Milo Talon

by Louis L'Amour

  “You looking for somebody?” I asked.

  “There was a shot! It came from here!”

  “Shot? Hell, mister, I just dropped my boot. It surely didn’t make that much noise!”

  The clerk pushed into the room with several other men, staring around. There was nobody there but me and my window was closed, the glass unbroken.

  Sitting down, I began to tug on the other boot. John Topp loomed in the doorway, his eyes on my bed. He started forward but I was too quick. I picked up Nathan Albro’s notebook and stuck it in my hip pocket.

  “You must have heard that shot?” the clerk said.

  “I heard something. It could have been a shot, but why be surprised at that? I’ve been in a hundred towns like this and there’s always some drunken cowboy blowing off steam.”

  That clerk was no fool. He stared at me, one eyebrow raised. “Come to think of it,” I said, “I believe I saw somebody on the roof yonder. Out of the corner of my eye, like. But what would a man want, shooting off a roof? Unless he was trying to kill somebody.”

  I looked at Topp. “A man can’t be too careful these days.”

  They trooped out of the room and I glanced around quickly, then took up my vest and donned it, then my coat.

  When I reached the lobby John Topp was waiting. He spoke to me for the first time. “The boss would like to see that notebook.”

  “He may, in time.”

  “He’ll want it now.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You’re workin’ for him, mister.”

  “Only to find a girl, that’s all. How I find her is my business.”

  His expression did not change. It never did. Only his eyes moved and he had large, somewhat solemn eyes. “He’ll want that book, mister. He’ll want it now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “All right,” Topp replied mildly, “I’ll tell him.” He half-turned away and then he threw a punch. He was big and he was fast and I was as much off-guard as I ever will be. He threw a right-hand punch and I just stepped off to the left. I’ll never know whether it was because of some subconscious warning or if it was pure accident, but when I stepped off to the left his punch missed me completely and he fell, carried by the impetus of his blow, and he half-fell across a table and some chairs.

  “Tsk, tsk,” I said, and walked on out the door.

  Molly was gathering dishes from a table when I came in. “If you’re going to do that, stay away from the windows.”

  “Milo, what are we going to do? What can we do?”

  Now if I’d been like some I’ve heard of I’d have come up with a quick solution, a nice easy one, but I’d no idea what to do. What I needed was time to consider.

  Molly was looking to me for help, and German Schafer was expecting me to come up with answers I did not have. Looking out at the sunlit street, I felt trapped, and furthermore, I was scared. I had a girl depending on me, a girl they wanted to kill, and now they wanted to kill me, too.

  Topp knew I had the notebook, and he would be wanting to make up for his blunder in taking a swing at me. He hadn’t thought it out. There was the book, they wanted it, and a quick blow might knock it from my hands and he might be in possession. That I’d come off lucky I knew full well. I would not be so lucky again.

  “German,” I spoke through the door to the kitchen, “better keep an eye on that back door.”

  Looking out into that street a man would think it just a sleepy western town. Folks were going about their business, buying supplies in the stores, getting boots repaired, horses shoed, walking up the stairs to the doctor’s office, talking cattle, sheep, and politics, and ninety-nine percent of them totally unaware of what was going on, that a few steps away a young woman was in danger.

  We could run for it. We could take out for Denver and hope we could make it. We’d have to go horseback as they’d be watching the train. Molly knew too much and I had information they wanted … or they believed I had.

  Molly brought me some coffee and sat down with me. “Milo? What are we going to do?”

  “Run,” I said, “and I don’t like to. But this is all too open. One of these days when we step out on the street they’ll nail us.

  “They’re watching, you can bet on it. They don’t want anything obvious and they don’t want either of us left alive to talk. I think if we could get into the mountains we could lead them a chase.

  “I don’t know how John Topp is on a trail, but I know these mountains and I’ve friends in Denver. Far as that goes, we could go to the Empty.”

  “Empty?”

  “Ma’s ranch. MT is the brand, stands for Em Talon. We’d be safe there but that’s a long ride, and when there’s that amount of money at stake they won’t take any chances. Neither will she.”

  “She?”

  “Anne. She’s in it somehow.”

  Molly looked at me. “You mean you don’t know? She’s the girl you’ve been looking for. Nancy is a name that began as a nickname for Anne.”

  Well … I should have known.

  Reluctantly, I’d been giving up on Anne. When she visited the Empty I built a lot of dreams around her. The trouble was, I had been building my dreams around the girl I wanted her to be and hoped she was. We all do that. All too often the man a girl thinks she loves or the girl a man believes he loves is just in their imaginations. A body makes excuses for their mistakes because he or she wants to believe.

  Anne … Nancy … even Nathan Albro had said she was cold and cruel. Whatever else he was, Nathan was perceptive.

  “I think she always hated me,” Molly said suddenly. “I thought of her as my friend. I had no other. I know now that a lot of the slights I thought were unintended were intentional.”

  “Nathan liked you.”

  “He was a fine old man. Lonely … very lonely, and remote. Not many people understood him at all. He lived almost entirely with his business, but I know of dozens of things he did for people and they never knew he was responsible. I liked him.”

  “We’ve got to get away, Molly. We’ve got to run. There’s no place to hide here. There’s no safety.” I looked at her. “Can you ride, Molly? Ride for days and nights? Sometimes without sleep?”

  “Yes.”

  “German?”

  He came in from the kitchen. I put a gold coin on the table. “Grub for five days. Have it ready before dark.”

  “How will you get horses? You go to the stable and that’s all they’ll want. That would be their chance.”

  “Got to figure that one out. I want to get out of here tonight, without fail.”

  “They’ll be watching.”

  The street was a dusty avenue of waiting death. Who the man on the roof had been, I did not know, but that he had been scouting for Molly seemed obvious. It was her room into which he had planned to shoot, not knowing she was elsewhere. No doubt he’d had a view of the bed where she usually slept. He was inept, clumsy. Neither John Topp nor Baggott would have made such a mistake.

  Suddenly a covered wagon came up the street. I sat up straight. Molly had already seen it. “Rolon Taylor’s wagon,” I said. “He’s waitin’ for us, I think. Or for you.”

  We heard the far-off whistle of the train. Longingly, we listened. That train could carry us away to safety. Yet even as we looked, several rough-looking men strolled from the Golden Spur and started down the street. Others would come from the other saloon and they would go down to the station to wait.

  There was another train, later. They would watch that, too. Maybe—

  “German,” I said, “we’ve got to have horses.”

  Walking to his counter I got a sheet of paper, then back to the table. Sometimes when thinking I liked to fiddle with something, drawing in the sand with a piece of stick or doodling on paper with a pencil.

  “Folks will be comin’ for supper,” German said. “It’s early, but this here’s an early town.” He sat down between Molly an’ me. “Got me an idea.”

  “We can use it,” I
said. “I’m coming up empty.”

  “Maggie,” he said.

  We just looked at him.

  “Maggie’s got horses. She’s got a half dozen of the best horses you ever put eyes on. Used to be a rider, Maggie did. Ain’t no horses around like hers, and those fellers, Henry, Pride Hovey, and John Topp and their like, they wouldn’t think of them. They’re all newcomers. They wouldn’t know about Maggie’s horses.”

  “Would she let us have them?”

  “Ah? That’s the rub. Maybe. Just maybe … if she saw you. If she took a liking to you. Maggie’s more jealous of her horses than anything.

  “She don’t ride no more but she likes to watch them out on the meadow behind the house. Sets there watchin’ them all day long. Likes to see them run and play, likes the sun shining on their coats—

  “If you could get up there, and if she cottoned to you … that’s a lot of ifs.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “Maggie?” German paused, thinking about it. “She’s no youngster. Been around a long time. Some folks say she was a dance-hall girl one time. I wouldn’t know about that. Lives alone and likes it. She’s got a couple of dogs, a parrot, and a big Indian.”

  “Indian?”

  “A Kickapoo. He’s big and he’s old. Face looks old enough to have worn out two bodies, but he’s strong. Anything he lays hold of moves. Most Indians I’ve seen have long, slim muscles. Not him. He’s built like a wrestler and so he used to be. He was one of the best wrestlers in the tribes. Never beaten, so I hear. He wandered in here one time, Maggie fed him, then put him to work with her horses.

  “Maggie lives up there with her gee-tar and her books. Reads. Reads most of the time, sings a lot, too, but just for herself. Gets wound up sometimes and talks about London, Paris, Vienna, Rome, Weimar—I don’t know what all. She must’ve been quite a girl when she was younger.”

  “Do you think she’d lend us her horses?”

  German shrugged. “No telling. She’s notional. Takes whims. She’s mighty shrewd about business, knows where every cent goes, and how to make every cent pay double. If she takes a liking, she’ll let you have them, but she never has loaned a horse to anyone, for any reason.”

  “Topp’s coming.”

  Well, I sat up and turned a little to face the door. He opened the door and stepped in. He was alone. I looked at him again. He was even bigger than I thought and he had an easy way of moving.

  For the first time he looked directly at me. “Nice,” he said, “that was nice, what you did. Cost you, though. I didn’t like it.”

  He looked over at Molly. “Too bad,” he said. “She’s young, too.”

  “So are you, John,” I said, “and you’re a strong, healthy man. Better stay that way.”

  He just looked at me and German crossed to his table. “Can I get you something, Mr. Topp?”

  “Beef,” he said, “roast beef, and some of that you make up out of potatoes, onions, and such.”

  He glanced out of the window and seemed to have forgotten about us. I reached over and squeezed Molly’s hand. “We’ll make it,” I whispered and wished I felt sure.

  The town was so open. The river offered a chance, but elsewhere it was wide open country. Even if we got horses and started we’d have to run for it, and I wouldn’t kill a horse for any man.

  “You never know about Maggie,” German said, stopping by. “Don’t count on her.” He spoke softly so only we would hear.

  Others were coming in to supper now. Four men, whom I recognized as Rolon Taylor’s men. I thought of that. Taylor’s men in town, and some of Jefferson Henry’s, and both of them wanted us.

  “Might as well eat,” I said.

  Molly went to the kitchen and returned with my supper. Then she got a plate for herself and sat down close to me where we could talk without speaking out. The walls of the building across the street would soon be flushed red with the setting sun.

  How could we ever get out of town? Or even manage to see Maggie? The riverbed offered the only cover and they would be watching that.

  Suddenly John Topp pushed back his chair and got up and started for the door. He reached it and it started to open under his hand. I looked around. “All right, John,” I said, “the deal’s on.”

  He paused, staring at me, puzzled. He had no idea what I was talking about and I had not expected him to. Rolon Taylor’s men were listening, as I’d hoped.

  It would be dark soon. One of Taylor’s men got up, walking outside with a toothpick in his teeth. He looked after Topp, then strolled along behind him.

  Leaning across the table to Molly, I said, “Why not? If we’re selling out, why not to the highest bidder? He will arrange everything. You’ll see.”

  I spoke just loud enough and hoped they heard me.

  “If there’s trouble,” I said. “Topp and his men will take care of those others. You’ll see.”

  Molly stared at me, wondering if I’d gone insane. I smiled at her, then shrugged.

  “You left something in my room, Molly.” This time nobody but she could hear.

  “Under the shelf-paper, top shelf,” she said.

  “Wish me luck.” I got up suddenly and started for the door. Just beside their table I stopped. “I hope nobody comes out,” I said. “It would be just too easy.”

  CHAPTER 19

  ROLON TAYLOR’S MEN might have planned to take John Topp from the beginning, or maybe my words had brought it on, but as I opened the door the Taylor man who followed John started diagonally across the street. As he did so, another man stepped from the barbershop with a rifle in his hands.

  They thought they had him treed but you don’t bet against a man like John Topp. A gunfighter isn’t just a man with a gun who can shoot, he’s a man who knows when to shoot, who to shoot at, and who has lived through or thought his way through so many situations he knows exactly what he wants to do.

  The man from the barbershop started to lift his rifle, and, instead of stopping or trying to get away, Topp ran right at him putting himself between the two men. If either shot, he must endanger the other man; both hesitated.

  The man with the rifle tried to sidestep to get out of line with his friend, but Topp was too fast and too close. He fired, saw the man with the rifle start to fall, and he caught the awning-post with his left hand and used it as a pivot to swing himself around. The man who had been behind him fired as he saw his friend fall, and John Topp, swinging around the post, fired as his right foot hit the ground. The man who had been behind him raised on his toes and took two tiptoe steps forward and plunged on his face in the dust.

  John Topp stood where he was, looking at the door where I stood. He did not know I was there or if anyone was, but if anyone had stepped from that door at that moment he would have died in the next.

  Taking a step back, I glanced toward the table of Rolon Taylor men. Two of them had started to their feet, one still gripped his knife and fork, the fourth was slowly lowering his cup to the tabletop.

  “Your boys didn’t do so good,” I told them, “but I’d finish my breakfast if I were you.”

  Several people had come from stores. One woman was staring, shocked, her hand to her mouth. A man in a white apron walked from the butcher shop. “I saw it,” I heard the words loud and clear, “they tried to kill him. It was self-defense.”

  “That man Topp’s been around for days. Never bothered nobody. Quiet sort of man, minded his own affairs.”

  “Taylor men,” somebody else was saying, “they’re a sorry outfit.”

  “Gettin’ tired of those Taylor men comin’ into town, raisin’ hell. What we need’s some vigilantes with a rope.”

  The door stood open and the men at the table could hear, as I could.

  Walking back to the table where Molly still sat, I said, “German? How’s about another cup of coffee? That street is no place to be right now.”

  One of the Taylor men said, “I’ll kill him. If it’s the last thing I do—”


  Looking across the room at them, I said, “You try it and it will be the last thing you do. You boys better get wise. That’s an ol’ he-coon from the high country.”

  A crowd had gathered in the street and there was angry talk about “citizens being assaulted” and “running them out of town.”

  Me, I was through listening. With everybody distracted, we had our chance. Getting up, I took my cup and walked to the kitchen. From the shelter of the door I motioned to Molly.

  The sunlight was already fading when we slipped from the door, me wearing an old coat of German’s. We cut across lots heading for Maggie’s. It was the chance I’d hoped for and we might not get another.

  When we were a hundred yards off, we stopped to listen. There was no sound of pursuit, only of loud talk from the street. Turning, we went on around the patch of trees and finally into the road leading up to Maggie’s.

  It was a log house, two-storied at one end where a light showed in two lower windows that faced the town. At the other end there was also a light, and as we approached, a woman came to the door and threw out a pan of water. Then she paused, staring toward the town, evidently wondering about the gunshots. She was turning back toward the wide open kitchen door when she heard us coming. Pausing, she looked our way.

  “Ma’am? Maggie?”

  “She’s inside,” the woman replied, “she ain’t to be disturbed.”

  “It’s very important,” I said, “important to the safety of this young lady. There’s trouble in town.”

  “Heard some shootin’,” the woman agreed.

  “I’ve got to get this young lady away,” I insisted. “We wanted to borrow some horses.”

  “Horses? You must be crazy. Mrs. Tyburn wouldn’t lend a horse to anybody. Not to anybody, believe me.”

  “May we see her? Will you tell her we wish to speak to her?”

  Grudgingly, the woman turned toward the house. When we reached the door’s light she turned and looked at us carefully. “Well,” she hesitated, “I’ll see. But mind you, I promise nothin’. She ain’t seen anybody in weeks and ain’t wishful of it.”