L'Amour, Louis - Novel 06

by To Tame a Land

  Logan Pollard stood there with a gun in his hand, hi s face as still and cold as always.

  “You should have told me, Rye. I didn’t realize you’d had trouble until one of the men said you were bloody. Then I started after you.”

  We walked over and looked down at the Mexican I had shot. My bullet was a little high .. . but not much.

  Pollard looked at me strangely, then caught up Old Blue and we started the cows toward home.

  The next day he told me to quit, and when I collected my money I had thirty-two dollars, all told. With that in my pocket, and the money from my Pap, which I’d never touched yet, I felt rich. We started northwest into the wild country around the San Juan, following the old Spanish Trail.

  “We’re going to California to see Mary Tatum,” he said, “and then maybe you can go to school. You’re too willing to use a gun.”

  “They stole the cows,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “And Ma’s picture.”

  He glanced at me. “Oh, I see.”

  It was a wild and lonely land of great red walls and massive buttes. There were canyons knifed deep in the rocky crust of the earth, and cactus with red flowers , and there were Indians, but they seemed friendly enough , and we traveled on, me riding Old Blue.

  The sun rose hot and high in the mornings, and sometimes we took all morning to get to the bottom of a canyon, then all afternoon climbing out. We crossed wide red deserts and camped in lonely places by tiny water holes , and my face grew browner and leaner and I learned more of the country. And one morning I got up and looked over at Logan Pollard.

  “Today I’m fourteen,” I said.

  “Fourteen. Too young to live like this,” he said. “A man needs the refining influences of feminine companionship.”

  He was a careful man. Careful of his walk, careful of the way he dressed, careful when he handled guns, and careful in the care of his horse. Every morning he brushed the dust from his clothes, and every morning he combed his hair.

  And when we rode he talked to me about Shakespeare and the Bible, and some about Plutarch and Plato. Some of it I didn’t set much store by, but most of it made a kind of sense.

  From Virginia, he’d come. Educated there, and then he’d come west.

  “Why?”

  “There was a man killed. They thought I did it.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. I shot him fair, in a duel.”

  We rode on for several miles. I liked watching the shadows of the clouds on the desert. “I was to have married his sister. He didn’t want me to.”

  And in California I went to school.

  Logan Pollard stayed around for a while, and then he rode away. I did not believe Mary Tatum wanted him to go.

  Yet he was gone no more than a week before he came back, and when I came riding in on Old Blue I saw the m talking, serious-like, on the porch. “It has happened before,” he was saying, “and it may happen again.”

  “Not here,” she told him. “This is a quiet place.”

  “All right,” he said finally. “I’ll stay.”

  The winter passed and all summer long I worked, felling logs for a lumber mill and holding down a riding job on a nearby ranch the rest of the time. In the fall and winter I went to school and learned how to work problems and something of history. Most of all, I liked to read Plutarch.

  Logan Pollard rode out to see me one day. I was sitting on a log, reading my nooning away.

  “Third time,” I said. “I read slow.”

  “This is a book to be read that way. Taste it, roll the flavor on your tongue.”

  It was not only school and reading. I was growing, too, and some part of every day I went out into the woods and practiced with the gun. I’d a natural gift for guns, and my skill had increased rapidly. Pollard never mentioned guns to me now, and was no longer wearing his. Not in sight, anyway..

  These were good months. Work never worried me. I enjoyed using my muscles, liked feeling strong, and there was always a little time for riding in the mountains, tracking stray cattle or horses, hunting varmints that preyed on the stock.

  It was spring again and Old Blue kept looking at me, and I knew he expected me to saddle up and ride. It was spring, and I was fifteen years old, close to six feet tall , but thin. Only my shoulders and arms were strong, and my hands.

  “What happened to the gun?” Logan asked me.

  So I reached down in my pants and brought it out, that old Shawk & McLanahan .36 Pap had given me.

  “Ever shoot it?”

  “Yes,” I said, and turning the muzzle, I fired. It was all one easy move. Sixty yards away a pine cone shattered into bits. Pollard looked at me and nodded. “You can shoot. I only hope you never have to.”

  He was married that next Sunday to Mary Tatum, and I stood up with them, feeling awkward in a store-bough t broadcloth suit and a stiff collar, the first I ever owned.

  And when it was over and we ate the cake, Mary said, “We want you to stay with us, Rye. If you can’t be my son, be my brother.”

  So I stayed on.

  When two months more had passed I mounted Old Blue and rode down to the store. It was mighty pretty that morning, and the sun was bright, and every leaf was like a tiny mirror. The water of the stream rippled and rollicked over the stones, and it seemed the world had never been so nice.

  I was wearing my broadcloth suit because I was going to a pie supper before I came home.

  At the store I bought some crackers and cheese and went to the steps to eat, and there I was sitting real quiet when a big man rode up on a white horse. He was thick in the middle and his vest was dirty with food stains, and when he saw Old Blue he fetched up short and stopped.

  He got down from the saddle and he walked slow around that horse. He glanced over at me, only my head was down and he couldn’t make out my face, and I was eating.

  “Who owns this horse?”

  He said it real loud, his voice mighty big and important -like. There were two men settin’ up on the porch and they said nothing, so he looked over at me. Who owns this horse?”

  Stuffing the last of the cheese and crackers in my mouth, I got up. “I own him, McGarry. You want t o make something out of that?”

  His nose was blue-veined and bigger than I’d remembered, and his eyes were even smaller and more piggish. He was a wide man, the sleeves of his dirty white shirt rolled halfway to his elbows, his big boots scuffed and worn.

  His hat was too small for his big head and he was unshaved and dirty.

  “You? You, is it?”

  “It’s me,” I said, and suddenly I knew I hated this man. I was wondering, too, if he realized Mary Tatum was in town. Or that she was married to Logan Pollard.

  “It was you made all that trouble,” he said. “I ain’t had no luck since. You an’ that little skirt your pap played with.”

  Right then I hit him. I hit him on the mouth and he staggered back two steps and almost fell. Blood started to come and he grabbed for his gun.

  Then something bucked in my hand and he stepped back and sat down as my gun bucked again, and he was settin’ there dead almost half a minute before he rolled over on his face and stretched out, but in that last split second of life I saw shocked surprise on his face. And there I stood with that old Shawk & McLanahan in my hand and Big Jack McGarry dead at my feet.

  Chapter 4

  M ARY TATUM was feeding the chickens when I rode into the yard. She looked up and I saw her eyes widen a little, and she came up to me as I got down.

  “Rye, what is it? What’s happened?”

  So I stood there, feeling a sinking in me, hating to tell her, yet knowing I had to.

  “Mary,” I said, “I killed a man.”

  “Oh, no!” she caught my arm. “Not you, Rye!”

  “Yes, ma’am. I killed Jack McGarry.”

  That stopped her, and she held my arm a minute, her gray eyes searching mine. “Jack McGarry? Here?”

  “Yes,
ma’am. He said words… . He reached for his gun after I hit him.”

  “Words, Rye?’

  “Yes, ma’am. He spoke slighting of you and Pap.”

  “Oh. We had better tell Logan.”

  Somehow Logan did not seem surprised. He listened to me and I told it plain and simple, holding nothing back.

  “I reckon,” I said honestly, “it was partly because I hated him.”

  There was something else on his mind. “He touched his gun first?”

  “Yes, sir. He had it almost out when I shot him.”

  Nothing more was said and Mary went about getting supper. She was never one to take on when it was past time for it to do any good. We ate some, although I didn’t have much appetite, and kept seeing how McGarry looked, lying there on the ground with that shocked. expression on his face. I didn’t hate him any more, I didn’t feel anything about him except maybe sad that he had pushed me into it. I didn’t want to shoot anybody any more.

  We went out on the porch and Logan began to talk. First off, it seemed like he was just telling us about his boyhood and his travels, and then it came to me that this was something special, for me. It was a lesson, like.

  He had killed a man at nineteen. The man was a riverboat gambler. Then he killed his sweetheart’s brother, because back there, them days, if a man called you out, you went, or you left the country wearing the coward brand.

  Afterward he left the country, anyway. He had killed four men in gun battles, he said, and he told me he hoped never to kill another, and then he said, “Rye , you’re a hand with a gun. Maybe the best I ever saw. You’ve a natural skill, a natural eye, and you judge distance easy and fine. That’s a responsibility, Rye. This is a time when all men carry guns. Naturally, some are better than others, just like some men can use an ax better, or make a better wheel, like your pap. But a gun is different, because with a gun you can kill.”

  He paused a minute, looking down at his fine brown hands, the sort of hands you might expect to see on a violinist. “You’ll have to use a gun, from time to time. So be careful that you use it right. Never draw a gun unless you mean to shoot, never shoot unless you shoot to kill.

  “Back there with the Mexicans you were too slow to shoot. If I hadn’t been there you might have been killed. Yet I’d rather have you shoot too slow than have you too ready to shoot. Never kill the wrong man or it will punish you all the days of your life.”

  He was right about that, and I knew it. I was no fool kid who thought a gun made me a big man. Right then I didn’t ever figure to kill anybody else, anytime.

  Morning came, and when I walked out to saddle up there was a big, rawboned roan coming into the yard with a man on his back. The man had a shock of uncut hair and a big mustache. His hat was small and he looked sort of funny, but there was a badge on his chest that was not funny, and he wore a pistol.

  Logan came to the door, and Mary. She looked white and scared, but Logan was like he always was, quiet and sort of stern.

  The man on the roan wore a checked shirt and it was untidy. He wore suspenders, too.

  “Name of Balcher,” he said, and he took some chewing tobacco from his shirt pocket. “Carry it there,” he said, sort of smiling, “so nobody will mistake I’m reaching for a gun. I’d sure hate,” he added, “to be shot by mistake.”

  “What’s your business, Mr. Balcher?” Logan stepped down off the porch.

  Balcher looked at him thoughtfully. “My!” he said. ���For a quiet man I sure run into a lot of you folks. You’re one of them, too, sure’s shootin’.”

  Logan stood quiet, waiting. Balcher turned his big head and looked at me, chewing slow. “How old are you, boy?”

  “Fifteen. Going on sixteen.”

  He rolled his squid in his jaw. “Young,” he said, “but you handle a gun like a growed man. You killed that feler yestiddy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He studied me carefully. “You know him before?”

  Logan Pollard interrupted, and quietly he told the story of what happened on the trail, leaving out nothing.

  He made it plain that I had reason to feel as I did, and that McGarry had opened the trouble, not I.

  Balcher listened, looking from Logan to me with lonesome hound-dog eyes.

  “Reckon I’d feel like shootin’ him myself.” He turned in his saddle. “Don’t blame you, son. Understand that. Don’t blame you a bit. But you got to go.”

  “Go?” Mary said. “But he can’t, Sheriff! He’s like my own brother! This is his home!”

  The way she said it made a lump come in my throa t and I was afraid it was bringing tears to my eyes. I reckon there was nobody quite so nice as Mary.

  ” ‘Fraid so,” Balcher said it regretfully. “I ain’t much hand with a gun, myself. Reckon either one of you could shoot me dead before I could touch iron, but the way I keep the peace about here is to send all gun folks apackin’.

  “Now don’t get me wrong. I got nothin’ against you, Tyler, but folks know you’re handy with a gun now. Some rambunctious youngster is liable to want to find out if he’s better. So I reckon you better ride.”

  The sun was bright on the hard-packed earth of the ranchyard. It was warm and pleasant, standing there, a trickle of water falling in the trough, the smell of coffee from the house. This was home for me. The only home I’d had for a long, long time. And now they were telling me to go.

  “And if he doesn’t?” Logan asked the question, his voice low and hard.

  Balcher shrugged. “Well, I can’t shoot him. Folks down to town say they never saw anything as fast as this Rye Tyler. He shucked his gun so fast nobody scarce seen it. An’ he didn’t miss once he got it out. I reckon if the bullet hadn’t killed McGarry, the shock would have, he was that surprised.”

  Balcher turned in his saddle. “Look, Mr. Pollard. I got to keep the peace. She’s my job. I reckon I’m too lazy to farm, and nothing much grows for me, anyway. But, four years now I kep’ the peace. I hope, folks, that he’ll ride out quiet. If he don’t, I got to go back down to town and round up eight or ten of the folks with shotguns to start him movin’. To do that I’d have to spoil a day’s work for a lot of folks. Now, you wouldn’t want that, would you?”

  “I reckon not, Mr. Balcher,” I said. “I reckon I can go.���

  “Rye!” Mary protested.

  “Got to, Mary. You know I got to. It’s all right. I been sort of itchin’ to see more country, and Old Blue, he’s been downright disappointed in me.”

  Daybreak I taken the road out to Surprise Valley, across the mountains and north. I figured I might hunt a little, then maybe get a riding job before I headed south. Right then I had twenty-six dollars of my own money, and I was still carrying the forty dollars Pap left me.

  Saying good-by to Mary was worst of all. She clung to my sleeve and she kissed me, and I reckon it was the first time since I was a mite of a baby I’d been kissed.

  It was kind of sweet-like, and the feel of it stayed on my cheek all the way across the mountain.

  Logan rode a ways with me, then he shook hands and said, “Come see us, Rye. This is home, always.”

  Two miles down the trail I saw a man on a roan horse setting out there in plain sight. He was setting sideways on that horse when I came up to him, and he grinned at me, sort of sly. It was Balcher. He put his hands on the pommel and said, “Boy, I wish you luck. You take it easy with that gun. You’re a fine boy, so don’t you start to shootin’ less you have to.”

  Then I rode down the trail, and a lump was in my throat and in my heart, too, and my stomach was all empty. This was the second time I’d lost folks that loved me.

  First Pap, by Indian guns, and now Mary and Logan, by my own gun.

  Was that the way it was going to be?

  Do you know that Western land? Do you know the far plains and the high, snow-crested ridges? Do you know the beaver streams, the water laughing in the bright sun?

  Do you know the sound of wind in the pines
? The cloud shadows on the desert’s face? Have you stood on a high ridge and looked fifty miles across the country, country known only to Indians, antelope, and buffalo?

  Have you crawled out of your bedroll in the chill of a spring morning with the crisp air fresh in your lungs and the sound of running water in your ears? Have you started a fire and made coffee, and broiled your venison over an open fire? Have you smelled ironwood burning, or cedar?

  That was how I lived for a whole year after I left Mary and Logan. I lived away from men, riding, drifting , and reading Plutarch for the fourth time.

  Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and down to Colorado.

  Beside campfires under the icy Teton peaks, I read of Hannibal and of Cato. I smelled the smoke of a hundred campfires, as I drifted.

  Rarely did I find a white man’s fire, and only occasionally one left by an Indian. I saw the country o f the Nez Perces and the Blackfeet, of the Crows, th e Shoshones, and the Sioux. I wandered up the lost red canyons of the La Sal Mountains, and through the Abajo Range.

  The only sounds I heard were the sounds that the wilderness makes. The slap of warning from a beaver’s tail on water, the sudden crash and rush of an elk, the harsh , throaty snarl of a mountain lion … the wind, the water, and the storm.

  The shelters I had were caves or corners among the tree; or wickiups I built myself. All that Logan Pollard had taught me came in handy, and I learned more.

  And so after many days I came again to a town where there were people. I rode to the edge of the hill and looked down, a little frightened, a little uncertain. And I knew that I had changed. Some of the stillness of the mountains was in me, some of the pace of the far forests , but there was also the old thing that lived in me always.

  But I could be alone no longer. It was time to return to the world of people, and so I started Old Blue down the slope.

  Chapter 5

  MY SHIRT WAS BUCKSKIN. My breeches were buckskin.