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

by Louis L'Amour

  Returning to the shadows, Sabre unlocked a door and picked up a bundle of tied-up man. He cut loose the ropes around his ankles. “Just walk along with me and you’ll have no trouble.”

  “You can’t get away with this!” Dickert protested. “I ain’t done nothin’!”

  “And you aren’t going to. You’ve been arrested and the powder confiscated until things quiet down. I’m keeping you out of trouble.”

  As they moved into the light beside the jail door, there was a shout from the crowd. Men surged forward. “There’s Dickert! What’s up? Why’s he arrested?”

  Sabre glanced at them, then said, “Prisoner, Jeb.” He shoved Dickert inside, then turned to the angry crowd. He singled out their angry stares one by one, nodding at each recognition. “I arrested Dickert to keep him out of trouble. There’s been some fool talk about blowing the jail, and he had possession of some powder. He’ll stay inside until he’s safe.”

  Sabre smiled. “I suppose you boys are down here to be sure the prisoner isn’t taken away. Well, he’s in safe hands. You’ll have your hanging, all right. No need to worry.” His eyes settled on the face of one man. “Hello, Bill. I noticed on the jail books that you’re out on bond. Don’t leave town as I’ll pick you up in a day or two. There are eight or ten of you here tonight who are due for trial within the next few weeks. I’m going to clean the books fast. I know you don’t want to have to wait for trial.

  “Those of you”—he spoke louder—“who deserve hanging will get it. Any attempt at mob violence here tonight will be punished by hanging. I’ve a man who will talk to save his own skin, so there will be evidence enough.”

  Inwardly, his stomach was tight, his mouth dry. He stood in the full light, outwardly calm and confident, aware that he must break their shell of mob thinking and force each man to think of his own plight and the consequences to himself. He must make each man sure he was recognized, known. As a mass, thinking with one mind, they were dangerous, but if each began to worry…“Glad to see you, Shroyer. I’ll be picking you up tomorrow. And you, Swede. No more protection, boys; that’s over.”

  There was a sudden stir in the crowd, and Breidenhart pushed his way through. He grinned at Sabre. “All right, boys! Let’s bust this jail open and turn Rafe loose!”

  Breidenhart half turned his head to speak to the crowd, and Matt took a swift step forward and grabbed him by the back of the shirt collar, jerking him backward, off balance. As the big man toppled, Sabre took a quick turn on the collar, tightening it to a strangling grip. His other hand held a quickly drawn .44 Russian. “Stand back! Let’s have no trouble now!”

  Breidenhart struggled furiously, kicking and thrashing while his face turned dark.

  “He’s stranglin’,” Shroyer protested.

  “That’s too bad,” Sabre replied shortly. “A man who hunts trouble usually gets it.”

  “Take him!” a voice shouted from the rear. “Rush him, you fools! He’s only one man! Don’t let him get away with this!”

  The voice was strangely familiar. Sabre strained his eyes over the heads of the crowd as they surged forward. Shroyer was in the lead, not altogether of his own volition. Sabre dropped Breidenhart and kicked him away with his foot. Then he shot Shroyer through the knee. The man screamed and fell, and that scream stopped the crowd.

  “The next shot is to kill,” Sabre said loudly. “If that man in the rear wants trouble, send him up. He’s mighty anxious to get you killed, but I don’t see him up in front!”

  Behind him, Jeb Cannon’s voice drawled lazily from the barred window of the jail door. “Let ’em come, Matt,” he said. “I got two barrels of buckshot ready and enough shells laid here on a chair to kill an army. Let ’em come.”

  Breidenhart was tugging at his collar, still gasping. He started to rise, and with scarcely a glance, Sabre slashed down with his gun barrel, and Breidenhart fell like a dropped log and lay flat. Sabre waited, his gun ready, while Shroyer moaned on the ground.

  Men at the back of the crowd slipped quietly away into the darkness, and those in front, feeling the space behind them, glanced around to see the crowd scattered and melting.

  When the last of them had drawn back and disappeared, Jeb opened the jail door. He collared Breidenhart and dragged him within. Sabre picked up Shroyer and carried him inside. The bone was shattered, and the wound was bleeding badly. Sabre worked over it swiftly, doing what he could. “I’ll get the doctor,” he said then.

  At breakfast, Matt Sabre looked up to see Claire Gallatin come into the room. He got up quickly and invited her to join him. She hesitated, then crossed the room and sat down opposite him. “What happened last night? I’m dying to know!”

  After explaining briefly, he added, “I’ve nothing against you, but tell me. Who paid you to come here?”

  “I have no idea.” She drew a letter, written on the already-familiar tablet paper, from her purse. It was an offer of five hundred dollars if she would claim to be the sister of the prisoner and use her wiles on the marshal. If that failed, she was to offer a bribe. “I wasn’t much good at it,” she told him, “or else you aren’t very susceptible.”

  Sabre chuckled. “I’m susceptible, but you’re better in the theater. I’ve seen you in New Orleans as well as El Paso. In fact, you’re very good.”

  Her smile was brilliant. “I feel better already! But”—her face became woeful—“what will we do? The company went broke in El Paso, and now I won’t get the rest of my money. I’d planned on the pay to get us back East again.”

  “You still have the bribe money?”

  She nodded.

  “Then keep it.” He shrugged. “After all, to whom could you return it? You just go back to El Paso and get the show on the road.”

  The door opened before she could protest, and Nat Falley came in with Gilbert and Cobb. Falley smiled quickly, looking from the girl to Sabre. Gilbert looked worried, and Cobb was frowning. When they were seated, Sabre explained about the bribe money. “You agree?” he asked.

  Gilbert hesitated, then shrugged. “S’pose so.” Cobb added his agreement, and then Falley.

  “You seem to have handled a bad situation very well,” Falley said. “Who was hurt by that shot?”

  “Shroyer. He’s in jail with a broken leg.”

  “You’ll try him for that old killing?” Falley demanded.

  Sabre shook his head, looking at the mining man again. “No, I promised him immunity.”

  “What? You’d let him go?” Cobb protested. “But you know he’s one of the worst of them!”

  “He talked,” Sabre said quietly. “He gave me a sworn statement. Since then, I’ve been gathering evidence.”

  “Evidence?”

  Falley sat up straight. Only Cobb seemed relaxed now. He was watching Sabre, his eyes suddenly attentive. Nat Falley crossed and uncrossed his legs. He started to speak, then stopped. His eyes were on Sabre. Gilbert hitched his chair nearer.

  “What evidence?” Gilbert demanded. “What did you find out?”

  “All we need now is a jury. We can hold our trial today. That’s one blessing,” he said grimly, “about making your own law and having no court calendar to consider.”

  “But who was it? Who is behind this crime?”

  Matt Sabre looked into the tightly drawn face of the man opposite him. “Don’t try anything, Falley,” he said quietly. “I’ve had you covered under the table ever since you came in.”

  To the others, he explained, “There was more behind it than the loot. Falley was trying to grab all the valuable claims by having the owners murdered. Checking over the list, I noticed the apparent coincidence, that the victims not only carried money but in each case owned a valuable claim. The murderers got the money, while Falley moved in and took over the claims. Rafe Berry and Breidenhart were the right-hand men.”

  With his left hand, he drew a tablet from his coat pocket. “Ever see that before?”

  Cobb leaned forward. “Why, it’s Falley’s! Those are
his notations on the pages, I’d know them anywhere!”

  “Flip the pages to the back and you’ll see the note you found, Gilbert, will fit perfectly in one of the torn sheets. The same thing is true with the note that reached me.”

  Cobb looked at Falley. “Anything to say, Nat? He’s got you cold.”

  “Only that he’ll never get out of town alive.” Falley’s eyes were ugly. “I made sure of that.”

  Cobb disarmed Falley, and then at a movement near the door, their heads turned. It was Johnny Call.

  Matt Sabre nodded to him. “I was hoping you’d come around, Johnny. I wanted to say good-by.”

  “Good-by?” Johnny blinked stupidly. “What’s the idea?”

  “Why, you’re leaving town, Johnny. You’re leaving inside the hour—and you’re not coming back.”

  “Who says so?” Johnny took a sliding step farther into the room. His hands hovered above his guns. “Who says so?”

  “Johnny”—Sabre’s voice held a great patience—“you’ll do all right with guns as long as you shoot up old men and common cowhands, but stay away from the good ones. Don’t start anything with Jeff Milton, Bat Masterson, or Luke Short. Any one of them could tell just when you’re going to draw by the way you move your feet.”

  “My feet?” Johnny looked down. Instantly, his eyes came up, only now he was looking into Sabre’s .44 Russian.

  “That’s it, Johnny.” Sabre was low-voiced. “You aren’t good with a gun; you’ve just been trailing with slow company. And you think too slow, Johnny. Now unbuckle your belts.”

  For a long minute, Johnny Call hesitated. He had bragged that he would kill Matt Sabre. He had told Nat Falley he would kill him. But Matt Sabre was a dead shot, and the range was less than twenty feet. Carefully, he unbuckled his belts and let them drop. “Now get out of town, Johnny. If you’re here after one hour, I’ll kill you.” His eyes held Call’s. “Remember, it’s better to be a live cowhand than a dead gunman.”

  Call turned and went out the door, and he did not look back. Matt got to his feet. “Let’s go, Falley.”

  Heavily, the man got to his feet. He glanced at his former friends and started to speak, then walked out ahead of Sabre.

  Claire Gallatin looked after Sabre. “He’s—he’s quite a man, isn’t he?” she said, wistfully.

  Gilbert nodded slowly. “Any man,” he said, “can run a town with killings, if he is fast enough. To clean up a tough town without killing, that takes a man!”

  Ride, You Tonto Raiders!

  THE SEVENTH MAN

  The rain, which had been falling steadily for three days, had turned the trail into a sloppy river of mud. Peering through the slanting downpour, Mathurin Sabre cursed himself for the quixotic notion that impelled him to take this special trail to the home of the man that he had gunned down.

  Nothing good could come of it, he reflected, yet the thought that the young widow and child might need the money he was carrying had started him upon the long ride from El Paso to the Mogollons. Certainly, neither the bartender nor the hangers-on in the saloon could have been entrusted with that money, and nobody was taking that dangerous ride to the Tonto Basin for fun.

  Matt Sabre was no trouble hunter. At various times, he had been many things, most of them associated with violence. By birth and inclination, he was a western man, although much of his adult life had been lived far from his native country. He had been a buffalo hunter, a prospector, and for a short time, a two-gun marshal of a tough cattle town. It was his stubborn refusal either to back up or back down that kept him in constant hot water.

  Yet some of his trouble derived from something more than that. It stemmed from a dark and bitter drive toward violence—a drive that lay deep within him. He was aware of this drive and held it in restraint, but at times it welled up, and he went smashing into trouble—a big, rugged, and dangerous man who fought like a Viking gone berserk, except that he fought coldly and shrewdly.

  He was a tall man, heavier than he appeared, and his lean, dark face had a slightly patrician look with high cheekbones and green eyes. His eyes were usually quiet and reserved. He had a natural affinity for horses and weapons. He understood them, and they understood him. It had been love of a good horse that brought him to his first act of violence.

  He had been buffalo hunting with his uncle and had interfered with another hunter who was beating his horse. At sixteen, a buffalo hunter was a man and expected to stand as one. Matt Sabre stood his ground and shot it out, killing his first man. Had it rested there, all would have been well, but two of the dead man’s friends had come hunting Sabre. Failing to find him, they had beaten his ailing uncle and stolen the horses. Matt Sabre trailed them to Mobeetie and killed them both in the street, taking his horses home.

  Then he left the country, to prospect in Mexico, fight a revolution in Central America, and join the Foreign Legion in Morocco, from which he deserted after two years. Returning to Texas, he drove a trail herd up to Dodge, then took a job as marshal of a town. Six months later, in El Paso, he became engaged in an altercation with Billy Curtin, and Curtin called him a liar and went for his gun.

  With that incredible speed that was so much a part of him, Matt drew his gun and fired. Curtin hit the floor. An hour later, he was summoned to the dying man’s hotel room.

  Billy Curtin, his dark, tumbled hair against a folded blanket, his face drawn and deathly white, was dying. They told him outside the door that Curtin might live an hour or even two. He could not live longer.

  Tall, straight, and quiet, Sabre walked into the room and stood by the dying man’s bed. Curtin held a packet wrapped in oilskin. “Five thousand dollars,” he whispered. “Take it to my wife—to Jenny, on the Pivotrock, in the Mogollons. She’s in—in—trouble.”

  It was a curious thing that this dying man should place a trust in the hands of the man who had killed him. Sabre stared down at him, frowning a little.

  “Why me?” he asked. “You trust me with this? And why should I do it?”

  “You—you’re a gentleman. I trust—you help her, will you? I—I was a hot—headed fool. Worried—impatient. It wasn’t your fault.”

  The reckless light was gone from the blue eyes, and the light that remained was fading.

  “I’ll do it, Curtin. You’ve my word—you’ve got the word of Matt Sabre.”

  For an instant, then, the blue eyes blazed wide and sharp with knowledge. “You—Sabre?”

  Matt nodded, but the light had faded, and Billy Curtin had bunched his herd.

  IT HAD BEEN a rough and bitter trip, but there was little farther to go. West of El Paso there had been a brush with marauding Apaches. In Silver City, two strangely familiar riders had followed him into a saloon and started a brawl. Yet Matt was too wise in the ways of thieves to be caught by so obvious a trick, and he had slipped away in the darkness after shooting out the light.

  The roan slipped now on the muddy trail, scrambled up and moved on through the trees. Suddenly, in the rain-darkened dusk, there was one light, then another.

  “Yellowjacket,” Matt said with a sigh of relief. “That means a good bed for us, boy. A good bed and a good feed.”

  Yellowjacket was a jumping-off place. It was a stage station and a saloon, a livery stable and a ramshackle hotel. It was a cluster of ’dobe residences and some false-fronted stores. It bunched its buildings in a corner of Copper Creek.

  It was Galusha Reed’s town, and Reed owned the Yellowjacket Saloon and the Rincon Mine. Sid Trumbull was town marshal, and he ran the place for Reed. Wherever Reed rode, Tony Sikes was close by, and there were some who said that Reed in turn was owned by Prince McCarran, who owned the big PM brand in the Tonto Basin country.

  Matt Sabre stabled his horse and turned to the slope-shouldered liveryman. “Give him a bait of corn. Another in the morning.”

  “Corn?” Simpson shook his head. “We’ve no corn.”

  “You have corn for the freighters’ stock and corn for the stage horses. Give m
y horse corn.”

  Sabre had a sharp ring of authority in his voice, and before he realized it, Simpson was giving the big roan his corn. He thought about it and stared after Sabre. The tall rider was walking away, a light, long step, easy and free, on the balls of his feet. And he carried two guns, low hung and tied down.

  Simpson stared, then shrugged. “A bad one,” he muttered. “Wish he’d kill Sid Trumbull!”

  Matt Sabre pushed into the door of the Yellowjacket and dropped his saddlebags to the floor. Then he strode to the bar. “What have you got, man? Anything but rye?”

  “What’s the matter? Ain’t rye good enough for you?” Hobbs was sore himself. No man should work so many hours on feet like his.

  “Have you brandy? Or some Irish whiskey?”

  Hobbs stared. “Mister, where do you think you are? New York?”

  “That’s all right, Hobbs. I like a man who knows what he likes. Give him some of my cognac.”

  Matt Sabre turned and glanced at the speaker. He was a tall man, immaculate in black broadcloth, with blond hair slightly wavy and a rosy complexion. He might have been thirty or older. He wore a pistol on his left side, high up.

  “Thanks,” Sabre said briefly. “There’s nothing better than cognac on a wet night.”

  “My name is McCarran. I run the PM outfit, east of here. Northeast, to be exact.”

  Sabre nodded. “My name is Sabre. I run no outfit, but I’m looking for one. Where’s the Pivotrock?”

  He was a good poker player, men said. His eyes were fast from using guns, and so he saw the sudden glint and the quick caution in Prince McCarran’s eyes.

  “The Pivotrock? Why, that’s a stream over in the Mogollons. There’s an outfit over there, all right. A one-horse affair. Why do you ask?”