Riding for the Brand (Ss) (1986)

by L'amour, Louis

  Wald slumped over on the sand, his face contorted.

  Swarr, the Kid saw at a glance, was dead. Yet it had not been only his bullet, for the German must have got in at least one shot. Swarr’s face and head were bloody.

  Schweitzer lay on his back, his face upturned to the sun. The Sandy Kid knelt beside him, but a glance told him there was nothing he or anyone could do.

  Dutch stared at him. “Never was no hand to abuse women”… He said, “never no hand.”

  The Sandy Kid turned to Betty Kurland, who stood staring down at Dutch. “He was a strange man”… She said.

  “Let’s get out of here”… The Kid said. Taking her by the hand, he led her toward the path down which Schweitzer had come.

  On the cliff top, they stood for a moment together.

  Betty’s face was white now, and her eyes seemed unusually large and dark. He noticed then that she hadn’t limped.

  “Was yore foot burned badly?” He asked.

  “I didn’t think to help yuh.”

  “It wasn’t burned at all”… She told him. “I jerked my foot back as he thrust the cigarette at it.”

  “But you screamed?” He protested.

  “Yes, I know”… She said, looking at him. “You had to have your chance to draw, and they hadn’t taken away your guns. And I knew about Dutch Schweitzer.”

  “Knew about him? What?”

  “The Apaches killed his wife. They burned her. I thought, maybe That was why he drank so much, I guess.”

  When they were on the trail toward the Forks, he looked at her and then glanced quickly away.

  “Well, yuh’ve got yore claim”… He said.

  “All yuh’ve got to do is stake it out and file on it.

  I never did. Yuh found yore pa, too. Looks like yuh’re all set. I reckon I’ll hug the rawhide and head out of the country. A loose horse is always huntin’ new pastures!”

  “I’ll need a good man to ramrod that mine for me”… She protested. “Wouldn’t you do that? I promised you half, too!”

  “Ma’am,” the Sandy Kid was growing red around the gills and desperate, for she was sure enough a pretty girl “I reckon I never was made to stay no place. I’m packin’ my duffle and takin’ the trail out of here. If anybody comes around askin’ for the Sandy Kid, you tell “em he lit a shuck and went to Texas!”

  He turned his horse at the forks of the road and headed for the Bar W. His own horse was there, and since Wald wouldn’t be needing this bay pony, he might need him out West there, Arizona way. He sure did aim to see that Grand Canyon down which flowed the Colorado. A mile deep, they said. Of course, that was a durned lie, but she might be pretty deep, at that.

  Once, he glanced back over his shoulder. The girl was only a dim figure on the skyline.

  “First thing we know”… He said to the bay pony, “she’d have me a-settin” in church a-wearin’ a fried shirt. I’d shore be halter broke.”

  The bay pony switched his tail and picked up its feet in an Injun trot, and the Sandy Kid broke into song, a gritty baritone that made the bay lay back its ears.

  Oh, there was a young cowhand who used to go riding.

  There was a young cowhand named Johnny Go-day!

  He rode a black pony an’ never was lonely, For a girl never said to him, “Johnny, go “way! his If *

  *

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THE NESTER AND THE PIUTE

  Value has a lot to do with time and location.

  There’s been many a man who would give his shirt for a good cup of coffee, so if you steal something from a man you’d better have some idea of the value he sets on it.

  A man gets things set in his mind. When he’s got his teeth ready for hot biscuits and sourwood honey, you take it from him at some risk.

  *

  The Master and the Piute.

  He was ridin” loose in the saddle when we first saw him and he was wearing a gun, which was some unusual for the Springs these days. Out on the range where a man might have a run-in with a locoed steer or maybe a rattler, most of the boys carried guns, but around town Sheriff Todd had sort of set up a rulin’ against it.

  It was the second time I’d seen him, but he looked some different this mornin’, and it took me a minute or two to decide what it was made the difference, and then I decided it was partly the gun and partly that look in his eyes.

  He reined in that yellow horse in front of Green’s and hooked one long leg around the saddle horn.

  “Howdy.”

  “Howdy.”… Hatcher was the only one who answered, only the rest of us sort of looked up at him. He dug in his shirt pocket for the makin’s and started to build a smoke.

  Nobody said anything, just sort of waitin’ to see what was on his mind. He had an old carbine in a saddle scabbard, and the scabbard wasn’t under his leg, but with the muzzle pointed down and the stock close to his hand. A man ridin’ that away ain’t rightly figurin’ on usin’ a rope on no stock.

  That rifle would be in the way, but if he was figurin’ on needin’ a rifle right quick, it would be a plumb handy way to carry it.

  When he had his smoke built he lit it with his left hand, and I got a good glimpse of his eyes, kind of cold and gray, and them lookin’ us over.

  Nobody here was friendly to him, yet nobody was unfriendly, neither. All of us had been around the Springs for years, all but him. He was the nester from Squaw Rock, an’ nesters aren’t right popular around cow range. However, the times was a changin’ an’ we all knowed it, so it wasn’t like it might have been a few years before, when the country was new.

  “Seen a tail-like hombre on a black horse?”

  He asked the question like maybe it was a formality that he wanted to get over with, and not like he expected an answer. j “What sort of man?” backslash It was Hatcher who had started the talkin’, as if he was ridin’ point for the rest of us.

  “Maybe two hundred pounds, sort of limp in his right leg, maybe. Rides him a black horse,! long-gaited critter, and he wears two guns,” hangin” low”

  “Where’d you see him?” J “Ain’t never seed him. I seen his sign.”

  Yanell, who lived over nigh to Squaw Rock himself looked up from under his hat brim and spat into the dust. What he was thinkin’ we was all thinkin’. If this nester read sign that well and trailed the Piute clean from Squaw Rock, he was no pilgrim.

  That description fitted the Piute like a glove, and nobody amongst us had any love for the Piute. He’d been livin’ in the hills over toward White Hills for the last six years, ever since he come back to the country after his trouble. The Piute had done a bit of horse stealin’ and rustlin’ from time to time and we all knowed it, but none of us were right anxious to trail him down.

  Not that we were afraid. Only, none of us had ever caught him in the act, so we just left it up to Sheriff Todd, who wanted it that way. This here nester seemed to have some ideas of his own.

  “No”… Hatcher said, “I ain’t seen nobody like that. Not lately.”

  The nester his name was Bin Morley nodded like he’d expected nothin’ else. “Reckon I’ll ride along”… He said. “Be seein’ you!”

  He swung his leg back over the saddle and kicked his toe into a stirrup. The yellow horse started to walk like it was a signal for something, and we sat there watchin’ him fade out down toward the cottonwoods at the end of the town.

  Hatcher bit off a hunk of chewing and rolled it in his jaws. “If he meets up with the Piute”… He said, “he’s askin’ for trouble.”

  Yanell spat into the dust. “Reckon he’ll handle it”… He said drily. “Somethin’ tells me the Piute rustled cows off the wrong hombre.”

  “Wonder what Sheriff Todd’ll say?” Hatcher wanted to know.

  “This here Morley, now”… Allyanell said, “he sort of looks like a man who could do his own lawin’.

  He’s one of them hombres what ain’t felt the civilizin’ influences of Sheriff Todd’s star, nor he ain’t li
kely to!”

  The nester’s yellow horse ambled casually out over the trail toward White Hills. From time to time Bin Morley paused to study the trail, but from here it was much easier. He knew the look of the big black’s track now, and from what was said later, I reckon the Piute wasn’t really expectin’ no trouble. Me, I was plumb curious. My pappy always did tell me my bump of curiosity was too big for my britches, but after a few minutes I got up off the porch and walked around to where my steel-dust was standin’ three legged in the dust. I throwed a leg over him and trailed out after the nester.

  Maybe I’d been listenin’ too much to the oldtimers around tellin’ of cattle drives and Injun fightin’. You listen to the stories a mite and you get to honin’ to see some of them fracases yourself.

  Now I knowed the Piute. Actually, he was only part Piute, and the rest was some brand of white, but whatever it was, the combination had resulted in pure-D poison. That was one reason everybody was plenty willin’ to accept Sheriff Todd’s orders to leave law enforcement to him. I will say, he done a good job. He done a good job until it come to the Piute.

  It was understandable about the Piute. That Injun left no more trail than a snake goin’ over a flat rock, and no matter how much we suspected, nobody could ever get any evidence on him.

  Sheriff Todd had been on his trail a dozen times, but each time he lost it. I knew what Yanell was thinkin’ just as well as if it was me. Anybody who could trail the Piute plumb from Squaw Creek wasn’t likely to holler calf rope for any Injun rustler without smokin’ things up a mite.

  Me, I was just curious enough and ornery enough to want to see what would happen when this nester cornered the Piute.

  He was a big, sullen brute, the Piute was.

  Rumor had it he’d killed a half dozen men, and certainly there was several that started out huntin’ him that never showed up until somebody found “em dead, but there’d never been evidence to prove a thing. He could sling a gun, and when we had the turkey shoot around about Thanksgiving, he used to fetch his guns down, and nine times out often, he got himself a turkey and he used a six-gun. You take a man that moves around over the hills like a ghost, Injun footin” it over the rocks an’ through the brush, and who shoots like that, and you get an idea why nobody was just too worried about gettin’ him in a corner.

  Six miles out I got a glimpse of the nester.

  The yellow horse was amblin’ along, takin’ it easy in a sort of loose-jointed trot that didn’t look like much but seemed to eat up the country right fast.

  The day wore on and I kept to the brush, not knowing how Morley would take it if he knew I was trailin’ him. Then all of a sudden I saw him swing the yellow horse off the trail and drop to the ground. He was there for a minute, and ridin’ closer, I could see he was bendin’ over the body of a man. Then he swung back into the saddle and moseyed off down the trail.

  When he went over the next rise I turned my horse down the hill. Even before I rode up, I knew who the dead man was. I could see his horse lying in the cactus off to one side, and only one man in that country rode a bay with a white splash on the shoulder. It was Sheriff Todd.

  There was a sign around, but I didn’t need more than a glance at it to tell me what had happened.

  Sheriff Todd had run into the Piute unexpectedlike and caught him flatfooted with stolen stock, the first time he had ever had that chance. Only from the look of it, Todd had been caught flatfooted himself. His gun was out, but unfired, and he had been shot twice in the stomach.

  Lookin’ down at that body, I felt something change inside me. I knowed right then, no matter how the nester come out, I was goin’ to foller on my own hook. For Sheriff Todd was still alive when he hit the ground, and that Piute had bent over him, put a pistol to the side of his head, and blowed half his head off! There were powder burns around that hole in his temple where the bullet went in. It had been coldblooded murder.

  Swinging a leg over that gelding, I was startin’ off when I happened to think of a gun, and turned back and recovered the one Sheriff Todd had worn. I also got his saddle gun out of the scabbard and started off, trailin’ the nester.

  From now on the sign was bad. The Piute knowed he was up against it now. He was takin’ time to blot his tracks, and if it hadn’t been for Morley, I’d never have trailed him half as far as I did.

  We hadn’t gone more than a few miles further before I saw something that turned me plumb cold inside. The Piute had turned off at the Big Joshua and was headin’ down the trail toward Rice Flats!

  That scared me, because Rice Flats was where my girl lived down there in a cabin with her kid brother and her ma, and they had lived there alone ever since her dad fell asleep and tumbled off his spring wagon into the canyon. The Piute had been nosin’ around the flats long enough to scare Julie some, but I reckon it was the sheriff who had kept him away.

  Now Sheriff Todd was gone, and the Piute knowed he was on the dodge from here on. He would know that killin’ Sheriff Todd was the last straw, and he’d have to get clean out of the country. Knowin’ that, he’d know he might’s well get hung for one thing as another.

  As my gelding was a right fast horse, I started him movin’ then. I jacked a shell into the chamber of the sheriff’s carbine and I wasn’t thinkin’ much about the nester. Yet by the time I got to the cabin on the flats, I knowed I was too late.

  My steel-dust came into the yard at a dead run and I hit the dust and went for that house like a saddle tramp for a chuck wagon. I busted inside and took a quick look around. Ma Frank was lyin’ on the bed with a big gash in her scalp, but she was conscious.

  “Don’t mind me”… She said. “Go after that Injun! He has taken out with Julie on her black!”

  “What about you?” I asked, although goodness knows I was wantin’ nothin’ more than to be out and after Julie.

  ““Brose’ll be back right soon. He rid over to Elmer’s after some side meat.”

  ‘Brose was short for Ambrose, her fourteenyear-old boy, so knowin” he’d be back, I swung a leg over that saddle and headed out for the hills.

  My steel-dust knowed somethin’ was in the wind and he hustled his hocks for those hills like he was headin’ home from a trail drive.

  The Piute had Julie and he was a killin’ man, a killin’ man who knowed he was up the crick without a paddle now, and if he was got alive he’d be rope meat for sure. No man ever bothered a woman or killed a man as well liked in that country as Sheriff Todd without ridin’ under a cottonwood limb. Me, I’m a plumb peaceable sort of hand, but when I seen the sheriff back there I got my dander up. Now that Piute had stole my girl, I was a wild man.

  Ever see that country out toward the White Hills? God must have been cleanin’ up the last details of the job when He made that country, and just dumped a lot of the slag and wastin’s down in a lot of careless heaps. Ninety percent of that country stands on end, and what doesn’t stand on end is dryer than a salt desert and hotter than a bronc on a hot rock.

  The Piute knowed every inch of it, and he was showin’ us all he knowed. We went down across a sunbaked flat where weird dust devils danced like crazy in a world where there was nothin’ but heat and dust and misery for man and beast. No cactus there, not even salt grass or yeso.

  Nothin’ growed there, and the little winds that stirred along the dusty levels made you think of snakes glidin’ along the ground.

  My gelding slowed to a walk an’ we plodded on, and somewhere miles ahead, beyond the wall of sun dancin’ heat waves, there was a column of dust, a thin, smoky trail where the nester rode ahead of me. Right then, I began to have a sight of respect for that long-legged yellow horse he was ridin’ because he kept on goin’ an’ even gained ground on my steel-dust.

  Finally we got out of that hell’s valley and took a trail along the rusty edge of some broken rock, windin’ higher toward some sawtooth ridges that gnawed at the sky like starvin’ coyotes in a dry season. That trail hung like an eyebrow to the face of the clif
f we skirted, an’ twice, away up ahead, I heard shots. I knowed they was shots from the Piute, because I’d seen that carbine the nester carried. It was a Spencer .56.

  Never seen one? Mister, all they lack is wheels!

  A caliber .56 with a bore like a cannon, and, them shootin’ soft-nosed lead bullets. What they do to a man ain’t pretty, like you’ll know. I knowed well enough it wasn’t the nester shootin’ because when you unlimber a Spencer .56 she has a bellow like a mad bull in a rock canyon.

  Sundown came and then the night, an’ little breezes picked up and blew cool and pleasant down from the hills. Stop? There was no time for stoppin’. I knew my gelding would stand anything the Piute’s horse would, and I knowed by the shootin’ that the Piute knowed the nester was on his trail. He wasn’t goin’ to get nary a chance to cool his heels with that nester tailin’ him down them draws and across the bunch-grass levels.

  The Piute? I wasn’t worried so much about Julie now. He might kill her, but that I doubted as long as he had a prayer of gettin’ away with her. He was goin’ to have to keep movin’ or shoot it out.

  The longer I rode, the more respect I got for Bin Morley. He stuck to that Piute’s trail like a cocklebur to a sheep, and that yellow horse of his just kept his head down and kept moseyin’ along those trails like he was born to “em, and he probably was.

  The stars came out and then the moon lifted, and they kept on goin”. My steel-dust was I beginnin’ to drag his heels, and so I knowed the end was comin’. At that, it was “most mornin” before it did come.

  How far we’d come or where we were I had no idea. All I knew was that up ahead of me was the Piute with my girl, and I wanted a shot at him.

  Nobody needed to tell me I was no hand to tie in a gun battle with the Piute with him holdin’ a sixgun.

  He was too slick a hand for me.

  Then all of a sudden as the sky was turnin’ gray and the hills were losin’ their shadows, I rounded a clump of cottonwoods and there was that yellow horse, standin’ three footed, croppin’ absently at the first green grass in miles.