Show fa V USELESS SS COWBOY r kalan le MAY sp ft CHAPTER I 1 melody jones and his side rider george fury had not expected to wind up in payneville Pay neville they had meant to ride to hot creek down near the mexican border but some miscalculation in crossing the red cloud plains had got them into a wrong pass through the wolf ears causing a miss of nearly one hundred dusty miles consequently as they rounded the shoulder of some mountain it later turned out to be big bone ledge they were rocked in their saddles by the sight of a sizable town immediately below it stood out clearly in the hot bright light a straggling disorder upon vast ragged plains its roofs of grey weathered shakes shone like metal in the hard smash 9 arthe ai ahe sun id d george fury looked surprised he the kie town was big enough to hold several hundred people and it gave george a creepy sense of insecurity to see it appear out of nowhere he put his hand over his eyes and rubbed them a little but when he looked again it was still there shimmering dustily in the sun melody look any special way at twenty two he was lanky and relaxed and looked four years younger than his age he was very seldom surprised for he never expected any one particular thing but took unexplained events as they came 1 I should judge ashes a cow town melody said 1 I can tell by the corrals george fury snorted corrals or not the town could not possibly have been anything else you plumb astound me he said melody shrugged them things Is easy for me george fury knew himself to be over fifty years old but had quit counting not liking to think about this he was spare and rope necked with a mustache something like a dead mouse and eyes sun faded to an indiscriminate eye color one shoulder was higher than the other and he sat crookedly in his saddle limping as he rode it beats me how she come here george fury said staring at the town 1 I mind one night I 1 rode into salice melody said and it was right where I 1 it was and all ally some way I 1 come into it from V east instead of from the west veller teller dont live that can figger them things through melody could not carry a tune so of course liked to sing but he did not get his name from this his real name was melvin and this had got changed to melody at javelina texas where the rio grande draws the wandering border with mexico the mexican people could not pronounce melvin seemingly by the time they were through batting it around it was nearer melody than anything else jones did not object the north trail cowboys could not pronounce javelina either they called it musk hog george fury snorted again and pushed his shaggy pony down the twist of the trail toward the town which he did not yet know was laneville lyneville Ly neville yn eville vo payneville Pay neville was a crossing town A wagon route west from diamond forks to california crossed the river here and trail herds of cattle pushing north to the railroad forded corded the same shallows the river was the Poison berry hell dry in summer and a howling flood in the spring an early trader had named it the strawberry because he wished he had some but later watched their Cone tumble end over end in the spring rise and changed the name nobody ever sang any songs about moonlight on the silvery Poison Polson berry rolling on ever on to syrup creek up on Pay nevilles boot hill there is still a sandstone slab marking the grave of this towns founder and carved upon it perhaps by an enemy are his alleged last words thank god I 1 am a payne As they drew closer riding between the bones of vanished buffalo payneville Pay neville looked dustier anal ana more ramshackle they entered the town through a drift of ruined huts stared at by mestizo children and turned at a slow plod into court street melody was riding more watchfully now made alert in spite of himself by george burys nervousness he consciously stiffened his face melody jones had a secret ambition to earn the title of unsmiling jones and command immediate respect wherever he appeared whenever he rode into a new cow camp he remembered this for an hour or two and preserved as rigid an expression as he could george fury glanced sideways at him what in hells the matter with wilh you you got your snubbed up like you was going to bawl melody modified his expression somewhat as well as he could melody had originally started out from two lance montana at fourteen or fifteen on the occasion of his father being rolled on by a cow in rustlers war but the wandering cow trails he had followed had been pretty shy of people nearly everything he knew about people he had learned from horses and cows and that was his trouble every mortal soul was a personal uncertainty unaccustomed eyes bothered him like flies george fury was looking for the first saloon and to see what the seat scat houses looked like but Mel odys eyes took in all details equally whether they had any meaning or not he estimated the amount of jerky hanging up in a mexican outdoor beanery and his cattle counting eye told him there were forty seven strips about a yard long he saw a camp robber jay steal some frijoles from a sleeping mexican just beyond the beanery stood the first bar which was beginning to moult its dilver ilver gray clapboards the oldest i Imil ding in town but the builder had misjudged the future center of town and now found himself at the foot of the street so that this was naturally called the first chance on one side of its sign and last chance on the other george fury who sometimes took four days to pass a given saloon would not get any farther just yet he turned his pony to the hitch rall rail and swung down and melody jones was freeing himself from the saddle on which he seemed to have melted and stuck when a girl came on to the street melody see where she came from as he looked up she was there he see her face because she was walking away from him down the boardwalk but he forgot georke george fury and lost interest in the first chance bar melody seen a white girl in nearly seven months now what george grunted huh A casual wind devil kicked a twirl of dust into Mel odys face he dug at his eyes with buckskin knuckles and sat there like a fool froze to thet hull bull who me melody sounded vague and senseless well I 1 I 1 I 1 feel kind of like a can to maters you look something like a can to maters george criticized never you mind melody said im going on down to the store george fury looked at melody queerly and started to say something he knew that melody had no money in his pants all they had between them was a few dollars george had managed to keep hold of it was in his mind to houer holler after melody and give him a buck but he smothered this idea and I 1 V 1 I sho should ul d j judge edg e ashes a cow town went into the first chance rolling creakily on his run over high heels melody pushed his copy pony on up the street through the soft dust he was following the girl along with an innocent detachment that would have killed george fury he was like a dog ho goes walking with a stranger lver looking directly at his bis companion never getting near but drawing a sort of un demanding comfort from the vague association of time and place besides watching the girl he saw that the boards of the occidentals dentals sign were splitting in the sun and that an apache indian asleep fun full length on the walk before the grand eastern hotel was drawing flies the few shaggy ponies along th the hitch rails were saddled with center fire and three quarter rigs hung with rawhide so he knew he was among the dally daily men again this touched him with a taint faint contempt a cowman commonly feels tor for any way of riding but his own melody was a double rig tie fast man the girl went into the lost dutchman saloon the wind went out of melody so definitely that his pony took advantage of him and stopped melody sat where he was for a moment or two before he started it again got a right to get thirsty aint she he explained her to himself why in hell she get thirsty nuts he angled across the dust to the general store and tossed his reins loose across the rack the donys name was harry henshaw according to melody and he had been with melody long enough to learn that he had better stand lest a worse thing happen next harry henshaw toed in a little on the nigh side and look like much and because of this he was the only pony out of the scores melody had owned that nobody had bothered to get away from melody As melody went up the steps to the stores broad gallery he was wary and watchful again two men a big one and a little one loafed on the gallery just outside the door both wore low strapped forty fives the same as melody himself except that Mel odys was in the thigh pocket of his ragged shotgun shot gun chaps they wore the easy clothes of cowmen but that did not necessarily prove what they were melody stiffened his face the shorter man met his eyes briefly an impersonal cool flick of pinched pupils the other look at him at all so melody was able to study him better a man long geared but compact with an expressionless face of deep carved jack pine his eyes were awake but lazy like the flat side of a knife while melody looked at him the mans eyes changed then the whole face the eyes sharpened to a quick focus not on melody but across the street and it was as if the sleepy knife had turned point first and sung past Mel odys ear melody turned slowly on his high heel feet apart to clear his long spur and followed the mans eyes it was like melody thought the girl had come out of the lost dutchman not thirsty after all looking for somebody the man by the door was whistling through his teeth a stanza of Chiz zum trail it might have been the part about the night stampede or the last of the old two bars but melody knew better unhurriedly but with no trace of thought at all melody took two long strolling steps and knocked the stranger down he used the heel of his right hand without closing his fist he had understood der stood that wallop tor for a long time the heel of a hand swung full arm packs nearly the same weight as a fist but afterward you get credit for downing your man with a slap of the open hand A good thing to have said ot of you especially if the other man looking as now the strangers hat flew off and his hla head spun sideways slamming against the board front with a boom that shook the store inside the wall some tell fell down quicker to fall fail than the man who was struck after the tin wares first crash some more of it fell more slowly so that the occasional clatter of a pie tin or a bread pan kept sounding at irregular intervals for some time the man himself half buckled at the knees his face a blank amazement he slid sideways against the wall and came down sitting on his hat melody stood watching the fellow shake his head and feel out the workings of his jaw and melody had never been worse dumbfounded in his life the astonishment of the man he had hit was nothing alongside his own melody was estimating now the exact distance in thousandths of a second between the strangers hand slackly palm up on the floor of the gallery and the black butt of the strangers gun already half out of its leather by its own weight it was no better than three inches away or possibly three and a half the hand look like a bowmans cow mans hand much more like a bunch of bananas really but that is just the kind that knows its business very often melody was beginning to sweat a little now up from the wooden face the strangers eyes were looking at melody like a couple of cactus buds melody stooped and got a grip on the gun arm with both hands his head canted to bounce off a possible crusher from the strangers left the arm was tense and ridged made of wagon tires or something melody pretended to help the other up half hauling him to his feet but keeping him off balance and he began to talk as fast as he could which was a kind of a loping drawl well now melody said sure too bad how come that your toot foot slip you reckon he hoped afterward that he had sounded gruff and hard but he remembered pretty clearly that he had stumbled along in a sort of a thin bleat TO BE CONTINUED |