the Tall Stranger (1982)

by L'amour, Louis

  Even as his eyes touched them, the nearest Indian broke into a wild, shrill whoop. Then the whole charging line broke into yells.

  Rock Bannon, leaning against the Crockett wagon, lifted his Henry rifle and fired. A horse stumbled and went down. He fired again, and an Indian threw up his arms and vanished in the turmoil of oncoming horses and men, and then the men of the wagon train opened up.

  Firing steadily, Bannon emptied his rifle before the Indians reached the edge of the circle. One brave, his wild-eyed horse at a dead run, leaned low and shot a blazing arrow into the canvas of the Crockett wagon. Rock fired his right-hand pistol and the Indian hit the dirt in a tumbling heap, just as a second arrow knocked off Rock's hat. Reaching up with his left hand, Rock jerked the burning arrow from the canvas. The fire had not yet caught. Then he opened up, firing his pistol, shifting guns, and firing again. The attack broke as suddenly as it had begun.

  Tom Crockett was kneeling behind a water barrel, his face gray. A good shot, he was not accustomed to killing. He glanced up at Rock, a sickened expression on his face.

  "I never killed nothing human before!" he said weakly.

  "You'll get used to it out here," Rock said coldly. His eyes lifted to Sharon.

  "You saved our wagon!" she said.

  "It might have been anybody's wagon," he said bluntly, and turned away. He counted seven dead Indians on the prairie. There were probably one or two more hidden in the tall grass. He could see several dead ponies. The Indian who had shot the flaming arrow lay not more than a dozen feet away. The bullet had gone through his stomach and broken his spine.

  Rock walked around. He had eyes only for the men. Cap looked frightened, but determined. Pagones had fired steadily and with skill. Bannon nodded at the short man.

  "You'll do," he said grimly.

  Pagones started to speak, stared after him, and scowled a little. He was ashamed of himself when he realized he was pleased at the compliment.

  They were good men, Rock decided. Purcell was reloading his rifle, and he looked up as Bannon passed, but said nothing. Rock walked back to the Crockett wagon. Cap was standing there, his rifle in the hollow of his arm.

  "Will they come again?" he asked.

  Bannon nodded. "Prob'ly several times. This is Buffalo Hide. Those were his warriors."

  "But Morton said--" Crockett started to protest.

  Bannon looked around, then he pointed at the dead Indian. "You goin' to believe Morton Harper, or that?" he demanded. "That Indian's a Blackfoot. I know by the moccasins."

  The next time they came in a circle, going around and around the wagon train. A volley of flaming arrows set two wagon tops afire. Rock stood at the end of the wagon and fired steadily, carefully, making every shot count.

  Dawn came with a red, weird light flaming in the east and turning the wagon colors to flame. Guns crashed and the air was filled with wild Indian yells and the acrid smell of gunpowder and burned canvas. Three times more they attacked, and Bannon was everywhere, firing, firing, firing. Crockett went down with a bullet through his thigh. Bjornsen was shot through the head, and a warrior leaped from a horse into Greaves's wagon and the two men fought there until the Indian thrust a knife into Greaves's side. Bannon shot the brave with a snapped pistol shot, almost from the hip.

  The last attack broke, and the sun lifted into the sky. As if by magic the Indians were gone. Rock Bannon wiped the sweat from his forehead and stared out over the plain. Buffalo Hide had lost men in this fight. At least twenty of his braves were dead; there would be wailing and the death chant in Blackfoot villages tonight. Two horses and an ox had been killed. They gathered around, buried the two dead men and butchered the ox.

  Rock sat on a wagon tongue alone. Cap walked over to him. The man's face was round and uncomfortable. "Reckon you saved us, Rock," he said. "Don't rightly know how to thank you!"

  Bannon got up. He had been cleaning his rifle and reloading it while the men were buried. "Don't try," he said.

  Bob Sprague walked over and held out his hand. "Guess we haven't been very friendly," he said, "but you were right about the Indians."

  Suddenly, boyishly, Bannon grinned. "Forget it, Bob! You did a good job with that rifle of yours!"

  They were the only two who mentioned it. Rock helped lift Crockett into the back of the wagon, then harnessed the oxen. He had already gone, riding flank on the steel-dust, when Sharon came to thank him. She looked after him, and her heart felt strangely lost and alone.

  It was late that day when they reached the dry country. The settlers did not realize the change until the dust began to rise, for in the distance it had looked much the same, only the grass was darker and there was less of it. Within a mile they were suffused in a cloud of powdery, sifting dust, stifling and irritating in the heat.

  This was no desert, but merely long miles of plain where the hills receded, and there was no sub-irrigation to keep the grass green and rich. All the following day the dust cloud hung over the wagon train, and from Mulholland's place in the van the last wagons could not even be distinguished.

  Mulholland looked up at Bannon, who was riding beside him. "Harper said there was one bad stretch," he said, almost apologetically.

  Bannon did not reply. He alone of all the party knew what lay ahead. He alone knew how brutal the passage would be. Let them find out ...

  Days later, when Cap asked him to go for game, they all knew. They were still in that desert of dust and dirty brown brush. They had camped in it for five days now. Their water barrels were empty, the wagons so hard to pull in the thick dust that they made only a few miles each day. It was the worst kind of tough going.

  When he had killed two antelope in the hills, Rock rode back to join the party. Pagones, hunting on the other side, had killed one. Rock turned toward Sharon's wagon and swung down from the saddle. She looked up at him from over a fire of greasewood.

  "Hello," she said. "We haven't seen much of you."

  He took off his black, flat-brimmed hat. His dark curly hair was plastered to his brow with sweat.

  "There are some here who don't want me talking to you," he said dryly. "Figure I'm a bad influence, I guess."

  "I haven't said that!" she protested. She brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. "I like to have you riding close. It--it makes me feel safer."

  He looked at her for an instant, then looked away. "How's your dad?"

  "Better, I think. But this heat is so awful. How long before we get out of this dust?"

  "Tomorrow night, at this rate. This bad stretch is about over."

  "Then we're free of that. Morton said there was only one."

  He noticed that she had called Harper by his first name. "He was wrong. You'll strike another near Salt Lake that's much worse than this. You'll never get across unless you swing back and take the old trail for Pilot Peak."

  "But he said--" Sharon protested.

  Rock Bannon looked up at her from where he squatted on his haunches. "I know he did. I heard everything he said, and I'm still wondering what he has to gain by it. Nobody takes this route. Crossing the Salt Desert this way is suicide--with wagons, at least. You've all placed a lot of faith in a stranger!"

  "He was right, Rock. Those first six days were heaven, and from now on it should be good."

  "From now on it will be good until you hit the desert," he admitted, "unless you stop."

  "Unless we stop?" Sharon dished up a plate and handed it to him, then poured the coffee. "Why?"

  "Tomorrow we get into Hardy Bishop's country." Rock Bannon's face was somber.

  "You always refer to him as if he were an outlaw, or something awful!"

  "No," he said. "Bishop isn't that. If you are his friend, or a guest, he's one of the finest men alive. If you are an enemy or try to take something that's his, he is absolutely ruthless."

  When she returned from feeding her father, she sat down beside him on the wagon tongue. The sun was down, and the dust settled. Near a fire on the far side of the circle
Dud Kitchen was singing softly over his mandolin.

  The air was cool now, and the soft music mingled in the air with the scent of woodsmoke and the low champing of the horses or the mumbling of the oxen. In the distance they could see the hills, purple with last shadows before darkness, and shadowed with a promise of coolness after the long days of heat and dust and bitterness.

  He stared away at the hills, remembering so much, worried, uncertain, wondering again about Morton Harper. What did the man have in mind? Who was he? Purcell had said he had lent him money. It was not like a man to lend money and not follow it up to get back what was his. Behind all of this was a reason, and in the back of his mind Rock was afraid he knew that reason.

  Sharon spoke suddenly. "What are you thinking of, Rock? You're always so silent. You seem so bitter sometimes, and I can never understand what you have on your mind."

  "It isn't anything." He had no desire to mention Harper again. "I was just thinking about this country."

  "You like it, don't you?"

  "Like it?" He looked up suddenly, and his eyes changed. He smiled suddenly and with warmth. "Like it? I love it! This is a man's country! And that ahead? Wait until you see Bishop's Valley! Miles upon miles of tumbling streams, and waving green grass dotted with cattle!

  "You should see Bishop's Valley! You go down through a deep gorge along a roaring mountain stream, and you can look up at cliffs that rise for three thousand feet, and then suddenly the gorge widens and you look down a long valley that's six or seven miles wide and all of fifty miles long.

  "On each side high mountain ridges shut it in, and here and there deep gorges and ravines cut back into those ridges and there are green meadows and tumbling waterfalls. And all the hills around are timbered to their crests. It's a beautiful country!"

  Sharon stared at him, enchanted. Rock had never talked like this before, and as she listened to him tell of the hills and the wild game, of deer, elk, bear and mountain goats, of the catbirds calling in the willows and the hillsides white with groves of silver-columned birch, she suddenly forgot where she was, or who was talking.

  "You seem to love it so much!" she said. "Why did you ever leave?"

  "It belongs to one man--to Hardy Bishop," Rock said. "He's carving a little empire here. He went there long before any other white man dreamed of anything but going on to California, before they thought of anything but getting rich from gold mines. They came through the country like a pack of vultures, taking everything, building nothing. They wanted only to get rich and get out.

  "He was different. Once, when only a boy, he went into that valley on a trapping venture, and he was never content until he came back. He drove a herd of cattle west when there were no cattle in this country, and he got them into that valley and turned them loose. He fought Indians and outlaws, he built a dam, built a home, built irrigation ditches where he wanted them and planted trees.

  "He made the valley, and you can't blame him if he wants to keep it his way now."

  Long after Sharon lay in her blankets she thought of that, and of Rock Bannon. How tall he was! And how strange! He had risen suddenly, and with scarcely a word had walked into the night, and then she heard him mount his horse and ride away. Yet even as she heard the dwindling hoofbeats, she heard something else. The sound of other horses, drawing near. Still wondering who they could be, she fell asleep.

  Scarcely were they moving in the morning before a black mare wheeled alongside her wagon. Flushing suddenly, she saw Morton Harper, hat in hand, bowing to her.

  "Good morning!" he said. "I hoped to catch up with you before this, but by tomorrow you'll be in green country again!"

  "Yes, I know."

  He looked at her quickly. "You know? Who told you?"

  "Rock Bannon."

  His face sharpened, and she could sense the irritation in the man. "Oh? Then he's still with you? I was hoping he had left you alone. I'm afraid he's not a good man."

  "Why do you say that? He's been very helpful."

  Harper shrugged. "I'd rather not say. You know of that killing in Laramie, and if that were the only one, it would not matter. There are others. He has killed five or six men. He's a troublemaker wherever he goes. I'm glad Purcell and your men understand that, for it will save a lot of trouble."

  He smiled at her. "You look so lovely this morning that it's unbelievable that you have come so far across the prairie. It is a pity you have so far to go. I've been thinking some of settling in this country here." He waved ahead. "It is such a beautiful land, and there is nothing in California so desirable."

  Rock Bannon had heard the horses the night before, and he reined in long enough to see them come up to the fire. Harper he recognized at once. There were two men with him, one a lean, sharp-faced man with a long nose. The other man was short, chuckle-headed and blunt-featured. Bannon's lips tightened when he recognized Pete Zapata. The half-breed killer was notorious, a gunfighter and desperado of the worst stripe, but none of the wagon train would know that.

  All that day he stayed away from the train, riding on ahead. He drank at the spring, killed an antelope and a couple of teal, then rode back under a clump of poplars and waited for the wagon train to come up. They were already on Hardy Bishop's V Bar. Only a short distance behind the poplars, the long canyon known as Poplar Canyon ran down into Bishop's Valley.

  He got up when he saw the first of the long caravan of wagons. Better than the others, he knew what this would mean, and knew on how bad a trail they had started. He was standing there, close to the stallion, when the wagons moved in.

  The fresh water and green grass made everyone happy. Brown-legged children rushed downstream from where the drinking water was obtained, and there was laughter and merrymaking in the camp. Fires sprang up, and in a short time the camp was made and meals were being cooked.

  Watchfully, Rock saw Morton Harper seated on a saddle at Cap Mulholland's fire. With them were the sharp-featured stranger, Satterfield, and Lamport and Pagones. They were deep in a conference. In a few minutes Tom Crockett walked over to join them.

  Dud Kitchen was tuning his mandolin when he saw Bannon sitting under the willows.

  "All alone?" Kitchen said with a grin, and dropped on the grass beside Bannon. "Saw how you handled those guns in that Indian fight. Never saw the like. Made more tune with 'em than me with a mandolin!"

  Rock chuckled. "But not so nice to hear." He nodded at the group of men around the fire. "Wonder what's up?"

  Dud shrugged. "Harper's got some plan he's talkin' about. Sayin' they are foolish to go on when there's good country right here."

  Rock Bannon sprang to his feet, his eyes afire with apprehension. "So that's it?" he said. "I might have known it!"

  Kitchen was startled. "What's the matter? I think it would be a good idea, myself. This is beautiful country. I don't know that I've ever seen better. Harper says that down this draw behind us there's a long, beautiful valley, all open for settlement."

  But Rock Bannon was no longer listening. Stepping across the branch of the creek, he started for the fire. Morton Harper was talking when Rock walked up.

  "Why not?" Harper was saying. "You all want homes. Can you find a more beautiful country than this? That dry plain is behind you. Ahead lies the Salt Lake Desert, but in here--this is a little bit of paradise. Beyond this range of hills--you can reach it through Poplar Canyon--is the most beautiful valley you ever saw. It's just crying for people to come in and settle down! There's game in the hills, the best grazing land in the world, all for the taking!"

  "What about Hardy Bishop?" Bannon demanded.

  Harper looked up, angered. "You again? Every time these people try to do anything, you interfere! Is it your business where they stop? Is it your business if they remain here or go on to California? Are you trying to dictate to them?"

  Pike Purcell was on his feet, and Rock could see all the old dislike in the big Missourian's face. The other men looked at him with disapproval, too. Yet he went on recklessly,
heedlessly.

  "Hardy Bishop settled that valley, and he's running two thousand head of cattle in there. You try to settle in that valley and you're asking for trouble. He won't stand for it."

  "An' we won't stand for you buttin' in!" Purcell said suddenly. He dropped a hand to the big dragoon pistol in his holster. "I've had enough of you interferin' in our affairs. I'm tellin' you now, you shut up an' get out."

  "Wait a minute!" Bob Sprague stepped closer. "This man warned us about that Indian attack or we'd all be dead, includin' you, Pike Purcell. He did more fightin' in that attack than any one of us, orany two of us, for that matter. His advice has been good, and I think we should listen to him!"

  Dud Kitchen nodded. "Speak up, Rock. I'll listen!"

  "There's little to be said," Bannon told them quietly. "Only the land this man is suggesting you settle on was settled on over ten years ago by a man who fought Indians to get it. He fought Indians and outlaws to keep it. He won't see it taken from him now in his old age. I know Hardy Bishop. I know him well enough to be sure that if you move into that valley many of the women in this wagon train will be widows before the year is out.

  "What I don't know is Morton Harper's reason for urging you into this. I don't know why he urged you to take this trail, but I think he has a reason, and I think that reason lies in Bishop's Valley. You're coming west to win homes. You have no right to do it by taking what another man fought to win and to keep. There is plenty for all further west."

  "That makes sense to me," Sprague said quietly. "I for one am moving west!"

  "Well, I'm not!" Purcell said stubbornly. "I like this country, and me and the wife have seen enough dust and sun and Indians! We aim to stay!"

  "That valley is fifty miles long, gentlemen," Harper said. "I think there's room enough for us all in Bishop's Valley."

  "That seems right to me!" Cap said. He looked around at Tom Crockett, limping near the fire. "How about you, Tom?"

  "I'm staying," Crockett said. "I like it here."

  Satterfield nodded. "Reckon I'll find me a place to set up a blacksmith shop," he said. "But there's a sight of things we all need. There ain't no stores, no place to get some things we figured to get in California."