The Lawless West

by Louis L'Amour

  It brought out another frantic effort. That effort did not avail to unseat the rider. And so Jack Trainor paid the price, swung into the saddle, and jogged onto the long East Road.

  “I’ve seen good riding,” said Joe Bigot, “but I never dreamed that a man could stay on a horse when a horse done what the bay has just finished doing.”

  “Bah!” Jack Trainor grinned. “This hoss means mighty well when it comes to bucking, but he ain’t been rode enough to get any practice in fancy bucking. And it takes practice to make a good bucker, just the way it takes practice to make a man a good shot.”

  “There’s exceptions to that.”

  “There are?”

  “I know one man who’s a dead shot, but he never practices hardly at all.”

  “You know such a man?”

  “Larry Haines. He can shoot as straight as an eagle looks. He never misses. But he ain’t had much practice.”

  “I’d like to meet up with him,” said Jack slowly. “I’ve heard such a lot about him that I’d like to meet up with him. These dead shots…I’ve heard about ’em here and there, but I’ve never seen ’em pan out when it came to a showdown. Maybe this Larry Haines will be different.”

  Such was the mood in which they started. But as they journeyed on, and day after day, they struck farther and farther into the green heart of the cattle ranges of Canada, and Jack stopped pondering the question of Haines and the girl. He was too much occupied with the beauty of the country through which they were traveling.

  “We’ll go first,” said Joe, “straight for the hill that looks over the town. It ain’t very high, but it’s high enough to give us a look over the country.”

  And so, on the last day, they struck for the hill, and, when they came in view of it, they could plainly make out, upon the top, the forms of two riders sitting their horses quietly there. Those forms grew into a woman and a man and these in turn grew more and more distinct, until Joe Bigot uttered a shout and spurred his horse into full speed.

  “It’s Alice!” he cried. “Come on, Jack!”

  Now there was enough speed in the long legs of the bay colt to lay a circle around the big gray, but Jack Trainor held his mount in. He felt that it was too important a crisis simply to be rushed upon.

  And so the face of the girl grew out slowly upon him until at length, with a cry of excitement, she started her horse on to meet her lover. Then Jack Trainor knew that the test would be even grimmer than he had expected, for she was far more lovely than the photograph had been able to hint.

  Chapter 7

  He passed the two at a trot. They were in a flurry of exclamations and laughter, and even big Joe Bigot seemed to have found his tongue. For that matter, Jack Trainor declared to himself that she would have roused a dying man to eloquence and foolishness. Another great question was settled in his mind. How would she greet the big trapper when he came down to her? After the letters that had been poured upon her, how would she reconcile their eloquence—and Jack felt that they were eloquent indeed—with the slow-moving mind of the big man? One glance at her excited face as he moved past the two settled that matter. She was thinking of nothing except that he had returned to her. There was no doubt about him in any respect.

  But, in the meantime, the attention of Jack began to center around another figure, the companion of Alice Cary who had remained in the background. One glance at that sallow, handsome face, now strangely pinched and drawn as he looked down upon the girl greeting Bigot, and Jack felt sure that he had an answer to the riddle. It was Larry Haines, the invincible fighter, the sullen and dark-minded youth.

  He saw Larry, now, produce the makings and roll a cigarette in spite of the blowing wind and the emotion that, Jack guessed, would have reduced any other man to trembling. The cigarette was lighted despite the gale, and then, as the issuing cloud of smoke hung for a moment and was dashed by the breeze, Jack Trainor came up to the smoker.

  “Only the lucky ones,” said Jack with great good cheer, “have someone waiting for them, eh?”

  Larry Haines turned toward him with an indecipherable expression.

  “That sounds as though it might be true,” he said. “Are you a friend of Joe’s?”

  “Just met him when he was coming down out of the hills. We drifted this way together.”

  “That’s a pretty long drift, eh?” suggested Larry Haines.

  “All depends,” answered Jack. “It’s long for some and short for some…I mean, for those that keep moving and don’t care much where they get.”

  “I don’t know that kind,” replied Haines coldly.

  “That’s your misfortune,” answered Jack in the same tone. “Those that keep moving like the road. They can’t see any point in standing still the rest of a man’s life.”

  He was disliking Haines heartily. He could gather from the expression of the other that the feeling was mutual. That distaste seemed founded upon nothing but chance. In the meantime, Joe and the girl had come slowly up the hill toward them, and Trainor gave his attention to the young couple.

  Alice Cary was obviously entirely happy. They had been talking about everything—nothing. She had had no chance to make comparisons or conduct an investigation. As for Joe Bigot, the big man was actually trembling with joy. And now and again he fixed upon Trainor a glance that was burning with gratitude.

  The smile with which she acknowledged her introduction to Jack Trainor went through and through him, and then he found that she and Bigot and Haines and he were riding four abreast down the hill and toward the little red-roofed village in the distance. On the way Jack thought to himself: She’s sharp as a fox, for all of her careless ways. And Haines is sharp as a fox. Between them, it will be a close squeeze if they don’t find out the truth. The thing for me to do is simply to get out of the town before they find any clues to work on. That would be the finish of poor Joe with the girl. And, no matter how beautiful she may be, he’s too good for her.

  He was roused from this meditation by the voice of the girl saying: “Look at that tree yonder. What sort of a tree is it, Joe? But see the way it’s budding, just like points of light on the tips of the twigs. I’ll never see a tree bud after this, Joe, without thinking of something that you said about it.”

  Larry Haines twisted his head sharply toward Bigot. The idea of Bigot’s having said something about budding trees apparently stunned him.

  “Something I said? I don’t remember,” said Joe innocently.

  The girl frowned. Had she not been in the saddle, she would probably have stamped, Jack decided. She did not want to go further into the matter. It was a reference Joe, if he were a true lover, should have caught up at once like a burning brand passed to him. It should have set him on fire, and now it seemed that he did not even remember having said it.

  “Not said…but something you wrote. I suppose that’s the same thing,” said Alice Cary.

  Her smile was a thin veneer over her anger, it seemed to observant Jack Trainor.

  “I disremember,” said Joe Bigot as heavily as before.

  In the cabin in the mountains, he had formed the habit of looking to Jack for counsel whenever he was mentally cornered by a difficulty. Now his eye rolled toward his friend again, and the flash of Trainor’s glance brought him up with an almost visible start.

  “In a letter,” he said. “Yes, I sort of vaguely remember it.”

  This brought a dark frown to the forehead of Alice, for it was something that he should more than casually remember. If it had been an utterance out of his soul, as it had seemed, it should never be forgotten.

  Jack Trainor, gnawing his lips with anxiety at one side of the little troop, remembered it well enough.

  “It was about the winter being like night, and the spring being like day, and the budding of the trees the sunshine of the day…it was something like that,” said the girl. “I thought it was beautiful, Joe.”

  Joe stirred under her reproachful glance, and then, feeling the ferret-like glance of La
rry Haines upon him, he turned a bright crimson.

  But Jack Trainor knew that there was a vital part of the simile left out—the part that referred to her in the same breath with the buds. It had been a comparison that had come out of his heart, seeing the faint smile of the girl in the photograph play like sunshine indeed in the dark, cold interior of the cabin. But now there was danger ahead in very fact. The suspicions of Larry Haines must be by this time fully aroused. No matter how the girl may have passed over the eloquence of her big lover and accepted it as real, Larry Haines would instantly know that Joe was perfectly incapable of saying such a thing as this—of conceiving such fanciful and complicated figures of speech.

  But Haines said not a word to attempt to draw a confession from Joe. For that, Trainor respected his prowess and feared him the more. A man capable of playing a waiting game is always to be dreaded when it comes to a pinch. With all of his soul, Jack wished them well and safely out of the difficulty.

  Luckily the down pitch of the hill—almost the only considerable incline in the entire vicinity—had urged the horses to a gallop, and now the whole troop fled down the slope at a round pace that blew the color back into the cheeks of Alice and sent the light gleaming into her eyes. She was laughing again when they reached the level once more, and so the party continued in the most perfect good humor until they reached the silent little street of the village.

  All that way Larry Haines had said not a word.

  Yes, decided Jack, I must certainly move on this very night! But, just as this conclusion became definite in his mind, Haines spoke for the first time.

  “There’s a man you ought to know, Joe,” he said. “That old chap yonder. He’s a trapper, too, and he spent the season up in the mountains pretty close to you. I think he went out from the same town to his trap line.”

  He watched Joe keenly as he spoke. Trainor watched the big man with no less attention to see how he would endure the test. And he was glad to note that Bigot neither changed color nor started visibly. There had not been one chance in a thousand that a trapper from the far-distant Rockies would come into the vicinity of the little town. It was like leaving someone in Peking and meeting him again in the middle of the Arizona desert. It was an unlucky chance, to say the least. But even at that, the probabilities were great that the old fellow ahead of them, just now in the act of sauntering across the street, had never even heard the name of Joe Bigot in the mountains unless he actually stumbled across a mutual friend.

  However, it was necessary to make inquiries and follow up the remark of Haines. Trainor marked with pleasure that Bigot saw the need and accepted the risk. His face was unchanged except for a slight bulging of the heavy muscles at the angle of the jaw, and that small sign was enough to tell Jack of the spiritual strain under which the poor trapper was laboring. He veered his horse to the side, nevertheless, and paused beside the old man, whose bent body was token of the labor he had endured.

  “Hello, stranger,” said Joe. “The boys tell me that you been up trapping around Crampton. I been working a trap line up that way myself.”

  The other nodded, running his fingers thoughtfully through his short tangle of gray beard. But his face remained a blank. For that Jack was profoundly grateful.

  “Look here, Minter,” broke in Haines, “you must be a good deal of a hermit if you never ran across Joe Bigot in the mountains and yet you got your provisions from the same place.”

  “Joe Bigot?” echoed the old man slowly. “Joe Bigot?”

  Here, as his face suddenly cleared under the light of knowledge, the heart of Trainor failed him.

  “Sure I’ve heard of you, Bigot. I recollect the storekeeper talking about you. Used to say that you always took out enough grubstakes to’ve done two ordinary men. But then, a man can see in half a glance that you ain’t ordinary, not by seventy pounds, I’d say.”

  He laughed heartily at his rather thin jest, his eyes snapping and glittering with enjoyment under their white brows.

  “A man has to eat,” said Joe good-naturedly. “And I reckon I do my share. But I walked my share of line, too.”

  “I guess maybe you did,” said the old man enviously. “You got the legs for it, man! I guess you kept an extra measure of traps this winter, eh?”

  “Extra lot of traps?” echoed poor old Joe Bigot feebly, feeling that the blow was about to fall.

  “Why, yes. They told me you had a man out with you…somebody that wandered into your shack during a storm, and…”

  The cat was out. Could it be whistled back into the bag?

  Chapter 8

  “In your cabin this winter?” cried Alice Cary with great eyes of astonishment.

  “In my cabin? Why, yes,” said Joe. “But, come to think about it, I guess I didn’t write that he was there.”

  Jack Trainor was utterly astonished. He had never dreamed that the big, honest trapper had such possibilities. Taking it all in all, it was as roundly delivered a lie as he had ever heard told. And this from slow Joe Bigot!

  “Write to me about him? You certainly didn’t! But how long was he there?”

  That vital question was avoided deftly by Joe Bigot. Just as it began, he blurted out some remark to the trapper about the severity of the winter and then expressed a desire to see him soon and declared that he would look him up. With that and a farewell wave, they passed on. Alice Cary repeated her question.

  “How long was the stranger with you, Joe, and who was he? And what was he doing in a storm in the mountains?”

  Again Jack Trainor was breathless. Again he felt the eyes of Bigot fumble hopelessly toward him, then, realizing that there was no succor in his companion, he searched about in his own brain for a sufficient answer. How much better it would have been if, at all costs, those letters had never been written, and if the pure truth could be told!

  “He was a Russian, I think,” said Joe Bigot. “His name was Rasmussen. He was running a line of traps up north of mine. But he was new to the country. One day a norther caught him out when he was hunting south, away off from his line. He’d seen my smoke, so he decided that it would be easier to make for my place than it would be to turn around and buck the wind and the snow to get back to his own lean-to. So he came down my way and got there just about froze.”

  “Poor fellow!” cried Alice. “Was he very far gone?”

  Jack Trainor heaved a faint sigh of relief. It seemed that the great crisis was passed. Then he turned a little and looked at Larry Haines. That worthy had fastened his ferret eyes upon the face of Joe Bigot, and, although he never spoke, a subtle disbelief, a subtle mockery, had overspread his features. Apparently he had arrived at more of a conclusion than the girl had been able to come to in seeing through the untruths that Joe was telling.

  Joe Bigot was continuing his new story with a great deal of fluency that more and more surprised Jack Trainor.

  “He wasn’t very far gone. But he thought he was. He wasn’t used to the cold, you see.”

  “Not used to the cold! But I thought you said that he was a Russian?”

  “I did. But he came out of the south of Russia.”

  “But don’t they have cold winters every place in Russia?”

  “Not down by Turkey, I think,” put in Trainor calmly.

  Larry Haines, who had been pricking his ears during these remarks, now flashed upon Jack an absolutely wolfish glance, and then forced his eyes deliberately away, as though he feared to reveal too much of his own malignance through that look.

  “He came out of the south of Russia, down by Turkey,” went on the big man glibly with a flash of gratitude toward Jack. “He wasn’t used to the cold, and he was scared because he’d got numbed in places. But I brought him around. It didn’t take long. There’s some think that the only thing to do when folks are frozen is to rub them with snow. But I’ve always figured that to be fool talk. First I use cold water, and then I take water that’s a little warmer and a little warmer, and that way I get the circulation going grad
ual again. I’ve tried rubbing with snow, and I’ve tried the other way. There ain’t any comparison, I think. He came around fine, and after that I saw a good deal of him.”

  “He lived with you…and left his own trap line? That old fellow said that somebody was really living with you.”

  “Yes, I told them about it at the store once.”

  That unlucky day when he had told the storekeeper of the arrival of the stranger! How many details did the other trapper in the town know?

  “He left his trap line because he thought that it was worth his while to learn what he could about setting out traps from me. Him and me used to walk my line of traps together, and so he picked up a good deal that I knew and that he didn’t.”

  Here the girl laughed. “Joe,” she confessed, “when he spoke at first about somebody being with you, I thought that there was a secret about it.”

  “Secret?” muttered Joe Bigot with an assumption of a vast innocence. “Why should there be any secret about it?”

  Indeed, more and more Trainor began to feel that there had been possibilities of intelligence and quick wit in Bigot that he had completely overlooked. He had quite smoothed the matter over for Alice Cary, so it seemed, and it only remained to see how far Larry Haines could press his suspicions.

  On the whole, Jack would have been happier had Haines taken an opportunity to cross-question the big trapper on the spot. But this he showed no intention of doing. He made no effort to corner Bigot. But the tiger was nevertheless in view in the face that Trainor saw. Sooner or later he would get on the trail of Joe, and then he would be merciless should he run him down.

  A moment later, Haines parted from them, shaking hands with Joe again and saying that he was glad to see him back, and shaking hands with Trainor, also. But he did this silently, and the eyes that they raised to each other were dark with enmity.

  After that, they went on to the girl’s house, and there they would both stay for supper. They were alone for a moment when she ran in while they were putting up their horses.