by Lauran Paine
“Mebbe he seen us or heard us.”
Maybe he had, but one thing was gut sure. The old devil wouldn’t get very far afoot, and the first move he made toward that horse would be his last.
Garner sweated. The wait was long, the tension great, and when he thought he could stand it no longer, a shadow glided across the open place—and Burt Garner wasn’t ready.
As quickly as he dropped his head and snugged back the carbine, the raw-boned old wraith was swifter. He faded into the brush by the horse before a shot could be fired.
A thick vein at Garner’s temple swelled and throbbed. His vision blurred and he stifled with great effort the violent curses in his throat.
Then Bob Ander’s carbine snaked suddenly forward and grew stonestill. Garner was squinting to see Ander’s target when the gun exploded beside him with a spanking echo. He heard Ander’s groan through a ringing in his head.
“Missed. God dammit I missed!”
There was no answer to that. Sweat burst out over Garner. His armpits grew dark with it and his shoulders twitched. Over in the brush there was absolute stillness. Only the horse moved, turned its head to look in their direction with nervous ears.
“Did you see him good?” Garner asked.
“Not real good. Just his side and one arm.”
Garner continued to watch. There was a stillness to the brush around the horse. “Maybe you got him,” he said, but he didn’t believe Ander had. He didn’t believe you could kill a man like Uriah Gorman with one bullet. He told himself to be patient, to watch and stay still as death because now Uriah knew they were watching and he, too, had a gun.
Time dragged. The gulch turned warm, then hot, and finally Bob Ander said in a tight way: “Listen, the old cuss might be slipping around behind us. If he gets up the hillside, he can pot shoot us from up there.”
Garner squirmed around for a searching look above them.
Ander said: “Maybe he’ll surrender.”
Garner twisted back flat and grunted. “About as likely as the Second Coming,” he muttered.
“We ought to take him back alive if we can.”
Garner bent a long look at the town marshal.
“Well,” Ander spoke quickly, “folks’re entitled to one hanging. Lord knows they’ve gone through enough.”
Garner’s reply sounded irritable. “You stick your head out there if you want, and I’ll try to wing him for you. But me … no, sir. I came here to get him and I prefer him dead. I don’t trust that crazy old bastard … not one damned bit I don’t.”
“Well, try anyway. Call out to him,” Ander persisted. “Give him a chance to surrender.”
Garner considered this. He did not feel, as Ander felt, that a live capture would be personal triumph. For one thing Garner did not run for office like Bob Ander; he felt differently about Uriah. He had run to earth other devils as dangerous as rattlers, and he usually brought them back dead. Now he nodded and settled his head low over the carbine.
“All right. We’ll give him a chance to give up. But you watch, Ander, and if you get another glimpse, don’t waste it. Kill him.”
Garner called then, his voice muffled a little by the gunstock. “Hey, Gorman! We’re peace officers. You going to give up peaceable or not?”
Deep silence closed in more solidly than ever. Only the horse moved slightly, stamping its feet. Ander said in puzzlement: “Maybe I did get him, after all.”
Garner’s squint didn’t lessen. His lips barely moved when he said: “I know a good way for you to find out. Stand up where he can see you.”
Ander said no more.
Then they heard it. A faint, harsh voice speaking as though the face was pressed flat against the earth, the mouth muffled by dust and dirt.
“Come and get me. I don’t surrender.”
Ander’s excited words interrupted the marshal’s dawning belief. “I did get him, Garner. He’s hit bad, too, I can tell. He’s belly down over there.”
Ander got slowly upright until he could see over the sage toward the horse. No lancing flash of flame came but the silence grew thicker. Below, Burt Garner heard the deep sweep of Ander’s indrawn breath,; watched him move cat-footedly away from the cover toward sun-bathed thick grass. Ander was coming out of his crouch. He still held the carbine across his body with both hands, but now there was triumph and confidence across his face. Closer he went, toward the horse and the thicket where it waited.
Burt Garner gathered his weight and pushed upward onto one knee. He was breathing very shallowly. A finger slippery with sweat rested fully upon the tang of his carbine’s trigger. His mouth was dry and he was very thirsty.
From ahead and to Garner’s left came a single smashing roar, a great bursting flashing flame that diminished to a point. Echoes danced outward and upward through the yellow sunlight.
Bob Ander’s arms flexed, flung outward casting the carbine away. Where it struck stone the gun exploded sending up a long bullet furrow of dust. He took a drunken step and lowered his head. He continued to stand there for a very long time. To Burt Garner, flat again upon the ground, it seemed that he hung like that for hours. Then he went slowly forward, face down, and pushed himself out along flatly for the full distance of his body. He did not twitch or move again.
A stringy gaunt specter appeared suddenly out of the brush. Garner saw, and forgot to fire. He stared.
Gorman’s hair was matted and his speckled beard jutted wildly around a spittle-caked mouth. He strode purposefully toward the body of Town Marshal Bob Ander with his rifle wrong-ended, held over one shoulder like a club. His cheeks were so sunken the bones showed through and there was a whiteness to his green eyes. They bulged with full madness.
“Oh, you filth,” he roared at the dead man. “You murdering, killing filth.” He wrenched up his shoulders and swung.
Garner heard the rifle stock smash against inert flesh. It made him a little sick to the stomach.
Uriah clubbed Ander again and again, then he stopped and leaned upon the shattered rifle, sucking in the air that seemed too thin. There was a whirling before his eyes but Garner could not know that. Uriah continued to gulp air. A big old Dragoon pistol was jammed into his waistband.
Garner went lower, raised his carbine, and pinched his eyes closed to clear them of stinging sweat.
It was as though a sense had warned Gorman. He sprung upright suddenly, looking around, looking straight at Garner’s hiding place. He flung the useless rifle at Garner and spun away, jerking at the belt gun as he staggered toward cover. There was glistening blood at Uriah’s lower right side.
Garner fired.
Uriah was in front of the brush then. He fell into it. Hung there, a spidery skeleton in rags impaled upon the thorns and wagging its head. Garner levered up another shot. Uriah heard it. He fought loose and turned to fire. He was sinking low when the gun in his fist went off.
Garner winced at the tongue of orange flame and missed his second try. Then, in that sudden second between their shots he could hear the rattling pull of Gorman’s tortured breathing and could see his grimacing face with its freshet of blood at the lips and thought detachedly his first shot had pierced the old devil’s lungs. Garner fired his third and final shot.
Uriah let off a great pealing roar. He dropped the pistol and both arms hung uselessly at his sides, but he did not fall—the brush was holding him somewhat. He roared again.
It sounded to quaking Burt Garner like the scream of a panther or a lion’s kill cry. He got up very slowly and moved out into the open. Uriah’s head was sagging now. Garner could not see where the last slug had struck. There was blood on the old man’s side and spreading in slow stain upon his shirt front. That was all. He went closer and stopped. Uriah’s lips were moving slightly. Suddenly the brush snapped and Uriah fell against the earth with a rattling sound.
Garner kneeled
, rolled him face up, and straightened his arms. Then he saw where the last shot had gone—through the old devil just below the belt buckle. It had broken his back. He took off his hat and held it before Uriah’s face to keep out that blazing sunlight. “Gorman, can you hear me? Can you see me?”
Silence. Uriah’s chest was barely rising and falling. His lips had ceased to move and his face had turned oddly peaceful. Garner placed the hat gently over his face and stood up. He made a cigarette, his fingers shaking badly. He lit it and sucked back smoke in a loud and greedy sweep of breath. Fifty feet southward Bob Ander lay in the shimmering heat, facedown. The world teetered a little in his vision. He closed his eyes tightly, then sprang them wide open. The world was back as it should be again. He gazed steadily at Ander. What a goddamned fool he had been. What an idiot. You only got one chance to find out about madmen like old Gorman.
Ander’s fine shining scaffold would stand empty now. All those eager breathless people back in Union City would be disappointed.
Garner inhaled deeply, flung his head to rid himself of sour sweat—and smiled. For what? For fifty thousand acres of summer-hard nothing!
He began to feel light-headed and stooped to retrieve his hat. Beneath it Uriah’s face was still and serene. He experienced a slight shock. He had felt certain those eyes would be a weathered, faded steely blue. But they were green. By God the old devil had had green eyes.
He went after their horses.
* * * * *
Union City was quiet when Deputy US Marshal Garner returned with two dead men tied to their ambling mounts. But it was uncanny how swiftly eyes saw; how swiftly word spread. He had scarcely dismounted at the livery barn when the crowd began to form. He told them nothing and went with the sergeant to the hotel where Captain Spannaus was waiting. He told everything exactly as it had happened and felt the officer’s crushing stare on his face.
“Why didn’t you report this before you went out, Marshal?”
“Well, because we weren’t sure there was anything to it. It was just another rumor.”
There was a moment of silence, then two icy words dropped into the stillness: “I see.”
The marshal spoke again, his voice gathering strength and his eyes rising to hold to the officer’s ascetic, fiercely mustached face. “My work is done here, Captain. I’ll be leaving in the morning.”
The officer appeared not to have heard. He was looking at the man who had brought Garner to him.
“Sergeant, get the Foster woman. Bring her here.”
Garner left. Captain Spannaus got up, went to a window, and looked out into the dark roadway. He was thinking of Lee Gorman and how the people had reacted to his acquittal. God, he said to himself, I’m sick of this. I’m so sick of Union City I could throw up!
“Sir?”
He turned and went back to the desk without fully seeing the girl. “All right, Sergeant. That will be all. Wait outside. Madam … that chair there.”
Ann sat. He looked at her finally, his thoughts still following their gray meanderings.
Handsome. A fine bosom … a good face. A man could build his life around a woman like this.
He spoke around the maze of tiredness that held him. “What are your plans now, madam?”
“Plans …?”
His voice sharpened. “Yes. Your plans. You love this Gorman, don’t you?”
“Yes …” Her tone was dull.
“And you know he has been ordered to leave this area?”
A nod.
“Then … what are your plans?”
“We haven’t really made any … yet.”
The captain closed his eyes, then opened them. “Are you going to leave with him?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Now, do either of you have a wagon and a team?”
“No … I don’t think we do. The cowmen burned his wagon …” Ann looked up. “I suppose I can get one from my paw.”
“Is he still in town?”
“Yes.”
“Then go ask him. If he gives you one, have it back here in front of the hotel by sunup. Do you understand?”
Ann said, “Yes,” again, and stood up.
The captain remained seated but he nodded to indicate dismissal. Then he watched her cross to the door and pass beyond.
“Sergeant …?”
“Yes, sir!”
“How are the townsmen taking it … about Ander?”
“Not very well, sir.”
“I see. Well, relay my orders to Lieutenants Bertram and Meade that the column pulls out at sunup for Fort Laramie.”
“Yes, sir!”
“And one more thing, Sergeant. See that the Foster woman and Gorman go with us. We’ll act as an escort at least as far as Hatchersville. That ought to be far enough to get them started on their way. Clear?”
“Yes, sir!”
THE END
About the Author
Lauran Paine who, under his own name and various pseudonyms has written over a thousand books, was born in Duluth, Minnesota. His family moved to California when he was at a young age and his apprenticeship as a Western writer came about through the years he spent in the livestock trade, rodeos, and even motion pictures where he served as an extra because of his expert horsemanship in several films starring movie cowboy Johnny Mack Brown. In the late 1930s, Paine trapped wild horses in northern Arizona and even, for a time, worked as a professional farrier. Paine came to know the Old West through the eyes of many who had been born in the previous century, and he learned that Western life had been very different from the way it was portrayed on the screen. “I knew men who had killed other men,” he later recalled. “But they were the exceptions. Prior to and during the Depression, people were just too busy eking out an existence to indulge in Saturday-night brawls.” He served in the US Navy in the Second World War and began writing for Western pulp magazines following his discharge. It is interesting to note that all of his earliest novels (written under his own name and the pseudonym Mark Carrel) were published in the British market and he soon had as strong a following in that country as in the United States. Paine’s Western fiction is characterized by strong plots, authenticity, an apparently effortless ability to construct situation and character, and a preference for building his stories upon a solid foundation of historical fact. Adobe Empire (1956), one of his best novels, is a fictionalized account of the last twenty years in the life of trader William Bent and, in an off-trail way, has a melancholy, bittersweet texture that is not easily forgotten. In later novels like The White Bird (1997) and Cache Cañon (1998), he showed that the special magic and power of his stories and characters had only matured along with his basic themes of changing times, changing attitudes, learning from experience, respecting nature, and the yearning for a simpler, more moderate way of life.