Taggart (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  “Always wanted a place with a few cows,” he said. “Life like that is mighty lonely.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “A man has to live on his grass. Mostly it’s far from anywhere…no near neighbors, nobody to talk to. It’s a wonder a man like that ever finds him a woman.”

  “If a woman loved a man she would live anywhere, anywhere at all.”

  “A man who loves a woman wants to give her things. He wants to pretty her up…dresses and such things. A man on a ranch may not make much for three, four years. Maybe longer. He doesn’t have much to offer.”

  He stared gloomily across the street. “Best thing a man can do is keep traveling. Keeps him from getting ideas. A man settles down he stagnates, he dries up, loses all his get-up-and-go.”

  Stark and Consuelo came out of the restaurant. The other two started in, but Consuelo stopped Miriam. “I was a fool,” she said. “I am sorry.”

  “We’re all fools part of the time. Some of us most of the time. Men just as much as women, and some of them are as stubborn as any mule-headed bronc.”

  Taggart started in the door, then flushing, he stepped back and held the door open for her.

  There were three tables covered with a kind of slick cloth that Taggart had not seen before, and a waiter in a smeared apron crossed to take their order. “Ain’t seen a egg this week,” he said, “not until this morning. I got three left.”

  “Mr. Taggart will have them. I will have whatever else you have.”

  “I got meat. I got beef meat, deer meat, hog meat, and some mountain sheep meat. I can recommend any of it.”

  “Take the horns off a sheep and bring him in,” Taggart suggested, “and you scramble those eggs and split them two ways. Miss Stark will have half of them.”

  The waiter stared owlishly from one to the other. “Now listen to that! You two are sure formal with each other. What you think this is, Boston?”

  He waddled away and they looked at each other and laughed. Miriam felt herself blushing and looked at her plate. Her fingers were twisted together in her lap, and suddenly she was embarrassed before this man in whose company she had been for days…and nights.

  In one way, you could even say they had slept together. At the thought she blushed again, worse than before. It was nothing like that. Only they were together, and they had slept. A little, anyway.

  They ate in silence. Swante Taggart was a man who appreciated food, and the coffee was just right, he decided. You could float a horse shoe in it. Dump in plenty of coffee, wet it down, and boil it. That was the way to make it. Best coffee was always made in an old tin pail.

  The waiter came over as they finished eating. He had a huge apple pie which he placed on the table. “Honor of the occasion,” he said. “First time I had two such good-lookin’ women in here as you an’ that Mex gal that was just in here.”

  He stared at Miriam and then at Taggart. “You and him sure are lucky. Ain’t but three single women in Globe right now, and one of them is old enough to be Andy Jackson’s grandmother.”

  When they went outside the stage rolled into town. The relief driver came out of a shack stuffing his shirt into his pants with one hand and carrying a gun belt in the other. “Wonder they wouldn’t wake a man up,” he growled. He glanced at the Starks, at Taggart and Miriam. “You passengers?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he watched them hook the traces of the fresh team. They looked wild and eager, bronco mules and bad ones.

  Then he crossed to the BEDS and shook the snoring agent down for his keys. He wakened him, but without waiting for him or expecting him to follow, he crossed to the station and opened the door and unlocked the big iron safe.

  With Taggart helping, the gold was loaded. The two girls got in and Stark waited outside. Taggart put the last sack into the boot.

  An oldish man with a yellowed mustache appeared and climbed up to the seat. He was the express messenger. He seated himself and cradled a shotgun across his knees, directing a hard look at Taggart and Stark. Taggart stepped into the saddle and Stark mounted up. The stage driver cracked his whip and yelled, and the mules lunged into their harness as if the devil had lit fires under them. They took off for the south.

  It was a quiet ride, those first few miles. Taggart and Stark were tired after the long night with little sleep, and the sun was warm. They dozed in the saddle, roused themselves to look around, and then dozed again. Gradually, they fell back.

  The road at first followed the bed of Pinal Creek, shaded by oak, sycamore, and cottonwood, then it wound upward through the green Pinal Mountains. Many tiny streams fell from rocky crevices, sometimes tumbling a hundred feet. Finally they came down to the valley where Dripping Springs Station was located. Beyond lay the barren, rugged slopes of the Mescals, red and russet in the evening sun.

  The stage rolled up to the long, low station and came to a halt. A few minutes later, Adam Stark, stiff from his bruised and battered muscles, rode up, and behind him came Swante Taggart.

  Taggart swung down. Suddenly he realized he was dead tired. The excitement and pressure of the weeks past were catching up with him, and he leaned heavily against the horse for a minute or two before he shook off his weariness and went about stabling his horse.

  There was a shed stable here, and corrals. He led the steeldust to a stall and tied him there, and forked hay into the manger.

  Miriam had climbed down from the stage and was standing alone near it. Consuelo had gone inside, and Adam was talking to the mustached express messenger.

  The sun was just going down; the sky was bright and the air clear. Somewhere out through the last of the trees, a quail called. And when Pete Shoyer stepped around the corner of the stage station Swante Taggart saw him at once.

  They faced each other across a hundred feet and there was no doubt in the mind of either that this was the moment. Swante Taggart had a fleeting thought that it could not have been at a worse time for him, tired as he was, but he knew this was it.

  He could hear water falling somewhere, and the horses munching hay in the mangers. A large, drowsy fly buzzed somewhere nearby. These sounds seemed strangely clear. A horse stamped and Miriam turned slowly, her eyes on Taggart. Then she stifled a gasp as she saw Pete Shoyer. Adam Stark appeared on the porch and with him was Consuelo.

  Shoyer had taken a step forward. “I’m takin’ you in, Taggart!” he said loudly.

  “Why, come and take me then,” Taggart replied, and watched Shoyer come toward him.

  Then suddenly Shoyer’s head thrust forward and his right hand dropped, but as it dropped Taggart took a fast step to the right and drew as he moved. He felt the heavy gun swing up, felt the jolt of the shot, and then another jolt as he was spun around.

  He started to fall, but stiffened his knees and fired a second time. Shoyer seemed hazy, a difficult target. Another shot struck him and a third kicked up dust at his feet. Taggart ran three light, fast steps to the right and fired again.

  Then he fell. He smelled dust and blood and knew he was down. He heard the blast of a gun. Dust was kicked into his face and he rolled over into a sitting position and, lifting his six-shooter, he shot into Shoyer’s body, firing once, then again.

  A bullet whiffed past Taggart’s face and he began to thumb shells into his gun, and then he got to his knees and started to rise. His leg buckled under him and he fell again, feeling a bullet pass him as he went down. And then he shot upward from a prone position, rolled over and got up, all the way this time.

  There was blood on his face and he could taste blood in his mouth, and he felt a strange weakness in his body. He held his gun ready as he looked around slowly, trying to place Shoyer, but he could not find him. Miriam was grasping his arm and crying, and he was trying to shake her off, sure she would be killed.

  Then he saw Pete Shoyer. The gunman was sprawled on the adobe
soil near the corner of the stage station. Taggart lifted his gun.

  “It’s all right,” Stark was saying. “He’s dead.”

  “Who killed him then?” Taggart demanded. “This was my fight. I—”

  He felt himself slipping; he tried to lift his gun. But as he fell he heard Adam Stark say, “Why, you killed him, man, and a good job it was, too.”

  There was an arm under his head and he heard someone sobbing. He felt his shirt torn open, and someone else was tearing his pants leg. He wished they would go away. Besides, this was the last pair of pants he had.

  He heard himself speaking. “Adam,” he said, “I would like to ask the hand of your sister in marriage.”

  There was a moment then when he was aware of nothing, and when he opened his eyes later they were all around him and he was on a table in the stage station.

  “I asked a question,” he said.

  “And I answered,” Miriam said, “I give myself to you.”

  “This is between men,” Taggart replied. “It was your brother I asked.”

  “Why, yes,” Adam said, “she could go far and not find so much of a man. I’ll give her to you on condition you join us on the ranch we’ll find somewhere near Tucson. We will need a man who knows cows.”

  Taggart turned his head stiffly. His skull throbbed heavily and he knew he must have been hit there, too, but he felt very much alive. “All right then,” he said to Miriam, “I accept your acceptance. We will be married then, and if there is any beauty after this that I can bring to you, it shall be yours.”

  He was delirious, he decided, but it was not a bad way to be. He was delirious or he was happy, or he was both, and he put his head back on the table.

  “Here’s his gun,” somebody said. “I’ve put his horse in the stable.”

  His horse and his gun, he thought. It was all he had when he rode up to the canyon of the chapel, and now he still had his horse and his gun, but he also had a woman and a friend.

  WHAT IS LOUIS L’AMOUR’S LOST TREASURES?

  Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures is a project created to release some of the author’s more unconventional manuscripts from the family archives.

  Currently included in the project are Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 1, which was published in the fall of 2017, and Volume 2, which was published in the fall of 2019. These books contain both finished and unfinished short stories, unfinished novels, literary and motion picture treatments, notes, and outlines. They are a wide selection of the many works Louis was never able to publish during his lifetime.

  In 2018 we released No Traveller Returns, L’Amour’s never-before-seen first novel, which was written between 1938 and 1942. In the future, there may be a selection of even more L’Amour titles.

  Additionally, many notes and alternate drafts to Louis’s well-known and previously published novels and short stories will now be included as “bonus feature” postscripts within the books that they relate to. For example, the Lost Treasures postscript to Last of the Breed will contain early notes on the story, the short story that was discovered to be a missing piece of the novel, the history of the novel’s inspiration and creation, and information about unproduced motion picture and comic book versions.

  An even more complete description of the Lost Treasures project, along with a number of examples of what is in the books, can be found at louislamourslosttreasures.com. The website also contains a good deal of exclusive material, such as even more pieces of unknown stories that were too short or too incomplete to include in the Lost Treasures books, plus personal photos, scans of original documents, and notes.

  All of the works that contain Lost Treasures project materials will display the Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures banner and logo.

  POSTSCRIPT

  By Beau L’Amour

  The novel Taggart evolved out of my father’s short story “Trap of Gold.” Both are studies in psychological pressure. The short story is a classic of the man-against-nature and man-against-himself variety, while the novel balances more than one element of sexual tension with the external threats of both bounty hunters and Apaches. Both tales are interesting mixtures of the traditional Western conventions and something a good deal more innovative. I always thought that while “Trap of Gold” worked as a nineteenth-century Western, it could also have taken place in the early-twentieth-century era of my father’s youth. The story is minimalist and pretty universal in its appeal.

  Here it is:

  Trap of Gold

  Wetherton had been three months out of Horsehead before he found his first color. At first it was a few scattered grains taken from the base of an alluvial fan where millions of tons of sand and silt had washed down from a chain of rugged peaks; yet the gold was ragged under the magnifying glass.

  Gold that has carried any distance becomes worn and polished by the abrasive action of the accompanying rocks and sand, so this could not have been carried far. With caution born of harsh experience he seated himself and lighted his pipe, yet excitement was strong within him.

  A contemplative man by nature, experience had taught him how a man may be deluded by hope, yet all his instincts told him the source of the gold was somewhere on the mountain above. It could have come down the wash that skirted the base of the mountain, but the ragged condition of the gold made that improbable.

  The base of the fan was a half-mile across and hundreds of feet thick, built of silt and sand washed down by centuries of erosion among the higher peaks. The point of the wide V of the fan lay between two towering upthrusts of granite, but from where Wetherton sat he could see that the actual source of the fan lay much higher.

  Wetherton made camp near a tiny spring west of the fan, then picketed his burros and began his climb. When he was well over two thousand feet higher he stopped, resting again, and while resting he dry-panned some of the silt. Surprisingly, there were more than a few grains of gold even in that first pan, so he continued his climb, and passed at last between the towering portals of the granite columns.

  Above this natural gate were three smaller alluvial fans that joined at the gate to pour into the greater fan below. Dry-panning two of these brought no results, but the third, even by the relatively poor method of dry-panning, showed a dozen colors, all of good size.

  The head of this fan lay in a gigantic crack in a granitic upthrust that resembled a fantastic ruin. Pausing to catch his breath, his gaze wandered along the base of this upthrust, and right before him the crumbling granite was slashed with a vein of quartz that was literally laced with gold!

  Struggling nearer through the loose sand, his heart pounding more from excitement than from altitude and exertion, he came to an abrupt stop. The band of quartz was six feet wide and that six feet was cobwebbed with gold.

  It was unbelievable, but here it was.

  Yet even in this moment of success, something about the beetling cliff stopped him from going forward. His innate caution took hold and he drew back to examine it at greater length. Wary of what he saw, he circled the batholith and then climbed to the ridge behind it from which he could look down upon the roof. What he saw from there left him dry-mouthed and jittery.

  The granitic upthrust was obviously a part of a much older range, one that had weathered and worn, suffered from shock and twisting until finally this tower of granite had been violently upthrust, leaving it standing, a shaky ruin among younger and sturdier peaks. In the process the rock had been shattered and riven by mighty forces until it had become a miner’s horror. Wetherton stared, fascinated by the prospect. With enormous wealth here for the taking, every ounce must be taken at the risk of life.

  One stick of powder might bring the whole crumbling mass down in a heap, and it loomed all of three hundred feet above its base in the fan. The roof of the batholith was riven with gigantic cracks, literally seamed with breaks like the
wall of an ancient building that has remained standing after heavy bombing. Walking back to the base of the tower, Wetherton found he could actually break loose chunks of the quartz with his fingers.

  The vein itself lay on the downhill side and at the very base. The outer wall of the upthrust was sharply tilted so that a man working at the vein would be cutting his way into the very foundations of the tower, and any single blow of the pick might bring the whole mass down upon him. Furthermore, if the rock did fall, the vein would be hopelessly buried under thousands of tons of rock and lost without the expenditure of much more capital than he could command. And at this moment Wetherton’s total of money in hand amounted to slightly less than forty dollars.

  Thirty yards from the face he seated himself upon the sand and filled his pipe once more. A man might take tons out of there without trouble, and yet it might collapse at the first blow. Yet he knew he had no choice. He needed money and it lay here before him. Even if he were at first successful there were two things he must avoid. The first was tolerance of danger that might bring carelessness; the second, that urge to go back for that “little bit more” that could kill him.

  It was well into the afternoon and he had not eaten, yet he was not hungry. He circled the batholith, studying it from every angle only to reach the conclusion that his first estimate had been correct. The only way to get at the gold was to go into the very shadow of the leaning wall and attack it at its base, digging it out by main strength. From where he stood it seemed ridiculous that a mere man with a pick could topple that mass of rock, yet he knew how delicate such a balance could be.

  The tower was situated on what might be described as the military crest of the ridge, and the alluvial fan sloped steeply away from its lower side, steeper than a steep stairway. The top of the leaning wall overshadowed the top of the fan, and if it started to crumble and a man had warning, he might run to the north with a bare chance of escape. The soft sand in which he must run would be an impediment, but that could be alleviated by making a walk from flat rocks sunken into the sand.