L'Amour, Louis - Novel 06

by To Tame a Land

  All the way home I was thinking it out. I had killed another ‘man. This was two. That Mexican … My shot might have killed him, but it was Pollard’s shot that did kill him. No doubt about that. And I didn’t want to claim any more than I had to.

  Liza ran out to meet us as we came up. “You got the horses!” She was excited. “Did you catch the thieves? Where are they?”

  Later, I guess she was told, or she heard about it, because for several days she was very big-eyed around me.

  But she didn’t say anything to me about it, or to anyone else. And it wasn’t even mentioned for a long time.

  Sometimes at night we would sit over the table and talk, and I’d tell them stories about living in the mountains alone, and of some of the places I’d seen. And once when we were talking I went to my saddlebags and got out Ma’s picture and showed it to them.

  She was a pretty woman. Only twenty when the picture was taken.

  Mrs. Hetrick looked at it for a long time, then at me.

  “Do you know anything about her family?”

  “No, ma’am. Pap told me that when they were married her family sort of got shut of her. I mean … well the way I heard it, they didn’t think Pap had money enough. But Pap and Ma, they were happy.”

  Mrs. Hetrick put the picture down thoughtfully. “That dress she had on … that was expensive.”

  I knew nothing about women’s clothes. It looked just like any dress to me. Women, I guess they know about things like that. One time, a few days later, I heard her telling Hetrick, “Real lace. I never saw a prettier collar. It’s a pity the boy doesn’t know her family.”

  Sometimes of an evening Liza and I would walk down to the spring and talk, or out by the corral. Always in plain sight of the house. She was a mighty pretty youngster, but just a youngster. Me, I was eighteen, headin’ on for nineteen.

  We’d talk long talks there by that corral, leaning on the bars close to Old Blue. We’d talk boy-girl talk, even though she was younger than me. About what we wanted to do, the dreams we had, and where we wanted to go.

  We both wanted to be rich, but I guess that wasn’t very important to us, either. It was just that we both wanted more things, and to see more.

  Liza would listen, all wide-eyed and excited when I talked about the mountains up in Wyoming. Or the Blues over in Oregon, or those wild, empty canyons that cut down through the southwest corner of Utah.

  Twice I went to town, but only once did I see Burdette.

  The other time he was out of town chasing down some outlaw. He brought back his horse with an empty saddle.

  The time I did see him I was coming out of the store with some supplies to load into the buckboard. He came down to the walk to watch me load up.

  “Breaking homes for Hetrick, I hear.”

  “That’s right. Nice stock.”

  “Hear you lost some.”

  “Found ‘em again.”

  “Any trouble?”

  His eyes were searching mine. It gave me the feeling he might have heard something, but either wasn’t sure or didn’t believe what he had heard.

  “Nothing to speak of.”

  “Lucky. I heard Rice Wheeler was working these hills.”

  By that time I was up on the seat, turning the team.

  Liza was there beside me and she looked up at Burdette.

  “He isn’t any more,” she said, and before he could question that, I got the team started out of town.

  “You shouldn’t have said that,” I told her. “Now he won’t rest until he digs out the story.”

  “I don’t care,” she said pertly. “I don’t like him.”

  It was nice driving along over the trail, talking to Liza. We always had something to say to each other and it was hard to realize she was growing up, too.

  And my time to leave was not far off. Hetrick had much to do yet to make his place pay. He would have a fine bunch of horses to sell, and he had some good breeding stock. So he had a good chance of building something really worth while. It made me see what a man could do. When all the rest of them were hunting gold or silver, running saloons or gambling houses, he was quietly building a ranch and a horse herd. It was something stable, something that could last.

  But once the horses were broken he would need me no longer, and it was time I started to find a place for myself in the world. And a ranch was what I wanted, too.

  My own ranch, somewhere back in some of those green valleys I’d seen during my wandering.

  When I had broken the last horse, a sorrel with three stockings, I went to Hetrick.

  “Finished,” I said.

  He opened a drawer in his desk and took out some money. He paid me what he owed me. Not counting what I had drawn on my wages, I had seventy dollars coming to me.

  And I’d still not touched the forty dollars Pap left me.

  I still had that, sewed into my gun belt.

  “Wish I could keep you on, son. There just isn’t work enough.”

  “I know.”

  “Come around whenever you like, Rye. We enjoy having you.” He pushed his desk drawer shut. “Got any plans?”

  “Yes, sir. I. thought… well, I heard tell of some placer diggings down on Willow. I figured to try that. Maybe … well, I don’t aim to ride aimless all my life long. I had an idea that if I could get a stake I’d start ranching.”

  “That’s wise.” Hetrick hesitated, then he said, “Son , be careful around town. Kipp got drunk the other night and Burdette got the story out of him. He knows you killed Rice Wheeler.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. But Liza told us she had said something to him about it.”

  “It was nothing. I don’t blame her.”

  “It started him asking questions. You’ll have to be careful.” He took out his pipe and filled it. “Rye, you watch him. He’s killed three men at the Crossing. He’s .. . well, he’s tricky.”

  “All right, sir. But I don’t expect to be around there.”

  The next morning after breakfast I rode away. Liza did not come out to say good-bye, but I could hear her in the next room. It sounded as if she was crying. I sort of felt like crying myself. Only men don’t carry on.

  When I was turning into the lane she ran out and waved. I was going to miss her.

  It was thirty miles to Willow Creek, and it was far away from anywhere. Once there, I scouted along the creek and picked a likely-looking bench. It was my first time to try hunting gold, but I’d heard talk of it, and around Pollard’s place in California they had taken thousands from the creeks.

  The work was lonely and hard. The bench was on a curve of the Willow, and I found a little color. I sank a shaft to bedrock, which was only eight feet down, and I cleaned up the bedrock and panned it out. After two weeks of brutal labor I had taken out about ninety dollars.

  Not much, but better than punching cows. It was harder living alone now than it had been in the mountains before I met the Hetricks. They were good people, and I’d liked staying there with them, and I thought a lot about Liza. It was Liza I kept remembering. The way she laughed, how she smiled, and the warm way her eyes looked sometimes.

  The next week I cleaned out some seams in the bedrock and took out more than two hundred dollars in twenty minutes.

  It was spotty. There was a lot of black sand mixed in with the gold and it was hard to get the gold out.

  Twice in the following week I moved upstream, working bars and benches to the tune of a little color here and a little more there.

  My grub ran short; but I killed an elk and jerked the meat, then caught a few fish from time to time. Living off the country was almost second nature to me by this time.

  Nobody came around. Once a couple of Utes came by and I gave them some of my coffee. When they left, one of them told me about a bench upstream that I should try.

  Taking a chance that they knew what they were talking about, I went upstream the next morning and found the bench. It was hidden in the pines that fla
nked both sides of the stream, and it was above the water.

  There was an old caved-in shaft there, a shovel with the handle long gone, and a miserable little dugout in the bank. I found some arrowheads around. Whoever had mined here must have been here twenty years ago.

  This was Indian country then.

  When I cleaned out the old shaft I panned some of the bottom gravel and washed out twelve dollars in a few minutes. The second pan was off bedrock and ran t o twenty-six dollars. Working like all get-out, I cleaned up a good bit of dust. Not enough make a man rich, but more money than I ever had before.

  When I finished that week I loaded my gear and saddled up. Old Blue was fat and sassy, so we drifted back to the Crossing.

  The old black hat was still on my head, and I was wearing buckskins. It wasn’t trouble I was looking for, but I remembered Hetrick’s warning. Outside of town I reined in and got out the old Shawk & McLanahan and belted it on.

  When I swung down at the bank, Burdette was coming down the street, and when they had finished weighing out my gold they counted out my money and it came to just $462. And I still had $50 of my wages from Hetrick.

  “Doing well,” Burdette said.

  “Not bad.”

  “So you killed Rice Wheeler?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That was what you meant, then? When you said I should know the look of you?”

  I shrugged. “Read it any way you like.”

  He watched me as I walked out to my horse and stepped into the leather. When I rode toward Hetrick’s, he was still watching. I could feel his eyes on me and I’ll admit I didn’t like it. At a store on the edge of town I bought some ribbon for Liza, and I’d also saved her a small gold nugget.

  She ran out to the gate to see me, recognizing Old Blue from far down the road. She stepped up in my stirrup and rode that way up to the house. Mrs. Hetrick was at the door, drying her hands on her apron, and Hetrick came up from the corral, smiling a greeting. I felt all choked up. I guess it was the first time anybody felt good about seeing me come back. Most of my life I’ve been a stranger.

  It was good to walk around the place again and to see the horses. One of them, a tall Appalousa, followed me along the fence, whinnying at me, much to Old Blue’s disgust.

  While we waited for dinner and talked about the horses, Hetrick suddenly asked, “Did you see Burdette?”

  “I saw him.”

  “Bother you?”

  “No.”

  “He wanted to buy a horse from me, but I turned him down. I’ve seen the way he treats his horses.”

  That gave me some satisfaction, but it worried me, too. I wouldn’t want any of the horses I had broken so carefully to get into the hands of Ollie Burdette, who was as Hetrick said, a hard man with a horse. But it worried me because I knew that Hetrick, a stiff-necked man and stern about such things, would not have hesitated to tell Burdette what he thought.

  It was pleasant inside the house, and Mrs. Hetrick put on a linen tablecloth and had the table fixed up real fancy. When I had my hair slicked down as much as it would ever slick, which isn’t much, I sat down to the best supper I’d had.

  Kipp rode in while I was there, all excited about the gold I’d panned out, but I knew he wouldn’t be so much excited by the work. It was a good supper and there was good talk around, and had I been their own son, I couldn’t have been treated any better.

  “That Burdette,” Kipp said suddenly, “I don’t thin k he’s in your class. He’s fast, all right, but not as fast as you.”

  Hetrick frowned. He never liked talk about gun fighters, but Kipp was always talking of Clay Allison, the Cimarron gun fighter, or of the Earps, Bill Longley, Langford Peel, or John Bull.

  “You’d match any of them,” he said, his excitement showing. “I’d like to see you up against Hardin, or this Bonney feller, down in New Mexico.

  “Why, Kipp,” Mrs. Hetrick was horrified. “A body would think you’d like to see a man killed!”

  He looked startled, and his face flushed. “It ain’t that,” h e said hurriedly, “It’s just … well, sort of like … I don’t know,” he finished lamely. “I just like to see who’s best.”

  Talk like that worried me some, and I didn’t want any more of it. Loose-talking folks have promoted more than one fight that would never have happened otherwise.

  Kipp wasn’t the only one. When I was around town I’d heard some talk, folks speculating on who would win, Burdette or me. The talk excited them. It wasn’t that they were bloodthirsty, just that they liked a contest, and. they just didn’t think that a man would have to die to decide it.

  Or maybe they did. Maybe they figured the sooner we killed each other off, the better.

  It nagged at a man’s mind. Was he better than me?

  I didn’t want to be better than anybody, not at all. Bu t it worried me some because I wanted to live.

  Even nice people warned me, never realizing that even their warnings were an incitement. It was on their minds, on all their minds, so how could it be different with me?

  Or with Burdette? The sooner I got out of town, the better.

  “I’m taking out,” I said suddenly. “I figure to go East. Have a ride on the cars, maybe. I want to see St. Louis or Kansas City. Maybe New Orleans.”

  “Will you look up your family?” Mrs. Hetrick asked.

  “I reckon not. They never tried to find me.”

  “You don’t know,” she protested. “Maybe they think you’re dead. Maybe they don’t even know about you.”

  “Just as well. They didn’t set much store by Ma, or they’d not have thrown her over like that.”

  “Maybe they were sorry, Rye. People make mistakes. You have some money now, why don’t you look them up?”

  No matter about that, I was getting out of here. I didn’t want to hear any more talk about Ollie Burdette , or whether he was faster than me.

  So we talked it out, and I made up my mind to leave Old Blue behind. He was all of eleven years old, maybe even older. It was time he had a rest. I’d ride one of Hetrick’s horses over the mountains to the railroad and sell him there. We agreed on that.

  Hetrick wanted Old Blue. He was gentle enough and would be a good horse for Liza to ride, and she liked him.

  I said I’d rather see her have him than anybody else, and she flushed a little and looked all bright-eyed. She was a nice little girl. And I was going to miss her. I was going to miss her a lot.

  Come daylight, I saddled up.

  Burdette was standing on the street when I rode into the Crossing with Hetrick. He saw the bedroll behind my saddle.

  “Leavin’?”

  “Going East,” I said. “I want to see some country.”

  “Better stay shut of Dodge. They eat little boys down there.”

  It rankled, and suddenly I felt something hot and ugly rise inside me. I turned on him. “You hungry?” I said.

  It surprised him and he didn’t like it. We were close up, and he didn’t like that. We weren’t four feet apart, and neither of us could miss. Right then I stepped closer. I t was a fool thing to do, but right at the moment, I was doing it. I crowded him. “You hungry?” I repeated. “You want to eat this little boy?”

  He backed up, his face gray. He wasn’t scared. I knew he wasn’t scared. It was just that nobody could win if the shooting started. It was too close. It was belly to belly.

  He wasn’t scared, he just wanted to win. He didn’t wan t to get shot, and he was older than me, old enough to be cautious. Later I would have better judgment, but right then I was mad.

  “Any time,” I said. “Just any time.”

  Those gray eyes were ugly. He hated me so bad it hurt, and he wanted to draw. He wanted to kill me. But he laughed, and he made it sound easy, though it must have been hard to do.

  “You got me wrong, kid. I was just foolin’.”

  But he was not fooling. It just wasn’t the right time, and Ollie Burdette figured he could wait.

 
“Sure,” I said. “Forget it.”

  So I left him like that and I rode out of town and down the trail.

  Maybe I would look up my relatives, after all.

  When I looked back, Ollie Burdette still stood there, but Hetrick was gone.

  Right then I had a hunch. “I’ll see you again, Ollie Burdette, I’ll bet on it.”

  And there was an unspoken thought that it would b e the last time … for one of us.

  Chapter 7

  MARKET SQUARE in Kansas City was hustlin’ and booming when I first walked down the street. To me it was a big town, all crowded with people, all seeming in a big hurry.

  I liked seeing the beer wagons with their big Percheron or Clydesdale teams, and I liked watching the fancy carriages with their fine driving horses all neck-reined up and prancing along. And right away I noticed that nobody carried a gun where you could see it, so I stached mine away behind my waistband.

  For hours I just walked the streets, looking at all the things I didn’t want. I never saw so much I could do without, and never so many people. Right away I saw I’d have to do something about my buckskins. Even the new black hat I’d bought looked shabby, so I went to a tailor and had him make me up a fine gray suit and one of black , and I bought a fine white hat, some shirts with ruffled fronts, and some black string ties. When I’d found some boots of black calfskin I began to feel mighty dressed up.

  Almost nineteen, I could pass as several years older. I was weighing one hundred and eighty now, and no ounce of fat on me. Once in a while I’d pass some girl who would look at me, then turn to look again. And I always saw it because I’d usually turned to look myself.

  The old Shawk & McLanahan was still with me, but seeing some of the Bisley Colts, I longed for a new and more efficient gun. Several times I almost went in to buy one, but each time I hesitated. Right now I needed no gun and there was a lot I wanted to see on the money I had left.

  One day on Market Square I saw a bunch of men sitting or standing around a bench. Some of them looked Western, so I walked over, and when I go there they were talking about shooting. It was warm, and most of them had their coats off. One tall, finely built man with long hair to his shoulders and a mustache interested me. He was wide across the cheekbones and had gray eyes.