The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 7 Page 14

  He staggered, splashing, toward higher ground. There he looked back, and saw that almost an acre of water had already gathered behind his crude dam. A little work would make it more effective.

  Memory returned, and he realized he had been shot at. Shot at the instant before the explosion by someone perched on the very rocks he was blasting! Whoever that unknown marksman had been, he was dead now. Survival, where he had been perched, was out of the question.

  A half hour of staggering and falling brought him to his horse, which looked up quickly at the sight of him, tossing his head at the smell of blood. It was no more than fifteen minutes of riding to the house. All was dark and still.

  Carefully, Rock considered this. Had Leosa been at home, she would certainly have a light. Moreover, she would be awaiting supper. The time he roughly estimated to be nine or past, but she knew he was working and would have heard the explosion. Had she gone out looking for him? Stealthily, he rode nearer, then dismounted. Ten minutes of careful searching proved the house, barn, and the whole ranch was empty. The stove was cold, no dishes on the table. No evidence that a meal had been prepared.

  Squinting against the stinging pain in his cheek and forehead, he tried to assemble his thoughts. Somehow they must have gotten her out of here, believing him dead. Van Rorick had acted to seize the ranch.

  The gray he was riding had a liking for the trail and he let him take it. He ran like a scared rabbit until the town lights were plain, then Rock slowed him to a canter and then a walk. He swung down from the horse near the livery barn, loosened his guns in his holsters, and started up the street. Voices made him draw back into the shadows. Between two buildings he waited while two men drew near.

  “Hear about that gal out to the old Barron place? One said she was Barron’s niece? She skipped out with that tough-lookin’ hand who’s been hanging around there. Somebody said they was seen on the road to Cimarron, ridin’ out of the country.”

  “Good riddance, I’d say. I hear she carried on plenty!”

  Rock stared after them. Rorick was shrewd. His story was already going the rounds, and it was a plausible yarn. But what had happened to Leosa?

  He started up the street, moving more cautiously now. First, he must see Whiting. The lawyer would know what to do, and would start a search here. Then he would head for Rorick’s own ranch.

  It was possible that Rorick had killed the girl at once, or that Lute Wilson had. But the man on the rock before the explosion was probably Lute. Rorick was too smart to take such chances himself. It had been only bad luck that got Lute, however, for the man could not have known of the loaded holes and spitted fuses.

  Rock climbed the stairs, then pushed open the lawyer’s door. Rance Whiting’s office was dark and still. Fumbling in his pocket, he got a match and lighted it. Whiting was sprawled on the floor, his shirt bloody, his face white as death.

  Dropping to his knees, Rock found the lawyer had been stabbed twice, once in the back, once in the chest. The room was in wild disorder.

  Working swiftly, Rock got water and bathed the wounds, then bandaged them. The lawyer was still alive, and the first thing was to get the bleeding stopped. When he had him resting easily on the bed, Rock turned to the door. He was opening it when he heard the lawyer’s hoarse cry.

  Instantly, he turned back. “The papers,” Whiting whispered, “they …” His voice trailed feebly away. He had fainted.

  Leaving the light burning, Rock ran down the outside stairs to the street, glanced once at the saloon, and then ran up the street to old Doc Spencer’s home. In a few minutes he had the old man started toward Whiting’s office.

  Joe Rock stared at the Longhorn. This was his town. He owned the whole townsite by inheritance, and he intended to keep it, especially that part usurped by Van Rorick. He walked swiftly to the saloon and, from a position near the window, studied the interior. Rorick was there but he didn’t appear happy. The same slight-figured man who had been with him before was with him now. Lute was not, which was all the assurance Rock needed that the man was dead. It was undoubtedly his failure to return that worried Rorick.

  Circling swiftly, he came to the rear door, but reached it only to hear the front door open and close. When he looked in, Rorick and his friend had gone.

  From the street came a sound of horses’ hooves and then two men rode down the street and out of town. Hurrying to his own horse, Rock swung into the saddle and, kicking his feet into the stirrups, started in pursuit.

  Rorick set a fast pace. Rock let his mind leap ahead, trying to get the drift of the other man’s thinking. Wilson had not returned, and that could mean he had failed. It could also mean Wilson and Rock had killed each other. Rorick swung toward the Barron homestead, and drew up, staring toward it. Rock was no more than a hundred yards away and could see the men outlined against the sky.

  Seeing the house dark, they evidently decided that Rock had not returned there. They pushed on. When they reached the now dry creek, Rock heard a startled exclamation, and then the riders turned toward the dam. He saw them ride up to it and look around, heard a low-voiced conversation of which he could guess the sense but understand no word. Then they mounted and rode on.

  The course they followed now led deeper and deeper into the rocky canyons to the north. This was lonely country, and was not, Rock was aware, toward Rorick’s ranch. Suddenly the two men rode down into a hollow and disappeared.

  Rock drew up, straining his eyes into the night, holding his breath for any sound. There was none. He walked his horse a short way, and was about to go farther when his eyes caught a vague suggestion of light. Turning, he worked his way through some willows and saw among some boulders the darker blotch of a cabin from which gleamed two lighted windows!

  Swinging down, Rock stole toward the house, ghostlike in the night. She had to be here! His heart pounding, his mouth dry, all the fear he had been feeling all evening was now tight and cold within him. What if something had happened to her? What if she had been killed?

  A door opened and a man stepped out. He was a stranger. “I’ll put the horses up,” he said over his shoulder, “an’ grub’s ready.”

  The fellow carried a lantern and he walked toward a rock barn that stood close under a cliff. Joe Rock followed, and moved in behind him. The man placed the lantern on the ground and reached for a bridle.

  In that instant Rock’s forearm went across his throat and jammed a knee into the startled man’s back, jerking him off balance. Then Rock turned him loose, but before he could get breath to yell a warning, Rock slugged him in the wind. He doubled up, and Rock struck him again. Then he grabbed him by the throat and shoved him against the wall. He was trembling with fury. “Is that girl in there? Is she safe?”

  The fellow gasped and choked. “She … she’s all right! Don’t kill me! For Lord’s sake, man!”

  “Who’s in there?” Rock demanded in a hoarse whisper.

  “Just them two. Beal ’n’ Milt Blue.”

  Joe Rock froze. Then he said carefully, “Who did you say? Art Beal and Milt Blue? The outlaws?”

  “They ain’t sky pilots,” the man said, growling.

  “You mean Beal is the hombre known in town as Rorick?”

  “Yeah, maybe.” The man was talking freely now. “He said there’d be no trouble. I ain’t no outlaw! I just needed a few dollars.”

  Roughly, Rock bound and gagged the man. He was aware now of his real danger, and of Leosa’s danger. If Rorick was Art Beal, that accounted for some of the six years he had been away from Joe Billy, and also let Rock know just what sort of a man Rorick was. Yet for all of that, the real risk lay in facing Milt Blue, the gunslinger.

  He left the man bound on the dirt floor of the barn, and started for the house. He carried the lantern with him, wanting them to believe he was their helper. As he neared the door he shifted the lantern to his left hand and drew his gun. Then he opened the door and stepped in.

  Only Leosa was looking toward the door, and her eyes
widened. Her expression must have warned them, for as one man they turned. Instantly, as though it had been rehearsed, Leosa threw her body against Rorick, knocking him off balance.

  Rock had his feet spread and his gun ready. “Drop it, Blue!” he yelled.

  The gunman grabbed iron. His gun leaped free with amazing speed, and as the muzzle cleared the holster Rock shot him in the stomach. He was slammed back by the force of the bullet, but fought doggedly and bitterly to get his gun up. Despite the fierce struggle against the wall, where Leosa fought desperately with Rorick, Rock took his time. He fired again. Blue’s eyes glazed and the gun slid from his hand.

  Rock turned and instantly Leosa let go and stepped back. Van Rorick stared across the room. “You think you’ve won!” he cried. “Well, you haven’t! I got the papers! I burned them! Burned every last one of them! You’ve lost everything! And I sold my claim on her place, so you’ll lose that, too! And now I’m going to kill you.”

  His right hand had dangled behind him, and now it swung up, clutching a gun. Rock’s pistol leaped in his hand, and the room thundered with a shot. Rorick’s face twisted and he stepped back, shocked with realization. Awareness of death hit him, and his eyes widened, then his mouth dropped open and he crumpled to the floor.

  Rock caught Leosa in his arms and hurried her to the door.

  DOC SPENCER MET THEM when they reached the top of the office stairs. “He’s in bad shape, but he’ll pull through,” he told them. “Few minutes ago he was conscious, an’ he said to tell you the papers are stuck behind his volume of Horace. Those he left for Rorick to find were fakes he fixed up. He figured on somethin’ like this.”

  They walked back down the steps to the silent street. Almost unconsciously, they were holding hands.

  “Rock,” Leosa asked gently, “what will you do now? You own the town? I heard you did.”

  “I’m goin’ to give all these folks who shape up right deeds to their property. It ain’t worth so much, anyway. The Longhorn I’ll sell.”

  “What about you?” she asked, looking up at him.

  “Me? … Why, I was thinkin’ of ranchin’ an’ watchin’ hay crops grow out on the Barron place … with my wife.”

  His Brother’s Debt

  You’re yellow, Casady!” Ben Kerr shouted. “Yellow as saffron! You ain’t got the guts of a coyote! Draw, curse you. Fill your hand so I can kill you!” Kerr stepped forward, his big hands spread over his gun butts. “Go ahead, reach!”

  Rock Casady, numb with fear, stepped slowly back, his face gray. To right and left were the amazed and incredulous faces of his friends, the men he had ridden with on the O Bar, staring unbelieving.

  Sweat broke out on his face. He felt his stomach retch and twist within him. Turning suddenly, he plunged blindly through the door and fled.

  Behind him, one by one, his shamefaced, unbelieving friends from the O Bar slowly sifted from the crowd. Heads hanging, they headed homeward. Rock Casady was yellow. The man they had worked with, sweated with, laughed with. The last man they would have suspected. Yellow.

  Westward, with the wind in his face and tears burning his eyes, his horse’s hoofs beating out a mad tattoo upon the hard trail, fled Rock Casady, alone in the darkness.

  Nor did he stop. Avoiding towns and holding to the hills, he rode steadily westward. There were days when he starved and days when he found game, a quail or two, killed with unerring shots from a six-gun that never seemed to miss. Once he shot a deer. He rode wide of towns and deliberately erased his trail, although he knew no one was following him or cared where he went.

  Four months later, leaner, unshaven, and saddle weary, he rode into the yard of the Four Spoke Wheel. Foreman Tom Bell saw him coming and glanced around at his boss, big Frank Stockman.

  “Look what’s comin’. Looks like he’s lived in the hills. On the dodge, maybe.”

  “Huntin’ grub, most likely. He’s a strappin’ big man, though, an’ looks like a hand. Better ask him if he wants a job. With Pete Vorys around, we’ll have to be huntin’ strangers or we’ll be out of help!”

  The mirror on the wall of the bunkhouse was neither cracked nor marred, but Rock Casady could almost wish that it was. Bathed and shaved, he looked into his own tortured eyes and then looked away.

  People had told him many times that he was a handsome man, but when he looked into his eyes he knew he looked into the eyes of a coward.

  He had a yellow streak.

  The first time—well, the first time but one—that he had faced a man with a gun he had backed down cold. He had run like a baby. He had shown the white feather.

  Tall, strongly built, skillful with rope or horse, knowing with stock, he was a top hand in any outfit. An outright genius with guns, men had often said they would hate to face him in a shoot-out. He had worked hard and played rough, getting the most out of life until that day in the saloon in El Paso when Ben Kerr, gunman and cattle rustler, gambler and bully, had called him, and he had backed down.

  TOM BELL WAS a knowing and kindly man. Aware that something was riding Casady, he told him his job and left him alone. Stockman watched him top off a bad bronc on the first morning and glanced at Bell.

  “If he does everything like he rides, we’ve got us a hand!”

  And Casady did everything that well. A week after he had hired out he was doing so much work as any two men. And the jobs they avoided, the lonely jobs, he accepted eagerly.

  “Notice something else?” Stockman asked his foreman one morning. “That new hand sure likes the jobs that keep him away from the ranch.”

  Stockman nodded. “Away from people. It ain’t natural, Tom. He ain’t been to Three Lakes once since he’s been here.”

  Sue Landon looked up at her uncle. “Maybe he’s broke!” she exclaimed. “No cowhand could have fun in town when he’s broke!”

  Bell shook his head. “It ain’t that, Sue. He had money when he first come in here. I saw it. He had anyway two hundred dollars, and for a forty-a-month cowpoke, that’s a lot of money!”

  “Notice something else?” Stockman asked. “He never packs a gun. Only man on the ranch who doesn’t. You’d better warn him about Pete Vorys.”

  “I did.” Bell frowned. “I can’t figure this hombre, Boss. I did warn him, and that was the very day he began askin’ for all the bad jobs. Why, he’s the only man on the place who’ll fetch grub to Cat McLeod without bein’ bullied into it!”

  “Over in that Rock Canyon country?” Stockman smiled. “That’s a rough ride for any man. I don’t blame the boys, but you’ve got to hand it to old Cat. He’s killed nine lions and forty-two coyotes in the past ninety days! If he keeps that up we won’t have so much stock lost!”

  “Too bad he ain’t just as good on rustlers. Maybe,” Bell grinned, “we ought to turn him loose on Pete Vorys!”

  ROCK CASADY KEPT his palouse gelding moving steadily. The two pack-horses ambled placidly behind, seemingly content to be away from the ranch. The old restlessness was coming back to Casady, and he had been on the Four Spoke only a few weeks. He knew they liked him, knew that despite his taciturn manner and desire to be alone, the hands liked him as well as did Stockman or Bell.

  He did his work and more, and he was a hand. He avoided poker games that might lead to trouble and stayed away from town. He was anxiously figuring some way to be absent from the ranch on the following Saturday, for he knew the whole crowd was going to a dance and shindig in Three Lakes.

  While he talked little, he heard much. He was aware of impending trouble between the Four Spoke Wheel outfit and the gang of Pete Vorys. The latter, who seemed to ride the country as he pleased, owned a small ranch north of Three Lakes, near town. He had a dozen tough hands and usually spent money freely. All his hands had money, and while no one dared say it, all knew he was rustling.

  Yet he was not the ringleader. Behind him there was someone else, someone who had only recently become involved, for recently there had been a change. Larger bunches of cattle were bein
g stolen, and more care was taken to leave no trail. The carelessness of Vorys had given way to more shrewd operation, and Casady overheard enough talk to know that Stockman believed a new man was directing operations.

  He heard much of Pete Vorys. He was a big man, bigger than Rock. He was a killer with at least seven notches on his gun. He was pugnacious and quarrelsome, itching for a fight with gun or fists. He had, only a few weeks before, whipped Sandy Kane, a Four Spoke hand, within an inch of his life. He was bold, domineering, and tough.

  The hands on the Four Spoke were good men. They were hard workers, willing to fight, but not one of them was good enough to tackle Vorys with either fists or gun.

  Cat McLeod was scraping a hide when Rock rode into his camp in Blue Spring Valley. He got up, wiping his hands on his jeans and grinning.

  “Howdy, son! You sure are a sight for sore eyes! It ain’t no use quibblin’, I sure get my grub on time when you’re on that ranch! Hope you stay!”

  Rock swung down. He liked the valley and liked Cat.

  “Maybe I’ll pull out, Cat.” He looked around. “I might even come up here to stay. I like it.”

  McLeod glanced at him out of the corners of his eyes. “Glad to have you, son. This sure ain’t no country for a young feller, though. It’s a huntin’ an’ fishin’ country, but no women here, an’ no likker. Nothin’ much to do, all said an’ done.”

  CASADY UNSADDLED IN silence. It was better, though, than a run-in with Vorys, he thought. At least, nobody here knew he was yellow. They liked him and he was one of them, but he was careful.

  “Ain’t more trouble down below, is there? That Vorys cuttin’ up much?” The old man noted the gun Rock was wearing for the trip.

  “Some. I hear the boys talkin’ about him.”

  “Never seen him yourself?” Cat asked quizzically. “I been thinkin’ ever since you come up here, son. Might be a good thing for this country if you did have trouble with Vorys. You’re nigh as big as him, an’ you move like a catamount. An’ me, I know ’em! Never seen a man lighter on his feet than you.”