L'Amour, Louis - SSC 31 Page 8

  Taking off my guns, I placed them on a flat rock close at hand while I worked. Folks who’ve never packed pistols can’t imagine how heavy they are. Pretty soon Josh Boone got out of the hole and traded places with Kinyon. Jim, he put down his rifle and went to work. All of a sudden, and why I turned I don’t know, I turned sharp around, and there was Ed Karpe standing on the bank with his rifle in his hands. He was looking down at Boone and I’d have sworn he was about to shoot him. Boone, he was on his feet his own rifle ready, and what would have happened next was anybody’s guess, when suddenly an arrow smacked into a tree within inches of Karpe’s head, and he yelled “Injuns!” and ducked for cover.

  He took shelter behind the bank while Jim and Boone made it to the fort. Me, I squatted down in the hole where I was, and when the Injuns rushed us I opened up with both Colts. Karpe had turned to fire on them, and what he or the others did I didn’t know, but I dropped four men and a horse. Then I caught up my rifle, but they were gone, leaving behind them several horses and some Injuns. A couple of them started to crawl away, and we let ‘em go.

  Boone went out to gather up what guns he could find and to catch up horses and bring ‘em in. Whilst he was collectin’ them, I saw him throw something into the bushes. At the time I thought nothing of it. My guns reloaded, I watched the boys come together again. Nobody had more than a scratch. We’d been ready, as much for each other as for them, but everybody was ready to shoot when they showed up, and of course, we had our fort, such as it was.

  “Lucky!” Boone said. “Mighty lucky!”

  “They’ll be back,” Kinyon replied grimly. “Our scalps are worth more now that we’ve shown ourselves warriors.”

  Nobody knew better than I what a break we’d had. If the Indians had come at us easy-like, slipping up and opening fire from cover, we’d have had small chance. Indians have bad leaders as well as white men, and this one had been too confident, too eager. Young braves, no doubt, reckless and anxious to count coup on a white man, and wanting loot, too, our guns and horses. But nobody needed to tell anybody what stopped them.

  Josh Boone was staring at me again. “You handle them Colts like a man who knowed how to use ‘em.”

  “Why d’ you figure he carries them? I knew he was handy.” Kinyon was smiling with some secret pleasure.

  Karpe had a wry amusement in his eyes. “And to think I nearly got into a shootin’ scrape with you!”

  “This does it,” Kinyon said. “Now we’ll have to go.” Boone started to object, then said nothing. We slept cold that night, staying away from the fire and close to our horses. If they stole our horses and those we had of theirs, we’d never get out of here alive. It was too far to anywhere safe.

  We slept two at a time, not taking a chance on having just one man awake, because we didn’t know who the murderer was. At daybreak we slipped away from camp. We’d covered our holes, hiding our tools and what gear we did not want to carry. We kept one pan for taking samples downstream, and then we took off. What the others were thinking I had no idea, but as for me, I was worried. One of us was a murderer and wanted all our gold. It wasn’t enough that we had to watch out for Injuns, but one amongst us as well.

  We hadn’t gone three miles before Kinyon, who was in the lead, threw up a hand. “Injuns!” he said hoarsely. “Must be thirty or forty of ‘eml”

  That about-faced us, you can bet! We turned back up-creek, riding fast, and then turned off into the woods. We hadn’t gone far before we heard ‘em again, only this time it was another bunch already spread out in the woods. A gun thundered somewhere ahead of us, and then an arrow whistled by my head, and as I swung my horse I took a quick shot with the Sharps and saw an Indian fall. Then I was riding Hell for leather and trying to load whilst we ran.

  There was a yell behind us and Karpe’s horse stumbled, throwing Ed to the ground. He lit running just as a couple of Indians closed in on him. One swung a tomahawk high, and I shot without aiming, then shoved the Sharps into the boot and went for a six-shooter. Boone and Kinyon both fired, and Ed came running. He still had his rifle and saddlebags.

  “No use to run!” Jim yelled. “Too many of ‘em! We’ve got to stand! There were rocks ahead, not far from our old fort, and we hit them running. My horse ran on, but I was shooting soon as I hit the ground, and Kinyon beside me. Boone and Karpe found good places, and they also opened fire. The attack broke off as quick as it began. Karpe had a bullet scratch along his skull, and a burn on his shoulder.

  “You bovs saved me!” he seemed amazed. “You surely did!” Our horses were still with us. Mine had run on and then circled back to be with me, or with the horses he knew, I did not know which. We had our horses, but we had Indians all around us and no help nearer than three or four hundred miles. At least, none that we knew of.

  “If they wipe us out,” Boone commented, “nobody will ever know what happened to us.”

  “We wouldn’t be the first,” Kinyon said, “I found a skull and part of a spine and rib cage back yonder when I was huntin’ gold. The bones had a gold pan along with em.”

  We sat there waiting for the next attack and expecting little when I heard that stream. It was close by, and in all the confusion I hadn’t thought of it. “Look,” I said, “if we can hold on until dark, I think I can get us out of this!”

  They looked at me, waiting, but nobody said anything. Right at the moment nobody thought much of his chances. “If we can stand ‘em off until dark, we can slip away upstream into a cave I’ve found. They’ll think we’ve left the country.”

  “What about our horses?” Kinyon asked. “Have to leave ‘em,” I said, although it went hard to leave my Tennessee horse.

  “Maybe there s another entrance?” Jim suggested. “Where there’s one cave there’s sometimes others.” We sat tight and let the sun do its work. It was almighty hot, but we had to put up with it, for there was no more than an edging of shade near some of the boulders. The Injuns tried a few shots and so did we, more to let ‘em know we were still alive and ready than with hope of hitting anything. Boone was lyin’ beside me and he kept turning his head to stare out over the rocks.

  “Think we’ll make it?” he asked me. Al! the big-headedness seemed to have gone out of him. “I’d sure like to save my pelt.”

  They came on then. They came in a wave from three sides, riding low on their horses and again it was my Model 48s that stopped them. Not that I killed anybody, but I rained bullets around them and burned a couple, and they couldn’t understand that rapid fire. They knew about guns, and had some themselves, but they had never run up against any repeating weapons. The last Injun was riding away when he turned sharp in the saddle and let go with a shot that winged Josh Boone.

  It hit him high but hard, and he went down. Leaving the shooting to Karpe and Kinyon, I went to Boone. His face was all twisted with pain, but when I went to undo the laces on his buckskin shirt he jerked away, his eyes wild and crazy. “No! Let me alone! Don’t bother with me!”

  “Don’t be a fool, Josh. You’ve been hit hard. You get treated or you’ll die sure!”

  He was sullen. “I’d better die, then. You go off. I’ll fix it myself.”

  Something in his voice stopped me as I started to turn away. Slamming him back on the ground in no gentle way, I ripped open the rawhide cords and peeled back his hunting shirt. There was a nasty wound there, all right, that had shattered his collar bone and left him bleedin’ most awful bad. But that wasn’t all. There was another wound through the top of his shoulder, which was all festerin’ and sore.

  When I saw that I stopped. He stared at me, his mouth drawn in a hard line, his eyes ugly, yet there was something else, too. There was shame as well as fear. There was only one time he could have gotten that wound. Like when a bullet comes along a man’s rifle and cuts the meat atop his shoulder. It had been Josh Boone and not Ed Karpe who had tried to kill Jim Kinyon, and therefore it had been Boone who killed old German Kreuger. He stared at me and said no word while I w
ashed off the wound, picked away bone fragments, and put it in the best shape I could manage. I folded an old bandana to stop the bleeding, and bound it tight in place. By the time I finished it was fetchin’ close to dusk, and the Injuns had let up on their shootin’.

  Kinyon guessed right. There was another hole into that cave, just a big crack, like, but big enough to get a horse inside, even a horse as big as my Tennessee. Once they were inside we pulled a couple of pieces of old log into the gap and then we bedded down to wait it out. Oh, they come a-huntin’, all right! We could hear them looking for us, but we kept quiet and after a while they gave up and rode away. We sat it out for three days in that cave, and then Jim slipped out to scout araund. They were gone, thinking we’d gotten away, and we slipped out, mounted up, and headed back for the settlements.

  When we had buildings in sight and knew we were safe, I pulled up and turned to face them. “Josh,” I said, “German left a widder behind. She’s up at this settlement waitin’ for him. With German dead, she will be hard put to live. I figure you might like to contribute, Josh.” He sat his horse lookin’ at me, and I knew he was left handed as well as right. He had a gun, a handgun I’d seen him pick out of the bushes after he’d taken it off a dead Injun. He looked at me and I looked at him. I put no hand to a gun and I knew there was no need.

  “You just toss me your poke, Josh,” I told him. His eyes were all mean-like, and he tossed me the poke. “Now the other one.”

  Ed Karpe and Jim, they just sat watching and Ed couldn’t seem to figure it out. Kinyon knew, although how long he had known I couldn’t guess. Josh Boone waited, holding on as long as he could, but then he tossed me the other poke. Pocketing the pokes, I then took a couple of nuggets and some dust from my own poke.

  “There’s maybe a hundred dollars there,” I said. “It’s riding money, a loan from me to you.”

  “I’ll owe you for that,” he said. “I always pay my debts.”

  “I’ll see no man beggared with a broken arm,” I said, “but that’s what I named it. Ridin money. Now you ride.”

  We sat there watching while he rode away, back square to us, one arm hitched kind of high. He rode like that right out of time, because we never saw him again.

  “Well,” Jim said after a bit. “If we ain’t campin here let’s ride in. I’m goin’ to wet my whistle.”

  We started riding, and nobody said anything more.

  HORSE HEAVEN

  The high wall of the canyon threw a shadow over the entrance of the shallow cave where the two men stood, staring at the skeleton that lay on the sandy floor. Only a few rags remained of the man’s clothing, and the dried-out, twisted leather of gunbelt and boots. The front part of the head had been blown away by a bullet fired from behind. Another bullet could still be seen, lodged low down in the man’s spine.

  The taller and older of the two men lifted his eyes to his companion. “Are you sure it’s him? There ain’t much to go on, Jim.”

  Locklin’s face was lonely. This was the last member of a once closely-knit family who lay there, the brother he had loved and admired, who had pleaded with him to come west before the War. “I don’t need anything more, Nearly. See where the left elbow was broken? I helped set it in a buffalo wallow while we fought off a bunch of Comanches.

  “That gunbelt was his own work. He did it himself. He was a good man, Pike, too good a man to be trailed here and murdered after he was wounded.”

  “My guess would be that bullet in the spine crippled him,” Nearly Pike suggested. “Why d’you suppose he came here? Was he just huntin’ a place to hide? Or did he figure you’d be along?”

  “He sent for me, like I told you. This is where we were to meet, so he must have had some reason why he did not want me riding down to the place without seeing him first. He’d camped here on Savory Creek before he built down in the valley, so he’d told me all about the place.”

  “You won’t have anything to go on,” Pike observe. “There’s no sign left after all these years.”

  “There’s two things. His guns are gone, so somebody packed them off; and there’s the ranch. Somebody will have it, and that somebody will have some questions to answer.” He turned away. “We will come back and bury him properly when this is settled. A-few more days or weeks won’t matter now. From now on we are hunting two ivory-butted guns, and each will have three grooves filed in the bottom of the butt.”

  The trail to Toiyabe was dusty and long. Clouds hung heavy with a promise of rain, but as the hours passed it failed to develop. Wise with the wisdom of forty years west of the Missouri, Nearly Pike knew the manner of man with whom he rode. Yet he was a man who wanted nothing more than peace, and saw little in the weeks ahead.

  Ten years before, George Locklin, accompanied by his much younger brother Jim, was riding through this country heading home to Texas when they saw the V where Antelope Valley points back toward a notch in the mountains. There was water and grass, with lakes and timber in the nearby hills. It was then George told his brother he had found what he wanted, and he would come back and settle on this ground and make a home for them here. As they spoke of their plans they were sheltered in the same shallow cave on Savory Creek where his bones now lay.

  Jim Locklin had stayed on in Texas, but then came the note: Come on out, Jim, I’ve bought yoo a place called Horse Heaven, up in the mountains. I bought it in your name and filed the deed in the court house at Jacobsville. Looks like o bit of trouble here and I could use a good hand. If you don’t find me around look up a gent named Reed Castle.

  At the time the note came Jim Locklin had been trailing north with a herd, and as they were shorthanded there was no way he could leave. The mention of trouble had not alarmed him, as it had not been emphasized and he knew George could handle trouble. They would need money to develop their property, so he took on a job ramrodding a herd from Dodge City to Canada, and then he drifted south toward Texas, pausing long enough in Deadwood to strike it rich in a small way. Finally, back in Texas, he paid off old debts and banked the rest. Only then did he start west.

  “They might have buried him,” Pike commented. “A man deserves that.”

  “I’m glad they didn’t. Now I know he was murdered. He was a good man, Pike. He asked nothing from anyone and gave all he could. He could be a hard man, but this is a hard country.”

  “We’d best say nothing about who we are,” Pike commented, as they sighted the first buildings of Toiyabe. “If we listen we might learn something.”

  “Good idea. You round up some grub, and I’ll roust around and see what I can hear. It’s been a good while, but if we can get some old timer to talkin’ the rest should be easy.”

  Toiyabe was booming. In the bottom of its steep-walled canyon the town’s few streets were jammed with freighter’s outfits, the recently arrived stage, buckboards from the ranches, and horses lining the hitching rail. Aside from being the supply center for the ranches, it was also headquarters for miners and for the men who worked in the sawmill. The Fish Creek Saloon was run by Fish Creek Burns, whose faded blue eyes had looked sadly upon a world that stretched from his boyhood in the Cumberland Gap country through Council Bluffs to the Platte and west to the Rockies and back again by way of Abilene, Dodge, El Paso, Tascosa, and Santa Fe.

  He was a man of many interests, few loyalties, and no illusions. Now, suddenly, his hands stopped, utterly still, on the glass he had been polishing. A man rarely surprised, he was startled now to immobility; slowly then, after a moment, the hands began to move once more. Under the straw-colored brows, the eyes lost their momentary sharpness and assumed the faded, normal lack of lustre. Yet the mind behind them was busy.

  The man who had come through the door was two inches under six feet, but broad in the chest and thick in the shoulders. He was a young man in his twenties, but compact and sharp, the lean, brown face holding the harsh lines of one much older. Fish Creek Burns never forgot a face or a loyalty.

  “Rye,” Locklin said mildly,
“it’s been a dusty ride.”

  “This time of year,” Burns agreed, putting bottle and glass before him. Down the bar was Chance Varrow, and behind the stranger was a poker table where one of the players was Reed Castle, of the OZ spread. Burns’s eyes shifted to Locklin.

  “Driftin’?”

  “Stayin’.”

  “Huntin’ a job?”

  “No, but maybe I’ll have an outfit of my own.”

  Burns’s tone was dry and casual as he picked up another glass. “That big man with the black mustache at the table behind you runs a lot of cattle in Antelope Valley, away back,” his eyes met Locklin’s, “where the valley notches the mountains.”

  Jim Locklin was immediately alert. What was the bartender trying to tell him? That ranch in the notch of the hills had belonged to his brother! Burns’s face was without expression. He was polishing another glass.

  “Has he had the place long?”

  “Three years or so. He’s doing right well.”

  The last letter from George had been mailed just about three years ago. Jim wanted to turn and look but he did not.

  “Maybe he could use a hand. Does he have a name?”

  “Reed Castle.” Burns sighted through a glass. “He’s the big man around here. A man who makes money fast makes both friends and enemies. Down the bar, the tall man in the white hat and the blue coat is Chance Varrow, and some say he could have a dozen notches on his guns if he wanted.” Varrow was taller than Locklin, with sharply-cut features, cold as a prowling fox. As Locklin looked, Varrow’s eyes turned and stopped suddenly on Locklin.

  “The big man in the black broadcloth suit,” Burns continued, “is Creighton Burt, district attorney. A man with nerve, a man of integrity. He doesn’t like Reed Castle.” Disturbed by the interest in Varrow’s eyes, Jim leaned his forearms on the bar and asked Burns, “Do I look like somebody you know? Varrow acts like he’s seen me somewhere.”