Plain Mary Smith: A Romance of Red Saunders

by Henry Wallace Phillips

"The old church shall say mass for your soul, Juan," says Gonzales. "You are the best dead man in the country."

After that, they were careful. I thought they'd leave, seeing they couldn't do anything with us, till Pedro explained they were probably holding us till armed men came. I should have felt dismal once more at this news, if I'd had nothing to do. The darkened store wore on my feelings. One feller I shot wriggled in a funny fashion as he lay on the ground. He was still wriggling—I could see him every time I stopped to think. He gave a long twist, like a snake, bringing his face to the light, at the last. He looked as if he felt perfectly disgusted. He hadn't ought to have looked that way. It bothered me.

The other three stood the gaff of waiting much better than I. In fact, I was frantic inside me, though I made a good chest of it. "Pede," I says, "let me have the other rifle—I'm going scouting."

"That is well," says Gonzales. "If you can get up on the hill without being seen, you can drive them out, and we shall have a shot."

So I took the rifle and squirmed through the brush and rocks back of the store until I was a hundred yards or so up the hill. It was a steep slant. In going so far I'd risen nearly a hundred feet. I could see part of our besiegers plain. Some ten of 'em lay behind boulders, smoking cigarettes and taking it easy. Another batch sat under the bridge. The rest I couldn't see.

I had a particular grudge against the feller who challenged me to fight. I searched carefully, and finally made him out, under a rock about three hundred yards away, sitting with his back to me, and playing a game with the man in front of him.

His fat back made a corking target. I rested the gun between two stones and had him dead to rights. I was ready to listen to the report and see him fall over, when, by the gods of war! my finger wouldn't pull the trigger. I hadn't the least feeling about killing that treacherous skunk, so far as I knew, but all the same, I could not pull that trigger. I was surprised, plenty. "Why, you damn fool!" I says to myself, "what's eating you! That lad would 'a' slaughtered your entire family, by this time!"

True, too, but it didn't make the gun go off. It's mighty queer how an unexpected "me" will jump out of you at times. There was one Bill Saunders just as anxious to do that blackguard as a man could be, and there was another—and the boss, too—who wouldn't stand for it.

I cussed between my teeth. "If you'd look at me, instead of turning your back, you dog!" I whispered, "I'd heap you up quick." I broke out into a sweat of shame, knowing how my friends were putting their faith in my gathering a man or two. I could have cried with mortification. Suddenly my lad jumped up and pointed, forgetting where he was. The next second the finger jammed into the ground, and the whang of Gonzales's rifle cut through the valley.

I looked where he pointed. Here come a string of men with guns, dog-trotting. I up and pasted into them. The shot started those below. Some jumped up. I could have whaled it to them all right now, but a shell jammed. Our boys socked it to them from the store, while I clawed at the durned cartridge. Got it out with my knife at last and banged away, first below and then at the approaching soldiers. I dropped a man and the soldiers scattered behind rocks and trees.