Bendigo Shafter

by Louis L'Amour

  A hunting knife was the most useful of articles, and I went nowhere without one, but the hatchet was useful also. As boys we had learned to throw them with the same skill with which some men throw knives. Often, when not wishing to use a gun, I had killed small game with a thrown tomahawk.

  Returning to my horse I got my hatchet and went back to the stream. I enlarged the hole in the ice and began breaking off chunks of the quartz at the edge and beneath the water.

  It was there, all right.

  I’d heard much talk of gold mining, prospecting, and the like. From time to time I had tried my hand, with little to show for it. There was a prevailing notion that the deeper one followed a vein the richer it got, but I well remembered one old timer who claimed that a vein tended to peter out as it went deeper, that the richest ore was apt to be nearer the surface.

  I had no idea which was true, but I guessed that if I’d found even these few colors downstream of this area, the deeper sands downstream must be loaded. When spring came I’d go down to bedrock on the nearest sandbar.

  For more than an hour I worked steadily, trying to make no more noise than essential, prying away at cracks to break off chunks, and getting out the best stuff-jewelry rock, as the miners called it. Finally, when the shadows started to lengthen I carefully swept all the dust and debris into the hole in the ice and pushed a nearby chunk of driftwood over the hole. By morning it would be frozen solid once again.

  My horse was more than willing to leave, so sacking up my stuff in an old blanket, I started back along the mountain. Several times I turned to look back. It was beginning to snow. With luck even my tracks would be covered before daylight.

  It was a long, cold ride back, and midnight was near before I rode up to the blacksmith shop. I carried my sack inside, then went to put up my horse.

  Cain came from the house. “Ruth is over,” he said. “We were getting worried.”

  “Don’t go in yet, Cain. We’ve some talking to do.”

  When the mustang was rubbed down and fed, I went back to the blacksmith shop. Reaching into the sack I took out a chunk of the ore. It was seamed with gold. I’d knocked away as much excess as I could, and the stuff looked great

  “Is there much of it?”

  I shrugged. “Cain, I don’t know. My guess would be that there is, but it might peter out in just a few feet. The gold that’s been broken off over the years and washed downstream should be something, though, and there’s probably several good bars right below. I’m no judge but my guess is that I’ve nearly a hundred dollars right here.”

  “Well bust it up and melt it down,” Cain said. “You’ve a good day’s work, I’ll say that.”

  We put the stuff in an old canvas sack where Cain usually carried odd bits of iron, and we hid it under some bits of planking, old rope, and odds and ends of harness.

  Ruth and Bud were still up when we came back in. Drake was also there, and we sat down to an excellent meal. I was hungry and tired yet excited about my discovery. I’d never been one to place much emphasis on wealth. I wanted the respect of my fellow man and a chance to live my life, to think, to ride the high country. “Are you going east, Bendigo?” Ruth asked.

  “I am. I shall ride east and take the steam cars to Omaha, then to Chicago and New York.”

  “Not to New Orleans?”

  I got a little red around the ears. “Maybe. But she’s forgotten all about me. Besides, what use would she have for a wild country man like me?”

  Ruth smiled. “You haven’t looked into a mirror lately, Bendigo. You’re a handsome man.”

  Well, I felt red and uncomfortable. I wasn’t used to compliments and never knew what to say or how to react.

  “By the way, Ben,” Drake said, “there’s a new magazine starting out on the coast. The Overland Monthly. A man named Bret Harte is editing it. Why don’t you send him something? From what I’ve heard he is interested in everything western, and he might use something of yours.”

  “Thanks, I’ll try him.”

  “We were just talking, Ben,” Helen said. “Ruth thinks this will be the last year for wagon trains.”

  “There was a man stopped in at the post who had been working on the railroad, the Central Pacific. He says they are building east even faster than the Union Pacific is going west.”

  They talked quietly over their coffee and I sat with them, thinking over the past time and all that had transpired. We had come here to a small, bare valley, and we had built our homes, and now for a time we had lived within them. We had raised our small crops, hunted and gathered in the forest and along the streams, and we had faced our trails.

  What did it mean? What did we mean? Were we more than the beaver who builds for a while, harvests the country, and then retreats to easier, better places? Had we given anything to the land? To our country?

  Listening to their voices I thought of them, of Cain, Helen, Ruth, of Webb and John Sampson and Drake Morrell ... we all were passersby, in the last analysis, yet during this time we had lived our lives with courage, and each of us, I think, had grown.

  We were a part of this now, a part of this land, of this forest, of these green hills now covered with snow. We had watered from its streams, reaped crops from its soil, and I, perhaps, had learned more than all of them, for I had the most to learn.

  Here in this house, built of logs cut and trimmed by our own hands, I had talked to Plutarch, to Locke, to, Hume and Blackstone; yet now I knew I must go on, and I did not know where.

  Was it only Ninon that drew me to the east? Or was she the facade of something else ... some vast yearning to be a part of that larger world as I was a small part of this?

  “Ben?” Drake Morrell was speaking. “You are going east?”

  “Yes. After Christmas I shall go. To New York first, I think.”

  “Don’t be disappointed if your stuff doesn’t sell. It rarely does, at first.”

  That made me smile. “I’ve been a trapper too long, Drake,” I said, “a man has to set many traps to catch fur in one or two. I think it will be the same with writing.”

  There was a tap on the door, and then it opened. Ethan was there. He moved in, a man endlessly graceful, a man who moved like a blade of grass in the wind. I envied him.

  He squatted on his heels against the wall, his rifle in one hand. “Ben, somebody picked up your trail today. Somebody tried to backtrack you.”

  For a moment I was very quiet, my mind sorting words for an answer. “Tried to?”

  “He couldn’t do it. It was snowing too much, and then somebody shot, and I guess it worried him.”

  “Somebody shot?”

  Ethan was bland, innocent. “Yeah, I guess somebody figured that if that there person stopped follerin’ now there’d be too much snow by the time he tried again. I wouldn’t say anybody shot at anybody, but it was the sort of thing that makes a cautious man more cautious.”

  “Who was following the trail?” I asked.

  “Offhand I’d say it was Moses ... the Reverend.”

  They were all looking from Ethan to me. I should have known I could keep no secrets from him. I said as much.

  He smiled. “Ben, you’re my friend. What you’ve a mind to do is your affair, and I’ve no desire to horn in on it. Only thing is, I don’t like nobody trackin’ down a friend of mine ... maybe gettin’ in where he don’t belong.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Ruth Macken changed the subject. “Bendigo, I got some books that I’d sent for. You might like to read them. A man named Timothy Dwight, writing about the New York-New England country.”

  “Thanks,” I said; a part of my mind had moved after Moses Finnerly. Why was he tracking me? I often went to the mountains, so why this time?

  “We need a larger building,” Drake was saying. “We had only a half dozen students to begin. Now we’ve more than thirty. Even with Lorna helping, we’ll need another room, and we should have another teacher.”

  “Maybe two more, Drake,” I sai
d quietly. “When I go east I am taking Loma with me.”

  Chapter 34

  “No way you could have seen him,” Ethan told me the next morning. “He didn’t foller you, it was your trail. He tried backtrackin’ you, and something about it struck me wrong, so I sort of headed him off.”

  “Did he have any idea who shot?”

  Ethan chuckled. “Him? He’s a pretty good Injun, but not that good. I just figured to kick up some snow, was all, and he took off.”

  “I’ve got to go back again,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Take a roundabout. Go through country where anybody who follers has got to come out in the open. Don’t leave no other way for him, then set up high for a while and sort of look back.”

  “Good idea. Want to come with me?”

  “Nope. Your aflair ... less you need he’p. You know, Ben, I sort of figure I’ve got all I need in this world. It ain’t likely I’ll marry, and if I do I can run a trap line. To me a showing of wealth would only cumber my life. It would load me up with watchin’ after it, and I’d spend more time at that than roamin’ the high country.

  “I wouldn’t trade all anybody could give me for one day on those mountain trails. I seen a big bear up there yesterday, Ben, the biggest I ever did see. A silver-tip grizzly, and he must’ve weighed nearly a ton. He seen me, all right, an’ he r’ared up on his hind legs and looked at me.

  “I grounded the butt of my gun to show him I meant him no evil, an’ we stood there, sniffin’ the air and lookin’ at each other for a while, and then he kind of lifted a paw ... it was an accident, of course, but it looked almost like he waved at me, then he just turned his back an’ walked off, an’ I let him go.

  “When he looked back again he was at the edge of the trees, an I lifted a hand to him. He looked, then went on into the trees and out of the way. Ben, that bear was a big one. He’s put in too many years in this country for me to fetch him now.”

  “I’ve found gold up there, Ethan.”

  “Figured as much. Well, if you go east after that actress gal you’ll need it. Not that it would matter to her, but money shines with the old folks.”

  “I want to look around some. I’ve got to make up my mind about some things.”

  “I reckon.” Ethan took out his pipe. “Ben, did you ever think about runnin’ for office? I’m serious. I’ve heard a lot of talk. Wyoming will be a state. They’ll need men with education. You’ve read a sight of books, and you’re steady. I’d trust your judgment any time ... you think about it.”

  Well, I had thought about it. Maybe that was a part of what our town meant, maybe it was a place for growing up, a place for teaching a man to think not only of himself but of a community, a training ground for learning to live together, to think for others, to plan for a future.

  Yet I felt inadequate. There were so many questions of which I knew nothing, and that night I opened a fresh bundle of papers and began going through them. I must know why Johnson was dismissing Stanton, why they wanted to impeach Johnson, why men preferred Grant to Seymour.

  Blackstone had greater appeal. I liked the even tone of his work, the effect he gave of considered judgment, the cool beauty of the principles he laid down. This was one of the books Jefferson had read, and Madison ... all of them. They had read Plutarch, too.

  Two more trips I made to my mine, and each time I returned with gold. Cain melted it down in the forge, cast it into small ingots for me, flat and about as round as a silver dollar, but thicker.

  On my last trip I rode out before daybreak. It was a clear, cold morning ... freezing cold. On such a morning I would not have thought of going, but it would be the last time. Christmas was tomorrow, and after New Year’s I would be going off to the east

  I rode swiftly up Beaver Creek, cut over toward the mountain, and climbed along an old game trail. It was a trail I knew very well, and when well up the mountain I turned sharply off and looked back. Nothing.

  It was too cold to wait long and I rode on, my horse eager to be off. On this occasion, I planned to bring back some gold I had dug and cached ... a good load of it.

  The air was very still, the sky gray and low. It was bad weather ... a kind of weather made for sitting by the fire. I rode into the trees, down a long, snow-covered slope, into the trees again. Suddenly I pulled up.

  Tracks ... huge tracks. That big silver-tip was out and moving around. He probably knew we were in for a bad storm and wanted to have a full belly before it set in. Well, luck to him.

  Cold ... it was bitter, bitter cold, and it had grown colder since I started.

  I had to get back. Tomorrow was Christmas Day. Once, turning around a clump of snow-covered brush, I thought I caught a whisper of movement far behind me, but I looked and looked and saw nothing. My horse stamped irritably, eager to be moving, and we went on. How I loved the vast stillness around me! No sound but the crunch of my horse’s hoofs in the snow, the creak of stiff leather, an occasional crack of a branch in the cold.

  Pulling up under some trees I stepped down from my horse into snow just short of knee-deep. My feet were cold, so I walked on, leading my horse. Then I mounted again, doubled back on my trail at a fast trot, and came suddenly into the open.

  It caught them by surprise. There were three riders, and they were coming right down my trail.

  When I rode out of the trees they pulled up sharply, and one of them made as if to turn. They were a good two hundred yards off and I considered. I had an idea who they were but no real reason to shoot ... they had not attacked me. Not yet.

  So I simply turned my horse and walked him back into the trees.

  Three men ... not one, but three. They were not simply following me, which one man could have done, they meant to kill me.

  I turned up a dim game trail, only slightly tracked since the snow. I rode up, weaving a way in and out of the trees. I slid my horse down a steep bank, edged him between two boulders, slid down another bank through the trees and circled toward my cache.

  Did they know of it? Had they located my mine? Or only the area? Unless they did know they would be foolish to kill me.

  There was something in this I did not understand.

  My horse wore caulked shoes so I turned him upstream on the ice and rode swiftly for several hundred yards, then up the bank and into the trees again. I disliked seeming to run from them, but I had killed men and this was known. The Reverend Finnerly still had friends and a few followers, and there was no liking between us. If I killed them or any one of them I would be in trouble, all my dreams suddenly gone down the drain. What I needed now was escape.

  They were following but not too fast ... why? Drawing up to let my horse catch his wind, I scowled: Why, if they wanted me dead, did they not close in and try to do the job?

  They were obviously not in a hurry.

  Why? The answer came to me suddenly ... because they were not ready yet.

  Why not?

  Like a dash of cold snow down the back of the neck it came to me. Because there was somebody else involved, somebody not yet on the scene.

  They were making no move to catch up. Despite the coming on of night they were willing to take their time. They were not even closing in to be sure I was within range.

  In fact they acted just like ... like men driving game or herding cattle.

  That was what they were doing then, they were herding me, moving me closer and closer to some other enemy.

  The worst of it was, I was in a canyon. There were places where I could climb out, but they were few, steep, and exposed.

  At this point the canyon was about a half mile wide, the stream ran up the bottom, there were a few meadows, many trees, some steep, rocky cliffs, some slopes not quite as steep, some covered with trees, some only with snow.

  What lay ahead? Enemies, certainly, but what enemies? Who? There was also the night, the cold.

  On my right the bank fell steeply away into the brush. Swiftly I turned my horse and slid down the bank into an avenue
of trees. I would be herded no further. If it was fight they wanted, it would be now. I went into the trees on a run, turned right again down the canyon, and came up out of the trees to a level area to see the three riders pulling up ... then, deliberately they turned their horses and started away. Startled, I glanced behind me.

  Indians. And they were coming toward me in an arc, walking their horses, closing in.

  Starting forward, I found myself facing another group that was emerging slowly from the trees in the direction I was going. Shoving my rifle into its boot, I reached inside my coat and shucked my six-gun.

  There was no chance to even think, there was only time now to do. My enemies had walked me right into a trap set for me and now they were pulling out. I slapped my heels to the mustang, and rode right into them.

  They were not ready for it. They had expected me to try to talk, to ride to right or left, to try any way out. Instead I went right into them and I went shooting. My first shot knocked an Indian from his horse. The second tried to turn too fast, and his ordinarily surefooted pony, slipped on the ice of the creek, and almost went down. I went into them, shooting.

  It was almost dark. If I could just ...

  The Indians behind me hesitated to shoot for fear of hitting their friends, and shooting to right and left, I was through them. It was due far more to the caulks on my horse’s shoes than to any skill or bravery on my part. The horse was sure on its feet, and in a moment I was into the trees.

  I heard whoops and yells ... there must be a dozen. How many were down? One man had gone down with his horse, but that was probably only momentary, and one I had wounded ... I believed I had hit one other, but I’d been more intent on getting through them than killing anyone.

  They were all around me. On my right the cliff went sheer ... there was a chimney where a man might climb, no place a horse could go.

  I dismounted quickly and stuffed the food from my saddlebag inside my shirt. There was also some ammunition, which I stuffed into my coat pockets.

  “All right, boy,” I whispered to my horse, “go home now!”