Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  I fell.

  Even as I fell, I knew that I was falling and there was nothing I could do about it. I did not feel myself hit the ground, but when I got my eyes open and my brain clear for an instant, I was on the ground.

  Getting my hands under me, I pushed myself up. There was blood where my head had been. There was blood where my shirt pressed against the sand. On my hands and knees I knelt, staring at the bloody sand. Slowly the idea percolated through the fog in my brain. I had to get up. I had to move. I had only my pistols and they had rifles, and they would not be likely to miss again.

  Shelter…a hideout…someplace, just anyplace. Lava fields are of many kinds, and lava flows proceed to cover everything. Sometimes the outer skin of a flow would cool and solidify while the lava kept flowing within, as water through a pipe. But I could find no such place.

  Then, when I had given up, suddenly the narrow aisle along which I had been walking opened on the bank of a small stream. Kneeling, I scooped up water, splashed it over my face. Then I drank a little, and then a little more. I crossed the stream, which was very small, and kneeling to face the direction from which I’d come, I drank some more. Then taking off my hat, I threw a double handful of water on my head. It stung a little where it touched the cut on my scalp.

  Finally rising, I walked up the slope and into the trees.

  It was late afternoon now. The sun would be gone soon. I sat down close among some junipers and waited for somebody to come after me.

  Surprisingly, I felt better. It might have been the water. It might have been the moment of rest. From where I sat I could see the edge of the lava and the opening from which I’d come. Gun in hand, I waited.

  A rattlesnake crawled from some rocks into the grass near the stream, just at the place where I had crossed. “Let them come now,” I told myself. “I have an ally.” But they did not come.

  Suddenly I awakened. It was cold. The stars were coming out, and the lava field lay flushed and sullen in the last reflections from the vanished sun. I put my gun back in my holster. I had dozed, slept, and not for a little while but at least an hour. Or so I thought.

  For a few minutes I looked all around. Directly to the south of me was the vast bulk of Sierra Grande. To my right front the lesser tower of Capulin, and off my left shoulder a peak bulked large.

  My shoulder was stiff and sore, and I was afraid to move for fear or starting the bleeding again, yet if ever I was to escape it must be now, under cover of darkness.

  If only I could find my horses! The roan would not go far and would try to find me. I knew this because he had done it before. Often he followed me like a dog, and sometimes I would deliberately hide, but he always found me. A horse, particularly one that has run wild, has a nose almost as good as a hound.

  The other horse would undoubtedly stay with the roan. They would also want to feed and they would want water. The creek where I had drunk and which lay before me, just down the slope, probably was a feeder for the Cimarron River.

  Grasping a branch with my right hand, I pulled myself erect. For a moment I stood still, bracing myself. I had lost blood and was weak but under the circumstances was not in bad shape. Less bad than after the beating I had taken in the cabin. It seemed a long time ago.

  Keeping to the slope, slight as it was, I started to work my way downstream. Suddenly I saw a light. It was far off, perhaps two or three miles, and it was on the slope of that other big peak. At the base of that peak, rather. And it was not a campfire.

  Slowly the stiffness left my legs and I walked more easily. After a bit I thought I saw another light, near the first one.

  A ranch?

  Skirting a bunch of trees, I got a better glimpse. It was a town. But what town? Further east, maybe thirty or forty miles—I was unsure of the distance as I’d never been there—was Robber’s Roost, where Coe hung out with his outlaws, but this was too far west.

  A half hour or so later I was crouched in the darkness at the town’s edge. My head was aching and I was exhausted. Kneeling on the ground, I studied the buildings, which were few. A blacksmith shop, now closed, a saloon, a general store, and a couple of other buildings. There were several dwellings built of logs or stone, and one that I could see was adobe.

  At the hitching rail before the saloon, three horses were tied, the horses of the L’Ollonaise brothers.

  So they were here before me. Carefully, I moved my arm to a more comfortable position. Without doubt they had brought the wounded one here for treatment, and also without doubt they would spend the night here and would be eating here. The thought of food made my stomach growl.

  First, I must discover where they were. I started to rise, and just at that moment someone said, “What’s the trouble? Have you been hurt?”

  My hand went to my gun, but it had been a woman’s voice and she was speaking from a darkened window close by. I could see the vague outline of her, and of something white, a curtain, no doubt.

  “I’ve been shot,” I said, straightening up. “I need some care and some food. I can pay.”

  “Come to the back door,” she said. “I would rather no one saw you enter.”

  When I reached the back door, she had it open. For an instant I hesitated. This woman knew nothing of me, yet she was inviting me in. I started to speak, but she interrupted. “Please! Come in!”

  Once inside, she drew the blinds and then lighted a lamp. She was young, quite pretty, and simply dressed. “Sit down right here.” She indicated a chair. “I’ll get some hot water. Luckily,” she said, “I was just about to make tea.”

  She poured the water into a washbasin and then put more on the stove. She came to me with the washbasin and a cloth.

  “Let’s have that shirt off.”

  When I took the gun from my waistband, she held out her hand for it. “Let me put that down for you.”

  “I’ll just keep it,” I said. “I feel better with it close by.”

  She put my shirt aside, and with many ohs and tsk, tsks she began to bathe my shoulder. Dried blood had caked around the wound and stained my side. Carefully she washed it away, then bathed the wound with a solution of carbolic and water.

  “You were lucky,” she said. “It broke no bones.”

  While she was bathing and dressing my shoulder, my eyes strayed around the room. There were a few pictures, a thick carpet on the floor, a bed, and a dresser. The stove was in an adjoining room and visible through the door.

  When she had finished with my shoulder, she went for the tea and brought it back with a thick sandwich. “You’d better eat,” she said. “I don’t have much to offer.” She smiled suddenly. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

  “You live alone?”

  “Yes…my mother died. I work in the store sometimes.”

  “What place is this? I had no idea there was a town anywhere near.”

  “It’s Madison. Named for Madison Emery. The mountain out there is Emery Peak, and that’s named for him, too. It’s quiet, usually, unless some of that crowd over at Kenton come in here. That’s Robber’s Roost, Kenton is. Sometimes a dozen of them will stop here when passing through. We all know them.”

  She watched while I ate. “You were hungry!” she said. “I wish I had more. In fact I was going over to the store when I saw you. I just…well, I just knew you were hurt and couldn’t stand having you out there, needing help.” She got up, putting a shawl around her shoulders. “You lie down when you’ve finished that. I’ll be right back.”

  “There are some men out there,” I said, “who are looking for me. Don’t tell anyone about me.”

  “I won’t,” she promised.

  She glanced at me again. “Please lie down,” she said. “It will be all right. There’s another bed in the next room, so you can stay the night if you want, right where you are.”

  She went out and closed the door behind her. For a moment I sat perfectly still. She seemed nice, but…

  I was worried, and trusted nobody. One after the other
I checked my guns and reloaded the empty chambers. Then I poured a fresh cup of coffee.

  Desperately tired as I was, I could not trust myself to sit down on the bed. To sit down would be to lie down, to lie down would be to fall instantly asleep. Suddenly I got up and put on my shirt, difficult as it was to do. Taking my coat, still stiff with dried blood, I went outside and closed the door behind me. Then I walked swiftly along the back of the buildings toward the general store. I glanced in.

  It was empty except for a balding man with glasses behind the counter. Glancing across the street from the dark alley where I stood, I saw the horses, still tied to the hitching rail.

  As I stood there, two men came to the door. One of them was a L’Ollonaise. The other was saying, “…wants to speak to you. Right here a minute ago.”

  They stepped out on the boardwalk, and she came from the shadows, the shawl over her head now. She was speaking. “Can tell…where…”

  There was some subdued talk and then L’Ollonaise said, “Fifty dollars? Are you crazy? I can find him myself!” He turned to the man beside him. “Where does this woman live?”

  She grabbed at his sleeve and he thrust her roughly aside, then stepped to the door and spoke to someone inside. Another L’Ollonaise came out, and following the third man, they started down the street. The woman screamed something at them, then began to run…straight toward me.

  She came into the narrow space between the buildings, and there was no way we could avoid coming face to face. She stared, wild-eyed. “You! I thought—”

  “Thanks for fixing my shoulder,” I said. “Now you know how Judas felt.”

  “I’m sorry! I really am! I wanted to get out of this place! I want to live! I want to get away from here and never see it again! I hate everything about it!”

  “You will hate the next place, too,” I said. “What you are you will carry with you.”

  I brushed past her and walked across the street. At the hitching rail I untied their horses and mounted one of them. He humped his back a little at the unfamiliar touch, but I turned him sharply around and, letting the others do as they would, I rode out of town.

  The rough road sent my shoulder to throbbing, but I followed a trail up the creek, then cut back through the hills toward the area where I had last seen my own horses. It was beginning to cloud over, only a few stars showing when I reached the creek again about at the place I had crossed it to reach the town. Starting back along my trail, I rode at a rapid clip toward the lava beds.

  The horse I rode was restive, sensing the unfamiliar rider and not at all pleased. Coming through a scattered clump of trees, I came suddenly upon my own horses. Pulling up, I called out to them, then swung down and caught the roan’s reins. Swiftly I changed horses, then turned and rode into the night.

  Westward now, my shoulder throbbing, and so tired I could scarcely sit a saddle.

  All night long I rode, dozing in the saddle, and at daybreak I rode into the streets of Trinidad.

  First off, I found a corral and a bait of hay for my horses. Then, packing my gear, I headed down the street. There was a hotel alongside Davis and Barraclough’s store and another across the street and further along. At the Colorado Hotel I got a room, and stripping down to my belt, I bathed my shoulder in hot water. It was stiff and sore and I took my time getting cleaned up. I washed some of the blood out of my coat and shirt and hung them to dry, digging into my blanket roll for a fresh shirt. It was rumpled but clean.

  There was a drugstore run by a man named Beshoar, who was also a doctor, but he was in Pueblo on business, so I bought some carbolic and went back to my room and stretched out on the bed.

  I’d only seen three riders coming up on me out there, but there had been four of them…and that fourth man worried me. He had not been in Madison, apparently…so where was he? Anyway, one of the four had been wounded and dragged. He was down and probably out of the picture.

  After a while I dozed off, and when I awakened it was sundown. I looked out of the window and along the street. There was a rig standing in front of the Davis and Barraclough store and a couple of horses tied to the hitching rail. Neither horse nor brand was familiar. My room was on the ground floor, so I drew the shades a little tighter and pulled on my boots. My coat was almost dry. Checking my guns, I belted them on and then donned my coat. I was hungry and still tired, and my mouth tasted awful. My head ached and I wanted no trouble from anybody. Leaving my Winchester and gear, I went out on the street.

  The air was cool and pleasant with a faint smell of sagebrush and cedar, mingled with the wood smoke of cooking fires. For a few minutes I just stood there, enjoying the evening and the quiet of the place. Trinidad was on occasion a pretty wild place, but at the moment it was tranquil, and that was the way I hoped it would stay.

  Fisher’s Peak loomed black and huge beyond the town. There was a restaurant sign down the street, and I went in. There were two long tables where a half dozen men were eating family-style and some extra tables. I was in no mood for conversation but didn’t want them to think me uppity, so I dropped down at the end of a bench.

  A bald-headed man, quite fat and sweating, walked over with a coffeepot. “Two bits,” he said, “an’ all you can eat. If you want somethin’ you don’t see, don’t bother to ask. We ain’t got it.”

  I put my two bits on the table and reached for a plate loaded with thick slices of beef. There was a mound of mashed potatoes into which somebody had been digging and a bowl of beans. I helped myself.

  “One thing,” the fat man said, pausing across the table from me, “there’s fresh apple pie. You ask for that, you get it. One piece to a customer. I don’t dare set that out or these cow nurses would eat the whole thing. Leave nothing for nobody.”

  “Now, now, Slats,” a tall, redheaded cowpuncher said, “you’ll make this gent think we got no manners, although I do allow you make a mighty fine apple pie.”

  “That still won’t get you no extry piece,” Slats said.

  Red looked over at me. “He used to cook for the old BB4 outfit. When he quit, the whole crew quit an’ follered him.”

  Red’s eyes hesitated a moment on the hole in the shoulder of my coat, and undoubtedly he had noticed the stiffness with which I moved my left arm, when I did.

  “Good cooks are hard to find,” I said.

  He passed me the meat. “Eat up,” he said. Then he added, “This here can be a troublesome country, but we’re lucky. We got us a good sawbones. He’s a mighty decent man,” he added, “closemouthed, too.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “I hope I won’t need him.”

  He gave me a long look but said nothing more. The others talked among themselves, seeming not to even be aware of me. My seat left me a view of the door, and had been taken with that in mind, which I am sure Red noticed.

  The view of the street was a good one, so I lingered over my coffee. Red stayed on, too, seeming to ignore me. We watched the others leave, and then he turned around toward me, pushing his hat back on his head.

  “I’m a kind of friendly gent,” he commented, casually. “I punch cows when the job’s available. Come up the trail from Texas.”

  “I’ve been there.”

  “Seen your horses when you come in. They’ve covered some country.”

  “They’re good stock.”

  “None o’ my business,” he commented, “but I surely hate to see a man walk into a trap.”

  Something inside me chilled. For an instant even my heart seemed to stop. “A trap?”

  “Uh-huh. Seems to me you’re a man runnin’ from something or runnin’ at it. Maybe this here ain’t my business, like I said, but I sort of cottoned to you, and I surely didn’t to those others. Not even their woman.”

  “How many of them?”

  “Two…three, countin her. The way I figure it, you better count her.”

  “You are right, amigo,” I said quietly, “she may be the worst of the lot. They’re here?”

  “They surely
are, and they seen you come in. They know where you are right now. They have staked out your hotel. In fact, they staked out Sherman’s, too, not knowing where you’d go.”

  There was a door to the street, the one where I had come in, and there was a door out through the kitchen. Both would be watched by now, I was sure.

  “What made you think they were watching for me?”

  He chuckled. “Mister, you come into town on two hard-ridden horses, you leave them at a corral, you get you a room. You got blood on your coat when you come in, you favor one side of you. You’re watchful as a cat huntin’ mice, an’ besides—”

  “Besides?”

  He grinned, both hands flat on the table. “I been waitin’ for you my ownself.”

  Chapter 22

  *

  MY COFFEE CUP was in my right hand, but my left was in my lap close to my belt gun. “You? Waitin’ for me? Well, looks like you found me. If I’d known you were waiting,” I added, “I’d have come along a little faster.”

  He smiled. “From all I hear, you’ve been ridin’ a rough trail to trouble these last months. How could a pleasant-lookin’ gent like you get so many folks mad at him?”

  “They chose up sides before I was born,” I said. Carefully, I put down the cup.

  He had a taunting, whimsical look in his eyes, not at all an unfriendly one. “Family fight?” he asked.

  “Sort of. Since they killed my pa, I’m the last one to stand between them and all they want, and from the way they act, it must be plenty, although they are said to be good haters. I never even knew they existed until just awhile back.”

  “You got a friend knows all about it.”

  “A friend? Me? I don’t know anybody in this part of the country.”

  “This here friend, he sent a man ever which way to flag you down an’ get you to set still until he caught up with you. He’ll be along soon, if you can just abide here.”

  Someone was coming along the walk outside, and then the door opened and a man came in. It was Felix Yant.