Novel 1953 - Showdown At Yellow Butte

by Louis L'Amour

  A horse’s hoof struck stone, and as one man they looked up. Although they could not see the horse they heard the creak of saddle leather. A spur jingled, and Alton Burwick stood among them.

  Loren Keith straightened to his feet and briefly explained the situation. Burwick nodded from time to time, then added, “Use the dynamite. First thing in the morning. That should end it, once and for all.”

  He drew a cigar from his pocket and bit off the end. “Had a wire. That committee is comin’ out, all right. Take them a couple of weeks to get here, an’ by that time folks should be over this an’ talkin’ about somethin’ else. I’m figurin’ a bonus for you all.”

  He turned back toward his horse, then stopped and catching Dornie Shaw’s eye, jerked his head.

  Shaw got up from the fire and followed him, and Keith stared after them, his eyes bitter. Now what? Was he being left out of something else?

  Beyond the edge of the firelight and beyond the reach of their ears, Burwick paused and let Shaw come up to him. “Nice work, Dornie,” he said. “We make a pair, you an’ me.”

  “Yeah,” Dornie nodded. “An’ sometimes I think a pair’s enough.”

  “Well,” Burwick puffed on his cigar, “I need a good man to side me, an’ Gunter’s gone—at least.”

  “That company o’ yours,” Dornie was almost whispering, “had too many partners, anyway.”

  “Uh huh,” Burwick said quietly, “it still has.”

  “All right, then.” Dornie hitched his guns into a firmer seating on his thighs. “I’ll be in to see you in a couple of days at most.”

  Burwick turned and walked away, and Dornie saw him swing easily to the saddle. He stayed where he was, looking into the darkness and listening to the slow steps of the horse. They had a funny sound—a very funny sound.

  When he walked back to the campfire, he was whistling Green Grow the Lilacs, O.

  THE ATTACK CAME again at daybreak. The company had mustered twenty men, of whom two carried packages of dynamite. This was to be the final blow. The squatters were to be wiped out, once and for all.

  Shortly before the arrival of Burwick, Keith and Dornie Shaw, with Fessenden accompanying them, made a careful reconnaissance of the canyon from the rim. What they found pleased them enormously. It was obvious, once the crevasse had been located, that not more than two men could fire from it at once, and the attackers could find plenty of cover from the scattered boulders. In fact, they could get within throwing distance without emerging in the open for more than a few seconds at a time. Much of the squatters’ field of fire would be ruined by their proximity to the ground and the rising of the boulders before them.

  The attack started well, with all the men moving out. They made twenty yards into the canyon, moving fast. Here, the great slabs fallen from the slope of Yellow Butte crowded them together. And there the attack stopped.

  It stopped abruptly, meeting a withering wall of rifle fire—at point-blank range!

  Tom Kedrick knew a thing or two about fighting, and he knew full well that the hideout in the crevasse would in the long run become a deathtrap. He put himself in Keith’s place and decided what that man would do. Then he had his eight men, carrying fourteen rifles, slip like Indians through the darkness to carefully selected firing positions far down the canyon from where Keith would be expecting to find them.

  Five of the attackers died in that first burst of fire. As the gunhands broke for cover, two more went down. One dragged himself to the camp of the previous night with a shattered knee cap. He found himself alone.

  The wife of Taggart had begun it—the mighty blast of rifle fire completed it.

  The company fighters got out of the canyon’s mouth, and as one man they moved for their horses. Keith was among them and glad to be going. Dornie Shaw watched him mount up, and swung up alongside him. Behind them, moving carefully as if they were perfectly disciplined troops, the defenders of the canyon moved down, firing as they came. A horse dropped, and a man crawled into the rocks, then jumped up and ran. Dai Reid swung wide of the group and started after him.

  Another went down before they got away, and Kedrick turned to his group. “Get your horses, men. The women will be all right. This is a job that needs finishing now.”

  A quarter of a mile away, Brokow spotted a horse, standing alone, and started for it. As he arose from the rocks, a voice called out from behind. “A minute!”

  Brokow turned. He saw only one man approaching him, the Welshman, Dai Reid. He stared at the man’s Spencer, remembering his own gun was empty. He backed up slowly, his eyes haunted.

  “My rifle’s empty,” he said, “an’ I’ve lost my Colt.”

  “Drop the rifle then,” Dai said quietly. “This I’ve been wanting, for guns be not my way.”

  Brokow did not understand, but he dropped his rifle. He was a big man, hulking and considered powerful. He watched in amazement as Reid placed his Spencer carefully on the ground, and then his gun belt. With bowlegged strides, the shorter man started for Brokow.

  The outlaw stared, then started forward to meet Dai. As they drew near, he swung. His rocklike fist smashed Dai Reid flush on the chin. But Reid only blinked, then lunged. Twice more Brokow swung, blows filled with smashing panic born of the lack of effect of that first punch. Dai was unable to avoid the blows, and both connected solidly. But then Dai’s huge, big-knuckled hand grasped Brokow’s arm and jerked him near.

  The hand slipped to the back of his head and jerked Brokow’s face down to meet the rising of the Welshman’s head. Stars burst before Brokow’s eyes, and he felt the bone go in his nose. He swung wildly, and then those big hands gripped his throat and squeezed till Brokow was dead. Then Dai Reid dropped the outlaw to the sand. Turning, he walked away. He did not notice the horse that stood waiting. It was a grulla.

  In the headlong flight that followed the debacle in the canyon’s mouth, only Lee Goff had purpose. The hard-bitten Montana gunman had stared reality in the face when Taggart’s wife turned on him. It was only coincidence that she so resembled his own mother, long since dead of overwork in rearing seven boys and five girls on a bleak Montana ranch.

  He headed directly for Yellow Butte and the Taggart home. He did not dismount, but stopped by the door and knocked gently. It opened and he faced Mrs. Taggart, her eyes red from weeping. “Ma’am,” he said, “I guess I ain’t much account, but this here’s been too much. I’m driftin’. Will you take this here—as a favor to me?”

  He shoved a thick roll of bills at her, his face flushing deep red. For an instant, she hesitated, and then she accepted the money with dignity. “Thanks, son. You’re a good boy.”

  Goff put spurs to his horse and swung it around. The bald-faced sorrel disappeared into the darkness of the night. Lee Goff had had his belly full. He was heading for Colorado, or Utah—anywhere … but away.

  Elsewhere, Tom Kedrick was riding to Mustang. With him were Laredo Shad, Pit Laine, Dai Reid, Burt Williams, and the others. They made a tight, grim-faced little cavalcade, and they rode with their rifles across their saddle forks.

  Due west of them, however, another little drama was taking place. The riders they followed did not include all the men who had abandoned the fight in the canyon. Two of them, Dornie Shaw and Colonel Loren Keith, had headed due west on their own. Both of them had their own thoughts and their own ideas of what to do. Among other things, Keith had decided that he had had enough. Whether the others knew it or not, they were through, and he was getting out of the country.

  There was some money back there in Mustang, and once he had that, he was going to mount up and head for California. Then let Ransome investigate. After a few years he would return to the East. If the subject ever came up, he would swear he had nothing to do with it, that he only represented the company legally in the first steps of the venture.

  What Dornie Shaw was thinking nobody ever guessed. At this moment, however, he had no thought at all in his mind. For his mind was not overly given to thought. He
liked a few things, although he rarely drank, and seemed never to eat much. He liked a good horse and a woman with about an equal degree of affection, and he had liked Sue Laine a good bit. However, the woman who really fascinated him was Connie Duane, and she seemed unaware that he was alive.

  Most of all he liked a gun. When cornered or braced into a fight, he killed as naturally and simply as most men eat. He was a creature of destruction, pure and simple. Never in his life had he been faced with a man who made him doubt his skill, and never had he fought with anything but guns—and he vowed he never would.

  The two rode rapidly and both were mounted well. By the time Kedrick was leaving Yellow Butte with his men and lining out for town, Shaw and Keith reached the bank of Salt Creek Wash. Here Keith swung down to tighteen his saddle cinch while his horse was drinking. After a moment, Dornie got down, too.

  Absently Keith asked, “Well, Dornie, this breaks it, so where do you think you’ll go now?”

  “Why, Colonel,” Shaw said softly, in his gentle boy’s voice. “I don’t know exactly where I’m goin, but this here’s as far as you go.”

  It took a minute for the remark to sink in, and then Keith turned, his puzzled expression stiffening into black horror, then fear. Dornie Shaw stood negligently watching him, his lips smiling a little, his eyes opaque and empty.

  The realization left Loren Keith icy cold. Dornie Shaw was going to kill him.

  He had been an utter fool ever to allow this to happen. Why had he left the others and come off with Shaw? Why hadn’t he killed him long since, from behind if need be, for the man was like a mad dog. He was insane, completely insane.

  “What’s on your mind, Shaw?” Without realizing it he spoke as he might to a subordinate. Shaw was not conscious of the tone. He was looking at Keith’s belt line. The Colonel, he reflected, had been taking on a little weight lately.

  “Why, just what I say. You’ve come as far as your trail takes you, Colonel. I can’t say I’m sorry.”

  “Burwick won’t like this. We’re two of the men on whom he relies.”

  “Uh huh, that’s the way it was. It ain’t now. Back yonder,” he jerked his head toward the butte, “he sort of implied he’d got hisself one too many partners.” He shoved his hat back a little. “You want to try for your gun? It won’t help you none, but you can try.”

  Keith was frightened. Every muscle within him seemed to have tightened until he could not move, yet he knew he was going to. But at the last, he had something to say, and it came from some deep inner conviction. “Kedrick will kill you, Dornie. He’s going to win. He’ll beat Burwick, too.”

  Suddenly, he remembered something: it had been only a fleeting expression on Dornie Shaw’s face, but something. “Dornie!” he shot the word out with the force of desperation. “There behind you! The grulla!”

  Shaw whirled, his face white, an almost animal-like fury on it. As he turned, Keith, gasping hoarsely and triumphantly, grabbed for his gun. He got it, and the gun swung up. But he had never coped with a fighter like Shaw. In the flashing instant that he whirled and found nothing behind him, Dornie hurled himself backward. The shot split wide the air where he had stood an instant before, and then Dornie himself fired from the ground. He fired once, then a second time.

  Keith caught the bullet through the midsection, right where that extra weight had been gathering, and took the second one in the same place.

  He fell, half in the trickle of water that comprised Salt Creek. Feeding shells into his gun, Dornie Shaw stared down at the glazing eyes. “How did you know?” he asked sullenly. “How did you know?”

  CHAPTER 14

  FESSENDEN RODE WELL forward in the saddle, his great bulk carried easily with the movement of the horse. His wide face was somber with thought and distaste. Like the others, the wife of Taggart had affected him as nothing else could have. He was a hard man who had done more than his share of killing. But he had killed men ruthlessly, thoughtlessly, killed men in mortal combat where he himself might die as easily.

  Several times before he had hired his gun, but each time in cattle or sheep wars or struggles with equals, men as gun-wise as he himself. Never before had he actually joined in a move to rob men of their homes. Without conscience in the usual sense, he had it in this case. For the men who moved West, regardless of their brand, were largely men in search of homes. Before, he had thought little of their fight. Several times he had helped to drive nesters from cattle range, and to him that was just and logical. Cows needed grass and people lived on beef, and most of the range country wasn’t suited to farming, anyway.

  But now there was a difference, he realized, thinking of it for the first time. Now men were not being driven off for cattle, but only for profit. To many, the line was a fine one to draw; to Fessenden and his like, once the matter was seen in its true light, that line became a gap, an enormous one.

  Actually, he rode in a state of shock. The victory Keith had wanted seemed so near. The taking of the few left in the canyon had seemed simple. His qualms against the use of dynamite he had shrugged off, if uncomfortably. He had gone into the canyon with the others to get the thing over with, to get his money and get out. And then, long before they expected it, came that smashing thunderous volley. It had been made more crashing by the close canyon walls, more destructive by the way the attackers were channeled by the boulders.

  Shock started the panic, and distaste for the whole affair kept some of them, at least, on the move. Yet it was hard to believe that Clauson and Poinsett were dead, that Brokow had vanished, that Lee Goff was gone. For alone of the group, Goff had told Fessenden he was leaving. He had not needed to tell him why.

  Behind him rode the Mixus boys, somber with disappointment at the failure of the attack. They had no qualms about killing, and no lines to draw even at the killing of women. They were in no true sense fighting men; they were butchers. Yet even they realized the change that had come over the group. What had become of Brokow or Goff they did not know. But they did know that disintegration had set in. In turn, these men had turned into a snarling pack of wolves venting their fury and their hatred on each other.

  Mustang lay quiet when they rode into town. It was the quiet before the storm. The town, like that cattle buyer who had turned back to Durango, sensed the coming fury of battle. No women were on the street, and only a few hardy souls loitered at the bars or card tables. The chairs before the St. James were deserted, and Clay Allison had ridden back to his home ranch, drunk and ugly.

  An almost Sunday peace lay over the sun-swept town when Fessenden drew up before the Mustang Saloon and swung down from his weary horse. Slapping his hat against his leg to beat off the dust, Fessenden stood like a great shaggy bull and surveyed the quiet of the street. He was too knowing a Western man not to recognize the symptoms of disaster. Clapping his hat all awry upon his shaggy head, he shoved his bulk through the doors and moved to the bar.

  “Rye,” he said, his voice booming in the cavernous interior. His eyes glinted around the room, then back to the bartender.

  That worthy could no longer restrain his curiosity. “What’s happened?” he asked, swallowing.

  A glint of irony came into the hard eyes of the gunman. “Them squatters squatted there for keeps,” he said wryly, “an’ they showed us they aim to stay put.” He tossed off his drink. “All Hades busted loose.” Briefly he explained. “You’d a figured there was a thousand men in that neck of the rocks when they opened up. The thing that did it was the unexpectedness of it, like steppin’ on a step in the dark when it ain’t there.”

  He poured another drink. “It was that Kedrick,” he said grimly. “When I seen him shift to the other side I should’ve lit a shuck.”

  “What about Keith?”

  “He won’t be back.”

  They turned at the new voice, and saw Dornie Shaw standing in the doorway, smiling. Still smiling, he walked on in and leaned against the bar. “Keith won’t be back,” he said. “He went for his gun out on Sa
lt Creek.”

  The news fell into a silent room. A man at a table shifted his feet and his chair creaked. Fessenden wet his lips and downed his second drink. He was getting out of town, but fast.

  “Seen that girl come in, short time back,” the bartender said suddenly, “that Duane girl. Thought she’d gone over to the other side?”

  Dornie’s head lifted and his eyes brightened, then shadowed. He downed his own drink and walked jauntily to the door. “Stick around, Fess. I’ll be back.” He grinned. “I’ll collect for both of us from the Old Man.”

  The bartender looked at Fessenden: “Reckon he’ll bring it if he does?”

  The big gunman nodded absently. “Sure. He’s no thief. Why, that kid never stole a thing in his life. He don’t believe in it. An’ he won’t lie or swear—but he’ll shoot the heart out of you an’ smile right in your face while he’s doing it.”

  The show had folded. The roundup was over. There was nothing to do now but light out. Fessenden knew he should go, but a queer apathy had settled over him. He ordered another drink, letting the bartender pour it. The liquor he drank seemed now to fall into a cavern without bottom and had no effect.

  ON THE OUTSKIRTS of town, Tom Kedrick reined in.

  “We’ll keep together,” he said quietly. “We want Keith, Shaw, Burwick, the Mixus boys and Fessenden. There are about four others that you will recognize whom I don’t know by name. Let’s work fast and make no mistakes.

  “Pit, you take Dai and two men and go up the left side of the street. Take no chances. Arrest them if you can. We’ll try them, and”—his face was grim—“if we find them guilty they’ll have just two sentences: leave the country or hang. The Mixus boys and Shaw,” he said, “will hang. They’ve done murder.”

  He turned in his saddle and glanced at the tall Texan. “Come on, Shad,” he said quietly, “we’ll take two men and the right side of the street, which means the livery stable, the St. James and the Mustang.”