Novel 1969 - Conagher (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “If he comes by, I’ll speak to him,” Evie said. “You leave me your address.”

  Suddenly she noticed the tall man with the marshal’s badge. His expression was odd, and he was stirring his coffee very busily. The other man was looking down at his plate.

  The marshal looked up then and said, “Miss, if you want to stop around the Plaza—that’s the next town down the line—you might run into him. I couldn’t say for sure, but there’s a man around there called Curly—he seems to fit the description.”

  Evie’s head came up sharply and her eye caught that of the marshal, who slowly shook his head.

  Scott Baker…curly hair…Curly Scott! She had heard Charlie McCloud speak of him. Curly Scott was one of the Parnell gang, wanted by Wells Fargo for stage holdups. There were five of them, sometimes six, and they were a tough outfit.

  Smoke Parnell was a lean, lath of a man with a long, hatchet face who had come west from the Bald Knob country of Missouri. He was a dead shot with a rifle, and a fair hand with a short gun. He had come into the Territory from Nevada and was suspected of a stage holdup in Black Canyon, south of Prescott. The gang was also wanted for raiding several mining operations, and for at least one killing during the course of a robbery.

  “Your brother been out here long?” the marshal asked.

  “Oh, he came out about three years ago,” Lucy Baker said. “He wanted to leave school and try mining for a while. He had a mine somewhere in the Mogollons.” She pronounced the word with an emphasis on the “goll” and not as it was spoken in the area, as “Muggy-owns.” “I don’t know how successful he has been, but when we did not hear from him for so long, we were worried…and my aunt wanted to come west, anyway.”

  Evie poured her own cup of tea and sat down at the table while the marshal and his companion went outside to talk to Charlie McCloud. She was starved for the companionship of women, and she longed to talk to them. While she was taking in their clothes her heart went out to them as she thought of the shock it would be for them to learn that Curly Scott was an outlaw.

  “I love it here,” she said suddenly. “I think there is something here, something more than all you see and feel…it’s in the wind.

  “Oh, it is very hard!” she went on. “I miss women to talk to, I miss the things we had back East—the band concerts, the dances. The only time when we see anyone is like now, when the stage comes. But you do not know what music is until you have heard the wind in the cedars, or the far-off wind in the pines. Someday I am going to get on a horse and ride out there”—she pointed toward the wide grass before them—“until I can see the other side…if there is another side.”

  “What about the Indians? Aren’t you afraid of them?” Lucy Baker asked.

  “So far we haven’t seen any. We hear rumors. The Apaches are raiding to the south of us, but so far they haven’t come up here. We will have to face that when the time comes.”

  Long after they were gone Evie could hear the sound of their voices. At the end the two women had talked of clothes and fashions, of the theater, and of schools. She would stop often and look out over the plains, which grew blue and then a dusky purple as evening came, and she would try to remember all that had been said.

  She wished she could have warned them about Curly. They would stop in the Plaza, but the marshal would be there, too, and if Curly heard they were there he would ride in to meet them.

  Early the following morning Laban had gone to feed the stock. Ruthie had gone with him, and Evie was finishing the morning dishes. She dried her hands on her apron, and almost automatically her eyes lifted to the hills.

  She saw the Indians at once. There were a dozen of them, and they were coming single file down the mountain. There were no squaws among them, just warriors, and they were stripped for action.

  “Laban!” she called. “Come to the cabin! Both of you! Come quickly!”

  Laban straightened up and started to protest, then he caught Ruthie by the shoulder. “Let’s go,” he said.

  She jerked her shoulder free. “Don’t be so bossy!” she said.

  “Ruth!” Evie spoke sharply. “Come…now!”

  Ruthie started to speak to assert her independence, but Laban just scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the cabin, kicking and arguing.

  He dropped her at the door and she started to run back. “What is it, ma?” Laban asked.

  “Indians,” Evie said. “They are coming down the mountain. You’d better come in, Ruth.”

  Ruthie turned sharply, looked up at the mountain, and then, her face suddenly white, she ran into the cabin. Laban stopped to gather an armful of wood. He came in and went to the back of the cabin and closed the strong wooden shutters. There were loop holes in the walls through which they could fire. Evie put the bar close to the door, but left the door open part way.

  Her heart was pounding and her lips were dry. “Laban,” she said, “they must not know we are alone here, and they must not know we are frightened.”

  “All right, ma.”

  He was standing in the middle of the room, looking around. There was nothing that remained to be done.

  “They will try to take the horses,” he said.

  “Yes. We must stop them if we can.”

  The Indians rode suddenly into the yard, and drew up when they saw her standing in the door. Laban was poised behind it, ready to slam it shut and drop the bar.

  “What is it you want?” Evie asked.

  “Grub,” one of them said. “You give us grub.”

  “I am sorry. I have none to spare.”

  Ruthie took up the rifle Charlie McCloud had brought to them and slid the muzzle through a loop hole.

  “You give us grub or we take horses. We take cow.”

  “Ride on,” Evie ordered, “ride on now! We do not want trouble, but you must not come here like this. I do not like threats. Go now.”

  They looked at her. Their horses shifted position, and one Indian rode slowly around the cabin.

  She stood very still, the shotgun held in the fold of her dress, concealed by it. She sensed they were not sure. They could see the muzzle of one gun, and she seemed very confident.

  One of the Indians turned his pony and started for the horse corral.

  “Tell that man to leave the horses alone,” she said clearly.

  Suddenly, they charged.

  What warned her, she never knew. Perhaps it was the tensing of muscles before the horses lunged. They were not forty feet from the door when they started.

  She lifted the shotgun and fired from the hip…there was no time to raise it further. Then she stepped back so quickly she almost tripped, and Laban slammed the door and dropped the bar.

  Bodies crashed against the door and she opened the loop hole in the heavy door and fired the shotgun through it.

  She heard a scream, then a scattering. Laban leaped to take the rifle from Ruthie and fired almost without aiming.

  “You got one, ma,” Ruthie said. “You killed one of them. There’s another bleeding something awful.”

  Laban not only had the rifle, but was a good shot. He was watching the horses while Ruthie and Evie moved from loop hole to loop hole to see what was happening.

  All was quiet outside. The one Indian lay sprawled in the yard, a pool of blood under him and around him. The shotgun blast had caught him not more than twenty feet off, for he was coming at them when she fired. The heavy charge of buckshot must have nearly cut him in two.

  Suddenly Laban fired the rifle again.

  The corral stood out in the open, and it was not easy to approach it without being seen.

  “Ma,” Laban said, “it’s almost time for the stage. They’ll be here when it comes.”

  The stage…she had forgotten about the stage.

  “Ruthie,” she said, “go up in the loft and keep a watch out on the road. When you see it coming, call down to Laban and he can start shooting.”

  “What if there’s nothing to shoot at?” Laban
asked.

  “Shoot anyway. It will warn them on the stage. Shoot where you think you’d be if you were an Indian.”

  Going to the fireplace, she made coffee, put the bean pot close to the fire to warm, and then sliced some meat. The chances were the stage would go right on through, but if they did stop, they must have warm food and hot coffee—above all, they would want coffee.

  From time to time she peered through the loop holes, but there was nothing stirring. All was still, scarcely a breath of air moving. She could see sunlight on the grass out in front, the horses standing in the corral, and the view down the trail toward the Plaza, miles away. Within the cabin it was shadowed and quiet, the shutters closing out the light except the little that filtered through around them.

  The stage was due by now. The passengers would be stiff and tired from the long ride in cramped quarters. Charlie or Ben Logan, who drove alternate, would be up on the box. He would be right out in the open and a perfect target. Evie was hoping there were no women aboard.

  She checked the loads in the shotgun. She was frightened, but she knew what she must do. How many Indians there were she did not know…she thought she had seen a dozen, although there might have been twice as many. The dead one still lay in front of the house, and at least one had been wounded, the one Ruthie had seen with the bloody leg might have been on the porch when she fired through the loop hole. And Laban might have hit one.

  The minutes went slowly by. She poured a cup of coffee for herself and one for Laban, who never drank coffee except on the coldest days.

  “They’re still out there, ma,” Laban said. “I saw a magpie fly up just now. Something scared him, and the horses kind of shied, too.”

  Where was the stage?

  Suddenly Ruthie called out, “Ma! It’s comin’! The stage is comin’!”

  Laban fired. The roar of the gun seemed unnaturally loud after the long silence in the shuttered cabin. Instantly he fired again. And then they saw the stage.

  The team was running wild, and the driver lay slumped over the seat; how he was staying up there on the jolting, bounding stage was more than she could guess. She saw the team charging toward the cabin, and suddenly the driver sat up, swinging the horses right at the door.

  Evie ran to the door and took down the bar. The team swung toward the door and the stage almost crashed against the side of the building, then stopped.

  Evie swung the door open as two men and a woman almost fell from the stage. One of the men was dragging another one down. The driver—it was Ben Logan—fell into the room, his chest and one arm bloody. He clutched a .44 Colt and he paused one instant to fire before they slammed the door shut.

  “Hit us about three mile up,” he said, “around the Point. I figure we got a couple, but they hit us hard.”

  He staggered back and almost fell to a bench by the table, resting his gun hand on it.

  The two active and able men, after dragging the wounded man inside, had gone at once to loop holes. There was almost steady firing now, and the room was filled with gun smoke.

  “What kind of a roof you got, ma’am?” one of the men asked. “I didn’t notice when we came in.”

  “It’s a pole roof, covered with earth.”

  “Thank God for that! They can’t set it afire.”

  The shooting slowed, then stopped.

  The other man, short and stocky with a square, determined face, turned to Logan. “Ben, we’ve got to get that stage moved. They’ll set it afire and burn the cabin.”

  “It’s stone,” Evie said.

  “Makes no difference. They’ll burn down the door and fire through the opening. Anyway, the smoke might do for us.”

  “The horses are still hitched,” Ben said, “but I can’t hold a rein.”

  The woman had been kneeling beside the wounded man, gently unbuttoning his vest and shirt. Evie went to her. “If we could get him on the bed—”

  The woman looked up. She was scarcely more than a girl, with a round, pretty face. “We’d better not move him. He might be gut-shot.”

  The rough term from her lips was startling. Evie started to speak, then she realized what the woman probably was.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” she said. “There’s hot water on the fire and we have bandages. I’m afraid I don’t know much about wounds.”

  “I do,” the girl said practically. “I’ve seen a good many. I’ve lived in some shooting towns.”

  The stocky man was easing the door open, peering out. “One of the horses is down. He’ll have to be cut from the harness first.”

  “Then cut him,” Logan said. “There’s no time to spare, man.”

  He tossed a bowie knife to the man at the door, who hesitated only a moment, then slipped out and went to his knees. Rising quickly, he slashed, then slashed again. The bowie knife had a heavy blade and was razor sharp. Seizing the whip, he lashed the nearest horse and the animal leaped, impelling the others. In an instant they were gone, careening across the yard, running down an Indian who sprang up suddenly from behind a cedar log.

  The man who had done the cutting lunged for the door and tripped, and then was dragged inside as several bullets drummed on the door or ricocheted from the rock walls. And then again there was silence.

  The girl had gone from the wounded man on the floor to Ben Logan. Working with smooth skill, she cleaned and then dressed his wounds.

  Outside there was neither sound nor movement. The day wore on, the heat of the afternoon changing to the coolness of evening.

  “What do you think, Ben?” the square-faced man asked Logan. “Will they stay and fight, or will they pull out?”

  Ben Logan shrugged. “I figure they’ll pull out. No Injun wants to fight a losin’ battle, and they’ve lost more men today than in many a fight with the Army. I figure they’ll try to get that dead one out yonder, and they may try for the horses, but they’re likely to go.”

  After a moment he added, “They can count, good as you or me, and they know there’s four, five guns in here, and we’re behind a stone wall. They aren’t out to win no medals.”

  It was a long, slow evening, and a longer, slower night. Several times, just to keep the Indians away, one of them fired a rifle along the side of the corral. It was a moonlit night and from the cabin the front of the corral and both sides were covered easily. Only the back of the corral could not be observed.

  At daybreak the horses were still there, the body of the dead Indian was gone, and by ten o’clock they knew the siege had been lifted.

  “Don’t worry none,” Logan said. “When the stage doesn’t reach the Plaza they’ll come huntin’ us.”

  And they did…a party of forty horsemen, heavily armed.

  Chapter 5

  *

  THE APACHES HAD come and gone, and they had left no scars on the landscape. Those who had attacked were a small renegade band who had come over the border from Mexico, from their hide-aways in the far-off Sierra Madres.

  Evie Teale looked out over the brown grass of autumn, and thought of the Apaches. Only a week had gone by since the day the men rode in from the Plaza, but it seemed an age ago. Things had such a way of passing here and leaving no mark upon the land—people, events, storms, troubles.

  But the Apaches had left a mark upon her, and upon Laban and Ruthie. From now on they would be more cautious, more wary, more aware that it could happen to them. But the attack had also left them stronger, in that they had faced an enemy and they had survived.

  Evie Teale suddenly became aware of something else. For the first time she was at peace here, really at peace. She had believed the land was her enemy, and she had struggled against it, but you could not make war against a land any more than you could against the sea. One had to learn to live with it, to belong to it, to fit into its seasons and its ways.

  The land was a living thing, breathing with the wind, weeping with the rain, growing somber with clouds or gay with sunlight.

  When she had come to this place she ha
d looked aghast upon desolation. Now the cabin no longer looked out of place, it no longer looked like something dropped alongside the way, for it had become a part of the landscape, as she had.

  As she had…She thought of that, and knew that it was true, and that it had been the sun and shadow on the grass out there which had first won her; but now she must do something herself, she must not leave it to the land alone.

  “Laban…Ruthie…we’re going to make a flower bed. We’re going to plant some flowers.”

  They looked at her, surprised, but eager, anticipating. “We’ll dig up some prairie flowers and plant them alongside the door,” she said.

  “Laban, you have to start it. Take your shovel and dig up a flower bed on each side of the door. From the corners of the cabin to the doorstep, and about four feet deep.

  “Ruthie, you and I will go look for flowers. We’ll get some daisies, and there’s Indian paintbrush…Come on!”

  By the time they returned with a basket filled with carefully dug-up plants, Laban had the earth spaded up, raked, and watered ready for the planting.

  “We should plant some trees,” Evie said. “We’ve got water enough, and there’s some young cottonwoods down by the creek.”

  It was dusk before they settled where the trees would be planted so that they would offer shade for the cabin and at the same time would not be in the way of the stages.

  *

  OFTEN, AFTER THE children were in bed, Evie walked out in front of the cabin to look at the stars and to feel the wind. These were the lonely hours, when at last she could let down from the work of the day, when she could stand there and feel the wind touch her hair, when she could look at the bright, silent stars, and hear a coyote’s plaintive cry come from far out on the plain.

  Behind her the windows would show a faint light from her lantern, for the fire would be banked for the night, the coal-oil light would be out or turned low.

  She could hear a faint stirring among the horses in the corral, and sometimes one would stamp or blow dust from his nostrils.

  Jacob was gone…

  Now she accepted the fact. How or why he had gone she had no idea, but somehow he had been killed or had died or been injured in some terrible way. That he might have simply gone off and left them she did not for a moment consider. Jacob was too much a man of duty, and both his place and his children meant too much to him.