Novel 1965 - The Key-Lock Man (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “Aren’t these wild horses?”

  “You bet they are—wild as they come. Ed came out on the wrong end of a fight with a grizzly. He was hunting a colt one of the mares had hidden and he found it the same time this she grizzly did. He wounded the bear and it charged him. He killed the bear, but it killed him, too.”

  “He must have been quite a man.”

  “He was all of that, and he never weighed over a hundred and thirty pounds, soaking wet. When that grizzly tackled that colt of his, he tackled Ed Linnett. Ed was all torn up by grizzly teeth and claws, but that bear had nine or ten stab marks in its hide where Ed got home with his hunting knife. Ed never did take to anything worrying his stock.”

  They rode along a wash that would intersect the one followed by the wild horses, going warily so as not to come suddenly upon the herd. And Matt Keelock was careful, even now, to check his back trail. Long ago he had learned the way to survive was to watch your back trail and keep a gun handy.

  He did not plan to try catching the golden stallion now. He only wanted to estimate the limits of its range, to find out its watering holes and its favorite grazing places. Most of all, he wanted the horses to become familiar with him, to get the idea that his presence did not imply danger.

  Twice, just before sundown, they were within half a mile or less, but each time they veered off, giving the stallion ample time to see them, and to know that he was seen. Head up, nostrils distended, he watched them as they rode by the last time, only a few hundred yards off.

  That night they camped in a cove of Hoskinini Mesa, their fire hidden from observation by the cove and its brush and boulders.

  During the night they heard the horses pass, pause in their passing to test the man smell, then walk on. One horse lingered after the others.

  “Now that one,” Matt said in a low voice, “that one might be a horse that’s just gone wild. Could be it remembers the smell of man and of woodsmoke.”

  Long after Kristina slept, Matt lay awake, looking up at the stars and thinking about the posse. They had been determined men, pursuing him for what they believed was rightful cause, and they would not soon give up. He fell asleep wondering what the next move would be.

  NOBODY IN FREEDOM or the country around wanted to make an enemy of Bill Chesney. They respected him for his energy, his honesty and courage, but were also aware that he was a hard man and an impatient one. He entered into everything with drive and purpose, and whatever needed to be done was done without delay if he had anything to do with it.

  Consequently, when Chesney came into the saloon the next morning, shortly after opening time, Sam was wary. Sam had tended bar and operated saloons long enough to know the smell of trouble, and he had caught the scent of it the night before.

  “Neerland been around?” Chesney asked.

  “Leave him alone, Bill. He’s trouble with a capital T.”

  Chesney threw him a hard look. “He’s trouble for that Key-Lock man.”

  “Maybe…and maybe for us.”

  Chesney ignored this. He had made up his mind and was not to be disputed. “You don’t have to like him. I ain’t seen that he’s runnin’ for any popularity contests.”

  “You puttin’ him up for town marshal?”

  “He wants it like that. If he catches that man I don’t care what he calls himself.”

  “I don’t like it, Bill.”

  Chesney looked at him irritably. “Maybe it just don’t matter what you like! You want to go chase him yourself?”

  Sam’s lips tightened, and abruptly he turned his back on Chesney. Yet a man had to make allowances. After all, Johnny had been Chesney’s friend, and a friend counted for something in this country.

  Taplinger came in, and after him, George Benson, and the two of them sat down at a table. Neither man spent much time around the saloon, and Sam had a good idea why they had come now. Chesney turned away from the bar and carried his drink to their table.

  Taplinger had built a house on the edge of town and had a few cattle running on the hills nearby. He talked of building a sawmill, but so far it had been just talk. George Benson was a partner in the general store, a self-important man who talked politics and let it be known that he had held office back east.

  Sam carried their drinks to the table and returned to the bar to pick up the glass he had been polishing. Mitchell would be the next one…and then they would start talking about a town marshal. He glanced out the window and down the narrow, dusty lane that led toward Hardin’s place. Now, why the hell wasn’t Hardin here? If ever the town of Freedom needed his quiet way and his brains, it was now.

  “Of course, we need a marshal,” Taplinger was saying. “There’s too many trouble-makers adrift these days. Look at that man who did the shooting the other day. Just a no-account drifter.”

  “I’m not too positive about that.” Benson took the cigar from his teeth. “Over at the store they said he ordered a big lot of supplies…a big lot.”

  Taplinger laughed. “George, you know better than that. Another minute or two and he’d have been asking credit. We have had too many of that kind around. It wouldn’t be as if he owned something about the country.”

  Joe Mitchell came in and went to their table. He ordered a beer and leaned his skinny forearms on the table. “That there man of yours, Chesney. You reckon he’s right for the job?”

  Chesney glanced at him. “He’s asked for it. He sizes up like a tough man in any crowd.”

  Sam put a glass on the back bar, and looked out the window and down the street. Where was Hardin? Or even Neill. Neill didn’t stampede, he would say that for him, and he had a way of resisting without making an issue of it.

  John Ware was out of town, over at Prescott, and John would not stand for this, Sam was thinking, not for a minute. It was a foolish thing to do…there had been no trouble here the townspeople couldn’t handle.

  Only occasionally could Sam hear a word, but he could guess at those he did not hear. Well, he might make an enemy of Bill Chesney and he certainly would make one of Neerland, but he was going to cast his vote against it. The worst of it was, according to the town laws they had drawn up, only a third of the property owners need be present to vote on any issue affecting the town itself, and that meant just twelve men were needed to appoint a marshal. And with Taplinger, Chesney, Mitchell, and Benson to head the list, the others could be found.

  Short and McAlpin came into the saloon then and went to the bar. Chesney called to them.

  “Later,” Short said. He looked over at Sam. “Give me that bottle.”

  Sam pushed the bottle and two glasses over the bar. He nodded toward the table. “I don’t like that deal. I don’t like it a damn’ bit.”

  Short shrugged. “What the hell? It’s no skin off your nose.”

  Taking the bottle, he went with McAlpin to another table. Sam saw Short drawing a design upon the table-top. He held a pencil in his fingers, and he was making an X. “Now right there,” he was saying, “is Mormon Well. If we…” Short’s voice lowered and Sam could hear no more. Nor did he need to hear more. It was the Lost Wagons again.

  Chesney came over to the table. “Damn it, Short!” he said. “I want to talk to you, I want—”

  “I know what you want. You want to make Neerland town marshal and let him go man-hunting. All right, you’ve got my vote.”

  “Mine, too,” McAlpin said.

  Chesney turned on his heel and went back to his own table. Sam had listened and heard.…Where the devil was Hardin?

  Chapter 7

  MATT KEELOCK MADE his plans with care. He wanted that golden stallion and he wanted some of the mares, so he held aloof, letting them become used to his presence, and he studied their grazing and watering habits. Within a week he knew the track of each of the herd. He had killed an antelope on the first day, a deer on the fourth.

  He and Kristina were never apart. She rode beside him, hunted beside him. The whiteness left her skin and it became brown under the wi
nd and the sun. The wilderness began to give her its awareness; she began to feel that its stillness was a part of her. Far, far behind her now were the places in Europe that she had known. She scarcely thought of them any more, so demanding and so exciting was the day-to-day living.

  On the tenth day, their coffee gone, they rode back to the camp in the canyon near the great ruin.

  For a long time Keelock studied the place before they approached it. He skirted the cliffs, looking down into the basin from every aspect, searching for anyone who might have hidden near by. Only after some hours did he descend into the canyon, and then he went alone.

  They packed their things, and after that was done he left the pack animals and rode alone to the mouth of the canyon. Where it opened into Marsh Pass he dismounted, changed to moccasins, and walked down to the trail to check on the travel.

  The tracks were few, mostly those of Indian ponies or wild horses, and he had turned to go back when he saw a boot print, the mark of a large, heavy man. Near by were the hoof marks of a shod horse…a freshly shod one.

  The traveler had paused there, dismounted, waiting and no doubt listening. He had then ridden on along Marsh Pass.

  Keelock had never seen Neerland’s tracks, but he had a feeling these were his. The weight and height were about right—the man’s height estimated by the length of his stride. When Matt returned to his horse he walked on rocks, careful to leave no tracks behind.

  Kristina was standing waiting when he came up the trail. She came to him quickly.

  “Out there,” he gestured, “I saw some tracks. I think they belong to Oskar Neerland.”

  “Will he find us?”

  Keelock shrugged. “Maybe he’ll find the camp. There’s too much sign there. But he won’t find our trail out of it, not unless he’s a tracker of ghosts. I fixed the lower part of the trail, made a blind over the approach…it looks as if it’s been undisturbed for years. And there’s no way to leave a track on the rock of the trail itself.”

  THEY RODE STEADILY north until they were back in the domain of the golden stallion, and they camped that night on Moonlight Creek near the point of rocks. Those rocks, in a vast jumble, stretched away to the north, to the San Juan and beyond. Westward the land was gathering shadows as they built their fire.

  Taking her arm, Matt pointed to the west where, a dozen miles away, a vast bulk blocked off their horizon. “No Man’s Mesa,” he said. “The highest part is a good thousand feet above the country around, and the cliffs are nowhere less than five hundred feet high.

  “It’s all of nine miles long, and from a quarter of a mile to a mile and a half wide on top. They call it No Man’s Mesa because there’s supposed to be no way to the top. I think there is a way. If we get separated, you go to the western side. A bit over two-thirds of the way along there’s a place I want to try. Stop where the cliff curves away toward the east. I’ll meet you there.”

  The next morning they saw the stallion, saw him suddenly, and close up.

  They were riding westward, passing Organ Rock, when the stallion emerged from a draw and scrambled up the bank. He stopped, head up, nostrils distended, not fifty yards away. Had they been out on a flat, or at least on good ground, Matt might have tried to make a catch right there. A quick run and a good cast of the rope and he might have him. On the other hand, the slope was soft sand and the ground bad for running. His horse might break a leg, and if he failed to make his catch, all the work leading up to this would be lost.

  The sheer magnificence of the stallion arrested him. At close range he was even more splendid than at a distance. He was the color of a bright gold coin with a splash of white across the hips, the white flecked with spots of gold. He had a white nose and three white anklets. His neck was arched, his head held proudly.

  He stood, ears up, looking at Matt and Kristina. His mares, following swiftly, came up out of the draw and drew up around him.

  For just an instant the tableau held. “Hello, boy,” Matt said. “Want to make friends?”

  The horse tossed his head, and then with a snort, led the way by a devious path through the rocks and into the open again, the mares trailing close behind. Of the other horses following, several were young stallions, but whether mares or stallions, they were fine stock. The stallions, Matt noticed, trailed at a respectful distance.

  As they disappeared into the flatland below, Matt glanced at Kristina. “What do you think?” he said. “Is it worth it?”

  “It is,” Kristina answered softly, “it really is! Oh, Matt, isn’t he wonderful!”

  Together, they trailed along behind the horses, moving at a fast walk.

  “Kris,” Matt said, “there’s a story about some lost wagons in this country, and all the gold they are supposed to contain. Well, they can have it. All I want is that stallion and a couple of those mares.”

  He drew up suddenly, sharply, swinging his horse to stop hers from moving further. Her eyes, already accustomed to looking for trail sign, followed his.

  In front of them, partly obliterated by the passage of the wild herd, were the tracks of three shod horses, and they were fresh tracks.

  “Made last night,” he said. “Kris, we’ve got to get under cover.”

  Wheeling his buckskin, he rode back along the trail made by the mustangs as they left the draw. He back-trailed them swiftly, following the draw, with Kris and the pack mules close behind.

  The followed the trail back, then cut off and rode westward along the base of Hoskinini Mesa and into the mouth of Copper Canyon. Turning there, they looked back, but there was no dust, no evidence of movement in all the wide country that lay there in their view.

  “Three men,” he said, “on freshly shod horses.”

  “Are they looking for us?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  For a long while they watched the plain, and then, riding up Copper Canyon, Matt cut off to the westward. By early afternoon they had made camp in Cattle Canyon under the towering rim of Piute Mesa.

  Over a small fire, in a sheltered place among the rocks and brush, Kristina broiled venison while he rubbed down their horses and scouted the country around them.

  “Matt, tell me about the Lost Wagons,” she said when they were ready to eat.

  “All right.” But what he said then was, “Kris, I think one of those men made the same tracks I saw in Marsh Pass. We’ve got to hole up somewhere and wait it out.”

  “We haven’t much to eat.”

  “No…can you stick it?”

  She smiled. “Of course, Matt. As long as you can.”

  When they had eaten they put out the fire and drew back into a thick nest of rocks to which there was no easy approach. In a hollow, they picketed their horses.

  “About Lost Wagons,” he said when they had settled down. “It’s an old story. The West is filled with buried treasure of one kind or another, and some of it has been found. In any country where there is danger, as from the Indians, or where folks have to travel light and fast, they are apt to bury gold or whatever they treasure. Sometimes the owners get killed, and sometimes they lose their nerve. Gold can look almighty nice, but a few hundred miles of sun-blistered desert full of Apaches can look mean enough to take the shine off the gold.

  “There were seventeen men started out of California with two carts and six mules to each cart, which was a-plenty. All seventeen had saddle horses, and all were seasoned, well-armed men. In the carts, aside from provisions of one sort or another, they had a lot of gold.

  “How much? Well, it was enough. Nobody rightly knows now how much it was, because those stories grow mighty fast. The gold was in bars, and there were several sacks of nuggets, and of Spanish and French coins.

  “They lost a man near the Colorado. Mohaves killed him. Somewhere near what is now Beale Springs another one died. He’d been poorly, and he caught an arrow in the fight near the Colorado, but nobody expected him to die.

  “They could see San Francisco peaks off to the northeast, and w
ere getting set to bed for the night when a party of Coyotero Apaches closed in on them. It was a three-day fight, and the whites lost another man and had a couple wounded, but not bad.

  “That night one of the wounded men died, and nobody expected him to go, either. By now they were getting worried. They had some bad country ahead and they needed every man; but what worried them most was those two men dying, unexpectedly, like that. There just didn’t seem any way to account for it, and they were getting superstitious.

  “With just thirteen men left, hampered by the slow movements of the carts, they were in trouble, and they knew it. The other wounded man was well enough to ride, although he was carrying one arm in a sling. But he was a scared man, Kris. Two wounded men had died, and he was scared…and he had a right to be.

  “Three good days of travel they had, without incident, and then that other wounded man died during the night. One of the party, a Frenchman named Valadon, was keeping a journal, and when he was fixing to bury the body he noticed a tiny spot of blood in one ear. He touched it, and found the end of a wire, like. Somebody had murdered that wounded man by pushing a needle-like piece of steel through his brain. Inside his ear like that, it could have gone unnoticed. So far as Valadon was concerned, that accounted for the deaths of the others, too. And it was being done by somebody in the company.”

  “How long ago was this, Matt?”

  “Fifteen—maybe sixteen years ago. That’s a long time, out here. Anyway, Valadon was scared, and he said as much in that journal. The murderer could be any one of them, and of course, nobody had to look for a motive. It was the gold.

  “He told them at the fire that night. He laid it out before them all, telling them one of them was a murderer. The next morning, they went on, but by that time nobody trusted anyone else.

  “Valadon and another man were scouting ahead when they saw the Coyoteros. They were some distance off, and there was a large party. He didn’t know if they had been seen, so they slipped away quickly to warn the others.