The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 2 (17 page)

Then he recalled what had awakened him. The sound of a horseshoe clicking against stone. Sitting up, he strained his ears to hear, and it came again, the muffled hoof-falls of a horse and a creak of saddle leather.

Keeping to the darkness away from the open door, he moved softly to where he could see out.

Chick Bowdrie had found little time for romance in his life or he, instead of Tom Ballard, might have been meeting Sary near the corral, but he witnessed their greeting, a healthy if not soulful kiss. If there was no delicacy in the kiss there was no lack of earthy appreciation in it.

Chick had not come to witness kisses, so he stood waiting. He had recognized Ballard from other days.

“Anybody been around?” Tom asked.

“Uh-huh. Stranger passin' through. Sleepin' in the loft right now. He was astin' Pa for a place where there was water where he could lay up for a while. Pappy thinks he's on the dodge.”

“What's he look like?”

“He ain't no Ranger, if that's what you're scared of. Although he does have one of those new Winchesters like they carry. Looks more like a gunhand. Dark, narrow features. Nose like a hawk. Eyes blacker than a well bottom. Packs two tied-down six-shooters. Walks straight an' fast. He's ridin' a mean-lookin' strawberry roan.”

Tom Ballard drew a breath. “Got a little scar, has he? Like a thin sort of dimple below his cheekbone?”

“That's him! Who is he?”

“Bowdrie, Chick Bowdrie. He's the man who killed Pete Drago a while back.”

“Is he huntin' you?”

“I hope not. Why should he be? He's kind of on the outlaw side himself, from what I hear. Just ridin' through, most likely.”

The rest was unimportant. Bowdrie tiptoed back to his bed and stretched out. He was fast asleep within minutes.

He was dipping his head in the water bucket when Sary appeared the following morning. He shook the water from his hair, then wiped his face and hands on the roller towel beside the back door.

“I'm huntin' a place to lie up for a while,” he suggested. “I'd be obliged for any ideas.”

“Nothin' around here.” She eyed him with speculative eyes. “Would you come a-callin' if you was close by?”

Bowdrie admitted he was no hand with women but he knew a trail when he saw it. His bloodhound's instinct told him what to say. “Why else would an hombre want to stay in this country?”

Sary finished drawing her bucket from the well. “There's the Highbinders, them low, brush-covered hills you see out past the barn. There's water there, and a few deer. A body could kill him an antelope if he needed meat. Or even a steer, so long as it isn't one of ours. Nobody out here kills his own beef,” she added.

At the table they ate thick steaks cooked well-done and drank black bean coffee. There were cookies, too. Ma Sloacum could cook and bake.

Crilley, Bowdrie noted before Tate Sloacum even spoke, was nowhere around. “Where's Joe? Ain't like him to miss breakfast.”

“He got his coffee, then taken off to the hills before sunup,” Ma explained.

         

Almost an hour later Crilley rode into the canyon where the Ballards were holed up. He dropped from his horse at the cabin and glanced over at Aaron Fobes, who stood beside the cabin door.

“I got bad news,” he said.

Clyde Ballard came to the door, Luther Doyle and Northup behind him.

“What news?” Fobes demanded.

“Chick Bowdrie's eatin' breakfast over at Sloacum's.”

“What's that to us?” Clyde asked.

“Fobes here, he killed Noah Whipple over at Miller's, didn't he? Well, when Bowdrie rode in the other night I couldn't place him, then it come to me. He pulled into Whipple's a while back with some bullets in him. They nursed him back to health, an' he stayed on, ridin' for Whipple for a few months. I hear he sets store by that family.”

Aaron Fobes looked sullen. “Bowdrie ain't got no call to come huntin' me. Anyway, I can take him or any two like him.”

“You'd better hightail it, Aaron,” Clyde suggested. “The way I hear it, he's somethin' to see with those guns of his.”

“How'll he find me?” Fobes looked over at Crilley. “Unless you tell him.”

“I ain't tellin' nothin' to nobody.”

He knew Fobes and the thought did not make him happy. Suddenly he wished he hadn't been in so much of a hurry to ride over and tell him. He should have let well enough alone. Yet he liked Clyde Ballard and Clyde was a feudist—a fight with one of his men was a fight for all. Crilley had never liked Fobes. He was a mean, difficult man.

“He'll find you,” Clyde said. “I've heard of him and he could trail a rattler across a flat rock, but if anybody is huntin' him they have to burn the stump and sift the ashes before they find him.”

         

When Crilley did not appear for breakfast, Bowdrie decided there was but one reason for his absence. Obviously it was something of which the family knew nothing, and such absences were not the usual thing for Crilley, or no comment would have been made.

Why, then, had he gone? Only one thing out of the ordinary had happened at Sloacum's—his own arrival. The night before, Crilley had been sure he had seen Bowdrie somewhere before. Obviously he had remembered where and had ridden to inform the Ballards.

If he had ridden into the Highbinders, he would leave a trail, and where a horse had gone, Bowdrie could follow. A half-hour after breakfast he was in the saddle, riding east. When well out from the ranch, he swung in a wide circle until he picked up the sign of Crilley's horse.

He rode swiftly, making good time. Ahead of him the trail dipped into a dry wash and turned away from the hills. He followed until the trail came to a clear stream of water, less than a foot deep and flowing over a sand-and-gravel bottom.

Bowdrie swung down for a drink and let his horse drink, on the theory that a man never knew what might happen. He rode upstream first and was lucky. He found several hoofprints the water had not yet washed away. Riding or walking in the water is not always a means of losing one's trail. Bowdrie knew a dozen ways of following such a trail. Horseshoes could scar rocks even underwater.

Several times he reined in to study the country and the Highbinders, which were close now.

His thoughts returned to Joanie, clinging to his arm when he rode to town looking for Noah. She had not known about her father then, although her mother was worried that her husband had not returned as planned.

“Bring me something from town, Chick! Please!”

What did you bring a girl from town? That was more of a problem than Crilley's trail. He must find her something, some little knickknack. He would …

He saw a hoofprint in the clay bank where Crilley's horse had left the water. The trail turned back along the bank, weaving in and out of thick brush.

He never heard the shot.

A wicked blow on the head knocked him from the saddle, unconscious before he hit the ground. Something tore at him with angry fingers—and he hit, sagged, and hung.

When his eyes opened he was staring into a black, glassy world. Something that moved, flowed, a glassy world that mirrored a face, his face.

He started to move, but brush crackled and he felt again that sagging feeling. Slowly he became aware. He had fallen from his horse and was suspended in the brush above the stream's edge. His foot felt cold, and looking down, he saw one boot toe trailed in the water. He lifted it clear.

Carefully he looked around. He had fallen into brush that partly supported his weight, but his gunbelt had caught on an old snag, which had helped keep him clear of the water, where he might have drowned, shallow though it was.

Nearby was a branch that looked sturdier than the others. He grasped it, tested it, and slowly, carefully lifted himself clear. Climbing out of his precarious position was a shaky business, but he managed.

He crawled higher on the bank. He had been dry-gulched. They had waylaid him and shot him from the saddle, leaving him for dead.

He still had his guns. One remained in its holster; the other had fallen on the bank. He picked it up and wiped the clay from it, testing the action.

It was almost sundown, which meant he had been unconscious for hours. Delicately his fingers felt the furrow in his scalp. The blood had dried and caked his hair. Better not disturb it. He knelt by the stream and washed the blood from his face, however.

Looking about, he found his hat and placed it gingerly on his head.

There was no sign of his horse but there was still enough light for tracking. When he had fallen, the roan had bolted. Weaving his way through the brush and then a grove of small trees, he suddenly glimpsed the horse standing in a small meadow, looking at him.

When the hammerhead saw him it nickered softly, and actually seemed glad to see him. His Winchester was still in the saddle scabbard. The horse even took a couple of steps toward him. When he had first caught the roan from the wild bunch, his friends advised him to turn it loose. “That's no kind of a horse, Chick. Look at that head. And he's got a mean look to him. Turn him loose or shoot him. That horse is a killer!”

They had been right, of course. The roan was such a savage bucker that when he threw a rider he turned and went for him with intent to kill. He was lean, rawboned, and irritable, yet Bowdrie had developed an affection for him. Pet the roan and he would try to bite you. Curry him and he'd kick. But on a trail he would go all day and all night with a sort of ugly determination. Bowdrie had never known a horse with so much personality, and all of it bad. Nor did the roan associate much with other horses. He seemed to like being in a corral where they were, but he held himself aloof.

Of one thing Bowdrie was sure. No stranger was going to mount the roan. As for horse thieves, only one had tried to steal the roan, for in a herd of horses the roan would be the last anyone would select. The one attempt had been by a man in a hurry and the roan was there.

The horse thief jerked free of the tie-rope and leaped into the saddle. The roan spun like a top and then bucked and the would-be rider was piled into the water trough and his screams brought Bowdrie and the marshal running, for the roan had grabbed the thief's shoulder in his teeth.

Bowdrie took the bridle, spoke to the horse, then mounted and rode away. The thief, badly shaken and bloody, was helped from the trough. Aside from the savage bite, he had a broken shoulder.

“What was
that
?” the outlaw whined. “What …?”

“That was Chick Bowdrie an' that outlaw roan he rides.” The marshal kept one hand on his prisoner while looking down the street after Bowdrie. “They deserve each other,” he added. “They're two of a kind.”

         

Bowdrie found the camp by its firelight. It was artfully hidden but the light reflected from rocks and there was a small glow in the night.

On foot Chick Bowdrie walked down the grassy bank toward the fire. Aaron Fobes was talking. “No call for Clyde to get huffy,” he complained. “I just got him before he could get me.”

Meat was roasting over the fire, and the two men were doing a foolish thing. They were looking into the flames as they talked, which ruins the vision for immediate night work. There was no sign of the Ballards, nor of Northup.

“Maybe he didn't have a chance, but what difference does that make?”

“Get up, Fobes!”

Fobes started as if touched by a spark from the fire; then slowly he began to rise.

“You in this, Doyle?” Bowdrie's black eyes kept both men in view. “If you ain't, back up an' stay out!”

“I ride with him,” Luther Doyle said.

Fobes had reached for his gun as he came erect, and Doyle, who had not quite made up his mind, was slower. Yet Doyle was the deadlier of the two and Bowdrie's first shot knocked him staggering and he fell backward over the saddles. The second and third shots took Aaron Fobes in the throat and face. Fobes fell forward into the fire, scattering it. Doyle got off a quick shot that knocked the left-hand gun from Bowdrie's grip, leaving his hand numb. Doyle fired again and missed, taking a slug in the chest. He fell forward and lay still.

Chick walked over and retrieved his gun, holstering it, rubbing his left hand against his pants to restore the feeling. Then he caught Fobes by the back of his shirt and lifted him free of the fire. The man was dead.

Bowdrie got his canteen from his horse and lifted Doyle's head to give him a swallow.

The wounded man's eyes flickered. “He wasn't worth it, but I rode with him. No hard feelings?”

“None,” Bowdrie replied. “Next time you better choose better comp'ny. You could get yourself killed.”

He opened the wounded man's shirt. The one low down on the left side looked ugly, but the other shot had hit Doyle's heavy metal belt buckle and glanced off, ripping the skin across his stomach for a good six inches, but the wound was only a bad scratch.

“Am I bad off?”

“Not too bad. You'll live, most likely. I'll patch you up some when I get time. Now we got comp'ny.”

He thumbed cartridges into his guns, holstering the left one. His hand was still numb, but if necessary …

“What d'you plan to do?” Doyle asked.

“Take the Ballards,” Bowdrie said. “I'm a Texas Ranger.”

“Bowdrie? A
Ranger
?”

“Since Fobes killed Noah Whipple.” He grabbed Doyle's handkerchief and shoved it into his mouth, but the outlaw spat it out. “I won't holler,” Doyle said. “If I do, there'll be shootin'.”

They waited in silence, listening to the approaching horses.

“Watch Northup,” Doyle said. “I don't want Clyde shot up.”

Three men rode into the firelight and started to swing down. One was on the ground before they saw anything amiss.

“Hold it, Ballard!” Bowdrie said. “This is Chick Bowdrie and I'm a Texas Ranger. I'm arrestin' you for the Benton bank job!”