He swallowed that one. Maybe he wasn’t the type for double harness, but if he was, Rusty Monaghan was the girl. And why shouldn’t he be? Ward McQueen had been the same sort of hombre as himself, and Ward was marrying his boss—as pretty a girl as ever owned a ranch.
While he had decided to homestead this place simply because of Targ’s high-handed manner, he could see that it was an excellent piece of range. From talk at the Y7 he knew there were more of these mountain meadows, and some of the other ranchers from below could move their stock up. His sudden decision, while based on pure deviltry, was actually a splendid idea.
His cattle were on the range, even if they still wore Monaghan’s brand. That was tantamount to possession if he could make it stick, and Kim Sartain was not a man given to backing down when his bluff was called. The camp across the pool was growing quiet, for one after another of the men was turning in. A heavy-bodied, bearded man sat near the fire, half dozing. He was the one man on guard.
Quietly, Kim began to inch around the pool, and by the time an hour had passed and the riders were snoring loudly, he had completed the circuit to a point where he was almost within arm’s length of the nearest sleeper. En route he had acquired something else—a long forked stick.
With infinite care, he reached out and lifted the belt and holster of the nearest rider, then, using the stick, retrieved those of the man beyond. Working his way around the camp, he succeeded in getting all the guns but those of the watcher, and those of Clay Tanner. These last he deliberately left behind. Twice, he had to lift guns from under the edges of blankets, but only once did a man stir and look around, but as all was quiet and he could see the guard by the fire, the man returned to his sleep.
Now Kim got to his feet. His bad leg was stiff, and he had to shift it with care, but he moved to a point opposite the guard. Now came the risky part, and the necessity for taking chances. His Colt level at the guard, he tossed a pebble against the man’s chest. The fellow stirred, but did not look up. The next one caught him on the neck, and the guard looked up to see Kim Sartain, a finger across his lips for silence, the six-shooter to lend authority.
The guard gulped loudly, then his lips slackened and his eyes bulged. The heavy cheeks looked sick and flabby. With a motion of the gun, Kim indicated the man was to rise. Clumsily, the fellow got to his feet and at Sartain’s gesture, approached. Then Sartain turned the man around, and was about to tie his hands when the fellow’s wits seemed to return. With more courage than wisdom, he suddenly bellowed, “Targ! Tanner! It’s him!”
Kim Sartain’s pistol barrel clipped him a ringing blow on the skull, and the big guard went down in a heap. Looking across his body, Kim Sartain drew his other gun. “You boys sit right still,” he said, smiling. “I don’t aim to kill anybody unless I have to. Now all of you but Tanner get up and move to the left.”
He watched them with cat’s eyes, alert for any wrong move. When they were lined up opposite him, all either barefooted or in sock feet, he motioned to Tanner. “You get up, Clay. Now belt on your guns, but careful! Real careful!”
The gunman got shakily to his feet, his eyes murderous. He had been awakened from a sound sleep to look into Sartain’s guns and see the hard blaze of the eyes beyond them. Nor did it pass unnoticed that all the guns had been taken but his, and his eyes narrowed, liking that implication not a bit.
“Targ,” Kim said coldly, “you and your boys listen to me! I was ridin’ through this country a perfect stranger until you tried to get mean! I don’t like to have nobody ridin’ me, see? So I went to see Mon-aghan, whom I’d never heard about until you mentioned him. I made a deal for cows, and I’m in these meadows to stay. You bit off more than you could chew.
“Moreover, you brought this yellow-streaked, coyote-killin’ Tanner in here to do your gunslinging for you. The rest of you boys are mostly cowhands. You know the right and wrong of this as well as I do! Well, right here and now we’re goin’ to settle my claim on this land! I left Tanner his guns after takin’ all yours because I figured he really wanted me. Now he’ll get his chance; afterwards if any of the rest of you want, you can buy in, one at a time! When the shootin’s over here tonight, the fight’s over.”
His eyes riveted on Targ. “You hear that, Jim Targ? Tanner gets his chance, then you do, if you want it. But you make no trouble for Tom Monaghan, and no trouble for me. You’re just a little man in a big country, you can keep your spread and run it small, or you can pull your freight!”
As he finished speaking, he turned back to Tanner. “Now, you killer for pay, you’ve got your guns. I’m going to holster mine.” His eyes swung to the waiting cowhands. “You,” he indicated an oldish man with cold blue eyes and drooping gray mustaches, “give the word!”
With a flick of his hands, the guns dropped into their holsters. Jim Targ’s eyes narrowed, but his cowhands were all attention. Kim Sartain knew his Western men. Even outlaws like a man with nerve and would see him get a break.
“Now!” the gray-mustached man yelled. “Go for ’em!”
Tanner spread his hands wide. “No! No!” He screamed the words. “Don’t shoot!”
He was unused to meeting men face to face with an even break. The very fact that Sartain had left his guns for him, a taunt and a dare as well as an indication of Sartain’s confidence, had wrecked what nerve the killer had.
Now he stepped back, his face gray. With death imminent, all the courage went out of him. “I ain’t got no grudge agin you!” he protested. “It was that Targ! He set me on to you!”
The man who had given the signal exploded with anger. “Well, of all the yellow two-bit, four-flushin’ windbags!” His words failed him. “And you’re supposed to be tough!” he said contemptuously.
Targ stared at Tanner, then shifted his eyes to Sartain. “That was a good play!” he said. “But I made no promises! Just because that coyote has yellow down his spine is no reason I forfeit this range!”
“I said,” Sartain commented calmly, “the fighting ends here.” Stooping, he picked up one of the gun belts and tossed it to Targ’s feet. “There’s your chance, if you want a quick slide into the grave!”
Targ’s face worked with fury. He had plenty of courage, but he was remembering that lightning draw of the day before, and knew he could never match it, not even approach it. “I’m no gunfighter!” he said furiously. “But I won’t quit! This here range belongs to me!”
“My cattle are on it,” Kim said coolly. “I hold it. You set foot on it even once, and I’ll hunt you down wherever you are and shoot you like a dog!”
Jim Targ was a study in anger and futility. His big hands opened and closed, and he muttered an oath. Whatever he was about to say was cut off short, for the gray-mustached hand yelled suddenly, “Look out!”
Kim wheeled, crouched and drawing as he turned. Tanner, his enemy’s attention distracted, had taken the chance he was afraid to take with Sartain’s eyes upon him. His gun was out and lifting, but Kim’s draw was a blur of motion, then a stab of red flame. Tanner’s shot plowed dust at his feet. Then the killer wilted at the knees, turned halfway around, and fell into the dust beside the fire.
Sartain’s gun swung back, but Targ had not moved, nor had the others. For an instant, the tableau held, and then Kim Sartain holstered his gun.
“Targ,” he said, “you’ve made your play, and I’ve called you. Looks to me like you’ve drawn to a pair of deuces.”
For just a minute the cattleman hesitated. He had his faults, but foolishness was not one of them. He knew when he was whipped. “I guess I have,” he said ruefully. “Anyway, that trail would have been pure misery, a buildin’. Saves us a sight of work.”
He turned away, and the hands bunched around him. All but the man with the gray mustache. His eyes twinkled.
“Looks like you’ll be needin’ some help, Sartain. Are you hirin’?”
“Sure!” Sartain grinned suddenly. “First thing, catch my horse—and then take charge until I get back here!
”
THE BOARDINGHOUSE TRIANGLE at the Y7 was clanging loudly when the dun cantered into the yard.
Kim dismounted stiffly and limped up the steps.
Tom Monaghan came to his feet, his eyes widened. The hands stared. Kim noted with relief that all were there. One man had a bandage around his head, another had his arm in a sling, his left arm, so he could still eat.
“Sort of wound things up,” Sartain explained. “There won’t be any trouble with Targ in the high meadows. Figured to drop down and have some breakfast.”
Kim avoided Rusty’s eyes and ate in silence. He was on his second cup of coffee when he felt her beside him. Then, clearing a space on the table, she put down a pie, its top golden brown and bulging with the promise of fruit underneath.
He looked up quickly. “I knew you’d be back,” she said simply.
About Louis L’Amour
“I think of myself in the oral tradition—
as a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man
in the shadows of the campfire.
That’s the way I’d like to be remembered—as a storyteller.
A good storyteller.”
It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.
Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.
Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs, including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies, and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.
Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are more than 300 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.
His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel), Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available as audio downloads and on CD from Random House Audio publishing.
The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.
Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour publishing tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Louis and Katherine L’Amour Trust
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-553-90705-6
www.bantamdell.com
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The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 7 Page 56
