by Alan Lemay
When a horse won't come to you, it is necessary to go to the horse. Whiskers's injured knee was now paining him badly. His left foot was beginning to swell, and with great difficulty he worked off the loose boot with the toe of the other. Then, dragging the boot in one hand, he began to crawl toward the horse.
Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself across the level ground. The sock dragged off of the bootless foot; a little trickle of blood appeared on the ankle and began to dot his trail with little dark spots. Every inch of the way was torture, but inch by inch, foot by foot, he somehow covered the ground. From time to time Ten Spot moved forward in his grazing, undoing in a moment five minutes of agonizing toil.
Whiskers knew that the nearer he approached Ten Spot without attracting the animal's attention, the surer was his chance of success. He paused and rested ten yards from the mount, then forced himself to go on. Five yards. Ten Spot was headed the other way. Just a little farther, he told himself. Two yards more.
"C'mere, Ten Spot!" His voice sounded strange, a hoarse, raucous croak.
Ten Spot started, spun about, and gazed at the grotesque, sprawling figure of the man. Perhaps a faint scent of blood came to his nostrils. He whuffed, shook his head, and started away at a lope. One fore hoof stepped on the trailing reins, jerking down his head, and the horse somersaulted. Badly scared, the pony scrambled to his feet and went into a mad fit of bucking as he plunged away. Then he straightened out and ran.
Ten Spot was half a mile away when he began to graze again. Whiskers's face became gray and set as he stared at the distant horse. Without even an oath the old man gritted his teeth and started the long drag in pursuit. The pain in his leg was now almost unbearable, running in hot surges well up into his back. The blood still trickled slowly, draining his strength. It left little blackening dots in the dust of the plain. Once he collapsed face down, his laboring breath drawing little particles of sand between his dry lips, and, when he tried to spit it out, he could not.
Yet he went on and on, ever so slowly covering the ground, while the hours passed and the sun went down. Finally, somehow, three quarters of a mile from the carcass of the steer, he found himself once more one hundred yards from his horse. Whiskers regarded with dull eyes the animal that meant life, hope, the only chance he had to avoid a slow death on the plain.
The bleeding had stopped at last, but he was weak. He had not eaten since sun-up, and this, with the loss of blood, left him faint. His head pounded and swam, and gradually the prairie floor assumed a slow, hardly perceptible revolving motion that told him he had not much farther to go.
The sun was setting now behind the far Wind River Mountains, spreading over the softening sky a glory of wine purple and Aztec gold that Whiskers did not see. And with the sunset there came a far-off sound that brought the cold sweat to the old man's brow.
It began in a low, moaning thunder, the deep-lunged bass of a restless bull. It increased in volume till the great voice broke into bleating soprano bellows. No personality in the herd is so subject to malevolent whim as the bull. He can be as docile and timorous as any calf, or, sometimes, he can work himself up to prowl and stamp half the night, with enraged roars, over half a tin cupful of spilled blood. Not a fearsome sound, this bellowing, to a man in the saddle or by a fire, but an ominous thing to a crippled man alone on the plain, lying at the end of a dotted trail of blood. Slowly Whiskers twisted his head and looked back the way he had come. He could see the cattle, perhaps a dozen of them, a low black blur three quarters of a mile away. The bull he could not make out, but Whiskers knew that he was probably sniffing the blood of the fallen steer, and throwing dirt over his own back with pawing hoof.
Whiskers thrust a shaking hand into the pocket that had yielded the stray cartridge, in the desperate hope that another might be there. The pocket contained tobacco crumbs, lint nothing more. Hastily the old man began searching the other pockets in his clothes.
"God...!" he whispered fervently. "Leave me have jest one. For God's sake be there. Be there."
One was. Shakily Whiskers put the lone remaining cartridge into his gun. Then, with clamped teeth and features contorted with pain, he began the traversing of that last hundred yards to Ten Spot. Slowly, very slowly, he made his way, pausing frequently to husband strength. It was like the nightmare torture of a fever dream. Nearer now sounded the deep, moaning voice of the bull. Mwaaaw... mmmwaaaaw! a malevolent, evil thing.
Twenty minutes passed. The clear night of evening was dimming into dusk. Whiskers looked back. He could make out the bull now, a great dark beast in advance of his little band of staring cattle. He could see him sniff and paw. Unquestionably he was following up that crooked, tortured trail. The man turned his eyes to Ten Spot, thirty yards away.
The horse had ceased to graze and was half turned, staring back. Perhaps he was suspiciously regarding the huddled figure on the ground, perhaps looking at the approaching cattle beyond. On what the animal would do next depended Whiskers's chance for life.
The old man gauged the distance. Little use, the single cartridge, to kill the bull, if the other cattle followed in a trampling rush, or if Ten Spot once more cantered beyond his reach into the dusk. Whiskers made a brave decision. Drawing his revolver, he staked his life on a single flip of the cards.
He braced his elbows and aimed with both hands at the top of Ten Spot's neck. A graze shot could drop the horse, momentarily stunned. A fraction of an inch too high would miss; an equal strength margin too low would kill. Either error would mean the end.
His hands shook, and he dared not shoot. Three times he closed his eyes and lowered the gun to steady his trembling hands. On the fourth attempt he fired, and Ten Spot fell.
Scrambling, regardless now of pain, Whiskers clawed himself over the ground, any old way, desperately striving to reach the pony before he should rise, if, indeed, he were ever to rise again. He reached the fallen horse, dragged himself over Ten Spot's barrel, and clutched the horn. A long moment passed, the horse motionless beneath him, not seeming to breathe.
Mwaaaaw...mmmwaaaw! said the voice of the bull, very close now, so close that when he stood and pawed, Whiskers could hear his hoof tear at the earth. The old man rested. He was through, his last card played. It was already decided whether he had lost or won.
Ten Spot stirred, then rolled over on to his knees, and shook his head. With a mighty effort Whiskers got his sound leg over the saddle. The pony heaved to his feet.
"It's me, Ten Spot!" Whiskers croaked. "It's me! Whoa an' easy, in the name o' God!"
Somehow Whiskers recovered the trailing reins, and held the pony to a jogging walk until he could fumblingly strap himself to the saddle by buckling front and rear coat straps through his belt. His released bedroll slid off, but he didn't care. He let the reins fall over the pommel and held on with both hands. With the battle over, his game old nerve gave out, and the tears ran into his beard.
Ten Spot skirted the little herd of cattle, and headed south for the remuda, far away.
"Seems like...we're goin'...the wrong way," said Whiskers through the mists of pain.
He vainly tried to turn Ten Spot with his sound leg. Ten Spot went on.
Dawn and a creeping grayness. Then two long streaks of burnt orange came into the buckwheat sky just above the eastern horizon, like long trailers of bright smoke.
At the main herd camp of the Triangle R, one of the motionless rolls of blanket emitted a preliminary whimper, growled, and disgorged a tousled and bleary-eyed cook, fully dressed. This abused-looking husky stumbled over to the next roll of blanket and nudged it with his boot.
"Huh," he said to it in a tone of command." 'Snother day."
A puff-eyed 'puncher struggled to a sitting position and shook the next man.
With sleepy but effective movements the cook was starting his fire. The two wakened 'punchers pulled on their boots, picked up rope and rig, and stumbled off toward the remuda, preparing to relieve the two motionless statues riding night herd a q
uarter of a mile away. An encouraging smell of bitter black coffee began to drift over the camp; a great mass of potatoes began to sizzle; the fire cracked and smoked. Blanket rolls stirred and subsided, the men inside groping for a last brief catnap before the ordeal of getting into action.
Whack-Ear, deep within his blankets, woke slowly, and painfully considered the necessity of rolling out. Some feeble fumbling cleared his head of the blankets; he yawned and then listened. The soft plunk of walking hoofs sounded close, very close. In another moment a hoof moved into his line of vision and stopped. Whack-Ear twisted his neck, and with sleepy stupidity made his eye trace up a foreleg to the horse at the end of it. Suddenly Whack-Ear burst out of his blankets with a great yell.
"For God's sake, look here!"
All around him heads thrust sleepily out of blanket rolls. They stared for a fraction of a moment, then their owners, like Whack-Ear, turned out with sudden alacrity. A cluster of serious-faced 'punchers quickly formed about the invading horse.
In the middle sat Whiskers, slumped over the pommel, gripping the horn with white, stiff hands. One leg, crooked and unnatural, stuck out stiffly away from the stirrup. He looked at them uncomprehendingly, with haggard, staring eyes that seemed set in black pits.
Whack-Ear and Squirty Wallace were fumbling at the straps that tied the old 'puncher to the saddle. Whiskers opened his mouth and tried to speak, but only a rasping noise came forth. Then, with a great effort, he wrenched out a question.
"Which o' you boys," he croaked, "took the cartridges ...outo'...my iron?"
No one answered.
Whiskers slowly moved his haggard blank eyes over the group of 'punchers. "I know!" he rasped, fixing his gaze upon Fodder Williams. "That's the one!" He let go the horn, and stretched a stiff, shaking claw in Fodder's direction. "You ...yalla...coyote ...I'll fix...your dirty works."
Whiskers gripped the pommel and gamely tried to swing himself out of the saddle. Then suddenly he collapsed into Whack-Ear's arms.
"If I was you, Fodder," said Whack-Ear presently, "I b'lieve I'd take my horse an' ride."
Fodder, having considered the matter from all angles, took his horse and rode.
"Terlegaphy?" said Whiskers a long time after to a nottoo-cautious questioner. "Terlegaphy? 'S'all right, son, works real slick an' inflooential...sometimes. But when it ain't workin'...well, you best do like me. Send that or'nary, obstinate, wooden-headed crocodile some other sort o' message...one that'll be real pressin'!"
When a story is being told about a man, he himself is the last one to hear it. So it was a long time before I found out what was being told about the part I played in the gunfight up at Burnt Corral. But now I tell you that I was the last one who should have got any name out of that fight. It was Jim Flood who made that fight, Jim Flood as good as alone, one man against four, and I was no good.
That thing came at the end of the most haywire two weeks of my life, and those two weeks came at the end of the worst year I ever had, and I was feeling mighty sunk. I still think the Flying M that I rode for that year was in the right. The big Salinas crowd, made up of four or five big brand outfits, was warring it out with three or four little outfits like the Flying M, such as could only have one or two riders, and the idea was to rough our little outfits and worry us always, until we were rubbed out of the range.
It was the same old story of war over grass and water, with the same old finish the little ones being beaten and crushed out by the big ones. But though the end was written in the beginning, it seems an end to such a thing can't come without three or four good boys being leveled off and spaded under the plain. Of course, that had happened here.
I was only a hired hand for the Flying M, but I had ridden mighty hard and steady for that outfit, and I swear to you I had seldom given an inch to the riders of the Salinas crowd. The same was true of Bud Cary, my side rider, the Flying M's only other cowboy. The Salinas crowd killed Bud Cary at Wolf Head Water Hole. Later they tried to get me at Paintrock Gap, but there I had the luck to kill the man who had killed Bud, and I got away.
Just about then the Flying M owners had enough, and they quit cold. They quit the valley and they quit cattle and they quit me. It seems the big outfits always have the law with them, and the Flying M owners had found it needful to clear themselves by denying all knowledge of shooting orders, and blaming me.
So there I was, outlaw, without hope of justice, and no loyalty left to anything worn out and broke, and hunting a hole to crawl into, which came mighty hard.
Late in the day of August 31 I was working my horse up through the bouldery bed of the Little Stormy, which was almost dry from the fading out of the snows above. That day I had come all the way from the floor of the desert up into the timber belt, where the Dragoon Mountains stand, gaunt and straight, pushing their granite into the sky.
I was still trying to break loose and head south for the Mexican border, but they were checking the country so close there was small chance of making it through, unless I could get rested, and somehow get hold of fresh horses. For I had ridden the same horse a week, and he was all but finished.
So I had spent the last of his strength making it into this high, lost crack in the Dragoons, where I knew there was an abandoned miner's cabin, and usually a grub cache. And here I meant to lay over a little while, until I could decide what I'd better do.
A little before sundown, I rode into the meadow that was well known to the boys as the Burnt Corral. I can tell you it looked good to me, cupped in among those almighty tall Dragoons, still and quiet, with plenty of water, and fetlockdeep grass that was actually green, from the cienaga seep. On the far side was the little cabin, made of logs instead of adobe like the outfits down below, and I was hoping I would find some beans and bacon here, as well as rest for a saddle-weary man.
Then, as I came within the last hundred yards, I pulled up and sat listening. I don't know what warned me. The quiet was unbroken, but somehow I knew that something was wrong, and that this was a place I shouldn't have come to. I must have sat there in the saddle for five minutes before I pushed my pony up near the cabin, moving slowly.
Then suddenly there was a girl standing in the cabin doorway, looking at me. She had stepped there without any sound, just as if she had appeared out of nothing. She had a carbine slung in the crook of her arm.
I suppose I never saw a more unwelcome sight. That girl standing there meant finish for me. It didn't even matter whether she was alone or not. I didn't need the cabin any more than a coyote does, and I could probably talk her out of the bacon and beans. But, above all, I needed grass and water for my pony, and there wasn't the equal of the Burnt Corral for that in another day's ride. And I knew that as soon as I had pulled out, she would hightail downcountry and give the alarm, and the posses would be closing in, and just about all the chance that was left would be gone.
Yet, even then, bad as she made things look for me, I realized that she made a mighty pretty picture standing there in the long clear twilight. She was a slim, straight girl, with a thin lively face. Her short tawny hair was rumpled up all wild and loose, and she had straight eyes that never flickered.
"You're Kit Palmer," I said at last.
"And you're Bill Saunders," she said, "wanted for the killing at Paintrock Gap."
I don't think I had ever spoken to her before, but each of us knew who the other was, all right. Her father was Sundown Palmer, one of the Salinas crowd that had busted the Flying M, and was now after my scalp. I don't know why a tough old character is called a sundowner in some parts of the West, but that is how Sundown got his name. And this girl, pretty as she was, was well able to take care of herself on her own account. Deer hunting was her game, and she thought nothing of going off on a week's hunt, alone in the hills.
"I wasn't exactly expecting you," Kit Palmer said.
"Naturally," I said. "I didn't know you'd took over this stand, or I wouldn't be here."
"This is anybody's shack that wants to us
e it, I guess."
"And first come has water rights," I answered. "So me, I'll be moving on."
"I don't know as you will," Kit Palmer said. "There's a reward up for you, my gun-throwing friend."
I said: "There isn't anything you can do to stop me, I guess."
"I can drop you out of the saddle as easy as I'd drop a bird," she said, letting the carbine swing loose and easy on her arm.
I sat there in the saddle and studied her, and I still thought that she made a mighty pretty picture, standing there in her cowboy clothes, on her slim long legs. She was good-looking enough in her sort of way, but I was tired and I lost my temper.
"I'm going to turn my horse and be out of here," I told her. "It would be like a Palmer to shoot a rider in the back. But you're not going to do it, because you lack what it takes. You're going to watch me ride out of here without even raising your gun, and, even if you do raise it, you won't be able to get the trigger pulled."
"No?" she said.
"No. I can even tell you what you'll do next. You'll saddle up and go downcountry and run yipping to the Salinas coyote pack, and tell 'em where I'm to be found. I know your kind and your breed. I know you right down to the ground."
Even in the dark I could see how white she had turned under her tan. I grinned, feeling very bitter. Then I turned my worn-out horse, and I walked him toward the upcountry trail.
A black silence shut down as I turned my back on Kit Palmer. All I could hear was the swish of my pony's slow hoofs, as he stumbled in the grass. I didn't know whether Sundown Palmer's daughter raised her gun on me or not, and I didn't much care. I rode across the meadow toward the dry trail above.
Then I heard a pony behind me, and I knew that Kit Palmer was coming after me. Wearily I figured that she had decided to make one more bluff to hold me for the posse. I faced my horse around and let her come up.