Guns of the Timberlands

by Louis L'Amour

  “Can we stall for a couple of days?”

  “Might.” Mahafee was dubious. “No longer.”

  Hank Rooney opened the door and came in. His face looked fine-drawn in the morning light. He poured coffee, took a hasty swallow, then sat down on Bell’s right.

  “Who you figure fired that shot?”

  Bell shrugged. “This morning I’ll have a look around over there.”

  “You be careful.” Rooney swallowed coffee and brushed his mustache with a finger.

  Bill Coffin came in with Shorty Jones. Shortly had a heavy shock of hair, and he was brushing it now with his hand, and combing it back with his fingers. His shoulders bulged powerfully against the cloth of his shirt, and this morning his jaw looked hard.

  Rooney looked suspiciously from Shorty to Coffin. The latter looked smug, as if he were about to put over something. Bill Coffin was a practical joker, and when he and Bert Garry had been riding as saddle partners there was always something popping. Shorty was more serious, a good hand with a gun, and nobody to push around. Since Garry had been hurt the two had been much together.

  Coffin said something under his breath to Shorty. Jones hesitated, then said, “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  On this morning when Clay stepped into the saddle he was riding a tough strawberry roan, a mountain horse, caught wild and broken to the saddle. The horse stepped out fast, wanting to go, and Clay put him up the trail through Emigrant Gap.

  Long ago, before an easier route was found, this had been the way of the wagon trains in this part of the country. Just beyond the Gap there had been a massacre. Unsuspecting pioneers had been ambushed by Indians and almost wiped out. Only a few days before Devitt arrived in the country Clay had found an arrowhead there, and there were several old wagon wheels rolled out of the way against the rock wall.

  He rode up the narrowing trail, emerging on the flatland inside the Gap. Here the country was open, with only a few scattered pines, thickening to clumps as one rode farther on.

  Turning off the trail toward The Notch, Bell rode northwest into the timber, the roan’s hoofs making almost no sound on the pine needles. Here, scattered among the pines, were the sycamores with their mottled trunks and a few oaks. On his left the mountain sloped steeply up, soon leaving behind the trees, emerging above their level in great bald shoulders of hard red rock and buff-colored cliffs streaked with long bands of white. The cliffs rose into serrated ridges and castled rocks, towering above the inner valley.

  Here, in these few dozen square miles, surrounded by the outer desert and grassland, was a little oasis of green and verdant beauty. Away now from the ranch, walking the roan along the shoulder of the valley, Clay Bell found himself absorbing some of the quiet peace of the country. Below, on the edge of a far meadow, an antelope lifted his head, then bounded away. Suddenly a dozen others were running, disappearing into the trees.

  Turning the roan downslope, he rode deeper into the forest, leaving the battlemented cliffs behind. On that side where lay the ranch in the mouth of Emigrant Gap, there was no trail into the inner basin except through the ranch. Ahead and still on his left, loomed the great bulk of Piety Mountain. A single trail led down Piety to the flat, that trail he had taken to intercept Colleen on her visit to the ranch. There was no other, and no man could approach or mount that trail without being visible to a watcher on the peak. Beyond Piety the wall of mountains swung westward, and there was but one trail down that side, the one Bell had used in his quick ride to Tinkersville, the one toward which he was now headed.

  He watered the roan in Cave Creek, and then rode on. Skirting below wind-worn and rain-washed cliffs and leaving the ghost town far down the basin on his right, he took to the hills. He left the green shade and coolness behind as he rode up, moving from one shelf to the other, working his way higher and higher along the mountain. At the top there were clumps of cedar, and he drew up, glancing across the vast bottom toward the town.

  A few trails of smoke lifted into the warm morning sunlight. It was nearly noon, and there was no movement along the road. He studied the terrain between the foot of the mountain and the town, but saw no sign of movement at all. With his glasses he studied the country longer and with infinite care.

  Then he rode on. At this point it was nearly four thousand feet above the level country. Within the basin it was less than six hundred feet. Within there was coolness, grass, water, and the timber. Outside there was miles of bunch-grass country dotted with occasional clumps of mesquite, cat-claw, or cholla. When he came to the trail he rode to the bottom, then skirted it toward the spot from which the rifle shots had come.

  He came upon the tracks suddenly. A small-hoofed horse had come up here. He studied the trail, working along until he found the place where the horse had stood, tied to a small clump of mesquite in a hollow, invisible from the trail.

  The horse had stood here for some time. He studied the brush, hoping to find some indication of the color of the horse. But if the animal had scratched itself anywhere about, he was unable to find such a place.

  The rider had been a heavy man with small feet. He trailed him along to the spot from where the shots had been fired. There were no cigarette butts, no exploded shells. Yet the presence of the man was plainly indicated. And he had been here for some time.

  From the spot where he had waited there was an excellent view of the trail. Looking down from the low sandhill where the unknown marksman had waited, Clay Bell felt a little chill along his spine. His mouth felt dry and he backed up, wetting his lips. How the man had failed to kill him he could not guess. From here there was an excellent field of fire. He had been almost riding into the gun.

  Tracks led to and from a boulder some distance off, and walking that way, he found a place which the unknown man had evidently considered as a place of ambush, but here two low trees obscured part of the trail. Yet the man had knelt there in the shadow, evidently sighting along his rifle. There in the sand, slightly damp near the boulder, was the plain print of a knee. The man had worn broadcloth trousers.

  Automatically this eliminated all but a few men. Not many would be wearing such trousers across the range on a week-day. Later on, farther along the rider’s homeward trail, he found where the man had drawn up to look back along his own path. There the horse had turned under the hand of the rider. Caught in the brush were a few tail hairs. The tail had been iron-gray.

  Clay Bell returned to his own horse and mounted. Only when in the saddle did the significance of what he had discovered come home to him. Yet nothing in his suspicions seemed likely, for there was no motive.

  MORTON SCHWABE WAS a huge, overbearing man who had been from boyhood a bully. Ranching in the country some miles from Deep Creek, he had no contact with Clay Bell except on his rare visits to town. Yet Morton Schwabe had taken a strong dislike to the quiet rancher who came and went about his business and seemed to be acquiring a respect in Tinkersville never given to himself.

  There had been no trouble nor the occasion for it until Bell had stopped the big Dutchman from beating a horse. Angered, Schwabe had struck Bell. His next punch was a clean miss, but if Bell missed any at all they had been invisible punches, for Bell had promptly given him such a beating that it was three days before he could ride out of town. No man in a lifetime takes two such beatings. No man could take them.

  When Jud Devitt approached Schwabe with the offer to be a Deputy U.S. Marshal he had accepted at once. For weeks he had been practicing with a pistol, a fact known only to Kesterson, who sold him ammunition, and now his chance had come and his mind was clearly made up. He would kill Clay Bell. And he would have the backing of the law.

  Immensely pleased, he cleaned his gun and prepared to ride to town. He even brushed off his black coat, which he had not worn in months. He would go to town dressed as a marshal should be. He would take the papers and he would serve them.

  Unaware of what had happened in Tinkersville, Clay Bell rode back up the trail to the ridge. He studied the l
ong sweep of land, and on the trail from the opposite direction to Tinkersville he saw a faint plume of dust. It was Jud Devitt returning from Schwabe’s ranch, but Bell had no idea who the rider might be, nor what it signified.

  He turned back into the now cooling depths of the woods, taking a new route back to the home ranch.

  Wind murmured in the trees, bird calls came from the brush along the stream. Once he surprised a steer browsing in a quiet glade in the forest where sunlight slanted down through the columned trees. Coming out upon the rim of a plateau, he could look across the tops of the trees, across small meadows, along the winding courses of Cave Creek and Deep Creek to the far, striated shoulders of the mountains along The Notch.

  Some of those firs were six or seven feet in diameter. There were sycamores down along Cave Creek that were equally thick. Those trees would never be cut off while he lived. This was his land, his home.

  A branch of Cave Creek came chattering down the rocks and spilled through a long, narrow crevasse near him. He could hear it falling into a pool down in the darkness somewhere under the brush. He rode along, then drew up to look at a scuffed place down beside the stream. He could see the water from this one point, and the edge of the stream was scarred by boot prints.

  Puzzled, he looked down at them. The narrow strip of sand was all of forty feet down and not easy to get at. He swung down and moved closer, then saw a place where a man might descend by stepping down upon the rocks and clinging to the branches of a sycamore. As he started down, he saw a scarred place on the bark made by a boot. Somebody else had preceded him, but not recently.

  When he reached the bottom he saw a number of tracks, and under the overhang of the cliff was a sack that was bulky with its contents. Opening it, he found several chunks of what looked like ore. They were heavy and metallic.

  The tracks had been made within the past month—no, within the past three weeks. There had been a rain before that that would have washed them out.

  Somebody had been here, working. Somebody who wanted that ore, and somebody who did not want his presence known.

  Somebody who might be willing to kill to get what he wanted.

  CHAPTER 12

  JUD DEVITT WAS immensely pleased. Morton Schwabe had accepted the appointment as Deputy Marshal and would serve the papers on Clay Bell, forcing him to open a right-of-way through Emigrant Gap and The Notch. It would be none too soon, for valuable time had been lost and already there had been requests from officials of Mexican Central for information as to when the first load of ties would be received.

  He found Judge Riley at dinner with Colleen. Both looked up as he approached. For an instant it seemed there was a coolness in their manner, but this he promptly dismissed as unreasonable. He seated himself. Colleen, he realized suddenly, was even more attractive than he had believed. She was a lovely girl … a lovely woman.

  He had been neglecting her, but business was business and this affair had given him more trouble than he expected. But now, he assured them, the trouble was all over and when the papers were served there would be nothing to keep them from logging off Deep Creek. In a short time they could move on, back to New York if they wished.

  “I seem to remember you were quite sure when we came here that you’d have no trouble,” Colleen suggested, a tinge of irony in her tone. “You’re very confident.”

  He waved a dismissing hand. “My boys are ready to move. Schwabe will serve the papers tomorrow.”

  “Schwabe?” It was the first time Colleen had heard a mention of just who had received the appointment. “Isn’t that asking for trouble?”

  Her father put down his cup. “Why do you say that?”

  Devitt started to interrupt but Colleen persisted. “There’s been trouble between Schwabe and Clay. Doctor McClean told me about it.”

  Riley’s face was stern. “You said nothing of this, Jud.”

  Devitt shrugged. He was irritated by Colleen’s interference in what was man’s business. She knew nothing of such things.

  “A detail, Judge. Competent men aren’t to be found everywhere.”

  “Or men who will take orders.”

  Jud Devitt’s face flushed, but he turned on Colleen, smiling. “If one wishes to get something done he has to use the tools at hand. Now let’s forget business. Let’s talk about us.”

  “Us?”

  Jud Devitt had never been a tactful man. Impatient to get on with things, he usually put down any idea that Colleen expressed as a mere whim. He was sure she was displeased because of his neglect.

  “Colleen,” he put his hand over hers, “we’ve delayed too long now. Why don’t we get married right away?”

  “Jud,” her voice was quiet, and she looked straight into his eyes, “I’m not going to marry you. Not now or at any time.”

  Jud Devitt was shocked. He started to speak, then stopped. His face, which had paled, suddenly flushed.

  “What sort of a joke is this?”

  “You’re a handsome man, Jud, and a strong man. You have done big things, and I admired you for it. But I never understood until now how you did them.”

  Anger stirred him. Judge Riley sat very quiet, and continued to eat. Devitt looked from the judge to his daughter, trying to stifle his anger and to control his voice.

  “You know, Jud,” she continued, “some big things are done by men who are really very small.”

  “Just what do you mean by that?”

  “Given time,” she responded coolly, “I think you’ll find out for yourself, but today I learned that the attack on those poor boys was made by your direct order.”

  “And so?” He was really angry now. His dark eyes narrowed and his face held its flush.

  “If Bert Garry dies you’ll be his killer.”

  “Don’t be a fool!” His anger flared. The idea that this girl should call him to account enraged him. “Bell attacked Williams! They began it.”

  “Not according to Wat.”

  Devitt pushed back his chair. “Judge,” he kept his voice even, “you’d better take this daughter of yours and talk some sense into her.” He got up, then looked down at Colleen. “We’ll be married this week or not at all.”

  “Not at all,” she said, and she watched him, startled at the cruel lights in his eyes. This was a man she had never known. “And if you make any more trouble for Clay Bell I’ll hate you as long as I live.”

  “So that’s it? You’ve fallen in love with that cowhand!” He turned abruptly, knocking over his chair, and strode from the room.

  Only Sam Tinker sat near enough to have distinguished their words. Despite her anger, she had to smile, for Sam was making no effort to conceal his pleasure. He was fairly beaming, and when he smiled his face became so much the picture of good humor that one could only smile in return.

  She sat very still, looking down at her plate. She was no longer hungry. Jud was gone—and her only feeling was of relief She looked up suddenly. “Dad, did I do right?”

  “I think so. I think we’ve both been saved from a serious mistake.”

  Jud Devitt had walked outside into the night. He took a cigar from his pocket and bit off the end. He was furious, seething inside.

  He lighted his cigar and stared down the street. Let up on Clay Bell? He’d be eternally damned if he did! Then he remembered the curious expression on Morton Schwabe’s face when he accepted the appointment. Bell was not out of trouble by a long shot.

  Across the street a man loitered, and Devitt glanced sharply at him. It was Stag Harvey. As he looked, the man sauntered off down the street, and Devitt’s eyes followed him.

  Suddenly a horseman rounded into the street and came down the avenue at a dead run. Seeing Devitt, he drew up sharply. “Boss! We’re burned out! The whole camp!”

  “What’s that?”

  The man stammered in his excitement, then calmed down. “Right after dark, Jud. Some feller out on the desert called out, called for help. Called some of the boys by name!”

 
Jud Devitt’s fury was gone Now he felt something cold and murderous within him—a feeling he had never known before.

  “We rushed out, figurin’ some of the boys was in trouble. We couldn’t find a thing, but then we saw the whole camp was in flames. We rushed back an’ fought fire most of an hour. Lost two wagons, burned right down to the wheel rims, all the grub, and the donkey engine mighty near ruined.”

  “Who did you see? Which of those cowhands did it?”

  “Never saw anybody, Boss! We had to fight fire an’ whoever done it, if anybody did, they got away.”

  Devitt remained where he was when the messenger had gone with his orders. Tomorrow the whole town would be laughing at him. And Colleen behaving like a silly school girl!

  His cigar tasted terrible. He took it from his mouth and threw it into the street.

  There was a donkey engine in Holbrook. He could send for that if his own could not be repaired immediately. But probably it was only the platform—he would have a look at it first thing in the morning.

  And tomorrow Morton Schwabe would serve his papers.

  Jud Devitt decided he could wait. That would be triumph enough, to send his wagons through the Gap. He could wait—although every time he thought of Bell he wished he could live over that day in the street when he walked away from Bell’s cool challenge.

  His anger cooled into resolution. He would show them. He would show them all what it meant to buck Jud Devitt.

  From his seat on the porch Sam Tinker watched Jud walk away down the street. He had seen the rider come, had overheard his excited words. Sam needed no questions—in the burning of the wagons and the manner in which it was consummated he could see the ripe, rich hand of Bill Coffin. He chuckled fatly and rubbed his jaw. It was just as much fun as being young again, to sit here and enjoy it, without all the riding and sweating.

  He looked across at the bank, dark and silent now. Nor was there a light upstairs. Noble Wheeler was a restless man these days.