The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 7 Page 9

  Accustomed to working and planning alone he now turned all his thoughts to defense. It was a problem he had considered since his first day, and his position was excellent. Table Mountain and the Neck barred access to Mirror Valley, and only the tunnel and The Fence offered ingress. In the other direction lay the canyon that opened into Long Valley, and he had no worries about that direction. It was a seventy-mile ride, much of it through the reservation lands to get to that approach, and the Indians would resent any armed band crossing their lands.

  With cool calculation he began to study his problem.

  BY NOON ON SATURDAY he began work, using a double-jack and a drill. These holes he loaded with powder, determined to blast it shut if need be. It was late afternoon before he completed the work.

  From the top of Table Mountain he studied the Mirror Valley country with a field glass his father had given him. He could see the dust clouds that told of moving cattle. No cattle had yet reached Willow Springs, which Candy had told him would be the rendezvous point. Yet by Sunday night he knew the cattle would be massed at the opening of the draw.

  Returning to the house he lowered a heavy log gate across the tunnel mouth. Mounting his horse and leading a packhorse, he headed for The Fence.

  Once there he studied the terrain with care. The Fence was strong, and his inner fence was stronger. Tearing it out would be no simple job. Climbing the mountain he dug two rifle pits, one forward, the other some distance further back, which he could reach by a hidden route. In each he left ammunition.

  No weight of cattle could press down The Fence. It must be torn down or blasted out. Using a crowbar from the packhorse he pried loose a number of boulders and tumbled them down the steep sides of the draw to a place behind The Fence to widen and deepen the barrier.

  Further back, where the draw opened into the basin he dug another rifle pit and tumbled down more stones, but there they were more widely spaced and less of an obstruction. Not until darkness had fallen and he could see the dark mass of advancing cattle did he cease work.

  Despite the fact that he feared to leave the barricade, he went back to the house and prepared a meal. He was sitting down to eat when he heard a call from the tunnel.

  “Merrano?” The shout reached him clearly. “This is Cab Casady! I want to talk!”

  Picking up his rifle, his gun belts still hanging from his hips, he walked to the log gate. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  The big man grasped the logs. “Merrano, damn it, I’m no talker! But I do claim some sense of what’s right, and I ain’t havin’ no part of what they’re tryin’ to do. I got a rifle here and plenty of shells. I came to lend you a hand!”

  “You mean that?” He recalled what Candy had said of this man.

  “I sure do, boy! You’ve got sand, and by the Lord Harry I want to show these bullheads that at least one of us won’t be stampeded by no hate-filled coyote like Joe Stangle!”

  Barry put down his rifle and unlatched the gate. “Come in, Cab! I won’t tell you how good it is to see you!”

  The two men walked up to the cabin. Over coffee and side meat Barry explained his defenses. Casady chuckled. “I’ll like seein’ the expression on Joe Stangle’s face when he gets to The Fence!” he said.

  They took turns guarding the draw, but not until daylight did the cattlemen start to ride up. Barry was at the cabin when he welcomed another visitor … two of them, in fact.

  Clyde Mayer, driving his old buckboard, a rifle between his knees, drove up the hill when the gate was opened. Beside him on the seat was Candy Drake. She set her lips stubbornly when she saw Barry.

  “If you won’t let me shoot I can at least make coffee and get food for you. You’ll have to eat.”

  “All right. I’m not sorry you came. Come on, Mayer, we’d better head back for the draw.”

  He turned to the girl. “Candy, watch the tunnel. If you hear anybody coming, and you can always hear them, tell them to go away. Fire a couple of warning shots and if they don’t leave, light the fuses.”

  Her features were stiff and white, her eyes large. “I’ll do it, Barry. They’ve no business coming here.”

  Day was breaking into that gray half-light that precedes the dawn. Cab Casady rose from behind a boulder and came to meet them. “Howdy, Mayer! You joined the army?”

  “I have.”

  Casady was a large, broad-shouldered man with twinkling blue eyes. “They’re comin’ now,” he said. “We better look to it.”

  “Let me do the talking,” Barry suggested. “Maybe we can avoid shooting.”

  “I doubt it,” Cab said. “Stangle wants blood.”

  When the little cavalcade of riders had approached as far as he thought wise he fired a shot that brought them up standing.

  “You boys better ride home. Nobody is coming through the wire, today or ever. I don’t want to kill anybody, but I’m protecting my property against armed men.”

  Casady stood up. “I’m here, too, boys. The first man to touch that wire dies!”

  Clyde Mayer called out. “Hill? Is that you? I’m no fighting man, but by gravy there’s going to be some justice in this country! You take my advice and ride home.”

  “Mayer?” Hill’s tone was incredulous. “You turned traitor, too?”

  “I’m upholding justice, and if you’ve half the sense I gave you credit for you’ll turn around and ride home. I like you but you lay a hand on that wire and my bullet will take you right between the eyes!”

  There was a hurried conference among the riders. “They can’t stop us!” Stangle protested. “They’re bluffin’!”

  “Count me out,” Price Taylor said.

  “You yellow?” Dulin sneered.

  “You know I’m not yellow,” Price Taylor said calmly, “but I’ve been thinking all the way out here. Merrano whipped me fair and square, and when I was down he didn’t put the boots to me but stepped back and let me get up. He made good when we all laughed at him, and he’s standing his ground now. As for Mayer, there ain’t a fairer, more decent man around than him, and I’ll be damned if I’ll shoot at him!”

  “Then why don’t you join him?” Dulin sneered.

  Price turned on him. “You called it, Rock! That’s just what I’ll do! I’ve made some bad mistakes and I’m no sky pilot, but I never ganged up on a man with guts.”

  He wheeled his horse and started for the barrier. He lifted a hand. “Don’t shoot, Merrano! I’m joinin’ you!”

  Rock Dulin swore viciously and suddenly he whipped up his rifle and fired.

  Price Taylor lurched in the saddle, then slipped over on the ground.

  “Damn traitor!” Rock Dulin said. “That’ll show ’em!”

  Tom Drake stared down at the body of Price Taylor. He had reared the boy. He had helped him mount his first horse. He stared around him in shocked bewilderment. “What are we doing?” he said. “Men, what are we doing?”

  Dropping from his horse he stumbled to the body of Price Taylor.

  Jim Hill was white to the lips. Hardy Benson stared after Tom Drake, his face stupid with shock. He looked as if he had awakened from a nightmare. He turned his eyes to Rock Dulin. “That was murder!” he said. “Nothin’ but murder!”

  Dulin turned like an animal at bay. His eyes went from man to man. “What’s the matter? Are you all turnin’ yellow? You started out to do it, now you’re quittin’!”

  Hill sat his horse, his rifle in his hands. “Price Taylor was a good man. He had a right to his feelin’s as much as us. Dulin”—his eyes fastened on the other rancher—“you an’ Stangle do what you want, but you lift a gun at me, my boys will string you to the nearest cottonwood, an’ that’s where you belong! We’ve been a pack of fools, the lot of us!” He turned in the saddle. “Come on, boys, start ’em for home!”

  As the Jim Hill hands began gathering the herd, Tom Drake glanced once at the draw, then turned to his own boys. “A couple of you pick up Price,” he said.

  Lou Barrow looked over
at Drake. “Boss, Price was a good man. Too good to get shot in the back.”

  “I know, but there’s been trouble enough today.” He walked his horse to where Jim Hill and Hardy Benson sat. “I seem to be gettin’ old these days, Jim. I’ve been lettin’ things get out of hand.”

  “Yeah. Well, this is it, Tom. We’re broke.”

  Silently, the groups scattered, driving their cattle. Dulin spoke to this one or that one but was ignored, cut off, left out of their thinking.

  He turned in cold fury to Stangle. “I got a notion to cut the thing myself!”

  “Don’t try it,” Stangle advised. “If he didn’t get you, Cab would. We can get even later.”

  AS THE THREE MEN inside The Fence watched them go, Casady said, “It will be good to get some warm grub.” They turned their horses and rode toward the house.

  “Dulin has always been a killer. He shot a man in a gunfight over at Trinidad a few years back,” Cab said. “Curt McKesson is another of the same stripe.”

  Mayer went to his buckboard. “I’ll be leaving.”

  “Watch yourself,” Casady advised.

  “They daren’t bother me,” Mayer said. “Without me they can’t eat.”

  Candy was last to go, and Barry rode along with her. At the gate she turned to say good-bye, and he shook his head. “I must talk to your father,” he said.

  “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “Maybe not, but he’s got a chance to save some of his cattle, if he will listen.”

  DRAKE DID NOT look up when they entered. He was seated in his old hide-bound chair, head hanging.

  “Father? Here’s someone to see you.”

  He looked up, raising his head like a cornered bear. “Howdy, Merrano. You’re lookin’ at an old fool.”

  “Drake”—Barry squatted against the wall—“if you will work to save your herd you can still do it.”

  “It would have to be soon, boy. They’re dyin’ like flies.”

  “Have you been up in the White Hills lately?”

  “The White Hills? Not in five or six years. Nothin’ up there but pinon an’ juniper.”

  “I think there’s water up there,” Barry said. “One time down in Texas I saw them bring in an artesian well in country just like that. If you drilled a well just below that old trapper’s cabin I think you’d strike water.”

  “Never heard of any wells drilled in this country,” he said doubtfully.

  “I’ve drilled four,” Merrano replied, “all with water.”

  Drake struck a match and held it to his pipe. “Well, it’s high time I owned up to thinkin’ I was too smart. We old dogs figured we knew all the tricks.”

  He puffed on his pipe. “Mind if I ride over and have a look at your place? Candy’s told me about it.”

  “You come at any time. As for well-drilling, I’ve got an outfit I hauled in two years ago from Aragon.”

  He rode warily on his homeward way. Despite the peaceful discussion with Drake he knew that Stangle and Dulin were still his enemies. The two had ridden off together, and Curt McKesson had ridden with them.

  WHEN TOM DRAKE RODE to the basin the next morning, Jim Hill, Vinnie Lake, and Hardy Benson rode with him. They greeted Barry with no more than a nod, and he mounted the steeldust and led them across the basin. Drake pulled in suddenly, pointing to a mound of earth running diagonally across a shallow place on the hill. “What’s the object of that?” he asked.

  “Water was starting to make a wash right there,” Barry explained, “so I put in that little spreader dam. Causes the water to divide and spread over the hillside and so reaches the roots of more grass.

  “Down below where there was a natural hollow, I dug it out a little more with a scraper. Now I’ve got a pool, although it is drying up now.”

  “More water in that pool right now than I’ve got on my whole place!” Hill said.

  Barry led them from place to place, showing them the lakes he had dammed in the draws, and the various pools. The first of the wells, where he had a windmill pumping, showed a good flow of water. The second, some distance away, was artesian.

  The basin looked green and lovely, and he gestured with a wave of the hand. “That’s mostly black grama and curly mesquite grass. I let the cattle run there a few weeks, then move them to another pasture and let this grow back. I only run about a third of the stock you have on the same number of acres, that way my stock is always fat.”

  “My place is all growed up to cholla cactus now,” Drake said.

  “Burn that field,” Barry advised, “the ashes will help the field and the fire will burn the dry needles off the cholla leaving the green pulp behind. That green pulp is fairly good feed. The Navajos taught me that.”

  “Then I’ve got enough cholla on my place to feed all the stock in Christendom,” Hill said.

  “Son,” Drake said, “you’ve done a job! We should have listened to you a long time back.”

  THE DAYS PASSED SWIFTLY and Barry worked hard, but he was lonely, and even the work failed to help. Each time he returned to the house he kept looking for Candy as he remembered her, making coffee in his kitchen during the fight. At night, alone by the fire, he seemed to see her there. Then one day he rode his horse up the draw and stopped, astonished.

  The Fence was gone! Rooted out, wire and posts gone, and the post holes filled in. There might never have been a fence there at all. He pushed his hat back on his head, and shook his head. “Mom,” he said aloud, “you’d have liked to see this!”

  CANDY DRAKE, riding her pinto, decided to head for the basin. She knew all about The Fence being down. The burning of the cholla had worked and would be the means of saving at least some of the cattle. Now, if the rains came in time or the drillers struck water, they had a fighting chance.

  Yet trouble was mounting. Lou Barrow, filled with fury at Rock Dulin’s killing of Price Taylor, had gone to town. Barrow had made a remark about killers, and Dulin had gone for his gun. Barrow was a tough cowhand but no gunman, and Dulin put three bullets into him. Miraculously, Barrow lived.

  Rock Dulin swaggered about town, his ranch forgotten, his stock dying. Joe Stangle and Curt McKesson were usually with him.

  Candy decided it was time the women took a hand. Alice Benson agreed, and so did the three Lake girls. They organized a big dance and celebration for the purpose of getting everybody together again and wiping out old scores. Candy had taken it upon herself to ride to the basin and invite Barry Merrano.

  IN OTHER PARTS of the valley, events were moving in their own way. McKesson had ridden over to Stangle’s, and the two sat in the untidy living room over a bottle of whiskey. With nothing on which to feed, Joe Stangle’s hatred had turned inward. For days he had been brooding over the thought of Barry Merrano, now the talk of the valley. Joe Stangle’s hatred was of long standing, for he had wanted Molly O’Brien and then she had married Miguel Merrano. The fact that Molly had never even noticed his existence made no difference. Deliberately, he provoked trouble with Miguel, confident the Mexican would back down.

  The trouble was, he did no such thing. The darkly handsome young Mexican had simply stepped back and told him to go for his gun whenever he was ready.

  Suddenly Joe had discovered he was not at all ready. It was one thing to tackle what you thought was a puppy dog, quite another when you found yourself facing a wolf with fangs bared. Stangle looked across eight feet of floor and discovered that courage knows no race or creed.

  He had backed down, and although it was not mentioned, he knew he was despised for it. His hatred for Miguel Merrano flowered with the coming of his son.

  Now, both men were drunk or nearly so. Hulking Curt McKesson reached for the bottle and so did Stangle. Joe got his hand on it as did Curt. In a sudden burst of fury, Stangle jerked the bottle from McKesson’s hand.

  McKesson’s sullen anger, never far from the surface, exploded into rage and he struck with the back of his hand, the blow knocking Stangle sprawling. McKesson was not
wearing a gun, having put it aside in the other room.

  Joe Stangle, blind with fury, saw nothing but the great hulking figure. All his bottled-up rage found sudden release in this, and his gun slid into his hand, thumbing the hammer again and again.

  The thunderous roar of the six-gun filled the room, and with it the acrid smell of gunsmoke. Then the sound died, the smoke slowly cleared, and Joe Stangle lurched to his feet.

  One glance at Curt McKesson was enough. The big man was literally riddled with bullets. Averting his eyes, Joe Stangle picked up the bottle and drained off the last of the whiskey. Without a backward glance, he walked out the door.

  Drunk as he was his natural cunning warned him he had no chance of getting away with what had been the killing of an unarmed man. Steps were being taken to elect a sheriff and once that was done neither he nor Rock Dulin would long remain at large. Mounting his horse he started down the valley, filled with a sullen feeling that somehow it was all Barry Merrano’s fault.

  The trail he was riding, drunk, and filled with sullen rage, intersected that of Candy Drake.

  Unknown to either of them, Barry Merrano had ridden out of a draw and glimpsed Candy’s pinto at a distance. A deep canyon lay between them although they were less than a mile apart, but with luck he could overtake her at Willow Springs.

  As he rode he sang a song he had himself composed, a song made up during his loneliness and when he desperately needed something cheerful of which to think.

  “Oh, gather ’round closer and fill up your glasses,

  And I’ll tell you the story of Johnny Go-Day.

  He was a young cowhand who rode all the mustangs,

  And no bronco they bred could Johnny dismay!”

  In the cancer of envy that festered in the mind of Joe Stangle was a hatred for all better off or more attractive than himself. Most of all, after Barry Merrano, he hated Candy Drake.

  She was a girl who spoke to everyone, but Stangle had noticed that she did not particularly enjoy speaking to him. He failed to realize this was due to his own surly manner, and the fact that he had been known to make unpleasant remarks about girls and women. He simply believed she thought herself too good for him.