“But …” said Harrison.
“He’ll understand,” the man assured him. “You won’t have to draw no pictures.”
“All right, I’ll tell him first thing I get to town,” Harrison promised. “And now that we got that off our chest, how about some business? Need any pots or pans? Got some …”
The horseman in the black coat spurred forward, big and burly on his shaggy mount, face red with sudden anger.
“You go getting gay,” he shouted, “and we’ll shoot your pans so full of holes you can put them up for sieves.”
“Shut up!” yelled the first man, angrily.
“No stinking peddler can go getting gay with …”
The man’s words broke off and he coughed and swayed jerkily in his saddle. From the barren hilltop that rose like a bald man’s head above the brushy hillside came the snarling chuckle of a high power rifle.
The first man spun his horse around with a vicious hand, raised his six-gun in a flashing arc. From the ridge the rifle coughed and a bumbling thing howled above the men grouped on the trail and crashed into the brush.
On his feet, Harrison fought the rearing team with one hand, clawed for one of his six-guns with the other. A .45 crashed beside the wagon and out of the corner of his eye, Harrison saw the bullet raise a trail of dust clouds as it ground-skipped across the ridge-top.
The rifle spat like an angry cat and the horse of the wounded man bolted, the black-coated rider doubled up in his saddle as if a taloned fist were tearing at his vitals. He bounced like a wobbly sack of oats as the horse tore into the brush and wallowed down the hillside.
The man in the blue shirt followed. The man in the red shirt was already gone. When Harrison cleared his gun the trail was empty. Quieting the maddened team, he stood and listened to the crashing of the underbrush on the hillside far below.
Turning to the ridge above him, he saw two riders angling down toward him. One was tall and skinny as a scarecrow and rode without a hat. The other was broad and solid in the saddle and wore a hat that made up in bulk for the one the other didn’t wear.
“Ma!” Harrison shouted. “Ma Elden!”
Ma Elden shouted back. “You all right, Johnny?”
“They got my hat,” yelled Harrison.
He got down from the rig and waited for them, hunting up his hat, trying to brush off the dirt with an awkward sleeve, staring ruefully at the ragged hole angling through the crown.
“Ten bucks,” he told himself. “Ten whole cartwheels.”
The horses reached the trail and Ma Elden eased herself out of the saddle, waddled heavily forward, hunting in the pocket of her shirt for makings.
“What did they want?” she asked.
“Wanted me to tell Marshal Haynes to turn somebody loose.”
Ma nodded. “Jim Westman. No account rascal. Shot the town up some the other night. Plugged Jack Collins dead center.”
“Kill him?”
“Bet your boots,” said Ma. “Collins wasn’t much good himself and probably wanted killing, but Sundown kind of likes to dish out its own justice. Don’t appreciate foreigners coming in and doing it for them.”
She poured tobacco into a paper, coaxed it into shape.
Harrison spoke to the skinny man still sitting his horse.
“Howdy, Hatless.”
Hatless Joe chuckled softly, tawny mustaches waggling. “Kind of tickled up that pudgy feller some, didn’t I?”
“If he lives,” said Harrison, “it will be a miracle.”
Ma licked the quirly deftly. “Horse thieves,” she said. “Horse thieves, sure as I was born. County’s plumb infested with them.”
Harrison went back to the man in jail. “How come,” he asked, “if this Westman killed a man he isn’t over in the county jail at Rattlesnake?”
Ma snorted. “Cause they’d turn him loose, that’s why. Get the judge all likkered up and load the jury with his friends. That is, if the sheriff didn’t sort of forget and let him go before he ever got to trial. Westman worked for Dunham at the Bar X for a while, then drifted over to Rattlesnake and since then’s been living without visible means of support, if you don’t look too close.”
“The way it is,” said Hatless, “we figure on giving him a fair trial, then take him out and hang him.”
Ma snapped a match across her thumbnail, lit the quirly.
“Westman one of the horse thieves you spoke about?” asked Harrison.
“Could be,” Ma told him. “Don’t rightly know, of course. He’s got all the earmarks, though. Gang’s got its hideout somewhere in the badlands up near Rattlesnake. Been cleaning out the county.”
“Newest thing in stealing,” explained Hatless. “Lifting cows is downright old fashioned now. Horses move faster and bring better prices.”
Harrison nodded gravely. “Been hearing some about it. Most everyone has lost some horses, seems. But folks are so stirred up with this county splitting business that you don’t hear much of any talk but that.”
“It’s about time we got shut of that courthouse bunch up at Rattlesnake,” Ma said, curtly. “Just a bunch of cutthroats. Me, I been working real hard for setting up a new county, so’s we can get some decent government. Trouble is, folks seem to be afraid of Dunham. Him and the Bar X outfit is plumb set against this two county business. Says we’ve got along all right so far, so what’s the sense of changing.”
Hatless guffawed. “Getting along all right the way Dunham wants it. Him with the biggest ranch in the whole dang country and bringing in a batch of men that he don’t need around each election time just so they can vote.”
Ma moved toward the rear of the wagon. “Got a new horse, I see.”
“Picked him up the other day,” Harrison told her. “Come sort of high, but once I laid eyes on him …”
“Yeah, I know,” said Ma. She eyed him closely. “When you going to quit this peddling and get a business of your own?”
“Pretty soon,” Harrison told her. “Figured maybe I’d do it right away and then …”
“And then you saw this horse.”
Harrison grinned. “I call him Satan. Good name for him, don’t you think? Black as night. Best horse I ever saw.”
“The Smith general store at Sundown is up for sale, I hear,” said Ma. “Cheap, too. Jake is figuring on moving farther west. Got an itchy foot.”
“Haven’t got the money, now. Another year or so.”
“Might loan you some,” said Ma.
Hatless chuckled. “She’d do most anything …”
Ma raged at him. “You keep your trap shut, you old buzzard. Ain’t I got trouble enough without you butting into everything I say?”
Harrison put the damaged hat on his head, reached for the reins.
“Thanks for happening along,” he said.
“Was hunting some cows when we heard the shot,” said Hatless. “Figured we’d better see what was going on.”
“You’re coming out to the ranch for Sunday dinner, ain’t you?” asked Ma.
“Sure,” said Harrison. “Always do when I’m around.”
“Carolyn will be home,” Ma told him. “Coming home tonight.”
“All the way from St. Louis,” said Hatless. “She’s been away to school. Mighty fancy …”
“He knows that as well as you do,” Ma snapped.
She said to Harrison: “Sing Lee will have some of that chicken fixed the way you like it. That is, if he’s sober.”
“He’s taken to making his own, now,” said Hatless. “Beats forty rod all hollow. Got to tie it down before you try to drink it.”
Harrison climbed aboard the wagon.
“See you Sunday,” he said.
He clucked to the team and the wagon rolled, canvas flapping in the wind, faint rattle of pans coming from the rear, the one dry wheel
screaming in protest.
Two miles from Sundown he overtook the man walking along the trail and leading a horse.
Harrison pulled up the rig.
“What’s the matter, Doc?”
Doc Falconer grinned lop-sidedly. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you.”
He climbed to the seat beside Harrison, set his medicine kit on the floor, holding onto the reins of the horse.
“You and the horse have an argument?” asked Harrison.
“Horse went lame,” explained Doc. “And I didn’t have the heart to ride him. Take it easy, will you. Don’t want to make it harder on him than I have to.”
“Somebody sick?”
Doc shook his head. “Been out to my gold mine, Johnny.”
“You really got a gold mine, Doc?”
Doc Falconer’s eyes squeezed together, making tiny wrinkles of dry humor at their corners.
“Nope, but folks think I have. Figure I got a lot more cash than I really have. Figure nobody could make that much cash just doctoring.”
He squinted along the dusty trail. “Folks should know how little I have just from the way they pay me,” he declared.
The dry clop-clop of the horses’ hoofs sounded like faint, dull explosions in the dust. An insect sang stridently in the limp air of late afternoon. Fall flowers nodded beside the trail.
“When are you going to quit this roving life and settle down?” asked Doc.
“Someday,” said Harrison casting his eyes down.
“That Carolyn is a darn fine girl,” said Doc.
“She’s coming home tonight,” Harrison told him.
“Knew that,” said Doc. “Figured you’d be along.”
He hummed beneath his breath.
“Wonder if you’d do something for me, Johnny?”
“Sure would,” said Harrison. “That is, if I can.”
“Only one around here that could do it,” Doc told him. “Only one that knows enough to keep his mouth shut. Wonder,” said Doc, “if you’d keep a letter for me and forget you ever saw it.”
“Sure,” agreed Harrison.
“I may come and ask you for it,” said Doc, “and again I might not. If I don’t come back in five days or so you mail it.”
“Sounds like you figure on something happening to you,” said Harrison.
“Something may,” Doc told him.
“You usually camp at the spring below town, don’t you?” asked Doc.
Harrison nodded.
“I’ll get off there and walk in the rest of the way,” said Doc. “Thanks for the lift.”
“About that letter …”
“I’ll give it to you in the morning.”
At the spring, Harrison stood for a long time beside the wagon, watching Doc and the horse continue their slow way up the trail to town.
Harrison shook his head. “Queer jasper,” he told himself.
Folks in Sundown didn’t like Doc Falconer … mostly because they didn’t understand or appreciate the dry humor that made the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
And that gold mine yarn. To Doc himself it was just another joke, to many of Sundown’s citizens it was actual truth … how Doc would go riding off and be gone for several days, then come back and pay up bills that had been accumulating in the stores for weeks.
Harrison shook his head again. It was no business of his … Doc’s gold mines or Doc’s letters.
Hurriedly he made camp, watering the horses and picketing them out, spending an extra moment with Satan, who whickered and nipped playfully at his shoulder.
“Good horse,” said Harrison and gave him an extra pat, then hurried up the trail to town.
Marshal Albert Haynes was sprawled in a chair behind his desk, picking with a knife at a sliver in his finger.
“Howdy, Johnny,” he said. “Somebody steal some pans?”
“Nope,” said Harrison. “Got a message for you.”
“Shoot,” the marshal invited.
“Some gents stopped me out on the trail with guns. Told me to tell you that if you didn’t turn Jim Westman loose they’d come in and tend to it themselves.”
The marshal bounced up in his chair, stabbed the knife deep into the desk.
“Oh, they did, did they?”
He glared at Harrison. “You go back and tell them hombres to go plumb to hell. I ain’t turning loose no murderer.”
“I’m not telling them a thing,” said Harrison. “They didn’t ask me to. They told me what to tell you and you’ve said no and that’s an end of it.”
Haynes hunched forward. “I ain’t so sure that’s the end of it,” he snarled. “Don’t look good to me, you coming and telling me all this bosh about being held up and told a message for me. Don’t look good …”
“Why, you —!” Even as he spoke, Harrison moved forward, one swift step that brought him towering above the desk. One powerful hand shot out and grabbed the marshal by the shoulder, hauled him to his feet. The other hand, doubled into a sledge hammer fist, moved even as the marshal, face twisted with fear and rage, clawed desperately for gun-butts.
The fist smacked with a hollow sound, a thudding sound that almost echoed in the room. Pain shot through Harrison’s wrist with the force of the blow and he felt Haynes go limp within his grasp. He opened his hand and the man slid down behind the desk and out of sight.
Harrison turned on his heel and walked out onto the street.
Dusk had come and the first lamps of evening were being lit in the business houses that ran along the single street. Two horses stood slack-hipped at the hitching rail in front of the Silver Dollar. Harrison glanced at them as he went past, his eyes barely sliding along them, then stopping in surprise. A sorrel and a blaze-faced bay!
He halted and stared at the horses. Possible, but not likely. Not likely that two other men would ride a sorrel and blaze-faced bay.
He swung around quickly, but the saloon’s porch was empty. From inside came the low buzz of voices and the clink of glasses on the bar.
For a moment, Harrison stood in indecision, then shrugged.
“No business of mine,” he told himself. “I’m getting out before that gang starts hemstitching this town with their forty-fives.”
Rapidly he strode along the sidewalk. The smell of ham and eggs from a restaurant hurried his gait—he recalled the campfire to be built, the supper to be cooked.
There was a light in Doc Falconer’s office over the bank and inside his general store Jake Smith leaned elbows on the counter and talked with a rancher in to buy a month’s supplies. Nice business, Harrison thought. And Ma said it could be gotten cheap. Only I bought a horse instead.
And socked the marshal, said his accusing mind. That’s a hell of a way to start business in a town.
The horses nickered at him companionably as he came up to the wagon.
“Hello, fellers,” he told them. “How’s everything?”
They stamped at him, champing grass.
Only there was something wrong, something that it took a long minute for him to place. Then he knew.
There were only two horses, the team.
Satan was gone!
Heart thumping, he strode toward the place where he’d picketed the black.
Maybe he just pulled the pin and wandered off. Maybe …
But the pin was there, planted solidly in the ground, with the rope trailing from it. He picked up the rope and hauled it in, ran exploring fingers across the free end.
Cut! Slashed with a knife!
Satan had been stolen!
Chapter Two
A Gun Deal from the Bottom
The sorrel and the blaze-faced bay were gone from the hitching rack in front of the Silver Dollar, but there was some excitement going on up the street in front of the Eagle hotel
.
For a moment Harrison hesitated, trying to decide whether to go inside the saloon and ask about the men or to hurry up the street in hopes that he might find some trace of them. Ben, the bartender, he remembered, was a surly hombre and probably wouldn’t tell him a thing.
After all, he told himself, standing there in the spatter of light that came from the saloon’s dirty window, he had no evidence the two men had taken Satan; no evidence, even, that the men were the ones who had held him up that afternoon. He had only seen the horses … and other men might ride horses that looked exactly the same.
Slowly, Harrison turned from the saloon, started up the street.
“Johnny!”
He swung around. Ma Elden had stepped out of the crowd in front of the hotel and was waving at him. And suddenly he remembered … remembered a thing that had been shaken from his mind. Carolyn was coming in tonight … coming on the stage.
He turned around, walked slowly back toward the crowd in front of the hotel. Ma hurried out to meet him. She was upset, he saw … upset and a little angry.
“Johnny, I’ve been expecting you. And the stage is late. What do you think has happened?”
“Had some trouble, maybe,” said Harrison. “Broke a wheel or something.”
But even as he said it, he knew the explanation was a weak one. Jack Carter, who drove the stage, prided himself on the time he made. And the road was good.
“I just know …”
“Listen,” snapped Harrison.
From up the street came the faint sound of pounding hoofs and rattling wheels.
“It’s him,” someone shouted. “It’s Carter and the stage!”
Ma beamed happily. “Maybe there ain’t nothing wrong, after all. Maybe it’s just …”
Her words cut off and one hand went to her mouth. The stage had swung around the corner and was coming down the street, not more than a block away, the horses at a dead run, the stage swaying drunkenly, the long reins dragging in the dust, coiling and looping like snakes behind the frightened horses.
A man was slumped across the high dashboard, where he had lodged when he had fallen from the seat. His head rolled limply in the faint lamplight spearing from the stores and his dangling arms swung like pendulums with the swaying of the coach.
The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume Two Page 7