Louis L'Amour (17 page)

“You all right?” I asked.

“All right?” He smiled at me. “How could I be all right? Ann’s gone to look for a way out.” He indicated an opening toward the back, on the downhill side, and when I went back and looked down I could see a crevice in the rocks down which water had run at some time or other.

It opened into a deep canyon, if you could call it that, not over six or eight feet wide, and a wild, unholy-looking place it was. Along the edge there was a sort of trail made by deer or elk, barely wide enough for them to set their feet. The gorge was partly shielded from above by trees and brush growing out of the walls and along the top.

Just as I was about to start down looking for Ann, she came climbing back up. “It’s a way out,” she said. “There’s a brook down there … or a creek, as you call it, running due north.”

“Eddie, you help Ann get Philo on a horse,” I said. “He’s in no shape to ride, but if he stays here he won’t be in any shape to walk or even crawl, so he’d better try it. Then you start down the creek, but keep a lookout.”

“What about you?” Ann asked.

“I’ll hang back for a bit. Make ‘em think we’re dug in to fight it out.”

It was almighty quiet there after they’d left. The only sound was the wind in the pines. The air was all
vibrant and dancing, the way it is sometimes when the snow is melting. Once, back up the slope, I heard a pine cone fall. But there was no other sound for a long time.

Just when I was getting worried about the others, I heard the sound of a man sliding in gravel, and the next minute a head and shoulders stuck over the sloping rock behind me. I was squatting down against the boulders on the other side and when his head came over, my rifle came up and his eyes found me a split second before the bullet took the top of his head off.

He let go of everything and spilled over the rock, then slowly came full into sight, his rifle still gripped in his hand.

He slid to the bottom of the slope and I walked over and picked up his rifle, then peeled off his gun-belt and hand gun. He had another cartridge belt looped over one shoulder and under the other arm, so I took that too. Before this shindig was over I might need all the ammunition I could get.

After a minute a voice called, “Al?”

“You want him,” I called back, “you come an’ get him.”

Somebody swore, and then I heard Bohlen. “Pike, you’re a damned fool! Why fight us? You’ll never work another day in this country, and you know it. Now, you come on up here and I’ll give you fifty dollars and you can ride out of the country, nobody the wiser.”

“Don’t you miss any meals waitin’ for me, Roman,” I said cheerfully. “You may get me, but it’s going to cost you. Why, we’ve got two of your men now. Leaves seven, doesn’t it?”

Shifting my position a little, I backed toward the cave. It was time to give Bohlen something to worry about, something other than what would result if any of us got away.

“Hear about Gatty?” I called out conversationally. “We found Shorty Cones all shot up. Some big rustler outfit came and cleaned them out, lock, stock, an’ barrel.”

“Serves ‘em right!” Bohlen was closer now.

“You mean you want an outfit that tough for neighbors? Listen, Roman, that Tom Gatty was no pilgrim. If that outfit wiped them out, what will they do to your stock? Why, I’d lay a bet they’re sweeping your range right now! You won’t have enough beef left to buy a cigar.”

“Like hell!”

“Figure it for yourself. You’ve got nobody at the ranch. They’ll clean you from hell to breakfast!”

A shot smashed into the logs not far from where I was, so I shot back, then yelled: “You talk to yourself, d’you hear? I’m through talkin’ … but I’ll laugh at you when you can’t even hire a lawyer to keep you from hanging!”

Ducking back into the cave, I ran to the back and scrambled swiftly and silently down the deep, narrow crevice in the rock.

The others had made good time. I had to run and walk almost two miles before I caught up with them. Farley looked like a ghost, sitting up there on that horse, but he was game. He gave me a feeble grin and said, “I knew you’d make it, Pike. What happened?”

Glancing ahead to where Ann rode, I lowered my voice. “We’ve two less to worry about.”

We had only three horses now, and one of us had to travel afoot, which was what I was doing. Not that I liked it. Me, I was a cowhand, and no cowhand will walk across a street if he can ride. Not that I hadn’t done a sight of walking, time to time.

Still we made good time. The country was not so rough now, and though avoiding the regular trail we could still keep to pretty good going.

It was long after dark before I led them into a hollow in the mountains to camp. After it was dark I’d turned at right angles and gone due east into rough country by a little-known route that I’d followed a time or two. From here on I knew the country somewhat better, and the hollow in which we camped was not likely to be found, unless in the daylight.

All of us were all in, so we took a chance and built a small fire in the hollow among some boulders and fixed us a hot meal, although we were running short on everything but coffee. When we had eaten I smothered the fire and crawled back under the brush to rest. Eddie needed rest as much as I did, and this time we left to our broncs the job of keeping guard. They were not long from the wilds, and they would be apt to warn us of trouble. Nevertheless, I woke up twice during the night and prowled around, talking quietly to the horses and listening into the night, but I heard nothing.

By the time the sun was topping out on the Black Hills over east beyond the Powder, I was high up on a ridge of the mountain studying the country behind us.

The air was clear and sharp, and I saw them at almost the first glance. They were miles off, north of Beaver Creek, and raising angry dust at us. They must
have missed our right-angle turn, and were hunting tracks where we hadn’t made any.

By the time I came down off the mountain everybody was packed and ready to go.

Farley reached into a saddlebag. “Did you ever wear moccasins, Pike? They’ll beat those boots for hiking or running.”

They were almost a perfect fit, and they surely felt good. Farley wasn’t the first rider I’d known who packed a pair of moccasins for wear around camp, though it wasn’t the usual thing. I’d seen him wearing moccasins around his cabin a time or two.

Ann rode alongside me, and I let her carry my rifle, making that much less weight for me.

We nooned in a shallow place among low grass hills, with no trees around and no water but what we carried in our one canteen. There was a trickle of water in a creek bed and Eddie led the horses there to water, a good hundred yards off, while we brewed coffee on a buffalo-chip fire.

Nobody was talking. I still was dead beat, and so were the others. We drank our coffee and dowsed our fire, and when Eddie came back Farley was asleep or passed out, I couldn’t tell which. Ann sat close to him, still sipping her coffee.

“We ain’t going to make it this way,” I said. “I’m about beat up from hiking and running.” I took a swallow of coffee. “Eddie, you got to take Farley and Ann on into Miles City.”

They just looked at me, too tired to ask the obvious question. “I’m going to get me a horse,” I said. “I’m through walking. I’m going to get it from them, and I’m going to make a try at setting them afoot.”

“You’ll get killed,” Ann said. “And you’d not be in this at all, neither of you would, if it hadn’t been for us.”

Me, I wasn’t paying any attention. All the time I’d been running along on sore feet I’d been getting madder by the minute, and now I was really ready for trouble, and I wasn’t about to wait for it. I’d been chased about as far as I was going to run, and if they wanted a fight they were going to get it.

If I had to take on that whole crowd to get me a horse, then I’d take them on.

The sky was gray again, and it looked like more snow, and we were still a good distance from Miles City. “You go along,” I said. “I’m going to make me a fight.”

Eddie looked at me without speaking. He wanted to be with me, I knew that, but somebody had to care for Philo, and somebody had to keep them moving.

So I took a stick and laid it out for them. “You keep going due north,” I said, “and you can’t miss it. Over east is Pumpkin Creek, but she bends kind of wide toward the east, so don’t waste around trying to follow it. You just keep north. Somewhere up yonder you’ll have to cross the Pumpkin or the Tongue, but there’s a crossing near where they join up. Try for that and cross over and go on into Miles City.”

Eddie went to get the horses and I checked my rifle. Ann stood there, looking big-eyed at me, almost as if maybe she wasn’t going to see me anymore—and maybe she wasn’t.

Right then my muscles were sore, my feet were blistered, and my mind was all in a bind with stubbornness. It was the meanness in me that made me
want to wait, just as much as it was wanting to give them a running start toward Miles City. If I could get at Bohlen’s horses, or even hold his men up for a few hours, the others might make it on in. Otherwise it was going to be a fight all the way into town.

“Ann,” I said, “Philo’s got a chance. It’s up to you and Eddie to get him there. I’m going to hang back and stir up trouble. You go along now.”

She stood there, a serious smile on her face. “Barney,” she said, “I think you’re the finest, most genuine man I ever knew!”

That’s a hell of a thing to say to a man. I felt my neck getting red and hunted around for words. But I couldn’t find any that wouldn’t make me sound more of a fool than I was.

“You better get goin’,” I said. “Get your brother ready to start.”

“If we come out of this, Barney, I’m going to stay in Montana.”

“This is no place for an English lady.”

“But I’m Irish, Barney, and you’ll find the Irish all over the world, the men and the women too. I’m one of a family who have had cousins who fought in the French Army, in the Spanish Army, and in India. I had a second cousin who was killed with Custer—that’s not very far from here, you said.”

“There’s nothing here for you,” I said. “This is a rough country.”

“Nothing for me? I think there is.”

Me, I pulled my beat-up old hat down over my eyes and looked at my Winchester.

“You get to Miles City,” I said, “and you tell them
what happened out here. Tell them about those other killings too. And Ann—” “What?”

“Don’t you turn your back to anybody.
Anybody at all
. You hear?”

Eddie came up with the horses and I helped her get Philo into the saddle. He was drawn finer than any man I ever saw who was still alive and able to move.

“Luck, Pike,” he said in a low voice, “the best of luck, man.”

When Ann’s horse started to turn away, she suddenly reached over and touched my cheek.

Eddie hesitated a moment longer. “I’ll do the best I can,” he said quietly. “You keep your hands up, boy. Don’t you let them feint you out of position.”

He rode off and I stood there, looking after them, and now that I felt I was seeing her for the last time, I finally admitted that I was in love with Ann Farley.

But there was no way it could do me a bit of good.

A
MAN HAS to face up to himself sometime or other. You can go on being satisfied or ducking the issue only so long, and then there comes a time when you start asking yourself, not what you’ve done with your summer’s wages, but with your whole life up to that minute. And more often than not the answer you have to give yourself isn’t a happy one.

The thing a man has to realize is that it is never too late. I’ve known of many a man who has braced up and made something of himself after he was forty, with nothing to show for the years before that but scars and the cluttering up of dead wishes. About the worst thing a man can do is to let a dream die.

A while back, when I wasn’t much more than a youngster, I used to think often of having my own place, and of just how I’d handle it. An idea like that in your mind doesn’t just lie fallow; it builds up and gathers background, trying to fit itself for realization. Here and there you pick up a thought or an idea, you work for somebody else who does things well or badly, and you add to your little stock of information, and you do it mostly without thinking.

You get to studying range conditions, and the effects of different kinds of grass or forage, and all the while you are learning. Every idea is a seed and, like a seed, it germinates. Only you have to feed it to make
it grow properly. My trouble was that after a lot of years of thinking, I’d sort of fallen into the rut of working for the other guy, of riding into town, having myself a time, fighting somebody who was supposed to be tough, and riding back home to do the same thing. The idea was still there, but it was growing in a mighty spindly fashion.

A man never starts to get old until he starts to forget his dream. Somebody said once that nature abhors a vacuum; well, from all I’d seen, I would say that nature dislikes anything that doesn’t produce. And me? Maybe this was my time to die, because so far as I could recall I’d produced nothing but a day’s work for a day’s pay, I’d been honest, hard-working; I’d paid no attention to rain, snow or hail, I’d done my job, breaking the rough ones, pulling ornery steers out of bogs, eating the dust of roundups and the bawling sounds of roundup cattle on drives.