Two riders left Crewsville within the hour. One went east to Three Springs to fetch Mike Student, the deputy-sheriff. One rode north to the capital to inform the territorial marshal. The mayor told them not to spare their horses. The man who rode north was a young fellow named Dick Harmsworth. He used up four horses getting to his destination and arrived there one day and a half later. Which must have made it a record ride. His orders were to go straight to George Mangan, the territorial marshal, and not to stop till he got there. He didn’t. He didn’t stop for sleep and he ate in the saddle. He was a mighty tired young man as he walked into the office of the marshal and slumped into a chair.
Mangan, the marshal, was an alert man in his late thirties. He was a controlled, short-spoken man, who was the personal appointee of the governor. That made him a political man. But, men said, he was good at his job. He was a good listener.
He listened to Harmsworth’s story and read the letter he carried from the mayor. He knew the mayor and thought he was a pompous old busybody. But that didn’t detract from the shock of the story the man had to tell. Mangan read panic in every line written on the paper. Ordinarily he would have discounted half of the mayor’s story, but you couldn’t discount three dead people and two of them mutilated. There were several points in the story that upset Mangan. The first that a lawman had been killed. The second that one of the victim’s had been a woman. The fact that she hadn’t been any better than she should have been didn’t alter the case.
When he had heard the young man out, the marshal put his fingertips together and said: ‘I’ll act on this, Mr. Harmsworth. Now you go over to the hotel and catch up on your sleep.’
The young man staggered away from the office, crossed the street, booked in at the hotel and within a short while was dead to the world.
When he woke, he found that it was night and somebody had lit the lamp on the small table beside the bed. He was slightly startled to find that he was not alone.
There was a man sitting on the sick of the bed, watching him.
He sat up and said: ‘Who’re you?’
‘Sam Spur,’ the man said. ‘Deputy United States Marshal.’
The boy had heard of him. Who hadn’t heard of Sam Spur?
He gazed at his visitor with some interest.
He was, he reckoned, a little disappointed in what he saw. He would have expected a bigger man, a man with more presence. This mild-looking, fair-haired fellow smiling faintly on the edge of his bed was altogether too ordinary to have been a badman whom half the lawmen in the west had hunted at one time. He didn’t look at all the kind of man the bounty-hunters crowded each other to get at, He wasn’t exactly frail, but he looked as if a strong drink or a mettlesome horse would have dumped him in no time flat.
Spur said: ‘You made one hell of a ride here.’
‘Just kept on a-goin’,’ Dick said modestly.
‘The marshal assigned me to the case. I’ll be ridin’ back with you,’ Spur told him. ‘Feel like goin’ over it again?’
Dick said sure he would, but could he eat? He was ready to eat a mule. Spur said get dressed and they’d attend to that. He stood up. Harmsworth saw that he was dressed for the trail. Corduroy pants tucked into knee-high boots, topped by a store bought coat, white shirt gathered at the heck by a string tie. His hat was black and high-crowned. There was a bulge at the right hip where the gun lay. Harmsworth looked at this bulge with some awe. It hid the famous gun.
Ten minutes later, they were in the hotel dining room and he talked a lot with his mouth full. Spur listened mostly, shooting a gentle question every now and then. When the meal and the talk was finished, Harmsworth found himself outside on the street where there were two horses waiting. One was a pretty little mare, Spur’s famous mount. The other was a strong-looking bay which Harmsworth found was for him. They mounted and rode.
*~*
The Cimarron Kid was breaking horses when word came from Spur that he was wanted. He looked at the note Spur had sent him and frowned angrily. It said:
Kid go to Crewsville fast and get yourself arrested by the deputy sheriff there for some small thing. You’ll hear from me when you’re in the calaboose.
Spur.
The Kid choked.
If there was anybody on the face of this earth who could get him all riled up, it was that God-damned Sam Spur. Who the hell did he think he was?
He stormed away from the corral into the cabin where Cusie Ben was sniffing his black nose appreciatively over a savory stew.
The Kid thrust the paper at him.
‘Read that,’ he ordered.
Ben smiled and shook his head.
‘You know I can’t read, Kid.’
‘You know what that fool Spur’s tole me to do? You know what he says in this here letter?’ He read the letter.
Ben laughed.
‘Ain’t that jest lak ole Sam?’ he cried. ‘He sho know what you’m good at, Kid. Git yo’self arrested. Why, man, you been arrested more times than I had hot dinners. You could do that in yo’ sleep.’
The Kid cursed him. Ben didn’t pay him any heed. He sipped his stew from the ladle gingerly and sighed with culinary pride.
‘You goin’ to have time to taste my stew?’ he asked gently, ‘Or you goin’ right off?’
‘I ain’t goin’ nowhere,’ the Kid screamed.
The smile dropped from Ben’s face. For a brief moment, he looked like the man he could be. The sight of that look coming over Ben always stopped the Kid in his tracks. Only then could he believe that Ben was the dangerous man he was reputed to be.
Ben said: ‘If you ain’t, I is.’
The Kid glared at him.
This was the kind of treachery he would expect from the Negro.
‘Spur don’t mean nothin’ to you,’ the Kid snarled.
‘Hit don’t seem,’ Ben said loftily, ‘he mean anythin’ to you either. But he should ought. He save your life, man. There ain’t nothin’ you got you don’t owe him. I ain’t surprised you takin’ this here attitude, mind you. The kind of thing I expect from white trash like you.’
The Kid’s twenty-year-old pride puffed up his rage at these words and in the rage was some of his fear for Cusie Ben.
‘I shot men to death for less than that,’ he said through his teeth in the traditional manner.
The Negro looked at him. In spite of the heat of the stove, he looked as cool as all get out. The sight enraged the Kid further.
‘When their backs was turned or when they was lyin’ he’pless in their beds,’ he said.
‘One day,’ the Kid screamed, ‘you’re goin’ to drive me too far.’
‘I sho do hope I drives you outa sight,’ Ben said. ‘You look real comic standin’ there like a badman. You doin’ hit for yo’self? You sho ain’t makin’ no impression on me, son.’
The Kid turned and stormed out of the cabin. One day, he promised himself, he’d catch Ben without his gun on. But when could you catch the old sonovabitch without his gun being within an inch of his hand?
He sulked, sitting on the corral, staring at the broncs he and Ben were working on. They’d caught them in the hills the week before and were now topping them off for sale. There was a ready market around these parts for saddle stock and the two of them were doing a fair business. He sulked there, fuming and promising himself all sorts of wonderfully dire things he would do to the Negro when he had a good chance. He stayed there on the corral fence while delightful smells were wafted to him on the soft breeze from the cabin. He pictured Cusie Ben sitting at the table enjoying the stew. He knew Ben’s stews. Men dropped in from miles around to eat them. If they had seen what Ben put in them, they wouldn’t have been so enthusiastic.
Finally, the Kid could stand it no longer. He swallowed his pride, climbed down from the fence, said: ‘What the hell,’ and tramped into the cabin.
‘You left any of that stew,’ he demanded in a surly voice, ‘or did you hog it all?’
The Negro, cleaning his plate with a piece of bread, looked up in amazement.
‘You mean you wanted some?’ he said. ‘Now, I thought anythin’ I cook’d choke you clean to death. There was some left, but I throwed it out.’
The Kid choked again.
‘You what?’ he shouted.
‘I throwed it out.’
The Kid went to the stove and lifted the lid of the pot. The aromatic steam hit him. He sighed with relief. He ladled a goodly portion into a plate and sat at the table. When he had wolfed down several mouthfuls, he said: ‘Spur didn’t say he wanted you,’ he said. ‘He wants a real good man he can rely on.’
‘That leaves you way out,’ Ben said calmly.
‘Now don’t you try an’ rile me again,’ the Kid said. The stew was getting to him. It had a soothing effect.
Ben said: ‘Sam don’t send for nobody unless he in real trouble. No harm in us both goin’. I gettin’ real stale catchin’ up the wild ones and sittin’ on my butt. Time I got me some travel. Maybe I’ll get me a little fun down in Crewsville.’
The Kid argued, but he knew that he might as well have butted his head up against a stone wall arguing with Ben. It didn’t get him anywhere except mad. And so it happened that a couple of hours later, they shut the cabin door, caught themselves a couple of good horses, turned the rest out to grass and loaded a big and particularly ugly mule with their gear. Albert was Sam Spur’s and he had kicked and bitten men from the Missouri to the far west. His heart and soul was all mule and he could run from breakfast to supper without rest. They handled him with the respect due to him. When they were ready, they mounted and rode south.