Gunpoint Page 3

  Of course he might have thought he’d hit me, especially from the way I’d just fallen off my horse. I took a cautious look to my left. My horse was still about ten yards away, cropping at the grass along the side of the road. Fortunately, the tied reins had fallen behind the saddle horn and were held there. If I wanted to make a run for it I wouldn’t have to spend the time gathering up the reins. The bad part of that was that our horses were taught to ground-rein. When you got off, if you dropped the reins they’d stand there just as if they were tied to a stump. But this way my horse was free to wander off as the spirit might move him—leaving me afoot whilst being stalked by a man with a rifle.

  I tried to remember how close the bullet had sounded over my head and whether or not the assassin might have thought he’d hit me. He had to have been firing upward because there was no other concealment except the high grass. Then I got to thinking I hadn’t seen a horse. Well, there were enough little depressions in the prairie that he could have hid a horse some ways back and then come forward on foot and concealed himself in the high grass when he saw me coming.

  But how could he have known I was coming? Well, that one wasn’t too hard to figure out. I usually went to town at least two or three times a week. If the man had been watching me at all he’d of known that. So then all he’d of had to do was come out every morning and just wait. Sooner or later he was bound to see me coming along, either going or returning.

  But I kept thinking about that shot. I’d had my horse in a walk, just slouching along. And God knows, I made a big enough target. In that high grass he could easily have concealed himself close enough for an easy shot, especially if he was a gun hand. The more I thought about it the more I began to think the shooter had been aiming to miss me, to scare me, to wear me down as Howard had said. If the note had come from somebody with an old grudge, they’d want me to know who was about to kill me or have me killed. And a bushwhacking rifle shot wasn’t all that personal. Maybe the idea was to just keep worrying me until I got to twitching and where I was about a quarter of a second slow. That would be about all the edge a good gun hand would need.

  I’d been laying there for what I judged to be a good half hour. Unfortunately I’d crawled in near an ant mound and there was a constant stream of little bastards passing by my hands. Sooner or later one of them was going to sting me. By now I was soaking in sweat and starting to get little cramps from laying so still. I knew I couldn’t stay there much longer. At any second my horse might take it into his head to go loping back to the barn. As it was he was steadily eating his way further and further from my position.

  I made up my mind I was going to have to do something. I slowly raised my head until I could just see over the grass. There wasn’t anything to see except grass. There was no man, no movement, not even a head of cattle that the gunman might have secreted himself behind.

  I took a deep breath and moved, jamming my hat on my head as I did and ramming my gun into its holster. I ran, keeping as low as I could, to my horse. He gave me a startled look, but he didn’t spook. Ben trains our horses to expect nearly anything. If they are of a nervous nature we don’t keep them.

  I reached his left side, stuck my left boot in the stirrup, and swung my right leg just over the saddle. Then, hanging on to his side, I grabbed his right rein with my right hand and pulled his head around until he was pointing up the road. I was holding on to the saddle with my left hand. I kicked him in the ribs as best I could, and got him into a trot and then into a lope going up the road toward town. I tell you, it was hell hanging on to his side. I’d been going a-horseback since I could walk, but I wasn’t no trick rider and the position I was in made my horse run sort of sideways so that his gait was rough and awkward.

  But I hung on him like that for what I judged to be a quarter of a mile and cut of rifle shot. Only then did I pull myself up into the saddle and settle myself into a normal position to ride a horse. Almost immediately I pulled up and turned in the saddle to look back. Not a thing was stirring, just innocent grass waving slightly in the light breeze that had sprung up.

  I shook my head, puzzled. Somebody was up to something, but I was damned if I could tell what. If they were trying to make me uneasy they were doing a good job of it. And the fact that I was married and had a wife and child to care for, and a hell of a lot more reason to live than when I was a single man, was a mighty big influence in my worry. It could be that the person behind the threats was aware of that and was taking advantage of it. If such was the case, it made me think more and more that it was the work of the daughter of the maniac in Bandera that had tried in several ways to end my life. It was the way a woman would think because she would know about such things. I couldn’t visualize the man in the buggy understanding that a man with loved ones will cling harder to life for their sake than a man with nothing else to lose except his own hide.

  But all that philosophizing was going to have to wait for a safer time. I put spurs to my gelding’s belly and jumped him up into a high gallop. If my bushwhacker had moved up the road to have another try I wasn’t going to give him an easy target.

  I held the gelding to his work for near three miles. When I felt him beginning to blow a little hard, only then did I pull him down to a lope and then a canter and finally a walk. Between my legs I could feel his sides swelling in and out as he ran air in and out his mouth. I looked back over my shoulder and kept a steady vigil on both sides of the road as I went along. Town was still three miles away, and I figured to let the gelding take it easy for about a mile and then put him back on pace for the balance of the way into Blessing. I got out my watch. It was a little after eleven o’clock.

  I made it into Blessing on a mighty tired horse. It was just coming noon when I pulled up in front of Lew Vara’s office. I dismounted and loosened the cinch on my gelding to let him have a better blow. He was still too hot to water. I’d do that when he cooled out. Our horses could take hard usage, first because they were bred to it, but also because of the kind of care they got.

  Fortunately Lew was in his office and not out of town or out to one of the surrounding ranches. When I came through the door he was sitting behind his desk, fiddling with some papers.

  “Well, well, well,” he said. “Look what the cat done drug in.”

  I said, “What are you doing there at your desk with them papers? Still trying to pretend you can read?”

  He pulled open a desk drawer and came out with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. “I was just looking for an excuse to have a drink.”

  “Like you never took one by yourself.”

  “Just when I was looking in a mirror.”

  I dragged up a chair opposite him and sat down while he poured out the whiskey. Lew was about half Cherokee Indian and half Mexican. The funny thing about him was that some days he looked both and some days he didn’t look either one. He was about two inches shorter than me but bigger in the shoulders and arms. He was a powerful man and no mistake. He could break up a saloon brawl just by walking in and clearing his throat. Wasn’t nobody around that really wanted to tangle with Lew.

  Now he said, “What brings you to town? Come in to count your money?”

  He meant that on account of the fact that we owned the bank. We also owned the hotel and the auction barn and various other places around town. But forty-five years past, Howard had arrived with a branding iron and a bedroll and a percussion-cap pistol. His closest neighbors had been Comanche Indians who did not welcome him or any other white-face coming. A little later on Buttercup—whose real name was Tom Butterfield—had shown up and gone to work helping Howard brand up a herd of the wild Longhorns that roamed the range. It had all come from that lowly beginning and it had all been earned. It was still being earned; nobody had ever given us anything.

  I said, “Let’s have that drink first.”

  We lifted our glasses, said “Luck” as befits the toast, and then knocked them straight back. We set our glasses down and Lew poured out again. He sa
id, “Gettin’ on to lunchtime. I hear Crook’s has made a new batch of chili.”

  “This early in the year?”

  “I hear that last batch had finally worked a hole through the cast-iron pot and leaked out.”

  I sipped at my whiskey. “Something I need to talk to you about first.”

  I got the threatening message out of my pocket and told him all I knew, including the rifle shot of that morning. When I’d finished I shoved the message across to him. He read it and then whistled. “Somebody don’t like you.”

  “You seen any strangers hanging around the last few days? The kind that might fit the intent of that note?”

  He leaned back in his swivel chair and stared at the ceiling, thinking it over. For a town of not much more than fifteen hundred souls Blessing did a pretty good trade in transients, which was mainly on account of the considerable number of ranches in the area and the amount of money they produced. We had drummers traveling in every line of merchandise and cattle buyers and sellers and people looking to hire out as well as those looking for experienced cowhands. Also, we were on the direct rail line from Houston and San Antonio to the border, a place where some of the gunmen I feared were out for my hide might hang out.

  Finally, Lew leaned forward and put his hands on his desk. “Hell, Justa, I can’t rightly say. Been about the ordinary run of strangers this past week. You can bet if your man was one of them he wouldn’t go out of his way to call the sheriff’s attention to hisself.”

  “What do you think about that rifle shot that went over my head?”

  He shrugged. “I think it was like you say. It would be too easy a shot for an experienced man if he’d wanted to knock you out of the saddle. Hell, he’d of knowed you’d be taking that little road from your ranch. He could have hid in the grass no more than fifty yards away and had a can’t-miss shot. It ain’t like you was riding around on the range with him having no idea which way you’d turn next.”

  “What do you reckon I ought to do?”

  He stood up. “Let me think on it. Meanwhile, let’s go down to Crook’s and have a bite. With any luck the chili will kill you first and you won’t have anything to worry about.”

  We walked down the board sidewalk, our spurs going ching-ching-ching against the hard surface. We knew most of the folks we met or passed, but I couldn’t help eyeing every one of them with a different eye than I normally would have turned in their direction. The mistake might be in looking for a stranger. I’d made some enemies around town as well. When I traded I traded hard, and some of the old mossbacks we had around would kill you for a cowhide.

  We got into Crook’s and had the chili and a couple of beers, not talking much while we ate. When we were through Lew got up and got a toothpick. When he’d sat back down he said, “If it was anybody else I’d tell them to clear out of the country for a while until this thing sort of blew over. But I know you ain’t going to do that.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” I said, thinking of that vacant-feeling house. “I been getting a little sick of that ranch for some little time. And now, with Nora gone ...” I let it trail off, not wanting to get into my personal feelings. But I said, “If I thought I had things lined out where the ranch would run itself I’d leave tomorrow. Ain’t a hell of a lot of thinking or choosing needs to be done this year. Just keep the cows in sight and keep them near water and out of the salt grass.”

  Lew said, “Why, if you was to take off for, say, a couple of weeks I’d easy be able to spot any stranger that was hanging around over-long. Then we’d have our man.”

  I just give him a look. I said drily, “Don’t you reckon he’d follow me, Lew? Seems like the hombre has been keeping a pretty close eye on me.”

  He chewed on his toothpick for a minute and said, “I hadn’t thought of that. But couldn’t you take off in the middle of the night? Or take the train? Why don’t you take the train to Houston to see Nora?”

  I gave him a fairly amazed look. “And bring this kind of trouble right sprang into the middle of her family reunion? Norris said I’d been drinking too much. I think he needs to get on to you.”

  I suddenly stiffened and my hand went instinctively toward my revolver as a man I didn’t know came through the front door. I only relaxed when I saw, as he headed toward the bar, that he wasn’t wearing a gun.

  Lew was watching me curiously. “You better do something, old friend. You’ve been acting like a hunted man ever since we left my office. Your eyes never stop moving, and I seen you just now nearly pull on that farmer. You keep this up you’ll wear yourself plumb out.”

  “Let’s go,” I said. “I’ve got to go and see Norris.”

  But I walked back to the sheriff’s office with Lew even though Norris’s office was in the opposite direction. Parker’s Mercantile was nearly right next door to the jail and I wanted to duck in for a minute a see Nora’s dad, Lonnie. Besides, I needed to water my horse. I said adios to Lew at his office door. He said, “I’ll keep my eyes open and I’ll keep thinking. But I don’t see where you got much choice except to clear out for a time. Ain’t no way to protect yourself as out in the open as you stay. That is, unless the man thinks he’s good enough to take you head-on. Maybe he’ll be fool enough to do that.”

  Lew went in, and I unhitched my horse and led him down the street to a water trough. I hitched him in such a manner that he could drink his fill, and then stepped up on the boardwalk and went into the dim coolness of Lonnie Parker’s general store.

  Naturally Lonnie hadn’t gone to the reunion. Some people said if it wasn’t for Sundays and Christmas he wouldn’t close his store at all. And he wasn’t about to leave it in the care of nobody else. If there ever was a tradesman it was Lonnie. But he was a pretty good old coot and he and I got along fine as in-laws. And that wasn’t because of the considerable business our ranch did with his store. We’d been doing that long before Nora and I had got serious.

  He was behind the counter where the cash register was, as usual. He had enough help around the place that he could have taken it a lot easier, but Lonnie just plain liked to sell merchandise. I came through the dimness, trying to adjust my eyes from the bright sun outside. I said, “Hello, Lonnie.”

  He said, “Well, my goodness. How be you, son-in-law?”

  “Little lonesome,” I said. I leaned an elbow on the counter. “Reckon them women of ours are ever going to come back?”

  He shook his head. He said, “I most dearly hope so. That Mexican woman Mizz Parker left to cook my vittles don’t know any more about cooking than a pig knows about square dancing.”

  Well, he should talk. His wife was about the best cook in ten counties. Nora was always accusing me of marrying her in hopes she’d learn to cook like her mother. It wasn’t true, but I never went out of my way to deny it. I said, “Been a week. You had any word?”

  He shook his head. “Naw, them women folk ain’t got no mind fer us sufferin’ here back home. They still catchin’ up on their gossip and talkin’ sewin’ and all that stuff women talk when men ain’t around.”

  “Did you say you were going to go up and bring your wife and Nora home when they get done?”

  He got a kind of hemmed-up look on his face. He cleared his throat. “Well, now it could be that I might do just that. But I just don’t see no way to get away what with business being what it is and all these new helpers I got around here that need breakin’ in.”

  I wanted to laugh. I had specifically heard him promise Mrs. Parker that he would make it up to Houston for a couple of days towards the end of the reunion. And his new helpers consisted of a couple of hired hands that had been with him for about ten years. But I didn’t say anything about that. “Listen, Lonnie, there’s a good chance I might have to be out of town for a couple of weeks. Business. And I’ll kind of be out of touch. I might even be gone longer. If I do leave I want you to do something for me.”

  “If I can,” he said.

  “Tell them down at the telegraph office and at the p
ost office that if any messages or letters come for me from Nora they are to deliver them to you. You’re here in town and I can wire you easier than I can my family out at the ranch. Besides, you might get word from Mrs. Parker.”

  Since it wasn’t going to cost him any money he was only too happy to oblige. He went to nodding his head and said, “Be glad to, be glad to.”

  “And there’s just a chance that I might still be gone when Nora gets back. If I am, I want you to keep her here in town with you and Mrs. Parker until I get back. I don’t want her and the baby out at the ranch by themselves.”

  “Well, that would just plumb tickle me and Mizz Parker to death. I ain’t near had a good enough chance to play granddaddy.”

  We visited for a few more minutes. He asked me what kind of business might be taking me out of town, and I said something vague about going west to look over some ranches that were in financial trouble and might be acquired at a pretty good price.

  He nodded approvingly. “That’s the time to trade with a fella, when he’s got hisself in a bind.”

  After that I took myself back outside, tightened up the cinch on my horse, swung aboard, and rode down to the bank where Norris had his office. Norris had his office on the second floor and I walked through the lobby, nodding at the employees who worked for us, and took the stairs up to the top. Norris was going over some papers when I walked in, and didn’t say anything. I sat down in a chair opposite him and got out a cigarillo and lit it. I said, “I’ve been thinking on quitting the country for a couple of weeks. You got anything that might require my approval or signature before I go? Understand, I haven’t made up my mind yet. I’m just trying to see what might be standing in the way.”

  He said, “Just what we talked about last night, selling off some cattle for cash.”

  I bit my lip. I really wasn’t ready to sell off as yet because I thought the market might go higher, but I also knew it could go lower and go lower in a hurry! There was also the consideration of the amount of grass we had. We were nearly grazing to the limit, and if we caught a dry summer we’d have to sell off anyway. I said, “What’s the latest Kansas City quote?”