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.