Louis L'Amour_Hopalong Cassidy 01

by The Rustlers of West Fork

  Sparr’s teeth bared in a snarl as he took the hammering lead; his cheeks seemed to sink to deep hollows. His hat was gone somehow, and there was the dark, smoky taste of battle in his mouth, and he was shooting, shooting, shooting!

  He had no way of knowing in those last gun-blazing split seconds of his life that his equilibrium had been destroyed by the first bullet he took, that the second had torn his left arm, smashing the bone and tearing flesh as the misshapen bullet found a way through. He had no way of knowing that the big guns in his hands were hammering into the sun-baked earth and that his own body was knocked right and then left by lead from Cassidy’s smoking guns.

  Hopalong, his face bleak, stepped around the big gunman as a fast boxer steps around a slow-moving slugger—stepped around and shot him to doll rags, for Hopalong knew that while one tiny breath of life wavered in this man he was a fighter still. Cruel he might be, criminal he might have been, but he was a fighting man.

  Once only he paused to flash a shot at a window. Then he finished the job and left Sparr flat on his face in the sunshine. Wheeling, he ran for the storeroom.

  Anse Mowry was there. Anse, who had cursed Hopalong and sworn to kill him. Anse, who was vicious and cruel, but who had watched with amazement as the mighty Avery Sparr went down beneath Hopalong’s guns. Suddenly something thick and bitter climbed in his throat, and with a cry of half-animal fear he saw Hopalong wheel away from Sparr and come toward him.

  Wheeling, Mowry clawed at the window. Forgotten were all the boasts he had made; forgotten his claims and his meanness.

  He clawed at the frozen-shut window, then grabbed a chair and smashed out the glass. With a lunge he dived through, the glass ripping his flesh. He started on a run for the woods, his throat torn with cries of fear.

  Sanity had left him, and he had only one idea: to get away, to escape. Suddenly, fearfully, he glanced over his shoulder and snapped a wild shot at the window where Hopalong’s face was framed. The long gun spoke, and he turned half around and stretched out in the snow, his boasts as dead as his fears, his blood staining the snow, as red as any man’s.

  A spatter of shots came from the buildings, and Hopalong sprang back. Somewhere a horse’s hoofs hammered and died away, and then the air was soft with sunshine and the smell of melting snow. Hopalong fed bullets into his guns and stepped into the open. Mesquite was coming toward him, limping. “Burned me,” he said. “You hurt?”

  “No.” And then, thoughtful as he always was, “Where’s Johnny?”

  “Comin’!” Johnny Nelson came down the rocky hill toward them.

  “Mowry?” Mesquite asked.

  “Dead.”

  “I got two in the house,” Mesquite said, “an’ Framson’s gone.”

  Johnny Nelson waited until he recovered his breath. “The Piute an’ his sidekick lit a shuck when Sparr went down.”

  “How about Lydon? Wasn’t he the one in the bunkhouse?”

  “My first shot. Let’s look.”

  Lydon lay inside the window, beyond the rustling of cattle.

  “That other hombre, the one up in the rocks, I knocked him out, but he got up an’ came for me with a knife. He’s finished too.

  Hopalong picked up his hat, which he had lost in the fight. “One man still missing,” he said. “Where’s Johnny Rebb?”

  “Lit out, maybe?” Nelson suggested.

  “Uh-uh. Not him.” Mesquite was positive. “He ain’t the runnin’ kind.”

  At the sound of approaching horses all three turned swiftly. Mesquite’s rifle swung up.

  “Hold it!” Hopalong grasped the gun barrel. “That’s Sim Thatcher an’ his crowd.”

  Thatcher rode up, his horse shying at the body of Avery Sparr. The rancher stared at him, then turned to Hopalong. “Dead, huh? You did it?”

  “Yeah. I reckon two or three got away. The Piute an’ one of the Gleasons. No sign of Johnny Rebb.

  “Sim, I’m ridin’ to Alma to tell Dick about this. While I’m over there I’ll pick up that buckskin o’ yours. Now look, that’s the best mountain horse I ever rode, an’ I want him.” He paused, and sobered. “Of course he’s a mite old, an’ a little sway-backed, but—”

  “You durned no-account, silver-headed liar!” Sim Thatcher chuckled. “That buckskin ain’t quite five yet, and if he’s sway-backed I’m the next Emperor of China. Don’t start runnin’ him down to beat me out of him. I like that horse. He’s one of the best I ever saw, but you done me a big favor, Hopalong, so if you don’t take that horse as a present, you need never speak to me again. Nor,” he grinned, “you don’t eat no more apple pie at my place!”

  Hopalong rubbed his jaw, his blue eyes twinkling. “I reckon that last argument cinches it, Sim! I sure was figgerin’ on more pie!”

  Mesquite looked at Johnny Nelson. “Did he say pie? Apple pie?”

  “Sounded like it.” Johnny looked serious. “I don’t believe it, but in the interests of truth an’ veracity, not to say science an’ history, I figger we better ride over to the T Bar an’ carry on a little investigation-like.”

  Hopalong watched them start for their horses. “Better leave a couple of men here, Sim, if you can spare ’em. I’m headin’ for Alma. Also,” he added, “you better take all the rest of them back to your spread if they want to protect that pie. There’s only one thing those boys do as good as fight, an’ that’s eat!”

  *

  DICK JORDAN WAS sitting up in bed when Hopalong entered the room. “Confound it all!” he bellowed. “These here women sure keep a man hemmed in! They don’t give me enough grub to keep a yearlin’ youngster goin’ an’ expect me to get better!” He held out a hand. “I sure am pleased, Hoppy! Fact you’re here proves things is better! Leastways, you’re still on your feet!”

  “Yeah.”

  Hopalong dropped to a chair and tried to comb his hair with his fingers, conscious of Pamela’s presence. They were bursting with questions and it was like him to tease them by ignoring their curiosity. “Looks like a good winter, Dick. Nice fall of snow, some meltin’ now, but that’s only in the low places. Purty quick she’ll snow real hard again, an’ we’ll have good summer grass. Now—”

  “Consarn you, Hoppy!” Jordan interrupted. “Stop that infernal beatin’ around the bush! What happened? Where’s Sparr?”

  Hopalong glanced at Pamela, who was staring at him, avid with interest and excitement.

  “Sparr?” he inquired. “Oh? Oh, yeah! Sparr.”

  “Well, what happened?” Jordan demanded, scowling.

  Pamela leaned forward, looking even more charming than usual. “Hoppy, stop teasing! Please, please tell me!”

  Cassidy chuckled. “All right. Well, there ain’t much to tell. Mesquite an’ Johnny had a run-in up in Turkey Springs—”

  Quietly he told them the story, adding no unnecessary details, merely giving them the information.

  “About all it amounts to is that your ranch is in your hands again and those outlaws are either dead or runnin’ for the border.”

  “You didn’t say nothing about Rebb,” Jordan complained. “What happened to him?”

  “Not a word or a sound. He vanished just like the earth swallowed him. I wanted to leave the same day to come over here, but couldn’t. One of Thatcher’s boys found Soper. He was dead, had been shot and killed at that guard cabin on the ford of the West Fork. From sign around he figgered Johnny Rebb done that.

  “Mesquite trailed Rebb’s horse up to the cabin an’ saw where he was joined by Soper. Soper evidently tried to kill him because we, saw Rebb’s tracks goin’ away, then where he turned real fast. And Soper had a stingy gun lyin’ near by him.”

  “What about Rebb’s trail?”

  “He started for the Circle J, but evidently heard the shootin’ an’ saw the T Bar outfit come up. Maybe he ran into some of the boys who took out, but anyway, he never showed up.”

  Outside, the moonlight was bright as moonlight can only be on an early winter night. The street was empty of
snow, save in a few sheltered places where the day’s sunlight could not reach, but in the east the high peaks of the Mogollons sparkled like moonlit diamonds, impossibly, unbelievably beautiful.

  *

  IN AN EMPTY cabin almost a block away from the house where Hopalong Cassidy talked with the Jordans, a man fed a fire in a glowing red stove, and close to the stove he held his hands, and from time to time he kneaded his fingers with care. The room in which he sat was dark but for the fire, but it had the lonely, empty feeling of a room long deserted.

  This was the home of one of the men Hopalong had run out of the Eagle. The room’s only window opened on the street, and from it one commanded an excellent view of the house where Dick Jordan lay recuperating from his mountain journey.

  The man in the cabin smoked a cigarette, then carefully put it out, and sat still beside his fire, waiting with such patience as only the hunter knows. And he was, indeed, a hunter—Johnny Rebb, waiting to kill Hopalong Cassidy.

  He had not much longer to wait. Death is rarely impatient and can conjure up a multitude of tiny delays. Death definitely has dramatic sense and understands the rules of suspense, for upon this night Johnny had come to his feet more than once, his gun ready. First it had been the doctor coming out, and then somebody who delivered an armful of groceries, and then a visitor. Hopalong was staying a long time.

  He would not stay the night. Johnny Rebb had taken precautions to find out, but it did not matter, for Rebb was prepared to wait a week, a month if necessary. He had a good store of dry wood. He allowed little smoke to emerge, no light to be seen. His supplies had been brought in by night.

  Hopalong Cassidy was a careful man. Always a fighting man, he had learned that survival was a matter of intelligence, of knowing things first, and being always ready for the unexpected. Pamela had come with him to the door, and they stood there, talking.

  “Will you go back to Buck now, Hoppy?” she asked.

  “No.” His eyes strayed down the street and rested upon a dark house; rested, then moved on. “No, I reckon not. I want to ride south from here, down near the border. Little town down there I want to see, and some new country.”

  “Won’t you ever settle down? Stay in one place?” Her hand was on his sleeve. “Why don’t you stay here, Hoppy? Somehow—Oh, I feel so much better when you’re near, and lately I’ve been almost sick when you were gone.”

  He avoided her eyes, reflecting miserably that she would probably be sicker if he stayed and then went. And he would go.

  “Who lives in that house down the street? The one that is out farther than the others? On the corner almost?”

  “That one? It’s empty. Frager used to live there, they tell me. He was an outlaw, I guess. Anyway, when the Eagle closed, he left very fast.”

  “I see. Anybody been in there lately?”

  “Oh, no! It’s empty. It has been for days.”

  Hopalong Cassidy nodded, and his eyes gleamed in the darkness. The snow in the street where it had been walked over and run over was gone. There were still a few roofs that had snow, however, but they were the roofs of sheds and barns without inner heat. The houses where lights showed had no snow on the roof, for the fires within had helped to melt it away. There was no snow on the roof of the house in question, although there was snow on the porch, unbroken, untrodden snow.

  “I’d better go,” he said quietly.

  “You’ll come back?” Pamela pleaded gently.

  “Yeah, maybe.” It was better to say you would come back. Better than flatly saying no. It wouldn’t work, he knew. Pamela was lovely, but he was a man who lived by the gun. She deserved better. Maybe she was a little in love with him, but he was not at all sure. And in a little while, if he was gone, there would be somebody else.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly, “I’ll come back, Pam. After I go south.”

  He stepped quickly off the porch, intent now upon something else.

  No snow on the roof. He smiled, seeing again a pattern of living and a pattern of going shaping itself. “So long, Pam! Tell Dick I got a little job to do down the street, but I’ll be ridin’ on right after.”

  Within the dark window of that house his eye had caught, in the moment he first stepped from the door of the house, a tiny fleck of light that might have been a suddenly extinguished cigarette. And it might have been his imagination.

  He huddled his sheepskin coat around his ears but stripped off his gloves and shoved them into the capacious pockets. He walked slowly down the street. And then the door of the empty house opened and a man made tracks in the hitherto untracked snow. His boots crunched on the porch snow, and then he stepped down on the walk. He wore a heavy buffalo coat that hung open.

  “A cross draw,” Hopalong said to himself, “an’ it will be fast.”

  Johnny Rebb stopped and watched the man approaching him. He was young at this game, but good. He knew he was good. He was too young to have the feeling of going too often to the well, too young to have any premonition of death or to recognize it if it came. He was a young man of singularly basic emotions. An uncomplicated young man. His ideas were few, his tastes and desires simple. Right now he wanted to kill Hopalong Cassidy. Right now he felt he was going to kill him.

  “Howdy, Cassidy.” He spoke in a low voice, and waited.

  “Yeah, Johnny. I been expectin’ you. Fact is, I knowed you was here.”

  “How?”

  Johnny Rebb was puzzled. How could he have known?

  “No snow on the roof. Only houses with the snow gone are those with fires.”

  “Well, what d’you know? I never figgered on that.” He chuckled. “You’re a smart one, Hoppy. Too bad you have to go this way, but Sparr, he done me some favors.”

  “Do yourself one, kid,” Hopalong suggested quietly. “Call this off an’ beat it. You had luck. You beat out a tough game, so take the luck you have an’ go someplace else. Start ranchin’ or punch cows. This killin’ won’t get you no place.”

  “Talkin’ too much, Hoppy. Them who talk too much are usually scared.”

  Hopalong’s chuckle was dry. “Not this time, kid. I hate to see this happen.”

  Johnny Rebb’s right hand lightly held the edge of his coat, only inches from his gun butt. “Sorry, Hop—!”

  He turned his body at the hips with a swift motion that thrust the gun butt—the gun was in his waistband—right into his hand. Then he drew and fired. It was fast. Amazingly fast.

  Hopalong, whose gun was in its holster, the butt at the edge of the coat, was an instant slower. It was a hair’s-breadth difference caused by difference in gun positions and the edge of Hoppy’s coat. But Johnny Rebb shot first, and he shot too fast.

  He had failed to learn what those who live must learn—that the instant of deliberation before the trigger is pulled is often the only difference between life and death. His bullet tore a deep furrow along the top of Hoppy’s sheepskin coat’s shoulder. His second shot went through the thick fold of the coat within an inch of Hoppy’s heart but failed to touch his body.

  Hopalong’s gun had swung up to hip level, and then he fired. He fired once only. He fired at the shining buckle on Rebb’s belt, and the heavy lead slug hit the corner of the buckle and ranged upward. Hopalong walked forward swiftly to the fallen man. Rebb stared up at him, his eyes surprised and bitter. “You should have filed the shine off that buckle, kid,” he said gently. “It makes much too good a mark.”

  People came running, and Pamela would be one of them. He edged away from the dying man, remembering that he had not picked up the buckskin yet.

  “When Pamela Jordan comes out,” he told a bystander, “tell her Cassidy was all right. I’ve got to see a man about a horse.”

  Afterword

  by Beau L’Amour

  MY FATHER WAS Tex Burns. He’s gone now, so I feel it’s time to stop denying it. I really don’t think that Tex ever did anything he needed to be ashamed of; all he did was lose an argument. Nonetheless, Tex Burns was persona no
n grata around our house.

  In the spring and summer of 1950, Louis L’Amour wrote this and three other stories about Hopalong Cassidy. He used the pen name Tex Burns and the books were commissioned by Doubleday’s Double D Western imprint. The Rustlers of West Fork, Trail to Seven Pines, Riders of High Rock, and Trouble Shooter were the first four novels that he ever had published.

  But for the next thirty-eight years he denied that he had ever written any of them.

  When asked, he told people that he had never written about Hopalong Cassidy, that he had never written as Tex Burns. At autograph sessions he would refuse to sign the Hopalong books that fans would occasionally bring. And for years he worried that these books which he tried so hard to ignore would be reprinted and brought back into circulation.

  I first heard about the situation when I was ten or eleven. Dad had just returned from doing a radio call-in show and as we sat down to dinner he grumbled something about how he wished people would stop asking about Hopalong Cassidy.

  I asked him what the matter was, and he gave Mom a look (the kind parents give each other when their children up and say something that makes people uncomfortable). He put down his fork. “A long time ago,” he said, “I wrote some books. I just did it for the money, and my name didn’t go on them. So now, when people ask me if they were mine, I say no.”

  “But you did write them, didn’t you?” I asked. This sounded vaguely like a secret…very important to a kid.

  “Yes,” he sighed.

  “And when people ask you if you wrote them, you tell them you didn’t? Isn’t that lying?”

  “I just wrote them for hire. They weren’t my books.” A nonanswer.

  I had hit a nerve that youngsters seem to have a magical talent for finding. The Parent Paradox. To be a “good parent,” Dad has to tell Junior not to lie, that lying is bad. Of course, everybody lies. The real issue is how often, and to what extent do you distort the truth—a subject too complicated for many kids…and some adults.