The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1 (24 page)

He steadied the gun against the corner of a box. His eyes blinked. He squeezed off both barrels and, hit in the belly, the Apache staggered back.

 

At high noon on the fourth day, Major Magruder with a troop of cavalry, rode into the streets of Sentinel. Behind him were sixty men of the town, all armed with rifles.

At the edge of town, Major Magruder lifted a hand. Jake Carter and Dennis Magoon moved up beside him. “I thought you said the town was deserted?”

His extended finger indicated a dead Apache.

Their horses walked slowly forward. Another Apache sprawled there dead … and then they found another.

Before the store four Apaches lay in a tight cluster, another savage was stretched at the side of the walk. Windows of the store were shattered and broken, a great hole had been blasted in the door. At the Major's order, the troops scattered to search the town. Magruder swung down before the store.

“I'd take an oath nobody was left behind,” Carter said.

Magruder shoved open the store. The floor inside was littered with blackened cartridge cases and strewn with empty bottles. “No one man could fire that many shells or drink that much whiskey,” Magruder said positively.

He stooped, looking at the floor and some flour on the floor. “Blood,” he said.

In the saloon they found another empty bottle and an empty box of cigars.

Magoon stared dismally at the empty bottle. He had been keeping count, and all but three of the bottles of his best Irish glory were gone. “Whoever it was,” he said sorrowfully, “drank up some of the best whiskey ever brewed.”

Carter looked at the piano. Suddenly he grabbed Magoon's arm. “McGraw!” he yelled. “ 'Twas Finn McGraw!”

They looked at each other. It couldn't be! And yet—who had seen him? Where was he now?

“Who,” Magruder asked, “is McGraw?”

They explained, and the search continued. Bullets had clipped the corners of buildings, bullets had smashed water barrels along the street. Windows were broken, and there were nineteen dead Indians—but no sign of McGraw.

Then a soldier yelled from outside of town, and they went that way and gathered around. Under the edge of a mesquite bush, a shotgun beside him, his new suit torn and blood-stained, they found Finn McGraw.

Beside him lay two empty bottles of the Irish. Another, partly gone, lay near his hand. A rifle was propped in the forks of the bush, and a pistol had fallen from his holster. There was blood on his side and blood on his head and face.

“Dead!” Carter said. “But what a battle!”

Magruder bent over the old man, then he looked up, a faint twinkle breaking the gravity of his face. “Dead, all right,” he said. “Dead
drunk
!”

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The One for the Mohave Kid

About a mile or so from camp lay Independence Rock, 120 feet high and over 2,000 feet long according to an estimate.
^*
It is covered with the names of travellers. A few miles further along is Devil's Gate, where the Sweetwater passes through a cleft some 30 yards wide and 300 yards long. The rock walls tower several hundred feet, sheer rock. There was grass for our stock. We camped at a bend of the river just after sundown.

From a diary, August 19, 1849

Twelve years earlier a party of mountain men were camped here: “Immense numbers of buffalo in sight … here I am at a beautiful spring, a hot fire of buffalo dung, a set of good, sweet hump-ribs roasting … I have forgotten everything but my ribs and my sweetheart.”

^*
Above dimensions not accurate, LL

The One for the Mohave Kid

We had finished our antelope steak and beans, and the coffeepot was back on the stove again, brewing strong, black cowpuncher coffee just like you'd make over a creosote and ironwood fire out on the range.

Red was cleaning his carbine and Doc Lander had tipped back in his chair with a pipe lighted. The stove was cherry red, the woodbox full, and our beds were warming up for the night. It was early autumn, but the nights were already cool. In a holster, hanging from the end of a bunk, was a worn-handled, single-action .44 pistol—and the holster had seen service as well as the gun.

“Whenever,” Doc Lander said, “a bad man is born, there is also born a man to take him. For every Billy the Kid there is a Pat Garrett, an' for every Wes Hardin there's a John Selman.”

Temple picked up a piece of pinewood and flicking open the stove door, he chucked it in. He followed it with another, and we all sat silent, watching the warm red glow of the flames. When the door was shut again, Red looked up from his rifle. “An' for every John Selman there's a Scarborough,” he said, “an' for every Scarborough, a Logan.”

“Exactly,” Doc Lander agreed, “an' for every Mohave Kid there's a …”

 

Some men are born to evil, and such a one was the Mohave Kid. Now I'm not saying that environment doesn't have its influence, but some men are born with twisted minds, just as some are born with crooked teeth. The Mohave Kid was born with a streak of viciousness and cruelty that no kindness could eradicate. He had begun to show it when a child, and it developed fast until the Kid had killed his first man.

It was pure, unadulterated murder. No question of fair play, although the Kid was deadly with any kind of a gun. He shot an old Mexican, stole his outfit and three horses which he sold near the border. And the Mohave Kid was fifteen years old when that happened.

By the time he was twenty-two he was wanted in four states and three territories. He had, the records said, killed eleven men. Around the saloons and livery stables they said he had killed twenty-one. Actually, he had killed twenty-nine, for the Kid had killed a few when they didn't know he was in the country, and they had been listed as murders by Indians or travelers. Of the twenty-nine men he had killed, nine of them had been killed with something like an even break.

But the Mohave Kid was as elusive as he was treacherous. And his mother had been a Holdstock. There were nine families of Holdstocks scattered through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, and three times that many who were kinfolk. They were a clannish lot, given to protecting their own, even as bad an apple as the Mohave Kid.

At twenty-two, the Kid was five feet seven inches tall and weighed one hundred and seventy pounds. He had a round, flat face, a bland expression, and heavy-lidded eyes. He did not look alert, but his expression belied the truth, for he was always wary, always keyed for trouble.

He killed for money, for horses, in quarrels, or for pure cruelty, and several of his killings were as senseless as they were ruthless. This very fact contributed much to the fear with which he was regarded, for there was no guessing where he might strike next. People avoided looking at him, avoided even the appearance of talking about him when he was around. Usually, they got out of a place when he came into it, but as unobtrusively as possible.

Aside from the United States marshals or the Texas Rangers in their respective bailiwicks, there was only local law. Little attention was given to arresting men for crimes committed elsewhere, which served as excuse for officers of the law who preferred to avoid the risks of trying to arrest the Mohave Kid.

Ab Kale was an exception. Ab was thirty-three when elected marshal of the cow town of Hinkley, and he owned a little spread of his own three miles out of town. He ran a few cows, raised a few horses, and made his living as marshal. For seven years he was a good one. He kept order, never made needless arrests, and was well liked around town. At thirty-four he married Amie Holdstock, a second cousin to the Mohave Kid.

As the Kid's reputation grew, Kale let it be known throughout the family that he would make no exception of the Kid, and the Kid was to stay away from Hinkley. Some of the clan agreed this was fair enough, and the Kid received word to avoid the town. Others took exception to Kale's refusal to abide by clan law where the Kid was concerned, but those few dwindled rapidly as the Kid's murderous propensities became obvious.

The Holdstock clan began to realize that in the case of the Mohave Kid they had sheltered a viper in their bosom, a wanton killer as dangerous to their well-being as to others. A few doors of the clan were closed against him, excuses were found for not giving him shelter, and the feeling began to permeate the clan that the idea was a good one.

The Mohave Kid had seemed to take no exception to the hints that he avoid making trouble for cousin Kale, yet as the months wore on, he became more sullen and morose, and the memory of Ab Kale preyed upon his mind.

 

In the meantime, no man is marshal of a western cow town without having some trouble. Steady and considerate as Kale was, there had been those with whom he could not reason. He had killed three men.

All were killed in fair, stand-up gunfights, all were shot cleanly and surely, and it was talked around that Kale was some hand with a gun himself. In each case he had allowed an even break and proved faster than the men he killed. All of this the Mohave Kid absorbed, and here and there he heard speculation, never in front of him, that the Mohave Kid was avoiding Hinkley because he wanted no part of Ab Kale.

Tall, well built, and prematurely gray, Kale was a fine-appearing man. His home was small but comfortable, and he had two daughters, one his own child, one a stepdaughter of seventeen whom he loved as his own. He had no son, and this was a matter of regret.

Ab Kale was forty when he had his showdown with the Mohave Kid. But on the day when Riley McClean dropped off a freight train on the edge of Hinkley, the date of that showdown was still two years away.

If McClean ever told Kale what had happened to him before he crawled out of that empty boxcar in Hinkley, Ab never repeated it. Riley was nineteen, six feet tall, and lean as a rail. His clothes were in bad shape, and he was unshaven and badly used up, and somebody had given him a beating. What had happened to the other fellow or fellows, nobody ever knew.

Ab Kale saw McClean leave the train and called out to him. The boy stopped and stood waiting. As Kale walked toward him he saw the lines of hunger in the boy's face, saw the emaciated body, the ragged clothes, the bruises and cuts. He saw a boy who had been roughly used, but there was still courage in his eyes.

“Where you headed for, son?”

Riley McClean shrugged. “This is as good a place as any. I'm hunting a job.”

“What do you do?”

“Most anything. It don't make no difference.”

Now when a man says that he can do most anything, it is a safe bet he can do nothing, or at least, that he can do nothing well. If a man has a trade, he is proud of it and says so, and usually he will do a passing job of anything else he tackles. Yet Kale reserved his opinion. And it was well that he did.

“Better come over to my office,” Kale said. “You'll need to get shaved and washed up.”

McClean went along, and somehow, he stayed. Nothing was ever said about leaving by either of them. McClean cleaned up, ate at the marshal's expense, and then slept the clock around. When Kale returned to the office and jail the next morning he found the place swept, mopped, and dusted, and McClean was sitting on the cot in the open cell where he slept, repairing a broken riata.

Obviously new to the West, Riley McClean seemed new to nothing else. He had slim, graceful hands and deft fingers. He cobbled shoes, repaired harnesses, built a chimney for Chalfant's new house, and generally kept busy.

After he had been two weeks in Hinkley, Ab Kale was sitting at his desk one day when Riley McClean entered. Kale opened a drawer and took out a pair of beautifully matched .44 Russians, one of the finest guns Smith & Wesson ever made. They were thrust in new holsters on a new belt studded with cartridges. “If you're going to live out here, you'd better learn to use those,” Kale said briefly.

After that the two rode out of town every morning for weeks, and in a narrow canyon on the back of Kale's little ranch, Riley McClean learned how to use a six-shooter.

“Just stand naturally,” Kale advised him, “and let your hand swing naturally to the gun butt. You've probably heard about a so-called gunman's crouch. There is no such thing among gunfighters who know their business. Stand any way that is easy to you. Crouching may make a smaller target of you, but it also puts a man off balance and cramps his movements. Balance is as important to a gunfighter as to a boxer. Stand easy on your feet, let your hand swing back naturally, and take the hammer spur with the inside of the thumb, cocking the gun as it is grasped, the tip of the trigger finger on the trigger.”

Kale watched McClean try it. “The most important thing is a good grip. The finger on the trigger helps to align your gun properly, and after you've practiced, you'll see that your gun will line up perfectly with that grip.”

He watched McClean keenly and was pleased. The boy had the same ease with a gun he seemed to have with all tools, and his coordination was natural and easy. “You'll find,” he added, “in shooting from the hip that you can change your point of aim by a slight movement of your left foot. Practice until you find just the right position for your feet, and then go through the motions until it is second nature.”

Finally, he left him alone to practice, tossing him a box of shells occasionally. But no day passed that Riley McClean did not take to the hills for practice.

There are men who are born to skill, whose coordination of hand, foot, and eye is natural and easy, who acquire skills almost as soon as they lift a tool or a weapon, and such a man was Riley McClean. Yet he knew the value of persistence, and he practiced consistently.

It was natural that he knew about the Mohave Kid.

Riley McClean listened and learned. He talked it around and made friends, and he soon began to hear the speculations about the Kid and Ab Kale.

“It'll come,” they all said. “It can't miss. Sooner or later him an' Kale will tangle.”

As to what would happen then, there was much dispute. Of this talk Kale said nothing. When Riley McClean had been two months in Hinkley, Kale invited him home to dinner for the first time. It was an occasion to be remembered.

The two months had made a change in Riley. The marks of his beating had soon left him, but it had taken these weeks to fill out his frame. He had gained fifteen solid pounds and would gain more, but he was a rugged young man, bronzed and straight, when he walked up the gravel path to the door of the Kale home. And Ruth Kale opened the door for him. She opened the door and she fell in love. And the feeling was mutual.

Ab Kale said nothing, but he smiled behind his white mustache. Later, when they had walked back up to town, Kale said, “Riley, you've been like a son to me. If anything should happen to me, I wish you would see that my family gets along all right.”

Riley was startled and worried. “Nothing will happen to you,” he protested. “You're a young man yet.”

“No,” Kale replied seriously, “I'm not. I'm an old man as a cow-town peace officer. I've lasted a long time. Longer than most.”

“But you're chain lightning with a gun!” Riley protested.

“I'm fast.” Kale said it simply. “And I shoot straight. I know of no man I'd be afraid to meet face to face, although I know some who are faster than I. But they don't always meet you face to face.”

And Riley McClean knew that Ab Kale was thinking of the Mohave Kid.

 

He realized then, for the first time, that the marshal was worried about the Mohave Kid. Worried because he knew the kind of killer the Kid was. Deadly enough face to face, the Kid would be just as likely to shoot from ambush. For the Kid was a killing machine, utterly devoid of moral sense or fair play.

The people of Hinkley knew that Riley McClean had taken to carrying a gun. They looked upon this tolerantly, believing that Riley was merely copying his adopted father. They knew that Kale had been teaching him to shoot, but they had no idea what had happened during those lessons. Nor had Ab Kale realized it until a few days before the payoff.

The two were riding out to look over some cattle, and Kale remarked that it would be nice to have some rabbit stew. “If we see a fat cottontail,” he said, “we'll kill it.”

A mile farther along, he spotted one. “Rabbit!” he said, and grabbed for his gun.

His hand slapped the walnut butt, and then there was an explosion, and for an instant he thought his own gun had gone off accidentally. And then he saw the smoking .44 in Riley McClean's hand, and the younger man was riding over to pick up the rabbit. The distance had been thirty yards and the rabbit had lost a head.

Ab Kale was startled. He said nothing, however, and they rode on to the ranch, looked over the cattle, and made a deal to buy them. As they started back, Kale commented, “That was a nice shot, Riley. Could you do it again?”

“Yes, sir, I think so.”

A few miles farther, another rabbit sprang up. The .44 barked and the rabbit died, half his head and one ear blasted away. The distance was a shade greater than before.

“You've nothing to worry about, Riley,” he said quietly, “but never use that gun unless you must, and never draw it unless you mean to kill.”

 

Nothing more was said, but Ab Kale remembered. He was fast. He knew he was fast. He knew that he rated along with the best, and yet his hand had barely slapped the butt before that rabbit died.…

The days went by slowly, and Riley McClean spent more and more time at the Kale home. And around town he made friends. He was quiet, friendly, and had a healthy sense of humor. He had progressed from the town handyman to opening a shop as a gunsmith, learning his trade by applying it that way. There was no other gunsmith within two hundred miles in any direction, so business was good.