A Colt for the Kid

by John Saunders

  He followed much the same route that he had covered earlier and saw two things that would ordinarily have sent him into a wild rage. The first was a pair-horse wagon with a stained canvas tilt, undoubtedly that of a homesteader. The second, a distant view of grazing sheep. He noted both items but for the moment they were crowded from his mind by what he had in hand. He kept telling himself, as he rode, that he had to handle this business alone; had to do it that way so that he could go back to his ranch and let it be known that what a whole bunch of men had failed to do for him he had done for himself. Nearing the house he had so blown up his self esteem that he was working up a scheme to finish off Carter the moment he had done with young Callum and the Stevens’ pair. However, he retained sense enough to rein in when he got within a long rifle shot of the place, to study his best approach to the house. There was low ground to the right of the house and it seemed to him that if he made his way to it he could probably come up to the barns unnoticed. He moved in that direction and came to a dry gulch, steep-sided and narrow. He let the mare slither down one bank and was beginning to climb the other side when a voice called out.

  ‘Donovan.’

  He had no need to look up to know that the caller was Sam Stevens, and waited only for the bark of a shot or the order to draw. It would be one or the other whether the girl was dead or not, and Donovan began to curse himself for his foolhardiness in riding into a trap. Then Stevens’ voice called again and he looked up to see Sam sitting his horse at the top of the bank.

  ‘You’re on my land, Donovan. I ought to kill you on sight but I guess murder ain’t in my line. Better get moving and stay that way.’

  Donovan mastered his surprise. It appeared that Callum had not taken the girl home, or at least, Stevens was not aware of it yet. He had the option of riding away and leaving Stevens to wonder what had brought him to the place or, if he could get to the side of Stevens, force a fight on him. He was on the point of deciding to leave when Sam whipped out his gun.

  ‘Sit right where you are, Donovan, and start talking. I’ve just noticed that’s Lucy’s mare you’re riding. Should have seen it before but she looks different from up here.’

  Donovan’s mouth went dry. Unless he could find some way of bluffing Sam, the chips were down for the last game.

  ‘I’m waiting for an answer, Donovan,’ Stevens said in a hard voice. ‘You’ve got ten seconds to say how you come to be on that mare.’

  ‘My own went lame,’ Donovan blurted out. ‘Almost in front of your house. I was calling on you to see if we couldn’t fix things between us—’

  ‘That sounds like a goddam lie, but go on.’

  ‘There was no one at your place,’ Donovan managed to put conviction into what he knew was true, ‘so I borrowed the mare and set out to look for you. I reckoned you mightn’t be far away.’

  ‘And you picked Lucy’s mare, the smallest horse of the bunch, or maybe you’re going to tell me it was already saddled for you.’

  Donovan seized on the chance. ‘Odd though it sounds, that’s the way it was. The mare was hitched to the veranda rail but I went through the house and all around and there was no sign of Lucy or young Callum.’

  Filled with a number of suspicions he could not put a name to, Sam snapped out:

  ‘I don’t believe a darn word of what you’ve been saying. Throw down your gun and ride back to the house and go carefully.’

  Glad of even this breathing space, Donovan let the gun drop to the ground and turned his mount about. He thought he could see the mistake he had made and there was a possibility he might still ride free if he did not delay. Lucy, he guessed, was not dead but badly wounded and Callum had taken her to town as being the nearest place. There had not yet been time for the news to reach Sam. Donovan began to calculate time as he guided his horse towards the house. Callum would have reached town by now, supposing that that was where he had gone. A message would undoubtedly be sent to Stevens and if it were done immediately the messenger should reach the Stevens’ place in the next half hour. Could he, by any means, trick Sam Stevens into letting him go before that time? It would be difficult in the face of the fact that his own mount was not at the house. Suppose he failed to persuade Stevens into letting him go free. What then? A slug fired in anger or would Sam take him into town and hand him over to Hennesey?

  Donovan felt his spine crawl at either prospect and as the house came into view he had the mad idea of jabbing spurs to the mare’s flanks and trying to make a run for it. He half turned his head and saw from the grim expression in Sam’s face that the cocked gun in his hand would blast immediately if any such move was made. A minute later Sam’s voice came, harsh and dry, as if his throat were constricted.

  ‘I don’t see your horse, Donovan.’

  ‘It could have wandered.’

  ‘You said it was lame. Spit the truth out before I blast your spine in halves.’

  Desperation prompted Donovan’s inventive powers. He pulled the mare to a standstill and twisted in the saddle to face Stevens.

  ‘All right, I’ll give it you straight. I was over on that patch of land near Chimney Rock. The piece young Callum reckons is his. We got to pulling guns then Lucy rode up. She got one of Callum’s slugs in the shoulder. I loaned him my horse to take her to town. Mine would carry double weight easier and town was nearer than coming here.’

  A trickle of sweat ran down Donovan’s cheek as he watched the doubts expressed on Sam’s face. Then Stevens snapped the question.

  ‘If all that is true, why all the lies in the first place?’

  ‘You had a gun pointed at me and you mightn’t have believed that I’d bring you the news. Things being the way they are between us.’

  ‘You’re damned right I wouldn’t have believed you and I don’t know that I do now.’

  Stevens moved his horse closer to Donovan and his left hand unhooked the lariat from his saddle. With a deft move he slipped the noose over the rancher’s head and settled it round his neck.

  ‘Now ride to town and make it fast. If you’ve any notions of breaking loose, forget ’em unless you want to be dragged by the neck.’

  Donovan turned and settled the reins in his grip. Sweat ran freely down his face now and the loosely fitted rope about his great bull neck seemed to be already constricting his breathing. He felt, as he urged the mare to a fast trot, that unless some miracle happened, the rope about his neck would be a hangman’s noose. Then he thought of Hennesey and his spirits lifted a little. Hennesey would not stand for lynch-law, even if Lucy had died as a result of the shot. The rancher pushed the mare to a faster pace. The sooner he got to town the better the chance that the girl still lived.

  The arrival in the town of the pair on horses that were blowing heavily brought men running after them and quite a few yelled out instructions for Stevens to get his end of the lariat over the branch of a tree. The stir made Judge Bohun heave himself from his chair on the porch of his house. He stared for a moment then hurried towards the Silver Dollar where Donovan and Stevens were climbing from their saddles. Bohun had not been inside the saloon since the abortive election for a marshal, both Belle and Luke Carter having told him plainly that his presence would not be tolerated. Now, however, he hurried up the steps of the veranda, as did a dozen other men, curious to learn how Donovan came to have a rope round his neck. Bohun’s hurry to get inside the saloon was not entirely prompted by curiosity. There was in his mind some glimmering of an idea of making profit for himself out of Donovan’s situation. Bohun had heard a garbled account of Lucy being carried into the saloon, had seen Johnnie Callum ride Donovan’s horse out of town and the quick following up of Hennesey and Carter, and already the sequence of events were adding up to something near the truth in Bohun’s mind. The main thing was, Donovan was in serious trouble and Donovan was a man well able to pay those who helped him.

  Belle was saying to Stevens when Bohun made his way towards them: ‘I think she’s going to be all right, Sam. There’s some f
ever but it’s not getting any worse.’

  Men crowded forward to hear her words, Bohun among them. She gave them a brief glance then went on. ‘Johnnie’s gone gunning for this skunk although it seems from what Johnnie said that Lucy getting the slug was an accident.’ Stevens viewed Donovan sourly. ‘You can get that rope off your neck though I reckon I’ll be hunting you if my sister dies.’

  Sam allowed the end of the lariat to drop and was sliding his gun back in its holster when a man pushed forward and gave a savage snatch to the end of the rope.

  ‘Friends of mine were shot down in the street on account of this guy. I say we ought to hang him while we got the chance.’

  Donovan grabbed at the tightening noose about his neck and using all his great strength hauled backwards until the other man was nearly off his feet. The rancher bellowed a curse and somehow that, more than the action of the man at the other end of the rope, brought anger to the rest of the men. A dozen hands gripped on the rope and jerked Donovan off his feet. Sam’s hand went towards his gun as the rancher was dragged across the sawdust covered floor to the batwings. More men were pushing into the place and cries of, ‘String the murdering skunk up,’ came from all sides. Sam was still hesitating to draw his gun, divided between a love of justice and a hatred for the man who had been the cause of so much trouble and bloodshed. Bohun was finding himself shouldered to one side, but his eyes were still on the struggling, mountain of a man on the floor, and his mind on the fact that Donovan alive might mean profit for himself.

  Bohun moved quickly, heaving his bulk of fat along at speed he had not known in years. He pushed behind the bar, passed the pop-eyed bartender and grabbed the shot-gun that hung beneath the mirror. With the double-barrelled weapon levelled at the shouting men he yelled out:

  ‘Hold it, all of you, or I’ll fill you full of shot.’

  ‘You damned, interfering old fool,’ Belle shouted as the crowd of men dropped the rope and backed away from the wide muzzles of the gun, ‘can’t you see he’ll ride you into the dust when it suits him?’

  Sam gripped her arm. ‘You wouldn’t want to see a man lynched, Belle.’

  She turned on him furiously. ‘The hell I wouldn’t! I’d like to see the louse swing higher than a kite.’

  She stamped away and climbed the stairs, her full skirts swirling angrily.

  Donovan had got to his feet and taken the rope from his neck. His limbs were trembling slightly and sweat poured down his near purple face. Bohun still held the shot-gun directed at the men, but now he had allowed the weight of the barrels to rest on the bar. He, too, was trembling, shocked by his own efforts. Stevens eyed the men grouped about the batwings. A few looked sheepish but rage burned in the eyes of at least half-a-dozen and it seemed to him that only a little spark was wanted to inflame them further. Donovan moved towards the bar, brushing sawdust from his clothes as he walked.

  ‘I’ll take that shot-gun, Bohun,’ he said thickly, ‘and thanks for the help.’

  Sam whipped out his Colt. ‘Keep your hands off that gun, Donovan.’

  Donovan turned and glared at him, then there was a shuffling movement as a few men slid out through the batwings.

  ‘I need a gun to get out of here alive,’ Donovan snarled.

  ‘You’re darned right you do,’ came from a straggly moustached man at the batwings. ‘You’ll need a gun and a hoss and we’ll see that there ain’t any hoss. Come on, fellers, we can wait outside for this guy. We’ve got plenty of time.’

  Sam turned the gun on the speaker. ‘That’s wild talk, Jeff Richards, and you know it. I’ve suffered as much as anyone from Donovan’s rough riding but I don’t want to see lynch-law in the town. Donovan will leave here on my horse and there’ll be no shooting in the back as he goes. We still have Hennesey as marshal. Remember that. Bohun, put that shot-gun back where it belongs. Donovan, make for the batwings and get on your way.’

  The men crowding the front of the batwings looked at one another uncertainly then drifted out of the place. Stevens followed closely and Donovan, with an effort at recovering his shattered dignity was close behind him. Bohun remained behind the bar and with hands that shook poured himself a large sized whiskey. Outside, Donovan mounted in silence, feeling the glare of angry eyes upon him. He had no sense of gratitude towards Stevens for making his escape possible and felt only a little for Bohun’s saving of his life. As he swung away from the place, his thought centred mainly on the run of ill luck he had had. He should, by now, have run Hennesey out of town, wiped out that young upstart, Callum, and have cleaned the Stevens’ place out. Yet here he was on a horse loaned to him by a man who had good cause to hate him thoroughly, his holster empty and at his back, in his own town, a gang of yapping men who had wanted to string him up. String him up! By God, he’d show them who was the big boss in these parts. And before another day was over too. A big raid on the town was what was needed. A real shooting up then a follow-on to the Stevens’ place. That would settle things. To hell with this notion of proving to himself that he was as good single handed as he had ever been. The years were piling on him and there was no sense in denying the fact. He bent over the horse’s neck and urged and spurred it to a punishing pace, took a bend in the trail at such a pace that he narrowly missed colliding with an aged wagon that creaked slowly along under the efforts of a pair of weary looking horses and passed on without giving heed to the curses hurled at him by the driver of the wagon. He had reached his house and was climbing from the saddle when it occurred to him that there had been something vaguely familiar about the face of the middle-aged man who had been driving the wagon. Still, he had only caught a blurred glimpse of the face, so it could have been that of one of the hundreds he had seen about the town. Nevertheless, as he went indoors and bawled for the cook boy to go and fetch Stone, he had some difficulty in dismissing the matter from his mind. He had lighted and a quarter smoked a cigar before it occurred to him that the boy had been gone a long time and again a sense of unease gripped him. He strode into the hall with the intention of seeing for himself what was keeping the boy, then he remembered his empty holster and returned to the living-room. He was in the act of loading a weapon for himself when he heard the boy in the hall. He holstered the gun and stepped into the hall. The cook’s face was covered in blood and it took Donovan a full minute to understand from the boy’s pidgin English that the bunkhouse was full of fighting men.

  The fighting had spread to the outside of the bunkhouse when he reached it, with eight men punching away at each other indiscriminately.

  ‘Let up, you scum,’ Donovan shouted, then had to jump to one side as a ninth man came spinning through the doorway and sprawled to the ground. He seized the man by the shoulder as he was getting up.

  ‘What’s it all about?’

  The puncher shook free from his grasp. ‘Darned if I know,’ and then plunged into the bunkhouse again.

  Donovan punched and shoved those still outside into something like order, then stepped into the bunkhouse. He guessed, as he entered the sweat stinking atmosphere of the place, that he had an ordinary bunkhouse row on his hands. Some quarrel over a poker game, most likely, and one that Stone should have quelled immediately. The long, narrow building seemed packed with struggling men and the gloom of the place resounded to grunts and curses as bodies thumped against the double tier of bunks.

  The rancher bawled orders to break up the riot, but his words went unheeded and it was doubtful if his presence was noticed until, with a bellow of rage, he seized on the man nearest the door and threw him bodily through the opening. After that, he picked on men with deliberation, flinging some out of doors and clubbing others with the barrel of his gun. He made out Stone, at the further end of the cabin, backed against the cook-stove and swinging an iron skillet with his left hand. He began to fight towards the foreman, then a gun exploded, its thunder roaring above the rest of the din and Stone’s head and shoulders were no longer visible to Donovan. The racket of sound died down as if a l
id had been clamped on it and a lane between men suddenly stretched in front of Donovan. A narrow lane at the end of which a puncher named Rourke stood with a smoking gun in his hand and Stone’s body at his feet. In the brooding silence that was now heavy on the place, Donovan and Rourke stared at one another. Both men had guns in their hands and each had defined the other’s intention. Rourke stood stiffly watchful, the gun hanging down by his side but his grip on the butt hard and tense. Donovan’s stance was easier, his feet a little apart, the hand that held the Colt was a little to the back of his massive thigh and his big thumb was working slowly to raise the hammer of the weapon without the loud click that would come from a rapid movement. The next few seconds, he know, would bring death to one of them and he intended that if possible his own gun would be just the fraction of a second in front of Rourke’s that would give him the advantage. The difference in time between a gun already cocked and that of a weapon whose hammer had to lift before it could fall.