the Outlaws Of Mesquite (Ss) (1990) (16 page)

"By the-was "Taber!" The big man with the tawny mustache took a step forward. "You shoot and I'll kill you myself!

Don't be a fool!"

There was a short, taut silence. "Now, Red," the big man said quietly, "we can do business.

Looks to me like you're on the dodge. I saw your horse out there. A mighty fast horse, and it's come far and hard. I know that horse. It's from the Ruidoso, over in Lincoln County. Unless you knew that outfit well, you'd never have it. And if they let you have it, you're an outlaw."

"So?"

Red Clanahan stood very still, his big feet apart, his eyes wary and alert. Like a photograph, that room with every chair, table, and man was in his mind.

"So we can do business," the tawny-mustached man said. "Tell me where that claim is and I'll give you a thousand dollars."

Red chuckled. "You foolin'?"

"You better." The newcomer was casual. "If you don't, you'll never get out of here alive. Nor will the girl."

They faced Red and the girl, who were seven or eight feet apart. Fallon was closest to her. Porter and the boys were nearest to Red.

"And you'd lose a million dollars." Red grinned tightly. "You make me smile. How many men are crawlin' over these hills now, lookin' for lost mines? How many will always be doin' it? Mister, you know and I know there's nothin' so lost as a lost mine. Gold once found is mighty shy about bein' found again. If you kill me, you haven't one chance in a million of findin' that gold."

"We could make him talk," Shorty suggested.

Red Clanahan laughed. "You think so? You little coyote, you couldn't make a ten-year-old kid talk. The Apaches worked on me for two days once, and I'm still here."

The boss eyed him. "Who are you, Red? Seems I ought to know you."

"You wouldn't, only by hearsay. I run with the lobos, not with coyotes."

The boss seemed to tighten and his eyes thinned down.

"You use that word mighty free. Suppose we work on the girl? I wonder how fast you'd talk then?"

Red Clanahan shrugged. "How would that hurt me?

She's a pretty kid, but I never saw her before she walked in here. She's nothing in my life. You torture her and all you'd get would be the trouble of it. You'd be surprised how I could bear up under other people's trouble."

"He ain't as tough as he looks," Taber said.

"Let's work on the girl."

"No," the boss said, "I don't-was His voice broke off. Some of Red's relief must have shown in his eyes, for the boss suddenly changed his mind.

"Why, yes, Shorty, I think we will. You take-was The girl's gun seemed to waver, and Fallon grabbed for it. Instantly, the girl fired and Red Clanahan lunged.

He was cat-quick. With a bound he was half across the room. His shoulder struck Porter and knocked him careening into the boss, and both fell against the bar.

Red's move had the immediate effect of turning all the fire away from the girl, shifting the center of battle. But his lunge carried him into a table and he fell over a chair. Yet as he hit the chair his big hand emerged from under his shirt with a second gun.

Fallon was struggling with the girl, and Red's first bullet caught Shorty in the midriff. Shorty took a step back, his eyes glazing. Guns exploded and flame stabbed. Red lunged to his feet, moving forward, swaying slightly, spotting his shots carefully, the acrid smell of gunpowder in his nostrils. Then suddenly the room was still.

Only the boss was on his feet and Fallon was stepping away from the girl, his hands lifted. The boss had blood trickling from his left shoulder.

Shorty Taber was down, his eyes wide and empty.

Porter was slumped against the bar, a gun beside his hand, the front of his vest dark with blood, which was forming a pool under him.

Red moved swiftly and gathered up his second gun from where it had fallen. "Fifteen thousand, boss," he said quietly, "and I'll tell you what I know. I'll give you the map the girl's father drew for me." Red Clanahan bolstered one gun. "Act fast," he said. "I haven't much time."

Sam looked at the boss. "You want me to get it out of the safe, Johnson?"

Johnson's voice was hoarse. He clutched his bloody shoulder. "Yeah." Then he begged. "Let me get my shoulder fixed. I'll bleed to death."

"Afterwards." Clanahan watched Sam go to the safe.

"Johnson own this place, Sam?"

"Uh-huh."

"Looks like you're through here, then."

"You're tellin' me?" Sam brought two sacks to the counter. "They'd kill me after this."

"Then go saddle two horses. One for yourself and one for the lady."

"Miss," Clanahan gestured to her, "write him out a bill of sale to the claim designated on that map."

"But-was Elaine started a protest, then stifled it at Red's sudden impatience.

"Hurry!" he said angrily. "Do what I tell you!"

Red Clanahan saw Sam come around the building with the saddled horses, and yelled at him:

"Tie Fallon," he said. "But let Johnson alone. By the time he gets Fallon loose and that shoulder fixed, we'll be too far off. And if he follows, we'll kill him."

Johnson took the map and the bill of sale, smiling suddenly. "Maybe it was worth a bullet-shot shoulder," he said. "That's a rich claim."

Sam picked up the gold and sacked it into the saddle bags. Then he picked up the lunch he had packed earlier, and two hastily filled canteens.

In the saddle, Red said hoarsely, "Ride fast now! Get out of sight!"

Elaine glanced at him and was shocked by the sudden pallor of his face. "You! You're hurt!" she cried.

His wide face creased in a grin. "Sure! But I didn't dare let those hombres guess it.

Keep goin' a few miles. I can stick it."

Beside a stream they paused and bandaged his wound. It was a deep gouge in the side, from which he had bled freely. He watched the girl work over it with quick, sure fingers.

"You'd do to take along, ma'am. You're sure handy."

"I worked for a doctor."

Back in the saddle, they switched off the trail and headed up through the timber.

Sam rode beside them, saying nothing. His round face was solemn.

"By the way," Red said, "I better tell you. I looked at your dad's claim. And he was wrong, ma'am. It wasn't worth a million. It wasn't worth scarcely anything."

Shocked, she looked around at him. "What do you mean?"

"Your dad struck a pocket of free gold. It was richer than all get-out, but your dad was no minin' man. There ain't a thousand dollars left in that pocket."

"Then-was "Then if you'd kept it, you'd have had nothing but hard work and nothin' more. You got fifteen thousand."

"But I thought-was Red chuckled. "Ma'am," he said, "I never stole from no woman. I just figured those hombres wanted that claim so bad, they should have it."

Cresting the divide, two days later, they saw the smoke of a far-off town. Red Clanahan drew up. "I leave you here. My trail," he pointed north, "goes that way. You take her to town, will you, Sam?"

The older man nodded. "Where are you headed, Red?

The Roost?"

Clanahan glanced at him, wry humor in his eyes.

"Yeah. You know me?"

"Sure. I seen you once before, in Tascosa."

Clanahan glanced briefly at the girl.

"Take it easy with that money, ma'am." He lifted a hand. "So long."

The flanks of the horse gleamed black a time or two among the trees.

Elaine stared after him, her eyes wide and tear-filled.

"He-he is a good man, isn't he?" she said softly.

"Yeah, a real good man," Sam answered.

"What did you mean? The Roost?"

Sam rode on in silence; then he said, "Robber's Roost, ma'am. It's a hangout for outlaws up in the Utah canyon country. The way he rode will take him there."

"You knew him?"

"By sight, ma'am. His name's Red Clanahan, and they say he's killed nineteen men. It's said that he is a real badman."

"A good badman," she said, and looked again at where the horse had vanished in the trees. Once, far on a blue-misted ridge she thought she saw movement, a rider outlined briefly on the horizon. And then it was gone.

She might have been mistaken.

Showdown on the Tumbling T

Author's Note:

A man who was a gunfighter was simply a man who was good with a gun. His skill was usually the result of very steady nerves, very good reactions, and good coordination. A man might have had no intention of being a gunfighter at all, but then he got into a disagreement with somebody, and because of his ability, he was faster with a gun and he won. After he won two or three times he had a reputation as a gunfighter, whether he wanted it or not.

Very few gunfighters wanted to be known as such. The notion that a man went around trying to outdraw other people in order to build a big reputation seldom ever happened, unless they were either very young boys or somebody who was a psychopathic case.

Guns were dangerous and these men knew it. They carried guns because they were a tool of their living. You had to have them for many reasons aside from just wanting to shoot somebody else.

Chapter
I

Death Trap
.

U
nder the slate-gray sky the distant mountains were like a heap of rusty scrap iron thrown helter-skelter along the far horizon. Nearby, the desert was the color of pink salmon and scattered with the gray of sagebrush and a few huddles of disconsolate greasewood. The only spot of green anywhere in sight was the sharp, strong green of tall pines in a notch of the rust-red mountains.

That was the place I'd come from Texas to find, the place where I was to hole up until Hugh Taylor could send word for me. It was something to have a friend like Hugh, someone to give you a hand up when the going was rough. When I had returned from Mexico to find myself a fugitive from justice, he had been the only one to offer help.

A few scattered drops of rain pounded dust from the desert. I dug into my pack for my slicker. By the time I had it on the rain was coming down in a steady downpour that looked fair to last the night through as well as the afternoon.

Rowdy, my big black, was beginning to feel the hard going of the past weeks. It was the only time I had ever seen the big horse even close to weariness, and it was no wonder. We had come out of Dimmit County, Texas, to the Apache country of central Arizona, and the trails had been rough.

The red rocks of the mountains began to take on form and line, and I could see the raw cancers of washes that ate into the face of the plain, and the deep scars of canyons. Here and there lines of gray or green climbed the creases in the rock, evidence of underlying water or frequent rains among the high peaks.

The trail curved north, skirting the mountains toward the sentinel pines. "Ride right to the Tin Cup ranch," Hugh Taylor had said, "and when you get there, ask for Bill Keys. He'll be in charge, and he'll fix you up until this blows over. I'm sure I can get you cleared in a short time."

The mountains cracked wide open on my left and the trail turned up a slope between the pines. Blue gentians carpeted both sides of the road and crept back under the trees in a solid mass of almost sky-blue. The trail was faint, and apparently used very little, but there were tracks made by two riders and I watched them curiously. The tracks were fresh and they were headed into the Tin Cup canyon.

You can bet I had my eyes open, for even so far away from anyone that knew me there might be danger, and a man on the dodge learns to be careful.

Then I heard a shot.

It rapped out sharp and clear and final, bringing my head up with a jerk and my hand down to the stock of my Winchester. My rifle rode in a scabbard that canted back so that the stock almost touched my right thigh, and I could draw that rifle almost as fast as a man could draw a six-gun.

Rowdy heard that shot, too, and Rowdy knew what shooting could mean. He skirted the rocks that partially barred the way into the Tin Cup, and I looked down into a little valley with a stone barn and stone house, two corrals, and two riderless horses.

Then I saw the men. The air was sharp and clear, and they were only a couple of hundred yards off. There were three of them, and one was lying on the ground. The man who stood over the body looked up and yelled at the other one near the corner of the house. "No, it ain't him!" And then they both saw me.

Panic must have hit them both, but one of them made a break for his horse while the other swung his hand down for his gun. Honest men don't start shooting when a stranger rides up; so as his six-gun lifted, my rifle cleared the boot. He fired, but I wasn't worried. He was much too far away.

He made a dive for his horse and I held my fire. As he settled in the saddle I squeezed off my shot. He jerked like he was hit and I saw the gun fall from his hand into the rocks, and then they were taking out of there, but fast. They wanted no part of my shooting.