Sonny
By Murray Leinster
Author of “Fog,” “Sagebrush Slings The Bull,” etc.
Gunpowder was a specialist in concentrated helliousness, the type of outlaw horse that could buck and whirl on a quarter—and have twenty cents left over. In the long search which lay ahead of him, Sonny Holman needed just such a fiery mount; so in payment he embarked upon a dangerous duty for the sheriff of Helada.
Sonny Holman was worth a thousand dollars to anybody in Helada on the morning he rode in, whether they got him dead or alive. But nobody seemed to know it. He thought he was ahead of the alarm for him, so rode on to where he saw something like a crowd. There was a black and white horse fighting like a fiend to dismount his rider, in the center. Sonny looked at the horse and stiffened. Then he rolled a cigarette and watched the battle. All the town was watching, apparently. The fight was taking place in the small corral attached to the livery stable, and there were quite forty citizens leaning against the corral rails or perched on other points of vantage.
The man on the horse was beginning to weaken before Sonny rode up. As Sonny struck a match to light his cigarette, daylight showed underneath the rider. When Sonny had taken his first puff, the rider grabbed wildly for the horn of his saddle. When Sonny drew his first inhalation the rider lost a stirrup. Sonny’s discarded match stick and the rider of the black and white horse struck the ground at the same time.
A yell went up from the onlookers. The black and white horse whirled and reared up, to come down with sharp fore hoofs upon the fallen man. A lariat fell across its head, and the man on the ground rolled out of the way at the same instant. A moment later the horse was being dragged across the corral, fighting madly every foot of the way, and the man on the ground had struggled to his feet and was limping to the gate.
“That’s a right nice hawss,” observed Sonny.
“Nice hawss?” queried a citizen by the corral gate. “He’s hell on wheels, with all kinds of equipment. Nobody ain’t rid him yet.”
“Hm,” said Sonny reflectively. “What might you folks call him?”
The citizen spat. “His official name,” he stated, “is Gunpowder; but I’m inclined to think that Buck, yonder, is callin’ him somethin’ different.”
The limping man came out of the gate rubbing his shoulder. Sonny surveyed him thoughtfully. “That your hawss, brother?” he asked.
“Not much,” rasped Buck. “If I owned the devil, I’d fill him so full of lead he’d have t’ use a block an’ tackle to hoist his tail for a fly flap!”
“I’d admire,” said Sonny tentatively, “to try forkin’ that animal. He hadda trick or two I ain’t seen before. There was a kinda shimishewabble in the middle of a steamboat turn that looked right intricate.”
“Go ahead,” snapped Buck. “I bet yuh regular money y’ don’t stay on as long as I did.”
“No,” said Sonny sorrowfully, “I ain’t got any widow for you t’ collect from if I was to lose.”
He slipped off his own pony and went over to the horse. He seemed wholly at ease, but he was acutely aware of each glance that was bent upon him. When one is badly wanted, even if one is ahead of the news, caution is desirable—especially when honor likewise is at stake. But nobody showed anything but curiosity. Gunpowder had been blindfolded, now, to be edged into the stable. Sonny stopped the two men who were handling him. No more than half a dozen words and he was granted a free ride, with smothered grins at his apparent confidence.
“Want y’ own saddle?” queried one of the men at Gunpowder’s head.
“That one’s on tight,” said Sonny. “Let ’er go!”
The men jumped back. Nothing happened. Sonny sat upon the most placid of horses, one which gazed curiously around at the men watching it. Sonny puffed twice and then ran a caressing hand under its mane. “A li’l action, Gunpowder,” he suggested mildly.
* * * * *
Without warning, Gunpowder exploded. He bucked and at the same time spun around like a pinwheel. He made half a dozen monster leaps, landing stiff-legged from every jump. He whirled, and stopped short with a jerk. He plunged full speed for the opposite side of the corral, and five yards from the fence dug his hoofs into the ground and slid. His object was to shoot Sonny over his head either above or into the corral fence. He failed. Sonny stuck like a leech, and to add insult to injury, slapped Gunpowder’s flank with the palm of his hand.
Gunpowder shook himself, walked deliberately to the center of the corral again, and without warning became a veritable tornado. He bucked, he plunged, and in the middle of a plunge he bucked again. He fought like a demon, desperately, fiercely, infuriatedly. For a good three minutes not one of the onlookers saw Gunpowder as anything but a whirlwind of horse in the middle of a cloud of dust. Buck after buck, jumping with his back arched—everything in the line of plain and fancy devilishness that long experience could suggest were exhibited in quick succession.
And daylight had not yet appeared between Sonny and his saddle.
Gunpowder was panting, now. A very few minutes of such battling as he had been doing will wear out any horse. He began to gasp a little. Sonny touched him with the spur. Gunpowder seemed to go mad with rage and determination, bucking, plunging—everything the mind of a horse has yet conceived in the way of wickedness. Suddenly he plunged for the fence. Sonny lifted his right leg to avoid being scraped off, but instead the black and white horse flung himself down and rolled up flat to the fence. It was deliberate and it was devilish, an attempt to crush the man against fence or earth with Gunpowder’s full weight.
Sonny jumped just in time, but he had to make it across Gunpowder’s upturned belly to escape. He sprawled on the ground, and when he got up there was a nasty cut on his forehead from a plunging hoof.
“Hold on, there!” he snapped. Men were running with lariats, and one or two with poles. “I’m tendin’ to this here.”
As Gunpowder struggled to his feet again Sonny leaped upon him, and his face was no longer pleasant, but definitely grim and determined. Now he was not content to let Gunpowder wear himself out. He fought the animal with cold determination.
“Naughty li’l son of a gun,” he said grimly when the bucks had lost their first energy. “A li’l more action, Gunpowder.”
He touched his spurs in. The horse was galvanized into a fresh and frantic outburst. When he slackened Sonny spurred him again. And again and again he forced the wearying animal to battle until at last horseflesh could stand no more.
Gunpowder was defeated. He stood with hanging head, exhausted and beaten, and Sonny slipped rather stiffly from the saddle and went around to his head.
“Dawggone!” he said admiringly. “Gunpowder ain’t no name for you. You’re Dynamite from now on, an’ sayeth no man to the contrary. Who owns this critter? I’m aimin’ to buy him.”
There had been one man watching, standing apart from the others. He came forward now, and Sonny saw a bright metal star on his shirt. Sonny’s right hand fell inconspicuously to his side, hard by his six-gun. There was a thousand dollars reward for Sonny, and he meant to be careful. For the time it would take to locate a man he once foolishly had trusted, he intended to remain at large.
“I own him,” said the sheriff curtly. “Maybe we can make a deal.”
“How much?” asked Sonny. He watched alertly, without seeming to be on guard.
“The price is three hundred,” said the sheriff shortly, “but he ain’t for sale for cash. Can you shoot?”
“I’ve pulled a trigger now an’ then,” admitted Sonny.
The sheriff turned to regard the group, who had been watching the taming of Gunpowder. His eyes met emptiness. Every man had walked away. Several could be seen turning into the Jackrabbit Saloon.
The sheriff turned back with a grim smile.
“The law, you might say, ain’t especial popular right now in Helada,” he observed. “All my deputies got shot or run away. An’ I need one ’r two that can ride an’ shoot. Stick with me a month an’ if you ain’t perforated I’ll give you the hawss. I can’t ride him.”
Sonny, for whom a reward of a thousand dollars, dead or alive, had recently been posted; Sonny, who had ridden into this town liable to find his picture posted on the nearest fence, frowned thoughtfully. To occupy his hands he started to roll a cigarette. But it is not every wanted man who is offered a job enforcing the law. And besides, Gunpowder was a horse. A real horse, such as every man hopes to find and few men come across.
“You’ll probably be plugged inside of a week,” said the sheriff curtly, “but I c’n promise yuh some action. What say?”
Sonny licked his cigarette and nodded. Somewhere in this region there was a man who earnestly hoped not to meet Sonny. The latter approved of a chance to search—and likewise hide out from those who sought him—as a limb of the law.
“I’m on,” said Sonny. “Do I wear a badge?”
* * * * *
The sheriff tossed the makings across the desk to Sonny, and dropped a curtain made of flour bags across the window, which arrangement let light into the office but prevented anyone outside from looking in. It was a typical office for a Western sheriff. Posters pinned untidily on the walls, describing men wanted, a calendar or two, a heap of dusty documents on the desk, a .45-70 carbine in its saddle sheath in one corner, and two pairs of rusty handcuffs hung on a nail in the wall.