The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1 (22 page)

Pa, who trapped with Bridger and Carson, never lost a chance of teaching us boys how to judge terrain, and the best time was at sundown or sunup with the shadows falling toward you.

When I finished my study, I came down off the rock and cleared a spot of needles and leaves under one of those cedars that sort of arched out toward us. My fire was about the size you could hold in your two hands, for the smaller the fire, the less smoke, and such a fire will heat up just as well if a man wants to cook. And rising up through the branches thataway the smoke would be thinned out so much it could not be seen.

“I'm from Tennessee,” I said to her, “and my name is Tell Sackett.”

“Oh—I am Christine Mallory, and I was born in Delaware.”

“Howdy, Mrs. Mallory. Mostly, the Delawares a man meets out here are Indians. Good trackers and good fighting men.”

When I dug out what grub I had, I was ashamed it was so little. It was a mite Squires staked me to before I taken out. The coffee was mostly ground bean and chicory, and all else I had was jerked venison and cold flour.

When the coffee was ready I filled my cup and passed it to her. “Mrs. Mallory, this isn't what you have been used to, but it's all we've got.”

She tasted it, and if she hadn't been a lady I think she would have spit, but she swallowed it, and then drank some more. “It's hot,” she said, and smiled at me, and I grinned back at her. Truth to tell, that was about all a body could say for it.

“You'd better try some of this jerked venison,” I said. “If you hold it in your mouth awhile before you begin to chew, it tastes mighty wholesome. All else I've got is cold flour.”

“What?”

“Cold flour—it's a borrowed thing, from the Indians. Only what I have here is white-man style. It's parched corn ground up and mixed with a mite of sugar and cinnamon. You can mix it with water and drink it, and a man can go for miles on it. Mighty nourishing too. Pa was in Montana one time and traveled two weeks on a couple of dry quarts of it.”

Last time I got up to scout the country around I caught the gleam of a far-off campfire.

 

Standing there looking across country and watching the stars come out, I thought of that girl and wondered if I would ever have me a woman like that one, and it wasn't likely. We Sacketts are Welsh, and a proud people, but we never had much in the way of goods. Somehow the Lord's wealth never seemed to gather to us; all we ever had was ourselves and our strength and a will to walk the earth with honesty and pride.

But this girl was running away, and it didn't seem right. She was huddled to the fire, wrapped in one of my blankets when I came down to the fire. Gathering cedar boughs and grass, I made her a bed to one side, but close to the fire.

“The fire smells good,” she said.

“That's cedar,” I said, “and some creosote brush. Some folks don't like the smell of creosote. Those Spanish men call it
hediondilla,
which means little stinker. Some of the Indians use it for rheumatism.”

Nobody said anything for a while, and then I said, “Creosote-brush fires flavor beans—the best ever. You try them sometime, and no beans ever taste the same after.”

The fire crackled, and I added a few small, dry sticks and then said, “It ain't right, leaving him thisaway. He's likely worried to death.”

She looked across the fire at me, all stiff and perky. “That is none of your business!”

“Mrs. Mallory, when you saddled yourself on me, you made it my business. Girl who marries a soldier ought to think to live a soldier's life. Strikes me you've no nerve, ma'am, you cut and run because of dirt floors. I'd figure if a girl loved a man it wouldn't make her no mind. You're spoiled, ma'am. You surely are.”

She got up, standing real stiff, coming the high and mighty on me. “If you do not want me here, I will go.”

“No, you won't. First off, you haven't an idea where you are or which way to go to get there. You'd die of thirst, if that lion didn't get you.”

“Lion?”

“Yes, ma'am.” I wasn't exactly lying, because somewhere in Arizona there was sure to be a lion prowling. “There's snakes, too, and at night you can't see them until they get stepped on.”

She stood there looking unsure of herself, and I kept on with what I had to say. “Woman needs a man out here—needs him bad. But a man needs a woman too. How do you think that man of yours feels now? His wife has shamed him before others, taking on like a girl-baby, running off.”

She sat down by the fire, but she looked at me with a chilly expression. “I will thank you to take me to Hardyville. I did not mean to ‘saddle' myself on you, as you put it. I will gladly pay you for your trouble.”

“Ain't that much money.”

“Don't say ‘ain't'!” She snapped her eyes at me.

“Thank you, ma'am,” I said, “but you better get you some shut-eye. We got to ride fifty miles tomorrow, and I can't be bothered with any tired female. You sit up on that horse tomorrow or I'll dump you in the desert.”

“You wouldn't dare!”

“Yes, ma'am, I surely would. And leave you right there, and all your caterwauling wouldn't do you a mite of good. You get some sleep. Come daylight we're taking out of here faster than a scared owl.”

Taking up my rifle I went out to scout the country, and setting up there on that rock slab I done my looking and listening. That fire was still aburning, away off yonder, like a star fallen out of the sky.

When I came back, she was lying on the bed I'd made, wrapped in a blanket, already asleep. Seen like that with the firelight on her face she looked like a little girl.

It was way shy of first light when I opened my eyes, and it'd taken me only a minute or two to throw the saddles on those broncs. Then I fixed that pack saddle for her to ride. My outfit was skimpy, so it wasn't much extra weight, carrying her.

When I had coffee going, I stirred her awake with a touch on the shoulder, and her eyes flared open and she was like to scream when she saw me, not that I'd blame her. In my sock feet I stand six-three, and I run to shoulders and hands, with high cheekbones and a wedge face that sun had made dark as any Indian. With no shave and little sleep I must have looked a frightening thing.

“You better eat a little,” I said. “You got five minutes.”

We rode out of there with the stars still in the sky, and I was pleasant over seeing no fire over yonder where it had been the night before.

It was just shy of noon, with the sun hot in the sky, when we crossed a low saddle and started out across a plain dotted with Joshua trees—named by the Mormons who thought they looked like Joshua lifting his arms to Heaven.

 

We came down across that country, and there had been no dust in the sky all morning, but of a sudden four men rode up out of a draw, and it was the Coopers. Their description had been talked around enough.

“Howdy, Coopers! You hunting something?”

They looked at Christine Mallory and then at me. “We're looking for you,” one said, “and that gold, but we'll take the lady, too, sort of a bonus-like.”

Like I said, when you've quit running, you can talk or you can fight, and times like this I run long on talk.

“You'll take nothing,” I said. “You are talking to Tell Sackett—William Tell Sackett, to be exact, as my pa favored William Tell in his thinking. We Sacketts hail from the Cumberland Gap in Tennessee, and Pa always taught us never to give up nothing without a fight. Specially money or a woman.

“Now,” I continued on before they could interrupt, “back to home, folks used to say I wasn't much for fiddling or singing, and my feet was too big for dancing, but along come fighting time, I'd be around.

“Couple of you boys are wearing brass buttons. I figure a forty-four slug would drive one of those buttons so deep into your belly a doc would have to get him a search warrant to find it.”

My horse was stepping around kind of uneasy-like, and I was making a show of holding him in.

“Anyway,” I said, “this here is General James Whitfield Mallory's wife, and if you so much as lay a hand to her, this territory wouldn't be big enough to hold you. He's the kind to turn out the whole frontier Army just to hunt you.”

My horse gave a quick sidestep about then, and when he swung his left side to them, I used the moment to fetch out my gun, and when the roan stopped sidestepping, I had that big Colt looking at them.

Pa, he set me to practicing getting a gun out as soon as the end of my holster quit cutting a furrow in the ground when I walked. Pa said to me, “Son, you ever need that gun, you'll need it in your fist, not in no holster.”

They were surprised when they saw that gun staring them down, and this George Cooper was mad clean through. “That ain't going to cut no ice,” he said. “We want you, we'll take you.”

“One thing about this country,” I said, “a man's got a right to his opinion. Case like this here, if you're wrong, you don't get a chance to try it over. Any time you want to give it a try,” I said, “you just unlimber and have at it.”

Nobody had anything to say, none of those Coopers looking anything but mad right about then, so I kept on, figuring when we were talking we weren't fighting.

“I got me a bet, Coopers; I got me a bet says I can kill three of you before you clear leather—and that last man better make it a quick shot or I'll make it four.”

“You talk a good fight,” George Cooper said.

“You can call my hand. You got the right. One thing I promise, if I don't kill you dead with my first shots, I'll leave you lay for the buzzards and the sun.”

Those Coopers didn't like it much, but my roan was standing rock still now that I'd quit nudging him with my spur, and at that range a man wasn't likely to miss very often. And it's a fact that nobody wants to die very much.

“If she's Mallory's wife, what's she doing with you?”

“She was headed for Whipple,” I said, “and she turned sick, and the doc said she should go back to Ehrenberg. They asked me to take her there. Served with the general during the war,” I added. “He knows me well.”

“I never heard of no General Mallory,” George Cooper said.

“You never heard of
General James Whitfield Mallory
?” By now I believed in him my own self. “He was aide to General Grant! Same class at the Point with Phil Sheridan and Jeb Stuart. Fact is, they are talking of making him governor of the territory just to wipe out outlaws and such.

“Begging the lady's pardon, but he's noted for being a mighty mean man—strict. And smart? He's slicker than a black snake on a wet-clay sidehill. Last thing you want to do is get him riled.

“Lady here was telling me if he is made territorial governor he plans to recruit a special police force from among the Apache. He figures if those Apaches hate white men they might as well turn it to use tracking down outlaws—and he doesn't say anything about them bringing anybody back.”

“That's not human!” George Cooper protested.

“That's the general for you. He's that kind.” Now that trusty Colt had stayed right there in my fist, and so I said, “Now, we'll ride on.”

Motioning her on ahead, I rode after her, but believe me, I sat sidewise in my saddle with that Colt ready for a quick shot. The last I could see they were still a-setting there, arguing.

Most talking I'd done since leaving Tennessee, and the most lying I'd done since who flung the chunk.

 

We fetched up to Hardyville about sundown on the second day, and the first person I saw when we rode up to the store was Bill Squires.

“Bill,” I said, “the Coopers were a-hunting me. Only way they could have known I had that gold was if you told them. Somebody had to ride out to tell them, and somebody would want to be on hand to divvy up.

“Now,” I said, “if you want to call me a liar, I'll take this lady inside and I'll come right back. But you hear this: They didn't get one speck of this gold, and neither are you.”

“I panned my share of that gold!” He was looking mighty bleak.

“So you did, but yours wasn't enough; you had to try for all of it. A month or so back Jack Walker left camp and was dry-gulched. I plan to send your gold to his widow and family, and you can save your objections to that until I come out.”

So I went inside with Christine Mallory, and there were two or three fresh Army officers right off the boat waiting to go to Fort Whipple.

“My husband is not a general,” she said then, “and his name is Robert Mallory.”

“I know that, Mrs. Mallory. Your husband is Second Lieutenant Robert Mallory, and he's greener than meadow grass. Month or so back he came out and ordered me to get my horse off the parade ground at Whipple. Mighty stiff-necked he was too.

“Ma'am, you haven't got you a man there, you've got a boy, but a boy sound in wind and limb; and two or three years on the frontier will give you a man you can be proud of. But if you run off now the chances are he will resign his commission and run after you, and you'll have a boy for a husband as long as you live.

“You stay with him, you hear? You ain't much account, either, but give you seasoning and you will be. Fact is, if you'd been a woman back there on that trail I might have been less of the gentleman, but you haven't grown up to a man yet.”

She had the prettiest blue eyes you ever saw, and she looked straight at me. She was mad, but she was honest, and behind those blue eyes she had a grain of sense.

“You may be right,” she admitted, “although I'd rather slap your face than agree. After what I have been through these past few days, that dirt floor would look very good indeed.”

“Ma'am, when my time comes to marry, I hope I find a woman as pretty as you—and with as much backbone.”