Collection 2008 - Big Medicine (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Tom Kedrick knew a thing or two about fighting, and he knew full well that his hide out would in the long run become a deathtrap. He put himself in Keith’s place, and decided what that man would do. Then he had his eight men, carrying fourteen rifles, slip like Indians through the darkness to carefully selected firing positions far down the cañon from where Keith would be expecting them.

  Five of the attackers died in that first burst of fire, and, as the gun hands broke for cover, two more went down, and one dragged himself to the camp of the previous night with a shattered kneecap. He found himself alone. The wife of Taggart had begun it—the mighty blast of rifle fire completed it. The company fighters got out of the cañon’s mouth, and as one man they moved for their horses, Keith among them and glad to be going. Dornie Shaw watched him mount up, and swung up alongside him. Behind them, moving carefully as if they were perfectly disciplined troops, the defenders of the cañon moved down, firing as they came. A horse dropped, and a man crawled into the rocks, then jumped up and ran. Dai Reid swung wide of the group and started after him.

  Another went down before they got away, and Kedrick turned to his group. “Get your horses, men. The women will be all right. This is a job that needs finishing now.”

  A quarter of a mile away, Brokow spotted a horse, standing alone, and started for it. As he arose from the rocks, a voice called out from behind: “A minute!”

  Brokaw turned. It was only one man approaching him, the Welshman, Dai Reid. He stared at the man’s Spencer, remembering his own gun was empty. He backed up slowly, his eyes haunted. “My rifle’s empty,” he said, “an’ I’ve lost my Colt.”

  “Drop the rifle, then,” Dai said quietly. “This I’ve been wanting, for guns be not my way.”

  Brokow did not understand, but he dropped his rifle. He was a big man, hulking and considered powerful. He watched in amazement as Reid placed his Spencer carefully on the ground, and then his gun belt. With bowlegged strides, the shorter man started for Brokow.

  The outlaw stared, then started forward to meet Dai. As they drew near, he swung. His rock-like fist smashed Dai Reid flush on the chin, and Reid blinked only, then lunged. Twice more Brokow swung, blows filled with smashing panic born of the lack of effect of that first punch. Dai seemed unable to avoid them, and both connected solidly, and then his huge, big-knuckled hand grasped Brokow’s arm and jerked him near. The hand slipped to the back of his head and jerked Brokow’s face down to meet the rising of the Welshman’s head. Stars burst before Brokow’s eyes, and he felt the bone go in his nose. He swung wildly, and then those big hands gripped his throat and squeezed till Brokow was dead. Then Dai Reid dropped the outlaw to the sand, and, turning, he walked away. He did not notice the horse that stood waiting. It was a grulla.

  In the headlong flight that followed the débâcle in the cañon’s mouth, only Lee Goff had purpose. The hard-bitten Montana gunman had stared reality in the face when Taggart’s wife turned on him. It was only coincidence that she so resembled his own mother, long since dead of overwork in rearing seven boys and five girls on a bleak Montana ranch. He headed directly for Yellow Butte and the Taggart home. He did not dismount, only he stopped by the door and knocked gently. It opened, and he faced Mrs. Taggart, her eyes red now, from weeping. “Ma’am,’ he said, “I guess I ain’t much account, but this here’s been too much. I’m driftin’. Will you take this here... as a favor to me?”

  He shoved a thick roll of bills at her, his face flushing deep red. For an instant, she hesitated, and then she accepted the money with dignity. “Thanks, son. You’re a good boy.”

  There’s an old Mormon Trail across northern New Mexico into Colorado and Utah. Lee Goff’s bald-faced sorrel stirred the dust on that road all the way across two states before its rider began to look the country over.

  Behind him, had he known, Tom Kedrick was riding to Mustang. With him were Laredo Shad, Pit Laine, Dai Reid, Burt Williams, and the others. They made a tight, grim-faced little cavalcade, and they rode with their rifles across their saddle forks.

  Due west of them, had they only known, another little drama was taking place, for the riders they followed were not all the riders who had abandoned the fight in the cañon. Two of them, Dornie Shaw and Colonel Loren Keith, had headed due west on their own. Both men had their own thoughts and their own ideas of what to do, and among other things Keith had decided that he had had enough. Whether the others knew it or not, they were through, and he was getting out of the country.

  There was some money back there in Mustang, and, once he had that, he was going to mount up and head for California. Then let Ransome investigate. After a few years he would return to the East, and, if the subject ever came up, he would swear he had nothing to do with it, that he only represented them legally in the first steps of the venture.

  What Dornie Shaw was thinking nobody ever guessed, and at this moment he had no thought at all in his mind. For his mind was not overly given to thought. He liked a few things, although he rarely drank, and seemed never to eat much. He liked a good horse and a woman with about the same degree of affection, and he had liked Sue Laine a good bit, but the woman who really fascinated him was Connie Duane, who never seemed aware that he was even alive. Most of all he liked a gun. When cornered or braced into a fight, he killed as naturally and simply as most men eat. He was a creature of destruction, pure and simple. Never in his life had he been faced with a man who made him doubt his skill, and never fought with anything but guns—and he vowed he never would.

  The two rode rapidly and both were mounted well, so by the time Kedrick was leaving Yellow Butte and lining out for town, they reached the bank to Salt Creek Wash. Here Keith swung down to tighten his saddle cinch while his horse was drinking. After a moment, Dornie got down, too.

  Absently Keith asked: “Well, Dornie, this breaks it, so where do you think you’ll go now?”

  “Why, Colonel,” Shaw said softly, in his gentle boy’s voice, “I don’t know exactly where I’m goin’, but this here’s as far as you go.”

  It took a minute for the remark to sink in, and then Keith turned, his puzzled expression stiffening into blank horror, then fear. Dornie Shaw stood negligently watching him, his lips smiling a little, his eyes opaque and empty. The realization left Loren Keith icy cold. Dornie Shaw was going to kill him. He had been an utter fool ever to allow this to happen. Why had he left the others and come off with Shaw? Why hadn’t he killed him long since, from behind if need be, for the man was like a mad dog. He was insane, completely insane.

  “What’s on your mind, Shaw?” Without realizing it, he spoke as he might to a subordinate. Shaw was not conscious of the tone. He was looking at Keith’s belt line. The colonel, he reflected, had been taking on a little weight here lately. “Why, just what I say. You’ve come as far as your trail takes you, Colonel. I can’t say I’m sorry.”

  “Burwick won’t like this. We’re two of the men on whom he relies.”

  “Uhn-huh, that’s the way it was. It ain’t now. Back yonder”—he jerked his head toward the butte—“he sort of implied he’d got hisself one too many partners.” He shoved his hat back a little. “You want to try for your gun? It won’t help you none, but you can try.”

  Keith was frightened. Every muscle within him seemed to have tightened until he could not move, yet he knew he was going to. But at the last, he had something to say, and it came from some deep inner conviction: “Kedrick will kill you, Dornie. He’s going to win. He’ll kill Burwick, too.”

  Suddenly he remembered something; it had been only a fleeting expression on Dornie Shaw’s face, but, something. “Dornie?” he shot the word out with the force of desperation. “There behind you! The grulla!”

  Shaw whirled, his face white, an almost animal-like fury on it. As he turned, Keith gasped hoarsely and triumphantly, and his gun swung up, but he had never coped with a fighter like Shaw. In the flashing instant that he whirled and found nothing behind him, Dornie hurled himself backward. The s
hot split wide the air where he had stood an instant before, and then Dornie himself fired from the ground. Fired once, then a second time.

  Keith caught the bullet through the midsection, right where that extra weight had been gathering, and took the second one in the same place. He fell, half in the trickle of water that comprised Salt Creek. Feeding shells into his gun, Dornie Shaw stared down at the glazing eyes. “How did you know?” he asked sullenly. “How did you know?”

  XIV

  Fessenden rode well forward in the saddle, his great bulk carried easily with the movement of the horse. His wide face was somber with thought and distaste. Like the others, the wife of Taggart had affected him as nothing else could have. He was a hard man who had done more than his share of killing, but he had killed men ruthlessly, thoughtlessly, men in mortal combat where he himself might die as easily. Several times before he had hired his gun, but each time in cattle or sheep wars or struggles with equals, men as gun-wise as he himself. Never before had he actually joined in a move to rob men of their homes. Without conscience in the usual sense, he had it in this case, for the men who moved West, regardless of their brand, were largely men in search of homes. Before, he had thought little of their fight. Several times he had helped to drive nesters from cattle range, and to him that was just and logical, for cows needed grass and people lived on beef, and most of the range country wasn’t suited to farming, anyway. But in this case there was a difference, he now realized, thinking of it for the first time. In this case men were not being driven off for cattle, but only for profit. To many, the line was a fine one to draw; to Fessenden and his like, once the matter was seen in its true light, that line became a gap, an enormous one.

  Actually he rode in a state of shock. The victory Keith had wanted seemed so near. The taking of the few left in the cañon had seemed simple. His qualms against the use of dynamite he had shrugged off, if uncomfortably. Yet he had gone into the cañon with the others to get the thing over with, to get his money, and get out. And then, long before they expected it, came that smashing, thunderous volley, made more crashing by the close cañon walls, more destructive by the way the attackers were channeled by the boulders.

  Shock started the panic, and distaste for the whole affair kept some of them, at least, on the move. Yet it was hard to believe that Clauson and Poinsett were dead, that Brokow had vanished, that Lee Goff was gone. For alone of the group, Goff had told Fessenden he was leaving. He had not needed to tell him why.

  Behind him rode the Mixus boys, somber with disappointment at the failure of the attack. They had no qualms about killing, and no lines to draw even at the killing of women. They were in no true sense fighting men; they were butchers. Yet even they realized the change that had come over the group. What had become of Brokow or Goff they did not know, only that disintegration had set in, and these men had turned into a snarling pack of wolves, venting their fury and their hatred on each other.

  Mustang was quiet when they rode into town. It was the quiet before the storm, and the town, like that cattle buyer who had turned back to Durango, sensed the coming fury of battle. No women were on the street, and only a few hardy souls loitered at the bars or card tables. The chairs before the St. James were deserted, and Clay Allison had ridden back to his home ranch, drunk and ugly.

  An almost Sunday peace lay over the town when Fessenden drew up before the Mustang Saloon and swung down from his weary horse. Slapping his hat against his leg to beat off the dust, Fessenden stood like a great, shaggy bull and surveyed the quiet of the street. He was too knowing a Western man not to recognize the symptoms of disaster. Clapping his hat all awry upon his shaggy head, he shoved his bulk through the doors and moved to the bar.

  “Rye,” he said, his voice booming in the cavernous interior. His eyes glinted around the room, then back to the bartender.

  That worthy could no longer restrain his curiosity. “What’s happened?” he asked, swallowing.

  A glint of irony came into the hard eyes of the gunman. “Them squatters squatted there for keeps,” he said wryly, “an’ they showed us they aim to stay put.” He tossed off his drink. “All hell busted loose.” Briefly he explained. “You’d ’a’ figured there was a thousand men in that neck of the rocks when they opened up. The thing that did it was the unexpectedness of it, like steppin’ on a step in the dark when it ain’t there.” He poured another drink. “It was that Kedrick,” he said grimly. “When I seen him shift to the other side, I should’ve lit a shuck.”

  “What about Keith?”

  “He won’t be back.”

  They turned at the new voice, and saw Dornie Shaw standing in the doorway, smiling. Still smiling, he walked in and leaned against the bar. “Keith won’t be back,” he said. “He went for his gun out on Salt Creek.”

  The news fell into a silent room. A man at a table shifted his feet and a chair creaked. Fessenden wet his lips and downed his second drink. He was getting out of town, but fast.

  “Seen that girl come in, short time back,” the bartender said suddenly, “that Duane girl. Thought she’d gone over to the other side.”

  Dornie’s head lifted and his eyes brightened, then shadowed. He downed his own drink and walked jauntily to the door. “Stick around, Fess. I’ll be back.” He grinned. “I’ll collect for both of us from the old man.”

  The bartender looked at Fessenden. “Reckon he’ll bring it if he does?”

  The big gunman nodded absently. “Sure! He’s no thief! Why, that kid never stole a thing in his life. He doesn’t believe in it. An’ he won’t lie or swear... but he’ll shoot the heart out of you an’ smile right in your face while he’s doing it.”

  The show had folded. The roundup was over. There was nothing to do now but light out. Fessenden knew he should go, but a queer apathy had settled over him, and he ordered another drink, letting the bartender pour it. The liquor he drank seemed now to fall into a cavern without bottom, having no effect.

  233

  On the outskirts of town, Tom Kedrick reined in. “We’ll keep together,” he said quietly. “We want Keith, Shaw, Burwick, the Mixus boys, and Fessenden. There are about four others that you will know that I don’t know by name. Let’s work fast and make no mistakes. Pit, you take Dai and two men and go up the left side of the street, take no chances. Arrest them if you can, we’ll try them, and”—his face was grim—“if we find them guilty, they’ll have just two sentences…leave the country or hang. The Mixus boys and Shaw,” he said, “will hang. They’ve done murder.”

  He turned in his saddle and glanced at the tall Texan. “Come on, Shad,” he said, “we’ll take two men and the right side of the street, which means the livery stable, the Saint James, and the Mustang.” Kedrick glanced over at Laine. “Pit,” he said, “if you run into Allison or Ketchum, better leave ’em alone. We don’t want ’em”

  Laine’s face was grave. “I ain’t huntin’ ’em,” he said grimly, “but if they want it, they can have it.”

  The parties rode into town and swung down on their respective sides of the street. Laredo grinned at Kedrick, but his eyes were sober. “Nobody wants to cross Laine today,” he said quietly. “The man’s in a killin’ mood. It’s his sister.”

  “Wonder what will happen when they meet?”

  “I hope they don’t,” Shad said. “She’s a right pretty sort of gal, only money crazy.”

  The two men with them stood hesitantly, waiting for orders. Both were farmers. One carried a Spencer .56, the other a shotgun. Shad glanced at them. “Let these hombres cover the street, Tom,” he suggested. “You take the Saint James, an’ I’ll take the stable.”

  Kedrick hesitated. “All right,” he agreed finally. “But take no chances, boy.”

  Laredo grinned and waved a negligent hand and walked through the wide door of the stable. Inside, he paused, cold and seemingly careless, actually as poised and deadly as a coiled rattler. He had already seen Abe Mixus’s sorrel pony and guessed the two dry-gulchers were in town. H
e walked on a step and saw the barrel of a rifle push through the hay.

  He lunged right and dove into a stall, drawing his gun as he went, and ran full tilt into the other Mixus! Their bodies smashed together, and Mixus, caught off balance, went down and rolled over. He came up, clawing for a gun. Laredo kicked the gun from under his hand and sent it spinning into the wide-open space between the rows of stalls.

  With a kind of whining cry, Bean Mixus sprang after it, slid to his knees, and got up, turning. Laredo Shad stood, tall and dark, just within the stall, and, as Mixus turned like a rat cornered and swung his gun around, Laredo fired, his two shots slamming loudly in the stillness of the huge barn. Bean Mixus fell dead.

  The rifle bellowed and a shot ripped the stall stanchion near Laredo’s head. He lunged into the open, firing twice more at the stack of straw. The rifle jerked, then thundered again, but the shot went wild. Laredo dove under the loft where Abe Mixus was concealed, and fired two more shots through the roof over his head where he guessed the killer would be lying.

  Switching his guns, he holstered the empty one and waited. The roof creaked some distance away, and he began to stalk the escaping Mixus, slipping from stall to stall. Suddenly a back door creaked and a broad path of light shot into the darkness of the stable. Laredo lunged to follow—too late.

  The farmer outside with the shotgun was the man Sloan. As Abe Mixus lunged through the door to escape, they came face to face, at no more than twenty feet of distance. Abe had his rifle at his hip, and he fired. The shot ripped through the water trough beside Sloan, and the farmer squeezed off the left-hand barrel of his shotgun. The solid core of shot hit Mixus in the shoulder and neck, knocking him back against the side of the door, his neck and shoulder a mass of blood that seemed to well from a huge wound. He thought to get his gun up, but Sloan stepped around, remembering Bob McLennon’s death and the deaths of Steelman and Slagle. The other barrel thundered and a sharp blast of flame stabbed at Abe Mixus. Smashed and dead, the killer sagged against the doorjamb, his old hat falling free, his face pillowed in the gray, blood-mixed dust.