Rain beat at the walls of the cabin, and on the roof. There was a leak in the corner, another in the center of the roof.
“All right,” Cotton said. “We holster our guns, lift our hands, and reach, is that it?”
“Fine.” James Brionne was very cool. He had done what he intended to do, and had gotten his son and Miranda outside. He still held his gun.
He was gambling, and he held two cards he was depending on. One of them was his own gun.
“All right,” Cotton said, “holster ’em!”
He was superbly confident. In this business of the fast draw, he had seen no one who could equal himself and he was sure this Virginia soldier could not.
Watching carefully for some trick, Brionne drew his gun back, and lowered it carefully to the leather. He had no idea of trying to beat Cotton Allard to the draw. He intended to do just what he was best at. He was going to draw, level his gun, and fire. From the hip, perhaps, if there was no more time, but he was going to aim.
He understood in his cool, careful mind that he was going to get hit. He accepted the fact. But there are many hits that do not kill, and he hoped the shot that hit him would be one of those. On the other hand, he planned to make sure of his own bullet.
Brionne knew that he would probably fire only one shot. He intended that should be enough.
He could hear the pounding rain, he could smell the fire inside the cabin, he could see the savage face of Cotton Allard, the man who had burned his home. Outside was his son, who might die without him if his other gamble did not pay off, or this one.
He felt the muzzle of his gun touch the bottom of the holster, lifted his hand free, and saw that Cotton still gripped his gun.
“So you are a coward, too,” he said quietly. “You think you are the best man, but you will not chance it.”
Cotton’s face flushed with rage. Deliberately, he lifted his hand free; then “Draw!” he yelled, and dropped his hand.
Brionne felt his own hand slap the butt, felt the gun start to lift. Cotton’s gun was clearing leather, and his face was twisted with triumph and hatred.
“This is for Anne,” Brionne said, and for an instant, Cotton’s hand froze.
Then his gun leaped up and he fired. Brionne felt the slug as a tremendous blow. It knocked him back through the door. As he tumbled across the threshold he heard the second blast of the gun, and rolled over in the rain and the wet.
He came up to his knees, then to his feet. Something seemed to grip his side, and there was a numbness there. He lifted his gun as Cotton stepped into the door and fired again. Brionne staggered, slipped in trying to regain his balance, and almost fell.
Cotton, his face wolfish, his teeth bared in a kind of snarl, was lifting his gun for another shot. Brionne swung his body around, straightened up, felt the slam of another bullet, but held himself still. He had seen men die, and he had seen too many men take lead to believe that one shot would surely kill, unless by chance or by dead aim. He had no doubt that Cotton could get him, and that he might, but he intended to kill Allard.
He brought his gun down and looked along the barrel at Allard, saw Cotton’s eyes blazing with fury, which changed to sudden terror as the gun lined on him. Cotton fired again, and then Brionne squeezed off his shot. He stood in perfect form, firing as if at a target, and he shot Cotton Allard right between the eyes.
Then he turned his gun to Peabody. “You were there,” he said, and as Peabody tried to lift his gun, he shot him dead.
“Is there anyone else?” he said calmly.
They stood with their hands up, but they were not looking at him.
He turned and saw Dutton Mowry. The man was using a broken branch for a crutch, and one leg was bandaged and bloody, but he held a six-shooter in one hand. And he was covering them.
“You got here,” Brionne said.
“Did you think I wouldn’t?” Mowry said.
He gestured to Hoffman and the others. “You boys just shuck your hardware. You’ll find a pick and shovel up yonder at the tunnel. Come back down here and bury these men.”
James Brionne had not moved. He felt sick and very strange, but he was looking over at Mat, and he wanted to go to him. He willed himself to move, but there was a great weakness in him.
Suddenly Miranda and Mat were running to him. He managed to holster his gun. “I am afraid I shall have to sit down,” he said. “I believe I am hit.”
They put him down gently at the entrance to the mine and Miranda took off his coat. His shirt was soaked with blood. The bullet had struck his shoulder bone, evidently at an angle, hitting him hard enough to knock him down, and tearing through the muscle at the end of his shoulder.
“He hit me twice, I think. The other one is lower down.”
Miranda eased the tail of his shirt from behind his belt, then almost laughed with relief. The bullet had struck his cartridge belt, veered upward and flattened against his money belt, each pocket filled with gold coins.
“You took a chance,” she said, “when you didn’t throw down your gun.”
“We’d have had no chance without it. They were going to murder us anyway, and I was betting that I could at least kill Cotton, and maybe one other.
“You see, I felt sure Mowry was coming. That was the second gamble I took. It had to be him back there. The more I remembered about him, the more I knew he would not be far behind me.”
Mowry was directing Hoffman in building a fire. “You had more confidence than me,” he said. “There was a time or two I didn’t think I’d make it.”
James Brionne leaned back a little, feeling the warmth of the fire and liking it. “I had reason for confidence. Grant never sent a boy to do a man’s job.”
Dutton Mowry grinned. “Now, how’d you figure that out? Devine told me that if you knew you had a watch dog you’d raise hob.”
“General Grant is my friend, and Devine is a worrier. I didn’t peg you at first, and then when I had a hunch you took off with Miranda.”
Mowry chuckled. “The way I figured it, if you saw me followin’ you, with your trouble in Cheyenne, and all, you’d be likely to take a shot at me. Seemed to me that you weren’t about to let Miss Loften go off into the mountains without you looking after her. You just ain’t that kind of a gent.
“Pat told me you’d been asking about Rody Brennan and Ed Shaw, so I just figured the easiest way to keep account of you was to stay close to Miss Loften here.”
Hoffman was puttering with the fire, and now he looked up. He was gaunt and pale. “What are you planning to do with us?”
Brionne glanced at Mowry. “Shall we string them up? I hear that’s the thing to do out here. Or shall we take them down to Brigham’s boys? I have a feeling that Porter Rockwell would know just what to do with them.”
Hoffman started to protest.
“They’ve been keeping mighty bad company,” Mowry said. “Maybe a long walk might help.”
“All right.” Brionne sat up, holding his rifle over his knees. “You boys start right off down the trail, and keep going. If we should run into you on the way back—”
“What about our horses?” Miranda protested. “Won’t they take them?”
“I found ’em and moved ’em,” Mowry said. “I rode one…that’s how I caught up with his nibs here.”
When they had gone, Mowry added wood to the fire. “The storm ain’t over. I’d best get some fuel.”
“You ease that leg,” Brionne said. “I’ll get it.” He got to his feet. He was a little unsteady, but he already felt better. It was all over now.
He walked out in the rain and stood for a moment, just letting the rain fall on him, liking the feel of it. The thunder was sulking in the canyons off to the east; the clouds hung low and heavy over the basin. Standing there in the rain, he felt the tensions of the past few months slowly washing out of him, draining away, and leaving a stillness within him.
He gathered sticks, using only one hand and putting them on the other arm, car
eful not to hurt the wounded shoulder. He had a bad bruise on his body where the second bullet had smashed against his belts, and that bothered him some. But Mat was all right. He was in there with Miranda, and they were sitting together.
Dutton Mowry eased his leg, and stared out of the door at Brionne. “He’s a good man, that one. Take it from a Pinkerton man, who’s seen them come and go. He’s one of the best.”
He glanced around at Miranda. Mat had gone to sleep, his head against her shoulder. “Are you going to grab him?” Mowry asked.
“I’d rather have him than the mine,” she said, smiling. “You know, I haven’t even thought about it since we got here. I don’t know whether there’s anything up there or not. And do you know something else? I don’t really care.”
James Brionne was coming back into the cabin as she spoke. He was carrying an armful of branches he had broken from a deadfall. He dropped the wood just inside the door.
“I think the rain is easing up,” he said. “I’ll go get the horses.”
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.
Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.
His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel), Brionne, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio publishing.
The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.
Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour publishing tradition forward.
Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour
NOVELS
Bendigo Shafter
Borden Chantry
Brionne
The Broken Gun
The Burning Hills
The Californios
Callaghen
Catlow
Chancy
The Cherokee Trail
Comstock Lode
Conagher
Crossfire Trail
Dark Canyon
Down the Long Hills
The Empty Land
Fair Blows the Wind
Fallon
The Ferguson Rifle
The First Fast Draw
Flint
Guns of the Timberlands
Hanging Woman Creek
The Haunted Mesa
Heller with a Gun
The High Graders
High Lonesome
Hondo
How the West Was Won
The Iron Marshal
The Key-Lock Man
Kid Rodelo
Kilkenny
Killoe
Kilrone
Kiowa Trail
Last of the Breed
Last Stand at Papago Wells
The Lonesome Gods
The Man Called Noon
The Man from Skibbereen
The Man from the Broken Hills
Matagorda
Milo Talon
The Mountain Valley War
North to the Rails
Over on the Dry Side
Passin’ Through
The Proving Trail
The Quick and the Dead
Radigan
Reilly’s Luck
The Rider of Lost Creek
Rivers West
The Shadow Riders
Shalako
Showdown at Yellow Butte
Silver Canyon
Sitka
Son of a Wanted Man
Taggart
The Tall Stranger
To Tame a Land
Tucker
Under the Sweetwater Rim
Utah Blaine
The Walking Drum
Westward the Tide
Where the Long Grass Blows
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Beyond the Great Snow Mountains
Bowdrie
Bowdrie’s Law
Buckskin Run
Dutchman’s Flat
End of the Drive
From the Listening Hills
The Hills of Homicide
Law of the Desert Born
Long Ride Home
Lonigan
May There Be a Road
Monument Rock
Night over the Solomons
Off the Mangrove Coast
The Outlaws of Mesquite
The Rider of the Ruby Hills
Riding for the Brand
The Strong Shall Live
The Trail to Crazy Man
Valley of the Sun
War Party
West from Singapore
West of Dodge
With These Hands
Yondering
SACKETT TITLES
Sackett’s Land
To the Far Blue Mountains
The Warrior’s Path
Jubal Sackett
Ride the River
The Daybreakers
Sackett
Lando
Mojave Crossing
Mustang Man
The Lonely Men
Galloway
Treasure Mountain
Lonely on the Mountain
Ride the Dark Trail
The Sackett Brand
The Sky-Liners
THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS
The Riders of the High Rock
The Rustlers of West Fork
The Trail to Seven Pines
Trouble Shooter
NONFICTION
Frontier
The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels
A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour
POETRY
Smoke from This Altar
BRIONNE
A Bantam Book / November 2004
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam edition published August 1968
New Bantam edition / July 1971
Bantam reissue / January 1996
Bantam reissue / May 2003
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1968 by Louis & Katherine L’Amour Trust
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