Wild West

by Elmer Kelton

  Mark took a final look inside at Floyd Rankin. He had handcuffed him to a heavy woodstove. He had wadded a rag into Rankin’s mouth and tied a handkerchief across Rankin’s face to keep the gag in and prevent him from making any outcry.

  “Just you keep quiet now,” he warned.

  There wasn’t much else Rankin could do.

  Mark stepped out onto the porch, the saddlegun in his hand. He left the door wide open and stood in front of it, so he could jump back inside when the shooting started. He had little hope that the trouble would end without shooting.

  The pinpoint of dust had grown greatly. Presently the riders showed up through the brush. They paused a moment, just out of firing range of the house, cautiously looking the situation over. Mark hoped everybody was well out of sight.

  The outlaws studied the adobe house. A man pointed at the corral, with all the horses in it. Then Mark could feel the eyes all fasten on him. He braced, hoping they wouldn’t shoot him right now. But he reasoned that they wouldn’t, at least until they knew where Floyd Rankin was.

  He counted thirteen men. Unlucky for somebody, he thought. Who?

  Edsel Rankin led them, riding a high-strung bay horse and jerking it violently, cursing when it fought its head. Holding a six-gun, Rankin made a motion with his hand. His men fanned out on either side of him. Some were Americans, some Mexicans. Every man bore the stamp of an outlaw. All of them had guns out and ready.

  Rankin drew rein twenty paces from the house, warily eyeing the windows. He looked at Mark Truitt then, and his gray eyes stabbed with hatred.

  “I want my brother, Truitt.”

  “So do I,” Mark replied.

  Rankin’s face was dark and twisted. “Send him out here, Truitt, and we’ll ride away. You know we’ve got you outnumbered. Hold back and we’ll pull that house right down over your ears.”

  Inside the house, Mark Truitt could hear Floyd Rankin stamping his feet. The bare earth would make no sound, so he must have twisted around to where he could stamp against the side of the cookstove. Edsel Rankin heard the noise too, and Mark knew the outlaw sensed that it was his brother.

  Mark said, “You can’t afford to do any wild shooting, Edsel. He’s in there, and you might hit him.”

  He could see this realization reach Edsel Rankin and feed his anger.

  Mark said, “We want you too, Edsel. You may have us outnumbered, but we’ve got you surrounded. You can’t get out of here.”

  Edsel Rankin’s head jerked desperately around as he tried to seek out the men waiting in ambush.

  “Mark Truitt,” he breathed, “I’ll nail you to the door!”

  His gun muzzle came up.

  Mark dove back inside the door. He hit the dirt floor on his side and went rolling. Half a dozen bullets buzzed after him like angry hornets, and he felt one graze his leg with a touch of fire.

  Knowing now that they were in a trap, some of the outlaws wheeled their horses around and spurred out. In an instant, guns roared around them. Three men fell in the first volley. One got up again, but two of them never would.

  Edsel Rankin screamed something and spurred out toward the barn, his men right behind him. Gunfire from George and Luke turned them back. Rankin’s Mexican sombrero jerked away. One of the men behind him bounced half out of the saddle, then caught himself and held on weakly, while his horse stampeded past Luke Merchant. The rider bobbed a time or two and fell rolling.

  Rankin wheeled his horse back and tried to run straight out the way he had come, firing blindly as he spurred. Mark Truitt’s saddlegun crashed. Rankin’s horse stumbled and went down. Rankin rolled in the sand. He came up fighting, shooting in Truitt’s direction and grabbing at the reins of a panicked horse that had just lost its rider.

  Guns roared. Fire spat from every direction. Heavy smoke drifted across the wild melee. Horses squealed in terror. One horse went down, and then another.

  All this time Rankin was shouting and cursing and firing wildly at everything he saw move. None of his men were listening to him. Gripped by fear, they moved blindly one way, then another, firing at anything or nothing.

  Mark saw a familiar figure then. Jase Duncan was one of the few still on horseback. He spurred toward the open door, hoping perhaps to kill Truitt and get to safety inside. Mark raised the saddlegun and held it steady. When Duncan was almost to the porch, he squeezed the trigger. Duncan dropped like a sack of lead.

  All of Rankin’s men were afoot now, crouching to provide less of a target. Their horses were tearing wildly back and forth, hunting a way out. Some of the men were pleading for mercy, raising their hands. Rankin was cursing them, calling them a hundred kinds of yellow coward. But they were through, and he could see it.

  “Give up, Rankin,” Mark Truitt called. “You can’t get out of this alive.” Edsel Rankin grabbed the reins of a panicked horse. He fought to get a foot in the stirrup, then swung up. Spurring viciously, he headed the horse straight for the door, straight at Mark Truitt.

  Mark brought the saddlegun up again. Rankin’s six-gun fired. Mark felt the saddlegun take the impact of the bullet. The gun splintered in his hands. The force of it drove the gun back into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. He stood there stunned, unable to move.

  Edsel Rankin was almost on him, the six-gun leveling again. Helpless, Mark could only stand and look into Rankin’s twisted face, to see the rage and the hatred that surged up there.

  Then he saw a movement behind Rankin, saw Will Tony raise himself up out of the ditch. He saw flame belch from Will Tony’s gun. Edsel Rankin buckled. His horse stopped abruptly. Rankin’s body pitched forward, over the frightened horse’s head. It landed on the porch and went rolling, coming to a standstill at Mark Truitt’s feet.

  The shooting was over now. The Rankin bunch, what was left of them, stood with their hands up, in the stifling swirl of smoke and dust. Mark saw his own men break out of their vantage points and come hurrying toward him.

  He knelt and looked at Edsel Rankin’s body, then straightened again. He saw the question in Will Tony’s eyes as Will came up. He nodded, and a look of satisfaction came over Will Tony. Mark had done what he came for. The Rankins were through.

  * * *

  Probably there wasn’t a person in Lofton who missed seeing the posse come into town. By the time the horsemen pulled up in front of the sheriff’s office, there must have been fifty or sixty people crowding around to watch Mark Truitt and the others step down and hold guns on seven weary, beaten outlaws.

  Young Floyd Rankin was handcuffed. The rest had their wrists bound to their saddle horns. Mark Truitt moved from one to another, cutting the rawhide strings that held them, so they could dismount.

  The word swept across town like a whirlwind. “They’ve got Floyd Rankin down at the jail!”

  Betty Mulvane rushed from her cafe and ran down the street. She shoved her way through the crowd and threw her arms around Mark. She didn’t care who was watching. She couldn’t speak, but she didn’t have to.

  T.C. stood in the doorway. “Unlock the cells, T.C.,” Mark said.

  They moved the outlaws inside. Mark followed them, his arm around Betty.

  Just then Dalton Krisman came pushing through. “Make room here,” he shouted. “Make way for the law.”

  He bustled through the office door, a gun in his hand.

  “Hands up, Mark Truitt,” he barked. “You’re under arrest.”

  But shortly behind him came the balding old judge. “Put that gun up, Krisman. Haven’t you any sense at all? They’re already trying to laugh you out of town for throwing that girl in jail, even before you got your badge. Can’t you see Mark’s got Floyd Rankin, and some of the rest of the outlaw gang?”

  Flinching under the judge’s sharp tongue, Krisman looked about him and saw people snickering. Ridicule was one thing he could not take. He shoved the gun back into the holster where it belonged.

  “All right, T.C.,” he said unnecessarily, “lock them up.”


  Unnecessarily, because T.C. already had done so.

  Even the old jailer was grinning a little, taking a chance on being fired.

  Mark Truitt couldn’t resist a little sarcasm himself. “When you get time from your duties, Sheriff, there are three more men out at George Frisco’s place. They were wounded too bad to bring in.”

  “And Edsel Rankin?” the judge asked.

  “Dead.”

  Mark took off his badge, which had remained pinned to his shirt. He extended it past Krisman and handed it to the judge. “Property of the county,” he said.

  It was obvious that the judge hated to have to take it. “I’d like a full report on this thing,” he said. “After all, I have to know how you’ve been spending the county’s money. What say we go over to Betty’s and have some coffee?”

  The crowd parted and made room for them. By the time they got to Betty’s cafe, Sam Vernon was with them. Luke Merchant had come along, too. Mark told them the story. What he left out, Luke put in.

  The judge nodded gravely. “I can guarantee you one thing, Mark; there won’t be any more of this talk about cowardice. They’ve been rawhiding Krisman till his back is sore, about being locked in Betty’s cellar overnight with Scott Southall. People didn’t take it very kindly when he put Betty in jail, either. They didn’t let her stay in there but about an hour.

  “I expect when the story gets out about the Rankins financing his campaign, Krisman’ll catch it sure enough. He’ll ride out of town some morning and not come back. We’ll have to hold another election.”

  Sam Vernon said, “Mark, you say you think most of the cattle the Rankins have stolen from us are still down there, and we can go down and bring them back?”

  Mark nodded. “It’s a mighty big country, and it would take some time. But I think it can be done.”

  Sam pondered a while. “Seems to me you’d be the right man to take charge of the roundup. I’d be willing to give you, say, ten percent of my cattle that you recover. I think I could get the others to make the same deal. It’d give you a start, Mark. A good herd of cattle would help you build something while you’re sheriffing. Think it over.”

  Mark smiled. “I won’t have to think it over. I’ll take the offer.”

  He thought they would never finish their coffee and leave. But at last he was alone with Betty Mulvane.

  She touched his hand. “Just before you left, you said you were going to ask me a question.”

  He nodded. “I was. I was going to ask you to marry me. I haven’t much in the way of property right now, but maybe someday I will have. If you were to think it over and decide to gamble along with me…”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder, smiling. “I won’t have to think it over,” she said. “I’ll take the offer.”

  NO EPITAPH FOR ME

  On the offside of the hill, two of the three shivering riders swung down from their saddles. Stiff-fingered, they tied their split leather reins to winter-bared mesquite limbs swaying in the chill morning wind. Hunching over against the cold, they trudged up the hill.

  The third man stayed in the saddle. He was bent low over the saddle horn, clutching with a gloved hand the dried crimson blotch that spread down from the shoulder of his thick woolen coat. His pinched young face was almost blue. His struggle against pain had left ugly tooth marks on his lower lip.

  Reaching the top of the hill, Clay Forehand crouched low. He glanced a moment at the heavy gray clouds and grunted in satisfaction. There was a smell of rain in the air, freezing rain that would chill to the bone. But it would wash out tracks. Zack Bratcher crawled up behind him. “See them anywheres? They coming on?”

  The wind was blowing straight down from the wide-open plains of the Texas Panhandle. Forehand blinked the wind-bite from his eyes and peered anxiously over the back trail. “There’s a little speck down there. Can’t tell if it’s moving or not.”

  Awkwardly, because of the cold, he reached his sheep-lined coat and pulled out a six-shooter. He slipped it into the crotch of a stout mesquite, near the ground where the wind couldn’t move it. He worked it around until the sights were aligned on the speck. Blinking again, he concentrated on the front sight. The spot moved slowly from the top of the sight and off to the left.

  “They’re heading up the river,” he said.

  Zack Bratcher chuckled, a chuckle that came from deep in his thick throat. A grin showed stained teeth through the black stubble that covered his wolfish face.

  “Then we’ve shook them, by God. It’s took us two days, but we’ve shook them.”

  Clay grunted. “If they don’t circle back and cut our sign before it rains. Now let’s put some more miles behind us so we can find shelter for Allan.”

  He trotted down the hill, enjoying briefly the warm tingling of blood circulating through his saddle-stiffened legs. He wasn’t a big man, this Clay Forehand. But though he was hardly more than thirty, he already had a way of carrying himself, a stern set to his stubbled jaw, that made men walk around him.

  Untying his own horse, Clay led him up beside the wounded man’s mount. “How you making it, boy?”

  Allan Forehand swayed over the horn. He mumbled an unintelligible answer through his chattering teeth.

  Attempting a show of cheerfulness, Clay rested his hand on his brother’s knee. “Hang on, boy. We’ll be finding you a house and a warm bed directly.”

  But, he pondered darkly as he swung into the cold saddle, it had better not be too long. The jogging ride might start the wound bleeding again. Allan had spilled too much blood already, this side of the San Angelo bank.

  The rain started, as he had hoped. First it fell in scattered droplets cold as ice. Then it was a deluge, spilling off the flattened broad brim of his hat, soaking his pants legs and filling his boots, working its chill through to the marrow. But muddy brown rivulets poured off the hillsides, taking all tracks with them.

  Long, cold, sodden hours added up the miles. But Allan was falling back. Clay slowed down to stay beside him. Irritably Bratcher drew rein and pulled around to face them.

  “Come on, come on. Let’s get moving.” Warmth rose on the back of Clay’s neck. “The kid’s doing the best he can. You keep your mouth shut.”

  Bratcher’s muddy eyes glowered. He chewed his thick lips. “The kid didn’t have any business being with us in the first place. If he hadn’t been so chickenhearted he wouldn’t’ve got shot.”

  Clay kept hold of the boy’s arm, steadying him as they rode. “He can’t kill people the way you can, Zack, like they was rabbits. Even when he saw the button aim the six-shooter at him, he couldn’t make himself kill a youngster like that.”

  Zack grunted. “There wasn’t nothing kept me from shooting.”

  Clay swallowed down a hard taste that came to his mouth. The picture was still sharp in his mind, Zack Bratcher swinging his gun down into the horrified button’s face after Allan had been hit. The face had all but disappeared.

  Zack squinted his eyes and frowned. “Now if you don’t hurry that kid up a little, I’m taking my share of the money and riding on.”

  A threat of real anger rode up and down Clay’s throat. He wanted to say, “Go on and be damned to you.” There’d come a time, maybe, when he would. But now he might need Bratcher.

  It wasn’t long until they pushed out of a mesquite thicket at the head of a draw and saw the little cow camp snuggled against the long, rocky foot of a table-top hill. Brownish smoke trailed with the wind as it curled out of a tin chimney that shoved crookedly up from the roof of a small rock house near the hill base.

  Relief warmed Clay, tightly he gripped his brother’s shivering arm. “Come on boy, we’ve found you a bed.”

  Zack Bratcher held up his big, hairy hand. “You hold up a minute, Clay. We was careful to keep our faces covered when we hit that bank. When we pull out of this place we can’t leave anybody alive to be describing us and getting us identified. You got that?”

  Clay looked at his brother�
�s pale, drawn face and nodded immediately. “Sure, sure, we won’t leave anybody. Now let’s get to that house.”

  A little brown dog trotted out to meet them. He barked loudly, then dashed in to nip at the ankles of Zack’s skittish horse. Cursing, Bratcher jerked at the reins and pulled out his pistol.

  “Put that gun up, Zack,” Clay said stiffly. “We need their help and killing their dog ain’t going to make them friendly.”

  Muttering, Bratcher holstered the gun. The solid plank door of the rock house swung inward, and a young woman stood in the doorway. She was wiping bread dough off her hands onto an apron of cotton sacking. She gazed open-mouthed at Allan, who was swaying in the saddle.

  “We got a hurt man here,” Clay said. “We got to get him to bed.”

  She paled. She had an attractive face Clay noted involuntarily. With the care town girls could give it, it could have been a pretty face.

  “Bring him on in,” she said uncertainly, gripping the door edge a little fearfully.

  To Clay, watchfulness was ingrained, result of years of riding and looking back. As the pleasant wood-fire warmth of the one-room house enveloped him, his sweeping gaze took in every corner. One bed. A big, iron kitchen stove, with dry mesquite wood piled high in a box behind it. Pantry in one corner. Table and cabinet of rough pine lumber. Quirt, rope and battered hat hanging on pegs stuck in the plaster of the rock wall.

  Poor as sheepherders, he thought disinterestedly. But snug and comfortable, a man could bet his boots.

  Clay, put his brother down on the one bed. “Boil us some water and get us some dean cloth for a bandage,” he ordered the woman.

  Quickly she poured a bucketful of water into a pan and set it on top of the big iron cookstove. She shoved some more wood into the fire. Then she picked up the bucket and started for the door.

  Bratcher stepped in front of her and caught her roughly. “Where you think you’re going?”

  She trembled. Her voice shook. “Just to get some water out of the well.”

  Bratcher took the bucket out of her hand. “I’ll git it. You stay here.”

  Carefully Clay took the heavy coat off of Allan. He unstrapped the boy’s gun, looked for a place to put it, then shoved it far under the bed.