The Fourth Western Novel

by H. H. Knibbs

  Stepping cautiously to the hitch-rail, he sized up the ponies. His hand was on the knot of a tie-rope when he happened to glance through the saloon doorway.

  Eight or ten Tonto cowboys, Lute among them, were facing the Spider. A gun in each hand, the wizened little gambler stood with his back against the door of his room. Bull Malvey lounged at the front end of the bar, a fixed grin on his heavy face. The Mexican, One Ear, his back to the bar, was facing the crowd, and smiling.

  Pete figured swiftly. Bull Malvey, One Ear, and the Spider’s mozo. The Spider could count on three men, in case the crowd turned loose. And the air felt as though the crowd would.

  Pete’s neck grew hot. “The Tonto Kid murdered Old Man Jepson,” Lute was saying. “And he’s in that room there. We want him.”

  Without realizing just how he got there, Young Pete was standing in the saloon doorway, smiling pleasantly. “Want the Tonto Kid, do you, cowboy? Then why don’t you come and get him?”

  Lute stared. Pete saw Bull Malvey’s hand begin to move slowly down toward his hip. One Ear’s narrow eyes grew narrower. “The Tonto Kid!” said someone in the crowd.

  Men’s eyes turned toward Young Pete, swung to the Spider, who was standing against the door with a gun in each hand. No one moved. Bull Malvey’s hand was on his holster now. One Ear was fingering the edge of his fancy vest. The Spider’s beady eyes were expressionless, glowing like polished jet. His voice came, thin, a shrill whisper, “I wouldn’t, Lute.” Still that spell held them.

  Bull Malvey’s laugh came like the bellow of a steer. “Lute ain’t got guts enough!”

  “Fool!” muttered Pete. “You done busted the string.”

  Lute went for his gun. Young Pete’s slender brown hand vanished, reappeared. Flame leaped toward answering flame. The blue-eyed cowboy clutched at his stomach and stumbled toward Young Pete. Pete jumped to one side as one of Lute’s friends fired. Bull Malvey dropped the man who had fired at Pete.

  One Ear darted along the bar and stood beside the Spider. The Spider had not fired a shot. A Tonto cowboy made a dash for the door. One of the Spider’s guns cracked. The cowboy plunged head first out onto the saloon veranda.

  Now, as the Tonto crowd backed down the room, the Spider followed, step by step, his guns held belt high and both of them going. Four of Lute’s crowd were still on their feet. Three of them suddenly turned and dashed through the patio. The fourth put up his hands. But the Spider, walking toward him in that strange trance of battle, shot him down.

  “Spider!” called Bull Malvey.

  The little gambler stopped, turned his head. He seemed to realize where he was, and that the fight was over. “Close the cases,” he said, as though speaking to his dealer.

  Malvey, clumsy, brutal, fearless, rushed toward the gambler. “Did you get hit?” he cried hoarsely.

  The Spider shook his head.

  Bull Malvey coughed. A thin trickle of red showed at the corner of his mouth. “I got it twice. Gimme a drink.” He stumbled to the bar, leaned on it heavily. One Ear, reloading his gun, smiled. He seemed to enjoy Malvey’s suffering. “Three get away,” said One Ear. “Four don’ get away.”

  The Spider seemed to notice Young Pete for the first time. “You’re damned expensive,” he said in his thin voice. “But you’re worth the ante.”

  Pete’s gaze went from Malvey, leaning on the bar, to the men on the floor. “Two of ’em are down for keeps. Lute there—he’s a long ways from dead yet.”

  Bull Malvey swung round. His eyes were glazed and heavy, his lower lip sagged, showing his broken teeth. “Lute,” he mumbled, “started this ruckus. He’s lived too darn’ long.” Bracing his back against the bar, Malvey drew his gun. Pete saw that Malvey intended to kill Lute. He jumped to grab the outlaw’s gun arm, but he was too late. Pete was so close that the powder stung his face. He jumped back. His hand came up. But he did not fire. Reaching from behind him, the Spider knocked Malvey out with the barrel of a six-shooter.

  “Thanks,” said Pete. “I sure would ’a’ beefed him.”

  * * * *

  The Spider’s mozo sat just outside the doorway of the gambler’s private room, a rifle across his knees. Where he had been during the fight, Pete never knew. The Spider sat smoking a cigar and gazing at Butt Malvey. He seemed interested only in Malvey’s condition. Pete stood inside the doorway of the room, gazing at the Spider’s unreadable face. One Ear and the two Mexicans had carried out the bodies of the dead Tonto cowboys.

  A grim smile touched the Spider’s thin lips. “That brown cayuse with the crooked front foot belongs to me. Lute owed me a little bill. He’s a stout, handy pony.”

  “And easy to trail, with that skew foot,” said Pete. “But I’ll take him, and a bill of sale for seventy-five dollars. I’m owin’ you the seventy-five.”

  “That goes with me, Kid.”

  The horse with the crooked front foot was a stout, handy pony, but he didn’t track straight. Within two hours Young Pete was back at the old sheepman’s wagon. Three things he needed before he could journey south—water, food, and a shoeing hammer.

  These he found, the latter along with horseshoe nails and hoof-nippers in the wagon-box. By lantern light he reset the shoe on the crooked foot.

  It was a lonely spot, there in the starlight—the empty wagon, the mound of stones, the silence. For a moment Pete stood looking down at the grave of the old sheepman. “The fella that murdered you,” he said, finally, “got his. But what good does that do anybody? It sure don’t do you no good, or young Jimmy. Or me.”

  Pete mounted and swung away. Once he glanced back, wishing that he could meet Jimmy Jepson again, when the boy would know it was not the Tonto Kid who killed his grandfather.

  He struck south across the ridge and headed into the desert. His bay pony, dead on the trail, the old sheepman, Tonto Charley, Pecos Jim, and Charley Lee marched past in a ghostly procession. “Crow bait,” said Pete, shaking himself out of his reverie. “When’ll it be my turn?”

  CHAPTER 16

  It was said of Billy Bent of Organ Mountain that he fed more hungry outlaws than any man in New Mexico. Yet Billy Bent himself was no outlaw, rather a hard-working, sprightly person who broke broncos for a living. His ranch in the San Andreas Range was so situated that a hunted man might live there in comparative safety, provided he kept in the background when a chance visitor arrived. And there were few visitors. Billy Bent himself never questioned the stranger within his gates. If it so happened that one of his horses was missing, along with some stranger who had stayed at the ranch, Billy Bent understood. The few regular hands working with Billy Bent did not talk when in town. Billy Bent himself could talk when necessary, but he did not deem it necessary to talk about his itinerant guests. These, who were always willing to work for their board and lodging, never asked for wages. Their wages were sanctuary and occasionally a good horse and rig. Only one man ever betrayed Billy Bent’s hospitality. That man was not Young Pete.

  When the boy who was trying to get away from the stigma of being the Tonto Kid made his way out of Showdown, he had crossed the line into Mexico. There, to his surprise, in a dusty hamlet in Sonora, he ran into an old acquaintance. It was in a retreat, incongruously named the Blue Dog Saloon, that he found Slim Akers. The Blue Dog—locally known as the Perro Azul—was run by a tall, gaunt Missourian of seamed and melancholy face who answered to the name of Long Bill.

  Slim Akers sketched his adventures since leaving Perdition. After hearing Pete’s own history, brought more or less up to date, he invited Pete to go into business with him.

  Young Pete hesitated. He would certainly like to settle down and live respectable. It sure was kind of wearing to keep on the dodge all the time. Aloud he only remarked: “I knew a peace officer once that got salvation. But it took a couple of slugs from a forty-five and a parson to do it.” No one would have guessed from Slim Akers’s air tha
t he sensed the loneliness back of the sixteen-year-old outlaw’s remark.

  “Ever try working for a living?”

  “Quit joshin’. What do you think I been doing? Trouble was something always happened and I had to drift.”

  Slim Akers had a genius for acting on the spur of the moment. “Why not throw in with me and the Blue Dog and Long Bill?”

  That was the beginning of a long and rollicking partnership—long, that is, as time went with Young Pete. Slim put up the money, Long Bill put up the Blue Dog Saloon, and Pete, as he pretended to complain, put up the labor. The Blue Dog, renovated, came into its own. For over eight months the three oddly assorted partners kept house, tended bar, swept out the drunks, and ran the games that took in modest but increasing revenues. Slim was nervy and clever. He had a way of making friends, and an ingratiating good humor that made him popular among Mexicans and foreigners alike. If one of his clients went broke bucking the game, Slim always staked him to a meal and a drink and told him to toddle along home.

  Through motives stronger than a gambler’s mere habit of sizing up his companions, Slim was studying his young partner.

  And Young Pete himself? There was peace in his heart for the first time. It was great, being a partner with real men in a real business. For all Long Bill’s peculiar makeup, there was more back of that glass eye than most folk realized. As for Slim, he, of course, was as white a partner as they made them. Little by little the months went by, and the other and less congenial life receded farther into the background of Pete’s mind. He grew taller, stouter, more sure of himself and of his ability to handle circumstance.

  He missed the country that was second nature to him. Arizona was alive. There was always something doing.

  Maybe after a bit he would sell out to Slim and go into some less spectacular business. Folks ran cattle here. Pete began to dream of future possibilities.

  Among the patrons of the Blue Dog was the superintendent of a silver mine owned and operated by an American syndicate. The superintendent was an Arizona man who kept in touch with events through his hometown paper. Through him Young Pete learned that a cowboy by the name of Dave Hamill had been shot in a quarrel between some valley ranchers and the Hamill brothers of Thunder Mountain. Dave was in the hospital slowly recovering. The newspaper stated that he would be crippled for life. When Young Pete saw the paper, read the article himself, he decided that there was but one thing to do. Dave had befriended him, thrown in with him, cutting himself off from his family and his heritage. Now Dave would need help.

  Pete sold his interest in the Blue Dog to Slim Akers. Slim did not try to stop him from riding north. He understood Pete better than the boy knew. If eventually the cards fell right, Slim intended to take a hand in the game himself.

  The parting was without pomp and circumstance. The Tonto Kid and Slim shook hands—an unusual procedure. Each knew that his luck couldn’t hold out forever. Perhaps there would be a next time—perhaps not.

  For the first time in his life Young Pete had plenty of money. Most of it he gave to the crippled Dave, telling him he had as much more for himself. Dave cussed him cheerfully, and vowed he would pay it back. In spite of the hazard he ran, Young Pete stayed on, chiefly because he liked to be with Dave. However, there was another reason. Pete had no definite plans for the future. He didn’t know what he was going to do. He didn’t care, until Chance took a hand.

  Pete was hiding out in an adobe in the foothills of Thunder Mountain. It had been his custom to ride over, each day, to the railroad hospital in Perris and visit with Dave. One afternoon as Pete was coming from the hospital he met, face to face, one of Yardlaw’s old deputies, Frank Tenny. At the time Tenny was not looking for Young Pete; in fact, the deputy did not realize that it was Pete until the latter had got to his horse. Even had Pete known that Tenny was simply visiting some relatives in Perris, and that he had long since given up the job of deputy sheriff, Pete would not have done other than he did—put several hours between himself and Perris without stop. Again he headed south. As he rode, a name came to him. He had heard the Butterfield hands talk about Billy Bent. With his money pretty well used up, Pete made for the Bent ranch. He wouldn’t show up for a chat with Dave next morning, that was certain. But Dave would understand.

  Once arrived at the Bent ranch in New’ Mexico, Pete asked for a job, turned a played-out horse to pasture, and went to work. Billy Bent knew who he was, but never so much as by the lift of an eyebrow did he disclose the fact. He and Young Pete got along well together. Pete was industrious and a good hand with broncs. In fact, Billy Bent hoped the slim young outlaw would become one of his regular hands. But that was not on the books.

  Several months after his arrival at Billy Bent’s, Young Pete was half way down the eastern slope of the San Andreas, hazing a bunch of horses into the water pen, when he spied far out in the valley a solitary rider coming north. Shoving his bunch of horses into the water pen, Pete noted that the horseman had changed his course, he was now angling toward the San Andreas hills.

  Presently the horseman rode past on the trail leading up to the Bent ranch. A slow grin spread across Pete’s face. The tall, slender, dark-eyed stranger, obviously worn from hard riding, was Mr. Slim Akers. But why so? Pete asked himself. Also, why here?

  Pete hailed his old companion. “Where in hell did you come from?”

  Slim turned, recognized Pete and laughed outright. “Prosperous retired gambler, paying a visit to the States. Didn’t you read it in the papers?”

  “Coroner’s papers, or just newspapers?” Pete eyed his old companion hard. “Where’s Long Bill?”

  “I left Bill holding down the joint.”

  Pete was strangely glad to see his flop-eared partner of the Blue Dog, but he didn’t say much. Slim didn’t either. The card man’s horse was about done. Without a word Pete rode to the water pen, roped out a fresh mount, and led it to Slim. Without a word Slim shifted the saddle to the new mount.

  Billy Bent showed no surprise when an hour later Young Pete rode into the ranch yard accompanied by a slim, weary-looking stranger. Nor did Bent remark the stranger’s horse, although it bore the Bent brand.

  “Speaking of melodeons, kid,” said Slim that night when they were alone, “I saw Buck Yardlaw a couple of days ago. He’s back in New Mexico.” Pete gazed out across the starlit valley. “Some men,” said Mr. Akers thoughtfully, “have a strange idea of pleasure.”

  Pete understood Slim’s roundabout tactics. Somehow or other, Buck Yardlaw had nosed out Pete’s hiding-place, was once again on his trail.

  Young Pete was grateful to Slim for bringing the warning. Yet he wished that Slim had come on any other errand.

  With enough food to last them a couple of days, Young Pete and Slim crossed the San Andreas, taking with them Billy Bent’s good wishes and his regret that Young Pete was obliged to leave hurriedly. All down the range and into the valley Pete remained silent. Disgusted with the way Fate dogged him, Young Pete had about made up his mind to quit trying to ride a straight trail, and throw in with the wild bunch. There were plenty of young fellows who would be only too glad to join with him. Young Pete’s reputation alone would draw to him many a reckless character. With such men at his back, Pete could easily get work with one or the other of the big cattle outfits then at war.

  Yet he wouldn’t let Slim know his plan. Somehow, Slim was different from the others. Young Pete did not realize that he cared more for the card man than ever he had for any person, save, perhaps, Tonto Charley. He wondered how he could part with Slim without seeming ungrateful. He was still wondering two days later after a long, hard ride.

  The reins loose in his hand, Slim glanced sideways at his partner. “Pete, when it comes to conversation you’re about as noisy as a desert terrapin.”

  The Tonto Kid shifted his weight in the saddle, but he said nothing.

  “Remember what the man said when h
e lifted the rooster: ‘I got nothing personal against you, but you’re wanted.’”

  Pete frowned. That was it! He was wanted.

  Yet certainly not through any choice of his own. That was what gave the thing such a strange slant. You set out to take a certain road and before you knew it you were riding into a town in the opposite direction. It was through a certain loyalty that he had won a reputation that he either had to live up to, or get shot. As for settling down, he had tried it several times. But always some unforeseen circumstance had thrust him out onto the trail again. He had a few real friends—Dave Hamill, the Red Doctor, Long Bill, Billy Bent—most of all the card man Slim Akers. But could anyone really do anything for him? Not in the way of getting him straight with the law. Better throw in with the wild bunch and be done with it.

  Pete was mulling this over in his mind when Slim gestured. A tiny black dot, moving slowly across the desert, began to take shape. Suddenly Slim’s horse raised its head and nickered.

  The oncoming traveler stopped and seemed to be trying to locate the origin of the sound.

  “His eyesight ain’t any too good,” commented Pete, “or he’d seen us quite a spell ago. Old, too, I reckon.”

  “Can you really see his teeth from here?”

  “What I mean, did you ever see a young fella punchin’ a burro across the desert?”

  The distant figure dipped into an arroyo and did not reappear.

  “Maybe he broke his neck,” suggested Slim.

  “Or mebby he’s layin’ behind a rock lookin’ down the sights of a rifle.”

  Exercising a natural precaution Slim and Pete sat their horses watching.

  Presently Pete sniffed. “I smell smoke.”

  “He’s getting ready to cremate the body.”

  “That’s interestin’. Let’s go look.”

  In the dry stream bed, a white-bearded old man was squatting before a tiny fire making coffee. He was a big man, slow-moving, with blue eyes slightly filmed. His burro, bearing a small pack of ore, stood just behind him.