Novel 1978 - Bendigo Shafter (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “Remember what I said about fuel. Stay close to the stove and burn it just enough to keep warm.” I turned away and started back to my own car.

  The nicely spoken man came after me. “Mind if I ask a few questions?” He gestured toward a pale, attractive young woman and a boy. “That’s my family.”

  “All right.”

  “We have all heard of South Pass City. I’d like a turn at gold mining myself. Is it a good place?”

  I shrugged, smiling. “My friend, most places are good places if your approach is right. There are fine people there, and there are some bad ones. South Pass City is only one of several small communities, and there is some mining along a half dozen of the creeks.

  “Our own settlement is only a few miles from South Pass City, and we’d welcome you. However, I believe some of us will be leaving the area. Most of the good placer-mining claims have been staked, and the traffic along the Overland Trail will disappear when the railroad is in full operation, and I believe it is even now. I know the east and west lines have been joined, and by now they probably have scheduled trains…I haven’t made inquiries beyond my own transportation.

  “We’d welcome you, but you will have to think of making a living.”

  “You are in the cattle business?”

  “In a small way. My brother and I operate a sawmill, also, but even that must be moved. We’ve been cutting ties for the railroad and timbers for some of the mines, although few have gotten so far along.”

  “Is it a violent place? Alec Williams here,” he gestured toward the man who had spoken of Herrara, “has been telling us of the killings. He says the marshal there, somebody named Ben Shafter, is a killer.”

  “You won’t need to worry about him nor about the community. There has been very little shooting.”

  Williams was listening. “A lot you know! That Shafter killed two men last year! Right in the middle of town!”

  “Perhaps. His job is to keep the peace, but unfortunately there are always troublemakers. The two men who were killed were drifters, toughs, and not of the town at all. They came looking for trouble.”

  “Were you there?” Williams demanded belligerently. “What do you know about it?”

  “Yes, I was there. I saw it.”

  Now I was eager to get away. The train was crawling now, and stooping to look out the windows, I saw the snow was falling again, thicker and faster. I heard the wind whine around the train.

  “Save your fuel,” I warned, “better stay close to the stove and to each other. This may develop into a bad storm.”

  Alec Williams was one of those who fed on sensation, and I’d known his kind before. Men were killed by officers of the law in eastern cities and villages, but nobody thought of building them up as killers or as gunfighters…they saved that for the west.

  The train crept along. The stack of fuel grew lower. I walked back to the car where I had been riding and stood beside Lorna and Dr. Fairchild. “We’re in trouble,” I said quietly. “We’re going to have a blizzard. The snow is falling and the wind is picking up.”

  Fairchild looked up. “But we’re in the train. It will be safe here.”

  “These cars are not easy to heat, doctor,” I said, “and there’s very little fuel. If this keeps up we may get snowed in.”

  “Snowed in? You mean the train will stop?”

  “We may even be covered with snow. It happens out here…this is a blizzard building up.”

  The plains that had stretched far away like a frozen sea had vanished. Now there was just the howling wind and a visibility of only inches beyond windows, which were swiftly frosting over.

  I stopped the conductor. “We’d better get them all into one car, it will save fuel and keep them warmer.”

  “Good idea.” He hurried away, his face taut with worry. I did not want to sit down. A restlessness was on me, and I was worried. I tried to remember what kind of country we were passing over…plains, yes, but had there been any stream beds? Any stands of cottonwood? Then I remembered that I had been asleep when we passed over much of this.

  There was a station or a town. As the bunch from the other car trooped in, I asked the conductor about it. “No good,” he said. “There’s a station, but it’s been closed, and the folks that were in the town picked up and left.”

  “How about buildings? Were there any?”

  “Shacks…nothing but shacks and soddies. There was a store and saloon. Those folks were damn’ fools. There was no chance for a town there. Nothing for it to draw on. Maybe if the country settles up there’d be enough business, but I doubt it. Somebody convinced them this would be the big metropolis of the plains.

  “Why, I saw lots selling for a hundred dollars apiece right out there where there’s nothing but prairie dogs and coyotes!”

  “How far from here?”

  “I dunno. Ten, fifteen miles. Hard to figure where we are when you can’t see nothing.”

  “When we get there, stop.”

  “Mister, I daren’t. Wheels would freeze to the tracks in no time. Anyway, there’s nothing there. Nothing an’ nobody.”

  I looked at him. “Conductor, when you get there…stop. There’s fuel…or should be.”

  He went away and the train kept on. Some of the youngsters were whimpering. Lorna helped rock a baby to sleep, and the men went back to the other car to carry in what fuel remained. Nobody had much to say.

  Williams came over to me. “It’s mighty cold. Trains ever get stuck out here?”

  “They could.”

  His face was gray. “It’s my fault. I wanted to come out here. Pa said I was a fool, and Lil, she didn’t want to leave. I just figured I’d do better. I wasn’t making anything back there, just workin’ sunup to sundown on the farm.”

  “It will be the same here,” I told him quietly. “Wherever a man is, there is work to do. That’s the best part of it.”

  “The best part?”

  “The very best part. My friend, there is a Hell. It’s when a man has a family to support, has his health, and is ready to work, and there is no work to do. When he stands with empty hands and sees his children going hungry, his wife without the things to do with. I hope you never have to try it.”

  The car trembled with the force of the wind. Blown bits of snow, each one a bit of ice, rattled against the windows. The windows were coated over with frost, and when the conductor next came through an icy blast blew in with him. He stamped the snow from his overshoes.

  “Got to keep the doors open. They’ll freeze shut. Anyway, with that stove goin’ you’ll need air, time to time.”

  “How far to that station?”

  “You got me, mister. Ought to be soon.”

  There were five cars on the train. Three freight cars and two passenger cars and a sleeping car for the train crew. It was not really a caboose, just a freight car lined with tar paper with bunks and a stove.

  He went on through, pulling the door shut behind him. After he had gone I looked at the snow that had fallen from his boots. The snow from his last trip was still there, unmelted.

  The train whistle wailed into the night, a long, mournful cry. Lorna put the baby down on the seat and tucked the blanket around it.

  The passengers were few. The nicely spoken man was Miller. “What about the town?” he asked. “Will there be people there?”

  “No, I don’t think so. It is one of those towns that had no reason for being.” As I spoke I felt a twinge, thinking of our own town with sadness. “It has been abandoned. I’ve been thinking we might find some fuel.”

  The train was slowing, then it ground to a stop. The conductor put his head in the door. “Here’s your town! But it’s not empty. There’s somebody got a light yonder.”

  With a rush we buttoned up and tightened collars and went down the icy steps to the platform. There were some stacks of firewood alongside the deserted station, and we rushed to it.

  “We can tear down a building,” Williams suggested. “It will ma
ke a good hot fire.”

  We started for the nearest one, and suddenly a man appeared with a lantern in one hand, a shotgun in the other.

  “Here! What you doing?” he demanded angrily.

  “Loading some fuel,” the conductor replied. “We’re about to freeze on that train.”

  Another man appeared, also with a shotgun. “You ain’t loadin’ nothin’!” he said roughly. “You uns are on a train. You’re a-goin’ somewhar. We uns are stuck here an’ we got a long winter ahead of us. You jest git right back on that train an’ git!”

  “The wood by the depot belongs to the railroad,” the conductor protested. “We’re takin’ that!”

  “No, you ain’t!” The shotguns came level. “We need that wood! Now you jest pull out o’ here. You want to argy about it, you start in, but we aim to be shootin’.”

  “Forget it, conductor,” I said quietly. “We’ve loaded some, and it will help. He’s right, you know. These men and their families are stuck…they’re here for the winter.”

  “We could take them on the train,” the conductor suggested. “We could take them on to the next town.”

  “What? And leave all this here?” One of the men swept a gesture at the town. “Mister, we bought lots here! When the other folks pulled out, we done bought their lots! When spring comes this place’ll be boomin’! We’re gonna be rich! Rich!”

  “Let’s get back to the train before the wheels do freeze,” I suggested. “We’ll find something else!”

  We scrambled aboard, the locomotive started, its wheels ground, then it reversed, started forward again, and slowly moved off into the blowing snow.

  “Poor damn’ fools!” the conductor said. “I hadn’t the heart to tell them.”

  “Tell them what?” I asked.

  “About their town. Folks left because they heard what’s the truth. Come spring we’re goin’ to straighten the line through here and this town will be three, four miles from the track. His lots ain’t worth nothin’…this here’ll go back to prairie dogs, jackrabbits, and kiyutees!”

  Chapter 41

  NONETHELESS, WE HAD loaded what amounted to a cord of wood before we were stopped, and when the train rolled westward we went with a slightly greater margin of safety.

  The conductor stopped by about an hour later. We had made coffee on the stove, and we poured a cup for him. He stood by, his clothes streaked with snow from crossing between the cars.

  “Gettin’ deeper out there. We’re almighty afeared of the cut up ahead.”

  “Cut?” Fairchild asked. “You mean a cut through a hill?”

  “Sort of. She’s thirty feet deep and most of a half mile long.”

  “Have you got scoop shovels aboard?” I asked.

  “I should reckon. Maybe a dozen. If we make it through the cut we can get on to the next settlement. There’s folks there, and there’s stores and grub…fuel, too.”

  Even as he spoke the train ground to a halt. The train reversed, then lunged ahead, then stopped.

  I picked up my buffalo coat and with the conductor, went up through the cars. We climbed down the icy steps and jumped off into the snow. It was bitter cold even here where there was some shelter from the wind.

  With the conductor breaking trail, we went up to the locomotive. The engineer was a burly Irishman. He leaned from the cab. “We’re stopped, Walt. Big drift up there.”

  He got down from the cab and we walked forward, stumbling and pushing through the snow.

  The drift had come down from the cut, slanting across the tracks. Where the locomotive had stopped it was at least eight feet deep and no telling how far it ran.

  “We’re about a third of the way through the cut, but I doubt if this drift runs far. If we could just get through here we might make it the rest of the way before daylight.”

  “Let’s have those shovels,” I said. “And if you’ve got any more lanterns, let’s have a couple.”

  The wind swirled snow in my face, taking my breath. I hid my chin behind my collar and turned my face sidewise to the wind, walking back to the car where the shovels would be.

  Taking a shovel, I walked back to the cow-catcher on the engine and began cutting out blocks of snow and tossing them aside. There was little room, but soon Fairchild joined me, and then Williams.

  Williams was a talker, but he was also a good worker, and we worked steadily, shoveling the snow to one side. The slanting drift had filled in solidly on the far side of the engine, and we could dispose of the snow only where there was some shelter under the bank.

  The work warmed us. We worked steadily, taking a moment now and again for a breather. Soon Miller came and took Fairchild’s place while we returned for coffee, and two other men, their names unknown to me, came up and joined in.

  The engine whistled, started forward, gained about fifty feet, and stopped again.

  Snow swirled in our faces, frost formed from our breathing. My toes grew cold, and I stamped my feet on the ties to warm them, to restore circulation. We slugged away at the bank of snow, shoveling under it, then bringing it tumbling down about us.

  We gained a few more feet, then a few more. When I returned to the warmth of the car and held my stiffened fingers to the blaze, I hated the thought of returning to the job, yet it must be done. I looked at the fuel box, then at Lorna. She was watching me, for our minds worked the same and she knew at once how little warmth remained to us. While we had worked the fuel had burned down to nothing.

  Returning, I swung up to the warmth of the cab. “You know this country. Are there any creek bottoms near? Anywhere I could find some fuel?”

  He shook his head. “Not that I recall. There’s a crick up ahead, but she don’t amount to much. No trees that I know of.”

  The fireman spoke up. “Yes, there’s a few. Back about a hundred yards from the right-of-way the crick takes a turn, and I’ve seen treetops in there.”

  “You’ll have to share with them back yonder,” I said. “They’re about out.”

  He gestured toward the tender. “We ain’t doin’ so well ourselves. Unless we have fuel we don’t go nowheres, an’ you don’t neither.”

  An hour more we slugged away at the snowbank, and the locomotive gained a little more. We carried armfuls of wood from the tender back to the car and fed the hungry flames. The cold seemed to have grown more intense.

  Suddenly, we broke through. The wall of snow before us caved in, and we could see the rails ahead. Throwing our shovels into the freight car, we scrambled into our own passenger car to get warm while the train inched ahead.

  A half mile long he had said, and we had come about a third of the distance when we stuck the first time. Now it must be almost half.

  The train chugged-chugged ahead, occasionally spinning its wheels, then catching hold and going on, about as fast as a man could walk.

  Fairchild looked at me. “Do you think that’s it? Are we through?”

  I shrugged. “There’s no telling. There’s maybe another drift ahead.”

  Wearily, I dropped into a seat beside Lorna. “Are you all right?” she whispered.

  “Cold,” I said, “and tired, but I’ve been cold and tired before this. Don’t worry. We’ll get through.”

  She glanced at Fairchild. “He’s doing his share, isn’t he?”

  “He is that. He’s a good man, honey.”

  She sat back, closing her eyes. She had lived with Cain and me too long, and she knew too well how we thought, and I expect she had worried about this, about how Fairchild would stand the gaff, and whether we would accept him. She knew we would accept him. She knew we would take him into the family, but she wanted more than that. She wanted him accepted for himself alone.

  Still, the train was moving forward. How far had we come since we quit shoveling snow? A hundred yards? Two hundred?

  Suddenly the train stopped. I sat still, my eyes closed, hating the thought of going out there again.

  The door opened with a blast of freezing air. “S
hafter? You got to see this to believe it.” The conductor was standing at the door. “We’re stopped, but it ain’t snow this time, it’s buffalo!”

  “What?”

  I struggled into my coat. I was tired, but so were the others, probably more tired than I. Fairchild was up. Williams, Miller, and the two of us followed the conductor back through the door. We got down and started forward, and suddenly I saw them.

  We had entered the narrowest part of the cut, and the buffalo had taken shelter here from the storm. They were packed solid, wall to wall of the cut, and snow had drifted over and around them. As buffalo usually face into a storm, the heavy wool on their heads and shoulders was thick with snow. They stood stolidly, peering at us.

  There was no way to judge their numbers, but a rough guess would say there were hundreds.

  “They won’t budge!” the brakeman said, standing near the cow-catcher. “They’re alive, but they aren’t about to move.”

  “If one of them got down on the tracks,” the brakeman added, “it could derail the train.”

  Exasperated, we stood and stared at them. Heavy heads hanging, they stared back. They had found the best shelter anywhere around, and they were not going to budge simply because this puffing black monster wanted to crowd in where they had established themselves.

  “We could shoot them;” Williams suggested.

  “And then what?” I asked. “Some of those right there weigh two thousand pounds or more. The smallest I can see will weigh eight or nine hundred. How are you going to move that weight after it’s dead?”

  “The shooting would scare ’em!” he insisted.

  “Not buffalo,” I replied. “Buffalo don’t scare very easy. I’ve seen a buffalo hunter on a stand kill all afternoon from one position and the rest keep on feeding. They won’t scare worth a damn. We’re stuck.”

  “We could push into them. Maybe they’d move.”

  “You can try. You’ll just get your tracks all bloody and slippery.” Leaning closer to the conductor, I said, “There may be five hundred of them in there.”