Collection 1986 - The Trail To Crazy Man (v5.0) (55 page)

Rain pelted against his face, and he cowered, fearing the strike of a bullet at each flash of lightning, smelling the brimstone as the lightning scarred the high ridge with darting flame. He touched his lips with his tongue and stared until his eyes ached with strain.

His mouth was dry and his stomach empty, and something mounted within him. Fear? Panic? He could stay still no longer. With infinite patience, he edged forward, working his way a little over the edge of the ridge toward the hulking black clumps of some juniper, ragged trees, whipped to agonized shapes by generations of wind.

There was no sound but the storm, no sight of anything. He moved on, trying to estimate how far away the cliff house would be, to guess if he could reach it first or get between it and the killer out there. Flame stabbed the night, and something burned sharply along his shoulders. He let go everything and rolled, crashing down a dozen feet before he brought up in a tangle of dead limbs.

But the killer was not waiting. He loomed suddenly, dark on the crest; and crouching like a hunted animal, every instinct alert, Kedrick fired!

The dark figure jerked hard, and then the Spencer bellowed. The bullet plastered a branch near him, and Kedrick knew that only his own shot had saved his life. He fired again and then deliberately hurled himself backward into the night, falling, landing, crawling. He got to his feet and plunged into the absolute darkness, risking a broken limb or a bad fall, anything to get the distance he needed. Then lightning flashed, and as if by magic the Spencer boomed. How the man had followed his plunging career he could not know, but he felt the stab and slam of the bullets as they smashed about him! This man was shooting too close! He couldn’t miss long!

His shoulders burned, but whether that shot had been a real wound or a mere graze he did not know. Something fluid trickled down his spine, but whether it was rainwater through the slit coat or his own blood, he could not guess.

He moved back, circling. Another shot, but this slightly to his left. Quickly he moved left, and a shot smacked right near where he had been standing. The killer was using searching fire now, and he was getting closer.

Kedrick moved back, tripped, and fell, and bullets laced the air over him. Evidently the man had a belt full of ammunition, or his pockets stuffed.

Kedrick started to rise, but his fingers had found a hard smoothness, not of rock, but of earth and gravel! Carefully, he felt about in the darkness.

The path! He was on a path, and no doubt the path to the cliff house!

He began to move along it, feeling his way carefully. Once, off to his his left, he heard a rock roll. He took a chance and fired blind and then rolled over three times and felt the air split apart as the shots slammed the ground where he had been. He fired again and then again, always moving.

_______

L
IGHTNING FLASHED, AND he saw a hulking thing back on the trail the way he had come, a huge, glistening thing, black and shining. Flame sprang from it, and he felt the shock of the bullet. Then he steadied himself and fired again.

Deliberately, then, he turned and worked his way down the path. Suddenly, he felt space before him, and found the path here took a sharp turn. Another step and he might have plunged off! How near was his escape he knew in another instant when lightning flashed and he saw far below him the gray-white figure of the Appaloosa standing in the rain!

He worked his way down the cliff. Then he found a ledge, and in a moment, his hands found the crude stone bricks of the cliff house. Feeling his way along it, he felt for the door, and then pushing it open he crawled into the inner darkness and pushed the door shut behind him.

After the lashing of wind and rain the peace seemed a miracle. Jerking off his soaking hat he tossed it aside and threw off the slicker. There was a chance the killer would not guess that he knew of this place, and undoubtedly had he not known he would have passed it by in the darkness and storm.

Working his way along the floor, he found a curtain dividing this from an inner room. He stepped through it and sat down hard on the bunk. Feeling for his left-hand gun he found the holster empty, and he had fired five shots with his right gun. Suddenly, the curtain stirred and there was a breath of wind. Then it vanished. The killer was in the other room! He had come in!

Kedrick dared not rise, for fear the bed would creak, but he heard a match strike, and then a candle was lighted. Feet shuffled in the other room. Then came a voice. “I know you’re in there, Kedrick. There’s water on the floor in here. I’m behind a piece of old stone wall that I use for a sort of table. I’m safe from your fire. I know there’s no protection where you are. Throw your guns out and come with your hands up! If you don’t, I’m going to open fire an’ search every inch of that room!”

Over the top of the blanket curtain, which was suspended from a pole across the door, Tom Kedrick could see the roof in the other room. The cave house was actually much higher than need be. Evidently the killer had walled up an overhang or upper cave. Kedrick could see several heavy cedar beams that had served to support a ceiling, now mostly gone. If that was true in the other room, it might be true in his also.

He straightened to his feet, heard a sudden move, and then fired!

From the other room came a chuckle. “Figured that would draw fire! Well, one gun’s empty. Now toss out the other an’ come out. You haven’t a chance!”

Kedrick did not reply. He was reaching up into the darkness over his head, feeling for the beams. He touched one, barely touched it, and then reached up with both hands, judging the distance he had to jump by the width of the beams in the other room.

What if it were old and would not support his weight? He had to chance that.

He jumped. His fingers hooked well over the edge, and soundlessly he drew himself up. Now Kedrick could see into the lighted room, but he could not locate the killer. The voice spoke again. “I’m giving you no more time, Kedrick. Come out or I start to shoot! Toss that other gun first!”

Silence lay in the room, a silence broken by the sudden bellow of a gun! The killer fired, emptied a six-gun, and then emptied another. Tom Kedrick waited, having no idea how many guns the man had or what he might have planned for. Then six more carefully spaced shots were fired. One of them ricocheting dangerously close to Kedrick’s head.

There was a long pause and then a sound of movement. “All right, if you’re alive in there now, you got a shot comin’, but if you want to give up, you can. I sort of want you alive.”

Suddenly the blanket was jerked from its moorings and Alton Burwick stood in the opening, a gun gripped in his fist, ready to fire.

_______

K
EDRICK MADE NO sound, and the man stared and then rushed into the room. Almost whining with fury, he jerked Kedrick’s hat from the bed and then the slicker. As the latter fell to the floor, with it fell Kedrick’s other pistol, which falling from the holster had hooked into a tear in the slicker. He stared at it furiously and then jerked the bed aside. Almost insane with fury, he searched, unbelieving and whining like an angry hound on a trail.

He stopped, his pent-up fury worn away, and stood there, his chest heaving with his exertions, his fist still gripping the pistol. “Gone! Gone!” he cried, as if bereft. “When I had him right here!”

Kedrick’s fingers had found a tiny sliver of wood, and deliberately, he snapped it against Burwick’s cheek. The fat man jerked as if stung and then looked up. Their eyes met, and slowly he backed away, but now he was smiling. “Oh, you’re a smart one, Kedrick! Very smart! Too bad it couldn’t have been you with me instead of that weakling Keith! All front and show, but no bottom to him, no staying quality!

“But,” he sighed, “I’ve got you anyway, and you’ll suffer for what you’ve done.” He scooped Kedrick’s other pistol from the floor and backed away. “All right, get down!”

Kedrick dropped to the floor, and the fat man waved irritably at the gun he clutched. “No use to bluff. That’s empty. Throw it down!”

“What’s it all about, Burwick?” Tom asked suddenly. “Why this place? The armor? What about Dornie Shaw?”

“Ah? How did you know about that? But no matter, no matter!” He backed to the wall, watching Kedrick and holding the gun. “Why, it was gold, boy! Gold and lots of it! It was I who stirred those Indians up to attacking that caravan! I wanted the gold they carried, and most of it belonging to Dornie’s pa!

“I knew about it! Followed them from Dodge. Knew when they drew it from the bank there, and how much!

“They fooled me though. When the Indians hit, they’d buried it somewhere. It could have been a lot of places. That was the trouble. They might have buried it sooner, but somewhere along the trail. I’ve dug and I’ve hunted, but I’ve never found it. Maybe I will someday, but nobody else is going to!

“Wondered why I wanted the land? Profit, sure! But I wanted this piece, a couple of sections in here, all for myself. Figured on that, working it out somehow. The gold’s somewhere between here and Thieving Rock. Has to be.”

Kedrick nodded. “That clears up a lot of things. Now you drop that gun, Burwick, and come as my prisoner.”

Burwick chuckled fatly. “Try to bluff me? I’d of expected that from you! Nervy one, huh? Bet you got that Connie Duane, too! By the Lord Harry, there’s a woman! No scare to her! Not one bit! Drop your gun, boy, or I’ll put my first bullet through your kneecap!”

He was going to shoot, and Tom Kedrick knew it. Coolly, he squeezed off his own shot, an instant faster. He shot for the gun hand, but the bullet only skinned the thumb knuckle and hit Burwick in the side.

The fat man jerked and his face twisted, and he stared at the gun, lifting his own. Coolly, Kedrick fired again and then again. The bullets struck with an ugly smack, and Burwick wilted, the gun going from his limp fingers to the floor. Kedrick stepped in and caught him, easing him down. The flabby cheeks were suddenly sagging and old. Bitterly, the man stared upward at him. “What happened? That—that—?”

“The gun was a Walch twelve-shot Navy pistol,” Tom explained. “I started carrying them a few days ago, replacing the .44 Russians.”

Burwick stared at him, no hatred in his eyes. “Smart!” he said. “Smart! Always one trick better than me, or anybody! You’ll—do, boy!”

_______

O
N THE STREETS of Mustang the sun was warm after the rain. Tom Kedrick, wounded again but walking, stood beside Connie Duane. Shad was grinning at them. “Look mighty fine in that tailored suit, Tom. You goin’ to be gone long?”

“Not us! We’ll be married in Santa Fe, and then we’re headin’ for the Mogollons and that ranch.”

“Seems a shame not to hunt for that gold,” Laredo complained. “But anyway, the real treasure was that box full of Burwick’s papers. Sure made Cummings hunt his hole. But I do regret that gold.”

“I don’t,” Connie replied. “It’s caused too much trouble. Alton Burwick spent his life and a good many other lives after it. Let it stay where it is. Maybe a better man will find it, who needs it more than we do!”

“Gosh!” Laredo said suddenly. “I got to light a shuck! I’m late to meet Sue! So long, then!” They watched him go, waiting for the stage.

Everything was quiet in Mustang—three whole days without a killing.

About Louis L’Amour

“I think of myself in the oral tradition—as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way
I’d like to be remembered—as a storyteller.
A good storyteller.”

I
T IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel,
Hondo
, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include
The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum
(his twelfth-century historical novel),
Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed
, and
The Haunted Mesa
. His memoir,
Education of a Wandering Man
, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio publishing.

The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour publishing tradition forward.