it was big because sooner or later he’d likely face a shoot-out with Lufton, and I didn’t expect any man to take that on for fifty dollars a month.” He paused. “He remembered that and saw his chance. That answer your question?”
“I guess you think so,” Jim murmured.
Riling leaned forward and gestured sharply with his hand. “Jim, what the hell’s eatin’ you? We’ve got more than a box of marbles at stake.”
“You have, you mean.”
“That means you quit?”
“That means I have quit,” Jim corrected.
Riling settled back slowly in his chair, his troubled gaze on Jim. He shook his head in puzzled disbelief and then he sat up again. “Look, let me talk. Lufton’s not dead; he’s not even hurt. Last night we ran off his two herds, scattered them from hell to breakfast. He can round ’em up before the deadline only if he uses his whole crew and we let his crossed herd alone. We’ve got him over a barrel.”
“You’ve swung it then,” Jim said. “Why bother about me?”
“I need you. Now’s the time I’ve got to have you. Can’t you see that?”
Jim shook his head, and Riling leaned forward, talking in a low, earnest voice. “Even if I could ride into Blockhouse, you think Lufton would deal with me? You think he’d sell me his herd? You think he wouldn’t get word to Sweet and Big Nels and the others that I’d used them to blackmail him into a giveaway deal?”
“He’d rather lose the herd than deal with you,” Jim said.
Riling’s palm came down on the table. “Exactly. But yesterday you stepped in and made a live man out of one that was as good as dead. Lufton won’t forget that. When you ride up and speak your piece he’ll listen. Tell him the way you look at the layout. He can’t get his stuff off the reservation before the deadline unless we let him alone. His cattle are lost. But you’ll offer him a fifth of what his herd’s worth. The nesters will let you alone as long as you take the cattle out of the country. So he can beat the deadline, make delivery at the Massacre, and you’ll have men to take them out of the country. What about it?”
Jim picked up a cigar, studied it idly and said, “No dice.”
“Why not?”
Jim looked at him, and his gray eyes were smoky. “It’s something you wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“No, you wouldn’t understand it unless I made it pretty simple.”
“All right, make it simple.”
Jim said gently, “It starts with your double cross of some poor jug-headed nesters. It goes on to your hirin’ gun hands, Tate—me along with the others. It leads up to your try for Lufton yesterday. It goes past that to the death of Anse Barden’s son. It winds up right here, Tate, with a man outside that window waitin’ to see if I’ll go back with you or he’ll shoot me in the back.” He leaned forward a little. “It all adds up to this,” he murmured quietly. “I’ve seen dogs that wouldn’t claim you for a son, Riling.”
Riling sat erect. He looked briefly at Jim, bitter judgment in his eyes, and then he reached for his glass. He was smiling as he knocked it off the table onto the floor and put his feet under him to rise.
Jim knew the glass was the signal, and he put both hands on the edge of the table and shoved it against Riling’s belly. Tate went over backward, clutching at the table, and Jim lunged for him just as the sound of pounding feet in the street came to him. Jim landed on Riling’s chest and slashed down at the gun Riling was dragging from its holster. Riling grunted with pain, and the gun slipped out of his fingers. Jim palmed it up, came off Riling and shot first at the overhead kerosene lamp. It blinked out, and he turned the gun on the doorway and emptied it, the shots clattering into the wood and moving the doors. Then he threw the gun through the door and backed against the rear wall, waiting in the sudden dark.
He saw Riling, framed in the front window, come to his feet, and Jim smashed into him, sinking a blow into his belly and sending him crashing on top of the table. He moved back against the side wall now, watching both the door and the spot where Riling went down. The gunman outside was held there by uncertainty. He heard Riling come erect again and he picked up a chair and hurled it at him. The rungs cracked like kindling as they broke against Riling, and he swore in a wild, anguished voice. Jim picked up another chair and hurled it, and this one missed, catching the top of the bar and skidding into the stacked glasses behind. They fell with a musical, crashing cascade, and then Jim saw the light approaching from the lobby. It framed the door dimly, and he knew that as soon as there was light in the saloon the man outside would have a target. He moved down the wall and caught Riling’s silhouette in the doorway. He was standing there like a wary bull, head down, thick shoulders hunched, listening, not even intending to run.
Jim smiled at that and came at him. Riling heard him and whirled and lashed out with a blow that caught Jim on the head and seemed to split it. But his momentum carried him into Riling, shoulder first, and they both slammed into the bar with a wall-shaking crash. The picture of the unclad woman above the bar fell unheard into the bottles. The small bar tilted against the combined weight of them and then overturned into the back bar, bringing down all the bottles with a booming jangle that continued for seconds.
Riling’s back was pinned against the bar with Jim’s weight, and Jim slugged wildly at his face. Riling raised a knee in his groin and flung him away, spinning him against the uptilted bar. Jim stepped on a bottle, and it rolled under his foot and he went down, and his bracing hand fell on the jagged edge of a broken glass. The pain of it shocked up his arm, and he came to his feet, crouched, barely ready to meet Riling’s rush. The impact shook the breath out of him, and now Jim was dimly aware that there was light in the room. He even heard the man with the lamp clatter down the stairs, and then Riling wrapped his thick arms around him and bent him backward.
Jim strained every muscle to break that hold, hearing Riling’s savage grunting, the shifting of their feet. The room began to go dim again, and Jim struggled against Riling’s bone-crushing bear hug. His arms were pinned against his chest, useless, and the pressure that Riling kept increasing seemed ready to break them at the elbows. Slowly Jim’s back was arching. Riling had his chin in the V of Jim’s throat and was bearing down, bending his back. They fumbled for a footing then, and the room pinwheeled before Jim’s eyes.
A kind of panic seized him, and he stomped savagely on Riling’s feet. He felt Riling’s foot grind under his heel, and then the pressure lessened, and Jim raised a knee into Riling’s groin and twisted away, pushing against Riling’s chest with his numbed arms.
And then they were parted, both sucking in great gagging breaths of air. It was then Jim looked beyond Riling’s shoulder and saw Riordan standing just inside the swing doors. His small shadowed face, thin and wicked, was almost smiling. His gun was trained on the bartender in the doorway.
Riling tramped in again now, swinging great slogging blows that Jim couldn’t smother. He took them on the chest and face, and they jarred him clear to the base of his spine, and always he kept remembering to keep Riling’s back to Riordan.
He felt his own back against the wall now. Bracing himself, he drove a smashing blow into Riling’s face. It raked his cheekbone and skidded and ripped his ear, and then Jim fell into him, hugging his arms, dead weary and searching for air at the very depths of his lungs. They rested that way a moment, too exhausted to move, drawing deep within them for some strength. A kind of stubborn, killing anger was in Jim now; he didn’t care about Riordan or about the bartender or about any of them during that exhausted pause.
Then he raised his shoulder suddenly and he heard Riling’s teeth clack, and he lifted the whole weight of his weary body into a shove. It caught Riling off balance, and he went over backward and dragged Jim with him, and they fell with a thundering crash among the strewn chairs. Jim sensed what Riling’s next maneuver would be and spread his legs so that when Riling tried to pull him off with a great heaving twist he failed. Jim crawled full astride him, taking Riling’s punishing, awkward blows, and he was hammering wildly at Riling’s face with the side of his hand, as if he were driving nails. Riling gathered himself for one great heave, and Jim felt it coming. He grabbed Riling’s ears and alternately lifted and pounded Riling’s head against the floor until he did not have strength to do it longer. Riling had ceased struggling now. Jim fell forward, deadbeat. Riling’s battered face was under his chest, and Jim lay there on top of him, breathing great shuddering gasps of air that would not fill his lungs.
Behind the dead weariness he knew that Riordan was waiting for him to sit up and he cared now, but he could not move. Then he heard Riordan’s voice, close, felt the kick in his ribs.
“All right, get off him.” After the words came that slow, grinding wheeze that was like gears meshing. It was Riordan’s cough.
Jim put both hands on the floor and raised his head. He was looking at Riordan’s legs. Between them he saw the swing door begin to inch open, and then Riordan kicked him.
He caught Jim in the side, and the force of his kick lifted Jim off Riling and rolled him over on his back onto the sawdust. Jim had one bitterly hating moment when he saw Riordan’s gun rise and level down at him, and he even heard the shout of protest from the bartender.
Then a gun hammered deafeningly in the room, and before Jim understood Riordan had fallen on him. His light, sick body dropped across Jim’s feet and then rolled off, turned completely over and was still. Jim came to his knees.
He knelt there a moment on all fours, looking at Riordan without comprehension. Then he grabbed the edge of a table and tried to haul himself to his feet and fell back, taking the table with him. It was the bartender who dragged him to his feet, and then Jim looked, saw and understood.
There, just inside the door, gun at his side, stood Anse Barden. It was his shot that had downed Riordan.
Jim dropped into a chair and folded his arms on the table and put his head there, letting the sickness of exhaustion and violence ride him.
Barden spoke sharply from the door, an order to the others. “Hold it. Give him time.”
Slowly Jim raised his head and fought to his feet, steadying himself. Riling lay on his back, his battered, bloody face turned toward Riordan, who lay small and shapeless on his face ten feet away.
Barden said dryly, “Can you make your horse?”
Jim nodded, and Barden moved his head. “Get out.”
Jim picked up his hat off the floor and tramped slowly toward the door. He felt beaten and caved in and gutted, and yet in spite of it there was something he had to say to Barden.
He stopped beside him and put a hand on the doorframe to steady himself and said, “Why’d you do it?”
Barden spat and laid his unfriendly glance on Jim. “I’ve always wanted to shoot one of you, and he was the handiest. Get out!”
Jim went out through the door and wondered if he could make it to the stable behind the blacksmith shop where his horse was.
Barden stayed there in the doorway, gun at his side, watching the bartender and the man with the split vest. The lamp on a table laid a bright wedge of light on the floor that included Tate Riling. The sight of his battered, bloody face gave Anse Barden an obscure satisfaction. It was something he could treasure, a satisfying memory.
When he heard Jim Garry’s horse vanish into the night moments later, he said, “I don’t want to be followed,” and backed out the door.
Then he broke and ran for his horse, and once on him, he turned south toward the Long Reach. Nobody followed him.
Chapter Seven
From his post atop the limestone outcrop above the Blockhouse, Ted Elser saw the rider approaching from the east. Ted considered him for a moment and then slipped down to his horse below, mounted and put him past the Blockhouse.
He met the rider at the edge of the cottonwoods, his rifle slacked easily across his saddle. There was a moment before recognition when Elser dumbly marveled at the man’s appearance. His bloody shirt was in ribbons, and great livid bruises showed on his broad chest and flat belly. His leaned face was swollen oddly on one cheekbone, and his lips were thickened at one corner of his mouth. The hands atop the saddle horn were clumsily folded, and Elser noted that they were raw across the knuckles. But it was the gray eyes, defiant still through their weariness, that Elser remembered, and his face hardened.
“Ain’t you Jim Garry?”
“Yes. I want to see Lufton.”
Elser shook his head. “You damned saddle tramp,” he said quietly. “Get out of here—and quick.”
Jim Garry didn’t move, only said, “Let him kick me off. Take me to him.”
“I don’t even need orders from him to cut down on you. Get out!” He swung his rifle hip high and cocked it, and still Garry didn’t move. Elser was baffled and angry too. He’d meant what he said, and still Garry acted as if he didn’t believe the threat was serious.
“Do I have to blow you out of the saddle?” Elser asked softly.
“I reckon you do.”
Elser debated with himself a moment. Garry had a six-gun, but Ted doubted if his hands were in any shape to unlimber it in a hurry.
“Lufton’s gone,” he said finally.
“I’ll wait for him. You can take my gun.”
“Maybe I’d better,” Elser said pointedly. “Both the girls are home.”
He saw Garry flush under that gibe. He pulled his horse around, lifted Jim’s gun out and then gestured toward the house.
Jim put his tired horse in motion, riding under the cottonwoods past the long veranda. When he was beyond the kitchen door he heard it open, and Amy Lufton stepped out.
Jim nodded to her and touched his hat, and Elser said, “He wants to see your dad, Miss Amy. I’ll keep him in the bunkhouse.”
Jim rode on to the bunkhouse and reined up. For a moment he made no move to dismount, for he doubted if his legs would hold him. Summoning up the decision, he swung out of the saddle, holding onto the horn. His knees gave way, and he hung there a few seconds and then braced himself and stood up.
Elser watched all this with silent curiosity. When Jim looked at him inquiringly Elser gestured with Jim’s gun to the bunkhouse. He followed Jim in and watched him sink wearily onto the stump bench that sat by the table in the middle of the bunk-lined room. Leaning up against the doorjamb, he
watched Garry look around, finally put his elbows on his knees and lace his fingers together. Garry was looking out the window, utterly patient.
Ted said, “It wasn’t one of our boys mussed you up, was it?”
Garry looked at him. Every time Elser saw those eyes he got mad again. That day when Miss Amy almost shot him Garry’s eyes held the same expression. It was a kind of insolence, as if the man didn’t have the grace or understanding to be ashamed or afraid, and Elser believed it was so.
“No,” Garry said slowly. “No, that was somebody else.”
Ted heard a step behind him and looked around and then stepped out of the doorway. Amy Lufton came in. Garry stood up and took off his hat. Elser saw a deep ugly cut in the palm of his hand as it rose to his hat. Garry’s dark hair, once uncovered, was matted with sweat and blood.
Amy said, “Sit down. You’ve been in a fight.”
“I’m lookin’ for your father,” Jim said. He sat down gratefully.
“He’s—”
“Careful, Miss Amy,” Ted warned. “I don’t trust him or anything about him. It don’t matter to him where your father is.”
Amy looked annoyed. “But what difference can it make?”
“He shot at you once.”
“He also saved my life once,” Amy said evenly. “I’d like to talk to him, Ted.”
Still looking suspicious, Ted Elser stepped outside, and Amy came over to Jim. She was wearing a faded blue cotton house dress, and her sleeves were pushed up to her elbows, revealing the golden brown of her arms. Her hair was a little awry, as if she had been interrupted in the middle of work and forgotten to push it off her forehead.
Her scrutiny of Jim was quicker than Ted’s. She said, “He’s all right. He didn’t know about that in town.”
