Six-Gun Crossroad

by Lauran Paine

  “Reed’s in this, too, mister. Not only in it, but he and Logan are somewhere up in these hills, huntin’ for the same meetin’ place I’m lookin’ for.”

  The outlaw slumped. He mopped sweat off with a soiled sleeve. “Frank an’ me, we talked about Sam after we seen him in that saloon, Deputy. We got to wonderin’ about him being this far north. Last time we seen him was down at Wolf Hole before the robbery at Saint George. Then, all of a sudden, the old devil was here in Ballester. But it was too odd for anythin’ but coincidence, Frank said, so we figured to wait until …”

  “Until Jim Howard and Charley Ringo got up here, then ask them about it,” Perc concluded dryly.

  The outlaw nodded. “Yeah. That’s about the size of it.”

  “Ringo got shot in that Saint George robbery, did you know that, mister?”

  The outlaw shook his head. “Haven’t seen him or Jim since we split up down south and struck out for the Ballester country, ridin’ apart, the four of us. How bad?”

  “Just through the upper arm. Not bad. Tell me about that robbery.”

  “Nothin’ much to tell. We heard there was a gold shipment comin’ through and figured to catch the coach along the ninety-mile deserted stretch of desert between Wolf Hole and Saint George. We did, caught it easy. Only it turned out not to be gold.”

  “Greenbacks?”

  The outlaw nodded. “Damnedest haul of greenbacks you ever saw, Deputy.” The outlaw raised his face. For the first time since he’d been shot his expression showed something besides anguish. “Eighty thousand dollars worth of paper currency. Twenty thousand apiece! Deputy, you got any idea how much twenty thousand dollars is, all in one chunk?”

  Perc shook his head with complete candor. He had no idea how much money that was, couldn’t even adequately imagine. The outlaw’s gaze turned crafty, turned speculative. Perc saw this and divined the reason. He said: “Forget it before you even offer me Frank’s share to turn you loose. By the way … what’s your name?”

  “Smith,” said the outlaw glibly, but when Perc reared back to take his weight off his booted foot, the outlaw said: “Wait, wait, it’s Peter Miller, an’ that’s the gospel truth. I was born Peter Miller, only I never stuck to it very long. Commenced changin’ it every few months right after my seventeenth birthday.”

  “Where’s the meeting place, Pete?” Perc asked.

  Miller shook his head and for the first time showed annoyance. “Those damned idiots been leadin’ us all over the lousy country with their signs and arrows an’ such-like. By God, I’ve ridden ten times as far already as anyone ought to have to go to get hold of what’s rightfully theirs.”

  Perc eyed the sky and brought his head down slowly. “Sure,” he murmured dryly. “What’s rightfully yours. Tell me, Pete, how many men got killed when you boys halted that coach?”

  “Only two, Deputy. The driver an’ the shotgun guard.”

  “Real considerate of you. Were there any other folks on the coach?”

  “No. We figured there would be … you know, to sort of make it appear to be just an everyday run, but there wasn’t.”

  Perc gazed at his captive. If there had been passengers, they’d have died, also. That was the usual practice of such murderers as these men when stopping a bullion coach. No witnesses, no identification afterward.

  “What’s the closest ranch to the spot where you hit that coach, Pete?”

  “An outfit called the Cross-Quarter-Circle.”

  Perc gravely nodded. “They had pretty good horses,” he murmured, and stood up. “Where are you wanted besides in Arizona, Pete?”

  “Nowhere. Just Arizona.”

  “How much are you worth?”

  “Only five hundred. Listen, Deputy, about Frank’s slice of that stack of greenbacks …”

  “Pete, I’ve already told you. You’re wasting your breath.”

  “Well, you figurin’ on takin’ me back to Ballester tonight?”

  Perc didn’t answer because this had suddenly become his primary headache and he’d been privately dwelling upon it now for nearly an hour—since he’d shot Miller. If he did take the murderer back, he might just as well forget ever catching up with Howard and Ringo. If he didn’t, if he went on tracking those other desperadoes, Miller wouldn’t be here when he got back … unless … He turned and gazed at that splinted, purple-swollen leg. Unless he took Miller’s horse and guns and left him just as he was now, in which case no matter how tough he was or how he struggled, Miller couldn’t get very far away by dragging that splinted leg, and even if he could cover a few miles, he’d leave a squiggly track from dragging that leg a blind man could follow.

  He made another smoke and lit it. Miller watched him closely. It was clear Perc was turning a number of things over in his mind. It was just as clear to the outlaw, after two abortive attempts, that no outside source could very easily sway Perc’s judgment, so Miller wisely kept quiet.

  Dusk was settling in fast, especially around this gloomy rock escarpment where the overhead sky was partially blotted out. Fortunately, though, it was warm, would remain warm throughout the night.

  A sudden idea struck Perc. He went over, got the Snowshoe colt, brought it back, picked up some of the damp bloody mud where he’d worked over Miller’s leg, smeared it generously over the saddle, checked the colt up so that it could not lower its head to graze, and gave it a smart slap across the romp. The startled animal jumped five feet and lit out, running straight southward.

  Miller wailed. “What’d you do that for, Deputy? How’d you expect me to get down to Ballester?”

  “Fly,” said Perc enigmatically, and watched for as long as the running colt was visible. He’d get down to Snowshoe sometime in the night. Johnny and the others would find that bloody saddle, and, come sunup, they’d come boiling upcountry backtracking the colt. He turned and walked over beside Miller, kneeled, and shelled out all the cartridges in the shell belt around the outlaw’s broken leg. Miller watched and tensed, but Perc was gentle. He was also silent. As he straightened back up, pocketing the bullets Miller made a puzzled dark frown.

  “What in the devil are you up to?” he growled.

  Instead of answering Perc retrieved the Winchester, stepped over, and swung it violently against a tree. Miller let out a squawk as his gunstock broke into a dozen pieces. Perc tossed the gun down and faced around. “No guns,” he said, “no sting left, Pete. Now tell me something. Where were you going when you left the swales to come up here for water?”

  “I already told you, damn it, I don’t know! There was an arrow back at a cottonwood spring south and west of here. There was fresh tracks leadin’ in the way that arrow pointed. I followed the tracks. That’s all I know. That was the arrangement Jim and Charley an’ Frank an’ I made after the Wolf Hole stage job. We’d come up here. Charley and Jim knew this country. At least I got that impression from listenin’ to ’em. They’d blaze a trail for Frank an’ me.”

  “They had the money?”

  “Yeah. All eighty thousand of it,” muttered Miller, and suddenly looked crestfallen. “Eighty thousand greenbacks …”

  Chapter Sixteen

  There was no genuine daylight left when Perc rode away. Dusk, though, was slow turning to darkness in midsummer, so he got back down to the trail Pete Miller had been pursuing before Pete had angled off for water, before night.

  But it wasn’t enough he saw, as soon as he tried to pick up those tracks Miller had been following. He tried walking ahead, leading his horse, but after a half hour of that the gloom rolled down and silkily blotted everything out.

  Still, he kept in the same general direction until a low, fat old boulder loomed up. There, he sat down and made a smoke for supper, told his horse they’d wasted too much time with Miller, and otherwise listened to the hushed night.

  After a while the strengthening moon floated up. He kil
led his smoke and started walking onward leading the horse. He thought briefly of Pete Miller’s vehement protests at being left alone back there unarmed and unable to move.

  It was one of the interesting things about murderers that, although they could be wholly impersonal about an execution, they couldn’t be the slightest bit impersonal about themselves or the reaction of other people to their crimes.

  Still, he’d done one charitable thing. He’d left Miller half his tobacco and half his cigarette papers. If that proved a poor substitute for food, it was no less than Perc himself was having to make do with. Furthermore, in his private opinion, it was a lot more than Miller deserved.

  He halted again to consider the onward lay of softly lit land. There were several rather steep hill slopes discernible ahead. Beyond them, up through a twisting cañon that grew steeper and gloomier as it progressed steadily toward wild and tangled uplands, there was a widening of the trail. He knew all this because he’d once made a hunting camp on ahead where a creek brawled and tumbled its southward way down from the yonder peaks.

  It did not seem logical to him that the outlaw leaders would persist until they reached the distant mountains. If they knew this country at all, they’d know there wasn’t any chance at all of discovery up through the yonder cañon, for even during the grazing season cattle wouldn’t come up in here; it was not only too rocky and steep, it was also too primitive. There would be meat-eating cougars and bears up in this wilderness. Their powerful scent would also keep horses out.

  Then, he mused, the outlaws must have their rendezvous up in that spring-watered wide place on ahead. If it wasn’t there, he told his horse as he stepped around to swing up, they’d have to bed down at the campsite and wait until sunup to pick up the trail again.

  He rode on a loose rein, allowing the horse to do its own picking and choosing. After a while the trail gradually began to widen as the hillside shoulders curved back and away on both sides. But, also, there began to be more and more rocks up in here, tumbled from the northward escarpments perhaps by lightning strikes or upheavals of the earth in centuries gone. The horse became very careful in choosing its footing until, a half hour later, it suddenly lifted its head, shot forward its small ears, and became quite interested in something it obviously couldn’t see, which meant it had caught a scent.

  Again Perc dismounted. This time, as he led the animal along, he kept it up even with him. Should the horse suddenly decide to trumpet a greeting to whatever it had scented on ahead, he could clamp down hard and swiftly, cutting off its wind and thereby also cutting off its noise.

  He thought he knew what the beast had scented. Other horses. He also thought he knew who would be riding those other animals. But sometimes when a man’s entire being is powerfully concentrating upon a pre-conceived notion, he leaves absolutely no leeway for doubt, and can therefore be more thoroughly wrong than he’d believe possible.

  Then he caught the fragrance of a cooking fire. It was definitely coming from that onward grassy clearing where the brawling little white-water creek ran—his old hunting camp. He secured the horse, drew forth his carbine, sniffed a moment to be dead certain about the location of that smell, then started ahead. He hadn’t progressed a hundred yards when off on his right up a black, narrow off-shoot cañon a soft sound of crumbling decomposed granite came through to him. He dropped down and raised his Winchester. It was much too dark up that little narrow cañon to see anything, but there was something—man or animal he had no idea—up there.

  Only a fool advances against enemies without first making certain his back trail is secure. He waited a long time for that rustling noise to be repeated. It hadn’t been a small, nocturnal animal, he was sure of that. After a while it came again, a heavy, shuffling sort of solid movement like a tethered horse would make. It puzzled him. Surely the outlaws wouldn’t hide their animals this far beyond their sight. He got up and skulked noiselessly forward. Whatever it was, he had to know before going on around the last bend in the trail on up toward the campsite.

  He stepped into the dark, narrow cañon and immediately encountered spiny chaparral that made whispering sounds as it brushed across his lower legs. He paused and strained to see. The moon hadn’t yet touched down into this scary place; it was steep-walled and pitch dark. He used the Winchester butt to ease brush aside, took two more steps—and the side of a mountain fell on him. At least that was his reaction to being struck forcibly from off on one side by a mighty weight that drove him backward and sideward until the chaparral, tangling around his legs, upended him back at the mouth of the draw. He dropped his carbine and rolled frantically to get clear of the underbrush. He heard a man’s low, deep down growl, thought first it might be a bear, then glimpsed something broad and wraith-like lunging at him.

  He rolled again, jackknifed both legs up close, and sprang to his feet. A huge fist sang past his cheek and a hurtling body came at him like a projectile. He whipped sideways and escaped most of that driving force but not all of it. One arm as thick as oak lashed out and struck him across the chest. He dropped straight down as his scarcely visible adversary tried to pivot, tried to catch him before he squirmed away. He came up and spun on the ball of his right foot as he aimed and fired a blasting blow at the other man’s middle.

  It was like hitting a sack of flour that had been filled to capacity. There was a little give to the flesh, but great corded muscles threw back Perc’s fist like they were made of rubber.

  He tried again as that writhing, moving, stalking enemy got squared around and planted himself solidly in such a way that Perc couldn’t get past and make a run for it back toward his horse. The second punch grated over an upthrown forearm, slid off it overhand, and jarred solidly against hair and bone and gristle. This punch slowed the other man; he seemed just for a second to stagger, to be stunned. Perc, reacting at top speed, sprang sideways to get around the other man. He almost made it, too. He got clear, but when he was dropping down for the next jump a hard, round, coldly impersonal piece of steel came out of the brush at his back and rammed into his side below the ribs. He heard, whoever was holding that gun, cock it.

  He froze. A man might sometimes, with luck, escape from a very formidable foeman by thinking lightning fast, but no man living had ever yet outrun or out-dodged a closely aimed bullet. Some had of course tried, but they didn’t count because they were no longer among the living.

  That silent apparition back in the brush yanked away Perc’s six-gun and eased off the hurting pressure of his cocked gun. Then he spoke, and Perc’s mouth dropped open. He said: “John, you all right?”

  “All right,” came the rolling deep-down rumble of John Reed’s subdued voice. “But whoever he is, he sure can hit.”

  Perc slumped. “I thought I’d find you two up here for your share of the eighty thousand,” he muttered bitterly.

  The gun in his back was withdrawn. The chaparral back there crackled and Sam Logan stepped around to push his face up close and stare. “Be damned,” sighed Logan. “John, it’s the deputy.”

  Reed plodded over, planted himself close, too, and also peered. He afterward settled back, gingerly felt his bearded jaw, and said: “Well, Sam, we should’ve tied him.”

  “Or you shouldn’t have left that note for Abbie, John.”

  Reed muttered under his breath, wobbled his jaw gingerly, and nodded. Reed put up his gun and handed Perc’s .45 back to him. “Squat,” he said. Perc squatted. So did Logan, and after a moment more of probing his tender jaw, John Reed also dropped down.

  Perc couldn’t make out too much in the darkness but he thought both the older men looked and acted dog-tired and disheveled. “Where are your friends?” he quietly asked them.

  At once Reed growled: “Keep your voice to a whisper, Deputy. They’re on around the bend but that doesn’t mean one of ’em might not take a notion to go strolling around.”

  Sam Logan thumbed back his hat and k
ept staring at Perc. “You sure got a tough skull,” he murmured. “You must’ve left town about sunup to be here by now.”

  “I’d have been here sooner but I had a little run-in with Pete Miller.”

  Both the older men swiftly looked up. Sam said: “Where?”

  “A few miles back.”

  What’d you do with him?”

  “Left him there with a splinted broken leg and turned his horse loose.”

  “His guns,” growled John Reed. “Did you leave him his guns?”

  Perc shook his head. “No. I took all his slugs and busted his carbine against a tree. I’m going to do the same to you boys, too, the first chance I get.”

  Logan and Reed exchanged a look. Reed lifted his mighty shoulders and let them slump. “Might as well tell him,” he mumbled. “Can’t keep him out of our hair anyway, Sam.”

  Logan nodded and said: “Deputy, you’ve got some notion we’re in on the division of that Saint George stagecoach money. Well, we’re not. We were both down there at Wolf Hole, though, when the Howard gang hit the stage and killed those men. John had sent for me to meet him at Wolf Hole after he got out of prison and lit out for Arizona. I went down and met him there, you see, because I was the one who tracked him down years back and sent him to prison. I sort of owed him something, maybe.”

  “And,” stated Reed softly, “you were curious. You see, Percy, Sam and I’d been writing letters back and forth over the years while I was in prison. He wasn’t sure I meant it when I wrote him that I’d had enough, that I meant to spend the rest of my life serving the Lord and doing good works.”

  Logan nodded. “All right. I was curious. Anyway, I rode down, met John and Abbie … and then we ran across Jim Howard down there with his gang. We also ran onto something else. I was sitting in a saloon at Saint George when Frank Rawlings and this Miller feller took a nearby table and started whispering about the hold-up Howard had planned for his gang. Howard knew me by sight. So did his sidekick, Charley Ringo. But Rawlings and Miller weren’t so sure. They’re younger men. I’d already retired before they started cutting their teeth on gun barrels. I contacted John and we set out to prevent the hold-up.” Logan paused. “We got there too late. Well, I knew where they were heading … to the Ballester country up in Utah … Rawlings and Miller had said as much in that Saint George saloon. I sent word to John, then lit out straight for your bailiwick, Deputy. But it turned out to be a long wait. It seems that there were posses and Army detachments kicking up a big dust all over northern Arizona and southern Utah after that coach was found with the cash gone and the driver and guard shot. So, the members of Howard’s gang didn’t start drifting in until just a few days ago, and by then, because he came straight through, John had also shown up.”