Over on the Dry Side

by Louis L'Amour

  “Taken a shot at ’em m’self,” the old man said, “just to bugger ’em a mite. I was a mite far off for good shootin’, but I burned one of ’em. Burned him good…dropped his rifle an’ he taken off. He come back for his rifle after a while, but somebody’d snuck down there an’ packed it, packed it right off.”

  “Good!” Chantry smiled. “A man doesn’t find a rifle every day.”

  He surely didn’t, and I felt sorry for the man who lost it, at the same time thinkin’ it was one more we wouldn’t have to worry about aimin’ at us.

  Chantry kept sizing up the old man and finally he asked him when he come into the country. That old man, he canted his head and his old eyes twinkled. He gulped down some more hot coffee an’ he says, “I don’t pay no mind to years. Ain’t seen a clock or a calendar since I was a boy. But this here much I’ll say. When I first come over on the dry side I already had hair on m’ chest. I was fit to handle m’self or anybody that come to catch me. Only nobody come.”

  “But you knew Clive?”

  “I knowed him. Had his head in a book most o’ the time. But he was a good man for all of that…a good man. Kept the coffee on…never had to wait in his house. Rode with Clive once. Down in Mexico with another feller named Mowatt. But we got chased out. They ran us awhile, but one of Clive’s friends was an Otomi Indian. He knowed the country, an’ he taken us out.

  “We had us a fight an’ the Indian was killed, but ’fore he died he tol’ Clive ’bout some papers. He’d seen him readin’, so he told him his people had papers, too. Told him where they was hidden.…Old papers, and carvin’s and such.

  “Clive, he’d have it no way but to go lookin’, an’ sure enough, he found ’em. Wasn’t all he found, neither. He found a heap of grief and trouble.

  “Clive Chantry was the one built the cabin on the rampart. And buried or hid whatever it was.”

  “How much gold did he have?” I put in.

  The old man chuckled. “Gold? Laddie, you’d of had a hard time fillin’ a thimble! I know! I was there! We three had us some gold until the big fight in Mexico, an’ then we was lucky to get out with our skins! We had us some horses and two mules, an’ we had some grub. We had powder an’ lead, an’ mighty little else. Gold? I should smile!”

  Well, there it was! Unless this old man was a-lyin’, or had found where the gold was hid and had it hid someplace hisself. I taken another look at him. Old he might be, but he was no damn fool. He was smart as a hill-country fox.

  “I never heard of no Otomi Indians,” I muttered.

  “There are many tribes in Mexico,” Chantry said, “with many languages. I know nothing of the Otomis either, except that I’ve heard their language is very different, with no kinship to the other Indian tongues. Of course, that may be just hearsay.”

  “That Otomi was a good man,” the old man said, “but he was a drifter and a wanderer, never stayed put nowheres.”

  “I still believe there was gold,” I declared. “Or gems and such. I don’t see why a man would waste his time totin’ old papers or whatever all the way from Mexico. What I want to know is where it was hid.”

  The old man shrugged. “Who knows? Clive was mysterious. Wherever he hid the stuff, nobody ever knowed. You’ll play hob findin’ it.”

  Chantry went off under a tree and rolled up in his blankets, and the old man, he just set awhile staring into the coals of the fire an’ talkin’ to hisself. I taken my rifle an’ started scoutin’ out again up toward the rim. When I finally got there I set down amongst the rocks and brush where I could see, and I started watchin’ the trails.

  That was a mean outfit and I didn’t trust them no way at all. Chantry said he’d talked to Mac Mowatt, but I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. I didn’t figger anybody could walk right into an outlaw camp and talk to the leader without getting killed. But maybe he done it.

  I couldn’t figure that old man out either. It was hard to believe he’d lived in that country so long and we never even seen him. Yet it could be so. It was right what Marny said about bears and lions, and if they could do it maybe a man could too. It made a body downright uneasy to think there’s folks around, peerin’ at him without him knowin’. Made me look around.

  Settin’ there like that, nothin’ on my mind, thoughts kept edging their way up front, thoughts I’d put out no welcome for. It kept nagging at me there might be men who set such store by papers they’d risk their lives to save ’em. That was a new thing to me.

  Shifting my rifle, I squinted down the trail. No dust. No smoke. Yet somethin’ about that trail worried me.

  I oughta be thinking of meat, too. We didn’t have much left. Maybe some fish. I could rig myself up a pole and catch a bait of mountain river trout, be mighty tasty.

  I taken another sight down trail and still seen nothin’. I studied the country round, then backed out the brush and went down the trail to the Lost Canyon camp.

  Owen Chantry was polishin’ his boots when I got there. “See anything, Doby?” he asked.

  “All quiet,” I told him. “What you reckon they’re figurin’ on?”

  “If they’re smart, they’re pulling out about now. But I don’t think they’re that smart, or that willing to believe they’ve wasted their time. What they should do, not being smart enough to quit, is to hole up and hide out until I’ve found whatever it is they think is so valuable.”

  “Might be a long time,” I said, thinking about that. For how could any man alive read the thoughts of a man long dead? There were miles of country in which to hide something, clefts in the rock, hollow trees, boulders, places where holes could be dug. An’ I said so.

  Chantry agreed. “Clive knew me, and I knew him. He would think of something, some clue we would both understand. But whatever it is, I can’t figure it out from here. I’ve got to go back to the cabin. I have to be where he was and try to think his thoughts.”

  “However could you do that?” Marny asked.

  Chantry put down the cloth he’d been using to polish his boots. “Put myself in his place. He may have known they would try to kill him.”

  Marny flushed. “I had no idea they’d kill him. You see, they thought whatever it was was in the house…the ranch house. I thought so, too.”

  “So?” Owen Chantry was lookin’ right at her, kinda cold and steady.

  “They told me they were going to kill him if he didn’t tell them where it was, and I begged them not to. I’d met him, you see, while riding. We’d talked.…He was much older.…He seemed much older than you, Owen. I liked him. He was a gentleman. And after being with them…Oh, I liked it! I liked being treated like a lady, I liked listening to him. I was anxious to learn things. How to be a lady, how to act, what women wore. Clive seemed to know something about everything. Then they told me they were going to kill him, so I begged them to let me try to find it. They agreed.

  “So I went down. I told Clive I’d run away, that I was afraid of them, and that much was almost true. I wanted to run away, but I was always afraid…always.

  “He let me stay there. He told me he’d protect me until he could figure out how to get me away safely. And when he was out of the house, I looked for treasure. The only thing I ever discovered was that it could not possibly be hidden in the ranch house.

  “We used to talk a lot. Suddenly he’d seem very lonely. And most of all, Owen, he talked of you. He’d read poetry to me, and to himself, and he read other things. And when I realized he had nothing of value hidden in the house, I went to them and tried to tell them. I begged them, pleaded with them but they wouldn’t listen. They thought he’d made a fool of me.

  “Finally, Mac promised they’d do nothing. Or I thought he’d promised, at least. And then they killed him. And ransacked the house, and found nothing…nothing.

  “And he was dead. Clive Chantry was dead.”

  Chapter 16

  *

  MAC MOWATT SAT hunched on the butt end of a log in Hell’s Hole, a small hollow on th
e course of the middle fork of the range. Above him, the great bulk of the hogback loomed, rising over a thousand feet to its crest.

  It was not a good campsite and Mowatt was not in a good mood. He stared gloomily into the flames, Owen Chantry’s words of the night before sticking like spurs into his brain.

  Suppose Chantry was telling the truth. Suppose all this searching was for nothing at all. Suppose all this waiting, all this grief, plus the loss of several good men and the trouble they were in now was in vain.

  All of them had reached the lake before the flames burned anyone bad, but several had been singed and were suffering. A burning leaf had set Ollie Fenelon’s hair afire before he could slap it out, and he had a raw scalp. And Tom Freka’s big horse had a burn across his hip from a bullet that had come out of nowhere.

  His own clothes were still damp from the soaking, for most of them had gone in up to their necks. Their blanket rolls were wet, and a lot of their grub had been soaked. Pierce Mowatt, his half-brother and the best cook among them, was contriving something at the fire. Several coffeepots were on the coals, and things might soon be looking better.

  “I’ll kill him!” Freka yelled suddenly. “I’ll break both his legs and show him what the feel of fire is!”

  Jake Strawn rolled the tobacco in his jaws and spat.

  “You get a chance to kill him, you better not try no fancy touches.”

  “You think he’s really somethin’, don’t you?” Freka sneered.

  “Uh-huh. He’s the best I ever seen…unless it’s me,” Strawn was complacent. “He’s right handy, an’ you choose your weapon. Knife, pistol, or club, he’s rough an’ randy.”

  “I’ll kill him!” Freka repeated.

  “Pa?” It was Frank, and Mac Mowatt looked up. “I’m takin’ a ride to Santa Fe. Maybe El Paso. I’d be pleased not to ride alone.”

  There was a momentary silence, then Mac shifted his boots. “Don’t talk that way, Frank. We need you here.”

  “I got no liking for this dodging about in the brush, all on somebody’s say-so that there’s gold.” So much was what Frank thought and felt. When he continued, he was speaking partly to affect the others. “I want to see a woman. I want some lights and some fancy grub. Or at least some grub we don’t have to fix for ourselves. There’s stages down near the border. And there’s cattle can be stole across the border an’ sold this side. An’ vice versa. We’re a-wastin time here, Pa.”

  “There’s got to be a mint o’ gold,” Mac said. “Why, they was comin’ out of Mexico with an army after ’em! What was they after ’em for? Just those fool papers Clive was supposed to have?”

  “Who told you about that army, Pa?” Frank inquired mildly. “That’s just border talk, you know that. An’ if they had any gold, why didn’t they spend it? Why would a man bury gold in the ground? Did we ever bury any of ours?”

  “Why should we bury it?” Pierce asked.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Frank said quietly. “Why should anybody bury gold? If there’s a posse after ’em and they need to lighten their load, maybe. If they got so much they can’t carry it, maybe. But if there was an army after Ben Mowatt and Clive Chantry, what happened to the army?”

  Fenelon looked up. “Whad’ya mean?”

  “They were after them, weren’t they? This was Spanish territory them days, wasn’t it? So if they was after them, why did they stop short? Mowatt got killed, and Clive settled down right here an’ stayed, so they wouldn’t have had no trouble findin’ him.”

  “Aw, hell!” Fenelon said. “We know an army chased ’em! Why, Charlie Abrams down to Socorro, he knowed all about it. He said they was Mex soldiers, and he was on the border when they was chasing Mowatt an’ Chantry.”

  “Wasn’t any border,” Frank said quietly. “Not them days. I heard tell Charlie never even come into this country ’til just before the war.”

  He got out his pipe and loaded it. He didn’t want to talk anymore. They were out of sorts and sore at the world. Let them stew about it.

  Treasure! Lost mines! How many stories had he heard? Some of them made sense. Some of them had some basic logic behind them, but most of them wouldn’t hold water.

  He got up and started for the river bank. He’d taken no more than a step when he heard the rumble. He started to turn, saw what was happening and yelled, “Run! Rockslide! Run!”

  They ran. They scattered. Somebody charged into Frank full-tilt and they both fell, sprawling on the ground just in time to be missed by a boulder the size of a mule. It hit a rock above them and bounded over their heads. Men were falling, cursing. Somebody screamed. There was a roaring behind them, then a few scattered rocks falling down, a trickle of pebbles, and silence.

  And then the swearing began.

  “Help!” a voice called. “I got a busted leg!”

  Men came out of the creek, stamping the water from their legs, pausing to empty their boots.

  “Where’s the horses?” Mac Mowatt yelled. There was more cursing.

  “Gone, god damnit!” Pierce said.

  Their fire was out, buried under a deluge of rocks and gravel. Their coffeepots were spilled, smashed, or buried. Their food was under a heap of rocky debris from off the cliff.

  It hadn’t been a big slide, but big enough to frighten the horses, wipe out their camp, and ruin their supper.

  “Now why in hell,” Pierce muttered, “did that have to happen?”

  “Happen, hell!” Ollie Fenelon shouted. “That didn’t happen! It was done! Somebody had to start that rockslide!”

  Mowatt swore, and Freka said again, “I’ll kill him, damnit. I’ll kill him!”

  Jake Strawn gathered up what he could find of the camp gear. When Frank came over to help, Strawn said, “El Paso sounds better ’n better.”

  Strawn found one dented but intact pot, and they found most of their gear and bedding, after some digging. One rifle had a broken stock, and the wooden stirrup on a saddle was broken. But that could be repaired, and the gun stock also, with time.

  When the coffee was ready they took turns, for they needed more than one pot. It was a slow, tiring supper they ate and finally, on ground a hundred yards from their original campsite, they bedded down.

  It was after midnight before the camp was quiet. Within the hour that followed, all were asleep. Even Mac, who’d been doing some serious thinking.

  The moon rose later and finally shone into the canyon. Suddenly the perfect stillness of the mountain night was split wide open by the heavy explosion of a rifle shot, unnaturally loud in the quiet.

  Tom Freka came to his feet with a scream of pure fury, and as he lunged erect a bullet hit the ground within inches of his toes. He sprang back, tripping over Frank Mowatt to fall in a heap. Another shot followed, and then stillness.

  Bleary-eyed from weariness, only half-awake, the men stared around, and then from the cliff above them came a mocking voice, singing, “We’re tenting tonight on the old campgrounds, give us a song to cheer—”

  Tom Freka emptied his rifle toward the sound high above.

  “Goodnight, boys!” It was Owen Chantry’s voice. “Sleep late in the morning.”

  Wiley swore bitterly, and after a minute or two they rolled in their blankets. But it was a long time before they could sleep. Pierce Mowatt came out of the darkness and walked down by the stream, lighting his pipe, half-expecting a shot. But no more shots were heard.

  The trouble was, Mac Mowatt reflected, now they would never know. Nobody would strike a match, try to make coffee, or settle down for a meal without wondering when the shots were going to come.

  There were two possible solutions: leave the country or track down Owen Chantry and kill him. He said as much to Freka.

  “There’s another,” Freka said. “I think he’s got a case on Marny. If’n we could get Marny back, he’d come for her.”

  “No!” Mowatt’s voice was flat and harsh. “Marny’s kin. Keep her out of this.”

  “It’s your funer
al,” Freka said, but he was doing his own thinking. If he could get Marny, then he’d have Marny and he could get Chantry at the same time. Bait him right into a trap…a juicy trap.

  Jake Strawn—big, tough, and raw-boned, a gunhand in many a cattle war, a man who’d done time in two prisons—looked across at Freka. Tom Freka might be a mystery to some, but he was an open book to Strawn. Jake turned on his side with disgust and closed his eyes. The trouble with being on the wrong side of the law was the kind of company you had to keep.

  *

  DAYLIGHT CAME TO the camp on Lost Canyon with a red glow on the rimrock. Owen Chantry, who had slept two hours, went down to the river and bathed his face in the cold water, cupping it in his hands to dash into his eyes. He stood up, shaking water from his fingers. The trouble with doing what he had done was that the other side could do it too.

  It was time to move. Kernohan was better and might be strong enough to sit a horse, if they didn’t have to go too far. Chantry watched a squirrel run out on the rocks near the water, then turned back to the camp.

  He was tired, dog tired, and it was catching up with him. Yet he knew he could go for days…might have to go for days.

  “Ten,” he said aloud. “Ten, eleven, twelve—” What had Clive been trying to say? The other day he’d again had a fleeting idea that had disappeared as quickly as it came…some haunting thought that had come to him.

  He walked back to the camp and sat down. Marny was up and combing her hair. The filtered sunlight caught the light in it, and Chantry watched. She was uncommonly graceful, her every move.

  “Nice morning,” he said quietly.

  “Where were you last night? I was worried.”

  He chuckled softly, amused. “I went serenading. I wanted to sing those boys to sleep.”

  She stared at him, not knowing what he meant. He picked up the book of poetry and turned the pages under his thumb. Clive had read it a lot. “Locksley Hall” had been a favorite of his and Clive’s too. There was a copy of “Marmion” by Sir Walter Scott, tucked in the pages, written in Clive’s own hand. It gave him a sudden pang of loneliness. He would never see Clive again.