The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1

by Louis L'Amour

  Taylor hesitated, shifting his feet nervous-like, not wanting to say, or figuring why Ma wanted to know. But Ma wasn’t a woman you could shake off. “I asked a question, Mr. Taylor. I believe you were a friend of my husband’s.”

  “Well, ma’am, I figured so. I figured to be a friend of yours, too.”

  “And so you are. Now tell me.”

  So he told her.

  It was a warm, still morning. We went down to the hotel, where I waited, and Ma went out to buy some women fixin’s like she won’t buy with a man along.

  All the chairs were taken in front of the hotel, so I leaned against the corner of the building next to the alley. Moment later I heard Riley speak from behind my right shoulder. He was right around the corner of the building in the alley.

  “Don’t turn around, boy. Is Cooper on the street?”

  “Not yet, but Cad Miller is in town.”

  “Tom,” he said, “just so you’ll know. I was in prison for killing a man who’d killed my brother. Before that, I was a deputy United States marshal.” He hesitated. “I just wanted you to know.”

  Nobody on the street was talking much. A rig clattered along the street and disappeared. The dust settled. A yellow hound ambled across the street headed toward shade. Ma went walking up the other side of the street and just when I was wondering what she was doing over there the Coopers turned into the upper end of the street. The boys were riding on his flanks and the old man was driving a shining new buckboard.

  Cooper pulled up in front of the hotel and got down. His boys were swaggering it, like always, both of them grinning in appreciation of the fun.

  Cooper stepped up on the walk and took a cigar from his vest pocket and bit off the end. His hard old eyes glinted at me. “Boy, where’s that hired man of yours? I understand he was asking for me.”

  “He leaves town today,” Andy Cooper said loudly, “or he’ll be carried out.”

  Cooper put the cigar in his teeth. He struck a match and lifted it to light the cigar and I heard a boot grate on the walk beside me and knew Riley was there. Cooper dropped the match without lighting his cigar. He just stood there staring past me at Riley.

  “Lark!” Cooper almost choked over the name. “I didn’t know it was you.”

  “You remember what I told you when I ran you out of the Nation?”

  Cooper wasn’t seeing anybody but Riley, the man he had called Lark. He wasn’t even aware of anything else. And I was staring at him, because I had never seen a big man scared before.

  “I told you if you ever crossed my trail again I’d kill you.”

  “Don’t do it, Lark. I’ve got a family—two boys. I’ve got a ranch. I’ve done well.”

  “This boy had a father.”

  “Lark, don’t do it.”

  “This boy’s father has been dead three or four years. I figure you’ve been stealing his cows at least two years before that. Say five hundred head.”

  Cooper never took his eyes off him, and the two boys acted as if they couldn’t believe what was happening.

  “You write out a bill of sale for five hundred head and I’ll sign it for the boy’s mother. Then you write out a check for seven thousand dollars and we’ll cross the street and cash it together.”

  “All right.”

  “And you’ll testify that Cad Miller was told to kill this boy’s pa.”

  “I can’t do that. I won’t do it.”

  “Pike,” Riley said patiently, “you might beat a court trial, but you know mighty well you ain’t going to beat me. Now my gun’s around the corner on my saddle. Don’t make me go get it.”

  Cooper looked like a man who was going to be sick. He looked like a school kid caught cheating. I figured whatever he knew about Riley scared him bad enough so he didn’t want any argument. And that talk about a gun on the saddle—why, that might be just talk. A man couldn’t see what Riley was packing in his waistband.

  “All right,” Cooper said. His voice was so low you could scarce hear it.

  “Pa!” Andy grabbed his arm. “What are you sayin’?”

  “Shut up, you young fool! Shut up, I say!”

  “Cad Miller’s in town,” Riley continued; “you get him out here on the street.”

  “He won’t have to.” It was Ma’s voice.

  The crowd moved back and Cad Miller came through with Ma right behind him, and trust Ma to have the difference. She had a double-barreled shotgun, and she wasn’t holding that shotgun for fun. One time I’d seen her use it on a mountain lion right in the door yard. She near cut that lion in two.

  Sheriff Ben Russell wasn’t liking it very much, but there was nothing he could do but take his prisoner. Once Cooper showed yellow, those two boys of his weren’t about to make anything of it, and any man who knew our town knew Cooper was through around here after this.

  Back at home I said, “Cooper called you Lark.”

  “My name is Larkin Riley.”

  “And you didn’t even have a gun!”

  “A man has to learn to live without a gun, and against a coward you don’t need a gun.” He rolled a smoke. “Cooper knew I meant what I said.”

  “But you’d been in prison yourself.”

  He sat on the stoop and looked at the backs of his hands. “That was later. Ten or fifteen years ago, what I did would have been the only thing to do. There are laws to handle cases like that, and I had it to learn.”

  Ma came to the door. “Larkin … Tom … supper’s ready.”

  We got up and Riley said, “Tom, I think tomorrow we’ll work the south range.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  One for the Pot

  When Laurie reached the water hole at Rustler’s Springs she knew she had missed the trail.

  Steve had explained about the shortcut across the mountains to Dry Creek Station, and had advised her to take it if anything happened to him. But he had warned her about riding near the Junipers or stopping at Rustler’s Springs.

  By retracing her trail she might discover the turnoff she had missed, but if she delayed any more it would be long after dark before she reached the stage station.

  The logical move was to return to the ranch and make a fresh start at daybreak, as soon as Steve had left the house. Yet if she returned now she might never again muster the nerve to leave him. And she had already been too much trouble to Steve.

  While the bay drank of the cool water Laurie slid from the saddle and tried dipping up a drink in the palm of her hand. The swallow of water was unsatisfactory and all she succeeded in doing was getting her face wet and spilling water on her blouse. It was somehow symbolic of all her failures since coming west.

  When she got to her feet there was a man standing at the edge of the brush with a rifle cradled in his arms. How long he had been there she had no idea, but suddenly she was keenly aware of the utter loneliness of the spot and that not even Steve knew where she was. And her only weapon was the pistol in her saddlebag.

  The man was thin and old with white hair and the coldest eyes she had ever seen looking from a human face. Tiny wrinkles wove a pattern of harsh years across the sun-darkened patina of his skin. It was a narrow face, high in the cheekbones … a hawk’s face except for the blunted nose. His blue shirt was faded, his jeans worn. Only the narrow-brimmed hat was new.

  He did not speak, merely stared at her and waited.

  “I missed the shortcut.” She was surprised that she could speak so calmly. “I was going to Dry Creek Station.”

  His eyes left her face for the carpetbag behind her saddle. It contained only the few belongings she had brought to Red Tanks Ranch and to Steve Bonnet.

  “You’re Bonnet’s woman,” he said then. His voice was thin and dry.

  Her chin lifted. “His wife.”

  “Quittin’ him?”

  Resentment flared. “It’s none of your business!”

  “Don’t blame you for bein’ skeered.”

  “It’s not that!” she protested. “It’s not
that at all!”

  His eyes had grown old in the reading of trail sign and the motives of men—and women.

  She did not lie. Something other than fear was driving her. He could sense the bitterness in her, the sense of failure, and the hurt.

  His head jerked toward the south. “Cabin’s over there,” he said, “and coffee’s on.”

  Afterward she was to wonder why she followed him. Perhaps it was to show him she was not afraid, or it might have been hesitation to cross that last bridge that would take her from this country and the promise it had held for her.

  The cabin was old but neat. There were bunks for several men, empty of bedding save one. The bed was neatly made and the few utensils were clean and hung in place.

  Filling two enamel cups he placed one before her. Tasting the coffee she felt envy for the first time. For this had been her greatest failure. At least, it was the failure she was most miserable about. She could not make good coffee, not even good enough to please herself.

  It had not taken her long to discover that she was not cut out to be the wife of a western man, but it was a mistake she could now rectify.

  With a little pang she remembered Steve’s face when he saw the sore on the gelding’s back. A wrinkle carelessly left in her saddle blanket had done that. Then there was the time his spare pistol had gone off in her hand, narrowly missing her foot. He had been furious with her, and she had cried most of the night after he was asleep.

  “Surprised you’d take out on your man,” the old man said, “didn’t figure you for skeered after you throwed down on Big Lew with that shotgun.”

  She looked up, surprised at his knowledge. “But why should he frighten me? Besides,” she added, “the shotgun wasn’t loaded.”

  The cold eyes glinted with what might have been humor. “That’ll jolt Lew. You had him right buffaloed.”

  He pushed the coffeepot back on the fire. “Took nerve. Lew ain’t no pilgrim. He’s killed hisself a few men.”

  “He really has?”

  “Three, maybe four.” He stoked his pipe, glancing out of the corners of his eyes at her face. It was a small, heart-shaped face with large, dark eyes, and her body, while a beautifully shaped woman’s body, seemed almost too small, too childlike for this country. Yet his mother had been a small woman, and she had borne ten children in a rugged, frontier community. “If you ain’t skeered, why you takin’ out?” Then his eyes crinkled at the corners and he said wryly, “But I forgit. That ain’t none of my business.”

  “I’m no good to him.” She looked up, her dark eyes wide. “He needs someone who can help. All I do is make trouble for him.”

  The old man looked thoughtfully at his pipe. Her presence with that shotgun had prevented Big Lew and the Millers from burning the ranch. That had been their purpose in going to Red Tanks.

  Little by little her story came out. Her father’s long illness had absorbed their savings, and after his death she had become a mail-order wife. Steve Bonnet had needed a wife, and when she got off the stage and saw the tall, silent young man with the sun-bronzed face she had felt a queer little quiver of excitement. He needed a wife, she needed a home. It had been simple as that. They had not talked of love.

  “In love with him now?”

  The question startled her for she had not given it a thought. Suddenly she realized, shocking as it was … “Yes,” she acknowledged. “I am.”

  The old man said nothing then, and she watched the shadows of the trees on the ground outside the cabin. She remembered Steve’s face when he had come home the night before, the something in his eyes when he saw her. Had it been relief ? Pleasure? What?

  He refilled her cup. “Will quittin’ give you rest? And how will he feel when he comes home tonight?”

  She stifled the pang. “He’s better off without me.”

  “Nothin’ nice about comin’ home to an empty house. You told him you love him?”

  “No.”

  “He told you?”

  “No.”

  “Wrong of him. Knowed a sight of women, here ’n there. Tell ’em you love ’em, pet ’em a mite, do somethin’ unexpected nice time to time an’ they’ll break their necks for you.”

  The cottonwoods brushed their pale green palms together, rustling in the still, hot afternoon. “I wish I could make coffee like this.”

  “Not’s good as usual.” She noticed how the rifle lay where he had placed it, across the corner of the table, pointing a finger at the door. “Helps to have hot coffee when a man gets to home.”

  He leaned back in his chair and lighted his pipe again. “He know you’re gone?”

  “No.”

  “If them Millers come back they could burn him out. And him countin’ on you.”

  “They won’t come back.”

  His reply was a snort of contempt for such ignorance. “This here’s a war, ma’am. It’s a fight for range … and you’re the only one your man’s got on his side … and you quittin’.”

  “I’m no good to him. I can’t do any of the things a wife should do out here.”

  “You can be home when he gets there. No man likes to stand alone. It’s a sight of comfort for a man to know he’s fightin’ for something.”

  When she remained silent he said quietly, “They figure to have him killed, them Millers do.”

  “Killed?” She was shocked. “Why, the law …”

  He looked at her, cold-eyed. “A man carries his law in his holster in this country. Them Millers don’t want no part of Steve Bonnet themselves. They hire their killin’ done when it’s somebody like him. That man of yours”—the old man got to his feet—“is plumb salty.”

  He was suddenly impatient. “You ain’t only a wife. You’re a pardner, and you’re quittin’ when he needs you most.”

  He started for the door. “No need to go back to Six-shooter Gap. There’s a trail back of here that old Stockton used. You stay shut of the Junipers and hold to the trail. It’ll take you right to the stage station. You’ll hit it near Little Dry.”

  She did not move. “Will you teach me how to make coffee like that?”

  A quail was calling when she rode into the yard at Red Tanks. Steve was not back, and she hurriedly stripped the saddle from the gelding. Then, remembering what Steve had done, she rubbed the horse down.

  An hour later, her second batch of coffee hot and ready, she watched Steve ride into the yard. When she thought how she had nearly failed to be here to greet him she felt a queer little wrench of dismay, and she stood there in the door, seeing him suddenly with new eyes.

  This was the man she loved. This man, this tall, narrow-hipped man with the quiet face and the faintly amused eyes. His bronzed hair glinted in the light as he stepped into the door, but there was no amusement in his eyes now. They were shadowed with worry.

  “Steve … what’s wrong?”

  He looked at her suddenly, as if detecting a new ring in her voice. And for the first time he shared his troubles with her. Before he had always brushed off her questions, assuring her everything would be all right.

  “Heard somethin’ today. Old Man Miller has hired a man. A killer.”

  She caught his arm. “Steve? For you?”

  He nodded, closing the door. He took off his hat and started for the wash basin. Then he smelled the coffee and saw the cup freshly poured.

  He looked up at her. “Mine?”

  She nodded, almost afraid for him to try it. Such a little thing, yet a mark for or against her.

  He dropped into the chair and she saw the sudden weariness in his face. He tasted the coffee, then drank.

  “A man named Bud Shaw. He’s already here.”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  “Not around here.” He was drinking his coffee. “I saw him in El Paso once, when I first came west. He’s a known man.”

  “But he kills for money? They can really hire men to kill someone?”

  “This is a hard country, Laurie, and there’s a war for range. Men
hire out to fight as they join armies of other countries. I don’t know as I blame ’em much.”

  Laurie was indignant. “But to kill for money! Why, that’s murder!”

  Steve looked up quickly. “Yes, if they dry-gulch a man. Bud Shaw won’t do that. He’ll meet me somewhere, unexpected-like, and I’ll have my chance.” He got up. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. The country’s rough on womenfolks.”

  He glanced at his empty cup. “Say, how about some more coffee?”

  For a long time she lay awake. How like a little boy he looked! In the vague light from the moon she could see his face against the pillow, his hair tousled, his breathing even and steady. Suddenly, on impulse, she touched his cheek. Almost frightened, she drew her hand back quickly, then slid deeper under the coarse blankets and lay there, her eyes wide open, her heart beating fast.

  When breakfast was over and he had picked up his rifle, she stopped him suddenly. “Steve … teach me to load the shotgun.”

  He looked around at her and for an instant their eyes held. Suddenly, his cheeks flushed. He turned back and picked up the shotgun, but his eyes avoided hers. Carefully, he showed her how the shotgun functioned, then at the door, he pointed. “See that white rock? If they come here, stop ’em beyond that. If they come closer … shoot.”

  She nodded seriously, and he looked at her again, and suddenly he gripped her shoulder hard. “You’ll do, Laurie,” he said quietly, his voice shaken, “you’ll do.”

  She was sitting where she could see out the door and down the trail when she heard the horse. She got up quickly and put her sewing aside. Heart pounding, she went to the door.

  It was a lone man, riding a mouse-gray horse. A shabby old man, but he wore a neat, narrow-brimmed hat.

  He stopped on the edge of the woods and sat his horse there, one hand on the rifle, watching the door. He let his eyes drift slowly over the place, but she had a curious feeling that he was watching her, too, all the time his gaze wandered.

  Then he let the horse walk forward and when he stopped he looked at her. “Howdy, ma’am. Mind if I git down?”

  “Please do.” He swung down, then leaving his horse ground hitched, he walked up to the door. “Passin’ by,” he said, “and I reckoned I’d try some of that there coffee.”