He wiped sweat from his face but said nothing.
“I’ve some ideas about German Kreuger, too.”
“You think he stole your gold and lit out?”
“You know better. Nor do I think Injuns killed him. However, we better have us a look.”
“Who do you think?”
“It wasn’t you, and it wasn’t me. And I’d bet every ounce I have that it wasn’t that old German.”
Pausing, I said, “You go on working. I’ll watch.”
He was canny, Jim was. He worked, all right, but he didn’t get into a pattern. When he bent down he didn’t lift up in the same place, but away from there. He kept from any pattern, so’s if anybody planned a shot they’d have to wait until he was out in the open.
As for me, I almost missed it. Almost, but not quite. I’d been lying there a couple of hours, and my eyes were tired. The day was warm, and I’d been working hard the past few days and was tuckered. I must have been looking right at that rifle barrel a full minute before I realized it.
Only the fact that Kinyon was moving saved him. He was down by the water, partly hidden by some rocks, and he was digging sand from the low side of a boulder, preparing to wash it out. That rifleman was waiting for him to come up on the bank where he’d have no doubt.
Me, I didn’t wait. Sliding my old Sharps breechloader up, I just throwed a shot into that brush, right along that rifle barrel. There was a crash in the brush, and both me and Jim jumped for it, but the heavy brush and boulders got in the way, and by the time we got there that feller was gone. Nor could we make anything from the tracks except that he wore boots and was therefore a white man.
We tried to track him, though, and found nothing until we slid down among some rocks and there we found Kreuger. He’d been scalped. “No Injun,” Kinyon said, and he was right. That was plain as day to any old Injun fighter.
“We’ve got a murderer in the outfit,” I said.
“Maybe,” Kinyon said doubtfully, “but there could be somebody else around, somebody we don’t know about.”
After a pause he said, “We’ve not much gold yet.”
“No one of us has,” I agreed, “but for one man it’s a healthy stake, if he had it all.”
“Injuns around,” Kinyon said, that night at the fire. “Today I was shot at.”
“I’ve been afraid of that,” Karpe agreed. “We’d better watch ourselves.”
Josh Boone glanced over at Karpe. “It ain’t Injuns that scares me,” he said, but if Ed Karpe noticed he paid no attention.
For the next two days everything went along fine. I worked with an eye out for trouble, and every now and again I’d quit work and scout around the area to make sure nobody was closing in on me. On the bottom of the shaft I’d sunk, I broke up the layers of bedrock where there were cracks, and made a good cleanup. Even me, who’d been doing well, couldn’t believe how rich the find was. When I sacked up that night I had more than I’d had in my life, more than I’d ever seen, in fact.
Kinyon met me at an agreed-upon place on the creek bank. “Let’s go higher,” I suggested, “and sink a shaft together. We’ll work faster, and this ground is rich enough for both of us.”
Ed Karpe came up to us. He looked from one to the other. “I’d like to throw in with you boys,” he said. “I’m getting spooked. I don’t like going it alone.” He looked at us, his face flushing. “Maybe I’ve lost my nerve.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“I feel like somebody’s scouting me all the time.”
Boone joined us just then, carrying his rifle in the hollow of his arm. “What’s this? Everybody quitting so soon?”
“We’re going to team up and work together,” I said. “We figure it will be safer. Less chance of Injuns sneakin’ up on us. I think we should get what we can and move out while our luck holds.”
Josh Boone stared at me. “You runnin’ this show now? I thought I was elected leader?”
“You was,” Kinyon agreed. “It wasn’t any idea of leading that started Pike talking. He figures we’d all do a lot better working together on shares than each working by himself.”
“Oh, he does, does he? I don’t see he’s done so durned well.”
“I got more than four thousand in gold. If any of you has over a thousand I’ll cook chow this night.”
“Four thousand?” They just stared. Jim was the one who said it, then he spat into the dust. “What’re we waitin’ for? I ain’t got five hundred.”
That settled it, but it did not settle Josh Boone. He was sore because they all listened to me now. Even Karpe listened, although I was keeping an eye on Karpe. He kept his gun close and his eyes busy, but mostly he was watching me. I saw that right off.
We were edgy, all of us. Here we were, four men out miles from anywhere or anybody, hid out in the Black Hills, but we watched each other more than we watched for Injuns.
German Kreuger was gone, so our little world was lessened by one, our total strength less by twenty percent, our loneliness increased by the missing of a face by the fire at night.
Somebody, either Karpe, Boone, or some stranger had killed Kreuger, and had been about to shoot Jim Kinyon. Only we had found no stranger’s tracks, nor even the tracks of any Indian at the time.
Our meat gave out, and Karpe was the hunter. He did not like it very much and he hesitated, about to say something which his personal courage would not let him say. My father, who had been a reading man in the few books he had, often quoted the Bible or other such books, and he was one to speculate on men and their ways. I thought of him now, and wondered what he would say of our situation. Since my father’s death I have had no books and read but poorly. It ain’t as if the idea wasn’t there.
Karpe took his rifle and went out alone, and the rest of us went to work.
It was hot and the air was close. Jim paused once, leaning on his shovel. “Feels like a storm coming,” he said, and I did not think he meant only in the weather.
Taking off my guns, I placed them on a flat rock close at hand while I worked. Folks who’ve never packed pistols can’t imagine how heavy they are. Pretty soon Josh Boone got out of the hole and traded places with Kinyon. Jim, he put down his rifle and went to work.
All of a sudden, and why I turned I don’t know, I turned sharp around, and there was Ed Karpe standing on the bank with his rifle in his hands. He was looking down at Boone and I’d have sworn he was about to shoot him.
Boone, he was on his feet his own rifle ready, and what would have happened next was anybody’s guess, when suddenly an arrow smacked into a tree within inches of Karpe’s head, and he yelled “Injuns!” and ducked for cover.
He took shelter behind the bank while Jim and Boone made it to the fort. Me, I squatted down in the hole where I was, and when the Injuns rushed us I opened up with both Colts. Karpe had turned to fire on them, and what he or the others did I didn’t know, but I dropped four men and a horse. Then I caught up my rifle, but they were gone, leaving behind them several horses and some Injuns. A couple of them started to crawl away, and we let ’em go.
Boone went out to gather up what guns he could find and to catch up horses and bring ’em in. Whilst he was collectin’ them, I saw him throw something into the bushes. At the time I thought nothing of it. My guns reloaded, I watched the boys come together again. Nobody had more than a scratch. We’d been ready, as much for each other as for them, but everybody was ready to shoot when they showed up, and of course, we had our fort, such as it was.
“Lucky!” Boone said. “Mighty lucky!”
“They’ll be back,” Kinyon replied grimly. “Our scalps are worth more now that we’ve shown ourselves warriors.”
Nobody knew better than I what a break we’d had. If the Indians had come at us easy-like, slipping up and opening fire from cover, we’d have had small chance. Indians have bad leaders as well as white men, and this one had been too confident, too eager.
Young braves, no doubt, reck
less and anxious to count coup on a white man, and wanting loot, too, our guns and horses. But nobody needed to tell anybody what stopped them.
Josh Boone was staring at me again. “You handle them Colts like a man who knowed how to use ’em.”
“Why d’ you figure he carries them? I knew he was handy.” Kinyon was smiling with some secret pleasure.
Karpe had a wry amusement in his eyes. “And to think I nearly got into a shootin’ scrape with you!”
“This does it,” Kinyon said. “Now we’ll have to go.”
Boone started to object, then said nothing. We slept cold that night, staying away from the fire and close to our horses. If they stole our horses and those we had of theirs, we’d never get out of here alive. It was too far to anywhere safe.
We slept two at a time, not taking a chance on having just one man awake, because we didn’t know who the murderer was.
At daybreak we slipped away from camp. We’d covered our holes, hiding our tools and what gear we did not want to carry. We kept one pan for taking samples downstream, and then we took off.
What the others were thinking I had no idea, but as for me, I was worried. One of us was a murderer and wanted all our gold. It wasn’t enough that we had to watch out for Injuns, but one amongst us as well.
We hadn’t gone three miles before Kinyon, who was in the lead, threw up a hand. “Injuns!” he said hoarsely. “Must be thirty or forty of ’em!”
That about-faced us, you can bet! We turned back up-creek, riding fast, and then turned off into the woods. We hadn’t gone far before we heard ’em again, only this time it was another bunch already spread out in the woods. A gun thundered somewhere ahead of us, and then an arrow whistled by my head, and as I swung my horse I took a quick shot with the Sharps and saw an Indian fall.
Then I was riding Hell for leather and trying to load whilst we ran.
There was a yell behind us and Karpe’s horse stumbled, throwing Ed to the ground. He lit running just as a couple of Indians closed in on him.
One swung a tomahawk high, and I shot without aiming, then shoved the Sharps into the boot and went for a six-shooter. Boone and Kinyon both fired, and Ed came running. He still had his rifle and saddlebags.
“No use to run!” Jim yelled. “Too many of ’em! We’ve got to stand!”
There were rocks ahead, not far from our old fort, and we hit them running. My horse ran on, but I was shooting soon as I hit the ground, and Kinyon beside me. Boone and Karpe found good places, and they also opened fire. The attack broke off as quick as it began.
Karpe had a bullet scratch along his skull, and a burn on his shoulder. “You boys saved me!” he seemed amazed. “You surely did!”
Our horses were still with us. Mine had run on and then circled back to be with me, or with the horses he knew, I did not know which. We had our horses, but we had Indians all around us and no help nearer than three or four hundred miles. At least, none that we knew of.
“If they wipe us out,” Boone commented, “nobody will ever know what happened to us.”
“We wouldn’t be the first,” Kinyon said, “I found a skull and part of a spine and rib cage back yonder when I was huntin’ gold. The bones had a gold pan along with ’em.”
We sat there waiting for the next attack and expecting little when I heard that stream. It was close by, and in all the confusion I hadn’t thought of it. “Look,” I said, “if we can hold on until dark, I think I can get us out of this!”
They looked at me, waiting, but nobody said anything. Right at the moment nobody thought much of his chances.
“If we can stand ’em off until dark, we can slip away upstream into a cave I’ve found. They’ll think we’ve left the country.”
“What about our horses?” Kinyon asked.
“Have to leave ’em,” I said, although it went hard to leave my Tennessee horse.
“Maybe there’s another entrance?” Jim suggested. “Where there’s one cave there’s sometimes others.”
We sat tight and let the sun do its work. It was almighty hot, but we had to put up with it, for there was no more than an edging of shade near some of the boulders. The Injuns tried a few shots and so did we, more to let ’em know we were still alive and ready than with hope of hitting anything.
Boone was lyin’ beside me and he kept turning his head to stare out over the rocks. “Think we’ll make it?” he asked me. All the big-headedness seemed to have gone out of him. “I’d sure like to save my pelt.”
They came on then. They came in a wave from three sides, riding low on their horses and again it was my Model 48s that stopped them. Not that I killed anybody, but I rained bullets around them and burned a couple, and they couldn’t understand that rapid fire. They knew about guns, and had some themselves, but they had never run up against any repeating weapons.
The last Injun was riding away when he turned sharp in the saddle and let go with a shot that winged Josh Boone.
It hit him high but hard, and he went down. Leaving the shooting to Karpe and Kinyon, I went to Boone. His face was all twisted with pain, but when I went to undo the laces on his buckskin shirt he jerked away, his eyes wild and crazy. “No! Let me alone! Don’t bother with me!”
“Don’t be a fool, Josh. You’ve been hit hard. You get treated or you’ll die sure!”
He was sullen. “I’d better die, then. You go off. I’ll fix it myself.”
Something in his voice stopped me as I started to turn away. Slamming him back on the ground in no gentle way, I ripped open the rawhide cords and peeled back his hunting shirt.
There was a nasty wound there, all right, that had shattered his collar bone and left him bleedin’ most awful bad. But that wasn’t all.
There was another wound through the top of his shoulder, which was all festerin’ and sore. When I saw that I stopped. He stared at me, his mouth drawn in a hard line, his eyes ugly, yet there was something else, too. There was shame as well as fear.
There was only one time he could have gotten that wound. Like when a bullet comes along a man’s rifle and cuts the meat atop his shoulder. It had been Josh Boone and not Ed Karpe who had tried to kill Jim Kinyon, and therefore it had been Boone who killed old German Kreuger.
He stared at me and said no word while I washed out the wound, picked away bone fragments, and put it in the best shape I could manage. I folded an old bandana to stop the bleeding, and bound it tight in place. By the time I finished it was fetchin’ close to dusk, and the Injuns had let up on their shootin’.
Kinyon guessed right. There was another hole into that cave, just a big crack, like, but big enough to get a horse inside, even a horse as big as my Tennessee. Once they were inside we pulled a couple of pieces of old log into the gap and then we bedded down to wait it out.
Oh, they come a-huntin’, all right! We could hear them looking for us, but we kept quiet and after a while they gave up and rode away. We sat it out for three days in that cave, and then Jim slipped out to scout around.
They were gone, thinking we’d gotten away, and we slipped out, mounted up, and headed back for the settlements. When we had buildings in sight and knew we were safe, I pulled up and turned to face them.
“Josh,” I said, “German left a widder behind. She’s up at this settlement waitin’ for him. With German dead, she will be hard put to live. I figure you might like to contribute, Josh.”
He sat his horse lookin’ at me, and I knew he was left handed as well as right. He had a gun, a handgun I’d seen him pick out of the bushes after he’d taken it off a dead Injun. He looked at me and I looked at him. I put no hand to a gun and I knew there was no need. “You just toss me your poke, Josh,” I told him.
His eyes were all mean-like, and he tossed me the poke.
“Now the other one.”
Ed Karpe and Jim, they just sat watching and Ed couldn’t seem to figure it out. Kinyon knew, although how long he had known I couldn’t guess.
Josh Boone waited, holding off a
s long as he could, but then he tossed me the other poke.
Pocketing the pokes, I then took a couple of nuggets and some dust from my own poke. “There’s maybe a hundred dollars there,” I said. “It’s riding money, a loan from me to you.”
“I’ll owe you for that,” he said. “I always pay my debts.”
“I’ll see no man beggared with a broken arm,” I said, “but that’s what I named it. Ridin’ money. Now you ride.”
We sat there watching while he rode away, back square to us, one arm hitched kind of high. He rode like that right out of time, because we never saw him again.
“Well,” Jim said after a bit. “If we ain’t campin’ here let’s ride in. I’m goin’ to wet my whistle.”
We started riding, and nobody said anything more.
About Louis L’Amour
“I think of myself in the oral tradition—
as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man
in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way
I’d like to be remembered as a storyteller.
A good storyteller.”
IT IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.
Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.
Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.
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