“Wat! Oh, you mustn’t be found here! Go away!”
“Win, you take care of her!”
She had come right to my arms, and I was holding her close, looking over my shoulder at Dolliver.
“Get a shotgun … you’ve got one, I know. Get all your shells. If the worst comes to the worst, stand them off with that. I’m going out there!”
“You’re a fool to do that, Wat,” Win said seriously. “You won’t have a chance, man!”
“No, I’ve got to side Hugh. They are going to kill him. He can’t see it, either. He can’t see that Keys wants a showdown. They’ve got the idea from him. Most of the work and planning is done, so now Keys and Kettle figure it’s all over. They want to get rid of him.”
“You’d side the man who tried to have you killed?” Win was incredulous.
I shrugged, knowing I was probably a fool.
“He’s my cousin. We grew up like brothers, and Uncle Tom would have liked it that way. Anyway, those men out there are my enemies as well as his.”
From the door I took a quick, careful look at the yard. This was it, all right. Keys had walked a dozen feet away from Hugh and turned to face him. Wolf Kettle had strolled off to the right, at least fifty feet from Keys. They made two corners with Hugh Taylor as the point of the triangle.
Keys spoke first. “Taber, we don’t like this setup. We don’t like you lordin’ it over us … comin’ high and mighty around. We don’t like you takin’ most of the money, either. We’ve decided to cut you out of the deal.”
Maybe I’m cold-blooded, but I was curious. I wanted to see how much of the Bell blood there was in Hugh. For the first time in his life, so far as I knew, Hugh was called face to face, and if ever a man was called by a pair of curly wolves from the way back and rough, it was these two. What would he do? That was what I wondered.
For almost a half minute, he didn’t say anything, but he must have been thinking plenty, and when he spoke, I could have cheered. The hombre may have tried to frame me, he may have hit the wrong trails, but he was my cousin.
“Why, sure, Bill,” he said. “You do want a showdown, don’t you? And you, Kettle? Sure there’s more of the coyote in you than the wolf. This is what they called giving a man the Black Spot in a story I read once. Funny thing, it was a pirate story, and I read it with Wat … a better man than either of you.”
He took a step closer toward them, his eyes shifting from one to the other.
“Spread wide, aren’t you? Well, I’ll take one of you to hell with me, anyway!”
Their hands were poised when I stepped out of the door. As I stepped out, I spoke.
“Which one do you want, Hugh? I’ll take the other. I’m siding you.”
Keys’s eyes lifted to me, then Kettle’s. They weren’t happy about this change in the situation, not even a little bit. Hugh did not turn a hair.
“Take Kettle,” he said, “Keys has been begging for it.”
“There’s a good bit of skunk in both of them,” I said calmly. “Trot out your coyote, Kettle. You asked for it.”
I hit the ground with a jump, digging in both heels and drawing as I landed.
Kettle flashed a fast gun, I’ll say that for him, and he dropped into a crouch, snarling like the wolf he was named for. I saw his gun wink red, and then I was walking into him, triggering my right hand Colt.
Kettle fired and fired again, and then my second shot hit him just below the shirt pocket, and he lifted up on his tiptoes, and I slammed another one in for good measure. He went down, clawing at the dirt with both hands, and then I turned on my heel to see Hugh was down on his face but struggling to get up, and Keys was cursing viciously and trying to get a gun up for one more shot.
“Drop it, Bill!” I yelled. “Drop it or take it!”
The face he turned on me was a mask of viciousness. Down he might be, and badly wounded, but he was a cornered cougar at that moment, boiling with all his innate viciousness. His gun came up, and I felt the shock of the bullet, then the report. I got my balance and lifted my gun, then fired. The shot turned him around on his knee and dropped him, but he wouldn’t die.
With a lunge, he got to his feet. His shirt was soaked with blood, and he stood there tottering and opened up on me with both guns. They turned into coughing, spitting flame, and I took another step straight forward and fired again, then shifted guns and slammed two more into him.
Still snarling, he took a step back, so full of lead he was top heavy, but he stood there, cursing wickedly and glaring at me. Then his eyes seemed to glaze over, and, mouthing curses, he went to the ground. I turned and took a look back at Kettle, but he was done for.
Looking up at the dark line of men near the horses, I told them: “This is it, boys. Drop your guns!”
They must have thought me completely crazy. I was hit once and maybe more, and my guns were almost empty, yet I was calling out twelve hardcase riders, all of them gun handlers.
“That’s right!” It was Shorty Carver from the barn. “Let go your belts easy! We’ve got you covered!”
“I’m holding a shotgun, and there’s plenty of shells!” Win chimed in from the house.
They hesitated, and I didn’t blame them. There were a dozen of them, but they could see the rifle from the barn and the shotgun from the house. The rifle was a Spencer, firing a .56 caliber bullet of three hundred and sixty grains. It took no great imagination to realize that while some of them might, and probably would, get away, the Spencer would account for several, and a man hit with a .56 caliber bullet don’t travel far. As for the shotgun, it had twin barrels, and that meant two dead men without reloading. As for me, I was tottering on my feet, but I’d missed only one shot of all I’d fired, and nobody wanted to gamble I’d miss more. It was a cinch anywhere from four to seven of them would hit dirt before the rest got away. And nobody was sure he wouldn’t be one of the seven.
“To hell with it!”
The black mustached man who had recalled me from Sonora let go his belts, and it was a signal. They all did likewise.
At that moment a half-dozen riders swept down the hill and into the yard. Two of them wore badges. I turned and walked slowly toward Hugh as Win and Maggie rushed from the house toward me.
Dropping on one knee, I turned him over gently. His eyes flickered open, and he looked at me. There was nothing anybody could do for him. Bill Keys hadn’t been missing any shots, and the only wonder was that Hugh was still alive.
“Thanks, kid,” he whispered. “You were right on time. You and Mag … I’m glad. Real glad.” His breath sobbed in his lungs for three deep, agonized gasps, and then he spoke again. “Unc … le Tom … he told me why … left ranch … you. Knew I was … crook … I was a fool.”
We got him inside then, and along about three that morning, he hung up his spurs.
In another room, I was having my own trouble, for I’d taken two slugs instead of one, and the Doc had to dig one of them out. It came hard, but I had a bullet to bite on while he probed for it. Mag was with me, with me all the time, although twice I sent her to see how Hugh was coming.
He came out of it, Hugh did, just before the end, and when he did, I got out of bed and went in. Doc told me I was crazy, but I went.
He looked up at me from the bed.
“It’s all square, Hugh,” I said, “tell Uncle Tom ‘hello.’ ”
“You think I’ll see him?” he asked me, and his voice was mighty hoarse.
“Sure you will,” I said. “Any cowhand might take a wrong trail once or put the wrong brand on a cow. I think the Inspector up there can read your brand right.”
“Thanks, kid,” he said, “when you grew up, you sure grew tall.”
I took his hand then, and he was looking up at me when his eyes blinked and his grip tightened, then loosened.
“He’s all yours, boy,” I said softl
y. “Let him have his head.”
You know, I’ll swear he smiled … it was really something, after all, to have a friend like Hugh.
the end
About the Author
Louis L’Amour was born in Jamestown, North Dakota in 1908. From his earliest youth, L’Amour had a love of verse. His first published work was a poem, “The Chap Worth While,” appearing when he was eighteen years old in his former hometown’s newspaper, the Jamestown Sun. L’Amour wrote poems and articles for a number of magazines through the early 1930s and, after many rejection slips, finally had his first story accepted, “Anything for a Pal” in True Gang Life (1935). In 1938 he joined his family where they had settled in Choctaw, Oklahoma, determined to make writing his career. “The Town No Guns Could Tame” in New Western (1940) was his first published Western story. L’Amour then agreed to write Western stories for the various Western pulp magazines published by Standard Magazines, a third of which appeared under the byline Jim Mayo. L’Amour’s first Western novel under his own byline was Westward the Tide (1950). L’Amour sold his first Western short story to a slick magazine two years later, “The Gift of Cochise” in Collier’s (1952). With Showdown at Yellow Butte (1953) by Jim Mayo, L’Amour began a series of short Western novels for Ace Publishing, but it was his association with Bantam Books for which he wrote the Sackett series and many other original paperbacks that made him a household name. He was the first American novelist to be awarded a National Gold Medal for his literary achievement.
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