Desert Death-Song

by Louis L'Amour

  “It was gettin’ late when I hit town. A man I knowed told me Ben was around with his outfit and that nobody was goin’ to back me one bit, them all bein’ scared of Ben’s boys. He told me, too, that Ben Kerr would shoot me in the back as soon as not he bein’ that kind.

  “I went huntin’ him. Kidlike, an’ never in no fight before, I was jumpy, mighty jumpy. The light was bad. All of a sudden, I saw one of Ben’s boys step out of a door ahead of me. He called out, ‘Here he is, Ben! Take him!’ Then I heard runnin’ feet behind me, heard ’em slide to a halt, an’ I wheeled, drawin’ as I turned, an’ fired.” His voice sank to a whisper.

  Cat, leaning forward, said, “You shot? An’ then … ?”

  “It was Jack. It was my own brother. He’d heard I was in town alone an’ he come runnin’ to back me up. I drilled him dead center!”

  Cat McLeod stared up at the young man, utterly appalled. In his kindly old heart he could only guess at the horror that must have filled Casady, then scarcely more than a boy, when he had looked down into that still, dead face and seen his brother.

  “Gosh, son.” He shook his head in amazed sympathy. “It ain’t no wonder you hate gun fights! It sure ain’t! But … ?” He scowled. “I still don’t see …” His voice trailed away.

  Rock drew a deep breath. “I sold out then, and left the country. Went to ridin’ for an outfit near El Paso. One night I come into town with the other hands, an’ who do I run into but Ben Kerr. He thought I ran because I was afraid of him, an’ he got tough. He called me—right in front of the outfit. I was goin’ to draw, but all I could see there in front of me was Jack, with that blue hole between his eyes! I turned and ran.”

  Cat McLeod stared at Rock, then into the fire. It was no wonder, he reflected. He probably would have run too. If he had drawn he would have been firing on the image of his brother. It would have been like killing him over again.

  “Son,” he said slowly, “I know how you feel, but stop a minute an’ think about Jack, this brother of yours. He always protected you, you say. He always stood up for you. Now don’t you suppose he’d understand? You thought you was all alone in that town. You’d every right to think that was Ben Kerr behind you. I would have thought so, an’ I wouldn’t have wasted no time shootin’, neither.

  “You can’t run away from yourself. You can’t run no further. Someday you got to stand an’ face it, an’ it might as well be now. Look at it like this: Would your brother want you livin’ like this? Hunted and scared? He sure wouldn’t! Son, ever’ man has to pay his own debt, an’ live his own life. Nobody can do it for you, but if I was you, I’d sort of figure my brother was dead because of Ben Kerr, and I’d stop runnin’!”

  Rock looked up slowly. “Yeah,” he agreed, “I see that plain. But what if when I stepped out to meet him, I look up an’ see Jack’s face again?”

  His eyes dark with horror, Rock Casady turned and plunged downstream, stumbling, swearing in his fear and loneliness and sorrow.

  At daylight, old Cat McLeod opened his eyes. For an instant, he lay still. Then he realized where he was, and what he had come for, and he turned his head. Rock Casady, his gear and horse, were gone. Stumbling to his feet, McLeod slipped on his boots and walked out in his red flannels to look at the trail.

  It headed south, away from Three Lakes, and away from Ben Kerr. Rock Casady was running again.

  The trail south to the canyon was rough and rugged. The palouse was sure-footed and had a liking for the mountains, yet seemed undecided, as though the feeling persisted that he was going the wrong way.

  Casady stared bleakly ahead, but he saw little of the orange and red of the sandstone cliffs. He was seeing again Frank Stockman’s strong, kindly face, and remembering his welcome at the Three Spoke. He was remembering Sue’s hand on his sleeve and her quick smile, and old Tom Bell, gnarled and worn with handling cattle and men. He drew up suddenly and turned the horse on the narrow trail. He was going back.

  “Jack,” he said suddenly aloud, “stick with me, boy. I’m sure goin’ to need you now!”

  Sandy Kane, grim-lipped and white of face, dismounted behind the store. Beside him was Sue Landon.

  “Miss Sue,” he said, “you get that buyin’ done fast. Don’t let none of that Vorys crowd see you. They’ve sure taken this town over since they shot the boss.”

  “All right, Sandy.” She looked at him bravely, then squeezed the older man’s hand. “We’ll make it all right.” Her blue eyes darkened. “I wish I’d been a man, Sandy. Then the boys would come in and clean up this outfit!”

  “Miss Sue,” he said gently, “don’t fret none. Our boys are just honest cowhands. We don’t have a gunfighter in the lot, nobody who could stand up to Kerr or Vorys. No man minds a scrap, but it would be plain suicide!”

  The girl started to enter the store, then caught the cowboy’s hand.

  “Sandy,” she said faintly, “look!”

  A tall man with broad shoulders had swung down before the store. He tied his horse with a slip knot, and hitched his guns into place. Rock Cassady, his hard young face bleak and desperate, stared carefully along the street.

  It was only three blocks long, this street. It was dusty and warm with the noon-day sun. The gray-fronted buildings looked upon the dusty canal that separated them, and a few saddled horses stamped lazily, flicking their tails at casual flies. It was like that other street, so long ago.

  Casady pulled the flat brim of his black hat a little lower over his eyes. Inside he felt sick and faint. His mouth was dry. His tongue trembled when it touched his lips. Up the street a man saw him and got slowly to his feet, staring as if hypnotized. The man backed away, then dove into the Hackamore Saloon.

  Rock Casady took a deep breath, drew his shoulders back, and started slowly down the walk. He seemed in a trance where only the sun was warm and the air was still. Voices murmured. He heard a gasp of astonishment, for these people remembered that he had whipped Pete Vorys, and they knew what he had come for.

  He wore two guns now, having dug the other gun and belt from his saddlebags to join the one he had only worn in the mountains. A door slammed somewhere.

  Ben Kerr stared at the face of the man in the door of the saloon.

  “Ben, here comes that yellow-backed Casady! And he’s wearin’ a gun!”

  “He is, is he?” Kerr tossed off his drink. “Fill that up, Jim! I’ll be right back. This will only take a minute!”

  He stepped out into the street. “Come to get it this time?” he shouted tauntingly, “or are you runnin’ again?”

  Rock Casady made no reply. His footsteps echoed hollowly on the board walk, and he strode slowly, finishing his walk at the intersecting alley, stepping into the dust, then up on the walk again.

  Ben Kerr’s eyes narrowed slightly. Some sixth sense warned him that the man who faced him had subtly changed. He lifted his head a little, and stared, then he shrugged off the feeling and stepped out from the building.

  “All right, Yella-Belly! If you want it!” His hand swept down in a flashing arc and his gun came up.

  Rock Casady stared down the street at the face of Ben Kerr, and it was only the face of Kerr. In his ear was Jack’s voice: “Go ahead, kid! Have at it!”

  Kerr’s gun roared and he felt the hot breath of it bite at his face. And then suddenly, Rock Casady laughed! Within him all was light and easy, and it was almost carelessly that he stepped forward. Suddenly the .44 began to roar and buck in his hand, leaping like a live thing within his grasp. Kerr’s gun flew high in the air, his knees buckled, and he fell forward on his face in the dust.

  Rock Casady turned quickly toward the Hackamore. Pete Vorys stood in the door, shocked to stillness.

  “All right, Pete! Do you want it or are you leavin’ town?”

  Vorys stared from Kerr’s riddled body to the man holding the gun.

  “Why, I’m leavin’ town!” Vorys said. “That’s my roan, right there. I’ll just …” As though stunned, he started to mount
, and Rock’s voice arrested him.

  “No, Pete. You walk. You hoof it. And start now!”

  The bully of Three Lakes wet his lips and stared, then his eyes shifted to the body in the street.

  “Sure, Rock,” he said, taking a step back. “I’ll hoof it.” Turning, stumbling a little, he started to walk. As he moved, his walk grew swifter and swifter as though something followed in his tracks.

  Rock turned and looked up, and Sue Landon was standing on the boardwalk.

  “Oh, Rock! You came back!”

  “Don’t reckon I ever really left, Sue,” he said slowly.

  “My heart’s been right here, all the time!”

  She caught his arm, and the smile in her eyes and on her lips was bright. He looked down at her.

  Then he said aloud, “Thanks, Jack!”

  She looked up quickly. “What did you say?”

  He grinned at her. “Sue,” he said, “did I ever tell you about my brother? He was one grand hombre! Someday, I’ll tell you.” They walked back toward the horses, her hand on his arm.

  DUTCHMAN’S FLAT

  The dust of Dutchman’s Flat had settled in a gray film upon their faces, and Neill could see the streaks made by the sweat on their cheeks and brows and knew his own must be the same. No man of them was smiling and they rode with their rifles in their hands, six grim and purposeful men upon the trail of a single rider.

  They were men shaped and tempered to the harsh ways of a harsh land, strong in their sense of justice, ruthless in their demand for punishment, relentless in pursuit. From the desert they had carved their homes, and from the desert they drew their courage and their code, and the desert knows no mercy.

  “Where’s he headin’, you reckon?”

  “Home, mostly likely. He’ll need grub an’ a rifle. He’s been livin’ on the old Sorenson place.”

  Kimmel spat. “He’s welcome to it. That place starved out four men I know of.” He stared at the hoof tracks ahead. “He’s got a good horse.”

  “Big buckskin. Reckon we’ll catch him, Hardin?”

  “Sure. Not this side of his place, though. There ain’t no short cuts we can take to head him off and he’s pointin’ for home straight as a horse can travel.”

  “Ain’t tryin’ to cover his trail none.”

  “No use tryin’.” Hardin squinted his eyes against the glare of the sun. “He knows we figure he’ll head for his ranch.”

  “He’s no tenderfoot.” Kesney expressed the thought that had been dawning upon them all in the last two hours. “He knows how to save a horse, an’ he knows a trail.”

  They rode on in near silence. Hardin scratched his unshaven jaw. The dust lifted from the hoofs of the horses as they weaved their way through the cat-claw and mesquite. It was a parched and sunbaked land, with only dancing heat waves and the blue distance of the mountains to draw them on. The trail they followed led straight as a man could ride across the country. Only at draws or nests of rocks did it swerve, where they noticed the rider always gave his horse the best of it.

  No rider of the desert must see a man to know him, for it is enough to follow his trail. In these things are the ways of a man made plain, his kindness or cruelty, his ignorance or cunning, his strength and his weakness. There are indications that cannot escape a man who has followed trails, and in the two hours since they had ridden out of Freedom the six had already learned much of the man they followed. And they would learn more.

  “What started it?”

  The words sounded empty and alone in the vast stillness of the basin.

  Hardin turned his head slightly so the words could drift back. It was the manner of a man who rides much in the wind or rain. He shifted the rifle to his left hand and wiped his sweaty right palm on his coarse pants leg.

  “Some loose talk. He was in the Bon Ton buyin’ grub an’ such. Johnny said somethin’ at which he took offense and they had some words. Johnny was wearin’ a gun, but this Lock wasn’t, so he gets him a gun an’ goes over to the Longhorn.

  “He pushed open the door an’ shoots Johnny twice through the body. In the back.” Hardin spat. “He fired a third shot but that missed Johnny and busted a bottle of whisky.”

  There was a moment’s silence while they digested this, and then Neill looked up.

  “We lynchin’ him for the killin’ or bustin’ the whisky?”

  It was a good question, but drew no reply. The dignity of the five other riders was not to be touched by humor. They were riders on a mission. Neill let his eyes drift over the dusty copper of the desert. He had no liking for the idea of lynching any man, and he did not know the squatter from the Sorenson place. Living there should be punishment enough for any man. Besides—

  “Who saw the shooting?” he asked.

  “Nobody seen it, actually. Only he never gave Johnny a fair shake. Sam was behind the bar, but he was down to the other end and it happened too fast.”

  “What’s his name? Somebody call him Lock?” Neill asked. There was something incongruous in lynching a man whose name you did not know. He shifted in the saddle, squinting his eyes toward the distant lakes dancing in the mirage of heat waves.

  “What’s it matter? Lock, his name is. Chat Lock.”

  “Funny name.”

  The comment drew no response. The dust was thicker now and Neill pulled his bandanna over his nose and mouth. His eyes were drawn back to the distant blue of the lakes. They were enticingly cool and beautiful, lying across the way ahead and in the basin off to the right. This was the mirage that lured many a man from his trail to pursue the always retreating shoreline of the lake. It looked like water, it really did.

  Maybe there was water in the heat waves. Maybe if a man knew how he could extract it and drink. The thought drew his hand to his canteen, but he took it away without drinking. The slosh water in the canteen was no longer enticing, for it was warm, brackish, and unsatisfying.

  “You know him, Kimmel?” Kesney asked. He was a wiry little man, hard as a whipstock, with bits of sharp steel for eyes and brown muscle-corded hands. “I wouldn’t know him if I saw him.”

  “Sure, I know him. Big feller, strong made, rusty-like hair an’ maybe forty year old. Looks plumb salty, too, an’ from what I hear he’s no friendly sort of man. Squattin’ on that Sorenson place looks plumb suspicious, for no man came make him a livin’ on that dry-as-a-bone place. No fit place for man nor beast. Ever’body figures no honest man would squat on such a place.”

  It seemed a strange thing, to be searching out a man whom none of them knew. Of course, they had all known Johnny Webb. He was a handsome, popular young man, a daredevil and a hellion, but a very attractive one, and a top hand to boot. They had all known him and had all liked him. Then, one of the things that made them so sure that this had been a wrong killing, even aside from the shots in the back, was the fact that Johnny Webb had been the fastest man in the Spring Valley country. Fast, and a dead shot.

  Johnny had worked with all these men, and they were good men, hard men, but good. Kimmel, Hardin and Kesney had all made something of their ranches, as had the others, only somewhat less so. They had come West when the going was rough, fought Indians and rustlers, then battled drought, dust and hot, hard winds. It took a strong man to survive in this country, and they had survived. He, Neill, was the youngest of them all, and the newest in the country. He was still looked upon with some reserve. He had been here only five years.

  Neill could see the tracks of the buckskin and it gave him a strange feeling to realize that the man who rode that horse would soon be dead, hanging from a noose in one of those ropes attached to a saddle horn of Hardin or Kimmel. Neill had never killed a man, nor seen one killed by another man, and the thought made him uncomfortable.

  Yet Johnny was gone, and his laughter and his jokes were a thing passed. They had brightened more than one roundup, more than one bitter day of heart-breaking labor on the range. Not that he had been an angel. He had been a proper hand with a gun, and could thr
ow one. And in his time he had had his troubles.

  “He’s walkin’ his horse,” Kesney said, “leadin’ him.”

  “He’s a heavy man,” Hardin agreed, “an’ he figures to give us a long chase.”

  “Gone lame on him maybe,” Kimmel suggested.

  “No, that horse isn’t limpin’. This Lock is a smart one.”

  They had walked out of the ankle deep dust now and were crossing a parched, dry plain of crusted earth. Hardin reined in suddenly and pointed.

  “Look there.” He indicated a couple of flecks on the face of the earth crust where something had spilled. “Water splashed.” “Careless,” Neill said. “He’ll need that water.”

  “No,” Kesney said. “He was pourin’ water in a cloth to wipe out his horse’s nostrils. Bet you a dollar.”

  “Sure,” Hardin agreed, “that’s it. Horse breathes a lot better. A man runnin’ could kill a good horse on this Flat. He knows that.” They rode on, and for almost a half hour, no one spoke. Neill frowned at the sun. It had been on his left a few minutes ago, and now they rode straight into it.

  “What’s he doin’?” Kesney said wonderingly. “This ain’t the way to his place!” The trail had turned again, and now the sun was on their right. Then it turned again, and was at their backs. Hardin was in the lead and he drew up and swore wickedly.

  They ranged alongside him, and stared down into a draw that cracked the face of the desert alongside the trail they had followed. Below them was a place where a horse had stood, and across the bank something white fluttered from the parched clump of greasewood.

  Kesney slid from the saddle and crossed the wash. When he had the slip of white, he stared at it, and then they heard him swear. He walked back and handed it to Hardin. They crowded near.

  Neill took the slip from Hardin’s fingers after he had read it. It was torn from some sort of book and the words were plain enough, scrawled with a flat rock for a rest.

   That was a fair shutin anyways six aint nowhars enuf, go fetch more men. Man on the gray better titen his girth or heel have him a sorebacked hoss.

  “Why, that … !” Short swore softly. “He was lyin’ within fifty yards of us when he come by. Had him a rifle, too, I see it in a saddle scabbard on that buckskin in town. He could have got one of us, anyway!”