King of the Gunmen

 

The outlook of Kit Gordon was as bleak as the tawny desert which writhed in the heat below his cliff. Never in his thirty-one years had he sunk so far or faced death in such a variety of ways.

 

And that was saying a great deal, as men had variously dubbed the lean gunslinger “Suicide,” “Smoke” and “Sudden Death.” From the Missouri to the Pacific, tales were told about the branding fires of the things Kit Gordon was supposed to have done—and sometimes he had done them and always, even if he had not, he was capable of the feats.

 

Few men could honestly swear that they had met him but his general appearance was very well known. He stood six feet one, hardly thick enough through the waist to cast a shadow were it not for his double guns, swelling out to broad and heavy shoulders which bore up a well-shaped head from which any man, no matter how blind, could have judged his quick intelligence.

 

His one compelling feature was his eyes. They were changeable with his mood and swiftly so, ranging rapidly from cold killer gray to hot and angry green and even to glowing gold. Men watched his eyes as cattle brokers watch the ticker tape. Their shade was the only thing by which it was possible to predict Kit Gordon’s next move.

 

The men who told stories of him would have been shocked to have seen him now. They stressed the meticulousness of his clothes, the polish of his sixty-dollar boots, the hang of his black broadcloth coat, the set of his expensive John B.

 

But their description was inaccurate now. Kit’s hands were blistering under the onslaught of the savage sun. His coat was white with alkali dust and the Stetson punctured by a rifle bullet. One of his boots had been scuffed beyond repair when his horse had collapsed under him.

 

His even-featured face was gray with pain and hunger. He was dying and he knew it. But he was not afraid, only annoyed by the circumstances which had led him to such a pass, at his own foolhardy pursuit of Kettle-Belly Plummer and the flight from the lynch mob in the north.

 

He was still mystified at the rapidity of his downfall, angered by the injustice which had been done.

 

Two hundred miles north, at the Santa Fe whistling post of Randall, his hotel room had been looted in his absence and his change of clothing had vanished. A private inquiry had elicited the information that the gunman named Plummer, an enemy of old standing, had been seen in the vicinity. Kit Gordon had preferred to do his own justice, had taken the trail.

 

But he had found no trace of Kettle-Belly Plummer though he had searched for two days in the surrounding country. He would not have cared about the suit and hat and boots. But among the loot had been a repeater watch, a favored possession and good-luck piece worth around a thousand dollars. That watch had once been the property of Kettle-Belly Plummer until that unworthy had lost it across the faro table in Dodge, two years before. In the following fight, Kit Gordon had kept the watch.

 

Trying to think of some way to get a line on the obvious thief, Kit had returned to Randall, intending to press his inquiry even further. His reception was amazing.

 

The town marshal, backed by a mob of railroad workers, had tried to arrest him and Kit, knowing a lynch mob when he saw one, had resisted. Before the marshal and two section hands had thumped into the dust of the street, Kit Gordon had been hit and hit hard with a bullet in his right shoulder but he had managed to escape.

 

The only intelligence he had of the affair was that he had been seen leading the gang which had stopped and robbed the Limited the night before, dynamiting the express car and killing a messenger.

 

Kit knew the answer to that. Plummer was settling the score in his own back-knifing way. If Kit could only find Plummer . . .

 

His tongue swelling in his mouth from thirst, with hanging behind him and torturous death at hand, he lay exhausted, watching the maddening mirages come and go, growing palm trees and spouting fountains from the caustic sand. A train puffed importantly where a train would never run. A town fried a hundred feet in the air.

 

The town was what interested Kit. It was certainly somewhere near at hand or else it could not have its picture projected upon the shimmering sky in that ridiculous fashion.

 

His head felt light and through it ran the crazy string of his thoughts. He considered the town with a practiced eye, even amused when it occurred to him that he was inspecting something which was probably a hundred miles away and far beyond the normal range of sight.

 

He could read the signs very clearly. The Bird Cage Opera House. The Seco Hombre Saloon. Wells Fargo’s stage was drawn up before the post office and the citizens were standing about.

 

As is the trick of the mirage at times, all things were greatly magnified so that the men and horses appeared ten times their usual size.

 

One fellow in particular attracted Kit Gordon’s attention. The man was very tall and thickly built, with a black beard and a black hat. He hovered on the rim of the crowd as though he did not want to be seen and then, abruptly, turned on his heel and sprinted for a horse.

 

With one foot in the stirrup, he started to mount. The men in the crowd seemed to be very agitated as they started toward him on the run.

 

And then, as is the habit of the mirage, having started the drama it refused to longer amuse Kit Gordon by completing it. Empty air writhed with heat waves and the town was gone.