Blood at Sunset (A Sam Spur Western

by Matt Chisholm

  In a minute or two, an idea struck him.

  He climbed down from the shelf and managed to pick his coat up from the floor. It took him some time to get it on the shelf at hand level because he could use only his teeth and feet. However, he managed to find the stub of a pencil in a pocket. He now climbed awkwardly to the top shelf, praying that it would not collapse under his weight and there managed to tear off a piece of paper from a parcel up there. He climbed down to a height at which he could use his hands and wrote on the paper, signing his name when he finished. He thrust the paper between his body and the top of his pants and climbed down again.

  Now there was a man’s voice raised outside the door. It sounded like Charlie Doolittle’s. Juanita’s voice sharp with anger was added to his. A man swore and the key turned in the lock. The door opened and Spur heard Stace say: ‘Gaylor ain’t goin’ to like this.’

  ‘I don’t expect him to,’ Doolittle said.

  The girl came in behind him. She said she had brought him some food and would dress his wound again.

  Doolittle added: ‘We’ll stay while you eat it.’

  Jim Tabor came in and said: ‘Wayne Gaylor’s goin’ to hear about this.’

  Doolittle turned nonchalantly and said: ‘Go tell him right now.’

  The girl came close to Spur and started to unwind the bandage after she had removed the shirt he wore like a cloak. Stace was standing in the doorway watching them. When the girl was between Spur and the man in the doorway, Spur whispered: ‘Take the paper in the top of my pants.’

  Spur looked at Doolittle and knew the man had heard. Doolittle turned and started talking to Stace. The girl’s fingers retrieved the piece of packing paper and slipped it down the top of her blouse.

  When she had the wound uncovered, she said: ‘It is angry, but it is doing well. It is clean and that is the important thing.’

  When the wound was bound up again, she fed him. There was the leg of a chicken, some chili con carne, some tortillas, a little wine. A feast. He wolfed it. He was halfway through it when Gaylor came in.

  He stood staring at Spur and the girl.

  ‘Pretty soon, Doolittle,’ he said softly, ‘you’ll go too far with me.’

  ‘You threatenin’ me, Gaylor?’ Doolittle asked gently.

  ‘I’m givin’ you due warnin’. I’m the law in this neck of the woods an’ don’t you forget it.’

  ‘You don’t give anybody a chance to forget it,’ Doolittle said. ‘Only, if you’re a lawman, I’m the archangel Gabriel.’

  ‘You git outa here.’

  ‘I’ll go when the prisoner’s fed.’

  Gaylor looked as if he would like to use force, but dared not. Spur ate on, wondering about Doolittle. He seemed to be a man of influence around here. When he was through eating, Juanita let him drink from the bottle of wine. It was red, coarse and strong. It seemed to put new strength into him.

  With her back to the men, she smiled at him.

  ‘A thousand thanks, senorita,’ he said. ‘If I live, I hope to be able to repay you.’

  ‘That you live will be repayment enough. Tell me, did you kill the old man, Rube Daley?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I did not. He was my friend. He sent for me because he was in trouble.’ Her smooth forehead creased in a frown. ‘Do you know what the trouble was?’

  ‘Talk American, damn you,’ Gaylor said.

  ‘There is only one trouble here,’ she said, ‘and that is that vain pig there.’

  Juanita gathered up her utensils and put them in the basket she had brought with her. ‘I shall return tomorrow,’ she said. She turned and thrust her way through the men and went out through the store. Doolittle nodded to Spur and followed.

  Gaylor came forward and looked Spur over. He grinned.;

  ‘Enjoyin’ life?’ he said. ‘Arms still in their sockets?’

  ‘When do I come to trial?’ Spur asked.

  ‘When the judge gits here. Next week. The week after. Who knows?’

  He turned away and went out. The other two followed him, the door shut and the key turned in the lock. Spur climbed up on the shelf and went to sleep. He was going to need all the strength he could muster.

  Chapter Five

  Charlie Doolittle walked down the street beside the Mexican girl. They didn’t speak. They walked through the deep dust until they reached the cantina of her father and entered the cool spacious interior. Here there were no more than three or four men, drinking. Her father was behind the bar, sweating. He turned toward them as they entered.

  Doolittle went up to the bar and said: ‘A word with you, Manuel. In private.’ He spoke in rough cow pen Spanish.

  Morales gave him a hooded look and said: ‘You will take a drink?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The Mexican picked up a bottle and two glasses and led the way from the bar, down a narrow passage and out into a kind of patio where there was cool water and a few shady trees growing.

  Doolittle had never been out back here before and he was struck by the pleasantness of it. There was a table and chairs here. They sat. Manuel poured some wine and they drank. The girl stood watching them. She took the piece of paper that Spur had given her from her blouse and gave it to Doolittle. He read it carefully and looked at the man and the girl. Then he read what was written on it.

  He said: ‘This is some choice to make. We don’t know if he killed old Rube or not. It’s one thing to see a prisoner isn’t maltreated, another to help him like this.’

  ‘All he wants is a lawyer,’ Manuel said. ‘Is that too much to ask?’

  ‘We can fix that an’ have a lawyer here inside forty-eight hours,’ Doolittle said. ‘But that’s not all he wants. He says get in touch with this Cusie Ben. You know him?’

  Morales spread his hands.

  Doolittle went on: ‘He’s a crazy Negra. Killed more men than you and me have had hot dinners.’ That took some translating into Doolittle’s crude Spanish. The result was spectacular in its awfulness.

  ‘This man Ben is his friend,’ Morales said. ‘It is natural for a man to want a friend near at a time like this.’

  ‘I think we should also inform the Federal Marshal,’ Doolittle said.

  ‘That makes sense. But you cannot send a letter from here. It would never get past the sheriff.’

  ‘I’ll send a rider into Crewsville within the hour,’ Doolittle said. ‘I was going myself, but I think I should stick around here. Why I trouble myself with this man Spur I don’t know.’

  Morales said: ‘Because you are a good man, my friend.’

  Doolittle withered him with a look, rose and said: ‘Thanks for the wine, Manuel.’

  He walked out through the cantina, turned right and walked to the extreme east of the Mexican part of town. Here was situated his freight-yard which was his source of livelihood. Here were the extensive corrals containing those bullocks and mules which were not out on the trail, three or four heavy freight wagons scattered about the yard and beyond his house, a sprawling adobe. In this building was his office. He entered the low cool building, crossed the patio and went into his office beyond. Here at his desk, he sat down and wrote three letters. These he sealed and carried out into the yard. Here, he found a small dark man. This was Inaki Cilveti, a Basque from the old country. Doolittle had had him with him for several years and knew him to be tough and resourceful.

  ‘Inaki,’ he said, ‘I have a very special job for you. You will take the two fastest horses – the sorrel and the gray, I think – and you will ride them to Crewsville turn and turnabout. You will not stop to eat, drink or smile at a woman until you hand this first letter to Hansard Morley, an attorney who has his office on Donaphan. When that is done, you will mail this letter to the Federal Marshal. Last you will go north-east into the country-known as the Three Soldiers, Los Tres Soldados, to find this man Cusie Ben. You will go as fast as a man can go who has two horses at his disposal. If you do all these things well, you will earn my gratitude and a just rew
ard.’

  Being a speaker of Basque, Cilveti’s Spanish was as bad as Doolittle’s. It was the only language they had for communication. He replied that he would do all his patron asked. He would go now.

  ‘And, Inaki,’ Doolittle added, ‘there is one other thing. You will speak to nobody of what you do.’

  Cilveti swore on his life that he would be silent. He walked away and Doolittle watched him catch the two horses. Both animals were Doolittle’s pride. He was a great lover of horses. When the sorrel was saddled and the Basque was ready to depart, Doolittle handed him a wad of banknotes, saying: ‘A man who has money travels light and fast.’

  The Basque bade him farewell and rode out. Doolittle knew that he would be in Crewsville by midnight. Within two days at the latest, the lawyer would be here. Within five the Federal Marshal would know that one of his officers had been arrested by a local sheriff. Doolittle stuck a stogie between his lips and fired it, thinking. He didn’t know if he had done right, but he had certainly put a spoke in Gaylor’s wheel.

  Lydia Carson served in her father’s store. Her father found her useful when dealing with lady customers. There were few of those in town, but every now and then ranchers’ wives came in from the outlying ranges. The country was still comparatively empty, for it had not yet recovered from the Apache scares of a couple of years past, but more people were coming in now. One or two men had shown that with judicious irrigation, the desert could be made to bloom. Long past the Navaho Indians had shown that the soil of Arizona could bear peach trees. There was a future in the territory and Carson meant to hold on making no more than a fair living until the good days came. When they did he would be well-entrenched; there were possibilities of his becoming a man of some importance. This was a dream he had.

  Therefore, when his daughter showed some interest in the wretched murderer who was incarcerated in his store-room, he was moved to anger. His daughter was a beauty and he had hopes for her. She would make a powerful marriage that would be a stepping-stone to her father’s ambition. His daughter worried him. Women, in this country where women were such a scarce commodity, usually married young. She was therefore passing the accepted age for marriage. She was twenty-two. By rights, she should have been married a few years and should now be rearing children. He might be a dominating father and he may have expressed his wishes in certain terms, but his daughter who was ordinarily obedient and well-behaved, had shown a disconcerting determination over the matter of marriage.

  Not that she didn’t like men. She liked them very much indeed and they were seldom far from her thoughts. But the thoughts were dreamlike and she could not see in the uncouth male inhabitants of this wild land anybody that took her fancy. Except for this wounded man they had locked up in her father’s store and whom they all called a murderer.

  Something had happened to her in that first moment when she saw him. And she knew in her innermost being that the same thing had happened to him. She didn’t know whether he had committed the murder or not, but she was aware that she didn’t care. The rules that she had learned at her mother’s knee fell away from her. She no longer cared for what was right or wrong. When a woman feels for a man what she felt for the chained creature in her father’s store-room, there is no right and wrong except that which she creates herself. It was as though she had formed in an instant her own private morality, her own private sanity. What the rest of the world thought and did no longer mattered.

  She went about her business, her usually simple and straightforward mind suddenly devious, outwardly the same as ever, courteous and smiling to the women she served in the store, a ready word for a youngster, affectionate with her father. But inside her she was planning, dreaming. She looked for an opportunity. The man Spur had to be freed. He would ride away from here, heading for the open plains to which he belonged. And she would be with him. That she didn’t doubt. She would leave her father, her secure life. Suddenly, she didn’t care anymore how she would live or what must come tomorrow. She wanted to live, she thirsted for a crazy happiness that gave no thought for the future.

  Yet, at the same time, she didn’t lose her good sense totally. She knew little about the man on whom she had set her mind. There was, she knew, a recklessness about him which boded ill for any woman. Sure, she knew she could make him love her given the chance. She knew that she could inspire him with a passion that he could not have known before. But she knew that she would never hold him forever and a day. There would be no happy ever after. And she didn’t give a damn. She wanted to taste what this man had to offer and then life could carry on as it had done before.

  The strange thing was that this girl, who had been sheltered from the world all her life by her mother and father, a girl who was really abysmally ignorant of the world had seen almost nothing of it, was not surprised by the depths of her feelings nor lacked confidence that once she had this man to herself that her dream could become reality.

  Once or twice, in spite of her conscious attempt to hide her thoughts from her parents, she was caught out. Once her father spoke to her in the store, asking her to fetch something for him and she didn’t hear him.

  ‘Lyd girl’, he admonished, ‘you’re standing there dreaming.’ To dream in the Carson household was unheard of. Folks had to be practical. The purpose of life was to get ahead and that meant the making of money.

  She came to herself with a start, found herself blushing a little at her thoughts.

  ‘I’m sorry, pa,’ she said. ‘I’m a little tired. I guess it’s the heat.’

  He frowned and told her what he wanted. He didn’t have overmuch sympathy for physical weakness.

  Later, when she was clearing the dishes, she stopped between the table and her mother who was washing the dirty dishes, caught in a dream of the man who her father told her was chained like a dog. And he was wounded. She was caught in a trap of compassion and rage.

  Her mother spoke to her and she didn’t hear.

  ‘Lyd, you’re dreaming.’

  It was an accusation. The words got through to her. She came to herself to find herself in the familiar kitchen with the picture of Spur still in her mind. She stood confused. In front of her was her mother, stolid, eyes dead. Had she ever felt passion for the equally stolid Mangan Carson? Had she ever lost her head and done the instinctive foolish thing?

  Lydia pulled herself together and went about her routine. At night she lay in her bed and thought about Spur, dreamed of her helping him to escape to freedom. She wanted him to ride free again, but she doubted if she had the courage to help him. She was tied to the routine and dullness of her life here.

  The last thing she saw before she slept was the look that the man had given her. He had seen her as a beautiful and desirable woman. Wounded and caught as he was, she had gotten through to him as a woman.

  Chapter Six

  The following day, late in the afternoon, a young man rode into Sunset on a tired horse. The horse was a bay hired from the Crewsville livery. The man was a slim fellow of about twenty five or six years of age. He wore a city suit and he looked as if the ride had taken the stuffing out of him.

  He asked the way of the town drunk to Charles Doolittle’s freight-yard. The drunk told him and then went off with meandering steps to inform Sheriff Wayne Gaylor at the American House where he boarded. The sheriff received the information with some interest and gave the drunk the price of a drink.

  The young man rode on to Doolittle’s place, went through Mex Town and found the freight-yard without difficulty. Doo-little was in the yard supervising the hitching of four yoke of oxen. They would start the pull into Crewsville in the cool of the evening. Such travel at this time of the year was kindest to men and beasts.

  ‘Mr, Doolittle?’ the young man asked.

  ‘The same.’

  ‘I’m Hansard Morley, attorney. I received your letter.’

  ‘Light, Mr. Hansard and come in out of the heat.’

  The young man stepped down from the saddle and
a man came and led away his horse. The two men shook and Doolittle led the way into his house. In a pleasant room, Doolittle sat Morley down and poured him a drink.

  ‘I know little of why you sent for me, Mr. Doolittle, beyond the fact that a man has been arrested for murder and you’re interested in him.’

  Doolittle was cautious.

  ‘I’m not so much interested in him as in justice, Mr. Morley,’ Doolittle told him. ‘I don’t know whether this man killed the victim or not. I’m not too much concerned. All I know is the local sheriff is a sonovabitch and he’s trying to keep Spur incommunicado.’

  The young man looked startled.

  ‘Spur did you say, sir? Not Sam Spur for God’s sake.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘He’s a Federal Marshal.’

  ‘I know it. A man could ask himself why a man in his position should shoot a prospector in the back of the head. Particularly as that miner was a friend of his.’

  ‘Maybe you’d best tell me the story from the beginning.’

  Doolittle did so. They went in to dinner, served by Doolittle’s Mexican housekeeper Serafina Rodriguez. It was an excellent meal and during it, they discussed the case. Morley didn’t like what he heard. On the face of it a jury could think the man was guilty.

  ‘I take it, Mr. Doolittle,’ the attorney said, ‘that you believe this man is innocent.’

  ‘I don’t believe anything,’ Doolittle retorted. ‘It is merely that I hate to see a man not being allowed to make a legal defense. Added to that I don’t much care for the sheriff. You have only to see what kind of men he uses for deputies to judge what kind of a man he is himself.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ the younger man said. This was a chance for him. He was new to the west and had come into the country hoping that he could find rapid advancement for himself. ‘I’ll demand to see the prisoner in the morning. Meanwhile, I must see if I can find lodgings in town.’