West of the Tularosa

by Louis L'Amour

  He walked slowly, with his usual measured step. One of the loafers in front of the store got to his feet and ducked into the saloon. All right, then. The Kid knew he was coming. If he came out in the street to meet him, so much the better.

  Ruth came suddenly from Riley’s shop and started toward him. He frowned and glanced at her. No sign of the Kid yet. He must get her off the street at once.

  “Hello, Dad.” Her face was strained, but she smiled brightly. “What’s the hurry?”

  “Don’t stop me now, Ruth,” he said. “I’ve got business up the street.”

  “Nothing that won’t wait,” she protested. “Come in the store. I want to ask you about something.”

  “Not now, Ruth.” There was still no sign of the Kid. “Not now.”

  “Oh, come on. If you don’t,” she warned, “I’ll walk right up to the saloon with you.”

  He looked down at her, sudden panic within him. Although she was not his own daughter, he had always felt that she was. “No,” he said sharply. “You mustn’t.”

  “Then come with me,” she insisted, grabbing his arm.

  Still no sign of the Kid. Well, it would do no harm to wait, and he could at least get Ruth out of harm’s way. He turned aside and went into the store with her. She had a new bridle she wanted him to see, and she wanted to know if he thought the bit was right for her mare. Deliberately she stalled. Once he looked up, thinking he heard riders. Then he replied to her questions. Finally he got away.

  He stepped out into the sunlight, smelling dust in the air. Then he walked slowly across and up the street. As he reached the center of the street, the Mohave Kid came out of the Trail Driver and stepped off the walk, facing him.

  Thirty yards separated them. Ab Kale waited, his keen blue eyes steady and cold. He must make this definite, and, if the Kid made the slightest move toward a gun, he must kill him. The sun was very warm.

  “Kid,” he said, “your business in town is finished. We don’t want you here. Because of the family connection, I let you know that you weren’t welcome. I wanted to avoid a showdown. Now I see you won’t accept that, so I’m giving you exactly one hour to leave town. If you are here after that hour, or if you ever come again, I’ll kill you.”

  The Mohave Kid started to speak, and then he stopped, frozen by a sudden movement.

  From behind stores, from doorways, from alleys, stepped a dozen men. All held shotguns or rifles, all directed at the Kid. He stared at them in shocked disbelief. Johnny Holdstock—Alec and Dave Holdstock—Jim Gray, their cousin—Webb Dixon, a brother-in-law—and Myron Holdstock, the old bull of the herd.

  Ab Kale was petrified. Then he remembered Riley on that racing horse and that today was old Myron’s fortieth wedding anniversary, with half the family at the party.

  The Mohave Kid stared at them, his face turning gray and then dark with sullen fury.

  “You do like the marshal says, Kid.” Old Myron Holdstock’s voice rang in the streets. “We’ve protected ye because you’re one of our’n. But you don’t start trouble with another of our’n. You git on your hoss an’ git. Don’t you ever show hide nor hair around here again.”

  The Mohave Kid’s face was a mask of fury. He turned deliberately and walked to his horse. No man could face all those guns, and, being of Holdstock blood, he knew what would come if he tried to face them down. They would kill him.

  He swung into the saddle, cast one black, bleak look at Ab Kale, and then rode out of town.

  Slowly Kale turned to Holdstock, who had been standing in the door of his shop. “You needn’t have done that,” he said, “but I’m glad you did…

  Three days went by slowly, and then the rains broke. It began to pour shortly before daybreak and continued to pour. The washes were running bank full by noon, and the street was deserted. Kale left his office early and stepped outside, buttoning his slicker. The street was running with water, and a stream of rain was cutting a ditch under the corner of the office. Getting a shovel from the stable, he began to divert the water.

  Up the street at the gun shop, Riley McClean got to his feet and took off the leather apron in which he worked. He was turning toward the door when it darkened suddenly and he looked up to see the bleak, rain-wet face of the Mohave Kid.

  The Kid stared at him. “I’ve come for my gun,” he said.

  “That’ll be two dollars,” Riley said coolly.

  “That’s a lot, ain’t it?”

  “It’s my price to you.”

  The Kid’s flat eyes stared at him, and his shoulder seemed to hunch. Then from the tail of his eye he caught the movement of the marshal as he started to work with the shovel. Quickly he forked out $2 and slapped it on the counter. Then he fed five shells into the gun and stepped to the door. He took two quick steps and vanished.

  Surprised, Riley started around the counter after him. But as he reached the end of the counter, he heard the Kid yell: “Ab!”

  Kale, his slicker buttoned over his gun, looked around at the call. Frozen with surprise, he saw the Mohave Kid standing there, gun in hand. The Kid’s flat face was grinning with grim triumph. And then the Kid’s gun roared, and Ab Kale took a step backward and fell, facedown in the mud.

  The Mohave Kid laughed suddenly, sardonically. He dropped his gun into his holster and started for the horse tied across the street.

  He had taken but one step when Riley McClean spoke: “All right, Kid, here it is!”

  The Mohave Kid whirled sharply to see the gunsmith standing in the doorway. The rain whipping against him, Riley McClean looked at the Kid. “Ab was my friend,” he said. “I’m going to marry Ruth.”

  The Kid reached then, and in one awful, endless moment of realization he knew what Ab Kale had known for these several months, that Riley McClean was a man born to the gun. Even as the Kid’s hand slapped leather, he saw Riley’s weapon clearing and coming level. The gun steadied, and for that endless instant the Kid stared into the black muzzle. Then his own iron was clear and swinging up, and Riley’s gun was stabbing flame.

  The bullets, three of them fired rapidly, smashed the Mohave Kid in and around the heart. He took a step back, his own gun roaring and the bullet plowing mud, and then he went to his knees as Riley walked toward him, his gun poised for another shot. As the Kid died, his brain flared with realization, with knowledge of death, and he fell forward, sprawling on his face in the street. A rivulet, diverted by his body, curved around him, ran briefly red, and then trailed on.

  People were gathering, but Riley McClean walked to Ab Kale. As he reached him, the older man stirred slightly.

  Dropping to his knees, Riley turned him over. The marshal’s eyes flickered open. There was a cut from the hairline on the side of his head in front that ran all along his scalp. The shattered end of the shovel handle told the story. Striking the shovel handle, which had been in front of his heart at the moment of impact, the bullet had glanced upward, knocking him out and ripping a furrow in his scalp.

  Ab Kale got slowly to his feet and stared up the muddy street where the crowd clustered about the Mohave Kid.

  “You killed him?”

  “Had to. I thought he’d killed you.”

  Ab nodded. “You’ve got a fast hand. I’ve known it for months. I hope you’ll never have to kill another man.”

  “I won’t,” Riley said quietly. “I’m not even going to carry a gun after this.”

  Ab Kale glanced back up the street. “So he’s dead at last. I’ve carried that burden a long time.” He looked up, his face still white with shock. “They’ll bury him. Let’s go home, son. The women will be worried.”

  And the two men walked down the street side by side, Ab Kale and his son…

  West Is Where the Heart Is

  Jim London lay facedown in the dry prairie grass, his body pressed tightly against the ground. Heat, starvation, and exhaustion had taken a toll of his lean, powerful body, and, although light-headed from their accumulative effects, he still grasped the fact that t
o survive he must not be seen.

  Hot sun blazed upon his back, and in his nostrils was the stale, sour smell of clothes and body long unwashed. Behind him lay days of dodging Comanche war parties and sleeping on the bare ground behind rocks or under bushes. He was without weapons or food, and it had been nine hours since he had tasted water, and that was only dew he had licked from leaves.

  The screams of the dying rang in his ears, amid the sounds of occasional shots and the shouts and war cries of the Indians. From a hill almost five miles away he had spotted the white canvas tops of the Conestoga wagons and had taken a course that would intercept them. And then, in the last few minutes before he could reach their help, the Comanches had hit the wagon train.

  From the way the attack went, a number of the Indians must have been bedded down in the tall grass, keeping out of sight, and then, when the train was passing, they sprang for the drivers of the teams. The strategy was perfect, for there was then no chance of the wagon train making its circle. The lead wagons did swing, but two other teamsters were dead and another was fighting for his life, and their wagons could not be turned. The two lead wagons found themselves isolated from the last four and were hit hard by at least twenty Indians. The wagon whose driver was fighting turned over in the tall grass at the edge of a ditch, and the driver was killed.

  Within twenty minutes after the beginning of the attack, the fighting was over and the wagons looted, and the Indians were riding away, leaving behind them only dead and butchered oxen, the scalped and mutilated bodies of the drivers, and the women who were killed or who had killed themselves.

  Yet Jim London did not move. This was not his first crossing of the plains or his first encounter with Indians. He had fought Comanches before, as well as Kiowas, Apaches, Sioux, and Cheyennes. Born on the Oregon Trail, he had later been a teamster on the Santa Fe. He knew better than to move now. He knew that an Indian or two might come back to look for more loot.

  The smoke of the burning wagons bit at his nostrils, yet he waited. An hour had passed before he let himself move, and then it was only to inch to the top of the hill, where from behind a tuft of bunch grass he surveyed the scene before him.

  No living thing stirred near the wagons. Slow tendrils of smoke lifted from blackened timbers and wheel spokes. Bodies lay scattered about, grotesque in attitudes of tortured death. For a long time he studied the scene below, and the surrounding hills. And then he crawled over the skyline and slithered downhill through the grass, making no more visible disturbance than a snake or a coyote.

  This was not the first such wagon train he had come upon, and he knew there was every chance that he would find food among the ruins as well as water, perhaps even overlooked weapons. Indians looted hastily and took the more obvious things, usually scattering food and wasting what they could not easily carry away.

  Home was still more than two hundred miles away, and the wife he had not seen in four years would be waiting for him. In his heart, he knew she would be waiting. During the war the others had scoffed at him.

  “Why, Jim, you say yourself she don’t even know where you’re at. She probably figures you’re dead. No woman can be expected to wait that long. Not for a man she never hears of and when she’s in a good country for men and a bad one for women.”

  “She’ll wait. I know Jane.”

  “No man knows a woman that well. No man could. You say yourself you come East with a wagon train in ‘sixty-one. Now it’s ‘sixty-four. You been in the war, you been wounded, you ain’t been home, nor heard from her, nor she from you. Worst of all, she was left on a piece of ground with only a cabin built, no ground broke, no close up neighbors. I’ll tell you, Jim, you’re crazy. Come, go to Mexico with us.”

  “No,” he had said stubbornly. “I’ll go home. I’ll go back to Jane. I came East after some fixings for her, after some stock for the ranch, and I’ll go home with what I set out after.”

  “You got any young ’uns?” The big sergeant had been skeptical.

  “Nope. I sure ain’t, but I wish I did. Only,” he had added, “maybe I have. Jane, she was expecting, but had a time to go when I left. I only figured to be gone four months.”

  “And you been gone four years?” The sergeant had shook his head. “Forget her, Jim, and come with us. Nobody would deny she was a good woman. From what you tell of her, she sure was, but she’s been alone and no doubt figures you’re dead. She’ll be married again, maybe with a family.”

  Jim London had shaken his head. “I never took up with no other woman, and Jane wouldn’t take up with any other man. I’m going home.”

  He had made a good start. He had saved nearly every dime of pay, and he did some shrewd buying and trading when the war was over. He started West with a small but good train, and he had two wagons with six head of mules to the wagon, knowing the mules would sell better in New Mexico than would oxen. He had six cows and a yearling bull, some pigs, chickens, and utensils. He was a proud man when he looked over his outfit, and he hired two boys with the train to help him with the extra wagon and the stock.

  Comanches hit them before they were well started. They killed two men and one woman, and stampeded some stock. The wagon train continued, and at the forks of Little Creek they struck again, in force this time, and only Jim London came out of it alive. All his outfit was gone, and he escaped without weapons, food, or water.

  He lay flat in the grass at the edge of the burned spot. Again he studied the hills, and then he eased forward and got to his feet. The nearest wagon was upright, and smoke was still rising from it. The wheels were partly burned, the box badly charred, and the interior smoking. It was still too hot to touch.

  He crouched near the front wheel and studied the situation, avoiding the bodies. No weapons were in sight, but he had scarcely expected any. There had been nine wagons. The lead wagons were thirty or forty yards off, and the three wagons whose drivers had been attacked were bunched in the middle with one overturned. The last four, near one of which he was crouched, had burned further than the others.

  Suddenly he saw a dead horse lying at one side with a canteen tied to the saddle. He crossed to it at once, and, tearing the canteen loose, he rinsed his mouth with water. Gripping himself tight against drinking, he rinsed his mouth again and moistened his cracked lips. Only then did he let a mere swallow trickle down his parched throat.

  Resolutely he put the canteen down in the shade and went through the saddle pockets. It was a treasure trove. He found a good-size chunk of almost iron-hard brown sugar, a half dozen biscuits, a chunk of jerky wrapped in paper, and a new plug of chewing tobacco. Putting these things with the canteen, he unfastened the slicker from behind the saddle and added that to the pile.

  Wagon by wagon he searched, always alert to the surrounding country and at times leaving the wagons to observe the plain from a hilltop. It was quite dark before he was finished. Then he took his first good drink, for he had allowed himself only nips during the remainder of the day. He took his drink, and then ate a biscuit, and chewed a piece of the jerky. With his hunting knife he shaved a little of the plug tobacco and made a cigarette by rolling it in paper, the way the Mexicans did.

  Every instinct warned him to be away from the place by daylight, and, as much as he disliked leaving the bodies as they were, he knew it would be folly to bury them. If the Indians passed that way again, they would find them buried and would immediately be on his trail.

  Crawling along the edge of the taller grass near the depression where the wagon had tipped over, he stopped suddenly. Here in the ground near the edge of the grass was a boot print!

  His fingers found it, and then felt carefully. It had been made by a running man, either large or heavily laden. Feeling his way along the tracks, London stopped again, for this time his hand had come in contact with a boot. He shook it, but there was no move or response. Crawling nearer he touched the man’s hand. It was cold as marble in the damp night air.

  Moving his hand again, he struck canva
s. Feeling along it he found it was a long canvas sack. Evidently the dead man had grabbed this sack from the wagon and dashed for the shelter of the ditch or hollow. Apparently he had been struck by a bullet and killed, but, feeling again of the body, London’s hand came in contact with a belt gun. So the Comanches had not found him! Stripping the belt and gun from the dead man, London swung it around his own hips, and then checked the gun. It was fully loaded, and so were the cartridge loops in the belt.

  Something stirred in the grass, and instantly he froze, sliding out his hunting knife. He waited for several minutes, and then he heard it again. Something alive lay here in the grass with him!

  A Comanche? No Indian likes to fight at night, and he had seen no Indians anywhere near when darkness fell. No, if anything lived near him now, it must be something, man or animal, from the wagon train. For a long time he lay still, thinking it over, and then he took a chance. Yet from his experience the chance was not a long one.

  “If there is someone there, speak up.”

  There was no sound, and he waited, listening. Five minutes passed—ten—twenty. Carefully, then, he slid through the grass, changing his position, and then froze in place. Something was moving, quite near!

  His hand shot out, and he was shocked to find himself grasping a small hand with a ruffle of cloth at the wrist! The child struggled violently, and he whispered hoarsely: “Be still. I’m a friend. If you run, the Indians might come.” Instantly the struggling stopped. “There,” he breathed. “That’s better.” He searched his mind for something reassuring to say, and finally said: “Damp here, isn’t it? Don’t you have a coat?”

  There was a momentary silence, and then a small voice said: “It was in the wagon.”

  “We’ll look for it pretty soon,” London said. “My name’s Jim. What’s yours?”

  “Betty Jane Jones. I’m five years old and my papa’s name is Daniel Jones and he is forty-six. Are you forty-six?”