The Fourth Western Novel

by H. H. Knibbs

  “Let’s ride, Charley. You can’t do any good here.”

  Pecos Jim’s Winchester boomed. From behind the low, false-front of a store building some forty yards down the street a tall, heavy figure rose, threw up its arms and seemed actually to dive to the sidewalk below. Pecos Jim’s last shot had killed the town marshal.

  “That’s all,” said Charley Lee. Reining his horse over to the curb he dismounted, and seating himself on the edge of the sidewalk began to make a cigarette. The little brown paper fluttered from his fingers. He slumped forward and was dead almost before he touched the ground.

  Young Pete could hear his own heart pounding, and the harsh breathing of Pecos Jim’s wounded horse. Catching up Lee’s buckskin Pete rode over to Pecos and dragged him from behind his still-living barricade. “Come on, Pecos,” he said. “The show is over.”

  When Old Man Butterfield got his team in hand and returned to town, Young Pete had vanished.

  Twice on their journey to Horse Thief Hollow Pecos Jim fainted and fell from his horse. The second time he begged Pete to ride on and leave him. Pete merely said he had a different idea, and kept on. They reached the Hollow in the blaze of a noon sun. Their horses were exceedingly leg-weary, and Pecos Jim was half crazy with pain and fatigue.

  Late that afternoon Pecos told Young Pete where he could find some corn cached for just such an emergency. Pete fed the horses, and knowing that Pecos couldn’t last long, turned one of them loose.

  But Pecos lasted longer than Pete had imagined he could. Pete, who sat outside the stone house watching the back trail, rose occasionally and gave Pecos water. Finally Pecos asked him to prop him up near the doorway. Pete thought that Pecos wanted to take a last look at the Hollow, at the purple shadows and sunset gold that spread on down to the desert below. But fumbling in his shirt, Pecos Jim drew out his beloved almanac. “They never touched her,” he said in an awed voice. “And I was hit twice.”

  Pete stepped out and clinched up. He was going to get out of the country before he got into any more trouble. When he returned to the stone house Pecos was staring at the almanac. Pete slipped a cartridge into the wounded man’s empty six-shooter. “So long, Pecos,” he said, but Pecos did not seem to hear.

  “So long,” said Pete in a louder tone.

  “Hello, kid!”

  “You’re done,” said Pete. “I’m short of shells. But I left you a load, in case you want to cross over quick.”

  Pecos Jim’s tufty red eyebrows drew together in a puzzled frown. He stared at Young Pete with unseeing eyes. “Talk to you when I finish readin’,” he murmured.

  Pete pulled down his hat, backed out of the stone house, and mounted his horse. Pecos would talk when he had finished reading. Pete’s mouth twisted in a peculiar smile. It took sand to bluff like that. And Pecos Jim had kept up the bluff till the end. Pete had known all along, as had Charley Lee and Kimball, that Pecos Jim couldn’t read a word.

  CHAPTER 6

  Riding south along the foothills, Young Pete welcomed night as his friend. Far behind lay Horse Thief Hollow. Moonlight would be shining down on the stone house now, shining on the sightless eyes of Pecos Jim sitting propped up in the doorway pretending to read his almanac. A dead man pretending to read, especially when he had never been able to read a word! Pete shrugged. It was all right to bluff when you had to and knew that you could back it up. But why should a man want to carry a bluff like that across the Big Divide?

  Well, Pecos Jim was through with bluffing. Pete wondered that he himself had come out of that Las Vegas gunfight without a scratch. He recalled Pecos Jim’s wild “So long, Vegas town!” as they pounded out across the red clay road and into the hillside brush. Did Pecos know then that it was so long everything—the sunlight, the starlight, the mesas, and the hills? Or didn’t Pecos care? Young Pete cared. He could never work in that part of the country again. No explanation could ever set him right with Old Man Butterfield. Anyone witnessing the gunfight would say that he had deliberately thrown in with Charley Lee and Pecos.

  Bitter toward the circumstances that had brought about the fight, Pete reviewed each step in this final misfortune: the treachery of the Las Vegas storekeeper, Brownell; Old Man Butterfield’s slowness in not getting his team under way before the fight began; getting thrown out of the wagon when it started; and the blundering of drunken Tom Kimball, which had cost the lives of Charley Lee and Pecos Jim, and had finally cost Pete his job.

  Pete wondered if his plans and resolutions had been worth anything at all. Six months he had worked for a white outfit, and then, unexpectedly, he had met Charley Lee and Pecos Jim in Las Vegas. Five minutes, either way, and he would have missed them.

  Staring through the starlit dusk, nodding to the stride of his horse, Pete thought of the old Hemenway gang, of Tonto Charley, of the luck that had tossed him from one mischance to another all his fourteen years. Six months ago he had gone to work for wages. Now he was riding south, toward the country from which he had so recently fled, riding the horse Charley Lee had tried unsuccessfully to trade him.

  Leg-weary with the hard journey from Las Vegas to Horse Thief Hollow, the buckskin was inclined to drift into the foothills for grass and water. But Pete held him toward the south until the shadow of Thunder Mountain, a few miles below Horse Thief Cañon, loomed big against the starlit sky. He recognized the landmark. Tonto Charley had pointed it out only a few months back as they fled from Socorro. Now Tonto Charley, his one friend, was buried somewhere on the desert. Charley Lee and Pecos Jim—they had been friendly, too. They had been killed in that Las Vegas fight. Pete wondered when his turn would come. Soon enough, he reflected grimly, if he kept on riding into a country still hot with the names of Hemenway, Claybourne, and Tonto Charley. Someone would recognize him as the kid who had ridden with the Hemenway gang. But somehow, Pete had a premonition that he could not keep away from the south. Colorado, Wyoming, or Montana never could be his country.

  Swinging into the foothills, he gave the buckskin its head. There were water and grass somewhere up there on the mountain—water and grass and timber, and perhaps a chance to get a little sleep before starting out again. The buckskin began to climb, apparently following a trail. Pete was not surprised. Charley Lee had known that country. Naturally enough his horse knew the trails and the way to the nearest water and grass.

  Yet even after they reached the edge of the timber the horse kept on. About a half-hour later he stopped and nickered. An answering nicker came. Surmising that he was on the edge of a big mountain meadow, Pete stared into the deep darkness of the timber country. He heard someone moving in the darkness, then a voice: “That you, Ira?”

  “No,” replied Pete quickly, “it’s Charley.” And immediately he realized he had been thinking of Tonto Charley.

  Following a murmured conversation a tall figure loomed up beside Pete’s horse. “Sounds like you caught cold, Charley. Better come in and get warm. Brent’ll take care of your horse.”

  Brent? And they had been expecting someone named Ira. That made three. Pete wondered how many more of them lived up there on Thunder Mountain. He had heard of the Hamills of Thunder Mountain, a wild, hard-riding lot—Amos, Ira, Brent, Dave, the hunchback Finn, and Judson Hamill. He wondered if he had stumbled onto their camp and if the Hamills and Charley Lee had been friendly. He hoped so. He was riding Charley Lee’s horse.

  Pete stepped down and began to unsaddle.

  “I’ll take care of that,” said Brent Hamill. “Go on in with Jud and get thawed out.”

  Pete followed Judson Hamill across the starlit meadow.

  The home of the Hamills, a long, low-roofed log cabin, was lined on one side with bunks. Against the opposite wall stood a long table. The big fireplace at the end of the cabin was almost high enough to stand upright in.

  Judson Hamill lighted a lantern, and, setting it on the hearth, raked the smouldering embers together an
d hung a huge coffee-pot above them. A great, broad-shouldered man, well over six feet, bearded and bright of eye, he turned to Pete. “So you’re Charley?”

  Pete nodded.

  “That’s good enough,” said Judson Hamill. “Mebby you could eat something?”

  “I ain’t forgot how.”

  As Pete sat on the edge of the hearth and ate warmed-up meat and biscuits, he glanced at the six bunks along the wall. Four of them were occupied. “Six of us,” said Judson Hamill, as though answering a question. “Five of us live here. I’m Judson.”

  Having taken care of Pete’s horse Brent Hamill came in, pulled off his boots, and lay down in a bunk. “It was Charley Lee’s buckskin, Judge,” he said, and turning over, seemed to fall asleep.

  Brent Hamill had called his brother “Judge.” The title awakened Pete’s recollection. Judge Hamill of Thunder Mountain was chief and arbiter of the Hamill clan—mountain men who waged ceaseless warfare with any desert outfits that attempted to graze cattle or horses on the Thunder Mountain meadows. Though they had never been classed as outlaws the Hamills recognized no authority save that of their brother Judson. He, it was rumored, settled all disputes among them and acted as leader and adviser in their warfare against interlopers.

  Pete drank coffee and set the empty cup on the hearth. Naturally these men would want to know what he was doing up in their country, especially at that time of night, and why he was riding one of Charley Lee’s horses.

  Pete was framing an explanation when Judson Hamill said casually, “I see you’re riding Charley Lee’s horse.”

  “You know that horse, then?”

  Judson Hamill smiled. “I gave him to Charley.”

  “Well, he’s a pretty good horse.”

  Judson Hamill nodded. “It’s cold country up here for a desert man.”

  “So I noticed. But I aim to keep warm tendin’ to my own business.”

  “That’s right, son. But up here, it depends on what your business is. Did anybody send you up here?”

  “No.”

  “Charley Lee, mebby?”

  “No.” Pete’s dark eyes flashed. He resented being treated like a boy. “If you was to ride into my camp, on anybody’s horse, lookin’ for grub and a bed, you’d get ’em. And you could pull your freight without bein’ asked who you was or how big a loop you swung.”

  Judson Hamill smiled gravely. “Yes, I reckon I could.”

  Pete glanced quickly at Hamill’s bearded face. “Meanin’ I know how to keep my mouth shut?”

  “Charley Lee thought a lot of that buckskin,” said Judson Hamill.

  “I could tell you,” said Pete slowly, “that Charley Lee offered to trade the buckskin for a horse of mine. We didn’t trade. I could tell you that Charley Lee and Pecos Jim was killed in a gunfight in Las Vegas, day before yesterday.”

  “Las Vegas?”

  Pete nodded.

  “Did you see the fight?”

  “Yes, I saw it.”

  “Anybody else killed besides Charley and Pecos Jim?”

  “Tom Kimball.”

  “I mean on the other side.”

  “I saw six men down—peace officers.

  “Know their names?”

  “No. One was the town marshal. And two of his regular deputies. Three Block-H cowboys that was sworn in special got killed.”

  For a moment Judson Hamill stared into the fire, then he awakened his brothers, asking Pete to tell them all about the trouble in Las Vegas.

  Pete told of his driving into town with Old Man Butterfield, of his chance meeting with Pecos Jim and Charley Lee at Brownell’s store. Omitting only his own activities in warning them and delaying Old Man Butterfield that Lee and Pecos Jim might get to their horses and escape, he described the fight from the first shot fired by drunken Tom Kimball to Charley Lee’s final duel with the two mounted cowboys and Pecos’s shooting of the marshal. “He was a big man,” said Pete in conclusion, “almost as big as you.” He nodded to Judson Hamill.

  “Yes—almost as big as me.”

  “But not quite,” came from one of the brothers.

  “Amos always thought he was bigger,” said another. “Well, I’m glad it was Pecos and not one of us that got him.”

  “You say Lee and Pecos and Kimball—all of them?” asked Judson Hamill.

  “All of ’em. Charley got his when he rode into that Block-H cowboy. He knew he was done. He stepped down off his horse and walked over to the curb and sat down. ‘That’s all,’ he said. I could see he was goin’ fast. He tried to make a cigarette. But he never lighted it.”

  Pete could hear the heavy breathing of the Hamill brothers. He glanced along the row of bunks. Their faces were hardly discernible in the dim light of the lantern. Why were they so silent? Pete felt uneasy. He was only a kid. Had he said too much? He had expressed no opinion—simply had told the story of the fight as he had seen it. Judson Hamill was staring at him in a peculiar manner.

  “Pecos was the last,” said Pete to cover his nervousness. “He’s over there in Horse Thief Hollow, settin’ in the doorway of the stone house readin’ his almanac—if he’s where I left him.”

  A figure half rose from the nearest bunk. “I thought you said Pecos was killed in Las Vegas?”

  Pete didn’t like the other’s tone, nor, as he looked closer, the gaunt face and huge head covered with tangled black hair. There seemed to be something queer about him. Suddenly Pete realized that the man who had spoken was a hunchback.

  “I said Pecos Jim was through.”

  “You just said he was reading the almanac.”

  Pete turned to Judson Hamill. “One of your family called you ‘Judge!’ so I’m talkin’ to you. After the fight, Pecos and I made it to the Hollow. Just before his light went out, he asked me to help him to the doorway of the stone house. He pulled the almanac from his shirt and pretended to read it. It was soaked up pretty bad, but he didn’t seem to notice that. He was settin’ there, dead, when I pulled out. You didn’t ask me—but I’m tellin’ you.”

  “How do you know’ he ain’t lying?” said the hunchback, Finn Hamill.

  Pete bit his lip. “He’s your brother, I take it,” he said to Judson Hamill. “Mebby his word is just as good as mine.”

  “Just as good,” said Judson Hamill quietly. “Finn, when I want your judgment of a man, I’ll ask you for it.”

  “That’s right,” Brent Hamill turned to Finn. “Finn, you shut up.”

  “And I won’t need any help,” said Judson Hamill.

  The huge Brent stopped in the middle of a yawn. “Hell!” he muttered and turned over in his bunk.

  But the misshapen Finn seemed viciously eager to make trouble. “You talk like God made you boss of this outfit.”

  “He did,” said Judson quietly.

  The hunchback leaped from his bunk. He was so badly deformed that his hands hung below his knees. Thrusting out a long arm he shook his hand at Pete. “He warned Lee and Pecos, and the dirty hounds killed my brother Amos!” The hunchback glared at Judson Hamill. “And you sit there and let him tell you—” Finn Hamill’s arms were flung above his head. His mouth twitched horribly. Spume rose to his lips as he tried to curse. Judson Hamill rose. The hunchback’s body grew rigid. Dave Hamill saved him from falling, laid him in his bunk. Fetching water, Brent washed the spume from Finn’s mouth.

  Pete stared at Brent’s splendid body, and at the twisted form of the hunchback half covered with blankets.

  “Yes,” said Judson Hamill, as if to himself, “God made them both.”

  Pete could not keep his gaze from the misshapen man. A man didn’t have a say about what he was to be, or what he would look like, or how he would go. He just took what came. Pete saw that Judson Hamill was looking at him. “Fits,” said Judson. “He’ll be all right in the morning.” Pete nodded. But Judso
n Hamill must have seen the lingering question in his eyes. “Finn has those spells. He doesn’t know what he is doing when he is taken that way.”

  “Not at first—when he said I was lyin’ to you?”

  “I guess you don’t understand,” said Judson Hamill. “Amos was city marshal of Las Vegas. He was the only one of us Finn had any use for.”

  Pete was awakened from a heavy sleep by the arrival of Ira Hamill. The sun was up. There was no one else in the cabin but Finn, busy cooking breakfast, and Judson Hamill, who stood in the doorway smoking his pipe and gazing out across the meadow. Judson stepped aside as Ira entered. Ira was tall and heavy, but not within pounds or inches of either Brent or Judson. Pete pulled on his boots and stood up.

  “No hurry.” Judson introduced Pete to Ira Hamill.

  For some reason or other Ira Hamill seemed ill at ease. Pete started for the doorway. Judson Hamill signified that he wanted him to stay.

  Ira Hamill walked over to the hearth and poured a cup of coffee. He came back to where Judson stood.

  “How are things over in Las Vegas?” Judson asked Ira.

  “Amos was shot to death, day before yesterday.” Ira Hamill glanced at Pete.

  Judson Hamill nodded.

  “Tom Kimball started the fight. He was drunk. Lee and Pecos Jim were both killed. Amos was killed.”

  Again Judson Hamill nodded.

  Ira Hamill sipped his coffee. “Amos and his men got Lee and Kimball. Pecos got away. He finished up over in Horse Thief Hollow.”

  Still Judson Hamill made no comment.

  Ira put his empty cup on the table. “You don’t seem surprised a whole lot.”

  Judson said nothing. Finn, grotesque in his flour-sack apron, left the hearth and came softly toward them. He had been cutting steaks and had a short butcher-knife in his hand.

  “No,” said Ira, glancing at Finn, “Pecos didn’t get far. He cashed in over in the Hollow.”

  “You trailed him from Las Vegas?” said Judson.

  Ira Hamill nodded.

  “But you got there too late to do anything for him?”