Novel 1970 - Reilly's Luck (v5.0) Read online

  Whoever was in there must have heard him at the corral, and he spoke quietly. “I am friendly. You want to strike a light?”

  There was silence.

  All was darkness within. For several minutes Val waited, then moved closer. He heard breathing, and stepped up to the door. The breathing was uneven, the breathing of someone injured, he was sure.

  With his left hand he pushed the door wide, but nothing happened.

  Then deliberately, he stepped in and to the right against the wall. There was no reaction.

  “Who’s there?” he asked. “Who is it? I am a friend.”

  There was still no response, and taking a chance, he struck a match.

  Beyond the table which occupied the center of the room a man lay sprawled on the floor. A gun lay not far from his hand. The bunk from which he had fallen was bloody.

  The match burned down, and Val struck another and lit the coal-oil lantern on the table. Then he went around the table and stared down at the man. The back of his buckskin jacket was bloody, and torn by a bullet. Carefully, Val turned the man over. It was Tensleep.

  There was a cut on his scalp that looked to be several days old, and the blood from the bullet wound had dried.

  Val straightened up and looked around the room. Tensleep, several years before, had been riding with Henry Sonnenberg, and despite what Val had heard about Sonnenberg, Thurston Peck, and Hardesty, Tensleep might have been one of them.

  Never before had Val been faced with anything of this kind, although more than once he and Will had taken care of wounded people. But it had always been Will, decisive and sure, who had taken command and had known what to do.

  The first thing was to take care of Tensleep. He straightened the bed, then slid one arm under Tensleep’s hips and put the other around his body under the arms, and he picked him up.

  Val was strong, but the wounded man was limp, and like a dead weight. Maybe moving him was the wrong thing, but Val got him on the bed, and unbuttoned the bloody shirt. The sight of the wound turned him sick at his stomach.

  Turning from it, he put sticks together in the fireplace, started a fire, and put water on to boil.

  Then he went outside, stripped the saddles from the horses, and turned them into the corral. He found a stack of hay, scarcely enough for two days, and pitched some to the horses. After that, he carried his gear into the cabin and dumped it on the floor.

  The water was boiling, and he carried some of it to the table and with a clean handkerchief he bathed the dried blood away and cleansed the wound as best he could. He made a pad of another of his handkerchiefs and bound it in place over the wound. He did the same at the point of exit, and then washed the blood from the wound on the scalp.

  He shaved some jerked beef into a tin and, adding water, made a thin broth. He didn’t know whether he was doing the right thing, but Tensleep had been without food at least a day or two, so he tried him with a little of the broth. The wounded man swallowed it, and then accepted more.

  At midnight Val prepared his own bed and went to sleep.

  Chapter 9

  *

  HE AWOKE SUDDENLY, starting from a sound sleep into sharp attention. He stared up at the cabin roof for a moment. Where was he? The cabin in the mountains…Tensleep…

  He swung his feet to the floor. Tensleep was awake, and was watching him. “I ain’t sure who you are, amigo, but it looks to me like you come along at the right time. I’m hit hard, ain’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “You think I’ll make it?”

  “I’m not a doctor, but Will used to say that he’d seen men with guts pull through injuries where by all accounts they should have died. He used to say two-thirds of it was in the mind.”

  “Will? Ah, now I got you! You’re that kid of Will’s…from ten years back. Sure, an’ I’d heard you were still with him. What d’ you know about that?”

  “Will’s dead. They got him.”

  Tensleep lay quiet, staring at the ceiling. “I’d have staked my life they couldn’t do it, not even the three of them.”

  “He was coming out of a doorway, and they gave him no warning. They used shotguns.”

  Val pulled on his clothes and got a fire started. He didn’t know what to do except to make some more of the broth. There were herbs that might help, and Will had taught him a little about them, but he remembered no herbs that grew around where they were now. With what he had, he would have to try to build some strength back into the man.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “It was them, Hank and the others. They wanted me with them, but I wouldn’t go against Will. First place, I knew he was faster and a better shot, but mostly it was because I always liked his style. He was my kind of man—the kind I’d like to have been.…I never was anything but a wild kind of hombre with no more sense than the law allows.…

  His voice trailed off, and in another minute Val saw that he was asleep. While the water was getting hot he went outside and led the horses from the corral and picketed them on the grass. Tensleep’s horse had evidently been taken away, for there was neither horse nor saddle, and they must have taken his weapons too.

  Val gathered fuel, and considered the situation. If he was going to catch Simpson or Sonnenberg he had to be riding, but Tensleep would never make it here alone. There was not one chance in ten for Tensleep to make it anyway, but without Val’s help there was not even that chance.

  The cabin stood on a gentle slope with a thick grove of aspen behind it, the trees climbing the mountainside in a solid mass. Still higher up were stands of Engelmann spruce and balsam fir. Below and to the east were slopes covered with yellow pine. Here under the aspen columbine was growing, with its lovely lavender, purple, or sometimes almost white flowers, and mingled with them some tiny yellow flowers he did not recognize. Near the cabin a stream came down the slope in a steep fall, supplying water for whoever lived in the cabin and for their horses.

  As night came on, Tensleep grew feverish, and sometimes he was wandering in his mind. “Save me, kid,” he cried out, “for God’s sake save me long enough to find Hank!

  “Watch out for him! He’s mean, poison mean! He’ll hate you, kid, like he hated Will! He was afraid of Will—I told him he was afraid. That’s why they used shotguns out of the dark. That’s why he hated Will, because he was scared of him.”

  After that a pause, and then he spoke more calmly. “He shot me under the table, kid, sneaked a gun out and shot me. Never gave me a chance. He gut-shot me an’ left me to die—told me he was takin’ my horse and outfit.”

  “You get well,” Val said, “and I’ll give you Will’s horse and outfit. I brought it along.”

  Tensleep slept then for almost an hour, and woke up begging a drink.

  “Val,” he said hoarsely, “I seen men gut-shot afore this. Mostly they die in less than a half-hour, at least the ones I’ve seen. Some of them take a while, but if they live as long as I have, they usually have a chance. You know, boy, that bullet might have gone clean through me and never clipped a thing. Seen it happen. But I’ll have a bad time tonight, I’m figurin’.

  “Val, there’s a plant grows down on the slope below here. I seen it a time or two over east of the stream. It has a purple flower—called cinquefoil. You find it, pick some of the leaves, and make me some tea. It’s good for fever, boy. It’ll help me.”

  Val got up. “I’d better go then. There isn’t much light left.”

  “East of the stream, nigh that big gray boulder with the moss on it. There’s a lightning-struck tree close alongside, and sumac on beyond it, higher up.”

  Val went out quickly, taking his rifle. The sun had set, but it was still light enough to see. He checked landmarks, choosing those useful after dark when everything looked different, and he crossed the stream and hurried down the slope, making the best time he could. He found the plants where Tensleep had said they would be, and gathered a hatful of leaves.

  Tensleep was sleeping rest
lessly, his face already hot from fever. He threw his head from side to side and muttered unintelligibly.

  Val steeped some of the leaves in hot water, and then held the wounded outlaw up so that he could sip some of the tea. Again and again he repeated the proceeding, though he was afraid he might be doing the wrong thing. If the man really was cut up inside, he certainly was; but in such a case Tensleep, would die, anyway. The nearest doctor was at least sixty miles away, and Tensleep might be wanted in Durango.

  At last Val slept, and when morning came he saw that Tensleep was resting easily. He fed the horses and busied himself outside, but still the outlaw slept.

  Val cleaned his guns, washed out the handkerchiefs he had used on the wounds, and cut some wood and laid it ready for a fresh fire. Then he went outside again and practiced with his six-shooter.

  He was fast…maybe as fast as Will, who had always said Val had a gift for it. And he could shoot straight. He felt no desire to shoot anyone, yet he knew that if he could find Sonnenberg he would kill him, for there was no evidence to convict him of the murder of Will Reilly. He would do the same for Hardesty and Peck…if there was no other way.

  He came back to the cabin to find Tensleep awake. The outlaw had been watching him through the open door. “Pretty handy with that thing, ain’t you, kid? Well, you’ll need to be.”

  “I don’t intend to stay in the West. After I’ve had a go at Sonnenberg, I’m going back east. I’ll stay there, I think.”

  “Maybe. But this here country has a pull on a man. You get to looking at the mountains, and at the stretches of wide-open, empty land…and it gets to you.

  “I never had no chance to live no place else. When I was growin’ up the thing I wanted most was to be a mountain man, but by the time I’d got some years on me, it was punchin’ cows. I was a fair hand…and one of the best bronc riders around. An’ then one night some of the boys were broke and we wanted to throw a wing-ding so we rounded up ten or twelve head of cows and sold them…and the law got wind of it, and they was after us for rustlin’.”

  Tensleep had gained a little strength, and he wanted to talk. So Val listened.

  “I never figured to be an outlaw. I’d known too many as a boy…on the dodge all the time, and never anything in sight but prison or a rope. But one careless evenin’ an’ there I was…runnin’ from the law.

  “I never was a hired gunman, though. Fact is, the first time I killed a man it was over that. He was always hirin’ out for rough work like burnin’ out nesters, or killin’, and he wanted me to he’p him. I told him what I thought of that and he grabbed iron. I never had any thought of bein’ fast at that time, an’ wore a gun because ever’body did—out on the range from time to time a body needed it.”

  “You killed him?”

  “I got off two shots before he cleared leather, and I been outlawin’ it ever since.”

  He was suddenly tired, and he lay back on the bed while Val rolled a smoke for him and put it between his lips. When he had the cigarette drawing he said, “You do that, kid—you get shut of this country and go east.”

  In the days that followed, Val was restless. Sonnenberg and Simpson would be meeting, and parting. After that there would be small chance of finding them. But he stayed on. And Tensleep gained strength every day.

  Val remembered hearing an Army doctor talking to Will about western men. “They’re made of rawhide and iron, and they don’t die easy. It’s what meat and beans and a lot of hard work and fresh air will do for you.”

  The day that Tensleep got up Val told him he was leaving. “All right, Val,” Tensleep said. “You light out. I can manage all right now.”

  “Like I promised, I am giving you Will’s horse and saddle, his six-shooter, and my rifle. I am going to hang onto Will’s rifle myself.”

  Tensleep turned away abruptly. “Kid, you’ll do all right,” he said. “If ever I get the chance to make it up to you, I will.”

  Val Darrant hesitated for a moment over what he was about to say—that door to the past was closed so long ago.

  “Tensleep, you knew my mother. You knew Myra Cord.”

  Tensleep turned to look at him. “That’s a closed book, Val. You forget her.”

  “What was she like?”

  “You’ve forgotten?” Tensleep’s tone was rough. “She was no good, Val. She turned you out, she would have had you left to freeze. She was heartless and mean.”

  “Where is she now?”

  Tensleep sat down and rolled another cigarette. “Look, kid, nobody knows anything about that. Me, and maybe Hank recalls it. So leave it lay. Go build yourself a good life and forget her. Will Reilly was born on the wrong side of the tracks and became a gentleman, Myra was born on the right side and became a—a shady lady and a thief. Yes, an’ folks suspected her of murder, a time or two.”

  “Did you know my father?”

  “Better than Will Reilly did. I packed for him one time, into the mountains not far from here. He was a well-off man, Val, and that’s how you came to be.”

  “Me?”

  “Myra set her cap for him. She was a tramp, workin’ down on the line like the rest of ’em, but she had eyes for a good thing. She latched onto Darrant, and when she knew you were going to come along, she tried to get him to make a will in her favor.

  “Darrant was no fool. He didn’t believe she was going to have a child, and he could read women better than most, so he told her to forget it and she got mad and threatened him.

  “Well, he laughed at her, and then she got all soft and weepy and said how she never meant it. Me, I couldn’t keep my nose out of it. I’d spent time in the mountains with him and liked him, so when she bought that rat poison, I told him about it.

  “He just looked at me, and said, ‘There are rats in that old hotel. I’ve heard them.’

  “ ‘Uh-huh. And they been there ten years, and nobody made any fuss about ’em, so how come all of a sudden she buys enough rat poison to kill half the rats in Colorado?’

  “The next day he was gone out of there…just like that.

  “Oh, you should have seen her! She was fit to be tied! Somehow she’d learned that he was well fixed, and she hated to lose.”

  “Did you ever see him again?”

  “No. He went back east, I think, or maybe to Canada.”

  “And Myra?”

  Tensleep shrugged evasively. “You stay away from her, boy. Forget her. That there’s a downright bad woman.”

  “What about Van?”

  “He’s with her, wherever she is, unless she’s got tired of him and kicked him out—or poisoned him.”

  The next morning Val rode out of the mountains. He followed the trail to Hays, and lost it there. Then he rode south into Texas.

  The gold in the twin money belts rode heavily on his hips, but he used it sparingly. One night, camped in a sheltered draw near some mesquite, he fed his fire. A feeling of loneliness possessed him. He was missing Will’s companionship, and the talks they’d had about people and books and cards. He was realizing that he wanted to leave all this behind and go somewhere very different…he wanted to go east.

  For some time he had been conscious of a growing sound in the distance, and now there was the rattle of trace chains, and the creak of a heavy wagon. A voice called out, “Halloo, the fire!”

  Val stepped back into the shadows. “Come in if you’re friendly. If you’re not, just come a-shootin’!”

  He heard a chuckle from the darkness. “Now, there’s an invite if ever I heard one! Come on, Betsy, looks like we’re to home!”

  Chapter 10

  *

  THE WAGON ROLLED up to the edge of the firelight and a tall old man got down, peering toward the fire. “It’s all right, stranger,” he said. “We ain’t meanin’ no harm. Seems like Betsy an’ me, we got lost out here.”

  He walked into the light, carrying a rifle in his right hand, muzzle down.

  Val studied him. He seemed like any drifting land-hunter. Val’
s eyes went to the wagon. Whoever Betsy was, she was not in sight. The muzzles of four rifles were.

  He was still deep in the shadow and he was sure they could not see him, but he was in no position to fire. If he did shoot, they would sweep his position with rifle fire in the next instant.

  “If you’re friendly, why the rifles?” Val kept his tone pleasant. “And don’t count on them being any help. They might get me afterward, but I’d nail your hide before they did.”

  “Looks’ like a Mexican standoff, don’t it, son?”

  The old man walked up to the fire. He was shabbily dressed, but he looked as if he made a try at cleanliness, at least. “You all alone, boy?” he said.

  “No, I’m not alone. I’ve got a six-shooter and a Winchester,” Val said. “They’re all the company I need.”

  The old man chuckled. “See? I tol’ you he was our kind of folks. ’Light an’ set, Betsy.”

  The wagon curtains parted and a girl swung down lightly and easily, then she turned and faced the fire. Her hair was black, and her eyes were the same. Her skin was clear and creamy. She was beautiful.

  “I am Betsy,” she said simply.

  “Why don’t you have the rest of your outfit get down, too?” Val said. “I’d feel a lot easier in my mind if you just gathered around.”

  Two young men, not much older than Val himself, got down from the wagon, and Val stepped into the open. He held out his hand. “I am Val Darrant,” he said, “and I am hunting a place to light.”

  “Same here.” The taller of the boys said, “I am Tardy Bucklin. This here’s Cody, an’ Pa you’ve met.” Then he turned to the girl. “And this here is Western Bucklin, our sister. We call her Betsy.”

  “There’s coffee,” Val said, “but I haven’t enough grub for you all.”

  “Never you mind,” Cody said, “I’ll get a bait from the wagon.”