Gun Boss of Tumbleweed

 

Some day, hombre, one of these squeezed-out rancheros is goin’ to get past your guns, and when he does, they’ll be measurin’ you for a sod kimono. And personally, it’ll do my heart a world of good to see you skippin’ over the red-hot coals of hell.”

 

Mart Kincaid said it with insolence, a wicked flash in his eye. But somehow it was tired, too—tired with the weight of five years on the payroll of Gar Malone, King of the Concha Basin.

 

The sun was August hot in the searing blue bowl of the Southwest sky, but it wasn’t the sun which made Gar Malone jerk his hat lower to hide his eyes.

 

They sat their horses for a little, on the edge of the trail, neither one of them willing to let it drop without further venom—for they hated each other as the rattlesnake hates the gila, and they had hated each other for a long, long time.

 

Gar Malone was corpse-thin, hot for gain, killer-ruthless in his sway of range in four hugely unsurveyed counties. His eyes were dark, his teeth were black, there was no light whatever to the flame of thirsty ambition which scorched within him, searing him on to further power, further wealth, further conquest.

 

He was no coward, Gar Malone, but he knew his man.

 

“What objections you got? Seems like you’re kinda late, Kincaid.”

 

“Sure, sure. I’m the fallen sparrow and my hands ain’t fit to touch a decent horse. But they ain’t my crimes, Gar Malone.”

 

“Crimes? Why for cripe’s sake, what kind of a baby have you turned into? What’s criminal in bein’ the biggest horn toad in this furnace? What’s so damned dirty about shovin’ weaklings and peewee stockmen out of the country? Did they invent it? God made it, Kincaid, and it’s for the one that can take it and keep it.”

 

“God may have made it,” said Mart, “but He sure didn’t count on a brand artist comin’ along and turnin’ it into what it is. There ain’t fifty decent people from here to Tumbleweed. It’s gettin’ kind of monotonous pitchin’ into every poor citizen that wants to eat, work and prosper within a hundred miles any direction. I don’t object to dirt but I get tired wallerin’ in it and pretendin’ it’s rose petals.”

 

“You goin’ to Tumbleweed, or ain’t you?” snapped Gar.

 

“Oh, sure, sure. I’ll go to Tumbleweed. I’ll knock out the Singing Canyon spread. I’ll stand back and let the boys throw lead into honest punchers whose only crime is bein’ loyal to a good boss. Sure, I’ll do it.”

 

“Now, that’s better,” said Gar, mollified considerable. “You’re the best gun in the state and the gold I pay clinks. But by all that’s holy, Kincaid, if I have to go on takin’ all this off ’n you, you think I’m goin’ to forget what I know?”

 

“Dead men ain’t got no memories to speak of at all,” said Kincaid. 

 

Gar’s dark gaze fastened upon the silver-chased cannons in Kincaid’s buscadero belt. His breath went shallow. “Try it, Kincaid. Go ahead and try it. And the Saturday I don’t appear in Lawson, Jeb Barly takes the sealed packet out of his bank safe and puts it in the hands of the US deputy marshal. You won’t be the only one that will get green-gilled that day. Think twice, gunman. Think twice.”

 

“You ain’t panicky, are you?” said Kincaid. His laugh was insolent, without any amusement whatever.

 

“You think I don’t know your fanning? Why do I pay you? And we both know why you go on workin’ for me. I need you. You and Gary O’Neil need me alive.” Gar’s mood changed into pretended lightness and warmth. “I hear,” he continued, “that young Gary’s ma got herself a new house on her birthday. Now wasn’t that just wonderful of you boys? I tell you, it does my heart good.”

 

“You know, hombre,” said Mart, “there’s times when I just plain itch to let the desert breezes fan gently through yore hide.” And as swift as lightning he rolled his guns and slammed four rapid shots into a cast-off canteen beside the trail. The first made it leap into the air, the second, third and fourth rent it apart before it could fall once more.

 

The first shot Gar had felt in his own flesh. He didn’t breathe comfortably until the white powder smoke had drifted well down the trail.

 

“I guess,” said Mart, “that I’ll be headin’ out for Tumbleweed.”

 

He jerked his pack horse forward and spurred his gray. If he had looked back he would have seen Gar Malone still sitting his bay beside the trail, looking after him with eyes which sought furtively for a way to end this tension and still rule the Concha Basin.

 

But Mart Kincaid didn’t look back. He was in a more than usually bitter mood. At twenty-five, he felt, he should be well on his way toward making a decent man of himself, carving a fine future from this gaudy but fertile desert realm. But who was he? Gar Malone’s peacifier. At twenty-five he was Mart Kincaid, general of the forces of Concha Basin’s private and personal devil, a man who used him as guns and brains and kept him chained as thoroughly as Gar’s big greyhounds, imported from the East to run down and kill wolves.

 

It was sixty miles as the buzzard soars to Tumbleweed but it was better than twenty-nine more if one connected with the water holes and used the better trails. But Mart was in no hurry and he added six more in a detour past O’Neil’s small ranch.

 

He felt bad and his eyes were turned so far in that as he came through the canyon below the ranch he did not see, there on the narrow trail before him, the six Malone punchers, part of the home ranch crew.