Borden Chantry (1977)

by L'amour, Louis - Talon-Chantry

  He knew the man by sight, but had never known his name. But there was no question about the gun. It was a Colt .44, a weapon with considerable authority.

  He backed into the office. "What's the idea?"

  "Get back into that cell," the man said quietly, "and you'll live to hear the story. One yip out of you, and you won't."

  "Ought to be a good story, but I got an idea who'll write the end to it."

  "Just get back into the cell. Besides, if you yelled, the first man through that door would be Chantry and he would be dead before you could tell him why."

  He closed and locked the cell, then stepped over to Boone Silva's cell and opened it.

  "Your clothes are in the outer office, in the closet. Your gun is there, too, but in case you might prefer it, I brought you this."

  It was a heavy express shotgun, double-barreled. It would be loaded with heavy slugs.

  Then the man put a small sack of gold pieces on the desk. "There's three hundred.

  Here's an order on our friend for the rest. Now go do the job you were hired for."

  Boone Silva looked at the money, then at the man who was paying him. "When?" he asked.

  "Now ... this minute. He'll be coming here, and I want him dead, dead ... Do you hear?"

  "I hear." Silva looked at the money again.

  Somehow it did not seem very much for a man's life.

  Yet Chantry had arrested him, and paraded him through the street in his underwear. And for that there had to be a killing or he'd have to find a far country, far from here, far from everywhere that he knew. For such a story has wings.

  "All right," he said, but the man was gone.

  Boone Silva dressed quickly, surely.

  He belted on his gun, spun the cylinder. He glanced at the shotgun, and hesitated.

  "Silva," Baca said, "open this cell, will you?"

  "Go to hell," Silva replied conversationally.

  "You're a fool if you go against him. There isn't a man living who can get lead into him without taking just as much. That's a tough man, Silva, a very tough man, and he won't hesitate. He's doing what's right, and he knows it."

  "I'll kill him, then I'll ride."

  "How far? A mile? Ten miles?

  A hundred miles? Do you know who rode into town today? Tyrel Sackett. Tyrel, did you get that? He took Cruz, he took Tom Sunday, he's taken the best of them. Boone, if you get that marshal, Tye Sackett waits on the other side of him. And if you should get Tye, there's Tell.

  "Take my advice, Silva, grab yourself a horse and ride. He won't stop you. He's got other things on his mind, and he never wanted you, anyway.

  "Ride! Ride, Silva, while there's time."

  "I took his money."

  "To hell with the money! He'll be dead within the week."

  Boone Silva turned toward the cell, shocked. "What do you think I am, a thief?

  When you take a man's money, you do the work he paid you for!"

  He looked again at the shotgun. His every instinct told him to take it, but his pride rebelled.

  No man alive could draw as fast or shoot as straight as he, and he was not about to back down to any country marshal, nor did he need any margin. He would meet him on his own ground, on his own terms.

  There was also a measure of wisdom eating into his zone of madness ... To shoot a man in a gun battle with pistols was one thing, but a shotgun looked like murder--and could mean hanging!

  He stepped out into the street.

  A few steps away, a team of mustangs stood at the hitch rail, heads hanging, drowsing in the sunlight. Further along, at Time Reardon's Corral and at Henry's, several saddle horses stood, awaiting their masters' pleasure.

  Lucy Marie was standing in front of a store window, looking at something.

  One by one, his eyes picked out the doorways, studying each in turn ... No sign of Borden Chantry.

  From talk around the jail, he gathered that Chantry favored the Bon-Ton, which was just beyond the post office. He scanned the street again, disappointed that there was no sign of Borden Chantry.

  As he started to walk, he drew abreast of the post office and saw the postmistress staring at him, her mouth open with surprise.

  Grimly, he told himself that a lot of people were going to be surprised, especially that town clown, that small-town marshal, that--

  "Looking for me, Boone?"

  He had stepped past the post office corner and was opposite the gap that separated it from the Bon-Ton. A right-handed man can fire easier to the left than to the right, and Boone Silva knew it. But Chantry was on his right, and he swung his right foot back to bring him face to face with Chantry. His right foot came down and he fired.

  The quick turn, Chantry's coolness, and some sneaking inner doubt of his own wisdom conspired to make him miss. The shot went high, grazing the lobe of the marshal's ear. The marshal was looking right at him, both eyes open. Then his gun stabbed flame, and Boone Silva caught one where it mattered.

  It was a little low, but the blow of the bullet strike was enough to make him stagger. Staggering, Silva missed his second shot. He never got a third one.

  Suddenly he was on his knees. He had no idea how he got there. Angrily he started to get up, but there was something wrong with his legs.

  He couldn't draw either one from beneath him.

  He tried again, but somehow his legs had gone nerveless. And then he was lying with his face in the dust. He tried to push himself up.

  He looked, and Borden Chantry was standing there, gun in hand, just looking at him, and waiting.

  Waiting for what?

  His eyes misted over and he swore at himself.

  What was going wrong with his eyes? At a time like this? He made it to his knees. Then after an effort, he got one leg underneath him.

  "You should have stayed where I left you, Boone,"

  Chantry said.

  There were others standing around now. Boone Silva could hear the shuffle of their feet, the rustle of their clothing, the creaking of the boardwalk.

  "It didn't have to be this way," Chantry continued. "I put you away for safekeeping."

  "I'd taken his money." Boone was anxious for Chantry to understand. After all, Chantry had played fair with him. "I had it to do. You understand that, don't you?"

  "Of course."

  Boone Silva raised his hand to fire ... and there was no gun there.

  He stared at it, puzzled. Then he looked at the ground. And it lay there in the dust by a bit of bunchgrass. He reached out for it and his face hit the dust again. Something welled up in his throat and he coughed ... blood. It was blood ... his blood.

  He was dying.

  No!

  He thought he screamed the word, but the sound was only inside. With one great spasmodic contraction of muscles, he lunged to his feet.

  He! Boone Silva! To die? No!

  He lunged forward and then he fell, and that time he lay still.

  Across the street at the Corral, somebody started playing the piano to get the crowd back inside. The last sound that came to his ears was that piano, playing a tin-pan, jangling accompaniment to his dying.

  Borden Chantry thumbed a cartridge into the chamber from which he'd ejected the empty. Then he holstered his gun.

  Big Injun was there.

  "Take care of him, will you? And when you've taken him away, bring my horse and ask Bess to pack some grub. I'll be gone for awhile."

  He went back to the jail then, and let Kim Baca out of his cell.

  "He wouldn't listen, Chantry. I tried to tell him. He said he had it to do. Can you understand that?"

  "I can, and so can you. Every man has his own sense of what is honorable, Kim. That was his."

  "It was the other one let him out. I wasn't expecting anything like that, Marshal. I never had a chance."

  "You're just lucky he didn't want to alarm the town, or he would have killed you. I'm going up to the house, but it won't matter much, because he'll be gone."

&n
bsp; "You think he's running?"

  "He was running when he came here, Kim, and he will always be running. He killed six men because he thought somebody was hunting him, and nobody was. Once you get the law on your trail, there's just no place to rest."

  Blossom Galey was standing in front of the Bon-Ton. She looked empty and old.

  "Has he gone, Bord?"

  "I think so, Blossom. You were too good a woman for him, anyway."

  "Maybe ... maybe. But I need a man, Bord, I want to be a woman again. George knew, and he tried to warn me. He was riding to tell me again when he got killed. I know that, and I guess I always knew. But he was a smooth-talking man, and he said the words I wanted to hear. It wasn't him. It wasn't Lang Adams, it was those damn stupid words!

  I'm a lonely woman, Bord, an' I'm not a kid any more. And I don't like riding range and laying out work for the hands.

  "I'd like to have a kid of my own, and I'd like to get up at ten o'clock and read a newspaper or sew. But I helped run the ranch for Pa, and then I ran a bigger ranch for my first husband, an'--"

  "Take a walk over and see Bess.

  She'll be alone, too, for a few days now. You go see her. I'll just go off up to Lang's and see if he's around."

  "He's gone. I knew he was a light man, I knew it all the while. There was no weight to him, Bord. Not like Pa, or you, or old George Riggin. He was an easy-talking man, an' he was damn good-lookin', but there was no bottom to him, no stamina. I knew it all the time. My common sense kept tellin' me the truth and my heart kept listening to the words.

  Bord, I--"

  "Go along to Bess now, Blossom. She's been wanting to see you."

  "All right. Bord. All right." She turned away, then stopped. "You be careful now, d'you hear? He's a damn fine shot with any kind of a weapon. That ol' fifty-two was Pa's. I never thought of it until yesterday, an' when I went to look in the attic, it was gone. But he's got him a Winchester now. Bord, an' more'n two hundred rounds for it. You be careful."

  Borden Chantry walked up the outside stair of the apartment above the store. He knew Lang Adams wouldn't be there, but he had to look.

  It was a neat enough room, but too much flimflammery to suit Chantry. On the table there was a note.

  Dear Bord:

  Don't come after me. I am leaving the country and you will see me no more, so let it lay. I was the best pete-man in the country until I thought I'd marry rich and settle down, and it got me nothing but trouble. I am going back east now and take up where I left off. You stay off my trail. I never wanted to kill you, I never did. You were the closest thing to a friend I ever had.

  Lang And signed below it, still lower on the page, Ford Mason.

  "But you killed six men, murdered them. Six good men, who had lives of their own to live. You took those lives away, Lang, and left them with nothing. And Billy McCoy without a dad.

  Old Helen Riggin to live out her days alone.

  And Pin Dover's woman, wherever she is."

  He spoke aloud, to an empty room, and then he turned and pulled the door quietly shut behind him and went down the steps.

  Blazer came to the foot of the steps. "If it's Lang, Bord, I saw him leave town.

  He rode out east."

  "Thanks, George." Chantry eased his gun on his hip. "You know, George, Lang should have stayed back east where he came from. He lived out west eight or nine years and never learned a damn thing."

  "Maybe," Blazer said, "but you be careful.

  He won half the turkey shoots in the county with that rifle of his, and there's a lot of open country between here and Carson."

  "He hasn't gone to Carson," Chantry said patiently. "He's gone west. Right now he's headed for Denver or Leadville, and maybe later to San Francisco."

  The Appaloosa was saddled, the saddlebags and canteen were full. Borden Chantry walked into the office and stuffed a handful of cartridges into his pocket. The loops in his belt were already full.

  "Marshal?" Kim Baca got up quickly.

  "How's about me ridin' along? I'm good on the trail, like you know, and--"

  "You stay here, Kim. Keep an eye on things. Anything you don't know about, ask Big Injun. He knows more about the job than I do."

  He took a spare badge from the desk drawer. "Wear this until I get back.

  Anything needs doing, you do it."

  Kim Baca flushed. "Now, see here, Marshal! I--"

  "Do what you're told, Baca. I'll be back."

  He stepped into the saddle and walked the Appaloosa over to his own house. Bess came out, Tom and Billy with her.

  "Boys, you take care of Ma, do' you hear?"

  "Sure, but can't we--"

  "Borden? Do you have to go?"

  "I do."

  "Then come back. I'll keep Blossom here with me. We'll be company for each other."

  He kissed her lightly, and turned the Appaloosa into the trail.

  Lang had some good traits, but basically, he was a thief. Now what would a thief be likely to do when he figured he was leaving the country for good? Even if he had some money?

  He'd try to steal some more, some he happened to know was where it was.

  Borden Chantry hoped he would be wrong. And he hoped he would not pick up the trail where he thought it would be. But he was not wrong, and the trail was there.

  Chapter XX

  The sky above was red and the sand below was pink, and Borden Chantry rode a trail between--a trail where a man could die.

  The leather of his saddle was like the leather of his cheek. And he sang the song of Brennan as he rode, of Brennan on the Moor, the Irish highwayman who rode a robber's trail in a land quite far from his He wasted no time in scouting. He looked not once toward the east, for Lang had known how to find Boone Silva. And such a man would ride westward to escape, westward to the broken country of the Cimarron, to the Mesa de Maya, Sierra Grande and the place called Robbers'

  Roost, or even to the town of Madison where the outlaws came to carouse and drink.

  It was a wild and lonely land cut deep by canyons, ribbed with red rock walls and dotted with crumbling mesas, black-topped with lava from fires burned long ago. Among the red walls and the crumbling lava blocks were the greens of pi@non, pine and juniper, and here and there, if a man but knew, there was water enough and plenty.

  He rode the blue roan Appaloosa with a splash of dotted white across the hips, a horse that loved a trail through wild country and kept its ears pricked for the crossing of each ridge, the turning of the bend.

  The cicadas sang in the brush, and the air was hot and still. And high above the land, a buzzard swung in lazy circles down the evening sky, secure in the knowledge that where men will ride, men will die, and content to await their dying. From all earthly troubles the buzzard was aloof, untouched by wrangle and debate, the song of bullet or the whine of arrow, the pounding hoofs, the sudden fall, the choking thirst or the flaming heat. He had only to bend a dark wing where the sky hung its clouds against the sun, and to await the inevitable end.

  Borden Chantry was riding in his own country, in wild country. He liked the movement of his horse, the feel of it between his knees, he liked the trickle of sweat down his cheek. He liked squinting against the sun, the creak of saddle leather and at night the wolf howl against the moon.

  He held to low ground and took his time. The Appaloosa was a good trail horse, blending well with the terrain andwitha liking for rough country and hard work.

  The trails he rode were the trails left by buffalo, used occasionally by wild mustangs.

  He made no attempt to find and follow the trail left by Lang Adams, for the trails of men in a western land are apt to be channeled by their needs. Water, food, and companionship of their kind--these are the things that make trails converge.

  Lang Adams was not a western man, but he had been a hunted man. And a hunted man is like a hunted wolf or any other animal, and he would be wary. Not only would he be wary, but he would be ready and waiting to kill. And Lang Ad
ams had wasted no lead on the men he had killed. His work had been done with neatness and precision--and with utter ruthlessness. So far as Borden Chantry knew, Lang Adams had never missed a shot.

  Somewhere up ahead, somewhere not very far off, Lang would be waiting. He might hope that Boone Silva had done his work, but he might lay other, similar plans. Just as Chantry knew something about the manner of man Lang was, Lang knew as much or more about him. Lang had reason for concealing himself from others, Chantry was a frank and open man.

  He veered suddenly to the south, crossing the bed of Carrizo Creek and following it back toward the east for a half mile before emerging among some rocks and low brush. He scanned the country, then rode on and fell into an old Indian trail, well-worn but long unused. He cut to right and left but found no tracks.

  The Old Santa Fe Trail lay off to the south, a day or two days' ride ... He did not know how far, only that it lay there. Long abandoned now, it was only a maze of ruts cut deep into the earth. Six thousand wagons and sixty thousand mules had used that trail annually, and enough men to people a good-sized town had traveled over it every year. He had always told himself he would someday ride south and see it, but he never had. There had always been work to do.

  Several times he cut to right and left to check for tracks, but found none. He seemed to be riding alone in a lonely land. When he found the stone house, he was surprised.

  It was empty, long abandoned. He tried the windlass in the well and brought up some water.

  After he had pulled several buckets, he let his horse drink, then pulled another and drank himself.

  He lifted the latch and opened the door.

  Pack-rats had been there, but they had abandoned it, too. He took the dried wood from their nest and built a fire in the chimney, made coffee and fried some bacon. He ate part of the lunch Bess had put up for him and then he moved outside and bedded down under the stars.

  By daybreak he had been two hours in the saddle. He was deep in the winding canyons of the Mesa de Maya, and by mid-afternoon he was watering his horse in the Cimarron near the western end of Black Mesa.

  He had crossed the river and was coming out of the water on the far side when he saw the track.

  He recognized it at once. Lang Adams' big black. The tracks were no more than an hour old.