George Owen Baxter

Soft Metal

Warsaw 2017

Contents

I. A DIVE INTO BLACKNESS

II. TAKING JIM’S PLACE

III. BACK TO MONKVILLE

IV. AT THE BLACKSMITH SHOP

V. AL RICHARDS ARRIVES

VI. GETTING THE DROP ON BOB

VII. A COCK-AND-BULL STORY

VIII. A VISIT TO THE SHERIFF

IX. RICHARDS AND THE INTERLOCUTOR

X. THE HEEL OF ACHILLES

XI. REMOVING A TALISMAN

XII. THE MAN-KILLER FLEES

I. A DIVE INTO BLACKNESS

All the earth was black, but there was still light in the heavens when Larry Givain came over the hills and into the valley. He paused on the upper slope between a great Spanish dagger plant and a scrub cedar. Below him the darkness was broken, not by forms, but by black hints of shapes like arms thrust up at the sky. More Spanish daggers, then, marched down in their grisly ranks to the bottom of the hollow.

Larry Givain dismounted from the saddle, loosened the throat latch of his mare, and took off his glove to rub her wet muzzle. “Dear old Sally,” he said to her, and stopped patting her nose to slick her ears between his fingertips. Even her ears were wet almost to the points, for Sally had labored mightily that day, and, when Larry looked back in mind to the wilderness of desert and rocks and mountains which the dainty-footed mare had covered, it seemed that they must have been given wings.

In this hollow beyond the rise he had hoped to find the light of a house. Once before he had traveled in that general direction, and he could be almost certain that he had passed a house in this very place, although that was years before, and the whole remembrance was as dim as the light in which he was riding. But he needed water very badly. It did not so much matter that his own throat was lined with fire. It had been in that condition many a time before, when he was compelled by certain exigencies to plunge out of one town and away toward another of vague location, somewhere beyond a gigantic screen of desert. For, like most men who make their living by their luck at cards, Larry Givain was apt to run into streaks of violent unpopularity after he had been in a town a few days.

In the old days he had been able to arrange a career across the mountains so that he flitted safely on like a bee, sipping the honey at one flower patch and then darting away to the next before the hornets were aroused. But having been five years on the road, he now found that he had to retrace his steps across known country. Of course, he never went back to the same town he had been in before, but even to be in the near vicinity of a town that had known him in the past was dangerous. If one man saw him, talk was started. And shortly after talk was started, it became an essential for Larry to use the legs of a fast horse.

The fast horse was Sally, and she was a very rocket for speed, yet she had been with him so long that she was becoming almost more of an encumbrance than a blessing, for where his face was not remembered, her beautiful brown body and the white-stockinged near forefoot and the blaze of white in the center of her forehead were sure to be recalled. Of course, he would not give her up. She had saved his hide a hundred times. She knew his voice; she knew his whisper. She would have given all of her great heart for him as freely as though her blood were water.

Larry Givain thought of these things, while he rubbed her sleek ears and blessed her. But she must have water. Not only for her own sake but to keep away from sundry hot riders whom he had last seen in the middle of the afternoon, coursing furiously along his trail. They were very angry fellows, and they had promised him, among other things, a coat of tar and feathers. However, that was a girl which had been offered to him before, and the acceptance of which he had dexterously avoided.

He mounted Sally again and rode her gently down the hill, knowing well that a down slope is far harder on a tired horse than an upward one. And so it was, just as he reached the bottom of the hollow, that the place loomed black and big before him–literally slapped him in the face. It was the house of his dim memory, put here in the hollow, surely enough, but simply without a light in it.

That might mean, perhaps, desertion, and no water available in a broken well. He hurried anxiously to the rear, and there he saw the long trough with a great yellow star floating in the black water.

Sally, like a good horse, drove her head in up to the eye, but after she had taken a deep swallow or two, Larry Givain drew her away, for she was far too hot to drink much. And she answered his touch, in spite of her passion of thirst, as readily as though he was taking her from a free pasture. Little things sometimes touch us most, and this kindly willingness of Sally’s made the whole heart of Larry Givain rise.

He led her away from the trough, loosened the cinches a trifle more–for he made a point of a loose cinch at all times–and looked back to the skyline. The stars were out, but not in the east where the last pallor of the old day was living, and this light defined mistily the heads of the eastern hills. No black shadows of horsemen broke that line, and they would not break it for a good half hour to come, at the least. Sally had been running her best, and, when Sally did her best, the cream of other horseflesh shriveled and shrank from comparison.

That half hour would be far better employed in rest than in further riding. If, at the end of that time, the impromptu posse stormed over the hills and swept down toward the house, they had as well try to tag the tail of a comet as attempt to catch a rested and well-breathed Sally.

So he tried the door of the house. It was unlatched. It occurred to him that the owner of the house might be there, but simply asleep after a hard day’s work. So he called, but his voice died, and the echoes rang from wall to wall with a convincing hollowness. So he threw the reins of Sally and stepped in to explore.

What the light of three matches showed him were three rooms. The first was the kitchen, where he found the well primed, a sure sign that the owner of the house was not more than twenty-four hours away. He worked it for five minutes, controlling his wild thirst until the stream of water ran cool as a mountain spring, for he knew that half a cup of really cool water will do more for a famished man than a whole quart, apparently, of lukewarm throat wash. His second match showed him a living room. His third match gave to his eyes the bedroom.

It was a well-ordered, well-equipped house, a hundred times neater and better furnished than the average squatter’s shack, and a squatter this man must surely be. Givain went to the living room, opened the window, and let a stream of fresh night air cleanse away the humid heat that had been accumulating in the house all day. It washed away the larger half of the nameless odors of the dwelling, also, and let in the keen scent of the desert, sharp as a wolf’s ear, to the nostrils of Givain. He whistled for Sally. It was the only thing in the world that could make her stir after the reins had been thrown, so she trotted up to him, holding her head far to the side so that she would not tread on the reins. Then she stood at the window, and, when Givain lighted the lamp, her great eyes mirrored the light and made her look almost terrible in wildness.

There she remained, sniffing cautiously at the door, then raising her little square nose to the ceiling, then drawing back without moving her feet and looking about her into the night. For, with infinite care, he had taught her to stand as quietly and to move as quietly as a great loafer wolf. Her master in the meantime was busying himself with the first book upon which his hand had fallen. He was so glad to see it that he hardly cared to wonder how it happened to be in a mere squatter’s shack. He opened it, and was instantly deep in the pages.

The time passed. Outside, the last light faded, the coyote that had been crying down the draw turned downwind, and his voice began to quiver and pulse along the horizon of sounds, as a sail on the open seas seems to wing in and out of view. Still, the time rolled on. Sally was ready for her second drink long since, and she moved more and more restlessly, until finally she stepped about and stared continually into the night to make out the first movement of an enemy. For poor Sally had been hunted with her master so often that she distrusted a long halt with all of her heart.

At length there came a warning that struck even the attention of the gambler. It was no more, say, than the noise that wind makes on a quiet day, when a door is opened silently and slowly, but to Larry Givain the sound seemed as intelligible as the whisper of a voice at his ear. For he had heard the unmistakable sound of cloth rubbing against cloth, and the noise came from the kitchen, where he had not seen a fragment of cloth hanging against the wall.

He glanced at the window. He could dive through it like an eel into water and be instantly safe on the back of Sally, where she stood, glimmering in the starlight, but Givain had fled long enough. He had a sort of femininely uncertain nature that made him unaware of exactly what course he would pursue. He never could plan a strict course of action for himself; the stricter it was, the more apt he would be to break it. On this occasion, reason told him to flee speedily, but the imp of the perverse made him stay.

Givain laid down his book and rose from his chair. He reached the wall nearest to the opening of the kitchen door in three long and gliding steps. Then he waited. It did not seem to weary him to wait out the seconds, or to hold his difficult position, for he was crouched low, as if he would strike at an enemy with teeth and hands like a beast of prey rather than with the heavy- handled Colt that dragged down in his holster. For, strangely, he had not drawn the gun. Indeed, it was a maxim of his never to draw a gun until there was absolute necessity to shoot, and never to find a necessity until he felt that his own life must be given up otherwise. In that crouched position one felt that the body beneath his clothes must be like the body of an Indian, lithe and lean and wiry, and his thin, handsome face was sunburned to an Indian brown, and his big, dark eyes had the Indian wild light in them.

The door swayed open a crack, and Givain melted against the wall. It opened a bit more, and he dug his toes against the floor. He always wore soles on his riding boots of a papery thinness. Sometimes they made for discomfort in a long ride, chafing against the stirrups, but those flexible soles gave his feet a purchase and made his footfall as silent as the dropping of a moccasin.

The door opened yet more; something was now visible beyond it. There was a half guessed at eye of metal gleaming behind the dusky wall. Of course, the gun was the thing to use, a quick snap shot, aimed rather low perhaps, in case he did not wish to risk inflicting a mortal wound upon an innocent man. But instead of the gun, suppose that he dove into the blackness beyond, grappled the enemy–it would be death, perhaps, but it would be an exquisite thrill of pleasure.

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