The Man from Battle Flat

by Louis L'Amour

  “I said I didn’t want a job.”

  “Ah?” The genial light left the older man’s face, and his blue eyes hardened and narrowed. “So that’s it! You’ve gone to work for Walt Pogue!”

  “No, I don’t work for Pogue. I don’t work for anybody. I’m my own man, Mister Reynolds.”

  Chalk Reynolds stared at him. “Listen, my friend, and listen well. In the Ruby Hills today there are but two factions, those for Reynolds, and those against him. If you don’t work for me, I’ll regard you as an enemy.”

  Haney shrugged. “That’s your funeral. From all I hear you have enemies enough without choosing any more. Also, from all I hear, you deserve them.”

  “What?” Reynolds’s eyes blazed. “Don’t sass me, stranger!”

  The lean, whip-bodied man beside him touched his arm. “Let me handle this, Uncle Chalk,” he said gently. “Let me talk to this man.”

  Ross shifted his eyes. The younger man had a lantern jaw and unusually long gray eyes. The eyes had a flatness about them that puzzled and warned him. “My name is Sydney Berdue. I am foreman for Mister Reynolds.” He stepped closer to where Haney sat in his chair, one elbow on the table. “Maybe you would like to tell me why he deserves his enemies.”

  Haney glanced up at him, his blunt features composed, faintly curious, his eyes steady and aware. “Sure,” he said quietly. “I’d be glad to. Chalk Reynolds came West from Missouri right after the war with Mexico. For a time he was located in Santa Fé, but, as the wagon trains started to come West, he went north and began selling guns to the Indians.”

  Reynolds’s face went white and his eyes blazed. “That’s not true!”

  Haney’s glance cut his words short. “Don’t make me kill you,” Ross said sharply. “Every word I say is true. You took part in wagon train raids yourself. I expect you collected your portion of white scalps. Then you got out of there with a good deal of loot and met a man in Julesburg who wanted to come out here. He knew nothing of your crooked background, and . . .”

  Berdue’s hand was a streak for his gun, but Haney had expected it. When the Reynolds foreman stepped toward him, he had come beyond Haney’s outstretched feet, and Ross whipped his toe up behind the foreman’s knee and jerked hard just as he shoved with his open hand. Berdue hit the floor with a crash and his gun went off with a roar, the shot plowing into the ceiling. From the room overhead came an angry shout and the sound of bare feet hitting the floor.

  Ross moved swiftly. He stepped over and kicked the gun from Berdue’s hand, then swept it up.

  “Get up! Reynolds, get over there against the wall, pronto!”

  White-faced, Reynolds backed to the wall, hatred burning deeply in his eyes. Slowly Sydney Berdue got to his feet, his eyes clinging to his gun in Ross Haney’s hand.

  “Lift your hands, both of you. Now push them higher. Hold it.”

  He stared at the two men. Behind him, the room was silent with curious onlookers. “Now,” Ross Haney said coolly, “I’m going to finish what I started. You asked me why you deserved to have enemies. I started by telling you about the white people you murdered, and by the guns you sold, and now I’ll tell you about the man you met in Julesburg.”

  Reynolds’s face was ashen. “Forget that,” he said. “You don’t need to talk so much. Berdue was huntin’ trouble. You forget it. I need a good man.”

  “To murder . . . like you did your partner? You made a deal with him, and he came down here and worked hard. He planted those trees. He built that house. Then three of you went out and stumbled into a band of Indians, and somehow, although wounded, you were the only one who got back. And naturally the ranch was all yours. Who were those Indians, Chalk? Or was there only one Indian? Only one, who was the last man of three riding single file? You wanted to know why I wouldn’t work for you and why you should have enemies. I’ve told you. And now I’ll tell you something more. I’ve come to the Ruby Hills to stay. I’m not leavin’.”

  Deliberately he handed the gun back to Berdue, and, as he held it out to him, their eyes met and fastened, and it was Sydney Berdue’s eyes that shifted first. He took the gun, reversed it, and started it into his holster, and then his hand stopped and his lips drew tight.

  Ross Haney was smiling. “Careful, Berdue,” he said softly. “I wouldn’t try it, if I were you.”

  Berdue stared, and then with an oath he shoved the gun hard into its holster and, turning out the door, walked rapidly away. Behind him went Chalk Reynolds, his neck and ears red with the bitterness of the fury that throbbed in his veins.

  Slowly, in a babble of talk, Ross Haney seated himself again. “May,” he called over to the waitress, “my coffee’s cold! Bring me another one, will you?”

  V

  Persons who lived in the town of Soledad were not unaccustomed to sensation, but the calling of Chalk Reynolds and his supposedly gun-slick foreman in the Cattleman’s Rest Hotel restaurant was a subject that had the old maids of both sexes licking their lips with anticipation and excitement. Little had been known of the background of Chalk Reynolds. He was the oldest settler, the owner of the biggest and oldest ranch, and he was a hard character when pushed. Yet now they saw him in a new light, and the story went from mouth to mouth.

  Not the last to hear it was Walt Pogue, who chuckled and slapped his heavy thigh. “Wouldn’t you know it? That old four-flusher! Crooked as a dog’s hind leg!”

  The next thing that occurred to anyone occurred to him. How did Ross Haney know? The thought brought Pogue to a standstill. Haney knew too much. Who was Haney? If he knew that, he might . . . but, no! That didn’t necessarily follow. Still, Ross Haney would be a good friend to have, or a bad enemy.

  Not the least of the talk concerned Haney’s confidence, the way he had stood there and dared Berdue to draw. Overnight Haney had become the most talked-about man in the Ruby Hills.

  When gathering his information about the Ruby Hills country, Ross Haney had gleaned some other information that was of great interest. That information was what occupied his mind on his second day in Soledad.

  So far, in his meandering around the country, and he had done more of it than anyone believed, he had had no opportunity to verify this final fragment of information. But now he intended to do it. From what he had overheard, the country north and west of the mountains was a badlands that was avoided by all. It was a lava country, broken and jagged, and there was much evidence of prehistoric volcanic action, so much so that riding there was a danger always, and walking was the surest way to ruin a pair of boots.

  Yet at one time there had been a man who knew the lava beds and all of that badlands country that occupied some 300 square miles stretching north and west across the state line. That man had been Jim Burge.

  It had been Jim Burge who had told Charlie Hastings, Reynolds’s ill-fated partner, about the Ruby Hills country, and it had been Jim Burge who first drove a herd of Spanish cattle into the Ruby Hills. But Burge tired of ranching and headed north, leaving his ranch and turning his horses loose. His cattle were already gone. Gone, that is, into the badlands. Burge knew where they were, but cattle were of no use without a market, and there was no market anywhere near. Burge decided he wanted to move, and he wanted quick money, so he left the country, taking only a few of the best horses with him.

  He had talked to Charlie Hastings and Hastings had talked to Chalk Reynolds, but Jim Burge was already gone. Gone east into the Texas Panhandle and a lone-hand fight with Comanches that ended with four warriors dead and with Jim Burge’s scalp hanging from the belt of another. But Jim Burge had talked to other people in Santa Fé, and the others did not forget, either. One of these had talked to Ross Haney, and Ross was a curious man.

  When he threw his saddle on the Appaloosa, he was planning to satisfy that curiosity. He was going to find out what had become of those cattle. Nine years had passed since Burge left them to shift for themselves. In nine years several hundred cattle can do pretty well for themselves.

  “There’s
water in those badlands if you know where to look,” Burge had told the man in Santa Fé, “an’ there’s grass, but you’ve got to find it.” Knowing range cattle, Ross was not worried about the cattle finding it, and, if they could find it, he would find them—unless someone else had.

  So he rode out of Soledad down the main trail, and there were many eyes that followed him out. One pair of these belonged to Sherry Vernon, already out and on her horse, drifting over the range, inspecting her cattle and seeing where they fed. She noted the tall rider on the queerly marked horse, and there was a strange leap in her heart as she watched him heading down the trail.

  Was he leaving? For always? The thought gave her a pang, even though, remembering the oddly intent look in his eyes and the hard set to his jaw, she knew he would be back. Of course, she had heard the story of his meeting with Chalk Reynolds and Sydney Berdue. Berdue had always frightened her, for wherever she turned, his eyes were upon her. They gave her a crawling sensation, not at all like the excitement she drew from the quick, amused eyes of Ross Haney.

  The Appaloosa was a good mountain horse, and, ears pricked forward, he stepped out eagerly. The sights and smells were what he knew best and he quickened his step, sure he was going home. Ross Haney knew that with his action of the previous day he was in the center of things whether he liked it or not, and he liked it. From now on he would move fast, and with boldness, not too definitely, for it would pay to keep them puzzled for a few days longer. Things would break shortly between Pogue and Reynolds, especially now that his needling of Reynolds would scare the old man into aggressive action.

  Chalk was no fool. He would know how fast talk would spread. It might not be long before embarrassing questions might be asked. The only escape from those questions lay in power. He must put himself beyond questions. Eyes squinted against the glare, Haney thought about that, trying to calculate just what Reynolds would do. It was up to him to strike, and he would strike, or Haney knew nothing of men under pressure.

  The trail he sought showed itself suddenly, just a faint track off to the right through the piñons, and he took it, letting Río set his own gait. It was mid-afternoon before Ross reached the edge of the lava beds. The black tumbled masses seemed without trails or any sign of vegetation. He skirted the great black, tumbled masses of lava, searching for some evidence of a trail. It was miserably hot, and the sun threw heat back from the blazing rocks until he felt like he was in an oven. When he was on a direct line between the lava beds and Thousand Springs, he rode back up the mountain, halted, and swung down to give his horse a rest.

  From his saddlebags he took a telescope, a glass he had bought in New Orleans several years before. Sitting down on a boulder while the Appaloosa cropped casually at the dry grass, he began a systematic, inch-by-inch study of the lava beds.

  Only the vaguest sort of plan had formed in his mind for his next step. Everything had been worked out carefully to this point, but from now on his action depended much upon the actions of Pogue and Reynolds. Yet he did have the vestige of a plan. If the cattle he sought were still in the lava beds, he intended to brand them one by one and shove bunches of them out into the valley. He was going to use that method to make his bid for the valley range.

  After a half hour of careful study he got up, thrust the glass in his belt, and rode slowly along the hillside, stopping at intervals to continue his examination of the beds. It was almost dusk when he raised up in the stirrups and pointed the glass toward a tall finger of rock that thrust itself high from the beds. At the base of it was a cow, and it was walking slowly toward the northwest!

  Try as he might, Ross could find no trail into the lava beds, so as dusk was near, he turned the Appaloosa and started back toward Thousand Springs. He would try again. At least, he knew he was not shooting in the dark. There was at least one cow in that labyrinth of lava, and, if there was one, there would certainly be more.

  The trail he had chosen led him up the mesa at Thousand Springs from a little known route. He wound around through the clumps of piñon until the flat top was reached. Then he rode along slowly, drinking in this beauty that he had chosen for the site of his home. The purple haze had thickened over the hills and darkened among the trees, and deep shadows gathered in the forested notches of the hills while the pines yet made a dark fringe against the sky still red with the last rose of the sinking sun.

  Below him, the mesa broke sharply off and fell for over 100 feet of sheer rock. Thirty feet from the bottom of the cliff the springs trickled from the fractured rock and covered the rock below with a silver sheen from many small cascades that fell away into the pool below.

  Beyond the far edge of the pool, fringed with aspens, the valley fell away in a long sweep of tall-grass range, rolling into a dark distance against the mystery of the hills. Ross Haney sat his horse in a place rarely seen by man, for he was doubtful if anyone in many years had mounted the mesa. That he was not the first man here, he knew, for there were Indian relics and the remains of stone houses, ages old. These seemed to have no connection with any cliff dwellings or pueblos he had seen in the past. The building was more ancient and more massive than on Acoma, the Sky City.

  The range below him was the upper end of Ruby Valley and was supposedly under control of Chalk Reynolds. Actually Reynolds rarely visited the place, nor did his men. It was far away at the end of the range he claimed, and the water was available for the cattle when they wished to come to it. Yet here on the rim of the mesa, or slightly back from the rim, Haney had begun to build a ranch house, using the old foundations of the prehistoric builders, and many of their stones.

  The floor itself was intact, and he availed himself of it, sweeping it clean over a wide expanse. He had paced it off, and planned his house accordingly, and he had large ideas. Yet for the moment he was intent only on repairing a part of the house to use as his claim shanty.

  There was water here. It bubbled from the same source as that of the Thousand Springs. He knew that his water was the same water. Several times he had tried dropping sticks or leaves into the water outside his door, only to find them later in the pool below.

  From where he sat he could with his glass see several miles of trail, and watch all who approached him. The trail up the back way was unknown so far as he could find out. Certainly it indicated no signs of use but that of wild game, although it had evidently been used in bygone years.

  To the east and south his view was unobstructed. Below him lay all the dark distance of the valley and the range for which he was fighting. To the north, the mesa broke off sharply and fell away into a deep cañon with a dry wash at its bottom. The side of the cañon across from him was almost as sheer as this and at least a quarter of a mile away.

  The trail led up from the west and through a broken country of tumbled rock, long fingers of lava, and clumps of piñon giving way to aspen and pine. The top of the mesa was at least 200 acres in extent and absolutely impossible to reach by any known route but the approach he used.

  Returning through the trees to a secluded hollow, Ross swung down and stripped the saddle and bridle from the Appaloosa, then turned it loose. He rarely hobbled or tied the horse, for Río would come at a call or whistle, and never failed to respond at once. But a horse in most cases will not wander far from a campfire, feeding away from it, and then slowly feeding back toward it, seeming to like the feeling of comfort as well as a man did.

  He built his fire of dry wood and built it with plenty of cover, keeping it small. Even at this height there was no danger of it being seen and causing wonder. The last thing he wanted now was for any of the people from the valley to find him out.

  After he had eaten, he strolled back to the open ground where the house was taking shape. Part of the ancient rock floor he was keeping for a terrace from which the whole valley could be seen.

  For a long time he stood there, looking off into the darkness and enjoying the cool night air. Then he turned and walked back into the deep shadows of the house. He was s
tanding there, trying to see it as it would appear when complete when he heard a low, distant rumble.

  Suddenly anxious, he listened intently. It seemed to come from within the very rock on which he stood. He waited, listening for the sound to grow. But after a moment it died away to a vague rumble, and then disappeared altogether. Puzzled, he walked around for several minutes, waiting and listening, but there was no further sound.

  It was a strange thing, and it disturbed him and left him uneasy as he walked back to his camp. Long after he rolled in his blankets, he lay there puzzling over it. He noted with an odd sense of disquiet that Río stayed close to him, closer than usual. Of course, there could be another reason for that. There were cougars on the mesa and in the breaks behind it. He had seen their tracks. There were also elk and deer, and twice he had seen bear. The country he had chosen was wildly beautiful, a strange, lost corner of the land, somehow cut off from the valley by the rampart of Thousand Springs Mesa.

  * * * * *

  Ross Haney awakened suddenly as the sky was growing gray, and found himself sitting bolt upright. And then he heard it again, that low, mounting rumble, far down in the rock beneath him, as though the very spirit of the mountain had been rolling over under him in his sleep. Only here the sound was not so plain, it was fainter, farther away.

  VI

  At daybreak, Ross rolled out of his blankets, built a fire, and made coffee. While eating, he puzzled over the strange sound he had heard the night before and again before dawn. The only solution that seemed logical was that it came somehow from the springs. It was obvious that forces of some sort were at work deep in the rock of the mesa.

  Obviously these forces had made no recent change in the contour of the rock itself, and so must be insufficient for the purpose. Haney continued with his building, working the morning through.

  Unlike many cowhands, he had always enjoyed working with his hands. Now he had the pleasure of doing something for himself, with the feeling that he was building to last. By noon he had another wall of heavy stone constructed and the house was beginning to take shape.