A B Guthrie Jr

by Les Weil

  The man was in no hurry. He gazed around and turned and closed the door, softly, and, turning back, said, "Howdy, gents."

  "Howdy, Jehu," the bartender answered. "Stage on time, huh?"

  Jehu stepped up to the bar, nodding to the others' nods. He was an inch or two taller than Ram.

  "Since when haven't I pulled that outfit in on time, Fatty?" The mouth was pleasant under the high curve of nose.

  "I ain't got opportunity to count," the bartender answered. "See me when I ain't busy."

  "Fatty can do anything better than anybody else just as long as he don't have to do it," Jehu announced to no one in particular. "There's something about slopping drinks that makes a man smart."

  "It's the company. It's the goddam smart company. The house'll buy, gents, seein' Jehu can't get his hand in his pocket."

  Jehu had moved in close to the whiskered drunk, and now he angled his head and looked out of the corner of his eye while his thin nostrils sniffed. Then he edged away. "It ain't the season," he told Fatty.

  "Ever know a hide hunter to clean up?" Fatty asked with a glance at the drunk. The drunk was hanging by his elbows to the bar and didn't seem to notice. "Sons-of-bitches come in here," Fatty went on, talking to the crew, "and the last one to pick a louse off his carcass has to buy the drinks."

  "Nice, clean subject," Jehu said as if to put a stop to it. "Excuse me, gents." He turned away from them to Fatty. "My man show up?"

  Fatty shook his head.

  "His name was Turpin."

  "You told me that a'ready."

  "He promised he'd be here."

  "Promisin' man, huh?"

  Jehu let out a disgusted sigh. "Got scared, I guess. That's today for you. I can remember, back there, when I could've done it myself, or found a dozen salty men for nothing."

  "Yeah. Yeah." Fatty's tone was jeering. "You ought to use that fancy six-gun on him like I said before."

  "And get my wife down on me and give a hole-card ace to her father and the rest! I told you he was a gift."

  "Hell of a gift. Your wife's pa must want to make a widow of her."

  Jehu said, "Uh-huh," and fell to thinking and after a minute looked up and said, "Sorry, gents. I didn't mean to bust your party up. Have a drink."

  "We was only talkin' women," Ram replied, "and theah's a field that's grazed aplenty." He held his shot glass up and studied it. "Shootin', as you say, suh, is a last reso't."

  "He's not just a gift, but more'n that, a kind of pet."

  "Could a man ask what it is, suh?"

  "Sugar by name."

  Fatty added, "He-devil by nature."

  "Suh?"

  "A goddam outlaw," Fatty said.

  "A hoss? A saddle hoss?"

  Jehu answered, "S'posed to be. I thought I had a fair man hired, one good enough, but he ran out on me, seems like. You know how it is these days -good men too old and young too soft." He got tobacco and papers out of his shirt and started working on a cigarette, frowning down at his hands as he did so. "Maybe it's just as well. He'd probably been piled and hurt, being what they brag of as the younger generation."

  "It's your pride," Fatty told him. "You can't stand for your old lady's old man to have the laugh on you, not as I blame you much, him bein' such a cacklin' bastard, but still I'd get shet of that horse."

  "When I haze him off, damn if he don't beat me back to the gate."

  Ram's gaze swung to Lat, and Jehu's, quick to follow, touched him and moved on. "Good-looker, too," Jehu went on. "Bred up from Oregon. Heavier than most cayuses and and faster, I'd say, with the kinks ironed out."

  "Purty is as purty does," Fatty said.

  Jehu shrugged. "Oh, well." He moved out from the bar. "Palaver doesn't get the chores done. So long, you gents."

  Ram let him get almost to the door. Before he spoke, he flicked another glance at Lat. "We got a little ol' boy can sometimes stick a hoss."

  Jehu smiled over his shoulder. "No," he answered. "No. Forget it." His hand went to the doorknob.

  "That bronc's a son-of-a-bitch and no mistake," Fatty said.

  Ram wagged his head and looked at one of the hanging lamps and said to it, "My mistake then. I was thinkin'-"

  Carmichael cut him off. "We was thinkin' this animal had hair on. Our boy'll fork anything with hair on."

  Jehu came back from the door. "Who is this champeen peeler?"

  Ram pointed. "That little ol' boy theah."

  Jehu looked and shook his head. "He's got a mother someplace."

  "Likely."

  "I wouldn't want to be to blame." The searching eyes came back and after a long instant moved to Ram. "No offense, but ain't you pushing your boy? It's not his meat, as you can see. He's kind of tallow-faced a'ready."

  "How about-" Ram began, but Tom's voice drowned him out. "You goddam shorthorn!"

  Jehu put out his hand as if to calm a wave. "Easy, son! I'm thinking of your pard. I wouldn't let a scared boy climb old Sugar. To be feazed is to be froze, you know yourself."

  "How about it?" Ram asked. "Not meanin' to impose, but how you feel, Lat? Game?"

  They waited for an answer. Just plain sense answered no.

  He said, "But why should I?"

  "Fo' hell and education. Jehu needs 'em both."

  "Why? What's in it, though?"

  "Oh, I take Jehu for a sportin' man." Mexico added, "Just like all of us."

  "Show him who's so smart!" Tom said.

  Jehu put his hand on Lat's shoulder. "Go low if your gizzard's weak, I tell you."

  "How about it, Lat?" Ram asked again.

  Sharp with the question, the eyes of all of them were on him. "Yes," he said and repeated, "yes," because the first one sounded small.

  Ram bobbed his head and said to Jehu, "Would a hundred dollahs salve that conscience?"

  "A bet?"

  "Salve fo' you."

  "Money talks, but I swear I don't like to listen. Now, boy, own up, ain't you scared?"

  "Feaze and freeze him first, eh, Jehu?" Sally said. "I ought to take a cleaver to you."

  "Not of a horse," Lat answered. The words came out too small again.

  "I could salve your conscience some myself," Carmichael said and added, "not that I think it's so awful saddle-sore." Sally squeezed a hand into his pocket. "Same here."

  Jehu spread his arms. "Why, gents, I never figured it would come to this."

  "But seein' it has?" Ram asked. The gold he brought out rattled on the bar.

  Jehu looked from man to man. "You're asking for it. Is the rest of you as reckless?"

  "Recklesser," Tom said and shied a smile at Lat. "Double or stone-broke." He started putting out his money.

  Oscar wanted in, too, and Drury and Codell and each and very one of them.

  Of a sudden Jehu was all business. "Call all bets. Fatty can hold stakes. But no cinch hooks, gents."

  He looked down at Lat's old spurs. "And no spade bit. Riding to be done in the open, not in a corral."

  "Yes, suh," Ram said while he stacked his money, "but for a man that don't want my boy messed up, you talk right bloodthirsty."

  The old man, quiet since his clash with Tom, moved around to Jehu. He slid a poke out on the bar. "This bets on the boy, or ain't you game?"

  Jehu looked at the man and then at the poke and then at the bartender. "What's it worth, Fatty?"

  Fatty brought a pair of scales from underneath the bar and blew the dust off and sprinkled raw gold from the poke. "Ten ounces, about. Make it two hundred dollars."

  "Match it," the old man said.

  Jehu was fingering the gold. "Much of that where you come from?"

  "Match it."

  "Must have a nose for it?"

  "Gold don't stink, which ain't all I might say."

  "You're a feisty old bastard."

  "The right name is Godwin."

  Jehu turned away. "You want to pair off the bets, Fatty?" His hands worked inside the checked shirt and brought out a money belt. "There's plenty
here."

  While Jehu raked coins from the belt, Fatty found a sheet of paper in the money drawer. "That damn pencil must have legs," he said as he cast about for it. "Well." He took the Henry from the rack and levered out a cartridge and made ready to write with the nose of it. Ram handed over the pencil that he carried to keep time and tally with.

  Fatty nodded and announced, "Names, gents, and what you're bettin'. We don't want no misunderstandin'." Under Jehu's eyes he stacked one pile against another and moved each set to a little shelf behind him and slipped a scrap of paper underneath.

  "All up?" Jehu looked around. "What about you there, bronc-fighter, or did your money get scared, too?"

  Tom muttered, "Aw, the goddam shorthorn!"

  "Fifty," Lat said.

  "Fifty is right. Stack it up and make it out, Fatty, and then we'll have a drink."

  Ram shook his head. "Thankin' you, but not now." He gave Jehu a small, one-sided grin and went on, speaking soft. "You and Fatty got a real sma't act. Us foolish flies is tangled in youah web. Let's see now can you eat us."

  Jehu grinned. "It tuckered me, that act. And I bet you'd've took me up regardless."

  "All I said is true as Jesus." Fatty turned to put the last bet on the shelf. "Wisht I could go along. That's the trouble with keepin' bar. Always tied up to a barrel."

  "Don't cry in the whiskey," Jehu told him. "Cut 'er down any more and people'll be asking you where Missouri River water got that funny tang." He started for the door. "Come on, you high-rollers. Happens I got Sugar in a catch pasture just a step away."

  "Fo'tunate, ain't it?"

  They followed Jehu out, all but Fatty and the drunk, who tried a step as if to come along and looked down at his leg and dragged it back to place and had to clinch the bar to keep from falling. Lat brought up the rear. As he reached the door, Ram crowded past him going back in. Ram put both hands on the bar and fixed Fatty with his stare. "Suh," he said, "I take you for an honest man, but once theah was a tinhorn that run out on us. We caught him in the Nations." He paused. "Sometimes I wish the boys had only shot him."

  Fatty didn't try to answer. He stood still, his eyes wide, and finally bobbed his head.

  Ram wheeled around and came back and took Lat's arm.

  Tom was waiting and took the other one as they moved out to the hitch rack where the men had gathered. "Win or lose," Ram said and smiled an easy smile, "no man of us will fault you."

  "Your best is good enough for us, pard." Tom gave a playful push. "We're just havin' fun, you old web-foot. It ain't a funeral."

  "I'll hoof it," Jehu was saying at the hitch rack. "It's just yonder. You that want to ride can ease along." He started out, trailed by old man Godwin, while the rest untied their horses.

  A man came out of a store across the street and yelled at Jehu, "Where's your posse bound?" A wagon driver whoaed to hear.

  "After an outlaw name of Sugar."

  "Hell you are! Wait up!" He poked his head back inside the door. Some other men came out.

  There was the known sky, just as in Oregon, the known sun dancing, the known earth waving under hoof, the companions once known on the trail. And this was Fort Benton, Fort Benton, Montana Territory. This store, this house, this hall, this river, this steamboat and its waiting cargo, these people watching, they were Fort Benton. It was a ground breeze that fiddled with the dust. It was wood smoke that lifted from a cabin.

  Jehu had turned west. He strode along with Godwin keeping pace, strode straight along as if someone had aimed him, out of town, into the open, toward a barn and a fence and a pole corral. Fort Benton from here swam with the river and, swimming, still stayed still. It was a herd that watered there, a little thirsty herd of wood and brick bunched on the bank. Out of it were coming a rider and another and a wagon and a handful of people on foot.

  Now from the barn ahead a horse trotted. It grew into a big dun that stopped to watch and stood quiet and high­headed like a statue. The ground breeze fanned his tail.

  Jehu twisted around to say, "You wouldn't think it to look at him, but just wait!" He walked on to the gate. "If some of you'll come in and corral him, I'll go to the barn and get my rope. He's partly halter-broke."

  They held up to watch a minute. The horse looked at them out of big and innocent-appearing eyes set wide above a straight nose. He came closer by a couple of easy steps, his nostrils widening as he tried the air.

  "Good head," Ram said. "Damn good even if the horse is no damn good."

  "Good all around, or maybe could be," Carmichael answered. "Chest. Barrel. And look at them legs! Too bad he's spoiled."

  Codell and Moo Cow rode through the gate and got behind the horse and hazed him toward the pole corral. He made straight for it, striding long, as if he had the sense to know it was no use to try to break around.

  "Action, too," Carmichael said and dismounted with the rest.

  Jehu came out of the barn with a rope. "Won't take but a minute," he called out. Codell was closing the gate of the corral.

  Tom put an arm across Lat's shoulders. "You've rode worse. Just keep that in your noggin, and damn that short­horn! He wouldn't call me scared!"

  Half seen through the poles of the corral, a noose sailed round the horse's neck. Jehu snugged the rope and held it up to Moo Cow, who took a dally on his saddle horn. The gate opened. Moo Cow rode out slowly. By turns the horse behind him balked and yielded to the rope. Jehu came out on foot and curved around and came ahead. "No snub in that corral," he told them at the gate. He put his hand on the gatepost. "We'll tie him up right here."

  "No sense in makin' things easy," Ram replied.

  Behind them a voice rose. "Don't get in a lather, Jehu! More's comin' to the ball." The first of the followers were pulling up.

  Moo Cow brought Sugar to the gate. Lat turned away. It was time to peel the gear from his own horse. From the side a stranger said, "Money says that nag'll pile you."

  Tom and Mexico were taking off the rigging. "Here," Lat said.

  Tom swung the saddle down. "Can't let our meal ticket fag himself doin' piddlin' chores. Come on." He tucked the saddle blanket under his arm and lifted the saddle by the horn. Mexico brought the bridle.

  Sugar was tied short to the gatepost. He stood quiet except for a fine trembling that riffled his hair like a touch of breeze.

  "A man like you won't mind to cool his heels," Jehu said to Lat. "See?" He motioned. The tail end of the little procession that had trailed them was still a piece away. "Soon enough the time will come, my boy. Now let me see that bit."

  Mexico held it up. It was a plain bar bit with only rings for side pieces.

  "English." Jehu smiled as if he found support in that. "And let me see those spurs again."

  Old Godwin's rusty voice called out, "Don't you want to count his teeth?"

  "Fair enough, men. Meeting called to order. Dress him when you're ready. I never saw him kick." The clipped mustache widened to another smile. "Likes to save himself."

  "I'll saddle him myself," Lat said. The horse shrank from the blanket. The blanket, laid and smoothed, shook to his fine trembling.

  "Goddam!" Jehu said. "Don't know why he hates a rider so. Just naturally, I guess."

  "He's scared," Lat answered, knowing, and in that instant hated Jehu. "He's been abused." The trembling now was not so fine; it shook the horse. "Wait, Tom, on that bridle!" He eased the saddle up. At the very touch of it, Sugar humped his back and humped more as the cinch drew tight. Lat stepped up to his head. "Gentle, Tom." He took the bridle. "Whoa, boy! Whoa, now!" Sugar tried to rear and couldn't against the short hold of the rope. The gatepost cracked but held. The bit went in. The headstall had to be let out.

  Jehu's voice came loud. "You boys best get where you can dive for the fence. Old Sugar goes plumb blind."

  Tom said, "More goddam scare talk, Lat."

  They had the headstall long enough and, now, the throat latch buckled. The circle of watchers had edged out and still was edging. Only Carmicha
el, only Ram kept close.

  Jehu's wave was waved to all. "Me, I'd hate to climb him with that saddle, gents." He spoke loud as he talked to Lat.

  "'Scuse me, boy, but it ain't much more than a pancake and a string."

  Ram saved an answer. "Any objections, still?"

  "No. No. Too late to reconsider anyhow. Rules is rules, and no one can change his mind. One thing, though. He's got to get on by himself. No holders. Hear?"

  "Moses has let loose with another commandment," Carmichael said.

  Jehu straightened to his full height. Slow as Moses and as solemn, he came back around to Lat. He put forth his hand. "Son, watch out, please, you don't get hurt. Shook loose, you leave him careful. What's money, stacked against your health?" The turned-down mouth said, "Luck!"

  "I'll put up fifty more" -from the fringe of thought the sore words broke- "and you put up the horse."

  Jehu bent his head. "Run home, chickens!" His eyes rose and narrowed to two sparks that swam and anchored beside the ridge of nose.

  "You overreached yourself, makin' our boy mad," Carmichael told him.

  "If he's rode," Jehu thought aloud while he counted on his fingers, "he maybe won't bring fifty, just depending. And if he isn't, like he won't be, come on more outside rnoney!" His eyes came up again.

  "Put 'er up!"

  "I'll just hold the fifty," Ram said. "Them long legs can easy catch me."

  So now. Now, at last, the time. Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish . . . Grandpa speaking, out of the years, across the miles. Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come.

  Lat took the reins and pulled the horse around. The men about him melted farther back except for Ram there and Carmichael there and Tom. They sidled close. The walking wasn't taking out the hump in Suger's back.

  "Hey, you Ramrod!" It was Jehu. "You boys quit blocking that horse!"

  "When Lat's aboa'd. And don't say you got a rule!"

  "Easy. Easy, boy." Lat stroked the trembling neck and tightened up the reins and caught hold of the mane and with his right hand turned the stirrup for his boot. The horse wheeled, snorting, as he brought his foot up. "Easy, now." Ram had side-stepped to front the moving head. Another try, another snorting wheel, and Jehu's words as from a distance, "Can't even fork him, then the money's mine."