Collection 1989 - Long Ride Home (v5.0) (11 page)

Shoving his hat back on his head he stood behind Kotch and glanced down at his cards. Kotch had a good hand. The stack of money before him would come to at least two hundred dollars.

“Bet 'em,” Shandy said.

Kotch stirred irritably in his chair. “Shut up!” he said harshly.

Shandy's gun was in his hand, the muzzle against Kotch's ear. “Bet 'em, I said. Bet 'em strong.”

Kotch's hands froze. The Junes looked up, staring at the gangling, towheaded youth. “Beat it, kid!” he said sharply.

“You stay out of this, June!” Shandy Gamble's voice was even. “My argyment's with this coyote. I'd as soon blow his head off as not, but if'n he does what he's told the worst he'll get is a beatin'!”

Kotch shoved chips into the center of the table. The Junes looked at their cards and raised. Kotch bet them higher. He won. Carefully, he raked in the coin.

“This is Shandy Gamble, Kotch. You owe me five hundred. Count it out before I forget myself an' shoot you, anyway.”

“There ain't five hundred here!” Kotch protested.

“There's better'n four. Count it!”

“Well, what do you know, Windy?” The thin man grinned across the table. “Ole Kotch run into the wrong hombre for once! Wished Buck was here to see this!”

Reluctantly, Kotch counted the money. It came to four hundred and ten dollars. Coolly, Shandy Gamble pocketed the money. “All right,” he said, “stand up mighty careful an' unload your pockets.”

“What?” Kotch's face was red with fury. “I'll kill you for this!”

“Empty 'em. I want more money. I want a hundred an' twenty dollars more.”

“You ain't got it comin'!” Kotch glared at him.

“Five hundred an' interest for one year at six per cent. You get it for me or I'll be forced to take your horse an' saddle.”

“Why, you—!”

The gun lifted slightly and Abel Kotch shut up. His eyes searched the boy's face and what he read there wasn't pleasant. Kotch decided suddenly that this youngster would shoot, and shoot fast.

Carefully, he opened a money belt and counted out the hundred and twenty dollars which Gamble quietly stowed in his pockets. Then he holstered his gun and hitched the belts into place. “Now, just for luck, Mr. Cattle Buyer, I'm goin' to give you a lickin'!”

Kotch stared. “Why, you fool! You—!” He saw the fist coming and charged, his weight slamming Shandy back against the wall, almost knocking the wind from him. Kotch jerked a knee up to Gamble's groin, but the boy had grown up in cow camps and cattle towns, cutting his fighting teeth on the bone-hard, rawhide-tough teamsters of the freight outfits. Gamble twisted and threw Kotch off balance, then hit him with a looping right that staggered the heavier man.

Kotch was no flash in the pan. He could fight and he knew it. He set himself, feinted, and then threw a hard right that caught the boy flush on the chin. Shandy staggered but recovered as Kotch rushed and dropping his head, butted the heavier man under the chin. Kotch staggered, swinging both hands; and straightening, Shandy walked into him slugging.

They stood there wide legged and slugged like madmen, their ponderous blows slamming and battering at head and body. Shandy's head sang with the power of those punches and his breath came in gasps, but he was lean and hard from years of work on the range, and he fell into a rhythm of punching. His huge fists smashed at the gambler like battering rams.

Kotch was triumphant, then determined, then doubtful. His punches seemed to be soaked up by the boy's abundant vitality, while every time one of those big fists landed it jarred him to the toes. Suddenly he gave ground and swung a boot toe for Shandy's groin.

Turning, Gamble caught it on his leg, high up, then grabbed the boot and jerked. Kotch's other foot lost the ground and he hit the floor hard. Gamble grabbed him by the shirt front and smashed him in the face, a free swing that flattened the bone in Kotch's nose. Then, jerking him erect, Shandy gripped him with his left hand and swung a looping blow to the wind. Kotch's knees buckled, and Shandy smashed him in the face again and again. Then he shoved him hard. Kotch staggered, brought up against the back wall, and slid to a sitting position, his face bloody, his head loose on its neck.

Shandy Gamble drew back and hitched his belts into place again. He mopped his face with a handkerchief, while he got his breath back. There were five men in the room now, all enemies without doubt. Two of them were Junes—obviously from earlier conversation they were Windy and Alec.

Shandy hitched his gun belts again and left his thumbs tucked in them. He looked at Windy June. “Found a cowhide out back,” he said, casually, “carried a KT brand.”

Instantly, the room was still. Windy June was staring at him, his eyes ugly. Alec was standing with his right hand on the edge of the bar; the others spread suddenly, getting out of the way. This, then, was between himself and the Junes.

“What then?” Windy asked, low voiced.

“Your brother Tom didn't like it. I called him a rustler, and he didn't like that.”

“You called Tom June a rustler?” Windy's voice was low with amazement. “And you're alive?”

“I took his gun away an' tied him up. I'm takin' him to the sheriff.”

“You're takin'—why, you fool kid!”

“I'm takin' him, an' as you Junes ride together, I reckon you an' Alec better come along, too.”

Windy June was astonished. Never in his life had he been called like this, and here, in his own bailiwick, by a kid. But then he remembered the job this kid had done on Abel Kotch and his lips grew close and tight.

“You better git,” he said, “while you're all in one piece!”

The bartender spoke. “Watch yourself, Windy. I know this kid. He's the one that brought the boys in from Cottonwood, one dead an' one almost.”

Windy June smiled thinly. “Look, kid. We don't want to kill you. There's two of us. If you get by us, there's still Buck an' Pop. You ain't got a chance with me alone, let alone the rest of them.”

Shandy Gamble stood tall in the middle of the floor. His long face was sober. “You better come along then, Windy, because I aim to take you in, dead or alive!”

Windy June's hand was a blur of speed. Guns thundered and the walls echoed their thunder. In the close confines of the saloon a man screamed. There was the acrid smell of gunpowder and Shandy Gamble weaving in the floor's middle, his guns stabbing flame. He fired, then moved forward. He saw Alec double over and sprawl across Windy's feet, his gun sliding across the floor.

Windy, like a weaving blade of steel, faced Shandy and fired. Gamble saw Windy June's body jerk with the slam of a .44, saw it jerk again and twist, saw him going to his knees with blood gushing from his mouth, his eyes bitterly, wickedly alive, and the guns in his big fists hammering their futile bullets into the floor. Then Shandy fired again, and Windy June sprawled across Alec and lay still. In the moment of silence that followed the cannonading of the guns, Windy's foot twitched and his spur jingled.

Shandy Gamble faced the room, his eyes searching the faces of the other men. “I don't want no trouble from you. Two of you load the bodies on their horses. I'm taking 'em with me, like I said.”

Abel Kotch sat on the floor, his shocked and bloody face stunned with amazement at the bodies that lay there. He had taken milk from a kitten and had it turn to a raging mountain lion before his eyes. He sat very still. He was out of this. He wanted to stay out. He was going to make no move that could be misinterpreted.

Slowly, they took the bodies out and tied them on the horses of the two June boys. Shandy watched them, then walked across to the stable to get his own horse, his eyes alert for the other Junes.

When he had the horses he walked back to the shed and saw Tom June staring up at him.

“What happened? I heard shootin'?”

“Yeah.”

Shandy reached down and caught him by his jacket collar with his left hand and coolly dragged him out of the shed, his feet dragging. He took him to the front of the saloon and threw him bodily across his horse. The bound man saw the two bodies, dripping and bloody. He cried out, then began to swear, viciously and violently.

“Look out, kid.”

Who spoke, he did not know, but Shandy Gamble glanced up and saw two other men who wore the brand of the June clan—Pop and Buck June—wide apart in the street. Their faces were set and ready.

Shandy Gamble stepped away from the horses into the street's center. “You can drop your guns an' come with me!” he called.

Neither man spoke. They came on, steadily and inexorably. And then something else happened. Up the street behind them appeared a cavalcade of riders, and Shandy recognized his boss, leading them. Beside him rode Johnny Smith and Jim Finnegan and behind them the riders from the KT.

“Drop 'em, June!” The boss's voice rang out sharp and clear. “There's nine of us here. No use to die!”

The Junes stopped. “No use, Buck,” Pop. June said, “the deck's stacked agin us.”

T
HE BOSS RODE on past and stopped. He stared at the dead Junes and the bound body of Tom. He looked at Shandy as if he had never seen him before.

“What got into you, Shandy?” he asked. “We'd never have known, but Johnny told us when you heard the Junes were here you got your guns and left. Then Jim remembered you'd been askin' him about this here Kotch, who trailed with 'em.”

Shandy shrugged, building a smoke. “Nothin'. We'd had trouble, Kotch an' me.” He drew the patch of hide from his pocket. “Then there was this, out back. Tom started a ruction when he seen me find it.”

Shandy Gamble swung into his saddle. “I reckon the Junes'll talk, an' they'll tell you where the cows are. An' boss,” Shandy puckered his brow, “could I ride into Perigord? I want to git me a new saddle.”

“You got the money?” The boss reached for his pocket.

“Yeah,” Shandy smiled, “I got it from Kotch. He'd been holdin' it for me.”

“Holdin' it for him!” Finnegan exploded. “He trusted Kotch—with money?”

Kotch had come to the door and was staring out at them. The boss chuckled. “Well, trust or not, looks like he collected!”

NO MAN'S MAN

I

H
E CAME TO a dirty cantina on a fading afternoon. He stood, looking around with a curious eye. And he saw me there in the corner, my back to the wall and a gun on the table, and my left hand pouring tequila into a glass.

He crossed the room to my table, a man with a scholar's face and a quiet eye, but with lines of slender strength.

“When I told them I wanted a man big enough and tough enough to tackle a grizzly,” he said, “they sent me to you.”

“How much?” I said. “And where's the grizzly?”

“His name is Henry Wetterling, and he's the boss of Battle Basin. And I'll give you a thousand dollars.”

“What do I do?”

“There's a girl up there, and her name is Nana Maduro. She owns a ranch on Cherry Creek. Wetterling wants the girl, and he wants the ranch. I don't want him to have either.”

“You want him dead?”

“I want him out of there. Use your own judgment. When I hire a man for a job, I don't tell him how to do it.” This man with the scholar's face was more than a quiet man; he could be a hard man.

“All right,” I said.

“One thing more”—he smiled a little, quietly, as though enjoying what he was about to say—“Wetterling is top dog and he walks a wide path, but he has two men to back him.” He smiled again. “Their names are Clevenger and Mack.”

The bartender brought a lemon and salt, and I drank my tequila.

“The answer is still the same,” I told him, then, “but the price is higher. I want five thousand dollars.”

His expression did not change, but he reached in his pocket and drew out a wallet and counted green bills on the dirty table. He counted two thousand dollars.

“I like a man who puts the proper estimate on a job,” he said. “The rest when you're finished.”

He pushed back his chair and got up, and I looked at the green bills and thought of the long months of punching cows I'd have to put in to earn that much—if anybody, anywhere, would give me a job.

“Where do you fit in?” I asked. “Do you want the girl or the ranch or Wetterling's hide?”

“You're paid,” he said pointedly, “for a job. Not for questions.…”

T
HERE WAS SUNLIGHT on the trail, and cloud shadows on the hills, and there was a time of riding, and a time of resting, and an afternoon, hot and still like cyclone weather when I walked my big red horse down the dusty street of the town of Battle Basin.

They looked at me, the men along the street, and well they could look. I weighed two hundred and forty pounds, but looked twenty-five pounds lighter. I was three inches over six feet, with black hair curling around my ears under a black flat-brimmed, flat-crowned hat, and the brim was dusty and the crown was torn. The shirt I wore was dark red, under a black horsehide vest, and there was a scar on my left cheek where a knife blade had bit to the bone. The man who had owned that knife left his bones in a pack rat's nest down Sonora way.

My boots were run-down at the heels and my jeans were worn under the chaps stained almost black. And when I swung down, men gathered around to look at my horse. Big Red is seventeen hands high and weighs thirteen hundred pounds—a blood bay with black mane, tail, and forelock.

“That's a lot of horse,” a man in a white apron said. “It takes a man to ride a stallion.”

“I ride him,” I said, and walked past them into the bar. The man in the white apron followed me. “I drink tequila,” I said.