Six-Gun Crossroad

by Lauran Paine

  Perc squatted there, looking from one to the other of these rugged older men. Finally he holstered the six-gun Logan had handed back to him and removed his hat, re-creased it, and put it back on. He needed that little space of time to make the necessary mental adjustments to what he’d just been told. He said: “I thought you two were part of the gang. How did you find out where, exactly, this meeting was to take place?”

  “I followed Rawlings and Miller,” said Logan. “That’s why I suddenly disappeared from town and didn’t come back until last night when I had to keep you from locking John up … and we put you to sleep. As I’ve already said, neither Rawlings nor Miller knew me except by sight and reputation. They saw me in the Golden Slipper but they didn’t put two and two together, or if they did, they never got to talk it over with Jim Howard. If they had …” Logan dragged a stiff finger across his own throat. “Jim would have known right away what I was up to. He and I’ve crossed trails before, years back.”

  Perc looked at the bearded and thickly massive John Reed. “Did you know Ringo and Jim Howard, too?” he asked.

  For a moment those piercing pale eyes bored into Perc with a strangely ironic expression in their baleful depths, then the former outlaw ponderously inclined his head. “I knew them boys. I knew them very well. You see, that’s partly why I feel it’s my obligation to put them out of action. I taught them what they know. Before I was sent away, they were part of the Reed gang.”

  Perc gazed at these two rough, experienced men whose earlier years had been spent in deadly combat against one another. He stood up and dusted off his breeches. They also stood up. Perc said: “Are you sure Howard and Ringo are on around the bend in that little secret meadow?”

  “We’re sure,” rumbled John Reed. “We’d just come back to fetch our carbines and close in on ’em when you came sneaking in behind us.”

  Sam Logan picked up Perc’s Winchester and returned it to him. “I think you ought to stay out of this,” he said quietly, but with a doubtful ring to his words as though he wasn’t very hopeful about this. “It’s John’s job and my job. It’s been coming a long time, Perc, been coming toward this final showdown many years. We’d like to finish it ourselves. It’s been a long trail for us … very long. It’s probably our last trail, too.”

  Perc gazed at their lined old faces, thought a moment of their violent, fierce lives, and smiled at them. “Sure enough,” he murmured. “You’re the bosses. I’ll just sort of back your play.”

  Even John Reed smiled now. “Good boy,” he whispered. “Good boy. I told Abbie … well, never mind what I told Abbie.” Reed looked around for his dropped carbine, found it, brushed dust and leaves off it, and looked gloweringly over at his smaller companion. “Good luck, Sam,” he said. “You’re going to need it. I taught those two well.”

  Logan’s long upper lip drew back in a slow, mirthless grin. “But not well enough,” he said evenly. They all knew what he was thinking. He’d beaten the notorious John Reed at the height of Reed’s violent career, so he’d be a match for Reed’s lieutenants.

  Reed swung half around and was quiet for a while as he looked over where the onward trail was faintly visible now because that moon was nearly overhead. “Keep a close watch anyway, Sam. Charley’ll be half out of it with that hurt right arm, but Jim …” Reed solemnly wagged his bushy head. “Jim’s as good with guns as I was at his age.”

  Perc stepped around them to walk on up the trail. Logan hissed at him. “Hold it, son. That’s not the way. You just stay back here with us. We’ll give you a little useful educating.”

  Perc halted, waited for the older men silently to pace on up, then he stayed with them as far as the last curve before they’d have walked out into the yonder wide place where notorious Jim Howard and Charley Ringo had a little dying campfire. There, without a word, Reed took to the left slope, Sam took to the right, and Perc went with the smaller man up into the gloomy, sharp rocks beside the trail.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was the flickering light they saw first. It came from the center of an ancient stone ring over beside the white-water creek. Perc had also used that stone ring. It was black with age and smooth from the heat of many cooking fires. He now recalled the last time he’d camped up here while on a hunting trip when he’d been riding for Snowshoe, that he’d thought probably that generations of Indian hunters had also used that same fire ring.

  What he’d never imagined in his wildest dreams back in those less burdensome days was that sometime he’d be silently scaling the westward slope under such bizarre circumstances, stalking the two most wanted outlaws in the West, in this identical spot, with a pair of companions as improbable, as unbelievable, as anyone could have imagined.

  Sam Logan paused and scowled when Perc’s right foot grated over stone. It had been a scarcely audible sound, but the wiry little lawman had disapproved of even that much noise. Perc stopped and looked carefully where he’d put his next few steps, picked out the most unyielding places, and nodded. Sam went on again, moving with agonizing slowness up the side hill, sometimes pausing for long periods, sometimes silently gesturing toward a place where treacherously loose shale lurked.

  They climbed until they could gaze straight down into the secret place. There were two horses down there, full of grass and water and standing like stone with their heads down. There were also two bedrolls not far from the dying little fire, and near the bedrolls two flung-down saddles with their saddlebags detached and lying near some soiled tin dishes and cups beside the fire.

  But there were no men.

  Perc found a level, wind-swept ledge, belly-crawled out upon it, and gradually let all the stiffness and wariness leak out. When Sam Logan came down and eased out his full length, also, Perc whispered to him.

  “Did you see them when you scouted up the place before?”

  Sam intently studied the meadow for a long moment before nodding and saying in a low whisper. “Saw Charley. He was at the creek, washing his hurt arm. Didn’t see Jim, but he’s there. They’re both down there. Maybe John can see ’em from over across the pass.”

  Perc reared up slightly to look across at the opposite jumble of dark, jagged rock where John Reed had faded out when they’d split up. It was possible that from over there John had a better view of the entire meadow, at least of that part of it that was directly below where he undoubtedly now was quietly lying. His attention was rudely yanked back to the meadow when Sam Logan laid a vice-like set of steely fingers on Perc’s arm and squeezed. Logan said nothing but he was intently staring down into the little meadow.

  A burly man came ambling out of the northward night where black basalt and dark trees added to the total gloominess of that northwestward rim.

  “Charley,” breathed Sam Logan, watching this man’s approach toward the dying little fire.

  Ringo was the one Doc Farraday had treated. Perc still had a folded Wanted poster with Ringo’s likeness upon it in his shirt pocket, and although he recognized the face without much difficulty, he’d never before seen Ringo as he now saw him, walking up to the fire, tall and thickly set up, unkempt and vicious-looking.

  The outlaw kicked up some sparks with his boot toe, squatted down, and began making a cigarette beside the fire. It was a warm night and therefore it was only habit that had driven the outlaw to the fire. He poked around in the coals, picked up a red ember, lit up, and exhaled. He twisted half around and gazed directly behind himself over where a meandering trail led on out of this little hidden place. Perc knew that trail well; it led up into the higher, rougher country where there was good hunting.

  But these men were not here for the hunting, as Ringo demonstrated when he called softly saying: “Jim, forget it. No need to hide it anyway. They’re not comin’.”

  For a while there was no sign of anyone over by the yonder pass, then the second man strolled forward. He was just as tall and just as thickly made
as Ringo was, but with a noticeable difference. Jim Howard walked balanced forward on the balls of his feet like a fighter or a wary wolf. He moved, even now when he was confident of being perfectly safe, with a quick, thrusting stride, his head constantly moving, his eyes seldom still. Perc was impressed—the most notorious lawbreaker he’d run up against so far down in Ballester had been a one-time horse thief. Otherwise, his arrests usually were prosaic enough: Boots for getting tanked to the eyeballs, or some other cowboy who wanted to bay at the moon.

  But this man he was watching now was totally different from anything he’d encountered before. He began to have serious doubts of his ability to handle those two if he’d come onto them alone. Very serious doubts. Often enough cowboys took up deputy’s badges, but facing a man whose decade-long renegade career had turned him into a walking machine of deadly destruction was something cowboy deputies were rarely ever called upon to interfere with, or if they tried, they died.

  “That,” announced Sam Logan quietly, “is Jim Howard.”

  “Looks rough,” Perc whispered, not looking away as Howard walked over and joined Ringo at the fire.

  “Deadliest man with guns you’ll ever see,” responded Logan, also studying the pair of big, heavily armed men down there at the fire. “Deadliest pair in the business today.”

  “What’re you figuring on doing?”

  “It’s John’s play,” stated Logan. “That’s what he wants and that what we’ll wait for.”

  Ringo growled from beside the fire with his face screwed up against the rising tobacco smoke. “They’d have made it by now. The trail was plenty plain even for those two dumbheads.”

  Howard yawned and stretched, then slumped. “Twenty thousand each,” he said in a low, deep voice. “I thought we were crazy to make this rendezvous anyway. Figured right after we split up you and me should’ve headed west out to California and let them two poke around up here, lookin’ for us while we was raisin’ a little hell out at Frisco.”

  Ringo smoked and eyed the embers at his feet and shrugged. He obviously didn’t care one way or another.

  “How long you want to wait?” Howard asked.

  “Too dark to light out now. Might as well hang around until morning … then head out.”

  “Which direction?”

  Ringo looked around and lifted his lips in a wolfish grin. “West. Out Frisco way.”

  Howard held out his right hand. “Give me some tobacco,” he said, and the minute Ringo laid the papers and sack in his palm, Perc felt Sam Logan stiffen beside him. It didn’t dawn on Perc right away why Sam had done that. By the time it did dawn on him, a bull-bass rumbling voice rolled out over the downhill meadow like distant cannons. John Reed had made his play. He’d waited with Indian-like patience until the only uninjured gunhand down there between those two deadly killers was too occupied to streak for a gun.

  “Freeze, Jim!” boomed out John Reed from some invisible place up in the northward rocks. “You, too, Charley. Freeze and stay froze. One flicker of an eyelash and you’ll both go to hell!”

  Perc watched those two burly men down there. They seemed taken not only by total surprise, but they also seemed stunned with recognition of that unmistakable booming old voice thundering down at them. Howard still had his right hand extended. He’d just started to close the fingers around Ringo’s tobacco sack, had just started to draw the hand back, when that clap of thunder had struck him.

  Ringo, too, didn’t move so much as a muscle. He was staring from widened eyes in the general direction Reed had spoken from. It was Ringo who recovered from the shock first, but he still didn’t move.

  “John,” he said, “is that you up there? John Reed …?”

  “That’s right, Charley,” rumbled Reed. “It’s I. I’ve come for the pair of you … murderers, butchers, thieves, animals. I’ve come for the pair of you!”

  Finally Jim Howard recovered and said: “Yeah, we’re everything you say we are, John. But we got eighty thousand dollars. How much you got?”

  That booming voice rolled out through the hills again saying: “Sam, go down and disarm ’em. Percy, stay where you are. Shoot if one of them so much as flexes his fingers.”

  Howard and Ringo turned their heads a little and rolled their eyes when Sam Logan rose up, no longer trying to be quiet, and started slipping and sliding down toward the little meadow.

  Ringo said: “Sam? Sam Logan?”

  “The same!” roared old John Reed. “Sam Logan and John Reed serving the good cause now, you two carrion. You know Sam, so if you want to make a break, now’s the time. You wait any longer and Sam’ll make mincemeat out of you.”

  Perc was fascinated. This was more than a capture. It was something violent and twisted and steeped in fierce hatred among these men. There was none of the usual disgust or contempt, none of the sulkiness of the vanquished or the stiff triumph of the victors; these men knew each other very well, had known each other a long time; they could talk back and forth as they were now doing without anything between them such as had lain between Perc and Pete Miller back there, because only one thing lay between these men. Not being captured or being vanquished, but death pure and simple. Someone was going to die here. Perc knew it as surely as he knew his own name. Among these four there was no such thing as surrender. There was only death.

  “You’re a fool, John!” called out Jim Howard. “You’re an old man. You got a girl to look after. Twenty thousand dollars would set you up in clover for life. How about those years in prison, John? You want to get paid for them, too? Just swivel that gun up there and center it on Sam. We’ll hand you twenty thousand cash … and a ten thousand dollar bonus for killin’ Sam.”

  “Scum,” rumbled John Reed from his hiding place up the northward slope. “I had in mind trying to save your souls when I first came up here, Jim, but it’s been borne in upon me since I been here that you two’ve got no souls to save. You’re worse than animals. You didn’t have to kill that driver or that guard. I taught you different years back. You’re not worth saving, either one of you.”

  Sam got all the way down into the meadow. The pair of killers saw him and stared over at him. Neither they nor Sam Logan said a word but John Reed’s rumbling denunciations rolled on and on.

  To Percy, with his carbine pushed ahead and ready, it was uncanny; it wasn’t like any showdown he’d ever heard of before. Sam started forward toward the motionless killers. He moved slowly and thoughtfully, never once putting himself between John Reed’s gun muzzle and their captives. Finally, as he inched around behind the bigger men, Sam said: “You’re the only two I’d have made this trip for, boys. You’re the only two I’d have come out of retirement for.” He removed Ringo’s gun, stepped back, and flung it over into the creek. He was in no hurry about any of this. Perc got the definite impression neither of these old hell-raisers wished to conclude this meeting in a hurry. “You’ll also have a boot knife,” he said to Ringo’s back. “And a belly-gun. Bend over, Charley, and shed the knife first.”

  Jim Howard strained up toward Reed’s place of concealment, his neck muscles standing out with fury. “Twenty thousand for Sam dead!” he called. “Forty thousand, John. Half for Sam dead, half for lookin’ the other way when we ride out of here. John! Use your head! That’s more money than you ever got in one job, and this here’ll be legal money. We own it. We’ll give you half.”

  “Legal money,” snorted Reed. “Blood money, Jim. I’ve told you a dozen times … never kill unless you have to.”

  While these two bawled back and forth, Charley Ringo bent down, lifted his right pants leg, fished out a wicked-bladed knife, and tossed it away. He then, with Sam’s urgings sounding softly from behind, fished under his shirt and brought forth a big-bored little .41 Derringer double-barrel that he also tossed away.

  “That’s all,” he said, and called Sam Logan a bad name. “I should’ve killed you ten
years ago, Sam. But it’s not too late now.”

  Perc had been waiting for this. He’d known from the beginning it was coming, but still, when Ringo started to move, Perc was caught not quite prepared. Ringo whirled with surprising speed for a large man, roared a curse, and hurled himself straight at smaller and lighter Sam Logan. It was a terrible mistake, for if Ringo had counted on Sam’s chivalry about not shooting an unarmed man, he’d just lost the biggest bet of his lifetime.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Logan’s red-flaming muzzle blast was partially muffled by big Charley Ringo’s body when he fired pointblank. Ringo’s head jarred forward, his hat flew off; he jack-knifed into an almost bent-double position when that big slug struck him, and he staggered one more step forward before the total impact halted him in his tracks.

  Sam Logan hadn’t moved an inch. He didn’t move now, with Ringo dying at his feet, until the bigger man began to roll forward in a face-down fall. Then Sam sprang clear.

  Perc hadn’t been able to fire even though he’d seen Ringo’s desperate charge coming, because Sam was too close. It didn’t matter now. Charley Ringo was dead before he hit the ground.