the Man from the Broken Hills (1975)

by L'amour, Louis - Talon-Chantry

  He might be still up there, waiting to see if I was alive. He probably hadn't come any closer because of Ol' Brindle. He must have seen him right away, and the chances were the big steer was still not far off. If I got up and started to move, I might get shot. If not that, Ol' Brindle might charge me, and in my shape I'd play hell getting away from him. And I still didn't even know how badly I was hurt.

  Now the rain was falling faster. I lay very still, only half aware, only half conscious. Again I must have faded out, for when my eyes opened again I was soaked to the skin and the rain was pouring down upon me.

  With an effort, I pushed myself up from the ground. My skull was bursting and my side hurt, but I raised myself enough to see all around and I saw nothing but muddy ground, a trickle of water in the once dry creek bed, and the wet trees and dripping leaves.

  Under the big cottonwoods the rain was a little less. I pulled myself to one and sat with my back against the trunk and looked around.

  Nearby, another cottonwood had fallen, and under it lay a great trough of bark that had fallen from the underside. Another piece of loosened bark, all of six or seven feet long, lay atop the trunk.

  My hat was gone, back near the creek bed, I supposed. My fingers touched my wet hair. There was something of a cut on my scalp, but I did not think it was from a bullet. More likely my head had hit something when I fell from my horse, and I was suffering from concussion.

  The only wound I could find was on my hip where I'd been creased just below my belt. When hit, my body must have jerked and my horse swerved, so I fell, hitting my head when landing. That I'd lost blood there was no doubt, for the dark stain of it covered my pants on that side. Often a flesh wound would bleed more profusely than something really serious. Desperately, I wanted a drink, and the few drops I could catch in my opened mouth helped not at all. Yet it was too far to the creek and I wanted only to rest and be still.

  This was the second time somebody had tried to kill me. Tory Benton? Somehow, I doubted that. This must be the same man who had fired at me before, and who was now stalking me to kill.

  He might return.

  Obviously, he was a man who liked to make sure of his work. He had fired from cover, from ambush, no doubt. He had also shown the ability to hit what he shot at. Yet in each case I'd lucked out through no effort of my own. How many times could I be lucky?

  The rain fell steadily. Somewhere off to the south, thunder rumbled. Occasionally, there was a flash of lightning. I could hear the creek now. It was running a fair head of water. My hand reached to feel for my pistol. It was there. My belt, I remembered, had only two empty loops.

  My horse was gone.

  This place where I now was couldn't be more than a mile, maybe a mile and a half from our line-cabin. I'd guessed the big steer that led this bunch had been a half mile off, but after reaching the bottom I'd worked along it a ways, rounding up stock, and then I'd tried to get them out of the creek bottom ... not more than a mile and a half. Yet I was in no shape for walking, and wasn't wishful of being caught in the open by a man with a rifle. And he might still be around.

  Crawling to that dead cottonwood tree, I got those two lengths of bark. I lay down in one and pulled the other over me and I just lay there. After a while, I went to sleep.

  Those two slabs of bark kept me off the ground and covered me, just like in a hollow tree. Only I remember one of the last thoughts I had before I dropped off was that it was mighty like a coffin. When that thought came to me, I almost got up and out, but I simply was too weak, too tired, and my head ached too much.

  If anybody came looking for me now, I was helpless. A man had only to walk up and shoot me full of holes. Fitfully, I slept. I awakened, slept again, and awakened. When I tried to turn over, water leaked in from the sides where the two slabs of bark met, so turning over was an ordeal.

  Finally, after an endless night of rain, day came. A day of rain.

  My eyes opened to a dripping world. My head throbbed heavily and my side was sore, my muscles cramped. For a long time I simply lay still, listening to the rain on the bark, hearing the running of the creek. To hear it now one would never believe that yesterday it had lain dry and empty.

  The line-cabin ... I must get back to the line-cabin.

  Pushing off the top slab of bark, I struggled to sit up, made it, and rolled over to my knees on the muddy ground. I pushed myself up, got to my feet, tottered, and fell against the trunk of a tree.

  For a moment I clung there, trying to get the cramps from my legs. I felt for my pistol ... It was in place. A drink. I desperately needed a drink. Tottering on my injured leg, I got to the creek, lay down on the sand and drank. I drank and drank. Getting up, I saw my hat. It lay on the rain-heavy branches of a clump of mesquite near the stream. I retrieved it and shook some water from it, then put it on.

  Clinging to a branch of a tree, I looked carefully around. The clouds were lowering and gray; the trees and the brush dripped with water. All was dark and gloomy, yet I saw no movement, no stir of life. No wild animal would be about on such a day, and probably no man.

  I'd lost blood, and was therefore weak, yet I would get no better here. And the nearest chance was the line-cabin. It was near, but terribly far in my present condition. Most of all, I dreaded the thought of that open plain I must cross for most of the distance to it. Once I stepped out on that plain, I was a target for any rifleman who might lie in comfortable shelter and take his own time to make the shot good.

  Still clinging to the branch, I reached down and picked a length of dead branch long enough for a staff from the ground. Taking a deep breath, I started toward the bank. Only then did I realize what faced me. The banks I must climb to get away from the creek bed were in all places steep, and the few places that offered a route a man might take were slippery with mud.

  When I had gone some fifty-odd feet, I paused to gasp for breath, to ease the pain of my hip and stiffened leg, and to study what lay before me.

  There was no way I was going to get up that bank by walking. I must get down and crawl. Onward I limped. At the foot of the bank I dug in with my stick and hobbled up a step, then two. Trying a third, my foot slipped under me and I came down hard in the mud, gasping with the agony of a suddenly wrenched leg. After a long time of lying in the mud, I pushed myself up, but it was no use. I sank down again and crawled on my hands and knees.

  At last I topped out on the edge of the plain. A little scattered brush, and then the open grassland, level as a floor. Beyond it loomed the low hills, and just over those hills, the line-cabin. A dry place, a warm fire, hot food ... a cup of coffee. At that moment, no paradise I could imagine needed any more than that.

  For a time I stood still, muddy and wet, looking carefully around. But again I saw nothing. No horseman, no cattle, no Brindle. No doubt Ol' Brindle was in some snug thicket, laying out the rain. At least, I hoped he was.

  A step with my good left leg, then hitching my right forward with the aid of the staff, and then the good leg again. It was slow, and it was painful. My leg not only hurt, but the wound at my hip was bleeding again. The ache in my skull had subsided to a dull, heavy pounding to which I had grown accustomed.

  Twice I fell. Each time I struggled up. Several times I stood still for a long time trying to wish myself across the plain. But wishing did no good, so I plodded on. At last I reached the trail up the hill, and this was not steep. At the crest I looked down at the line cabin. Two horses were in the corral ... No cattle in the corral beyond. No smoke from the cabin.

  Where then was Fuentes?

  There was a flat rock near a mesquite bush. I lowered myself down, stretching my stiff leg out carefully. From that point I could see the cabin. Everything I wanted was inside, yet I did not want to die to get it.

  Fuentes should be there with a fire going. But suppose he was not, and somebody else was? Suppose the unknown marksman who had twice tried to kill me was down there instead?

  He might believe me dead, but he mi
ght also realize that if I was not dead, and needed a horse, that I would surely come to this place where horses awaited me. I had struggled too much, suffered too much to want to walk through that door into a belly full of lead.

  For a long time I watched the windows. At this distance I could see little, but hoped I would catch movement past them. I saw nothing.

  Struggling to my feet, I hobbled slowly down the path to the cabin. Approaching it, I slipped the thong from the hammer, leaned my staff against the building and drew my gun.

  With my left hand, ever so gently, I lifted the door latch. With the toe of my stiff leg, I pushed the door open."Milo!"

  Swiftly, I turned. The stable! I'd forgotten! My pistol came around, the hammer eared back.

  The only thing that saved her was my years of training-never to shoot unless I could see what I was shooting. It was Ann Timberly!

  Cold sweat broke out on my forehead, and slowly I lowered my gun muzzle, easing the hammer down ever so gently.

  "What in God's world are you doinghere ?" I demanded, irritated by the fact that I might easily have shot her.

  "I found your horse, and I remembered your saddle. I tried to backtrack him, but the rain washed out the trail, so I brought him here. I was just unsaddling when I saw you."

  She helped me inside and I slumped down on my bunk, bolstering my gun. She stared at me, shaking her head. "What in the world has happened to you?"

  Explanations could be long, I made it short. "Somebody shot me. I fell and got this," I touched my head. "And that was yesterday... I think."

  "I'll get a fire started," she turned quickly to the fireplace. "You need some food."

  "Get my rifle first."

  "What?"

  "It's still on my horse, isn't it? My rifle and the saddlebags. Somebody wants to kill me, Ann, and I want that rifle."

  She wasted no time talking, and in a moment she was back with the rifle and the saddlebags. I had another fifty rounds of ammunition in that saddlebag.

  She was quick and she was efficient. Rich girl she might be, but she'd grown up on a ranch and she knew what to do. In no time she had a fire going, coffee on, and was telling me to get out of my wet clothes.

  "And into what?" I asked wryly.

  She whipped the blanket from Fuentes' bed. "Into that," she said, "and if you're bashful, I'm not."

  It was a problem getting out of my shirt, which was soaked and clung to my back. She helped me.

  "Well," she said critically, "you've got nice shoulders, anyway. Where'd you pick up all that muscle?"

  "Wrestling steers, swinging an ax," I said. "I've worked."

  Fortunately, she could get a look at my hip just by me loosening my belt and turning down the edge of my pants, which were stiff with blood. It was a nasty-looking wound, an ugly big bruise around the top of my hipbone and a gash you could lay a finger in.

  "You'd better start for home," I said, as she dressed the wound. "The major will be worried."

  "He stopped worrying about me a long time ago. I can ride a horse and shoot, and he stopped arguing with me when I was sixteen."

  I didn't like her being there, nonetheless. Folks will talk, given provocation or none, and a woman's good name was of first importance. Argument did no good at all. She was a stubborn girl, with her own notions about things, and I could see the major must have his problems. Still, she could ride and she could shoot, and it was a big, wide-open country where a woman was safer than almost anything else a body could mention.

  Wrapped in Fuentes' blanket, I relaxed on the bed while she fixed us a meal with what she could find. Meanwhile, we talked about the situation.

  "There's nobody I can think of who'd want to shoot me," I commented, "unless it was whoever was driving those stolen cattle. I figure he must've seen me on his trail."

  "Possibly," she agreed, but she did not seem too sure.

  "Do you think Balch and Saddler are stealing cattle?"

  She hesitated over that, then shook her head. "I don't know. Neither does Pa. We've lost ... we've lost a good many but not like you have. Balch claims they've lost young stuff, too. It doesn't make any kind of sense."

  She turned to look at me. "There's been talk about you, Milo. I thought I'd better tell you. People are saying no cowboy has the kind of money you spent at the box social."

  I shrugged. "I saved some money ridin' shotgun for Wells Fargo, then I hit a pocket of stuff placer-mining up in northern New Mexico."

  "Most cowhands would have spent it."

  I shrugged. "Maybe. I'm not much of a drinker. I carry a gun, and a good many folks know I've ridden shotgun. Besides, I've covered the Outlaw Trail, Canada to Mexico. A man riding that kind of country has to be careful."

  "Is this what you're going to do the rest of your life? Just ride up and down the country?"

  Smiling, I shook my head. "No, one day I'll settle down to ranching. Maybe I will. Barnabas says I was born for it, liking stock and the country and all."

  I paused. "You'd like Barnabas," I added, "he's traveled in Europe, and he reads. He thinks a lot, too. He's planning to import some breeding stock from Europe, mix it with longhorns. The way he figures, the day of the longhorn is short. They'll do well in rough graze like this, but they walk too much and don't carry enough beef. Although," I added, "I've seen some mighty fat longhorns, given the graze."

  It was mighty pleasant, sitting there talking to Ann, but somewhere along the line I just dozed off. I'd lost blood, I was feeling sick, and I was tired from my struggle through the mud while ailing.

  When I awakened again, the cabin was still, and only coals lay on the hearth. Ann was asleep on Fuentes' bed. Hearing a stir, I raised up on an elbow and saw Fuentes sitting up. He grinned at me and put a finger to his lips. He'd been sleeping on the floor with his blanket-roll gear.

  He went out, and I heard him washing beside the door. He automatically threw the water from the pan where it would usually help settle dust, although on this morning after the rain there was none. Then he came in. And moving silently, except for the tinkle of those big Spanish spurs he wore, he made coffee, stirred up the fire and added fuel.

  Favoring my bad hip, I sat up.

  Ann had put my rifle on the bed beside me--and my six-shooter, too. She'd forgotten to bar the door, and that was probably because she hadn't intended going to sleep.

  She awakened suddenly. She stared at Fuentes and, when he bowed slightly, she smiled. "I must have fallen asleep. I am ashamed. Anyone could have come in."

  "You were tired, senorita. It was best that you slept. But the major will be worried."

  "Yes," she admitted, "this is the first time I've been gone all night."

  She looked delightful, and in a matter of minutes she had washed, done something to her hair, and had taken over the cooking from Fuentes.

  "I rode to talk to Hinge," he explained. "When I told him you were missing, he was very angry. He was worried, too. I had ridden to look, but your tracks were gone under the rain."

  We ate and talked, then Ann was gone. My fever seemed to have disappeared during the night, although I still felt kind of used up. It gave me a cold twinge when I thought of both of us asleep and somebody out there who wanted to kill me. Yet Ann could not long have been asleep before Fuentes rode in.

  Joe Hinge rode in. "Get well," he told me after we'd talked some. "We're goin' to need you. We got the west range to ride, an' that's where Balch says we can't go."

  "Give me three, four days," I said.

  "Take you longer than that," he said, "you surely look peaked." He changed the subject abruptly. "Both times you were shot at you were southeast of here?"

  At my nod, he took off his hat and scratched his head thoughtfully. "You know, some things a body can figure. There's no way it could be Balch or Saddler ... Roger, maybe. Tory Benton was riding away off north of here, and so was Knuckles Vansen."

  He paused. "It's mighty easy for somebody to think that way out on the plains nobody would ever f
igure who shot you, but look at it. All the men we know of got jobs. They have to be somewhere. You locate those who were where they were supposed to be and you've trimmed down the list."

  Hinge continued. "I can account for most of Balch's hands, and the major's as well. I know where ours were, and most of the major's."

  "Harley?" I asked.

  "Him? He wouldn't shoot nobody. He's got no cause to. Anyway, he never goes anywhere but our place and home. He'd have been home when you were shot at and that's a good distance off."

  "Is he friendly to Balch? I'm only asking because I don't know him."

  "Balch?" said Hinge. "Hell, no! They had words a while back over a horse, but Harley, he keeps to hisself. Doesn't want any truck with anybody. Does his job, draws his money and keeps that place of his."

  The thing that worried me was: there was no logical suspect except the unknown cattle thief, and there was a good chance he--or they--would be unknown around here. Chances are, it was somebody laying up in the hills, taking cattle when nobody was around.

  Hinge rode off with Fuentes, and I laid back on the bed. They had to get back, and I couldn't yet ride. I could see the sunlight through the open door, and bees buzzing around the house. And somewhere, I could hear a mockingbird singing.

  It was almighty quiet and pleasant, and it was a good time to think. One by one I began thinking over every aspect of the problem. First, Barnabas used to say, you've got to state your problem. A problem clearly stated is often a problem already half solved.

  Somebody wanted me dead.

  Who? And why?

  Chapter 12

  All my thinking got me nowhere at all. Somebody wished me dead--that was all I knew. I almost dozed off along there, just thinking about it, and then suddenly I was wide awake and scared.

  I was alone. I was wounded and in bed. And somewhere out yonder was a man with a rifle who was hunting me!

  That was enough to wake anybody up. To my way of thinking, he either figured me dead or still down there in that bottom somewhere. But suppose I was wrong? Suppose even now he was up there in the brush somewhere waiting a chance to get a shot at me?