West of the Tularosa Read online

  He wanted no gunfighter’s name, only a little spread of his own where he could run a few cows and raise horses, good stock, like some he had seen in east Texas. No range ponies for him, but good blood. That Sprague place now…but that was Sam’s place, or as good as his. Well, why not? Sam was getting Else, and it was little enough he could do for Pa and Ma, to bring Sam home safe.

  He left the gelding at the water trough and walked into the barn. In his room he dug some saddle gear away from a corner and, out of a hiding place in the corner, he took his guns. After a moment’s thought, he took but one of them, leaving the .44 Russian behind. He didn’t want to go parading into town with two guns on him, looking like a sure-enough shooter. Besides, with only one gun and the change in him, Flitch might not spot him at all.

  Johnny was at the gate, riding out, when Else rode up. Else looked at him, her eyes falling to the gun on his hip. Her face was pale and her eyes large. “Be careful, Johnny. I had to say that because you know how hot-headed Pa is. He’d get killed, and he might get Sam killed.”

  That was true enough, but Johnny was aggrieved. He looked her in the eyes. “Sure, that’s true, but you didn’t think of Sam, now, did you? You were just thinking of Pa.”

  Her lips parted to protest, but then her face seemed to stiffen. “No, Johnny, it wasn’t only Pa I thought of. I did think of Sam. Why shouldn’t I?”

  That was plain enough. Why shouldn’t she? Wasn’t she going to marry him? Wasn’t Sam getting the Sprague place when they got that money back safe?

  He touched his horse lightly with a spur and moved on past her. All right, he would send Sam back to her, if he could. It was time he was moving on, anyway.

  The gelding liked the feel of the trail and moved out fast. Ten miles was all, and he could do that easy enough, and so he did it, and Johnny turned the black horse into the street and stopped before the livery stable, swinging down. Sam’s horse was tied at the Four Star’s hitch rail. The saddlebags were gone.

  Johnny studied the street, and then crossed it and walked down along the buildings on the same side as the Four Star. He turned quickly in to the door.

  Sam Redlin was sitting at a table with the redhead, the saddlebags on the table before him, and he was drunk. He was very drunk. Johnny’s eyes swept the room. The bartender and Loss Degner were standing together, talking. Neither of them paid any attention to Johnny, for neither knew him. But Flitch did.

  Flitch was standing down the bar with Albie Bower, but none of the old Gila River outfit. Both of them looked up, and Flitch kept looking, never taking his eyes from Johnny. Something bothered him, and maybe it was the one gun.

  Johnny moved over to Sam’s table. They had to get out of here fast, before Flitch remembered. “Hi, Sam,” he said. “Just happened to be in town, and Pa said, if I saw you, to side you on the way home.”

  Sam stared at him sullenly. “Side me? You?” He snorted his contempt. “I need no man to side me. You can tell Pa I’ll be home later tonight.” He glanced at the redhead. “Much later.”

  “Want I should carry this stuff home for you?” Johnny put his hand on the saddlebags.

  “Leave him be,” Hazel protested angrily. “Can’t you see he don’t want to be bothered? He’s capable of takin’ care of himself, an’ he don’t need no kid for gardeen.”

  “Beat it,” Sam said. “You go on home. I’ll come along later.”

  “Better come now, Sam.” Johnny was getting worried, for Loss Degner had started for the table.

  “Here, you.” Degner was sharp. “Leave that man alone. He’s a friend of mine, and I’ll have no saddle tramp annoying my customers.”

  Johnny turned on him. “I’m no saddle tramp. I ride for his pa. He asked me to ride home with him…now. That’s what I aim to do.”

  As he spoke, he was not thinking of Degner, but of Flitch. The gunman was behind him now, and neither Flitch, fast as he was, nor Albie Bower was above shooting a man in the back.

  “I said to beat it.” Sam stared at him drunkenly. “Saddle tramp’s what you are. Folks never should have took you in.”

  “That’s it,” Degner said. “Now get out. He don’t want you nor your company.”

  There was a movement behind him, and he heard Flitch say: “Loss, let me have him. I know this hombre. This is that kid gunfighter, Johnny O’Day, from the Gila.”

  Johnny turned slowly, his green eyes flat and cold.

  “Hello, Flitch. I heard you were around.” Carefully he moved away from the table, aware of the startled look on Hazel’s face, the suddenly tight awareness on the face of Loss Degner. “You lookin for me, Flitch?” It was a chance he had to take. His best chance now. If shooting started, he might grab the saddlebags and break for the door and then the ranch. They would be through with Sam Redlin once the money was gone.

  “Yeah.” Flitch stared at him, his unshaven face hard with the lines of evil and shadowed by the intent that rode him hard. “I’m lookin’ for you. Always figured you got off easy, made you a fast rep gunnin’ down your betters.”

  Bower had moved up beside him, but Loss Degner had drawn back to one side. Johnny’s eyes never left Flitch. “You in this, Loss?”

  Degner shrugged. “Why should I be? I was no Gila River gunman. This is your quarrel. Finish it between you.”

  “All right, Flitch,” Johnny said. “You want it. I’m givin’ you your chance to start the play.”

  The stillness of a hot midafternoon lay on the Four Star. A fly buzzed against the dusty, cobwebbed back window. Somewhere in the street a horse stamped restlessly, and a distant pump creaked. Flitch stared at him, his little eyes hard and bright. His sweat-stained shirt was torn at the shoulder, and there was dust ingrained in the pores of his face.

  His hands dropped in a flashing draw, but he had only cleared leather when Johnny’s first bullet hit him, puncturing the Bull Durham tag that hung from his shirt pocket. The second shot cut the edge of it, and the third, fourth, and fifth slammed into Albie Bower, knocking him back step by step, but Albie’s gun was hammering, and it took the sixth shot to put him down.

  Johnny stood over them, staring down at their bodies, and then he turned to face Loss Degner.

  Degner was smiling, and he held a gun in his hand from which a thin tendril of smoke lifted. Startled, Johnny’s eyes flickered to Sam Redlin.

  Sam lay across the saddlebags, blood trickling from his temples. He had been shot through the head by Degner under cover of the gun battle, murdered without a chance!

  Johnny O’Day’s eyes lifted to Loss Degner’s. The saloonkeeper was still smiling. “Yes, he’s dead, and I’ve killed him. He had it coming, the fool. Thinking we cared to listen to his bragging. All we wanted was that money, and now we’ve got it. Me…Hazel and I. We’ve got it.”

  “Not yet.” Johnny’s lips were stiff and his heart was cold. He was thinking of Pa, Ma, and Else. “I’m still here.”

  “You?” Degner laughed. “With an empty gun? I counted your shots, boy. Even Johnny O’Day is cold turkey with an empty gun. Six shots…two for Flitch, and beautiful shooting, too, but four shots for Albie, who was moving and shooting, not so easy a target. But now I’ve got you. With you dead, I’ll just say Sam came here without any money, that he got shot during the fight. Sound good to you?”

  Johnny still faced him, his gun in his hand. “Not bad,” he said, “but you still have me here, Loss. And this gun ain’t empty.”

  Degner’s face tightened and then relaxed. “Not empty? I counted the shots, kid, so don’t try bluffing me. Now I’m killing you.” He tilted his gun toward Johnny O’Day, and Johnny fired once, twice…a third time. As each bullet hit him, Loss Degner jerked and twisted, but the shock of the wounds, and death wounds they were, was nothing to the shock of the bullets from that empty gun.

  He sagged against the bar and then slipped toward the floor.

  Johnny moved in on him. “You can hear me, Loss?” The killer’s eyes lifted to his. “This ain’t a six-shoo
ter. It’s a Watch twelve-shot Navy gun, thirty-six caliber. She’s right handy, Loss, and it only goes to show you shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

  Hazel sat at the table, staring at the dying Degner.

  “You better go to him, Red,” Johnny said quietly. “He’s only got a minute.”

  She stared at him as he picked up the saddlebags and backed to the door.

  Russell, the storekeeper, was on the steps with a half dozen others, none of whom he knew. “Degner killed Sam Redlin,” he said. “Take care of Sam, will you?”

  At Russell’s nod, Johnny swung to the saddle and turned the gelding toward home.

  He wouldn’t leave now. He couldn’t leave now. They would be all alone there, without Sam. Besides, Pa was going to need help on that dam. “Boy,” he touched the gelding’s neck, “I reckon we got to stick around for a while.”

  The Man from Battle Flat

  At half past four Krag Moran rode in from the cañon trail, and within ten minutes half the town knew that Ryerson’s top gun hand was sitting in front of the Palace.

  Nobody needed to ask why he was there. It was to be a showdown between Ryerson and the Squaw Creek nesters, and the showdown was to begin with Bush Leason.

  The Squaw Creek matter had divided the town, yet there was no division where Bush Leason was concerned. The big nester had brought his trouble on himself, and, if he got what was coming to him, nobody would be sorry. That he had killed five or six men was a known fact.

  Krag Moran was a lean, wide-shouldered young man with smoky eyes and a still, Indian-dark face. Some said he had been a Texas Ranger, but all the town knew about him for sure was that he had got back some of Ryerson’s horses that had been run off. How he would stack up against a sure-thing killer like Bush Leason was anybody’s guess.

  Bush Leason was sitting on a cot in his shack when they brought him the news that Moran was in town. Leason was a huge man, thick through the waist and with a wide, flat, cruel face. When they told him, he said nothing at all, just continued to clean his double-barreled shotgun. It was the gun that had killed Shorty Grimes.

  Shorty Grimes had ridden for Tim Ryerson, and between them cattleman Ryerson and rancher Chet Lee had sewed up all the range on Battle Flat. Neither of them drifted cattle on Squaw Creek, but for four years they had been cutting hay from its grass-rich meadows, until the nesters had moved in.

  Ryerson and Lee ordered them to leave. They replied the land was government land open to filing. Hedrow talked for the nesters, but it was Bush Leason who wanted to talk, and Bush was a troublemaker. Ryerson gave them a week and, when they didn’t move, tore down fences and burned a barn or two.

  In all of this Shorty Grimes and Krag Moran had no part. They had been repping on Carol Duchin’s place at the time. Grimes had ridden into town alone and stopped at the Palace for a drink. Leason started trouble, but the other nesters stopped him. Then Leason turned at the door. “Ryerson gave us a week to leave the country. I’m giving you just thirty minutes to get out of town. Then I come a-shooting.”

  Shorty Grimes had been ready to leave, but after that he had decided to stay. A half hour later there was a challenging yell from the dark street out front. Grimes put down his glass and started for the door, gun in hand. He had just reached the street door when Bush Leason stepped through the back door and ran forward, three light, quick steps.

  Bush Leason stopped then, still unseen. “Shorty,” he called softly.

  Pistol lowered, unsuspecting, Shorty Grimes had turned, and Bush Leason had emptied both barrels of the shotgun into his chest.

  One of the first men into the saloon after the shooting was Dan Riggs, editor of The Bradshaw Journal. He knew what this meant, knew it and did not like it, for he was a man who hated violence and felt that no good could come of it. Nor had he any liking for Bush Leason. He had warned the nester leader, Hedrow, about him only a few days before.

  Nobody liked the killing but everybody was afraid of Bush. They had all heard Bush make his brags and the way to win was to stay alive.

  Now Dan Riggs heard that Krag Moran was in town, and he got up from his desk and took off his eye shade. It was no more than ninety feet from the front of the print shop to the Palace and Dan walked over. He stopped there in front of Krag. Dan was a slender, middle-aged man with thin hands and a quiet face. He said: “Don’t do it, son. You mount up and ride home. If you kill Leason, that will just be the beginning.”

  “There’s been a beginning. Leason started it.”

  “Now, look here…” Riggs protested, but Krag interrupted him.

  “You better move,” he said in that slow Texas drawl of his. “Leason might show up any time.”

  “We’ve got a town here,” Riggs replied determinedly. “We’ve got women and homes and decent folks. We don’t want the town shot up and we don’t want a lot of drunken killings. If you riders can’t behave yourselves, stay away from town. Those farmers have a right to live, and they are good, God-fearing people.”

  Krag Moran just sat there. “I haven’t killed anybody,” he said reasonably, his face a little solemn. “I’m just a-sittin’ here.”

  Riggs started to speak, then with a wave of exasperated hands he turned and hurried off. And then he saw Carol Duchin.

  Carol Duchin was several things. By inheritance, from her father, she owned a ranch that would make two of Ryerson’s. She was twenty-two years old, single, and she knew cattle as well as any man. Chet Lee had proposed to her three times and had been flatly refused three times. She both knew and liked Dan Riggs and his wife, and she often stopped overnight at the Riggs’s home when in town. Despite that, she was cattle, all the way.

  Dan Riggs went at once to Carol Duchin and spoke his piece. Right away she shook her head. “I won’t interfere,” she replied. “I knew Shorty Grimes and he was a good man.”

  “That he was,” Riggs agreed sincerely, “I only wish they were all as good. That was a dastardly murder and I mean to say so in the next issue of my paper. But another killing won’t help things any, no matter who gets killed.”

  Carol asked him: “Have you talked to Bush Leason?”

  Riggs nodded. “He won’t listen, either. I tried to get him to ride over to Flagg until things cooled off a little. He laughed at me.”

  She eyed him curiously.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Talk to Krag. For you, he’ll leave.”

  “I scarcely know him.” Carol Duchin was not planning to tell anyone how much she did know about Krag Moran, nor how interested in the tall rider she had become. During his period of repping with her roundup he had not spoken three words to her, but she had noticed him, watched him, and listened to her riders talk about him among themselves.

  “Talk to him. He respects you. All of them do.”

  Yes, Carol reflected bitterly, he probably does. And he probably never thinks of me as a woman.

  She should have known better. She was the sort of girl no man could ever think of in any other way. Her figure was superb, and she very narrowly escaped genuine beauty. Only her very coolness and her position as owner had kept more than one cowhand from speaking to her. So far only Chet Lee had found the courage. But Chet never lacked for that.

  She walked across the street toward the Palace, her heart pounding, her mouth suddenly dry. Now that she was going to speak to Krag, face-to-face, she was suddenly frightened as a child. He got to his feet as she came up to him. She was tall for a girl, but he was still taller. His mouth was firm, his jaw strong and clean-boned. She met his eyes and found them smoky green and her heart fluttered.

  “Krag”—her voice was natural at least—“don’t stay here. You’ll either be killed or you’ll kill Bush. In either case it will be just one more step and will just lead to more killing.”

  His voice sounded amused, yet respectful, too. “You’ve been talking to Dan Riggs. He’s an old woman.”

  “No”—suddenly she was sure of herself—“no, he’s telling t
he truth, Krag. Those people have a right to that grass, and this isn’t just a feud between you and Leason. It means good men are going to be killed, homes destroyed, crops ruined, and the work of months wiped out. You can’t do this thing.”

  “You want me to quit?” He was incredulous. “You know this country. I couldn’t live in it, nor anywhere the story traveled.”

  She looked straight into his eyes. “It often takes a braver man not to fight.”

  He thought about that, his smoky eyes growing somber. Then he nodded. “I never gave it any thought,” he said seriously, “but I reckon you’re right. Only I’m not that brave.”

  “Listen to Dan,” she pleaded. “He’s an intelligent man. He’s an editor. His newspaper means something in this country and will mean more. What he says is important.”

  “Him?” Krag chuckled. “Why, ma’am, that little varmint’s just a-fussin’. He don’t mean nothing, and nobody pays much attention to him. He’s just a little man with ink on his fingers.”

  “You don’t understand,” Carol protested.

  Bush Leason was across the street. During the time Krag Moran had been seated in front of the Palace, Bush had been doing considerable serious thinking. How good Krag was, Bush had no idea, nor did he intend to find out; yet a showdown was coming, and from Krag’s lack of action he evidently intended for Bush to force the issue.

  Bush was not hesitant to begin it, but the more he considered the situation the less he liked it. The wall of the Palace was stone, so he could not shoot through it. There was no chance to approach Krag from right or left without being seen for some time before his shotgun would be within range. Krag had chosen his position well, and the only approach was from behind the building across the street.

  This building was empty, and Bush had gotten inside and was lying there, watching the street when the girl came up. Instantly he perceived his advantage. As the girl left, Krag’s eyes would involuntarily follow her. In that instant he would step from the door and shoot Krag down. It was simple and it was foolproof.