Collection 1986 - The Trail To Crazy Man (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Olga had the Bar M and her uncle to run it for her, and nobody would be making any trouble for Canaval. There was nothing for me to do but to go back home.

  MY HORSE WAS standing at the rail, and I walked out to him and lifted the stirrup leather to tighten the cinch. But I did not hurry. Olga was standing there in front of the restaurant, and the one thing I wanted most was to talk to her. When I looked up she was standing there alone.

  “You’re going back to the Two Bar?” Her voice was hesitant.

  “Where else? After all, it’s my home now.”

  “Have—have you done much to the house yet?”

  “Some.” I tightened the cinch and then unfastened the bridle reins. “Even a killer has to have a home.” It was rough, and I meant it that way.

  She flushed. “You’re not holding that against me?”

  “What else can I do? You said what you thought, didn’t you?”

  She stood there looking at me, uncertain of what to say, and I let her stand there.

  She watched me put my foot in the stirrup and swing into the saddle. She looked as if she wanted to say something, but she did not. Yet when I looked down at her she was more like a little girl who had been spanked than anything else I could think of.

  Suddenly, I was doing the talking. “Ever start that trousseau I mentioned?”

  She looked up quickly. “Yes,” she admitted, “but—but I’m afraid I didn’t get very far with it. You see, there was—”

  “Forget it.” I was brusque. “We’ll do without it. I was going to ride out of here and let you stay, but I’ll be double damned if I will. I told you I was going to marry you, and I am. Now listen, trousseau or not, you be ready by tomorrow noon, understand?”

  “Yes. All right. I mean—I will.”

  Suddenly, we were both laughing like fools and I was off that horse and kissing her, and all the town of Hattan’s Point could see us. It was right there in front of the cafe, and I could see people coming from saloons and standing along the boardwalks all grinning.

  Then I let go of her and stepped back and said, “Tomorrow noon. I’ll meet you here.” And with that I wheeled my horse and lit out for the ranch.

  EVER FEEL SO good it looks as if the whole world is your big apple? That was the way I felt. I had all I ever wanted. Grass, water, cattle, and a home and wife of my own.

  The trail back to the Two Bar swung around a huge mesa and opened out on a wide desert flat, and far beyond it I could see the suggestion of the stones and pinnacles of badlands beyond Dry Mesa. A rabbit burst from the brush and sprinted off across the sage, and then the road dipped down into a hollow. There in the middle of the road was Bodie Miller.

  He was standing with his hands on his hips, laughing, and there was a devil in his eyes. Off to one side of the road was Red, holding their horses and grinning too.

  “Too bad!” Bodie said. “Too bad to cut down the big man just when he’s ridin’ highest, but I’ll enjoy it.”

  This horse I rode was skittish and unacquainted with me. I’d no idea how he’d stand for shooting, and I wanted to be on the ground. Suddenly, I slapped spurs to that gelding, and when the startled animal lunged toward the gunman I went off the other side. Hitting the ground running I spun on one heel and saw Bodie’s hands blur as they dove for their guns, and then I felt my own gun buck in my hand. Our bullets crossed each other, but mine was a fraction the fastest despite that instant of hesitation when I made sure it would count.

  HIS SLUG RIPPED a furrow across my shoulder that stung like a thousand needles, but my own bullet caught him in the chest and he staggered back, his eyes wide and agonized. Then I started forward, and suddenly the devil was up in me. I was mad, mad as I had never been before. I opened up with both guns. “What’s the matter?” I was yelling. “Don’t you like it, gunslick? You asked for it. Now come and get it! Fast, are you? Why you cheap, two-bit gunman, I’ll—”

  But he was finished. He stood there, a slighter man than I was, with blood turning his shirtfront crimson, and with his mouth ripped by another bullet. He was white as death. Even his lips were gray, and against that whiteness was the splash of blood. In his eyes now there was another look. The killing lust was gone, and in its place was an awful terror, for Bodie Miller had killed, and enjoyed it with a kind of sadistic bitterness that was in him—but now he knew he was being killed, and the horror of death was surging through him.

  “Now you know how they felt, Bodie,” I said bitterly. “It’s an ugly thing to die with a slug in you because some punk wants to prove he’s tough. And you aren’t tough, Bodie, just mean.”

  He stared at me, but he didn’t say anything. He was gone, and I could see it. Something kept him upright, standing in that white-hot sun, staring at me, the last face he would ever look up.

  “You asked for it. Bodie, but I’m sorry for it. Why didn’t you stay to punching cows?”

  Bodie backed up another step, and his gun slid from his fingers. He tried to speak, and then his knees buckled and he went down. Standing over him, I looked at Red.

  “I’m ridin’,” Red said huskily. “Just give me a chance.” He swung into the saddle and then looked down at Bodie. “He wasn’t so tough, was he?”

  “Nobody is,” I told him. “Nobody’s tough with a slug in his belly.”

  He rode off, and I stood there in the trail with Bodie dead at my feet. Slowly, I holstered my gun and then led my horse off the trail to the shade where Bodie’s horse still stood.

  Lying there in the dusty trail, Bodie Miller no longer looked mean or even tough. He looked like a kid that had tackled a job that was too big for him.

  There was a small gully off the trail. It looked like a grave, and I used it that way. Rolling him into it, I shoved the banks in on top of him and then piled on some stones. Then I made a cross for him and wrote his name on it, and the words: HE PLAYED OUT HIS HAND. Then I hung his guns on the cross and his hat.

  It was not much of an end for a man, not any way you looked at it, but I wanted no more reputation as a killer—mine had already grown too big.

  Maybe Red would tell the story, and maybe in time somebody would see the grave. But if Red’s story was told it would be somewhere far away and long after, and that suited me.

  A stinging in my shoulder reminded me of my own wound, but when I opened my shirt and checked my shoulder I found it a mere scratch.

  Ahead of me the serrated ridges of the wild lands were stark and lonely along the sky, and the sun behind me was picking out the very tips of the peaks to touch them with gold. Somehow the afternoon was gone, and now I was riding home to my own ranch, and tomorrow was my wedding day.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ____________

  SHOWDOWN ON THE HOGBACK

  NO MAN CAN be understood except against the background of his own time. The characters in “Showdown on the Hogback” lived in a time and place when work-days were long, living conditions were harsh, and the work itself was brutally hard. Yet they expected nothing more. At least, they had fresh air.

  Conditions in eastern cities were worse in many respects. Trade unions either did not exist or were fighting for acceptance, and sweatshop conditions prevailed everywhere. Sanitary conditions were just as primitive as in the West, only with less clean air and sunlight.

  The western man grew up fighting to protect the land he claimed and the cattle he drove. There was no policeman to call; he learned not to call for help because there was nobody to listen. He saddled his own broncs, and he fought his own battles.

  SHOWDOWN ON THE HOGBACK

  __________________

  I

  EVERYTHING WAS QUIET in Mustang. Three whole days had passed without a killing. The town-folk, knowing their community, were not fooled, but had long since resigned themselves to the inevitable. They would, in fact, be relieved when the situation was back to normal, with a killing every day, or more on hot days. When there had been no killing for several days, pressure mounted because no one k
new who would be next.

  Moreover, with Clay Allison, who had killed thirty men, playing poker over at the Morrison House, and Black Jack Ketchum, who richly deserved the hanging he was soon to get, sleeping off a drunk at the St. James, trouble could be expected.

  The walk before the St. James was cool at this hour, and Captain Tom Kedrick, a stranger in town, sat in a well-polished chair and studied the street with interested eyes.

  He was a tall young man with rusty brown hair and green eyes, quiet mannered and quick to smile. Women never failed to look twice, and when their eyes met his their hearts pounded, a fact of which Tom Kedrick was totally unaware. He knew women seemed to like him, but it never failed to leave him mildly astonished when they liked him very much, which they often did.

  The street he watched was crowded with buckboards, freight wagons, a newly arrived stage, and one about to depart. All the hitchrails were lined with saddled horses wearing a variety of brands.

  Kedrick was suddenly aware that a young man stood beside him, and he glanced up. The fellow was scarcely more than a boy and he had soft brown eyes and hair that needed cutting. “Captain Kedrick?” he inquired. “John Gunter sent me. I’m Dornie Shaw.”

  “Oh, yes!” Kedrick got to his feet smiling and thrust out his hand. “Nice to know you, Shaw. Are you working for Gunter?”

  Shaw’s long brown eyes were faintly ironic. “With him,” he corrected. “I work for no man.”

  “I see.”

  Kedrick did not see at all, but he was prepared to wait and find out. There was something oddly disturbing about this young man, something that had Kedrick on edge and queerly alert. “Where’s Gunter now?”

  “Down the street. He asked me to check an’ see if you were here an’, if you were, to ask you to stick around close to the hotel. He’ll be along soon.”

  “All right. Sit down, why don’t you?”

  Shaw glanced briefly at the chairs. “I’ll stand. I never sit in no chair with arms on them. Apt to get in the way.”

  “In the way?” Kedrick glanced up, and then his eyes fell to the two guns Shaw wore, their butts hanging wide. “Oh, yes! I see.” He nodded at the guns. “The town marshal doesn’t object?”

  Dornie Shaw looked at him, smiling slowly. “Not to me, he don’t. Wouldn’t do him no good if he did.

  “Anyway,” he added after a minute, “not in Mustang. Too many hard cases. I never seen a marshal could make it stick in this town.”

  Kedrick smiled. “Hickok? Earp? Masterson?”

  “Maybe.” Dornie Shaw was openly skeptical. “But I doubt it. Allison’s here. So’s Ketchum. Billy the Kid’s been around, and some of that crowd. A marshal in this town would have to be mighty fast an’ prove it every day.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” He studied Shaw surreptitiously. What was it about him that was so disturbing? Not the two guns, for he had seen many men who wore guns, had been reared among them, in fact. No, it was something else, some quality he could not define, but it was a sort of lurking menace, an odd feeling with such a calm-eyed young man.

  “We’ve got some good men,” Shaw volunteered, after a minute. “Picked up a couple today. Laredo Shad’s goin’ to be one of the best, I’m thinkin’. He’s a tough hand an’ gunwise as all get out. Three more come in today. Fessenden, Poinsett, an’ Goff.”

  _______

  OBVIOUSLY, FROM THE manner in which he spoke, the names meant much to Shaw, but they meant exactly nothing to Kedrick. Fessenden seemed to strike some sort of a responsive note, but he could not put a finger on it. His eyes strayed down the street, studying the crowd. “You think they’ll really fight?” he asked, studying the street. “Are there enough of them?”

  “That bunch?” Shaw’s voice was dry. “They’ll fight, all right. You got some tough boys in that outfit. Injun scrappers an’ such like. They won’t scare worth a durn.” He glanced curiously at Kedrick. “Gunter says you’re a fighter.”

  Was that doubt in Shaw’s voice? Kedrick smiled. And then shrugged. “I get along. I was in the Army, if that means anything.”

  “Been West before?”

  “Sure! I was born in California, just before the rush. When the war broke out I was sixteen, but I went in with a bunch from Nevada. Stayed in a couple of years after the war, fighting Apaches!”

  Shaw nodded, as if satisfied. “Gunter thinks well of you, but he’s only one of them an’ not the most important one.”

  A short, thickset man with a square-cut beard looking enough like General Grant to be his twin was pushing through the crowd toward them. He even smoked a thick black cigar.

  The man walking beside him was as tall as Kedrick, who stood an easy inch above six feet. He had a sharply cut face and his eyes were cold, but they were the eyes of a man born to command, a man who could be utterly ruthless. That would be Colonel Loren Keith. That meant there was one, yet, whom he must meet—the man Burwick. The three were partners, and of the three, only Burwick was from the area.

  Gunter smiled quickly, his lips parting over clenched white teeth that gripped his cigar. He thrust out his hand. “Good to see you, Kedrick! Colonel, this is our man! If there ever was a man born to ramrod this thing through, this is the one! I told you of that drive he made for Patterson! Took those cattle through without losing a head, rustlers an’ Commanches be danged!”

  Keith nodded, his cold eyes taking in Kedrick at a glance. “Captain—that was an Army title, Kedrick?”

  “Army. The war between the states.”

  “I see. There was a Thomas Kedrick who was a sergeant in the fighting against the Apaches.”

  “That was me. All of us went down some in rank after the troops were discharged.”

  “How much time in the war?” Keith’s eyes still studied him.

  “Four years, and two campaigning in the Southwest.”

  “Not bad. You should know what to expect in a fight.” His eyes went to Kedrick’s, faintly supercilious. “I have twelve years, myself. Regular Army.”

  Kedrick found that Keith’s attitude irritated him. He had meant to say nothing about it, but suddenly he was speaking. “My American Army experience, Colonel, was only part of mine. I was with Bazaine, at the defense of Metz, in the Franco-Prussian War. I escaped and was with MacMahon at the Battle of Sedan.”

  Keith’s eyes sharpened and his lips thinned. Kedrick could feel the sharp dislike rising in the man. Keith was definitely possessed of a strong superiority complex.

  “Is that all?” he asked coolly.

  “Why, no. Since you ask, it was not. I was with Wolseley in the second Ashanti war in Africa. And I was in the two-year campaign against the Tungans of northern Tien Shan—with the rank of general.”

  “You seem to get around a good bit,” Keith said dryly. “A genuine mercenary!”

  Kedrick smiled, undisturbed. “If you like. That’s what you want here, isn’t it? Men who can fight? Isn’t it customary for some men to hire others to do their fighting for them?”

  _______

  COLONEL KEITH’S FACE flamed and then went white, but before he could speak, a big, square-faced man thrust himself through the crowd and stopped to face them. “You, is it, Gunter? Well, I’ve heard tell the reason why you’re here, an’ if you expect to take from hard-workin’ men the land they’ve slaved for, you better come a-shootin’!”

  Before anyone could speak, Dornie slid between Keith and Gunter and fronted the man. “You lookin’ for trouble? You want to start your shootin’ now?”

  His voice was low, almost a purr, but Kedrick was startled by the shocked expression on the man’s face. He drew back, holding his hands wide. “I wasn’t bracin’ you, Dornie! Didn’t even know you was around!”

  “Then get out!” Shaw snarled, passion suddenly breaking through his calmness—passion and something else, something Kedrick spotted with a shock—the driving urge to kill!

  “Get out!” Shaw repeated. “An’ if you want to live, keep goin’!”

  Stumblin
gly, the man turned and ducked into the hastily assembled crowd, and Tom Kedrick, scanning their faces, found hard indifference there, or hatred. In no face did he see warmth or friendly feeling. He frowned thoughtfully and then turned away.

  Gunter caught his arm, eager to take advantage of the break the interruption had made to bring peace between the two. “You see what we’re up against?” he began. “Now that was Peters. He’s harmless, but there’s others would have drawn, and drawn fast! They won’t all be like that! Let’s go meet Burwick!”

  Kedrick fell in beside Gunter, who carefully interposed himself between the two men. Once, Tom glanced back. What had become of Dornie Shaw he did not know, but he did know his second in command, which job was Shaw’s, was a killer. He knew the type from of old.

  Yet he was disturbed more than he cared to admit by the man who had braced them. Peters had the look of an honest man, even if not an intelligent one. Of course, there might be honest men among them, if they were men of Peters’ stripe. He was always a follower, and he might follow where the wrong men led.

  Certainly, if this land was going to Gunter, Keith, and Burwick through a government bill there could be nothing wrong with it. If the government sold the land to them, squatters had no rights there. Still, if there were many like Peters, the job was not going to be all he had expected.

  Gunter stopped before a square stone house set back from the street. “This here’s headquarters,” he said. “We hole up here when in town. Come on in.”

  A wide veranda skirted the house, and as they stepped upon it they saw a girl in a gray skirt and white blouse sitting a few feet away with an open book in her lap. Gunter halted. “Colonel, you’ve met Miss Duane.

  “Captain Kedrick, my niece, Consuelo Duane.”

  Their eyes met—and held. For a breathless moment, no voice was lifted. Tom Kedrick felt as though his muscles had gone dead, for he could not move. Her own eyes were wide, startled.