Pulp - Action Stories.38.12.The Gun-boss of Whispering Valley - James P. Olsen (pdf)
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The big mines closed, and only a few creeks
“Yeah. But that ain’t all, Howdy. We
was being worked. But I’d sold my cow haul gold from the mines to Grand Center.
business to old ‘Bitter’ Root. Bill Dineen Dude Tern—well, we lost one bar and almost worked for him until I needed Bill.
another. This Tern showed up and said he’d
“Still, we managed. Then they got see the gold got through, or no pay. We ain’t modern ways to fix up ore, and another strike
lost one run since he’s been on—almost two
was made on Slip Creek. Things opened. I put
months.”
on new freight outfits, and put the old
Howdy didn’t speak his mind about
Concord coach on the run again. It was held
Tern. Logan said: “There is talk about having
up a couple times. I had to stand the losses, of Tern made Chief Deputy to old Sheriff
course.
Wayne. Tern maybe could stop our trouble
“Then this Mason Crake and Sam entire, that way. But Crake-Norvell would Norvell come in. Crake had a line in Arizona,
oppose him, I reckon. The job would mean
or someplace, and was losing out. Norvell
Tern would be sheriff, come next election
backed him, they moved the line, and time.”
Norvell—a straight-laced, sort of religious
There was a knock on the door. A
cuss—on the surface, anythow—built the teamster grouched in. “That damn stable store over there. He leaves the stage business
foreman’s drunk again, an’ nothin’ ready!”
to Crake, mostly.”
Logan swore. Then he frowned.
“Sure,
but—”
“He ain’t so young, Howdy, and—
“Wait,” Logan interrupted Howdy. “I
Well, it’s an easy job.”
was glad to see them start a stage-passenger
Howdy Harris, who had, after hearing
run, even when it meant I lost the postoffice.
Logan’s story, been ready to forget the ways
Freighting’s my business, anyhow. Norvell of peace and turn loose his wolf, was on the told me they wasn’t interested in freight.
verge of giving Logan hell for offering him a
“Then they started freighting in their
grandpa job. The urge to go out and peddle
own stuff. I yapped, and Norvell said they was
lead pills from his gun was strong in him.
in their rights. They put on two outfits, and
Yet, surprisingly, he said: “Sure, Asia.
relieve them at their stage stations—like the
I’d like the job. Maybe I can figger somethin’
one across from our Pinnacle Station.
out.”
“Now, Howdy, they’re moving me
“Don’t you go figgering like you use
plumb out. You see, we have accidents. Like a
to. Folks in this town got to have some peace
boulder rolling down a mountain and and quiet,” Asia warned.
smashing up a haul. I made one trip myself,
Yet he was shaking his head as Howdy
just to see. We got back all right, and going to left. Yes, Howdy Harris really was getting old.
unload machinery at a mine, we had to
At the big stable down the street, with
roughlock down a hill. The chain broke. the yard in the back filled with broken wagons Killed eight mules, busted wagon and gear,
and stored runners and the like, Howdy was
and smashed up several thousand dollars’ moving in. A bleary-eyed hombre sat on a cot worth of machinery the mine needed right
in a sort of office in one front corner, an
away. I got this busted leg. We found the
empty bottle in one hand.
chain’d been filed almost through!”
“Git your tail yonderly,” Howdy
“You can’t prove nothin’,” Howdy greeted him. “You ain’t on the Logan payroll stated. “An’ shippers are goin’ to turn to no more.”
Crake-Norvell entire, this keeps up. Well!”
“Hell I ain’t. Bigod, you ol’—”
The Gun-boss of Whispering Valley 7
Folks on the street saw that mistaken
Howdy got up and started after them.
one roll in the dust; saw old Howdy Harris
Dude Tern got down. He leaned
follow him, boot him to his feet, and leap off
forward, let an oath grind past his lips. “I told his feet following his fist—that landed on the
you!” he snarled, and started at Howdy.
other’s chin.
V
HE dusted his hands as he walked back inside,
saying, “That’s for callin’ Howdy Harris a
“WHOA UP!”
billy goat.” Thereafter, while the ex-stable
Dude Tern set his feet so suddenly he
foreman stood in the street and swore luridly,
twisted half around. He blinked at the old
blankets, odd belongings, clothing came hogleg Howdy yanked out of his shirt.
sailing out to him.
Tern had light, killer-gray eyes. They
He gathered up his doofunnies and met Howdy’s hard, old, faded eyes of killer turned away, yelling back, “Sure’s my name’s
blue, and for a moment fear impressed its taut
Gus Loffe, I’m going to get hunk at you!”
brand on Dude Tern’s face.
Howdy
merely
grunted.
“Don’tcha grab for that gun on your
He’d heard such threats before.
hip,” Howdy said too levelly. “I’ll blow you,
It was mid-afternoon, then. Howdy s’help me—an’ ’joy doin’ ’er. Stand hitched, was settled, had his look at things. In the yard, you rannihan, an’ listen to Howdy Harris
a blacksmith had been cussin’, fitting a new
make his oratement. Because you ride the gun
axle on a freighter layed up for repairs.
an’ ain’t lost nothin’, makes no bones to me.
“Don’t see how’n hell,” he complained
Underneath, you’re a four-flushin’ no damn
to Howdy, “enough dust gets in to grind these
good one. Time was when I was no damn
axles out. We need this wagon, too.”
good myse’f—but I never fourflushed.
Howdy made a brief inspection. Back
“I’m stable foreman here now. Asia
in the stable, he went into the harness room.
Logan’s a ol’ friend of mine.”
He opened pail after pail of axle grease,
Dude Tern reddened and shifted.
working the dark, yellow mixture through his
Passers-by, hearing Howdy give him how,
fingers.
were ganging in the front doorway, fully
He found grit in six of two dozen
enjoying this picture of the little old man
buckets. Some sort of steel or emery grit, he
holding Dude Tern under the gun while he
rightly guessed. Let a skinner get one of them
told it to him big.
and grease his axles, and he’d damn soon find
In a little while, it would be all over
his wagon laid up, the axle ground all to hell.
town.
Howdy put a half hitch on a mental
“You leave me be, Fancy Pants, an’
decision to keep an eye on one Gus Loffe.
I’ll try to keep from shootin’ you for what you He went in his office-living-bedroom,
done up at Pinnacle. You put a p
aw on me
had himself a long pull at a bottle, bit off a
again, though, I’ll use this cutter to fancy your chew, and sat in the doorway where it was
belly with buttonholes!”
shady and a breeze blew through, carrying
He stuffed the old pistol under his
horsey odors that pleased his sense of smell.
waistband and turned, hand outstretched to
He was a picture of peaceable old age
Bill Dineen. “I remember you, Howdy!” Bill
as Bill Dineen came up the street and wheeled
cried, and pumped the oldster’s hand.
the lathered team into the stable, wheels and
Dude Tern glowered, looked thinly at
hoofs rolling hollowly on the wooden runway.
Dineen, wheeled and stalked out, the audience
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8
in the doorway falling back for him.
hunker quiet. Good thing he’s old as he is.”)
“How in hell do you stand him,”
He ranged on toward the rear, and
Howdy asked, starting to unhook the team.
cinched down near a man who stood quite
“Well, Howdy, a man can do lots of
alone. He was a stocky, heavy-set customer
things. Tern wounded one holdup man. No-o-
with a dark face, a cruel mouth, and sly, deep
o, it was proved he wasn’t with Crake-
eyes. His store clothes fitted him well, yet he Norvell. ’Nother thing—Aw, hell, Howdy. seemed uncomfortable in them. Like a man When two fellers are setting up for the same
who’d grown up without dude skins, and
girl, it looks damn little of one to quarrel with would never get used to them.
the other’n.”
Howdy studied him covertly. And
“Like that, huh? Who’s the gal, Bill?”
grinned. The way the man stood, the way he
“That’s the hell of it!” Bill grunted.
looked around—little things most men never
“It’s Sam Norvell’s daughter, Nan. And—
would have noticed—told Howdy things.
Well, Howdy, I just can’t fit them into the
Things he reckoned none of his business,
picture. You wait’ll you meet Nan, and Sam
seeing as he didn’t know the gent and, judging
Norvell. Crake, of course, nobody likes. But
by his looks, didn’t care to know.
Norvell is really the money that runs them.”
“An’ what does Norvell think about
HOWDY ordered his whiskey double. The
you aimin’ at his Nan?”
dark man turned. He stared straight at Howdy,
“He don’t give me no encouragement.
and scowled, his lips drawing at one corner.
Don’t say much. Still, he seems fair, an’ ain’t Then he sniffed, said something about
booted me away, even if I am the nephew of
“Horse—” and walked away.
Asia Logan.”
Damn, but she was sure a hard job
“Think mebbe somebody is wreckin’
being a gent of dignity and peace, Howdy
things to get the two outfits fightin’, so they assured himself, aching to have it out with that can step in?” Howdy wondered.
nasty, hifalutin’ son. He motioned a bartender.
Bill grasped that eagerly. “I think it
“Him?” The bartender shrugged.
could be!”
“Don’t let him bother you. That’s Mason
When the team was cared for, and Bill
Crake.”
Dineen had gone, Howdy shook his head. “I
Howdy stood there, deep in thought,
don’t figger I can see ’er like that, son,” he
and a wicked, plumb ornery light in his old
said sorrowfully.
eyes. He grinned some, too. Maybe, now there
He greeted a stable hand who came
was a chance to be a dove and a pioneer and
in—a silent, quiet man who’d never be have hiyuh wild fun right along with it.
anything but a flunkey and hostler. Howdy
He watched the place filling up as
decided he wouldn’t be fixing things for outside the sun went down. The babble of accidents and such, and left him there while he voices in the Trompoose stopped suddenly,
strolled up the street.
and from outside came again the cry that had
He went into the Trompoose Bar and
silenced them:
started to join a loud group toward the front.
“Fist whuppin’! Fight!”
Then he remembered his new found
Howdy went out with the crowd.
dignity, and that, to Whispering Valley, he
Dust hung heavy in the still air of
was a pioneer. (He didn’t know it, but men
evening dust kicked up by scuffing feet of two
were pointing him out already as the “Ol’
men battling there. One was Gus Loffe, who
rooster who was so funny, makin’ Tern went down as Howdy recognized him. The
The Gun-boss of Whispering Valley 9
other was a scar-faced individual.... Howdy
and moseyed over there himself. He walked in
said “Hell!” softly, and pulled back into the
with a fine nonchalance, greeted Bill, who
crowd. He knew Loffe’s antagonist, too. A
stood at the end of a counter that tied in with gent named Scad Waters.
the row of boxes and the window of the
In Texas, some years back, Howdy had
postoffice section of the place.
been in jail with Scad Waters. Waters had held
“This is Howdy Harris, Nan,” Bill
up a stage and almost killed a man. He’d been
introduced. The girl gave Howdy a smile that
waiting in jail for his ride to the penitentiary.
lit him all up inside. He said, “I’m pleased,
Howdy watched. He saw Gus Loffe,
ma’am. I wondered if they was any mail for
his nose broken, spitting teeth, go down. me?”
Waters put the boots to him. The old sheriff
She went behind the partition, looked
was puffing toward the scene. It was Dude
in pigeon holes.
Tern who stepped out, drew his gun and Howdy felt Bill’s eyes on him and said, stopped the fight.
“Dammit, ain’t I got a right to have me some
mail?”
VI
“Sure, Howdy. Got a yaller-headed
biscuit-shooter on the end of a lass rope, back THEY helped Gus Loffe to a doctor. Scad
down the line?”
Waters explained to Sheriff Wayne: “He
Howdy cussed and moved restlessly
cussed me and shouldered me off the walk.”
away. He went down a counter. There was a
He turned on Dude Tern then, and Howdy
tall, thin-faced man in a dark suit that made
thought he detected a false note in Waters’
Howdy think of an undertaker, facing him.
voice when he said, “You got no business
“Chawin’,”
Howdy
ordered.
butting in!”
He paid for the plug and loitered,
Waters drifted on down the street. taking a long time in choosing the corner that Dude Tern moved back to the opposite suited him.
sidewalk, and climbed to the walk before the
“Sam!” a harsh voice snapped. “Why
Crake-Norvell establishment. There was a slip
let stinking tramps like this loaf arou
nd the
of a girl there beside the door, and Tern place?”
bowed low and handsomely, his hat in hand.
There wasn’t a lot of friendliness in the
HOWDY looked up. Mason Crake had come
way the girl returned the greeting. She spoke,
up from the rear, and stood outside this
tossed her shapely head and turned back inside
counter close to Howdy now. The tall man,
the store. Dude Tern’s face was dark as he
Sam Norvell, said stiffly, “This man is a
yanked his headpiece back on and slammed
customer, Mason.”
away.
“Customer, hell! He’s the old fool
“I betcha that’s Nan Norvell,” Howdy
that’s been raising trouble around today. I
told himself. “An’ it ain’t much use in Bill
heard of him. He was sent from here to the
Dineen bein’ worrit about Tern. It’s hell to be pen and ...”
in love when things get throwed in your
Old Sheriff Wayne, in the front
way—an’ I don’t reckon time’s goin’ to make
doorway, called out as he came on in. “Howdy
Crake-Norvell less enemies of the Logan Harris is a lot older now. The man he shot, tribe.”
that time, needed it. Howdy would’ve got off,
He saw Bill Dineen come along over
hadn’t been he called the Judge a burro-
there, enter the big place, and he left the walk headed fool, saying he wanted no favors off
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10
nobody. And he called me a pot-bellied Nan was crying softly, and didn’t look up.