The Fourth Western Novel

by H. H. Knibbs

  Kate glared at Bailey, paying no attention to the tread of boots on the boardwalk behind her.

  “You killed Oregon,” she accused in a husky whisper. “Him and me was fixing to get married!”

  Bailey leaned against the bar and hooked one high heel over the brass rail. Rowdy Kate moved her right arm. A metallic click came from under the shawl, and a Colt jumped from its hiding place.

  Bailey slowed his breathing and braced his shoulders to meet the shock of hammering lead. A long arm reached around the corner of the saloon front from the boardwalk, and a big hand cuffed down just as Kate tripped the trigger.

  The six-shooter exploded and jumped from her clutching fingers. Kate screamed like a panther and started to turn. Strong arms circled her from behind and caught her hands, and Silent Sutton carried her from the saloon.

  Kate kicked and tried to tear herself from Sutton’s arms. He lifted her from the ground and tightened his arms until she panted for breath. Then he walked into the courtroom and lowered Rowdy Kate until her high-heeled slippers touched the floor.

  The woman ignored Judge Jordan and whirled like a cat to face the marshal. She glared at him and then suddenly burst into tears.

  “You saved his life,” she sobbed. “He killed my man, and he means to kill you!”

  Jordan rapped for order. Kate controlled her sobs and faced him. All the fight seemed to have left her suddenly, and her voice was husky.

  “Give me a chance, Judge. I’ll get out of town and I won’t ever come back!”

  Jordan stared at her and raised his eyes to Sutton’s face. Sutton nodded slowly and made a little motion toward the door with his head. “There’s no charge against you, Kate. I’m releasing you on your promise to leave town.”

  Kate nodded and turned toward the door. Her arms went around Sutton before he could move away, and she held him for a long moment as she sobbed out her thanks. Then she released him and ran down the boardwalk. Sutton turned from watching her when he heard a scornful laugh.

  Molly Jo threw back her head and passed without a word. Sutton bit his lip as he backed into the court room.

  Molly Jo was passing the Alamo when Bailey stepped out and raised his Stetson. The girl stopped when he blocked her way, and Bailey pointed to the bar with his left hand.

  “Rowdy Kate came down here to kill me with that gun,” he said quietly, and indicated the big six-shooter on the bar. “Sutton slapped the gun aside, and he carried Kate to the court room because he didn’t know what else to do with her, once he picked her up. I thought perhaps you’d want to know.”

  He smiled, tipped his hat again and stepped back into the saloon. Molly Jo clenched her hands as a flush of shame stained her pretty face. Then she squared her shoulders and retraced her steps to the court room.

  Sutton saw her coming but said nothing when she entered the room. She came directly to him and took his hands in a warm, firm grasp.

  “I’m sorry, Silent,” she’ whispered. “Mr. Bailey just told me.”

  “I did my duty,” Sutton answered shortly. “Not to save your friend.”

  Molly Jo dropped his hands at once. “I’m proud to call Mr. Bailey my friend,” she said coldly. “I thought perhaps you should also know that. Good day, Mister Sutton!”

  CHAPTER VI

  ANOTHER HOLE FOR BOOTHILL

  Judge Jordan glanced up from the ledger in which he was making entries. If he’d heard the exchange between Sutton and Molly Jo he didn’t mention it.

  “You want to keep a sharp watch for the Cherokee Kid, Marshal,” he warned. “Bailey sent a man down last night with money to bail him out. If I know human nature, that redskin will be gunning for you.”

  Sutton nodded and made an excuse to check his right-hand gun. The judge watched with a curious interest, comparing this man to those law officers who had preceded him. Most of them hadn’t lacked for courage, but all of them talked too much. Sometimes, it seemed to the judge, Sutton didn’t talk enough.

  “I don’t know what the play will be, but the Cherokee Kid will be in the middle of it,” Jordan continued.

  Sutton nodded again and left the room. He wanted to talk to old Buffalo McGrew down at the jail, and he crossed the wide street to the railroad tracks. A slender figure stepped out from the shadows of the big water tank which served the locomotives at the end of their run. Sutton dipped his right hand down, and as suddenly stopped the swift movement.

  A pair of black glittering eyes glared savagely at him from under a dirty-white bandage. The Cherokee Kid’s greasy black hair hung down over the bandage, making a screen for his eyes. He gripped a cocked six-shooter in his grimy right hand and his mouth twisted as he tried to frame words.

  “I’ve been laying for to kill you, lawman!” The Kid snarled the words through tightly clenched teeth. Teeth that were broken and blackened from tobacco stain. “Then we kill Stud Bailey!”

  Sutton stood perfectly still. He knew that the slightest move would unleash straining muscles that had waited long for this opportunity. He stared intently at the Cherokee Kid, and tried to find the answer to the puzzle. He had connected the Kid with Percentage Parsons, and Parsons had left town. Then the answer came to Sutton with startling clearness.

  Ramrod Bailey had hired the Kid to shoot Colonel Jim Benton, and he, Silent Sutton, had killed Ramrod. Saunders and Bowman had been members of the Parsons gang, and Stud had killed them both. The Kid was also a member of the same gang, but Stud and Percentage were partners in the trail-driving deal.

  There was something else behind the breed’s desire for revenge. Sutton recalled the swarthy features of Rowdy Kate. The Kid had said that after killing Sutton, Bailey was next. Kate had been engaged to marry Saunders. It all added up to loyalty to those the Kid had considered his friends, and he would hold to that loyalty.

  “I could have killed you,” Sutton said softly. “But I allowed you to live.”

  “You make the big mistake,” the Kid sneered. “Me, I will not make that same mistake!”

  Sutton knew that as long as men talked, they wouldn’t kill. If he could keep Cherokee talking, McGrew might hear. But Sutton couldn’t think of anything to say!

  The Kid skinned back his thin lips and raised his six-shooter. Sutton saw the finger tighten inside the trigger-guard. He told himself the Kid couldn’t possibly miss at twenty feet, and that a man could die but once. If this was his time, there was nothing much to lose by taking a chance.

  Sutton heard the heavy gun roar just as he threw himself to the side. He felt the tug of a bullet across his ribs on the left side, and he would have sworn that there had been a stuttering echo to the explosion of the Kid’s weapon.

  Sutton hit the ground and rolled up with his gun, the hammer eased back to beat the Kid to the second shot.

  His jaw sagged when he saw Cherokee lying on his back under the dripping water tank.

  Sutton stared at the Kid’s face. A hole had been drilled between the Kid’s close-set eyes. He turned and stared at the Alamo Saloon across the tracks.

  Bailey stood there with a smoking six-shooter. It was the same gun Kate had taken from the body of Saunders, and which Sutton had taken from Kate.

  Sutton holstered his gun. It would come hard to thank Bailey, and Sutton was so intent he didn’t see Molly Jo watching from the Longhorn Corral: He crossed the street, cuffed back his Stetson and spoke to Bailey in a gruff voice.

  “Thanks for saving my life, Bailey. I won’t forget it!”

  “Please do,” Bailey said with a cold smile. “I always pay my debts, if it will make you feel any better. You saved mine, so this cleans the slate. Think nothing of it, Sutton. And that isn’t all. I don’t allow anyone to trespass on my private preserves!”

  The smile fled from his dark face as he spoke the last words almost savagely. He was telling Sutton that he, Bailey, was saving the marshal for his
own gun, when the time was right.

  Sutton remembered the message Bailey had sent him by Tilghman. “I’ll be at the funeral this afternoon,” he said quietly. “That’s the law, and I’m rodding it!”

  Sutton made his accustomed rounds, ate lunch at a little restaurant, then walked slowly down Front Street to the jail. He watched long processions of cowboys ride across the toll bridge from the cow-camps out on the flats of the Arkansas River. Every holster was empty.

  Buffalo McGrew grunted in his bushy beard. “Don’t let those empty holsters fool you, Silent,” he warned. “Most of those cowboys are Texans, and that means Texas pistols hid out under their shirts.”

  Sutton shrugged. The cowboys were obeying the letter of the law, which was more than he’d expected. They were hard men in a raw new land, but in their own way they’d respect the dead.

  Formaldehyde Smith had made two trips to Boothill with his black-covered wagon. A few soldiers from the fort had attended Sarge Billings’ funeral. There had been no mourners for Jake Bowman, but the Army chaplain had said a brief prayer.

  It would be different with Ramrod Bailey. He’d enjoyed a certain popularity with the wild bunch. There’d be a regular preacher and the sky-pilot would probably double and say a prayer for Saunders.

  Sutton crossed the street to the Occidental Hotel and went to his room. He changed to a clean white shirt and stared at his coat which hung from a hook. Then he shrugged into the garment and dropped both hands to his holsters. A man should show respect for the dead, but he could also split the difference and leave his coat unbuttoned.

  Buffalo McGrew was waiting at the Longhorn Corral with two saddled horses when Sutton left the hotel. They mounted and followed the crowd to the unhallowed plot of ground known as Hell’s Half Acre.

  It lacked a quarter of an hour to two o’clock when Sutton and McGrew drew rein at a tie-rail and swung to the ground. After tethering their horses, Sutton unbuckled his gun-belts and hung them on his saddle-horn.

  McGrew stared in amazement. “All the wild bunch will be here, Silent.”

  Sutton raised his head and looked across the mounded graves. McGrew followed his glance and caught his breath sharply. Stud Bailey stood near an open grave—and there were no gun-belts on the gambler’s hips. A score of hard-faced gun fighters stood behind Bailey, and none had hardware in sight.

  Rowdy Kate and a dozen dance hall girls were crying softly. Four men were lowering a pine box into a grave with their lass-ropes, and a tall, solemn man was reading the service. Oregon Saunders had also been popular with his own kind.

  Sutton turned to stare down the dirt road when the creak of wheels drowned the sonorous voice of the preacher. Formaldehyde Smith was leading a long procession with his black wagon. Buggies and buckboards followed the wagon of the dead, and then came a long line of cowboys on the horses they’d ridden on the long trail drives.

  Most of them wore rumpled coats they’d dug out of their warsacks, and nearly all were solemnly drunk. Most of them would face spitting guns without fear, but a funeral was something different, and required the kind of courage that came out of a bottle.

  Smith tooled his team of blacks close to the open grave and removed his hat. He was a tall, cadaverous man with a sallow skin, dressed entirely in black broadcloth. A powerful hunchback hooked the reins around the whip-socket and limped to the rear of the wagon.

  Sutton watched the two men remove the coffin, and then the marshal caught his breath quickly. Gorgeous Mary was alighting from a buggy. She advanced slowly to the grave and took her place beside Stud Bailey.

  Any surprise he felt was not for Gorgeous Mary. Bailey was staring at the occupant of another buggy, and Sutton turned his head. The marshal set his jaw when Molly Jo Benton stepped from the buggy and started toward him, and he waited until she spoke softly. “I had to come, Silent. Please escort me.”

  Sutton took her arm and walked slowly across the burying plot. They stopped at the foot of the grave, and Sutton removed his hat. Every man in the crowd followed his example. The preacher opened his book and began to read in a dear soft voice.

  “He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword!”

  Sutton was startled, and raised his eyes to Bailey. The gambler was staring at him with fixed intensity.

  The preacher droned through the service and closed his book. The coffin was lowered into the open grave by four men dressed in the rough garb of the long trails. Bailey leaned over and picked up a clod of fresh earth.

  “Vaya con Dios,” he murmured softly, and dropped the clod into the grave.

  “Go thou with God,” the preacher repeated in English.

  Gorgeous Mary’s hand darted down to her bosom and came out again with a vicious flaming roar. The spitting gun was kicked from her hand just as it exploded. Molly Jo Benton crouched at the foot of the grave with a snub-nosed .38 in her right hand.

  Bailey hadn’t straightened up fully after saying his farewell to his brother. A man coughed just behind the gambler and fell back against the crowd. Both Bailey and Sutton jerked around to see who had fired the third shot.

  Several dancehall girls were struggling with Rowdy Kate near the Saunders grave. Bill Tilghman came through the crowd and wrested the gun from Kate’s hand. Then he led her to a buggy and climbed in beside her.

  Bailey stood perfectly still. The wounded man was being helped to a buggy, and Mary was staring at Molly Jo and holding her numbed right hand. Molly Jo’s bullet had struck the barrel of Mary’s weapon without touching her hand.

  The preacher spoke solemnly. “I come not to bring you peace, but a sword,” he quoted. “My friends, I ask you all to respect the dead!”

  Sutton and Bailey were both reading sign with unerring ability. Kate had meant to kill the gambler, and only the fact that he’d stooped to pick up a clod of earth had saved his life.

  Bailey and Sutton could both read the sign up to this point, but they found a fork in the trail when they came to Molly Jo. Had the Texas girl fired to protect Sutton, knowing that some members of her sex wouldn’t play the game according to the rules that governed men?

  Sutton watched Bailey and pondered another angle. The gambler had warned him not to come to the funeral. Bailey hadn’t tried to cloud the sign about his own intentions. He’d told the marshal that he was saving him for his own gun, and had killed the Cherokee Kid for what he had called trespass.

  “Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust!”

  The soft droning voice of the preacher brought the interrupted service to a close. Bailey took Mary’s arm and led her to a buggy. Then he straightened and saluted Molly Jo, put on his Stetson and stepped in beside Mary.

  Sutton returned the salute gravely. Molly Jo clung to his arm as he walked back to his horse and took down his shell-studded belts. She watched as he buckled them around his lean hips.

  “Silent,” she said softly, “can’t we be the same old friends?”

  Sutton straightened and evaded her eyes. His lips tightened to make a straight line, and Molly Jo knew what he meant when he uttered one word. “Amigo!”

  “Amigo” meant friend, and that was what Bailey had called her. Texas men never dallied on their friends.

  Formaldehyde Smith was rattling back toward town in his black wagon. The preacher was craning toward them, and he removed his flat-crowned hat and held it before him with both hands. Then he bowed and spoke softly to Molly Jo.

  “Greater love hath no man, than he lay down his life for a friend. Our wayward sister meant to kill the marshal, and you were prepared to protect him with your own life. Thank you for not wounding Mary, and I was praying for your accuracy!”

  Sutton listened intently. So that was where the trail had forked. “Rowdy Kate was out to get Bailey,” he muttered. “And Gorgeous was there to beat Kate to the gun!”

  “The female of the species is deadlier than the ma
le,” the preacher reminded with a sad smile. “Ask Miss Benton to explain this feminine triangle.”

  “Rowdy Kate meant to kill Mr. Bailey!” Molly Jo murmured. “But Mary meant to kill you, Silent. Women are that way when they have a hidden motive. They can see through another woman, but each of them thinks she’s concealing her own secrets.”

  “You did this for me,” Sutton almost whispered, and he swallowed hard. Then his face hardened, and his eyes blazed from between narrowed lids. “What about Stud Bailey?”

  “The power of suggestion,” the preacher explained. “Someone suggested that he say his farewell in the Mexican manner. They always drop a clod of earth into the open grave, upon the coffin.”

  Sutton turned slowly and stared at Molly Jo. His cold blue eyes asked a silent question, and the girl nodded soberly.

  “It was my suggestion,” she admitted honestly. “I was watching from the Longhorn Corral when Bailey saved your life this morning. He snatched up the pistol you took away from Kate. You mustn’t fight him, Silent!”

  Sutton forgot he was in a graveyard. His mind went back to the killer near the water tank by the jail. The Cherokee Kid had been shot squarely between the eyes—at one hundred yards!

  Had Bailey shot to save him? Sutton smiled with the corners of his hard mouth. Bailey had paid off a debt which had irked him, and had saved Sutton for his own gun.

  Molly Jo offered the preacher a ride back to town in her buggy. Sutton hung a boot in his left stirrup, mounted his horse and tipped his hat without speaking. Molly Jo turned to hide the hurt in her brown eyes.

  Muffled reports of six-shooters echoed from town. Sutton turned his head to place the direction. His face grew grim when he realized a gunfight was taking place near the plaza. Several buggies were standing near the Dodge House and a crowd had gathered at a vacant lot near the hotel.

  Sutton slid his horse to a stop stepped down a-running and tore a way through the crowd. His six-shooter jumped to his hand when he saw Bailey. The gambler’s right hand was hanging at his side, gripping a snub-nosed Colt .45.