Over on the Dry Side

by Louis L'Amour

  “Ain’t tasted coffee in a spell,” he said. “Might be a long time agin. Out here I don’t throw nothin’ away ’til it’s plumb used up.”

  They started out. The old man led them at a good fast walk down a very steep trail for a hundred yards or so, then at a canter along a gradual slope.

  The shot came from afar. A single shot, and then silence. The old man pulled up sharply. Chantry’s eyes swept the country in a quick, measuring glance.

  All was still. There was no movement, no further sound. The shot seemed to have come from somewhere before them, but in the clear air the sound might have carried for some distance.

  Chantry started forward again, the only sound the swishing of the horses’ hoofs in the grass. He held his rifle in his right hand, ready for use.

  Then right before them, he saw the tracks of several hard-ridden horses. Grass was torn and earth kicked up where the hoofs had dug in. Men riding that hard were going straight to an objective, and not in doubt about it.

  Suddenly, half a mile away and racing across a meadow, he saw three riders, two bay horses and a buckskin, running all out.

  The old man spoke up suddenly. “Chantry, if I cut out, don’t you worry none. I’ll be around about.”

  “Just don’t get in the way,” Owen replied. “You do what you’re of a mind to.”

  “What you figurin’ on?”

  “I’m going in and get that girl out of there.”

  “You see her?”

  “No.…But look at that rocky knoll yonder? The one covered with aspens. There’s been a blowdown hit that slope. See the dead trees? My guess is she’s there, trying to make a stand.”

  “Yeah,” the old man said. “They’ve left one man to pin her down while they try to outflank her. Don’t you go gittin’ yourself killed. I ain’t much hand at goin’ agin three, four men single-handed. If’n I was huntin’ ’em, now…”

  “Hunt them then, but stay out of range. When I go in there I don’t want to think about where else my bullets are going.”

  Chantry walked his horse forward, sitting straight up in the saddle, missing nothing. He was reminded of a time during the war when he was outside Chattanooga. He had led a cavalry charge against a crossroads position, and they had come out of the trees, just like this, unseen by the men in position below.

  But this was war of another kind, and he commanded no company. There was only himself and one old man of whom he knew nothing.

  He began to trot, his eyes searching for the fourth man.

  He heard a shot and saw a puff of smoke from the knoll under the aspens. Almost instantly the hidden marksman replied, and then Chantry saw him, hunkered down behind a mound of earth and brush, lifting his rifle for another shot.

  Owen wheeled his horse, the packhorse following, and went in at a dead run.

  The man heard him coming too late. Wheeling around, he drew up his rifle for a shot. Yet the turn and the lift of the gun were too fast. The rifle went off before it was fairly lined up, and the next instant Owen rode in up on him, firing with his rifle downward, shooting with one hand.

  The man jerked back, spun and dropped. He started to get up and Chantry reined in, turning in a small circle around him.

  He’d been hit, all right. Blood stained his shirt and pants right about the beltline on the right side.

  “You played hell!” he said.

  The man was a rough-looking fellow, but unfrightened.

  “You surely bought yourself a ticket!” he said angrily. “The old man will have your scalp for this.”

  “Does it take four of you to round up one little girl?” Chantry asked.

  “Are you Owen Chantry?”

  “I am, and that girl is to be left alone. You understand?”

  The man spat. “You better tell them yonder. They ain’t about to leave her alone. They done had enough of her uppity ways. Who does she think she is?”

  “Why don’t you ask Mowatt?” Chantry suggested.

  The man spat again. “Hell, Mowatt don’t know what’s good for him. That girl ain’t no kin.”

  The man was clasping his leg tightly, but even as he talked the initial shock was wearing off. The pain was growing and he squinted his eyes against it, not wanting to let Chantry see.

  Out of respect for the man, Chantry turned away. But as he rode off he kept an eye on him to see that he didn’t reach for a gun. But the man was wholly concerned with his wound and didn’t again look up.

  Chantry rode forward, and there were no shots. As he mounted a small knoll he glimpsed Marny’s horse, deep inside a clump of trees.

  “Marny?” he called softly.

  “Come on in,” she spoke just loud enough for him to hear. “Although you’ve come to a poor place.”

  He rode in through the trees and swung down. She got up from a tangle of fallen logs. There was a smudge on her cheek and the skirt she wore was rumpled.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “So far, but there’s still three more, and they’ll be back.”

  He glanced around quickly. The clump of trees was no more than fifty or sixty feet across, any way you looked, and there were a good many deadfalls and several clumps of boulders. The field of fire in most directions was good.

  “They’ll come. But when they find out you’re not alone, they’ll pull out. Then we’ll have to run for it.”

  She glanced at him. “You needn’t, you know. I can get along.”

  She thought again how cold his face was. It was hardboned and strong, but there was little warmth in it until he smiled. There was loneliness in it, too, yet nothing about him invited sympathy. This was a man who had been much alone, with no experience at sharing feelings—probably because there had been nobody to share them with.

  “You’ve always been alone, haven’t you?” she asked.

  He shrugged, watching the timber across the meadow. “It’s better alone than with somebody you don’t trust.”

  “You’ve never learned to share your feelings.”

  “Who wants my feelings? A man alone keeps his feelings to himself.”

  She saw a movement among the leaves. “There’s somebody over there.”

  “I see.”

  “Are you going to shoot?”

  “Not until I see what I’m shooting at. Anybody who shoots blind is a fool. Something moving in the brush may be your best friend. Whenever I squeeze a trigger I know what I’m shooting at.”

  “But we don’t have any friends here!”

  “There’s Doby. And his Pa.…And that old man I met last night.”

  “Old man?”

  “He knows you. He’s got a telescope, and there’s not much he doesn’t know.…He’s also got a Sharps fifty.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Looks like he was here first and they built the mountains around him. But he’s spry…he’s mighty spry, and canny.”

  There was a yell off to their right, and when Owen turned they were coming…all three of them. They were well scattered and coming in at a dead run.

  Chantry lifted his rifle like a man shooting ducks, and he fired left, middle, and right.

  There was no wasted motion, and no emotion. He just lifted the rifle and came down on his targets, held up the merest second and squeezed off his shots.

  The first man veered sharply and dropped his rifle, then fell down the slope and into the bottom. The second man dropped from the saddle, hit the grass, and lay there. The third wheeled his horse wildly and tried to escape. Chantry let him have three good jumps while he held his fire. Then he shot.

  “I held high,” he explained, apologetically. “I might have shot through him and killed a good horse.”

  The horse and rider went racing away across the field, but the man rode limply, one arm dangling.

  “Only the horse? Not the man?”

  “The man came a-hunting trouble. He rode after a lone woman and he brought plenty of help, so whatever he gets is too good for him. The horse
didn’t have a choice. He was ridden into this fight, so there’s no use for it to suffer.” Chantry loaded his rifle again. “If you want to dance, you pay the fiddler. Only in this dance,” he smiled at her, “in this dance the devil does the fiddling and you pay in blood.”

  He glanced around the rocky, tree-covered knoll. “I like this place. When you pick a place to make a stand, you do all right.”

  The last echoes of the firing had died away. Not the faintest smell of powder smoke remained. It was as if nothing had happened. Only the body lying out there in the grass said otherwise, only a dark patch against the green.

  It would still be like this when they were gone. The few scars they left would be erased quietly. Even if left unburied the body would be disposed of in time, and after many years only a few buttons and perhaps a buckle would remain. Men would come, would pass, and where they walked the grass would grow again, and the forest, and there would be no signs of their passing.

  “We’d better go,” he said. “There’s been enough of this.”

  “They won’t stop, you know. Mac Mowatt is losing control. They will want blood now. They’ll come after you, Owen, and they’ll come after me. But it’s the treasure they want.”

  “Treasure!” he was irritated. “The treasure is out there,” he waved a hand. “The treasure is the country itself.”

  He helped her to the saddle, then mounted and picked up the leadline of his packhorse. They rode out and down across the meadow.

  Suddenly the old man came down from a clump of spruces across the way. He rode up to them and reined around, staring angrily at Chantry. “Might o’ left me one!” he said. “You cleaned house ’fore I got my fifty up. I d’clare, I never seen such shootin’. You an’ me, we could make us a passel out on the buffalo grass.”

  Owen Chantry led away to the south. He was withdrawn, not wanting to talk. Fighting had been a way of life for as long as he could recall, but he wanted no more of it.

  Sensing his mood, Marny said nothing. Against the far-off horizon the Sleeping Ute Mountain bulked large and, nearer, the great shelf of Mesa Verde thrust out, sharp against the sky.

  “Do you know what they say?” she spoke suddenly. “We had a half-breed Navajo with us for a while. He said there were ghost cities up there…houses, walls, rooms, all empty and still.”

  Owen’s eyes turned toward the bulk of the great plateau. “Could be,” he said, “though it’s a less favored place than the mountains we’ve come from.”

  The old man disagreed. “Depends on what you’re lookin’ for. If you’re in a country where there’s savage Indians, fighters like the ’Paches and the Navajos, then maybe you want a place you can defend.”

  Owen Chantry offered no comment. He had been looking far off, and now he drew up on the edge of a slight shelf that offered a good view to the west.

  Far off against the sky a slim column of smoke was rising toward the sky. Chantry swore softly, bitterly.

  Startled, Marny said, “What is it, Owen?”

  “They’ve fired the ranch,” he said. He pointed to the smoke. “It’s burning…or has been.”

  “What about the Kernohans?” she asked, suddenly frightened for them.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”

  Chapter 12

  *

  PA WAS JUST a-gettin’ hitched up when I seen ’em comin’. He had the harness on when I glimpsed the dust on the trail, an’ I yelled at him.

  “Pa! The Mowatt gang!”

  Well, I never seen him act so fast or so sure. I didn’t know he had it in him. Pa seemed to me a ord’nary sort of man, and when I picked out heroes he wasn’t among ’em. But he wasted no time.

  The saddle was already on my horse for I’d been fixin’ to take off yonder to the hills. Pa had bound me up tight round the chest and waist, like I was in a cast, and although he didn’t know what I aimed to do, he wanted my ribs to knit nice and clean so he done what seemed best to him.

  So my horse was ready, an’ my rifle was there with extra bullets. An’ a bait of grub. An’ when Pa seen that dust cloud he run for the house.

  I started after him and he yelled back to turn the stock loose. That meant the cows he had up, the one we were milkin’, and the heavy stock, so I threw down the corral bars and shied ’em out and into a run down the meadow.

  Pa come out with clothes and a few extries. He’d been thinkin’ on this. That I figgered out after, ’cause he knew just what to take. He run for the horses.

  “Pa!” I yelled. “What about the house?”

  “We didn’t have a house when we come here, boy, but we did have ourselves and our stock. Let’s go!”

  We taken out.

  The way Pa led off I knowed he wasn’t just runnin’ wild. He had a bee in his bonnet and soon I seen what it was.

  He was ridin’ right into Lost Canyon.

  Sometime or other he’d found him a trail, and we went for it. Afore we got there, we rode through several big clump of trees, and he done what he could to cover our trail. Then he headed for that place he’d found.

  Right where we hit the canyon she probably wasn’t much more’n fifteen hundred feet rim to rim, but she was at least five hundred feet deep. And both walls was covered with trees ’cept right at the rim. It was thick cover.

  We didn’t waste no time. Pa went over that rim and dropped plumb out of sight. When I got that close I seen his horse slidin’ on his haunches down a trail that made you catch your breath to look at.

  I taken out after him. I wasn’t goin’ to have Pa sayin’ I showed the white feather ’cause of no cliff. But I was sweatin’ blue water by the time I’d gone down a hundred feet.

  We bottomed out in that there canyon close by a stream, that went rushin’ by—a fine trout stream if ever I seen one, and me with no pole nor no time to fish.

  Sometime or other, Pa had done some scoutin’ without sayin’ a word to me about it. He’d been here afore and he led off almighty fast to a place where, sometime or other, the stream cut back into the cliff to make a holler faced off with trees. Some fallen logs had made a natural corral, and here we bunched our stock and Pa got down off his horse.

  “You stay here, Doby. I’ve got somethin’ to do up yonder.”

  “You goin’ back, Pa?”

  “They ain’t gonna burn that house ’thout me showin’ ’em I disapprove,” he said. “I’ll just fire a few rounds and then come on back.”

  “I’ll go along.”

  “Now, son, you stay here with the stock. I ain’t put in my years raisin’ you from a penny-grabbin’, candy-suckin’ kid to a growed up man just to see you killed by no outlaws. You set tight and I’ll be back, and then we’ll plan what to do.”

  “Pa, if’n you raised me to set still and watch my pa go into a fight by hisself, you surely wasted your time. I’m a-goin’ with you.”

  We went up together, me an’ Pa, and I never felt closer to him than right at that time. We went up together and we run back through the trees. The Mowatt gang was circlin’ round the house, yellin’ and shootin’.

  There was smoke from the chimney, and I guess they didn’t know we was gone. It was too far away for good shootin’, but we had to git back to that canyon if they took out after us, so Pa hunkered down among some rocks and he taken a long sight and squeezed her off. I seen that ol’ rifle jump in his hands and one of them horses r’ared up like it was burned and its rider went tumblin’. Then you never seen folks scatter like they done.

  But not before I put in some lead. I’d had my eye on one big gent with white suspenders, and I held my sight a mite below where those suspenders crossed on his back, and though it was a good long shot I tightened up the finger until that rifle went off.

  I didn’t kill him, but I burned him. I made him know he’d been shot at. I sent him a yippin’ out of there. But they kept ridin’ around. One of ’em throwed a torch at the house that fell on the roof an’ rolled off.

  Both Pa an’ me w
e opened up an’ dusted ’em around with lead. It taken ’em a few shots to realize we weren’t inside but outside, and then they turned around and charged at us.

  Well, you never seen such a fine sight.

  There must’ve been fourteen or fifteen of ’em an’ they was all mounted up on fine horses and they come at us like cavalry chargin’. It was a real sight. A better sight I never saw nor had, lookin’ right down the rifle barrel at ’em, and that time when I fired there wasn’t no mistake. A man just throwed up his hands and fell off his horse. He hit dust and rolled over and he lay all sprawled out. And Pa took a shot and then he said, “Son, let’s get out’n here.”

  So we taken off.

  We taken off a-runnin’. Pa was a better runner than I thought. He was really a-leggin’ it when we heard a yell behind.

  They’d seen us.

  “Here, boy,” Pa said. He dropped behind a log and he hadn’t hit dirt ’fore he fired. And me, I was just a hair behind him, firing standin’ up behind a good thick tree.

  They’d set the house afire. We could see the smoke goin’ up.

  Them riders split around us and we hightailed it. We was close to the rim then and bullets was kickin’ the dust all around us when we went over the rim and flopped down. We was shootin’ fast.

  They turned right and left into the trees and I started reloadin’ and looked over at Pa. And there was blood all over his shirt, and his face had gone white and me, I was scared.

  I crawled over to him and slung him over my back, and carryin’ both rifles I slid and fell and crawled to the bottom of the canyon. It was no way to handle a hurt man, but I didn’t have no choice. I got him to our corral and bathed off his face a little, then tried to peel off his shirt.

  I got it off and his undershirt down to his waist. I seen the bullet had hit his shoulder bone and tore through the meat on his shoulder, and down his back a mite. It was pressin’ against the skin of his back, a bluelike lump, and I figgered the thing to do was get shut of it. So I slid out my bowie and cut a slit in the skin and the bullet, it just popped out in my hand.

  He’d lost some blood. He’d lost a-plenty of blood, but it didn’t look to me like no death wound. Still, a body couldn’t be sure. So I plugged up the wound with pieces of his undershirt, bathed him off some, and stretched him out.