Son Of a Wanted Man (1984)

by L'amour, Louis

  “Monson an’ them,” he said, thinking aloud, “I’ll bet they went to do that bank job! Well, that will be an easy one! Then if they are smart they’ll head for Mexico.” He glanced around at Juliana. “Your pa thought he was king bee!” He paused, then shook his head.

  “And for a while there, he was. He could plan “em, I’ll give him that.” He glanced at Juliana.

  “Your pa’s dead, you know. Perrin an” them, they’ll have killed him by now. I mean whoever Perrin left to do it. There was nobody but him, all alone in that stone house of his.” Juliana sat up straighter. “Don’t be too sure,” she said, “and when he has time he’ll hunt you down. Don’t you suppose he knows this place? Who knows this country better than he does?” Ducrow stared at her. “What makes you think he knows this place?” “Peach Meadow Canyon?” Juliana was frightened, but desperation was making her think. “I’ve heard him speak of it,” she lied.

  Ducrow was uneasy now, and she sensed the doubt.

  He had believed himself secure, but her comment had injected an element of uncertainty. If she had a chance it lay in that doubt. He had believed himself secure, but if she could make him wary, make him hesitate” Aw, he don’t know nothin’ about this place! Nobody does! Anyway, those boys back at Toadstool have taken care of him. All that damn’ discipline! Do this, don’t do that! Makes a man sick! This here’s been cumin’ for months.” “The man you call Perrin,” Juliana said, “was killed! I looked back. He was down, and Mike Bastian was standing over him.” Ducrow squatted by the fire. Rig Molina would be killed attempting to rob the treasure train, Monson and Clatt were gone, and if Perrin was dead, then what would stop him from moving in and taking over? Juliana had been afraid but was so no longer. She was like a trapped animal fighting for its life. Dru would have known what to do … but what would she do? There had to be something, some way to outwit him, some way to trick him …. How?

  The fire-if she could only get him into the fire!

  If she could trip him, push him! if she could get hold of a gun! She could shoot, even if not so well as Dru.

  Or a knife, something she could hide until the proper moment. Even a sharp blade of stone.

  Indians used them, and some of the scrapers she had seen seemed hardly to have been shaped at all. Her eyes searched the ground for a sharp-edged stone.

  She would slash him across the face … no, not the face. It must be the throat. She must try to kill him or hurt him badly, she must “Here!

  Eat up, damn you! I haven’t time to be stallin’ around! Eat! “Come daylight we’re movie’ further up the canyon! There’s a place-was “This is the place, Ducrow. Right here!” He couldn’t believe it. Ducrow put the frying pan down and slowly he straightened. Was the thong off his gun or not? “Of Roundy was right.” Ducrow was stalling for the moment he wanted. “He said you could track a snake across a flat rock. “Well, now that you’re here, what are you goin’ to do about it?” “Whatever you like, Ducrow, but I’d suggest you just carefully unfasten your belt and let your guns drop. If you don’t want to do that you can always shoot it out.” “You’re too soft, Bastian! You’ll never make a gang leader like of Ben was! Ben would never have said aye, yes, or no, he’d just have come in blasting! You got a sight to learn, youngster.

  You’re too soft! Too bad you ain’t goin’ to live long enough to learn it.

  “Perrin always thought he was good with a gun. Never a day in his life I couldn’t have beat him!” He lifted his right hand and wiped it across his tobacco stained beard. The right made a careless gesture but at the same time his left hand dropped to his gun. It came up, spouting flame! Mike Bastian simply palmed his gun and fired. It was smooth, it was fast, but most important it was accurate.

  He fired and then stepped to Ducrow’s left and fired again. Ducrow stood staring at him and then his gun dropped from loose fingers. His knees sagged and he fell forward, facedown in the sand. One hand fell into the fire and his sleeve began to smolder.

  Bastian stepped forward and pushed the hand away from the fire with his toe. Then he loaded his gun and holstered it.

  Dru came running, rifle in hand. “Oh, Mike! I thought you’d been killed!” She dropped on her knees beside her sister, and Mike walked back to the horses.

  For a long moment he stood leaning on the saddle. After a while he heard the girls coming and he said, “There’s the ruins of a stone house over yonder. Go there. I’ll come along in a minute and build a fire. We’ll go home in the morning.” He went to where Ducrow lay, and dragged him over against a low ridge of sand and gravel. Then he caved sand over him. “That’s good enough for now, Ducrow.

  When we come back, I’ll bury you right and proper.” The coffee was already made, so he brought it to the new fire he built. Later, as the coals burned down, Dru asked, “Mike? What will you do now?” “Go back to Toadstool,” he said. He sipped his coffee and stared into the cup, then at her.

  “I’ve got to go back to Ben. I’ve got to make sure he’s all right.” “And then?” “Go someplace and start over.” “Not as an outlaw?”’ I never was one, never really wanted to be one.” He looked up at her. “Dru, folks have to live together, and it can only be done if they work together to keep things right. There’s no room for outlaws in a decent world, not even the kind of world they would try to create.

  “Ben was wrong. Wrong from the start, and even as a small boy, I knew it.” “So?” “He was all I had. I’d no place else to go, and he was kind. I’ll say that for him. He was always kind.” Sunlight lay white upon the empty street at Toadstool Canyon when Mike Bastian rode into the lower end of town, his rifle across his saddle.

  Beside him was Dru Ragan .

  Juliana had stayed behind at the Ragan ranch, but Dru refused. Ben Curry was her father and she was going to him, regardless, outlaw camp or not. Besides, she would be returning with Mike beside her. If Dave Lenaker had arrived, Mike thought, the town was quiet enough for it. No horses stood at the hitching rails, and the door of the saloon gaped wide.

  Something fluttered in the light wind, and Mike’s eyes flickered. Torn cloth on a dead man’s shirt, a-man he did not know. He walked his horse up the silent street, and the hoof falls were loud in the stillness. A man’s hand and wrist lay across a windowsill. A pistol lay on the ground beneath it. There was blood on the stoop of another house. “There’s been a fight,” Mike said softly, “and a bad one. Better get yourself set for the worst.” At the mess hall a man lay sprawled in the doorway. They drew up at the foot of the stone steps and Mike helped her down. “Stay a little behind me, if you must come.” Up the steps, across the wide veranda, and into the huge living room. Shocked, they stopped in their tracks.

  Five men sat about a table, playing cards. A coffeepot bubbled on the stove.

  Doe Sawyer, Roundy, Garlin, and Colley were there, Garlin’s head was bandaged, and Colley had one leg stretched out stiff and straight, as did Ben Curry, who was on the sofa. All were smiling.

  Dru ran to her father and dropped on her knees beside him. “Oh, Dad! We were so scared!” “What happened?” Mike demanded. “Did Dave Lenaker get here?” “He surely did, but what do you think? It was Rigger Molina who got him! The Rigger got to Weaver and discovered Perrin had double-crossed him before he ever made an attempt on the train. When he found out that Perrin had lied about the number of guards on the treasure train he simply rode back.

  “When he found that Ben was crippled and Perrin had run out, with Lenaker coming, he waited for Lenaker himself!

  “He was wonderful, Mike! I never saw anything like it! He paced the veranda like a bear in a cage, muttering and waiting for Lenaker. “Leave you in the lurch, will they? I’ll show ‘em! Lenaker thinks you’re gettin” old, does he?”’ “They shot it out in the street down there, and Lenaker beat him to the draw. He put two bullets into Rigger, but he wouldn’t go down. He just stood there spraddle-legged in the street and shot until both guns were empty.

  “Lenaker must have
hit him at least five times but when Lenaker himself went down Molina went over and spat in his face. “That’s for a double-Grosser!” he said. Mike, he was magnificent!” “They fooled me, Mike,” Roundy said. “I saw trouble cumin’ and figured I’d better get to old Ben.

  I never figured on them slippin’ in behind and grabbin you.

  “Then I heard Lenaker was cumin’. I knew him and I was afraid of what he would do, so I headed down the trail to meet him. Mike, I never killed a man in my life except some Blackfeet that attacked us when I was livin with the Crows, but I was sure aimin’ to kill Lenaker. “Then Lenaker come in by the old creek trail, and him and his boys went after Ben and the gold he was supposed to have.” “Doc was here,” Garlin said, “an’ Colley.

  Roundy slipped through and joined us. Oh, it was some fight while it lasted. We got scratched up some, but nothin’ to what they got.” Briefly, Mike Bastian described his fight with Kerb Perrin and the pursuit of Ducrow.

  “They’ve pulled out,” Roundy said, “all that’s alive.” “The only man who ever fooled me was Rigger Molina,” Ben Curry said. “I never guessed he was that loyal, but he took that fight when I was in no shape to, and soaked up lead like a sponge soaks water.” Doc Sawyer idly shuffled the cards. “Ben,” he said, “I think we should move out, as soon as you’re able to ride. I think we should all move out.” Ben Curry looked up at Dru. “Now you know.

  Your old man’s an outlaw. I never wanted you to know, and I planned to get shut of this whole outfit and live out my days with your ma, over there on the V-Bar.” “Why don’t you?” Dru asked.

  “Funny,” Ben said, “I never figured it would get this big, never at all. One thing just follered another until it got too big to let go of.” “It was over, Ben. You held men together who did not like being held. You made things work. Now some of them will slip away and probably disappear just like you can.” “You shuffle them cards any more, Doc,” Garlin said, “and I’ll get worried what you’re doin’ to that deck.

  Set up an’ deal.” Mike and Dru walked outside and looked down over Toadstool Canyon. There were no lights in the town where dead men lay, sprawled in their last moments. Inside they heard argument. “He’s a fine lad, Ben, and well educated, if I do say so who taught him all he knows. was “All he knows!” Roundy exploded. “Book larnin’ is all well an’ good but where would that gal be tonight if n I hadn’t taught him to read sign an’ foller a trail? I ask you, where would she be?”

  On the wide veranda, with the stars brushed by the dark fingertips of the pines, Mike said to Dru, “I can read sign, all right, but I’m no hand at reading the trail to a woman’s heart. You will have to help me, Dru.” She laughed, resting a hand on his arm. “Mike, you’ve been blazing that trail ever since we met in Weaved You need no help at all!” She turned him to face her. “Mike, I love this country! Every bit of its red rock canyons, its green cedars, the pines, the distance .

  . . all of it! Why don’t we get some cattle and go back to Peach Meadow Canyon? “Why don’t we build a cabin, plant some more peaches, and start a place of our own? You said you could make a better trail better than the one we used.” From inside Garlin was saying, “Monson an” Clatt?

  Wherever they went, we’ll hear of them soon enough!” “That Clatt,” Ben commented, “he was one I was going to drop. Liked to brag too much! He wanted to tell around the saloons what a tough man he was. He wasn’t content with my kind of operation, wanted to be pointed out as a bad man and an outlaw.” “The trouble with that,” Garlin remarked, “is that the law listens, too.” He glanced at Ben Curry. “He favored that bank back over the mountains. He always did think well of that job.” Curry glanced at his cards. He would keep what he had. He looked over them at Garlin. “I was calling it off. The old marshal, Riggin was his name, he got himself killed, and that rancher where we left the horses, Borden Chantry was his name, he took over as marshal.” He watched Doc draw two cards. Three of a kind, maybe? “There at their wagon I drank coffee with Chantry. I looked across my cup at him and I knew then he was one man I wanted no part o* When he became marshal I decided I’d just forget that job. Not that I didn’t think back to it every now and again, but it always came up as a bad bet.” . “Come daylight,” Doc said casually as he laid down three nines and took the pot, “we should ride out of here. If somebody happened by there’d be explanations.”

  He stacked his winnings in neat piles. “I’m glad it’s over, Ben. You an’ me, we’re the past. Those youngsters outside there, they are tomorrow.” Ben hitched himself into a more comfortable position. “You’re right, of course. All of us, you, me, Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Bill Hickok, we’ve lived out our time in a world we never made. “Take Billy now, I knew him as a youngster. Not a bad kid, but in Lincoln County them days you took sides. You had to. Billy took the right side, too. Tunstall and Maqueen were good men, and then of the whole two hundred or so involved in that fight Billy was the only one ever brought to trial.” Garlin, gathering the cards, suddenly stopped. On the back of a nine of spades there was a small fingernail scratch. Quickly he ran through the deck.

  There was another on the nine of diamonds, a third on the nine of hearts. “Doc!” he yelled.

  “Damn you for a four-eyed pirate! You—Ben chuckled and hitched himself around to get his foot on the floor. “Gar, you ought to know Doe by now. With him it ain’t the money, it’s the winning. How many times has he staked you?” Garlin shrugged, smiling.

  “Nevertheless-was Out in the dark a coyote pleaded plaintively to the silent stars, and Ben heaved himself to his feet, leaning on the heavy cane. On the porch, nearing the low stone wall, Mike Bastian stood with Dru. He stood staring for a minute, then muttered, “Well, why not?” He looked down the dark and empty street. Tomorrow it would be alone with its ghosts. “Garlin?” Mike called out. “See that Rig Molina gets a proper marker, will you? Say He was a good mare. And carve it in stone.”

  The End