Short Grass/Chapter 20
During the night Dunham's attitude toward his situation changed. Perhaps it was a subconscious adjustment, at work within him while he slept, or it may have been only the assertion of his common sense over the stubborn spirit of defiance. He woke in the conviction that he had made a mistake by remaining in Pawnee Bend, and that he would complicate it if he stopped there to tempt the rope some solid citizen might be knotting for his neck even then.
There was no chance of getting anything under his feet in that town but air, a foundation altogether too uncertain for a young man of ambitions and matrimonial designs. Nobody would give him a job; by staying there he would only be inviting disaster. They were accustomed to handling wilder men than he in that country, and it was as true that morning as when John Moore had put it bluntly some days back in Bill's adventurous career, that he could not fight them all.
It was unpleasant to think of a mob composed of the solid business interests of Pawnee Bend—of Puckett, Bergen, and the grumpy hardware man who had cursed because there was nobody to pay for the window broken by the fittified man. It would be better to slip away quietly, cowardly as it would seem to go, than to exasperate them to some desperate action by the continued challenge of his presence.
There was no question but he stood outlawed on that range. Nobody would give him a job, unless it might be on the railroad gang, which did not appeal to him. His money would waste away if he continued in Pawnee Bend, where there would be constant danger of embroilment with riders of the range who would be seeking a pretext for taking his life. After breakfast he would get his horse and depart quietly, heading for the next westward town, where he could sell the animal and continue on to Santa Fé by train.
He could not hope to see Zora before going; it would be an affront to Moore, after all that had passed, to visit his place. He would write to her, post the letter in Pawnee Bend, and she would be happily relieved to know that he had taken her advice. He would go on in the expectation of a happy reunion when he should find his place and get something more substantial under his feet than a prospect of unlimited Kansas air.
MacKinnon had not said whether the time for his departure had been arbitrarily fixed by the solid interests. Dunham believed MacKinnon had named the hour in his own friendly desire to make it safe. Early morning was a dead hour in Pawnee Bend; few people but railroaders got up in time for the ordinary farmer's breakfast. Even the stores opened late, with the exception of the butcher shop, which supplied the breakfast steaks, and the saloons, which furnished the appetizers necessary to create a yearning for the butcher's beef. And the saloons, of course, never closed.
The breakfast steak and the before-breakfast dram were the established formula in Pawnee Bend. Gentlemen who went out for the early nip ambled on to the butcher's and brought home the breakfast steak. When the wives of Pawnee Bend put the skillets on in the morning, the atmosphere of the town was blue with the smoke of beef that had been care-free steer the night before.
Dunham felt like a sluggard when he went down stairs, for the sun was high. All his years he had been accustomed to a generous handicap in his daily race with the sun. MacKinnon was on duty, ready to collect from guests as they came clumping on high bootheels down his resounding stairs. He eyed Dunham's overstuffed suitcase with approval.
MacKinnon said he was glad reason had prevailed against the stubborn spirit of youth. The more territory a man left behind him in life's travels the farther he could see ahead. He was greatly relieved that Will-ium had taken an old fool's advice—he was not a day over fifty—and decided to journey on. Yes, he would keep the suitcase there, and send it along when Bill supplied the address.
After putting away the liberal portion of breakfast steak they cut for a man in Pawnee Bend in those days, Dunham settled with MacKinnon and said good-by. MacKinnon asked no questions on his destination or intentions, but seemed under a nervous anxiety to have him gone.
It was then about seven o'clock, which seemed to Dunham a very late hour for making a start. He dropped the note he had written to Zora in the post office, and went angling across the street toward the livery stable to get his horse.
As Dunham crossed the street he saw the two men who had attracted his attention in the Casino the night before, standing in front of the San Angelo café. They were for the road also, he thought, wondering what their business could be that called for so much close conference. They were standing there in the sun picking their teeth, talking in the same oblivious manner to outside interference as last night when they leaned on Poteet's bar. They hadn't the appearance of very much consequence. Cowboys on the move from one job to another, he judged, dismissing them with the thought.
When Dunham came leading his horse out of the livery stable he found the two strangers standing near the door, looking about aimlessly, as if they had the day before them and didn't know what to do with it. He was adjusting a stirrup strap, when the elder of the pair, the tall one with the dusty stubble of beard, exclaimed to his companion and pointed to the-horse.
Dunham nodded across the saddle as they came sauntering up, in the wide-legged, ungainly gait of men who lived in the saddle, thinking they wanted to talk. They ignored the salutation with severe aloofness, looking at the horse, then at Dunham, then again at the horse, a hard look of accusation in their eyes.
"Where in the hell're you goin' to with that horse, feller?" the lanky man asked. He took hold of the bridle and stood glowering over the horse's head, Dunham with a foot in the stirrup ready to mount.
"Well, I don't know as that's exac'ly any of your business, friend," Dunham replied, outwardly unruffled, but feeling in that area which he defined as his craw a sinking and dragging, which told him as well as any barometer of human passions that ever might be devised, that trouble was standing in the road.
"I make it my business when I find a man ridin' off on my horse," the slab-sided fellow said. "I've been trailin' that horse, and I'm here to take him."
"You'll have to prove your ownership—I'm not goin' to take your word for that, pardner," Dunham replied, getting a little hot around the sweatband. "I bought this outfit from the man that owns this stable, and I've got his bill of sale."
"I ain't carin' a cuss about the man that had him; I'm talkin' to the man that's got him. Back up there, feller, and give me this horse!"
Dunham didn't believe the man ever saw the horse before. He raised his hand in a cautioning gesture, turned to the door and called the liveryman, whom he had left in his dusty little office smelling of neat's foot oil only a minute before.
The liveryman had disappeared. He didn't answer to the hail that Dunham sent roaring through the empty barn, but an open door at the back told which way he had gone. Whether he had dusted it out of caution, or because there was something crooked about the ownership of the horse, Dunham did not try to guess.
It came to Dunham suddenly, through that subtle sense that pricks its ears when a man confronts a situation bulging with danger, and strains every faculty to escape its threat, that this was merely a trick to involve him in an altercation upon which an excuse for killing him could be hung. He believed these two had been sent there by the cattlemen to put an end to what they considered his pernicious activity. He was a stranger who might have influential relatives. There must be a color of justification for the deed, and these rascals had been inspired by sight of his horse.
"Now, look here, pardner," Dunham said, argumentatively cool, his foot withdrawn from the stirrup, hands free of the saddle, but the rein still in his left hand, "if this is your horse, what is his brand?"
The brand, the letters SJ, was on the left shoulder, opposite the claimant, and out of his sight.
"I don't have to prove the brand on anything I own," the spokesman of the pair said—the other had not opened his mouth to let out a word—with a significant motion toward his gun.
This confirmed Dunham in the belief that the man was not honestly trying to regain possession of a stolen horse, but working to frame a situation that would provoke Dunham to go after his gun. They were confident of getting him, being doubled on him that way, working to a plan they no doubt had perfected well in advance.
Dunham did some of the quickest thinking of his life in the next few seconds. Their intention could not be altered by further words. If he mounted and started out of town, they would kill him on the pretext that he was escaping with a horse they believed had been stolen from them. Even if it should be plain to everybody their claim was only a pretense, it would be enough to clear them in the code of that lawless land.
"You never saw that horse before!" Dunham said, a cold bristling feeling sweeping over him. The alertness of his body and mind was intensified by the exigency. He jerked the bridle, breaking the hooked-fingerhold the man had on the bit ring, whirled the animal, gave it a sharp slap, and turned it back into the stable with a jump and a grunt. The man who had been holding the bridle had to jump lively to keep from being trampled as the horse whirled.
"He'll stay there till the liveryman comes back, then he'll do the explainin,' if there's any comin' to you fellers," Dunham said.
He had maneuvered the horse into the livery barn without turning his back for a second, and at the same time put a little distance between himself and the two men. He was standing not more than ten feet from the door, the man who had done the talking on his left, the other almost directly facing him.
These two now began to spread apart, edging along watchfully, their aim being to divide Dunham's attention and get him off guard. It was easier to watch two men in one place than two men separated. When they had him right, they'd get him with little risk to themselves. That was the theory of it, as Dunham could see.
At the same time Dunham began to back off, as he had backed away from Ford Kellogg in that same street, not two hundred feet from where he stood playing his part in the prologue to this new tragedy. The craft that was the most subtle force of his fighting heritage told him the farther he withdrew from them the harder it would be for them to coördinate action with intention.
Few people were on the street to witness the formation of this fighting triangle. Such as were abroad stopped in their tracks when they saw the hostile maneuvering, the wise ones dodging into the most convenient doors. The butcher, informed by a breathless customer of what was shaping up in the street, came to the door with his cleaver in his hand.
Across the street MacKinnon sat in his office reading a Kansas City paper brought over by the night operator when he went off duty, unconscious of Fate's busy writing before his very door what might turn out to be the last paragraph in Bill Dunham's brief, adventurous tale.
Nothing more was said by the weedy lank scoundrel who had pushed the unfounded quarrel to this ominous pass; not a word was uttered on either side. The argument in the case was finished; nothing was wanting but the decision, which must come in a hot streak very soon.
Dunham was prickling all over with a cold nervous thrill that maybe was nothing more noble than a savage exultation in the fight. There was no thought of danger in him, nothing but the clear, sharp calculation of chances, the keen watch for opportunity.
Give him the bulge, he kept telling himself, his main concern with the thinner man. He was the dangerous one, he was the surer one, but keep within the law; give him the bulge.
This man was sidling along into the street, scuffing his feet in the quick dragging movement of a boy who plays off base toward goal in some game of wits and speed, something in his movement of plain intent to deceive. His companion had backed up against the front of the barn, where he stood surly and watchful as if held at bay. His hand was near his gun, but not on it. They, also, were making a pretense of keeping within the law.
Dunham had been edging toward the barn door as he backed warily off, with a thought of dodging inside. That would put him out of sight of the man against the wall, and give him an even break. The opening was wide and high, cut to admit a wagon loaded with hay; the tall flimsy doors were folded back against the outside wall, one propped with a neckyoke, the other anchored against the wind by an old wagon wheel. A dash of six or eight feet would put Dunham inside.
How to make it was the question. He knew he would be throwing his life down if he turned his back an instant, and if he tried to crawfish that lanky man would let him have it where he lived. The fellow was watching to grab the slightest excuse for jerking out his gun, and this apparent desire to escape would give him all the grounds he needed to make a case. Sending his horse in ahead would look like part of a crafty ruse. The thought stopped Dunham in his tracks.
All this maneuvering had taken place in a very few seconds, so quickly, indeed, that the dust raised by Dunham's horse when it scurried into the barn still hung in the door. When Dunham stopped, the long man stopped. The three of them stood waiting for the next move.
Who was to make it? That was the big question in Dunham's mind. They were not there to let him get away; he might as well force them to show their hands soon as late. With this intention he made a feint of breaking for the door. The pale man with his back to the wall jerked out a quick:
"Look out!"
There was not more than five yards between Dunham and either man, and about an equal distance separating the partners in this double-cinched scheme to have his life. Dunham saw both of them go after their guns at that signal, as he knew it to be. He was standing with right foot thrown back toward the door, desperately alert, hand ready to drop to his gun, a gun, as he remembered with a terrible surge of apprehension, that he never had fired.
This realization gave Dunham a tremendous jolt. It made him feel as if his last hope was gone, that he had bungled the start of that desperate race and never could regain his chance. The long man was throwing down on him when Dunham jerked his gun and fired.
The other man had put his confidence in his partner's hitherto infallible hand, a misguided trust, as he realized too late. When Dunham fired, the lanky man's gun-hand jerked up, the shot going wide and wild. Dunham had heard a chicken make the same sharp little gasping cluck when its head was whipped off quickly with an ax as the tall flat man made in his throat when that bullet cut through his heart.
Without turning on his heel, Dunham flipped his gun and caught the fair-skinned man through the hand while his pistol-barrel was scraping the mouth of his scabbard. The shot that the flinching jerk of the fellow's stung fingers fired tore down his leg in a bloody furrow. He dropped his gun, his right hand cut across back of the knuckles as if he had been chopped with an ax. He never would sling a gun with that hand again. His partner lay on his face in the road, his long arms flung wide, like a pilgrim at Mecca embracing the ground the prophet's feet have pressed.