The Cowboy MEGAPACK ®. Owen Wister

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      At midnight, he halted to cook some beans and bacon, and to water the horses. He built his fire in the bottom of a sink hola. Watching the coffee boil, he got to thinking about Marian Ellis, wondering if she would leave her folks and settle down with him on his valley ranch. It was a lonely life, but he was saving money. The country was settling up. With a couple of kids, he could branch out through the valley, put in grain and increase his herd. Some day he might be one of the biggest breeders in the West. Music was going places—if something didn’t happen!

      After the rest, the night grew chill and the trip harder. The buckskins didn’t like their footing. They began to lag behind and had to be whistled up constantly. In addition, the compass needle acted up, which meant that Music was nearing a magnetic ridge. He took his bearing by the North Star and pushed on until dawn.

      Then, with the pinkening of the sky, he spotted a great black butte landmark that lay back of the first spring.

      “Go find it!” he shouted at the buckskins, waving his tan hat at them.

      The four broncs raced ahead, following the scent of water from a grove of palms. Music drew his six-gun, his eyes hardening. He circled the spring slowly, studying the grove carefully. Finally he rode up to the spring, halted, and sat his saddle tensely. There was no indication that riders had been here before him or that men lay in wait.

      “Reckon Stick and Keno got fooled,” Music decided, bolstering his six-gun and dismounting.

      Crash! The answer to his belief was the thunder of a hidden rifle and at the same time Music’s right leg was plucked out from under him. He fell whirling, with the thought of jerking his six-gun from its holster. But the nerves of his right side had been shocked and he didn’t seem to be able to get a grip on the gun butt. As in the case of a hard driven wound, he was stupefied for several seconds—and that was just enough time for the bushwhacker to come out of hiding in a nest of black rock across the spring and race toward him.

      “Pull that six and you’re dead!” growled the man who stared down at Music.

      “Stick Wiley!” Music groaned, looking up to the gunman’s bitter eyes.

      “Unbuckle your hogleg and roll away from it,” Stick snapped. “I could just as easy have killed you, but I want a bill of sale for your four buckskins. That’s my dicker for your life.”

      A burning pain chased the numbness out of Music’s right leg. He didn’t know if the rifle slug had shattered bone. He did know that he wouldn’t be able to get up. His only hope was in obeying orders, so he unbuckled his cartridge belt and rolled away, faint with agony. But his right leg was not shattered. It moved with his body.

      “Let me put a tourniquet on it, Stick,” Music said. “I don’t want to pass out.”

      “Go ahead,” the gunman said, picking up the horse trainer’s gun and belt.

      Music propped himself to a sitting position against a rock. Grasping the rent made by the rifle bullet in his frontier pants, he tore the seam and laid bare his crimson thigh. The slug had driven a neat hole in the flesh half-way from hip to knee. Nerves and minor muscles had been clipped, but Music knew he would walk again—if Stick Wiley left him his life!

      There was no need of a tourniquet. Music plugged the wound with his wadded neckerchief, then tore the tail of his shirt for a bandage. At last he lay back, wiping perspiration from his brow. The bushwhacker was grinning at him. Near the spring, the buckskins had moved over to a patch of grass to graze, and his own mount had joined them.

      “If you play straight,” Stick finally said, “I’ll give you a canteen to nurse. Yuh also get pencil and paper to make a bill of sale. Yuh’ll write that some hoss thieves shot at you. I come along and saved your life, so you sold me the cavvy for one thousand bucks, which is the same you got from the XYZ Ranch. Also, I want that extra cash you picked up.”

      “I deposited it in the bank in Saltville,” Music said.

      “I don’t believe it!” Stick shouted.

      “Search me,” Music replied, shutting his eyes. “I’d be a fool to carry money into the desert.”

      “They say in Saltville that you’re in love with that nester gal,” Stick Wiley sneered. “Yuh aim to go on to War Cry and meet her family there. Yuh plan to buy farm machinery and set her pap up in a farm in your valley. I got the whole story. Where’s your dinero?”

      * * * *

      Music didn’t open his eyes. “All a lot of talk,” he muttered. “Stories like that start out of nothin’ and grow tall. I no more than played the fiddle for her.” His face contorted with pain, and his breath came in gasps. “I don’t know nothin’ about—”

      A tremor took him from head to toe, and with an agonized sigh, he lay limp.

      “He might be fakin’,” Stick growled, walking over and sighting the rifle down at Music’s chest. “Get up!” the gunman shouted. “I’ll shoot first, then search you!”

      Music didn’t move.

      Stick nudged him with the toe of a boot. Then the gunman stepped back and set aside his rifle and the horse trainer’s gun-belt. He removed his own guns, came back and kneeled beside the seemingly unconscious Music Stevens.

      Stick’s bony hands slid under Music’s shirt and unfastened a money-belt.

      “Only twenty-three bucks!” the bushwhacker exclaimed angrily. “Must have that thousand dollars hid somewheres else.”

      After going through Music’s pockets, Stick Wiley turned to the horse trainer’s high-heeled boots. There was no caution in the outlaw. He evidently believed he could cope with an unarmed and wounded man easily in a rough-and-tumble fight. Stick jerked off Music’s right boot. The puncher didn’t move or cry out.

      Settling back on his haunches, Stick peered into the boot with greedy eyes. And that was the bushwhacker’s one big mistake. For Music’s eyes opened, and as quick as dynamite, the horse trainer’s left leg flexed backward, then shot straight out. The heel of Music’s left boot caught Stick on the point of the chin and sent him floundering backwards.

      Instantly Music was rolling over and over toward the six-guns that the outlaw had left not far away on the ground. Before Music got there, Stick Wiley was springing to his feet, dazed but alarmed. Music got a hand on his own bolstered weapon. He was jerking it free of the leather when Stick’s mind snapped into action. The bushwhacker’s hand darted into his red silk shirt.

      Before Music could thumb back the hammer of his Colt, the outlaw’s hand reappeared with a deadly derringer. Flame blossomed from the derringer’s muzzle even as Music let his thumb go on the hammer of his own six-gun.

      Stick’s bullet whistled past Music’s ear. The outlaw’s aim must have been thrown out by the kick on the chin. But Music’s bullet smashed the bushwhacker in the middle of the chest and hurled him backward with a death scream. The man fell hard, eyes never closing, boot toes curled. Music lay back to rest, a dark frown on his brow.

      “It was his life or mine,” the horse trainer told himself. “He would have murdered me in the end. No doubt about it. First, he wanted the cash I put in the Saltville bank. Mebbe he figured I hid it on the trail. He sure had all the information СКАЧАТЬ