DEAD OR ALIVE
The latest arrival, lounging on the shady veranda of Trail’s End, looked at his watch and yawned. Just a quarter to three? Great Scott! Half a day in this burg, but it seemed like a week. He cast bored eyes back to the street. From the Stockman’s Bank, a block down, to the county jail, a block up, there was nothing but heat and hush, but so much of both.
Turning on the grizzled proprietor of Trail’s End, who was awakening from his siesta in the easy chair beside him, he ungraciously blurted: “I don’t see how you stand it!”
Drowsily, Dad Peppin looked up. “Stand what?”
“This infernal quiet!”
A queer smile quirked the old man’s lips. He said feelingly: “We are thankful for it. We’ve had uproar enough around here to last us for a spell. And we’ll have more.” He drew himself up in his chair. “You’ve heard of the Jores?”
“And little else! Every paper I’ve picked up for weeks has been full of your outlaws. All I’ve heard since I hit Big Sandy is Jores. I feel personally acquainted with the whole clan. Know their history from the year one. Wish I could have been here when all the excitement was going on … though it’s hard to believe anything ever excited this town. And probably never will again, now they’ve got the Jores behind bars.”
“But they ain’t … not all,” was the slow denial. “They ain’t got the dangerous Jore. He’s still free.”
“Zion, you mean? The young fellow they say is crazy?”
Old Dad nodded gravely. But his guest failed to extract any thrill out of that. “He won’t be free long … with a sheriff like you got. From what I read, Pat Dolan must be pretty much of a man.”
He was surprised to see that didn’t set well.
“Yeah?” said Dad, in his slowest drawl.
“Meanin’ that you really don’t think so?”
“Waal,” Dad’s drawl speeded up, “you didn’t say pretty much of what kind of a man you thought he was. I think he’s pretty much of a bluff myself. I think”—his wrinkled old countenance flushing with righteous wrath—“he’s the most graspin’, self-aspirin’, fame-famished yahoo which it’s ever been my misfortune to know.”
“W-whew!” That was going some for a hot day.
“And contrary to what the papers said”—Dad’s ire boiled over—“it ain’t no laurels on Dolan’s blockhead that he got the Jores. He couldn’t help hisself. Yance and Abel walked right into a trap he’d set for Zion. Somebody give him a tip where the young fellow was stayin’. The Jores must have got the same tip. It was a bad break for them. But fool’s luck for Dolan! And he’s playin’ it up for all it’s worth. Takin’ credit on false pretenses. Why, he ain’t made a move of his own since he’s been sheriff. Done nothin’ … till he got the help of that blackhearted scalawag. Read about Shang Haman?”
The stranger had. “Waal,” grimly predicted old Dad, “you’re apt to read more, if you watch right close. A pithy little notice … all about how he was born, such and such a time, and died any day about now, with his boots on. Plenty of folks right in this town what’s rarin’ to give him a send-off.”
“Doubtless! A squealer was never popular. But Luke Chartres,” asked the visitor, “just what’s his interest in this? From what I catch, he’d as much to do with this clean-up of Jores as the sheriff. Seems to me it’s a strange business for a man of his prominence to tangle with.”
“Chartres,” said Dad Peppin shortly, “wants his pound of horseflesh.”
Which was a phase of the case the stranger had missed. A dozen questions rose to his lips. But before he could voice one, old Dad boiled over again.
“Pat Dolan,” he said, “has greased the skids for more bloodshed than this country’s seen yet. Nobody on earth could have got Zion back in that basin and looked after him but his uncles. It’s all they asked for in life … just to get their brother’s son home before he caused grief. But Dolan blocked their move. Nobody else has any influence …” He started suddenly. “Unless,” he said thoughtfully, “it’s that young fellow he calls pard.”
“The sick tenderfoot crook who kept the posse out of the Picture Rocks?”
“If you go by the papers,” Dad admitted indignantly. “And that’s about as straight as the rest of the stuff they print! He was sick, all right. But he ain’t no tenderfoot. And if he’s a crook, I’m Saint Cecilia makin’ music, with angels dropping roses on my halo.”
He looked so far from this that his guest couldn’t repress a laugh.
“He’s a fine, clean, upstandin’ young man,” warmly declared the old man. “He come here one night inquirin’ for a hombre, and I took to him right off. Next day I had occasion to help him. Dolan’s dragged me over the coals for doin’ it, but I’d do it again.” His gaze went from the shimmering miles of range to the Montezumas. After a time he said grimly: “If René Rand don’t come for Zion Jore, who can say what’ll happen, or when.”
Stirred by his tone, but reassured by a glance at the sleeping town, the stranger said: “Aren’t you taking the situation too serious? There’s been other badmen, and they all came to one end. It’s ridiculous to suppose this loony kid can ride around long, robbing, killing.”
He was abashed by the deadly seriousness with which his host took issue with this. “It’s ridiculous to suppose in this case. Zion Jore can’t be took too serious. There’s never been a outlaw like him. Oh, mebbe he ain’t got all his buttons. But he’s got more of what he has got … savvy … than lots of smart men. It’s what’s missin’ that makes him dangerous!”
He went on with moving solemnity. “Friend, it’s what Zion Jore ain’t got that gives me cold chills to contemplate … right now, a hundred in the shade. It would make the hottest Jore sympathizers draw a long breath of relief to hear that young fellow had been corralled safe. You’ve mebbe read, and you’ve heard more here, but it’s plain to be seen that you don’t savvy Zion Jore. He’s like this.”
As he hitched closer to his guest, he continued gravely: “He’s likely the best shot with rifle or six-gun ever seen in the West. He’s got no sense of responsibility, no savvy about the sacredness of property rights, nor the meanin’ of the word fear. The best safeguard around any institution is the knowledge of its protection. But it means nothin’ to Zion. He don’t know. He’d rush in where the nerviest, willin’est outlaw would balk cold.
“Not ten feet from where you’re a-settin’,” cried Doc Peppin, “he killed his first man! Nobody blamed him for that. Nobody blames him for anything yet. But he’s got to be stopped. Though how that’s to be accomplished …”
Then he told of the golden horse he had so long believed a myth.
“And it’s more of a myth,” he frankly confessed, “since I’ve seen it in the flesh. For it ain’t possible for a horse to run like that horse runs. And bullets don’t touch him. He’s a devil on hoofs. A wild yellow phantom.”
But the stranger wasn’t hearing him. He was staring down the street with incredulous eyes. Could Dad Peppin’s description of the horse be vivid enough to cause him to materialize there in the heat and hush—so realistically, that his golden flanks gleamed wet, as with sweat. Was that Black Wing standing down there or … “Is it,” gasped the guest, pointing a shaking hand, “there … by the bank! Am I seeing things?”
Dad looked, and his eyes almost leaped from their sockets. Wildly, he sprang up. “Black Wing! What’s he doin’ here alone? Where’s Zion? Does this mean Dolan’s …?”
“A young fellow just got off!” cried the guest. “Or I imagined him! A young chap in buckskin.”
He winced at the bite of the old man’s clutch. “Where did you imagine he went?”
“In the bank!”
Dad Peppin groaned. His eyes sought the jail, as if to call the Jores from their cells. Then he was plunging down the steps of Trail’s End, the stranger hard after him, trying to calm him.
“We may be wrong! He’s not the only young fellow wears buckskin! Black Wing’s not the only cream-colored stallion!”
But before their racing feet hit the sidewalk, a sharp retort shattered the quiet. And out of the door of the bank down there burst a wild figure—a Big Sandy man, who looked wildly around, then raced toward them, eyes popping, spurred to another admirable burst of speed by a second gunshot!
Meeting them halfway of the block, he seized Dad Peppin, clinging to him as to his one hope of salvation, panting, in a very hysteria of terror. “Zion Jore!” He tried for more, throat working, face contorted with as much pain as if he were swallowing something scalding. “I … I was at that desk … behind the door, signin’ a check. I’d hurried to cash it … before closin’ time! I saw him come in! And he poked a gun through the wicket, and … I run … and he shot at me!”
“You’re crazy!” Dad tried to jerk free. “What Zion Jore aims at, he hits!”
Then, riveting him, struck an ear-shattering clang-clang-clang as the electric gong before the bank set up a wild alarm, calling for help as with human tongue, seeming to shriek to the slumbering town, “Zion Jore! Zion Jore!”
The buckskin stallion at the curb madly pitched in his terror of it and of the bedlam that broke out around him, as Big Sandy awoke with a bang. Startled faces were thrust from windows. Doors slammed. The street was full of men, wildly demanding information of men, no better informed. Running to the bank, eyes on the bell as if it had done something terrible, while the cry was raised: “Zion Jore’s in there!”
With the courage of numbers, they were pushing to the very door, when it suddenly swung in their faces, and a young fellow stood there, a weighted canvas bag in one hand and in the other a black six-gun, from which they recoiled as if pushed back by an irresistible force. Coolly pausing to survey the frightened faces in the circle slowly backing away from him, the young man suddenly laughed, a wild laugh that unnerved them and sent them stampeding for the nearest covering.
Old Dad Peppin stood his ground, and he made no move to stop Zion. Any interference would be madness. A word, a sign, would result in more blood being shed, more blood on this young outlaw’s head. He could only watch, fascinated by Zion Jore’s absolute lack of fear, as he sauntered to the curb, soothed the pitching horse with a word and, as careless as though he were upon legitimate business, as though there were no threatening eyes on him, no gong clamoring for more men to come and kill him, no sheriff and deputies bursting down the street with guns drawn, he swung the bag up before his saddle, swung on behind it, and shot like a rocket between the bank building and the grocery store next to it—unscathed by the bullet Dolan sent after him, or by the charge of buckshot from a sawed-off shotgun, leveled on him from a window, or from a dozen shots that rang out from different quarters.
“They’re right!” Dad Peppin swore awesomely to himself, seeing man and horse emerge from the alley and streak up the road behind Trail’s End. “He can’t be human!”
Then he joined the mob now fighting to get into the bank to see what had happened. There were two men in the cashier’s cage—one, leaning weakly against the wall, white as paper, lips compressed, while the other applied a bandage to his bleeding arm and gave Sheriff Dolan an account of the hold-up at the same time.
“Me and Chet,” the cashier was saying, “was busy makin’ up the money. Didn’t see him, till we heard his voice. Saw his gun first … looked like a cannon to me. He told me to hand out that bag of money. I made to do it. But Chet, here, made a dive for the gun under the counter. Jore got him through the arm, but Chet rolled to the button and set the alarm goin’. He got all the cash in sight. Not much.”
It wasn’t the money Big Sandy was clamoring for, but Zion Jore. His boldness terrified them. Why didn’t the law protect them? What were they paying taxes for? If Dolan couldn’t handle this situation, why didn’t he say so like a man? They’d elect somebody who could.
“Zion Jore,” was the outspoken threat, “or a recall!”
Wouldn’t that be something to write up?
“I’ll get him,” promised Sheriff Pat Dolan, inwardly writhing. “This time I’ll bring him in, dead or alive! I want a dozen men on fast horses. And I want a fast horse for myself.”
Whirling on the man in a white Stetson who was standing beside him, a fine-looking man, whom nobody touched even in this press, who all now watched with respect, Dolan said: “Luke, didn’t you say you’d brought two of your racers up here, so you could supervise their trainin’?”
“Goblin and Mate are here … yes.”
“Waal, I want one of ’em.”
Big Sandy gasped at his audacity in commandeering horses of such worth for a manhunt. They understood, they thought, the awful reluctance of Chartres, and intensely admired the man, as he shrugged and said: “You’re the sheriff.”
“Then scatter!” Dolan waved at the rest. “We’ll take up the trail in five minutes. Meet at the jail.”
Grasping Luke Chartres by the arm, he was striding down the street to the barn where the thoroughbreds were stabled, when a hoarse cry from the bank drew his eyes back. The mob was pointing up at the high bluff behind Trail’s End, crying, as with one voice: “There he is!”
Dolan and Chartres looked, and there he was. Up there, in full view of the town, just out of rifle range, that wild young being sat the wild stallion, looking down, as if enjoying the commotion he had caused.
“Mockin’ us!” huffed the sheriff. “This has gone far enough!”
Zion Jore was still there when, less than five minutes later, a dozen men, mounted on fast horses, the sheriff and Chartres on two of the fastest in the West, raced away from the jail.
Still there he was, in plain view of the imprisoned Jores, who had heard the shots, the gong, and the posse rallying. They had divined the rest. In agony, as men and horses swarmed up the bluff, they strained at the bars and cursed their helplessness, and all the while Zion and Black Wing stood out motionless against the sky.