West of Nowhere

by Alan Lemay

  You couldn't see Whiskers's grin there in the dark, but I could tell by his voice that he grinned.

  "Come here, boy," Whiskers said. "You ain't forgotten me. You ain't forgot me at all. Come over here."

  My hair kind of raised, like is likely to happen if you are watching something that runs crosswise of the regular way things happen, and you have the feeling that something is almighty wrong, without just knowing what. For now Pain Killer took a slow kind of cautious step toward Whiskers Beck.

  I suppose it took Whiskers four or five minutes to get that horse to come across the corral to him. But little by little Pain Killer came. Those killers have their bad days and good days, and sometimes you can handle them for months without their making a pass at you, but to judge by what had already happened that day I figured Pain Killer was in one of his bad streaks. I was figuring that any minute he might whirl and lash out, or else come high striking with his front hoof and reaching for a hold with his teeth.

  Pain Killer came clear up to where Whiskers could touch him. Whiskers took him by the ear, kind of rough and easygoing, and whopped him on the neck with his big horny hand. For a while he stood there, talking to him, while Pain Killer stood quiet as a wooden horse and never made a move.

  Finally Whiskers crawled back through the fence, and Pain came to the fence and stood, looking through the bars after him. I went over to the fence just for a test, and Pain snorted and whirled and went to the far side of the corral. I turned to Whiskers Beck.

  "I'll place your bet," I said. "Maybe you know better what you're doing than I do, for all I know."

  I took Whiskers Beck's money and bet it with Ron Helmholtz, getting two and a half to one that Ben would not qualify on Pain.

  I was the third bronc' rider out of the chute the next day, and I qualified all right, making an ordinary ride on an ordinary bucking horse. But hardly anybody around there noticed, I hope, how close I come to slipping a stirrup, just through not having my mind on my work. Everything about that rodeo seemed the same as dozens of other rodeos I had worked in the lay-out the same, the stock the same, and the people the same but somehow there was something unnatural about the whole thing.

  There was the flat twenty-acre arena, sending up little dusty heat waves in the sun. There was the grandstand full of people, and the double rows of cars parked all the way around the arena fence, and there was the tall chutes with the big broadside gates that the bronc's came out of, and riders roosting around careless on the part of the chutes that was not being used. The calves were bawling, and a loudspeaker was squawking up in the stand, and a rumbling noise came from the crowd whenever something happened everything just like usual.

  Yet somehow nothing seemed usual about it to me. Stronger than ever I had that superstitious feeling that Ben had met his come-uppance. The more I thought about it the surer I was that Ben could not ride Pain, and would not live to try it again if he was bucked down, and that all that stood between Ben and a bloody smashing under Pain Killer's hoofs was just a gamble on the voice of an old man.

  It seemed like all day before Ben's number came up, but Pain Killer was thrown into the chute at last. I saw him come into the chute fighting, hating the close quarters. They had a bad time getting him headed into the chute, at all, and, when they got him in, he stopped halfway between Gate No. 1 and Gate No. 2, and wouldn't be driven and wouldn't be led. Somebody laid a quirt across him to drive him up in, and he came up on his hind legs and whirled, trying to get at the man, and came crashing down in the bottom of the chute, kicking four ways at once. They finally had to use a bull gad to ram him into place.

  By this time Whiskers Beck, who had been filling in for a judge in the calf roping, got loose from his job and came loping across. Maybe he could have gotten Pain into the chute without so much row, but by this time he was gated in and ready to saddle.

  Pain stood there making a low, ugly kind of groaning noise down in his chest. His eyes had gone as hard as glass, not scared or unhappy, or worried, but just plain hard and ready for fight. His ears were pricked forward, and he was waiting for the saddle now. And suddenly I knew that, if they would change their minds and turn that horse back in the corral, Pain would be disappointed, he was so plumb eager now for a chance at his man.

  A couple of the handlers were easing Ben's saddle down onto Pain Killer's back, and Pain stood steady. I saw him shuck his shoulders to settle the saddle into place. He knew the game! And now Whiskers Beck dropped off his pony and came to the side of the chute by Pain's head.

  I heard Whiskers talking kind of low and deep to Pain, as he had talked to him the night before.

  "Easy, boy. Take your time now, boy. Ain't you ashamed of yourself?"

  Pain turned quiet so suddenly that my hair raised again, seeing the way that old man's voice could work on that killer horse. A kind of marvel came over me as I thought for a minute that Whiskers Beck knew what he was doing, had known all the time, and could quiet that horse till he would maybe buck no more than a little calf.

  Then I saw that something was wrong. Pain was not standing quiet and easy at all, but just as rigid as if he was made of stone. I spoke to Whiskers, holding my voice casual and low.

  "Whiskers, look out. Take your hand off that gate and look out."

  And before the words were out of my mouth, Pain let go. Pain's wind exploded in his throat in a kind of cough. He came on to his hind legs quick as a lion and twisted in the chute to smash out with both fore hoofs at where Whiskers stood. If Pain had caught Whiskers's hand with the edge of his hoofs, Whiskers would have lost his hand. As it was, the side of one of his pasterns caught Whiskers's hand against the board of the gate, and we found out afterward that right there two fingers broke.

  Whiskers Beck turned gray. He didn't jump, but after a second he took a step back and looked at his hand, as if he couldn't believe his eyes. The saddle they were putting on was only half cinched, and, when this happened, it slid back and to the side, pretty near under Pain's belly, such as would make any other bucking horse go wild, but Pain paid it no mind. The handlers cussed and reached down and worked the saddle up into place again.

  Whiskers Beck stepped up to the gate again. "Boy," he said, "what's got into you? You gone crazy, boy?"

  I tell you it was like as if he dropped a match into powder. Pain squealed this time as he came up again, lashing out at Whiskers with everything he had till you'd think that he would either break a leg or smash that heavy chute. I had climbed up on the fence ten feet away, and the six-by-ten post I was sitting on shook as if you hit it with a ten-pound sledge.

  As the dust cleared and Pain stood quiet again, Whiskers spoke to Pain once more, but his voice was kind of wondering now, and very scared.

  "Boy," he said, "why, boy...."

  This time Pain didn't blow up, but he measured the distance and rammed his head between the bars, trying to get at Whiskers with his teeth.

  The handler who was trying to get the saddle on Pain stood up on the side of the chute and shoved his hat on to the back of his head, cussing.

  "Get that old brush-faced pelican away from here," he said, "or get somebody else to screw this saddle down! Don't you know no better than to stir up a horse a man is trying to cinch?"

  Whiskers turned away and walked a little way along the fence, and kind of slid down the fence to sit in the dust. Looking at him, I knew what was in his mind. He knew now that his scheme had blown up in his face and worked out so that he had just about as good as killed Ben Cord.

  I dropped off the fence to squat beside him.

  "It's all right, Whiskers," I said. "You done the best you could."

  "Good God," Whiskers said, so you could hardly hear him. "Good God in heaven!"

  "He may ride him," I said.

  "The man don't live," Whiskers said in a dead voice, "that can ride Pain the way he is today."

  I opened my mouth to say something, but I shut it again, I was so dead sure that Whiskers Beck was right.

&nbs
p; Whiskers turned to me. "Listen," he said, whispering, "stop Ben...get hold of him before he climbs that chute. You've got to...."

  "There's no use talking to Ben," I said.

  "Talk to him, hell! Call him the worst names you can think of, and then bring up your right clear from the heel of your boot and knock him cold! It's the only...."

  I jumped up, not waiting to hear the rest. I hadn't ever interfered with anybody's ride before, but all of a sudden I was willing to interfere now. I don't know if I would have tackled it on Ben's account alone. For though my hunch kept riding me that he was going to die, that's the bronc' rider's choice when he asks for a horse, and he has the right to make it alone. But here was this old man who had studied it all out, not for his own sake but for somebody else. If things went on for a minute more, he was going to spend what was left of his life blaming himself, and never able to get out of his mind the picture of a thousand pounds of crazy squalling horse driving hoofs down into something bloody in the dust. I was going to do what Whiskers wanted, and try to crack Ben down before he could ride.

  But now I saw that I was too late. It only takes a second or two to jerk tight the cinch and make fast, and the rider slides into the saddle and his helper, straddling the chute, heaves upward with his back, trying to cut the bronc' in two with the flank strap.

  All that only takes a couple of seconds, and the quicker after that you come out of the chute the less likely you are to be down in the bottom of it with a thrashing horse. They had gone through those motions very fast, once Whiskers had turned away. I saw that Ben was in the saddle, and the boy who had stood over him to heave upward on the bucking strap was already off the gate.

  Ben shouted: "Damn it, will you swing that gate?"

  The loudspeakers had already announced four or five times that Ben Cord was about to come out on Pain Killer. There was a second or two of complete silence now, as the boy handling the gate snatched loose the rope and swung the gate clear. That gate swung open right in my face, and I like to got stampeded over as that big black cyclone of a horse came out.

  I made a move toward where Whiskers's horse had stood, its reins down to hold it, but Whiskers had already flipped the reins over its head and was vaulting into the saddle without using the stirrup. So I turned back to watch how many jumps poor Ben would ride in maybe the last ride of his life.

  I had seen Pain buck before. I knew that horse. I knew both sides of him top side and bottom side for I had seen the one from the saddle and the other from the ground, with his hoofs coming down on me in that second when Bill Daly crashed his horse into the killer and made him miss. And nobody knew better than I knew that this horse had everything.

  He had the double pound that is caused by a horse sucking his back from under you just before he bumps it again and hits the ground, so that, instead of just the plain shock of jump and hit, it is as if he hauled off and struck upward at you with a thousand pounds. He had a sun-fishing twist, and he could come down out of it so straight upon his forelegs that at least once in his life he had gone clean over in a somersault, smashing the rider under the cantle of the saddle so that he never walked again.

  He could twist and turn on his side so low that it seemed your stirrup swept the ground, plumb careless of how he would come down if he fell. But most of all he had such a terrific crazy power to him as I have never felt in any horse, and once his rider was unbalanced, Pain never jumped back under him again. After that it was just a question of whether your pick-up men could get in to ward him off in time as he whirled and came back, striking down.

  I said I knew that horse. I mean I thought I knew him. For I never knew Pain or any other horse to turn on as Pain turned on now. Maybe it was the blood in his nose from having got his man the day before. Maybe it was the voice of Whiskers Beck somehow tangling up and working backward in the dizzy meanness that passed for Pain's brain. I know that Pain never fought like he did that day, and never did again.

  On the first jump, as Pain came out of the chute, Ben's spurs swung high, raking him down the side of his neck, and Pain bawled and blew up. He took two long leaping jumps to gather speed, then went up in the air and came down with such a full hard stop, straight up on his forelegs, that he was able to make his next jump really backward. Pain whirled, leaning so deep on his side that I thought he was down, then again two more of the hardest backward jumps I ever saw.

  And still Ben was riding him not just staying with him, but raking him crazily from mane to saddle blanket on every jump. It seemed to me that Ben was not using his legs to keep him on that bronc' at all, but just somehow balancing in the seat of the saddle, swinging both stirrups wild and free as he scratched the horse. That is the test of a bronc' rider not how long he can stay, but how high he can scratch.

  I swear, time and time again I saw daylight under Ben's spurs daylight between his boots and the top of Pain's neck. Somehow, for no reason, Ben Cord was making the ride of his life, riding better than he knew how, better than he could possibly ride. Cowboys who had seen a thousand bronc' riders were staring glassy-eyed. Only the ignorant ones, who had only seen a few, maybe failed to realize that you could follow the bronc's for a hundred years and maybe not see such a ride again.

  The killer bawled and put everything he had more than any horse has a right to have in maybe five more short, high, sun-fishing bucks, and still Ben's spurs swung high, though he had long ago passed the first three bucks where you really have to scratch the neck to qualify. Now Pain Killer, crazy wild that the man still stayed, threw himself, turning into the air, and came down any old way, no hoofs on the ground. I thought for a second it was a somersault, but somehow he twisted and came on the side of his neck, then down on his side.

  There was Ben, clear of the stirrup that was smashed under the horse, standing over Pain Killer. And he was in the saddle again as the black horse sprang up.

  At last the whistle blew. I don't know for sure, but I'll bet that whistle should have been blown long before, only the timekeeper had forgot where he was or what he was supposed to do, watching that ride. Whiskers Beck crowded in as Pain still went down the field in those crooked sunfishing jumps. Whiskers got an arm about Ben and dragged him clear of Pain Killer, and Ben squirmed up behind Whiskers on the other horse.

  I stood there and rolled a cigarette. It was only beginning to dawn on me that Ben had made the ride that Whiskers had bet he would make. What got into Ben, that he was able to do that? I don't know. He didn't know about the bet with the Helmholtz brothers, let alone anything about Whiskers's shenanigan to make it a possible ride. He didn't know anything about any of that. I don't believe, as he rode, he even realized that he was riding for prize money, but just rode for the love of riding a tough one, riding the tail right off of a killer horse.

  What do you suppose Ben said as they set him down at the chutes? That wild Indian, that crazy kid, he just said: "What's the matter...ain't you got any tough hosses here?"

  He didn't know yet he had saved Johnny Fraser's brand.

  I didn't see Whiskers Beck until that night, when our trails crossed while he and I both were hunting around town for another drink.

  "Well, Whiskers," I said, "I guess you won your bet."

  "Yes, I guess I won the bet."

  "The only thing now is to get your money."

  "I got the money," he said.

  "And this saves Johnny's lay-out?"

  "Well, I guess it as good as saves his lay-out."

  "It sure will be a big moment for you," I said, "when you ride in there and break the news to Johnny that you've laid hands on the dough."

  Whiskers Beck shook his head. Some code of his own sure had him in a stranglehold. "Everything I did worked out wrong," he said. "What it amounted to, I threw away Johnny's money. And not only that, I threw away Ben Cord's life. Yes, his life, you hear me? All the smart things I rigged up went to hell in a cloud of dust, and nothing would have been saved out of it, except for the hellfire riding of a wild, crazy, half
Indian kid. Gil, I'm an old man and a washout, and this is too much for me."

  "Just the same," I said, "you got plenty guts.. .more than me, more than Ben himself. And you'll find you've got a home for life, back in the Tonto!"

  Whiskers shook his head again. "I'm sending the money to Johnny."

  "Say...you mean you aren't going back to...."

  "I'm hitting the trail the opposite way," Whiskers said.

  He turned and walked off into the dark, walking just as steady as if he had not downed enough whisky to kill two men. I never saw him again.

  "Daw-gone it," protested Brian Duffy plaintively. "Dawgone it! I was afeared of this exact thing. Here's the Malloon Desert..." his short fringe of white beard quivered with emotion "with no more than one head of people to every eight hundred square miles. But let a man lay hands on a rich sample of ore, and the rumor runs from one end of the Malloon to the other quicker'n a greased pig on skates."

  His partner, Peculiar Shirt Smith, set in on him savagely: "And what about: this deed signed Aloysius MacGinnis? What about it? Is it forged like they say? Dast you write your name, right here on this table top, so we can see for ourselves whose handwritin' tacked on that name?"

  Brian Duffy raised aged blue eyes humbly, and looked briefly at each of the men who stood over him. Although there were but four of them, including his own partner, the little cabin at the head of the Three Burros shaft seemed packed with people. Besides Peculiar Shirt Smith, there were those two silent and ugly-looking strangers, the short man with the washed-out green eyes, and the dark-faced hombre who looked as if he had less sense than thirst for trouble. Worst of all, there was the wiry man whose graying hair still showed a trace of red the one who had dropped a bombshell on the partners by announcing himself as Aloysius MacGinnis, original discoverer, and sole owner, of the long-abandoned Three Burros mine.