May There Be a Road (Ss) (2001)

by L'amour, Louis

  “A thief? What did he steal? A wallet, wasn’t it? And the wallet belonged to his father. He is his father’s heir, or one of them. You can’t arrest this boy for stealing. I’m sure it wouldn’t hold up.”

  Eagan turned toward Kelman, uneasily.

  “You didn’t tell me the wallet belonged to Stevens,” he protested.

  “That’s neither here nor there!” Kelman’s rage was mastering him again. “Take the boy and let’s go. If that blundering fool wants to try to stop us, I’ll handle him!”

  “Stop you?” Gunthorp smiled. “I’d never think of it, Sheriff. I’ve a great respect for the law and officers of the law. The boy was taken to Kelman’s ranch where he was beaten to make him tell where some papers were. The boy escaped, and in escaping, took his father’s wallet to which he certainly had more right than Kelman. No, Sheriff, the boy is better off here.” He smiled again.

  “When he is needed for any court appearance, I shall gladly answer for “We want him, and we want him now,”

  Kelman flared. Gunthorp nodded. “I’m afraid you are mistaking yourself for some sort of official, Kelman. Mr. Eagan is his own man and he can do his own thinking. If he can’t..” well, we’ll see who gets the votes in the next election.”

  Eagan shifted uncomfortably in his saddle.

  Secretly, he was afraid of Kelman, but he resented the man’s arrogant manner and the ordering about he constantly took from him. The way Gunthorp was putting it, Eagan would practically prove he was crawling to Kelman’s orders if he took the boy.

  Gunthorp comprehended something of what was in the sheriff’s mind, so he offered him an easy way out.

  “Anyway,” he added, “Sheriff Eagan is a man who knows the law. I’m not saying the boy is here, but he can’t search my house without a warrant.”

  Eagan clutched at the opportunity. “That’s right, Kelman,” he said, “I’d have to have a warrant for the boy to go into that house and search for him.”

  “Warrant, blazes!” Kelman exploded with rage. He flung himself toward the house. “Get away from the door!” he roared at Gunthorp.

  Gunthorp did not move, but with his eyes on Kelman, he said to the sheriff, “Eagan, if he comes at me, I’ll defend myself.”

  Before Eagan could speak Kelman’s hand swept back for a gun, and at the same instant, Gunthorp moved. His left hand shot out and gripped Kelrnan’s wrist. His right hand dropped to Kelman’s left bicep.

  Kelman was a big man, and a skillful boxer, but here he had no chance. Gunthorp’s big brown hands shut down hard, the right fingers digging into the muscles of Kelman’s arm, the fingers of the left hand shutting down like a powerful vise on the wrist of the gun hand.

  Kelman might have been stricken with paralysis.

  Gunthorp’s hands gripped with crushing power, and Kelman’s face went white. The gun had come clear of the holster, but Kelman cried out with pain, and the gun dropped from his hand. Then, still gripping him by the wrist and upper arm, Gunthorp lifted the man clear off his feet and hurled him bodily into the yard.

  His face had not changed. “I’m sorry, Sheriff, but he attacked me. You saw it. I refuse to allow any search without a warrant. Go to Judge McClees and get one, if you wish.”

  Eagan knew just as well as Gtmthorp that Judge Jim did McClees was not going to grant any warrant without making a thorough study of the case; and that would be the last thing Kelman would want.

  Kelman, his right hand almost useless from the crushing grip, caught the pommel of the saddle with his left and hauled himself up. Gunthorp retrieved the gun and handed it to Eagan.

  “Return this to him when you think it’s appropriate,” he said, smiling.

  When daylight began lifting the shadows from the sun blasted ridges, Gunthorp ate a hurried breakfast, and then he took the boy to the door.

  “You see that cottonwood with the dead limb? Right opposite the end of that limb, in the wall of the cliff, is a cave. You go up there with this grub I packed and this canteen, and don’t you stir out of there until I come for you..” or till three days have gone by. If you don’t hear from me in three days, somebody got me.

  “In that cave there’s more water. You can also see this place, but you keep still up there or somebody might see you moving.”

  With that, Gunthorp swung into the saddle and started for the hills. He knew where the Stevens mine was and he was taking a chance that no one would be around. He rode swiftl and when he found himself among the pitons on the slope above the canyon where the mine lay, he ground-hitched the gelding and slid further down the hill to where he looked over the mine and a shack nearby. A half hour’s careful watch showed no movement.

  He went down the hill with long strides, sliding gravel around him, his weight carrying him almost at a run. When he reached the bottom of the steep slope, he surveyed the buildings once more. No movement.

  Swiftly, he crossed to the mine, took one quick, last look around, then disappeared into the tunnel.

  As he walked along the drift, he remembered what he had seen in that quick glance. The mine was in the face of the rock at the end of a deep notch in the mountain, a notch that widened out until it opened upon the desert valley below. Stevens had purchased this canyon and considerable land in the valley, although the extent of his buying was unknown. He had told those who were curious that he did not wish to be crowded, but they had laughed and said there was no chance of anyone ever moving near him, for the land he bought was the driest and worst around.

  This much Gunthorp knew, for he was a man who listened well, and there were men enough who talked freely. He carried a candle with him, and after a while he stopped to study the wall of the tunnel.

  There was very little mineral here, but the big vein might be further inside.

  He walked swiftly, counting his paces as he went. Suddenly, he rounded a turn in the drift and was brought up short, finding himself staring at the end where the drift had collapsed. He had walked almost a quarter of a mile from the entrance.

  Thoughtfully, he studied the rock around him, and particularly that in the face. Then he turned and with the same swift strides, hurried back. A quick look around showed no one in sight, so he stepped out and started for the wash.

  “Hey!” The shout stopped him in his tracks, and he turned to see a man rushing toward him. “Who are you? What do you mean by going into that mine without permission?”

  Gunthorp faced the unshaven, burly watchman.

  “Permission from who?”

  “From Kelrnan, that’s who!” The man faced Gunthorp, glaring at him. “You come back up here and wait until he comes. I ain’t sure he’d like you being in there!”

  Gunthorp’s bleak eyes showed humor. “I’m quite sure he wouldn’t, my friend. However, if I were you, I’d pick up and leave just as quickly as I could.

  Kelman’s through in this country.”

  The man laughed harshly. “That’s likely!

  He’s the boss around here. You coming with me, or do I take you?”

  Gunthorp chuckled. “Why, I guess you take me,” he said simply. He waited, his hands down, smiling at the other man.

  “Come on,” the watchman blustered, “I don’t want no trouble!”

  “Then go on back to your shack and keep your mouth shut. If you don’t tell Kelman, he’ll never know I was here. Then, you won’t get in trouble at all.”

  The watchman was disturbed. A second look told him that although this man might not be as tall as he, he was a solid mass of bone and muscle.

  Moving him wouldn’t be easy. Staring into those bleak eyes made him doubt the advisability of trying the pistol in his holster.

  A rattle of hoofs on the trail decided the man. “Get out of here, quick!” he said. “If Kelman found you here, he’d have my scalp!”

  In three fast steps, Gunthorp was in among the pifions. He glanced back to see three horsemen riding up to the mine. The man in the lead was Joe, but Kelman himself was not among them.
r />   When he reached his horse, he mounted and cut back across the mountain. There was no regular trail, but he wove in and out among the trees until he could see into a narrow canyon beyond. When he was in position, he stopped his horse and studied this new area with thoughtful eyes.

  This canyon was green, deeply green, thick with cottonwoods and tamarisk and a small stream flowing along the bottom. At one point the stream disappeared into a wide area of marshy sand and reeds.

  Gunthorp glanced at the sun, and seeing there was yet time, turned his horse down the trail and rode down through to the cottonwoods.

  The small river flowed out of the rock, described a wide half circle through a meadow, and then vanished into the sand on the same side from which it emerged. It was no more than four or five feet across, but the water was clear and cold and ran swiftly.

  As his horse drank, Gunthorp turned in his saddle and surveyed the valley. Mining operations had begun here, too. Across from him he could see the mouth of a drift and the pile of waste outside it. The tunnel mouth was low down against the valley floor.

  Gunthorp turned his horse be: and started for town, his face serious.

  Red Butte’s residential section was composed of some forty or fifty buildings, built haphazardly down the slope from the mesa. Beyond the buildings and corrals, the land sloped away for two miles and disappeared under the unsightly waters of an alkali lake.

  Gunthorp tied his horse at the hitching rail and stepped up on the boardwalk, heading for the office of Judge Jim McClees. At that moment, the door of the restaurant thrust open and Kelman stepped out, accompanied by an uncommonly pretty girl. They saw him at the same instant.

  “That’s the man!” Kelman pointed at him with a stiff arm. “That’s him.”

  The girl walked right up to Gunthorp, her heels clicking on the walk. “Where is my brother?” she demanded, her eyes sparking. “I want you to take me to him at once. And you must return the papers you took from him.”

  She was young, and very pretty, and he liked the determined set of her chin. “Miss Stevens,” he said quietly, “your brother is safe, and no thanks due to Mr. Kelman. If there are any papers, he alone knows where they are.”

  “Look here!” Kelman thrust himself forward.

  “Madge Stevens has returned to settle her father’s estate, and to do that, she must have those papers.

  Your little scheme has failed, so you can bring the boy in and turn the papers over to me.”

  Gunthorp glanced at the girl. “Is that what you want?” “It is.” Her chin lifted. “You have no right to interfere in this matter, none at all. Mr.

  Kelman was doing all that could be done.”

  Gunthorp smiled. “No doubt. But is he doing what is best for your interests and the boy’s, or his own?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” she flared. “It certainly is none of your business.”

  “No doubt Kelman has made you an offer for the land your father owned? Was he going to take all that wasteland off your hands as a favor?”

  From the puzzled look in her eyes, he knew that he was right. “What did he offer you for it?”

  “That’s neither here nor there.” Kelman’s anger was growing. “All you have to do is take us to the boy.”

  Gunthorp ignored Kelman. “Miss Stevens,” he said, “I don’t know what he has offered you for the land, but whatever it is, I’ll double it.”

  Her eyes widened. “For that worthless land? Why that’s absurd! That would be ten dollars an acre for—”

  “Ten?” Gunthorp’s eyes brightened. “Miss Stevens, I’ll give you more. If you say ten dollars, he must have offered you only five. I’ll give you twenty dollars an acre and a twenty percent share in any profit I make.”

  “But I don’t understand,” she protested.

  “The man’s trying to pull the wool over your eyes,”

  Kelrnan interrupted. His tone was desperate, and anger was growing in him. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. You’ve sold the land to me for five dollars an acre, and you’ve been paid for it.” He turned back to Gunthorp. “See, my friend? You are too late. Now will you turn the boy over to us and get out of here?”

  Gunthorp stood flat-footed, shaken by the statement the girl did not deny. If she had sold the land… Suddenly, he smiled.

  “Miss Stevens,” he asked politely.” I know it is always wrong to ask a woman’s age, but how old are you?”

  “Why, I’m eighteen, almost nineteen, but how does that matter?” Kelman’s face changed. “You mean you’re not of age?” Gunthorp looked up at him. “It really wouldn’t matter, Kelman,” he said softly. “You see, Lane is an heir, too, and she would have no right to sign away his rights.

  Miss Stevens has no right to dispose of the property without authority of his legal guardian.”

  “But she’s his older sister,” Kelman protested furiously. “She’s his guardian.”

  “Not unless the court appoints her so, and as she’s underage, that isn’t likely. I suggest we talk with Judge McClees.”

  Madge Stevens stared from one to the other, frightened and confused. In each of the three letters that had come to her from Kelman, he had assured her of his friendship for her father and herself, and had offered to dispose of the land her father had, he suggested, foolishly bought. Now this man whom Kelman had said was forcibly holding her brother was suddenly making everything seem very different.

  Kelman noticed the indecision in her face.

  “Come over here,” he said to Gunthorp. “I want to talk to you!”

  Gunthorp followed him to one side, his calm eyes on Kelman’s excited face.

  “Listen,” Kelman protested when they were out of hearing. “Let’s not fight over this! That land is worth a fortune! You know that as well as I do!

  Let’s make a deal on this! If you insist, we can cut the girl in, but there’s no reason why we should! You and I can handle this by ourselves! To blazes with that girl and her kid brother.”

  Gunthorp smiled. “Kelman,” he said loudly, “I’ve heard a lot about you. You have already labeled yourself as a liar and a skunk, but now you hit a new low. Asking me to cheat youngsters is about as bad as a man can get!”

  “You double damnedm!” Kelman’s hand dropped to his gun.

  Gunthorp’s left fist whipped up, crashing into the pit of Kelman’s stomach, and then a bone-shattering wallop to the chin. Stricken, the big man toppled back off the boardwalk and fell into the street. For an instant, he lay stunned, and then he grabbed again for his pistol.

  Gunthorp tried to reach him at the same instant, but Kelman had fallen a step or two away.

  Kelman’s gun whipped up, flame stabbed from the muzzle, and Gunthorp felt his hat lift from his head. Then, Kelman’s gun roared again and something struck Gunthorp solidly. His mouth widened, then closed as his body twisted under the bullet’s impact.

  Suddenly, things grew hazy and Gunthorp started to turn around, but seemed to trip. Hands grabbed him and eased him to the boardwalk. A man in a wide white hat with a mustache and goatee was bending over him.

  “Judge was His voice had no more focus than his eyes, and he had to fight to arrange the words properly. “Judge, you .. . care for this girl.

  Brother .. . her brother’s in a cave..” at my place.”

  Four days later Gunthorp was lying on the bed in the spare bedroom of Judge McClees’s home.

  The door opened and Madge Stevens came in, with Lane beside her.

  Her eyes widened at the sight of him lying there.

  “You—you’re better now?”

  “Sure. Doc says I’ll be up and around before long. I guess I’ll carry a couple of slugs, though.”

  “I’m so sorry .. . that I ever doubted you.

  Judge McClees arrested Mr. Kelman, you know. They took him away yesterday.”

  “That’s good.” He was still very weak.

  “About the land?” she said. “Men have been out to look at the mine. They say it�
��s worthless, and the land is worse.”

  Gunthorp smiled. “Don’t you believe them.

  Your father knew what he was up to. That isn’t a mine at all. It’s a tunnel to bring water from a canyon back there. There is a great volume of water, easily enough to irrigate five hundred acres of good hay land, and the level of the land your father bought is below that of the canyon, so irrigation for growing hay will be simple.”

  “But hay? Is it valuable?”

  “Well,” he said with a grin, “last year it sold for sixty dollars a ton, and fairly good meadow land will run a ton to the acre. This land you’ve got, irrigated, will do a whole lot better than many mines.”

  “The judge said that given all that has happened he should appoint a legal guardian for my brother and me until I turn twenty-one. He thought that it should be you.”

  “Well, one way or another, I guess I already got started a couple of days ago,”

  Gunthorp said.

  “But Lane and I thought it should be more of a partnership. If you’ll help us finish Father’s tunnel, we’ll split whatever we make on the hay three ways.”

  “With an offer as good as that there is no chance I could turn it down… I always was a sucker for kids in trouble.”

  “Kids!” she arched one eyebrow. “I hope you are only talking about Lane.” They turned and left the room, but not before she had paused to fluff his pillow and pull up the covers.

  “I wonder,” Gunthorp mused, “what I’ve gotten myself into now….”

  *

  THE GHOST FIGHTER

  A bell clanged. The narrow-faced man tipped his bar chair away from the gym wall and sat suddenly forward. Had he not known it to be impossible, he would have sworn the husky young heavyweight in the black trunks was none other than “Bat” McGowan, the champion of the world!

  Tall, bronzed, lithe as a panther, the fighter glided swiftly across the ring, stabbing a sharp left to his opponent’s head; then, slipping over a left hook, he whipped a steaming right to the heart.

  “Salty” Burke staggered, and his hands dropped slightly. Quickly Barney Malone jabbed another left at his face, and then a terrific right cross to the jaw. The blow seemed to travel no more than six inches, yet it exploded upon the angle of Burke’s chin like a six-inch shell, and the big heavyweight crashed to the canvas, out cold!