A burst of shooting and yelling put the Colt in my hand before my eyes were open all the way. On the far wall the wooden clock said it was eleven twenty. From the sound of it, only one rider was coming toward the house. Whoever he was, he was doing his best to sound like a troop of cavalry.
I went out fast and the rider, a young feller named Lawton, was still yelling while he thumbed fresh shells into his gun. Sore skulled or not, Dink Westfall was the first man out of the bunkhouse. Lawton, the fool, raised his gun and Westfall’s roar came close to knocking him out of the saddle.
Inside the house something heavy crashed on the upstairs floor. Sam’s bellowing followed right after, so the fall hadn’t killed him. I reached up and yanked Lawton out of the saddle. “Saxbee’s at the wire,” he said. “Saxbee’s at the wire.”
I grabbed him by the neck. “Just say it once, cowboy.”
He nodded. “A whole force of men. Looks like all the men he’s got. No attack, came in making plenty of noise. Saxbee sounded like he was drunk. Kept yelling about two of his men getting bushwhacked on the north range. Says Mr. Blatchford got to face him this time or … ”
Sam came out buttoning his pants. “I got to face what?”
I shoved Lawton away and told him to stop running off at the mouth. McCarty came out fully dressed as if he hadn’t been to bed. “Some trouble at the wire, I’ll handle it,” I told Sam.
McCarty stood close to Sam but said nothing. Sam hitched up his matched Colts and said, “Not this time. Something was said about me murdering two cowboys?”
Well, it was still his ranch. We moved out in minutes, and if there was killing going on at the wire we would have heard it, even with the wind going the other way. But there was nothing but the thin dusty night wind stinging our eyes.
Hours in the rocker, the time in bed, hadn’t altogether cooled the whisky in Sam’s head. He was somewhere between drunk and sober, a bad place for a man as wild headed as Sam. I rode in close to Sam, the kid on the other side, Westfall and the rest of the boys behind. Even at night the five miles to the wire wasn’t much for the rest of us; for Sam it was like rolling a boulder uphill. Good living had taken the snap from his legs; he jolted in the saddle like a sack of wet sand. One thing he didn’t look like was a warrior going out to do battle against his enemies.
Then we were riding into the long glare thrown by the barrels of burning oil. Back from the wire my men were flat on their bellies, rifles ready to start blasting. Across the wire it was the same with Saxbee’s men; all but Noah himself. The old Yankee sat his horse in a blaze of light. The horse didn’t move and neither did he. It would have been no trouble to kill him with a single bullet.
Sam had to prove that he was as nervy as his old partner. I wanted him to stay back and got told off. He walked his big horse until he was the same distance from the wire as Saxbee was on the other side. Trying to sound real casual, he said, “You got me out of bed, Noah. Something special you want?”
Thin and high, Saxbee’s voice didn’t roll in echoes, and that made it easier to understand. Most any man there could start the killing, but my friend Tex was most likely. I watched him while Saxbee dragged out the words in his Yankee twang.
“Just two boys working the north range and you had them murdered. No fight, not like the other day—just two young boys blasted with a shotgun. No chance, their guns still holstered.”
I looked over at the sawed-off riding in a boot beside McCarty’s leg. He wasn’t the only man on the ranch who owned a shotgun, but he was the only one who carried a shotgun as a regular thing.
Sam lurched around in the saddle and growled a question at me. Saxbee was branding him a bushwhacker, and though Sam was many things he was never that.
“None of our men,” I told him, not sure. The kid was closer to Sam than the rest of us, and slightly in front. Yeah, it looked like he had adopted fat roaring Sam Blatchford in place of his long gone daddy. I think he wanted a chance to prove what a loyal son he could be.
Sam roared back, “You know better than that, Noah.”
The answer was, “Not this time, Sam. Not anymore.” I knew this was no rigged dodge; old Saxbee was no trickster. “You want proof, Sam?”
Saxbee spoke over his shoulder and back where the light didn’t reach two horses started walking. Hoofs scraped on broken rock and then I saw one man leading both animals. When they got far enough into the light there was no mistaking the two bodies roped tight to keep them from sliding. One head was missing; what was left of the other was a mess.
Saxbee’s high voice had a shake in it. “Take a closer look. Two dead boys can’t hurt you.”
I told Sam to stay put. “Get them out of here,” I yelled at Saxbee.
The twangy voice came back at me. “Let Sam do his own talking, his own fighting if he’s got guts enough. No need for any more men to die. Just Sam—or me.”
McCarty spoke quickly to Sam. “Say the word, Mr. Blatchford.”
Swaying in the saddle, Sam told him to hold his God damned tongue. To work himself up to where he’d have to make it stick, he damned Saxbee for a lying money-grubbing Yankee scutter. “You want to face me by my lonesome, that’s just fine with me.”
Saxbee hadn’t much more to say. “I mean now, Sam.”
“Suits me, Noah.” Sam wasn’t such a slow money-grubber himself. “You got no kin, me neither. Winner takes all?”
Saxbee said that was all right with him. He was saying one last thing when the first burning barrel began to die out. It went out and the red hot metal sides made a clanging sound. The second barrel burned down, thickening the light, throwing long shadows. The men on both sides were getting edgy. We were just about even—men and guns—but a fair fight wasn’t ever my intention. I always say the worst way to get killed is in a fair fight. I knew we could stop Saxbee at the wire, but a lot of men would die before the night was out. Then, like as not, Saxbee and his men would fall back and the damn thing would drag on till Gabriel’s horn.
Another barrel was dropping fast; already men I could see seconds before were now hidden by shadow. “Not now,” I yelled over at Saxbee. “If it starts now it won’t be just you and Sam.”
Over on our side, Sam damned me for taking too much on myself, but made no big effort to change it. At less than the count of twenty the light would be gone. I ignored Sam’s swearing and said, “Say you’ll face him in daylight. That’ll maybe give us time; for what I don’t know.” What I didn’t say was, maybe he’d change his mind come morning.
“All right,” Saxbee yelled back. “A neutral place, off your land, off mine. Tomorrow in Mariposa. Any time you want to come I’ll be waiting.”
“Get that sheriff out of there and I’ll come,” Sam countered. “No sheriff, no tricks.”
Saxbee’s riders went away whooping and hollering, pushing their horses faster than was smart at night. As we rode the other way, my boys hollered too. They kept at it till I told them to choke it off. The distance between us stretched out; the noise from the other side of the wire faded, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
At the second line of defense I split the men and told them to watch for a surprise attack. Dink Westfall was put in charge. I said they might come in five minutes, or any time before first light.
With all this night guarding, Westfall had taken to chawing tobacco instead of smoking it, for there is no better target after dark than a man with a lit cigarette in front of his face. He still hadn’t got the hang of it, and I’d hate to be around him in shiny boots.
Hunkered down behind a split rock with a thorn bush screening the front of it, Westfall cursed and spat and looked up at me. The others had gone on ahead. “You got to stop this, Carmody. You got to stop that old man.”
I said I’d do my best; anything short of breaking Sam’s legs.
“If that works, do it.”
The way Sam sat a horse, plus the weight, made it easy to catch up. The moon tore loose through the rolling clouds, and the country was a washed-out yellow, black where cactus threw a shadow. It was well past midnight and the chill was settling in.
Some of the boys twisted in their saddles when they heard me coming. But not the kid. He was telling Sam how easy it would have been to kill Noah Saxbee. “One shot, Mr. Blatchford. Like that, right between the eyes. You ain’t going to shoot it out with him, are you, Mr. Blatchford ...”
I rode up close. “Please, Mr. Blatchford, sir, you got a drink for a thirsty man?”
Moonlight flashed on the empty bottle Sam held up. “Son of a bitch,” he said, and threw the bottle. It sailed off into the shadows, clinked on rocky ground, but didn’t break. A man who throws a bottle in a rage gets madder when it doesn’t burst like a bomb. Sam did.
“Nobody talk to me. You know why? Because I don’t feel like talking. Back at the wire me and Noah would have ended this thing. Right now I’d be dead or own the biggest spread ever was. Now I got to think about it all over again. You sure you don’t have a drink, Carmody?”
Yeah, I had something to drink in my war bag. Tequila.
“Mule piss,” Sam said. “Hand it over, boy.”
The kind of tequila you can drink and not feel them taking off your leg is what I favor. Can be used in place of horse liniment, for taking paint off signs, and you can even drink it without going blind.
Sam took the bottle and didn’t even ask if I could do with a snort. Even for a man who drank bourbon like mother’s milk, the Mexican firewater must have tasted awful. Sam drank it anyway, and the wrong way to drink tequila is to gulp it. Sam whacked himself in the belly to help a belch get started.
“Dear Lord, how can you drink that stuff? Why do they make it, why do people drink it?”
It would take a Mexican, or somebody like me, to answer Sam’s question.
But after the burning and belching stopped he liked it a lot. Suddenly it was time to sing “The Succotash Song,” one of Sam’s favorites. Tequila takes people in different ways; some sing, others commit murder. Only a man as old as Sam would have remembered the words to that one. It was about a dude who married an Indian—and what happened on their wedding night.
We rode through the darkness with the echoes rolling back at us. Sam was loud and merry, but you could almost hear the fear gnawing on his guts.
At the house, still singing, he slid off his horse and lay gasping in the dirt. He was snoring hard when the three women came out like angry clucking hens and carried him inside.
McCarty put his pony away and came back to me. “You know it ain’t right for him to do this, Carmody.”
I went inside without giving him an answer. The best time to argue with Sam was when he was feeling worst.