Novel 1968 - Chancy (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  My bullet spat slivers from the post. I worked the lever, dropped quickly to one knee, and fired again. I saw the dust leap from his jacket, and his bullet threw dust in front of me. I started to lunge to my feet, but went suddenly weak and sprawled in the dust, still frantically working the lever.

  Caxton Kelsey was up. Bloody and staggering, he was on his feet, lining his pistol at me as I lay there. Rolling over, I came to one knee and fired into him. His bullet hit the top of my shoulder, and I felt the sharp, angry burn of it. Then I fired again.

  He stood an instant, the gun dangling from his fingers, then he sat down abruptly, staring at nothing. And then he simply lay down and rolled over.

  Crouching there, I held my rifle ready, watching him. In a moment, using the rifle for a crutch, I pushed myself to my feet and took a step to the edge of the walk, where I sat down hard, gripping the rifle, still watching Kelsey.

  People began to appear on the street, and Handy Corbin was suddenly pushing through them. He crossed the street to me.

  “You got him! By the Lord Harry, you got him! They were offerin’ ten-to-one odds and no takers that he’d gun you down!”

  “What about Prince?” I asked.

  Handy Corbin shrugged, and looked away uncomfortably. “You got to understand that, boss,” he said, almost apologetically. “He was one of our own, and it was up to me to do. We’re good folks, mostly, and we aim to do right. LaSalle was no good—right from the start there was something cross-grained about him. He was forever a-tryin’ to lead us boys into trouble. Two, three times as he was growin’ up pa got him out of trouble, but it seemed like he got wilder and meaner.

  “Then a neighbor of ours sold some sheep, and LaSalle met him on the road and LaSalle had a bottle. The two of them got to drinkin’, and first thing you know that neighbor woke up with a thick head and his money gone. LaSalle, he began spendin’ down at the corners, and we knew what must have happened. That man braced him with it, and LaSalle shot him. Didn’t kill him, but hurt him bad, and then LaSalle, he taken out.

  “Next thing we knew he was off buffalo huntin’, but he spent more time huntin’ buffalo hunters than buffalo. He sold a team of grays in Cherry Creek, Colorado, that had belonged to a couple of brothers working out of Abilene. Somebody recognized the horses, and later the bodies were found. LaSalle, he became an outlaw. He went from that to killin’ for hire, and we figured we’d turned loose a mad wolf on the country, and it was up to us to slow him down. Pa, he saddled up and rode off to have a talk with him.

  “LaSalle, he laughed at pa. Said he was a sanctimonious old fool, and told him to go on back home whilst he was able. Pa wasn’t about to take that off no man, and he told LaSalle to take off his guns, because he was sure enough goin’ to whup him. Pa stripped off his guns, and then LaSalle drew one of his and shot pa. He shot him in the knee, and he fell, and when he tried to get up, he shot him in the other. He cussed pa out, then killed him. So I’ve been huntin’ him ever since, and teachin’ myself to be fast enough to beat him.”

  Me, I was beginning to get the reaction now, the letdown that comes after. I didn’t want to talk, I wanted to get in somewhere off the street. Corbin helped me down to the Doc’s office, where Bob Tarlton was a-pacing the floor. He’d heard the shooting—in fact, it woke him from a nap he was taking. The Doc was there and wouldn’t let him go out on the street.

  It felt good just to stretch out on that table, for I was all in. That was one time I’d not have given a plugged nickel for Otis Tom Chancy’s possibilities, and nobody knew better than me how lucky I’d been.

  As it was, I’d caught a slug through the shoulder that missed the bone. I had a deep furrow across the top of the shoulder, and at least two bullet burns I didn’t even recall getting. I’d lost some blood and a whole lot of steam.

  But the thing that worried me now was Kit. There was no sign of her, but she might be hunting me right then.

  “Handy,” I said, “you go down to the hotel and find Miss Dunvegan. Tell her I’m all right.”

  The Doc looked around. “She was around here earlier, Chancy. She had that cowhand of yours, Juniper Cogan. She was hunting the marshal.”

  The marshal? Where had he been, anyway? Was he like some of those cowtown marshals who preferred to see trouble shoot itself out? Some of them never lifted a hand, as long as the town’s citizens were left alone.

  Well, I started to get up and the Doc pushed me down. “You lie still. You may not be shot up as bad as I expected, but you’ve lost a lot of blood and you’re weaker than a cat.”

  Tarlton got up. “I’ll go with him, Otis. You rest easy now.…Who did you say the girl was?”

  “Her name is Kitty Dunvegan, and she’s pretty as all get out. Come noontime tomorrow, we’re getting married.”

  “We’ll find her then,” Tarlton said. “But I know June Cogan, and if she’s with him she’ll be all right.”

  Chapter 15

  THEY LEFT ME alone there, with the lamp wick turned low, lying up in bed with a lot of weakness and some pain, and a mighty wish to be up and doing that faded as tiredness set in.

  It seemed as if I’d been going at top pace as long as I could recall, and there was nothing for it but to rest now.

  It worried me that Kit Dunvegan was in that wild western town, maybe alone and without protection. I should have known they bred them strong in Tennessee, for Kit was a girl with a mind of her own, and ideas of her own.

  Finally I put a hand above the lamp chimney and blew out the light. I could smell the smoldering wick for a few minutes, and then I must have slept, for when I opened my eyes again, Kit was sitting there in a chair beside the bed reading a book, and it was clear daylight beyond the curtains.

  For several minutes I said nothing, just enjoying the look of her there, sitting so prim and still, turning the leaves of her book. Looking back, I could scarcely recall when last a woman had sat at my bedside, and then it was ma, when I was a sick boy.…

  She turned her head and met my eyes, and for a moment we looked at each other, not speaking, and then she jumped up. “The doctor said you were to have some hot broth when you woke up.”

  “Where were you? I was worried.”

  She ran her hands down her apron, smoothing it. “I went to see Queenie Gates.”

  “You what?”

  “I really didn’t think she was all that pretty…hard-looking, sort of.”

  “You went to see that she-cat? Don’t you realize you could have been hurt?”

  “By her?” She looked disdainful. “I could handle her. But I took the marshal along, and Juniper Cogan. I wanted some witnesses.”

  “To what?”

  “To a deposition. If we were going to bring charges against you for shooting that man back in the Nation, we had to have evidence, didn’t we? Naturally, if he was my uncle I’d want you punished, wouldn’t I?”

  “You told her that?”

  “Well…I implied it. It wasn’t actually said. But we had to have her sworn account of the gun battle, and she was very anxious to give us all the information she had. How he was armed and all, but you shot him without giving him a chance.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Of course, we had her describe the weapon…we wanted that for evidence, you know, because you were in possession of the gun. She described the ivory-handled gun in detail. Swore to her evidence, and June and the marshal witnessed it.”

  What could I say to that? While I was busy stalking Andy Miller, she was making her own plans and carrying them out.

  “Where were you when the shooting started?” I asked.

  “In her room…at the door, in fact. We were just leaving.”

  Kit went to the other room and returned with the broth. Then she went on with her story.

  “Queenie said, ‘You needn’t have bothered. Chancy won’t live to see prison. Kelsey will kill him.’

  “I couldn’t resist telling her then, so I said, ‘Otis Tom won’t die that ea
sy, Mrs. Gates. You’ll see. I’ve known him since I was a little girl.’

  “Well, you should have seen her face. She caught up the empty water pitcher and threw it at me, but Mr. Cogan jerked the door shut…just in time. I’m afraid she was very angry.”

  Bob Tarlton came in about then. He was up and about, although looking mighty thin. “Juniper Cogan and Handy went out to the herd,” he said. “We’re starting them north in the morning, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Sure. I’ll be up—”

  “Not you…us. The doctor says I can ride part of the day for a while, if I rest in the wagon. You won’t be up to it for several days yet, and we sort of figured you and Kit might want to honeymoon down to Denver or somewhere.”

  Now, who could argue against a setup like that? Not me, at least.

  Kit, she wasn’t doing any arguing either.

  About Louis L’Amour

  “I think of myself in the oral tradition—

  as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, 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 re-created 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 nearly 270 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), Chancy, 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 on cassette tapes from Bantam 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.

  Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour

  NOVELS

  Bendigo Shafter

  Borden Chantry

  Brionne

  The Broken Gun

  The Burning Hills

  The Californios

  Callaghen

  Catlow

  Chancy

  The Cherokee Trail

  Comstock Lode

  Conagher

  Crossfire Trail

  Dark Canyon

  Down the Long Hills

  The Empty Land

  Fair Blows the Wind

  Fallon

  The Ferguson Rifle

  The First Fast Draw

  Flint

  Guns of the Timberlands

  Hanging Woman Creek

  The Haunted Mesa

  Heller with a Gun

  The High Graders

  High Lonesome

  Hondo

  How the West Was Won

  The Iron Marshal

  The Key-Lock Man

  Kid Rodelo

  Kilkenny

  Killoe

  Kilrone

  Kiowa Trail

  Last of the Breed

  Last Stand at Papago Wells

  The Lonesome Gods

  The Man Called Noon

  The Man from Skibbereen

  The Man from the Broken Hills

  Matagorda

  Milo Talon

  The Mountain Valley War

  North to the Rails

  Over on the Dry Side

  Passin’ Through

  The Proving Trail

  The Quick and the Dead

  Radigan

  Reilly’s Luck

  The Rider of Lost Creek

  Rivers West

  The Shadow Riders

  Shalako

  Showdown at Yellow Butte

  Silver Canyon

  Sitka

  Son of a Wanted Man

  Taggart

  The Tall Stranger

  To Tame a Land

  Tucker

  Under the Sweetwater Rim

  Utah Blaine

  The Walking Drum

  Westward the Tide

  Where the Long Grass Blows

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Beyond the Great Snow Mountains

  Bowdrie

  Bowdrie’s Law

  Buckskin Run

  Dutchman’s Flat

  End of the Drive

  From the Listening Hills

  The Hills of Homicide

  Law of the Desert Born

  Long Ride Home

  Lonigan

  May There Be a Road

  Monument Rock

  Night over the Solomons

  Off the Mangrove Coast

  The Outlaws of Mesquite

  The Rider of the Ruby Hills

  Riding for the Brand

  The Strong Shall Live

  The Trail to Crazy Man

  Valley of the Sun

  War Party

  West from Singapore

  West of Dodge

  With These Hands

  Yondering

  SACKETT TITLES

  Sackett’s Land

  To the Far Blue Mountains

  The Warrior’s Path

  Jubal Sackett

  Ride the River

  The Daybreakers

  Sackett

  Lando

  Mojave Crossing

  Mustang Man

  The Lonely Men

  Galloway

  Treasure Mountain

  Lonely on the Mountain

  Ride the Dark Trail

  The Sackett Brand

  The Sky-Liners

  THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS

  The Riders of the High Rock

  The Rustlers of West Fork

  The Trail to Seven Pines

  Trouble Shooter

  NONFICTION

  Education of a Wandering Man

  Frontier

  The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels

  A Trail of Memories: Th
e Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour

  POETRY

  Smoke from This Altar

  CHANCY

  A Bantam Book / February 2004

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam edition / April 1968

  New Bantam edition / October 1971

  Bantam reissue / August 1998

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1968 by Louis & Katherine L’Amour Trust

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except

  where permitted by law. For information address:

  Bantam Books New York, New York.

  Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Please visit our website at www.bantandell.com

  eISBN: 978-0-553-89900-9

  v3.0