Bounty Guns

by Short, Luke;

  Buck struggled to get up, but he was too weak to make it. “Tip, you can’t go in there alone! Dammit, you can’t! Wait a few days until I’m on my feet!”

  “I’m not waitin’ any more. I’ve waited too long now.”

  He touched his horse with his spurs and rode out of the circle of firelight. Lucy, who had silently listened to all this, said, “Buck, can’t we do something?”

  “Go after him!” Buck cried. “Hell, they’ll murder him!”

  But Lynn was already moving. She stepped into the saddle and pushed out of the firelight after Tip. Lucy stood watching her, and her face was so sad that Buck, still propped up on his elbow, said, “Do you want to go, too, Lucy?”

  Lucy smiled at him, and Buck thought it was the most wistful smile he had ever seen. “I want to, Buck, but he’d send me back. And he won’t send Lynn.”

  Buck said gently, “Lucy, look up here.”

  Lucy did, and she was not far from tears.

  “I didn’t know it was that way, sis. Does Tip know?”

  “He doesn’t know, and he never will, Buck, because he’s never taken the trouble to look.” She walked over and looked down at him. “It’s all right, Buck. I knew it was Lynn from the moment I saw them together, and I’m glad. I couldn’t help loving him and I’m proud I did, but it was never any use. A man makes his choice a long time before he knows it himself, and Tip Woodring has made his choice. It—it just wasn’t me, Buck.”

  A hundred yards away from the fire Lynn made out Tip’s form in the trees and she called to him, and he stopped.

  “There’s no use tryin’ to stop me,” Tip said patiently. “I’m goin’, Lynn.”

  “I know you are. So am I.”

  “You’re goin’ back!”

  “Oh, no, I’m not. This is my fight more than it is yours, Tip Woodring. Blackie Mayfell was my father.”

  Tip stared wrathfully at her in the dark. He was helpless to make her return and he knew it and he was secretly glad.

  “All right,” he said finally. “This won’t be pretty to watch, but you asked for it.”

  When they were in sight of town, Lynn put her hand out and caught the bridle of Tip’s horse and pulled him up.

  “Tip, you’ve got to let me help. There must be something I can do, isn’t there?”

  “No,” Tip said quietly. “Thanks.”

  “How do you know Rig Holman is still in town?”

  “I’ll find out.”

  “That’s something I can do,” Lynn said. She spurred her horse ahead and called back, “I’ll meet you in back of the Inquirer, Tip.”

  Tip didn’t try to stop her. He looked ahead at the lights of this town. He had whipped it once, and then it had whipped him, and now he was coming back for the last try. Either he would whip it this time, or he would never know that he hadn’t.

  He took to the alleys again, but this time he avoided going past the jail. He wasn’t quite ready for that yet. Going down the side street he turned at the cross street and came up the alley from the other direction, dismounting in back of the Inquirer. He hunkered down against the wall there, feeling no impatience, only a sort of cool wind touching him. He could wait for anything now, because he knew what he was going to do.

  Presently he saw Lynn turn into the alley, and he was erect when she stopped and swung out of the saddle.

  “He’s still there, Tip. His baggage is, anyway.”

  “Good.”

  A pause. “How do you plan to go about it, Tip?” She tried to hold her voice steady, forcing the fear out of it.

  “I don’t plan,” Tip said. “I’m just goin’ to the jail, that’s all.”

  “Jeff is there, and so is Murray Seth. I saw them when I rode past. So are two other men.”

  “All right,” Tip said. The impatience was here now, the knowledge that he was going to do it being pushed by the desire to be done with it.

  He and Lynn faced each other there in the dark.

  Lynn said, “Do you think Holman will run when he hears the fight?”

  “Let him run. There’s nowhere he can hide that I won’t find him.” He drew out one gun, opened the loading gate, and spun the cylinder. It was loaded. He tried the other, and it was loaded, too. There were only those sounds in the quiet night, and they made Lynn’s spine go cold.

  “Well,” Tip said, “I’ll see you later.”

  Lynn wanted to throw her arms around him, to hold him, to fight him back, and then she wanted to go with him, and she knew all the time that she would do none of these things. She had to let him go, because this was what men lived by. She only said, “Come back, Tip.”

  But Tip didn’t hear her. He walked toward the street between the buildings, squeezed past the stairs, and came to the boardwalk. He paused there a brief moment, scanning the street. The light from the lamp in the sheriff’s office lay across the boardwalk in a luminous block. Across the street, the buildings were black blocks in the night. Four horses just beyond the shaft of light from the office moved softly in the dark, their muffled stomping and the jingling of their bits a muted warning sound.

  Tip’s nerves were keyed up now, as he began his slow walk toward the sheriff’s office. He passed a dark store building, and his pace increased and then he came abreast the saddle shop, and then the alley, and now his hands fell to his guns. He could hear Jeff Bolling laugh in the office.

  Crack! The flat slam of a rifleshot was simultaneous with the whup! of the slug as it buried itself in one of the clapboards of the sheriff’s office just beyond Tip’s head. Tip lunged into the passageway between the saddle shop and jail, hearing someone come out of the sheriff’s chair with a lunge and run for the street, yelling, “Here he is, boys!” It was Jeff Bolling’s voice.

  Tip moved on toward the window, looked in, and saw the room was deserted. He swung a leg over the sill just as Murray Seth lunged out of the stairway door, heading for the street door. He and Tip saw each other at the same time. Murray, still running, swung his gun up across his body, just as Tip’s gun finished its tight-arc and exploded twice in rapid succession. The shots drove Murray off balance, and he crashed into the table and went down. Tip was now running for the street door. He lunged over Murray’s body and rammed into a man in the doorway. He shot blindly, so close to his body that he felt the scalding burn of the powder, and then he slugged the man out of his way, caroming him into a second man behind him. This man tripped and sat down, and as he was falling he shot wildly. Tip kicked at his face and felt his boot connect and then he fell, rolling in between the feet of the horses at the tie rail. He came up on one knee and lunged out into the road, just as the horses began to plunge and kick.

  And then, from his kneeling position, he saw Jeff Bolling standing in the middle of the street, half turned toward him, a gun in each hand. Tip came up slowly just as Jeff shot. It was almost a tentative shot, as if Jeff were trying to make sure of his man. Then, feet planted wide apart, a kind of wild panic took hold of Jeff Bolling. He used his guns as if they were clubs, swinging each down and firing as if the fear that rode him could not push him fast enough. Tip swung up his gun shoulder-high, then let it settle and when Jeff Bolling’s head and then his chest hove up through the indistinct sight, he pulled the trigger.

  It was as if some invisible hand had brushed Jeff Bolling down. His feet still planted, his boots in the same tracks in the dust, he went over backward, and Tip heard the wind go out of him as he fell. Jeff bent one knee and dragged his foot back, and then the knee fell sideways, and his head turned over in the dust, his cheek lying in it as on a pillow.

  Tip looked up beyond Jeff to the porch of Baylor’s store. A half-dozen men, all townsmen, regarded him in silence.

  “I’m still deputy sheriff in this town,” Tip announced quietly. “Does anybody want to argue that?”

  He stood out there in the street, a dark, shadowy figure, erect and waiting and inviting a fight, standing straight as a gun barrel, his free hand fisted, the gun loose in the o
ther.

  The first man on the steps let his gun slide back into its holster and turned and went back into the store. The others followed him.

  Tip walked down the middle of the street, ramming fresh loads in his gun. He paused by Jeff Bolling, looking down at him. Jeff’s face, for the first time in his life, was peaceful-looking and quiet. Tip stepped over him, hit the boardwalk, and then tramped downstreet toward the hotel. He met three men on the boardwalk, and they knew him and were warned by his look. They looked upstreet and saw that figure lying in the road and then they moved against the building, letting him pass.

  He went into the hotel and crossed the lobby and tramped deliberately up the stairs. As his head came level with the top step, he could look down the hall and see Lynn Mayfell, a gun in her small fist, facing an open doorway. Behind and to one side of her, Uncle Dave Shawn, the bedclothes wrapped around him, had a shotgun slacked off his shoulder. Lynn didn’t turn as she heard Tip’s step.

  Tip shouldered between them and against the outside wall of the room, hands over his head, stood Rig Holman, his face a pasty gray.

  “Tip!” he cried. Relief flooded his face, and he lowered his hands. Tip stepped into the room and took hold of the door to close it. He felt it stop halfway, and he heard Lynn’s voice say, “No. I’m coming in.”

  Tip didn’t look at her. He was watching Rig Holman, watching the confidence flood into his face and fear wash out.

  “What in hell is this?” Rig asked curiously. “They’ve been holdin’ me against this wall for five minutes.”

  “He came in with a rifle, Tip,” Lynn said quietly.

  Tip smiled then. “Sit down, Rig. I’m sorry you’ve been bothered.”

  Rig seated himself onto the bed, looking first at Tip and then at Lynn.

  “This is Lynn Mayfell, Rig,” Tip murmured. “The girl you paid the money to. Blackie Mayfell’s daughter. Remember Blackie?” His voice was soft, gentle, deceptive.

  Only Rig’s eyes were wary now; the rest of him was relaxed. He regarded Tip closely, and Tip knew he was wondering how much was known.

  “Sure I do,” Rig said confidently. “I don’t understand the welcome with the gun, though.” He looked curiously at Lynn, whose back was to the wall, and who still held the six-gun trained on Rig.

  Tip sank into the chair and waved a hand carelessly. “Oh, forget that, Rig. Let’s talk about other things,” Tip said gently, and a wiser man than Rig Holman would have been warned by that gentleness.

  Rig’s smile flashed. It was the old smile, and now Tip saw that it was as phony as tin money.

  “Sure,” Rig said. He drew a sack of tobacco from his pocket and rolled a smoke. Tip marveled at how steady his hands were, his gambler’s hands.

  Rig lighted his smoke and said, “I’ve been lookin’ for you, Tip. I wanted some advice.” He laughed suddenly. “You aren’t exactly easy to find these last few days, according to the town.”

  “Not very,” Tip said quietly. “Advice on what?”

  “I bought a place today. The Shields place. Know it?”

  “I’ve heard of it. Go on.”

  “It was up for auction and I picked it up. Fifteen hundred acres. Is it a good buy for fourteen thousand?”

  “A very good buy.”

  Rig looked up at Lynn. She still held the gun on him. He said nervously to Tip, “For God’s sake, Tip. Make her put that gun down! What’s the matter with her?”

  “Nervous, Rig?”

  “Why should I be?” Rig said defiantly. There was a little quiver in the cigarette he was holding. “Well, I bought it,” Rig said, watching Tip. His confidence was just beginning to crack.

  “What for?” Tip asked. “Going to ranch?”

  “No, I wanted a place to come to now and then. I like to get away from the tables every once in a while.”

  “You can get a long way from a gamblin’-table on fifteen hundred acres, Rig. Why so much land?”

  “Oh, I only wanted the park up there and the house,” Rig said.

  He was sweating, Tip saw. Little beads of perspiration were forming on his forehead.

  “That’s what I wanted to see you about, Tip.”

  “What?”

  “I wondered if you’d go half and half with me on the place. You ranch it, and we’ll split whatever it makes.” He stared intently at Tip, licking his lips.

  Tip understood him. What he was trying to say was, that if Tip knew of the gold there, then he was willing to split fifty-fifty with him to keep it a secret. A kind of wicked relish for this scene was having its way with Tip now, and he pretended he hadn’t understood.

  “Why, Rig, you know I’m ranchin’ up in the short-grass country. That is, I will if I can find Blackie’s killer and earn that ten thousand.”

  “Don’t bother with that,” Rig said sharply. “This is a good ranch. It’ll make us money. I’ll pay you well, too.”

  “How much?”

  “Why, ten thousand the first year.”

  Tip drawled quietly, “That’s a nice offer, Rig. Mighty handsome.”

  Rig was puzzled. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his coat and for one moment despair showed in his eyes. He couldn’t understand Tip’s actions. Then he laughed. “Well, I think a lot of you, Tip. I’d like to help you. You don’t seem to be doing so well here.”

  “I’m makin’ out,” Tip said gently. “You’d be surprised, Rig, how close I am to makin’ out pretty well.”

  Rig swallowed. He shuttled his glance to Lynn, who still held the gun on him, and then back to Tip. Tip’s gaze had never left Rig’s face.

  Rig asked the question then that he knew he was going to have to ask, the question that would be the test. But he wanted to put it off as long as he could. He said, “Makin’ out? You haven’t got Blackie’s killer yet, have you?”

  Tip scoured his chin with his hand, regarding Rig with a faint smile. “Not quite yet.”

  Here it was. Rig stammered, “You—you know who he is?”

  “Oh, yes,” Tip said quickly. “I know who he is.”

  “Who?”

  There was a long pause. The sweat was streaming off Rig’s face, and his hands were shaking so he couldn’t stop them.

  Tip, his eyes wicked, but a faint smile still on his face, threw a leg over the chair arm and said, “Rig, I come in here for a nice visit with you and then you start talkin’ business. It’s business, business, business all the time with you. No chance to get set, no chance to light a pipe, no chance to relax. You act like you thought time was money. That’s a proverb, isn’t it, Rig? ‘Time is money’?”

  “I don’t know,” Rig said weakly.

  Tip swung his leg down, as if he were going to get up. Rig started to rise, and Tip settled back in the chair and threw the other leg up.

  “A proverb,” Tip repeated. “That reminds me, Rig. My old man loved proverbs. He was a great reader.” He looked sharply at Rig. “Did you know that?”

  “I—didn’t know your old man,” Rig said hoarsely.

  “That’s right, you didn’t. Well, he liked to read. He was after what he called a philosophy of life, and he figured he’d look for it this way. Are you listenin’, Rig?”

  “Yes,” Rig whispered. His face had gone to pieces now.

  “He’d read all the proverbs he could find. But you know, Rig, for some proverbs that sound wise you can find other proverbs that contradict them. Let me see.” Tip looked at the ceiling. “Here’s two that contradict each other. ‘Make haste slowly,’ and ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’ See? They cancel each other, don’t they?”

  Rig nodded, his eyes desperate.

  “Well, my old man got all the proverbs together, threw away all those that canceled out, and guess what he had left? It was his philosophy of life. Do you know what it was?”

  “No.”

  Tip swung his leg over the chair arm and came to his feet. Rig came to his feet, too.

  “It was this. ‘When you’re dead, you’re dead!�
� And Rig, you’re dead!”

  Rig clawed away from him, and Tip grabbed him by the shirt front. He reached in under his coat and brought out Rig’s gun and threw it toward Lynn. Then he shoved Rig into a corner.

  “Tip, Tip!” Rig pleaded. “Don’t shoot me! I’ll split it with you, Tip. No, I’ll give it to you if you’ll let me go!”

  Tip stood there unbuckling his gun belt. He let it drop to the floor, then kicked it over in Lynn’s direction.

  “Shoot you?” Tip drawled. “Hell, no, Rig. That’s too easy a way to die for a maggot like you. I’m goin’ to peel the skin off your back and see if it’s yellow clear down to the bone.”

  “Don’t, Tip!” Lynn said.

  Tip didn’t hear her. He swung Rig out of the corner and knocked him over the footboard of the bed. The bed gave in at both ends and crashed to the floor. Rig scrambled up and backed against the wall. Pure terror was on his face.

  “Tip, I’ll give you all the money I got if you’ll let me go!”

  “There ain’t enough money in the world to buy you off, Rig. Come off that bed!”

  Rig Holman saw it was hopeless. He lunged for a chair, and Tip cut across to him and drove a left into his midriff that threw him against the washstand. Rig scrambled to his feet, picked up the water pitcher, and threw it at Tip, who ducked. It crashed into the mirror with a loud jangle and broke against the wall.

  Rig had the bowl raised over his head when Tip came at him. He brought it down, and Tip threw up his arm to ward it off. It broke, and a great jagged shard ripped across Tip’s cheek, drawing blood; Tip slugged him then, and Rig’s head slapped back against the partition and he slid to the floor.

  Turning quickly, he kicked up at Tip, catching him on the old wound. Tip’s leg crumpled and he went down, and Rig dove on him. The breath slammed out of Tip now, and he felt Rig’s slim, strong fingers circle his throat. He wrapped his arms around Rig and squeezed, then kicked with one leg and rolled over. When Rig came under him, he slugged hard at his face, and the thick, slapping sound of knuckle-studded fist on flesh was followed by a moan. Rig turned and sank his teeth into Tip’s hand.