Novel 1969 - Conagher (v5.0) Page 14

  He rode to Socorro and headed for a cantina.

  The stage was standing on the street, and Charlie McCloud was boosting a trunk toward the top. He glanced around, saw Conagher, and said, “Hey, give me a hand here!”

  Together they got the trunk to the top and lashed it in place. McCloud dusted his hands, looking at Conagher thoughtfully. “I heard you were stopping over at Mrs. Teale’s. I kind of thought you two would get together.”

  Conagher stared at the ground, flushing. “Aw, Charlie, you know I ain’t the kind to stand hitched. I’m a drifter.”

  “How long have you been telling yourself that? You’re no more a drifter than I am. Look, Conn, if you’re smart you’ll find yourself a piece of ground and settle down. That there’s a fine woman.”

  “She is that. But she wouldn’t have the likes of me. What have I got to offer a woman?”

  McCloud chuckled. “Don’t ask me. Let her tell you. A woman can always find something in a man worth having. I think you’re a no-account saloon brawler who’d rather fight than eat, and the only things I can say good about you is that you do your job, you’re honest, and you never backed off from trouble.”

  “Yeah. You can put that on my marker when they bury me. ‘He never backed off from trouble.’ That’s just what’ll kill me, one of these days.”

  “Speaking of that, have you seen Kris Mahler? He’s carrying a chip on his shoulder over you.”

  “It’s one-sided. I’ve got no fight with him.”

  “Wasn’t he one of the Parnell crowd there for a while?”

  “I wouldn’t know, but that’s all over now, and I left that fight behind me.”

  “What are you aiming to do now?” McCloud asked.

  “Charlie, I’m going to get drunk. I’m going to get mean drunk and then sleepy drunk, and when I wake up I’m going to ride clean to Montana or Oregon or somewhere far off.”

  He crossed the street and entered the cantina.

  “Pedro,” he said, “give me a bottle and that table over there. I’m going to get drunk.”

  “But señor,” Pedro protested, “you do not get drunk! I have never seen you get drunk!”

  “Nevertheless, I think—”

  The door behind him swung inward. Conagher turned slowly. It was Kris Mahler.

  “I heard you were in town,” Mahler said. “So I came over to see what an honest man does when he’s away from home.”

  Conagher felt a sudden, vast impatience. He did not want to fight, but there were times when it could not be avoided. He suddenly knew that one of them was going to leave town or else they were going to fight; and then he knew that he, at least, was not going to leave. He was going to stay.

  He stood with his back to the bar watching Mahler with an expression of disgust.

  Mahler came on into the room and stopped, legs spread apart, staring at him. There were only two others in the cantina, Pedro and Charlie McCloud, who had come in through the side door.

  “Mahler, I’m minding my own business. I’m not looking for trouble.”

  “What’s the matter? You turned yellow?”

  “No, I just want no trouble. You’ve got it stuck in your craw because you rode off and I didn’t, so what does it matter? That was your business, so let it lay.”

  “Suppose I don’t want to?”

  Mahler was a big man, a broad, strong man, powerfully made and rugged. “Ever’where I go,” he said, “I hear what a tough man Conn Conagher is. Well, I’ve never seen any of your graveyards.”

  Conagher deliberately turned his back on Mahler and, taking up his bottle, crossed to the table he had chosen. He pulled out a chair and straddled it. Then he filled a glass.

  “Damn you, Conn!” Mahler shouted. “Listen to me!”

  “When you make sense, I’ll listen. Come and have a drink.”

  Mahler took two long strides and swept the bottle and glass from the table, knocking them into a corner.

  “All right,” Conagher said mildly, “if you don’t want to drink, pull up a chair and I’ll order some grub. Or we’ll just talk. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “That man you shot up in the hills back of Teale’s, that was Hi Jackson. He was my saddle partner.”

  Conagher lifted his eyes. His smile was gone and his eyes were bleak. “That man was a damn rustler and a thief, and he tried to shoot me in the back.”

  Mahler grabbed for his gun, and Conagher, whose foot was lifted against the under frame of the table, shot the table out with one smashing kick, knocking it into Mahler.

  He got up then and unbelted his guns and put them on the bar in front of Pedro.

  Kris Mahler had gone down hard, but now he was getting up and Conagher walked up to him and hit him with a work-hardened fist. The blow caught Mahler in the mouth and staggered him, but he came in swinging. Conagher caught one and went to his knees, started up and caught another, a straight left that stabbed him in the mouth, and a right cross on the chin. He staggered back and brought up hard against the bar. Mahler’s mouth was bloody, but he was smiling.

  “If you want to take a beating,” he said, “you’ll get it. Nobody ever whipped me with their fists yet, and nobody ever will.”

  He feinted, then crossed another right to the jaw. There was a smoky taste in Conagher’s mouth, and he knew a tooth had been broken. Mahler could punch, and not only that, but he knew how to fight with his fists.

  He came at Conagher, feinting, rolling to let Conn’s right go by, then smashing him with two wicked punches in the belly. Mahler half stepped back then, expecting Conagher to fall, but Conn merely weaved, threw a left and a right that missed, caught a stiff left in the mouth, and then suddenly he ducked his head and lunged in.

  The sudden attack when everything was going his way startled Mahler. He tried to side-step and bumped into a table, and Conagher smashed into him, knocking the table over and Mahler with it.

  Conagher dropped swiftly, his knee driving into Mahler’s stomach; then Conagher started to rise and as Mahler did the same Conagher’s knee smashed him under the chin, knocking him back to the floor.

  Mahler rolled over and Conagher sprang free, and as Mahler came up, Conagher went into him, hooking short and hard with both hands to the head and body. Shaken, Mahler backed up and tried to get set, but Conagher plunged into him, whipping up a wicked right to the wind, hooking a left that missed at close quarters, but smashing Mahler with an elbow.

  They fought toe to toe, coldly, furiously. Conagher lost all track of time. He caught smashing blows to the head and the body, but grimly he dug in, hanging in there like a bulldog, taking Mahler’s best shots and smashing back with both hands.

  He backed Mahler against the bar, took two driving blows going in, and then leaned his head against Mahler’s shoulder and ripped at his belly with short, wicked punches.

  Conagher could taste blood in his mouth, and he knew there was blood on his face. He was knocked down, and then again. He got up, and felt a hammer-like blow on the side of the face, but as he swung he caught Mahler’s arm and threw him hard against the piano. There was a thunder of sound and Mahler braced himself, but when he threw the punch Conagher went under it and ripped both hands to the wind, then moved back and brought up a right uppercut that broke Mahler’s nose and showered him with blood.

  Kris moved away. He kicked a chair out of the way for room in which to box. He jabbed, and jabbed again. He feinted, hooked a right to the chin, then tried the left, but Conagher had been waiting for it. He knocked the punch aside and whipped a lifting left into the solar plexus. Mahler’s knees buckled and he started to fall, and Conn hit him again with a right. Mahler fell and Conagher caught him by the collar and jerked him upright and hit him three times more before the bigger man could fall again. He went down then, and he lay still.

  Conagher stood over him, weaving and bloody, his shirt torn to shreds.

  At last Conagher turned away and fell against the bar.

  “You can have that bottle,”
Pedro said. “I give you the bottle.”

  “Don’t want it,” he mumbled, through broken lips. “I don’t need it.”

  He was thinking. He was putting things together. The hammering he had taken left a confusion of ideas in his mind that suddenly began to be less confused; they began to fall into place.

  Four hundred and twenty dollars in gold…Jacob Teale riding to buy cows…Jacob Teale never came back…a skeleton about one day’s ride east…a dried-up saddle and saddlebags…it had to be.

  He had both hands resting on the edge of the bar and drops of blood were welling from his nose, and there was blood in his mouth. He spat.

  His head was buzzing from the punches he had taken. He reached for his gunbelt in a staggering daze and buckled it on. Somebody handed him his hat.

  “Mr. Conagher?”

  It couldn’t be. Not here. Not in Socorro. He turned his battered face toward the glare from the door and there a woman stood, framed against the sunlight. He could not see her face. Only a dress, a right pretty dress when you thought of it.

  “Mr. Conagher? I think you should come home.”

  He stared at her. Home? He had no home. He took a step toward her and his knees buckled, but she caught him under the arm.

  “Mr. McCloud? Will you help me? I am afraid he’s hurt.”

  “Him? You couldn’t hurt him with an axe. There’s too much mule in him.”

  Conagher drew himself up. “Why did you come here?” he asked, swaying a little on his feet. He held his bandana against his bloody lips.

  She was a plain woman, some had said, but she was pretty now, Conagher was sure of it.

  “I…we need you, Mr. Conagher. I…we all felt lost…I don’t know what…”

  “There’s the Ladder Five,” he said, “that’s a good outfit. I mean with this money…it’s yours rightly…with this money we can buy some stock from Tay. We can make a start.”

  Kris Mahler rolled over and got up, his face twisting with pain. Holding his side he watched them go out the door. “I hit him,” he said, “I hit him with ever’thing I had, and he still came at me.”

  He staggered against the bar, staring at the still swinging doors.

  Outside Conagher fumbled in his pocket. He pulled out a small handful of shabby notes. “You…you wrote these, didn’t you? I remember out there that night you said something about the wind in the grass, and—”

  “I was lonely. I had to talk…to write to somebody, and there was no one.”

  “There was. There was me.”

  Back at the saloon Mahler shook his head. “I hit him,” he said again. “I hit him with ever’thing I had. What sort of man is he?”

  “He’s Conagher,” McCloud said, “and that’s enough.”

  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), Conagher, 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

  Education of a Wandering Man

  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

  CONAGHER

  A Bantam Book / August 2004

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam edition published in September 1969

  New Bantam edition published June 1971

  Bantam reissue / September 1994

  Bantam reissue / December 2001

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1969 by Louis & Katherine L’Amour Trust

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except