Collection 1986 - The Trail To Crazy Man (v5.0) (37 page)

But he was finished. He stood there, a slighter man than I was, with blood turning his shirtfront crimson, and with his mouth ripped by another bullet. He was white as death. Even his lips were gray, and against that whiteness was the splash of blood. In his eyes now there was another look. The killing lust was gone, and in its place was an awful terror, for Bodie Miller had killed, and enjoyed it with a kind of sadistic bitterness that was in him—but now he knew he was being killed, and the horror of death was surging through him.

“Now you know how they felt, Bodie,” I said bitterly. “It’s an ugly thing to die with a slug in you because some punk wants to prove he’s tough. And you aren’t tough, Bodie, just mean.”

He stared at me, but he didn’t say anything. He was gone, and I could see it. Something kept him upright, standing in that white-hot sun, staring at me, the last face he would ever look up.

“You asked for it. Bodie, but I’m sorry for it. Why didn’t you stay to punching cows?”

Bodie backed up another step, and his gun slid from his fingers. He tried to speak, and then his knees buckled and he went down. Standing over him, I looked at Red.

“I’m ridin’,” Red said huskily. “Just give me a chance.” He swung into the saddle and then looked down at Bodie. “He wasn’t so tough, was he?”

“Nobody is,” I told him. “Nobody’s tough with a slug in his belly.”

He rode off, and I stood there in the trail with Bodie dead at my feet. Slowly, I holstered my gun and then led my horse off the trail to the shade where Bodie’s horse still stood.

Lying there in the dusty trail, Bodie Miller no longer looked mean or even tough. He looked like a kid that had tackled a job that was too big for him.

There was a small gully off the trail. It looked like a grave, and I used it that way. Rolling him into it, I shoved the banks in on top of him and then piled on some stones. Then I made a cross for him and wrote his name on it, and the words:
HE PLAYED OUT HIS HAND
. Then I hung his guns on the cross and his hat.

It was not much of an end for a man, not any way you looked at it, but I wanted no more reputation as a killer—mine had already grown too big.

Maybe Red would tell the story, and maybe in time somebody would see the grave. But if Red’s story was told it would be somewhere far away and long after, and that suited me.

A stinging in my shoulder reminded me of my own wound, but when I opened my shirt and checked my shoulder I found it a mere scratch.

Ahead of me the serrated ridges of the wild lands were stark and lonely along the sky, and the sun behind me was picking out the very tips of the peaks to touch them with gold. Somehow the afternoon was gone, and now I was riding home to my own ranch, and tomorrow was my wedding day.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

____________

S
HOWDOWN ON THE
H
OGBACK

NO MAN CAN be understood except against the background of his own time. The characters in “Showdown on the Hogback” lived in a time and place when work-days were long, living conditions were harsh, and the work itself was brutally hard. Yet they expected nothing more. At least, they had fresh air.

Conditions in eastern cities were worse in many respects. Trade unions either did not exist or were fighting for acceptance, and sweatshop conditions prevailed everywhere. Sanitary conditions were just as primitive as in the West, only with less clean air and sunlight.

The western man grew up fighting to protect the land he claimed and the cattle he drove. There was no policeman to call; he learned not to call for help because there was nobody to listen. He saddled his own broncs, and he fought his own battles.

S
HOWDOWN ON THE
H
OGBACK

__________________

I

E
VERYTHING WAS QUIET in Mustang. Three whole days had passed without a killing. The town-folk, knowing their community, were not fooled, but had long since resigned themselves to the inevitable. They would, in fact, be relieved when the situation was back to normal, with a killing every day, or more on hot days. When there had been no killing for several days, pressure mounted because no one knew who would be next.

Moreover, with Clay Allison, who had killed thirty men, playing poker over at the Morrison House, and Black Jack Ketchum, who richly deserved the hanging he was soon to get, sleeping off a drunk at the St. James, trouble could be expected.

The walk before the St. James was cool at this hour, and Captain Tom Kedrick, a stranger in town, sat in a well-polished chair and studied the street with interested eyes.

He was a tall young man with rusty brown hair and green eyes, quiet mannered and quick to smile. Women never failed to look twice, and when their eyes met his their hearts pounded, a fact of which Tom Kedrick was totally unaware. He knew women seemed to like him, but it never failed to leave him mildly astonished when they liked him very much, which they often did.

The street he watched was crowded with buckboards, freight wagons, a newly arrived stage, and one about to depart. All the hitchrails were lined with saddled horses wearing a variety of brands.

Kedrick was suddenly aware that a young man stood beside him, and he glanced up. The fellow was scarcely more than a boy and he had soft brown eyes and hair that needed cutting. “Captain Kedrick?” he inquired. “John Gunter sent me. I’m Dornie Shaw.”

“Oh, yes!” Kedrick got to his feet smiling and thrust out his hand. “Nice to know you, Shaw. Are you working for Gunter?”

Shaw’s long brown eyes were faintly ironic. “With him,” he corrected. “I work for no man.”

“I see.”

Kedrick did not see at all, but he was prepared to wait and find out. There was something oddly disturbing about this young man, something that had Kedrick on edge and queerly alert. “Where’s Gunter now?”

“Down the street. He asked me to check an’ see if you were here an’, if you were, to ask you to stick around close to the hotel. He’ll be along soon.”

“All right. Sit down, why don’t you?”

Shaw glanced briefly at the chairs. “I’ll stand. I never sit in no chair with arms on them. Apt to get in the way.”

“In the way?” Kedrick glanced up, and then his eyes fell to the two guns Shaw wore, their butts hanging wide. “Oh, yes! I see.” He nodded at the guns. “The town marshal doesn’t object?”

Dornie Shaw looked at him, smiling slowly. “Not to me, he don’t. Wouldn’t do him no good if he did.

“Anyway,” he added after a minute, “not in Mustang. Too many hard cases. I never seen a marshal could make it stick in this town.”

Kedrick smiled. “Hickok? Earp? Masterson?”

“Maybe.” Dornie Shaw was openly skeptical. “But I doubt it. Allison’s here. So’s Ketchum. Billy the Kid’s been around, and some of that crowd. A marshal in this town would have to be mighty fast an’ prove it every day.”

“Maybe you’re right.” He studied Shaw surreptitiously. What was it about him that was so disturbing? Not the two guns, for he had seen many men who wore guns, had been reared among them, in fact. No, it was something else, some quality he could not define, but it was a sort of lurking menace, an odd feeling with such a calm-eyed young man.

“We’ve got some good men,” Shaw volunteered, after a minute. “Picked up a couple today. Laredo Shad’s goin’ to be one of the best, I’m thinkin’. He’s a tough hand an’ gunwise as all get out. Three more come in today. Fessenden, Poinsett, an’ Goff.”

_______

O
BVIOUSLY, FROM THE manner in which he spoke, the names meant much to Shaw, but they meant exactly nothing to Kedrick. Fessenden seemed to strike some sort of a responsive note, but he could not put a finger on it. His eyes strayed down the street, studying the crowd. “You think they’ll really fight?” he asked, studying the street. “Are there enough of them?”

“That bunch?” Shaw’s voice was dry. “They’ll fight, all right. You got some tough boys in that outfit. Injun scrappers an’ such like. They won’t scare worth a durn.” He glanced curiously at Kedrick. “Gunter says you’re a fighter.”

Was that doubt in Shaw’s voice? Kedrick smiled. And then shrugged. “I get along. I was in the Army, if that means anything.”

“Been West before?”

“Sure! I was born in California, just before the rush. When the war broke out I was sixteen, but I went in with a bunch from Nevada. Stayed in a couple of years after the war, fighting Apaches!”

Shaw nodded, as if satisfied. “Gunter thinks well of you, but he’s only one of them an’ not the most important one.”

A short, thickset man with a square-cut beard looking enough like General Grant to be his twin was pushing through the crowd toward them. He even smoked a thick black cigar.

The man walking beside him was as tall as Kedrick, who stood an easy inch above six feet. He had a sharply cut face and his eyes were cold, but they were the eyes of a man born to command, a man who could be utterly ruthless. That would be Colonel Loren Keith. That meant there was one, yet, whom he must meet—the man Burwick. The three were partners, and of the three, only Burwick was from the area.

Gunter smiled quickly, his lips parting over clenched white teeth that gripped his cigar. He thrust out his hand. “Good to see you, Kedrick! Colonel, this is our man! If there ever was a man born to ramrod this thing through, this is the one! I told you of that drive he made for Patterson! Took those cattle through without losing a head, rustlers an’ Commanches be danged!”

Keith nodded, his cold eyes taking in Kedrick at a glance. “Captain—that was an Army title, Kedrick?”

“Army. The war between the states.”

“I see. There was a Thomas Kedrick who was a sergeant in the fighting against the Apaches.”

“That was me. All of us went down some in rank after the troops were discharged.”

“How much time in the war?” Keith’s eyes still studied him.

“Four years, and two campaigning in the Southwest.”

“Not bad. You should know what to expect in a fight.” His eyes went to Kedrick’s, faintly supercilious. “I have twelve years, myself. Regular Army.”

Kedrick found that Keith’s attitude irritated him. He had meant to say nothing about it, but suddenly he was speaking. “My American Army experience, Colonel, was only part of mine. I was with Bazaine, at the defense of Metz, in the Franco-Prussian War. I escaped and was with MacMahon at the Battle of Sedan.”

Keith’s eyes sharpened and his lips thinned. Kedrick could feel the sharp dislike rising in the man. Keith was definitely possessed of a strong superiority complex.

“Is that all?” he asked coolly.

“Why, no. Since you ask, it was not. I was with Wolseley in the second Ashanti war in Africa. And I was in the two-year campaign against the Tungans of northern Tien Shan—with the rank of general.”

“You seem to get around a good bit,” Keith said dryly. “A genuine mercenary!”

Kedrick smiled, undisturbed. “If you like. That’s what you want here, isn’t it? Men who can fight? Isn’t it customary for some men to hire others to do their fighting for them?”

_______

C
OLONEL KEITH’S FACE flamed and then went white, but before he could speak, a big, square-faced man thrust himself through the crowd and stopped to face them. “You, is it, Gunter? Well, I’ve heard tell the reason why you’re here, an’ if you expect to take from hard-workin’ men the land they’ve slaved for, you better come a-shootin’!”

Before anyone could speak, Dornie slid between Keith and Gunter and fronted the man. “You lookin’ for trouble? You want to start your shootin’ now?”

His voice was low, almost a purr, but Kedrick was startled by the shocked expression on the man’s face. He drew back, holding his hands wide. “I wasn’t bracin’ you, Dornie! Didn’t even know you was around!”

“Then get out!” Shaw snarled, passion suddenly breaking through his calmness—passion and something else, something Kedrick spotted with a shock—the driving urge to kill!

“Get out!” Shaw repeated. “An’ if you want to live, keep goin’!”

Stumblingly, the man turned and ducked into the hastily assembled crowd, and Tom Kedrick, scanning their faces, found hard indifference there, or hatred. In no face did he see warmth or friendly feeling. He frowned thoughtfully and then turned away.

Gunter caught his arm, eager to take advantage of the break the interruption had made to bring peace between the two. “You see what we’re up against?” he began. “Now that was Peters. He’s harmless, but there’s others would have drawn, and drawn fast! They won’t all be like that! Let’s go meet Burwick!”

Kedrick fell in beside Gunter, who carefully interposed himself between the two men. Once, Tom glanced back. What had become of Dornie Shaw he did not know, but he did know his second in command, which job was Shaw’s, was a killer. He knew the type from of old.

Yet he was disturbed more than he cared to admit by the man who had braced them. Peters had the look of an honest man, even if not an intelligent one. Of course, there might be honest men among them, if they were men of Peters’ stripe. He was always a follower, and he might follow where the wrong men led.

Certainly, if this land was going to Gunter, Keith, and Burwick through a government bill there could be nothing wrong with it. If the government sold the land to them, squatters had no rights there. Still, if there were many like Peters, the job was not going to be all he had expected.

Gunter stopped before a square stone house set back from the street. “This here’s headquarters,” he said. “We hole up here when in town. Come on in.”

A wide veranda skirted the house, and as they stepped upon it they saw a girl in a gray skirt and white blouse sitting a few feet away with an open book in her lap. Gunter halted. “Colonel, you’ve met Miss Duane.

“Captain Kedrick, my niece, Consuelo Duane.”

Their eyes met—and held. For a breathless moment, no voice was lifted. Tom Kedrick felt as though his muscles had gone dead, for he could not move. Her own eyes were wide, startled.

Kedrick recovered himself with a start. He bowed.

“Miss Duane!”

“Captain Kedrick.” Somehow she was on her feet and moving toward him. “I hope you’ll like it here!”

His eyes had not left hers, and now color was coming into her cheeks. “I shall!” he said gently. “Nothing can prevent me now.”

“Don’t be too sure of that, Captain!” Keith’s voice was sharp and cold. “We are late for our visit. Let’s be going. Your pardon, Connie. Burwick is waiting.”

Kedrick glanced back as he went through the door, and the girl was still standing there, poised, motionless.

Keith’s irritation was obvious, but Gunter seemed to have noticed nothing. Dornie Shaw, who had materialized from somewhere, glanced briefly at Kedrick, but said nothing at all. Coolly, he began to roll a smoke.

II

Burwick crouched behind a table. He was an incredibly fat man and incredibly dirty. A stubble of graying beard covered his jowls and his several chins, yet the eyes that measured Kedrick from beneath the almost hairless brows were sharp, malignant, and set close alongside a nose too small for his face. His shirt was open, and the edge of the collar was greasy. Rims of black marked each fingernail.

He glanced at the others and then back at Kedrick. “Sit down!” he said. “You’re late! Business won’t wait!” His bulbous head swung from Kedrick to Gunter. “John, this the man who’ll ramrod those skunks off that land? This him?”

“Yes, that’s Kedrick,” Gunter said hastily. Oddly enough, he seemed almost frightened of Burwick. Keith had said nothing since they had entered the room. Quietly, he seemed to have withdrawn, stepped momentarily from the picture. It was, Kedrick was to discover, a faculty he had when Burwick was near. “He’ll do the job, all right!”

Burwick turned his eyes on Kedrick. After a moment, he nodded. “Know a good deal about you, son!” His voice was almost genial. “You’ll do if you don’t get soft with them! We’ve no time to waste, you understand! They’ve had notice to move! Give ’em one more notice. Then get ’em off or bury ’em! That’s your business, not mine! I’ll ask no questions,” he added sharply, “an’ I’ll see nobody else does! What happens here is our business!”

He dismissed Kedrick from his mind and turned his attention to Gunter. “You’ve ordered like I told you? Grub for fifty men for fifty days? Once this situation is cleaned up I want to get busy at once. The sooner we have work started, the sooner we’ll be all set. I want no backfiring on this job.”

Burwick turned sharply at Tom Kedrick. “Ten days! I give you ten days! If you need more than five, I’ll be disappointed! If you’ve not the heart for it, turn Dornie loose! Dornie’ll show ’em!” He cackled suddenly. “That’s right! Dornie’ll show ’em!”

He sobered down, glanced at the papers on his desk, and then spoke without looking up. “Kedrick, you can go. Dornie, you run along, too!”