by Peter Dawson
Before he went in through the swing doors he took the bandage off his head and tilted his hat so that it would cover the spot where the hair had been burned away. He was thankful at finding the place nearly empty and at the way the half dozen customers politely ignored him and went on with their drinking and their small stake game of draw at a table in the big room’s back corner.
There was a reason for the Pride’s near emptiness. Late this afternoon close to forty men had come up from town to the stretch of timber across the creek from Schoonover’s where Frank Bishop, Fred Kelso, and Jensen’s crew were already fighting the fire. Streak had come down there after leaving Cathy at the Crescent B; luckily the flood hadn’t damaged Bishop’s house, sitting as it did high above the creek, except for the foundations of the portal being undermined and a little water having come in under the door onto the front end of the living room floor. It had taken just short of half an hour to organize those forty men to do a job that had any hope of checking the fire. Bishop and Kelso between them had finally thought out the best way.
A mile to the south of the creek a fairly large clearing centered the thick neck of the timber stretching southward, the trees running around it on its upper and lower sides. The final plan had been to cut a wide lane through those two segments of the timber that joined beyond the clearing. The townsmen and Jensen’s crew had worked their guts out and managed to cut those two lanes by the time the fire had spread to the northern edge of the clearing. Then, thinking they had won their battle, they had seen the fire cross the west lane by burning underground along the tinder-dry roots of a big dead ponderosa pine. As night fell, those men, Kelso working with the rest, had madly fought this jump fire, checking it as best they could. Then, when it got out of hand and the exhausted men faced the threat of losing all they had gained, the first misty drizzle of the rain had come down out of the night sky. Within ten minutes, the downpour started. Men had shouted crazily, gone flat on their bellies beside the quickly gathering and blackened pools of rain water, and cooled their parched throats and burned faces. The Baptist preacher, who had worked so hard he could barely stand, had offered to say a prayer of thankfulness. It was while those men knelt shadowed in the feeble light of the dying fire that Streak had quietly gone to his horse, pulled himself up into the saddle, and ridden away.
He would never forget that last glimpse of the valley, men kneeling there, humbly thanking their God for the blessings of the rain that had saved them while the parson’s low voice droned a prayer. Bishop, Jensen, and old Fred Kelso, their faces lined with fatigue but now relaxed out of the grim set of hopelessness, had been on their knees close to where the preacher stood. As Streak had ridden away through the trees, he had taken a last look at Kelso and Bishop and himself came as near as he ever had to praying. But his prayer wasn’t in thankfulness over Nature having taken a hand in saving the valley; it was that Frank Bishop and his daughter would find the happiness denied them these past months, that they would all forget the hates and blood lust that had become the scourge of the valley, that they would find peace in the days to come.
Streak now forced himself to eat the cold overcooked beef and bread the bartender brought him when he asked for food. He had coffee, too, four steaming big mugs of it that put new strength and warmth in him. Leaving his half dollar in change on the bar, he nodded to the bartender and said—“So long.”—feeling that it was his final farewell to this valley and all it had come to mean to him.
He went out, spent a moment pulling tight his cinch, and had lifted a boot to stirrup when he saw a rider cross the street up ahead from a side alleyway to the one flanking the hotel’s far side. The rider’s outline was made shapeless by a yellow poncho. The horse was a dark one, white-stockinged. There was something strangely familiar about the animal’s markings. Suddenly Streak knew what it was. The black Cathy had ridden today had been marked exactly like this animal, both forelegs white to the knee joint, the left hind leg white to the hock. Streak wound his reins to the tie rail again, putting down the spark of excitement in him at the thought that he might see Cathy a last time. Reason told him that that rider probably wasn’t Cathy, yet he couldn’t ignore a sudden strong hunger for a last word with her, for even only a last glimpse of her. Because she might possibly be the rider on the black, he crossed the street and started for the opening into which the rider had disappeared, feeling the cold and the wetness crowd in on him once more, knowing he would be disappointed in having followed this foolish urge.
The passage was totally dark except toward its head where the light coming from the side window of the hotel lobby was reflected from the gray, weathered siding of the adjoining building. Beyond that, the blackness closed in until Streak couldn’t see the hand he held outstretched before him. The rusty gutter two stories overhead leaked a continual thin sheet of water that quickly soaked him to the skin. Far back, he could make out the rectangular opening of the passageway’s lower end and the hazy cobalt outline of a building across the back alley.
He was within two strides of the end of the passage when he heard voices. Cathy’s he knew at once. The other was a man’s, vaguely familiar but still unrecognizable. Streak abruptly understood something. Cathy had ridden all this way to town in the rain to meet someone. Her wary crossing of the street from a passageway opposite spoke of a furtiveness that was distasteful to him. He knew at once that he was an intruder and, feeling a slow let-down, turned back up the passageway. Then he heard the man’s voice say sharply, clearly: “You little hellion! Drop that gun!”
In the instant he recognized Dallam’s voice Streak wheeled and in three lunging strides was out of the foot of the passageway. His hand stabbed to holster. Then he saw them, indistinctly, Cathy’s shape recognizable only by the lighter shade of her yellow poncho and because it was so much shorter than Dallam’s. They stood barely twenty feet away down the alley, Cathy with her back turned, Dallam beyond and facing Streak. They were almost within reach of each other.
Streak heard Cathy say sharply—“Stay where you are!”—as Dallam took a step toward her. Dallam drew back at her quick warning and she went on: “Pete, Streak Mathiot is still alive. I wanted you to know that.”
“But I left . . .” Dallam stopped short. Then: “What’s Mathiot to you?”
“Everything I once thought you were, Pete. He’s fine all the way through. He’s kind and gentle, and . . . I love him.”
“Who got him out of there?” Dallam queried in a rasping voice.
“I did.”
“So you’ve already picked up another man now that you’re through with me.”
“Pete, you’re loathsome,” Cathy said in a trembling voice. “Raise your hands and turn around. I’m taking you to jail.”
“No, you’re not.” Again Dallam took a step toward her.
Through the soft undertone of the pelting rain, Streak caught the sharp click of a gun falling in cock. He lifted his Colt quickly into line, then froze in fear of his shot hitting Cathy. He knew she was going to shoot and called out sharply: “Don’t, Cathy!”
The sound of his voice brought her head around and in that instant Dallam lunged in. Cathy’s gun exploded deafeningly, but the stabbing flame of the shot lined downward, away from Dallam. Streak saw Dallam jerk the gun from her hand and arc it up at him. A split second before Dallam fired, Streak side-stepped and his shoulder hit hard against the hotel’s back wall. The flash of Dallam’s shot blinded him for an instant; at his back he felt the shock of the bullet hitting a board of the wall. Then his momentary blindness was gone and he made out Dallam’s shape towering over Cathy’s, behind it. Dallam was using Cathy for a shield.
“Mathiot!” Dallam called when a moment’s silence remained unbroken.
Streak breathed shallowly, not moving.
“Mathiot!” Dallam called again, more sharply this time.
Cathy gave a choked cry. “You’ve killed him.”
“If I haven’t, I’m going to,” Dallam’s voice snarled.
Suddenly Dallam half shouted a curse and Streak saw him move as Cathy twisted sideways and nearly out of his grasp. For an instant the pale outline of her poncho left Dallam’s tall shape clearly outlined, open. Streak squeezed the trigger of the Colt he held hip high. He saw the impact of that bullet as he once more lunged sideways and closed in. Dallam jerked back half a step. Then in a powerful sweep of his arm he was holding the girl in front of him again and his gun laid a blazing crescendo of fire in at the wall where Streak had stood. Streak counted the shots. There were three of them and they splintered a board of the wall only two feet to his right.
Cathy called—“Streak!”—and her voice was edged with terror.
Streak was about to answer, then checked himself. For he realized what an advantage he had over Dallam; the other couldn’t see him.
Now he could hear Dallam’s rattling breathing and knew that his bullet had hit the man where it counted. Still Dallam stood his ground, Cathy held squarely before him in the powerful clutch of his left arm.
There was another brief moment in which no sound but the rhythmic drone of the rain on the tin roof of the hotel broke the stillness. Then Dallam was saying in a choked, thick voice: “Want some more, Mathiot?” When Streak made no answer, Dallam added: “I’ll count up to five. Either show before I finish, reachin’, or I put this last slug through Cathy’s back!” There was a moment’s pause. Then: “One . . . two . . . three . . .”
Streak deliberately brought his gun up to eye level. He could see the worn, shiny back of the front sight in the notch of the rear as he targeted the dim outline of Pete Dallam’s head. He didn’t for an instant doubt that Dallam would carry out his threat. Barely below his sight Streak sensed a lower target, Cathy’s head. Panic gripped him as Dallam called: “Four!” He was using a strange gun, one of Frank Bishop’s that Cathy had loaned him there at the house this afternoon on his way down from Elbow Lake. He didn’t know how it was patterned. As he sensed that Dallam was about to make his last count, he lifted his sights almost to the crown of the man’s hat and put a firm, even pressure on the trigger. The gun’s hard pound against his wrist surprised him.
He saw Dallam move backward, saw Cathy’s vague shape melt toward the ground in a fall. He knew then that his bullet had struck her. A blossom of gun flame winked above Cathy, at the level of Dallam’s chest. A blow on Streak’s shoulder drove him hard against the wall. Then he was emptying his gun into Dallam, three swift shots that laid a roll of thunder along the alley.
Dallam lurched to one side in a wide-stanced step and stood solidly against the last bullet. He tried to come in at Streak, but his off-weight knee bent as he moved and he fell in a slow wheeling drop, to his knees and finally straight out on his face.
An aching throb pounded in Streak’s shoulder as he walked slowly out to where Cathy lay. He didn’t want to look. But he didn’t have the will to keep himself from it.
Cathy moved when he was two steps from her, seeming to rise up out of the shadows.
“Streak!” she sobbed. “You’re alive!”
Then she was in his arms, her own hugging him close to her. And he was gently kissing her upturned face.
* * * * *
The next morning Fred Kelso was standing on the bottom step that led down off the hotel verandah lighting his after-breakfast cigar. Hank Snyder saw him and reined in off the street to the rail beyond to ask: “Know where I can find a gent by the name of Mathiot, Sheriff?”
“Sure,” Kelso said. “He’s in there havin’ breakfast in bed.” The lawman jerked a thumb to indicate the hotel. He was curious over Snyder’s being here in Ledge instead of down at the stage corral at Agua.
Snyder gave him a sour look. “I’m in too much of a hurry to listen to any of your wisecracks,” he drawled. “Maybe I better ask someone else.”
“I’m tellin’ you the truth,” Kelso bridled. “Mathiot’s in bed havin’ breakfast. He couldn’t be any place else. He’s too weak to walk. Why you want to see him?”
“Paight sent me. I got something to tell Mathiot.”
“Paight!” Kelso tossed away the match, forgetting to pull on his cigar to get it going. “What about Paight?”
“He wants Mathiot to get down to Agua today if he can.”
“Well, he can’t, he’s laid up.”
“So’s Paight,” Snyder said.
“I wondered. They say he had a hole through him when he left here yesterday. Is he hurt bad?”
“Not too bad. His wife’s lookin’ after him.”
“Wife?” Kelso echoed.
Snyder nodded. “They was married last night, him and that sister of Dallam’s. Only she ain’t Dallam’s sister.”
Kelso thumbed his Stetson onto the back of his head and said slowly, deliberately: “I’m damned.” Then, when he became aware of Snyder again: “Well, what is it you want me to tell Mathiot?”
“What I been tellin’ you. Ain’t that enough?” Snyder said testily.
“Plenty,” Kelso said. He turned, let his cane slip down from the crook of his arm, and started up the steps. Halfway up, he stopped and faced Snyder again: “You might tell Paight the same thing about Mathiot you were supposed to tell Mathiot about Paight.”
“What?”
“What you been tellin’ me. He’s married.”
“Who is?”
“Mathiot. And you can tell Bill for me he’d better get healed up and back here quick. Mathiot’s goin’ to need a straw boss to help him run Fencerail. He’s buyin’ it from the bank.”
“That so?” Snyder said. “Things sure happen fast around here. Who did Mathiot marry?”
“You just tell Bill he’s hitched. He’ll guess who to.”
the end
About the Author
Peter Dawson is the nom de plume used by Jonathan Hurff Glidden. He was born in Kewanee, Illinois, and was graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in English literature. In his career as a Western writer he published 16 Western novels and wrote over 120 Western short novels and short stories for the magazine market. From the beginning he was a dedicated craftsman who revised and polished his fiction until it shone as a fine gem. His Peter Dawson novels are noted for their adept plotting, interesting and well-developed characters, their authentically researched historical backgrounds, and his stylistic flair. During the Second World War, Glidden served with the U.S. Strategic and Tactical Air Force in the United Kingdom. Later in 1950 he served for a time as Assistant to Chief of Station in Germany. After the war, his novels were frequently serialized in the Saturday Evening Post. Peter Dawson titles such as Royal Gorge and Ruler of the Range are generally conceded to be among his best titles, although he was an extremely consistent writer, and virtually all his fiction has retained its classic stature among readers of all generations. One of Jon Glidden’s finest techniques was his ability, after the fashion of Dickens and Tolstoy, to tell his stories via a series of dramatic vignettes which focus on a wide assortment of different characters, all tending to develop their own lives, situations, and predicaments, while at the same time propelling the general plot of the story toward a suspenseful conclusion. He was no less gifted as a master of the short novel and short story. Dark Riders of Doom (Five Star Westerns, 1996) was the first collection of his Western short novels and stories to be published.
