by Alan Lemay
She had jumped on her pony bareback, and her hair was floating in the wind as she came tearing up. But when she had brought her pony to a stop, she didn't seem to know what to say.
"Well," I said, "what is it now?"
"You're wrong about the Palmers," she said in a queer voice. "No Palmer ever shot anybody in the back."
"They shot Bud Cary in the back at the Wolf Head," I reminded her.
"That was Jap Connolly did that," she said. "I don't hold it against you that you downed Connolly when they jumped you at Paintrock Gap."
This was a surprise, and I began trying to figure what kind of a shenanigan she was working on now.
"I don't throw guns around at anybody from either behind or in front," she went on, still talking kind of queer. "And another thing I don't do is run yipping to turn a posse onto an all-in man on a half-dead horse. I don't recognize you, and I didn't see you here. You're welcome to the cabin and the feed."
I sat and stared at her, and finally I began to believe she meant what she said. "I'm ashamed of the way I spoke to you," I said.
"Forget it. Cut loose your pony and we'll cook up a few venison steaks."
I would have been a fool not to take her up on that. We rode back to the little cabin. But before swinging down, I sat quietly on my horse in front of the door, listening. The girl dropped off her pony. Then, seeing what I was doing, she stood still and listened, too.
"There's another horse coming up the Little Stormy," she said, after a minute.
I drew a deep breath and I felt weak, for she was right.
Kit Palmer said: "You'd better swing your horse around the cabin and fix to pull out through the trees, if you need to. And maybe you'd better shift your saddle onto my horse."
God knows I didn't feel like fighting, but I didn't want to run out with the girl's horse, either. As I stalled and argued, the rider from downcountry came into view, and it was too late.
The clear sunset light was still hanging on, and even at the quarter mile I recognized the bald-faced roan horse and knew who the rider was.
The girl knew as quick as I did. "It's Jim Flood!" she said, and I partly knew why she spoke so sharp. "Is he on the gun for you?"
"Not that I know of."
Still, in the uncertain way I was living, I figured it would be best to make sure, so I went out to meet him, riding at a walk. We met out in the meadow well out from the cabin, and both reined up and sat sizing each other up. I knew his name, and I supposed he knew mine, but I'd never talked to him before.
Jim Flood had been holding down the same job with the little Lazy J that I had had with the Flying M, except that I was supposed to be just a cowboy while Flood was supposed by everybody to be there because he was a gunfighter who had made his name out-country on warrior jobs. Having heard so often how bad he was with a gun, I was kind of surprised at the way he looked up close, for he didn't look like a tough one at all, but like a happy-go-lucky kid.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he said unfriendly.
There never had been any love lost between the Flying M and the Lazy J, even though we were on the same side of the war. But while my owners had turned against me, his boss had been run out of the country altogether, so there wasn't any great reason for enmity between us. Still, the way he had come at me, there wasn't anything I could do or say.
"I don't guess I ever learned to hear that brand of question, Flood," I told him.
He was looking past me, very steady, and now it suddenly came to me why he had come at me on the prod. Everybody knew that Jim Flood was dead gone on Kit Palmer, and though it drove her father crazy, Sundown Palmer hadn't been able to keep him from seeing her sometimes. Now that Flood saw that she was here, I figured it probably steamed him up because I was here with her. When a man is crazy about a girl, he isn't always reasonable.
"You got no business even being in the same country with her," he said now.
"I guess," I answered, "that's for her to say, and not you.,,
"Maybe," he said. "I'm still enough people to decide some things like that."
"Meaning?"
"You're moving on."
"No," I said. "I'm not moving on, nor taking orders from you in any shape or way."
His face changed. I saw his eyes flicker to my gun, and his own hands were light and ready together in front of him on his reins.
Kit Palmer had been riding out toward us, and now she was with us before we knew it. "Jim," she said in a despairing voice, "what's the matter with you now?"
Jim Flood looked at her steady. "Kit," he said, "go back. I have to talk to this man, and you have to go back."
He meant it to be an order, but it didn't sound convincing. He must have known that Kit Palmer wouldn't move.
"Jim, if you fight again...here and now...I'll never speak to you again."
I don't think he believed her.
After a minute or two he said: "All right, Kit."
"I got some shot meat here," Kit Palmer said. "We'd better all have something to eat now, I should think. I'm going to go back and cook." She turned and rode toward the cabin.
Jim Flood and I looked at each other a minute, and then, a little sheepishly maybe, we followed her pony.
"This thing isn't over," Flood said. "We've got to have it out, later on."
"That's all right with me."
We rode up to the cabin, and Flood threw down his saddlebags and his blanket roll. Then I began getting wood in, and one thing and another like that, while Kit Palmer set in to cook some meat. Flood rode off to the edge of the meadow and put his horse up a climb. I knew that he was taking a look out in the last light where he could see the back trail down Little Stormy.
It was dark, and the meat was ready by the time he got back. Kit and I had dug up a couple of old lamps, and they were lighting the cabin in a smoky way. Jim Flood came and stood in the doorway, his eyes on Kit Palmer.
"Kit," he said, "I got to tell you something."
"I'm not asking any questions," Kit Palmer told him.
"This ropes you in as well as me," Flood said. "I guess it ropes all three of us."
Kit looked at him. "Jim, you've been in a fight?"
"Kit, I swear I could've downed them all," Flood said. "I had to gun two of them to get clear. One I took through the arm because it was him or me, and one I brought off his horse with a bullet in his leg, because his horse was better than what I had. It was the least I could do, if I was going to get clear."
Kit said: "Thank you, Jim. But I don't think we have got to talk about it now."
"That's just the trouble. We do have to talk about it. I thought I gave them the slip before I made my break up the Little Stormy. I've just found out that I didn't give them the slip. Four deputies from Salinas are riding up the Little Stormy. Right now they're within a mile. They're wanting Bill Saunders, here...and they're wanting me."
There was a long moment of silence, then Kit said: "You'll have to get out, Jim. Both of you have to get out!"
Jim Flood shook his head. "This is the first time I ever ran for it in my life. I couldn't have done it except for you ...and, even for you, I can't keep on."
"But if you let them take you back...." There was fear in Kit Palmer's face. She knew as well as we did what kind of trial either one of us would get if they took us back.
"I can't let them take me back."
"But if you stand and fight...."
"Kit, this time I can't fight, either. One of the deputies is your father."
There was silence again while they looked at each other.
Kit Palmer cried out: "Jim, you can't fight him!"
"Of course, I can't fight him."
"But if you won't ride?"
"I've run from them once. That was once too much. If I do it again I'll never be able to live with myself. I'll run no more."
Suddenly Kit Palmer moved quickly toward the door.
Jim caught her with: "Where you going?"
"I'm going out
to meet them and turn them back."
Flood smiled and shook his head. "They know now by the sign that whoever is up here has not been here alone. Both Saunders's horse and mine show tracks in the sand pockets of the Little Stormy. You can't do it, Kit."
Real terror came into Kit's face. "In heaven's name, what are you going to do?"
"I'll try to bluff," Flood said. "They're scared of me... all except your father."
"But if they call your bluff?"
"I promise you this," Flood said. "Whatever breaks, I'll never raise a gun against him. Now you have to be moving out of here, Kit."
"Jim, I can't! If anyone can stop my father...."
"It'll work just opposite, Kit. If he finds you here, he'll think you came here to meet me. That sounds like something I oughtn't to say, but you know it's true. He'll go broncho-wild if he thinks that. And you know what'll happen then."
All the life seemed to go out of Kit Palmer's face, and I saw her lips quiver, but then she seemed relaxed, resigned to whatever was ahead as she said at last: "All right, Jim. I'll go
"Your pony's on picket?" he asked.
Kit Palmer nodded and walked to the door, slow. There she turned and looked at me. Until then, it seemed that they had both forgotten I was there. "And you," she said, "what will you do?"
"I'm staying."
Kit looked at Jim, and they held each other's eyes for a long minute. "Good luck to you," she said at last. Then she turned her eyes to me. "To you both," she added.
Then she was gone into the dark. Flood and I stood, neither of us moving until we heard her horse move off down the meadow on the upcountry side.
Flood moved across the room and blew out one of the lamps. He picked up a piece of meat and began to tear it with his teeth, looking at me as he ate. I picked up a piece of meat and bit into it, too. When I had wolfed it down, I rolled a cigarette and offered Flood the makings.
He wouldn't take them. "I'm not forgetting I still have a bone to pick with you when this thing is done."
I shrugged and let it go, and then we both stood listening sharply, for down at the lower end of the meadow a pony whinnied, and one of our own horses answered it from nearby.
"There they come," Flood said.
"You going to stay here, in the light?"
"Hell, yes. You still have time to take to the timber if you want."
I spit through my teeth to let him know what I thought of that crack, and after that we both shut up. Then for a long time there didn't seem to be anything to do but wait the hardest thing that any man can possibly do in a case like that. I was wondering what Flood would try, and what I would try, when the posse came.
As I thought that over, I suddenly knew that I, too, could not throw a gun down on the father of this girl I had never talked to before tonight. There we were in the most cock-eyed situation I've ever seen two of us who didn't dare be taken, yet seemingly were unable to run for it, either, while closing in on us in the meadow were three men and Sundown Palmer, the hard and unyielding old cattleman who we couldn't stand off nor fight nor kill.
We waited so long without hearing any more of the enemy horses that presently I knew what was happening out there and a cold snaky feeling went down my spine. They had left their horses tied at the lower end and had come on slow, spreading a little, maybe, to cover the door and all sides, if we should still try to make a break to get away.
After I had thought about that for a while I got so I could feel them out there in the dark. I don't suppose we waited fifteen minutes while this went on, but it seemed like an hour. All that time Jim Flood sat with his knees crossed and the smoky lamp just over his shoulder on a little shelf. He was whistling softly through his teeth.
I was leaning against the wall to the side where the door was, so those just circling us outside couldn't see us, but I knew they must be able to see Jim Flood, and I wondered why he didn't worry for fear somebody would take a shot at him out of the dark. I thought the wait was never going to be over, but when it was over at last, it ended so suddenly that I was taken by surprise. I had imagined that I heard them all around us, moving in the dark, but it must have been imagination only, because, when Sundown Palmer stepped into the doorway, he got there silently, while I still didn't know anyone was within fifty yards.
"Reach," he said, his voice low but hard and sharp. His gun was in his hand, and his eyes were on Jim Flood.
Flood never stopped that gentle whistling through his teeth. His eyes had been on the floor, and now they drifted slowly up the long length of Sundown Palmer, until at last he looked Palmer in the eye. His hands were locked over one knee, easy and comfortable, and he didn't reach.
"Hello, Sundown," he said.
"Jim," said Sundown Palmer, very grim, "you're under arrest."
Jim Flood's eyes dropped to Sundown's gun, which was centered on the third button of Jim's shirt, and for a while Jim seemed to study that gun. Then his eyes turned to me, very noncommittal. Sundown wheeled quickly, to where he could more or less keep an eye on both of us at once, though his gun stayed on Jim. Until that moment I'm sure Palmer had not realized I was in the room.
Then he spoke to somebody outside. "Monk," he said, "step here."
After a moment or two, Monk Connolly stepped in and stood beside Palmer, and his gun was in his hand, too.
"We've got the two of them, instead of one," Sundown said.
Monk Connolly looked at me, and I saw his little eyes go red, redder than they were before, for this was a brother of Jap Connolly that I had shot it out with on the run when they jumped me at Paintrock Gap. I'll say this for Monkhe knew his business. Never minding anybody else, he kept his smoke-iron leveled on my belt buckle from then on. I thought there was a quiver in the muzzle of his gun, as if his trigger finger was itching to pull and square accounts for his brother Jap.
"You boys might just as well come," Sundown said slowly. "I don't know how you come to let me take the drop on you like you done, but there it is. I want you to reach high, and stay reached, while Monk takes off your guns."
"Sundown," Jim Flood said, "this war is over, and you've won. There isn't anything more left of the Lazy J. I can't let you take me in, and you know it. I tell you, I don't want to fight. You go your way, and I'll go mine. It looks to me like there's been enough blood spilled over this thing already."
Sundown Palmer's face didn't change from its hard set. "I'm not here working for my brand. I'm working for the law. I come out to get you and take you back, and I'm going to take you back. It's either up to you to reach and make no trouble or...make your play."
"It's your play, I think," Jim said.
"Have it your own way." Sundown sang out into the dark again: "Jack! Buck! Come on."
After a minute the two boys he had called came into the cabin. Jack Healy was one of those hangers-on around county offices that are always trying to wangle some favoritism job rather than go to work. The man they called Buck was a strong-shouldered guy with a big empty face.
"We can't take any chances with these babies," Sundown told these two. "Keep them both covered all the time. You go and take their guns off them...first Flood's gun, then Saunders's."
Jack Healy and the man called Buck moved toward Jim Flood, edging around behind Monk Connolly so that Monk could keep his gun on me all the time.
Then Flood's voice raised up, sharp. "Wait, Sundown! Let's talk...."
"To hell with you! Go in on him, boys!"
Those were the last words spoken as the so-called Burnt Corral gunfight broke.
My eyes were on Jim Flood, and I saw him jump, as if dynamite had lifted him, from the pack box where he sat. His whole body shot up and to the side, and his left arm smashed that little lamp shelf, and the lamp went out of the world as if it had exploded. I must have jumped, too, at his first move, away from the wall, and dropped to my knees, for suddenly, without thinking about it, I was in the middle of the floor, and my gun was in my hand. Then hell broke loose in the dark of th
at God-forsaken cabin.
First there were two smashing reports, almost together, and those must have been the guns of Sundown and Monk Connolly. An instant before, they had been dead centered on Flood and me, and it's God's own wonder that they didn't get us both, but they did not. Then it seemed as if everybody must have been shooting; there were gun flashes everywhere.
I knew that Monk Connolly was lined up with the jamb of the door, and I lifted my gun and fired four times at where I thought he was. In the blasting of the guns, within those close walls, it was like being beat around the head with twenty clubs.
Then suddenly, just as suddenly as it had begun, that whole hell of gun noise stopped. There was dead silence in that black dark.
That silence seemed to hang on for minutes while I waited, trying to hold my breath and thinking I hadn't better move. Then, after a long time, somewhere outside I heard a horse take off on a run, downmeadow. We found out later that that was Jack Healy, the hanger-on from the county office. He had got part of a finger shot off, and he had lost his gun and his head.
Still I waited there in the dark. Then at last Jim Flood spoke. "Bill," he said, "are you there?"
"Yeah, I'm here."
"Are you hit? Can you strike a light?"
I was about to answer him when, somewhere in that room, someone moved in a different place from where Jim's voice had come. Although I was taking what I thought was an awful chance, I fumbled for a match and struck it on the heel of my boot. If I live a hundred years, I'll never forget that instant when the light flared first a daze in my eyes from the sudden flash, and then....
The strange thing about anything like that is that everything comes out cock-eyed and irregular, nobody where you thought they were, or where there's any sense in their being. Jim Flood stood flat against the wall, in almost the exactly the place where the lamp had stood on the little shelf, except that now both the lamp and the shelf were gone. The man called Buck was down on his face close to the wall, in about the place I had been standing before the fight began.