Over on the Dry Side

by Louis L'Amour

  “Here there is no established law yet. We have no marshal, no sheriff, no judge. And until such things exist, the evil must be restrained. A man has been murdered, you have been warned to leave.

  “This country needs men like you. You may not think of yourselves as such, but you are the forerunners of a civilization. Where you are, others will come.”

  “And how about you, Mr. Chantry?” I asked.

  He smiled, with genuine warmth. “Doby, you’ve asked the key question. How about me? I am a man who’s good with a gun. I’ll be needed until there are enough people, and when there are enough, I shall be outmoded.

  “I do not recall any other time in history when men like me existed. Usually it was a baron or a chief who brought peace to an area, but in this country it is often just a man with a gun.”

  “I don’t put no stock in guns,” Pa said suddenly. “I figger there should be a better way.”

  “So do I,” Chantry replied. “But had there been no gun today, your son would have been beaten by not just one man but several. Your fence pulled down, your house burned.

  “Civilization is a recent thing, sir. With many, it’s still no more than skin deep. If you live in a busy community, you must live with the knowledge that maybe two out of every ten people are only wearing the outer skin of civilization. And if there was no law, or if there was not the restraint of public opinion, they would be utterly savage.…Even some people you might know well.

  “Many men and women now act with restraint cause they know it is the right thing to do. They know that if we are to live together we must respect the rights of those around us. Our friends in the mountains do not feel that way. They’ve come to this remote place because they wish to be free of restraint, to be as cruel, as harsh, as brutal as they wish.”

  “You talk like a schoolteacher, Mr. Chantry,” I said.

  He glanced at me. “I wish I was a schoolteacher. It is the most honorable profession, done well.” He smiled at me. “Maybe, in a sense, that’s what I am.”

  “You say when there’re enough people you won’t be needed anymore,” I said boldly. “How long’re you givin’ yourself?”

  “Ten years. Maybe twenty. Surely not more than thirty. Men become civilized by degrees. By adapting, compromising.”

  “A man like you, with your education, I reckon you could do anything,” Pa said.

  Chantry’s smile was grim. “No,” he said. “I’ve had a fine education, good opportunities, but I was trained for nothing.…To be a gentleman, to oversee land, to direct the work of others. To do all that one must have a business, or money to employ.…I have nothing.

  “I have read…and riding long distances alone has given me time to think.”

  “What about that woman up yonder?” Pa asked.

  “She’s to be considered. Most definitely, she’s to be considered.”

  Somethin’ in the way he said it made me uneasy. I liked him…figured he was quite some man, but he worried me, and he knew it. Suddenly I knew. That was his trouble. He knew the kind of man he was. Whatever he done, one part of him stood off and watched.

  He walked outside to the steps and lit one of them slim cigars he smoked. He stood there, away from the light, and after helping Pa with the dishes, I followed him.

  “Have you seen her, Doby? I mean that girl up there? Have you seen her?”

  “No. I ain’t.”

  He was silent awhile. His cigar glowed in the dark. At last he said, “I’m going up there, Doby. Can you tell me how to get to that cabin?”

  Then I was silent. There was a resentment in me. I had found that cabin my own self. What did he want to go there for? What was the woman to him?

  “Don’t know’s I could,” I said. “It ain’t easy.”

  “Is it that you cannot…or will not?”

  “Mr. Chantry, that there cabin is where she comes to be alone. She’s got a right…once in a while. I figure maybe she needs to have her a place, and I don’t want—”

  “Doby,” he was patient. I could sense his patience. And his irritation, too. “That cabin is mine. I plan to live there, to return there from wherever I go. I, too, need a place to be alone.

  “I am not,” he paused just for a moment, “going to interfere with her solitude. There are other places in the forest and mountains where she can be. But I must go there. I have business there.…And perhaps I wish to see her.”

  “You’ll get her in trouble, Mr. Chantry.”

  “Doby,” his patience was wearing thin. “You don’t even know that girl…or woman. You don’t even know who she is or what. You’re making a thing out of this that it should not be.”

  “I just don’t like it,” I said stubbornly. “She even swept up. She dusted. She had everything to rights. She put out flowers. She loves the place like it is.…”

  “All that may be true,” Chantry said quietly. “But it’s my place, and I must go there.”

  A thought came to me at a sudden, a chance to get the better of him. “How about your brother? Maybe he give her the right to go there. Maybe he even give the place to her.”

  It was a point, and he saw it. “Not that place, Doby,” he said then. “Some other place, maybe, but not that one.”

  “What’s so different about it?” I demanded.

  “It’s a whole lot different.” His voice was harsh. “Don’t mix into things you don’t understand, boy. Just remember this: that cabin is mine, and there’s a lot more to it than you know.”

  Well…maybe. All of a sudden, I didn’t like him nearly so much.

  Yet, a man had to be fair. What he said was straight-enough talk. This here ranch was his, and he was lettin’ us have it. He couldn’t be more decent than that. When he could have told us to load up an’ git.

  He done no such thing. Plus he’d stood by us in trouble.

  But still it rankled.

  Fair was fair. And it come to me that all I was sore over was because he was buttin’ into my dream. I’d been dreamin’ of a girl up there at that cabin, a girl who was mine somehow. When I’d never even seen her, didn’t even know if she was a girl, an’ not some growed-up grandma of a woman.

  Maybe it was because I was kind of short on dreams and short of girls to think on. A body needs somethin’ to build a dream with. Which was why, when I come to consider it, I’d not been too anxious to meet up with that girl.…Because once I seen her, and her me, the dream might be gone forever.

  She might figger I was no account, or she might be nothing a man could be proud of herself. Just because a woman sweeps the floor and puts flowers in a pot don’t make her a princess. Nor even a girl to walk with.…

  She might be old and fat. She might be a married lady with babies. She might be anything.

  The trouble was that all my thinkin’ wouldn’t shake loose my dream, of her being young and gold and beautiful.

  She had to be. She just had to be.

  Chapter 4

  *

  COME DAYLIGHT, OWEN Chantry saddled up and rode away. I watched him take a trail that went to the hills, and then I headed for the dapple.

  “Doby!” Pa’s tone wasn’t gentle like usual. “Where d’you think you’re goin’?”

  “To the hills,” I said. “I want to see what he’s doin’ up there. What he’s goin’ to do.”

  “You stay right where you are. There’s work to do, boy, if we spec to make a crop and get wood laid by for winter. We ain’t got no time to go gallivantin’ over the mountains.”

  “Pa, I—”

  “You leave him be. He’s lettin’ us have this outfit, ain’t he? He stood by us, didn’t he? Whose business is it what he does?”

  Well, there was that girl. Only Pa wouldn’t understand about her.

  “Boy, don’t you get no notions now. That there’s a good man, but he’s a hard man, too. He’ll take no nonsense from nobody. If that cabin up there is all he wants, tis little enough.”

  Pa was right. Yet I didn’t want him goin’ up
there. He’d change things. Maybe she wouldn’t come there anymore. Then how would I ever find her?

  But all the time I knew I was playin’ the fool. Knowin’ nothin’ about her, and her not knowin’ me. And who was I? Just a green country boy who knowed nothin’ but horses and cattle. Scarce sixteen year old. How could any such girl be interested in me?

  I thought no such thing, only I wanted to think it. And most of all I didn’t want him to spoil it for me. So I went to work like Pa said and dug postholes and trimmed poles for the fence. But every now and then I’d stop and look to the mountains and wish I was up there under them aspen, ridin’ the green trails like him.

  *

  OWEN CHANTRY RODE his black horse into the canyon below the hogback. He had ridden in a wide half circle since leaving the ranch, scouting the country with care, and taking his time.

  It was all strange country, and the approach he was making gave him a better opportunity to locate the actual position of the cabin. Doby Kernohan had come upon it by accident and from another direction, and Doby’s grasp of its actual situation had been less than accurate…or perhaps Doby hadn’t wished to explain too well.

  Chantry frowned thoughtfully. What was it that bothered Doby? Could it be the girl herself? But Doby hadn’t even seen her, knew nothing about her…

  His brother had built the cabin on the rampart. That he knew.

  Chantry’s left hand held the reins. His right was never far from his gun. Nothing in his years had left him trusting of men or human situations. He never lay down at night without a built-in readiness to rise suddenly to action. He never sat down to a meal with the certain feeling that he would finish.

  He rode forward slowly. Kernohan had known nothing of the men who had tried to drive him out, nor of their connection with the girl. A lawless outfit, doubtless.

  On his right the towering mass of the rampart reared up, walls of rock almost sheer, but broken and rough enough so a skillful man might climb, if need be. It was crowned with a forest of trees.…Pine or spruce, he couldn’t make them out at that distance. It lay like a big long loaf, thrust out from the mass of the mountains behind it.

  He studied the mountains before him. He must work a little more to the east, for the mesa seemed thus easy of access, and the faint trail he followed led that way.

  A deer walked into the trail before him, unawares. It stepped slowly along, then suddenly caught a glimpse of him, ducked into the trees, and was gone. Overhead the sky was impossibly blue, with puffballs of white cloud. Toward afternoon they would bunch together, turn gray, and rain would fall. Every afternoon the rains came, never lasting for long. Sometimes the showers were intermittent.

  There were no tracks in the trail he followed except the tracks of deer. This trail was possibly unknown. Yet Chantry was cautious. It never paid to underrate an enemy, to assume they knew less than they did.

  Were they southern renegades, come west after the war? Some of the old Quantrill or Bloody Bill Andersen crowd?

  He drew up in the dappled shadow of a clump of aspens and studied the trail ahead of him, watching the trees, the ground, the birds…listening.

  Did they know of the cabin on the rampart? Possibly only the girl did, if she came there to be alone, as Doby believed. Doby had seen no other tracks, no other signs.

  He slid his Henry from its scabbard and rode forward along the trail.

  It was very still. He turned off the trail and went into the trees. When he had gone a short distance, he paused again. Through a break in the trees he could see all the land to the west, a magnificent sweep of country with the vast bulk of the Sleeping Ute topping the horizon.

  He was high up, with a sheer drop of two hundred feet or so a few rods away, with trees all the way to the edge. This was the vast rampart visible from the ranch. He must be close to the cabin.

  He stepped down from the black and stood listening. Far off he saw several elks come from the brush to feed. There was much ponderosa here. He walked slowly forward, crossing a wide area of bare rock swept by runoff water. He saw several old stumps from trees cut down long ago, no doubt to build the cabin he was looking for.

  Suddenly he saw it, partially screened by ponderosa and spruce. He knew it had been built by his brother, who understood the use of broadax and adz, of squared logs. He liked its solid look, yet he was puzzled by the chimney, which might have belonged to a still older structure. But like the cabin, it was set deep into the native stone.

  Owen Chantry, in a lifetime of drifting, had looked upon many constructions with a critical eye, and this one presented some interesting aspects. At first glance it was but another log house, yet it gave evidence of care in its framing and fitting, and the choice of its site. Concealed, it nonetheless offered a magnificent view to the west, with almost equally fine views to the south and north. To the east the view was cut off by trees and beyond them the vast bulk of the La Platas, with their bare peaks, slide-rock slopes and forested flanks.

  Chantry could detect no movement near the cabin. Tying his mount under the trees and out of sight, he took his rifle and crossed the sparse grass to the doorway. The latch-string was out.

  Lifting it, he opened the door. Inside all was empty and still, yet freshly swept and dusted. There were two pots of flowers. The hearth was cold, the ashes long dead.

  He walked back to the open door and looked westward through the trees. Screened from view, the cabin was nevertheless a perfect observation point for all that moved in the valley below—and the vast spread of land that reached out in all directions.

  The air was cool with the scent of spruce. A pleasant place, certainly, and a place in which to be alone. Owen Chantry leaned against the doorpost.

  The mountains showed blue with distance. Farther to the north, somewhat fainter, lay the La Sals.…Wild country, almost unknown country from here to there. And farther on lay a maze of canyons. Father Escalante had come through, and Rivera had explored some of it a hundred years ago. Seeking a route only, they probably had seen little of the country.

  He looked around him again. For the first time in thirty years, he felt at home.

  The winters would be cold, for the altitude was high. A man must lay in a good supply of food to last out such a winter, and he must have reserves within himself on which to draw.

  He went inside the cabin. It was as trim indoors as out.

  Thoughtfully, he examined the walls, the logs solid and fitted one to the other without crack or crevice. No chinking here, for the logs had been faced with an adz until each lay cheek to cheek against the other.…A wall two feet thick or more, and a handsome stone-flagged floor.

  There was a ceiling and hence at the back, at least, a small loft. The hewn planks of the ceiling lay from beam to beam, fitted tightly. There seemed to be no—

  He distinctly heard the sound.…A horse walking, a horse that came slowly forward, then paused…just outside.

  Owen Chantry turned swiftly, rifle in hand.

  Chapter 5

  *

  THE HORSE STOPPED, blew slightly, and a saddle creaked. Owen Chantry stepped into the doorway.

  The girl was facing him, wide-eyed. For a moment they stared at each other.

  “You’re more beautiful than I expected,” he said.

  “Who are you?”

  “You cannot guess? You knew my brother, I think, and he was not unlike me.”

  “You are Owen Chantry, then? Yes, I see his face in yours. I knew Clive. He was a good man. A silent, mysterious man, but good. Too good a man for what happened to him.”

  “That needs to be talked about,” Chantry said quietly. “I noticed a coffeepot inside, but no coffee. Did you bring some? I notice you have a lunch.”

  Her eyes searched his face. He was tall, leaner than she had seen at first, but wide-shouldered. There was a deceptive stillness in his face, deceptive because she already knew much of this man.

  A strange, morose man, Clive had said. Too good with a gun at too early an a
ge. In the War Between the States, Owen had at first been a wild and reckless leader in the cavalry, a man whom the war had changed. The war, and other things.

  She took the pack from the horse and walked past him into the cabin. She turned. “Will you build a fire? I think there’s enough here for two, if we eat lightly.”

  “Eating lightly has become a way of life for me,” he said wryly. “Yet there have been good times.”

  He went out to the edge of the woods and broke the small dry twigs off the lower trunks of several trees, the little branches that start to grow, then die. From a fallen tree he peeled bark, and then he walked back into the house.

  There he knelt, crushing the dry bark in his hand, placing it on the old ashes, and then the twigs. When he had the fire going, he added the larger branches. There was a good stock of dry wood in the house, and more alongside, most of it old now, and rotting.

  “You know they intend to kill you?” she asked.

  “I have that impression,” he said. “I met some of them but they didn’t seem disposed to attempt a killing then.”

  “Strawn wasn’t with them…nor Freka.”

  He looked around at her. “Tom Freka? And Jake Strawn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, well. That, of course, changes the situation somewhat.”

  “You know them then?”

  “We’ve never met, if that’s what you mean. But I know them by reputation. Yes, I know them. I’d say the company you choose is not always the best.”

  “No? Perhaps I didn’t choose them. Perhaps I was put into a situation I never wanted.”

  Chantry chuckled softly. “That happens to many of us. I guess the true worth of a man or woman is just how far they can rise above it.” And then he added, the smile disappearing, “And I haven’t risen far.”

  She turned and stared at him. “Do you know the whole story?”

  He shrugged. “Who does? I think I know most of it. I never believed it all.” He smiled wryly. “One hears so many stories.…Lost mines, treasures buried by outlaws.…The country is full of such stories, most of them pure nonsense. Most people who have gold do not bury it. Clive had no interest in gold, I think. But he had a scholar’s ways, which took him to Mexico to start with. Were you close to him?”