Guns in Wyoming

by Lauran Paine

  Joseph Fawcett’s eyes bulged with dimming sight. His lips fell open and a whining chant began. A toneless thing that rose and fell, bubbled and frothed, and grew finally still, only to come again weaker, an eerie ageless whimper that went down deep into the listener, found response in dark places of his spirit, and drew out a thin, dim memory of primitive things eons distant. Then it stopped altogether and the whispering dawn turned soft with a soughing wind dragging through the cottonwoods and Joseph Fawcett’s head began to rock feebly from side to side, eyes clamped closed tightly.

  Uriah returned noiselessly, stood over them a moment, then kneeled down. He had a hatful of spring water. Lee took it, cradled the dying man’s head in his arm, and poured water across his face. Fawcett gulped, choked, and swallowed avidly. Continued to swallow after the hat was emptied, its last brown dregs gone, until Lee laid him back. He heard a roaring the others could not hear. There was a dimming to his mind. He tried to speak again. Only an unintelligible husking sound came. His mouth sagged and Joseph Fawcett was dead.

  Lee bent low to search for the heartbeat that was not there. He straightened up, looked long at the filthy, haggard face. It grew soft, mellow with a beauty, a peacefulness it had never possessed in life. And the body flattened, widened, caved in gently. A finger of quiet wind ruffled Fawcett’s black hair and moved on.

  “He’s dead.”

  “Yes,” Uriah acknowledged. “And for the peace it brings I could near trade places with him.”

  “He didn’t die peaceful, Paw. He died hard.”

  Uriah got up. The unreasoning quick wrath was on him and breath whistled past his nostrils. “Don’t contradict me, boy.”

  “No, I won’t, Paw. Not here. Not if it defiles this spot where Fawcett died.”

  “Nor mock me either, damn you!”

  A redness swam before Lee’s eyes and impaired his vision. He was mute.

  “Between you and me there’s been little enough lately, boy,” said Uriah. “If you got hate in you like some of the others have …”

  “I’ve got no hatred, Paw. It’s defeat I got in me, not hatred.”

  “Then,” Uriah retorted swiftly, “you’re the first of our blood to have it, I’ll covenant you that.”

  “Maw didn’t?”

  Uriah’s fists knotted. He stood oaken and raw-boned and towering forbiddenly above dead Joseph Fawcett. “The fever taken your maw off and you know it.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Lee answered, facing half away from Uriah. “I don’t believe that and I don’t think you do. She’d been too many years fighting against … everything. It wasn’t the fever, Paw, it was despair. It was defeat. Fighting every living hour against something she couldn’t hope to win out over.”

  “What? I ask you what couldn’t be won out over, boy?”

  “You, mostly. You and conditions, I guess. About the other things I don’t know. About you … I do know. I don’t understand, but I know it was mostly you, Paw. Maw couldn’t win out over you and neither can I. Neither can the rest of us.”

  Lee cast a long final sorrowing look at the still body and peaceful gray face between them against dawn’s cooling earth, then he walked swiftly toward the trees where the others were sitting like scarecrows, faces turned away and wearing inward expressions.

  Uriah followed him with his green eyes until he was lost in the rising mists. Then he turned a slower look upon fallen Joseph Fawcett, and his face turned darkly brooding. I will not give up, he thought. I have never given up. It is not in me to do so … but, God, I’m tired and they hate me. All of them now, even Ezekiel. They follow now because there is nothing left. They fight like cornered rats now, not like men fighting for their rights. Where did I go wrong?

  We are fighting for our rights, for equal graze on open range. That is right. We have right on our side. No. No, not any more. Somewhere something went wrong. We are outlawed. Something has happened. I, too, am an outlaw now. Am I responsible?

  I think not, by God. I think not at all. I think what has gone wrong is the same thing that has been wrong all along. We are sheepmen and they are cowmen and the law is cowman law. That’s what is wrong. Not I. I have done no more than lead them against injustice. As God is my witness, I will lead them still. I am right! And I will triumph. This will not end as Appomattox did. It will not end as things ended in Alabama and Tennessee … as things have always ended. I feel it in me … this time I will win out. I’ve got to. I must. Because there will never be another chance to triumph over wrong … not for me at my age. And I leave no flesh of my flesh to fight on after me. Not in Ezekiel … certainly not in Lee.

  Then, Jesus, I pray to You for strength … for guidance …

  He felt a burning in his eyes, a wetness. “Good night, Fawcett. You fought well … a good fight. I will remember you. Now good night. We’ve got to be riding.”

  He turned away, strode toward the others, still and drooping low among the cottonwood trees. In the east a pink stain of approaching day appeared. The trees and men and played-out horses rose sharply against the sky’s paleness.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lee stood briefly among the trees where the horses were, then he took them by the lead ropes and went out where new grass was thick and succulent so they could replenish their energy. He squatted among them with the pleasant sound of their eating drawing away the tension. He saw his father come toward the others, speak curtly, and watched them all return to the spot where Fawcett was cooling out. Then came the soft thud of rocks being dropped, first against flesh, later against other rocks, until the cairn was finished. He could picture the gaunt frame kneeling, arranging rocks, fitting them, forcing them into place.

  How many gone now? Percy Bachelor had fled; they had not had him at the jailhouse so he had made good his escape. Baker and one other back at the livery barn. Fawcett … Paxton Clement, Manuel Cardoza, Slocum, Hoag, Logan, Amaya, Pompa … Others. It seemed a long time ago. Dead for what? Because his father’s answer for everything these fast-falling years had been an upraised fist, a harsh word, a roar of defiance.

  They were returning now, boots swishing through the grass, silent filthy scarecrows who even took their guns with them to graveside.

  He continued to squat in apathy among the horses, listening to the tiny voice of memory. He felt hunger, but not only the hunger for food. Somewhere along the back trail he’d lost something out of himself. Something that had always been strong and bright and confident within him. Something that had been inherent right up until last night. Now it was forever gone; he would not find it again. It was youth.

  He’d lost youth. Somewhere, very recently, he’d forgotten how to smile, to laugh, to see beauty in ugliness, had forgotten what confidence was. It was difficult now to see high color and dancing light and no longer could his outstretched hand encounter warmth and promise in all he touched.

  One of the horses threw up its head. For a moment the alarm did not break over the man. Then it did, fully. The horse was not looking easterly where the others were returning from Fawcett’s rock cairn, it was straining due south.

  A steel fingernail scraped along Lee’s spine. He spun up off the ground. A second animal raised its head, then a third and fourth.

  “Paw!”

  The plodding figures froze, then they rushed forward, their apathy gone in a twinkling. Uriah’s brooding expression evaporated in that instant. Without searching the brightening skyline, he hissed: “Bring those horses back into the trees.”

  Lee obeyed with rough swiftness. Zeke ran to help. Like the others, he was swift and sure now, in every movement. “Here, give me a couple of those ropes.”

  Among the trees four tense shadows waited in watchful suspense, guns at the ready. When the brothers hastened up, Kant U’Ren was sniffing, his head up high and working back and forth.

  Uriah grabbed his mount, twisted up a squaw bridle,
and jerked it tight. “What was it, boy?” he demanded of Lee.

  “I don’t know. Something, though. The horses heard it or smelled it … south of us there.”

  “Maybe wolves or coyotes.”

  Uriah snorted and turned a cold look on the man who had said that—George Dobkins. “These’re range-bred horses, boy. They’re not about to get in any sweat over coyotes or wolves.”

  Kant U’Ren saw no sense in this talk. “We been here too long already,” he growled. “Let’s get going.”

  Uriah was already swinging astride. He settled himself squarely, then watched the others. Only five now.

  “Head west for the first ridge. We can see from up there. Follow me.”

  Zeke was ready to spring up when his horse flung up its head with flaring nostrils. Quick as a flash big Zeke’s steel fingers clamped down hard, cutting off his wind. They did not slacken until the beast was struggling for air.

  “Nicker will you? Damn you, be quiet!”

  They rode northerly behind Uriah, staying to the trees as long as possible. Then out into the graying light and across open prairie until the country sucked back and dipped slightly before it began to buckle up and rise steadily into the mountains beyond.

  They were all uneasy but Kant U’Ren seemed most disturbed. To Lee he growled: “Wasted a half hour back there, god dammit. It’s sunup now. We should’ve been into the hills long ago.”

  Lee was mute. He did not care.

  “Folks’ll be boiling out of their settlement like bees out of a hive.”

  “Let them,” the boy answered. “Kant, how long do you think this can last?”

  U’Ren’s gaze came back, lingered in stony silence on Lee a moment, then drifted away, went forward where Uriah rode out ahead a short distance, and remained there.

  “Your Paw’s a fox, boy. He brought us out of Union City. Don’t forget that.”

  “Yes. He brought us out of Union City. Look around you, Kant. How many do you see who rode into Union City with us?”

  The half-breed would have answered that but Lee didn’t wait. He urged his horse forward, up where Zeke rode just behind their father. They exchanged looks, nods, but no words. What was there to talk of? They were hungry, yes, but they’d always been more or less hungry. They were hunted. Their chances were momentarily lessening. Once they could race over the prairie, even easterly, beyond the cowmen’s town. Now they could go only toward the mountains. The land behind was locked against them. Even the mountains were watched but at least they knew them, knew where they might lie down and go soft against the earth for a while. But in the end it would be the same—spring up and flee, ride for it.

  They hadn’t even saddles now and some were without rifles. They dared not make even a dry-oak fire. Sharp noses would detect it.

  And all the time the ring was tightening.

  What was there to talk about? Winning a range war they’d lost first in Paxton Clement’s ranch yard—and last night amid the dead and dying back at Union City—or before that, during the cold-blooded murder of Captain Gower Hardin?

  There was nothing to say. Nothing at all. They were done with words and shortly they would also be done with deeds. The land was swarming against them; it rang with the promise of quick hard justice. Men talked of the future—they had none. They talked of the past—they had no wish to remember. Of the present? No, there was no present, really. There were only moments and any of them might be their last. They rode together through the warming daylight following the eldest Gorman, totally silent, with faces averted, with tired eyes, troubled and tortured and watchful. Around them was an army of vengeful, hard-riding men in a closing circle. It could only be a matter of time.

  Uriah led them to a thin, long ridge, and halted to look back.

  They had to be very careful now, since behind them were the rooting posses and ahead, probably on the high places, were cowboy sentinels waiting to catch movement. Elsewhere there was thin rising mist and fading shadows. A rim of strong light was descending the mountainsides behind them, blood-red near the peaks and pink below where gloom diluted it.

  Zeke sat his horse between his father and his brother. He was looking steadily downward across the empty world. He was relaxed and slouched. “For now we’d best stand fast right here,” he told them. “They’ll be watching for movement.” From the corner of his eye Zeke saw his father draw up stiffly. “I know,” he added quickly. “You’re captain here. I was thinking out loud.”

  Coldness drew out across his father’s face. “That’s right. I’m captain here. You remember that, boy.”

  The others stirred. They were embarrassed for Zeke. They knew Uriah was thinking back to the fight at the knoll.

  “I’ve had experience at this sort of thing. Don’t any of you forget that. I do what’s best for us.”

  In Lee an unusual flash of fierce anger rose up at his father’s words. It was bitter anger. It would be hard to convince Fawcett that Uriah always did what was best for them. And Pompa, Bachelor, Cardoza, Amaya … The hand on his rope rein quaked in tightening spasms. Then Uriah spoke a hard truth that winnowed away Lee’s sudden wrath, leaving him drained and spent.

  “But even if I didn’t … even if what we are doing is wrong … it wouldn’t matter because now we are all of a feather. If they take us alive, we’re slated to die on their scaffolding. If they catch us on the prairie, they’ll shoot us down like dogs. We must stay together and fight together.”

  Yes, thought the youngest son. And die together.

  They followed Uriah deeper into the hills, twisting and turning through horse-high brush, their bodies bumped and bruised and scratched but hidden at least. Moving cautiously through the dark cañons toward a secret place Uriah knew, and finally they could stop in a tree-roofed tiny glade and get down, turn out the horses, and drink deeply at a seepage spring where the punky earth was covered with hair-fine grass and moss. The softest bed they had known in weeks.

  Later, when the others went out a ways to find places of concealment where they might rest, Lee remained by the spring alone, listening until the last man-made sounds were no more. Then he lay back and for the first time in days felt completely alone and detached. His mind, despite danger, went down the years with a poignancy he could not fathom. Days faded into nights, then grew light again; time growing into years spinning out lazily, heavy and solid with memory. Times he and Zeke had gone pokeberry gathering for their mother. Days working the vats making lye soap, mulching oak ashes into the cauldrons. A richness of familiarity blossoming between them with their mutual understanding and silence, and always somewhere close had been the old man’s shadow, hulking large.

  Other faces faded and glowed shadowlike but always somewhere nearby in the processes of memory stood Zeke—and their father, oaken and gnarled and brooding silently, fierce and seeming mighty.

  The old horse he had stolen cat-footed up to the spring, eyed him askance, and drank. The specters from yesteryear dissolved and there was just this stolen horse beside him and pervading silence throbbing in the dulling shade and the summer warmth, with peaceful little rustling sounds in the grass and the gold-blue sky overhead. He smelled horse sweat and summer heat …

  Where once there had been fourteen of them there were now only five. Somewhere out on the range near a bosque of cottonwoods was Fawcett’s cairn.

  Farther back, even, was Ann. Haunted eyes, a still, impassive face in memory standing fully upright and gazing steadily into his face with her two souls in one body.

  He fell asleep with warming sunlight filtering through tree leaves, etching soft patterns of gold across him. Ten feet away his stolen horse drowsed, too. It was peaceful there. Too peaceful.

  He had no idea how long he had slept, or even, upon awakening, exactly where he was. All he knew was that gunshots were ringing through the pinched-down little arroyo and many men were screaming. Th
ere came, too, a clatter of riders. He whirled up off the ground like a startled hawk. Whoever it was came in force. He reached the equally as surprised horse in two bounds and sprang upon its back and spun westerly, still befogged by sleep. No, not westerly—instinct told him—that’s the direction the horsemen are approaching. He saw three riders squirt past and lose themselves up the cañon, riding low and faces white. He would have followed them but the horse shied from a near hit that sliced a white sliver of living wood off a tree, and lit facing easterly. He bent low and slammed inward with his heels. The beast needed no urging, only directing. It fled in panic through filigreed shadows, its rider shivering with dread and choking fear.

  He let the horse have its head, keeping it only in this easterly direction that seemed open to it. Man-high brush did the rest, shielding them both except for blurred glimpses where they broke into openings, crossed them, and plunged deeper into shadows.

  He topped out over the same ridge they had sat upon that morning, then plunged down the far side with thoughtless abandon. Ahead the country was open as far as the cottonwood bosque. Down across the running dip of land and toward the only cover within miles—where Joseph Fawcett lay.

  He reached it safely and drew up to blow the horse. The respite proved too brief. Suddenly from behind came the strong-throated yell of pursuit and his heart darkened with fear again. He leaned low and the horse shot forward, belly-down and with little ears flattened. He rode with trees hurtling past, heading north, with matted shadows to screen him. After a time hope revived when he could not hear them behind him any longer, and later, with dusk curdling, with the shadows intensifying, he left the trees, loped across open country, and did not draw up until he’d passed several ranches. Once, a great slavering hound paced him with lolling tongue, baying in a booming way until Lee reined southerly and lost him with a burst of speed.