Then he examined the guns. The pistol was a good one, brand-new, apparently. Whose outfit did he have, anyway? He belted on the gun, tried it for balance and feel. It felt good.
He had to get back to New York. That meant returning to the railroad and finding a town or a water tank. Some place where a train might stop. He had to get back. Morrissey would need him.
Shanaghy walked back to his blanket-roll, but instead of picking it up he sat down again. Damn, it felt good! Just the stillness, the peace. After the hectic life he had.been living …
He knew the sound of horses’ hoofs when he heard them, and he heard them now. For a moment he remained where he was, just listening. Then he got up, moved the blanket-roll out of sight near a tree and leaned the shotgun against the tree. The coat he wore effectively concealed the pistol. Shanaghy walked down to the ashes of the fire. Now maybe he could find out where he was and how far away was the nearest town.
There were four of them and they came down the slope toward the stream, riding together. One man, on a gray horse, trailed a little behind. “Hey!” He heard one of them speak. “Somebody’s … “
They rode through the stream and pulled up about twenty feet away from him.
“Look,” one of them said, “it’s a pilgrim!”
“How are you?” Shanaghy said. “I wonder if … “
“It’s an Irish pilgrim,” another said. “What d’ you know about that?” Three of them were about his own age, one of them probably younger. The fourth was a lean, wiry older man with a battered, narrow-brimmed hat and an old gray coat and patched, homespun pants. This man had his hands behind him. Shanaghy squatted on his heels, stirring the ashes and adding a few sticks.
“Headin’ for town,” he said casually. “How far is it?”
Some of the sticks caught a small fire.
The heavier-set of the riders took a coil of rope from his saddle and shook out a loop. He moved toward a large cottonwood. “How about here?” he suggested. “Wait a minute,” another said. “What about him?” A man in a white buckskin vest had looked on but not yet spoken. He had sat, staring at Shanaghy. Then slowly he smiled. “We can always make it two,” he said.
The heavy-set one looked startled. “But we don’t even know him. He ain’t done any harm.”
“How do we know? He looks to me like a sinful man.” He turned his full attention to Shanaghy. “Where’s your horse?”
“ I don’t have one.” Shanaghy was wary. He was in trouble but he did not know how much, nor had he quite understood what they were talking about. “I dropped off a train.”
“Out here? You must be crazy! It’s forty miles to the nearest town.”
“I can walk.”
“Walk? Now I know you’re crazy.”
The man in the white vest spoke again. “He shouldn’t be here. He’s in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Shanaghy was growing irritated. “This looks like a good place to me,” he said.
“I like it.”
“You hear that?” White Vest said. “He says he likes it.” There was a moment of silence, then the man on the horse with his hands behind him said, “I always knew you were rotten, Drako.” “Bass?” Drako glanced at the man with the coiled rope. “Take him.” Shanaghy had never seen anybody rope steers, but he had heard stories from his old friend who taught him to shoot. He saw the rope go up, saw the loop shoot at him and as the horse gathered itself to leap he threw himself toward a tree. The trunk was no more than six feet from him and he was quick. For Shanaghy, to think was to act. He threw himself past the tree, then around it in a lunge. The loop caught him as he had known it would, but as the horse leaped to drag him he had a turn around the tree, then a second. The horse hit the end of the rope with a lunge and the girth parted. The horse charged on, then man, saddle and rope hit the ground hard.
Drako swore and the third man grabbed for a gun. Shanaghy never knew how he did it but he had not stopped moving. When the girth broke he had thrown off the rope and when the third man grabbed for his gun, Shanaghy shot him.
He intended to shoot him through the body but the man was moving and the bullet caught his left arm at the elbow, breaking it.
“Next time,” Shanaghy covered his miss, “I’ll break the other arm. Now get out of here … all of you.”
“Mister?” The man with his hands behind him spoke softly, desperately. “Mister, I never begged for anything in my life, but-“ For the first time Shanaghy realized that the man’s hands were tied behind his back.
“Leave that man here,” Shanaghy said. “Let go of that lead-rope and leave him.”
“I’ll be damned if I will!” Drako shouted.
“You’ll be dead if you don’t,” Shanaghy replied. “I was mindin’ my own affairs. You come bargin’ in here an’ you just tried to sweep too many streets all at once. If you want to live long enough to see sundown you’ll get out, and if you come back you’ll deserve what you get.”
“Oh, we’ll be back, all right!”
Drako dropped the lead-rope and turned his horse away. “We’ll surely be back!” Shanaghy watched them ride away and then he walked over to the bound man and cut his hands loose. “Don’t know what they had you for, chum,” he said, “but that’s a bad lot.”
The man rubbed his wrists. “You’re new in this country,” he replied grimly.
“They was fixin’ to hang me. If you hadn’t been here I’d be dead by now.” Shanaghy walked to the tree where he had concealed his blanket-roll and the shotgun, and took them up.
“My name’s Tom Shanaghy,” he said.
“Josh Lundy,” the older man said. Then he added, “We got but one horse. No use killin’ him carryin’ double. You ride awhile, then I will.” Lundy reached for the bed-roll but stopped abruptly, his eyes on the shotgun. Then slowly he took the roll of blankets and tied it behind the saddle. “You carry a shotgun all the time?” he asked. Something in his tone drew Shanaghy’s attention.
“No … Why?”
“Wondered.”
Yet suddenly Lundy’s manner had changed. The friendliness was gone from his tone and he was somehow cool and remote.
“You come far?” he asked suddenly.
“New York.”
“On a train, you said?”
“Uh-huh. Railroad bull bounced me off back yonder a ways. I walked for a while, then saw this stream and followed her to here.” “Got you an outfit there. Didn’t figure you fellers in New York carried blanket-rolls.”
“We don’t.”
“You were almighty quick with that gun,” Lundy said. “I never seen a man no quicker.”
“Fellow taught me. I never used a gun very much. Where I come from it’s knuckle-and-skull, the boots if you go down.”
Tom Shanaghy was used to walking and he stepped off briskly. He was puzzled by all that had happened and waited for Lundy to explain, which he seemed in no hurry to do. In fact, since seeing the shotgun he had said very little. Shanaghy looked around as he walked. As far as he could see there was nothing but grass and sky and the twin ruts of the trail cutting through the grass ahead. Here and there along the road there were sunflowers in bloom. He paused suddenly. “Lundy, what in God’s name do they do with all this country?
There’s no farms.”
“Cattle country,” Lundy replied, “grazin’ land. Used to be buffalo.” Something moved in the distance, a moment of tawny-red when caught by the sun’s rays, then a flicker of white and they were gone. “What was that? Cows?”
“Antelope,” Lundy said. “There’s a good many of them.”
“Who they belong to?”
Lundy glanced at him. “God, I guess you could say. They’re wild.”
“Can you hunt them?”
“Uh-huh. Not the best eatin’ though. They’re good enough, but not so good as buffalo or deer meat.” He walked the horse in silence for several minutes and then asked, “What do you aim to do now?”
“Me? Catch a train back to New York. I piled on that train in a hurry and I was dead tired. I never wanted to get this far away.” He hesitated, suddenly thoughtful. “Say, how far is it to New York, anyway?” Lundy shrugged. “You got me. Maybe a thousand miles.”
Shanaghy pulled up short. “A thousand … ? It can’t be!”
“It is. Maybe more. This here’s Kansas you’re in.” Lundy pointed ahead. “Colorado’s right over there. You must have been really knocked out when you hit that train.”