to Tame a Land (1955) (16 page)

"Don't make a wrong move. Don't try to see who I a m. My life wouldn't be worth a plug penny. But loo k down Lang's back trail."

"Thanks."

"All right." The man in the darkness chuckled. "Wort h it to see Billings moppin' the floor!"

Footsteps retreated down a narrow alleyway, and I s tood quiet until they were gine. Me, I was pretty sur e it had been the gambler with the smile.

We wrote some letters, Mustang and me. We wrot e letters to Denver and Cheyenne, because we knew Lan g had been both places. We found out he had been in Cimarron and Tascosa. And in Cimarron he had been associated with a gambler known as Ben Blake.

Ben Blake . . . Ben Billings. And the description s fitted. The trouble was, that was all. We couldn't ti e anybody to them. And nobody in Denver, Cimarron, Tascosa, or Cheyenne knew anything about them, or abou t anybody known as Farris.

Mustang and me, we sat in the office one night. I t was coming on for spring and a soft wind was blowing.

I had been around town all day and was getting restless , or maybe it was just the wind.

Mustang, he tipped back in his chair, that long narro w face of his looking uncommon thoughtful. He slid his ha t back on his head, showing that cowlick of blond hair.

"You sure was on your own mighty young," he sai d suddenly. "Wonder you got away from them Indians."

"I had a fast home. Old Blue.

"Gave him to Liza, didn't you?"

"Well, sort of. She was to ride him."

Mustang rolled him a smoke and when it was lit h e said thoughtfully, "You set store by that kid. Maybe sh e set some by you, too. You're a good-lookin' galoot. Al l the womenfolks in town say you're handsome. I recko n they could be right. Now, such a girl as that, not seeir e many men, she might be so dumb as to fall for you."

"Not much chance."

"S'posin' she did. She have anything to remember yo u by?"

"Not that I know of."

"Except Old Blue."

"He's prob'ly dead. Old, anyway. And most of th e horses were stolen."

Mustang drew deep on his cigarette, and looked superior-like. "Not him," he said. "I seen him today."

Chapter
14

COME DAYLIGHT, we rode out there, ready for trouble.

Really loaded for bear.

If what Mustang figured was true, Liza would tak e care of that horse. If she cared a mite about me, sh e would keep Old Blue close to her.

Mustang, he was a shrewd one. He set around wit h a poker face most of the time, but he used that head o f his, and he reasoned mighty well.

He got to thinking about that girl and that ranch. H
e reasoned she would keep Old Blue up close to the house , In the stable, prob'ly. He reasoned Old Blue wouldn'
t get stolen for that reason. Besides, he was mighty old, an d no horse thief would want a gelding who was gettin g along in years.

"Something else," Mustang said. "Whoever this T. J.

Farris is, he knows who you are."

"I figure."

"I mean he knows plenty about you. He's gone t o some trouble to find out. He even knows things I don'
t know about you."

"How's that?"

"You'll see. He's been huntin' along your back trail.

Maybe to find something to scare you with."

This ranch was a little outfit back in the hills, not fa r from town, but out of the way. A nice little ranch wit h pole corrals and rail fences and some good meadowland.

There were some stacks of hay put up, and I could se e some berries trimmed and up on a ience, like. She wa s a mighty nice place.

We came riding up mighty slow. Mustang, he ha d scouted the place, and he had talked to the man wh o owned it. Or said he owned it. Only now it might be a trap.

Sure enough, Old Blue was there. He still had on hi s winter coat and looked mighty rough, but it made a lum p come in my throat to see him. Why, he must be fourtee n years old, maybe older.

Right then, outlaws or no outlaws, trap or none, I w asn't passing up Old Blue. I swung down and went ove r to the fence.

"Blue," I said. "Good Old Blue!"

His head came up and his ears pricked. He came towar d the fence, then stopped, looking at me. "Blue, you ol d sidewinder! Blue!"

Then I reckon I shed some tears. I reckon I did. I n front of Roberts and all. With maybe guns trained on me.'

But this was Old Blue, the home that had come across th e plains with us, the horse my pap rode, the home tha t carried me that lonely crying time after Pap was killed.

The horse that carried me right up to the ranch wher e I'd met Liza.

And he knew me. Don't you ever tell me a horse can'
t remember! He remembered, all right. He came up an d I went over that rail fence and put my arms around hi s neck. And he nuzzled me with his nose.

"Where is she, Blue? Where's Liza?"

And if he could have talked, he would have told me.

I believe that. If he could have talked. Only he couldn't.

Or . .. could he?

A man was coming down the lane toward us, a tal l old man with gray hair, just such a man as Hetrick himself had been. Gave me a start for a minute, only whe n he came nearer I saw it wasn't him. Nor even much lik e him.

"Knows you, doesn't he?"

"He should. We went through it together."

"So I was told."

"Told? By Liza? Where is she?"

He drew on his pipe. "No idea. I told him," he gesture d at Mustang Roberts, "I'd no idea. Only the horse wa s left here.

"A man came up one day with the home. I knew th e home because I'd seen him with the girl. She had brough t him with her behind the stage. All she had left, she said , and she was going to keep him.

"This man who was with her, he said to keep the home.

He said to take good care of him. He said one day you'
d come along to claim him."

"That I would?"

"What he said. That you would. Named you to me. H
e said Rye Tyler would be along. That if you wanted him , he was yours. Otherwise I was to give him a home her e until he died. With the best of care."

Now that was funny. That was most odd. What woul d anybody care about my old horse? Unless . .. maybe h e was doing it to please Liza. Right then I felt sort of sick.

Maybe he was in love with her, and her with him. Wh y else would a man care about another man's horse?

But this was getting mixed up. Maybe this gent had n o connection with T. J. Farris at all. Maybe he was jus t somebody who met Liza and fell in love with her. Mayb e Liza was happily married now. Maybe she was in a goo d home and I was wasting my time, and Mustang's too.

Why else would a man think so of a home?

"This man. What did he look like?"

"Quiet-looking man. A cowhand, but no kid. He sai d his boss wanted the home left here."

"His boss?"

"Uh-huh, that's it."

So it was another blind trail. Who might the boss be?

"This cow hand. Where was he from? Who was he?"

"Gave no name. Never saw him before. He gave me a hundred dollars and told me to take care of the horse.

I'm a man who likes homes, and he knew it. And an y man would like Old Blue."

None of this made sense. In one way, I wasn't so muc h worried. A man who would think that much of anothe r man's horse wasn't the sort to be mean with a woman.

Yet in another way, I was worried. That sort of ma n might be the kind she could love. And that bothered me.

I guess Mustang was right. I was in love with Liza.

And this was another dead end. Or mighty near it.

The thing that had me wondering was why Billing s would not talk about his connection with the girl. Especially when he must have known I'd get out of hi s wool if I took out after Liza.

Yet two months later I was no nearer finding her, an d on the day when I again heard of her, I killed my eight h man.

We had occasional trouble with drunken miners, bu t we usually put them in jail to cool off and sober up.

Otherwise it was almighty tame. Then one day a ma n tried to hold up, of all places, Billings' saloon.

Shouldn't say he tried. He did it. Me, I was back o f the office saddling the gray when I heard a shot. I steppe d around the horse and was looking along the back door s of the buildings when I saw this door burst open and a man lunge out with a sack in his hand.

He had a gun gripped in the other hand, and I coul d see a horse waiting. He was headed for that horse whe n I yelled at him. I told him to hold up there, and b e quick.

At that, he might have got away. There were a coupl e of wagons and a wagon yard betwixt us, and he woul d have been behind them in two more jumps. But whe n I yelled he skidded to a stop and came up with his gun.

My bullet nailed him just as he fired. His shot wen t whining off overhead, seeming closer than it was. Alway s that way with a bullet when a man is shot at. Alway s seems close.

When I got to him he was in bad shape. The bulle t had hit him in the side and gone through both his lung s and he was breathing blood in bubbles. All the fight wa s knocked out of him. His gun had fallen where he coul d have reached it, but he didn't try.

When I leaned over him he spoke mighty bitter. "You!

That . . . that stopped me! I . . . I had to make my try!"

The holdup man was
Ollie Burdette. He looked older , grayer. Yet it had been only a few months since I'd ru n him out of Mason Crossing.

Yet there was a glint in his eyes, a kind of fadin g triumph. "I seen her!" I could barely hear the words.

"Seen her! You'll never get her now! You'll . . . bette r man!"

"What?" I grabbed his shoulder. "You saw who?"

He was going fast, and folks were coming, but he wa s having the last laugh. "I . . . seen Liza!" He spoke wit h that ugly bubbling sound from bleeding lungs. "Bette r man than you . . . got her!"

And he died.

Ben Billings scooped up the spilled money. He looke d at Burdette, then curiously at me. "You know him?"

How much had Billings heard? What was he thinking?

"
Ollie
Burdette," I told him, "from over at th e Crossing."

Billings looked at the dead man, a curious, thoughtfu l look on his face. "Strange. . . . A man would think h e was fated to die by your gun. You didn't kill him there , so unexpectedly you kill him here." He looked around a t me. "Makes a man wonder."

It did, at that.

And was there some other meaning behind the word s of Ben Billings? Was he, too, fated to die by my gun?
i And that night, back at the office, I thought about t.

Who could have guessed such a thing would happen?

That from the day Burdette saw me on the street, I wa s marked by some fate to cut him down? Did he know it i n some queer way? Me, I don't set much store by that sor t of thing, but it does beat all.

Billings could have killed 'him, or a dozen men. Yet i t was me. And he was my eighth man, and I had neve r wanted to kill even one.

Sometimes when I got up in the morning I hated t o belt on my gun. Sometimes I just looked at it and wishe d I could be shut of the whole thing, that I could get clea n away from it all, and go someplace where men did no t pack guns or shoot to kill.

Maybe you think I could have left my guns off, bu t I wouldn't have lived an hour. Not one. Too many o f that Billings crowd around, or others who wanted m y hide.

When Mustang and me took over there had been robberies and murders every night. It was the law of th e gun that we brought to Alta, but it was law. Ours wa s a time of violence, of men fiercely independent, of me n who resented every slight and whose only recourse was t o the Colt.

It is all very well for those who live in the East t o talk of more peaceful means, or for those who live in th e later, gentler years, but we were men with the bark on , and we were opening up raw, new country, mustan g country, bronco country, uncurried, unbroken, and fierce.

Because of the guns I wore, women walked along ou r streets now, children were going to a small school nearby , and people went to church on Sunday. I wore my gun s and the thieves and murderers sat in the shadows an d waited for me to fall or to have a moment of carelessness.

I thought of Liza. A better man, he had said. A bette r man had won her. But better in what sense? What sor t of man could be friendly to Billings and be a good man?

One thing I had in that town, I had a friend. No ma n was ever more understanding or a stronger right han d than Mustang Roberts. He had only three short years o f schooling. He read, but slowly. He could write, though no t well. But there was in him a purpose and endurance suc h as I have seen in few men, and a kind of rocklike strengt h that let me go ahead knowing he would always be at m y back, ready to back me up with his guns.