In the hot, dusty stillness of the afternoon street, all was deathly still. Somewhere a baby cried, and a foot shifted on the boardwalk. For what seemed an age, all movement seemed frozen and still as the two men in the street faced each other.
Kitty Blaze, her eyes wide with horror, seemed caught in that same breathless time-frozen hush. The hands of the men were moving with flashing speed, but at that instant everything seemed to move hauntingly slowly. She saw Mart Ray’s gun swing up; she saw the killing eagerness in his face, his lips thinned and white, he eyes blazing.
And she saw the stranger, Jim Gary. Tall, lithe, and strong, his dark face passionless, yet somehow ruthless. And she saw his lean brown hand flash in a blur of movement, saw flame leap from the black muzzles of his guns, and saw Mart Ray smashed back, back, back! She saw his body flung sideways into the hitching rail, saw a horse rear, his lashing hoofs within inches of the man. She saw the gun blaze again from the ground, and a leap of dust from the stranger’s shoulder, and she saw Gary move coolly aside to bring his guns better to bear upon the man who was now struggling up.
As in a kind of daze, she saw Jim Gary holding his fire, letting Ray get to his feet. In that stark, incredible instant, she saw him move his lips and she heard the words, as they all heard them in the silence of the street. “I’m sorry, Mart. You shouldn’t have played it this way. I’d rather it had been the stampede.”
And then Ray’s guns swung up. His shirt was bloody, his face twisted in a sort of leer torn into his cheek by a bullet, but his eyes were fiendish. The guns came up, and even as they came level, red flame stabbed from the muzzles of Gary’s guns and Ray’s body jerked, dust sprang from his shirt’s back, and he staggered back and sat down on the edge of the walk, and then as though taken with a severe pain in the groin, he rolled over into the street and sprawled out flat. Somewhere thunder rolled.
For a long moment, the street was motionless. Then somebody said, “We better get inside. She’s rainin’.”
Jerry swung from his horse and in a couple of strides was beside the fallen man. Ripping back the shirt, he exposed the side, scarred by a steer’s hoof.
Dan Blaze jerked around. “Slagle!” he yelled. “Where’s Red Slagle! Get him!”
“Here.” Slagle was sitting against the building, gripping a bloody hand. “I caught a slug. I got behind Ray.” He looked up at Blaze. “Gary’s right. He’s straight as a string. It was Ray’s idea to ring him in and use him as the goat after he found him with us.”
Dan Blaze knelt beside him. “Who killed my brother?” he demanded. “Was it you or Ray?”
“Ray shot him first. I finished it. I went huntin’ him an’ he busted out of the brush. He had a stick he’d carried for walkin’ an’ I mistook it for a gun.”
“What about Langer?” Gary demanded. “Where’s he?”
Red grinned, a hard, cold grin. “He lit a shuck. That whuppin’ you gave him took somethin’ out of him. Once he started to run he didn’t stop, not even for his money.”
He dug into his pocket. “That reminds me. Here’s the forty bucks you earned.”
Jim Gary took the money, surprised speechless. Slagle struggled erect. Gary’s expression seemed to irritate him. “Well, you earned it, didn’t you? An’ I hired you, didn’t I? Well, I never gypped no man out of honest wages yet!
“Anyway,” he added wryly, “by the looks of that rope I don’t reckon I’ll need it. Luck to you, kid! An’,” he grinned, “stay out of trouble.”
Thunder rumbled again, and rain poured into the street, a driving, pounding rain that would start the washes running and bring the grass to life again, green and waving for the grazing cattle, moving west, moving north.
What Gold Does to a Man
We came up the draw from the south in the spring of ’54, and Josh was the one who wanted to stop.
Nothing about that country looked good to me, but I was not the one who was calling the shots. Don’t get the idea that it was not pretty country, because it surely was. There was a-plenty of water, grass, and trees. That spring offered some of the coldest and best water I ever tasted, but I didn’t like the look of the country around. There was just too much Indian sign.
“Forget it, Pike!” Josh Boone said irritably. “For a kid, you sound more like an old woman all the time! Believe me, I know gold country, and this is it. Why should a man go all the way to California when there’s gold all around him?”
“It may be here,” Kinyon grumbled, “but maybe Pike Downey ain’t so dumb, even if he is a kid. He’s dead right about that Injun sign. If we stick around here, there being no more than the five of us, we’re apt to get our hair lifted.”
Kinyon was the only one who thought as I did. The others had gold fever, and had it bad, but Kinyon’s opinions didn’t make me feel any better, because he knew more about Injuns than any of the rest. I’d rather have been wrong and safe.
Josh Boone did know gold country. He had been in California when the first strike was made, and I don’t mean the one at Sutter’s Mill that started all the fuss. I mean the first strike, which was down in a canyon near Los Angeles. Josh had done all right down there, and then when the big strikes came up north he’d cleaned up some forty thousand dollars, then he rode back east and had himself a time. “Why keep it?” he laughed. “There’s more where that came from!”
Maybe there was, but if I made myself a packet like that I planned to buy myself a farm and settle down. I even had the place in mind.
It was Boone who suggested we ride north away from the trail. “There’s mountains yonder,” he said, “and I’ve a mind there’s gold. Why ride all the way to Californy when we might find it right here?”
Me, I was ready. Nobody would ever say Pike Downey was slow to look at new country. The horse I rode was the best in the country, and it could walk faster than most horses could trot. It weighed about fourteen hundred, and most of it muscle. It was all horse, that black was, so when we turned off to the hills I wasn’t worried. That came later.
Josh Boone was our leader, much as we had one. Then there was Jim Kinyon, German Kreuger and Ed Karpe. I was the kid of the bunch, just turned nineteen, strong as a young bull.
Josh had been against me coming along, but Kinyon spoke for me. “He’s the best shot I ever did see,” he told them, “and he could track a snake upstream in muddy water. That boy will do to take along.”
Kinyon calling me a boy kind of grated. I’d been man enough to hold my own and do my part since I was fourteen. My paw and maw had come west from Virginia in a covered wagon, and I was born in that wagon.
I’d been hunting since I was knee-high to a short beaver, and the first time I drove a wagon over the Santa Fe Trail I was just past fourteen. My rifle drew blood for me in a Comanche attack on that wagon train, and we had three more fights before we came up to Santa Fe.
Santa Fe was wild and rough, and I had a mix-up with a Comanchero in Santa Fe with knives, and I put him down to stay. The following year I went over the Trail again, and then I went to hunting buffalo in Texas. The year after I went all the way to California, and returning from that trip I got friendly with some Cheyennes and spent most of a year with them, raiding deep into Mexico. By the time I met Boone, I had five years of the roughest kind of living behind me.
Boone talked himself mighty big, but he wasn’t bigger than me, and neither was Ed Karpe.
We rode up that draw and found ourselves the prettiest little canyon you’ll ever see, and we camped there among the trees. We killed us a deer, and right away Josh went to panning that stream. He found gold from the first pan.
Gold! It ran heavy from the first pan, and after that there was no talking to them. We all got to work, but being a loner I went along upstream by myself. Panning for gold was something I had never done, but all the way back from California that time I’d traveled with one of the best, and he’d filled me to the ears with what was needful to know about placer mining for gold.
He told me abo
ut trying sandbars and little beaches where the stream curves around and throws up sand in the crook of the elbow. Well, I found such a place, and she showed color.
Wasting no more time on panning, I got my shovel and started digging down to bedrock. No more than four feet down I struck it. It was cracked here and there and, remembering what that old timer told me, I cleaned those cracks and went back under the thin layers of rock and panned out what I found. By nightfall I had a rawhide sack with maybe three or four hundred dollars in it.
All of the boys had gold, but none of them had as much as I showed them, which was less than half what I had. Jim Kinyon was tickled, but it didn’t set too well with either Boone or Karpe. Neither of them liked to be bested, and in particular they didn’t like it from me.
Kreuger patted me on the back. “Goot poy!” he said. “Das iss goot!”
We took turns hunting meat, and next day it fell to me. Mounting up, I took my Sharps Breech-Loader, and I’d buckled on my spare pistol. I had me two Army Colts, Model 1848, and I set store by them guns. I’d picked ’em off a dead Texan down east of Santa Fe.
That Texas man had run up on some horse thieves and out of luck at the same time. There’d been four horse thieves and him, and they had at it, and when I came along some hours later there they lay, all good dead men with a horse for each and six extry. There were their rifles, pistols, and a good bit of grub, and there was no sense in leaving it for the Comanches to pick up or the sand to bury. In the time I’d been packing those six-shooters I’d become right handy with ’em.
They were riding my belt that morning when I rode out from camp. Sighting a couple of deer close to camp, I rode around them. I’d no mind to do my killing close by, where we might need the game at some later time. A few miles further away I fetched me a good-sized buck, skinned him out, and cut us some meat. Down at the stream I was washing the blood from my hands when I glanced up to see two things at once—only one of them was important at the moment.
The first thing I spotted was a full-growed Injun with his bow all drawed back and an arrow aimed at me. Throwing myself to one side I fetched one of those Colts and triggered me an Injun just as the arrow flicked past my face. He slid down off that river bank and right into the Happy Hunting Grounds, where no doubt someday we’ll meet and swap yarns.
The other thing I’d glimpsed was upstream just a ways. It was only a glimpse, but I edged along the creek for a better look.
Under a ledge of rock, just above the water, was a hole. It was about crawling-into size, and didn’t smell of animal, so I crawled in and stood up. It was a big cave, a room maybe twenty feet long by fifteen wide, with a solid-packed sandy floor and a smidgin of light from above. Looking up, I could see a tangle of branches over a hole, which was a couple of feet across but well-hidden by brush.
When I rode into camp to unload my meat I told the boys about my Injun. “I caved the bank over him,” I said, “but they will most likely find him. Then they’ll come hunting us.”
“One more and one less,” Karpe said. “A dead Injun is a good Injun.”
“A dead Injun is the start of trouble,” I said. “We’d better light out of here if we want to keep our hair.”
“Are you crazy?” Boone stared at me. “With all the gold we’re finding?”
“We don’t need to leave the country,” I protested. “But what does gold mean to a dead man?”
“The boy is right,” Kinyon agreed. “We’re in for trouble.”
“We can handle trouble,” Karpe said. “I ain’t afeerd of no Injuns. Anyway, this just sounds like Pike talking big. I’ll bet he never saw no Injun.”
Well, I put down the meat I was eating and licked my fingers. Then I got up and looked across the fire at him. “You called me a liar, Ed,” I said, mild-like. “I take that from no man.”
He stared at me like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Now what about this?” he said. “The boy figures he’s a growed-up man! Well, I’ll take that out of him!” He got to his feet.
“No guns,” Boone said. “If there are Injuns, we don’t want to draw them nigh.”
Me, I shucked my Bowie. Some folks don’t fancy cold steel, and Ed Karpe seemed to be one of them. “Shuck your steel, Ed,” I told him. “I’ll see the color of your insides.”
“No knives,” he protested. “I fight with my hands or a gun.”
I flipped my knife hard into a log. “All right,” I said. “It makes me no mind. You just come on, and we’ll see who is the boy of this outfit.”
He come at me. Ed Karpe was a big man, all rawboned and iron hard. He fetched me a clout on the jaw that made me see lights flashing, hitting me so hard I nearly staggered. Then he swung his other fist but I stepped inside, grabbing him by shirt-front and crotch, swinging him aloft and heaving him against the bank.
He hit hard, but he was game and came up swinging. He fetched me a blow, but he was scared of me grabbing him and hit me whilst going away. I made as if to step on a loose rock and stagger, and he leapt at me. Dropping to one knee, I caught him again by shirt-front and crotch, only this time I throwed him head first into that bank. He hit hard and he just laid there.
When I saw he wasn’t about to get up, I dusted off my knees and went back to the bone I’d been picking. Nobody said anything, but Josh Boone was looking surprised and sizing me up like he hadn’t really seen me before. “You can fight some,” he admitted. “That didn’t take you no time at all.”
“One time up in Pierre’s Hole I fought nigh onto two hours with a big trapper. He’d have made two of Ed there, and he was skookum man, but I whopped him some.”
After a bit Ed Karpe come around, and he come back to the fire shaking his head and blinking, but nobody paid him no mind. Me, I was right sorry. It ain’t good for folks to start fighting amongst themselves in Injun country. Come daylight I went back to my shaft and taken one look. Whilst I’d been grub-hunting yesterday somebody had moved in and cleaned the bed-rock slick as a piano-top.
Sure, I was upset, but I said nothing at all right then. I went on up the creek to a better place and dug me another hole, only when I left this one I covered it with brush and wiped out the sign I’d left.
Kinyon had been hunting that day, and when he came in he was worried. “We’d better light out or get fixed for a fight. There’s Injuns all around us.”
They listened to Kinyon where they hadn’t listened to me, so we dug ourselves some rifle pits and forted up with logs. I said nothing about my shaft being cleaned out.
Next day I went back to my brush-covered hole and sank her down to bedrock and cleaned up. This was heavy with gold, and the best so far. My method of going to the rock was paying off. It was more work than using a pan, and it was more dangerous.
That night when we all came in to camp Kreuger was missing. We looked at one another, and believe me, we didn’t feel good about it. Nobody had seen the German, and nobody had heard a shot. When morning came I headed upstream, then doubled back to where Kinyon was working, only I stayed back in the brush. I laid right down in the brush not far from him, but where I could watch both banks at once.
“Jim?” I kept my voice so only he would hear me. “Don’t you look up or act different. I’ll do the talking.”
“All right,” he said.
“Somebody robbed that shaft of mine. Cleaned her out whilst I was hunting.”
He wiped sweat from his face but said nothing.
“I’ve some ideas about German Kreuger, too.”
“You think he stole your gold and lit out?”
“You know better. Nor do I think Injuns killed him. However, we better have us a look.”
“Who do you think?”
“It wasn’t you, and it wasn’t me. And I’d bet every ounce I have that it wasn’t that old German.”
Pausing, I said, “You go on working. I’ll watch.”
He was canny, Jim was. He worked, all right, but he didn’t get into a pattern. When he bent down he didn�
�t lift up in the same place, but away from there. He kept from any pattern, so’s if anybody planned a shot they’d have to wait until he was out in the open.
As for me, I almost missed it. Almost, but not quite. I’d been lying there a couple of hours, and my eyes were tired. The day was warm, and I’d been working hard the past few days and was tuckered. I must have been looking right at that rifle barrel a full minute before I realized it.
Only the fact that Kinyon was moving saved him. He was down by the water, partly hidden by some rocks, and he was digging sand from the low side of a boulder, preparing to wash it out. That rifleman was waiting for him to come up on the bank where he’d have no doubt.
Me, I didn’t wait. Sliding my old Sharps Breech-Loader up, I just throwed a shot into that brush, right along that rifle barrel. There was a crash in the brush, and both me and Jim jumped for it, but the heavy brush and boulders got in the way, and by the time we got there that feller was gone. Nor could we make anything from the tracks except that he wore boots and was therefore a white man.
We tried to track him, though, and found nothing until we slid down among some rocks and there we found Kreuger. He’d been scalped. “No Injun,” Kinyon said, and he was right. That was plain as day to any old Injun fighter.
“We’ve got a murderer in the outfit,” I said.
“Maybe,” Kinyon said doubtfully, “but there could be somebody else around, somebody we don’t know about.”
After a pause he said, “We’ve not much gold yet.”
“No one of us has,” I agreed, “but for one man it’s a healthy stake, if he had it all.”
“Injuns around,” Kinyon said, that night at the fire. “Today I was shot at.”
“I’ve been afraid of that,” Karpe agreed. “We’d better watch ourselves.”
Josh Boone glanced over at Karpe. “It ain’t Injuns that scares me,” he said, but if Ed Karpe noticed he paid no attention.
For the next two days everything went along fine. I worked with an eye out for trouble, and every now and again I’d quit work and scout around the area to make sure nobody was closing in on me. On the bottom of the shaft I’d sunk, I broke up the layers of bedrock where there were cracks, and made a good cleanup. Even me, who’d been doing well, couldn’t believe how rich the find was. When I sacked up that night I had more than I’d had in my life, more than I’d ever seen, in fact.
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 2 Page 7