“The devil with it!” Hardin exclaimed impatiently. He wheeled his horse and, pistol in hand, started down into the narrow rift in the dark. One by one, they followed. The darkness closed around them, and the air was damp and chill. They rode on, and then the trail mounted steeply toward a grayness ahead of them, and they came out in a small basin. Ahead of them they heard a trickle of running water and saw the darkness of trees.
Cautiously they approached. Suddenly, they saw the light of a fire. Hardin drew up sharply and slid from his horse. The others followed. In a widening circle, they crept toward the fire. Kesney was the first to reach it, and the sound of his swearing rent the stillness and shattered it like thin glass. They swarmed in around him.
The fire was built close beside a small running stream, and nearby was a neat pile of dry sticks. On a paper, laid out carefully on a rock, was a small mound of coffee, and another of sugar. Nobody said anything for a minute, staring at the fire and the coffee. The taunt was obvious, and they were bitter men. It was bad enough to have a stranger make such fools of them on a trail, to treat them like tenderfeet, but to prepare a camp for them …
“I’ll be cussed if I will!” Short said violently. “I’ll go sleep on the desert first!”
“Well—” Hardin was philosophical. “Might’s well make the most of it. We can’t trail him at night, no way.”
Kimmel had dug a coffeepot out of his pack and was getting water from the stream which flowed from a basin just above their camp. Several of the others began to dig out grub, and Kesney sat down glumly, staring into the fire. He started to pick a stick off the pile left for them and then jerked his hand as though he had seen a snake. Getting up, he stalked back into the trees, and after a minute, he returned.
Sutter was looking around, and suddenly he spoke. “Boys, I know this place! Only I never knew about that crack in the wall. This here’s the Mormon Well!”
Hardin sat up and looked around. “Durned if it ain’t,” he said. “I ain’t been in here for six or seven years.”
Sutter squatted on his haunches. “Look!” He was excited and eager, sketching with a stick in the sand. “Here’s Mormon Well, where we are. Right over here to the northwest there’s an old sawmill an’ a tank just above it. I’ll bet a side of beef that durned killer is holed up for the night in that sawmill!”
Kesney, who had taken most to heart the taunting of the man they pursued, was on his knees staring at the diagram drawn in the damp sand. He was nodding thoughtfully.
“He’s right! He sure is. I remember that old mill! I holed up there one time in a bad storm. Spent two days in it. If that sidewinder stays there tonight, we can get him!”
As they ate, they talked over their plan. Traveling over the rugged mountains ahead of them was almost impossible in the darkness, and besides, even if Lock could go the night without stopping, his horse could not. The buckskin must have a rest. Moreover, with all the time Lock had been losing along the trail, he could not be far ahead. It stood to reason that he must have planned just this, for them to stop here, and to hole up in the sawmill himself.
“We’d better surprise him,” Hardin suggested. “That sawmill is heavy timber, an’ a man in there with a rifle an’ plenty of ammunition could stand us off for a week.”
“Has he got plenty?”
“Sure he has,” Neill told them. “I was in the Bon Ton when he bought his stuff. He’s got grub and he’s got plenty of forty-fours. They do for either his Colt or his Winchester.”
Unspoken as yet, but present in the mind of each man, was a growing respect for their quarry, a respect and an element of doubt. Would such a man as this shoot another in the back? The evidence against him was plain enough, or seemed plain enough.
Yet beyond the respect there was something else, for it was no longer simply a matter of justice to be done, but a personal thing. Each of them felt in some measure that his reputation was at stake. It had not been enough for Lock to leave an obvious trail, but he must leave markers, the sort to be used for any tenderfoot. There were men in this group who could trail a woodtick through a pine forest.
“Well,” Kimmel said reluctantly and somewhat grimly, “he left us good coffee, anyway!”
They tried the coffee and agreed. Few things in this world are so comforting and so warming to the heart as hot coffee on a chilly night over a campfire when the day has been long and weary. They drank, and they relaxed. And as they relaxed the seeds of doubt began to sprout and put forth branches of speculation.
“He could have got more’n one of us today,” Sutter hazarded. “This one is brush wise.”
“I’ll pull that rope on him!” Short stated positively. “No man makes a fool out of me!” But in his voice there was something lacking.
“You know,” Kesney suggested, “if he knows these hills like he seems to, an’ if he really wanted to lose us, we’d have to burn the stump and sift the ashes before we found him!”
There was no reply. Hardin drew back and eased the leg of his pants away from the skin, for the cloth had grown too hot for comfort.
Short tossed a stick from the neat pile into the fire.
“That mill ain’t so far away,” he suggested, “shall we give her a try?”
“Later.” Hardin leaned back against a log and yawned. “She’s been a hard day.”
“Both them bullets go in Johnny’s back?”
The question moved among them like a ghost. Short stirred uneasily, and Kesney looked up and glared around. “Sure they did! Didn’t they, Hardin?”
“Sure.” He paused thoughtfully. “Well, no. One of them was under his left arm. Right between the ribs. Looked like a heart shot to me. The other one went through near his spine.”
“The heck with it!” Kesney declared. “No slick, rustlin’ squatter can come into this country and shoot one of our boys! He was shot in the back, an’ I seen both holes. Johnny got that one nigh the spine, an’ he must have turned and tried to draw, then got that bullet through the heart!”
Nobody had seen it. Neill remembered that, and the thought rankled. Were they doing an injustice? He felt like a traitor at the thought, but secretly he had acquired a strong tinge of respect for the man they followed.
The fire flickered and the shadows danced a slow, rhythmic quadrille against the dark background of trees. He peeled bark from the log beside him and fed it into the fire. It caught, sparked brightly, and popped once or twice. Hardin leaned over and pushed the coffeepot nearer the coals. Kesney checked the loads in his Winchester.
“How far to that sawmill, Hardin?”
“About six miles, the way we go.”
“Let’s get started.” Short got to his feet and brushed off the sand. “I want to get home. Got my boys buildin’ fence. You either keep a close watch or they are off gal hootin’ over the hills.”
They tightened their saddle girths, doused the fire, and mounted up. With Hardin in the lead once more, they moved off into the darkness.
Neill brought up the rear. It was damp and chill among the cliffs and felt like the inside of a cavern. Overhead the stars were very bright. Mary was going to be worried, for he was never home so late. Nor did he like leaving her alone. He wanted to be home, eating a warm supper and going to bed in the old four-poster with the patchwork quilt Mary’s grandmother made, pulled over him. What enthusiasm he had had for the chase was gone. The warm fire, the coffee, his own weariness, and the growing respect for Lock had changed him.
Now they all knew he was not the manner of man they had supposed. Justice can be a harsh taskmaster, but Western men know their kind, and the lines were strongly drawn. When you have slept beside a man on the trail, worked with him and with others like him, you come to know your kind. In the trail of the man Chat Lock, each rider of the posse was seeing the sort of man he knew, the sort he could respect. The thought was nagging and unsubstantial, but each of them felt a growing doubt, even Short and Kesney, who were most obdurate and resentful.
Th
ey knew how a backshooter lived and worked. He had his brand on everything he did. The mark of this man was the mark of a man who did things, who stood upon his own two feet, and who if he died, died facing his enemy. To the unknowing, such conclusions might seem doubtful, but the men of the desert knew their kind.
The mill was dark and silent, a great looming bulk beside the stream and the still pool of the millpond. They dismounted and eased close. Then according to a prearranged plan, they scattered and surrounded it. From behind a lodgepole pine, Hardin called out.
“We’re comin’ in, Lock! We want you!”
The challenge was harsh and ringing. Now that the moment had come, something of the old suspense returned. They listened to the water babbling as it trickled over the old dam, and then they moved. At their first step, they heard Lock’s voice.
“Don’t you come in here, boys! I don’t want to kill none of you, but you come an’ I will! That was a fair shootin’! You’ve got no call to come after me!”
Hardin hesitated, chewing his mustache. “You shot him in the back!” he yelled.
“No such thing! He was a-facin’ the bar when I come in. He seen I was heeled, an’ he drawed as he turned. I beat him to it. My first shot took him in the side an’ he was knocked back against the bar. My second hit him in the back an’ the third missed as he was a-fallin’. You hombres didn’t see that right.”
The sound of his voice trailed off, and the water chuckled over the stones and then sighed to a murmur among the trees. The logic of Lock’s statement struck them all. It could have been that way.
A long moment passed, and then Hardin spoke up again.
“You come in and we’ll give you a trial. Fair an’ square!”
“How?” Lock’s voice was a challenge. “You ain’t got no witness. Neither have I. Ain’t nobody to say what happened there but me, as Johnny ain’t alive.”
“Johnny was a mighty good man, an’ he was our friend!” Short shouted.
“No murderin’ squatter is goin’ to move into this country an’ start shootin’ folks up!”
There was no reply to that, and they waited, hesitating a little. Neill leaned disconsolately against the tree where he stood. After all, Lock might be telling the truth. How did they know? There was no use hanging a man unless you were sure.
“Gab!” Short’s comment was explosive. “Let’s move in, Hardin! Let’s get him! He’s lyin’! Nobody could beat Johnny, we know that!”
“Webb was a good man in his own country!” Lock shouted in reply. The momentary silence that followed held them, and then, almost as a man they began moving in. Neill did not know exactly when or why he started. Inside he felt sick and empty. He was fed up on the whole business, and every instinct told him this man was no backshooter.
Carefully, they moved, for they knew this man was handy with a gun. Suddenly, Hardin’s voice rang out.
“Hold it, men! Stay where you are until daybreak! Keep your eyes open an’ your ears. If he gets out of here he’ll be lucky, an’ in the daylight we can get him, or fire the mill!”
Neill sank to a sitting position behind a log. Relief was a great warmth that swept over him. There wouldn’t be any killing tonight. Not tonight, at least.
Yet as the hours passed, his ears grew more and more attuned to the darkness. A rabbit rustled, a pinecone dropped from a tree, the wind stirred high in the pine tops, and the few stars winked through, lonesomely peering down upon the silent men.
With daylight they moved in and they went through the doors and up to the windows of the old mill, and it was empty and still. They stared at each other, and Short swore viciously, the sound booming in the echoing, empty room.
“Let’s go down to the Sorenson place,” Kimmel said. “He’ll be there.”
And somehow they were all very sure he would be. They knew he would be because they knew him for their kind of man. He would retreat no farther than his own ranch, his own hearth. There, if they were to have him and hang him, they would have to burn him out, and men would die in the process. Yet with these men there was no fear. They felt the drive of duty, the need for maintaining some law in this lonely desert and mountain land. There was only doubt which had grown until each man was shaken with it. Even Short, whom the markers by the trail had angered, and Kesney, who was the best tracker among them, even better than Hardin, had been irritated by it, too.
The sun was up and warming them when they rode over the brow of the hill and looked down into the parched basin where the Sorenson place lay.
But it was no parched basin. Hardin drew up so suddenly his startled horse almost reared. It was no longer the Sorenson place.
The house had been patched and rebuilt. The roof had spots of new lumber upon it, and the old pole barn had been made watertight and strong. A new corral had been built, and to the right of the house was a fenced-in garden of vegetables, green and pretty after the desert of the day before.
Thoughtfully, and in a tight cavalcade, they rode down the hill. The stock they saw was fat and healthy, and the corral was filled with horses.
“Been a lot of work done here,” Kimmel said. And he knew how much work it took to make such a place attractive.
“Don’t look like no killer’s place!” Neill burst out. Then he flushed and drew back, embarrassed by his statement. He was the youngest of these men and the newest in the country.
No response was forthcoming. He had but stated what they all believed. There was something stable and lasting and something real and genuine, in this place.
“I been waitin’ for you.”
The remark from behind them stiffened every spine. Chat Lock was here, behind them. And he would have a gun on them, and if one of them moved, he could die.
“My wife’s down there fixin’ breakfast. I told her I had some friends comin’ in. A posse huntin’ a killer. I’ve told her nothin’ about this trouble. You ride down there now, you keep your guns. You eat your breakfast and then if you feel bound and determined to get somebody for a fair shootin’, I’ll come out with any one of you or all of you, but I ain’t goin’ to hang.
“I ain’t namin’ no one man because I don’t want to force no fight on anybody. You ride down there now.”
They rode, and in the dooryard, they dismounted. Neill turned then, and for the first time he saw Chat Lock.
He was a big man, compact and strong. His rusty brown hair topped a brown, sun-hardened face, but with the warmth in his eyes it was a friendly sort of face. Not at all what he expected.
Hardin looked at him. “You made some changes here.”
“I reckon.” Lock gestured toward the well. “Dug by hand. My wife worked the windlass.” He looked around at them, taking them in with one sweep of his eyes. “I’ve got the grandest woman in the world.”
Neill felt hot tears in his eyes suddenly and busied himself loosening his saddle girth to keep the others from seeing. That was the way he felt about Mary.
The door opened suddenly, and they turned. The sight of a woman in this desert country was enough to make any man turn. What they saw was not what they expected. She was young, perhaps in her middle twenties, and she was pretty, with brown wavy hair and gray eyes and a few freckles on her nose. “Won’t you come in? Chat told me he had some friends coming for breakfast, and it isn’t often we have anybody in.”
Heavy-footed and shamefaced they walked up on the porch. Kesney saw the care and neatness with which the hard hewn planks had been fitted. Here, too, was the same evidence of lasting, of permanence, of strength. This was the sort of man a country needed. He thought the thought before he fixed his attention on it, and then he flushed.
Inside, the room was as neat as the girl herself. How did she get the floors so clean? Before he thought, he phrased the question. She smiled.
“Oh, that was Chat’s idea! He made a frame and fastened a piece of pumice stone to a stick. It cuts into all the cracks and keeps them very clean.”
The food smelled good, and when Hard
in looked at his hands, Chat motioned to the door.
“There’s water an’ towels if you want to wash up.”
Neill rolled up his sleeves and dipped his hands in the basin. The water was soft, and that was rare in this country, and the soap felt good on his hands. When he had dried his hands, he walked in. Hardin and Kesney had already seated themselves, and Lock’s wife was pouring coffee.
“Men,” Lock said, “this is Mary. You’ll have to tell her your names. I reckon I missed them.”
Mary. Neill looked up. She was Mary, too. He looked down at his plate again and ate a few bites. When he looked up, she was smiling at him.
“My wife’s name is Mary,” he said. “She’s a fine girl!”
“She would be! But why don’t you bring her over? I haven’t talked with a woman in so long I wouldn’t know how it seemed! Chat, why haven’t you invited them over?”
Chat mumbled something, and Neill stared at his coffee. The men ate in uncomfortable silence. Hardin’s eyes kept shifting around the room. That pumice stone. He’d have to fix up a deal like that for Jane. She was always fussing about the work of keeping a board floor clean. That washstand inside, too, with pipes made of hollow logs to carry the water out so she wouldn’t have to be running back and forth. That was an idea, too.
They finished their meal reluctantly. One by one they trooped outside, avoiding each other’s eyes. Chat Lock did not keep them waiting. He walked down among them.
“If there’s to be shootin’,” he said quietly, “let’s get away from the house.”
Hardin looked up. “Lock, was that right, what you said in the mill? Was it a fair shootin’?”
Lock nodded. “It was. Johnny Webb prodded me. I didn’t want trouble, nor did I want to hide behind the fact I wasn’t packin’ an iron. I walked over to the saloon not aimin’ for trouble. I aimed to give him a chance if he wanted it. He drawed an’ I beat him. It was a fair shootin’.”
“All right.” Hardin nodded. “That’s good enough for me. I reckon you’re a different sort of man than any of us figured.”
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1 Page 7