The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1 (9 page)

Slow, and careful not to leave no tracks, we moved out, leaving our cabin, our crop, everything but the horses. We made it west-northwest past Lone Cone and finally crossing the San Miguel into Uncompahgre Plateau country. We found us a little box canyon there with grass and water, and we moved in. By hunting we made out, but Ma was feeling poorly so Burt, he stayed with her while Lisha and me, we mounted up and with five head of horses, we
headed for a little town north of us on the river. We sold our horses, bought up supplies and come back.

Ma, she didn't get no better, and finally, she died one morning, just died a-setting in her rocker. We'd brung that rocker along, and it had been a sight of comfort for her. So Ma died and Johnny played his mouth organ, and we buried her. Then there was just the four of us, with Johnny still recuperating from his bullet wounds.

We could move on, but this here was our country and we knowed it. Pa was buried back at Durango. Sam, too, now. And Ma, she was buried there in the lonely Uncompahgres, all because of the orneriness of one man.

Them horses we sold let folks know where we was, and soon there was a posse after us. We were figured to be outlaws, real bad hombres. We'd killed folks and we'd busted jail. That posse cornered us in the mountains and we shot it out and got away.

That began the bad and lonely time, made pleasant only because we were together. We drifted west into the La Balas and sold our horses except for an extry for each of us, and then drifted into the Robber's Roost country. It was there I kilt my first man. It was that there Boyd. The same one who shot Johnny in the back.

He'd kilt a woman in Colorado, and then her man. After that the country got too hot to hold him so he drifted west to the Roost. There was a shack in the Roost them days, a log shack, long and low. The floor was adobe and there was a bar and a few tables. It was low-roofed, dark, and no ways pleasant. It was outside of that place I come up to Boyd.

He seen me and he stopped. “Another one of them miserable Tremaynes!” he sneers.

Men stopped to listen and watch. “You shot Johnny in the back,” I tell him, “and I figure you're good for nothing else!” He grabs iron and about that time my gun bucks in my hand and this gent he just curls up and folds over.

The boys come a-running and we look at that passel of rustlers, thieves and no accounts, and a few mighty good men scattered among them. “Anybody got a argyment?” Burt asks.

One gent, his name was Cassidy, he chuckles, and says, “Boyd was no good and we knowed it. Anyway,” he grins at us, “the weight o' the artillery is on your side!” Then he bought a round of drinks.

We drifted north through Wyoming, selling a few horses we broke and working time to time on spreads in the Wind River and Powder River countries. We drifted north into Montanny, and finally down to Deadwood. Here and there we heard rumors. Folks said we were robbing banks and trains, which we never done. Folks said we had killed this man or that one, and without ever doing a thing, we got us a name most as bad as the James boys. All on account of how people love to talk and gossip.

The fact that I killed Boyd got back to Colorado. He'd been some shakes as a gunman, so they now had me pegged as one. Boyd, I kilt, but if they figured he was fast, they wasn't figuring right. In Deadwood I heard Ebberly was in town, making his brags what he would do if he ever come up to any of the Tremaynes.

Bullet come nigh me just now. Better I tend to business for a mite. Boone edged over a little and peered through the chinks in the rocks but could see only the dark line of the forest. The man he had kept under the rock shelf was off to his right now and it was not an easy shot … anyway, he had suffered enough.

His mouth felt dry and he rinsed it carefully with water from his canteen, then let the cool water trickle down his parched throat. It was his first drink in many hours. His face felt hot and there was a queer feeling around the wound in his side.

Bullets snarled and snapped, biting at the rocks, near him and farther along. He held his fire, reluctant to give himself away. Boone found no malice in his heart for the officers of the law. This was their job, and not theirs to decide the right and wrong, but to bring him in. He moved, crawling back along the long undercut of the cave. There was a little more to write. Ten … maybe twenty minutes more. Then it could be over … he could finally let it be over.

Ebberly, Son, he made his brags, but we kept away from him. Only we shouldn't have. He knowed we was in town and when we kept away he figured we was scared. Then he seen Burt and took a shot at him. Burt shot back. Both of them missed.

Burt, he hunted him and lost him. It was me who run into Ebberly last. I come down the street afore noon, hunting a couple of copper rivets to use in fixing my saddle. He stepped down into the street and yells at me, “Boone Tremayne!”

He yelled, and he shot. Yet my gun come up so fast the two shots sounded like one. Only he missed … I didn't. I stood there, looking around. “Folks,” I said, “I'm surely Boone Tremayne. But none of us, my brothers or me, ever stole a thing off any man. Nor we never shot at no man unless he hunted us down. We got us a bad name, but it ain't our doing. You seen this … he come at me with a drawn gun.”

“You all better ride,” a feller says. “This here Seth Bullock, our sheriff, he'd have to take you in.” So we rode out. Sam was kilt and Ma was dead and everywhere they was after us.

We headed west, making for the Hole-in-the-Wall where men beyond the law would be let alone. We come down Beaver Crick out of the Black Hills and we rode up Cemetery Ridge and we drawed up there and rested our horses.

After awhile Lisha, he tunes up his old gitar and starts to play a might, and then we saw a feller coming up the slope. He looked a mighty rough customer and when he heerd our music he slowed up and looked us over. Then he come on up clost.

“Howdy!” he says. “Goin' far?”

“To Sundance,” Burt says. “How fer is it?”

“Mebbe fifteen mile,” this gent says. “Luck!” An' he rides on.

“Didn't like the look o' that hombre,” Burt says, “we better ride out o' here, an' not for Sundance!” So we mounted up and took out south, holding east of Bald Mountain right along the Wyoming–South Dakota line.

Sure enough, Son, that gent was no good. He headed hisself right for Sundance, warning folks at ranches as he rode. The Bloody Tremaynes was riding, he said. We seen the first posse when we was heading to Lost Canyon, but there was no fight until they closed in on us from three directions at Stockade Beaver Crick. We fought her out there, kilt four of them and scratched up a few more, but we lost Burt. He had three bullets in him when he went down, kilt two men before he died. We buried Burt there on Stockade Beaver, and we made a marker for him, which you'll see if you ever ride thataway.

We rode south and west with that there posse setting in the brush licking their wounds.

We made the Hole-in-the-Wall and rode through and no posse would foller us. We'd no money, only the horses we rode. But we run into a short-handed cow outfit driving to the Buffalo Fork. They didn't know who we was and didn't give two boots in a rain barrel. We done our share like always, and we stuck to our ownselves. The hands, they was friendly cusses, and the boss he only asked for a man a day's work. We drove to the Buffalo Fork and then the boss, he come over to us. “I'll be payin' you off in the mornin'. You boys better buy what ca'tridges we got,” he says, quiet-like, “you won't find no place clost by to git 'em.”

“That's right friendly o' you, Boss,” Lisha says, “we take it kindly.”

He stands there a mite, and then he says, “Never did b'lieve all I heerd, anyways,” he said, and then he smiled. “We'll sure miss that music you boys make. Would you strike us up some singin' afore you leave?”

So we done it. Lisha, he sung “Greensleeves,” and “Brennan on the Moor,” an' “On Top of Ol' Smoky” and some of the other old songs from the hills back yonder, songs our folks fetched from Scotland and Ireland. We sang for an evening, and then loaded up with grub and bullets, and took off. Southwest across the Blackrock and camped at Lily Lake, and then on to the Gross Venture and into the Jackson Hole country.

Son, your Pa's hands is mighty cold now. I guess this here letter's got to end up.

Johnny, he wanted to see Ellie Winters, and Lisha, he wanted to eat fresh melons from the patch, and I wanted to see your Ma again. I never knowed she loved me. I never even guessed she cared or thought of me. I just figured I'd like to see her some.

One night we was setting by the fire and Lisha he looked over at me and he says, “Boys, the melons'll be ripe in the bottom land now, an' the horses will be headin' up from the flats for the high meadows.” So then we knowed we was heading home.

We rode down the Snake to the Grey and down the Grey to the Bear, and we followed her south to the border, staying clear of ranches and towns. Of a night we built our fires small and covered them well, and then at last we come riding down to the hills near Durango.

Lisha, he chuckles and says to me, “You all sure been a-talkin' a lot in your sleep, boy. If 'n you ever said those things to a girl awake she'd sure be bakin' your corn pone from here on out.”

Me, I git all redded up. “Don't give me that,” I say, “I never talked none. Anyway, it wouldn't matter. What woman would care for me?”

Both Lisha and Johnny looked up sharp. “You damn fool!” they says, “they'd never git a better man, nowheres. An' that Marge, she's been eatin' her heart out for years over you!”

Me, I just stood there … I never figured nothing like that. I sure thought they was wrong, but both them boys, they knowed a sight more about women than ever I would.

Lisha, he rides off to town, and he ain't gone an hour afore he comes back and then Ellie, she and Marge comes a-running, and with them is Betts Warner, Lisha's girl. Marge, she just stopped, took one look, and then run to me and went to crying in my arms.

We made her a triple weddin' just two days later, but folks heerd about it, and one morning Lisha come to the door for his horse and Dick Watson, his brother and four-five friends, they shot him down. Shot him down with him only getting one shot off.

Betts, she come a-running to warn us, thinking of us even when her heart was gone within her, her man laying dead back there full of Watson lead.

“Saddle up,” I says to Johnny, “I'll be coming back soon.” Me, I buckled on my guns.

“I'm goin' with you,” Johnny says, and I told him no. He'd have to git us packed and ready. Marge, she just looked at me strange and soft and proud. She says, “You go along, Boone, I'll saddle up for you, and I'll be a-waiting here when you get back.”

Never a mite of complaining, never a word agin it. She was a man's woman, that one, and she knowed my way was to ride for the man who fetched this trouble down upon us.

It was bright noonday when I fetched up to town. I swung down from the saddle and I asked old Jake. “You go along,” I said, “and you tell that Dick Watson I'm here to put him down.”

Standin' there, I wondered if it was I'd never have me a home, or see the light in my baby's eyes, or see the sunlight on the green corn growing, or smell the hay from my own meadows. Them things was all I ever wanted, all I ever fixed to have, and now it seemed like all my life I toted a gun, shooting and being shot at.

All I ever wanted in this here world was a bit of land and peace, the way man was meant to live. Not with no gun in his hand a-killing folks.

I seen Dick Watson step from a door down the way, and I seen him start, and I pulled down my hat and stepped out, stepped out and started walking to kill a man.

Then Watson stopped and I looked across the forty paces at him and I made my voice strong in the street. “Dick Watson, you brung hell to my family. You was sore because that black mare beat your horse! You lied about us stealing! You made us into outlaws and caused my brothers to be kilt and some other men too. It'll be on your conscience whether you live or die.”

He stood there staring at me like he'd looked right in the face of death, and then he slapped leather. His gun came up and I shot him, low down in the belly where they die slow and hard. God forgive me, but I done it with hate in my heart. And then … I should have knowed he'd framed it, a half dozen of his friends stepped out and opened up on me.

Son, what come over me then I don't know. I guess I went sort of crazy. When I seen them all around me, I just tore loose and went to shooting. I went up on the porch after them, I followed one up the stairs and into his room. I chased another and shot him running, and then I loaded up and turned my back on both the dead and the living and I walked down that street to my horse. I was halfway home before I knowed I'd a bullet in me.

When I was patched up some we rode on and Betts went back to her folks, a widow almost afore she was a wife. We fetched up, final, in the Blue Mountains of Utah, and there we built us a double cabin and we ketched wild horses and hunted desert honey, just the two boys of us left from the five we'd been. We lived there and for months we was happy.

Your Ma was the finest ever, Son. I never knowed what it could be like to live with no woman, nor to have her there, always knowing how I felt inside when nobody had ever knowed before. We walked together and talked together and day by day the running and shooting seemed farther and farther away.

Johnny was happy, too. Them days his mouth organ laughed and cried and sang sweet songs to the low moon and the high sun, and he played the corn out of the ground and the good sweet melons. We hunted some and we lived quiet-like and happy. How long? Three months, five months … and then Marge comes to me and says Ellie's got to go where she can have a doc. She's to have a baby and something, she's sure, ain't right about it.