to Tame a Land (1955)

by L'amour, Louis

  We had occasional trouble with drunken miners, bu t we usually put them in jail to cool off and sober up.

  Otherwise it was almighty tame. Then one day a ma n tried to hold up, of all places, Billings' saloon.

  Shouldn't say he tried. He did it. Me, I was back o f the office saddling the gray when I heard a shot. I steppe d around the horse and was looking along the back door s of the buildings when I saw this door burst open and a man lunge out with a sack in his hand.

  He had a gun gripped in the other hand, and I coul d see a horse waiting. He was headed for that horse whe n I yelled at him. I told him to hold up there, and b e quick.

  At that, he might have got away. There were a coupl e of wagons and a wagon yard betwixt us, and he woul d have been behind them in two more jumps. But whe n I yelled he skidded to a stop and came up with his gun.

  My bullet nailed him just as he fired. His shot wen t whining off overhead, seeming closer than it was. Alway s that way with a bullet when a man is shot at. Alway s seems close.

  When I got to him he was in bad shape. The bulle t had hit him in the side and gone through both his lung s and he was breathing blood in bubbles. All the fight wa s knocked out of him. His gun had fallen where he coul d have reached it, but he didn't try.

  When I leaned over him he spoke mighty bitter. "You!

  That . . . that stopped me! I . . . I had to make my try!"

  The holdup man was Ollie Burdette. He looked older , grayer. Yet it had been only a few months since I'd ru n him out of Mason Crossing.

  Yet there was a glint in his eyes, a kind of fadin g triumph. "I seen her!" I could barely hear the words.

  "Seen her! You'll never get her now! You'll . . . bette r man!"

  "What?" I grabbed his shoulder. "You saw who?"

  He was going fast, and folks were coming, but he wa s having the last laugh. "I . . . seen Liza!" He spoke wit h that ugly bubbling sound from bleeding lungs. "Bette r man than you . . . got her!"

  And he died.

  Ben Billings scooped up the spilled money. He looke d at Burdette, then curiously at me. "You know him?"

  How much had Billings heard? What was he thinking?

  "Ollie Burdette," I told him, "from over at th e Crossing."

  Billings looked at the dead man, a curious, thoughtfu l look on his face. "Strange. . . . A man would think h e was fated to die by your gun. You didn't kill him there , so unexpectedly you kill him here." He looked around a t me. "Makes a man wonder."

  It did, at that.

  And was there some other meaning behind the word s of Ben Billings? Was he, too, fated to die by my gun? i And that night, back at the office, I thought about t.

  Who could have guessed such a thing would happen?

  That from the day Burdette saw me on the street, I wa s marked by some fate to cut him down? Did he know it i n some queer way? Me, I don't set much store by that sor t of thing, but it does beat all.

  Billings could have killed 'him, or a dozen men. Yet i t was me. And he was my eighth man, and I had neve r wanted to kill even one.

  Sometimes when I got up in the morning I hated t o belt on my gun. Sometimes I just looked at it and wishe d I could be shut of the whole thing, that I could get clea n away from it all, and go someplace where men did no t pack guns or shoot to kill.

  Maybe you think I could have left my guns off, bu t I wouldn't have lived an hour. Not one. Too many o f that Billings crowd around, or others who wanted m y hide.

  When Mustang and me took over there had been robberies and murders every night. It was the law of th e gun that we brought to Alta, but it was law. Ours wa s a time of violence, of men fiercely independent, of me n who resented every slight and whose only recourse was t o the Colt.

  It is all very well for those who live in the East t o talk of more peaceful means, or for those who live in th e later, gentler years, but we were men with the bark on , and we were opening up raw, new country, mustan g country, bronco country, uncurried, unbroken, and fierce.

  Because of the guns I wore, women walked along ou r streets now, children were going to a small school nearby , and people went to church on Sunday. I wore my gun s and the thieves and murderers sat in the shadows an d waited for me to fall or to have a moment of carelessness.

  I thought of Liza. A better man, he had said. A bette r man had won her. But better in what sense? What sor t of man could be friendly to Billings and be a good man?

  One thing I had in that town, I had a friend. No ma n was ever more understanding or a stronger right han d than Mustang Roberts. He had only three short years o f schooling. He read, but slowly. He could write, though no t well. But there was in him a purpose and endurance suc h as I have seen in few men, and a kind of rocklike strengt h that let me go ahead knowing he would always be at m y back, ready to back me up with his guns.

  He came in that night after the killing of Burdette an d I told him about the last words of the man from Maso n Crossing. Then we started talking, as we often did, abou t the gun fighters who were making names for themselves , about Hickok, Allison, Ben Thompson, and King Fisher.

  "You ever run into Ash Milo, the Mogollon gunman?"

  "Never did. He wasn't one of the Market Squar e crowd in Kansas City. That was where I saw Hickok."

  Mustang rolled a smoke. "He's a mighty mean man.

  And pure poison with a gun. I never did see him, either , and never heard tell of him until about two years ago.

  In those two years he's made a name."

  He tipped back in his chair. "He killed six men las t year. Hunted down two of them, two big names. Deliberately hunted them. He's mean, he's reckless, doesn't see m to care . . . or didn't at first. This past year he's tapere d off a little. Maybe he found something worth living for."

  "Don't know much about him. Outlaw, isn't he?"

  Seemed to me as I spoke that I'd seen his name o n some of the circulars we got in the mail.

  "Uh-huh. Stuck up a payroll in Nevada. Then a train , some stages. Killed the marshal at Greener."

  "Hope he doesn't come this way," I said. "I want n o truck with him. I don't want to kill anybody, not ever."

  We talked and loafed through the night and finall y when daylight began to show we called the day watc h and turned in. After I got into bed I got to thinkin g about Mustang asking me if I'd known Milo. Maybe th e question had been more pointed than I'd believed. . . .

  No, I was getting too suspicious. Finding double meaning s everywhere.

  By then I had saved eight thousand dollars. Not s o much, maybe, but a sight for a kid with no education wh o was just twenty-one years old.

  Folks in town seemed to like me. And I was gettin g to know them. The toughs passed me by, glad to be unnoticed, but the businessmen often stopped to talk an d their wives would bow to me on the street.

  I'd always kept the office looking clean and dusted , but lately I'd taken to dressing up a little myself. I'd discarded the old buckskins, and had taken to wearin g tailored black or gray trousers.

  Also I'd started a move to clean up the back yard s and junk heaps. Not that I needed any help. All I ha d to do was drop a word here and there.

  But always in the back of my mind was Liza, and I k new I would never feel free until I knew she was al l right, and until I was sure she was happy. Sometimes I g ot to studying about it and trying to put it all together: t he fact that Billings knew something about her, that Ol d Blue had been left at a nearby ranch, that Ollie Burdette had known something.

  We had tried to find out where Ollie Burdette ha d been hiding out before he came to Alta, but we got nowhere. His trail vanished utterly. For two months ther e was a complete blank space in his life.

  Mustang never stopped digging around. Sometimes h e would come up with odd comments that started me thinking. Mustang was a patient man, and when I said h e would make a good Pinkerton, I was right. If I was a crook I'd not want him on my trail.

  One day he came into the office just after I g
ot up.

  It was right after lunchtime. We had stood the nigh t watch, as usual.

  "This here Ash Milo," he said, "he killed another man.

  Killed an outlaw named Ruskin."

  "Heard of Ruskin."

  "Uh-huh. Bad man. Woman trouble. Ruskin neve r could leave them alone."

  "Where'd this happen?" I was just making conversation. I didn't care where it happened. Or anything abou t either of them.

  "Thieves' hideout. Place back on the plateau calle d Robbers' Roost."

  Of course, I knew about the place. There was an are a out there several hundred miles square that was a know n hideout for thieves and killers. We had no big crime i n Alta, so it didn't affect us, but every time a bank, train , or payroll was taken, the bandits took off for the Roost.

  And no posse dared to go after them. Only one eve r tried. The two men who survived had been shot to dol l rags.

  "This Ash Milo is the boss back in there."

  "Yeah?"

  "You never knew him?"

  "Not me."

  Mustang, he let his chair legs down to the floor. "That's funny, Rye, because he knows you."

  Chapter 15

  THAT TOOK a few minutes to make itself felt. Then I s aid, "By reputation, you mean."

  "No. He knows you."

  I scowled, thinking back. There was no Ash Milo anywhere in my memory. Of course, a man meets a lot o f folks, time to time, and back on the cattle drive ther e had been a lot whose names I never knew. The same wa s true of Wichita, Dodge, Uvalde, and Kansas City.

  There had been a lot of gun-packing men at Red Rive r Crossing, too. But no Ash Milo that I could remember.

  "What gives you that idea?" I said at last.

  "Because the word's out. None of that gang are t o start any trouble over here. They stay out of town an d they pull nothing crooked in this town. He told the m flatly you were bad medicine and to be left alone."

  "Good for him. Saves trouble."

  Mustang Roberts wasn't happy about it, I could see.

  Something was biting him, eating at him. He got up an d paced the floor and he was studying this thing out. He had a good head and he thought of a lot of things.

  "This may be it, Rye. This may be it."

  "What?"

  "The tie-up. The link between Billings, Liza and Ol d Blue."

  "No connection that I can see."

  "Me, neither. But it's got the feel. I think it's there."

  That night I made my rounds about eleven o'clock.

  That was the best time, because by then the boys woul d be liquored up enough to think they were mighty big , but knowing my gun was around usually kept the m mighty sober. Most times all I had to do was walk aroun d and show myself.

  While I was walking, I got to thinking. It might be.

  Maybe there was something to this idea. It might jus t be the connection between Liza, Billings, and the fac t that Ollie Burdette had seen Liza recently.

  Pausing against the side of a building, I thought tha t over. Ollie Burdette had dropped from sight for severa l months, and during that period he must have seen Liza.

  On Robbers' Roost he would be out of sight and s o would she. And nobody would do much talking about it.

  And Burdette had said a better man had Liza. Ha d he meant Ash Milo?

  Of course, I knew a little about Milo. And since Mustang had mentioned him I'd begun remembering thing s and hearing more. I expect I'd been hearing them befor e without paying them no mind.

  Many considered him the most dangerous gunman wes t of the Rockies. And they weren't giving him second plac e to Hickok, Earp, or any of them.

  Returning to the office, I went through the files. Th e holdup in Nevada seemed t have been the beginning o f his Western caree n It had been a job with timing and finish. It ha d been planned carefully and had come off without a hitch , and must have taken place while I was on that cattl e drive.

  The killing of the marshal revealed another side to hi s character. The account in the files told of Milo's literall y shooting the marshal to rags. It had been the act of a killer, of a man in the possession of terrible fury or a homicidal mania . . . or of an extremely cold-bloode d man who wanted to shock people into absolute fear.

  The marshal before John Lang had kept careful files , and reading what I could find on Milo gave me a pictur e of a sharp, intelligent, thoroughly dangerous man who sho t as quick as a striking snake and asked no questions.

  The picture was not pretty. At least twice he had kille d men because they got in the way at the wrong time. An d when they were only too anxious to get out of his way.

  He was a man utterly ruthless, but also a man wh o seemed driven by some inner fury.

  Ash Milo shaped up like no easy proposition. He wa s a very dangerous man, but he did not fit the descriptio n of any man I knew. So that part could be ruled out.

  Nevertheless, the thought that he might have Liz a worried me. And where else could she be? Thinking o f Liza made think of Old Blue. When I awakened the nex t day at noon, after working the night hitch, I saddled u p and rode out to see him.

  He trotted to the fence to greet me. It was good t o see the old fellow. I fed him some sugar, slapped him o n the shoulder, ran my fingers up through his mane . . . A n d stopped.

  My fingers had found something. Something tied o r tangled there. Slowly, knowing it was by the feel, I parte d the long hairs of the mane and looked at a folded squar e of paper. Untangling the mane, I untied the knots tha t held it in place.

  It opened out, and I knew the handwriting.

  Liza!

  My heart pounding, I held it a moment before beginning to read. Then, finally, I lowered my eyes.

  Dearest Rye:

  Please don't try to find me. Go away. To find me wil l only bring you heartbreak and misery, and possibl y death. I am all right, and I am happy to know yo u are well, and away from here. Go! If you love me , please go!

  Li.

  So . . . at last a message. The gap lyidged by a fe w simple words. But she was sending me away.

  That I did not think of at first. Only that she had t o be close. She was near.

  Vaulting the fence, I stepped into the leather an d went to the ranch house at a dead run.

  The old man had been washing dishes and he came t o the door drying his hands on a towel. "Figured to se e you," he said. "That girl was here."

  "When was it?"

  "Two days ago, along about sundown. She come wit h that puncher and two others. Looked mighty mean, the y did. She went down to see the horse and two of the m stayed close all the time. She asked if you had been aroun d and seemed pleased when I told her you was some happ y about the horse."

  "How's she look?"

  "Mighty pretty. Beautiful, even. Hair's pretty, and a good figger. Looks well fed, but ain't fat. Just nice-like.

  But . . . well, kind of worried. Upset, maybe."

  "Where'd they go?"

  "Like I said, it was sundown when they showed. By the time they left, it was clean dark. I couldn't even se e to the gate, but I figure they went south."

  No matter how many questions I asked, that was al l he could tell me, except that they had not let her ou t of their sight, and the one puncher he had seen befor e had this time stayed well away from the house.

  "Mighty interested in you," he added. "Asked a sigh t of questions." He returned to washing dishes. "Seeme d to me they picked that time to get here so's they coul d leave in the dark. I figure it was planned."

  Descriptions of the men meant nothing to me, nor coul d he tell me if any one of the three seemed to have authority.

  Liza had been treated politely and with respect, but the y had never left her alone with him for a minute.

  Mustang was sitting on the walk with his back agains t the wall of the building when I returned to the office.

  I told him what had happened and showed him the note.

  He frowned over it, reading poorly as he did, but the n
he looked up and said, "Man asking for you. He's a t the hotel." Mustang got up. "It's that gent from Denver.

  That Denison what's-his-name."

  "All right. I'll go see him. He say what he wanted?"

  "No. Only he asked a lot of questions about you. Aske d about Burdette, and about the fight at Billings' place."

  The hotel was a long two-story building of unpainte d lumber, some weathered by wind and rain. It had bee n put together in a hurry to accommodate the sudden influ x of visitors while the town was booming.

  Denison Mead sat by the fire alone when I walked int o the lobby. The place was almost empty, usual for that tim e of day.

  The room was big and there was a homemade settee , some huge old leather chairs, and the desk at one en d of the room with the stairway to the rooms opposite it.

  The floor was bare and there were only a few crud e paintings on the wall, and one good drawing of a buckin g horse, traded to the proprietor for a meal two year s before.

  Mead got up to shake my hand, and seemed reall y pleased to see me. His eyes searched my face curiously , and then he waved at a chair and sat down himself.

  "Tyler, I'll get right to business. When I first met yo u in Denver I was struck by your resemblance to somebod y I knew. When you answered my questions, your answer s told me without doubt you were the person whom I t hought you to be."

  "I'm afraid I don't quite get you, mister,"

  "I told you I was a lawyer handling mining property.

  My firm also handles the Blair estate. In fact, they ar e one of our oldest clients."

  This Mead seemed like a nice fellow, but whateve r he had in mind, I didn't know. And he was taking a lon g time getting to it.

  "Tyler, do you have anything that belonged to you r mother?"

  "A picture, that's all. Everything Pap kept was lost i n that Indian raid."

  "A picture? Do you have it?"

  When I settled in town I began carrying the picture i n my pocket instead of keeping it in the saddlebags, so I h ad it with me. I took it out and handed it to him an d he smiled. "Of course! Virginia Blair! I'd know the fac e anywhere, although I've only seen pictures of her myself."