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

by Louis L'Amour

  There was a small scar on one cheekbone and sometime long ago his nose had been broken. He was probably twenty-five but he looked older, and the years behind him had probably been rugged years.

  Clip Hart stared at him. “There’ll be seven horses brought here tonight. Keep them saddled and ready to go. Understand?”

  Duffy’s man jerked a thumb at Duffy. “I take my orders from him.”

  Hart’s anger flared. He was a man who could not accept resistance of any kind. It drove him to a killing fury and Duffy knew it, and was worried. “You’ll take my orders!” Hart said. “Get back inside!”

  Deliberately, the hostler glanced at Duffy and the old man nodded. Duffy’s man turned on his heel and went back inside.

  “You’ll get paid, and plenty,” Hart was telling Duffy, “but no arguments, understand?” Then, his tone thick with contempt, he added,

  “Who in this town could make trouble for us?”

  When Hart crossed the street to the saloon, Duffy’s man returned to the door. “You goin’ to take that?”

  “We’ve no choice. I’m no gunslinger. There’s no more than seven men in town right now, all quiet, peaceful men. Anyway, their womenfolks would be scared. We’ve been expectin’ something of the kind for a long time.” He looked around. “You’re new here. Those men are bad, real bad.”

  Duffy’s man merely looked at him. “Are they?” he asked.

  He walked back into the stable and climbed to the loft, forking hay into the mangers, then put corn into seven feed boxes. Walking out he said, “I’ll eat now,” slipping into his coat as he spoke. He did not look at Duffy. The three horses were still across the street.

  There was a sign that said ma’s kitchen and when he went inside there were two tables eight feet long with a bench along each side and at each end. Clip Hart was sitting at the end of one table with his back to the wall. Duffy’s man sat down alongside the table near the opposite end.

  He had been born in the West but left with his mother when he was ten and had grown up in the streets of New York. At fifteen, after two years working on a fishing boat he had shipped out around the Horn. He dealt monte in a Barbary Coast dive, fought a series of bareknuckle fights, and won them. He had become friendly with Jem Mace and learned a lot about fighting from him, the master boxer of his time. At seventeen he was on a windjammer in the China Sea. Back in New York again he fought several more bareknuckle fights and won each time.

  Discontented with his life he found an interest in books and began to study with an eye to bettering himself, although without any definite idea. Running out of money he worked his way West on the railroad and finally, dead broke, he dropped off the stage in Westwater.

  Westwater had one restaurant, one saloon, a livery stable, a blacksmith shop, a crossroads store, and a stage station which doubled as a post office.

  Julie came around the table and put a plate before him. He thanked her and watched her fill the cup. She was a slender girl with Irish blue eyes, black hair, and a few freckles. She left him and went around the table, picking up several dirty dishes. It looked like at least three men had left without finishing their meals when Hart came in.

  “More coffee!” Hart looked at the girl as he spoke, boldly appraising. When she went to fill his cup he slipped an arm around her waist.

  She stepped away so quickly that it jerked Hart off balance and his face turned ugly with anger.

  “Put that pot down and come here!” he said.

  “Keep your hands to yourself !” Julie flared. “I’ll serve you, but I won’t be pawed by you!”

  Clip started to rise but Duffy’s man grabbed the table and shoved hard. The end of the table hit Hart’s hip as he was turning to rise, and it caught him off balance. He staggered, the bench behind tripped him. He fell hard, his feet flying up.

  Duffy’s man stood over him. “Let her alone,” he said. “A man in your business can’t afford to fool around.”

  “You’re tellin’ me my business?” He gathered his feet under him but he was in no position to argue, and something in the face of Duffy’s man warned him.

  At the same time he realized that what the hostler said was true. He could not afford trouble here and now. He could wait. He got carefully to his feet. “Aw, I was just foolin’!” he said. “No need for her to be so persnickety.”

  Then as he started to brush himself off, his anger flared again. “You shoved that table!” he exclaimed.

  “You catch on fast.” Duffy’s man spoke calmly, standing there with his hands on his hips, just looking at Hart. The outlaw grew more and more angry. At the same time he felt an impulse to caution. No trouble here and now. That could wait.

  Without another word he drew back his bench and sat down. When he had finished eating he threw a half-dollar on the table and went out without so much as a backward glance.

  Julie filled his cup again. “He won’t forget that.”

  “I know.”

  “He’ll kill you. He’s killed other men.”

  “Maybe.”

  Duffy’s man finished his meal in silence, ever conscious of her presence. When he got up he dropped two bits on the table to pay for the meal, then went to the door. “You be careful,” she warned.

  He crossed the street and saw the horses the men had ridden into town were gone. It was dark now, but he could still see Duffy seated in his big old chair.

  “Horses come?”

  “Not yet.” Duffy’s chair creaked. “What happened over there?”

  “He got fresh with Julie, and I shoved him down with a table. He didn’t like it very much.”

  “He’ll kill you.”

  “I’m not ready to die.”

  “Take a horse,” Duffy advised. “Take that little bay. If you ever get the money you can send it to me. If not, forget it. I like you, son.”

  “I don’t need a horse.”

  “You won’t have a chance.”

  “You go home, Mr. Duffy, and don’t come out tomorrow. Leave this to me. It’s my fight.”

  Duffy’s chair creaked as he got up. “The bay’s in the box stall if you want it.” He paused near the corner of the barn. “Have you got a gun?”

  “No, I don’t think I’ll need one.” He was silent, and he was aware that the old man had not moved, but stood there in the shadows.

  “The way I see it,” he said, “they’ve got this town treed. They can do as they please. First they will use it as a way station for fresh horses, then they’ll take over the town’s business, then the people. Men will be killed and women taken.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You go home now, Mr. Duffy. You stay out of this.”

  Duffy’s man listened to the slow, retreating steps. Duffy must be nearly eighty. The storekeeper was well past sixty. The tough young men of the town were all gone on a cattle drive. They would be back next year, or maybe they would never come back. The hardships of a cattle drive being what they were. It made no difference now. He was a man who knew what had to be done and he was not accustomed to asking for help.

  He sat down in Duffy’s chair and waited. There had been a man in a railroad construction camp who was always quoting, and those quotations had a way of sticking in the mind. Duffy’s man stirred in the chair, remembering one the fellow had loved to quote. Time and again he had said it.

  They tell us, Sir, that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be next week? Will it be next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed and a guard stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Sir, we are not weak if we make proper use of those means which the God of nature has placed in our power.

  The words had a nice sound and he said them aloud, but softly, listening to the smooth sound of them on his lips. He had the Irishman’s love of fine sounding words and the Irishman’s aptitude for rebellion. He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. The fellow in the construction camp who quo
ted that, he had been better than a book, and all he needed to start him off was a bit of rye whiskey.

  It was past midnight when the horses came. Two riders led them up under the trees and then across the street to the stable. One man remained outside in Duffy’s chair while the other helped Duffy’s man tie them in the stalls. They were all fine, beautifully built animals.

  The man was stocky and not very tall. He lifted the lantern to the hostler’s face. “New?”

  “Drifting.”

  “You take good care these horses are ready. You do that and you’ll have no trouble. You might even find a few extra bucks in your kick when this is over. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you.”

  The man walked back to the door but did not step out into the light. There was a lantern over the door that was kept burning all night, and it threw a pale glow around the stable door.

  Duffy’s man watched the glow of their cigarettes and then he went to the harness room. There were several old saddles, odds and ends of harness, and in a corner, behind a dusty slicker there was something else.

  It was a Colt revolving shotgun.

  He peered out a crack of the door, then put the lantern on the floor between himself and the door. Taking up the shotgun he wiped it free of dust, then he took it apart and went to work on it.

  Several times he went to the door to peer out. After almost two hours of work he had the shotgun in firing condition. The cylinder would no longer revolve of itself but could be turned by hand. Duffy’s man fed shells into the four chambers. They were old brass shotgun shells, and he had loaded them himself. Then he stood the shotgun back in the corner and hung the slicker over it.

  The short, stocky man was in the chair now and the other one was asleep on the hay just inside the door. Duffy’s man stopped inside the door. “What time tomorrow?” he asked.

  The fellow looked around at him. “Maybe noon. Why?”

  “Wonderin’ if I should feed them again. They won’t run good on a full stomach.”

  “Say, that’s right. Feed ’em now, I s’pose. All right?”

  “Yeah.”

  Duffy’s man walked back inside and fed the horses. “They tell us, Sir, that we are weak,” he repeated, “but when shall we be stronger?”

  He thought it over as he stood there, rubbing the sorrel’s neck. “It has a nice sound,” he told the horse, “a nice sound.”

  He walked to the door. “Soon be daylight,” he said, “the sky’s turning gray.”

  “Yeah.” The stocky man got to his feet and stretched. Duffy’s man hit him.

  It was a backhand blow with his left fist that caught the stretching outlaw in the solar plexus. Duffy’s man stepped around in front of him and with the practiced ease of the skilled boxer he uppercut with the left and crossed a right to the chin. The outlaw never had a chance to know what was happening, and the only sound was a gasp at the backhand to the solar plexus.

  Duffy’s man pulled him out of sight behind the door. Then he tied his hands and feet and stuffed a dirty rag into his mouth for a gag, tying it there.

  Leaning over the sleeping outlaw he very gently lifted the man’s hand and slipped a loop over it. His eyes flared open but the hostler grasped his upper arm and flipped him over on his face before he realized what was happening.

  Shoving the man’s face into the hay and earth, he dropped on one knee on the man’s back and jerked his other wrist over to receive a second loop. Quickly, with a sailor’s skill with knots, he drew the wrists together and bound them tight, then tied his feet and gagged him.

  They might, he thought, get themselves free just when he was most busy. He dragged them to the center of the barn where there was no loft. It was almost forty feet to the ridgepole. Climbing the ladder to the loft he then mounted a ladder that led to the roof and rigged two ropes over a crosspiece, then went back to the floor.

  The outlaws, both conscious now, stared at him, horrified.

  “Going to hang you,” he said cheerfully, grinning at their agonized expressions. “But not by the necks … unless you struggle.”

  Twenty minutes later he looked up at them with appreciation. More than thirty feet above the hard packed earth of the barn floor he had suspended the two outlaws. Each man had a loose noose around his neck. If they struggled to get free and the knots started to slip they would hang themselves.

  “It’s up to you,” he explained. “You can hang there quietly and when this shindig is over I’ll let you down easy. You struggle and you’ll both be dead.”

  He strolled to the door. Smoke was lifting from Ma’s Kitchen and Julie was sweeping off the step. He walked across and she glanced up, smiling at him. He saw her eyes go past him to the barn door. The chair was empty.

  She got the coffeepot and filled his cup, stealing a glance at his face, which revealed nothing. She had heard the riders come in with the horses, and she knew it meant a bank holdup somewhere near.

  The outlaws could run their horses at top speed, switch to fresh horses and be off to the mountains. The fresh horses would assure them of escape, for any posse would have to run their horses hard to try to catch them, and those horses would have been extended to the utmost before reaching Westwater.

  Duffy’s man ate in silence. When he arose he dropped a quarter on the table. “Better stay inside today,” he told Julie, “and tell Ma.”

  She stopped at the end of the table. “Whatever it is you’re planning,” she said, “don’t do it. You don’t know Clip Hart.”

  “There are Clip Harts wherever one goes. If you start running there’s no place to stop. I have it to do or I have to run, and I don’t run easy.

  “Anyway”—he spoke in a lighter tone, not looking at her—“a man has to stop somewhere and make a start. This seems as good a place as any. A man might even start a ranch of his own.”

  “That takes money.”

  “A man who is good with an ax might make some money cutting ties for that branch line they’re about to build. They will need ties,” he added, “or they’ll have to ship them a long way.”

  He went out without looking back, but he heard Ma say, “I like that young man.”

  Julie answered, “He won’t live long if he bucks Clip Hart.”

  At the foot of the steps Duffy’s man stopped, thinking. How did one man handle seven men? And how far behind the outlaws would the posse be? How long would it take them to get to Westwater?

  Duffy’s man considered a half dozen ways of delaying the outlaws and still staying alive. Tying their horses with hard knots? They would cut the ropes. Opening fire as they entered the street? He didn’t have shells enough to kill them all if he scored with every shot, and they were too many. He would himself be dead.

  There was no way. He had been foolish to begin what he could not end, and he was very glad he had not tried to enlist help in his foolhardy scheme. It had been all too easy to think of doing something, all too easy to say they would never be stronger.

  Nonetheless, having started it, it was not in him to quit. What he had begun he would finish, and he would hope to do enough damage in the process that they would come no more to Westwater.

  It was natural that he did not consider his own situation. Not that he had not thought of it before, but he had known what his chances were, and now that he had decided to go ahead he simply would have no chance at all. At least, none worth considering.

  Finally, he brought the horses out and tied them, according to plan, at the hitch rail. He tied them with slipknots, tying Clip Hart’s horse a little closer to the stable and just a little apart from the others. Then he brought the shotgun from the harness room and placed it beside the barn door, but out of sight.

  He knew then he had done what he could do, and there was nothing to do but wait. He dropped into Duffy’s chair and relaxed.

  Word seemed to have gotten around, for no one appeared on the street. The store was open, as was the saloon, but nobody was in either place. Several times Julie ca
me to the door and looked across the street at the young man in the chair by the barn door. Each time he was whittling. Once he even seemed to be asleep.

  It was almost eleven o’clock when they heard them coming. They thundered across the bridge just outside of town and came racing around the bend and through the trees. They came at a dead run, piled off their horses and rushed for the fresh horses at the hitch rail. Hart reached his horse and grabbed at the slipknot, and Duffy’s man hit him.

  There was no warning. Duffy’s man had tied that horse within an easy step and his left hook caught Hart on the chin and he went down, spun halfway around, and grabbed for his gun.

  Duffy’s man slapped away the gun hand and smashed Hart with a big, work-hardened fist. Knocking him back against the rail he proceeded to slug him in the belly, then on the chin with both hands. Hart went down, battered and bleeding. Only then did Duffy’s man disarm him.

  The other outlaws had leaped for their saddles and no sooner did they hit leather than all hell broke loose. The horses were big, fresh, and full of corn, and they began to pitch madly as if on signal. A girth broke, and then another. Men plunged into the dust, and as they hit, men rushed from the stores and ran among them, clubbing with gun barrels and rifle butts.

  Duffy himself was there, moving with surprising agility for one of his age and bulk. Only one man made a break for it. He was near the stable and his cinch did not break. He got his horse turned and as he did so he lifted his pistol and took careful aim at Duffy’s man.

  The hostler sprang for the shotgun beside the door, knowing he would never reach it in time. Then a rifle shot rang out and as Duffy’s man swung around with the shotgun in his hands, he saw the outlaw topple from his saddle into the dust.

  He glanced around and saw Julie standing in the door with an old Sharps .50 in her hands, a thin wraith of smoke issuing from the muzzle.