Lost Trails

by Louis L'Amour

  “You’re giving a lot of orders for an old man who ain’t got a gun.”

  Leroy stepped in front of Bullock. “My partner here has a tendency to get a little crazy at times. It’s best not to provoke him.”

  Bullock nodded. “I can see that. Any chance you can talk some sense into him?”

  Leroy shook his head. “Probably not. He gets stuck on something, he’s kinda like a dog on a rat. Like I said, he gets a little crazy at times!”

  Gordon turned his gun toward Annie. “What’s the banker’s name, darlin’?”

  She looked at him and shook her head.

  Gordon took three quick steps and slapped her face. “I asked you a question!”

  “Don’t hit her!” Leroy ordered. “I warned you about hitting women!”

  Gordon’s face hardened and he pointed the gun at Leroy. “Don’t you be giving me orders!”

  Leroy’s eyes narrowed and he slowly unbuttoned his coat. “I warned you a long time ago about pointing a gun at me!” he hissed through clenched teeth.

  “You ain’t gonna get your gun out fast enough,” Gordon warned. “Don’t be stupid.”

  Leroy’s eyes moved from Gordon to the sheriff and back to Gordon waving the pistol. “You aren’t going to shoot me, Gordon,” he stated softly. “I’m the only friend you still got. I’m the only person left in the world you can trust.”

  Gordon began to giggle, broke into loud laughter, and fired two quick shots into the floor on either side of Leroy, who slowly raised his hands.

  “You shouldn’t have done that!” Leroy said. “I’ve warned you for the last time!”

  That man is crazy! Bullock told himself as he slowly slid his hand into his gun pocket.

  Gordon swung the pistol to point at Bullock. “Put your hands up, Sheriff!”

  Bullock quickly raised his hands. “Easy there.”

  Gordon turned the pistol back to Leroy. “Put your gun on the bar,” he ordered. “I don’t trust you anymore.”

  Leroy’s face was expressionless and he didn’t move.

  The gun in Gordon’s hand fired and a slug tore into the floor in front of Leroy.

  Leroy’s face hardened and he flexed his fingers.

  Bullock’s eyes moved quickly back and forth between the two men and then over to Jensen, who took a small step to his right behind the bar. I hope he’s not going to be stupid and try for that short shotgun he keeps under the bar!

  “I’m going to tell you one more time to put that gun down, Gordon,” Leroy said.

  “What’re you gonna do if I don’t?” Gordon asked.

  Bullock saw Jenkins was continuing his slow trip behind the bar. Damnit! Don’t be stupid, Milo. He’ll shoot you down if you try for the shotgun.

  “If I have to, I’ll take that gun away from you,” Leroy threatened. “We came to this town to rob the bank, not fight between us. Now, put the damned gun down and we’ll talk this out.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Gordon saw Jenkins reach down under the bar and start to raise a shotgun. He turned and fired two quick shots at him.

  Jenkins cried out in pain. The shotgun in his hands discharged, blowing a hole in the front of the bar. He bounced against the back bar, tipping a rack of bottles and toppling to the floor, a bloody tear in the shoulder of his shirt.

  Gordon instantly swung the gun back and fired two fast shots at Leroy, who was fumbling inside his coat for a gun.

  Leroy staggered backward, looked down at the fresh holes in the front of his shirt, and tried to say something before he collapsed, tipping a table and crumpling to the floor.

  The air was still and full of gun smoke.

  Annie’s eyes were wide, her hand held over her mouth.

  Gordon held the pistol steady at Bullock, who was standing with his hands raised.

  If my count’s right, that gun isn’t loaded anymore.

  Gordon laughed, dropped the automatic pistol on the bar, and pulled a short-barreled revolver from a coat pocket. “Countin’, weren’t you, Sheriff?”

  This man’s on a blood run and dangerous as a fresh-shed rattler! “No, I wasn’t,” Bullock lied, shaking his head and raising his hands higher. He’s just shot two people, so another one won’t make any difference. I’ve got to try to calm him down. “Can I get a drink?” he asked, putting his hand to his chest. “I’m getting some terrible pains in my chest and the doc warned me about my heart and too much excitement.”

  Gordon laughed. “This is too much excitement, Old Man?”

  Bullock nodded and rubbed on his chest. “Just one shot of whiskey.”

  Gordon motioned him to the bar. “Go ahead and help yourself.”

  Bullock’s hand was shaking as he poured himself a shot of whiskey and downed it.

  Gordon stepped to the bar and poured himself a shot of whiskey. He toyed with the glass, but didn’t drink it. “That was some pretty fancy shootin’, wasn’t it? I’m young and fast and good!”

  “Some of the fanciest gun work I’ve ever seen,” Bullock agreed, looking at Leroy’s body on the floor. “You are the best and the fastest. There’s no doubt about that.” Keep talking nice.

  Milo Jensen moaned from behind the bar.

  Gordon pointed to Annie. “Go take a look at him.”

  She nodded, slipped behind the bar, and knelt beside the wounded man. “It’s his shoulder,” she stated, grabbing a towel from the bar and gently pressing it to his wound. “He’s awake.”

  “I could’ve killed him, you know,” Gordon stated, laughed, and downed the shot of whiskey.

  “Now, seems to me we was talking about a banker, Sheriff.”

  “Let me think a minute on how to get him over here on a Saturday,” Bullock said slowly. “Can I get myself a beer?”

  Gordon nodded and motioned for him to help himself.

  Bullock leaned over the bar, glanced at the wounded man, and put a mug under the tap. He pulled down the handle, watched the beer level rise, pushed up the handle, lifted the beer, took a drink, and thumbed the foam from his mustache. “You want one?”

  “Quit your damned stalling!” Gordon shouted, wagging the gun for emphasis.

  “All right, all right,” Bullock said.

  Gordon stepped closer and tapped the pistol barrel on the sheriff’s chest. “Your time is about up, Old Man. What if I shoot the bartender again to help speed up your memory?”

  “No, no,” Bullock pleaded. “I’ve got an idea.” He put his foot under the rim of the spittoon beside Gordon’s feet and tipped it over, spilling the contents on Gordon’s shoes.

  Gordon looked down and leaped back. “What the. . . .”

  The beer from the mug in Bullock’s hand made a lopsided halo when it collided with the side of Gordon’s head and he toppled to the floor.

  Sheriff Seth Bullock bent down and took the pistol from Gordon’s limp hand. He patted the man’s pocket, pulled his badge from it, and hooked it on to the front of his own coat as he straightened. He looked down at the unconscious man on the floor and nudged him with his boot. “You’re under arrest for murder, stealing a car, and a few other things, you demented bastard. Oh, yeah, one more thing. You may be younger and faster than me, but I’m older and wiser and a helluva lot more devious!”

  The Cody War

  Johnny D. Boggs

  January 10, 1917

  Denver, Colorado

  Shock slaps her like the brutal wind, and she quickly looks away, focusing on a frosted pane of glass, anywhere but the bed. She can picture Boy Scouts on the porch, freezing but determined to help the old man and his family. Can visualize reporters on the death watch, can almost smell their cigar smoke and whiskey-laced coffee. Can see Harry Tammen, that heartless lout, rubbing his gloved hands, joking with ink-spillers, pretending to be friend, philanthropist, when ruination is what he sows for others to reap.

  Sobs sound behind her, a moan from her sister-in-law, and whispers, but she can’t make out any words, which sound as if they are coming from the botto
m of an Arizona well. From behind, the priest’s hand squeezes her shoulder, while Cody Boal kneels beside her, kisses her cheek. “Grandma?” he mouths.

  She shakes her head. At least, she thinks she does. Maybe she can’t move.

  Low voices finally reach her. He’s gone. . . . An era has passed.

  Her head jerks toward the men as they test their quotes for reporters—speechifyin’, Will would have called it—and she snaps, “Why don’t you just say ‘now he belongs to the ages,’ you damned fools?”

  Silence. They stare at her, before quietly filing out to the parlor and kitchen. A door closes; she’s alone.

  She finds him again, and is chilled by the sight. Tentatively, she forces her heavy body out of the chair, weaves to the bedside, takes his cold hand in her own, and remembers the last time he shocked her so.

  July 28, 1910

  North Platte, Nebraska

  “What the blazes are we doin’ here?”

  “Aunt Irma said to bring you,” his grandson answers, setting the brake and jumping from the spring wagon to help the honorable Colonel William F. Cody down. Though only fourteen, Cody Boal’s old enough to understand his grandfather is well in his cups, sure to fall face-first into the dirt without a steadying hand.

  “Welcome Wigwam,” the old man says. “That’s what I called it. Well, she sure didn’t make me feel welcome last time I was here.”

  “I know.”

  He stumbles against the child, pushes back to lean against the wagon.

  “Locked herself in her room, she did. Not a word, not even a good cussin’ would she give me. I went up and begged her to at least open the door. Three times I done it, and Buffalo Bill ain’t a beggin’ man. Not a word. Not one damn word.”

  “Aunt Irma said to bring you.”

  “Irma.” His breath stinks of rye, and it’s not ten in the morn. “She’s a good daughter. So was your ma, God rest her soul.” Grandfather runs fingers through grandson’s hair. “And you’re a top hand.”

  “Thank you, sir.” He leads the old scout up the steps, opens the door, guides him inside.

  Irma stands in the parlor, wringing her hands, biting her lip.

  “Papa,” she says, her voice quiet, and gives him a peck on the cheek.

  “Thought I was goin’ to the ranch,” he says. “I could use a rest.”

  “Yes,” his daughter says, “but . . .” She sighs.

  He straightens. “Lulu? Has something happened to your ma?”

  Her head shakes nervously. “She’s . . . come inside.” Taking him by the hand, she leads him to the family parlor, where he bristles at the sight of his wife, sitting on the oak divan, reading the Telegraph, and he bellows, his words too slurred for either Irma or her nephew to understand.

  Seeing him, Louisa Frederici Cody tosses the paper aside, bolts out of her chair. “What’s he doing here?” she demands.

  “You two need to talk things out.” Irma has found her voice—surprisingly forceful. “And don’t come out until you’ve done it.” With that, she is gone, leading her sister’s son to the porch. Once the door slams, husband and wife stare at one another from across the room.

  “You’re drunk,” she says.

  “I’ve had my mornin’ bracer.” He looks across the room, finds the brandy decanter. And I’d like to have another. He starts to remove his hat, but when she barks at him, asking if he has a head cold, he leaves it on. That’ll show that ol’ witch.

  “Well, why are you here?” Lulu asks. “To torment me more? Shame me? Why aren’t you at your lovely Scout’s Rest Ranch with all those friends of yours?” Contempt laces her voice.

  “Weren’t my idea, woman. ’Specially after the welcome I got in March.”

  “What did you expect, you old fool? You were in your cups the whole time. And it was you who tried to divorce me! My parents . . .”

  He rolls his eyes. He has heard that before. They’re spinnin’in their graves. Sounds like that melodramatic Buntline at a temperance lecture when she speaks of that shame, that agony, heartbreak. Criminy, he had been trying to do her a favor. This wasn’t a marriage. Hadn’t been for some time, and he would have been shuck of her except for that judge. Wouldn’t grant the divorce, nor would the court agree to a new trial. That had cost him, damn near broken him, and it had been, what, four years ago? Tormented her? Shamed her? What about him?

  He glares at her, a stout—hell, fat is the word—woman, short and stooped, with gray hair put up in a bun, clad in an ill-fitting dress and sandals in boot country. A hard-rock woman with a cast-iron heart. Sure not that charming, beautiful girl he had wooed back in St. Louis all those years ago.

  “Well, you got your wish, Lulu.”

  “It wasn’t my wish, Will.”

  He turns to go, but sags at the parlor entrance. He’d have to walk past his grandson and Irma, waiting outside. Be like runnin’ from a fight, and Buffalo Bill never retreats, if you believe the dime novels or his Wild West show.

  So he whirls, waving a finger at her. “You ain’t been a wife for years, woman.”

  “And what kind of husband have you been? Consorting with strumpets!”

  “What? You mean them actresses?”

  “Whores!” she hisses.

  That had been a disaster from the get-go. Get-go? she thinks. Now I sound like the fool.

  It had been Buntline’s idea. Ned Buntline, or Edward Zane Carroll Judson. Take Buffalo Bill, King of the Bordermen, transform him from scout to thespian. “You don’t know the difference between a theater cue and a billiard cue,” she told him, but he wouldn’t listen. He never listened. “You’ll make a fool of yourself, Will.”

  “I’ll make us rich,” he answered.

  So they went to Chicago in the winter of ’72, and he had played the fool, a mighty big one, stumbling over his lines when he didn’t forget them. Critics panned the play, rightfully so, but performance after performance sold out. People couldn’t get enough of the West back East. Chicago . . . St. Louis . . . Cincinnati . . . Philadelphia . . . Boston . . . Washington City . . . New York. Scouts became celebrities on stage and off. The reaction struck her dumb.

  Of course, he had to bring his friends along. Buffalo Bill had to share the glory with his drunken troupe of bitter merry men. First Texas Jack Omohundro, then that man-killing Hickok, later Captain Jack Crawford. Yet Will had made the family, if not rich, at least comfortable, and he had gotten them out of that hellhole frontier to civilization, with homes in West Chester and Rochester. Nice homes . . . until the . . . tragedy.

  “Criminy,” he’s saying, “that was nigh forty years ago.”

  “You embarrassed me,” she tells him.

  She starts to stand, to head upstairs to her room. She’ll lock herself inside again, until that walking whiskey vat takes his leave. She sinks back, however, her legs suddenly weak. She can’t . . . not break Irma’s heart, not her grandson’s. They’re all I have left.

  The fool’s speaking again. She looks at him, rolls her eyes.

  “If you mean that time I called you out from the balcony . . .”

  She hasn’t forgotten that, although she can’t remember the city.

  He had just killed about twenty “supes,” the low-paid actors pretending to be savage Indians, and, for the umpteenth time, couldn’t remember his lines. Usually, when that happened, he’d just start slaughtering Indians again, but they were all scattered about stage left and stage right, playing dead, and when he looked up, his face frightened, he found her in the balcony. “Mama,” he cried out, “what a horrible actor I am!”

  The audience loved it, clapping, whistling, cheering, then forcing her to come on stage and take a bow. “Say a few words, Mizzus Cody!” they demanded when she stood beside the show’s star at center stage, but she found herself speechless, terrified, and he pulled her close, telling the crowd, but mostly her, “You see what hard work I do to support my family.”

  Strength returning to her legs, she pushes herself out of the di
van, waves a finger in his face. Talk things out, Irma says. Well, I’ll tell that old mule a thing or two.

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. I saw you kissing those women . . . in our hotel! With me there, with your children there. I would not be shamed so. That’s why I left you, wouldn’t travel with you anymore!”

  “I was rehearsin’, Lulu.”

  “Horseshit.”

  A long finger jabs back at her. “There. You lied! Proof you lied in court. You said you never used profane language. Your friends said you never used profane language, but you do, Lulu. You do!”

  “You’d drive anyone to it. That or the bottle. Or both. You and that sorry lot you call friends. Anybody with a sad story or not a cent to his name. All he had to do was say, ‘We scouted together.’ Or ‘We freighted together.’ Or ‘I was in the Army with Carr.’ Or, by jingo, ‘We met on a stage once.’ Maybe even ‘I just read one of your stories!’”

  “Man who’d turn his back on a friend ain’t a man,” he says.

  “And you’d never turn your back on a bottle, Will Cody!”

  “Well, all I did was kiss actresses, either rehearsin’ or celebratin’ a performance. Ain’t like I was ever untrue to you. And I ain’t gonna say I’m sorry for bein’ kind to stranger or friend, ’specially one in need.”

  “Even Hickok!”

  He looks dismayed. “You liked Jim.”

  “I tolerated him. Like I tolerated all those drunken sots you brought to our home.”

  He hadn’t known her when he first met Hickok. He was just a kid of twelve, freighting for Majors and Russell, barely knowing one end of an ox from another, fetching anything for that bear of a man with Lew Simpson’s train until the brute pushed him too far.

  “Fetch that corncob, boy, and come with me to wipe my arse.”