Nobody moved, but out of the tail of my eye I could see some change of expression on Tap’s face.
“He reached first,” Tap said.
“But he was just a kid!” Who that was, I
don’t know. It sounded like Gravel Brown, who bummed drinks around Ventana.
“His gun was as big as a man’s,” Tap said, “and he’s seventeen, which makes him old as I was when I was segundo for a fighting outfit driving to Ogallala.”
Brown was no fighter. “Gravel,” I said, “you move up easylike and take that noose off Tap’s neck, and if you so much as nudge him or that horse they’ll be pattin’ over your face with a spade come daybreak.”
Gravel Brown took that noose off mighty gentle. I’d walked my horse up a few steps while Gravel untied Tap’s hands, and then restored his guns.
“You may get away with this now, Tyler,” somebody said, “but you and Tap better take your luck and make tracks. You’re through here. We want no gunslingers in this country.”
“No?” That made me chuckle. “All right, amigo, you tell that to Chet Bayless, Red Corram, and most of all, Jerito Juarez. If they go, we will. Until then, our address is the Pelado, and if you come a-visiting, the coffee’s always on. If you come hunting trouble, why I reckon we can stir you up a mess of that.” I backed my horse a couple of feet. “Come on, Tap. These boys need their sleep.
Let ‘em go home.”
We sat there side by each and watched them go. They didn’t like it, but none of them wanted to be a dead hero. When they had gone, Tap turned to me.
“Saved my bacon, kid.” He started riding, and after a ways he turned to me. “That straight about you being the Laredo 33 gunfighter?”
“Uh-huh. No reason to broadcast it.”
“And I was wondering if you’d fight! How
foolish can a man be?”
It set like that for a week, and nobody showed up around South Fork and nobody bothered us. Tap, he went away at night occasional, but he never said anything and I didn’t ask any questions. Me, I stayed away. This was Tap’s play, and I figured if she wanted Tap she did not want me. Her riding all that way sure looked like she did want him, though. Then came Saturday and I saddled up and took a packhorse. Tap studied me, and said finally, “I reckon I better side you.”
“Don’t reckon you better, Tap,” I said, “things been too quiet. I figure they think we’ll do just that, come to town together and leave this place empty. When we got back we’d either be burned out or find them sitting in the cabin with Winchesters. You hold it down here.”
Tap got up. His face was sharp and hard as ever, but he looked worried. “But they might gang you, kid. No man can buck a stacked deck.”
“Leave it to me,” I said, “and we’ve got no choice anyway. We need grub.”
Ventana was dozing in the sun when I walked the steeldust down the main alley of the town. A couple of sleepy old codgers dozed against the sun-backed front of a building, a few horses stood three-legged at the tie rail. Down the street a girl sat in a buckboard, all stiff and starched in a gingham gown, seeing city life and getting broken into it.
Nobody was in the store but the owner himself and he was right pert getting my stuff ready. As before, I was wearing three guns in sight and a fourth in that shoulder holster under my jacket. If they wanted war they could have it.
When my stuff was ready I stashed it near the back door and started out the front. The storekeeper looked at me, then said, “You want to live you better hightail it. They been waiting for you.”
I shoved my hat back on my head and grinned at him. “Thanks, mister, but that sure wouldn’t be neighborly of me, would it? Folks wait for me shouldn’t miss their 35 appointment. I reckon I’ll go see what they have to say.”
“They’ll say it with lead.” He glowered at me, but I could see he was friendly.
“Then I guess I can speak their language,” I said. “Was a time I was a pretty fluent conversationalist in that language. Maybe I still am.”
“They’ll be in the Ventana Saloon,” he said, “and a couple across the street. There’ll be at least four.”
When I stepped out on the boardwalk about twenty hombres stepped off it. I mean that street got as empty as a panhandler’s pocket, so I started for the Ventana, watching mighty careful and keeping close to the buildings along the right-hand side of the street. That store across the street where two of them might be was easy to watch.
An hombre showed in the window of the store and I waited. Then Chet Bayless stepped out of the saloon. Red Corram came from the store. And Jerito Juarez suddenly walked into the center of the street. Another hombre stood in an alleyway and they had me fairly boxed. “Come in at last, huh?” Bayless chuckled. “Now we see who’s nestin’ on this range!”
“Hello, Jerito,” I called, “nobody hung you yet? I been expecting it.”
“Not unteel I keel you!” Jerito stopped and spread his slim legs wide.
Mister, I never seen anything look as mean and ornery as that hombre did then! He had a thin face with long narrow black eyes and high cheekbones. It wasn’t the rest of that outfit I was watching, it was him. That boy was double-eyed dynamite, all charged with hate for me and my kind.
“You never seen the day,” I said, “when you could
tear down my meathouse, Jerito.” Right then I
felt cocky. There was a devil in me, all
right, a devil I was plumb scared of. That was why
I ducked and kept out of sight, because when trouble
came to me I could feel that old lust to kill
getting up in my throat and no smart man
wants to give rein to that sort of thing. Me, I
rode herd on it, mostly, but right now it was in me
and it was surging high. Right then if somebody had
told me for certain sure that I was due to die in
that street, I couldn’t have left it. 37
My pulse was pounding and my breath coming short and I stood there shaking and all filled with wicked eagerness, just longing for them to open the ball.
And then Betty Lucas stepped into the street.
She must have timed it. She must have figured she
could stop that killing right there. She didn’t know Chet Bayless, Corram, and those others. They would fire on a woman. And most Mexicans wouldn’t, but she didn’t know Jerito Juarez. He would have shot through his mother to kill me, I do believe.
Easylike, and gay, she walked out there in that dusty street, swinging a sunbonnet on her arm, just as easy as you’d ever see. Somebody yelled at her and somebody swore, but she kept coming, right up to me.
“Let’s go, Rye,” she said gently.
“You’ll be killed. Come with me.”
Lord knows, I wanted to look at her, but my eyes never wavered. “Get out of the street, Betty. I made my play. I got to back it up. You go along now.”
“They won’t shoot if you’re with me,” she said, “and you must come, now!” There was awful anxiety in her eyes, and I knew what it must have taken for her to come out into that street after me. And my eyes must have flickered because I saw Jerito’s hand flash.
Me? I never moved so fast in my life! I tripped up Betty and sprawled her in the dust at my feet and almost as she hit dust my right-hand gun was making war talk across her body, lying there so slim and lovely, angry and scared.
Jerito’s gun and mine blasted fire at the same second, me losing time with getting Betty down. Something ripped at my sleeve and then I stepped over her and had both guns going, and from somewhere another gun started and Jerito was standing there with blood running down his face and it all twisted with a kind of wild horror above the flame-stabbing .44 that pounded death at me.
Bayless I took out with my left-hand gun, turning him with a bullet through his right elbow, a bullet that was making a different man of him, although I didn’t know it then.
He never again was able to flash a fast gun!
Jerito suddenly broke and lunged toward me.
He was blood all over the side of his head and face and shoulder, but he was still alive and in a killing mood. He came closer and we 39 both let go at point-blank range, but I was maybe a split second faster and that bullet hit bone.