Blood at Sunset (A Sam Spur Western

by Matt Chisholm

  The Negro must have searched Kruger because he appeared from behind the counter with a key in his hand. He gave it to the girl and said: ‘Open her up, miss.’ Then to Carson: ‘You keep ahead of me, mister.’

  The girl opened up the door. The Negro picked up the lamp and walked into the store-room. Spur was on his feet, blinking in the lamplight, looking like hell.

  ‘Ben,’ he said simply.

  Ben said: ‘You all right, boy?’ His eyes took in the chains, Spur’s hands pulled high.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Spur said. ‘A mite mad is all.’

  Carson looked in amazement from one man to the other, marveling at their calm. This might have happened to them every day of the week.

  Juanita said: ‘We must hurry.’

  Spur said: ‘I’m sorry you had to be in on this, Juanita.’

  ‘Only way we could git in,’ Ben said, ‘without blastin’ some folks. An’ you don’t care too much for killin’.’ He climbed the shelves and cut the rope that held the chains. Spur lowered his arms with a small sigh of relief.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  Ben said: ‘We wait a mite.’

  There was a faint sound behind him. He whirled and his gun came into his hand, smooth and fast. The golden-haired girl in the doorway started back with a slight scream as the weapon was pointed at her.

  ‘You go back to your room,’ her father told her.

  Ben said: ‘Now she here, she stays.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Lydia demanded, eyeing the Negro with some fear.

  ‘I’m escapin’ from justice,’ Spur said lightly.

  The girl’s face lit up.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ she exclaimed.

  Carson said: ‘You don’t know what you’re saying, girl. Go back to your room.’

  Lydia was in her nightdress and dressing-gown. She looked ravishing. So much so that Juanita looked at her with undisguised hatred.

  Before anything else could be said, there came a sharp tap on the rear door.

  Ben called: ‘That you, Kid?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Time to go,’ said Ben.

  Spur said: ‘Carson, you talk and tie Juanita in with this and you’ll pay.’

  ‘My father won’t say a word,’ Lydia said. ‘I promise.’

  ‘I—’ said Carson. But his mind was working. He wasn’t a successful business man for nothing. He knew the laws of survival as well as the next man. ‘My daughter and I were in bed,’ he said. ‘We know nothing of this.’

  ‘There’s Kruger,’ Ben reminded him.

  Carson’s face fell.

  ‘We take them aways with us,’ Spur said. ‘It’s the only thing.’

  Carson cried: ‘I protest.’

  ‘Protest all you want,’ said Spur. ‘It’s the only thing that will save your neck. Open the rear door.’

  Shaking, Carson went to the rear door and opened it. A small dark man, little more than a boy, entered. He looked like an eastern gutter rat in western clothing. Which was what he was.

  ‘You goin’ to take all night?’ he said.

  His eyes fell on Lydia Carson and Juanita Morales. He gaped. Trust that Spur to gather a couple of beautiful women around him.

  Spur said: ‘You have horses handy?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Ben.

  ‘Jenny?’

  Who’s Jenny?’ Lydia demanded.

  ‘His hoss. No, I don’t have Jenny.’

  Spur said: ‘I don’t go without the mare.’

  Ben groaned and swore. He said: ‘I knowed it. Look, we broke you outa here. Ain’t that enough for one night?’

  Spur said: ‘Get these irons off me an’ I’ll go get Jenny.’

  ‘You don’t do no sech thing.’

  The Kid cut in with: ‘We’re losin’ time. Let’s ride, for the luva Pete.’

  Lydia said: ‘Yes, you must go. Please go.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ Spur said, ‘I never went any place without that little horse.’

  Juanita Morales said: ‘You go now. I will get the mare. That I promise.’

  Ben said: ‘You don’t have to promise nothin’, Miss. If he don’t go now I’ll bend the barr’l my gun over his head an’ tote him outa here.’

  Spur gave him a kind of crazy look and said: ‘AH right. But soon as I get these irons off I come back for the mare.’

  He walked out of the store-room, holding the chains in his hands to stop them rattling and walking awkwardly with the irons on his legs. The Kid and Ben herded the others after him. He found himself in fairly bright moonlight. The Kid now took the lead and headed south. The town was quiet. Spur saw a man lying trussed on the ground and knew that was the guard. At least the Kid had put the opposition out of action without a killing. Maybe the little rat was becoming more civilized.

  Pretty soon, they found themselves among trees and Spur heard the faint sound of water. They came upon the horses at the edge of the creek.

  Spur stopped.

  ‘This is far enough,’ he said. ‘They can go back now.’

  Nobody argued with that.

  ‘How will you ride,’ Juanita said, ‘with the irons on your legs?’

  ‘Quite a problem, I’ll admit,’ Spur said, ‘but a man can do almost anythin’ with a rope behind him.’ He added: ‘I reckon I owe you me life.’ He said this in Spanish and Lydia and her father did not understand what he said.

  ‘Tell me one thing,’ Juanita said, ‘Did you kill Rube Daley?’

  ‘No,’ Spur said. ‘I did not.’

  ‘What’re they saying?’ Lydia asked.

  ‘You will come back?’ Juanita asked.

  ‘I’ll be back sure as God made little apples,’ Spur told her. The translation of that into Spanish had to be heard to be believed. It puzzled Juanita a little.

  ‘You will take care,’ the Mexican girl said.

  ‘Bank on it,’ Spur told her. Their hands touched. Lydia didn’t like that too much. She started forward, but her father caught her by the arm and held her back.

  ‘Am I permitted to go home now?’ Carson asked.

  Spur smiled.

  ‘You’re permitted,’ he said.

  ‘I think you’re being very foolish. Spur,’ the storekeeper said. ‘The law will catch up with you.’

  Spur said: ‘You’re wrong, Carson. I am the law. As you’ll see.’

  The man snorted and turned away, hauling his daughter after him. She turned to look back at Spur as she was hurried away. Ben came forward with a horse and helped Spur heave himself into the saddle. His leg irons prevented him from sitting properly astride and he was forced to sit the saddle with one leg crooked around the saddlehorn.

  He chuckled.

  ‘Now I’ve done everythin’,’ he said.

  Ben said to Juanita: ‘When Mr. Doolittle sobers up, you tell him how it went, miss. Him an’ you should keep your eyes and ears open. We’ll be back to hear what you learned.’

  The girl raised a hand. Ben and the Kid stepped astride. Spur lifted a hand in salute. The horses headed along the creek. The girl watched them walk away into the gloom, then turned away and headed back for town.

  She thought: I’ll get his horse for him.

  Spur led his two companions along the creek no more than two or three hundred yards. Then he turned his horse down into the waters of the creek and went back along it in the direction they had just come. Ben chuckled to himself. Spur didn’t trust a living soul. He was working on the assumption that one of the three they had just left would rouse the town against them. He followed Spur with the Kid bringing up the rear, following the soft music of Spur’s chains. He knew the ride must make the iron chafe the man’s wrists painfully, yet he heard not one complaint from Spur during the ride. They headed back along the creek for about a half-mile, then Spur found the spot he wanted in the moonlight, a narrow rocky beach and put his horse ashore. They came dripping onto dry land and worked their way up onto higher ground. Now Spur lifted his animal to a trot. The pace must
have been acutely uncomfortable for him, but he went straight ahead.

  It was not long before the notes of their horses’ hoofs changed and they were pushing their way into the hills. Spur seemed to be taking them on an aimless and meandering course, but Ben didn’t question him. He was aware that Spur knew what he was doing. They started to climb steeply, entered a large sweep of timber and came out onto a rocky shelf. Spur headed across this and halted among some massive boulders. The other two drew rein.

  ‘Did anybody happen to think of bringing a file along to get these damned irons off me?’ he asked conversationally.

  ‘I ain’t jest a pretty face,’ Ben said and produced a file from nowhere.

  ‘I have them on my arms and legs,’ Spur said. ‘One file will take us a week goin’ night an’ day. You think of that?’

  ‘I thought of it,’ Ben said and produced a second file. He tossed this to the Kid and the boy caught it. ‘Let’s git to work.’

  They dismounted. They loosened girths. They dared not unsaddle in case a pursuit started. Spur sat on the ground and the other two got to work with the files, the Kid cursing the fact that he was missing his sleep because Spur had been caught killing a man and he thought Spur was a real professional. Ben told him to shut his fool head. He knew as well as they did that Spur hadn’t killed anybody. The Kid said he didn’t know no such thing. Spur said he didn’t care what the Kid thought, nobody gave a damn what the Kid thought. All they wanted for him to do was cut the gab and keep a-going with that file.

  After an hour, their hands were blistered, the files had cut Spur several times and the chore was getting worse than pounding rocks in the pen. Spur said for the Kid to get some sleep, he’d take over for a while. The Kid didn’t argue. Ben complained that the little whelp always had it soft. Spur told Ben they’d wake the Kid in a while and he could take Ben’s place. They took turn and turnabout till dawn. Spur didn’t get a wink of sleep all night. He worked that file till it was nearly smooth and he thought his arm would drop off. But by dawn, he was free.

  The three of them examined his wrists with some curiosity. They were raw. Ben had something for that. He found some bear grease in his gear and rubbed it on the sore spots. Then he bound the wrists with clean rag. He couldn’t have been gentler. They sat in the depressing gray chill of dawn and looked at each other.

  ‘Jesus,’ Ben said, ‘you gotten yourself in a fine ole mess, boy.’

  ‘So you bust me out of jail,’ Spur said, ‘you thought of the files, you sawed through my irons. Am I goin’ to hear about it the rest of my life. I’ll bet you didn’t even bring along a gun for me.’

  Ben rose wearily and walked to his horse. He brought a Colt forty-five from his saddlebag and handed it to Spur.

  ‘I never saw a feller so goddam spoiled in all my life,’ he said.

  Spur examined the gun carefully, tried it for balance.

  ‘That’s not a bad gun,’ he said.

  ‘It should ought to be,’ Ben said. ‘I done stole it myself.’

  Spur slipped it into the top of his pants and stood up. He looked pale and unsteady. Ben eyed him anxiously.

  Spur said: ‘I reckon we’d best git on.’

  ‘Where we headed?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Old Rube’s mine,’ Spur told him.

  The Kid swore violently, but without skill.

  ‘You’re outa your head,’ he said.

  They tightened cinches, mounted and rode.

  Chapter Eleven

  They were all drunk. And that included Charlie Doo-little. He thought he had never been so drunk in all his life. If the bar hadn’t been there to lean on, they would have all fallen flat on their faces. They were discussing the hanging and Wayne Gaylor was telling them in minute detail just how he was going to carry it out. It would be an impressive ceremony. The gallows had been erected at some public expense at the rear of the livery stable. That was a good spot. There were some trees there and they would provide shade for the onlookers. A sheriff always had to think of his public. Roily Damon thought that was a very good point and it showed the sheriff had a good mind. They started to discuss how they thought Spur would die. Charlie Doolittle, thinking that he was playing his part with great subtlety and cunning reckoned that Spur would die like the yellow coward he was, screaming for mercy. Hank Shultz who had joined them at a late hour and who had been forced to drink hard and fast to catch up with them, didn’t agree. He knew Spur’s kind. He’d smile and make a good speech. That kind always did. They didn’t give a damn whether they lived or died. He’d watched Spur closely during the trial. The man had been resigned to death from the beginning. They all entered into the argument with drunken enthusiasm.

  At that very moment, Mangan Carson, with his daughter, was sitting morosely in a vacant lot not far from the saloon with his watch in his hand. He knew that his future in this town depended on how he would play his part this night. He meant to act as he had never acted before.

  When the hands of his watch had told him that a sufficiency of time had passed, time that would allow the escaped prisoner to get clear and time enough to prove that his story was true, he rose to his feet.

  ‘Daughter,’ he said, ‘you will remain here until you hear the hubbub. There will be a whale of a hubbub, count on that. You will watch for an opportunity to slip into the store and go up to your room. You will lock your door and stay there till I call you. Is that understood?’

  She nodded. She knew that tone and she knew that she would have to obey.

  Her father braced his shoulders and to her utter amazement broke into a rolling run, heading for the street.

  Carson, a man made soft of flesh by easy living and short of wind by fat, pounded across the vacant lot like a miniature elephant, reached the street and turned to the left, the sweat starting from him and his breathing sounded like the dying notes of an organ. Which was exactly as he had planned. He had to find the sheriff and give the impression of a man desperate and frightened. This wasn’t too hard, for he was indeed a man both desperate and frightened.

  He burst into the smaller saloon and cried out to the three last drinkers there: ‘Where’s the sheriff?’

  They gazed at him drunkenly for a long moment. The barman said: ‘I didn’t see him.’

  Carson turned and blundered onto the street, yelling.

  ‘Sheriff, sheriff, Sheriff Gaylor.’

  He ran this way and that across the street like a man confused in his desperation. There could not have been a man, woman or child in the place who didn’t hear him.

  A fellow outside the larger saloon, called: ‘He’s inside, Mr. Carson.’

  The storekeeper headed for the saloon, stumbled on the step and lurched inside just as the sheriff was weaving his way drunkenly through the doorway. They staggered back as they collided, the sheriff shaken by the collision with Carson’s hurtling bulk. He stumbled back into a deputy behind him. The man cursed.

  ‘Sheriff Gaylor,’ Carson cried breathlessly. ‘Oh, my word, how glad I am to find you.’

  Gaylor stood blinking at him. Somehow, his sodden brain connected the storekeeper to the prisoner. The men behind him pushed forward out of the building.

  ‘What happened?’ Roily Damon demanded.

  ‘What happened?’ Carson repeated, pressing his hands to the side of his fat face. ‘You may well ask. Oh, my goodness. Why did I ever come to this barbarous country?’

  Gaylor said: ‘What happened, man?’

  ‘I was abducted,’ Carson yelped. ‘That’s what happened.’ Some of his fright was now turning to anger. For a moment he despised the sheriff more than he hated him. ‘I was taken away by force of arms.’

  One of the men said: ‘What’s the fat fool babblin’ about?’

  Gaylor fought his way through the drink fumes to some sense.

  ‘Spur,’ he said.

  ‘They took me,’ Carson told him, ‘me and my daughter. My God, we might have been murdered. While you were here drinking ...’


  The sheriff caught him by the front of his clothes and hauled him up on his toes.

  ‘Tell it,’ he said into the fat little man’s face.

  Carson ceased to despise the sheriff and was now plain scared of him.

  ‘They broke Spur out and they took us with them,’ Carson said, shaking like a jelly.

  The sheriff dropped him and he almost fell to the ground. The lawmen looked at each other. The sheriff looked as if he had been struck by the ultimate disaster.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘An’ bring that fat fool with you.’ He turned and hurried toward the store, his men pushing and pulling the unfortunate Carson in his wake.

  Windows and doors were open, people appeared, questions were showered down on them as they hurried. The sheriff ignored them.

  Charlie Doolittle walked somewhat unsteadily out of the saloon, stood for a moment to light a stogie. Vince Marvin, the owner of the saloon, joined him. Vince was sober – he was teetotal. He chuckled.

  ‘So Spur got away,’ he said. ‘I had a good bet on it.’

  Doolittle nodded. He didn’t know whether he felt triumphant or a little scared. This was the first time he had helped to circumvent the law in a big way.

  They looked up and turned as they heard the sound of a horse entering the town from the west. The horseman came down the street and, as he saw the two men standing with the light of the saloon behind them, he turned toward them. They saw that the horse was lathered, sweat and dust caked, and tired. He reined in and said: ‘Good evening, gentlemen. Maybe you’ll tell me if I’m in the town of Sunset.’ They told him that that was so and he dismounted slowly and stiffly. He approached them and informed them that he was John Cornwall, United States Marshal. As the lamplight hit him, they saw that he was tall, mustached and gray-haired. The sight of him impressed them. They introduced themselves and asked what they could do for him.

  He said: ‘Tell me where I can find a room and where I can put my horse.’

  Doolittle told him: ‘That’s easy, sir. Vince here can offer you a bed and I’ll take your horse over to the livery yonder.’

  He thanked them and Doolittle ventured to ask him what his business in this part of the country might be. Just for the sake of appearances in front of the saloon-keeper.