Wild West

by Elmer Kelton

  Mertzon’s slitted gaze probed big Andy’s eyes for a sign of interest. “I’ll wait around on rodeo day till there ain’t any customers in the bank. Then I’ll clean the place out and leave through the back door. You’ll have your back window open, Andy, and I’ll pitch the loot through it as I run by. Then I’ll go in the back door of the saloon and be mixed up with the crowd before anybody has a chance to git after me.”

  The outlaw grinned. “That fat banker has a standin’ reward of one thousand dollars for any bank robber, dead or alive. When I git through, he won’t have that much!”

  Eagerly Mertzon leaned forward. “I’ll give you a thousand out of whatever I git, Andy. And all you have to do is leave your back window open.”

  Temptation boiled in Big Andy. A thousand dollars! That would more than pay what he owed Fuller, if he could figure out a way to explain where he got it. And he could pay Doc Brooks the money he had owed him ever since Alice had died.

  But Big Andy shook his head. “I quit that kind of business a long time ago. I’ll go hungry before I take a chance on leadin’ my son through the kind of life I had!”

  Mertzon scowled. “Maybe you’d like me to spread the word about the old days in the Panhandle. That’d really fix your kid up!”

  An old fear made Andy’s heart beat faster. “I’ve spent more than ten years tryin’ to live that down. I’ve worked up a reputation that Jimmy could be proud of. You wouldn’t take that away from me, would you, Rocky?”

  Mertzon looked up with a cruel grin.

  “The Weaver brothers up around Tascosa are still wonderin’ what became of you. They got a funny idea it was you that killed Tom Weaver.”

  Andy’s heart jumped. “That’s a lie! You shot Tom Weaver! I wasn’t even there!”

  Mertzon still grinned crookedly. “Sure, but the Weavers thought it was you. Still do. Maybe you’d like a chance to prove to ’em different.”

  Pulse racing and his face stove-lid hot, Andy dived for a drawer in which he knew would be a pistol. But even as his sweaty hand touched the gun butt, he felt Mertzon’s .45 poking him in the ribs.

  “That’s a fool play, Andy,” Mertzon growled. “You been goin’ straight too long. All you would’ve done was make an orphan out of that kid.”

  Defeated, Big Andy slowly settled back against the work bench. His heart thumped rapidly. His mouth was dry.

  “I’ll pull the job tomorrow,” Mertzon said. “Have that window open. And if you git any ideas about crossin’ me up, just remember the Weavers.”

  He holstered his gun, stepped out into the street, and was gone.

  The next day, standing in the front door of his shop, Andy watched the occasional tiny dust devils whirl across the powdery street. A small but steady stream of riders kept a thin haze of dust hanging in the air. The rodeo was bringing its crowd. Andy’s hands were wet with nervous perspiration, and a nameless tension tied his innards in a knot. Where was Rocky Mertzon? If he had to pull his robbery, why didn’t he come on and get it over with?

  Andy watched as his son and a group of boys romped gaily down the dusty street, playing cowboy. There was a fresh patch in the seat of Jimmy’s worn trousers. No question about who had made the repairs, Andy thought with a twinge of conscience. Mary Wilson mothered the boy like he was her own.

  His heart warmed then as he saw the young schoolteacher coming down the wooden sidewalk. Her pretty face beamed.

  “Dad did it, Andy!” she exclaimed. “Dad did it. He found a buyer for his cattle. He had to cut way down into his breeding herd, but he got enough money to pay off Tiller’s note on the ranch.”

  He managed to grin with her. “What did Fuller say when you all paid him off?”

  “He wasn’t in. We deposited the money with the teller. We’ll pay Fuller later.”

  Andy’s grin faded as a sobering thought struck him. What if Rocky Mertzon robbed the bank before Mary’s father could pay the debt? He would get the Wilsons’ money, and the mortgage would still stand. Fuller would take the ranch.

  Sick at heart, Andy moved to his bench and sat down. It wouldn’t be just the Wilsons, either, he told himself. The bank money didn’t belong to Fuller only. It belonged to depositors from all over the area—friends of Andy’s—who were trying to pay their debts and still live like human beings.

  Andy could see old Charlie Wilson across the street, joyfully slapping Sheriff Bronson on the back. He thought of Jimmy. What if the truth were guessed, and Andy had to go on the dodge? What about Jimmy?

  Despairingly the saddlemaker watched fat Eli Fuller swagger past on his way to the bank. Nerves tingling, Andy rubbed his sweating hands against each other for what seemed like hours. He couldn’t let this go on. He had to stop it!

  He reached into the drawer, hauled out the six-gun, and shoved it into a boot-top, out of sight. Then he strode firmly out onto the sidewalk. He spotted Rocky Mertzon sitting on a bench in front of the saloon. Big Andy gestured at Mertzon with his chin, then walked back through the shop into the rear room. As Mertzon came in a minute later, Big Andy lifted his foot and snaked out the gun.

  “You’re not goin’ through with it, Rocky,” he declared, the gun leveled at Mertzon’s chest. “I’ll leave town tonight. I’ll risk my name being smeared, and I’ll risk the Weavers. But you’re not robbin’ that bank!”

  Angry red flamed in Mertzon’s eyes. “You’re mighty righteous for a feller whose old man robbed half the banks in Texas.” For a heated moment hatred glared from his narrowed eyes. Then he slowly turned around, as if giving up. Big Andy lowered the gun a little.

  Suddenly Mertzon whirled back and grabbed at the gun. In a second he wrenched it from Andy’s hand. Big Andy threw a hand up defensively as he saw the glint of the slashing gun barrel. Something exploded in his head. He dropped to his knees, the shop reeling before his eyes.

  “You’re not fast enough for me, Big Andy,” Mertzon snarled. “You never was!”

  There was a second of blinding pain as the gun barrel struck him again. Then there was only darkness.

  He became conscious of soft hands wiping his face with a wet cloth. His head throbbed dully, and he grimaced at a sickening taste in his mouth.

  He forced his eyes open and saw Mary kneeling over him. Painfully he lifted himself up onto his elbows. He could see a red stain on the wet cloth.

  “What happened, Andy?” she asked in alarm.

  “Somebody slugged me,” he told her. “Help me up.”

  As he struggled to keep his feet, Mary quickly told him that Jimmy had come back to the shop to get his quirt for play. He had found his father in the back room, unconscious. His first thought had been to run to Mary.

  “We’ve got to get you to Doc Brooks,” she said with concern.

  Andy shook his throbbing head. “No, I’ve got to see the sheriff. Right now!”

  Leaning on the slender girl for support, he started for the front. Then two shots exploded in the bank next door. Despair choked Andy like a giant hand clasped around his throat. In his excitement he felt his strength returning. He and Mary got to the bank a few seconds before the sheriff did.

  Acrid gunpowder stung his nostrils. The room was cloudy with choking smoke, which slowly swirled upward toward the high ceiling. The back door was open. Then Andy saw the excited bank teller kneeling beside fat Eli Fuller. Moaning, the banker lay sprawled on the floor, one flabby hand clutching at a bleeding shoulder. A chewed-up cigar, one end still smoking, lay beside him.

  “The back door!” boomed Sheriff Bronson’s voice. Andy moved to the door ahead of the lawman and stepped out into the alley. No one there!

  The old lawman cursed. “Got clean away, Andy! He must’ve had a plenty fast horse!”

  Guilt lay heavy in Andy as he followed the somber sheriff back into the bank. The ashen-faced teller was gesturing nervously and recounting the incident to the gathering crowd.

  “Mr. Fuller seemed to lose all reason when the masked man took the money. He grabbed at a gun, a
nd the robber shot him!”

  Doc Brooks hobbled through the huddled circle of men and ripped the banker’s vest and shirt away from the wound. A low, disappointed murmur ran through the crowd as the doctor announced that the wound wasn’t too serious. A little sick, Andy started for the door. Mary came to him, her face stricken.

  “Oh, Andy,” she sobbed, “we didn’t even have a chance to pay Fuller. He’ll surely take the ranch now.”

  Andy sympathetically put his arm around her shoulder and led her outside. The sheriff was swearing in volunteers for a posse.

  Andy looked vainly for Mertzon. He hoped the outlaw hadn’t had time to get back to the saddle shop. Tension gripped him as he realized what he had to do. There wasn’t much time. He held Mary’s hand tightly and called: “Wait a minute, Sheriff. I don’t think you need to do that. How about comin’ into the shop with me?”

  The sheriff stared quizzically, then followed him. Mary gazed at him in puzzlement.

  It wasn’t any trouble to find the bag of stolen money under the shop’s back window. As Andy handed it over he told Mary, the sheriff, and half a dozen possemen the whole story—about his boyhood in the Panhandle, about Tom Weaver, and about Rocky Mertzon.

  “Rocky probably figgered I wouldn’t wake up till it was all over, and then I’d be scared to say anything. If Jimmy hadn’t found me and Mary waked me up, I’d still be lyin’ here. I guess this means jail for me now,” he concluded darkly. “Mary, I wish you’d take care of Jimmy.”

  Sheriff Bronson snorted. “Nobody’s goin’ to blame you for this, Andy. Maybe you should’ve come to me in the first place, but just the same, you tried to stop it. You like to’ve got your skull bashed in. Folks’ll be grateful to you.”

  It turned out he was right. Andy was dead tired by late afternoon, when people stopped coming around to shake his hand. Eli Fuller hadn’t sent any thanks, however. The banker had growled that it was all a plot of Andy’s to get him killed. He sent word that he was taking over the shop the minute the note fell due.

  His ranch secure now, old Charlie Wilson asked Andy to come help him run the ranch. No drouth ever lasted forever, he argued, and this one had about run its course. Besides, it would be handy to have a cow-wise son-in-law, he hinted.

  But Andy couldn’t forget the Weavers. No sign of Mertzon had been found. He knew the angered outlaw would eventually keep his threat, to tell the Weavers where Andy was. If Andy stayed, it meant more gunplay. So there was only one thing to do—pull out.

  As he closed shop that evening Andy found his pistol and shoved it into his boot. Turning to go, he picked up Jimmy’s unfinished quirt. He fingered it fondly as he headed home for the last time. It was dark when he climbed the front steps of the lonely house. Jimmy met him at the front door. The boy’s eyes were wide with alarm.

  “There’s a man here to see you, Daddy,” he said excitedly. “He says he’s a friend. But…”

  Raw fear cut through Andy as he saw Rocky Mertzon standing there, not two paces in front of him. The outlaw’s hands hovered over his gun butts. The gap between his teeth showed black behind the twisted, cruel lips, making Andy feel this man’s ruthlessness.

  “I changed my mind about the Weavers,” Mertzon snarled, “I’ll finish this job myself.”

  Andy felt cold sweat popping out on his forehead. Gripping the quirt handle tightly, he realized he couldn’t beat Mertzon to the draw.

  Suddenly Mertzon’s hands moved downward. Andy shoved the boy to the floor. A million needles pricking his skin, he lashed out with the quirt and slashed it across the outlaw’s face. The man bellowed with rage and pain.

  His guns thundered, but Andy was between them, lashing madly at the outlaw’s hands. One gun clattered to the floor.

  Then the years rushed back, and Andy was twenty again, untamed, hard as a man can get only on the outlaw trails. Breathing hard, he threw himself desperately on Mertzon. Frantically, he tried to wrench the other gun out of the man’s hand.

  Teeth clenched, straining and sweating, the two men struggled for the weapon. For a second the muzzle grazed Andy’s stomach.

  Then slowly he twisted the gun back toward Mertzon, every muscle in his body aching with the effort. Beads of sweat stood out on the grunting man’s forehead. Andy grimaced at the robber’s hot breath in his face. The gun boomed then, and Mertzon went limp. Andy swayed dizzily a moment. Through the swirling gunsmoke he could see the outlaw lying twisted on the floor. He also saw Jimmy streak out the door.

  A moment later half a dozen men, led by Sheriff Bronson, crowded into the room.

  “There’s your … your bank robber,” Andy breathed heavily.

  Bronson examined the outlaw. “Wanted to get even, eh?”

  Andy nodded, his breath still short. The sheriff instructed the men to carry Mertzon’s body outside. Then he turned back to the weary Andy.

  “Doc Brooks’ll get enough out of Fuller, takin’ care of that shoulder, to buy the equipment he’s been wanting. And Fuller’ll sure throw a fit when you pay him off with his own money, the reward money. The thousand dollars he’s always offered for a bank robber, dead or alive!”

  Then Mary ran up the steps and into the room, followed by little Jimmy. Seeing Andy on his feet, she sighed in relief, then almost fainted.

  Holding her, Andy felt all the tension leave him, replaced by a warmth he hadn’t known in four years.

  “Jimmy sure knows who to go to,” he told her softly. “But from now on he won’t have to go hunt you. He can find you right here.”

  CLIMB THE BIG RIM

  It was a raw, thorny, man-killing country that even the devil wouldn’t have. For two days Wade Massey had worked his way across it, cursing the bare stretches of rock and sand, the tangles of clutching chaparral. Now, his ride almost done, he reined up a moment.

  He took off his broad-brimmed hat and wiped his sweaty forehead on a dusty sleeve. He squinted against the glare of the hostile sun and let his gaze sweep again the broad panorama of the desert.

  The land was choked up with mesquite and catclaw and ironwood, and worst of all there was the cholla cactus that seemed to reach out and grab at horse and man. No, sir, he told himself, even the devil wouldn’t lay claim to a country like this.

  But there were people fool enough to want to, and there were bankers fool enough to lend them money to try it.

  Wade looked down at the Rafter T headquarters, huddled around a spring that fed a narrow little stream. The bankers must have been caught on their warm side when Price Stockton and Glenn Henry, brothers-in-law, had talked them into making a loan so they could bring cattle into this country, Wade reflected. But their warm side had gradually taken on a chill when the years started slipping by and the cattlemen hadn’t even been able to pay interest on the loan.

  Looking at the country, Wade couldn’t understand why the partners hadn’t given up and turned their cattle back to the bank long ago. Particularly, he couldn’t understand why Price Stockton had kept on going even when his partner died in agony after a smashing accident on the slope of a rocky hill.

  But what the hell. He shrugged as he swung back into the saddle and jogged on down toward the huddle of rock buildings and pole corrals. It wasn’t his job to be wondering why. The banking firm of Underwood & Watson had sent him to get their money back or take over the ranch. They didn’t care which.

  He stopped again a couple of hundred yards from the ranch buildings. The thought struck him that no wagon could ever get in here. The country was too rough. The rocks for the buildings had been moved by hand, or by pack mule. He glanced over the pole corrals. The rails had been snaked down from the higher timber country, most likely.

  A lot of hard labor and pure guts had gone into the building of this place. The thought set a worry to nagging at him again. Underwood & Watson hadn’t sent any word to Stockton. They were going to let Wade break the news.

  “There’s no way of knowing how he’s going to take it,” Oliver Underwood had said. “B
ut I can guess.

  “That’s why we’re sending you. You know cattle, horses and the ranch business as well as anybody. And you’re young enough and husky enough to take care of yourself in a fight.”

  Wade was hot and tired and thirsty when he swung down beside the little shoveled-out stream, a few yards below a fence which kept livestock away from the spring. He loosened the cinch and let his horse lower its head to the cool water. Wade moved a couple of steps closer to the spring, dropped to his belly, and began to drink of the good, running stream.

  He didn’t see the woman walk up on the other side of the spring. He didn’t become aware of her until he rose onto one knee and wiped the water off his mouth and looked up.

  He saw first that she was young and slenderish and wore a slat bonnet. Then he saw that she held a small hand up to her mouth in surprise and that the color had drained from her oval face. She dropped the wooden bucket she carried.

  Awkwardly Wade got to his feet, crushing his hat with one hand and rubbing his stubbled chin with the other. He hadn’t shaved in three days. He probably looked like an outlaw.

  “I didn’t go to scare you, ma’am,” he said apologetically.

  She swallowed. “You didn’t scare me,” she said weakly. “It was just that you—you looked for a minute like someone else, a fellow who used to ride in and stop at the stream and drink from it the way you just did.”

  Wade couldn’t help staring at her. He liked her full, slenderish figure, the way the lacy top of her full-length dress swelled outward as she breathed rapidly. Her face wasn’t beautiful like some he had seen, but it was soft-looking and warm, with fine features. She wasn’t a girl any more. She was a woman.

  “This man,” he said cautiously, “is he somebody you’re afraid of?”

  She quickly shook her head. “Oh, no,” she replied, “it wasn’t that.” He could see a sign of pain in her blue eyes. “He meant a lot to me. He’s been dead a long time.”