The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1 (14 page)

Yet I couldn't recall being exactly scared … only that I was in the middle of something I'd be better out of.

 

Pa was sitting up with his back to a tree when I rode up. He had the coffeepot on, for that had been among the stuff I left beside him when I shucked my gear at the camp. Pa was sitting up but he looked poorly. His face was gray and tight-drawn.

“Three of them?” He studied the situation awhile. “That's our money, boy. We were trusted with it.”

We drank our coffee, and neither of us talked much, but it gave me time to sort of get things settled down inside me. A man doesn't always know what to do when things happen quick-like and when for the first time he's faced up with gun trouble and no way accustomed to it. But this was showing me a few things and one of them was that Pa had been right about Doc and Reese.

When it came right down to it those two shaped up like a couple of two-by-twice tinhorns. Neither of them had nerve enough to talk up to Bob Heseltine … but neither had I.

“I got to go back,” I said, “I got to go back and make my fight. Else I'll always think I was scared.”

“You and me, Ed,” Pa said, “we've had our troubles but you never showed anything but sand. There's scared smart and then there's scared stupid. I think that you did the right thing.” Pa reached for a stick lying among the branches of a fallen tree, and he had out his bowie. “We're going back, boy, but we're going together.”

We'd taken our time. Pa had a pipe after his coffee and while he smoked he worked on a crutch. My mouth was all dry inside and my stomach was queasy, but once we decided to go back I felt a whole lot better. It was like I'd left something unfinished back there that just had to be done.

And I kept thinking of Sites, not willing to face up to it, and Reese, who was supposed to be my friend, wanting to kill me.

“You did right, Ed,” Pa told me, speaking around his pipe stem. “You did the smart thing. They will think you were scared off.”

“That Heseltine … they say he's killed a dozen men. He's robbed banks and he's got a mean reputation.”

“I like to see a mean man,” Pa said. “Most of them don't cut much figger.”

Pa had finished working out his crutch. It wasn't much, just a forked stick trimmed down a mite so he could use the fork to hold under his armpit. I helped him to the horse, and once he got a foot in the stirrup and a hand on the horn he was in that saddle. Meanwhile I smothered our fire. Nobody wants to turn fire loose in grass or timber unless he's a fool.

“A bank robber don't shape up to me,” Pa said. “When he goes into a bank with a gun, he don't figure to get shot at. If he expected it he'd never take the first step. He threatens men with folks depending on them and steals money he's too lazy to work for.

“The James boys swaggered it mighty big until a bunch of home folks up at Northfield shot their ears off, and the Dalton gang got the same thing in Coffeyville. The McCarty boys tried it in Colorado, and all those bold outlaws were shot down by a few quiet men who left their glass-polishing or law books to do it.”

Well, all those outlaws had seemed mighty exciting until Pa put it thataway, but what he said was true. Pa was a little man himself, only weighed a hundred and thirty pounds, though he had the strongest hands I ever did see. Strong hands from plowing, shoeing horses, and wrassling steers.

Close to midnight we fetched up to their fire.

“Help me down, Ed,” Pa said, whispering. “I want to be on the ground.”

We walked up to the fire, our boots making small sounds in the grass. Pa was carrying my Colt in his right hand, and I carried a shell under the hammer of my Henry rifle. Those boys weren't much account at keeping watch; they were setting around a blanket playing cards for our money.

“You boys are wasting time,” Pa told them. “You're playing with money that don't belong to you.”

Pa had that crutch under his left shoulder, but he held that Colt in one big hand and it pointed like a finger at Heseltine.

“Hear you're a killing man,” Pa said to him, “but you size up to me like a no-account, yellow-bellied loafer.”

“You got the drop,” Heseltine said. “You got a loud mouth when you got the drop.”

“The drop? You figure we're in some kind of dime novel? Ed, you keep an eye on those others. If either of them make a move, shoot both of them and after they're laying on the ground, shoot them again!”

Deliberately Pa lowered the muzzle until it pointed into the grass beside his foot. “Now, Ed tells me you're a fast hand with a gun,” Pa said, and he limped forward three steps, his eyes locked on Heseltine's, “but I think you're a back-shooting tinhorn.”

Heseltine looked at Pa standing there on one leg and a crutch, and he looked at that old pistol. He looked at Pa again and he drew a long breath and held it. Then he let his breath go and stood there with his hands hanging.

“Nobody's got the drop now, Heseltine.” Pa spoke quietly but his pale eyes blazed in the firelight. “I'm not going back without that money. And if you try to stop me either you're gonna die or both of us are gonna die!”

Sweat was all over Bob Heseltine's face, and it was a cool evening. He wanted to go for his gun the worst way, but he had another want that beat that one all hollow. He wanted to live.

Kid Reese and Doc Sites stood there looking at the big man and they couldn't believe it, and I'm sure I couldn't. A body didn't need to read minds to guess what they were thinking, because here was a poor old gray-haired caprock rancher on one leg with his gun muzzle down calling the bluff of a gunman said to be among the fastest—although, come to think of it, I never heard it said by anyone but Doc or Reese.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Pa standing there; for a little man he looked mighty big, and I suddenly found myself thinking about how it was that my pa had come back with Uncle Bud's scalp. No Comanche warrior ever left a trophy like that beside the trail. Surely no Comanche warrior would ever let a trophy like that go without a fight to the death. It seemed all Bob Heseltine had to do to die was lay hand on his guns.

Pa's pistol swung up. “You had your chance. Now unbuckle your gun belt and step back.”

Heseltine did what he was told and I went forward and gathered his guns. Then I picked up all that money and stuffed it in the saddlebags, and I went through their pockets checking for more.

“Time you learned a lesson, Edwin,” Pa said to me. “Time you learned that it's what's inside a man that matters, not how fast he can draw a gun.”

Pa backed off a few careful steps and without looking at me, he said, “Ed, you and him are going to fight. He needs a whoppin' and you're going to give it to him, do you hear?”

Pa gestured with the Colt. “You others stay out of this … it's a fair fight, between the two of them.”

Well, I looked over at Heseltine; he was six or seven years older than me an' he outweighed me by more than a few pounds. I thought of that story where he killed the sheriff, and then I remembered that he'd just backed down to a crippled-up old man who'd been armed with little more than a fiery force of will and my old Colt.

I put down my gun.

Heseltine took off his calfskin jacket and spat on his hands, looking over at me. “Why, you weak-kneed little whelp, I'll—!”

Another thing Pa taught me: If you're going to fight … fight. Talk about it after.

Lifting my left fist I fetched him a clout in the mouth with my right, and right then I saw that a mean man could bleed.

He came at me swinging with both hands. He was strong, and he figured to put the sign on me. He moved well, better than me, but he hadn't put in all those years of hard work that I had.

He walloped me alongside the jaw and it shook me some, but not like I figured it would. He hit me again and I saw a kind of surprised look come into his eyes, and I knew he'd hit me as hard as he could so I fetched him right where he'd been putting all that whiskey. He grunted, and I spread out my legs and began whopping him with both fists … and in that regard I take after Pa. I've got big hands.

He went down to his knees and I picked him up by the collar and looked him over to find a place that wasn't bloody where I could fetch him again, but the fight was all out of him and Pa said, “Let him go, Ed. Just drop him.”

Seemed like he would go down easier if I fetched him a clout and I did, and then I walked back to get my gun, blowing on my sore fists.

Pa looked over at Doc Sites and Kid Reese who were staring at Heseltine like it was a bad dream. “You two can keep your guns,” he said. “This is Indian country, and I just hope you come after us.

“Whatever you do,” he added, “don't ever come back home. There will be too many who'd like a shot at you.”

Neither of us felt like camping that night with home so far away, so we rode on with the north star behind us. Pa's leg must have been giving him what for, but he was in a good mood, and my fists were sore and my knuckles split, but I felt like riding on through the night.

“You know, Pa, Carlson's been wanting to sell out. He's got water and about three hundred head, and with what we've got we could buy him out and have margin to work on. I figure we could swing it.”

“Together, we could,” Pa said.

We rode south, taking our time, under a Comanche moon.

Dead-End Drift

The trickle of sand ceased, and there was silence. Then a small rock dropped from overhead into the rubble beneath, and the flat finality of the sound put a period to the moment.

There was a heavy odor of dust, and one of the men coughed, the dry, hacking cough of miner's consumption. Silence hung heavily in the thick, dead air.

“Better sit still.” Bert's voice was quiet and unexcited. “I'll make a light.” They waited, listening to the miner fumbling with his hand lamp. “We might dislodge something,” he added, “and start it again.”

They heard his palm strike the lamp, and he struck several times before the flint gave off the spark to light the flame. An arrow of flame leaped from the burner. The sudden change from the impenetrable darkness at the end of the tunnel to the bright glare of the miner's lamp left them blinking. They sat very still, looking slowly around, careful to disturb nothing. The suddenness of the disaster had stunned them into quiet acceptance.

Frank's breathing made a hoarse, ugly sound, and when their eyes found him, they could see the dark, spreading stain on his shirt front and the misshapen look of his broken body. He was a powerful man, with blond, curly hair above a square, hard face. There was blood on the rocks near him and blood on the jagged rock he had rolled from his body after the cave-in.

There was a trickle of blood across Bert's face from a scalp wound but no other injuries to anyone. Their eyes evaded the wall of fallen rock across the drift, their minds filled with awareness.

“Hurt bad?” Bert said to Frank. “Looks like the big one hit you.”

“Yeah,” Frank's voice was low. “Feels like I'm stove up inside.”

“Better leave him alone,” Joe said. “The bleeding seems to be letting up, and there's nothing we can do.”

Frank stared down at his body curiously. “I guess I'm hurt bad.”

He turned his head deliberately and stared at the muck pile. The cave-in had left a slanting pile of broken rock that reached toward them along the drift, cutting them off completely from the outside world, from light and air. Behind them was the face of the drift where Rody had been drilling. From the face of the drift to the muck pile was a matter of a few feet. Frank touched his dry lips with his tongue, remembering what lay beyond the cave-in.

It could scarcely have been the tunnel alone. Beyond it was the Big Stope. He reached over and turned out the light. The flame winked, and darkness was upon them.

“What's the idea?” Joe demanded.

“Air,” Frank said. “There's four of us, and there isn't going to be enough air. We may be some time in getting out.”

“If we get out,” Joe said.

Rody shifted his weight on the rock slab where he was sitting, and they heard the rasp of the coarse denim. “How far do you reckon she caved, Frank?”

“I don't know.” Then he said what they all feared. “Maybe the Big Stope went.”

“If it did,” Rody commented, “we might as well fold our cards and toss in our hands. Nobody can open that stope before the air gives out. There's not much air in here for four men.”

“I warned Tom about that stope,” Joe said. “He had no right to have men working in here. That stope was too big in the first place. Must be a hundred feet across and no pillars, and down below there was too much weight on the stulls. The posts were countersunk into the laggin' all of two inches, like a knife in butter.”

“The point is,” Frank said, “that we're here. No use talking about what should have been. If any part of the stope went, it all went. There's a hundred feet of tunnel to drive and timber, and workin' in loose muck isn't going to help.”

No one spoke. In the utter blackness and stillness of the drift they waited. There was no light, no sound. All had been cut off from them. Joe wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.

The blackness of a mine, the complete darkness, had always bothered him. At night in the outer world, no matter how clouded the sky, there is always some light, and in time the eyes will adjust, and a man can see—a little, at any rate. Here there was no light, and a man was completely blind.

And there was no sound. Only two hundred feet to the surface, yet it might as well have been two thousand. Two hundred feet of rock between them and the light, and that was the shortest route. By the drift or tunnel it was a quarter of a mile to the shaft where the cage could take them to the surface.

Above them was the whole weight of the mountain, before them the solid wall where they had been drilling, behind them the mass of the cave-in, thousands of tons of broken rock and broken timbers.

On the surface there would be tense, frightened men, frightened not for themselves but for those entombed below—and they could not know that anyone was alive.

The skip would be coming down now, bringing men to attack that enormous slide. On top men would be girding for the struggle with the mountain. Around the collar of the shaft men and equipment would be gathered to be sent below. Near the warehouse men would be standing, and some women, tense and white, wondering about those below. And the men who were buried alive could only wait and hope.

“Got a chew, Bert?” Joe asked.

“Sure.” Bert pushed his hand into the darkness, feeling for Joe's. Their hands were steady. Joe bit off a chew, then passed the plug back, their hands fumbling in the dark again.

“We ain't got a chance!” Rody exclaimed suddenly. “She might have caved clear to the station. Anyway, there's no way they can get through in time. We ain't got the air to last five hours even if they could make it that quick.”

“Forget it,” Joe said. “You wouldn't do nothing but blow your money on that frowzy blonde in Kingman if you got free.”

“I was a sap for ever coming to work in this lousy hole,” Rody grumbled. “I was a sap.”

“Quit crabbing,” Bert said mildly. “We're here now, and we've got to like it.”

There was a long silence. Somewhere the mountain creaked, and there was a distant sound of more earth sliding.

“Say”—Frank's voice broke into the silence—“any of you guys work in Thirty-seven?”

“You mean that raise on the Three Hundred?” Bert asked. “Sure, I put in a couple of shifts there.”

“Aren't we right over it now?”

“Huh?” Joe moved quickly. “How high up were they?”

“Better than ninety feet.” Frank's tone was tight, strained. He held himself, afraid to breathe deep, afraid of the pain that would come. He was not sure what had happened to him. Part of his body was numb, but there was a growing pain in his belly as the shock wore off. He knew he was in deep trouble, and the chances of his getting out alive were small. He dreaded the thought of being moved, doubted if he would survive it.

“If that raise was up ninety feet”—Joe spoke slowly, every word standing alone—“then it ain't more than ten feet below us. If we could dig down—”

“Ten feet? In that kind of rock?” Rody sneered. “You couldn't dig that with a pick. Not in a week. Anyway, Thirty-seven ain't this far along. We're thirty yards beyond at least.”

“No,” Frank said, “I think we're right over it. Anyway, it's a chance. It's more than we've got now.”

There was a long silence while they turned the idea over in their minds. Then Joe said, “Why a raise here? There's no ore body here. That's supposed to be farther along.”

“Air,” Bert said. “They wanted some circulation.”

He got up, and they heard him fumbling for a pick. They heard the metallic sound as it was dragged toward him over the rock. “Better move back against the muck pile,” he said. “I'm digging.”

“You're a sap,” Rody said. “You've got no chance.”

“Shut up!” Joe's tone was ugly. “If you ain't willing to try, you can go to hell. I want out of here.”

“Who're you tellin' to shut up?” They heard Rody rise suddenly. “I ain't never had no use for you, you—”

“Rody!” Frank's tone was harsh. “I've got a pick handle, and I know where you are. You go back where you were and keep your mouth shut. This is a hell of a time to start something.”

A light flared in Frank's hand, and he hitched himself a little higher to see better. “That's right, Bert. Start right there. Some of that top stuff will just flake off.”

Sweat beaded his strained white face. One big hand clutched a pick handle. Slowly, as if he had difficulty in moving them, his eyes shifted from face to face. He stared at Rody the longest. Rody's stiff black hair curled back from a low forehead. He was almost as broad as Frank but thicker.

The sodden blows of the pick became the ticking clock of the passing time. It was a slow, measured beat, for the air was already thickening, and the blows pounded with the pulse of their blood. The flame of the carbide light ate into their small supply of air, burning steadily.

Bert stopped, mopping his face. “She's damn hard, Frank. It's going to take the point off this pick in a hurry.”

“We've got four of them,” Frank said. The whole front of him was one dark stain now. “I always carry a pick in a mine.”

Bert swung again, and they watched as the point of the pick found a place and broke back a piece of the rock. The surface had been partly shattered by the explosions as the drift was pushed farther into the mountain. It would be harder as they got down farther.

Frank's big hands were relaxed and loose. He watched the swing of the pick, and when Joe got up to spell Bert, he asked him, “Anybody on top waitin' for you?”

“Uh-huh.” Joe paused, pick in hand. “A girl.”

Rody started to speak but caught Frank's eye and settled back, trying to move out of reach of the pick handle.

“My wife's up there,” Bert said. “And I've got three kids.” He took off his shirt and mopped his body with it.

“There's nobody waitin' for me,” Frank said. “Nobody anywhere.”

“What d'you suppose they're doing out there?” Bert said. “I'd give a lot to know.”

“Depends on how far it caved.” Joe leaned on the pick handle, gasping for breath. “Probably they are shoring her up with timbers around the station or at the opening into the Big Stope.”

He returned to work. He swung the pick, and a fragment broke loose; a second time and another fragment. Bert sat with his elbows on his knees, head hanging, breathing heavily. Frank's head was tipped back against the rock, his white face glistening like wet marble in the faint light that reached him.

It was going to be a long job, a hard job, and the air was growing worse. Being active, they were using it more rapidly, but it was their only chance. Nobody could get through to them in time. As Joe worked, the sweat streamed from his body, running into his eyes and dripping from his chin. Slowly and methodically he swung the pick, deadened to everything but the shock of the blows. He no longer noticed what progress he made; he had become an automaton. Bert started up to relieve him, but Joe shook his head. He was started now, and it was like an infection in his blood. He needed the pick. He clung to it as to a lifeline.

At last he did give way to Bert. He dropped on the rocks, his chest heaving, fighting for air. He tried to keep from remembering Mary, but she was always with him, always just beyond the blows of his pick. Probably she did not yet know what had happened to them, what this sudden thing was that had come into their lives.

She would be at work now, and as the mine was forty miles from town, it might be hours before she knew of the cave-in and even longer before she knew who was trapped below. It would be her tragedy as well as his. Joe cursed. Tomorrow they would have gone to the doctor. He was reliable, Frank had told him, a good man and not a quack.

Big Frank knew about Mary. He knew that with every drive of the pick it would be a closer thing for her. There were but four of them here, underground, but outside were Mary and Bert's wife and kids. It would be a close thing, any way it was looked at. He, Joe, could take it. He had never done anything else, but Mary was in a strange town with no friends, and unless they got to the doctor—

They were fools to have gone ahead when they knew they were taking a chance, but nobody expected anything like this. He had worked in mines most of his life and no trouble until now, and then the roof fell in. The whole damned mountain came down—or so it seemed. When he heard the crash, his first thought was for Mary. He was trapped here, but she was trapped out there, and she was alone.

“Better take a rest,” Frank said. “We've got some time.”

Joe sat down, and Bert looked across at him. “We could work in the dark,” he suggested. “That flame eats up air.”

Frank shook his head. “If you can't see, there's too much waste effort. You've got to see where the pick goes. Try it with the light a little longer.”

Joe's eyes went to Frank. The big man lay tense and still, gripping the rock under his hand. He was in agony, Joe knew it and hated it. Frank was his friend.

“Will we make it, Frank?” He was thinking of Mary. What would she do? What could she do? How could she handle it alone? It wasn't as if they were married. “Think we'll make it?”

“We'll make it,” Frank said. “We'll make it, all right.”

“Listen!” Bert sat up eagerly. “I think I hear them! Wasn't that the sound of a pick?”

They listened, every muscle tense. There was no sound. Then, far away, some muck shifted. Frank doused the light, and darkness closed in, silent and heavy like the dead, dead air. There was no vibrancy here, no sense of living.

They heard Joe get up, heard the heavy blows of the pick. He worked on and on, his muscles aching with weariness. Each blow and each recovery was an effort. Then Bert spoke, and they heard them change places. Standing once more, Bert could feel the difference. It was much harder to breathe; his lungs labored, and his heart struggled against the walls of his chest, as if to break through. Once he stopped and held a hand over it, frightened.