One Man, One Gun

by Matt Chisholm

  “Miss Manuela,” he said, “does that man understand English?”

  “He does not. But if you speak in Spanish, he will not hear. He is of my people and he is loyal to me.”

  “Here goes then,” he said. “Now you jest listen real hard. I’m goin’ to talk fast an’ ever’ word’s goin’ to count. I reckon I lied to li’l ole Rolf there. Sure, I come to dicker for bulls, but I come to steal women too. This is an honorable offer, I give you my word. An’ that’s good any place between the Border an’ Canada. The offer’s marriage an’ a place to call your own. I’m through foolin’ around with savages an’ I’m all set to raise cows and children. Say me yes or no, ma’am.”

  She looked at him wide-eyed for a moment as if she suspected that he had taken leave of his senses.

  He must have read her thoughts.

  “I mean ever’ durned word of it,” he asserted.

  “Mr. Harrison,” she said, “I know you do me an honor. But I am what you would call a fallen woman.” She said it calmly, without bitterness.

  Earnestly, he said: “You don’t look like you fell too far to be pulled right back up.”

  “Do you think it is possible?”

  “Jest take a-hold of my hand,” he said, “an’ you’ll see if it’s possible.”

  There was a scurry of movement on the far side of the corral. Men were roping bulls. Dust teased their nostrils. They heard Rolf shouting orders.

  “A woman needs time to decide a thing like this,” she said.

  “That’s what I don’t have to offer you, gal,” he said. “Come dawn li’l ole Rolf’s goin’ come after me loaded for bear. See here, I have all the gold a man needs and I ain’t ezackly repulsive. We could raise fine children.”

  “But Rolf would always be in your mind,” she said. “You are not so different from other men.”

  He laughed.

  “Girl,” he cried, “you’re plumb mistook. The good Lord never raised a man like me before. Who’s this feller Rolf you mentioned?”

  She could not help laughing.

  The Mexican hand spoke.

  “Go, señorita,” he said. “God has sent this man.”

  Harrison looked at the small swart man.

  “Listen to that,” he exclaimed, “this hombre sure has observation. Hell, ma’am, what do you have to lose. I can’t be no worse than that feller out yonder whose name I don’t recollect.”

  She smiled.

  “Very well,” she said. “I will do it. I hope that I shall prove that you have not made a mistake.”

  The Mexican said: “You have not made a mistake, senor. This is the best thing you ever did in your life.”

  “You said it,” said Harrison.

  “They are coming,” said the Mexican.

  Harrison turned in the saddle and saw the torches and lanterns coming back their way. He started to talk fast. He gave the woman the same directions that he had given Jody. “Get goin’ now.” he said. “I’ll tell Rolf you changed your mind and rode back to the house.”

  She hesitated for a moment. He reached out and touched her hand. “You won’t regret it,” he told her. She smiled and turned her horse. Harrison found that his mouth was dry. He knew that he had just made the biggest decision of his life.

  The riders were approaching. He saw that they had roped three bulls and were leading them forward.

  The Mexican said: “Not the one with the blaze, Don Prescott. He is no good with the cows.”

  Harrison thanked him.

  Rolf rode up.

  “There, Mr. Harrison,” he declared. “The best of my herd. I swear it.”

  Harrison urged his horse through the open gateway and looked the animals over. All three looked magnificent to him. The one with the blaze the best of all. He was the biggest bull he had ever laid eyes on in his life. But he knew his adviser could be right. Some of the puniest men sired the best kids. And breeding potential was what he was after.

  “I’ll take these two,” he said.

  Rolf exclaimed: “But the third. He is the best animal of the three.”

  “Not to my liking. I told you I was a man of whims, Rolf.”

  “But every man here will tell you that he’s the best.”

  “I’m goddam sure they will,” said Prescott. “What’s your price?”

  “A thousand dollars,” said Rolf.

  The men sat their horses, watching, enjoying it. They liked a trade.

  “Mighty high price for two bulls” said Harrison. “Throw in another an’ I might think about it. An’ not that big bluffer younger.”

  “A thousand dollars each,” said Rolf.

  Harrison turned slowly in the saddle to stare at him.

  “Man,” he said, “ifn I fall clean offn my horse, don’t you be surprised now. You done take my breath away. Them horns made of solid gold or somethin’?”

  “That’s my price,” said Rolf.

  Harrison pointed to his beard.

  “There’s silver amongst the gold,” he said. “I ain’t no fool yearlin’, Rolf. Leave us start all over. Say three hunnerd each an’ I’ll start listening with considerable interest.”

  “Two thousand dollars the pair,” Rolf maintained.

  “There’s other bulls,” Harrison said. “You ain’t the on’y gopher on the prairie.”

  “But none like mine.”

  “Who wants bulls like yourn? Jumpin’ snakes, if one was to breathe extry hard I’d feel like havin’ the vapors at that price. Leave me outa here where I kin buy a li’l ole longhorn for a few dollars and live happy.” He turned his horse away. He decided he would have to cut his losses if his bluff didn’t work. He’d have the horses and the woman. Jody Storm would have to go whistle for his fool bull.

  Rolf let him cover twenty yards when he called: “Harrison!”

  Harrison halted his horse and turned in the saddle.

  “What is it?”

  “You’re not bluffing me. You’ll be back.”

  “That’s one thing I shall not be, Rolf. I can’t abide avarice and you sure is an avaricious man. I don’t reckon you aim to sell them bulls. You jest wanta keep ’em all for yourself. You go chargin’ prices like that an’ you’ll sure have ’em all for yourself.”

  “Nine hundred dollars each.”

  Harrison laughed and rode on.

  Rolf shouted: “Eight hundred.”

  Harrison bawled back: “The pair.”

  “Each.”

  Harrison walked his horse on. He heard men riding after him. Four men came up, two on either side. One of them said: “The boss ain’t through talking with you.” He was an Anglo. Harrison couldn’t see his face, but the voice sounded hard and cold. Pride made him want to smash his fist into the man’s face and knock him from the saddle. But he wasn’t playing the pride card that night.

  “He ain’t talkin’ the kinda language I savvy,” he said. “But I’ll continue the conversation if he starts talkin’ my language.”

  “Go back an’ try him,” said the rider.

  Harrison turned back. He found Rolf where he had left him.

  “You jest made me a little mad,” he said. “It didn’t do you one little bit of good. I’m offering you four hunnerd the pair an’ I ain’t budgin’. Take it or leave it.”

  “I’m a reasonable man,” said Rolf. “I’ll take fourteen hundred for both animals.”

  “That ain’t a offer,” Harrison said. “That’s an insult.”

  The Anglo rider said: “Don’t talk to Mr. Rolf that way. He don’t like it.”

  Harrison grunted.

  He turned very slowly and looked at the man. He could see his face now in the flickering light of the torches. The face fitted the voice. This was Rolf’s gun-hand and general handy man. Amusement and delight warmed Harrison.

  “From that remark, son,” he said gently, “a man would gather that you would aim to do somethin’ about it ifn I kinda got outa line.”

  “That’s the size of it,” the man said, �
�you catch on fast.”

  “I do,” said Harrison, “real fast.”

  It was his philosophy that violence was an unpleasant last resort. It could get a man killed and that man could be you. If you talked about it before you resorted to it, the odds against you were increased considerably.

  So when he moved, he moved fast. So fast in fact that nobody there was ever too sure of what exactly happened. Certainly, Harrison lifted his gun from the leather. That much they were all sure of. Most reckoned that the barrel of the gun kissed the gun-hand’s mouth. They knew that the said gun-hand pitched from his saddle and hit the ground spitting out teeth and making whimpering sounds.

  If any of them were tempted to lift their own guns from leather they changed their minds when Harrison’s vintage but excellently cared for Colt’s gun came to full-cock and was held unwaveringly pointed at their employer’s heart.

  “My friends,” Harrison said. “One of you looks at me wrong an’ I’ll blow the mean heart outa that big wheel yonder. Get around behind him and I’ll look at your hands while you do it.”

  They started to move. Harrison knew that he was in considerable danger. The shadows were deep and a man could have made a lethal move under their cover. Harrison would have liked them all disarmed, but the only way that he could remove their guns from leather was to demand they do it themselves. He didn’t want the butts of their guns so near their hands. Some fool might have been tempted.

  As for Rolf, he sat his horse experiencing a fury which he could not hide. The calm exterior was whisked away, revealing the bully boy who had made his pile on the Barbary Coast by means mostly foul. The eyes were those of a man who in the early years had done his own killing. One look at him convinced Harrison that getting away from here alone was going to be difficult. Getting away with a couple of bulls in tow was going to be nigh on impossible. That, however, did not deter him from his determination to depart from there alive and with two bulls. He needed help. His mind rested for a moment on the Mexican who had aided him in his brief courting of Manuela Salazar. Maybe ... Another risk might solve his problem.

  In Spanish, he said: “You, my friend, go around behind these men and take their guns from them. You will throw them as far you can into the darkness. Don’t forget that one wrong move will bring about the death of your patron.”

  The Mexican gave a pretty good performance of being scared out of his hide. Maybe he wasn’t acting at that. He dismounted and walked around behind the riders who were lined up behind Rolf. As he started to pluck belt-guns from their holsters and hurl them into the night, Rolf spoke.

  “You will not get away with this, Harrison,” he said. “I shall come after you and hang you.”

  “Foolish talk,” Harrison said, knowing the man meant what he said. “You’re askin’ for me to kill you here an’ now. But we’re wastin’ time. I’ll make you a fair offer for the crittus yonder. Three hunnerd each.”

  “No,” said Rolf. “You’d best steal them while you have the gun.”

  “Not me,” said Harrison. “I pay cash in front of witnesses. I want a script.”

  “You’ll not have a script for three hundred.”

  “Make it four.”

  “Six.”

  “I’ll meet you on five.”

  Rolf’s jaw set like a trap.

  “Done,” he said.

  Harrison slipped fingers under his sash and brought out a tightly rolled wad of bills. He grinned and said: “I had the exact sum ready.” That thrust defeat into Rolf’s face. The man ground his teeth and looked fit to be tied. One of the riders tittered.

  Harrison said: “I’ll take a bill o’ sale.”

  Rolf said: “That won’t save your neck from the rope.”

  “It’ll mean I’ll die an honest man which is more’n you’ll ever do, Rolf.”

  Paper and pencil were found. Rolf dismounted and wrote with the paper resting on his saddle. He handed the paper to a rider and the man brought it to Harrison.

  By this time, the man with the mashed mouth was on his feet. He stood holding his mouth and watching Harrison, who folded the paper, slipped it under his sash and said to the Mexican who had disarmed the others: “You will drive those bulls toward the creek. See that you do not misbehave yourself or you will find yourself very dead.”

  “That,” said the Mexican, “I would not like.” He swung astride his horse and started the two fine bulls out of the corral.

  To Rolf, Harrison said: “You come after me, Rolf, an’ I’ll nail your hide out for a parfleche.”

  Rolf sat his horse as if he were made of stone. Only his eyes were violently alive.

  Harrison listened carefully to measure how far the Mexican had gone with the bulls, then backed his horse from the corral, spun it and quickly disappeared into the darkness.

  The Rolf riders were at once piling from the saddle to search for their weapons. Rolf halted them.

  “Take your time,” he said, putting Harrison’s money away. “He’ll be traveling slowly with those animals. We shall have no trouble picking him up soon after first light. We shall stretch his neck before noon. Get some sleep.”

  Meanwhile, Harrison caught up with the Mexican. He saw the flash of the man’s white teeth in the dim light.

  “It was a great pity and a greater waste to pay good money for these bulls,” he said.

  Harrison chuckled.

  “You are a bandit at heart, amigo,” he said.

  “No,” the man told him. “Just a good hater.”

  “How do they call you?”

  “Hijinio Chavez.”

  “Hijanio,” Harrison told him. “You drive these bulls to where they’re going and I will pay you one hundred Yankee dollars.”

  “I’m your man,” said the Mexican.

  He told the man to cross the creek and gave him detailed directions. He knew that he was taking a big chance, but he reckoned that this was a night of chances. He was banking on the man’s loyalty to Manuela. When they reached the creek, Harrison halted and listened. There was no sound of pursuit. He thought that Rolf would most likely wait for daylight to come after him. The man was in for a shock. Or so Harrison hoped.

  He now dismounted and handed the lines to Hijinio.

  “I shall come later with fresh horses. If I do not come, you will take the senorita to safety.”

  “My word on it.”

  The man offered his hand and they gripped.

  Harrison waited while Hijinio drove the bulls through the creek water. He listened as they turned south and he could hear them no more. He wondered how young Storm was making out.

  There was brush along the edge of the creek here and the cover was good. He worked his way west until he had the corral in sight. During his previous visit he had drawn a mental map of the place and he knew where the horses were. He waited while Rolf and his riders went back in the direction of the buildings. He then drifted through the dim light and waited until he was certain that most of the men were under cover. He now worked his way south around the corral of the bulls and came up west of the horse corrals. There were two of them. Jody Storm’s animal, Sox was in the one to the north. The majority of the hands’ remuda was in the southern one. Harrison decided he might as well take the ultimate gamble and deprive Rolf, even though temporarily, of all his horse stock. It pleasured Harrison to make Rolf mad and it would hold up the pursuit for a while.

  He started cutting through the rawhide that held the poles of the southern corral together. If he left a wide enough gap, he hoped that these horses would take off when he ran the bunch with Jody’s horses among them off. He told himself that he hadn’t enjoyed himself so much for years.

  He remembered Henry Carrington Wilder. He wondered why he hadn’t seen hide or hair of the Englishman. He hadn’t met a real snag yet. Maybe Wilder was the snag.

  A few horses drifted out of the darkness to see what he was doing. He spoke to them in a low voice, they tossed their heads and wheeled away. When he had opened up a
bout thirty feet of fence, he went on to the next corral. He started work with his knife again. He found that he was sweating. This surprised him because he thought he was keeping pretty calm. But the tension must be rising in him now.

  He walked through the gap he had cut. The horses turned and bunched in a far corner of the enclosure. He walked toward them, talking to them. He had to go carefully now. He was afoot and he didn’t want to stay that way. If these critturs spooked and lit out without his catching one he was a dead man for sure.

  An animal detached itself from the bunch and ran around the edge of the corral, kicking its heels and squealing. Harrison cursed softly and with fluency. The noise could bring some of the hands running.

  He neared the horses. Two more broke away and went running.. He heard the first horse find the gap and go through it.

  He made a quick move forward.

  That was a mistake. The whole bunch of them took fright and were off.

  He turned and ran for the gap as fast as he could go. The horses were thundering around the edge of the corral, travelling fast, thoroughly alarmed now. The opening in the fence seemed an eternity away. His legs were going like pistons. The whole world seemed to be full of the racket kicked up by the horses. If that didn’t bring the men out, nothing would.

  He saw the pale shape of white. It reached the gap, swung through it and headed on south. At least the sonovabitch was going in the right direction. Three or four more followed it. The whole bunch was going to be free before he could get his hand on one.

  Then it seemed that the whole bunch rocketed through and away. The dust kicked his nostrils, got into his eyes.

  He reached the gap and halted, chest heaving, defeat swamping him.

  He heard a sound behind him and turned.

  A laggard was coming.

  It loomed up suddenly, on him almost before he was ready. He jumped for it and it dodged to the right. He yelled. It shied, dodged back into the corral, spun and made a run for the gap again.

  He lunged for its mane and missed. He kept his legs going, driving himself into a wild sprint. The flowing tail came under his hand and he grasped it. The pace of the horse nearly tore him from his feet, but he managed to keep them under him. Together he and the animal tore over the ground.