Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  He stopped just inside the door and looked straight at me. He was wearing a holster, as always, but he carried a sleeve gun, too. That was what I thought of now.

  “You cover a lot of country,” I said. “Pull up a bench and sit down.”

  He crossed to the table and sat opposite me, which put him around the corner from where Red was sitting. If he so much as glanced at Red, I did not see it. He was totally concerned with me, totally concentrated. He was like a bull snake facing a mouse…only I didn’t feel like a mouse.

  He turned and looked at Red. “This will be a private conversation, do you mind?”

  Red got up. “Nope, I surely don’t.” Then Red looked at me. “Abide is the word,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said, and he walked over to the bar.

  Yant studied me. “You’ve grown up,” he said. “You’ve come a long way.”

  “Things been sort of pushing me,” I said.

  “You didn’t make it to Carolina,” he said, smiling with that chilly little smile he had.

  “I didn’t have to go,” I said. “It’s all taken care of without me.”

  That startled him. “What? What do you mean?”

  “Made a tie-up with Ben Blocker,” I said, “who is a big cattleman. With him and his lawyer. I didn’t have to go east, because I sent my lawyer to look after things.”

  It shocked him. Obviously he had known nothing about Attmore, nor apparently had he had any idea of my using a lawyer. There are those, and we were both of that sort, who handle such matters on a one-to-one basis. The intervention of third parties is unpleasant and not to be considered. There are people who live out their entire lives in such a manner, and Yant was probably one. Essentially a loner, a cold, distant man, he probably had few contacts away from his immediate family, and it was possible they saw little of each other unless drawn together by some mutual need.

  “I am going into the cattle business,” I added, “and just did not have time, and this lawyer was from that part of the country and understands the situation.”

  Obviously it was something they had not bargained for. They had centered their attention upon me—eliminate me and the field was clear.

  “Now,” I said, and this I did not know, “the matter has been settled. If anything happens to me, the estate goes to my heirs, and you folks aren’t among them.”

  “You’re lying.” I am sure that made him feel better, but he was obviously worried. “Nothing can be done that fast.”

  “It can,” I said, “when the man doing the fixing has the right connections. He’s related to a judge and some other folks. He looked over the papers and didn’t figure it would take long.”

  He sat very still. Slats came over with a pot of coffee. “One for my friend,” I said, “and for me.”

  “You’re cool,” Yant said at last. “You have guessed that we have you trapped and you’re trying to talk your way out of it.”

  “No,” I replied, after a minute, “I am not talking my way out of it, and I don’t want to.” Surprisingly, I realized what I had said was true. I’d been too busy running and protecting myself to think about it all, but now I was getting mad, and the more I thought about it, the madder I became. “You and your folks have been begging for trouble. You’ve hunted me and hounded me, and it stops here. By this time you should have learned better. You’ve lost one man—”

  “Two,” Felix said. “For that alone we would kill you.”

  “I skinned up a few others,” I added.

  He looked at me, and for a moment there was a shadow of something else in his eyes, almost a wistfulness. “I am sorry it is this way,” he said then. “Maybe if—”

  “You murdered my father,” I said.

  He shrugged. “He was in the way, as you are now. I am not alone in this. It involves all of us, and our futures. We were so sure your father was dead…had been killed. And then you…” His voice trailed off and he was silent.

  Not for an instant did I relax. This was a dangerous man, and perhaps he was trying to get me off guard. My ears were alive to the slightest sound, too, although I observed Red standing at the bar in such a way that he could watch both doors. What we were expecting never happened, for suddenly the bat-wing doors were shoved aside and two men came into the room. Both men wore badges. The first one was a small, gray-haired man, but with a look about him that called for no nonsense.

  They came right to our table. He looked at me, then at Yant. “I understand you two and some of your friends out there are having difficulties.”

  “Not really,” Yant started to say. “I—”

  “You,” the gray-haired man said, “are riding out of town. You are leaving now, and I mean right now. I will tolerate no shooting in our streets. I don’t give a damn what your troubles are, but settle them somewhere else…not here.”

  “Officer,” Yant said, “I do not think we need listen to any more of that. Outside are—”

  “I know,” the marshal replied grimly, “several more of your murdering kind, and right now they are being watched by six good citizens armed with shotguns and buffalo guns. Get out now—and fast!”

  When Yant had gone, I sat very still, waiting. After walking to the door with Yant, he came back to me. “All right, I am giving you one hour to clear out. Let them get on their way and then you go.”

  Red spoke up. “He’s supposed to meet a man here, Marshal. It is important.”

  “That’s his hard luck,” the marshal said. “You get your gear and your horses and get out, do you hear me? I’ve nothing personal against you, don’t even know who you are, but I want no shooting in my town. Do you understand?”

  “Of course,” I replied. “In your place I’d have taken the same action. I will be gone within the hour.”

  As I rose he noticed my belt gun and smiled grimly. “Ready with it, were you? Well, I don’t blame you. They’re a bad lot. There’s a way down the Picketwire that Red here can show you. In your place, I’d keep off the trail and along the river and cut off up Burro Canyon toward the Spanish Peaks.”

  His cold gray eyes warmed a little. “Been on the dodge a time or two in my younger days. Know how it feels.”

  Red took me down the lanes between barns and corrals, along a muddy little street overhung by trees to the riverbed. For a while we sat there, looking over the country ahead of me.

  “On your own,” Red said. “I got to wait for your friend.”

  “If he figures to traipse along after me,” I said, “he’d better pull his head down into his collar, because I’ve no friends around that I know of and I am going to be looking out for Yants or L’Ollonaises or whatever they call themselves. I’ll be right edgy about the time he catches up to me…if he does.”

  “He will.”

  “I’m cutting out for Apishapa Pass right now, yonder west of the Spanish Peaks. If he’s so anxious to get himself into a shooting fight, tell him to come on…whoever he is. I’m going to be needing all the help I can get, but tell him no more running and dodging for me. From here on I’m hunting scalps.”

  Red turned his horse around, lifted a hand, and loped off. Me, I just sat there a mite, studying the country without anybody around, and then I took off toward the west, keeping to cover.

  Nobody needed to tell me this was a showdown. They wanted it and I wanted it. All of a sudden I realized I wasn’t at all scared. I was wary and I was ready.

  The way they indicated was a good one, and holding to the river bottom of the Purgatoire, I rode westward until I was about opposite Reilly Canyon. Riding up out of the riverbed, I found my way into the trees and cut across the hill to Burro Canyon.

  When I came down into the Burro Canyon trail, I found none but old tracks, and started up canyon, riding at a good gait.

  The mountain air was cool and pleasant, with a smell of pines and wood smoke from the fires of a few prospectors working along the canyon or small draws opening into it. There was no sound but the hoofs of my own horses. Looking u
p the slopes around and before me, I could see the lighter green of aspen thickly massed along the mountainsides.

  Checking every trail that came in from a branch canyon, I found nothing, yet I knew my enemies were not far off and would be making every effort to locate me.

  Before me loomed the towering Spanish Peaks, clouds gathering around them. “Rain, boy,” I said to the roan. “She’s going to rain. I think we’d better hole up.”

  High above on the slope ahead I glimpsed what looked to be a small bench tucked into a corner of an aspen grove. Riding past it and looking for a way up, I found what I wanted and rode a switchback route up that steep slope.

  It was not all I’d hoped, but I could get my horses back far enough so as not to be seen from below. Stripping their gear, I picketed them on the meadow and went to work to build a shelter. From the ominous look of the clouds gathering over the mountains, I did not have much time.

  At the near edge of the aspen were dozens of small trees from six to eight feet tall, and going among them I cut off a few of the smaller ones close to the ground, then bent the tops of four of the eight-foot trees together and tied them, adding others where their position made them useful. Working swiftly, taking only time to glance at the lowering clouds from time to time, I gathered spruce boughs and thatched the dome-shaped frame, working from the bottom up with each successive layer overlapping the one below.

  Gathering other spruce boughs, I made a bed for myself, and in a relatively sheltered place outside the shelter I laid a fire and a crude reflector made of some great slabs of bark from a deadfall.

  After building a fire, I dipped water from a stream and started my coffee. Then I returned to my thatching. By the time I had water boiling, a few spattering drops of rain were falling. Running out to the meadow, I brought my horses in close to my own shelter, for there was much good feed to be found under the aspen. Then I added fuel to my fire, hustled my gear into the shelter, and was all snugged down for the night.

  Frying the last of my bacon, I ate a chunk of biscuit and drank what amounted to three cups of strong black coffee. Hungry as I was, it tasted good. The rain had increased to a steady downpour, and here and there large drops fell inside my shelter, but not enough to worry about. I’d taken the trouble to build where no water ran, and where it could not gather in pools. Outside my horses stirred from time to time.

  Lying on my back in the darkness, my face carefully situated between places where large drops occasionally fell, I stared up into the blackness of night and thought how little it took to really satisfy a man.

  Shelter, a small fire, food, and a time to rest. It wasn’t much, but I’d been so many times with less. This, I reflected, might easily be my last night on earth. Whatever else I was getting into, one thing was sure. It would be a fight with nobody to stop it and no getting away.

  Momentarily I wondered who the “friend” might be of whom Red had spoken. Who was there? I shook my head in the darkness. It had to be a mistake. Pa was dead and I had no friends close enough to help, certainly none who could send men out to watch the different routes I might have taken.

  For a long time I lay awake, mostly thinking about Laurie and wondering how she was. The movements of my horses were reassuring, for that roan would let nobody come near without snorting, blowing, or showing his anxiety in one way or another.

  Sitting up, I added a few sticks to the edge of my fire to keep it smoldering. Then pulling my blankets around my shoulders, I went to sleep.

  Snug and warm I slept, but I awakened to dampness and cold. Turning on my back, I looked up at the spruce boughs overhead. Much of the rain had run off due to my thatching, but some had come through. Sitting up, I put on my hat, shook out my boots, and tugged them on. Then I got to my knees and put on my gun belt, thrusting my spare into my waistband.

  My fire was cold and dead, but I dearly wanted a cup of coffee, so I started the fire again and put the coffee closer. It was the remnants of last night’s coffee and so would be strong enough to float an ox, but right now that was what I needed.

  With all tracks washed out, they were not going to find me unless by accident or the smell of my smoke, and I wanted my coffee enough to take the risk. Brushing off any twigs or leaves I’d picked up, I carefully rolled my blanket and ground-sheet.

  It was still raining but it had settled down to a fine, gentle rain. Building up the fire a bit, I warmed the saddle blanket a mite and then saddled up, wiping away most of the water on the roan’s back before I put the blanket on him.

  If my friend found me, he was going to have to be good. Still, he would know I was directed to Burro Canyon, and the rest might follow from there. But this was not a much-used trail, and I believed it would drop off to the west and let me down into White Creek or at the head of Echo. I’d never been up this far before. I was a mite southwest of the West Peak of the twins, and they towered above me. The nearest one was over thirteen thousand feet and the other only slightly less. There were several lesser peaks, including Sawtooth, just west of them.

  Stepping into the saddle, I turned off along the bench I was on, keeping the aspen between me and the trail below. Now I was through running. They were somewhere about and I meant to find them.

  From time to time I paused to listen. Sounds carry well in the mountains, although a peak or a shoulder of mountain can screen them away from a man. Yet I heard nothing.

  The trees grew thicker. The bench fed onto a small plateau between West Spanish Peak and the White Peaks. It offered a way north, skirting some slide rock by a very rough route.

  Topping out on a low ridge, I pulled up at the edge of the spruce and looked back the way I had come. It was well that I did, for they were there, maybe four or five miles back. Four, I counted, following right along the way I had come. And there very easily could be more of them somewhere around.

  Above me loomed the naked rocks of West Spanish Peak, and I sat my saddle, watching them come, only specks along the trail, unrecognizable as anything but men on horseback at this distance. Turning, I glanced up at the peak that towered above me.

  This was Huajatolla, the double mountain, often called “the breasts of the world.” There were dozens of legends about them and about their being the home of the highest gods. Years ago pa had told me stories of the gold that was said to have been taken from them by the Aztecs and carried away to Mexico. Legends, or the stuff of legends. If mines there were, they have been long since covered by slides. Sun worshipers were rumored to have had a temple on the eastern peak.

  Wind ran a ripple through the aspen just below me, moving across them like a small wave in a sea. The rain had stopped. Here and there the sun threw a shaft of light down from the clouds.

  On my left staggered platoons of spruce advanced up the steep sides of the West Peak, platoons broken by inroads of slide rock weathered from off the peak. Here and there pockets of snow remained clinging to shadowed places. The pass swung westward here to descend to White Creek, but I turned north, planning to cut over to the head of Echo. And then I saw the knoll.

  It was low, covered with spruce, some of them fallen across and among some moss-covered boulders. Long ago someone, Indian or white, had camped there, for a little circle of blackened stones indicated where fires had been. Behind it on the slope there was grass, then scattered spruce, and a dim trail through the spruce seemed to point toward Echo Creek. Riding up the knoll, I turned in the saddle and looked back down the trail. From this spot one had a perfect field of fire.

  Dismounting, I led the horses back to that grassy slope and picketed them there. Taking my Winchester, I walked back to the rocks and brush atop the knoll and sat down in a comfortable place.

  I was tired of running, tired of wondering what came next, ready for a showdown. They were many and I was one, but before this day was over, I told myself, I’d lessen the odds.

  Warm sunlight came through the broken clouds. Far-off rain still obscured the distance. I nibbled at a cracker, and a curious
whiskey-jack hopped close, watching for crumbs. Breaking off a piece, I tossed it to him, and he accepted it quickly and hopped nearer, either trusting too much or secure in his ability to fly quickly up and away.

  They were closer now, coming on without seeming to worry, sure no doubt that I was still running. The rifle felt good in my hands, my position was excellent, and I had a getaway route at the back. Nor was the knoll isolated. If need be, I could move to either direction under partial cover.

  My shoulder was still stiff and I moved carefully, sparing it. Good health, natural strength, and the clean, fresh air of the mountain country healed wounds quickly. I took a sight on a turn in the trail. It was a good four hundred yards off. To the right of it a splash of scarlet gilia ran down the slope, the flowers red as blood.

  Pushing my hat back on my head, I placed my rifle on the tree trunk I intended using for a rest and got out another cracker, sharing it with the whiskey-jack.

  How did a man feel, living his last hours? Was I, now? The air was fresh off the peaks, cool with a chill of snow and the icy cold that was up there, only a couple of thousand feet above me.

  A bird flew up down by the trail, and the first rider appeared. They were hunting me and they had shown they would kill without hesitation, so I shot him.

  My sight was purposely low, for they were coming up the mountain, but my bullet went where intended, a flickering light on his vest, a medallion, perhaps, or a gold nugget on his watch chain.

  He must have convulsed at the moment the bullet hit him, spurring his horse by accident, for the gray horse leaped forward, the rider swaying loosely in the saddle, then falling.

  He toppled from the saddle, hitting hard beside the trail, falling in that splash of gilia while the gray horse came running on up the slope and past me, stirrups flopping.

  The rifle shot slapped against the rocky peaks and echoed off down the canyons, and then it was still. The whiskey-jack rustled impatiently among the leaves, and far overhead an eagle soared.

  My eyes went from the trail, where the others might appear, to the fallen man. A man shot so is rarely killed at once but dies slowly, yet to aim at a man’s head when the body presents so much the better target was foolhardy. There was no movement. Either the fallen man was still in shock, was shot through the spine, or was lying still to deceive me. In any case, I remained where I was.