Dark Canyon (1963)

by L'amour, Louis

  Nor was it by accident that he found the body, for he had been trailing Desloge and had hoped to catch him before he reached Riley's ranch.

  Larsen, who had seen many men die, was never astonished by death. Desloge had had his chance. His gun lay where it had been jolted from his hand. He had been struck by only one bullet and there was almost no blood. Death in this case appeared singularly undramatic.

  Despite his age, Larsen was a powerful man. He picked up the dead man and draped him over the empty saddle of his horse, then leading the horse, he returned to his own, took some piggin strings, and tied the body.

  He turned back to go to Rimrock, but the Shattuck ranch was closer, and he went there.

  There was dancing at the ranch. Marie came quickly to the door at the sound of the horses, and Larsen thought he detected disappointment in her eyes when she recognized him. He had dropped the reins of the dead man's horse back at the edge of the light.

  "Gaylord Riley? He is not here?"

  "Did you think he would be?" Shattuck had come to the door, followed by Oliver and two other men, Eustis and Bigelow. "In this house?"

  Larsen glanced slyly at Marie. "I thought so," he said. "I thought he might be . . . around."

  "What's the matter?"

  "Feller killed . . . oudt by the buttes."

  "Riley!" Eustis exclaimed. "By the Lord Harry, we've got him! Need a posse, Sheriff'?"

  "If you like, come. Dere will be no trouble, I

  "He has some men out there," Shattuck said, "but Lewis won't fight. Neither will Cruz. Not when he sees who it is."

  "Cruz will fight," Pico interrupted. "He will die, if need be."

  "Then well hang Cruz along with him," Eustis said angrily. "I've lost sixty, seventy head in the past two weeks."

  Pico looked at him. "To hang Cruz will not be easy . .. nor to hang Riley. Men will die before either is hung."

  Dan Shattuck glanced sharply at Pico. The Mexican was a shrewd judge of men, and he thought he detected a note of liking in his voice.

  "You are not with us, Pico?"

  "In this, I am with the sheriff. I think he will do what should be done. To talk of hanging is foolish."

  "Stay here then, and be damned! We don't need you!" This was Eustis, who was a hot-head.

  The men rushed to get their horses, and as Larsen and Pico stood together, waiting, they heard another horse slip away in the darkness.

  Pico smiled . . . she had chosen well. The horse she had taken was a racing mare. It is good to be young and in love, he told himself. Like my own daughter she is, he thought, and I was afraid it would not come for her-the joy, and the hurt. The mare ran, then trotted; ran and trotted, walked and ran again. Gaylord Riley heard the racing horse and was waiting on the trail in the moonlight when she appeared.

  She drew up, swinging her horse broadside to him. "Riley, did you kill Desloge?"

  "No."

  "They believe you did. They're coming for you, Larsen and the ranchers!"

  "All right!" he said calmly.

  She almost cried with impatience. "Don't just stand there! You must get away. You can go to Dandy Crossing!"

  "I'll wait for them."

  She started to protest, then recognized the futility of it. "They'll not believe you," she said.

  "I have wanted a home too long to run from it now. I shall stay." He indicated the house. "Go inside. I'll put your mare in the stable out of sight." She was surprised at the neatness of the room, and she liked the way it was built. She looked around curiously. There were two doors, closed up now, doors obviously meant to lead to other rooms. When he came into the house she was drinking coffee. She looked at him, so tall and strong; yet somehow so much alone, and her hands wanted to reach out to him.

  "I have not thanked you," he said. And then he added, "When this is over, I should like to come calling."

  He gestured around, not waiting for her reply. "This is only one room. There will be seven or eight. I shall build the house in the shape of an L, with the open side toward the south, I think. The setting sun is beautiful, but it can be hot.

  "I want some old Spanish furniture, large, very comfortable, suitable for this house. And I want a garden out there." He motioned toward the south. "I have heard of flowers that do well at this altitude, and I shall send for as many as I can think of, or hear of."

  They heard the sound of the horses on the hard trail, and on the rocks.

  "When this is over," he said, "I shall want you here ... always."

  He was standing alone in the moonlight when the sheriff rode into the yard with the posse.

  "Late riding, Sheriff," he said quietly, "but you're in good company. Or are you?"

  "We want you for killing Desloge!" Eustis announced loudly. "Drop those gun belts!"

  "I talk here," Larsen said sternly.

  Dan Shattuck was a man honest with himself, if stubborn and opinionated, and he found himself admiring the cool courage of the young man who stood alone in the night, facing a hanging posse. There was no bravado in this young rancher, only a calmness, a certainty of himself.

  "Did you see Desloge today?" Larsen asked. "He was here."

  "What for?"

  "That's my business."

  "It is my business now. He has been killed." "I didn't do it."

  Eustis started to interrupt, but stopped at Larsen's lifted hand.

  Cruz moved out of the darkness and took his place a few yards from Riley. Darby Lewis was just beyond him. Tell Sackett walked up and stood beside Riley, waiting.

  "Come away from there, Darby!" Oliver said. "This isn't your fight!"

  Surprisingly, Darby replied, "If you draw a gun, it is my fight," he said. "I ride for the brand."

  Cruz spoke up, telling quietly of the strange man with white hair and his advice to them.

  "A lie!" Eustis said.

  Cruz looked at him. "Another time, senor, we will speak of that. I do not lie."

  "He's right," Darby agreed. "Never saw the man before, but I'll read you this. He was nobody to mess with."

  Sheriff Larsen believed them, Riley was sure of that. There was no telling what Shattuck believed, but Eustis did not believe, nor did the others, except Oliver.

  Larsen's gaze shifted to Sackett. "You I do not know."

  "I'm Tell Sackett," the man replied, "and I ride for the brand-or shoot for it."

  Sackett . . . several pairs of eyes turned to look again, for it was a known name.

  "One question," Larsen said. He seemed ready to leave. "Had you ever seen Desloge before?"

  "Yes . . . once before, and only once. He was a thief and a cow rustler. I ordered him off the place." "I fink dat concludes our business," Larsen said. "We go back to town."

  "Now, see here!" Eustis protested.

  "We go back to town," Larsen repeated.

  Dan Shattuck was strangely silent. Bigelow and the others looked to him for leadership, but he said nothing. Only once Larsen saw Shattuck's eyes stray toward the house, but whatever was in his mind remained unspoken.

  Eustis alone objected. "Damn it, man! We came out here after a rustler, and I'll be damned if-" "I keep the peace here," Larsen said. "You will ride back with us. You will go back freely, or as my prisoner."

  "Well, I'll be damned if-"

  "We go," Larsen said, and they went.

  Chapter 11

  Cruz and the others strolled away, and Gaylord Riley stood alone, staring into the night, listening to the fading sounds of the posse. So far, so good, but nothing had been changed-nothing had been changed in the least.

  Only Larsen had stood between them and gunplay, and even he might not have averted it had not Dan Shattuck hung back. Why?

  Turning toward the house, he saw the movement within, and suddenly he knew.

  Shattuck knew or had guessed that Marie was here, and had the house been attacked, her presence would have been discovered. And no explanation would have prevented people from thinking the worst.

  He we
nt into the house and closed the door behind him, and Marie came quickly to him. "What you said before they came"-she caught his arm-"did you mean that?"

  Miserably, he knew he had no right to involve her in what lay ahead, yet it was what he had wished to say, and the words, started from him as they had been, were nevertheless what he felt. But when he recalled Jim Colburn and the others, a connection that sooner or later must be exposed, he hesitated. She saw the hesitation, and misunderstood.

  Abruptly, her face pale, she pushed by him and started for the door.

  "Please! Let me answer."

  "You didn't mean it," she said. "You didn't mean it."

  "I meant it," he insisted, "but I've no right. I-" She ran out the door, and went to her horse, which Cruz was holding for her. Riley started after her, then stopped. For what was there to say? How could he ask her to share what he faced? His ranch was at least half owned by his outlaw friends, and it was to them he owed his first loyalty. And there was trouble coming, trouble that would split the Rimrock area wide open, and he would be a fool to ask her to join him in that. Especially when Dan Shattuck was on the other side.

  A week passed, and then another. The branding went more slowly as they found fewer unbranded cattle. They had begun to know the terrain, and now each rider carried a running iron and branded any that needed it, wherever they could be found. There was much to do besides the branding. They built a dozen small spreader dams on hillsides to spread out the runoff and give the water a chance to sink into the ground; and they built a bunkhouse. Fall would be coming with its cold winds, and winter with its snow. There was no need to build windbreaks, for they came naturally in this country of mesas, canyons, and jumbled heaps of boulders. From a meadow near a seep, Riley, helped by Sackett, cut several tons of hay.

  Tell Sackett, the tall, quiet young man from Tennessee, used a scythe easily and with skill. The man cut the 'hay, stacked it for winter, and, knowing how cowhands hate to do manual labor, Riley took it on himself to cut wood for the winter. He rigged a stone-boat and hauled logs from wherever he found them. There were a number of deadfalls, trees that had fallen or had been blown down, and these he gathered first, to remove the danger of fire in the woods and to give what grass might come up a chance.

  They saw no one, and they heard no news. None of them went near Rimrock, nor did any rider from the town or the other ranches approach them. Once, riding to Dandy Crossing after tobacco, Darby Lewis heard that Doc Beaman was talking up trouble over the death of his nephew, insisting that he had been murdered, his cattle stolen. Eustis was no longer even speaking to Larsen, and had banded together with Bigelow and some others to seek the sheriff's removal from office.

  In the days that followed, Riley began his exploration of Dark Canyon. It was a gorge from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet deep, so narrow that for miles the sun never reached the bottom except at noon, when it was directly overhead. In some places scarcely a hundred feet wide, it ran from Elk Ridge, some miles east of the ranch, to the Colorado, where it ended as a mere slit in the rock wall. Much of the canyon bottom was choked with a thick growth of trees and brush, dotted with pools of clear, cold water supplied by small streams trickling down from a number of springs higher up the canyon, as well as in the branch canyons. Here and there the pools were fairly deep, and were shaded with cottonwood, box elder, ash, and ferns. When sunlight touched the higher walls of the canyon it turned to amazing color the sandstone and limestone walls, stained by water, streaked by iron or salt. Only one trail led to the bottom, a dim trail used only by wild animals.

  On one of his exploring trips in the canyon, Riley dismounted and walked ahead of his horse, allowing the animal to choose its own way. At times the inside stirrup scraped the wall as the horse edged past.

  The walls towered immensely high above him. It was very still. Pausing, he listened, and beside him his horse listened, ears pricked.

  Great boulders bulked among the trees; willows leaned over the still, cold pools. There was no sound but the faint trickle of water and the hum of bees. When a rock fell, it only emphasized the stillness and solitude of the place.

  Riley walked on, almost on tiptoe, bringing his own silence to the silence of the canyon. If worse came to worst, he thought, he would come here, he would hide out here.

  For several miles he worked his way cautiously along the bottom, finally leaving his horse at a small meadow among the trees, where the grass was luxurious and green. That meadow, he realized, could not be seen from above. The lower walls of the canyon rose sheer, while up there they ran back steeply for some distance, and as a consequence the best position one could find for looking down into the canyon was well back from the sheer edge. Here, in the barren, rocky country of the southeastern corner of Utah was a veritable Eden, a place so lovely and so remote as to be unbelievable. And from above not a hint of it, so far below.

  Behind some cottonwoods and willows Riley found an overhang forming a good-sized cave, not too far from the meadow. The floor of the cave was level, of smooth sand and rock. There was a spring nearby that spilled water into a deep, shaded pool.

  He had discovered what he wanted . . . a hide-out where he could retreat in case of trouble; a place where Colburn and the others could hole up and still be close by.

  But even while he explored the canyon, always in the back of his mind there were thoughts of Marie.

  Dan Shattuck said nothing to Marie on her return, waiting to see if she would say anything herself, but she did not. That she had suffered a shock was obvious; twice when passing her bedroom door in the night, he was sure he heard her crying.

  Alone in his own room, he stared dismally at the wall. He had never known anything about women. His own marriage had not been a success, and a good part of that had probably been his own fault. Yet if it had done nothing else, it had given him time to think and to respect the feelings of others. After his wife left him he had for a time acted the fool. Whether it was love for her or simply hurt feelings that made him do so, he never did understand, but after a while, there was no more of this.

  He had often been lonely before Marie had come to live with him. She had changed his life in every way, and a welcome change it was. He was no longer lonely and rarely depressed, and he had somebody to think about other than himself.

  Pico had helped. Pico understood women much better than he did, and he was ready to admit it-to himself at least. No matter what face he might put on for other people, he had never fooled himself. Now he was losing cattle, and they were cattle-he could ill afford to lose, but he said no more about it. There was more talk than ever, and he knew that all he had to do was speak a word and a group of self-appointed vigilantes would ride out to Dark Canyon and there would be a hanging.

  Oddly enough, he who had been so sure was no longer so. He had gone to the ranch reluctantly, but he had gone; and had he not seen Marie's shadow against the curtain he might have led an attack.

  Once he realized she was there, he was helpless-if the others discovered her presence there, he knew the kind of talk there would be. They would not know, as he did, that she had raced there ahead of them to warn Riley. And talk could destroy her-and him, too, when it came to that; although that had not occurred to him at the moment.

  He knew, too, that he would kill the first man who spoke against her, and it would not end with one killing. There were always more.

  Marie still rode out, taking long Tides across the high mesas, but she rarely rode toward Dark Canyon. Occasionally on those Tides she saw the tracks of other riders.

  One day she had ridden out across the mesa and, leaving the trail that descended into Cottonwood Draw and followed the creek back into the Blues, she held to the mesa itself and skirted the base of the Blues, planning to water at a spring under the rim of Maverick Point.

  It was a wild and lonely country, but she rode with confidence. Never in all her rides had she encountered trouble, and there was small chance she would see anyone in this empty la
nd.

  She had discovered the spring several years before, and had never seen any tracks there but those of wild animals, but now as she slid her horse down into Hop Creek, which offered access to Cottonwood Draw near the spring, she suddenly smelled smoke. Concealing her horse among the cedars, she worked her way along the bench above Cottonwood Draw until she could look down upon the spring. Three men stood about a fire, and there were four 'horses. She did not see the fourth man until one of the others went to him with a cup. She lay there, watching them, knowing the man was ill.

  But why were they here, in this lonely place? Suddenly a voice was raised, and a man said, "The devil with what he wants! He'll die here. I say, take him to the kid's place!"

  Voices were lowered then, and they talked for some time. At last the tallest one of the group mounted his horse and, taking great pains to cover all sign, he rode away. After a bit, she went back to her own horse and followed.

  She lost him when she crossed Cottonwood Draw above their camp, but sighted him again on Maverick Mesa. She lost him again, then saw him riding along the Reef of Rocks, headed west. She was sure now-there was nothing over there but Riley's place until you came to Dandy Crossing. When they spoke of the "kid" they had to mean Riley. Taking another trail, she started for Rimrock.

  She rode swiftly, thinking of the strange riders in the canyon, and of the wounded man, for she was sure he must have been wounded. She did not think about where she was riding, for she knew all of the trails very well; she had no wish now but to get back to the ranch, to be at home before her uncle began to worry. And it was already late.

  Riding down to the banks of a small creek, she started to wade her horse through when she saw a rider sitting his horse in the middle of the trail. To right and left there was thick brush, and her only route lay straight ahead.

  She looked again, trying to make out the features under the hat brim. She saw that the man was Strat Spooner, and suddenly she was frightened. He stared at her, smiling a little, as her horse walked nearer. By his gaze she was made acutely conscious of her figure, of the way her breasts tautened the material of her blouse. She wished she were away from here, anywhere at all.