L'Amour, Louis - Novel 06

by To Tame a Land

  My boots had long since worn to nothing and been replaced by moccasins. I still carried the old Joslyn carbine, and I still carried the Shawk & McLanahan .36. So I rode into town to sell my furs.

  Right then I was nigh seventeen. I was an inch over six feet and I weighed one hundred and seventy pounds, and no bit of fat on my bones. Lean and tough as any old catamount, wearing a torn and battered hat, I must have been a sight to see. Into that town I came, riding slow.

  Old Blue was beginning to feel the miles. He was getting some years on him, too. But he loved the life as I did and he could still run neck and neck with a buffalo while hot.

  The town was a booming mine camp, the street lined with a jostling crowd of booted, belted men. Leaving Old Blue at the livery-stable hitch rail, I walked up the street, happy to be among people again, even if I knew none of them. Yet I walked aloof, for I hesitated to meet people or to make friends. There was always in the back of my mind the thought of the gun, and I did not wish to fire in anger at any man.

  Oddly enough, in those long wilderness months I had no trouble with Indians. I had wandered their country, shared their hunting grounds, but evaded contact with them. A few times I had gone into the Nez Perce villages to trade for things I needed.

  It was warm and sunny in the street. Leaning against an awning post, I watched the people pass. Tents and false-fronted stores, a long log bunkhouse that called itself a hotel, and a bigger log building that was a saloon.

  Down the street a man sold whisky from a board laid across two barrels, dipping the whisky with a tin cup.

  And it was good to be there. These were tough and bearded men, a rough, roistering, and on the whole friendly crowd. They were men, and I was a man among them.

  My face was lean and hard, and my body was lean, too.

  Only my shoulders were wide, my chest deep, my arms strong. Those long months in the mountains had put some beef on me, and tempered my strength.

  A man came up the street wearing a badge. He had a broad brown face with strong cheek and jawbones , the skin of his face stretched tight. His eyes were deepsunk and gray to almost white.

  He looked hard at me, then looked again. It was a long, slow look that measured and assayed me, but he continued to walk. Farther down the street he stopped and I saw him standing alone, watching me.

  Finally he moved on, but when he did a slim young man walked over and stopped beside me. “Don’t know you, friend, but watch yourself. Ollie Burdette’s got his eye on you.”

  “Trouble?”

  “He’s the marshal, and he shoots first and asks questions later. Killed a man last week.”

  “Thanks.”

  “My name’s Kipp. Got a little spread out east of town. Come out, if you’ve a mind to.”

  He walked on away from me, a quiet young man with quick intelligent eyes. But maybe too quick to warn me.

  For a while I loafed where I was, thinking about it.

  Right now I should ride on, but I’d just come into town and had done nothing, nor did I intend to get on the wrong side of the law, ever. Sometimes the law can make mistakes, but usually it’s right, and it’s needed to regulate those who haven’t yet learned how to live with their fellow men.

  Walking across the street, I went into the hotel. The dining room was only half full, so I found a table and sat down.

  After I’d ordered, I picked up an old newspaper and browsed through it. I was just getting to the last page when a voice said, “Please? May I have it?”

  Looking up from the paper, I saw a slender young girl.

  She could have been no more than fourteen, but she had beautiful eyes and a nice smile.

  I got to my feet quickly, embarrassed. “Yes, ma’am. Of course. I just finished.”

  “It was Papa’s paper. I put it down on the table and forgot. He would be just furious if I didn’t have it. He loves his newspaper.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. I didn’t know.”

  Suddenly someone was beside us. Glancing around I looked into those gray-white eyes of Ollie Burdette’s’

  They were cold and still. “This man botherin’ you, young lady?”

  His voice was harsh, commanding. There was something almost brutal in its tone and assurance. It was the voice of a man not only ready for trouble, but pushing it.

  “Oh, no!” She smiled quickly. “Of course he isn’t! He just gave me my newspaper. I’d have lost it otherwise.”

  “All right.” He turned away almost reluctantly, giving me a hard look, and I felt the hairs prickle on the back of my neck, and my mouth was dry. Yet it angered me, too. Burdette was very ready to find trouble.

  “Are you looking for a job?”

  My eyes went back to her. She was looking up at me, bright and eager. “Papa needs a man to break horses.”

  “I’d like that. Where’s your place?”

  She told me, then added, “I’m Liza Hetrick. You ask for me.”

  When she was gone and my dinner finished I sat there thinking. What Kipp had said might be true. There were gunmen who deliberately hunted trouble, some because of an urge to kill, some because they wanted to stop trouble before it began, some who were building a reputation or whose only claim to recognition was a list of killings. But why pick on me? Because I was only a boy and wore a man’s gun?

  Yet I was no longer a boy in Western consideration.

  At seventeen and younger, a boy wore a man’s boot s and a man’s responsibilities. And was the better for it, I thought.

  Yet it would be a good idea to ride out of town.

  Avoiding trouble was the best thing. I wasn’t trying to prove anything to anybody. I wasn’t so insecure that I had to make people realize I was a tough man, and no man in his right mind hunts trouble.

  Walking to the door after paying my check, I looked down the street. Burdette was a block away, standing in front of the barbershop. Stepping out of the door, I w alked down the street to my horse. As I gathered the reins I heard his boots on the walk.

  “You, there!” His voice was harsh. “Don’t I know you?”

  When I turned around it was very slowly. I could feel a queer stillness in me, something I’d never felt before.

  His cold eyes stared into mine.

  “Don’t believe you do, Mr. Burdette. I���m new here.”

  “I’ve seen you somewhere. I know that look.”

  I sat my horse and looked at him. “You’ve never seen me, Mr. Burdette. I’m only a boy and I’ve lived most of my life in the hills. But I think the look is one you’ve seen before.”

  With that I touched my spurs and started away. But he was not through. “Wait!”

  Drawing up, I looked at him. All along the street movement had stopped. We were the center of attention.

  That strange, cool, remote feeling was in me. That waiting… .

  “What d’you mean by that?” He came into the street, but not close. “And where did you get my name?”

  “Your name was told me,” I said, “and also that you killed a man last week.” Why I said it I’ll never know, but it wasn’t in me to be bullied, and Burdette was making me angry. “Don’t ride me, Burdette. If you want to kill a man this week, try somebody else!”

  And then I rode out of town.

  The trail wound upward into the tall pines. The grass smelled good, and there were flowers along the way. At the fifth turning, just four miles from town, I saw a rail fence and back of it a barn bigger than any I’d ever seen , and a strongly built log house.

  A dog ran out, barking. Then a tall, rough-hewn man with a shock of white hair came to the door. “Light and set, stranger! I’m Frank Hetrick.”

  “My name is Ryan Tyler. I was told to ask for Liza.”

  He turned. “Liza! Here’s your beau!”

  She came to the door, poised and pretty, her cheek s pink under the tan. “Papa! You shouldn’t say such things. I told him you’d give him a job.”

  Hetrick looked at me from keen blue eyes. “Do you b
reak horses, Tyler?”

  “Yes, sir. If you want them broke gentle.”

  “Of course.” The remark pleased him. “Get down and come in.”

  At the door I took off my ragged black hat and ran my fingers through my hair. There were carpets on the floor and the furniture was finished off and varnished.

  You didn’t see much of that in pioneer country.

  It was the first time I’d been inside a house in over a year, and I’d never been in one as nice as this before.

  Not, at least, since Pap and I left home. There was a double row of books on shelves across the room, and when Hetrick left the room I walked over to look.

  Some of them were books Logan Pollard had talked about. Tacitus, Thucydides, Plato, and a dozen others that were mostly history.

  Hetrick returned to the room and noticed my interest. “I see you like books. Do you read a lot?”

  “No, sir. But I had a friend who talked about books to me.”

  After supper we went out on the porch to sit and Hetrick built a smudge to fight off the mosquitoes. We sat there talking for a while and watching the black shadows capture the mountains. But that smudge was almost as bad as the mosquitoes, so we went in.

  Liza sat down beside me and started asking questions, and the first thing I knew I had told them about Logan Pollard and Mary, and how Pap died. But I didn’t tell them about the Indians I killed, or about the Mexican rustlers, or about McGarry.

  It wasn’t that I wanted to hide anything, but I wasn’t the kind to talk, and that was over and done. The one thing I did not want was a gun-fighting reputation, and besides, I liked these people. Somehow, I felt at home here. I liked Hetrick, and Liza was a mighty nice girl, even if she did look so big-eyed at me sometimes that I was embarrassed.

  The next day I went to work at forty a month. There was one other hand on the place, a Mexican named Miguel.

  Hetrick came out and watched us that first day. And from time to time in the days that followed he came around and watched, but he had no comment and made no suggestions. Only one day he stopped me. “Rye,” he said, “I like your work.”

  “Thanks, sir.”

  “You’re working well and you’re working fast.”

  “You’ve good stock,” I said, and meant it. “Breeding in these horses. It shows.”

  “Yes.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “Breeding always shows through.” He changed the subject suddenly, ���Liza told me you had words with Ollie Burdette.”

  “It was nothing.”

  “Be careful. He’s a killer, Rye. He’s dangerous. You’ve known horses like that, and I’ve watched Burdette. He’s got a drive in him, a drive to kill.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Twice during the following month, Kipp came over.

  He liked to talk and he liked Mrs. Hetrick’s pies. So did I. He was over for my birthday, too, the day I was eighteen.

  He looked at my old Shawk & McLanahan. “You should have a Colt,” he said. “They’re a mighty fine gun.”

  “Heard of them,” I admitted. “I’d like one.”

  The next morning when we went out, nine of Hetrick’s best horses were gone. Stolen.

  The story was all there, in the tracks around the corral where we held the freshly broken stock. Moving around, careful to spoil no tracks, I worked it out.

  “There’s two, at least,” I said. “Probably one or two more.”

  Kipp had stayed the night, and when I went to the barn for my saddle, he followed along. “I’ll go with you,” he said. “Three is better than two.”

  Reading their sign was no problem. I’d been living too long like an Indian. The three of us rode fast, knowing as we did that they were going clear out of the country. We could tell that from the direction they took.

  There was nothing that way, nothing at all for miles.

  Hetrick had a fine new rifle, and Kipp was well armed.

  As for me, I still had the old Joslyn .50, although it was pretty nigh worn out now. But I knew that old carbine and could make it talk.

  The thieves took the horses into a stream and followed it for miles, but that isn’t the trick some folks think it is, and it didn’t wipe out their trail the way they expected.

  A horse makes a deep track in wet sand and sometimes the tracks don’t wash out very soon.

  So water or not, we held to their trail until they left the stream and took out across a sandy flat. From that they reached some prairie, but the dew was wet on the grass and the horses had knocked the grass down and you could follow it at a trot.

  On the fourth day of trailing the thieves had slowed down. We were coming up fast until we smelled a wood fire, and then we started walking our horses. We were going down a long slope covered with pines when we saw the branding fire.

  We bunched a little as we neared the fire and they were busy and didn’t see us until a horse whinnied. One man dropped his branding iron and a thin trail of smoke lifted from the grass where the iron fell.

  There were four of them, four to our three. They stood waiting for us as we walked our horses nearer, four tough looking men from the rough country. One of them was a lean, hatchet-faced man with hair that curled over his shirt collar. He had gray-striped trousers tucked into his boot tops.

  “Reckon you got the wrong horses,” I said.

  The big man with the black beard looked nervously at the one with the hatchet face. I was watching him, too. He had a bronco look about him that spelled trouble, and I could see it plain. He wore his gun tied down and his right hand was ready. And they were four to our three.

  “You think so?” Hatchet Face was doing the talking.

  One of the others was an Indian or a breed, a square-jawed man with a wide face and a beaded vest.

  “The horses belong to Hetrick, here. I broke them all. We’re taking them back.”

  “Are you, now?” Hatchet Face smiled and showed some teeth missing. “You’re a long ways from home, boys, and we’ve got the number on you. That means we keep the horses.”

  Kipp and Hetrick were forgotten. I could feel that lonely feeling again, the feeling of trouble coming, and of being poised and ready for it. It was the something that happened to me when something was coming up.

  “No,” I said, choosing my words careful-like. “You are four to three, but with us it’s just one to one.”

  Hetrick had a wife and daughter, and I knew he was no fighting man, although he would be right with me when the chips were down. I wanted to keep this short and quick, and I had an idea that I might do it by keeping the fight between the two of us. The others didn’t look ambitious about a shoot-out. Black Beard would back up quick if he had the chance. The man I’d called was number one and if there was to be a fight, he would make it.

  His face thinned down, seemed to sharpen. He had not expected that. There was a quick calculation in his eyes.

  Old Blue walked forward two steps, then stopped. I was looking right down the muzzle of his courage.

  “Yes,” I said it low and straight at him. “You have this wrong, Bronco. I’m the man you think you are.”

  He measured me, not liking it. “What’s that mean?”

  “It means we take our horses. It means if you reach for a gun, I’ll kill you.”

  Never before had I talked like that to any man. No r did I know where the confidence came from, but it was there, as it had been when Logan Pollard stopped McGarry that day when he would have quirted me.

  Bronco was bothered, but he was still confident. So I gave him time. I wanted his sand to run out. Maybe it would. And there was an even better chance it would not, for whoever Bronco was, he had used his gun; I could sense it, feel it.

  That feeling sharpened all my senses, set me up and ready for what would come. Yet there was no hanging back. The horses were ours, and no man would dare walk away from such a situation and still call himself a man.

  Not in the West, not in our day. And we weren’t about to walk away. Hetrick and Kip
p would have got themselves killed, but this time they had the difference, and I was the difference.

  “Mr. Hetrick,” I said, “you and Kipp gather up the horses.”

  “Like hell!” Bronco flared.

  Shorty nervously shifted his feet, and that did it. Maybe Bronco thought Shorty was starting something. Anyway, his hand swept back and I shot him.

  The bullet cut the Bull Durham tag hanging from his shirt pocket. The second bullet struck an inch lower and right.

  His gun was half drawn, but he seemed to shove it down in his holster and he started to take a step, and then he was dead.

  A crow cawed out in the trees on the slope. A horse stamped. The other men stood flat-footed, caught that way, unmoving, not wanting to move.

  And there was no more fight. Even if they had wanted one, it was too late. My gun was out and they were under it, and few men have the stomach to buck that deal.

  “I’ll get the horses,” Kipp said, and he started for them.

  Hetrick got down from his saddle. “Rye,” he said, “we’d better collect their guns.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Shorty stared at me. “Rye,” he said thoughtfully. “I never heard that name. Know who you killed?”

  “A horse thief,” I said.

  “You killed Rice Wheeler,” he said, “the Panhandle gunman.”

  “He should have stayed in the Panhandle,” I said.

  Chapter 6

  RETURNING was only a two-day trip. We had no trail to find, and we could cut across country, which we did.

  Nobody had very much to say that first day out.

  Late on the second day, when we were walking our horses up a long canyon, Kipp said, “That Wheeler, he killed six or seven men” Nobody said anything to that, and he went on. “Wait until I tell this in town! It’ll make Ollie Burdette turn green.”

  “Don’t tell him!” Hetrick said angrily. “Don’t say a word about it. I got back my horses and let’s let it lay.”

  “But why not? It isn’t every day a man kills a Rice Wheeler!”

  “You don’t know gunmen,” Hetrick said testily. “It will start Burdette hunting the boy all the more.”

  Reluctantly Kipp agreed, but only after I said, “I don’t want that kind of talk about me, I’m not making any reputation.”