King Colt

by Short, Luke;

  Johnny didn’t say anything until the drinks were set down before them. He leaned back against the wall and said, “Man to man, Turk, don’t you get fed up with this business? You ain’t with a bunch. They don’t want anything to do with you. The little smidgin of horses and cattle you steal, you got to drive a hundred miles to a market and do it alone. You’re tough enough that nobody bothers you, but on that account, nobody’ll work with you. I don’t savvy it.”

  Turk said cautiously, “I don’t do so bad.”

  “You do awful bad,” Johnny contradicted him. “You know it.”

  Turk shrugged. “Not much choice, Johnny. I’m tough because I don’t want anybody to throw in with me. And I don’t want anybody to throw in with me because he’d be bound to get big ideas about stealin’ every horse and steer in the county. We’d get away with it for a while, and then we’d get caught. And then you rannies over at the sheriff’s office would start lookin’ through your reward posters and you’d ship me back over the mountains—if you didn’t hang me.” He shook his head. “Just a little suits me. You wouldn’t bother to run me down and, besides, you couldn’t.”

  Johnny let that pass and went back to what Turk had said.

  “I’ve seen some of those reward dodgers. You used to make big tracks, didn’t you?”

  “Sort of.” Turk grinned.

  “Tired of this penny-ante rustlin’?”

  “Plenty,” Turk said flatly, “but a man’s got to live.”

  “Ever try a job?”

  “That’s a laugh,” Turk said wryly. “Every time I go near a mine, somebody picks up a shotgun and says, ‘The weather’ll get some hotter if you come any closer, Turk.’”

  “What about ridin’ jobs?” Johnny asked him.

  “Ranchers claim every one of their steers knows me on sight and will start a stampede when they see me.” He added, grinning, “Which is exaggeratin’ it a little, but then that’s the way they feel.”

  “Still, you stick here,” Johnny pointed out.

  Turk swallowed his drink and said mildly, “Thanks to you and Baily Blue. You could run me out if you wanted. You haven’t. I try to pay you back by not stealin’ the county blind. I don’t do half the thievin’ anybody else in my line would do.”

  Johnny drank his whisky then, and set down his glass, regarding Turk with amiable curiosity. “Heard about my runnin’ for sheriff?”

  “On a law-and-order platform, yeah. You better pull in your neck.”

  “How’d you like to be my deputy after I’m elected, Turk?” Johnny said.

  Turk raised his pale eyes to Johnny’s face. “It’s been a long time since I heard about Santa Claus. I thought he’d left the country.”

  “I mean it,” Johnny said. “Before you start laughin’, think it over. If I’m elected, I don’t aim to write to every county in the Territory and ask for a list of their wanted men, then comb over this pack of hardcases and ship them home. I ain’t even interested in hangin’ the deadwood on anybody—least of all you. All I aim to do is move them out of here. If they don’t want to go, they got to prove they’re men enough to stay. That’s simple, ain’t it?”

  “To say it, yeah,” Turk admitted.

  “I’m sayin’ it, and I’m doin’ it. But I can’t do it alone. I need a deputy—at least one—who’s a scrapper and can beat these hardcases at their own game. I don’t care anything about his past. All he’s got to do is worry about his present. I’ll expect him to be honest, impartial, and willin’ to risk his neck for somethin’ he’s fought against most of his life.” Pausing, he regarded Turk closely. “It strikes me you’ve had just about enough of dodgin’ reward posters, Turk. Am I right?”

  Turk fondled his glass with a square, hairy hand, his eyes musing. “How long will this job last?”

  “Forever, if you’re on the level and I can work it for you. I won’t be sheriff forever, Turk, but I figure if I’m sheriff once, I’ll do enough for these ranchers that they’ll do me a favor. And one of those favors will include forgettin’ the old Turk Hebron and rememberin’ the new one.”

  Turk said quietly, “I’ve never known you to go back on your word, Johnny. But can you promise that much?”

  “I think so. You willin’ to throw in with me?”

  Turk didn’t say anything for a moment. Johnny said softly, “I know what you’re thinkin’. You know plenty about the men that are robbin’ this county. You wouldn’t want to double-cross ’em, even if you did hate ’em. Isn’t that it?”

  Turk nodded.

  “If I get elected, I’m not goin’ to try and trap these birds on the first night. I’m goin’ to tell them I’ll give ’em twenty-four hours to clear out of the county. After that, anything goes. That’s fair enough, ain’t it?”

  “Sure. But how about them that don’t take your little message to heart? Most of these birds have been told to get out of places before. But they don’t scare easy. If you was elected sheriff with such high notions, they might give you twenty-four hours to move on somewheres else.”

  “I don’t scare very easy, either,” Johnny said. “And—I’m tellin’ you—I aim to have to help some customers that don’t move easy. That’s where you come in. How does it sound to you?”

  “Interestin’,” said Turk.

  “How about it, then? A hundred a month and horse keep—and brawls and shots at your back and gun fightin’ and ridin’ and plenty other misery.”

  “You’re on,” Turk said briefly.

  Johnny rose and said, “Come out in back a minute, Turk. There’s one other thing to settle.”

  Turk rose and followed him out in back of the Palace. There was a bare square of hard-packed dirt between the Palace and the rear alley. Johnny looked around and saw no one in sight, and he reached up and unbuckled his gun belt and laid it on the step. Turk was watching curiously.

  “I’ve had a notion,” Johnny drawled, “you think you ride a little higher and wider than me, Turk. In other words, if it come to a showdown, you think you could take care of me pretty easy. That right?”

  “Not easy,” Turk murmured. “But I could take care of you. Not when it come to guns, though. You’d cut me to doll rags.”

  “But fists,” Johnny drawled.

  “I can take you.”

  “Try it,” Johnny suggested. “I’m open to conviction.”

  Turk laughed and shucked his belt, and they squared off and circled a moment. Then Turk, head down, sailed in, arms flailing. Johnny straightened him out with a blistering hook and stepped back.

  “You ain’t fightin’,” Turk complained, shaking his head. “I can’t dance. But I can fight.”

  “Here she comes,” Johnny murmured.

  They rushed at each other. Turk hoped to make it a clinch, where his weight and heavily corded shoulder muscles could wrestle Johnny around while he ladled out punishment. But Johnny hacked down on Turk’s guard and sent five lashing blows—three in the midriff, two on the shelf of the chin—at Turk.

  Turk went down, and on his back. When he got up, he was scowling and cursing furiously.

  “Look at my tracks,” Johnny murmured. “I didn’t back up to do that.”

  But Turk was mad now, and he wasn’t looking at anything but Johnny. He came in, shoulders lowered and rolling, and they collided. This time there was no science about it, nothing but vicious, body-weighted slugging. Toe to toe they stood, weaving a little, trying to dodge the worst blows, but so intent on hitting that each took them and grunted and gave them back. For perhaps forty seconds it went on that way, neither of them conceding an inch, taking the shock of the blows full on the body. But slowly Johnny was working out his plan. Turk’s chin was buried in his thick neck, where it was protected, and Johnny was pumping savage blows into Turk’s midriff. And slowly, from the pain of it, Turk was hauling his own blows in so that his elbows would protect him. And he was breathing hard. Suddenly, Johnny shifted a little to the right, so that he was at one side of Turk, and then he laced over a
left that yanked Turk’s chin out of its cover. And then, savagely, putting every ounce of bone and muscle in him, Johnny drove the chin higher, until it shelved clear, and then he slugged hard and desperately, and there was a sound of skin-padded bone on knuckles.

  Turk seemed to carom off Johnny’s fist into the dirt.

  He lay there, absolutely motionless except for a little convulsive movement of his knees. Johnny, dragging in great gusts of breath, stood over him, watching. Then he picked up his hat and went over to a barrel standing under the eaves trough of the Palace and ladled out a hatful of water, which he doused on Turk’s face. Turk rolled over and dragged himself to his knees, then shook his head and looked around for Johnny.

  “Enough?” Johnny murmured.

  “Plenty,” Turk muttered, and then grinned. Johnny helped him to his feet, and they faced each other.

  “Brother,” Turk said ruefully, “I’ve seen the hind legs of a mule that couldn’t do that.”

  Johnny grinned and touched his ribs gingerly. “You’ve got five of my ribs between your fingers, it feels like.”

  They both laughed, and Turk stuck out his hand. “By thunder, you will make a sheriff,” he said slowly.

  Johnny stuck out his own. “With a hardcase, redheaded deputy, how could I help it?”

  And then and there, behind the Palace, the pact was sealed.

  Chapter Five: STRAWS IN THE WIND

  If Johnny did not set up drinks for the whole county in each of the dozen saloons for a week, he did other things designed to offset Baily Blue’s whisky buying. On the quiet, he managed to see every merchant in town and point out the advantages of a law-and-order term. To them he promised a deputy who would act as marshal. Then he went to the mine owners and operators, and to them he promised he would stop holdups, or anyway cut them down to the place where insurance rates on the bullion shipments were not prohibitive. It was a busy week, but in the midst of it he took the time to go down to Hugo Miller’s assay office and talk with him.

  Hugo was a quiet man, a graduate engineer, middle-aged, not given to talking much about his past. But Pick had found him thoroughly honest and he had often spent evenings in the back of Miller’s workshop talking over ores and minerals and mines, and Johnny sometimes listened. He, too, liked this pale, sensitive-faced man who forever had a pipe in his mouth, and who minded his own business.

  Miller was working at his scales; at Johnny’s entrance he quit and pulled up two chairs. After a few minutes of small talk, in which Miller bitterly lamented Pick’s death, Johnny said, “Did Pick have any samples with you, Hugo?”

  “About ten.”

  “Anything good show up?”

  “They weren’t worthless,” Hugo said carefully. “Pick knows too much about the game to lug rock down to me that isn’t good. But on the other hand, they were run-of-the-mill samples for him. They all assayed about the same.”

  “No one better than the others?” Johnny asked hopefully.

  “We’ll see,” Hugo said, rising. He got his reports and glanced over them briefly. “Here’s one that’s better than the others. Not much, though.”

  Johnny’s heart sank. He had hoped Hugo could show him a rich assay, something that would indicate Pick had struck it and had been murdered by claim jumpers, but there was nothing here pointing to it.

  “Know where any of these claims were located?” he asked glumly, and then he went on to explain. Surely Pick had been murdered for his gold—it was certain that he had found gold, for some of it was found on his burros. In view of this, it was almost certain that he had the location papers on him when he was murdered. “Maybe he found this gold at a place he’d been workin’ a long time. I thought maybe he’d told you of a place that looked good.”

  Hugo shook his head. “He never told me.”

  Johnny sighed. “That’s out, I reckon.”

  “Maybe not,” Hugo said quietly. “He’s brought me a lot of ore to assay, Johnny. Most of it lately has been a peculiar kind of ore—what a geologist would call volcanic breccia, and my guess is that it’s in a long dike, or fault. Every one of his last thirty samples has been of this ore. Maybe he struck gold in this volcanic breccia dike.”

  “That’s a lot of help,” Johnny said dryly. “What do I do? Hunt the Calicoes for volcanic breccia?”

  “There isn’t much of it,” Hugo said.

  “I know. But it may be only a mile long. It’d take years to find it.”

  “Let someone else do it for you,” Hugo said calmly. Johnny was about to protest, when he closed his mouth and looked hard at Hugo. “What do you mean by that?”

  Hugo took his pipe from his mouth and pointed it at Johnny. “Each one of these samples Pick has brought in is higher-grade stuff than the one before it. That argues that Pick was following this breccia dike to its head, doesn’t it? He was getting closer and closer to a really good thing. All right, if the man who killed him did it because Pick had something, the chances are he’ll bring in this ore to be assayed. It’ll have this volcanic breccia in it. And I’d know the looks of that anywhere, because in ten years of assaying for this town and the Calicoes, it’s the first I’ve run across.”

  Johnny turned this over in his mind. “Then if a jasper brings in some samples with volcanic breccia, you’ll know it come from Pick’s workings?”

  “More than likely it will. Prospectors don’t usually work near each other unless they’ve already found good color and staked claims.”

  “That’d be it,” Johnny murmured. “It wouldn’t be a sure thing, but it might be.” He rose. “You’ll let me know, then, Hugo, if anyone brings in samples that jibe with Pick’s?”

  “Gladly.”

  Johnny left then. Here was something to work on; slim enough, it appeared, but nevertheless something. It would take patience and a lot of it. He stopped in at the sheriff’s office and found Baily Blue loading his pockets with half dollars. He grinned up at Johnny and said, “That’s my ammunition. Fifty cents a drink. You ought to take a tip from an old campaigner, son.”

  Johnny shook his head. “Got the mail yet?”

  “Uh-uh. I’m on my way.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll pick it up,” Johnny said. He turned down toward Bledsoe’s Miners’ Emporium, where the post office was. A section in the front of the store had been partitioned off to make the post office. This partition consisted of a rack of pigeonholes, opened at both ends. The mail had been brought in on the stage only a few minutes before, and Bledsoe, the fat postmaster, who always waited to rack up the local mail with that brought in on the stage, was busy behind the partition. Most of the waiting crowd had already received its mail and was reading it.

  Johnny looked in his pigeonhole and saw that it was vacant and stuck his head through the wicket. “Nothin’ for me, Bledsoe?”

  “A lot,” Bledsoe said, and reached up to haul it out. He withdrew his pudgy hand, looking surprised. “Why, you had a whole boxful not ten seconds ago, Johnny,” he said slowly.

  Johnny wheeled to confront the crowd. Miners, punchers, men, and women were standing in small clusters in the front of the store, most of them reading, some conversing. They had not heard Bledsoe’s conversation with Johnny, for they were paying no attention to him—all except one dirty and unshaven puncher. Johnny’s gaze whipped past him, and the man turned down-store. As he wheeled, Johnny saw a sheaf of envelopes peeping out of his pocket.

  Johnny started toward him, and then stopped. It would look mighty foolish to go up and accost the puncher and ask to see the letters. If that story got around, Baily Blue would turn it into a laugh, and no one knew better than Johnny how easy it is to laugh a man out of office. But still, he wasn’t sure, and he loafed back through the store keeping a good distance between the puncher and himself.

  The puncher stopped down the counter and asked the clerk for a box of shells, then turned and glanced obliquely at Johnny, who was pretending to examine a gun lying on the counter.

  When he looked up again
, the puncher was walking rapidly toward the rear of the store. Johnny, his suspicions thoroughly aroused now, took after him.

  Outside, the puncher turned up the alley and out of sight, and Johnny ran to the back door, yanked it open, and raced out into the alley. Ahead of him, the puncher was running as fast as he could. Johnny lit out after him, drawing his gun. He shot once into the air and yelled, “Better pull up, fella.”

  For answer, the puncher stopped abruptly, whirled with gun in hand, and started to shoot. Johnny cut off to his right for the shelter of a shed, and he emptied his gun in swift rat-a-plan. He saw the puncher go down, and he stopped, then loaded his gun and walked carefully toward him. He hadn’t expected this, and he cursed himself for losing his head. What if the man had only been trying to get out of the way of what he thought was an officious lawman? One look at him and Johnny saw he was dead. One of the slugs had caught him in the neck, and he lay on his back, head twisted awry. And Johnny remembered that it was himself who had shot first.

  Men started to collect in the alley. Swiftly, Johnny knelt down and rolled the man over and pulled the letters out of his Levi’s pocket. A glance at them brought a wave of relief over him, for they were his.

  To the first few men around him—hardcase loafers at Prince’s Keno Parlor—Johnny held out the letters. “Stole them,” he drawled calmly. “When will these tinhorns learn they can’t hooraw everybody in this town?”

  He could see the dislike in the eyes of these men. One of them said, “You couldn’t’ve asked him for ’em, I don’t suppose?”

  “If you see a man ridin’ off on your horse, you don’t ask him to get off, do you?” Johnny drawled.

  “It ain’t the same thing,” the man countered.

  Another said, “This a sample of that law and order you’re talkin’ about?”

  Johnny picked out the speaker and walked over to him. “It is. Don’t you like it?”

  “Not much.”

  “This is a wide country, friend,” he said gently, ominously. “If you don’t like it, there’s lots of roads out of here.”