by Jon E. Lewis
That coldness was in his eyes now as he looked at us, and it bothered me. It was those eyes and his hands, long and tapered and almost soft, that had made me pick him as a gun fighter. “Howdy, neighbors,” he said. “I hear you’ve decided to fight Corby Lane.” His voice was soft, but everybody heard it and they all stopped talking.
We were all there. Jim Peterson, tall and blond and nervous, thinking of the bride he had left at home. Fedor Marios, with his great mat of kinky white hair; Mel Martin, the oldest man in the valley. Ted Beaumont was down at the end of the counter with the two farmers from Rincon Valley. They were the ones who had come across the ridge to tell us there was no use trying to deal with Corby Lane. They had tried it, and Corby Lane had moved his sheep through their valley and wiped out their crops completely.
Frank Medlin, the young cowboy who worked for the Walking R over at Seventeen Mile, was also there. It was Frank Medlin who had gotten Ted Beaumont into his latest trouble. The two of them had served six months in jail on a cattle-rustling charge just a few months back.
Ted moved away from the counter, walking a little unsteady. “So help me,” he said, “it’s The Preacher come to pray!”
I keep calling him The Preacher. He wasn’t one, really. His name was Johnny Calaveras, but us folks here in the valley had nearly forgotten that. To us he was The Preacher. It wasn’t that he actually held church. It was just in the way he looked at things, calm and peaceful, always expecting the best. That’s all right when you’re fighting something like weather or grasshoppers, but it wouldn’t work against Corby Lane and his hired gunmen, and nobody knew it any better than I did. I had been a sheriff in a boom town before I married and settled down. I knew about men like Corby Lane.
The Preacher looked at Ted, remembering that this boy was Grace Beaumont’s brother, and then he looked around the room, measuring every man, and there wasn’t a man there who didn’t grow restless under that gaze.
“Here’s The Preacher,” Mel Martin said needlessly. “I reckon that makes all of us.” His lie was there in his voice. We hadn’t asked The Preacher to join us. We didn’t figure he’d want to.
The two farmers from Rincon Valley were standing between Mel Martin and Ted Beaumont. Ted pushed one of them away roughly and stood there peering at The Preacher. “Let’s get things out in the open, Preacher,” Ted said. “You’re always mighty full of high-flown advice, especially for me. I just want you to know that I’m running this show.”
The Preacher didn’t show any signs of how he had taken that. “Which end of the show you running, Ted?” he said. “The fighting end?”
There was a lot of nervousness and tension in that room. The Preacher’s remark struck everybody funny, just as a remark will sometimes when men are keyed to the breaking point. We all laughed, and the color came into Ted Beaumont’s cheeks. But Ted wasn’t a boy who backed down easy. He took a step closer to The Preacher and he let his eyes run over the man. “Where’s your gun, Preacher?” Ted said.
The Preacher stood there, and I saw the half smile on his lips; it was the kind of smile I never like to see on a man. There was bad blood between The Preacher and Ted Beaumont. I caught myself wondering if that was the reason Grace Beaumont and The Preacher had never married, and I figured it must be. They had been in love ever since Grace had nursed him back to health from that gunshot wound he had when he came into the valley.
“I don’t wear a gun when I’m talking to my friends, Ted,”The Preacher said easily.
It made Ted mad. He was a handsome kid, stocky-built. He had wavy blond hair. He was just twenty, but he had done a man’s work from the day his dad had been gored to death by a bull four years back, and all of us accepted him as a man. Ted had set himself up as a sort of leader here, and that was all right with most of us. We were going to need his kind of fire before this day was over.
There wasn’t a man in the valley wouldn’t have been glad to forget the scrapes the kid had been in, even if only for his sister Grace’s sake. But Ted wouldn’t let you. He always looked as if he was mad at the world. Now he got that nasty twist to his lip and said, “What you gonna do, Preacher? Sing church songs to them sheep?”
When you’re standing there thinking that within a few hours you’ll maybe be killing a fellow human being or getting killed yourself, that kind of talk sounds childish. We all felt it. The Preacher said, “Why not? I’ve heard you and Frank Medlin singin’ to cows on night herd. How do you know sheep don’t like music?”
The way he said it made Ted look a little foolish. The muscles of his face tightened. Until The Preacher had come in nobody had questioned any of Ted’s decisions, and Ted didn’t want his decisions questioned now. He said, “ Look, Preacher. We’ve decided on a line. They go one step beyond it and maybe we’ll club a few sheep. Maybe we’ll hang a few sheepherders.” He slapped the gun he had strapped around his middle. “ We don’t need no sermon from you. This gun will do the talkin’.”
The Preacher gave him a long look and then deliberately turned away. He spoke to those two farmers from the other valley. “ What happened in Rincon?” he asked.
The two Rincon men started to talk at once, stopped, and then one went ahead. “There’s six Mexican herders with the band,” the farmer said, “but they won’t cause no trouble. It’s this Corby Lane and the three men with him. They’re gun fighters, neighbor, and they come on ahead of the sheep.”
“We know the setup, Preacher,” Ted Beaumont said. His voice was ugly.
The kid was getting under my skin. “The Preacher ain’t heard it,” I said. “Let him hear it.”
“Why?” Ted Beaumont said, turning to me. “So he’ll know what verse in the Bible to read? Let’s get out of here. I warned you last month a couple of us had to put on guns and fix a boundary if we wanted to keep this valley clear of sheep.”
“You mean you and Frank Medlin decided you needed an excuse to wear guns?” The Preacher said.
“If Frank and me are the only two not afraid to wear guns, yes,” Ted said bluntly.
The Preacher shook his head. “You’re not tough, Ted,” he said. “I’ve told you that before. You’re just mixed up.”
I saw the wicked anger in Ted’s eyes and it wasn’t a man’s anger. It was the flaring temper of a kid. “I told you I’d handle this without your sermons, Preacher,” Ted said.
“You’re not going to handle it, Ted,” The Preacher said. “Not you or anyone here, the way you got it laid out.”
I kept my mouth shut. I liked The Preacher. I wanted to give him his chance. It was old Mel Martin who bristled. “ Hold on a minute,” Mel said. “There’s gettin’ to be too much palaver.”
“Looks to me like you need some palaver,” The Preacher said. “You’re gonna expose yourself, let Corby Lane know just how many men you got and what you plan—”
“You got a better idea, Preacher?” Mel said.
“I have,” The Preacher said. “Let me go up there and talk to Corby Lane.”
It surprised all of us and there was a loud hoot of derision from Ted Beaumont. “You and who else, Preacher?”Ted scoffed. “You and God, maybe?”
I saw the brittle hardness come into The Preacher’s eyes, and I could see him fighting to control his temper. “A man could do worse than picking God for a saddle partner, Ted,”The Preacher said. “But I figured on taking one man with me.”
“Who you want to take with you, Preacher?” Ted said, his voice sarcastic. “Old Fedor, maybe?”
The deep red of Fedor Marios’ complexion turned to a saddle-tan and I thought he would hit Ted. He didn’t have a chance. The Preacher’s voice was so soft we barely heard it, but it filled the room like a solid block: “Why don’t you come along with me, Ted?”
The color ran out of Ted Beaumont’s cheeks. I looked at The Preacher, and I was looking at a man who had fought a losing battle with his temper. He hadn’t planned on taking Ted Beaumont up there with him. He had planned on taking me, maybe. I was his best friend
. But a man could stand just so much. Even a man like The Preacher. Ever since he had known Grace Beaumont The Preacher had tried to be friendly with her brother. He had taken things from Ted no other man would have taken.
I saw the conflict in Ted Beaumont’s face. It was one thing to go up to that sheep camp with ten men back of him. It was another to go it alone with a man like The Preacher. I saw the conflict and I saw Ted make his decision. It was the wrong one. He figured The Preacher was bluffing and he was going to call that bluff.
“Sure, Preacher,” Ted said. “I’d like to see you run. What are we waiting for?”
“I got a little business to attend to,” The Preacher said. “I’ll be back in five minutes and we’ll go.”
“You sure you’ll get back, Preacher?” Ted said.
The Preacher had started toward the door. He stopped and turned. In his eyes was an anger so great that I knew it wasn’t aimed at Ted Beaumont alone. It was a bigger thing. An anger toward the thing that made Ted Beaumont the way he was. I couldn’t think of the man as The Preacher any more. He was Johnny Calaveras again, a man who had ridden in out of the night with a bullet in his chest. I wouldn’t have wanted to cross him right then. He looked at me and said, “You better come with me, Luke, to see I get back all right.” He went outside and mounted and I followed him.
He wanted to see Grace and tell her what had happened. That’s the way Johnny and Grace were with each other. He headed for the schoolhouse up at the end of the street and I followed.
Grace must have expected him. She had let the kids out for an early recess and I saw her standing by the oak tree out by the pump.
She was one of those women who become really beautiful after you knew them. The trouble Ted had caused her showed in her eyes and in the way she smiled, but the grief she had known was a part of her beauty. Johnny swung down easy and walked over to her, and she put out both her hands and he took them. I loosened my reins and let my horse crop at the grass. I didn’t want to listen to what they had to say. It was none of my business.
I glanced at them a couple of times, and they were standing there close together, still holding hands, The Preacher tall and straight and serious.
The kids had spotted them now and they were all standing there, staring like a bunch of calves at a corral fence.
Maybe the wind changed. Maybe Johnny spoke louder. Anyway, I heard him, though I wasn’t trying to listen. “Maybe I could have handled it, without a gun, the way we planned,” he said. “Maybe I couldn’t have. I won’t risk it with Ted along.”
Suddenly it was as if the two of them had reached the end of a dream and they were all alone in the world, and it wasn’t the world as they had wanted it, but the world as it was. I saw Johnny bend his head swiftly and kiss her, and I heard those blasted kids giggle, and it wasn’t anything to giggle about.
I saw Grace break away from Johnny’s embrace, reluctantly and yet quickly, and then she left the schoolyard and went across the street to the Perkins house, where the schoolteachers always lived. She walked rapidly. When she came back out of the house she had a folded belt and a holstered gun in her hand. She came across the street and handed it to Johnny Calaveras, and I knew it was the same gun he had worn into the valley. No one had seen it since that first night.
“I’ll take care of him, Grace,” I heard him say. “Maybe it’s best this way.” He buckled on the gun belt. The darkbrown stains of Johnny’s own blood were still on the leather. I felt old and tired and somehow useless, and then I saw Grace Beaumont’s eyes and I saw the worry and the end of a dream in them. I didn’t have to make any decision. I thought of my own wife and of the love I had seen between Johnny and Grace, a love that was maybe ending here today.
I rode over close to them. “I’m going, too, Johnny,” I said.
“I didn’t ask you,” he said flatly.
“You couldn’t stop me.”
We rode back to the store, and everyone was out in front. Ted Beaumont was in the street, mounted, a little uncertain. He said, “I see Luke didn’t let you get away from him.”
Suddenly I felt sorry for Ted Beaumont. He was nothing but a darn’-fool kid itching to get his fingers on a gun. I had seen the signs before. A gun could be a dangerous thing with a kid like Ted. I wondered if Johnny had known what it was like to want a gun more than anything else.
“Get this, kid,” Johnny said, and now his eyes were holding Ted. “From here on out I give the orders. Make up your mind to it or drop out now.”
I saw Ted bluster, wanting to give a scoffing answer, but that gun, the new look about The Preacher, held him from it. And he couldn’t back down now. He said, “What’s holding us up?”
“Nothing,” Johnny Calaveras said. “Not a thing.”
The sheep were an undistinguishable blot against the brown grass, and as Johnny and Ted and I climbed the hill the animals took form and shape and became separate bunches. We could see the herders, men on foot, and their dogs stretched in shady patches, tongues lolling, ears alert. The herders, half asleep under the trees, hadn’t noticed us yet. We couldn’t be seen from Corby Lane’s camp because there was a shoulder of the hill between us and the camp. Ted looked at me. There was an amused, indulgent swagger in his glance, but there were white patches at the corners of his mouth, and I knew he had been watching Johnny Calaveras.
The only thing Johnny had done was to strap on that gun and take off his gloves, but that made the difference. He wasn’t The Preacher any more. I could see his right hand just hanging limp at his side almost as if his elbow were broken. Johnny Calaveras was a gun fighter. It was marked on him as clearly as if it had been printed in red letters.
I watched his right hand opening and closing, loosening fingers that had been long unused in their deadly business. I saw Ted Beaumont’s lips move, and I knew the fear he was beginning to feel. I had felt it myself.
We had dropped down into a draw, out of sight of the sheep, and Johnny Calaveras reined up sharply. He didn’t waste words. “I know Corby Lane,” he said. “ I can ride into his camp and talk to him without getting shot at. What good it will do, I don’t know, but that’s the way it has to be.” A little of the harshness went out of his voice. “If it should come to a fight,” he said, “I want the odds on our side.”
He was talking straight to Ted now. There was something cold and deathlike about Johnny’s voice. I felt as if I were watching the opening of a grave.
“A gun fighter that stays alive,” Johnny said, “never gives a sucker a break. Luke, you ride up this draw and come in behind the camp. Keep your ears open, and don’t make a move unless I give the sign, but don’t be afraid to shoot if I do.”
I think he was trying to make Ted see that there was nothing glamorous about gun fighting. It was brutal stuff with nothing of trust or decency about it. I looked at Ted, wondering if he had seen through this, and I knew he hadn’t. He still had that cocky swagger in his eyes, but those white patches at the corners of his mouth were more noticeable. “You want me to ride along with Luke to cover for you?” he said.
“No,” Johnny said. “I want you to come along with me. Maybe Luke couldn’t hold you if you started to run.”
That was like slapping the kid in the face, but it was a smart move. Ted Beaumont would be twice as determined now. He was a little scared, and a little anger right now wouldn’t hurt him. I headed on down the draw, riding slow enough not to attract attention, and I saw Johnny and Ted ride up on the ridge to within full sight of the sheep camp.
Luck was with me and my timing was perfect. I came up behind the sheep camp just as Johnny and Ted rode in. The three men standing there by the oak didn’t even suspect I was around. They were too busy watching Johnny and Ted, and I was able to dismount and move up into the brush not fifty feet behind them.
One of the men looked more like a sheepherder than he did a gunman, but he kept his hand near his gun as he slouched there against the tree. Another was thick through, a brutal-looking man with sh
aggy hair and crossed gun belts and blue lips.
The other gunman was slender to the point of being emaciated, and at first I picked this one to be Corby Lane. His clothes seemed to hang on his frame. His shirt moved in the imperceptible breeze, and he gave the impression that if his clothes were removed he would be revealed as a skeleton strung together with spring wire. “You boys just ridin’?” he said. “Or did you want something?”
“I want to talk to Corby Lane,” Johnny Calaveras said slowly.
The thin man shifted his position slightly and I felt my finger tightening on the trigger of my rifle. “Corby’s taking a siesta,” the thin man said. “ You can say it to me.”
“I’ll wait for Corby,” Johnny said, smiling. It was a cold, thin smile.
I had watched this kind of thing before. The thin man was measuring Johnny, seeing the things I had seen. He had recognized Johnny for what he was, or for what he had been in the past, and the thin man was smart enough to take it easy. There wouldn’t be any fast gunplay. Both men had respect for the damage a .45 slug could do.
“You might have quite a wait,” the thin man said. He had glanced across the fire they had burning and beyond to the tent that stood under the oaks.
“I got time,” Johnny said.
The other two gunmen were standing back, letting the thin man do all the talking. Johnny and the thin man sparred, making small talk, each one looking for a weak spot in the other. It would have gone on like that until Johnny found the opening he wanted, except for Ted Beaumont.
I had been so busy watching the play between Johnny and the thin man and keeping my rifle ready on the other two gunmen that I had nearly forgotten Ted. He had behaved himself up to this point, and any fool could see what Johnny was doing, stalling, waiting for Corby Lane to show. But I had misjudged The Preacher. Ted said, “We’re wasting time, Preacher.” Every eye except Johnny’s turned toward him.