Bendigo Shafter (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  On the third week after election nobody showed up for Finnerly’s service. His sermons had grown increasingly filled with bigotry and hatred, and people preferred John’s reading and our singing.

  Several times I encountered Finnerly. He passed me by without speaking. Pappin spoke always; Ollie was surly, avoiding me.

  With the first snow in the high country we brought the cattle down. Cain, John, Bud, and I had cut hay from several meadows and stacked it against the winter.

  Alongside the haystacks we built a pole corral, made into a wall against the wind on the north side, and a shed to shelter some of the stock.

  When I went up the hill for supper I was thinking of the newspapers Stratton had given me. For the first time it would give me a chance to see what was taking place away from our town, and I began to wonder about what had been happening in the world far from our valley.

  Those newspapers, of which I read every item, showed me how things were in other communities, in places where life was less simple than our town. A lot of lawing in those days was settled by the local justice of the peace and never went beyond him.

  Back east business was picking up, and there was much talk of what the Union Pacific would do for the business of the country when it was complete, which would be soon.

  I began to realize how little I knew of our country and what made it work. The more I’d read and observed the more I realized that the best intentions in the world will get a man just nowhere unless he knows how to get results and can enlist the cooperation of others. And cooperation means compromise.

  Used to be that I’d get impatient that evils were allowed to be. I figured there ought to be some way of just shutting them off. The trouble was, there was no way short of dictatorship, and that meant worse evils. What was needed was to take one step at a time, not to be too drastic, and to bring about the changes with the least amount of friction. No changes could be forced upon people. They had to want it, to be ready for it. And public life demanded folks who would do a little more than they were paid to do.

  Being marshal of a small town was not a full-time job, and most marshals worked at something else, too. However, this was the town where I lived, so I looked around. There was a mudhole shaping up where the watering trough stood, and in front of Dad Jenn’s where the hitching rail got the most use there would be a dust pit come summer. Without saying anything to anybody I hitched up a team and hauled gravel from a pit a few miles south. Between times I dumped gravel by the trough and the hitch rail, filled the mudhole, and gravelled a good part of the street. It was only two blocks long. With rain and snow it should pack down solid during the winter months.

  I asked no help, used my own team, did the work with my own shovel, my own sweat.

  Every night I studied the papers. Red Cloud’s Sioux were raiding in the eastern parts of the Territory. There was talk of splitting us off from the rest of Dakota and forming a new territory, called Wyoming. I mentioned it, and Cain smiled. “You’ve been gone, boy. That’s already done.

  “Grant’s been nominated for president against Seymour, they’re about to try Jeff Davis for treason. They tried to impeach President Johnson, but lacked the votes. There’s been a lot going on.”

  Due to Indian troubles the stage did not run regularly, and only a rare passenger stopped off in our town. News was scarce, unreliable, and usually devoted to the sensational aspects.

  We checked out the number of men able to defend the town and warned each to keep a rifle close by. Follett and Ethan were usually off in the hills. I took to riding up on the ridge as I had in the first days, so we would have ample warning if the approach of Indians was not first observed by Follett or Sackett.

  We had snow from time to time but the grazing was still good, and we held the cattle on the open plain a couple of miles from town.

  Handling the herd was simple. We held them on the grass, moved them occasionally to a new area, and kept our eyes open for Indians or cow thieves.

  CHAPTER 30

  * * *

  THE TOWN WAS quiet then, for three months. The snow fell deep upon the land, few people were traveling, and I took time to help Cain with tie-cutting. His mill was busy on the railroad contract, and I was felling timber back in the Wind Rivers.

  A last wagon train came through…they had been thinning out before snow fell, and we all felt sure it was not only the winter. Many people would now be waiting for the steam cars to run.

  That last wagon train was a worn-out lot, their hearts heavy with grief. The Sioux had hit them hard, driving off some stock, killing four of their men and one woman. The long stretch ahead was too much for them, and they stopped right there at our town, circled their wagons, and came up to see us.

  Stacy Follett, Ethan, and I were sitting in Dad Jenn’s when their wagon boss came in. We invited him to sit down.

  “We’re quittin’,” he said. “We ain’t damn’ fools and with that desert and all ahead, and it being too late to cross the passes through the Sierras, we’re just going to cash it in.”

  “There isn’t much to do here,” I said. “How are you fixed for grub?”

  “We got aplenty, even with what was burned when the Injuns raided us, but me, I got a brother down Texas way. He wanted me to come work with him but I was hot for Californy. I reckon I’ll sell my outfit if’n I can find a buyer, and I’ll keep my saddle horse and ride out for Texas.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Four or five of them are pulling out come daylight for the south. It’s cold, but they reckon they can make it down to where the railroad’s coming through and be settin’ there come spring.

  “Two, three families figure to stick around here, if they can find a place. Miller Pine, that actor feller, he’s in no shape to travel…got bad lungs. He’ll stay on. You’ll find him a right pleasant man…got a thousand stories to tell, all worth hearin’.” He looked at me. “Marshal, there’s good folks in that outfit, and some not so good, but one and all they’ll need cash money. If you got enough to buy with, you can make you a deal, startin’ with me.”

  “What do you have to sell?”

  “Four head of oxen, in bad shape, six head of beef cattle, four of them heifers, comin’ fresh in the spring. I got a wood-burnin’ stove, some tools, kitchen fixin’s, and an old printin’ press.”

  “A what?”

  “Printin’ press. I ain’t no printer, but I come on a feller in Laramie…there at the fort…who was. He had run out of eatin’ money, and it looked like he was never goin’ to start no newspaper in Californy. He swapped it to me for a side of bacon, ten pounds of beans, and a crow-bait mule so’s he could ride out of there.”

  Mentally I took count of what I had and it wasn’t much, then I took count of what they needed, and it was a whole lot, so I walked down to the wagon circle.

  Certainly, they would be fools to try to go further. Once down off the pass they’d miss most of the snow, but they might come into it again in Nevada, and there was no way they could cross the Sierra Nevada until spring. They were in much the same shape as we were only they didn’t have a Ruth Macken, nor a Cain Shafter, when it came to that.

  Their stock was in bad shape. The beef and milk cattle were doing fine…they’d just walked along and the grass had been all right. The wagon teams, whether horses or oxen, were pretty dragged out and beat, and so were the people. Listening, I could hear they’d had a time of it. Indian fights, one wagon and a family lost swimming a river…several head of stock lost in a stampede of buffalo…a man killed there, another with a broken arm and leg.

  “I am not one to take advantage,” I told them, “but whatever I bought I’d have to buy cheap. Cash money is hard to come by.”

  “We done talked it over. The families that stay in your town will need all they have, but we who are to travel, we’ll need grub for traveling and some cash money when we get there, if it’s only a dollar or two.”

  We did some dickering, and I ended up with four he
ad of oxen, two of the heifers, and a few odds and ends. Finally, when all else was completed and the only thing left was the printing press, he looked over at me. “I can’t pack that on no horse, mister. You give me ten dollars and it’s yours.”

  Well, why not? And to tell the truth I was fascinated by the press, although I’d never seen one worked and had no paper to use in such a machine. He pocketed the ten dollars. “A town like this needs a newspaper, anyway,” he added. “Now you can go into the business.”

  A week later I hired a driver and put my oxen to work hauling logs for the sawmill. When spring came I’d start them hauling to the railroad. The printing press I stored in the corner of John Sampson’s barn loft where it would be dry and out of the way, yet it stuck in my mind. A man might do a lot with a printing press.

  The winter settled in, cold and still.

  At the mill we had a square dance and a box supper. Each of the girls and women prepared a box with a supper inside, and these were auctioned off to raise money for new hymnals for the church. The buyer of a box got to eat with the girl who fixed it.

  By that time nearly everybody knew the good cooks, and of course, the pretty girls were obvious. Lorna was both, and her box brought the highest price of the evening, the prize going to Miller Pine. It was a fine, fun time, and the music sounded out over the cold snow. I went outside, looking off into the distance where the dark line of the road led over the snow.

  Where was Ninon? She would be nearly fifteen now…maybe older. I did not know when her birthday was. Girls married at that age in the south before the War, and perhaps they still did so.

  Suddenly the door opened, letting out the sound of laughter and of someone singing. It was Pine…and he was singing “Home, Sweet Home,” the song I’d first heard sung by Ninon.

  Lorna came up to me. “A penny for your thoughts.”

  “I’m lonesome,” I told her, honestly enough.

  “I know. Bendigo, Miller knows her. Knows Ninon, I mean.”

  “Knows her? How?”

  “He played New Orleans a few months ago, and Ninon was there with her family. One of his company remembered her as an actress and pointed her out. He said she was gorgeous, one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen.”

  “She was that. She was lovely.”

  “Why don’t you go see her? She was in love with you, you know.”

  “She was a child. I saved them out in the snow that night and she made something of it. By now she’s forgotten me.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Anyway, how could I go? She comes of wealthy people. I am a town marshal making fifty dollars a month. I own a few head of cattle, and my whole wealth represents what her folks might spend in a week…maybe even in a day.”

  “Ben, you can be anything you want to be. Drake Morrell thinks so. So does Mrs. Macken.”

  We stood there together in the crisp, cold air, and after a bit I suggested, “You’d better go in, Lorna. It is cold.”

  “All right.” She turned to go. “Ben? Take me for a ride tomorrow?”

  “All right. You and Miller, if you want him.”

  “Ben, you’re silly. I’m not getting a case on him.”

  “On who, then?”

  “That’s just it, Ben. There isn’t anybody for me, either.”

  She was right, of course, and we had that in common. I waited, watching the stars twinkling in the cold night sky, listening to the sounds.

  There were a few lights scattered over the town but everybody was here, at the mill, celebrating. It worried me, so I went down the hill to Cain’s, opened the door, and went in. It was warm inside, and still. I filled a coffee cup, then got out my Winchester and my gunbelt.

  At the party I had been carrying my six-shooter in my waistband, but now I transferred it to the holster. Putting on my buffalo coat, taking up the rifle and my gloves, I went outside and closed the door softly behind me.

  They were dancing again, and I could hear the stomp of feet, the voice of the caller, and the whining of the fiddler and the fife. Slowly, I walked down toward the street, my boots crunching in the snow.

  It was cold…must be all of thirty below, and not a night when Indians would be feared. No Indian wanted to fight in cold weather, and they did not do it when it could be avoided.

  Slowly, I made the rounds, stopping at each store or house, just listening. When I reached the end of town, I stopped. Miller Pine, who had been a chemist before he became an actor, had opened an assay office, and it was now the last building on the street. It was dark under the awning, and I stood there, rifle under my arm, rubbing my gloved hands together to warm them. From here I could see down the road a piece, but I had a good view up the street when I turned, and a view also of Ruth Macken’s place on its bench.

  Just as I was about to start back up the hill my eye caught a flicker of movement, and I stopped where I was, looking up the hill.

  Somebody was up there…Ruth and Bud were at the mill. I’d seen them only a few minutes before, noticing that Bud was probably the best dancer of us all.

  The movement had not been outside, but inside the house…somebody had passed a window.

  Imagination? Maybe.

  I’d have a look. Walking out from under the awnng, I went up the hill. It was a five-minute walk…and it gave me time for thinking, for wondering.

  Who could it be? Everybody was at the party…or almost everybody. Finnerly and his friends were not there, nor old Mrs. Wilson, one of the newcomers. There were a couple more.

  At the door, I paused, slipping the glove from my right hand to take the action of the rifle. With my left hand I opened the door.

  The stove was warm, its sides glowing red from the heat. There was no light in the room except that from a lamp with its wick turned low, and seated in Ruth’s rocking chair by the stove was my brother Cain. His pipe was lit, and he had both elbows on his knees. He looked up when the door opened.

  “I knew your step, Bendigo. Set down.”

  Standing my rifle close by against the wall, I pulled up a chair, then took off the heavy coat and my other glove. I put them down together on the bench. “Nice and warm,” I said.

  “I didn’t want her…them…to come home to a cold house. Bud forgot to bank the fire and it had burned to nothing.”

  “Lucky you thought of it. I was down by the assay office…saw something move.”

  We sat there for a while, and I was uneasy. There was more to it than that. I remembered now that Cain had been gone for some time. He never did care for dancing, always kind of sat back and let Helen enjoy herself.

  Suddenly, Cain said, “Bendigo, you’ve got to ride out of here. Don’t take a chance on being caught here, don’t waste yourself in this place.”

  “It’s our town,” I said, surprised. “We built it.”

  “Bendigo, we built ourselves a place against the wind, but that was for us. Don’t let it be for you. There’s a larger world out there…I don’t know what it’s like, really. I guess I’ll never know…but I wish I did, I wish I had.

  “I got caught, Bendigo, I was caught in a trap I set for myself.”

  “A trap? You?”

  “I planned to go to New York, Bendigo. You know how it is with tools and me. I could always do just about anything, make about anything. I had some inventions…just little things, but I had ideas. I wanted my own shop, in time, my own factory. I had big ideas, Bendigo, but I believe there was no reason why they should not have happened.”

  Well, I just sat there. I remembered now, when I was just a youngster, a city man who kept coming to town and wanting Cain to go with him, offering to put up the money for Cain’s skill and his knowledge, but by that time Cain was walking out with Helen.

  “I’ve been here before, Bendigo, when they were visiting…just to sit and smoke.”

  “Does Ruth Macken know?”

  “I think so, but she’d never say anything, nor will I. You know, Bendigo, it is the easiest thing in
the world to forget a man’s responsibilities, chuck it all, and go following some red wagon…but it isn’t a man’s way.

  “Helen is my wife, and we’ve grown along together. We understand each other, we mesh like gears…and I’d never find another woman like her. I could go chasing off, calling it love or whatever a body wished to call it, and I’d only prove myself a damned fool.

  “The world isn’t built around people who do what they want to do, Ben, what they want regardless of who gets hurt. It is built by people who do what they should do.

  “You’ve been reading a lot…Plutarch, and the like. Well, the old Romans built what they had by being strong, inside as well as out, and they lost it when they began giving in, going the easy way. They lost everything, Ben, when they ceased to be men, and a man is one who does what he has to do when it has to be done, and does it with pride.”

  “Are you in love with Ruth Macken?”

  “Don’t ask that question, Ben. Don’t even think it. I am in love with Helen.

  “Maybe…just maybe…had Ruth and I met at another time, another place…well, who knows? Maybe she feels the same way, but I shall never find out because I don’t want to. I married Helen, and we’ve had warm, friendly, wonderful times together. We’ve the children, and we understand each other. Any damn’ fool kid can go tomcatting off after everything he sees…takes no particular knowledge, skill, or much of anything.”

  Cain got to his feet. “I grew up a long time ago, Ben. And I am glad I did. I miss the dream, but maybe if I’d followed the dream I’d never have found anyone like Helen.

  “The thing you have to remember are the years. Not the hours, not the days or nights, but the years. When you want a woman you want one you can live down the years with. I have been dreaming, too, Ben, not of anything I have wanted to happen, not of anything I expected to happen, but just a kind of romantic thing that was there in my mind. But do you know something? I am glad you came up the hill tonight, we’ve had a good talk, and I don’t think I’ll be coming back here again. Let’s go back to the party, Bendigo.”