The Gun is my Brother

by Matt Chisholm

  Wright Schwartz rounded the house and saw Charlie fall and he said the same as Spur— ‘The damn fool.’

  Charlie started to kick his legs in a kind of ecstasy and to throw himself this way and that in the dust and Schwartz stood there in the yard watching him with a calm interest. He’d seen plenty of small-town gun-punks die this way and it didn’t move him one iota. Why should it? This was the kind of deaths these unbalanced kids courted, wasn’t it? It didn’t occur to him that he was courting the same one.

  The door of the house was flung open and Sarie Hobun stood glaring at him.

  ‘Get the goddam hell out of here,’ she told him.

  Schwartz curled a thin lip at her and said, ‘Get inside and shut up.’ Nick the Greek’s woman was less than nothing to him. How a fine woman like Mrs. Overell ever came to have a sister like her was beyond him.

  ‘Don’t you have some better way of getting money without bringing in a scalp, like Spur was nothing but an Indian?’

  Schwartz walked towards the door of the barn, calm because he knew the rifleman was not in a position to shoot him. ‘If you want something to do, go help Charlie.’

  She screamed ‘He can rot.’

  Schwartz shrugged. ‘Let him, then.’

  Lucy Overell pushed past her and ran into the yard. That brought the saloon-keeper around and abashed. The woman was wild-eyed and pale, distraught.

  ‘Can’t you stop it?’ she demanded and he could see that she was on the verge of hysteria. ‘Take Henry Wragg and get away from here. Mr. Spur’s wounded. Can’t you let a hurt man alone.’

  ‘I’m really sorry about this, Mrs. Overell,’ Schwartz said, sincere regret in his voice, ‘but Spur’s a murderer and he has to be taken. You shouldn’t have taken him in. That was wrong of you. Didn’t you hear he’s killed the parson.’

  She looked at him like a crazy woman.

  ‘Yes, I heard,’ she told him. ‘And I’m glad. Somebody should have killed the pig long ago.’

  That shook Schwartz. The tone and the words were so out of character that he was made speechless with wonder. It also gave him a little fright and suddenly it seemed that it wasn’t such a good idea hunting this Spur to his death. Lucy Overell’s unguarded words had started a furious line of thought in him.

  He walked on to the barn, turning- his back on her. As he went past Charlie, the gunman gave a last kick and lay still. His hat had fallen off and lay like a dark halo under his disheveled golden hair.

  In the barn, he found Henry Wragg fit to be tied. Schwartz didn’t know the whole story, but he could see enough of it from one glance at the irate little man. He’d had a hole shot in his hat and the bullet had been near enough to his head to crease his scalp and cover his face with blood. Even his magnificent mustache was flooded with it. He’d fallen off a bucket, hurt his ankle and been kicked in the butt by one of the two horses in there. He wasn’t happy. He was mad and his pride had been hurt. Having Schwartz walk in there and look at him with ironic disparagement didn’t do it any good at all.

  The little man hopped as much as he could with only one good leg and screamed with his voice climbing rapidly from deep base, ‘What in goddam hell’re you grinnin’ at?’

  ‘What have I to grin about?’ Schwartz demanded coldly. ‘Bontine damn fool enough to stick his head out and get himself shot, you fool enough to go for a man like Spur as if he were a pilgrim.’

  ‘The day ain’t done—not by a long sight. I’ll git the sonovabitch yet.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Schwartz said and went into an empty stall to take a peek through a part in the planks. He saw the brush in line with the bluff move and rejected the temptation to empty his repeater into it. He wondered if the wounded man had any plans and what they were. What possible purpose could he have of leaving the comparative safety of the house except because of the women?

  Someone a good way off was bellowing at the top of his voice. He turned and walked into the yard, keeping the barn between himself and the brush and looked towards the timber. There were a couple of men there. One of them was shouting his inquisitiveness. Schwartz expected a shot from Spur in their direction, but none came.

  Maybe that was because the man was heading for a definite destination. Schwartz put a bird’s-eye picture of the surrounding land in his head and looked at it carefully. Over the way Spur was going was nothing but the bluff and beyond that, the creek.

  The bluff and the creek!

  He wouldn’t gain much by that move.

  What contingency would send a wounded man to either of those? He’d reach the bluff first ... a man could make a stand there … had a clear view of the timber, an edge of town, the house and all the open space in front of it. At his back was a sheer drop into the water. Yes, a man could surely fort up there.

  Possibly Spur was hit so bad he thought he was dying and was going to get set and take as many as he could with him.

  The thought appalled Schwartz a little. He was good himself but he knew he wasn’t in the same class as this man. A lot of men could get themselves killed with Spur up there.

  But why let him get there? If he was wounded as everybody said he was, he’d be moving slowly.

  He leapt into action. Sticking his head inside the barn, he called, ‘Henry, Spur’s heading out of the brush towards the bluff. Start shooting and make him keep his head down. I’m going around south of him above the creek in towards the bluff. And mind where you put those shots. I’m wearing a white hat. Remember that.’

  ‘Get near Spur an’ you’ll be wearin’ wings,’ Wragg said bitterly.

  Schwartz recognized that was a possibility, swallowed on it and ran around the side of the barn furthest from Spur, went across open ground, bent double, towards the brush that announced the timber beyond and didn’t draw a shot. When he arrived out of breath and flung himself flat on the ground, he allowed himself to be surprised at the lack of opposition.

  Over in the timber over by town, Smelling stopped shouting and said, ‘That’s him in the brush there. I seen him I tell you.’

  Bob Thurminger grunted disagreement.

  ‘He was shooting at the house. Must be one of our fellers.’

  ‘Don’t be a bigger goddam fool ’an you can help, man. That was Charlie Bontine I seen over by the barn. Our boys’re in the barn. Spur was shootin’ at them.’

  Billy Torstad, a farmer to the west of town who had come north the year before with a cow outfit ran up and said, ‘What’s that shootin’?’

  ‘Spur,’ Smelling told him. ‘They got him in the brush of there.’

  ‘Shootin’s stopped. He been hit?’

  ‘Not today he ain’t. But I hit him for sure yesterday.’

  ‘So did I,’ Bob said, ‘so did Schwartz, so did Charlie, an’ so did half-dozen other lyin’ sons.’

  ‘You callin’ me a liar?’ Smelling demanded.

  Thurminger grinned and said, ‘You an’ the other dozen.’

  ‘Aaaah!’ Smelling snarled in disgust.

  They heard other men coming through the trees. One of them was the sheriff. He carried a Winchester repeater and he was sweating. It wasn’t the heat only that made him hot.

  ‘I’ve sworn in a score of deputies, men,’ he announced. ‘Do the same for you if you’re willin’.’

  They nodded and said, ‘Sure.’ They’d have stayed for the fun anyway.

  ‘He’s yonder in that patch of brush,’ Smelling said.

  They kept in the shadow of the timber and gazed across the flat towards the brush.

  ‘He been hit again?’ somebody asked.

  ‘Go ask him,’ Thurminger suggested and got a small laugh.

  ‘Dolan,’ the sheriff ordered, ‘get through the timber with three four men and go around the house to take him from the south.’

  A man wearing a store-suit of brown cloth and carrying a Remington carbine said, ‘All right,’ and named a few men who followed him into the trees.

  ‘Rest of you scatter out a mite,’ Carlson co
ntinued. ‘Careful you don’t hit none of our own people. Always some damn fool gets hisself shot times like this.’

  They scattered out like he said, keeping the trunks between themselves and that brush and then settled down, using deadfalls and breaks in the ground for cover.

  They waited for maybe ten minutes without doing anything or seeing anything until suddenly somebody began shouting excitedly, ‘I seen him. I seen him,’ and a gun started to go off rapidly.

  There were shouts and several more gunshots and they watched a little of that brush fly into the air under their impact before a single shot came back at them. It passed clean between Torstad and Williams, the butcher, who were kneeling behind a deadfall close together.

  Torstad said, ‘My Gawd,’ in a hushed voice and flung himself flat. Williams, a redheaded Welshman, went white and found himself unable to move.

  The sheriff bawled, ‘Get him. See his smoke.’

  A ragged volley crashed out from the timber and a single thin reply of two shots came back at them. One plucked at the skirts of the sheriff’s coat, the other sent Williams screaming shrilly to the ground.

  Every man there retired hastily, scrambling to their feet and running with somebody dragging the Welshman behind. When they got him into deep cover, they found he’d been hit in the throat, not fatally, though there was a lot of blood and that upset some of them.

  The sheriff, although alarmed by the closeness of the shot through his coat, tried to rally them, but they would have gone on back closer to town if at that moment a flurry of shots had not come from the south. That stopped them.

  ‘That’s Dolan and the boys,’ Thurminger said.

  ‘Naw,’ came from Smelling, ‘they ain’t had time.’

  Curiosity dragged at them. They ventured back cautiously.

  They got their eyes on that brush and waited. Some more shots from the south and now they could tell it was one man shooting rapidly on his lonesome. They asked themselves who the hell that could be?

  They soon knew.

  When the rifle stopped, a single shot sounded from the brush and, suddenly, out of the timber beyond it, they saw a man walking.

  There was something strange about him, but they couldn’t tell what. Maybe it was the way he seemed to be walking on tiptoe with a kind of dainty air. They took in the white hat, the clawhammer coat and the fine shiny boots and several of them exclaimed, ‘That’s Schwartz.’

  After six fantastic paces, Schwartz tossed his rifle aside as if he was a dancer in a show, disdainfully, seemed to trip on his own feet and crumple up as if he didn’t have a bone in his body.

  A small wisp of dust arose from where he had fallen.

  Something like a sigh ran through the onlookers.

  ‘That was Wright, all right,’ one said.

  ‘Plumb killed daid.’

  ‘In the gut most like.’

  ‘This Spur sure is poison.’

  A short silence, then Torstad said in a shaky voice, ‘A man don’t git sworn in to git hisself all shot up.’

  The sheriff cleared his throat and announced, ‘One man out there with a pocket full of shells. Can’t have many left. Can’t go south, ’cos the boys’ll be over there any minute. Can’t go across the flat—we’ll get him sure as God made little apples. Can’t git down the bluff, can’t come this way. We got him dead to sights, men.’

  They considered that,

  A good few of them liked it.

  ‘Can’t have a goddam murderer goin’ around free with a gun in his hands. Shwartzy was a good man.’

  ‘So was Charlie.’

  ‘That bastard!’

  ‘Shouldn’t never speak ill of the daid, son.’

  The sheriff ordered, ‘Get down an’ stay down. All we want now is patience. Starve him out. Pete, Jake—go through the timber and cross the creek at the ford. Cover the bluff from the water. We got him tighter an’ a bronc in a cinch-strap.’

  The posse brightened.

  Inside five minutes, they felt pretty tough and dangerous, upholders of the law and death on gunmen. A man had his duty to the community and he should stick to it no matter what happened.

  After the shooting of Wright Schwartz, Spur took it easy. He knew what was in the minds of the men in the timber. They wouldn’t come at him in daylight unless they were pretty sure he wouldn’t shoot the ears off them. He made about twenty yards in the hour, resting a good deal and reaching the top of the bluff about an hour before nightfall.

  They made a long-distance try for him during the last light, but he quieted them down with a few well-aimed shots. One he gave to the two men on the opposite side of the creek. He didn’t hit either of them, but he cooled their ardor.

  He didn’t feel very bright himself, but he had stopped the bleeding in his leg. That he had managed to get so far mildly surprised him and, whereas during his long slow crawl he had become reconciled to meeting his end up there on the bluff, he saw now that with a good deal more luck than he had a right to expect, he might make a break. Therefore, he now had hope. Not much, but some.

  He counted his ammunition and found that he had six shots in the Henry and a complete reload of twelve cartridges. Not much, but better than a kick in the ass from a mule. He hadn’t yet fired a shot from the Remington—five shots in the chamber, ten in his pocket. A lot of men could be disillusioned about trying to take Sam Spur with that.

  A smoke or a chew would have been welcome, but Mrs. Overell had taken his Bull Durham from his clothes and he had forgotten to ask her for it.

  He found himself a nice spot to fort up in from which in daylight he would have a fair view of the flat in front of him. So all a man had to do was pray for a full-moon. It seemed at first that his prayer would remain unanswered. A light mist came up from the creek with the dusk and that made him nervous, thinking every move in the brush near him was a man creeping up on him. Once he was alarmed into firing by some scuttling small thing, but the mistake brought him somewhat to his senses and after that he nursed his shot.

  Maybe they thought he’d try and make a break in the dark, but they made a small try for him as the light started to fade rapidly. First a few men came on the run from the south, charging along the high ground above the creek and for a moment he thought they’d persist and over-run him. He overestimated them. Two or three well-placed shots with the Henry and they dropped for cover. A few more and they pulled back a couple of hundred yards. The men in the timber towards town couldn’t see things very well on account of the mist and the failing light, so as soon as that lot of shooting died they gallantly tried the same tactics. Though they didn’t come in so close because they had to cross open ground.

  Hearing the shooting, the men on the opposite side of the water joined in with some upward shooting that gained them nothing except some hits on the earth and rocks of the bluff.

  When he had crawled out his smoke, Spur found that he was hungry. So hungry that he began to think that he would try anything for a mouthful of food, even to make the attempt of getting into town. That made him consider the state of his health.

  By crackey, he told himself, I can’t be hurt so bad wanting to eat like this.

  Then the thirst started to worry him.

  The heat of the day began to fade and slowly the cold crept into him. He’d have given a lot for a blanket then, or even a thick coat. This was quite high country and this, time of the year the small hours could chill a man considerably. He started to worry about himself, which was a good sign.

  An hour after dark, somebody spunkier than the rest started a crawl in. Either he wasn’t much of a hand at playing Indians or Spur’s ears were attuned to night sounds. Or both. The wounded man heard him when he was within fifty yards, got his position when he had come within twenty-five and opened up on him with the Remington a little short of that.

  Blinded by the flash of the heavy pistol, Spur could see nothing for a few seconds. He didn’t have to see anything to know how accurate his shooting was.

>   The man screamed out, ‘My God, he’s killed me. Help me fellers, help...’

  He ran so fast then that he proved himself a liar. He tripped and fell a couple of times and Spur was tempted to increase his record speed with another shot or two, but held himself in the interest of economy.

  After that, things quieted down for an hour. He heard sounds of men departing and others arriving and guessed that some of the early arrivals were going to eat. He lay envying them. The new ones wanted to hear the sound of their guns, so they started plastering the top of the bluff. He had moved his position after the previous shooting and they had no idea where he was. Some of the shots, however, were lucky and came near enough for him to make retaliation. He did not want them too confident. Aiming by a gun-flash he showed them the foolishness of their action. That earned him some respect and firing died away to a minimum.

  After that, some of those to the south made a concerted effort to creep in on him. He kept them at a distance and found that he had five shots for the Henry left. That would have sobered the man who drank the wagon dry. If they kept this up into the night, he wouldn’t last till dawn.

  They stayed quiet for an hour and then some fools tried to get at him from the creek. Repelling that attack didn’t cost him a shot. He dropped rocks down on them and drove them into the water. He would like to have warmed them up with some shooting, but again he knew he couldn’t spare the lead.

  As he heaved over the last rock, the moon came up so suddenly he had to get to cover fast as the men on either hand opened up with everything they had. He didn’t make any attempt to answer their fire, but got down so flat they could have walked over him without knowing he was there. He guessed he wouldn’t have been exaggerating to claim that there were fifty rifles, shotguns and revolvers out there trying for him.

  They didn’t get him.

  Which was just as well because he was having a bad enough time with his two wounds without having any more added to them. He’d hurt his back heaving the rocks and felt sick with the pain of it. And when the firing eased up and he could sit and inspect his leg, he found that it had opened and was bleeding again.