Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “There’s a man behind me,” I explained.

  “The law?”

  “No…an enemy. I don’t know how much of an enemy, but if he follows where I am going, he’ll be wanting me bad.”

  I walked to the counter and ordered what I would need, a side of bacon, some dried fruit, flour, salt, beans, a few odds and ends, and some hard candy. It would help me through the times when I could not stop. I also bought one hundred rounds of .44s.

  “You been out there before?”

  “I have.”

  “Has he?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “West, south, and north,” he said, “there isn’t another white man for a hundred miles…more likely two hundred miles.”

  “Nobody at Lee’s Ferry?”

  “They come and got him. Or took him somehow. I don’t think there’s anybody there now.”

  He looked at me. “You’re almighty young. Have you killed somebody?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “I’m hoping not to.”

  “If he ain’t use to it, an’ he follers you,” the old man said, “you won’t need to kill him. That country will do it.”

  He looked at me again. “You been there, you say?”

  “I come across with my pa. I was a youngster the first time, standing about as high as the sight on a Winchester.”

  He nodded slowly. “With a tall man? A gentleman?”

  “He was my father,” I said gently, “and he was always a gentleman, and always a man.”

  “Ride well, son,” the old man said, “an’ make your grub last. I seen you come in. That’s a good horse.”

  “This was his country,” I said. “Pa taken him from the wild bunch over there back of the Sweet Alice Hills.”

  The land fell away in a vast sweep like a great, empty sea where no billows rolled, nor even waves. Stiff grass stood in the wind, scarcely bending, and the cedar played low, humming songs with the wind.

  I rode away into the empty land, and there was no sound but the drum of hoofs upon the hard ground, and there was no dust, and scarcely a track to mark my passing.

  Chapter 8

  *

  WHAT IS IT makes a man do the things he does? Time to time I’ve wondered about that, and it was pa who set me to thinking. I never realized that pa was running until it was too late. Sure, it occurred to me now and again that we moved a lot, sometimes leaving good jobs and places we liked. It was only now that I wondered if pa was running away from something, or simply avoiding an issue, a settlement he did not wish to face.

  Pa wasn’t scared. I’ll give him that. Several times I’d seen him face up to mighty dangerous situations, always calm, easy, and in command. And he was a good man with a gun.

  Something happened back yonder in his younger years that had brought him to grief. That something was tied in with the reason Felix Yant would come riding after me. Oh, I never doubted he’d come! And deep inside me I was sure it was he, and nobody else, who killed pa.

  What bothered me was I felt an uneasy kinship with the man. Maybe we were related, but it was more than that. Sometimes when he spoke, I knew what he would say before he said it, and that was strange, too, for he was a different kind of man than I’d ever known.

  Some things about me bothered him, too. He didn’t like the language I used most of the time. What he hadn’t yet realized was that it was a sort of a vernacular most western men slipped into, no matter how well they could talk or how much they knew of the language. Part of it was that the educated ones didn’t want to seem to be putting on airs, as the saying was, but it was more than that. It was almost as if it was a dialect. We used a lot of contractions and Indian or Spanish words that came into our speaking natural-like.

  Sometimes Yant, who was obviously new to the West, would stop and look at me to guess the meaning of what I’d said. I had an idea the words we used would in a short time become so much a part of the language nobody would even hesitate over them.

  We used lariat, which was short for the Spanish la reata, and hombre was used almost as much as man. There were dozens of other words and expressions that sort of filtered into the everyday talk from the Indians, the Spanish, and the country itself.

  Me an’ that roan, we just taken off into the desertlike country toward the west. Not that it was desert, but it was dry—least you knew where the water lay. And all the advantage lays with a man who is making the trail. He can go where he wishes, stop when he likes, and I was of no mind to make it easy.

  At first I didn’t attempt to make myself hard to find. What I wanted most was distance, and I hit a fair pace and held to it. That roan could go all day at a kind of shambling trot.

  I had no illusions about what I was getting into. Yant, if he had killed pa, was as cold-blooded as they come. He’d shot pa at point-blank range and in the back of the head, and he’d do the same for me if the chance allowed. Maybe I was better in wild country and maybe I wasn’t. In any event, the man was a good rider and a tough, dangerous man, not to be held lightly.

  If I could shake him loose, I’d strike out for Georgetown and hope that pa had left something there. If not, I’d have to rethink the situation and go over pa’s back trail.

  Wacker and the judge and them seemed far away and in another world. I was staking my life on outguessing Felix Yant.

  There was nobody I could go to for help. Anyway, it wasn’t the way things were done in the West. A man saddled his own broncs and he fought his own battles. He stood alone, on his own two feet. A gang was a place for cowards to hide, because they were afraid to stand out in the open. They wanted others to fight their battles for them and to shield them from attack.

  The wind was cold, right off the snow-covered flanks of the mountains, which lay behind me now. How far I was going west I had no idea, only that somehow I had to shake Yant from my trail and then turn east once more.

  There was ice on the edges of Cherry Creek when I crossed it. Then, deciding here was where I should start, I turned downstream, keeping my horse in the water for a couple of miles, then out on the east bank again, and by high noon I was skirting the La Plata on the west side, hunting for an arroyo I dimly remembered that ran off to the northwest. Sometime about an hour later, I saw it off to the west and cut across-country. There was a trail but I chose to avoid it, crossing to the arroyo itself. There had been recent rains, but cattle had gone up and down the canyon leaving a maze of tracks that in the soft sand had no distinction, one from the other. Keeping to the arroyo for another hour, I reached the old Ute Trail, which would take me west to the Mancos River.

  Leaving the roan to graze on whatever he could find, I climbed a high shoulder near the trail and sat there for a good half hour, watching my back trail. I saw nothing, not even dust. Instead of making me feel good, it left me worried.

  Suppose I was all wrong and he had not followed me? Suppose he had outsmarted me and guessed my intention and was waiting until I started east again? He was a shrewd man, and I returned to my horse feeling none too good.

  The land through which I rode was lonely, desolate, offering nothing. Here and there great mesas thrust up from the land about, towering like islands from a vanished sea. Off to the west was the tableland of Mesa Verde, its great promontory like the bow of a ship outlined sharply against the sky.

  Everywhere there was a thick stand of cedar, and wherever there was an open space, it was grown up to sagebrush. From time to time up some branch canyon, there was a glimpse of spruce trees along the flanks or in the ends of the canyons. It was rough, broken country with many fallen slabs of rock and talus slopes. I needed a place to hole up. If Yant lost my trail, he might give up on me.

  At the head of a canyon a trail branched off to the northwest. No Indian tracks, although this was Ute country, only a scattering of deer and other animal tracks. I was catching a sense of the country now, remembering it from a time long since, when pa and me had holed up here for a spell.

  Red Horse Gulch was somewher
e off to the south, and if I wasn’t guessing wrong, this trail led to a spring. I turned the roan along that trail, and from the way he quickened his step I had an idea there was water ahead.

  Believe me, I was mighty uneasy. Felix Yant might be green to this country, but he’d ridden and hunted a lot and it would take some doing to fool him. I was banking that he’d sight-hunted mostly, or trailed game with dogs, and that he wasn’t much of a tracker. Yet to underestimate an enemy is always dangerous.

  About a half mile or so from where I left the Ute Trail, I found the spring. First off I let my horse have what he wanted, drank myself, and filled my canteen. Plenty of game tracks but no horse tracks.

  Squatting beside the spring, I considered what lay before me and behind me. Odd part of it was, I was kind of enjoying this cat-and-mouse game. The trouble was—and this I had to keep in mind—that it was no game. It was being played for keeps, and all a man needed was one mistake.

  Right now a man was on my back trail who was deadly as a rattler. He’d shot pa in the back, so it showed he didn’t have any mercy in him. It may have shown something else…that when it came right down to it, he was scared of pa.

  Seemed strange that anybody could be afraid of pa, who had always seemed the gentlest of men, yet Yant had taken no chances with him.

  The spring was in a small branch canyon, and I didn’t much like staying there for fear Yant would come down the draw and catch me there, so I straddled the roan and started down canyon. Here and yonder the trail went up the flank of the canyon to get away from great blocks of rock that had broken off the wall and tumbled to the bottom, blocking any trail there might have been.

  Here and there I saw broken pieces of pottery, so Indians had lived here before. Pa had told me of some cliff dwellings along this canyon and another branch that ran back toward the east and north.

  Where the canyon forked, I turned right and found myself looking up into the high arch of one of those shallow, wind-hollowed caves where the old cliff dwellers liked to build. There was a cliff dwelling there, too, but it was different.

  There was a ledge crossed that cave some sixty feet from the bottom of the arch, and on that ledge was built a house. Only ruins were left, yet pretty substantial ruins. How a body could get up there was more than I could figure, but a man sitting up there with a rifle could cover anybody coming down that canyon where I was.

  The cave was right at the junction of those two canyons, and the more I looked at that cliff house, the more I wanted to see what was inside. Certainly once a man got in there, a body would surely be in a fix trying to get at him. If I could get in.

  Riding up the canyon was no easy matter. There was a sandy strip in the bottom where water had run during rains, but great boulders and slabs of rock had fallen across the way in several places. There was more pottery down here, or bits and pieces of it, and there were several ruins tucked back under the brows of the cliff. Back at the junction those canyon walls were maybe five hundred feet high, but a little less toward the canyon’s head. Near the far end I glimpsed what seemed to be some ruins in behind some spruce trees. Leaving my horse cropping at some brush, I scrambled up there and found the ruins of a house and the edge of what might have been a kiva, one of their round ceremonial centers. It was mostly filled with rock that had sloughed off the roof of the cave. The place was cool, still, and almost entirely hidden from below. In a couple of pools water stood, runoff from recent rains that had not evaporated in this shaded place.

  Returning to my roan, I found a place where it could be hidden behind a thick stand of spruce, a fairly level area, although small. Here, too, there were broken fragments of pottery and some ears of corn that were only three or four inches long and no larger around than my finger. Stripping the gear from the roan, I hid it as well as I could with some fallen branches and the like. Then, taking my rifle and canteen, I went back down the canyon, working my way along the steep side, following what must at one time have been a foot trail, that took me higher and higher along the canyon wall.

  Several hundred feet above the canyon floor I found a crack in the canyon wall where stood the notched trunk of a cedar. Rigging a crude sling for my rifle, I hung it over my back to have both hands free for climbing. Slowly and carefully, aiding myself with handholds or fingergrips on the rocks, I mounted to an excessively narrow ledge, then by another notched pole to a still higher one.

  Working my way along and up, I reached a ledge that led to the cliff house. Once settled inside, I unslung my rifle and peered out through a crack in the crumbling wall. From here I could look down to the junction of the two canyons. It was an easy rifle shot, but did I wish to kill?

  Settling back, I studied my surroundings. On my right, almost under my elbow, was the edge of the kiva, a round ceremonial room with some of the ancient timbers still in place although the roof had long since fallen in.

  There was a door broader at the top than at the bottom, for is not a man wider at the top? And often carrying a burden on his back or shoulders? And another opening that gave access to an area beyond.

  There were bits of broken pottery lying about and a number of small corncobs, less than a third the size of those with which I was familiar. Corn had been domesticated, apparently, but not developed to our present standard. I took a short drink from my canteen and settled back to rest.

  All was quiet in the canyon. Occasionally a rock, loosened by some animal or by the workings of nature, would tumble off into the canyon below. Once I heard some small animal scurrying.

  My horse was reasonably safe. Shielded by trees as he was, and somewhat above the canyon floor in the old ruin, there was small chance he would be discovered. It would need someone totally lacking in caution to go up the canyon to its end, completely exposed to rifle fire from a dozen possible places of hiding. Felix Yant was not, I was sure, such a man.

  What I needed was a little rest, time to think and to plan, and a chance to observe my enemy, if such he was, and to learn what manner of man he was.

  Slowly the afternoon passed. I dozed, awakened, dozed again.

  At last, peering through some broken brick atop the wall, I saw a bird fly up.

  Somebody coming? Suddenly I began to sweat. Suppose they had seen me climb up here? If such was the case I could well be trapped, for impossible as the place was to attack, it was almost equally impossible to leave without exposing myself.

  At night? The thought of attempting that cliff in the darkness gave me no pleasure. I was agile enough, and had climbed a lot among rocks, but at night? Not if I could help it.

  Nothing happened. All was still. Watching, I thought of Yant, of those cold, measuring eyes that seemed to possess no more human feeling than those of a rattler.

  That he was a relative I accepted. His resemblance to pa was too uncanny for it to be otherwise. Yet how related? And if related, why would he wish to kill me?

  An estate of some kind? Money motivated more things than hatred, yet there could be both.

  The two mysterious women who had come to visit us returned to mind. One had been friendly, yet I had been so frightened of the other I had never even told pa…and she had tried to kill him. To poison him, somehow. I knew that now. Pa had been deathly ill after her visit.

  Who could she be? And why did they wish us dead?

  I was alone. I knew nothing. And they were seeking me out. Suddenly, I was uneasy. I felt cramped, closed in, eager to be out and away. Yet to move now would be fatal. I must remain where I was, let them search, let them seek me.

  Georgetown. I was sure now that was where pa had left his papers. He and Louis Dupuy had struck up a friendship, and the man Dupuy was a strange, bitter, self-isolated man, influenced by no one, beholden to no one. If pa wished to leave those papers with someone, he could have chosen no better man.

  A stone fell from the canyon wall opposite, a pebble that bounded from rock to rock. My eyes searched the rock wall opposite. Much broken rock, clumps of cedar, and some lower bru
sh. The rock atop the cliff was largely water-worn and smooth, but here and there were hollows that held water. It was from these natural reservoirs, most of them small, that the cliff dwellers had obtained some of their water.

  A faint flicker of light on metal, seen and gone. A rifle barrel?

  There was silence in the canyon. Easing my rifle forward, I waited. The last thing I wished was to give away my position, and to move might be fatal. I had water enough for another day and night if I was careful. I had a little food. It was unlikely they would find the way up that I had used, impossible for them to use it by night, so for the moment I seemed secure.

  Peering through a crack in the rocks, I saw a man suddenly appear opposite me on the rim of the canyon. He moved out in plain sight and just stood there.

  Puzzled, I watched him for several minutes before it dawned on me that he was there to draw my fire, or to somehow make me give away my position. I remained very still. The man disappeared, and a moment later there was a shot. The bullet struck the rock outer wall of the cliff house.

  Careful to make no sound, I crawled through the T-shaped door into the inner room, which was completely enclosed. There I would be safe from ricochets.

  Apparently they had no idea where I was or if I was even in the canyon, and if my horse made no sound we might well deceive them into moving on.

  Another shot, and this time the bullet struck the back wall of the cave, and the ricochet smashed into the rock wall. For a long time then, there was no sound. I took a swallow of water and waited. There were no more shots. After a while I moved out of the inner room and peered through the rocks. Nobody was in sight…nothing moved.

  Somewhere thunder rolled and a wind stirred the cedars across the canyon. Leaning my head back against the rock pile where I sat, most of it debris or slabs fallen from the wall of the cave, I dozed.

  I awakened to the patter of rain and a crash of thunder followed a flash of lightning. That one was close. Sitting up, I looked out. Here I was sheltered, but the canyon was veiled by a curtain of rain.