Ralph Compton - Down on Gila River

To Sam’s joy, the makings were still in Moseley’s shirt pocket, and there was only a little blood on the full five-cent Bull Durham sack and none on the papers. A further search produced a supply of dry matches.

Sam built a cigarette and dragged deeply, his head swimming a little.

As he smoked he contemplated the body of Vic Moseley, like an unshaven, seedy Hamlet gazing upon the skull of poor Yorick.

Moseley had been a fine-looking man, no doubt about that, with the kind of wavy hair and magnificent dragoon mustache that made female hearts flutter.

Pity he’d been such a dirty, low-down son of a gun.

Sam ground out the butt of the quirlie under his heel and built another.

“Well, Vic,” he said, smoke drifting from his mouth as he talked, “you an’ me have a job to do, old son.”

The man was big, and heavy, and he’d be a deadweight, but Sam reckoned he could handle him, at least over the short distance between the cabin and the saloon.

The body lay on its back on a cot, the eyes open, staring glassily at the beamed ceiling. His cigarette between his lips, Sam grabbed the dead man by the shirtfront and pulled him into a sitting position.

He was hit by a wave of decay’s sickly sweetness and was grateful for the smoke drifting into his nose.

Then a problem.

He’d closed the cabin door behind him.

Sam dropped the body again, propped the door open, and stepped back to the cot.

He again pulled Moseley to a sitting posture, spat away the butt of his smoke, and then hauled the dead man to his feet.

Sam grunted from the effort and sweat popped out all over him.

Moseley was even heavier than he’d thought.

He dragged the body to the door, the toes of Moseley’s boots gouging parallel tracks across the dirt floor. Then he was outside in the sunlight.

Breathing hard, Sam propped the body against the wall of the cabin. Moseley’s head lolled onto his chest, and his knees buckled, and Sam had a hell of a time getting him upright again.

The heat and the stench of the dead man’s decomposing corpse made Sam reconsider his course of action. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea.

But his poke was empty, and this was his last throw of the dice.

Big Vic Moseley, what was left of him, was his only hope of survival.

* * *

Sam manhandled the body away from the cabin, half dragging, half carrying it toward the saloon. His breath came in short, agonized gasps, the effort taking its toll.

Feet pounded to his right and he turned his head and saw Hannah running in his direction, her skirts hauled up to midthigh.

The woman stopped beside him and Sam read the shock in her eyes before she spoke.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“What it looks like,” Sam said. “Ol’ Vic is gonna help me root Jake Wells out of his hidey-hole.”

“Sam, he stinks.”

“Yeah, well, he was a stinker when he was alive. Now help me get him to the saloon door. I’m all used up.”

“I wanted to kill him,” Hannah said. “Now all I feel for him is pity.”

“Yeah, me too,” Sam said quickly. “Now help me get the sucker to the door.”

Sam thumped Moseley’s body against the wall just to the left of the saloon doorway, then rested, his heart banging in his chest.

“Sawyer, is that you?” came Jake’s voice from inside.

“Yeah, it’s me, Sam Sawyer as ever was.” He waited a beat, then said, “Still got your razor, Jake?”

“I’m done with that, Sam. I got a broke leg an’ Skate Santos done shot me. I’m taking my medicine like a man an’ I don’t want to fight no more.”

“You giving up, Jake?”

“Sure I am. Like I told you, I’m done.”

A thud from inside and Jake said, “I’ve tossed my gun away, Sam. You can come in now and no harm will come to you.”

“That’s true-blue,” Sam said.

“I’m finished, Sammy, shot through and through. My time is short. Bring your woman and come pray with me.”

“Spoke like a gentleman, Jake. Let bygones be bygones, I say. I’m coming in to give you some spiritual comfort.”

Sam mustered the last of his strength and shoved Moseley’s body into the doorway. The corpse hung there for a moment, and by the time it collapsed to the sill, Jake Wells had pumped three bullets into its chest.

Ciphering was never one of Sam’s strong points, but he added things up and figured that Jake had fired five shots.

Now, praying that the man hadn’t filled all six chambers or reloaded from a cartridge belt, he followed Moseley inside, gun in hand.

Sam moved quickly from daylight to gloom and for a few seconds he was blinded, standing motionless just inside the doorway. But from a corner to his left, he heard Jake shriek words at him.

“Sawyer, I’m done. I give up.”

Sam’s vision cleared as he stepped in the man’s direction. He stopped when he made out Jake sitting with his back to the wall.

A miner’s boot lay on the floor close to Sam’s bare feet, the thud he’d heard when Jake claimed to have tossed his gun.

The man looked up at him, eyes scared. “You’ve done fer me, Sawyer,” he said. “I’m your prisoner.”

Sam let his Colt dangle by his side, his face showing no expression.

“Jake,” he said finally, “you scared me, and when I get scared bad things happen. One o’ them bad things is that I don’t take prisoners.”

Sam brought up his gun and emptied it at Jake—two hits to the man’s chest, one to his left thumb, the others a pair of wild misses.

But it was enough.

Jake Wells, his tongue lolling out of his bloody mouth, was as dead as he was ever going to be.

Chapter 46

Sam Sawyer considered it unfortunate that Mayor Jerome T. Meriwether’s wife and daughter were visiting his office when he walked in to tell them about the skewbald pony.

A doctor had stitched up the gashes on his cheeks and covered them with gauze and tape. The mayor chose to ignore Sam’s wounds, as though they were of no importance to him.

After an exchange of pleasantries, Meriwether describing Sheriff Vic Moseley as a thieving rogue who was better off dead and Sam telling how that latter was accomplished, the mayor got down to business.

He opened a drawer, removed a tin cashbox, and counted forty dollars onto the table.

“Is the pony outside?” Meriwether said.

His fat kid squealed in delight and ran to the window.

“Papa, he’s not there,” she said, tears springing into her eyes.

The mayor’s wife, a thin, stringy woman who looked as if she lived on scripture and prune juice, sniffed and said to Sam, “Well?”

Sam’s shoulders slumped and those parts of his that weren’t covered in bandages took on a forlorn look.

“It’s dead,” he said. “The skewbald pony is no more.”

Mrs. Meriwether looked as though she’d just smelled a dead fish.

“What do you mean the skewbald pony’s dead?” she said. “Explain yourself.”

Sam explained.

“I shot it,” he said.

He knew the reaction would be bad, but it was much worse than he’d expected.

The daughter threw herself on the floor, screaming, kicking her fat legs in the air. Mrs. Meriwether, rushing to succor her child, tripped over the spittoon and fell heavily on her face, a terrible cry erupting from her mouth.

Sam stepped around the struggling, shrieking females and said loudly to the mayor, “I reckon my forty dollars is out of the question, huh?”

Meriwether’s reply came in the form of a bloodcurdling curse. He grabbed a gun from a drawer and for a moment Sam thought he was going to cut loose.

“Get out of my office! Get out of my town!” he roared above the female bedlam. “If you’re not gone from Lost Mine in two minutes, I’ll hang you.”