III
It was almighty hard luck, the way things had turned out for a man. When the only friend a man had was laid up with a busted laig and a sick wife. No “Red River Jig”. No fire to set by. No Pete to talk to and tell how comical that bank dude looked when he dropped. No warm grub. Only that bottle. Better drop past the cabin and fill a jug. When a man ain’t slept ner et he’d orter have a jug along to keep him alive.
He stopped at his cabin long enough to fill the jug. Then he pulled out. He rode into a Long X line camp. A slit eyed, frost blackened man who staggered a little when he walked. The two cowpunchers stared hard at him.
“Peter Peralta’s in bad shape. Broke a laig. His missus is dyin’. I’m ridin’ fer a doctor. One o’ you boys git over there and look after things.”
He wolfed some meat and beans and gave them a shot out of his jug. One of the cowpunchers was getting ready for the trip to Pete’s. Sam Graybull climbed back into the saddle and rode on.
The storm had quit. The stars glittered like white sparks against the clear sky. The moon pushed up over the ragged ridges. Sam Graybull swayed a little as he rode, half asleep, half awake, back along the trail to town.
He took some tobacco and rubbed it into his eyes to sting them open. Now and then he took a drink from the jug. Not as big a drink as he wanted. Just enough to keep a man alive. That grub made a man sleepy. A paunch full of meat always made a man sleepy. Almighty hard luck that a man couldn’t git off and lay down. For five minutes. Yeah. Five hours. Be froze stiff as a stick. Hadn’t he froze his feet thataway? Wouldn’t he a-died there only Pete come by? Hell, he was payin’ Pete back right now. A man paid his debts thataway. Took guts, too. But when a man’s got one friend on earth, he’d be a hell of a kind of man not to lend a hand. It took guts. Somethin’ Pete didn’t have. Pete was a chicken hearted cuss. With his wife and his fiddle. Never taken a chance. Never would get nowhere. Like a cow pasture. A muley cow. Well, no man had ever sawed Sam Graybull’s horns. No fence made ever held him. No jail, neither. Never bin ketched. Them as tried it had some hard luck. Have a drink. Damn that cork. A man’s hands stiff and numb. There she comes. Good whisky. Thawed a man’s belly. Fightin’ whisky.
Sam Graybull’s laugh grated on the silence of the winter night. There’d be fightin’ a-plenty if a man run into that fool posse. Sam took a beaded buckskin pouch and put into it the note to the doctor. Then he fastened the pouch around his neck outside his coat. He moved with a dogged, sluggish precision. Like a machine that needs oil. He lost one of his mittens. The right mitten. He put the other mitten on his right hand, leaving the left one bare. Sam Graybull’s right hand was his gun hand.
Out of the hills and onto the main road to town. Daylight now. Sleepy. Dozing in the saddle. Ridin’ that horse like he owned him. Payin’ off the only debt he owed to his only friend.
Yonder was Beaver Crick. Old gray wolf a-comin’ outa the bare willers. With a belly full of meat, headin’ fer a safe place to sleep it off. Sam never killed a wolf. Hell, he was a wolf, hisself. A he-wolf. A killer. No rabbit, like Pete Peralta. Pete, whinin’ over a busted laig. What’d he do if he had a .30-.40 slug in him and had to gouge it out with a jacknife? Sam Graybull had done that.
What’s a-comin’ yonder? Horsebackers. A dozen er more. Posse men. Time fer a drink. A big’n this time. No nibble. Bin holdin’ off. Waitin’.
“Here’s lookin’ at you boys!” Sam Graybull’s hoarse voice carried a note of triumph. “Here’s lookin’ at you acrost gun sights!” And he left the fiery stuff gurgle down his throat.
A rifle bullet whined past Sam Graybull’s head. He taunted the marksman with a yell of derision and, tossing aside the jug, jerked his carbine and rode at a run straight for the men.
A hail of bullets met his rush. Sam Graybull’s horse somersaulted, shot between the eyes. Sam tried to kick his feet from the stirrups. Too late. Horse and man crashed together. A dull pain shot through the killer’s leg. That leg was pinned under the dead weight of the horse. Bullets spatted and droned. Sam Graybull emptied his carbine. Two of the posse felt the searing sting of the outlaw’s bullets. Sam pulled his six-gun—the .45 that had taken deadly toll of human life. His thumb fanned the hammer.
“Come an’ git it! Come on, you red necks!”
Black lips bared from tobacco stained teeth. Slit eyes swollen almost shut. It took guts.
Something white hot stabbed Sam Graybull’s chest. He hardly felt it. Above the flat spat of rifles in the dawn, sounded the mirthless laugh of Sam Graybull. A laugh that sounded like the death rattle. Tumbing the hammer of an empty gun. Then the weary head dropped back into the snow. Sam Graybull, killer, was dead.
The last of the whisky gurgled out of the uncorked jug into the trail.
“He must have got drunk, blind drunk, and lost his way.”
“The sheriff pulled the dead outlaw clear of the horse. Grimly triumphant, the grizzled old officer examined the body of the killer. Then he opened the pouch and found the note.
As he read it, there in the sunrise of that winter morning, the warm glow of victory chilled. He turned to a man who carried a small black bag instead of a gun.
“This is fer you, Doc. You’re wanted down on the river.” He handed over the note. Then he turned to his men.
“Handle Sam easy, boys. He come back a-purpose, to do the only decent thing he ever done in his life. Pete Peralta’s wife is about to have a baby. Sam Graybull come to fetch Doc. Handle ’im easy.”
The sheriff and Doc Steele rode along the trail together. Doc read aloud the postscript to Pete Peralta’s note.
“The bank money is in a sack under the hay at my cabin. What bounty there is on my hide goes to Pete Peralta. If the kid’s a boy, name him Graybull. Use the bounty money to educate him. So long”
—SAM GRAYBULL.
And so it was that Doc Steele brought into the world a boy named Graybull Peralta. Some of the A.E.F. will remember him as Captain Graybull Peralta, the fighting chaplain of the —th Division, made up of men from the cow country. He was killed in action in the Argonne. In the pocket of his blouse was a bullet drilled, blood soaked Bible. In his hand was a bone handled six-gun with six notches filed on its age yellowed handle.
Major Steele, who found him, gently removed the empty gun from the dead captain’s hand. He looked with memory misted eyes at the face of the fighting parson. The bared lips, the swollen, slitted eyes.
“Handle him gently, men,” he told the stretcher bearers. “Gently, as we handled his father twenty years ago. May the son of Sam Graybull find fat meat in the Shadow Hills!”
And they were too busy, those stretcher bearers, to wonder at the queer words of the white haired surgeon.
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the November 15, 1928 issue of Adventure magazine.