The First Fast Draw

by Louis L'Amour

  At night all places have a feeling of their own, and a man must be in tune with the night if he is to move safely. The sounds were different, and a man’s subconscious has to get used to them again, so standing there against the outer wall of Will’s house, I listened into the night, my mind far ranging out over the great lawns of Blackthorne, which were off to my left, and the orchard to my right, and beyond that to the swamps the river was bringing closer to Blackthorne by the year.

  The frogs were loud in the darkness, a cricket chirped nearby. No coyote sounds in here, although there were wolves enough in the thickets to the south and west. Somewhere an owl hooted, and something splashed out in the swamp. The night was quiet so I walked to where the mule had been left and tightened the girth, then adjusted the bridle. It was quiet enough, but the mule was alert and I was uneasy.

  Maybe it was the strangeness after so many desert and prairie nights, but turning from the path to the lane, I took a way that led back through the orchard and so across the fields. It made no kind of practical sense, going back the way I’d come—a man in Indian country learns things like that because it is back along the return trail they may be waiting for you.

  The night had a different smell, a familiar smell. The clean dryness of the desert air, touched by the smell of sage or cedar was gone. Here there was a heaviness of the greater humidity, and heavier smells of decaying vegetation, of stagnant water, and of dew-wet grass. The leaves of the peach trees brushed my hat as I rode through the orchard, taking my way from old experience toward a place where the fence was down. Sure enough, it had never been fixed.

  When I walked the mule across the soft grass coming up back of my own house I knew there was someone else around, and drew up, careful not to shift my weight so the saddle would creak, and then I listened. Then an owl hooted and I had a feeling it was no true owl but one speaking for me.

  Searching a minute in my mind I tried to recall what Bob Lee knew of our place and where, if it was him, he would wait, and was sure and certain it would not be the house itself.

  There was a big old stump Pa had never been able to grub out, gigantic roots, big as small trees themselves, curled deep into the rich earth and without powder, which we could not afford then, it would be a long task to get it out. So we left it there, and it was a known place, used for a meeting on coonhunting nights. Bob Lee would remember. One of the few times he’d been on the place was to coon hunt, so I swung in a wide circle toward the stump, and when I was backed by the trees I hooted like an owl, but low down, so I’d sound farther off than I was…in the night a knowing man can do many things with sound.

  The answer was plain, so with the Spencer in shooting position I walked that mule over the weed-grown field toward the stump. Two men arose from its shadow as I pulled up.

  “Cullen?” it was Bob Lee.

  “You’ve the name. What’s the message?”

  “Chance Thorne has learned you’re here. He’s sworn to drive you from the country. You were seen by someone in the lanes today, and then you’ve talked to Joel Reese.”

  “If he comes for me, he’ll find me here. I’ve work to do.”

  “If the time comes you’ve a need of friends,” Bob Lee said, “you’ll know where to find us. We’ve means of learning things, Cullen, and friends about who’ll feed us and hide us as well.”

  Crouched by that big old stump we talked an hour away, and they brought me up to date on much that had taken place, and things they’d just got wind of. Bob Lee was a man with friends as well as a big family, and such can be a sight of comfort to a man, times like this.

  Bill Longley had little to say. He was stern for his age, a tall, quiet young man that took getting used to, but I liked him.

  “You know what I think,” Bob Lee said, standing. “I think we’ll all be lucky if we add five years to our ages. I think they’ve marked us down for dying.”

  “Five years?” Longley’s tone was almost wistful. “Bob, I’d settle for the certain knowledge of one year.”

  Bob Lee stood silent, a fine man, but with sharp-honed pride brought to an edge by family position and the anger in him that he had to run, I’d have said he would be lucky to last the year. As for me, I intended to fight shy of trouble. The carpetbaggers would pass as all thing do, and I’d show my patience—although I’d little of that—and try to wait them out.

  “We’ll have small chance,” Bob Lee said, “unless we’re armed and ready. You’d better give thought to that, Cullen, and go to your plow with your Spencer in a scabbard on the plow handle.”

  “This land is mine,” I said. “I mean to crop it, and I’ll buy cattle when I can, and horses, too. I mean to breed horses here, when it can be safely done.”

  “There’s wild cattle in the thickets, Cullen. We could get together and round up a bunch and drive them to Fort Worth. If you want, tell me and I can have fifty men for you in a couple of days.”

  “There’s that many?”

  “In the thickets? There’s more, man. And they’ll fight, if it comes to that.”

  “I want no fighting. It is peace I have come for, and it is peace I will have.”

  When they were gone I waited until the sound of their going had faded away, losing itself among the night sounds. What Bob Lee had said was true. If they came upon me in the fields it would be well to have a gun, for it was always better to talk peace with a solid argument at hand. The Spencer carbine was not too long, easy to swing into line, but I must have another Colt. It was a hard-hitting pistol with a good range.

  Yet it was not of peace I was thinking when the trouble came. It was of Katy Thorne.

  There was a faint whisper of a boot in the grass but my mind was elsewhere and the warning was an instant late. A gun jammed hard against my spine and a hand wrenched the Colt from my belt and another hand, rising almost from the ground, grasped the barrel of my Spencer. The gun muzzle at my back was an insistent argument, I relaxed my hold on the carbine and stood quiet.

  “Welcome home, Cullen.” That would be the voice of Chance Thorne, and a fine voice he had, faintly mocking now. “I was afraid you had gone for good.”

  At the moment there was nothing to say, and certainly nothing to do. Lee and Longley would be deep into the swamp by now, and whatever was done I must do myself. So I stood very still and I think my silence began to worry them.

  “Shall we take him back?” It was Reese speaking. “Or just leave him here?”

  “The colonel wishes to speak to him, but the colonel is sure he will resist, so naturally he expects to see him in rather rough condition, and in a mood to answer questions.”

  Reese said, “What are we waiting for?” And struck out viciously. And as he struck I kicked him in the groin. He screamed out like an animal in pain, and then they closed in around me. My swinging fist smashed at a face and I had the savage pleasure of feeling the bone crunch, and then I plunged forward, punching with both hands, fighting to get clear of the circle. And then out of nowhere a pistol barrel caught me across the skull and my knees went rubbery and I fell, and then they closed in, kicking and striking as I rolled on the ground, trying to evade them. Their very numbers interfered with brutality.

  Suddenly Chance parted the group and said, “I waited a long time for this!” And he kicked me in the head.

  Only a quick turn of my head saved me the full force of that kick, but I pushed my face into the soft grass and relaxed as if unconscious, which I nearly was. There was a heavy throbbing inside my skull and I wondered if it had been cracked, and vaguely I heard someone say, “Throw him over a horse.” And in the brief moment before consciousness slipped away, I felt a swift, savage exultation that so far they had not found my derringer.

  Only I knew that I must live. Regardless of everything, I must live and make them pay. They had come upon me in a mob, too cowardly to face me alone, and no man deserves to be beaten and hammered by a mob, and the men who make up a mob are cowards. But cowards can die, and being cowards death is a
bitterness beyond anything a brave man can feel.

  “You take my advice,” I heard Joel Reese say, “and you’ll hang him now.”

  “Did I ask your advice?” Chance spoke contemptuously. “Did I ever take your advice?”

  When they threw me over the horse I was only vaguely conscious, but when the horses started down the lane I knew I had a chance if they kept on along this route. It was a slim chance, but I’d no intention of taking any more than I’d had; as long as they believed me unconscious I had a chance.

  The rider who rode the horse over which they’d thrown me had kicked me in the head when mounting, and the boot in the stirrup was beside my skull, and I could hear the slight tinkle of the spur. When they made the turn along the swamp it was my chance and it had to come now. Grabbing the boot I jammed the spur into the horse’s ribs as hard as I could shove.

  It was unexpected, the man’s foot was easy in the stirrup, and the startled horse lunged in pain, plunging off the trail into the brush and grass, and when the horse plunged I went off the saddle into the edge of the swamp.

  There was a mad moment while the rider fought his horse before he was aware of what had happened, and in that moment I reached my feet and made three fast strides, and then dove head-first into the brush, squirming forward. Behind me there were shouts, screams of fury, and then shots cut the brush past my head. The earth turned to mud and then water and I splashed through the reeds and rank water-grass and lowered myself into the dark water.

  There was an instant when my hand slid along a mossy log and I shuddered, thinking it an alligator, and then I half-waded, half-swam over to a mud bank and crawling out, lay gasping with pain.

  My skull pounded like a huge drum, every throb was one of pure agony, and my body was wracked with pain, bruised from the kicking, and bloody as well. And that blood would mean added danger in the swamp.

  Yet I knew my position would be secure only for minutes, and after that, I had to move.

  Behind me there were shouts and the splashing and cursing of the searchers.

  This was my first night at home, and already I was a hunted man. Deep within me there was a pounding hatred of those who had done this to me. They had mobbed me, beaten me, and for no reason. Yet they had declared war, I had not. Be it on their own heads, I told myself. Whatever comes now, they have asked for it.

  Chapter 2

  * * *

  AFTER A TIME my breath came easier, and I lay very still, trying to plan. I had come no more than sixty feet from that swampy shore, and I knew this bank upon which I lay sprawled for I had fished from it many a time. It was only a narrow, projecting tongue of swampy ground that reached out like a pointing finger into the dark waters.

  It was this vicinity that was favored by the huge old ’gator locally known as Ol’ Joe, and reputed to have eaten more than three men, yet it was this water I must swim, and there was no other way out. It could be no more than a minute or two before either Chance Thorne or Joel Reese remembered the mud bar.

  To walk back to the mainland was to invite capture, for already the search along the shore was nearing the connecting point. Getting to my feet I hobbled across the mud bar to the far side.

  There was a knifing pain in my side, and one leg was badly bruised and probably torn. Ol’ Joe was a chance I had to accept, wherever he was he would be sure to catch the scent of blood in the water. On the other hand it would make the pursuers no more eager to investigate until daylight.

  Walking into the dark water until it was chest-high, I struck out. Swimming was something at which I’d always been handy, and I moved off into the water making almost no sound. Despite the throbbing in my skull and the stiff, bruised muscles I must swim about two hundred yards into the swamp before there would be a place to land.

  Taking each stroke by itself, neither thinking nor trying to plan beyond the other side, I swam steadily, keeping my mind away from Ol’ Joe.

  Behind me there was a shout of triumph and I knew they had found some tracks. Glancing back I saw lanterns bobbing along the swamp shore.

  Somewhere out here, and my swimming should have put me in a direct line with them, were a few old cypresses standing in the water. They were heavy with Spanish moss and a tangle of old boughs and might offer a hide-out. A few minutes later my hand struck an underwater root, then feeling around, caught a low-hanging limb. Taking a good grip I pulled myself up out of the water.

  The air was cold after the water and my teeth chattered. From limb to limb I climbed until there was a place on some twisted limbs where I could make a nest for myself. Removing my belt I belted myself around a branch of the tree and lay there in the darkness, teeth rattling with cold, mosquitoes swarming around.

  The last thing I recalled was the lights along the shore line and then I must have slept or become unconscious for when I opened my eyes again the sky was gray in the east, and their campfires were large on the shore, waiting for daylight and serious search.

  Something was wrong with one of my eyes and when I felt of it with careful fingers I found it swollen enormously, and fast shut. There was a great welt above one ear, and a wide cut on my scalp. Every muscle was stiff and sore, and my head throbbed with a dull pound. The flesh of my left arm was badly torn by the hobnails of a boot, and only the fact that it had been cushioned from beneath by grass and soft earth had saved it from breaking. No matter how I felt, I could wait no longer, for this place while good enough at night, would never survive a search by day.

  Peering about, turning my head awkwardly because of the one eye I could use, I searched for some escape. And then I glimpsed a huge old log half concealed by vines. It was afloat, but hung up on a root of the very cypress where I was hiding.

  There was movement around the fires and their voices carried to me as I climbed down the tree, every move painful, and my head feeling like a keg half-full of water, sloshing around and hard to manage.

  By bending branches I got the log loose. By the sound of the voices I knew the searchers were drinking, which would make it worse for me if caught. Then pushing the log free with a broken branch for a pole, I started to move. The swamp was one of the arms of Lake Caddo, which nobody knew much about, and my guess was that a hundred years from now, folks still would not know all its tortuous sloughs and the hyacinth-clogged bayous of sluggish brown water. Yet around this lake with its bayous and sloughs, and the swamps along the Sulphur I’d spent most of my boyhood, and I figured to know this swamp country in both Louisiana and Texas as well as anybody.

  Keeping that clump of cypress between the shore and me, I poled steadily, every bruised muscle aching, pushing deeper and deeper into the swamp. Where I was going now they would not follow me even if they knew of it, and I was mighty sure they didn’t. I was going to the island.

  No more than a half-dozen men knew of that island before the war, and probably nobody had learned of it since unless taken there by one of those who knew. Hidden from sight in a wilderness of moss-hung cypress, the approaches seemingly clogged by hyacinth or lily pads, the island was a quarter of a mile long, and at its widest no more than a hundred yards. The highest point was about six feet above the water, but without a guide who knew the area the island simply could not be found. From a dozen yards away it was invisible in the jungle of trees, moss and vines. The Caddo Indians had known of it, and a few of the mixed-blood Caddo-Negroes who lived in the swamp knew of it.

  There were several of these islands, although the others were smaller and, but for one other, more exposed. Yet it was likely that none of them were known to these fellows who mostly had ridden down from Boston, Texas.

  A heron flew up and spread wide wings…poling on along the bayou, my head throbbing, muscles aching, finding a way through the lilies that would close after me.

  How far had I come? A mile? Two miles? Moving as though in a trance, thinking only of putting distance between myself and the searchers who must now be looking for me. If they caught up with me before I reached the islan
d I would be caught with nothing but the derringer to protect me, and it was useless at a distance. Moreover, I needed rest and a chance to gather my strength after the brutal beating I’d taken. My only chance was on that island where I was almighty sure Bob Lee, Longley and maybe Bickerstaff would be.

  The sun was hot, and the water dead and still. Occasionally there were wide pools to cross, but mostly it was a matter of finding a way through the fields of lilies and hyacinth that choked many wide areas. If Ol’ Joe had been around he certainly wasn’t making himself known to me.

  Every move of the pole was an effort now. Sometimes I could touch no bottom for some distance, nor could I always pole off the hyacinth although in most places there was enough thick growth to give a man some purchase. When I reached those places where I touched no bottom I just had to float, or paddle a bit with my hands to keep moving.

  The sun was terribly hot and I needed water. The swamp water could be drunk if a man needed it bad enough, but folks got fever from it, I’d heard, and I was in trouble enough.

  And I was still poling along, half-delirious when the log run aground. Several times I tried to force it on, and then looked up through a haze of pain and saw the bank of the island rising before me. But it was not a part of it that I remembered. Clumsily, I scrambled up the bank and fell flat, lying in the warm sunshine, letting the tired muscles relax. My brain was foggy and I seemed to have a hard time getting to my feet, but I knew that I must keep moving. The swamp has a way of destroying anything that becomes helpless, and to keep moving was my only salvation.

  The earth was damp and in deep shadow once I left the shore, except where here and there the foliage overhead thinned out allowing enough sunlight to dapple the earth with light and shadow. Once, so weak that if it had been closer I could not have avoided it, I passed a huge diamond-back rattler coiled on a log.