Gunman

by Lauran Paine

“Mister, I think you’d best saddle up and get along.”

  There was no mistaking the hostility here. Ray eased up off the washstand and dropped his cigarette. Inside him something primeval stirred, the blood quickened in his veins, objects became sharply clear in his vision. This man, instinct told Ray, was ready to fight.

  “If Joe tells me to ride on, I’ll go,” he answered evenly, “but what you tell me doesn’t mean a damned thing, Fenwick.”

  The big foreman continued to stand motionlessly, gazing fully forward. “I’ve been told you were the fastest gunman Joe had, in the old days. But that isn’t going to make any difference, Kelly.”

  “No,” said Ray. “Not when you’re not wearing a gun.” He raised his eyes from Fenwick’s middle. “Why’d you take it off? You had it on in the blacksmith shed.”

  “Because I didn’t want this to end with one of us getting killed. But you’re going to ride on all the same.” Fenwick took several short steps closer to Ray.

  “You’ve got Grace right well trained.”

  “She didn’t have to tell me anything. I sized you up the minute I saw you, Kelly. You’re a gunman. You mean trouble.”

  Ray was watchful, but more than that he was puzzled. “Tell me something, Fenwick. What’s going on around here?”

  “Nothing. This is a cow outfit. It’s being operated like one. We don’t raid the lowland herds. I’ve heard how things were run when Duncan Holt and the likes of you worked here, but my deal with Joe Mitchell was…no rustling. That’s why I’m telling you to ride out.”

  “You know,” Ray drawled silkily, “I came back here to kill a man who called me a rustler. I’d just as soon kill two men for calling me that as one man.”

  “Not an unarmed man!” Fenwick exclaimed. “Go get your gun then.”

  “No.”

  “Then start what ever you’ve got in mind or make it plain you weren’t calling me a cow thief just now.”

  There was a shine in George Fenwick’s eyes; he was going to fight and that knowledge passed to Ray Kelly. Fenwick squared himself up, then lunged, one big, scarred fist whipping upward. Ray stepped in closer, not away, caught Fenwick around the middle before he could draw down the upflung arm, and raised him bodily off the ground, bent far back, and heaved the foreman against the ground.

  Fenwick rolled over and got up. He shook himself, and moved in again, tried a feint that did not succeed and crouched, moving cat-like around Ray’s left. The younger man turned easily, pivoting on his toes, waiting. Fenwick’s face was expressionless. He threw a long overhand blow that missed, then sprang forward. This time Ray, recovering his balance after ducking away from the overhand strike, could not get clear. Fenwick struck him high in the chest, then twice, lower, in the soft parts, and Ray took two big backward steps and two more sideways. Fenwick went past beating air.

  Ray let the opportunity go; his stomach was knotted with pain. He sucked in great gulps of air and slid away as the foreman recovered and came back in again, swinging. Then he ducked low, dug in his toes, and jumped. Fenwick was oncoming and could not avoid collision. He struggled against the clawing hands trying mightily to save himself. Ray caught hold, pushed his face into the older man’s chest to protect it, and, when Fenwick was bending forward, Ray stiffened his legs with a sudden and powerful upright spring, the top of his head cracked against the foreman’s jaw, and Fenwick sagged. Ray let go and jumped clear. Fenwick’s eyes were awry.

  Ray moved beyond reach, arms down and waiting.

  “All right,” a new voice said thickly, brimming with excitement and hostility but trying to be impersonal, “you made your point, Kelly.”

  Ray turned. It was the man who had brought him in with Grace Fenwick. Mitchell had called him Carter Wilson. He came forward from the shadows heading toward Fenwick.

  “George, you all right?”

  Fenwick’s muddled brain was clearing, but he was still unsteady on his feet and a trickle of flung-back blood showed across one cheek from a split lip. “I’m all right,” he muttered, touching his mouth. “Kelly….”

  “Forget it,” Ray said between sucked-back deep breaths. “I’m staying.” He caught up his hat and walked away.

  Out where the afternoon sun smash was hottest, he found Grace standing near a corral in the shade of a shed and went across to her.

  “Thanks,” he said, sharp enough in his tone to bring her swiftly around facing him, and with the smoky look of battle still in his gaze. “Next time you’d better send two of them instead of one, though. Never send a boy to do a man’s job.” He started to move off.

  “Wait!” She had paled. “What did you do?”

  “I didn’t shoot him…I just knocked him a little fuzzy-headed is all.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “Well, go down there and see.”

  “You couldn’t. You’re not man enough to whip my dad!”

  Ray considered her through an interval of silence, and then he said: “Lady, a man like your dad learns to brawl in saloons and bunk houses. That’s where I learnt, too…but the first man I fought in Yuma Prison whipped me in less than ten seconds. After that I found out that barroom brawling is for kids long on guts and short on experience. A place like Yuma Prison teaches a man a lot of things. One of them is how to fight, and fight to win.”

  He left her staring after him, crossed to the main house, and pushed on inside without bothering to knock. “Joe!” he called. “Joe, where are you?”

  Mitchell came hurriedly from a back room, drawn by the whiplash of that calling voice. He stopped in the doorway. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Nothing much, but your foreman’s got a headache.”

  “George…?”

  “Sit down, Joe. I can’t wait until after supper for our talk.”

  “Ray, there’s nothing to be sore about,” Mitchell protested, but he crossed to a chair and sank down. “A little misunderstanding…those things happen, son.”

  “Joe, Fenwick’s girl hates my guts. That’s all right. I never cared much for women, either. But she prodded her pa into jumping me at the creek and I left him wobbling around down there. Now what I want to know is who he is, what he’s doing giving the orders around here, and why he ordered me to saddle up and get out?”

  Mitchell’s face changed expression several times in the space of seconds; it colored slightly and the cowman looked away from Ray to the wall, the floor, his hands, and back to Ray again. “Sit down,” he eventually said. “Sit down, boy, and relax. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  Chapter Four

  “About three years ago,” Joe explained, “I began losing cattle, Ray. Someone was comin’ up in here and rustling them out of the parks. I hired more hands and we patrolled. It didn’t do any good. I still lost ’em. I got the other mountain ranchers to help me patrol and still I lost cattle.” Mitchell’s moving glance grew still. “I know it’s hard to believe, son, but wenever caught a single rustler…not a blessed one.”

  “How could they work that?” Ray asked. “You know the parks better than anyone else.”

  “It took me nearly a year to find out how they worked it, Ray.” Mitchell fixed the younger man with a stare. “Can you guess?”

  “No,” Ray answered promptly. “You had a good crew. They moved the cattle, patrolled the trails. If it was the same bunch of boys I knew at the JM, there wasn’t a better bunch of riders in the country.”

  “That part of it’s right enough,” agreed the cowman. “With one exception.”

  “Who?”

  “Tell me something, Ray. When you were down in Welton did you run into anyone you knew?”

  “Perry Smith is all. Why?”

  “None of Salter’s crew?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t know who Mort’s foreman is?”

  “No.”

  “Duncan Holt!”

  Ray was jarred. Holt had been the JM foreman when he had worked for Mitchell. He knew him well,
had in fact been on many a drive and roundup with him. Duncan Holt had always been as loyal a man as he thought existed. Joe spoke again, scattering Ray’s thoughts.

  “Duncan put the herds where he wanted them. He led the night patrols. Salter’s boys rode up to where Duncan had ranged the cattle and drove them off. It worked real good because Duncan always patrolled a long way from where the herds were hit. You understand now?”

  “Yes,” Ray mused, “but…Duncan?”

  Joe nodded. “I lost nearly three thousand head, then Duncan quit me, and the next thing I knew he was Mort Salter’s range boss. Summer before last I went down to the bank at Welton to see about borrowin’ some money to buy replacement cows with and they turned me down. Mort was one of the directors at the bank. Afterward he took me to the saloon and laughed in my face.”

  “He told you…?”

  “He told me, boy. Bragged about the whole thing.”

  “Did you go see Perry?”

  Mitchell shook his head. “No. I rode out with my crew to Salter’s range. We spent two days goin’ through his herds. Ray, there wasn’t a single solitary dog-goned JM critter among ’em.”

  “What’d he do with ’em?”

  “I’m not sure but rumor has it he traded them south of the border in Mexico for unmarked Mex critters and had the new cattle driven up, re-branded, and turned loose on his range.”

  Ray’s thoughts of his fight with George Fenwick were gone. He sat still looking at the older man. Outside, several riders loping into the yard made a familiar sound in the hush.

  “We used to pick up a few slicks now and then,” he said finally, “but we never stole any cattle, Joe.”

  “I know. But we were mountain cowmen, Ray, and….”

  “Joe, you know why I’m back in the country?”

  “Yes, I know. But I don’t think you stand a chance. That’s what I aimed to tell you to night after supper. Mort’s almighty big now, boy. Far too big for you to handle.”

  “It isn’t just that I want to even things up for those lost five years, Joe.”

  “No?”

  “No. Listen, a man does a lot of figuring in prison. He gets some conclusions and he rides them right out to the last notch.”

  “Sure, kid, but….”

  “Let me finish. The thing that kept puzzling me in Yuma was that no evidence was presented against me, Joe. If I’d stolen those cattle, what did I do with them?”

  Joe shrugged, holding his silence.

  “That’s why the first thing I asked you when I got back was if you’d stolen them.”

  “It wasn’t me, Ray. I give you my word on that.”

  “But someone stole them, Joe, and not a single hide showed up as evidence at the trial. All the same I was sent to prison.” Ray leaned suddenly forward in his chair. “That’s what I mean,” he said, strong conviction in his tone. “I didn’t steal them, you didn’t, no hide nor hair of them ever showed up anywhere in the country afterward, but Salter proved by his tally count and his books that he’d lost them, and he had five witnesses who swore they’d seen me driving them off. That’s what kept stickin’ in my craw in prison. I could figure everything just that far, Joe, and no further. Now I think I’ve got the answer.”

  “All right, what is it?”

  “Salter stole those damned cattle from himself, sold or traded them down in Mexico, got me railroaded into prison, and made a pile of money for himself at the same time.”

  “But…why you?”

  “I was handy. It could’ve been any of your crew. Salter’s hated your guts for years. That’s no secret. He’s told folks you’re a cow thief so long now everyone believes it.”

  “Ah,” Mitchell said, “a few slick-eared calves now and then. Hell, if we hadn’t gotten them, some lowland outfit would have.”

  “Salter would have, Joe, but we were a better crew and he hated us for that, too.” Ray got to his feet. “I figured Salter stole those cattle from himself some way. I thought about it a lot and that was the only logical thing I could come up with.” He looked down at Mitchell. “Now you understand why I’m going to kill him, don’t you?”

  “Well…not exactly, Ray.”

  “Not for sending me to prison altogether, Joe. For making a fool of me. For bragging around Welton how he’d caught himself a simpleton and railroaded him into prison.”

  Mitchell looked glum. “You’ll never get it done. You’ve been gone five years and Mort Salter’s bigger now than any two cow outfits in the country. Not only that, but if he knows you’re in the county, he’ll put a price on you, Ray. Someone’ll blow your head off before you get within a mile of him.”

  Ray relaxed; for some indefinable reason he felt good. Now he smiled down at Mitchell. “Like I told Grace, a man learns things in prison he couldn’t learn anywhere else. If Mort gets me, at least he’ll know he’s had a run for his money.”

  Mitchell stood up, crossed to a window, and looked out. The sun was sinking in the west, shadows were puddling out in the yard, and down by the log barn men were forking hay to corralled horses.

  “It won’t help you any,” he said over his shoulder to Ray, “if you give Mort a scare and die doing it.” He turned facing Ray. “I don’t think you can count on much help, Ray.” He said this reluctantly, his eyes sliding away from the younger man’s face. “I better tell you something,” he muttered. “Fenwick’s my foreman all right, son, but the bank at Welton put him up here.”

  “What?”

  “You see, this year the bank let me have that money to buy replacement stock with….”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I had to agree to hire Fenwick so he could supervise the herds, Ray. Otherwise…no loan.”

  “Why didn’t you tell them to go to hell?”

  Mitchell sighed, crossed back to his chair, and dropped down. “Listen, Ray,” he said very earnestly, “I’ve fought off Injuns and blizzards and varmints…and I’ve got as good as I gave from rustlers until Duncan like to broke me…but cow ranching isn’t just fighting any more. It’s running a business, dealing with bankers and such like, and I’m ’way past the half-century mark and this new fangled finance and what not sort of throws me.”

  “Joe,” Ray asked thoughtfully, “did you agree to keep Fenwick until the money is paid back?”

  “Yes. Like I just said…if I hadn’t, they wouldn’t have loaned me the cash.”

  “One more question…did Fenwick ever work for Mort?”

  “No, leastways he said he never had.” Mitchell leaned back. “George is all right, son. You may not work double with him but he’s a good man just the same. Thing is, he’s dead against picking up slick-ears and dogies and unmarked critters of any kind. He’s pretty dog-goned straight-laced but he’s a good cowman.”

  “Hell!” Ray exploded. “If you don’t try to even up your losses on a mountain cow ranch by marking unmarked strays, Joe, you’ll lose every dog-goned calf that’s dropped out in the mountains some place to other outfits.”

  Mitchell continued to sit there in the deepening shadows saying nothing, looking past Ray toward the window.

  “Joe? Did you hear me?”

  “I heard you…but I don’t ride any more, Ray, and George runs things now.”

  “Then get rid of him and.…” Mitchell’s gaze fell across Ray’s face, silencing him briefly. He scowlingly began manufacturing a cigarette. When it was going, he spoke again. “All right, you can’t fire him. Then keep him on and let me have part of your crew to work the high country, Joe.”

  Mitchell seemed to consider this before he said: “Kid, there’d be nothing but trouble if I did that.”

  “Since when has Joe Mitchell ducked trouble?” The younger man demanded hotly. “Joe? What’s got into you? Hell, five years ago we had JM humming.”

  “It was a different crew then. Duncan was….”

  “The hell with Duncan. Let’s get JM running like a cow outfit again, Joe…then we’ll look up Duncan and Mort.”


  “It’s Mort’s got the mortgage I had to give the bank to borrow that money, Ray. I dassn’t antagonize him or he’ll wipe me out.” Mitchell pushed up out of the chair. “Ray, like I said, I’m not a young man any more. I don’t want to end up living in a tar-paper shack down in the gulch behind Welton while Mort Salter winds up with JM. I’d rather just go along George’s way and get the loan paid off.”

  “George’s way,” Ray said caustically. “How long will that take? Hell, Joe, you’ll lose half your calf crop every year, running things his way. You’ll never get that loan repaid.”

  Chapter Five

  It was beyond six o’clock, nearing seven in fact, when Ray left the house heading straight across the yard for the corral. The riders were not in sight when he caught the livery animal, flung his saddle across it, and stooped to catch the cinch. He heard voices down by the creek and through his indignation it came to him that Joe’s hands were down by the washstand getting spruced up for supper. Three deft flips and the latigo was looped up snugly. He was dropping the stirrup again when Carter Wilson came forward out of the evening and stopped when he saw Ray saddling up. Wilson blinked, then nodded and shuffled his feet.

  “Leaving?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I see. Well…maybe it’s best.”

  Ray turned his back to bit the animal. Wilson continued to stand there watching him. When Ray finished and turned, the cowboy said: “George’ll breathe easier, anyway.”

  Something in the rider’s tone made Ray pause. “So will his daughter!” he exclaimed. “So will Joe, I think.”

  “I reckon,” Wilson said in the same thoughtful way. “I reckon it’s best all around, except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  Wilson was balancing something in his mind. He finally lowered his voice so that the words traveled not farther than the barn doorway. “Don’t take the south trail down out of the mountains, Kelly.” Then he moved, heading back out of the barn.

  Ray dropped the reins and lunged forward, caught Wilson just beyond the opening, and whirled him around with one hand. “Why not?” he demanded.