Wild West

by Elmer Kelton

  Soberly Cass studied the floor. “I reckon we’re always fighting ourselves, never ready to accept our own responsibility.”

  “And that’s where you’re ahead, Toby. You can ride a straight road now and never have to look back,” the sheriff said. He stood up then, placing his hand on Toby’s shoulder. “You’re tired, son. You ought to rest. Come on over to the house with us. We’ll fix you a bed.”

  Toby nodded. “Just one thing first. I’d like to see Paul English, if he’s conscious.”

  Cass said, “Yes, he’s all right now. Funny thing, too. You might never have been cleared if Marvin hadn’t gotten scared and tried to kill him. But he didn’t need to do it. Paul never saw a thing that night we jumped the cow thieves. He never got a look at the man who shot him.”

  Together the three of them walked out of the courthouse and headed down the long, dusty street. Toby glanced down at Betty, and tightened his arm around her.

  DEADLY HOMECOMING

  “Two riders come,” Enrique said.

  Kyle Rayford turned at the warning and squinted down the grassy slant of the hill. The horsemen were still only two black dots out on the broad prairie past the deep green line of trees along the creek. They hadn’t wasted much time. His fist clenched near the gun at his hip.

  Enrique Salinas spoke again, his voice almost casual. “Is still time, hijo. We can still go.”

  Kyle Rayford shook his head, a grim set to his square jaw. “We didn’t come back to run.”

  Salinas shrugged, a great patience in his ageless black eyes that might have seen fifty years or seventy years—no man could ever guess their exact age.

  Kyle turned back to what had been the Slash R headquarters, so long ago. Bitterness rode him the way a restless man rides a horse. There wasn’t much left after four years. He found where the dugout had been, all tumbled in now and grown over with grass. It was now a rattlesnake den inside, more than likely.

  Lying there, rotted on the ground, was the heavy ridgepole he had helped his father and Enrique haul in from miles down the creek. The mob had tied a rope to it that night four years ago. Then they had jerked it out to cave in the dugout and destroy what little home the Rayfords had.

  The only thing still there was the set of corrals they had built. Somebody had added onto them and made them bigger. A Bar E iron had been burned into one of the posts, probably by some cowboy testing the heat of it.

  Bar E. That was Ebeling. Kyle realized suddenly that they’d even built a corral over his father’s grave. He swore softly to himself. He couldn’t even be sure any more exactly where it had been.

  “They wouldn’t let him alone while he lived,” Kyle Rayford said aloud. “You’d think they’d let him lie in peace now.”

  It was a long and bitter story, one hard to think about. Yet now he wanted to think about it. He wanted to keep the memory fresh and vivid and raw until he had evened the score, wiped the slate clean …

  Hope had ridden high with Earl Rayford and his young son Kyle when they had come up to the high plains from the brush country of South Texas with a string of longhorn cattle, a worn-out wagon, and not much else. Up here, people said, a man could carve himself a place out of virgin range. He could do anything he felt big enough to. He could grow as big as he wanted to because there was room up here for everybody.

  So they came and pushed out the buffalo and traded out the Indians. But in time there were too many people. The elbows got to rubbing a little too close, and some got careless with other men’s range and other men’s cattle. Accusing fingers pointed one way, then another. And more and more they pointed at Earl Rayford, his son, and the gaunt old Mexican vaquero who had come up the trail with them.

  They had been wrong. One man who had come up with a hunger for land and cattle was Clint Ebeling. He saw what the Rayfords had and wanted it. So he saw to it that the fingers kept pointing.

  It hadn’t meant much to Kyle then because he was eighteen and full of beans and didn’t give a damn what anybody thought. It had all blown up in his face the Sunday afternoon he had gone over to the Half Circle B to pay court to Jane Emmett, daughter of Brook Emmett.

  Jane Emmett. Even after four years the picture of her was still bright and clear in his mind. He had courted her quite a while, and they’d begun making plans about building a place of their own up at the head of the creek. Eighteen wasn’t too young in those days.

  But that afternoon Jane didn’t come out to meet him at the cedar picket gate the way she always had. Brook Emmett was standing there, and his huge shoulders were squared for trouble.

  “Don’t get down, Kyle,” he had said. His voice was almost soft. But men had learned that when Brook Emmett talked soft, it was time to start backing up.

  “Don’t get down and don’t come here anymore. If you ever speak to my daughter again, I’ll kill you!”

  The big explosion came a few nights later. Kyle was alone in the dugout, still worrying over the sudden change, puzzled by the way Jane had turned from him and walked away when he had slipped back after old Emmett had gone riding off.

  Enrique was across the creek, helping their friend Sam Whittenburg brand a bunch of calves. He wasn’t expected back till the next day. But Pa had been due back hours ago, and Kyle was beginning to worry.

  The sound of hooves sucking at the mud finally came to him in the dugout. He lit the lantern and stepped outside in the drizzling rain. The flickering yellow light splashed upon a dozen riders, sitting their horses in a half circle around the front of the dugout. In a glance, Kyle caught the grim purpose in their hard faces. He whirled away.

  A gun barked. A bullet plunked into the rough-hewn wooden door. “Don’t do it, Rayford,” a rough voice said.

  The lantern light winked against silver gun barrels. Uncertainly Kyle set the lantern down on the muddy ground at his feet. Only then did he see the horse outside the circle, and the slack body hanging across the saddle. A man pulled the horse up and gave the body a shove. It made a soft thump in the mud.

  He didn’t have to look at the face. He sank beside his father’s body, his shoulders heaving.

  “We caught him this time, kid,” somebody said. The voice belonged to Clint Ebeling. “He was running his brand on a Bar E calf.”

  Kyle looked at Ebeling and saw a trace of a satisfied grin on the man’s face. A terrible fury roared through him. He leaped at Ebeling, jerking him out of the saddle, driving at him with his fists. “It’s a lie, a lie!”

  A gun barrel slashed across the back of his hatless head, driving him to his knees. He rubbed a muddy hand across his face, trying to clear his head. One thing was clear. This was what Clint Ebeling had been working up to. He’d planned it. He’d framed it.

  Desperately he tried to tell them that. Nobody listened. A fist struck him behind the neck and sent him face down into the mud. He heard the ragged voice of Benny Ahrens.

  “Shut up, or I’ll stomp your brains out!”

  Wet and muddy from his fall, Ebeling said harshly, “Let’s stop playing with him and get it over with, before we all die in this damp.”

  Benny Ahrens’s feet clomped into the dugout, then out again. “Wonder where that Mexican is? We ought to hang him, too.”

  A big man, broad of shoulder and a little heavy, swung down from his saddle, grunting at the effort. “No, Ahrens. We’re not hanging anybody.”

  It was Brook Emmett. They all listened to him because he was a man of strength and dignity. Emmett helped Kyle to his feet. Once Emmett had liked him, had liked the idea of hard-working Kyle Rayford for a son-in-law. Now there was only contempt in the big man’s eyes.

  “He’s a kid, Ebeling,” Emmett said. “We’ll let him go.”

  But the big man’s eyes burned into Kyle. “You’ll bury your father, then you’ll leave. If you ever come back, I’ll not stand up for you again.”

  Kyle tried to talk, tried to tell him the truth, but Emmett wasn’t listening. He turned his back and remounted his horse. He rode away, tw
o of his cowboys with him. Only Ebeling was left now—Ebeling and his own two men, and some other ranchers who usually leaned on Ebeling’s counsel.

  For a moment now, with Brook Emmett gone, Kyle feared the others might hang him anyway. But Emmett carried a lot of weight in this country.

  Benny Ahrens blurted, “If we ain’t going to hang him, then we ought to leave our mark on him!”

  Benny was Clint Ebeling’s dog, trailing in Ebeling’s shadow, lolling his tongue at everything Ebeling did. A coward in a fight, but a tiger when he knew nothing could hurt him.

  They ripped off Kyle’s shirt and tied him flat against the rough door of the dugout. It wasn’t easy, for he fought like two men, and while he fought he tagged every man in the bunch. Not all their faces—it was too dark for that. There are other ways to know a man. There is the set of his shoulders, the way he sits his horse, the way he stands, the sound of his voice. Kyle marked every man.

  Clint Ebeling dropped a coiled rope into muddy water to wet it. He handed it to Benny Ahrens and stepped back, that mean grin on his mud-flecked face again.

  The doubled rope sang wickedly. Kyle choked off a cry and hugged the flat door. Again and again the lash sang and struck him, cutting, biting, searing.

  Then someone cut Kyle loose and he fell in the mud, the world spinning crazily about him, his body afire.

  “We’ll, be back, Rayford,” Clint Ebeling said. “If you’re still here, we’ll kill you!”

  Kyle lay helpless in the mud while they tied onto the ridgepole and pulled it out, caving in the Rayfords’ home. Out of his pain grew a burning hatred, a bitter purpose that was to drive him through the years ahead.

  “You’ll wish you’d hung me. Because now I’ll get you—every one!” Kyle had said, making this a promise.

  He lay in the rain an hour or more before he finally was able to crawl to a shed. The next thing he knew, Enrique was holding a bottle to his lips, and the fire of the whisky burned hotter even than the fire of the lash.

  It all cleared up then. The rain was gone, and the full moon played hide and seek behind the drifting clouds. Kyle looked past Enrique and saw Sam Whittenburg standing over him, his friendly face full of concern. Kyle saw the body still lying where it had been dropped. Sam’s slicker covered it.

  “How did you—”

  Sam Whittenburg spoke quietly. “Some of them came by my camp after it was over. They told me about it. I kept Enrique hidden.”

  The Mexican’s face was without expression. The years had stretched his dry skin across jutting Indian cheekbones and given it the color of saddle leather. His face was patient and neutral. But his brown fingers moved restlessly, pulling at each other, tightening and loosening, tugging at the knees of his old trousers like angry dogs tearing at quarry.

  “Ebeling?” he asked finally. “He was the leader?”

  Kyle nodded. Enrique left him the bottle and hobbled to what was left of the dugout. He managed to dig out some supplies and some rain-soaked clothes and bedding. Somewhere he found a shovel.

  They almost had to tie Kyle to get him into Sam’s wagon. With the bottomless patience of his race, Enrique listened to Kyle’s raging. When that had run out, he spoke half in Spanish, where his thoughts more easily were shaped into words:

  “Muchacho. I am an old soldier. I have fought in many battles, in many places. I have learned long ago that one mark of a good soldier is to know when to pull away, when to give up a battle that one may live to win a war.”

  His long, slender fingers dexterously rolled a cigarette in thin brown paper. His black eyes touched Kyle as his tongue flicked across the edge of the paper to seal the cigarette.

  “Our enemies are too many. There are only two of us. Me, I might be able to kill a few of them, but they would get me, in time. You, you are not yet a man, as they count a man in years. How long would you last?”

  Kyle Rayford’s eyes were dull and gray with pain and loss. But a fever burned in them. “I can last long enough to get Clint Ebeling. After that, I don’t care.”

  Salinas shook his head. “That shows you are still a boy, mi hijo.”

  For three days then, Sam Whittenburg kept Kyle and Enrique at his camp, risking the fury of his neighbors, risking the suspicion that this action was likely to cast upon him. Even before those three days were up, Kyle learned that Clint Ebeling had taken over the Slash R range, had begun rounding up the Slash R cattle and venting his Bar E brand on them. If the other ranchers objected, there was no sign of it. Few men spoke against Clint Ebeling.

  * * *

  Now Kyle Rayford was a boy no longer. Now he was a man, a bitter man with a gun at his hip. And in these four years he had learned how to use it. In South Texas men spoke his name with a touch of awe, for his name had become well known down there.

  Enrique Salinas, the old soldado, had taught Kyle all he knew about a gun, and that was considerable. When Enrique had no more to teach him, Kyle had practiced and experimented and taught himself. Now he was the master, the pupil become better than the teacher.

  The two riders were almost upon them now. Kyle stepped out away from the corral fence to be in the clear. He let his hands settle to his hips, the fingers not far from the gun.

  His lips flattened in a dry grin as he recognized the men. Benny Ahrens, loud as a mongrel dog but without a bit of courage, and the other man was an Ebeling cowboy he remembered, a rawhide-tough rider named Thatcher. He, too, had been at the dugout that night.

  Benny Ahrens reined up, his eyes worried until he recognized Kyle, grown taller and broader now, with tanned skin and the face of a man.

  “The Rayford kid,” he said. He relaxed, the bullying confidence coming back to him. “Thought we told you to never come back. You ain’t going to like it here.”

  Kyle didn’t worry about Ahrens, as long he faced him. But his eyes stayed on the other man. Thatcher wasn’t a loudmouth.

  “Like it or not, Benny, it’s my ranch. I’m back to stay.”

  Ahrens sat straighter, beginning to feel a brush of worry at this show of defiance. “Looks like he forgot what we done to him, Thatch.”

  “I haven’t forgotten anything, Benny. The rope scars are still on my back.”

  “You’re asking for one on your neck.”

  “I’m not asking anything. I’m telling you. I’m taking back my land. Go tell Ebeling the Rayford kid’s come back. He’s here to stay. This time, I’m driving him out.”

  Ahrens laughed, but his laugh was hollow. He glanced quickly at Thatcher, asking him with his eyes what had gone wrong here, asking him what to do.

  “Tell him something else, Benny,” Kyle said. “Tell him I know every man who came here that night. I’m going to make every one of them answer for it. You, Benny. And you, too, Thatcher.”

  He saw fire leap into Thatcher’s face. “Big talk, Rayford. But you’re going to find it too tough to slice.”

  Kyle shook his head. He started baiting Thatcher, the excitement playing in him. “You were mighty brave in a mob. But you won’t be any trouble one at a time, and that’s the way I’m going to take you. Cut you off from the bunch and you’re all cowards.”

  Thatcher’s voice was strained. “You think I’m a coward?”

  “A dirty, yellow coward!”

  He hadn’t planned to bait Thatcher, but he was doing it. He saw the warning in Thatcher’s eyes as the man swallowed it. When Thatcher’s hand darted, Kyle was ready.

  The crash of Kyle’s gun sent Thatcher rocking back in the saddle. For a second or two the cowboy clawed at the horn. He tumbled and lay quivering in the grass, his horse plunging away in panic.

  For one brief fraction of a second, as Kyle had brought his gun up, he had looked at the spot just above Thatcher’s belt buckle. That was where he intended to shoot him. But then he tipped the gun up just a little more.

  Now Kyle stood with the smoking gun in his hand and looked down at Thatcher. The cowboy’s face was twisted in pain, and his right hand was held t
o his left shoulder, where crimson quickly spread down through his shirt.

  For a moment, Kyle was angry with himself. Why hadn’t he killed him? That was what he had come for, wasn’t it? He had all the reason a man would ever need.

  Benny Ahrens’s face was white as flour. His hands were held high away from his belt, his eyes pleading as if to say, “I’m not going to draw. Don’t shoot me!”

  “Go catch his horse, Benny,” Kyle said curtly. Benny nodded, greatly relieved that Kyle didn’t intend to shoot him, too. He chased after the horse.

  Kyle kicked Thatcher’s gun away. Enrique knelt beside the cowboy and opened the shirt. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and put it against the wound, stanching the flow of blood.

  “You don’t die,” he told the cowboy. “But that arm, she won’t ever be much good.”

  Thatcher didn’t reply. His face was drained white from shock. His teeth were clenched tight, holding down a groan. Thatcher had guts, Kyle had to give him credit for that.

  But he didn’t feel sorry for him. He remembered another man who had lain there four years ago, an innocent man. And Thatcher had helped kill him.

  Benny came back. Kyle stood aside while Enrique helped put Thatcher on his horse.

  Kyle said to Benny Ahrens, “Tell Ebeling what happened. Tell him I’ll get him, too, by and by.”

  His eyes narrowed. “And I’m not through with you yet, Benny.”

  Benny Ahrens rode away as fast as he could go and still hold Thatcher in the saddle.

  Watching them, Kyle was acutely conscious of Enrique’s critical gaze.

  “This was not good,” Enrique said softly.

  “It’s what I came to do.”

  “I saw your eyes. It was not a good thing to see. You wanted him to try. If you had seen yourself, hijo…”

  Kyle said subbornly, “It’s what I’ve been waiting for, for four long years.”

  Enrique said, “Better we had never come back. This hunger for vengeance is driving you the way a man drives cattle. Your father wouldn’t know you.”