Collection 1981 - Buckskin Run (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Stiber’s tone was mocking. “At forty a month how much are you goin’ to save? You think that girl will wait? Maybe somebody else is shinin’ up to her? Somebody who doesn’t freeze and starve on hopes? You think she’ll wait? A time comes for marriage, and a woman marries, doin’ the best she can. You’re dreamin’, boy.”

  Maybe he was. Jeff Kurland stared into the fire. He had been taking too much for granted. What made him think she loved him? Because he loved her? Because he wanted her love so much?

  He had never so much as spoken of his dreams to her, just the simple facts of the case, yet how many times must she have heard that? Every cattleman, sheepman, and mining man had the same dream. And all the while there was Kurt Saveth, who had a small but charming home in town which he had inherited from his folks; he also had a successful store, and people around all the while, not a lonely cabin in the far-up mountains.

  Footsteps crunching in the snow caused his head to lift. Ross Stiber’s grab for his pistol was just an instant slower than Jeff’s. “Not today, Stiber! We will have no shooting here!”

  There was a loud knock, and at his “Come in!” the door opened and Sheriff Tilson entered, followed by Kurt Saveth, looking handsome in a new mackinaw, and following him, Doc Bates, and, of all people, Jill!

  His face flushed with shame. He had not wanted her to see how he lived until he had something better, something fit to show her. He saw her glance quickly around, but as her eyes came to him he looked quickly away.

  “All right, Stiber, you’re under arrest.” He turned to Jeff. “What’s this mean, Kurland? You harborin’ this outlaw?”

  “He has a broken leg,” Jeff spoke with dignity. “What could I do, carry him down on my back?”

  “You could report it,” Tilson replied. “You’re in trouble, young man.”

  “He found me dyin’ in the cave on Copper Mountain, Sheriff. He packed me over Red Cliff trail on his back.”

  “You expect me to believe that? After that pogonip a rabbit couldn’t come down that trail, to say nothing of a man packin’ another man on his back.”

  “He done it,” Stiber insisted. “I’d come down and taken grub away from him, but when he figured I was starving he came up and got me. I’m his prisoner. If there is any reward he should get it.”

  Tilson laughed with humor. He glanced around at Saveth. “Hear that? They’d probably split it. Your guess that Stiber was hidin’ here was a good one, Kurt. He had to be here, because there’s no other place on the mountain where he could keep warm.”

  Doc Bates looked around from examining Stiber’s leg. “This man does have a broken leg, Tilson.”

  “That doesn’t make Kurland’s story true. No man in his right mind would risk that trail. Kurland will be lucky if we don’t prosecute him.”

  Jeff Kurland felt nothing but disgust and despair. He did not care about the reward. He had never thought seriously of that, anyway, but he sensed that Saveth disliked him and wanted him out of the way. Well, this ended it. When the cold broke he’d sell whatever he had left and head south.

  Then he felt a hand slip into his. Startled, he looked down to see Jill had moved close beside him.

  She was looking at Ross Stiber. “I remember you. You’re Jack Ross, the rider from Cheyenne.”

  “You’ve a good memory, ma’am. Look, don’t you believe what they’re saying. All they want is that reward money. You’ve got your hand on the best and squarest man I know. If you take your hand off his arm you’ll have lost the best of the breed.”

  “We’ll fix a travois and haul him down to jail,” Tilson said, and he glanced at Jeff. “You’ll have a tough time provin’ you didn’t harbor a criminal.”

  “Sheriff,” Doc Bates interrupted, “I know this man Stiber. He may be wanted as an outlaw, but I can put fifty men on the stand that will testify he’s no liar. Before he got into trouble Jack Ross, that’s how we knew him, was a respected man and a top hand. If he says Kurland brought him over the Red Cliff trail, I’ll believe him. So will those others.”

  “And I’ll swear to it on the stand,” Stiber added. “He had me. I was his prisoner.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Saveth said.

  Tilson was irritated. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Doc? You comin’ with us?”

  “I guess we all are,” Bates said. “We wouldn’t want anything to happen to our prisoner now, would we?”

  Tilson went outside to put together a travois, and Stiber turned quickly to Jill. “Ma’am? You won’t be tellin’ Clara that I’m Jack Ross now, will you? I wouldn’t want her to see me in jail. Not that she meant much to me. Fact is, I was glad to get away. She struck me as one of those who’d get mean and cantankerous as she grew older.”

  “You were right about that,” Jeff assured him. “She has a disposition like a sore-backed mule. Just ask Tilson.”

  “Does he know her?”

  “Know her? He married her!”

  All the way to town Sheriff Tilson wondered if Ross Stiber wasn’t a little crazy. He kept chuckling and laughing, and what did a man with a broken leg, maybe headed for a hanging, what did he have to laugh about?

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  GABRIEL VS. PHY

  THERE WERE ONLY a few occasions when top gunfighters shot it out with each other. One of these was the meeting of Pete Gabriel and Joe Phy.

  The two had known each other for some time, and had been friendly until they campaigned against one another for sheriff. Pete won the election, but during the campaign tales had been carried back and forth by those interested in creating trouble. Bad blood developed as a result, and there was considerable speculation as to what would happen when and if they fought.

  Joe Phy was a professional gambler and a gentleman. He dressed with care, conducting himself with reserve and dignity. He neither smoked nor drank, but was widely known for his skill with guns.

  When the showdown came it was in a saloon in Florence, Arizona. Phy was the faster of the two, and there was no question as to his accuracy. He emptied his pistol, putting all five bullets into Gabriel’s body, one of them close to his heart.

  Pete Gabriel, a tough man and a good law officer, fired but one shot, killing Phy. Gabriel survived the fight and lived for a number of years.

  WHAT GOLD DOES TO A MAN

  WE CAME UP the draw from the south in the spring of ’54, and Josh was the one who wanted to stop.

  Nothing about that country looked good to me, but I was not the one who was calling the shots. Don’t get the idea that it was not pretty country, because it surely was. There was a-plenty of water, grass, and trees. That spring offered some of the coldest and best water I ever tasted, but I didn’t like the look of the country around. There was just too much Indian sign.

  “Forget it, Pike!” Josh Boone said irritably. “For a kid, you sound more like an old woman all the time! Believe me, I know gold country, and this is it. Why should a man go all the way to California when there’s gold all around him?”

  “It may be here,” Kinyon grumbled, “but maybe Pike Downey ain’t so dumb, even if he is a kid. He’s dead right about that Injun sign. If we stick around here, there being no more than the five of us, we’re apt to get our hair lifted.”

  Kinyon was the only one who thought as I did. The others had gold fever, and had it bad, but Kinyon’s opinions didn’t make me feel any better, because he knew more about Injuns than any of the rest. I’d rather have been wrong and safe.

  Josh Boone did know gold country. He had been in California when the first strike was made, and I don’t mean the one at Sutter’s Mill that started all the fuss. I mean the first strike, which was down in a canyon near Los Angeles. Josh had done all right down there, and then when the big strikes came up north he’d cleaned up some forty thousand dollars, then he rode back east and had himself a time. “Why keep it?” he laughed. “There’s more where that came from!”

  Maybe there was, but if I made myself a packet like that I plann
ed to buy myself a farm and settle down. I even had the place in mind.

  It was Boone who suggested we ride north away from the trail. “There’s mountains yonder,” he said, “and I’ve a mind there’s gold. Why ride all the way to Californy when we might find it right here?”

  Me, I was ready. Nobody would ever say Pike Downey was slow to look at new country. The horse I rode was the best in the country, and it could walk faster than most horses could trot. It weighed about fourteen hundred, and most of it muscle. It was all horse, that black was, so when we turned off to the hills I wasn’t worried. That came later.

  Josh Boone was our leader, much as we had one. Then there was Jim Kinyon, German Kreuger and Ed Karpe. I was the kid of the bunch, just turned nineteen, strong as a young bull.

  Josh had been against me coming along, but Kinyon spoke for me. “He’s the best shot I ever did see,” he told them, “and he could track a snake upstream in muddy water. That boy will do to take along.”

  Kinyon calling me a boy kind of grated. I’d been man enough to hold my own and do my part since I was fourteen. My paw and maw had come west from Virginia in a covered wagon, and I was born in that wagon.

  I’d been hunting since I was knee-high to a short beaver, and the first time I drove a wagon over the Santa Fe Trail I was just past fourteen. My rifle drew blood for me in a Comanche attack on that wagon train, and we had three more fights before we came up to Santa Fe.

  Santa Fe was wild and rough, and I had a mix-up with a Comanchero in Sante Fe with knives, and I put him down to stay. The following year I went over the Trail again, and then I went to hunting buffalo in Texas. The year after I went all the way to California, and returning from that trip I got friendly with some Cheyennes and spent most of a year with them, raiding deep into Mexico. By the time I met Boone, I had five years of the roughest kind of living behind me.

  Boone talked himself mighty big, but he wasn’t bigger than me, and neither was Ed Karpe.

  We rode up that draw and found ourselves the prettiest little canyon you’ll ever see, and we camped there among the trees. We killed us a deer, and right away Josh went to panning that stream. He found gold from the first pan.

  Gold! It ran heavy from the first pan, and after that there was no talking to them. We all got to work, but being a loner I went along upstream by myself. Panning for gold was something I had never done, but all the way back from California that time I’d traveled with one of the best, and he’d filled me to the ears with what was needful to know about placer mining for gold.

  He told me about trying sandbars and little beaches where the stream curves around and throws up sand in the crook of the elbow. Well, I found such a place, and she showed color.

  Wasting no more time on panning, I got my shovel and started digging down to bedrock. No more than four feet down I struck it. It was cracked here and there and, remembering what that old timer told me, I cleaned those cracks and went back under the thin layers of rock and panned out what I found. By nightfall I had a rawhide sack with maybe three or four hundred dollars in it.

  All of the boys had gold, but none of them had as much as I showed them, which was less than half what I had. Jim Kinyon was tickled, but it didn’t set too well with either Boone or Karpe. Neither of them liked to be bested, and in particular they didn’t like it from me.

  Kreuger patted me on the back. “Goot poy!” he said. “Das iss goot!”

  We took turns hunting meat, and next day it fell to me. Mounting up, I took my Sharps Breech-Loader, and I’d buckled on my spare pistol. I had me two Army Colts, Model 1848, and I set store by them guns. I’d picked ’em off a dead Texan down east of Santa Fe.

  That Texas man had run up on some horse thieves and out of luck at the same time. There’d been four horse thieves and him, and they had at it, and when I came along some hours later there they lay, all good dead men with a horse for each and six extry. There were their rifles, pistols, and a good bit of grub, and there was no sense in leaving it for the Comanches to pick up or the sand to bury. In the time I’d been packing those six-shooters I’d become right handy with ’em.

  They were riding my belt that morning when I rode out from camp. Sighting a couple of deer close to camp, I rode around them. I’d no mind to do my killing close by, where we might need the game at some later time. A few miles further away I fetched me a good-sized buck, skinned him out, and cut us some meat. Down at the stream I was washing the blood from my hands when I glanced up to see two things at once—only one of them was important at the moment.

  The first thing I spotted was a full-growed Injun with his bow all drawed back and an arrow aimed at me. Throwing myself to one side I fetched one of those Colts and triggered me an Injun just as the arrow flicked past my face. He slid down off that river bank and right into the Happy Hunting Grounds, where no doubt someday we’ll meet and swap yarns.

  The other thing I’d glimpsed was upstream just a ways. It was only a glimpse, but I edged along the creek for a better look.

  Under a ledge of rock, just above the water, was a hole. It was about crawling-into size, and didn’t smell of animal, so I crawled in and stood up. It was a big cave, a room maybe twenty feet long by fifteen wide, with a solid-packed sandy floor and a smidgin of light from above. Looking up, I could see a tangle of branches over a hole, which was a couple of feet across but well-hidden by brush.

  When I rode into camp to unload my meat I told the boys about my Injun. “I caved the bank over him,” I said, “but they will most likely find him. Then they’ll come hunting us.”

  “One more and one less,” Karpe said. “A dead Injun is a good Injun.”

  “A dead Injun is the start of trouble,” I said. “We’d better light out of here if we want to keep our hair.”

  “Are you crazy?” Boone stared at me. “With all the gold we’re finding?”

  “We don’t need to leave the country,” I protested. “But what does gold mean to a dead man?”

  “The boy is right,” Kinyon agreed. “We’re in for trouble.”

  “We can handle trouble,” Karpe said. “I ain’t afeerd of no Injuns. Anyway, this just sounds like Pike talking big. I’ll bet he never saw no Injun.”

  Well, I put down the meat I was eating and licked my fingers. Then I got up and looked across the fire at him. “You called me a liar, Ed,” I said, mild-like. “I take that from no man.”

  He stared at me like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Now what about this?” he said. “The boy figures he’s a growed-up man! Well, I’ll take that out of him!” He got to his feet.

  “No guns,” Boone said. “If there are Injuns, we don’t want to draw them nigh.”

  Me, I shucked my Bowie. Some folks don’t fancy cold steel, and Ed Karpe seemed to be one of them. “Shuck your steel, Ed,” I told him. “I’ll see the color of your insides.”

  “No knives,” he protested. “I fight with my hands or a gun.”

  I flipped my knife hard into a log. “All right,” I said. “It makes me no mind. You just come on, and we’ll see who is the boy of this outfit.”

  He come at me. Ed Karpe was a big man, all rawboned and iron hard. He fetched me a clout on the jaw that made me see lights flashing, hitting me so hard I nearly staggered. Then he swung his other fist but I stepped inside, grabbing him by shirt-front and crotch, swinging him aloft and heaving him against the bank.

  He hit hard, but he was game and came up swinging. He fetched me a blow, but he was scared of me grabbing him and hit me whilst going away. I made as if to step on a loose rock and stagger, and he leapt at me. Dropping to one knee, I caught him again by shirt-front and crotch, only this time I throwed him head first into that bank. He hit hard and he just laid there.

  When I saw he wasn’t about to get up, I dusted off my knees and went back to the bone I’d been picking. Nobody said anything, but Josh Boone was looking surprised and sizing me up like he hadn’t really seen me before. “You can fight some,” he admitted.
“That didn’t take you no time at all.”

  “One time up in Pierre’s Hole I fought nigh onto two hours with a big trapper. He’d have made two of Ed there, and he was skookum man, but I whopped him some.”

  After a bit Ed Karpe come around, and he come back to the fire shaking his head and blinking, but nobody paid him no mind. Me, I was right sorry. It ain’t good for folks to start fighting amongst themselves in Injun country. Come daylight I went back to my shaft and taken one look. Whilst I’d been grub-hunting yesterday somebody had moved in and cleaned the bed-rock slick as a piano-top.

  Sure, I was upset, but I said nothing at all right then. I went on up the creek to a better place and dug me another hole, only when I left this one I covered it with brush and wiped out the sign I’d left.

  Kinyon had been hunting that day, and when he came in he was worried. “We’d better light out or get fixed for a fight. There’s Injuns all around us.”

  They listened to Kinyon where they hadn’t listened to me, so we dug ourselves some rifle pits and forted up with logs. I said nothing about my shaft being cleaned out.

  Next day I went back to my brush-covered hole and sank her down to bedrock and cleaned up. This was heavy with gold, and the best so far. My method of going to the rock was paying off. It was more work than using a pan, and it was more dangerous.

  That night when we all came in to camp Kreuger was missing. We looked at one another, and believe me, we didn’t feel good about it. Nobody had seen the German, and nobody had heard a shot. When morning came I headed upstream, then doubled back to where Kinyon was working, only I stayed back in the brush. I laid right down in the brush not far from him, but where I could watch both banks at once.

  “Jim?” I kept my voice so only he would hear me. “Don’t you look up or act different. I’ll do the talking.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “Somebody robbed that shaft of mine. Cleaned her out whilst I was hunting.”