HIRED GUN
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
Dust-devils danced in the middle distance, dervishes to the wind's desires, a swirl of smoky, silken silt. The heat of mid-day was upon us, and work was all but impossible, Pa and I stayed inside our house and waited. Watching the horizons around us, wondering if one of the shadows would resolve into riders, if the pounding of hooves would announce our death-day. We'd been waiting like this for more than four days.
Resolution, a shadow was a rider, only one, coming toward us, along the trail from town, not riding hard and fast, not slouching along aimlessly, just riding to us, the moderate, ground-eating pace of a horse-and-rider that had been on their way for days. Four days, maybe?
"Could it be him, Pa?" I asked.
"Maybe." Pa said. "Better you stay inside and cover me. I'll go out and see who it is."
I took the rifle, the barrel felt greasy in my palms. Maybe it was the sweat, borne not just of the heat...but of fear. "Pa..." I said. "I ain't never shot a man before."
"If we're lucky, you won't have to today, neither." Pa said. "But if you have to, I expect you to do it. I'll do the talking, if he's safe, I'll take off my hat. Long as my hat stays on my head, you keep that gunsight right on top of him. He makes a quick move, any kind, you pot him, you got me?"
"Okay, Pa." I said through lips bone-dry past a throat dusty-dry. I licked my lips with my tongue, a faint film of moisture was all my tongue could muster to wet them. "I'll do it if I have to."
"Good boy." Pa said. The rider was getting closer and I could see by now he was a stranger to me. No detail, just that combination of things that means it's not one of the fifty or sixty people who were locals. Any stranger was dangerous right then. I knelt down by the window, pulled the curtain closed across it, and stuck the barrel of the rifle through the curtain, turning the line between curtain and sash into my peephole. Protected while I prepared to commit cold-blooded murder.
Pa went outside as the man rode up. The man got off on the side of his horse nearest to Pa, a good sign. Anyone out to kill Pa, or afraid of him, would have gotten off on the far side of the horse. The man and Pa talked, and I strained to hear, but neither voice was loud and the wind blew their words away, mixing it with the dust to swirl among the sagebrush.
But Pa took off his hat and I heaved a big sigh of relief, pulled the rifle back inside, and went out to see who our visitor was. Could it be him? Could it?
It was. Pa had written for a hired gun, and this man had answered. I didn't know the details of how Pa had done it, but this man was supposed to be good, Pa had said.
Maybe he could keep us alive the next few days. Maybe.
I looked at him as I stepped outside. Not handsome, he was too weather-beaten for that. His eyes had developed a perpetual squint from peering into the hot noonday sun, his face had formed lines into that squint, pulling his face together, creasing his forehead. A poorly kempt beard trickled around the bottom of his jawline from one ear to the other, the skin was reddened and raw-looking. And the eyes. They were as dead as the granite of a tombstone, and just as gray. Seeing...but they never seemed to blink.
"This your boy?" the man said to Pa.
"Yep, just the two of us here." Pa said.
The man's mouth twitched into a semblance of a smile, but there was no mirth behind it. "Kind of young to be toting that gun, ain't he?"
"I know how to use it." I said.
"Oh, I believe you." the man said. "Just like I believed a kid even younger'n you, he warn't more'n nine or ten years old, wearing a six-shooter on his hip like a real man, he came up to me back in Abilene and said he was going to shoot me down."
"What'd you do?" I wanted to know.
"Killed him." came the laconic response.
"Really?" I was struck by the tone. Uncaring. It didn't matter to him.
"Yep." the man said.
"Why'd you kill him?" I asked. "Couldn't you have done something else?" I had visions from my reading of yellow novels, he could have shot the gun from the boy's hand, leaving him stunned and helpless. He could have performed an acrobatic jump and roll as the boy tried to kill him, rolling to safety.
"I might've been able to do something else." the man said. "But killing him made certain. That way, he was dead and I was alive." The man kicked back the brim of his hat with his forefinger. "And that's the way I wanted it to be. Same as I would've picked you right out of that window if'n your Pa hadn't given the signal to tell you to back off. If he'd waited ten more seconds, I would have."
"You couldn't have got me in there." I said in disbelief. "I wasn't showing more'n an eyeball to the window."
"That's all I need."
My stomach clenched up at that. I didn't doubt him at his word. I had been ten seconds away from dying!
"We'll set you up a bunk in the barn." Pa said, leading him away. "Joseph, you stand guard while he gets his horse watered and fed and gets settled in."
"Sure thing, Pa." I said. Pa and the man went into the barn, the man leading his horse, a sorrel mare, and I was left once again scanning the horizon.
It was a dry year and the water was drying up. Our ranch, the Circle J, and the Bar A ranch next door had to share the sole remaining source of water for our cattle. Trouble was, there were too many cows for that one little spring to water both of them. The spring started off on the Bar A's land, but the water drained off onto our spread in a small creek, more like a brook. It hadn't been much more than a place the cattle would drink from now and then...until the other sources of water had dried up. Then it became our source of salvation.
Trouble was, the Bar A had blocked the little creek that ran from that spring, stopping the water from getting through to our cattle. That had been six days ago.
There's not much that will turn a rancher against his neighbors, but water is one thing that'll do it. The Bar A had no right to keep that water, it belonged to all the ranches along that little watercourse over to Sawgasee Creek, mainly us! Our ranch was the only one without an alternate source of water, the other ranchers had turned a blind eye to our plight!
So Pa had brought in a hired gun, someone to fight off the men with guns who guarded the dam, so we could go onto the Bar A and blow open that dam. Start the water flowing again, enough to save our herd.
And that was why this stranger was now bunking in our barn.
Our cattle were lowing with thirst, after the stranger was done with his horse and took up what I presume was a watchful position on our front porch (he appeared to be napping to me!), I went back to hauling water from our little well. We didn't have enough water to do more than fend off the worst of their thirst, I had to let them drink a few at a time, drive them away to let the next batch up to the tub. It left us with nothing more than mud by the end of the day. Experience with our well had taught me we had to wait three more days at least to try to draw water from the well, nearly a month before the water would be clear enough to drink without filtering.
I went with the pails back up onto the porch. The stranger appeared asleep, but when I got nearer, he lifted a hand, used the back of his forefinger to flick the hat back out of his eyes, looked up at me. "Got something to say, kid?"
"Yeah." I said. "Whatever you're going to do to get us the water back, you got to do in the next couple of days. After that..." I set the pails down, let him see them empty, "...you might as well not bother."
"You'll have water before morning." he promised me. "I checked things out on my way in."
"What are you going to do?" I asked him.
"Survive." he said and pushed his hat back over his eyes. "It's what I do best." I shrugged and went back inside. I still didn't know what to make of this man.
The next day, the cattle were gone from our yard. I found them at the creek, drinking their fill.
The water was back. The dam had been broken and flooded the creek all along its length, the cattle were enjoying its bounty. I watched them come back to life, to begin to crop at the yellowed, dried grass again with gusto...then went back to the house to find our savior.
He wasn't on the porch, he was in the bunk we'd set up in the barn. I walked up to him cheerfully and toward his sleeping form...and there was a flash of blanket being thrown back and I was staring down the barrel of his gun.
Then he was putting it back into his bunk. "Shit, kid, I nearly shot you!"
"Sorry." I said. "I just wanted to say thank you for getting the water back."
"You're welcome. Now shut up and let me sleep."
I got out of there again. He finally came out in the afternoon, and up to me. "Hey, kid, how about some breakfast?"
"It's mid-afternoon." I pointed out.
"Okay. How about some lunch?"
Well, he had been up most of the night working for us. "Sure." I said.
"Where's your Pa?" he asked me when I set the bacon and eggs in front of him.
"In town." I said. "He said now you got the water back, he wants to see what the owners of the Bar A are going to do about you blowing up the dam."
"The dam was illegal, wasn't it?" he asked.
"Sure." I said. The laws of the territory were clear, watercourses through grazing land were not to be impeded; an understandable law in this water-poor land; the alternative was, well, what we had, armed banditry and the law of the gun. "But that didn't stop them from building it in the first place, and we can assume they're going to try again. Pa is trying to find out just what."
He turned his attention to his plate. "Your Pa is a smart man." he admitted.
"It's why we hired you for the entire year." I pointed out. "We can hope that it rains enough this winter to end the drought, and the trouble will all blow over if it does."
"Maybe not." He said. "I had to waste two of their men blowing the dam."
"Did they see you?" I asked. Maybe there was a squad of horsed men riding this way right now, bent on vengeance.
"Nope." he said. "I got them while their backs were turned."
"That was cowardly." I pointed out self-righteously.
"Not in my book, it warn't." he said.
"How's that?" I wanted to know.
"`Cause they're dead and I'm alive." he said again. "And that's the way I wanted it to be." He handed me the plate, belched loudly. "Thanks for the eats, kid."
I didn't say anything, went out to see about the cattle.
I avoided the gunslinger the rest of the day except for giving him supper. Well after sundown, I was sitting at the table, wondering if Pa had decided to stay in town for the night (it was a long ride to town and back, after all), and heard the notes of music from outside. A harmonica. The gunslinger was playing a harmonica! I listened a while; damn, he was good!
It was wrong of me to sneer at him for killing those two men. They were there to make sure we couldn't get the water we needed, the water they had stolen from us. He was all by himself, and facing odds of two to one. How could he have fought them fair? He'd gotten us the water back, it was foolish for me to think he should have done it by facing down two armed men at once.
So, in a much more charitable mood, I went out to the porch to sit and talk with him a while.
He put away the harmonica when I sat down. "Hey, kid." he said. "Isn't it past your bedtime?"
"Maybe." I said. "What's it to you?"
"Nothing. Just wondering." he said.
"Why are you still up?" I asked.
"I don't sleep much." he said. He took out a knife and began to whittle, I saw that this piece of wood was one he'd been working on for some time.
"You whittle a lot, then?" I asked him. "At night?"
"Yep." he said.
"Oh." I concluded.
The silence stretched out.
"So, what's your name, anyway?"
He cocked one eye my way. "Not a good idea to ask a man that." he said.
I knew better than that, sure. "I mean, what should I call you?"
"The hired gun." he said.
"I mean a name." I clarified.
"So did I." he said. "That's what I am."
"I mean, what did your mother name you?"
"Don't know." he said. "She wasn't around long as I can remember."
"What about your father then?" Maybe his mother had died when he was too young to remember her. Mine had.
"Don't know who he was."
"So who raised you?" I asked.
"Kid, you ask too damned many questions." he said, ending the conversation once again.
Another silence, during which I almost got up and went back inside. Instead...
"I'm sorry." I said.
"It's okay." he said. "Just don't ask any more like that."
"Okay." I said. "So what should we talk about?"
"You talk about whatever you want to."
"I meant I wanted you to talk." I said. "God, I grew up right here on this ranch. Pa taught me my letters and numbers, but other than a few trips into town, this is all I know. So what's to talk about? You, though, you've been places."
"A few." he allowed.
"So tell me about them."
"Not a fit subject for a kid like you." he said. "If you think living the life of a hired gun is exciting, you got another think coming."
"So what is it like?" I asked him.
"It's fine as long as you never forget the first rule of being a hired gun." he said.
"You mean, make sure you're alive and he's dead?"
He nodded. "That's the long and short of it. Long as you remember that, you'll be fine."
"Gee." I thought it over. "What about drawing fast?"
"The quickdraw is for showoffs." he grunted. "Oh, it's nice if you can bring it off, but you don't have to be fast. More important to be accurate when you do fire. And better to fire first, too."
"From hiding, like you did with those two men last night?" I countered.
He smiled, not at all offended, "Like you were the first time I saw you." he pointed out.
I blushed, turned my head away, and he laughed. "Hey, kid, if you want to do something before bed, I got an idea."
I looked at him, and he was smiling at me. It looked kind of funny on that face of his. "Uh, what did you want to do?" I asked him, swallowing hard. He was so much bigger and stronger than me, if he wanted to....
"Got any checkers?" he asked.
"Checkers? Oh, uh, yeah!" I said, getting up hastily. "Come on in and we'll set up on the table."
We played for about another hour. Pa still hadn't come home, and I mentioned it. "You think something may have happened to him?" I asked. By then, we were talking, at least about checkers and such.
"Not unless he was stupid or something." he opined. "For him to be in trouble, he'd have to blab that he'd blown up the dam."
"Pa wouldn't do that!" I said.
"Then he's just chosen to stay the night in town." he said.
"I hope you're right." I said after a pause.
"Sure. Now get to bed, kid." He said standing up.
"Thanks for the game of checkers." I said.
"Sure." He went to the door. "Oh, and kid?" he said his hand on the open door.
"Yes?" I looked around.
"You can call me Charley." He said and went quickly out the door.
My dreams that night were odd, vivid in color and sounds, it was like reality. Only problem was, I'd wake up from something happening in the dream, and feeling scared, and I couldn't remember anything about the dream. I'd lay back and go back to sleep after a while, and the same thing would happen.
Finally, just before dawn, I gave up and got out of bed. Went out to the barn to get the feed for the chickens.
Charley (I finally had a name for him!) was lying in his bed, a blanket thrown over his lower body, but bare from the waist up. A second blanket under him protected his body from the straw that made up his bed. It was the first time I'd ever seen a man's body other than my father's, and Pa wasn't anything like as big as Charley. His arms were huge orbs of sweat-shining muscle, one flung over his head, the other down by his side his stomach was a sunken pit beneath his ribs that formed an arch to support the muscles of his chest, the apex of this cathedral of male torso was decorated by black hairs that crowned it. And the blanket had its own spire rising, the inspiration from a dream too vivid...much like mine had been.
He moved and his other hand came up...bearing his gun, but it didn't get aimed at me.
"Christ, kid, how often do I have to tell you to not sneak up on me." Charley complained.
"I'm sorry." I said. "I just came to get the chickens their feed. When I feed them and gather their eggs, I can fix you some breakfast."
He sat up and I could just see the white band of his underpants when the blanket fell away from him. He had left on the lower half of his underclothes, remained clothed from waist to ankles. That disappointed me for some reason I couldn't define.
"What are you going to do today?" he asked me.
"I need to check the fences." I said. "If the cattle have water and start to graze again, they're going to wander about more. Besides, I like to check our fences every few days, just to be safe."
He nodded. "That's wise. I'll get dressed and come with you."
"Why?" I asked him. Unless I hit a major repair job, one man was plenty for this.
"You might have some people gunning for you." he reminded me.
"Oh. Yeah." I said.
His ears cocked over, and he scrambled to his feet. I saw the underclothes clearly now, hanging loosely off his abdomen. The wet cloth (it had been a hot night) clung to him like a second skin. That bulge was there, lying along one leg, shrinking fast. Then he was creeping toward the barn door and I realized why. "Do you hear someone?" I asked him.
"Ssst!" he shushed me. "Someone's coming."
"Maybe it's Pa!" I said, but that was a whisper. I was straining my own ears, I didn't hear anything.
"I don't think so." he said, listening to sounds I still couldn't hear. "A wagon."
He crouched down behind a barrel in the barn, and I realized that he would be nearly invisible there in the darkness of the barn from the people outside.
"Stay down, kid." he hissed at me. "Wait until they pull up into the yard and you can get a look at them. Then, if need be, you say the word and I'll cut them all down."
"Okay." I said.
It was Doc Wagner and in the back of the wagon was Pa. I told Charley that and ran out to see the Doc.
Pa had had an accident in town, was all that had happened. His leg had gotten smashed by a freak accident with a wagon. It had broken the leg in two places when the wheel went over it. Pa was fine now, but he would be bedridden for a few more weeks and ambling on crutches for a month or more after that.
Charley stayed hidden until Doc Wagner was gone and then he came out. Pa and Charley talked, and I listened. The Bar A owners had a pretty good idea who had blown up their dam. They had threatened Pa. "Isn't that unlikely that they had a hand in that wagon coming around the corner when it did." Pa concluded. "Means we're going to have to be careful from now on."
"I need to check the fences." I told Pa.
"Take the hired gun with you." Pa said. Hired gun, that was all Pa knew about Charley.
And I didn't tell him more, it wasn't my secret to tell. Looking back on it, I don't think Pa wanted to know anything more about Charley. Keeping him around the way you keep a dog to attack strangers that come onto your property.
Charley and I rode around the perimeter of our ranch. We had only two stretches fenced off. North of us was government land, owned by the Army. If the cattle wandered onto there a bit, they didn't care. South of us was the Chamakichi Hills, and cattle from the ranches went there for free-range grazing. Come springtime, we had to go out there and round them up, the cows went in there during winter to scavenge for food. But this time of year, they were happy to keep out of it.
East of us was our downstream neighbor, the Line K ranch. They had a border with a river and didn't need our water. West of us was the Bar A ranch. It was the line I wanted to check. An incursion of cattle in either direction could be trouble.
But the western fence (I'd always taken better care of it than the eastern one) was clean and intact. We reached the post that marked the edge of our ranch and I said, "Well, that's one of them. T'other's a mile yonder." I pointed with my chin. "If there ain't nothing wrong with the eastern fence, we can be home in time to fix Pa some lunch."
I hadn't checked the eastern fence in more than a week, a section of it was down. Charley judged it. "Looks more like it was taken down rather than fallen down."
"Probably they needed to move some cattle through here and forgot to put it back." I said. "I'll get this done in a moment."
"I'll help you." Charley said and got off his horse.
"Shouldn't you be keeping an eye out for strangers?" I asked him.
"Look around yourself." he suggested, and I did. We were on a flat stretch, you could see for a mile in every direction. Nobody around, and anyone who did come, you'd see them a quarter hour before saying howdy.
"Okay, you can help me." I said.
He made a good hand helping me with the fences, setting the rails back into position in an overlapping way that meant if one post fell down, the fence would still be mostly upright. I mentioned that to him, and he answered, "Been thinking that when I decide to settle down, I might get a ranch somewhere. Someplace quiet and away from other people."
"Why not around here?" I asked him. Plenty of land was still available.
He shook his head. "You can't settle in a place where you've worked when you're a hired gun." he said darkly. "Have to move somewhere nobody knows your face or what you've done. My kind aren't welcome except when there's trouble, like here."
"Pa and I would welcome you." I insisted. "We could use another hand on the ranch, especially what with Pa laid up. Besides," I hesitated, and said it anyway, "I like having you around."
He looked at me with those gray, dead eyes and I could see the clouds closing behind them. "Nobody likes having me around, `cept when they need someone killed. Only thing I'm good for. But I'm good at it. Always a market in the West for a gun and an owner not afraid to use it."
"I don't want you around for that." I insisted. "It...it gets lonesome around here. You stayed on, we could be friends and play checkers at night."
"And you could come wake me up in every morning." he said.
"Yeah." I said, smiling at the memory of him lying there on the straw.
His hand went down to his pants and I looked up, surprised. "What are you doing?" I asked him.
"Got to walk the horse." He explained succinctly and I turned away. It wasn't polite to stare at a man while he was pissing, Pa had drilled that into me. It wasn't polite....
But I remembered that tent in his blanket and I had to look, just had to. I'd never seen a man's organ before, only my own and Pa's, back when I was too young to remember it clearly.
He was just finished "walking the horse" and I saw his cock still in his hand, white and clean, looking like a fish hanging out from his trousers, the bulbous head glinting in his fingers.
I licked my lips, looking at it, how it was so fine a piece of him, so very like him, strong and knowing what it wanted and....
"Kid, you ain't supposed to be looking at me." Charley complained.
"I'm sorry." I said, licked my lips again.
He took a couple of steps, his cock still out, still in his hand. "Getting a good look at it?" he asked me.
"I'm sorry." I murmured again, but I didn't look away.
"Never seen one before?"
"No, sir." I said.
"Know what to do with it?" Charley asked me.
"I know enough." I said, and I did, thanks to stories told by schoolmates, and a rather clinical explanation from Doc Wagner when I was fifteen. Put those two together with my own sexual self-abuse at night, and I knew enough.
"Then come on." Charley invited me.
I stumbled toward him and I don't know if I planned to get on my knees or just ended up that way. I just know I was down in front of him and his cock was right next to my face, and I lifted my hand up to wrap my fingers around it, quivering as I felt for the first time another man's cock. Warm, so very warm, even hot, that was my first impression. My second was the strong smell from Charley's crotch, all moist and salty-strong and musky as a bull that had just serviced a cow. The third was my watching as I pumped the hard rod, squeezing it up and seeing the clear pearl of salty jizz bubble up, just as mine did when I yanked it. And Charley's groan, a soft, longing sigh, that was just like mine when I was really enjoying my yanking.
I pummeled Charley's prick, whamming that pud the way I did my own, get it off fast before Pa came in and caught me at it. Pa hadn't caught me doing it yet, but it had been close a couple of times. The barn in the morning would be better, Pa liked to sleep in, he always said morning chores were young men's work, he needed time to let his bones get used to being awake, he would cook breakfast while I took care of the chickens and horses and such.
"Oh, yeah, work it for me." Charley gasped. "Give it a good pumping, boy, really make it hum for me. Oh, yeah, I can't wait to get your lips on it, boy!"
My lips? What was he talking about? Doc Wagner hadn't said nothing about this and neither had my friends at school. Get my lips on it?
I looked at his dong in my hand, my hand now getting sticky from the precome that oozed down out of the slit and I thought how I'd tasted my own once, found how salty it was and the thought of tasting that from him made me drool! I reached out and kissed his cockhead with my tongue and when I did, Charley's hand got the back of my head and pulled me down onto it. "Oh, yeah, boy, come on, work it for me!" he urged.
I choked, coughed, strangled and Charley let go. "You okay, kid?"
"Yeah, I'm all right." I gasped out. "What were you trying to do?"
Charley looked at me, understood, and explained to me in simple words. At his instruction, I began to lick at his cock again and this time he let me. I worked my saliva all over the cockhead, which drank up my liquid hungrily, but after a time it became sated and began to gleam silver in the sun.
"Okay, kid, now start working it with your lips." he instructed. "Got to keep everything slicked up and moving smoothly or you'll choke again."
As I obeyed him, moving my lips up and down on his dong, feeling the hot pole burning against my gullet, I wondered how Charley knew these things. But then, he'd been around a lot, he must have learned it from the professional women in places like New Orleans or St. Louis. I wondered how I'd compare to such consummate professionals as those!
But Charley wasn't complaining, he was moaning the way I would on those times when I was alone in the house and could make all the noise I wanted to when I pumped my rod, Charley was telling me with such nonverbal syllables how much he loved this, how much it was working for him, how much closer he moved to coming with my every motion upon his prong!
His head was thrown back, those dead eyes were shut to the world, and on his face was a tenderness I hadn't seen on him before. Even when he was confiding in me the night before, he hadn't had this look on his face. That squint was mostly gone, only lines burned into his face told of their existence, but covering that like a mother's blanket was the softness that now glowed from within him.
That spurred me to further efforts, I had reached some part of this remote man, however temporarily and whatever the circumstances, for now, he was closer to the realm of manhood than he had been in...who knew how long?
His sounds of ecstasy climbing rose in his throat, floated around me like the leaves of autumn, glistening flashes of color, only these were of sound and even with my eyes closed as I worked his cock, I had the beauty of the lightning in my ears, echoing over and over again, rising to crescendo.
As his moans reached a fever pitch, his hands came back and took control, by now, I could let him do this, his cock was a known visitor in my mouth and I knew how it would move and what room it would need, and so when he grabbed my head and hunched his pud down my throat, I only grunted and that was from the air being forced past this pistoning prick.
"Uh, uh, HUH-GNNNHHH!" he said and that was all the words, then he went to heavy breathing and that, only then, was when his cock burst into my mouth and down my esophagus, hot salty sperm shooting into me like a rapid-firing revolver, the gummy packets of sperm fell onto the back of my tongue and seethed there before slithering like slugs down my dark tunnel into oblivion.
Charley kept humping my face even after he was done, until every erg of his pleasure had been wrested from his dick and only then he let me go, still panting hard like he'd run a long ways.
"Hot damn, kid, you did good!" He assured me with his first available breaths after restoring his exhausted lungs. "Man, but you've got a real talent!"
"Thanks." I said to him bashfully. "I liked it, too."
"Whoo!" he said, his chest expanding and blowing out in a noisy explosion. "That gives me one more reason to stick around a bit. You sneak around to the barn after dark and I'll show you a real good time!"
I smiled at that, though my own cock ached for release. The promise of later, though, made me a stern schoolteacher to its desire for play. Later, I told it, later we'll have some real fun. And it went back to its seat and sat down, real quiet-like.
We finished checking the fence and had only a couple of small falls to deal with, and then it was back to the house.
After Pa was asleep, I snuck out to the barn, and Charley was waiting for me. He made good on his promise, too, and we ended up sucking each other, him showing me a real talent. When I blew my wad, he gulped it down a lot easier than I had when his own had been blasting me. When I asked him about it, he just said, "You learn a lot of things in an orphanage, whether you want to or not."
The next day, I went out to check the cattle. We didn't try to restrict their ranging, just kept tabs on where they were.
Six of our cattle had been shot dead. Four more were wounded so badly I had to put them down myself. Three others, I hoped would heal, they were too wild to let me do anything for them without some help. I went back to the house, my heart heavy.
Charley just nodded, said to Pa, "They know you blew up the dam. I heard some gunfire last night, but it was far enough off I didn't think it was aimed at us."
"Damn it, man, you have to do something!" Pa exclaimed harshly. "Another few days of this and I won't care about keeping the water from that little creek. I won't have any cattle to need watering."
"I'll deal with them." Charley said. "Tonight."
I couldn't sleep, just listened as I heard gunfire. It was closer this time but still nearly a mile away. A spell of silence, more gunfire.
Charley wasn't back the next morning. I was about to go out riding to try to find him when he rode in, his right arm heavily bandaged and red with blood. "They won't be shooting any more of your cattle, that bunch, anyway." he gasped.
I helped him into the house, put him in my bed. The bullet had pierced his arm entirely, gone out the other side. I said as much, with some relief. "It didn't cut the bone or a major artery." I said to him. "A little while and you'll be good as new."
"The hell I will." Charley said. "I can't move my right arm enough to matter now." He lifted it, straining, to show me, wincing with the pain. "They done took me out of the job of protecting you."
"What are we going to do?" I asked Pa.
"Write for another hired gun." Pa said. "Soon as you can ride, you can leave." he told Charley. "I'll pay you for your work, you done good by us."
"Hey!" I protested. "Pa, we can't send him away!" If Pa did that, when would Charley and me have another time in the barn like we had? One time wasn't enough for me, I wanted more of it! If Pa hadn't been there, I would have crawled into bed with him right then and there.
"No, kid, I want to move on soon as I can." Charley said. "I stick around and it's going to be pretty obvious who killed those Bar A boys. I've done potted five of them, now, the others are going to be searching with blood in their eyes, now. And here I am, helpless as a turtle on my back.
"They can't have you!" I informed him fiercely. "I won't let them have you."
Charley smiled, but it had no power in it, a feeble movement of lips alone. "We'll see what we see." He said. "I think I can manage to ride a horse again tomorrow, I'll head east and get out of their way."
"But you can't go!" I protested.
"Hey, kid, right now, I'm alive." Charley said. "If I'm going to stay alive, I have to vamoose. Nothing personal."
I bit my lower lip, he was right. "Maybe they won't come looking for you." I said.
"Maybe." Charley said.
The next day, Charley was looking better and we had the bleeding stopped. His arm was well bandaged and he had his gun around so he could draw it and shoot with his left hand. He wasn't any good left-handed, he admitted...but it was all he had, so it would have to do.
For him to ride east, I had to go with him, take down a part of the fence. That was why I was with him when we ran into the Bar A riders.
Four of them. They were nearly a quarter mile away, but soon as they saw us, they began to ride toward us.
A lone tree was our only possible protection. "Get behind it!" Charley urged me. Back to back, we stood there, my rifle jutting out the left side of the tree, Charley's left-hand aiming his pistol out the right.
The men got closer and I shot at them with my rifle and so did Charley. One of us, I don't know who, knocked one man out of his saddle, and he lay on the ground, screaming in pain.
The others got off, used their horses for protection, holding them between us and them, and firing around and above and under them. I got two of their horses with my shots (a horse is easier to hit than a person) and while neither shot took them down, it was enough to make the horse rear, whinny and run off, one of them limping badly but still making good time.
Charley wasn't such a bad shot even with his left hand, he managed to knock down two of the men, one for good, the other squirming in pain. Just one was now firing at us. Only problem was, both Charley and I were nearly out of ammunition. Our ammo was in our saddlebags back on our horses!
"Charley, I got two shots left." I told him as I reloaded.
"I got my gun full." Charley said. "It's going to have to do. Only one man left."
But we can't get him!" I wailed. He was behind a rise of land, an impossibly small target. We were stuck behind a tree that just wasn't good enough. If the man managed to work his way around to get a clear shot at us....
He had. I heard the shot, felt it bite my leg, only a nick, thank God!
"Remember the first rule!" Charley said to me and he took off running! He got about fifty feet from the tree, and then the shots from the other man was rewarded by him clutching his chest. Another shot, and he fell.
But the man was standing up now. I swung my rifle his way and pulled the trigger, and the man keeled over. I had blown the top of his head off.
I didn't waste any tears on him. I only saw Charley lying there on the ground, not moving.
"Charley! Charley!" I called out as I ran to him. The red on his chest, that wonderful chest that I had admired before while he slept, now the white shirt was stained with red! "Oh, Charley!" I said to him. "Why didn't you stay down if you was going to leave?"
"First rule of the hired gun." Charley said to me, coughed.
"But...but..." I couldn't say it, not here, not now. But Charley hadn't obeyed his own first rule! "But why?" I asked him.
"Because you're alive and he's dead." Charley said to me. "And that was the way I wanted it." And Charley's eyes closed.
I got him back home best I could, and Pa took over caring for Charley's wounds while I rode like blazes for the Doctor. Clouds started arriving while I was riding back with the Doctor, and the rains that fell for the next couple of weeks ended the drought for good, which ended our range war with the Bar A.
The doctor patched up Charley, though he was terribly sick for a long time after, but he's a lot better now. Both he and Pa limp some, Pa from his leg that didn't mend properly and Charley from the pain in his chest from the bullet. His right arm still won't let him hold his gun or anything else steady in his right hand, his days as a hired gun are now over.
I run our ranch now. Pa can't understand why I keep Charley on as a hired hand when he can't do a lot of the hard work a ranch needs. "He's just a cold-blooded killer." he keeps pointing out.
Charley had stopped being a killer on the same day he broke his first rule of survival in order to save my life. And there's nothing cold-blooded about him.
I just tell Pa, firmly, "We owe it to him."
And we do.
THE END
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