“I’ll kill you, Jack, if you don’t give up the gold.”
“I don’t have no gold, Jonas.”
Jonas Reed pressed the trigger of his six-gun sending a bullet into the unarmed man’s leg, and Black Jack Slade crumpled to the dirt of the street in a painful gasp.
“Next one will be a might higher up, Jack,” Jonas Reed warned grimly.
Klye Reed, wounded, but now standing beside his brother centered his six-shooter on the stranger, winced in pain, said, “We’re wanted men. We’re not playing games here. Give up the gold or we’ll kill you right now!”
“If I give up the location of the gold you’ll kill me anyway.” Slade replied.
“We’ll sure as hell kill you if you don’t give it up!” Klye barked. He was loosing patience. I knew I’d have to do something soon.
I made up my mind and moved out of the alley to kneel beside Timmy Wirth, telling him what I was gonna do, making it look like I was tending to his wounds. Timmy tried to stop me but I put my hand over his mouth. I told him to shut up.
Klye Reed took a quick look in my direction. I gulped and froze as he turned to shoot. He had me in a clear path of a bullet and I could see his finger ready and itching to squeeze the trigger.
“Klye!” The stranger barker. “He’s just a kid. Leave him be and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
Well that got Kyle Reed’s attention and probably saved my life. Kyle and his brother both turned away from me, trained their guns and attention back on Black Jack Slade.
“Now you’re talking, Jack. Those are sensible words for once,” Jonas Reed said smiling now.
That’s when I made a leap for Timmy Wirth’s shotgun. It was heavy. My fingers scrambled for the trigger as I brought it up high, trying my best to aim the scattergun in the general direction of the Reed Brothers before they blew my head off. I knew I didn’t have much time. I also knew I didn’t need a well-aimed shot.
I saw Kyle Reed move his six-shooter my way, and that’s when I let loose with both barrels of the scattergun in a loud explosion that threw me back three feet into the street.
There was a loud scream.
It was from me!
I felt hot searing pain in my leg. I looked down and saw blood there, a small red splotch soaking into the fabric of my pants and slowly growing larger as I watched with terror. I pulled my eyes away from my leg and looked at the Reed Brothers, saw Kyle Reed slumped down in the dirt. He was dead, no doubt about that, his head was practically blowed off his shoulders by the shotgun blast.
Jonas Reed was down too, clutching his chest, silently mouthing cries of pain. I saw the stranger, still on the ground from his leg wound, with his gun in hand, crawl across the street to relieve Jonas Reed of his weapon.
I got up and hobbled over to the scene of the carnage. A scene I had significantly helped to create, which was not lost on me as I looked at what remained of Kyle Reed.
“You did a gutsy thing there, kid,” the stranger said to me. He quickly wrapped his wounded leg in a improvised tourniquet, then limped over to me to get a look at my own wound.
He smiled, “Just a flesh wound, kid. You’re lucky.”
He didn’t have to tell me how lucky I was.
“You saved my life and I thank you for that. You also saved the gold.”
“So there really is gold?” I asked full of excitement.
He just nodded, went and looked in at Sheriff Wilson. By then a crowd had gathered and people were helping the sheriff and Timmy Wirth. Wilson’s deputy, Bob Gritz, had returned and was putting Jonas Reed in a jail cell while old Harry Mortimer, the barber and mortician, was already measuring what was left of Kyle Reed for a Boot Hill coffin. It turned out Sheriff Wilson was only grazed by the bullet and Timmy was going to be okay too.
* * * *
Next day we were sitting in the sheriff’s office in the jail. Slade and Sheriff Wilson were finishing up a long glass of tequila. I waited and watched, wondering why I’d been called.
Finally the man known as Black Jack Slade looked to me and said, “I appreciate what you did for me the other day.”
“It took a lot of guts, Joey,” Sheriff Wilson aded. “With me wounded and out of action, and Timmy cut down, there was no one here to stand up for law and order.”
I nodded, still pretty numb after all the action the day before.
“I came to this town, Joey,” Slade told me, “to keep a promise to a friend. I wasn’t lying about the gold. It’s all there, right in Warren’s safe.”
“Real gold?” I asked.
“Real gold, Joey, and a lot of it, too. California gold.”
I looked at Black Jack Slade.
“Joey, years ago I met a man and we became good friends. He always talked about the son and daughter he’d left behind. Felt terrible about it and swore if he ever struck it rich he’d give them each a share of what he made one day. He’d hit pay dirt out in California, a mine everyone thought was played out. He worked it for years, like a crazy man. Eventually he found an untapped vein and struck it rich. He was killed a few months back. Before he died he made me promise that his son and daughter would get this gold. Well, Joey, that man was your father. Now Warren here told me about your sister passing away, and I’m real sorry about that, but that just means all this here gold belongs to you now.”
I didn’t know what to say. I thought of the father I’d never known. There were no memories there, just a big empty void.
“Joey, use that gold wisely, make something of yourself so you’ll make your old man even prouder of you than I am. He loved you powerfully. You’ll never know how much,” Slade said.
Sheriff Wilson took that as a cue, he stood up and shook hands with Black Jack Slade and wished him a safe journey. I watched him go, his limp barely noticeable, his six-gun saying at his side like winter wheat in a spring breeze.
I didn’t know what to make of all this. It had hit me so sudden and all, but when Sheriff Wilson called me over to the safe behind his desk, opened the huge iron door, and pulled out half a dozen heavy sacks of gold dust, I knew it wasn’t some dream but all too real.
I think I knew something else too.
That’s when I ran out the door of the sheriff’s office and over to the Overland Stage depot at the other end of town.
I saw the stranger there, a dangerous man, still the dreaded shootist, limping toward the stage. He seemed older now and more tired, but that look in his eyes and the bearing of his frame hadn’t diminished one bit. This was still a man you did not trifle with. But I had no choice.
I yelled out, “Wait! Wait, Mr. Slade!”
He turned slowly, watching me carefully as I ran over to him. The way he looked at me was strange, I noticed a sudden softness there, but for only an instant and then it was gone, replaced by his hard cruel eyes and tough visage. It made me more determined than ever in believing I was right in what I was thinking.
I said, “Thanks for the gold, Mr. Slade.”
He said, “It’s alright kid, least I could do.”
I said, “You knew my Pa well?”
“Well as any man can know another, I guess.”
“Was he a good man, Mr. Slade? I’ve heard some bad things said about him.”
“No, Joey, your Pa wasn’t a good man, but he wasn’t as bad as most and was better than some, but mostly he loved you and your sister, even though I’m sure you don’t believe me when I tell you that.”
I smiled, confident now, then I said, “Sure, I believe you when you tell me that. Pa.”
There was a stillness so powerful it was like the day the Bible says when damnation has finally arrived.
Black Jack Slade stopped cold in his tracks, slowly turned back around and looked at me head on. His face was a mask. Not cold, just ba
rren, unreadable. The gunfighter’s face that had been called out to draw.
“You’ve got that all wrong, son, if you think I’m your father.”
“So you’re just doing all this for a friend. Right?”
“That’s it. I’m just making a delivery, seeing to it you get what’s yours. As your Pa wished. Now I got other business to attend to.”
I didn’t say anything more about it and neither did he. The subject was closed. Tight. I saw he was making ready to board the stage. I had to say something.
“Well, then, goodbye, Mr. Slade. I thank you and wish you well.”
As he got into the stage he replied, “And I wish you well, Joey. I know your Pa is proud as hell of you – where ever he might be right now.”
“I know.”
“And Joey,” I heard him say just as the stage pulled out, “some people will tell you that there ain’t no men in heaven, but maybe, someday, when you’re a man yourself, you’ll understand that your Pa tried his best to get there.”
And I said, “I think I understand.”
And he just smiled and then was gone as the stage pulled out.
And under my breath I said, “It’s okay, Pa.”
But of course, he never heard me.
MUSTANG BREED, by Alan LeMay
The Triangle R’s new hand was catching a horse.
Leisurely, whistling through his teeth, “Doughfoot” Wilson scratched his head and looked over the small herd that slowly shuffled itself about the corral. An ordinary-looking bay with no markings appeared to be the nearest thing.
Doughfoot deftly shook out the loop of his lariat and shot it along the ground with an easy motion. The horse leaped ahead; the rope bounced into the air, the noose closing about the wiry forelegs. The horse stopped instantly.
“’Pears to be a quiet sort of goat,” said Doughfoot Wilson to himself.
He approached the animal, recoiling his rope as he reeled it in, and fashioned a makeshift halter of the free end of the lariat. Next he tied the horse’s head short to a post and very circumspectly applied the saddle.
The horse sawed back and forth uneasily, and swung about as Doughfoot tied the cinch, but this was a matter so commonplace that Wilson thought nothing of it. Nor did it bother him that the animal was head-shy and attempted to rear away from the bit. He was still whistling through his teeth as he cast loose the horse’s head and stuck a foot into the near stirrup.
In the next fraction of a second the whistling stopped.
A whirl and a jump—and the horse was off. Doughfoot would have been off too, before he was on, but his right hand had grabbed the cantle of the saddle. The reins whistled through the fingers of the hand that gripped the pommel, taking the skin with them.
Doughfoot managed to get his other leg over the animal’s loin back of the saddle, but another spinning buck jerked it loose again. Yet, somehow, he managed to get into the saddle and got his foot into the lashing off-stirrup.
Settling down into plain, honest bucking, the horse progressed around the corral in short, hunching bounds, coming down on stiff forelegs in violent jolts. Doughfoot wished that he had picked some other horse, or hadn’t got on at all.
Abruptly the animal changed its tactics and reared backward into the air. Doughfoot Wilson had enough; he had no desire to feel nine hundred pounds of horse jab the pommel of the saddle into his prostrate stomach. He swung himself clear and slid off.
Doughfoot looked around the corral to see if any one had seen this conservative feat of horsemanship.
Darn it! Sure enough, there was a booted, broad-hatted figure seated on the top rail of the corral. Casually, with a foolish grin, Wilson strolled toward the watcher on the fence.
Then he hesitated, and his mouth fell open as he received a shock. The watcher was a girl.
“G’mornin’,” said Doughfoot
“It’s afternoon.”
“Guess that’s right.”
An awkward silence followed, during which Doughfoot, for want of a better thought, whistled through his teeth, and with elaborate nonchalance climbed to a seat near her on the top rail. He cast a studious eye at the heavens.
“Looks like it might snow a little,” he offered.
“Might.”
Another silence.
“Guess you’re Old Ben Rutherford’s girl,” said Doughfoot.
She did not deny that she was.
“Well, me, I’m Doughfoot Wilson. The new hand.”
“That so?”
“Yep.”
She made no comment on this, and Doughfoot felt embarrassed. After some thought he tried one more conversational sally.
“This here cow country ain’t what it used to be, what with fences and the like.”
She slowly turned her head and surveyed him with gray eyes as keen as any man’s.
“Neither are the riders,” Madge Rutherford remarked coolly.
Doughfoot flushed.
“Ain’t no sense in leavin’ a cayuse fall over on top of you,” he contended.
“Didn’t see any horse fall over,” she said.
“Well, he looked like he was goin’ to, didn’t he?”
“Oh, yes. He looked like he might possibly, under certain conditions, begin to think about startin’ to rare up a little, if he should happen to get around to it,” she conceded.
Doughfoot squirmed.
“Gosh,” he said, “ain’t you satisfied less’n somebody gets kilt every minnit?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want you takin’ any risks,” answered Madge. She added, “Mebbe I could help you out, now, by takin’ the edge offen him for you.”
Doughfoot had not earned his name by any outstanding nimbleness of wit. He considered her offer innocently.
“Nope,” he decided. “’Twouldn’t be anyways right.”
“Great suffering coyotes,” said Madge Rutherford in a choked voice.
She hastily climbed down from the rail and made off.
As Doughfoot stared after her in amazement, he heard her break into peal upon peal of uncontrollable laughter. An angry glint came into his mild blue eyes. One eyebrow lifted menacingly as he shook a fist at the saddled bay, now standing at the far side of the corral. He spat viciously.
“Why, you ornery, cow-colored, six-legged, pop-eyed pelican!” he apostrophized the animal. “Go to work an’ make a monkey out of me, will you? Why—why—”
Words failed him. He jumped down from the rail and strode across the corral with a purposefulness such as his oldest friends had never seen.
* * * *
“Seems like I heard you had some sort o’ trouble with a horse, t’day,” said “Whack-Ear” Banks that evening, as the punchers attacked their chow at the long plank tabic in the mess shack.
“Well,” admitted Doughfoot, “I did fool around a little with a cross-eyed bay, what isn’t exactly what you’d call bridle wise.”
“Heard you got off eight times,” persisted Whack-Ear maliciously. “Each time by the special request o’ the horse.”
“Four,” amended Doughfoot gloomily. “Twice he rolled over, and once he like to fell over backward. No man,” he stated weightily, “should ought to stick in the saddle when a bronc is rollin’ over on the ground.”
“What about the other time,” Whack-Ear insisted. “Was he turnin’ handsprings, mebbe?”
“Humph,” said Doughfoot, doggedly devoting himself to his plate of beans.
“It was that ’ere Rattlesnake hoss,” said “Whiskers” Beck, with his mouth full. “Didn’t notice none of you boys pickin’ him out fer yer regular strings.”
“I never had no trouble with him,” said “Dixie” Kane.
“No,” said “Squirty” Wallace, not too loudly. “Not
no more trouble than you’d ’a’ had with a man-eatin’ tagger climbin’ trees an’ a burr under the saddle an’ the stirrups busted an’ no bridle on an’ his tail caught fire, an’—”
“I rode him, didn’t I?” demanded Dixie Kane belligerently.
“Oh, yes,” admitted Squirty. “You rode him. But was you takin’ him where you wanted to go, or was you jest goin’ with him where he wanted?”
Dixie ignored this.
“That horse ain’t been handled right,” opined Whiskers Beck, spearing another potato with his knife. “I mind when I was ridin’ my hoss, Crazy—”
“You ride all horses kinda crazy,” Whack-Ear put in.
“You got to treat a hoss like Rattlesnake different,” Whiskers went on. “Kindness—that’s the ticket. Talk gentle. Give him a potato peelin’, or mebbe a sour-dough bun. Go about it easy-like.”
“An’ mebbe get a rockin’-chair, and take the bronc on yer lap, an’ try singin’ him to sleep,” suggested Squirty. “Oh pickles!”
“I mind,” continued Whiskers, “when I was ridin’ my hoss, Dizzy—”
“You ride all horses kinda—” Whack began.
“Shut up!” barked Whiskers. “These ’ere hosses are what you might call the cayuse breed. They’re like eggs, or some cowboy with a roll o’ jack. Not much to look at, an’ you cain’t figger out what they’re like till they’re busted. On’y, some broncs cain’t be busted. They’ll holler an’ buck an’ roll an’ bite an’ fall on their back till they’re plumb wore to a frazzle. An’ then they’ll sulk. An’ when they sulk—try to move ’em. Dynamite ain’t no assistance.”
“Never see a horse I couldn’t bust,” commented Dixie Kane.
“Young, ain’t you son?” said Whiskers. “Young—an’ ain’t been about much. You’ll see some. Not many mebbe. Some.”
“I betcha I’ve rode more as a million horses,” Dixie announced.
“Plenty men ain’t never seen a non-bustable cayuse,” agreed Whiskers. “Mebbe they’s whole states what ain’t got none of ’em in. But when you says there ain’t no sech thing, you sure are coverin’ a pile o’ ground. Take this here Rattlesnake. You boys all tried him. Some rode him—some not. But he ain’t did a lick o’work yet. An’ mebbe never will, too.”
The Third Western Megapack Page 4
