L'Amour, Louis - Novel 06

by To Tame a Land

  “Waited? Where?” Bagley was angry. “Risk our families? What you talkin’ of, boy?”

  “McGarry said you’d wait at the springs. He told Pap that. We got to the springs right quick, and you all didn’t even stop.”

  There was a slim, wiry man in buckskins setting a black horse there, and he looked at me. “Boy, are you sure Big Jack promised to wait at the springs?”

  “I’m damn sure!”

  Big Jack came up then and pushed his horse through the circle. “Here! What’s this? You’re holdin’ up the .. .Oh, it’s you.”

  You didn’t need to look close to see he wasn’t happy to see me. His face showed mighty plain that he had never expected us to come through … and only one of us had.

  The slim man in buckskins looked over at Big Jack.

  “Jack, the boy says you told his pap you’d wait at the springs.”

  “He lies!” McGarry said angrily. “The boy lies. I told him nothing of the kind.”

  “You did so.” I put my hand on my Shawk & McLanahan. “You say I lie and I’ll shoot you sure.”

  The man in the buckskins shook his head at me. “Sit quiet, boy. We’ll get the straight of this.” He turned back to McGarry. “I never did understand why we passed u p the sweetest water in a hundred miles. It was early to stop, but with that wagon left behind …?”

  “I told him no such thing! What would I do that for?”

  “Because Pap wasn’t afeared of you. And because you were shinin’ up to Mary Tatum.”

  That man hated me. I could see it in his hard little eyes. “Boy, you shet that mouth! You shet up or I’ll blister your hide!”

  “You’ll blister no hides, McGarry. You’ve a question or two to answer.” The man in buckskins turned and looked at Mary Tatum. “Ma’am, I reckon we all know McGarry’s been wantin’ to court you. You been talkin’ with him some. Did you set out with him so much when Tyler was with us?”

  Mary was a right pretty girl and she had spunk. I knowed Pap set a sight of store by her, and he had asked me once what I’d think of her as a mother. I told him that seeing as how my own ma was buried back East, there was nobody I’d like better.

  Now she lifted her chin and said quietly, “I was thinking a lot about Mr. Tyler. He was a good man and an honest man. I believe he was in love with me.”

  “I know he was,” I said.

  She looked at me, her gray eyes wide and full. Then she said quietly, “I am a single girl and I want a husband. I hoped to marry Ralph Tyler. I have never even considered marrying Jack McGarry, and will not now.”

  McGarry’s face went red, then white. He started t o speak.

  The man in buckskins interrupted. “We don’t know the straight of this, and I reckon we’ll never know exactly. If you told him we’d wait at the springs, we should have waited. We should have stopped there, anyway. I wondered why we didn’t. I think you’re guilty.”

  I expected McGarry to grab for his gun, but he didn’t.

  There was something about that slender man that didn’t look very safe.

  A solidly built man in a black coat and flat black hat spoke up. “We’ll be having an election. We’ll be wanting a new captain.”

  Big Jack McGarry looked over at me and there was nothing nice in his eyes. He looked mighty mean.

  Mary Tatum saw it, and she walked over to my horse.

  “Rye,” she said gently, “I’m very sorry about Ralph. Will you ride with us now?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said, “but I thank you. I don’t figure to stay with this outfit.” I looked over at Bagley. “There’s some folks here won’t feel right as long as I’m about.”

  “But, Rye, you’re only a boy!” she protested.

  “I killed me three Indians,” I said. “I’ve come across the plains these last days all by myself. I’ll go on by myself.”

  She smiled at me. “All right, Rye, but will you eat with us this night?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be obliged.”

  It was mighty good, setting up to a civilized meal again.

  Mary Tatum was a wonderful cook, and she even managed some cookies, and most of them she gave to me. Night came, and when I got my buffalo robe she brought me blankets from her own wagon.

  “Ma’am,” I said, “I’d have liked it, having you for a ma.”

  She put her hand on my head then and pulled it against her, and I guess I cried, though I ain’t much to brag on that.

  That shamed me, the crying did. When I got to my feet I was some taller than Mary, and I brushed those tears away, and felt worse about crying than anything else.

  So I took my blankets and went away to the edge of the circle and started to spread them out.

  Something moved out there in the dark, and I took out my Shawk & McLanahan, for those two weeks had put me on edge. Whoever was out there went away.

  The next morning when I was saddling up, Big Jack McGarry came by. He looked down at me and his eyes were mighty mean. “Figure you’re a big man now, don’t you? I’ll slap some of that out of you!”

  Right then I was some scared, but the pistol was in my belt and I knew if he started for me I’d pull iron. I didn’t want to, but I would.

  “You got my pap killed,” I told him, “just like you figured on. If he was here you’d not talk about whuppin’ me. I notice you never tried to come it over him.”

  He started his horse at me and raised his quirt, and just about that time a gun clicked behind me and I heard a voice say, “Go ahead, hit him. This wagon train can wait long enough to bury a man.”

  McGarry sat there with his quirt raised up and had the look of a fool.

  It was that slim man in the buckskin shirt. He had a six-shooter in his hand and he was not fooling. “McGarry,” he said, “if anything happens to that boy while I’m with this wagon train, even if it’s an out-and-out accident. I’ll kill you.”

  McGarry lowered his quirt and rode off to the head of the column. Only he was not there officially any more.

  They had voted him out of the captain’s job.

  The man in the buckskin shirt walked over to me and looked at me thoughtfully. “Boy,” he said, “you’re mighty young to be packin’ a gun, but you’d better keep it handy.”

  ���All right, sir.”

  “My name is Logan Pollard.” He studied me a minute. “Tell me what happened back there. When your father was killed.”

  So for the first time I told the whole story.

  He questioned me right sharp, then he knocked out his pipe and told me, quiet-like, “You’ll do, boy. But don’t use that gun unless you have to.”

  He went away then, and the next morning when the column moved out he came by on horseback. He motioned me to follow and I went with him and we rode out away from the wagons.

  It wasn’t until we were over the hill that he said, “We’ll get an antelope or two, and we’ll start your education same time.”

  “I can read. I been to school.”

  “Not that kind of education.” He looked at me from that narrow brown face that never seemed to smile. “The kind you’ll need. I’m going to teach you how to read sign, how to tell an Indian’s tribe from his moccasins, and where to find game. Also, how to use that gun. I’m going to teach you things you need to know. So don’t think of riding off by yourself just yet.”

  We rode on a ways farther, and then he drew up, indicating a plant about four feet high. It had a prickly look, with sort of white flowers shading off to violet.

  “Indian thistle,” he said, “and the roots will keep a man alive if there’s nothing else to eat. Don’t forget it.”

  He rode on, leading the way, pointing out things as we rode. Toward evening we circled back and we had two antelope.

  “Back home,” he said, “we had almost two thousand books. I read most of them. But this,” he swept his arm wide to take in the country, “this is the book I like best. You can always learn. There’s always something new on the page.”

  W
hen he left me, he said, “Don’t despise the Indian. He’s lived here a long time, lived well. Learn from him.”

  Chapter 3

  THE SECOND DAY it was different. That morning he came for me right after the wagons started, but we rode fast, rode on ahead. As we rode, he told me things. They were things to remember, and Pollard did no aimless talking.

  “Stalking a deer,” he said, “you remember you can move as long as he has his head down, feeding. Just before he looks up he’ll start to switch his tail. Stop moving then and stand right still, or sink down and wait until he starts to feed again.

  “Indians often smoke their bodies in sage to kill body odor when going on a hunt. Mint will do the same thing, or any grass or plant that smells.”

  We were several miles ahead of the wagon train and far off to one side when we drew up in a grove of aspen.

  Ever seen aspen growing? Most times they grow in thick clumps, grow straight up, their trunks almost all of a size.

  Logan Pollard swung down and I followed him. Then he paced about fifty feet from an aspen about four inches in diameter. “Take out your gun,” he said, “and hold it down by your side.”

  He faced the slim young aspen and drew his own gun.

  “Now,” he said, “lift your gun in line with that aspen trunk. Just keep lifting it at arm’s length until your gun is shoulder high.”

  When I had done that a few times he had me take the shells from my gun. For over an hour we worked. He kept me at it, lifting that six-shooter and sighting along the barrel. Lifting it straight up from the base of the tree trunk until it was at eye level, always sighting along the barrel and keeping it in line with the trunk. Not until I’d been at it a few minutes longer did he start me mapping the gun when it reached shooting position.

  “Every day,” he said, “you’ll practice that. Every day we’ll ride out here.”

  “Will you teach me to draw real fast?” I asked him.

  That was something I wanted to know. I’d heard talk of Jack Slade and others who were mighty good that way.

  “Not yet.” He squatted on his heels. “First you learn how to use a gun. The draw isn’t so important as it is to hit what you shoot at. Learn to make that first shot count. You may,” he added dryly, “never get another.”

  He taught me to look where I was shooting and not at the gun, and to shoot as a man points a finger, and how to hang my holster so my palm came to the gun butt naturally. “No man,” he said, “ever uses a gun unless he has to. Don’t hunt trouble. Sooner or later you’ll always find more than you want. A gun is a tool, mighty handy when you need it, and to be left alone until you do need it.”

  Beyond the shining mountains there was desert, and at its edge we left the wagon train.

  “We’ll be in California, Rye,” Mary Tatum said. “If you want to come, you’re welcome.”

  “Another time, ma’am. I’m riding south with Pollard.”

  She looked past me at Logan, who sat slim and straight on the black horse he rode. “Take care of him, Logan. He might have been my son.”

  “You’re a child yourself, Mary. Too young to have had this boy. Maybe when he comes, I’ll come with him.”

  She looked up at him and her cheeks were a little pinkish under the tan. “Come, then, Logan Pollard. There’s a welcome for you, too.”

  So we watched them start off toward the Salt Lake and the distant Pilot Butte, beyond the horizon. “If she couldn’t marry Pap,” I said, “I’d rather it would be you.”

  Pollard looked at me, but he did not smile. Only his eyes were friendly-like. “Rye,” he said, “that was a nice thing you said.”

  South we rode then, and he showed me Brown’s Hole, where the trappers used to rendezvous, and we rode through the rugged country and down to Santa Fe. Only it wasn’t all riding, and it wasn’t all easy. Every day he drilled me with the gun, and somehow I began to get the feel of it. My hands had always had a feel for a gun butt, and the big six-shooter began to handle easier. I could draw fast and shoot straight.

  We lived off the country. Logan Pollard showed me how to rig snares and traps for small game, how to make a moose call, and what to use for bait when fishing. He showed me how to make a pot out of birch bark in which a man could boil water as long as the flame was kept below the water-level in the pot. He showed me how to build fires and he taught me to use wood ashes for baking powder in making biscuits.

  Sometimes we would split up and travel alone all day, meeting only at night, and then I would have to rustle my own grub, and often as not track him to where we were to meet.

  When he would ride on ahead and have me track him down, I would practice with the gun while waiting to start out. It had a natural, easy feel in my hand. I tried drawing and turning to fire as I drew. But Logan Pollard told me to respect a gun, too.

  “They make them to kill,” he said, “and you can kill yourself or somebody you love just as easy as an enemy. Every gun you haven’t personally unloaded that minute should be treated as a loaded gun. Guns aren’t supposed to be empty.”

  Santa Fe was a big town to me, the biggest since the wagon train left Missouri, and bigger than any town I’d seen up to then, except St. Louis.

  There in Santa Fe I took a job herding a small bunch of cattle for a man, keeping them inside the boundary creek and out of the canyon. It was lazy, easy work most of the time. He paid me ten dollars a month, and after two months of it Logan Pollard came around to see me.

  “You need some boots,” he said, “and a new shirt.”

  He bought them for me from a pocketful of gold coins, and then we went to a Mexican place he knew and ate a good Mexican meal, chicken with rice and black beans.

  Only he made me tuck my gun down inside my pants, and I wore it like that when I was in Santa Fe.

  One day when I was with the cattle he rode out to see me and he took a book out of his saddlebags.

  “Read it,” he said. “Read it five times. You’ll like it better each time. It’s some stories about great men, and more great men have read this book than any other.”

  “Who wrote it?”

  “Plutarch,” he said, “and you can read it in the saddle.”

  It was warm and pleasant in the sunshine those days, and I read while I sat the saddle, or loafed under a tree sometimes, making an occasional circle to hold the stock in. And then one day two Mexicans rode up with a mean look in their eyes, and they fretted me some looking over the cattle like they did.

  One of them rode out and started to bunch the cattle, so I put Plutarch in the saddlebag and got up on Old Blue.

  He walked out there mighty slow. I figure Old Blue knew more than me, and he could smell trouble making up before it hit.

  We were halfway out there before they saw us, and they hesitated a moment, and then, getting a better look , they laughed.

  “Nih-o,” he said, and kept bunching the cows. And as I drew nearer they started them moving away from me, toward the creek.

  “Leave those cows,” I said. “Get away from here!”

  They paid me no mind and I was getting scared. I’d been set to watch those cows, and if anything happened to them it would be my fault. They were driving them toward the creek when I raced Old Blue ahead and turned them back.

  The big Mexican with the scar on his face swore at me in Spanish and raced at me with a quirt. He raced up and I pulled Old Blue over and he swung, lashing at me. He struck me across the face, and I pulled the Shawk & McLanahan out of my pants.

  His eyes got very big, and me, I was shaking all over, but that gun was as big in my fist as his.

  He began to talk at me in Spanish and back off a little , and then the other Mexican rode over to see what was happening. When he saw the gun he stopped and looked very serious, and then he turned away from me as if to ride off, but when he turned he suddenly swung backhanded with his rope and the gun was torn from my hand and sent flying. Then he came at me, and he hit me across the face with the rope, and then lashed me
with it over the back, and the half-coiled rope struck like a club and knocked me from my horse.

  Then he spat on me and laughed and they drove off the cows, taking Old Blue along with them, and I lay there on the ground and could do nothing at all.

  When I could get up I was very stiff and there was blood on me, but I walked to where the Shawk & McLanahan lay and picked it up.

  It was ten miles back to town, but I walked it, and asked around for Pollard. When I found him he was playing cards. He waved at me and said, “Later, Rye. I’m busy now.”

  The place was crowded with men and some of them stared at my bloody face and the dirt on me, and I was ashamed. They would laugh at me if I told them I’d been knocked off my horse and had my cattle run off. So I went and borrowed a horse and took out after those Mexicans.

  It was not only the cows; my mother’s picture was in the saddlebags, and the Plutarch. And the Joslyn carbine was in the boot on Old Blue.

  That night I didn’t come up with them, or the next , but the third night I did.

  They were around a water hole where there were some cottonwoods. It was the only water around and I was almighty thirsty, but I looked for Old Blue and saw him picketed off to one side.

  It was dark and I was hungry, and they had a fire going and some grub, and I shucked the old Shawk & McLanahan out of my pants and cocked her.

  The click of that gun cocking sounded loud in the night, and I said, not too loud, “You sit mighty still. I’ve come for my horse and cows.”

  “El nino,” the scarred Mexican said.

  I stepped into the light with the gun cocked.

  “Kill him,” the scarred Mexican said. “Kill him and they will think he took the cattle himself. Kill him and bury him here.”

  The other Mexican was sneaking a hand toward a gun “Stop!” I said it loud, and I guess my voice sounded shrill.

  He just dived at the gun, and I shot, and the bullet knocked him rolling. He sprawled out and the other Mexican lunged at me, and I tried to turn, but before I could shoot there was a shot from the edge of the brush, and then another.

  The Mexican diving at me fell face down, all sprawled out, and then he rolled over and there was a blue hole between his eyes, and the first Mexican, the one I shot, had another bullet that had torn off the side of his face after it killed him.