Sunset Trail

by Wayne D. Overholser

  He sighed as the waitress set his plate of bacon and eggs in front of him. He wasn’t hungry, but he ate because he had to keep his strength up for the grueling weeks of the campaign that lay ahead.

  He thought about those men in Denver who wanted to see him dead and he was a little surprised at himself for not hating them. Actually he felt sorry for them because they placed such a great value on their wealth, wealth that they were convinced they would lose if he had another term as governor.

  Miles bolted his breakfast and rose. “I’ll fetch the team and rig to the front door, Governor,” he said.

  “It won’t be more than ten minutes.”

  “We’ll be there,” Wyatt promised.

  Miles swung around and strode out of the dining room. Henry stared at his back, frowning. “I don’t trust that man. I still think we should send word to Amity that you can’t make it and catch the next train out of here.”

  Wyatt sighed and, picking up his cup, drank the rest of his coffee. He said: “You’re still thinking about that death threat, Tom. I won’t disappoint the people in Amity because we get a letter from another crackpot.”

  “I don’t think it was a crackpot this time,” Henry said. “We’ve known for a month or more that there was a conspiracy in Denver. . . .”

  “I know, I know,” Wyatt said testily as he rose. “Let me remind you that there is a good deal of difference between a conspiracy and an actual effort to kill me. Now let’s go get our luggage and be ready when Miles gets here with his rig.”

  Henry’s jaw jutted forward stubbornly. “It’s a Henry’s jaw jutted forward stubbornly. “It’s a waste of time and effort. You won’t get a vote from that bunch down there. You ought to save your strength. . . .”

  “Tom, sometimes you try me severely,” Wyatt said. “There are a few worthwhile things in this campaign besides getting votes. Now, come on.”

  From long experience, Tom Henry knew how far he could go with Wyatt and he had reached that point. He followed Wyatt out of the dining room and up the stairs to their room. A few minutes later Wyatt closed and locked his suitcase and set it in the hall outside his door. Henry picked it up and carried it and his own bag downstairs and put them down on the boardwalk in front of the hotel.

  A moment later Wyatt joined him just as Miles drew up in a hack. Henry piled the suitcases in the back and stepped up and sat down beside Wyatt in the rear seat.

  Miles handed two rifles to Wyatt and Henry, ask-ing: “How are you gents on the shoot?”

  “I’m pretty good,” Wyatt said as he took the Winchester. “Are we stopping to hunt jack rabbits?”

  Miles scowled. “You know damned well why I’m handing out these Thirty-Thirties. We may go clean through to Amity without any trouble, but again maybe we won’t. I figure three rifles is a hell of a lot better than one. If we get stopped, show that we’re armed and do it fast.”

  Henry had taken his rifle and carefully placed it between him and Wyatt as Miles turned and spoke to the team. Wyatt couldn’t keep from grinning as he winked at Henry. He said: “Well, Tom, are you ready to defend yourself?”

  “I told you we shouldn’t make this trip,” Henry said. “It ain’t worth it to risk our necks just to give a talk about a dam.”

  Wyatt guessed that Henry had never fired a rifle in his life, but he didn’t lack courage. That fact had been demonstrated more than once in the time they had been associated. He said gently: “That’s a matter of opinion. You may be proved right, but in my opinion it is worth risking our necks for and my opinion is the one we have to go by.”

  Henry’s face turned red. “Yes, sir,” he said.“I know that. It’s just that I hate to take the risk of having you assassinated.”

  “We take that risk every time I make a speech,” Wyatt said.

  They were silent then, the town dropping behind.

  They were silent then, the town dropping behind. The road led straight south through a rolling land covered by grass and sagebrush and Spanish bayonet. The dust rose behind them in a gray cloud and hung there in the still morning air while the sun moved up into a blue sky.

  It was warm now, but Wyatt knew that by noon, when they were due to reach Amity, the temperature would be in the nineties. He would have to stand on a platform under that hot sun to make a speech, and then he would get back into a rig and ride north to Burlington to catch a westbound train.

  It was too much, he told himself. Just too damned much, but he had made a commitment and he would keep it if it killed him. It might do exactly that, too. He had felt the heat more this summer than ever before. A day like this could give him a heart attack or heat prostration or something of the sort. Tom Henry had apparently not thought of it, but Wyatt considered it a greater danger than an assassin’s bullet.

  The country was monotonously the same, with here and there the buildings of a cattle ranch set back from the road. Wyatt didn’t like eastern Colorado. He had spent much of his life before becoming governor in the mining camps high in the Rockies. He loved the scenery which was never quite the same, the invigorating air of the high country, the variety of colors, the pale green of the quaking aspens or their gold in the fall, the dark green of the pines, the sharp green of the grass in the mountain meadows.

  If he lost the election, he would go back to the high country. There were times, and this was one, when he actually hoped he did lose. Then quite suddenly he dropped off to sleep, his chin dipping to his chest, his head bobbing back and forth. An hour later he woke suddenly as Miles yanked the team to a stop, cursing furiously.

  “Here they come, Governor,” Miles said. “Let ’em see your Winchesters. Both of ’em.”

  It took Wyatt a moment before he could fully comprehend what was happening. Tom Henry had lined his rifle on three cowboys who were riding toward them. Miles wrapped the lines around the brake handle, then picked up his Winchester. Wyatt rubbed his eyes and moistened his dry lips with the tip of his tongue, then lifted his rifle across his lap so it could be seen.

  “Who are they?” he asked.

  “In town we call ’em the Owl Creek boys,” Miles answered. “They’ve got shirt-tail spreads up Owl Creek and they make a hell of a poor living on ’em. They’re like a lot of cowmen around Amity. They blame you and the Populist party ’cause they’re almost broke.”

  “How do you know they’re after me?”

  “I’ve heard ’em talk.” Miles motioned at the three riders and called: “That’s close enough! I’m taking the governor to town to speak at noon. We haven’t got time to stop and palaver, so if you’ve got anything to say, spit it out and get to hell off the road.”

  The three men pulled up and sat their saddles, their eyes on Miles as if surprised to run into him. One of them started to curse as he reached for his gun, then froze as Miles cocked his rifle.

  “Don’t do it, Yarnell,” Miles said. “I figured some of you tough hands might try something like this, so we fetched along three Winchesters. Just start the ball, boys, and we’ll finish it.”

  “What is it?” Wyatt asked. “Are you men here to see me?”

  “We’re here to kill you,” the one Miles had called Yarnell said, “but we didn’t figger to run into three rifles. Maybe you and your friend can’t hit anything, but that damned Miles can shoot a fly off a man’s nose at fifty yards. What’s the matter with you, Dick?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” another one said truculently. “You’re a cowboy and you know what that old goat has done to us. We just sold all the steers we could round up and we got about enough dinero for ’em to pay taxes. What the hell are we supposed to live on?”

  “Get off the road or you won’t need to worry about having anything to live on,” Miles said. “You don’t have to like the governor, but you’re going to treat him real polite. You hear me, Lupton?”

  Wyatt laughed. “I’ve been called worse names than an old goat,” he said. “Gentlemen, I’m sorry about the low price of beef, but I don’t know why
you blame me. If you’ve got to blame somebody, blame the bankers. As governor, my program has been stopped in the legislature by the bankers and other wealthy men in the state.”

  “Oh, hell,” Yarnell said. “Don’t cuss the bankers. If there’s one decent man in Amity, the banker’s him, but you probably never heard of Matt Dugan.”

  “On the contrary,” Wyatt said, “he’s the one who asked me to come to Amity to speak today. He’ll be disappointed if you kill me.”

  “You’re drunk,” Miles said. “No sense trying to talk to you. Get out of our way.”

  “Sure we’re drunk,” Yarnell said. “Everybody will be drunk before Dam Day’s over.” He scratched a stubble-covered cheek as he stared at Wyatt. “We didn’t know you were here to speak because Matt invited you.”

  “Yeah, we sure didn’t,” Lupton agreed. “Maybe we won’t kill you, after all.”

  Miles laughed at them. “Of course you won’t. You’re a pack of fools. If you start anything . . . anything at all, I’ll see all three of you hang just as sure as you’re the ugliest man on Owl Creek.”

  Miles put his rifle down and, taking the lines, spoke to the team and drove straight at Yarnell and Lupton. Grudgingly they reined to one side of the road and the rig wheeled past them.

  “Watch behind you,” Miles said. “I bluffed ’em that time and I don’t look for trouble now, but they’ve been drinking, and sometimes whiskey gives men like that enough guts to do what they wouldn’t do any other time.”

  Wyatt and Henry turned to watch the three cowboys who were holding their horses in the road as if not sure what they should do now. Wyatt said: “They’re not chasing us.”

  “This is about what I expected,” Miles said. “We’ll still keep our eyes peeled. I figure them three are mostly blow, but there’s men in Amity who ain’t.”

  Wyatt glanced at Henry. He said: “No, we’re not going back to Burlington even after that.”

  He didn’t sleep any more. For the first time he came to grips with the hard fact that Tom Henry had been right about the danger they would be facing in Amity. He had been underestimating it in his own thinking. The men he had just seen had suffered enough and had been drunk enough to have killed him if Dick Miles had not handled them exactly the way he had.

  There would be other men in Amity waiting to see him, men who had suffered as much and would be as drunk as these three. He was heading into a hornets’ nest. It was his business if he chose to face danger, but he had no right to take Tom Henry with him.

  He turned to look at Henry’s set face, wanting to ask him to get out of the rig before they reached Amity. He turned his head again to stare at the long, gray ribbon of road ahead of them. He couldn’t do it. Henry would be insulted if he did.

  XVIII

  Bud Dugan slept fitfully and woke several times during the night. Dolly was always awake, sometimes walking around the room, and sometimes sitting in the rawhide-bottom chair at the table, playing solitaire. When it was daylight, he woke again in time to see Dolly coming toward him, two rawhide thongs in her hand.

  When she saw that he was awake, she said: “I’m gonna tie you up. I’m so damned sleepy I’m about to fall on my face. I’ve got to go to bed for a while, and I can’t trust you to stay put.”

  She tied his feet first, then tied his hands behind his back. She took the shell out of the shotgun and left the gun lying across the table. Now she walked past the table to one of the shelves in the corner and returned with a revolver.

  “You go on back to sleep,” she said. “I’m gonna lie right there beside you. I sleep light, so if you get loose, which I don’t figure you will, and if you try to go outside, I’ll plug you right in the brisket.”

  She sprawled out on the bed beside him, the revolver clutched in her right hand, and was asleep in a matter of seconds. He turned his head to look at her. She snored with gusto; her lips fluttered with each outgoing breath. Sometimes she would choke and snort and wake herself up, and then she would go back to sleep at once.

  If circumstances had been different, he would have laughed. Dolly looked and sounded comical enough, but he couldn’t laugh. He thought there was a good chance he would never laugh again as long as he lived.

  The woman was an animal. She’d kill him if he tried to get away just as she had said she would. He lay on his side, thinking of his mother and then Jean and finally of his father. Up until now Matt Dugan had been the kind of man who could do anything.

  Bud found it hard to believe that for the first time in his life Matt was caught in a trap that made it impossible for him to do anything. But he hadn’t panicked. Bud was thankful for that. Alesser man than his father would have cracked under the pressure and either made a run for it himself or helped Bud get out through a window and go after Jerry Corrigan.

  At that first moment when his father had awakened him, Bud had thought he should go for help, but now, with time to think about it, he knew his father had been right. They were dealing with people who had no conscience, who were here to murder someone for a large amount of money.

  He watched the light deepen in the soddy as the sun rose. Dolly had not been an expert at tying his wrists. The thong was not tight, and now he began to twist his hands back and forth and to tighten and relax his muscles. He found after a few minutes of this that he had increased the slack.

  Still, it was a long time before he was able to slip his hands through the loop. When he did succeed in freeing himself, he brought his hands around in front of him and gently massaged his wrists. They were raw, a good deal of the skin having been rubbed off, but he was free. He sat up, moving slowly and carefully so he wouldn’t wake Dolly, and untied the thong around his ankles.

  All this time he had been carefully weighing his chances of getting out of the soddy alive. He still didn’t know what Jerry Corrigan could do if he were told what was going on, but the situation was different than it had been last night. If he had left the house then, Smith and the other two would soon have known and there would have been hell to pay. Now, if he escaped from the soddy, Dolly wouldn’t ride into town to tell Smith and Sammy what had happened. If she rode anywhere, she’d ride the other way.

  He looked at the woman. She had moved so she lay partly on her side. He had hoped he could get the revolver away from her, but she had rolled over enough so that the gun was partly under her. He couldn’t possibly pull it free without waking her, and the shotgun wouldn’t do him any good if he was able to get to it. He didn’t know what she had done with the shell.

  All he could do was to slip off the bed and cat-foot to the door, lift the bar and open the door, and then light out for the shed as fast as he could run. If he made it that far, the chances were good he could saddle his horse and ride to town.

  Bud was perfectly aware that he might never reach the door. Or reaching it, he might wake her when he lifted the bar. The door might squeak when he opened it. She’d shoot him like a dog if she woke up before he got away.

  He was scared. He had never been as scared in his whole life as he was right now. When he looked at her face, he felt prickles run up and down his spine; he felt his belly muscles contract until they were hugging his backbone. Scared or not, he knew he had to try to get out.

  The thought came to him that this was his initiation into manhood. If he made it, he’d be a man. If he didn’t, he’d be dead, but he was certain that, if his father were in his position and felt there was a chance to get Jean and her mother out of danger, he’d do anything he could to save them. Or Jerry Corrigan. They were the best men he knew, and he could do no less than they would under the same circumstances.

  Carefully he eased off the bed and stood up, his eyes on Dolly. She didn’t move or miss a snore. His heart began to pound as he moved silently across the room, the longest fifteen feet he had ever covered in his life. He got to the door and looked back. She still hadn’t moved.

  He turned his head and lifted the bar, thinking he had made it, but just as he eased the ba
r to the floor and reached for the knob to open the door, Dolly’s revolver roared, a bullet slapped into the door within an inch of the side of his head, and she bellowed: “Put the bar back, damn it! What’d I tell you I’d do if you tried to leave?”

  For a few seconds he couldn’t move. He expected her to shoot again and the next time she wouldn’t miss. When the bullet didn’t come, he reached for the bar, replaced it, and slowly turned.

  “I wasn’t trying to get away,” he said. “It’s getting stuffy in here. Besides, I needed some exercise. You had me tied so tight the circulation was stopped and I figured I was getting gangrene.”

  “You’re a damned liar.” She got up, the revolver in her hand. “I’ll say one thing for you, boy. You’re the coolest customer I ever ran into.” She motioned to the bed. “Get back over here.”

  He obeyed. She crossed the room, lifted the bar, and opened the door. She stood in the sunlight and took a deep breath, then turned to face him. “You’re right about one thing. It was getting purty stuffy. Staying in one of these damn’ soddies is like living in a cave.”

  “I’m hungry,” he said. “Is part of your job to starve me to death?”

  She scratched her head, then shrugged. “No it ain’t. A cup of coffee would go purty good.”

  She laid the revolver on the table and built a fire. He had a wild hope that she might move far enough from the table so he’d have a chance at the gun. He had no illusions about what she’d do if he tried for it and failed, but he’d try if he thought the odds of his getting his hands on it ahead of hers were about equal.

  The chance never came. She put the coffee pot on the stove, fished some bacon sandwiches out of a greasy sack, and gave him one. When the coffee was done, she filled two tin cups and handed one to him, then stepped back to the table. At no time was she more than ten feet from the revolver.