“Webb’s given him land and a job. He’s the worst of them, I think.”
“How was Webb before he came?”
“Angry, and ordering us off, but he wasn’t so strong for killing.”
“Maybe,” I said, “if Priest were out of it, we could talk.”
Then we heard the rattle of hooves on the bridge and the sound of riders and I looked around over my shoulder and saw the Gleasons come into the yard.
There was the weakness from my wound, but no time for weakness now. There they were, the three of them, and they were looking around at what they had ridden into. And then I took my gamble as a man sometimes must. I’m not a talking man when the chips are down and the love of battle is strong within me, but there was more at stake now than me or my desires, for there was a handful of kindly folks and their farms and wishes.
There comes a time to every man when he must drop the old ways and look ahead, so here was I, a man who had ridden and roistered and rustled a few head, who had shot up the wrong side of town on a Saturday night. I’d killed a few hardcases and lived the life of a wild land growing, and now suddenly I could see a chance for my own life: a wife, my own home, my own green and growing land, my own children about the door—maybe all of it lay out there beyond that hot, sunbaked yard where my enemies stood. Twenty-odd men with reasons for killing me, and not one for helping me stay alive.
“Maggie,” I said, “I’m a changed man. I’m going out there and talk. Pray if you can, for you’re certain to have more of a voice with the Lord than I, for it’s got to be blarney rather than bullets if we come out alive from this.”
So I walked out there and faced the Gleasons, three hard, tough, honest men. Three men who had ridden here to kill me.
“Pat,” I said, “we rode a roundup together. Mickey, you pulled me out from under a steer one time, down Sonora way, an’ you, Dave, I’ve bought you drinks and you’ve bought them for me. That’s why I ran after I’d shot Korry. He had it comin’, an’ deep in the heart of you, you all know it.
“Korry got what he asked for, and had it not been me, it would have been another, but I ran, for I’d no desire to kill any of you.”
“Or to be killed, maybe.”
Then I shrugged. “That’s a gamble always, but the Chambers boys went down and a fool knows no lack of confidence. Surely, I’m a fool, and a great one.”
“Why the palaver?” Pat demanded. “What trick is this?”
“No trick,” I said. “Only I’ve no wish to kill any one of you, nor to kill anyone anymore but one man.
“These”—I gestured at the gathered riders—“are fine upstanding men who’ve come to rob a girl of her home! To take the roof from a girl who’s but recently lost her father!
“They want to run out a lot of fine, homemaking men who are irrigating land and building the country. And they’ve brought a killer to do their dirty work, a buzzard named Sad Priest!
“I don’t want to fight you. I’ve this fight to think of now. Never yet have I shot an honest man, and I’ve no wish to begin.
“Only one thing I want now,” and when I spoke my eyes went to Sad Priest across the yard. “I want to kill the man who’d run a girl with no family from her house!”
Oh, I didn’t wait for him! Nobody waits for Sad Priest! So when I spoke, I reached, but he drew so fast his gun was up and shooting before I’d more than cleared leather. But I’d known he’d shoot too fast and he did. His bullet tugged at my shirt and I triggered my six-gun, two quick, hammering shots, and then ran!
Right for him, his gun spitting lead and the blood of my bullets showing on his neck and shirtfront, but my running made him miss and only one of the bullets hit me, taking me through the thigh, and I went down and felt another bullet whip past my skull, and then I fired up at him and the bullet split his brisket and his knees let go and he started down just as I rolled on my side and fired into him again at eight feet of distance.
He hit ground then and lay there all sprawled out, and one of the Webb hands started for me and Pat Gleason levered a shell into the barrel of his Winchester. “Hold it, mister!” he said. “That was a fair fight!”
They stood there, all of them, nobody quite knowing what to do, and then Maggie Ryan ran to me and with her hands under my arms I got to my feet. I stepped away from her and pushed her back toward the house. This was not yet over. Blood was running from my side where the other wound had started to bleed.
“Got you twice,” Dave Gleason said.
“No,” I told him, “the one in my side was Korry’s. Only he was a few inches too low.”
“Korry got a bullet into you?” Mickey said. “If he did that he had a fair shake. He wasn’t fast enough otherwise.”
“It’s his,” I said. “You can see the wound’s not fresh.”
Yanel Webb stood there with his hands at his sides, not sure of what to say. And his hands waited for him, for he was their boss and they rode for the brand, but knowing their kind I knew their hearts weren’t in it.
“Yanel,” I said, “Priest was long overdue. Ride home. You’ve land enough, and when you want eggs and fresh vegetables, come down on the creek and trade with these people.
“You and me,” I said, “we’ve got to grow with the times. The day of the gun and the free range is past. We’ve got to accept that or go like the buffalo went.”
He was reluctant to leave, and he stood there, knowing the truth of what I’d said, and knowing that nothing now stood between him and my first bullet.
“He’s calling them fair,” Pat Gleason said. “I stand with him on that.”
Webb turned to his hands. “Well, boys,” he said, “we’d best take Sad along and plant him. I reckon we’ve played out our hand. These farmers best keep their crops fenced, though.” It was his final chance to bluster. “If their fields are eaten or trampled, it’s not my lookout!”
They went then, and we watched them ride, and then I faced around and looked at the Gleasons and they looked at me. Maggie Ryan had her arm around me and then she spoke up and said to them, “There’s coffee on. Will you come in?”
So we went in and the coffee was hot and black, and there by the table there was warm and pleasant talk of cattle and grass and what a man could do in a green growing valley, with time on his hands.
The Man from the Dead Hills
The sagebrush flats shimmered in the white heat of a late-summer sun, and a gray powder of dust lay thick upon the trail. Far away the hills loomed purple against the horizon, but the miles between were dancing with heat waves.
Leosa Barron stood in the door, shaded her eyes against the glare, and searched once more, as she had so often of late, for a figure upon the road. There was nothing. The road was empty of life, vanishing in the far hills where lay a little cow town known as Joe Billy.
She looked away. She must not expect him yet. Even if Tom Andrews received her letter and was able to come, he could not arrive so quickly.
When her housework was finished, during which time she resolutely refused to look at the trail, she walked again to the door. Yet there was nothing but the white dust and the heat. Then her eyes turned back up the even lonelier trail to the badlands, the trail to the dead and empty hills where nothing lived. Her lips parted suddenly, and she stared, refusing at first to believe what she saw between her back fence and the dark cliffs.
Someone was coming. Someone was coming from the direction of the Dead Hills.
Unable to return to the shaded coolness, she waited in the door watching. She was a slender girl, taller than most, and graceful in her movements. She had a friendly mouth, eyes that smiled easily, and lips that could laugh with her eyes. The few freckles scattered over her nose only added a piquant touch to an already charming face.
Much later she was still standing in the doorway when the solitary figure had shaped itself into a man, a man walking.
His hat was gray and battered, his plain wool shirt had a dark spot on the shoulder and was gray wit
h dust. The man was unshaven, and the eyes under the dark brows flashed with a quick, stabbing glance that made her start with something that was almost fear.
The jeans he wore were roughened by wear, and his boots were run-down at the heel. His belt was wide leather, and curiously handworked. Leosa thought she had never seen a man in whom strength was so apparent, strength and ruthlessness.
Yet he wore no gun.
She had been watching him for two miles when he reached the gate. Now he fumbled with the latch and swung it open. He did not speak, but turned back, closing the gate carefully.
As he faced her she knew she was looking at a man exhausted but not beaten, a man whose lips were cracked with thirst, whose flanks were lean with starvation, but a man in whom there burned an indomitable fire, a fire of whose source she knew nothing, and could sense nothing.
Several times she had seen him stagger upon the road, and now as he faced her, his feet wide apart, it suddenly occurred to her that she should be frightened. She was alone here, and this man was from the Dead Hills. Her eyes went to that dark spot on the shoulder, a spot that could be only blood. His face was haggard, a gray mask of dust and weariness from which only the eyes stared, hard and clear.
He walked toward her, and his eyes did not leave hers, fastening to them and clinging as though only their clear beauty kept him alive and on his feet. As in a trance, she saw him stop at the well coping and lift the rope. He staggered, almost losing balance, then she heard the bucket slap on the water.
Quickly she was beside him. “Let me do it—You’re nearly dead!”
He smiled then, although the movement of his lips started a tiny trickle of blood from the heat cracks. “Not by a durned sight, ma’am.”
But he let her help him. Together they drew up the bucket, then he lifted it and drank, the water slopping over his chin and down his shirtfront. After a minute he put the bucket down and stared at her, then around the place. His eyes returned to her. “You alone here?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
He held the bucket in his hands, and waited. She knew how the body yearns for water and more water when one has been long without it, but this man waited. He impressed her then as a man who could do anything with himself, a man who knew his strength and his weaknesses. His eyes glinted at her, then he lifted the bucket, drank a little more, and put it down.
Turning away from her, he picked up the washbasin and sloshed water into it. Stripping off his shirt, he began to bathe his body. Standing behind him, she could see that there was an ugly wound near the top of his shoulder and a dark stain of dried blood below and around it. Hurrying inside, she secured medicine and clean linen and returned to him.
He accepted her ministrations without comment, only watching her with curious eyes as she cleansed the wound and bandaged his shoulder.
As she worked she was wondering about him. Long ago she had taken a ride into that remote desert country around the Dead Hills. Outlaws had lived there before the gangs were wiped out, but nobody else. There were hideouts near some of the water holes, but those water holes were hard to find unless one knew the country.
To a stranger the region was a waterless horror, a nightmare of grotesque stones and gnarled and blasted cacti, a place where only buzzards and an occasional rattler could be seen.
How far had this man come? What had happened to his horse, and where and how had he been shot?
When she had finished with his wound, she stood back from him and looked up into his eyes. He was smiling, and the expression in his eyes startled her, for it was so different from the lightning of that first glance from the gate. His eyes were warm and friendly, even affectionate. Yet he stepped by her and into the coolness of the room beyond. Without a word he lay down on the divan and was at once asleep.
Returning to the door, she looked down the road again. If Tom Andrews were to arrive in time, there was need that it be soon. If she lost possession of the ranch before he arrived, she had been told there was small chance they would ever recover the property.
Then, almost at sundown, she saw them coming. Not Andrews, but Rorick and Wilson, the men she feared.
They came into the yard riding fast, drawing up without dismounting. “Well”—Van Rorick’s voice was cool but triumphant—“are you ready to leave? All packed?”
“I’m not leaving.”
Leosa Barron stood straight and still. She knew these men, and for all Rorick’s pretended interest in her, she knew there was nothing he would not stoop to do if it obtained results. Lute Wilson was just a tool for Van, and a dangerous man to cross. Yet it was Rorick she feared the most, for she knew the depths of malice in the man, and she had once seen him vent his hatred on a trapped wildcat.
“Then you leave us no choice, Leosa,” Rorick replied. “We’ll have to move you. If we do that, we might have to handle you rather roughly. You’ve had plenty of time to leave without trouble.”
“I told you I was not going.” Leosa stood even straighter. “You will leave this ranch at once!”
Rorick’s eyes narrowed a little, but he laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “If you want to come to my place, I could make you comfortable. If you don’t come with me, there will be no place in Joe Billy where they will have you.”
Leosa knew the truth of this. Van Rorick was known and feared in the cow town, but more than that, she was herself a stranger, and unkind rumors had been set afloat because of her living alone. She had no doubt that those rumors had been originated by Rorick himself. He knew so well the prejudices of a small town.
“I told you I was staying.”
Yet there was no chance of winning. Had Tom Andrews made it, she might have stood them off. She could rely on Tom. Alone against them, she was helpless. And where could she go? She had neither money nor friends. Only Andrews, who had failed her.
“All right, Lute. I guess we move her.”
Lute was the first to reach the ground. He turned to face the porch, then stopped, his face stupid with shock.
Surprised, Leosa turned, and found the unshaven stranger at her side. He had belted on her uncle’s guns.
“You heard the lady. Get goin’! Get out of here!”
There was a low, ugly sound in the man’s voice that frightened her and apparently had something of the same effect upon Lute Wilson, for he froze where he stood, uncertain how to move.
“Leosa,” Rorick demanded, “who is this man? What is he doing here?”
The stranger stepped down to the ground, his movements swift and catlike. “Shut up,” he said, and his voice was not hard, only somehow more deadly for it.
“Shut up an’ get out!”
“My friend”—Rorick’s face was a study in controlled fury—“you don’t know what you’re buttin’ into!”
“I can tell a coyote when I see one,” the stranger said coolly.
Wilson reached for him. But the stranger sidestepped and smashed him in the stomach with a lifting uppercut that stood Wilson on his toes. Before Rorick could think to move, the stranger smashed a right and left to Wilson’s face, and the rider went down in the dust, his face smeared and bloody.
Rorick reached for his gun, reached … then stopped, for he was looking into the muzzle of a pistol in the stranger’s hand. “Get off your horse,” the stranger said quietly, and when Van Rorick, still amazed by the speed of that draw, had dismounted, the stranger said, “Now turn around, take your friend, and start walkin’. When you’re out of sight I’ll turn your horses loose.”
The two men turned, and with Rorick half supporting Wilson, they lurched out of the yard. Together, the newcomer and Leosa stood watching them go, and when they were out of gunshot, the stranger stooped and, lifting the bucket, drank for a long time. It was only when he replaced the bucket that he turned the horses loose, each with a ringing slap on the haunches.
“Those horses will run all the way home, so I figure we’ve nothin’ to bother us for a bit. Meanwhile, you can give me the hang of th
is so I’ll know what’s goin’ on.”
“Your shoulder,” she said suddenly. “It’s bleeding again!”
“Yeah.” He grinned sheepishly. “I reckon I forgot all about it until I began throwing punches. Man, but it hurts!”
“You’ve had a hard time.” She hesitated, wanting to know what had happened to him, but not liking to ask.
Then she hurried about, getting food on the table and making coffee. He sat in a chair near the door and dozed; as she looked at him she marveled at the strength of the man. Nowhere was he bulky, yet his shoulders were compact and hard looking under the faded color of his shirt.
“Do you have a home?” she asked suddenly. “Or are you just drifting?”
His eyes opened sleepily, and he shrugged. “Home?” He shook his head. “I’ve no home. I always”—his eyes showed a strange wistfulness—“always sort of wanted one.”
“I see,” she said softly, and she did.
“Who was that man?” he asked suddenly. “What’s he want?”
She frowned. “Van was born around here, has lived here most of his life but for some six years. He went away and joined the army, and when he came back, he seems to have become a changed man. Or so they tell me. I’ve been here but a short time. I guess war does change some men,” she added.
He shrugged, watching her. “Maybe. It may, like anything, bring out what’s in him. I don’t know if it would put anything there that wasn’t there before.”
“Well, when he came back he moved onto a small spread and began expanding his herd. He prospered, with Lute Wilson to help him. He gets along with some people, rides roughshod over the others. He didn’t get along with my uncle, who owned this place. About a year ago my uncle was thrown by a bad horse, just after he had invited me to come here to live with him.
“He died a few days later, and it seems he left some debts. Rorick heard of them, and he bought up the notes and got a lien against this place. He offered to pay me two hundred dollars and give me the notes if I would leave, and I would not.
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 7 Page 12