The Hopalong Cassidy Novels 4-Book Bundle

by Louis L'Amour

  “Ben’s been riding, too,” Katie volunteered. “I don’t think he believes Jacks is dead. Do you?”

  Hopalong shrugged. “He took one slug, maybe two. Men have lived through lots worse than that. We’ll never know unless we go back and look. And that,” he added, “is what I think I’ll do.”

  Shorty Montana and Tex Milligan pushed into the room. “How’s for some of that coffee, Katie?” Shorty demanded cheerfully. “That cook out at the Rockin’ R is good, but he doesn’t have your touch with coffee.”

  “Look, Katie,” Milligan interrupted, “I tried to steer Shorty away, but there was no chance. He simply wouldn’t go. I know you don’t want to lower the tone”—he glanced around smugly—“of your establishment by havin’ ornery coyotes around, but I couldn’t keep him away.”

  “Keep me away?” Shorty glared. “Why, you waffle-headed picture of a string bean, you never saw the time you could keep me away from anything! In the first place there isn’t enough of you to make a good man! You’re so thin you’d have to stand twice in the same place to make a shadow!”

  “Huh!” Milligan grunted. “Don’t pay him any attention, Katie. He’s just sore because he has to stand on his tiptoes to see over a saddle.”

  Both men were arguing just to hear the sound of their voices, Hoppy knew. While they argued both were acutely conscious of him, and he had a rough idea they were riding herd on him. The thought of it amused him and yet it warmed his heart to think that they liked him enough to worry. That the country was still filled with enemies of the Rocking R and of Hopalong Cassidy, they all knew. Many of the outlaws were gone or had been killed, but others might be lurking about, and some of the ranchers who hoped to profit from the fall of the Rocking R were still sore about their failure.

  Con Gore had not been seen in town and had talked to no one. What he was thinking was a complete mystery. That Troy would be nursing a grudge was obvious, and it was probable that Rawhide, who walked always beside Pony Harper, was thinking of his sore feet with no pleasure. It was a rare night that some veiled allusion was not made to his hiking proclivities, and the thing was eating on him, corroding his self-control, and driving him to a fury that was beyond reason.

  * * *

  The sun was scarcely up the following morning before Hopalong forked Topper and headed east for the hideout to settle his doubts once and for all. As on the last occasion when he left the place, the sky was cloudy and it looked like rain. He pushed the white gelding steadily toward the faulted ground, scanning the country with care as he rode. If Jacks was alive, and if he had Dud Leeman and Duck Bale with him, Hopalong might very well be riding into a trap, and a serious one. By now they would know that he had been using the rockslide for a means of entry into the valley, and if they were still there they would certainly be on their guard against that approach.

  The lowering clouds pressed down around the higher peaks and in some places had swallowed the serrated crests of the mountains, sinking in cottony billows down the mountainsides and drifting in ghostly wraiths among the scattered junipers. Once, far off, Hopalong saw a coyote lope away and vanish among the greasewood. A tall-eared jackrabbit leaped from its nest in startled confusion and bounded away to lose itself among the sage. All else was still. No breath of air stirred, and the gelding moved steadily and easily through the brush.

  Although he kept a close watch, Hopalong spotted no new tracks. Several times he stopped and, squinting his blue eyes against the distance, looked, studied, and examined all within range of his sight. The desert was empty, as far as he could see, no living thing moved or had its being. Soon scattered rocks began to appear, not loose boulders, but the upthrust ledges of the faulted ground. Uneasily he surveyed the prospect, and he did not like it. Getting into the fault canyon would be a serious problem now, and he had to admit to himself that he never approached this place without awe and wonder.

  Here there was something far more vast than any work of man. This rock had been broken asunder by the forces of nature itself, a cataclysm that man could not control and before which all his powers, all his inventions were as nothing. The titanic forces that had broken these ledges far beneath the surface of the earth and thrust their jagged edges through the soil were not dead, but lying there only leashed for the time.

  The land was still. A silence lay upon it, a vaster silence than the desert usually knew. No cicada sang in this cloudy weather; no bird twittered among the greasewood. All was still, and with the stillness his alertness grew, his readiness for the danger he seemed to sense.

  Topper slowed to a walk, ears pricked forward. Occasionally, of his own volition, he stopped and looked ahead and around. There was upon the earth a feeling of expectation, a sense of waiting. Uneasily, Hopalong shook off the feeling. He was a man not easily disturbed, yet the last one to shake off such a feeling as of no importance. It remained only for him to interpret it, and do so correctly and at once.

  Much of this might be his own imagination, his own mind. Tough and practical as he was, he still retained strong respect for the wild. There were strange currents of feeling in the wilderness, or perhaps those feelings were in men when they were in the wilds. In any event, most men who have lived in the great loneliness of Arctic, desert, ocean, or high mountains but have known that peculiar feeling that conveys itself to all who inhabit the wilderness.

  Over such country as this he had ridden much of his life. He knew its moods and changes, and at the same time he knew that sixth sense that sometimes warns of danger. He had never, so far as he could recall, underrated an opponent. If Clarry Jacks was alive, he was a deadly antagonist, a man cold-nerved but fired with killing lust, and one not easily upset by trifles. He would be a hard man to kill, and he might take someone with him when he went.

  The rockslide was seemingly unchanged, but the serrated ridge showed many differences, and the towering upthrust of granite appeared to have fallen inward. Hopalong again descended to the bottom.

  He had detected no sign of life about either part of the fault canyon, and now on the bottom he saw that the adobe house was a ruin. Two walls stood, but both were cracked. No horses remained in the corrals. If Clarry Jacks was alive, Hopalong Cassidy was sure he was not in the canyon.

  The floor of the canyon was a jumble of fallen rock, and around the base of the walls the earth was broken and shoved back by the movement of the rock. A silence as of death hung over the place, an eerie loneliness that brought an involuntary shudder to his shoulders. Among the ruins of the house he found no sign of a body, although the darkness of blood was on the floor. Then near the corral he found a grave.

  LARAMIE

  1881

  DIED WITH HIS BOOTS ON

  One grave! Clarry Jacks was alive! Swiftly now Hopalong moved to the shack where he had originally talked with Bale. Here there was every evidence of hurried leave-taking. Glancing at the gelding, Hopalong saw the horse had his ears up and was looking wildly about. Warily, Hopalong looked around him, and then the landscape seemed to shimmer.

  Cassidy reached the saddle in one long dive and swung up as the startled horse leaped into a dead run for the canyon mouth. Under the horse’s feet the earth seemed to groan, and with an appalling grinding the rock to the south pushed higher and higher into the sky. With the portals of the narrow opening seeming even narrower than usual, Hopalong lunged the horse through. Beside him the earth cracked and there was a vile odor as of sulfur mingled with something long dead, and then the horse was down the draw and into the open. The effects of the quakes were noticeable even here, for long cracks ran into the desert as far as he could see. Turning at right angles, he ran Topper out of the faulted area, slowed to a canter, then a walk.

  Clarry Jacks was alive. If so, where was he? Corn Patch had been burned to the ground, and while he might have ridden to join the remnants of the 3 G crowd, Hopalong doubted it. Jacks was a man to lead, not follow. Duck Bale would be with him, and by now he would be in communication with Dud Leeman.
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br />   Cutting the desert for some sign of the outlaws would be useless. If they were to be tracked it would be with the mind, not the sign they would leave upon the desert. Dud and Clarry had both been known around Unionville, yet he doubted they would go there for that very reason. Hopalong believed that Clarry would hope his enemies would accept his death as a fact.

  Night was coming on. A cluster of cottonwoods in a hollow raised the possibility of water, and Hopalong started the white gelding toward them. He suddenly realized he was tired, and he could tell by the way Topper was walking that the horse was also. The cottonwoods did not prove themselves liars, for among them was a small pool supplied by a seep. The manzanita clustered thick at one end of the grove, and there Hopalong made camp alongside a huge deadfall. Nothing bigger than a coyote could possibly get through the manzanita without making noise enough to wake the dead, and the log offered some cover in the other direction. Scraping together some bark fragments, some dead branches, and a few chunks of half-rotted wood, Hopalong got his fire going, a small fire that threw very little light.

  He was pouring coffee when he heard a hoof click on stone, and he put down his cup, then rolled over into the brush near the big end of the log, rifle in hand. For a long time there was no sound, and he eyed the steaming coffee irritably. Somebody would have to come up on him just as the coffee was hot!

  An idea occurred to him, and with utmost caution he snaked out the rifle barrel, hooking the front sight through the handle of the cup, and slowly dragged it back toward him. Luckily it slopped over very little, and it was with real satisfaction that he gulped the hot coffee. Now let them come. He was ready.

  Again a hoof clicked, closer this time. Whoever it was approaching had become mighty cautious. Hopalong studied the skyline, seeking some obstruction that would blot out the stars, but there was none. A murmur of voices came to his ears, and he tilted his head, trying to catch the inflection. When it came to him he grinned, and easing around the end of the log, he crawled forward through the grass. When he could see their broad hats stark against the sky, he said aloud, “If you pilgrims would holler when you approach a camp, you wouldn’t get caught this way.”

  Shorty and Tex turned sheepishly as he walked from the brush. “We sort of figured you might want company,” Tex suggested.

  “And as long as we’re ridin’ down the country we figured to bring you the news.”

  “What news?” Hopalong demanded suspiciously.

  “Well, Doc and Miss Irene are gittin’ hitched up real soon.”

  “I knew that.”

  “And there was a shindig of some sort over to the 3 G. Hank Boucher got into an argument with Con Gore, and that coyote Troy up and shot Boucher in the back. Doc figures he may pull out of it, but it’s still a question.”

  “That outfit can’t even get along with themselves,” Hopalong said. “Come on back to camp—coffee’s hot.” As they started back he turned his head. “Feel that quake?”

  “Feel it?” Tex said. “Scared the livin’ daylights out of me. Caught us right out on the open desert, nothin’ close up, but we could see rocks fallin’ off the ridges. That old flat-top mesa south of here lost a corner.”

  Over coffee Hopalong recounted the experiences of the day and the finding of Laramie’s grave. He also commented on the fact that he believed Jacks was alive and teamed up with Bale and Leeman.

  “We heard he was alive. Ben Lock cut the sign of that toed-in paint you trailed before the stage robbery. There was three horses in the bunch, all with riders. He followed ’em some distance before he lost ’em. Feller came in the other day said they stopped him on the road. He never said a word about it until Lock told us. The three of them spooked him so bad he was afraid to talk, but he said that they stopped him on the road and made him give them some grub.”

  “Where do you think he’ll head for?” Milligan asked.

  “No tellin’. Maybe that claim on Star Peak.”

  “Doubt it,” Montana objected. “Too many people know about it now. Although there’s old tunnels around what’s left of Star City, and there’s shelter there. That might be it.”

  “If I was him,” Tex said, “I’d hit northwest toward the Black Sand. I’d lose myself in those hills over yonder.”

  “Well”—Hopalong shrugged—“if he gets out of the country I won’t follow him. It’s time I was movin’ on, anyway.”

  Tex fed a few sticks into the fire and started a long story about running cattle down on the Brazos, and in a few minutes he and Shorty were arguing hotly over respective methods of roping and whether it was better to tie or dally the rope.

  Hopalong leaned back and listened with only half his attention. It would be good to see Red Connors now. The last time he had seen Johnny or Mesquite was down on the Gila. They had come along then and butted into a fight just in time to help him. That had always been the way of the Bar 20 or any of the outfits started by the old crowd: They never hesitated to side each other.

  He grinned, remembering the fights Mesquite and he had found themselves getting into at Dodge and Ogallala, but even those towns weren’t what they had been. The old cattle drives weren’t so big as they used to be, either. It was towns like Tombstone and Deadwood that were getting all the play now. But for sheer murderous toughness there were a half-dozen mining camps in Utah and Nevada that would compare with the old trail towns. The longhorn had taken over from the buffalo and now was giving way to the white-face. Before long there would be plows on the range. The old West was changing, and there was nothing to do but accept it.

  “What now?” Shorty asked suddenly. “You goin’ to hunt Jacks?”

  “Possibly.” Cassidy rolled a smoke and stretched his legs to ease the cramp building in his thighs. “But it could be he’s had enough. As for the 3 G, I hope they mind their own affairs. Ronson wants no trouble he can avoid.” His eyes twinkled. “And I’m feelin’ about the same.”

  Milligan looked downcast. “Just when it was gettin’ to be a good fight, too!”

  * * *

  In 1863, Unionville had been wide open. At that time it had ten stores, six hotels, nine saloons, two express offices, two drugstores, four livery stables, and a brewery. Everybody had a claim staked out and every claim was potentially the richest ever found. Men without a nickel to their name talked in terms of thousands of dollars, and they exchanged, bought, or sold claims, and veins that sold by the foot. Mining men being what they are, optimism was the normal attitude, and it takes an optimistic man to live in a dugout or brush shelter while grubbing in a mountainside for the rainbow’s end; but in a country where a chunk of silver nearly a ton in weight had been found and rich veins were paying off in millions, optimism had some excuse for being.

  Within twenty miles of Unionville a half dozen hamlets were born, some to last only a few months, some a few years, and some to move at least once during their lifetimes. One of these was Star City, a haphazard collection of habitations clustered on a mountainside guarded from view by a lower but neighboring peak.

  There had been a rich strike here. It had lasted almost two years, then died. The miners, finding too little to do, had drifted on to Unionville and elsewhere. The shacks remained, and in them a few optimists and a few casual squatters. The optimists stayed on, while the squatters changed from week to week. At last even these drifted on and the town acquired a few desert owls, a pack rat or two, and some migrating bats.

  Clarry Jacks was white-faced and half dead when the faithful Duck Bale brought him to the collection of shacks. In one of these that was reasonably intact they found shelter, and Bale, whose experience with gunshot wounds had been wide, worked over the injuries. The scalp had been laid open to the bone and there had been a concussion, but the body wound was the most serious. After a few days, when he could leave the wounded man without danger, Bale made contact with Dud, then returned to the cluster of shacks.

  For a week Jacks hovered between life and death, ministered to by Bale himself and by old D
oc Benton, smuggled into the town blindfolded by Dud Leeman. Benton, a former army surgeon now far gone in liquor, still retained ability, and he used it. When he finally was returned to the saloons of Unionville, Jacks was well on the way to recovery. Yet as he recovered, his manner grew increasingly irritable, then vicious.

  Moving from Star City, they took shelter in the half-dozen ramshackle buildings in a deep gash in the mountainside that constituted all that remained of the High Card Mining Company. Thin, white-faced, and mean, Clarry Jacks paced the floor, seething with repressed fury. Duck Bale watched him and worried, and even the phlegmatic Dud Leeman eyed him with misgivings. Whether it was the sharp defeat administered by Hopalong or the concussion was hard to say. The fact remained that the man’s character stood starkly revealed now. The cloak of easy laughter was gone, and all that remained was the killer, but now without a single relieving virtue.

  Dud Leeman chewed silently on his plug of tobacco and ruminated upon what he knew of his companion. Clarry Jacks had been close to him, but Clarry Jacks in a tight spot had murdered Dakota Jack. Dud had known for a long time that Vasco Graham and Jacks were one. It had been Bale, a friend of Jacks back in his Bald Knob days, who had told him the truth. None of it made Dud any more confident of his future.

  “My idea,” he ventured once, “would be to pull out. This country’s finished as long as Cassidy’s here. We can take care of Pony later.”

  “Forget that!” Jacks whirled on him, his eyes narrowed viciously. “We don’t leave this country until both Cassidy and Harper are dead! I want that gold, but that isn’t so important to me as gettin’ Cassidy!”

  “Boss,” Leeman protested quietly, “the whole country’s against us now. If we stay we haven’t got a chance to get out alive. I mean it. We can get away now. They don’t know whether you’re alive or dead, but believe me, they are gettin’ suspicious.