Collection 1981 - Buckskin Run (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “If you want to know the truth, Dunn, I’ve given serious thought to sending word back to Texas for two dozen friends of mine to come in and settle on your range. They’d file on it legally, and they are fighters. You’d be lucky to keep the house you live in.”

  “Tanner, maybe I’ve been some kind of a blind fool, but you wouldn’t want to press those charges, would you? I might be able to beat your case, but I’d look the fool. You name the damages, and I’ll pay. That all right with you, Sheriff?”

  Collins waved a hand. “If Tanner drops his charges I’ll say no more.”

  Morgan Tanner looked at Dunn and could find no malice in his heart. All that had been washed away back on the Neuces. He wanted only peace now, and Ann.

  “No more trouble about Lonetree?”

  “No more trouble. That’s decent of you, Tanner. You had me over a barrel.”

  Herndon swore. “Boss? What’s come over you? Knucklin’ under to this plow-jockey? I’d see myself in—!”

  His voice broke off and he started to draw as Tanner turned.

  Tanner’s draw was smooth and much faster. His first shot broke Ollie’s arm at the elbow, spinning him half around. A second shot notched his ear, and as Ollie’s other hand grabbed at the bloody ear, another bullet cut the lobe on the remaining ear.

  Herndon turned and began to run clumsily. Tanner walked after him, gun poised. “You start riding, Herndon, and if you ever show up in this country again, I’ll kill you.

  “You aren’t a tough man. You wouldn’t make a pimple on a tough man’s neck. You’re a woman-beater. Now hit your saddle and get out of here.”

  Deliberately, he turned his back and walked to his own horse. He mounted, then glanced at the sheriff. “Thanks, Collins.”

  As Ann rode to him he looked around. “Have your boys drive those heifers back, Dunn. And drop around yourself some time, for supper.”

  Further along the road he said, “You know, that man Dunn might make a good neighbor. He’s pig-headed, but in his place I might have been just as bad. Anyway, what a man needs in this country is good neighbors.”

  Then he added, “We’d better hurry. Johnny’s apt to be worried, holdin’ the fort there by himself.”

  When they rode into the yard Johnny came out from the house, a rifle in the hollow of his arm. At last it was sundown on the Lonetree.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  LONG HENRY THOMPSON

  HE CAME TO Montana from Texas with a herd of Rocking H cattle, and took a riding job with the NbarN. He was a tall, quiet man who was known to have killed three men somewhere back down the trail.

  Long Henry carried a six-shooter from which the trigger and trigger-guard had been filed, and the gun was fired by simply pulling back the hammer and releasing it. The style, in some areas, was known as “slip-shooting.” He carried his gun in a holster mounted on a swivel fastened to his belt, and usually he fired it by simply tilting the gun. He was amazingly accurate.

  It was said he was one-quarter Cherokee, and he looked it. He drank little, smoked rarely, and tried to avoid trouble, yet somewhere along the line he had killed another man. Then came the trouble with George Denman, the NbarN camp cook.

  Denman was a large, powerful man, heartily disliked, according to the NbarN hands, by everyone who knew him. His manner was deliberately obnoxious under normal conditions, and when drinking he became more so.

  On the night in question Long Henry walked into Charlie Hanson’s saloon with several other cowhands, to find Denman drinking at the bar.

  Present also was another cowboy whom they all knew, named Wasson or Watson. He was a harmless, good-natured drunk, who invariably drank more than was good for him. On this night Denman was buying him drinks, then shoving him around just to see him fall, or spinning him, then laughing as the smaller man tumbled to the floor. It was an ugly spectacle made worse by a sudden spin that sent Watson crashing into the stove. Falling, his head hit the wood-box, inflicting a nasty cut.

  As he lay there Denman threw a glass of whiskey in his eyes and said, “There! That should stop the bleeding!”

  Long Henry walked across the room and lifted Watson from the floor and seated him on a chair. Then he wiped the drunken man’s face, wiping away the whiskey and the blood. Then he turned to Denman and said, “I guess that will be enough of that for tonight, George.”

  Denman demanded, “Who the Hell are you, butting into my affairs?”

  “I think you know who I am, George. I am just telling you to lay off this man.”

  Long Henry returned to the bar, finished his drink, and walked out.

  Denman left Watson alone, but after leaving the saloon he went from one to another, muttering threats against Thompson.

  The following morning, after loudly demanding where Long Henry was, Denman mounted his horse and was riding down the street when he saw Long Henry coming toward him. When about thirty feet apart, Denman pulled up and Long Henry also stopped.

  Denman said, “I’ve got you right where I want you, Thompson!” And reached for his Winchester, which he carried butt-forward on the left side of his horse.

  As the rifle slid from its scabbard, Long Henry tilted his six-shooter and fired. Denman stiffened, started to draw the rifle free, when Long Henry’s second shot hit him. He let go of the rifle and fell into the street.

  The first shot hit him just above the heart, the second in the throat.

  Long Henry walked on down to Hanson’s and said, “Will somebody notify the sheriff in Miles City? I have just killed George Denman.”

  It was September 24th, 1894.

  JACKSON OF HORNTOWN

  HORNTOWN BELONGED TO the desert. Whatever claim man had once had upon it had yielded to the sun, the wind and the blown sand. A double row of false-fronted buildings faced a dusty street into which the bunchgrass and sagebrush ventured. It had become a byway for an occasional rabbit or coyote, or the rattlers that had taken refuge in the foundations of The Waterhole, a saloon in which water had rarely been served.

  A solitary burro wandered like a gray ghost among the weather-beaten, abandoned buildings.

  To the east and west, craggy ridges of ugly red rock exposed their jagged crests to the sky. To the north, the narrow valley tapered away to a mere gully down which a dim trail led the unwary to that sink of desolation that was Horntown. To the south the valley widened into the Black Rock Desert. There were few trees and less water.

  Had there been a watcher in the ghastly emptiness of the lifeless ridges he might have seen a lone horseman riding up the trail from the desert.

  He rode a long-legged buckskin, which shambled wearily through the sagebrush, and even the sight of the ghost town failed to awaken any spark in either man or horse.

  The watcher, had there been one, could have determined from the way the man rode that he was riding to a known destination. All the way across the waterless waste he had ridden as to a goal, and that in itself meant something.

  For Horntown was a forgotten place, slowly giving itself back to the desert from which it had come. It had lived wildly, desperately, and it had died hard in a red-laced flurry of gunshots and powder smoke. The bodies of those who fell had been left where they had fallen, and the survivors had simply gone away and no one among them had looked back. Horntown was finished, and they knew it well.

  Yet the sun-browned man with the bloody bandage on his head had kept his trail to Horntown; through all that broken country he had deviated by no more than a few feet from the direction he had chosen.

  The red-rimmed gray eyes that occasionally stared back over the trail behind held no hint of mercy or kindness. They were the eyes of a man who had looked at life over a gun barrel, a man who had lived the hard, lawless way, and expected to die as he had lived.

  It was fitting that he rode to Horntown, for the place had bred many such men. It had begun over a hundred years earlier, when a west-bound gold-seeker decided he had gone far enough. It died its first death two years later because
the founder owned a horse, and a passing stranger needed a horse.

  Jack Horn died with a gun in his hand. Seven months later a Mexican named Montez moved into the abandoned buildings and opened a saloon. He combined selling bad whiskey with robbing casual travellers until he chose the wrong man and died on his door-step. It was after that the first Jackson came to town.

  Enoch Jackson was from Tennessee. Tall, leather-tough, and rawboned, he stopped in Horntown with his six sons, and the heyday of the town came into being.

  It is a curious thing that no matter how sparse the vegetation or how remote the place, how difficult the problem of materials, a man who wants a drink will make one. The Jacksons had always had whiskey, and they had always made their own. They drank their own product, but drank it sparingly. Once set up in Horntown they drank even more sparingly for, of course, they alone knew the ingredients.

  No one ever guessed and few asked what the whiskey was made from, but it fed fire into the veins of a hardy brood who turned the country to the south into a whirlwind of evil with their gunfighting, rustling, and hold-ups.

  For fifty years the small Hell that was Horntown was ruled by Enoch and his powerful son, Matt Ben Jackson. A roving gunman, sore and hunting trouble, sent Enoch to his final pay-off with a bullet in his skull, and then died with Matt Ben’s bullet just two hours later. He died where Matt Ben caught up with him, right where the valley of Horntown opened into the Black Rock Desert.

  After that Matt Ben ran the show at Horntown with his brother, FireHat Jackson, as his lieutenant.

  Several months later Sheriff Star Redman rode to Horntown with a posse of thirty men. They never reached their destination, but when the survivors rode home there were four empty saddles, and five men carried Jackson lead, to be removed later.

  Redman was not of a yielding breed, and he had been elected to do a job. He returned, and on the fourth attempt the final bloody battle was fought. Star Redman had sworn he’d bring an end to Horntown or never return. There were twenty-six men in that last posse, and only seven of them returned unscathed. Several were buried in Horntown, and two died on the way back.

  Behind them only one man remained alive, Matt Ben himself. Forty, tough, and badly wounded, he watched the last of the attackers ride away. Then, like a cornered rattler, he crawled back to The Waterhole and poured himself a drink.

  A month later a wandering prospector found him dead on the floor, his gun in his hand. Matt Ben had amputated his own foot and shot himself when apparently dying of blood poisoning.

  Searching the town, the prospector, who knew Horntown well, found the bodies of all the Horntown bunch but one. That one was FireHat. Or rather, all but two, for with FireHat had vanished Matt Ben the Younger.

  “They’ll come back,” Sheriff Star Redman said bitterly, yet half in admiration. “He’s a Horntown Jackson, and he’ll be back. What I can’t understand is why he ran away in the first place.”

  “Them Jacksons are feuders, Sheriff,” the prospector reminded. “When FireHat left he took young Matt Ben with him, and he was only six and too young to fight.”

  “Maybe so.” Redman admitted. “It could be he wanted to save him for seed.”

  FireHat Jackson died alone, ten years later, down in Sonora. The word drifted back to Webb City, sixty miles south of Horntown. Star Redman took the news with a strange light in his eyes. “Sonora, eh? How did he die?”

  “Rurales surrounded him. He took eight of them along for company.”

  Redman spat. “You just know it! Them Jacksons never die alone. If one of ’em has a gun he’ll take somebody along!”

  “Well,” somebody commented, “that ends the Horntown bunch. Now we can rest easy.”

  “Don’t be too sure,” Redman warned. “Matt Ben the Younger is somewhere around.”

  “But he wasn’t one of the old bunch, Sheriff. He was too young to have it matter much. He won’t even remember Horntown.”

  Star Redman shifted his tobacco in his jaws, chewed, then spat. “He was a Horntown Jackson!” He spat again. “You’ll see. He’ll be back.”

  “Sometimes, Star,” the old storekeeper commented, “I think you almost wish he’d come back.”

  Redman had started toward the door, and now he turned. “He was one of the old breed. I’d rather he rode for the law, but say what you like about them Horntown Jacksons, they were men!”

  The lone horseman slowed the yellow horse to a shambling trot, then to a walk. The buildings of Horntown were just ahead. He slid the Winchester from its boot. With his rifle across the saddle in front of him, he rode slowly up the one street of Horntown.

  There were no more than twenty buildings still standing. The nearest was a gray, wind-battered house, and beyond were several shacks and corrals. Then the great, rambling old structure with its faded sign:

  THE WATERHOLE.

  The rider of the yellow horse with the black tail and mane rode up the empty street. Here and there tumble-weeds had lodged. Sand had drifted like drifts of snow, doors hung on sagging hinges, creaking dismally in the wind. At one side of The Waterhole the run-off from the roof had worn a deep gully.

  A spot of white at the corner of a building caught his eyes. It was a human skull, white and bleached. Grimly, he studied it. “More than likely he was one of my uncles,” he said aloud.

  He swung down in front of The Waterhole and tied the buckskin to the old hitching rail. His boots had a hollow, lonesome sound on the boardwalk. He opened the door and walked in.

  Dust and cobwebs hung over everything. The chairs and tables remained much as they must have been when the fight ended. A few poker chips were scattered about, an empty bottle stood on a table, another on the bar beside a tipped-over shot-glass. Propped against the bar was a skeleton, rifle beside it, gun-belt still hanging to the lank white bones. One foot was missing.

  Slowly the man uncovered his head. “Well, Pa, you died hard, but you died game.”

  Outside he went to where the spring was, the reason why old Jack Horn had stopped in the first place. Crystal-clear water still ran from the rocks and trickled into a natural basin, then trickled off down through the rocks and into the wash, where it lost itself in a small cluster of cottonwoods and willows.

  He filled his canteen first, as any sensible man would, then he drank, and, removing the bloody bandage, carefully bathed his head where a bullet had cut a furrow. Then, still more carefully, he washed his hair.

  He led the buckskin to water, then picketed him on a small patch of grass he remembered from the days when he had played there as a youngster.

  Inside the saloon he found dishes, washed them, and, working at the fireplace, prepared a rough meal.

  He was digging a grave for his father’s bones when he heard a faint sound, then another. His gun slid easily into his hand and he waited, listening to the slow steps, shambling, hesitant. Then a long gray head appeared around the corner.

  Matt Ben holstered his gun, then he climbed out of the grave and held out his hand to the burro. “Hi, Zeke! Come here!”

  At the sound of the familiar name the burro’s head lifted, and the scent of this man apparently touched a chord of memory, but still he hesitated. Matt Ben called again and again, and slowly the old burro walked toward him.

  “It’s all right, Zeke. It’s just a Jackson, come home at last. I’m glad you waited.”

  Three days later Pierce Bowman walked into the sheriff’s office in Webb City. “Wire for you, Star. Looks like you were right. Matt Ben’s on his way home.”

  “He’s already here,” Redman commented dryly. “Tim Beagin came by there day before yesterday. Saw smoke in The Waterhole’s chimney.

  “I didn’t plan to bother him. Seems sort of natural, havin’ a Jackson out there, but this here wire changes matters. I got to go get him.”

  “You takin’ a posse?”

  “No. Just me. If he’s a Jackson we’d never get nigh him. Them Jacksons always could smell a posse ten mile off.”

&
nbsp; “What do they want him for?”

  “Sheriff over at Carson tried to take him and he wouldn’t go, said he was just ridin’ through. The sheriff made a mistake then. He reached for his gun, and Matt Ben put him out of commission.”

  “Jacksons always could shoot. How d’ you figure to take him, Star?”

  “Darned if I know. I think I’ll just go talk to him.” He paused. “You know something, Bowman? Nobody ever did try just talkin’ to a Jackson. They always went for them with guns and ropes. Maybe somebody should have tried talkin’ a long time ago.”

  Star Redman took the trail to Horntown carrying no pleasant thoughts. He had no desire, at his age, to shoot it out with a Horntown Jackson. Once, when he was younger, he might have felt otherwise, but time had tempered his courage with wisdom. The Jacksons, like himself, had been products of their times, but not really bad men. They never killed except when firing at an equal in open combat.

  There had been, he remembered, a certain something on their side. His job was to arrest young Matt Ben, and of course that was what he must do. This young Jackson might be different, but again he might not. The Jackson blood was strong.

  He remembered very well the time the shooting ended at Horntown. “I think he’s dead,” somebody commented. “Shouldn’t we go in and find out?”

  An old-timer in the posse looked around. “You want to go in, you go. Me, I wouldn’t go in if you offered me your ranch!”

  Star Redman knew the hills. He believed he knew them better than young Matt Ben, and in his knowledge he saw his chance—to get close without arousing suspicion. He glanced skyward. “Smells like snow,” he said to himself. “Time for it, too.”

  Young Matt Ben was thinking the same thing. He began gathering wood and scrap lumber, which he piled alongside The Waterhole. He began making repairs in the room he expected to use, and also in the stable where he could keep the buckskin.

  In the lower meadow, just beyond the willows, he found a fine stand of hay, and began mowing it with a scythe he sharpened in the blacksmith shop. It was time for snow to fall, and if he expected to winter at Horntown he had best be ready for it.