Silver Canyon (1956)

by L'amour, Louis

  Behind me a crowd had gathered, but it was a silent crowd this time, a crowd awed by what they were seeing.

  Morgan Park got up, and when he came off the floor he rushed, head down and swinging. Sidestepping swiftly, I thrust out a foot and he tripped, falling heavily. He got up again, stolidy, with determination. When he turned toward me, I hit him.

  The blow struck his chin solidly, like the butt of an axe striking a log. He fell, not backwards, but on his face. He lay there quiet and unmoving, and I knew my fight was over.

  Sodden with weariness and for once fed up with fighting, I picked up my hat and walked by the silent men. I got my rifle again and shoved it in my saddle boot. Nobody said anything, but they stared at my battered face and torn clothing.

  At the door I met Sheriff Will Tharp coming in. He stopped, measuring me. “Didn’t I tell you to stop fighting in this town, Brennan?”

  “What am I to do? Let him beat my head off? He followed me here.”

  “Better have some rest,” Tharp said then. “When you’re rested, ride out of town for a while.”

  When I was in the doorway, he stopped me again. “I’m arresting Park for murder. I have official confirmation on your message.”

  All I wanted just then was a drink of cold water. Gallons of it.

  Yet all the way to Mother O’Hara’s I kept remembering that bucket of water dashed over me in the saloon. Had that really been Moira, or had it been an illusion?

  When I had washed my face and patched my shirt together I went into the restaurant. Key Chapin was there.

  He said little, watching me eat, passing things to me. My jaw was sore and I ate carefully.

  “Booker’s still in town,” Chapin said. “What’s he want?”

  Right then I didn’t care. But as I drank my coffee, I began to wonder. This was my country now, my home. It did matter to me, and Moira mattered.

  “Was I crazy, or was Moira in there last night?”

  “She was there, all right.”

  Refilling my cup, I thought that over. She was not entirely against me then.

  “You’d better get over to Doc West’s. That face needs some attention.”

  Out in the air I felt better. With food and some black coffee inside me I felt like a new man. The mountain air was fresh and good to the taste, and even the sun felt good.

  I walked along the street .Out of the grab bag of the world I had picked this town. Here in this place I had elected to remain, to put down my roots, to build a ranch. Old man Ball had given me a ranch, and I had given my word. Here I could cease being a trouble-hunting, rambunctious young rider and settle down to a citizen’s life. It was time for that, but I wanted one more thing. I wanted Moira.

  Doc West lived in a small white cottage surrounded by rose bushes. Tall poplars stood in the woodyard and there was a patch of lawn inside the white picket fence. It was the only painted fence in town.

  A tall, austere man with a shock of graying hair answered the door. He smiled at me.

  “No doubt about who you are, Brennan. I just came from treating the other man.”

  “How is he?”

  “Three broken ribs and a broken jaw. The ribs were broken last night, I’d say.”

  “There was no quit in him.”

  “He’s a dangerous man, Brennan. He’s still dangerous.”

  After he had checked me over and patched up my face, I got back on my feet and buckled on my guns. My fingers were stiff. I kept working them, trying to loosen up the muscles. What if I met Jim Finder now? Or that weasel, Bodie Miller?

  Picking up my sombrero, I remembered something. “Have Tharp check Morgan Park’s boots with those tracks Canaval found. I’m betting they’ll fit.”

  “You think he killed Maclaren?”

  “Yes.”

  On the porch I stopped, gingerly trying to fit my hat over the lumps on my skull. It wasn’t easy. Scissors snipped among the rose bushes. Turning I looked into the eyes of Moira Maclaren.

  Her dark hair was piled on her head, the first time I had seen it that way. And I decided right then it was much the best way.

  “How’s Canaval?” I asked.

  “Better. Fox is running the ranch.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  My hat was back in my hands. I turned it around. Neither of us seemed to want to say what we were thinking. I was thinking that I loved her, but I was afraid to say it.

  “You’re staying on at the Two-Bar?”

  “The house is finished.” When I said that, I looked at her. “It’s finished … but it’s empty.”

  Her voice faltered a little, and she snipped at a rose, cutting the stem much too short.

  “You … you aren’t living in it?”

  “Yes, I’m there, but you aren’t.”

  So there it was, out in the open again. I turned my hat again and looked down at my boots. They were scuffed and lost to color.

  “You shouldn’t say that. We can’t mean anything to each other. You … you’re a killer. I watched you fight. You actuallylike it.”

  Thinking it over, I had to agree.

  “Why not? I’m a man … and fighting has been man’s work for a long time on this earth.”

  “It’s bad … it will always be bad.”

  I turned my hat, then put it on. “Maybe … but as long as there are men like Morgan Park, Jim Finder, and Bodie Miller, there must be men to stand against them.”

  She looked up quickly. “But why does it have to be you? Matt, don’t fight any more! Please don’t!”

  I drew back a little, though I wanted to go to her and take her in my arms.

  “There’s Bodie Miller. Unless someone kills him first, I’ll have to face him.”

  “But you don’t have to!” Her eyes flashed angrily. “All that’s so silly! Why should you?”

  “Because I’m a man. I can’t live in a woman’s world. I must live with men, and be judged by men. If I back down from Miller, I’ll be through here. And Miller will go on to kill other men.”

  “You can go away! You can go to California to straighten out some business for me! Matt, you could—”

  “No, I’m staying here.”

  There were more words, and they were hard words, and then we parted, no better off.

  But she had started me thinking about Bodie Miller. He was riding his luck with spurs, and he would be hunting me. Remembering that sallow-faced killer, I knew we couldn’t live in the same country without meeting. And my hands were bruised, my fingers stiff.

  Bodie Miller was full of salt now. I’d have to ride the country always ready. One moment off guard and I would have no other moments, ever.

  How could I live and not kill?

  Yet when I rode up to the ranch I was thinking of a dark-haired girl tall among the roses.

  Chapter Twenty.

  Jonathan Benaras stared at my face, then looked away, not wanting to embarrass me with questions.

  “It was quite a fight … he took a licking.” Benaras grinned in his slow way, and a sly humor flickered in his gray eyes. “If he looks worse’n you do, he must be a sight.” While I stripped the saddle from the buckskin I told them what had happened, as briefly as possible. They listened, and I could see they were pleased. Jolly hunkered down near the barn and watched me.

  “It’ll please Pa … he never set much store by Morgan Park.”

  “Wish I’d been there to see it,” Mulvaney mused. “It must have been a sweet fight.”

  We went inside where supper was laid, and we sat at a table and ate as men should—for the first time, not around a campfire. But I was thinking of the girl I wanted at this table, and the life I wanted to build with her, and how she would have none of me.

  Nobody talked. The fire crackled on the hearth, and there was a subdued rattle of dishes. When we had eaten. Jolly Benaras went out into the dark with his rifle. Walking to the veranda, I looked down the dark valley.

  The first thing was to find out what Booker and Morgan
had been up to, and the only possible clue I had was the silver assay.

  The place to look was where the Two-Bar and the Boxed M joined, I decided. The next day I would ride that way, and see for myself. If it was not there, then I must swing ride and need tracks, for tracks there must be.

  Mulvaney rode with me at daybreak. The Irishman had a facile mind, and a shrewd one. He was a good man to have on such a search, and also, he had mined and knew a little about ore.

  The morning fell behind us with the trail we made across the Dark Canyon Plateau, and we lost it at Fable Canyon’s rim. Off on our right, but far away, lay the Sweet Alice Hills.

  Heat waves danced. … I mopped my face and neck. We saw no tracks but those of deer, and once those of a lobo wolf. We rode right and left, searching. More deer … the spoor of a mountain sheep, the drying hide of an antelope, with a few scattered bones, gnawed by wolf teeth. And then I saw something else.

  Fresh tracks of a shod horse.

  Turning in my saddle, I lifted my hat and waved. It was a minute before Mulvaney saw me, and then he turned his mule and rode toward me at a shambling trot. When he came closer I showed him the tracks.

  “Maybe a couple of hours old,” he said.

  “One of the Slade gang?” I suggested, but I did not believe it.

  We fell into the trail and followed along, not talking. At one place a hoof had slipped and the torn earth had not yet dried out. Obviously then, the horse had passed after the sun had left the trail, possibly within the past hour. The earth had dried some, but not entirely.

  We rode rapidly, but with increasing care. Within an hour we knew we were gaining. When the canyon branched we found where the rider had filled his canteen and prepared his meal.

  We looked at his fire and we knew more about him. The man was not a Slade, for the Slades were good men on a trail, and their gang were men on the dodge who had ridden the wild country. The maker of the fire had used some wood that burned badly, and his fire, was in a place where the slightest breeze would swirl smoke in his face.

  The boot tracks were small. Near by there was the butt of a cigar, chewed some, and only half smoked through.

  Cowhands rarely smoke cigars, and they know which wood will burn well and which will not. And they have learned about fires by building many.

  When we started to go, we suddenly stopped. For there were no tracks.

  He had come here, watered his horse, prepared a meal, then disappeared.

  The rock walls offered no escape. The earth around the spring was undisturbed beyond a few square yards. The tracks led in … and none led out.

  “We’ve trailed a ghost,” Mulvaney said, and I almost agreed.

  “We’d best think of him as a man. What would a man do?”

  “Not even a snake could mount those cliffs, so if he rode in, he rode out.”

  There were no tracks, nothing had been brushed out. We scouted up the canyons, but we found nothing. Mulvaney tried one branch, and I the other.

  Walking my buckskin, I studied the ground with care. Wild horses had fed up this canyon, browsing along slowly, evidently at least twenty in the group. Suddenly the character of the tracks changed. The horses had broken into a wild run!

  Studying the hoof prints, I could see no indication of any tracks other than those of the wild horses.

  What was likely to frighten them? A grizzly? Perhaps, but they were rarely seen this far south. A wolf—no. A wild stallion was not likely to be disturbed by a wolf, even a large one. Nor was a wolf likely to get himself into a fight with a wild stallion in such close quarters. A lion then? Certainly, a lion perched on one of these cliffs might make an easy kill. Yet no lion would make them run as they had. The horses would move off all right, but not in such wild flight.

  Only one thing was likely to make them run as they had … a man.

  The tracks were only a few hours old at most. They might even be less than an hour old. And then I saw something that alerted me instantly. In tracking, what the tracker seeks for is the thing out of place, the thing that does not belong. And on a manzanita bush was a bit of sheep’s wool!

  Dismounting, I plucked it from the bush. It was not the wool from a wild sheep, not from a bighorn. This was wool from a merino, a good sheep, too. No sheep would ever find their way into this wild canyon alone, and who would bring them in and why?

  The whole situation became suddenly plain. The man we had followed had tied sheepskin over his horse’s hoofs so they would leave no tracks.

  Mulvaney was waiting for me when I rode back. I showed him the wool and explained quickly.

  “A good idea … but we’ll get him now.”

  The way out through the branch canyon led northeast, and finally to a high, windswept plateau unbroken by anything but a few towering rocks and low growing sagebrush. We sat our horses, squinting against the distance.

  Far off the Blue Mountains lifted their lofty summits ten thousand feet into the sky, but even those summits gathered no clouds. And between us and the mountains was a Dante’sInferno of unbelievable grandeur, arid and empty.

  “We may never find him,” Mulvaney said at last. “You could lose an army out there.”

  “We’ll find him.”

  Taking my hat from my head, I mopped my brow, then wiped the hatband. My eyes squinted against the glare. Sweat got into the corner of one eye and it smarted. My face felt raw and sore. We rode on into the heat, the only sounds those made by our walking horses; the only change, the distant shadows in the canyon and hollows of the distant hills.

  Some of this country I had known, much of it had been described to me by old man Ball or the Benaras boys, who were among the few white men to have ridden into this desolate waste. Far away, between us and the bulk of the mountains, I could see a rim. That would be Salt Creek Mesa, with the towering finger above it, Cathedral Butte. Far beyond, and even higher, but not appearing so at this distance, was Shay Mountain.

  The man we were searching for was somewhere in the maze of canyons between us and those mountains. And he could not be far ahead.

  With the sheepskin on his horse’s hoofs he would leave no trail but, knowing what to look for, we might find some indication of his passing. And his horse could not move fast.

  We rode on, walking our horses. The heat was deadening, the plodding pace of the horses almost hypnotic. I shook my head, and dried my hands on my shirt.

  Mulvaney’s face was hard and sweaty. There was deep sunburn along his cheekbones and jaw. He rolled a smoke and lighted it, clipping the cigarette tight between his flat lips, marked with old scars.

  “Hell of a country!”

  His eyes flickered at me. “Yeah.” He shook his canteen to guage the amount of water remaining, then rinsed his mouth, holding the water a while before he swallowed. My own thirst seemed intensified by hearing that slosh of water in his canteen. I took a long swallow from my own.

  After I replaced the cork my eyes swept the country, searching it far away, then nearer, nearer.

  Nothing.

  We went on, seeing another bit of wool, and later a smudged place in the dust.

  “Not far … he ain’t far.”

  Mulvaney was right. We were closing in. But who were we following? What manner of man was this? Not a plainsman, not a cowhand. Yet a man who knew something of the wilds, and a man who was cunning and wary.

  I mopped my face again, and swore softly at the heat. Sweat trickled down my ribs and I rubbed my horse’s neck and spoke reassuringly.

  “We’ll need water,” Mulvaney said.

  “Yes.”

  “So will he.”

  “Maybe he knows where it is. He isn’t riding blind.”

  “No.”

  Our talk lapsed and we rode on, our bodies moving to the rhythm of the walking horses … The sun declined a little. It must be midaftemoon, or later. I wanted another drink, but did not dare take it. I wanted to dismount for a pebble to put in my mouth, but the effort seemed too much.

>   Our senses were lulled by the heat and the easy movement. We rode half dozing in our saddles.

  And then there was a shot.

  It slapped sharply across our consciousness, and we reined wide, putting our mounts apart. We had heard no bullet, only the flat, hard report, not far away. And then another.

  “He ain’t shootin’ at us.”

  “Let’s get off the flat …quick! “

  The shots had come from the canyon, the trail led there, so we went over the edge into the depths, and swung, right, always right, down the switchback trail.

  If we were seen here we were dead, caught flat against the mountainside like paper ducks pinned to a wall.

  Chapter Twenty-One.

  At the bottom we swung our horses in a swirl of dust and leaped them for cover in a thick cluster of trees and brush. Even our horses felt the tension as they stood, heads up and alert.

  All was still. Some distance away a stone rattled. Sweat trickled behind my ear and I smelled the hot aroma of dust and sun-baked leaves. My palms grew sweaty and I dried them, but there was no further sound.

  Careful to let my saddle creak as little as possible, I swung down, Winchester in hand, and with a motion to Mulvaney to stay put, I moved away through the brush.

  From the edge of the trees I could see no more than thirty yards in one direction, no more than twenty in the other. Rock walls towered and the canyon sand lay still under the blazing sun. Close against the walls there was a thin strip of shadow.

  Somewhere near by water trickled, aggravating my thirst. My neck felt hot and sticky, my shirt clung to my shoulders. Shifting the rifle in my hands, I studied the rock wall with misgiving. I dried my hands on my jeans and, taking a chance, moved out from my cover, and into that six-inch band of shade against the wall. Easing along to a bend in the wall, I peered around the comer.

  Sixty yards away stood a saddled horse, head hanging. My eyes searched and saw nothing more, and then just visible beyond a white, water-worn boulder, I saw a boot and a leg as far as the knee.

  For a space of a minute I watched it. There was no movement, no sound. Cautiously, wary for a trick, I advanced, ready to fire. Only the occasional chuckle of water over rocks broke the stillness. And then I saw the dead man.