Turning away from the trail, Hopalong bent his head and rode into a thick, dark section of fir. Here he sat right atop the ridge and could see over a wide stretch of country, but he could see no smoke or suggestion of it; all he could see were treetops. The valley beyond the mountain was high but heavily forested. Returning to the deer trail, Hopalong followed it over the ridge.
Within a few minutes he had found the nest where the deer had bedded down. Evidently it had used this place a great deal, and apparently the hunter had either stumbled upon it or had deliberately hunted it down. After a careful study of the country brought no reward, Hopalong swung out from the deer's nest until he was a good fifty feet away from it and then began a slow, watchful circle of the spot. Almost sixty yards from the nest he came upon the trail. A man in high-heeled boots had stood here and had fired twice. He found both shells among the needles. They were from a Winchester .44-40.
He turned abruptly and swung into the leather, turning the white gelding down the slope into the trees. For a short distance he followed the trail, then halted abruptly. Clear and sharp against the air he heard the sound of an axe. Rising in
the stirrups he looked through the trees and for the first time saw the cabin.
Set back in a notch among the hills, it was screened by trees, and he could see behind it the line of a watercourse he had noticed several minutes before. As he watched, a man stopped chopping and gathered an armful of wood, walking toward the house. Even from this distance he could see it was Grat. The man turned at the step and took a last look around, then went inside.
Hopalong did not hesitate. He could wait until sundown ; and then return with the others, but he decided against it. Mesquite was impetuous, and if he found the cabin he would barge right in. It would be better to go ahead. There was just a chance he might take them both alive, although even as the thought passed through his mind he knew the chances were slight.
He rode the horse downhill for three hundred yards, then concealed him among the trees and brush in a little hollow near a leaning slab of rock. Leaving his Winchester behind, he started down the slope through the trees.
The cabin was backed against the mountain and could be approached from only one direction--straight in front. To the left of the avenue before him were the corrals; to the right, flowing between the house and himself, was the stream. It was only a few inches deep, but about four or five feet wide.
It was growing late. The afternoon sun was already down over the mountain in the west. Long shadows were gathering, although the sky overhead was still bright and the few scattered clouds were faintly pink. The storm that had been threatening for the last two days was piling up clouds again, and in the distance there was thunder.
There was only one way to approach the cabin, and Hopalong hesitated, disliking the look of the situation. Suddenly Bolt came from the house and walked with quick, nervous strides down toward the horses. He wore two guns and had a third thrust in his waistband. As he walked, his eyes probed restlessly at the woods and the ridges.
Abruptly, when not over forty yards from Hopalong, he stopped. Nervously he looked around. Hopalong's intent gaze might have warned him, or he believed he had heard something. He looked around, and as his eyes went past the place where Hopalong waited, Hopalong stepped into the open. Instantly the eyes swung back to him, and the two men faced each other across the clearing.
"Cassidy?" Bolt asked. "Is that you?"
Hopalong took a step toward the gunman. "It's me, all right. Expect me?"
Bolt watched him, his eyes intent. "Sort of. I hoped you'd come. You're the one who caused all this for me! You butted in where you had no business. If you'd stayed out, why, I'd have my ranch now and be in California enjoying it."
"And some good honest people would have lost most of their cattle," Hopalong said. "I think this way is better."
"You won't think it long." Bolt was almost pleasant. Hopalong started toward him, walking slowly, narrowing the distance.
The gunman's face was haggard, and his eyes seemed wild. His face was unshaven and his clothes untidy. He seemed to have become ragged of nerve and irritable to an extent he had never been before. He was facing Hopalong, but suddenly he turned his right side toward him, his hand suspended over his gun. "Looking for it, Cassidy? I'm not Pod Griffin, you know."
Hopalong said nothing, bearing suddenly to the left. This maneuver confused Bolt, as he could not see the sense in it. Actually, its sole purpose was to confuse the gunman and to make him turn; also to get out of the line of a possible shot from the cabin door. Suddenly, Hopalong stopped. He was now within thirty yards of the outlaw, and Bolt was glaring at him, wide-eyed with hate. "If I had been sure you wouldn't go back to bother those people," Hopalong said, "I'd not have come after you."
Bolt chuckled, and the sound was dry. Somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled. "You can just bet I was going back! I was going back after the rest of their cattle and to burn them out! Sim will catch up to me--" "Sim's dead."
"There's his brothers, the Breed, Slim--" "Slim was killed by the Breed in a fight over a horse. The horse killed the Breed. As for the Aragons, Manuel is badly wounded and Pete in jail."
Jack Bolt stared at him. "So? There are others." He looked more closely at Hopalong. "You killed Sim Aragon?" Hopalong nodded.
Jack Bolt shrugged, and then as his shoulders lifted in the shrug both hands grabbed gun butts. His face twisted in a wolfish snarl and the guns leaped from the leather. Hopalong ran two quick steps, stopped, and his guns bucked as his heels braced. Bolt's body jerked, he half-turned, then swung a gun on Hopalong and fired!
Hopalong felt the tug at his shirt sleeve and he shot again
and again. Each bullet knocked Bolt back a step as it struck,
and he stood swaying at the end, his eyes still ugly with hatred.
"You're fast, Cassidy!" he said. "But--" His voice ended
and his mouth opened, gasping for words. Then he was dropping, falling face downward into the dirt.
Thunder rumbled again and there were a few spattering drops of rain. Hopalong turned his eyes toward the cabin. Grat stood on the steps, his hands empty. For a long minute their eyes held over the distance between them.
"I ain't fightin', Cassidy. I've had enough. If you won't let them lynch me, I'll come along willin'."
"All right," Hopalong replied. "I'll make sure you get a fair trial."
Just then Mesquite Jenkins rode into the clearing, leading Topper. A moment behind him was Red Connors. Both men looked at Bolt, then at Hopalong. "You hurt?" Mesquite asked.
"No." Cassidy looked down at Bolt, his face strangely white in the fading light. "Bring him up to the barn, will you, Red? It's going to rain."
Grat was standing at the table with a steaming coffeepot when they came in. He had put four plates on the table. "Chuck's ready," he said. "Set and eat."
All three looked at him a moment, then nodded. Without further hesitation they sat down, and he loaded their plates with food. "My guns and ammunition are on the bunk," he said. He filled Red's cup, then looked down at him. "We gave you a bad time in the hills, Red. I reckon I'm sorry about that. You were mighty game."
Red shrugged. "That's past. You make a good cup of coffee."
Hopalong looked from one to the other, and faint lines appeared around his eyes. These were his kind of men. Winning or losing, they made no great fuss about it.
Thunder rolled and there was a swift, rushing spatter of
raindrops. From where he sat he could see through the open door and smell the odor of rain on long-dry dust.
The storm might last for several days. He leaned back and stretched his legs under the table. The coffee was strong, black, and hot.
A NOTE OF EXPLANATION AND THANKS
For those of you who have not read The Rustlers of West Fork and its Afterword, here is a brief history of my father's involvement with Hopalong Cassidy stories:
In the early 1950s, actor William Boyd too
k his version of the Cassidy character from the big screen to television. His earlier movies and Clarence Mulford's Hopalong books had been very popular, and so Doubleday, Mulford's publisher, became interested in marketing some new Hoppy novels. Mulford, who had been retired since 1941, did not want to continue the job, and so he turned the task over to a young (actually not that young; Dad was forty-two) writer of pulp magazine westerns . . . Louis L'Amour.
The publisher chose the pen name Tex Burns for him, and in 1950 and '51 he wrote his four Hopalong Cassidy books. They were published as the feature stories in the short-lived periodical Hopalong Cassidy's Western Magazine and in hardcover by Doubleday. Due to a disagreement with the publisher over which interpretation of the Hopalong character to use (Dad wanted to use Mulford's original Hoppy, a red-haired, hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and rather bellicose cowhand instead of Doubleday's preference for the slick, heroic portrayal that Boyd adopted for his films), my father refused to admit that he had ever written those last four Hopalongs. Starting with The Rustlers of West Fork, this is the first time they have been published with his name on them. For a more in-depth version of the story of how Louis L'Amour came to write and then deny that he had written the Cassidy stories, you can take a look at the Afterword in Rustlers.
I again offer my thanks to David R. Hastings II and Peter G.
Hastings, trustees of the Clarence E. Mulford Trust. Also to the late C. E. Mulford himself for creating the classic character of Hopalong Cassidy.
My best to you all,
Beau L'Amour
Los Angeles, California
November 1992
ABOUT
"/ think of myself in the oral tradition--as a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered--as a storyteller. A good storyteller."
It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.
Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.
Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, assessment miner, and an officer in the tank destroyers during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and
worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.
Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 100 books is in print; there are nearly 230 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.
His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel), Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L'Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio publishing.
The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.
Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the nineties--among them, an additional Hopalong Cassidy novel, Trouble Shooter.
the Riders Of High Rock (1993) Page 18
