The Man Without a Gun

by Lauran Paine

  But he cherished this freedom too much to react as he once would have; he did not turn, plant his legs wide, and roar a challenge. Instead, he continued to walk until each heel had a blister and his feet steamed like boiled beef, and his hatless head grew light inside, and his vision blurred. Walked until the miles flowed together in molten monotony and finally stopped when evening came, seeking the stage station in another town. He held up some limp bills and asked for a ticket.

  The clerk looked at him in long silence before he said: “Sure, mister, but where to? You got to have a destination.”

  And then the echoes: Don’t go back. Break clean. Start over fresh. Going back never did any good, anyway....

  “Some place where there’s shade,” he said to the curious face before him. “Shade and maybe a creek, open country, good grass. You know where there’s such a place?”

  The clerk’s lips quirked. He made a sad little joke. “Yeah. Heaven.” The words died and the clerk looked uncomfortable. “Hard to find anything like that in Arizona, mister.” He was thoughtful for a moment, then added: “You ever been to Herd? It’s three days’ ride from here. Off the main trails a few miles. It’s got trees and even a creek.”

  The big man pushed his money forward. “To Herd,” he said, and that was how he came to arrive in Herd, Arizona Territory, the blistering summer of 1872, when the sun hung, iron-red and low, beyond ranks of marching mountains and the range ran like a frozen ocean out into eternity, flat as the palm of his hand.

  He slept the first night in the tangled thickets along the creek bottom, then in the morning he went into the town, bought a new shirt, Levi’s, boots, and had a gigantic breakfast at a hash house. After that the lemon-yellow sun looked different. Even the dust and timelessness of the desert seemed different, seemed friendly.

  A little silver remained in his pocket but the paper money was gone. He went down by the community water trough and sat in the shade there. Riders passed; people who were not ex-felons nodded. He heard the quicksilver call of boys, the barking of dogs, things he had forgotten existed. Then, when the hour was right and the morning rush was over, the clean-up and wash-down period began. He crossed the roadway to the livery barn.

  The liveryman was small, aged beyond reckoning, with once-blue eyes now faded to a rheumy white, and a pair of incongruously bowed legs. He greeted the big man with a quick appraisal and a short nod.

  “I was wondering if you needed any help?”

  The old eyes made a slower appraisal; they took in the wide sweep of chest, the thickness of big shoulders, the red and peeling face. They did not miss the unmoving eyes or the haunted shadows in their depths.

  “Ever work in a livery barn before?”

  “No. But I’ve been a horseman all my life.”

  “Cowboy?”

  “Cowboy, horse-breaker, blacksmith, saddle....”

  “Come along with me.”

  The old man started down the wide alleyway flanked by tie and box stalls. When he halted with an arm up and pointing, he said: “Nice critter, ain’t she?”

  The big man leaned on the half door, gazing in. The mare was nice. She was big, seal-brown in color, docile-looking with a stud neck, and well fleshed-out.

  “She’s nice,” he agreed.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  The mare was pointing. Swift sought other faults and found none.

  “Sore feet,” he said.

  The liveryman pursed his lips. “Could a good smith fix that, young feller?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  There was a quiet smile in the big man’s eyes when he faced around. “With spreaders. Pine tar and leather pads. Change shoes every three, four weeks and add more spread. It’s contraction...not very serious.”

  “Hot shoes?”

  The quiet smile broadened. “I never saw spreaders made from cold shoes.”

  The old man’s shrewd look altered. He, too, smiled, his face breaking up into line and wrinkles like erosion scores. “What’s your name, big feller?”

  “Jack Swift.”

  “Mine’s Buck. Andrew Jackson Buck. When do you want to start?”

  “Can I bunk here?”

  “Sure. In the loft if you don’t smoke...in the harness room if you do. Tomorrow morning?”

  “Fine.”

  “You got enough to eat on till then?”

  “Yes.”

  Buck turned away. “Then I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Swift went back out into the sunshine. Across the road a wagon seat was bolted to a big sycamore tree. He went there, sat down, made a cigarette, and let a feeling of looseness, of belonging somewhere, run through him.

  The tobacco smoke hung lazily, blue-gray in the air. People passed. Time spun out. It was good to belong. A thought struck him and he smiled. He had forgotten to ask about his wages.

  A man as big as Jack Swift strolled by. He was much older, though, and grizzled. A lawman’s star hung from his shirt front. He nodded. Jack nodded back — with a solid weight lying in the pit of his stomach.

  II

  Those first days passed pleasantly. It was good to shoe horses, to harness them, and ache a little from hard labor. It was good to live in the easy world of horsemen again, to laze in the cool alleyway, to talk with old Buck when they waited out the dead hours. It was good to belong.

  And later, when kids began hanging around, he enjoyed their company, too. Listening to them he learned names, relationships, feuds of the town, learned more about Herd in a few days from the kids than he’d have learned about it in years from their parents.

  He discovered something else, too, something he’d never thought of before. That boys were sharply observant, knew a lot without trying to know any of it, were wise without seeming to be, and seethed with information without caring that they did.

  One blistering hot day, when the boys did not appear and Jack was filling in the hours with saddle and harness maintenance, a solitary lad came into the barn from the back alley. He walked oddly, with one foot crooked inward, with a hesitant step, a vague limp. Watching him come forward, the big man thought he had the bluest eyes he had ever seen.

  The lad stood motionlessly in the shadows, watching Jack dismantle a saddle, oil the undersides of leather with the saddle maker’s elixir — half neat’s-foot oil, half mutton tallow, heated and applied with a paintbrush — and he said nothing, but his blue eyes followed each brush stroke.

  Jack laid out the skirts, rosaderos, stirrup leathers and jockeys, flesh side up, and dipped the brush into the pan. “Pretty hot out,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t believe I’ve seen you around before.”

  “No,” the boy replied. “I just came over today. Heard the fellers were hanging around here now. My name’s Logan. They call me Rob.”

  Jack made a long stroke and watched the oil glisten briefly, then disappear. “Rob? Is your first name Robert?”

  “Yes.”

  “How come folks don’t call you Bob?”

  The thin face remained expressionless. Only the eyes moved. “My mother called me Rob, so everyone else does.”

  The boy, encouraged by Jack’s friendliness, shuffled closer. The big man looked down and around. There were drag marks in the dust and the small face held more years than youth should know. He saw something else there, too, a reflection of deep knowledge locked away from the rest of the world. He could recognize that expression because he also had it. He resumed his work.

  “How come you aren’t down at the creek fishing?”

  The boy looked up quickly. “Is that where the fellers went today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They didn’t tell me.”

  Jack’s gaze went back to the thin face. He said — “Oh.” — and the brush resumed its long, even stro
kes.

  Kids were cruel like Indians — senselessly cruel. What the hell’s a limp? Lots of folks had them. He could remember a man who had limped; he could remember him vividly.

  “Can I help, mister?”

  “Sure, glad to have you.”

  He wiped the brush handle off, slanted it in the pan, and looked into the blue eyes. “Tell you how we’ll work it, Rob. I’ll take them apart and you oil ’em. All right?”

  Robert Logan moved forward. His shoulders hunched from the effort and his right leg dragged in the dust. Jack turned quickly away, reaching for another saddle. He spoke while his back was turned, grabbing the first words that came along.

  “Don’t you like to fish, Rob?”

  “Well...yes.”

  “You don’t sound like you do.”

  “I do, only I don’t know the good fishing holes.” Rob took up the brush and made a long sweep with it over a curling saddle skirt.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s rocky along the creek. I got to be careful in loose rock.”

  Jack worked over the next saddle, worked loose the strings that were double-spliced in front of leather conchos. He heard meaning without trying to and saw painful hurt without looking for it. He knew there were beads of sweat on the thin face, felt motion where thin arms worked and tough young tendons moved.

  “You live in town, Rob?”

  “The last house north, just on the outskirts. I live with my grandfather. My dad used to drive the Bartlesville stage...from here to there. He got killed in a flash flood in Muerto Cañon when I was real little.”

  “Oh.”

  “And my mother died, too. She got sick last fall....”

  Jack reached for the initiative in this conversation. He spread words around and forged them into loose meaning, drawing upon things he was familiar with while he worked on the saddle, tugged off skirts, stirrup leathers, peeled back the seating leather and made it fast with strings behind the cantle.

  Rob Logan asked questions, about saddles, about horses, about places and people, and finally stopped oiling to gaze solemnly at the big man when he answered. Finally he said: “You sure know a lot, mister.”

  Jack knew then that he had overshot his mark. Instead of taking the boy’s mind off unpleasantness he’d aroused his curiosity. “No,” he said. “I don’t know very much, Rob.”

  “Saddles, horses, cowboying.” The blue eyes had lost their dullness. “Mister, did you ever know any outlaws?”

  The big hands fumbled. “Well, now, Rob, nobody wants to know outlaws.”

  “Well. You’ve known lawmen, haven’t you?”

  “I’ve known a few lawmen, yes.”

  “Then you must’ve known outlaws, too. Maybe not known them exactly, but seen them anyway.”

  Seen outlaws, known outlaws? Like Jack Britton — who also had a limp — and the Calabasas Kid — Red Ewart, Tex Connelly, and Jack Swift of old Tularosa. Gunfighters, horse thieves, hard drinkers, night riders....

  “Haven’t you, mister?”

  “Just call me Jack.”

  “Haven’t you, Jack?”

  “I reckon I’ve seen my share of outlaws,” the big man said, looking pointedly at the motionless brush. “You’ve got to get that oil on before it cools, Rob. If it gets too thick, we’ll have to heat it again.”

  The thin arm dipped, stroked up and down, and a lock of russet hair tumbled over the boy’s thin forehead.

  “Jack?”

  “Huh?”

  “Did you ever know an outlaw that limped?”

  Swift’s hands grew still among the leathers. “Why?”

  “I limp. Sometimes I hate it bad enough to be an outlaw.”

  The big man raised up and turned very slowly. There was something you said to a kid at a time like this — what was it? What the warden had said at Yuma? No, that came afterward — three years afterward.

  He began to make a cigarette. Folded it carefully, firmed it up, and lit it. Watching the even, gentle brush strokes, he said: “That’s no way to talk, Rob.” It wasn’t what he wanted to say and it sounded totally inadequate, but it was all he could think of just then.

  The blue eyes jumped to his face. “Not for you. You’re big and you don’t limp. I can’t even fight good. Bet you can, can’t you?”

  “What’ll fighting get you, Rob?”

  But the blue eyes were glowingly measuring the great depth of chest, the powerful width of shoulders, and the mightily massive arms of the big man.

  “That’s why you don’t wear a gun, isn’t it? Because you don’t need one. You lick ’em with your hands.”

  “That oil’s....”

  “I wish I could do that someday. Fight real good.”

  “You’re still a kid.”

  “No one’d call me limpy then.”

  Jack smoked and watched the thin face. Somehow this conversation had gotten entirely away from him.

  “I’d like to be a marshal, too, only who’d hire a limpy marshal?”

  Jack’s gaze dropped to the warped leg. “How’d it happen, Rob?”

  “Right after my paw was killed, when I was little, I ran after a puppy when the freighters were going through.”

  “Wheels went over your leg?”

  “Yes.”

  Jack’s glance returned to the pan. “You’d better hurry or we’ll have to heat that stuff again.”

  They worked through the rich saffron shadows of afternoon and abruptly Rob said: “Did you ever feel like that...like you’d like to learn to use a gun real good so’s folks’d be scairt of you?”

  Jack was arranging the pieces to be oiled. “Listen,” he said shortly, “I don’t reckon there was ever a man who didn’t have troubles, but most men carry them without turning mean about them. Now take you. Wouldn’t it have been a heap worse if you’d gotten both legs busted...or maybe your backbone crushed? With a busted backbone you don’t get around at all. See what I mean?”

  The blue eyes looked up with a hard wisdom. “That’s what my grandpa says. But I’m still a limpy and nobody likes to play with me.”

  Blue eyes looked into gray eyes, words dwindled, and Rob went back to work. For a long time he was silent, then he said: “Maybe I could learn to be a saddle maker. I’d rather be a bronco buster, but that hurts too much, doesn’t it? I’d better be a saddle maker.”

  Jack took up another saddle without answering and slammed it down on the workbench. He went to work on it with angry fingers. Fear’s in this kid, fear of pain because he’s had his share of it. When you talked to a kid like this, you had to be careful.

  “Saddle makers make good money,” he said. “Maybe someday you’d own your own shop. Like doctors, Rob, there’s never enough good saddle makers.”

  The boy turned and watched Jack’s hands as they disassembled the saddle with unhesitating confidence. “You know saddles real well, don’t you?”

  “I’ve been around them in one way or another all my life, Rob.”

  “Teach me what you know about them...and horse breaking...and cowboying.” Rob sucked in a big breath and said with fierce intensity: “And teach me how to fight, Jack.”

  “If you learn all there is to know about saddles, it’ll take most of your time, Rob. All fighting’ll do is land you in a heap of trouble.”

  The afternoon waned, its silence broken now and then by words between the man and the boy. Pieces of leather hung from a wire over a tub for excess oil to drip into. Then, when the shadows came, Rob Logan left. The big man watched him depart, dragging his crooked leg.

  “Jack?” Buck came bowlegging his way down the evening.

  “Yes.”

  “Wasn’t that the Logan kid back here with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” Buck said, small eyes lingering on the rows of hanging le
ather darkly rich with oil, “a feller’s got to watch out for kids around a barn.”

  “I watch them, Buck.”

  “I know you do. But a man’s got to watch like a hawk. They can get hurt dozens of ways a grown man’d never think of getting it.” Buck dug out a big silver watch and squinted at it. “I’m going home. Light the coach lamps out front, will you? See you tomorrow.”

  “Good night,” Jack said.

  Evening descended. There was feeding to do, cleaning up, some patrolling among the squealing animals in the outside corral. A little livery business, too, among young bucks who wanted to rent top buggies with lap robes, but finally there was stillness, a leavening of the long, dying day, a period of hush and twilight and peacefulness.

  That was when memories came crowding up.

  Jack stood out back and smoked. Night shadows hid the cast-off horseshoes, the heat-shriveled hoof parings, and overhead the moon, disheveled and slovenly, rode serenely among her spoiled offspring — stars — lonely and a million miles away.

  He thought of Rob Logan’s deformity. The thin face haunted him, its vivid intensity forcing a realization that hurt made of people what otherwise they would not be. A withered arm, an ugly face, a dragging leg, a sense of apartness, a fear that life was casting them upon a stage for others to pity and to scorn.

  For the first time in his life he understood with easy clarity why a man named Britton, who also limped, was more savage than an Indian when he was drunk. Jack Britton, one of the fastest and deadliest gunmen in the whole Southwest. Also known as the Sundance Kid.

  He turned finally, his cigarette burned out, and strolled up through the barn past feeding horses, and lit the carriage lamps that hung high on either side of the barn’s roadside entrance. Then he went down to the harness room where his cot was.

  Being alone like this at the end of the day was an old familiar ache. He felt the sadness, the loneliness more than ever. It spread upward and outward, bringing him down to a bitter sense of personal futility. Then daylight came again and life was once again bearable.

  The hot, golden days flowed outward toward an early fall with the fragrance of coming rain in it. And Jack’s limping, wistful shadow was never far off. There were questions and looks and longings in Rob’s blue eyes. He and the big man became close. Then an old gelding named Johnny Reb developed distemper, something usually associated with much younger animals. Buck was away, something to do with an Army cartage contract.