Rio Bravo

by Leigh Brackett

  Wheeler felt genuinely concerned. A generous wave of warm feeling for Chance swept over him, mingled with the pleasurable excitement a man can feel when there is big trouble afoot that does not directly involve him.

  He asked, “Who’ve you got helping you?”

  “You’ve seen half of ’em,” Chance said.

  “What? Him there—El Borrachin, and only one other?” Wheeler was appalled. “Who is it?”

  “Stumpy Anderson. He’s guarding the jail.”

  Wheeler groaned. “An old man with a game leg and the town drunk. That’s fine, Chance. That’s real fine. What’s got into you?”

  Chance smiled. “Necessity.”

  He straightened as Dude rode up. Dude looked down at him, the muscles twitching in his cheeks, his hands fussing with the reins. He seemed to have trouble breathing, as though the nerve centers that operated that part of him were not working properly. He glanced at Wheeler as though he hated him. Right now, Dude looked as though he hated the whole world.

  “What about this outfit, Chance? Do we take their guns?”

  Chance said easily, “You got any new men with you, Pat?”

  “No,” said Wheeler, and then amended that, pointing to the kid. “None except Ryan here.”

  Ryan walked his horse closer. Chance looked at him from under the brim of his hat. The kid was slight and slender and cheerful-looking, blond-haired, quietly dressed except for the fancy gunbelt he wore with two big guns hanging on his hips. Chance asked Wheeler, “Where did you sign him on?”

  “Beginning of the trip, in Fort Worth.”

  “What’s he do?”

  Wheeler was about to answer but the kid spoke up in his polite way. “I speak English, Sheriff, if you want to ask me.”

  Chance said gravely. “All right. What do you do?”

  “I’m riding guard.”

  “Kind of young, aren’t you?”

  This time Wheeler stepped in before the kid could answer. “I knew his father in Colorado. The old man was good with a gun. The kid’s a little faster.”

  Chance nodded, looking the kid over, sizing him up. Dude fidgeted in the saddle, waiting, wiping a white sweat off his face.

  Chance said slowly, “He’d better be good if he’s going to keep packing a pair of guns.” He spoke to the kid. “Your father ever tell you that, Colorado? A man only packs two guns for one of two reasons—either he’s looking hard for trouble, or it’s looking hard for him.”

  Wheeler said, “I’ll vouch for him, Chance.” He glared warningly at the kid.

  But the kid was smiling. “If it’s the two guns that bother you, Sheriff, I’ll let you have one of ’em.” He glanced aside at the jail window. “Matter of fact, you can have both of ’em. They wouldn’t do me much good, not with that shotgun pointed my way.”

  Wheeler started and looked at the two small barred windows sunk in the ’dobe wall behind him. The double barrel of a shotgun protruded from one of them. He saw Chance start and look too, and he thought that young Ryan had surprised him with that.

  “Besides,” Ryan was saying, “I don’t want to make trouble.”

  Chance laughed. “You can keep your guns, Colorado. Both of ’em. And if you don’t want trouble don’t start any.”

  “I won’t,” Ryan said, and added, “not unless I tell you first.”

  “Fair enough.” Chance turned to Wheeler. “All right, Pat. Go ahead and put up your wagons.”

  A thought came to Wheeler and he hesitated. The livery stable corrals were behind the hotel and he always parked the wagons in the big open space there, but now this did not seem like such a good idea.

  He said so to Chance. “Lamp oil and dynamite are kinda touchy, especially the dynamite, and I’m hauling enough of it to blow up the town twice. If there’s liable to be any shooting, those wagons would be just as well away from the main street.”

  Dude grunted. It might have been an attempt at laughter. “Take ’em to that open space near Burdette’s warehouse,” he said. “If they’re going to blow that’s as good a place as any.”

  Wheeler looked at Chance, who smiled briefly and said, “Sure, go ahead.”

  Wheeler shrugged and swung himself into the saddle again. He rode off with Ryan to separate the wagons. Burdette’s warehouse stood out on the west edge of town pretty well by itself, and it ought to be as safe a place as any. Wheeler noticed that the people along the street were beginning to come out of their holes.

  He said to Ryan, “You handled yourself all right there, boy.”

  Ryan grinned. “Sheriff looks like a hard man to me. I don’t want to tangle with him. He’s in trouble, ain’t he?”

  “Sure is,” said Wheeler heavily. “He sure as hell is. And nobody with him.”

  “I was just wondering,” said Ryan, “how come a fellow like that raggedy-assed one gets to be a deputy?”

  Wheeler’s answer was profane but not enlightening. He didn’t know either and he couldn’t even guess, unless John T. Chance had gone clean off his head.

  Meanwhile Dude was sitting on his horse watching the wagons lumber off along the street. Chance stood watching Dude. There was a lot of dust. Wheeler’s wrangler was having a hard time holding the remuda now that the mules knew they were close to feed and water.

  Dude wiped some more of the pallid sweat off his face. He said, “I guess I better get back out there and watch the road.”

  Chance said, “You don’t look so good.”

  “I feel great,” Dude said bitterly. “I feel so good I’m going to stop and get a beer before I go. Maybe two beers.”

  Chance said, “I got some inside.”

  “What’s the matter?” Dude said. “Don’t you trust me to stop at two?”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn where you stop,” said Chance, evenly and without rancor. He went up the steps and into the jail.

  Dude sat a moment, with the sun blazing on him and the dust settling on his broken hatbrim and the lean ridges of his shoulders. Then he slid shakily to the ground, threw the reins over the rack, and went in after Chance.

  FOUR

  It was dark and cool inside the jail. Stumpy Anderson pulled his shotgun barrel in through the window bar and turned as Chance came in.

  “Doggone,” he said. “For a minute there I thought I was gonna get to shoot that young feller, but he seen me.”

  Chance swore at him. The old man was all vinegar and brimstone and Chance had learned long ago that the only way to get along with him was to fight him. Otherwise he would tromp all over you.

  “I thought I told you to stay out of sight,” he said, and crossed the room, leaving Stumpy to snarl at his back.

  “There you go,” Stumpy said. “There you go! Never can please you.” He had white hair and a white beard with some dark hairs still in it, all standing out wild around his seamy, bright-eyed face. His left leg was stiff and crooked at the knee. He had had it smashed by a rifle bullet, and the man behind the rifle was a Burdette man with Burdette money in his pocket. Not the kind of a thing a man forgets easily. Stumpy had not forgotten it.

  He said aggrievedly to Chance, “I was just covering you in case there was any trouble.”

  Chance went around the scarred desk where he did such paper work as he was forced to do and took a small pottery jug off the shelf beside the gunrack. “I’d be in a lot more trouble,” he said, “if somebody picked you off while you were showing yourself in that window.”

  Dude came in blinking out of the sunlight. Stumpy roared.

  “You’d be in trouble! What about me if somebody gunned me? Don’t you never think about nobody but yourself?” He turned to Dude, who was struggling with the bolt on the door. “We might as well get used to it. This bastard don’t care for anything but his own skin.”

  The bolt shot home and Dude went over to Chance, ignoring Stumpy, who watched him with shrewd eyes. Chance found a clay cup by the water olla and poured beer into it from the jug. He held it out to Dude, who took it in his t
wo hands and raised it to his mouth, slopping a little over the edge in spite of his care. He drank like a man who had been lost in the desert for days without water.

  “From here on you stay back in there and keep the door locked,” Chance said to Stumpy. He pointed to the barred door that lead to the back part of the jail where the cells were. “I find it open like that again, I’ll fire you.” Stumpy muttered, but he went back through the door. Chance followed him. “Did you fix those windows?”

  Looking back over his shoulder he saw Dude put down the empty cup and pick up the jug, holding it to drink over the rim.

  Stumpy said, “Come and look at ’em. Nailed up tight. Nothin’ could get in, not even a breath of fresh air.” He limped sturdily down the short corridor, carrying the shotgun. Chance followed him.

  “You know what that’s going to do to me?” Stumpy said. “Five, six days locked up in here, breathing the same air as Joe Burdette …”

  Five or six days, Chance thought. It didn’t sound like much, but it felt like a lifetime and was likely to be one. That was the length of time it was going to take for the letter he had given less than an hour ago to Jake Myers, the driver of the weekly stage, to get to the U.S. Marshal who was then in El Paso, plus the time it would take the marshal to ride back to Rio Bravo with help. He did not think Nathan Burdette would care to buck a U.S. Marshal. But an awful lot could happen in five or six days.

  Stumpy was rattling on about the effects on him of close association with Joe Burdette.

  “It’s liable to make a killer out of me, Sheriff, and when they come to try me in court I’ll hold it was your doing, locking me up in here with him.” He stuck his head around the corner. “You can hear me, can’t you, Joe?”

  Chance went past the old man into the cell corridor. This ran across the back of the building. There was an ancient stove at one end with a pile of mesquite roots beside it. There were three cells in it. Two of them were empty. Joe Burdette was in the middle one, lolling sulkily on the bunk. He looked bored, self-assured and resentful. His face was considerably the worse for Chance having used his rifle barrel on it. There were two or three pieces of sticking plaster patched onto his cheeks, and one eye was puffed almost shut. The other one glittered with honest hate.

  He said wearily, “I hear you all right, and I’m glad I won’t have to listen for very long.”

  “That’s gratitude for you,” Stumpy said. “Didn’t I fix up all them cuts and bruises for you, tenderly, like a mother? And that’s all the thanks I get.”

  Joe gave him a rude answer and said to Chance, “Hasn’t Nathan come in to town yet?”

  “No,” said Chance. He looked at the two small windows high in the outer wall. Stumpy had done a good job of boarding them up.

  “Ain’t even heard from him yet?” Joe said.

  “No.”

  Joe smiled. “You will.” He got up and lounged against the bars of the cell door. “And I hope it’s soon. Hell, I might as well be hung as bored to death.” He shouted. “Dude! Hey, Dude, why don’t you come and sit in place of old Windbag here?”

  Dude came into the corridor, carrying the jug. Joe grinned at him.

  “How you holding up, borrachin? You look kind of shaky. That beer won’t do you no good, you’ll be needing something better than that.” He started to go through his pockets. “If you’re still broke, borrachin, I think I got another dollar here …”

  Dude threw the jug at him. It shattered on the bars, spattering Joe with what little beer was left in it. Dude followed it. He took hold of the bars and looked at Joe, who backed off and made a great thing of mopping the drops of beer off his clothes, complaining to Chance. “That’s no way to treat a prisoner, Sheriff. I got rights, you know.”

  Chance said to Dude, “I’ll give you the key any time you want it.”

  Dude let go of the bars. His face was perfectly white. He was smiling, a very odd little smile that Chance had almost forgotten about. “It’d be too easy,” Dude said. “He hasn’t got anybody to back him up now, and he needs at least six behind him to make him feel like a man.”

  Now it was Joe that got white with anger. He glared slit-eyed at Dude’s back as Dude walked away, but he did not say anything.

  Chance said to Stumpy, “If he talks out of turn, throw a pail of water on him.” He went after Dude.

  Stumpy laughed, looking at Joe. “I’ll throw one on him, and then pour another in his bed and let him sleep in it.” He sat down in the old round-backed chair that was against the outer wall of the corridor and laid the big shotgun across his lap. From this position he could watch both Joe in his cell and the short corridor from the front of the building. He took a piece of rag out of his pocket and began polishing the gun, raising it to his shoulder from time to time and sighting along it at Joe. Joe pretended not to notice this but it made him nervous all the same.

  Chance went into the office, closing the barred door behind him. He glanced at Dude, who was standing with his back to Chance.

  “Maybe you better get another beer,” he said. “You kind of wasted some of that last one.”

  Dude laughed. “It wasn’t wasted. I feel fine.” He started for the door. “See you later.”

  A movement in the street outside caught Chance’s eyes and he said sharply, “Hold it, Dude.”

  He reached over and picked up his rifle, which was leaning against the desk, and moved closer to the window. “Somebody’s coming.”

  Dude moved fast to the other window, drawing his gun.

  Outside, all alone in the wide sun-blazing street, a man was walking toward the jail. He was coming slowly. He was wearing a gun but he did not seem to be intending to use it because he was carrying a package in his right hand.

  Dude said through the window, “That’s far enough.”

  The man stopped, squinting at the windows.

  Dude asked, “What do you want?”

  The man held up the package. “Mister Wheeler told me to bring this to the sheriff.” He put up his left hand part way too, so that there should not be any mistake about his peacefulness. Dude looked over at Chance.

  “Were you looking for a package?”

  Chance shook his head and said, “Hell, no.” He thought, This is a trick, Nathan’s trying to get me off guard so he can rush the jail. His finger curled close around the trigger and his gaze probed swiftly at the buildings visible through the window, trying to see hidden men. Then he said, “Oh, Christ, I’d clean forgotten. It’s that present Carlos ordered for his wife.”

  He found he was shaking and cold with a sudden sweat. He was ashamed of himself. He had arrested Joe Burdette less than twenty-four hours ago and already he was beginning to bend under the strain. And nothing had even happened yet. Perhaps that was the trouble. He had expected Nathan Burdette to come charging in with blood in his eye as soon as he heard about Joe, but Nathan had not come. Instead riders had appeared on the cliffs above the town, and on the roads leading in and out of it, watching, stopping everything that moved. The town itself had filled quietly with Burdette men who only watched and made no trouble. And Chance sat at the center of it, waiting because there was nothing he could do but wait, expecting trouble every minute, and getting more and more jumpy because it did not come, feeling Nathan hanging over him like a black storm cloud, powerful enough to crush him any time he chose to, biding his time.

  Chance remembered that as a very young man after the war, Nathan had done well fighting the Comanches. Apparently he hadn’t forgotten any of the tricks.

  Chance said to the man outside, “All right, stay where you are. We’ll be right out.” He went over to the barred door and called to Stumpy. “I’m going over to the hotel for a few minutes.”

  Stumpy poked his head around the corner and grinned. “Take your time. Take the whole day if you want to. Me and Joe are cozy as polecats in a hollow stump.”

  Chance took the key to the barred door out of his pocket and threw it the length of the corridor. “See that yo
u stay that way. And you better keep this back there out of reach.”

  He opened the front door and went out, looking cautiously around, while Dude covered him. Then he covered Dude while he came out and locked the door. The tinny piano clattered in the saloon. Nothing stirred in the street, except a couple of women with baskets on their arms, the usual number of Mexican kids and the familiar little gang of loafers on the porch of the general store. Chance felt foolish standing there with his rifle, peering around expecting somebody to shoot at him.

  Then he saw the man lounging around in front of the Rio Bravo Saloon where he had been since sunup, and he did not feel foolish any more.

  He took the package from Wheeler’s teamster and thanked him for his trouble.

  “No trouble at all, Sheriff,” the man said, and went away as fast as he could without running. Chance smiled briefly. Dude was looking at the lounger on the saloon porch.

  “I see our friend is still on the job.”

  “There’s another one over by the church,” said Chance, and nodded to where a man was standing half hidden in one of the shadowy archways.

  Dude unhitched his horse and started to walk with Chance across the street toward the hotel, leading the horse. He kept watch to one side, Chance to the other, so that nothing could move on a rooftop or a gallery or behind a window or in a doorway without one of them seeing it.

  Dude said, “They want to know what’s going on at the jail. Why don’t we put ’em inside where they could get a real good look?”

  “What’d we arrest them for—standing around? Anyway, there’d just be some more come, and the jail won’t hold ’em all.” He frowned. “Matter of fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if they’d like to get a few in the jail.”

  “Yeah,” said Dude. “I guess that would figure.” They walked toward the hotel, which was newer than the ’dobe buildings and two stories high. Carlos tried to keep it painted, but it was a losing battle. The sun raised it up in blisters and the wind peeled it, and then the blown sand came to scour the boards down clean to a kind of silver color that wasn’t bad at all in itself.