Mustang Man s-15

by Louis L'Amour

  "Where's that canyon?" Bishop asked.

  It sounded like an odd question, for from where he sat he could almost have thrown a rock into the mouth of it, but the way it looked we were about to ride right past it. The reason was that you had to ride to the far side before you could get past the big boulders at the mouth.

  "Canyons all around, Noble. You take your pick." I gestured right toward the canyon. "Like that one, for instance."

  He grinned at me. "You already checked that one," he said. "We found your tracks coming out. If you left that canyon the gold can't be there. So you show us."

  "I wish we knew. How's a man going to pick one canyon out of all these around here?"

  "You'd better find a way," Bishop said.

  "Don't be a damn fool, Noble. Look, we've been up here a few days now. How long does it take to pick up that much gold and run? If we knew where it was, we'd have been off and running. Nathan Hume was supposed to have hidden some gold up here. We know that two men got away from the massacre. Maybe some others did, too."

  "Two?" Sylvie spoke up. She hadn't known that.

  "Sure, there was a Mexican got away--he was a packer for Hume. But the governor of New Mexico was after anybody who worked for him. Somebody tipped off the governor that Hume was smuggling gold out and paying no percentage to the government, or whatever they had to do in those days.

  "That Mexican lit out for Mexico, but he got his back broke down there and never could come back. But that doesn't say some of his folks mightn't have come back."

  "Are you trying to tell us the gold isn't there?" Ralph demanded incredulously.

  "I'd say it isn't," I replied. "Bishop, I don't know about you, but Fryer worked the mining camps in Nevada and Colorado. He'll tell you hidden gold is usually gone, or nobody ever finds it. There's men who have spent their lives hunting for treasure like this, and never found anything."

  "That's nonsense," Ralph said. "The gold is here ... we know it is."

  "Lots of luck. I only hired on to guide these folks into this country. You find it, you can have it. And you'll know the place by the bones."

  "Bones?" It was the first time Ferrara had spoken.

  "Sure. A lot of men died there when Hume was killed, and a lot have died since.

  The Comanches and the Utes say that box canyon is cursed. No Indian will spend a night in the canyon, and none will ride through if they can help it."

  "See?" Hooker said. "That was what I was tellin' you."

  "Take their weapons," Sylvie said. "We will make them talk."

  "Noble," I said, "nobody ain't about to take my guns. Do you think I'd shuck my iron, with what I know's ahead? I've got nothing to tell you, so there'd be no end to it. You boys want what I'm holdin', you're going to have to buy it the hard way."

  "Don't talk like a fool!" Ralph said. "Why, we could blow you out of your saddle!"

  "Likely. Only Noble here knows me, and he knows I wouldn't be goin' alone. I seen a man one time who was still shooting with sixteen bullets in him. At this range I know I'm going to get two of you anyway--maybe three or four."

  And they were going to help me do it, for if trouble started I was going to jump my horse right in the middle of them, where every shot they fired would endanger everybody else in their party.

  Now, Noble Bishop was no damn fool. He'd used a gun enough to know that you don't just shoot somebody and they fall down. If a man is mad and coming at you, you have to get him right through the heart, right through the brain, or on a big bone to stop him.

  On the other hand, a shot that's unexpected can drop a man in his tracks; although any expert on gunshot wounds can tell some strange stories about what can happen in a shooting.

  Bishop knew I'd been wild and desperate. He knew I was reckoned to be a fast man with a gun, and a dead shot; and he knew if it came to shooting, somebody was going to get killed. In such a melee it could be anybody. And like I'd hinted, the gold might not even be there.

  Bishop, Fryer, Ferrara, and maybe Parker were canny enough to guess what I'd do, and they weren't having any of it. After all, why start a gunfight when they could pick us off one at a time with small risk? Or let us find the gold and then take it from us? I knew how they were thinking, because I knew what I'd think in their place.

  Bishop spoke calmly. "He's right as rain." He wasn't going to turn this into a wild shooting where anybody could get hurt, and maybe nothing accomplished in the end.

  Time and numbers were on their side. All the help I had was a girl and a crippled-up old man, but both of them could scatter a lot of promiscuous lead at such close-up range as this.

  "There's nothing to be gained by shooting it out here," Bishop went on. "You ride on your business and we'll ride on ours."

  Sylvie was about to protest, then said. "Let him go. Just kill the girl. She has claim to that gold." You never did see anybody who looked so beautiful and was so poison mean as she did when when she said it.

  "Nobody gets shot," Bishop said. "You all turn and ride out of here."

  We turned and started away, but as I went past Bishop, I said to him in a low voice, "Noble, if you find that gold, don't drink any coffee she makes."

  Then we went on by, but when I glanced back he was still watching us. After a minute, he lifted a hand and waved. That was all.

  "I thought surely there would be shooting," Penelope said.

  "Nobody'd been drinking," Mims said dryly, "and nobody was crazy. We'd have wound up with some of them shot up, and nothing settled."

  All the same, nothing was settled anyway. Noble Bishop and me would have it to do, come the right day.

  And I had an idea the day was not far off.

  Chapter 11

  Sylvie Karnes must have made contact with Bishop in Romero, I was thinking. But murderous as Bishop was, he did his work with a gun, which in my book was something altogether different from using poison. Yet he was none the less deadly, for all of that.

  "How'd you get shut of Loomis?" I asked as we rode along.

  Penelope shrugged. "Who said I was? We got separated, that's all."

  Now, I didn't really believe that, nor did I believe that I'd seen the last of that stiff-necked, hard-mouthed old man.

  "Whatever we're going to do," I added, "had best be done soon." Even as I said it, I had no stomach for it. I'd a sight rather face Bishop with a gun than ride back into that box canyon.

  And Mims was in bad shape. He had lost blood, leaving him weak as a cat, and he could only fumble with his bad hands. It was no wonder he had passed out up there in the canyon, but the idea stayed with me that it had been something worse than mere weakness.

  The shadows were growing long as we rode along the stream and then crossed to a low island covered with willows. It was no more than sixty or seventy feet long and half as wide, but there was concealment of a sort there, and some grass.

  Swinging down, I helped Mims from the saddle, and felt him trembling with weakness. I spread his blankets, and got him over to them, and he let himself down with a deep sigh.

  "We'd better make some coffee," Penelope said. "We all need it."

  The stars were out while I gathered driftwood along the island's low shore, and the water rustled pleasantly. Behind the trunk of a huge old cottonwood deadfall, I put together a small fire. The wind was picking up a little, and it worried me, for the sound of the wind would cover anybody trying to approach us.

  Nobody talked. All of us were tired, and on edge. We all needed rest, Mims most of all. When I looked at the old man it gave me a twist of pain inside. And it gave me a sudden turn to think that though I was young and strong and tough now, this was the way a man could be when he grew old. It was old age I could see in the face of Harry Mims now.

  He drank some coffee, but refused anything to eat, and soon he fell into a restless sleep. Off to one side I said to Penelope, "All the gold in this country ain't worth that man's life. He's a good old man."

  "I know." Then she was silent. I si
pped black coffee and tried to reach out with my thoughts and picture what tomorrow would bring.

  "I need that money, Nolan," she went on. "I need it badly. Say I am selfish if you will, but if I don't get the gold, I'll have nothing, nothing at all."

  There didn't seem much of anything to say to that, and I kept still. But I kept thinking about the gold. We were not far from the canyon. As I thought about it, I wondered if I could find my way around in there in the dark. The trouble was they would probably have somebody watching. Tired as I was, I wanted to get it over with and get out of there.

  That canyon worried me. A man who lives on the rough side of things learns to trust to his instincts. The life he leads calls for a kind of alertness no man living a safe and regular life would need; his senses become sharper and they make him alive to things he can't always put into words. I was not a superstitious man, but there was something about that canyon that was all wrong.

  After a bit of contemplating, I decided not to go there by night. It would be hard enough to come upon the gold in the daylight, let alone prowling among boulders and rock slides in the dark, and maybe falling into a hole, nobody knew how deep.

  Most of all I wanted to get shut of Loomis and Sylvie and Ralph, and I got to thinking about what kind of people they were. With western folks a body knew where he stood. I mean, things were mostly out in the open, for the very good reason that there was no place to hide anything. People were scarce, the towns were small, and whatever a man did it had to be pretty well known.

  Things were beginning to change, though, because with the railroads a new kind of folks were coming west. The cheats and the weaklings that hard times had weeded out in the earlier years could now ride west on the cushions.

  Jacob Loomis was a man who might have come at any time, though he wouldn't have been any great addition to the country. Sylvie and Ralph would not have come west at all but for the gold they thought they'd come by in an easy way.

  Bishop might try to shoot me, I knew. Fryer might try dry-gulching me, but that was to be expected, more or less; anyway, this was Indian country where a man had to be on guard. Poison was another matter, and Sylvie and Ralph ... well, there was something wrong about them, something evil, something twisted in their minds.

  Finally I went to sleep, though I knew when I closed my eyes that I would wake up to a day of guns and gunsmoke. There would be blood on the rocks of the Rabbit Ears before another sundown.

  The last stars hung lonely in the sky, and a low wind trembled the cottonwood leaves when my eyes opened and my ears reached out for sound. One by one I heard the sounds--the rustling leaves, the low murmur of the creek water, the pleasant sound of horses cropping grass. Out in the creek a fish jumped.

  Picking up my boots, I shook them out--centipedes or scorpions have a way of crawling into boots at night; and then I tugged them on, stood up, and stamped them into place. My hat was already on, of course. First thing any cowhand does of a morning is put on his hat. I slung my gunbelt and settled the holster into place, then tied the thong about my leg.

  It was not yet full daylight. A single red coal showed in the fire. I stretched the stiffness out of me, wiped the night sweat from my Winchester, and went down to the creek to wash and to brush my teeth with a frayed willow stick.

  Moving quietly, I went to the dun and rubbed his ears a mite, talking to him in a low, friendly tone. Then I saddled up, rolled my bed, and made ready to move out. The old man was sleeping, breathing evenly. That tough old man, all bone and rawhide, would pull though all right. As for that girl Penelope--

  She was gone. Her bed was there, but she had slipped away. Her horse was gone too.

  My mustang hadn't made any fuss because she came from within the camp, she was one of us, and she had a right to go. And for once I'd slept so sound I'd missed her going.

  She had no business slipping off that way, but I had no business sleeping so sound that she could do it. The truth was, it made me mad to think anybody could slip out of camp without me knowing--but it worried me, too. My life depended on never sleeping that sound.

  Kneeling down, I touched Mims on the shoulder. He opened his eyes right off, sharp and clear as if he had never slept.

  "That girl kin of yours slipped off. No telling what's happened to her."

  He sat up and reached for his hat. "She'll have gone to that misbegotten canyon.

  We'd better get over there."

  Whilst he got himself up, I slapped a saddle on his horse, and only minutes after he opened his eyes we had all gear packed and ready, and rode out of camp.

  We walked our horses out of the creek and started up through the trees. The Rabbit Ears bulked large and dark against the sky. A quail called somewhere out in the brush. I knew we weere riding to a showdown, and for once I wished it was over.

  We kept to low ground, seeking all the cover we could find, and riding out in the open only when we reached the canyon mouth. There seemed to be plenty of tracks, but we could make nothing of them. As before, the dun wanted no part of the box canyon, but at my urging he went ahead hesitantly. I could see that several horses had entered the canyon since we had come out of it.

  The first thing we saw was Steve Hooker, and he was dead. He lay crumpled on the ground, one knee drawn up, his six-gun still in its holster, the thong in place.

  "Look!" Mims said hoarsely. He was pointing at Hooker's tracks.

  He had been walking along, taking slightly shorter strides than a man of his height might have been expected to take, which made me sure he had come in here after dark. Walking on uneven ground, unfamiliar to him, a man will usually take shorter steps.

  He had fallen after a few staggering steps and had gone to his hands and his knees. He had gotten up and gone on, and then had fallen again. This time when he had risen he took not more than two or three steps before he collapsed.

  "Something last night," Mims spoke in a low, awed tone. "Sackett, I'm riding the hell out of here."

  "You wait just a minute," I said. "No use goin' off half-cocked."

  Nothing seemed any different from yesterday except for the body of Hooker. I stepped down from the saddle and turned him over. There was no sign of a wound, no blood. His face looked puffy and had a kind of bluish color to it, but that might have been the effect of the early light, or it might have been my imagination.

  The low clouds that had come with daybreak hung over the Rabbit Ears, and tails of mist drifted past them. The canyon was a gloomy place at any time with its dark, basaltic rock and the uncanny stillness. I heard no sound at all, and saw no birds, no small animals.

  What was it the Mexican had told me that night on the Neuces?

  The gold had been pushed into a hole under a boulder, and rocks had been caved in over it. A cross had been scratched on the rock. Forty years or more had passed since the day that happened--I didn't have a sure idea when it was that Nathan Hume had been caught in this trap and massacred.

  "Look for a white cross, Mims," I said, keeping my voice low, not knowing who there might be listening. "The sort of thing a man would scratch on a rock if he was in a hurry."

  We both saw it at the same moment and started our horses toward it.

  The gray clouds seemed darker and lower still, and there was a hint of dampness in the air. I did not like the feel of it; I did not like anything about this strange, haunted place.

  Dropping my Winchester into the boot, I swung down from the saddle, and tied the dun to some stiff brush nearby. I loosened the thong from my six-shooter, then walked into the hollow where the boulder stood. At the base of it, below the scratched cross, was a jumble of rumbled rock.

  I looked all around. "Keep a sharp lookout, Mims," I said. "Don't watch me--watch for them."

  "I wonder where that girl is?" Mims said in a worried tone. "She'd no call to go traipsing off like that."

  "Let's get the gold. Then we'll hunt for her. I've got a hunch she can take care of herself."

  The hiding place was lo
gical enough. Men defending themselves from Indians would probably retreat to just such a place as this. It would have seemed a good place to make a stand, although Indians up on the rim could have covered them with rifle fire.

  One by one I started moving the rocks, most of them slabs, or boxilders from head-size on up. I worked as fast as a body could, but I was trying to make as little noise as possible. It was not so much that I suspected anybody was close by, but there was something about that canyon that made a man want to walk softly and speak in a low tone.

  My head, which had only stopped aching the day before, started in again now, and my breathing was bad. After a bit I left the hollow and scrambled up beside my horse, to lean against him. It was a surprising thing to know how much a wallop on the head could take out of a man.

  Mims looked worried. "You feel all right? You sure don't look so good."

  "Headache," I told him, "from that knock on the head from Andrew's bullet."

  He looked at me thoughtfully. "Now, you never did tell me how come your head was like that. Andrew, hey? What become of him?"

  "Come to think of it, it wasn't Andrew who shot me, it was Ralph. It was Andrew who came in to finish the job."

  The air was better up there beside my horse--only a few feet difference, too.

  After a few minutes I slid back down and went to work again, but I had moved only a few boulders when my head began to buzz and I felt very peculiar. I was going to have to quit.

  "If there was a swamp around here," Mims said, "I'd figure you were getting a dose of marsh gas. It'll sometimes do that to a man. Cuts his wind."

  Crawling up again, I staggered to my horse, took my canteen and rinsed my mouth with water, and then emptied some of the water over my head. After a moment or two I felt better and went down into the hollow once more. Almost at once I found the gold.

  It had been dumped into a natural hollow in the rock underneath. Wasting no time, I began to get it out. Mims, despite his weakness, got down and started to help. Our excitement carried us on, with me passing the ingots up to Mims, who put them in the prepared packs on his two lead horses.