Treasure Mountain (1972) (27 page)

Nothing ... nothing at all.

A brief, utterly futile battle. A moment of desperate struggle, and then nothing.

Yet I should have known. He was a sure-thing killer, who could stab the wounded and helpless Pierre, who could shoot my father from ambush and then lurk, waiting for days for a final shot.

He had thought to kill me there in the darkness, coming at me suddenly, yet I had been ready. And I had nicked him. Of that I was sure.

After a moment I walked back. "I believe I scratched him," I said and explained.

At the edge of the cliff where he had said my father's body was hidden, I hesitated. It was the very edge, and there looked to have been some crumbling.

Probably the result of the tree roots.

There was a crack, all right, and some dirt had been filled in. Orrin came closer, holding a burning branch in his left hand. I leaned over to look closer, put my foot on the outer edge of the crack and leaned still further, astride the crack.

Suddenly there was a grating sound, the outer edge fell away under my foot and I felt myself falling. Half-turning I made a futile grab at anything, the rock crumbling from under my feet.

A hand caught mine, the branch dropped, another hand grabbed my sleeve, and I was hauled up on the ledge.

There was a moment when I said nothing. I looked over into the terrible void of blackness behind me, listening to the last particles of rock fall, strike, and rattle away on the last slope.

"Thanks," I said.

"It was a trap," Orrin said dryly. "There's more than one way to kill a man."

Chapter
XXVIII

We still had no idea who the killer was. He was somebody who fancied he'd a claim on all that gold, and he was bound and determined to keep everybody else away and to have it all for himself.

At daylight we took a look at the place where I'd almost gone over. There was no evidence to show that a body had ever been there. I reckon the killer had seen the place, figured it was ready to collapse, and just used it on chance.

A woodsman is forever noticing small things like that. He'll have in his mind many possible camps that he'll never have time to use, and he'll notice tangles to avoid, things a man might trip over, and bad footing generally. After a time a man takes all these things in without really thinking about it. But if something is out of place he will see it instantly.

Judas fixed us bacon and eggs from the outfit he'd brought up the trail. It wasn't often we had eggs unless setting down at table, but Judas was a planning man, and he'd packed for good cooking. When we finished I took my Winchester, shifted into moccasins, and walked out to where we'd had our scuffle the night before.

There were tracks aplenty, but might few of them a body could read, for we'd fought mostly on crushed-down grass and flowers, and some of them were already springing back into place.

After a while I found a couple of fair prints. It was the same boot I'd seen on the trail, and I worked around, trying to pick up sign that would take me where he was going. Trailing a man like that would be like trailing an old silvertip grizzly. He'd be watching his back trail and would be apt to see me before I saw him, and that wasn't pleasant to contemplate.

Not that I had anybody to mourn much for me but brothers. Ange was dead, the other girls I'd known were scattered and gone, but I could do some mourning for myself. It seemed to me I had a lot of living to do and no particular desire to cash in my chips up here in Cumberland Basin.

Nevertheless, I poked around. He'd taken off in an almighty hurry, not scared, mind you, but lacking that extra percentage he always had to have. When he took those first steps he'd be getting away, not thinking of hiding a trail. By his third or fourth step he'd be thinking of that, if I knew my man.

Sure enough, I found a toe print, gouged deep. I followed a few bruised blades of grass, the edge of a heel print, a crushed pine cone, and a slip in a muddy place, and I came through a patch of scattered spruce and into the open beyond.

I had to pull up short. Chances were nine out of ten he'd changed direction right there. So I scouted around and after a few minutes worked out a trail down into the hollow that lay on the east side of the basin. He had gone down into it, then switched on a fallen log, walked its length, and started back up to the ridge.

By night he couldn't see what he'd done, but crushed grass or leaves had left a greenish smudge atop that log in two places. He had stepped on the log and grass from his boots had stuck it, just as a body will track dirt and the like into a house.

Four or five places in the next hundred yards or so took me along a diagonal route to the high-line trail. That Ghost Trail, as some called it. A pebble kicked from its place on the muddy path and a couple of partial tracks showed me he was following along the trail.

This here was rifle country, most of it wide open, for the trees give out in the high-up country. Trees were scattered hither and yon, singly or in bunches, among some brush. Higher up the only trees had been barbered by the wind until they looked like upturned brushes. Then there was grass and bare rock, the far-away mountains on every hand, and over all the sky, always scattered with white clouds.

If that hidin' man was in a swivet to get himself killed he'd have to bring it to me. Generally speaking I'm not a techous man, taking most things calm. When a man is about to get shot at he'd better be calm. As much as he can be, at least.

Nobody looks favorably on the idea of being shot at.

Trouble was, it was such all-fired pretty country, a man had trouble keeping his mind to it. And quiet? No sound but maybe an eagle, some distance off.

You'd think that in a bald out country like that there'd be no place to hide, but there were places, and any one of them might hide that man. He'd held to the path--a wise man holds to what trails he can find in the mountains. I picked up sign here and there. He'd slowed down, and a couple of times he'd stopped to catch breath or to ponder.

He knew come daybreak I'd be seekin' his sign. I never minced about shootin' when it had come to that. Back in the Tennessee hills nobody did. Many a girl back yonder bloused her waist to carry a pistol, and we Sackett boys had been toting shootin' irons since we were as tall as pa's belt.

A man walked wary facin' up to a man like this one, so I held my rifle in two hands and kept it right up there where I could shoot without wasting time.

The trail led past a couple of small pools of water, then took a sharp right-hand switch to go out along the ridge toward the north. Spread out before me was a sight of beautiful country that I knowed nothing about but tell of.

Folks around had talked of it. I'd heard some talk from Cap Rountree when we were up on the Vallecitos that time, and from others here and there. I was looking down Magnetic Gulch toward Bear Creek, and the bear-toothed mountains opposite were Sharkstooth Peak, Banded Mountain, and beyond it the peak of Hesperus.

From where I stood she dropped off some two thousand feet to the bottoms along Bear Creek. I was twelve thousand feet up. I hunkered down behind some rocks, sort of sizing things up before I moved out.

An eagle soared yonder toward the Sharkstooth, and as I looked, some elk came out of the trees into open country and moved across a bench toward the north of the gulch. Now something had moved those elk ... they weren't just a-playin'

"Skip to My Lou." They hied themselves across the clearin' and into the trees.

Might be a bear or a lion, they grow them big in these hills, especially the grizzlies. The grizzly was big, and, when riled, he was mean, but he wouldn't last--because he was fearless. Until the white man came along with his rifle-guns the grizzly was king of the world. He walked where he had a mind to, and nobody trifled with his temper. He couldn't get used to man, although lately he'd become cautious. Maybe too late.

The ridge trail led along the west side of the mountain along here. A man with a rifle would have to be a good shot, used to mountain country.

I stood up and went down into the trees just north of the gulch. When I got into the trees I hunkered down and listened. There was only the wind, the eternal wind, moving along the high-up peaks, liking them as much as we did.

The grass smelled good. I looked at the rough, gray bark of an old tree, peeling a mite here and there. I saw where a pika had been feeding, and I looked off down the sunlit slope and saw nothing. Then I turned toward the dark clump of spruce further down the slope. I felt suddenly hungry and I stood up and put my left hand into my pocket for some jerky.

I put my rifle down against a limb and boosted the bottom of the pocket a little to get at the jerky. And then from behind me I heard that voice. "Got you, Sackett! Turn around and die!"

Well, I didn't figure he meant to sing me no lullabies, nor the words to "Darlin' Cory," so when I turned around my hand was movin' and I hauled out that ol' .44, eared her back and let 'er bang.

He had a rifle and when I turned I was lookin' right down the barrel. I just said to myself, Tell Sackett, you'll die like your pa done, lonesomelike and hunted down. But that .44 was a pretty good gun. She knew her piece and she spoke it, clear and sharp. I felt the whiff of his bullet.

He'd missed. The best of us do it, but a body hadn't better do so when the chips are down and you've laid out your hand on the table with no way but to win or die.

My bullet took him. It took him right where he lives, and the second one done the same like it wanted company.

He couldn't believe he could miss. Maybe he was too sure of it. I stood there, a long, tall man from the Tennessee hills with my pistol in my fist, and I watched him go.

He wanted to shoot again, but that first shot had done something to him, cut his spinal cord, maybe, for his hands kind of opened up and the rifle slided into the grass.

"Nativity Pettigrew," I said, "where did you bury pa?"

His voice was hoarse. "There's a green hillside where a creek runs down at the base of Banded Mountain. You'll find him there at the foot of a rock, a finger that points at the sky, and if you look sharp you'll find his grave and the marker I carved with my hands.

"He had my gold and he had to die, but there's no gainsaying he tried ... I liked him, lad, but I shot him dead and buried him there where he fell.

"Beat as he was, and wounded bad, he crawled over the mountain to get me. It was him or me, there at the last, and I carry the lead he gave me."

He lay there dying, his eyes open wide to the sun, and I hated him not. He'd played a rough game and, when the last cards were laid down, he lost. But it might have been me.

"When we get the gold out, I'll give some to your wife. She's a good woman," I told him.

"Please," he said.

He died there, and I'd bury him where he fell.

When I came up to the campfire, they were sitting around and waiting. Flagan was there, who'd come up from Shalako, riding a mouse-colored horse.

"You'll have to forget Hippo Swan," Orrin said. "He came hunting you to Shalako, and Flagan said you weren't the only Sackett, and they fought."

"Sorry, Tell," Flagan said, "but he'd come wanting and I'd not see him go the same way. He fought well but his skin cut too easy, and now he's gone down the road feelin' bad."

"We found the gold, too," Orrin said. "Remember what pa said about me always wanting the cream of things and about the distance to the old well and how many times ma scolded me for it.

"Well, I got to thinking. That word cream did it. Remember how we used the well to keep our milk cold? When I was a youngster I used to go out and skim the cream off. Ma was always after me about it. Well, this was the same kind of place--a hole in the rocks--about the same distance away as the well.

"He'd laid rocks back into the hole, threw dirt and such at it, I guess. Anyway, we pulled out the stones and there she was. More than enough to buy us land and cattle to match Tyrel's."

I sat there, saying nothing, and they all looked at me. Then Orrin said, "What happened to you?"

"It was Nativity Pertigrew," I said. "Not so crippled up as he made out. Pa followed him--maybe a mile out there, or more. He crawled up on him and they swapped shots. Pa got lead into him but pa was killed, and Nativity buried him yonder on the slope of Banded Mountain."

"Kind of him," Orrin said, and I agreed.

"We'll do the same for him," I said. "Where he lies we'll put him down. What was it pa used to say? 'Where the chips fall, there let them lie.' "

Nell Trelawney stood up. "Are you going home now, Tell? It's time."

"I reckon," I said, and we went to our horses together.

About the Author Louis L'Amour, born Louis Dearborn L'Amour, is of French-Irish descent. Although Mr. L'Amour claims his writing began as a "spur-of-the-moment thing" prompted by friends who relished his verbal tales of the West, he comes by his talent honestly. A frontiersman by heritage (his grandfather was scalped by the Sioux), and a universal man by experience, Louis L'Amour lives the life of his fictional heroes. Since leaving his native Jamestown, North Dakota, at the age of fifteen, he's been a longshoreman, lumberjack, elephant handler, hay shocker, flume builder, fruit picker, and an officer on tank destroyers during World War II.