Black Thunder Read online

  The Laymon house hove in view. It was two tall stories high and had a whole block of trees and garden around it. John Laymon never did things by halves. Thirty miles out from town he had one of the best ranches in the valley, crowded with fat cattle. But he preferred to keep his family closer to the stageline.

  Money had come to John Laymon through his patient labor and keen brain. Reputation had come to him some three or four years ago when he had rounded up the entire Wharton gang of rustlers who had been preying on the cattle of the community. He had brought in the sheriff, raised a force of fighting cow- punchers, contributed his own wise head and steady hand, and they had scooped up the gang and sent the Whartons to prison. After that, John Laymon spent less of his time on his distant ranch that lay back among the mountains in a fertile valley. He was more often in town.

  But he was not in sight as Traynor advanced toward the house. There was only Rose Laymon in a white dress and the doctor. Her arms were bare; her throat was bare. She was as brown as a schoolboy, and Traynor could guess at the blue of her eyes long before he actually could see the color.

  She was small and slender, but her wrists and her arms and her throat were rounded. Traynor could see the flash of her laughter from the distance, and then he turned in up the path under the big shade trees.

  The crowd waited behind him. Some of the men leaned on the fence and some remained clear across the wide, treeless street.

  The doctor lounged in a chair near the girl. He wore gray flannels and a white shirt open at the throat, without a necktie. There was no other man in Little Snake who would have dared to wear such clothes—not even Clancy himself. But the doctor had no fear. He wore white shoes, too, and he had his legs crossed and swung one lithe foot up and down.

  When he saw Traynor coming with the hat, however, he began to straighten himself in the chair, little by little. He was big and he was lean; he was supple and quick; he had the look of a fellow who might be capable of almost any physical exertion, and as a matter of fact he was as good as his looks.

  But what depressed Traynor more than all else was the great sweep of the intellectual brow above that handsome face. The doctor had everything from education to brains. It was not at all strange that he had taken Rose away from Traynor at a gesture. What was Traynor in comparison but a rather stodgy figure, a common cowpuncher not even distinguished for skill with a rope or a branding iron?

  He was merely “one of us”, and people like the doctor always ride herd on the ordinary men. The immensity of the gulf between him and the murder kept widening in the understanding of Traynor as he drew closer. He could see himself as a mere pawn contrasted with a king among men. It seemed to him miraculous that he, Larry Traynor, could ever have sat on that verandah at the side of Rose Laymon.

  He went up the front steps, one at a time, tipping his hat to the girl. He took his hat clear off. Sweat began to run on his hot forehead. He raised his left arm and wiped the sweat off on the flannel sleeve of his shirt.

  The girl stood before him, saying coldly: “Do you want something . . . Larry?”

  She had started to say mister, and then shame, perhaps, had stopped her. But he could forgive pride in such a girl. Let the pretty women pick and choose because, once they have chosen, they settle down to trouble enough.

  “I want to give this hat back to the doctor,” he said. He offered it, with a gesture.

  Parker Channing sat forward, rose. He took the hat in a careless hand, examined it. “I never saw it before,” he said.

  “No?” said Traynor. His heart was beginning to rise in his breast, stifling him.

  “No, I never saw it before,” said the doctor.

  “What’s this all about?” asked the girl. “Why do you look at Parker with such a terrible eye, Larry?”

  “Because I was wondering. . .” Traynor breathed. “I was wondering whether or not he was a murderer.”

  The girl made two or three quick steps back. She put out a slim hand against the wall of the house. The heat had crumpled the white paint to roughness.

  “Don’t pay any attention, Parker,” she said. “He’s simply drunk again.”

  That was the way she had been talking to the doctor about him then? A town drunkard—was that what she had been making of him?

  “I won’t pay too much attention to him,” said the doctor. “He’s not drunk, though he looks like it.”

  His gaze suddenly narrowed, became professionally curious. It fastened like teeth on the throat of Traynor. A malicious interest gleamed in his eyes. What could he see?

  “A man wearing this hat,” said Traynor, “held up the stage I was driving and shot old Sam to death.”

  “Not Sam!” cried the girl. “Oh, Larry, not old Sam!”

  “Yes. He’s dead.”

  “But he can’t be. Only two days ago. . .” She stopped. Something was passing between the two men that locked up her speech in ice.

  “The murderer was wearing this hat. You never saw the hat before, Doctor?”

  “Never,” said Channing. “Sorry to hear about. . .”

  “You’re sorry, are you?” muttered Traynor. There was rage in him to warm his blood, but always there was that horrible fluttering of his heart, and the need to gasp wider for air. “You never even saw this Stetson before?”

  “I’ve told you that before, man. What’s the matter with you?” asked Parker Channing coldly.

  “Your initials are inside the sweat band, where Clancy wrote them in when he sold you this hat three weeks ago Tuesday.”

  The doctor’s head jerked back. His right hand darted inside his coat.

  “No, Parker!” cried the girl. “No, no!”

  Traynor’s grip was on the butt of his Colt. He did not draw it. There seemed no strength to draw the gun. He knew, by the cold of his face, that he was deadly white. His eyes ached, they thrust out so hard. And there came over him the frightful surety that he was a coward.

  He could not believe it. He had gone through his troubles—not many of them, but he had faced what all Westerners have to face—half-mad horses under the saddle, high dangerous trails, and sometimes an argument with an armed drunkard in a saloon. Yet here he found himself hardly able to breathe, and the tremor from his heart had invaded his entire body.

  “You don’t mean that he’s right,” moaned Rose Laymon. “It’s not really your hat, Parker?”

  The doctor, breathing hard, swayed a little back and shook his head. “No . . . not mine. At least, if it is mine, then someone else stole it. I don’t know anything about this murder. . .”

  He was always as cool as steel. But now the coolness was gone. The guilt withered and puckered his face, narrowed his eyes. What was he seeing, briefly, in the distance of time? All the high promise of his life falling in ruins? And in the presence of the girl he had wanted to marry.

  “Ah, damn your rotten heart!” said the doctor, and walked straight up to Traynor.

  It was the time to stand on guard, but Traynor’s arms were lead. The figures before him shifted, were raised from their places, wavered in the thin air. The brightness of the sun was gone. He could no longer feel the beating of his heart. His lungs labored, but the life-giving air would not enter them, it seemed. He could hear a rasping, quick pulse of sound and knew that it came out of his own throat.

  The doctor struck him across the face and leaped back half a step, his hand inside his coat, half crouched, on edge to draw.

  “You lying dog!” said Dr. Channing.

  And Traynor could not move.

  “How horrible,” he heard the girl whisper.

  And, far away on the street, where the men of the town were watching, Traynor heard a deep, groaning noise. Nothing as shameful as this had ever been seen in Little Snake.

  Cowards have been known to faint in a crisis. And Traynor wanted to faint; he wanted to lie down on the flat of his back and close his eyes and concentrate on the frightful problem of getting enough air into his lungs. Instead, he had to sta
nd, like a wretched, crumbling statue.

  The girl walked between him and Channing. “Don’t touch him again,” she said scornfully. “Whatever you are . . . whatever you’ve done, Parker, you don’t strike a harmless coward a second time.”

  “Certainly not,” said the doctor. “I beg your pardon, my dear. It seems, in fact, that I’m in some trouble, here . . . owing to a little misunderstanding that I’ll clear up in no time. Will you trust me to do that?”

  She did not answer. She looked as white as Traynor felt. She loved this fellow—this murderer.

  “In that case,” said Channing, as though he had heard a long and bitter denunciation, “there’s nothing to do but say good bye to you forever. And God bless you, Rose. I know you’ll mix in a kind thought of me now and again.”

  He leaned, picked up the Stetson that Traynor had allowed to fall on the porch, and walked down the steps, down the path, out into the open street.

  “Gentlemen,” he said slowly, tonelessly, “what is it that you will have of me?”

  III

  He stood out there in the sun with his hat raised, waiting, and running his eye up and down the men of Little Snake, and not a voice answered, and not a hand was raised. He turned his back, and walked without hurrying down the street, and around the corner.

  He was well out of view before a murmur grew out of the crowd. It increased to a loud humming. Then a yell broke out of one man. It was echoed by another. The whole crowd lurched suddenly into pursuit of Parker Channing, as fast as their feet would carry them.

  “You look sick,” said the cold voice of the girl to Traynor.

  “I’m all right,” he said. He was not at all sure that he could walk, but he managed to get down the steps with sagging knees. When he stood on the level of the path, he turned to do his manners and lift his hat to Rose Laymon. But she was oblivious to him. She had her hands folded at the base of her throat. Her face was not contorted by sobbing, but tears ran swiftly down her cheeks and splashed over her hands.

  She loves him, thought Traynor to himself. She’ll never stop loving him. And. . . I wish to God that I were dead.

  He got out from the grounds of the Laymon house, at last, and turned into the emptiness of that wide street. He had to take short steps. His feet would not fall in a straight line but wandered a little crazily. Something akin to nausea worked in his vitals. Something was dead in him.

  A pair of boys dashed on ponies around a corner. When they saw him, they reined in their horses. They swept about him in flashing arcs. The hoofs of their ponies lifted a cloud of dust that obscured Traynor.

  “Yeller . . . yeller . . . yeller!” they shouted. “Larry Traynor’s yeller!” They screamed and they sang the insult.

  That was all right, and he might have done the same thing, at their age. The thing was true. He was yellow. And yet he still felt that it was the sick breathlessness rather than actual terror that had kept his hands idle back there on the verandah of the Laymon house. All cowards, of course, would have the same feeling. They were not afraid. No, no! They were just troubled with a touch of ague. They felt a mastering chill up the spine. They could not help growing absent-minded because they were thinking about home and mother.

  He could have laughed. Instead, he had to start gasping for air in real earnest. Something was profoundly wrong with him. And the two young devils kept wheeling their horses closer and closer to him, yelling more loudly. Other children were coming from the distance. Better ask mercy from Indians than from these mannerless savages.

  He saw the little house of the sheriff, unpainted, with nothing except the long hitching rack in what might have been a garden patch. He turned in and climbed the verandah with weary legs.

  “Look at him! He’s afraid! Coward, coward, coward!” screamed the boys. “Oh, what a coward! He’s yeller! Larry Traynor’s yeller!”

  Traynor pushed the door open—it was never locked—and walked into the tiny, two-room house. Kitchen/dining room—and then a small bedroom.

  The sheriff had left in a hurry, this day, for the neatness of his housekeeping was marred by a soiled tin plate on the table and a tin cup with coffee grounds still awash in the bottom of it.

  Traynor went into the bedroom and lay down. The blankets held a heavy body odor that seemed to put away the supply of air. He got up wearily and opened the front door and both windows and then the rear door to make a draft. He lay down on the floor of the kitchen and spread out his arms.

  Lying on his back did no good. Presently he was sinking. A wavering thread attached him to existence, and the thread was running out, spinning thinner and thinner. To breathe deeply took too much effort. He could only gasp in a profound breath every now and again, when he was stifling.

  He turned onto his right side, his head pillowed on his arm. By degrees he felt better. He began to think of old Sam—dead. He began to ride again over the dusty miles the stagecoach had covered. Out of these thoughts he was recalled to himself by the sound of a horse trotting up to the front of the house, the squeak of saddle leather, the thump of feet as a man dismounted.

  He sat up. Very strangely, the faintness had left him almost entirely. He rose to his feet, and a moment later the gray-headed sheriff walked into the room.

  Compassion entered his eyes when he saw Traynor. Better to be hounded by the insults of the youngsters than to be met by that compassion. But the sheriff shook hands—almost too warmly.

  “Sit down, partner,” he said. “I’m glad to see you. Mighty glad. I’ve heard about the stage and everything. A good job you done in skinning away after that crook and getting his hat. We know who the killer is, now, and we’ll have a chance to spot him, one of these days. I’ll hit the trail after him right this evening.” He ran on cheerfully: “We’ve found out what made him do it. Faro. He couldn’t keep away from the game, and Lem Samuels told us how much he was losing. You can’t buy fine horses and trot a girl all around, and then hit faro, too. So the poor fool found out about that shipment of cash and decided to help himself. A pretty cool nerve, Larry, when you come to think of it. A stagecoach filled with armed men and only one. . .” Here the sheriff’s voice died out, as though he realized he was stepping on delicate ground.

  “I was mighty sorry about old Sam,” he said. “One of the best men in the world . . . and a good friend to you, Larry. I hear the funeral is tomorrow morning.”

  “I won’t be here,” said Traynor. The sheriff waited, and he went on: “I’ll be pretty far out on a trail. And I want to carry handcuffs with me . . . and a deputy sheriff’s badge.”

  The sheriff whistled softly. He laid his hand on the arm of Traynor. “Ah, that’s it, eh? Good boy, Larry. You were down for a minute, but the right sort of fellow always comes back. If you want to go after the doctor, though, hadn’t you better go with me?”

  “I’ll go alone,” said Traynor.

  “Got an idea?”

  “A piece of one.”

  “I’ll swear you in,” said the sheriff. “You know what you’re doing. You shot his hat off once, and I hope to God that you shoot his head off the next time . . . the damned, murdering, sneaking rat! Wait till I get a badge for you. . .”

  ****

  The outfit that Traynor took was exactly what he wanted—some dry provisions, a pot and pan, a couple of blankets, a revolver and a rifle, enough ammunition. But his old horse, Tramper, was much too high to suit the rider. Tramper had not had much work to do since his master began to drive the stage. He had wandered through rich pasture lands, eating his fill, until his body was sleeked over with fat and his heart was rich with pride. He wanted to dance every foot of the way; he insisted on shying at cloud shadows and old stumps; in the morning he enjoyed working his kinks out with a little fancy bucking.

  All of these things would have been nothing to the Traynor of the old days. He would have laughed at the dancing, the shying, the pitching. But the Traynor who survived out of the past was a different fellow. A flurry of hard bucking left hi
m gasping, head down, the landscape whirling before him. And it would be whole minutes before his breath came back to him. Even to sit in the saddle for a few hours was a heavy thing, and he made it a habit to lie down flat beside the trail for a few minutes every couple of hours. Even so, he reached the end of each day almost exhausted.

  But a good idea is better than strength to a determined man, and he had the idea. Where would the doctor flee, when he rushed on his fine bay gelding out of Little Snake? Of course he would wish to go far, but what was the greatest distance that he had ever gone from Little Snake through the twisting mountain trails?

  A couple of months before, the doctor had been far up on Skunk Creek with a hunting party, and Skunk Creek was a good two days’ ride away from the town. It seemed to Traynor a good bet that Channing would head for this distant place among the lonely mountains. From that point of vantage he could plan the rest of his retreat. The sheriff and his men would conscientiously hunt out the sign of the doctor’s horse; Traynor preferred to hit far out and take his chance.

  The second day was the worst of the two. The altitude made it harder for Traynor. He was continually short of breath. He was continually so very short that he had to gasp like a fish on dry land. About midday, also, he felt discomfort in his feet. By night they were so badly swollen about the ankles that he had to lie with his heels resting on a log higher than his head for a couple of hours before he could reduce the swelling and get his boots off.

  On the morning of the third day he simply could not wedge his feet back into the boots. His feet were swelling out of shape. His wrists were heavy, also, and the cursed shortness of breath had increased.

  But he was only an hour from the head of Skunk Creek, and he made that distance riding in his socks, his boots strapped on behind the saddle. Something had gotten into his system—some sort of poison, he presumed. And it was settling in the extremities. Some good, hard sweating when he got back into the heat of the valley would probably make all well.