The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 7 Read online

  Krag chuckled. “Yeah,” he said, “I see what you mean. Now let’s get this stuff picked up. If we can get that press started, we’ll do a better job—and this time I’ll be standing beside you.”

  Two days later the paper hit the street, and copies of it swiftly covered the country.

  BIG RANCHERS WRECK JOURNAL PRESS

  Efforts of the big ranchers of the Squaw Creek Valley range to stifle the free press have proved futile….

  There followed the complete story of the wrecking of the press and the threats to Dan Riggs. Following that was a rehash of the two raids on the nesters, the accounts of the killings of Grimes and Leason, and the warning to the state at large that a full-scale cattle war was in the making unless steps were taken to prevent it.

  Krag Moran walked across the street to the saloon, and the bartender shook his head at him. “You’ve played hob,” he said. “They’ll lynch both of you now.”

  “No, they won’t. Make mine rye.”

  The bartender shook his head. “No deal. The boss says no selling to you or Riggs.”

  Krag Moran’s smile was not pleasant. “Don’t make any mistakes, Pat,” he said quietly. “Riggs might take that—I won’t. You set that bottle out here on the bar or I’m going back after it. And don’t reach for that shotgun! If you do, I’ll part your hair with a bullet.”

  The bartender hesitated and then reached carefully for the bottle. “It ain’t me, Krag,” he objected. “It’s the boss.”

  “Then you tell the boss to tell me.” Krag poured drink, tossed it off, and walked from the saloon.

  When Moran crossed the street, there was a sorrel mare tied in front of the shop. He glanced at the brand and felt his mouth go dry. He pushed open the door and saw her standing there in the half shadow—and Dan Riggs was gone.

  “He needed coffee,” Carol said quietly. “I told him I’d stay until you came back.”

  He looked at her and felt something moving deep within him, an old feeling that he had known only in the lonesome hours when he had found himself wanting someone, something … and this was it.

  “I’m back.” She still stood there. “But I don’t want you to go.”

  She started to speak, and then they heard the rattle of hoofs in the street and suddenly he turned and watched the sweeping band of riders come up the street and stop before the shop. Chet Lee was there, and he had a rope.

  Krag Moran glanced at Carol. “Better get out of here,” he said. “This will be rough.” And then he stepped outside.

  They were surprised and looked it. Krag stood there with his thumbs hooked in his belt, his eyes running over them. “Hi!” he said easily. “You boys figure on using that rope?”

  “We figure on hanging an editor,” Ryerson said harshly.

  Krag’s eyes rested on the old man for an instant. “Ryerson,” he said evenly, “you keep out of this. I have an idea if Chet wasn’t egging you on, you’d not be in this. I’ve also an idea that all this trouble centers around one man, and that man is Chet Lee.”

  Lee sat his horse with his eyes studying Krag carefully. “And what of it?” he asked.

  Riggs came back across the street. In his hand he held a borrowed rifle, and his very manner of holding it proved he knew nothing about handling it. As he stepped out in front of the cattlemen, Carol Duchin stepped from the print shop. “As long as you’re picking on unarmed men and helpless children,” she said clearly, “you might as well fight a woman, too!”

  Lee was shocked. “Carol! What are you doin’ here? You’re cattle!”

  “That’s right, Chet. I run some cows. I’m also a woman. I know what a home means to a woman. I know what it meant to Mrs. Hershman to lose her husband. I’m standing beside Riggs and Moran in this—all the way.”

  “Carol!” Lee protested angrily. “Get out of there! This is man’s work! I won’t have it!”

  “She does what she wants to, Chet,” Krag said, “but you’re going to fight me.”

  Chet Lee’s eyes came back to Krag Moran. Suddenly he saw it there, plain as day. This man had done what he had failed to do; he had won. It all boiled down to Moran. If he was out of the way … “Boss,” it was one of Ryerson’s men, “look out.”

  Ryerson turned his head. Three men from the nester outfit stood ranged at even spaces across the street. Two of them held shotguns, one a Spencer rifle. “There’s six more of us on the roofs,” Hedrow called down. “Anytime you want to start your play, Krag, just open the ball.”

  Ryerson shifted in his saddle. He was suddenly sweating, and Krag Moran could see it. Nevertheless, Moran’s attention centered itself on Chet Lee. The younger man’s face showed his irritation and his rage at the futility of his position. Stopped by the presence of Carol, he was now trapped by the presence of the nesters.

  “There’ll be another day!” He was coldly furious. “This isn’t the end!”

  Krag Moran looked at him carefully. He knew all he needed to know about the man he faced. Chet Lee was a man driven by a passion for power. Now it was the nesters, later it would be Ryerson, and then, unless she married him, Carol Duchin. He could not be one among many; he could not be one of two. He had to stand alone.

  “You’re mistaken, Chet,” Moran said. “It ends here.”

  CHET LEE’S EYES swung back to Krag. For the first time he seemed to see him clearly. A slow minute passed before he spoke. “So that’s the way it is?” he said softly.

  “That’s the way it is. Right now you can offer your holdings to Ryerson. I know he has the money to buy them. Or you can sell out to Carol, if she’s interested. But you sell out, Chet. You’re the troublemaker here. With you gone I think Ryerson and Hedrow could talk out a sensible deal.”

  “I’ll talk,” Hedrow said quietly, “and I’ll listen.”

  Ryerson nodded. “That’s good for me. And I’ll buy, Chet. Name a price.”

  Chet Lee sat perfectly still. “So that’s the way it is?” he repeated. “And if I don’t figure to sell?”

  “Then we take your gun and start you out of town,” Krag said quietly.

  Lee nodded. “Yeah, I see. You and Ryerson must have had this all figured out. A nice way to do me out of my ranch. And your quitting was all a fake.”

  “There was no plan,” Moran said calmly. “You’ve heard what we have to say. Make your price. You’ve got ten minutes to close a deal or ride out without a dime.”

  Chet Lee’s face did not alter its expression. “I see,” he said. “But suppose something happens to you, Krag? Then what? Who here could make me toe the line? Or gamble I’d not come back?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me.” Krag spoke quietly. “You see, Chet, I know your kind.”

  “Well,” Chet shrugged, glancing around, “I guess you’ve got me.” He looked at Ryerson. “Fifty thousand?”

  “There’s not that much in town. I’ll give you twelve, and that’s just ten thousand more than you hit town with.”

  “Guess I’ve no choice,” Chet said. “I’ll take it.” He looked at Krag. “All right if we go to the bank?”

  “All right.”

  Chet swung his horse to the right, but as he swung the horse he suddenly slammed his right spur into the gelding’s ribs. The bay sprang sharply left, smashing into Riggs and knocking him down. Only Krag’s quick leap backward against the print shop saved him from going down, too. As he slammed home his spur, Chet grabbed for his gun. It came up fast and he threw a quick shot that splashed Krag Moran’s face with splinters; then he swung his horse and shot, almost point blank, into Krag’s face!

  But Moran was moving as the horse swung, and as the horse swung left, Moran moved away. The second shot blasted past his face and then his own guns came up and he fired, two quick shots. So close was Chet Lee that Krag heard the slap of the bullets as they thudded into his ribs below the heart.

  Lee lost hold of his gun and slid from the saddle, and the horse, springing away, narrowly missed stepping on his face.

 
; Krag Moran stood over him, looking down. Riggs was climbing shakily to his feet, and Chet was alive yet, staring at Krag.

  “I told you I knew your kind, Chet,” Krag said quietly. “You shouldn’t have tried it.”

  Carol Duchin was in the cafe when Krag Moran crossed the street. He had two drinks under his belt and he was feeling them, which was rare for him. Yet he hadn’t eaten and he could not remember when he had.

  She looked up when he came through the door and smiled at him. “Come over and sit down,” she said. “Where’s Dan?”

  Krag smiled with hard amusement. “Getting money from Ryerson to buy him a new printing outfit.”

  “Hedrow?”

  “Him and the nesters signed a contract to supply Ryerson with hay. They’d have made a deal in the beginning if it hadn’t been for Chet. Hedrow tried to talk business once before. I heard him.”

  “And you?”

  He placed his hat carefully on the hook and sat down. He was suddenly tired. He ran his fingers through his crisp, dark hair. “Me?” he blinked his eyes and reached for the coffeepot. “I am going to shave and take a bath. Then I’m going to sleep for twenty hours about, and then I’m going to throw the leather on my horse and hit the trail.”

  “I told you over there,” Carol said quietly, “that I didn’t want you to go.”

  “Uh-uh. If I don’t go now,” he looked at her somberly, “I’d never want to go again.”

  “Then don’t go,” she said.

  And he didn’t.

  Death Song of the Sombrero

  Stretch Magoon, six-foot-five in his sock feet and lean as a buggy whip, put his grulla mustang down the bank of the wash, and cut diagonally across it toward the trail up the bank. His long, melancholy face seemed unusually sad.

  When the grulla scrambled up the bank, Stretch kept him to a slow-paced walk. The sadness remained in his eyes, but they were more watchful, almost expectant.

  The ramshackle house he was approaching was unpainted and dismal. Sadly in need of repair, the grounds around were dirty and unkempt, the corral a patchwork of odds and ends of rails, the shed that did duty for a barn little more than a roof over some rails where three saddles rode.

  Magoon’s eyes caught the saddles first, and the hard bronze of his face tightened. He reined up in the space between the shack and the shed. A big man loomed in the door, a bearded man with small, ugly eyes. “Howdy,” he said. “Wantin’ somethin’?”

  “Uh-huh.” Stretch dug out the makin’s and began to build a smoke. “Wantin’ t’ tell you all somethin’.” He finished his job, put the cigarette in his mouth, and struck a match on the side of his jeans. Then he looked up. Two men were there now; the bigger man had stepped outside, and a runty fellow with sandy hair and a freckled, ugly face stood in the door. One hand was out of sight.

  “As of this mornin’, come daylight,” he said, “I’m ramroddin’ the Lazy S.”

  “You’re what?” The big man walked two steps closer. “You mean, you’re the foreman? What’s become of Ketchell?”

  Stretch Magoon looked sadly down at the big man. “Why, Weidman, Ketchell did what I knowed he would do sooner or later. He was a victim of bad judgment. Ever’ time that man played a hand of poker, I could see it comin’.”

  “Get t’ the point!” Weidman demanded harshly. “What happened?”

  “We had us a mite of an argument,” Stretch said calmly, “an’ Ketchell thought I was bluffin’. He called. We both drawed a new hand an’ I led with two aces—right through the heart.”

  “Y’ killed Burn Ketchell?” Weidman demanded incredulously. “I don’t believe it!”

  “Well”—Stretch dropped his left hand to the reins—“dead or not, they are havin’ a buryin’. I reckon if he ain’t dead he’ll be some sore when he wakes up an’ finds all that dirt in his face.” He turned the mouse-colored mustang. “Oh yeah! That reminds me. We had the argument over suggestin’ t’ you that your Sombrero brand could be run mighty easy out of a Lazy S.”

  “Y’ accusin’ us o’ rustlin’?” Weidman demanded. His eyes flickered for an instant, and Stretch felt a little shiver of relief go through him. He knew where that third man was now. It had had him bothered some. The third man was beside the corner of the corral.

  His eyes dropped, and his heart gave a leap. The sun was beyond the corral, and he could see the shadow of that corner on the hard ground. He almost grinned as his eyes caught the flicker of movement.

  “I ain’t accusin’ you o’ nothin’. I ain’t sure. If I was sure, I wouldn’t be settin’ here talkin’. I’d be stringin’ your thick neck t’ a cottonwood. What I’m doin’ is givin’ you a tip that the fun’s over now. You can change your brand or leave the country. I ain’t p’tic’lar which.”

  “Why, you—” Weidman’s face was mottled and ugly, but he made the mistake of trusting too much to his dry-gulch attempt, and when Stretch Magoon drew, it was so fast he didn’t have a chance to match him. He was depending too much on that shot from the corral corner.

  Magoon’s eyes had been on the shadow, unnoticed by Weidman. Stretch had seen the rifle come up from past the corner of the corral, had waited it out, waited until it froze. Then he drew and fired in the same instant.

  He fired across his body, and too quickly. It had to be a snap shot because he needed to get his gun around and on the other two men. As it was, his bullet struck the man’s hand just where his left thumb lay along the rifle barrel.

  Very neatly it clipped the tip of the thumb and continued past to cut a furrow in the man’s cheek, cut the lobe from his ear, and bury itself in the ground beyond. It had the added effect of a blow behind the ear, and the marksman rolled over on the ground, knocked momentarily unconscious by the blow.

  Weidman’s gun was only half out, and Red Posner had not even started to draw when Magoon’s gun swung back in line. Weidman froze, then, very delicately, spread his fingers and let his gun slip back into its holster. His face was gray under the stubble of beard.

  “No hard feelin’s,” Stretch said quietly, “but I’m repeatin’. Change your brand or git!”

  He swung his horse and, watching warily, rode to the wash. Then, instead of following the trail up the other side, he whipped the mustang around and rode rapidly down the wash for a quarter of a mile. There it branched away to the left, and he took the branch. Well back in the cedars, he rode out of the wash and cut across country toward town.

  Despite himself, he was disturbed. Something about the recent action had not gone as he had expected. Barker had sent for him two weeks before, when the missing cattle from the Lazy S had begun to mount rapidly in numbers. In those two weeks, Stretch had ascertained two things: first, that Lazy S cattle were being branded, and then, while the brands were still fresh, drifted into the breaks across the range near the Sombrero spread of Lucky Weidman.

  Second, he had trailed Burn Ketchell and had actually caught him in the act of venting a brand. The change from a Lazy S to a Sombrero was all too simple for a handy man with a running iron.

  It was merely a matter of making an inverted U over the top bend of the Lazy S to make the crown of the Sombrero, and then running a burned line from the top of the S around and down to the lower tip. It was simple, perfectly simple.

  Burn Ketchell had been the brains behind the rustling. With Burn out of the way, Stretch had believed the rustling would be ended. Now, because of that attempted killing, he was not so sure.

  Lucky Weidman was crooked and he was dirty, but he was no fool. He would never have taken a chance of having Magoon killed on his place after rustling had been discovered, unless he had friends—and friends in places to do him some good.

  TINKERVILLE WAS an unsightly cowtown sprawled on a flat at the mouth of Tinker Canyon. Recently silver had been discovered up the canyon and the town had experienced a slight boom. With the boom the town had received an overflow of boomers, a number of whom were from the East and new to Western ways. One of these was the tall, p
recise, gray-mustached man who became sheriff, Ben Rowsey.

  Another was the tall, handsome Paul Hartman.

  New to the country himself, Stretch Magoon, itinerant range detective, had looked the town over when he arrived. Paul Hartman, only six months a resident of Tinkerville, was the acknowledged big man of the town.

  He had loaned money to Sam Tinker, who owned the Tinker House and had founded the town in Indian days. He bought stock in the mining ventures. He grubstaked three prospectors, he started a weekly newspaper, and he bought a controlling interest in the Longhorn Bar.

  Another newcomer was Kelly Jarvis, who owned the Lazy S, of which Dean Barker was manager.

  Kelly was twenty-one years old, lovely, and fresh from the East. Her father had been a salty old range rider, tough and saddle-worn. He had made a mint of money, and had lavished it on Kelly. She was named for a companion of her father’s. A story she told, and no one questioned.

  Within two hours after she reached town, Kelly was being shown around by Paul Hartman. He was handsome and agreeable.

  Stretch Magoon knew all of this. Tall, sad, and quiet, he got around, listened, and rarely asked a question. When he did, the questions were casual and calculated to start a flow of talk that usually ended in Magoon’s learning a lot more than anyone planned to tell him.

  He was having a drink in the Longhorn when Ben Rowsey walked up to him. “Magoon,” Rowsey demanded sharply, “what’s the straight of that shootin’ out at the Lazy S?”

  Magoon was surprised. In the West, rustling usually ended promptly with either a rope or a bullet. Not a man given to violence himself, he acted according to the code of the country. He had presented evidence of vented brands to Barker, had proved that Ketchell’s orders had sent the cattle into the breaks near the Sombrero, and had been riding with Barker and County Galway when he found Ketchell. Ketchell had not seen Barker and Galway, and had tried to shoot it out.

  “Nothin’ much t’ tell. I found him ventin’ a brand, an’ he went for a gun. He was too slow.”