The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour: Vol 3 Part 18

"Got any apple pie?" he asked.

She placed a thick piece before him, then filled a cup with coffee. Johnny grinned at her and began to eat. "Mmm!" he said, liking the pie. "You make this?"

"No, my mother did."

"She sure makes good pie!" Johnny was enthusiastic. "I've got to get over here more often!"

"Surprised they let you get away from home," Lacey said, "but I see you brought a nursemaid with you."

Now, Tom West had advised Johnny to keep out of trouble, and Johnny, an engaging and easygoing fellow, intended to do just that, up to a point. This was the point.

"I didn't need a nursemaid over on the Tierra Blanca," he said cheerfully. "From the way you hightailed over them rocks, I figured it was you needed one!"

Lacey's face flamed. He came off the bench, his face dark with anger. "Why, you-"

Johnny looked around at him. "Better not start anything," he said. "You ain't got a gang with you."

Lacey was in a quandary. Obviously the girl was more friendly to Johnny than to him. That meant that he could expect no help from her should she be called on to give testimony following a killing. If he drew first he was a gone gosling, for he knew enough about old Tom West to know the Slash Seven outfit would never stop hunting if this kid was killed in anything but a fair fight. And the kid wasn't even on his feet.

"Listen!" he said harshly. "You get out of town! If you're in this town one hour from now, I'll kill you!"

Slamming down a coin on the counter, he strode from the restaurant.

"Oh, Johnny!" Mary's face was white and frightened. "Don't stay here! Go now! I'll tell Gar where you are. Please go!"

"Go?" Johnny was feeling a fluttering in his stomach, but it angered him that Mary should feel he had to leave. "I will not go! I'll run him out of town!"

Despite her pleading, he turned to the door and walked outside. Gar Mullins was nowhere in sight. Neither was Lacey. But a tall, stooped man with his arm in a sling stood across the street, and Johnny Lyle guessed at once that he was a lookout, that here was the man he had winged in the canyon fight. And winged though the man was, it was his left arm, and his gun hung under his right hand.

Johnny Lyle hesitated. Cool common sense told him that it would be better to leave. Actually, Uncle Tom and the boys all knew he had nerve enough, and it was no cowardice to dodge a shoot-out with a killer like Hook Lacey. The boys had agreed they wouldn't want to tangle with him.

Just the same, Johnny doubted that any one of them would dodge a sc.r.a.p if it came to that. And all his Texas blood and training rebelled against the idea of being run out of town. Besides, there was Mary. It would look like he was a pure D coward to run out now.

Yet what was the alternative? Within an hour, Hook Lacey would come hunting him. Hook would choose the ground, place, and time of meeting. And Hook was no fool. He knew all the tricks.

What, then, to do?

The only thing, Johnny Lyle decided, was to meet Lacey first. To hunt the outlaw down and force him into a fight before he was ready. There was nothing wrong with using strategy, with using a trick. Many gunfighters had done it. Billy the Kid had done it against the would-be killer, Joe Grant. Wes Hardin had used many a device.

Yet what to do? And where? Johnny Lyle turned toward the corral with a sudden idea in mind. Suppose he could appear to have left town? ouldn't that lookout go to Hook with the news? Then he could come back, ease up to Lacey suddenly, and call him, then draw.

Gar Mullins saw Johnny walking toward the corral, then he spotted the lookout. Mullins intercepted Johnny just as he stepped into saddle.

"What's up, kid? You in trouble?"

Briefly Johnny explained. Gar listened and, much to Johnny's relief, registered no protest. "All right, kid. You got it to do if you stay in this country, and your idea's a good one. You ever been in a shoot-out before?"

"No, I sure haven't."

"Now, look. You draw natural, see? Don't pay no mind to being faster'n he is. hances are you ain't anywheres close to that. You figure on getting that first shot right where it matters, you hear? Shoot him in the body, right in the middle. No matter what happens, hit him with the first shot, you hear me?"

"Yeah."

Johnny felt sick at his stomach and his mouth was dry, his heart pounding.

"I'll handle that lookout, so don't pay him no mind." Gar looked up. "You a good shot, Johnny?"

"On a target I can put five shots in a playing card."

"That's all right, but this card'll be shooting back. But don't you worry. You choose your own spot for it."

"Wait!" Johnny had an idea. "Listen, you have somebody get ^w to him that Butch Jensen wants to see him. I'll be across the street at the wagon yard. When he comes up, I'll step out."

He rode swiftly out of town. Glancing back, he saw the lookout watching. Gar Mullins put a pack behind his own saddle and apparently readied his horse for the trail. Then he walked back down the street.

He was just opposite the wagon yard when he saw the lookout stop on a street corner, looking at him. At the same instant, Hook Lacey stepped from behind a wagon. Across the street was Webb Foster, another of the Lacey crowd. There was no mistaking their purpose, and they had him boxed!

Gar Mullins was thirty-eight, accounted an old man on the frontier, and he had seen and taken part in some wicked gun battles. Yet now he saw his position clearly. This was it, and he wasn't going to get out of this one. If Johnny had been with him-but Johnny wouldn't be in position for another ten minutes.

Hook Lacey was smiling. "You were in the canyon the other day, Gar," he said triumphantly. "Now you'll see what it's like. e're going to kill you, Gar. Then we'll follow that kid and get him. You ain't got a chance, Gar."

Mullins knew it, yet with a little time, even a minute, he might have.

"Plannin' on wiping out the Slash Seven, Hook?" he drawled. "That's what you'll have to do if you kill that kid. He's the old man's nephew."

"Ain't you worried about yourself, Gar?" Lacey sneered. "Or are you just wet-nursing that kid?"

Gar's seamed and hard face was set. His eyes flickered to the lookout, whose hand hovered only an inch above his gun. And to Webb, with his thumb hooked in his belt. There was no use waiting. It would be minutes before the kid would be set.

And then the kid's voice sounded, sharp and clear.

"I'll take Lacey, Gar! Get that lookout!"

Hook Lacey whipped around, drawing as he turned. Johnny Lyle, who had left his horse and hurried right back, grabbed for his gun. He saw the big, hard-faced man before him, saw him clear and sharp. Saw his hand flashing down, saw the broken b.u.t.ton on his shirtfront, saw the Bull Durham tag from his pocket, saw the big gun come up. But his own gun was rising, too.

The sudden voice, the turn, all conspired to throw Lacey off, yet he had drawn fast and it was with shock that he saw the kid's gun was only a breath slower. It was that which got him, for he saw that gun rising and he shot too quick. The bullet tugged at Johnny's shirt collar, and then Johnny, with that broken b.u.t.ton before his eyes, fired.

Two shots, with a tiny but definite s.p.a.ce between them, and then Johnny looked past Lacey at the gun exploding in Webb Foster's hands. He fired just as Gar Mullins swung his gun to Webb. Foster's shot glanced off the iron rim of a wagon wheel just as Gar's bullet crossed Johnny's in Webb Foster's body.

The outlaw crumpled slowly, grabbed at the porch awning, then fell off into the street.

Johnny stood very still. His eyes went to the lookout, who was on his hands and knees on the ground, blood dripping in great splashes from his body. Then they went to Hook Lacey. The broken b.u.t.ton was gone, and there was an edge cut from the tobacco tag. Hook Lacey was through, his chips all cashed. He had stolen his last horse.

Gar Mullins looked at Johnny Lyle and grinned weakly. "Kid," he said softly, walking toward him, hand outstretched, "we make a team. Here on out, it's saddle partners, hey?"

"Sure, Gar." Johnny did not look again at Lacey. He looked into the once bleak blue eyes of Mullins. "I ride better with a partner. You got that stuff for the ranch?"

"Yeah."

"Then if you'll pick up my horse in the willows, yonder, I'll say good-bye to Mary. e'd best be getting back. Uncle Tom'll be worried."

Gar Mullins chuckled, walking across the street, arm in arm with Johnny. "Well, he needn't be," Gar said. "He needn't be."

Home in the Valley Steve Mehan placed the folded newspaper beside his plate and watched the waiter pour his coffee. He was filled with that warm, expansive glow that comes only from a job well done, and he felt he had just cause to feel it.

Jake Hitson, the moneylending rancher from down at the end of Pahute Valley, had sneered when he heard of the attempt, and the ranchers had shaken their heads doubtfully when Steve first told them of his plan. They had agreed only because there was no alternative. He had proposed to drive a herd of cattle from the Nevada range to California in the dead of winter! To the north the pa.s.ses were blocked with snow, and to the south lay miles of trackless and almost waterless desert.

Yet they had been obligated to repay the money Hitson had loaned them by the first day of March or lose their ranches to him. It had been a pitifully small amount when all was considered, yet Hitson had held their notes, and he had intended to have their range.

Months before, returning to Nevada, Steve Mehan had scouted the route. The gold rush was in full swing, people were crowding into California, and there was a demand for beef. As a boy he had packed and freighted over most of the trails and knew them well, so finally the ranchers had given in.

The drive had been a success. With surprisingly few losses he had driven the herd into central California and had sold out, a few head here and a few there, and the prices had been good. The five ranchers of Pahute Valley who had trusted their cattle to him were safe. Twenty thousand dollars in fifty-dollar gold slugs had been placed on deposit in Dake and Company's bank here in Sacramento City.

With a smile, he lifted his coffee cup. Then, as a shadow darkened his table, he glanced up to see Jake Hitson. The man dropped into a chair opposite him, and there was a triumphant light in his eyes that made Steve suddenly wary. Yet with the gold in the bank there was nothing to make him apprehensive.

"Well, yuh think yuh've done it, don't yuh?" Hitson's voice was malicious. "Yuh think yuh've stopped me? Yuh've played the hero in front of Betty Bruce, and the ranchers will welcome yuh back with open arms. Yuh think when everything was lost you stepped in and saved the day?"

Mehan shrugged. "We've got the money to pay yuh, Jake. The five brands of the Pahute will go on. This year looks like a good one, and we can drive more cattle over the route I took this time, so they'll make it now. And that in spite of all the bad years and the rustlin' of yore friends."

Hitson chuckled. He was a big man with straw-colored brows and a flat red face. From one small spread down there at the end of the Pahute he had expanded to take in a fair portion of the valley. The methods he had used would not bear examination, and strange cattle had continued to flow into the valley, enlarging his herds. Many of the brands were open to question. The hard years and losses due to cold or drouth did not affect him, because he kept adding to his herds from other sources. During the bad years he had loaned money, and his money had been the only help available. The fact that he was a man disliked for his arrogant manner and his crooked connections made the matter only the more serious.

Hitson grinned with malice. "Read yore paper yet, Mehan? If yuh want to spoil yore breakfast, turn to page three."

Steve Mehan's dark eyes held the small blue ones of Hitson, and he felt something sick and empty in his stomach. Only bad news for him could give Hitson the satisfaction he was so obviously feeling. Yet even as Steve opened the paper, a man bent over the table next to him.

"Heard the news?" he asked excitedly. "Latch and Evans banking house has failed. That means that Dake and Company are gone, too. They'll close the doors. There's already a line out there a hundred yards long and still growin'!"

Steve opened his paper slowly. The news was there for all to read. Latch and Evans had failed. The managing director had flown the coop, and only one interpretation could be put upon that. Dake and Company, always closely a.s.sociated with Latch and Evans, would be caught in the collapse. February of 1855 would see the end of the five brands of Pahute Valley. It would be the end of everything he had planned, everything he wanted for Betty.

"See?" Hitson sneered, heaving himself to his feet. "Try and play hero now! I've got you and them highfalutin' friends of yores where I want 'em now! I'll kick every cussed one of 'em into the trail on March first, and with pleasure! And that goes for you, Steve Mehan!"

Steve scarcely heard him. He was remembering that awful drive. The hard winds, the bitter cold, the bawling cattle. And then the desert, the Indians, the struggle to get through with the herd intact and all to end in this. Collapse and failure. Yes, and the lives of two men had been sacrificed, the two who had been killed on the way over the trail.

Mehan remembered Chuck Farthing's words. He had gone down with a Mohave Indian's bullet in his chest. "Get 'em through, boy. Save the old man's ranch for him. That's all I ask!" It had been little enough for two lives. And now they were gone, for nothing.

The realization hit Steve Mehan like a blow and brought him to his feet fighting mad, his eyes blazing, his jaw set. "I'll be eternally blasted if they have!" he exploded, though only he knew what he meant. He started for the door, leaving his breakfast unfinished behind him, his mind working like lightning.

The whole California picture lay open for him now. The news of the failure would have reached the Dake and Company branches in Marysville and Gra.s.s Valley. And in Placerville. There was no hope there. Portland? He stopped short, his eyes narrowed with thought. Didn't they have a branch in Portland? Of course! He remembered it well, now that he thought of it. The steamer from San Francisco would leave the next morning, and it would be carrying the news.

But what if he could beat that steamer to Portland? Going by steamer himself would be futile, for he would arrive at the same time the news did, and there would be no chance for him to get his money.

Hurrying down the street, his eyes scanning the crowds for Pink Egan and Jerry Smith, punchers who had made the drive with him, he searched out every possible chance, and all that remained was that seven hundred miles of trail between Sacramento and Portland, rough, and part of it hara.s.sed by warring Modocs. He paused, glancing around. He was a tall young man with rusty brown hair and a narrow, rather scholarly face. To the casual observer he looked like a roughly dressed frontier doctor or lawyer.

Actually, he was a man bred to the saddle and the wild country. Over the roofs of the buildings he could see the smoke of a steamboat. It was the stern-wheeler Belle, just about to leave for Knights Landing, forty-two miles upstream. He started for the gangway, walking fast, and just as he reached it a hand caught his sleeve.

He wheeled to see Pink and Jerry at his elbow. "Hey," Smith demanded. "Where yuh goin" so fast? We run two blocks to catch up with yuh."

Quickly, Steve explained. The riverboat tooted its whistle, and the crew started for the gangway to haul it aboard. "It's our only chance!" Steve Mehan exclaimed. "I've got to beat that steamboat from Frisco to Portland and draw my money before they get the news! Don't tell anybody where I've gone, and keep yore eyes on Hitson!"

He lunged for the gangway and raced aboard. It was foolish, it was wild, it was impossible, but it was their only chance. Grimly, he recalled what he had told Betty Bruce when he left the Valley. "I'll get them cattle over, honey, or I'll die tryin'!"

"You come back, Steve," she had begged. "That's all I ask. We can always go somewhere and start over. We always have each other."

"I know, honey, but how about yore father? How about Pete Farthing? They're too old to start over, and the ranches are all they have. They worked like slaves, fought Indians, gave a lot in sweat and blood for their ranches. I'll not see 'em turned out now. Whatever comes, I'll make it."

As the riverboat pushed away from the dock, he glanced back. Jake Hitson was staring after him, his brow furrowed. Jake had seen him, and that was bad. Mehan put such thoughts behind him. The boat would not take long to get to Knights Landing, and he could depend upon Knight to help him.

The man had migrated from New Mexico fifteen years before, but he had known Steve's father, and they had come over the Santa Fe Trail together. From a mud-and-wattle hut on an Indian mound at the landing, he had built a land grant he got from his Mexican wife into a fine estate, and the town had been named for him.

Would Jake Hitson guess what he was attempting? If so, what could he do? The man had money, and with money one can do many things, Hitson would not stop at killing. Steve had more than a hunch that Hitson had urged the Mohaves into the attack on the cattle drive that had resulted in the death of Chuck Farthing. He had more than a hunch that the landslide that had killed Dixie Rollins had been due to more than purely natural causes.

But he could prove nothing. His only chance was to reach Portland before the news did. He was not worried about their willingness to pay him the money. The banks made a charge of one half of one per cent for all withdrawals over a thousand dollars, and it would look like easy profit to the agent at the banking and express house. Nor was it all unfamiliar country, for Steve had spent two years punching cows on ranches, prospecting and hunting through the northern valleys, almost as far as the Oregon line.

When the Belle shouldered her comfortable bulk against the landing at Knights, Mehan did not wait for the gangway. He grabbed the bulwark and vaulted ash.o.r.e, landing on his hands and knees.

He found Knight standing on the steps of his home, looking down toward the river. "A hoss, Steve!" Knight repeated. "Sh.o.r.est thing yuh know. What's up?"

While Steve threw a saddle on a tall chestnut, he explained briefly.

"Yuh'll never make it, boy!" Knight protested. "It's a hard drive, and the Modocs are raidin" again." He chewed on his mustache as Steve swung into the saddle. "Boy," he said, "when yuh get to the head of Grand Island, see the judge. He's an old friend of mine, and he'll let yuh have a hoss. Good luck!"

Steve wheeled the chestnut into the street and started north at a spanking trot. He kept the horse moving and the long-legged chestnut had a liking for the trail. He moved out eagerly, seeming to catch some of the anxiety to get over the trail that filled his rider. At the head of Grand Island, Steve swapped horses and started north again, holding grimly to the trail.

There was going to be little time for rest and less time to eat. He would have to keep moving if he was going to make it. The trail over much of the country was bad, and the farther north he got toward the line, the worse it would be. His friends on the ranches remembered him, and he repeatedly swapped horses and kept moving.

The sun was setting in a rose of glory when he made his fourth change of mount near the Marysville b.u.t.tes. The purple haze of evening was gathering when he turned up the trail and lined out.

He had money with him, and he paid a bonus plus a blown horse when necessary. But the stockmen were natural allies, as were the freighters along the route, and they were always willing to help.

After leaving Knights Landing he told no one his true mission, his only explanation being that he was after a thief. In a certain sense, that was exactly true.

At ten o'clock, ten hours out of Sacramento, he galloped into the dark streets of Red Bluffs. No more than five minutes later, clutching a sandwich in his hand and with a fresh horse under him, he was off again. Darkness closed around him, and the air was cool. He had no rifle with him, only the pistol he habitually wore and plenty of ammunition.

The air was so cold that he drew his coat around him, tucking it under and around his legs. He spoke softly to the horse, and its ears twitched. It was funny about a horse how much they would give for gentleness. There was no animal which responded so readily to good treatment, and no other animal would run itself to death for a man except, occasionally, a dog.

The hoofs of the horse beat a pounding rhythm upon the trail, and Steve leaned forward in the saddle, hunching himself against the damp chill and to cut wind resistance. His eyes were alert, although weariness began to dull his muscles and take the drive and snap from them.

Twenty miles out of Red Bluffs he glimpsed a fire shining through the trees. He slowed the horse, putting a hand on its damp neck. It was a campfire. He could see the light reflecting from the front of a covered wagon, and he heard voices speaking. He rode nearer and saw the faces of the men come around toward him.

"Who's there?" A tall man stepped around the fire with a rifle in his hand.

"Mehan, a cattleman. I'm after a thief and need a fresh hoss."

"Well, 'light and talk. Yuh won't catch him on that boss. d.a.m.n fine animal," he added, "but yuh've sh.o.r.e put him over the road."

"He's got heart, that one," Steve said, slapping the horse. "Plenty of it! Is that coffee I smell?"

The bearded man picked up the pot. "It sh.o.r.e is, pardner. Have some." He poured a cupful, handed it to Steve, and then strolled over to the horse. "Shucks, with a rubdown and a blanket he'll be all right. Tell yuh what I'll do. I've got a buckskin here that'll run 'til he drops. Give me twenty to boot and he's yores."