Guns in Wyoming

by Lauran Paine

  “Well, shucks, Lee … we’re boxed in like this.”

  “Be still and watch him.”

  They were past the houses now. Ahead lay the littered lots and darkened rear entrances to Main Street’s buildings. Then Uriah drew up. He sat like stone for a moment, looking and listening. There was no one abroad on the back streets. Out on Main Street there was noise, but it was neither loud nor quantitatively strong. The hour was late—nearly midnight. That much of Uriah’s figuring was flawless. He swung down and held up his reins to Pete Amaya.

  “Zeke, Lee, George, you come with me and fetch along the prisoners. The rest of you stay here and watch. If there’s trouble, fire one shot.”

  He turned his back on them, waiting. The loudest sound was of squeaking leather, of dismounting men grunting down and moving softly up beside him. Without looking back again, he started forward with that thrusting, urgent stride of his. They followed.

  It was coal-dark behind the stores and saloons. He led them carefully, as though he had been here before recently, which he had, led them straight to a narrow opening between two buildings—called a dogtrot—and up into it as far as the plank walk beyond. At the opening he paused to look north and south, then he stepped out and the others pushed up close around him. There was only a sleeping soldier visible the full length of the roadway. Beyond the soldier in front of a saloon, where listless slow music sounded, was a hitch rack holding less than a dozen sleeping horses, the saddled property of late drinkers.

  “Go up and take care of that soldier,” Uriah said to his eldest, and, as Zeke slipped forward, he faced the others, green eyes brightened by fire points of leashed excitement.

  “Simpson, this may be your last night on earth.”

  Hardship had quenched much of the cowman’s resolve. He spoke now in a low held voice: “For God’s sake, Gorman, let my boy go. He’s done you no harm.”

  “Nor will he, Simpson.”

  “They won’t bargain with you, Gorman, you’re an outlaw. Let Dade go and keep me. I promise you I’ll stand up in his place.”

  Simpson’s pleading reached Lee. He writhed under its clearly audible anguish and watched his father.

  Uriah turned away, looked up where Zeke was coming back toward them and beyond, where the sleeping soldier was lying darkly still in the dust of the roadside gutter.

  “Good,” Uriah said. “Now come along.”

  They clumped after him as far as the preempted law office that had become emergency headquarters for the soldiers, and when Uriah lifted the latch and inched inside, they followed.

  A spatter of lamp glow struck them all and bounced off. Their shadows on the back wall were enormous. A soldier clerk cocked back with his feet on a desk opened his eyes, wide. He made no other show of awareness except that his face went white.

  Uriah spoke into this look of incredulity and quickening fear. “Where’s your officer?”

  “Asleep.”

  The reply was a low whisper. Another time the soldier’s expression would have been funny; now it wasn’t. Uriah moved silently around the desk and disarmed the soldier, who took his feet off the desk and brought his chair down gently, still staring at the bulging eyes.

  “In that room?” Uriah asked, with a head nod toward a closed door.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “George, go fetch him … and be sure you take his weapons.”

  Dobkins went through the door and shortly they heard gruff profanity coming into the hush. It grew briefly louder, then went silent. Moments later a thin man clad only in soiled full-length underwear appeared. He looked at Uriah, at the others, at the Simpsons bound at the wrists and haggard. Through the mists of dullness came quick understanding. “Who are you?” he asked, although he knew who they were. “What the hell do you mean coming in here like this?”

  “My name is Uriah Gorman,” Gorman answered with an urgent ringing in his voice. “I’m leader of the sheepmen. This here is Charles Simpson and his son Dade. They are my hostages.”

  “Hostages,” the officer repeated. “You damned old rebel you. Those men were abducted and you’re the leader of nothing. You’re an outlaw, proclaimed so by law. Now if you know what’s …”

  Uriah interrupted harshly. “I didn’t come here to argue,” he said, keeping his voice down with a struggle. “I came here to offer terms.” He paused. The officer’s face twitched, his eyes blinked rapidly but he did not speak. “We are entitled to equal range rights with the cowmen under the law. We demand them. In exchange for that to which we have full right … and for your protection in seeing that the free-graze law is upheld … and your protection of all sheepmen … we will give up our hostages and stop fighting.”

  Uriah stood, giantlike, in the middle of the room. Behind him, also filling the space of two ordinary men, were Lee and Zeke. Less impressive except for his bared handgun and beard-stubbled grimness, George Dobkins stood fast in dripping shadows. The Simpsons were staring steadily at the weather-beaten officer and he, in turn, did not take his eyes from Uriah’s bitter-set face and eyes of green ice.

  “Gorman, you’re crazy. By God, you’ve got to be to bust in here like this, and make such a tomfool demand.” Each word fell bell-clear in the deep stillness. “You’re a murderer. There are a dozen warrants out for you. Over three hundred men are hunting your band. You can’t be serious in this, man.”

  “I was never more serious.” Uriah’s jaw clamped closed. “Zeke,” he ordered after a moment of thought, “take this man back to his room. Have him get dressed. Fully dressed in his uniform, then bring him back.”

  They waited. Uriah turned and fas tened a deliberate stare upon the shaken orderly. He seemed to be considering something, then he looked away and his shoulders drooped a little.

  Zeke reentered the small room behind the officer. Uriah looked long at the smooth blue uniform, at the encrusted shoulder straps, at the girt-saber and its handsome sword knots glowing golden in the light. He brought his eyes back to the captain’s face with an effort, and those behind him could not see. Only Zeke, looking fully at his father over the captain’s shoulder, saw the surface lights of madness lambent in the lusterless green stare.

  “Your name, sir,” Uriah asked in a tone of sifting ashes. “Your name and outfit.”

  “Captain Gower Hardin, Fourth Cavalry.”

  “Captain Hardin you have our terms. Do you accept them or not?”

  The officer’s eyes were dryly staring, round with comprehension and incredulity. “And if I don’t?” he asked.

  “Then I’ll have no choice. You are an enemy. I cannot leave you alive in my rear and you know that.”

  The quick explosion of two voices simultaneously filled the room. One was from the clerk orderly, who sprang up now. The other belonged to Lee. His prevailed; it was loudest.

  “Paw! For God’s sake what are you doing?”

  “This!” Uriah roared in his thunderous voice so that echoes crashed throughout the room.

  It happened too fast. There were only splinters of things to see, to be forever imbedded in seven minds. The foot-long Dragoon pistol came up and tilted back. Uriah cocked it. The officer turned white to the eyes. He stared at the gun. His orderly would have sprung forward but George Dobkins’ gun crunched against his skull and he crumpled to the floor with a gentle swishing sound.

  Zeke was moving clear when Uriah fired. His mouth was wide open. One of Hardin’s upflung arms struck Zeke as the officer was flung backward in his fall. Before the sound had fully died, Dobkins was keening in a shaken voice.

  “We got to get out of here. We got to run for it. Hurry!”

  Lee turned toward the door and stumbled. Someone caught his arm in an iron grasp and gave him a savage push through. It was Uriah. Behind him Zeke was punching the Simpsons along. No one said anything but over the sound of their pounding boots arose a sudden cry.

>   At the entrance to the dogtrot Uriah paused to await the Simpsons and Zeke. He still held his pistol. When the Simpsons came up, he raised it but Zeke was too fast. He struck the gun aside, grabbed Uriah’s shoulder, and hurled him into the narrow passageway. With a shout and a toss of his head Zeke told the Simpsons to run. They ran, even if awkwardly because their arms were bound behind them, but desperately and as rapidly as they could.

  Beyond the dogtrot and moving restlessly in the darkness, the others sat their saddles with drawn guns. They had heard the shot that killed Gower Hardin. Kant U’Ren leaned low and held Uriah’s reins out. Uriah did not take them at once. Pete Amaya urged his horse up toward Lee and waited for the younger man to mount. His round dark face was glistening with excitement.

  Lee, Zeke, and George Dobkins got quickly astride. Uriah shucked out the spent casing from his pistol and reloaded it. Then he faced the others.

  “Which of you knows where Bob Ander lives?” he asked in a voice as emotionless and dry as a breath of air among cornhusks.

  Lee leaned from the saddle, sheet-white and staring. “That was murder. You can’t do it again.”

  Chapter Ten

  After Lee’s outburst there was silence. None of them knew where Town Marshal Ander lived, or, if they did know, they did not say. They were vastly more interested in the sounds around them of a rousing populace.

  Finally Kant U’Ren said: “Come on, Uriah, let’s go. We can get Ander another time.”

  “You fool,” Uriah stormed, making no move to mount up. “If we don’t kill him now, we may never get him. They’ll be after us like a pack of hounds come dawn.”

  “U’Ren’s right,” a shadowy rider said, shortening his reins. “Come on, Uriah.”

  The elder Gorman still hesitated.

  Then Lee spoke over the sudden burst of excited gabbling around front. “He doesn’t care about lives … he wants to kill.”

  Pedro Amaya, farthest back and facing an alley, made a quavering cry of alarm. “They are coming. They have lanterns and they are coming up this alleyway.”

  Uriah mounted, then, but he still did not lead them away. He sat his saddle, gauging the distance of the mob and its numbers. In his mind thoughts ran together to form a dark beauty from violence; he could charge into that crowd and shoot down maybe ten of them. They wouldn’t give quarter—then they deserved none. Hurried words from the warp of his mind, from his secret soul, made him temporarily oblivious to peril.

  “We’ve got rights!” he roared suddenly. “We ask no more’n we deserve.”

  “You’ll get it, too,” Kant U’Ren told him harshly, “if you sit here much longer.”

  “Shut your damned mouth!” he roared at the half-breed. “Cowards, I’m surrounded by cowards!”

  Lee flung his horse between his father and the oncoming mob with its roaring malevolent sound and its highly held and swinging lanterns. His face was split by a ghastly expression and his hair stood up like Uriah’s hair, like snakes caught up and writhing.

  “Paw, there’s mounted men amongst ’em!”

  “So I see,” said Uriah in a cold and detached manner. He reined around Lee and started toward the mob with his handgun ready.

  It was big Zeke who swung up, grabbed Uriah’s reins, and yanked back so abruptly that Uriah was thrown forward in the saddle and nearly tumbled to the ground. His head snapped around and hot eyes grew still on his eldest.

  “Scared to die like a man are you, Ezekiel?”

  “There’s no call to die,” retorted his angered son. “Lee, take the others and ride out the way we came in. Go on!”

  Zeke let go his father’s reins. They were close now, glaring across at one another. “You undid what little good we might have done here tonight,” the son said savagely. “Now come on. Look there … at least ten of ’em got rifles and horses.”

  Uriah looked. His face cleared suddenly, became stark and ironlike again. “To the east,” he said brusquely. “Ride east and follow me.”

  They went clattering across the summer-hard ground with a sound like thunder in their wake. Rode swiftly and unerringly back through the rows of houses, some lit now, and Uriah didn’t draw up for many miles, until the men called to him that their horses were faltering. By then they were far off and well clear of any pursuit.

  Lee thought his father had gone from one extreme to the other, from wanting to fight the whole of Union City to wanting to flee out of Wyoming itself. He drew up and looked around. He counted shadows—eight. He counted again. There should have been ten.

  Kant U’Ren eased down beside him. “There’s no more coming,” he said. “Two split off miles back. I saw them go. Good riddance.” U’Ren started forward where Pete and Uriah were talking. He said over his shoulder: “They ain’t got the chance of a snowball in hell. The law’ll be after ’em like the devil after a crippled saint.” He laughed, a musical, diminishing sound as he rode away.

  Uriah led them south now. Steadily south until the rolling uplands of Cottonwood Creek were nigh. There, he went in among trees along a hogback and dismounted.

  The ground was soft and damp from leaf mold. There was some grass for the animals but not much. Beyond, down the southwesterly slope, the creek was visible, an oily black in the paling moonlight. Pete Amaya, seeking good feed for his mount, came upon a buck and shot it. Uriah cursed and railed, until Pete came back with the meat, then he went silent. They made a fire, cooked venison, and ate it. There was neither coffee nor whiskey but there did not have to be. Eight shrunken bellies swelled to bursting and the effect was the same. They became less morose, less rebellious in thought and expression.

  Uriah ate standing, listening, head cocked in that familiar stance they had come to know him by. Wolf-wary and Indian-like. Then suddenly he left them, walking southerly through the tangle of trees, softened by the mist and silent. None of them looked around to watch him go.

  George Dobkins moved over where Zeke was lying full-length on his saddle blanket. He was smoking, something he rarely did, and watching the dawn mist swirl up from the creek. Dobkins sat down and sucked his teeth for a while before speaking.

  “That was a bad thing back there,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “If we had any sympathizers before, we ain’t got ’em now.”

  “I suppose not.”

  Lee came up to them and sank down. His face was haggard beneath its coating of grime and stubble. His eyes sought his brother’s gaze briefly, then moved away. Dobkins studied the younger man from beneath his hat brim. There was a great layer of unhappiness on the younger man’s face—a weakness he thought—but he said no more of what was on his mind. After a time he left the brothers alone, went out to check his horse. He did not mean for his animal to be weak when the time came to run for it.

  Lee watched Dobkins go. Zeke did not look away from the treetops nor did he blink or act as though he knew Lee was there beside him.

  After a long interval Zeke said: “I reckon you didn’t see his face back there, did you?”

  “Paw’s?”

  “Yeah. I was across the room from him … behind the officer. I saw it real good. Real good.”

  “Well, I was behind him.”

  “I know. Too bad. You should’ve seen it, Lee.”

  Lee knew. It wasn’t necessary for him to have seen his father’s face, at all. “Zeke, you were right … that going to Union City was the craziest thing he ever did.”

  “I figured he was going to do something like that. I figured for a while he was fighting for our rights on the range. You know … like we all figured.”

  “No,” the younger man said. “I knew different. I told you so after what happened at XIH.”

  “He’s crazy,” said Zeke flatly. “All right. I see that. I believe it now. But tell me … just what in hell is in his head? Doesn’t he know they’ll surround u
s now and run us down for what he did at Union City?” Zeke got up on one elbow and looked at his brother. “Hell, we couldn’t even surrender now, boy. Not even if we wanted to.”

  Lee was looking to the north. There was nothing in this conversation that held him. In his mind he’d said it all before. Northerly was the Foster place.

  Zeke watched his brother’s face a moment, then grunted and lay back again. In a dead voice he said: “Forget it, Lee. Forget you ever touched her. Damned small chance you’ll ever see her again.”

  “Zeke …?”

  “No,” he answered before the question was asked. “Not a chance, boy, and you know it. Like I said … forget her. You wouldn’t get halfway there before some damned posse’d have you swinging from an oak limb.”

  It was the truth and Lee knew it, but its full impact and starkness became evident only when it was put into words. He turned toward the cooking fire, dying now, and went low against the ground. The others were sleeping flat in the dirt with twitching arms and legs. Around them the misted world was brightening opaquely. He had just closed his eyes, it seemed, when Uriah came back, light-footed, all tall and angular with shadows around him, and roused them up.

  “They’re hunting us hard,” he said.

  A shapeless form struggled upright. “You saw them?” Uriah hunkered by the fire with a headshake. He began throwing dirt on the flames. “I didn’t see them, no. I went back a mile or so and put my ear to the ground. They’re riding, boys, they’re riding. I heard them.”

  Dobkins and another man exchanged a secret look. Around them grew a stirring. Men got to their feet numbly. Dobkins went over to stand behind their leader. “Uriah,” he asked, “what ailed you back there? You were fixing to ride right into them.”

  Lee got to his feet tensed to leap between them. He mentally cursed Dobkins’ foolishness. But Uriah didn’t explode, didn’t even turn to face Dobkins when he answered because in his mind a voice was speaking and he harkened to it. You’ve led them, Uriah. You’ve led them to triumph and there is a wealth of weariness in you. You’ve led them and shielded them and saved them and now you’re dog-tired. You’re old. Amethyst is gone. A harlot robbed your youngest of his soul. Your eldest is drawing apart from you … The others will, too, in time.