The Gun is my Brother

by Matt Chisholm

  The town licked its chops and smelled blood in the dust of the streets.

  The tale-carriers started their work.

  ‘Mr. Spur, you’d best watch out. That Hertz is talking war-talk down at the Drover’s. Drinkin’ an’ sayin’ he’s gonna take you apart and when he sees you on the street you’d best be makin’ smoke or you’ll be kickin’ up the daisies for sure.’

  ‘Hertzy—that Spur sure is a cool one. When I tole him you was gunnin’ for him he jes’ laugh and say: ‘That punk ... he don’t frighten me none. I’ve eaten jaspers like him afore breakfus’.’

  Smelling came in for his share.

  ‘Yeah, Mr. Smelling, you know what that Spur said? Damned, if’n he didn’t say he beat you so bad you couldn’t lift a gun. Yeah, he said them very words. That ain’t so is it, Mr. Smelling? You kin…’

  Once Spur and Hertz met on the street. It was noon and the foreman was in liquor, loudly boastful, talking vengeance. They met on the sidewalk and Spur, knowing from experience what was at stake, refused to give way, braced the man in full hearing of the town and had him step down on to the street to let him pass. He presented his back and passed on unscathed.

  That evening, Spur and Foggart were passing an hour over a game of pool when Bob Thurminger strolled in and told them that Smelling, Hertz and a couple of riders were well-liquored up at the Drover’s and saying if somebody didn’t do something about Spur, they damn well would. They thanked Spur’s former persecutor and continued with their game.

  Foggart said with a wry smile, ‘I was hoping they wouldn’t get up courage till around trial time.’

  Spur grinned back and said, ‘I ain’t that legal. Remember, I don’t just want the boys that tried to hang me. I want the road-agents and the men that killed Will Overell.’

  Foggart said, ‘You think I don’t?’

  The door leading to the main part of the saloon opened and the sheriff walked in with Ely behind him. He looked grave. Spur thought he looked steadier than he had before. Something had shaken the man up.

  ‘Mr. Foggart,’ Carlson said, ‘and you, Mr. Spur, I should warn you, I reckon trouble’s goin’ to break any time now.’

  They noted the shotgun in the crook of his arm, the similar weapon in the deputy’s hands.

  ‘Thurminger here,’ Foggart said, ‘has indicated the same thing. Sounds mighty like the whiskey talking to me.’

  ‘Maybe, if I was to take your guns … nobody would shoot an unarmed man.’

  Spur said sharply, ‘No? Ly, you do what you like. Me, I’d ruther be pantless than gunless.’

  Seriously, Foggart said, ‘I reckon that goes for me, too.’

  ‘I’ll be around in case of trouble,’ the sheriff told them and

  Foggart said dryly, ‘Thanks,’ as Carlson stalked out with Ely behind him. The deputy looked as if he’d rather be a hundred miles away. Neither of them blamed him.

  Spur looked around, noted the door to the alley, the uncurtained window.

  ‘Could be we’ve picked ourselves a bad spot,’ he said.

  Foggart agreed. ‘Couldn’t be worse, but I guess you’re taking fright. I’m beating the ass off you.’

  ‘I’ll give you best. Let’s move along.’

  ‘All right. I’ll finish off.’ Foggart hefted the cue he was leaning on and moved by Spur. To reach the table he moved between Spur and the window. As he stepped off there was a sudden crash of glass that brought them both spinning around. Too late Spur saw the ugly twin snouts of the greener thrust into the room.

  One brief nerve-jump of alarm and Spur moved. Shoving Foggart to the left of the window with all his strength he leapt away to the right, hurling himself to the bare boards. There was a brief impression of splinters tearing into his left hand, his right slapping down on the worn butt of the Remington and the deafening roar of the shotgun as the unseen man let go left and right barrels as fast as he could pull the twin triggers.

  Buckshot seemed to slap and tear through the thunder of it, ripping into the pool table, smacking viciously into the opposite wall.

  A shrill cry that seemed a part of the explosion and that told him Foggart was hit, then he was rolling half-stunned on one side, lifting the pistol, cocked.

  A brief glimpse of the paleness of human flesh on the other side of the shattered glass and he fired as quick as he could trigger and cock, three times.

  The remainder of the glass was driven into the street, making a sliver of sound on the sidewalk, bootheels thudded one-two slowly and hard before a man went running downtown ringing the street with the hollow sound.

  Spur drove himself to one knee and looked for Foggart through the fog and stench of his own firing, saw a dim form under the further end of the table. Lurching to his feet, he stepped across.

  Foggart was on his face, spread-eagled and still. Somebody hit the inner door with his shoulder and burst it in and, glancing up, Spur saw it was the sheriff.

  ‘See to him,’ Spur shouted and dove for the alley door. There was no caution the way he went through it and even as he did so he knew he was taking a chance. He knew it even better as he ploughed into the sudden darkness, saw the night cut by gun flashes and heard the lead smacking into the planks of the saloon.

  He didn’t stop, but swung right and kept on going. Fired once at a gunflash, heard a scream and knew he’d hit and headed for the street. Two shots left in the Remington. Load as you run, fingering the shells out of your belt, muttering savagely with your pounding breath. A shot from behind and the knowledge that you’d be set up properly. One man to gun you down and the others ringed around should he fail.

  The driving thought in his mind as he hit the street and went left was he’d get the man who’d shot Ly, the man who had accepted his word and ridden here to put a wrong right.

  A shadowy form moved on the sidewalk, a gun was fired from across the street and suddenly he realized that the town looked empty. Suited his book. Anything that moved could be an enemy. He wasn’t running away this time. He was going to get him a man, alive, and that man was going to talk He was going to say the things that Spur wanted to hear.

  A door slammed and as he pounded through the dust, his mind clicked and he knew it was the door to Nick the Greek’s place.

  Again the gun over the way went off. A window closed and far off a dog started to bark hysterically. Two horses, tied by the side of the street, went crazy and one broke free and went careering madly down the street. Spur slipped under the rail, saw the lights in the Greek’s and pounded towards it.

  He hit the door with his shoulder and burst it open as if it had been made of paper. The place was full of men, not sitting at the tables, but standing around, every head turned, startled at his violent entry. Nick behind his counter, eyes wide, face dripping with sweat. Beside him the woman just as scared.

  ‘Where’d he go?’ Spur demanded.

  As he asked the question he remembered his first night in this town when he had walked the sheriff at pistol-point out through the rear of this place.

  He jumped around the counter, Nick sidestepping and slashing at him with a broad-bladed meat knife, the woman screaming and lunging for the man’s arm as Spur brought his pistol barrel down on his head. A tangle of arms and legs in the confined space, him kicking himself free and bursting into the kitchen, seeing the door slam ahead of him and charging for it, wrenching it open and hearing the fleeing boots as they hit the trash and headed for the timber beyond.

  Stopping, he raised and cocked his gun, caught the dim movement and fired twice, heard the man keel over among the cans, flounder in a vain attempt to rise and run on and fall again.

  The man started to shout.

  Spur bellowed, ‘Let me hear you throw your gun aside.’

  He flung himself down and prepared for another shot. The man fired and he gave back one in return. Then he waited.

  Silence.

  Slowly he arose and went forward as quietly as he could through the trash. He kept going till a voi
ce said, ‘You murderin’ bastard,’ and his heart sank at the thought that the man would die. There was death in the voice and he had heard the tone too many times. This man wouldn’t talk.

  He reached down, searched with his left hand, found the fallen gun and tossed it far.

  ‘You want to talk before you die?’ he asked and heard a throat bubble of sound as the man checked out.

  Very tired, he stood up and walked slowly back to the eating place, found Nick in the kitchen looking sick.

  ‘You,’ Spur ?aid, ‘come on up to the jail.’

  ‘Who’re you?’ the Greek demanded. ‘You can’t take me no place.’

  ‘Citizen’s arrest,’ Spur told him. ‘Don’t lift a knife, don’t even look at me wrong or I’ll bust your ugly head open for you. Just walk ahead of me.’

  The man shrugged and sneered, but he turned around and walked ahead as he was told. The men in the restaurant, still standing in a bunch, eyed them as they went through but made no move to prevent them. Sarie was behind the counter presenting the look of a woman who had been hit—hard.

  ‘Get your duds, ma’am, and go on up to your sister’s,’ Spur told her.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Go on like I say,’ he told her and passed on, knowing she’d obey him.

  Out on the sidewalk, boots sounded—the sheriff and his deputy, several other men backing them, appeared.

  ‘What happened?’ Carlson demanded, gasping from his run.

  ‘How about Foggart?’ Spur wanted to know.

  ‘Hurt bad. Hip broken most like. The doc’s with him now. My God, imagine this happening ... I don’t know…’

  ‘Take the Greek.’

  ‘Nick? What’s the charge?’

  A man said, ‘You sheriff all of a sudden, Spur?’

  ‘I made a citizen’s arrest. This man’s tied in with the road-agents. Make the charges formal. Also attempted murder. He tried to knife me back there. Make him talk any way you want. Nothing’s too bad for him.’

  ‘You can’t do this.’

  ‘I’m doing it. And you listen to me. Don’t anybody get in my way. This town owes me a lot. Anybody trips me and I’ll make it pay through the nose. Carlson, you get any of the fellows in the alley by the saloon?’

  Carlson floundered, his new-found steadiness seeping out of him rapidly.

  ‘The alley? Why—say, with Foggart shot. I was seeing to—’

  Spur elbowed through them, grim-faced and tramped down the sidewalk, aware that men and a few women were making an appearance, asking questions, getting their imaginations to work right off.

  He went in through the swing doors of the Golden Glory, half-surprised that another try at him hadn’t been made and went through the scattered customers, ignored their questions, found himself face to face with Bob Thurminger. He hauled up and demanded, ‘Thurminger, anybody catch a look at any of the bushwhackers.’

  ‘Nary a one,’ Thurminger avowed. ‘They gone too far. By Gawd, they overstepped the mark this time. I do—’

  Spur was past him, stepping into the pool room.

  A man on his knees beside the still body snapped. without looking up, ‘Get out and stay out.’

  Spur said, ‘I’m Spur. How is he?’

  The little doctor looked up from his grisly chore and said, ‘Shot to hell. I’m sick to the guts of this God-damned country.’

  ‘Will he live?’

  ‘Is this the age of miracles?’

  It turned out that the medico was sure the hip was shattered. Beside that there were multiple gunshot wounds. All he was sure of was that he could stop the external bleeding. Heaven only knew what internal damage there was.

  ‘Can we move him?’

  ‘We can’t leave him lie and that’s for sure.’

  Spur carried Foggart to their room in his arms, staggering and tired. Once en the bed, the marshal groaned and opened his eyes. He looked like death.

  ‘What’s the score?’ he asked and Spur said, ‘It’s bad. I wouldn’t try to fool you, Ly. You got this for me.’ Foggart smiled wanly.

  ‘Then you get them for me’ he whispered. ‘Go right ahead, boy.’

  Spur patted his shoulder ineffectually and said, ‘I’ll do that.’

  To the doctor, he said, ‘Get somebody to stay with him.’

  From the door a voice said, ‘That won’t be necessary, Sam.’

  Lucy Overell.

  ‘Girl,’ Spur said, ‘I never wanted to see you more—or less. There’s danger here. You shouldn’t have come.’

  She smiled and said, ‘Don’t fret. This is the one thing I can do to help. Doctor Morgan will tell you that I am a competent nurse.’

  ‘Only one in town,’ the doctor affirmed.

  Spur looked at Lucy and the man lying on the bed watching him out of dark-rimmed eyes and he knew the lonely years were over.

  ‘Don’t go on the street,’ he said and smiled at her. ‘I’ll be back.’

  She put a hand on his arm.

  ‘They’re not worth it, Sam. Ride out.’

  ‘Smelling has a lot of money of mine, honey. Coming in from south the other day I saw a piece of land down the creek I’d sure like to buy. Couple of miles beyond your place.’

  She stepped up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, not caring about Foggart or the doctor.

  ‘He doesn’t need that, ma’am,’ the marshal said. ‘I’m the sick one.’

  Spur laid his hand for an instant on her cheek.

  The doctor snapped, ‘If you shoot them, Spur, kill ’em. I’m fed to the teeth with patchin’ up damn fools that can’t dodge a bullet or get themselves hit dead center.’

  Spur said, ‘I’ll do my best,’ and took a box of cartridges from his warbag. Then he was gone, walking down the upper hall, pausing for a second at the head of the stairs before he went down.

  At the bottom, he met Shwartz leaning on his two sticks.

  ‘I’m prayin’ they get you,’ the saloon-man said. ‘If they don’t, I will.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Spur told him, ‘I’ll watch my back,’ and moved on. Bob Thurminger and several men watched him go and Thurminger called, ‘How’s Foggart?’

  ‘Bad,’ Spur told him and reached the street door and met the sheriff coming in, men following behind him.

  ‘This is a damn bad business, I know,’ Carlson said, ‘but don’t go off half-cocked, man. There must be three-four of them.’

  ‘You any idea who they are?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then you’ll know there’s more than that.’

  Spur went to push by, but Carlson detained him with a hand on his arm and asked, ‘Where you goin’ now?’

  Brushing the hand aside, Spur said, ‘You’ll know when you hear the guns.’

  Then he was through them and in the lamp-shadows of the sidewalk, standing and listening to the sounds of the street. Most men were simple at the best of times and he would bet that if it had been Smelling or his men who had fired the shots into the poolroom they’d now be at the Drover’s Rest. Having a drink or two to steady themselves after taking the risks they had; they’d be thinking of one man killed and another wounded. They’d changed their town roost since he and Foggart had taken a room a Schwartz’s place. Ironic that he should be staying in the saloon run by the man he had shot nearly to death.

  A small figure darted across the sidewalk and Spur called softly, ‘Son.’

  The boy stopped and said, ‘Hey, mister, that shootin’ … you know where Sam Spur’s at?’

  ‘Why? Do you want him?’

  ‘Sure do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wanta see him shoot it out with Smelling and his crowd.’

  ‘Spur’s here, boy.’ The boy lifted his face, stared into the shadow. ‘Where’s Smelling?’

  ‘He’s at the Drover’s’

  ‘Wragg?’

  ‘He run outa the alley alongside the Golden Glory crossed over and went downtown.’

  Spur took a coin from his pocket,
handed it over and received, ‘Gee, thanks,’ before he went on.

  The moon was up now, making the streets as bright as day, except under the sidewalks covers. Head and shoulders, he was hidden from across the street. His lower body and legs were plainly visible. Reaching the mouth of the alley from whence the attack had come, he dropped to the ground and turned left down it. That was taking a chance, but it was nothing to what he’d be taking pretty soon.

  He walked the length of it and turned right, went along as far as the blacksmith’s shop and turned right again, heading for Main. When he reached the end he stopped and stared across the street at the Drover’s. There were lights in a half-dozen windows and any of them could have been Smelling’s. He’d been a damned fool not to have found out which was his before he started this little picnic. There were a few people about now, but all of them keeping away from the center of the street. Someone rode rapidly out of town and he only glimpsed the rider spurring his horse. It could have been anybody. Over in the Drover’s a piano started up, out of tune, jangling. A couple of voices joined it, drunkenly sentimental.

  He’d liked to have known where Henry Wragg was. He was the dangerous one when it came to pistol work. He went over his idea of how best to do this chore, leaning against the warped timber of a house, thumb on the curved hammer of the Remington.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Smelling was half-sitting, half-lying on the bed when he heard the burst of firing that followed upon the twin thunder of the shotgun.

  He smiled and said, ‘That’s him. That’s Spur blown to hell.’ The pleasure was so great that he didn’t give thought to why he was doing this, what he had to gain by it. He had the money and he should have got out of here. But his pride wouldn’t let him do that. The town had seen him beaten. It had now to see him on top of the world. Not only the town, but Lucy Overell. She had to see him with money and fine horses, the biggest man in the country. It hadn’t been any loss to her when Will had been killed. Will who had thought the parson had shot him. Poor fools, both of them.