By the Horns

by Ralph Compton

  “You still have your six-gun,” Lon said, and shot him in the breastbone.

  “No!” Ben Sloane exclaimed, his last mortal comment, and then his big frame crumpled in on itself until his forehead touched the ground and his big arms splayed outward.

  “You killed him!” Bill Givens shrieked, accenting his outrage with curses.

  “That was the general idea.” Lon jerked Givens to his feet and shoved him toward the wagon. “Get a move on.”

  The shooting had stopped.

  In the ear-ringing silence that marked the aftermath of every gun battle, the groan of a dying rustler was unnaturally loud. Benedito was still on the wagon seat. Owen was by the longhorns, a dead rustler at his feet.

  Slim was hunched over Cleveland. Whining pitiably, he raised tear-dampened eyes and declared, “He’s dead! My best pard in all the world, and he’s gone.”

  “Two got away,” Owen said. “I heard them ride off.”

  “We still have this one.” Lon Chalmers gripped Givens by the scruff of the neck and slammed him to the earth. Then Lon began reloading, replacing each cartridge with slow deliberation.

  “Retie his ankles so he can’t run off,” Owen directed.

  “No need.”

  “We’ll turn him over to the law.”

  “Only a federal marshal has jurisdiction,” Lon said without looking up from the cartridge he was inserting, “and it could take a month of Sundays to find one. My way is better.”

  Ben Givens began to crawl backward, pumping his elbows and his heels. “Now hold on, mister! You can’t do this!”

  “Your men killed our friend.” Lon inserted yet another cartridge, winked at Givens, and said, “Two to go.”

  Givens appealed to Owen. “You’re the reasonable one. Talk to him. I’d rather take my chances in court.”

  “I bet you would,” Lon Chalmers said, and shot the rustler in the throat. He watched Givens thrash and shriek, then stood over him and emptied the Colt, shot by shot by shot, until the hammer clicked on a spent cartridge.

  Owen walked over and somberly regarded the riddled remains. “Sometimes you worry me, pard. You truly do.”

  “I should have done it when he first showed his face,” Lon said. “Cleveland might be alive.”

  “You don’t know that. None of us can read crystal balls.”

  Slim had picked up Cleveland and was carrying him into the trees. His spindly legs shook under the weight, and his cheeks were damp.

  “Wait for us,” Owen said. “We’ll help you.”

  “No!” It was practically a scream. “Thanks, but it’s mine to do.”

  Benedito called out, “Someone to watch your back then, señor? Perhaps the two who left will return.”

  “I wish to God they would,” Slim said.

  An expression of puzzlement came over Owen and he looked around in concern. “Say, where did that Brit get to? He was here when the lead started flyin’.”

  “I haven’t seen him in a while,” Lon said, rotating right and left. “If anything has happened to him, Mr. Bartholomew will have us staked out over an anthill.”

  Benedito rose and from his elevated position scoured their vicinity. “There!” he suddenly cried, pointing. “Are those not his?”

  A pair of black shoes was all that was visible, jutting from high grass on the bank. Owen and Lon raced to the spot. Owen got there first and stopped so abruptly that Lon nearly ran into him.

  “Lord, no.”

  Pitney lay on his stomach, one arm outstretched, the other under him. His hat was missing, and a scarlet furrow ran from above his right ear to his right eye. Blood matted his hair and was drying on his neck.

  “Help me,” Owen said. He slid an arm under Pitney and carefully sat him up, Lon doing the same on the other side.

  “Is he—?”

  “We need water.” Owen was rising when Alfred Pitney’s eyelids fluttered and opened.

  “I say. I’m still alive?”

  “From the neck down,” Lon said.

  “The last thing I remember is a blow to my head and staggering about. I was terribly fortunate, what?”

  Lon Chalmers gazed toward where scraping and digging sounds came from among the trees. “You could say that.”

  19

  Big Sieves and Little Sieves

  The day finally came when Luke Deal asked the question he had asked of every trail boss and received the answer he had been waiting for.

  “A small outfit with a big bull? Sure, saw them, oh, about ten days ago,” said the rugged trail boss for the Slash H, who were pushing two thousand head toward Dodge. “We had to stop early and they went past us about four in the afternoon. I rode over and talked with a ranny named Owen. Would he be the friend you’re tryin’ to find?”

  “One of them,” Luke Deal said with a smile.

  “That was some bull they had,” the Slash H boss declared. “Big Blue, they called him. I’d give all I own and then some to have an animal that fine.”

  “How many others were with Owen?” Luke inquired.

  “Let me see. I recollect two other trail herders and a foreigner. An Englishman, he was. He had a peculiar name. Pick-something. Pickles, maybe. Plus their cook.”

  “Only two other herders? Are you sure? I thought there were supposed to be three.”

  “They lost one. Owen told me they swapped lead with some mangy rustlers and one of his men was killed. He was real upset about it. Speaks well of a foreman when he cares that much.”

  “That’s Owen for you,” Luke said. “He wouldn’t stomp a snake if the snake wasn’t doin’ him any harm.”

  “Well, neither would I,” the Slash H trail boss said. He touched his hat brim to Sweet Sally. “Nice meetin’ you folks, ma’am. Hope you catch up to your friend soon.”

  “We all do,” Luke answered for her.

  The trail boss wheeled his mount and left them. Bronk waited until he was out of earshot to ask, “Which one do you figure is feedin’ the worms?”

  “What difference does it make?” Luke rejoined. “The important thing is that there is one less, which makes it easier for us.”

  From that moment on, Sweet Sally’s fear was compounded by her worry for Slim and the other Bar 40 punchers. Any day now Luke would overtake them, and she had no illusions about what would happen. Luke’s past performance allowed for no doubt. He would kill them, and her, and take the bull and the other longhorns and sell them for a lot of money. The money was all he talked about of late around the campfire at night. He was thinking about heading for San Francisco. He had heard a lot of grand things about the city on the west coast, about the gambling and the nightlife. How it was a den of iniquity the likes of which to rival New Orleans. The perfect haunt for a man like him.

  Sweet Sally could not let Slim and the others come to harm. She must stop Luke somehow. But how when she was only one woman and there were three of them? Three of the vilest human beings it had ever been her misfortune to know. Compared to Luke Deal, Paco Ramirez had been a saint.

  She was no match for them physically. She was stronger than most females but she was terribly slow. Even Grutt could whip her.

  The logical course, Sally decided, was to get her hands on a weapon. A gun, a gun of any kind—pistol or rifle, it didn’t matter, so long as it was loaded. She had not done a lot of shooting and was not familiar with a lot of firearms, but how hard could it be? Revolvers were simple enough to use. You pulled back the hammer and squeezed the trigger. Rifles took a little more work. You had to move the lever to feed a new cartridge into the chamber. And even though she was probably one of the worst shots on the planet, it didn’t matter if she was close enough when she pulled the trigger. At arm’s length everyone was a marksman.

  Sweet Sally devoted every waking moment to conspiring to get her hands on a firearm but it proved more difficult than she’d counted on.

  Neither Luke, Grutt, nor Bronk ever let his rifle out of his sight. The rifles were in their saddle scabbards w
hen the men were riding and in their hands or close to them when they weren’t. At night they slept with their rifles at their sides. Their rifles were a part of them, like their arms and legs.

  As for their revolvers, the only way she would get one would be to pry it from their lifeless fingers. Their six-shooters never left their waists except when they used them or cleaned them. They even slept with the damn things on, or, in Grutt’s case, tucked under his belt with his hand on it.

  Five days went by. Sally was always vigilant, always on the lookout for a chance, but none presented itself. By the evening of the fifth day she was so worried she barely touched the rabbit stew Bronk made. She sat staring glumly into the flames, depressed to her marrow.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Grutt unexpectedly demanded. “You’ve been sulkin’ all damn day, woman.”

  “I’m fine,” Sweet Sally said.

  “You’re a liar.”

  Bronk chuckled and nudged him. “What woman ain’t? They never give a man a straight answer.”

  “I’m fine, I tell you,” Sweet Sally insisted. It might have been wiser to keep her mouth shut but she was tired of their teasing and sick of their contempt and mad as hell over the murders she had been forced to witness and those she saw no means of preventing, including her own.

  Luke Deal was on his back, his head propped on his saddle, his hat brim low. Now he pushed it up and studied her with that cold, calculating way he had. “It’s not hard to figure her, boys. She’s frettin’ over her friends. She doesn’t want them hurt.”

  “Well, they will be,” Grutt said, and snickered. “Me, I want to put a few into that Lon Chalmers. I bumped into him once in the saloon and spilled some of my whiskey on his shirt and the bastard made me apologize.”

  “Chalmers is hell with the hide off,” Bronk said. “He’s all yours. I don’t want no part of him.”

  Luke Deal made a sound of disgust. “Listen to you yellow-backs. He pulls his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us, doesn’t he?”

  “He also whips out that hogleg of his faster than just about anybody I ever saw,” Bronk said. “Remember the social the church put on? And the shootin’ match? Chalmers won.”

  “I missed out on that,” Luke said. “I was down in Mexico.”

  “Well, I saw him,” Bronk said. “They stuck playin’ cards on a board with pins, six for each shooter. The idea was to hit all six dead center but no one came close. Owen hit two in the middle and nicked the rest, which I thought was good shootin’, but then Chalmers walked up to the line and as slick as you please he drew and emptied his Colt and damn me if he didn’t hit all six cards, four of them smack in the center.” Bronk shook his head. “I never saw such shootin’ in all my born days.”

  “They say Hickok could shoot like that,” Grutt mentioned. “Now there was one tough hombre.”

  “Wyatt Earp is supposed to be a gun shark,” Bronk commented.

  Luke Deal swore. “Wyatt Earp is a windbag. The same as most of that gun-wise crowd who crow about their shootin’ affrays.”

  Despite herself, Sweet Sally’s interest perked. “I met a man once,” she said softly. “About the nicest gentleman you ever saw. He always treated the ladies with respect. He could shoot, let me tell you. I saw him practice many a time from the shack where I was livin’. He would go out every mornin’ and line up whiskey bottles and the like, and back off twenty steps with a revolver in each hand.”

  “He broke bottles?” Grutt said. “Hell, I can break bottles.”

  “No, he shot the necks off the bottles,” Sweet Sally said. “He never missed either. He would flip up those revolvers and bam, bam, it was done.”

  “This prodigy have a handle?” Luke Deal idly asked.

  “Ringo. Some folks called him Ringgold for some reason but his real name was John Ringo.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Bronk said.

  Luke snorted again. “The fuss people make over leather-slappers makes me sick. Half the stories about them are tall tales and the rest are outright lies.”

  “You sound jealous,” Sweet Sally said with sham politeness.

  “What would I have to be jealous about?” Luke contemptuously responded.

  “That windbag, as you called him, doesn’t go around murdering parsons and shooting women and children.”

  “Your point?”

  Sweet Sally heard the threat in his tone but she answered him anyway. “That Earp and those like him are better men than you’ll ever be. You talk about your friends here being yellow when you’re the most yellow son of a bitch I’ve ever met.”

  Grutt, about to refill his tin cup, turned to marble. Bronk let out a long breath, his eyes growing to the size of walnuts.

  Luke Deal did not say a word. He lay there as still as a log, the firelight dancing on his hard features, and stared at Sally with those icy, flat eyes of his for what seemed an eternity. Then he folded his hands on his chest and said, “Well.”

  “Well what?” Sally baited him. “What do you have to say for yourself? You know I’m right.”

  “What I know is that there are big sieves and little sieves,” Luke said, “and some plans don’t always work out. I also know you still reckon you have me figured out but you don’t.”

  “You’re not yellow?” Sweet Sally did not hide her disdain.

  “Do you think it’s easy to kill? To shoot a parson like I did? Or that family? It’s not. It takes more grit than you’ll ever have.”

  Sally indulged in a bitter laugh. “Shooting defenseless little girls? Face it. You only kill those who can’t fight back.”

  Deal did not rise to the insult. “I’ve never backed down from a scrape in my life.”

  “I’ve read about Wyatt Earp in the newspapers,” Sweet Sally mentioned. “I’ve never read about you.”

  “That’s because I’m smarter than he is,” Luke said. “I don’t want the law comin’ after me so I keep quiet about my doin’s. Braggarts like Earp crow just to see their names in print.”

  “I’d like to see you call him that to his face,” Sweet Sally sneered. “Just so I could gloat over your grave.”

  “You’ll never understand,” Luke said. “You can’t help it, bein’ a woman and all.”

  “I understand more than you give me credit for,” Sweet Sally jousted. “I understand you’ve probably killed more people than Wyatt Earp and John Ringo combined, but that doesn’t make you better than they are. Maybe Wyatt is a windbag, but he’s a windbag on the side of law and order. You’re a snake in the grass who only cares about himself.”

  “Call me all the names you want,” Luke said. “It won’t ruffle my feathers any.”

  “All right,” Sweet Sally said. “You’re a bastard. You’re scum. You are slime. You are as low as a human being can go. You don’t care about anyone but yourself. You are dead inside, so you make everyone else as dead as you are. Something happened to you that night your parents were killed. Or maybe it was always there, inside of you, and didn’t come out until you were on your own.” Sally paused to take a breath.

  “Are you through?”

  “Not by a long shot.” Sally had been holding her emotions in check for so long that her pent-up feelings spilled from her like water over a burst dam. “You deserve to die, Luke Deal. You deserve to die the most horrible death any man has died since the dawn of time. Hanging is too good for you. Too quick. Too painless. You deserve to suffer. Not a little but a lot. You deserve to die kicking and screaming and in the most god-awful agony ever inflicted.”

  Sally stopped. She had said too much. Way too much. But she was glad she’d done it, glad she’d stopped hiding behind the wall of fear that had paralyzed her, glad she had told him how despicable he was.

  “I gather we’re not friends anymore.”

  “I’ve never hated anyone so much in my life.” Sweet Sally leaned back, pleased with herself until she saw Luke’s eyes. Regret spiked through her. She had made a mistake, gone too far.

&nbs
p; Sally glanced toward the string. They had traded the ox for a horse the second day after Luke exterminated the family in the prairie schooner. A trail boss named Weaver had lost a lot of head in a stampede and did not want to lose any more to fill the bellies of his men, so he made the swap.

  “Ox isn’t beef but it’s not shoe leather,” was Weaver’s assessment.

  Now, pushing to her feet, Sally walked toward some bushes barely visible in the dark.

  “Where do you think you’re goin’?” Grutt snapped.

  “That coffee went right through me.” But what Sally really needed was some moments alone to think. She went past the bushes and sat down, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands. Since she had not been able to get her hands on a weapon, she had to do something else, and she had to do it quick. In a couple of days they would overtake the Bar 40 bunch.

  If she was going to slip away in the dead of night, Sweet Sally reflected, she must do it that very night. She would take a horse, and lead it by the reins until she was far enough away to climb on and ride without being heard. She must not stop until she caught up to Slim and the rest. Once they were warned, they could give the high and mighty Luke Deal a taste of his own medicine.

  Sweet Sally longed to see that. She longed to see Luke Deal die. She had never been a vengeful or hateful person but she craved his death more than she had ever craved anything in her life.

  There was a hitch to her plan, though. The three hard cases took turns keeping watch. Luke always took the early watch, Grutt the middle, and Bronk sat up from about three a.m. until daylight. To steal a horse from under their noses might be impossible. If she was caught, they would punish her. Luke would punish her. She shuddered at the thought.

  Boots crunched, and Bronk gruffly asked from the other side of the bushes, “What’s takin’ you so long back there? Luke wants you at the fire.”

  “I’ll only be another minute,” Sally said. “It’s not as if I’ll run off in the dark.” She gazed longingly into the night, wishing she were younger, wishing she were thinner, wishing she could flee with the speed of a bounding antelope.