—
Coyle awakened me two hours before dawn to take over the sentry duty, so I slid out of my blankets and rolled them for traveling.
“All quiet,” Coyle whispered, and crawled away toward his blankets for a nap before daybreak.
It was almighty still…the sky touched up with stars, and along the Sweetwater the trees and brush lying like a winding black snake among the low hills. Soon it would be growing light.
The night had a waiting in it, a sort of stillness like something was set to happen. My rifle lay easy in my hands. It was a Deane, Adams & Deane five-shot revolving-cylinder rifle. I’d picked it up from an Englishman who was on his uppers in Frisco, and I’d never want a better gun.
Individual trees began to stand out from the dark, and there was dew on the grass…then I saw a gray streak there where it should not be. Picking up a small pebble, I chucked it into the middle of camp, where it hit near Fleming’s foot. He sat up, looking at me, and I lifted my rifle and sighted into the grass where that streak in the grass ended. Somebody had been crawling, brushing the dew from the grass where he crawled, so I just squeezed off my shot into the end of that streak.
There was a movement down there, and then the Indians came out of the grass, out of the gray morning, running low and fast. My second shot was too quick and a miss, but the third, held lower, dropped a Sioux in his tracks. Beside me another rifle opened up and from the far side of camp, another. And then no Indian could be seen, anywhere.
A faint dawn breeze stirred the grass; nothing else moved. Reloading the Deane, Adams I laid out five extra paper cartridges on a flat rock. If I got off half that many shots during the next rush I’d be lucky…if there was a rush.
Aspen leaves whispered. Fleming was beside me, and Coyle off to my left. We waited through long minutes and then Seagrave calmly slipped back into the hollow, just a few yards behind us, and stirred up the fire and put on the coffeepot. If a man was going to fight, he had to eat. That was Seagrave’s thinking and for my mind it was right.
How many had we got? Studying the situation, it looked like the two I’d nailed were the only ones, although the Swede thought he might have barked one. Their surprise had failed and by now it was full light although the sun wasn’t over the eastern ridge.
Our situation was good. We had a fine field of fire in every direction and some shelter for ourselves. In the bottom of the hollow a man could stand almost upright without being seen and we had both grub and water, so if the fight continued we wouldn’t run short for several days. Our horses were in the hollow with us, as safe as we were ourselves. So far, after that first attack we had seen no Indians anywhere, but I didn’t like the look of it.
Harran wanted to go on.
“They’ve gone, so we’d best push on before they bring help.”
“If these were Modocs,” I said, “they’d still be out there. I don’t figure Sioux are much different.”
Waiting gets a man. It works on him, and nobody knows that better than an Indian. He also knows that most white men are the get-up-and-get-at-it type who have no patience. Therefore an Indian usually figures if he waits a white man will move and give him a chance. That was what Harran was all for doing, and Sheedy and the Swede were right with him.
Not me. Not Johnny Banta. One time I nearly got my fool head shot off like that, and nobody needs to show me twice. In this sort of fighting, a man doesn’t get many mistakes. Mostly he gets a chance to make only one.
“You want to move,” I said, “you go ahead. But you leave my horses here.”
“Suppose we decide to take them?” Harran was a mean one, a most trying man.
“Why, anytime you get your mind made up,” I said, “you just try. Only there’s two Indians out there with my mark on them who offered a slight less target than you do right now.”
Harran, he didn’t know what to make of me. He figured me for a kid who wasn’t dry behind the ears yet, but he had seen me shoot, a time or two. He just wasn’t sure.
“I believe Johnny is right,” Seagrave said. “I believe there are still Indians out there.”
So nobody went anywhere right then. The wind stirred the grass out front and the sun came up and when the sun was over the hill in our eyes, they came out of the grass again, running swiftly, and shooting as they came. Fleming was quick; he shot fast and an Indian fell, and then the rest of us were shooting and the attack stopped again.
Harran had nothing to say about that, nor anybody, all of them realizing how some would have been dead had they tried to leave. It wasn’t that I was smarter than anybody, I had fought Indians before, was all, and maybe I was more scared. Nobody wants to die at nineteen.
They pulled out then. The Sioux weren’t a big party and they decided there was easier hunting. They pulled out, so a short time after, we left, riding away in the same formation as before.
Only there was friction among us. Fleming didn’t like me, nor did Harran. Coyle had nothing to say; a watching man like him couldn’t be expected to take sides until the last minute, if at all. Seagrave rode up to me and said something that had been on my mind.
“Johnny, I think you’re my friend, and I’m a man who needs friends.”
“Well, now.”
“I mean it. I need friends, boy and you know why.”
Fleming, Harran, Sheedy, and the Swede, they were going back empty. Sheedy might have had a little put by, but mighty little, and this was a lonesome country where a man might die and no questions asked. Seagrave might be just realizing that, but I’d had it in mind for some time now, ever since I began to get windward of Harran.
He was a hungry man…hungry for all the things he thought he deserved. A hungry man and one eaten by envy and dislike is a dangerous man when opportunity offers, and here with us was Seagrave carrying gold home to the States, and a lot of gold at that.
The Sailor Swede was a hard man. Big, powerful, and sullen, he was a man with a violent temper and unless I was mistaken, killing lay behind him. He was a fit one to walk beside Harran, and Sheedy would follow the two of them.
Fleming? The man did not like me, and he was a man big with his own sense of importance, and little enough reason for it. I did not know about Fleming, nor about Coyle, for that matter. It was beginning to look as if it might be Seagrave and me against the lot.
For I’d seen what he saw. Fleming staring into the fire of a night, remembering that he was returning from gold fields with nothing to show, and no answer to the questions he would be getting except the admission of failure. It comes hard for any man, but harder still for one like Fleming. And there was Harran, hating and full of envy, the Swede wanting gold for women and liquor, and there was Sheedy, a coyote ready to snatch at the wolves’ leavings.
That I was one with Seagrave was a natural thing. First, I was disliked, and secondly I owned some of the horses, which were themselves worth a price. And they had seen me friendly with Seagrave.
It was a far-off place, the California we had left behind, where we had all been friendly enough, joining together for the long trek across the Plains, and shaking hands around, or eating together. Now that trouble had come on us there were divisions obvious to us that had not been so easily seen before.
We rode on, and after a time Seagrave dropped back and offered to take the place of Sheedy, who gave up willingly, not liking me, nor the dust we both had to eat. So Seagrave rode beside me, and not another word was said about what might come, only he talked of his family in Vermont and what would come to them if anything happened to him.
There was nobody anywhere who gave a thought to me, but I’d no wish to feed the buzzards or the coyotes out on a grassy hillside somewhere, so we made it up between us that one of us would always be awake and watchful. And that was the way it was right up until we came upon the woman.
Only she was no woman, only a girl. A scared girl of sixteen or so…there in the middle of nowhere.
Fleming was well out in front and when he saw her r
unning along the grassy slope he drew up his horse, and we all bunched, a bad thing to do, and stared at that girl in the gray dress running like a frightened deer along the slope.
At first we thought she was chased by Indians, but there were no Indians in sight. We waited, wanting to rush into nothing but what we could handle.
“Must be a wagon train close by,” Sheedy suggested.
“Off the trail,” Fleming objected. “They hold farther south where there’s fewer hills.”
“Let’s go,” Coyle said. “That girl needs help.”
COMMENTS: This is how many of L’Amour novels got started. A number of tries, getting the tone or the particulars of the first scene or first few chapters set up. Sometimes the differences between the different versions were very minor, sometimes radically different. Then something would click and the narrative would take off…or it wouldn’t. Quite a few of the story fragments in this book are pieced together from a number of parallel attempts such as these. Cutting and pasting them together I have tried to present a version that shows off the most complete vision or most interesting aspects of what Dad was trying to create.
These three attempts contain a favored plot of Louis’s: a tough group of guys and a stash of money that isn’t going to be big enough for the ones who steal it to share. What role the girl was going to play and why she was changed from Indian to white is anyone’s guess.
Louis experimented many times with “the tough guys and a bunch of money” concept…to the point where I’ve wondered if it was something he’d actually confronted in real life. The idea shows up in a couple of other places here in Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures. In fact, we’ll see it again and I’ll discuss it a bit more thoroughly before we get to the end of this book.
* * *
JAVA DIX
* * *
The Beginning of a Crime Story
When I woke up that morning I was broke. Not even coffee money. Out on the street there was a slow rain falling and I walked along, wondering what to do. I was two days back in town from the Far East and I didn’t know anybody.
Finally I stopped on a corner and was just standing there when this Buick convertible drove by. There was a girl in it with auburn hair. She was lovely…so lovely it made a guy catch his breath and start to hurt down inside. I watched the car until it turned the corner. Then, just as I was starting across the street, the convertible came up again and this girl stopped the car and looked at me.
She was young. Not more than twenty. Only the way she looked at me wasn’t young…she looked me over.
“Want to make some quick money?”
“Sure,” I said, and she opened the car door and I got in.
This babe I didn’t figure. She was no tramp. Every line of her breathed class. Nor could I figure the youth of her along with that wise way in which she examined me. The two things just didn’t go together.
We drove on for a couple of minutes and neither of us said anything. She had good legs, but I tried not to think of that. This babe wasn’t on the make and she wasn’t likely to go for a busted drifter.
“You,” she said, not looking at me, “you haven’t had breakfast, have you?”
“No.” I switched to the far side of the seat where I could look at her. “How’d you figure that?”
“It’s nine o’clock,” she said, “and you just came out on the street. You walked past a diner and you walked past a good restaurant. They wouldn’t let you make coffee in that hotel where you stayed. Then you stopped on the corner looking around. You didn’t know where you were going. I’ll bet you’re broke.”
“You’re a smart kid.”
“And you’re a stranger in town.”
“How’d you figure that one?”
“The way you look at the signs, the way you walked. The way you hesitated on the street like you weren’t sure about the traffic.”
“You do a lot of figuring. What’s the gimmick? What d’you want?”
“I want a man,” she said quietly, “with nerve enough to tackle hell with a bucket of water.”
That about floored me. Somehow it didn’t figure, not this girl needing help, and not the way she asked for it. She swung the car around a corner and pulled up at a small restaurant. “They don’t know me in here,” she said, “and it won’t be busy now. We’ll go to that booth almost to the back. We can talk while you eat.”
We got out of the car and went in. She was wearing a green raincoat and she walked quickly, not minding the rain on her hair. We took a table and she watched me eat. And then over her coffee she started to talk. But not until after she had pumped me for plenty.
Me? I’m a big guy, not heavy. I weigh only one-seventy, but I’m six-two. I can do a lot of things, none of them usual and not many of them legitimate.
Name? They call me Java, and my last name is Dix. Merchant seaman, lumberjack, placer miner in New Guinea, and pearl poacher. I was with the OSS during the war and afterwards a freelance journalist….That’s the quick version. Fights? I’ve won and I’ve lost, but I won more than I lost and got off the floor a few times to win.
I can talk nine languages like I was born to them. I’m proud of that.
“I need a man,” she said, “who has nerve and brains. I’m in trouble, real trouble.”
“Somebody else is in trouble,” I said, “not you.”
She smiled a little, hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, you’re right. It’s my mother.”
“If your mother is in trouble,” I said, “then it would be your father you took after.”
She smiled again, only this time it was not just a mechanical smile, it was warm and beautiful. “You’re right,” she said, “but my father is dead. If he were here I’d never have stopped you. I wouldn’t have been looking for you.”
“He must have been quite a guy.“
“Dad was wonderful,” she said quietly. “He was honest, and he had nerve. You would have liked him,” she said, and suddenly she looked at me, a little surprised, “and he would have liked you.”
“Fathers don’t like seeing drifters with their daughters. Drifters without money.”
“He would understand. He had been a drifter himself. Only he was rich when he died. He made it in the oil fields. He was a big man,” she said, “with red-gray hair, and—”
“Slasher Hannegan,” I said, “he was Slasher Hannegan, of Spindletop, of Seminole, of Tampico and Balikpapan.”
She stared at me, and tears came into her eyes. “You knew him? It…it’s unbelievable!”
“Worked for him, kid. I worked for him in Tampico. I was a tool-dresser. I worked on a tower for him in Borneo. That was ten years ago. And I remember you now, all freckles and knees, living in a house on the bluff above the road that wound around from the port to the Dutch Club.”
It was crazy, but there it was. She had picked up a tough-looking drifter off the street when she needed help, and I had worked for her old man. Only it wasn’t so strange, in some ways. A lot of tough men had worked for her father during the wild days of the oil booms.
We were both quiet then, and after a while she said, “It’s almost like he led me to you. I was desperate. I knew what he would have done, and knew I could not do it, so I started looking for the right sort of man. Yesterday I looked. I went to bar rooms, I rode along the docks, I looked everywhere…and then I saw you.”
She opened her purse and took out five twenties. She handed them across the table. “That’s a stake, Java. That’s for nothing. That’s what Dad would have given any man of his old crew if he was broke. You take it from Dad, and pay it back when you can.”
Once the money was in my pocket she did not waste any more time.
“My mother drinks,” she told me. “She drinks too much. She never drank when Dad was alive, and she never had reason to.” She looked me right in the eye and said quietly, “My mother needs a man. When Dad was around, she was all right. She was happy….Now she isn’t happy anymore and she drinks. And sometimes when
she is drinking she goes out.”
This was tough for her. I could see how tough, only this kid was game. She must have been living with this for a long time, and it had not been easy.
“Usually she went out of town, but once it was the wrong man.”
“Blackmail?”
“Yes…but not just a little blackmail. He wants it all…everything.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“Yes”—she looked up from her coffee—“he includes me.”
Something in me started to get mad then. It was bad enough to take advantage of a woman’s weakness, but to get this girl into it…“He’s got evidence?”
“Yes.”
“You said he wanted all of it? There’s a lot?”
“There’s eleven million, more or less,” she said quietly. “But it isn’t the money. It’s mother, and it’s Dave.”
“Dave?”
“My brother. He’s to be married soon, a girl from—a very prissy family.”
I grinned. “I take it your brother doesn’t take after your dad.”
Little by little the story shaped itself. But there was something about it that did not quite fit. Her mother, I gathered, was just forty, a lush and lovely woman. She had been closemouthed, however, even when drinking, but somehow this one particular man had found out exactly who she was, and he had come to town, looked the situation over, and then moved in with his demands.
“She’s already given him money?”
“Several times…about four thousand dollars.”
She waited while the waitress filled our cups, then she said, “He’s not in it alone. There’s somebody else.”
“What did you want me to do?”
“Find out all who are involved. Get the evidence. Prints, proof, everything.”
COMMENTS: There is a nice reference to some of Louis’s personal travels hiding in this story. When he writes
…a house on the bluff above the road that wound around from the port to the Dutch Club.
Volume 1: Unfinished Manuscripts, Mysterious Stories, and Lost Notes from One of the World's Most Popular Novelists Page 15