Dutchmans Flat (Ss) (1986) (31 page)

"I know." He stared anxiously out the window. "The Kid left his gun to be repaired.

I've just finished it."

"Oh, Riley! Isn't there something we can do?" Her face was white and strained, her eyes large.

He looked down at her, a wave of tenderness sweeping over him. "I don't know, honey," he said gently. "I'm afraid the thing I might do, your father wouldn't like. You see, this is his job. If he doesn't meet the Kid and order him to leave, he will never have the same prestige here again. Everybody knows the Kid came here on purpose."

Ab Kale had heard that the Mohave Kid was in town, and in his own mind he was ready.

Seated at his desk he saw with bitter clarity what he had known all along, that sooner or later the Kid would come to town, and then he would have to kill him or leave the country. There could be no other choice where the Kid was concerned.

Yet he had planned well. Riley McClean was a good man, a steady man. He would make a good husband for Ruth, and together they would see that Amie lacked for nothing.

As far as that went, Amie was well provided for. He checked his guns and got to his feet. As he did so, he saw a rider go by, racing out of town.

He stopped dead still in the doorway. Why, that rider had been Riley McClean! Where would he be going at that speed, at this hour? Or had he heard the Kid was in town ? ... Oh, no! The boy wasn't a coward. Ab knew he wasn't a coward.

He straightened his hat and touched his prematurely white mustache. His eyes studied the street. A few loafers in front of the livery stable, a couple more at the general store, a half dozen horses at the hitch rails. One buckboard. He stepped out on the walk and started slowly up the street. The Mohave Kid would be in the Trail Driver's Saloon.

He walked slowly, with his usual measured step. One of the loafers in front of the store got to his feet and ducked into the saloon. All right, then. The Kid knew he was coming. If he came out in the street to meet him, so much the better.

Ruth came suddenly from Riley's shop and started toward him. He frowned and glanced at her. No sign of the Kid yet. He must get her off the street at once.

"Hello, Dad!" Her face was strained, but she smiled brightly. "What's the hurry?"

"Don't stop me now, Ruth," he said. "I've got business up the street."

"Nothing that won't wait!" she protested. "Come in the store. I want to ask you about something."

"Not now, Ruth." There was still no sign of the Kid. "Not now. "

"Oh, come on! If you don't," she warned, "I'll walk right up to the saloon with you."

He looked down at her, sudden panic within him. Although she was not his own daughter, he had always felt that she was. "No!" he said sharply. "You mustn't!"

"Then come with me!" she insisted, grabbing his arm.

Still no sign of the Kid. Well, it would do no harm to wait, and he could at least get Ruth out of harm's way. He turned aside and went into the store with her. She had a new bridle she wanted him to see, and she wanted to know if he thought the bit was right for her mare. Deliberately, she stalled. Once he looked up, thinking he heard riders. Then he replied to her questions. Finally, he got away.

He stepped out into the sunlight, smelling dust in the air. Then he walked slowly across and up the street. As he reached the center of the street, the Mohave Kid came out of the Trail Driver and stepped off the walk, facing him.

Thirty yards separated them. Ab Kale waited, his keen blue eyes steady and cold.

He must make this definite, and if the Kid made the slightest move toward a gun, he must kill him. The sun was very warm.

"Kid," he said, "your business in town is finished. We don't want you here. Because of the family connection, I let you know that you weren't welcome. I wanted to avoid a showdown. Now I see you won't accept that, so I'm giving you exactly one hour to leave town. If you are here after that hour, or if you ever come again, I'll kill you!"

The Mohave Kid started to speak, and then he stopped, frozen by a sudden movement.

From behind stores, from doorways, from alleys, stepped a dozen men. All held shotguns or rifles, all directed at the Kid. He stared at them in shocked disbelief. Johnny Holdstock .. . Alec and Dave Holdstock ... Jim Gray, their cousin .. . Webb Dixon, a brother-in-law ... and Myron Holdstock, the old bull of the herd.

Ab Kale was petrified. Then he remembered Riley on that racing horse, and that today was old Myron's fortieth wedding anniversary, with half the family at the party.

The Mohave Kid stared at them, his face turning gray and then dark with sullen fury.

"You do like the marshal says, Kid." Old Myron Holdstock's voice rang in the streets.

"We've protected ye because you're one of our'n. But you don't start trouble with another of our'n. You git on your hoss an' git. Don't you ever show hide nor hair around here again."

The Mohave Kid's face was a mask of fury. He turned deliberately and walked to his horse. No man could face all those guns, and being of Holdstock blood, he knew what would come if he tried to face them down. They would kill him.

He swung into the saddle, cast one black, bleak look at Ab Kale, and then rode out of town.

Slowly, Kale turned to Holdstock, who had been standing in the door of his shop.

"You needn't have done that," he said, "but I'm glad you did...."

Three days went by slowly, and then the rains broke. It began to pour shortly before daybreak and continued to pour. The washes were running bank full by noon, and the street was deserted. Kale left his office early and stepped outside, button
ing
his slicker. The street was running with water, and a stream of rain was cutting a ditch under the corner of the office. Getting a shovel from the stable, he began to divert the water.

Up the street at the gun shop, Riley McClean got to his feet and took off the leather apron in which he worked. He was turning toward the door when it darkened suddenly, and he looked up to see the bleak, rain-wet face of the Mohave Kid.

The Kid stared at him. "I've come for my gun," he said. "That'll be two dollars,"

Riley said coolly.

"That's a lot, ain't it?" "It's my price to you."

The Kid's flat eyes stared at him, and his shoulder seemed to hunch. Then, from the tail of his eye, he caught the movement of the marshal as he started to work with the shovel. Quickly, he forked out two dollars and slapped it on the counter. Then he fed five shells into the gun and stepped to the door. He took two quick steps and vanished.

Surprised, Riley started around the counter after him. But as he reached the end of the counter, he heard the Kid yell, "Ab!"

Kale, his slicker buttoned over his gun, looked around at the call. Frozen with surprise, he saw the Mohave Kid standing there, gun in hand. The Kid's flat face was grinning with grim triumph. And then the Kid's gun roared, and Ab Kale took a step backward and fell, face down in the mud.

The Mohave Kid laughed, suddenly, sardonically. He dropped his gun into his holster and started for the horse tied across the street.

He had taken but one step when Riley McClean spoke: "All right, Kid, here it is!"

The Mohave Kid whirled sharply to see the gunsmith stand
ing
in the doorway. The rain whipping against him, Riley McClean looked at the Kid. "Ab was my friend," he said. "I'm going to marry Ruth."

The Kid reached then, and in one awful, endless moment of realization, he knew what Ab Kale had known for these several months, that Riley McClean was a man born to the gun. Even as the Kid's hand slapped leather, he saw Riley's weapon clearing and coming level. The gun steadied, and for that endless instant the Kid stared into the black muzzle. Then his own iron was clear and swinging up, and Riley's gun was stabbing flame.

The bullets, three of them fired rapidly, smashed the Mohave Kid in and around the heart. He took a step back, his own gun roaring and the bullet plowing mud, and then he went to his knees as Riley walked toward him, his gun poised for another shot.

As the Kid died, his brain flared with realization, with knowledge of death, and he fell forward, sprawling on his face in the street. A rivulet, diverted by his body, curved around him, ran briefly red, and then trailed on.

People were gathering, but Riley McClean walked to Ab Kale. As he reached him, the older man stirred slightly. Dropping to his knees, Riley turned him over. The marshal's eyes flickered open. There was a cut from the hairline on the side of his head in front that ran all along his scalp. The shattered end of the shovel handle told the story. Striking the shovel handle, which had been in front of his heart at the moment of impact, the bullet had glanced upward, knocking him out and ripping a furrow in his scalp.

Ab Kale got slowly to his feet and stared up the muddy street where the crowd clustered about the Mohave Kid.

"You killed him?"

"Had to. I thought he'd killed you."

Ab nodded. "You've got a fast hand. I've known it for months. I hope you'll never have to kill another man."

"I won't," Riley said quietly. "I'm not even going to carry a gun after this."

Ab Kale glanced back up the street. "So he's dead at last. I've carried that burden a long time." He looked up, his face still white with shock. "They'll bury him. Let's go home, son. The women will be worried."

And the two men walked down the street side by side, Ab Kale and his son....

*

The Lion Hunter and the Lady Growing up, the boys and girls of the frontier learned to make every shot count.

The girls, as witness Annie Oakley, hunted meat for the table also.

Ira Freeman, in his History Of Montezuma County (Colorado) says, "Every rider carried a gun, usually a revolver or six-shooter, as it was most often called ... Almost always it was a Colt and nearly everyone wanted a .45."
... Nearly every rider was skilled in the use of these fire-arms.

They practiced shooting all their purse would allow, and the aim was to be quick on the draw.

Often how quick a man was, was the difference between life and death."

Harry Drachman, commenting on the shooting of Jeff Mil ton, frontier peace officer, tells of him "tossing half-dollars in the air, then drawing his six-shooter
and hitting them on the fly.

The mountain lion stared down at him with wild, implacable eyes and snarled deep in its chest. He was big, one of the biggest Morgan had seen in his four years of hunting them. The lion crouched on a thick limb not over eight feet above his head.

"Watch him, Cat!" Lone John Williams warned. "He's the biggest I ever seen! The biggest in these mountains, I'll bet!" "You ever seen Lop-Ear?" Morgan queried, watching the lion. "He's half again bigger than this one!" He jumped as he spoke, caught a limb in his left hand and then swung himself up as easily as a trapeze performer.

The lion came to its feet then and crouched, growling wickedly, threatening the climbing man. But Morgan continued to mount toward the lion.

"Give me that pole," Morgan called to the older man. "I'll have this baby in another minute."

"You watch it," Williams warned. "That lion ain't foolin'!" Never in the year he had been working with Cat Morgan had Lone John become accustomed to seeing a man go up a tree after a mountain lion. Yet in that period Morgan had captured more than fifty lions alive and had killed as many more.
Morgan was not a big man as big men are counted, but he was tall, lithe, and extraordinarily strong.
Agile as a cat, he climbed trees, cliffs, and rocky slopes after the big cats, for which he was named, and had made a good thing out of supplying zoo and circus animal buyers.

With a noose at the end of the pole, and only seven feet below the snarling beast, Morgan lifted the pole with great care. The lion struck viciously and then struck again, and in that instant after the second strike, Morgan put the loop around his neck and drew the noose tight. Instantly, the cat became a snarling, clawing, spitting fury, but Morgan swung down from the tree, dragging the beast after him.

Before the yapping dogs could close with him, Lone John tossed his own loop, snaring the lion's hind legs. Morgan closed with the animal, got a loop around the powerful fore legs, and drew it tight. In a matter of seconds the mountain lion was neatly trussed and muzzled, with a stick thrust into its jaws between its teeth, and its jaws tied shut with rawhide.

Morgan drew a heavy sack around the animal and then tied it at the neck, leaving the lion's head outside.

Straightening, Cat Morgan took out the makin's and began to roll a smoke. "Well," he said, as he put the cigarette between his lips, "that's one more and one less."

Hard-ridden horses sounded in the woods and then a half dozen riders burst from the woods and a yell rent the air. "Got 'em, Dave! Don't move, you!" The guns the men held backed up their argument, and Cat Morgan relaxed slowly, his eyes straying from one face to another, finally settling on the big man who rode last from out of the trees.

This man was not tall, but blocky and powerful. His neck was thick and his jaw wide.