Rio Bravo

by Leigh Brackett

  He had to. Chance only had three guns even with Colorado. Dude was able to realize, quite without dramatics, that he owed Chance too much to take one of those guns away from him.

  He composed himself to wait for Nathan Burdette’s next move.

  His shadow had moved out from under him and was beginning to slant eastward from the rock when Matt Harris and two other men rode up. They were elaborately polite about hanging up their guns. They appeared surprised when Dude insisted on making sure they had no others inside their shirts, but they did not raise any great objection. Matt Harris peered closely at Dude.

  “You look like you had an accident,” he said.

  Dude nodded. “I fell out of bed.”

  “You ought to be more careful,” Harris said.

  “I’m the carefullest man this side of hell,” Dude said, smiling. “How careful are you?”

  “Just as careful as I’m paid to be,” Harris said, and went on into town.

  Chance saw him come in. Harris made it obvious that he was on legitimate business. He bustled around on a series of errands while the two other men drifted from one place to another and finally wound up at the Rio Bravo Saloon, where Harris joined them. By that time, Chance figured, between them they had heard the story of the shooting from everybody in town.

  Chance went into the Rio Bravo too. Raton glanced at him nervously but he went on playing, making himself as small as he could on the piano stool. Some of his zest seemed to have departed. There were no customers in the place beside Harris and the two men; the monotonous deadly drumming of the Deguello was not helping to bring in any trade.

  Chance leaned on the bar beside Harris, who said, “Evening, Sheriff.”

  “Evening, Matt. Guess you heard that some of Joe’s friends dropped around this morning.”

  Harris nodded. “Joe’s got a lot of friends.”

  “Uh-huh,” Chance said. “Just as many as Nathan wants to buy at a hundred dollars a head.”

  Harris gave him a blank, cold look. “Sheriff,” he said, “I just came in here for a drink. Does the law say I got to take a lot of bull along with it?”

  “No,” said Chance cheerfully. “It’s Nathan’s money, after all.” He glanced at the clock. “Stick around a few minutes. I want Nathan to know that at least part of it was well spent.”

  He went and stood by the door, not exactly barring the way. Matt Harris finished his drink and ordered another, as though he had fully intended to stay.

  The Deguello pounded on and on from the piano.

  Presently from up the street another Deguello blended with it.

  This one was much fuller and louder. Drums carried the deep notes and brassy trumpets screamed fiercely over them. The sound came closer. It drowned out the piano. Raton stopped playing. He looked uneasily at Harris, who walked to the front of the saloon.

  “Come out,” Chance said from the porch. All along the street people were lined up watching. Juanito came first with his hide drum, walking tall and solemn, thumping with his clenched fist. The other musicians followed, six or seven of them, all Mexican and blowing their trumpets with the peculiar silken, snarling tone that Mexican brasses seem to have. The drums boomed. The whole town was filled with the Deguello and the men marched to it, and after them came the hearse with its black horses, and after the hearse came three wagons draped in black and each one carrying a coffin.

  “Take your hat off,” Chance said to Matt Harris.

  Harris said evenly, “The hell with you.” He went down the steps and got on his horse.

  “I’ll pass on your message,” he said and rode out of town past the procession, which followed him relentlessly as far as Boot Hill.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Dude was sleeping, rolled up on a blanket in the corner of the office. He was sleeping deeply and quietly, without nightmares.

  Stumpy asked, “Shall I wake him?”

  Chance shook his head. “Not unless you hear something. We’ll be back in a little bit anyway. Just want to look around.”

  Stumpy grinned evilly and stroked his shotgun. “Look sharp,” he said. “Nathan’s liable to be in a bad mood after today.” He lifted the gun and squinted along it at the door.

  “You be careful with that goddamn thing,” Chance said. “All set, Colorado?”

  Colorado nodded. They went out, covering each other.

  The street looked normal and unconcerned. There were lights in the cantinas. The stars blazed overhead and the wind blew, making gritty halos of dust wherever an outside lantern swung. The Deguello sounded, very wearily now, from the Rio Bravo Saloon, and a man sat on the porch there. Chance was used to seeing him. He looked carefully, saw no one else, and nodded to Colorado. Colorado covered him while he crossed the street. They began to move along the street on opposite sides, away from the Rio Bravo Saloon.

  Behind them on the porch of the saloon the man watched until they were some distance away, their backs to him and their attention on the buildings and the side lanes of the town. Then he took a cigar out of his pocket and lighted it. He used three matches one after the other, possibly because of the wind.

  Chance walked slowly, pacing Colorado. He stepped light, his gaze moving here and there, keen and restless. He felt edgy and keyed-up. The wind smelled strange to him and the stars were like a million cold bright watching eyes. The very quiet and normalcy of the town seemed somehow threatening, as though it was concealing a trap.

  Yet he could see nothing. Once he thought he heard the sound of a man running somewhere and he darted halfway up a dark lane, but then the sound was gone and he decided it was only the wind. He planned to make a full sweep of the town, going out the main street as far as Burdette’s warehouse where some of Wheeler’s wagons were still parked, and then swinging back by the livery stable and along behind the Rio Bravo Saloon and around again to the jail. There was no way to keep a complete watch on the town by night. Men could come in by many ways other than the road under cover of dark. About all you could do was hope to know it if a whole lot came in.

  They passed the hotel and Chance thought of Feathers in there tending bar and worrying about him. He could not think of any reason at all why a girl would want to take up with a man in his position, considering he was likely not to live the week out, but he had gotten nowhere trying to talk her out of it and so all right. He was glad she was there worrying about him. It made him all the more determined to survive.

  Not that a man needed any extra encouragement along those lines.

  Colorado was moving along alert and cool. Chance was glad of him. From Nathan’s angle one more gun might not look like much, but from where he sat it was like a whole company of artillery.

  The quiet and the wind made Chance very nervous and fidgety. He found himself literally holding his breath, waiting for something to happen.

  It did.

  Rio Bravo was a loose-built town. Apart from the main street people had tended to put up buildings wherever it took their fancy and so the side and back streets ran every whichway and there were clumps of houses, sometimes four or five of the two-room abodes run together, with nothing else near them. There was one of these at an angle to the main street, set back of it but overlooking it along a wide alley.

  On the main street Chance looked up the alley, saw nothing but the unlighted adobe block, and started across. With sudden violence a shot cracked out. Chance ducked and leaped for the cover of the corner he had just left.

  Colorado ran to join him. There was another shot, and then a third. They were coming from the adobe block.

  “Laying for us like they did for Mr. Wheeler,” Colorado said, and drew his gun.

  Chance said, “Get around back. Wait till you hear my rifle before you come in.”

  Colorado said, “Yes, sir.” He found a space between two store buildings and vanished into it.

  Chance began to work his way quickly along the side of the building, where a porch roof supplied him with a tunnel of black shadow. There were
more shots. By the time Chance reached the end of the alley he had located them. They were coming from the middle one of the five adobes. A couple of the houses he knew were empty, and the occupants of the others were laying mighty low. He figured Colorado would be behind the block by now. The angle at which it stood made it quite easy for Chance to come up to it from the end, which was without windows.

  Crouching low, moving in quick bursts of speed, Chance went along the fronts of the first two houses, under the shuttered windows, past the closed doors.

  There was more firing from inside the middle house. It came in a sort of explosion as though half a dozen guns were going all at once. Chance stopped in the blank space between the houses, hugging the wall. A puzzled expression came into his eyes.

  There was a moment of silence.

  From somewhere off to his right, behind the adobe block, he heard the sound of horses running.

  More shots went off in the house. Chance straightened up. He yelled with all his might to Colorado and the pounding hoofs rushed closer and he knew the boy was trapped against the back wall of the block with no cover and no place to go.

  There were more shots from inside the house but Chance did not hesitate any longer. He sprang to the door and kicked it in and rushed through the two small rooms in a cold frenzy because he could hear shooting from outside in the back now and he knew he was too late.

  The back door was barred. He tore the bar aside and flung it open. Horsemen were almost on top of him coming at a dead run, firing, and he saw Colorado dive headlong into the road in front of the horses. Chance swung his rifle up. The riders were shooting down at Colorado but the horses were shying and rearing at the sudden dark thing in the road, jumping stiff-legged to clear it. Chance fired at the bobbing targets. One of them fell. They were past Colorado now, flying down the street. Chance kept on firing and Colorado rose up out of the dust behind them working both guns. Another man came clear out of the saddle and a third one fell but not clean and the horse dragged him. Then they were gone. The drumming of hoofs rolled back on the wind from the main street and there was once again a sound of gunfire.

  Chance turned and ran back through the house, never stopping to see whether Colorado was with him. A couple more shots went off right in his ear but he ignored them. He ran out the front door and down the alley. In the main street the horsemen were going away from him, firing at some target he could not see, and the target was firing back because another man went off his horse. Chance did not fire at them because they were so blurred now in dust and darkness and going away so fast that he knew he would not hit them, and he was afraid of hitting somebody else. Colorado came up beside him, panting. “That sounds like Dude down there,” he said, and Chance said, “Yeah.”

  The shooting stopped and the sound of hoofbeats dwindled.

  Chance yelled, “Dude!” He started down the street.

  Dude answered. And suddenly Colorado said, “Up there on the roof,” and fired. He was way short but Chance saw where he was aiming. He brought the rifle to his shoulder and there was a sound like the hand of God slamming a table three times, and a man fell in a slow graceful arc from the flat roof of a building across the street from where Dude had answered.

  Colorado said, “They like to copper their bets, don’t they?”

  Dude was coming toward them. Chance went to the middle of the street where the rider who was being dragged had come loose from the stirrup. He lay on his face. Chance thrust a foot under him and heaved him over and then grunted in angry disgust. He turned to Dude.

  “How about them?” he asked, indicating the two bodies farther down the street.

  Dude shook his head.

  Chance cursed and started back toward the adobe block. “Goddamn it,” he said to Dude, “didn’t you have any better sense than to come running out where they could get at you?”

  “Thought you might need some help,” Dude said.

  “That’s just what they thought you’d think,” Chance snarled. He had been played for a fool and it made him mad.

  Dude said mildly, “I waked up kind of sudden, and there was a whole lot of shooting. What happened?”

  Chance did not answer, and Colorado said, “I ain’t sure myself and I was right in on it.” He turned to Chance. “What about the men in the house.”

  “There weren’t any men.” Chance was bending over a body at the end of the adobe block. Dude shrugged and went on to where Chance had brought down the first man when the horses were busy jumping over Colorado. He reached down a hand, and then he called sharply, “Hey, Chance!”

  Chance ran to him. But by the time he got there Dude was wiping his hand on the man’s shirt and shaking his head.

  “Did he say anything?” Chance asked.

  “Only three words, and he didn’t quite finish the last one.”

  “What were they?”

  “I couldn’t repeat them,” Dude said, “in front of the kid.”

  He stood up. Chance swore. “If we keep on like this, Juanito’ll be the richest man in town.” He looked at Colorado. “How come that dive under the horses?”

  “A horse won’t step on a man if it can help it,” Colorado said. “They’re leary of soft footing. And a man can’t shoot good from a jumping horse.” He nodded at the house. “I’d like to know about the men that were shooting at us from in there.”

  “I’ll show you,” Chance said. They went inside, into the two little rooms that had not been tenanted for some time. In the front one a rusty iron brazier had a fresh bed of coals glowing in it. Chance pointed to it.

  “Somebody threw a handful of cartridges into the fire. The heat set ’em off. I didn’t catch on, like a damned fool, until I realized there were no bullets coming through the windows. The sound and the pattern of firing were wrong too. But by that time they’d got what they wanted. Whether it was you or Dude with me, they knew we’d split up to take this place and they knew I’d go in the front. So they waited somewhere out of sight until you got around back, and then they had you pinned and figured I couldn’t get through to help you.”

  “That’s a good trick,” Dude said. “I’ll remember it.”

  “You do remember it,” Chance said wrathfully. “Part of it was to get rid of you. The horsemen got fouled up some and they missed you, but that guy on the roof wasn’t going to.”

  “Oh, him,” said Dude. “I was fixing to take care of him, only you got ahead of me.”

  “The hell you were.”

  “Matter of fact,” Dude said, “he was laying for me when I left the jail. That’s why I took cover. You didn’t need to worry about him.”

  “I give up,” Chance said, and slammed out of the house. But he was shaky with relief, and happy because this was the way Dude had been in the old days, the true tone and accent, and it was as though the three years in between had never been.

  Colorado said slowly, “They were out to get Dude and me, and I can understand that, Sheriff, but how come none of them tried to get you?”

  “I guess,” said Chance, “it’s because Nathan figures he’s got more use for me alive.”

  He thought how close they had come to stripping him of Dude and Colorado, leaving him to stand alone, and he was pretty sure he knew just about what use Nathan had in mind for him. He didn’t think, if Dude and Colorado had been killed, he would have been able to hold out against it. Not in any way that would have mattered.

  He walked on, and Dude and Colorado walked beside him. They walked like free men, but they were not free men, and Chance knew it. They were in a trap and the trap was closing tighter all the time, and the weight of it was all against them. They had won nothing but a reprieve that would not be any longer than Nathan Burdette wanted it to be.

  Men were gathering in the street around the bodies. Lantern light flickered red on their faces, giving them the weird look of creatures in a bad dream.

  Chance walked on, and the taste of the wind was cold and bitter.

  TWENTY-TWO


  They were all in the jail, and the jail was quiet. Even Stumpy was not talking. Chance sat with his feet on the desk and his hat pulled down, looking heavy and broody. Dude smoked. Colorado was the only one who was making any noise and it was so soft that it blended right into the quiet. He was singing. The song was a ballad about a man who caught a bull by the tail and was dragged all over the prairie until he fell into a hole where the bull couldn’t get at him.

  All of a sudden Colorado realized that Chance was watching him and he flushed and broke off his singing. “Sorry,” he said.

  “No need to be. Our minds are running the same way.” Chance got up and walked back and forth. “Seems like that’s what we’ve got to do, get into a hole and stay there till the marshal comes. I ain’t going to like it any better than you will, but it’ll only be for three or four days and I guess we can stand it.”

  Dude nodded. “That way Nathan won’t have much to choose from. He can rush the jail or do nothing.”

  “Ten to one he’ll wind up rushing it,” Chance said. “Time’s running out on him and the shorter it gets the more he’ll begin to wonder if I really meant what I said about killing Joe, When it gets short enough he’ll figure Joe’d be better shot than hung anyway and at least he might have the pleasure of killing us too.”

  “We can hold him,” Dude said. “Meantime he won’t be able to throw any loops over you, which is what he wants.”

  Chance nodded. “How much food you got, Stumpy? Enough for all of us?”

  “I’ll need more bacon and beans. And coffee.”

  “How about water and firewood?”

  “Filled up this morning on them. But there’s other things—tobacco and matches, unless you got plenty.”