Collection 1983 - Bowdrie (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Fosdick knew the trails, and the wild bunch knew them. At the head of the cliff trail on a little plateau there was a cave. Once, during an Indian attack when Jerry and Lily Fosdick were youngsters, they had holed up there with Moby and two other men until the attack was over.

  Moby had windows overlooking the trail from either side, and nobody could enter the hollow without being seen. So when the rider on the strawberry roan topped the rise from Del Rio, he saw him.

  His hard old eyes narrowed with speculation as they watched the shambling, loose-gaited stride of the roan. The rider was a stranger.

  Few travelers came by way of Lee’s Canyon, and most sought to avoid it. Nobody knew where the Tucker gang holed up, but there were rumors. Fosdick knew the wild bunch but he also knew most of the hands who worked on ranches west of him. The rider wearing the black flat-crowned hat was nobody he remembered seeing before.

  Fosdick strode to the door and shaded his eyes against the setting sun. The trail was empty. He looked off to the south and the hidden road. Nobody there, either. The stranger was drawing near.

  Moby took in the dark, Indian-like face and the two guns. Not many men carried two guns in sight. A lot of them had a hideout. He glanced at the rider’s face as he stepped down from the saddle. There was something about that still, emotionless face that gave him a little chill.

  He had known this time would come and now he had a decision to make. He had expected it would come with a dozen hard-riding men, not a lone horseman on a wicked-looking hammerhead roan. He looked again. That was probably the ugliest, meanest-looking horse he had ever seen.

  “Howdy! How about some grub?”

  “Come in! Come in! Lily, set another place. We’ve got company!”

  Fosdick turned back to the rider. “You can wash up right outside the door there. Fresh towel an’ soap. Put it out m’self, not an hour ago.” He glanced at the roan. “I’ll take your hoss around an’ give him some hay.” He paused. “Shall I take the hull off him or will you be ridin’ on?”

  “If you’ve room, I’ll stay the night.” The rider looked at Moby. “Treat that horse gentle-like, and be careful. He both kicks and bites on occasion. Give him the hay first so he’ll know you’re friendly.”

  Fosdick walked to the barn with the roan. Well, that settled it. Hell would break loose now and Jerry would be caught right in the middle. To protect his son he would have to warn the whole Tucker gang.

  Jake Rasch was standing in the shadows of the stable. His greasy, unshaved face was suspicious. “Who’s that in yonder? I seen him ride up an’ figured I’d better play possum.”

  “Hit the trail, Jake. You get to Shad Tucker as quick as you can make it. Tell him there’s a traveler down here who looks like a Ranger, and he looks pretty salty.”

  “One man?” Rasch sneered. “What’s one Ranger goin’ to do with all of us? Even with one of us?”

  “You ain’t seen him,” Fosdick said dryly. “This gent’s got the bark on! Rough! I can tell! You look into those black eyes and it’s like lookin’ into two six-shooters with the hammers drawed back.”

  Jake’s expression changed. He grabbed Fosdick’s arm. “Black eyes! Looks like an Apache?”

  “That’s him.” Fosdick lifted the saddle from the roan’s back and set it astride a rail. “What’s the matter?”

  “Chick Bowdrie!” Jake’s face paled with excitement. “He’s the one cleaned up the Ballard outfit!”

  Resolution came to Fosdick. “Jake, you tell Jerry to meet Lily at the cave at sunup tomorrow. I’ve got word for him. Now, don’t forget!”

  “All right,” Rasch said. “Bowdrie, huh? If I could only git him!”

  “Are you crazy?” Fosdick’s contempt was poorly concealed. “If you’re smart you’ll just forget that. You never saw the day you could match Clyde Ballard, and he wasn’t good enough.”

  “I wasn’t thinkin’ of givin’ him no even break. He’s after us, ain’t he?”

  To kill Chick Bowdrie! As Rasch rode up the cliff trail, he sat hunched in the saddle dreaming of what it would mean. Why, he’d become one of the most famous men in the border country! In all of Texas! And to Jake Rasch Texas was the world.

  There’d be nobody to say how it was done. That girl in El Paso, she’d sure set up an’ take notice of him if he got Bowdrie.

  Three men lay about the fire at Cedar Springs when Jake Rasch returned to camp. Shad Tucker was a big, rawboned young man with features that betrayed the ugly savagery that lay beneath the surface. In a dozen years of outlawry he had come off scot-free in his brushes with the law. He claimed to have killed twenty men. Actually he had killed twelve, only three of whom had had an even break.

  He was brutal, ignorant, and disdainful of the law.

  “What’s up?” he demanded, recognizing the excitement in Jake Rasch.

  “Chick Bowdrie’s down at the post. He’s stayin’ the night.”

  “Bowdrie?” His eyes turned mean as he saw the sudden apprehension in Buckeye Thomas’s face. “If ’n he’s huntin’ us, he’s askin’ for it!”

  “Stay shy of him,” Frank Crowley advised.

  Tucker spat. “He ain’t so much! It’s time somebody showed this Bowdrie a thing or two.”

  “Whar-at is Jerry Fosdick? I got word from the old man. He wants Jerry to meet Lily at the cave tomorrow at sunup.”

  Shad Tucker looked around at him. “You don’t need to tell Jerry nothin’. I’ll go to the cave.”

  Buckeye laughed coarsely and Jake’s eyes showed his envy. Crowley looked up.

  “You think that’s wise, Shad? The old man’s been a help, time an’ again.”

  “He won’t be no more. I been suspicious of him, an’ he never wanted Jerry to tie up with us. I reckon it’s time we cleaned up Fosdick. We’ll take his money and the gal and we’ll git all he has in that store. He’s got a rifle or two I’ve had my eyes on for months.”

  Crowley knew Shad Tucker hated Fosdick because he sensed the contempt Fosdick had for him.

  “We’ll send Jerry off somewheres an’ tell him the Rangers done it.”

  They all knew about the iron box under the floor.

  “Might as well git on with it. Jake, you go down there an’ kill Fosdick. You can git him through a window. Then git back here. We’ll handle that Bowdrie when he trails after you.”

  Jake Rasch’s face was sweaty. He was chewing on a chunk of beef. “Better wait until mornin’,” he advised. “Give Lily a chance to start for the cave.”

  BACK IN LEE’S Canyon Bowdrie accepted another plate of frijoles and cornbread. Lily, a slender, pretty blond girl, filled his cup with fresh coffee. “You’re not very talkative, Mr. Bowdrie,” she said, smiling.

  “No, ma’am, I guess I’m not rightly a talking man. I’ve got lots of figurin’ to do. Anyway,” he added, “I know more about horses than folks, and the folks I know are mostly the bad ones. Gives a man a jaundiced opinion, I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t you have a family?”

  “No, ma’am. Once, when I was a youngster, but that’s a long time ago. I went to work soon’s I was able. Never had much time to get acquainted, me bein’ out with stock all the time.”

  “Don’t you have a girl?”

  “No, ma’am. I’ve knowed a few here an’ there, but there’s not been many where I was. I don’t even have one to dream about. There was a girl out in Tascosa, she was married to an Irish gambler, an’ many’s the cowpuncher rode miles just to look at her, she was that beautiful. I never rode that way when she was around.”

  He did have figuring to do. Fosdick had been too long taking care of the roan. Had there been somebody else out there? And where was young Jerry? At this time of night he should have been around.

  Fosdick had looked anxious and irritated about something, and then Bowdrie heard somebody riding away. The horse did not go east or west or he would have heard the hoofbeats on the hard trail. He had heard three, maybe four hoofbeats, which meant the rider had crosse
d the trail, not ridden along it. The rider had ridden toward that apparently impassable wall of cliffs.

  His deductions were wrong in one instance. Knowing Fosdick had a son, he assumed the rider was Jerry. Obviously he would be riding to warn the Tuckers, which implied a friendly relationship. Yet when Fosdick returned to the table Bowdrie could not reconcile the man’s manner or his personality with what he knew of the Tuckers.

  Chick Bowdrie’s arrival was no accident. Tucker’s gang had made a brief foray into Mexico, killing three people, one of them a woman, and stealing a bunch of horses. The Mexican government complained and McNelly sent Bowdrie to investigate.

  So far the Tucker outfit had been confining their activities to the wilder, less-known areas, but emboldened by success, they had been striking at larger, richer places.

  Getting a map of Texas, Bowdrie made ink marks to indicate the locations of the various raids. Then he calculated a probable location of their hideout as the various robberies seemed to radiate out from a given center, which could be Lee’s Canyon. He had checked out several badland locations before coming to Fosdick’s trading post.

  Nobody had wanted to talk about the rough country south of Poplar Creek, although willing enough to talk of other places, so he deduced his search must begin there.

  He took it for granted there was some kind of a working agreement or truce between the Tucker outfit and Fosdick. Otherwise he could not have existed there.

  Obviously both Fosdick and Lily were disturbed by his presence. Shad Tucker would know Bowdrie was here and would resent his presence. So while he ate, he listened, every sense alert. Outside a coyote was howling.

  Bowdrie was finishing his coffee when the coyote stopped howling. No coyote stopped howling suddenly on a moonlit night without reason. Somebody or something had disturbed that coyote. Chick lifted a forkful of beans, his dark eyes intent and aware. Lily’s eyes were large and her lower lip was caught under her teeth.

  Her brother? Or someone else? Chick’s eyes sought her face, watching her expression. She had lived here, she knew the night sounds better than he. In that instant Jake Rasch’s face appeared at the window. Neither Bowdrie nor Lily saw him, but Jake glimpsed the room, seeing what he wished to see.

  Chick Bowdrie sat with his back to the door. Opposite him sat Moby Fosdick, and with luck Jake could get them both. His footsteps were catlike as he approached the door.

  His heart was jumping like mad. It was the chance of a lifetime! To the devil with Tucker. If he could kill Bowdrie he’d be a big man, bigger than Tucker, and he could always tell Shad he just had to kill him. Yet Bowdrie’s reputation was such that when Jake’s hand touched the latch, it was trembling.

  Six-gun gripped in his hand, he gripped the door latch with his left, and slamming the door back, he fired two quick shots into an empty space!

  In the moment when Jake was rounding the corner of the house, Bowdrie got up and stepped to the corner for his saddlebags and Fosdick leaned over to get a light from the fire for his pipe.

  Tense, every nerve on edge, Jake had fired at the place where the two men had been sitting. Only then did he realize they were gone. Pale with shock and sudden fear, he swung the gun, looking for Bowdrie.

  Chick was standing, his saddlebags in his left hand, his gun in his right. He was standing casually, eyes alert, staring at Rasch.

  The outlaw gulped, the sound loud in the room. The old clock ticked twice while horror mounted in Jake’s breast. He found himself in the last situation he wanted to be in, facing Chick Bowdrie with an even break.

  “Well”—Bowdrie was cool—“you came to kill me. Why don’t you shoot?”

  Transfixed with fear, Rasch forgot the girl in El Paso. He forgot about the important man he wanted to be. Suddenly the cost was enormously large. His mouth opened and closed. He tried to swallow. “You . . . you’d kill me! I wouldn’t have a chance!”

  “How much chance were you givin’ us?”

  Jake Rasch let his tongue touch his lips. Lust to kill was mounting past his fear. He took a step back toward the door, then another. Bowdrie’s eyes were on him.

  “No,” he whined. “I was a fool! I was—”

  He turned toward the door, then fired suddenly across his chest.

  Bowdrie had been watching with the eyes of experience. The treachery in the man was obvious. He could see the fever to kill in the man’s eyes. His gun was ready, and when he saw the man’s knuckle move, his thumb on the hammer, Bowdrie killed him.

  Jake’s gun blasted, and there was a thud in the wall behind him. The gun slipped from Rasch’s fingers and his legs seemed to melt under him. He sank to the floor, half in, half out of the door.

  Moby Fosdick stared at the fallen man, then at the groove cut by Rasch’s bullet in the surface of the table. Had he not leaned to pick that twig from the fire, he would be dead.

  He realized what a fool he had been. There could be no tolerating of evil. One stamped it out or the evil grew worse. He had held on, hoping the Tuckers would leave the area or be killed. Now he knew that not only himself but his son and daughter were in danger.

  “Lily, pack your things. Come daybreak we’re gettin’ out of here.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Jake Rasch. He rides with Tucker.”

  Bowdrie knew the name. He was on the list of wanted men. “Who did he want? You or me?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked at the groove again. “Looks like he wanted me, probably both of us.”

  DAYLIGHT WAS FILTERING into the hollow when Bowdrie rolled out of the hay, left the stable, and walked toward the house. A paint horse stood head down at the hitching post. Bowdrie considered it, reaching some agreement with himself. He was turning toward the door when it opened softly. Quickly he flattened himself against the wall and in the shadows of a tree.

  Lily Fosdick slipped from the door, glanced fearfully toward the stable where she thought him to be, then hurried away across the clearing. Without stirring, he watched her enter the cedars near the cliff.

  Moby was stirring around inside when Bowdrie entered. “Got some coffee on,” he suggested. “Better have some.”

  “I’m going after the Tuckers this morning. Got anything you want to tell me?”

  Moby straightened up from the fire. “I guess . . . not. They’ve got them a hideout, can’t be more’n five or six miles off, the way they come an’ go.”

  Bowdrie gulped hot black coffee and waited. Something was worrying Fosdick.

  “Bowdrie, you’ve got a name for killin’ men, but they say you’re square. My boy’s out there, Bowdrie. He ain’t a bad boy, but it got kind of lonesome here and those fellers talked big about all they done. He sort of took up with Tucker. I don’t reckon he’s done anything wrong yet, ain’t been time, and they ain’t been away, so—”

  “Any boy can get into trouble. No reason he has to keep on that road. I had a start that way myself but turned off before it was too late. As for killin’, I don’t do any more than I have to. Rasch there, he gave me no choice.”

  WHEN BOWDRIE HAD the saddle on the roan, he tied the reins of the paint horse to the saddle horn and said, “Go home, boy. You go home now.”

  The paint hesitated, trotted off a few steps, then headed down the trail. Whether the gelding understood or not, he remembered where the other horses were and where he’d been fed and watered.

  There was no sign of Lily. He saw her tracks, then lost them as he followed the paint.

  Almost an hour later Shad Tucker got up from the fire and saw the paint come trotting into the clearing. He stiffened, eyes narrow. “Frank? Look there!”

  Crowley stood up. “Looks like Jake made a bad mistake,” he commented dryly.

  “Hey?” He dove into the brush, reaching for his rifle as he passed the rock where he had been sitting. “See those reins? Tied to the horn. I betcha that Ranger’s followin’.”

  A short distance back along the trail, Bowdrie was puzzled. There should be some smoke
. At this time of the morning somebody would be making coffee. He saw the paint had pulled up near a corral where there were other horses. He turned to look toward the left and saw the fire. He also saw two rifle barrels, and they were pointed at him.

  “Jest set right still, Ranger. An’ keep both hands on the pommel.”

  Chick Bowdrie swore softly. It would be madness to move now. At that distance they could not miss.

  Shad Tucker came out of the brush. Behind him was Buckeye Thomas. “Good man, Frank!” Tucker said. “We got him dead to rights!”

  Thomas bared his yellow teeth. “The great Chick Bowdrie! Wal, Mr. Ranger, I reckon you got to be taught. I reckon so.”

  Tucker gestured at the maze of canyons and rough country. “This here’s mine! You Rangers ain’t needed. We’ll just sort of make an example of you an’ leave what’s left for Rangers to find so they’ll know what’s comin’ to ’em if they come into my country.”

  “There will be others,” Bowdrie said calmly. “Others who are tougher and smarter than me.”

  “When they find you,” Tucker replied, “they’ll find you with no hands, nor will you have any eyes or skin on your chest. I’ll keep you alive for all o’ that, then leave what’s left to the ants and the buzzards.”

  Crowley glanced from one to the other, worry in his eyes. Bowdrie could see that Crowley didn’t like it. Robbery and killing was one thing, torture something else. “Shad, Lily will be down to the cave about now, won’t she?”

  Tucker slapped his thigh. “Damned if she won’t! I almost forgot. I figured to keep that appointment she made with Jerry, so I better get down there.”

  Tucker reached up and flipped Bowdrie’s guns from their holsters; then, grabbing him by the shirtfront, he jerked him from the saddle and threw a wicked punch to his belly. “How d’you like it, Ranger? You think you’re tough, huh? Well, we’ll see.”

  When Bowdrie was bound hand and foot, Shad Tucker swung to the saddle of his own horse and started down the trail. “Hold him for me. Don’t do nothin’ until I git back. This one’s my meat.”