The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 7

by Louis L'Amour

  Each of the others had a reason to be here at this hour. Barney Gard had opened his saloon and left it to the ministrations of his swamper. Jack Thomas directed the destinies of the livery stable. Johnny Haven, when he wasn’t getting drunk and trying to tree the town, was a hardworking young cowhand and thoroughly trustworthy.

  The older of the two women present was Mary Jameson, a plump and gossipy widow, the town’s milliner, dressmaker, and Niagara of conversation. When she finished her breakfast she would walk three doors down the street and open her shop.

  But what of the girl with the gray eyes? Her face was both delicate and strong, her hair dark and lovely, and she had an air of being to the manor born. Perhaps it was because she did possess that air, like someone from the marshal’s own past, that she seemed familiar. And also, he thought reluctantly, she was just the sort of girl—

  It was too late now, and there was no use thinking of it. He was not fool enough to believe there could be any such girl for him now. Not after all these years. And there was an antagonism in her eyes that he could not account for.

  The marshal glanced thoughtfully at Johnny Haven. The young cowboy was staring sourly at his plate or devoting his attention to his coffee. Over his right temple was a swelling and a cut. This, coupled with a hangover, had left Johnny in a disgruntled mood. Last night had been the end of his monthly spree, and the swelling and the cut were evidences of the marshal’s attention.

  Johnny caught the marshal’s glance and scowled. “You sure leave a man with a headache, Marshal. Did you have to slug me with a gun barrel?”

  Fitz Moore dusted the ash from his cigar. “I didn’t have an ax handle and nothing else would have been suitable for the job.” He added casually, “Of course, I could have shot you.”

  Johnny was perfectly aware of the fact and some marshals would have done exactly that. Coming from Fitz Moore it was almost an apology.

  “Is it so easy to kill men?” It was the girl with the gray eyes who spoke, her tone low and modulated but shaded with contempt.

  “That depends,” Fitz Moore replied with dignity, “on who is doing the shooting and the circumstances.”

  “I think”—and there was a flash of anger in her eyes—“that you would find it easy to kill. You might even enjoy killing. If you were capable of feeling anything at all.”

  The depth of feeling in her words was so obvious that, surprised, Johnny turned to look at her. Her face had gone pale, her eyes large.

  The marshal’s expression did not change. He knew Johnny understood, as any westerner would. Johnny Haven had himself given cause for shooting on more than one occasion. He also knew that what Marshal Fitz Moore had just said to him was more of an explanation than he had given any man. Fitz Moore had arrested Johnny Haven six times in as many months, for after every payday Johnny came to town hunting trouble. Yet Fitz Moore knew that Johnny Haven was simply a wild youngster with a lot of good stuff in him, one who simply needed taming and a sense of responsibility.

  The girl’s tone carried an animosity for which none of them could account, and it left them uneasy.

  Barney Gard got to his feet and dropped a dollar on the table. Johnny Haven and then the milliner followed him out. Jack Thomas loitered over his coffee.

  “That Henry outfit has me worried, Marshal,” he said. “You want me to get down the old scatter-gun, just in case?”

  Fitz Moore watched Barney Gard through the window. The saloon keeper had paused on the walk to talk to Johnny Haven. Under the stubble of beard Johnny’s face looked clean and strong, reminding the marshal, as it had before, of the face of another young man, scarcely older.

  “It won’t be necessary,” Fitz Moore replied. “I’ll handle them in my own way, in my own time. It’s my job, you know.”

  “Isn’t that a bit foolish? To refuse help?”

  The contempt in her voice stirred him, but he revealed nothing. He nodded gravely. “I suppose it might be, ma’am, but I was hired to do the job and take the risks.”

  “Figured I’d offer,” Thomas said, unwilling to let the matter drop. “You tell me what you figure to do, and I’ll be glad to help.”

  “Another time.” The marshal tasted his coffee again and looked directly at the girl. “You are new in Sentinel. Will you be staying long?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have relatives here?”

  “No.”

  He waited, but no explanation was offered. Fitz Moore was puzzled and he studied her from the corners of his eyes. There was no sound in the room but the ticking of the big, old-fashioned clock.

  The girl sat very still, the delicate line of her profile bringing to him a faint, lost feeling, a nostalgia from his boyhood when such women as she rode to hounds, when there was perfume on the air, blue grass, picket fences …

  And then he remembered.

  Thomas got to his feet. He was a big, swarthy man, always untidy, a bulge of fat pushing his wide belt. “You need any help, Marshal, you just call on me.”

  Fitz Moore permitted himself one of his rare smiles. “If there is any trouble, Jack,” he said gently, “you will be the first to know.”

  The clock ticked off the seconds after the door closed, and then the marshal broke the silence.

  “Why have you come here? What can you do in this place?”

  “All I have is here. Just a little west of here. I left the stage to hire a rig, and then I heard your name and I wanted to see what manner of man it would be who would kill his best friend.”

  He got to his feet. At that moment he knew better than ever what loneliness could mean.

  “You judge too quickly. Each man must be judged against the canvas of his own time, his own world.”

  “There is only one way to judge a killer.”

  “Wait. Wait just a little while and you will see what I mean. And please … stay off the street today. If you need a rig I will see you get a responsible man.” He walked to the door and paused with his hand on the knob. “He used to tell me about you. We talked often of you, and I came to feel I knew you. I had hoped, before it happened, that someday we would meet. But in a different world than this.

  “What will happen today I want you to see. I do not believe you lack the courage to watch what happens nor to revise your opinion if you feel you have been mistaken. Your brother, as you were advised in my letter, was killed by accident.”

  “But you shot him! You were in a great hurry to kill.”

  “I was in the midst of a gun battle. He ran up behind me.”

  “To help you.”

  “I believed him to be a hundred miles away, and in the town where we were I had no friends. It was quick. At such a time, one acts.”

  “Kill first,” she said bitterly, “look afterward.”

  His features were stiff. “I am afraid that is what often happens. I am sorry.”

  He lifted the latch. “When you see what happens today, try to imagine how else it might be handled. If you cannot see this as I do, then before night comes you will think me even more cruel than you do now. But you may understand, and where there is understanding there is no hate.”

  Outside the door he paused and surveyed the street with care. Not much longer now.

  Across from him was Gard’s Saloon. One block down was his office and across the street from it his small home. Just a little beyond was an abandoned barn. He studied it thoughtfully, glancing again at Gard’s with the bank diagonally across the street from the saloon, right past the milliner’s shop.

  It would happen here, upon this dusty street, between these buildings. Here men would die, and it was his mission to see that good men lived and had their peace, and the bad were kept from crime. As for himself, he was expendable … but which was he, the good or the bad?

  Fitz Moore knew every alley, every door, every corner in this heat-baked, alkali-stamped cluster of life that would soon become the arena. His eyes turned again to the barn. It projected several feet beyond the otherwise ca
refully lined buildings. The big door through which hay had once been hoisted gaped wide.

  So little time!

  He knew what they said about him. “Ain’t got a friend in town,” he had overheard Mrs. Jameson say. “Lives to hisself in that old house. Got it full of books, folks say. But kill you quick as a wink, he would. He’s cold … mighty cold.”

  Was he?

  When first he came to the town he found it a shambles, wrecked by a passing trail-herd crew. It had been terrorized by two dozen gamblers and gunmen, citizens robbed by cardsharps and thieves. Robbery had been the order of the day and murder all too frequent. Now it had been six months since the last murder. Did that count for nothing?

  He took out a fresh cigar and bit off the end. What was the matter with him today? He had not felt like this in years. Was it what they say happens to a drowning man and his whole life was passing before his eyes, just before the end? Or was it simply that he had seen Julia Heath, the sum and total of all he had ever wanted in a girl? And realizing who she was, realized also how impossible it had become?

  They had talked of it, he and Tom Heath, and Tom had written to Julia, suggesting she come west because he had found the man for her. And two weeks later Tom was dead with his, with Fitz Moore’s, bullet in his heart.

  The marshal walked along the street of false-fronted, weather-beaten buildings. Squalid and dismal as they might seem to a stranger they were the center of the world for those who lived in the country around. Here where mountains and desert met, the town was changing. It was growing with the hopes of its citizens and with the changing of times and needs. This spring, for example, flowers had been planted in the yard of a house near the church, and trees had been trimmed in another.

  From a haphazard collection of buildings catering to the needs of a transient people, the town of Sentinel was acquiring a sense of belonging, a consciousness of the future. The days of cattle drives were soon to be gone and where they had walked men would build and plant and harvest.

  Fitz Moore turned into the empty alley between the Emporium and the general store. Thoughts of his problem returned. With the marshal dead the town would be helpless until men could gather, choose a leader, and act. For the moment the town would be helpless.

  But how did they plan to kill him? That it had been planned he was sure, but it must be done soon and quickly, for the marshal would be the focal point of resistance.

  The loft of the abandoned barn commanded a view of the street. The outlaws would come into town riding toward the barn and somewhere along that street the marshal of Sentinel would be walking, covered by a hidden rifleman.

  He climbed up the stairs to the barn loft. The dust on the steps had been disturbed. At the top a board creaked under his boot. A rat scurried away. The loft was wide and empty, only dust and wisps of hay, a few cobwebs.

  From that wide door the raid might be stopped, but this was not the place for him. His place was down there in that hot, dusty street where his presence would count. Much remained to be done and there was but little time.

  Returning to his quarters, Fitz Moore thrust an extra gun into his pocket and belted on a third. Then he put two shotguns into a wool sack. Nobody would be surprised to see him carrying the sack, for he used it to bring firewood from the pile back of Gard’s.

  Jack Thomas was seated in a chair in front of the livery stable. Barney Gard came from the saloon, glanced at the marshal as if to assure himself of his presence, then went back inside. Fitz Moore paused, relighting his dead cigar, surveying the street over the match and under the brim of his hat.

  The topic of what might happen here if the Henry gang attempted to raid was not a new one. There had been much speculation. Several men aside from Thomas had brought up the subject, trying to feel him out, to discover what he thought, what he might plan to do.

  Jack Thomas turned his head to watch the marshal. He was a big, easygoing man with a ready smile. He had been one of the first to offer his services.

  Johnny Haven, seated on the steps of the saloon’s porch, looked up at the marshal, grinning. “How’s the town clown?” he asked.

  Moore paused beside him, drawing deep on the cigar and permitting himself a glance toward the loft door, almost sixty yards away and across the street. Deliberately, he had placed himself in line with the best shooting position.

  “Johnny,” he said, “if anything happens to me, I want you to have this job. If nothing happens to me I want you for my deputy.”

  Young Haven could not have been more astonished, but he was also deeply moved. He looked up at the marshal as if he thought his mind had been affected by the heat. Aside from the words the very fact that the marshal had ventured a personal remark was astonishing.

  “You’re twenty-six, Johnny, and it’s time you grew up. You’ve played at being the town roughneck long enough. I’ve looked the town over, and I’ve decided you’re the man for the job.”

  Johnny … Tom. He tried to avoid thinking of them together but there was a connection. Tom had been a good man, too. Now he was a good man gone. Johnny was a good one, no question about it. He had heard many stories of how dependable he was out on the range, but Johnny was walking the hairline of the law. A step too far and he could become an outlaw.

  Johnny Haven was profoundly impressed. To say that he both respected and admired this tall, composed man was no more than the truth. After Moore arrested him the first time Johnny had been furious enough to kill him, but each time he came into town he found himself neatly boxed and helpless.

  Nor had Moore ever taken unfair advantage, never striking one blow more than essential, never keeping the cowhand in jail an hour longer than necessary. And Johnny Haven was honest enough to realize he could never have handled the situation as well.

  Anger had dissolved into reluctant admiration. Only stubbornness and the pride of youth had prevented him from giving up the struggle.

  “Why pick on me?” He spoke roughly to cover his emotion. “You won’t be quitting.”

  There was a faint suggestion of movement from the loft. The marshal glanced at his watch. Two minutes to ten.

  “Johnny—?” The sudden change of tone brought Johnny’s head up sharply. “When the shooting starts there are two shotguns in this sack. Get behind the water trough and use one of them. Shoot from under the trough, it’s safer.”

  Two riders walked their horses into the upper end of the street, almost a block away. Two men on powerful horses, much better horses than were usually found on any cow ranch.

  Three more riders emerged from the space between the buildings, coming from the direction of Peterson’s corral. One of them was riding a gray horse. They were within twenty yards when Barney Gard came from his saloon carrying two canvas bags. He was starting for the bank, and one of the riders reined his horse around to come between Gard and his goal.

  “Shotgun in the sack, Gard.” The marshal’s tone was conversational.

  Then, sunlight glinted on a rifle barrel in the loft door. Fitz Moore took one step forward and drew. The thunder of the rifle merged a little late with the bark of his own gun. The rifle clattered, falling, and an arm fell loosely from the loft door.

  The marshal’s turn was abrupt, yet smooth. “All right, Henry!” His voice was like the blare of a trumpet in the narrow street. “You’ve asked for it! Now take it!”

  There was no request for surrender. The rope awaited these men, death rode their hands and their guns.

  As one man they went for their guns. The marshal leaped into the street, landing flat-footed and firing. The instant of surprise was his, and they were mounted on nervous horses. His first shot had killed the man in the loft, the second killed Fred Henry.

  Behind and to his right a shotgun’s deep roar blasted the sun-filled morning. The man on the gray horse died falling, his gun throwing a useless shot into the hot, still air.

  A rider leaped his horse at the marshal but Fitz Moore stood his ground and fired. The rider’s face seemed t
o disintegrate under the impact of the bullet.

  And then there was silence. The roaring of guns was gone and only the faint smells lingered, the acrid tang of gunpowder, of blood in the dust, the brighter crimson of blood on a saddle.

  Johnny Haven got up slowly from behind the horse trough. Barney Gard stared around as if just awakened, the canvas bags at his feet, his hands gripping the shotgun Johnny had thrown him.

  There was a babble of sound then and people running into the street, and a girl with gray eyes watching. Those eyes seemed to reach across the street and into the heart of the marshal.

  “Only one shot!” Barney Gard exclaimed. “I got off only one shot and missed that one!”

  “The Henry gang wiped out!” yelled an excited citizen. “Wait until Thomas hears that!”

  “He won’t be listenin’,” somebody said. “They got him.”

  Fitz Moore turned like a duelist. “I got him,” he said flatly. “He was their man. He tried all morning to find out what I’d do if they showed up. Besides, he was hostler at the livery stable at the time of the holdup at the Springs.”

  AN HOUR LATER Johnny Haven followed the marshal into the street. Four men were dead, two were in jail. “How did you know, Marshal?”

  “You learn, Johnny. You learn or you die. That’s your lesson for today. Learn to be in the right place at the right time and keep your own counsel. You’ll be getting my job.” His cigar was gone. He bit the end from another and continued.

  “Jack Thomas was the only man the rider of the gray horse could have visited without crossing the street. No outlaw would have left the horse he would need for a quick getaway on the wrong side of the street.”

  When he returned to the eating house Julia Heath was at her table again. She was white and shaken.

  “I am sorry, Julia, but now you know how little time there is when guns are drawn. These men came to steal the money honest men worked to earn, and they would have killed again as they have killed before. Such men know only the law of the gun.” He placed his hands on the table. “I should have recognized you at once, but I never imagined, after what happened, that you would come. I had forgotten about Tom’s ranch. He was proud of you, and he was my best friend.”