Collection 2008 - Big Medicine (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Ducking his head, he reloaded the Winchester. Another bullet smashed the ridgepole and then a searching fire began, the heavy slugs tearing through the roof about three to four inches below the top.

  Kedrick slid down the roof, hesitated at the edge of the trap door, and, seeing a distant figure circling to get behind the men in the wash, he took careful aim and squeezed off his shot. It was all of five hundred yards, and he had only a small bit of darkness at which to aim.

  The shot kicked up sand short of the mark by a foot or more as nearly as he could judge, and he knew he had missed, but the would-be sniper lost his taste for his circling movement and slid out of sight. Kedrick went down the trap door and dropped again into the livery stable office. Regretfully he glanced at the stock of whiskey, then picked up two more bottles and stuffed them into his pockets.

  Hesitating only a second, he lunged across the way for the shelter of the livery stable. The Spencer boomed and he knew that the hidden marksmen had been awaiting this effort. He felt the shock of the bullet, staggered but kept going.

  Reaching the livery stable, he felt the coldness of something on his stomach and glanced down. The bottle in his shirt had been broken by the bullet and he smelled to high heaven of good whiskey. Picking the glass out of his shirt, he located his horse’s stall, led the Appaloosa out into the runway, and swung into the saddle.

  The Spencer boomed again and again as he hit the road, riding hard, but he made it. The others cheered as he rode pell-mell through the cañon mouth and swung to the ground.

  “This is no good,” Laine said. “They can get behind us on the ridge.”

  Two men limped in from the draw, having withdrawn from boulder to boulder. Kedrick glanced around. There were fourteen men and women here who were on their feet. One man, he who had had the rifle knocked from his hand, had a shattered arm. The others were slightly wounded. Of them all, he had only seven men able to fight.

  Quickly he gave directions for their retreat, then with Dai and Shad to hold the cañon mouth and cover them, they started back up the cañon.

  Tom Kedrick measured his group thoughtfully. Of Laredo, Dai, and Laine, he had no doubts at all. Of these others, he could not be sure. Good men, some of them, and one or two were obviously frightened. Nobody complained, however, and one of the men whose face was pale took a wounded man’s rifle and gave him a shoulder on which to lean. He led them to the crevasse, and down into it.

  Amazed, they stared around. “What d’you know?” the bartender spat. “Been here nigh seven year an’ never knowed o’ this place!”

  There were four horses with the group, and they brought them all into the cave. One of the men complained, but Kedrick turned on him. “There’s water, but we may be glad to eat horse meat.” The man swallowed and stared.

  Laine pointed at Kedrick’s shirt. “Man, you’re bleedin’!”

  Kedrick grinned. “That isn’t blood, it’s whiskey! They busted one of the bottles I brought away!”

  Pit chuckled. “I’d ’most as soon it was blood,” he said, “seems a waste of good likker.”

  The seven able men gathered near the escape end of the crevasse, and one of them grinned at Kedrick. “I wondered how you got away so slick. Is there another way out down here?”

  He shook his head. “If there is, I don’t know it. I waited and got out through the cañon when it wasn’t watched.”

  Laine’s face was serious. “They could hold us here,” he said anxiously. “We’d be stuck for sure.”

  Kedrick nodded. “I’m taking an extra canteen and some grub, then I’m going atop the butte to join Burt Williams. I’d like one man with me. From up there we can hold them off, I think.”

  “I’m your man,” Laredo said quietly. “Wait’ll I get my gear.”

  A rifle boomed, and then Dai Reid joined them. “They are comin’ up,” he said. He glanced at Kedrick. “One man dead in the boulders. I got the look of him by my glass. It was Alf Starrett. Poinsett was the other.”

  “Starrett was a skunk,” Burnett, one of the settlers, said, “a low-down skunk. He kilt a man up Kansas way, an’ a man disappeared from his outfit oncet that occasioned considerable doubt if he didn’t git hisself another.”

  Kedrick turned to Pit Laine. “Looks like your show down here,” he said. “Don’t open fire until you have to, and don’t fire even one shot unless it’s needed. We’ll be on top.”

  He led the way out of the crevasse and into the boulders and brush behind it. There was no sign of the attackers, and he surmised they were holed up, awaiting the arrival of some supporting fire from the rim back of the cañon.

  Tom glanced up at the towering butte. It reared itself all of a hundred and fifty feet above him and most of it totally without cover. As they waited, a rifle boomed high above them and there was a puff of dust in the cañon mouth. Burt Williams had opened up.

  Yet their first move toward the butte drew fire, and Laredo drew back. “No chance. We’ll have to wait until dark. You reckon they’ll hit us before then?”

  “If they do, they won’t get far.” Tom Kedrick hunkered well down among the slabs of rock at the foot of the Butte. “We’ve got us a good firing point right here.” He rolled a smoke and lit up. “What are you planning when this is over, Shad? Do you plan to stay here?”

  The tall Texan shrugged. “Ain’t pondered it much. Reckon that will take care of itself. What you aimin’ to do?”

  “You know the Mogollons southwest of here? I figured I’d go down there and lay out a ranch for myself.” He smoked thoughtfully. “Down in east Texas, before I came west, a fellow arrived there named Ikard. Had some white-faced cattle with him, and you should see ’em! Why, they have more beef on one sorry critter than three longhorns. I figured a man could get himself a few Hereford bulls and start a herd. Might even buy fifty or sixty head for a beginning, and let ’em mix with the long-horns if they like.”

  “I might go for somethin’ like that,” Laredo said quietly. “I always wanted to own a ranch. Fact is, I started one once, but had to git shut of it.” He studied the end of his cigarette. “That was in the Texas Panhandle, a ways south of Tascosa. Quite a ways. It was rough country. I mean rough to live in, not rough like this is. Why, you could stand on your front step down thataway an’ see straight ahead for three days! Coyotes? Why, you should see ’em! They’d whup a grizzly, or near it, an’ make these coyotes around here look like jack rabbits.” He stared down the cañon toward the mouth, his rifle across his knees. He did not look at Kedrick, but he commented casually: “We need luck, Cap’n, plenty of luck.”

  “Uhn-huh”—Kedrick’s face was sober—“right now we’re bottled up, and, believe me, Burwick will stop at nothing. I wonder who was on watch up the cañon? Or supposed to be?”

  “Somebody said his name was Hirst. Sallow-faced hombre.”

  “We’ll have to talk to him. Was he down below?” “Come to think of it, he wasn’t. He must have hid out back there.”

  “Or sold out. Remember Singer? He wouldn’t have been the only one.”

  Laredo rubbed out the last of his cigarette. “They’ll be makin’ their play soon. You know, Kedrick, I’d as soon make a break for it, get a couple of horses, an’ head for Mustang. When we go, we might as well take Keith an’ that dirty Burwick with us.”

  Kedrick nodded in agreement, but he wasn’t thinking of the men below. There were at least four good men aside from Shad, Laine, and Dai Reid. That left the numbers not too unevenly balanced. The fighting skill and numbers were slightly on the enemy’s side, as they had at least twelve men when the battle opened, and they had lost Starrett. That made the odds eleven to eight unless they had moved up extra men, which was highly probable. Still, they were expecting defense, not an attack.

  He studied the situation. Suddenly a dark figure loomed on the rim of the cañon some hundred and fifty yards off, and much higher. He lifted his rifle and fired even as both Shad and Kedrick threw down on him with rifles, firing instantly.
The man vanished, but whether hit or not they could not tell.

  Desultory firing began, and from time to time they caught glimpses of men advancing from the cañon mouth, but never in sight long enough to offer a target, and usually rising from the ground some distance from where they dropped. The afternoon was drawing on, however, and the sun was setting almost in the faces of the attackers, which made their aim uncertain and their movements hesitant. Several times Shad or Kedrick dusted the oncoming party, but got in no good shots. Twice a rifle boomed from the top of the butte, and once they heard a man cry out as though hit.

  “You know, Laredo,” Kedrick said suddenly, “it goes against the grain to back up for those coyotes. I’m taking this grub up to Burt, an’, when I come back, we’re going to move down that cañon and see how much stomach they’ve got for a good scrap.”

  Shad grinned, his eyes flickering with humor. “That’s ace high with me, podner,” he said dryly. “I never was no hand for a hole, and the women are safe.”

  “All but one,” Kedrick said, “that Missus Taggart who lives in that first house. Her husband got killed and she wouldn’t leave.”

  “Yeah, heard one o’ the womenfolks speak on it. That Taggart never had a chance. Good folks, those two.”

  Colonel Loren Keith stared gloomily at the towering mass of Yellow Butte. That man atop the butte had them pinned down. Now if they could just get up there. He thought of the men he had commanded in years past, and compared them with these outlaws. A pack of murderers. How had he got into this, anyway? Why couldn’t a man know when he took a turning where it would lead him? It seemed so simple in the beginning to run off a bunch of onegallused farmers and squatters.

  Wealth—he had always wanted wealth, the money to pay his way in the circles where he wanted to travel, but somehow it had always eluded him, and this had seemed a wonderful chance. Bitterly he stared at the butte, and remembered the greasy edge of Burwick’s shirt collar, and the malice in his eyes, Burwick who used men as he saw fit, and disposed of them when he was through.

  In the beginning it hadn’t seemed that way. His own commanding presence, his soldier’s stride, his cold clarity of thought, all these left him despising Gunter as a mere businessman and Burwick as a conniving weakling. But then suddenly Burwick began to show his true self, and all ideas of controlling the whole show left Keith while he stared in shocked horror as the man unmasked. Alton Burwick was no dirty weakling, no mere ugly fat man, but a monster of evil, a man with a brain like a steel trap, stopping at nothing, and by his very depth of wickedness startling Keith into obedience.

  Gunter had wanted to pull out. Only now would Keith admit even to himself the cause of Gunter’s death, and he knew he would die as quickly. How many times had he not seen the malevolence in the eyes of Dornie Shaw, and well he knew how close Shaw stood to Burwick. In a sense, they were two of a kind.

  His feeling of helplessness shocked and horrified Keith. He had always imagined himself a strong man, and had gone his way, domineering and supercilious. Now he saw himself as only a tool in the hands of a man he despised, yet unable to escape. Deep within him there was the hope that they still would pull their chestnuts out from the fire and take the enormous profit the deal promised.

  One man stood large in his mind, one man drew all his anger, his hate and bitterness. That man was Tom Kedrick. From that first day Kedrick had made him seem a fool. Keith had endeavored to put Kedrick firmly in his place, speaking of his rank and his twelve years of ser vice, and then Kedrick had calmly paraded such an array of military experience that few men could equal, and right before them all. He had not doubted Kedrick, for vaguely now he remembered some of the stories he had heard of the man. That the stories were true, and that Kedrick was a friend of Ransome’s, infuriated him still more.

  He stepped into the makeshift saloon and poured a drink, staring at it gloomily. Fessenden came in, Goff with him.

  “We goin’ to roust them out o’ there, Colonel?” Goff asked. “It will be dark soon.”

  Keith tossed off his drink. “Yes, right away. Are the rest of them out there?”

  “All but Poinsett. He’ll be along.”

  Keith poured another stiff shot and tossed it off as quickly, then followed them into the street of Yellow Butte.

  They were all gathered there but the Mixus boys who had followed along toward the cañon, and a couple of the newcomers who had circled to get on the cliff above and beyond the boulders and brush where the squatters had taken refuge. Poinsett was walking down the road in long strides. He was abreast of the first house when a woman stepped from the door. She was a square-built woman in a faded, blue cotton dress and man’s shoes, run down at the heel. She held a double-barreled shotgun in her hands, and, as Poinsett drew abreast of her, she turned on him and fired both barrels, at point-blank range, and Poinsett took them right through the middle. Almost torn in two, he hit the ground, gasping once, his blood staining the gray gravel before their shocked eyes.

  The woman turned on them, and they saw that she was no longer young. Her square face was red and a few strands of graying hair blew about her face. As she looked at them, her work-roughened hands still clutching the empty shotgun, she motioned at the fallen man in the faded, check shirt.

  In that moment the fact that she was fat, growing old, and that her thick legs ended in the grotesque shoes seemed to vanish, and in the blue eyes were no tears, only her chin trembling a little as she said: “He was my man. Taggart never give me much, an’ he never had it to give, but in his own way he loved me. You killed him…all of you. I wish I had more shells.”

  She turned her back on them and, without another glance, went into the house and closed the door behind her.

  They stood in a grim half circle then, each man faced suddenly with the enormity of what they were doing and had done.

  Lee Goff was the first to speak. He stood spraddle-legged, his thick, hard body bulging all his clothes, his blond hair bristling. “Anybody bothers that woman,” he said, “I’ll kill him.”

  XIII

  Keith led his attack just before dusk and lost two men before they withdrew, but not before they learned of the hole. Dornie Shaw squatted behind the abutment formed by the end wall of the cañon where it opened on the plain near the arroyo. “That makes it easy,” he said, “we still got dynamite.”

  Keith’s head came up, and he saw Shaw staring at him, his eyes queerly alight.

  “Or does that go against the grain, Colonel? About ten sticks of dynamite dropped into that crevasse an’ Burwick will get what he wants…no bodies.”

  “If there’s a cave back there,” Keith objected, “they’d be buried alive!”

  Nobody replied. Keith’s eyes wandered around to the other men, but their eyes were on the ground; they were shunning responsibility for this, and only Shaw enjoyed it. Keith shuddered. What a fool he had been to get mixed up in this!

  A horse’s hoof struck stone, and as one man they looked up. Saddle leather creaked, although they could not see the horse. A spur jingled, and Alton Burwick stood among them.

  Loren Keith straightened to his feet and briefly explained the situation. Burwick nodded from time to time, then added: “Use the dynamite. First thing in the morning. That should end it, once and for all.” He drew a cigar from his pocket and bit off the end. “Had a wire. That committee is comin’ out, all right. Take them a couple of weeks to get here, an’ by that time folks should be over this an’ talkin’ about somethin’ else. I’m figurin’ a bonus for you all.”

  He turned back toward his horse, then stopped and, catching Dornie Shaw’s eye, jerked his head.

  Shaw got up from the fire and followed him, and Keith stared after them, his eyes bitter. Now what? Was he being left out of something else?

  Beyond the edge of the firelight and beyond the reach of their ears, Burwick paused and let Shaw come up to him. “Nice work, Dornie,” he said, “we make a pair, you an’ me.”

  “Yeah.” Dornie n
odded. “An’ sometimes I think a pair’s enough.”

  “Well”—Burwick puffed on his cigar—“I need a good man to side me, an’ Gunter’s gone... at least.”

  “That company o’ yours”—Dornie was almost whispering—“had too many partners, anyway.”

  “Uhn-huh,” Burwick said quietly, “it still has.” “All right, then.” Dornie hitched his guns into a firmer seating on his thighs. “I’ll be in to see you in a couple of days at most.”

  Burwick turned and walked away, and Dornie saw him swing easily to the saddle, but it was all very indistinct in the darkness. He stayed where he was, watching the darkness and listening to the slow steps of the horse. They had a funny sound—a very funny sound. When he walked back to the campfire, he was whistling “Green Grow the Lilacs”.

  The attack came at daybreak and the company had mustered twenty men, of whom two carried packages of dynamite. This was to be the final blow, to wipe out the squatters, once and for all.

  Shortly before the arrival of Burwick, Keith and Dornie Shaw with Fessenden accompanying them had made a careful reconnaissance of the cañon from the rim. What they found pleased them enormously. It was obvious, once the crevasse had been located, that not more than two men could fire from it at once, and there was plenty of cover from the scattered boulders. In fact, they could get within throwing distance without emerging in the open for more than a few seconds at a time. Much of the squatters’ field of fire would be ruined by their proximity to the ground and the rising of the boulders before them.

  The attack started well with all the men moving out, and they made twenty yards into the cañon, moving fast. Here, the great slabs fallen from the slope of Yellow Butte crowded them together. And there the attack stopped. It stopped abruptly, meeting a withering wall of rifle fire, at point-blank range!