One Man, One Gun

by Matt Chisholm

  The idea of putting up a gallant fight and protecting his horses faded quickly from his mind. In the light of the circumstances, it seemed a much better idea just to get out of there and stay alive. He had the feeling that these two bucks were better at this game than he was.

  He rolled downhill a few yards, dropped over a low ledge and found himself on the edge of some thick undergrowth. This might offer him enough cover to get away. He regretted losing his horses, but that would be better than losing his life. He wormed his way through the bushes and paused for a moment to listen, wondering if they would come after him, He heard one of the Indians call to the other. Jody didn’t understand a word.

  The man immediately above him laughed.

  That did it. If that man hadn’t laughed, maybe Jody Storm would have slipped away and crawled to safety, leaving those two braves the richer by two horses. But one laughed. Jody lay and fumed. That laugh mocked his courage and stuck a goad in his manhood. Two goddamned naked savages were up there on the hillside were thinking they had run rings around him. It was more than a man could bear. So they thought they were smart, did they? They thought they had chased off Jody Storm and gained two fine horses the easy way. Well, they had another think coming to them.

  He worked his way south to where the bushes ended and gazed uphill.

  A branch swayed. He fired. Leaves and twigs flew. He may or may not have hit a man.

  He watched and listened. He could hear the horses moving about behind and below him.

  He heard a faint twang.

  Something hit the ground at his side, lightly touching his ribs. He tried to roll and found that he could not. He looked down and saw that he was pinned to the ground by an arrow that had driven through his coat and shirt. Fear rushed through him. That arrow had come from his left. He reached across himself with his right hand and tore the shaft from the ground, ripping it from his clothes. He grabbed his rifle and rose to rush into a crouching run. A gun banged and the dirt kicked up a foot to his right. Which way dare he run? He was going south now along the side of the hill, searching frantically for good cover.

  At last he found rock and brush and dove into it. He landed hard and bruised himself badly. As he lay still and listened he heard a man moving at speed on a parallel course along the side of the hill above him. He glimpsed the racing legs, sighted above them and fired.

  There came a crash of breaking branches as the man crashed down. The fellow threshed around. Jody could see no more than a blur of movement. He jacked a fresh round into the breech and fired again. He did not know if he made a hit. He crouched down and waited, ranging what he could see of the hillside with his eyes.

  The movement above him stopped. The man called out. Jody waited for the other man to give his position away, but he was too smart for that.

  The boy lay there, trying to put himself in the shoes of the man with the rifle. He would want to care for his comrade’s wound or tote him out of the fight. But it wasn’t safe to do that. So he had to kill the white man to make it safe. Jody toyed with the idea of creeping away downhill, getting on Blue and ‘lighting out as fast as he could go. Nobody would blame him for doing that. But his saddle and his gear were up there by the water. That was a forty dollar saddle. Cost more than a month’s pay. Besides, it sure hurt a man’s pride to run from an Indian with a single-shot carbine. It could even be a muzzle-loader. Certainly, there were long spaces between shots. There was one more consideration and this was probably the most important one. If he broke for his horse that same single-shot carbine might cut him down.

  Jody decided to stay put.

  He just wished that the son-of-a-bitch with the rifle would tote his wounded friend quietly away and end the fight. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen.

  Jody heard a faint sound from above him. He peered out from his hiding place and listened. He thought the sound was that of something being dragged over the ground. He glimpsed slight movement through the foliage. It seemed to be going uphill from him. It looked like his wish had come true and the rifleman was dragging the wounded man away. Should he try and kill the second man? Play safe?

  Or was it playing safe? If he killed a man wouldn’t he have the whole tribe down on his neck. He didn’t fancy the prospect of being hunted through the hills by a pack of blood-thirsty savages. Two were more than enough for him.

  The sounds above him were growing fainter. He listened until he could hear them no longer. Then he gave them a good long time to get clear. It came to him that possibly the rifleman might return to kill him once he had carried the wounded man to safety. Which didn’t make him feel any easier. At that moment, it didn’t seem at all a romantic thing to be out on the trail alone. He could do with at least two other Storms along.

  He started up the hill, crawling, stopping every few yards to look and listen. If the two men had ponies nearby, he never heard them. At last he reached the spot where the man had fallen. There were still leaves wet with blood. He looked beyond and saw where the man had been dragged. With great caution, he followed the sign until at last he reached the crest of the ridge. The sign was blurred here, but he reckoned one man had carried the other from here on. Keeping low, he followed the tracks down into a tiny valley with steep sides, matted with trees and brush, scattered with rocks. After a while, he came to the place where the horses had been tied. Their tracks plainly led north. It looked like his enemies had departed. He hoped that was right. He hoped also that their camp was a long way off and there weren’t a hundred bucks waiting to come a-hunting him.

  He decided that there was no time to lose. Climbing the side of the valley as fast as he could go, throwing all caution to the wind, he ran down the far side through the trees, collected his rope from camp and went down to catch his horses. There was no call for the rope. Both animals came to his call. He led them back into camp, hastily packed his gear, saddled both horses with many a glance around, and loaded Sox. As he did so, he tried to remember everything Joe Widbee and his old man had taught him about losing sign. He mustn’t try anything fancy that might be beyond him, nothing but the best would fool Indians. This was their country and they knew it well. His first need was running water that flowed along a bed which he could travel with two horses. He mounted and rode to the crest of the ridge, went down into the little valley and turned up it. This brought him out into a gully that reared above him high and steep on either hand, smelling dank and forbidding. It seemed as if it had never been trodden by man. He came out of this into a larger, untidy valley that looked as though it had been ruffled in some past age by a mighty hand. It was tumbled and broken from one end to the other, lying in seething movement under high craggy cliffs of gray and faded purple. It could have belonged to another world. He would not have been surprised if some fantastic monsters had appeared and challenged his presence there. As it was, he glimpsed nothing more than a small caballada of wild horses that tossed their manes and ran at his approach, led by an old white mare and bossed by a small wiry black stallion.

  He rode across this place, looking for a way up the cliff that faced him, but he saw none. He did, however, come on water, a gently flowing creek that went south-east. He tested it with a stick and found it too deep to take his horses without swimming. This was a disappointment and he rode along its shore, taking advantage of the comparatively smooth ground to up his speed a little. Every mile counted. He rode with his chin on either shoulder, knowing that he must be clearly visible to any watcher on the valley walls.

  At the southern end of the valley, he reached timber and was glad to get into this shelter. It slowed his pace, but it felt a good deal safer than the open ground. He cleared timber and came out into broken country with high hills on either hand.

  And here he had a little luck. He came on a fairly wide creek that meandered here, there and everywhere. It pushed its haphazard way through a vast scattering of rocks, so that there was stone for fifty to a hundred yards on either side. The water proved to be shallow and the bottom sandy. He
couldn’t ask for anything better. He put Blue into it as if he were going to continue on his present line of march upstream, but once in the center of the creek, he turned downstream and picked his way toward what looked like broken country that was well-covered with greenery. To have both water to wipe out his sign and foliage to hide his presence answered his every prayer.

  The water was shallow enough not to slow him unduly and he hit a pretty good pace, often keeping the horses at a brisk trot for five minutes at a time. In this way, he followed the water till he could go no further, for the bed became rocky and would put the horses at risk. He halted and carefully chose the spot where he would land, coming ashore on a wide expanse of shale that would prevent him from making sign until he was in the cover of the trees beyond.

  He rode into the timber for a hundred paces, halted the horses and went back to wipe out as much sign as he could. That done, he remounted and went on. By this time, having survived several hours, he was feeling pretty pleased with himself.

  He found that he was climbing fairly steeply before he had covered another half-mile and it dawned on him by this time he had broken his father’s instructions arid was a long way from the trail he was supposed to be following. It was going to be necessary to have a good amount of luck if he was going to find Rolf’s place without asking the way. And where would he find anybody to ask in this wilderness?

  As if his question was being answered, when he finally broke clear of the trees, he saw, at a distance of no more than thirty feet’ a solitary horseman.

  The man so startled him that he halted abruptly and reached for his belt-gun.

  The man said: “No call for that, sonny.”

  Chapter Three

  Being called sonny made Jody so mad that for one terrible moment he almost obeyed his impulse and pulled his gun from the leather to blaze away.

  Two things prevented him from doing this. One was that a shot might locate him for any Indians who might be in the neighborhood. Two was that the stranger’s rifle, which lay in the crook of his left arm, was pointed straight at Jody’s belly.

  He got a grip on himself and inspected the man in front of him. The fellow was mounted on a black and white paint pony — a creature that a self-respecting cowman wouldn’t wish to find himself dead on. This animal stood sideways on to Jody and turned its head to inspect Blue and Sox with some curiosity. Its single line was knotted around its lower jaw in the Indian fashion. But though the saddle too was of Indian design and there were various decorations and feathers on the creature that denoted Indian origin, the rider was plainly as white as Jody himself.

  Not that this was much comfort, for there was about the man so wild an air and so forbidding a look that he could have been used to frighten grown men, let alone children, on a dark night. He was of medium height and massive in the shoulder; of any age between thirty and fifty, though his beard showed no sign of gray. It did, however, reach nearly to his waist. Both beard and hair were shot with gold and red, the hair matching the beard and reaching his shoulders in a mass of loose curls. He wore a faded blue shirt of hickory and over it an Indian hunting shirt with an irregularly shaped skirt as if its shape had been scarcely altered from the original doe-skin. This was fringed with what many summers before had been gay colors and badly marked with grease and cuts. The pants looked as if they had once belonged to a horse-soldier and had the yellow stripe removed. These were laced around his lower legs with strips of rawhide. His feet were covered by an excellent pair of moccasins that showed little sign of wear. Therefore, thought Jody, a squawman.

  “Name’s Prescott Harrison,” the man said. “Who might you be?”

  “Jode Storm,” said Jody.

  The man nodded as if the information confirmed his worst doubts. Jody saw that his eyes were an extraordinarily clear blue. They gazed at him hawk like on either side of a sunburned beak of a nose.

  “Where frum?”

  “Three Creeks.”

  “Uhuh. Wa-al now. That’s the formalities done. Been sittin’ up here waitin’ for you, sonny.”

  “Don’t call me “sonny”,” Jody said through his teeth.

  Prescott Harrison grunted. He might have been laughing and he may have sneered. It was hard to tell through all those whiskers.

  “Heerd tell of you Storms,” he said. “Had run in with Ed Brack last year. Cuttin’ a mighty wide swath is you an’ your kin, boy. So you come a-hellin’ into my mountains.”

  “Your mountains?”

  “Wa-al, I was here fust. Gives a man some kinda claim. Men’ve claimed land on less grounds ’an that, I reckon. Huh? Corse, the Injuns was here afore me. Still here. Like you jest found out.” A soft cackle came out of the whiskers and Jody guessed he was laughing for sure this time. “Their land, I s’pose. You wouldn’t think it the way the white trash drives in here, tromping all over, treatin’ the Injuns like they had no right here. Half the whites I come on ain’t worth a Ute’s left bollock an’ that’s a fac’. No, sir.”

  Jody said: “You with the Utes, Mr. Harrison?”

  “I reckon. You call me a squawman, I guess. Yep, I’m the Utes’ tame white man. The on’y one they kin trust. That’s why I’m here. Talk to you. Stop you gittin’ your fool throat cut an’ your hair lifted.”

  So this old fool was in with the two bucks who had jumped him. Jody’s right hand crept nearer to the butt of his gun and he wondered what sort of a chance he would have with that damned rifle pointed at his guts.

  “I didn’t do a thing,” he said. “I was ridin’ through, jest mindin’ my own business. I was jumped and you know it. What would you do if you was jumped by a coupla savages? Kiss ’em?”

  “No sass, now,” said Prescott Harrison sternly. “I’m here for your own good, boy. Keep a civil tongue in your head. You savvy I’m a squawman an’ you think that means you kin treat me like a goddam abergoin. Thet ain’t so. You speak civil or I climb down off n this here paint an’ I tan your hide for you.”

  The blood ran into Jody’s eyes.

  “By God,” he cried, “you ain’t man enough.”

  “Issatso?” said Harrison with some asperity. “You wanta wager on it?”

  Jody was out of the saddle quick as the winking of an eye.

  “Take that goddam rifle off me,” he said, “an’ I’ll show you.”

  A certain eagerness came into the squawman’s eyes. He looped his rifle to a projection on his saddle, threw a leg over the bow of the saddle and slipped nimbly to the ground.

  “Take off thet gun,” he said. “I knowed you was a real fightin’ man, minute I clapped eyes on you.”

  Suspicion knifed through Jody’s heated brain.

  “You want to part me from my gun,” he accused.

  “Sure do. Hot-headed youngsters might draw a gun in a rough-an’-tumble jest natcherly without thinkin’.”

  “All right.” Jody unbuckled his belt and slung it over his saddle horn. He stripped off his coat and threw it over his saddle. Harrison watched these arrangements with some amusement. It looked like a waste of time to him.

  Jody faced him and said: “Let’s git started.”

  Harrison grinned, went into a crouch, hands forward and started to circle around Jody. His brow was wrinkled in concentration, his eyes hard. It came to Jody that this man was capable of killing another man with his bare hands. But he was committed now and must go through with it.

  Suddenly, the squawman jumped in.

  Jody met him with a straight left to the face as his Uncle Mart had taught him. His bunched knuckles landed hard on Harrison’s nose and staggered the man a couple of paces backward. Blood flowed freely down into the red-gold of his whiskers. He shook his head and opened those blue eyes wide.

  “Hell’s bells,” he exclaimed. “Thet sure was a dandy. I ain’t never seen thet before. Where’d you learn it? I call thet real mean.” His voice was rich with admiration.

  “More where thet came from,” Jody said, flattered and pleased.

&nbs
p; “You don’t say,” said the squawman. “Wa-al, they reckon they’s a counter to everythin’ in this here vale of tears.”

  He jumped in again, precisely as he had done before and in precisely the same way as before, Jody shot out his left. But this time his adversary’s nose was no longer there to contact. Harrison moved his head to one side and Jody felt his wrist grasped by two hands of iron. Harrison seemed to fall away before him and he was yanked unceremoniously off his feet. He flew through the air all arms and legs and landed on his face.

  He didn’t like it too well. Every ounce of air was driven from his body and his face felt as if it was hash, bruised. Before he could recover or roll, something heavy smashed down onto his back and the air he was struggling to get into his lungs was violently driven out again. He knew that Harrison had jumped with both feet on his back.

  He started to feebly roll, but he was struck hard in the ribs and knew that he’d been kicked. He thought he’d best play it like a fox and rose choking and coughing to his knees. He saw the mocassined feet come dancing near and knew another kick was coming. He caught the foot in his left hand just before it landed. He wrenched it upward and rose with it, staggering almost blindly to his feet.

  Harrison landed on his back and his face showed a delicious surprise. Jody wiped it off when he dropped with both knees into his belly. It was Harrison’s turn to have the wind knocked out of him.

  But he was quick to recover himself. One moment he was gasping for breath on his back, the next he was on his feet, face aflame and eyes burning. Jody had succeeded only in driving the fighting madness into the man. The boy knew that he was now fighting for his life.

  The squawman advanced toward Jody with caution even though there was destruction in his eyes. The boy felt that now it only needed one mistake on his part to finish up with his neck broken. When Harrison made an attempt to close with a lightning spring forward, Jody rode back before him and, as Harrison straightened himself, darted forward with his left in counter-attack, rapping the man smartly first on his nose again and then high on the cheek. Harrison was shaken. The blows somehow cooled off the crazy rage that had come over him. The pale blue eyes came back into focus again, he circled cautiously, those eyes boring into Jody’s. Harrison made as if to seize Jody around the neck, the boy ducked and to his astonishment found his ankles in the grasp of Harrison’s hands. His feet were whisked from under him and once more he was on his back.