the Man Called Noon (1970)

by L'amour, Louis

"What is there at the station?" Fan asked.

  "Very little. The Ute Agency is just a couple of miles north. I think there's a water tank and a box car for a station."

  "I hope there's some shade."

  "There is."

  She was silent for a while, and then said, "I am sure I have come through here on the tram several times, but I remember nothing of it."

  "No reason to. It's a forgettable place. The beauty is in the country around."

  His mouth was dry and his stomach felt empty. He glanced back toward the strange rider, still too far away to see. Ahead of them he could now make out the outline of the water tank, and of a low building-it was more than a box car. The trees along the river were green. He could use a drink.

  He deliberately slowed their pace, not wanting to attract too much attention, and hoping that before they reached the station he could see whoever might be there. There would be a train along soon.

  The platform was empty. The small, two-roomed building that was the station was empty also. They rode up, then went past it and pulled up under -the rustling green of the cottonwoods. For a moment he sat in his saddle, listening. Then he got down.

  'Jonas?"

  He turned sharply, surprised at the name. It was Fan who spoke. "I told you I was going to call you that. It is your name, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  At that moment he knew for sure that it was. For the first tune the name felt right to him - not a name he had simply chosen, but one that belonged to him, a name that was his.

  "Jonas, isn't there some way we can get away without trouble?"

  "That's the plan. If the train arrives before they do, and if they are not on the train, then we can make it. But remember, Fan, they're going to try to get the gold from you."

  "Let them have it."

  "I can't. Not in good conscience, I can't. I took money from your father to kill four men, but if I can save what is yours without that, then I will have done what it was given me to do.

  "And this would not be an end, Fan. You cannot submit to evil without allowing evil to grow. Each time the good are defeated, or each time they yield, they only cause the forces of evil to grow stronger. Greed feeds greed, and crime grows with success. Our giving up what is ours merely to escape trouble would only create greater trouble for someone else.

  "If we can get on the train and get away before they come we will have won; but if they arrive with the train or before, we must fight."

  He stopped, and she was silent. The day was hot and still. Over the mountains great black thunderheads loomed up, vast swellings shot through with jagged streaks of lightning. The air was close, unlike mountain air. On the Pacific coast in the old days they would have said it was earthquake weather. He put a hand down and touched the butt of his gun. It felt curiously cool and comforting, and he knew he would need it soon.

  He would need it, because there was no yielding to any of them. The weak and the doubtful were dead or gone; Kissling was gone, and others were gone, too. Tough Dave Cherry was gone. And Ben Janish - the top man with a gun, the one most feared - he was gone.

  There were enough who remained, but any one of them might die, and that went for him as well. He was good - he knew that deep inside himself. He was resolute, he was fast, he was sure. Above all, at the moment of truth, that moment when it came time to draw and live, or draw and die, he was cool... or he always had been.

  Would he be so now? That was the thing. A man never knew. He had seen strong, dangerous men suddenly lose faith in themselves, either in front of a gun or during a fight, like Billy Brooks against Kirk Jordan in Dodge. Brooks had proved his nerve time and again, and when the Jordan thing was long past he was to prove it again and again - but against Jordan and his big .50 buffalo gun he lost his nerve.

  Lebo spoke. "There's a rider comin'," he said. "Down the old Ute Trail."

  They could see him. He was coming hard, riding all out ... and in a moment they knew why. The train whistled. It was far up the track, but it was coming.

  Ruble Noon touched his tongue to his lips. "Strip the gear off the horses," he said. "They'll go back where they came from."

  The Mexican looked at him. "You going out there, amigo? Out in the open?"

  "Yes."

  Lebo's shrug was eloquent.

  They could hear the pound of hoofs now, and the train whistled again. Ruble Noon eased his gun in its holster to be sure it was free to move fast.

  Thunder rumbled . . . the storm was closer now.

  They started for the station, leading the two pack horses. Fan walked beside them, still holding her rifle. Little puffs of dust lifted from the road as they crossed it. On the platform their footsteps sounded loud ... a brilliant streak of lightning bulged a cloud with livid flame, and thunder cracked. A few scattered drops fell.

  Ruble Noon removed the sacks from the pack saddles and put them down on the platform.

  Then suddenly they were there, at the end of the platform, and he had no idea where they had come from.

  Lang was there, and Manly, and there was another man-a Mexican, tall and thin, wearing a wide sombrero, twin cartridge belts, and a thin black mustache.

  Cristobal!

  Ruble Noon's agreement had been for four men and a woman. A woman? He would never have agreed to that.

  Suddenly it was crystal-clear in his mind. He had not agreed to kill any of them. He had agreed to free the ranch of outlaws by his own means, and he had been warned to be careful of four men and a woman. Careful, and only that. And the woman would be Peg Cullane.

  So Tom Davidge had known something about her, too. Now they might never know what it was, but Tom Davidge had known very well who his enemies were, and who they might be.

  Cristobal now ... As dangerous a gunman as ever came down the pike. And there he was, with Manly and Lang. .. . Was nothing ever going to be easy?

  "You can leave it right there, or you can die," Manly said. "You're lucky-you've got a choice."

  "The gold's gone," Ruble Noon lied. "All we have here is some lead shot. We got the gold away, and used this to keep you off the regalar shipment, which is halfway to Denver by now."

  "You can't give us that," Manly said, "so don't try." Fan Davidge had a piece of the black-painted gold in her pocket and she held it up. "See?"

  They did not want to believe it, they could not, but it worried them.

  The train whistled again, and the sullen thunder rumbled. Big drops of rain spattered on the platform.

  Lebo released the pack horses, and they walked away to join the other horses grazing under the trees.

  Ruble Noon knew when a time had come. He could feel it deep within himself, and he took a step to the side so as to pull the shooting away from Fan's position.

  "The train's coming," he said quietly, "and when that train comes in, we're loading the sacks on it. Maybe we're lying about what's in them, maybe we're not; but if you want to die to find out, you can have a try ... any time."

  "The great Ruble Noon," Cristobal said. His black eyes showed contempt. "I do not believe he is that great. Always he shoots from nowhere . . . can he shoot from somewhere at men with guns?"

  The moment was here, and there was no time to waste in talk. When a fight is inevitable, it is foolish to waste time in words.

  "Now?" he said gently, and then he drew.

  All three of them moved as one man, but Ruble Noon shot at Lang first. Lang, the cool, the quiet, the man who did not talk ... Lang he wanted out of there, and Lang knew it and was smiling. He saw Lang's gun coming up, rising too high ... he was being too careful.

  The report of his own gun was lost in a crash of thunder. He was moving ahead, a careful step at a time, firing with precision, but with speed.

  Lang, then Lang again, then Cristobal. Manly was down, too . .. Lebo must have got him.

  From behind him somebody was shooting with a rifle, and that worried him, but he did not turn.

  Two for Lang .. . another for Cristobal, and a
third one for Lang as the man started to rise, his face and shirt bloody.

  Lang was down, though for a moment he was trying to get back up. Cristobal was still up, his fine white teeth flashing in a smile ... easy, taunting-and dead. He was failing forward, the gun going from his hand.

  The rifle behind them thundered again, and then the train came rushing along the track. The shooting was over, and the rain had turned into a downpour.

  The bodies lay on the platform like old sacks. Lebo was down, and Ruble Noon was thumbing shells from his gun, and feeding cartridges into it. He had stopped shooting when Lang went down, and he stood there in the rain, watching Lang for signs of life.

  People were staring from the tram windows. Fan was bending over Miguel Lebo, and beside her was another

  man with a rifle in his hand. He was pointing with it to a window of the station.

  A rifle lay on the platform underneath the window, and hanging over the broken glass was Judge Niland, as dead as a man could be.

  The man who was pointing his rifle toward the Judge was J. B. Rimes.

  "Mr. Mandrin," he was saying, "I'm a Pinkerton man."

  "Not an outlaw at all?" Ruble Noon asked mildly. "I was ... once. They recruited me to run down some train robbers. We had looked for you until the reward was called off, but I had a guess at who you were when you said your name was Jonas." The rain continued to fall.

  Fan tugged at Noon's sleeve. "Jonas ... the train!" He picked up a couple of the sacks. Rimes did likewise, and the express messenger took the others.

  When they had reached the express car and loaded the gold inside, he looked back at Lebo. The Mexican was on his feet and was coming toward them, limping. His shirt was bloody. "Is it bad?" Noon asked. Lebo shook his head. "No ... I think no."

  "Get on. You're better off on the train than here. Let's go."

  It was a three-car train-just the express car and two coaches. There were four passengers in the first coach- two men together, obviously easterners, and a slender, aristocratic-looking woman accompanied by a squarely built man. The woman wore a gray traveling suit; her hair was gray, her eyes a startling blue.

  One of the easterners smiled tolerantly as they entered the coach. "That was quite a performance," he said. "Does the railroad pay you to stage these little shows?" -

  "I thought it was a bit overdone," the other man commented. "Too much, don't you know?"

  Ruble Noon and J. B. Rimes helped Lebo to a seat. All of them were soaking wet.

  "Too bad you had to get caught in the rain," the first easterner said. "It kind of broke up the show."

  "What do you do for an encore?" the other asked.

  Fan was helping Lebo off with his buckskin jacket. His shirt was soaked with blood.

  The gray-haired woman got up from her seat and put down the fancy work in which she had been engaged. "Perhaps I can help?" she suggested. "I've had some experience in this line of work."

  "Would you, please?" Fan asked. "I ... I've lived in the East until recently, and I'm afraid I..."

  "Get me some water, young man," the woman said, turning to Ruble Noon. "There's a pan on the stove at the end of the car. My husband was heating it to shave."

  The man riding with her opened his valise. He handed Ruble a towel. "It's the only one I've got. We'll have to share it."

  Ruble Noon dried his face and hands, then took off his wet coat. He checked his gun, drying it carefully with his handkerchief.

  The two easterners were silent while they looked on unbelievingly. As they watched, the older woman bathed and cleansed the gunshot wound. Lebo had been hit in the side, the bullet ripping the skin along his left ribs and cutting through the muscle. It was a bloody wound, but not a dangerous one.

  Lebo looked up at Ruble Noon. "I got Cristobal," he said.

  "You knew him?"

  "He was my brother-in-law."

  "Your brother-in-law!"

  Lebo tried to shrug, wincing from the pain. "For nada. ... He married my sister, and he left her. He was no good. He was a loudmouth. But he could shoot - he always could shoot."

  Ruble Noon sat down beside Rimes. The train was rolling south. Soon it would turn east, running along the border briefly. He put his head back against the red plush upholstery and closed his eyes.

  There was only the rumbling of the train, the creaking of the car as it rounded a small curve, the occasional sound of the engine's whistle, the pound of its drivers, and the clicking of the wheels crossing the rail-ends. He could hear the quiet talk of Fan and the older woman while they bandaged Lebo's wound.

  For the first time in weeks he could relax. Rimes was talking to the older woman's husband, who said he operated a mine near Central City, and had come west to look over some properties.

  "... deserved killing," the mining man was saying. "Manly was involved in claim-jumping in Nevada. He always was a troublemaker."

  The train slowed, and Ruble Noon opened his eyes. "Are we stopping?"

  "La Boca," Rimes said. "Just a station. We take a big bend and go east now."

  Noon heard someone drop to the roadbed from the rear car. He listened to the sound of boots along the cinders - more than one person.

  Lebo was leaning back, his eyes closed, his face pale. Fan was sitting opposite him. The older woman had gone back to the seat by Rirnes and her husband.

  There was a faint sound from the front of the car, a sound so faint that Ruble Noon doubted if he had heard it-it sounded rather like the rattle of a brake pin.

  Suddenly he heard the sound of the engine moving again, but their car was standing still.

  He spun around and hit the aisle running. He reached the end of the car in three long strides, just in time to see the express car and the engine moving away-too far to jump.

  He dropped to the roadbed, and the first person he saw was Peg Cullane. She had a rifle in her hands, and she was lifting it to shoot. The second person he saw was Finn Cagle.

  The gunman fired, his bullet clanging against the back of the car, within inches of Ruble Noon's head. Noon stepped back for partial protection from the rifle, and then as Peg fired he ran forward three quick, short steps, stopped, and shot from the hip. The bullet spun Cagle around, throwing him off balance. Dropping to one knee, Noon laid the barrel of his gun across his left forearm and shot again, and Cagle backed up and fell.

  Two rifle shots spat sand and dirt in front of Noon, and then a shot came from the train.

  The engine and express car had stopped. He saw that Finn Cagle was getting up, and shot into him again. Somebody shot from the car behind him, and he saw Peg Cullane drop her rifle.

  Ruble Noon ran forward. Suddenly he heard the drivers spin as the power was thrown to the engine and he jumped for the rear of the express car.

  He grabbed the door and ripped it open. The express messenger lay sprawled on the floor, his scalp laid open from a blow. The gold was still there in its neat sacks. He ran the length of the car, loading three chambers as he ran, and scrambled up on the tender.

  Bayles, the one who ran with Cagle, turned sharply as the coal rattled and threw up his gun for a shot. The engineer lunged into him, and Bayles fell from the train, hitting the edge of the roadbed and rolling over into the grass and pine needles alongside the track.

  He sprang to his feet, staggered, and the stagger made Noon miss his first shot. He swung to the ground and they faced each other.

  Bayles was badly shaken, and the side of his face was bleeding from hitting the ground, but he still gripped his gun.

  "Ruble Noon, is it?" he said. "I've heard of you. Now it's you an' me."

  "You can drop it and ride out," Noon said, "and it can end here."

  "You joke. You think I will end it so? I am not afraid of you, Ruble Noon. German Bayles has killed his men, too."

  "We'd both be better off at some other occupation," Ruble Noon replied calmly. "Enough men have died."

  "Sooner or later we all die. I think it is your time now, Ruble Noon.
I think tomorrow in the saloons they will be telling how German Bayles killed you ... face to face beside the railroad tracks."

  "Cagle's had it," Noon said. "He's dead, or close to it."

  "And now - " Bayles's gun was in his hand, and so was Ruble Noon's. Both men fired at the same instant. Noon felt the bullet strike him, felt his leg buckle under him, and he went down.

  He was still shooting, but Bayles was walking in, smiling, confident. "Tomorrow in the saloons they will be talking," he said, "talking of how ..." He fired again as he spoke, and Ruble Noon's body jerked with the shock of the bullet. "... of how German Bayles killed Ruble Noon ... the great Ruble Noon." The words came out slowly.

  Ruble Noon was down, his brain a dizzy buying, his body numb. He tried to rise as German Bayles came toward him, but his leg refused to function.

  Bayles was lifting his pistol for a final shot. The sun was hot on his face, a white cloud was drifting behind Bayles's head; Noon could hear the crunch of gravel and the whisper of the coarse weeds as Bayles came on.

  He noticed with surprise that there was blood on Bayles's shirt ... he did not remember hitting him ... and the German's face was beginning to streak with blood from a scalp wound. He was coming in close, still smiling. He stopped and spread his legs, seeming to waver just a little.

  Ruble Noon saw the duty blue of Bayles's shirt, saw the gun coming level, and then he fired twice, and heard the gun click on an empty chamber.

  He flicked open the loading gate with his thumb, but he was lying on his elbow and he could not bring the other hand into play, so he tried to sit up, and failed. Bayles fell heavily beside him.

  Ruble Noon rolled over on the hot gravel, smelling the dusty smell of the weeds, and he worked the ejector rod and thrust, out a shell, loading the cartridge in its place.

  He spun the cylinder and looked over at Bayles. The German was staring at him, smiling. "Tomorrow in the saloons ... they will be saying ..." His voice trailed off, but he still looked at Ruble Noon.

  "You are a good man, Ruble Noon," he was saying, "... a good man... with a gun...."

  He was still smiling - and he was dead.

  Ruble Noon tried to get up. He heard running feet, and then hands caught him and he felt himself eased back to the ground.