Collection 1997 - End Of The Drive (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Somewhere through the red haze before him he could hear the low bitter cursing of Sonntag, and he fired at the sound. The voice caught, and gagged, and then Finn got his feet under him, and swayed erect only to have his knees crumple under him. In a sitting position, he could see Sonntag down, but the man was not finished. Mahone triggered his gun, but it clicked on an empty chamber.

  Sonntag fired, and the bullet plucked at Finn’s trouser leg. Finn dug shells from his belt and began to feed them into the chambers of his six-gun. Off to his left there was a rattle of pistol fire and the dull boom of the Spencer that Frank Salter carried. Someone was helping Mahone out.

  Sonntag was getting up, his thick shirt heavy with blood, his face half shot away. What enormous vitality forced the man to his feet, Mahone could never imagine, but there he was, big as a barn, seemingly indestructible.

  Mahone got to his feet, and twenty feet apart they stared at each other. Finn brought his gun up slowly.

  “You’re a good…man, Mahone,” Sonntag said, “but I’ll kill you an’ live to spit on your grave!”

  His own gun swung up swiftly, and blasted with flame, but the shot went wild, and Finn Mahone fired three times, slowly, methodically.

  Sonntag staggered, and started to fall, then pitched over on his face. He squeezed off another shot, but it plowed a furrow in the sand.

  It was awfully hot. Finn stared down at the fallen man, and felt his own gun slip from his fingers. He started to stoop to retrieve it, and the next thing he knew was the sound of singing in a low, lovely voice.

  His lids fluttered back and he was lying on his back and Remy was bending over him. The singing stopped. “Oh, you’re awake? Don’t try to talk now, you must rest.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “A week tomorrow.”

  “A week? What happened to Sonntag?”

  “He’s dead…”

  “And Salter?”

  “When you’re better you can thank my father.”

  “I thought Sonntag was going to kill me,” Finn said thoughtfully.

  “Don’t think about it now,” Remy advised. “You’ll be well soon.”

  He caught her hand. “I’ll be going back to the valley, then. It’s never been the same since that morning when you were waiting on the steps for me. I think you should come back, and stay.”

  “Why not?” Remy wrinkled her nose at him. “That’s probably the only way I’ll ever get that black stallion!”

  He caught her with his good arm and pulled her close. “Wait! That’s not the way a wounded man should act!” she protested.

  Then their lips met, and she protested no longer.

  THE SKULL AND THE ARROW

  * * *

  HEAVY CLOUDS HUNG above the iron-colored peaks, and lancets of lightning flashed and probed. Thunder rolled like a distant avalanche in the mountain valleys.…The man on the rocky slope was alone.

  He stumbled, staggering beneath the driving rain, his face hammered and raw. Upon his skull a wound gaped wide, upon his cheek the white bone showed through. It was the end. He was finished, and so were they all…they were through.

  Far-off pines made a dark etching along the skyline, and that horizon marked a crossing. Beyond it was security, a life outside the reach of his enemies, who now believed him dead. Yet, in this storm, he knew he could go no further. Hail laid a volley of musketry against the rock where he leaned, so he started on, falling at times.

  He had never been a man to quit, but now he had. They had beaten him, not man to man but a dozen to one. With fists and clubs and gun barrels they had beaten him…and now he was through. Yes, he would quit. They had taught him how to quit.

  The clouds hung like dark, blowing tapestries in the gaps of the hills. The man went on until he saw the dark opening of a cave. He turned to it for shelter then, as men have always done. Though there are tents and wickiups, halls and palaces, in his direst need man always returns to the cave.

  He was out of the rain but it was cold within. Shivering, he gathered sticks and some blown leaves. Among the rags of his wet and muddy clothing, he found a match, and from the match, a flame. The leaves caught, the blaze stretched tentative, exploring fingers and found food to its liking.

  He added fuel; the fire took hold, crackled, and gave off heat. The man moved closer, feeling the warmth upon his hands, his body. Firelight played shadow games upon the blackened walls where the smoke from many fires had etched their memories…for how many generations of men?

  This time he was finished. There was no use going back. His enemies were sure he was dead, and his friends would accept it as true. So he was free. He had done his best, so now a little rest, a little healing, and then over the pine-clad ridge and into the sunlight. Yet in freedom there is not always contentment.

  He found fuel again, and came upon a piece of ancient pottery. Dipping water from a pool, he rinsed the pot, then filled it and brought it back to heat. He squeezed rain from the folds of his garments, then huddled between the fire and the cave wall, holding tight against the cold.

  There was no end to the rain…gusts of wind whipped at the cave mouth and dimmed the fire. It was insanity to think of returning. He had been beaten beyond limit. When he was down they had taken turns kicking him. They had broken ribs…he could feel them under the cold, a raw pain in his side.

  Long after he had lain inert and helpless, they had bruised and battered and worried at him. Yet he was a tough man, and he could not even find the relief of unconsciousness. He felt every blow, every kick. When they were tired from beating him, they went away.

  He had not moved for hours, and only the coming of night and the rain revived him. He moved, agony in every muscle, anguish in his side, a mighty throbbing inside his skull, but somehow he managed distance. He crawled, walked, staggered, fell. He fainted, then revived, lay for a time mouth open to the rain, eyes blank and empty.

  By now his friends believed him dead.…Well, he was not dead, but he was not going back. After all, it was their fight, had always been their fight. Each of them fought for a home, perhaps for a wife, children, parents. He had fought for a principle, and because it was his nature to fight.

  With the hot water he bathed his head and face, eased the pain of his bruises, washed the blood from his hair, bathed possible poison from his cuts. He felt better then, and the cave grew warmer. He leaned against the wall and relaxed. Peace came to his muscles. After a while he heated more water and drank some of it.

  Lightning revealed the frayed trees outside the cave, revealed the gray rain before the cave mouth. He would need more fuel. He got up and rummaged in the further darkness of the cave. He found more sticks and carried them back to his fire. And then he found the skull.

  He believed its whiteness to be a stick, imbedded as it was in the sandy floor. He tugged to get it loose, becoming more curious as its enormous size became obvious. It was the skull of a gigantic bear, without doubt from prehistoric times. From the size of the skull, the creature must have weighed well over a ton.

  Crouching by the firelight he examined it. Wedged in an eye socket was a bit of flint. He broke it free, needing all his strength. It was a finely chipped arrowhead.

  The arrow could not have killed the bear. Blinded him, yes, enraged him, but not killed him. Yet the bear had been killed. Probably by a blow from a stone ax, for there was a crack in the skull, and at another place, a spot near the ear where the bone was crushed.

  Using a bit of stick he dug around, finding more bones. One was a shattered foreleg of the monster, the bone fractured by a blow. And then he found the head of a stone ax. But nowhere did he find the bones of the man.

  Despite the throbbing in his skull and the raw pain in his side, he was excited. Within the cave, thousands of years ago, a lone man fought a battle to the death against impossible odds…and won.

  Fought for what? Surely there was easier game? And with the bear half blinded the man could have escaped, for the cave mouth was
wide. In the whirling fury of the fight there must have been opportunities. Yet he had not fled. He had fought on against the overwhelming strength of the wounded beast, pitting against it only his lesser strength, his primitive weapons, and his man-cunning.

  Venturing outside the cave for more fuel, he dragged a log within, although the effort made him gasp with agony. He drew the log along the back edge of his fire so that it was at once fuel and reflector of heat.

  Burrowing a little in the now warm sand of the cave floor, he was soon asleep.

  * * *

  FOR THREE WEEKS he lived in the cave, finding berries and nuts, snaring small game, always conscious of the presence of the pine-clad ridge, yet also aware of the skull and the arrowhead. In all that time he saw no man, either near or far…there was, then, no search for him.

  Finally it was time to move. Now he could go over the ridge to safety. Much of his natural strength had returned; he felt better. It was a relief to know that his fight was over.

  * * *

  AT NOON OF the following day he stood in the middle of a heat-baked street and faced his enemies again. Behind him were silent ranks of simple men.

  “We’ve come back,” he said quietly. “We’re going to stay. You had me beaten a few weeks ago. You may beat us today, but some of you will die. And we’ll be back. We’ll always be back.”

  There was silence in the dusty street, and then the line before them wavered, and from behind it a man was walking away, and then another, and their leader looked at him and said, “You’re insane. Completely insane!” And then he, too, turned away and the street before them was empty.

  And the quiet men stood in the street with the light of victory in their eyes, and the man with the battered face tossed something and caught it again, something that gleamed for a moment in the sun.

  “What was that?” someone asked.

  “An arrowhead,” the man said. “Only an arrowhead.”

  Afterword

  * * *

  IN THE FOREWORD to West of Dodge (Bantam, spring 1996) I told about finding a box of my father’s unpublished manuscripts, lost for some time in the confusion of materials that my father left behind. Here again I have dipped into that box and collected a group of stories that I think make up one of the most interesting books of short stories we have ever published.

  To some of you a few of these tales will seem familiar, and that is the fascinating thing about this particular book: five of these stories were the genesis of later novels. But unlike the novellas collected in The Trail to Crazy Man and The Rider of the Ruby Hills, these are not simply a shorter version of the later novels; they are early experiments in characterization and plot that were altered substantially when they were enlarged to book form. Since Dad almost never did any rewriting, this is also one of the very few occasions any of us will have to see an early or “first” draft of a book by Louis L’Amour. In comparing the short stories to the novels you can see the ways the stories evolved as they were developed into a longer form. I’ve put together a few notes here that might be of interest regarding the evolution of the stories in this collection.

  “Caprock Rancher” was expanded in 1971 to become Tucker. The hero’s first name was changed (the reason known only to my father) and the theme was also altered; in the short story Edwin Tucker grows into manhood by learning the truth about his juvenile delinquent buddies and cementing the relationship with his father. In the novel, however, Shell Tucker’s father dies while they are chasing after the stolen money. Shell is then both after the money and out to get revenge on his onetime friends who have caused his father’s death. He eventually learns that killing is not an answer he can live with, and comes up with a way to make his enemies destroy one another. Finally he finds that he cannot allow even this vengeance to control him, and decides to go on with his life.

  After “Desperate Men” was written it had a strange half-life during which, even though unpublished, it was purchased by a motion picture company and eventually produced as Kid Rodelo. Louis took this opportunity to expand it into novel form, and the book was released around the same time as the movie. In doing so he added two major elements to the story. One, a woman named Nora Paxton who is taken along with the convicts on their trip into the desert. The other, the fact that Rodelo has served his time but needs to return the stolen gold to prove that he was innocent of the robbery. These two elements are actually quite well integrated into the plot of the novel, but the version in this collection has the Spartan purity that is deeply important in a good short story. Here Dan Rodelo is not innocent of the crime he was imprisoned for; he’s simply a tough kid in a bad spot. There is no woman and no complicated agendas. It is just the men, the gold, and the desert.

  “End of the Drive” became Kiowa Trail. The two characters who are the hero and heroine of Kiowa Trail were added to the basic idea of “End of the Drive.” Tom Gavagan, “End of the Drive’s” young romantic, becomes Tom Lundy in the novel, a minor character who gets killed when he violates the city ordinance forbidding trail drivers north of the town’s main street. His death is the catalyst that causes the rest of the outfit to wreak a unique revenge on the town. Kiowa Trail is also one of a handful of my father’s stories to take place partly in Europe.

  “The Skull and the Arrow” is a good example of the incredible length of time it can take for a story to work its way through a writer’s creative processes. The story was written sometime in the mid-1950s and through an odd series of circumstances became, surprisingly enough, Last of the Breed. About ten years later Dad wanted to write a book about a reconnaissance pilot much like Gary Powers who, instead of being captured, escapes. It was a cold-war fantasy but one that originated in the days of Eisenhower rather than Reagan. When Louis was planning the book, twenty years before he started writing, it was going to be called The Skull and the Arrow and based in part on this story. At a critical moment, when the hero is on the verge of giving up to either the Siberian cold or the Soviet soldiers, he takes refuge in a cave and, just like the nameless character in this book, discovers the evidence of a prehistoric battle between a huge bear and a man armed only with primitive weapons. The pilot is encouraged because the man seems to have survived this encounter with a Russian bear, and decides to press on. I have no idea why this sequence was not included in the novel Last of the Breed, but when the manuscript was finally finished it was not included.

  “The Lonesome Gods” is another good example of how a brief examination of a theme can evolve into a novel. Like The Skull and the Arrow, it shares no part of the characters or plot of the novel; it simply explores the idea that the gods of ancient peoples may respond to the attention of a person from another time and another culture. That theme and the title are the only similarities.

  “The Courting of Griselda” did not develop into a novel, but its hero, Tell Sackett, is well known to many readers. It is with great sadness that I bid this character farewell, as there are no more stories about him left to publish.

  “Elisha Comes to Red Horse” is a sort of sequel to the novel Fallon. The town of Red Horse is again the setting of a confidence game, this time of biblical proportions. Macon Fallon has disappeared from the scene but Brennen, the saloon owner, and a couple of the other original characters remain. At one time Dad intended to turn this story into a full-length novel and wrote several versions of the first chapter without going any further. The earliest versions do not include references to the characters from Fallon and I think it was only later that he noticed the town had the same name and that they were both stories about con artists, and played up the similarities.

  “Rustler Roundup” is unrelated to any of Dad’s other work, but this collection is a good place to put it. It was originally written in December 1947 and was submitted to Standard magazine’s editor, Leo Margulies. He returned it for some minor revisions, but Dad seems to have never gotten around to sending it back.

  In the next collection of stories there will be a never-before
-published Kilkenny novella, another story about Utah Blaine, and the last remaining tale of the Talon family, along with six other stories. The title of that book will be Monument Rock and the stories in it will finish off the mysterious box that I discovered several years ago. Monument Rock will be published in the spring of 1998, and following its release we will go back to bringing out books containing the rest of the Louis L’Amour short stories that were previously published back in the pulp magazine days. I think we have enough books to get us well past the millennium.

  In the back of West of Dodge we published a list of people I was trying to locate in regard to the biography of my father that I am writing. I want to include a special thanks here to the old friends and acquaintances of Louis L’Amour who have contacted me for all the help they have offered me in my research.

  Here are the names of the people that I would like to contact. If you find your name on the list, I would be very grateful if you would write to me. Some of these people may have known Louis as Duke LaMoore or Michael “Micky” Moore, as Louis occasionally used those names. Many of the people on this list may be dead. If you are a family member (or were a very good friend) of anyone on the list who has passed away, I would like to hear from you, too. Some of the names I have marked with an asterisk(*); if there is anyone out there who knows anything at all about these people, I would like to hear it. The address to write to is:

  Louis L’Amour Biography Project

  P.O. Box 41183

  Pasadena, CA 91114-9183

  Marian Payne—Married a man named Duane. Louis knew her in Oklahoma in the mid- to late 1930s. She moved to New York for a while; she may have lived in Wichita at some point.

  Chaplain Phillips—Louis first met him at Fort Sill, then again in Paris at the Place de Saint Augustine officers’ mess. The first meeting was in 1942, the second in 1945.