Borden Chantry

by Louis L'Amour

  “No officer named Ford Mason was known, but the description answered that of a deserter who had since been involved in a bank robbery with Langdon Moore, a man named Wells, and a Charley Adams.

  “Cunningham faced Mason with the facts, and there was a shooting. Cunningham was severely wounded and his daughter shot through the arm…I am sure that was accidental. In any event, Ford Mason skipped the country, and Miss Cunningham talked her father into dropping the charges.”

  Borden Chantry listened without comment. The story was not an unfamiliar one. In the west, the man who sat beside you on a stage or in a restaurant might be a prince or a thief, and nobody was inclined to ask questions. Each man was accepted as he represented himself unless he showed himself to be otherwise.

  “Are you staying in town, Sackett?”

  “You say my brother was buried? Is there a marker on the grave?”

  “Not yet,” Chantry shifted uncomfortably. “You see, when we buried him we didn’t know who he was. We’d have marked the grave, though.”

  “Thank you.” Sackett got to his feet. “I shall handle that myself. Having been an officer, I understand your problems, but if there is anything we can do, please let us know.”

  He paused. “You understand, Marshal, we want the killer brought to justice. In fact, we insist upon it. If it turns out that you cannot find him, we would have to take steps.

  “I’m not shipping cattle this year, so I’ve a few months to spare, and when my time runs out, there are always Bob, Tell and Orrin.

  “Then I’ve some kinfolk here and there about the country, and they have a little time they can spare now and again. It might take a year, even two or three. But we’d sort of stay with it, Marshal. If it took five years or even ten…Or twenty, we’d still be sort of meanderin’ around, lookin’ into things.”

  “Bye an’ bye one of us would come up with him, somewhere, sometime.”

  “You want to move the body?”

  “My brother’s? No. My ol’ pappy used to say, ‘Let the chips lay where they fall,’ and we reckon that’s the way to do it. There’ve been a sight of Sacketts buried across the country, an’ most of them are buried where they fell. So we’ll leave Joe right there where you put him, only we’ll leave a marker on the grave so’s someday folks will know where he staked his last claim.”

  Tyrel Sackett walked out the door and Borden Chantry sat alone, the cold coffee in his cup forgotten.

  Now he knew, and now he had it to do. And he did not relish the job.

  He went around the corner and on to his own home and opened the gate. For a moment he stood there, looking at the small white house. Only a rented house, but it had been their home. And Tom would remember this when even the ranch was forgotten—and the cave Tom had discovered by the spring.

  He went inside and went to the wall and took down his spare gun and checked it. Then he thrust it behind his belt. Bess stared at him, her eyes wide and frightened. “Is there trouble, Borden?”

  “I am hoping there won’t be. I shall be making an arrest now.”

  “Be careful, Borden.”

  “That I’ll be, but he’s a foolish man. He’s killed six men to cover up a crime for which no one wanted him. And I do not doubt he’ll be foolish still.”

  “Borden? Who is it?”

  He lifted a hand. “Wait, Bess. I do not want to say the name until I must. Have a warm supper for me, Bess, I’ll be wanting it.”

  He walked outside and closed the gate carefully behind him. And then he walked, in long strides, toward the street.

  Chapter 19

  * * *

  A HALF HOUR earlier, Kim Baca had got up from his chair and put down the magazine he had been reading. He saw a shadow near the door, and when he stepped into the doorway he found a gun in his belly.

  He knew the man by sight, but had never known his name. But there was no question about the gun. It was a Colt .44, a weapon with considerable authority.

  He backed into the office. “What’s the idea?”

  “Get back into that cell,” the man said quietly, “and you’ll live to hear the story. One yip out of you, and you won’t.”

  “Ought to be a good story, but I got an idea who’ll write the end to it.”

  “Just get back into the cell. Besides, if you yelled, the first man through that door would be Chantry and he would be dead before you could tell him why.”

  He closed and locked the cell, then stepped over to Boone Silva’s cell and opened it. “Your clothes are in the outer office, in the closet. Your gun is there, too, but in case you might prefer it, I brought you this.”

  It was a heavy express shotgun, double-barreled. It would be loaded with heavy slugs.

  Then the man put a small sack of gold pieces on the desk. “There’s three hundred. Here’s an order on our friend for the rest. Now go do the job you were hired for.”

  Boone Silva looked at the money, then at the man who was paying him. “When?” he asked.

  “Now…this minute. He’ll be coming here, and I want him dead, dead…Do you hear?”

  “I hear.” Silva looked at the money again. Somehow it did not seem very much for a man’s life. Yet Chantry had arrested him, and paraded him through the street in his underwear. And for that there had to be a killing or he’d have to find a far country, far from here, far from everywhere that he knew. For such a story has wings.

  “All right,” he said, but the man was gone.

  Boone Silva dressed quickly, surely. He belted on his gun, spun the cylinder. He glanced at the shotgun, and hesitated.

  “Silva,” Baca said, “open this cell, will you?”

  “Go to hell,” Silva replied conversationally.

  “You’re a fool if you go against him. There isn’t a man living who can get lead into him without taking just as much. That’s a tough man, Silva, a very tough man, and he won’t hesitate. He’s doing what’s right, and he knows it.”

  “I’ll kill him, then I’ll ride.”

  “How far? A mile? Ten miles? A hundred miles? Do you know who rode into town today? Tyrel Sackett. Tyrel, did you get that? He took Cruz, he took Tom Sunday, he’s taken the best of them. Boone, if you get that marshal, Tye Sackett waits on the other side of him. And if you should get Tye, there’s Tell.

  “Take my advice, Silva, grab yourself a horse and ride. He won’t stop you. He’s got other things on his mind, and he never wanted you, anyway.

  “Ride! Ride, Silva, while there’s time.”

  “I took his money.”

  “To hell with the money! He’ll be dead within the week.”

  Boone Silva turned toward the cell, shocked. “What do you think I am, a thief? When you take a man’s money, you do the work he paid you for!”

  He looked again at the shotgun. His every instinct told him to take it, but his pride rebelled. No man alive could draw as fast or shoot as straight as he, and he was not about to back down to any country marshal, nor did he need any margin. He would meet him on his own ground, on his own terms.

  There was also a measure of wisdom eating into his zone of madness…To shoot a man in a gun battle with pistols was one thing, but a shotgun looked like murder—and could mean hanging!

  He stepped out into the street.

  A few steps away, a team of mustangs stood at the hitch rail, heads hanging, drowsing in the sunlight. Further along, at Time Reardon’s Corral and at Henry’s, several saddle horses stood, awaiting their masters’ pleasure.

  Lucy Marie was standing in front of a store window, looking at something.

  One by one, his eyes picked out the doorways, studying each in turn…No sign of Borden Chantry.

  From talk around the jail, he gathered that Chantry favored the Bon-Ton, which was just beyond the post office. He scanned the street again, disappointed that there was no sign of Borden Chantry.

  As he started to walk, he drew abreast of the post office and saw the postmistress staring at him, her mouth open with surprise.
>
  Grimly, he told himself that a lot of people were going to be surprised, especially that town clown, that small-town marshal, that—

  “Looking for me, Boone?”

  He had stepped past the post office corner and was opposite the gap that separated it from the Bon-Ton. A right-handed man can fire easier to the left than to the right, and Boone Silva knew it. But Chantry was on his right, and he swung his right foot back to bring him face to face with Chantry. His right foot came down and he fired.

  The quick turn, Chantry’s coolness, and some sneaking inner doubt of his own wisdom conspired to make him miss. The shot went high, grazing the lobe of the marshal’s ear. The marshal was looking right at him, both eyes open. Then his gun stabbed flame, and Boone Silva caught one where it mattered.

  It was a little low, but the blow of the bullet strike was enough to make him stagger. Staggering, Silva missed his second shot. He never got a third one.

  Suddenly he was on his knees. He had no idea how he got there. Angrily he started to get up, but there was something wrong with his legs. He couldn’t draw either one from beneath him.

  He tried again, but somehow his legs had gone nerveless. And then he was lying with his face in the dust. He tried to push himself up.

  He looked, and Borden Chantry was standing there, gun in hand, just looking at him, and waiting.

  Waiting for what?

  His eyes misted over and he swore at himself. What was going wrong with his eyes? At a time like this? He made it to his knees. Then after an effort, he got one leg underneath him.

  “You should have stayed where I left you, Boone,” Chantry said.

  There were others standing around now. Boone Silva could hear the shuffle of their feet, the rustle of their clothing, the creaking of the boardwalk.

  “It didn’t have to be this way,” Chantry continued. “I put you away for safekeeping.”

  “I’d taken his money.” Boone was anxious for Chantry to understand. After all, Chantry had played fair with him. “I had it to do. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  Boone Silva raised his hand to fire…and there was no gun there.

  He stared at it, puzzled. Then he looked at the ground. And it lay there in the dust by a bit of bunchgrass. He reached out for it and his face hit the dust again. Something welled up in his throat and he coughed…blood. It was blood…his blood.

  He was dying.

  No!

  He thought he screamed the word, but the sound was only inside. With one great spasmodic contraction of muscles, he lunged to his feet.

  He! Boone Silva! To die? No! He lunged forward and then he fell, and that time he lay still.

  Across the street at the Corral, somebody started playing the piano to get the crowd back inside. The last sound that came to his ears was that piano, playing a tin-pan, jangling accompaniment to his dying.

  Borden Chantry thumbed a cartridge into the chamber from which he’d ejected the empty. Then he holstered his gun.

  Big Injun was there.

  “Take care of him, will you? And when you’ve taken him away, bring my horse and ask Bess to pack some grub. I’ll be gone for awhile.”

  He went back to the jail then, and let Kim Baca out of his cell.

  “He wouldn’t listen, Chantry. I tried to tell him. He said he had it to do. Can you understand that?”

  “I can, and so can you. Every man has his own sense of what is honorable, Kim. That was his.”

  “It was the other one let him out. I wasn’t expecting anything like that, Marshal. I never had a chance.”

  “You’re just lucky he didn’t want to alarm the town, or he would have killed you. I’m going up to the house, but it won’t matter much, because he’ll be gone.”

  “You think he’s running?”

  “He was running when he came here, Kim, and he will always be running. He killed six men because he thought somebody was hunting him, and nobody was. Once you get the law on your trail, there’s just no place to rest.”

  Blossom Galey was standing in front of the Bon-Ton. She looked empty and old.

  “Has he gone, Bord?”

  “I think so, Blossom. You were too good a woman for him, anyway.”

  “Maybe…maybe. But I need a man, Bord, I want to be a woman again. George knew, and he tried to warn me. He was riding to tell me again when he got killed. I know that, and I guess I always knew. But he was a smooth-talking man, and he said the words I wanted to hear. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t Lang Adams, it was those damn stupid words! I’m a lonely woman, Bord, an’ I’m not a kid anymore. And I don’t like riding range and laying out work for the hands.

  “I’d like to have a kid of my own, and I’d like to get up at ten o’clock and read a newspaper or sew. But I helped run the ranch for Pa, and then I ran a bigger ranch for my first husband, an’—”

  “Take a walk over and see Bess. She’ll be alone, too, for a few days now. You go see her. I’ll just go off up to Lang’s and see if he’s around.”

  “He’s gone. I knew he was a light man, I knew it all the while. There was no weight to him, Bord. Not like Pa, or you, or old George Riggin. He was an easy-talking man, an’ he was damn good-lookin’, but there was no bottom to him, no stamina. I knew it all the time. My common sense kept tellin’ me the truth and my heart kept listening to the words. Bord, I—”

  “Go along to Bess now, Blossom. She’s been wanting to see you.”

  “All right, Bord. All right.” She turned away, then stopped. “You be careful now, d’you hear? He’s a damn fine shot with any kind of a weapon. That ol’ fifty-two was Pa’s. I never thought of it until yesterday, an’ when I went to look in the attic, it was gone. But he’s got him a Winchester now, Bord, an’ more’n two hundred rounds for it. You be careful.”

  Borden Chantry walked up the outside stair of the apartment above the store. He knew Lang Adams wouldn’t be there, but he had to look.

  It was a neat enough room, but too much flim-flammery to suit Chantry. On the table there was a note.

  Dear Bord:

  Don’t come after me. I am leaving the country and you will see me no more, so let it lay. I was the best pete-man in the country until I thought I’d marry rich and settle down, and it got me nothing but trouble. I am going back east now and take up where I left off. You stay off my trail. I never wanted to kill you, I never did. You were the closest thing to a friend I ever had.

  Lang

  And signed below it, still lower on the page, Ford Mason.

  “But you killed six men, murdered them. Six good men, who had lives of their own to live. You took those lives away, Lang, and left them with nothing. And Billy McCoy without a dad. Old Helen Riggin to live out her days alone. And Pin Dover’s woman, wherever she is.”

  He spoke aloud, to an empty room, and then he turned and pulled the door quietly shut behind him and went down the steps.

  Blazer came to the foot of the steps. “If it’s Lang, Bord, I saw him leave town. He rode out east.”

  “Thanks, George.” Chantry eased his gun on his hip. “You know, George, Lang should have stayed back east where he came from. He lived out west eight or nine years and never learned a damn thing.”

  “Maybe,” Blazer said, “but you be careful. He won half the turkey shoots in the county with that rifle of his, and there’s a lot of open country between here and Carson.”

  “He hasn’t gone to Carson,” Chantry said patiently. “He’s gone west. Right now he’s headed for Denver or Leadville, and maybe later to San Francisco.”

  The Appaloosa was saddled, the saddlebags and canteen were full. Borden Chantry walked into the office and stuffed a handful of cartridges into his pocket. The loops in his belt were already full.

  “Marshal?” Kim Baca got up quickly. “How’s about me ridin’ along? I’m good on the trail, like you know, and—”

  “You stay here, Kim. Keep an eye on things. Anything you don’t know about, ask Big In
jun. He knows more about the job than I do.”

  He took a spare badge from the desk drawer. “Wear this until I get back. Anything needs doing, you do it.”

  Kim Baca flushed. “Now, see here, Marshal! I—”

  “Do what you’re told, Baca. I’ll be back.”

  He stepped into the saddle and walked the Appaloosa over to his own house. Bess came out, Tom and Billy with her.

  “Boys, you take care of Ma, d’ you hear?”

  “Sure, but can’t we—”

  “Borden? Do you have to go?”

  “I do.”

  “Then come back. I’ll keep Blossom here with me. We’ll be company for each other.”

  He kissed her lightly, and turned the Appaloosa into the trail.

  Lang had some good traits, but basically, he was a thief. Now what would a thief be likely to do when he figured he was leaving the country for good? Even if he had some money?

  He’d try to steal some more, some he happened to know was where it was.

  Borden Chantry hoped he would be wrong. And he hoped he would not pick up the trail where he thought it would be. But he was not wrong, and the trail was there.

  Chapter 20

  * * *

  THE SKY ABOVE was red and the sand below was pink, and Borden Chantry rode a trail between—a trail where a man could die.

  The leather of his saddle was like the leather of his cheek. And he sang the song of Brennan as he rode, of Brennan on the Moor, the Irish highwayman who rode a robber’s trail in a land quite far from his.

  He wasted no time in scouting. He looked not once toward the east, for Lang had known how to find Boone Silva. And such a man would ride westward to escape, westward to the broken country of the Cimarron, to the Mesa de Maya, Sierra Grande and the place called Robbers’ Roost, or even to the town of Madison where the outlaws came to carouse and drink.

  It was a wild and lonely land cut deep by canyons, ribbed with red rock walls and dotted with crumbling mesas, black-topped with lava from fires burned long ago. Among the red walls and the crumbling lava blocks were the greens of piñon, pine and juniper, and here and there, if a man but knew, there was water enough and plenty.