Over On the Dry Side (1975)

by L'amour, Louis - Talon-Chantry

  “English … and a poet. A very good poet.”

  “Poet?” Ollie was shocked. “What would a man write a poet’s name for when he was dyin’?”

  “I like his poetry,” Chantry said quietly.

  “And so did Clive. Whatever he’d hidden he didn’t wish anyone to find it but me. So he was trying to conceal it in such a way that only I could find it.”

  “Hell!” Freka spat. “If one man can find it, another man can too.”

  “You’ve tried, I think,” Chantry said.

  “But what have you found? You’re welcome to go on trying. There’s room enough for everyone to look. Be my guest.”

  “If you know something sure, stop talkin’ so much an’ tell us,” Mowatt said. “Was it somethin’ in one o’ them books he left?”

  “Of course.” Chantry got to his feet and stretched. Three guns were on him, and the men who held those guns were ready to kill him. But not quite yet. They wanted to know what he knew.

  “We both liked Tennyson,” Chantry said.

  “Certain of Tennyson’s poems we both liked very much, so Clive naturally thought of something he knew I would think of also. The secret to the hiding place is hidden in one of Tennyson’s poems.”

  “In a poem! Who’d a thought of that?”

  Fenelon was disgusted. But suddenly his mood changed. “I don’t believe it! I don’t believe one cottonpickin’ word. You made the whole thing up!”

  “Maybe some of it,” Strawn said, “but I seen that ten. Never paid it no mind.”

  Mac Mowatt was watching Chantry with careful eyes. “All right, what next?” he asked finally.

  “I’ll need a copy of Tennyson,”

  Chantry said.

  “You sure?” Mowatt stared at him, eyes hard. “Don’t you remember? Didn’t you learn it by heart?”

  “No,” said Chantry, “I didn’t. I don’t even know which poem it’s in. I’ll need the book, and I’ll need some time to study it at the cabin.”

  “We ain’t got no time to waste,” said Freka.

  “We’ll all go along,” Mowatt said.

  “All but Whitey and Slim. Just so’s the rest of us stay together. Wouldn’t want nothin’ to go wrong now.”

  Under his breath, Chantry swore. His mouth was dry, the taste bitter. This was his last chance.

  Chapter 20

  “You’re not gonna need us all,” Freka said, “I’ll just stay here with Whitey and Slim and the prisoners.”

  “You’ll come with us,” Mowatt said sternly.

  Tom Freka got to his feet slowly and he spat into the fire. “Whitey can stay,” he said, “but I’ll stay, too.”

  Owen Chantry felt his muscles slowly relax, yet all his senses were alert. This might be a showdown, and if—

  “All right, Tom,” Mowatt was suddenly easy. “Maybe you’re just wore out. You set by while the rest of us pick up that gold. You just set by.” He let his eyes shift to Whitey, a hard-faced man. “Whitey, I’m holdin’ you responsible for the people I’m leavin’. That goes for all of ‘em. They’re not to be hurt, y’understand?”

  Whitey nodded. “I hear you, Mowatt. They won’t be.”

  Mowatt led the men off. When they were out of earshot of the camp, Pierce suggested, “Maybe I should go back?”

  “They’ll be all right,” Mowatt said.

  “I wouldn’t leave any woman where Freka is,” Chantry said.

  “Ain’t none of your damn business, Chantry,” Mowatt told him roughly. “Just lead us to that treasure now.”

  They walked the distance to the cabin.

  Chantry stopped in the clearing just shy of the cabin. A gun prodded his back.

  “What you’ stoppin’ for?” Pierce demanded.

  Chantry didn’t answer.

  “All right, get goin’,” Mowatt said.

  Chantry walked forward, and seeing the door partially open, he pushed it gently with his hand. The door swung inward.

  The room was empty, the bed was made. A few coals were gleaming in the fireplace. A blackened pot on the hearth steamed slowly.

  Chantry glanced quickly around. He saw no gun, nothing he could use for a weapon. He felt like he’d been struck in the belly. He had hoped … he scarcely knew any longer what he had hoped.

  Mowatt pushed him hard from behind, and he staggered.

  “Damnit, get in there!” Mowatt shoved in after him, glaring around.

  The books were on the table where he’d put them.

  Chantry glanced out of the north window. Like the south window, it was small, almost like a porthole, though somewhat larger. It was rounded at the top.

  “Now look at them books!” Mowatt said.

  “And you better find somethin’ quick!”

  Mowatt took up the books one by one and riffled their pages.

  At one point a torn scrap of paper had been used for a bookmark. It was at the poem “Ulysses.” Mowatt read the poem slowly, his lips moving, occasionally scowling over some word or meaning. “Hell,” he said, at last, “there ain’t nothing there!”

  Only there was.

  He offered Chantry the book. Chantry made a show of turning the pages as if searching for a clue. Ollie Fenelon and Pierce Mowatt went outside, and he could hear them muttering over “Stuff an’ nonsense.”

  Chantry knew that “Ulysses” had been a special favorite of Clive’s. They had quoted it to each other in letters and written of certain passages in it.

  One passage that Chantry especially remembered began: “Yet all experience is an arch wherethrou’gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fadesfor ever and for ever when I move.”

  Reading quickly from first one poem and then another Chantry paced the floor.

  Pausing in his pacing, he looked out of the north window. Only trees in a dense stand beyond an area of rock, scattered shrubs and young aspens.

  Yet the top of the window could be called an arch.

  He went back to turning the pages.

  Chantry sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Damnit,” he muttered, with a great show of irritation, “it’s got to be here.”

  “It better be,” Mowatt said.

  Again Chantry paced the floor. This time he stopped in the middle of the room, reading a couple of lines from “Locksley Hall” aloud as though searching for something in them. Then he looked out through the south window.

  The sky was a brilliant blue. The sun shone brightly.

  A big granite rock was visible above the green of the grass.

  Chantry had started to turn away when something flashed across his vision … a faint gleam. He took his eyes from the window and slowly turned a page.

  “What was you lookin’ at then?” Mowatt demanded.

  “I was just thinking,” Chantry replied.

  “Clive was never a simple man. I’ve got to put myself in his shoes and try to think like him. I may seem to be daydreaming, but I’m not.”

  Mac Mowatt hitched around in his chair. “Your funeral,” he said shortly. “But I’m gettin’ mighty impatient. And so are the boys.”

  “You haven’t yet hung the killer of my brother,” Chantry said. “And I gave your men two weeks.”

  Mowatt came off his chair with a lunge and backhanded Chantry across the mouth. He staggered, falling against the wall. Instantly, the men outside were in the doorway.

  Mowatt waved a hand. “It’s all right. He just gave me some lip. You boys relax. I can handle this.”

  Mowatt sat down again and Chantry picked up the fallen book. He tasted blood, and his lip was swelling where it had smashed against his teeth.

  “You keep a still tongue now,” said Mowatt.

  “I got no time to waste.”

  Chantry lifted his eyes to the window. There, by the big granite rock where the secret way went down the mountain, there was a gleam … a bit of mica in the rock reflecting light. Chantry turned his eyes away and knew what he intended to do. It was a long, long chance to take
, and it meant some closeup shooting, and a chance that he’d be killed.

  He smiled.

  “What you smilin’ at?” Mowatt demanded.

  Chantry continued to smile. “I was just thinking of your faces when I find it,” he said, “because I know it isn’t what you think. You’ve been a fool, Mowatt, leading your men on a wild-goose chase, getting several of them killed, and several hurt. And all for nothing.”

  Chantry wanted him close. He wanted him to hit again. He had to get him close.

  “I was smiling, too,” he added, “to think how foolish we all are. Everybody dies sometime.

  The one thing we know about life is that we never get out alive, so why not live like a proud man?

  Mowatt, you’re a yellow-bellied coward to hit an unarmed man. You are no gentleman, not even a shadow of one. You’re leading a murdering, cowardly band of renegades, and not one of them would stand up to a man in a fair fight.

  “And you, Mac Mowatt, supposed to be a fearless leader. I heard you back up for Freka … afraid to face him down. You’re nothing, Mowatt, nothing at all. You haven’t the guts of a mouse.”

  Chantry was ready, poised for attack, but it didn’t come. Mac Mowatt leaned back in his chair and grinned at him, his eyes cold and crafty.

  “You talk a lot, Chantry,” he said, “but you ain’t got what it takes. I know just what you’re thinkin’. Like I’ll get mad, jump you, you’ll try for my gun, an’ then you’ll shoot it out. Well, it ain’t a-gonna work.

  “Oh, I’m mad, all right! As for Freka, I’ll handle him my own way, and I need no help from you. Meanwhile, you got you one minute.

  You tell me where that gold is.” Mowatt drew his gun and balanced it in his palm, muzzle upward.

  “Read it,” growled Mowatt.

  ““Yet all experience is an arch wherethrou’gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fadesfor ever and for ever when I move.””

  “Don’t mean nothin’ to me,” Mowatt said.

  The gun was steady in his hand, its muzzle lined on Chantry’s chest.

  “Look, Mowatt. The window is the arch. And looking out the window, you can see the sun reflecting off the mica. That’s the gleam. If you shift your head a mite, the gleam fades and you lose it.

  That’s “whose margin fades/for ever and for ever when I move.””

  “Thanks, Chantry.” Mac Mowatt was smiling. “Now you’ve given me all I need.”

  He eared back the hammer on his gun.

  What was happenin’ to ‘em I couldn’t find out. All I knew was that if me an’ Marny was to get out of this alive I surely had to do somethin’, an’ fast.

  Whitey was a tough, mean man, an’ nobody to tangle with if it could be avoided, and there he set behind a slab of pine he’d picked up from a lightnin’-blasted tree, a-playin’ solitaire with a greasy deck of cards. He sat there facin’ us where we could never move without his seein’, his cards in his hands, his six-shooter lyin’ on the slab right there beside him.

  Slim had come back and was watching Whitey’s game an’ I happened to glance up an’ seen something wavin’ at me. It was a hand, and it was that old man. He was in the edge of the woods and he had that ol’ buffalo gun and he was kind of gesturin’, seemed to me, toward Slim and then himself.

  It taken me no time to see what he meant.

  He was going to take Slim and that left Whitey for me. Well, he sure picked the easy one.

  Tacklin’ that Whitey was like jumping right down a grizzly’s throat, but I aimed to do it.

  I reached over an’ taken Marny’s wrist and kinda squeezed, puttin’ my feet back for a quick getup as I done it, so she’d know somethin’ was up. First time I ever touched her.

  That old coon hunter out there, he taken aim with that ol’ buffalo gun and I looked up at Slim just a minute, an’ I couldn’t help but say it. I said, “Goodbye, Slim,” and his eyes come to mine, and then that gun boomed.

  What the buffalo gun done to him, I never seen, ‘cause when it boomed I left the ground in a lunge, and I swung one from the hip that clobbered Whitey right in the face. He went over backward, grabbin’ for his gun that was falling off the slab, and Slim, he was on the ground near me, kickin’ an’ squawlin’.

  Whitey come off the ground but I swung another fist into him and the gun somehow landed near my feet.

  I ducked an’ grabbed for it, but Whitey kicked me in the head, knockin’ me back to the ground.

  And then I heard a gun go off close up, and I was certain I was shot.

  When I opened my eyes and started to get up, Marny was standin’ there with a gun in her hand an’

  Whitey was dead.

  Then something slammed into my skull, I heard a scream an’ another gunshot, and then I was rolling in the dust and branches from a fallen tree an’ my head was roaring with sound an’ a stabbing pain. I fought to get up. Got up, staggered, and scraped my palms on tree bark when I tried to hold myself from fallin’ again.

  Blood was streamin’ into my eyes and all I could see was Tom Freka up on a horse.

  He had Marny and she was unconscious, seemed like, and they were ridin’ away through the trees.

  Whitey was on the ground where Marny had shot him to save me, and I jumped for him, trying to find the gun Marny must have dropped near him.

  I found it and came up holding it.

  Then a man I never seen before come running at me. He skidded to a halt when he seen me and he says, “Drop it, kid, or I’ll kill you!” and I shot him right through the brisket.

  Chapter 21

  Chantry had no faith in the breaks, but he knew one when he saw it.

  The hammer on Mac Mowatt’s gun eared back and from somewhere outside a buffalo gun boomed. The boom of that big gun, unexpected as it was, froze Mac Mowatt for one instant.

  Chantry needed no more.

  He swung a long-stretched kick at the tilted-up leg of Mowatt’s chair and hooked it. The chair went over and Mowatt with it. And the gun went off into the ceiling.

  Chantry threw the Tennyson at him and followed it in, and as Mowatt floundered in the tangle of book and chair, he kicked him in the belly and wrenched the gun from his hand. He heard the snap of a bullet past his ear and the thud of it into the wall, and then he fired. Mowatt lay still.

  His next bullet caught Ollie Fenelon filling the doorway and a second one hit Ollie as he fell into the room, Ollie’s gun falling from his hand. Snatching Ollie’s gun, Chantry jumped for the door: Pierce Mowatt had a rifle and it was lifting as Chantry stepped into the door and chopped down on him with both guns. Pierce took a step back and fell, tried to get up and then lay still.

  And there, across a small clearing, his six-shooter in its holster, stood Jake Strawn.

  “Chantry, take my horse,” he said, “Tom Freka’s prob’ly got your girl.”

  That big blood bay was standing there, saddled for traveling, and Chantry swung into the saddle.

  “Thanks!” he yelled, and then the bay was running.

  Jake Strawn had need of a fast horse from time to time, and this was the horse that could outrun anything in the country.

  Chantry had heard some gunshots from far away and feared the worst.

  Doby was at the Mowatt camp, standing all spraddle-legged, only half aware of what was happening. There was blood all over his head and two men down. Doby yelled and pointed out the direction, and the bay began to run again.

  Freka’s tracks were fresh, and the bay seemed to know that was where they were going.

  The trail was narrow, and the slender stems of aspens bent over the trail in arches, like the crossed swords at a military wedding. It was like riding down a tunnel, only there was dust in Chantry’s nostrils until they broke into open meadow.

  Not knowing the country, Freka had been riding blind and, in his haste, had reached a dead end.

  He was seeking a trail out when he saw the big bay, believing its rider to be Strawn.

  “Lay off, Jake!” Freka
shouted. “This gal is mine!”

  Then he saw it was Chantry, and his face went white. He let go of Marny, who slid from the saddle to the ground. Freka’s horse stepped away from the fallen girl, and Freka snarled, “How’d you get that horse Chantry?”

  “Jake let me have him, Freka. He said you had my girl.”

  “Never knowed she was yours,” Tom said, “or I’d a taken her sooner. I see you got a drawn gun. That gives you a edge.”

  “You never had an edge, Freka?” Chantry was relentless. Marny was stirring. She was going to get up, and he wished she would stay where she was.

  “I didn’t think the almighty Owen Chantry needed a edge. You holster your gun an’ I’ll beat you.”

  “You might … and you might not. But I’m not aiming to give you a break. You’re a woman-killing snake.”

  Chantry dropped his gun into its holster. He saw Freka’s hand move to cover him. His hand already just above his own gun, Chantry simply brought it out again and fired.

  Freka had white pearl buttons on his dark blue shirt. The button on his left pocket flap vanished and was replaced by crimson.

  Chantry walked the big bay closer as Freka tried to bring his suddenly too heavy gun to bear. “I’m not a woman, Freka,” he said.

  “You should have stuck to killing women.”

  There was no need to waste another bullet. The gun slid from Freka’s fingers and he slumped in the saddle, still holding the reins and looking at Owen Chantry with staring eyes.

  “He let you have that horse. I never knowed him to—”

  “Jake Strawn is a man, Freka. A bad man, but a man.”

  Freka fell from his horse, his boot hanging in the stirrup. The horse walked off a few steps, dragging Freka face down in the dirt.

  Owen Chantry rode the bay over, disengaged Freka’s boot, and let his leg fall. Then he rode back to Marny Fox, leading Freka’s horse behind him.

  “We’d better go back,” he said gently.

  “They’ll be worried.”

  When Marny rode in with Chantry beside her, Strawn was waiting near the cabin. Chantry swung down. “Thanks, Jake. Lucky you had him saddled.”

  “Glad to oblige, Chantry,” Strawn said, “I’ve had enough of Mowatt’s crew. Them that’s still alive has scattered. I figgered I’d ride down El Paso way and see Frank.”