The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Five Page 16

  “That’s right!” It was Shorty Carver from the barn. “Let go your belts easy! We’ve got you covered!”

  “I’m holding a shotgun, and there’s plenty of shells!” Win chimed in from the house.

  They hesitated, and I didn’t blame them. There were a dozen of them, but they could see the rifle from the barn, and the shotgun from the house. The rifle was a Spencer, firing a .56-caliber bullet of 360 grains. It took no great imagination to realize that while some of them might, and probably would, get away, the Spencer would account for several, and a man hit with a .56-caliber bullet doesn’t travel far. As for the shotgun, it had twin barrels, and that meant two dead men without reloading. As for me, I was tottering on my feet, but I’d missed only one shot of all I’d fired, and nobody wanted to gamble I’d miss more. It was a cinch anywhere from four to seven of them would hit dirt before the rest got away. And nobody was sure he wouldn’t be one of the seven.

  “To hell with it!” The black-mustached man who had recalled me from Sonora let go his belts, and it was a signal. They all did likewise.

  At that moment a half-dozen riders swept down the hill and into the yard. Two of them wore badges. I turned and walked slowly toward Hugh as Win and Maggie rushed from the house toward me.

  Dropping on one knee, I turned Hugh over gently. His eyes flickered open, and he looked at me. There was nothing anybody could do for him. Bill Keys hadn’t been missing any shots, and the only wonder was that Hugh was still alive.

  “Thanks, kid!” he whispered. “You were right on time! You an’ Mag…I’m glad! Real glad!” His breath sobbed in his lungs for three deep, agonized gasps, and then he spoke again. “Unc…le Tom…he told me why…left ranch…you. Knew I was…crook…. I was a fool.”

  We got him inside then, and along about three that morning, he hung up his spurs.

  In another room, I was having my own trouble, for I’d taken two slugs instead of one, and the Doc had to dig one of them out. It came hard, but I had a bullet to bite on while he probed for it. Mag was with me, with me all the time, although twice I sent her to see how Hugh was coming.

  He came out of it, Hugh did, just before the end, and when he did, I got out of bed and went in. Doc told me I was crazy, but I went.

  He looked up at me from the bed. “It’s all square, Hugh,” I said, “Tell Uncle Tom hello.”

  “You think I’ll see him?” he asked me, and his voice was mighty hoarse.

  “Sure you will!” I said. “Any cowhand might take a wrong trail once, or put the wrong brand on a cow! I think the Inspector up there can read your brand right!”

  “Thanks, kid,” he said. “When you grew up, you sure grew tall!”

  I took his hand then, and he was looking up at me when his eyes blinked and his grip tightened, then loosened. “He’s all yours, boy,” I said softly. “Let him have his head!”

  You know, I’ll swear he smiled…. It was really something, after all, to have a friend like Hugh.

  Waltz Him Around Again, Shadow

  Deke Murphy, wrangler for the Stockman’s Rodeo in Bluff Springs, drew back against the corral, his keen gray eyes on the girl who was passing with Bill Bly, the rodeo star. In the three days he had been in town, Deke had seen the girl several times—and had fallen completely in love with her. As for Bly, Deke would not have liked him even if he had not been with Carol Bell.

  The boots with their run-down heels, faded Levi’s and his patched wool shirt made Murphy a distinct contrast to the immaculate gray of Bly’s rodeo costume, but the contrast did not end there.

  Bill Bly was a splendidly built man, two hundred and ten pounds of muscle, and easily over six feet. He was cock of the walk, looked it, acted it, and wanted it known. Bill Bly was the hero of the rodeo world and Deke Murphy was an unknown, a hard-faced youngster who had dropped off a freight train and rustled a job handling stock for the rodeo.

  Bly and the girl halted by the corral and peered through the horizontal bars to watch the milling horses. “I’d like to ride that Highbinder horse,” Bly told the girl. “He’s the worst horse in this show an’ a man could make a good ride up on him. The judges always watch the men who come out on bad horses. The Highbinder’s never been rode.”

  He glanced tolerantly at Deke, who leaned against the corral, eyes for nothing and nobody but Carol Bell, “That Highbinder’s plenty bad, ain’t he, boy?”

  Deke Murphy bristled. He disliked being called “boy.” He was all of twenty-two, and they had been rough years, even by the standards of the West. “Not really,” he said.

  A shadow of dislike appeared in Bly’s eyes. He was used to being yessed by the wranglers. “I suppose you could ride him?” he suggested sarcastically.

  “I reckon,” Deke said calmly. “Anyway, he’s easy compared to that Shadow horse.” He nodded toward the lean, narrow-headed grulla that idled alone near the far wall of the corral. “Shadow will pitch circles around him!”

  Bly looked for the first time at the sleepy, mouse-colored horse. “Him? He couldn’t buck four sour apples!” Bly glanced again at Murphy. “If you think you can ride the Highbinder,” he said, with amusement, “you should be in the show! You’d be better than half the riders we’ve got! Maybe better than all of them!”

  “Maybe,” Deke said shortly, starting to turn away. But Bly’s voice stopped him, and he turned back.

  “Just for fun,” Bly said, “an’ since you’re such a good rider, I’ll bet you twenty bucks you can’t stay up ten seconds on Sonora, there.”

  Sonora, a mean-eyed buckskin with a splash of white on one hip, stared thoughtfully at them. Deke glanced at him.

  “I can ride him,” he said.

  “Then put up your money! Talk is cheap!” Bly taunted.

  Deke flushed. “I can ride him!” he said stubbornly, but he glanced left and right, looking for an escape.

  “Come on!” Bly insisted, his eyes sneering at Deke under the guise of affability. “You said you could ride him! Let’s see you do it! Put up your money!”

  Several people had gathered around, and among them was a man of sixty-odd years, a white-haired man with keen blue eyes and a worn Stetson.

  “Don’t insist, Bill!” Carol said gently. “Maybe he doesn’t feel like riding!”

  “All right, honey.” Bly looked back at Murphy. “Don’t let me hear any more of that big talk! You got to put up or shut up,” he said sharply.

  Slowly the crowd drifted away and Deke Murphy turned miserably toward the corral, leaning against it, his head down. He had been made to look like a four-flusher. Anyway you take it, she would think he was a piker, a loudmouth. But how could he admit he didn’t have twenty dollars? Or ten, or even five? How could he admit in front of Carol that he was broke?

  She didn’t know him, and she probably never would. She would not care, but he did. He cared desperately. From the first moment he had seen her, he knew she was the girl for him, and yet the gulf that separated them was bottomless.

  “You think that Shadow horse can buck?” The voice was friendly.

  Murphy looked up. “You just bet he can buck!” he said sharply. “Highbinder won’t come near him!”

  “You seen him?” the man persisted. It was the oldish man with the blue eyes and white hair, his brown face seamed and wind worn.

  “Me? Why, uh, not exactly.” Deke’s words stumbled and he hesitated. “A friend of mine told me about him.”

  “I see.” The old man nodded. “I’m Tim Carson. Been around long?”

  “Just pulled in,” Deke admitted. “I don’t know nobody here. Saw this rodeo, an’ braced ’em for a job feedin’ an’ waterin’ stock.”

  “Got any money?”

  Deke’s head came up sharply, his eyes cold and bitter. “That just ain’t none of your business!” he said.

  Carson shrugged. “If you had money you wouldn’t get so het up about it,” he said. “Figured you might need a few bucks for grub an’ such.”

  Murphy studied him susp
iciously.

  “What do I have to do?” he demanded. “I won’t do nothing crooked an’ I won’t take money for nothin’.”

  “I figured on a loan, but if you want to earn it—” Carson waved a hand at the buckskin. “Throw a saddle on that horse an’ I’ll pay off if you ride him.”

  “How much?” Deke demanded.

  “Oh, say twenty bucks!” Carson suggested.

  “What you want to see me ride him for?” Deke asked cautiously.

  “See if I’m right or not,” Carson said. “I figure I know folks. I figure the only reason you wouldn’t get up on that horse was because you didn’t have the money to bet an’ wouldn’t admit it in front of that girl.”

  “Old man,” Deke said, “you figure too darn close. Now put up your money.”

  “It’s in my pocket,” Carson said. “You get a saddle an’ we’ll ride this horse.”

  Without another word Deke went off to get a saddle, and as he walked away Carol Bell came from between the buildings, slapping her boots with a quirt. “Uncle Tim,” she demanded, “what are you up to now? Why do you want that boy to ride that horse?”

  DEKE MURPHY CAME BACK trailing a saddle which he grasped by the horn, and with a bridle over his shoulder. With the help of Carson he saddled and bridled the buckskin. The arena was empty at this early hour and Deke climbed the bars of the chute to mount the horse. Carol had drawn back to one side, and he had not seen her. He dropped into the saddle and Carson turned the horse loose.

  The buckskin made a run for the center of the arena, skidded to halt with his head down, and when his rider stayed in the saddle, scratching with both heels, the buckskin swapped ends three times as fast as he could move and then buck-jumped all over the arena, ending his spurt and the ten seconds by sunfishing wildly for three full seconds. Carson yelled, and Deke unloaded hurriedly.

  Together they caught up the buckskin and led him back to the corral. “They’ll raise Old Nick when they find out I rode this horse!” Deke said worriedly.

  “Forget it. I know them.” He dug into his pocket—“An’ here’s your twenty bucks, son. Good luck!”

  “Thanks,” Deke said, gripping the twenty and staring at it with unbelieving eyes. “Man, that’s the fastest money I ever made!”

  Carson studied him. “You ride mighty well, son. Ever do any ridin’ in a rodeo?”

  Deke looked up, hesitated, then shook his head. “Not exactly,” he replied. “I’d better beat it. I’ve got a lot of work to do an’ I want to go up to town for a little bit!”

  Tim Carson watched him go, glanced toward the place where his niece had been watching, and seeing she was gone, he turned toward the office with purposeful strides. “It’s him!” he said grimly. “I’d bet money it’s the same kid!”

  DEKE MURPHY WALKED DOWN the town’s dusty, banner-hung street and turned into a general store. “I want to buy a new pair of Levi’s,” he said, “an’ a shirt, a good shirt!”

  A half an hour later, with the new clothes on and a good meal under his belt, he walked back to the corrals. It would soon be time for the parade down the main street that would end at the rodeo grounds, and then the Grand Entry Parade that would open the show. He would have much to do.

  In his pocket were three dollars and some change, but he felt better. Still a far cry from the glamorous clothes of the rodeo stars, his were at least neat, and he looked much better than in the shabby clothes he had been wearing, too redolent of the stable, and slept in too many times.

  There was a job to do here, and he had to get on with it. He shook his head over his dislike of Bill Bly. It would never do to have trouble with him. All he knew was horses and cattle, and if he made an enemy of Bly he would be blackballed around every rodeo in the country. And he wanted very much to stick close to rodeos. The man he was looking for was somewhere around them, and if he looked long enough, somehow he would find him. Wherever the man was, he still wore the brand Deke Murphy had given him.

  TIM CARSON WATCHED him return to his job in the new clothes and studied him through careful eyes. The build was similar. The kid was lean and rugged, muscular, but not big. He carried himself well and moved well. It could be the same one.

  Bill Bly watched his horse being saddled for him and then turned to greet Carol as she walked up. “Hello, Bill.” She smiled up at him. “Say, it’s lucky that kid didn’t take you up on your bet this morning. Uncle Tim offered him twenty dollars to ride the buckskin, and the kid rode him—scratched him high, wide, and handsome!”

  Bly’s brows tightened a little. “He did? Well, good for him!” His words were affable, but there was none of that in his mood. Deke had irritated him, and he did not like being irritated. Moreover, he had decided that Deke was a loudmouth and he disliked being proved wrong.

  Another idea struck him. “Why did your uncle do that?”

  “Oh, there’s no accounting for Uncle Tim! He’s liable to do anything! But it isn’t that this time: he’s interested in this fellow, I can see it. He was watching him like a cat all the time.”

  “I wonder why?” Bly remarked absently. He was thinking of how he would look in the parade with this girl beside him. Old Curly Bell’s only child—not a bad idea, marrying her.

  “I don’t know,” Carol said, “but Uncle Tim’s funny. He used to be a United States marshal, you know. Over in Nevada.”

  Bly turned abruptly. “In Nevada, you say?” He caught himself. “You’d never suspect it. He seems so quiet.”

  “I know, but he’s that way. He’s still angry, and has been for the past three years over that gold shipment robbery.”

  “Oh, yes! I recall something about it, I think. The bandits held up a train and got away with two hundred thousand dollars in freshly minted gold, wasn’t that it?”

  “I guess so. Uncle Tim believes that gold is still intact and has never been used, that it is cached somewhere.”

  “But he’s not even an officer anymore, is he?”

  “No, but that doesn’t matter to Uncle Tim. In fact, I’ve heard him say more than once that he believed the thieves would come back, that the gold was hidden someplace not too far from here, in the mountains.”

  “You think that’s why he’s interested in this Murphy kid? One of the bandits was supposed to be no more than a boy. He was the one who killed the messenger.”

  “Oh, no!” The protest was sharp, dismayed. For some reason the idea frightened and disturbed Carol. It had not occurred to her before that such might be the reason for her uncle’s interest in Deke Murphy.

  Carol Bell would not have admitted her interest in Deke Murphy even to herself. In fact, she was scarcely aware of that interest, yet she remembered what he had practically told her uncle, that Deke had not wanted to be shown up as being broke in front of her.

  She was a thoroughly aware young lady, and had seen his eyes follow her from place to place, and his interest pleased her. Moreover, he could ride. She had seen him ride, and she was enough of a rider herself to know that he would compare favorably with many of the contest hands.

  IN THE OFFICE, after calling his wire through to the telegraph office, Tim Carson turned to Tack Hobson. “Hobby,” he said, “you know that Shadow horse? How many shows has he been in and where were they?”

  “Funny you should ask that,” Hobson remarked, “but he’s never been ridden by anybody, an’ he’s shown in just four rodeos…all of them in prisons.”

  “I see. Was the Highbinder in any of these shows?”

  “One of them. He was ridden once by a convict.” Hobson stoked his pipe. “Reason I said it was funny you should ask is that you’re the second man who asked that question. Bill Bly was in here, just a few minutes ago. He wanted to know the same thing.”

  DEKE MURPHY HAD NO IDEA just how he was to find his man, or exactly what he would do when he found him. From the moment he had been released from prison that had been his one idea. He had been framed and framed badly, and had done two years for a crime in which he had n
o part.

  It had been a dark night when he had ridden up from his last camp near Singing Mountain, a tough and lonely kid, eager only to escape from his home in the Robber’s Roost country and to find an honest job. Riding since he could first remember, he had lived a lonely life back in the brakes with his mother and his stepfather.

  His stepfather had been a kindly man around home, and despite the fact that he was a rustler, had been a good father and a good husband, yet Deke’s mother had reared him to be an honest man, and had made him promise that when he was old enough he would leave the Roost behind and start out on his own. His mother had died of pneumonia, alone and unattended except by himself, and his stepfather had been killed in a gunfight shortly after. Deke, true to his promise, had left the Roost behind.

  He rode for a ranch in Utah, then one in Nevada, and started down the country looking to get himself as far from the Roost as possible. Leaving Singing Mountain, broke and without food, he had come upon an outlaw camp on the site of Sand Springs.

  Three men had loafed by the fire. Deke knew all three, and about only one of them could he say anything good. Frank Wales had been a friend of his father’s, an outlaw, but a man of some decency. Jerry Haskell and Cass Kubela he knew mostly by reputation but their reputation wasn’t anything his mother would have approved of.

  “Hey,” Kubela had said, sitting up, “how about the kid? When we take the next shipment he could be the fifth man.”

  Wales glanced at him. “The kid’s no outlaw,” he said. “Leave him out of this!”

  Jerry Haskell was a lean, dry whip of a man with a saturnine expression in his black eyes. He had killed two men that Deke knew about. “He’s in now,” he said, “he knows us an’ he’s seen us. Whether he likes it or not, he’s in.”

  “I’m in nothing!” Deke had said hotly. “I’m ridin’ through. Figured I might get me a bait of grub, then ride on. I ain’t seen nothin’, don’t know nothin’!”

  At Wales’s invitation, he ate, eager only to finish and get away. That the three were waiting for their leader to get back, he knew. That they had just committed a robbery and were planning the holdup of a shipment from the mines, he soon learned. He knew Wales was his only friend here, but the older man would not dare go against the two seasoned outlaws. Cass Kubela had killed more than one man. A short, tough fellow with narrow eyes and big hands, he was even more dangerous than Haskell. Of the three here, Wales was without doubt the weakest link.