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  Copyright © 2011 by Thomas B. Flynn, M.D.

  First Skyhorse Publishing edition published 2015 by arrangement with Golden West Literary Agency

  “When a Gunman Steals a War” first appeared in Star Western (9/38). Copyright © 1938 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1966 by Thomas Theodore Flynn, Jr. Copyright © 2011 by Thomas B. Flynn, M.D., for restored material.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63450-433-1

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0043-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  When a Gunman Steals a War

  Travis

  WHEN A GUNMAN STEALS A WAR

  I

  Tom Fortune began to tremble when he realized what the warden was saying. He couldn’t help himself. After two years on a twenty-year sentence, you got pretty hopeless. Twenty-three when you went in, forty-three when you’d get out, and the best of life gone. And now in the drab prison office the warden was speaking.

  “You were sentenced for murder, Fortune, with some doubt about the evidence. Last month, when you dragged those two men out of the fire, the governor interested himself in your case. You’re getting the benefit of all doubts in your trial. The governor has paroled you for the rest of your time.”

  Papers rustled as the warden laid them down. In the sudden quiet, the wall clock ticked steadily. Tom was weak around the knees. His throat drew tight, so that it was hard to speak.

  “Paroled?” he got out huskily.

  “Today,” assented the warden gruffly. “As soon as you check out.”

  The warden was a hard man, and a stern man, although probably just by his beliefs. He was proud of the fact that he didn’t coddle prisoners. Now he wasn’t too pleased. “I know a little of your case, Fortune. The sheriff who brought you here after the trial told me you’d been a young man on the prod, always looking for trouble.”

  The trembling was gone from Tom now; this was like the first stage of a glorious drunk, with the giddy exhilaration flooding up in waves and spilling like a wild fever into the blood. Tom grinned. He’d have grinned at anything. He wanted to shout, yell. What did it matter what the warden was saying?

  “So Bent Hooker shot off his mouth about me?” Tom laughed—and his eyes sought the window beyond the warden’s desk. There was sun out there, fresh air, and birds singing. God! All that again to be part of his life.

  The warden’s mouth tightened. “Sheriff Hooker had this to say. If I remember correctly, he said the whole range around Sundown was relieved to see you leave. Not to speak of the people who thought you should have been hanged for the murder of that banker . . . I forget his name.”

  “Timmins,” said Tom, sobering. He shrugged. “It doesn’t make much difference now, I guess . . . but I never killed Timmins. I just happened along about that time. We’d had a few words over some notes I’d signed with Dan Walker, my partner, when we bought out little XO Ranch. That helped saddle me with the killing. Bent Hooker never liked me much. He’d believe most anything about me.”

  “None of that matters,” snapped the warden. “Take my advice, Fortune. Don’t go back to Sundown with a chip on your shoulder, or you’ll be back here pronto.”

  “No,” said Tom. “I don’t reckon I’ll ever be back.”

  “Your parole lets you out of here as long as you go back to Sundown and take up ranching again, and keep out of trouble,” said the warden. “This governor’s giving you a chance to start over. If you get into any more trouble, you’re to be brought back here to serve the rest of your sentence. Think hard about it, Fortune. Seventeen and a half years is a long time to risk. Any wild tricks are a gamble against seventeen and a half years still due the prison.”

  Sober enough now, Tom’s face was set. “So I’m not free after all? I’m in prison at Sundown for seventeen more years?”

  “Stay here if you care to,” invited the warden shortly. “The governor’s doing more now than he should. It sets a bad example. Other prisoners will think they should have as much consideration.”

  The sun was hot, bright through the window beyond the warden’s desk. Tom drank it in, grinned coldly.

  “I’ll go back to Sundown . . . and I won’t be back here. I’ve had enough. You can forget about me.”

  The warden stood up, warning: “You won’t be forgotten. If you make a break for some other part of the country, you’ll be outlawed and brought back here at the first opportunity. The governor doesn’t mean to go wrong on this. Think it over. Stop at the clerk’s office and get your parole papers. And good luck to you.”

  “Thanks,” Tom said, turning to leave.

  The cold grin was on his face as he walked out of the office.

  * * * * *

  Twenty-three when they’d cut him off from life. A proddy, hellacious twenty-three at that, tall and wiry, with a lean-hipped swagger that didn’t mean anything much except that life was a pretty good cake when a young fellow felt like cutting it. Dan Walker had been the same way, too, although a few years older. But Dan had a fighting streak when he was drinking.

  Now, buying a new outfit with money he’d had on deposit at the prison, Tom eyed himself in a mirror. Not two and a half years older—five or ten years older! There was a sober cast to that pale face, new lines that hadn’t been there before the trouble, a slight stoop to the shoulders. Gone was the swagger, the hellacious, proddy look. Prison bars had taken out that starch. But God, it was good to be out again!

  “Mister,” suggested the shrewd-faced clerk, showing several gun belts, “one of these ought to fit you. And we’ve got the best stock of guns in town.”

  Tom adjusted the new gray sombrero. Too gray—it matched his gray prison face. But the sun would change that. He grinned a refusal. “Don’t need any guns.”

  The clerk coughed. “Most of the men who come out get a gun before they leave town.”

  Even this weedy clerk could see the prison look. Tom bit back an angry reply. “Not buying,” he refused shortly. “Give me the bill.”

  A hundred and eighty miles to the southwest was Sundown. Tom Fortune rode that way with a pair of blankets and no guns. He grubbed at ranch houses, now and then with a Mexican sheepherder. If there wasn’t any grub handy when eating time rolled around, it didn’t matter much. This ride to Sundown was a drunk on freedom.

  His skin drank up the hot, friendly sun. The wind brought smells for which his senses had starved. Each night a pungent campfire crackled and danced, swirling smoke like incense, and the cool, clean earth under the blankets was a better bed than men had invented. Days and nights of it, hardening saddle muscles, tanning out the prison pallor, cleaning the musty corners of a man’s soul. And yet—it was freedom with a hobble and a rope. No day’s ride was long enough to escape the shadow of those seventeen years waiting back
at Prison Town.

  The familiar Sundown range crept out from the horizon—the buttes, the broken hills, the little mountains scattered on the plains, and the Jawbone Mountains piling, vast and mighty, in the blue distance. The little streams made lush strips where they ran, the bunch grass was rich, and the San Carlos River at Sundown had water that never failed.

  Tom rode off the direct line to Sundown to see the ranch—that little XO spread Dan Walker and he had bought with their savings and credit from the Sundown bank. Walker had written Tom that he’d try to sell and split the money. His last note, months back, had said he was still trying. Now it was lucky a buyer hadn’t come along.

  Hangtail Creek flowed through XO land. Tom cut the water near the northeast boundary fence and rode upstream over his own grass. His throat tightened again; his eyes misted for the first few minutes. All this had been gone forever, but now it was reality again. Steers were thrifty and numerous. Fences had been kept up. Dan Walker had done a good job of keeping the ranch going.

  The Jawbone peaks were crowned with dusty fire from the sun setting behind them when Hangtail Creek made the swing around Little North Butte, and the windmill vanes by the adobe ranch house were visible over a rise half a mile away. There Tom reined up at the sight of a girl. She rode easily, hair flying, the ends of a gay silk neckerchief whipping in the wind. Her saddle scabbard held a rifle. She came spurring hard, her face set and furious. She pulled a carbine from the scabbard, pumped a shell in place, and galloped on, holding the gun in one hand. Tom didn’t know her. She must live near, riding out like this, bareheaded and no jacket, he thought.

  Yards away she pulled in the blowing horse and held the rifle across her pommel. “This saves me the trouble of going to the ranch house. Put your hands up while I find your gun!” she ordered.

  She was so pretty with her flushed cheeks, so young, slim, so seething with anger that Tom laughed.

  “I’ll save you the trouble, ma’am. I’m not packing a gun. How about handling that rifle a little easier?”

  Her lip curled. “Don’t tell me an XO man goes without a gun!”

  “Climb down and I’ll tell you about it.”

  His grin made her angrier. She flared: “I’ll do the telling today! I sent word to you people that if our wire was cut once more, an XO man would patch it. You’re riding to the break now and fixing it.”

  “What break?”

  “The fence in Devil’s Draw.”

  “That’s the line fence between our land and the Murphy Ranch.”

  “Why call it the Murphy Ranch? We’ve . . . my father, Angus Gaylord . . . had it a year and a half. Are you trying to be funny?”

  “I never saw you before . . . never heard of you folks. Who are you, ma’am?” Tom’s eyes danced as he looked at her.

  “I’m Betty Gaylord,” she said stiffly.

  “I’ve been away,” Tom said. “Just coming home. I’d be pleased to hear what all the ruckus is about.”

  Doubt suddenly struck her. “Who are you?”

  “Tom Fortune.”

  “Oh. I’ve heard of you . . . the man who . . . who . . .”

  “The man who went to the pen,” Tom said, sobering. A flush sprang into his cheeks at the stiffness suddenly in her manner.

  “They said . . . I heard you were gone for . . . twenty years . . .”

  “I didn’t escape. You needn’t be afraid. If it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll ride over with you and string wire until the moon rises. And since I own half the XO here, and don’t know what this is all about, maybe we’d better talk a little. I’d like to find out some things.”

  “There’s been too much talk already. I’ve changed my mind . . . you ride on and settle your own troubles.”

  Tom thought she had looked at him strangely; he couldn’t be sure; she was gone too quickly, galloping hard the way she had come. He almost followed her, then shrugged, rode on, grim-faced, toward the ranch house.

  II

  Home! Dan Walker had enlarged the bunkhouse, built a second horse corral. New horses, more riders on the ranch by the looks of the bunkhouse, more cattle on the grass. They were eating in the usual room next to the kitchen. But the voices, laughter, and profanity stopped as Tom stepped in.

  Seven men were at the table—all strangers. Dan Walker wasn’t present, or Leatherneck Jones, or old Three-Finger Jack Bird, the former hands. The burly young man with the short red beard at the table head was a stranger, too. His greeting had a scant welcome.

  “Howdy, stranger. Set down.”

  “Where’s Dan Walker?” Tom asked.

  “Around Sundown somewhere, I reckon.”

  “Will he be back here tonight?”

  “Not that anybody knows. Most likely he’ll be nursing a bottle somewhere around Sundown. He ’most always is. What’d you say your name was?”

  “Fortune. Who are you?”

  “Fortune? Tom Fortune . . . that feller who went to the pen?”

  “That’s right. I’m asking who’n hell are you?”

  “Lope Larsen, ramrodding this outfit for the Hookers. And if you aim to be so crusty about it, get the hell out of here. We don’t want any prison jakes around.”

  Before he thought, Tom gritted: “If I was packing a gun . . .”

  Then he remembered, stopped, swallowed. But it was too late. They had stiffened, gone wary. Larsen stood up and kicked his chair back.

  “Hand him a gun, Shorty. I’ll make him crawl dirt on that.”

  A bowlegged waddy on Tom’s side of the table swung out of his chair, holding a pearl-handled .45, butt first. One front tooth was missing as he grinned. “Grab hold, feller. You talked plenty big . . . now back it up.”

  The white-aproned cook stopped in the kitchen doorway with a plate of bread. He was a stranger, too, and with no more welcome than the others.

  Tom stepped back. His hammering heart seemed to shake him. He saw the extended six-gun, the staring men, the malevolent expectancy on Larsen’s red-bearded face. And far more clearly he saw the cramped cell back at the prison, heard again the warden’s curt warning. Seventeen years waiting back there at the prison—waiting for just one hot-headed move. Then the bitter truth smashed home. It wasn’t hard to be brave, he realized. The hard thing, the bitter thing, was deliberately to turn coward and back away from trouble. Nothing had ever cost so much as the backward step Tom took—the first yellow move in his life.

  “I’m not looking for a gunfight,” he said hoarsely. “Not looking for anything. A heap has happened here I don’t know anything about. I’ll ride on and get the straight of it at Sundown.”

  Stunned silence filled the room. One of the men swore wonderingly. The bowlegged Shorty holstered his gun, sneering: “So that’s the kind of yaller dog you are? No wonder you wound up in the pen for a bushwhacking. Get out before I run you out.”

  Lope Larsen slammed his fist on the table so that the dishes danced. “By God, he won’t get off that easy. If he won’t fight with a gun, he can put up his hands. Fortune, I’m gonna beat hell outta you.”

  “I didn’t come here to fight,” Tom said through his teeth.

  “Stand there, you rabbit!” roared Larsen, darting around the end of the table.

  Tom was already going out the door. He made a running jump to the saddle, was spurring away when Larsen’s yell from the doorway ordered him to stop. A burst of six-gun shots followed—but by then Tom was turning the end of the house.

  Past the new corral, where the remuda horses jostled and stared, past the windmill, and into the juniper brush. He was riding mechanically, blindly, his nerves crawling, his body on fire with shame. The sickness of it struck under his belt in nausea. Tom Fortune, a yellow dog. Tom Fortune running away from a fight even with his fists.

  Darkness came down like a kind mask to hide his shame from the world. He hadn’t eaten since morning, but hunger had left him now. The fire of shame stayed in his veins like fever.

  This Larsen was ramrodding the XO
for the Hookers. And Dan Walker was nursing a bottle in Sundown. Dan’s infrequent notes, scrawled in a big wavering hand, hadn’t suggested anything like this. Startling changes had occurred in two and a half years. The Murphy Ranch had been sold to a stranger named Angus Gaylord. Why, Big Steve Murphy and his little laughing wife had been fine neighbors—hadn’t ever spoken of selling out. Larsen had spoken of the Hookers. Bent Hooker, the sheriff, was the only Hooker that Tom had ever heard of around Sundown. Must be the same man. Tom tried to remember about Hooker.

  The man had come to Sundown some seven years back, from the Texas border country, down in the Big Bend. Hooker had been old Lige Harrison’s deputy for three years—a tall, saturnine, gimlet-eyed deputy, never saying much, standing around in the background and watching things without expression. Thinking back, Bent Hooker had never gone out of his way to make trouble. He’d acted like he was calmly there for business. Fast in his gun work, efficient in the gunfight or two that had been forced on him, he had been a natural for sheriff when an outlaw bullet had cut down old Lige. That had been six or seven months before Tom Fortune and Sundown had parted company for twenty years. But it didn’t explain the Hookers running the XO now.

  Had this Angus Gaylord any connection with the Hookers? Betty Gaylord stayed in Tom’s mind. No girl had ever seemed like this spirited, pretty girl whose anger could be so devastating—and so lovely. Grimly Tom put her out of his mind. He had no right to be thinking of any girl. A convicted murderer, a man whose life would never be his own for seventeen long years, who might be outlawed at any time or jerked back to stone-walled prison. And he had showed yellow before men who’d never forget. It was nine miles from the XO to Sundown. And it was nine miles of hell tonight, in the fire of his shame and bitterness.

  III

  Sundown sprawled by the San Carlos River under great cottonwoods. Shipping pens by the railroad tracks and the square red-brick courthouse marked a prosperous range country. Tom rode to the livery stable and walked to the Diamond Bar, owned by Curt Lomis, who had been a friend. Half a dozen horses were at the hitch rack. Eight or ten men were at the bar. Curt Lomis, with his shock of iron-gray hair, was behind the bar, as if only a day had passed.