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

by Louis L'Amour

  Lonnie was there and Magda was in his arms.

  He turned abruptly and started back down the walk. He heard the door open behind, then Magda called, “Jim! Oh, Jim, no!”

  He paused at the gate, his face stiff. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He heard Lonnie’s low chuckle.

  She called again but he did not stop. He walked down the street and out of town, clear to the edge of the mesa. He stood there a long time in the darkness.

  Leaving the restaurant at noon the next day, he saw Lonnie Parker, George Sprague, and Ed Blick sitting on the bench near the door. They looked up as he passed, and he had his first good look at Lonnie Parker.

  He was tall and pink-cheeked, and had an easy smile. His eyes were bland, too innocent, and when he saw Rossiter he grinned insultingly. Lonnie wore two guns, and wore them tied down.

  Sprague was a cold, silent man who rarely smiled. Ed Blick boasted of a local reputation as a gunman.

  “That’s him,” Blick said. “That’s the gent who’s been takin’ care of your girl for you, Lon.”

  “Much obliged,” Lonnie called out. He turned to Ed Blick. “I seen him last night. He was just leavin’.”

  His face burning, Rossiter walked on. Mike Hamlin was waiting for him when he reached the office.

  “Jim.” He got up quickly. “You said when I was fourteen you’d give me a job. I’m fourteen next week and I’d sure like to earn some money.”

  Rossiter sat down. This had been his idea, and he had talked to Mike’s mother about it. If Mike was going to college he would have to begin to save. “All right, Mike,” he said, “get on your horse and ride out to Frisby’s. Tell him I sent you. Starting tomorrow morning, you’re on the payroll at thirty a month.”

  Thirty a month was more than any boy in Spring Valley was making. A top hand only drew forty! Mike jumped up, full of excitement. “You’ll earn it,” Jim told him dryly, “and when you show you can handle it, I’ll go up to forty.” He grinned suddenly. “Now get at it … and save your money!”

  During the week that followed he made no effort to see Magda, and carefully stayed clear of the places where she was most likely to be. He avoided mail time at the post office and began to eat more and more at home. Yet he could not close his ears nor his eyes, and there was talk around.

  Lonnie was to marry Magda, he heard that twice. He saw them on the street together, heard them laughing. Work was piling up for him and he lost himself in it. And there was trouble around the country. Ed Blick had returned to town from Durango, where he had killed a man.

  Lonnie spent most of his time with Sprague and Blick. He had made no effort to rustle a job, but he seemed to have money. Once Jim saw him buying drinks in Kelly’s, and he stripped the bills from a large roll.

  Rossiter was working late over a brief when Frisby came to his office. He was a solid, hardworking man, but he looked tired now, and he was unshaven.

  “Jim,” he came to the point at once, “we’re losin’ cows. Some of yours, some of mine, a few other brands.”

  During the night Mike Hamlin had heard the sound of hooves. He had gotten out of bed in the bunkhouse and had caught up a horse. There was a smell of dust when he hit the grass country, and at daybreak the boy had found the tracks. At least thirty head had been driven off by four men.

  “They drove into the brush east of my place. When we tried to follow, somebody shot at us.”

  East of the Frisby place was a dense thicket of the black chaparral, a thicket that covered twenty square miles, a thorny, ugly growth of brush through which there were few trails, and none of them used except by wild game or strays. A rider could see no more than a few yards at any time. It was no place to ride with a rifleman waiting for you.

  “I’d better get Mike out of there,” he said. “I don’t want him hurt.”

  “Don’t do it, Jim,” Frisby advised. “You’d break his heart. He’s might set on provin’ himself to you. He sets up night after night with them books, but he figures he’s got to earn his money, too. He’s makin’ a hand, Jim.”

  Frisby was right, of course. To take the boy off the job would hurt his pride and deprive him of the money he would need if he were going to college. As for the cattle … Rossiter walked across the street to the sheriff ’s office.

  George Sprague was standing in front of Kelly’s smoking a cigar, and Jim was conscious of the man’s sudden attention.

  He had never liked Sprague, and never had known him. The man always had money, and he gambled, although he never seemed to win big … but he always had cash. He disappeared at intervals and would be gone for several days, sometimes a couple of weeks. His companion on these rides was usually Ed Blick. Now it was also Lonnie Parker.

  Sheriff Mulcahy was a solid, serious man. A hard worker, intent on his job. “Third complaint this week,” he said. “Folks gettin’ hit mighty hard. Got any ideas?”

  Rossiter hesitated the merest instant. “No,” he said, “not yet.”

  Stepping out of the sheriff ’s office, he came face to face with Magda Lane.

  “Jim!” Her eyes were serious. “What’s happened? You haven’t been to see me.”

  “The last time I called,” he said quietly, “you seemed rather preoccupied.”

  “Jim.” She caught his sleeve. “I’ve wanted to talk to you about that. You made a mistake. You—”

  “I think I made my mistake,” he said, his voice tightening, “at a box supper. Some time ago.” Abruptly he stepped around her and walked on.

  A moment later, he was furious with himself. He could have listened … maybe there was an explanation. So many things seemed what they were not. Still, what explanation could there be? And it was all over town that she was to marry Lonnie Parker.

  Saddling his horse, he rode out of town. The turmoil aroused by seeing her demanded action, and he rode swiftly. He was crossing the plains toward Frisby’s when, far and away to the east, beyond the chaparral, he saw a smoke column. He drew up, watching.

  The smoke was high and straight. As he watched, the column broke, puffed, then became straight again.

  Smoke signals … but the days of the Indian outbreaks were over. He turned in his saddle, and from the ridge back of Gentry he saw another signal. Even as he looked, it died out and was gone. Somebody from town was signaling to somebody out there beyond the chaparral.

  Taking a sight on that first signal, he started toward it, passing Frisby’s road without turning in.

  There was only one reason of which he could think for a smoke signal now. Somebody in town would be sending word to their rustlers that the sheriff had been notified, or that he was riding. Probably the former. He, Rossiter reflected, was only a cow town lawyer, and not a man to be feared.

  He rode into Yucca Canyon and followed it north, then climbed the steel dust out of it, skirted the mesa, and headed east again. He was high in the chaparral now, where it thinned out and merged with a scattered growth of juniper. Weaving his way through, he was almost to the other side when he came upon the tracks of cattle.

  It was a good-sized herd, and it had come out of the chaparral not long before. From droppings he spotted, he judged the herd had been moved not more than four or five hours before.

  The country grew increasingly rugged. It was an area into which he had never ventured before, a wild, broken country of canyons and mesas with rare water holes. By sundown he was too far out to turn back. And he had no bedroll with him, no coffee, and worst of all … no gun.

  Yet to turn back now would be worse than foolish. This was, without doubt, a rustled herd. Time enough to return when he discovered their destination. As there were still some minutes of daylight, he pushed on. On his right was a long tongue of a lava flow, to the left a broken, serrated ridge of rusty rock. Before him, at some distance, lifted the wall of the mountain range, and it seemed the cattle were being driven into a dead end.

  Coolness touched his face and the trail dipped down. The desert was gone, and there
was a sparse growth of buffalo grass that thickened and grew rich as he moved ahead. The lava flow now towered above his head and the trail dipped down, and rounded a shoulder of the lava. He found himself in a long, shallow valley between the flow and the pine-clad range. And along the bottom grazed more than a hundred head of cattle.

  He swung the steel dust quickly right to get the background of the lava for concealment. Then he walked his mount forward until he could see the thin trail of smoke from a starting fire. Concealing his horse, he walked down the slope through the trees.

  When he reached a spot near the camp the smoke had ceased, but the fire was blazing cheerfully. A stocky man with a tough, easy manner about him worked around the fire. He wore chaps, a faded red flannel shirt, a battered hat … and a gun.

  Rossiter turned and started back through the trees. If he cut across country he could have Mulcahy and a posse here shortly after daybreak.

  A pound of hooves stopped him and he merged his body with a pine tree and waited, alert for trouble. Through an opening between trees he saw three riders. Two men and a boy.

  A boy …

  With a tight feeling in his chest he turned abruptly about and carefully worked his way back toward the camp. Ed Blick, George Sprague—and Mike Hamlin.

  Mike’s face was white, but he was game. His hands were lashed to the pommel of his saddle.

  The red-shirted man looked up. “What goes on?” He glanced from the boy to Sprague.

  “Found him workin’ our trail like an Injun.”

  The man with the red shirt straightened and dropped the skillet. “I don’t like this, George. I don’t like it a bit.”

  “What else can we do?”

  “We can leave the country.”

  “For a kid?” Sprague began to build a smoke. “Don’t be a fool.”

  “Lonnie said Frisby went to Rossiter, then Rossiter to the sheriff.” Blick was talking. “I don’t like it, George.”

  “You afraid of Rossiter?”

  “That lawyer?” Blick’s contempt was obvious. “Mulcahy’s the one who worries me. He’s a bulldog.”

  “Leave him to me.”

  Their conclusion had been obvious. Mike Hamlin had found their trail, and now he had seen them. They must leave the country or kill him. And they had just said they would not leave the country.

  The red-shirted man had not moved, and Rossiter could see the indecision in his face. Whatever else this man might be, Rossiter could see that he was no murderer. The man did not like any part of it, but apparently could not decide on a course of action.

  Rossiter had no gun.… He had been a fool to go unarmed, but he had intended only to ride to Frisby’s to talk to Mike and look over the situation on the spot. He had never considered hunting the thieves himself, but there came a time when a man had to fork his own broncs.

  Whatever they would do would be done at once. There was no time to ride for help. Blick lifted Hamlin from the saddle and put the boy on the ground some distance away. The red-shirted man watched him, his face stiff. Then Blick and Sprague slid the saddles from their horses and led them out to picket. Jim worked his way through the brush until he was close to the fire.

  Rossiter knew there was little time and he had to gamble. “You going to let them kill that boy?” he asked quietly.

  The man’s head came up sharply. “Who’s that?”

  “I asked if you were going to let them kill that boy?”

  He saw Rossiter now. His eyes measured him coolly. “You want them stopped,” he said, “you stop them.”

  “I wasn’t expecting trouble. I’m not packing a gun.”

  It was his life he was chancing as well as Mike’s. Yet he believed he knew men, and in this one there was a basic manhood, a remnant of personal pride and integrity. Each man has his code, no matter how far down the scale.

  The fellow got to his feet and strolled over to his war bag. From it he took a battered Colt. “Catch,” he said, and walked back to the fire.

  Jim Rossiter stepped back into the shadows, gun in hand. He had seen Mike’s eyes on him, and in Mike’s eyes there had been doubt. Rossiter was a reader of books, a thinker … and this was time for violence.

  Sprague and Blick came back to the fire and Sprague looked sharply around. “Did I hear you talkin’?”

  “To the kid. I asked if he was hungry.”

  Sprague studied the man for a long minute, suspicion thick upon him. “Don’t waste the grub.” He started to sit down, then saw the gap in the open war bag. With a quick stride he stepped to the boy and rolled him over, glanced at the rawhide that bound him, then looked around on the ground.

  Blick was puzzled but alert. The man in the red shirt stood very still, pale to the lips.

  The gambler straightened up and turned slowly. “Bill, where’s that other gun of yours?”

  “I ain’t seen it.”

  Rossiter smelled the acrid smell of wood smoke. There was the coolness of a low place and damp grass around him. Out on the meadow a quail called.

  “You shoved it down in your pack last night. It ain’t there now.”

  “Ain’t it?”

  Bill knew he was in a corner, but he was not a frightened man. It was two to one, and he did not know whether the man in the shadows would stand by him—or even if he was still present.

  “I’m not fooling, Bill. I won’t stand for a double-cross.”

  “And I won’t stand for killin’ the kid.”

  Sprague’s mind was made up. Ed Blick knew it, and Ed moved left a little. Bill saw that move and knew what it meant. His tongue touched his lips, and his eyes flickered toward the pines.

  Rossiter took an easy step forward, bringing him into the half-light. “If you’re looking for the gun, Sprague, here it is.”

  The gun was easy in hand … Blick saw something then, and it bothered him. No lawyer ever held a gun like that. He tried to speak, to warn Sprague, but Rossiter was speaking.

  “Bill,” he said, “untie that boy.”

  Sprague’s lips had thinned down against his teeth. The corners of his mouth pulled down, and the skin on his face looked tight and hard. “Leave him be. I’m not backing up for no cow town lawyer.”

  “Watch it, George,” Blick said. “I don’t like this.”

  “He doesn’t dare shoot. One of us will get him.”

  “Untie the kid, Bill.” Rossiter’s eyes were on Sprague, a corner of attention for Blick. He sensed that Blick was wiser at this sort of thing than Sprague. Blick was dangerous but he would start nothing. It would be Sprague who would move first.

  Bill walked across to Mike and, dropping on his knees, began to untie him.

  “Back off, Bill,” Sprague warned, “or I’ll kill you, too.” He crouched a bit, bending his knees ever so slightly. “Get ready, Ed.”

  “George!” There was sudden panic in Blick’s voice. “Don’t try—!”

  Sprague threw himself left and grabbed for his gun. It was swinging up when Rossiter shot him. Rossiter fired once, the bullet smashing Sprague in the half-parted teeth, and then he swung the gun. He felt Blick’s shot burn him, then steadied and fired. Blick backed up two steps and sat down. Then he clasped his stomach as if with cramp and rolled over on his side and lay there, unmoving.

  Bill touched his lips with his tongue. “For a lawyer,” he said sincerely, “you can shoot.”

  Rossiter lowered the gun. Mike was sitting up, rubbing his arms. He walked over to where the other man’s kit lay on the ground and dropped the pistol onto a blanket. “Much obliged, Bill. Now you’d better saddle up and ride.”

  “Sure.”

  Bill turned to go, then stopped. “That gun there. I got it secondhand.” He rubbed his palms down his chaps. “I’ll need a road stake. You figure it’s worth twenty bucks to you?”

  Rossiter drew a coin from his pocket and tossed it to Bill. It gleamed gold in the firelight. “It’s a bargain, Bill. A good buy.”

  Bill hesitated, then said quietly, “
I never killed no kids, mister.”

  Nobody was in the street when they rode in at daybreak. There was a rooster crowing and somewhere a water bucket rattled, then a pump squeaked. Rossiter walked his horse up the street, leading two others, the bodies of Sprague and Blick across them.

  Mike started to turn his horse toward home, then said, “You never said you could shoot like that, Jim.”

  “In a lifetime, Mike, a man does many things.”

  Mulcahy came from the door of his house, hair freshly combed. “Ain’t a nice sight before breakfast, Jim.” Mulcahy glanced at the two dead men. “You want me to put out a warrant for this Bill character?”

  “No evidence,” Rossiter replied. “Let him be. The last of them is Lonnie Parker. I want you to let me come along.”

  “Tomorrow,” the sheriff said.

  It was noon when he got out of bed. He bathed, shaved, and dressed carefully, not thinking of what was to come. He left Bill’s gun on the dresser and went to a chest in the corner and got out a belt, holster, and gun. The gun was a .44 Russian, a Smith & Wesson six-shooter. He checked the loads and the balance, then walked out into the street.

  Magda was just leaving her gate. She hesitated, waiting for him. She looked from the gun to his eyes, surprised. “Jim … what are you doing?”

  He told her quietly of what happened, and of Bill riding away.

  “But,” she protested, “if they are dead and Bill is gone—”

  “There were four rustlers, Magda,” he said gently. “I don’t know what the other one will do.”

  She got it then and he saw her face go white. One hand caught the gate and she stared at him. “Jim!” Her voice was a whisper. “Oh, Jim!”

  He turned away. “I don’t want trouble, Mag. I’m going to try to take care of him for you. After all,” he said with grim humor, “he may need a lawyer.”

  Sheriff Mulcahy was waiting up the street in front of his office. The time had come.

  He was gone three steps before she cried out, and then she ran to him, caught his arm.

  “Jim Rossiter, you listen to me. You take care of yourself ! No matter what happens, Jim! Jim, believe me, there was never anybody else—nobody at all—not after I met you. The night he came to town I … I was just so glad to see him, and then you saw us and you wouldn’t talk to me. He took too much for granted, but so did you.”