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 steeldust.
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 cliff 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 come out and then the moon lifted, and they kept on goin’. My steeldust was 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 six-gun. 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.
The nester was nowhere in sight, but I swung down and with the carbine in hand, started down through the trees, catfootin’ it along with no idea what I might see or where they could have gone. Then all of a sudden I come out on the edge of a cliff and looked down at a cabin in a grassy basin, maybe a hundred feet below and a good four hundred yards away.
Standin’ in front of that cabin were two horses. My face was pretty pale, an’ my stomach felt sick, but I headed for the trail down, when I heard a scream. It was Julie!
Then, in front of the cabin, I heard a yell, and that durned nester stepped right out in plain sight and started walking up to the cabin, and he wasn’t more than thirty yards away from it.
That fool nester knowed he was askin’ for it. The Piute might have shot from behind the doorjamb or from a window, but maybe the nester figured I was behind him and he might draw him out for my fire. Or maybe he figured his comin’ out in the open would make him leave the girl alone. Whatever his reason, it worked. The Piute stepped outside the door.
Me? I was standin’ up there like a fool, just a-gawkin’, while there, right in front of my eyes, the Piute was goin’ to kill a man. Or was he?
He was playin’ big Injun right then. Maybe he figured Julie was watchin’ or maybe he thought the nester would scare. Mister, that nester wouldn’t scare a copper cent.
The Piute swaggered about a dozen steps out from the cabin and stood there, his thumbs in his belt, sneerin’. The nester, he just moseyed along kind of lazylike, carryin’ his old Spencer in his right hand like he’d plumb forgot about his handgun.
Then, like it was on a stage, I seen it happen. That Piute went for his guns and the nester swung up his Spencer. There was two shots—then a third.
It’s a wonder I didn’t break my neck gettin’ down that trail, but when I run up, the Piute was lyin’ there on his back with his eyes glazin’ over. I took one look an’ then turned away, and you can call me a pie-eatin’ tenderfoot, but I was sick as I could be. Mister, did you ever see a man who’d been hit by two soft-nosed .56-caliber bullets? In the stummick?
Bin Morley come out with Julie, and I straightened up an’ she run over to me and began askin’ how Ma was. She wasn’t hurt none, as the nester got there just in time.
We took the horses back, and then I fell behind with the nester. I jerked my head toward the Piute’s body.
“You goin’ to bury him?” I asked.
He looked at me like he thought I was soft in the head.
“What fur? He picked the place hisself, didn’t he?”
We mounted up.
“Besides,” he said, “I’ve done lost two whole days as it is, and gettin’ behind on my work ain’t goin’ to help none.” He was stuffin’ something in his slicker on the back of his horse.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A ham,” he said grimly, “a whole ham. I brung it clean from Tucson, an’ that durned Piute stole it off me. Right out of my cabin. Ma, she was out pickin’ berries when it happend.”
“You mean,” I said, “you trailed the Piute clean over here just for a ham?”
“Mister,” the nester spat, “you durned right I did! Why Ma and me ain’t et no hawg meat since we left Missoury, comin’ three year ago!”
The steeldust started to catch up with Julie’s pony, but I heard the nester sayin’, “Never was no hand to eat beef, nohow. Too durned stringy. Gets in my teeth!”
Desert Death Song
When Jim Morton rode up to the fire, three unshaven men huddled there warming themselves and drinking hot coffee. Morton recognized Chuck Benson from the Slash Five. The other men were strangers.
“Howdy, Chuck!” Morton said. “He still in there?”
“Sure is!” Benson told him. “An’ it don’t look like he’s figurin’ on comin’ out.”
“I don’t reckon to blame him. Must be a hundred men scattered about.”
“Nigher two hundred, but you know Nat Bodine. Shakin’ him out of these hills is going to be tougher’n shaking a possum out of a tree.”
The man with the black beard stubble looked up sourly. “He wouldn’t last long if they’d let us go in after him! I’d sure roust him out of there fast enough!”
Morton eyed the man with distaste. “You think so. That means you don’t know Bodine. Goin’ in after him is like sendin’ a houn’ dog down a hole after a badger. That man knows these hills, every crack an’ crevice. He can hide places an Apache would pass up.”
The black-bearded man stared sullenly. He had thick lips and small, heavy-lidded eyes. “Sounds like maybe you’re a friend of his’n. Maybe when we get him, you should hang alongside of him.”
Somehow the long rifle over Morton’s saddlebows shifted to stare warningly at the man, although Morton made no perceptible movement. “That ain’t a handy way to talk, stranger,” Morton said casually. “Ever’body in these hills knows Nat, an’ most of us been right friendly with him one time or another. I ain’t takin’ up with him, but I reckon there’s worse men in this posse than he is.”
“Meanin’?” The big man’s hand lay on his thigh.
“Meanin’ anything you like.” Morton was a Tennessee mountain man before he came west, and gun talk was not strange to him. “You call it your ownself.” The long rifle was pointed between the big man’s eyes, and Morton was building a cigarette with his hands
only inches away from the trigger.
“Forget it!” Benson interrupted. “What you two got to fight about? Blackie, this here’s Jim Morton. He’s lion hunter for the Lazy S.”
Blackie’s mind underwent a rapid readjustment. This tall, lazy stranger wasn’t the soft-headed drink of water he had thought him, for everybody knew about Morton. A dead shot with rifle and pistol, he was known to favor the former, even in fairly close combat. He had been known to go up trees after mountain lions, and once, when three hardcase rustlers had tried to steal his horses, the three had ended up in Boot Hill.
“How about it, Jim?” Chuck asked. “You know Nat. Where’d you think he’d be?”
Morton squinted and drew on his cigarette. “Ain’t no figurin’ him. I know him, an’ I’ve hunted along of him. He’s almighty knowin’ when it comes to wild country. Moves like a cat an’ got eyes like a turkey buzzard.” He glanced at Chuck. “What’s he done? I heard some talk down to the Slash Five, but nobody seemed to have it clear.”
“Stage robbed yestiddy. Pete Daley of the Diamond D was ridin’ it, an’ he swore the robber was Nat. When they went to arrest him, Nat shot the sheriff.”
“Kill him?”
“No. But he’s bad off, an’ like to die. Nat only fired once, an’ the bullet took Larrabee too high.”
“Don’t sound reasonable,” Morton said slowly. “Nat ain’t one to miss somethin’ he aims to kill. You say Pete Daley was there?”
“Yeah. He’s the on’y one saw it.”
“How about this robber? Was he masked?”
“Uh-huh, an’ packin’ a Winchester .44 an’ two tied-down guns. Big black-haired man, the driver said. He didn’t know Bodine, but Pete identified him.”
Morton eyed Benson. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he said, and Chuck flushed.
Each knew what the other was thinking. Pete Daley had never liked Bodine. Nat married the girl Pete wanted, even though it was generally figured Pete never had a look-in with her, anyway, but Daley had worn his hatred like a badge ever since. Mary Callahan had been a pretty girl, but a quiet one, and Daley had been sure he’d win her.
But Bodine had come down from the hills and changed all that. He was a tall man with broad shoulders, dark hair, and a quiet face. He was a good-looking man, even a handsome man, some said. Men liked him, and women, too, but the men liked him best because he left their women alone. That was more than could be said for Daley, who lacked Bodine’s good looks but made up for it with money.
Bodine had bought a place near town and drilled a good well. He seemed to have money, and that puzzled people, so hints began to get around that he had been rustling as well as robbing stages. There were those, like Jim Morton, who believed most of the stories were started by Daley, but no matter where they originated, they got around.
Hanging Bodine for killing the sheriff—the fact that he was still alive was overlooked and considered merely a technical question, anyway—was the problem before the posse. It was a self-elected posse, inspired to some extent by Daley and given a semiofficial status by the presence of Burt Stoval, Larrabee’s jailer.
Yet, to hang a man, he must first be caught, and Bodine had lost himself in that broken, rugged country known as Powder Basin. It was a region of some ten square miles backed against an even rougher and uglier patch of waterless desert, but the basin was bad enough itself.
Fractured with gorges and humped with fir-clad hogbacks, it was a maze where the juniper region merged into the fir and spruce and where the canyons were liberally overgrown with manzanita. There were at least two cliff dwellings in the area and a ghost mining town of some dozen ramshackle structures, tumbled in and wind worried.
“All I can say,” Morton said finally, “is that I don’t envy those who corner him—when they do and if they do.”
Blackie wanted no issue with Morton, yet he was still sore. He looked up. “What do you mean, if we do? We’ll get him!”
Morton took his cigarette from his lips. “Want a suggestion, friend? When he’s cornered, don’t you be the one to go in after him.”
FOUR HOURS LATER, when the sun was moving toward noon, the net had been drawn tighter, and Nat Bodine lay on his stomach in the sparse grass on the crest of a hogback and studied the terrain below.
There were many hiding places, but the last thing he wanted was to be cornered and forced to fight it out. Until the last moment, he wanted freedom of movement.
Among the searchers were friends of his, men with whom he rode and hunted, men he had admired and liked. Now they believed him wrong; they believed him a killer, and they were hunting him down.
They were searching the canyons with care, so he had chosen the last spot they would examine, a bald hill with only the foot-high grass for cover. His vantage point was excellent, and he had watched with appreciation the care with which they searched the canyon below him.
Bodine scooped another handful of dust and rubbed it along his rifle barrel. He knew how far a glint of sunlight from a Winchester can be seen, and men in that posse were Indian fighters and hunters.
No matter how he considered it, his chances were slim. He was a better woodsman than any of them, unless it was Jim Morton. Yet that was not enough. He was going to need food and water. Sooner or later, they would get the bright idea of watching the water holes, and after that…
It was almost twenty-four hours since he had eaten, and he would soon have to refill his canteen.
Pete Daley was behind this, of course. Trust Pete not to tell the true story of what happened. Pete had accused him of the holdup right to his face when they had met him on the street. The accusation had been sudden, and Nat’s reply had been prompt. He’d called Daley a liar, and Daley moved a hand for his gun. The sheriff sprang to stop them and took Nat’s bullet. The people who rushed to the scene saw only the sheriff on the ground, Daley with no gun drawn and Nat gripping his six-shooter. Yet it was not that of which he thought now. He thought of Mary.
What would she be thinking now? They had been married so short a time and had been happy despite the fact that he was still learning how to live in civilization and with a woman. It was a mighty different thing, living with a girl like Mary.
Did she doubt him now? Would she, too, believe he had held up the stage and then killed the sheriff? As he lay in the grass, he could find nothing on which to build hope.
Hemmed in on three sides, with the waterless mountains and desert behind him, the end seemed inevitable. Thoughtfully, he shook his canteen. It was nearly empty. Only a little water sloshed weakly in the bottom. Yet he must last the afternoon through, and by night he could try the water hole at Mesquite Springs, no more than a half mile away.
The sun was hot, and he lay very still, knowing that only the faint breeze should stir the grass where he lay if he were not to be seen.
Below him, he heard men’s voices and from time to time could distinguish a word or even a sentence. They were cursing the heat, but their search was not relaxed. Twice men mounted the hill and passed near him. One man stopped for several minutes, not more than a dozen yards away, but Nat held himself still and waited. Finally, the man moved on, mopping sweat from his face. When the sun was gone, he wormed his way off the crest and into the manzanita. It took him over an hour to get within striking distance of Mesquite Springs. He stopped just in time. His nostrils caught the faint fragrance of tobacco smoke.
Lying in the darkness, he listened, and after a moment heard a stone rattle, then the faint chink of metal on stone.
When he was far enough away, he got to his feet and worked his way through the night toward Stone Cup, a spring two miles beyond. He moved more warily now, knowing they were watching the water holes.
The stars were out, sharp and clear, when he snaked his way through the reeds toward the cup. Deliberately, he chose the route where the overflow from the Stone Cup kept the earth soggy and high-grown with reeds and dank grass. There would be no chance of a watcher waiting there on the wet ground, nor w
ould the wet grass rustle. He moved close, but there, too, men waited.
He lay still in the darkness, listening. Soon he picked out three men, two back in the shadows of the rock shelf, one over under the brush but not more than four feet from the small pool’s edge.
There was no chance to get a canteen filled there, for the watchers were too wide-awake. Yet he might manage a drink.
He slid his knife from his pocket and opened it carefully. He cut several reeds, allowing no sound. When he had them cut, he joined them and reached them toward the water. Lying on his stomach within only a few feet of the pool and no farther from the nearest watcher, he sucked on the reeds until the water started flowing. He drank for a long time, then drank again, the trickle doing little, at first, to assuage his thirst. After a while, he felt better.
He started to withdraw the reeds, then grinned and let them lay. With care, he worked his way back from the cup and got to his feet. His shirt was muddy and wet, and with the wind against his body, he felt almost cold. With the water holes watched, there would be no chance to fill his canteen, and the day would be blazing hot. There might be an un-watched hole, but the chance of that was slight, and if he spent the night in fruitless search of water, he would exhaust his strength and lose the sleep he needed. Returning like a deer to a resting place near a ridge, he bedded down in a clump of manzanita. His rifle cradled in his arm, he was almost instantly asleep.
Dawn was breaking when he awakened, and his nostrils caught a whiff of wood smoke. His pursuers were at their breakfasts. By now they would have found his reeds, and he grinned at the thought of their anger at having had him so near without knowing. Morton, he reflected, would appreciate that. Yet they would all know he was short of water.
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Five Page 4