*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74023 ***



A NOTCHED GUN

By Walt Coburn

    Walt Coburn gives us a moving little story that swings a
    dramatic arc from the Old West to the battlefields of France.


Sam Graybull was a killer. He proved it now as he backed slowly out of
the Valley Bank with a smoking Colt in one hand and a gunnysack full of
currency in the other. The teller had made a move for the automatic
below the money counter. Sam Graybull’s bullet had caught the
unfortunate man between the eyes.

The cashier, his movements sluggish from stark fear, made a break for
the side door and was shot in the back.

“You’ll be next,” he told the young lady stenographer, “if you let out
one yap.”

The blizzard outside muffled the sound of the shots. There was no one
abroad in the little storm-swept cow town to block San Graybull’s
departure. He mounted the horse that stood humped in the snow. In five
minutes he was lost in the storm, made thicker by the shadows of dusk.
He left no telltale sign. Because the country between Milk River and the
Bad Lands was as familiar as a child’s back yard, he had no fear of
capture. He tied the sackful of money to his saddle and fashioned a
cigaret with thick, blunt fingers that were steady.

“That damn’ bank dude’s mouth flopped open shore comical.” The rattle of
Sam Graybull’s laugh was blurred by the wind.

No fear of pursuit marred the killer’s flight. He knew the ways of
sheriff’s posses. They would hole up at the first ranch. That is why he
had held off till the storm broke, then rode into town and stuck up the
bank. A one man job. Cunningly planned, cold bloodedly executed. The
lives he had taken were but tally notches on his gun, no more. He would
boast about it when he got drunk.

“That other’n piled up like a beef.”

The storm swirled and moaned. The horse drifted with the wind, headed
south for the Bad Lands. A man could hole up there and get plenty drunk.
Grub in the cabin. Wood enough for a month. Hay a-plenty. A keg of
moonshine licker. When a man got hard up for company, there was Pete
Peralta and his wife across the river. Pete was a damn’ fool but he
knowed how to keep his mouth shut. Pete was all right. Just didn’t have
the guts to go out and take chances, that was all. Mebbe if it wasn’t
fer the missus, Pete might swap a hayfork fer a gun and pick up some
easy money. Pete’s missus was just a young thing. Purty enough, so far
as looks went. Kinda quiet. Scairt, like as not, because she wa’n’t used
to men that had guts. But she had sense. Close mouthed like most ’breed
women. No damn’ sheriff’d ever git anything outa Rose Peralta.

                *       *       *       *       *

It was getting dark now. Black as a hat. Sam Graybull shrank into his
buffalo coat and let his horse drift along. He rode good horses.
Whenever Sam Graybull stole a horse he picked a good one. It was nearly
a hundred miles into the Larb Hills where they dropped in timbered
ridges to meet the Missouri River. To travel all night in a blizzard was
only part of a man’s job. The same as killing those two bank dudes. And
by evening tomorrow he would be at his cabin in the Bad Lands.

“That keg’ll look good.”

Sam Graybull liked whisky. He liked whisky like most men like women.
Liked the color of it in a glass. Liked the gurgle of the stuff as it
spilled out of a jug into a tin cup. Talk about music. The burn of it
when a man tilted a jug and drank it thataway. God, fer a drink right
now.

But Sam Graybull dared not drink till he got home. Tried it onct. Fell
off a horse and froze both feet sleepin’ in the snow. Peter Peralta was
horse huntin’ and found him. Pete’s missus taken care of him. Pete
wasn’t much of a hand to drink. A few shots and Pete had a-plenty. Just
enough to make that fiddle talk good. “The Red River Jig” and “Hell
Among the Yearling’s” and “Cross Eyed Moses.” ’Breed tunes.

Sam hadn’t seen Pete and his missus since early last spring. They were
the only friends he claimed. A man on the dodge can’t have many friends.
Not when there’s a big bounty on his scalp. That’s the way most of the
boys got theirs. Trustin’ somebody. Hell, them fool posses never got
nowhere. Milled around. And when they followed Sam Graybull they kept
bunched. Damn’ right they did.

Sam had been in Wyoming all summer. Gamblin’ some amongst the sheep
shearers. Gettin’ drunk and eatin’ good. Nobody the wiser. Who’d look
around sheep camps fer a cow hand? Then he’d up and shot that Mexican
shearer and had to drift back into Montana again. Too quick on the
trigger.

Sam’s rattling laugh broke forth again. He took out his .45 and with the
nail file blade of his jacknife, he made two fresh notches on the gun’s
bone handle. That was the Indian in him. Sam was about a quarter breed
Sioux. He was proud of those notches. Six, all told, counting the two
bank dudes. Not bad fer a man thirty-one. He’d tell Pete and his missus.
Pete’d grin kinda silly. The missus’d just sit and shiver like she was
took with a chill. Scairt of a man that had guts. A man that was quick
on the trigger.

                *       *       *       *       *

Into the black maw of the cañons and draws. Snow piling in till a man
felt smothered. Black as a hat. Cold. Give a dollar fer a drink. Hell,
give five dollars. Ten. There was money a-plenty in that sack. Whisky
money.

Topping out on a long ridge. Into a dawn that was the color of dirty
slate. A wind that bit plumb into a man’s innards. Didn’t dast drop into
a ranch or even a sheep camp fer grub. There'd be no fool sign fer a
posse to pick up. Nobody but Pete knew of that little log cabin tucked
away in a pocket of the Bad Lands. Pines and brush and rocks. Grub
cached. Shoot a black-tail buck or a yearlin’. What’s two days without
grub? Make a man eat good when he got it. Whisky and meat. Good whisky
and fat meat. Half way home now. Safe as dog in a hole.

Keep to the coulees, just under the rim of the ridges. No use skylinin’
a man’s self. All day. Horse gittin’ laig weary. Stumbled into a badger
hole. No harm done. Wind that shriveled a man’s heart. Wind that cut the
hide on a man’s face. Feet like ice cakes. Like the blood was dried up.
God, but that whisky’d send it chargin’ through a man’s veins, though.
Fill a jug and go acrost to Pete Peralta’s. A man needed talk when he’d
bin alone so long. Pete’d drag out the fiddle. “Red River Jig.” “Hell
among the Yearlin’s.” “Blue Bottles.”

He pulled into his hidden cañon that afternoon. A frost seared, fur clad
figure, red eyed from the wind and loss of sleep. A lone figure in a
vast white world. Cold, hungry, craving whisky as a man on a parched
desert craves water. With a fortune tied in a gunnysack. Two fresh
notches on the bone handle of a short barreled Colt .45. A laugh
rattling in his throat.

Hay in the barn. Pete had put up that hay. The spring above the cabin
was warm. It never froze. Had an iron taste to it.

Sam Graybull watered and fed his gaunt horse. While no law of God or man
had weight with the killer, he never violated that creed of the range
that commands its men to care for a horse that has carried a man. After
that he may look to his own comfort.

Sam Graybull found the whisky keg buried under the hay. He found a tin
cup, and with a corner of his fur coat he wiped some of the dust from
inside it. Then he squatted there by the keg and drank a cup of whisky
as if the stuff were water. He sat there for better than half an hour.
Drinking until the ache thawed from his bones and the hunger pains left
his empty stomach. Now and then he laughed. The horse would give a start
and look around, ears erect. Sam Graybull’s laugh was unlike the
laughter of any other man because there was no humor in it. More like a
death rattle.

He was steady enough on his feet when he got up and went to the cabin.
As steady as a man can be when he has been frozen into the saddle for a
night and a day, and when he is bundled in fur coat and chaps and four
buckle overshoes.

“Fill a jug and go visit Pete Peralta. To hell with cookin’. Pete’s
missus’ll sling up some grub.” His cracked, frost blackened lips split
in a grin as he saw smoke coming from the Peralta cabin, across the
river among the skeleton cottonwoods.

He found a jug and filled it. Then he kicked off his chaps and located a
pair of snowshoes. It was as easy goin’ afoot as it was a-horseback. He
slung the jug about his shoulder with a bit of rope. Then he took his
carbine and fitted it into a worn buckskin sheath.

“Whisky. Ca’tridges. All set.” Then he remembered the money in the
gunnysack. “Whisky’s takin’ holt.” He hid the money in the hay. Then,
shuffling along on his webs, he crossed the river to Pete Peralta’s
place.




II


Even before he rapped on the door, Sam Graybull sensed that something
was wrong at the home of Pete Peralta. Horses in the hay corral,
nibbling from the snow capped stack. Gate down. No tracks around.
Cattle, gaunt flanked and hollow eyed, bawling for water in the lower
pasture. Woodpile buried in the snow. Yet there was smoke coming from
the chimney. A light inside, against the coming dusk.

“Come in!” Was that the voice of Pete Peralta? Sam could not see through
the window. Frost had made the panes opaque.

Cautiously Sam Graybull opened the door. His jug and carbine laid aside,
he held his Colt in his hand, the hammer thumbed back. He kicked the
door open.

For a moment Sam Graybull stood there, half crouched, ready. Then he
straightened. The gun hammer lowered gently and the weapon went back
into its holster.

For propped up on a bunk beside the stove, one leg in rude splints, sat
Pete Peralta. A hollow eyed, gaunt cheeked, unshaven Pete.

“Sam! Sam Graybull!” His voice was like the hoarse call of a crow. But
there was a prayer in its welcome, as he voiced the name of the killer.

From the bedroom beyond came a broken, moaning sob. A woman’s sob. A
woman half delirious with pain.

“Horse fell and busted my leg . . . About a week ago . . . Rose took
care of me until she had to quit . . . She's goin' to have a baby--and
no doctor inside a hundred miles. I reckon she’ll die.”

It took Sam Graybull some seconds to comprehend fully. A pint or more of
raw whisky on an empty stomach does not make for quiet thinking. The
fact that he could retain even a semblance of his faculties proved the
toughness of the killer.

“Doctor, eh?” Sam Graybull pushed back his muskrat cap and ran blunt
fingers through his shock of coarse black hair. “Doctor? Yeah, you sure
need one, don’t you, Pete?”

“Not me, Sam. Her. She’s out of her head, kinda.”

“Dyin’, Pete?”

“She will, I reckon. There has to be a doctor when a baby comes.”

Sam Graybull passed his hand across his eyes. He knew nothing of
childbirth. There had never been room in his killer’s heart for sympathy
for man or woman. Life and the losing of life meant but little to him.
He nodded, black brows knit in a thoughtful scowl. Then he stepped
outside and brought in the jug.

He poured three drinks into tin cups.

“Do us all good, Pete. Then we’ll kinda figger this thing out.” He took
one of the cups and went into the next room.

“Howdy, Rose. Git outside o’ this. Nothin’ like it to kill pain.”

Dimly, through eyes that were mere slits of red, he saw the white face
of the girl. White as the pillow against the mass of black hair. He
lifted her head and held the cup against the lips that seemed drained of
blood.

“The pain--the pain. . .”

“Hell, ain’t it? But that drink’ll do you good.”

He went back into the other room and handed Pete his cup.

“Here’s luck, Pete. Down ’er. More where that come from.”

Sam gulped down his drink without a grimace. His brain seemed to be
clearing.

“Where do you keep your pencil and paper, Pete?”

“That shelf. God, Sam, if we could only do somethin’ to help her.”

“Keep your shirt on.” Sam found the writing pad and pencil. He handed
them to the crippled man.

“Write a note to the doctor, Pete. Tell it scary.” Sam pulled on his cap
again. “I’ll be ready by the time you git it wrote.”

“Where you goin’, Sam?”

“Out to saddle up the best horse you got. I’m goin’ fer the doctor. I’ll
stop by the nearest ranch and have ’em send over somebody to ride herd
on you.” The door banged shut behind him.

Sam caught Pete’s best horse. When he had saddled the animal, he came
back inside.

“Got that note finished?”

“Yes. But you can’t make it into town, Sam.”

“The hell I can’t. The storm’s quit. I know the road, and I ain’t so
drunk but what I kin ride. Lemme have that pencil.”

He scrawled something at the foot of the note. Then he folded the paper
and put it into his pocket.

“Hang and rattle, Pete, till the doc gits here.” He poured some of the
whisky into an empty vinegar bottle and put the corked bottle into his
overcoat. Then he filled the two cups.

“Here’s how, Pete. If the kid looks like you, I shore feel sorry fer the
critter.”

Sam tossed down his drink and before Pete Peralta could say a word, he
was gone.




III


It was almighty hard luck, the way things had turned out for a man. When
the only friend a man had was laid up with a busted laig and a sick
wife. No “Red River Jig”. No fire to set by. No Pete to talk to and tell
how comical that bank dude looked when he dropped. No warm grub. Only
that bottle. Better drop past the cabin and fill a jug. When a man ain’t
slept ner et he’d orter have a jug along to keep him alive.

He stopped at his cabin long enough to fill the jug. Then he pulled out.
He rode into a Long X line camp. A slit eyed, frost blackened man who
staggered a little when he walked. The two cowpunchers stared hard at
him.

“Peter Peralta’s in bad shape. Broke a laig. His missus is dyin’. I’m
ridin’ fer a doctor. One o’ you boys git over there and look after
things.”

He wolfed some meat and beans and gave them a shot out of his jug. One
of the cowpunchers was getting ready for the trip to Pete’s. Sam
Graybull climbed back into the saddle and rode on.

The storm had quit. The stars glittered like white sparks against the
clear sky. The moon pushed up over the ragged ridges. Sam Graybull
swayed a little as he rode, half asleep, half awake, back along the
trail to town.

He took some tobacco and rubbed it into his eyes to sting them open. Now
and then he took a drink from the jug. Not as big a drink as he wanted.
Just enough to keep a man alive. That grub made a man sleepy. A paunch
full of meat always made a man sleepy. Almighty hard luck that a man
couldn’t git off and lay down. For five minutes. Yeah. Five hours. Be
froze stiff as a stick. Hadn’t he froze his feet thataway? Wouldn’t he
a-died there only Pete come by? Hell, he was payin’ Pete back right now.
A man paid his debts thataway. Took guts, too. But when a man’s got one
friend on earth, he’d be a hell of a kind of man not to lend a hand. It
took guts. Somethin’ Pete didn’t have. Pete was a chicken hearted cuss.
With his wife and his fiddle. Never taken a chance. Never would get
nowhere. Like a cow pasture. A muley cow. Well, no man had ever sawed
Sam Graybull’s horns. No fence made ever held him. No jail, neither.
Never bin ketched. Them as tried it had some hard luck. Have a drink.
Damn that cork. A man’s hands stiff and numb. There she comes. Good
whisky. Thawed a man’s belly. Fightin’ whisky.

Sam Graybull’s laugh grated on the silence of the winter night. There’d
be fightin’ a-plenty if a man run into that fool posse. Sam took a
beaded buckskin pouch and put into it the note to the doctor. Then he
fastened the pouch around his neck outside his coat. He moved with a
dogged, sluggish precision. Like a machine that needs oil. He lost one
of his mittens. The right mitten. He put the other mitten on his right
hand, leaving the left one bare. Sam Graybull’s right hand was his gun
hand.

Out of the hills and onto the main road to town. Daylight now. Sleepy.
Dozing in the saddle. Ridin’ that horse like he owned him. Payin’ off
the only debt he owed to his only friend.

Yonder was Beaver Crick. Old gray wolf a-comin’ outa the bare willers.
With a belly full of meat, headin’ fer a safe place to sleep it off. Sam
never killed a wolf. Hell, he was a wolf, hisself. A he-wolf. A killer.
No rabbit, like Pete Peralta. Pete, whinin’ over a busted laig. What’d
he do if he had a .30-.40 slug in him and had to gouge it out with a
jacknife? Sam Graybull had done that.

What’s a-comin’ yonder? Horsebackers. A dozen er more. Posse men. Time
fer a drink. A big’n this time. No nibble. Bin holdin’ off. Waitin’.

“Here’s lookin’ at you boys!” Sam Graybull’s hoarse voice carried a note
of triumph. “Here’s lookin’ at you acrost gun sights!” And he left the
fiery stuff gurgle down his throat.

A rifle bullet whined past Sam Graybull’s head. He taunted the marksman
with a yell of derision and, tossing aside the jug, jerked his carbine
and rode at a run straight for the men.

A hail of bullets met his rush. Sam Graybull’s horse somersaulted, shot
between the eyes. Sam tried to kick his feet from the stirrups. Too
late. Horse and man crashed together. A dull pain shot through the
killer’s leg. That leg was pinned under the dead weight of the horse.
Bullets spatted and droned. Sam Graybull emptied his carbine. Two of the
posse felt the searing sting of the outlaw’s bullets. Sam pulled his
six-gun--the .45 that had taken deadly toll of human life. His thumb
fanned the hammer.

“Come an’ git it! Come on, you red necks!”

Black lips bared from tobacco stained teeth. Slit eyes swollen almost
shut. It took guts.

Something white hot stabbed Sam Graybull’s chest. He hardly felt it.
Above the flat spat of rifles in the dawn, sounded the mirthless laugh
of Sam Graybull. A laugh that sounded like the death rattle. Tumbing the
hammer of an empty gun. Then the weary head dropped back into the snow.
Sam Graybull, killer, was dead.

The last of the whisky gurgled out of the uncorked jug into the trail.

                *       *       *       *       *

“He must have got drunk, blind drunk, and lost his way.”

“The sheriff pulled the dead outlaw clear of the horse. Grimly
triumphant, the grizzled old officer examined the body of the killer.
Then he opened the pouch and found the note.

As he read it, there in the sunrise of that winter morning, the warm
glow of victory chilled. He turned to a man who carried a small black
bag instead of a gun.

“This is fer you, Doc. You’re wanted down on the river.” He handed over
the note. Then he turned to his men.

“Handle Sam easy, boys. He come back a-purpose, to do the only decent
thing he ever done in his life. Pete Peralta’s wife is about to have a
baby. Sam Graybull come to fetch Doc. Handle ’im easy.”

The sheriff and Doc Steele rode along the trail together. Doc read aloud
the postscript to Pete Peralta’s note.

      “The bank money is in a sack under the hay at my cabin.
      What bounty there is on my hide goes to Pete Peralta.
      If the kid’s a boy, name him Graybull. Use the bounty
      money to educate him. So long”
                                               --SAM GRAYBULL.

And so it was that Doc Steele brought into the world a boy named
Graybull Peralta. Some of the A.E.F. will remember him as Captain
Graybull Peralta, the fighting chaplain of the --th Division, made up of
men from the cow country. He was killed in action in the Argonne. In the
pocket of his blouse was a bullet drilled, blood soaked Bible. In his
hand was a bone handled six-gun with six notches filed on its age
yellowed handle.

Major Steele, who found him, gently removed the empty gun from the dead
captain’s hand. He looked with memory misted eyes at the face of the
fighting parson. The bared lips, the swollen, slitted eyes.

“Handle him gently, men,” he told the stretcher bearers. “Gently, as we
handled his father twenty years ago. May the son of Sam Graybull find
fat meat in the Shadow Hills!”

And they were too busy, those stretcher bearers, to wonder at the queer
words of the white haired surgeon.

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the November 15, 1928 issue
of Adventure magazine.]



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74023 ***