by Galloway
to kill me.
Vern Huddy had the taste of blood upon bis lips, and was a-thirst for more, and
I lay with my body torn by his bullet, shuddering with every bream, my coat gone
and night a-coming on, waiting for him to make his move.
Only thing good about it was that he didn't know exactly where I was. His bullet
got me most of an hour before as I dove for shelter, but I'd wormed and
scrambled and crawled some little distance since then.
I gouged snow from the almost frozen remains that had backed up against a rock
near me. I let a handful melt in my mouth and felt the delicious coolness of it
going down my throat, through my body.
Moving stones from under me I piled them around, digging myself deeper against
the cold and Huddy's bullets. The weakening was upon me, and for two hours
before the bullet hit I'd been driven and outflanked at every turn by a man who
was a past master at his trade, and who knew now that I was somewhere along
timberline with nowhere else to go. In his heart he was sure he was going to get
me.
This was my last stop. Whatever happened must happen here. I told myself that
and I believed it. I could not go back because it was a wide-open space and even
in the night there would be enough light to see me against that gray-white
expanse.
The hole made by the bullet I had plugged with moss, and now I was waiting for
him to come in for the finish. If he came before I passed out I might get him,
and if not he would surely get me.
It was growing dark. Down in the valleys below it was already dark and people
were sitting down to their tables to eat warm suppers in pleasant surroundings.
Meg Rossiter was down there preparing supper for her pa, or helping, and around
the campfire my brother and the others would be wondering where I was.
Easing my long body to a better position, I waited. He did not know where I was
and I did not know where he was, and each needed to know. Squirming deeper into
the gravel, I shivered against the cold. It was growing late in the year and at
this, nearly twelve thousand feet of altitude, it could become icy by night.
This was a different peak from the night before, unknown to both of us. They
called it Parrott or Madden ... the two were side by side and I was not sure
which we were on. I didn't know the country that well.
Digging a fragment of jerky from my pack, I began chewing on it. That pack of
mine was almost flat, just a place to carry a few pieces of bread and meat to
sort of tide a man over.
I'd lost a good bit of blood and the shock of the bullet had been great. It
seemed to have struck the top of my hipbone, knocking me down and numbing my
leg, but then it had glanced into the flesh and had gouged a deep hole.
Even if Huddy did not get me I'd be lucky to last the night. The blood drained
from me and the icy cold would take care of that. Suddenly something moved, and
leaving my rifle alone I drew my pistol ... how could he have come so close!
There was a low whine ... that damned wolf!
How could he have followed me up here? But why not? He seemed to be haunting me.
Now I've known wild animals to do some strange things. I heard of a panther one
time who followed a boy two miles through a dark forest only a few feet behind
him, the boy talking to it all the while thinking it was his dog. Then he called
out to the house and when they opened the door they all saw the panther ... it
ducked off into the brush.
I taken a small bit of the jerky from my pack and said quietly, "Here, boy!" And
tossed it out there.
Eager jaws took it, and I could hear the chewing. I began talking to it in low
whispers, and calling it to me. After a long while it did come, crawling over
the bank on its belly as if it knew enough to keep down, and then waiting while
I talked to it. Suddenly it crawled closer.
Seen up close, even in the almost dark, it looked like a wolf and yet not quite
like one. In fact, it might have been half dog. My hand reached out to it. The
wolf growled a little, but warningly rather than threateningly, then it sniffed
of my fingers, seemed reassured and crept closer. I put a hand on it, then
listened, but heard nothing. My hand brushed the thick ruff and started to
scratch.
"My God!"
The expression was startled from me, for around the neck of the wolf was a
collar, a collar so tight the poor animal was almost strangled!
"Why, you poor devil!" I reached for my knife and talking to it all the while,
slipped the knife under the collar. The wolf began to gag and choke, but he
seemed to know I was trying to help, and then that razor-sharp blade cut through
the collar and it came loose.
The effort taken a good bit from me, but I lay there, whispering to that wolf
that he'd be all right now. The poor thing had been follerin' me around for all
this time, figuring I could help it. Must be that some man had at one time had
it for a pet, had put the collar on when it was small, and the wolf had gone
back to the woods or maybe the man had died. Then the wolf had grown and grown
until the collar was choking it. No wonder it was so hungry for the small
fragments I threw out. It could swallow them.
I kept my hand on the ruff and kept talking to it, and oddly enough, the wolf
showed no idea of leaving. He crept closer, and even licked my hand. And the
first thing I knew I'd fallen to sleep.
It must have been the warmth of the big animal lying close thataway, and part of
it was that my attention had been torn from the main issue and I forgot about
staying awake. Anyway, I slept.
And then I heard a low, ugly growling alongside of me and suddenly I was awake.
Just the glimpse of the stars showed it was past midnight.
"Quiet, boy!" I whispered, putting a hand on the wolf, and it quieted down, but
its ears were pricked and it was looking right straight ahead.
Me, I eased my pistol out and rolled away from the wolf so if I drew fire it
would not get hit. He was coming in. I heard a foot grate against gravel and
then he was there, black against the sky.
The wolf suddenly sprang away and his gun came up and I said, "Don't shoot. It
was just a wolf."
"A what?"
"A timber wolf," I said. "He's a friend of mine."
"You're crazy," he said. "Out of your head."
"You going to kill me now?" I asked, conversationally.
"And enjoy it," he said, "and then I'm going down to see Meg. Nobody will ever
find you up here. I'll just leave you for that wolf or whatever it is."
My pistol was in my hand but he hadn't seen it. He was standing about a dozen
feet away and he had a rifle and he was holding it in one hand pointing it at
me. It began to look like a Mexican stand-off, with both of us dying up here.
"Ever see a wolf come to a man before, Huddle?" I said. "If you'll stop and
think, that there's impossible. Up in the mountains of Tennessee we know all
about wolves and such, like ha'nts and werewolves."
He was suddenly still, like he almost stopped breathing. "That's fool talk," he
said. "I'm going to kill you, Sackett."
"If you do," I said, "you'll n
ever get off the mountain. That there's what the
Indians call a medicine wolf. He'll get you sure. Tear you to bits ... unless
you got a silver bullet."
"You're lying!"
There was a low growl from the bushes to his right, and as he spun slightly
toward the sound I lifted my gun and shot him.
His rifle went off and spat sand into my face. His movement must have deflected
it just by a hair, just enough to save my bacon. He was down, but I could see
the glint of the rifle barrel as he moved it toward me. I shot him again.
The rifle fell from his hands as he rolled over on his side. I stood up. "No!
No!" he whispered. "Oh, no, no!"
"You gave it to a good many, Huddy," I said. "You shot that poor Indian who
worked for me, shot him when he didn't even know, and when no enemies were
around. He never had a chance to lift a hand. Now you know how it feels."
"No ... not me." He was whimpering like a child. "Not me!" And I had it in me to
feel sorry for him. Somehow his kind never figure it will be them. They always
kill; they are never killed. That's the way they see it.
Taking up his rifle I backed off a little, still wary of him because he was
packing a six-shooter, but I needn't have been because he was dead.
The wolf moved out there in the dark and I said to him, "Come on, boy, we're
going home now."
Picking up his collar because I wished to see it by daylight, I started down the
mountain in the first gray of dawn, and the wolf—or dog-wolf which he seemed to
be—fell in behind me. Not too close, not too far.
Looked like he'd been lonesome for a man to belong to, and when he saw me and I
tossed him that meat back yonder he figured I might be the one to help him out
of the trap that was sure to kill him sooner or later.
We started down the mountain, but we stopped down there where Starvation Creek
flows out of the rock, and I hunted around for that gold and found it. Taken me
only a few minutes and I had to rest, anyway, with my wound and all.
I was in bad shape again, but this time I was going home and I had a friend with
me. The gold was heavy so I only taken one sack of the stuff, just to throw on
the table in front of Nick Shadow, and say "This what you were lookin' for?"
The sky was all red, great streaks of it, when I walked across the meadow toward
the fire. Soon as I felt better, I was going over to see that Meg girl. She'd
want to hear about my wolf.
The boys came out and stood there staring at me. "It's Flagan," Galloway said.
"I knew he'd be coming in this morning."
"Boys," I said, "you got to meet my wolf. Take good care of him, I—"
Well, I just folded my cards together and fell, laid right down, dead beat and
hurt. But it was worth it because when I opened my eyes, Meg was there.
About the Author
Louis L'Amour, born Louis Dearborn L'Amour, is of French-Irish descent. Although
Mr. L'Amour claims his writing began as a "spur-of-the-moment thing" prompted by
friends who relished his verbal tales of the West, he comes by his talent
honestly. A frontiersman by heritage (his grandfather was scalped by the Sioux),
and a universal man by experience, Louis L'Amour lives the life of his fictional
heroes. Since leaving his native Jamestown, North Dakota, at the age of fifteen,
he's been a longshoreman, lumberjack, elephant handler, hay shocker, flume
builder, fruit picker, and an officer on tank destroyers during World War II.
And he's written four hundred short stories and over fifty books (including a
volume of poetry).
Mr. L'Amour has lectured widely, traveled the West thoroughly, studied
archaeology, compiled biographies of over one thousand Western gunfighters, and
read prodigiously (his library holds more than two thousand volumes). And he's
watched thirty-one of his westerns as movies. He's circled the world on a
freighter, mined in the West, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, been shipwrecked in
the West Indies, stranded in the Mojave Desert. He's won fifty-one of fifty-nine
fights as a professional boxer and pinchhit for Dorothy Kilgallen when she was
on vacation from her column. Since 1816, thirty-three members of his family have
been writers. And, he says, "I could sit in the middle of Sunset Boulevard and
write with my typewriter on my knees; temperamental I am not."
Mr. L'Amour is re-creating an 1865 Western town, christened Shalako, where the
borders of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado meet. Historically authentic
from whistle to well, it will be a live, operating town, as well as a movie
location and tourist attraction.
Mr. L'Amour now lives in Los Angeles with his wife Kathy, who helps with the
enormous amount of research he does for his books. Soon, Mr. L'Amour hopes, the
children (Beau and Angelique) will be helping too.
[11 May 2002] Scanned by pandor
[05 Jun 2002] (v1.0) proofed and formatted by NickL
