The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Five

by Louis L'Amour

  Bly, with a snarl of fury, had grabbed for his gun. As it swung up, Deke came around and fired!

  Bly took it standing, a little puff of dust leaping from his gray shirt. Bly stepped forward, seemed to hesitate, then his knees wilted under him and he folded up like a punctured accordion.

  Dazed, Deke turned, thumbing shells automatically into his gun. The crowd was pouring from the stands, moving desperately to get out of the way of any more shooting.

  Deke’s leg felt numb, and he turned and stared down at it. There was no blood or sign of injury, and then he saw the smashed silver ornament on his belt over his right hip where the bullet had struck and glanced off.

  Tim Carson rushed up to him. “You hurt, boy? Did he get you?”

  “No.” Deke limped over to Jud Kynell’s body. Bending over, he pulled back the shirt. There on the man’s chest was a ragged white scar made by the muzzle blast of his gun on that night long ago when he and Deke had struggled over it. “Funny, I never figured Bly was my man,” he said. “Not until I heard his voice just before I came out on Shadow.”

  “I knew,” Carson said, “in fact we’ve been pretty sure for over a year, but just lacked the right dope on him. Then he talked to Carol today about the holdup, an’ he mentioned it was two hundred thousand. That was kept secret, an’ nobody ever knew but the outlaws an’ the government. Just one man at the mines actually knew an’ he kept his mouth shut. Tyin’ that in with what else we knew, it had to be him.”

  CAROL’S HAND WAS on his arm, and he looked down. “You know,” he said, “wearin’ your colors brought me luck, I think.”

  “Then why not keep wearing them?” she asked.

  “Well, ma’am,” he said, smiling, “that’s not a bad idea…and it’s probably safer to ride when there’s no one shootin’ at you!”

  Rowdy Rides to Glory

  CHAPTER I

  FOR WANT OF A HORSE

  Rowdy Horn stared gloomily at Cub’s right hind leg and shook his head with regret.

  “No use even thinkin’ about it, Jenny,” he admitted ruefully to the girl he wanted to marry. “Cub won’t work at the Stockman’s Show this year. Not with that leg!”

  Jenny Welman nodded, faintly irritated. Something was always going wrong. “No,” she agreed, “you can’t ride him, and without a good roping horse you wouldn’t have a chance at first money, and without five thousand dollars—”

  “I know! Without it we can’t get married!” Rowdy ran his fingers through his dark, curly hair. “Jenny, does that money make so much difference? Lots of folks I know started with a darned sight less, and if I get a good calf crop this year we would be all set.”

  “We’ve talked of this before,” Jenny replied quietly. “If you want to marry me, you’ve got to provide a home for me. I won’t start like my mother did.”

  “She was pretty happy,” Horn insisted stubbornly, “and your mother was a mighty fine woman.”

  “True, but just the same, I want to be comfortable! I don’t want to slave my youth away trying to get ahead like she did.” Suddenly, and excitedly, Jenny caught his arm. “Rowdy! I just happened to think. Why don’t you see Bart Luby?”

  “Luby?” Horn’s mouth tightened. “What would I see him for?”

  “Maybe he would let you borrow Tanglefoot to ride! He’s going to ride Royboy, I know, so why don’t you ride over and ask him?”

  “Ask a favor of Bart Luby?” Rowdy’s eyes smoldered. “I will not! I’ll let the rodeo go to kingdom come, and the ranch, too, before I’ll go to him for help! Anyway, he’d turn me down flat. He knows well enough that with Cub and me out of the running he is a cinch to win.”

  “Will it do any harm to ask?” Jenny insisted impatiently. “Why you imagine he holds anything against you, I can’t guess. He’s the wealthiest man in the whole South Rim country, and has the biggest ranch, so why he should worry about you, I wouldn’t know.”

  THERE WAS AN UNDERCURRENT in Jenny’s voice that stirred Rowdy’s resentment. He glanced up, studying her carefully. He had been in love with Jenny Welman for a long time, and had been going around with her for almost a year, yet somehow of late he had been experiencing vague doubts. Nothing he could put his finger on, but little things led him to believe that she placed more emphasis upon whether a man had money than how he got it.

  “If you’d like,” she suggested, her eyes brightening, “I could see him for you.”

  “No.” Horn shook his head stubbornly. “I won’t ask him, and I don’t want you asking him. He knows exactly how I feel about him, and he knows I think there was something wrong about that Bar O deal.”

  “But Rowdy!” she protested, almost angry. “How can you be so foolish? After three years I was hoping you’d forgotten that silly resentment you had because you didn’t get that ranch.”

  “Well, I haven’t!” Rowdy told her firmly. “If there was one man I knew, it was old Tom Slater, and I know what he thought of Bart. There was a time when he thought of leaving that ranch to both of us together, but after Bart Luby left and went to cattle buying, Slater never felt the same about him. Something happened then that old Tom didn’t like. Why, three times he told me he didn’t even want Luby on the place, and that he was leaving it to me. It doesn’t make sense that he would change his mind at the last minute!”

  “It was not at the last minute!” Jenny protested. “He had given Bart a deed to the ranch—over a year before his death. Why, with that deed he didn’t even need the will, but all the same, the will left everything to him. You heard it read yourself.”

  Jenny’s chin lifted, and in her eyes Rowdy Horn could see the storm signals flying. This old argument always irritated Jenny. She was just like nearly everybody in the South Rim: admired Luby’s cash and show as well as his business ability. And of course, the man had made money.

  It was easy to admire Bart Luby if you accepted him from the surface appearance. He had a dashing way, and he was a powerful man physically, handsome and smooth-talking. He was the one who had the Stockman’s Show organized, and for three years now had been featured in it for his fine riding, roping, and bulldogging. He was the local champion, because for those three years he had won all the major events.

  But that will—that was something else.

  Rowdy Horn was usually reasonable, but on the subject of that will he ceased being reasonable. It was flatly contradictory to everything he knew of Tom Slater, who had been almost a father to him.

  Besides that, nobody could work with a man as Rowdy had worked with Bart Luby without knowing something of him, and Bart had always been unscrupulous in little things. He had left the Bar O to become a rodeo contest rider and a cattle buyer, and there had been vague rumors, never substantiated and never investigated, that his success as a buyer was due to his association—suspected only—with Jack Rollick.

  Rollick was a known rustler who haunted the broken canyon country beyond the Rim, and did his rustling carefully and with skill among the brakes south of the Rim. It was hard to get proof of his depredations—nobody had, as yet—for he never drove off large numbers of cattle and never rustled any stock with unusual markings. He weeded cattle from the herds, or the lone steers that haunted the thick brush, and it was generally believed he gathered them in some interior valley to hold until he had enough to drive to market. Such shortages as his rustling caused would not show up until the roundup.

  “Well, I’m riding back into Aragon, then, if you won’t listen to a thing I say,” Jenny said, swinging into her saddle. “But I do wish you’d change your mind and let me see Bart for you.”

  Rowdy shook his head, grinning up at her. Looking at him, Jenny thought for the thousandth time that he was easily the handsomest cowboy, the best-looking man afoot or in the saddle in the whole South Rim country. It was too bad he was so stubborn and such a poor manager.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, smiling. “One way or another I’ll be in that rodeo, and I’ll win first money. Then we can be married.”
>
  She gave him her hand. “I know you will, dear. Luck.”

  With a wave of her hand, she wheeled the paint and rode off at a snappy trot. He watched her go, uncertain again. Cub nickered plaintively, as if unaware of the disaster his misfortune had brought upon them.

  Rowdy ran his hand under Cub’s mane and scratched the horse’s neck.

  “Too bad, old boy. We worked mighty hard, trainin’ you for that rodeo, and all for nothing. That hole you stepped into was sure in the wrong place.”

  Gravely, he studied the situation, but could see no way out, no escape. His Slash Bar was a small ranch, the place upon which Tom Slater had made his start. Rowdy had bought the ranch from the bank, making the down payment with his savings and the reward for the capture of Beenk Danek, a bank robber.

  There had been a few good months after the ranch was his, then the roundup—and he had been missing more than two hundred head of cattle, more than any other one rancher, even those with much larger herds. His was small.

  Then there had been fence trouble with Luby’s men, although never with Luby himself, and more than once it had almost led to shooting. Despite Luby’s smooth excuses, he was sure the cattleman was deliberately instigating trouble. To top it all, water shortages had developed, and he had fallen behind in his payments to the bank. So it had been the Stockman’s Show and Rodeo that had offered him the best chance to make a substantial payment on the ranch as well as to provide the things on which Jenny insisted. Until Cub’s injury, he had been certain he had at least an even chance with Bart Luby, and Bart had been aware of it, too.

  Now still another worry had developed. One of his two hands, Mike McNulty, had ridden in a couple of days before to tell him the water hole at Point of Rocks was shrinking—the only water supply for miles of range. It had been considered inexhaustible. That was a matter which Rowdy must look into himself—and now.

  Mounting a steeldust he used for rough riding, he started off for the dim and lonely land under the gigantic wall of the Rim. There, at the end of a trailing point of rocks, lay the water hole.

  IT WAS AN HOUR’S RIDE from the home ranch, and when he drew rein near the water hole the sun was still almost an hour high. His fears were realized the instant his eyes fell upon what always had been a wide, clear pool, for around it lay a rim, at least six feet wide, of gray mud, indicating the shrinkage. This was the last straw.

  A hoof struck stone, and surprised, he glanced up. Lonely as this place was, other riders than the two men who worked for him hardly ever came to this water hole. But here was one—and a girl.

  She was tall, slender, yet beautifully built. He wondered instantly who she was. He had never seen her before. Her dark hair was drawn to a loose knot at the nape of her neck, and her eyes were big and dark. She was riding a splendid palomino mare, with an old-fashioned Spanish-type saddle.

  He swept off his hat and she flashed a quick smile at him.

  “You are Rowdy Horn?” she inquired.

  “That’s right, ma’am, but you’ve sure got the best of me. I thought I knew every girl in this country, and especially all of the pretty ones, but I see I don’t.”

  She laughed. “You wouldn’t know me,” she said sharply. “I’m Vaho Rainey.”

  His interest quickened. The whole South Rim country knew about this girl, but she had never been seen around Aragon. The daughter of French and Irish parents, she had been left an orphan when little more than a baby, and brought up by old Cleetus, a wealthy Navaho chieftain. When she was fourteen she had been sent to a convent in New Orleans, and after that had spent some time in New York and Boston before returning to the great old stone house where Cleetus lived.

  “Welcome to the Slash Bar,” Rowdy said, smiling. “I met old Cleetus once. He’s quite a character.” He grinned ruefully. “He sure made a fool out of me, one time.”

  HE TOLD HER how the old Indian had come to his cabin one miserable wintry night, half frozen and with a broken wrist. His horse had fallen on the ice. Rowdy had not known who he was—just any old buck, he had thought—but he had put Cleetus to bed, set the broken bone, and nursed the old man through the blizzard. Returning to the cabin one day after the storm, he had found the old man gone, and with him a buckskin horse. While the old man was still sick, Rowdy had offered him a blanket and food when he left. These Cleetus had taken.

  Over a year later, Rowdy Horn had discovered, quite by accident, the identity of the old man he had befriended. And he had learned that Cleetus was one of the wealthiest sheepmen among the Navahos, and one of the first to introduce Angora goats into the lonely desert land where he lived.

  Vaho laughed merrily when she heard the story.

  “That’s like him. So like him. Did he ever return the horse?”

  “No,” Rowdy said dryly, “he didn’t. That was a good horse, too.”

  “He’s a strange man, Rowdy,” she said. He was glad, somehow, that Vaho did not stand on ceremony. He liked hearing her call him by his first name.

  “Maybe he could use a good man with his flocks,” Rowdy suggested, a little bitterly. “I’m sure going to be hunting a job soon.”

  She looked at him quickly. “But you have this ranch? Is that not enough?”

  Rowdy did not know just why he had an impulse to tell this girl, a stranger, his trouble—but he did.

  CHAPTER II

  JILTED—AND GLAD OF IT

  Shrugging, Rowdy explained, and Vaho Rainey listened attentively, watching him with her wide dark eyes. She frowned thoughtfully at the receding water.

  “There must be a reason for this,” she said. “There has always been water here. Never in the memory of the Navaho has this water hole been so low.”

  “Sure, there’s a reason,” Rowdy said glumly, “but what is it? Maybe there’s somebody takin’ water before it gets to this pool, but who and where? I always figured this water came off the Rim, somewhere.”

  “Or from under it,” Vaho said thoughtfully.

  That remark made no impression on Rowdy at the moment, although he did recall it later, and wondered what she had meant. Right now, his interest in this tall, dark girl was quickening. There was warmth in her, understanding, and sympathy for his problems—all the things that he had missed in Jenny.

  He glanced up suddenly. The sun had slid behind the mountains, and it was growing dark.

  “You’d better be getting home!” he warned Vaho. “Riding in the mountains at night is no good.”

  “Not when you know them as I do,” she said, smiling. “Anyway, I’ve not far to go. Some of our people are camped only a few miles from here. I shall go to them.”

  When he had watched her ride away into the dusk that lay thick among the dark pines, he swung into the saddle and turned the steeldust down the road home. But he was conscious of a strange excitement, and the memory of that tall, dark girl was like a bright fire in his thoughts. He was remembering the curves of her lips and the way she had moved, how her laughter had sounded an echo in his heart. With a quick start of guilt he realized that in his mind he was being a little disloyal to Jenny. Despite his guilty feeling, though, he would not forget that girl from the canyons, or the strange warmth she had left with him.

  He had ridden home and had stripped the saddle from the steeldust, when he heard a man’s voice inside the stable. For an instant he hesitated. It was dark inside and he could see nothing. Then he saw a subdued glow, and stepped quickly to the door. “Who’s there?” he demanded.

  A man who had been kneeling to examine Cub’s leg got to his feet. As he stepped out of the door Rowdy Horn could see him plainly—a tall, thin man in a battered hat not of western vintage, and a shabby suit of store clothes.

  “How are you?” he said. “I hope you won’t think I’m butting in. I stopped to ask for something to eat and a place to sleep, but finding nobody at home, I walked around a little. Then I found your horse with the bad leg. What happened to him?”

  “Stepped into a gopher hole. My roping hors
e. I’d figured on riding him in the rodeo.”

  “Too bad.” The man hesitated. “How about that grub?”

  “Sure. Come on up to the house. I haven’t eaten myself. You passin’ through?”

  “Uh-huh. I’m a tramp printer, Neil Rice by name. My doctor told me if I expected to live I’d better get west. I’m not really sick, but he told me that any more of that city air and I would be, so I packed up and started west.”

  “Broke?”

  “I am now. I ran into a poker game back in Dodge, and I’d played a lot of poker with other printers. Those Dodge people played too fast a game for me.”

  Rowdy chuckled. “All right, Rice. I know how that is. I’m Rowdy Horn. You hunting a job?”

  “Any kind of a job. I know a little about horses, but not much about cattle. And I can cook.”

  “There’s what you need,” Rowdy said cheerfully. “Let’s see what you can do. I am probably the worst cook who ever died of slow poisoning from his own cookin’. I’d hesitate to ask a stranger to eat it.”

  TWO HOURS LATER, with a good dinner behind their belts and pipes lighted, they sat back and stared thoughtfully at the fire. Rowdy by that time knew most of Rice’s troubles, and the printer was aware of the precarious situation on the Slash Bar.

  “This fellow Luby,” Rice said thoughtfully. “Has he always lived around this country?”

  “Here, Texas, New Mexico, and California, as far as I know. He seems to know a good bit, though.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.” Rice hesitated. “Is there any way in which I could get my hands on that deed? And the will? I know a little about such things.”

  Horn shrugged. “Not that I know of. Maybe I can figure out a way. Why? Are you a lawyer?”

  Rice chuckled. “Just a printer, but I know a little about documents. I wouldn’t promise anything, but it might be that if the deed was faked and if the will was forged, I could tell. How, I don’t know, and I couldn’t promise anything. I’d have to examine them, and preferably have them for a while.”