Gunsmoke Talk

  BRADFORD SCOTT

  GUNSMOKE TALK

  WILDSIDE PRESS

  This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended between any character herein and any person, living or dead; any such resemblance is purely coincidental.

  Copyright, © 1963, by Pyramid Publications, Inc.

  All Rights Reserved

  “We’re going to hit!”

  Slade’s cry warned the others to brace themselves as the train bucked, then seemed to leap in the air, grinding to a halt with the cars angled crazily across the track.

  From in front came a booming sound, followed by a crackle of gunfire. Bullets whizzed through the shattered windows.

  “It’s a holdup!” Sheriff Serby bellowed. He and Slade hurdled the sprawled passengers in the aisle and in an instant were on the ground outside the train—facing half a dozen masked men!

  Immediately the concentrated fire of the bandits’ guns was turned on Slade—with no shelter from the sizzling lead, the Ranger had only one defense against sure death—ATTACK!

  GUNSMOKE TALK

  1

  TO THE NORTH RISE the Franklin Mountains, a range of bare, craggy peaks. To the east is an arid area that extends for hundreds of miles, broken by flat desert tablelands—austere, desolate, forbidding, a bewildering contrast to the verdant Middle Valley of the Rio Grande.

  To the south and west the mountains again shoulder the valley, the Sierra Madre a drop curtain for Juarez across the river in Mexico. A mile or so west of the Texas-New Mexico Line looms the Sierra de Cristo Rey.

  El Paso, the City of the Pass—and such it has been since the conquistadores passed that way nearly four centuries ago in their search for fabled treasure—lies directly under the crumbling face of Comanche Peak, spreading out fan-shaped around the foot of the mountain. City of the Mountains might well be a more fitting name for this international town, for on all sides mountains pierce the sky in breathtaking beauty.

  Where Ranger Walt Slade, he whom the Mexican peons of the Rio Grande river villages named El Halcon—The Hawk—sat his tall black horse, suddenly, almost incredibly, the valley bursts on the eye like a vision of paradise viewed from hell’s mouth; fair indeed as a Garden of the Lord after the region of deserts and rugged mountains he had traversed.

  “Shadow,” he said to the horse, “I’ve a notion that this valley must be what the Garden of Eden looked like to Adam when he glanced back over his shoulder.”

  Shadow snorted and did not otherwise argue the point.

  “But the difference between Adam and us,” Slade resumed, “is he was going out, while we are going in. When Adam departed from the garden, he left the snake behind, but from what we’ve heard there are quite a few of the two-legged descendants of that footless critter in the ‘Eden’ down there. Which really is a comparison unfair to the snakes, who don’t bother anybody so long as they are left alone.”

  It was not the first time Walt Slade had viewed this marvelous transition, but for him it never lost its charm, although it did evoke memories of violence and death so out of keeping with the peaceful scene.

  Comedies do not necessarily require a wide stage, nor tragedies an amphitheater, for their enactment. And ruthlessness and greed do not necessarily reflect their surroundings. The wastelands to the east would have seemed more fitting for dark deeds and the callous disregard for suffering and the sanctity of human life, but wherever men gather together is fertile ground for lawlessness and strife.

  Which was why Captain Jim McNelty, the famous Commander of the Border Battalion of the Texas Rangers, dispatched his lieutenant and ace man to El Paso and the Middle Valley in answer to pleas from local law enforcement officers for help in remedying a situation with which they frankly admitted they were unable to cope.

  From the elevation where Slade sat his horse, the wide reaches of the valley were spread before his eyes like a map, until they faded into the blue mystery of the horizon. Here to the east they were lonely and apparently devoid of human life—grasslands upon which grew mesquite thickets, trees and other clumps of chaparral growth.

  To the west, beyond that retreating blue line of the horizon, the trail Slade rode would run past farms and orchards and vineyards, but here the empty loneliness was relieved only by occasional clumps of peacefully grazing cattle. Here, to all appearances, was a no man’s land, as devoid of human tenancy as when the dawn light of Creation glowed upon it.

  No, it was not the first time Walt Slade viewed the terrain, its wild beauty in its surroundings of weird austerity. He rolled a cigarette with the slim fingers of his left hand and sat smoking and drinking in the panorama spread before his eyes.

  Slade made a striking picture sitting his magnificent black horse on the crest of the rise, the late afternoon sunshine etching every line and detail. He was tall, more than six feet; the breadth of his shoulders and the depth of his chest, slimming down to a sinewy waist, matched his height. A rather wide mouth, grin-quirked at the corners, relieved somewhat the tinge of fierceness evinced by the prominent, high-bridged nose above and the powerful jaw and chin beneath. His cheeks were lean, deeply bronzed, his forehead broad. His pushed-back “J.B.” revealed crisp, thick black hair.

  The sternly handsome countenance was dominated by long, black-lashed eyes of a very pale gray—cold, reckless eyes that nevertheless always seemed to have little devils of laughter lurking in their clear depths.

  His dress was that of the rangeland, homely and efficient, worn with careless grace. A critical observer might well conclude that chain mail or evening dress would be worn with that same careless grace of the man who does not wear clothes that are becoming but “becomes” what he may don.

  So bibless overalls, soft blue shirt with vivid neckerchief at the throat, well-scuffed half-boots of softly tanned leather and the broad-brimmed rain-shed appeared eminently fitting to the moment and the mood.

  Clasping his lean waist were double cartridge belts. From these carefully worked and oiled cut-out holsters protruded the plain black butts of heavy guns. And from those protruding gun butts his slim, powerful hands seemed never far away.

  Carefully pinching out his cigarette and casting it aside, Slade addressed the tall black horse with his glorious rippling mane and eyes full of fire and intelligence—

  “Guess we might as well be ambling, Shadow; can’t spend all day loafing up here and admiring the scenery. About time we both put on the nosebag, too. Long time since breakfast, and not much of a breakfast, either. Maybe somebody can spare a handout for ornery El Halcon and his ornery cayuse.”

  El Halcon! “The good, the just, the compassionate, the friend of the lowly!” said the Mexican peons.

  El Halcon! “A blasted owlhoot too smart to get caught!” vowed quite a few folks who didn’t know the truth.

  “Anyhow—blast it!—no matter what he is or what he ain’t, he’s the singingest man in the whole dadblamed Southwest, with the fastest gunhand. You take it from there!”

  With Shadow traveling at a fast pace, Slade rode down the long slope to the valley floor and continued on his way. He had covered perhaps ten miles of steady going when he reached a point where the trail curved through a bristle of tall and thick brush that extended for some distance. Shadow ambled on, his master lounging comfortably in the hull, his thoughts elsewhere so far as time and place were concerned.

  He was jerked back to the present and his immediate surroundings by a sound unexpected and alien to the peaceful hush of the dying day—the hard, metallic clang of a rifle shot. It was followed by two more, evenly spaced.

  “Now what the devil!” he wondered. Shadow snorted and pricked his ears. Slade listened intently for more shots. He heard none, but he heard something else that steadily loudened, a low drumming of fast hoofs beating the dusty surface of the trail.

  “Sounds like some gent is in a hurry,” he muttered. He crowded Shadow close against the encroaching growth, which here was a mite thinner than ordinary. Best to give the unseen rider plenty of room, especially after that ominous burst of gunfire.

  Louder and louder grew the hammering hoofs. Another moment and a foaming sorrel horse bulged around the bend and into sight. His rider lurched and swayed in the saddle, seemingly barely able to maintain his seat on the hull. And in a wavering hand he held a gun!

  2

  SLADE WENT sideways in his saddle as the muzzle of the gun jutted in his direction. It spurted smoke. The slug fanned his face. The sorrel shot past like a streak of goose grease. Slade swore a wrathful oath and reached for the butt of his Winchester snugged in the saddle boot under his thigh. Then he desisted, glaring at the lurching, reeling horseman as he careened around another bend and out of sight. Looked very much like he was wounded and had perhaps almost unseeingly thrown down on something he thought might block his headlong flight.

  Also, to El Halcon’s keen ears came a second drumming of hoofs, more than one set, coming fast. It began to look like the nervous-trigger gentleman might be the object of a chase. Slade tensed for possible action. It quickly proved more than possible.

  Around the bend swooped three more riders. The foremost gave a yelp of alarm, and they jerked their mounts to a slithering halt.

  This time Slade went clear out of the saddle. As he hit the ground, a slug yelled through the space his body had occupied an instant before. Another kicked dirt into the air scant inches from his head.

  Prone on the ground, Slade drew and shot with both hands. There was a yell of pain, and one of the riders dropped his gun and clutched at a blood-spo
uting arm. Another yell and the leg of a second flopped wildly out of the stirrup. Screeching curses, the trio whirled their horses and streaked back the way they had come. Slade lined sights with the third man’s back, then held his fire. The whole affair had been so absolutely loco as to defy explanation, and he did not wish to kill anybody unless he was forced to. He got to his feet, listened a moment to the hoofbeats dimming into the distance and dusted himself off, growling angrily to Shadow, who, knowing just what to do when lead started whistling, had leaped sideways into the brush.

  “Okay, feller,” his master concluded, “you can come out. I don’t think there’ll be a second encore. What in blazes have we horned into?”

  If Shadow knew, he didn’t admit it and satisfied himself with a derisive snort. Slade mounted, hesitated a moment. He would have liked to trail after the trio, but there was the first rider to consider. Little doubt but that he had stopped lead. Might be badly hurt and in need of assistance. Had looked like he would fall from his mount at any moment.

  Turning Shadow, Slade rode back the way he had come. He rode warily, alert for anything else untoward, but the back trail remained peaceful. Finally he reached a point where he could see ahead for considerably more than a mile. The lone horseman was nowhere in sight.

  Halting Shadow, Slade rolled a cigarette, lounged comfortably in the hull and considered the situation. Even at the rate he was traveling, the fellow would not have had time to reach the next bend in the trail. So he must have turned off somewhere into the brush. Appeared he was not so badly hurt, after all, and had no doubt gotten in the clear. Of course, he might be holed up somewhere awaiting his pursuers, but Slade thought that unlikely, and he had no intention of trying to find out; he’d heard enough blue whistlers singing songs to him for one day.

  “Well, horse,” he remarked, “looks like Captain Jim was right, per usual, when he ’lowed there was a bunch of horned toads, raising the devil hereabouts and twisting his tail. That is, if today is a fair sample of the goings on. Yep, looks like we should be able to do a little business in the section, if we manage to stay in one piece long enough. Oh, well, needs must when the devil drives, as the saying goes, so let’s amble on our way if we hope to make Clint by not too far after dark. Should be hitting the cultivated lands before long; may learn something from somebody there. That is, if that ruckus had its inception that far northwest. We’ll just go and see.”

  Shadow offered no objection, doubtless reflecting that oats were to be had at Clint to pleasingly supplement the strictly grass diet he’d been on for the past few days, and ambled on at a fairly fast pace.

  Slade glanced at the westering sun. Only about a dozen miles to Clint, a shady town of adobe houses and folks who as a rule were peaceful and law-abiding. So much so, in fact, that the community was able to dispense with the services of a town marshal, relying on Trevis Serby, Sheriff of El Paso County, for any required law enforcement, abetted by Tomas Cardena, the plump and genial mayor whom Slade knew well.

  That is, it used to be like that, but if the day’s happenings were a sample of present conditions in the section, even Clint might be pawin’ sand a mite. Be that as it may, there was opportunity at Clint to put on the nosebag and sleep in a comfortable bed, both of which had their attractions for a healthy young man who had been subsisting on scant rations of late and using the sky for a blanket.

  A few more miles of steady going and they reached the beginning of the cultivated lands. Now the trail led between small farms, orchards and vineyards—a scene of pastoral peace and prosperity.

  Workers in the fields raised their heads to gaze at the tall horseman, but nobody spoke to him. Slade gradually developed the conviction that he was undergoing a critical appraisal. Also, sensitive to expressions and gestures, he sensed an atmosphere of distinct hostility. Not necessarily directed at him personally, but toward what he might possibly represent. Quite different from what he had encountered when he last rode this way, a couple of years back. Began to look like any stranger was an object of suspicion.

  Of course the section might have experienced considerable change in two years. It had always been subject to change. Time was when the population of the valley was almost wholly Mexican, but the steady flow of immigration from the east had changed that. Now Americans, especially Texas- Americans, were in the majority.

  Even in comparatively recent years the section had known plenty of turbulence. At San Elizario, only three miles to the left of Clint, Judge Charles Howard, John McBride and John Atkinson, members of the very small American colony at the time, were shot to death before an adobe wall in the final tragedy of the famous Salt War.

  Through the brush country, Slade had ridden very much on the alert, carefully studying the movements of birds on the wing and little animals in the growth, against a possible attempted drygulching by the trio of gunslingers, although he thought such an attempt unlikely. Two of the hellions were probably not feeling very good at the moment and had no doubt headed for some place where they could get patched up, possibly Clint

  Now, however, in the region of cultivation, he relaxed somewhat; it was not a good terrain for an ambush.

  Sunset flamed in a riot of color that drenched the western peaks with gold and rose and amethyst and mauve. The mighty shoulders of the Franklins were swatched in royal purple. The towering crest of Sierra de Cristo Rey was ringed with saffron fires. Comanche Peak glowed crimson and violet. Gradually the dusk sifted its blue film of beauty over the farm lands. The bonfire stars of Texas blazed overhead, and it was night.

  Slade rode on. Shadow quickened his pace in anticipation of something with which to line his empty belly. And soon the lights of Clint sparkled in the decreasing distance.

  Mayor Tomas Cardena, whose duties as Clint’s chief executive were not onerous, owned a hospitable cantina which was frequented not only by the townspeople but by sprightly young vaqueros from south of the Rio Grande, bronzed and bearded farmers and grape growers, and quite a sprinkling of Texas cowhands. With now and then gentlemen who looked to be punchers but who had not recently known the feel of rope or branding iron. For Clint was in the nature of a “passing through” town and at times frequented by those who preferred to do most of their riding during the hours between sunset and dawn.

  At the hitchrack in front of the cantina Slade drew rein. He tied Shadow securely to the evening breeze and entered. Cardena, plump, jovial and efficient, spotted him at once and gave vent to a joyous exclamation. He hurried forward, hand extended, his rubicund features wreathed in smiles.

  “Capitan!” he exclaimed. “You have returned!”

  “Looks sorta that way,” Slade admitted, returning the other’s grip.

  “Ha! This is a day!” chortled Cardena. “We will celebrate with the dinner beyond compare, and the wine of the best. Come, Capitan!”

  “First,” Slade replied, “I want to care for my horse. Chances are you’ll remember him, too.”

  “The beautiful caballo, how could I forget?” returned the mayor. “We will take him to my barn at once. Come, I will accompany you.”

  Outside, Cardena made much of Shadow, who evidently remembered him. Then he led the way to his commodious stable.

  “The best,” he ordered the old keeper, who also remembered both Slade and the horse. After which they returned to the cantina. Having seated his honored guest, Cardena hurried to the kitchen to give instructions for the preparing of the meal. He returned to the table and occupied a chair, his black eyes twinkling.

  Slade liked Tomas Cardena, who was an excellent example of Mexican courtliness and Texas vigor, a combination hard to beat. He spoke both English and Spanish fluently, and in moments of excitement or when he wished to swear with unusual vigor, he resorted to both languages, with an occasional pungent Yaqui expletive thrown in for good measure. Also, there was plenty of stringy muscle beneath his plump-appearing exterior, and he was capable of keeping order in his establishment if the going should happen to get a mite rough.

  His cantina, although not overly large, was excellently appointed and softly lighted without being gloomy.