The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 3 Read online

  The boy had drawn as he turned, a flashing, beautifully timed draw. Ed Fuller caught the first bullet in his midsection as the boy fired. Thirty seconds later the youngster was in the saddle, riding out of town, leaving three Fullers dead and another dying. Now, suddenly, the face of that boy merged with that of Morgan Tanner. Of course! That was why there had always been something disturbingly familiar about the man.

  There was no turning back now. “I’ll stay here, Pete. The rest of you scatter out and find the cattle. When you find them, drive them out here.”

  “Those are not your cattle. We bought and paid for them.”

  Ollie Herndon did not leave. “Boss, let me go get him. I want him.”

  “Don’t be a fool!” Dunn was worried and his temper was short. “That’s the sheriff’s job.”

  He paused. “Anyway, you’re not in his class. Morgan Tanner is the one they used to call the Lowry kid.”

  “Aw, I don’t believe it! Why, that—!”

  “Mr. Dunn is right,” Ann Tanner replied, “and when he learns what you have done, he will kill you. I wish you would ride now. I wish you would leave the country before he finds you.”

  Herndon laughed. “Since when have you started carin’ about me?”

  “I don’t care about you. You’re a cheap, loud-mouthed braggart, and a coyote at heart. You’ve gotten away with a lot because you ride in Mr. Dunn’s shadow. I just do not want my husband to have to kill another man.”

  As they drove the cattle away, Ann looked after them, heartsick with worry and fear. Johnny appeared from the trees. “I seen ’em, Sis, but I didn’t know what to do. I figured I’d better ride to town after Morg.”

  “No,” she was suddenly thinking clearly, “you stay here and don’t let them burn us out. I’ll ride into town and see Sheriff Collins.”

  While Johnny was saddling her horse she hastily changed, fixed her hair, and got some papers from the strongbox.

  Collins was shocked. “Ma’am, you can’t do this! You can’t arrest Dunn for stealin’! Why, he’s the biggest cattleman in these parts!”

  “Nevertheless, I have sworn out a warrant for his arrest, and I want you to come with me.” She showed him the bill of sale for the cattle. “He has driven these cattle from my place, taking them by force, and Ollie Herndon struck me.” She indicated the bruise on her brow.

  “Sheriff, my husband is a Lowry. I want Wiley Dunn behind bars before my husband finds him.”

  “Just what happened out there, ma’am?” Reluctantly, he got to his feet. “Is that right? Is Morg the one they called the Lowry kid?”

  At her assent, he started for the door. “You come along, ma’am, if you will. I don’t want any killing here if it can be helped.”

  The Lowry kid was credited with nine men in all, but locally Morgan Tanner had been a quiet, reserved man, well-liked in the area, and always peaceful. Yet Collins knew the type. The West was full of them. Leave them alone and they were solid, quiet men who worked hard, morning until night; push them the wrong way and all hell would break loose.

  Suddenly Tanner was in the door. “Ann? What’s wrong? I thought I saw you come in here.” Then, “What’s happened to your head?”

  He listened, his face without expression, but as he turned to the door, Collins said, “Morg? Leave this to the law.”

  “All right. Except for Ollie. I’ll take care of him.”

  “You’re well-liked around here, Morg. You want to spoil that by killing a man?”

  “I won’t kill him unless I have to. I’ll just make him wish he was dead.”

  Wiley Dunn was talking with Ollie Herndon on the porch when Sheriff Collins, Morgan Tanner, and Ann rode into the ranch yard. By then there was a livid bruise where she had been struck.

  “Dunn,” Collins spoke apologetically, “I’ve got a warrant for your arrest. You and Ollie there. For rustlin’.”

  Ollie was watching Tanner. The expression in his eyes was almost one of hunger. “You huntin’ me?”

  “Pull in your neck,” Tanner said calmly, “you’ll have your turn.”

  Dunn’s face was flushed with anger. “You’d arrest me? For rustling?”

  “That’s right,” Collins said. “Mrs. Tanner has a bill of sale for those cattle you drove off. She bought ’em from the Bar Seven. Paid cash for ’em.”

  Dunn was appalled. “Look, this is a mistake. I thought—!”

  “The trouble is that you didn’t think at all,” Tanner cut him off. “You’ve let yourself get so fatheaded and self-centered you didn’t think at all.

  “Dunn, all I’ve ever wanted from you is peace. You’ve no legal right to any of that range you hold. You’ve used it and misused it. Right now you’re destroying the range with five thousand more cattle than the grass will carry.

  “If you want to know the truth, Dunn, I’ve given serious thought to sending word back to Texas for two dozen friends of mine to come in and settle on your range. They’d file on it legally, and they are fighters. You’d be lucky to keep the house you live in.”

  “Tanner, maybe I’ve been some kind of a blind fool, but you wouldn’t want to press those charges, would you? I might be able to beat your case, but I’d look the fool. You name the damages, and I’ll pay. That all right with you, Sheriff?”

  Collins waved a hand. “If Tanner drops his charges I’ll say no more.”

  Morgan Tanner looked at Dunn and could find no malice in his heart. All that had been washed away back on the Nueces. He wanted only peace now, and Ann.

  “No more trouble about Lonetree?”

  “No more trouble. That’s decent of you, Tanner. You had me over a barrel.”

  Herndon swore. “Boss? What’s come over you? Knucklin’ under to this plow-jockey? I’d see myself in—!”

  His voice broke off and he started to draw as Tanner turned.

  Tanner’s draw was smooth and much faster. His first shot broke Ollie’s arm at the elbow, spinning him half around. A second shot notched his ear, and as Ollie’s other hand grabbed at the bloody ear, another bullet cut the lobe on the remaining ear.

  Herndon turned and began to run clumsily. Tanner walked after him, gun poised. “You start riding, Herndon, and if you ever show up in this country again, I’ll kill you.

  “You aren’t a tough man. You wouldn’t make a pimple on a tough man’s neck. You’re a woman-beater. Now hit your saddle and get out of here.”

  Deliberately, he turned his back and walked to his own horse. He mounted, then glanced at the sheriff. “Thanks, Collins.”

  As Ann rode to him he looked around. “Have your boys drive those heifers back, Dunn. And drop around yourself sometime, for supper.”

  Farther along the road he said, “You know, that man Dunn might make a good neighbor. He’s pigheaded, but in his place I might have been just as bad. Anyway, what a man needs in this country is good neighbors.”

  Then he added, “We’d better hurry. Johnny’s apt to be worried, holdin’ the fort there by himself.”

  When they rode into the yard Johnny came out from the house, a rifle in the hollow of his arm. At last it was sundown on the Lonetree.

  That Slash Seven Kid

  Johnny Lyle rode up to the bog camp at Seep Spring just before noon. Bert Ramsey, foreman of the Slash Seven outfit, glanced up and nodded briefly. Ramsey had troubles enough without having this brash youngster around.

  “Say!” Johnny hooked a leg around the saddle horn. “Who’s this Hook Lacey?”

  Ramsey stopped walking. “Hook Lacey,” he said, “is just about the toughest hombre around here, that’s all. He’s a rustler and a horse thief, and the fastest hand with a gun in this part of the country since Garrett shot Billy the Kid.”

  “Ride alone?”

  “Naw. He’s got him a gang nigh as mean as he is. Nobody wants any part of them.”

  “You mean you let ’em get away with rustling? We’d never cotton to that back on the Nueces.”

  Ramsey turned away irritab
ly. “This ain’t the Nueces. If you want to be useful why don’t you go help Gar Mullins? The heel flies are driving cows into that quicksand faster’n he can drag ’em out.”

  “Sure.” Johnny Lyle swung his leg back over the saddle. “Only I’d rather go after Lacey and his outfit.”

  “What?” Ramsey turned on him. “Are you crazy? Those hombres, any one of ’em, would eat three like you for breakfast! If that bunch tackles us, we’ll fight, but we’ll not go huntin’ ’em!”

  “You mean you don’t want me to.”

  Ramsey was disgusted. What did this kid think he was doing, anyway? Like a fool kid, to make a big play in front of the hands, who were listening, to impress them how tough he was. Well, there was a way to stop that!

  “Why, no,” he said dryly. “If you want to go after those outlaws after you help Gar get the cattle out of the quicksand, go ahead.”

  Sundown was an hour past when Gar Mullins rode up to the corral at the Slash Seven. He stripped the saddle from his bronc, and after a quick splash and a wipe, he went in and dropped on a bench at the table.

  Old Tom West, the owner, looked up.

  “Where’s the kid?” he asked. “Where’s my nephew? Didn’t he come in?”

  Gar was surprised. He glanced around the table.

  “Shucks, ain’t he here? He left me about three o’clock or so. Said Bert told him he could get Hook Lacey if he finished in time.”

  “What!” Tom West’s voice was a bull bellow. His under jaw shot out. “Bert, did you tell him that?”

  Ramsey’s face grew red, then pale. “Now, look, boss,” he protested, “I figured he was talking to hear hisself make a big noise. I told him when he helped Gar get all them cows out, he could go after Lacey. I never thought he’d be fool enough to do it.”

  “Aw!” Chuck Allen grinned. “He’s probably just rode into town! Where would he look for that outfit? And how could he find ’em when we ain’t been able to?”

  “We ain’t looked any too hard,” Mullins said. “I know I ain’t.”

  Tom West was silent. At last he spoke. “Nope, could never find ’em. But if anything happens to that boy, I’d never dare look my sister in the face again.” He glared at Bert Ramsey. “If anything does happen to him you’d better be halfway to the border before I hear it.”

  Johnny Lyle was a cheerful, easygoing, free-talking youngster. He was pushing eighteen, almost a man by western standards, and as old as Billy the Kid when Billy was leading one of the forces in the Lincoln County War.

  But Johnny was more than a brash, devil-may-care youngster. He had been born and raised on the Nueces, and had cut his riding teeth in the black chaparral between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. When his father died he had been fourteen, and his mother had moved East. Johnny had continued to hunt and wander in the woods of the Virginia mountains, but he had gone to New York several times each month.

  In New York he had spent a lot of time in shooting galleries. In the woods he had hunted, tracked, and enjoyed fistic battles with rugged mountaineers. He had practiced drawing in front of a mirror until he was greased lightning with a gun. The shooting galleries gave him the marksmanship, and in the woods he had learned to become even more of a tracker than he had learned to be in the brush country of his father, to which he returned for his summer vacations.

  Moreover, he had been listening as well as talking. Since he had been here on the Slash Seven, Gar Mullins had several times mentioned the rough country of Tierra Blanca Canyon as a likely hangout for the rustlers. It was believed they disposed of many stolen cattle in the mining camps to the north, having a steady market for beef at Victorio and in the vicinity.

  Tom West loved his sister and had a deep affection for his friendly, likable nephew, but Johnny was well aware that Tom also considered him a guest, and not a hand. Mullins could have told him the kid was both a roper and a rider, and had a lot of cow savvy, but Mullins rarely talked and never volunteered anything.

  Johnny naturally liked to be accepted as an equal of the others, and it irritated him that his uncle treated him like a visiting tenderfoot. And because he was irked, Johnny decided to show them, once and for all.

  Bert Ramsey’s irritable toleration of him angered him.

  Once he left Mullins, when the cattle were out of the quicksand, he headed across the country through Sibley Gap. He passed through the gap at sundown and made camp at a spring a few miles beyond. It could be no more than seven or eight miles farther to the canyon of which Mullins had talked, for he was already on the Tierra Blanca.

  At daybreak he was riding. On a sudden inspiration, he swung north and cut over into the trail for Victorio.

  The mining town had the reputation of being a rugged spot, and intended to keep it. The town was named after the Apache chieftain who had several times taken a bad whipping trying to capture the place. Several thousand miners, gamblers, gunmen, and outlaws made the place a good one to steer clear of. But Johnny Lyle had not forgotten the talk about Slash Seven beefs being sold there by rustlers.

  Johnny swung down from his horse in front of the Gold Pan Restaurant and walked back to a corral where he saw several beef hides hanging. The brand was Seven Seventy-seven, but when he turned the hide over he could see it had been changed from a Slash Seven.

  “Hey!” A bellow from the door brought his head up. “Git away from those hides!”

  The man was big. He had shoulders like the top of an upright piano and a seamed and battered face.

  Johnny walked to the next hide and the next while the man watched. Of the five fresh hides, three of them were Slash Sevens. He turned just in time to meet the rushing butcher.

  Butch Jensen was big, but he was no mean rough-and-tumble scrapper. This cowhand was going to learn a thing or two.

  “I told you to get away!” he shouted angrily, and drew back his fist.

  That was his first mistake, for Johnny had learned a little about fighting while in New York. One thing was to hit from where your fist was. Johnny’s fist was rubbing his chin when Jensen drew his fist back, and Johnny punched straight and hard, stepping in with the left.

  The punch was short, wicked, and explosive. Jensen’s lips mashed under hard knuckles and his hands came up. As they lifted, Johnny turned on the ball of his left foot and the toe of his right, and whipped a wicked right uppercut into Jensen’s huge stomach.

  Butch gasped, and then Johnny hit him with both hands and he went down. Coolly, Johnny waited for him to get up. And he got up, which made his second mistake. He got up and lunged, head down. A straight left took him over the eyebrow, ripping a gash, and a right uppercut broke his nose. And then Johnny Lyle went to work. What followed was short, interesting, and bloody. When it was over Johnny stood back.

  “Now,” he said, “get up and pay me sixty dollars for three Slash Seven steers.”

  “Sixty!” Butch Jensen spluttered. “Steers are going for twelve, fifteen dollars!”

  “The steers you butchered are going at twenty dollars,” Johnny replied calmly. “If I ever find another hide around here, the price will be thirty dollars.”

  He turned away, but when he had taken three steps, he stopped. There was a good crowd around, and Johnny was young. This chance was too good to miss.

  “You tell Hook Lacey,” he said, “that if he ever rustles another head of Slash Seven stock I’ll personally come after him!”

  Johnny Lyle swaggered just a little as he walked into the Gold Pan and ordered a meal.

  Yet as he was eating he began to get red around the ears. It had been a foolish thing to do, talking like that. Folks would think he was full of hot air.

  Then he looked up into a pair of wide blue eyes. “Your order, sir?”

  Two days later Chuck Allen rode up to the ranch house and swung down. Bert Ramsey got up hastily from his chair.

  “Chuck,” he asked eagerly, “you see him?”

  Chuck shook his head. “No,” he said, “I ain’t seen him, but I seen his trail. Y
ou better grab yourself a bronc, Bert, and start fogging it for the border. That kid’s really started something.”

  The door opened and Tom West came out. “What’s up?” he demanded. His face was gray with worry. “Confound it, what’s the matter with these hands? Two days now I’ve had you all ridin’ to find that kid, and you can’t turn up a clue! Can’t you blind bats even find a tenderfoot kid?”

  Chuck grew a little red around the ears, but his eyes twinkled as he looked at Bert out of the corner of his eyes. “I crossed his trail, boss, and she’s some trail, believe you me!”

  West shoved Bert aside. “Don’t stand there like a slab-sided jackass! What happened? Where is he?”

  Chuck was taking his time. “Well,” he said, “he was in Victorio. He rode in there the morning after he left the ranch. He found a couple of Slash Seven hides hanging on Butch Jensen’s fence. They’d been burned over into Seven Seventy-sevens, but he found ’em, and then Butch Jensen found him.”

  “Oh, Lord!” West paled. “If that big brute hurt that kid, I’ll kill him!”

  “You won’t need no war paint,” Chuck said, aggravatingly slow, “because the kid took Butch to a swell three-sided whipping. Folks say Johnny just lit all over him, swinging in every direction. He whipped Butch to a frazzle!”

  “Chuck,” Bert burst out, “you’re crazy! Why, that kid couldn’t whip one side of—”

  “But he did,” Chuck interrupted. “He not only beat Butch up, but he made him pay for three head at twenty dollars a head. He further told him that the next hide he found on Butch’s fence would cost him thirty dollars.”

  West swallowed. “And Butch took it?”

  “Boss, if you’d seen Butch you’d not ask that question. Butch took everything the kid could throw, which was plenty. Butch looks like he’d crawled face-first into a den of wildcats. But that ain’t all.”

  They waited, staring at Chuck. He rolled a smoke, taking his time.