Fallon (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  Al Damon backed off. He was suddenly sick inside, and he knew he was about to throw up. He had to get off the street before that happened. Abruptly, he turned into an alleyway.

  He had killed a man.

  He half fell against the building and was sick. How could he know the man was carrying a useless gun? The man had shoved him…well, it seemed like that, anyway.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and went around behind the buildings.

  He wanted to go home, but the thought of his mother’s eyes stopped that idea. Instead, he climbed over the corral bars and went into the stable, where he crawled back on the freshly cut hay and put his back against the wall.

  The staring eyes of the dying man and those frightful sobs stayed with him. He cowered there, and finally he slept.

  When he awoke it was dark. He listened for some sound, but heard nothing. He crawled out of the hay and carefully brushed himself off; and then he thought of his gun, and he reloaded the empty chamber.

  Well, suppose he did kill that stranger? He asked for it, didn’t he? He came barreling out of that door and almost knocked him down. Why, when it came to that, he had acted in self-defense. Looked like he was being jumped on—how was he to know?

  He looked down at his gun. He had killed a man. He could file a notch on it now. The momentary twinge he had felt was stifled by a growing pride. It wasn’t everybody could say that…that they’d killed a man.

  When he got back on the street he hitched his gun a little farther forward. All right…so let them talk. If they got tough with him he’d…

  The street was empty. Lights shone from a few windows. It was after suppertime and he was hungry. He went into the restaurant.

  Two strangers were there, and both got up very pointedly and walked toward the door, leaving their food. Budge came from the kitchen with coffee just as they were leaving. “Hey, here’s your coffee!” he called.

  “Forget it,” one man said. “We’d rather go hungry.”

  Al Damon felt the blood rising to his face. Should he call them on that? He started to turn, uncertain as to what he should do, when Budge spoke.

  “Get out,” he said coldly, “and don’t come in here again. We don’t serve your kind.”

  Al hesitated, appalled and angry. Budge stooped and took a double-barreled shotgun from under the counter. “Get going,” he said. “If it was up to me, there’d be a hanging party tonight.”

  Al walked out onto the street. They couldn’t talk that way to him! Just wait—he’d show them!

  He needed a horse—above all things, he needed a horse. To hell with them! He would ride and join Bellows!

  But where to go now? He still had no desire to go home, and he suspected the feeling evidenced by Budge would be present almost everywhere. And then he thought of the Yankee Saloon.

  Fallon would probably be there. He might not be, but if he was, it was high time they met, for now they would meet on a new footing. Fallon must respect him now. Moreover, Brennan was a man who censured no man. Even in the short time since his arrival in Red Horse, his philosophy had become known. John Brennan turned no man from his bar.

  Al had taken only a few steps when a voice stopped him. It was Lute Semple.

  “You’re pretty fast with that gun, Al. I saw that. You slicked it out mighty fast.”

  Al Damon shrugged, standing wide-legged on the walk. “He came for me,” he said.

  “What I hear,” Semple said dryly. “When we heard about it, we figured it was Fallon you’d killed.” He paused to let the idea sink in. “Could have been, you know. The same way. It would work on him better than on Bates.”

  “Who’s Bates?”

  “The man you killed.” Lute Semple waited for a moment, and then added: “He was a well-liked man. He’d two brothers back in Illinois that set store by him.”

  “What’s that to me?”

  “You ain’t used to it yet, kid. Why, those brothers, they’ll come huntin’ you. You’ll have to keep a sharp eye out from now on.”

  Al shifted his feet uneasily. “What did you mean, it would work on Fallon easier than Bates?”

  “It’s an easy thing to let a man bump into you or, if there’s nobody around, to let on the other man drew first. That Fallon…he doesn’t have many friends.

  “Bates was nobody. Fallon, now, that’s a different story.” Lute Semple paused. “Bellows, he’s all for lettin’ Tandy Herren come into town, and Tandy wants to come. Only I figured you should have your chance.”

  Semple struck a match to the stub of a cigar. “Far as that goes, we could give you a mite of help. Not that you’d need help, but insurance that don’t cost nothin’ is another thing.”

  “Where would you be?”

  “That store across from the Yankee’s got an upper story with nobody in it. A couple of us with Winchesters could come up the back stairs and we could lay there. When Fallon came out the door, you could bump him and draw, and when you did, we’d cut down on him from the window. Then we’d down the steps and high-tail it.”

  * * *

  MACON FALLON WAS at breakfast at his usual table in the Yankee Saloon when Wiley Pollock came in. Pollock was a tall, strapping young man with a genial expression that masked an underlying seriousness.

  “Are you Mr. Fallon?” Pollock asked. “They tell me you have some mining claims for sale.”

  Fallon allowed no hint of his elation to come into his expression. “Well, let’s put it this way. I have some claims. I won’t say they’re for sale. On the other hand, I was never much of a man to dig, so if the price was right I might talk about it.”

  He refilled his coffee cup and then pushed another cup toward Pollock. “Are you a miner?”

  “Not exactly,” Pollock replied, “but I came west to mine, not farm.” He looked sharply at Fallon. “Nobody seems to be mining…why?”

  “My fault. A town isn’t built by people who want to get rich overnight. I wanted some business going here first; but personally,” he added, “I have been doing some development and exploration on my claims.”

  They talked for half an hour, and then together they went up the hill to the mine.

  Wiley Pollock looked around thoughtfully. It was obvious that some work had been done. The tools stood about, and also the wheelbarrow Fallon had used. There was fresh rock thrown on the dump. Pollock went into the tunnel and knocked off a couple of chunks of rock and studied them.

  Fallon stooped suddenly and picked up a piece of rock, glanced at it quickly, and thrust it into his pocket.

  “May I see that?” Pollock extended his hand.

  “It was nothing,” Fallon said, with studied carelessness, “nothing at all.”

  Pollock walked out into the sun and looked around again. “How much are you asking?” he said.

  Fallon shook his head. “I am sorry. I don’t believe I will sell. I’ll admit,” he said, “I’m not a miner, and I have been ready to sell if the price was right, but I don’t think I’ll sell…not yet.”

  Pollock looked at him shrewdly. “Have anything to do with that rock you picked up back there?”

  “No…no, of course not.”

  “I’ll give you three thousand cash,” Pollock said.

  “Sorry.”

  Macon Fallon looked down the street. Three thousand? It was a good bit of money. Take it, and run. The thought went through his mind, but he dismissed the idea.

  At the door of the Yankee Saloon, Fallon paused. “I might go higher,” Pollock suggested.

  “It would have to be much higher,” Fallon responded. And then he pushed through the door and went in. At the bar, he said to Brennan, “John, let me have your hammer.”

  Pollock still stood on the boardwalk out front. He heard the back door close, then the sound of a hammer on rock, several blows, and then
a grating sound. After a few minutes Fallon came back through the saloon, leaving the hammer on the bar as he went through. He crossed the street to Damon’s store.

  “Get out your gold scales, Damon. I want to weigh up a little.”

  Fallon took out the gold he had collected at the mountain spring. In most gold camps a teaspoonful was calculated as an ounce, and he had less than that, but it would be more than enough.

  “Half-ounce,” Damon said, “a mite over. My guess would be twelve dollars.”

  “All right.”

  Damon paid over the twelve dollars and Fallon slipped it into his pocket.

  “Get that on your claim?” Damon asked.

  Fallon chuckled. “One piece of rock…no bigger than your fist.”

  Damon’s eyes tried to shield his interest. “Much of it around?”

  Fallon shrugged. “Probably not…float, more than likely.”

  He crossed the street and went into the Yankee Saloon again, and within a few minutes he saw Pollock go into the store across the way. Smiling to himself, he went to the back and sat down. Brennan’s eyes followed him.

  Joshua Teel came in, and Budge followed. “Mr. Fallon, are you busy?” Budge said.

  “What is it?”

  “Maloon’s place. Card Graham’s making trouble. He rooked a couple of newcomers last night, then laughed at them when they called him on it.”

  “He didn’t shoot?”

  “They weren’t heeled. But I think they’ll be back.”

  Fallon looked down at his coffee. He had told them what he would do. Of course, he had seen nothing, but it sounded to him like a deliberate challenge. But what about the men he rooked? Would they come back?

  “You saw them,” he said to Teel. “Will they come back?”

  “They’ll come. He trimmed them good, and didn’t seem to care whether they knew it or not.”

  Macon Fallon got to his feet. “I’ll talk to Graham.” He stepped outside and looked down the street. He could see the wagons of the newcomers on the flat below the town.

  Across the street, on the upper floor of the building, Lute Semple pointed at him. “See?” he said. “He’s right where I want him. You call him, I shoot him. Everybody will think it was you. But you shoot twice, d’you hear? And miss that second shot so there’ll be a place for mine if they try to figure it out.”

  “Yours might be in the back.”

  “That’s why I say your second should miss. You can claim your first shot turned him. But maybe I can get a bullet into him in front…I’ll try.”

  Down in the street Macon Fallon straightened his hat. “I’ll talk to Graham,” he said, “and Maloon.”

  “You’d best hurry, then,” Teel replied grimly, “for here they come!”

  Two men were walking up the street, both of them with guns strapped on. They were some distance off, but they walked in step and with determination, and they looked neither to right nor left.

  Several men stepped out on the boardwalk as they passed, and a woman or two. The story had gotten around, and everyone knew what was happening. Fallon quickened his step, but he was too late. The two men did a perfect flanking movement at the door, and one of them reached up to push the door open.

  The double-barreled shotgun blast ripped through the door and drove the man backward into the street. Graham had fired, and then reaching up, caught a second shotgun tossed to him by Maloon. Instantly he was at the door, firing again.

  The second man, shocked by the coughing bellow of the shotgun and by his friend’s sudden death, hesitated that fraction of a second that made him too late. The blast the second shotgun threw at him tore him in two.

  Macon Fallon spoke quietly. “Empty now, isn’t it?”

  Card Graham seemed to wince, then he turned his head slowly, as a rattler may turn at some uncertain danger.

  “Don’t drop it,” Fallon said. “If you do I might think you’re going for a gun.” Without turning his head, he said, “Teel, take the rear door. If he makes a wrong move, kill him.”

  He walked up slowly and said, “We’ll go inside, Card. Poker is your game, isn’t it?”

  Graham stared at him. “You want to play?”

  “Yes…if we can call it play. Yes, I want to play.”

  Wiley Pollock was there. Fallon saw him looking on, coolly interested.

  “Pollock,” he said, “let me have your best offer, your final offer for the claim.”

  “Ten thousand dollars,” Pollock replied promptly. “In cash, now.”

  “Done,” Fallon replied.

  “I don’t get it,” Graham was saying. “Why play now?”

  Fallon felt cold and still inside. He felt the way he sometimes had before a gun battle, but he felt something more. He felt hatred.

  He knew neither man who had died, but he had seen them both come into town. They were good men, solid men…and both had families.

  “You owe those men something,” he said quietly, “and they have families. I am going to win it for them.”

  Card Graham laughed without humor. “Don’t be a fool, Fallon. You owe them nothing. Stay out of this.”

  He said it as a matter of course. What he wanted very much was what he was going to get—Macon Fallon in a card game. He did not know Fallon, but he did not like him.

  Fallon followed Graham into the saloon and took a seat at a table with his back to the wall. Card Graham sat down opposite him and took a deck of cards from a box on the table. Graham drew high card, and the deal.

  He shuffled the cards, Fallon cut, and Graham dealt. “We do not stop,” Fallon said, “until one of us is broke, and if you go broke, you leave town.”

  Graham did not reply. Cards were his game, cards were what he knew. He had started playing in a Texas cow camp shortly after coming down from Ohio; he had continued to play in cow camps for a year, then opened a game in a cow town. He had picked up a little here, a little there. He had never played the riverboats, never the big places in St. Louis or Chicago or New York, but he was very sure of himself.

  They played, and Graham won. He won steadily for an hour, and he was playing a fair game. He knew it, and Macon Fallon knew it.

  Then the cards took a change, and they took the change while Graham was dealing. Fallon found himself with good cards, decided it was not a set-up situation and played it to win. Graham had a fair hand, thought Fallon was bluffing, and lost almost a third of what he had won up to that moment.

  Irritated, Graham played the next hand badly and won, but much less than he should have with the cards he held.

  An hour later Fallon was winning steadily, and Card Graham suggested drinks. Spike Maloon came around the bar with the drinks on a tray and Macon Fallon glanced up, smiling faintly. He lifted a hand. “Put the tray down on the next table,” he said quietly. “We can take our drinks from there.”

  There was silence in the room. Card Graham’s face paled slightly. “What’s that mean?” His eyes were hot and eager.

  A killer, Fallon thought. The man’s become a killer. He’s begging for a chance to draw his gun.

  “I’m superstitious,” Fallon said, “about trays. I don’t like trays near the table while I’m playing.” He smiled into Graham’s eyes. “I know this is an honest game, but sometimes a tray can have a cold deck under it.”

  Graham wanted to say something, but he hesitated, and Macon Fallon knew why he hesitated. There was a cold deck under that tray, and if he said anything Fallon would suggest the tray be turned over.

  “Forget it!” Graham said, shrugging. “Let’s play cards.”

  Fallon was looking away from the table when he heard the faint whisper of a bottom deal. The sliding of that bottom card off the end of the pack had a faintly different sound, but he did not react. When he picked up his cards he was holding three nines. He disc
arded two cards and was given two more, and one of them was the other nine.

  He folded his cards together and raised another two dollars. Graham seemed to be studying his cards, which gave Fallon time to think.

  Three nines was logical. It was the sort of hand a fairly careful card mechanic might give, enough to make him raise, yet not too big. The fourth nine was not logical.

  Fallon studied Card Graham in his mind and decided the fourth nine was an accident. The deck, he was sure, was not marked. The nines would be unlikely marking in any event, for usually that was reserved for face cards, aces, and tens—although complete marking had often been done. It was probable that Graham figured the chance of his getting that extra nine was impossibly high…and it was unlikely. Yet unlikely things were always happening in poker games.

  Graham raised ten dollars, and Fallon upped it one hundred. Graham’s face was unreadable, but Fallon had an idea Graham was pleased, for it must seem that Fallon had taken the bait. Macon Fallon smiled inwardly—and grimly, for perhaps he had. He was betting that the fourth nine was an accident.

  Graham saw his raise and boosted it five hundred.

  At the showdown, Graham showed a full house, queens and jacks, and Fallon spread out his four nines.

  Card Graham stared unbelievingly at the cards as Fallon raked in the money. His tongue touched his lips, for he knew how great the odds were against Fallon’s picking up that fourth nine on the draw. But Fallon had done it, and there was no way it could have been rigged, because Fallon could not have known what cards Graham would give him.

  Fallon watched Graham with seemingly casual interest. The fun was over. Card Graham had been hurt where he liked it least—in his skill as a card mechanic. From now on, it would be every man for himself.

  Idly, Fallon gathered the cards, shuffled, pushed them over for Graham’s cut, then dealt. Fallon was a good poker player, but few card sharps were, for they were too busy building up a chance to cheat, or watching for that chance…and they are depending on cheating to win, not on good poker playing. Yet a good card mechanic need cheat only once in a game, if he chooses the right time.