by Lauran Paine
Wharton sighed, refilled his cup, and stood, wide-legged, where he could see past Ladd across in the direction of the roadway window. Out yonder in the yellow-lemon summertime heat, roadway dust arose from the slightest motion, and as near as the far side of the road there were dancing heat waves. Full summer had arrived. There probably was no place on earth where full summertime could be as unnerving, as generally debilitating, as it could be in Arizona Territory.
“If I’d learnt a trade instead of always having to rush over and see what was on the far side of every blessed mountain,” mused Marshal Wharton, “I’d probably right now be doing what you’re doing, Ladd, and the good Lord knows it’s a sight better than being a lawman.” He paused to sip coffee, and to say it afterward exactly as he had been thinking it. “As an aging lawman.”
Later in the day the foreman of the forge, which was near the south end of Piñon on the opposite side of the road, brought up a torn running-W to be repaired, and lingered to explain what had happened. It was a highly unusual horse that could not only survive a bout with a running-W, but that could break one of the things. This horse, according to the sweat-stained blacksmith, had not only broken the taming rig but he had also turned back, charged through the shop, put six grown men to flight, and had hit one old loafer with his shoulder, knocking him into the black water of the cooling barrel. The blacksmith smiled broadly. Ladd laughed along with the blacksmith. He promised to fix the rig so that it would not break again.
After the second week it was beginning to be predictable, how he would conduct the business, how much trade would come through his doorway, what the possible livelihood would net him, and, since the living quarters off the back of the little wooden building was his home and his only outside expenses involved supplies from Denver and an occasional drink across the road at the saloon, or breakfast and maybe supper at the café, he could pretty well estimate what the years up ahead held in store for him. Many men would never have settled for that. Many men would have felt stifled by the sameness of the routine and the predictability of the days, week in and week out. Ladd Buckner not only did not feel stifled; he settled into his routine with clear comfort and pleasure. And he was a good leather man. Even those skeptical old-timers who hung around the bench out front of the livery barn and who had for the most part been critical of every newcomer as well as every change and innovation ultimately decided after closely inspecting the new harness maker’s work that he was not just good at his trade but that he was also a credit to the community.
Homage came slowly, but not as slowly as it could have come. Ladd accepted it like he learned to accept a lot of things in the Piñon countryside. Mainly he became passive because he had his work and he enjoyed every day of it. Other things could fit in, or not, as they chose, or as the people around him caused them to fit or not; he didn’t care in particular, perhaps because as the weeks and days passed he became more and more aware that his work was approved of not only by the townsmen, the blacksmith, the doctor, and the liveryman, but also by the outlying cow outfits. He had repaired saddles, bridles, even boots and chaps, suspended all along one wall awaiting the irregular return trips to Piñon by men of the distant cow ranges.
Bert Taylor who owned and operated The Tomahawk Valley General Mercantile & Dry Goods Emporium was also Ladd Buckner’s source of credit information, but as a matter of fact most of the people who brought in articles to be repaired, or who purchased new items, had a definite use and a need for them. Cow country was seldom where people defaulted on debts to merchants. Occasionally a cowboy would ride off and never return, or perhaps be killed out on the range somewhere, but harness makers rarely lost money. The repair bill on just about any saddle, bridle, pack outfit, or pair of boots never exceeded its saleable value. Ladd, in fact, made more money than old Warner had been making the last few years before he had sold out and left the country. The reason, according to Bert Taylor, whose store was across the way, was simply that old Warner’s eyes had been failing him and his hands hadn’t been up to the demands made upon them, with the inevitable result being that his work had suffered. Much that ordinarily should have come to Piñon went elsewhere to be rebuilt or repaired. Now it was beginning to trickle back to Piñon again.
Ladd was busy, and he was good at his trade, and once when Dr. Orcutt and Marshal Wharton came together at Reilly’s bar for a nightcap, the doctor made a remark about someone as young as Ladd Buckner being as experienced and skilled at his trade being extremely rare, and Tom Wharton had leaned there, studying his empty shot glass for a long while before saying: “Enos, you don’t just figure he’s a natural leather man.”
Dr. Orcutt agreed. “No, I don’t. He sewed the grip on my satchel exactly the way a man from the Colorado penitentiary sewed it one time. I’ve only seen that kind of loop-through knotting done by men who’ve learned their trade in prison.”
Marshal Wharton looked up with a sardonic, vague smile. “Funny you should say that, Doc. A while back I was over there, having coffee and watching Ladd work on a busted side-saddle. He made the identical routine moves a feller did I once sent to prison in Colorado, and who also learned his trade there, and came back to the territory years later, where I visited him in his harness works over near Tombstone. Funny we should both notice that, Doctor.”
VI
Tom Wharton wrote to the authorities of the federal penitentiary in Colorado. It was a routine letter of enquiry by a man who was usually curious about people and things without ever being excessively interested. Wharton was pretty much of a live-and-let-live individual. But he was tough and thoroughly capable when he was required to be. He had that kind of a reputation and he had not acquired it by just talk.
When he had his morning coffee at the harness shop one clear, still, and azure early morning about a month after Ladd Buckner had taken over as harness and saddle maker, he had the reply to that letter he’d sent up to Colorado in a shirt pocket, folded neatly and buttoned out of sight. He made no mention of it. As a matter of fact for as long as Tom Wharton lived, he never mentioned that letter.
He stood and watched Ladd at work, and, when he’d finished his coffee and was ready to go forth into the rising morning heat, he turned at the door and said: “Ladd, Chad Holmes was by the jailhouse yesterday. We had us quite a talk. Your name came up.”
The harness maker did not raise up from the cutting table but he lifted his eyes in a quizzical way. “He mentioned that little tussle at Tomahawk Meadow, did he?”
Wharton nodded. “Yeah, seems him and the other Muleshoe fellers are still talking about the way you handled that Winchester. They were also still talkin’ about you holding back a hurt raghead. They wondered whatever became of him.”
Ladd could understand that because he’d occasionally wondered the same thing. “I took him up within shouting distance of his ranchería and left him, and that’s all I know,” Ladd told Marshal Wharton. “I sort of figure he probably died. He was hard hit through the carcass.”
The lawman was not convinced. “They’re tough. They’re tough enough to survive just about anything but a direct head or heart shot. I know, I’ve seen my share of ’em down a rifle barrel, and I’ve gone up afterward only to discover that the feller who was supposed to be dead had gone and crawled plumb away.” Tom leaned in the doorway. Out in the roadway, northward to judge from the sounds they made, a number of horsemen entered town at a hard lope. Shod hoofs made a ringing sound over either rock or hardpan and this late in the summertime Piñon’s roadway was purest hardpan. The lawman casually looked, then just as indifferently turned to gaze back where Ladd was leaning. “Muleshoe’s making a legend out of the way you came up out of that cañon and busted into those ragheads like you was the cavalry.” Wharton showed that vague, faint sardonic smile of his and straightened around to stroll away.
Ladd saw him take one step, then whip straight up in what looked from the rear as complete astonishment. He whipped straight up and hung there for perhaps five seconds, then he ripped out
a muffled curse, and Ladd saw his body loosen, begin to settle flat down as Marshal Wharton went for his gun. Two carbines erupted. It sounded to Ladd Buckner as though one carbine was northward upon the opposite side of the roadway while the other carbine was on the same side as his harness works, but northward about as far as the stage station.
Tom Wharton went back drunkenly against the front wall of the harness shop, then loosened the grip on his six-gun, and turned very slowly with Ladd frozen in place, staring. Wharton continued to turn until he was staring straight at Ladd, then he turned loose all over, and collapsed in a heap.
Up the road someone sang out in a sing-song sort of chant with his words being indistinguishable. Ladd pulled back, laid aside his cutting knife, wiped both hands on the apron, then reached back and systematically untied the thong, pitched the apron atop the table, and walked toward the doorway. He picked the six-gun from its holster upon a wall-peg just inside his shop, and walked out where the lawman was lying.
Up in front of the bank three armed men faced outward across the roadway with carbines cocked and held two-handed, ready. Another rifleman was indeed up in front of the stage station upon Ladd’s same side of the road. Otherwise, the roadway was totally empty. Whether this happened to be a natural condition, or whether those two gunshots had emptied the roadway, was anyone’s guess. Ladd studied the men at the tie rack out front of the bank, then moved slightly to step past Tom Wharton. Nothing happened. He saw all he had to see, up yonder, then slowly turned and gazed downward.
There was nothing anyone could do for Marshal Wharton. He had caught both of those slugs high in the body. He was either dead or within a breath of being dead. Ladd swung forward again, sank deliberately to one knee, and called ahead: “You at the tie rack!”
That was all; he simply called forth as though he meant to catch the attention of those men up there, and the next moment when one of those bank robbers stepped ahead to take his stance, Ladd shot him through the chest. The man fell, his carbine bounced against the plank walk, and those other outlaws swung to begin firing. Ladd was not the best target in the world, in shadows out of the bitter sunlight in front of his shop and beneath its overhang, but they could see him clearly enough if they made the effort, and they were certainly attempting to do that as they began firing.
It sounded like the Indian skirmish all over again. Gunfire built up to a fierce crescendo, then another of those horsemen up yonder dropped on his face, and the man over in front of the stage station suddenly panicked and raced as hard as he could over to join his companions out front of the bank. Ladd tracked this running man, aimed lower than before, and squeezed off a shot. The outlaw fell with a ripped-out scream, rolled and writhed with a smashed hip, then suddenly blacked out and flopped back with blood darkening his trousers and the dusty roadway around him. He needed immediate aid but no one offered to go out into the center of the roadway and give it to him. He died.
Two men darted from inside the bank. At the last moment one of them swung back around in the doorway and systematically fired. The echoes from within the brick building were deafening. Finally, now, there were other townsmen belatedly entering the fight, but it was over the moment the surviving outlaws flung up across saddle leather, sank in rowels, and raced wildly northward out of Piñon.
Ladd got to his feet, moved out to the center of the roadway, took two-handed aim, and emptied his six-gun without bringing down a single fleeing bank robber. Someone from Reilly’s saloon darted to the bank doorway, halted, and yelled into the acrid-scented hush that followed Ladd Buckner’s final gunshot: “Jesus, they killed ’em!”
People emerged, furtively and tentatively at first, peering up the roadway in the wake of the outlaws, and went over to join that horrified man in the bank doorway only when it was no longer possible to see the escaping outlaws because of their pillars of dun-colored dust up the stage road in the direction of the far-away hills.
Ladd Buckner remained out in the roadway, hatless in the violent heat and sun smash, shucking out spent shells from his six-gun. He had no other slugs to replace the casings with, so he walked back into the overhang shade where the lawman was lying, and knelt with the empty gun while he made a closer study of Tom Wharton. It had all happened just too fast. Wharton must have been the most thoroughly astonished individual in town when those bank robbers appeared and boldly fanned out to cow the town as their companions went inside to loot the bank. Wharton’s death had also been too sudden and too thoroughly unexpected. Even the peaceful expression on his face had an underlying expression of total surprise. Sightless eyes stared up through Ladd Buckner and through the warped overhang ceiling above Ladd Buckner.
Enos Orcutt came out from between two buildings a few doors southward, did not speak, walked up, and sank to his knees, little patched black satchel at his side. Ladd pulled away, stepped inside to fish out six fresh loads for his useless six-gun, and re-armed the weapon while Dr. Orcutt went through his necessary but futile routine. Orcutt twisted to look up at Buckner as the harness maker slowly took down his belt and holster and buckled them on. “Are you all right?” the doctor enquired.
Ladd said: “Yeah, I guess they couldn’t aim as well when someone was firing at them as they aimed when Marshal Wharton first got ready to brace them. He’s dead?”
“Within moments of the time he hit the ground,” confirmed Dr. Orcutt. “They cut him down as neat as marksmen cut them down back during the war. Like they were waiting for him to step out so they could do it.”
Up the roadway someone began shouting for Dr. Orcutt to hurry to the bank building. Whoever he was he not only had a powerful set of lungs and a resonant voice, but he also had no intention of being quiet until Enos Orcutt appeared.
The doctor got to his feet and hurried forward, clutching his satchel, leaving Ladd Buckner standing there, looking a trifle quizzically after him. Why would the doctor say Tom Wharton had died as though those outlaws had expected Tom to step forth from the harness works, exactly as Tom did step forth. Orcutt had made it sound as though it were, in one way or another, a kind of prearranged killing. He had made it sound as though someone had deliberately set the lawman up to be murdered.
Joe Reilly and Bert Taylor came across from the opposite side of the roadway and stepped up into overhang shade to stand mutely staring. Reilly, the former soldier, said: “God damn, they nailed him right through the brisket. He didn’t have a chance at all.”
Bert Taylor lifted a troubled face to Ladd. “He didn’t even get a chance to draw, did he?”
Ladd looked at the holstered Colt for the first time. “Doesn’t look like it,” he replied. “What did they do up at the bank?”
“Killed the head man and shot hell out of the cashier!” Reilly exclaimed. “My God, they didn’t just come to town to rob us. They rode in to kill as many folks as they wanted to.”
“Renegades,” stated the storekeeper. “I can’t believe it happened this way. There wasn’t a word of warning. I was at my desk in the back room when the firing started.” Taylor looked blankly at Ladd Buckner. “You turned them out. What else might they have done if you hadn’t shot it out with them?”
“Nothing,” said Buckner. “They got the money. That’s all they came for.”
“But . . . look at Tom,” protested the storekeeper. “My God, look at what happened inside the . . .”
“God dammit,” snapped the harness maker, “I told you . . . all they came for was the darned money.” He holstered the recharged six-gun and turned back into the harness shop, leaving the two older men out there gazing after him, until eventually they looked at one another and Reilly said: “Leave him be. It’s darned upsetting, shooting it out like that.”
They trudged back in the direction of the opposite side of the roadway where people were beginning to throng up in the direction of the bank’s bloody and rummaged interior. It was a hot day; the raid had occurred shortly before noon; there was settling dust far up the stage road for a half hour af
ter the attack, and for most of the residents of Piñon what had occurred had in fact happened exactly as the storekeeper had implied—too suddenly, too unexpectedly, and too swiftly for them to see any of it although all but the stone deaf had heard the gunfire.
The legends began even before the dead men had been hauled feet first down to the doctor’s buggy shed for preservation until graves could be dug. Eventually Tom Wharton was also carried down there, and, during the subsequent course of Enos Orcutt’s preparation of the Wharton corpse for burial, the doctor extracted that letter from the marshal’s shirt pocket. He also read it.
VII
The outlaws were identified from dodgers in the late town marshal’s office as three members of a renegade gang that normally operated farther southward, down closer to the international border. Bert and Joe Reilly composed a letter to the Texans and the New Mexicans who had worked up those dodgers, informing them that three of the wanted men had been shot to death at Piñon, Arizona Territory, and gave the date of those killings as well as the circumstances surrounding them. Then they put in requests on behalf of Ladd Buckner for the bounty money and neglected to tell Ladd that they had done this. It was a plain oversight; neither Taylor nor Reilly had experience as lawmen. They only did what had to be done, then they went among the other townsmen to urge the appointment of some kind of interim committee, or perhaps a vigilance organization to keep the peace and enforce the law until a new lawman could be appointed. None of it was precisely according to the law, but all of it was according to the community’s immediate needs and desires.
Dr. Orcutt embalmed the three outlaws and Tom Wharton, then one evening he came down to the harness shop after closing hours and pummeled the door until Ladd emerged from his rear quarters to admit the medical man. Orcutt had three separate bundles, pitifully small and woefully insignificant. He offered the bundles to the harness maker, and, when Ladd suspiciously pointed to the counter top, Enos put the bundles up there.
