Taggart (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  “You’ve a neat place here.”

  “I found it.”

  “Old Spanish stonework. I’ve seen it before.”

  “The Lost Mine of the Padres,” Stark said briefly. “Only the padres never found it…I have.”

  “I’m not a mining man,” Taggart said, “although I’ve worked mines off and on for others. Started using a single- or double-jack when I was a kid. I’m a cattleman.”

  “Own a ranch?”

  Swante Taggart stared bleakly into the night, remembering the cabin in New Mexico, the green meadows of hay, the cattle. “I did,” he said. “A big outfit moved in and there was trouble.”

  “Gun trouble?”

  “A fair fight, but I beat the wrong man. Now Shoyer is after me.”

  It happened…Adam Stark knew it had happened more than once. It was the day of the cattle baron, not of the small rancher or farmer…but he wanted cattle himself.

  “I’m no miner, myself,” Stark admitted. “Studied geology a little, prospected some. It’s cattle I want, and I’ve a place in mind down Tucson way.”

  “A man needs water. If he has water he has it all. Longhorns will make a living almost anywhere if they can find water within three days’ walk.”

  “Lots of water on this place I have in mind,” Stark said. “Four good water-holes and a small stream. No place on the outfit is more than four miles from water.”

  “You own it?”

  “I can buy it…that’s why I’m here.”

  Adam Stark returned to the house, thinking about the ranch. It was a comfort to talk to a man again. Woman-talk was all right, but a man needed men. Suddenly he found himself hoping Taggart would stay on, and if Shoyer came, he could settle that here as well as anywhere. There was no use in a man running.

  He went inside…Connie was already in bed. Miriam sat by the candle reading.

  “What do you think of him?”

  Miriam looked up, wondering what to say. “He’s a good man, I think.”

  “I’ve been trying to remember where I heard that name, and now I know. He rode shotgun on the stage out of Cheyenne to Deadwood.”

  “Will he stay?”

  Adam Stark did not know, and said as much. He pulled off his shirt, thinking about it. If he did stay on he would be a help here, but he must not go up to the mine. If he saw what it was like…

  He really worried very little about that mine. Anyone might try to go in there, but not one in a million would be foolish enough to swing a pick in there. He just hoped nobody would try it until he was safely out with the hundred thousand he wanted.

  Perhaps he had been a fool to tell Taggart so much, but the man was no tenderfoot and he would understand as soon as he looked around in the morning. The old arrastra was still there, and no man would be fool enough to remain in such a place unless he had found gold, and lots of it.

  * * *

  —

  Forty miles to the north Pete Shoyer got up from behind a clump of rocks and looked out over the moonlit desert. The horse was still there, standing ground-hitched as he had been for the past hour. By now Shoyer was confident that no one was around.

  Behind him in the arroyo where they had taken shelter lay the body of Mark Billings, the last man of the posse he had gathered in Crown King. Until three days ago three men had stayed with him after most of the group had turned back as they started into wilder country.

  The four remaining had run into a running fight with Apaches, and of the four only Shoyer remained alive.

  One man had been shot from his horse, and the others had holed up in a cave and fought off the Apaches through a day-long battle. At the end of the day one man was dead and Billings wounded.

  During the night Shoyer had slipped from under the overhang that formed their cave, and with Billings over his shoulder he had climbed the cliff. Shoyer was a squarely built, powerful man of tremendous strength, and Billings’ weight was nothing to him.

  When they abandoned their horses for shelter in the cave Shoyer had been afraid they would be found, but they had not. Only one was dead, killed by a stray bullet.

  Pete Shoyer knew he was in trouble. In the hard life that lay behind him he had often shaped up with trouble, but this time he knew it would require all his ingenuity to escape from the Apaches, to survive, and carry on to capture Swante Taggart.

  He went through the saddlebags and gathered all the food and ammunition on his own horse, as well as the extra canteen. There was a spare pistol now, and he took that and they started off.

  Then the Apaches found them again, killed Billings’ horse, and shot it out in a bitter fight…after which Shoyer got away again, and again took Billings with him. But now Billings, who had done his share in that last fight, had taken two more gunshots. When he died in the arroyo, Shoyer was left alone.

  Through that day and part of the night, Pete Shoyer had waited while his water supply ran low, but the Apaches had either given up or drawn off until help was forthcoming. He saw nothing of them, and so, leaving Billings where he had died, but taking his weapons, he mounted up and rode out.

  Utilizing all his skill, he attempted to cover his tracks against pursuit, but at the same time he kept pushing ahead. With grudging admiration, he realized at least part of the trouble had been arranged for him by Taggart, who had succeeded in turning attention in the direction from which he had come, and so had left Apaches to watch for his pursuers.

  Keeping to lower ground and losing himself in the close-growing ocotillo and mesquite, Pete Shoyer worked his way south, with Rockinstraw Mountain looming against the sky.

  On the day Swante Taggart arrived at the canyon of the chapel, Pete Shoyer knew that he himself had evaded pursuit by the Apaches, but had lost the trail of the man he pursued.

  He swung back and forth, casting about for the trail, but he found nothing. A mile or two north of the Salt River the trail had just petered out, although for some days past he had been really doubtful if the trail he followed was that of the man he sought. There were differences in the trail and he was hard put to work it out…there was an irritating feeling that he had been deceived.

  After he crossed the Salt River he rode along the bank for several miles, but found no evidence that anyone had crossed it. He did find the tracks of a party of Apaches, at least a dozen strong, and he felt sure they were the same, now reinforced, who had fought him earlier.

  Swante Taggart had disappeared. He had literally dropped off the face of the earth.

  But the Apaches had not.

  On a rugged shoulder of Squaw Peak, Pete Shoyer studied the terrain and fought his own problem.

  He needed supplies. South of him was Globe, and if Taggart had headed south it was to Globe he would go. Meanwhile the Apaches would settle down and forget him. He put his glasses back in the pack and stepped into the saddle. Only a few minutes later Adam Stark emerged from the canyon and started toward Rockinstraw Mountain, the very area Shoyer had been studying a moment before.

  For a long time Shoyer stood on his look-out point and surveyed the country around him. It was broken by arroyos, and much of it was covered with desert growth. He realized Taggart could be out there, perhaps only a short distance away, perhaps waiting to kill him.

  Pete Shoyer was an officer of the law simply because it could be made to pay well. He did not bother with small fry except for the information they could provide, and his enforcement of the law was devoted to those men for whom large rewards were paid.

  He took no joy in killing, nor did he kill unless necessity demanded it, but he thought no more of killing a man than of killing a coyote, a quail, or a pack-rat. As a boy in Texas he had fought Comanches, and had become a skillful sniper, as successful as any Apache at using their tactics.

  He cared nothing one way or the other for Taggart. Only Swante Taggart was wo
rth five thousand dollars to him, dead or alive, the reward to be paid by the Bennetts themselves. If he could deliver Taggart alive to the Bennetts they would provide their own hanging, but the problem of taking a prisoner across the country was a tough one.

  Some men had to be taken back dead. He preferred it otherwise, because a dead man is mighty hard to load on a saddle each morning, and in hot weather it isn’t practical. Moreover, if he took them back alive they might escape and could then be captured again for another reward. Yet to date he had killed nine men, not counting Indians.

  Pete Shoyer was a tough man. He had no philosophy of life and had probably never heard the word; certainly he would not have understood it. He had no concealed motivations. He simply hunted men the way he had once hunted buffalo, because it paid well, and for the most part was scarcely more dangerous.

  He had grown up hunting. He had hunted rabbits, deer, antelope, lion, bear, and buffalo, and now men. It had begun quite accidentally. A United States Marshal stopping by a cow-camp where he worked had remarked that an outlaw he sought was worth five hundred dollars, dead or alive. Pete Shoyer made a mental calculation as to how many months he must work for five hundred dollars at thirty a month, and decided he was in the wrong business.

  He had no desire for a gunman’s reputation. He never sought out a dangerous man to challenge to see who was the fastest man; the very idea was ridiculous to him. Who was to gain by such an obviously silly action?

  More than once he had gone out of his way to avoid a gun battle. Had he stopped to consider the facts, he would probably have agreed that Swante Taggart was in the right in defending his land, but Pete Shoyer was not interested in who was right. His problem was simplicity itself: a man was wanted, the reward was large, get the man.

  His desires were few. He liked women, he liked food, he liked whiskey, although he was never drunk. He liked being Pete Shoyer…liked the thought that he never lost a prisoner or a man he once started after. He rarely played cards, because he hated to lose good money…it simply made no sense to him. Most of the men who ran the gambling houses were prosperous, and he supposed it was no accident…he himself never gave anyone any chances he could avoid giving, and he was sure the gamblers felt the same way.

  He had never known what it meant to quit. He trailed men as a beagle trails rabbits, because it was his nature to do so, and he never thought of the right or wrong of it. The men he sought were outlaws; somebody would eventually get them, and it might as well be him.

  He was not cruel. He had never needlessly punished anyone. He went about his business as casually as the wind blows. There was no malice toward the men he hunted, unless they had tried to kill him. If they showed signs of fight he usually killed them as the most practical solution.

  He had no particular feeling about crime except that most of the criminals he had known were broke. They were always talking about making a big haul, and they lived a poverty-stricken, hunted life while they talked about it.

  Their hide-outs were dirty, their blankets filled with bugs, their food cooked in a hurry, their ears sharp for any sound that might mean pursuit. He did much better, and he believed in crime paying, because it paid him.

  He understood the minds of the men he trailed, because they were predatory creatures like the wolves, lions, and bears he had hunted earlier. He knew what they wanted and where they had to go to get it. He knew where every sizeable bit of loot was, and kept an eye on these places as a matter of course. He had developed a knowledge of most of the outlaw element, of their friends, relatives, and hide-outs. Most of his jobs were simplicity itself.

  The women he liked were the frontier women of the cribs, the ones he could have, pay, and leave behind. He ate, he drank, he had a woman when he felt the need, and from time to time he relaxed and loafed, living a life he could never have afforded by any other means.

  He was a dead shot with both rifle and pistol, and when he shot, he shot to kill. He could track as well as any Apache, and it was rarely that he encountered such a problem as Taggart offered.

  Not many outlaws would have taken off alone into Apache country. Shoyer felt sure he would find Taggart dead, mutilated, and perhaps beyond identification.

  He had lost the trail first when Taggart doubled back through Horsethief Canyon, and he lost it again at the Agua Fria, but he had no idea of giving up: five thousand was the biggest reward he had ever gone after. By the time he discovered that Taggart was heading east into the heart of Apache country, he knew the man he followed was not an ordinary outlaw, nor an ordinary man.

  When Pete Shoyer left his lookout near Squaw Peak he rode south for Globe.

  But he would be back.

  CHAPTER 6

  Swante Taggart awakened suddenly in the dark near the stable door and he lay still, his hand on his gun, listening. Then he heard a door open slightly. Someone came out and started toward the spring. He listened and heard a faint rustle of skirts.

  With sudden embarrassment he realized that in washing the night before, and drinking, he had all but emptied the water bucket and had not refilled it.

  He got to his feet and stepped out into the starlit night. For a moment he stood still, testing the night for other sounds, and then after a glance toward the canyon mouth, he started after the girl who had gone for water.

  He heard the gulp of the bucket as it took up water, and the falling drops as it was lifted clear, then emptied. Whoever it was, wished to get the bucket thoroughly wet to keep the water cool…and then he heard water running into the bucket from the spring itself.

  “I’ll carry that,” he said. “I should have filled it last night.”

  “You were tired,” said Miriam. “Why don’t you rest?”

  “Not in me, I guess. I’m an early riser.”

  They stood alone in the darkness, each conscious of the other, each uncertain what to say.

  “Does he begin work early?”

  “Adam? He tries to get to the mine while it is still dark so he will not be seen moving about. It is something we live with here…we try to keep from being seen, or leaving tracks, so we move around as little as possible.”

  “But you live off the country?”

  “Connie knows the plants…at least many of them. We use what we can to help with what we brought along. Up the canyon there are some benches that are thickly grown, and on the mountainside above us…we’re careful.”

  “She’s Indian?”

  “Mexican…but she grew up with Apaches. She knows them, and she’s afraid of them.”

  He lifted the bucket from the rock and they started back to the cabin. “I’ll stay on,” he said. “My horse needs a rest.”

  “And then?”

  “Who knows? Maybe I’ll ride out of here for Morenci like I planned, but I might turn back to the west. With a man like Pete Shoyer you have to figure mighty careful. He reads a sign like an Apache, and he reads the mind of the man he’s chasing. Once you establish a pattern of escape, he’ll have it, and he’s got you. A man who’s running away will nearly always, somewhere along the line, try to double back. He knows that. Most times when a man goes into the water to leave no tracks, he’ll come out on the same side he goes in.”

  “I don’t see why that should be.”

  “Neither do I, but it works out that way. So a man on the dodge, he has to out-guess the man on his trail. One time you do it one way, another time another way. Most of all, a man shouldn’t try to move fast…he should think his way through, do the unexpected several times, then the expected.”

  “It sounds complicated.”

  They paused at the door, neither anxious to end this brief exchange, a man and a woman together, standing close in the darkness.

  She spoke in a whisper. “What you said about Tom Sanifer…was that true?”

  “Heard it coming across country. Heard it again in Cro
wn King…stories like that get around. I’d say it was true.”

  “You mustn’t say anything about it….We didn’t know, Connie and I.”

  “Story has it a woman was involved.”

  She looked down at the shine of the dark water in the bucket. “So Adam did it….I’m not surprised.”

  He opened the door and they stepped into the room. There was a rustle of movement from the further room, and he put the bucket up on the table against the wall where the gourd hung. Only a candle glowed in the silent room.

  He knelt at the fireplace and stirred the few coals, banked with ashes against the night just passed. And then he added a few twigs, a piece of bark, some mesquite wood. A flame curled around the mesquite, shooting out a red tongue toward the willingness of the bark. Swante Taggart looked up at the girl standing near him. Their eyes met, and he looked quickly back at the fire, then got up and turned toward the door.

  “I’ll have coffee in a few minutes.”

  “All right.”

  He closed the door softly behind him and crossed to the stable. Habitually, when unable to undress because of the circumstances, he wore moccasins instead of boots. They were comfortable, didn’t make his feet swell as the boots were apt to do, and were better for moving quietly if he had to get up in the night.

  Now he went to the horse and put more feed before him, talked to him a few minutes, and led him to water. When he returned him to his feed he checked the position of his saddle and left his rifle by the door jamb where he could put a hand on it instantly.

  The canyon was gray now…everything was visible, although there was no sun yet in the sky, and a few stars still hung like late lanterns in the early light.