Bullets in the Sun

by Robert J. Horton

  First Skyhorse Publishing edition published 2015 by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency

  Copyright © 2011 by Golden West Literary Agency

  “Bullets in the Sun” first appeared as a six-part serial in Street and Smith’s Western Story Magazine (3/8/31-5/2/31). Copyright © 1931 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1959 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Acknowledgment is made to Condé Nast Publications, Inc., for their co-operation. Copyright © 2011 by Golden West Literary Agency for restored material.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Print ISBN: 978-1-62087-824-8

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62914-893-9

  Printed in the United States of America

  Chapter One

  For a wicked town, Sunrise had the sweetest name and the most ideal location of any cluster of weather-beaten false fronts and board shacks in the Crazy Butte country, which meant the east Teton range. It was as if some evil genius had set it down, ready-made, in its idyllic setting, as a lure—a trap for the unwary who would find its enticing beauty a mirage.

  Between the resorts and other buildings that lined its short main street grew towering cottonwoods, whose graceful branches arched and weaved and purred in the wandering winds. A stream, crystal-clear, meandered through it, its banks green and sprinkled with nodding willows. And on all sides the plains rolled away in waves of gold to splash in purple breakers against the hills. Over all this, ten miles to eastward, Crazy Butte reared its rose-and-turquoise crown.

  It was as though Nature strove to draw a veil of camouflage about the town’s rough exterior. For Sunrise was notoriously bad, outrageously wicked, reckless, and as wide open as the arching blue vault of the sky.

  And if an evil genius had seen fit so to place the town, then that genius also had chosen to put Big Tom Lester at the head of it. In Sunrise, Tom Lester’s word was the only approach to law. His was the largest resort, the Red Arrow, and he dominated most of the others. He boasted acquaintance with every outlaw, cut-throat, killer, rustler, gambler, and tinhorn in the vast Crazy Butte district. He possessed a flaming tongue and wore a ready gun. It was said he had his clutching fingers deep in the spoils of every band operating north of the Teton River. Men who could beat him to the draw he bent to his will by the sheer ferocious force of his personality. He was as big physically as he was powerful otherwise, black-eyed, with ruddy veins tracing intricate patterns on his cruel face, thick-lipped, square-jawed, aggressive, malignant.

  At some time or other, sooner or later, every shady character that came into the Crazy Butte region drifted to Sunrise and into the Red Arrow to report. The resort boasted the longest bar north of the Missouri, drink of volcanic strength, every conceivable gaming device, a dance floor and women to keep it busy, limitless poker, and any kind of a welcome a newcomer might desire. Forty feuds had been shot out in the street in front of it and in the space between its near wall and the corrals behind it. The Red Arrow, then, was the hot spot in the wildest town between the Missouri and the line.

  On this warm May night, Sunrise was thronged with the first big influx of visitors after the tardy retreat of winter from the north ranges.

  Big Tom stood at the lower end of his long bar, a black cigar thrust between his thick lips, his pudgy fingers beating a tattoo on the surface before him. The bar was lined three deep. Card tables were filling and other games drawing a patronage that indicated capacity business by midnight. Big Tom’s eyes gleamed with a fierce light of exultation. This was his kingdom.

  A slight, wasp-like man, tanned and wrinkled, beady-eyed, glided through the throng, twisting and sidling like a snake until he reached Big Tom Lester’s side. He hardly came up to the big man’s shoulder, and Lester did not look down at him but inclined his head.

  “Mills is in town,” said the small man in a voice that barely carried to Big Tom’s ear.

  The Red Arrow proprietor showed no flash of interest. But he now looked down into the other’s eyes. “Where?” he asked. “Who’s with him?”

  “Just put up his horse,” replied the small man. “He’s alone. Must have rode clear in from Milton, way he looked. Dust, an’ sweat, an’ . . .”

  “Go keep an eye on him, Porky,” the larger man commanded. “He’ll be comin’ to see me. Keep this to yourself an’ I don’t want him bothered.”

  When the wasp-like figure slipped away, Big Tom motioned to a bartender who quickly served him a drink. He toyed with his glass, his eyes slightly narrowed, a thin furrow of thought showing above his bushy brows. Then he tossed off the libation and waited. After a time he raised his empty glass a few inches from the bar and put it down.

  A man at the upper end of the long counter detached himself from some companions and made his way leisurely down to Big Tom’s station. This man was dressed after the manner of a fancier of the gaming tables. He was dark and handsome, smooth-shaven, with flashing brown eyes, and a smooth, satiny skin. Diamonds flashed about him. When he arrived at Big Tom’s side, he crooked a finger at the man in the white coat nearest them as a signal for a drink.

  “Porky tells me Mills is in town,” said Big Tom in his ordinary voice. “Do you know anything?”

  “Not a thing,” said the other. “Nothing big has been pulled this spring, so far.”

  Big Tom scowled. “Well, Farlin, there’s something behind it, you can lay to that. An’ this is the first time he ever came out here alone. That means something.”

  Farlin pursed his lips. He put a hand above his right ear where the hair was gray. “Alone, eh? I don’t believe it.”

  “Porky’s word is pretty good,” said Big Tom curtly. “But why . . . that’s what I would like to know.”

  “Here’s one that can’t tell you,” said Farlin coolly. “I’ve never seen anything sensible about the law yet.”

  “That’s all right to say in Sunrise.” Big Tom frowned. “But Mills isn’t such a fool. If Porky says he’s alone, he is alone, an’ it takes something besides nerve to drag Mills here by his lonesome.”

  Farlin rolled a brown-paper cigarette with white, tapering fingers, steady as steel. “Overconfidence,” he suggested, sliding the edge of the paper along his tongue.

  “Mills ain’t that kind,” growled Big Tom Lester.

  “Then he has some men cached around here somewhere,” Farlin decided, touching the flame to his smoke.

  “What good would that do him?” asked Lester crossly.

  “That’s just it.” Farlin nodded. “An’ what good would it do him to try to bring a bunch of men in here? He’s got too much sense to attempt that. He’s safer without ’em.”

  A second line traced a seam across Big Tom’s forehead. “It seems that way,” he conceded. “Pass the word around that I don’t want him noticed if he comes in here, an’ he’s pre
tty sure to come here before the night’s over.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Farlin. “Is Porky trailing him?”

  “Porky’s outside,” was the reply. “He’ll likely slip me a sign. Better stir along. I reckon everybody here doesn’t know him.”

  “But plenty do,” was Farlin’s soft rejoinder as he moved away.

  * * * * *

  An hour later Big Tom started as a tall figure loomed at his side.

  “’Evening, Tom,” said a cool, drawling voice. “Warm for May.”

  The resort proprietor turned his head and surveyed the speaker coldly. “Safer to come in the front way, Mills,” he said crisply.

  “Shorter by the back,” said Sheriff Mills. “And your man Porky didn’t have a chance to sneak a signal. You know, Tom, sometimes I think Porky ain’t so smart.”

  “What’ll you have to drink?” asked Big Tom with a scowl.

  “Same as yourself,” drawled the official. “I wouldn’t risk the common stock, Tom.”

  Lester bit his lip and signaled the bartender. “Now,” he said, when they had been served, “let’s have it down the alley.”

  “You mean the drink.” Mills smiled, raising his glass. “We’ll talk in your office.”

  The sheriff had been the cynosure of stealthy eyes. By this time every man in town that knew him knew he was there. But none stared at him directly. The two finished their drinks and turned into Big Tom’s private office behind the end of the bar.

  The resort proprietor proffered cigars and Mills accepted one without hesitation. “Tom, you know how to pick good whiskey, good cigars, an’ good locations,” he said as he lit the weed and blew a fragrant ring of smoke aloft.

  “You ought to be glad I can pick the last,” said Lester dryly.

  “It shows you have judgment, anyway,” was Mills’s comment.

  “I don’t bother you none out here,” Lester snapped.

  “Not directly,” Mills drawled. “Not directly, Tom. And you’ve got a good crowd for so early.”

  “It’s a long time since you’ve been out this way,” said the other. “I don’t reckon you just come for the ride.”

  Mills shook his head. “I’m getting too old to ride for pleasure, Tom. Any of the big boys up north yet?”

  Big Tom’s eyes slowly narrowed. “If there’s one thing you didn’t ride out here for, it’s to get information,” he said darkly. “You know me better than that.”

  “Oh, I have had information,” said Mills, waving his cigar. “But them it concerned should have known better than to cross Big Tom Lester. You’re not above that sort of thing, Tom.”

  Lester’s eyes were glittering, and he bit the sharp answer from his tongue. “They’re all big fellows here, one way or another,” he managed to get out.

  “They are,” Mills nodded. “I agree with you. And taken together they make up the biggest bunch of cut-throats between here and doomsday.”

  Big Tom met his gaze steadily. “We’ll let that go as it stands,” he said with a faint smile in which there lingered no trace of mirth.

  “As I knew it would,” said Mills sternly. “Now, Tom, there’s a big fellow on his way up here you haven’t met. You won’t like him, because he won’t be afraid of you. If you call him, he’ll just naturally tell you to go to blazes . . . maybe give you a ticket, and send that mean little gunfighter of a Porky along with you. Now, I see you’re interested. Who wants the information now?”

  Lester’s face went white, then black, then white again. “You’re . . . you’re takin’ a big chance, Mills,” he rasped. “What’re you doin’ it for?”

  “I’m not taking a chance in the world,” replied the sheriff coldly. “I’d be taking a chance, maybe, if I rode in here with a force of men. But, alone, I have you to protect me. Don’t think I came here without certain parties knowing my destination. You couldn’t kill me and get away with it, and you know it. I’m just wearing’ a gun because it’s part of my equipment.”

  Lester half rose, and then sat down hard in his chair by the desk.

  “I’ll bite,” he shot through his teeth. “Who’s this big one you’re spoutin’ about?”

  “I thought so,” said Mills with evident satisfaction. “The gent’s name is Bovert. Ever hear of him?”

  Big Tom had gripped the arms of his chair. His eyes popped. “Not up here!” he ejaculated, incredulous.

  “Why not?” Sheriff Mills raised his brows. “There are soft pickings to be had here, are there not? Isn’t this a loose town? Isn’t this a wide-open joint? Don’t you welcome visitors who are . . . ?”

  Lester interrupted with an oath. “If Bovert comes here,” he snarled, “if he comes here . . .”

  “You’ll gather him in, if you can,” Mills put in mildly. “He’s bad medicine, Tom. He can shoot a bullet in the air and split it with a second shot. He’s got hair on his head and brains inside it. You’ll surely be nice to him, I reckon.”

  Lester made no reply to this. Then: “Why did you come here to tell me he was comin’?” he asked, his face dark with suspicion.

  “Bovert is no friend of mine,” said Mills. “I couldn’t send word, so I had to come myself. I want to ask you to lay off him when he comes. Now, don’t ask me why. I want your promise to let him alone, unless . . . no, I want your promise to let him strictly alone. Do I get it?”

  Big Tom stared. “You want him whitewashed?” he gasped. “Why, he’s worse than any of the crowd here.”

  “That’s why I want him left alone,” said Mills evenly. He surveyed the other under knitted brows. “I don’t know as I ever asked anything of you before,” he said slowly. “If I ever did, I’ve forgotten it. It’s out of the way over here, and they can’t hear the echoes in the county seat. Not that I’d be scared about my job,” he added hastily, “for this county can have my badge any time it wants it. I’ve bothered you some, and maybe I’ll bother you again. I don’t figure I’ll be under any obligations in return for this favor. But I guess you’ll understand that we . . . that I’ll appreciate it.”

  “Oh . . . .” Big Tom waved a hand in a generous gesture. “We understand each other. How’d you find out Bovert was headed north?”

  “The meadowlarks brought the word,” said Mills dryly. “Do I get the promise? It ought to puff you up to see that I’m willing to take your word.”

  “I’ve been known to keep it,” Big Tom snapped. “You should tell me more so I . . .”

  Mills had risen from his chair. “Do I get it?” he demanded sharply.

  “Suppose I can’t stop . . . anything?” Lester evaded.

  “That’ll be hard luck,” said Sheriff Mills grimly. “For the last time, Tom, do I get it?”

  “Yes, you have it,” snarled Big Tom Lester savagely.

  They went out and drank amicably at the bar.

  “Tell Porky my horse is branded,” drawled Mills as he left and walked the length of the room and out the front entrance, leaving the Red Arrow proprietor glaring at the wasp-like gunman who was now waiting for orders.

  Chapter Two

  None ever would have suspected that Dan Farlin was fifty-five years old, as he admitted; anyone would have been astounded to learn that he was nearly sixty. Straight of bearing, perfect in poise, smooth, clear complexion, dark-haired except where a becoming gray showed over his temples, suave, urbane, polished—he was the closest approach to a gentleman on the whole north range. Always he dressed in a dark, double-breasted suit, with a soft gray shirt of silk and wool, a blue four-in-hand in which sparkled a two-carat diamond, blue-white, deep, and flawless. A soft gray hat, and black-buttoned shoes, with gray silk socks, completed his attire. He wore a four-carat diamond on the middle finger of his left hand and he would not have been Dan Farlin without it. He was generous to a fault, inexorable as an opponent at cards, accomplished in the many ways of the professional gambler and the man who lives splendidly by his wits.

  He was the one man Big Tom Lester respected, the one man in whose presen
ce the lord of Sunrise felt vaguely uneasy, the one man who could disconcert him merely by a look. Which is doubtless why Dan Farlin was closeted with Big Tom in the latter’s private office a few minutes after Sheriff Mills had taken his departure.

  “Do you believe he came here to tell me Bovert was headed this way?” asked Lester in a worried voice.

  “Why not?” said Farlin, arching his brows. “Mills is one of the old school and doesn’t lie. I told you he would be safer if he came alone, and he told you the same thing. He told you he couldn’t send a messenger, so you say, and he couldn’t. As far as I can make out, from what you have told me, he came here on exactly the mission he explained. I don’t blame you for feeling suspicious, however.”

  Big Tom leaned forward with his hands on his knees. “Do you know much about this Bovert, Dan?” he asked. “You were south last winter, an’ you get around more than I do. I didn’t want to show my . . . my ignorance to Mills, but I don’t even know what this Bovert looks like.”

  “Nor do I,” said Farlin, building a cigarette. “Yes, I’ve heard of him. He’s a lone worker and a fast one. He goes in for big stuff. His reputation down in the desert country is young, but he may have worked somewhere else before under another name. Tell the truth, I wasn’t much interested. I was merely putting in the winter down there, playing a little cards, taking the waters at the springs, giving Gladys a chance for a little more schooling and music in San Antone . . . buying a hundred-thousand-dollar ranch.” He lit his cigarette with a graceful gesture.

  “You what!” Big Tom gasped out. “Buyin’ a . . . a hundred-thousand-dollar ranch! A . . . ranch?”

  Dan Farlin laughed softly, musically. His gaze was quizzical as he looked at Lester.

  “My dear Tom,” he said with a delightful suggestion of drawl, “you don’t think this is going to last forever, do you? Sooner or later the works are going to blow up. The explosion is coming suddenly, when it does come. There’ll be no time fuse. I’ve been through this sort of play before. I’m not so young. I’m old enough so that when it comes this time, I’m not going to be caught with a saddle and no horse. But don’t let what I’m saying worry you. I don’t expect it will, and I don’t want it to. But I’ve got Gladys to think of. You see I’m not alone, this time.”