Yondering: Stories

by Louis L'Amour

  He was big-boned and powerful, the white-blue of his eyes startling against the dark skin.

  He squinted his eyes against the glare from sea and sand, and leaned against the post that supported the porch roof. The house was old and shabby; no coat of paint had ever graced the gray, weather-beaten boards. There were three rooms, the living room that extended across the front of the house, and behind it the bed-room and kitchen.

  The big man studied the sea through his squinted eyes, and recognized the meaning of the slow, heavy swell. He watched the curl of the surf at the water’s edge. He had learned to know the moods of the sea by watching the way the surf came up on the sand.

  His name was Tanner Malloy and he had been four years in this house, on this beach. Sometimes he fished. Sometimes he patrolled the long stretch of beach for what drifted ashore. He had managed to get along almost without money.

  He mopped under his arms and across the back of his neck. God, was it hot! He knew the feeling in the air. It was heavy, like that swell out there, and it was slow, like the curl of the surf. This one would be bad.

  Tanner Malloy had lived through many storms in his four years on the beach, and he had lived through many other storms elsewhere. He considered briefly the cave in the coral ridge behind the house…that might be the place to spend the night. The sea had never come this high since the house had been built, at least thirty years before. But it might. Tanner Malloy never questioned what the sea might do.

  He had turned to go back inside when he heard the muffled beat of the motor from beyond the sand-spit. The boat was beyond the spit and so out of sight, but he did not need to guess who it was.

  He only needed to wonder why Frank Myers was coming around the island. Tanner Malloy did not like Myers and he was not one to conceal his feelings. He knew his own faults, and one of them was a sharp impatience with people he did not like. He knew there were many who did not like him, and cared less, although respecting their privilege. He had a brusque, hard-heeling way of going through life, which was one reason why he was here.

  Only it was not the only reason.

  The boat was rounding the spit now, a long, graceful motor ship displacing about a hundred tons. That boat had cost a lot of money, but Malloy had no respect for the boat, its owner, nor even for money.

  Only of late had he begun to think about money. Strangely, he had awakened several times thinking about home.

  Not that he had a home anywhere, but home meant the town from which he had come, back in the States. At last he had decided he wanted to go back. And for him it was a strange decision.

  Malloy walked back into the bed-room and lifted the lid of the trunk. From it he took a .44 magnum Smith & Wesson, a heavy gun with enormous shooting power. Into his pocket he dropped a double handful of cartridges, first tucking the pistol behind his waistband. Pulling off the torn shirt, he donned a light cotton jacket that covered the pistol but left it ready to hand.

  He did not trust Frank Myers now and had never trusted him, nor did he need a pistol to handle him. The pistol was insurance against whoever Myers had with him. He was not likely to come alone.

  He waited on the porch, making no move to greet the visitor at the pier. As he waited he thought about the arrival. It was thirty miles to the port where Myers had his store and his home. Myers would come here for no trivial reason.

  Frank Myers was a large man, an inch taller and thirty pounds heavier than Malloy. There was a little extra bulk at his waist-line. Two men accompanied him.

  Leaving these two in the shade of the palms, Myers walked up to the house alone.

  “Hello, Tan.”

  “Hiya.” Malloy did not move his shoulder from the post, and over the head of Myers he could watch the two men under the palms. Tanner Malloy was not a trusting man.

  Myers wasted no time. “Do you know where Pocklington Reef is?”

  “You know damned well I do.”

  “You can land on it?”

  Malloy regarded Myers with cynical distaste, but curiosity was stirring within him.

  Pocklington Reef was a lonely, desolate, God-forgotten coral reef some twenty miles long and two to three miles wide out in the Coral Sea. It was eighty-odd miles from the nearest land, and someday it would be an island. There were a few rocks projecting well above the sea; some stretches of the reef were drying, some breaking. Much of it was still underwater.

  There were, at times, a few skimpy stretches of sand, and there was some wreckage. There was the rusting hull of an ancient iron ship which Tanner Malloy would not soon forget. It had been his home for three miserable months after his ketch piled up there during a hurricane.

  “You don’t want to go to Pocklington Reef.”

  “Is there an anchorage?”

  “Properly speaking…no.”

  “But a boat could anchor there? It is possible?”

  Tanner Malloy straightened up and tucked his thumbs behind his belt. “If the wind was right. If there wasn’t much of a sea, and if you didn’t stay long.”

  “Will you come with us?”

  Malloy’s laugh held no humor. “Myers, I don’t have any notion of going anywhere near Pocklington. And if you’re smart, you won’t either.”

  “I’ll pay you.”

  Malloy merely looked at him.

  “I mean it. I’ll pay you well.”

  “No.”

  Myers was growing angry. Malloy could see it and was not displeased. “I’ll give you two hundred dollars.”

  “No.”

  Myers was really angry now. “Tanner, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you care about money at all? How can you live like this?” He gestured angrily at the lonely beach and the sea. “I don’t understand you.”

  “Let it go at that, Myers. You don’t understand me. You think I’d rather live close to you? I like the sea and the sky. I don’t like your stinking gin mills. I don’t like you. I don’t like the way you do business.”

  Myers hesitated. Suddenly, he looked up. “Malloy, there’s a woman on Pocklington Reef.”

  Tanner Malloy just looked at him. He was stunned. Then he relaxed. Myers was lying. Of course, he was lying.

  “So?”

  “We’ve got to get her off. She’s there alone, Tan, she’s stuck there.”

  Malloy studied Myers, suddenly impressed. Suppose he was telling the truth? His eyes lifted to the sea. That was an ugly swell. The air had that tight, close feeling that came before a storm, and with a coldness that struck deep within him, he remembered the terror of a storm on Pocklington Reef. He remembered those nightmares where the enormous waves crashed over the reef, the wind howling and filling the air with tremendous sound.

  Malloy lifted his eyes to those of Myers. He searched the big man’s hard eyes carefully. “Since when are you so worried about somebody else?” he asked. “I’ve never known you to give thought to anything but money.”

  “The Navy,” Myers said, “they put word out to get her off that ship. They can’t make it in time themselves. She’s on the rocks there at Pocklington, all stove up and in a sinking condition, but the girl won’t leave her.”

  It made sense, put that way. Frank Myers had reason to want to stay on the good side of the authorities, for they had been showing a good deal of interest in some of his activities. Anyway, if word got out that nothing had been done…As for himself, he wouldn’t see a wharf rat left to Pocklington in a storm.

  He glanced at the sky, which was blue and quiet, then at the sea, which had a greasy look. No breaking waves, nothing like that at all, just a long, deep swell and the heaviness in the air.

  He studied the sea and considered the distance. The Coral Queen could make good time, but it was over eighty miles to the reef. Not less than seven hours with good luck, and very
likely as much as eleven or twelve. They would reach the reef with a tremendous storm building, and to even approach it under the circumstances was a fool’s trick.

  But a girl…

  “Who’s there with her?”

  “That’s just it. She’s alone.”

  The sky was gray with torn clouds as they began the last hour of the drive to Pocklington Reef. There were whitecaps now, and the seas were slate gray and heavy with power.

  Tanner Malloy lounged in the stern, nursing a cup of steaming coffee, liking none of his surroundings.

  Myers had five men aboard the Coral Queen aside from the cook and the engineer, and the cook doubled as cabin boy and when the situation demanded, on deck as a seaman. And none of the five men were the sort Tanner Malloy would have selected for company, and he was not a choosy man.

  In his oilskin coat he stared at the sea, feeling a tightness in his scalp as they drew nearer and nearer to the reef. There was nothing about Pocklington he liked. The roughly oval reef was a nightmare in which he had lived for three months, of starvation, struggle and sleeplessness. He had ripped shell-fish from the rocks, caught other fish with his hands or with a hook and line, and he had trapped a couple of sea birds, one of which he had eaten raw.

  His drinking water had come from pools left from the rain, or rain-water caught in a ragged piece of tarpaulin. And throughout the tropical storms for which the Coral Sea was a breeding ground, he had clung with bloody hands to the broken coral knobs, filled with a wild despair. Somehow he had survived, more an animal than a man when finally picked up by an astonished marine survey ship.

  He sipped his coffee, staring into the distance where the reef would first appear. He was afraid of it. He admitted it wryly, and without shame. A man who was not afraid of the sea was a fool. You could live on the sea, you could live with it, you could learn to understand it…and then it would suddenly become monstrous. There were frightful storms…such as the typhoon that struck down upon the American Navy during World War II…perhaps it was the worst storm in history. But there had been other storms, and he knew that no ship could survive when the sea was at its worst.

  He also knew the jagged teeth of Pocklington, the broken molars hidden beneath the turbulent waters, baring themselves through the foam of the white water. It was a trap…he knew it well, and feared it from knowledge.

  “We’d better go in from the south, Myers,” he said, when the owner of the ship came back to him. “We won’t have much time. We will have to get in, get the girl and get out. I’d say we’d be fools to be there more than fifteen minutes.”

  Myers avoided his eyes. Then he said, “It may not take longer than that.”

  Malloy was uneasy. He had a restless, irritable feeling of some undercurrent of which he was unaware.

  The nagging doubt returned in full force. What had happened to Myers that he would risk his ship and his life to rescue a girl? True, if it was realized that he could have done it and had not, he would be despised all over the Pacific. Yet such things had not been known to weigh very heavily with Frank Myers before.

  Malloy could feel the hard weight of the Smith & Wesson under his coat. Now the oilskin was over it, but he had left a snap unfastened to get his hand to the gun.

  He straightened suddenly, balancing to the movement of the boat. He could see the bulk of the grounded ship, a big, old freighter of some five thousand tons displacement, canted sharply over, her funnel demolished, and one mast broken sharply off.

  At a glance he could see that the freighter would never be refloated. There was no need to examine her position, for he had been over every foot of the reef while there. The present storm would batter her into junk…and there was little time.

  He walked to the wheel and took it in his hands. The man turned to glance at Myers, and Myers nodded, but watched the progress of the Coral Queen with care.

  The sea was picking up, the air had grown colder. The storm had been farther away than he had suspected, but it was coming now. He eased her past a coral head, slid through a break in the reef and called out, “Let go forward!”

  He heard the anchor splash in the water and several fathoms of chain ran out.

  And then he saw the girl.

  She was standing, a small, pitiful figure on the canted deck of the freighter. Now he could see the freighter was already almost broken in half, for she was twisted hard so that the foredeck and fo’c’slehead were on an even keel, while the after end of the freighter was canted sharply over.

  “Better hurry,” he said, “there’s mighty little time.”

  They got the boat over quickly. The sea had an ugly look and the swells coming in over the outer reef were tremendous.

  Malloy got into the boat and they shoved off. Even here, under the protection of several sections of the reef, the sea was lifting and plunging.

  They moved in swiftly, and he sprang to the rock. On the reef, the water was washing over the coral, several inches deep. Myers and two other men followed, while one remained in the dinghy.

  Malloy led the way along the reef, but only at a place or two was the coral above water. At times they splashed through knee-deep, and once a wave reached them nearly waist-high.

  Malloy was in the lead when they reached the crushed hull. The bottom was ripped open, and she was badly canted over. He yelled at the girl, “Come on! Hurry!”

  She did not move. He could see her face was pale and she was obviously frightened, yet she was looking past him. And then suddenly he was shouldered aside and two of the men rushed for the freighter, leaping to catch the rail and pull themselves to the deck, which was at this point scarcely seven feet above the water.

  He sprang for the rail himself and was struck a wicked blow across the shoulder from behind. He tried to turn, and another glancing blow from a pistol barrel slammed alongside his head.

  He went down, falling on his face in the water. A heavy boot caught him in the ribs and he looked up into the contorted, triumphant face of Frank Myers.

  “I’d kill you,” Myers said, “but I want you to die slow. You and that girl. You’ll never be so lucky as to get off here again.”

  From the deck above he heard an anguished scream, and then the two men leaped from the deck and started for the dinghy.

  One of the men held a small black waterproof bag.

  Tanner Malloy struggled to get up. His head was spinning and he could feel the sticky wetness of blood on his face. He was almost to his knees when the wave hit him and he went down, gasping for breath under the drenching of icy water.

  He got to one knee, then heaved himself erect. Fumbling with the front of his slicker, he got his hand inside and came out with the Smith & Wesson.

  He lifted the gun and fired. Even in the howling wind he heard the hoarse bark of the gun, but his aim was off. He distinctly saw chips leap from the gunwale of the dinghy, and then it was alongside and the men were springing aboard. At the same time, he heard in a momentary lull the sound of the anchor chain being heaved in.

  He steadied himself and fired, but this time he fired at the hull itself, aiming at the engine. He knew the terrific penetrating power of the pistol. His second shot was at the man at the wheel, partly concealed behind the deckhouse.

  He saw splinters fly, heard a yelp, and the Queen yawed sharply. Then it was moving away.

  He started to fire again, but a heavy sea drenched him, almost knocking him down. For a minute or more the ship was lost in blown spray and when he saw it again, he fired again. Then he reloaded the gun.

  Somebody was firing at him, but by then the range was more than four hundred yards, and they were coming nowhere near. He took careful aim at the hull and squeezed off a tight bunch of four shots.

  Reloading the gun, he thrust it back into his waistband holster, and jumping
, he caught the rail and climbed aboard. The girl was sprawled upon the deck. He bent over her quickly, and as he lifted her, she stirred in his arms and looked up, then tried to twist away from him, her eyes wild.

  “It’s all right,” he said, “they’ve gone!”

  She stared at him, as if trying to collect her wits, then sat up. Turning, she looked toward the Queen and could see it pulling away.

  “You came with them,” she accused.

  “Myers told me it was to rescue you before the storm broke. I should have known something was wrong, because I know him.”

  The clouds were low now, and the waves lifted with power and smashed down over the outer reef. He got to his feet and took careful stock of their situation.

  Better than any man alive, he knew what they could expect. The freighter had been driven through a partial gap in the outer reef, probably ripping open her bottom in the process.

  The part of the reef where the freighter lay was barely above water; most of it in the vicinity was just near enough to the surface to cause the waves to break. It was true that the force of the waves would be broken by the outer reef, but the freighter would take a tremendous pounding, and would very likely go to pieces.

  He explained this as he looked around, taking stock. From skepticism, the girl began to watch him in fascinated horror. He glanced aside and caught her expression, and then he said, more quietly, “You see, I know how it is. I was wrecked here…three months of hell.”

  “Three months?”

  “I was lucky,” he said. “An oceanic survey ship happened by, otherwise I might have been here yet. Most ships come nowhere near this place.”

  For the first time the impact of what he was saying made an impression. Slowly, she looked around. As far as her eyes could reach the sea was a snarling mass of white water, broken only here and there by the blackened stumps of the broken teeth of the reef. In the distance she could see some larger rocks.

  “There used to be an old, rusting wreck further along,” he said, “a ship wrecked here many years ago. And there are quite a few areas above water when it is calm.”