A B Guthrie Jr

by Les Weil

  The big man's right arm showed the stain and growing seep of blood. It came down slowly.

  Hector told him, "Keep 'em up!"

  "You sons-of-bitches winged me. Can't work my fingers, or I'd be firin' yet."

  "Piteel Pitee!"

  Somehow the big man had found time to draw his boots on. He swung one of them, so fiercely as to send the small man sprawling. "You can pray in hell, you war whoop!"

  Hector said, "That's Bigsbee."

  Carmichael already knew it was. He thrust aside the softness for him that Hector, being Hector, was the cause of. To his knowledge Bigsbee had a noisy thirst and touchy temper and, by reputation, a light regard for ownership. As such men did, he had a toady following, in his case breeds and shady whites. Not that it mattered, but he also had peep­holes for eyes and a nose like a potato and a mouth cut on the bias.

  "Goddam your guts, too!" Bigsbee told Hector. "You're a land hog and a water hog and a natural-born hog and by rights belong on a rope, what with the stock you've mavericked."

  "Pitee!" The little man was on his belly, his face raised like an otter's. "I have papoose."

  Hector said to Bigsbee, "Talk's cheap."

  "You mean dear -but worth it just to get you told." His good hand went to his wounded arm.

  "Ambushin's just your size."

  "Wag your damn tongue while you can! Talk big or go to beggin' like your friend! We got a cure for both." Hector pointed to the cabin. "Anyone with you? Any more of you thieves?"

  Bigsbee was slow to answer. When he did, it was to say simply, "Dead man inside. French Joe, shot through the face."

  "Have a look! McLean! Howie!"

  Before they could move, the little man gathered himself. He scrambled for the corner of the cabin, running half bent over. From the tail of his eye Carmichael saw Hector swing his rifle and for a wink thought of a hunter sure of his bag and cheered. The little man was squeaking. The rifle seemed a long time in exploding. Short by two yards of the corner he'd tried to put behind him, the man pitched forward and flopped around and lay still. From the corral came the snorts of horses. Hector opened the breach and blew into the barrel. He motioned to the others to keep an eye on Bigsbee and went forward and jerked his target over. "Saves hangin'," he said, straightening. "Now look inside, you two."

  Carmichael heard, beside him, the hard pull of Lat's breath, the one hard pull that brought in air and locked it there.

  McLean and Howie walked to the door and stepped inside and came out nodding.

  Hector moved on Bigsbee, drawing the rest along. His hands were busy with a rope now.

  "Make it right, Hector," Bigsbee said. "I wouldn't want to hang on the wrong knot." He stood, small-eyed, big-nosed, slash-mouthed, pale and ugly in the morning light. Drop by drop, blood was falling from his hand. But what Carmichael noticed more than all was the fine, the almost unnoticeable trembling of one pants leg. Bigsbee hitched himself abruptly, planting both legs.

  "Tie his hands!" Hector said to anyone who would.

  "We'll hear him out." It was Evans, speaking quietly.

  "Hear him out? Good God!"

  Chenault said, "We'll hear him out."

  "We know he's guilty!"

  "Shut up!" Evans answered, still quietly, too quietly, it occurred to Carmichael. "Bigsbee, what about those horses in the corra!?"

  "What about them?"

  "They're stolen."

  "Too bad about you nabobs."

  "You have a hand in rustling them?"

  "None of your goddam business."

  "We're giving you your chance."

  "Chance?" The down end of the big mouth pulled down even farther. "Jesus Christ wouldn't have a chance."

  "You do if you're innocent."

  "Sure, I'm innocent." The pants leg trembled again, and again Bigsbee hitched. "I'm as goddam innocent as Hector."

  Hector put in, "Let's get on with it," maybe thinking of the calves he'd mavericked before the territory got some kind of order.

  "Guilty or not guilty, then?"

  Bigsbee would never break, Carmichael thought even before the answer came. He wouldn't beg or try to make a case. He'd die proud and defiant, and guilty, fighting the quiver of his muscles.

  Bigsbee said, "Go to hell!"

  Lat lowered his head and shook it slowly and then nodded slowly. "I guess that's it."

  Hector dropped his rope and put two fat fingers in his mouth and whistled, calling Gunderson. He and Rax and Whitlock marched up, surrounding Bigsbee. With his good hand Bigsbee swung on Hector. He missed and went down, felled by the pistol barrel that Whitlock laid eagerly along his skull.

  Hector said to Rax, "Give me that piggin' string!" He tied Bigsbee's hands behind him and got the hanging rope and looped it over Bigsbee's head and, for a blindfold, used a used bandanna. Everything was very businesslike.

  Carmichael heard the gallop of a horse. Gunderson rode up, a six-gun in his hand. Waving it, he said, "Svede ready. Yust show me."

  "Never mind. Get off!" Hector told him.

  Bigsbee couldn't hold his head up, quite. They dragged him under the cottonwood limb. "Handy," Hector said while he coiled the loose end of the rope. He cast it up and over the limb and made a hitch around the trunk. "Bring that horse up, Gunderson!"

  They boosted Bigsbee on the horse and took up slack. "You plumb and pious satisfied?" Hector turned to ask of Lat.

  Lat only nodded.

  Hector looked at Bigsbee. "Savin' last words, we're ready."

  Bigsbee didn't answer.

  Hector picked up a stick. "Leave go the reins," he said to Gunderson and smacked the horse's rump.

  The horse lunged. Bigsbee bounced against the cantle of the saddle and jerked against the rope. It swung him up to 4 o'clock. He swung back and thrashed, his breath screeching in his twisted neck. In time the thrashing and the screeching stopped. The body swung slower and slower. It turned on the rope, front, back, front, and from the crooked mouth beneath the blindfold the tongue oozed out.

  It was Hector who spoke first. "There's a good man now." The deed had left no shadow on his face."We'll leave him hang just as a warning." He nodded to his own decision as he looked around. "Where you goin', Evans?"

  Lat had turned and started off. Over his shoulder he said, "Backhouse."

  "Have a look inside the cabin on your way. Might be clues there. Hey, I'll look with you." Hector strode ahead and took Lat by the arm and shook him playfully. "Backhouse, huh? You'll catch the crabs."

  It was different when Carmichael reached them just out­side the cabin door. They had halted there, and Hector's eyes were busy on the snow.

  Lat said, "Let's go in!"

  Hector looked up at him and down again. With a glance Carmichael picked up what Hector saw, what none of them had noticed earlier -one-way footprints that slanted from the others and curved from sight around the corner.

  "Come on!" Lat said.

  "Now just a minute, you!" Hector stalked the tracks. Lat cast a glance at Carmichael and moved on after Hector. From the corner, Carmichael saw, the tracks led to the privy, not returning. The little breed close by had bled a red slush in the snow. It flitted in and out of Carmichael's mind that he looked cold. Behind them some of the other men were pushing up. Two stood at the corral, looking through the poles. Hector kept on stalking, his rifle cradled in his arm.

  Longer-spaced and slurred, the tracks came leaping from the privy and veered west, up the thickets of the stream. Hector kicked the door in, uselessly. "One man got away!" His eyes were fixed on Evans.

  "Looks like it. If you hadn't been so keen for blood, the breed would have told us who."

  There was something here Carmichael couldn't understand. The men were gathered round now, all of them and all listening, while Lat and Hector stared each other in the face.

  "You wouldn't say you spotted anyone?" Hector said.

  "Don't be a fool!"

  Carmichael saw thought working in Hector's eyes. "You were damn qu
ick to hail the house." Whatever he was, Hector wasn't stupid.

  Carmichael put in, "It worked, didn't it?"

  They might not have heard him.

  "You've said enough." Again Lat spoke too quietly.

  "Enough! You ain't raised a hand yet, except to block the work."

  Chenault addressed them from behind. "Cut it out, you two! "

  Lat turned. "Mike, we'll chase him down."

  "You!" Hector said. "The hell you will!"

  McLean had come up close. "Sure, let 'em go. Cinch to run a man on foot down. Two's enough."

  Hector swung his eyes from Lat. "I don't trust him." One taste of blood, Carmichael thought as he watched them both, had turned his head. "He ain't got the stummick for it."

  Now Lat spoke to the rest. "Hector would shoot the first man he saw, no questions asked. That's why he doesn't go. Some of you others could, except that Whey Belly's made the thing a case of trust."

  Chenault muttered, "Hell, we trust you."

  "How'll you have it, Hector?" It wasn't like Lat to bull the game. Lat Evans? Carmichael cheered inside himself.

  McLean said, "This is crazy."

  "Keep out, Mac," Lat answered. "It's personal."

  "Rough and ready." Hector was drunk on blood all right. Or was he? A bigger man all round. Strong and ornery as an ornery mule. A born brawler. Carmichael made a mental bet on Evans. A bad bet maybe. Alongside Hector, Lat looked almost frail. The bet was on what didn't show.

  Hector handed his Winchester to Gunderson and peeled off his coat. Carmichael took Lat's rifle and watched him unwrap. The men were drawing back, making a circle around the two. "The belly," Carmichael found time to say to Lat alone.

  Too fast to expect, far too fast for his swollen paunch, Hector crouched and charged. His fist caught Evans on the jaw and knocked him down. His boot kicked at the face that swung away not quite in time. Lat rolled to his feet, the boot mark showing on his cheek. Hector was crowding him. As if receiving them himself, Carmichael could feel the jolting, blind light of those heavy fists. He cried silently, "The belly! The belly!" Lat went down again. He got up, barely ahead of Hector's kick.

  "Ah!" The half grunt came out of Carmichael on its own, for Lat's left hand had found the target. Hector sucked for breath. He drew away and charged again. Lat took a blow high on his head and staggered back and steadied and got underneath. Two licks, left and right, deep in the bulge of belly. Hector didn't go down. He folded up, and his throat croaked for air, and his face when he raised it was gray. His hand slid toward the hip where his revolver had been left to hang.

  "I wouldn't," Carmichael said. Hector's eyes came to him and saw the rifle ready. "Tell your Swede to take care, too."

  "Watch it, Swede!" The voice was Chenault's. Hector's gaze went around. His hand fell away. "You men think I'm crazy!" he strained out.

  "It's open to debate." It was Chenault again.

  "You been whupped," Rax said in his spare way. That was the end of it.

  Evans reached out for his rifle. "Come on, Mike." He led out toward the brush where the horses were tied.

  Behind him Carmichael heard Whitlock. "Let's burn this robbers' roost."

  He heard Rax answering, "And warn the cabin down the crick!"

  Evans kept silent while they walked to the brush and untied and got on. Then he said merely, "Straight ahead. He'll stick to the cover along the stream."

  Carmichael knew his feeling or thought he knew some of it -the let-down after winning, even over such a man as Hector. The killings would be heavy on his mind, too. Not pretty, not in any part, but the men who died had asked for what they got. "Good fight, Lat." He tried a smile without results. "And your face ain't bruised too much. Won't have to say you run into a door."

  Lat kept quiet, and Carmichael went to wondering. The footprints, the sudden hail, the other things? The sun had climbed the cloud bank, half of it had, shining long-bright across the land. It would be a good day, a melting day, and cows would find grass greening underneath the thinning skim of snow. Calves would do well, up on their shaky legs, their snoots outstretched for all they cared of ma. Before too long now the white of the mountains would leak away to blue. Even Lat ought to feel good.

  They wound through the willows and cut the boot tracks at the creek bed. Lat held up. His turned face looked abused and old. "It's Ping, Tom Ping," he said.

  Carmichael held back his first surprise. "I figured some such." Everything fell into place, even to the footprints that Lat had wanted to scuff out before the others saw. Carmichael sighed. He didn't ask Lat about the justice of it. A straight row could be too hard to hoe, and the men who hoed it too hard to travel with. All he said was, "Armed?"

  "I don't know."

  "He'll shoot you sure as hell. You let me take the lead!"

  Carmichael knew beforehand what Lat would say. "Thanks, Mike, but no go."

  "What you aim to do?"

  "Run him down."

  "Then what?"

  Lat tapped his knee with the end of one rein while he looked off into space. "He saved my life once."

  "I know. And since then overdrawed the debt."

  Lat kept tapping his knee, his face sober and yet softened as a man's was by old thoughts. He was lost somewhere out there, somewhere in space and time with the Tom he knew once.

  "You can't want to kill him?"

  No answer came.

  "Then why chase him down?"

  Lat pulled himself out of the past as if he had to pass it point by point, stopping here and there to live some things again. "If he knows we know, Mike-?"

  "Then he'll reform?"

  "I keep thinking." Lat had slid into the years again.

  Carmichael had a bite on something. He chewed it in his mind. "He's got to know we know -but you got to know he knows?"

  Lat considered, his eyes far away. "Maybe, Mike. Don't ask me. I guess I do want him to see we're square." A long breath blew out of him. He started Sugar on the trail. "Anyhow, we're wasting time."

  The footprints followed a game path that wound west through tangles of brush. Now and then they could trot, now and then even gallop, but mostly they had to go slow while they fended off branches -slow, that was, for mounted men. Ping's long stride in the snow began to shorten. Here he had stopped to blow and let off water. Here he'd sat down, probably to squeeze the feet squeezed sore by high­heeled boots. He could be hidden anywhere ahead, his finger on the trigger, his eye lined on the sights. First he'd take Lat, who rode steady in the lead, hardly watching as a man should. Carmichael pressed him close.

  The brush ended. Ahead for half a mile was open country, and in the open, bound for the farther cover, a man was hobbling. Even from a distance it was Ping.

  They put their horses to a run. Ping stopped and wheeled around. His hand was empty, his waist not circled by a cartridge belt. His chest swelled and went flat with his breath. His face was too dark for the teeth his panting showed.

  Nothing was said. There was nothing to say, Carmichael thought while he waited. He turned the other cheek in the saddle.

  Then at last Lat spoke. "The two of us know, Tom. No more." A man almost had to strain his ears to hear. "You can go on."

  Ping said, "You bastard!"

  Lat didn't flare up. For himself Carmichael wished he had, and for himself he said, "You're even, Ping! He done you quite a favor." At once he wished he hadn't spoken.

  Ping said, "He can keep his goddam favors!"

  Lat just waved his rifle. "Go on!"

  Ping faced away. It was a dozen steps or two before he limped.

  Lat's words were slow in making sense. "We'll have to have a story for the others."

  Carmichael felt as much depressed as Lat had shown himself to be. He said, "I s'pose you'd ought to kilt him."

  30

  EVANS AND CARMICHAEL reached the ranch by early morning, having forked off from the others in the extra darkness just ahead of dawn. From the slope that led down to it the place lay res
tful, the roofs of house and bunkhouse and barn steaming faintly in the slanting sunlight, the chimney feathered with the smoke of quaking asp.

  Westward by twenty miles the sun fingered at the main range of the Rockies, picking peaks and faces for its touch. For a moment, during which he hold himself he was flighty with fatigue, Evans wished he could be lifted there. High in that all-whiteness, above the shadowed canyons, a man might look untroubled on the world, seeing each thing in its place.

  He brought his eyes back to the buildings. They made a good berth, a berth made for a home. Inside the kitchen was a pump fed by a well he'd dug. Inside were a sink he'd soldered out of coal-oil cans and a hanging tank to which he could force water by pumping with the pump snout plugged. Tables, benches, chests, a good part of the house itself -these somehow he'd built himself. It was as if those days of waiting for the wedding day gave rise to special skills. The days of waiting and the thought of Joyce, who was not to wear her life away as other ranch wives did. The house even had a fixed bathtub, though the copper of it sometimes left corrosion marks on the skin.

  And Joyce and Little Lat were coming back. He kept reminding himself of that. All night, while they rode, he had summoned it to mind. It was a matter for rejoicing.

  Against his own silence Carmichael had kept speaking, drawing on old stories, on things seen and heard and stored in memory for happy times. "Ever tell you about old Doc Longeway down there in Ioway?" he'd asked. "Got in a fight, the doc did, and knocked the man down and straddled him and went to givin' him what-for, paying no attention that the man was shoutin' out he'd had enough. So someone watchin' says to Doc,'Quit it! He called enough.' Doc lets up just long enough to answer, 'I know he did, but he's such a goddam liar you can't believe a word he says.' "

  Or Carmichael had been telling, "A feller got arrested in Nebraska for callin' names, and they took him afore a justice of the peace. A unprejudiced witness took the stand. The j.p. asks him, 'Did you hear the plaintiff, Ole Beaner, called a son-of-a-bitch?' Says the witness, 'Your honor, I never knew Ole Beaner to go by any other name.'"

  Now, as they neared the house, Carmichael said, "My belly's rubbin' my backbone, and I can't keep more'n one eye open."