Kill Crazy, page 1
Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
KILL CRAZY
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1957 by Gil Brewer.
Originally published in Posse, April 1957.
Also published as Crazy Kill.
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com
KILL CRAZY
Crattock strained against the ropes binding his wrists behind the chair. He cursed his brother, who breathed harshly as he lashed Crattock’s legs to the chair, knotting the biting hemp.
“I won’t stay tied forever, Mel,” Crattock said, “I’ll kill you for this.”
Mel Crattock straightened, chuckled. He was tall, lean, in black shirt and jeans, and his eyes crinkled, “Sure, Tom,” he said. “Sure, sure, sure.” Grabbing the back of the chair, he dragged it closer to the scald of shimmering heat from the pot-bellied stove. Tom Crattock felt his skin curl.
“Be sure you’re warm while you’re doing all these things,” the other said. He leaned close, breathing a fog of raw whisky, his eyes laughing but mean. “I got the money from the bank, and I killed two tellers.” He paused. “It wasn’t enough, man. I knew Pa would send the cattle money home before he came back himself. I got that, and it’ll do.”
“You bastard.”
“Sure, sure, sure. Now, listen. You try coming after me, you ever get loose, I’ll shoot your head off. What the hell I want to stick around here for? Live like the old man, half starving, waiting thirty years to make a pile. Well, I got the pile. The old man won’t need it. He’ll scrape by on beans. And you don’t know no better.” He straightened, hitched at the two guns holstered low on his thighs, and chuckled. “I’m taking Grace with me, Tom.”
Crattock said nothing. He sat quietly, waiting. There was nothing he could do now. Taking Grace with him?
“She’s right outside the door,” Mel said. “She’s waiting with the horses, ready to ride. With me. She’s in love with me. She’s been feeding you slush, Fella. And you been eating heavy. She wants fun—she wants to live.”
“I’ll find you,” Crattock said.
“Adios.”
Mel Crattock walked to the door, tipped his low-crowned black hat, grabbed a sheepskin off the hook, and left.
He sat there in the baking heat from the stove and heard her laugh outside, and the sound of their voices trailed high on the autumn winds. He heard his brother speak. He heard the creak of leather, and the scattering shuffle of the horses’ hoofs beating out the yard and down the road.
He struggled with the bonds, trying not to think, with this thing burning inside him, knowing he would find his brother, and kill him.
It had all happened fast. Last night he had asked Grace to marry him, and she’d said, “Yes.” Tonight, it was all changed. Mel had come in just at supper, pulled his gun, and told him the story of how he yearned for fun in life.
Knowing Grace had been laughing at him, waiting for Mel to do this thing, planning to go with him, lying about her love, tore at his heart. The very thought of it sent him crazy inside.
He gave a violent lunge and tipped over the chair. He crashed to the floor, his head a scant inch under the bottom of the seething stove. Coals hissed inside. The heat was a choking, solid mass that thrust down upon him. The air was bad. He couldn’t breathe right. He kicked and fought with the chair, but each movement only seemed to drive him further under the stove, his head entirely under now.
He calmed.
Outside the early autumn blew.
Then he knew he had to get free. With any kind of a head start, trailing would be pretty hard, especially since they’d left at night. The possibility of an early snow struck him.
He jerked harshly, got his head free from the blazing confines above him. It was worse. The cherried sides of the stove seemed to gust and drip and spew a baking, oven-like heat that he’d never before experienced.
He would find him and kill him.
He thought of the old man coming home to this, after nearly thirty years trying to make enough to quit on. The herd had sold for a high price. And his brother had that price in his saddle-bags.
Mel had done a good job with the rope.
He struggled fiercely, trying to break the chair itself. The chair was strong. He lay there, remembering the way her lips had been last night, the urgent needs of her fine body.
He cursed, raging now.
He fought the chair across the room, until he was on the brink of the stairs leading down into the kitchen. It was dark down there. The only light was a lamp in the living room. The stairs were steep, eight long steps down.
Abruptly, he lunged with his weight, and hurtled bounding down the stairs. He felt the chair give and crack. Sharp pains reamed his back. He sprawled in a clatter of smashed rungs, and trailing rope across the kitchen floor.
He came to his feet, yanking at the ropes. He got his wrists free, took a running step, and fell again. Painstakingly he freed the knots around his ankles, then stood up, and leaped up the stairs into the front room again. He strapped on his guns, standing there, a little taller, a bit heavier than his brother, wearing worn blue jeans and a homespun shirt. He stormed toward the barn.
With the black half-saddled, he realized he was bleeding. He checked his side under his shirt, and saw where a sharp broad splinter from the chair had gouged him. He disregarded it, led the horse outside, mounted and rode in a hard clatter to the front of the house.
Moonlight sprayed across the yard. Damp dust gouted under the horses hoofs. He checked fast toward the gate entrance, then on the road, and caught the deep shoe-markings, headed Northwest, along the dusty shoulder.
He spurred the black, his breath burning in his throat. He would get them—he had to.
The old man would return dreaming his dreams of peace. He would find a cold, wind-blown house, his lands cleared of cattle, robbed of a life’s work, cleaned out, ruined by his own son.
Mel had been the favorite.
He had no idea where Mel would head. He knew Grace and his brother were both fine riders. They had the dun stallion, and probably Grace’s roan. Both fast horses.
Morning found Indian summer lighting a slow breeze across the desert. He had traveled hard all night. The horse was tired. They were both hungry. Crattock knew he had to find water.
If the wind increased, he’d lose their trail.
They had ridden fast. Too fast. Twice he had lost them in the darkness, and he’d cursed the world. He kept moving, and at daybreak, he found himself crossing their trail.
They were headed south now. He knew where.
Mexico.
They were cutting a corner off the desert, and he knew that noon would find him among the foothills where the trailing would be hard, sign diminished perhaps to nothing more than bruised grass.
The heat was rough. He tied his jacket behind him, and drove the horse hard.
It was past noon when he reached the foothills of the mountains. Mel knew this country, but the man couldn’t have realized what he’d be taking Grace through if winter set in early. It could. If often did.
Even the lower pass would be a snow slotted fury. He wondered how much grub they had packed. He wondered what Grace was thinking.
Hate grew, festering in his heart.
Perhaps it was only intuition, maybe nothing more than an old habit. In any event, Crattock reined in atop the brow of a slope, and looked back.
He saw them.
He knew it was a posse, without being told.
It struck him gently at first. Then harshly.
He would be labeled right in with his brother. Those men driving across the desert, following the trail of three horses, would think the three had gone together.
Murder ripe. He knew those men. They wouldn’t ask questions. They wouldn’t shoot, unless they were forced to. They’d hang Mel and himself to the nearest high tree, and maybe even the girl, though he doubted that.
Grace would be hauled back to Pineville, and jailed.
He spurred his mount over the slope, then looked back again.
Must have been close to a dozen riders. But back—far back. Just entering the desert. Little more than a finger of dust on the far horizon. Even at a back-breaking run, they wouldn’t reach the foothills before high midnight.
How could he explain this to them?
He couldn’t. It would be his hide, no matter what. If he reached Mel and killed him—and he meant to—they’d only say the two had fought over the money and the girl.
It would be true.
Turning the foam-mouthed black, he lashed it against the lowering slope, eyeing the trail.
There wasn’t much time. Not once the posse reached the hills. It would be slow going for all concerned.
Those men back there would be as mad as he was. Their savings were in Mel’s saddle-bags. Two townsmen had been murdered. Wives mourned. Children wept. There would be no mercy. The country was triggered to no tenderness, and when something like this happened, all the blood-lust of pioneered brutality lept in swinging.
He spotted where their horses had followed a stream bed, running narrow, the shale splattered and smashed, mud still drying in the sun. Apparently they had paused someplace back there, where he’d missed the spore.
He watered his mount, trying to think of a way to edge them off.
He let his gaze travel the ridge of undulant hills, the canyons, and rocky chases. He lifted his eyes to the far mountains limned against the pinkening sky. He saw the way Mel woul
He took the chance, reined off, and cut sharply up over the nearest hill, then followed the sheer cliffside of rattling stone to a copse of pine. Once there, he took a straight bee-line toward the lower mouth of the pass.
If he had reckoned wrong, he would lose them.
Right, he would salvage miles and hours.
“Tom?”
He drew the horse in so harshly, the animal slawed the brisk air. It was Grace. She was dismounted, sitting on a boulder near a moss-covered pine. Her golden hair fed on the sun, and her ripe-lipped mouth wasn’t smiling. She wore a tight-clinging fawn-colored skirt, riding boots, and a much too tight shirt, drenched across the thrust of her breasts.
He approached her, riding slowly, gun drawn.
“Put it away,” she said.
“Where is he?”
She shrugged. “How the hell do I know?”
“Don’t lie to me, Grace.”
“You guys are both nuts. I never saw anything like it. You’re born under a loon moon.”
He vaulted off the horse, dropped the reins, and walked toward her, gun still in his fist. The way she talked, and what she had done, made him want to kill her. Only the way she looked stopped him. He could never harm her. He loved her, and that would never change, no matter what she did. He knew this now.
“Left me here,” she said. “My horse threw a shoe. Said he couldn’t wait.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Come down off your righteous peak,” she said. “You talk like a fool. Blame me for what you want, but talk straight. You’re no better than he is. What would you give me? A log-up in Pineville. How many years waiting while you mend fence, and drive cattle, and build woodsheds, and brag, and finally get drunk on Saturday nights? And first off, a lot of bed-time, and then not even that, what with maybe a dozen snarling brats, and me with another hanging from the baker.”
“You talk crazy, Grace.”
“Well, you’re the crazy one. You and him.” She stood up, feeding her tight shirt into the binding waist of her skirt, her breasts peaking, the lush mounds revealed in the open slash at the throat. Her hips swelled against the fawn cloth of the skirt, and when she moved, she smiled. “What the hell?” she said. “I took the chance, and lost out. What a line he fed me. All that money, too. And all I had to do for it was make him happy.”
“I love you, Grace.”
She threw her golden head back and laughed at him. He holstered his gun, stepped close to her, and took her in his arms.
“Let loose, you fool!”
He held her close, working for her lips, trying to bring her to him again. He felt the stirring shape of her as she whirled in his arms and slapped his face.
She whispered, panting to him. “Go and find him and kill him, like he said you wanted to. Let’s see you do that. Go ahead. I’d like to see that.”
He watched her.
“I would have killed him,” she said softly. “He took the guns. He knocked me down. My horse is out there someplace, wandering. He left me here. You’re both crazy, I tell you!”
He grabbed her arm. She writhed against him. He held her face and kissed her, holding her struggling body. She fought hard. They tripped and sprawled onto the sunny earth.
“Rape me,” she said. “That’s the way. He did, before he left me here.”
He stood up. He took her by the arm, drew her to her feet, and pulled her with him to his horse. He swung into the saddle, still holding to her wrists. “Get up behind me,” he said.
She cursed him.
“There’s a posse coming,” he told her. “You rather have that?”
She swung onto the horse’s rump, and he felt her arms circle his waist, looked down at her hands.
“I’m just holding on,” she said. “The hell with you. I was going to be a rich lady. Get that?”
He spurred toward the pass, not even thinking now, just feeling all the bitterness inside him like a branding iron burning up through his guts.
She didn’t speak. He didn’t either. They rode across the afternoon.
He wondered, as he rode, what had changed her? He knew she hadn’t always been like this. Yet, who was to say what wiles a woman schemed.
Here she was, her arms around him. He could feel the crowding and pleasurable pressure of her body, feeding against him at every step of the horse. He sensed her warmth, and the touch of her thighs. He knew she was thinking, though she did not speak.
What of?
Of them? Of herself? Of what she wanted so fiercely that she could throw away everything she had once dreamed of? Because he knew she had once been true.
This country was no place for a woman.
It wouldn’t be for another century, maybe.
Yet, there had to be women.
He loved her, and he did want her—badly. But this did not diminish the raw hate that cut inside him, driving him toward thoughts of seeing his own brother across the sights of any gun.
“He’ll kill you, you find him,” she said. “You should know that. You’re a good farmer, maybe. Maybe even someday make a fair cattleman—but you’re no man with that gun you carry, Tom—he said—”
“He says a lot of things.”
She pulled up close to him, raising her lips to his ear. “How’d you like to get down, right now?”
He said nothing.
She moved her hands up, and unbuttoned his shirt, and put her warm palms on his chest. She urged herself against him, breathing against the back of his neck, talking into his ear.
He turned, taking her harshly in his arms, and they sprawled off the horse onto the ground, striking heavily. She moaned, then looked at him.
“I’m not hurt,” she said. “Yet. See you can hurt me, Tom.”
He cut her words off with his mouth, holding her against the ground.
He stiffened, hearing the steps above the soft neighing of the black. He jerked around, clawing for his gun.
“Just keep your hands steady,” Mel said.
Grace let go a short laugh, then sat there watching them.
Tom came to his feet, hands half-raised, watching his brother step from behind the shielding trunk of an oak. Mel was breathing heavily. Sweat coursed across his face. He had lost his hat, and his hair was matted down one side. His clothes were mud and dust-splattered, and he gripped the carbine tightly.
“Get his gun, honey,” Mel said.
Tom reached for his gun, but her hands snaked them both from their holsters. He heard her soft laugh again.
“I saw you back here,” Mel said. “From ’way up yonder. Reckoned the best thing to do was come back and take things in my own hands. Just so I’d be sure of things for the future. Should’ve done it before.”
“You left me to rot,” the girl said.
“Now, child.”
“Where’s your horse?” she asked.
“Yonder, to a stump. An’ the money’s safe as ever was, honey.” His voice was gentle now. The shadows of the afternoon began to lengthen.
“I’m going to kill you,” Mel said, speaking to his brother. “Because I know you’d of killed me.”
Tom leaped for the other’s legs, and he heard the girl’s laughter. Mel struck him a crushing blow with the barrel of the carbine, and he flattened against the earth.
“Posse’s on your backtrail,” Tom said.
“Sure,” Mel said. “And I’m going to tell them I run you down, ’cause you took Grace off, and robbed your old man and killed them two fellers at the bank. So I cut you down for that. Hard thing to do, being as you’re my brother. But, I’ll have done it.”
“What about the money?”
Mel shrugged. “That’s easy,” he said. “I’m going to hide it, after I shoot you. Then I’ll tell them I thought you had it with you, but that it must be you cached it somewheres.”
Tom slowly came to his feet, edging backwards.
Mel turned partly toward the girl. “I don’t exactly know what to do with you, child,” he said.
She began to laugh, standing there.
“I know what to do with you,” she said, and shot him three times in the chest.
“Girl!” he said. He fell, crawled a foot, and died.
Tom moved toward her.
She continued to laugh. “Crazy,” she said. “Both of you are crazy as hell!”
She shot him four times. One of the slugs took him in the shoulder, spinning him around, knocking him to the ground. He wormed his way toward her, feel the lead nestling in his gut, not believing any of it, knowing he was going to die, that she had done this.
