The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 3

by Louis L'Amour

  “I’ll look,” Sandy said. “I’ve heard about the fightin’ this mornin’.”

  “You be careful,” Kilkenny warned. “Poke Dunning is handy with a gun.”

  “I know him,” Sandy said shortly. “We had trouble over some strays, once. He’s right handy with a runnin’ iron, too.”

  Where to look for Lona was the next thing. While he was looking for her he had to be cautious not to run afoul of Mailer. The man was dangerous, and he would be doubly so now.

  “Night and day,” Kilkenny told Cain and Brigo, “one of you be around. Never let up.”

  In the morning Kilkenny mounted the buckskin. He returned to the house at Blue Hill and scouted around, but the profusion of tracks told him nothing. Working the trail a bit farther out proved helpful in that he found the tracks of several riders. They seemed to be scouting around some and he figured they were out looking for the lost girl, same as he was. Their tracks had obliterated the original trail and so he followed them quickly, covering ground as fast as possible.

  He had stopped at a well due west of Chimney Rock when he saw a rider approaching. It was Sandy. His face was drawn and gray. “Been ridin’,” he said. “Rusty is out, too. An’ that Flynn.”

  “How is he?”

  “In no shape, but he won’t quit. Head poundin’ like a drum, I can tell. Pale around the gills. We tracked Poke as far as Monument Rock, then lost him. Other tracks wiped his out.”

  “The posse, maybe?”

  “I reckon.” Sandy wiped his chin after a long drink. “Maybe they got him.”

  “If they found him, somebody is dead.” Kilkenny knew the men. “They didn’t like it even when I stopped them hanging the wrong men. They wanted an eye for an eye.”

  “Dunning won’t be taken easy,” Sandy said. “Where you headin’?”

  “Northeast. Look,” he added, “why don’t you swing back and follow the posse tracks? If they turn off the route back to Aztec, you’ve got a lead.”

  Sandy turned his bronc. “See you,” he said, and cantered off.

  Kilkenny wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. His eyes were dark with worry. Someplace in these bleak hills that girl was with Dunning. Someplace Mailer lurked. Neither was pleasant to think of. He swung into the saddle and glanced northeast. The tower of Chimney Rock loomed against the sky, beyond it the mountains, and there was a trail into them by that route. He turned the buckskin.

  He rode with a Winchester across his saddle, his eyes searching every bit of cover, his ears and eyes alert. He saw nothing, heard nothing.

  On a point of rocks near Eagle Nest Arroyo, Frank Mailer, his face covered with a stubble of coarse black beard, watched Kilkenny riding north through his glasses, and he swore softly. Twice, the gunfighter had been close to him, and each time Mailer had held off rather than dare a confrontation. Being on the dodge had him worried, for too long he’d lived the easy life at Blue Hill, taking off to do jobs outside the territory but always with the safety of Dunning’s ranch to return to if things got bad. He had learned of what had happened, knew of the end of Sam Starr and Socorro. He had found the body of Poke Dunning, lynched for the crimes that he, Mailer, had committed, but strangely he felt depressed. There was the man that he had wanted dead, and he was dead. He had the nine thousand dollars from the Aztec bank, a good horse, and a beltful of ammunition. But the good old days were gone. The hanging of Poke Dunning affected him as nothing else had; there was an inevitableness about it that frightened him.

  Frank Mailer, six feet five in his socks and weighing over two hundred and fifty pounds, walked back to his gray horse. He stood with a hand on the pommel, and something was gone out of him. For the first time since he was a youngster, he was really on the dodge. He was running.

  Poke had run, too, and it hadn’t done him any good. Dunning had beat the game for years, and now look at him. Somehow it always caught up with you. Frank Mailer heaved himself into the saddle and turned his horse across country.

  The sight of Dunning’s body had even driven the lush beauty of Nita Riordan from his mind. He rode on, sullen and dazed; for the first time he had a feeling of being hemmed in, trapped.

  Kilkenny was hunting something; was it him? Now there was something he could do. He could seek out a showdown with Kilkenny and beat him. There was a deep, burning resentment against the man. If he had stayed out of it, all would have been well.

  A mere half dozen miles north, Kilkenny rounded a sandstone promontory and saw just beyond a horseman picking his way over the rounded gray stones and gravel of a wash. The man looked up and waved. It was Sandy again. “Found her,” he said when they were closer. “Flynn found her. She was tied in a shack back in the hills. Dunning left her there with water and a little grub. Never saw nothin’ like it. She was tied in the middle of the ’dobe with ropes running around her body an’ off in all four directions. She couldn’t move an inch one way or the other, an’ couldn’t get free, but she had her hands loose. Those ropes were made fast in the walls an’ windows, knots so far away she couldn’t reach ’em. She picked at one of the ropes until her fingers were all raw, tryin’ to pull it apart.”

  “She’s all right?”

  “I reckon so. They took her to Blue Hill.” Sandy eyed him thoughtfully. “Dunning left her the day before yesterday. You ain’t seen him?”

  “No. Nor Mailer.”

  “I’m headin’ home.” Sandy was regretful. “The boss will be raisin’ hell. See you.” He turned his horse, then glanced back. “Luck,” he said.

  Kilkenny sat his horse for a moment, then turned and started south again. Now he was hunting Mailer, not to kill him, unless he had to, but to make sure he was gone, out of the country, before he relaxed his guard.

  “He will want to see,” Kilkenny told Buck. “If he’s on the dodge but hasn’t left the country, he’ll have headed for the ridgelines.”

  Shadows grew long and crawled up the opposite wall of the mountains, and Kilkenny turned aside, and in a hollow in the rocks, he bedded down. He built no fire, but ate a little jerked beef and some hardtack before crawling into his blankets.

  He was out at dawn, and had gone only a few miles when he saw the tracks of a big horse cutting across his trail. A big horse … to carry a big man. Kilkenny turned the buckskin abruptly. He had no doubt that this was Frank Mailer’s horse. It was rough terrain into which the trail was leading, country that offered shelter for an ambush. Yet he followed on, taking his time, following the sign that grew more and more difficult. A bruised branch of sage, a scratch on a rock, a small stone rolled from its place, leaving the earth slightly damp where it had rested but a short time before. Once he saw a scar atop a log lying across the trail where a trailing hoof had struck, knocking the loose bark free and leaving a scar upon the bark and the tiny webs in the cracks beneath the bark.

  It was a walking trail. Whether Mailer knew he was tracked or not, once in the mountains he had been exceedingly careful, and it could not be followed at a faster pace than a walk. Sometimes Kilkenny had to halt, searching for the line of travel, but always there was something, and his keen eyes read sign where another might have seen nothing, and they pushed on.

  Kilkenny drew up, and sitting his horse close against a clump of piñon, he rolled a smoke. His mouth tasted bad and his hair was uncombed. He squinted his eyes against the morning glare of the sun and studied the hills before him. He put the cigarette in his lips and touched a match to it, feeling the hard stubble of beard on his chin as he did so. His shirt felt hot and had the sour smell of stale sweat from much riding without time to change. He felt drawn and hard himself, and he worked his fingers to get the last of the morning damp out of them.

  Then he rode out and he met the hard, flat sound of a rifle shot and felt the whip of it, barely ahead of his hat brim. He left the saddle, Winchester in hand, but there was no further shot. Staring up at the rocks, his eyes hard and narrow, he waited. There was no sound.

  The warm morning sun lay lazily
upon the sandstone and sage; a lizard came out from under a rock, and darted over another rock that was green with copper stain and paused there. Lying where he was, Kilkenny could see the beat of its tiny heart against its side. Then something flickered and he saw a vanishing leg and fired quickly, the .44 thundering in the depths of the canyon.

  Chips flew from the rock where the leg had vanished and from the opposite side of the rock where his second shot had struck. Then he heard the sound of a running horse, and he came out and climbed into the saddle.

  In a few minutes he had found the trail. A big horse carrying a heavy man and running swiftly. He moved after it, riding more warily now, knowing that Mailer knew he was on the trail, and that from now on it would be doubly hard.

  He forded Coal Mine Creek, carrying little water now, and headed for the five-hundred-foot wall of the Hogback, a high, serrated ridge biting with its red saw teeth at the brassy sky. Then, suddenly, as though in a painting, horse and man were outlined sharp against the sky. An instant only, but Kilkenny’s rifle leaped to his shoulder and the shot cracked out, echoing and reechoing from the wall of the Hogback. Kilkenny saw the horse stumble, then go down, and the man spring clear. He fired again, but knew he had missed.

  Coming up through the brush, he dismounted near the fallen horse and returned his rifle to its boot. The Hogback reared above him in a brown and broken-toothed height that offered a thousand places of concealment. Kilkenny dug into his saddlebags and got out his moccasins. Leaving his boots slung on the pommel, he moved out after Mailer on foot.

  There was no way of telling how he had gone, or where. Yet Kilkenny moved on, working his way in among the boulders. Then, at a momentary pause, he saw some birds fly up and directed his course that way, but working to get a little higher on the cliff. He was on a narrow ledge, some seventy feet above the jagged rocks below, when he heard a low call. Startled, he looked up, to see Mailer on a ledge some fifty yards higher ahead of him.

  The man was smiling, and as he smiled he lifted his pistol. Kilkenny drew left-handed and snapped a shot. It was a fast draw and the shot was more to move Mailer than with the expectation of a hit. Mailer lunged sidewise and his own shot clipped the rocks above Kilkenny and spat dirt and gravel into his face.

  A small landslide had scoured out a hollow in the mountain, and Kilkenny started up it. The climb was steep and a misstep might send him shooting all the way to the bottom, but the soft moccasins gave him a good toehold. When he reached the higher ledge he was panting and winded.

  The sun was blazing hot here, and even the rocks were hot under his hands. The burned red sandstone was dotted with juniper and it broke off in a steep slope. Steep, but not a cliff. He moved up behind a juniper and studied the mountain carefully. All was hot and still. Sweat smarted his eyes and he rubbed them out, then mopped the sweat from his brow and cheeks.

  Overhead, an optimistic buzzard circled in widening sweeps. Far away over the valley that lay in the distance was Blue Hill. Almost due west was Salt Creek. A thin trail of smoke lifted near the town. Below, the terrain was broken into canyons and arroyos, and the color shaded from the deep green of the juniper to the gray-green of sage, and from the pale pinks and yellows of the faded sand to the deep burned reds and magentas of the rock.

  Some thirty yards away a tree had died and the dry white bones of its skeleton lay scattered in a heap. Nearby a pack rat had built a mound of branches in a clump of manzanita. Kilkenny pulled his hat brim down to shade his eyes and moved out cautiously, walking on his cat feet across the mountainside.

  Ahead of him a startled jackrabbit suddenly sprang from the ground and charged full tilt right at him. Kilkenny whirled aside and felt the blast of a bullet by his face. He started forward, running swiftly, and saw Frank Mailer spring up, gun in hand. Mailer fired and missed, and Kilkenny’s shot blasted … too quick, but it cut through Mailer’s shirt and then the man dove for him.

  Kilkenny fired again, but whether he scored or not he had no idea, for he sprang forward and smashed a driving blow to Mailer’s face. The punch was a wicked one and it caught the big man lunging in, caught the corner of his mouth and tore the flesh, so that Mailer screamed. Then he wheeled and grabbed Kilkenny’s throat, wrenching him backward. Lance Kilkenny kicked his feet high and went over with Mailer, the sudden yielding carrying the big man off balance. Both went down and Mailer came up, clawing for his pistol, and Kilkenny drew his left-hand gun and fired. Mailer went to his knees, then grabbed wildly and caught Kilkenny’s ankle. As Lance came down he lunged to his feet and dove for shelter in a nest of boulders. Flat on the ground, Kilkenny crawled to retrieve his gun, then loaded the empty chambers. Then he saw blood on the ground, two bright crimson stains, fresh blood!

  A shot kicked dirt in his teeth and he spat it out and shot back, then lunged to his feet, his own position being too exposed, and sprang for the rocks and shelter.

  He lit right into Mailer and the big man came up with a grunt and chopped for Kilkenny’s skull with a pistol barrel. Bright lights exploded in his head and he felt his knees melting under him and slashed out with his own pistol, laying it across Mailer’s face. He hit ground, heard an explosion, and Mailer fell on him.

  Panting, bloody, and drunk with fury and pain, Frank Mailer leaped to his feet and stood swaying, a thin trickle of blood coming from a blue hole under his collarbone. He lunged at Kilkenny.

  Exhausted, beaten, and punch-drunk himself, Kilkenny swung wildly and his fist connected with a sound like a rifle shot striking mud, and Mailer stopped, teetered, and fell.

  Kilkenny backed up, his chest heaving, his lungs screaming for air, his skull humming with the blow he had recently taken. He caught up a gun and turned just as Mailer rolled on his back, a gun also in his hand. Both guns bellowed at once, and Kilkenny was knocked back on his heels, but as he staggered he pulled his gun down and fired again.

  Where Mailer’s ear had been there was blood, and the big man, seemingly indestructible, was getting up. With a wild, desperate kind of fury, Kilkenny flung himself on the rising man, and he heard guns bellowing, whether his own or Mailer’s or both, he did not know, and then Mailer rolled free and fell away from the boulders. Slowly, ponderously, at each roll seemingly about to stop, the big man’s body rolled over and over down the slope.

  Fascinated, Kilkenny stared after him. Suddenly the man caught himself, and then, as if by magic, he got his hands under him. Something inside of Kilkenny screamed, No! No! and then he saw Mailer come to his feet, still gripping a gun.

  Mailer swayed drunkenly and tried to fire, but the gun was empty. His huge body, powerful even when shot and battered, swayed but remained erect. Then, fumbling at his belt for cartridges, he began, like a drunken man trying to thread a needle, to load his gun. Kilkenny stared at him in astonishment, his own mind wandering in a sort of a sunlit, delirious world. Mailer faced him and the gun lifted, and Kilkenny felt the butt of his own gun jump and Mailer’s hips jerked back grotesquely and he went up on his tiptoes. Then his gun spat into the gravel at his feet and he fell facedown on the slope.

  When Kilkenny opened his eyes again, it was dark and piercing cold. A long wind moaned over the mountaintop and he was chilled to the bone. He was very weak and his head hummed. How badly he was wounded he had no idea, but he knew he could stand little of this cold.

  Near the pack rat’s nest he found some leaves that crackled under his touch. And shivering with such violence that his teeth rattled and his fingers could scarcely find the matches, he struck and pushed the match into the leaves. The flames caught and in a moment the nest was crackling and blazing.

  He knew he had been hit once, and perhaps twice. He had a feeling he was badly wounded, and how long he could survive on this mountaintop he did not know. He did know that it was in view of Salt Creek, if anyone happened to be outside. The flames caught the gray, dead wood and blazed high and he lay there, watching the inverted cone of flame climbing up toward the stars, filled with a blank cold and
emptiness.

  Finally, as the fire died and its little warmth dissipated, he turned and crawled back among the boulders and lay there, panting hoarsely and shivering again with cold.

  When he got his eyes open again, the sky was faintly gray. He could distinguish a few things around him and there were here and there a few scattered sticks. He got them together with a handful of grass and put them on the coals of last night’s fire, then cupped his hands above the small flame. He felt a raw, gnawing pain in his side and his face was stiff and his hands were clumsy. Overhead, a few stars paled and vanished like moths flying into smoke, and he added another small stick and felt for his gun. It was gone. He moved, scraping the fire along until he was beneath the dead tree. Slowly he built up the fire around its dried-out trunk, and as it caught he rolled backward, away from the flames. He lay there as the white branches went up in a rush of smoke and flame, and as he passed out he prayed for help.

  His eyes flickered open again at a sun-brightened world and he saw a huge turkey buzzard hunched in a tree not fifty yards away. He yelled and waved an arm, but the buzzard did not move. It sat there, waiting, and then its head came up, and it launched itself on lazy wings and floated off over the desert.

  Kilkenny lay still, staring up into the brassy vault of the sky, his mind floating in a half-world between delirium and death. Out of it floated a voice, saying, “Here’s a hat!”

  And then another voice. “They can’t be up there! It ain’t reasonable!”

  There was a long silence, and suddenly his eyes flashed open. That was no delirium! Somebody was searching! Hunting for him! He tried to call out, but his voice would muster no strength, and then he gathered himself, and picking up a small stick from near the fire, he threw it.

  “He’s got to be here. You saw all that smoke an’ that’s Buck down there, an’ where you find that horse he ain’t far away!”