Novel 1963 - How The West Was Won (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Chapter 10

  *

  WESTWARD THE BRIGHT land lay, westward the magic names, names they had heard in story and song, the names that spelled wild country, that spelled Indians, that spelled danger and promise and hope. The Platte was such a name, Ash Hollow another.

  Chimney Rock…Horse Creek…Scott’s Bluffs…Fort Laramie…Bitter Creek…the Sweet Water, South Pass, Fort Bridger, the Humboldt River, Lawson’s Meadows, Forty-Mile House…Day after day, sunshine or rain or wind, the wagons rolled westward, their heavy wheels rocking out a strange music from wood and weight upon the uneven ground.

  Less often now did Cleve Van Valen ride the wagon. Both women could drive and he was needed to scout trail, to scout water and grass and fuel, to watch for Indians, to hunt meat. More and more Morgan had come to depend on him, forgetting his animosity for the needs of the wagon people.

  High on a windy hill where the grass waved in the sun, Cleve removed his hat and wiped the sweat from the band. His hair blew around his ears, for it had grown long in the passing time. Squinting his eyes against the distance, he considered the situation and his place in it.

  Not only had Morgan’s attitude changed, but his own had altered; and not merely his attitude, but his appearance. He had tanned under the sun and wind of days of riding. He had cut wood, driven the mules, wrestled with wagon wheels stuck in the mud or sand, using his physical strength to a degree he had never used it before.

  The values out here were different, too. It mattered not at all who a man might have been back in the East; here they only asked, “Can he do the job? Will he stand when trouble comes?”

  Around the fire there had also been an almost imperceptible change. Now he was deferred to by Lilith as well as by Agatha.

  Between Cleve and the wagonmaster there was a truce, but no more. Morgan had not referred at all to the gambling episode. Cleve had no cause to pursue the matter, and Morgan apparently was willing to let well enough alone. But Cleve had refused all invitations to play, and avoided those who gambled.

  As for Lilith, he made no further attempt to ingratiate himself, and except at mealtimes they saw little of each other. It was true that he worked for them, but the needs of a wagon train must be fulfilled by its personnel, and men did what they were best suited for.

  With their passing of the Great Salt Lake Desert, fear of Indians dwindled. There were Indians about, but they were apt to indulge in petty theft rather than attack. Increasingly, as they moved westward, the problem became a matter of water, grass, and fuel.

  The long, winding course of the Humboldt offered little wood or water. For miles its course was marked only by low brush. Off to the south of them there were mountains, and they occasionally saw them like low gray clouds along the horizon. Some of these were capped with snow; always they were off the trail, and almost out of sight. One and all, the travelers looked for the Sierras, for the Sierras meant California, and California was where the trail ended.

  Cleve still took care of the mules. He took them to water and to the corral, he harnessed and unharnessed them. And he provided the wagon with its fuel, and occasionally with fresh meat.

  Naturally quick to observe and to learn, drawing upon his memories of conversations and books he had read, Cleve Van Valen soon developed into a first-class plainsman. His eyesight was excellent, and with the revolving Colt rifle loaned him by Gabe French he was well armed. The gelding was strong, fast, and carried him far afield. Well-mounted and well-armed, he developed a liking for scouting far from their line of march, often riding on ahead to locate good camping grounds for the coming night.

  Riding thus, far from the line of march, he often came upon game, and two or three times a week he returned from these forays with fresh meat. Aside from what he provided for his own wagon, he often had enough to distribute impartially among the other wagons.

  “What you figurin’ on?” Gabe asked him one day. “You plannin’ to run for office? You’re makin’ a lot of friends on this train.”

  “All I want is to get through with a whole skin.” Cleve turned his attention from the hills to Gabe French. “Gabe, when I get to California I’m going into business.”

  “Got any ideas?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you give it thought. It’s safer than minin’ , which is a chancy game any way you size it up.” Gabe paused. “Might have some ideas myself.”

  They had camped on the Truckee, with the Sierras looming above them, when Cleve rode into camp and dropped off a quarter of elk meat at the wagon. Then he rode on, leaving a bit here, a bit there.

  Agatha watched him go. “Lil,” she said emphatically, “you latch onto that man, d’you hear? Ain’t many men as good at providin’ as him.”

  “He’s changed,” Lilith admitted.

  “Maybe…an’ maybe you just never knew him in the first place. Might be he didn’t even know himself.” Agatha gazed after him with a critical eye. “He’s changed, all right. He’s taken on some color from the sun and some beef in the shoulders. That there’s quite a man.”

  “He’s a gambler, and I never knew one really to change, did you?”

  “That one might. Comes of a good family, Gabe says, who knew his folks. Got rooked out of his due and killed the man who did it.”

  *

  MOUNTAINS NOW BLOCKED out the western sky, and the desert lay behind them. Snow crested the peaks and ridges, and pines covered the long, steep slopes. Other wagon trains had crossed these mountains, so there must be a way, but from where the wagons now were they seemed a towering and impenetrable wall. How had the first wagons found their way through?

  Three times that morning they stopped to clear small slides of rock, snow, and other debris from the narrow trail, and at best it was slow, difficult traveling. The wagons simply inched along, and Cleve scouted ahead for a camping site. When he discovered what he wanted at approximately the distance they would be able to cover, it was a pleasant meadow surrounded by tall pines where a small spring started a cascade from off the mountain.

  There was good grass, plenty of fuel, and the clear, cold mountain water. After a last look around, he stripped the saddle from the gelding and rubbed it down with a handful of coarse grass.

  He heard no sound but the wind among the trees, and the tumbling of the water. The gelding, he noticed, was gaunt. Even that fine, strong horse was beginning to show the effect of the miles, and even his winter coat failed to disguise it. Suddenly Cleve was tired.

  There were many miles to go before they would reach the gold fields, and more miles beyond that to San Francisco—why should he wait? Why march with the slow-moving wagons, when on his fast gelding he could be there in a fraction of the time? Why not saddle up at daybreak and ride on, and then just keep on riding, all the way to the Golden Gate?

  No sooner had the thought occurred to him than he knew it was the solution. After all, what reason had he to suppose Lilith had changed, or would change? True, she was more agreeable, easier to be with, and sometimes there had seemed to be genuine liking in her manner, but he knew better than to put faith in such things.

  It was true that he had no money, and a gambler needs a stake, but there might be old friends among the gambling houses who would set him up with a faro layout, and he would do the rest.

  He was still considering it when the wagons rolled in, and then he became busy with the mules, the fire, the problem of fuel. But the thought remained.

  Lilith was lovely. If a man had to marry for money, he certainly could do no better. She had a mind of her own, but he liked that…and when he came to think of it, what had gambling brought him in those wasted years? Years lost now, beyond recovery.

  Yet he would be a fool to go inching along over these mountains, breaking his back with toil, when a few hours of riding would take him out of them. Why not forget Lilith? Why not leave now, tonight?

  “We’ve not much farther to go,” Lilith said suddenly beside the fire. She spoke the words and they rested
there, seeming almost to ask a question.

  “After we cross the mountains you won’t have any use for me,” he said. “It will be easy going from there on to wherever it is you’re going.”

  “Rabbit Gulch…it’s in the Mother Lode.”

  Lilith had replied almost without thinking, then as she stooped to lift the lid from a kettle the import of his remark reached her. No use for him? Did that imply that he would leave, once they crossed the Sierras?

  For an instant she felt as if she had been struck. Unmoving, she stared blindly at the kettle; then she slowly put the lid on it again and straightened up.

  She felt suddenly lost, empty, forsaken. What was the matter with her? After all, he was a fortune-hunter, wasn’t he? A drifting, ne’er-do-well gambler? What kind of a man was that to make her feel as she did?

  She started to ask about his leaving, but feared his reply. She poked sticks into the fire, then lifted the lid again and stirred the stew.

  When he spoke he said what she had been dreading to hear. “I was thinking I might ride on ahead…we’re almost there now, and I guess I’m impatient.”

  She forced herself to be casual. “You’re going to the gold fields?”

  “Frisco…I’m not likely to be much good at mining.”

  “I think you could do whatever you set out to do,” she said carefully. She was struggling to order her thoughts, to say the right thing; struggling, too, against an overpowering sense of loss, or impending loss.

  “Well,” she said at last, “you’ve earned your money. You promised a day’s work for a day’s pay, and you have done more than your share…even Roger admits that.”

  So it was Roger now, was it? Had it gone that far? Morgan had made a habit of dropping around by the fire, and a couple of times he had seen them talking quietly, almost intimately.

  What kind of a fool was he, anyway, Cleve asked himself. Morgan was a stable man, even if an unimaginative one, and he was well off, according to reports. In short, he had a good deal to offer a girl—and what did he, Cleve Van Valen, have?

  He had no money, he had a reputation as a gambler, and some skill with weapons. Looked at coldly and logically, it didn’t add up to much. What kind of a fool had he been to go chasing off after a girl, believing he could marry her when so many others were in the running?

  The truth of the matter was, he had acted just as the kind of a man she suspected him of being would act—like an egotistical fool. All of which added up to the fact that he was wasting his time.

  Agatha came to the fire and dished up their food, glancing from one to the other with a thoughtful expression. She was too worldly-wise not to understand something of what went on here, but for once she had no idea of what to do.

  “He’s earned it, all right,” she said, “earned whatever he’s to get…but there’s things you can’t pay for, believe me.”

  In the morning, Cleve thought, in the morning I shall go. I have played out my time, and there’s always a time to quit. The thing to do was to quit when you were ahead.

  “I’ll be riding on in the morning,” he said; “you’ve no need for me any longer.”

  She stared helplessly into the fire, her appetite gone. Finally she said, “But what will I pay you? I don’t know…we didn’t settle on anything, on any amount, I mean.”

  “You owe me nothing. I’ve had my keep.”

  “You’ve earned more than that, much more. We could never have made it through without you…for that matter, if it hadn’t been for you when the Cheyennes attacked, we would all have been killed. You stopped that panic, you got them into a circle.”

  “Morgan wouldn’t have let it start,” he said, “and if it hadn’t been for me it might never have started.” He looked up. “I never told you of this before, but Morgan caught me gambling, and we had trouble. If it hadn’t been for that, Morgan would have stopped that damned fool before he could go off half-cocked.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  He got up. “I can be sure that I distracted Morgan’s attention at an important moment. I risked all your lives.”

  He looked around, wanting to say something more, but he could find no words. Then he said again: “I’ll go in the morning. You don’t need me.”

  Abruptly, he turned and walked away from the fire. Lilith started to speak, but did not go on…she just stared after him, helplessly.

  “You goin’ to let him get away?” Agatha asked.

  “What can I do?”

  “Women have known the answer to that since Eve bobbed that apple with Adam. If you don’t know at your age, you ain’t about to learn from me.”

  “I love him.”

  Agatha shot her a quick glance. “Bad as that, is it? I’d say latch onto him then. That’s a rarely good man, take it from me. You get to my age and you’ll settle for almost any kind of a man, so long as he breathes and he’s warm. They’re a comfort, take it from me.”

  “I love him.” Lilith repeated, as if astonished by the realization. “I really do.”

  “Don’t tell me your troubles…tell him.”

  The whole camp was bedded down, and most of them were asleep, before Cleve returned to the wagon. Lying awake, staring up at the wagon cover which was weirdly lit from the dying flames, Lilith listened to him unroll his bed and pull off his boots. She could hear every sound, and interpret it. At last he stretched out with a sigh, and after a minute she could hear his even, regular breathing.

  Sleep would not come. Several times she turned over, seeking to find a more comfortable position, and then suddenly, she heard another sound.

  Something—some large animal—was moving around outside the wagon. She heard a snort from Cleve’s gelding and she started to reach for the rifle that lay beside her in the wagon, then she drew her hand back quickly.

  The sounds continued, there was a subdued snuffling, and she could hear Cleve’s horse struggling at his picket pin. “Cleve!” she whispered. “Cleve!”

  “I hear it,” he said aloud, calmly.

  He lay perfectly still, listening. For an instant after he spoke there had been absolute stillness, then the snuffling began again, and a bucket rattled as something turned it over.

  Suddenly the gelding started to rear and plunge, fighting the picket rope.

  Grabbing his pistol, Cleve rolled out from under the wagon and started to rise to his feet, and at the same instant the animal, a huge bear, reared up, almost beside him. Angered by the plunging snorting horse, as well as by the man who suddenly appeared beside him, the bear gave an ugly growl. It was point-blank range when Cleve fired.

  He shot once…twice…a third time. He fired as rapidly as he could squeeze off the shots.

  Blinded by the flash of the gun, the bear lunged at him. It’s paw missed a swipe that would have torn his head off, but it knocked him down with the lunge of its body.

  Cleve rolled over, but managed to cling to his pistol, and the bear brought up with a thud against the side of the wagon, then turned, snarling and fighting, tearing at the wounds in its chest. The bear sprang over him without seeing him and Cleve fired the pistol upward into its belly, then he scrambled to his feet and backed up hurriedly as the bear struggled to rear up again. Bringing the pistol level, he squeezed the trigger again and the gun clicked, missing fire.

  All over the camp he heard cries and shouted questions. He stood flat-footed, amazed that the bear did not charge.

  He had no extra cylinders with him. They were all in the pockets of his coat or in his saddle pockets. Carefully, he backed away another step, straining his eyes toward the spot near the front wheel where the bear had been.

  “Cleve? Cleve? Are you all right?” It was Lilith.

  He waited, slowly lowering the pistol, fearful of making a sound that might provoke another charge.

  Several armed men came running. “What’s happened? What was it?” they called.

  Cleve tossed fuel on the fire and some of the evergreen branches blazed up. The b
ear lay where it had fallen against the front wheel of the wagon, and the men approached it gingerly, their weapons ready.

  Lilith and Agatha emerged from their wagon. Lilith ran to him, her eyes wide and frightened. “Cleve? Are you all right? Are you sure?”

  Gabe French caught hold of the bear by the paw and pulled it away from the wagon wheel. It lay there, an inert mass. Three slugs had torn into the bear’s chest, slightly left of center, and the three points of entry could have been covered by a man’s hand.

  One of the men glanced at the holes, then up at Cleve. “Man, that’s shootin’!”

  It was the fourth and last shot that had saved his life, for it had gone into the bear’s stomach and had broken his spine. Despite the killing shots in the chest, the bear might finally have killed him had it not been for that. He had been lucky…very lucky indeed.

  Obviously, the bear had not been looking for trouble, but had merely been rummaging among the buckets and gear around the wagon, drawn by the smell of food. The flash of Cleve’s gun had blinded it, and probably it had been as eager to get away as he would have been. It was that paralyzing final shot that had kept him from a bad mauling—or worse.

  He heard scraps of talk…“nerve” and “tackled a bear, hand-to-hand” and “shootin’ like that…in the dark, too.” But he knew he had been no hero. He had been frightened, and he had done what had to be done. Had he attempted escape, the bear might easily have turned on him. When he found the bear that close he had no alternative but to shoot.

  But the story was one that would be told and retold wherever any of these men gathered.

  Lilith caught his arm. “Cleve? Oh, Cleve, you can’t leave now! What if that bear had come and you had not been here? What would we have done?”

  He looked down at her, his hands on her arms, and something inside him made unspoken answer: Why, you’d probably have taken that rifle of yours, drilled him dead-center, and then gone back to sleep. He said it to himself, but to her he said, “Yes, I’d better stay. I can’t leave you alone.”

  The truth of the matter was, he decided, that he didn’t want to go, anyway.