This story was first published in 1949 - 1950 under the name Jim Mayo. The story opens as Jim Gary, traveling solo westward for reasons not yet disclosed, encounters three men and joins them in taking shelter from an approaching thunderstorm. The sandy-haired man, apparently the leader, is Red Slagle; the big one is Tobe Langer, and the smaller one (and skilled cook) is Jeeter Dirksen. The presence of a shotgun - not normally carried by cowhands - makes Jim Gary uneasy.
The cattle all carry a fresh Double A brand, and are being driven towards the ranch of that name near Salt Creek. This, too, is odd: if the cattle are carrying the Double A brand, why are they being driven toward the place of their supposed provenance?
[SPOILERS FOLLOW]
(I could not immediately discover whether Salt Creek is a real place or not. If so, it would no doubt have been familiar to midcentury fans of the Western genre. If "half of Texas and all of New Mexico, or most of it" would lie behind Jim at the end of his westbound trip, then the location must be in southwestern New Mexico.)
A further ominous development occurs when Jim Gary, riding the second night watch (relieving Tobe Langer), spies a mysterious horseman, the stranger's face illuminated by a flash of lightning. When Jim relates this incident to the other men, they are clearly worried, though they won't say why.
(The thunderstorm, in addition to providing a general atmosphere of foreboding, serves to drive the characters together for shelter, and, through the lightning, to reveal what would otherwise have remained hidden.)
A flashback illuminates some of Jim Gary's own past. We learn that is riding west to meet his acquaintance Mart Ray at that same Double A Ranch, where Jim expects to find a job waiting for him. Mart had been a friend of Jim's father, Steve Gary, a well-known gunfighter. Mart Ray himself was also a gunfighter, with six kills "that Jim Gary knew". Mart's observation of Jim's character is that the apple seems to have fallen far from the tree, and that Jim - who readily admits to being conflict-averse - gives the appearance of being "a little bit yaller." (I love it that all the cowboys talk exactly like cowboys are supposed to talk.)
What we learn next about Jim - and what Mart doesn't know - is that shortly prior to the time of the story, Jim had found himself in a spot of trouble after dancing with a Mexican woman in a bar. (Those alluring, dangerous, foreign women again. Jim could have saved himself some trouble if he'd read his Proverbs.) This flirtation led to a gunfight with a Mexican man who came in second place in that contest, and was revealed to be the notorious Miguel Sonoma. A band of Sonoma's men then attacked Jim Gary at his ranch, and when the smoke cleared, Jim had equaled Mart's body count.
Hence, the need for Jim to make westward expeditiously. Jim, suspicious of the business of the three men, starts asking questions, and in the process his own identity is discovered - "You're that Jim Gary."
At this point, Jim realizes that his prior acquaintance with Mart Ray and the Double A might be bad for his health. However, he does have one card up his sleeve: information asymmetry. The Jim Gary that Slagle's men know is the Jim Gary that was described to them by Mart Ray ("a little yaller"), not the Jim Gary who shot down six Mexican bandits. And so, swallowing his pride (Jim is a little insecure), he realizes that it is to his tactical advantage to allow his adversaries to underestimate him.
That afternoon, Mart Ray, having ridden out from the Double A to meet them, surprises Jim Gary, just as Jim is getting a close-up look at the Double A brand freshly stamped over the Slash Four and is putting, well, two and two together. Mart Ray must have been a party to the theft of the cattle, along with the other three men. That would make himself, Jim, an accomplice. Jeeter Dirksen confides his own misgivings about the operation to Gary. That evening, the sound of a gunshot from the hills further arouses the suspicions of Jim and Jeeter, both of whom declare their intentions to quit.
The section ends with Tobe Langer and Jim Gary having words and throwing hands, at the end of which the big Tobe gets a taste of what Jim is made of (and of his own nose).
The following morning, Jim makes a discreet excursion into the hills to investigate the source of the gunshot; sure enough, he finds a dead horse and a dead man - evidently the figures he had seen before in the lightning. The horse had been stripped of its Mother Hubbard saddle (the lightweight type prized by cowboys for its usefulness on long cattle drives, named for its resemblance to the bonnet worn by pioneer women), no doubt the same saddle that Jim had spied earlier in Red's possession. Papers on the dead man's body identify him as Tom Blaze - the owner of the Slash Four.
Jim returns to Red and again expresses his intention to quit, and demands his pay immediately; questioned by Slagle, he matter-of-factly confronts Red with what he knows. Slagle, momentarily caught off guard, protests that Gary will have to wait until they arrive at Salt Creek to collect his wages when they are all paid at the Double A by Mart Ray (who by this time has disappeared again).
That afternoon, the four men are surrounded by a dozen horsemen (and one woman) who demand that they stop and surrender themselves. Jeeter Dirksen makes a run for it, but he doesn't get far. The leader of the posse is addressed by the young woman as "Uncle Dan" - he's the brother, and she the daughter, of the late Tom Blaze. They are looking for Tom's killer, and they figure they've found him.
Up until now, Jim Gary has maintained an almost Stockholm-syndrome-like effort to keep a good opinion of Mart Ray, but now he cannot escape the fact that Mart has set him up to take the punishment for the theft of the Slash Four cattle and the murder of Tom Blaze. Now it is Gary's word against that of Ray - who is now claiming never to have met Jim Gary.
The captive Gary names a distinguishing scar on Ray's body, and challenges him to remove his shirt to show it. Things happen fast after that: the cornered Ray challenges Gary to a gunfight, and learns belatedly from one of the other men that Jim Gary is the man who shot Sonoma.
In the end, Mart Ray gets his justice in lead. Red Slagle, who had been standing behind him, suffers a bullet wound, but he'll live long enough to strength-test the length of rope that the posse brought for this occasion. In a final act of decency, Slagle pays Gary his 40 dollars in wages: "By the looks of that rope, I don't reckon I'll need it."
In 'Man Riding West', the key plot point is that Jim Gary's character has evolved in the time since he was first described by Mart Ray to Slagle's men, so we (the reader) know that Jim is a more formidable adversary than either Slagle or Ray suspects. So it is universal in its appeal, I think, in that probably all of us want to believe in a stronger, more heroic, and as yet undiscovered side of ourselves, that the rest of the world does not suspect. [1284]
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