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

by Louis L'Amour

  The lawless element had been running Painted Rock with complete immunity, and the first blow at this immunity had been struck by the arrest of Rafe Berry and his sentencing. For Sabre had demanded an immediate trial for Berry, and before anybody had time to cool off and before his friends had a chance to frighten the jury, Rafe Berry was tried and convicted and sentenced to hang.

  The first attempt to save him had followed the trial when a note was found by Matt Sabre lying on his bed. The note told him to see that Berry escaped or die. He not only ignored the note’s warning but took added precautions. He double-locked the cell door and carried one key himself.

  On the street, he paused, lighting a cigarette and letting his eyes travel slowly along the loafers who were beginning to gather with the ending of day. His eyes hesitated slightly as they reached the walk before Gilbert’s Palace. Burt Breidenhart was standing there leaning against an awning post.

  He bulked big standing there, and he bulked big in Painted Rock, too. Sabre watched with cold, knowing eyes as men turned across the street to avoid the man. And some of them were tough men. Breidenhart was cruel, vindictive, and dangerous. A brute with his fists, he was also a gunman of sorts. Yet it was his willingness to fight and kill that worried more peaceful men. And Breidenhart had trailed with Rafe Berry.

  Matt Sabre turned from his place and walked slowly down the street, purposely walking close to Breidenhart. The big man turned slowly as he neared, and he smiled, his hard eyes dancing with a reckless light. “Hello, marshal!” He said it softly, yet with a certain lifting challenge in his voice. “Hope you ain’t all set for that hangin’.”

  Sabre paused. “It doesn’t really matter whether I am or not, Burt,” he said quietly. “The hanging is scheduled and it will go off on schedule.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Breidenhart said, hitching up his jeans. “Just don’t you bet on it.”

  “It would be a safe bet,” Sabre said quietly. And then he walked on, feeling Breidenhart’s eyes following him. Other eyes followed him, too. And then he felt a queer little start. Across the street were three horses, and he knew those horses and knew their riders. Johnny Call was in town!

  Darius Gilbert came out of the Emporium with Cobb and Falley. They stopped when they saw him, and Cobb said worriedly, “Matt, things don’t look so good. Maybe we made a bad bet.”

  His eyes strayed from one to the other of them and rested finally on Nat Falley. “You boys getting the wind up? Nothing to worry about.”

  “Breidenhart’s in town, spoiling for trouble.” Gilbert looked over his cigar at Sabre. “You know he doesn’t bluff. If he came in, he won’t leave without starting something.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  “It isn’t that easy,” Falley said suddenly, irritably. “We’ve property to consider. Rafe Berry has fifty friends in this town right now, and they are all armed and ready for trouble. People will be killed and property damaged. If we go through with this hanging, they’ll tear the town to pieces.”

  “And if we don’t, they’ve got us whipped, and they’ll know it. They’ll bleed the town white. Sorry, but you’ve got to make a stand somewhere. We’ve got to show our teeth.”

  Gilbert cleared his throat and then nodded worriedly. “I suppose you’re right, but still—”

  “The jury found him guilty; the judge sentenced him.” Matt Sabre let his eyes wander off up the street. “Sorry, gentlemen, but that’s the way it stands.”

  “That’s easy for you to say!” Cobb burst out. “What about us? What about our property?”

  “You’ll be protected,” Sabre replied shortly. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but there is something more than your property at stake. I refer to the welfare of the community. We are making a decision here today whether this community is to be ruled by justice and by law or by force and crime.” Sabre took a step back. “Good evening, gentlemen!”

  Yet as he turned away, he was uneasy. He needed support; one man alone could not stand before a mob. And these three were the town’s wealth and power. Among them, they owned everything but the homes of the workers in the mines and small claims. Men with wives and families, but with little property and no power.

  And Johnny Call was in town. Never forget that, Matt Sabre, he told himself. If you forget that, you die.

  Johnny Call was a killer. Scarcely nineteen, utterly vicious, with nine killings behind him. His friends bragged that he was faster than Billy the Kid, that by the time he was twenty-one, he would have more killings chalked up and would still be alive.

  Johnny Call had been a friend of Rafe Berry’s, too. Not that it mattered. Johnny had been hunting an excuse to tackle him, Matt knew. Yet the Johnny Calls of the West were an old story to Matt Sabre of Mobeetie. Matt Sabre of the cattle drives, Matt Sabre who had been Major Sabre and Colonel Sabre in more than one army.

  He stopped at the corner, glanced both ways, then turned and started back, taking his time. Suddenly, he cut across the street. Long ago, he had practiced these sudden deviations from the way he appeared to be taking, and to it he probably owed his life on more than one occasion.

  He was a tall man, lean in the body and wide in the shoulder. He wore a .44 Russian in the holster on his leg and had another, invisible to the casual eye, thrust behind his waistband under the edge of his coat.

  He had known Johnny Call before. He had seen him before and watched his climb up the ladder of gunslinging fame. Johnny was not yet nineteen, and he had done most of his killing in two years. Four of the dead men had been town marshals, the last one had been the marshal of Painted Rock, who preceded Matt Sabre.

  Lights were out now, and the street that had been crowded was about empty. With a curious sense of loss, he realized the men who had voted to hang Rafe Berry were gone on this gold rush. He considered that…Suppose it had been a ruse?

  No matter what the reason, they were gone, and what came he must face alone. He walked down to the Empire House and entered. It was the quietest night he had known.

  Forcing the jail would not be easy. Jeb Cannon was jailer, and Jeb was a man who knew no compromise with duty. The building was strongly built, carved, in fact, from solid rock. It could be got at only from in front, and Jeb was inside with several rifles, two shotguns, and plenty of ammunition.

  Still Breidenhart had seemed very sure of himself. Sabre thought that over and decided he did not like it. The big man would stop at nothing, but the place was invulnerable…unless they had a cannon. If a shell exploded against the door…Sabre felt a queer sense of premonition go through him, a subtle warning from his subconscious.

  Blasting powder!

  Quickly, over a cup of coffee, he surveyed the possible places where they might secure it. The store…he would have to see Falley and the others and block that. Or one of the claims. That could not be blocked, but there was probably little around. Those on the rush had probably taken their supplies with them.

  Mentally, he reviewed the case against Rafe Berry. The man had shot and killed Plato Zappas, a Greek prospector, and had stolen his poke and his equipment. He had been seen on the road before Zappas’s death, and he had been caught trying to sell Zappas’s horse and pack mules.

  It was given in evidence that he had also sold a horse once known to belong to Ryan, an Irish miner recently murdered. He was utterly vicious. He had laughed when they arrested him. He had laughed at the trial. He had said he had friends, that he would be set free. He had seemed very sure.

  Breidenhart? Somehow Matt Sabre did not find that logical. Nor Johnny Call. To set him free against the will of the town would not be easy. It meant somebody of influence.

  He shook his head. He was imagining things. Suddenly, he looked up to see Claire Gallatin beside him. “May I join you?” She smiled widely, then sat down. “I’m still hoping to persuade you to help us, you know.” Her purse had fallen open, facing him. There was a fat sheaf of bills visible. “I must free my brother.”

  Matt shook his head. “Sorry.
The answer is the same as before.”

  Her eyes searched his. “You’re a strange man, Matt. Tell me about yourself.”

  “Nothing much to tell.” His eyes were faintly humorous as he looked across the table. “I’m past thirty, single, and own a ranch south of here. I’ve covered a lot of countries and places.” He smiled as he said this. “And I’ve known a lot of women, in Paris, in London, in Vienna and Florence. Twice women got things from me that I shouldn’t have given them. Both times were before I was eighteen.”

  Her eyes chilled a little. “You mean you can’t be persuaded now? Is it so wonderful to be hard? To be cold? Do you find it so admirable to be able to refuse a girl who wants to help her only brother to escape death? Is that something of which to be proud?” Her lips trembled. Her chin lifted proudly. “I’ll admit, I had little hope, but I’d heard that western men were gallant and that if…if they lacked gallantry, they might…they might be persuaded by other means.” She touched the packet of bills.

  “And if that failed?”

  “Matt Sabre,” she said, her voice low and pleading, “can’t you see? I am offering all that I have! Everything! I know it is very little, but—”

  He smiled at her, his eyes twinkling faintly. “Very little? I think it is quite a lot. There must be two thousand dollars in that sheaf of bills!”

  “Three thousand.”

  “And you…you’re very lovely, very exciting, and you play your role even better than you did when I saw you play in East Lynne. That was last year, in El Paso.”

  Her face stiffened with anger. “You’ve been laughing at me! Why, you—”

  Matt Sabre got up quickly and stepped back. “Laughing at you? Of course not! But this performance has been preposterous. Two days ago, I became marshal. My first official act was to arrest Rafe Berry and bring him to trial. He was convicted. Almost at once you appear and claim to be his sister.”

  “I was close by! I am his sister!” Her face was hard, and her lips had thinned, yet she was still, he admitted, beautiful.

  “His sister? And you haven’t even asked to see him?” Matt chuckled. “But don’t be angry. I’ve enjoyed it. Only”—he leaned over the table—“who paid you to come here?”

  She rose and walked away from him, walking rapidly toward the steps. He watched her, frowning thoughtfully.

  Three thousand dollars was a lot to protect Rafe Berry. Or was it to protect somebody else? Somebody who could afford three thousand dollars to keep him quiet?

  Nat Falley had come in, and he watched the girl go up the stairs. “You’re lucky,” he said dryly. “She’s very beautiful.”

  Sabre nodded. “Yes,” he agreed, regretfully, “but maybe too expensive for me. For some things, the price is always too high.”

  Falley watched him go out the door, frowning thoughtfully. He looked up the steps, hesitated, then shrugged and walked away.

  BACK AT THE JAIL, Jeb opened the door for Sabre. “Town’s full up,” Jeb commented, “with mighty tough hombres. Reckon there’ll be trouble?”

  “Could be.” Matt took a worn ledger from the desk. In this ledger, arrests and dispositions were entered. Jeb eyed him dyspeptically as he opened it.

  “Ain’t much in there,” he said. “What you huntin’?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Sabre admitted, “but Berry isn’t the only man here who deserves hanging. And there’s somebody behind this.”

  Jeb said nothing, watching the big man loitering across the street. Others were coming. They were beginning to close in. “You all right here?” Sabre asked him.

  “Yep.” Jeb turned his head. “Better’n you’ll be out there. You better stay until day comes.”

  “I’ve work to do. I’ll be able to do more outside, anyway. Keep back from the door. I’ve an idea they’ll use blasting powder.”

  “They’d have to throw it,” Jeb replied. “That won’t be easy.”

  He closed the door behind Matt Sabre, and the marshal strolled forward; men faded back into the shadows, but anxious to avoid precipitating trouble, he seemed unaware of them. Yet he knew he must hurry. There was little time.

  Darius Gilbert, one of the owners of the general store, was seated in the big buffalo-hide chair. He looked pale and worried. His usually florid cheeks had lost color, and his brows were drawn in. As Matt entered the Empire House, he got hurriedly to his feet and thrust a note into his hands. Matt glanced at it, the same cheap paper, the penciled words: Call off your marshal or we’ll burn you out. It was unsigned.

  “They won’t.” Sabre folded the note and put it in his pocket. It was not, he realized, an entire sheet. It had been torn from a larger sheet, as had his own warning note. Each had been written on the bottom of a page. Hence, if he found that tablet and these torn sheets fitted…“Where’s Owen Cobb?” he asked.

  “At the store. He’s worried about it. He’s sittin’ over there with a rifle.”

  Sabre tapped his pocket. “You sell paper like that note?”

  “I don’t know. Cobb does the buyin’ an’ sellin’. I’ve just got money invested, like Nat Falley.”

  Matt Sabre sat down and opened the ledger he had brought with him. Time and again, the same names. Most were simple drunk and disorderly charges, yet there were a number of arrests for robbery, most of them released for lack of evidence.

  “Did you ever stop to think, Gilbert, that somebody has been protecting the crooks around here?”

  Gilbert turned his big head and stared at Sabre. His eyes blinked. “You mean somebody is behind ’em? That I doubt.”

  “Look at this: Berry bailed out three times. No evidence to bring him to trial at any time. And this man Dickert. His fines paid, witnesses that won’t talk, some of them bribed and some frightened.”

  Sabre tapped the book as Falley joined them. “Checking this book and the one I examined last night, I find Breidenhart bailed some of these men out and paid fines for others. It figures to be more than a thousand dollars in the past three months.”

  Gilbert rubbed his jaw. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “It is. And did Breidenhart ever impress you as a philanthropist? Where does he get that kind of money? To my notion, he’s the middleman, and somebody else is behind all this, taking the major portion of the loot for protection and tipoffs.”

  Sabre tapped a folded paper. “Here’s a list of robbed men. All had money. In the very nature of things, thieves would make an occasional bad guess, but not these fellows. That means they were told who carried money and who did not.”

  “What do you plan to do?” Falley asked.

  Sabre got to his feet. He looked at Nat Falley and shrugged. “The answer is obvious. Get the leader and your crime will drop to nothing at all. He’s the man we want. And I may ask you gentlemen for help.”

  HE MUST SEE OWEN COBB. He walked swiftly along the street, noting the increasing number of men who loitered about. But there was time. He found Cobb in his room, one shoe off. “Yes,” Cobb admitted, “I did sell some powder today. Sold it to that man Dickert.”

  Sabre got to his feet. “Thanks. Just what I wanted to know.”

  Cobb looked up, rubbing his foot. “Matt, you forget it. This is too big for us. Let Berry go. If we don’t let him go, there’ll be hell to pay. I been settin’ here wonderin’ if I dare go to bed.”

  “You go to bed.” Sabre’s face was somber in the reflected lamplight. “This is my problem.”

  At the door he hesitated, considering again the problem before him. He must talk to Nat Falley. It was just a hunch, but Falley would know about the mining claims.

  Outside, he paused, listening. There was subdued movement, and he knew his time was growing short. So far, they were still gathering; then they would bunch and talk before moving against the jail. He turned into a dark alleyway and walked swiftly along it.

  There was a cabin a block off the main street, and a light was showing. Sabre’s step quickened, and he dropped a hand to his gun to make sure it was rea
dy. At the cabin, he did not knock or stop; he lifted the latch and stepped in.

  Dickert was sitting at the table cutting a short piece of fuse still shorter. A can of powder was on the floor near him. As he saw Sabre, he started to his feet, clawing for a gun. Matt struck swiftly, and Dickert toppled back, knocking the table over. Yet the miner was a burly man, and rugged. He came up swiftly and swung. Matt, overly eager, stepped in and caught the punch on the cheekbone. Springing after him, Dickert stepped into a wicked, lifting right uppercut to the brisket. He gulped and stepped back and, grabbing his stomach, turned sideways. Sabre struck swiftly and without mercy, smashing the man behind the ear with his fist.

  Dickert hit the floor on his face and lay still. Swiftly, Matt Sabre bound him. Then he picked up the powder, and dabbing at the cut on his cheekbone, he left the cabin.

  When he again reached the street, he moved quietly up to the gathering of men. One man hung on the edge of the crowd, and Matt tapped him gently on the shoulder, then drew him to one side. In the vague light from a window, he recognized the man as a tough miner he had seen about. “Hello, Jack,” he said quietly. “Kind of late for you to be around, isn’t it?”

  Uneasily, the miner shifted his feet. That he had not expected Sabre was obvious, and also that he had planned to shield his own identity in the anonymous shadow of the crowd. Now he was suddenly recognized and in the open. He had no liking for it. “You know, Jack,” Sabre suggested, “I’ve never found you in trouble so far, but I’m here to stay, Jack, and if there’s trouble, I’ll know one man to arrest. You want to be the goat?”

  “Now, look Matt,” Jack protested, “I’m just lookin’ on. I ain’t done a thing!”

  “Then why not go home and keep out of it?” Sabre suggested.

  The miner shrugged. “Reckon you’re right. See you.” He turned and walked quickly away.

  Sabre watched him go, searching for Breidenhart. No sign of him yet. Knowing much of the psychology of mobs, Sabre circulated through the crowd, staring long into this face and that, occasionally making a suggestion. Here and there, a man slipped away and vanished into darkness. Mobs, he reflected, must be anonymous. Most men who make up mobs act only under influence of the crowd. Singled out and suddenly alone, they become uncertain and uneasy. Deliberately, he let them know that he knew them. Deliberately, he walked among them, making each man feel known, cut off.