Collection 1983 - Law Of The Desert Born (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

She shook her head. “I…I think he expected me to marry Jim.…He always wanted it that way, but we never felt like that about each other, and yet Jim told me after Uncle Dave died that I was to consider the place my home, if he got it.”

  As they ate, he listened to her talk while he studied the cliff. It wasn’t going to be easy, and yet it could be done.

  A shout rang out from the rocks behind them, and they both moved to the boulders, but there was nobody in sight. A voice yelled again that Jim spotted as that of Wing Cary. He shouted a reply, and Wing yelled back, “We’ll let Lisa come out if she wants, an’ you, too, if you come with your hands up!”

  Lisa shook her head, so Gatlin shouted back, “We like it here! Plenty of water, plenty of grub! If you want us, you’ll have to come an’ get us!”

  In the silence that followed, Lisa said, “He can’t stay, not if he attends the auction.”

  Jim turned swiftly. “Take the rifle. If they start to come, shoot an’ shoot to kill! I’m going to take a chance!”

  Keeping out of sight behind the worn gray boulders, Gatlin worked his way swiftly along the edge of the pool toward the cliff face. As he felt his way along the rocky edge, he stared down into the water. That pool was deep, from the looks of it. And that was something to remember.

  At the cliff face, he stared up. It looked even easier than he thought, and at one time and another, he had climbed worse faces. However, once he was well up the face, he would be within sight of the watchers below…or would he?

  HELL’S CHIMNEY

  He put a hand up and started working his way to a four-inch ledge that projected from the face of the rock and slanted sharply upward. There were occasional clumps of brush growing from the rock, and they would offer some security. A rifle shot rang out behind him, then a half dozen more, farther off. Lisa had fired at something and had been answered from down the canyon.

  The ledge was steep, but there were good handholds, and he worked his way along it more swiftly than he would have believed possible. His clothing blended well with the rock, and by refraining from any sudden movements, there was a chance that he could make it.

  When almost two hundred feet up the face, he paused, resting on a narrow ledge, partly concealed by an outcropping. He looked up, but the wall was sheer. Beyond, there was a chimney, but almost too wide for climbing, and the walls looked slick as a blue clay sidehill. Yet study the cliff as he would, he could see no other point where he might climb farther. Worse, part of that chimney was exposed to fire from below.

  If they saw him, he was through. He’d be stuck, with no chance of evading their fire. Yet he knew he’d take the chance. Squatting on the ledge, he pulled off his boots, and running a loop of piggin’ string through their loops, he slung them from his neck. Slipping thongs over his guns, he got into the chimney and braced his back against one side, then lifted his feet, first his left, then his right, against the opposite wall.

  Whether Lisa was watching or not, he didn’t know, but almost at that instant she began firing. The chimney was, at this point, all of six feet deep and wide enough to allow for climbing, but very risky climbing. His palms flat against the slippery wall, he began to inch himself upward, working his stocking feet up the opposite wall. Slowly, every movement a danger, his breath coming slow, his eyes riveted on his feet, he began to work his way higher.

  Sweat poured down his face and smarted in his eyes, and he could feel it trickling down his stomach under his wool shirt. Before he was halfway up, his breath was coming in great gasps, and his muscles were weary with the strain of opposing their strength against the walls to keep from falling. Then, miraculously, the chimney narrowed a little, and climbing was easier.

  He glanced up. Not over twenty feet to go. His heart bounded, and he renewed his effort. A foot slipped, and he felt an agonizing moment when fear throttled him and he seemed about to fall. To fall meant to bound from that ledge and go down, down into that deep green pool at the foot of the cliff, a fall of nearly three hundred feet.

  Something smacked against the wall near him and from below there was a shout. Then Lisa opened fire, desperately, he knew, to give him covering fire. Another shot splashed splinters in his face and he struggled wildly, sweat pouring from him, to get up those last few feet. Suddenly, the rattle of fire ceased and then opened up again. He risked a quick glance and saw Lisa Cochrane running out in the open, and as she ran, she halted and fired.

  She was risking her life, making her death or capture inevitable, to save him.

  Suddenly, a breath of air was against his cheek, and he hunched himself higher, his head reaching the top of the cliff. Another shot rang out and howled off the edge of the rock beside him. Then his hands were on the edge, and he rolled over on solid ground, trembling in every limb.

  There was no time to waste. He got to his feet, staggering, and stared around. He was on the very top of the mountain, and Tucker lay far away to the south. He seated himself and got his boots on, then slipped the thongs from his guns. Walking as swiftly as his still-trembling muscles would allow, he started south.

  There was a creek, he remembered, that flowed down into the flatlands from somewhere near there, an intermittent stream, but with a canyon that offered an easy outlet to the plain below. Studying the terrain, he saw a break in the rocky plateau that might be it and started down the steep mountainside through the cedar, toward that break.

  A horse was what he needed most. With a good horse under him, he might make it. He had a good lead, for they must come around the mountain, a good ten miles by the quickest trail. That ten miles might get him to town before they could catch him, to town and to the lawyer who would make the bid for them, even if Eaton had him in jail by that time. Suddenly, remembering how Lisa had run out into the open, risking her life to protect him, he realized he would willingly give his own to save her.

  He stopped, mopping his face with a handkerchief. The canyon broke away before him, and he dropped into it, sliding and climbing to the bottom. When he reached the bottom, he started off toward the flat country at a swinging stride. A half hour later, his shirt dark with sweat, the canyon suddenly spread wide into the flat country. Dust hung in the air, and he slowed down, hearing voices.

  “Give ’em a blow.” It was a man’s voice speaking. “Hear any more shootin’?”

  “Not me.” The second voice was thin and nasal. “Reckon it was my ears mistakin’ themselves.”

  “Let’s go, Eaton,” another voice said. “It’s too hot here. I’m pinin’ for some o’ that good XY well water!”

  Gatlin pushed his way forward. “Hold it, sheriff! You huntin’ me?”

  Sheriff Eaton was a tall, gray-haired man with a handlebar mustache and keen blue eyes. “If you’re Gatlin, an’ from the looks of you, you must be, I sure am! How come you’re so all-fired anxious to get caught?”

  Gatlin explained swiftly. “Lisa Cochrane’s back there, an’ they got her,” he finished. “Sheriff, I’d be mighty pleased if you’d send a few men after her, or go yourself an’ let the rest of them go to Tucker with me.”

  Eaton studied him. “What you want in Tucker?”

  “To bid that ranch in for Lisa Cochrane,” he said flatly. “Sheriff, that girl saved my bacon back there, an’ I’m a grateful man! You get me to town to get that money in Lawyer Ashton’s hands, an’ I’ll go to jail!”

  Eaton rolled his chaw in his lean jaws. “Dave Butler come over the Cut-Off with me, seen this ranch, then, an’ would have it no other way but that he come back here to settle. I reckon I know what he wanted.” He turned. “Doc, you’ll git none of that XY water today! Take this man to Ashton, then put him in jail! An’ make her fast!”

  Doc was a lean, saturnine man with a lantern jaw and cold eyes. He glanced at Gatlin, then nodded. “If you say so, sheriff. I sure was hopin’ for some o’ that good XY water, though. Come on, pardner.”

  They wheeled their horses and started for Tucker, Doc turning from the trail to cross the desert throu
gh a thick tangle of cedar and sagebrush. “Mite quicker thisaway. Ain’t nobody ever rides it, an’ she’s some rough.”

  It was high noon, and the sun was blazing. Doc led off, casting only an occasional glance back at Gatlin. Jim was puzzled, for the man made no show of guarding him. Was he deliberately offering him the chance to make a break? It looked it, but Jim wasn’t having any. His one idea was to get to Tucker, see Ashton, and get his money down. They rode on, pushing through the dancing heat waves, no breeze stirring the air, and the sun turning the bowl into a baking oven.

  Doc slowed the pace a little. “Hosses won’t stand it.” he commented, then glanced at Gatlin. “I reckon you’re honest. You had a chance for a break an’ didn’t take it.” He grinned wryly. “Not that you’d have got far. This here ol’ rifle o’ mine sure shoots where I aim it at.”

  “I’ve nothin’ to run from,” Gatlin replied. “What I’ve said was true. My bein’ in Tucker was strictly accidental.”

  The next half mile they rode side by side, entering now into a devil’s playground of boulders and arroyos. Doc’s hand went out, and Jim drew up. Buzzards roosted in a tree not far off the trail, a half dozen of the great birds. “Somethin’ dead,” Doc said. “Let’s have a look.”

  Two hundred yards farther and they drew up. What had been a dappled gray horse lay in a saucerlike depression among the cedars. Buzzards lifted from it, flapping their great wings. Doc’s eyes glinted, and he spat. “Jim Walker’s mare,” he said, “an’ his saddle.”

  They pushed on, circling the dead horse. Gatlin pointed. “Look,” he said, “he wasn’t killed. He was crawlin’ away.”

  “Yeah”—Doc was grim—“but not far. Look at the blood he was losin’.”

  They got down from their horses, their faces grim. Both men knew what they’d find, and neither man was looking forward to the moment. Doc slid his rifle from the scabbard. “Jim Walker was by way o’ bein’ a friend o’ mine,” he said. “I take his goin’ right hard.”

  The trail was easy. Twice the wounded man had obviously lain still for a long time. They found torn cloth where he had ripped up his shirt to bandage a wound. They walked on until they saw the gray rocks and the foot of the low bluff. It was a cul-de-sac.

  “Wait a minute,” Gatlin said. “Look at this.” He indicated the tracks of a man who had walked up the trail. He had stopped there, and there was blood on the sage, spattered blood. The faces of the men hardened, for the deeper impression of one foot, the way the step was taken, and the spattered blood told but one thing. The killer had walked up and kicked the wounded man.

  They had little farther to go. The wounded man had nerve, and nothing had stopped him. He was backed up under a clump of brush that grew from the side of the bluff, and he lay on his face. That was an indication to these men that Walker had been conscious for some time, that he had sought a place where the buzzards couldn’t get at him.

  Doc turned, and his gray white eyes were icy. “Step your boot beside that track,” he said, his rifle partly lifted.

  Jim Gatlin stared back at the man and felt cold and empty inside. At that moment, familiar with danger as he was, he was glad he wasn’t the killer. He stepped over to the tracks and made a print beside them. His boot was almost an inch shorter and of a different type.

  “Didn’t figger so,” Doc said. “But I aimed to make sure.”

  “On the wall there,” Gatlin said. “He scratched somethin’.”

  Both men bent over. It was plain, scratched with an edge of whitish rock on the slate of a small slab, Cary done…and no more.

  Doc straightened. “He can wait a few hours more. Let’s get to town.”

  TUCKER’S STREET WAS more crowded than usual when they rode up to Ashton’s office and swung down. Jim Gatlin pulled open the door and stepped in. The tall, gray-haired man behind the desk looked up. “You’re Ashton?” Gatlin demanded.

  At the answering nod, he opened his shirt and unbuckled his money belt. “There’s ten thousand there. Bid in the XY for Cochrane an’ Gatlin.”

  Ashton’s eyes sparkled with sudden satisfaction. “You’re her partner?” he asked. “You’re putting up the money? It’s a fine thing you’re doing, man.”

  “I’m a partner only in name. My gun backs the brand, that’s all. She may need a gun behind her for a little while, an’ I’ve got it.”

  He turned to Doc, but the man was gone. Briefly, Gatlin explained what they had found and added, “Wing Cary’s headed for town now.”

  “Headed for town?” Ashton’s head jerked around. “He’s here. Came in about twenty minutes ago!”

  Jim Gatlin spun on his heel and strode from the office. On the street, pulling his hat brim low against the glare, he stared left, then right. There were men on the street, but they were drifting inside now. There was no sign of the man called Doc or of Cary.

  Gatlin’s heels were sharp and hard on the boardwalk. He moved swiftly, his hands swinging alongside his guns. His hard brown face was cool, and his lips were tight. At the Barrelhouse, he paused, put up his left hand, and stepped in. All faces turned toward him, but none was that of Cary. “Seen Wing Cary?” he demanded. “He murdered Jim Walker.”

  Nobody replied, and then an oldish man turned his head and jerked it down the street. “He’s gettin’ his hair cut, right next to the livery barn. Waitin’ for the auction to start up.”

  Gatlin stepped back through the door. A dark figure, hunched near the blacksmith shop, jerked back from sight. Jim hesitated, alert to danger, then quickly pushed on.

  The red and white barber pole marked the frame building. Jim opened the door and stepped in. A sleeping man snored with his mouth open, his back to the street wall. The bald barber looked up, swallowed, and stepped back.

  Wing Cary sat in the chair, his hair half-trimmed, the white cloth draped around him. The opening door and sudden silence made him look up. “You, is it?” he said.

  “It’s me. We found Jim Walker. He marked your name, Cary, as his killer.”

  Cary’s lips tightened, and suddenly a gun bellowed, and something slammed Jim Gatlin in the shoulder and spun him like a top, smashing him sidewise into the door. That first shot saved him from the second. Wing Cary had held a gun in his lap and fired through the white cloth. There was sneering triumph in his eyes, and as though time stood still, Jim Gatlin saw the smoldering of the black-rimmed circles of the holes in the cloth.

  He never remembered firing, but suddenly Cary’s body jerked sharply, and Jim felt the gun buck in his hand. He fired again then, and Wing’s face twisted and his gun exploded into the floor, narrowly missing his own foot.

  Wing started to get up, and Gatlin fired the third time, the shot nicking Wing’s ear and smashing a shaving cup, spattering lather. The barber was on his knees in one corner, holding a chair in front of him. The sleeping man had dived through the window, glass and all.

  Men came running, and Jim leaned back against the door. One of the men was Doc, and he saw Sheriff Eaton, and then Lisa tore them aside and ran to him. “Oh, you’re hurt! You’ve been shot! You’ve…!”

  His feet gave away slowly, and he slid down the door to the floor. Wing Cary still sat in the barbershop, his hair half-clipped.

  Doc stepped in and glanced at him, then at the barber. “You can’t charge him for it, Tony. You never finished!”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE:

  BODIE

  THERE WAS A time when a man with a few drinks under his belt who wished to impress people would proclaim himself a “Badman from Bodie!”

  Bodie, California, was a rich camp, and a tough one. On one day in 1880 they had three shootings and two stage holdups, and the town was just getting warmed up. Another man noted six shootings in one week and made no mention of various knifings, cuttings, or other passages of arms.

  In approximately three years, from 1879 to 1881, miners took something over $30 million in gold from the mines of Bodie. Laundrymen were getting rich panning out the dirt they washed from mi
ners’ clothing.

  It is reported that Rough-and-Tumble Jack, Bodie’s first badman, was explaining how tough he was when someone saw fit to challenge him. He and his antagonist went outside and opened fire on each other at point-blank range. Rough-and-Tumble Jack staggered back into the saloon, but his opponent, with one arm broken, reloaded his gun by holding it between his knees and then went back into the saloon and finished the job. Jack became one of the first to bed down in Bodie’s Boot Hill.

  Much of the town still remains, although a fire in 1932 swept away many of its buildings.

  DESERT DEATH SONG

  WHEN JIM MORTON rode up to the fire, three unshaven men huddled there warming themselves and drinking hot coffee. Morton recognized Chuck Benson from the Slash Five. The other men were strangers.

  “Howdy, Chuck!” Morton said. “He still in there?”

  “Sure is!” Benson told him. “An’ it don’t look like he’s figurin’ on comin’ out.”

  “I don’t reckon to blame him. Must be a hundred men scattered about.”

  “Nigher two hundred, but you know Nat Bodine. Shakin’ him out of these hills is going to be tougher’n shaking a possum out of a tree.”

  The man with the black beard stubble looked up sourly. “He wouldn’t last long if they’d let us go in after him! I’d sure roust him out of there fast enough!”

  Morton eyed the man with distaste. “You think so. That means you don’t know Bodine. Goin’ in after him is like sendin’ a houn’ dog down a hole after a badger. That man knows these hills, every crack an’ crevice. He can hide places an Apache would pass up.”

  The black-bearded man stared sullenly. He had thick lips and small, heavy-lidded eyes. “Sounds like maybe you’re a friend of his’n. Maybe when we get him, you should hang alongside of him.”

  Somehow the long rifle over Morton’s saddlebows shifted to stare warningly at the man, although Morton made no perceptible movement. “That ain’t a handy way to talk, stranger,” Morton said casually. “Ever’body in these hills knows Nat, an’ most of us been right friendly with him one time or another. I ain’t takin’ up with him, but I reckon there’s worse men in this posse than he is.”