Law Of the Desert Born (Ss) (1984) (21 page)

Into that circle of hell and hatred walked Stretch Magoon.

He had left the grulla in the wash and crept up on foot, knowing the advantage of surprise. He glimpsed the girl on the*bed, and she glimpsed him. He had no heroic ideas about slipping in, untying her, and making a break for it. He knew he couldn't get through the window and across the room without making some noise. He had one chance, and he was a man who believed in direct methods.

Stretch Magoon stepped around the corner. "Hello, boys," he said, and went for his gun.

There was no heroism in him. He was a man with a job to do. It was characteristic of the West to give
a
man a break, but even men of the West found it convenient to ignore that principle on occasion. And when one man faces three is not a time to start giving breaks.

The three of them, seething with hatred as they were, didn't lag far behind. Magoon's first shot was for Posner. He didn't want the coyotes yapping at his heels trying to hamstring him when he went after the old grizzly.

Red Posner hopped around like the horned toad he resembled, but his gun never got into action, he took a bullet through the teeth, and it was immediately apparent that he found the lead indigestible.

Tinny Curt-is was sitting down, nursing his jaw and his hatred. He never got to his feet. The bullet that got him took him right in the brisket and went right out through his spine.

Lucky Weidman was lucky; he was also careful. He got his gun out, but Magoon was thin, and his first shot missed; the second knocked Magoon back into the wall of the shack, and then Magoon swung his 'gun onto Weidman and let one bullet chase another one through his big stomach. His fifth and last shot, Magoon missed completely. Then he threw the gun and, with Weidman firing, went into him swinging wildly. He saw the red blaze of the gun, felt the heat on his face, and he felt his fists smashing into that big face. Weidman went down, and Magoon lit just past him, on his knees, then he slid forward into the dust.

A half-hour later he was still lying there, more dead than alive, when Sheriff Ben Rowsey rode in with a warrant for the arrest of Weidman and Posner. With him rode Sam Tinker, Chicken Livers, and a scattering of townspeople, including that unwilling convert to living in towns, County Galway.

When Magoon was able to talk, Rowsey told him,
Hartman's in jail. You were right about figuring he wa
s
that missin' teller. Weidman an' Posner were the other two."

Kelly was bending over him. He looked at her sadly and she said, "Hurry up and get well. I've put Dean Barker back on the job. I've got some plans for you too, when you get up."

"I reckon," Magoon said woefully, "that I know better than t' argue with a girl who was named for a burro!"

Her face flushed. "Who told you that?" she demanded. "Yourpa," he said.
I rode for him three, years steady, after you left!"

*

Author's
Note:

There were not as many black cowboys as some recent writers maintain, and in the photos of the old trail drivers they are present but rare. Nonetheless, numbered among them were some of the West's greatest riders.

My favorite, I believe, was Bose Ikard, right-hand man to the great trail driver, Charlie Goodnight. Bose was born a slave in Mississippi in 1847, came west when not yet six years old to a ranch just west of Weatherford, Texas. Perhaps one should not have favorites among people, but in a lot orresearch I've never heard or found a bad word about Bose. He was a gentleman, an excellent horseman, a good cow-country cook, an excellent night herder, and a good fighting man. Above all, he was responsible and trustworthy. Time and again he carried all of Goodnight's money.

He died in 1929 and is buried in Weatherford. The epitaph Goodnight put on the marker he erected for Bose read:

*

Served with me four years on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, never shirked a duty or disobeyed an order, rode with me in many stampedes, participated in three engagements with Comanches, splendid behavior.

This is a far greater tribute than the words suggest, for Goodnight was himself among the greatest trail drivers and a man who demanded and got the best men that could be found. He blazed the Goodnight-Loving Trail, ranched the Palo Duro Canyon and opened up some very rough country.

*

He rode into town on a brown mule and swung down from the saddle in front of the Chuck Wagon. He wore a high Mexican hat and a pair of tight Mex pants that flared over his boots. Shorty Duval started to open his mouth to hurrah this stranger when the hombre turned around.

Shorty Duval's mouth snapped shut like a steel trap, and you could almost see the sweat break out on his forehead.

One look was all anybody needed. Shorty was tough, but nobody was buying any trouble from the drifter in the high-crowned hat.

He had a lean brown face and a beak of a nose that had been broken some time or other. There was a scar along his cheekbone that showed white against the leather brown of his face. But it was his eyes that gave you the chills. They were green and brown, but there was something in the way they looked at you that would make a strong man back up and think it over.

He was wearing two guns and crossed belts. They were not Peacemakers, but the older Colt, the baby cannon known as the Walker Colt. Too heavy for most men, they would shoot pretty accurate for well over a hundred yards, which wasn't bad for a rifle.

He wore one of them short Mex jackets, too, and when we looked from his queer getup to that brown mule that was all legs we couldn't figure him one little bit.

Not many strangers rode into White Hills. I'd been there all of two months, and I was the last one to come. This hombre showed he knowed the kind of a town he was in when he didn't look too long at anybody. In fact, he didn't even seem to notice us. He just pushed through the doors and bellied up to the bar.

Bill Riding was in there, and some four or five others. Being a right curious hombre, I walked in myself. If this gent did any talkin', I aimed to be where I could listen. I, saw Riding look around when I come in.. His eyes got mean. From the first day I hit town, we'd no use for each other.

Partly it was because of Jackie Belton's 'cur dog. Belton was a kid of fourteen who lived with his sister, Ruth, on a nice cattle spread six or seven miles out of White Hills. That dog ran across in front of Riding one day and come Burned near trippin' him. He was a hot-tempered hombre, and when he drawed iron, I did, too.

Before he could shoot, I said, and I was standin' behind him,
You kill that dog, Riding, and I'll kill your'

His face got red, and then white. His back was half toward me, and he knowed he didn't have a chance.
Someday," he said, his voice ugly,
you'll butt in at the wrong timer'

Jackie saw me, and so did his sister, and after the way they thanked me, I figgered it would have been cheap even if I'd had to kill Riding.

White Hills was an outlaw town. Most of the men in town were wanted somewheres, and while it wasn'
t
THE GUNS TALK LOUD
d
oin' any deputy much good to come in here, the town was restless now. That was because the bank over to Pierce had been stuck up and ever'body in White Hills figgered the rangers would come here lookin' for him. That was why they'd looked so suspicious when I rode into town.

It didn't take no fortune-teller to guess that Harvey Kinsella had put Bill Riding to watchin' me. Kinsella was the boss o' that town, and he knowed everythin' that went on around.

Riding wasn't the only one had an eye on me, I knowed that. Kinsella had posted two or three other hombres for the same reason. Still, I stuck around. And part of the reason I stayed was Ruthie Belton.

The hombre with the high-crowned sombrero leaned against the bar and let those slow green eyes of his take in the place. They settled on Riding, swung past Shorty Duval, and finally settled on me.

They stayed there the longest, and I wasn't surprised none. We were the two biggest men in the place, me and him. Maybe I was a mite the bigger, but that hat made him look just as tall. His eyes didn't show what he was thinkin',. but knowin' how a man on the dodge feels, I knowed what it was.

He had me sized up like I had him. Me, I grooved up under the Tonto Rim, and when I wanted to ride the cattle trails, I had to ride east to git to 'em. I'd punched cows and dealt monte in Sonora, and I ain't braggin' none when I say that when I rode through New Mexico and hung around Lincoln and Fort Sumner and Sante Fe, not Billy the Kid nor Jesse Evans wanted any part of what I had to give. Not that I wanted them, either. There wasn't no high Mex hat on me. Mine was flat crowned and flat brimmed, but my guns was tied down, and had been for more than a little while. My boots was some down at heel, and I needed a shave, but no man in that place had the power in his shoulders I had, and n
o
man there but me could bust a leather belt with his chest expansion.

He didn't need no second sight to tell him I was ridin' a lone trail, either. They never cut my hide to fit no Kinsella frame. Anyway, he looked at me, and then he says, "I'll buy you a drink!" An' the way he laid that "you" in there was like layin' a whip across the face of ever' other man in the saloon.

Bill Riding jerked like he'd been
. B
ee-stung, but Kinsella wasn't there, and Bill sat tight.

Me, I walks over to the bar and bellies up to it. Amigo, it done me good to look in that long mirror and see the two of us standin' there. Y' can ride for miles and never find two such big men together. Maybe I was a mite thicker'n him through the chest, but he was big, amigo, and he was mean.

-They call me Sonora," he said, lookin' at the rye in his glass.

"Me, I'm Dan Ketrel," I said, but I was thinkin' of what the descriptions of the bandit who robbed the bank at Pierce said. A big man, the descriptiQns said, a very big man, wearin' two guns.

Sonora was a big man, and he wore two guns. For that matter, I did, too. There was even another big man in town who wore two guns. The boss, it was, Harvey Kinsella.

We looked at each other right then, and neither of us was fooled a mite. He knowed what I was here for, and I knowed what he was here for, and neither of us was in friendly country.

Bill Riding didn't like me bein' here. It was choldn' up in him like a thunderstorm chokin' up a canyon with cloud. It was gittin' in his throat, the meanness of him, and I could see trouble was headin' our way.

For that matter, I'd knowed it was comin', soon or late. I knowed it was cumin' because I knowed I was goin' to butt into sonnethin' that wasn't rightly m
y
THE GUNS TALK LOUD
b
usiness. It had been buildin' for days, ever since I got the lay of the land, hereabouts.

I was goin' to tear down the fence that kept Ruth Belion's cows from gratin' in Reefer Canyon, where the good grass was.

You'd think, maybe, that tearin' down one fence wouldn't do no good. You'd think maybe they'd put it right up again. You'd be wrong.

Irn I tore down that fence once, it was goin' to stay down, because after I tore it down, I'd have to kill Harvey Kinsella and Bill Riding.

They was the ones out to break Ruthie Belton. When her old man was alive, they left him strictly alone. He was old, but he was a ring-tailed wolf on the prowl, and they knowed it. Then he got throwed from a bad hoss, and they started to move in on the Bar B.

It wasn't none of my business. Me, I was up here for a purpose, and rightly I shouldn't think of anythin' else, but sometimes a man stumbles into a place where, if he's a man, he's got to show it. And me, I was a fixin' to tear down that fence.

It would mean shootin', and Kinsella was poison mean, and Riding damn' near as bad. That was sayin' nothin' the rest of that outfit. But I had me a plan now, and that plan was buildin' around a certain tall hombre in a high-crowned hat, a man that rode a brown-legged mule and packed two Walker Colts.

Bill Riding got up and walked over to the bar. He was spoilin' for trouble. As big a man as Kinsella in weight, he was a mite shorter than either of us, but nearly as broad as me. A big-handed man, and a dirty fighter in a rough and tumble.

"Stranger," he says, starin' at Sonora, "y' seem kind of limitin' in your offer of a drink. Maybe y' think
. Y
ou're too durned good to drink with us!"

Sonora had his elbows on the bar right then, and he didn't straighten; he just turned his head and let thos
e
cold eyes take in Riding, head to foot; then he looked back at his drink.

Riding's face flamed up, and I saw his lips tighten. His hand shot out, and he grabbed Sonora by the shoulder. Bill just had to be top dog, he just had to have ever'body believin' he was a bad hombre, but he done the wrong thing when he laid a hand on Sonora.

The man in the high-crowned hat back-handed his fist into Bill's unprotected midsection. It caught Bill unsuspectin', and he staggered, gaspin' for breath. Then Sonora turned and slugged him. Bill went back into a table, upset it, and then he crawled out of the poker chips with a grunt and started for Sonora.