Heller with a Gun (1955)

by L'amour, Louis

  He groped for easy words. “The distance, I guess. It’s this country. It’s too big.”

  “How far do we have to go?”

  Healy side-stepped that question. He did not even like to think of it himself. They walked on, plowed through some snow, and stopped on a ridge. The wind had an edge when it touched the skin. He warmed his face against his hands.

  “Tom!” Janice was pointing, and his eyes followed her finger to a row of tracks in the snow. Walking on, they came to the tracks and stopped. They were the tracks of a single horse, cutting across the route of the wagons and disappearing over the hills.

  At their wild gesturing, Barker put his horse to a gallop and rode up to them.

  “Indians!” Healy said, indicating the tracks.

  Astride his horse, Barker seemed unusually big, indomitable. Yet his face grew cold as he looked at the line of tracks. They were those of a shod horse, going off across the country in a direction where nothing lay.

  No white man in his right mind would be riding away from any known shelter in the dead of winter.

  “Shod horse,” he said briefly. “It wasn’t an Indian.” That Barker was disturbed was obvious. Healy watched him, curious as to why the tracks of a white man should upset him so.

  Barker turned sharply to Janice. “Did that Mabry fellow say anything about catching up?”

  “No. Why should he?”

  Yet, remembering the way he had looked at her, Janice wondered, too, and blushed at the memory. But she should not think of such a man. He was a killer, probably completely vicious under that quiet exterior.

  The mark of the country was on him. Seeing it now, getting the feel of it for the first time, Janice could understand it. He carried the mark of a wild land, a land that was itself aloof and poised. A land where you lost yourself, as they did now, in immeasurable distance. Day after day the wagons had plodded on, and day after day the snow-covered hills fell behind, the streams were crossed, the lonely camps abandoned to the wilderness. And day after day she seemed to dwindle, to grow less. The vans were tiny things, their bright-colored sides tawdry in the stillness and snow. All was immensity where they seemed to crawl at a snail’s pace into a vastness beyond belief.

  They were alien here … or was it only she? With a kind of resentment, she saw how easily Dodie fitted into the landscape, how easily she did the little things around the campfire. Even Healy had seemed to grow, to expand. He seemed bigger somehow, more of a man. Yet the distance and the cold depressed her, the flat and endless sky made her eager to be back inside.

  The vans were coming along now. Barker had walked his horse back to them. Had his manner changed? Or was she imagining things? He was impatient with their questions, even irritable.

  Steam rose from the flanks of the horses, and from their nostrils. Travel was easier because the hard snow crusted the ground, covering the unevenness and the stones. The hills drew closer, lifting their snow-clad summits higher against the dull gray sky. The southern extremity, Barker had said, of the Big Horns. .

  After the fresh, clear air, the hot confines of the van seemed unbelievably close. Yet she was glad to be inside. Maggie was knitting. Dodie lay on her back, reading a copy of Harper’s Weekly.

  “Nice walk?” Dodie looked past her magazine at them. “Wonderful! You should try it!”

  “She won’t,” Maggie said cuttingly. “Not unless she can see some men.”

  “I don’t want to see men.” Dodie preened herself ostentatiously. “I want them to see me.”

  “With that walk,” Maggie said sarcastically, “they’ll see you!”

  “You’re just jealous.”

  “Jealous?” Maggie flounced. “When I was your age I not only got the men-I knew what to do with them!” Dodie arched her back luxuriously, like a sleek kitten. “I’ll learn,” she said complacently. “Somebody will teach me.”

  Tons Healy was amused. “Careful. You’ll get the last lesson first.”

  Dodie looked at him, wide-eyed with innocence. “But I always read the end of a book first!”

  Chapter Six.

  THE WEATHER HELD and the trail was good. They made twenty miles that day and as much the day following. The mountains loomed over them, snow-covered and aloof.

  There was no rest. Each morning they started early, and the noon halts were short. Healy watched the trail and saw that Barker selected it with care. The way might be the longest around, but invariably it was the best for traveling, and they made time.

  The cold held, though the skies were usually clear. Sometimes he walked far ahead with Janice, watching the wagons come along after them, but it was only among hills that they could do this, for on comparatively level country the wagons moved at a-good clip.

  From the distance the two garishly painted wagons with their teams seemed grotesquely out of place in this vast wilderness.

  Barker was restless and increasingly brusque. Only the fact that they were miles from anywhere and completely in Barker’s hands kept Healy from a showdown with him. Several times during halts he found Barker in low-voiced conversation with Wycoff and Boyle, conversations that ceased abruptly when Healy appeared.

  More and more Barker’s unwillingness to have Mabry along occupied Healy’s thoughts. In a country where every pair of hands was a help, Barker had been unwilling to let anyone else accompany them.

  Once, stuck in deep snow in a bottom, they were hours getting out, and made it only with everyone, the girls included, pushing. Twice they had to hitch both teams to a wagon to draw them up steep hills.

  He found himself watching the backtrail, almost hoping Mabry would appear. Yet there was no reason he should join them, and no reason they should expect him. The identity of the rider of the shod horse puzzled him. He gathered from comments he heard and from campfire talk that there was nothing off to the north for more than a hundred miles. Yet that was the direction the rider had taken.

  Once, off to one side, he found the remains of a small fire and boot tracks around it. He did not mention his discovery when he returned. Another time he found where someone had watched them from a distance, but the man wore square-toed boots, not at all like Mabry’s.

  Returning to the wagon, he found Doc Guilford on the edge of his bunk playing solitaire. “How’s it look?” Healy glanced at him. Doc was a wise old man. “Not good. Something about Barker I don’t like.”

  “Reminds me of a con man I knew once,” Guilford mused, “only this one is tougher and meaner.”

  Healy watched Doc’s game. He was himself changing, and the country was doing it. He was wary in a way he had never been before.

  “Got a gun?”, Doc did not seem surprised. “Uh-huh.”

  “Keep it handy.”

  “I do.” Doc placed a red card carefully. “Lately.”

  The mountains loomed nearer now. A long red wall of sandstorm shut them off from the west, disappearing to the north, farther than they could see.

  The going was slower as they crossed more and more streams. They followed no trail, for there was none. Perhaps a horse trail, but even this they could not see under the snow.

  Barker explained during a halt “Passes north are all closed by now. We’ll use the Hole-in-the-Wall. Only opening in nearly forty miles. Place where the Cheyennes under Dull Knife came after the Custer fight.”

  “We can get through?”

  “Uh-huh. Little stream flows through. A fork of the Powder. Wild country beyond, but I know my way through.”

  There were no more tracks, yet Barker kept looking for them and he was uneasy. When they camped again it was in a bend of the stream in the wide gap of the red wall. All around them was hard-packed snow. The wagons formed a V against the wind. Boyle put sticks together and made a fire while Wycoff led the horses to the stream, breaking the ice so they could drink.

  Healy gathered fuel, ranging along the stream’s bank for driftwood. Janice came out of the wagon and joined him, her cheeks flushed with cold, eyes sparkling.

/>   “Like it?” he asked appreciatively.

  “Love it!”

  She gathered sticks and threw them into a pile. Seeing a large deadfall, a cottonwood blown down in some storm and floated here by some flood, she pushed through the brush to get the bark. Then she stood very still.

  After a moment she walked ahead, then paused again. She turned and called softly, “Tom!”

  He came quickly, clutching a heavy stick. When he saw her alone and unharmed he lowered the stick and walked up. “What’s the matter?”

  “I heard something. Someone was moving in the brush over there.”

  Behind them there was a sudden crunching of footsteps.

  Art Boyle pushed through the brush and stopped. There was a knowing leer in his eyes. “Sorry.” He grinned. “Huntin’ wood?”

  “I piled some back there.” Janice pointed.

  When he had gone, she turned to Healy. “Tom, what does it mean?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted reluctantly, “only the more I think about it, the less I like it. They never want any of us out of their sight, and for some reason Barker doesn’t want to see anybody and doesn’t want anybody to see us.”

  “Why, “I wish I knew.”

  “Tom, do you suppose … I mean, could they be planning to rob us?”

  He considered that. Certainly they gave no evidence of being supplied with more than barely sufficient funds. The outfit would be worth something … and they could not know about the money concealed in the wagon. Or could they?

  And if they were robbed and murdered, who would know?

  In more than a week they had seen nobody, and only the tracks of two riders, neither of whom would approach them.

  Tom Healy looked at the wide gate of the Hole-in-the Wall. Far behind them were Cheyenne and Deadwood. To the west, through that gate, lay endless miles of wilderness before they would come to Salt Lake.

  Western Wyoming was almost empty of white men, a wild and broken land where their two wagons would be lost in a vast white world of snow, mountains, and rivers. Nobody expected them in Alder Gulch. There was Maguire in Butte, but he was expecting to hear from them in Salt Lake, where the money was to be deposited for him. If anything happened out here it would be months before they were missed.

  Healy’s face was drawn with worry. “Maybe we’re imagining things,” he said. “Nothing’s gone wrong yet.” “Tom, who could have made those tracks?”

  “No idea.”

  “King Mabry?”

  “Could be.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “Like him?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know at all. I feel I shouldn’t like him, yet … well, there’s something about him.”

  “I know.” He sighed. “Well, we’d best get back. It’s almost dark.”

  As they walked they picked up what dry wood they saw.-

  “I don’t like him,” Healy admitted, “because he likes She laughed. “Why, Tom!”

  “All right, so I’m stupid.”

  “Anyway, I’m sure he doesn’t like me. He thinks I’m a nuisance.”

  “Maybe.” Healy looked at the wall of sandstone, etched hard against the gray sky of coming night. “Like him or not, I’d give the proceeds of our next ten weeks to know he was close by. This place is beyond me, much as I hate to admit it. I’m out of my depth.”

  She said nothing, for there was nothing to say. Tom Healy, a quiet Irish singer, accustomed until now to the life of the Eastern theatres and cities, was out of his depth. Yet other than Tom there was only an old man who bragged of bygone days and played solitaire.

  Barker was a big man, a powerful man. Then there were the sly, sneering Art Boyle and the dull, animal-like Wycoff. It was not pretty to think of.

  But was today a ,deadline? Because tomorrow they would be beyond the Wall? Because it was a dividing line? They dumped their wood beside the fire. Boyle had water on and was cookings The fire was sheltered and the food smelled good.

  Wycoff came into the circle of light wiping his hands on his buckskins. He looked across the fire at Dodie, his deep-set eyes invisible in the shadows under his brows. Barker seemed restless, and only after a long time would he sit down.

  There was a subtle change in the atmosphere, something in the manner of Wycoff and Boyle that had not been present before. When Wycoff shouldered past Maggie, he almost pushed her. Healy started to protest, then held his peace.

  Doc Guilford sat back from the fire with his shoulders against a wheel. His shrewd eyes were curiously alive, and they rarely left Barker.

  There was no talk during supper and Maggie was the first to go to the wagon. She was not well, she said. Yet nobody paid much attention.

  Dodie got up to leave, and Boyle, who was relaxed on one elbow, looked around. “Stick around, honey. Night’s young.”

  She merely looked at him and walked on to the wagon. He sat up, staring after her, his face sullen.

  Janice got up and scoured her cup with snow. Guilford had not moved. He sat by the wagon wheel, warming his hands inside his coat.

  Healy’s scalp began to tighten. Maybe it was Boyle’s surly attitude, or something in Wycoff’s careless brutality. Suddenly Healy knew the warning had come too late. The time was now.

  Tom Healy got up and stretched. There was a shotgun in the wagon. It was hidden beneath his blankets. There were shells there, too, but the shotgun was already loaded. He had to have that shotgun and have it now. He started for the wagon.

  Behind him Boyle spoke impatiently. “What are we waiting for, Barker? Damn it, I’m-”

  “Healy!” Barker’s voice caught him full in the light and two good steps from the wagon.

  Healy turned. “Yeah? I’m tired. Figured I’d catch some sleep.”

  Guilford had not moved. He sat very quietly against the wheel, but he was alert.

  Barker’s gun appeared from beneath his coat. “Come back and sit down, Healy. We want to talk.”

  “I’m all right where I am. Start talking.”

  Barker balanced the gun against the butt of his palm. “Where’s the money, Healy? Where’s that strongbox?” Tom Healy took his time, trying to think of a way out. He desperately needed a hole card and he had none. Barker would not hesitate to kill, and he would be of no use to the girls dead.

  “You boys have it wrong. There isn’t enough money in that box to keep you drunk a week.”

  “He’s lyin’!” Boyle shouted. “Damn it, Barker, you said he must be carrying four, five thousand, anyway.” “There’s not eight hundred dollars among the lot of us,” Healy said. “That’s why we’re so anxious to reach the Gulch.” He took a careful breath. “No use you boys going off half-cocked. I know this is a rough trip. I’ll give you seven hundred more to take us on through.” Barker smiled, showing his white teeth under his mustache. “And what would you tell them at the Gulch? What nice boys we’d been? I don’t think so, Healy. I think this is as far as we go.”

  “Anyway,” Boyle said, “it’s as far as you go.”

  Wycoff looked up from under thick brows, grinning at Healy. Barker’s gun tilted and Healy saw his finger tense. He threw himself desperately at a hole in the wall of brush.

  Barker’s gun blasted once, then again. He hit the brush, tripped, and plunged face down and sliding in the snow. A bullet whipped past him and then he was up and running. Inside him was a desperate hope that unless they could be sure of killing them all, they would not dare kill any. If he got safely away, they might hesitate to kill the women while he might remain to tell the story. He stopped suddenly, knowing the noise he made, and moved behind a blacker bush. There was no pursuit. From where he now stood, on a slight rise, he could see part of the camp.

  He was fifty yards off, but in the clear, cold air the voices were as plain as if he stood among them.

  “Shot me,” Wycoff said. “The old devil shot me.” Guilford no longer sat straight against the wheel. He was slumped over on his side, limp and still.

  “It was me he shot
at,” Barker said. “You just got in the way.”

  “Well,” Wycoff shouted, “don’t stand there! Get me a bandage! I’m bleedin’!”

  “Aw, quit cryin’!” Boyle was impatient. “He just nicked you, an’ it’s over. We got ‘em.”

  Tom Healy looked around for a way to run. He might have to go fast, for without doubt they would come looking for him.

  Only they did not have to look now. They could wait until morning, then mount their horses and ride him down in the snow. He was unarmed and helpless.

  Inside the wagon, three women stared at each other, listening. Janice got up and started for the door, but Maggie caught her arm. “Don’t go out! The door’s locked now and it won’t be easy to break.”

  “There’s a shotgun in the other wagon,” Janice said. Dodie swung her legs to the floor and began dressing. Then she opened her small carpetbag. When she straightened up she held a long Colt pistol in her hand. Janice stared. “Where did you get that?”

  “It belonged to my father. Can you shoot it?” “Yes,” Janice said.

  She took the pistol. It was very heavy and it was loaded. She carried it to her bunk and put it down. It they tried to break in, that would be the time to use it. “Tom got away,” Maggie whispered.

  “Yes, but it’s awfully cold away from the fire.” Wind rattled along the side of the van, moving a lantern that hung outside. They heard a mutter of voices. Silently they waited in the dark wagon, making no sound, huddled together with blankets around their shoulders. It was a long time until morning.

  A hand tried the door, then pushed. After a moment footsteps retreated and there was a further mutter of talk.

  The wind began to pick up. Blown snow, frozen long since, rattled along the side walls.

  It was very cold… .

  Chapter Seven.

  OUT IN THE DARKNESS Tom Healy crouched and shuddered with cold. He had to have a fire. Much as he hated to move far from the wagons, he must have a fire.

  There was nothing he could do here. And it was improbable that anything further would be done tonight. He had seen Boyle try the door of the women’s van, swear, and turn away. The three men huddled close to the fire, talking in low tones.