Mistakes Can Kill You

by Louis L'Amour

  There was a sign around, but I didn’t need more than a glance at it to tell me what had happened. Sheriff Todd had run into the Piute unexpectedlike, and caught him flat-footed with stolen stock, the first time he had ever had that chance. Only from the look of it, Todd had been caught flat-footed himself. His gun was out, but unfired, and he had been shot twice in the stomach.

  Lookin’ down at that body, I felt something change inside me. I knowed right then, no matter how the nester come out, I was goin’ to foiler on my own hook. For Sheriff Todd was still alive when he hit the ground, and that Piute had bent over him, put a pistol to the side of his head, and blowed half his head off! There were powder burns around that hole in his temple where the bullet went in. It had been cold-blooded murder.

  Swinging a leg over that gelding, I was startin’ off when I happened to think of a gun, and turned back and recovered the one Sheriff Todd had worn. I also got his saddle-gun out of the scabbard and started off, trailin’ the nester.

  From now on the sign was bad. The Piute knowed he was up against it now. He was takin’ time to blot his tracks, and if it hadn’t been for Morley, I’d never have trailed him half as far as I did.

  We hadn’t gone more than a few miles further before I saw something that turned me plumb cold inside. The Piute had turned off at the Big Joshua and was headin’ down the trail toward Rice Flats!

  That scared me, because Rice Flats was where my girl lived down there in a cabin with her kid brother and her ma, and they had lived there alone ever since her dad fell asleep and tumbled off his spring wagon into the canyon. The Piute had been nosin’ around the Flats long enough to scare Julie some, but I reckon it was the sheriff who had kept him away.

  Now that Sheriff Todd was gone, and the Piute knowed he was on the dodge from here on. He would know that killin’ Sheriff Todd was the last straw, and he’d have to get clean out of the country. Knowin’ that, he’d know he might’s well get hung for one thing as another.

  As my gelding was a right fast horse, I started him movin’ then. I jacked a shell into the chamber of the sheriff’s carbine and I wasn’t thinkin’ much about the nester. Yet by the time I got to the cabin on the Flats, I knowed I was too late.

  My steeldust came into the yard at a dead run and I hit the dust and went for that house like a saddle tramp for a chuck wagon. I busted inside and took a quick look around. Ma Frank was lyin’ on the bed with a big gash in her scalp, but she was conscious.

  “Don’t mind me!” she said. “Go after that Injun! He has taken out with Julie on her black!”

  “What about you?” I asked, although goodness knows I was wantin’ nothin’ more than to be out and after Julie.

  “’Brose’ll be back right soon. He rid over to Elmer’s after some side meat.”

  ’Brose was short for Ambrose, her fourteen-year-old boy, so knowin’ he’d be back, I swung a leg over that saddle and headed out for the hills. My steeldust knowed somethin’ was in the wind and he hustled his hocks for those hills like he was headin’ home from a trail drive.

  The Piute had Julie and he was a killin’ man, a killin’ man who knowed he was up the crick without a paddle now, and if he was got alive he’d rope meat shore. No man ever bothered a woman or killed a man as well liked in that country as Sheriff Todd without ridin’ under a cottonwood limb. Me, I’m a plumb peaceable sort of hand, but when I seen the sheriff back there I got my dander up. Now that Piute had stole my girl, I was a wild man.

  Ever see that country out toward White Hills? God must have been cleanin’ up the last details of the job when He made that country, and just dumped a lot of the slag and wastin’s down in a lot of careless heaps. Ninety per cent of that country stands on end, and what doesn’t stand on end is dryer than a salt desert, and hotter than a bronc on a hot rock.

  The Piute knowed every inch of it, and he was showin’ us all he knowed. We went down across a sunbaked flat where weird dust devils danced like crazy in a world where there was nothin’ but heat and dust and misery for man and beast. No cactus there, not even salt grass or yeso, nothin’ growed there, and the little winds that stirred along the dusty levels made you think of snakes glidin’ along the ground.

  My gelding slowed to a walk an’ we plodded on and somewhere miles ahead beyond the wall of sun dancin’ heat waves, there was a column of dust, a thin, smoky trail where the nester rode ahead of me. Right then, I began to have a sight of respect for that long-legged yellow horse he was ridin’ because he kept on goin’ an’ even gained ground on my steeldust.

  Finally we got out of that hell’s valley and took a trail along the rusty edge of some broken rock, windin’ higher toward some sawtooth ridges that gnawed at the sky like starvin’ coyotes in a dry season. That trail hung like an eyebrow to the face of the cliff we skirted, an’ twice, away up ahead, I heard shots. I knowed they was shots from the Piute, because I’d seen that carbine the nester carried. It was a Spencer .56.

  Never seen one? Mister, all they lack is wheels! A caliber .56, with a bore like a cannon, and them shootin’ soft-nosed lead bullets. What they do to a man ain’t pretty, like you’ll know. I knowed well enough it wasn’t the nester shootin’ because when you unlimber a Spencer .56 she had a bellow like a mad bull in a rock canyon.

  Sundown came and then the night, an’ little breezes picked up and blew cool and pleasant down from the hills. Stop? There was no time for stoppin’. I knew my gelding would stand anything the Piute’s horse would, and I knowed by the shootin’ that the Piute knowed the nester was on his trail. He wasn’t goin’ to get nary a chance to cool his heels with that nester tailin’ him down them draws and across the bunch grass levels.

  The Piute? I wasn’t worried so much about Julie now. He might kill her, but that I doubted as long as he had a prayer of gettin’ away with her. He was goin’ to have to keep movin’ or shoot it out.

  The longer I rode, the more respect I got for Bin Morley. He stuck to that Piute’s trail like a cockle burr to a sheep, and that yellow horse of his just kept his head down and kept moseyin’ along those trails like he was born to ‘em, and he probably was.

  The stars come out and then the moon lifted, and they kept on goin’. My steeldust was beginnin’ to drag his heels, and so I knowed the end was comin’. At that, it was most mornin’ before it did come.

  How far we’d come or where we were I had no idea. All I know was that up ahead of me was the Piute with my girl, and I wanted a shot at him. Nobody needed to tell me I was no hand to tie in a gun battle with the Piute with him holdin’ a six-gun. He was too slick a hand for me.

  Then all of a sudden as the sky was turnin’ gray and the hills were losin’ their shadows, I rounded a clump of cotton woods and there was that yellow horse, standin’ three-footed, croppin’ absently at the first green grass in miles.

  The nester was nowhere in sight, but I swung down and with the carbine in hand, started down through the trees, catfootin’ in along with no idea what I might see or where they could have gone. Then all of a sudden I come out on the edge of a cliff and looked down at a cabin in a grassy basin, maybe a hundred feet below, and a good four hundred yards away.

  Standin’ in front of that cabin were two horses. My face was pretty pale, an’ my stomach felt sick, but I headed for the trail down, when I heard a scream. It was Julie!

  Then, in front of the cabin, I heard a yell, and that durned nester stepped right out in plain sight and started walking up to the cabin, and he wasn’t more than thirty yards away from it.

  That fool nester knowed he was askin’ for it. The Piute might have shot from behind the door jamb, or from a window, but the nester figured I was behind him and he might draw him out for my fire. Or maybe he figured his comin’ out in the open would make him leave the girl alone. Whatever his reason, it worked. The Piute stepped outside the door.

  Me? I was standin’ up there like a fool, just a-gawkin’, while there, right in front of my eyes, the Piute was goin’ to kill a man. Or was
he?

  He was playin’ big Injun right then. Maybe he figured Julie was watchin’, or maybe he thought the nester would scare. Mister, that nester wouldn’t scare a copper cent.

  The Piute swaggered about a dozen steps out from the cabin and stood there, his thumbs in his belt, sneerin’. The nester, he just moseyed along kind of lazylike, carryin’ his old Spencer in his right hand like he’d plumb forgot about his hand gun.

  Then, like it was on a stage, I seen it happen. That Piute went for his guns and the nester swung up his Spencer. There was two shots—then a third.

  It’s a wonder I didn’t break my neck gettin’ down that trail, but when I run up, the Piute was lyin’ there on his back with his eyes blazin’ over. I took one look, an’ then turned away and you can call me a pie eatin’ tenderfoot, but I was sick as I could be. Mister, did you ever see a man who’d been hit by two soft-nosed .56 caliber bullets? In the stummick?

  Bin Morley come out with Julie, and I straightened up and she run over to me and began askin’ how Ma was. She wasn’t hurt none, as the nester got there just in time.

  We took the horses back, and then I fell behind with the nester. I jerked my head toward the Piute’s body.

  “You goin’ to bury him?” I asked.

  He looked at me like he thought I was soft in the head.

  “What fur? He picked the place hisself, didn’t he?”

  We mounted up.

  “Besides,” he said, “I’ve done lost two whole days as it is, and gettin’ behind on my work ain’t goin’ to help none.” He was stuffin’ something in his slicker on the back of his horse.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “A ham,” he said grimly, “a whole ham. I brung it clean from Tucson an’ that durned Piute, stole it off me. Right out of my cabin. Ma, she was out pickin’ berries when it happened.”

  “You mean,” I said, “you trailed the Piute clean over here just for a ham?”

  “Mister,” the nester spat, “you durned right I did! Why Ma and me ain’t et no hawg meat since we left Missoury, comin’ three year ago!”

  The steeldust started to catch up with Julie’s pony, but I heard the nester sayin’, “Never was no hand to eat beef, nohow. Too durned stringy. Gets in my teeth!”

  MISTAKES CAN KILL YOU

  Ma Redlin looked up from the stove. “Where’s Sam? He still out yonder?”

  Johnny rubbed his palms on his chaps. “He ain’t comin’ to supper, Ma. He done rode off.”

  Pa and Else were watching him and Johnny saw the hard lines of temper around Pa’s mouth and eyes. Ma glanced at him apprehensively, but when Pa did not speak, she looked to her cooking. Johnny walked around the table and sat down across from Else.

  When Pa reached for the coffee pot he looked over at Johnny. “Was he alone, boy? Or did he ride off with that no account Albie Bower?”

  It was in Johnny neither to lie nor to carry tales. Reluctantly, he replied. “He was with somebody. I reckon I couldn’t be sure who it was.”

  Redlin snorted and put down his cup. It was a sore point with Joe Redlin that his son and only child should take up with the likes of Albie Bower. Back in Pennsylvania and Ohio the Redlins had been good God-fearing folk, while Bower was no good, and came from a no-good outfit. Lately, he had been flashing money around, but he claimed to have won it gambling at Degner’s Four Star Saloon.

  “Once more I’ll tell him,” Redlin said harshly. “I’ll have no son of mine traipsin’ with that Four Star outfit. Pack of thieves, that’s what they are.”

  Ma looked up worriedly. She was a buxom woman with a round apple-cheeked face. Good humor was her normal manner. “Don’t you be sayin’ that away from home, Joe Redlin. That Loss Degner is a gun-slinger, and he’d like nothin’ so much as to shoot you after you takin’ Else from him.”

  “I ain’t afeerd of him.” Redlin’s voice was flat. Johnny knew that what he said was true. Joe Redlin was not afraid of Degner but he avoided him, for Redlin was a small rancher, a one-time farmer, and not a fighting man. Loss Degner was bad all through and made no secret of it. His Four Star was the hangout for all the tough element and Degner had killed two men since Johnny had been in the country, as well as pistol whipping a half dozen more.

  It was not Johnny’s place to comment, but secretly he knew the older Redlin was right. Once he had even gone so far as to warn Sam, but it only made the older boy angry.

  Sam was almost twenty-one, and Johnny but seventeen, but Sam’s family had protected him and he had lived always close to the competence of Pa Redlin. Johnny had been doing a man’s work since he was thirteen, fighting a man’s battles, and making his own way in a hard world.

  Johnny also new what only Else seemed to guess, that it was Hazel, Degner’s red-haired singer, who drew Sam Redlin to the Four Star. It was rumored that she was Degner’s woman, and Johnny had said as much to Sam. The younger Redlin had flown into a rage and whirling on Johnny had drawn back his fist. Something in Johnny’s eyes stopped him and although Sam would never have admitted it, he was suddenly afraid.

  Like Else, Johnny had been adrift when he came to the R Bar. Half dead with pneumonia he had come up to the door on his black gelding, and the Redlin’s hospitality had given him a bed, the best care the frontier could provide, and when Johnny was well, he went to work to repay them. Then he stayed on for the spring roundup as a forty-a-month hand.

  He volunteered no information and they asked him no questions. He was slightly built and below medium height, but broad shouldered and wiry. His shock of chestnut hair always needed cutting, and his green eyes held a lurking humor. He moved with deceptive slowness, for he was quick at work, and skillful with his hands. Nor did he wait to be told about things, but even before he began riding he had mended the buckboard, cleaned out and shored up the spring, repaired the door hinges, and cleaned all the guns.

  “We collect from Walters tomorrow,” Redlin said suddenly. “Then I’m goin’ to make a payment on that Sprague place and put Sam on it. With his own place he’ll straighten up and go to work.”

  Johnny stared at his plate, his appetite gone. He knew what that meant, for it had been in Joe Redlin’s mind that Sam should marry Else and settle on that place. Johnny looked up suddenly, and his throat tightened as he looked at her. The gray eyes caught his, searched them for an instant, then moved away, and Johnny watched the lamplight in her ash blonde hair, turning it to old gold.

  He pushed back from the table and excused himself, going out into the moonlit yard. He lived in a room he had built into a corner of the barn. They had objected at first, wanting him to stay at the house, but he could not bear being close to Else, and then he had the lonely man’s feeling for seclusion. Actually, it had other advantages, for it kept him near his horse, and he never knew when he might want to ride on.

  That black gelding and his new .44 Winchester had been the only incongruous notes in his getup when he arrived at the R Bar, but he had hidden his guns and his best clothes in a cave up the mountain, riding down to the ranch in shabby range clothes with only the .44 Winchester for safety.

  He had watched the ranch for several hours despite his ­illness before venturing down to the door. It paid to be careful, and there were men about who might know him.

  Later, when securely in his own room, he had returned to his cache and dug out the guns and brought his outfit down to the ranch. Yet nobody had ever seen him with guns on, nor would they, if he was lucky.

  The gelding turned its head and nickered at him, rolling its eyes at him. Johnny walked into the stall and stood there, one hand on the horse’s neck. “Little bit longer, boy, then we’ll go. You sit tight now.”

  There was another reason why he should leave now, for he had learned from Sam that Flitch was in town. Flitch had been on the Gila during the fight, and he had been a friend of Card Wells, whom Johnny had killed at Pichacho. Moreover, Flitch had been in Cimarron a year before that when Johnny, only fifteen then, had evened the score with the
men who killed his father and stole their outfit. Johnny had gunned two of them down and put the third into the hospital.

  Johnny was already on the range when Sam Redlin rode away the next morning to make his collection. Pa Redlin rode out with Else and found Johnny branding a yearling. Pa waved and rode on, but Else sat on her horse and watched him. “You’re a good hand, Johnny,” she said when he released the calf. “You should have your own outfit.”

  “That’s what I want most,” he admitted, “But I reckon I’ll never have it.”

  “You can if you want it enough. Is it because of what’s behind you?”

  He looked up quickly then. “What do you know of me?”

  “Nothing, Johnny, but what you’ve told us. But once, when I started into the barn for eggs, you had your shirt off and I saw those bullet scars. I know bullet scars because my own father had them. And you’ve never told us anything, which usually means there’s something you aren’t anxious to tell.”

  “I guess you’re right.” He tightened the girth on his saddle. “There ain’t much to tell, though. I come west with my Pa, and he was a lunger. I drove the wagon myself after we left Independence. Clean to Caldwell, then on to Santa Fe. We got us a little outfit with what Pa had left, and some mean fellers stole it off us, and they killed Pa.”

  Joe Redlin rode back to join them as Johnny was swinging into the saddle. He turned and glanced down at the valley. “Reckon that range won’t get much use, Johnny,” he said, anxiously, “and the stock sure need it. Fair to middlin’ grass, but too far to water.”

  “That draw, now,” Johnny suggested, “I been thinkin’ about that draw. It would take a sight of work, but a couple of good men with teams and some elbow grease could build them a dam across that draw. There’s a sight of water comes down when it rains, and enough to last most of the summer if it was damned. Maybe even the whole year.”