Six-Gun Crossroad

by Lauran Paine

Perc got a Winchester carbine from his office wall rack and returned to the barn with it. Ab had his horse saddled and bridled. He stood aside, watching Perc buckle the carbine boot into place and he sucked his teeth until Perc turned the horse, mounted, and evened up his reins. Then Ab said: “Deputy, what you up to?”

  Perc smiled enigmatically and told the simple truth. “I don’t know, Ab. See you later.”

  He rode out of town with a brassy orange disc climbing steadily upward from off in the diamond-clear east. Where the stage road made a little dog-leg jag, he left it, heading west. He rode back and forth, seeking a particular set of tracks, but because many horsemen had come and gone in this area there was nothing to set a course by. He therefore set his course straight for the Snowshoe headquarters ranch.

  By the time he came within sight of those distant buildings, the sun was high and hot, the land lay cowed, and the few little straggles of cattle he passed were bunched up under whatever shade they could find.

  As he passed down into the Snowshoe yard, someone bawled out a blistering string of profanity over behind the barn and dust spurted around there. He angled his mount over for a look. Three men were branding calves in a big circular corral, one at a fire over near the big gate, and the others on horseback with their ropes down and ready. The man at the fire had just inadvertently grabbed up a hot iron without his gloves and had been burned. He was no longer cursing when Perc came around the barn, but he had his injured hand plunged wrist deep into a nearby bucket of water.

  There was a fourth man there, but he was on the outside of the corral, casually looking in. At the sound of an approaching rider he turned and looked. It was Snowshoe’s range boss, Johnny West. The minute he recognized Perc he stepped back from the corral and waited.

  Perc dismounted and strolled on over. One of the horsemen made a little backhand loop. Perc stopped to watch. The rope settled neatly around the head of a two-hundred-pound bull calf full of bawl and battle. The second the dallies were taken, the rope snapped taut, the calf exploded with an angry and terrified bellow. As his hind legs left the ground, a second rope snaked out and under, caught both legs, and sang taut. The calf fought on even after he was upended and being dragged to the fire where the grimacing rider with the burned hand picked up a wicked-bladed knife and stepped forward.

  “Good roping,” Perc said casually to Johnny West. “Takes me back a few years.”

  West smiled in recollection. He and Perc had done the team roping in those days, and like all men who worked together long enough, they got so that each complemented the other. “Yeah. Sometimes I wish those years were back again, Perc. Being boss takes a lot of the fun out of it.”

  “I reckon so,” murmured Perc, and turned. “Johnny, how many strangers have you seen on Snowshoe range lately?”

  “Strangers? None, Perc. At least, if the boys have seen any, they haven’t said anything about it. Why, you got some kind of trouble?”

  “Some kind, yeah, but I don’t know exactly what kind, Johnny. There are four hardcases on the range somewhere. Six really, but I’m only interested in four of them.”

  West made a wry face, saying: “That doesn’t make much sense, Perc. How about the other two?”

  “John Reed and Sam Logan. I’m not too interested in them right now, except that I figure wherever the others are, Reed and Logan might also be.”

  West’s expression hardened a little. “I don’t know anything about the first four, Perc, but if I was you, I’d sure look out for those last two. Reed’s a …”

  “Johnny,” broke in Perc in a dry tone, “Reed’s served his time and been set free. Regardless of what old Boots thinks, that’s the fact of the matter.”

  “Like I said, Perc, an old dog is still an old dog.”

  “I hope you’re never put in a bad spot,” retorted Perc, annoyed a little. “It’s pleasanter to be a judge than to be the judged. As for Sam Logan … I thought I’d ride out and tell you another fact, Johnny, just in case you or Boots or any of your men get mean ideas. Logan’s a retired sheriff from down in Arizona.”

  West got the same look of astonishment on his face Ab Fuller had also gotten. “A lawman? You mean that tough little cuss with his pearl-handled .45 isn’t a gunfighter?”

  “That’s what I mean, Johnny. Pass the word around. Not that I figure any of your buckaroos are foolish enough to want to get planted like Banning and Johnson, but just so’s, if they see either Reed or Logan on the range, they’ll let you know right away. And you let me know.”

  West looked back over where the two ropers were laughing because that hefty bull calf—no longer a bull but still full of fight—had just upset the man working the marking fire, and the upset man was turning the air blue with his anger and profanity.

  When West looked back, he said: “You plumb sure you’re right about all this, Perc?”

  “Plumb sure, Johnny.”

  “All right. I’ll pass the word, and if anything comes of it, I’ll either ride into town and let you know, or send someone in. Anything else?”

  “No,” replied Perc as he mounted his horse, turned, and rode northward out of the Snowshoe yard. He turned once, a hundred yards out, and gazed back. Johnny was still standing where Perc had left him, gazing northward.

  The heat got fierce after high noon. June, July, and August were hot months. It usually didn’t begin to cool off in uplands Utah until about the middle of September. The heat lay in gelatin-like waves that eddied and broke as a man passed through them. Even the shade was rarely pleasant and the water holes were tepid and rimmed around by a green scum. The water wouldn’t kill a man, but it sure didn’t improve him any. Perc got thirsty long before he got across the Snowshoe range up toward the more broken, jagged northward country where the big Rainbow outfit grazed. He knew the country well and headed straight for a spring near a clump of rough-barked, old, shaggy junipers. When he finally got there, though, he held his horse back from the water and sat perfectly still atop his horse.

  A dead man lay half in, half out, of the water hole. Except for the nearby junipers, the land was more or less open in all directions. He looked for a long time, making a careful study of every rock and tree and broken stretch of land. Nothing moved. There was no loose horse standing around and in the overhead brassy sky no buzzards circled.

  He finally dismounted, walked in a little closer, and kneeled, holding his impatient horse back from the water while he studied the ground.

  Two horsemen had ridden to this spot. They had dismounted, gone ahead to drink, and while one stood back, evidently holding their animals, one had flopped belly down to drink. Perc shook his head; every now and then an outlaw got careless like that. Every once in a while someone misplaced his trust. There was nothing to tell him what had happened next, but there didn’t have to be. That dead man with his face in the water had a little scorched hole through his shirt right between his shoulder blades, plumb center. The other one, the man holding the horses, had simply drawn his .45, aimed, and fired. As simple as that. He had then mounted up and ridden off, leading the dead man’s animal.

  Perc stood up, went ahead and dragged the body clear, let his horse move around and drop its head to gulp water, while he rolled the corpse over. It was the same man who’d laughed in his face when he’d ordered him to march into the jailhouse. The same cowboy whose likeness he had gone through his pile of Wanted posters last night, looking for, and whose likeness he’d never found.

  He rummaged the man’s pocket but someone had beaten him to everything except some small change and an old knife with a badly nicked blade. There was no wallet, no letters, nothing at all to identify the dead man. He stood up. He’d been thirsty until now. He turned slowly to study the position of the sun, the flowing land, those tracks heading off southeasterly, and decided it would be useless to try and trail the other one so late in the day.

  He got the corpse across
his saddle, lashed it down, mounted behind the cantle, and turned back for town. The horse plodded and the sun beat down mercilessly. He tried to make sense out of the murder and could only come up with one plausible explanation. The killer, knowing Perc had seen his dead partner and would probably remember him, had perhaps decided that the best way to resolve any trouble that might accrue from their meeting was to kill his partner.

  It was pretty weak, he told himself, on the ride back toward Ballester, but he had nothing else to go on—yet. He also thought Logan and Reed might know this man. Even if they didn’t, he was grimly certain they would know something, why this man and his friend were in the country, who those other two were—the wounded one and his companion. Surely something.

  He didn’t come into sight of town until after sunset. On a horse carrying double under sizzling July heat no sensible man ever tried to set any speed records. It was just as well, he thought, riding into Ballester with a corpse was certain to stand the town on its ear.

  He didn’t go down the main road but came into the rear alleyway from the west, by-passed Ab’s barn, and got all the way to his jailhouse without encountering anyone. It was suppertime. Ballester was quiet and serene. He unloaded his grisly burden and locked it inside a little shed out back, led his horse up to the livery barn, and was relieved when the hostler who came out to get his animal informed him Ab had gone over to the café for supper.

  He next went to Doc Farraday’s place, got the medical man to accompany him back to the shed out back, brought a lantern from the jailhouse, and showed Farraday the dead man. The doctor kneeled and made a cursory examination, stood up and said: “Right through the heart from the back, Deputy. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  Perc looked wry. “I’m not blind, Doc. I saw where the slug hit him. What I want to know is why … and you can’t answer that. Otherwise, I want to make you a present of him.”

  Farraday looked down and said: “I’m sure of one thing. He’s not either of the men who came to my place last night, Perc.”

  “How can you be sure he’s not the one who was on the horse?”

  “Easy. He’s not as tall as that one was.”

  They went back out into the warm night. Perc re-locked the shed and straightened up to glance along the alleyway up where orange lamplight shone through the upper square of glass in John Reed’s wagon’s rear door.

  Farraday said: “Have you any idea who did it, Perc?”

  “I think so, Doc. There were two of them. I met them last night. I don’t know who they were and I didn’t get a good look at the other one.” Perc turned, blew out his lantern, and said: “How about the feller who was hurt, will he come back to have his bandage changed?”

  Farraday considered this a moment, then shook his head. “No. He might need more care but he won’t be back. Anyone who’d ride as far as he’d ridden before seeing a doctor wouldn’t be likely to return for more care when his wound was beginning to heal. I’ll tell you, Perc, you’ve got a big problem. There’s something going on around here. I can’t even guess what it might be, but I can tell you this much, that man in there was cut from the same bolt of dirty cloth as the man was with the bullet hole in his arm. Outlaws, pure and simple. Well, I’ve got to go finish supper. I’ll send someone around for this one in the morning. Good night.”

  “Good night, Doc, and thanks.”

  Farraday’s stooped figure shuffled away up the alley. Perc stood, holding his unlit lantern gazing straight up where John Reed’s wagon stood. He turned finally, put aside the lantern, and struck out straight up through the gloom for the wagon.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was his third visit to the wagon but persistence paid off. When he knocked, John Reed opened the door and looked down at him. Reed’s face was sunburned and freshly scrubbed, but the eyes were tired and a lot of their piercing quality was lacking as he gravely considered Perc Whittaker.

  “You’re a hard man to keep track of,” said Perc. “Step down here, Mister Reed, I want to show you something.”

  Reed came out, closed the door, and didn’t open his mouth as Perc turned and started walking down the dark alleyway. There was no spring in his step, though, and his thickly powerful shoulders sagged. Obviously John Reed was bone-weary. When Perc passed the spot where they’d previously stopped to talk, the bearded older man shot him an inquisitive look, but he still said nothing.

  Perc picked up his lantern, re-lit it, unlocked the shed door, and motioned for Reed to enter first, which the older man did, but it was a tight fit—whoever had built that shack hadn’t figured on a man of Reed’s dimensions ever entering through that doorway.

  Perc held the lantern high, closed the door, and put his back to it. Reed saw the dead man at once. He stood like stone, gazing into the sightless eyes before he finally made himself go forward, drop to one knee, and look closer. When he saw the exit hole of that deadly bullet, he drew back a sharp breath. To any experienced man a bullet hole was always larger and more ragged where it exited than where it entered. He turned his head very slowly and looked straight at Perc.

  “From behind,” he whispered. “Why, Deputy, why didn’t you give him a chance?”

  Perc blinked. “I didn’t shoot him. I found him already dead. But you’re right about that shot … it came from behind. Who was he, Reed?”

  “Frank Rawlings,” rumbled Reed, turning and dropping his head again.

  “What was he?” Perc asked.

  But Reed didn’t answer. He kneeled there, hunched forward, looking more than ever like some old-time prophet with weak lamplight falling over his grizzled head and full, awry beard. “I asked what he was, Reed.”

  Old John stirred, heaved back, and got upright. He bent, still without speaking, and beat dust off his knee. As he afterward straightened around slowly, he said: “A cowboy. Not a very good one, but a range rider.”

  “Is that all he was?”

  “No,” muttered the older man, gazing straight down. “He was also an outlaw, Deputy. Never very good at that, either. He was working up to it, but he wouldn’t ever have been in the class of the men who get their pictures printed on posters. Who killed him?”

  Perc lowered the lamp. “There were two of them. Last night out front they tried to sic me on Sam Logan, hinted he was wanted by the law. I think they were trying to get me to lock Sam up on suspicion. Why, I’m not sure, but I think that’s what they had in mind.”

  “Do you know where the other one is, Deputy?”

  Perc shook his head. “I don’t know who he is. That’s why I brought you down here tonight, so you can tell me. There are a lot of questions I want answers to, Reed. Maybe Abigail told you … I’ve been looking for you and your friend, Logan.”

  “I can’t tell you anything,” rumbled the older man, shuffling over closer to the door.

  “You’re going to have to,” asserted Perc, planting his legs wide and settling flat against the door. “There is another pair of these men loose around Ballester.”

  Reed looked straight at Perc. “Describe them,” he said, his deep voice making a low growl.

  “One of them has a bullet hole in his right arm,” said Perc, and fished for that Wanted poster. “This is who he is.” He handed the poster to Reed. “The other one wasn’t recognizable in the dark last night, but since I’ve never yet known an outlaw to be traveling with anyone besides another outlaw, I think he’ll have a price on his topknot, too.”

  Reed bent and held the poster under Perc’s lantern for a long, grim moment while he studied the picture on it. As he slowly straightened up and folded the flyer, he shook his head back and forth.

  “As you know,” he muttered, “this one is Charley Ringo. The man with him in all probability will be Jim Howard.”

  Perc checked himself in mid-speech. Ringo and Howard! He’d been surprised to learn from Farraday that the one with the wound was Char
ley Ringo, but Jim Howard was one of the most wanted desperadoes in the West. There was a $2,000 bounty on Howard from Arizona alone. He’d been murdering and plundering his way through life for seven years. There were other rewards, too, but Arizona had the biggest one because it was down there that Howard had committed most of his robberies and killings.

  “What are these men doing in Ballester?” Perc finally asked, but John Reed only looked down and shook his head. Perc waited, then said: “Mister Reed, I’m giving you a choice. Either tell me what this is all about, or get locked up.” Reed raised his head. Outside someone rapped softly, almost furtively, on the door. Perc shifted the lantern to his left hand, drew his .45 with his right, and motioned for Reed to back away. Reed obeyed. Perc turned and said: “Who is it … what do you want?”

  The answer came back, soft and difficult to make out through the door. “It’s Doc Farraday again. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  Perc looked over where John Reed was stolidly standing, put up his gun, and reached for the latch. As he swung the door inward, Doc Farraday didn’t enter. Sam Logan did, and Sam had a cocked .45 in his fist. Perc stood stockstill, letting his breath slowly run out. Logan gestured with his gun.

  “Get away from the door, Deputy.”

  Perc stepped clear grimly and reluctantly. Logan’s hat brim was tugged low, making a dark shadow over his upper face. Only the wet shininess of his rock-hard eyes showed clearly. “Been wondering who’d come out of here first,” he said, speaking half to Perc, half to John Reed. “Got tired of the suspense. Take his gun, John.” As Reed rolled forward, Logan shook his head slightly at Perc. “Don’t be a fool, Deputy.”

  Perc had no intention of being a fool—or a dead hero, either, for that matter. He said: “How did you know Farraday had been here, Logan?”

  “Saw him come down here with you, Deputy. That was after I saw you ride into town with Rawlings across your saddle. You shoot him, Deputy?”

  Reed answered that as he moved back with Perc’s gun in his hand. “It wasn’t Whittaker. Rawlings came here with a friend. It was the friend who killed him. Whittaker just came onto Rawlings after he’d been salivated, Sam.”