Live by the West, Die by the West

by William W. Johnstone

  While Charlie and Pistol kept their guns on the moaning gunslicks on the floor, Smoke and Lujan walked among them, silently determining which should first receive Adair’s attentions and who would never again need attention.

  Not in this life.

  Smoke knelt down beside a young man, perhaps twenty years old. The young man had been shot twice in the stomach, and already his dark eyes were glazing over as death hovered near.

  “You got any folks, boy?” Smoke asked.

  “Mother!” the young man gasped.

  “Where is she?”

  “Arkansas. Clay County. On the St. Francis. Name’s . . . name’s Claire . . . Shelby.”

  “I’ll get word to her,” Smoke told him as that pale rider came galloping nearer.

  “She always told me . . . I was gonna turn out . . . bad.” The words were very weak.

  “I’ll write that your horse threw you and you broke your neck.”

  “I’d . . . ’preciate it. That’d make her . . . feel a bunch better.” He closed his eyes and did not open them again.

  “I thought you was gonna kiss him there for a minute, Jensen,” a hard-eyed gunslick mocked Smoke. The lower front of the man’s shirt was covered with blood. He had taken several rounds in the gut.

  “You got any folks you want me to write?” Smoke asked the dying man.

  The gunslick spat at Smoke, the bloody spittle landing close to his boot.

  “Suit yourself.” Smoke stood up, favoring his wounded leg. He limped back to the bar and leaned against it, just as the batwings pushed open and Doc Adair and the undertaker came in.

  Both of them stopped short. “Jesus God!” Adair said, looking around him at the body-littered and blood-splattered saloon.

  “Business got a little brisk today, Doc,” Smoke told him, accepting a shot glass of tequila from Lujan. “Check Cord here first.” He knocked back the strong mescal drink and shuddered as it hit the pit of his stomach.

  The doctor, not as old as Smoke had first thought—of course he’d been sober now for several weeks, and was now wearing clean clothes and had gone back to shaving daily—knew his business. He cleaned out the shoulder wound and bandaged it, rigging a sling for Cord out of a couple of bar towels. He then turned his attention to Lujan, swiftly and expertly patching up the arm.

  Smoke had cut open his jeans, exposing the ugly rip along the outside of his leg. “It ought to be stitched up,” Adair said. “It’ll leave a bad scar if I don’t.”

  “Last time my wife Sally counted, Doc, I had seventeen bullet scars in my hide. So one more isn’t going to make any difference.”

  “So young to have been hit so many times,” the doctor muttered as he swabbed out the gash with alcohol. Smoke lifted himself out of the chair as the alcohol cleaned the raw flesh. Adair grinned. “Sometimes the treatment hurts worse than the wound.”

  “You’ve convinced me,” Smoke said as his eyes went misty, then went through the same sensation as Adair cleaned the wound in his ear.

  “How ’bout us?” a gunfighter on floor bitched. “Ain’t we get no treatment?”

  “Go ahead and die,” Adair told him. “I can see from here you’re not going to make it.”

  Charlie and his friends had walked around the room, gathering all the guns and gun belts, from both the dead and living.

  “Always did want me a matched set of Remingtons,” Silver Jim said. “Now I got me some. Nice balance, too.”

  “I want you to lookee here at this Colt double-action,” Charlie said. “I’ll just be hornswoggled. And she’s a .44-40. Got a little ring on the butt so’s a body could run some twine through it and not lose your gun. Ain’t that something, now. Don’t have to cock it, neither. Just point it and pull the trigger.” He tried it one-handed and almost scared the doctor half to death when Charlie shot out a lamp. “All that trigger-pullin’-the-hammer-back does throw your aim off a mite, though. Take some gettin’ used to, I reckon.”

  “Maybe you ’pposed to shoot it with both hands,” Hardrock suggested.

  “That don’t make no sense atall. There ain’t no room on there for two hands. Where the hell would you put the other’n?”

  “I don’t know. Was I you, I’d throw the damn thing away. They ain’t never gonna catch on.”

  “I’m a hurtin’ something fierce!” a D-H gunhawk hollered.

  “You want me to kick you in the head, boy?” Pistol asked him. “That’d put you out of your misery for a while.”

  The gunhawk shut his mouth.

  Adair finished with Beans and went to work on the fallen gunfighters. “This is strictly cash, boys,” he told them. “I don’t give no credit to people whose life expectancy is as short as yours.”

  TWENTY

  All was calm for several days. Smoke imagined that even in Dooley’s half-crazed mind it had been a shock to lose so many gunslicks in the space of three minutes, and all that following the raid on Dooley’s ranch. So much had happened in less than twenty-four hours that Dooley was being forced to think over very carefully whatever move he had planned next.

  But all knew the war was nowhere near over. That this was quite probably the lull before the next bloody and violent storm.

  “Dad Estes and his bunch just pulled in,” Cord told Smoke on the morning of the fourth day after the showdown in the saloon. “Hans sent word they came riding in late last night.”

  “He’ll be making a move soon then.”

  “Smoke, do you realize that by my count, thirty-three men have been killed so far?”

  “And about twenty wounded. Yes. I understand the undertaker is putting up a new building just to handle it all.”

  “That is weighing on my mind. I’ve killed in my lifetime, Smoke. I’ve killed three white men in about twenty years, but they had stole from me and were shooting at me. I’ve hanged one rustler.” He paused.

  “What are you trying to say, Cord?”

  “We’ve got to end this. I’m getting where I can’t sleep at night! That boy dying back yonder in the saloon got to me.”

  “I’m certainly open to suggestions, Cord. Do you think it didn’t bother me to write that boy’s mother? I don’t enjoy killing, Cord. I went for three years without ever pulling a gun in anger. I loved it. Then until I got Fae’s letter, I hadn’t even worn both guns. But you know as well as I do how this little war is going to be stopped.”

  Cord leaned against the hitchrail and took off his hat, scratching his head. “We force the issue? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Do you want peace, Cord?”

  “More than anything. Perhaps we could ride over and talk to . . . ?” He shook his head. “What am I saying? Time for that is over and past. All right, Smoke. All right. Let me hear your plan.”

  “I don’t have one. And it isn’t as if I haven’t been thinking hard on it. What happened to your sling?”

  “I took it off. Damn thing worried me. No plan?”

  “No. The ranch, this ranch, must be manned at all times. We agreed on that. If not, it’ll end up like Fae’s place. And if we keep meeting them like we did back in town, they’re going to take us. We were awfully lucky back there, Cord.”

  “I know. So . . . ?”

  “I’m blank. Empty. Except for hit-and-run night fighting. But we’ll never get as lucky as we did the other night. Count on that. You can bet that Dooley has that place heavily guarded night and day.”

  “Wait them out, then. I have the cash money to keep Gage and his boys on the payroll for a long time. But not enough to buy more gunslicks . . . if I could find any we could trust, that is.”

  “Doubtful. Must be half a hundred range wars going on out here, most of them little squabbles, but big enough to keep a lot of gunhawks working.”

  “I’ve written the territorial governor, but no reply as yet.”

  “I wouldn’t count on one, either.” Smoke verbally tossed cold water on that. “He’s fighting to make this territory a state; I doubt that he’d want a lot
of publicity about a range war at this time.”

  Cord nodded his agreement. “We’ll wait a few more days; neither one of us is a hundred percent yet . . .” He paused as a rider came at a hard gallop from the west range.

  The hand slid to a halt, out of the saddle and running to McCorkle. “Saddle me a horse!” he yelled to several punchers standing around the corral. “The boys is bringin’ in Max, Mister Cord. Looks like Dooley done turned loose that back-shootin’ Danny Rouge. Max took one in the back. He’s still able to sit a saddle, but just barely. I’ll ride into town and fetch Doc Adair.” He was gone in a bow-legged run toward the corral.

  Cord’s face had paled at the news of his oldest son being shot. “I’ll have Alice get ready with hot water and bandages. She’s a good nurse.” He ran up the steps to the house.

  Smoke leaned against the hitchrail as his eyes picked up several riders coming in slow, one on either side helping to keep the middle rider in the saddle. Smoke knew, with this news, all of Cord’s willingness to talk had gone right out the window. And if Max died . . . ?

  Smoke pushed away from the hitchrail and walked toward the bunkhouse. If Max died there would be open warfare; no more chance meetings between the factions involved. It would be bloody and cruel until one side killed off the other.

  “Might as well get ready for it,” Smoke muttered.

  * * *

  “All we can do is wait,” Adair said. “I can’t probe for the bullet ’cause I don’t know where it is. It angled off from the entry point. It missed the kidney and there is no sign of excessive internal bleeding; so he’s got a chance. But don’t move him any more than you have to.”

  Smoke and several others stood listening as Doc Adair spoke with Cord and Alice.

  “His chances . . . ?” Cord asked, his voice tired.

  “Fifty-fifty.” Adair was blunt. “Maybe less than that. Don’t get your hopes up too high, Cord. Have someone close by him around the clock. We’ll know one way or the other in a few days.”

  * * *

  “Did you get him?” Dooley asked the rat-faced Danny Rouge.

  “I got him.” Danny’s voice was high-pitched, more like a woman’s voice.

  “Good!” Dooley took a long pull from his whiskey bottle, some of the booze dribbling down his unshaven chin. “One less of that bastard’s whelps.”

  He was still mumbling and scratching himself as Danny walked from the room and stepped outside. Dooley’s sons were on the porch, sharing a bottle.

  “Did he squall when you got him?” Sonny asked, his eyes bright from the cruelty within the young man.

  “I ’magine he did,” Danny told him. “But I couldn’t hear him; I was a good half mile away.” Danny stepped from the porch and walked toward the one bunkhouse that was still usable. With the coming in of Dad Estes and his bunch, tents had been thrown up all over the place, the ranch now resembling a guerrilla camp.

  The other gunhawks avoided Danny. No one wanted anything to do with him, all feeling that there was something unclean about the young man, even though Danny was as fastidious as possible, considering the time and the place. He was considerate of his personal appearance, but his mind resembled anyone’s concept of hell. Danny was a cold-blooded killer. He enjoyed killing, the killing act his substitute for a woman. He would kill anybody: man, woman, or child. It did not make one bit of difference to Danny. Just as long as the price was right.

  He went to his bunk and carefully cleaned his rifle, returning it to the hard leather case. Then he stretched out on the bunk and closed his eyes. It had been a very pleasing day. He knew he’d gotten a good clean hit by the way the man had jerked and then slumped in the saddle, slowly tumbling to the ground, hitting the ground like a rag doll.

  It was a good feeling knowing he had earned his pay. A day’s work for a day’s pay. Made a man feel needed. Yes, indeed.

  * * *

  At the Circle Double C, the men sat, mostly in small groups, and mostly in silence, cleaning weapons. The hands, not gunfighters, but just hard-working cowboys, were digging in war bags and taking out that extra holster and pistol, filling the loops of a spare bandoleer. They rode for the brand, and if a fight was what Dooley Hanks wanted, a fight would be what he would get.

  The hands who had come over to Cord’s side from the D-H did not have mixed feeling about it. They had been shoved aside in favor of gunhawks; they had seen Dooley and his ignorant sons go from bad to savage. There was not one ounce of loyalty left among them toward Dooley. They knew now that this was a fight to the finish. OK. Let’s do it.

  Just before dusk, Cord walked out to the bunkhouse, a grim expression on his face. “I sent Willie in for the doctor. Max is coughin’ up blood. It don’t look good. I can’t stand to sit in here and look at my wife tryin’ to be brave about the whole damn thing when I know that what she really wants to do is bust out bawlin’. And the same goes for me.”

  Then he started cussing. He strung together some mighty hard words as he stomped around the big room, kicking at this and that; about every fourth and fifth word was Dooley Hanks. He traced the man’s ancestry back to before Adam and Eve, directly linking Dooley to the snake in the Garden.

  He finally sat down on a bunk and put his face in his hands. Smoke motioned the men outside and gently closed the door, leaving Cord with his grief and the right for a man to cry in private.

  “It’s gonna be Katy-bar-the-door if that boy dies,” Hardrock said. “We just think we’ve seen a little shootin’ up to now.”

  “I’m ready,” Del said. “I’m ready to get this damn thing over with and get back to punchin’ cows.”

  “It’s gonna be a while ’fore any of us gets back to doin’ that,” Les said, one of the men who had come from the D-H.

  “And some of us won’t,” Fitz spoke softly.

  Someone had a bottle and that got passed around. Beans pulled out a sack of tobacco and that went the way of the bottle. The men drank and smoked in silence until the bottle was empty and the tobacco sack flat as a tortilla left out in the sun.

  “Wonder how Dooley’s ass is?” Gage asked, and the men chuckled softly.

  “I hope it’s healed,” Del said. “’Cause it’s shore about to get kicked hard.”

  The men all agreed on that.

  Cord came out of the bunkhouse and walked to the house, passing the knot of men without speaking. His face bore the brunt of his inner grief.

  Holman got up from his squat and said, “I think I’m gonna go write my momma a letter. She’s gettin’ on in years and I ain’t wrote none in near’bouts a year.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Bernie said. “If I tell you what to put on paper to my momma, would you write it down for me?”

  “Shore. Come on. I print passable well.”

  They were happy-go-lucky young cowboys a few weeks ago, Smoke thought. Now they are writing their mothers with death on their minds.

  That ghostly rider would be saddling up his fire-snorting stallion, Smoke mused. Ready for more lost souls.

  “What are you thinking, amigo?” Lujan asked him.

  Smoke told him.

  “You are philosophical this evening. I had always heard that you were a man who possessed deep thoughts.”

  Smoke grunted. “My daddy used to say that we came from Wales—years back. Jensen wasn’t our real name. I don’t know what it was. But Daddy used to say that the Celts were mysterious people. I don’t know.”

  “I know that there is the smell of death in the air,” the Mexican said. “Listen. No birds singing. Nothing seems to be moving.”

  The primal call of a wolf cut the night air, its shivering howl touching them all.

  “Folks cut them wolves down,” Del spoke out of the darkness. “And I’ve shot my share of them when they was after beeves. But I ain’t got nothing really agin them. They’re just doing what God intended them to do. They ain’t like we’re supposed to be. They can’t think like nothin except what they is. And you can’t fault th
em for that. Take a human person now, that’s a different story. Dooley and them others, and I know that Dooley’s done lost his mind, but I think his greed brung that on. His jealousy and so forth. But them gunning over yonder. They coulda been anything but what they is. They turned to the outlaw trail ’cause they wanted to. What am I tryin’ to say anyways?”

  Silver Jim stood up and stretched. “It means we can go in smokin’ and not have no guilty conscience when we leave them bassards dead where we find them.”

  Lujan smiled. “Not as eloquently put as might have been, but it certainly summed it up well.”

  Cord stepped out on the porch just as Doc Adair’s buggy pulled up. The men could hear his words plain. “Max just died.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Max McCorkle, the oldest son of Cord and Alice, and brother to Rock, Troy, and Sandi, was buried the next day. He was twenty-five years old. He was buried in the cemetery on the ridge overlooking the ranch house. Half a dozen crosses were in the cemetery, crosses of men who had worked for the Circle Double C and who had died while in the employment of the spread.

  Sandi stood leaning against Beans, softly weeping. Del stood with Fae. Ring stood with Hilda and Hans and Olga. Gage with Liz. Cord stood stony-faced with his wife, a black veil over her face. Parnell stood with Smoke and the other hands and gunfighters. And Smoke had noticed something: the schoolteacher had strapped on a gun.

  The final words were spoken over Max, and the family left while the hands shoveled the dirt over the young man’s final resting place on this earth.

  Parnell walked up to Smoke. “I would like for you to teach me the nomenclature of this weapon and the proper way to fire it.”

  A small smile touched Smoke’s lips, so faint he doubted Parnell even noticed it. “You plannin’ on ridin’ with us, Cousin?”

  The man shook his head. “Regretfully, no. I am not that good a horseman. I would only be in the way. But someone needs to be here at the ranch with the women. I can serve in that manner.”

  Smoke stuck out his hand and the schoolteacher, with a surprised look on his face, took it. “Glad to have you with us, Parnell.”