Louis L'Amour (21 page)

“I must go,” she said. “I must go or I will be too late.”

She turned to Matty. “Don’t let Peg see him. Please don’t.”

Ridge Fenton was at the door. “Don’t worry, we’ll have him out of sight in no time. Won’t do to have him lyin’ there when those others come in with the stage.”

He looked at her again. “Are you comin’ back, ma’am? I mean, after you tell them?”

“If I can, Mr. Fenton, if I can.”

She had forgotten how good a horse Nimrod was, and even after so long a time, he seemed to recognize his name and even her.

As she left the station, Wat came out to her. “Ma’am, there’s a trail through the woods. They won’t see you if you take it, and it’s quicker. Cut the time by maybe fifteen minutes!”

She was gone, making the turn into the brush at the point mentioned. Actually, what Wat called a woods was merely a few scattered trees and some patches of brush along some low ground where there had once been a stream. Yet the old trail was good, and Nimrod fancied it. She started off at a good pace and kept the horse to it. One thing she was thankful for. Jordy Neff had known a good horse and had cared for it.

She left her horse tethered behind the house and came in through the garden. The first person she met was Regina, who was coming down a stairway from the rooms above.

“You! What in the world—!”

“Where is your father? I must see him at once!”

Mutely, Regina pointed toward the library and stepped aside.

Mark Stacy, Preston Collier, and Sgt. Barry Owen were there. Swiftly and as concisely as she could, she explained the situation.

“You mean to tell me you believe they will attack
here
?” Collier inquired skeptically.

“It’s like them, sir,” Owen said. “Mrs. Breydon knows them, sir, as I do. They’re a bad lot.”

The stage rolled in, and the passengers dismounted. Quickly, four of the soldiers got in. “The rest of you wait here. We’ll go down around the bend, drop into that fold in the hills, and then we’ll get out and come back. Maybe we can settle it all right here.”

Inside the house, Preston Collier opened his gun cases. He had his own assortment of weapons, hunting rifles, and shotguns. He doled them out, passing cartridges to each one. “Take them alive if we can, but only if we can!”

The stage was scarcely out of sight before three men appeared on the trail, walking their horses. Two more showed at the edge of the park to the east of the house. Then two more riders. The first three continued on along the road until past the house, then turned and trotted their horses forward. The other two turned off abruptly, rode up to the gate, and the two dismounted and came up to the door and knocked.

Now several other riders appeared in view.

Preston Collier opened the door wide, and the two men had guns in their hands. They stared into the muzzles of four double-barreled shotguns. “You’d better drop those guns,” Mark Stacy advised.

Nobody but a fool would have taken the chance, and these men were not fools.

“Now just come on in very quietly. Leave the door open for the others. We mustn’t appear inhospitable.”

The next three came in with a rush to face the same battery of shotguns. Without hesitation, they surrendered.

Denver Cross reined in before the house. It was quiet, too quiet. There were women in there, and if he knew his men, they should be screaming by now. He started toward the house, then drew up. A dozen more of his men were coming along the road.

“Mercer, I think everything’s under control. Ride over there and see but don’t waste any time. We’ve got to get along after that stagecoach.”

Mercer glanced at Cross, then shrugged. Why didn’t he go himself? He’d always wanted to be in at the start. He rode his horse to the steps and called out. All was quiet, so quiet he was suddenly scared. He started to turn his horse when he saw Owen beside the door, just out of sight of anybody but him.

“Get down and come in, man. Come quietly!”

“Like hell!” Mercer swung his horse and went for his gun at the same moment and caught two well-aimed rifle bullets before his draw was completed. He fell; his foot hung briefly in the stirrup, then fell free. His horse trotted off.

Denver Cross swore and slapped the spurs to his horse, yelling to his men.

A volley from the house emptied three saddles, and then Cross was away and running. Rounding a bend, he all but charged into the stage, and Wilbur Pattishal, kneeling atop the stage, gave him a charge of buckshot.

“Neat!” Collier said. “Very neat, indeed, thanks to Mrs. Breydon.”

A
N HOUR HAD passed; the soldiers under Sergeant Owen had taken the prisoners away. Mercer and two other men had been buried on the far side of the hill. Cross was still alive, although in a bad way.

“We won’t be able to connect Flandrau with any of it, I’m afraid,” Stacy said, “unless one of the prisoners will talk.”

“I’m not so sure,” Collier said. “With the testimony of both Mrs. Breydon and Sergeant Owen as to the previous connection of Flandrau with the outlaws, we may be able to tie him to what happened here.” He took out a cigar. “Mrs. Breydon? Do you mind?” He struck a match. “That man who was riding your horse, Mrs. Breydon? If we could get him to talk? Most men will talk to avoid hanging.”

“I am afraid he has already avoided it, Mr. Collier. Part of this action was to remove Temple Boone from the scene at Cherokee Station. Jordy Neff attempted it and failed.”

“Boone killed him?” Stacy commented. “I am not surprised. Boone is a dangerous man.”

“And a gentleman,” Mary said.

She got to her feet. “I must ride back to the station. They will be worried.”

Collier arose. “It is good to have you for a neighbor, Mrs. Breydon. Please do not become a stranger.”

“Thank you.”

Mark Stacy got up. “The stage is gone, but if I could borrow a horse, Collier, I’d ride along with Mrs. Breydon. We’ve some business to discuss.”

He took up the rifle with which he had been armed. “We’re making a stopover of Cherokee Station. It isn’t officially a home station, but the atmosphere is so congenial that our passengers are beginning to insist on it.”

Sitting her saddle, she waited for Mark Stacy to join her. The brief spatter of rain had ended, and the clouds were breaking up.

Stacy rode around the corner of the house, and together they started back along the main trail. The air was clear and fresh, and it was a pleasure to be riding. It was almost like old times.

“You’ve done a fine job, Mrs. Breydon,” Stacy said. “Frankly, I had my doubts. I’d heard of women operating stations in California but never really believed it possible. And you—you’re scarcely the type.”

“What is the type, Mr. Stacy?”

He shrugged. “You’ve got me there. Only—well, you’re a lady.”

“I hope so.” She smiled again. “I have never found it a handicap.”

“This”—he gestured toward the station that was just coming within sight, although still some distance off—“will soon be a thing of the past. They’ll be building a railroad west as soon as the war is over. Stage lines will only be feeder lines for a while.”

“How long, do you think? I mean before they complete a railroad this far?”

“Three years, perhaps four. Ben Holladay is already thinking of it, and so am I. I’ve become involved, in fact. That is where the future is, Mrs. Breydon.”

They rode on in silence. “And you, Mrs. Breydon? What are your plans?”

“For the moment, to operate Cherokee Station as best I can. When the war is over, we may go back to Virginia. I have property there.”

“Some of us would like to keep you here,” Stacy said. “This is a new country. We need people of vision, both men and women. And—well, we need
you
.”

“Thank you. I am not going to think of that now. I’ve Peg to think of, and Wat. He’s become a member of the family. For a while, I am going to live day by day.” From the crest of a low hill, she could see the sunlight on Peg’s hair as she stood outside the station. “Later, after I’ve become adjusted, I may think of other things.”

“When do you, I hope you will think of me.”

“Of course, Mr. Stacy. How could I help it?”

“Well,” he said irritably, “there’s Temple Boone.”

“Yes, there is, isn’t there? As Matty says, he’s a fine figure of a man!”

Matty was on the step drying her hands on her apron. Temple Boone and Ridge Fenton were walking in from the barn, and Wat was shading his eyes toward them.

They were all there, at Cherokee Station, and it was good to be coming home.

S
EVERAL HOURS LATER and fifty miles away, Jason Flandrau was heading southeast, avoiding the trails. The money belt around his waist was heavy, as were his saddlebags. He had played out his hand in Colorado, but New Mexico lay to the south, and there was new country to the west of it. It was a wise man who knew when to fold his cards and toss in his hand. Down there or in California, he could deal them his own way, in his own time.

He had been in his office, about to close the window, when he heard them talking in the street. Denver Cross was dead, most of his gang wiped out, but they had some prisoners who, in fear of a hangman’s noose, were telling all they knew.

Thirty minutes later, he was in the saddle and finding his way out of town through the back streets.

Now, miles away and safe, he smiled smugly. So much the better! There had been no need to divide the money he had promised, and he could afford to take his time and look around. What he had almost done in Colorado, he could do elsewhere. He rode around the base of a low hill and down to the small creek among the trees. He would water his horse and take a breather.

The Comanche war party was in an irritable mood. They had ridden more than a hundred miles without taking a scalp.

They were stopped by the stream when they heard the sound of a horse’s hoofs. The rider was approaching at an easy gait.

They were standing in a half circle with arrows in position and bows bent when the rider came through the trees. He drew up sharply.

There were twelve of them, the first Comanche war party he had ever seen and the last he would ever see. He went for his gun, but the bulging money belt impeded his draw. The Comanches had no such problem.

He was still partly alive when a warrior stooped over him with a scalping knife.

Somebody, he thought, had dealt him a black deuce.

Author’s Note

T
HE CHEROKEE TRAIL received its name from a party of Cherokee Indians who went over the route in 1848–1849, bound for the gold fields in California. According to the best reports, their interest lay less in the discovery of gold than in locating a home for their people. Finding the turmoil of the gold rush not to their liking, the Cherokees returned by approximately the same route.

When the Civil War pulled away most of the soldiers guarding the Overland Stage, that part of the route from Laramie to Julesburg was abandoned due to continual Indian attacks, and the stage was routed south to Denver and then over the Cherokee Trail to Laramie.

My story is concerned with that portion of the trail that runs north from Denver through Laporte to Laramie. North of Laporte, this is wide-open country for much of the way, and the old stage station at Virginia Dale is still standing.

Outlaws did have a hideout, used occasionally, in a natural rock fortress in the hills west of Owl Canyon.

The Cherokees found gold in several of the creeks along the way, which was one of the factors that led to the gold rush to Colorado.

About Louis L’Amour

“I think of myself in the oral tradition—

as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man

in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way

I’d like to be remembered as a storyteller.

A good storyteller.”

I
T IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel,
Hondo
, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include
The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum
(his twelfth-century historical novel),
The Cherokee Trail, Last of the Breed
, and
The Haunted Mesa
. His memoir,
Education of a Wandering Man
, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio publishing.

The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour publishing tradition forward.