North To The Rails

by Louis L'Amour

  He thought of what had happened. Who had shot him? An Indian? French Williams? One of the Talrims? Or perhaps some stranger who needed a horse? No matter. There would be time to think about that when he was warm again, and when he had eaten.

  Warm? Would he ever be warm again?

  He hobbled westward, depending on his staff, and pausing every few steps to ease the pain in his feet. The ground was muddy from the rain, and he had to stop often to shake the mud from his foot coverings.

  When he had gone scarcely a mile he found another creek bed and descended into it, pushing through the brush. He scooped up water and drank, then crossed on scattered stones and climbed the far bank.

  Every step now was agony, but he plodded on simply because he knew he must not stop. He had thought at moments of giving up, he had thought of surrendering to whatever ill fate awaited him, but it had never really been in him to do so. Somewhere beyond the muddy plain across which he was slogging lay Destination, a place where there was food and warmth, a solution to his immediate problem.

  When he fell down again it was at the edge of some trees. He had come to another creek, and the water still ran north, so he was on the right track. He got up and stumbled to the flat ground under the trees, and here he found the remains of an old campfire.

  He searched the ground for something useful, perhaps a broken knife blade, something for a weapon. But what he finally found was a shelter, a lean-to, tightly made and with dry leaves and grass on the ground inside. He fell to his knees, rolled over, and slept.

  Words awoke him. He did not open his eyes, for he heard the first words spoken.

  “Leave him be, Sarah. He’s as good as dead, can’t you see?”

  “And if he doesn’t die?”

  “But he will!”

  “I’m going to make sure that he does,

  Paul. I did not come this far to have anything else happen. I want him dead. I want French to have those cattle … then there’ll be just one man.”

  “Is it worth it? There are only about two thousand head, Sarah.”

  “And in Dodge they are worth ten thousand dollars with the outfit.”

  “Ten thousand? You will have to pay the hands.”

  “You talk like a fool, Paul. Let me have your gun.”

  “My gun? Why?”

  “Because I am going to kill him with it. Then I am going to put the gun in his hand and when he is found they will think he shot himself because of the hopeless situation he was in.”

  The words of this creature called Sarah came to him clearly and plainly. He was to be murdered, for some reason he did not know. He was not sure whether he could move or not, but he was about to try when Paul spoke again.

  “Let’s make a fire and have some coffee. I’m cold, Sarah. We can take care of him any time. He isn’t going anywhere.”

  They moved off under a tree and the man built a fire. When they had coffee on and both were sitting down, Tom Chantry lifted his head. The sleep and the emergency had brought clearness to his mind. He looked around cautiously.

  Their horses were over there, sixty or seventy yards off.

  He eased slowly to his elbows and began to crawl. Moving with infinite care, he made no noise on the sodden ground. Out of the lean-to … behind a tree … then angling off to come at the horses from the other side.

  There was talk between the two at the fire, the smell of coffee … He reached the horses, pulled himself up. He got to the brush where they were tied, pulled the loose end of the slipknot, and holding the reins, he grabbed for the pommel. The horse side-stepped away from the smell of him and he fell against the saddle.

  He heard an exclamation and made a wild grab for the pommel and caught it. The horse jumped and started to run as his foot reached the stirrup. He fell into the saddle, and then the horse was running and somebody was shooting.

  Chapter Ten

  THE HORSE was a good one, a fast starter, probably somebody’s cutting horse. Now it was frightened, and it lunged into a dead run at the first jump. It went through the trees like a jack rabbit, hit the slope, and was up it and topped out on the bank beyond before Chantry could get settled in the saddle.

  He took one quick look around and headed the horse westward, where it seemed inclined to go anyway. For half a mile he simply let it run, then eased it down to a trot, held for another half-mile, then a walk and a trot again.

  There was no trail that he could make out in the darkness, but he was heading for Trinidad and, weak as he was, he knew nothing under heaven was going to get him off that horse until he reached the town.

  It was nothing much when he got there. A few cabins, a scattering of houses and corrals, a few haystacks, and then a saloon or two, a two-story building with a sign that said HOTEL, and a restaurant beyond. A few other places of business were all closed and dark. The street itself was empty.

  Still short of the lights he pulled up and swung down, hit the borrowed horse a slap across the rump, and went up the steps and into the hotel.

  There were three men in the room. A man wearing a green eye-shade and sleeve garters shuffled and dealt cards at a table alone; another man was behind a desk, and a third sat behind a newspaper at one side of the room.

  They all looked up and stared at him. He was sodden with rain. His feet squished as he walked across the floor, leaving mud and water behind him. His hair streaked down over his head, and his cheeks were haggard. The wound on his scalp had reopened and bled.

  “I want a room,” he said hoarsely, “a room and some food.”

  “Mister,” the clerk protested, “you comin’ here like this! You got money to pay for it?”

  “I am owner of the herd French Williams just drove through. I was dry-gulched and left for dead. I need that room, mister, and I can pay for it. What I don’t need is an argument.”

  “Now, see here—“

  Anger gave him strength, anger and a desperate impatience, for he felt that at any moment he might fall on his face. He reached across the desk and took a handful of the clerk’s shirt. “Give me that room—and no more argument!”

  “Give it to him.” The cool voice was familiar. “I’ll stand good for it.”

  Chantry released his hold and turned half around. Sparrow was walking toward him, folding a newspaper.

  “All right,” the clerk said grudgingly. “If you say so, Mr. Sparrow.”

  The cattleman held Chantry by the arm, and took the key the clerk held out. “Come on, young man,” he said, “we’ve got some talking to do.”

  As they entered the hall to the ground-floor rooms he turned and called back to the gambler, “Mobile, do me a favor and get hold of Sam Baker for me.”

  The man got to his feet and took his coat off the back of the chair.

  Sparrow walked Chantry back to the room, went in, and closed the door behind them. “Get out of those wet clothes,” he said. “You need a stiff rubdown and a drink. You get undressed … I’ll get the drink.”

  He went out and Chantry dropped to the wooden chair and stooped to pull off the rags of buckskin that hung from his feet. He got one off, and then he pitched over on the floor.

  But only for a moment. Slowly, he pushed himself up … there was so much to do. He needed a horse. He had to catch up with the herd. He pulled off his buckskin coat and his shirt, both heavy with water. He took the rough towel and began to dry his head and his face and chest. He sat down again, unbuckled his belt and got out of the soaked pants, torn and ragged from his struggles against the brush and the rocks.

  Sparrow came back bringing a bottle and a glass, “Get a jolt of this into you. I’m not much of a man for whiskey, but in your condition it’s what you need.”

  Chantry took a gulp of the whiskey and felt the heat of it go all through him. He waited a moment, then took another.

  “You get some sleep now,” Sparrow said.

  “We can talk in the morning.”

  “We’ll talk now,” Chantry said.

  “Morni
ng may be too late.” He took another gulp of the whiskey, a small one this time. “Somebody tried to kill me.” Briefly he told of Sarah and Paul, and the horse he had let loose.

  “Do you know them?” Sparrow asked. “I don’t.”

  “Strangers … but they knew me. They wanted me—I don’t know why.” He added, “They didn’t look or act like western people … from the border states, perhaps.”

  Sparrow reached into his waistband. He took out a short-barreled .44. “Do you still have a prejudice against using one of these? They’ll trace that horse, and they’ll find you.”

  “I just lost my prejudice,” Chantry replied shortly. “Give me the gun.”

  “Keep it close by,” Sparrow said.

  There was a rap on the door. The gambler named Mobile and another man, somewhat older, stood there.

  “Come in,” Sparrow said. “Baker, this young man is a friend of mine. He’s going to need an outfit, from the skin out, and he’ll need it tonight. He’ll also need a pistol and a Winchester. Can you open up and get them for him?”

  “For you? You’re damned right.” Baker turned away. Then he glanced over his shoulder. “From the look of him, what he needs is some hot soup … a lot of it.”

  “I’ll get it,” Mobile said. “It’ll have some rain water in it by the time I get back, but it’ll be soup and it’ll be hot.”

  Chantry pulled a blanket around him. The liquor and the warmth of the room were taking effect, but he was feeling very tired.

  “Sparrow, why are you doing this for me?” he asked. “I thought you had no use for me.”

  Sparrow smiled, and took a cigar from his pocket. “I didn’t,” he said, “but you’ve been moving and you’ve been making friends. I ran into Koch down in Las Vegas. He hates your guts, but he carries the marks to show why. That was part of it, and then everybody is talking about your deal with French.”

  “You know about that?”

  “Everybody does. That’s why I knew you’d need an outfit. I’ll have a horse for you, too, the best one I can find.”

  “Do you think French had me shot?”

  “No, that doesn’t sound like him. He’d have it done right out in the open where anybody could see it.

  He’s got his own sense of honor about things. He’ll steal everything you own, and he’ll get you killed in a gun fight if he can, or by a bad hose or a steer, but I doubt he’d ever have a man dry-gulched. Of course, that’s just one man’s opinion.”

  Mobile came in with the soup, and he stayed behind after Sparrow left. “You get some sleep,” he advised. “I’ll kind of set around and keep an eye on things.”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  Mobile shrugged. “I don’t have to. I used to punch cows for Sparrow. I came up the trail with him from Texas, decided that was too rugged a life for a man, and settled down here to deal cards. Contrary to what you might figure, I don’t make much more than I would punchin’ cows, but I sleep in a bed at night and I don’t have to ride drag.”

  Slowly, carefully, Tom Chantry stretched out on the bed and drew the covers over him. His muscles, stiffened by cold and weariness, slowly relaxed.

  “Mobile?” His eyes opened. “Do you know a couple of people named Sarah and Paul?” He went on to describe them, and added, “They’ll be hunting that horse, but I’ve got an idea that horse came from town here, sold to them or rented. He sure wanted to come this way. He was a big bay, about sixteen hands, with three white stockings. It looked like a Pitchfork brand … I caught a glimpse as he ran off.”

  “That’s Henry Hazelton’s. He’s got a ranch outside of town—deals in horses and mules. I’ve used that horse myself.” He took a step toward the door. “Now you get some sleep. I’ll ask around.”

  The door closed, and there was silence in the room. For several minutes Chantry lay quiet, then he got out of bed and limped across the room and propped the chair under the knob. It was an inside room with no window. He closed his eyes. Nothing had ever felt so good as this bed, nothing ever would.

  He slept … and outside, rain fell upon the town—a rain that drowned the sound of a horse’s hoofs splashing through the mud. It smothered the sound of footsteps of a man walking along the alley and trying the back door of the hotel, then entering.

  It did not wipe out entirely the sight of a young woman walking across the street and mounting the outside steps of the building across the way.

  Mobile, shuffling cards at his table, saw the girl dimly through the rain, saw her put a key in the lock and enter the door. Mobile Callahan trusted neither people nor the appearances of things. Of Tom Chantry he knew nothing beyond the fact that he was respected by Sparrow.

  Two people had apparently tried to kill Chantry, one of them a girl, one a man. A girl had just mounted the stairs to the rooms and offices across the way, and it was unlikely that there would be two young women out in the rain on such a night. And where was the man?

  This was the only hotel in town, and anyone looking for a homeless man would be likely to come to it. Anyone wishing to kill such a man would not be likely to come by the front door, for he would be seen and remembered.

  Mobile made a neat stack of his cards and got to his feet. A glance told him the light in the back hallway was out, and he could smell the faint fumes left by a coal-oil lamp that has recently been blown out. Somebody wanted it dark, and Mobile Callahan was not going to walk along a dark hallway looking for a killer. His mother had raised no foolish children.

  His own room was the first on the right side of the hall, Chantry’s next to the last on the left side. Mobile stretched and yawned noisily. “Looks like a chance to catch up on some sleep,” he said to the clerk. “I think I’ll turn in.”

  He walked back to his room, ignoring the bit of dark hall that lay beyond the light from the lobby, and opened his door. He went in, closing the door, then promptly eased it open a fraction of an inch.

  Standing in the darkness with a drawn gun, Mobile listened and heard a faint creak from down the hall, then another. Gently, he eased his door open a little more. By standing tight against the wall he could look along the door and down the passage. At first he could see nothing, and then he made out a darker shadow, and from it a hand that took hold of the knob on Chantry’s door and tried it, ever so carefully. Turned it, and pushed … nothing happened.

  Mobile heard a muffled curse, then the man put a shoulder to the door and lunged against it, but it did not give. Chantry had put a chair under the knob and braced the door.

  What happened next was completely unexpected, and ready as Mobile was for almost anything, he was not ready for this.

  The man stepped back, drew his gun, and suddenly opened fire.

  He held his gun low and Mobile saw the stab of flame in the darkness even as he heard the thunder of the gun in the narrow hall.

  Caught flat-footed, it was an instant before he could react, an instant in which the unknown gunman got off at least two shots.

  Leaping into the hall, Mobile fired. The gunman wheeled, fired one quick shot at him, and fled. Mobile fired again as the man went through the door.

  Doors burst open, the clerk came running. Sparrow, gun in hand, appeared in a door in his long-johns. Mobile ran to him. “He tried to kill him,” he said to Sparrow.

  I’ll light up.”

  He scarcely noticed the warmth of the lamp chimney as he removed it and applied a match to the wick of the hall lamp.

  A dozen men were gathered outside Chantry’s door, while Sparrow hammered on it.

  “Chantry? Are you all right?” he called.

  The wall near the door was of one-inch pine boards, and it held three bullet holes. A .44 could penetrate several inches of pine, and the bullets had been fired to strike a man lying on the bed.

  For a moment there was no sound inside the room; then a chair scraped on the floor and the door opened. Tom Chantry looked out.

  “Are you all right?” Sparrow asked again. As Chantry stepped
back, Sparrow entered, followed by Mobile.

  “I’m all right. I was lying on my back. If I’d been on my side he’d have gotten me.”

  Mobile glanced at the bullet holes, then at the wall opposite. In the light from the bedroom lamp he pointed out a bullet buried in a washstand, another that had gone through the wall on the opposite side of the room.

  When the others had left, Mobile told about the girl he had seen climbing the steps across the street.

  “That’s Webb Taylor’s office,” Sparrow said. “He’s an attorney, but so far as I know he’s out of town.”

  After the two men had gone Chantry stretched out once more on the bed. They would not try again—not right away. Hands clasped behind his head, he tried to put things together to make sense.

  Out there in the woods the girl had said, “I want French to have those cattle. Then there’ll be just one man.”

  One man? For what? And why did she want French to have the cattle?

  He thought and thought, but found no answers, and presently he fell asleep.

  Across the street, in the upstairs office, Sarah looked at Paul with disgust. “You fool! Now everybody will know somebody is trying to kill him.”

  “They’ll believe it was French, or that other man we heard about … Koch.”

  She was silent for a few minutes, and then she said, “We’ve got to stay out of sight, Paul. So you leave town. Now.”

  “In this rain?”

  “They’ve seen you, Paul. They caught a glimpse of you, anyway. Go up the trail of the cattle. You can be sure Chantry will be coming along, and you can kill him then. But this time don’t make a mess of it. Take your time and be sure you get him. Ten thousand dollars may not be all the money in the world, but it is all we’re likely to have.”

  Paul went to the door and peered out. The night was veiled with rain.

  “All right,” he agreed reluctantly, “I know where there’s a shack up the line. I’ll stop there.” He paused for a moment. “What about you?”

  “They know nothing about me. I am just here visiting Webb Taylor and getting some legal advice. You go ahead—and be careful that nobody sees you.”