Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  With that he was gone, and we sat there staring at each other. She was displeased, I thought, by his sudden leave-taking, but she tried to continue.

  “What did happen out west?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Nothing much. Rain, cold, and a long ride. Somebody followed me from here, I think, and shot at me.”

  She stared at me. “Shot at you? Why?”

  “I think it was those same two men, the two who came in here that day, just before I left.”

  “Who are you, Kearney?” she asked suddenly. “I mean really. You’re never told me anything about yourself.”

  “I didn’t figure you were interested.”

  “Oh, but I am! You told me about your father being killed. I’m sorry. That must have been awful for you. Did you send his body back home?”

  Well, I just looked at her. “We hadn’t a home,” I said. “Home was wherever we hung our hats. He was buried in the town where he fell…like I’ll be, no doubt.”

  “Fe—I mean Mr. Yant, he has a plantation back in Carolina. A beautiful place, he said, with a lovely old house and acres and acres of trees and planted land, right along a river.”

  “Good for him.”

  “He said he thought your father must have come from a good home, too. Before the trouble.”

  “What trouble?”

  “Why…I don’t know. I just thought…I mean he said that most men who came west like that had come because they were in some kind of trouble.”

  “Is that why you folks came west?” I asked bluntly.

  She flushed. “It is not! And you’ve no right to suggest—”

  “You just did it to me,” I said.

  She stared at me, half-angry. “Well, you told me yourself you and your pa wandered all over, never stopping anyplace at all. And then he did get shot. Somebody killed him, and they must have had a reason.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  We were alone in the room now, as the others had gone. I was angry and defensive.

  “Well, he had done something to someone. Isn’t that why people are usually killed? In revenge? Or in punishment?”

  “Or because they have something,” I said.

  “You told me he wasn’t robbed.”

  For a moment I did not reply, for what had been lingering in the back of my mind all the time suddenly was there, right before me. Of course that was why he was killed. Revenge or hatred might have had a part in it, but there was more than that. He had been killed because of something somebody wanted. As nothing had been taken that I knew of, it must have been something he did not have with him but something that belonged to him, and that meant property.

  Property? Land? But if Felix Yant had a plantation in Carolina, why would he be worried about what pa might have?

  I knew very little about such things. Only supposing they were kin. Suppose that plantation belonged to them both, and the only way Yant could have it all was to kill pa? And then he discovered me, of whom he had not known?

  That was a lot of surmising, yet pa and Yant did favor each other. I’d mistaken Yant for pa, and they had mannerisms alike, and what was Yant doing out here, anyway?

  “He wasn’t robbed of anything he had on him,” I said. “Maybe somebody was trying to rob him of something he owned. If that was true, then I own it now…whatever it is.”

  “If your pa owned something that valuable, he’d be tending to it, not running around over the country letting his boy grow up every which way.”

  She was quiet for a few minutes and so was I. She seemed like a totally different girl, somehow. Had she always been that way, or was this something Yant had done to her?

  “If I were you,” she said, “and I thought I owned anything, I would find out what it was and claim it. Your pa, now, if he owned anything he would have some record of it, or he would have told you.”

  “He may have planned on telling me. Then he was killed.”

  “He must have told you something. If you tried, you could remember.”

  My coffee was cold. So was the night. I got up suddenly. “See you tomorrow,” I said.

  She started to turn away, then she looked back. “Kearney? I think you’re angry with me.”

  “No, I ain’t. Why should I be? You’ve done nothing.”

  “Mr. Yant likes you. He really does. He says you deserve a better future than this, and I think he would help you if you could just remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  “Well, he said he thought maybe your pa had come from a good family, and that somewhere he’d had some records or something. If you could find those, you could be somebody yourself. He said he was sure you knew, although you might not think you did.”

  That, at least, was probably the truth. He wanted me to find those records. Maybe he was afraid that if something happened to me, those records would show up. It was then I thought back to Pistol. We’d always called ourselves brothers, but actually we weren’t blood kin. Somewhere along the line Pistol just took on with us, and pa raised him along with me, only Pistol was older than me and before long he took off on his own.

  Pistol, being older than me, might know something, but the last I heard Pistol was out California way. He taken his name from his skill, for he was a natural with any kind of shooting iron. He was almighty quick and he was steady, and that was how come he left us.

  We’d been in Missouri at the time, and pa was down sick…pneumonia, I think it was. Pneumonia was a real killer them days, and pa was in bad shape. A woman there was caring for him…name of Kate Donelson.

  Pistol an’ me, we were just sort of waitin’ around. My age was about ten, if I recall, an’ Pistol was closing in on sixteen. Then these two men came to town.

  I recall them clear. They were tall, straight men who never smiled…not at least when I seen them. They wore black coats like the one pa had when he was shot, and like the one Felix Yant wore. I guess they were the style down south or back east or wherever. Mostly out west it was gamblers or lawyers who wore them, and often doctors.

  These two men came to town, and I heard them inquiring for pa. The man at the livery stable, he told them he didn’t know such a man, and he lied because he was friendly with pa. I started to tell them, but something in that livery man’s face made me shut up.

  I walked away and seen Pistol and told him. He asked me where they were an’ I told him. Well, he taken a look and said we should get on home. When we got there, he went inside and buckled on his six-shooter. Now like I say, Pistol was almighty handy with one of them short guns but he never wore one in town…only on the trail. Pa had asked him not to.

  Me, I said as much this time, an’ Pistol said, “Pa won’t mind this time, Kearney. He surely won’t. You see those men coming, you tell me and then you get inside, and do it quick.”

  Small town like that, there’s always somebody who talks too much, an’ somebody did. We was settin’ on the porch…I’d just brought Pistol a cup of coffee as he wouldn’t leave those steps, not no way.

  We seen…saw…them coming down the pike an’ I says, “It’s them!” He puts down his coffee and says, “You get inside and stay away back. This here’s trouble.”

  “Trouble? Why?”

  “Those men are huntin’ your pa to kill him. I got to stop them.”

  Well, I’d been taught long ago not to argue when told to move and I done it. I moved inside and I went back to pa’s bed and lifted one of his pistols from the holster. He opened his eyes and looked at me.

  “What’s the trouble, boy?” he asked, his voice weak and sick-sounding.

  “Nothing we can’t handle,” I said, and went back to the door, then to the window. That window was open, and from beside it I could see those men. They looked at the house, at Pistol, and then they started for the steps, and Pistol says, “You lookin’ for somebody?”

  “It’s nothing to you, boy. Get out of the way.”

  He stood up. “You just back off there,” he says, quiet-like. “
We ain’t havin’ visitors today. There’s a sick man in there.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” the biggest one said. “He won’t be sick much longer. We’re doctors, boy, an’ we got the cure.”

  “He’s got him a doctor,” Pistol said, and then he added, very quiet, “I ain’t never killed a man yet, so don’t you boys insist.”

  Well, they taken a look at him then. They’d been figuring him for some wet-nosed kid, and he stood there looking back at them and all of a sudden their manner changed.

  “You never killed a man, boy? Well, we have. We’ve both killed our man, an’ more than one. We’d as soon make it another if you don’t move, and now.”

  Suddenly he laughed. He laughed right out loud and that surprised them. It was a real surprise because his laugh threw them off just enough and he went for his gun. It was only an edge and a mighty slight one, but Pistol was fast and he was sure.

  He put two bullets into that big man faster’n you could wink, and then he shot the other one just as his gun came into action. Pistol taken a bullet through the side of his shirt, but that second man was already down.

  I ran out on the porch, and Pistol turned on me. “You’re hurt!” I said.

  “No, I ain’t, but the law here don’t like me much and I’m leaving. You tell pa to get well. He’s the best man ever!”

  He turned and started up the street, and just as he turned his back, that big man who was lying there raised up on one elbow and pointed a six-shooter at his back. I was to one side of him and seen it, and next thing I knew, I’d fired, my shot being just a mite faster than the big man’s.

  Pistol turned and taken one quick look. “Thanks, Kearney…thanks.”

  And then he was gone, and people came crowding up. We’d been on a sort of back street where there weren’t many folks, but they came back from the main street as soon as the shooting stopped. And right behind the first of them was that two-bit town marshal.

  Nobody liked him much, because he was mean. He pushed through the crowd soon as he saw the shooting was over. I’d stuck my six-shooter back under the window-curtain so’s it was lying on the sill, out of sight.

  “Here! What’s going on here?” he demanded.

  “Those men threatened to kill pa,” I said, “an’ pa’s sick in bed.” That was something most of the town knew, as there were mighty few people in town and news got around, such as sickness, weddings, and such. “They tried to push in here and my brother, he stopped them.”

  Somebody in the crowd said, “Serves ’em right! Comin’ after a sick man!”

  From the way folks reacted, that seemed to be the general opinion, and nobody was quicker to sense that than the marshal. “Anybody know these men?” he asked.

  Nobody did.

  “What about you, boy? Did you know them? Why did they want to kill your pa?”

  “I never saw them before. I don’t know why they wanted to kill him. They must have hated him, to want to shoot a sick man who’s on his back in bed with pneumonia. And they must have come a long way looking for him.”

  “Got what they deserved,” one man muttered.

  The marshal, he looked at me. “You sure your pa is down sick?”

  “You can ask Doc Cory,” I said. “He’s treating him.”

  He looked at the bodies. One of the men had a white vest, and there was a bullet hole where the heart was. The other had two bullets in the body and a third in the head. That one was mine, but I didn’t lay claim to it.

  “Didn’t figure that brother of yours was that fast,” the marshal said.

  “He’s mighty good,” I said, “maybe as good as pa.”

  They carried the bodies away, and that was the end of it. Pa got well and we dragged our freight out of there, but we surely missed Pistol.

  Standing there in that restaurant, empty but for Teresa and me, I thought back to Pistol. I also thought of those two dead men and of Kate Donelson.

  Pistol might know something, and so might Kate, if she was alive.

  And those two dead men…maybe the folks in the town where they were killed had some record, from the stuff in their pockets or what gear they had.

  It was something to go on, and it was time I got started.

  Teresa, she looked at me. “What are you going to do? Are you going off again?”

  “Might as well. Looks like you found yourself a man.”

  She flushed. “He’s not my man. At least he knows how to treat a lady and he’s not running off around the country all the time.”

  “You just see how long he stays once I’m gone,” I said.

  “Oh, my!” She stared at me. “You really think yourself important, don’t you? He did not leave before, after you left!”

  “Some others did,” I said, “and he didn’t figure he’d need to. This time I’m going east.”

  “He won’t leave,” she insisted. “When the snow is off, he plans to start mining.”

  “Good for him,” I said, “and good-bye!”

  I taken out of there, and picking up my gear, I went to the stable. They could keep their old hotel. I’d sleep in the hay. The good Lord knows I’d slept in worse places.

  Chapter 10

  *

  DAYLIGHT WAS AN hour away when I fetched out of there, and I’d be lying if I said I’d slept well. Tired as I was, I surely didn’t sleep. I’d been building ideas in my mind about Teresa. Except for that other freckle-faced girl I’d seen when I first come off the mountain, I’d had no girl in my thoughts.

  If a boy is going to think about girls and such, he has to have some particular girl in mind, and I hadn’t even seen one in eight or nine months. Teresa had seemed right friendly and I’d kind of warmed up to her in my mind, but Yant was a talker and I’d been gone awhile.

  Me and that roan, we just taken out of there. The snow was off the passes now, and the trees were budding out in fine shape.

  When I left town I was riding south, but I knew where I was going and a few miles out I took a dim mountain trail up Scotch Creek. That was high country and rough, but I held to the old Indian trail and went around a ridge and cut over to Hotel Draw.

  If I was heading east I might need a sight of money, and although I’d spent mighty little going west, a body never knew when he might fetch up to needing. So I was heading back to my cache on the plateau, or what I called the place.

  Sure enough, when I topped out, the snow was gone except on the peaks around. The wind was chill but the grass and flowers were coming up. On the sunny, south-facing slope the tree-cover was higher, mostly spruce so far as I could see, and the wild flowers would be blooming in no time. Up that high a flower can’t afford to waste time. They have to grow, blossom, and put out seed before the next frost comes, and it’s a hurry-up job for them.

  The sun was warm and friendly, and when I looked across at the old cabin, it wasn’t there. Standing in my stirrups, when I topped a little rise I could see charred timbers.

  Burned. I felt a twinge then, for I’d spent some good nights in that place. Burned by the judge and them, no doubt.

  I stayed shy of it, heading for my cache. There was no time to waste around if I figured to get anywhere, and already I was thinking of that town where pa had been killed. It was fairly enough on my route, and even if it meant taking a chance, I was going on in.

  A whiskey-jack made noises at me from a rock, hoping I’d go into camp. He followed along, keeping track of me. Jacob’s ladder was blooming, and I saw some wand lily and alumroot here and there.

  When I found my cache, I taken a long look around and then reached up and fetched out my money. I’d never yet counted it and wasn’t about to do so now. I stashed it away in my saddlebags and taken out of there, heading out along a narrow trail through boulder piles and uplifted slabs. Frost, wind, and sun had worn the sharp edges off the rocks over the years, but here and there among the piles of boulders there was some dwarf columbine with a flower no bigger than my thumbnail.

  Marmots whi
stled signals to each other as I wove a way through the rocks, but they didn’t pay me much mind. Usually they whistle and disappear in the rocks, but they must have remembered me putting crusts of bread out for them now and again, because they just whistled and sat there, watching me pass. Maybe it was their way of saying good-bye, because I never figured to see that place again.

  Old Dingleberry was nowhere around when I passed the trail leading to his place, and it was after sundown when I rode into the town where pa had been killed. There were lights at the portals of some of the mines, and there were lights along the street, mostly in saloons or eating places.

  The roan was tired and so was I, so I fetched around to the livery stable. Old Chalk was there, and he seen me ride up. He knew that horse as well as me or better, and he said, “Howdy, son. It’s been awhile.”

  “Anybody around town lookin’ for me, Chalk?”

  “Not so’s I heard, son. The judge, he cut up somethin’ fierce for a while, then he an’ some others taken out. I reckoned they was huntin’ you.”

  He didn’t ask no questions and I didn’t offer any answers. A man learns to keep his own affairs to himself. “Give old roan here a bait of oats. He’s earned it.”

  “All right, son.” Chalk watched me take my gear off the saddle, and if he noted those saddlebags were heavy, he didn’t speak of it.

  “Chalk,” I said, “you knew my pa.”

  “I did so. A finer man never walked, although he was no gambler. Not until that last night.”

  “He was gamblin’ for me. Chalk. I never guessed until it was too late. He was trying to get me a stake so’s I could go to school and such. It was the only way he knew how.”

  “He might have gone to minin’,” Chalk commented.

  “Now, the way I see it,” I replied, “pa didn’t figure he had long, and there was a man on his trail…more than one of them.” That reminded me. “Chalk, did you ever see a man around here, tall man, black coat like pa’s, a man who favored pa some?”

  “I seen him.”

  “Can you tell me when?”

  “He come in the day your pa was killed and he rode out that same night. Had him a mighty fine horse.”