L'Amour, Louis - SSC 32

by The Collected Short Stories Vol 3

  When I had four hours of riding behind me I stopped and walked ahead of my horse, spelling him a might. I made coffee then, from the little a cowhand always has with him, and let the bay crop the rich green grass.

  Moving on, I turned at right angles and, climbing ahead of the horse, went right up a steep gravelly ridge. On top, just short of the skyline, I walked him along for half a mile, then picking a saddle, crossed the ridge and went down into the trees.

  Sighting a dozen steers feeding, I started them off and drove them ahead of me for a ways, and then turned and started them back. They bunched for thirty or forty yards, enough to wipe out my horse tracks, and then I turned and rode downstream, keeping to the water until it became knee deep, when I scrambled out. So it went for two days.

  Mine was a tough trail, hard to follow even for such a tracker as Shiloh, but he worried me, nonetheless. He knew the country, and when a man doesn’t, he may lose a lot of time and distance.

  Twice I’d killed rabbits, once a sage hen … at dusk I killed another, and in a tiny hollow among the trees and rocks I built a masked fire, built it in a hole and screened it so there’d be no glow on the trees overhead.

  Along the way I’d seen some Indian breadroot, and dug a dozen of them. While fixing the sage hen I let these roots roast on the hot stones near the fire. Then I made some desert tea from the ephedra.

  When I’d eaten I looked to the bay, moved him to better grass, scouted around, and then returned to my camp. Uneasy as I was, I was dead for sleep, and figured it was safe enough… .

  When I opened my eyes, Colonel Metcalf was sitting on a rock with a gun in his hand. “You’re Tyler?” he said it, rather than asked, and he seemed to be measuring me, judging me.

  Taking it careful, I sat up. There was a gun near my saddle, easy to hand.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Colonel Metcalf,” I said. “I reckon ever’body knows you.”

  He kept his eyes on me. “Do you know who else I am?”

  Some puzzled, I shook my head. And then he said sort of quietlike, “Tyler, I’m the man who should have killed Tate Lipman.”

  It took awhile for it to sink in, but even then I was not sure. “What does that mean?” I asked him.

  “It has been said that the evil that men do lives after them—sometimes, Tyler, it lives with them. You deserve to know what I shall tell you. But only one other person knows. No one else must ever learn of it.”

  None of this made sense to me, so I sat still. Believe me, I was some worried. If he was here, then Shiloh wouldn’t be far behind. And the rest of them, with the rope they carried for me.

  He was freshly shaved. His clothes had been brushed. He looked like he always had, like Colonel Andrew Metcalf with his wide ranch and his position in town. His word was law … and mostly it was a good law. He was a hard man, but just—or so they said.

  My fingers opened, and when his attention shifted an instant, they inched a little toward my gun.

  “Tyler,” he spoke quietly, “I’m Rosa Killeen’s father.”

  That stopped me … it stopped me cold. I sat with my mouth half open, just looking at him.

  “Her mother was a good woman … a fine woman. We crossed the plains together before the war, and her husband died on the way out. I was a young lieutenant then, riding with the escort, and she was a beautiful woman… . She had never loved her husband. He’d been … not a bad man but an unthinking one. After his death we were much together. Too much, and we both were young.

  “She came of a fine old family, a very proud family. They were Spanish Californians mixed with Irish.

  “The Army had orders waiting for me in Santa Fe, and they took me into the East and then to the Confederate War. It was a long time later that I got a letter she had written me. She was dying and there had been a baby girl … it was mine.

  “I had married during the war. There was nothing I could do but provide for the child in every way I could. But I had to do so secretly … to have publicly accepted Rosa as mine would have been disastrous to my marriage, and would have all too plainly pointed the finger of scorn at her mother’s family.

  “I paid for Rosa’s education and, when she grew old enough, kept her near me. It was all I could do, and Rosa understood the situation and accepted it. We did not, neither of us, foresee Tate Lipman.”

  Why was he telling this to me? If Shiloh and the others came up, not even Metcalf could keep them from putting a rope around my neck. Lipman had two riders in that crowd, two mighty tough men, and Shiloh would never give up this chance to get me where he wanted me.

  But I sat still, waiting him out … all I knew was that I wanted to live, and to live I had to have that gun. No man at twenty-two is ready to die, and I sure wasn’t. Especially for killin’ a no-good like Tate Lipman.

  “That ain’t no business of mine,” I told him. “I killed Tate Lipman because he had it comin’. No matter who her father was, Rosa is a fine girl.”

  “You love her?”

  He looked at me sharply when he said that, those cold blue eyes of his direct and clear.

  “Yes,” I said, and meant it.

  He got up. “Then pick up that gun you’ve been wanting to get your hand on,” he said quietly, “and—“

  Shiloh stepped out of the trees. “No, you don’t,” he said. “You touch that gun and I’ll cut you down.”

  There it was … the one thing I’d been afraid of— Shiloh gettin’ the drop on me, like he had now.

  “Shiloh, there’s reasons for all of this—“ The colonel started to speak, but Johnson shook his head.

  “No, you don’t,” he said again. “I heard all that talk. It don’t make no difference to me.” I could see the satisfaction in his eyes, the pleasure at having me under his gun. “Tyler-murdered Lipman. It was seen. He’ll hang for it.”

  It was there, plain and cold. Nothing the colonel could say was going to stop it now.

  “I been suspicious o’ you, Metcalf.” There was no title used this time, and I could see the colonel heard the change in Johnson’s attitude. “I seen you go to your horse that night, seen you leave that bag. Right then I couldn’t figure why… . Come daylight, your horse gone, I figured some of it.”

  He had never once taken his eyes from me, and his gun was rock steady. With some men there might have been a chance. Shiloh was nobody to fool with.

  “Only thing,” he said it slow, like it tasted good to him, “I can’t decide whether to shoot you now or see you hang.”

  There was silence in the clearing. Far off, I heard the wind in the pine tops, far off and away. It was a lonesome sound.

  “I’m holding a gun, too, Shiloh,” Metcalf said quietly.

  “If you shoot, I’ll kill you.”

  No man ever spoke so matter-of-fact. And the colonel’s gun covered Shiloh now, not me.

  Shiloh was quiet for a long minute, and then he smiled. “You won’t shoot me, Metcalf. You wouldn’t dare chance it. Some of that crowd is mighty suspicious already, the way you held us back from catchin’ him the other night. If I was to die now, along with him, they’d hang you.”

  Colonel Andrew Metcalf sat very still. Shiloh was smiling, and me, I sat there, wishin’ I dared grab for that gun. But first I had to get my hand on it, make the first grab sure without lookin’ toward it, then swing it into line. Time enough for a fast man to fire two, maybe three shots.

  Then the colonel stood up. He was smiling a little. “Shiloh,” he said quietly, “situations like this have always appealed to me. I’ve always been curious about what people do when the chips were down … well, the chips are down now.”

  Shiloh Johnson’s face was a study. He didn’t dare take his eyes from me, and the colonel was to his right and out of his line of vision. He stood there, his boots wide apart, his cruel little eyes locked on mine, his long jaw covered with beard. He wanted to look, but he didn’t dare chance it.

  “Tyler shouldered my responsibility when he kill
ed Lipman. I’m not going to see him suffer for it. So I’m going to kill you.”

  Shiloh had it up in him now. He was cornered and he didn’t like it. Not even a little.

  “You shoot me in the back,” he started to say, “and—“ “It won’t be in the back,” Metcalf said quietly. “I’m going to move right over in front of you. You may get one or even both of us—but one thing is dead certain. We’ll get you.”

  Now I could see what the colonel meant about liking situations, and this was one. I wouldn’t want to play poker with him … and Shiloh stood there with his face working, his eyes all squinched up, and ready to kill as he was, he wasn’t no way ready to die.

  It took a lot of cold nerve to do what the colonel said he would do—step over in front of a man ready to kill—but nobody would ever be able to say which of us had killed Shiloh, then.

  “Now, look here …” Shiloh said. “I—“

  “You have one other choice.” Colonel Metcalf’s voice was hard now, like a commanding general. “Drop your gun belts, get on your horse, and ride clear on out of the country. Otherwise, you die right here.”

  As he spoke, the colonel began to shift around to get in front of Shiloh. There was panic in Johnson’s voice. “All right! All right… .”

  He holstered his gun, then unbuckled his belts. There, was plain, ugly hatred in his face when he looked at me. “But this ain’t the end.”

  He stepped away from his belts and started toward his horse, which had walked up through the trees from where he had left it ground-hitched when he heard our voices.

  Colonel Metcalf watched him go, then turned to me. He held out his hand. I ignored it.

  His voice went cold. “Tyler, what’s—“

  Shiloh Johnson had reached his horse. He put a hand to the pommel, then wheeled, whipping a gun from the saddlebag. It was fast and it was smooth, but I was on my feet with a gun in my hand, and as he turned I shot him through the body. He fired … and then I triggered my gun for two quick shots and he folded, his horse springing away as he fell.

  “At Wild Horse Camp,” I said, “he always carried a spare.”

  The colonel stood there, very white and stiff. “My boy,” his voice was strange and sort of old, like I’d never heard it sound, “I’ve sent her to Fort Worth. Go to her.”

  “But—“

  “Ride, boy!” The old crack came back into his voice. “They’ll have heard the shots!”

  He stood there, not moving, and when I was in the saddle he said, “Fort Worth, son. She’ll be waiting. Rosa loves you.”

  As he said it I’ll swear there were tears in his eyes, but the bay was running all out and away before I recalled something else. There had bee n a dark splotch on his shirt front. That one shot—that wild shot Shiloh got off—it had hit him.

  He carried it well that day, afraid I’d not leave him if I knew … but he carried it well for ten years, and was carrying it on our Texas ranch, when he held his grandchild on his knee.

  West of Dodge

  Lance Kilkenny looked across the counter at the man with the narrow face and the scar on his jaw. “Watch; yourself,” Hillman said. “This is Tom Stroud’s town, He’s marshal here, and he’s poison for gunfighters.”

  “I’ll be all right.” Kilkenny paid for his shells and walked to the door, a tall, spare man looking much less than his two hundred pounds. His was a narrow, Hamletlike face with high cheekbones and green eyes.

  His walk was that of a woodsman rather than a rider, but Hillman had known at once that he wore the two Colts for use rather than for show.

  It disturbed Kilkenny to find himself known here, as a gunfighter if not by name. Here he had planned to rest, to hunt a job, to stay out of trouble.

  Of Marshal Tom Stroud he knew nothing beyond the bare fact that some two months before Stroud had killed Jim Denton in a Main Street gun battle.

  Yet Kilkenny needed no introduction to reputation-hunting marshals. There had been Old John Selman and others who fattened their records on killing gunfighters— and were rarely particular about an even break.

  At the hitch rail Kilkenny studied his gaunt, long-legged buckskin. The horse needed the rest, and badly. Torn between dislike for trouble and consideration for his horse, the needs of the horse won.

  He headed for the livery. Glancing back at the store, he saw a slope-shouldered man with dark hair and eyes step awkwardly into the doorway to watch him ride away. Something about the way the man stood, one hand braced against the wall, made Kilkenny think that he was a cripple.

  Hillman had not guessed his name. That was fortunate. A man of his sort might guess if given time … of his sort … now where had that thought come from? Rubbing down the buckskin, Kilkenny gave consideration to the idea. What was Hillman’s sort?

  Something about the storekeeper had marked him in Kilkenny’s mind, and it left him uneasy that he could not make a proper estimate of his instinct about the man, yet something disturbed him, left him wary and uncertain.

  Hillman was a man in his thirties, as tall as Kilkenny, and only a little bulkier, but probably no heavier. He had a careful, measuring eye.

  From the door of the livery stable Kilkenny studied the street, still thinking of Hillman and Stroud. Usually, a storekeeper would want to avoid trouble in a town. Maybe he believed a warning would cause Kilkenny to move on. Building a smoke, he considered that.

  Like many western towns, this one was divided into two sect ions. One was a rough collection of saloons, shanties, and bawdy houses along the railroad and backed by a maze of corrals and feed sheds where cattlemen put up their herds while waiting for shipment east. This was the old town, the town that had been built by the hard-drinking track crews and cattle buyers in the wild days before the town had ever thought to build a church or a schoolhouse.

  Running at right angles to the tracks was the newer Main Street. Away from the smell and the flies of the holding pens, it had been built by the merchants who came as the town grew. There were carefully built buildings made of whitewashed planks or brick, with boardwalks connecting one to the next so that the shopper or businessman only occasionally had to brave the rutted mud of the street. There was only one saloon in this part of town, and it was a pretentious affair situated on the ground floor of the new two-story hotel. Behind the stores of the street were grids of one-to five-acre lots where the townspeople lived. Most of the houses had vegetable gardens growing corn and tomatoes, and each had a carriage house, stable, or barn. At the bottom of Main Street was the livery, where Kilkenny now stood, and opposite him, the marshal’s office … abridge, or a barrier, separating one world from the other.

  Kilkenny crushed out his cigarette. He wore black chaps and a black, flat-crowned, flat-brimmed hat. Under his black Spanish-style jacket he wore a gray flannel shirt. They were colors that lost themselves in any shadow.

  He was weary now, every muscle heavy with the fatigue of long hours of riding. His throat was dry, his stomach empty. His mind was sluggish because of the weariness of his body, and he felt short-tempered and irritable because of it.

  Normally, he was a quiet, tolerant man with a dry humor and a liking for people, but in his present mood he was wary of himself, knowing the sudden angers that could spring up within him at such times.

  Darkness gathered in the hollows of the hills and crept down into the silent alleys, crouching there to wait their hour for creeping into the empty streets. Kilkenny rolled another smoke, trying to relax. He was hungry, but he wanted to calm himself before walking into the company of strangers.

  A stray dog trotted up the street … a door slammed. The town was settling down after supper, and he had not yet eaten. He dropped his cigarette, pushing it into the dust.

  There was a grate of boot soles on gravel. A low sentence reached his ears from the bench outside the door. “Reckon Stroud knows?”

  “Who can tell what he knows? But he was hired to keep the peace, an’ he’s done it.”

  “In his own
way.”

  “Maybe there ain’t no other.”

  “There was once. Stroud shut down the gambling and thievein’, but he stopped the Vigilance Committee, too. They’d have strung the worst of them and burnt the old town to the ground. There’s some say we’d be better off.”

  As he crossed the street Kilkenny did not turn to look at the men who had spoken behind him. He could feel the rising tensions. Something here was still poised for trouble. Alive to such things, currents that could mean death if un-watched, he was uneasy at remaining, yet he disliked the idea of going on. Towns were scarce in this country.

  It was no common frontier-style boardinghouse he entered, but a large, well-appointed dining room, a place suited to a larger city, a place that would have a reputation in any city.

  There was linen on the tables and there was silver and glass, not the usual rough wood and crockery. A young woman came toward him with a menu in her hand. She had a quiet face and dark, lovely eyes.

  He noticed the way her eyes had seemed to gather in his dusty clothes and rest momentarily on the low-hung guns. She led him to a corner table and placed the menu

  before a place where he could sit with his back in the corner, facing the room.

  His eyes crinkled at the corners and he smiled a little. “Does it show that much?”

  Her own eyes were frank, not unfriendly. “I’m afraid it does.”

  “This,” he indicated the room, “is a surprise.”

  “It is a way of making a living.”

  “A gracious way.” She looked at him more directly as he spoke. “It is a way one misses.”

  A small frown gathered between her eyes. “I wonder— why is it that most gunfighters are gentlemen?”

  “Some were born to it,” he said, “and some grow into it. Men are rude only when they are insecure.”

  He was eating his dessert when the door opened and a man came in. It was, Kilkenny guessed at once, Tom Stroud.

  He was a square-faced man with the w.ide shoulders and deep chest of mountain ancestry. He was plainly dressed and walked without swagger, yet there was something solid and indomitable about him. His eyes were blue, a darker blue than that usually seen, and his mustache was shading from brown to gray.