The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 2

by Louis L'Amour

  Coolly, he strode across to his black horse and swung into the saddle. He was smiling gently, but there was sneering triumph behind the smile. “You’ve nothin’ on me, not a thing!”

  “Don’t let him get away!” Bill London shouted. “He’s the wust one of the whole kit and kaboodle of ’em!”

  “But he’s right!” the Ranger protested. “In all the papers we’ve found, there’s not a single item to tie him up. If he’s in it, he’s been almighty smart.”

  “Then arrest him for horse stealin’!” Tack Gentry said. “That’s my black horse he’s on!”

  Hardin’s face went cold, and then he smiled. “Why, that’s crazy! That’s foolish,” he said. “This is my horse. I reared him from a colt. Anybody could be mistaken, cause one black horse is like another. My brand’s on him, and yuh can all see it’s an old brand.”

  Tack Gentry stepped out in front of the black horse. “Button!” he said sharply. “Button!”

  At the familiar voice, the black horse’s head jerked up. “Button!” Tack called. “Hut! Hut!”

  As the name and the sharp command rolled out, Button reacted like an explosion of dynamite. He jumped straight up in the air and came down hard. Then he sunfished wildly, and Van Hardin hit the dirt in a heap.

  “Button!” Tack commanded. “Go get Blackie!”

  Instantly, the horse wheeled and trotted to the hitching rail where Blackie stood ground hitched as Olney had left him. Button caught the reins in his teeth and led the other black horse back.

  The Rangers grinned. “Reckon, mister,” he said, “yuh done proved yore case. The man’s a horse thief.”

  Hardin climbed to his feet, his face dark with fury. “Yuh think yuh’ll get away with that?” His hand flashed for his gun.

  Tack Gentry had been watching him, and now his own hand moved down and then up. The two guns barked as one. A chip flew from the stair post beside Tack, but Van Hardin turned slowly and went to his knees in the dust.

  At almost the same instant, a sharp voice rang out. “Olney! Starr!”

  Olney’s face went white and he wheeled, hand flashing for his gun. “Anson Childe!” he gasped.

  Childe stood on the platform in front of his room and fired once, twice, three times. Sheriff Olney went down, coughing and muttering. Starr backed through the swinging doors of the saloon and sat down hard in the sawdust.

  Tack stared at him. “What the—”

  The tall young lawyer came down the steps. “Fooled them, didn’t I? They tried to get me once too often. I got their man with a shotgun in the face. Then I changed clothes with him and lit out for Austin. I came in with the Rangers and then left them on the edge of town. They told me they’d let us have it our way unless they were needed.”

  “Saves the state of Texas a sight of money,” one of the Rangers drawled. “Anyway, we been checkin’ on this here Hardin. On Olney, too. That’s why they wanted to keep things quiet around here. They knowed we was checkin’ on ’em.”

  The Rangers moved in and with the help of a few of the townspeople rounded up Hardin’s other followers.

  Tack grinned at the lawyer. “Lived up to your name, pardner,” he said. “Yuh sure did! All yore sheep in the fold, now!”

  “What do you mean? Lived up to my name?” Anson Childe looked around.

  Gentry grinned. “And a little Childe shall lead them!” he said.

  No Man’s Mesa

  It dominated the desert and the slim green valleys that lay between the peaks or in the canyon bottoms. It was high—over six hundred feet.

  The lower part was a talus slope, steep, but it had been climbed. The last three hundred feet was sheer except upon one corner where the rock was shattered and broken edges protruded. This, it was said, was the remnant of the ancient trail to the flat top of the mesa.

  There was, legend said, a flowing spring atop the mesa, there were trees and grass and an ancient crater, but all this was talk, for no living man had seen any of it.

  The place fostered curious stories. After the Karr boys tried to climb it, there was no rain in the country for two months. After Rison fell from the remnant of the path, there was no rain again. Cattle seemed to shun the place, and people avoided it. The few horses and cattle that did wander to the mesa were soon seen stumbling, vacant-eyed and lonely, losing flesh, growing shaggy of coat, and finally dying. Their whitened bones added to the stories. “This,” Old Man Karr often said, “wouldn’t be a bad country if it wasn’t for Black Mesa.”

  Matt Calou rode up to Wagonstop in a drenching downpour. When his mount was cared for he sloshed through the rain to the saloon.

  “Some storm!” Calou glanced at the four men lining the bar. “Unseasonal, ain’t it?”

  “Floodin’ our gardens.” The man jerked his head westward. “It’s Black Mesa, that’s what it is.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  They shrugged. “If you lived in this country you wouldn’t have to ask that question.”

  He took off his slicker and slapped rain from his hat. “Never heard of a pile of rock causin’ a rainstorm.”

  They disdained his ignorance and stared into their drinks. Thunder rumbled, and an occasional lightning flash lit the gloom. Old Man Karr was there, and Wente, who owned the Spring Canyon place. And two hard-case riders from the Pitchfork outfit, Knauf and Russell. Dyer was behind the bar.

  Calou was a tall man with a rider’s lean build. His face was dark and narrow with an old scar on the cheekbone.

  “Lived here long?” he asked Dyer.

  “Born here.”

  “Then you can tell me where the Rafter H lies.”

  All eyes turned. Dyer stared, then shrugged. “Ain’t been a soul on it in fifteen years. Ain’t nothin’ there but the old stone buildin’s and bones. Not even water.”

  Old Man Karr chuckled. “Right under the edge of Black Mesa, thataway, you couldn’t give it to anybody from here. It’s cursed, that’s what it is.”

  Matt Calou looked incredulous. “I never put no stock in curses. Anyway, I’m goin’ to live there. I bought the Rafter H.”

  “Bought it?” Dyer exploded. “Man, you’ve been taken. Even if it wasn’t near Black Mesa, the place is without water an’ overgrown with loco weed.”

  “What happened? Didn’t they used to run cattle there?”

  Dyer filled Calou’s glass. “Friend,” he said quietly, “you’d best learn what you’re up against. Twenty-five years ago Art Horan started the Rafter H. Folks warned him about Black Mesa but he laughed. His cattle went loco, his crops died, an’ then his well dried up. Finally, he sold out an’ left.

  “Feller name of Litman took over. Nobody saw him for a few days, an’ then a passin’ rider found him dead in the yard. Not a mark on him.”

  “Heart failure, maybe.”

  “Nobody knows. Litman’s nephew came west, but he never liked to stay there at night. Used to spend all his time here, and sometimes he’d camp on the range rather than go near Black Mesa at night.

  “Finally, he rounded up a few head of stock, sold ’em, an’ drifted. That’s one funny part, stranger. Over two thousand head of stock driven to the place, an’ never more than five hundred came of it.” Dyer nodded his head. “Never seen hide nor hair of ’em.”

  “Tell him about Horan,” Karr suggested. “Tell him that.”

  “Nobody ever figured that out. After Horan sold out an’ then Litman died an’ the nephew left, nobody went near the place. One night Wente here, he rode past Black Mesa—”

  “I’ll never do it again!” Wente stated emphatically. “Never again!”

  “He was close to the cliff when he heard a scream, fair make a man’s blood run cold, then a crash. He was takin’ off when he heard a faint cry, then moanin’. He rode back, an’ there on the rocks a man was layin’. He looked up at Wente an’ said, ‘It got me, too!’ an’ then he died. The man was Art Horan. Now you figure that out.”

  “Nobody has lived there since?”<
br />
  “An’ nobody will.”

  Calou chuckled. “I’ll live there. I’ve got to. Every dime I could beg, borrow, or steal went into that place. I’m movin’ in tomorrow.”

  There was animosity in their eyes. The animosity of men who hear their cherished superstitions derided by a stranger. “You think again,” Karr replied. “We folks won’t allow it. It’ll bring bad luck to all of us.”

  “That’s drivel!” Calou replied shortly. “Let me worry about it.”

  Karr’s old face was ugly. “I lost two boys who tried to climb that mesa, an’ many a crop lost, an’ many a steer because of it. You stay away from there. There’s Injun ha’nts atop it, where there was a village once, long ago. They don’t like it.”

  Knauf looked around. “That goes for the Pitchfork, too, mister. Move onto that place an’ we’ll take steps.”

  “Such as what?” Calou asked deliberately.

  Knauf placed his glass carefully on the bar. “I don’t like the way you talk, stranger, an’ I reckon it’s time you started learnin’. “

  He was stocky, with thick hands, but when he turned toward Matt Calou there was surprising swiftness in his movements. As he stepped forward he threw a roundhouse right. Matt Calou was an old hand at this. Catching the swing on his left forearm, he chopped his iron-hand left fist down to Knauf’s chin, then followed it with a looping right. Knauf hit the floor and rolled over, gagging.

  “Sorry,” Calou said. “I wasn’t huntin’ trouble.”

  Russell merely stared, then as Calou turned he said, “You’ll have the Pitchfork on you now.”

  “He’ll have the whole country on him!” Old Man Karr spat. “Nobody’ll sell to you, nobody’ll talk to you. If you ain’t off this range in one week, you get a coat o’ tar an’ feathers.”

  The rain had slackened when Matt Calou rode down into a shallow wash. Water was running knee-high to his horse, but it was not running fast. He crossed and rode through the greasewood of the flat toward the buildings glimpsed in occasional flashes of lightning. Beyond them, dwarfing the country, loomed the towering mass of Black Mesa. When he was still a mile from the house he found the first whitened bones. He counted a dozen skeletons.

  Rain pattered on his slicker as he rode into the yard and up to the old stone house. There was a stable, smokehouse, and rock corrals, all built from the talus of the mesa.

  Leaving his horse in the stable where it was warm and dry, Matt spilled a bit of grain from a sack behind the saddle into a feed box. “You’ll make out on that,” he said. “See you in the mornin’.”

  Rifle under his slicker, he walked to the house. The backdoor lock was rusted, and he braced his foot against the jamb and ripped the lock loose. Once inside, there was a musty smell, but the house floors were solid and the place was in good shape. Opening a window for air, he spread his soogan on the floor and was soon asleep.

  It was still raining when he awakened, but washing off the dusty pots and pans, he prepared a hasty breakfast, then saddled up and rode toward the mesa. As he skirted the talus slope he heard water trickling, but when he reached the place where it should have been, there was none. Dismounting, he climbed the slope.

  At once he found the stream of runoff. Following it, he found a place where the little stream doubled back and poured into a dark hole at the base of the tower. Listening, he could hear it falling with a roar that seemed to indicate a big, stone-enclosed space. He walked thoughtfully back to his horse.

  “Well, what did you find?”

  Startled at the voice, Matt looked around to see a girl in a rain-darkened gray hat and slicker. Moreover, she had amazingly blue eyes and lovely black hair.

  She laughed at his surprise. “I haunt the place,” she said, “haven’t you heard?”

  “They said there were ghosts, but if I’d known they looked like you I’d have been here twice as fast.”

  She smiled at him. “Oh, I’m not an official ghost! In fact, nobody is even supposed to know I come here, although I suspect a few people do know.”

  “They’ve been trying to make the place as unattractive as possible,” he said, grinning. “So if they did know, they said nothing.”

  “I’m Susan Reid. My father has a cabin about five miles from here. He’s gathering information on the Indians—their customs, religious beliefs, and folklore.”

  “And this morning?”

  “We saw somebody moving, and Dad’s always hoping somebody will climb it so he can get any artifacts there may be up there.”

  “Any what?”

  “Artifacts. Pieces of old pottery, stone tools, or weapons. Anything the Indians might have used.”

  Together, they rode toward the ranch, talking of the country and of rain. In a few minutes Matt Calou learned more about old Indian pottery than he had imagined anybody could know.

  At the crossroads before the Rafter H, they drew up. The rain had ceased, and the sun was struggling to get through. “Matt,” she said seriously, “you’ve started something, so don’t underrate the superstition around here. The people who settled here are mostly people from the eastern mountains and they have grown up on such stories. Moreover, some strange things have happened here, and they have some reason for their beliefs. When they talk of running you out, they are serious.”

  “Then”—he chuckled—“I reckon they’ll have to learn the hard way, because I intend to stay right where I am.”

  When she had gone he went to work. He fixed the lock on the back door, built a door for the stable, and repaired the water trough. He was dead tired when he turned in.

  At daybreak he was in the saddle checking the boundaries of his land. There was wild land to the north, but he could check on that later. Loco weed had practically taken over some sections of his land, but he knew that animals will rarely touch it if there is ample forage of other grasses and brush. Several of the locoweed varieties were habit-forming. Scarcity of good forage around water holes or salt grounds was another reason. Most of the poisonous species were early growing and if stock was turned on the range before the grass was sufficiently matured, the cattle would often turn to loco weed.

  It was early spring now, but grass was showing in quantity. There was loco weed, but it seemed restricted to a few areas. He had learned in Texas that overgrazing causes the inroad of the weed, but when land is ungrazed the grasses and other growths tend to push the loco back. That had happened here.

  The following days found him working dawn until dark. He found some old wire and fenced off the worst sections of weed. Then he borrowed a team from Susan’s father and hitched it to a heavy drag made of logs laden with heavy slabs of rock. This drag ripped the weed out by the roots, and once it was loose he raked it into piles for burning.

  During all of this time he had seen nobody around. Yet one morning he saddled up, determined to do no work that day. His time was short, as the week they had given him was almost up, and if trouble was coming it might start the following day. He rode north but was turned back by a wall of chaparral growing ten to fifteen feet high, as dense a tangle as he had ever seen in the brush country on the Nueces.

  For two miles he skirted the jungle of prickly pear, cat claw, mesquite, and greasewood until he was almost directly behind Black Mesa.

  Looking up, he was aware that he was seeing the mesa from an unusual angle. The area was a jumble of upthrust ledges and huge rock slabs and practically impenetrable, yet from where he sat he could see a sort of shadow along the wall of the mesa. Working his way closer, he could see that it was actually an undercut along the face of the cliff. It was visible only because the torrential rains had left the rock damp in the shadow of the cliff. It might be that it had never been seen under these circumstances and from this angle before.

  Forcing his horse through a particularly dense mass of brush, he worked a precarious way through the boulders until he was within a few feet of the wall, and near it, of a gigantic earth crack. In the bottom of this crack was a trickle of water
, but it was running toward the mesa!

  Leaving his horse, he descended to the bottom of the crack. At the point where he had left his horse it was all of thirty feet wide, but at the bottom, a man could touch both walls with outstretched arms.

  All was deathly still. Only the faint trickle of the water and the crunch of gravel under his boots broke the stillness. Yet he was aware of a distant and subdued roar that seemed to issue from the base of Black Mesa itself!

  He came suddenly to a halt. Before him was a vast black hole! Into this trickled the stream he had been following, and far below he could hear the sound of the water falling into a pool. Recalling the small hole on the opposite side, he realized that under Black Mesa lay a huge underground pool or lake. By all reason the water should have been flowing away from the mesa, but due to the cracks and convulsions of the earth, the water flowed downward into some subterranean basin of volcanic formation.

  But if it did not escape? Then there would be a vast reservoir of water, constantly supplied and wholly untapped!

  When he emerged, he looked again at the shadow on the wall, revealing a wind- and rain-hollowed undercut that slanted up the side of the mesa. And while he looked he had an idea.

  The following day he rode north again, seeking a way through the chaparral. Beyond the belt of brush Sue had told him the green petered out into desert. Although she had not seen it herself, she also told him that only one ranch lay that way, actually to the northwest of Black Mesa, and that was the Pitchfork.

  Suddenly he came upon the tracks of two horses. They were shod horses, walking west, and side by side.

  The tracks ended abruptly as they had begun, at an uptilted slab of sandstone, but seeing scratches on the sandstone, he rode up himself. It was quite a scramble, but the ledge broke sharply off and a crack, bottomed with blown sand, showed horse tracks.

  When he reached the bottom he was in a small meadow and the belt of chaparral was behind him except for scattered clumps. The riders had worked here—he puzzled out the tracks—rounding up a few head of cattle and starting them northwest up the edge of the watery meadow.