Novel 1978 - Bendigo Shafter (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Cain worked quietly, doing his share to gather and cut fuel, but always looking forward to spring, to building his smithy and his mill. Cain was not a hunter but an artisan, a sharer of labor, a builder of civilization.

  “When spring comes there will be more people,” Cain said to me, “and we will need some law. If we are to be free to work we must have somebody to wear a badge.”

  “Can’t we do without that?” I asked.

  “No. Until man can order his own affairs, until he ceases to prey on his brothers, he will need someone to maintain order. A lawman,” he added, “is not a restraint, but a freedom, a liberation. He restrains only those who would break the laws and provides freedom for the rest of us to work, to laugh, to sing, to play in peace.”

  I had not thought of it that way.

  Twice, hunting beyond Limestone Mountain I came upon pony tracks. It was a distance to go for fuel, but I remembered bitter cold days and wanted to leave the closer fuel for days when we could not go so far afield.

  There was an old travois trail leading up the mountain through the trees, and I had followed it for a short distance. One day on that trail Ethan Sackett rode up to me. He got down and helped me to throw wood into the small cart I was using to collect it.

  “Game’s staying far out. I haven’t seen a track today.”

  “Might be a good time to ride to Bridger. Lay in a few supplies while the weather is mild.”

  “Take you a week, if all went well.”

  “Worth it,” I said. “Are you going to fiddle for the party?”

  “Tom is. I’ll spell him, time to time.” He gave me a sharp look. “Watch yourself, Bendigo. Mae Stuart is settin’ her cap for you.”

  My ears grew hot. “Aw, no such thing! Anyway, I ain’t about to marry.”

  “I’d caution against it. Not to say a word against Mae, but she’s flighty and marriage won’t make a spell of difference.” And then he added, “Many a man who had no thought of marrying suddenly finds himself in a place when he’s either got to marry or run.”

  My eyes ranged the edge of the woods. I leaned against the wagon watching the steam rise from the horses. It was cool, but pleasant, and time to be starting for home.

  “Have you ever been to San Francisco, Ethan?”

  “A time or two. You figuring to go there?”

  “Maybe…I haven’t decided yet. I want to make something of myself, and I don’t want to live out my days here. Not that I don’t like our town, but there’s not many folks.”

  He grinned at me. “Not many girls, either.”

  I got red around the ears. “All right, there aren’t. Girls are part of it, but a man needs room to swing an axe, and I want my axe to cut deep and true. Maybe I’m a damn’ fool,” I added.

  “You’re not. You’ve got good ideas.” He looked over at me. “Ruth Macken thinks you’ll make a great man, someday.”

  I flushed again, but I was pleased. “She said that?”

  “Uh-huh…if you don’t get your foot caught in some girl’s trap before you get started.”

  He got up in the saddle. “We could trap some beaver, you and me. There isn’t the money in it that there used to be when everybody wore a beaver hat, but a body can still get a price for prime fur.”

  “I’ll need money, but I’ll need education. Mrs. Macken says the big cities have libraries, some of them free for the use of anybody.”

  We started down the mountain. “I’ll never be the smith Cain is, and I’m not cut out for farming. With learning I might find my way to something.”

  “This country needs cattle. No town can depend on hunting, and all the stock you folks have got won’t last. There’s cattle in Oregon, Bendigo.”

  “Do you reckon a man could drive a herd from there?”

  “What a man wants to do he generally can do, if he wants to badly enough. Following some rain, a body just might make it.” He glanced at me. “You figuring on that?”

  “It’s in my mind. If you’d come along to keep the boogers off.”

  He chuckled. “Seems to me you’d do pretty good at that yourself.”

  “Trouble is, it takes money to buy cattle, and we don’t have it.”

  “You might find gold. The first gold was found here back in 1842.”

  “Gold is a chancy thing. Still, a body might find enough to buy a few head and make a start.”

  When we reached town he headed off for his dugout, and I stopped by Ruth Macken’s to throw down some wood.

  She came out with Bud, and whilst Bud was stacking wood I told her about my idea of buying cattle in Oregon.

  She did not laugh as I half expected she would but asked me about the trail, and I told her what Ethan had said.

  “Bendigo,” she said, after a bit, “when you’ve gotten rid of your wood, come back by and have supper with us. We’ll talk about it.”

  Well, now. I won’t say the idea hadn’t been in the back of my head. Helen was a fine cook, but she cooked plain. Ruth Macken fussed over her meals. Helen’s was straight, honest food with no nonsense about it, but Ruth did a little extra to everything she fixed, and it was tasty, mighty tasty.

  So while she cooked and fixed at supper, I sat astride a chair, my arms on the back, and told her my thinking. Most of it had just come to mind while I talked to Ethan, but once started it worried at my thoughts like a coyote over a fresh buffalo hide.

  “Ethan would go along. We could scout for water and grass on the way out and plan each day’s drive to end where there was water, even if the drives were short. We could hire a couple of men out there, bring back a small herd, and if it turned out well, go back for another.”

  When I was fifteen I’d helped drive three hundred head from Illinois to New York state, and I told her of that. We ate, talked, and then Ruth Macken said, “Bendigo, if you decide to go I will buy a share in your herd and take my money in cattle at the end.”

  Well, I just looked at her. There’d been no such thought in my mind. All I’d been doing was hunting a good meal and a chance to tell my idea to a good listener. I wanted to hear it take shape in my mind as I talked. Now, all of a sudden it was no longer just talk, the chance was staring me right in the face.

  “It would be a long drive, Mrs. Macken. I’d be wrong not to warn you we might lose all we started with.”

  “We need cattle here, and I believe you can do it.”

  Cain was sitting by the fire when I came back down the hill, but the rest of them were all asleep. He was putting a long splice in a rope so I sat down, fed a stick or two in the fire, and explained my idea.

  “You’d have to have an outfit, and grub for the trip,” he said, “and money to buy cattle.”

  “Ethan would go with me.”

  Cain took a strand of rope and tucked it into place, working it tight and snug with his hands. “The idea is a good one, but you’d best give it some thought. I doubt if we could spare both of you.”

  Well, I should have thought of that. Ethan and me, both gone for months on end. It would be a danger to the town, and they’d have less meat.

  “There’s Webb,” I said.

  “Yes, there’s Webb.” His tone said a lot. Cain did not trust Webb in a time of violence. Webb was eager, far too eager. Such a man might bring trouble where there was none.

  “Well, maybe next year,” I agreed, reluctantly. Another year seemed far, far away, and I’d been building plans and thinking what to do with the money I’d make.

  “You could go alone,” Cain said. He turned the rope in his hands, studying the splice. It was so perfectly done as to scarcely increase the dimension of the rope. “The risk would be great, but you’ve good judgment.”

  Alone?

  “If you go with Ethan you would learn, but you’d be dependent, too. He knows so much you’d be apt to let him lead. If you go alone you’ll do it all yourself.”

  There was a lot in what he said, for when I went out with Ethan I always stood back a mite. Much as I knew, he knew mo
re, and it was easier to let him have the responsibility. Suddenly the trip seemed a whole lot longer, yet more exciting, too.

  One thing I realized. If I would make it back to our town by the following fall, I must have my herd and be ready to begin my drive with the first grass of spring, and that meant I must leave sometime after the new year, while winter was still upon the land.

  Thinking about it, I lay awake long and slept late, a rare thing for me. When I awakened there was laughter in the house, and I could hear Mae down there with Lorna, and it came to me that today was party day, and everybody was fixing for it.

  It shamed me to be getting up from bed with all those folks downstairs, and me the one who was always the first out of bed. I’d got into my pants and was reaching for a shirt when Mae stuck her head over the edge of the floor.

  That girl was a caution. She had climbed right up there with Lorna daring her. She was looking at me with eyes dancing with fun, but there was something else in them, too, something that made me wonder what she’d have done if we’d been in the house alone.

  She was a bold one. She reached right over and put her hand on my arm. “Oooh! Look at all those muscles! I had no idea you were so strong!”

  “Lorna!” I yelled, embarrassed. “Get this girl out of here!”

  Lorna just laughed at me, and I grabbed for a shirt, and pulled it on. Maybe it was a good thing I was taking off down the Oregon Trail. She was pretty, too pretty to be running around loose, and I thought Ethan implied truly when he said marriage would not keep her from running.

  “You get down from here,” I said, “you’ve got no call to come up here like this. You’re a big girl now.”

  “I didn’t think you’d noticed,” she said, laughing at me. “That nice Mr. Trask surely did. He wanted me to come to Salt Lake with him.”

  “Which wife were you to be? Second or third?”

  “I’d be first, no matter when he married me!”

  Well, I got into my shirt and climbed down to where my boots were, smelling all the good things cooking and baking, and watching the girls sewing clothes and chattering away about the party. I’d never seen such excitement in our town, and for the first time I began to feel excitement myself. For the first time also I began to realize that the event itself is not more important to women-folks than the chattering about it, before and after, and the fixing up and doing for it.

  Cain was down at the shop, sharpening a saw. He paused, holding the file in his hand. “I’d have to leave right after Christmas,” I said.

  “I was thinking of that.”

  Much as I wished to go, in another way I didn’t want to at all. The town would have one less rifle to defend it and one less to hunt for game to survive the winter. A late spring could mean disaster.

  Yet we would need cattle; not only for my own gain, but for both milk and beef, and to build supplies against the winter that would follow.

  It was too soon to worry but not too soon to plan. I would not leave for another month, and in the meantime I must go over the trail with Ethan.

  And tonight was our first party, the first entertainment in our town.

  Chapter 9

  TOM PLAYED THE fiddle, and John Sampson played the fife, and we danced until the sun came up over the eastern hills. Cain played the accordion for a while, and I danced with Lorna and Mae, with Ruth Macken and Helen, and with Mary Croft and Neely Stuart’s wife, who did not like me, I think.

  It was a fine night, gay with laughter and singing. Few of us sang well but we all loved to sing, and the sound of our voices went out across the snow to the wintry hills beyond.

  Yet we did not forget, in all our fun-making, that our lives were lived with danger, and every now and again one or the other of us would step out, walk away from the inner sounds to listen to the night.

  Let it never be said that a man does not develop a sixth sense, a feeling for danger when there are no outward signs of it. Perhaps subconsciously he perceives things not registered on his conscious mind, but whatever the reason, I have myself been warned time and again of danger lurking, and so have many whom I know.

  So listening was not only listening, it was sensing, registering the feel of the night.

  The moon was clear and the eye carried far out across the snow, down the valley and along the towering cliffs, very white now in the moonlight. Nothing was seen.

  Lorna came out and stood beside me. She was flushed and happy, her eyes bright with gaiety. “It’s grand, isn’t it, Ben? I’m awfully glad we came.”

  “You left friends behind.”

  “I hated to leave them, too, but I will make new friends. I’ve seen so much and learned so much that I’d not have learned at home. You have too, Ben. You’ve changed.”

  “Me?”

  “Oh, yes! You’re so much older, and wiser somehow. I think you’ve changed more than any of us. Even Cain has spoken of it.”

  A change in a man is never so evident to himself, but of course, I had experienced new things. The experiences of the long trek west, the Indian fights along that trail, the responsibilities, rustling food for the people of the town, working, watching, thinking. Even as a man shapes a timber for a house or a bridge, he is also shaping himself. He has in himself a material that can be shaped to anything he wishes it to be. The trouble is the shaping never ceases, and sometimes it has gone far along one line before a man realizes it.

  “I can hardly wait for spring. I want to get out and walk upon the hills.”

  “You be careful. There’s Indians, you know.” I paused. “And I won’t be here. I am going away after Christmas.”

  “Oh, no!”

  So I told her our plans, and of my long ride to Oregon alone, and how it would need much of the year to make the homeward drive.

  We had turned to start back inside, for the cold was reaching into us, but as I held the door open for Lorna I glanced back.

  There was something on the trail, something that had not been there before.

  Only a black dot, only a shadow of something, only something that would alter the shape of my own life, but I could not see that. I could see only that something was there that had not been before.

  My pistol was in my waistband. To get my rifle might interrupt my people at their fun, so I told Lorna I would be right in, and then I closed the door and went to the edge of the bench to look again, and to look around also, to be sure it was not a trick, something to lure us out away from our buildings.

  I tucked my right hand under my coat to keep the fingers warm for my gun and started down off the bench toward the trail.

  The black spot did not move. With my hand on the butt of my gun for a quick, smooth draw, I went closer.

  It was a horse, head hanging, standing over a man who had apparently fallen from the saddle.

  Squatting, my right hand on my gun, I slid my left under his coat and felt for his heart. I seemed to feel a faint beat, but there was something else. His shirt was stiff with dried blood. He was not only in a fair way to freezing to death but wounded as well.

  Lifting him into the saddle I steadied him with one hand and spoke to the horse, who moved off quickly, eager for the lights of our town.

  The horse had not been ground-hitched but had preferred to stay with the man. It must be quite a man who could command such loyalty from a dumb brute.

  I went right to John Sampson’s house and carried the wounded man inside, stripped off his overcoat and covered him with a buffalo robe, all by firelight. Then I lit a candle and moved the hot water pot closer to the fire.

  Looking down at the wounded man, I studied his face. He was no one I had ever seen. His was a narrow, aristocratic face, finely boned and handsome. He was, I guessed, about thirty-five, but might have been younger. His hair was the color of buckwheat honey, his mustache darker.

  Lifting him carefully, I eased his arms out of his black broadcloth coat, then removed the vest, which was dark with the stain of blood. The gold watch he carried was expens
ive, the most beautiful I’d seen. His gunbelt was of hand-tooled leather, and the pistol was oiled and in fine working condition. It was the pistol of a man who knew guns and used them.

  I removed his tie and his collar. He was going to need help, more help than I could give him. Help of that kind in our town meant John Sampson, better at treating wounds or sickness than any of us.

  The buffalo robe and the fire would warm the chill from his body, and in the meantime I would care for his horse and get John Sampson.

  It had grown colder. I led the horse to the stable, stripped off its gear, rubbed it dry with a little hay, and put some more hay in the manger. Due to the smallness of the stable and the presence of our own stock, it was warm.

  At the Macken house the music had stopped and everybody was eating, laughing, and talking. Ruth came toward me with a plate but I shook my head, and catching John’s eye, motioned him to the door. Quietly, I told him of the wounded man, and putting down his plate he got his coat and followed me out. The youngsters did not notice, but Webb did, and so did Cain.

  Leaving John to care for the stranger’s wounds I went back to the stable. A thought had occurred to me: What was a man doing so far from anywhere without even a blanket roll?

  The saddlebags had been heavy. Lighting a lantern, I opened them up. One contained several clean white handkerchiefs, rare in this country, and a sack containing several paper-wrapped cylinders. Each cylinder contained forty gold eagles. There were twelve of them.

  There was a thin volume in some foreign tongue, a folded newspaper with a San Francisco dateline, some odds and ends, a few small coins, and some letters. I caught the name.

  DRAKE MORRELL

  PALACE HOTEL

  SAN FRANCISCO

  It was a name I had heard. Curiously, I opened the newspaper. Two months old, but not much worn. I doubted he had had it long.

  There was a headline over a column on an inside page:

  MORRELL TO HANG

  Morrell had killed a man, and not the first one, and he had been sentenced to hang on August the twenty-ninth. It was now only a few weeks to Christmas.