High Lonesome

by Louis L'Amour

Considine always made the beginning of the pursuit so tough that it broke the horses of the posses. Pursuit rarely lasted beyond the point where Considine would have the spare horses waiting.

  The ride up that sandy draw, for example, and then up the rocky slide—that was enough to take the starch out of any horse. Nor could they ever be traced by their horses, for the horses used in the holdups were never their own mounts.

  “Where to now?” Hardy asked.

  “Honey’s,” Considine answered.

  The Kiowa tilted his hat brim lower. Honey’s place was not far from Obaro, and the Kiowa did not like Obaro. It was Pete Runyon’s town, and Pete was a smart, tough sheriff. All the tougher because he had been an outlaw himself, and all the town knew it.

  “Are you thinking of Obaro?” Hardy asked.

  “Why not?”

  Hardy grinned at the thought. “Never was a horse that couldn’t be rode, an’ there never was a rider who couldn’t be throwed.”

  Dutch squinted his eyes into the heat waves.

  The horse that couldn’t be ridden might throw a lot of riders before the last one rode it. The trick was to be the one who made the ride … only how did a man know?

  And the town of Obaro, with Runyon for sheriff … it was a tough horse for any rider to top off.

  Chapter II

  IN THE SAND Tank Mountains there was a lonely corner unknown to the casual traveler. When Table Top Peak showed through a certain notch, the knowing rider would turn off the trail into the barren-looking hills.

  Picking his way through the rocks and cacti, a rider could enter a box canyon and climb a trail that led out of it and up along the canyon’s rim to a cirque, or hanging valley.

  This was no more than a pocket, but here was usually good grass, and a dripping spring hidden behind a gnarled and ancient cedar. It was a place where several men might remain concealed, unseen even by a rider passing close by … although in the memory of those who knew of the place, no rider had ever come that close.

  Three dim trails led from the pocket into the rough country of the Sand Tanks, trails by which a man on the dodge might swiftly lose himself.

  When the War between the States came and the few men who knew of the spring were killed or died off, the spring was forgotten, except by an occasional Apache or Pima.

  But Dave Spanyer remembered it. There had been a time when he had visited the spring often, a time when he had been glad of its seclusion. He was a grizzled, tough man, seasoned by time and trouble. Now he had come again to the spring, and this time he brought a grown daughter with him.

  Drawing rein, he fiddled with building a cigarette while his eyes glanced toward the notch where the shoulder of Table Top was visible. His eyes dropped to the ground. Bunch grass grew in the trail, and some sage … although trail, as such, there had never been.

  The great mass of the Sand Tanks lay before them, where there was little brush and less grass. He started his horse without speaking to Lennie and walked it toward a vivid streak of quartz that slashed across the face of a rock. At the rock he turned again and was within the box canyon.

  The trail that led upward along its edge was faint, but Dave Spanyer started up, followed by Lennie. Higher and higher through a wilderness of rock and cactus they mounted. Suddenly, when almost at the top, the trail dipped sharply down and around the rocks, and Lennie was riding into the hanging valley behind her father.

  The edge broke off sharply, and before them was a view of an enormous expanse of country—desert mountains and valleys—streaked with the white of dry washes. They were two thousand feet above the surrounding country here, and just below the rim.

  “There’s a spring behind that tree,” Spanyer said.

  “Pa … it’s lovely. It really is!”

  “You get down and make some coffee. I’ll fetch some wood.”

  But her words had caught at his attention, and he looked around him. The grass was green, and the cedars and pinions offered their deeper green and the darkness of their shade, making shadow patterns on the rocks.

  “Never thought of it before, Lennie. I reckon this here is really beautiful.”

  He walked over to where a sharply tilted strata of rock had broken off, forming a sort of alcove. Here the words scratched under the overhang were easily read, even after fifteen years.

  HERE LIES

  BURT CARNAVON

  DEAD BY THE GUN

  “Lived by it, died by it,” Spanyer muttered. “He was a good man … mighty good.”

  “Who was?”

  Spanyer turned irritably. It always angered him when somebody got close to him without his knowing. Once nobody could have done it, not a rattler, a coyote, or an Apache. His irritation faded when he looked at his daughter. She had a mouth like her mother, the sort of mouth a man always looked at twice.

  Damn it, she wasn’t a kid any more! She was filling out fast, and it worried him. This was no way to raise a girl. A boy now, or a colt … with them he knew what he was doing, but Lennie was constantly surprising him with her womanly attitudes and ways.

  “Feller buried here.”

  “Did you know him, Pa?”

  “I buried him.”

  He picked up some fallen branches and broke off some dead roots from a gnarled stump.

  “Pa … will we have other folks around us where we’re going?”

  “I reckon.” He glanced at her. The wistful note in her voice worried him. “It’s been lonely for you, ain’t it, Lennie? You’d set store by neighbors now, wouldn’t you?”

  It wasn’t right for a man to keep his daughter in a shack in a cow town. She needed to meet folks, to learn things from other women. She needed to meet some men, some decent men, and he was a mighty poor guide to such a trail.

  Burt now, he had been a decent man. God knows he had been no angel, but decent around women, even if quick with a gun. Up to a point he’d been quick … trouble was, a man could never be sure when he wouldn’t meet somebody who was quicker. Or when his gun wouldn’t misfire.

  A long time later, when she was huddled into her blankets, he bent over and pulled a couple of sticks back from the fire. It was dying down and he did not want it to burn any longer. When he lay down he put his gun belt close at hand, with the butt where he could lay a hand on it. He stared up at the stars through the cedar branches, and then his eyes closed…

  HIS EYES FLARED wide … only a few coals remained of the fire. Startled to awareness by an ancient sense of danger, he lay perfectly still, listening.

  The moon was up, a half-moon partly hidden by foliage. At first he heard only water trickling, and then his ears identified the sound that had awakened him.

  Riders…

  He sat up and pulled on his boots. “Lennie?”

  “I heard them, Pa.”

  By grabs, she was a girl! Never missed a trick. Well, he had never concealed the hard facts of life from her. She knew what danger was, and she had seen him kill one man … a man who had made an indecent remark to her. He was a brawny, hairy man, who made a brawny, hairy corpse because he had made such a remark, paying no attention to the grizzled wisp of a man at her side.

  “Get dressed and stand to the horses.”

  Lennie drew her skirt to her and wriggled into it under the blankets. She was dressed as quickly as he was, and was standing by the horses to keep them quiet.

  Dave Spanyer had a good view of the trail. For three hundred yards every inch of it could be covered from up here, but no posse had chased him in years, and he knew of no outlaws around who might know of this place.

  Four riders…

  They must have been traveling all night. There was something familiar about the way the second man sat his saddle, something about the bulk of his huge body.

  Dutch … and riding second. Any outfit Dutch rode with had to be solid, and any man who led Dutch anywhere would be quite a man.

  He watched them ride along the trail, and even in the moonlight he could see they r
ode better horses than any cowhand was likely to be riding. They were still some distance from the opening into the box canyon … were they coming here?

  If that was Dutch, he knew of this place. Were they coming here, or riding on toward Obaro?

  “We’ll saddle up,” he whispered to Lennie. He threw a saddle on the sorrel’s back and reached under the belly for the girth. He felt the sorrel swell his belly and tried to stop him. The sorrel whinnied—caught some vague smell of horse, no doubt, a smell carried on the wind. And the harm was done.

  He grabbed his rifle and crouched, waiting. It was quiet, too quiet. This was no job for one man, and Lennie, as if hearing his thought, slid her rifle from its scabbard and moved to the edge of the pocket.

  CONSIDINE STOOD AMONG the rocks on one of the back trails that led to the pocket and watched the girl take her position. With her first move he had recognized her as a woman. Now, with the sky lightening with the coming day, he could see her more clearly. He stepped out into the open and she turned sharply with the rifle on him.

  “It’s all right, I’m friendly,” he said.

  “Not if I can help it!” she said. Nevertheless, he could see her eyes were bright with interest or excitement.

  Behind him he heard Dutch speak. ” ‘Lo, Dave. Figured you had cashed in a long time ago.”

  Dutch turned his head. “Come on in, boys. I know this old rawhider.”

  Considine looked at the girl. She was a beauty, really a beauty. “Did you hear that?” he said. “We’re friends. Dutch knows your Pa.”

  “My Pa,” she replied shortly, “knows a lot of folks I wouldn’t mess with, so you walk in ahead of me and don’t cut up any or your friend will have a friend to bury.”

  Considine was tall, lean, and raw-boned. His dark features were blunt but warm, and when he smiled his face lighted up. He smiled now.

  “We’ll walk in together. How’ll that be?”

  Chapter III

  “HE’S ALL RIGHT,” Dutch said, looking past the girl’s head at Considine. “I rode with Spanyer.”

  Dutch gestured toward Considine. “Dave, meet Considine.”

  “Heard of him.” The wary old eyes glanced at Considine and then away. Then Spanyer indicated his daughter. “This here’s Lennie. She’s my daughter. We’re headin’ for Californy.”

  Dave Spanyer was a slope-shouldered man who looked older than his years, but he was weather-beaten and trail-wise, and obviously not a man to take lightly. Considine knew the type. Most of them had come west early, as mountain men or prospectors, and they had lived hard, lonely lives, relying on their own abilities to survive.

  “Going to marry her to some farmer?” Dutch asked.

  “She ain’t going to marry no outlaw, if that’s what you mean.” Spanyer glanced at Considine, who was out of hearing. “If you’re riding with him you’d better fight shy of Obaro.”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “I know Pete Runyon.” Spanyer looked toward his daughter, who had walked over to their horses. It was growing light now, and a good time to move on. “Don’t say you weren’t warned.”

  Dave Spanyer watched them ride on, walking to the edge of the trail to watch them go. Lennie came up beside him.

  “Stay away from men like that, Lennie. They’re no good. There’s not many of these new outfits that are worth riding with, but these men … Well, I don’t say they ain’t good men in their way. That Dutch, I knew him a long time back, and Considine, everybody knows him.”

  Spanyer turned away. They could have it. They could have the long, cold rides, the lonely camps, the scarce rations. All he wanted was a place in California in the sunshine where he could raise horses and some of that fruit he had heard tell of.

  “He’s handsome, Pa. The tall one, I mean.”

  “None of that! Don’t you be gettin’ any ideas, now. He ain’t your kind.”

  Considine was a fool to go back to Obaro, or any place close to it. Nobody had ever tapped that bank and nobody was likely to, not with Runyon the sheriff. And he had a town full of tough men.

  Spanyer turned his mind to California. He knew where he was going out there, knew the place well because he had got off a stage there once. It was a little place called Agua Caliente, tucked in a corner of the San Jacintos, and he had laid up there several weeks when he wanted to stay out of sight.

  Riding the outlaw trail was all right for the young sprouts, but a man was a fool to stay with it. He would buy a little place from the Indians, irrigate a patch, and raise some fruit. It wasn’t likely that anybody would show up around there who was likely to know him, and after a while he would move on out to the coast if things looked good. By that time they would have forgotten him.

  “Those men were outlaws, weren’t they?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Don’t you pay them no mind.”

  They mounted up, and when he was in the saddle he said, “Never pays to know too much. You didn’t see anybody, you don’t know anything about anybody.”

  Dave Spanyer turned his thoughts from Considine and his men and thought of the trail ahead. It was Indian country, and he was foolish to try to get through alone. Still, no Indian knew more about the trails than he did, and if necessary he knew how to live off the country.

  He was taking a chance, especially with Lennie along, but they had nothing back where they came from, and folks had found out about him. The daughter of an outlaw would have no chance to grow up and live a decent life; but out there in California … well, most of his kind stayed in Arizona. In fact, unless they were sent to Yuma pen they never went as far west as the Colorado.

  He rode a few yards ahead of Lennie, his Winchester in his hand. He knew the desert too well to be fooled by its seeming innocence. If all went well they would noon at Pozo Redondo. There was a store there, and he could buy what supplies they needed before going on into the desert.

  With Considine and his outfit in the vicinity, it would be a good idea to stay away from Obaro. Somebody might remember his connection with Dutch and he would be involved.

  The sun came up over the ridge and it grew hot. Nothing moved out on the wide sagebrush fiats. Suddenly he saw the tracks … four unshod ponies had crossed the trail … hours before.

  Dave Spanyer stared off in the direction they had gone, but there was nothing out there that he could see, nothing at all.

  AT THE FOOT of Wildhorse Mesa is a spring, and around it some ancient cottonwoods offer their shade. Once deer had come here to drink, but they came no longer, for in the shade of the trees there was now a combination store, stage stop, and saloon owned by “Honey” Chavez. When he first came to the country Chavez had made a business of robbing the desert bees and selling their honey in the settlements, hence the nickname.

  The store building was eighty feet long and twenty feet wide. It was built of adobe, and facing it across what was humorously called the “plaza” was another building almost identical in size which was a bunkhouse carrying a faded sign: BEDS— Two Bits.

  Honey Chavez was fat, sloppy, and nondescript, but there was little going on which he did not know about, for he was a man who listened well and found means to profit by the information he gathered. Despite his appearance, he was a man who had many times proved his courage against the Apaches, although usually he was on friendly terms with them. Lacking most of the virtues, Honey Chavez had one very necessary one—he knew when not to talk.

  From the porch in front of the store there was a good view both up and down the trail, while behind the place was a towering mountain that closed off all approach. In front of the place and across the trail the desert stretched away into almost endless distance before reaching some haunting blue hills, far, far away.

  Considine led the small cavalcade into the plaza, where they dismounted and tied their horses. Chavez was standing in his doorway, scratching his fat stomach and watching them. “Getting close to Obaro, ain’t you?”

  Considine ignored him. Everybody knew
about his relationship with Pete Runyon, and what could be expected if he returned to Obaro.

  He glanced up the trail. There was no sign of Dave Spanyer and his daughter. He stared that way, almost hopefully. She had been quite a girl. And that old man of hers—he was a tough old man, a very tough old man, but they should not be riding through Apache country alone.

  Dutch stopped beside him. “Don’t worry about them, Considine. That old man is no fool.”

  “You saw those tracks.”

  “He’ll see them, too.”

  The Kiowa led the horse to the trough for water, then to the corral. Considine watched him gloomily. The Kiowa was lucky, for he never seemed to think about things or to have any worries beyond the moment—but that might be an illusion.

  “The trouble with me is,” Considine said aloud, “I think too much.”

  Dutch nodded his big head. “You’re the best in this business, Considine, but you ain’t cut out for it. I never knew a man who was less cut out for it. To me this comes natural and easy, but not to you. The very thing that makes you good at this business shows you don’t belong in it. You’ve got an instinct to watch out for the other fellow … you don’t care how much grief you shoulder yourself as long as you can keep others out of trouble. That’s why you plan so carefully. That’s why you’re worrying about Spanyer and his girl now.”

  “Maybe.”

  Perhaps it was true, yet if so, his presence here was a contradiction, for his only reason for being here would be that bank in Obaro. The only obvious reason … Part of it was that everything about Obaro rankled, and it was not only Pete Runyon and the girl he’d married—it was the town, all of them.

  He glanced around at Chavez. “You been to town lately?”

  “Two weeks ago … maybe three.”

  “You’d better go in and have a look around.”

  Chavez rubbed his fat hands on his pants and shifted his eyes uneasily. In a way, he was afraid of Considine, for the big, quiet man was very sure of himself, and was known to be a dangerous man with a gun. But Chavez was afraid of Runyon, too.