The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 3 Page 6

  Ring hit the ground with both boots and scrambled over the brink, and even as the flood roared down upon them, he heaved on the bridle and the horse cleared the edge and stood trembling. Swearing softly, Ring kicked the mud from his boots and mounted again. Leaving the raging torrent behind him, he rode on.

  Thick blackness of night and heavy clouds lay upon the town when he loped down the main street and headed the horse toward the barn. He swung down and handed the bridle to the handyman.

  “Rub him down,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

  He started for the doors and then stopped, staring at the three horses in neighboring stalls. The liveryman noticed his glance and looked at him.

  “The Hazlitts. They come in about an hour ago, ugly as sin.”

  Allen Ring stood wide legged, staring grimly out the door. There was a coolness inside him now that he recognized. He dried his hands carefully.

  “Bilton in town?” he asked.

  “Sure is. Playin’ cards over to the Mazatzal Saloon.”

  “He wear Mex spurs? Big rowels?”

  The man rubbed his jaw. “I don’t remember. I don’t know at all. You watch out,” he warned. “Folks are on the prod.”

  Ring stepped out into the street and slogged through the mud to the edge of the boardwalk before the darkened general store. He kicked the mud from his boots and dried his hands again, after carefully unbuttoning his slicker.

  Nobody would have a second chance after this. He knew well enough that his walking into the Mazatzal would precipitate an explosion. Only, he wanted to light the fuse himself, in his own way.

  He stood there in the darkness alone, thinking it over. They would all be there. It would be like tossing a match into a lot of fused dynamite. He wished then that he was a better man with a gun than he was or that he had someone to side him in this, but he had always acted alone and would scarcely know how to act with anyone else.

  He walked along the boardwalk with long strides, his boots making hard sounds under the steady roar of the rain. He couldn’t place that spur, that boot. Yet he had to. He had to get his hands on that book.

  Four horses stood, heads down in the rain, saddles covered with slickers. He looked at them and saw they were of three different brands. The window of the Mazatzal was rain wet, yet standing at one side he glanced within.

  The long room was crowded and smoky. Men lined the bar, feet on the brass rail. A dozen tables were crowded with cardplayers. Everyone seemed to have taken refuge here from the rain. Picking out the Hazlitt boys, Allen saw them gathered together at the back end of the room. Then he got Ross Bilton pegged. He was at a table playing cards, facing the door. Stan Brule was at this end of the bar, and Hagen was at a table against the wall, the three of them making three points of a flat triangle whose base was the door.

  It was no accident. Bilton, then, expected trouble, and he was not looking toward the Hazlitts. Yet, on reflection, Ring could see the triangle could center fire from three directions on the Hazlitts as well. There was a man with his back to the door who sat in the game with Bilton. And not far from Hagen, Rolly Truman was at the bar.

  Truman was toying with his drink, just killing time. Everybody seemed to be waiting for something.

  Could it be him they waited upon? No, that was scarcely to be considered. They could not know he had found the book, although it was certain at least one man in the room knew, and possibly others. Maybe it was just the tension, the building up of feeling over his taking over of the place at Red Rock. Allen Ring carefully turned down the collar of his slicker and wiped his hands dry again.

  He felt jumpy and could feel that dryness in his mouth that always came on him at times like this. He touched his gun butts and then stepped over and opened the door.

  Everyone looked up or around at once. Ross Bilton held a card aloft, and his hand froze at the act of dealing, holding still for a full ten seconds while Ring closed the door. He surveyed the room again and saw Ross play the card and say something in an undertone to the man opposite him. The man turned his head slightly and it was Ben Taylor!

  The gambler looked around, his face coldly curious, and for an instant their eyes met across the room, and then Allen Ring started toward him.

  There was no other sound in the room, although they could all hear the unceasing roar of the rain on the roof. Ring saw something leap up in Taylor’s eyes, and his own took on a sardonic glint.

  “That was a good hand you dealt me down Texas way,” Ring said. “A good hand!”

  “You’d better draw more cards,” Taylor said. “You’re holdin’ a small pair!”

  Ring’s eyes shifted as the man turned slightly. It was the jingle of his spurs that drew his eyes, and there they were, the large-roweled California-style spurs, not common here. He stopped beside Taylor so the man had to tilt his head back to look up. Ring was acutely conscious that he was now centered between the fire of Brule and Hagen. The Hazlitts looked on curiously, uncertain as to what was happening.

  “Give it to me, Taylor,” Ring said quietly. “Give it to me now.”

  There was ice in his voice, and Taylor, aware of the awkwardness of his position, got to his feet, inches away from Ring.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he flared.

  “No?”

  Ring was standing with his feet apart a little, and his hands were breast high, one of them clutching the edge of his raincoat. He hooked with his left from that position, and the blow was too short, too sudden, and too fast for Ben Taylor.

  The crack of it on the angle of his jaw was audible, and then Ring’s right came up in the gambler’s solar plexus and the man’s knees sagged. Spinning him around, Ring ripped open his coat with a jerk that scattered buttons across the room. Then from an inside pocket he jerked the tally book.

  He saw the Hazlitts start at the same instant that Bilton sprang back from the chair, upsetting it.

  “Get him!” Bilton roared. “Get him!”

  Ring shoved Taylor hard into the table, upsetting it and causing Bilton to spring back to keep his balance, and at the same instant, Ring dropped to a half crouch and turning left he drew with a flash of speed and saw Brule’s gun come up at almost the same instant, and then he fired!

  Stan Brule was caught with his gun just level, and the bullet smashed him on the jaw. The tall man staggered, his face a mask of hatred and astonishment mingled, and then Ring fired again, doing a quick spring around with his knees bent, turning completely around in one leap, and firing as his feet hit the floor. He felt Hagen’s bullet smash into him, and he tottered. Then he fired coolly, and swinging as he fired, he caught Bilton right over the belt buckle.

  It was fast action, snapping, quick, yet deliberate. The four fired shots had taken less than three seconds.

  Stepping back, he scooped the tally book from the floor where it had dropped and then pocketed it. Bilton was on the floor, coughing blood. Hagen had a broken right arm and was swearing in a thick, stunned voice.

  Stan Brule had drawn his last gun. He had been dead before he hit the floor. The Hazlitts started forward with a lunge, and Allen Ring took another step backward, dropping his pistol and swinging the shotgun, still hanging from his shoulder, into firing position.

  “Get back!” he said thickly. “Get back or I’ll kill the three of you! Back—back to where you stood!”

  Their faces wolfish, the three stood lean and dangerous, yet the shotgun brooked no refusal, and slowly, bitterly and reluctantly, the three moved back, step by step.

  Ring motioned with the shotgun. “All of you—along the wall!”

  The men rose and moved back, their eyes on him, uncertain, wary, some of them frightened.

  Allen Ring watched them go, feeling curiously light-headed and uncertain. He tried to frown away the pain from his throbbing skull, yet there was a pervading weakness from somewhere else.

  “My gosh!” Rolly Truman said. “The man’s been shot! He’s bleeding!”

 
“Get back!” Ring said thickly.

  His eyes shifted to the glowing potbellied stove, and he moved forward, the shotgun waist high, his eyes on the men who stared at him, awed.

  The sling held the gun level, his hand partly supporting it, a finger on the trigger. With his left hand he opened the stove and then fumbled in his pocket.

  Buck Hazlitt’s eyes bulged. “No!” he roared. “No you don’t!”

  He lunged forward, and Ring tipped the shotgun and fired a blast into the floor, inches ahead of Hazlitt’s feet. The rancher stopped so suddenly he almost fell, and the shotgun tipped to cover him.

  “Back!” Ring said. He swayed on his feet. “Back!” He fished out the tally book and threw it into the flames.

  Something like a sigh went through the crowd. They stared, awed as the flames seized hungrily at the opened book, curling around the leaves with hot fingers, turning them brown and then black and to ashes.

  Half hypnotized the crowd watched. Then Ring’s eyes swung to Hazlitt. “It was Ben Taylor killed him,” he muttered. “Taylor, an’ Bilton was with him. He—he seen it.”

  “We take your word for it?” Buck Hazlitt demanded furiously.

  Allen Ring’s eyes widened and he seemed to gather himself. “You want to question it? You want to call me a liar?”

  Hazlitt looked at him, touching his tongue to his lips. “No,” he said. “I figured it was them.”

  “I told you true,” Ring said, and then his legs seemed to fold up under him and he went to the floor.

  The crowd surged forward and Rolly Truman stared at Buck as Hazlitt neared the stove. The big man stared into the flames for a minute. Then he closed the door.

  “Good!” he said. “Good thing! It’s been a torment, that book, like a cloud hangin’ over us all!”

  The sun was shining through the window when Gail Truman came to see him. He was sitting up in bed and feeling better. It would be good to be back on the place again, for there was much to do. She came in, slapping her boots with her quirt and smiling.

  “Feel better?” she asked brightly. “You certainly look better. You’ve shaved.”

  He grinned and rubbed his jaw. “I needed it. Almost two weeks in this bed. I must have been hit bad.”

  “You lost a lot of blood. It’s lucky you’ve a strong heart.”

  “It ain’t—isn’t so strong anymore,” he said, “I think it’s grown mighty shaky here lately.”

  Gail blushed. “Oh? It has? Your nurse, I suppose?”

  “She is pretty, isn’t she?”

  Gail looked up, alarmed. “You mean, you—”

  “No, honey,” he said, “you!”

  “Oh.” She looked at him and then looked down. “Well, I guess—”

  “All right?”

  She smiled then, suddenly and warmly. “All right.”

  “I had to ask you,” he said. “We had to marry.”

  “Had to? Why?”

  “People would talk, a young, lovely girl like you over at my place all the time—would they think you were looking at the view?”

  “If they did,” she replied quickly, “they’d be wrong!”

  “You’re telling me?” he asked.

  One Last Gun Notch

  Morgan Clyde studied his face in the mirror. It was an even-featured, pleasant face. Neither the nose nor jaw was too blunt or too long. Now, after his morning shave, his jaw was still faintly blue through the deep tan, and the bronze curls above his face made him look several years younger than his thirty-five.

  Carefully, he knotted the black string tie on the soft gray shirt and then slipped on his coat. When he donned the black, flat-crowned hat, he was ready. His appearance was perfect, with just a shade of studied carelessness. For ten years now, Morgan Clyde’s morning shave and dressing had been a ritual from which he never deviated.

  He slid the two guns from their holsters and checked them carefully. First the right, then the left. On the butt of the right-hand gun there were nine filed notches. On the left, three. He glanced at them thoughtfully, remembering.

  That first notch had been for Red Bridges. That was the year they had run his cattle off. Bridges had come out to the claim when Clyde was away, cut his fence down, run his cattle off, and shot his wife down in cold blood.

  Thoughtfully, Morgan Clyde looked back into the mirror. He had changed. In his mind’s eye he could see that tall, loose-limbed young man with the bronze hair and boyish face. He had been quiet, peace loving, content with his wife, his homestead, and his few cattle. He had a gift for gun handling, but never thought of it. That is, not until that visit by Bridges.

  Returning home with a haunch of antelope across his saddle, he had found his wife and the smoking ruins of his home. He did not have to be told. Bridges had warned him to move, or else. Within him something had burst, and for an instant his eyes were blind with blood. When the moment had passed, he had changed.

  He had known, then, what to do. He should have gone to the governor with his story, or to the U.S. marshal. And he could have gone. But there was something red and ugly inside him that had not been there before. He had swung aboard a little paint pony and headed for Peavey’s Mill.

  The town’s one street had been quiet, dusty. The townspeople knew what had happened, because it had been happening to all homesteaders. Never for a moment did they expect any reaction. Red Bridges was too well known. He had killed too many times.

  Then Morgan Clyde rode down the street on his paint pony, saw Bridges, and slid to the ground. Somebody yelled, and Bridges turned. He looked at Morgan Clyde’s young, awkward length and laughed. But his hand dropped swiftly for his gun.

  But something happened. Morgan Clyde’s gun swung up first, spouting fire, and his two shots centered over Bridges’s heart. The big man’s fingers loosened, and the gun slid into the dust. Little whorls rose slowly from where it landed. Then, his face puzzled, his left hand fumbling at his breast, Red Bridges wilted.

  He could have stopped there. Now, Morgan Clyde knew that. He could have stopped there, and should have stopped. He could have ridden from town and been left alone. But he knew Bridges was a tool, and the man who used the tool was Erik Pendleton, in the bank. Bridges had been a gunman; Pendleton was not.

  The banker looked up from his desk and saw death. It was no mistake. Clyde had walked up the steps, around the teller’s cage, and opened the door of Pendleton’s office.

  The banker opened his mouth to talk, and Morgan Clyde shot him. He had deserved it.

  The posse lost him west of the Brazos, and he rode on west into a cattle war. He was wanted then and no longer cared. The banker hadn’t rated a notch, but the three men he killed in the streets of Fort Sumner he counted, and the man he shot west of Gallup.

  There had been trouble in St. George, and then in Virginia City. After that, he had a reputation.

  Morgan Clyde turned and stared at the huge old grandfather’s clock. It remained his only permanent possession. It had come over from Scotland years ago, and his family had carried it westward when they went to Ohio, and later to Illinois; and then to Texas. He had intended sending for it when the homestead was going right, and everything was settled. To Diana and himself it had been a symbol of home, of stability.

  What could have started him remembering all that? The past, he had decided long ago, was best forgotten.

  He rode the big black down the street toward Sherman’s office. He knew what was coming. He had been taking money for a long time from men of Sherman’s stripe. Men who needed what force could give them but had nothing of force in themselves.

  Sherman had several gunmen on his payroll. He kept them hating one another and grew fat on their hatred. Tom Cool was there, and the Earle brothers. Tough and vicious, all of them.

  Perhaps it was this case this morning that had started him thinking. Well, that damned fool nester should have known better than to settle on that Red Basin land. It was Sherman’s best grazing land, even if he didn’t own it. But a
kid like that couldn’t buck Sherman. The man was a fool to think he could.

  The thought of that other young nester came into his mind. He dismissed it with an impatient jerk of his head.

  The Earle brothers, Vic and Will, were sitting in the bar as he passed through. The two big men looked up, hate in their eyes.

  Sherman was sitting behind the desk in his office and he looked up, smiling, when Morgan Clyde came in. “Sit down, Morg,” he said cheerfully. He leaned back in his chair and put his fingertips together. “Well, this is it. When we get this Hallam taken care of, the rest of the nesters will see we mean business. We can have that range clean by spring, an’ that means I’ll be running the biggest herd west of the Staked Plains.”

  Tom Cool was sitting in a chair tilted against the wall. He had a thin, hatchet face and narrow eyes. He was rolling a smoke now, and he glanced up as his tongue touched the edge of the yellow paper.

  “You got the stomach for it, Morg?” he asked dryly. “Or would you rather I handle this one? I hear you was a nester once yourself.”

  Morgan Clyde glanced around casually, one brow lifting. “You handle my work?” He looked his contempt. “Cool, you might handle this job. It’s just a cold-blooded killing, and more in your line. I’m used to men with guns in their hands.”

  Cool’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Yeah?’ His voice was a hoarse whisper. “I can fill mine fast enough, Clyde, anytime you want to unlimber.”

  “I don’t shoot sitting pigeons,” Morgan said quietly.

  “Why, you—” Tom Cool’s eyes flared with hatred, and his hand dropped away from the cigarette in a streak for his gun.

  Morgan Clyde filled his hand without more than a hint of movement. Before a shot could crash, Sherman’s voice cut through the hot intensity of the moment with an edge that turned both their heads toward the leader. There was a gun in his hand.

  Queerly, Morgan was shocked. He had never thought of Sherman as a fast man with a gun, and he knew that Cool felt the same. Sherman a gunman! It put a new complexion on a lot of things. Clyde glanced at Tom Cool and saw the man’s hand coming away from his gun. There had been an instant when both of them could have died. If not by their own guns, by Sherman’s. Neither had been watching him.