Towner bawled, “Look at me, suh, not at them!”
Sloan did, steadily and long. He said coldly, “I’ve not got much patience with your Southern code. If I fight a man, it’s not for fun, it’s for keeps and for a reason. Killing you won’t solve a damned thing because your whole crowd knows as well as I do that it isn’t fair. Your arm is broken, and you’re at a disadvantage. If I killed you then, I’d still have to take on the whole damned bunch of them.”
Dryden broke in, a grim-faced Dryden behind a shotgun that was none too steady. “What do you want, Hewitt? What are you getting at?”
Sloan didn’t look at him, but he answered him. He said, looking straight at the dusty-faced crowd of trail hands, “Pick your best man and send him out. Let him proxy for Towner.”
An instant of silence. Then clamor broke out in the cowmen’s ranks—the clamor of men eager to pick up the challenge. Sloan roared, “Shut up! It’s Towner’s choice. Let him pick the man!”
That quieted them a little, but there were still those who shouted, “Me, Maverick. Pick me. I’ll take that Yankee yellowbelly!”
Towner scowled. He plainly didn’t like anyone doing his fighting for him, but he also plainly knew that Sloan would kill him if he didn’t. Maybe he wasn’t afraid to die, thought Sloan, but he wasn’t exactly eager for it, either.
Towner said, “Denehy.”
There was an instant’s immobility, then the ranks of disappointed horsemen parted to let one of their number through. He was a small, scrawny man who, when he dismounted, displayed legs that were noticeably bowed. He had eyes as emotionless as those of a snake, and a thin, cruel mouth. His hair was uncut and long like most of the others, but there was an unkempt quality about him that the others did not possess, and his hair was the color of a mouse’s fur.
“Bin wantin’ to try you, Yankee yellowbelly,” he said. “An’ I bin hopin’ you’d last that long.”
Sloan said, “You’re lucky then, aren’t you?” in an even, steady voice. This one would be fast, he thought, perhaps faster than he. This one was professional. He could tell that by the gun rig he wore, by the easiness with which he waited now. Sloan stared at Towner. “I told you I only fight for a reason, and I want something understood.” Towner frowned. “If I kill your man, that’s an end to it. You shuck your guns right here and let Dryden haul them into town. Pick ’em up when you leave.”
“What if he kills you?”
Sloan grinned wryly. “That won’t concern me, will it? I won’t be here to care.”
Towner hesitated. Then he nodded a bit reluctantly. “You win, no matter whether you live or die. If you’re dead, there ain’t much point in treeing the town. We’ll have it the way we want it anyhow.”
Sloan grinned faintly. He looked at Denehy. “I’m ready.”
Denehy side-stepped guardedly. His eyes were unblinking, steady on Sloan’s face. Denehy was one who watched the eyes for a sign the man he faced was beginning to draw. That way, he got the signal a split second before his adversary’s hand could move. It gave him an edge, one that had probably kept him alive through a dozen gunfights he might otherwise have lost. A cocky, prideful gunman who would not draw first. He didn’t speak. Once he’d gotten himself set, he didn’t move. He scarcely seemed to breathe.
Sloan waited, too, knowing the wait would be harder on Denehy than it was on him. He was thinking of Sid, of Rose, of Sylvia, who were now avenged. He was thinking of Merline. He had won every battle but the last. Something told him this one was a battle he couldn’t win. He had a natural dexterity with his gun, but he hadn’t the skill that Denehy had. He didn’t spend hours practicing that lightning draw. He took a backward step—another. He narrowed his eyes until they were the mere slits. He’d draw in an instant now and he wondered how he would signal Denehy when he did—by a widening of his eyes? By a tightening of the muscles at the corners of his mouth? Suddenly his patience was gone. He couldn’t beat Denehy to the draw, so there was only one other thing to do.
His hand moved, but Denehy moved faster. An instant after Sloan began to draw he abandoned it and flung his body forward and to one side. Denehy’s gun blasted before he struck, but Sloan felt no bullet’s shock. He was tumbling in the dust, hearing the repeated roar of Denehy’s gun as he tried to follow Sloan’s erratic course. Rolling, Sloan drew his gun and, when he faced Denehy, steadied himself with one outflung hand and squeezed off a shot with the other. It took Denehy in the left shoulder, spoiling his aim at Sloan’s momentarily motionless form. Sloan snapped another shot just as he lost his balance, and this one missed. Denehy fought his way around again, but this time Sloan was ready for him. Crouched and steady, he squeezed off his shot and knew even before the roar of it reached his ears that it had gone where he willed it to go.
Denehy stumbled backward and sat down. His gun fell from his inert fingers.
Sloan got slowly, watchfully to his feet. He walked over and kicked Denehy’s gun out of reach. He turned to face the shocked group of horsemen, who had been so sure he would die that they could not believe that he was still alive.
Sloan said, “Step down, gentlemen, and shuck your guns. Then you can ride on into town.”
Towner stared at Denehy, and then at Sloan. “He was faster … ”
“Maybe. But he’s dead. Tell your men to shuck their guns, and bring that man of Burle’s with you when you come into town. He’s going to stand trial.”
He looked at the still forms on the ground—at Burle and his two men, at Denehy, who looked small and helpless, lying there. Then he turned his back deliberately and mounted his horse. He sat astride, looking down, while the trail hands rode past the growing pile of armaments on the ground, dropping their guns upon it. Before they had finished, he turned and rode toward town, slowly at first but with increasing speed. Today it looked like a different town than it had before. Today it looked like home, and was home, because a girl was waiting for him in the dusty road just this side of the railroad tracks. There was nothing of self-possession or calmness about her now. She was crying hysterically and unashamedly, and when she saw him coming she began to run, holding up her skirts so that she would not fall.
And, when she could talk, through her tears and the rough material of his shirt, all she could say was, “Damn you. Damn you. If you ever put me through that again …”
Her hair was smooth under his callused hand, and her body warm against his own. He’d put her through the same torment again because he was a lawman now and couldn’t help himself. But perhaps between times he could make it up to her. His arms tightened, and he held her very close.
the end
About the Author
Lewis B. Patten wrote more than ninety Western novels in thirty years, and three of them won Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, and the author received the Golden Saddleman Award. Indeed, this points up the most remarkable aspect of his work: not that there is so much of it, but that so much of it is so fine. Patten was born in Denver, Colorado, and served in the US Navy, 1933–1937. He was educated at the University of Denver during the war years and became an auditor for the Colorado Department of Revenue during the 1940s. It was in this period that he began contributing significantly to Western pulp magazines, fiction that was from the beginning fresh and unique and revealed Patten’s lifelong concern with the sociological and psychological affects of group psychology on the frontier. He became a professional writer at the time of his first novel, Massacre at White River (1952). The dominant theme in much of his fiction is the notion of justice, and its opposite, injustice. In his first novel it has to do with exploitation of the Ute Indians, but as he matured as a writer he explored this theme with significant and poignant detail in small towns throughout the early West. Crimes, such as rape or lynching, are often at the center of his stories. When the values embodied in these small towns are examined closely, they are found to be wanting. Conf
ormity is always easier than taking a stand. Yet, in Patten’s view of the American West, there is usually a man or a woman who refuses to conform. Among his finest titles, always a difficult choice, are surely A Death in Indian Wells (1970) and The Law at Cottonwood (1978). No less noteworthy are his more recent Westerns, Tin Cup in the Storm Country (1996), Trail to Vicksburg (1997), Death Rides the Denver Stage (1999), The Woman at Ox-Yoke (2000), and Ride the Red Trail (2001), now all available in trade paperback and e-book editions.
Lawless Town Page 21