Utah Blain (1984)

by L'amour, Louis

  "Glad to see you here, Rink," he said. "I was afraid you'd be late for the party!"

  "I'm goin' to send you to hell, Blaine!" Rink's voice was low, cold.

  Utah Blaine wanted to shatter that coldness. He wanted to break that dangerous, icy calm. "You?" Utah put a sneer in his voice. "Why, Rink, without help you never saw the day you could send me anywhere! I've seen you draw, Rink. You're a washwoman, so beggarly slow I'd be ashamed to acknowledge you a Western man. You--a gunfighter?"

  He laughed again. "As for sendin' me to hell, with all this help you might do it. But you know what, Rink? If I go to hell I'll slide

  through the door on the blood I drain from you an' Nevers. I'll take you two sidewinders right along, I'll--" He had been talking to get them off edge, and now--"take you"

  Incredibly fast, his hands flashed for their guns. Rink was ready, but the talk had thrown him off. Yet even without that split second of hesitation he could never have beaten that blurring, swift movement of hands, the guns that sprang up. His own gun muzzle was only rising when he saw those twin guns and knew that he was dead.

  He knew it with an instant of awful recognition. It seemed that in that instant as if the distance was bridged and he was looking right into the blazing green eyes of Blaine. Then he saw the flame blossom at the gun muzzle and felt the bullet hit him, felt himself stagger. But he kept on drawing. And then the second bullet, a flicker of an instant behind the first, hit him in the hip and he started to fall.

  His gun came out and he fired and the bullet hit the tree with a thud. With an awful despairing he realized he was not going to get even one bullet into Blaine, and then he screamed. He screamed and lunged up and fired again and again, his bullets going wild as death drew a veil over his sight and pulled him down . . . down . . . down.

  Blaine had turned. Those two shots had rapped out as one and he spun, getting partial shelter from the tree, and in the instant of turning he saw an incredible thing: instead of firing at him, Nevers lifted his gun and shot Lee Fox in the stomach!

  Fox stared at him, his eyes enormously wide, the whites showing as he staggered down the steps, trying to get his gun up. "I should--I should have--killed you!" His head turned slowly with a sort of ponderous dignity, and he looked at Blaine. "Kill him," he said distinctly. "He is too vile to live!" And Lee Fox fell, hitting the ground and rolling over.

  Hoerner was running and now he was behind Blaine. He fired rapidly into Utah's back. He shot once . . . twice . . . three times.

  The yard broke into a thunder of shooting and Blaine, shot through and through, staggered out from the tree. He slammed a shot into Nevers that ripped the rancher's shoulder; a second shot that knocked the gun from his hand. Turning, Blaine dropped to one knee, red haze in his eyes, and smashed out shots at Hoerner. He saw the big body jerk, and he shifted guns and shot again

  and saw Hoerner falling. Then Utah turned back and he saw Nevers standing there, his right side red with his own blood.

  "You're a murderer, Nevers!" Blaine's voice was utterly cold. "You started this! You were there with Fuller when they hung Neal! I heard your voice! You were behind it! Good men have died for you!"

  Utah Blaine's gun came up and Nevers screamed. Then Blaine shot him through the heart, and Nevers stood there for an instant, rocking with the shock of another bullet and then fell against the tree. The man with the drooping shoulder was lifting a Winchester and taking a careful sight along it when a rifle roared from the house door.

  Amazed, Utah turned his head. Angie stood in the doorway, her father's Spencer in her hands. Coolly, she fired again, and Blaine looked toward the corral. "Come out, Machuk! Come out with your hands up!"

  There was a choking cry, then Machuk's voice, "Can't. You-- you busted my leg!"

  Blaine turned and stared at Angie. One hand clung to a tree trunk. His body sagged. "Angie--you--you--all right?"

  Then he heard a thunder of hoofs and he fell, and the ground hit him and he could smell the good fresh dust of the cool shadows. He heard the crinkle of a dried leaf folding under his cheek and the soft . . . soft . . . softness of the deep darkness into which he was falling away.

  He opened his eyes into soft darkness. There was a halo of light nearby. The halo was around a dimmed lamp, and it shone softly on the face of the girl in the chair beside his bed. She was sleeping, her face at peace. At his movement, her eyes opened. She put out a quick hand. "Oh, you mustn't! Lie still!"

  He sagged back on the pillow. "What--what happened?"

  "You were wounded. Three shots. You've lost a lot of blood. "

  "Nevers? Rink?"

  "Both dead. Rals Forbes was here, and Padjen stayed here. He's sleeping in the other room. Rocky White was here, too."

  "White?"

  "He's the new marshal of Red Creek."

  White, a tall, rugged young puncher, looked like a good man. So much the better.

  "What happened to Ben Otten?"

  "Nevers killed him the night before you got here. Ben came here--for what I don't know--and Nevers shot him. Maybe he thought he was you. Maybe he didn't care. His body was lying in the stable all night and all the morning before the fight. "

  Otten . . . Nevers . . . Witter. And then Miller and Lud Fuller, and before them Gid Blake and Joe Neal . . . and for what?

  "Country's growin', Angie," he whispered, "growin' up. Maybe this was the last big fight. Maybe the only way men can end violence is by violence, but I think there are better ways."

  "They are setting up a city government in Red Creek," Angie said. "All of them are together."

  "That's the way. Government. We all need it, Angie." He was silent. "Government with justice . . . sometimes the words sound so ... so damn' stuffy, but it's what men have to live by if they will live in peace."

  "You'd better rest."

  "I will." He lay quiet, staring up into the darkness. "You know," he said then, "that 46--it's a good place. I'd like to see the cattle growin' fat on that thick grass, see the clear water flowin' in the ditches, see the light and shadow of the sun through the trees. I'd like that, Angie. "

  "It's yours. Joe Neal would like it too. You held it for him, Utah."

  "For him . . . and for you. Without you it wouldn't be much, Angie."

  She looked over at him and smiled a little. "And why should it be without me?" she asked gently. "I've always loved the place . . . and you."

  He eased himself in the bed and the stiffness in his side gave him a twinge. "Then I think I'll go to sleep, Angie. Wake me early ... I want to drink gallons and gallons of coffee ..." His voice trailed away and he slept, and the light shone on the face of the woman beside him. And somewhere out in the darkness a lone wolf called to the moon.