He turned his horse at the fork of the road and headed for the Bar W. His own horse was there, and since Wald wouldn’t be needing this bay pony, he might need him out west there, Arizona way. He sure did aim to see that Grand Canyon down which flowed the Colorado. A mile deep, they said. Of course, that was a durned lie, but she might be pretty deep, at that.
Once, he glanced back over his shoulder. The girl was only a dim figure on the skyline.
“First thing we know,” he said to the bay pony, “she’d have me a-settin’ in church a-wearin’ a fried shirt. I’d shore be halter broke.”
The bay pony switched his tail and picked up its feet in an Injun trot, and the Sandy Kid broke into song, a gritty baritone that made the bay lay back its ears.
Oh, there was a young cowhand who used to go riding,
There was a young cowhand named Johnny
Go-day!
He rode a black pony an’ never was lonely,
For a girl never said to him, “Johnny, go ’way!”
West of Dry Creek
On a late afternoon of a bitterly cold day he returned to the hotel and to his room. There was a narrow bed, a straw mattress, an old bureau, a white bowl and pitcher, and on the floor a small section of rag rug. The only other article of furniture was a drinking glass.
Beaure, short for Beauregard, took off his boots with their run-down heels and stretched out on the bed with a sigh. He was dog-tired and lonely, with nothing to do but wait for the storm to blow itself out. Then he would ride a freight out of town to somewhere and hunt himself a job.
Two days ago he had been laid off by the Seventy-seven. After a summer of hard work he had but sixty-three dollars coming to him, and nobody was taking on hands in cold weather. It was head south or starve.
Beaure Hatch was twenty-two, an orphan since fourteen, and most of the time during those eight years he had been punching cows. Brute hard work and nothing to show for it but his saddle, bridle, an old Colt, and a .44-40 Winchester. Riding company stock all the time, he did not even own a horse.
The Spencer House was the town’s second-best hotel. It occupied a place midway between the Metropole, a place of frontier luxury, and the hay mow of the livery barn, where a man could sleep if he stabled his horse there.
When a man had time to kill in Carson Crossing he did it at the Metropole, but to hang out there a man was expected to buy drinks or gamble, and a few such days would leave Beaure broke and facing a tough winter. He crumpled the pillow under his head and pulled the extra blanket over him. It was cold even in the room.
It was late afternoon when he went to sleep with the wind moaning under the eaves, and when he awakened it was dark. Out-of-doors sounds told him it was early evening, and his stomach told him it was suppertime, yet he hesitated to leave the warmth of the bed for the chill of the room.
For several minutes he had been conscious of a low mumble of voices from beyond the thin wall, and then the sound broke into understandable words and he found himself listening.
“It ain’t so far to Dry Creek,” a man was saying, “otherwise I wouldn’t suggest it in weather like this. We’ll be in a rig and bundled warm.”
“Couldn’t we wait until the weather changes?” It was a girl’s voice. “I don’t understand why we should hurry.”
Irritation was obvious in the man’s reply. “This hotel ain’t no place for a decent girl, and you’ll be more comfortable out at the Dry Creek place. Big house out there, mighty well furnished.”
Beaure Hatch sat up in bed and began to build a smoke. It was twenty miles to Dry Creek through a howling blizzard … and when that man said there was a comfortable house on Dry Creek he was telling a bald-faced lie.
Beaure had punched cows along Dry Creek and in its vicinity all summer long, and in thirty miles there were two buildings. One was the Seventy-seven line shack where he had bunked with two other hands, and the other was the old Pollock place.
The Pollock ranch had been deserted for six or seven years, the windows boarded up. A man could see inside, all right, and it was still furnished, left the way it had been when old man Pollock went East to die. Everything was covered with dust, and it would be icy cold inside that big old place.
The well was working—he had stopped to water his horse not three days ago—but there was no fuel around, and no neighbors within fifteen miles.
It was no place to take a girl in midwinter after telling her what he just had … unless, and the thought jolted him, she was not expected to return.
“But why should we go now?” she was protesting, “and why don’t you want to talk to anyone? When I sell the place people will certainly know it.”
“I explained all that!” The man’s voice was rough with anger. “There’s folks want that range, and it’s best to get it settled before they can start a court action to prevent it. If you get tied up in a lawsuit it may be years before the estate is settled. And you say you need the money.”
“I should think so. It is all I have, and no relatives.”
“Then get ready. I’ll be back in half an hour.”
The door closed and after a long silence he could hear the girl moving around, probably getting dressed for the drive.
Beaure finished his cigarette and rubbed it out. It was not his business, but anybody driving to the old Pollock place on a night like this was a fool. It was nigh to zero now, with the wind blowing and snow in the air. A man with a good team and a cutter could make it all right … but for what reason?
Beaure got to his feet and combed his hair. He was a lean, broad-shouldered young man with a rider’s narrow body. He pulled on his shabby boots and shrugged into his sheepskin. Picking up his hat, he also made up his mind.
He hesitated at her door, then knocked. There was a sudden silence. “Is that you, Cousin Hugh?”
“No, ma’am, this here is Beauregard Hatch, ma’am, an’ I’d like a word with you.”
The door opened and revealed a slender young girl with large gray eyes in a heart-shaped face. Her dark auburn hair was lovely in the reflected lamplight.
“Ma’am, I’m in the next room to you, and I couldn’t help hearing talk about the old Pollock place. Ma’am, don’t you go out there, especially in weather like this. There ain’t been nobody on the ranch in years, and she’s dusty as all get-out. Nor is there any fuel got up. Why, ma’am, you couldn’t heat that ol’ house up in a week.”
She smiled as she might smile at a child. “You must be mistaken. Cousin Hugh says it is just as it was left, and of course, there is the housekeeper and the hands. Thank you very much, but we will have everything we need.”
“Ma’am,” he persisted, “that surely ain’t true. Why, I stopped by there only a few days ago, and peeked in through the boarded-up windows. There’s dust over everything, and pack rats have been in there. It ain’t none of my business, ma’am, but was I you, I’d sure enough ask around a mite, or wait until the weather breaks. Don’t you go out there.”
Her smile vanished and she seemed to be waiting impatiently for him to finish what he was saying. “I am sure you mean well, Mr. Hatch, but you must be mistaken. If that is all, I have things to do.”
She closed the door in his face and he stood there, feeling like a fool.
Gloomily, he walked down the hall, then down the steps into the lobby. The fire on the hearth did nothing to take the chill from the room. What the Spencer needed was one of those potbellied stoves like at the Metropole, one with fancy nickel all over it. Sure made a place look up—and warmer, too.
It was bitter cold in the street and the snow crunched under his boots. Frost nipped at his cheeks and he ducked his face behind the sheepskin collar. When he glimpsed Abram Tebbets’s sign, he knew what he was going to do.
Abram was tilted back in his swivel chair reading Thucydides. He glanced at Beauregard over his steel-rimmed spectacles, and lowered his feet to the floor. “Don’t tell me, young man, that you’ve run afoul of the law?”
“No, sir.” Beau
re turned his hat in his hand. “I reckoned I might get some information from you. I been savin’ a mite and figured I might buy myself a place, sometime.”
“Laudable.” Abram Tebbets picked a pipe from a dusty tray and began to stoke it carefully with a threatening mixture. “Ambition is a good thing in a young man.”
“Figured you might know something about the old Pollock place.”
Abram Tebbets continued to load his pipe without replying. Twice he glanced at Beaure over his glasses, and when he leaned back in his chair there was a subtle difference in his manner. Beaure, who could read sign like an Apache, noticed it. He had known Tebbets for more than a year, and it had been the lawyer who started him reading.
“Settin’ your sights mighty high, Beaure. That Pollock place could be sold right off, just anytime, for twenty thousand dollars. The Seventy-seven would like to own it, and so would a lot of others.”
“Who owns it now?”
“Heirs to old Jim Pollock. His granddaughter was named in the will, but she dropped out of sight a few years back, and it’s believed she died back East somewhere. If she doesn’t show up in a few weeks it goes to Len Mason, and after that to Hugo Naley.”
Beaure knew them both by sight, and Naley a little better than that. Mason lived in a small shack over on the Clearwater. He had been a prospecting partner of Jim Pollock’s when the latter first came west. Hugo Naley was foreman of the Slash Five. The granddaughter’s name, Tebbets informed him, was Nora Rand.
If he explained to Tebbets what he had overheard, Tebbets would advise him, and rightly, that it was none of his business and to stay out of it. Still, the old man might be able to help.
That girl had no business going out there alone, and he was not going to stand by and see her do it. He remembered Hugo Naley from the roundup. He was a burly, deep-voiced man with an arrogant, hard-heeled way about him, and the punchers had him down as a bad man to cross.
There was a jingle of bells in the street and Beaure turned quickly to look from the window, a fact not lost on Abram Tebbets. In the lights that fell from windows to the snow, Beaure saw it was a cutter containing two people. Beaure went down the stairs two steps at a time.
Abram Tebbets stepped past his chair into the living room of his apartment, and glanced from the window in time to see the cutter and its two passengers disappearing into the snow along the river road. At the distance and in the vague light there was no possibility of making them out. The horses and rig looked like one belonging to the livery barn.
The wind moaned under the eaves and snow swirled in the now-empty street. It was a bad night to be out.… Beaure Hatch was going into the livery stable.
Sighing, Tebbets put aside his pipe and shouldered into his buffalo coat. That Beaure was thinking of buying a place was logical—it was a thought that came to many cowhands, and Beaure was more canny than the average. That he had saved any money at his wages was ridiculous.
Crossing to the Metropole, Tebbets ordered a drink. “Has Len Mason been in?”
“Len? Ain’t seen him in a week or more. And not likely in this storm.”
Beaure Hatch was a quiet young cowpuncher and not inclined to go off on tangents. Tebbets tossed off half his whiskey and scowled at the glass.
“Suppose everybody will be staying out of town, and don’t know as I blame them.”
“Naley was in from the Five. He didn’t stay long.”
Hugo Naley … Scowling, Tebbets crossed to watch the checkers game. Dickerson was the station agent, and he had played checkers in the Metropole every night for years.
“Quiet,” he replied to Tebbets’s question. “No passengers today, and only three last night. A couple of hands returning from Denver and some girl … a pretty little thing.”
The big red horse Beaure rented from the livery stable had no liking for the storm, yet he forged ahead into the snow, evidently hopeful of a good bait of corn and a warm barn at the end of the trip.
The wind was stronger once clear of the town. Here and there it had swept the road free of snow, but there were drifts. The cutter had a good start and was making time. Beaure took out his muffler and tied it around his hat and under his chin, and with his collar around his ears, he could keep fairly warm.
After a while he dismounted and led the horse. His feet tingled with the cold that was in them. Only where the cutter went through a large drift were there visible tracks. Suppose they didn’t go to the Pollock place at all? Try as he might, Beaure could not think of an alternative along this road.
Beaure wiped the red horse’s eyes free of the snow that had gathered on his lids. It was bitter cold, and night had turned to solid blackness through which the wind howled and the blown snow snapped at the skin like tiny needles.
If Hugo Naley was planning to do away with the girl—and Beaure could think of no other reason for his lies—then he had chosen a perfect time. The girl would have been seen at the station and at the hotel, but it was unlikely anybody would think of her again.
She had taken her belongings, and nobody would have seen them leave town in this storm. If the girl never came back, who would there be to know?
But how could Naley hope to profit? Len Mason was due to inherit before Naley. Unless something happened to Mason, too. Living alone as he did, it might be weeks before anyone knew. Mason was nearly eighty, and he lived far out of town on a lonely part of the range. A number of times his friends had tried to get him to move to town. The girl was supposedly dead, and Mason’s death would surprise no one.
There was no question of seeing anymore. The snow was swirling all around, and all sense of direction was lost. He must have been traveling a couple of hours, and during the first hour he had made good time. He could be no more than ten miles from Carson Crossing now, which would put him in the midst of a broad plain. Roughly a mile ahead would be the first of the timber. If he could get into that timber, the trail would be well defined by the trees themselves.
He put the wind on his left side and pointed the horse straight ahead, keeping the wind against the left side of his face. Suddenly they were floundering among the drifts at the edge of the woods, and Beaure recognized a huge old lightning-struck cottonwood, and knew he was less than a mile from the Pollock house. Turning into the wind, he rode along the edge of the timber. He had not kept to the trail, but despite the storm had made good time. Through a break in the storm he glimpsed a dark bulk ahead, and turned his horse into the trees.
Here the blowing snow was less, the fury of the wind was cut down, and there were places where he found relatively little snow.
Beaure drew up, snuggling his cheek against the sheepskin collar. Now that he was here he had no idea what he meant to do or could do. Had they arrived? He saw no light.
Thrusting his hand inside the coat he felt for his six-gun, touching the butt lightly. He also had his Winchester in the scabbard with an old bandanna tied around it to keep the snow out. He had no desire to go up against Hugo Naley, yet he surely couldn’t allow anything to happen to that girl.
He sat in his saddle looking toward the Pollock house, and suddenly he began to feel foolish. Suppose he was wrong? Suppose Hugo had fixed the house up? Even had a fire going?
He peered through the snow. There was no smell of smoke, but in this wind it would be hard to tell.
There was a large stone stable, but that would be the very place Naley would head for. However, there was an old adobe out back where cowhands occasionally kept their horses and slept themselves when in the vicinity. It was back from the house, but it was tight, and there might even be a little hay.
Keeping under cover of the trees, Beaure Hatch rode north until he could cut across to the adobe. He opened the door and led his horse inside.
Suddenly, it was very still. He struck a match and looked around. The small building was dark and still. There was hay heaped in a corner, and there were four stalls in the small building. He led his horse into a stall, loosened the cinch, and put hay in
to the manger.
He took a handful of hay and rubbed his horse dry, and then peered out toward the house. No light was visible.
Suppose they had not even come here? Suppose Naley had taken her to his own place? He was owner of a small spread over at the head of Brush Canyon. No sooner had the idea occurred to Beaure than it was dismissed, for in this weather such a trip was not be considered.
He had been aware of a peculiar smell for several minutes, and now he struck another match and looked slowly around. He walked to the next stall and peered in. Nothing. Nor was there anything in any of the other stalls. Nevertheless, he did smell something, and suddenly he knew what it was—it was fresh earth.
He went quickly to the corner of the old barn where a door opened into the old lean-to behind it. This was the only place he had not looked.
Opening the door, he stepped in, and struck a match. Before him gaped a hole. It was six feet long, and all of six feet deep, and it was freshly dug. The top layers of frozen earth had been hacked away with a mattock, which stood nearby, alongside the shovel. And Beaure needed no second glance to recognize them. They were the tools he had often seen on Len Mason’s place. In fact, he had borrowed that shovel several times to help dig steers out of bogs, scooping mud away from their legs before pulling them out with a rope. He knew the scarred handle, the red spot on the end that Mason put on his tools to mark them against theft.
The match burned down to his fingers and he dropped it into the grave, for grave it was … or was intended to be.
He walked back through the darkness to the window and peered out at the snow-blanketed house. While he waited here, murder could be done.
But what about Len Mason? Was he in on it, too?
He shucked his gun and checked it, wetting his cold lips with his tongue. No getting around it, he was scared. He had never faced any man with a gun. He had never used a gun for anything but potshots at rabbits, and once he had killed a rabid coyote.
Thrusting the pistol back into its holster, he buttoned his coat and went out into the storm, closing the door behind him.
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 3 Page 36