to Tame a Land (1955) (21 page)

"If she were to change at all, Logan, it wouldn't be i n this place. No decent woman could live in such a place."

He stood with his feet a little apart, facing me. He wa s wearing gray-striped trousers and a white shirt with a blac k string tie. He looked good. He was, I expect, a might y handsome man. He also wore a gun.

"Rye, you're the man I've needed here. Stay with me.

Together we can live like feudal barons. We can have al l this!" He waved a hand at the hills. "We can have it t o ourselves!"

All this . . . an empire of rock and sand. Someday i t would be more, but that was a long way off, and no bunc h of outlaws would make it more. Yet this man had helpe d me. He had been my best friend, and for a long tim e my only friend. But now I knew I was going to have t o leave, and that our friendship was at an end. And I wa s going to take Liza with me. And it wasn't going to b e easy.

"No. I said it flatly. "No, Logan, I'm leaving. And I'
m taking Liza with me if she wants to go."

Then I told him about the place back in Maryland. Onl y I was telling Liza, too. "I'm going to do what you advised , Logan. I'm going to get away from the need for killin g before I kill the wrong man, or before I lose all sense o f balance and kill too many."

He was very quiet. He rolled a smoke, and then h e looked up at me. This was Logan, but it was also th e man who had called himself T. J. Farris the man wh o had sent for John Lang. The man behind Ben Billings. I t was hard to believe how a man could change.

"You can go. Liza stays with me."

"You had Mary," I said quietly. "She was your tie, th e person who stood by you, helped you. Liza is the sam e for me. Liza can be everything to me. We've both know n it since we were kids."

"No." He said it as if he didn't want to believe. "No.

She stays."

I glanced at Liza. "Will you go with me?"

"Yes, Rye. I will go with you."

"See?" My eyes swung back. "I "

Logan Pollard was smiling at me. That tight, strang e smile, so unlike the warm smile he used to have. He wa s smiling at me over a gun.

"Rye, I thought I taught you better. Never take you r eyes off a man."

"But you're my friend," I said.

His face did not change. He looked a little bored, I t hought. Only I'm not always a good judge.

"There are no friends. In this life you take what yo u want or it's taken from you. You can go now, Rye. Yo u can ride out of the badlands and stay out. I've told th e boys to let you go. I told Smoky Hill you were to go afte r I'd talked with you."

So there it was. He looked at me across a gun the wa y he had once looked at McGarry, only with that odd difference. He looked at me down the barrel of a gun and I k new he was, with that gun, one of the most dangerou s men in the West.

He had taught me other things. Never to draw unles s to shoot, never to shoot unless to kill.

The man standing behind that gun was a man wh o had never drawn but to kill. Rarely in the old days, bu t now I could see that with the death of Mary, somethin g had happened. The old Logan Pollard was gone.

And here before me in this tight, icy man with th e thin-drawn mouth was what I might become. This ma n who killed wantonly now, who could take a decent gir l and hold her until she was finally broken by his will.

And suddenly I knew. I knew that when I turned t o go he would kill me.

He would kill me because if I left I would return wit h armed men to wipe out the Roost. He had admitted I'
d been left alone because he'd known how I would react.

"All right," I said. "I'll go. But I wish you'd think i t over. We've been friends, and-"

"Stop it!" His tension was mounting. He would have t o kill. I knew. "Consider yourself lucky. You did me a favo r by killing Chance Vader. Now get out of here. I'm returning the favor by letting you go."

Liza's eyes were wide and frightened. She was trying t o warn me, trying to tell me.

I turned, needing the one trick, the thing that woul d throw him off the one instant I needed, for there is a thing called reaction time, the space of delay between th e will and the action.

I started to turn, then suddenly looked back. "Logan,"

I said, "I've only read Plutarch four times."

"Plutarch?"

He had been set to kill, and the remark threw him off.

It took an instant for his mind to react and in that instan t I threw myself aside and drew.

It was an action I had practiced when alone, droppin g aside and to one knee, the other leg outstretched. And I m ade the fastest draw of my life. I made it because I ha d to.

The Smith & Wesson .44 kicked hard against my palm.

In the instant I fired I saw his eyes white and ugly an d his gun blossom with fire. I was smashed back to the floor , heard the hammer of another bullet drive into the wal l back of me, and I fired twice.

Yet even as I fired, I saw the red on his shirt front , and I saw him knocked back and twisted by my shots, s o that his third shot went into the ceiling.

Rolling over, I came up fast. He swung his gun an d we both shot. He hit me. I felt the numbing shock of th e bullet. And then I fired and he fell, tumbling face down , the gun slipping from his hand.

For an instant I stared down at him, holding my gu n ready. He turned over and stared up at me, smiling faintly.

"Rye," he said. "Good old Rye. You learned, didn'
t you?"

His body tightened and twisted, held hard against pain , and then his muscles relaxed.

"Liza," I said, "get a rifle. Stand by the window. We'r e still in trouble."

He was lying there looking at me. "Think I alway s knew it, Rye. Think I always knew it would be you. Fat e . . . somehow."

He was dying, and he knew it, yet there was still dange r in the man, and I could not trust- him. He saw it in me , and smiled. "Good boy," he said. "Good boy."

We could hear them coming up the hill. We could hea r them all coming. Thirty or more of them, armed and dangerous men.

"I'm going East, Logan. You're the last. I'm goin g to put my guns away."

My guns were loaded again. He had taught me that.

Reload as soon as you stop shooting.

They had stopped outside. I stepped to the door. "Smok y Hill," I said. "You and Bronc. Come on in."

With Liza holding a rifle on the others, they entere d one by one.

Logan Pollard looked up at them. He stared at the m for a minute, and then looked back at me. "Told yo u Plutarch would be good reading," he said. "I-"

And he died, just like that. He died there on the floor , and inside I felt sick and empty and lost.

Across his body I looked at them. "His real name wa s Logan Pollard," I said. "He was my best friend."

Nobody said anything. "I'm going out of here," I said.

"She's going with me. I came after her."

Smoky Hill rubbed his hands down his pants. Bron c rolled his quid in his jaws.

"Any argument?" I asked.

"Not any," Bronc said. "You go ahead."

They turned and walked outside and I took Liza by th e arm. She held back, just a minute. "You're wounded , Rye!"

"Get what we'll need," I said. "We can't give the m time to change their minds."

My side was stiff and sore. I could feel the wetness o f blood inside my shirt. But I felt all right. I could make out.

I'd have to.

"Rye . . . he was all right to me. He really was."

"I knew him," I said. "He was a good man."

Nobody said anything as we walked out and went dow n to the stables. Nobody made any argument. Maybe the y didn't want to face my guns. Maybe they were too stunne d to think about doing anything. Maybe there wasn't anything they wanted to do.

At a seep a dozen miles down the back trail, Liza looke d me over. One bullet had cut through the muscle at th e top of my shoulder. The second had hit a rib, breakin g it and cutting through the flesh and out the back. I'
d lost blood.

We met Mustang Roberts and a posse of twenty me n coming down Nine Mile. Valley, trying to work out th e trail. We were riding along together when they saw us , and they just turned around and fell in behind.

And that was the way it was in the old days befor e the country grew up and men put their guns away.

Someday, and I hope it never comes, there may be a time when the Western hills are empty again and the lan d will go back to wilderness and the old, hard ways.

Enemies may come into our country and times will hav e changed, but then the boys will come dowsi from the ol d high hills and belt on their guns again.

They can do it if they have to. The guns are hung up , the cows roam fat and lazy, but the old spirit is still there , just as it was when the longhorns came up the trail fro m Texas, and the boys washed the creeks for gold.