Novel 1978 - Bendigo Shafter (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “You know him?”

  “I should reckon. We done trapped beaver on the Yellowstone together, an’ fit Diggers on the Humboldt. So old Ethan is down there, is he?”

  He took out a plug of tobacco and bit off a healthy thumb of it. “What you folks fixin’ to do? Dig for gold?”

  “We’ve started a town. We plan to stay, raise some cattle, plant crops, trade with the wagons.”

  “You ain’t got long. Rich folks will be travelin’ by the steam cars, or so I hear.”

  My pistol was under my shirt, my shirt bagged, my hand was close, yet the man I faced had no gamble in him. He would shoot.

  “Who are you after? We’ve good folks down yonder, never made trouble for any man. All we’re wishful to do is build a church, a school, and raise our families.”

  “Well now, ain’t that nice?” He grinned at me, then spat a stream of tobacco juice near my feet. “I never cottoned much to towns or town-folk. Gimme a squaw an’ a buffalo-hide teepee.”

  “Fine,” I said, “why don’t you go get it right now and leave us be? You’ve wasted time scouting folks who’ve done you no harm and aren’t likely to. Unless you’re one of that bunch of renegades from over east.”

  “Them?” He spat. “A pack o’ murderin’ blackguards, that’s what they are.” He chuckled. “You gave ’em what-for. I liked to smiled.”

  “Have you been here that long?”

  “Here an’ about.” He gave me a foxy look from those sharp little eyes. “You taken on any comp’ny lately? I mean any new folks?”

  “We’re just a lot who turned off from a wagon train,” I said carelessly, for now I thought I knew at whom he was pointing. “We didn’t figure we could make it over the passes before winter.”

  “You think right. You was keerect. What I mean is somebody lately. A man and a couple of younkers, maybe?”

  “We found a man alongside the trail some time back. He lived long enough to tell us where the children were. One of them died,” I added, “the boy.”

  “A shame. I got nothing against the younkers. You say he lived long enough, but that don’t say he ain’t still livin’, does it? And I reckon he is. Drake Morrell ain’t the kind o’ man to die that easy.”

  “Is it Morrell you’re hunting?”

  “You’re darned tootin’. I’m fixin’ to kill him.”

  “I’ve heard he’s handy with a gun.”

  “He is. And might beat me if I face up to him, which I’m of no mind to do. He fights his way, I mine. And mine’s Injun. No man in his right mind risks losin’ his hair just to stand up to a man. I don’t care if he knows who kills him just so he dies. An’ he’ll die.”

  It was nigh to sundown, and I was still a good way from home. My stomach was growling from hunger, and I was of no mind to sit here talking about shooting when what I needed was a meal.

  “If you aren’t going to shoot,” I said, “I’m going home.”

  With that I moved to rise, and when I did I slid my gun into my fist. Now as I’ve said, I handle a pistol almighty fast. I can’t claim credit for it, it just comes natural, but there it was and him looking into it, but I didn’t shoot.

  We just stood there, a Mexican standoff, each of us with the drop on the other. He had the most power in that .56, but I was sure I’d shoot as fast as he could.

  “Well, now. Right foxy, ain’t you?” He grinned at me, in no way disturbed, yet I watched him like a cat, my finger easy on the trigger, for this man would kill.

  “I don’t like to have anybody slipping up on me,” I said, “I don’t like it at all.”

  “You could have waited. You might git a shot at me off guard.”

  “You? That would be a mighty long wait. And I wouldn’t shoot a man in the back.”

  “You’re a fool. You should live Injun for a while. You’d see the thing is to win, no matter how.”

  “I wasn’t aware that was an Indian idea,” I said. “Most of them take pride in their victories and would rather count coups on a live, dangerous enemy than a dead one.”

  “Some o’ them,” he admitted grudgingly. “They ain’t smart.”

  “I’m going to leave. I’m not anxious to kill you or be killed. I’d as soon leave you for Morrell.” Keeping the drop on him, I stepped back toward the brush, but curiosity overcame me. “Why do you want to kill him? It takes a good man to risk his life to protect those youngsters as he did.”

  “Mebbe he just used them for shelter,” he suggested. “Mebbe he figured I wouldn’t kill him with them dependin’ on him. An’ he was right,” he admitted, surprisingly, “I wouldn’t. Not any child, let alone hers.”

  “You knew their mother?” Now I was surprised.

  “Knew her? How’d the likes o’ me know her? No, sir. I didn’t know her but by sight, only that voice of hers. She sang like an angel. You know what that means to a man lonely for women-folks? I mean decent women-folks?

  “I heard a feller say she couldn’t sing for sour apples, but after he picked the teeth out of his face, he apologized.

  “She was the on’y woman I’d heard sing in fifteen year, and she sang songs my ma used to sing. It was a sound from Heaven, believe me.

  “It was a sorry thing when she died. If the thought’ll pleasure you,” he said, “I done put flowers on her grave after he buried her.”

  “But still, you want to kill him?”

  “That’s the switch of another tail. Yes, sir. I’ll fetch him to Hell with my Spencer. He notched his gun for two of my brothers.”

  “Maybe they took in after him?”

  “Surely they did, and that was their affair, but when he notched them he opened the war. I’ll see him buried or left for buzzards.”

  “You’d better think about it, friend,” I said. “I didn’t know your brothers, but Drake Morrell is a good man, a damned good man, and that girl depends on him. Do you want her left to get along by herself in this country? In a couple of years she’ll be a woman…what kind of woman?”

  He glared at me, but I’d finished talking. I picked up my rifle and backed off into the brush, and he did the same. I went to my horse and rode back to town. It had started out to be a quiet day, but a man never knows.

  Anyway, I had words for Drake Morrell, and I feared for him.

  Ethan was gathering stove wood when I rode up to town, so I pulled in and told him the story. After I described the man, he chuckled without much humor.

  “Stacy Follett…yeah, I know him. Morrell’s treed himself an old he-coon, that’s what he’s done. An old he-coon.”

  Chapter 12

  BY LANTERN LIGHT I fed my horse, rubbed him down with a handful of hay, and while doing so I thought of this place we were building, this island in the wilderness, and the dangers that lay about us. So it must have been with the first settlers building their first towns, surrounded by hatred of their strange ways.

  For as no man stands alone, neither does a town, nor can a change be made in the terrain without ripples moving out from it. Our coming had caused the game to move back into the hills, had shortened its supply, and when spring came our plows would bite deep in the soil. It was not a rich soil, but it was the soil with which we must make do. With our hands, our strength, and the cunning learned from farmers of all times, we would enrich the soil, grow our crops, and our harvest would come, for better or worse.

  Stacy Follett lurked in the mountains outside our town, a threat to one of us, indirectly to us all. Each man among us was necessary to us, and none could be lost without weakening the whole, and so exposing us to danger. Stacy Follett was not my enemy, yet I thought him so, for his rifle could remove part of our wall of strength against the Indians.

  We did not wish trouble with the red man. He had his way and we ours, yet he fought for pleasure, for loot, and because he was faced by a nameless threat he could not grasp, yet feared.

  He did not know his way of life was doomed, not by the guns of the white man, nor by his countless thousands, but by his g
oods.

  The death of the red man’s way came when the first white trader came among them to trade what the Indian could not himself make. From that day on his desire was aroused, and he must by trade or capture acquire those things he desired.

  The needle, the steel knife blade, the gun and gunpowder, the whiskey, and the various ornaments. These were the seeds of his destruction, and what he warred against was the desire in his own heart. There were those who protested against using the white man’s things, but their voices spoke into the hollow air, and no ear listened.

  I could have lived the Indian way and loved it. I could feel his spirits move upon the air, hear them in the still forest and in the chuckling water of the mountain streams, but other voices were calling me, too, the voices of my own people and their ways.

  For it was our way to go onward; to go forward and to try to shape our world into something that would make our lives easier, even if more complicated. Our struggle was for time. Our leisure was bought from hardship, and we needed leisure to think, to dream, to create.

  Drake Morrell was in his cabin when I came to the door. He invited me in and listened while I told him of Follett.

  “I have been expecting him,” he said. “He is the best of a poor lot. They gambled with me, and were very clumsy about it, and when they lost they accused me of cheating. I invited a soldier who was waiting for the stage to step over and feel under the table, and as I knew he would, he found four hidden cards on their side.

  “They had been trying to cheat, but so clumsily any fool could have seen what they were doing. I told them so, and what I thought of them, and they left.

  “They waited for me outside, and when I came out I left by the rear door and came around the building. I saw them there, guns held upon the door, and I called them.

  “Those Spencers are a terrible weapon, but heavy to handle swiftly. Only one got off a shot, and it went into the dirt. I killed them both, left and right like a brace of quail.

  “If you expect me to be sorry, you will be mistaken. They tried to beat me at my own game, cards. When that failed they tried to shoot me down without warning.

  “Stacy Follett is another thing. Without him they could not have lived as long as they had. He is a dangerous man.”

  “I think so.”

  “What is there to do? Be careful. I have always been that.”

  “You are a brave man, Morrell.”

  “A man does what he has to do. A brave man? What men call a hero, Shafter, is merely a man who is seen doing what a brave man does as a matter of course.”

  He turned away. “Let me get my pipe and we’ll walk up the street. Have you finished Plutarch?”

  “No.”

  “Take your time with him. He is worth it.” He pulled the door shut behind him. “You are luckier than you know. I mean in the books you have to read. People who come west cannot bring much, so they try to bring the best, and from all I hear Major Macken chose wisely.

  “I envy you, starting out like this. A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one’s life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself. You have a chance to select from some pretty elegant furnishings.”

  He changed the subject suddenly. “Shafter, you could do something for me.”

  Surprised, I just looked at him. He seemed so complete, so in need of nothing. “I speak of Ninon. If Stacy Follett should be luckier than I think he will be, take care of her.

  “She’s going to be a beautiful woman, Shafter, and a rarely talented one. She’ll not be content here for long. She has too much inside her crying for expression. Whatever she comes to be, her life won’t be lived quietly. She has too much passion and fire and ambition in her.”

  “But she’s only a child.”

  He shrugged. “How long is a girl a child? She is a child, and then one morning you wake up and she’s a woman and a dozen different people of whom you recognize none.”

  “Being here may be good for her. It may give her time to discover herself, to find out who she is.”

  “You’re talking nonsense, Shafter, and you know it. Nobody is anybody until they make themselves somebody. But it won’t take Ninon long. I know her and the stuff she came from.”

  We ate that night at Cain’s house, and Ruth and Bud were there. We talked that night of many things, of books and boots and mysteries, of haunts and swords and far-off places where temples were and gods once walked with men.

  Lenny Sampson came in with his pa and listened wide-eyed while Morrell told the story of Ulysses and the Cyclops, and the one about Theseus and the Minotaur, and Aeneas and the founding of Rome.

  It was good talk, and the room was warm and pleasant, and when it was over Ninon sang a couple of songs, and we drank coffee. When the youngsters had gone off to bed Cain, Morrell, Sampson, and I, we sat and talked of the town.

  “You must have a town marshal,” Morrell said. “You will have violent men coming among the peaceful ones, and if there is no law there will be trouble.”

  “How about you for the job?” Cain asked.

  “No.” Morrell spoke positively. “I am well known. I do not want to bring my troubles on your town. I will stay, if you will have me, but not as marshal.”

  “Bendigo is the one for the job,” Sampson said. “He has judgment, and he can use a gun if need be.”

  “I will not be here,” I said.

  “Webb?” Morrell asked.

  “No,” Cain said. “There is trouble in the man. I like him, but he is dangerous.”

  We talked of that, and of a city government, and for the first time we thought of elections and the drawing up of municipal regulations.

  There was also the matter of land. Nobody had claimed anything except for two mining claims by Webb and Stuart, over on Rock Creek. Nobody, that is, but Ruth Macken.

  She had staked out the bench on which her house stood, which comprised several acres as well as a corner of meadow that lay beyond some trees. That meadow was not one in which we had run our stock, being more visible from her house than from the town, yet there were at least fifty acres in it, and it was well watered.

  We began to think of garden plots, for there would be vegetables to be grown, and a place to sow wheat. Cain and John Sampson and I had agreed to work together, but now I would be gone. A subtle change had taken place in their relationship to me, one that even I had scarcely noticed. Since I had been hunting and providing so much of the meat for the settlement, they now accepted me as an equal.

  There was to be a town council, and we discussed among ourselves whom we should choose for mayor. Sampson and I suggested Cain, but he refused. John Sampson was the man, Cain said, and we finally agreed when it came to a vote we would nominate him…or Cain would.

  For several days the work went forward. Cain and I built the stone wall of our mill halfway up as planned, then began the use of timbers. By the end of the week we had it ready for roofing.

  Neely Stuart was working on his gold claim. Croft had been adding to his house, making it tighter against the cold. He had scouted a small field where he planned to plant vegetables and grain when spring came.

  Neely was gone much of the time, and at first he had success. Each night he returned to talk of his gold, and then he began to speak of it less, but to walk with more of a swagger. He did manage to let us know he was doing well, and several times he made small purchases at Ruth Macken’s and paid in gold.

  Webb worked occasionally on his claim but helped more with the gathering of fuel, the hunting, and the scouting. We never hunted alone…each time a man went out, somebody went with him.

  Several times Webb and I hunted, and I let him get the best of the shots. He was careful with a gun, a good shot and he wasted no ammunition. We talked little, but I felt that he liked me as much as he liked anyone. Several times he made comments about Foss…the boy was lazy, he said. He needed a good whipping from some boy half his size to teach him a thing or two. To all this I made no comment.

>   From Plutarch I moved on to Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding. It had been a book much read by the founders of our country, and it was different from anything I had read until then.

  Twice, groups of Mormons stopped by, and each time we gave them shelter and provided them with supplies, for which they paid. We saw nothing of Stacy Follett, and when I scouted his old observation post I found no sign of him there. No doubt once discovered he was wily enough to move away. Christmas was upon us then, and we forgot about him…at least most of us did.

  It had been our custom ever since arriving to hold a service on Sunday. Usually, it was a simple, friendly affair with Cain or John Sampson reading from the Bible and Tom Croft leading us in hymn singing. We had a few fair to middling voices amongst us, and we liked the singing.

  And then Moses Finnerly came to town.

  He was a tall, thin man with haggard features and hollow eyes, sharp eyes that missed nothing at all. He had two men with him, a short, stocky man with a bland, open face and eyes that revealed nothing but seemed merry enough at first sight. The other was a big, heavy man with fat jowls and a coarse, rough way about him.

  They came riding up the trail one Saturday forenoon and rode right to Cain’s. They had them a tent, and they set it up right off, and then Moses Finnerly came to see Cain.

  We had just reared a timber into place, one of the crossbeams of the mill, and we were catching our breath. Webb, wearing a pistol, had walked over to stand with us as the three riders came up the trail.

  My rifle was handy, and as always I was wearing a six-gun. In that country nobody went unarmed from sunup to sundown…not if he planned to live out his years.

  “How do you do, gentlemen? I am the Reverend Moses Finnerly. These gentlemen are accompanying me. May I present Brother Joseph Pappin? And Brother Ollie Trotter?”

  “Howdy,” Webb said. “I’m Webb. These are the Shafter brothers.”

  “Pleased,” the Reverend Finnerly said, “pleased, indeed. We understood you had a settlement here and thought it behooved us to bring you God’s word.”