by H. H. Knibbs
Pete, to the contrary, had rubbed shoulders with outlaws most of his life. Inured to hardship, quick to take the initiative, independent to the point of recklessness, and shrewd beyond his years, Pete both amused and interested his more easy-going companion. With no special destination in mind, they drifted south. Each knew that their companionship might terminate suddenly. Young Pete was still looking for a white outfit, but he knew it would not be easy to find one. Already he was booked as outlaw. To enter a town meant risk of capture. This worried Dave Hamill more than it did Young Pete. Consequently, when early that morning they drew up at a desert water hole and Pete suggested that they head for the nearest town, Dave was not especially enthusiastic. Aware that it wasn’t fear for himself that influenced Dave but rather fear that his companion might be recognized, Young Pete hesitated to take any chances that might involve Dave. He narrowed his eyes as he gazed at the weathered signboard that pointed to a group of cottonwoods far down the desert. “‘Five Miles to Perdition.’ Means hell, or something like that.”
“There’s a town called Purgatory, out near the White Sinks,” said Dave. “Funny how many different names there are for hell.”
Pete shrugged. “There’s a lot of different kinds of hell.” Their tired horses drank. Pete sat gazing toward the distant cottonwoods. “I like mine thick and rare. And plenty hot bread and coffee.”
“Same here—if you mean steak.”
“I wasn’t talkin’ about wimmen.”
Dave Hamill grinned. They headed for the distant cottonwoods.
Perdition, a mining town in the foothills of the Argus Range, admired to call itself tough. The mines back in the hills had closed down, but petty graft and the cowboys from Luna and Magdalena kept the hurdy-gurdy honking and the ball spinning in the wheel. Earnest but indiscreet visitors were received with open arms, wrung dry, and tossed out onto the city dump. Awakening sore and sober, they were hauled before the justice of the peace and fined for disorderly conduct. Perdition’s city marshal, Mr. Collins, was able to get away with this because he required visiting gentlemen to hang up their guns.
Unaware of this embarrassing handicap, Young Pete and Dave rode into town, stabled their horses, and made tracks for the nearest restaurant. They were sitting on high stools waiting for the two steaks thick and rare when the city marshal stepped in through a side door, discreetly approaching them from behind.
“You boys will have to hang up your guns while you’re here.”
“Like hell we will!” Dave Hamill swung round and faced the marshal.
Pete kicked Dave on the leg. “Leave it to me,” he whispered. Then to the marshal. “Here’s my gun. But I want a receipt for her. I’m leavin’ town in the mornin’.”
“That’s all right,” said Collins.
“What’s all right?”
“You won’t need any receipt.”
Young Pete’s grin faded. “You got my gun. All I got is your word I’ll get it back. I want it in writin’.”
“I’ll take your gun, too,” said the marshal to Dave, ignoring Young Pete.
Pete jerked Dave’s gun from its holster. “Give us two receipts and you can have it.” Pete was rolling the gun. “But you needn’t pester Dave. All he does is the thinkin’ for this outfit.”
“You’re a tough kid, ain’t you?”
Young Pete grinned into the muzzle of the gun the marshal had just taken away from him. “Just bite me and see! But don’t count on that gun. She’s empty. That’s why I gave her to you.”
A slim, dark man at a table across the room laid down his fork and laughed. The slim man was fastidiously dressed. He wore dark clothing, a shoe-string tie and square-toed boots.
City Marshal Collins stared at Young Pete’s lean, dark face. “Hand over that gun!”
“Can’t,” said Pete. “Don’t belong to me. What you pesterin’ me for? You got my gun. And Dave, here, ain’t got no gun. It ain’t awful hard to figure.”
The man who had laid down his fork rose and sauntered over to Pete. “I’d like to shake hands with you. You’re the first sober man that ever called Collins’s bluff. I run a little game over at the Silver Dollar. They call me Akers, down this way. Slim, when they get personal.”
“Glad to meet you. Dave, you shake hands for both of us. I’m busy.”
“You’ll be busier if you don’t hand over that gun!” threatened Collins.
“So will your relatives if you don’t quit pesterin’ me.” Young Pete continued to roll the gun.
City Marshall Collins glared at the interested Mr. Akers. “These friends of yours?”
“My dear Collins, what do you think? Any time you want a job,” he said to Pete, “my address is right across the street.”
“Thanks. Any time you want a new city marshal, just say the word.”
Collins spluttered. “Look here, Akers, you going to let that kid get away with this?”
“My dear Jake, haven’t you noticed that that gun he packs has a great big hole in it? I’ll bet my tame cockroach against your trained louse that if you were to holler down that big hole, something unpleasant would happen.”
Collins glared threateningly. “You haven’t heard the last of this!”
“No? Well, I’m a good listener.”
Collins barged out of the restaurant. Pete smiled to himself. Slim Akers might be a good listener, but apparently he was capable of being an even better talker. He was well equipped for both. There was a humorous quirk to his mouth. As for those bat ears of his—Pete had seen ears like that somewhere before. A man couldn’t chouse around the country with ears like a couple of matilija poppies and not be remembered.
Mr. Akers invited the boys to eat at his table. The waitress fetched their steaks. “Nothin’ has smelled so sweet since Pansy died. Pansy,” said Pete, “was a mule that fell into a well.”
Slim Akers, who manipulated cards for a living and manipulated ideas as a sort of side line, talked in an engaging and humorous fashion that amused the boys and made Pete forget the city marshal. He even forgot the long rides and short hands that life had dealt him. For a little while he felt safe, well fed, at peace with the world, like any young waddie who earns his living and sleeps in a regular bed.
With a sort of sprightly obliqueness Slim Akers seemed to be waxing confidential. Business in his line, he told Dave and Young Pete, was poor. And though his line embraced faro, monte, roulette, and the cards, it did not embrace city marshal Collins. This fact had greatly embittered that officer of the law. Unable to bully Slim into giving him a rakeoff, Collins was making things unpleasant. All Mr. Akers needed was an excuse, with the city marshal at one end of it. Then he would leave town; leaving it, he hoped, under his own power. He hated to think of departing in the Old Black Hack looking as natural as life. “I’m too young and too beautiful for a mere corpse,” he told the boys. Gathering up the three breakfast checks, the gambler led the way out of the restaurant. He gestured toward the saloon across the way.
“You’ll find me there most of the time today—but I’ve decided to shake the dust of Perdition from my feet. May I suggest,” he said amiably, “that it might profit you boys to do the same?”
Dave Hamill thought it was good advice. But Young Pete felt stubborn. He had done nothing in this town to run away from. “He took me for a kid. I don’t aim to let no cheap city marshal get ahead of me.”
“Let Collins get as far ahead of you as he likes. Just don’t let him get behind you.” Slim Akers shook hands. Pete watched him go into the Silver Dollar. Where had he seen Slim Akers before? And by the same token, if any, where had Slim Akers seen him? Pete shrugged. Certainly no one in Perdition knew he was the Tonto Kid. And he hoped most earnestly that nobody would find out.
“Let’s see what kind of dump this here Perdition place is,” Pete suggested to his companion. Folks, Pete had found, were kind of a game. And
a darned sight more interesting than cards or drink. Heartened by his meal, Dave accompanied Young Pete as they strolled about sizing up the town. About every other building in Perdition was a saloon. The street, littered and dusty, ran between the two rows of buildings comprising the town and then wormed out of sight in the foothills as if ashamed of itself. There were but few persons on the street, and these looked as if they had rather not be, Pete told himself.
Little by little the boy Tonto Charley had raised was learning to size up people, to put them in their proper categories in a way that would have done credit to a man twice his age. He had never stopped to think what it would be like to have an education. He had never stopped to think, either, that he was getting an education that much money might have paid for but never purchased. Until recently he had believed that there were but two classes of people, white folks and crooks. Now he knew that there were many classes of people. He had discovered good streaks in bad men, and some mighty dubious streaks in folks who were supposed to be good. He didn’t know what he and Dave were in for in the general scheme of things. He never tried to analyze himself. But he did want to leave his past well behind, to grow out of the conditions that had hitherto enveloped him.
By three o’clock that afternoon they had seen everything there was to see, as far as they knew, in Perdition. Dave began to be restless. He didn’t like the looks of the town. And a short, thick man in a big Stetson had stared rather hard at Pete a few minutes before. “Looks like that there Perdition sign was a warnin’,” commented Dave, again recalling Slim Akers’s advice. With the same thought in mind Pete and Dave headed for the livery barn to get their horses, which had been left there for a much-needed feed.”
Pete stepped into the shadow of a doorway. In a few minutes Dave returned on foot. “We’re sure up against it. The city marshal has left orders to hold our horses till you hand over your gun.”
“My gun? Did you offer to pay the feed bill?”
“I sure did!”
They walked back. Across the street a short, thick man in a big Stetson was keeping abreast with them. “He was in the livery office,” whispered Dave.
“Mebby a deputy, set to watch that we don’t make our getaway. Let’s step in here and see if he follows us.” But the thick man had disappeared.
Mr. Slim Akers was having a busy afternoon. The little run-in with Jake Collins had given him just the impetus his restless spirit needed. He was privately cleaning house preparatory to taking what with him was a frequent step—moving on. Besides that, he was indulging in a little philosophical speculation. In common with most of the Southwest, Mr. Akers had heard of the Tonto Kid.
Who had not? As a student of human nature the card man had long since become interested in the Tonto Kid’s history. Unlike the more loose-talking, loose-thinking folks of the territory, Mr. Akers considered the young outlaw’s six-shooter one of the most eloquent voices in the Southwest. It demanded independence, freedom, the right to be let alone.
The card man knew that this Young Pete had only recently been a quiet, hard-working member of Old Man Butterfield’s outfit. That he could be the dangerous and cold-blooded killer men claimed the Tonto Kid to be, Slim Akers did not for a moment believe. Just why the discrepancy was something he had aimed, sooner or later, to find out. Just now it seemed as though it might be sooner. The reason for this was that Slim now knew where the Tonto Kid was. Not alone through deduction but because he had seen the Tonto Kid years ago, in another habitat.
Shortly after six that evening Dave Hamill and Young Pete stepped into the Silver Dollar saloon in search of Mr. Slim Akers. They had not been able to find him earlier in the day. Nor was Akers now in sight. They had been in the saloon only a short while when a stocky man in a big hat entered with a companion. Dave heard the short man addressed as Pelcher, his companion as Bill. Pete pushed a nickel into the slot machine and pulled the lever down. As yet Young Pete had not decided what was to be done about their horses. He was anxious to talk with Slim Akers. Perhaps the gambler could help them out of their difficulty. Pete was pretty sure he could make it worth Mr. Akers’s while to do so.
While poking about town, in fact while in the back of the livery stable watching for a chance to lead the horses out and make a getaway, Young Pete had overheard a conversation in the stall nearest the rear door. Recognizing the heavy voice of the man with the big hat, Pete quietly slipped into the adjoining stall. Pelcher was talking in a low tone. The conversation was brief, but to Young Pete’s imaginative mind, illuminating. It seemed that at about midnight, Mr. Akers’s establishment was to be raided and robbed. Mr. Akers was to be put out of business, both personally and financially. Pete was surprised to hear the now familiar voice of city marshal Collins directing Pelcher as to the details, one of which was the subsequent arrest of the two young strangers. “The slim, dark one,” said the city marshal, “happens to be the Tonto Kid. We’ll let ’em run loose till after the show,” he concluded. “Then we’ll grab them and charge them with robbery and murder.” Pete now had no doubt that Slim Akers was right when he told Dave and himself to get out of town promptly. Perdition was all that its name implied. Pete and Dave had but one gun between them. Their horses were in the custody of the city marshal.
Pete slipped out and hastened to the Silver Dollar. A poker game was going. Several cowpunchers had come in. Slim was now walking about the room, keeping an eye on the tables. Pete had no opportunity to talk with the gambler just then so he got another handful of nickels and played the slot machine.
Dave sauntered over from the bar. “How’s the game going, Pete?”
Pete pulled the lever down. The cards whirred. As he watched them settle Pete told his companion of the plot to rob and kill Akers. Pelcher, Bill, and Slicker, a gambler who was in partnership with Slim, were to do the job. “But we’ll be the goats,” said Pete. “They’ll hang the job onto us. I had a hunch the city marshal was crooked.”
Dave Hamill nodded toward the flickering cards. “You can’t beat that game. How about holdin’ up the livery and leavin’ town right now?”
“I kind of like Slim Akers’s style. Mebby you recollect he offered me a job. Well, he didn’t mean polishin’ glasses behind the bar.”
Pete counted the nickels in his left hand. The idea was, he told Dave, that you had to side with one bunch or the other in this game of keeping alive, or sure as hell somebody would get you.
“Oh, I ain’t so sick I can’t stick around and watch you lose all our nickels,” said Dave, for the benefit of a cowhand who was just drifting past them.
The next hour seemed an eternity to Dave Hamill. To Young Pete it went swiftly. It was now eleven-thirty. The show, as city marshal Collins had called it, was to open up at twelve. Pete told Dave Hamill to get hold of Akers on the pretext that the slot machine was out of order. Presently Slim Akers, followed by Dave, came over to Pete. “Say! What kind of a rig do you call this!” said Pete. “I’ve been playin’ it for a couple of hours. Every time she starts to roll a flush or a straight the end card kicks back. I’m darn’ near broke.”
Mr. Akers was not only a clever card man. He had been a soldier of fortune in Old Mexico. The Argentine had known him for a time. Sportsmen in Sydney, Australia, were not unfamiliar with his shrewdness in the paddock. Under many names, and as many flags, always suave and engaging, often sprightly, and seldom without the wherewithal to make himself comfortable, he had explored the possibilities of humankind. Earlier in his life he had punched cattle. During a brief but vivid vacation in El Paso, the Mecca of cardmen and cowboys of the Southwest, Mr. Akers discovered that his aptitude for cards was his greatest asset as well as a grave responsibility. Leaving town to the accompaniment of a quartette of six-shooters, in the course of his travels he finally arrived in the town of Perdition. Here he established his modest gambling quarters, accepting without protest the comparative monotony of cowtown life, and the not ill-fitting appel
lation of “Slim.”
By the tone of Young Pete’s voice, by the challenging look in his eye, Mr. Akers now knew that he was talking about something more out of joint than an unruly slot machine. He dropped in a nickel, waiting for Pete’s next move.
Other men were too near for Pete to risk much talk. He leaned forward calling the cards. “Collins…Pelcher, and a fella called Bill got it fixed… To bump you off and rob the joint… Twelve, tonight…” He looked at the royal flush in the machine. “Now what do you think of that? Looks like you could handle that combination.”
“Yes, I can handle it.” Akers’s manner was easy. Pete knew that he had been understood. The gambler invited Dave and Pete to the bar. Turning he gestured to Pelcher who was talking with the man known as Bill.
Dave took a drink of whiskey, as did Pelcher and his companion. Pete, however, declined to take anything. Occasionally Young Pete took a drink. But in his fifteen hard years among the hardest citizens of Arizona and New Mexico, he had learned, purely as a business proposition, to leave hard liquor alone. “Liquor,” Tonto Charley used to say, when sober, “never steadied a man’s gun hand, or made him faster on the draw.” And this was the same Tonto Charley who had been killed in a drunken brawl.
It was nine minutes of twelve. Young Pete asked the gambler for a match. “I’ll take that job you offered me, now.”
The lean, dark gambler unbuttoned his frock coat. “My rule is cash on delivery.” As he reached for his pocketbook, he deliberately let Pete see the ivory handle of a six-shooter. He opened the pocketbook. Deftly Young Pete transferred the six-shooter to his own holster. No one saw him do it. Akers handed Pete a ten dollar bill. “Will that hold you?”