Fallon (1963)

by L'amour, Louis

  Wagon trains were few these days, for the time of the gold rush was long past.

  Nowadays the wagon trains were likely to be freighters, carrying cargo to the mines or ore from them. In this train there should be a number of men or families who might be useful to Red Horse.

  Fallon should be here. It had always been Fallon who sorted the men out, who looked for strong, competent men with trades, men who wanted to do something and create something. There was no one to do that now. And it was unlike Fallon to be gone.

  Teel dropped in just before closing. He was gloomy. “I don’t like it, John.

  There’s a lot of talk around about electing a mayor and appointing a marshal. Al Damon’s doing most of the talking, but young Jim Blane is, too.”

  “Where is Fallon?” Brennan said anxiously. “If ever, he should be here now.”

  Half an hour before closing time Luther Semple rode slowly into Red Horse. From a nearby bluff he had watched the wagon train and had decided that now, among all this crowd of strangers, he would have a good chance to take stock of the town.

  The wagon train was such a big one that attacking the town while it was there was simply out of the question. There must be a hundred men, he thought, or close to it, with that train. Until now, they had been trusting to the reports of Al Damon, but Semple did not place any confidence in his reports. It was obvious that Al did not like Fallon, and he might have underestimated him.

  Lute Semple was not particularly bright, but he had an animal instinct for danger and he had been one of those at the wagon the night Fallon rode up on them. He had not seen him3 but he had heard that voice.

  Since then, Al had described Fallon so it would be hard to miss him. Lute Semple wanted to see Fallon, to estimate the danger involved; for Lute had survived a good deal longer than many of his comrades because he had no desire to make a reputation, nor any urge to face a dangerous man in any kind of a gun battle.

  Semple rode into Red Horse unnoticed in the confusion following the arrival of the wagon train, almost half of which was made up of freight wagons. The teamsters were well-armed and competent-looking men. There were about thirty of them, tough men and veterans of many an Indian fight.

  Semple tied his horse a few doors down from the Yankee Saloon, then after a careful look around, he entered the saloon and ordered a drink.

  The first person he recognized was John Brennan himself, and he remembered him from both Abilene and Corinne. Taking his drink, Lute Semple found his way to a table in the corner and sat down.

  Had Brennan recognized him? He thought not. In any event, Brennan would have no reason to suspect him of anything, for Brennan had never, so far as Semple was aware, known anything about him.

  A lot of money was being spent. Semple could see the teamsters crowding to the bar, and the whiskey they bought was surprisingly good. Fallon did not seem to be anywhere around, and that worried him. If he was not here, where was he?

  Semple was sitting at the table when Joshua Teel entered. He had never seen Teel before, but he recognized the type. Oddly enough, Teel had been born in a log cabin not three-quarters of a mile from Semple’s home.

  After he finished his whiskey, Semple got up and left quietly. John Brennan, recorking a bottle, turned his eyes to watch him go. Luther Semple had not counted on Brennan’s good memory, or his interest in his customers.

  “Teel,” Brennan said, leaning on the bar, “you ever hear of Luther Semple?”

  “Semple? There were some Semples back home. The ones I knew of were a no-good outfit … though probably were others who were good folks…. Why?”

  “Lute Semple just walked out of here, and I’d make a small bet he’s with Bellows. A few years back there were a lot of murders over on the Republican—buffalo-skinners murdered in camp … shot in the back. The camps were robbed, and at first it was laid to Indians, but then it was figured to be a well-organized gang.

  “Semple was around about that time, and a man he traveled with was caught with a rifle stolen off a murdered man. Semple disappeared—dropped clean out of sight.

  Later, he was around Corinne. Back in those days it was a booming town on the Lake. If you see him around, keep an eye on him.”

  Joshua Teel left by the back door and cut around between the buildings. He stood in the shadows and surveyed the street with care. He saw Semple almost at once, a tall, slightly stooped man with drooping mustaches, a man who stood alone on the street, or bent to peer into the windows of the closed shops.

  Stepping out from the buildings, Teel loafed along in the shadows. He noted the horse tied at the hitch rail, a tall, clean-limbed bay with a rifle in the scabbard.

  It was after midnight when Semple mounted up and rode out of town. Listening, Teel heard no drum of hoofs on the bridge. Semple had gone down on the flat, then. Teel returned to his own place and turned in.

  Macon Fallon had found shelter for his horse among the boulders. Outside the canyon mouth there was no movement. His horse had drunk, and was cropping at some grass growing in the space between some of the higher boulders. Fallon settled himself down for a long stay, and waited for the sun to go down.

  Could the Utes get around behind him in any way? It was possible. His only way out was down the canyon toward Red Horse, for they blocked the opening before him. Yet suppose there was a way down from the cliffs above? Supposing even two or three could circle around, slip down the cliff, and lie in wait for him?

  The sun declined, seemed to hesitate, then vanished. It was twilight within the canyon now, although still bright out on the basin. The Utes knew that when darkness came he would ride away down the canyon to safety, yet they made no further attempt to push the attack. That meant they were either waiting for darkness to attack—which not many Indians liked to do—or they had gotten around behind him and were not worried.

  Suddenly, the black horse’s head came up. His head up, ears pricked, he looked off down the canyon. Something was down there, behind him.

  Carefully, Fallon replaced the fired cartridges in his Winchester, and waited.

  When darkness came, he took a last drink at the water, then mounted up. Slipping the Winchester into the scabbard, he drew his .44 pistol.

  Riding out quietly from the boulders, he turned his horse back toward the valley from which he had come. This, he hoped, they would not expect, for he would be riding away from safety.

  The sand made little sound as he walked the horse along. The end of the canyon was like a gigantic door … beyond was the valley, the star-lit skies. He had ridden sixty yards out of the canyon mouth before they discovered him.

  He smelled smoke, and at the same time he saw an Indian rear up from the ground and start toward him. Deliberately, he dropped the muzzle of his gun on the same dark figures, and fired.

  He saw the jerk of the Indian’s body as the bullet struck, and at the same moment he touched the black with the spurs and was off, riding at a dead run into the wide-open spaces of the valley.

  Could he find the other trail? At night it would look different, but long ago he had cultivated the habit of all wise travelers in wild country, of turning to look back. Faced from the opposite direction, a trail can look vastly different, and if compelled to retrace one’s trail such a precaution is essential.

  He rode at a dead run for a quarter of a mile or so, then slowed and turned at right angles, making for the valley’s eastern side. He found the gap, started toward it, then recalled the steep trail, and mounted to the top of the cliffs above the valley. Leaning forward, he peered above to his right, searching for the notch in the rock, and hoping he could choose the right one.

  Here, in the stifl, cool night, he could smell the dusty grass and the sage.

  Behind him there would be pursuit, and they would be sure he had come toward this trail, which he knew.

  Fallon spoke softly to his horse. That horse was working overtime keeping him out of trouble—keeping him alive, even; for a man without a horse in this country w
as often as good as a dead man … that was the reason for hanging horse thieves.

  Fallon rode carefully, easing toward the trail he had come over that afternoon.

  Suddenly, when almost past it, he saw what he believed was the notch he wanted.

  Turning abruptly, he put his horse up the steep slope. Instinctively, it held to the trail.

  They climbed steeply, winding around boulders, and, suddenly emerging at the top, he was among the pines. He sought a place among the trees and boulders not far from the trail up which he climbed, and there he settled down for the night.

  He slept fitfully, allowing the black horse to keep watch. With the dawn he was awake, listening. But he heard no sound but the wind in the pines, the lazy cropping of his horse. He sat still for some time, testing the morning with all his senses. If Indians were about, he wanted to know it. While he waited, he ate some pine nuts undiscovered by the birds.

  After a while he got to his feet, saddled the horse, and led it to the trail. He studied the ground with care and found no tracks or sign of any kind save that of his own horse. Nevertheless, he hesitated to descend into what might well be a trap. So far as he was aware, only two routes of escape were possible to him, and perhaps the Indians knew it, too. They might be waiting somewhere below.

  Mounting, he turned away from the trail by which he had reached the crest of the mountain, and rode along the slope under the pines, his rifle ready for any eventuality.

  The morning was clear and bright, the air fresh and pleasantly cool. His horse trod on pine needles, and pines were all about him. He followed a game trail along the slope. Occasionally, through a break in the pines he could see in front of him, off to the left, a towering dome of a mountain. It had a distinctive shape and looked to be the highest anywhere around.

  Suddenly the slope seemed to drop completely away, and he found himself on the verge of a tremendous declivity where the mountain fell away some four thousand feet to the valley below. This must be, had to be, the Big Smoky Valley.

  A few minutes later he found a spring trickling from the rocks. Here he drank, and allowed his horse to drink. The rocks around the spring were broken and jagged, a wide vein of quartz intruding the sedimentary rock. As he knelt to drink again he glimpsed tiny, gleaming fragments on the sand at the bottom.

  Gold? It could be … or fool’s gold. He scooped some of the sand from the bottom of the catch basin and, spreading it out, managed with a wet twig to isolate several small flakes and grains.

  The shade of trees bending over the spring seemed not to affect the gleam of the particles. He tested several flakes with a knife blade, and found they could be cut.

  His guess was that they were gold. He had worked as a miner, but had had little to do with gold except as money. Several mines in which he had worked had no visible gold before the ore was milled.

  If this was gold, he might get enough at the bottom of the small falls further down the slope to salt one of his claims; but to return here would mean risking another run-in with the Utes. While he stayed there in the shade beside.the spring, he washed out a tiny stack of gold, which he carefully put away in an old envelope he’d been carrying in his coat pocket. Returning, he decided, was unnecessary. It was far easier to salt a claim with imagination than with gold.

  After all, it was what a man imagined he would get from a claim that sold him, not what he actually saw. Often it was easier to sell a man a worthless hole in the ground than a good prospect.

  He was hungry, for he had eaten nothing since breakfast of the previous day, except for an occasional handful of pine nuts. But he had no food and he hesitated to fire a shot for fear it would bring the Utes around him. It was not the first time he had been hungry, and he had long ago learned that grumbling about what can’t be helped did no good at all. Remounting his horse, he worked his way farther along the slope. The dome he had seen was off to the northwest and, as near as he could judge, not more than four miles away.

  He was high up … judging by the plant growth around him, he was upwards of ten thousand feet. He had gone but a short distance toward the dome when the ground fell steeply away into a magnificent gorge, wild and lonely. His eyes followed it toward the northwest.

  This could be the gorge he had started up when leaving the hollow by the old Indian trail, and had veered off to the south. If it was that gorge, he was well on his way home—if he could only get down to the bottom of the canyon. But nowhere did there seem to be a route by which he could descend. He was trapped on an island in the sky, not over three miles long and about half a mile wide.

  He turned his horse and rode southwest again, back toward the Indians. On the east this plateau fell steeply away for a thousand feet or more, and then there was another steep descent, not quite so abrupt, to the bottom of Smoky Valley.

  Finally, after hours of searching, he found a way off the top, and went over the rim, the black horse almost sliding on his haunches. After going down several hundred feet, accompanied by cascades of sand and gravel, he found a game trail.

  After a mile it began a descent to the bottom of the canyon, and he followed it down.

  He had been on the mountain the whole day, and when he reached the bottom it was dark. Knowing enough of such canyons, he made no attempt to go further, but found a bench beside the stream and made camp. The bottoms of such canyons were littered with boulders, fallen logs, debris of all lands, and there were, as well, sudden falls that might drop off for fifty feet or more. Usually, if one could find it, there would be an Indian trail or a game trail skirting the edge of the creek. This would show him the way around any falls there might be.

  At noon the following day, Fallon rode up the street of Red Horse, a Red Horse such as he had never seen. The street was crowded with wagons and with strangers. Suddenly he saw Blane and started toward him. Blane looked up, saw him coming, and abruptly turned away and went inside, closing the door behind him.

  Surprised, Fallon rode on up the street A new saloon had opened and above a door near the saloon was a sign: OFFICE OF THE MAYOR.

  Brennan watched him tie his horse and came out on the street. “You played hell,”

  he said. “Where’ve you been?”

  Briefly, Fallon explained.

  “Last night,” Brennan said, “they had an election. It was Blane and Damon behind it, and Al talking it up all over town. The way I figure, Blane expected to be mayor … well, he didn’t get to even have a look-in. This newcomer, he had the votes from the wagon train, and he was elected. Not only that, but he appointed himself a marshal and a deputy marshal.”

  Fallon looked at Brennan unbelievingly. “That’s right,” Brennan said, “a marshal and a deputy, and if I ever looked on a troublemaker, it’s that Gleason. He’s big and he’s mean, and he’s been asking around for you.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Fallon,” Brennan said, “go easy. There’s at least sixty men here now who weren’t here when you left, and those men only know that you’re supposed to own the town. They don’t accept that—not for a minute, they don’t. The rest of them accepted it because they figured they owed you something. This bunch don’t figure they owe you anything.”

  Macon Fallon looked down the street, anger stirring within him. This was his town. He had started it, he had cleaned up the street, he had … But what was he kicking about? After all, he only wanted to sell a couple of claims and get out.

  “Maybe it will all work out for the best,” he said. “We’ll see.”

  Brennan was surprised at Fallon’s words. He was not sure what he had expected, but it was not this. Fallon went into the saloon and drank coffee until Brennan brought him a meal. As he sat there he did some serious thinking.

  Later, alone in his upstairs apartment, he wrote three letters. He had just completed them when there was a rap on his door. It was Joboy, Brennan’s Negro handyman.

  “Boss says there’s somebody downstairs to see you all.” Joboy hesitated. “It’s that mayor
fella and the marshal.”

  Fallon got to his feet. Carefully, he put on his black coat. But first he checked his gun. “Mr. Fallon,” he said, looking at himself in the cracked mirror, “luck!” And then he added, “You may need it.”

  As soon as he reached the head of the stairs, he could see he was in for trouble. The bar was lined with men, all strangers.

  “Joboy,” he said over his shoulder to the Negro, “tell Josh Teel I want to see him.”

  Joboy chuckled. “Mistah Fallon, you don’t need to tell that man. He’s already down at the end of the bar—with a shotgun!”

  Glancing over the room then, Fallon saw at a separate table Riordan, Shelley, and Zeno Yearly. A yard or so away, seated alone, but with his back to a corner, was Devol.

  Fallon suddenly felt good. It had been a long time since he had had friends. A

  wandering man loses much, and nowhere had Fallon sunk roots, nowhere had he remained long enough to know people. Several of these men were family men, with responsibilities to their families, yet they were here.

  Coolly, he walked down the steps, and as he reached the bottom, with all eyes on him, Devol got to his feet.

  “Your table, Mr. Fallon,” he said quietly, and then under his breath he said, “We’re with you—all the way.”

  “Thanks,” Fallon said, and drew back a chair.

  He had not looked at anyone after that first glance from the head of the stairs.

  Nor would he. If they wished to talk to him, they could come to him.

  Brennan, with a fine flourish, brought a bottle of wine to his table, wiped the table with care, and put down the wine and a glass. He spoke quietly. “The big fellow in the plaid shirt—that’s Gleason. His deputy is the man in the black hat, over by the door.”

  “And the mayor?”

  “Here he comes….”

  Brennan filled the wine glass two-thirds full, then put down the bottle and went back to his bar. A shadow fell across the table as the man stepped between Fallon and the light.

  Yes, Macon Fallon was feeling good. He had evaded the Utes with a whole skin. He had come back to town. He had good, solid men behind him, and a glass of wine before him.