Taggart (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  Stark looked at him.

  “She says that’s what she wants,” Taggart went on, “and she believes it. After a fashion I suppose she does, but what she really wants is to believe in you.”

  “That’s up to her.”

  Swante Taggart indicated the rock by a jerk of his head. “You should let her see that.”

  “No.”

  “And you shouldn’t let Shoyer see it.”

  “How about you?” Stark looked at him with a faint smile. “You’ve seen it.”

  “It’s your gold, and anybody who would dig it out of there is entitled to it. But if I were you,” Taggart grinned, “I’d even watch me. A man with that kind of gold can’t afford to trust anyone.”

  The morning sun warmed the mountainside. In the far distance the Four Peaks lost themselves against the sky. Below, the mountain fell away toward the Salt River, scarcely a mile away.

  “Why don’t you tell her that you killed Sanifer?”

  Stark stared at him. “You heard of that?”

  “She’d like you for it.”

  “Maybe…and she might hate me. She’s made a big thing of him in her mind.” Stark lit his pipe again. “Nothing much to him, really. A flashy big man with an easy way of talking, but no sand…no bottom to the man, not when the showdown came.”

  He paused and a slow minute passed. “He wouldn’t fight me. He backed down cold when I braced him in the saloon, and then when I started to leave, he tried to dry-gulch me.”

  “She’ll hear of it.”

  “I’d rather not.” Stark got up and knocked out his pipe. Suddenly he no longer felt like smoking. “There’s things she has to learn for herself. If she doesn’t learn them, there’s nothing more to be said.”

  The air was clear following the storm. Silence lay like a blessing upon the land and the warm sun burned off the last of the night’s chill. High overhead an eagle cried and sunlight sparkled on the waters of the Salt. The Apaches came out of a draw on the north side of the river and walked their horses through the sparse growth toward the river bank. There were at least thirty of them and they had several extra horses. They drew up at the river bank and looked the country over. Taggart sat very still, hearing his heart pound. He knew that Stark saw them, too.

  If they rode into the water and along the western-most arm of Horseshoe Bend they would emerge from the river where the dim trail led up Mud Springs Wash between Rockinstraw Mountain and the canyon of the chapel. If Miriam had gone from the canyon to the top of Rockinstraw this morning, they would find her tracks.

  “It’s a one-man job,” Taggart said. “I’ll circle around and get on the mountain near the canyon. I can see them, and I’ll know it if they find her tracks.”

  “One against thirty?”

  “One man can do as much as two in this case. If both of us got it, that would leave the girls with Shoyer…or the Apaches.”

  Taggart went over back of the slope and as soon as he was below the crest, he started to run. He ran lightly and easily. If the Apaches followed the route, he thought they would have a little less distance to go than he himself.

  He ran easily, with long, steady strides. The slope was steep and rocky, but a barely discernible game trail skirted the hill well below the crest. Slowing down to cross a wash, he got a glimpse of the Apaches as they rode down the river, keeping to the edge of the water. He turned up a canyon that led south and came out of it to climb the mountain near the canyon.

  From the mountainside above the canyon, over-looking the trail up Mud Springs Wash, Swante Taggart had a good field of fire. Squatting on his heels behind a juniper, he watched the Indians, still some distance off.

  They were moving slowly and studying the bank, obviously searching for indications of a crossing. Taggart had deduced from the dried blood on Shoyer’s shirt that there had been a battle…and now the Indians were out in force to hunt the hunter.

  From where he crouched he could see into the canyon; the spring and its pool were visible, and one shoulder of the old chapel. As he watched, Miriam came into sight, and picking up a rock, he tossed it into the pool. She turned quickly and looked up.

  He indicated the canyon mouth and flashed his ten fingers at her three times. Instantly, Miriam turned and ran for the house.

  Whatever else he might be, Shoyer was a fighting man and good to have along at this time, for Taggart had a hunch the Indians were not going to pass on.

  When the Apaches rode up to Mud Springs they were stretched out for a hundred yards or more, but at the springs they dismounted and scattered out, searching for indications that the spring had lately been used.

  It was one place that was carefully avoided by all at the canyon of the chapel…but what about Shoyer? Had he stopped there? And if he had, had the rain washed out all traces?

  From his position on the slope of the hill, Taggart could cover the approach to the mouth of the canyon, but he could not see what was happening inside the mouth where Shoyer or one of the girls was sure to be waiting.

  The edge of the canyon at this point was broken by several deep cracks, and slabs of rock lay scattered in profusion. Mingled among them were juniper and prickly pear, and the position allowed some movement under concealment.

  One by one the Apaches drifted back to Mud Springs, evidence enough that they had found no tracks. If one of the girls had gone to the mountain this morning they must certainly have left some indication, so evidently Consuelo as well as Miriam was in the canyon.

  The Apaches were making camp now, but several of them mounted and rode off, obviously scouting for Shoyer. It was very early, far too early for an Apache to camp unless there was reason for remaining in the vicinity…and this was a war party. Without doubt they had reason to believe him in the vicinity, and remembering how many tracks there must be on top of Rockinstraw, Taggart prayed they would not climb the lookout mountain.

  He built a cigarette, continuing to watch the Indians. There would be a fight, he was sure of that. Somehow they would find the canyon, or signs of the presence of some of the party, and then there would be some shooting. He had seen Apaches fight before, and he had fought them, just as he had fought Kiowas, Comanches, Sioux, and Modocs. He remembered the smoky smell of their bodies, the swiftness with which they could run, the suddenness with which they could disappear. With Apaches a man had to shoot first and think later.

  With a kind of sour respect, he watched them make their search. There seemed nothing methodical about it, and yet he knew nothing could have been more thorough. Only the rain had saved them thus far.

  By now Adam Stark would probably have returned to the canyon and would be ready for trouble. And Shoyer was there. Three men and two women, and their position was good, but he knew that he would not give much for their chances at this moment. If he had been elsewhere and had been asked how long three men and two women could survive against thirty Apaches, he would have shrugged it off as scarcely worthy of comment.

  Being here made it different…not that their chances were any greater, but that it was their own problem, and it had to be dealt with. He studied what chances they might have. First they could hope they were not discovered, and then, being discovered, they could fight with the idea of taking as many Apaches with them as possible.

  Two men at the canyon mouth could do a job of standing off any attack for a while, and he himself could keep them from getting to the canyon rim for a while. They would get around behind him eventually, and then if he was still alive he would retreat to the canyon. After that they would defend the house as long as they could.

  He chuckled grimly, remembering Shoyer. The man-hunter had bought himself a basket of trouble this time, and if he got out of here alive he would be lucky.

  All was quiet below. The Indians had started a fire and were killing one of their spare horses. Nothing an Apache liked better th
an horse meat except mule meat…no Apache, he remembered irrelevantly, would eat fish.

  Taggart lit his cigarette and stuck the match into the sand. He got out several cartridges and placed them in a neat row on a flat rock. They looked good there, ready for business. He put the Winchester down and sat back, watching the Indians moving about the fire, near the spring.

  Thoughts of the women went through his mind. That Consuelo was a fine figure of a woman. Give a man a time in bed, but for staying quality, day in and day out living, she wouldn’t hold a candle to Miriam Stark.

  He thought of the strange feeling that had risen within him when he sat his horse in the darkness outside the canyon, knowing there was someone near, even knowing that someone was a woman and desirable. It made no sense, but there it was. He had known.

  One of the Apaches was looking up the slope. He had a feeling, that warrior did…he had him a hunch. Maybe Taggart’s attention had drawn their attention. He waited, watching without looking directly at them.

  The Apache had stepped out from the rest now and was looking up the mountain. Taggart knew he could not be seen…the broken slabs of rock, the clusters of prickly pear, these were a perfect cover. Even if they caught a glimpse of him they might think it was just part of the prickly pear or the rock. But the attention of the Indian worried him.

  Suddenly the Apache stepped out from the others and started up the slope, walking slowly, studying the ground occasionally, but coming right on. Taggart drew deep on his cigarette and squinted at the Indian. The wind was from the Indians and toward him, so he had not been worried about them smelling the smoke.

  “You, anyway,” he said, to himself, “you keep coming and I’ll nail your hide to the mast. You I’ll take with me.”

  He was thinking his bullet home, knowing where he would put it, how he would inhale, exhale slowly and then squeeze off his shot…and there would be a dead Indian at the end of that shot. At that distance and with that target he would not, could not miss.

  The Apache drew nearer. He was no more than eighty yards away now and he had paused. He was short and stocky, and Taggart could see his face clearly…broad at the cheekbones.

  Taggart rubbed his cigarette out in the sand. He took up the rifle and balanced it in his hands, sighting briefly down the barrel at the middle of the Indian’s chest. Then he lowered the Winchester and waited.

  The Apache was looking up the slope and Taggart could see the glint of his eyes. And then there was a call from down the slope, and the warrior turned and went back down the hill. Taggart lowered his rifle and leaned it against the rock nearest his hand.

  It was very hot.

  * * *

  —

  Within the canyon there was no sound. The bare rock walls left narrow strips of shadow at their foot, and the rivulet of water had long ceased to run. The noon held still under the Arizona sun, breathless with the moment. Cicadas sang, a shrill accompaniment to the heat.

  Miriam came to the door and brushed the hair back from her eyes. She looked down the canyon toward the mouth, but there was no sound. Adam and Pete Shoyer had gone there, and they would be waiting in the rocks near the canyon’s opening, while according to Adam, Swante Taggart was somewhere on the mountainside above the canyon’s rim.

  “No need to worry,” Adam had said. “There’s a man who’ll get along if anyone will.”

  Yet she did worry. He was up there alone, beyond their sight, and by now he would be growing hungry. That he had visited Adam earlier Miriam guessed, but Adam had made no comment.

  An hour dragged slowly by, and then another. The Apaches seemed in no hurry to leave. Most of them rested in the sparse shade of brush or rocks near Mud Spring, while a few prowled restlessly among the hills, mostly toward Rockinstraw and Redmond Mountain.

  Pete Shoyer came back to the house, a heavy, unwashed man as seen by daylight. He grinned widely at Miriam. “Hot down there,” he said.

  “Will they find us?”

  Consuelo came to hear his reply, and Shoyer looked past Miriam at the Mexican girl. “You never know about ‘Paches. The way I figure, they know I’m somewhere around.”

  He stood at the door and ate the plate of beans and chia that Consuelo brought him, his eyes continually straying down canyon.

  Suddenly he chuckled. “That there Taggart…he sure won’t try runnin’, with those ‘Paches out there. They’d have him tied to a cactus in no time.”

  “Mr. Taggart,” Miriam replied quietly, “sees no reason why he should run. I doubt if you need worry about it. When this is over, if any of us are alive, he will be here.”

  Shoyer grinned insinuatingly. “You set store by him, looks to me. It sure looks to me.”

  “Not particularly,” Miriam replied stiffly, “only I’m sure Mr. Taggart is a good man. He is not a criminal. He is not a murderer. Those men were encroaching on his land and they began the fight.”

  “Lady,” Shoyer protested, “I ain’t the judge. I only hunt him down and make an arrest.”

  “Or kill him…and all for money!”

  Shoyer was not disturbed. “Don’t give me that. I’ve had all that stuff shoved at me before this, an’ it’s just the way I make a livin’. Some folks work at one thing, some work at another. I work at what I’m best at.”

  “Why don’t you forget Mr. Taggart?” Miriam asked. “When this is over, just ride on?”

  He chuckled. “Lady, you really do go for that gent. You really do. Now, the way I’d figured,” he glanced at Consuelo, “it was this other lady who went for him. Seemed to me that was a goin’ thing.”

  “You’re being rude.”

  Shoyer was not disturbed. “Maybe…that’s the way I see it. How about it, Mex?”

  Consuelo drew herself up. “I am married woman.”

  Shoyer shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first. Good-lookin’ man, that Taggart. Now me…women folks never made no fuss about me. On’y when I had money. So I pull Taggart in, I have money.”

  He finished his plate and licked his lips off carefully, then rubbed his palms on the front of his trousers and accepted the coffee. He had taken the first swallow when they heard the shot.

  It came from down canyon. It was sharp and clear, and left an echoing report that racketed against the rock walls.

  Pete Shoyer threw down the cup and, rifle in hand, sprinted for the canyon mouth.

  Miriam reached inside the door and took up her rifle.

  CHAPTER 9

  Swante Taggart had seen it coming. He had seen it happen.

  It was the same Apache who had started up the slope. He had been called from the spring by a beckoning Indian, and had started back when something arrested his attention in the direction of the canyon mouth. Taggart saw the warrior stop, and for several minutes the Indian stood very still. Then, ever so carefully, he began to move toward the spot where the canyon emerged upon the desert.

  Taggart, sure the Apache had seen some movement there and was stalking whoever was on guard there, lifted his rifle. He took careful aim, took up the slack on his trigger, then held his slack and waited. If that Apache started to lift his rifle Taggart would fire. The distance was now well over two hundred yards, but Taggart had no doubt of his shot.

  Another shot came first.

  The Apache made the slightest move upward with the rifle, then even as Taggart was about to squeeze off his shot the Indian buckled at the knees and pitched forward on his face, the echo hanging in the still air.

  For an instant, Taggart believed he himself had shot. The dust-brown body of the Apache lay in plain sight, sprawled on a clump of prickly pear, the sun gleaming redly on the blood-splashed leaves.

  Nothing else moved.

  Taggart shifted his attention to the group around Mud Springs…but there was no group! There was nobody at all. There were only the horses and the slow, thi
n spiral of the rising smoke from the campfire.

  Sweat trickled down his cheek. Taggart eased his tension on the trigger and, keeping his eyes on the slope, dug out the makings. The sun glinted from a rifle barrel…something was moving down there, but Taggart held his fire. No use to let them know what happened until necessary.

  The dead Indian lay where he had fallen, nailed with the first shot.

  Overhead a buzzard sailed in the blue-brassy sky, and in the far distance over the Four Peaks a few white clouds hung still in the sky. His foot was cramped and he shifted position.

  No chance to avoid the fight now…they were in for it. Only there was nothing to shoot at. Nothing to do but wait. Down below they would be ready. Stark and Shoyer would be at the canyon mouth, the girls at the house, and he was here, high on the slope of the mountain with the canyon falling off on his right hand.

  Whatever the dead Indian had seen or believed he saw had not been communicated to the others. The Apaches did not know what had happened, and right now they would be starting to move, to investigate.

  The trouble was, the visibility was not good enough. The air was sharp and clear, but the slope was dotted with brush, and there was brush in the hollow near the canyon mouth. Swante Taggart turned slowly and studied the mountain above and around him. A man never took anything for granted in this country if he wanted to keep his hair.

  Suddenly he realized he was holding an unlit cigarette in his teeth, and he struck a match with his left hand and lifted it to the cigarette. Just then an Apache came out of the juniper below him and started across the slope. He had worked his way up the slope and was not over fifty yards away, and if he reached the canyon at that level he could look down upon the buildings.

  Taggart fired the rifle with one hand, lifting it and squeezing off the shot.

  The Indian stumbled, but he did not go down. Like a wounded cat the Apache wheeled, and when he started to lift his rifle Taggart shot into his body, aiming from the shoulder this time. The Indian took a short quick step up the slope, and then went down to his hands and knees.