Collection 1986 - The Trail To Crazy Man (v5.0) (18 page)

Dan Shute would be in the National. Rafe walked slowly down the walk to the saloon and pushed open the door. Joe Benson looked up from behind his bar, and hastily moved down toward the other end. Pod Gomer, slumped in a chair at a table across the room, sat up abruptly, his eyes shifting to the big man at the bar.

Dan Shute’s back was to the room. In his short, thick coat he looked enormous. His hat was off, and his shock of blond hair, coarse and uncombed, glinted in the sunlight.

Rafe stopped inside the door, his gaze sweeping the room in one all-encompassing glance. Then his eyes riveted on the big man at the bar.

“All right, Shute,” he said calmly. “Turn around and take it.”

Dan Shute turned, and he was grinning. He was grinning widely, but there was a wicked light dancing in his eyes. He stared at Caradec, letting his slow, insolent gaze go over him from head to foot.

“Killin’ you would be too easy,” he said. “I promised myself that when the time came I would take you apart with my hands and then if there was anything left, shoot it full of holes. I’m goin’ to kill you Caradec!”

Out of the tail of his eye, Rafe saw that Johnny Gill was leaning against the jamb of the back door and that Rock Mullaney was just inside of that same door.

“Take off your guns, Caradec, and I’ll kill you!” Shute said softly.

“It’s their fight,” Gill said suddenly. “Let ’em have it the way they want it!”

The voice startled Gomer so that he jerked, and he glanced over his shoulder, his face white. Then the front door pushed open, and Higley came in with Baker. Pod Gomer touched his lips with his tongue and shot a side-long glance at Benson. The saloonkeeper looked unhappy.

Carefully, Dan Shute reached for his belt buckle and unbuckled the twin belts, laying the big guns on the bar, butts toward him. At the opposite end of the bar, Rafe Caradec did the same. Then, as one man, they shed their coats.

Lithe and broad-shouldered, Rafe was an inch shorter and forty pounds lighter than the other man. Narrow-hipped and lean as a greyhound, he was built for speed, but the powerful shoulders and powerful hands and arms spoke of years of training as well as hard work with a doublejack or an ax, or heaving at the heavy, wet lines of a ship.

Dan Shute’s neck was thick, his chest broad and massive. His stomach was flat and hard. His hands were big, and he reeked of sheer animal strength and power. Licking his lips like a hungry wolf, he started forward. He was grinning, and the light was dancing in his hard gray-white eyes.

He did not rush or leap. He walked right up to Rafe, with that grin on his lips, and Caradec stood flat-footed, waiting for him. But as Shute stepped in close, Rafe suddenly whipped up a left to the wind that beat the man to the punch. Shute winced at the blow and his eyes narrowed. Then he smashed forward with his hard skull, trying for a butt.

Rafe clipped him with an elbow and swung away, keeping out of the corner.

CHAPTER XXII

Man to Man

Still grinning, Dan Shute moved in. The big man was deceptively fast, and as he moved in, suddenly he left his feet and hurled himself feet foremost at Rafe.

Caradec sprang back, but too slow. The legs jackknifed around his, and Rafe staggered and went to the floor! He hit hard, and Dan was the first to move. Throwing himself over, he caught his weight on his left hand and swung with his right. It was a wicked, half-arm blow, and it caught Rafe on the chin. Lights exploded in his brain and he felt himself go down.

Then Shute sprang for him.

Rafe rolled his head, more by instinct than knowledge, and the blow clipped his ear. He threw his feet high and tipped Dan over on his head and off his body. Both men came to their feet like cats and hurled themselves at each other. They struck like two charging bulls with an impact that shook the room.

Rafe slugged a right to the wind and took a smashing blow to the head. They backed off and then charged together, and both men started pitching them—short, wicked hooks thrown from the hips with everything they had in the world in every punch.

Rafe’s head was roaring, and he felt the smashing blows rocking his head from side to side. He smashed an inside right to the face, and saw a thin streak of blood on Shute’s cheek. He fired his right down the same groove, and it might as well have been on a track. The split in the skin widened and a trickle of blood started. Rafe let go another one to the same spot and then whipped a wicked left uppercut to the wind.

Shute took it coming in and never lost stride. He ducked and lunged, knocking Rafe off balance with his shoulder and then swinging an overhand punch that caught Rafe on the cheekbone. Rafe tried to sidestep and failed, slipping in a wet spot on the floor. As he went down, Dan Shute aimed a teriffic kick at his head that would have ended the fight right there, but half off-balance, Rafe hurled himself at the pivot leg and knocked Dan sprawling.

Both men came up and walked into each other, slugging.

Rafe evaded a kick aimed for his stomach and slapped a palm under the man’s heel, lifting it high. Shute went over on his back, and Rafe left the floor in a dive and lit right in the middle of Dan Shute and knocked the wind out of him. But not enough so that Dan’s thumb failed to stab him in the eye.

Blinded by pain, Rafe jerked his head away from that stabbing thumb and felt it rip along his cheek. Then he slammed two blows to the head before Shute heaved him off. They came up together.

Dan Shute was bleeding from the cut on his cheek, but he was still smiling. His gray shirt was torn, revealing bulging white muscles. He was not even breathing hard, and he walked into Rafe with a queer little bounce in his step. Rafe weaved right to left and then straightened suddenly and left-handed a stiff one into Shute’s mouth.

Dan went under a duplicate punch and slammed a right to the wind that lifted Rafe off the floor. They went into a clinch then, and Rafe was the faster, throwing Dan with a rolling hiplock. He came off the floor fast, and the two went over like a pinwheel, gouging, slugging, ripping, and tearing at each other with fists, thumbs, and elbows.

Shute was up first and Rafe followed, lunging in, but Dan stepped back and whipped up a right uppercut that smashed every bit of sense in Rafe’s head into a blinding pinwheel of white light. But he was moving fast and went on in with the impetus of his rush, and both men crashed to the floor.

Up again and swinging, they stood toe to toe and slugged viciously, wickedly, each punch a killing blow. Jaws set, they lashed at each other like madmen. Then Rafe let his right go down the groove to the cut cheek. He sidestepped and let go again, then again and again. Five times straight he hit that split cheek. It was cut deeply now and streaming blood.

Dan rushed and grabbed Rafe around the knees, heaving him clear of the floor. He brought him down with a thunderous crash that would have killed a lesser man.

Rafe got up panting and was set for Shute as he rushed. He split Dan’s lips with another left and then threw a right that missed and caught a punch in the middle that jerked his mouth open and brought his breath out of his lungs in one great gasp.

____________

A
LL REASON GONE, the two men fought like animals, yet worse than animals, for in each man was the experience of years of accumulated brawling and slugging in the hard, tough, wild places of the world. They lived by their strength and their hands and the fierce animal drive that was within them, the drive of the fight for survival.

Rafe stepped in, punching Shute with a wicked, cutting, stabbing left. And then his right went down the line again, and blood streamed from the cut cheek.

They stood, then, facing each other, shirts in ribbons, blood streaked, with arms a-swing. They started to circle, and suddenly Shute lunged. Rafe took one step back and swung a kick from the hips. An inch or so lower down and he would have caught the bigger man in the solar plexus. As it was, the kick struck him on the chest and lifted him clear of the floor. He came down hard, but his powerful arms grabbed Rafe’s leg as they swung down, and both men hit the floor together.

Shute sank his teeth into Rafe’s leg, and Rafe stabbed at his eye with a thumb. Shute let go and got up, grabbing a chair. Rafe went under it, heard the chair splinter and scarcely realized in the heat of battle that his back had taken the force of the blow. He shoved Dan back and smashed both hands into the big man’s body. Then he rolled aside and spilled him with a rolling hiplock.

Dan Shute came up, and Rafe walked in. He stabbed a left to the face, and Shute’s teeth showed through his lip, broken and ugly. Rafe set himself and whipped up an uppercut that stood Shute on his toes.

Tottering and punchdrunk, the light of battle still flamed in Shute’s eyes. He grabbed a bottle and lunged at Rafe, smashing it down on his shoulder. Rafe rolled with the blow and felt the bottle shatter over the compact mass of the deltoid at the end of his shoulder. Then he hooked a left with that same numb arm, and felt the fist sink into Shute’s body.

The strong muscles of that rock-ribbed stomach were yielding now. Rafe set himself and threw a right from the hip to the same place, and Shute staggered, his face greenish white. Rafe walked in and stabbed three times with a powerful, cutting left that left Shute’s lips in shreds.

____________

T
HEN, SUDDENLY, CALLING on some hidden well of strength, Dan dived for Rafe’s legs, got him around the knees, and jerked back. Rafe hit the floor on the side of his head, and his world splintered into fragments of broken glass and light, flickering and exploding in a flaming chain reaction.

He rolled over, took a kick on the chest, and then staggered up as Shute stepped in, drunk with a chance of victory. Heavy, brutal punches smashed him to his knees, but Rafe staggered up. A powerful blow brought him down again, and he lunged to his feet.

Again he went to his knees, and again he came up. Then he uncorked one of his own, and Dan Shute staggered. But Dan had shot his bolt. Head ringing, Rafe Caradec walked in, grabbed the bigger man by the shirt collar and belt, right hand at the belt, and then turned his back on him and jerked down with his left hand at the collar and heaved up with the right. He got his back under him and then hurled the big man like a sack of wheat!

Dan Shute hit the table beside which Gene Baker was standing, and both went down in a heap. Suddenly, Shute rolled over and came to his knees, his eyes blazing. Blood streamed from the gash in his cheek, open now from mouth to ear. His lips were shreds, and a huge blue lump concealed one eye. His face was scarcely human, yet in the remaining eye gleamed a wild, killing, insane light. And in his hands he held Gene Baker’s double-barreled shotgun!

He did not speak—just swept the gun up and squeezed down on both triggers!

Yet at the very instant that he squeezed those triggers, Rafe’s left hand had dropped to the table near him. With one terrific heave he spun it toward the kneeling man. The gun belched flame and thunder as Rafe hit the floor flat on his stomach and rolled over to see an awful sight.

Joe Benson, crouched over the bar, took the full blast of buckshot in his face and went over backward with a queer, choking scream.

____________

R
AFE HEAVED HIMSELF erect, and suddenly the room was deathly still. Pod Gomer’s face was a blank sheet of white horror as he stared at the spot where Benson had vanished.

Staggering, Caradec walked toward Dan Shute. The man lay on his back, arms outflung, head lying at a queer angle.

Mullaney pointed. “The table!” he said. “It busted his neck!”

Rafe turned and staggered toward the door. Johnny Gill caught him there. He slid an arm under Rafe’s shoulders and strapped his guns to his waist.

“What about Gomer?” he asked.

Caradec shook his head. Pod Gomer was getting up to face him, and he lifted a hand.

“Don’t start anything. I’ve had enough. I’ll go.”

Somebody brought a bucket of water, and Rafe fell on his knees and began splashing the ice-cold water over his head and face. When he had dried himself on a towel someone handed him, he started for a coat. Baker had come in with a clean shirt from the store.

“I’m sorry about that shotgun,” he said. “It happened so fast I didn’t know.”

Rafe tried to smile and couldn’t. His face was stiff and swollen.

“Forget it,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“You ain’t goin’ to leave, are you?” Baker asked. “Ann said that she—”

“Leave? Shucks, no! We’ve got an oil business here, and there’s a ranch. While I was at the fort I had a wire sent to the C Bar down in Texas for some more cattle.”

Ann was waiting for him, wide-eyed when she saw his face. He walked past her toward the bed and fell across it.

“Don’t let it get you, honey,” he said. “We’ll talk about it when I wake up next week!”

She stared at him and started to speak, and then a snore sounded in the room.

Ma Baker smiled. “When a man wants to sleep, let him sleep, and I’d say he’d earned it!”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

____________

R
IDERS OF THE
D
AWN

NO MATTER HOW far back one goes, there are always stories of earlier arrivals. For example, in the archives of Paris, there is preserved a map prepared supposedly by Jesuits in 1792 that shows the Black Hills and the Big Horn Mountains. It is a topographical map and remarkably good, but where the Jesuits got their information we do not know.

At Massacre Rocks and several other places in Nevada, there are inscriptions and markings on rock walls that do not resemble anything done by American Indians.

R
IDERS OF THE
D
AWN

__________________

I

I
RODE DOWN from the high blue hills and across the brush flats into Hattan’s Point, a raw bit of spawning hell, scattered hit or miss along the rocky slope of a rust-topped mesa.

Ah, it’s a grand feeling to be young and tough with a heart full of hell, strong muscles, and quick, flexible hands! And the feeling that somewhere in town there’s a man who would like to tear down your meat house with hands or gun.

It was like that, Hattan’s Point was, when I swung down from my buckskin and gave him a word to wait with. A new town, a new challenge, and if there were those who wished to take me on, let them come and be damned.

I knew the whiskey of this town would be the raw whiskey of the last town and of the towns behind it, but I shoved through the batwing doors and downed a shot of rye and looked around, measuring the men along the bar and at the tables. None of these men did I know, yet I had seen them all before in a dozen towns. There was the big, hard-eyed rancher with the iron-gray hair who thought he was the bull of the woods, and the knifelike man beside him with the careful eyes who would be gunslick and fast as a striking snake.

The big man turned his head toward me, as a great brown bear turns to look at something he could squeeze to nothing if he wished. “Who sent for you?”

There was harsh challenge in the words, the cold demand of a conqueror. I laughed within me. “Nobody sent for me. I ride where I want and stop when I want.”

He was a man grown used to smaller men who spoke softly to him, and my answer was irritating. “Then ride on,” he said, “for you’re not wanted in Hattan’s Point.”

“Sorry, friend,” I said. “I like it here. I’m staying, and maybe in whatever game you’re playing, I’ll buy chips. I don’t like being ordered around by big frogs in such small puddles.”

His big face flamed crimson, but before he could answer, another man spoke up, a tall young man with white hair. “What he means is that there’s trouble here, and men are taking sides. Those who stand upon neither side are everybody’s enemy in Hattan Point.”

“So?” I smiled at them all, but my eyes held to the big bull of the woods. “Then maybe I’ll choose a side. I always did like a fight.”

“Then be sure you choose the right one”—this was from the knifelike man beside the bull—“and talk to me before you decide.”

“I’ll talk to you,” I said, “or any man. I’m reasonable enough. But get this, the side I choose will be the right one!”

The sun was bright on the street, and I walked outside, feeling the warmth of it, feeling the cold from my muscles. Within me I chuckled, because I knew what they were saying back there. I’d thrown my challenge at them for pure fun; I didn’t care about anyone…and then suddenly I did.

She stood on the boardwalk straight before me, slim, tall, with a softly curved body and magnificent eyes and hair of deepest black. Her skin was lightly tanned, her eyes an amazing green, her lips full and rich.

My black leather chaps were dusty, and my gray shirt was sweat-stained from the road. My jaws were lean and unshaven, and under my black, flat-crowned hat, my hair was black and rumpled. I was in no shape to meet a girl like that, but there she was, the woman I wanted, my woman.

In two steps I was beside her. “I realize,” I said, as she turned to face me, “the time is inopportune. My presence scarcely inspires interest, let alone affection and love, but this seemed the best time for you to meet the man you are to marry. The name is Mathieu Sabre.

“Furthermore—I might as well tell you now—I am of Irish and French extraction, have no money, and have no property but a horse and the guns I wear, but I have been looking for you for years, and I could not wait to tell you that I was here, your future mate and husband.” I bowed, hat in hand.

She stared, startled, amazed, and then angry. “Well, of all the egotistical—”

“Ah!” My expression was one of relief. “Those are kind words, darling, wonderful words! More true romances have begun with those words than any other! And now, if you’ll excuse me?”

Taking one step back, I turned, vaulted over the hitching rail, and untied my buckskin. Swinging into the saddle, I looked back. She was standing there, staring at me, her eyes wide, and the anger was leaving them. “Good afternoon,” I said, bowing again. “I’ll call upon you later!”

I
T WAS TIME to get out and away, but I felt good about it. Had I attempted to advance the acquaintance I should have gotten nowhere, but my quick leaving would arouse her curiosity. There is no trait women possess more fortunate for men than their curiosity.

The livery stable at Hattan’s Point was a huge and rambling structure that sprawled lazily over a corner at the beginning of the town. From a bin I got a scoop of corn, and while the buckskin absorbed this warning against hard days to come, I curried him carefully. A jingle of spurs warned me, and when I looked around, a tall, very thin man was leaning against the stall post watching me.

When I straightened up, I was looking into a pair of piercing dark eyes from under shaggy brows that seemed to overhang the long hatchet face. He was shabby and unkempt, but he wore two guns, the only man in town whom I’d seen wearing two except for the knifelike man in the saloon. “Hear you had a run-in with Rud Maclaren.”

“Run-in? I’d not call it that. He suggested the country was crowded and that I move on. So I told him I liked it here, and if the fight looked good I might choose a side.”

“Good! Then I come right on time! Folks are talkin’ about you. They say Canaval offered you a job on Maclaren’s Bar M. Well, I’m beatin’ him to it. I’m Jim Pinder, ramroddin’ the CP outfit. I’ll pay warrior wages, seventy a month an’ found. All the ammunition you can use.”

My eyes had strayed behind him to the two men lurking in a dark stall. They had, I was sure, come in with Pinder. The idea did not appeal to me. Shoving Pinder aside, I sprang into the middle of the open space between the rows of stalls.

“You two!” My voice rang in the echoing emptiness of the building. “Get out in the open! Start now or start shootin’!”

My hands were wide, fingers spread, and right then it did not matter to me which way they came. There was that old jumping devil in me, and the fury was driving me as it always did when action began to build up. Men who lurked in dark stalls did not appeal to me, nor the men who hired them.

They came out slowly, hands wide. One of them was a big man with black hair and unshaven jowls. He looked surly. The other had a cruel, flat face and looked like an Apache. “Suppose I’d come shootin’?” the black-haired man sneered.

“Then they’d be plantin’ you at sundown.” My eyes held him. “If you don’t believe that, cut loose your wolf right now.”

That stopped him. He didn’t like it, for they didn’t know me and I was too ready. Wise enough to see that I was no half-baked gunfighter, they didn’t know how much of it I could back up and weren’t anxious to find out.

“You move fast.” Pinder was staring at me with small eyes. “Suppose I had cut myself in with Blacky and the Apache?”

My chuckle angered him. “You? I had that pegged, Jim Pinder. When my guns came out you would have died first. You’re faster than either of those two, so you’d take yours first. Then Blacky, and after him”—I nodded toward the Apache—“him. He would be the hardest to kill.”

Pinder didn’t like it, and he didn’t like me. “I made an offer,” he said.

“And you brought these coyotes to give me a rough time if I didn’t take it? Be damned to you, Pinder! You can take your CP outfit and go to blazes!”

His lips thinned down and he stared at me. I’ve seldom seen such hatred in a man’s eyes. “Then get out!” he said. “Get out fast! Join Maclaren, an’ you die!”

“Then why wait? I’m not joining Maclaren so far as I know now, but I’m staying, Pinder. Anytime you want what I’ve got, come shooting. I’ll be ready.”

“You swing a wide loop for a stranger. You started in the wrong country. You won’t live long.”

“No?” I gave it to him flat and face up on the table. “No? Well, I’ve a hunch I’ll handle the shovel that throws dirt on your grave, and maybe trigger the gun that puts you there. I’m not asking for trouble, but I like it, so whenever you’re ready, let me know.”

With that I left them. Up the street, there was a sign:

With my gnawing appetite, that looked as likely a direction as any. It was early for supper, and there were few at table: the young man with white hair and the girl I loved…and a few scattered others who ate sourly and in silence.

When I shoved the door open and stood there with my hat shoved back on my head and a smile on my face, the girl looked up, surprised, but ready for battle. I grinned at her and bowed. “How do you do, the future Mrs. Sabre? The pleasure of seeing you again so soon is unexpected, but real!”

The man with her looked surprised, and the buxom woman of forty-five or so who came in from the kitchen looked quickly from one to the other of us.

The girl ignored me, but the man with the white hair nodded. “You’ve met Miss Maclaren, then?”

So, Maclaren it was? I might have suspected as much. “No, not formally. But we met briefly on the street, and I’ve been dreaming of her for years. It gives me great wonder to find her here, although when I see the food on the table, I don’t doubt why she is so lovely if it is here she eats!”

Mother O’Hara liked that. “Sure, an’ I smell the blarney in that!” she said sharply. “But sit down, if you’d eat!”

My hat came off, and I sat on the bench opposite my girl, who looked at her plate in cold silence.

“My name is Key Chapin.” The white-haired man extended his hand. “Yours, I take it, is Sabre?”

“Matt Sabre,” I said.

A
GRIZZLED MAN from the foot of the table looked up. “Matt Sabre from Dodge. Once marshal of Mobeetie, the Mogollon gunfighter.”

They all looked from him to me, and I accepted the cup of coffee Mother O’Hara poured. “The gentleman knows me,” I said quietly. “I’ve been known in those places.”

“You refused Maclaren’s offer?” Chapin asked.

“Yes, and Pinder’s, too.”

“Pinder?” Chapin’s eyes were wary. “Is he in town?”

“Big as life.” I could feel the girl’s eyes on me. “Tell me what this fight is about?”

“What are most range wars about? Water, sheep, or grass. This one is water. There’s a long valley east of here called Cottonwood Wash, and running east out of it is a smaller valley or canyon called the Two Bar. On the Two Bar is a stream of year-round water with volume enough to irrigate land or water thousands of cattle. Maclaren wants that water. The CP wants it.”

“Who’s got it?”

“A man named Ball. He’s no fighter and has no money to hire fighters, but he hates Maclaren and refuses to do business with Pinder. So there they sit with the pot boiling and the lid about to blow off.”

“And our friend Ball is right smack in the middle.”

“Right. Gamblers around town are offering odds he won’t last thirty days, even money that he’ll be dead within ten.”

That was enough for now. My eyes turned to the daughter of Rud Maclaren. “You can be buying your trousseau, then,” I said, “for the time will not be long.”

She looked at me coolly, but behind it there was a touch of impudence. “I’ll not worry about it,” she said calmly. “There’s no weddings in Boot Hill.”