Rio Bravo

by Leigh Brackett

  That was the night that John T. Chance, the sheriff of Rio Bravo, got a bull by the tail and couldn’t let him go.

  TWO

  Jim Ryan was singing as he rode along. Wheeler liked the sound of it. The kid had a sweet voice and he kept it down quiet, so that it blended with the creak of the wagon wheels, the jingle of harness chain and the steady plodding of hoofs.

  Wheeler glanced back along the train. The skinners were taking it easy, lounging on the high seats and letting the mules follow the leader. Behind the twelve big wagons and the chuck wagon the remuda lazed along, making a big dust. The sun was high and hot. The mules’ heads hung and their long ears were limp. To the left of the rutted road the wide land shimmered, a pale gray-green wash of sage over tan and sand-color, splotched with the darker green of prickly pear and yucca. To the right was a line of cliffs, bold and rocky, cut with arroyos.

  Wheeler relaxed. Ordinarily he would have made a nooning, but it was early in the season and the heat was not too great. He wanted to reach Rio Bravo well before dark. The mules needed rest and the boys needed some fun. It was a long haul out from Fort Worth to the mining camps where they were going, and very few towns along the way.

  Wheeler was half-asleep when Ryan stopped singing and said, “Hey—Mr. Wheeler!”

  Wheeler straightened up. Ryan pointed, “Look there.”

  High on the top of the cliff a rider was silhouetted against the sky, horse and man as motionless as the rocks.

  “One of the Burdettes’ riders,” said Wheeler. “This is all Silver Spur range.” He raised his arm and waved to the man.

  The man remained motionless, remote and small on top of the cliff. For some reason, all at once, Wheeler became uneasy.

  “Maybe he didn’t see you,” Ryan said.

  “He saw me.” Wheeler looked all around, pricked by this sudden feeling. He had bossed wagon trains for a long time and he had learned to be as smart as an old coyote about knowing when something was wrong.

  If the rider was just a cowboy at his regular work, he should have waved back. Most likely he would have ridden down to pass the time of day. But he just sat there, watching the valley.

  He continued to sit until the remuda was passing below him. Then Wheeler, looking back, saw him pull a rifle from his saddle and raise it high over his head, holding it in both hands.

  “There’s another,” said Ryan, pointing ahead. A second rider sat on a spur of the cliffs. He too held his rifle high, acknowledging the signal of the first one.

  “What do we do?” Ryan said.

  “Go ahead,” Wheeler told him. He rode back and spoke to Sam Gilson, his head skinner, on the lead wagon. “Keep your guns handy but don’t use ’em unless I tell you.” He turned to Ryan. “That goes for you too.” He nodded to Sam. “Pass the word along.”

  Sam’s swamper had waked up and was making sure the guns were loaded. All along the line the men were snapping out of their doze, getting the lines firm in their hands, looking around. Wheeler signaled for them to move a little faster and rode ahead again, trying to look every way at once and seeing nothing but the horseman on the cliff a quarter of a mile in front of him. The man had returned his rifle to its sheath. He sat watching, motionless, while the wagon train filed along the road below him. It passed him. The skin of Wheeler’s back itched. He kept swiveling his head around to watch the rider, and he saw the man raise his right arm and bring it down in a sweeping gesture.

  From the brush-choked mouth of an arroyo about forty yards ahead six armed men came riding.

  Wheeler flung up his arm in a signal, and the wagons jolted to a stop, flinging up dust in clouds that blew swiftly away. Ryan was sitting straight in the saddle and his horse was dancing nervously.

  “Watch it, boy,” Wheeler said sharply. “Let’s see what this is.”

  The kid was sensible, but he was green. Wheeler thought about what was inside some of the wagons and sweated. He didn’t want Ryan getting rattled and going off half-cocked.

  The riders came up.

  Wheeler recognized the man who was leading the bunch. It was Matt Harris, Nathan Burdette’s foreman and top gun. Wheeler did not know Matt Harris very well and he did not want to. Harris had a sharp leathery face with a long jaw and cold eyes. It was a face that Wheeler did not think could be made to look friendly no matter how hard Harris tried.

  He wasn’t trying now. He and the five men with him made a barrier across the road, and his eyes moved quick and wary from Wheeler to the kid and then along the line of wagons.

  “If nobody makes any trouble,” Harris said, “there won’t be any. This ain’t a holdup.”

  “What is it then?” asked Wheeler. He was getting mad, partly because he was scared and partly because Harris rubbed him the wrong way, barring the road and looking arrogant.

  Harris did not bother to explain. He asked, “You going into Rio Bravo?”

  “We’re on the road, aren’t we? Where else would we be going?”

  Harris looked at him. “You figure on going right through or stopping over?”

  Wheeler’s thick neck was bulging over his collar. He was not an even-tempered man. “What’s it to you?” he demanded of Harris, and then added in an even louder tone, “You got no right to stop us.”

  Harris smiled. “This is Burdette range you’re on.”

  “I know that,” Wheeler said, “but this is a public road.”

  “Well, now,” said Harris, “that all depends. And you haven’t answered my question.”

  Wheeler glared at Harris, almost forgetting that he was scared.

  Ryan moved up and said politely, “You want to answer him, Mr. Wheeler?”

  The kid was mad too and spoiling for a fight. For a second Wheeler was tempted. Then he remembered what he was hauling this trip and he shook his head.

  “It ain’t worth a fight,” Wheeler said regretfully.

  Ryan shrugged. “That’s up to you, Mr. Wheeler.” He dropped back again. Harris grinned. The five other men grinned too. They didn’t look like cowboys. They looked like hired gunhands. But sometimes with the Burdette riders, it was hard to tell.

  Wheeler said, answering Harris’s question, “We’re stopping overnight, just like we’ve been doing the last three years or more.” The words had a bad taste in his mouth. He spat and said, “Now what’s this all about?”

  Harris said, “We just got orders to ask, that’s all.”

  Ryan inquired, still in that painfully polite voice, “Who’s giving these orders?”

  Harris nodded to Wheeler. “Ask him. He knows the Burdettes.”

  Ryan said, “I was asking you.”

  Harris took a long close look at Ryan. “What’s your name?”

  Ryan smiled. “Is that part of your orders too?”

  Harris looked at him a moment longer, and then turned and rode away down the line of wagons. His men followed after him. Wheeler glared, wishing he had not let Harris get away with it. He looked at Ryan, who was purposely not looking at him.

  “Figure it out for yourself,” he said angrily. “Three wagons loaded with dynamite and four with lamp oil. You figure it.”

  Ryan said, “Yes, sir.”

  In a very bad mood, Wheeler got the wagons rolling again. Twice more they saw watchers on the cliffs, but they were not stopped again. There was a lot of speculation among the men, but it got nowhere. Wheeler told Ryan what he knew about the Burdettes, which was not much except that every time he came through Rio Bravo, which was about four times a year, they seemed to have got bigger, richer and more unpopular. He had never met or even seen either of the brothers personally.

  The road swerved away from the cliffs, where great boulders now made the way impassable. It began to skirt the edge of a long swell of land that humped outward from the cliffs. Presently there was a side road. The main track went ahead apparently without end, but the side road ran up the swell of land. Wheeler turned into it. The wagons followed him, the mules leaning into their collars on the
grade, the whips popping.

  Wheeler looked up. Where the land flattened out again at the top of the swell the houses of Rio Bravo swam in the heat shimmer. The cliffs rose sheer and bold behind the town, breaking only once to let the river through—not much of a river, either, for such a proud name—and on the top of the cliffs, placed so that nothing could move unseen in the streets below them, two horsemen watched and brooded.

  From out of nowhere, in all that heat, a cold wind blew across Wheeler’s body.

  He went on into Rio Bravo, with the great heavy wagons rolling behind him.

  They passed Boot Hill and the straggling lanes of the poor Mex quarter, where the tiny adobe houses baked and crumbled in the sun. Usually the place swarmed with children and goats, and there were old men with white mustachios and fine grave faces sitting under rickety arbors of thatch, and dark women leaning in the low doorways, or sweeping, or washing, or nursing their babies. Today there was not a sound or a sign of life. Every door and shutter was closed tight. Wheeler pictured the stifling darkness in those rooms, and suddenly he could smell the fear in the air, along with the mingled odors of dust and oregano.

  At a place between the Mex quarter and the main part of the town there was a tumble-down stone-and-’dobe structure that had once housed the livery stable before the new one was built, handy to the new hotel. The old well still gave some water. The horse trough was full and the shelter had been propped up and some of the missing thatch replaced with canvas so a horse could stand under it without getting sun stroke.

  There was a mounted man in the road there, barring the way.

  THREE

  The sunlight flashed off a bit of metal on the left side of the man’s vest. At least this looked official. Wheeler spurred forward.

  The man didn’t give him any chance to speak. He said, “Hello, Wheeler,” his voice curt and his eyes on the wagons. Then he said, “Keep your wagons moving. Tell your men to stay with ’em till they’re told different.”

  Wheeler stared at him. The man wore a deputy’s star but he did not look like a deputy. He looked more like something a butcherbird had hung on a fence to dry, gray and ganted-up and with the clothes peeling off him in tatters. But his voice had a hard ring of authority. He was still watching the wagons, ignoring Wheeler.

  Wheeler’s neck began to swell again. “What is this? Who the hell are you, ordering me around? First it’s the Burdettes, and now you …” He leaned closer, thrusting out his jaw. “I know you. I swear I do.”

  The man shrugged and said, “Probably.”

  Wheeler relaxed, looking disgusted. “Sure. You’re the one the Mexicans call El Borrachin. You had me mixed up, wearing that star.” He laughed, not humorously. “You’ll have to excuse me. It’s the first time I’ve seen you like this.”

  “If you mean sober,” Dude said, “you’re probably right. Now do you tell your men or do I?”

  Wheeler hesitated. The last time he had seen this borrachin—he had another name, one that didn’t belong at all, Dude, that was it—the last time he had seen Dude or El Borrachin he was being heaved bodily out of a saloon and he had lain in the sun on the beaten earth until somebody took pity on him and dragged him into the shade of a wall. He was disposed to tell Dude or El Borrachin to go to hell. But there was something about him now that made Wheeler doubtful. This was a stranger. His eyes were suffering and dangerous and he had a big gun strapped around his hollow waist. Besides, he was wearing a star. Wheeler decided to wait. He rode back down the line of wagons, giving the order. He noticed that Dude pulled back a little and sat with his hand loose over his gunbutt, watching intently as though he expected to see something come out from under the tilts of the wagons. High up on the cliffs, the silent horsemen watched too.

  Wheeler was coming back toward the head of the train when he saw the lead wagons pull over to make room and heard a solemn thumping sound coming toward him out of the town. A little Mexican kid, who looked about nine and was probably twelve, came carrying a stretched-hide drum almost as big as he was. He marched with a slow measured tread, banging the drumhead once with his fist every time his bare right heel hit ground. Behind him came the hearse, its glossy black paint sun-scorched and faded, the elaborate carvings of flowers and ribbons and sable draperies upheld by angels beginning to crack along the grain. The plate-glass windows flashed in the sun. All the men of the wagon train took off their hats. So did Wheeler. He knew Bert Pegram, the undertaker, but Bert was sitting as stiff as his own freight on the box, done up in a black suit and staring straight ahead. A buggy followed behind the hearse, carrying the preacher and a couple of women, and a dozen or so men in their Sunday clothes walked after them in the white dust. The men looked uncommonly grim even for mourners. They kept glancing uneasily from Wheeler and his wagons to the horsemen on the cliffs and then around at the landscape generally. Some of them wore guns under their church-going coats.

  Wheeler clapped his hat back on and rode up the street past the lead wagons. He was looking for Chance.

  He found him, standing square in the middle of the street beside the jail, with his rifle in the crook of his arm. He did not wear any hand guns. He cast a long shadow where he stood. Wheeler rode up to him, noticing that all along the street people were hiding in doorways and around corners, only sticking their heads out to watch. Incongruously, the sound of the piano in the Rio Bravo Saloon was the loudest thing there.

  “What the hell is going on?” Wheeler demanded.

  Chance looked past him at the wagons and said, “Hold your wagons where they are, Pat. Tell your men to stay with ’em.”

  Wheeler exploded. “Damned if I will. I had enough of this. I ain’t telling anybody anything until somebody gives me a straight answer. I been stopped and ordered around and stopped and ordered—”

  Chance said, “Better slow down or you’ll bust, Pat.” He held up his own hand to stop the wagons.

  “Look, Chance,” Wheeler said. “Remember me, your old friend? You got no call to act like this with me. Hell, I thought you’d want to know about the Burdettes, and now you’re doing the same thing.”

  Chance’s eyes left the wagons and pinned Wheeler. They were gray-blue, nested in sun wrinkles, appearing pale in contrast to the leather color of his face. Wheeler had always thought of them as friendly, humorous, and more than a little lazy. Now they bit into him cold and hard.

  “What about the Burdettes?”

  “They stopped me,” Wheeler said. “Couple of hours ago on the road. Matt Harris and some men—asked a lot of questions. I didn’t like it.”

  “Better get used to it,” Chance said. “You’ll get it again when you go to leave.”

  Wheeler shook his head. “I ain’t going back that way. I’m going on to Salt Springs.”

  “No difference. They’re watching that road too.”

  “Why?” said Wheeler. “Would you just mind telling me why?”

  Dude rode up at a gallop from the end of the wagon train. He said sharply, “Chance, you damn fool, get out of the middle of the street!”

  “In a minute,” Chance said.

  “Right now,” said Dude. He moved around behind Chance, his hand on his gunbutt, watching the doorways, the windows, the spaces between the houses.

  Chance shrugged. He walked back toward the jail. Satisfied, Dude rode away again down the line of wagons.

  “Oh, hell,” Wheeler said. “I give up.” He slid heavily out of the saddle and followed Chance, leading his horse. Ryan was sticking by the lead wagon, looking as though he wasn’t interested in any of it, but Wheeler could see that he wasn’t missing anything.

  Chance leaned his narrow butt against the hitching rack and nodded over his shoulder at the jail.

  “We’ve got Joe Burdette in there,” he said.

  Wheeler’s jaw dropped. “Joe Burdette? Nathan’s brother?”

  Chance nodded.

  “What for?”

  “You passed the reason on the way in. They were taking it out
to bury it.”

  “Murder?”

  “No other name for it. Little guy named Gurney Hayes. Maybe you knew him.”

  Wheeler did not and was just as glad. “Christ,” he said. “No wonder things are in a mess. What did Nathan say about it?”

  Chance looked up at the two men who stood sentinel above the town.

  “Nothing. He’s not talking. Just doing.” He turned back to Wheeler. “So now maybe you’ll stand for a minute without busting a cinch and answer some questions for me.”

  “Sure,” Wheeler said. “Sure, you bet.”

  “How many men did Matt Harris have with him?”

  “Five.”

  “Just five, both times?”

  “What do you mean, both times?”

  “When he rode up to you and when he rode away.”

  “Hell, man, I can count. It was five all the time. What’re you aiming at?”

  “I thought he might have put some men onto your wagons. Can’t think of a better way to get ’em into town sight unseen.”

  Wheeler’s face got red. So that was what everybody was afraid of.

  “That’s a fine thing to say, that is. If you think I’m that kind of a—”

  “Pat, you’ve got an awful temper,” Chance said. “It’ll get you in trouble yet.” He grinned, and all of a sudden he was the Chance Wheeler knew, ten years younger and a good man to drink with. “I don’t think you’re that kind, but there’s ways a man can be forced and ways he can be tricked. So I’m asking.”

  Wheeler said, “He came with five men and went with five. He couldn’t have put anybody in the wagons if he’d tried, because there ain’t room. No money in freighting empty space. And I got a full crew, which I wouldn’t trade one of for any of those gunslingers.” He leaned closer to Chance. “You figure Nathan will rush the jail?”

  “I figure he’s going to do something,” Chance said. “He’s got this town bottled up tight. I can’t change my socks without he knows it, let alone move Joe out of here and the killing only happened last night.” He nodded toward the cliffs. “They were up there before daylight.”