“Matt! Sabre?”
It was Sikes, his eyes flared wide. Sabre hesitated, glanced swiftly around, then dropped to his knees in the silent street.
“What is it, Tony? Anything I can do for you?”
“Behind—behind—the desk—you—you—” His faltering voice faded; then strength seemed to flood back, and he looked up. “Good man! Too—too fast!”
And then he was dead, gone just like that, and Matt Sabre was striding into the Yellowjacket.
The upstairs room was empty; the stairs were empty; there was no one in sight. Only Hobbs stood behind the bar when he came down. Hobbs, his face set and pale.
Sabre looked at him, eyes steady and cold. “Who came down those stairs?”
Hobbs licked his lips. He choked, then whispered hoarsely. “Nobody—but there’s—there’s a back stairs.”
Sabre wheeled and walked back in quick strides, thumbing shells into his gun. The office door was open, and Prince McCarran looked up as he framed himself in the door.
He was writing, and the desk was rumpled with papers, the desk of a busy man. Nearby was a bottle and a full glass.
McCarran lay down his pen. “So? You beat him? I thought you might.”
“Did you?” Sabre’s gaze was cold. If this man had been running, as he must have run, he gave no evidence of it now. “You should hire them faster, Prince.”
“Well”—McCarran shrugged—“he was fast enough until now. But this wasn’t my job, anyway. He was workin’ for Reed.”
Sabre took a step inside the door, away from the wall, keeping his hands free. His eyes were on those of Prince McCarran, and Prince watched him, alert, interested.
“That won’t ride with me,” Matt said. “Reed’s a stooge, a perfect stooge. He’ll be lucky if he comes back alive from this trip. A lot of that posse you sent out won’t come back, either.”
McCarran’s eyelids tightened at the mention of the posse. “Forget it.” He waved his hand. “Sit down and have a drink. After all, we’re not fools, Sabre. We’re grown men, and we can talk. I never liked killing, anyway.”
“Unless you do it or have it done.” Sabre’s hands remained where they were. “What’s the matter, Prince? Yellow? Afraid to do your own killin’?”
McCarran’s face was still, and his eyes were wide now. “You shouldn’t have said that. You shouldn’t have called me yellow.”
“Then get on your feet. I hate to shoot a sittin’ man.”
“Have a drink and let’s talk.”
“Sure.” Sabre was elaborately casual. “You have one, too.” He reached his hand for the glass that had already been poured, but McCarran’s eyes were steady. Sabre switched his hand and grasped the other glass, and then, like a striking snake, Prince McCarran grasped his right hand and jerked him forward, off balance.
At the same time, McCarran’s left flashed back to the holster high on his left side, butt forward, and the gun jerked up and free. Matt Sabre, instead of trying to jerk his right hand free, let his weight go forward, following and hurling himself against McCarran. The chair went over with a crash, and Prince tried to straighten, but Matt was riding him back. He crashed into the wall, and Sabre broke free.
Prince swung his gun up, and Sabre’s left palm slapped down, knocking the gun aside and gripping the hand across the thumb. His right hand came up under the gun barrel, twisting it back over and out of McCarran’s hands. Then he shoved him back and dropped the gun, slapping him across the mouth with his open palm.
It was a free swing, and it cracked like a pistol shot. McCarran’s face went white from the blow, and he rushed, swinging, but Sabre brought up his knee in the charging man’s groin. Then he smashed him in the face with his elbow, pushing him over and back. McCarran dove past him, blood streaming from his crushed nose, and grabbed wildly at the papers. His hand came up with a bulldog .41.
Matt saw the hand shoot for the papers, and even as the .41 appeared, his own gun was lifting. He fired first, three times, at a range of four feet.
Prince McCarran stiffened, lifted to his tiptoes, then plunged over on his face and lay still among the litter of papers and broken glass.
Sabre swayed drunkenly. He recalled what Sikes had said about the desk. He caught the edge and jerked it aside, swinging the desk away from the wall. Behind it was a small panel with a knob. It was locked, but a bullet smashed the lock. He jerked it open. A thick wad of bills, a small sack of gold coins, a sheaf of papers.
A glance sufficed. These were the papers Simpson had mentioned. The thick parchment of the original grant, the information on the conflicting Sonoma grant, and then…He glanced swiftly through them, then, at a pound of horses’ hoofs, he stuffed them inside his shirt. He stopped, stared. His shirt was soaked with blood.
Fumbling, he got the papers into his pocket, then stared down at himself. Sikes had hit him. Funny, he had never felt it. Only a shock, a numbness. Now Reed was coming back.
Catching up a sawed-off express shotgun, he started for the door, weaving like a drunken man. He never even got to the door.
THE SOUND OF galloping horses was all he could hear—galloping horses, and then a faint smell of something that reminded him of a time he had been wounded in North Africa. His eyes flickered open, and the first thing he saw was a room’s wall with the picture of a man with muttonchop whiskers and spectacles.
He turned his head and saw Jenny Curtin watching him. “So? You’ve decided to wake up. You’re getting lazy, Matt. Mr. Sabre. On the ranch you always were the first one up.”
He stared at her. She had never looked half so charming, and that was bad. It was bad because it was time to be out of here and on a horse.
“How long have I been here?”
“Only about a day and a half. You lost a lot of blood.”
“What happened at the ranch? Did Keys get there in time?”
“Yes, and I stayed. The others left right away.”
“You stayed?”
“The others,” she said quietly, “went down the road about two miles. There was Camp Gordon, Tom Judson, Pepito, and Keys. And Rado, of course. They went down the road while I stood out in the ranch yard and let them see me. The boys ambushed them.”
“Was it much of a fight?”
“None at all. The surprise was so great that they broke and ran. Only three weren’t able, and four were badly wounded.”
“You found the papers? Including the one about McCarran sending the five thousand in marked bills to El Paso?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “We found that. He planned on having Billy arrested and charged with theft. He planned that, and then if he got killed, so much the better. It was only you he didn’t count on.”
“No.” Matt Sabre stared at his hands, strangely white now. “He didn’t count on me.”
So it was all over now. She had her ranch, she was a free woman, and people would leave her alone. There was only one thing left. He had to tell her. To tell her that he was the one who had killed her husband.
He turned his head on the pillow. “One thing more,” he began. “I—”
“Not now. You need rest.”
“Wait. I have to tell you this. It’s about—about Billy.”
“You mean that you—you were the one who—?”
“Yes, I—” He hesitated, reluctant at last to say it.
“I know. I know you did, Matt. I’ve known from the beginning, even without all the things you said.”
“I talked when I was delirious?”
“A little. But I knew, Matt. Call it intuition, anything you like, but I knew. You see, you told me how his eyes were when he was drawing his gun. Who could have known that but the man who shot him?”
“I see.” His face was white. “Then I’d better rest. I’ve got some traveling to do.”
She was standing beside him. “Traveling? Do you have to go on, Matt? From all you said last night, I thought—I thought”—her face flushed—“maybe you—didn’t want to travel any mor
e. Stay with us, Matt, if you want to. We would like to have you, and Billy’s been asking for you. He wants to know where his spurs are.”
After a while, he admitted carefully, “Well, I guess I should stay and see that he gets them. A fellow should always make good on his promises to kids, I reckon.”
“You’ll stay then? You won’t leave?”
Matt stared up at her. “I reckon,” he said quietly, “I’ll never leave unless you send me away.”
She smiled and touched his hair. “Then you’ll be here a long time, Mathurin Sabre—a very long time.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
STEIN’S PASS
ONE NIGHT WHEN I was not quite seventeen years old I was put off a freight train at Stein’s Pass, New Mexico, high in the mountains near the Arizona/New Mexico border. I’d been at sea on a merchant ship and needed to save what money I had, so I caught a freight to the west. It was a miserably cold night, and when day broke and I saw some stirring of life, I walked from the depot over to the only lunch counter for coffee.
At the counter I started talking to an old cowboy. Stein’s Pass, he said, was where it all happened: holdups, Indian fights, and nearby, in Doubtful Canyon, one of the most desperate desert battles, a fight between the Apaches and the passengers of a stagecoach, all of them salty veterans of many a battle. When all were killed, Cochise is reported to have said they were the bravest men he ever knew.
A few years ago, after watching some work being done on a movie of mine near Tuscon, I drove over to the area I was to write about in SHALAKO. I stopped briefly in Stein’s Pass. A few buildings remained with empty windows staring blankly across the desert mountains, and a wild burro was wandering around the street. It was a ghost town and properly named. There could be many ghosts around Stein’s Pass. The old cowboy told the truth.
Sleeping echoes of many a battle still wait in the shadow of the canyon.
ONE LAST GUN NOTCH
MORGAN CLYDE STUDIED his face in the mirror. It was an even-featured, pleasant face. Neither the nose nor jaw was too blunt or too long. Now, after his morning shave, his jaw was still faintly blue through the deep tan, and the bronze curls above his face made him look several years younger than his thirty-five.
Carefully, he knotted the black string tie on the soft gray shirt and then slipped on his coat. When he donned the black, flat-crowned hat, he was ready. His appearance was perfect, with just a shade of studied carelessness. For ten years now, Morgan Clyde’s morning shave and dressing had been a ritual from which he never deviated.
He slid the two guns from their holsters and checked them carefully. First the right, then the left. On the butt of the right-hand gun there were nine filed notches. On the left, three. He glanced at them thoughtfully, remembering.
That first notch had been for Red Bridges. That was the year they had run his cattle off. Bridges had come out to the claim when Clyde was away, cut his fence down, run his cattle off, and shot his wife down in cold blood.
Thoughtfully, Morgan Clyde looked back into the mirror. He had changed. In his mind’s eye he could see that tall, loose-limbed young man with the bronze hair and boyish face. He had been quiet, peace loving, content with his wife, his homestead, and his few cattle. He had a gift for gun handling, but never thought of it. That is, not until that visit by Bridges.
Returning home with a haunch of antelope across his saddle, he had found his wife and the smoking ruins of his home. He did not have to be told. Bridges had warned him to move, or else. Within him something had burst, and for an instant his eyes were blind with blood. When the moment had passed, he had changed.
He had known, then, what to do. He should have gone to the governor with his story, or to the U.S. Marshal. And he could have gone. But there was something red and ugly inside him that had not been there before. He had swung aboard a little paint pony and headed for Peavey’s Mill.
The town’s one street had been quiet, dusty. The townspeople knew what had happened, because it had been happening to all homesteaders. Never for a moment did they expect any reaction. Red Bridges was too well known. He had killed too many times.
Then Morgan Clyde rode down the street on his paint pony, saw Bridges, and slid to the ground. Somebody yelled, and Bridges turned. He looked at Morgan Clyde’s young, awkward length and laughed. But his hand dropped swiftly for his gun.
But something happened. Morgan Clyde’s gun swung up first, spouting fire, and his two shots centered over Bridges’s heart. The big man’s fingers loosened, and the gun slid into the dust. Little whorls rose slowly from where it landed. Then, his face puzzled, his left hand fumbling at his breast, Red Bridges wilted.
He could have stopped there. Now, Morgan Clyde knew that. He could have stopped there, and should have stopped. He could have ridden from town and been left alone. But he knew Bridges was a tool, and the man who used the tool was Erik Pendleton, in the bank. Bridges had been a gunman; Pendleton was not.
The banker looked up from his desk and saw death. It was no mistake. Clyde had walked up the steps, around the teller’s cage, and opened the door of Pendleton’s office.
The banker opened his mouth to talk, and Morgan Clyde shot him. He had deserved it.
The posse lost him west of the Brazos, and he rode on west into a cattle war. He was wanted then and no longer cared. The banker hadn’t rated a notch, but the three men he killed in the streets of Fort Sumner he counted, and the man he shot west of Gallup.
There had been trouble in St. George, and then in Virginia City. After that, he had a reputation.
Morgan Clyde turned and stared at the huge old grandfather’s clock. It remained his only permanent possession. It had come over from Scotland years ago, and his family had carried it westward when they went to Ohio, and later to Illinois, and then to Texas. He had intended sending for it when the homestead was going right, and everything was settled. To Diana and himself it had been a symbol of home, of stability.
What could have started him remembering all that? The past, he had decided long ago, was best forgotten.
HE RODE THE big black down the street toward Sherman’s office. He knew what was coming. He had been taking money for a long time from men of Sherman’s stripe. Men who needed what force could give them but had nothing of force in themselves.
Sherman had several gunmen on his payroll. He kept them hating one another and grew fat on their hatred. Tom Cool was there, and the Earle brothers. Tough and vicious, all of them.
Perhaps it was this case this morning that had started him thinking. Well, that damned fool nester should have known better than to settle on that Red Basin land. It was Sherman’s best grazing land, even if he didn’t own it. But a kid like that couldn’t buck Sherman. The man was a fool to think he could.
The thought of that other young nester came into his mind. He dismissed it with an impatient jerk of his head.
The Earle brothers, Vic and Will, were sitting in the bar as he passed through. The two big men looked up, hate in their eyes.
Sherman was sitting behind the desk in his office and he looked up, smiling, when Morgan Clyde came in. “Sit down, Morg,” he said cheerfully. He leaned back in his chair and put his fingertips together. “Well, this is it. When we get this Hallam taken care of, the rest of the nesters will see we mean business. We can have that range clean by spring, an’ that means I’ll be running the biggest herd west of the Staked Plains.”
Tom Cool was sitting in a chair tilted against the wall. He had a thin, hatchet face and narrow eyes. He was rolling a smoke now, and he glanced up as his tongue touched the edge of the yellow paper.
“You got the stomach for it, Morg?” he asked dryly. “Or would you rather I handle this one? I hear you was a nester once yourself.”
Morgan Clyde glanced around casually, one brow lifting. “You handle my work?” He looked his contempt. “Cool, you might handle this job. It’s just a cold-blooded killing, and more in your line. I’m used to men with guns in their hands.”
Cool’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Yeah?” his voice was a hoarse whisper. “I can fill mine fast enough, Clyde, any time you want to unlimber.”
“I don’t shoot sitting pigeons,” Morgan said quietly.
“Why, you—” Tom Cool’s eyes flared with hatred, and his hand dropped away from the cigarette in a streak for his gun.
Morgan Clyde filled his hand without more than a hint of movement. Before a shot could crash, Sherman’s voice cut through the hot tensity of the moment with an edge that turned both their heads toward the leader. There was a gun in his hand.
Queerly, Morgan was shocked. He had never thought of Sherman as a fast man with a gun, and he knew that Cool felt the same. Sherman a gunman! It put a new complexion on a lot of things. Clyde glanced at Tom Cool and saw the man’s hand coming away from his gun. There had been an instant when both of them could have died. If not by their own guns, by Sherman’s. Neither had been watching him.
“You boys better settle down,” Sherman said, leaning back in his swivel chair. “Any shooting that’s done in my outfit will be done by me.”
He looked up at Clyde, and there was something very much like triumph in his eyes. “You’re getting slow, Morg,” Sherman said. “I could have killed you before you got your gun out.”
“Maybe.”
Sherman shrugged. “You go see this Hallam, Clyde. I want him killed, see? An’ the house burned. What happens to his wife is no business of yours. I got other plans.” He grinned, revealing broken teeth. “Yeah, I got other plans for her.”
Clyde spun on his heel and walked outside. He was just about to swing into the saddle when Tom Cool drifted up. Cool spoke low and out the corner of his mouth. “Did you see that, Morg? Did you see the way he got that gun into action? That gent’s poison. Why’s he been keepin’ that from us? Somethin’ around here smells to high heaven.”
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