the Man from the Broken Hills (1975)

by L'amour, Louis - Talon-Chantry

  The saloon was a long low adobe building. There was a bar in it, and a lean, savage-looking man with an almost bald head. Suspenders were holding up his pants. He wore a slightly soiled undershirt, and his brows were a straight bar across his head above his eyes.

  "What are ya having?" He stared at me with glassy blue eyes.

  "Beer, if you've got it."

  "We got it an' it's cold, right out of the springhouse." He reached for the bottle, put it on the bar. "Driftin'?"

  "Sort of. I've got a liking for new country."

  "Me, too. This ain't my place. I just agreed to set in for the boss. He had to go down to San Antone for a spell. Stomach botherin' him, he said, and it could be."

  "Can you feed a man here?"

  "If you like Mexican food. We got a gal here who can really put on the beans. We got beans, rice and beef. In the early morning we'll have eggs ... The woman's got chickens.

  He laughed. "Second batch she's had. Weasel got the whole bunch here a while back. Some folks say that man is the only one who just kills to be killing ... Those folks never saw a hen house after a weasel has been in it. He'll kill one or two, drink their blood, and then just kill all the rest. Seems to go kind of wild, crazy-like."

  I agreed. "Mountain lion will do the same thing. Kill two three deer, sometimes, eat a little off one of them and bury it in brush, then go off."

  I tasted the beer. It was good, much better than I'd expected. I gestured toward the north. "Isn't that the old Presidio up yonder?"

  "Sure is. Ain't much account except for holdin' cattle. Buildings and the walls make a fine corral ... hold a mighty big herd, comes to that." He looked at me again. "You headin' for San Antone?"

  "Sort of. But I'd latch onto a cow outfit if there was one needin' a hand. I'd rather drive cattle, if it comes to that. I'd rather just sit up there on my bronc an' let the world slide by. I got a good cuttin' horse yonder, and he knows more about cows than I do, so I just set up there and let him do the work."

  "Not many outfits this far west. Away over on the North Concho I hear there's some. Never been that far west, myself," he said.

  "You said they sometimes held herds in the Presidio? Any cattle up there now?"

  He shook his head. "Been some a few days back ... Just a small bunch, though. Maybe a hundred and fifty head. Two men drivin' them."

  He chuckled, suddenly.

  When I looked a question, he smiled and shook his head. "Beats a man how some folks get together. They come in here for a beer, just like you. One of them a real quiet man. Still face ... good-lookin' feller, but mighty quiet. Never missed anything, though. Other feller, he was younger ... Kind of a flashy sort, swaggers it around, and you can just see he's proud of that big gun on his hip. Never saw such two different fellers together before."

  "Didn't the quiet one have a gun?" I asked.

  "Surely did. But you know something? You had to look two or three times to see it. I mean it was right out there in plain sight, but he wore it like he'd been born with it and it was hardly so's you'd notice it."

  He paused. "That younger feller, he wore two guns, one stuck behind his belt on the left side with his vest hangin' over it a mite ... But the way he wore those two guns you'd a thought he had six. Just seemed to stick out with guns all over."

  "High forehead? High wave of hair thrown back? Striped pants, maybe?" I asked.

  "That's him. You know him?"

  "Seen him around. Name's Tory Benton. Hires his gun sometimes."

  The bartender shook his head. "He never hired it to that other man. Never in this world. That other feller, he don't need any gun hands. I seen his kind before."

  "A hundred and fifty head, you say? If they're trail-broke, two men could handle them, so they wouldn't need me," I said.

  "They're trail-broke, all right. He had one old cow, splashes of red an' white. She was the leader and the rest of them just trailed along behind ... young stuff ... three, four years old. Some yearlin's."

  Taking my beer, I walked to a table near the window. The bartender brought his bottle along and sat down opposite me. "I'm holed up here until spring," he said. "Got me a dugout yonder. There's beef around, and a good many turkeys. Come spring I'll head for San Antone. I'm a teamster," he added.

  We saw a man come out from a house across the way. The bartender indicated him with a nod of his head. "Now there's somethin' odd. That feller ... He's been around here two, three days, just a-settin'. Never comes over here. Never talks to nobody but his partner. I got a feelin' they're waitin' for somebody."

  He was a tall, lean, easy-moving man, with a stub of cigar in his teeth and a beat-up black hat on his head. He wore a tied-down gun and a Bowie knife and he was looking at my horse. When he turned his head and said something over his shoulder, another man came out of the house. This second man was fat and short, with unshaved jowls and a shirt open at the neck, with a dirty neckerchief tied there.

  Both men looked carefully around.

  "Amigo," I said to the bartender, "if I were you I'd get back of my bar and lie on the floor."

  He stared at me. "Look here ..." He hesitated. Then he asked, "They comin' for you?"

  I smiled at him. "Well now, I wouldn't rightly know. But that tall gent is called Laredo, and folks do say he's right handy with a six-gun. The fat one could be Sonora Davis. Either one of them would shoot you for fun ... Except they usually only have fun when they get paid for it."

  "They lookin' for you?"

  I smiled again. "They haven't said, have they? Maybe I'd better go see."

  Getting up, I slipped the thong from my six-shooter. "I never did like to keep folks waiting. If they respect you enough to make an appointment, the least you can do is not keep them sitting around. You keep that beer for me, will you?"

  There was no door, just the open space for one. I stepped into the doorway and walked outside. Stopping in the shade of the awning, I looked at them in the sunlight near their door.

  It was very still, and the sun was hot. A black bee buzzed lazily about, and a small lizard paused on a rock near the awning post, his little sides moving as he gasped for air.

  "Hello, Laredo," I said, loud enough for him to hear. "It's a long way from the Hole."

  He squinted his eyes under his hat brim, staring at me.

  "Last time I saw you," I said, "you were holding four nines against my full house."

  "Talon? Milo Talon? Is that you?" Laredo asked.

  "Who'd you expect? Santa Claus?"

  We were sixty feet apart, at least. His partner started to shift off to the right. "Sonora," I said, "I wouldn't do that. Might give me some idea you boys were waitin' for me. I wouldn't like to think that."

  Laredo shifted his cigar stub in his teeth. "We had no idea it would be you. We were just waitin' for a rider on a Stirrup-Iron Horse."

  I jerked my head to indicate my horse. "There he is. I'm the rider."

  Laredo was good with a gun, and so was Davis, but Laredo was the better of the two. Yet I could sense uncertainty in him. He didn't like surprises, and he had been expecting some random cowhand, not somebody he knew.

  "I hope he paid you enough, Laredo," I said quietly.

  "Well, we didn't figure on you. He just said a snoopy cowhand was followin' along behind him. Hell, if he'd known it was you, he'd have done it himself."

  "He knew. I'm sure he knew," I said. There were two of them, and I wanted an edge. I didn't know whether I needed it or not, but I wanted it. They had taken money to kill, and they would not welsh on the job.

  "We taken this money," Laredo said, "an' we got to do it."

  "You could always give it back."

  "We done spent most of it, Milo. We just ain't got it no more," said Laredo.

  "Well, I could let you have a few bucks," I said quietly. "I could let you have ... Let's see what I've got." I moved my right hand as if toward my pocket and when they went for their guns I was a split second ahead of them.

  Sonora's gu
n was coming up when I shot him. Sonora was on the right. It is an easier move from right to left, so I took him first.

  Laredo had been fast ... too fast for his own good. And he neglected to take that split instant of time that can make a good shot better. His thumb slid off the hammer as his gun was coming up, and the bullet spat sand a dozen feet in front of me. Mine hit the target.

  Long ago, an old gunfighter had told me, 'Make the first shot count. You may never get another.' I wasn't going to need another. Laredo fell against the side of the house and his gun went off into the dust at his feet. His shoulder against the wall, his knees buckled and he slid down to the hardpacked earth.

  For a moment, I stood very still, just waiting. It was warm, and there was the acrid smell of gun smoke. Somewhere up the street, if you could call it that, a door slammed. A woman stood in the street, shading her eyes toward us.

  Slowly I crossed to my horse, thumbing cartridges into my gun. When I holstered it, I stepped into the saddle.

  The bartender was in the door, looking at me. "What'll I do?" he pleaded. "I mean, what--"

  "Bury them," I said. "There'll be money in their pockets, and it will buy you an easy winter ... Take it. Keep their outfits. Bury them, and put some markers on their graves."

  I pointed at each in turn. "His name was Laredo Larkin, and his was Sonora Davis."

  "Where they from?"

  "I don't know," I said, "but they got where they were going. They've been riding down the road to this place for a long, long time."

  Then I rode out of there.

  Laredo and Davis. Was I riding the same road as them?

  Chapter 26

  The trail of the stolen cattle turned south toward the Llano River country. The worst of it was, I'd ridden out of town without getting anything to eat, and my belly was beginning to think my throat was cut. So when I saw an adobe house up ahead, I rode up to it and swung down.

  A slender young woman came to the door, shading her eyes at me. I also saw a man come to the door of the barn to watch me.

  "I'd like to buy something to eat," I said. "Or grub I can take with me."

  " 'Light an' set," she said. "I'll put something on."

  The man walked up from the barn, a thin young man with a quick, shy smile. "Howdy! Passin' through?"

  "That's my name," I said, grinning. "Seems to me that's about all I do. Pass through. Been here long?"

  "Nobody's been here long. I come in when the war was over. Found this place, fixed up the old 'dobe and the corrals. Got a few head of cattle on the range, and then I went back to West Virginia for Essie, there."

  "Well, you've got water, grass an' time. Seems like you won't need much else."

  He glanced at me again. "Surprised you didn't eat in town. That Mexican woman's a good cook."

  "There was a shooting up there, so I lit out. No tellin' when there might be more."

  "A shootin'? What happened?" he asked.

  "Looked to me like a couple of gunhands had been waitin' for a man. He rode into town and they had at him and came up short."

  "He got them? Both of them?"

  '"Looked that way. I just straddled my bronc and lit out," I said.

  We walked to the trough, where I let the horse drink, then tied him on some grass while I went inside. We sat down, and the man removed his hat, wiping his brow and then the sweatband of his hat.

  "Hot," he said. "I've been down in the bottom putting up some hay."

  Essie came in and put plates on the table. She shot me a quick, curious glance. News was scarce in this country, and visitors were few. I knew what was expected of me. They wanted to know what was happening ... anywhere at all.

  So I told them all about the box supper at Rock Springs Schoolhouse, about the cattle thefts up in the Concho country, and repeated what I'd said about the recent shooting.

  Essie put a pot of coffee on the table, then beans, beef and some fried potatoes--the first I'd had in some time. "He grows them," she said, proudly, indicating her husband. "He's a good farmer."

  "Seen some cattle been driven through here. Some of yours?" I asked casually.

  He shook his head quickly. "No. No, they aren't. They come through here from time to time ... Never stop." He glanced at his wife. "That is, they never done so until this last time ... There was a stranger along then, flashy looking man. I didn't take to him much."

  Essie's face was flushed, but I avoided looking at her.

  The man continued. "He stopped off, started talking to Essie. I guess he took her for a lone woman, so I came up, and he kind of edged around her, and I seen him take the loop off his gun."

  "A man with a high forehead?" I asked.

  "Yes, sir. He did have. Kind of wavy hair. Anyway, I was afraid of trouble, but that other man came back and spoke real sharp to him, and this first man, he rode off. When he looked back he said, 'You wait, honey. I'll be ridin' this way again.' I heard that other man say 'Like hell you will! I done too much to keep this trail smooth. I don't figure to have it messed up by--' Then his voice kind of trailed off, but I heard the other man speak. Believe me, they were none too friendly when they left."

  "The one who talked to you," I said to Essie, "is a gunman named Tory Benton."

  "A gunman?" Her face paled. "Then if--"

  "Yes," I said bluntly. "He might have killed your husband. He wouldn't hesitate to do just that. He shot a friend of mine up north of here."

  They exchanged glances.

  "Those cattle," I asked casually, while refilling my cup, "does he take them to his ranch?"

  "Wouldn't call it a ranch, exactly. He's got him a place down on the Llano ... Runs maybe a thousand head ... or more. All young stuff." He hesitated. "Mister, I don't know you, and maybe I shouldn't be tellin' you all this, but that there outfit doesn't size up right to me."

  "How so?" I asked.

  "Time an' again they drift cattle through here. They never bothered me, nor me them, until that last feller come along who bothered Essie. Hadn't been for him, I might have kept my mouth shut. I got no call to suspicion them except that it don't seem likely a man would have so many calves without cows, always driftin' along the same route."

  "How many men does he have?"

  The young man shrugged. "Can't say. Most often he's driftin' only a few, an' he's alone. Sometimes it's after dark, and I can't make them out. Time or two, when I was scoutin' for game down south of here, I cut their trail. One time I looked across the Llano and saw the cattle. Seemed to me there were two or three men down there, but I was afraid they'd see me and I wanted no trouble, so I lit out."

  "South of here, you say?" I asked.

  "Almost due south. The Llano takes kind of a bend this way. There's quite a canyon there, and he's running his cattle in south of there. Good grass, plenty of water, and lots of oak, elm, mesquite and some pecans. It's a right nice locality."

  When I'd finished eating, I went out and brought up my horse, tightened the cinch and stepped into the saddle. "Friend," I suggested, "you could make yourself a couple of dollars if you want to take a ride."

  "A ride to where?"

  Now I knew that cash money was a hard thing to come by in these places, and any two-bit rancher like this was sure to be hard up.

  "Up north of here along the Middle Concho ... Likely they're south of there by now, and you could meet them half way. There's a party of riders ... a Major Kimberly and a man named Balch will be leading, I think. Tell them Talon sent you, and that the cattle are on the Llano."

  "Those are stolen cattle?" he asked.

  "They are. But you just ride, and don't tell anybody why or wherefore. The man you had trouble with was Tory Benton, and the man bossing the move is Twin Baker ... and he's five or six times tougher and meaner than Benton. Don't cross them.

  "They'll see my tracks if I miss them and they come back this way. So don't lie. Tell them I was here, that I ate here and just pulled out. I didn't talk or ask questions. I just ate. You understand?"
>
  He agreed.

  My trail was southeast, through rough, broken country with a scattering of cedar and oak. Nor was it the kind of country a man likes to travel if he's worried about being drygulched; the country was perfectly laid out for it.

  Like I said before, my mother raised no foolish children that I knew of, so I switched trails every few minutes. That horse must have thought I'd gone pure loco. Suddenly, I turned him and started due east toward the head of Five Mile Creek. Then south, then west.

  I scouted every bit of country before I rode across it, studying the lay of the land and trying to set no pattern so that a man might trap me up ahead. I'd ride toward a bunch of hills, then suddenly turn off along their base. I'd start up the hills on a diagonal, then reverse and go up the opposite way. Whenever I rode into trees or rocks, I'd double back when I had concealment and cut off at an angle. It took time, but I wasn't fighting time. The main idea was to get there alive and in action.

  Not that I had any very good idea of what I was going to do when I arrived. That part I hadn't thought out too well. I decided to just let things happen. Mainly I wanted them not to drive off the cattle.

  Nightfall found me under some bluffs near the head of Little Bluff Creek. It was a place where a big boulder had deflected the talus falling off the rim to either side, leaving a little hollow maybe thirty yards across. And the slope below was scattered with white rocks.

  There was a cedar growing near the boulder, low and thick, and some mesquite nearby. I scouted it as I rode past. Then, stopping in a thick patch of trees and brush, I built myself a small fire, made coffee and fried some bacon. When I'd eaten and sopped of the bacon gravy with one of the biscuits Essie had packed for me, I dowsed my fire, pulling the sticks away and scattering dirt over the ashes. Then leading my horse, I walked back several hundred yards to the hollow below the boulder.

  Stripping my rig from the horse, I let him roll, watered him and picketed him on the grass below the boulder. Then I unrolled my bed, took off my boots and stretched out. And believe me, I was tired.

  If I had it figured right, the Llano was about eight or nine miles due south, and the holding ground for the cattle right beyond that river. That young rancher I'd sent north after Balch and Timberly had laid it out pretty good for me, and Baker was running his cattle in a sort of triangle between the Llano and the James, and just east of Blue Mountain ... but trying to hold them between Blue Mountain and the Llano.