L'Amour, Louis - SSC 32

by The Collected Short Stories Vol 3

  When he got his eyes open again, the sky was faintly gray. He could distinguish a few things around him and there were here and there a few scattered sticks. He got them together with a handful of grass and put them on the coals of last night’s fire, then cupped his hands above the small flame. He felt a raw, gnawing pain in his side and his face was stiff and his hands were clumsy. Overhead, a few stars paled and vanished like moths flying into smoke, and he added another small stick and felt for his gun.

  It was gone. He moved, scraping the fire along until he was beneath the dead tree. Slowly he built up the fire around its dried-out trunk, and as it caught he rolled backward, away from the flames. He lay there as the white branches went up in a rush of smoke and flame, and as he passed out he prayed for help. His eyes flickered open again at a sun-brightened world and he saw a huge turkey buzzard hunched in a tree not fifty yards away. He yelled and waved an arm, but the buzzard did not move. It sat there, waiting, and then its head came up, and it launched itself on lazy wings and floated off over the desert.

  Kilkenny lay still, staring up into the brassy vault of the sky, his mind floating in a half-world between delirium and death. Out of it floated a voice, saying, “Here’s a hat!”

  And then another voice. “They can’t be up there! It ain’t reasonable!” There was a long silence, and suddenly his eyes flashed open.

  That was no delirium! Somebody was searching! Hunting for him! He tried to call out, but his voice would muster no strength, and then he gathered himself, and picking up a small stick from near the fire, he threw it.

  “He’s got to be here. You saw all that smoke an’ that’s Buck down there, an’ where you find that horse he ain’t far away!”

  “Do you see him?” The voice was unfamiliar, sarcastic. “I don’t.”

  Then the other. “I’m goin’ on top!”

  “You’re crazy!” A long time later a loud whoop and then running feet. “Here’s Mailer! Hey, would you look at that? Man, what happened up here, anyway?” He tried to call out again, and this time they came hurrying. Cain Brockman, Rusty Gates, Gordon Flynn, his head bandaged and his face thin, and with them several men from town.

  “You all right, Lance?” Gates pleaded, his face redder still with worry.

  “What do you think?” Kilkenny muttered. And when he opened his eyes again, he was lying in darkness between clean white sheets and he felt vastly relaxed and comfortable. And Nita came in, walking softly, and sat down beside him.

  “Everything all right?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he whispered. “As long as when I’m well we’re goin’ to California to sit by the sea.”

  She smiled, “There’s a little port town called San Pedro, and I expect the railroad workers and dock men will want a gambling hall as much as anyone.” She kissed him gently. “When I see you’re better, I’ll have Cain start packing the wagons.”

  A GUN FOR KILKENNY

  Nobody had ever said that Montana Croft was an honest man. To those who knew him best he was a gunman of considerable skill, a horse and cow thief of first rank, and an outlaw who missed greatness simply because he was lazy. Montana Croft was a tall, young, and not unhandsome man. Although he had killed four men in gun battles, and at least one of them a known and dangerous gunman, he was no fool. Others might overrate his ability, but Montana’s judgment was unaffected. He had seen John Wesley Hardin, Clay Allison, and Wyatt Earp in action. This was sufficient to indicate to him that he rated a very poor hand indeed.

  Naturally, Montana Croft kept this fact to himself. Yet he knew a good thing when he saw it, and the good thing began with the killing of Johnny Wilder. Now Wilder himself was regarded as a handy youngster with a gun. He had killed a few men and had acquired the reputation of being dangerous. At nineteen he was beginning to sneer at Billy the Kid and to speak with a patronizing manner of Hardin. And then the stranger on the black horse rode into town, and Johnny took in too much territory. Not that Johnny was slow-in fact, his gun was out and his first shot in the air before Croft’s gun cleared leather. But Johnny was young, inexperienced, and impatient. He missed his first shot and his second. Montana Croft fired coolly and with care-and he fired only once.

  Spectators closed in, looking down upon the remains. The bullet had clipped the corner of Johnny Wilder’s breast pocket, and Johnny was very, very dead. Even then, it might have ended there but for Fats Runyon. Fats, who was inclined to view with alarm and accept with enthusiasm, looked up and said, “Only one man shoots like that! Only one, I tell you! That’s Kilkenny!”

  The words were magic, and all eyes turned toward Croft. And Montana, who might have disclaimed the name, did nothing of the kind. Suddenly, he was basking in greater fame than he had ever known. He was Kilkenny, the mysterious gunfighter whose reputation was a campfire story wherever men gathered. He could have disclaimed the name, but he merely smiled and walked into the saloon.

  Fats followed him, reassured by Croft’s acceptance of the name. “Knowed you right off, Mr. Kilkenny! Only one man shoots like that! And then that there black hat, them black chaps-it couldn’t be nobody else. Sam, set up a drink for Kilkenny!” Other drinks followed … and the restaurant refused to accept his money. Girls looked at him with wide, admiring eyes. Montana Croft submitted gracefully, and, instead of riding on through Boquilla, he remained. In this alone he broke tradition, for it was Kilkenny’s reputation that when he killed, he immediately left the country, which was the reason for his being unknown. Montana Croft found himself enjoying free meals, free drinks, and no bill at the livery stable, so he stayed on. If anyone noticed the break in tradition, they said nothing. Civic pride made it understandable that a man would not quickly ride on. Yet when a week had passed, Montana noticed that his welcome was visibly wearing thin. Free drinks ceased to come, and at the restaurant there had been a noticeable coolness when he walked out without paying. Montana considered riding on.

  He started for the stable, but then he stopped, rolling a cigarette. Why leave? This was perfect, the most beautiful setup he had ever walked into. Kilkenny himself was far away; maybe he was dead. In any event, there wasn’t one chance in a thousand he would show up in this border jumping-off place on the Rio Grande. So why not make the most of it? Who could stop him? Wilder had been the town’s toughest and fastest gun.

  Abruptly, Croft turned on his heel and walked into the hardware store. Hammet was wrapping a package of shells for a rancher, and when the man was gone, Croft looked at the storekeeper. “Hammet,” he said, and his voice was low and cold, “I need fifty dollars.”

  John Hammet started to speak, but something in the cool, hard-eyed man warned him to hold his tongue. This man was Kilkenny, and he himself had seen him down Johnny Wilder. Hammet swallowed. “Fifty dollars?” he said.

  “That’s right, Hammet.” Slowly, the older man turned to his cash drawer and took out the bill. “Never minded loaning a good man money,” he said, his voice shaking a little.

  Croft took the money and looked at Hammet. “Thanks, and between the two of us, I ain’t anxious for folks to know I’m short. Nobody does know but you. So I’d know where to come if it was talked around. Get me?”

  With that, he walked out. Montana Croft knew a good thing when he saw it. His first round of the town netted him four hundred dollars. A few ranchers here and there boosted the ante. Nobody challenged his claim. All assumed the demands were for loans. It was not until Croft made his second round, two weeks later, that it began to dawn on some of them that they had acquired a burden.

  Yet Croft was quiet. He lived on the fat of the land, yet he drank but sparingly. He troubled no one. He minded his own affairs, and he proceeded to milk the town as a farmer milks a cow. Nor would he permit any others to trespass upon his territory. Beak and Jesse Kennedy discovered that, to their sorrow. Two hard cases from the north, they drifted into town and after a drink or two, proceeded to hold up the bank. Montana Croft, watching from the moment they rode in, was ready f
or them. As they emerged from the bank he stepped from the shadow of the hardware store with a shotgun. Beak never knew what hit him. He sprawled face down in the dust, gold spilling out of his sack into the street. Jesse Kennedy whirled and fired, and took Croft’s second barrel in the chest.

  Montana walked coolly over and gathered up the money. He carried the sacks inside and handed them back to Jim Street. He grinned a little and then shoved a hand down into one of the sacks and took out a fistful of gold. “Thanks,” he said, and walked out.

  Boquilla was of two minds about their uninvited guest. Some wished he would move on about his business, but didn’t say it; others said it was a blessing he was there to protect the town. And somehow the news began to get around of what was happening. And then Montana Croft saw Margery Furman. Margery was the daughter of old Black Jack Furman, Indian fighter and rancher, and Margery was a thing of beauty and a joy forever-or so Montana thought.

  He met her first on the occasion of his second decision to leave town. He had been sitting in the saloon drinking and felt an uneasy twinge of warning. It was time to go. It was time now, to leave. This had been good, too good to be true, and it was much too good to last. Take them for all he could get, but leave before they began to get sore. And they were beginning to get sore now. It was time to go.

  He strode to the door, turned right, and started for the livery stable. And then he saw Margery Furman getting out of a buckboard. He stared, slowed, stopped, shoved his hat back on his head-and became a man of indecision. She came toward him, walking swiftly. He stepped before her.

  “Hi,” he said, “I haven’t seen you before.”

  Margery Furman knew all about the man called Kilkenny. She had known his name and fame for several years, and she had heard that he was in Boquilla. Now she saw him for the first time, and confessed herself disappointed. Not that he was not a big and fine-looking man, but there was something, some vague thing she had expected to find, lacking.

  “Look,” he said, “I’d like to see you again. I’d like to see more of you.”

  “If you’re still standing here when I come back,” she told him, “you can see me leave town.” With that she walked on by and into the post office.

  Croft stood still. He was shaken. He was smitten. He was worried. Leaving town was forgotten. The twinge of warning from the gods of the lawless had been forgotten. He waited. On her return, Margery Furman brushed past him and refused to stop.

  Suddenly, he was angered. He got quickly to his feet. “Now look here,” he said, “you-!” Whatever he had been about to say went unsaid. A rider was walking a horse down the street. The horse was a long-legged buckskin; the man was tall and wore a flat-brimmed, flat crowned black hat. He wore two guns, hung low and tied down. Suddenly, Montana Croft felt very sick. His mouth was dry. Margery Furman had walked on to her buckboard, but now she looked back. She saw him standing there, flat-footed, his face white. She followed his eyes.

  The tall newcomer sat his buckskin negligently. He looked at Croft through cold green eyes from a face burned dark by the sun and wind. And he did not speak. For a long, full minute, the two stared. Then Croft’s eyes dropped and he started toward the buckboard, but then turned toward the livery stable. He heard a saddle creak as the stranger dismounted. He reached the stable door and then turned and looked back. Margery Furman was in her buckboard, but she was sitting there, holding the reins.

  The stranger was fifty yards from Montana Croft now, but his voice carried. It was suddenly loud in the street. “Heard there was a gent in town who called himself Kilkenny. Are you the one?”

  As if by magic, the doors and windows were filled with faces, the faces of the people he had robbed again and again. His lips tried to shape words of courage, but they would not come. He tried to swallow, but, gulp as he would, he could not. Sweat trickled into his eyes and smarted, but he dared not move a hand to wipe it away.

  “I always heard Kilkenny was an honest man, a man who set store by his reputation. Are you an honest man?” Croft tried to speak but could not. “Take your time,” the stranger’s voice was cold, “take your time, then tell these people you’re not Kilkenny. Tell them you’re a liar and a thief.”

  He should draw … he should go for his gun now … he should kill this stranger … kill him or die. And that was the trouble. He was not ready to die, and die he would if he reached for a gun. “Speak up! These folks are waitin’! Tell them!”

  Miraculously, Croft found his voice. “I’m not Kilkenny,” he said.

  “The rest of it.” There was no mercy in this man. Montana Croft suddenly saw the truth staring him brutally in the face. A man could only die once if he died by the gun, but if he refused his chance now he would die many deaths …

  “All right, damn you!” He shouted the words. “I’m not Kilkenny! I’m a liar and I’m a thief, but I’ll be damned if I’m a yellowbellied coward!”

  His hands dropped, and suddenly, with a shock of pure realization, he knew he was making the fastest draw he had ever made. Triumph leaped within him and burst in his breast. He’d show them! His guns sprang up … and then he saw the blossoming rose of flame at the stranger’s gun muzzle and he felt the thud of the bullet as it struck him. His head spun queerly and he saw a fountain of earth spring from the ground before him, his own bullet kicking the dust. He went down, losing his gun, catching himself on one hand. Then that arm gave way and he rolled over, eyes to the sun. The man stood over him.

  Montana Croft stared up: “You’re Kilkenny?”

  “I’m Kilkenny.” The tall man’s face was suddenly soft. “You made a nice try.”

  “Thanks … “ Montana Croft died there in the street of Boquilla, without a name that anyone knew. Margery Furman’s eyes were wide.

  “You … You’re Kilkenny?” For this time it was there, that something she had looked for in the face of the other man. It was there, the kindliness, the purpose, the strength.

  “Yes,” he said. And then he fulfilled the tradition. He rode out of town.

  In Victorio’s Country

  The four riders, hard-bitten men bred to the desert and the gun, pushed steadily southward. uc1“Red” Clanahan, a monstrous big man with a wide-jawed bulldog face and a thick neck descending into massive shoulders, held the lead. ehind him, usually in single file but occasionally bunching, trailed the others.

  It was hot and still. The desert of southern Arizona’s Apache country was rarely pleasant in the summer, and this day was no exception. uc1“Bronco” Smith, who trailed just behind Red, mopped his lean face with a handkerchief and cursed fluently, if monotonously.

  He had his nickname from the original meaning of the term wild and unruly and the Smith was a mere convenience, in respect to the custom that insists a man have two names. The “Dutchman” defied the rule by having none at all, or if he had once owned a name, it was probably recorded only upon some forgotten reward poster lining the bottom of some remote sheriff’s desk drawer. o the southwestern desert country he was simply and sufficiently, the Dutchman.

  As for “Yaqui Joe,” he was called just that, or was referred to as the “breed” and everyone knew without question who was indicated. He was a wide-faced man with a square jaw, stolid and silent, a man of varied frontier skills, but destined to follow always where another led. A man who had known much hardship and no kindness, but whose commanding virtue was loyalty.

  Smith was a lean whip of a man with slightly graying hair, stooped shoulders, and spidery legs. Dried and parched by desert winds, he was as tough as cowhide and iron. It was said that he had shot his way out of more places than most men had ever walked into, and he would have followed no man’s leadership but that of Big Red Clanahan.

  The Dutchman was a distinct contrast to the lean frame of Smith, for he was fat, and not in the stomach alone, but all over his square, thick-boned body. Yet the blue eyes that stared from his round cheeks were sleepy, wise, and wary.

  There were those who said that Yaqui Joe�
�s father had been an Irishman, but his name was taken from his mother in the mountains of Sonora. He had been an outlaw by nature and choice from the time he could crawl, and he was minus a finger on his left hand, and had a notch in the top of his ear. The bullet that had so narrowly missed his skull had been fired by a man who never missed again. He was buried in a hasty grave somewhere in the Mogollons.

  Of them all, Joe was the only one who might have been considered a true outlaw. All had grown up in a land and time when the line was hard to draw.

  Big Red had never examined his place in society. He did not look upon himself as a thief or as a criminal, and would have been indignant to the point of shooting had anybody suggested he was either of these. However, the fact was that Big Red had long since strayed over the border that divides the merely careless from the actually criminal. Like many another westerner he had branded unbranded cattle on the range, as in the years following the War Between the States the cattle were there for the first comer who possessed a rope and a hot iron.

  It was a business that kept him reasonably well supplied with poker and whiskey money, but when all available cattle wore brands, it seemed to him the difference in branded and unbranded cattle was largely a matter of time. ll the cattle had been mavericks after the war, and if a herd wore a brand it simply meant the cattleman had reached them before he did. “Big Red” accepted this as a mere detail, and a situation that could be speedily rectified with a cinch ring, and in this he was not alone.

  If the cattleman who preceded him objected with lead, Clanahan accepted this as an occupational hazard.

  However, from rustling cattle to taking the money itself was a short step, and halved the time consumed in branding and selling the cattle. Somewhere along this trail Big Red crossed, all unwittingly at the time, the shadow line that divides the merely careless from the actually dishonest, and at about the time he crossed this line, Big Red separated from the man who had ridden beside him for five long, hard frontier years.