Now they all knew he was not the manner of man they had supposed. Justice can be a harsh taskmaster, but Western men know their kind, and the lines were strongly drawn. When you have slept beside a man on the trail, worked with him and with others like him, you come to know your kind. In the trail of the man Chat Lock, each rider of the posse was seeing the sort of man he knew, the sort he could respect. The thought was nagging and insubstantial, but each of them felt a growing doubt, even Short and Kesney, who were most obdurate and resentful.
They knew how a back-shooter lived and worked. He had his brand on everything he did. The mark of this man was the mark of a man who did things, who stood upon his own two feet, and who, if he died, died facing his enemy. To the unknowing, such conclusions might seem doubtful, but the men of the desert knew their kind.
The mill was dark and silent, a great looming hulk beside the stream and the still pool of the millpond. They dismounted and eased close. Then, according to a prearranged plan, they scattered and surrounded it. From behind a lodgepole pine, Hardin called out.
“We’re comin’ in, Lock! We want you!”
The challenge was harsh and ringing. Now that the moment had come, something of the old suspense returned. They listened to the water babbling as it trickled over the old dam, and then they moved. At their first step, they heard Lock’s voice.
“Don’t you come in here, boys! I don’t want to kill none of you, but you come an’ I will! That was a fair shootin’! You’ve got no call to come after me!”
Hardin hesitated, chewing his mustaches. “You shot him in the back!” he yelled.
“No such thing! He was a-facin’ the bar when I come in. He seen I was heeled, an’ he drawed as he turned. I beat him to it. My first shot took him in the side an’ he was knocked back against the bar. My second hit him in the back, an’ the third missed as he was a-fallin’. You hombres didn’t see that fight.”
The sound of his voice trailed off, and the water chuckled over the stones and then sighed to a murmur among the trees. The logic of Lock’s statement struck them all. It could have been that way.
A long moment passed, and then Hardin spoke up again.
“You come in and we’ll give you a trial. Fair an’ square.”
“How?” Lock’s voice was a challenge. “You ain’t got no witness. Neither have I. Ain’t nobody to say what happened there but me, as Johnny ain’t alive.”
“Johnny was a mighty good man, an’ he was our friend!” Short shouted. “No murderin’ squatter is goin’ to move into this country an’ start shootin’ folks up!”
There was no reply to that, and they waited, hesitating a little. Neill leaned disconsolately against the tree where he stood. After all, Lock might be telling the truth. How did they know? There was no use hanging a man unless you were sure.
“Gab!” Short’s comment was explosive. “Let’s move in, Hardin! Let’s get him! He’s lyin’! Nobody could beat Johnny, we know that!”
“Webb was a good man in his own country!” Lock shouted in reply. The momentary silence that followed held them, and then, almost as a man they began moving in. Neill did not know exactly when or why he started. Inside, he felt sick and empty. He was fed up on the whole business, and every instinct told him this man was no back-shooter.
Carefully they moved, for they knew this man was handy with a gun. Suddenly Hardin’s voice rang out.
“Hold it, men! Stay where you are until daybreak! Keep your eyes open an’ your ears. If he gets out of here, he’ll be lucky, an’ in the daylight we can get him, or fire the mill!”
Neill sank to a sitting position behind a log. Relief was a great warmth that swept over him. There wouldn’t be any killing tonight. Not tonight, at least.
Yet, as the hours passed, his ears grew more and more attuned to the darkness. A rabbit rustled, a pinecone dropped from a tree, the wind stirred high in the pine tops, and the few stars winked through, lonesomely peering down upon the silent men.
With daylight they moved in and they went through the doors and up to the windows of the old mill, and it was empty and still. They stared at each other, and Short swore viciously, the sound booming in the echoing, empty room.
“Let’s go down to the Sorenson place,” Kimmel said. “He’ll be there.”
And somehow they were all very sure he would be. They knew he would be because they knew him for their kind of man. He would retreat no farther than his own ranch, his own hearth. There, if they were to have him and hang him, they would have to burn him out, and men would die in the process. Yet with these men there was no fear. They felt the drive of duty, the need for maintaining some law in this lonely desert and mountain land. There was only doubt that had grown until each man was shaken with it. Even Short, who the markers by the trail had angered, and Kesney, who was the best tracker among them, even better than Hardin, had been irritated by it, too.
* * * * *
The sun was up and warming them when they rode over the brow of the hill and looked down into the parched basin where the Sorenson place lay.
But it was no parched basin. Hardin drew up so suddenly his startled horse almost reared. It was no longer the Sorenson place.
The house had been patched and rebuilt. The roof had spots of new lumber upon it, and the old pole barn had been made watertight and strong. A new corral had been built, and to the right of the house was a fenced-in garden of vegetables, green and pretty after the desert of the day before.
Thoughtfully, and in a tight cavalcade, they rode down the hill. The stock they saw was fat and healthy, and the corral was filled with horses.
“Been a lot of work done here,” Kimmel said. And he knew how much work it took to make such a place attractive.
“Don’t look like no killer’s place!” Neill burst out. Then he flushed and drew back, embarrassed by his statement. He was the youngest of these men and the newest in the country.
No response was forthcoming. He had but stated what they all believed. There was something stable and lasting and something real and genuine in this place.
“I been waitin’ for you.”
The remark from behind them stiffened every spine. Chat Lock was here, behind them. And he would have a gun on them, and, if one of them moved, he could die.
“My wife’s down there fixin’ breakfast. I told her I had some friends comin’ in. A posse huntin’ a killer. I’ve told her nothin’ about this trouble. You ride down there now, you keep your guns. You eat your breakfast, and then, if you feel bound and determined to get somebody for a fair shootin’, I’ll come out with anyone of you or all of you, but I ain’t goin’ to hang. I ain’t namin’ no one man because I don’t want to force no fight on anybody. You ride down there now.”
They rode, and in the dooryard they dismounted. Neill turned then, and for the first time he saw Chat Lock.
He was a big man, compact and strong. His rusty brown hair topped a brown, sun-hardened face, but with the warmth in his eyes it was a friendly sort of face. Not at all what he expected.
Hardin looked at him. “You made some changes here.”
“I reckon.” Lock gestured toward the well. “Dug by hand. My wife worked the windlass.” He looked around at them, taking them in with one sweep of his eyes. “I’ve got the grandest woman in the world.”
Neill felt hot tears in his eyes suddenly and busied himself loosening his saddle girth to keep the others from seeing. That was the way he felt about Mary.
The door opened suddenly, and they turned. The sight of a woman in this desert country was enough to make any many turn. What they saw was not what they expected. She was young, perhaps in her middle twenties, and she was pretty, with brown wavy hair and gray eyes and a few freckles on her nose. “Won’t you come in? Chat told me he had some friends coming for breakfast, and it isn’t often we have anybody in.”
Heavy-footed and
shamefaced they walked up on the porch. Kesney saw the care and neatness with which the hard-hewn planks had been fitted. Here, too, was the same evidence of lasting, of permanence, of strength. This was the sort of man a country needed. He thought the thought before he fixed his attention on it, and then he flushed.
Inside, the room was as neat as the girl herself. How did she get the floors so clean? Before he thought, he phrased the question. She smiled.
“Oh, that was Chat’s idea. He made a frame and fastened a piece of pumice stone to a stick. It cuts into all the cracks and keeps them very clean.”
The food smelled good, and, when Hardin looked at his hands, Chat motioned to the door.
“There’s water an’ towels if you want to wash up.”
Neill rolled up his sleeves and dipped his hands in the basin. The water was soft, and that was rare in this country, and the soap felt good on his hands. When he had dried his hands, he walked in. Hardin and Kesney had already seated themselves, and Lock’s wife was pouring coffee.
“Men,” Lock said, “this is Mary. You’ll have to tell her your names. I reckon I missed them.”
Mary. Neill looked up. She was Mary, too. He looked down at his plate again and ate a few bites. When he looked up, she was smiling at him.
“My wife’s name is Mary,” he said. “She’s a fine girl.”
“She would be. But why don’t you bring her over? I haven’t talked with a woman in so long I wouldn’t know how it seemed. Chat, why haven’t you invited them over?”
Chat mumbled something, and Neill stared at his coffee. The men ate in uncomfortable silence. Hardin’s eyes kept shifting around the room. That pumice stone. He’d have to fix up a deal like that for Jane. She was always fussing about the work of keeping a board floor clean. That washstand inside, too, with pipes made of hollow logs to carry the water out so she wouldn’t have to be running back and forth. That was an idea, too.
They finished their meal reluctantly. One by one they trooped outside, avoiding each other’s eyes. Chat Lock did not keep them waiting. He walked down among them.
“If there’s to be shootin’,” he said quietly, “let’s get away from the house.”
Hardin looked up. “Lock, was that right, what you said at the mill? Was it a fair shootin’?”
Lock nodded. “It was. Johnny Webb prodded me. I didn’t want trouble, nor did I want to hide behind the fact I wasn’t packin’ an iron. I walked over to the saloon, not aimin’ for trouble. I aimed to give him a chance if he wanted it. He drawed, an’ I beat him. It was a fair shootin’.”
“All right.” Hardin nodded. “That’s good enough for me. I reckon you’re a different sort of man than any of us figured.”
“Let’s mount up,” Short said. “I got fence to build.”
Chat Lock put his hand on Hardin’s saddle. “You folks come over sometime. She gets right lonesome. I don’t mind it so much, but you know how womenfolks are.”
“Sure,” Hardin said, “sure thing.”
“An’ you bring your Mary over,” he told Neill.
Neill nodded, his throat full. As they mounted the hill, he glanced back. Mary Lock was standing in the doorway, waving to them, and the sunlight was very bright in the clean-swept dooryard.
THE END
About the Editor
Jon Tuska is the author of numerous books about the American West as well as editor of several short story collections, Billy The Kid: His Life And Legend (Greenwood Press, 1994) and The Western Story: A Chronological Treasury (University of Nebraska Press, 1995) among them. Together with his wife Vicki Piekarski, Tuska co-founded Golden West Literary Agency that primarily represents authors of Western fiction and Western Americana. They edit and co-publish forty titles a year in two prestigious series of new hardcover Western novels and story collections, the Five Star Westerns and the Circle V Westerns. They also co-edited the Encyclopedia Of Frontier And Western Fiction (McGraw-Hill, 1983), The Max Brand Companion (Greenwood Press, 1996), The Morrow Anthology Of Great Western Short Stories (Morrow, 1997), and The First Five Star Western Corral (Five Star Westerns, 2000). Tuska has also been editing an annual series of short novel collections, Stories Of The Golden West, of which there are seven volumes.
Golden Gunmen Page 13