Mustang Man (1966)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 15

  “What would you have me do?” the old man said. “I worked with old Nathan when I was a boy, and I had me a mighty good idea where that gold was, but as long as the widow was alive I didn’t figure I had a right to it.

  “Others hunted it, but most of them had no idea where to look. I knew how old Nathan thought, and I was sure I could lay hand on the gold. The old man was my cousin, blood-kin, and I was the only one of his flesh who had worked with him.

  Many a time I went into the San Juans to meet up with the gold traders.

  “Them Karneses, they didn’t know where I was until you fetched up to their wagon. When they saw that brand on the dun, NH Connected, they knew it for old Nathan Hume’s brand, and knew that I was somewhere about. That was one of the reasons they wanted to do away with you.”

  “Why didn’t you try to get the gold before now?”

  He glanced up at me. “You ain’t seen that place yet, nor heard the stories.

  Well, I heard ‘em. Ain’t no Indian alive who will spend a night in that canyon, and mighty few who will even go into it. Evil spirits, they say, and maybe there is.”

  “You ain’t told me your name?”

  “Harry Mims. Now don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t ha’nts kept me out of that box canyon. Mostly it was Comanches. Why, I’ve lost my outfit twice and nearly lost my hair a couple of times, too.

  “One time I was lucky and got right up to the canyon before they come on me.

  Well, they took my pack outfit and got so busy arguing over the loot that I sneaked off and hid until things quieted down. Took me two weeks to get back to Las Vegas, and when I got there I hadn’t enough money for a meal. I got a job swamping in a saloon, then they moved me up to bartender. Took me six months to get myself an outfit again, what with gambling an’ all.”

  “How’d you get clear up here now?”

  “A-hossback—how’d you figure? They stole some horses off me, scattered the rest, but those horses come on home, and I caught up a few, saddled up, and rode. I taken me some time, but here I am.”

  He lay back, resting. He was in such bad shape I didn’t feel much like asking him more questions. Somebody had been shooting at him more than a little, and he’d wasted away some, riding all that time. It gave a body the shudders to think what that old man had gone through in getting here.

  “What do you figure to do now?”

  “You ask a fool question like that? I’m going to get that gold, or stop them from getting it, and by the Lord Harry, I’ll kill that Ralph Karnes.”

  “What about her?”

  Harry Mims was still for a while, and then he looked up at me. “Sackett, I know she needs it, but I can’t bring myself to kill no woman. Why, she was the worst of all when it came to thinkin’ of things to do t’ me. It was her thought of the fingernails, and she did part of it herself.”

  I could believe that of Sylvie.

  After a while Mims dropped off to sleep, and I covered him up better. He hadn’t told me where his outfit was, but it must be somewhere back in the brush. He couldn’t have come far in the shape he was in, not afoot, anyway.

  The death of Nathan Hume’s widow, way back in Virginia, had opened a fancy show out here on the grasslands of the Panhandle. Everybody and his brother was heading right for the gold, and all at the same time. It was just my luck to land right in the middle of it; and here I was, saddled with an old man who needed help the worst way, and maybe with a girl, if I could find her again.

  What about those Indian stories? Now, I was never one to doubt anything an Indian told me. Folks would say they were superstitious and all, but behind most of what they believed there was good common sense. I know one time down Mexico way Indians told me they would never go near a certain place, because there were evil spirits around. Come to find out, there had been a smallpox epidemic there, and that was the Indian way of quarantining the place. They thought evil spirits had caused the smallpox …

  Well, maybe there was something odd about that box canyon too.

  After I’d found Mims’s horses—he had four of them … two pack animals and a spare saddle horse—I went back to the fire and drank some more coffee, then let the flames die down to the coals. Then when it was fairly dark, I moved my bed back into the darkest shadows, where I could see the old man and the firelit space, and where I’d be unseen by anybody scouting the camp.

  Several times during the night I awakened, and each time I lay listening into the night. Finally, near daybreak, I decided not to go back to sleep. Many a night before this I had stayed awake for hours, for in my kind of life a man never knew when he would have to come up shooting.

  A long time I lay there thinking of other nights in other places when I had stayed awake listening to the night sounds. It wasn’t much of a life, being on the dodge all the time.

  After a while I began to hear something. At first it wasn’t really a clear sound, only of a sudden my ears seemed to sharpen, for something was moving out there, something that made no sound I could rightly make out.

  I looked toward the fire … a few red coals still glowed there, and Harry Mims, wrapped in two blankets and a ground sheet, lay dark and silent beside the fire.

  I could hear his faint breathing.

  I reached out with my left hand and took up the edge of the blanket that covered me and put it back carefully. The moccasins I always had with me were close by.

  Holding my pistol in my right hand, I picked up the moccasins with my left and eased my feet into them.

  Picking up a small stone, I tossed it at Mims. It struck his shoulder and his breathing seemed to stop, then it went on again. Was he awake? I had a hunch he was, awake and as ready as a body in his shape could be.

  All was quiet, yet with a different sort of quiet now. In the area north of our camp even the night sounds had stopped. Then I heard a faint whisper—the sort of sound a branch can make scraping the side of a man’s jeans. Somebody was approaching—perhaps more than one.

  I came smoothly and silently to my feet and took a careful step backward, where I was nearer the tree and partly shielded by its branches. Now, even if my bed was seen, I myself was blended into the darkness of the tree.

  That gun felt good in my hand, but suddenly I put it back in its holster and drew my knife. A knife was better for quiet work, in close.

  Chapter 10

  I waited there in the darkness, knife in hand, thankful its edge was razor-sharp. I held it low, cutting edge up.

  Down in the creek there was a rustle of water. Cottonwood leaves whispered softly to the breath of wind. I could smell the wood smoke from the fire, the faint aromatic scent of crushed leaves. Whoever was approaching moved with great skill, for there was not another whisper of sound.

  My leg muscles grew tired, but I did not want to shift my feet in a movement that might make even the slightest sound. Anyone who moved as silently as this unknown one would also listen well, for the two are one, to listen and to be conscious of others listening.

  Then I saw a shadow where no shadow had been before. I had to look a second time to be sure my eyes were not tricking me into believing something had changed.

  But the shadow was there. I made a slight move forward, and then my name was breathed. “Mr. Sackett?”

  It was Penelope.

  My relief was so great that all I could say was, “Where have you been?”

  She did not answer, but came swiftly toward me. “Who is that by the fire?”

  “Harry Mims. Have you heard of him?”

  “I know of him. You’d best awaken him. We must go quickly, before it is light.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Have you ever heard of a man called Tom Fryer? Or Noble Bishop?”

  “Are they in this now?”

  “Sylvie brought them in. I don’t know where she found them, but from all I hear, this only makes things worse.”

  “Is Ferrara with them?”

  “There’s a slim, dark man. I didn’t hear
his name. They came into camp tonight, and they seemed to know you.”

  They knew me all right—it could not have been worse. There were not three more dangerous men west of the Mississippi than those three.

  “You are right,” I said. “We’d better move.”

  Mims was sitting up. As we neared the fire he used his good hand to help himself up. “I heard. Let’s get out of here. Let’s get the gold and run.”

  It took only a few minutes to roll up our beds and to bring up the horses.

  Penelope would ride Mims’s extra horse, for she didn’t have one of her own.

  We led our horses to the stream, then mounted and crossed. Mims took the lead, for he was sure he knew where the box canyon lay. I didn’t like the sound of a box canyon, for that meant a trap—a canyon with only one entrance, and the chances were it had steep sides. It smelled like trouble—but then, everything smelled like trouble. I wished again that I had had sense enough to ride out of here before this.

  Penelope was close beside me. “You’re no tenderfoot,” I said. “You couldn’t move like that if you were.”

  “I grew up in the woods in Virginia. I was stalking deer before I was ten.”

  She’d had no right to make me feel she was helpless, I told myself. It was downright dishonest. Why, she was as good in the woods as I was myself. And she had saved my bacon.

  “You pulled me out of trouble.” I said it a little grudgingly, for I wasn’t used to being bested by a woman. “Thanks.”

  “That’s all right,” she said.

  “Where’s Loomis?” I asked.

  “Somewhere around. I lost track of him.”

  It seemed to me she was neither worried nor sorry. Maybe she already had him figured out. But how about me? How did she know I wouldn’t take all that gold and run? I gave her an uneasy look. Could be I was guessing wrong all the way around. But one thing I felt pretty sure of—she wasn’t anything like Sylvie Karnes.

  When my thoughts turned to Ferrara, Fryer, and Noble Bishop, I felt a chill. Any one of them was bad enough. All three at once I wanted no part of.

  Noble Bishop was a gunman. They told it around that he’d killed twenty men. Cut that by half and it might be true—at least, those killed in known gun battles.

  Whoever he might have dry-gulched I’d never be knowing, although that sort of thing was more to the taste of Fryer than of Bishop. As for Ferrara, he was a knife man.

  All three were known men, hired killers, men for whatever was needed when there was violence to be done. No doubt Sylvie had gotten wind of them through Hooker or one of the others, and she had wasted no time in hiring them.

  Harry Mims was old, and he might be crippled now, but he led us as swiftly through the trees as though he could see in the dark. We followed, and when he brought up at the canyon’s mouth we came up close to him.

  “I don’t like it,” he said. “The place worries me.”

  “You’re scared?” I was surprised, for that old man was tough. At any other time he might have gone for his gun at the very question.

  “Call it what you like. Maybe the Indians know what they’re talking about. I don’t like that canyon, and never did.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “Yes … It’s a litter of bones in there. More than one man has died in that place.”

  “Sure. Nathan Hume’s pack train died there, or most of them. Their bones will be there—what else would you expect?”

  “There’s others,” he said soberly. “I tell you, I don’t like the place.”

  “Let’s get the gold then, and get out. If we don’t do that, we might as well leave right now, because they’ll be coming and I’m not one to fight without cause.”

  The dun didn’t like the canyon either. He tried to turn away, fought the bit, and did all he could to avoid entering. The other horses were nervous, but none of them behaved as badly as the dun.

  We rode in, darkness closed around us. Up ahead of us, Harry Mims coughed, and then drew up. “Like it or not, we’ll have to wait until daylight. There’s a pool covered with green scum, and there’s some holes around here too. God knows what’s in them, but I’d not like to be.”

  We sat out horses then, no one of us wanting to get down from the saddle, though no one of us could have said why. It was simply an uneasy feeling we had, and the way the horses acted. I know I had no wish to trust the dun with me out of the saddle, unless he was strongly tied.

  Presently a saddle creaked. “I’m getting down,” Penelope said. “I’m going to look around.”

  “Wait!” I spoke sharply. “This may be a damned trap. Get back in your saddle and wait.”

  Well, I expected a quick answer, but none came. She got back into the saddle and sat quietly. By now the sky was growing gray, and it would not be very long until it was light enough to see.

  Nobody said anything for several minutes, and then it was Mims who spoke. “Say I’m scared if you like, but I can’t get shut of this place fast enough.”

  Rocks and brush began to take shape, and we could see the walls of the canyon.

  Nobody was going to ride out of here unless he went out the front way. Or so I thought then.

  “I could do with a cup of coffee,” I said.

  “Not there. Let’s get the gold and get out.”

  “It won’t be that easy,” I said. “It never is.”

  Nevertheless, I was as eager to be away as he was, for the canyon was a depressing place. Bones lay about, and not all of them seemed old enough to be the remains of Nathan Hume’s pack train.

  We all saw the pool, which lay close to Penelope’s horse. A still, dead place covered with a scum of green. Penelope leaned over and stirred the surface with a branch she broke from a dead tree. The water under the scum was oily and dark.

  “You notice something?” Harry Mims said suddenly. “There ain’t no birds in here.

  I’ve seen no insects, either. Maybe them Indians are right.”

  The place was beginning to give me the creeps. “All right,” I said. “From what I’ve heard the gold should be somewhere yonder.”

  We worked our way around the fallen rocks and over to the spot. There were bones enough, all right. A mule’s jaw, white and ancient, lay near a shattered rib cage. But the skeletons weren’t pulled apart, the way they often are after wolves or coyotes have worried at them.

  I could see that the canyon walls were too steep for any horse to climb, in some places too steep for a man. Yet the first sign of life I saw in the canyon were the tracks of wild horses. Several horses had come through here not long since, but there were older tracks, too, which were headed toward the back of the canyon. On a hunch, I swung my horse around. “You hunt the gold,” I said.

  “There’s something back there I’ve got to see.”

  Without waiting for a reply, I started off on the trail of those mustangs, and believe me, the dun was ready to move. He just didn’t take to that box canyon, not at all.

  Those wild horses headed right back up the canyon and into a mess of boulders tumbled from the rock wall above. They wound around among the rocks and brush, and of a sudden I found myself on a narrow trail going up a steep crack in the rocks, scarcely wide enough for a man on horseback. It went straight up, then took a turn, but I had no doubt but that it topped out on the mesa above.

  So there was another way out.

  Suddenly I heard a faint call, and turned in the saddle to look back. I hadn’t realized I had come so far, or so much higher. I could see Penelope back there, a tiny figure waving her arm at me.

  When I reached them Mims was down on the ground. He was lying on his face, which I saw had a faint bluish tinge when I turned him over. “Let’s get him out of here,” I said quickly. “If they come on us with him out—”

  I’d no idea what was wrong with him, but it looked as if he’d fainted from some cause or other, and his heart seemed a mite rapid, but was beating all right. I got him up in the saddle and lashed h
im there, then led the way down the canyon and out. We rode at once toward the shelter of the trees but saw no one, and soon were back among the cottonwoods and willows along the creek.

  By that time the better air outside the canyon, and maybe the movement on the back of his horse, seemed to have done him some good. I took him down from the saddle, feeling uncommonly helpless, not knowing what to do for him; but after a moment or two he began to come around.

  “You given to passing out?” I asked. “What happened back there?”

  “I don’t know. All of a sudden I felt myself going. I tell you one thing—I want no more of that box canyon. There’s something wrong about that place. Call it whatever you like, I think that place is ha’nted.”

  After a while he sat up, but his face was uncommonly pale. When he tried to drink he couldn’t keep it down.

  “Whatever we do had best be done quickly,” I said. There are too many others around. They’ll find the place if we waste time.

  “Maybe I’d best go after the gold. I can take along one of the horses and pack some of it out, and I can get the rest on my horse.”

  Penelope stood there looking at me, and then she said, “Mr. Sackett, you must think I am a very foolish girl, to let you go after that gold alone.”

  “No, ma’am. You feel up to it, you just go along by yourself—maybe you’d feel safer that way. But I figure one of us ought to stay by Mr. Mims here.”

  “I can get along,” said Mims. “You can both go.”

  To tell the truth, I’d no great urge to go back there at all, and even less so if I went along with Penelope. She had helped me out of a fix, but she needed my help. I didn’t figure it would be easy to get that gold out, and I wanted nothing else to worry about—especially not a girl I had to look after. I said as much.

  “You look after yourself,” she told me, speaking sharp but not what you’d call angry. And with that she got into the saddle and I followed.

  To see us, you wouldn’t figure we were going after a treasure like three hundred pounds of gold. We didn’t act very willing, and the closer we came to the mouth of that canyon the slower we rode. I didn’t like it, and neither did she.