The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1

by Louis L'Amour

  At break of day our wagons rolled down a long valley with a small stream alongside the trail, and the Indians came over the ridge to the south of us and started our way—tall, fine-looking men with feathers in their hair.

  There was barely time for a circle, but I was riding off in front with Tryon Burt, and he said, “A man can always try to talk first, and Injuns like a palaver. You get back to the wagons.”

  Only I rode along beside him, my rifle over my saddle and ready to hand. My mouth was dry and my heart was beating so’s I thought Try could hear it, I was that scared. But behind us the wagons were making their circle, and every second was important.

  Their chief was a big man with splendid muscles, and there was a scalp not many days old hanging from his lance. It looked like Ryerson’s hair, but Ryerson’s wagons should have been miles away to the east by now.

  Burt tried them in Shoshoni, but it was the language of their enemies and they merely stared at him, understanding well enough, but of no mind to talk. One young buck kept staring at Burt with a taunt in his eye, daring Burt to make a move; then suddenly the chief spoke, and they all turned their eyes toward the wagons.

  There was a rider coming, and it was a woman. It was Ma.

  She rode right up beside us, and when she drew up she started to talk, and she was speaking their language. She was talking Sioux. We both knew what it was because those Indians sat up and paid attention. Suddenly she directed a question at the chief.

  “Red Horse,” he said, in English.

  Ma shifted to English. “My husband was blood brother to Gall, the greatest warrior of the Sioux nation. It was my husband who found Gall dying in the brush with a bayonet wound in his chest, who took Gall to his home and treated the wound until it was well.”

  “Your husband was a medicine man?” Red Horse asked.

  “My husband was a warrior,” Ma replied proudly, “but he made war only against strong men, not women or children or the wounded.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder. “This is my son. As my husband was blood brother to Gall, his son is by blood brotherhood the son of Gall, also.”

  Red Horse stared at Ma for a long time, and I was getting even more scared. I could feel a drop of sweat start at my collar and crawl slowly down my spine. Red Horse looked at me. “Is this one a fit son for Gall?”

  “He is a fit son. He has killed his first buffalo.”

  Red Horse turned his mount and spoke to the others. One of the young braves shouted angrily at him, and Red Horse replied sharply. Reluctantly, the warrior trailed off after their chief.

  “Ma’am,” Burt said, “you just about saved our bacon. They were just spoilin’ for a fight.”

  “We should be moving,” Ma said.

  Mr. Buchanan was waiting for us. “What happened out there? I tried to keep her back, but she’s a difficult woman.”

  “She’s worth any three men in the outfit,” Burt replied.

  That day we made eighteen miles, and by the time the wagons circled there was talk. The fact that Ma had saved them was less important now than other things. It didn’t seem right that a decent woman could talk Sioux or mix in the affairs of men.

  Nobody came to our fire, but while picking the saddle horses I heard someone say, “Must be part Injun. Else why would they pay attention to a woman?”

  “Maybe she’s part Injun and leadin’ us into a trap.”

  “Hadn’t been for her,” Burt said, “you’d all be dead now.”

  “How do you know what she said to ’em? Who savvies that lingo?”

  “I never did trust that woman,” Mrs. White said; “too high and mighty. Nor that husband of hers, either, comes to that. Kept to himself too much.”

  The air was cool after a brief shower when we started in the morning, and no Indians in sight. All day long we moved over grass made fresh by new rain, and all the ridges were pine-clad now, and the growth along the streams heavier. Short of sundown I killed an antelope with a running shot, dropped him mighty neat—and looked up to see an Indian watching from a hill. At the distance I couldn’t tell, but it could have been Red Horse.

  Time to time I’d passed along the train, but nobody waved or said anything. Webb watched me go by, his face stolid as one of the Sioux, yet I could see there was a deal of talk going on.

  “Why are they mad at us?” I asked Burt.

  “Folks hate something they don’t understand, or anything seems different. Your ma goes her own way, speaks her mind, and of an evening she doesn’t set by and gossip.”

  He topped out on a rise and drew up to study the country, and me beside him. “You got to figure most of these folks come from small towns where they never knew much aside from their families, their gossip, and their church. It doesn’t seem right to them that a decent woman would find time to learn Sioux.”

  Burt studied the country. “Time was, any stranger was an enemy, and if anybody came around who wasn’t one of yours, you killed him. I’ve seen wolves jump on a wolf that was white or different somehow—seems like folks and animals fear anything that’s unusual.”

  We circled, and I staked out my horses and took the oxen to the herd. By the time Ma had her grub-box lid down, I was fixing at a fire when here come Mr. Buchanan, Mr. and Mrs. White, and some other folks, including that Webb.

  “Ma’am”—Mr. Buchanan was mighty abrupt—“we figure we ought to know what you said to those Sioux. We want to know why they turned off just because you went out there.”

  “Does it matter?”

  Mr. Buchanan’s face stiffened up. “We think it does. There’s some think you might be an Indian your own self.”

  “And if I am?” Ma was amused. “Just what is it you have in mind, Mr. Buchanan?”

  “We don’t want no Injuns in this outfit!” Mr. White shouted.

  “How does it come you can talk that language?” Mrs. White demanded. “Even Tryon Burt can’t talk it.”

  “I figure maybe you want us to keep goin’ because there’s a trap up ahead!” White declared.

  I never realized folks could be so mean, but there they were facing Ma like they hated her, like those witch-hunters Ma told me about back in Salem. It didn’t seem right that Ma, who they didn’t like, had saved them from an Indian attack, and the fact that she talked Sioux like any Indian bothered them.

  “As it happens,” Ma said, “I am not an Indian, athough I should not be ashamed of it if I were. They have many admirable qualities. However, you need worry yourselves no longer, as we part company in the morning. I have no desire to travel further with you—gentlemen.”

  Mr. Buchanan’s face got all angry, and he started up to say something mean. Nobody was about to speak rough to Ma with me standing by, so I just picked up that ol’ rifle and jacked a shell into the chamber. “Mr. Buchanan, this here’s my ma, and she’s a lady, so you just be careful what words you use.”

  “Put down that rifle, you young fool!” he shouted at me.

  “Mr. Buchanan, I may be little and may be a fool, but this here rifle doesn’t care who pulls its trigger.”

  He looked like he was going to have a stroke, but he just turned sharp around and walked away, all stiff in the back.

  “Ma’am,” Webb said, “you’ve no cause to like me much, but you’ve shown more brains than that passel o’ fools. If you’ll be so kind, me and my boy would like to trail along with you.”

  “I like a man who speaks his mind, Mr. Webb. I would consider it an honor to have your company.”

  Tryon Burt looked quizzically at Ma. “Why, now, seems to me this is a time for a man to make up his mind, and I’d like to be included along with Webb.”

  “Mr. Burt,” Ma said, “for your own information, I grew up among Sioux children in Minnesota. They were my playmates.”

  Come daylight our wagon pulled off to one side, pointing northwest at the mountains, and Mr. Buchanan led off to the west. Webb followed Ma’s wagon, and I sat watching Mr. Buchanan’s eyes get angrier as John Sam
pson, Neely Stuart, the two Shafter wagons, and Tom Croft all fell in behind us.

  Tryon Burt had been talking to Mr. Buchanan, but he left off and trotted his horse over to where I sat my horse. Mr. Buchanan looked mighty sullen when he saw half his wagon train gone and with it a lot of his importance as captain.

  Two days and nearly forty miles farther and we topped out on a rise and paused to let the oxen take a blow. A long valley lay across our route, with mountains beyond it, and tall grass wet with rain, and a flat bench on the mountainside seen through a gray veil of a light shower falling. There was that bench, with the white trunks of aspen on the mountainside beyond it looking like ranks of slim soldiers guarding the bench against the storms.

  “Ma,” I said.

  “All right, Bud,” she said quietly, “we’ve come home.”

  And I started up the oxen and drove down into the valley where I was to become a man.

  Ironwood Station

  The riders met where the trails formed a Y with the main road. The man from the north was fat, with a narrow-brimmed hat and round cheeks. He raised a hand in greeting. “Mind if I ride along with you? Gets mighty lonesome, ridin’ alone. I ain’t seen even a jackrabbit last ten miles, an’ a man can say just so much to a horse.

  “Figured to make Ironwood Station before sundown. They feed passengers, an’ I’m mighty tired of my own cookin’.” The fat man bit off a chunk of chewing tobacco and offered the plug to the other man, who shook his head. “Long empty stretch in here,” the fat man continued. Never see nobody ’ceptin’ Utes, whom nobody wants to see.” The fat man glanced at his companion. “Ain’t much for talkin’, are you?”

  “Not much.”

  “Well, I’m ready for Dan Burnett’s cookin’. That man can sure shake up a nice mess o’ vittles. Makes a man’s mouth water.”

  “Somebody north of us,” the other rider said. “Somebody who doesn’t want to follow a trail.”

  The fat man glanced at him. “You hear something?”

  “I smell dust.”

  “Could be Utes. This here is Ute country.” The fat man was worried.

  “The Utes have been killin’ a lot of folks about here.”

  “There’s three … maybe four of them.”

  “Now, how would you know that?”

  “Dust from one horse wouldn’t reach this far, but the dust from three or four would.”

  “My name is Jones,” the fat man said. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Talon … Shawn Talon.”

  “Odd name. Don’t reckon I ever heard that one before.”

  “You would in County Wicklow. My father was Irish, with an after-coating of Texas.”

  They rode in silence until they dipped into a hollow, and Talon drew up briefly. “Three riders,” Talon said, “on mighty fine horses. See the stride? A long stride and good action, although they’ve been riding a long time.”

  “You read a lot from a few tracks.”

  “Well, they’ve had to be riding a long time,” Talon said, smiling. “This isn’t camping country, and where would a man come from to get here?”

  Sun glinted on the rifle barrel a split instant before the bullet whipped past his ear, but the brief warning was enough. Talon slapped the spurs to his horse and was off with a bound, the report of a rifle cutting a slash across the hot still afternoon.

  Ahead of him there was a burst of firing, and as the two men, riding neck and neck, came over the rise, they saw three others in a hollow among the rocks defending themselves against an attack by Utes. Glancing back, Talon saw several Indians closing in from behind them. Jumping their horses into the circle of rocks, Talon rolled on his side and began feeding shells into the Winchester. Briefly, he glanced at the other men.

  The three strangers were tough, competent-looking men. One, a slim, dark man, had his holster tied down. He was unshaven and he glanced at Talon and grinned. “You showed up on time, mister.”

  It was very hot. From time to time somebody thought they saw a target and fired, and from time to time the Utes fired back … but they were working closer. “Getting set for a rush,” Talon said aloud.

  “Let ’em come,” the man with the tied-down gun said. “The quicker they try it, the quicker this will be over.”

  Neither of his companions had said anything. One was a short, dark man, the other a burly fellow, huge and bearded. All three looked dirty, and showed evidence of long days in the saddle. Talon noticed that his talkative friend was suddenly very silent.

  The rush came suddenly. Talon got in a quick shot with his rifle, and then the man with the tied-down holster was on his feet, his six-gun rolling a cannonade of sound into the hot afternoon. He shot fast and accurately. With his own eyes Talon saw three Indians drop under the gunman’s fire before the attack broke. With his rifle Talon nailed another, and saw the gunman bring down the last Indian with a fifty-yard pistol shot.

  “That was some shooting,” Talon commented.

  The man glanced at him briefly. “It’s my business,” he said.

  In the distance, beyond the trail, dust arose. “Thought so,” the gunman said. “They’re pullin’ out.”

  Talon waited a moment, watching the trail, and then he turned and walked toward his horse, standing with the other horses in the low ground behind the rocks. “Let’s ride, Jones.”

  They mounted up and the three men watched them in silence. The gunman stared at Talon as he swung his horse to ride out. “Something about you,” he said. “I’ve seen you before, somewhere.”

  “No,” Talon said distinctly, “I don’t believe so.”

  “You ridin’ west?”

  “To Carson City, probably.”

  “Make it definitely … you take my advice and don’t stop this side.” The gunman grinned. “You might run into more Utes without me to protect you.”

  Talon said, “You know something? You’re in the wrong business.”

  He loped his horse out of the basin without waiting for a reply, and Jones pulled in alongside him. Jones looked back over his shoulder. “You should be careful,” he said. “That was Lute Robeck back there. He’s a mighty dangerous man. You see the way he emptied that six-gun?”

  “He didn’t empty it,” Talon said. “He had one shot left.”

  The desert lay empty and still under the hot morning sun. Heat waves shimmered over the red-brown, sun-baked rocks of the distant mountains, but there was no other movement until a lone dust devil danced out of the greasewood clumps and gained size in the flatland, then died away to nothing.

  In the back room of the stage station at Ironwood, Dan Burnett lay on his back with a broken hip and three broken ribs. It was close and hot in the small bedroom and he gasped painfully with every breath.

  Kate Breslin, in the big main room of the station, went to the door for the fiftieth time and stared up the narrow, empty road that went down the flat and curved out of sight around the hill. The road was empty … in all that hot, vast, and brassy silence, nothing moved.

  Kate Breslin was twice a widow, once by stampede and once by the gun, but at forty-five she was all western, with no idea of ever going elsewhere. She had rolled into Ironwood on the stage bound for Carson and they had found Dan Burnett dragging himself toward the station door with a broken hip … he had been kicked by a mule and was in bad shape.

  Immediately, she volunteered to remain until a relief man could come and somebody to care for Dan. On impulse, Ruth Starkey had stayed with her. Now, as Ruth could plainly see, Kate was worried, and she was worried about something other than the injured man in the back bedroom.

  “Can you handle a gun?” Kate asked suddenly.

  “I’ve shot a rifle, if that’s what you mean.”

  “You may need to.…” Kate Breslin looked at her quickly. “You know what he told me? There’s seventy thousand dollars in gold on that westbound stage … seventy thousand.”

  “Does anybody know?”

  “You darned tootin’,
somebody knows. Trouble is, they don’t know who. Feller worked for the mining company, he suddenly took off, didn’t even pick up his wages … he lit right out of town. They thought about holding the gold, then decided they would be safer to ship it. That’s why Dan is so worried.”

  “But don’t they know about Dan?”

  “West they do, but that gold’s shipped from east of here … and back there they’ll think Dan is on his toes. This is one place nobody will expect trouble.”

  Ruth was standing in the door. “Kate,” she said, “two men are coming up the road … from the east.”

  Kate Breslin joined her in the door. Two men riding toward them, both on fine, blooded horses, definitely not the sort of horses ridden by cowhands. One man was short and thickset, the other was a tall man.

  “Be careful what you say,” Kate said. “You just be careful.”

  When they rode up it was the tall man who spoke. “Ma’am, we’ve heard they served the best food along the line at Ironwood, and we’re hungry. Could you manage to serve a meal for two?”

  “I reckon,” Kate said. “Get down and come in.”

  When they had stabled their horses, the two men came in and the fat one walked to the bar. “I’d like a whiskey,” he said, “I surely would.”

  “Pour one for him, Ruth.” Kate was already rattling dishes in the kitchen. “I’ll feed these men so they can get on their way. I expect they’re in a hurry to get to Carson.”

  Talon glanced at her and then at Ruth, momentarily puzzled by the presence of the women. His eyes strayed toward the closed door of the bedroom, but what it was or who was there, Talon had no idea. He sensed that for some reason his presence was not wanted, and he wondered why this was so. He was a sensitive man, aware of changes in the atmosphere, and he was aware of a subtle coldness now.

  He had not expected to find women here, and the younger one, the one called Ruth, was extremely pretty … but an eastern girl or one who had lately been east. Disturbed, he walked outside and went to the stable, where the mules that pulled the stage over this rough stretch were kept. There were twelve of them, and walking past the stalls, he suddenly glimpsed a gun, half-concealed by the hay on the barn floor.