Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  There were things to be learned by listening, and I was always one for learning, yet I could not forget Felix Yant and Delphine. That other one, with whom I’d had no contact, was not quite real to me. A danger…but a quantity unknown and therefore not to be judged.

  Where were they now? They had not followed, but soon they would know something had happened if they did not know even now.

  Suddenly I became worried about Laurie. Suppose Delphine learned of her?

  Yet how could she? I had walked along a street with Laurie, I had spent an evening in her home—was that so much?

  Did I dare go to her now? Might I not attract the vindictive spite of Delphine to them?

  “Storm or no storm,” I said suddenly, “I’m riding out at daybreak.”

  “And I’ll ride with you,” Pistol said.

  Mustache packed grub for us, and when the first light came, we took out down the trail. Red was outside with Charlie and Mustache, and they said, “Don’t you worry none about anybody along this trail. We’re going to stake it out.”

  Well and good, but they could not watch all the trails.

  We had two packhorses now and we took off down the Cucharas River, and Pistol led the way up a narrow game trail along the east slope of a north-south ridge to Coleman Canyon, then down to the head of Rilling Canyon, following that for roughly a mile then cutting through the forested hills to Indian Creek.

  It was a lonely route, and we were whipped by wind and rain, the rocky trails often slippery underfoot.

  We camped near a rainwater pool in rocky country surrounded by cedars just shy of La Veta Pass. We had pushed hard, but that night we sat by the campfire and remembered the days when we were boys together and wandering with pa.

  “You saved my bacon that time,” Pistol said suddenly. “That man would have killed me. And you just a youngster, too.”

  “It was our fight you were fighting.”

  “Mine, too. When your pa took me up and helped me, I got to feeling I was a son to him, too.”

  “And we felt the same,” I said.

  “It’s been a rough ride since,” he said. “I came upon trouble here and there, so I got to riding the wrong trail, just like Red did.”

  “In every town in the West there’s men who got off into rough country a time or two,” I said, “but it’s their own fault if they stay there. The way I see it, every time a man gets up in the morning he starts his life over. Sure, the bills are there to pay, and the job is there to do, but you don’t have to stay in a pattern. You can always start over, saddle a fresh horse and take another trail. Now look at it straight. I’ve come upon some money from pa’s winnings. Perhaps there’ll be more from that estate back east. Anyway, I’ve bought cattle and I’m going into the Rockies to locate in some high country I know, and I’ll need help. There will be a job for you, and one for Red, and Mustache…well, I could eat his cooking forever.”

  Pistol added fuel to the fire. “Kearney, since I taken off from you and your pa, I’ve never rightly had no home. I’ve been holed up with those outlaws over east of here lately or further north along the trail in Brown’s Hole or at Robber’s Roost over on the San Rafael Swell. I surely would like to cut loose from all that.”

  “Looks to me like you’ve cut loose,” I said. “We’ll say no more about it. You’ll have a working interest in my share, because part of this money was pa’s and he would have wanted it so…and I do too.”

  We let the fire die and rolled up in our blankets, watching the stars play peekaboo through the cedar branches and the clouds drifting. I was almost asleep when Pistol commented, “Well, he died winners, anyway. Not many of us do that.”

  *

  SILVERTON LIES IN a basin something over nine thousand feet up with mountains all around. Otto Mears had built a narrow-gauge railroad up from Durango, winding through a deep gorge that engineers had told him was impossible as a route. The town was booming. The mills and the mines were working, and there were a lot of miners working small operations in all the canyons close by.

  We rode into town just shy of sundown and I got a room at a hotel for the two of us, and Pistol, he said, “Kearney, I’m not a trusting soul. You go see your girl. I’m going down to the Tremont and ask around a little. If there’s any of that lot in town, there’s a man down there will know it.”

  First I rode over to the livery barn, and Chalk got up when he saw me pull up outside.

  “Howdy, son! Looks like you kept your hair so far!”

  “So far,” I agreed. “Any trouble with Henry bothering the McCraes?”

  “He come back around, but two, three of us, we sort of read him the riot act. We also told him how healthy it was down Arizona way and how men of his stature and disposition were about to come onto hard times in Silverton. He slung his pack and started leavin’ tracks behind him. Judgin’ by the speed at which he taken out, I expect he’s nigh to the border by now.”

  “Thanks. I’m beholden.”

  “No trouble. We don’t cotton to his kind. One of those gamblers down on Blair Street, he was all for shootin’ him on general principles. ‘Men like him,’ this gambler said, ‘contribute nothing but trouble.’”

  When I’d stripped the gear from the horses, Chalk indicated the black. “Seems familiar. Get him from the man over to Ouray?”

  “I did.”

  “He must have cottoned to you. Not often he lets a body take that horse…and you’ve had him awhile.”

  “I’ll buy, if he’ll sell,” I said. “That’s a good horse.” Then I told him about my ranching plans and who I was doing business with.

  “Reminds me,” he said. “I’ve been holding a letter for you…from Kansas City.”

  It was from Attmore. The matter of the estate was settled, my ownership proven, and the title delivered free and clear. There were a few papers to sign, which Blocker would bring west with him. From what Attmore suggested in his letter, the surrounding neighborhood breathed a sigh of relief to know the Yant-L’Ollonaise family had not inherited.

  So that was over.

  Somewhere down the canyon a train whistled.

  “There she comes!” Chalk said. “The Durango train’s comin’ in!”

  Pistol had gone over to the Tremont, and I decided to follow. I’d collect him and we’d eat at the Bon Ton, as I always did.

  A cool wind was blowing down the gulch when I turned into Blair Street. The train was chug-chugging up the track and there were lights in the cars, and lights were starting to appear in the buildings, although it was early. The train was running late, I gathered, and would be starting back almost at once.

  People were spilling from the train as I came abreast of it, and I paused to watch. Seeing a train come in was still a novelty in most western towns, and there was always the chance of seeing someone one had known.

  Coming down the steps, the people trooped toward the street or scattered toward their homes or places of resort. A fair lot of them headed for the Tremont, where Pistol was.

  The last of them came off the train, and I turned to walk away when something caught my eye, and I turned sharp around.

  Felix Yant stood on the platform facing me, and out at the edge of the platform, maybe fifteen feet from him, was a short, rather heavyset man with a wide face wearing a derby. His black coat was open, and I could see a gold chain from which were suspended several objects indiscernible at the distance.

  Behind them a woman was descending, and at a car yet further along, a rather stooped old man wearing a white planter’s hat. All this I took in at a glance.

  From the direction of the Tremont someone was coming toward me also, but my eyes were upon Felix.

  On my left the locomotive was still gasping steam after its long climb up from Durango, on my right, space and some buildings, but I did not look. My eyes remained on Yant but held within their range the others as well. The woman I knew. Was one of the others the mysterious Joseph Vrydag?

  This was the end. My hat brim
was pulled low. It was pa’s hat, one of the few things of his own that he’d left me. I wondered if Felix recognized it.

  There was not hate. He had hated pa and killed him, and yet I had no hate in me, but just the grim acceptance of the inevitable. Yet it was Delphine who worried me. What would she do? What if she produced a gun and began to shoot? Could I shoot a woman? Of course, if she attacked me, yet I wanted only to have her out of it.

  “Yant,” I said clearly, “you can get back on that train. You’ve still got time.”

  He had stopped, a good thirty yards off. The heavyset man had stopped too and had turned half toward me. Only Delphine continued to move toward me, and suddenly I was swept by panic.

  What was she doing? What—

  “Kearney,” she said sweetly, “it has been such a long time! Such a very long time! We’re so-o-o glad to see you!”

  Men and women stood around watching, people who knew none of us, people who would only see a beautiful woman approaching a young man with endearing remarks, a woman who seemed to be welcoming a long-lost friend or relative, and with every step she was drawing closer.

  She was speaking loudly enough for all to hear, and now she said, “Kearney! It has been so long! I want only to hold you in my arms again! I want—”

  She meant to kill me or to hold me while the others did, and I dare not fire, I dare not resist. I could turn and run or I could be killed. I—

  Suddenly someone ran past me. I heard a voice that I knew. “Delly! Of all people! What a thrill to find you all here so far from home! I do declare, Delly!”

  Laurie!

  I started to yell to warn her, but she was not stopping. She ran up to Delphine, who tried to avoid her. She made a desperate effort to turn aside and keep coming at me, but Laurie caught at her arm.

  “Delly! Just like you used to be! Always out chasing the young men! And so much younger, Delly! Why, he’s young enough to be your son! Maybe your grandson!”

  Delphine jerked angrily, but Laurie clung to her arm. And suddenly the men started to move. Their ruse failing, they were coming at me, and I saw the man in the derby reach inside his coat.

  Not many in the West were familiar with a shoulder holster, but I’d seen them in Kansas City. As his hand came clear, I drew and fired.

  There was no thinking. In that instant everything inside me was icy still. My gun came from my waistband and I fired. Then without looking, I swung my gun toward Felix Yant. It had to go past the struggling women, and his gun was coming up. He was taking aim, duelist-style, but even as my gun swung to cover him, there was a shot and I saw his knees buckle.

  Pistol was suddenly beside me, and he fired again as Yant tried to lift his gun.

  Then we both walked in.

  Felix Yant was sitting sidewise on the platform. There was blood on the planks beneath him and there was blood on his shirt, and his gray trousers were soaked with it.

  “From the first,” he muttered, “from that first day in Rico, I…” He stopped talking and simply stared vacantly at nothing. “I knew, I…Kearney, I…I’m glad it wasn’t…you.”

  People were coming up. They were standing around. “Evil,” he muttered, talking to no one now, “evil! All of us! Cabanus, L’Ollonaise, Yant…evil! All of us.”

  A hand slipped into mine, and Laurie was beside me. “Let’s get away from here,” Pistol suggested.

  Behind us the train whistled and began the slow chugachug as it backed away from the station. I glanced back. A few people were clustered around Yant, and now someone walked over to the man who must have been Vrydag.

  “Delphine!” I pulled up suddenly. “Where—”

  “She got on the train,” Laurie said quietly. “I put her on the train along with an old man who had been following her, a man in a white hat. He said to tell you his name was Tolbert. I don’t know why, but when he told her to get on the train, she said never a word, but did just as he said.”

  “My father mentioned him,” I said. Vaguely I remembered something about going to Old Tolbert if there was trouble…or that he would help me.

  “They’re gone,” Laurie said. “Come home with me. You, too,” she said, turning to Pistol. “You’re one of the family now.”

  Burns was sitting on the edge of the porch when we walked up to the house. “Your mother invited me in,” he said to Laurie, “but I thought I’d better wait out here.”

  “It took me longer than I planned,” I said, “but I came back.”

  “So you did,” he agreed, “and brought trouble with you.”

  “No way a body can account for other people’s notions,” I replied cheerfully. “I came back because of my promise to you and another to Miss Laurie McCrae. Now, tomorrow Miss Laurie McCrae and me, we have an appointment with a sky pilot who will make it proper for us to travel in double harness. And there’s one more thing you can do, if you’re of a mind to.”

  “And that is?”

  Me, I taken some money from my pocket. “Buy a marker for the grave of Felix Yant,” I said, “a man of taste who would not settle for enough.”

  “You’d buy a stone for a man you killed?”

  “He did it for pa. I want to kill no man. As for him, he put in his bid but he couldn’t meet the price. One thing I’ve learned, Mr. Burns, when you buy chips in the pistol game, you’d better have enough to raise the ante.”

  Burns got to his feet. “You will be leaving town then?”

  “For a rising young man of business,” I said, “it seems an awful lot of towns want me to move on. Yes, I’m going.”

  “We wouldn’t want to bankrupt you,” Burns said, “buying tombstones.”

  I walked to the door with him, and he held out his hand to me. I took it and he smiled a little, then said, “We found the remains of Judge Blazer in your burned-out cabin. We had a warrant for him from Kansas for misappropriation of public funds.”

  “You talk to Wacker?”

  “Left the country. We did talk to your Indians, and they verified your story.”

  When he walked away, I closed the door. Pistol had gone to bed and so had Mrs. McCrae.

  Well, I just looked at Laurie and asked, “You mean it?”

  “I mean it,” she said.

  And I believed her.

  About Louis L’Amour

  *

  “I think of myself in the oral tradition—

  as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man

  in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way

  I’d like to be remembered as a storyteller.

  A good storyteller.”

  IT IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

  Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

  Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His perso
nal library contained 17,000 volumes.

  Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

  His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel), The Proving Trail, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio publishing.

  The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

  Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour publishing tradition forward.

  Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour

  NOVELS

  Bendigo Shafter

  Borden Chantry

  Brionne

  The Broken Gun

  The Burning Hills

  The Californios

  Callaghen

  Catlow

  Chancy

  The Cherokee Trail

  Comstock Lode

  Conagher

  Crossfire Trail

  Dark Canyon

  Down the Long Hills

  The Empty Land

  Fair Blows the Wind

  Fallon

  The Ferguson Rifle

  The First Fast Draw

  Flint

  Guns of the Timberlands

  Hanging Woman Creek

  The Haunted Mesa

  Heller with a Gun

  The High Graders

  High Lonesome

  Hondo