L'Amour, Louis - Novel 06

by To Tame a Land

  “Sounds prosperous. I’ve been dealing in cows.”

  “Texas?”

  “Lately.”

  We talked a mite, just casual conversation. He had nothing to say about his reason for joining us. He was pleasant enough, yet I had an idea he was fishing for something, something he wanted to know. He didn’t ask many questions, but he had a way of getting a man to talk. But I hadn’t played poker for nothing. I wasn’t going to tell him anything more than I wanted to. On the other hand, I’d nothing to conceal.

  “This country your home? Or is it Texas?”

  “I’m drifting,” I said. “No home, properly speaking, but I aim to get a little home over in the mountains. A ranch, I’ve got in mind.”

  He looked at me thoughtfully. “About twenty? Or twenty-one?”

  “Twenty,” I said.

  We talked some of cattle, and he gathered I’d recently been in Kansas City and New Orleans.

  “Were you born out here?”

  It came quickly, but it slid into the conversation in such a way that I became suspicious. Something about the way he said it made me believe this was what he had been planning to ask all the time.

  I was getting uneasy. That shooting in New Orleans, now. That was off my home grounds, and they looked at things different there than out here. Unless somebody had stolen the gun, they would have found Woods with a pistol in his hand, but no telling what Chris Lillie might tell the law. Still, he was apt to tell them nothing.

  Not his kind.

  “No, sir,” I said finally, “I was born in Maryland. Or so my pap told me. Lived in New York when I was a boy, then in Missouri and Kansas.”

  “You’ve traveled a good bit.” He paused, and me, I’m good at reading sign. I can read it on faces as well as on the ground, and that’s why I play a fair game of poker.

  And right then I had a feeling this was another question he’d been building up to.

  “You’ve no home,” he said. “Wouldn’t you say your home was where your parents were?”

  “Ma died on the way West,” I explained. “Pap was killed by Indians when I was twelve.”

  “So. I’ve heard of such stories,” he commented. “I guess they’re a part of the West. Men have to die to build any country strong. All of them don’t die in battle, though.”

  “Pap did,” I said, and then I told him about it. Mustang had never heard the story, either, but he heard it now. How Ma took sick and didn’t really have no decent care, though Pap did the best he could. Then she died and when she was buried we started on West. I told him all that, and I told him about the last few hours, about the wagon train leaving us, about the fight in the ravine.

  But I didn’t tell them about what I did to the Indians , or about Jack McGarry.

  He was a pleasant man, easy to talk to, and he was friendly. I told him about Logan Pollard, and about reading Plutarch.

  “And did you read it five times?”

  “Only four, so far. But I’ll get to it.”

  “And this place you’re going to … Mason Crossing? Do you intend to stay there for a while?”

  “Prob’ly,” I said, “but I might move on.”

  After he left us I did some thinking about it. No law that I knew about was looking for me. Woods was killed in self-defense, and he was no account, anyway. Those days, men like him didn’t attract much notice when they died. Everybody figured the country was saved a hanging.

  Nevertheless, this talk worried me some.

  Tired of hanging around gambling joints, I bought a dozen books and lay on my bed in my room through the long cold days and read. Outside the wind blew a lot, and every other day or so it snowed. All the passes were closed and nobody was traveling. The streets sounded with the jingle of sleigh bells and the stoves in the saloons glowed cherry red.

  At night sometimes we sat around a big stove in the lobby and yarned. I didn’t talk much, but I liked to listen. There were mining men and cattlemen there, gamblers, drifters, and businessmen. There were drummers and cattle buyers, and men just looking for something to put money into. Most of them had been around a lot and they talked well.

  Up in my room I read a couple of books by an English writer named Dickens, and I read the Scarlet Letter, by Hawthorne. There was some poetry, too, by an English writer named Byron. This I liked a mighty lot.

  One day when I came back to the hotel that lawyer was waiting for me. Mustang was out somewhere, but this fellow was sitting in a big leather chair in the almost empty lobby.

  He seemed anxious to talk private, so we went upstairs, and when my room door was closed, he turned on me. “Tyler, I’ve been hearing some talk. Don’t go back to Mason Crossing.”

  This stopped me flat-footed, but I waited a long minute and then said, “Why not?” And I was pretty cool, for I want no stranger butting into my affairs.

  “Burdette will kill you.”

  “I doubt it. Anyway,” I looked him right in the eye , “I’m going back.”

  He said no more about that, walking up and down the room a couple of times. Then suddenly he stopped and looked at me. “How many men have you actually killed, Tyler?”

  “None of your business.”

  He looked at me for a long time, his eyes sort o f searching my face. Yet there was something friendly about it all, and something worried, too. Almost as if he had an interest.

  “Of course,” he agreed finally, “you’re right. It is none of my business. Only … well, no matter.”

  He crossed to the door. “Whatever you do, take care of yourself. And you may hear from me.”

  He went out and the next day I heard he had taken the stage for Cheyenne. Nobody in town knew much about him except that he had been investigating the titles to some mining claims, and he had looked over some prospects. At least, looked them over as much as he could with the weather what it was.

  Two days later the cold spell broke and I shook Mustang out of a sleep.

  “Pack up, man. We’re riding.”

  He didn’t argue any. I expect town was getting on his nerves, too. Anyway, within the hour we were riding out of town, headed west.

  The route we had taken swung south by way of Durango, and as the thaw was on, we made good time.

  We reached Durango late at night and the next morning I found a squaw who had been making buckskin breeches, and I bought some. I was beginning to feel as if I belonged again.

  This was my country. I liked the largeness of it, the space, the sharp, clear mountain air, and the riding. When I had a ranch it was going to be a home ranch.

  While we rode west I told Mustang about this Denison Mead, and what he had said about staying away from Mason Crossing.

  “Mighty good advice,” Roberts agreed, “but what’s he takin’ on so about?”

  “Can’t figure that unless he knows Burdette.”

  “Ain’t that. But he was askin’ a lot of questions about you.”

  We forgot about that during the day, for we were coming up to my old country again, and somewhere ahead was the ranch, and I’d be seeing Liza again. To say nothing of Old Blue. And Mrs. Hetrick was almost like my own mother. It had been a long time. Too long. And Hetrick was dead.

  Those last few miles before we reached the ranch sure fretted me. Finally I started the gray into a trot, and Mustang, he came right along with me. When the town came in sight I cut around back of it toward the ranch. I could hardly wait to see the place, and to see Mrs. Hetrick and Liza.

  The gray was almost at a run when I rounded to the gate. We went through, and then I pulled up.

  Grass grew in the dooryard and there were tumbleweeds against the fence. The porch was sagging and the door banged on loose hinges. A low wind moaned among the pines and around the eaves, and I stood there looking around, a big empty feeling inside me.

  I got down from the saddle and walked slowly through the house. She was empty. The folks were gone, and from the look of things, they had been gone for a long time.

  I
nside I felt as empty as the house, and when a long wind with a touch of snow on it came down off the mountain, I shivered. The gate at the garden creaked and banged, and I stood there, sick and empty. Liza was gone.

  Chapter 11

  THE CROSSING was built up some. I could see that as we rounded into the main street. It was built up, and Mason’s Store was bigger. There was a long awning in front of the rooming house and it had become a two-story hotel.

  Thinking suddenly, I turned aside and rode around to the cemetery. Mustang, he trailed along, never leaving me.

  At the cemetery gate I got down and went in. It was like so many of those Western cemeteries, a high knoll outside of town with the wind blowing across it and tumbleweeds racked against the fences.

  And I found what I was looking for, and more. Hetrick’s grave, and beside it the grave of his wife, who had died just four months later.

  Both gone.

  And Liza? She might still be in town, although somehow I was sure she wasn’t.

  “Mustang,” I said, “I got to get me a man. But I don’t aim to kill him, not unless I have to. I want you to go down to town. You be careful, because this Burdette is mighty mean. But you listen around and find out if he’s still there, and where he is. I want to come on him unexpected-like. I want to get the jump.”

  Sitting under some cedars there by the graveyard, with the gray grass alongside me, I waited. Maybe I slept some. Anyway, lights were coming on in town before Mustang came back.

  The chill had awakened me, and when I sat up I heard his horse. He rode up to the gate and got down, then he walked over and squatted on his heels and began to build a smoke.

  “Burdette’s there, all right. Mighty mean, like you say. The folks got no use for him, but he’s still marshal and they’re scared. Ever’ night about this time he makes his rounds. Then he goes to the saloon and sits until everybody turns in. He makes another round, then he turns in himself.

  “Come morning, he goes up to the restaurant for breakfast, and he sits around some. He killed another man about two weeks ago, and I got an idea the town would like to get shut of him.”

  “You eat?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I ain’t hungry. I think we’d best bed down right here. I want to get him in the morning at breakfast.”

  “Good. The restaurant has a back door, too. You want I should come in and get the drop?”

  “No. You leave it alone unless somebody tries to butt in. This is my branding. I’ll heat my own irons and make my own mark.”

  When we were all rolled up in our blankets and lying there listening to the town sounds, he said, all of a sudden, “That girl? Liza Hetrick? She left town six, seven months ago. And she only had sixty-three dollars. Took the stage out. West.”

  “You should have been a Pinkerton.”

  Mustang drew on his cigarette.” “Maybe I will be.” He chuckled. “But first we find your gal.”

  Morning found us with our beds rolled and ready.

  We took the trail down into town and went through streets and alleys until Mustang could show me the back door to the restaurant. Then we rode past it.

  “We may have to leave fast,” I said.

  Mustang chuckled dryly. “You leave. I’ll be right behind you, maybe ahead of you.”

  We got down and tied our horses and went inside.

  Mustang went through the door first with me right behind him, my head down.

  There were four people in the restaurant: the woman who ran it, old Mason, who sat at a table alone, and two cow hands in from the forks of the creek.

  Four people besides Burdette. He was sitting behind a table facing the door.

  When we got three steps inside the door Mustang sidestepped and I was looking into those mean, slate-gray eyes of Ollie Burdette’s.

  He was surprised. That was plain. And he never got a chance to get over it. I walked right up to his table because he didn’t like it close up. I walked right up, and I had only two steps to make to get there, and then I spoke up, loud and clear.

  “Burdette, you murdered Hetrick. That old man never packed a gun in his life. And you told it around that you had run me out of town. That’s why you killed him, because he knew you were a liar. He saw you take water that time.”

  He hadn’t no time to get his mouth open. Me, I just kept shoving it at him, and when he started to drop his hand, I slammed against the table and smashed him back against the wall. And then I slapped him twice across the mouth, once with each hand.

  Suddenly I was mad. I was mad clean through, but not killing mad. I just wanted to destroy everything he was or thought he was.

  It had been a complete surprise, shocking to Ollie Burdette, and my lunge against the table had pinned his gun holster.

  But suddenly I jerked the table away and stepped in. He grabbed for his gun, but I hit him. He staggered and I swung a boot from the floor and kicked his gun loose. It fell, and as he grabbed for it, I hit him in the face.

  He put his hands up and rushed at me, but he was a man who had trusted to guns. Big as he was and he was heavier than me, he was no fighter. I hit him in the belly, then on the side of the face. That last blow cu t deep and knocked him around, smashing his head against the edge of the table.

  He got no chance at all from me. No more than he had given some of the men he killed. I grabbed him by the collar and back-walked him to the door, slapping him across the face at every step. Then I shoved him out of the door and into the street.

  He fell in the dust, and fell hard. Then he lunged to his feet, but he didn’t know which way to turn. He was caught without a gun, and without a gun he was nothing. He started to back up, and I went after him.

  Walkin��� him back across the street, I slapped him. He tried to fight back, striking at me, trying to knock my hands down. A time or two he hit me, but he had been sitting around taking it easy while I had been riding , working, roughing it.

  In front of the saloon, with fifty men looking on, I knocked him down. He got up and rushed me, and I hit him in the mouth, smashing his lips into his teeth. He backed up, bloody and beaten. I walked up to him and throwing one from the hip, knocked him down again.

  Then I picked him up and tossed him bodily into the water trough. Then I fished him out and stood him up against it.

  “You murdered Hetrick. You might as well have murdered his wife. You bragged around that you run me out. You’re just a two-bit bad man in a four-bit town.”

  He couldn’t talk. His wind was gone and his mouth was all blood and torn lips.

  “You got a horse?” I looked around at Old Man Mason, who had followed us. “Where’s his horse?”

  “I’ll get it.” The voice was familiar, and I looked around. It was Kipp.

  Burdette stood there, soaked to the hide and shivering.

  He shook his head like a wounded bear. It had all happened so fast that he hadn’t no time to get set for it. Right then I don’t think he had realized yet what was happening to him. Too long he had lorded it around, doing it all on the strength of his gun. And now he had no gun.

  When Kipp came up with the horse, I told Burdette to get into the saddle. “Now ride. And don’t stop riding until the week is gone.”

  “I got property,” he protested, able to talk at last “I got stuff at the house.”

  “You lose it,” I said, “like Hetrick lost his ranch.”

  He stared at me, and those poison-mean eyes were shocked and dull. “Don’t I get a gun? Without a gun my life ain’t worth a plugged nickel.”

  “No more than the lives of some of those you killed. You get no gun.”

  He never said anything more. He just walked his horse off down the street and out of town. Somebody gave a halfhearted cheer, but not much of one. Trouble was, they were shocked, too.

  “Kipp,” I said, “Where’d Liza go?”

  “Don’t know, Rye. She wouldn’t take any help. After her ma died she aimed to take care of herself. She didn’t get mu
ch out of the ranch. After Hetrick was killed, the horse thieves stole them blind. All I know is, she bought a ticket for Alta. She would have had about forty dollars left when she got there.”

  Mustang and me, we mounted up and rode out of town that night. There was nothing at the Crossing for me now, and Mustang, he just seemed to want to stay along with me. And no man had a better friend.

  We never talked any about being partners. We never said much of anything to each other. We just rode together and shared together, and that was the way of it.

  Alta was a boom mining town, half across the state of Utah. It wasn’t a Mormon town, being populated mostly by gentile miners from Nevada or Colorado. Many had been working on the Comstock Lode and some had come down from Alder Gulch, Montana.

  I’d been hearing about Alta. It was a sure-enough mean town, where they killed men every night and mostly every day. The mines were rich and the town was booming. It was wide open and ararin’.

  Never before had I had much of any place to go, or any purpose in life. Now I had one. I was going to find Liza. I was going to make sure she was doing all right.

  It wasn’t right for a girl of seventeen to be traipsing around rough country on her own. No telling what had happened to her.

  Right then I thought some mighty fierce thoughts, and I angered up some, just thinking things that might have happened to her.

  It was snowing when we rode into town and stabled our horses. The first thing to do was to find a place to sleep, but I left that to Mustang and started for a saloon.

  The saloon was the club, the meeting place, the clearing house for information. In a mining camp or a cow town the same rule held true, and often enough the company would include many who drink little or nothing at all.

  The snow was falling fast, and except in the street , churned into mud by the passing of men, horses, and heavy wagons, the ground rapidly grew white. Huge ore wagons dragged by, their shouting drivers bundled up against the cold, their huge horses or oxen leaning into the harness as they strained against great loads.

  A music box was going up the street, and in the feeble light of a lantern behind a saloon a man was splitting wood.