Gunman's Song (23 page)

Dawson lowered the bottle and wiped a hand across his mouth. “Maybe we should have explained how it all happened to a lawman or somebody.”

“There's no kind of law in Turkey Wells except the law hanging on a man's hip,” said Shaw, “and that's the law that was played out the second Mace Renfield said he would kill me where I stood.”

“How do you know he meant it?” Caldwell asked meekly.

Giving him a bemused look, Shaw said, “I took his word for it. To me, when a man wearing a gun says he's there to kill me…it's the same as him reaching for iron. It might be questionable if he meant it or not. It might be questionable whether or not I could have talked him out of it. The one thing that ain't questionable is who's alive and who's dead. A man who doesn't value his life above another's is apt to have a short career as a gunman.” Seeing Dawson get ready to raise the bottle to his lips again so soon after his first drink, Shaw reached out and took the bottle, saying, “Are you going to share any of that yellow moon?”

But upon taking the bottle, instead of taking a drink, Shaw passed it to Caldwell, saying, “Here, you might need a couple swigs of this to smooth out a few wrinkles over what happened.”

“I'm all right, just nervous still,” said Caldwell.
But looking at Shaw and Dawson he took the bottle and took a sip. When he handed it back to Lawrence Shaw, he turned and walked away, leading the horses.

Looking back at Dawson, Shaw said quietly, “All right, spit it out.”

“Spit what out?” Dawson asked, reaching out for the bottle in Shaw's hand.

But Shaw held on to the bottle even with Dawson's hand on it. “You know what I mean, Dawson. Spit out whatever it is bothering you. Get it off your chest now, before it ends up causing bad trouble between us.” Now he turned the bottle loose.

Dawson started to take a drink, but he stopped and stared at the bottle for a moment as if gathering his thoughts, then said to Shaw, “All right, I'll tell you. I thought you could have done different today. You didn't try very hard to talk the man down. You didn't take it out to the street where it should have been…where there was less chance of some bystander getting hurt.”

“I see.” Shaw nodded as Dawson spoke. Then he said, “I suppose I should have given you some sort of sign, let you know what I was about to do?”

“That would have helped,” said Dawson.

“It would have helped Renfield too,” said Shaw.

“Renfield never even got his hand on his gun, let alone tried to draw it!” Dawson said, raising his voice.

“That's called a surprise, Dawson,” said Shaw, raising his voice with him. “Do you think I took unfair advantage? Hell, when I reached for my gun I didn't know if my arm was going to work or not! I gave him that much of an edge, whether he knew it
or not! As far as taking it to the street, he picked the spot, not me. When he made his threat…he said, ‘where you stand.' It doesn't get much plainer than that.”

Dawson stared at him as he raised the bottle and took a drink, this one not as long as the first. When he lowered the bottle, he said, “All right, forget it.”

“Are you sure?” asked Shaw. “Because it looks to me like you've still got things to talk about.”

“Well, I don't,” said Dawson. His voice lowered to normal. “I feel bad about those two cowboys I shot. It's just something I reckon I have to work out and get settled inside myself.”

“You do that, Dawson,” said Shaw, lowering his voice as well.

“I maybe could have done something different,” Dawson added, still running the fight over and over in his mind.

“Like what?” Shaw asked bluntly.

“I don't know, maybe jumped out of the way when that one started shooting at me.”

“Which way does a man jump when bullets are flying all around?” Shaw asked, seeing that Dawson was still having trouble turning it loose.

“I don't know, Shaw,” said Dawson. “I suppose that's why I shot him…I just wanted those bullets to stop. I stopped them the only way I could.” He took another drink, this one a short sip; then he handed the bottle back to Shaw.

“I expect I could say that about any gunfight I've ever had,” said Shaw. He put the cork in the bottle and popped it tight with the palm of his hand. “If you need any more of this, let me know.”

“The whiskey or the talk?” Dawson asked.

Shaw didn't answer.

“Can I say something?” Dawson called out as Shaw walked away toward the edge of the creek.

Shaw stopped and just looked at him, taking the sawed-off from under his arm and holding it loosely.

“What Renfield said…” Dawson's words trailed away. “You do have some unlikable ways about you. I hate saying it, but you ain't at all like the Lawrence Shaw I grew up with.”

“Ain't that the truth,” said Shaw, almost to himself.

“Sometimes it looks to me like Lawrence Shaw and Fast Larry are two men in a fistfight with each other,” said Dawson.

“Most times, they are,” said Shaw, turning away.

At dark, when they had finished a meal of jerked beef and coffee, Shaw put out the campfire and they moved four hundred yards farther along the creekbank. Staying inside the narrow strip of woodlands, they made a dark camp for the night and took turns sitting watch. Without a fire's light they couldn't be spotted from a distance, and while their tracks could be found along the creekbank, following them was not something a group of riders could do quietly through the mesquite, scrub brush, and juniper.

In the middle of the night, Jedson Caldwell awakened Lawrence Shaw by poking a stick against his sock foot. “Mr. Shaw, wake up, please. I think I hear something,” Caldwell whispered. He poked Shaw's foot again.

“All right, Undertaker,” Shaw growled under his breath. “I'm awake.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Shaw, but listen out there, upstream,”
he said. Then he fell silent for a moment. “There, did you hear it?” he whispered, his voice sounding excited.

“Yep, it's horses, moving slow,” said Shaw, rolling up from his blanket, bringing the shotgun with him. “You did good, Undertaker.”

“Thank you, Mr. Shaw,” said Caldwell.

“Listen, Undertaker,” said Shaw, pulling his boots on, “you can drop the ‘mister.' We've been in a gunfight together. I think that affords us a certain lack of formality, don't you?”

“Yes, you're right, Mi— I mean, Mist— I mean, Mr.—”

“Never mind,” said Shaw. He stepped over to where Cray Dawson lay sleeping beneath what smelled like a vapor of rye whiskey. Kicking Dawson's leg gently, Shaw said, “Dawson, wake up. Somebody's coming.”

Dawson groaned and sat up, cupping his face in both hands. “I feel like hell,” he said in a pained voice.

“You better pull yourself together pretty quick,” said Shaw. “If this is some of the boys from the Rafter One spread, the best thing we can do is keep you out of sight for the time being. Get up and make yourself scarce. But keep your ears open.”

“I will,” said Dawson, struggling to get to his feet, then searching around in the moonlight for his hat that had fallen somewhere on the ground.

Shaw picked up Dawson's blanket and pitched it over on his own, to make it look like there were only him and Caldwell there. Then he said to Caldwell, “Come on, Undertaker; let's see if we can convince these boys that we're by ourselves.”

“What if they don't believe us?” Caldwell asked, sounding a bit frightened.

“I don't care if they believe us or not, so long as they take our word for it and go away,” said Shaw, smiling thinly to himself. “Don't forget, my name is worth something. There's times when it doesn't hurt to be Fast Larry Shaw.”

Caldwell noted that there was a tone of irony and contempt in Shaw's voice. He decided to keep quiet and calm down, realizing that he was into this with Shaw and Dawson up to his neck. He had to survive, and his best chance was to learn to handle matters the way these two did, he thought, with a lot more boldness and a lot less fear of the consequences.

He followed Shaw to the edge of the clearing along the creekbank where the two of them squatted down out of the moonlight in the dark shadow of a live oak along a thin, winding trail. After a moment of listening to the sound of horses moving quietly through mesquite brush, Shaw whispered, “They're on our trail, but they don't know how far away we are. You sit tight here; I'll be right across the trail. Don't shoot unless you have to. Like as not I can talk them down.”

“What if there's too many of them?” Caldwell asked, regretting his words as soon as he said them.

“There's always too many of them, Undertaker,” said Shaw. He slipped away across the trail in the moonlight, then dropped out of sight. Caldwell felt his fear well up again now that he was alone in the dark, the sound of men with guns moving forward toward him in the night. A cold sheen of sweat formed on his forehead. He tried to prepare himself
for a long, agonizing wait, yet it seemed like only a few seconds had passed when he heard Shaw's voice call out to the sound of the horses moving closer.

“Hello, the trail,” said Shaw when he judged the riders to be within less than twenty feet away. “You've come close enough.”

A short silence passed; then a voice replied, “I'm Martin Sullivan, the foreman of the Turkey Track Ranch. We're looking for the man who shot two of my drovers back at the Turkey Wells station.”

“He's not here,” said Shaw with finality. “What else can we do for you?”

“We've got to take a look all the same,” the foreman said.

“I'm sorry you feel that way,” said Shaw. “It tells me you're going to be hardheaded, and make me empty this double-barrel on you.”

A worried voice among the riders said, “Damn it, Sully! If that's Fast Larry he'll do it too!”

“Pipe down, Ollie,” said Martin Sullivan. “Let's all keep our heads here.”

“Now there's a good idea,” Shaw called out, overhearing them.

“Are you Fast Larry Shaw?” Sullivan called out.

“I am,” said Shaw.

“Then you know it ain't you we're looking for. It's the other fellow, the one who killed our boys.”

“That was an honest mistake, cowboy,” said Shaw. “Your man took a secondhand bullet. Nobody meant for it to happen.”

“I've heard a half dozen different accounts of it,” said the foreman.

“But now you've heard the truth,” said Shaw.

“What about our other boy?” the foreman asked. “Buddy Edwards didn't even have good sense. All's he ever could do was stick a horse or pitch a calf.”

“He knew one other thing,” said Shaw. “He knew how to point a pistol and commence pulling the trigger.”

“Still, he didn't deserve dying like this,” said the foreman.

“Take it up with God, cowboy,” said Shaw. “I don't aim to lose any more sleep over it. Turn and ride.”

“We're staying on this trail,” said the foreman. “I want to hear how it happened from the man who done it.”

“I'm telling you straight up, nobody was out to kill them boys,” said Shaw, cocking the shotgun hammers slowly, letting them be heard and considered. “They were in the wrong place at the wrong time…end of song. Now turn and ride.”

“I can't do that, Shaw,” said Martin Sullivan stubbornly. “I know you're a big gun out of Somos Santos, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to—”

“Hold it,” said Dawson, appearing in the moonlight in the middle of the thin trail, facing the riders. “Here I am. If you want to hear it from me, you're hearing it.”

Shaw whispered to himself, “Damn it, Dawson, this is not the place to clear your conscience.”

“I killed them both,” said Dawson. “God knows I didn't mean to, but I did it just the same.”

“No matter whether you meant to or not, you killed them. As foreman of the Turkey Track Ranch, Rafter One spread, it's up to me to set things right,” said Sullivan. He stepped down from his saddle.
Let's get to it,” he said, giving his horse a slight shove to the side. “Mr. Shaw, since this has nothing to do with you, I'm hoping you won't have any grudge agin' me once it's over.”

“A grudge against you?” Shaw chuckled openly. “Don't worry about me, mister. Once this is over, the only thing left of you is what your boys there carve on a plank head marker.”

“I reckon there's a fifty-fifty chance the same thing is going to happen to him,” said Sullivan, giving a nod toward Cray Dawson.

“Then you're a damned fool,” Shaw said bluntly. “Don't forget, besides your two cowhands, he also left one of Renfield's top gunmen lying dead and sent the other running.”

“I realize that,” said Sullivan, swallowing a tight knot that suddenly came to his throat.

Seeing the man begin to weaken, Shaw continued.

Here's something else you'd best realize. This man is Crayton Dawson, the fastest gun to ever come out of Somos Santos. But I reckon that means nothing to you.” He backed his horse as if giving up in disgust, saying to Cray Dawson, “All right, Crayton, go on and shoot him. He's not smart enough to live.”

“Stay out of this, Shaw,” said Dawson. “I see what you're trying to do. But you're not going to stop it. I killed those two drovers and I'll face up to it.”

“Wait a minute here,” said Sullivan, getting anxious and a bit confused by the talk between Shaw and Dawson. He reached up and scratched his head under his hat brim, keeping his gun hand away from his pistol butt. Then he said warily to Lawrence Shaw, “
You're
from Somos Santos, ain't you?”

“We're both from Somos Santos,” said Shaw. “We
grew up there together. Broke horses together, swam the creeks together…shot jackrabbits together.” His eyes narrowed on the man in the moonlight. “We learned to draw and shoot togther.”