Guns Of the Timberlands (1955) (11 page)
Read Guns Of the Timberlands (1955) Online
Authors: Louis L'amour
The Homestake had been big, too, and going all night. The old Diamond Palace had burned down twelve years ago, the night of the big wind when most of the town was snuffed out like a candle.
His thoughts returned to the present. Noble Wheeler had gone to the hills with a rifle, and he had never been known to do any shooting before. Never even hunted deer or sage hens. And he was not known to possess a rifle. Showed you never really knew about a man.
One idea led to another, and this was Sam Tinker's night for ideas. Somebody had told Devitt about that timber on Deep Creek. It was not known to many away from the town itself. It was not easily seen. Somebody knew it was there, somebody who knew Devitt needed timber.
Sam Tinker heaved himself erect and walked into the hotel. Beat all what a man could learn, "jest settin'." Folks wasted a lot of time and tired a lot of horseflesh just gallivantin' around the country. Thing to do was "set to home" and keep your eyes and ears open. Only ask questions when you had to. That was the ticket. Most folks admired to talk. Just get them started and set by, they'd tell you all they knew or suspected, soon or late.
Sam Tinker had no liking for Noble Wheeler. Nor for Jud Devitt. More important, he had a warm affection for Clay Bell.
Wheeler believed he knew a lot about Bell. In outward facts, he knew a good bit. But he could have learned by listening to Sam Tinker, who understood Clay, and who knew on what shaky ground both Devitt and Wheeler walked.
Had he not liked him before, he would have begun the day he saw Devitt's lumberjacks, who had been swaggering big around the town, come beefing it into town on their swollen and bloody feet.
The story had set the whole town to chuckling. Like Bell or not, and most people did, he was one of their own. Jim Narrows had passed the story down the wire until there were a lot of people laughing in Santa Fe and Las Vegas, and even Denver. Clay Bell had walked Jud Devitt's tough lumberjacks over twenty miles of desert in their sock feet. It was a story worth telling.
They heard it in Dodge, and there were some who were not surprised. "Know that boy," Bob Wright said. "They got off easy."
Sam Tinker sat in his nightly pinochle game with Jim Narrows, Ed Miller, and the postmaster. Pinochle helped him to think.
Jud Devitt was across the room, sitting over dinner with Judge Riley and his daughter. Jud had become aware during the day that he was losing prestige in Tinkersville. Not that it mattered, except to his ego. This was a small town in a backwater of the West--and he would show them. In his pocket was an appointment for a Deputy U. S. Marshal.
Yet despite the satisfaction of that appointment that rested in his pocket, to confer upon whom he liked, Devitt was not pleased. Judge Riley was not talkative tonight. He seemed preoccupied. And Colleen was, if not cool, at least no more talkative than her father.
Several times Devitt tried to warm up the conversation and guide it down pleasant channels, but without success. Colleen excused herself and retired to her room. Judge Riley crossed the room to watch Sam Tinker and his cronies at their pinochle game. Restless and irritable, Jud Devitt got to his feet and walked outside.
He had made his decision as to the marshal. It would be Morton Schwabe. The Dutchman disliked Bell, but Judge Riley, who would be asked to recommend the appointment, could not know that. The appointment of a local man who knew conditions was what Riley wanted.
The night was cool. He walked slowly clown the street toward the corrals. If all panned out as he hoped, this situation would soon be right in the palm of his hand. But what else might Bell have up his sleeve? Irritably, Devitt looked at his dead cigar. The man had an uncanny way of planning ahead.
Colleen was not in bed. She had gone to her room, but she stood now beside the window looking out into the night.
She had changed. The few weeks that she had lived in Tinkersville had brought about a change in her feelings such as she had experienced in no previous period of her life. It was not only her feelings toward Jud, although they, too, had altered. It was something within herself. Her own world, the world of cities and parties and gaiety, seemed suddenly far away and very empty. Out here--she looked into the night and toward the lonely stars--it was different. She felt different, she was different.
Her friends had warned her against going west. She would be bored in a small town. There would be nothing to do. Jud would be busy. She had come on her own decision, overcoming Jud's objections and those of her father. And she was glad she had come.
The wind from the desert was soft. It brought intangible scents--sage, distant wood fire, the coolness of night. Somewhere a horse stamped and blew, and a tin-panny piano sounded from the saloon down the street, from the Homes take.
Down the street were empty buildings, and the foundations of those destroyed in the Fire. They always spoke of it so, for the Fire had been the biggest thing in their lives here, and it had been the final culmination of the mining boom. During her days in the town, while Jud and her father were busy, she had walked much and listened a lot. Dr. McClean was a man who enjoyed talking, and especially to a pretty woman. Sometimes when she helped him with Bert Garry she had listened to his talking of the old days. Once she had asked him about Bell.
"Clay?" The doctor paused, and seemed to be considering. "Colleen, he's a fine man. Sincere, hard-working. He drives himself harder than his men, but he's got a vein of poetry in him, too. And something else."
She waited, and when he did not speak again she adjusted the blanket over Garry, who was in a troubled sleep, aided by something the doctor had given him.
"Something else?"
"Yes . . . you remember the stories of the old Vikings? How they went berserk in battle? Clay's like that. He can be a cold, methodical, dangerous fighter up to a point, and then he goes completely hog-wild and reckless. Like the other night when he charged that campfire. The man would charge hell with a bucket of water."
"You like him, don't you?"
"Like him?" Dr. McClean paused briefly. "You bet I do."
Chapter
11
Unable to sleep, Clay Bell was out of bed before the first light touched the tip of Piety. He got into his jeans and struggled into his boots. From where he sat on the edge of the bed he could look down the dark valley where the only light was the thin white streak of the trail to Tinkersville.
He sat very still, feeling the silence. He must get into town and see Garry.
Straightening to his feet, he walked outside and splashed cold water over the upper half of his body, then dipped his head in the bucket and dried himself with a rough towel. He was combing his hair when he heard a door slam and then the splash of water. Mahafee was up and busy.
Clay got into his shirt, and buckled on his gun belts. From the veranda he looked down valley, but there was as yet no light near the camp of Devitt's men. He crossed the hard-packed earth of the ranchyard, feeling the cold air coming down the pass. A rectangle of light showed at the kitchen window.
He gathered an armful of wood and carried it into the kitchen and dumped it into the box. Mahafee dried his hands on his apron and picked up the coffee pot. Without speaking, he filled a thick white mug with coffee and put it on the table. The kitchen smelled of woodsmoke, steam, and the fresh coffee. There was a comforting warmth from the woodstove.
Mahafee never talked at this hour and Bell respected the cook's feelings. Sitting down at the oilcloth-covered table, Bell tried to assay his position. Early morning, the kitchen sounds, and the warm fire seemed to help him think. He must have supplies, and if the fight were to continue he must have more hands, men who would fight. And who could fight.
The black coffee was scalding hot. He touched it to his lips, then took it hastily away. Putting the cup down, he looked at his hands. He flexed the fingers on his right hand, feeling no pain. His shoulder was better, but far from well.
It was no use to think or plan now. So much depended on what Devitt did. Bell was irritated at leaving the initiative to him, but there was nothing else to do. And when he thought of Devitt his thoughts inevitably turned to Colleen.
It was impossible that she could love the man--yet why not? Love did strange things to people, and Devitt was a handsome man, if an obviously selfish one. Did she know he was entirely self-centered? Because he knew, that was no evidence that she perceived it.
Where would Judge Riley stand in the days to come? He had come to town with Devitt; apparently he was Devitt's man. Yet there was a strength to Riley's face that Bell detected beneath its seeming softness--a quiet man, not necessarily a pliable man.
He tried the coffee again. Still hot. Outside, footsteps crunched in the yard, and he heard the sound of the corral bars. That would be Hank Rooney. Hank always began his day by saddling a horse.
Hot cakes sputtered on the griddle and Bell could smell beef frying. Outside the window he could see a faint yellow above the rim of the far hills.
"Boss?"
Mahafee ran red work-coarsened hands over the flour-sack apron. "Boss, we'll be needin' grub. Short on flour an' coffee, mighty low on sugar. Need most everything else."
Clay flexed his hand again. Not reliable yet for a fast gun. He had always been ambidextrous, however, and his left hand was in good working order. But a trip to town for supplies was a vastly different thing from a trip to Doc McClean's. It meant loading a wagon in the street or behind the store. A perfect time for the lumberjacks' trouble-making efforts.
"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. Shorty 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.