A boat was brought around to the side and men started to descend a rope to get into the boat. The Smith & Wesson Russian was a powerful gun. He aimed the .44 at the water line of the rowboat and fired. Then he fired again.
A man on the rope ladder scrambled back aboard, and there was a shout from the boat. “Hey! He’s put a hole in us!”
Another man yelled, “She’s leakin’!”
“Bail her out!” the big man ordered. “An’ row over there! You can make it before she sinks.”
Val Darrant loaded the empty chambers of his gun. He had no doubt that by plugging the holes and bailing they could make it. He was no kind of a show-off, but sometimes a demonstration of what could be done was enough to prevent having to do it.
On the ledge by the pilot-house window was a bottle. He took it in his hand and stepped to the door.
“Just so you gentlemen will understand that I can do what I say,” he called, and tossed the bottle into the air. Lifting the gun, he fired, breaking the bottle; fired twice more, smashing the largest of the two falling fragments, and then smashing it again. The three shots sounded like one solid roll of thunder in the small cove.
When the sound died, he said, “I hope I won’t have to demonstrate on any of you.”
The rest of the men, despite the protests of the big man giving the orders, climbed back aboard, and Val could hear loud argument. Meanwhile he waited, desperately anxious, for the arrival of his friends. The trouble was, these men might seize the “Idle Hour” and force Val to give up his position to save his friends.
The steamer had drifted closer now. “All right, you can shoot. So we just set here and wait. When night comes you ain’t goin’ to see very good. We’ll come then.”
Despite his doubts, Val kept his voice confident. “Fine! You can just wait out there until the United States marshals arrive. They’ll be glad to see you, with all of those John Doe warrants they’ll be carrying. And I imagine they will know some of you boys very well! You just stick around. I’ve got a thousand rounds of ammunition and grub enough for two weeks.”
He had nothing of the sort, nor did he have any idea that United States marshals would be coming, but it gave them something to think about.
As Will Reilly had often said, “Let them use their imagination, Val. Nine times out of ten they will think you are holding more than you are. So just wait them out.”
He was not tired, the morning was dawning bright and beautiful, birds sang in the trees along the river bank, and his gun was loaded again.
It was a bird that warned him. A mud hen was swimming near the stern of the steamboat carrying the attackers. It had flown up briefly at the shots, then settled back. Now, suddenly, with a startled squawk, the mud hen took off.
Val sat up quickly. Instantly he knew what they were doing. They were coming now, swimming underneath the water. There might be one or two, there might be a dozen, but they were coming, and he was one against them all.
CHAPTER 14
HE COULD FEEL the softness of the air, see the sunlight and cloud shadows on the trees and water. He could see the men along the rail yonder, and four of them now had rifles.
The men swimming to attack him were probably coming from around both the bow and the stern to take him from both sides. He did not want to kill anyone, both because killing was no solution to one’s problems and because he had an idea the courts might be more inclined to hang him than not. And he had no witnesses…or none that he knew of.
“Call them back,” he said, shouting to the big man who watched from the pilot house. “Call them back or I’ll have to shoot.”
“You fire that gun,” the big man shouted, “and we’ll riddle you with bullets!”
There is a time for all things. He had offered not to kill, the men were closing in, and he was alone. The attackers were thugs paid to do their work, but the director of it all was that big man yonder.
“Call them back,” he said again, knowing they were almost at the wreck. Incongruously, he noticed that the mud hen was back again, swimming complacently, and would still be there when all of them were gone.
There was no answer, so he lifted the Smith & Wesson and shot the big man through the shoulder.
He saw the man knocked backward, heard his cry of shock and astonishment, and Val yelled at him, “Call them back. It’s you I’m going to get if you don’t.”
The man dropped from sight, but unless they had reinforced their walls as he had done, that pilot house was no more protection than cardboard. Yet even as the man dropped from sight, the four riflemen opened up on him. He heard the ugly smash of the bullets into the bulkheads, the whine of ricochets. From the door, flat on his belly, he fired and saw one of the riflemen spin around and drop his rifle.
He fired again, and one of the others stumbled. All of them were running now. Hastily, he fed a couple of shells into his gun, and heard a splash in the water down below. At least one of the men was now inside the texas, and right below him.
When he had tied up his skiff alongside the wreck, he had carried his oars up to the pilot house so they might not steal the boat. Now he caught up one of the oars. He thrust his pistol into his waistband and stepped quickly out on the shore side of the pilot house. A man was just scrambling up the ladder and catching the oar in both hands, above shoulder height, Val smashed the butt end of the oar into the man’s chest, knocking him back into the water.
Even as he splashed, Val heard running boots on the other side and wheeled around, drawing as he turned.
The man held a knife, an Arkansas toothpick, and he held it low down for thrusting.
Val held the gun on him. “You can drop that thing and dive off, or I’ll kill you,” he said. “I’ve already shot the big fellow.”
“Him? You wouldn’t dare, that’s—”
“I shot him. You boys better look at your hole card. Who’s going to pay you now?”
The momentary flicker of doubt in the man’s face told Val that he had struck a nerve. He tried again. “Look at it—nobody else is going to do it. Do you suppose the company will admit it had anything to do with what you’re doing here? If that big fellow doesn’t live, you can’t collect a quarter. Not a lousy two-bits.”
Nobody was trying to shoot from the steamer now, for their own men were aboard and they awaited the outcome. “See?” Val said. “They’ve stopped shooting. They know the show is over.”
The man hesitated, in doubt. Val knew his every urge was to come on, to finish the job if he could, but the gun muzzle was pointed at his belly, and no doubt Val’s argument undermined his resolution.
At that moment he heard a whistle, and around the bend came the “Idle Hour,” Paddy Lahey standing in the bow with a shotgun in his hands. Moments later another boat rounded into the cove, this one with four armed men standing in the bow.
“There you are,” Val said. “Now you just swim back to your boat—or swim to shore, for all I care.”
“You ain’t heard the last of this,” the knife man declared. “We’ll find you in St. Louis.”
The second boat, flying a blue flag, drew alongside the wreck. The man in the bow looked up at Val. “Are you all right?”
“No complaints,” Val said, “but you got here just at the right time.”
Seven days and nine trips later they had emptied the wreck of its cargo of flour as well as nearly a ton of lead, and odds and ends of salvage from the staterooms. The latter would be returned, wherever possible, to the original owners.
The flour, which was currently selling for twelve dollars a hundred pounds, brought them a good return, although several barrels had been completely destroyed and others had been a total loss from water damage. When they settled up, Val found himself with something more than four thousand dollars.
Steven Bricker was in his room when Val called on him to settle up for
the four men he had hired.
Bricker accepted the money, but waved away any suggestion of payment for legal fees. “Danforth was bluffing,” he said. “He thought you didn’t know what you were doing and he’d scare you off. It has been done before.”
He studied Val. “You’ve a lot of nerve for a youngster,” he said, “but they raise them that way out west.” He bit off the end of a cigar. “I can use a lad like you. My business is building railroads, and I can give you a chance for a lot of hard work, wild country, and education.”
Val shook his head. “I think I’ll go east for a while. I want to study law.”
“Good idea. You do that. When you decide to go to work, you write to me.” Bricker scribbled an address on a piece of paper. “I will make a place for you. We can use your kind.”
He got up and held out his hand. “Good luck, boy. We will meet again, I am sure.”
Outside in the street it was raining again, but Val had proper clothes now, and wore a good raincoat. Earlier, he had said good-bye to Captain Peterson and Paddy Lahey. Now he walked down the street to the railroad station. He had checked his bags there earlier.
He was going east. He was going to New York.
* * *
—
THE NEXT FEW years went by so swiftly that he was only vaguely aware of the time passing. They were years spent in hard work, in study, in learning. For a year he stayed in New York, reading law in an attorney’s office, and reading almost everything else he could find. He went to the opera whenever he could.
He grew taller and heavier. He became friendly with several prize fighters and spent hours in the gymnasiums boxing with them, or out on the roads when they did their road work. He wrestled, punched the bag, and skipped rope. At twenty he weighed a hundred and ninety pounds, and was six feet two inches tall.
After New York he spent a year in Minnesota, and later in Montana. He was first an assistant and secretary to Steven Bricker, who was building branchline railroads, opening mines, dealing in mining and railroad stocks, as an associate of James J. Hill.
From time to time he had letters from Pa Bucklin, always written by one or the other of the girls. They had drilled four wells, they had bought more stock. They were now running three thousand head of cattle and planned to make their first real sale. There had been small sales from time to time, the money defraying expenses or being used to purchase more breeding stock.
It was in the autumn of his twentieth year when he was in New York that he left the gymnasium where he had been working out and walked up the street to the corner. He stopped on the Bowery, watching the faces of the people as they passed. Suddenly a hand touched his sleeve. “Sir? If you could manage it, sir, I haven’t eaten today.”
It was a moment before Val turned, for he knew that voice, would have known it anywhere. When he did turn, the man had already started away. “Just a minute, please,” Val said.
The man turned, and Val was right—it was Van…Myra’s man, who had left him with Will Reilly, fifteen years back.
Van’s hair was grayer, his face thinner, his cheeks more hollow, he seemed not much changed. His clothes still looked neat, although he had perhaps slept in them.
“Yes?”
“Would you dine with me, sir? I should take it as a pleasure.”
Van’s eyes searched his face, his expression almost pleading. “You are serious, sir? If you are, I accept, most sincerely.”
Val’s heart was pounding strangely. He had always liked this lonely, weak man, this man who had been kind to him. He had told him stories, he had been gentle when no one else seemed to care.
“If you don’t mind, we’ll walk up the street. There is a good restaurant where I occasionally eat.”
They walked along together, neither speaking, until they reached the restaurant, which was one with notable food.
“You are sure—? I do not look as presentable as I might,” Van said.
“Come along.”
Only when they were seated did Van look at him. A faint frown showed on his face. “Do I know you? I can’t place you, but there is something familiar about you.”
Val ignored the question until they had ordered, and then he said, “Tell me about yourself. You seem to be a gentleman.”
Van shrugged. “I would have claimed so once, but no more. I am nothing.”
“What became of Myra?”
Van stiffened, and stared at him. “What do you know about Myra?” He scowled. “You have known me then…but where?”
“What about Myra? Where is she?”
“If I had done what I should have done she’d be burning in hell. A dozen times I planned to kill her—”
“You weren’t much inclined toward killing, Van.”
“Damn it all! Who are you?”
“You haven’t answered my question. Where is Myra?”
“Right where she planned to be, one way or another. Myra Cord is a rich woman, rich and dangerous. If you plan any dealings with her, forget it. She would eat you alive.”
“She must have altered her profession.”
“I don’t know whether she did or not. Myra is a vicious woman, who used prostitution as you might use a stepladder. Where she is now she doesn’t need it, although I haven’t a doubt she’d use it if it was to her advantage. She’s come a long way, but she hasn’t changed.” Van continued to stare at him. “What’s your interest in her, anyway?”
The food was served, the waiter left, and Val said, “She was my mother.”
Van dropped his fork. His face turned white.
Slowly the color came back. He pulled at his tie, loosening it. “You’re Val? Valentine Darrant?” he said.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be damned!” The words came slowly.
“I don’t think you will be, Van. You kept me alive, you know. You saved my life, and did me the greatest favor a man ever did for another.”
“What was that?”
“You left me with Will Reilly. He kept me, Van. He raised me. He taught me a way of life for which I owe him, and you, more than I can say.”
“So? Maybe that was why we never saw him again. I was always expecting to have to meet him, and I was afraid—not of what he would do, but of the way he would have looked at me. I liked the man, damn it. I respected him. And then I had to abandon a kid on him.”
“You think he avoided you and Myra?”
“He must have. You know the West. It’s a small community, after all. The men of the mining camps were known in them all. They followed every boom. The same in the cattle towns. And Will Reilly was a known man. I had run into him fifty times before, but never after I left you with him.”
They talked the meal through, and much of the night.
“What about you?” Van asked at last. “Where are you going? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going West. Not for long, I think, but I want to see some people out there and look at a ranch. And I made an investment a long time back, and I want to see what became of it.”
He went on: “I passed my bar exam, Van. I can practice law if I want to. In fact, I have had some experience along that line. And I told you I worked with Bricker.”
“It’s a wonder you didn’t run into Myra. She’s done business with him. Knows him well, in fact.”
“Myra Cord? If she had done business with him, I would know of it.”
Van smiled wryly. “You don’t think she would keep the old name, do you? She’s too shrewd for that. She dropped that name a long while ago. She’s Mrs. Everett Fossett now.”
Val stared at him. Myra Cord…his mother…Mrs. Everett Fossett?
“You must be joking.”
“No,” Van said grimly, “I am dead serious. She married Old Man Fossett, married him for his name and his money. He was a respected man,
you know, and a well-liked man, but he was no match for her. She tricked him and married him, and then murdered him in her own way. Oh, I know! It wasn’t anything the law could call murder, but it was that, just as much as if she had used poison.”
“She’s worth millions.”
“Yes, and not an honest dollar in the lot. She wasn’t a pauper when she married Fossett. She had robbed every man she knew, I expect, and she had spent very little of it. Fossett was only another stepping stone.”
“Have you seen her lately?”
“Not over two weeks ago, right here in New York. She didn’t see me. I took care that she didn’t, because I am one page she forgot to turn under; or rather, I got up nerve enough to run before she could do me in. She didn’t see me, but I saw her.” He was silent for several minutes. “She’s a beautiful woman, Val, even yet. She’s not much over forty, and even in the early days, mean as she was, she had good looks.”
“I have seen her. I just never dreamed…I mean, I had heard talk of her, but the idea that she was Myra Cord never entered my mind.”
“Now that it has, don’t go near her, Val—she’d kill you. Don’t look at me like that. She wanted you killed when you were a helpless child, didn’t she? And you’d open up a whole bag of tricks she wants forgotten. She’s an important woman now, socially and financially. And she’s completely ruthless. Once she sets her mind on something, there’s nothing in God’s world can stop her.”
“I wonder.”
“Don’t wonder—don’t even think about it.”
Val pushed back from the table. “Van, what can I do for you?”
“Maybe a ten-dollar gold piece. Any more would be a waste.”
“Van, why don’t you go home? I mean back to your own people? Your own world.”
“You’re crazy.” He chewed on his mustache. “Oh, I’ll not deny I’d like to. They know I’m alive, but almost nothing else. But I couldn’t. I’ve no money, no clothes, no way to make a living.”
Reilly's Luck (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 14