The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1 (35 page)

Benton indicated a drawer in an old-fashioned bureau. “In that drawer there's blankets. You take the other bottom bunk.”

Benton was still puttering around when Hurley dropped off to sleep. Hurley's last thought was: “At daybreak … when daybreak comes I'll get out of here.”

A blast of icy air awakened him and for an instant Hurley lay still, fighting to find himself, to realize where he was. The room was dark, swirling with blown snow, and nothing was familiar. Then it all came back to him, and he scrambled out of bed and slammed the door shut.

“What happened?” he asked into the silence, but the silence remained unbroken. Hurley stood still, listening, and he heard no sound but the wind.

Fumbling for his shirt, he found matches and lit one, then the lamp.

Benton's bunk was empty, but it had been slept in.

Hastily, Hurley got into his pants and boots and picked up his coat and shrugged into it. He strapped on his gun belt and, opening a lantern that stood by the door, he lit it. For an instant, he hesitated.

The Talbots might be out there. They might be … but his common sense told him they could not be. They would be holed up somewhere, waiting out the storm.

Opening the door, Hurley stepped out into the darkness. The wind was blowing a gale, and he was almost stifled by a blast of wind that blew his breath right back down his throat. Ducking his head, he stepped into the storm and almost tripped over a body, half buried in swirling snow.

Stooping, Hurley picked up the man and carried him to the door, which he opened with one hand, and stepped inside. Then he returned for the lantern.

The body was that of Benton, and a glance told him the old man's leg was broken.

Stretching him out on the bunk, Hurley covered him with blankets and then went to the fire which had been banked against the long hours of night. Stirring the coals, he added fuel and built a roaring blaze to warm the room. He worked swiftly, knowing warmth would be most important to Benton now. Then he crossed the room to the injured man, slit his trouser leg, and pulled the leg into place. He was binding splints when Benton came out of it and tried to sit up.

“Lie still … you've busted your leg.”

Benton settled back, his face gray with pain. Hurley turned from him and, searching through a cabinet, found a bottle of whiskey. He poured a slug into a glass and handed it to Benton. “Do you good,” he said.

“Mighty poor stuff to drink if you're going to stay out in the cold, but once inside it warms you up.”

Benton drank the whiskey and handed the glass back to Hurley. He settled back, looking around him. “Last thing I recall,” he said, “some noise out at the barn. I started out and slipped on the steps. I felt myself falling … that was all.”

Hurley explained how he had awakened to find the door open and snow swirling into the room.

Then Benton's remark reached his consciousness. “You say you heard a noise at the barn?”

Benton nodded. “You better go see what's wrong.”

The Talbots … they could be out there. They knew he would come for his horse, and the barn was warm. They could be out there waiting to shoot him down as he came in out of the morning. Or they might have made the noise on purpose to draw someone to the stable.

“It can wait,” Hurley replied sullenly. “The door's shut, I can see that.”

He got down the coffee and made a pot. How long he had slept he had no idea, but he was fully awake now. If they were really there.

Benton watched him with sardonic amusement as he made the coffee and brought a cup to the injured man. “Don't know whether them Talbots are out there, or not,” he said. “You just got to wait and see, or you've got to go out there and find out. Puts a man in a jim-dandy fix.”

“Shut up,” Hurley said irritably.

He stood over the stove, feeding sticks into the flames and trying to think it out. Even if the storm let up a man would have no chance afoot, for aside from the distance and the cold his tracks would be laid out plain as print for anyone to follow.

He got down the old man's Spencer and checked the loads. Seven shots. He was a good shot with a rifle, and had hunted rabbits and squirrels back in Ohio. The distance to the barn was no more than sixty or seventy feet, point-blank range.

After a while Hurley put the light out and stretched out on his bunk. He could hear deep breathing from Benton's bed and decided the old man must be asleep.

Hurley sat up so suddenly he bumped his head on the upper bunk.
What about Benton?

Somehow, in the excitement of finding the old man with a broken leg, and his worry about the Talbots being in the stable, he had given no thought to Benton.

Hurley could not leave him. He would have to stay on, he would have to stay and face the Talbots whether they were in the stable or not.

He had escaped death in the storm to trap himself here, a sitting duck to be killed whenever they came upon the place, and he had no chance.

He got out of the bunk and walked to the window. The wind had died down, and here and there he could see a break in the clouds. The barn was a low, squat hovel almost buried in snow. No tracks led to or from it, but there need be no tracks now, for it had blown snow long after they would have entered.

Angrily, he stared at the barn. And then he thought of the obvious idea. He had no business here at all. Suppose the old man had fallen when here alone? He would get along, wouldn't he? Suppose no one had been here to carry Benton in out of the snow? He would be dead by now. By bringing him in, Hurley had repaid Benton for whatever shelter he had gotten here. From now on they were quits and he could leave.

Only he could not go.

He picked up the Spencer, then put it down. If somebody was inside, the length of the rifle would be more of a handicap. What he needed was his pistol.

Hurley paused inside the door, taking a deep breath. Why was he going out there? Was he going to get his horse and run?

He was no gunman, he was a farmer, and all he wanted to be was a farmer. Suddenly he knew why he was going out there, and it was very simple. He was going out to feed the stock, just as any farmer would do on any winter morning.

His
stock?

For the first time he thought of his own stock. The cattle were loose to roam, and they were used to bad weather, and this snow wasn't so deep but what they could scratch through it for grass, and there were several haystacks to which he always let down the bars when he left the ranch. The chance of their coming to the stacks was slight, for usually they stayed well out on the range, but if they did there was feed.

Except for his horses, which were all in stalls, in the barn. He had told Anderson he was going into town, and Anderson would water them if he did not see Hurley return before dark. Anderson was a careful man, and he would realize at once that something had gone wrong, hearing the story as soon as anyone. He would care for the horses.

Standing there in the door, Hurley remembered the house he had built with his own hands, the cattle he owned, the horses, fine stock they were, that he had left behind. Benton was right. He would never have as much again.

Opening the door, he stepped outside into the cold.

The sky was clearing off, and there was a red glow in the east that told him dawn was only minutes away. Facing the barn, Hurley strode toward it. Inside his coat he held his .44, the gun concealed, the hand warmed by contact with his body.

At the barn door he stopped.

There was snow on the door, snow around it. No sign that it had been disturbed since he left it the night before. Unlatching the door he swung it wide, and pulling the .44 from under his coat, he stepped quickly into the barn.

It was, he thought as he took the step, a melodramatic, obvious thing to do. And perfectly foolish, of course, for as he entered the darkness of the barn, he was silhouetted against the snow outside.… He moved quickly to one side.

Nothing happened.

From stall to stall he went, and there was no one there. He put his pistol back in its holster and went about feeding and watering the stock. When he had finished, he came out and closed the door behind him. He stood for a minute in the still, cold air watching his breath, and he remembered how long he had been tortured by doubt, how long he had watched the barn, fearing the Talbots might be there.

Was all fear like that? Was it all, or most of it, just imagination? Was Benton right, after all, and the way to meet fear was head-on?

He walked back to the house. On the steps he paused to stomp the snow from his boots. As he did so the door swept open and Benton stood there with a leveled rifle.

Only the rifle was held steady against the doorjamb, and it was pointed past his head at the ranch yard behind him.

Hurley looked up and saw the grim look on the old man's face, saw the old man had dragged himself from bed to cover him while he fed the stock. But he saw much more. Benton was looking past him and Benton said, “
Hold it!
Hold it right there!”

Hurley knew death then. He knew the Talbots were behind him, and he knew there were four of them, and he knew he was fairly caught.

But he was calm.

That, of all things, was the most astonishing. There were, he knew in that moment, worse things than death, and there were few things worse than fear itself.

He turned slowly. “It's my fight, Benton,” he said. “You get back in bed.”

He stepped down off the step. He was scared. He was really scared, and yet somehow it was not as bad as he had expected. He looked at the four shivering men on their horses, and he smiled. “Are you boys looking for me?” he asked.

They hesitated … they were cold and shaky from having spent the night in whatever pitiful shelter had been available out on the prairie. And this man had beaten Jake to the draw, and that bullet had gone dead center. It was one thing to chase down a running man, another to face a man who was ready to fight.

“Jake Talbot was riding a horse stolen from me,” Hurley spoke loud in the still air. “When I asked him about it he went for his gun. He asked for it and he got it. Now if you boys have anything to say, have at it.”

Joe Talbot looked him over more carefully. They had figured they had him on the run, but he did not look scared now. Not none at all.

They could get him; they were four guns to one. Or two if that old man with the rifle declared himself in, but that fool Hurley, he might just get one of them, or even two while they were killing him. They had taken this ride to kill a man, not to be killed themselves, and each one had deep within him the feeling that the first one to pull a gun would be the one to die.

Silence hung in the still, cold air. A horse stamped a hoof impatiently.

“Jake must have bought that horse off a thief,” Joe Talbot said, at last. “We don't know anything about it.”

It was a retreat, and Hurley was wise enough to recognize it. He took a step nearer to them. “You have that horse back at my place Monday morning,” he said, “and we'll call it quits. Understand?”

They did not like it. They knew what was happening to them and they did not like it at all. After this there could be no more tough talk—folks simply wouldn't pay any attention. They were being backed down and they knew it, but no one of them wanted to be the man to die.

“No need for neighbors to fight,” Joe Talbot said. “We didn't have the straight of it.”

Joe Talbot made a move, finally, but it was to turn his horse toward the gate. And when he turned, the others turned with him.

“Talbot?”

Joe turned his head carefully to look at Hurley. “Stop by Anderson's and ask him to feed my stock, will you? I've got to take care of my friend here. He's got a broken leg.”

At the gate one of the Talbots got down from the saddle and closed the gate carefully, then they rode off, together. It looked like they were not very talkative.

“Hurley?” It was Benton. “Come inside and close the door! You're freezin' the place up! Besides, I want some breakfast.”

Hurley stomped his feet again and stepped up in the doorway. He glanced back at the sky. The clouds were blowing off to the north and the sun had already started the icicles dripping. One thing you could say for this country, it didn't take long to clear up.

Get Out of Town

Ma said for me to ride into town and hire a man to help with the cows. More than likely she figured I'd hire Johnny Loftus or Ed Shifrin, but I had no liking for either of them. Johnny used to wink and call Ma “that widder woman” and Ed, he worked no harder than he had to. Man I hired I'd never seen before.

He wasn't much to look at, first off. He was smaller than Johnny Loftus by twenty pound, and Johnny was only a mite more than half of Ed Shifrin, and this stranger was older than either. Fact is, he was pushing forty, but he had a hard, grainy look that made me figure he'd been up the creek and over the mountain.

He wouldn't weigh over a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet, which he wasn't likely to be in this country, and his face was narrow and dark with black eyes that sized you up careful-like before he spoke. He was a-settin' on the platform down to the depot with his saddle and a war bag that looked mighty empty like he was shy of clothes. He was not saying I, yes, or no to anybody when I rode up to town on that buckskin Pa gave me before he was shot down in the street.

Pa let me have the pick of the horses for sale in the town corral, and I taken a fancy to a paint filly with a blaze face.

“Son”—Pa was hunkered down on his heels watching the horses—“that filly wouldn't carry you over the hill. She looks mighty pert, but what a man wants to find in horses or partners is stayin' quality. He wants a horse he can ride all day and all night that will still be with him at sunup.

“Now you take that buckskin. He's tough and he's got savvy. Horse or men, son, pick 'em tough and with savvy. Don't pay no attention to the showy kind. Pick 'em to last. Pick 'em to go all the way.”

Well, I taken the buckskin, and Pa was right. Looking at that man setting on the edge of the platform I decided he was the man we wanted. I gave no further thought to Johnny or Ed.

“Mister,” I said, “are you rustling work?”

He turned those black eyes on me and studied me right careful. I was pushing fourteen, but I'd been man of the house for nigh three years now. It didn't seem to make no difference to him that I was a wet-eared boy.

“Now I just might be. What work do you have?”

“Ma and me have a little outfit over against the foothills. We figured to roust our cattle out of the canyons and bring 'em down to sell. There's a month of work, maybe more. We'd pay thirty a month and found and if I do say so, Ma is the best cook anywheres around.”

He looked at me out of those black, careful eyes and he asked me, “You always hire strangers?”

“No, sir. We usually hire Johnny Loftus or Ed Shifrin or one of the loafers around town, but when I saw you I figured to hire you.” The way he looked at me was beginning to worry me some.

“Why me?” he asked.

So I told him what Pa said when we bought the buckskin, and for the first time he smiled. His eyes warmed and his face crinkled up and laugh wrinkles showed at the corners of his eyes where they must have been sleeping all the time. “Your pa was a right smart man, son. I'd be proud to work for you.”

We started for the livery stable to get him a horse to ride out to the ranch, and Ed Shifrin was in front of the saloon. He noticed me and then the man who walked beside me.

“Tom,” Ed said, “about time your ma started the roundup. You want I should come out?”

Did me good to tell him, the way he'd loafed on the job and come it high and mighty over me. “I done hired me a man, Ed.”

Shifrin came down off the walk. “You shouldn't have done that. The Coopers ain't goin' to like a stranger proddin' around among their cows.” He turned to the man I hired. “Stranger, you just light a shuck. I'll do the roundin' up.”

The man I'd hired didn't seem a mite bothered. “The boy hired me,” he said. “If he don't want me he can fire me.”

Ed wasn't inclined to be talked up to. “You're a stranger hereabouts or you'd know better. There's been range trouble and the Coopers don't take kindly to strangers among their stock.”

“They'll get used to it,” he said, and we walked away up the street.

About then I started worrying about what I'd done. We'd tried to avoid trouble. “The Coopers,” I told him, “they're the biggest outfit around here. They sort of run things.”

“Who runs your place?”

“Well. Me, sort of. Ma and me. Only she leaves it to me, because she says a boy without a father has to learn to manage for himself.”

We walked on maybe twenty yards before he said anything, and then he just said, “Seems to me you've had uncommon smart folks, boy.”

Old Man Taylor brought out the sorrel for us. While the stranger was saddling up and I sat there enjoying the warm sunshine and the barn smells of horses and hay and leather, Old Man Taylor came to where I sat the saddle and he asked me low-voiced, “Where'd you find him?”

“Down to the depot. He was rustling work and I was looking for a man.”

Old Man Taylor was a man noted for staying out of trouble, yet he had been friendly to Pa. “Boy, you've hired yourself a man. Now you and your ma get set for fireworks.”

What he meant I didn't know, nor did it make any kind of sense to me. My hired man came out with the sorrel and he swung into the saddle and we went back down the street. Only he was wearing chaps now and looked more the rider, but somehow he was different from any cowhand I could remember.

We were almost to the end of the street when the sheriff came out of the saloon, followed by Ed Shifrin. He walked into the street and stopped us.

“Tom”—he was abrupt like always—“your ma isn't going to like you hiring this stranger.”

“Ma tells me to hire whom I've a mind to. I hired this man and I wouldn't fire any man without he gives me cause.”

Sheriff Ben Russell was a hard old man with cold blue eyes and a brusque, unfriendly way about him, but I noticed he cottoned up to the Coopers. “Boy, this man is just out of prison. You get rid of him.”

“I'll not hold it against him. I hired him and if he doesn't stack up, I'll fire him.”

My hired hand had sat real quiet up to now. “Sheriff,” he said, “you just back up and leave this boy alone. He sizes up like pretty much of a man and it begins to look like he really needs outside help. Seems to me there must be a reason folks want to keep a stranger out of the country.”

Sheriff Ben Russell was mad as I'd ever seen him. “You can get yourself right back in jail,” he said; “you're headed for it.”

My hired man was slow to rile. He looked right back at the sheriff with those cold black eyes and he said, “Sheriff, you don't know who I am or why I was in prison. You recognized this prison-made suit. Before you start shaping up trouble for me, you go tell Pike Cooper to come see me first.”

Nobody around our country knew a Cooper called Pike, but it was plain to see the sheriff knew who he meant and was surprised to hear him called so. He said, “Where'd you know Cooper?”

“You tell him. I figure he'll know me.”

Seven miles out of town we forded the creek and I showed him with a sweep of the hand. “Our land begins here and runs back into the hills. Our stock has a way of getting into the canyons this time of year.”

“Seems plenty of good grass down here.”

“This here is deeded land,” I told him. “Pa, he always said the day of free range was over, so he bought homesteads from several folks who had proved up, and he filed on land himself. These are all grazing claims, but two of them have good water holes and the stock fattens up mighty well.”

When we rode into the ranch yard Ma came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron. She looked at the new rider and I knew she was surprised not to see Ed or Johnny.

The hired man got down from his saddle and removed his hat. Neither Johnny or Ed had ever done that.

“The boy hired me, ma'am, but if you'd rather I'd not stay I'll ride back to town. You see, I've been in prison.”

Ma looked at him for a moment, but all she said was, “Tom does the hiring. I feel he should have the responsibility.”

“And rightly so, ma'am.” He hesitated ever so little. “My name is Riley, ma'am.”

Ma said, “Supper's ready. There's a kettle of hot water for washing.”

We washed our hands in the tin basin and while he was drying his hands on the towel, Riley said, “You didn't tell me your ma was so pretty.”

“I didn't figure there was reason to,” I said, kind of stiff.

He took a quick look at me and then he said, “You're right, boy. It's none of my business.” Then after a minute he said, “Only it surprised me.”

“She was married when she was shy of sixteen,” I said.

Supper was a quiet meal. With a stranger at table there were things we didn't feel up to talking about, and you don't ask questions of a man who has been in jail. We made some polite talk about the lack of rain, and how the water on the ranch was permanent, and when he'd finished eating he said, “Mind if I smoke?”

Reckon that was the first time in a while anybody had asked Ma a question like that. Pa, he just took it for granted and other men who came around just lit up and said nothing, but the way Ma acted you'd have thought it was every day. She said, “Please do.” It sounded right nice, come to think of it.

“You been getting good returns on your cattle?”

“The calf crop has been poor the last two, three years, but Ed and Johnny said it was because there were so many lions in the mountains. You have to expect to lose some to lions.”

“Good range,” Riley said, “and plenty of water. I'd say you should make out.”

When he had gone to the bunkhouse Ma started picking up the dishes. “How did you happen to hire him, Tom?”

So I told her about the buckskin and what I thought when I saw this man, and she smiled. “I think you learned your lesson well, Tom. I think he is a good man.” And then she added, “He may have been in prison, but he had good upbringing.”

Coming from Ma there was not much more she could have said. She set great store by proper upbringing.

A while after, I told her about the talk with Ed Shifrin and Sheriff Russell, and when I came to the part about Riley telling Russell to tell Cooper to come see him, I could see that worried her. Cooper had some tough hands working for him and we didn't want them around.

Year after Pa was killed, some of them tried to court Ma, but she put a stop to that right off.

 

Come daylight just as I was pulling on a boot I heard an ax, and when I looked from behind the curtain I saw it was Riley at the woodpile. Right off I could see he was a hand with an ax, but what surprised me was him doing it at all, because most cowhands resent any but riding work, even digging postholes.

The way it worked out we rode away from the place an hour earlier than I'd ever been able to with Ed or Johnny, and by noon we had hazed seventy head down on the flat, but we were mighty shy of young stuff. Whatever else he was, I'd hired a hand. He was up on Pa's bay gelding and he knew how to sit a cutting horse and handle a rope.

Next three days we worked like all getout. Riley was up early and working late, and I being boss couldn't let him best me, but working with him was like working with Pa, for we shared around and helped each other and I never did see a man learn country faster than he did. Time to time he'd top out on high ground and then he'd set a spell and study the country. Sometimes he'd ask questions. Mostly, he just looked.

Third day we had built us a hatful of fire for coffee and shucked the wrappings off the lunches Ma fixed. “You said your pa was killed. How'd it happen?”

“Ma and me didn't see it. Pa had been to the Coopers' on business and when he got back to town he picked up some dress goods for Ma and a few supplies. He was tying the sack on the saddle when he had a difficulty with a stranger. The stranger shot him.”

“Was your pa wearing a gun?”

“Yes, sir. Pa always wore a gun, but not to use on no man. He carried it for varmints or to shoot the horse if he got thrown and his foot caught in the stirrup.”

“You hear that stranger's name?”

“Yes, sir. His name was Cad Miller.”

That afternoon we ran into Ed Shifrin and Johnny Loftus. First time I'd seen them up thataway except when working for us, but they were coming down the draw just as we put out our fire.

Riley heard them coming before I did, but he looked around at the mountainside like he was expecting somebody else. He looked most careful at the trees and rocks where a man might take cover.

Both of them were armed, but if Riley had a gun I had seen no sign of it. He wore that buckskin jacket that hung even with his belt, but there might have been a gun in his waistband under the jacket. But I didn't think of guns until later.

“You still around?” Shifrin sounded like he was building trouble. “I figured you'd be run out before this.”

“I like it here.” Riley talked pleasant-like. “Pretty country, nice folks. Not as many cows as a man would expect, but they're fat.”

“What d' you mean by that? Not as many cows as you'd expect?”

“Maybe I should have said calves. Not as many calves as a man would expect, but by the time the roundup is over we'll find what happened to the others.”

Shifrin looked over at Johnny. “What about the kid?”

Johnny shrugged. “To hell with the kid.”

The way they talked back and forth made no sense to me, but it made sense to Riley. “Was I you,” Riley said, “I'd be mighty sure Cooper wants it this way. With the kid, and all.”

“What d' you mean by that?”

“Why, it just won't work. There's no way you can make it look right. The kid doesn't carry a gun. You boys don't know your business like you should.”

“Maybe you know it better?” Johnny sounded mean.