15 Western Short Stories — page 46: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

46 ain’t quite as much horse as the other two. Suppose we say eighty.” Larribee’s hand moved smoothiy and with great speed to the .45 and it came out. Without seeming to aim, he looked sidewise and pulled the trigger—and the upper segment of the insolent groundhog disappeared. Larribee calmly blew the smoke away from the end of the gun barrel and holstered the weapon. “Suppose,” said Larribee, “we say forty for the sorrel crowbait...and suppose you get to hellangone up the imei” The heavyset man would have looked pretty near natural guzzling swill at a hog-trough. He blinked, turned his head and stared at the re- mains of the groundhog. The varmint hadn’t even looked surprised, because by the time it should have looked sur- prised it didn’t have anything left to look surprised with. The groundhog was now a perfect philosopher, inca- pable of contemplating either good or evil. The man gulped several times, turned his countenance back to Larrt- bee and said: “Well now. Forty sounds about right, mister. Anyway, the critter’d just eat hay. Hay’s short this year. So forty’s about right.” He looked hope- ful. “Cash money?” “Cash money,” lLarribee — stated. “Twenty bucks’d be too much...but walkin’ in high heels upsets a man’s calm thoughts.” He took the currency from the left pocket of his tan shirt, keeping his right hand free. Putting the saddle onto the jughead sorrel wasn’t easy. The heavy man snaffled the skittery sorrel close, and presently Larribee swung aboard af- ter tying his effects and chattels. He inquired: “By the way—what’s your name?” “Dave Upton,” he said, without hes- itation. “Why?” “Just wondered.” Well, hell, it fit- ted the DU brand on the left hip of each horse. “See you in jail some- time.” “Adios.” The horse peddler headed up the trail hastily. Larribee gazed after him for awhile. Under the face of anything dwell the facts—and the facts may not look like the face. WESTERN SHORT STORIES Ts WAS the first ringtail native he’d come acruss. All the others had been generous with everything except a job. It was a dry, bad sum- mer. They were firin’, not hirin’. Lar- ribee wasn’t exactly worried, being a philosopher, but he had less than a hundred dollars left. That was what came of getting mushy about a ranch- er’s daughter and buying her expen- Sive presents off and on for two years ...and having her decide it'd be smarter to marry the town banker's son. Now, a day later and deep in foot- hill country, Larribee in modified sto- icism cursed his mount and cursed himself for buying the mount. This roman-nosed, white-eyed jughead of a sorrel had less brains than a jack- rabbit. It shied like a sidewinder eve- ry time its eyes, the windows of its feeble mind, detected any movement on either side of the trail. And every time it shied, its motion jarred Larri- bee’s teeth together—whereupon a jagged flash of pain would shoot through the lower molar which had begun to act up last night. That tooth ached worse than his sagebrush-Ro- meo heart had ached when he left Wyoming two weeks ago. I lost my girl and my black horse. The sun bakes me dry and what I’ve handy to eat wouldn’t fill a chip- munk. And now my tooth aches. Steady, man, he decided. No matter how rough things get they can always get rougher...and when they get rougher, pretend that you’re tougher. If it fools yourself maybe it'll fool an evil destiny too. The trail went up an incline and dipped suddenly into a fairly broad valley—and the valley was green! Larribee blinked. Grandpa was wrong. The grass didn’t just Jook greener over the hill—it was greener. “T told you, man,” Larribee murmured. “Happiness ahead.” After all the days of brownness, suddenly this. It meant water. It meant a big spring, or, more likely, an artesian well. Even more than that, it meant habitation. It meant food. Maybe it meant someone who could yank that blamed tooth. He prodded the sorrel into a slow lope. Somewhere down among those trees there had to be a house and hu- COMmiclboo SS CO