The Fourth Western Novel

by H. H. Knibbs

Slim Akers walked over to a big armchair against the wall and sat down, reading a newspaper. Pete surmised that the gambler was deliberately playing into the hands of Collins’s gang, and would continue to do so up to the last minute. Akers knew what he was doing. Pete was certain of that.

  While Pete stood watching the gambler, the man named Bill, who had been drinking heavily, lurched over toward Akers and sat down in the chair next to him. Somebody at the faro table began an argument with the dealer. Slicker, Slim Akers’s partner, pushed up his eye shade. The clock above the bar mirror showed two minutes of twelve. Handing the paper to the befuddled Bill, and calling his attention to an article about a gold strike in the Tecolote country, Slim Akers slipped quietly to the back of the room. The argument at the faro table had diverted the attention of the crowd. Slicker threw his eye shade on the table and walked over to the man reading the newspaper. A derringer flashed in Slicker’s hand. As he fired he saw that the man behind the newspaper was not Slim Akers. Another shot boomed just before Slicker reached up and threw off the electric lights.

  There was a rush of pounding feet as the crowd in the saloon broke for the front door. Suddenly the lights came on. In front of the chair where he had been reading lay the body of Bill, his face partially covered with the newspaper. Slim Akers stood near the electric switch. He was smoking a cigar. Slicker had fired twice. His derringer was empty. He glanced toward Pelcher—Pelcher, who stood with his back to the bar, made no move. Pete was holding a gun against his ribs.

  City marshal Collins and a deputy came from outside. “There they are!” cried the marshal, gesturing toward Dave and Young Pete. He stopped, stared at Akers standing by the electric switch. “How did this happen?” he boomed.

  “You might ask him,” said Akers.

  Beginning to see only too clearly that things were not going according to schedule, Collins glared at Pelcher and Slicker. His face was red as he turned to-Young Pete. “Drop that gun! You’re under arrest for robbery and murder.”

  Slim Akers gestured gracefully with his cigar. “Robbery”! Well, well! So my safe is gutted. How unfortunate. Just when did it happen?”

  The city marshal swore, blustered, seemed momentarily to have lost his wits. “You darn’ fool, that’s the Tonto Kid!”

  The gambler’s voice was honeyed. “Angels unawares, eh? Funny how things do happen. Maybe you hadn’t realized it, but I’m St. Peter.”

  It was now or never with city marshal Collins. To his surprise, Mr. Akers, apparently so negligently smoking, was now directly in his way. The marshal’s face grew dark. “Get out of my way, Akers. I haven’t got time to monkey with you anymore.”

  “I don’t want you to monkey,” complained Mr. Akers. “I want you to be a man.”

  “Step quick!” growled Collins.

  “Can’t. Just broke my leg. I’ve been looking all over Perdition for someone to shoot me.”

  Collins may or may not have reached for his gun. In any event it didn’t materialize. Instead, he found himself looking into a little derringer which Mr. Akers had produced seemingly by sleight of hand. Akers’s voice was mild but meaningful. “There are more things in Wick-wire county, Horatio, than ever were dreamed of in thy velocipede.” He went on to point out that this was one of them.

  Mr. Akers had still more to say. “You are right about the safe.”

  “Then what in hell you beefing about?” said Collins.

  “Me? About myself. I gutted it. I’m leaving Perdition. I feel I can safely leave it in your hands.”

  Young Pete laughed. Dave frowningly studied the gambler. The rest of the evening, by virtue of his well-known ability with a gun, was his. Cursing, but circumspect, city marshal Collins withdrew. Pelcher and the deputy followed. Slicker, yellow himself, stayed out of sheer self-interest. A half share in the gambling business was his. Slim made it over and saw him out of the saloon with a cool disdain that would have daunted a better man. Then he set about the last preparations for his own departure. He asked Dave and Pete, with winning courtesy, if they would mind if he accompanied them for a brief while. “Mind!” Young Pete laughed shortly.

  A few minutes later the three were riding down the starlit road along which Dave and Pete had traveled that morning. Pete spoke again. “What I don’t figure is just why you’re taking all this trouble for us.”

  Akers smiled. His eyes had a faraway look. “I recollect an evening in El Paso. I was tending bar at El Paso Johnny’s. Don’t hold it against me. I had been financially unfortunate. That evening Hemenway, Tonto Charley and their crowd were making merry. They had been down in the Panhandle. Their particular kind of business had been good. El Paso Johnny and I nearly wore out the cash register. Everybody on the sporting side of the bar was drunk. Some were even drunker.”

  Dave, riding alongside, wondered what it was all about. A queer time for reminiscences.

  “El Paso Johnny himself,” continued Mr. Akers, “wasn’t plumb sure which way was North. I said everybody was drunk. I apologize. I wasn’t. And there was a kid out back in the alley, holding the gang’s horses. He wasn’t drunk.” As the gambler paused, Young Pete, staring out at the dim street, nodded to himself.

  “It was a cold night,” said the gambler. “I guess the bunch forgot about the kid out there in the alley. But he was a tough little rooster. He never whimpered.”

  “How do you know he didn’t?” asked Pete.

  “He stayed right with the horses. Somebody told me he was Tonto Charley’s adopted boy. He was not much more than half your size then.” It was evident to Dave that the gambler was telling the story to Pete, and Pete alone.

  “That,” continued Akers, “was about five years ago. The kid was darn’ near froze; hungry and cold, and alone out there for hours. But he had been told to stick by the horses. So he stuck.”

  Pete stared straight ahead, his lips tight. How well he remembered that night.

  “Then,” said Akers, “somebody remembered the kid and took him a sandwich and a cup of hot coffee. The kid was biting his lips to keep from crying. The man that took him the sandwich told him to go inside and get warm, that he would watch the horses himself. But the kid wouldn’t budge. Just stood there with the sandwich in his hand. Scared, I take it, that if he opened his mouth he would beller.”

  “Yes,” said Pete, grinning. “And even if it wasn’t any too light out there, the kid remembered that fella’s ears.”

  “These ears,” said Akers mournfully, “will follow me to the grave.”

  An hour later Slim Akers reined up. There was considerable delicacy in his makeup. “The road branches here. One road goes South to The Pinnacles, one to Cartwright. But I think you know the country pretty well. Without wishing to be onerous, I’m open to suggestions.”

  Young Pete looked down the two dark roads. Funny a fellow should ever think his choice could make any difference. But somehow he would feel considerably safer near the border. And he had his own particular brand of delicacy. He gestured toward the south road. He nodded his thanks. “Mebby, someday,” he began, then hesitated.

  “Any time,” said Slim Akers, waving his hand. The gambler understood. Possibly, some day, they might see more of one another. That would be determined by chance. Young Pete had a hunch that his best play was to ride south. Mr. Akers did not believe in going against a hunch.

  Sometime toward morning, Dave and Young Pete drew up at the water hole on their way to that desolate region in the bad lands known as “The Pinnacles.” Pete reined close to the weathered old signboard that read “Five Miles to Perdition.” He reached up and jerked it loose.

  “What’s the idea?” asked Dave.

  “It’ll be the first time this sign ever done anybody any good. In a couple of hours I aim to boil some coffee. They ain’t no wood where we’re goin’. That coffee’ll carry us from daylight to The Pinnacles.”

  “The Pinnacles!” Dav
e shrugged. Staring through the darkness toward the south, he smiled grimly. “Funny how many different names there are for hell.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Gaunt with hunger and lack of sleep, the Tonto Kid lay on a ridge watching the approach of a distant horseman. The sun hammered hard on the rocky hillside. The valley below was sandy-white, shot with deep black shadows of brush and boulder. In spite of the heat the horse came on at a brisk swinging walk unlike the choppy gait of a cowpony. Pete’s own horse was tied down the hillside back of him. Not many hours north, Sheriff Buck Yardlaw and his men were whipsawing the country trying to pick up Pete’s trail, lost the evening before in Tecolote Cañon.

  Young Pete had aged in the few weeks since he and Dave Hamill had made their escape from Perdition to The Pinnacles. At Enright’s camp in the bad lands they had been able to obtain fresh mounts. They could have hidden in that country indefinitely, as friends of the gambler, Slim Akers. But neither Pete nor Dave Hamill was keen to throw in with Old Man Enright. He harbored stolen horses, and while friendly to the boys, his game did not appeal to them. After resting up a week they pulled out for Tecolote, on the west side of the valley. From there they hoped to make it to Mexico by easy stages. But what they learned at Tecolote forced them to change their plans.

  It was Pete himself who first got the news that Sheriff Buck Yardlaw and a posse from Apache County was hot after him for the slaying of City Marshal Amos Hamill. Only fifteen, and already officially outlaw! The wheel was warped, all right. Pete was with a white outfit and meant to stay there, when sheer and unpredictable mischance forced him into that Las Vegas gunfight and the shooting of the City Marshal.

  Pete and Dave stuck together as long as they could. But by the time they reached Alamogordo and headed out across the White Sands, Yardlaw had already gotten wind of Pete’s whereabouts and was pressing him hard. Pete and Dave were forced to part company in Tecolote cañon. Dave headed for the Argus Range, Pete held to the high trail and continued south. By riding all night he put the width of the Perris Basin between himself and his pursuers. Yet he dared not relax his vigilance for a moment. Buck Yardlaw never let up. When after a criminal, county lines and state boundaries meant nothing to him. Already the sheriff was south of his own territory, determined that even if he had to cross the line into Mexico he would get the young outlaw, and so wipe out the last of the Hemenway gang and the man who had killed an officer of the law.

  Pete thought the hot sunlight was playing tricks with him. A masked man had stepped out from the juniper and held up the solitary horseman Pete had been watching.

  “You Doc Hapgood?” said a voice. “The Red Doctor?”

  “I am.”

  “Where you headed for?”

  “The Bend. Man down there has been shot up pretty bad.”

  “What did you say his name was?”

  “I didn’t. But his name is Jim Wolf.”

  “Jim Wolf, eh? Well, turn right around and ride the other way.”

  “Suppose I choose to keep on the way I’m headed?”

  “I’m doin’ the choosin’. Get goin’, or—”

  Young Pete rose from behind a boulder. “Drop it!” he said, stepping up behind the holdup man.

  The masked man stood rigid as Pete jerked the handkerchief from his face. Slowly the bandit’s hand opened and his gun dropped to the sand. The Red Doctor sat his horse, almost as much surprised as he.

  The outlaw had no saddle-gun. Young Pete told him to get going. The junipers whipped behind him as he forged up the western slope of the valley.

  “You showed up just in time.” The Red Doctor took off his hat and mopped his forehead. His red hair flamed in the sunlight.

  “Just in time for what?”

  “To save my hide.”

  “Keep your hands on the saddle-horn,” said Pete. “I don’t want your hide. I want that horse you’re ridin’.”

  “He isn’t for sale. I need him.”

  “So do I.”

  “If you’re afoot, why didn’t you help yourself to that bandit’s horse when you had the chance?”

  “He wasn’t shod. Where I’m goin’ a barefoot horse would go lame. Step down—and step careful.”

  The Red Doctor shook his head. “I don’t know who you are,” he said gravely. “But I’m going to tell you something. The man that sent for me is shot up pretty bad. He’s a horse thief, but a horse thief has just as much right to medical attention as you have. A doctor plays no favorites. You’ve got the drop on me. If you intend to let me go through to the Bend, why, all right. If you don’t”—the Red Doctor looked Young Pete straight in the eye—“why, shoot and be damned!”

  “You got guts!” said the Tonto Kid. “I’ve changed my mind about your horse. Get goin’. All you got to do is forget you seen me.”

  “I’ll do that!” said the doctor “heartily. “I hope you find a good mount.”

  Young Pete did not feel that he owed much to any man. Slim Akers was an exception. But Slim Akers was one of the few bright spots in a life of darker coloring. Chances were, Pete and the gambler would never meet again.

  Young Pete’s mouth tightened. There were men holding down good jobs in the territory more entitled to arrest than he. What had he done, after all? None of the tragedies, from the killing of Tonto Charley to the fight on Thunder Mountain, had been of his own making. Yet he himself, through no choice of his own, was now branded as a killer, hunted day and night, and no man to say when it would end.

  The sound of hoofbeats came to him. Round the northern end of the ridge rode Buck Yardlaw and three of his men, their horses at a trot. Pete sank back out of sight. The sheriff stopped the Red Doctor. But the Red Doctor, apparently, knew nothing about the Tonto Kid. “The only man I’ve seen was riding a sorrel pony. He held me up and tried to make me turn back, but finally changed his mind. He took to the brush, over that way.”

  The posse strung out and followed the tracks up the western slope of the valley. The Red Doctor glanced toward the eastern slope where Pete lay, and rode on.

  Young Pete slipped down to his horse and led him to the bottom of the ridge. Tired as the animal was, Young Pete knew he must chance it.

  * * * *

  Manuel Escobar, a Mexican woodcutter and sheep-herder, lived in a mountain cabin far back in the Perris hills. Manuel and Tonto Charley had been old friends.

  Satisfied that he had thrown Yardlaw off the track, at least for the time being, Pete rode up into the timber of the range. That evening Manuel was surprised to see his friend Pete ride in, half starved, ragged, his horse hardly able to walk. Manuel had news and was eager to share it. Bodie, a wealthy cattleman recently elected to the legislature, had been murdered. Bancroft, Bodie’s political opponent, was suspected of instigating the murder. Following the murder of Bodie, Jim Wolf, one of Bancroft’s gunmen, had been ambushed and all but shot to death. Manuel said, “I theenk Jeem Wolf ees shoot by his own gang.”

  “That isn’t what I heard. I heard the Tonto Kid done the shooting.”

  “You! You make the joke.”

  “It won’t be much of a joke if Buck gets me. Anybody up at the shack?”

  Manuel shook his head.

  “Guess I’ll chance it and bush out there for a spell. I need about a week’s sleep. If Yardlaw happens to call—”

  “He don’ find you. I feex that.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “Any chance, Doc?” Jim Wolf glanced restlessly at the open window of the squalid hotel room. He had been found all but shot to pieces and fetched to the Bend by a rancher.

  From a cheap bureau a kerosene lamp cast a sickly glow on the wounded man’s face. Astride a chair near the doorway sat one of Bancroft’s cowboys, Slattery. The Red Doctor stood near the bed, gazing down at Wolf. “This window faces east, doesn’t it?”

  Wolf’s sunken eyes questioned the doctor’s fac
e. “You mean mebby I’ll see the sun come up once more, and mebby not?”

  The Red Doctor nodded gravely. “I’ve done about all I can for you.” He paused. “Unless there’s some message you’d like to send to your friends.”

  The cowboy Slattery spat over the back of the chair. “I’ll take care of any messages. I know most of Jim’s friends.”

  Jim Wolf glanced helplessly at the doctor. “Nothin’,” he said. His eyes told a different story. Wolf stared at the ceiling. “I’d sure like to see the sun come up once more. But I been fightin’ the pain so long. God, if I could only get a little sleep!”

  Slattery tilted his chair forward suddenly. “Why don’t you give him a shot, Doc?”

  The Red Doctor swung round. “That’s my business.”

  Wolf groaned. The doctor adjusted the lampwick and folded his medicine case.

  “You ain’t goin’, Doc?” Wolf’s voice was sharp with anxiety.

  “You might as well get some sleep yourself,” said Slattery, over-insistently. “I’ll stay here with Jim.”

  “Thanks.” The Red Doctor turned to Wolf. “What’s your decision?”

  “Give me a shot for the pain, Doc. But first, could I have some whiskey and a cigarette?”

  “Certainly.”

  “If I was to get drunk I wouldn’t know when I stepped off, would I?”

  The doctor gazed down at the dying man, but made no reply.

  Slattery rose. “Here’s the makings, Jim. I guess the doc’s got some whiskey, all right.”

  “Sorry to say I haven’t,” said the doctor, although a full flask lay in the bottom of one of his saddle-bags. “Step downstairs and get a pint of good whiskey. Here!” The doctor handed two silver dollars to Slattery. “Don’t forget what you went for. I want to get a little sleep myself.” Slattery walked down the hall. Locking the door the Red Doctor whipped out a pencil and prescription pad. “What is it. Wolf? Talk fast.”

  “It wasn’t Bodie or his cowboys that got me. It was my own bunch. Slattery was one of ’em.”

  “I’m not surprised.”