Collected Works of Zane Grey

by Zane Grey

  Brazos strode out. He halted to one side of the open door.

  Half-way between Hall’s saloon and the Happy Days there stood an unoccupied adobe structure, one of the old landmarks of Las Animas. Brazos took his station there in the doorway, from which he could not readily be seen except from a point almost directly opposite. He meant to wait there a little while.

  He did not have long to wait before a tall man emerged from Hall’s. He answered to the description Brazos had in mind as fitting Knight. Three men followed him out of the saloon. They talked. And Brazos detected a nervous excitement in the way they stood and spoke.

  Then Knight turned his dark face in Brazos’s direction. One of his comrades accompanied him, a lean man in his shirt sleeves. Brazos smiled scornfully at the folly and blind arrogance of a man who packed his gun like that. The lean man took no such chances.

  They came on. Brazos stepped out to confront them.

  “Howdy, Brad,” he drawled.

  If that name did not belong to this man, it certainly had power to halt him with a stiffening jerk.

  “My name’s — Knight,” he rasped out.

  “Aw, hell!” ejaculated Brazos in cold derision. The voice was the one he expected.

  “Who are you?” demanded the other.

  The lean man, staring hard at Brazos, said quietly, “It’s Brazos Keene.”

  “Good guess, stranger. Slope damn pronto, or I’ll bore yu,” returned Brazos, just as quietly.

  The man wheeled as on a pivot and his boots rang on the hard sidewalk.

  “Wal, Mr. Knight, yu’ve met up with Brazos Keene at last.”

  “Brazos Keene, ah? Ha! Ha! It doesn’t impress me, you bragging cowpuncher.”

  “Wal, it’s a-gonna. Brad.”

  “Damn you! My name’s Knight.”

  Brazos saw the leap of thought in those beady black eyes. It was a steely red glint, a compass needle wavering and fixing — the intent to kill. Brad would attempt to draw on him, Brazos knew, and felt deep amazement at this man’s ignorance of real gunmen.

  “Wal, it’s Brad, too. I just heahed Bodkin an’ thet other hombre call yu Brad.

  “When and where?” queried Brad heatedly, but he had begun to whiten.

  “Thet night at Halley’s. Just after the midnight train had pulled in from the East. I was in the next room an’ had a hole cut in the wall.”

  “You meddling cowhand!”

  “Shore, Brad. I shore got a hand to draw to — an’ I got one to draw with!”

  Knight appeared to be be beyond speech, clamped in his rage. Still he had no fear. But it was rage, not nerve.

  “Why, man alive!” went on Brazos in his cold, taunting voice, “I’ve met up’ with some real men in my day. Yu’re nothin’ but a low-down coward that shoots unarmed men—”

  With a grating curse Knight jerked for his gun.

  Brazos stepped through the drifting pall of smoke to look down upon the fallen man. But he was too late to see Brad die. The rustler boss lay on his back, his right arm pinned under him, clutching his half-drawn gun, his visage distorted in its convulsive change from life to death.

  “Atta boy, Brazos!” yelled a lout at the back, and a laugh, nervous, not mirthful, ran through the crowd.

  Sheathing his gun, Brazos whirled on his heel to strike rapidly in the direction of the sheriff’s office.

  It was locked. Brazos burst into three places before someone told him where to locate Bodkin.

  “Seen him go in Twin Sombreros restaurant,” called out this individual.

  Brazos laughed. Of all places for Bodkin to be cornered by Brazos Keene! There was a fate that waited upon evil men.

  Brazos opened the door of the restaurant, slipped in, then slammed it behind him. On the right side, facing the street, several of the small tables had been placed together, round which sat ten or a dozen men. Brazos’s lightning eye had scanned them to locate his victim.

  “Everybody set tight!” yelled Brazos.

  He surveyed the men at table. Miller he recognised. His passion was such that even the presence of the banker Henderson occasioned him no surprise. Several other faces were familiar, evidently belonging to new businessmen of Las Animas. The rest were strangers.

  The guests at that table rose so hurriedly that half their chairs turned over. They split, some on each side, leaving Bodkin alone at the head, his ox eyes rolling at Brazos.

  “Keene, this hyar’s an intrusion — insult to my guests. I—”

  “Haw! Haw! Yore guests, huh? Wal, they must be crooked as yu or the damnedest fools in Colorado.”

  “Drunk again! Same old Keene! You get out or I’ll clap you in jail.”

  Brazos spat like a cat. “Jail? By Gawd, yu make me remember I got thet on yu, too! Wal, Bodkin, my rustlin’ sheriff, yu’ll never clap me in jail again — or any other cowboy!”

  “Get out, Keene. You’re drunk an’ blowin’ off. Let me alone. You can’t want anythin’ of me.”

  “Hell I cain’t!”

  “What you want — then?” demanded Bodkin hoarsely.

  “Wal, first off I wanted to tell yu, Bodkin,” drawled Brazos with irritating slowness. “Yore pard Brad is layin’ oot here in the street daid!”

  “Brad?”

  “Yes, Brad. He calls himself Knight. He’s yore new man. Wal, he’s daid!”

  “Who shot him?”

  “Some hombre from Texas.”

  “You! Well, that’s no great concern of mine You’re one of these even-break gunmen, so I can’t arrest you. I knew him as Knight. Now get out—”

  “Aw, Bodkin, yu’re all lie,” flung out Brazos, and in two long strides he reached the table. He lifted his boot against it and shoved powerfully. The laden tables slid and tumbled with a crash, overturning Bodkin and half covering his burly form.

  “Come up with yore gun!” ordered Brazos.

  Bodkin floundered to his feet, a stark and ghastly terror etched on his face. He made no move for his gun, which swung free without coat to hamper it.

  “I’m not fightin’ you — gun slinger,” he panted.

  “Yes, yu air — or be the first man I ever bored withoot it.”

  “Let me by. If you’re spoilin’ for a fight I’ll find men—”

  “Bah, yu chicken-hearted four-flush! Cain’t you make no better stand before yore guests? Cain’t yu die game?”

  “Brazos Keene, I’ll not add another notch to your gun handle.”

  “Wal, I’ll break my rule an’ cut just one notch for yu, Bodkin. An’ wherever I ride I’ll show it an’ say thet’s for the yellowest skunk I ever shot.”

  “I tell you I won’t draw,” shouted Bodkin, desperate in his fear.

  Brazos’s gun twinkled blue. Bang! Bodkin screamed like a horse in agony. His leg gave way under him and he would have fallen but for the chair he seized. Brazos’s bullet had penetrated the calf of his leg.

  “Air yu gonna take it by inches?” demanded the cowboy.

  Bodkin gazed balefully, with wobbling jaw. Horribly plain his love of life, his fear of death! And still it eluded him — the destroying truth of this cowboy.

  “Bodkin, yore game is up. Yu’ve dealt yore last hand at cairds. Yore lyin,’ cheatin’, stealin’ days air over. Yore murderin’ days air over. For yu was Surface’s tool in Allen Neece’s murder. Yu tried the same deal when yu sent Bard Syvertsen an’ his girl Bess to murder me. Yu’re a menace to this range. The fools who elected yu sheriff air crazy or crooked.”

  “You’re the crazy — one,” gasped Bodkin.

  “Listen, man. Cain’t yu see things? I could kill yu on a personal grudge. But I’m gonna kill yu for better reasons.”

  “Keene, you can’t prove — you have no case—”

  “Hell! I was in the room next to yore’s at Hailey’s. I had a hole cut in the wall. I heahed yu come in at midnight, with two men. One of them this Brad hombre I just shot. An’ I heahed yu talk. About Brad’s failure to get the gunman, Panhandle Ruckfall, to come
heah to kill me. Aboot the gold Syvertsen stole from Neece an’ gave to Surface. Aboot how yu reckoned yu would hang on heah an’ get elected sheriff. An’ last, how the third man of yu three thet night — the one whose name I never heahed — how he said the cattlemen on this range was wakin’ up an’ he was gonna slope.”

  Damning guilt worked upon the fear and agony in Bodkin’s visage.

  “Now will yu go for yore gun?” added Brazos sardonically.

  “No — you — hydrophobia-bitten cowhand!”

  Crash! Brazos shot the other leg out from under Bodkin. Still the sheriff did not fall, nor did he scream out. He sagged a little, until his knee on the chair upheld him. Then the horrid expression faded, smoothed out of his face, and into it came a vestige of the realisation of death and a dark desire to take his merciless adversary with him. He let go of the chair with his right hand and drew his gun.

  Brazos let him swing it upward. Then he leaped aside and shot. Bodkin’s gun boomed so close afterward that the two shots seemed simultaneous.

  But Bodkin’s bullet crashed through the window and Brazos’s reached its mark.

  Then the cowboy faced the ill-assorted group of men who had assembled there as Bodkin’s guests. They stood as if petrified.

  “Henderson, yu’re in bad company,” rang out Brazos, “an’ no matter what yore excuse, it’ll be remembered in Las Animas. Miller, I’m brandin’ yu as hand an’ glove with this Surface ootfit. Yu businessmen an’ yu strangers all know Bodkin now for what he was. An’ I reckon thet’ll be aboot all for Brazos Keene in Colorado.”

  CHAPTER 13

  HE RODE AWAY at dawn as the sun was reddening the grey landscape, without ever once looking back, as he had done so often in his tumultuous life.

  His heading for the south, however, towards Texas, had an air of finality. Thirst for adventure and even for romance had been effectually killed. As Brazos took to the well-worn cattle trail, he felt sick and old and unhappy.

  He came at length to Doan’s Crossing, one of the famous old posts of the frontier.

  Doan’s Crossing had grown to be a settlement. The huge rambling trading-post appeared the same as the picture in his memory. But it fronted on the corner of a wide street that stretched far between grey flat houses and red-walled buildings.

  “Wal, doggone me!” ejaculated, Brazos mildly. “Tom Doan has shore thrown up a metropolis.”

  As he slid wearily out of his saddle a lanky young Texan met him with a keen gaze.

  “Howdy, rider. Air you stayin’ over?”

  “Howdy, young feller. I reckon my hawss is lame. Will you put him up and look after him?”

  “Yu bet,” replied the lad.

  “Tom Doan heah yet?”

  “Shore, Tom’s heah, big as life. Mister, there’s Doan comin’ now.”

  Brazos’s glance lighted upon a tall Texan approaching. Same old Tom Doan! Brazos could have picked him out of a hundred Texans, though they all were sandy-haired, sallow-faced, with slits of grey fire for eyes.

  “Howdy, stranger. Git down an’ come in,” was the greeting. “Haven’t I seen you before?”

  “Tom, I reckon I’m starved and thin and black with this heah dust and beard. But it’s a downright insult for you not to know me,” drawled Brazos.

  Doan straightened up from his close scrutiny and broke into a broad smile.

  “Wal, talk of the devil an’ heah he is! Brazos Keene!”

  “Yep, it’s Keene all right. And how air you. Tom?”

  The warm smile, the hard grip, and the hand on his shoulder thrilled some of the weariness out of Brazos.

  “I reckon I’m downright glad to see yu, Tom,” he responded hoarsely.

  “Say, yu’re spittin’ cotton. Come in, boy, an’ hev a drink.”

  “Wal, I need one, Tom. But not red likker.”

  Doan led Brazos through a lane of curious riders into the post. The huge interior, its adobe walls decorated with Indian ornaments, the coloured blankets and utensils hanging from the rafters, the counters laden with merchandise, and especially the great open fireplace at the end — all these appeared just the same as if he had seen them yesterday. But there was a wide door that Brazos did not remember. It led in to a saloon full of smoke and noise.

  “Tom, what the hell has come off about heah?” asked Brazos, after he had quenched his thirst.

  “Brazos, we’ve growed up. Doan’s Crossing is a town.”

  “Hell, Tom, I ain’t blind. But how come? There never was nothin’ heah. Wal, nothin’ but buffalo, Injuns, and trail-herd rustlers.”

  Doan laughed. “So we used to think, cowboy. But we was blind. There’s rich land heah. Lots of farms, ranches. We’ve got a growin’ town. A dozen stores an’ more, too many saloons, a school an’ a church an’ a doctor. I’ve added a hotel to my post. Two stages a week, herds still trailin’ north, travel heavy. Aw, Doan’s Crossing is boomin’.”

  “Wal, doggone! I’m shore glad.”

  “Brazos, where yu headin’?”

  “West of the Pecos,” replied Keene ponderingly, his gaze averted.

  “Aw! Don’t tell me yu are on the dodge, Brazos?”

  “Not atall. Tom, I want a room and hot water. Last time I was heah I slept on the counter oot there. Recollect thet?”

  “I shore do. An’ you didn’t need no bath, ‘cause yu an’ Herb Ellerslie got piled off in the river.”

  “Gosh, Tom, yu do remember heaps. What become of Herb Ellerslie?”

  “Shot, Brazos. Shot at Dodge by a gambler named Cardigan?’

  “Aw, no! I’m sorry. Cardigan? I’ll remember thet name. How aboot Wess Tanner?”

  “Jest fine. Come to think of it, Wess will be along any day now.”

  “Wouldn’t I like to see Wess!” ejaculated Brazos dreamily, following his host out of the saloon.

  Doan halted at the end of a corridor, which opened into a green and flowery patio. He was ushered into a room that spoke eloquently of the advance Doan’s Crossing had made toward civilisation.

  “Doggone! Tom, this heah is mighty stylish for me. Wonder if I can sleep in thet bed.”

  “Wal, you look like you needed to,” replied Doan with a laugh. “I’ll send some hot water. You got about a half hour before supper.”

  Brazos laid off his sombrero, his gun, spurs, and chaps. Then he opened his saddlebags to take out his last clean shirt scarf and socks, and also his shaving outfit.

  “Heigho!” he sighed, and sat down on the bed. “Doan’s Crossing — Jesse Chisholm’s Trail — and I’m a broken old man!”

  That night, tired as he was, Brazos could not sleep. The bed felt too soft, too comfortable. He lay awake, thinking. And June and Jan Neece filled his mind.

  In the dead of night in the blackness of this room, hundreds of miles from the scene of his downfall, he at last saw, clearly. All the time, it had been June, and June alone. He had worshipped her, and worshipped her still. June had uplifted and inspired him, called so deeply and poignantly to the finer side of him that he had never known really existed. He had thought of June as a girl to work for, to change his nature, to make a home for him and be the mother of his children. All dream! But he saw through it clearly now.

  Sleep came very late to Brazos that night. He was awakened by a pounding on his door.

  “Hey, Mister Keene, air yu daid?” called a voice Brazos recognised as belonging to the Texas lad.

  “Mawnin’, Tex. No, I ain’t daid yet. What’s the row aboot?”

  “I been tryin’ to wake you. The Dodge City stage rolled in — with an’ — some old friends of yores rode in with it.” The lad’s voice betrayed excitement.

  “Friends?” flashed Brazos, his blood quickening.

  “Tanner an’ some of his riders.”

  Brazos leaped out of bed. “Tell Wess I’ll be there in a jiffy.”

  Brazos washed and dressed swiftly, buckled on his gun belt, and strode into the trading-post.

  “Wess! you lean, hungry-lookin’ old
trail driver! My Gawd, I’m shore glad to see you!”

  “Pard! You damned ole brown-skinned vaquero!” replied Tanner unsteadily, as he met that proffered hand. “Brazos — I never expected to see this day. An’ am I happy?”

  They clasped hands and locked glances. It was a meeting between tried and true Texans who had slept and fought and toiled together through unforgettable days:

  “Brazos — meet my ootflt,” said Tanner presently.

  Brazos was introduced to the riders, most of them striplings. Obviously they were overcome at this meeting.

  “Wal, Wess, I reckon you’re ridin’ back to Santone for the winter. No more trail drivin’ this year?”

  “Not till spring, Brazos. An’ mebbe not then. Pard, I shore have the grandest ranch bargain there is in all Texas. If I can only raise the backin’.”

  “Same old Wess. Always dreamin’ of thet grand ranch. I shore want to heah about it. And I’d kinda like to ride south with you, for a while. It’s been lonely.”

  Tanner gave him a keen, kindly glance that baffled Brazos.

  “Don’t be hurt, pard. It ain’t likely you’ll want to ride with us. But I’d shore like thet — Brazos, come aside. I’ve news for yu. I’m scared stiff, yet—”

  Wess led Brazos to a corner beside a window and faced him there hopefully yet apprehensively, with a pale face full of suppressed agitation that nonplussed Brazos.

  Manifestly Wess laboured under some stress that rendered liberation extremely difficult. He lit a cigarette with visibly unsteady fingers and he swallowed, a lump in his throat.

  “Hell, man!” exploded Brazos. “You didn’t use to be so damn squeamish — You’ve heahed about thet little Las Animas mess.”

  “Shore, Brazos,” agreed Wess, hurriedly. “Only it didn’t seem little to me. Fact is — it was big — big as’ Texas.”

  “Yeah? An’ what of it?”

  “Wal, for one thing Dodge City took it fine. The mayor hisself said to me, ‘Wess, thet’s the sheriff for Dodge when we need another!’”

  “Hell he did? Kind of a compliment, at thet.”

  “Mebbe you shouldn’t have rode away from Las Animas so quick.”

  “I reckon you think I should have got up a party and swelled around town,” said Brazos sarcastically.