Collection 2008 - Big Medicine (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Kedrick lifted his right hand, and slapped the gunman across the mouth. Crying with fury, Shaw fought against the bigger man’s grip while Kedrick held him flat against the wall, gripping him by the shirt collar, and slapped him, over and back. “Just a cheap killer,” Kedrick said calmly. “Somebody has already bled you a little. I’ll do it for good.”

  He dropped a hand to Dornie’s shirt and ripped it wide. “I’m going to ruin you in this country, Dornie. I’m going to show them what you are…a cheap, yellow-bellied killer who terrorizes men better than himself.” He slapped Dornie again, then shoved him into the wall once more, and stepped back.

  “All right, Shaw! You got your guns! Reach!” Almost crying with fury, Dornie Shaw grabbed for his guns, but as he whipped them free, all his timing wrecked by the events of the past few minutes, Kedrick’s gun crashed and Shaw’s right-hand gun was smashed from his hand. Shaw fired the left-hand gun, but the shot went wild, and Kedrick lunged, chopping down with his pistol barrel. The blow smashed Dornie Shaw’s wrist and he dropped the gun with a yelp.

  He fell back against the wall, trembling, and staring at his hands. His left wrist was broken, his right thumb gone, and, where it had been, blood was welling.

  Roughly Kedrick grabbed him and shoved him out the door. Shaw stumbled and fell, but Kedrick jerked him to his feet, unmindful of the gasps of the onlookers, attracted by the sounds of fighting. In the forefront of the crowd were Pit Laine, Dai Reid, and Laredo Shad, blinking with astonishment at the sight of the most feared gunman in the country treated like a whipped child.

  Shaw’s horse stood nearby, and Kedrick motioned to him. “Get on him…backward!”

  Shaw started to turn and Kedrick lifted his hand and the gunman ducked instinctively. “Get up there! Dai, when he’s up, tie his ankles together.”

  Dornie Shaw, befuddled by the whipping he had taken, scarcely aware of what was happening, lifted his eyes. He saw the grulla tied near the stone house. It was the last straw; his demoralization was complete.

  Feared because of his deadly skill with guns and his love of killing for the sake of killing, he had walked a path alone, avoided by all, or catered to by them. Never in his life had he been manhandled as he had been by Tom Kedrick. His ego was shattered.

  “Take him through the town.” Kedrick’s voice was harsh. “Show them what a killer looks like. Then fix up that thumb and wrist and turn him loose.”

  “Turn him loose?” Shad demanded. “Are you crazy?”

  “No, turn him loose. He’ll leave this country so far behind nobody will ever see him again. This is worse than death for him, believe me.” He shrugged. “I’ve seen them before. All they need, that kind, is somebody to face them once who isn’t afraid. He was fast and accurate with his guns, so he developed the idea he was tough. Other folks thought the same thing. He wasn’t tough. A tough man has to win and lose, he has to come up after being knocked down, he has to have taken a few beatings, and know what it means to win the hard way. Anybody can knock a man down. When you’ve been knocked down at least three times yourself, and then get up and floor the other man, then you can figure you’re a tough hombre. Those smoke poles of Shaw’s greased his path for him. Now he knows what he’s worth.”

  The crowd drifted away and Connie Duane was standing in the doorway. Tom Kedrick looked up at her, and suddenly he smiled. To see her now, standing like this in the doorway, was like life-giving rain upon the desert, coming in the wake of many heat-filled days.

  She came down the steps to him, then looked past him at Pit. “Your sister’s upstairs, Pit. You’d better talk to her.”

  Laine hesitated, then he said stiffly: “I don’t reckon I want to.”

  Laredo Shad drew deeply on his cigarette and squinted through the smoke at Laine. “Mind if I do?” he asked. “I like her.”

  Pit Laine was astonished. “After this?”

  Shad looked at the fire end of his cigarette. “Well,” he said, speaking seriously, “the best cuttin’ horse I ever rode was the hardest to break. Them with lot of git up an’ go to ’em often make the best stock.”

  “Then go ahead.” Pit stared after him. Then he said: “Tell her I’ll be along later.”

  XVI

  For three weeks there was no sign of Alton Burwick. He seemed to have vanished into the earth, and riders around the country reported no sign of him. At the end of that time three men got down from the afternoon stage and were shown to rooms in the St. James. An hour later, while they were at dinner, Captain Tom Kedrick pushed open the door and walked into the dining door. Instantly one of the men, a tall, immaculate man whose hair was turning gray at the temples, arose to meet him, hand outstretched. “Tom! Say, this is wonderful! Gentlemen, this is Tom Kedrick, the man I was telling you about. We served together in the War Between the States! Tom…Mister Edgerton and Mister Cummings.”

  The two men, one pudgy with a round, cheerful face, the other as tall as Frederic Ransome with gray mutton-chop whis kers acknowledged the introduction. When Kedrick had seated himself, they began demanding details. Quietly, and as concisely as possible, he told them his own story from his joining the company in New Orleans.

  “And Burwick’s gone?” Edgerton asked. He was the older man with the mutton-chop whis kers. “Was he killed?”

  “I doubt it, sir,” Kedrick replied. “He simply vanished. The man had a faculty for being out of the way when trouble came. Since he left, with the aid of Miss Duane and her uncle’s papers, we managed to put together most of the facts. However, Burwick’s papers have disappeared, or most of them.”

  “Disappeared?” Edgerton asked. “How did that happen?”

  “Miss Duane tells me that when she entered the house before the final trouble with Shaw, she passed the office door and the place was undisturbed and the desk all in order. After the crowd had gone and when we returned, somebody had been rifling the desk and the safe.”

  “You imply that Burwick returned. That he was there then?”

  “He must have been. Connie…Miss Duane... tells me that only he had the combination and that he kept all the loose ends of the business in his hands.”

  Cummings stared hard at Kedrick. “You say this Shaw fellow killed Keith? How do we know that you didn’t? You admit to killing Fessenden.”

  “I did kill Fessenden. In a fair fight, before witnesses. I never even saw Keith’s body after he was killed.”

  “Who do you think killed John Gunter?” Cummings demanded.

  “My guess would be Burwick.”

  “I’m glad you’re not accusing Keith of that,” Cummings replied dryly.

  “Keith wouldn’t have used a knife,” Kedrick replied quietly, “nor would he have attacked him from behind as was obviously the case.”

  “This land deal, Kedrick,” Ransome asked, “where do you stand in it?”

  “I? I don’t stand at all. I’m simply not in it.” Cummings looked up sharply. “You don’t stand to profit from it at all? Not in any way?”

  “How could I? I own nothing. I have no holdings or claim to any.”

  “You said Burwick promised you fifteen percent?”

  “That’s right. But I know now that it was merely to appease me long enough to get me on the spot at Chimney Butte where I was to be killed along with the others. Burwick got me there, then rode off on the pretext that he wanted to look at a mineral ledge.”

  “How about this girl? The Duane girl?” Cummings asked sharply. “Does she stand to profit?”

  “She will be fortunate to get back the money that her uncle invested.”

  “See, Cummings?” Ransome asked. “I told you Kedrick was honest. I know the man.”

  “I’ll give my opinion on that later, after this investigation is completed. Not now. I want to go over the ground and look into this matter thoroughly. I want to investigate this matter of the disappearance of Alton Burwick, too. I’m not at all satisfied with this situation.” He glanced down at the notes in his hand, then looked up.
“As to that, Kedrick, wasn’t Fessenden a duly elected officer of the law when you shot him? Wasn’t he the sheriff?”

  “Elected by a kangaroo election,” Kedrick replied, “where the votes were counted by two officials who won. If that is a legal election, then he was sheriff.”

  “I see. But you do not deny that he had au thority?”

  “I do deny it.”

  Connie Duane was awaiting him when he walked back to his table. She smiled as he sat down, and listened to his explanation. She frowned thoughtfully. “Cummings? I think there is something in Uncle John’s papers about him. I believe he was acting for them in Washington.”

  “That explains a lot.” Kedrick picked up his coffee cup, then put it down abruptly, for Laredo Shad had come into the room, his face sharp and serious. He glanced around and, sighting Kedrick, hurried toward him, spurs jingling. Kedrick got to his feet. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  “Plenty! Sloan was wounded last night and Yellow Butte burned!”

  “What?” Kedrick stared.

  Shad nodded grimly. “You shouldn’t have turned that rat loose. That Dornie Shaw.”

  Kedrick shook his head irritably. “I don’t believe it. He was thoroughly whipped when he left here. I think he ran like a scared rabbit when he left, and, if he did want revenge, it would be after a few months, not so soon. No, this is somebody else.”

  “Who could it be?”

  Tom’s eyes met Connie’s and she nodded, her eyes frightened. “You know who it could be. It could be Burwick.”

  Burwick had bothered him, getting away scot-free, dropping off the end of the world into oblivion as he had. Remembering the malignant look in the man’s eyes, Kedrick became even more positive. Burwick had counted on this land deal, he had worked on it longer than any one of them, and it meant more to him.

  “Shad,” he said suddenly, “where does that grulla tie in? It keeps turning up, again and again. There’s something more about all this than we’ve ever known, something that goes a lot deeper. Who rides the grulla? Why is it he has never been seen? Why was Dornie so afraid of it?”

  “Was he afraid of the grulla?” Shad asked, frowning. “That doesn’t figure.”

  “Why doesn’t it? That’s the question now. You know, that last day when I had Shaw thoroughly whipped, he looked up and saw something that scared him, yet something that I think he more than half expected. After he was gone down the street, I looked around, and there was nothing there. Later, I stumbled across the tracks of the grulla mustang. That horse was in front of the house during all the excitement!”

  Frederic Ransome walked over to their table. “Cummings is going to stir up trouble,” he said, dropping into a chair. “He’s out to get you, Kedrick, and, if he can, to pin the killing of Keith on you, or that of Burwick. He claims your story is an elaborate build up to cover the murder of all three of the company partners. He can make so much trouble that none of the squatters will get anything out of the land, and nothing for all their work. We’ve got to find Burwick.”

  Laredo lit a cigarette. “That’s a tough one,” he said, “but maybe I’ve got a hunch.”

  “What?” Kedrick looked up.

  “Ever hear Burwick talk about the grulla?”

  “No, I can’t say that I did. It was mentioned before him once that I recall, and he didn’t seem interested.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t interested because he knowed all about it,” Shad suggested. “That Burwick has me puzzled.”

  Connie looked up at him. “You may be right, Laredo, but Pit and Sue Laine were Burwick’s stepchildren and they knew nothing about the horse. The only one who seemed to know anything was Dornie Shaw.”

  Tom Kedrick got up. “Well, there’s one thing we can do,” he said. “Laredo, we can scout out the tracks of that horse and trail it down. Pick up an old trail, anything. Then just see where it takes us.”

  On the third day it began to rain. All week the wind had been chill and cold and the clouds had hung low and flat across the sky from horizon to horizon. Hunched in his slicker, Laredo slapped his gloved hands together and swore. “This finishes it!” he said with disgust. “It will wipe out all the trails for us.”

  “All the old ones anyway,” Kedrick agreed. “We’ve followed a dozen here lately, and none of them took us anywhere. All disappeared on rock, or were swept away by wind.”

  “Escavada’s cabin isn’t far up this cañon,” Shad suggested. “Let’s hit him up for chow. It will be a chance to get warm, anyway.”

  “Know him?”

  “Stopped in there once. He’s half Spanish, half Ute. Tough old blister, an’ been in this country since before the grass came. He might be able to tell us something.”

  The trail into the cañon was slippery and the dull red of the rocks had been turned black under the rain. It slanted across the sky in a drenching downpour, and, when they reached the stone cabin in the corner of the hills, both men and horses were cold, wet, and hungry.

  Escavada opened the door for them and waved them in. He grinned at them. “Glad to have company,” he said. “Ain’t seen a man for three weeks.”

  When they had stripped off their slickers and peeled down to shirts, pants, and boots, he put coffee before them and laced it with a strong shot of whiskey. “Warm you up,” he said. “Trust you ain’t goin’ out again soon. Whiskey’s mighty fine when a body comes in from the cold, but not if he’s goin’ out again. It flushes the skin up, fetches all the heat to the surface, then gives it off into the air. Man freezes mighty quick, drinkin’ whiskey.”

  “You ever see a grulla mustang around, Escavada?” Laredo asked suddenly, looking up at the old man.

  He turned on them, his eyes bright with malicious humor. “You ain’t some of them superstitious kind, be you? Skeered o’ the dark like? An’ ghosts?”

  “No,” Kedrick said, “but what’s the tie-up?”

  “That grulla. Old story in this here county. Dates back thirty, forty years. Maybe further’n that. Sign of death or misfortune, folks say.”

  Laredo looked inquiringly at Kedrick, and Kedrick asked: “You know anything about it? That horse is real enough. We’ve both seen the grulla.”

  “So’ve I,” the old man said. He dropped into a chair and grinned at them. His gray hair was sparse, but his eyes were alive and young. “I seen it many times, an’ no misfortune come my way. Not unless you call losin’ my shovel a misfortune.”

  He hitched his chair nearer the woodpile and tossed a couple of sticks on the fire. “First I heerd of it was long ago. Old folks used to tell of a Spanish man in armor, ridin’ a mouse-colored horse. He used to come an’ go about the hills, but the story back of it seems to be that a long time back some such feller was mighty cruel to the Injuns. That story sort of hung around an’ a body heered it ever’ now and again until about fifteen, sixteen years back. Since then she’s been mighty lively.”

  “You mean, you heard the story more since then?” Kedrick asked.

  “Uhn-huh. Started with a wagon train wiped out by Injuns up on the Salt. Ever’ man jack o’ them kilt dead…womenfolks, too, the story was. There was a youngster come off scot-free, boy about five or six years old. He crawled off into the brush, an’, after, he swore them Injuns was led by a white man on a grulla horse, a white man in armor!”

  “Wild yarn,” Shad said, “but you can’t blame the kid, imaginin’ things after what he must’ve seen.”

  “He said that hombre in the armor went around with a long knife, an’ he skewered ever’ one of the bodies to make sure they was real dead. He said once that hombre looked right square at him, layin’ in the brush, an’ he was skeered like all git out, but must’ve been he wasn’t seen, ’cause he wasn’t bothered.”

  “An’ this grulla has been seen since?” Shad asked. “Reg’lar?”

  “Uhn-huh, but never no rider clost enough to say who or what. Sometimes off at a distance, sometimes just the horse, standin’. Most folks git clear off when they see
that horse.”

  He got up and brought back the coffee pot. “Right odd you should ast me about him now,” he commented. “Right odd.”

  Both men looked at him, and, sensing their acute interest, he continued. “Been huntin’ here lately. Ketched me a few bees off the cactus an’ mesquite, figurin’ to start a beeline. Well, I got her started, all right, an’ I trailed them bees to a place far south o’ here. South an’ west, actually. Most o’ this country hereabouts is worked out of bees. I been at it so long I was workin’ a good ways off. Well, my bee-line took me over toward the Hogback. You know that place? She’s a high-curvin’ ridge maybe five or six hundred feet at the crest, but she rises mighty close to straight up for four hundred feet. Crawlin’ up there to locate the cave them bees was workin’ out of, I come on a cave like a cliff dwellin’, on’y it wasn’t. She was man-made, an’ most likely in the past twenty years or so. What started me really lookin’ was my shovel... the one I lost. She was right there on that ledge, so I knowed it hadn’t been lost, but stole off me, so I began huntin’ around. I found back inside this place it was all fixed up for livin’. Some grub there, blankets, a couple of guns, an’ under some duffel in the corner an old-time breastplate an’ helmet.”

  “You’re serious?” Kedrick demanded incredulously.

  “Sure as I’m alive! But”—Escavada chuckled—“that ain’t the best of it. Lyin’ there on the floor, deader’n last year’s hopes, was a young fellow. He had a knife, an old-time Spanish knife that a feller in armor might have carried, an’ it was skewered right th’ough him!”

  “A young man... dead?” Kedrick suddenly leaned forward. “Anything odd about him? I mean... was he missing a thumb?”

  Escavada stared. “Well, now, if that don’t beat all! He was missin’ a thumb, an’ he was crippled up mighty bad in the other arm. Carried her in a sling.”

  “Dornie Shaw!” Laredo leaped to his feet. “Dornie Shaw, by all that’s holy!”