A Century of Great Western Stories Read online

  Ches Lane had no such inhibitions. For the first time, he realized how hungry he was. After the half-cooked meat of lonely, trailside fires, this was tender and flavored. Hot biscuits, desert honey … suddenly he looked up, embarrassed at his appetite.

  “You were really hungry,” she said.

  “Man can’t fix much, out on the trail.”

  Later, after he’d got his bedroll from his saddle and unrolled it on the hay in the barn, he walked back to the house and sat on the lowest step. The sun was gone, and they watched the cliffs stretch their red shadows across the valley. A quail called plaintively, a mellow sound of twilight.

  “You needn’t worry about Cochise,” she said. “He’ll soon be crossing into Mexico.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about Cochise.”

  That left her with nothing to say, and she listened again to the quail and watched a lone bright star in the sky.

  “A man could get to like it here,” he said quietly.

  John M. Cunningham’s most famous story is “The Tin Star,” which moviegoers around the globe know better as the legendary Western film High Noon. As with most of his stories and novels, “The Tin Star” takes a familiar situation and gives it new life. Cunningham has always been careful to give us real people and carefully drawn backdrops for his stories. He has a reporter’s eye for the one right detail that brings a setting to vivid life. His novels include Warhorse and Starfall.

  The Tin Star

  John M. Cunningham

  Sheriff Doane looked at his deputy and then down at the daisies he had picked for his weekly visit, lying wrapped in newspaper on his desk. “I’m sorry to hear you say that, Toby. I was kind of counting on you to take over after me.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Doane,” Toby said, looking through the front window. “I’m not afraid. I’ll see you through this shindig. I’m not afraid of Jordan or young Jordan or any of them. But I want to tell you now. I’ll wait till Jordan’s train gets in. I’ll wait to see what he does. I’ll see you through whatever happens. After that, I’m quitting.”

  Doane began kneading his knuckles, his face set against the pain as he gently rubbed the arthritic, twisted bones. He said nothing.

  Toby looked around, his brown eyes troubled in his round, olive-skinned face. “What’s the use of holding down a job like this? Look at you. What’d you ever get out of it? Enough to keep you eating. And what for?”

  Doane stopped kneading his arthritic hands and looked down at the star on his shirtfront. He looked from it to the smaller one on Toby’s. “That’s right,” he said. “They don’t even hang the right ones. You risk your life catching somebody, and the damned juries let them go so they can come back and shoot at you. You’re poor all your life, you got to do everything twice, and in the end they pay you off in lead. So you can wear a tin star. It’s a job for a dog, son.”

  Toby’s voice did not rise, but his eyes were a little wider in his round, gentle face. “Then why keep on with it? What for? I’ve been working for you for two years—trying to keep the law so sharp-nosed money-grabbers can get rich, while we piddle along on what the county pays us. I’ve seen men I used to bust playing marbles going up and down this street on four-hundred-dollar saddles, and what’ve I got? Nothing. Not a damned thing.”

  There was a little smile around Doane’s wide mouth. “That’s right, Toby. It’s all for free. The headaches, the bullets and everything, all for free. I found that out long ago.” The mock-grave look vanished. “But somebody’s got to be around and take care of things.” He looked out of the window at the people walking up and down the crazy boardwalks. “I like it free. You know what I mean? You don’t get a thing for it. You’ve got to risk everything. And you’re free inside. Like the larks. You know the larks? How they get up in the sky and sing when they want to? A pretty bird. A very pretty bird. That’s the way I like to feel inside.”

  Toby looked at him without expression. “That’s the way you look at it. I don’t see it. I’ve only got one life. You talk about doing it all for nothing, and that gives you something. What? What’ve you got now, waiting for Jordan to come?”

  “I don’t know yet. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  Toby turned back to the window. “All right, but I’m through. I don’t see any sense in risking your neck for nothing.”

  “Maybe you will,” Doane said, beginning to work on his hands again.

  “Here comes Mettrick. I guess he don’t give up so easy. He’s still got that resignation in his hand.”

  “I guess he doesn’t,” Doane said. “But I’m through listening. Has young Jordan come out of the saloon yet?”

  “No,” Toby said, and stepped aside as the door opened. Mettrick came in.

  “Now listen, Doane,” he burst out, “for the last time—”

  “Shut up, Percy,” Doane said. “Sit down over there and shut up or get out.”

  The flare went out of the mayor’s eyes. “Doane,” he moaned, “you are the biggest—”

  “Shut up,” Doane said. “Toby, has he come out yet?”

  Toby stood a little back from the window, where the slant of golden sunlight, swarming with dust, wouldn’t strike his white shirt.

  “Yes. He’s got a chair. He’s looking this way, Doane. He’s still drinking. I can see a bottle on the porch beside him.”

  “I expected that. Not that it makes much difference.” He looked down at the bunch of flowers.

  Mettrick, in the straight chair against the wall, looked up at him, his black eyes scornful in his long, hopeless face.

  “Don’t make much difference? Who the hell do you think you are, Doane? God? It just means he’ll start the trouble without waiting for his stinking brother, that’s all it means.” His hand was shaking, and the white paper hanging listlessly from his fingers fluttered slightly. He looked at it angrily and stuck it out at Doane. “I gave it to you. I did the best I could. Whatever happens, don’t be blaming me, Doane. I gave you a chance to resign, and if—” He left off and sat looking at the paper in his hand as though it were a dead puppy of his that somebody had run a buggy over.

  Doane, standing with the square, almost chisel-pointed tips of his fingers just touching the flowers, turned slowly, with the care of movement he would have used around a crazy horse. “I know you’re my friend, Percy. Just take it easy, Percy. If I don’t resign, it’s not because I’m ungrateful.”

  “Here comes Staley with the news,” Toby said from the window. “He looks like somebody just shot his grandma.”

  Percy Mettrick laid his paper on the desk and began smoothing it out ruefully. “It’s not as though it were dishonorable, Doane. You should have quit two years ago, when your hands went bad. It’s not dishonorable now. You’ve still got time.”

  He glanced up at the wall clock. “It’s only three. You’ve got an hour before he gets in … you can take your horse …” As Mettrick talked to himself, Doane looking slantwise at him with his little smile, and he grew more cheerful. “Here.” He jabbed a pen out of Doane. “Sign it and get out of town.”

  The smile left Doane’s mouth. “This is an elective office. I don’t have to take orders, even if you are mayor.” His face softened. “It’s simpler than you think Percy. When they didn’t hang Jordan, I knew this day would come. Five years ago, I knew it was coming, when they gave him that silly sentence. I’ve been waiting for it.”

  “But not to commit suicide,” Mettrick said in a low voice, his eyes going down to Doane’s gouty hands. Doane’s knobby, twisted fingers closed slowly into fists, as though hiding themselves; his face flushed slightly.

  “I may be slow, but I can still shoot.”

  The mayor stood up and went slowly over to the door.

  “Good-bye, Doane.”

  “I’m not saying good-bye, Percy. Not yet.”

  “Good-bye,” Mettrick repeated, and went out of the door.

  Toby turned from the window. His face was tight around the mouth. “You should have resign
ed like he said, Doane. You ain’t a match for one of them alone, much less two of them together. And if Pierce and Frank Colby come, too, like they was all together before—”

  “Shut up, shut up,” Doane said. “For God’s sake, shut up.” He sat down suddenly at the desk and covered his face with his hands. “Maybe the pen changes a man.” He was sitting stiff, hardly breathing.

  “What are you going to do, Doane?”

  “Nothing. I can’t do anything until they start something. I can’t do a thing… . Maybe the pen changes a man. Sometimes it does. I remember—”

  “Listen, Doane.” Toby said, his voice, for the first time, urgent. “It maybe changes some men, but not Jordan. It’s already planned, what they’re going to do. Why else would young Jordan be over there, watching? He’s come three hundred miles for this.”

  “I’ve seen men go in the pen hard as rock and come out peaceful and settle down. Maybe Jordan—”

  Toby’s face relapsed into dullness. He turned back to the window listlessly. Doane’s hands dropped.

  “You don’t think that’s true, Toby?”

  Toby sighed. “You know it isn’t so, Doane. He swore he’d get you. That’s the truth.”

  Doane’s hands came up again in front of his face, but this time he was looking at them, his big gray eyes going quickly from one to the other, almost as though he were afraid of them. He curled his fingers slowly into fists, and uncurled them slowly, pulling with all his might, yet slowly. A thin sheen on his face reflected the sunlight from the floor. He got up.

  “Is he still there?” he asked.

  “Sure, he’s still there.”

  “Maybe he’ll get drunk. Dead drunk.”

  “You can’t get a Jordan that drunk.”

  Doane stood with feet apart, looking at the floor, staring back and forth along one of the cracks. “Why didn’t they hang him?” he asked the silence in the room.

  “Why didn’t they hang him?” he repeated, his voice louder.

  Toby kept his post by the window, not moving a muscle in his face, staring out at the man across the street. “I don’t know,” he said. “For murder, they should. I guess they should’ve, but they didn’t.”

  Doane’s eyes came again to the flowers, and some of the strain went out of his face. Then suddenly his eyes closed and he gave a long sigh, and then, luxuriously stretched his arms. “Good God!” he said, his voice easy again. “It’s funny how it comes over you like that.” He shook his head violently. “I don’t know why it should. It’s not the first time. But it always does.”

  “I know,” Toby said.

  “It just builds up and then it busts.”

  “I know.”

  “The train may be late.”

  Toby said nothing.

  “You never can tell,” Doane said, buckling on his gun belt. “Things may have changed with Jordan. Maybe won’t even come. You never can tell. I’m going up to the cemetery as soon as we hear from Staley.”

  “I wouldn’t. You’d just tempt young Jordan to start something.”

  “I’ve been going up there every Sunday since she died.”

  “We’d best both just stay in here. Let them make the first move.”

  Feet sounded on the steps outside and Doane stopped breathing for a second. Staley came in, his face pinched, tight and dead, his eyes on the floor. Duane looked him over carefully.

  “Is it on time?” he asked steadily.

  Staley looked up, his faded blue eyes distant, pointed somewhere over Doane’s head. “Mr. Doane, you ain’t handled this thing right. You should’ve drove young Jordan out of town.” His hand went to his chest and he took off his deputy’s badge.

  “What are you doing?” Doane asked sharply.

  “If you’d of handled it right, we could have beat this,” Staley said, his voice louder.

  “You know nobody’s done nothing yet,” Toby said softly, his gentle brown eyes on Staley. “There’s nothing we can do until they start something.”

  “I’m quitting, Mr. Doane,” Staley said. He looked around for someplace to put the star. He started for the desk, hesitated, and then awkwardly, with a peculiar diffidence, laid the star gently on the windowsill.

  Doane’s jaw began to jut a little. “You still haven’t answered my question. Is the train on time?”

  “Yes. Four-ten. Just on time.” Staley stood staring at Doane, then swallowed. “I saw Frank Colby. He was in the livery putting up his horse. He’d had a long ride on that horse. I asked him what he was doing in town—friendly like.” He ducked his head and swallowed again. “He didn’t know I was a deputy, I had my star off.” He looked up again. “They’re all meeting together, Mr. Doane. Young Jordan, and Colby and Pierce. They’re going to meet Jordan when he comes in. The same four.”

  “So you’re quitting,” Doane said.

  “Yes, sir. It ain’t been handled right.”

  Toby stood looking at him, his gentle eyes dull. “Get out,” he said, his voice low and tight.

  Staley looked at him, nodded, and tried to smile, which was too weak to last. “Sure.”

  Toby took a step toward him. Staley’s eyes were wild as he stood against the door. He tried to back out of Toby’s way.

  “Get out,” Toby said again, and his small brown fist flashed out. Staley stepped backward and fell down the steps in a sprawling heap, scrambled to his feet and hobbled away. Toby closed the door slowly. He stood rubbing his knuckles, his face red and tight.

  “That didn’t do any good,” Doane said softly.

  Toby turned on him. “It couldn’t do no harm,” he said acidly, throwing the words into Doane’s face.

  “You want to quit, too?” Doane asked, smiling.

  “Sure, I want to quit,” Toby shot out. “Sure. Go on to your blasted cemetery, go on with your flowers, old man—” He sat down suddenly on the straight chair. “Put a flower up there for me, too.”

  Doane went to the door. “Put some water on the heater, Toby. Set out the liniment that the vet gave me. I’ll try it again when I get back. It might do some good yet.”

  He let himself out and stood in the sunlight on the porch, the flowers drooping in his hand, looking against the sun across the street at the dim figure under the shaded porch.

  Then he saw the two other shapes hunkered against the front of the saloon in the shade of the porch, one on each side of young Jordan, who sat tilted back in a chair. Colby and Pierce. The glare of the sun beat back from the blinding white dust and fought shimmering in the air.

  Doane pulled the brim of his hat farther down in front and stepped slowly down to the board sidewalk, observing carefully from squinted eyes, and just as carefully avoiding any pause which might be interpreted as a challenge.

  Young Jordan had the bottle to his lips as Doane came out. He held it there for a moment motionless, and then, as Doane reached the walk, he passed the bottle slowly sideward to Colby and leaned forward, away from the wall, so that the chair came down softly. He sat there, leaning forward slightly, watching while Doane untied his horse. As Doane mounted, Jordan got up. Colby’s hand grabbed one of his arms. He shook it off and untied his own horse from the rail.

  Doane’s mouth tightened and his eyes looked a little sad. He turned his horse, and holding the flowers so the jog would not rattle off the petals, headed up the street, looking straight ahead.

  The hoofs of his horse made soft, almost inaudible little plops in the deep dust. Behind him he heard a sudden stamping of hooves and then the harsh splitting and crashing of wood. He looked back. Young Jordan’s horse was up on the sidewalk, wild-eyed and snorting, with young Jordan leaning forward half out of the saddle, pushing himself back from the horse’s neck, back off the horn into the saddle, swaying insecurely. And as Jordan managed the horse off the sidewalk Doane looked quickly forward again, his eyes fixed distantly ahead and blank.

  He passed men he knew, and out of the corner of his eye he saw their glances slowly follow him, calm, or gloomy, or
shrewdly speculative. As he passed, he knew their glances were shifting to the man whose horse was softly coming behind him. It was like that all the way up the street. The flowers were drooping markedly now.

  The town petered out with a few Mexican shacks, the road dwindled to broad ruts, and the sage was suddenly on all sides of him, stretching away toward the heat-obscured mountains like an infinite multitude of gray-green sheep. He turned off the road and began the slight ascent up the little hill whereon the cemetery lay. Grasshoppers shrilled invisibly in the sparse, dried grass along the track, silent as he came by, and shrilled again as he passed, only to become silent again as the other rider came.

  He swung off at the rusty wire Missouri gate and slipped the loop from the post, and the shadow of the other slid tall across his path and stopped. Doane licked his lips quickly and looked up, his grasp tightening on the now sweat-wilted newspaper. Young Jordan was sitting his horse, open-mouthed, leaning forward with his hands on the pommel to support himself, his eyes vague and dull. His lips were wet and red, and hung in a slight smile.

  A lark made the air sweet over to the left, and then Doane saw it, rising into the air. It hung in the sun, over the cemetery. Moving steadily and avoiding all suddenness, Doane hung his reins over the post.

  “You don’t like me, do you?” young Jordan said. A long thread of saliva descended from the corner of his slackly smiling mouth.

  Doane’s face set into a sort of blank preparedness. He turned and started slowly through the gate, his shoulders hunched up and pulled backward.

  Jordan got down from the saddle, and Doane turned toward him slowly. Jordan came forward straight enough, with his feet apart, braced against staggering. He stopped three feet from Doane, bent forward, his mouth slightly open.

  “You got any objections to me being in town?”

  “No,” Doane said, and stood still.

  Jordan thought that over, his eyes drifting idly sideways for a moment. Then they came back, to a finer focus this time, and he said, “Why not?” hunching forward again, his hands open and held away from the holsters at his hips.