Laramie, with one loaded cartridge left in his last gun, leaned back against the wall, out of range of the bunk room.
“Come on out, Rawley,” he called. “Harrison’s dead. Yore game’s played out.”
The hidden gunman spat like an infuriated cat.
“No, my game ain’t played out!” he yelled in a voice edged with blood- madness. “Not till I’ve wiped you out, you mangy stray. But before I kill you, I want you to know that you ain’t the first Laramie I’ve sent to hell! I’d of thought you’d knowed me, in spite of these whiskers. I’m Rawlins, you fool! Killer Rawlins, that plugged yore horse-thief brother Luke in Santa Maria!”
“Rawlins!” snarled Laramie, suddenly white. “No wonder you knowed me!”
“Yes, Rawlins!” howled the gunman. “I’m the one that made friends with Luke Laramie and got him drunk till he told me all about this hide-out and the trails across the desert. Then I picked a fight with Luke when he was too drunk to stand, and killed him to keep his mouth shut! And what you goin’ to do about it?”
“I’m going to kill you, you hell-buzzard!” gritted Laramie, lurching away from the wall as Rawlins came frothing through the door, with both guns blazing. Laramie fired once from the hip. His last bullet ripped through Killer Rawlins’ warped brain. Laramie looked down on him as he died, with his spurred heels drumming a death-march on the floor.
Frantic feet behind him brought him around to see a livid, swarthy face convulsed with fear and hate, a brown arm lifting a razor-edged knife. He had forgotten the Mexican. He threw up his empty pistol to guard the downward sweep of the sharp blade, then once more the blast of a six-gun shook the room. Jose Martinez of Chihuahua lifted one scream of invocation and blasphemy at some forgotten Aztec god, as his soul went speeding its way to hell.
Laramie turned and stared stupidly through the smoke-blurred dusk at a tall, slim figure holding a smoking gun. Others were pouring in through the kitchen. So brief had been the desperate fight that the men who had raced around the house at the first bellow of the guns, had just reached the scene. Laramie shook his head dazedly.
“Slim!” he muttered. “See if Bob’s hurt!”
“Not me!” The sheriff answered for himself, struggling up to a sitting posture by the wall. “I fell outa the chair and rolled outa line when the lead started singin’. Cut me loose, somebody.”
“Cut him loose, Slim,” mumbled Laramie. “I’m kinda dizzy.”
Stark silence followed the roar of the six-guns, silence that hurt Buck Laramie’s ear-drums. Like a man in a daze he staggered to a chair and sank down heavily upon it. Scarcely knowing what he did he found himself muttering the words of a song he hated:
“When the folks heard that Brady was dead,They all turned out, all dressed in red; Marched down the street a-singin’ a song: ‘Brady’s gone to hell with his Stetson on!’”
He was hardly aware when Bob Anders came and cut his blood-soaked shirt away and washed his wounds, dressing them as best he could with strips torn from his own shirt, and whisky from a jug found on the table. The bite of the alcohol roused Laramie from the daze that enveloped him, and a deep swig of the same medicine cleared his dizzy head.
Laramie rose stiffly; he glanced about at the dead men staring glassily in the lamplight, shuddered, and retched suddenly at the reek of the blood that blackened the planks.
“Let’s get out in the open!”
As they emerged into the cool dusk, they were aware that the shooting had ceased. A voice was bawling loudly at the head of the canyon, though the distance made the words unintelligible.
Slim came running back through the dusk.
“They’re makin’ a parley, Bob!” he reported. “They want to know if they’ll be give a fair trial if they surrender.”
“I’ll talk to ‘em. Rest of you keep under cover.”
The sheriff worked toward the head of the canyon until he was within earshot of the men in and about the tunnel, and shouted: “Are you hombres ready to give in?”
“What’s yore terms?” bawled back the spokesman, recognizing the sheriff’s voice.
“I ain’t makin’ terms. You’ll all get a fair trial in an honest court. You better make up yore minds. I know they ain’t a lot of you left. Harrison’s dead and so is Rawley. I got forty men outside this canyon and enough inside, behind you, to wipe you out. Throw yore guns out here where I can see ‘em, and come out with yore hands high. I’ll give you till I count ten.”
And as he began to count, rifles and pistols began clattering on the bare earth, and haggard, blood-stained, powder-blackened men rose from behind rocks with their hands in the air, and came out of the tunnel in the same manner.
“We quits,” announced the spokesman. “Four of the boys are laying back amongst the rocks too shot up to move under their own power. One’s got a broke laig where his horse fell on him. Some of the rest of us need to have wounds dressed.”
Laramie and Slim and the punchers came out of cover, with guns trained on the weary outlaws, and at a shout from Anders, the men outside came streaming through the tunnel, whooping vengefully.
“No mob-stuff,” warned Anders, as the men grabbed the prisoners and bound their hands, none too gently. “Get those four wounded men out of the rocks, and we’ll see what we can do for them.”
Presently, a curious parade came filing through the tunnel into the outer valley where twilight still lingered. And as Laramie emerged from that dark tunnel, he felt as if his dark and sinister past had fallen from him like a worn-out coat.
One of the four wounded men who had been brought through the tunnel on crude stretchers rigged out of rifles and coats was in a talkative mood. Fear and the pain of his wound had broken his nerve entirely and he was overflowing with information.
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know! Put in a good word for me at my trial, and I’ll spill the works!” he declaimed, ignoring the sullen glares of his hardier companions.
“How did Harrison get mixed up in this deal?” demanded the sheriff.
“Mixed, hell! He planned the whole thing. He was cashier in the bank when the Laramies robbed it; the real ones, I mean. If it hadn’t been for that robbery, old Brown would soon found out that Harrison was stealin’ from him. But the Laramies killed Brown and give Harrison a chance to cover his tracks. They got blamed for the dough he’d stole, as well as the money they’d actually taken.
“That give Harrison an idee how to be king of San Leon. The Laramies had acted as scapegoats for him once, and he aimed to use ’em again. But he had to wait till he could get to be president of the bank, and had taken time to round up a gang.”
“So he’d ruin the ranchers, give mortgages and finally get their outfits, and then send his coyotes outa the country and be king of San Leon,” broke in Laramie. “We know that part of it. Where’d Rawlins come in?”
“Harrison knowed him years ago, on the Rio Grande. When Harrison aimed to raise his gang, he went to Mexico and found Rawlins. Harrison knowed the real Laramies had a secret hide-out, so Rawlins made friends with Luke Laramie, and—”
“We know all about that,” interrupted Anders with a quick glance at Buck.
“Yeah? Well, everything was bueno till word come from Mexico that Buck Laramie was ridin’ up from there. Harrison got skittish. He thought Laramie was comin’ to take toll for his brother. So he sent Rawlins to waylay Laramie. Rawlins missed, but later went on to San Leon to try again. He shot you instead, Anders. Word was out to get you, anyway. You’d been prowlin’ too close to our hide-out to suit Harrison.
“Harrison seemed to kinda go locoed when first he heard Laramie was headin’ this way. He made us pull that fool stunt of a fake bank hold-up to pull wool over folks’s eyes more’n ever. Hell, nobody suspected him anyway. Then he risked comin’ out here. But he was panicky and wanted us to git ready to make a clean sweep tonight and pull out. When Laramie got away from us this mornin’, Harrison decided he’d ride to Mexico with us.
&n
bsp; “Well, when the fightin’ had started, Harrison and Rawley stayed out a sight. Nothin’ they could do, and they hoped we’d be able to break out of the canyon. They didn’t want to be seen and recognized. If it should turn out Laramie hadn’t told anybody he was head of the gang, Harrison would be able to stay on, then.”
Preparations were being made to start back to San Leon with the prisoners, when a sheepish looking delegation headed by Mayor Jim Watkins approached Laramie. Watkins hummed and hawed with embarrassment, and finally blurted out, with typical Western bluntness:
“Look here, Laramie, we owe you somethin’ now, and we’re just as hot too pay our debts as you are to pay yours. Harrison had a small ranch out a ways from town, which he ain’t needin’ no more, and he ain’t got no heirs, so we can get it easy enough. We thought if you was aimin’, maybe, to stay around San Leon, we’d like powerful well to make you a present of that ranch, and kinda help you get a start in the cow business. And we don’t want the fifty thousand Waters said you aimed to give us. You’ve wiped out that debt.”
A curious moroseness had settled over Laramie, a futile feeling of anti- climax, and a bitter yearning he did not understand. He felt old and weary, a desire to be alone, and an urge to ride away over the rim of the world and forget — he did not even realize what it was he wanted to forget.
“Thanks.” he muttered. “I’m paying that fifty thousand back to the men it belonged to. And I’ll be movin’ on tomorrow.”
“Where to?”
He made a helpless, uncertain gesture.
“You think it over,” urged Watkins, turning away. Men were already mounting, moving down the trail. Anders touched Laramie’s sleeve.
“Let’s go. Buck. You need some attention on them wounds.”
“Go ahead. Bob. I’ll be along. I wanta kind set here and rest.”
Anders glanced sharply at him and then made a hidden gesture to Slim Jones, and turned away. The cavalcade moved down the trail in the growing darkness, armed men riding toward a new era of peace and prosperity; gaunt, haggard bound men riding toward the penitentiary and the gallows.
Laramie sat motionless, his empty hands hanging limp on his knees. A vital chapter in his life had closed, leaving him without a goal. He had kept his vow. Now he had no plan or purpose to take its place.
Slim Jones, standing nearby, not understanding Laramie’s mood, but not intruding on it, started to speak. Then both men lifted their heads at the unexpected rumble of wheels.
“A buckboard!” ejaculated Slim.
“No buckboard ever come up that trail,” snorted Laramie.
“One’s comin’ now; and who d’you think? Old Joel, by golly. And look who’s drivin’!”
Laramie’s heart gave a convulsive leap and then started pounding as he saw the slim supple figure beside the old rancher. She pulled up near them and handed the lines to Slim, who sprang to help her down.
“Biggest fight ever fit in San Leon County!” roared Waters, “and I didn’t git to fire a shot. Cuss a busted laig, anyway!”
“You done a man’s part, anyway, Joel,” assured Laramie; and then he forgot Joel Waters entirely, in the miracle of seeing Judy Anders standing before him, smiling gently, her hand outstretched and the rising moon melting her soft hair to golden witch-fire.
“I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you today,” she said softly. “I’ve been bitter about things that were none of your fault.”
“D-don’t apologize, please,” he stuttered, inwardly cursing himself because of his confusion. The touch of her slim, firm hand sent shivers through his frame and he knew all at once what that empty, gnawing yearning was; the more poignant now, because so unattainable.
“You saved my neck. Nobody that does that needs to apologize. You was probably right, anyhow. Er — uh — Bob went down the trail with the others. You must have missed him.”
“I saw him and talked to him,” she said softly. “He said you were behind them. I came on, expecting to meet you.”
He was momentarily startled. “You came on to meet me? Oh, of course. Joel would want to see how bad shot up I was.” He achieved a ghastly excuse for a laugh.
“Mr. Waters wanted to see you, of course. But I — Buck, I wanted to see you, too.”
She was leaning close to him, looking up at him, and he was dizzy with the fragrance and beauty of her; and in his dizziness said the most inane and idiotic thing he could possibly have said.
“To see me?” he gurgled wildly. “What — what you want to see mefor?”
She seemed to draw away from him and her voice was a bit too precise.
“I wanted to apologize for my rudeness this morning,” she said, a little distantly.
“I said don’t apologize to me,” he gasped. “You saved my life — and I — I — Judy, dang it, I love you!”
It was out — the amazing statement, blurted out involuntarily. He was frozen by his own audacity, stunned and paralyzed. But she did not seem to mind. Somehow he found she was in his arms, and numbly he heard her saying: “I love you too, Buck. I’ve loved you ever since I was a little girl, and we went to school together. Only I’ve tried to force myself not to think of you for the past six years. But I’ve loved the memory of you — that’s why it hurt me so to think that you’d gone bad — as I thought you had. That horse I brought you — it wasn’t altogether because you’d helped Bob that I brought it to you. It — it was partly because of my own feeling. Oh, Buck, to learn you’re straight and honorable is like having a black shadow lifted from between us. You’ll never leave me, Buck?”
“Leave you?” Laramie gasped. “Just long enough to find Watkins and tell him I’m takin’ him up on a proposition he made me, and then I’m aimin’ on spendin’ the rest of my life makin’ you happy.” The rest was lost in a perfectly natural sound.
“Kissin’!” beamed Joel Waters, sitting in his buckboard and gently manipulating his wounded leg. “Reckon they’ll be a marryin’ in these parts purty soon, Slim.”
“Don’t tell me yo’re figgerin’ on gittin’ hitched?” inquired Slim, pretending to misunderstand, but grinning behind his hand.
“You go light on that sarcastic tone. I’m liable to git married any day now. It’s just a matter of time till I decide what type of woman would make me the best wife.”
THE VULTURES OF WHAPETON; OR, THE VULTURES; THE VULTURES OF TETON GULCH
First published in Smashing Novels Magazine, December 1936
CONTENTS
1. GUNS IN THE DARK
2. GOLDEN MADNESS
3. GUNMAN’S TRAP
4. THE MADNESS THAT BLINDS MEN
5. THE WHEEL BEGINS TO TURN
6. VULTURES’ COURT
7. A VULTURE’S WINGS ARE CLIPPED
8. THE COMING OF THE VIGILANTES
9. THE VULTURES SWOOP
10. THE BLOOD ON THE GOLD
FIRST ENDING
SECOND ENDING
1. GUNS IN THE DARK
THE bare plank walls of the Golden Eagle Saloon seemed still to vibrate with the crashing echoes of the guns which had split the sudden darkness with spurts of red. But only a nervous shuffling of booted feet sounded in the tense silence that followed the shots. Then somewhere a match rasped on leather and a yellow flicker sprang up, etching a shaky hand and a pallid face. An instant later an oil lamp with a broken chimney illuminated the saloon, throwing tense bearded faces into bold relief. The big lamp that hung from the ceiling was a smashed ruin; kerosene dripped from it to the floor, making an oily puddle beside a grimmer, darker pool.
Two figures held the center of the room, under the broken lamp. One lay facedown, motionless arms outstretching empty hands. The other was crawling to his feet, blinking and gaping stupidly, like a man whose wits are still muddled by drink. His right arm hung limply by his side, a long-barreled pistol sagging from his fingers.
The rigid line of figures along the bar melted into movement. Men came forward, stooping to stare down at the limp shape. A
confused babble of conversation rose. Hurried steps sounded outside, and the crowd divided as a man pushed his way abruptly through. Instantly he dominated the scene. His broad-shouldered, trim-hipped figure was above medium height, and his broad- brimmed white hat, neat boots and cravat contrasted with the rough garb of the others, just as his keen, dark face with its narrow black mustache contrasted with the bearded countenances about him. He held an ivory-butted gun in his right hand, muzzle tilted upward.
“What devil’s work is this?” he harshly demanded; and then his gaze fell on the man on the floor. His eyes widened.
“Grimes!” he ejaculated. “Jim Grimes, my deputy! Who did this?” There was something tigerish about him as he wheeled toward the uneasy crowd. “Who did this?” he demanded, half-crouching, his gun still lifted, but seeming to hover like a live thing ready to swoop.
Feet shuffled as men backed away, but one man spoke up: “We don’t know, Middleton. Jackson there was havin’ a little fun, shootin’ at the ceilin’, and the rest of us was at the bar, watchin’ him, when Grimes come in and started to arrest him—”
“So Jackson shot him!” snarled Middleton, his gun covering the befuddled one in a baffling blur of motion. Jackson yelped in fear and threw up his hands, and the man who had first spoken interposed.
“No, Sheriff, it couldn’t have been Jackson. His gun was empty when the lights went out. I know he slung six bullets into the ceilin’ while he was playin’ the fool, and I heard him snap the gun three times afterwards, so I know it was empty. But when Grimes went up to him, somebody shot the light out, and a gun banged in the dark, and when we got a light on again, there Grimes was on the floor, and Jackson was just gettin’ up.”
“I didn’t shoot him,” muttered Jackson. “I was just havin’ a little fun. I was drunk, but I ain’t now. I wouldn’t have resisted arrest. When the light went out I didn’t know what had happened. I heard the gun bang, and Grimes dragged me down with him as he fell. I didn’t shoot him. I dunno who did.”
Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four) Page 256