He said as much to Dube. “Don’t worry,” Dube replied. “Tensleep is in town. He rode west right behind Boston’s stage, sort of keepin’ an eye on her. She’d throw a fit if she knew…says she can care for herself, and likely she can, but a body never knows. But Tensleep knows them all, especially Tom.”
“I remember him,” Val said. “As a matter of fact, I remember that he knew my grandparents—Myra’s folks. He came from the same town, or somewhere near. He said they were good people.”
It was cool and pleasant here. A few thunderheads showed in the north, over Animas Mountain.
Val went into the hotel, and looked down the street from the lobby window. A man had gotten up from a seat on the edge of the boardwalk and gone into the saloon.
“Val,” Boston said, close behind him, “be careful.”
They heard a door close, and turned to see a man coming up the dark hall from the back of the hotel. It was Tensleep.
Suddenly Val realized that Tensleep was an old man. He had never thought of him that way, for the outlaw-cowhand-gunfighter had never seemed to change.
“They’re all here, Val. I don’t think they saw me, but I seen ever’ last one of them. And they’re loaded for bear. Pagosa’s got him a buffalo gun, and Kiley is packin’ a double-barrel shotgun.”
“Thanks. Stay out of the way, Tensleep.”
“You kiddin’? This here’s my party as much as yours. I never did like that Sonnenberg, and he knows it.”
“How about Tom?”
Tensleep shrugged. “He’s with them, ain’t he?”
Egan Cates came into the room. “Val, we’ve got to talk. There’s this box—”
“I know about it.”
“Yes,” said Cates, “and so does everybody else. I’ve had two flat cash offers for it in the last twenty-four hours. Masters wants to buy it because of what he could do to Myra if she starts trouble. Myra herself wants it…and Lord knows who else.”
“Where is it?”
“Under my bed…and it isn’t easy to sleep with it there.”
“I’ll take it off your hands. Tensleep”—he turned to him—“you go with Cates. Move that box to my room and you sit on it, do you hear?”
“And miss out on the fight?”
“No, just until Boston can get there. She will take care of it.”
Dube had been leaning on the door jamb, watching down the street. “It’s quiet,” he said, “but that’s normal, this time of day. This here’s a Saturday-night town, and by day most folks are about their business, whatever it is.”
“Your canyon is right out of town,” Cates said, “if you want to look at it.”
“I’m selling it,” Val said, “that’s all.” He was cold inside, and he felt oddly on edge, and did not want to talk.
Boston was quiet, and he liked it that way. Just having her here was important. They moved into the dining room. The waitress was apologetic. “They hadn’t really planned to serve meals, and they may not continue the practice, so we’re really not set up for it.”
“Just anything,” Val said. He was not hungry, but he wanted to be busy.
“You hadn’t better eat,” Cates said. “It makes it worse if you get shot in the stomach.”
But they ate, and Val gradually began to simmer down, some of the tenseness going out of him as he drank the coffee.
“Boston,” he said then, “you go back and stay in my room or yours, but watch that box.”
“Is it so important?”
“To me it isn’t important at all, but it is important to her. Everything she’s done goes right down the drain if that box is opened and the contents get known.”
“What about you? And her people?” Boston said. “Val, her people probably believe she’s dead. It would ruin them if all this came out now. Don’t do it, Val.”
“Why should I? She hasn’t anything I want. The one thing she could have given me was just to be a mother to me, but that’s long ago and far away.”
The street was empty except for a dark man who leaned on a horse as if he were sick. He had just come from a saloon and he had his head down against the saddle, one hand gripping the horn as he stood there.
It was quiet in the room. Somebody had put a grandfather’s clock in the lobby when they began fitting the hotel for operation, and they could hear its ticking. Val pushed back from the table and stood up. “I never was much for waiting,” he said. “I’m going down there.”
“That’s taking too much of a chance,” Dube said. “You might get drilled when you walk out on the street.”
“I don’t think so. I think Henry would like to let me have it close up.”
“Even so,” Cates protested, “you’re forted up here. Make them bring it to you.”
Val was wearing a holster, had been wearing one since riding out of Denver. He eased it into position on his leg, dropped his hand to the butt. “You can do me a favor, Cates, by keeping an eye on Boston and that box.”
“All right.” Cates hesitated a moment, started to speak, and then went out.
“Well,” Dube said, “there’s three of us, and four o’ them…so far as we know.”
“That Sonnenberg,” Tensleep said, “is an army all by himself. I’ve seen him work.”
The sick man leaning against the horse was no longer visible, for the horse had turned broadside to the door of the hotel, and the man was behind it now. How old had he been when Will taught him that trick? If he walked out of the hotel there would be a rifle peering at him from over that saddle.
“Sonnenberg is the one I want,” Val said, “I don’t care about the others.”
The rifle muzzle had appeared over the horse’s back now.
Val took up his rifle, and then put it down. He did not want anybody to get hurt helping him. “Dube, there’s a man behind that horse down there with a rifle trained on this door. I can’t take a step if he’s there. Why don’t you go upstairs where you’ll have a better view of him. Just give him a shot to get him out of there…shoot at his feet or whatever you like, but move him.”
Val poised at the door, waiting. Suddenly a rifle’s sharp crack cut the stillness of the afternoon. The horse sprang away, and the suddenly exposed rifleman raced for the door. He had taken no more than two steps when a second shot ripped splinters from the boardwalk. He fell, got up, and a second bullet struck his boot heel and knocked him sprawling.
Val left the door running, reached the back of the buildings, raced along them to the saloon, stopped suddenly, and stepped inside.
At the sound of his step Sonnenberg, Kiley, and Tom turned as one man. They were spread out badly, but that could not be helped.
“Well, Henry,” Val said quietly, “it’s been a long time since that time on the mountain in the snow. I never figured you’d live this long.”
Sonnenberg was smiling. He looked huge, invulnerable. His body seemed like the side of a battleship. “You come to get it, kid? We’re goin’ to kill you, you know.”
Val was smiling and easy. All the tenseness seemed gone from him. He heard himself talking as if he were another person.
“Howdy, Tom. You’re the one I’m not likely to forget. You knew my grandparents once, Tom.”
“They were good people,” Tom said, “not like their daughter.”
“But she’s the one who is paying to have me killed—or did Henry tell you?”
“No, sir, he never told us that. You never told us any of that, Hank.”
“Hell, who cares?” Kiley said. “Her money’s as good as anybody’s.”
“But she’s his mother! She’s blood kin to ’im! Why, I used to deliver milk to that house when I was a boy, I—”
“Shut up, old man!” Kiley said. “We got us a job to do.”
“I remember you, Tom,” Val said. “I was a might
y lonely, frightened kid then, and when I left in the sleigh with Will Reilly, it was you who tucked the blanket in.”
“What is this?” Sonnenberg said. “Old home week?”
“No,” Val said, “I just wanted Tom to know I wasn’t going to shoot at him,” and he drew.
Henry Sonnenberg was fast and sure, but that split second of reaction time cost him his speed. Val’s gun slid out as if it was greased.
The speed of it shocked Sonnenberg, and something clicked in his brain. I couldn’t have beaten him anyway! it said.
The bullet slammed into him, but he never moved his body, only his gun came up like the arm of a well-oiled machine. The gun muzzle dropped into line and the hammer slid off his thumb just as the second and third bullets jolted him. He took a step back then, his arm swinging wide.
Guns were hammering in the room, but Val Darrant knew the man he had to kill was Henry Sonnenberg. He took a step to one side, so that Sonnenberg would have to swing his gun into line, and he shot the big man again.
Four bullets…one more.
Sonnenberg turned and shot and the bullet knocked Val around and to his knees. He felt another bullet cut through the hair at the side of his head, a sure hit had he not been knocked down.
He lunged up and dived into Sonnenberg, who took a cut at his skull with his gun barrel, but Val had ducked in close and stabbed the muzzle of his gun into the big man’s belly. He held it tight and squeezed the trigger and felt the man’s body jolt into his arms. Their faces were only inches apart.
“Hello, Henry,” he said, and then, “Good-bye, Henry.”
The man sagged against him, his gun going off into the floor, and Val stepped back, letting him fall heavily as Tensleep and Dube came bursting through the door.
Marcus Kiley was down, shot to doll rags by Tom, who was sitting wide-legged, his back against the bar.
“They were good folks,” Tom said. “Used to let me warm before their fire on cold mornings. They never deserved a girl like Myra…even then she was a mean one.”
Blood was staining his shirt. “You got him, boy. You killed ol’ Henry. He never believed the bullet was made that could kill him.”
Val dropped to his knee beside him. “Thanks, Tom. Will Reilly always said you were a good man.”
“But a little crazy. Just a little crazy in the head, that was what they always said about me—but Myra’s folks, Will Reilly, and you…it never made no difference to you all.”
“Tom, I—”
“Val,” Tensleep said, “he’s dead. He died right there.”
Val was feeding shells into his empty gun. “What about the breed?”
“He was dead before we got to him. One of those bullets of mine or Dube’s must have ricocheted into him—we were both shootin’.”
They started back up the street together, walking side by side.
Boston came out of the door to meet him, running into his arms.
“There’s a train through here tomorrow,” Val said. “Let’s go home on the Denver & Rio Grande.”
The stage came in just before sundown, and with the crimson and pink of the sunset coloring the sky and the rims of the mountains around, Val closed his deal with Cope, a clear sale for cash and stock.
“Myra’s gone east,” Cope told him. “She could only make money with the right-of-way if she sold to one of us, and we wouldn’t do business with her.”
Cope glanced around at Dube, Tensleep, and Cates. “Son,” he said, “it looks to me as if you’ve made some friends, some really good friends.”
“I hope I can always be as good a friend to them as they have been to me,” Val said, “and I think I can. I had a man who taught me how.”
WHAT IS LOUIS L’AMOUR’S LOST TREASURES?
Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures is a project created to release some of the author’s more unconventional manuscripts from the family archives.
Currently included in the project are Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 1, published in the fall of 2017, and Volume 2, which will be published in the fall of 2019. These books contain both finished and unfinished short stories, unfinished novels, literary and motion picture treatments, notes, and outlines. They are a wide selection of the many works Louis was never able to publish during his lifetime.
In 2018 we released No Traveller Returns, L’Amour’s never-before-seen first novel, which was written between 1938 and 1942. In the future, there may be a selection of even more L’Amour titles.
Additionally, many notes and alternate drafts to Louis’s well-known and previously published novels and short stories will now be included as “bonus feature” postscripts within the books that they relate to. For example, the Lost Treasures postscript to Last of the Breed will contain early notes on the story, the short story that was discovered to be a missing piece of the novel, the history of the novel’s inspiration and creation, and information about unproduced motion picture and comic book versions.
An even more complete description of the Lost Treasures project, along with a number of examples of what is in the books, can be found at louislamourslosttreasures.com. The website also contains a good deal of exclusive material, such as even more pieces of unknown stories that were too short or too incomplete to include in the Lost Treasures books, plus personal photos, scans of original documents, and notes.
All of the works that contain Lost Treasures project materials will display the Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures banner and logo.
POSTSCRIPT
By Beau L’Amour
Out of all my father’s books, I have always felt that Reilly’s Luck was as close to the work of the great Charles Dickens as you can get. A classic “rags to riches” story, it has long been a favorite of mine. In fact, until the release of The Walking Drum in the mid-1980s, I considered it the quintessential epic L’Amour novel.
My father built the basic concept gradually, adding different layers and modifications over the years. Other than its intended scope and the opening scene, the first version presented here has few similarities to the finished novel. It’s interesting to note, however, that like the finished novel, it does share some elements with Flint, another of Louis’s tales of a mentor and his adopted son.
A fictional bio of a boy who becomes a man in the west, and then in the east. The story of a boy who awakens in the night to hear a man and a woman arguing about him. The woman is his mother, and she does not want him, the man is not his father who argues with her. Finally the man takes him into the country and leaves him with some people or with an old man, kindly but drunk, the boy reads, fishes, hunts, returns to find the old man dead, and rides the freight trains west. He becomes a foot racer (check WILDEST OF THE WEST), a fighter, and a gambler, a con-man from western town to western town, then he cuts his ties, changes his name, his style of dress, and leaves the woman he has been living with and becomes a mining man or something and goes east.
Make this a big, brawling, ribald novel of a man…something like The Duke Steps Out.
Although there are no known surviving prints, The Duke Steps Out was a silent film about a wealthy young man who wants to be a boxer but finally ends up going to college. Other than Louis’s description above, I have no idea what the similarities to Reilly’s Luck might have been. The next version develops the characters a bit further and adds a nearly Shakespearian mentor-versus-adopted-son rivalry similar to the one that Dad used in To Tame a Land.
RILEY BRENNAN
They called him Riley Brennan’s Luck, and wherever Riley was, there also was The Luck.
He was known by no other name. A slim and crippled lad with one shrunken arm and a twisted foot, he was gifted with a shock of blue-black curly hair and enormous dark eyes. Looked at from the right side The Luck was beautiful as a young girl, yet the left side of his face was horribly scarred in the same accident that had crippl
ed his arm and leg. Yet The Luck had his talent. He was never seen without a violin.
When that violin nestled against the scarred cheek the bow lifted and touched the strings and brought from them music that spoke to the souls of men, music laughing and gay, music plaintive and dreaming, music of sunlight on the water and shadows on the bayous, music that whispered of dreams forgotten and loves of long ago.
Yet The Luck, for all his strangeness and all his talent, was but the shadow of Riley Brennan.
Riley Brennan was six feet two inches of splendid manhood, with the shoulders of a prizefighter, which he once had been, and the features of a patrician. Ninety percent of the time the manners of Riley Brennan suited the perfection of his features. And the other ten percent found him a brutal knock-down and drag-out fighter surpassed by none on the River.
For the rise of Riley Brennan had been the hard way. At sixteen, already a brawny lad with hard fists, he had become one of John Morrissey’s sluggers in the old engine company days. At eighteen he was a bare-knuckle fighter with a dozen victories to his credit. At nineteen he was working the flat-boats of the Mississippi and Ohio and ranked with those fighting men of legend, Mike Fink and Jim Girty.
At twenty-one, after a trip west to the goldfields, Riley discovered ambition and a gift. His large but finely shaped hands possessed a skill with cards that increased with practice. Riley Brennan became a gambler, prosperous, and something of a gentleman.
He learned to read, and found a taste for good books, he learned something of art, something of music, and became a connoisseur of food and wine…and women.
Known upon the River as a square gambler, Riley Brennan was all of this, yet not to the point of absurdity. Confronted by tricksters and crooked methods, Riley had his own ways of winning, and so he won, and with the years, continued to win.
Riley Brennan was handsome, polished, and to the causal eye, every inch the gentleman. And by nature he had always been a gentleman, yet under the perfection of his tailoring his body was hard and muscled, he was adept with a pistol and a better than average hand with a knife. He had killed four men in duels, and perhaps there had been others.
Reilly's Luck (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 25
