The Second Western Novel

by Matt Rand

  “No,” she replied. “I’m all right.”

  “Good. We’ve gotta get out’ve here, Millie. They’re liable to rush the house any minute now! Wait! Almost forgot about my shirt!”

  Dave whirled around the bewildered girl and darted into the room. He came bolting out of it with his shirt on, buttoning it up and tucking the tail into his levis.

  “All right,” Dave said briskly. “Let’s go. Maybe you’d better let me have the rifle, in case we run into something.”

  Millie pressed the weapon into Dave’s hands.

  “We can get out the side door,” the girl told him. “There’s brush all around it, and it’ll give us cover.”

  “Swell,” Dave responded. “You wanna take the lead? It’s awf’lly dark downstairs. I nearly broke my neck before.”

  Millie moved past Dave and they started down the stairs. He nearly fell over her when she stopped suddenly without warning him. He saved himself, and her, too, by grabbing the banister and checking himself.

  “S’matter?” Dave asked anxiously.

  “Tom,” Millie said, turning to him. “You didn’t say anything about him. He’s coming with us, isn’t he?”

  Dave was thankful then for the darkness that prevented them from seeing each other’s face. “No,” he said. “He isn’t.” The brief silence that followed seemed eternal. Her hand came up and tightened on his shirt sleeve.

  “Oh!” she said. “You mean he’s—”

  Dave drew a deep breath. “Yeah,” he said heavily. “They got him.”

  Millie’s hand came away. She turned slowly. When she went on again, Dave followed her. She was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs when he came down. Silently she gave him her hand and led him away through the darkness, guided him through a room, around the furniture and up to a door. Then she stopped him. She stepped ahead of him. He heard a bolt scrape as it was drawn back. There was a tiny creaking sound and then a rush of crisp air, and he knew that she had opened the door.

  “All right,” Millie whispered to Dave over her shoulder. “Give me your hand.”

  Their hands, each seeking the other, met and clasped. Dave moved closer to her. “Any steps we have to go down?”

  “No, none. It opens on level ground.”

  “Good.”

  When Dave felt the pressure of the girl’s hand, he moved alertly at her heels and followed her out. They stopped again shortly and stood together with the silent house just behind them.

  “The brush,” Millie told him in a whisper. “It’s ahead of us.”

  “All right,” Dave answered softly. “Lead the way, only don’t get too far ahead of me.”

  Together they flashed across the intervening space and halted a little breathlessly in the thick darkness inside the brush.

  “They’ve stopped shooting,” Millie whispered.

  “I know.”

  “Do you think it means anything?”

  “Only one thing,” Dave replied in a guarded voice. “I think it means they’re creepin’ up on the house.”

  “Oh!”

  “We didn’t get out any too soon. If we’d delayed even a minute or two, it mighta been too late. Mighta meant the difference between gettin’ out and away and gettin’ caught.”

  “Well, we got out.”

  “An’ we’ll get away, too. Which way’s the barn?”

  “Over there,” Millie said, turning and pointing. “To the left. Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve got an idea they’ve tied up their horses somewhere behind it,” Dave explained. “We could use a couple o’ th’m. Even one o’ th’m, if we can’t get any more.”

  “Yes,” Millie breathed. “But how do you expect to—?”

  “We’ve gotta make a try,” Dave said a little curtly. “Now tell me something. If I follow the brush, how far does it go?”

  “It goes on for bout sixty or seventy feet.”

  “Uh-huh,” Dave said thoughtfully. “I don’t think they’ll have anybody that far off. Where’ll I wind up if I follow it all the way to the end?”

  “To the rear of the barn.”

  “Uh-huh,” Dave said again. “Look, you hole up somewhere and stay put there—”

  “How will you know where to find me?”

  “If I have any luck with a horse, you’ll be hearing from me.”

  “Please, be careful.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dave told her. “But horse or no horse, I’ll come back for you. Depend on it that. I’m not gonna leave you here alone. Now, go ahead!”

  The two turned as one; Millie darted off in one direction, Dave in another. He followed the brush wall, crouching low all the while, and hugging it in order to stay within the deep shadows it cast off. When he crunched some dried out twigs underfoot and they snapped and broke, Dave stopped instantly, freezing in his tracks, and listened. Fortunately nothing happened, and after a minute of tensed expectancy he went on again, treading as carefully as he could, and bending lower and lower all the time.

  Finally, when the tall form of the barn loomed up diagonally ahead of him, Dave stopped again, got down on his hands and knees and crawled. He looked up quickly when he heard a horse whinny somewhere fairly close by. He probed the darkness with eager, anxious eyes, but he couldn’t see anything of a horse, nor a man. The Fowler gang had doubtless left someone to guard the horses, he told himself, and it was that someone he was seeking. He wanted the man even ahead of the horses as his first step toward obtaining the latter.

  Dave slowed his crawling, preparing himself meanwhile for any eventuality. He shifted the rifle, grasping it by the barrel so that he could use it as a club if the occasion demanded it. Then, rounding the brush wall, he saw the man he sought and then the horses he was guarding. There were seven or eight of them; Dave wasn’t certain about the number. He merely glanced at the horses and fixed his gaze on the man who was standing a dozen feet away looking around idly. The horses, tethered together, were a dozen feet beyond the man.

  Raising himself up, Dave drew a deep breath, then went plunging forward. The man turned his head, but he did not move quickly enough. Before he could do anything to protect himself, Dave was upon him, and the rifle butt had smashed into the man’s face, crushing it in. He staggered, spun and fell in a heap. Dave leaped over him and ran to the horses. He untied all of them save the last one. He found a lariat hanging from a saddle horn, and he snatched it off, ran the rope through the horses’ bits and looped the loose end around the first horse’s saddle horn. He wheeled the animal, brought the others close up behind him, then he stepped back and whacked the lead animal lustily on the rump. The horse cried out and leaped away, only to be brought to an abrupt stop when the other horses held back. Dave whacked a couple of the more hesitant ones and added a screeching yell. The horses dashed away in a body.

  Dave ran to the horse he had left untouched, untied him and swung himself up into the saddle. He could still hear the beat of the other horses’ hoofs, but it had begun to fade a bit. He heard some shouts and yells, and he grinned. By getting rid of the horses, even if only temporarily, he had made pursuit, once Millie and he were on their way, an impractical if not impossible effort. He wheeled his mount, glanced at the sprawled out figure in the grass as he rode past it, and loped away, following the brush in the direction in which Millie had fled, and he rode towards it. He emerged in the open and, suddenly, a tall figure rose up ahead of him.

  “That you, Sam?”

  “Yeah,” Dave answered.

  Dave dug his heels into the horse’s sides, and the animal fairly leaped. The man tried to twist away, but he moved far too slowly. The horse struck him full-tilt and flung him brokenly through space. Dave saw other shadowy figures running toward the house, and he swung around, rode back and burst into the brush again.

  “Millie!” Dave called. “Pst, Millie!”

  There was an instant response, a scurrying within the shadowy and protective brush, and a slim figure, that he recognized at once, appeared out
of the surrounding darkness and came flashing over the ground to his side. Quickly he bent down, caught her around the waist and swung her up behind him.

  “Which way?” Dave asked.

  “Why, southward, I suppose,” Millie answered.

  “Got any friends there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hang on,” Dave instructed. Millie’s arms came around his waist. “Tight.”

  Millie Cox’ strong, young arms tightened about Dave. They loped away, rode along the brush toward the barn, and when he spied a narrow gap in the wall, he wheeled through it and into the open. When he nudged the horse with his knees, the animal responded and quickened his pace. In a minute or two, the house, and its dead and the Fowlers were far behind them, disappearing in the enveloping darkness.

  Suddenly, everything about them seemed brighter. There was a moon overhead, a bright, silvery moon with a friendly, smiling face.

  “That’s what I call service, all right,” Dave said.

  “Service?” Millie repeated a little blankly.

  “Yeah. From the moon, I mean.”

  “Oh,” Millie said absently, and there was nothing in her tone to indicate that she understood him.

  “The moon held back. She kept out o’ sight so’s we could use the darkness for cover,” Dave explained. “When we got away, she came right out. I think that was pretty decent of ’er. Look at her up there, Millie. See ’er? She’s smilin’ all over herself like she knows she’s done a good deed tonight.”

  There was no response from Millie. He nudged the horse again, and the animal lengthened his stride.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was about eight-thirty, perhaps a few minutes past that, and John McKeon was alone in the kitchen of his house. He sat back in his chair at the table and ranged a critical eye around the room, then he got up on his feet and stalked out to the hallway to the foot of the stairs.

  “Janey!” old John hollered. “You in bed?”

  There was a brief silence, then a door on the upper floor opened. “Did you call me, Dad?” Janey asked.

  “Yeah. You in bed?”

  “No. Want something?”

  “Yeah, company! Danged house is so blamed quiet t’night, I c’n hear myself think. What are you doing?”

  “Nothing in particular.”

  “Then how ’bout you doin’ it downstairs?”

  “All right, Dad. I’ll be down in a minute.

  “Sure you don’t mind?”

  “Of course not.”

  McKeon grunted, turned and walked to the front door. He opened it, pushed it back wide and stood in the doorway. After a minute he stepped out on the veranda, and the door swung behind him and latched. It was a dark night, and a chill rode the air. From the direction of the bunkhouse, some sixty or seventy feet away, he could hear voices and then laughter. The yellowish lights that sifted out through the bunkhouse windows were pinpoints against the night. McKeon’s gaze shifted. A handful of men were idling in front of the corral; a couple of them climbed up and perched themselves on the top roil. The murmur of their voices floated across space to McKeon. The bunkhouse door opened, and McKeon’s eyes shifted to it. Light streamed out over the wooden step and the trampled grass below it, showing up all the bare spots.

  The door behind McKeon opened, and Janey came out, closing it behind her. She had donned a jacket, and now she buttoned it.

  “It’s chilly out, Dad,” the girl said. “Shouldn’t you have something more on?”

  “This heavy shirt o’ mine is a heap warmer’n your jacket,” McKeon answered.

  “It’s awfully dark too, isn’t it?”

  “No moon.”

  “I thought I saw one peeking out a little while ago.”

  “Yeah? Musta decided to take a night off.”

  “Where does a moon go, and what does it do when it has a night off?”

  Old John looked at his daughter and grinned. He moved across the veranda and brought two chairs forward. She took one, and he took the other. He sank into his with a sigh and stretched his legs in front of him.

  “Where are the boys tonight, Dad?” Janey asked after a moment.

  “Bud went over to Dugas to get ’imself a pair o’ boots,” John recited. “Charlie an’ Jim didn’t do enough ridin’ around today so they kinda decided they’d go ride into town.”

  “An Denny, I suppose, went calling on that Thompson girl.”

  “He didn’t say so, but chances are that’s where he went. Seems he’s taken quite a shine to the girl.”

  “She’s very nice, Dad.”

  “Yeah, I guess she is. Nice lookin’, too. Only trouble with her is her mother. That woman never shuts up. Keeps goin’ an’ goin’ all the time.”

  “You mustn’t hold that against Eda.”

  “Eda?” he repeated. “Is that the young un’s name?”

  “Yes.”

  McKeon shifted himself a little and crossed his legs. “I dunno,” he said. “My mother once told me that when I got sweet on a girl to look at her mother if I wanted to see what the daughter’d be like when she got older.”

  “Oh, Dad! That’s silly.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, the reason I called you down was to tell you I was thinkin’ about Millie Cox before. I think maybe we oughta go ride up their way tomorrow an’ kinda see that everything’s awright with Millie and Tom. Maybe there’s something we c’n do for them, huh?”

  “I was going to suggest that to you.”

  “Suppose we go right after breakfast? It won’t be so blamed hot that early in the day.”

  “All right,” Janey said. “Fine!”

  Someone came toward the house from the corral, and McKeon raised up a bit and eyed him. Then the man came closer, went through the gate and up the path to the veranda. McKeon grunted and settled back. “Oh, it’s you, Dobie,” he said.

  “Evenin’,” Dobie said.

  “What d’you want?” McKeon asked.

  “Nothing,” Dobie answered calmly. “You c’n go back to sleep, John.”

  “Why, you old goat! Who said I was sleepin’?”

  “You musta’ been,” Dobie said, calmly as before. “Seems to me, every time I look at you, you’re sleepin’. Leastways, you’ve almost always got your eyes closed. How are you, Janey?”

  “All right, Dobie, thank you. Sit down, won’t you?”

  Dobie seated himself on the top step between Janey and her father, with his back to McKeon.

  “Here me singin’ before?” the foreman asked.

  “So that’s what that awful wailin’ was!” McKeon said, and Dobie jerked his head around and looked up at him. “Seems to me the boys didn’t think too much of it, either. I could hear ’em laughin’ their heads off.”

  ‘They weren’t laughin’ at me,” Dobie retorted. “They were laughin’ at you.”

  John McKeon sat upright in his chair. “They were, huh?” he demanded gruffly. “An’ I suppose you didn’t put them up to it, did you?”

  “Well, now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. I admit it mighta been on account o’ something I told them, but—”

  “But nothing,” McKeon retorted. He shook a big finger at Dobie. “One o’ these days I’m gonna—

  “I know,” Dobie said a little wearily. “You’ve been threatenin’ to peel the hide offa me so long—

  “Well, one o’ these days I’ll really do it, doggone you!”

  “I was tellin’ the boys about the early days,” Dobie related. “About that time you an’ me hit that abandoned town an’ had to sleep in the only place we could find, in the window o’ that general store.”

  McKeon grumbled under his breath.

  “He ever tell you about that, Janey?” Dobie asked, turning to her.

  “Why, no,” Janey answered. “I—I don’t think so.”

  Dobie laughed. “No, I guess you don’t. I kinda figgered he wouldn’t tell you that story.”

  “Well, suppose you tell it to me.”

 
“Oh, there ain’t so much to tell, but what there is of it always makes me laugh when I think of it. Y’see, we were ridin’ westward, him an’ me,” Dobie began. “That was a long time ago. Forty years about, more or less. Anyway, we were dirty an’ dog-tired, an’ when we see this town ahead of us, we decide we’re gonna have ourselves a time. A bath with good hot water, all the grub we c’n hold an’ a real bed. But that ain’t the way it worked out. We find the whole place locked up, an’ no sign of anybody whatever. We couldn’t get into the hotel, but then John, your ol’ man, he spots this store with a bed an’ a sign on it readin’ ‘For Sale’ in the window.”

  “That’s a lie,” McKeon said. “You were the one who spotted it”

  “That part ain’t important,” Dobie said calmly, without looking up at John. “Don’t matter one way or another that I c’n see which one of us spotted it, even though I know danged well it was you. Anyway, gettin’ on with the story, Janey, your Pop’s so set on sleepin’ in a bed, he don’t care a hoot where it is. So he tries the door, but he can’t budge it. So he busts the window, an’ we get inside. He gets himself undressed, an’ he climbs into the bed. There ain’t enough room in it for the two of us, bein’ that he’s so blamed big an’ has to have so much room to spread himself out in, so I roll up in my blanket on the floor alongside o’ the bed. Well, morning comes, an’ I suddenly wake up on account I hear a lot o’ laughing.”

  “Huh,” McKeon said scornfully. “You sure know how to tell a story awright. Like nobody else. You ain’t satisfied to tell it the way it happened. You gotta do things with it, twist it around.”

  “Look, it’s my story an’ I’m tellin’ it the way I remember it,” Dobie retorted, turning to face John McKeon. “When you tell it, you c’n tell it any way you like, only I know danged well your way won’t be the way it happened.”

  Dobie turned to face Janey again. “Like I was saying Janey, I hear this laughin’ an’ cacklin’, an’ I tell myself it can’t be real, an’ that I must be dreamin’. This is supposed to be an abandoned town, an’ everybody’s cleared out. I hear it again. Then it sounds real. I have a little trouble gettin’ my eyes to workin’ the way they’re supposed to work, but I do pretty soon, an’ I take one look outside the store, an’ my eyes nearly pop.”