Spur

by Matt Chisholm

  Inez panted beside him. He put an arm around her shoulder and held her for a moment tight against him. She clung with both arms and he wondered at the situation. This girl whom he hardly knew, with him, on the run.

  “Aw, hell,” he said, “now you’re in it, girl. What do I do with you?”

  “We must have horses and we must ride. We cannot go to my father’s house.”

  “Your father?”

  “Dr. Municio.”

  In spite of the circumstances, Spur could not help feeling slightly stunned. He gaped. He could not imagine the doctor as the father of this lovely girl. He could not imagine him as a father at all.

  He tried to think.

  “My guess is they’ll hunt around a bit, but they won’t mount the hunt till dawn. You’re right, we have to have horses.” He had to take the girl with him. The thought stunned and confused him. He’d been on the run plenty of times in his life, but never with a woman.

  “I know where I can steal horses.”

  Thus spoke the girl who had never stolen anything in her life. Spur had stolen plenty, but he had never lifted a horse from another man. Some relic of his boyhood code.

  “No,” he said, “we don’t have to lift a horse.”

  He looked around.

  “How far does this arroyo go?”

  “A half-mile. It turns west.”

  “Go down it. As far as it offers cover and wait.” She nodded. “Does your father know what you’ve done?”

  “No.”

  She fluttered nervously. “There is no time. He will hear. My father, he never gets involved.”

  “Well, he’s involved this time. You’re his daughter.”

  “He will be angry. His anger is terrible.”

  “So’s mine. You’d best go now. Are you scared?”

  “A little.”

  He pressed his lips against her smooth forehead, smelled the smell of sun-touched skin and pushed her on her way. She hesitated a moment, then disappeared into the gloom. He turned, climbed up the side of the arroyo and headed back toward town. He heard sounds of men moving around to his left, but they were too far off for him to understand any of the words as they called to each other. He reckoned the girl would be safe for a while. What the hell, he thought, would he do with a girl on the run?

  He skirted town till he was in the maze of alleyways of the Mexican quarter. For a while, he was lost, but finally he found the doctor’s door. He had passed few people and both he and they had been in shadow. There was little chance of his being recognized. At first, there was no answer to his rapping on the wood, but after persisting, he heard the sound of footsteps and a voice asked: “Who is there?” in Spanish.

  “Spur.”

  Bolts were withdrawn. The door opened and he stepped inside. The doctor led the way into the dimly lighted room. He had been reading even at this late hour; his book was open by the table on the chair, his spectacles and a glass of wine beside it.

  “You surprise me, Mr. Spur,” the doctor said in English. “I thought you were in the jail.”

  Spur said: “There’s not too much time. I’ll say what I have to say and get out. Sure, I was in jail, but somebody busted me out.” The doctor gave a start of alarm. Here he was with a fugitive in his house - he could be implicated. “Do you want to know who did it?”

  “No. I want to know nothing.”

  “You should. It was your daughter.”

  The doctor was shaken. His mouth fell open.

  “Inez?”

  “Yeah. I came to tell you. We’ll have to run for it.”

  The doctor didn’t know what to say. “But ... but … she is a young girl. After all I have taught her, she breaks the law in this way. I do not have to ask why she has done it. You realize no doubt only too well what you have done, how you have played on the feelings of a young girl?”

  Spur said earnestly: “Look, doc, I didn’t plan it this way. But she’s your daughter and I owe it to her to get her away. Is there anybody south of the border she can go to?”

  The doctor shook his head. “No, but she has relatives in San Pablo, south-west of here.”

  “But Gomez will know of them.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Then that’s out. Doc, do you have any money? We’ll need money and all mine’s in the bank. You’ll get every cent of it back.”

  Distrust of Spur showed on the doctor’s face.

  “I do not know even that you are telling me the truth. How do I know that you have Inez with you? Why is she not with you?”

  “All right,” Spur said, “have it your own way. To hell with you. I can see Inez must inherit her guts from her mother.”

  Spots of anger appeared on the doctor’s sallow cheeks.

  “You have no right. You walk in here and tell me that my daughter has helped you to break jail. It proves nothing. Nothing except that I suspected that Inez had developed an unsavory emotion for you.”

  “Unsavory?” Spur snorted with indignation. “Seems mighty savory to me. Now, you see here, doc, you keep your mouth shut about me being here.”

  The doctor raised both hands in protest. “You may rest assured that I shall make no mention of it. I never become involved with the politics of the town. I am a doctor and that is sufficient.”

  Spur gave him a hard stare and went to the door. “I don’t know when you’ll see your daughter again, but I guarantee she’ll be back safe and sound.”

  The doctor said quietly: “That had better be so, or I shall surely kill you.”

  Spur went out into the alleyway and heard the bolts sound behind him. He had been a fool to come; he didn’t trust the doctor. The man was afraid and a man’s fear could drive him to anything. As soon as Spur was out of sight, the man might go straight to the law. Spur worked his way into the back lots and paced along the rear of the houses to the livery stables. Here he came to the corral fence, climbed it and walked across to the barn. He climbed another fence and found a lamp burning in the barn. The stove-in cowhand was sleeping on a pile of straw.

  Spur nudged him awake with his toe. The man sat up and said: “What the hell?” He saw Spur and Spur saw at once that the man knew he had broken out of jail. Fright showed clear.

  “Saddle the roan and put the bridle on the mule,” Spur said.

  “I can’t do that.”

  The man stood up with straw sticking to his clothes.

  Spur said: “You do it now, fast. You do anything else an’ I’ll drop you. Move.”

  The man moved, taking the lamp with him into the depths of the barn. Spur heard him busy with saddle and bridles.

  “Spur.”

  The name was whispered. Spur dropped down against the wall in deep shadow and drew his gun. He didn’t speak.

  The voice whispered: “Jody.”

  Spur took the hammer off cock and stood up. Jody walked into the barn, found him and said: “I’ll make it quick. I knew you wouldn’t leave without the horse or the mule. Gomez never thought you’d be crazy enough. You’ll need money and supplies. They’re here by the door.”

  “I need another saddle.”

  “Why?”

  “The girl. She busted me out.”

  “I’d forgotten about her.”

  “How’d you know about her?”

  “I put her up to it. Couldn’t expose myself.”

  “You foxy ole bastard.” Jody chuckled in the dark.

  “Now listen good.” Jody talked fast for three minutes, giving Spur directions, telling him to keep on the move, describing the canyon country to him, telling him of the water-holes. There wasn’t much time, but he imparted all the information he could. “Now, I’m going. Stick to the schedule if you can and I’ll contact you.”

  “This has ruined everythin’. I’m sorry, boy.”

  “Don’t be. Maybe this’ll worry ’em. Maybe this is the beginning of the end.”

  “Is it Randerson?”

  “It looks like it. Now, I’m going. Luck.”

&nb
sp; They shook in the darkness and Jody drifted quietly away across the yard. The old man came back leading the roan and the mule. Both animals were pleased to see Spur, but the mule didn’t show it.

  “I want a saddle for the mule.”

  “I don’t have no saddle.”

  Spur went outside and found the bundle of supplies. He searched through them and found the small bag of gold coins. He went and showed the gold to the surprised man. He went away into the barn and came back with an old saddle.

  “Put it on the mule.” The man obeyed. Spur brought in the supplies and roped them to the saddles, thrust the sheriff’s rifle into the saddle boot on the roan and paid the man. The old fellow giggled - “Never heard tell of a jail-break payin’ for nothin’.”

  Spur led the horses out along the side of the barn till he reached the corral and halted. After he had lifted down a couple of bars, he led the mule and the horse across the corral. The horses in there shifted and bunched. Spur tied his two animals to the rear fence and searched for another opening. At first, there did not seem to be one, but he found one at the farther end of the fence. He lifted the bars down and walked back to his animals, mounted the roan and rode around the corral, chousing the loose horses ahead of him. He realized that he didn’t have long, for the livery man would go straight to the sheriff. He hoped that the sheriff had not yet fetched his horses from here.

  As the horses went through the opening and crashed out into the brush beyond, there was no outcry behind him, so he knew that the livery man had run with his news to the law.

  Spur didn’t waste time, but headed for the arroyo, circling into the west to reach its mouth. He felt naked and unprotected as he rode out into the open, wondering if the sheriff had come this far and found the girl. But there was no time to be cautious if he wanted to get away from here.

  He halted and called.

  “Inez.”

  At once, she appeared out of the gloom, walking quickly.

  “Get on the mule,” he told her.

  There was no time to adjust stirrups, so she just had to climb aboard as best she could, having a lot of trouble with her wide skirts.

  From behind them, a man shouted.

  Spur leaned forward, struck the mule hard across the rump with his hand and said: “Ride.” The big Kentucky leaped forward; a strong willing animal; let nobody believe a mule to be a slow stubborn beast. Spur knew that mule and the mule knew him. They were undefeatable and knew that each possessed the quality; they both kept on coming till they died. Only death could stop them. The mule ran with its short chopping gallop, head out, and Spur turned the roan after it, touching the spurs home. From behind came the faint slam of a rifle. Something passed close to Spur, humming through the night air. The distant crackle that followed, he knew was several rifles trying for them. The girl was no more than a blur ahead of him, bent forward in the saddle.

  There was a sudden burning pain in Spur’s left arm, high up near the shoulder. It wasn’t the first time this had happened to him. He’d been hit.

  He cursed luxuriously, the roan hit a dead run as though it knew that it would only live if it got out of there fast. The rifles behind crackled some more and then it was too late for them to hit anything, mule and horse were on the open valley, running hard. The roan pulled up alongside the mule and Spur called: “You all right?’’

  Inez’s face, no more than a pale orb, turned.

  “I’m all right.” Her voice shook a little.

  Spur reckoned that now the sheriff knew which direction they had taken, he might try to come after them with horses and not wait for daylight. He was travelling in the opposite direction to his destination. He would have to play this carefully or he was going to have a horse and a mule on his hands that had been run into the ground.

  They ran five miles north before they hit a bend in the creek. They halted and the animals blew. He got down and inspected the bank, walked a little way north and found what he wanted.

  “We’ll cross here. They’ll expect us to go up or down stream so as not to leave sign. But we’ll cross and we’ll not leave sign.”

  He mounted and they crossed.

  On the other side, he dismounted and gave the roan’s line to the girl.

  “Just go ahead for a quarter-mile and wait for me,” he said. She obeyed him without a word. He broke a branch from nearby brush and started work, wondering if he would have time to finish before Gomez and the posse arrived. Maybe he could win an hour or two this way.

  First, he carefully erased the hoof marks on this side of the creek, they were deep in the mud and sand and the job had to be done with care. Gomez might have a good tracker with him and he had to be fooled. Satisfied at last that he had wiped out all trace of their passing, Spur started to work faster, wiping out their sign from the grass which was an easier matter. But an hour had passed by the time he had reached Inez. She was worried and frightened.

  “I thought you were never coming,” she said.

  “Listen,” he said and gripped her knee. Her hand came down and covered his. They listened. From a long way off, they heard the sound of running horses. Gomez was a damn fool, he was wasting his time in this poor light. Spur held the noses of the two animals, listening. He heard the riders come to the creek and stop. They would now be debating which way to go. Even daylight would not solve the problem for them.

  Going quietly, Spur and the girl moved on west.

  In an hour, the animals started to climb and Spur knew that by dawn they would be in the comparative safety of the hills, where visibility would be cut to a minimum. Dawn found them safely in the hills with Spur making a smokeless fire while the girl prepared coffee, the animals rested and munched grass, their movements restricted by their hobbles.

  It was while he was bending over the fire that the girl said: ‘‘Your arm - you’ve been hit.”

  “Yeah. We’ll have coffee, then you can fix it for me.”

  “I will fix it now. Coffee can wait.”

  Grinning at her, he said: “We must get our priorities right. Coffee comes before everythin’.”

  She put the coffee pot on the fire and started tearing strips from her petticoats. He sipped coffee while she got the shirt off him, fetched water from the nearby stream and washed the wound. It was still bleeding and she had to make a tourniquet to stop the flow. She didn’t turn a hair at the sight of blood and the fact pleased him. It was pleasant sitting there with her attending to him; she smelled as good as she looked.

  At first glance, this girl was just a pretty Mexican kid, but when he looked at her closely, he found character in her face. Some of the fineness of her father’s bone-structure was here; the brow was high; the eyes observing and intelligent; the mouth was large and strong and sensuous - the kind that could devour the man it loved and would make the devouring wholly good.

  When the doctoring was done, he said: “That wasn’t the first time you did that.”

  “I have helped my father many times. In this country gunshot wounds are not rare.”

  He put his good arm around her neck and pulled her gently toward him; but he didn’t need to pull. She came to him easily with a willingness that he found touching and exhilarating. He hated fooling around to get to the point. When a man wanted to kiss a girl as much as he wanted to kiss this one, he should go ahead and do it and take the consequences.

  The consequences here were even more than he expected. Here he knew as soon as their mouths met, was a woman made for love. She wasn’t good just for busting men out of jail.

  When they finished that one, they were both breathless and not only because they had both held their breaths. They looked at each other and they both knew. They smiled with quivering mouths. The first time he saw her, he knew she was the one for him. In those few minutes when their mouths had been together, something momentous had happened. This was the end of the line for him. No more night-riding, no more dodging; this girl had broken him out of jail into a new world. And he was glad.


  They sipped coffee, sitting near each other, but not touching. There was no need to touch to reassure each other. They were certain.

  “Maybe you know,” he said. “Maybe I don’t need to say nothin’, but this ain’t just one of those things, a man who hasn’t had a woman in a long time an’ finds himself alone with a woman like you. This is for keeps: church bells, kids, a home, any thin’ you say.”

  She nodded, her face unsmiling.

  “I know.”

  He laughed as lightly as he could.

  “This is a fine way to start, on the run, fair game for anybody with a gun.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We are together.”

  Chapter Seven

  They came slowly out of the green of the hills after travelling for a day and a half and hit the badlands, Spur taking them over the malpais so that they would leave no sign, or only sign that an Indian genius could find. To make sure, he cut squares of blanket and covered the animals’ feet with those. In the bad country, they travelled through the cool of the night and at dawn reached poor grassland, saw a thin cow or two. Spur’s arm was starting to give him trouble and Inez was worried about it.

  An hour later, in much the same country, they sighted smoke and, on Inez insistence, they headed for it. They came down out of the high rolling country onto a dried out plain cut through by an almost dried up creek. The few trees that showed were stunted and twisted with the bad years.

  The house they approached was an adobe with a small corral of the same material on one end of the house, a not unusual pattern in that end of the country where a man, in the great heat, gained what security he could for himself and his animals against marauding Indians. Now, so far as savages were concerned, the country was quiet: the brave ones were dead and the rest were on reservations and eating poorly on government rations.

  There was some sort of a stoop to the front of the house that gave a small patch of shade; by the stunted tree a horse stood, saddled and with drooping head; a few goats and hens stirred the dust of the yard. At the sound of their approach, a woman came out of the house and stood under the stoop cover and stared at them. By the smooth sheen of her hair and her clothes, they saw she was a Mexican. A man appeared and stood beside her; the barrel of a rifle glinted in his hand. There was something familiar about him, but at that distance, Spur couldn’t place him.