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

by Louis L'Amour

  He entered the tent and made his way up to the bar. The tables were crowded with gamblers and spectators, and the bar was lined with men. Just as he walked up, a man stepped away and there was a place for him.

  The music changed to a fanfare and a girl came on in spangles and a red dress. Zeb Rawlings watched her without interest. She had been pretty when she first reached the End of the Track, but that had been at least five hundred miles ago. She started singing “A Railroader’s Bride I’ll Be,” and Mike King came up to the bar beside Zeb. Men moved aside for him respectfully, but warily, too.

  “See those two men they killed today?” King asked.

  “We buried them.”

  “What about the Arapahoes?”

  “We tracked your men, and we found the Arapahoes, too, but the tracks didn’t lead to them. It was a war party of Cheyennes down from the north who killed your men.”

  “The hell it was! What about those two last week?”

  “Arapahoes killed them. Your men were drunk and chasing squaws. What would you do if some of those drunks started chasing your wife?”

  “I haven’t got a wife.” He watched the girl in red without much interest. Mike King already knew all there was to know about her. “Anyway, your job is to fight Indians, not agree with ’em.”

  “There were two hundred Arapahoes, and I had twenty men—it seemed a good time to listen. Anyway, I’m not starting a war just to please you.”

  “I think I’ll wire your colonel,” King said irritably. “He may have different ideas as to who you’re out here to please.”

  Without taking his eyes from the singing girl, Zeb reached into his pocket and handed a wire to King. “I reported to him,” Zeb said shortly, “and as you will see, my actions pleased him. If you’re in your right mind the last thing you’ll want is Indian trouble. Start a war with the Arapahoes now and the Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Sioux will all join in.”

  Zeb leaned his elbows on the bar and accepted a whiskey from King to chase the milk he had been drinking. He should be sleeping off his weariness, for he was tired, dead-tired. Burying those men today had hit him hard. He had merely glanced at them, but their faces stuck in his mind. Especially one of them…reminded him of ma.

  In his inside coat pocket was another letter from Jeremiah. He had bought another quarter section, and the letter ended: “Remember, half of everything is yours if you want to come back. Ruth and the youngsters send you their best.” Jeremiah had married and had two children already.

  Zeb stared at the dancing girl. “I want to see the varmint,” he said aloud.

  “What was that?” King asked. “Oh? You mean her? You’re right…a varmint. All wildcat.”

  King turned, resting an elbow on the bar so he could face Zeb. “Did you know I’d been seeing Julie lately?”

  “She told me. This is still a free country.”

  “You’re right.”

  King grinned at him. “If you think those brass buttons are enough, you’re wrong. I make more in a month than you do in a year.”

  “If you’re building up to something, let’s have it.”

  “You could be making more,” King suggested mildly. “I wouldn’t want to offer unfair competition. Take those men of mine—they were killed no more than a mile off the right-of-way. I want my men safe ten miles off the right-of-way. They’re bound to drink and they will chase squaws, but I want ’em safe.”

  “My orders are to keep the peace. That’s why I am here, and for no other reason.”

  “Orders are a piece of paper,” King replied impatiently. “You’re here to help us build this railroad. The government wants it, the people want it.”

  “And you want it.”

  “That’s right. I do want it.” King put down his glass. “And you’re going to help me get it.”

  When King had left, Zeb Rawlings leaned on the bar and watched the dancers without really seeing them, nor was it the dancers of whom he was thinking. For the first time he was seriously considering a life that had nothing to do with the Army. He knew what pressure Mike King could bring to bear, and he knew that within a few days he would be hearing from his colonel, just as his colonel would have heard from the general.

  The general was up for retirement and was already smoothing his way for a job in civilian life. His retirement pay would not provide adequately for the general and his family. A job with the railroad, in an executive position, would do all of that. Zeb Rawlings knew a little of this, and guessed more. Mike King used money and influence the way he used everything else to attain his ends, and without any thought of the morality involved, or the lack of it.

  Zeb Rawlings had the clarity of vision of a man who had lived on the frontier and dealt with simple things. His mind was not confused with too many issues, and long ago he had sacrificed personal interest for the good of the service whenever that was required. But an agreement had been made with the Arapahoes, and if an effort was made to push them back they would fight, and that meant that innocent people having no connection with the railroad would die.

  Jethro Stuart moved up to the bar beside him and accepted the glass and the bottle the bartender placed before him.

  He turned toward Zeb, his position almost identical to that taken by King earlier. “Your name is Rawlings and you’re from Ohio. Pa’s name wouldn’t be Linus, would it?”

  Zeb, curiously, looked at him. “It would.”

  “Knew him.” He thrust out a hand. “You’ve been seeing Julie. If you’re anything like Linus, I’m glad you’re seeing her.”

  “I’ve heard pa speak of you.” It was odd that until now he had not connected the names. “He used to talk of you often.”

  “Used to?”

  “He was killed at Shiloh.”

  Jethro filled Zeb’s glass and his own. “Better’n dyin’ behind a plow, and if I knew Linus he’d have wanted it thataway. I tried a plow once…most of a year. Took ten years off my life.”

  Jethro turned his glass in his hand. “You buried those men I brought in.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good men…surveyors. Had a right to be where they were. Cheyennes done it.”

  “You knew that?”

  “I can read sign.” He emptied his glass. “King will try to turn it into an excuse. Hates Indians.”

  Zeb Rawlings was surprised. “Hates Indians? Why?”

  “They’re in the way. They’re no good to Mike King or his like. They belong to a way of life that King resents because it ain’t his way.

  “There’s a kind of man who hates anything unlike himself and what he understands, and just seeing the Indians out there doing nothing that he can see, it bothers him.”

  “I never thought of it that way.”

  “King will be a big man in the country some day, but there ain’t much to him. Reminds me of beaver. You put a beaver where there’s water and he’ll make a dam because it’s his nature to make dams. Take him away from water and he’s good for nothing. Same thing with Mike King. He can get things done and he will make money, and he will die never knowing there was anything else in the world.

  “That’s one reason he resents those Indians out there. Most ways they have it better than he does.” Jethro turned away. “You drop by my place whenever you’re of a mind to. Like to see you.”

  Zeb finished his whiskey and put down his glass. No question about it—he was tired. He walked from the tent, pausing for a moment in the open air, far removed from the tin-panny music and the rough talk within.

  He wished again that he might have returned before ma died. Ma would have liked Julie.

  Chapter 15

  *

  THE TOWN AT the end of the track had a way of becoming abruptly silent. Rarely did the music, the noise, and the confusion dwindle away. They were going full blast with all the stops out, until suddenly silence descended like a dropped blanket, and then nothing remained but the night sounds—the creak of a sign in the wind, the flap of an unbuttoned tent door, the scuf
fing of a foot, or the sound of a man murmuring in his sleep. In the distance a lone coyote cast his woes into the starlit sky, and still further away a locomotive whistled mournfully at the unreplying stars.

  Julie wrapped her cloak against the wind. She should not be out, she knew that, but after staying in the tent all evening, she desperately wanted fresh air.

  Tonight when her father had come in, he glanced at her, saw she was waiting. “King?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “That Zeb,” he commented, “he’s a fine lad. Reminds me of his pa.”

  He rolled up in his blankets and went to sleep, but Julie sat very still for a while, wondering at the comment. Jethro had never tried to influence her one way or another in her choice of friends, not since she was a little girl. They had been long apart, and somehow when they came together again he chose never to interfere. Sometimes she almost wished that he had, but he had the special western trait of letting each person go his or her own way. In this case it was something more—he trusted her.

  Presently she went out to stand under the stars. She thought of the tent city in which she was a part. There were no other women at the End of the Track but those that followed the track-layers and the builders. She knew none of them, and would not. In her world and her time the two lines never crossed beyond a polite greeting.

  She heard Zeb Rawlings’ footsteps before she could see him, and sensed the tiredness in them. She had known he was worried, had seen the same worry in her father’s face. And she knew it was worry about the Indians.

  Zeb came up and stood beside her. He stood there a moment without speaking, letting the wind blow in his face and feeling the coolness.

  “Zeb,” she said, “what are you thinking about?”

  “Haunted, I guess. One of those men we buried out there today reminded me of my mother. I don’t know why, exactly…something in his face.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Like? She was kind,” he said, after a minute, “and she had a love for the land. She loved her family, and there was a strong vein of poetry in her thinking. Cropped out now and again. I took after pa.”

  “What was your father like?”

  “Like me, I guess. And a good deal like your pa. It’s a peculiar thing,” he added thoughtfully, “you never think of your parents as much else than parents. It isn’t until you get older yourself that you begin to realize they had their hopes, dreams, ambitions, and secret thoughts.

  “You sort of take them for granted, and sometimes you are startled to know they were in love a time or two, or maybe carried on over something. You never stop to think of what they are really like inside until it is too late.

  “Many a good father or mother is plodding away, doing the best they know how to raise a family, when their hearts are off across the horizon somewhere, hunting a dream…a dream that because of their family they may never find.”

  “I know.”

  “Reality has a way of raising up obstacles. Like now.”

  “Now?”

  “I like the Army. Somehow I never could see myself away from it, not after the war. But the way things are arranging themselves, I may resign my commission.”

  “Is it Mike?”

  If he noticed the use of the first name, he ignored it. “In a way. In another way it is something more than that. It is two kinds of life coming face to face—one a hunting, food-gathering life, the other a busy, commercial, technical life with all sorts of demands and needs. When two such peoples come face to face the one less equipped to survive must be pushed aside. It isn’t right, it isn’t wrong, it just is.”

  “And Mike wants you to push?”

  “Yes.”

  “But if it is inevitable, why do you mind?”

  “You always mind, Julie. And the pushing need not be now. Your pa thinks the Indians offend Mike…maybe he’s right. One thing is sure. We differ, and Mike King is going to win because he can use political influence, and no Army man likes to think he’s taking orders from a civilian. The president is different—he’s a civilian in a sense, but he’s commander-in-chief too.”

  Without thinking, they had begun to walk away from the tents. Zeb’s hand strayed to his belt gun, assuring himself it was there. They would not go far, but he was not a man to take risks unnecessarily—only a fool did that. There were risks enough in the ordinary process of living.

  “What will you do, Zeb? I mean, if you leave the Army?”

  “Go west. I might start ranching. All of our family seem to want to go west, except maybe Jeremiah.”

  He had told her about Jeremiah, and about Aunt Lilith too. She had come to his mind when the trouble with King developed, for Aunt Lilith’s husband, Cleve Van Valen, was a big man in railroading on the Pacific coast.

  Not that he would ever approach his Uncle Cleve to use influence. Zeb Rawlings was a man who fought his own battles, accepted his own defeats.

  “I won’t deny,” he told her, “that I’d thought a time or two about ranching. There’s land to be taken out west, and I’ve a love of the land in me. I guess I got that from ma. Only I’d stay with the Army if I could, even though there isn’t much chance for a man to rise unless he’s been to the Point. Promotion is slow, any time—when there’s peace, that is.”

  They strolled, not too far from the edge of camp, then turned slowly and came back. The tent city lay still under the stars. Near a pile of ties, Rawlings saw a sentry outlined against the sky.

  When they parted he almost started to ask her to go west with him, and then he thought of Mike King. King would be vice president of the Road someday, possibly even president. He would be a wealthy man. What could Zeb offer to compare with that?

  After he had gone she stood a moment looking after him, reluctant to see him go and a little annoyed that he had said nothing to show he thought about her in his plans.

  Would he say anything at all? She felt a sudden panic at the thought that he might not. For an instant she almost started after him, then she ducked her head and went inside.

  *

  LIEUTENANT ZEB RAWLINGS led his patrol on a long sweep around the area at the End of the Track. Wherever he rode he found the tracks of unshod ponies, some of them large parties; nowhere did he find travois trails. That meant the Indians had no families with them, and that meant they were war parties. Drawing up on the crest of a hill, he studied the country.

  “Sergeant,” he said, “have you seen Jethro in the last couple of days?”

  “He’s around. Ain’t talked to him, though. Not since he brought in those dead men.”

  Rawlings was uneasy. The parties of Indians who had passed back and forth across the country might be hunting parties, for there were several good-sized villages not very far off, close enough for squaws to come and do the skinning if any game was killed. But there was little game close to the railroad, because of the noise and confusion, so hunting parties appeared to be a doubtful answer to the tracks. Of course, the Indians sometimes came to the camps to beg, or simply to watch the white man at his incomprehensible tasks.

  But Rawlings was uneasy, and he was a man experienced enough to trust his intuitions.

  This was open country, though less open than it appeared at first glance. The railroad moved down a wide valley, but around it were rolling hills, some of these ending in steep bluffs. The higher ridges were tree-clad, and trees grew along the few water courses. A large party of riders who knew the terrain might travel unseen for some distance by riding along the bottoms of creeks or under the trees.

  Like many another soldier who served on the frontier, Zeb Rawlings had developed a sympathy for the Indian. The Indian was a good fighting man, and before the coming of the white man he had adapted himself to his surroundings to a remarkable degree.

  Without horses before the white man came, the range of Indian travel had been limited. Their travois were then drawn by dogs, and with them they followed the game; and in addition to game, seeds, nuts, and berries or roots
were the staples of their diet. Their greatest source of honor and pleasure came from warfare with other tribes.

  The coming of the horse revolutionized their way of living, extending their range immeasurably, and giving to horses a value beyond anything the Indian had previously known. The possession of horses became the measure of status, and a good horse-thief could have the pick of the young squaws.

  The Sioux, for one, had upon acquiring horses launched out on a career of conquest. Had the westward march of the white man been a little slower—say, for instance, had there been no gold rush to California, the savage horsemen of the Great Plains might have found their Genghis Khan, just as the Mongol horsemen, in a somewhat similar state of civilization, had found theirs.

  Like the Mongols, the American Indians were divided into many small tribes without any sense of unity in its larger meaning. Genghis Khan had welded the free tribes of the Mongols into a great fighting unit. Tecumseh had the idea, but the menace of the white man was not sufficiently realized, and Tecumseh came before his time. Quanah Parker had a similar idea, but he came too late.

  Had such a leader appeared to lead the Indian against the white man, it is at least possible the white man would have been driven back to the sea. Certain it is that many a frontier settlement would have been wiped out of existence. In later years the white man always had the advantage of arms, for even when the Indian possessed firearms he never had sufficient ammunition for any prolonged engagement. But the Indian danger was always there.

  Allowing for an occasional exception—and these were usually young officers fresh from the East—it was the Army that best understood the Indian; and had the management of Indian affairs been left to the Army it would have caused far less trouble. After the immediate subjugation of the Indians, it was in most cases some civilian appointee who stirred them again into action.