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

by Louis L'Amour

  She looked at him thoughtfully. This nephew of hers had a quality she liked. “You’re going to have a free hand with the ranch, Zeb, but we aren’t going to have much capital. I came away from San Francisco with very little.”

  “I’ve never had much capital,” he said quietly. “We’ll get along.”

  “What I was thinking,” Lilith said, “was that it may be necessary for you to devote all your time to the ranch.”

  He chuckled. “Ah! Now I see. You and Julie have had your heads together: How can we get him to stop this marshaling business and settle down?”

  Zeb looked at them seriously. “I’ll be glad to settle down whenever I can. Men serve as they can. I do not have the education to help make the laws—one thing I can do, is enforce them.

  “Julie doesn’t like me to wear a gun. I’ll take it off when I can—until then it will be necessary for the men of peace to have guns, as long as men of violence do. We can’t put all the force in the hands of evil.”

  He smiled at Julie. “You’ll be glad to know—Charlie Gant is leaving town.”

  Chapter 21

  *

  ZEB RAWLINGS ROLLED out of bed at daybreak, as had been his custom for years. The hotel room in which they had spent the night was furnished with one chair, a stand for the bowl and water pitcher, with a small mirror above it, and the bed itself—that was all.

  Always a quiet man, he dressed with special care this morning, not wishing to wake Julie. In his sock feet he stepped over to the window and looked out.

  At this hour the street was relatively empty, for the sun had not yet come over the mountains. But down there on the boardwalk a man was loafing, smoking a cigarette. On the ground near his feet were the butts of several cigarettes—he must have been there some time.

  Lifting his eyes, Zeb looked toward the mine. There a wagon was drawn up, and men were loading it. A guard with a shotgun sat on the wagon seat, and two mounted guards were nearby.

  The man in the street turned his head slightly and Zeb saw that he was one of those who had been at the station to meet Charlie Gant. It was falling into place, each neat, carefully planned piece of it. So neat, and yet so obvious.

  Zeb went over to the chair, sat down, and tugged on his boots. Taking up his hat, coat, and gun belt, he went to the door, opened it carefully, and stepped out into the hall. In the bathroom at the end of the hall he buckled on the gun belt, bathed his hands and face, and then slipped into his coat.

  All these actions required time, but it was time that Zeb needed. He would first see how the boys had gotten along in their wagon, but his mind was not on them, but on Charlie Gant and the gold.

  From long experience, he could almost chart the steps to be taken, just as he had been sure there would be a lookout in the street to be sure the gold shipment did pull away from the mine and was loaded on the train. The telegraph was valuable to the law; it was also a great help to outlaws.

  The lobby was empty when he walked through, and when he stepped out on the boardwalk, the watcher was gone. Up the street, and some distance away, Zeb saw the gold wagon driving toward the station, which lay just outside of town. By the time it reached the station, or within a minute or two afterward, the lookout would be at the station too, or within sight of it.

  Down the street in front of the Bon-Ton Restaurant a man in an apron was sweeping the boardwalk. Sunlight fell between the buildings, and at the end of the walk his broom moved in and out of the sunlight.

  Linus and Prescott were just waking up and Zeb sat with them and smoked a cigar while they washed at the livery-stable pump.

  Off in the distance a train whistled…the east-bound train which passed through only a short time before the west-bound train which would pick up the gold. Whatever was to be done about Charlie Gant had to be done now. Sitting there on the bench by the livery stable, he made up his mind about that. Not that he hadn’t reached the same conclusion hours ago, but he had to study the situation for a possible alternative.

  If he was let alone, Charlie would do what he had come to do, and then he would be free to locate Zeb Rawlings, and never so long as Gant lived would Zeb or any of his family live in security. There would be times when he would have to be away from the ranch, and most of the time he would be out on the range…his family would be alone, virtually helpless if Gant chose to strike at him through his family, and Gant was such a man.

  When Zeb walked into the hotel dining room with the boys, Lou Ramsey was there, seated at the table with Aunt Lilith and Julie. He got up, his face stern.

  “I had a visit from Charlie Gant last night,” Ramsey said. “I don’t like it, Zeb.”

  “Well?”

  “He said he saw you. That you were looking for trouble.”

  “You believe that?”

  Lou Ramsey looked at him angrily. “Zeb, it doesn’t matter whether I believe it. You’re taking your trouble to your own territory. You’re not going to make trouble for me here. I won’t have it, Zeb.”

  “There won’t be any more. Gant’s gone. He rode out before daylight this morning.”

  Ramsey hesitated, startled and displeased by the information, even though half expecting it. “Alone?”

  “You know better than that. He took his outfit with him, and you know as well as I do they’ll be somewhere between here and Kingman, waiting for that train.”

  Zeb paused, then went ahead. “Lou, if I could have three deputies…or even two. To get on that train with me.”

  “You don’t fool me a bit, Rawlings. It ain’t a robbery you’re expecting. I know how you feel about Gant. Texas the first time—you still carry the lead where he shot you. Then it was Oklahoma, when you killed Floyd. And now…here.”

  Ramsey looked around at Julie and Lilith. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ll have to forgive me. If you can’t stop him, I must, but he isn’t going to make my office a part of it.”

  “You haven’t eaten, Zeb,” Julie protested. “Why don’t you sit down?”

  Lou Ramsey strode from the room, and Zeb seated himself. He glanced across the table at Lilith. “I’m sorry, Aunt Lil. I’m sorry all this has to happen just when you arrive.”

  The waitress brought coffee to the table, and then Zeb’s breakfast. Slowly, the tension went out of him. He genuinely liked Ramsey, and did not want trouble with him, especially as he so clearly understood the marshal’s position. He blamed Ramsey not at all for his stand; only for Zeb it was an impossible stand at the moment.

  “Who is Charlie Gant?” Lilith asked.

  Zeb looked at her in surprise, not that she should ask, but that he himself had never given it a thought. It might be, he told himself, extremely important to know just who Gant was.

  After all, who is any man? Charlie Gant was a gambler. He was also an outlaw. Moreover, he was a brother to Floyd Gant, who had not only been an outlaw but a gunman.

  Odd, when you came to think of it, how few gunfighters were actually outlaws. Some of them became outlaws later, often because of changes in public attitude or in the attitude of the law.

  A gunfighter, or gunman, was actually no more than a man who, because of some unusual gift of dexterity, coordination, and nerve, became better with a gun than others. He was no particular type of person, other than possessing more than usual ability to face a gun in another man’s hand and shoot back; nor was he of any particular profession. Most gunfighters had been officers of the law, but that was a result of their skill, rather than otherwise.

  Hickok had been a stagedriver and scout for the army. Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Billy Brooks, and many others had been buffalo hunters; Clay Allison, Pink Higgins, and John Slaughter had been ranchers, Ben Thompson a gambler, Doc Halliday a dentist, Temple Houston a lawyer. Billy the Kid had been a drifting cowhand and gambler, then a feudist in the Lincoln County war, and actually only an outlaw after that war ended.

  Chris Madsen had been a soldier in several armies, among them the French Foreign Legion; Buckey O’Neill was a ne
wspaper editor, probate judge, and superintendent of schools, as well as a frontier sheriff; many gunfighters had been ex-soldiers.

  And who was Charlie Gant?

  “Takes me back a long time when you ask that, Aunt Lil,” Zeb commented, “and Lou Ramsey knows it. That’s why he’s edgy about this situation.”

  “We knew Floyd first,” Julie said. “Zeb met him in the Panhandle when they were buffalo hunting.”

  “Not that we were ever friends,” Zeb said, “but we got along all right. It was sort of nip-and-tuck between us with pistols, but with a rifle I could outshoot him.

  “We had a little bet on who would get the most buffalo, and I won. Nothing was said about it at the time, but it didn’t set well with Charlie. Floyd took it all right, but Charlie lost a good deal of money.”

  Zeb Rawlings sat back and watched his coffee cup refilled. Talking about old times brought them back, and glancing at Julie, he saw a reminiscent glow in her eyes, too.

  They had been good days after he returned from the Panhandle to Kansas City, where Julie was waiting for him. He had made good money on the hunt, and they lived well. They had gone to New Orleans, and from there they took a boat to Galveston. He had bought cattle, and together they went on the drive to Kansas, where he sold at a good profit. He began to look as if he was on his way to becoming a success.

  His second cattle venture was pure failure. It began with a stampede in the Nation when they lost half their cattle, and ended with a pitched battle with Kiowas in which the cattle were driven off and three men and Zeb had fought off Kiowas for three days, without water. One man died, and Zeb and another brought the third man in, half dead, across their one horse.

  There had been no good news for Julie on that trip. She was in Dodge to meet him, and the little money they had was barely enough to tide them over and get them back to Texas. Zeb Rawlings went to Austin and joined the Texas Rangers. He had stayed with them two years.

  He had been marshal in a small cow town in West Texas when Charlie Gant showed up again. Before Zeb took the job they told him about Gant’s place…there had been several killings in the place, and at least two big winners at the tables had been murdered after leaving it.

  Zeb Rawlings moved in, watched, listened, and conducted a careful investigation. Then a man was stabbed and left for dead out back of the saloon. He lived long enough to let Zeb know it had happened in the saloon, and at Gant’s order—or at least, with his knowledge.

  There wasn’t evidence enough for a trial, and no court in less than a hundred miles, so Zeb walked into the saloon and up to the bar. Charlie himself came to wait upon him.

  “No,” Zeb said, refusing the drink. “I’m closing you up, Charlie.”

  Gant had merely stared at him. After a bit he said, “Don’t be a fool. You can’t close me up.”

  “As of twelve o’clock noon”—it was at that time a little after ten in the morning—“you’re closed. There is a stage at two o’clock. You’re to be on it.”

  Gant laughed, but without much humor. “You’re playing the fool, Rawlings. I won’t close, and you can’t close me.”

  “If I could prove some of the murders you’ve committed, or had committed,” Zeb replied quietly, “you would leave this town only in irons and under guard. As it is, I am giving you a chance.”

  Zeb Rawlings would never forget that morning. He had walked out of the saloon into the bright glare of the sun, and had no idea of how he would or could force Gant to close.

  At a few minutes after eleven two of Gant’s men rode into town. One of them went to the livery stable and took up his post outside. The other, after a talk with Gant, walked across the street from the marshal’s office and, seating himself on the edge of the walk, rolled and lit a cigarette.

  At a quarter to twelve the town’s banker and several other citizens appeared at the marshal’s office with shotguns and Winchesters. “We’re ready if you are, Rawlings. If they want action, they can have it.”

  “Thanks,” Zeb said, “but you just sit tight here in the office. Let me handle this.”

  They were disappointed, as he knew they would be, for as in most western towns the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker were ex-cowhands, Indian fighters, or Civil War veterans, always aching to get back in the saddle again.

  Rawlings circled out of the back door, ducked between two buildings, and got into the side door of an empty store building. From there he went to the roof.

  The building had been among the first to go up when the town was built and when Comanche raids were frequent. The roof had a three-foot parapet all the way around it, with loopholes every few feet. Several of those loopholes overlooked the front of the saloon, and Rawlings had long since observed that the entire first and second floors were covered from them.

  Zeb Rawlings had taken along a piece of stovepipe with one end pushed together to make a mouthpiece. Using it as a megaphone, he called out, “All right, Gant! Five minutes!”

  The man stationed opposite the marshal’s office dropped his cigarette and looked around quickly. Nervous because of the unexpected force that had gathered with shotguns and rifles, he was now really alarmed. Yet look where he might, he could see nothing. Within the saloon, Gant and two bartenders and three dealers were all armed and waiting, prepared for trouble.

  The five minutes dragged.

  It ended with the sudden boom of a Spencer .56 buffalo gun. Zeb had discarded his Winchester for the moment because of the psychological effect of that cannon boom from the .56.

  His first shot he put into the awning post against which the watching gunman was leaning. The heavy slug struck with tremendous force, shattering the post and showering the gunman with splinters.

  Instantly, Rawlings turned and, shooting through another hole, smashed the lantern above the other watcher, showering him with glass and coal oil. Both men dove for shelter, and Rawlings speeded one on his way with another boom from the Spencer, the slug smashing the wall just a jump ahead of him.

  Turning his gun on the saloon, where the waiting men had yet to locate him, Rawlings began a searching fire. His first shot smashed the roulette wheel which Gant had imported at great cost; a second ripped into the bar where someone might be hiding; and a third smashed the great mirror behind the bar. The last shot clipped the window sill to the right of the door.

  With seven more shells laid out, he reloaded quickly. Coolly and methodically he proceeded to rip the saloon from one end to the other with heavy .56 caliber slugs. He smashed bottles on the back bar, shot into every possible place of concealment.

  When he had finished, he reloaded again, and again riddled the saloon from floor to ceiling, from wall to wall.

  A shot answered him from the second floor, but he was not worried. He was moving from loophole to loophole and the adobe walls around him would turn anything but a cannon shell.

  On the other hand, the flimsy walls of the rooms over the saloon would not stop any kind of a slug. A .44 or .45 would penetrate seven to nine inches of pine, and his .56 would do much better. At this range of less than sixty feet, one of those slugs would go through everything, the full length of the building unless it brought up against a timber.

  Choosing all the likely spots where a man might take shelter and still see to fire back, Rawlings proceeded to search the place with riflefire. He had no desire to shoot anyone, but simply to demonstrate that he meant what he said.

  And nobody was killed; but four of the men inside the saloon suffered minor wounds, and all were ready to leave town. Gant went, vowing to return.

  Two months later, with two hired gunmen, he did return, and they timed it right to catch Zeb Rawlings emerging from the IXL Restaurant. They caught him in the door, and the first bullet turned him around, flattening him against the wall. It was that bullet that saved his life, for it was followed by the blast of a double-barreled shotgun that tore a hole in the door as large as a man’s head. Though Rawlings was hit, he was not out of action. He ope
ned fire from the doorway, then managed to get out on the street.

  His first shot killed a horse, his second burned one of the hired gunmen. In the shooting that followed, both the gunmen were killed, and a bullet struck Gant in the belly, only to be deflected by a rectangular brass buckle on his belt. The buckle was large and heavy, and it saved his life.

  A second bullet ripped along his ribs within inches of his heart, and Gant, thoroughly frightened, fled town. It was weeks before the bruise behind that buckle disappeared, but the scar on Charlie Gant’s consciousness lasted much longer.

  The following year, after Rawlings had recovered from the four wounds he had incurred in the gun battle, he was appointed a deputy United States marshal, operating in the Indian Territory.

  It had been a good job. The Territory was filled with outlaws, a few of them protected by renegade Indians, but most of them objected to and disliked by the Indians. The Indians of the eastern Territory were mostly of the Five Civilized Tribes—the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. Most of them lived like white men. A good many had education, a good many were veterans of the war, and others had ancestors who had fought with or against Jackson.

  Zeb Rawlings liked them, and he liked the Osages. He enjoyed his job. A good tracker, and accustomed to long hours in the saddle, he earned the respect even of the outlaws he pursued and brought to justice.

  It was one of these who gave him the warning.

  Del Meggeson was a horse-thief, and a good one. He had, in the course of an eventful life, held up a few stages, rustled a few cows, fought Indians, and worked as a teamster on a freight line. He was wanted for a shooting on Cabin Creek, and Zeb Rawlings went in and got him.

  Del saw the glint of light on the star, and he went for his gun. Zeb Rawlings held his fire. “No!” He spoke sharply, the command ringing in the hollow by the river. “Del, I’ve got the drop!”

  Del Meggeson, no man’s fool, froze his hand where it was. He was fair game, and knew it. He relaxed slowly. “I can’t see you,” he said conversationally, “and I never heard your voice before, but only one man in this part of the country would give me a break like that. You have to be Zeb Rawlings.”