Novel 1963 - How The West Was Won (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Suddenly Marty lunged up from the water, gasping and crying out in a panic of fear. Blood streamed from a wound in his side. Then he fell back into the water.

  With a frightened yell the man dropped his bundle and fled back up the trail…but not quickly enough.

  Linus lunged from under the landing, and grabbing a rifle from the dugout, he flipped it to his shoulder and fired just as the fleeing man was disappearing from sight. But Linus was too old a hand to miss such a shot, leading his target just enough.

  The man threw up his hands and fell face forward, out of sight.

  Instantly Linus leaped for the brush and, once out of sight, was instantly still. He had neither powder nor shot, and his weapon was now empty, useful only as a club.

  Moving swiftly through the brush, he reached the clearing where the store was. Colonel Hawkins stood outside the store, clutching a double-barreled pistol. He was obviously listening, trying to figure out what had happened at the landing.

  A quick sizing-up of the situation at the store told Linus his best chance for quick action would come from Zebulon or Sam. Drawing back his knife, he threw it into the back of the man guarding them.

  Then all hell broke loose. Zebulon grabbed the falling man’s rifle by the barrel and drove it hard at the face of the guard close to the wall of the store. The thief leaped back and Zebulon reversed the rifle, and the two men fired as one. The thief’s bullet was a clean miss, and it smashed into the wall on the far side, scattering chips of bark. Zebulon’s shot killed the guard.

  Hawkins wheeled and fired simultaneously. His first bullet struck Sam and knocked him to his knees; the second bullet killed Colin Harvey. Hawkins ducked and ran, coattails flying, into the brush. Dora followed him out of the clearing.

  Swinging his rifle like a club, Linus had followed his knife into the fight. It was by no means his first experience in such a melee, and he floored the last of Hawkins’ men.

  Eve, retreating toward the brush with her mother and Lilith, recognized Linus. Her eyes caught his lean, swiftly moving figure even as he left the brush to plunge into the fight. “Oh, it’s him!” she cried out. “It’s him!”

  As always in such situations, the action ended as abruptly as it had begun. At one instant there had been cries, shots, wild blows, and running men; then there was sunlight and shadow falling over the clearing’s edges…some gasping for breath…a muffled groan.

  Rebecca for once had forgotten Zeke, and was kneeling above Sam. The Harvey boys had gone into the brush, pursuing Hawkins and Dora, while Eve ran to Linus. “You’re hurt! There’s blood on your back!”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve got to round up my furs and get goin’.”

  She drew back, dropping her arms stiffly; her eyes searched his face. “Then you didn’t come back to—?” The excitement was gone from her face. “No, I see you didn’t. Somehow they got your furs and it was them you came after. I might have known.”

  He avoided her eyes, embarrassed by his own sense of guilt and by the hurt in her eyes. This was quite a woman, he told himself, a woman with the kind of courage he had always admired. He knew what it must have cost her in pride to have come to him that first time. Trouble was, he was no marryin’ man. If he was, this would be the girl—she surely would be.

  The Harveys came plodding back through the brush. “Got away,” Harvey said tiredly. “Had them a dugout hid on the other side of the island.”

  “I fired,” Brutus said. “I think I put lead into him. Can’t be sure.”

  “Let them go,” Prescott said. “Their sins will catch up with them.”

  He avoided even looking at Sam. Rebecca, assisted by Lilith, was doing all anybody could. The thought of losing Sam shook him deeply, and he could not stand knowing how serious his wounds might be. Sam had changed since the trip began, becoming a man almost at once, making his own decisions and moving with a certainty Zebulon had never seen in him before.

  Perhaps the very act of leaving the farm, Zebulon’s farm, had been responsible for that. Now they were just two men together, each standing on his own feet, doing his own share of the work.

  For the first time, looking at Sam and at the body of Colin Harvey, Zebulon Prescott began to realize what the cost of this western venture might be. No new land is gained without blood and suffering, and they had been bold to leave all behind to go into the Ohio River country. They might yet pay a high price for their boldness.

  They had scarcely begun…how many would die before the West was won? How many by river, by disease, by blizzard and tornado and flood? How many by starvation and exhaustion? It was a long way to the shining mountains. He was glad they were not going that far…nor many miles farther, when it came to that.

  Turning away, he began to go through what was left within the store. There was a little they could add to their own supplies—some food, some ammunition, extra bullet molds, and weapons. With Zeke to help, he began slowly sorting things out. All, or most of it, had been stolen. The owners might now be dead—dead or gone on west. Sometimes it amounted to the same thing.

  Linus Rawlings piled his own furs on the small landing. He had seen his canoe on the bottom of the cove, only a few feet under the water, and was hopeful it might be repaired. He recovered his rifle, and added to his store some of the stock of powder and lead.

  Eve and her mother had made a bed for Sam that was shaded, and Linus helped Zebulon move the wounded man.

  Only when all his furs were on the landing did he wade into the cove and remove the stones from the canoe. Brutus Harvey helped him beach it on the slanting shore, and Linus checked it for repairs. It needed only two sections of birch bark, for Marty’s efforts to destroy the canoe had been halfhearted at best.

  Linus swore softly as he went to work. It seemed all he was doing these days was patching canoes. This one was large, and other than the damaged areas it was in good shape and comparatively new. The beat-up old canoe he had found in the brush near the cave was too small for his load of furs, but it had been swift and easily handled.

  Footsteps sounded on the path behind him…he cringed inwardly. Yet even as he did so he felt an odd warmth, a very real pleasure. It irritated him that he should be so confused about himself. After all, what did he want to do?

  She walked up beside him and stopped, looking down at the damaged canoe. “It’ll be a job,” Linus said, “but I can patch her up as good as new.”

  “Linus…?”

  “Eve, let’s talk no more about it.”

  “Linus, I’m telling you. You don’t know your own mind.”

  “Maybe so, maybe not. I ain’t denyin’ you been in my thoughts, but I still went to see the varmint with that pirate gal. I’ll always be goin’ to see the varmint, Eve—I just ain’t cut out to be either a farmer or a husband.”

  “Linus, I’m not going to bring the matter up again, whether I ever see you again or not.”

  “That’s best, and I wish you Godspeed, Eve, and it’s been a long time since I said the like to anybody.”

  Fighting tears, she turned swiftly away toward the path. Linus straightened up and for an instant he was about to call after her. Then, grimly, he closed his mouth.

  To himself, he said, “You ain’t no marryin’ man. No sooner’d you squat on some land than you’d start to thinkin’ how the wind blows over South Pass, or the way that water ripples on that lake at the foot of the Tetons.

  “All the time you were plowing a furrow you’d be rememberin’ the long winds in the pines atop the Mogollon Rim in Arizona, or the slap of a beaver’s tail on the water of a pool some place up the Green. No, sir. You ain’t no marryin’ man, Linus, not by a long shot.”

  He cut a patch of bark from a birch tree and settled down to remove the damaged square and replace it with the fresh piece, but the girl’s face remained in his mind, interfering with his work. He swore softly, scowling as he stitched the patch in its place.

  It was time he set off for Pittsburgh…and the so
oner the better. This was no time to be thinkin’ soft about any chance pilgrim girl.

  Chapter 6

  *

  ALTHOUGH IT WAS midday, darkness lay upon the river. The black, swollen waters ran swiftly, warned by lowering black clouds that hung low above. Thunder rumbled down far-off hills, and there was the sound of rain upon the water.

  A quarter of a mile ahead the Harvey raft raced through the water, seen through the steel veil of the rain. That would be Brutus at the oar…he was the stalwart one, the stable one. Never excited, never disturbed, when trouble or danger came he simply bowed his head and pushed on, as his sort will always push on, to their last day.

  When others panic or shout, when they wail and shed bitter tears, decrying the changing times, there are those like Brutus who simply go on. Changing times, anger, disappointment, defeat—all these they take in stride, living their lives with quiet persistence.

  Eve thought of that as she looked from the shelter into the rain. Brutus was a good man, and it was too bad it was not he whom she wanted. Not that he had ever indicated any interest in her, more than a normal, friendly interest.

  Zebulon squinted his eyes against the rain that hammered his cheeks, staring ahead, searching the river for snags. Lilith was fighting a rope, trying to tie the tent more securely over the frame, for a fierce gust of wind had torn it loose.

  “Watch yourself, Lil!” he shouted, striving to be heard above the rumble of thunder and the rush of rain and wind. “You be careful!”

  He could no longer see the Harvey raft, for rain had blotted out everything. The river seemed to be rushing swifter…was it the rain and wind that made it seem so?

  Anxiously, Zebulon peered ahead. One boy wounded and the other sickly…the girls trying hard to make up for Sam. He had never realized how much he had come to depend on Sam until now; suddenly, strangely, one half of his mind began to think of him, while the other half tried to estimate the river and fought with it.

  Surprisingly, he actually had no idea what his son was like. A man has children and he takes them for granted; they are his, they have grown up in his home, and in many ways he knows them. And then he realizes of a sudden that they are people—individuals with thoughts, dreams, and ambitions perhaps far different from anything he had ever known.

  He thought of Sam, comparing him to the girls—to Lilith, who did not know what she wanted…or hadn’t found the words for it, at least; and to Eve, who pointed at what she wanted with quiet persistence. Sam had seen through him. He had commented upon him going off to see that show and those show-folk. Sam had seen that in him, read him for his dreams, and it had made Zebulon suddenly shy before his son. Sam had understood at least something of him; but what did he know of Sam?

  Suddenly, from the front of the raft, Zeke turned and cupped his hands. “Pa!” he yelled against the wind. “It’s the falls! The falls of the Ohio!”

  Shocked, Zebulon strained to his full height, staring through the veil of rain. It could not be…it simply could not be. The falls were on the other channel.

  Unless—unless they had missed it. Where were the Harveys? After all, they couldn’t be that far ahead of him. Somehow he had missed the channel, and now the Harveys were gone, down the other side.

  Fear rose within him. He fought it down, fought the ugly taste of it in his throat. There was no white water in sight, but Zeke was right: he could feel the pull of the current, he could feel the power of it against the raft, against his oar.

  Now there was a dark smoothness to the water, and the raft seemed to gather speed. He had been warned that he would see no white water, not until too late, and that the rapids would seem anything but alarming. Only one who had tried to navigate those waters could understand their danger…it all looked so easy, so smooth.…

  Zeke shouted again, panic in his voice. Ahead Zebulon saw a huge rock, water boiling over it. Beyond it, he saw another.

  Fear flooded over him like an icy wave. Desperately, Zebulon worked at the long sweep, but even as he fought the current, he knew how little he could do with the cumbersome raft in that strong current that was already sucking them toward the rocks.

  The raft was no longer simply swept along by the current, it had become like a live thing, plunging and bounding upon the boiling water. Suddenly, as the bow of the raft lifted on a swell of rushing water, the wind caught the tent that had been tied over the framework to roof the house. The canvas billowed up like a great balloon, and Lilith caught wildly at the edge.

  In the next instant she was jerked over the side and plunged into the racing water, the canvas ripping loose and going with her.

  As she surfaced in the racing water, Eve thrust a pole toward her, but Lilith failed in a wild, futile grab at the end of the pole, and was swept away. At the last, before she vanished from sight, they saw she had turned and was swimming strongly, half riding the current, fighting her way toward shore.

  “Pa!” It was Zeke. “The tent’s draggin’ us! Cut her loose! Cut it away!”

  Dropping his useless steering oar, Zebulon caught up his axe and, staggering across the plunging raft, he struck wildly at the entangling ropes. The canvas tent, acting like a huge sea anchor, was turning the raft broadside.

  He struck, and struck again. Wildly as he seemed to strike, he struck true; the ropes were slashed and the tent disappeared on the wind. An instant more and the whole raft might have been turned over, capsized in the wild water.

  “Straighten her, pa! Straighten her!”

  Zebulon started for the steering sweep and was thrown headlong. He felt a wicked blow across the skull, and then he was up and grasping the sweep just as the end of the raft struck a rock. It was a crashing blow that shook the raft its entire length, and then the current swung the stern around and the raft had turned end for end.

  With mounting horror, Zebulon saw that the jolt of the blow against the rock had snapped at least some of the binding cords, and the logs were spreading. Water showed between them. He shouted hoarsely, and dropped the useless oar to go to his wife, who was beside Sam.

  “Grab holt!” he shouted. “Grab holt of a log!”

  Eve heard her father shout, but she never knew what he said, for the next instant the logs parted beneath her and she was plunged down into the icy water.

  Logs smashed together above her. She struck out, fighting to escape them. Dead ahead of her one log struck a rock and the current lifted the butt end of it, turning it end over end.

  She heard screams, a hoarse cry, and she saw her father had an arm around Rebecca. Logs smashed together like the shot of a gun, and Eve felt the sharp sting of a flying chip as it struck her face. Then she struck out, swimming downstream and across.

  Glancing back upstream, she saw a log plunging toward her, and managed to avoid the charging butt end of it. As she grasped wildly at the rough bark she felt it tear at her hand, but somehow she got an arm over it and clung for dear life.

  The falls itself were only a few feet high—from shore it might have seemed like nothing at all. She went over, clinging to the log, and was still hanging on when she came to the surface. Suddenly the log was ceasing to plunge. Ahead there was a wide eddy and beyond it a place close in to the shore where the water was almost smooth.

  Freeing one hand, she brushed the wet hair back from her face. There was a low riverbank ahead, and on it lay something dark and still. Her throat tight with fear, she began to paddle with her free hand and kick with her feet to get the log closer in.

  When her feet touched bottom she let go of the log and, straightening up, splashed ashore.

  At the sound, the dark body quivered, and a head lifted. It was Sam…and he was alive.

  She knelt beside him and he struggled to sit up. His body shook with a spasm of coughing, and he spat river water into the mud.

  “Are you all right, Sam? Are you hurt?”

  He shook his head, leaning it forward to his drawn-up knees. “I’m all right.”

  She turned her he
ad, looking all about her, afraid of what she might see. Something—it was some distance off and might be a log—was caught in the brush along the shore. There was nothing else in sight. The hour was late and the sky was heavily overcast.

  “Did they make it? Lil…have you seen Lil?”

  “She’d be miles upriver.” She shivered in the cold wind. “Sam, we’ve got to have a fire.”

  Helping each other, they staggered to the edge of the trees where Eve gathered broken branches and debris cast up by high water. Near the roots of a great tree, she put together the wood for a fire. Tearing bark from a tree, she got at the dry inner bark and shredded it; then with a little dry moss found high up on the side of a tree, she had tinder for the fire.

  With flint and steel, Sam struck a good spark after several attempts; it caught, smoked, and then was fanned and blown into a tiny flame. This he fed carefully with shredded bark, then with twigs, until the fire was blazing brightly.

  By the time the fire was going both were shivering with a chill. A cold wind had started to blow and in their soaked clothing they had no defense against the wind. But they worked together to build a lean-to, a windbreak to protect them from the night.

  From a forked tree to a forked branch, its other end thrust deep into the sodden earth, Sam placed a long branch. With other branches slanting to the ground from this ridge-pole, he made a roof and back wall for the lean-to, and then they swiftly cut branches to weave into and place over this. When the shelter was finished they built a reflector of branches that would throw the heat back into the lean-to itself. Then they removed their outer garments and draped them near the fire to dry while they huddled close to keep warm.

  The afternoon was gone. The rain continued to fall, but the heavy downpour had dwindled into a fine drizzle that promised to continue through the night. At intervals Sam got up and cut more branches to add to the roof, or dragged more sticks close for fuel.

  Eve was frightened when she looked at him. His face was drawn and gray, and his wound had been bleeding again.