by Galloway
Galloway by Louis L'Amourrelease info
Galloway
by
Louis L'Amour
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About the Author
Chapter I
The old elk walked up the knoll where the long wind blew. The wolves followed.
The elk realized what was happening, but he didn't know it was only a part of
something that had been going on since life began.
He didn't know that it was because of these wolves or their kindred that he had
been strong, brave, and free-running all his past years. For it was the wolves
who kept the elk herds in shape by weeding out the weak, the old, and the inept.
Now his time had come, and the wolves were there. He no longer had the speed to
outrun them nor the get-about to outfight them, and there were four wolves
working as a team, not one of them weighing less than a hundred pounds and two
of them nearly twice that.
All he had going for him was his wisdom, and so far he was making a fair country
try in getting himself to a place where he could make a stand. You could see,
plain as the snow on the mountains yonder, that he was heading for the rocks
where he could get his back to the wall.
His trouble was that wolves, like Indians, are patient. They had hunted elk
before, had seen all of this happen many times, and they knew they were going to
get that elk.
They didn't know about me. Coming up as I had, they'd caught no wind of me, nor
could they guess it was my work they were doing. For I was figuring on having
most of that elk myself.
When a man has been on the run and hasn't had a bite in three days, he's ready
to eat an elk—head, hoofs, and horns—all by himself. Trouble was, I'd no way of
killing an elk ... or anything else, really, and if those wolves got the idea I
was as bad off as I was they might take right in after me.
A lobo is too smart to harry a man unless he's down and well-nigh helpless. They
don't like the man smell, which always means trouble, but a wolf is born with a
keen sense of something ready for the kill ... which I was. Up to a point, I
was.
My feet were raw and bloody, the flesh churned into a bloody mess by running
over the broken rock, gravel, and stubble of the desert. My body was worn with
hunger, thirst, and exhaustion to a point where I could scarcely walk. But there
was that inside me, whatever it was that made me a man, that was a whole long
way from being whipped.
The wolves could smell blood, they could smell a festering wound, but could they
smell the heart of a man? The nerve that was in him?
That elk sprinted for the rocks and the wolves taken in after him, wary of his
hoofs, shy of the vicious drive of those forefeet that could stab and cut a wolf
to a cripple. The horns didn't worry them too much, but a wolf is a shrewd
hunter and wants to lose no hide for his meal.
My instinct is for mountains. The Sacketts of our branch were mountain people,
hill folk from Tennessee, and when trouble showed it was our way to take to the
hills again. At least until we got our second wind. That was why I pointed
toward the mountains yonder. Ever since I'd got shut of those Jicarilla Apaches
I'd been heading for the hills, but they hadn't left me much to go on. I was
making no complaints. If they still had me by this time I'd be dead ... or
wishing I was.
Somebody back yonder stirred up a pack of trouble and those Apache warriors had
taken off like somebody'd set their breechclouts afire, leaving me with the
squaws.
Now squaws are no bargain. They take to torturing with genuine pleasure. Thing
was, when the warriors taken off they also took all the ponies in camp, so I
just cut loose and started to run.
The squaws came close to catching me, with my hands tied and all. But I was a
long-legged man, barefooted and stark naked and knowing what would happen if
they caught me. When the warriors returned they taken after me, too.
By that time I was far off and had gotten my hands free, and was just beginning
to run. All that day and into the night I ran ... maybe fifty miles ... but an
Apache is like a hound on the trail. So they were back yonder coming after me,
and if I didn't get something to eat I was a finished man.
The elk had got the rock behind him and turned to fight, but for the time those
wolves were just a-setting there, looking at him, their tongues hanging out.
There was scattered cedar where I lay, and I kept my eyes open for a club,
a-wishing all the time for Galloway to show up. But for all I knew he was miles
away down in New Mexico.
Worming my way along the ground, I got closer to the wolves. It wasn't going to
do me a sight of good to come up on them until they'd made their kill. I was
sorry for the elk, but it was no use. If this bunch didn't get him the next
would.
Sure enough, when I was still sixty, seventy yards away that elk turned too far
after one wolf and another one slipped in behind and hamstrung him. The elk went
down, making a game fight of it, but he had no chance. About that time I got to
my knees, yelled, and threw a rock into their midst.
You never seen the like. That rock lit close to one big wolf with a cropped ear
and he jumped like he'd been hit. Maybe sand from the ground stung him. Anyway,
they turned to stare at me, waving my arms and yelling.
They backed up as I rose to my feet and started slowly toward them. I was
holding two stones and I could fling passing well, so I let drive again and had
the luck to hit one on the leg.
He jumped and yelped, so I flung the other and they backed up, getting the smell
of me now. If those wolves taken a notion I was in as bad shape as I was I'd
have had no more chance than the elk, but wolves have always feared man and
these were no exception.
Just then I saw a dead cedar, limbs all spread like something had dropped in the
middle of them. I picked up a branch longer than my arm and about as thick as my
wrist and started on.
The wolves taken off.
They ran off a ways and I limped up to the elk. It was dead.
The wolves stopped a hundred yards or so off and sat down to watch. They hadn't
given up by a long shot, but there was a whole lot about me that troubled them.
Naked as I was, I must have looked uncommonly white to them, and that was all
wrong according to their notion of men. And they could smell the blood from my
feet and maybe the festering that was there. One of the wolves had gone over
where I'd been lying and was smelling around to see what his hillside newspaper
would tell him. I could guess he was reading a lot out there that I wished he
didn't know.
Yet I had a good club in my hands, my back to a cliff, and meat enough to feed
me into health again if I could get it cut up. I also needed that hide.
The rock against which the elk had chosen to make his s
tand was about thirty
feet high and sloped off another twelve feet or so that was mostly broken rock.
Some of it was obsidian.
I found myself a good chunk of the right length and began chipping away at it
with another rock. I'd seen Indians make arrowheads and when a boy back in the
mountains had sometimes made small hunting arrows for my own bow. The Cherokees
we grew up around showed us how.
What I wanted now was a knife, and I began chipping away. Those wolves weren't
about to leave that much meat, but my chipping made them wary, as wild animals
are of anything strange.
After I'd worked awhile on the knife I picked up some dried wood and put it
together where it would be handy. My knife was still not in the shape I wanted,
but it had a cutting edge and with it I started skinning the elk. When I had
peeled back enough of the hide I cut two pieces off and tied them around my feet
with strips of the same hide. Even looking at the condition of my feet made my
stomach turn over with fear, for they were bloody, torn, and shapeless. But the
covering of wet hide made it easier to stand on them and using my club for a
cane, I began to hobble around.
The cliff where the elk had made his stand was a thirty foot dropoff at the end
of a long, steep mountainside, and among the rocks at its base was all the junk
that had fallen down the mountain. Plenty of dried wood, and a wide variety of
rocks. What I hunted was iron pyrites, and I found several chunks and broke off
two pieces to use in starting a fire.
Beside the elk I made a small pile of shredded bark, crumbled dry leaves and
slivers, and then I tried striking the two chunks of iron pyrites together. The
sparks came easy, but it taken nearly an hour to get one into the shredded
leaves and bark. Then I coaxed it, blowing gently to get a flame going.
Once a tiny flame began I fed it carefully with more bark and then with some
slivers of pitch pine until it was blazing nicely. When those flames leaped up
and began to crackle I felt like morning on the first day. It was no time at all
until I had a steak broiling on a stick propped over the fire. Then I went back
to work on my knife.
The wolves showed no mind to leave, and I didn't blame them, so I cut out a few
chunks of meat I wasn't going to want and threw them out. They sniffed kind of
cautious, then gobbled them up, but they looked surprised, too. Nobody had ever
fed them before, seemed like.
In the back of my thoughts there was knowledge of those Jicarillas. They'd be of
no mind to give up, and my bloody feet had blazed a pretty easy trail for them.
Keeping my fire alive I skinned out the rest of that elk, scraped some fat off
the hide, and cut out the best chunks of meat. I broke off a couple of pieces of
antler because it makes a good tool for chipping stone, then I bundled those
cuts of meat into the elk hide, whilst ever and anon I tossed a bone or
something to those wolves whose kill I had taken.
I understood how they felt, for they had been hungry, too.
My eyes kept straying to the country south of me, but I could see no movement,
nothing. With Apaches your first look is often your last one.
Putting out my fire, dropping the two pieces of iron pyrites into the hide along
with the meat, I swung the hide over my shoulder and taking up my staff, I moved
out. Following the face of the cliff, I started north. Behind me the wolves were
snarling and tearing at the carcass.
"Flagan Sackett," I said to myself, "you owe those wolves. You surely do."
It was slow going. The meat and hide were a burden, and in spite of the elk skin
on my feet it was all I could do to step on them. What I needed was a hideout, a
place where I could rest up and let my feet heal ... if they would.
The desert had run out behind me. Low green hills broken by jagged outcroppings
and covered by clusters of aspens or scattered pines lay before and around me.
Twice I followed the crests of ridges, hidden by the scattered trees, scouting
the land as I went.
It was a wild, lonely country with occasional streamers of snow in the shadows
where the sun did not reach. The wind was cold off the mountains and I was a
naked man with enemies behind me and nothing before me but hope.
Once I lowered my pack to gather some snakeweed that I found in a hollow, and
blessed my mountain boyhood where a body had to scrape and scrabble to live.
When I could go no further I worked my way back into a willow clump where rising
smoke would be scattered by the leaves and branches. Then I built a small fire
of dry wood that gave almost no smoke, and made a vessel from bark. Dipping up
some water from the creek I put it to boil on a stick suspended above the fire,
and put some snakeweed into it. When the snakeweed had boiled for a time I
bathed my feet with it, using a few handfuls of soft sage for a cloth. Meanwhile
I broiled more meat.
The day had ruined my crude moccasins so I staked out the hide, scraped it some
more, and cut out another pair made a little better.
After I'd eaten, during which time I moved my fire a few feet, I worked at my
knife of obsidian, chipping away to get a good edge. I was clumsy. I'd seen
Indians do it in a third of the time. Then I moved my fire again, scattered pine
needles over the warm ground where the fire had been, and curled up there with
the elk hide over me.
Just a-wishing wouldn't take me there, but my thoughts kept drifting back to the
mountain cabin where I was born, back nigh to Denney's Gap, in Tennessee. That
old cabin had been mighty comfortable, poor as it was, but unless some squatter
had moved into it the cabin was alone now, and empty.
In the cold of dawn the birds were telling stories in the brush, and that spoke
well of the neighborhood. As happy as they sounded it was unlikely there was
anything hateful around.
My feet were sore and the muscles of my calves ached from the awkward way I'd
walked trying to spare my feet. I got up, but my first step hurt so that tears
came to my eyes. I sat back down, scared to think of the trouble I was in.
This was no place to stop. I had to start on again, no matter what. Suddenly the
eye caught movement on the slope, and when I turned my head I saw the wolf.
It was the one with the cropped ear, and he was watching me.
Chapter II
What had become of the others I did not know, but this one was there, and I
remembered it well.
"Howdy, boy!" I said, and taking up a scrap from near the fire, I threw it out
toward him. He stood up then, started forward, then stopped. Turning my back on
him I shouldered my pack, and taking my club in my hand, I started along the
mountain.
When I came out into the open I looked back down the mountain. Far below and far
away I could see something moving ... several men.
My throat kind of tightened up on me. They were still coming then, and that
meant I hadn't a chance in the world. Not one.
If they stayed on my trail they were sure to get me.
The wolf had come up to where I had thrown the scrap of meat and was sniffing
it.
My trouble started wh
en Galloway and me decided to go to ranching. We wanted to
find ourselves some fresh country not all cluttered up with folks. We wanted to
settle somewhere in the mountains or with mountains close by, and we wanted land
where there was grass and water.
We had us a talk with Tell Sackett and old Cap Rountree, and both of them told
us about the country around the Animas, Florida, and La Plata rivers. It seemed
that it would be a good idea to take a ride out thataway and sort of prospect
the country.
Galloway had been helping Parmalee Sackett with a herd of cattle he'd bought in
Arizona awhile back, so I decided to go ahead and scout the country my own self.
It was as fine a ride as ever I had until I come up on those Apaches.
They spotted me and they came in after me and I decided to show them some
distance, so I swung my horse around and taken out of there. About the fourth
jump my horse took, his hoof went into a gopher hole and he spilled us both. I
came up with my eyes and ears full of sand, my rifle on the underside of the
horse, which had a broken leg, and those Indians came sweeping down on me.
There were too many of them to fight so I decided to try to face them. Indians
are notional, and it just might be that no shooting and a brave face might
change their way to favor me.
So I just walked out to meet them, and when they showed up I cussed them out in
Apache, as much of it as I knew, and told them that was no way to treat a
friend.
Well, it didn't work. They bound my hands and feet and taken me back to camp.
They were all set to find out how tough a man I was, and they began it by
stripping my clothes off and staking me out in the sun. They hung a water bag
close to my head with water dripping from it drop by drop within inches of my
mouth, but they'd give me none of it.
The youngsters around camp and some of the squaws would come around and throw
sand in my face or beat me with sticks, sometimes for a half hour at a time. An
they got out of me was a lot of cussin', so they decided to try something really
good.
Whilst they were setting around the fire talking it over, I did some business on
my own account. One of the youngsters had dropped his stick when he got tired of
beating me and it lay across my chest. By humping myself up I slid it down