The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 2 (24 page)

Queen suddenly shifted on his chair and glanced at them, but Jeanne had the poker back in the fire.

“Light a lamp,” he said to her. “It's gettin' dark in here.”

Jeanne got to her feet and had just lighted the lamp and was still holding it when Eberhardt loomed in the doorway. He sniffed suspiciously. “Smells like burnt rope,” he said. “What's goin' on?”

“Rope?” John Queen was suddenly alert.
“Rope!”

Jeanne turned and threw the lamp at Eberhardt. He threw up a protecting arm, and the lamp shattered and he was drenched with blazing oil. He sprang back, cursing, and Chick lunged to his feet. How much the ropes had burned, he had no idea, but it was now, if ever. With a tremendous heave he felt the ropes give way as Queen turned on him.

With a quick motion of his foot he kicked the chair against Queen's legs, and the big man went down with a crash. Ripping the burned ropes from his hands, he sprang for his guns, but Queen grabbed his ankle and he fell against the bunk. Queen leaped at him, but he rolled away and came to his feet.

The big man was just as quick. As he struggled erect, he swung a powerful right that knocked Bowdrie back against the cupboard, but as he followed it in, Bowdrie kicked him in the stomach and drove him into the corner. They both came to their feet, and Bowdrie swung a left and right into the big man's midsection as they came together, then hooked a right to his ear.

There was a yell from outside, and Jeanne caught up the rifle near the door. She fired, and there was a cry of pain and shock from outside. Chick smashed Queen back with driving rights and lefts, taking a wicked blow on the cheekbone that staggered him, but he slashed a cut under Queen's eye with a lancing left.

Queen lunged at him, but Chick toed the chair in his path again and the big man went over it to the floor.

But the big gunman was tough; he came up off the floor. Bowdrie's knee flattened his nose, and he went down again.

Grabbing for his guns, Chick swung them about his hips and drew the buckle together. He sprang to the side of the door. “Where are they?” he asked.

“Eberhardt's in the barn, but he's burned pretty bad. Peters is out there with a rifle. I either wounded him or scared him.”

It was dark now. Edging to the side of the door, Bowdrie ducked out the door, pulling Jeanne after him. They ran around the corner of the house. It was only a few feet to the corral where the horses were. “You run for it,” Chick whispered. “I'll cover you!”

Jeanne dashed for the pole corral, out of the line of fire from either the barn window or door. Chick took a quick shot through each as the girl dashed, then thumbed shells into his gun. He heard John Queen moving inside, and ducked for the corral himself.

The roan was standing ready, and he threw his saddle on the horse, then saddled the gray for Jeanne. Somebody fired from the barn, but the bullet did not reach them. As he saddled the gray, he heard Queen trip and fall and heard him swear. They had a moment, at best.

As he led the horses out of the back gate, the man in the cowhide vest sprinted for the cabin. Letting him take two steps to get into the open, Bowdrie cut him down.

“We've got to circle around,” Jeanne said as they swung into their saddles.

“No, we're going over the rim!”

“It can't be done! I heard Murray say so!”

“That's what they think!” He led the way into the trees. Ever since he had sat against the rock studying the country, he had begun to think there was something familiar about it. The trouble was, he had never seen it from that side before.

Winding through a maze of craglike rocks, he led the way to a rocky shelf, then rode straight at the edge. It dropped away into a black chasm.

“You'll have to lead your horse and feel your way. I'm goin' ahead. Once on this ledge, I think my horse will remember. He used to run wild in this country. I was here four years ago.”

Leading the roan, he started down the trail. The roan snorted a couple of times but followed along, stepping carefully like the true mountain horse he was. Keeping one hand on the rock beside her, Jeanne followed.

They were halfway down when from above they heard somebody stumble and swear, then say, “Where d'you suppose they got to?”

For two days they rode steadily east, and Bowdrie kept an eye on his back trail. John Queen was not a man to take a licking and like it.

They were making camp on the Pecos when the time came. Jeanne was bending over the fire and Bowdrie was rigging a crude shelter. It thundered, and Bowdrie glanced at the sky. “Better get inside,” he suggested.

“Let her wait and see this.” John Queen stepped from the dark.

Chick Bowdrie walked away from the shelter. The drops were falling now, falling faster.

“You came a long way, John,” he said. “You'd better call it off and ride back. I've got Jeanne Buck and I am taking her home. Damon Queen will be sentenced no matter what you do.”

“I'll kill you,” Queen said, “at the next crack of thunder.”

Lightning flashed and thunder followed. Chick had been noticing the interval. Which of them drew faster, he never knew. He fired and saw Queen start toward him, but Chick Bowdrie fired his gun in a steady roll of sound, then did a border switch, tossing the right and empty gun to the left hand, the left-hand gun to the right.

Lightning flashed again, and Queen seemed to be no more than fifteen feet away. Bowdrie fired, and the big man went to his knees, struggled to rise, and went down again, sprawling on his face against the grassy slope.

Chick stared down at him, astonished. In a flash of lightning he saw five holes in the big man's vest. Five through the body, and he had kept on coming!

Turning, Bowdrie started back to the shelter, then slipped and fell. That was odd. Puzzled, he stared at the ground, then pushed himself up and staggered erect. He managed two staggering steps, then fell on his face.

When he opened his eyes, it was light. He blinked at the brightness of the light, then turned his head.

“Chick? Are you all right?”

He stared at the worried eyes. “I guess so. What happened?”

“You killed John Queen, then you passed out. You have a hole through your thigh and another through the muscles atop your shoulder. You've lost quite a lot of blood.”

“And you've been caring for me?”

“Not exactly,” she confessed, “although I helped.”

“You mean that lazy Ranger has finally got himself awake?” Rip Coker thrust his head into the shelter. “McNelly was afraid you might need help, so when I finished that job in Tascosa, he sent me to look after you.

“Bowdrie, you disappoint me. Only five men? You must be losin' your grip!”

“Shucks,” Bowdrie said lazily, “if I'd had another girl like Jeanne along, there wouldn't have been anything for me to do!”

He frowned suddenly. “Whatever happened to Jake Murray?”

“He went after that deer,” Jeanne said, “and he never came back.”

“It was him told me where you'd be,” Coker said. “I met him down the trail and he spotted me for a Ranger. He said you wouldn't need any help, but I'd find you up here.”

“That all he said?”

“He just said, ‘Enough is enough, and I've never been to Oregon.' ”

There was a silence, and then Bowdrie smiled. “Rip, I'm glad you came along. Somebody has to take our horses back to Texas, and me being wounded like I am, I'll just have to ride back to Texas on the train, with Jeanne.”

“That's just like him,” Coker said, pretending disgust. “He's ridin' the cushions while I hit the saddle! He's nothin' but a red-plush Ranger, after all!”

The Outlaws of Poplar Creek

Moby Fosdick kept the trading post at Lee's Canyon, and Moby was a hard man. It took a man with a cold eye and a ready hand to do business in the Poplar Creek country, and Moby had been there a long time.

The store was a low-roofed building built in a hollow of the hills just below the falls of Poplar Creek. Lee's Canyon, narrow and rock-walled, was mostly uphill until within two hundred yards of the trading post. Then it topped a rise and the trail slid down into the hollow with a creek to the north.

From the store you could hear the roar of the falls, perhaps a quarter of a mile away.

If you just rode up to the post, did your buying and then rode away, you would believe there was only one way in and one way out, both along the Lee's Canyon trail.

A knowing man could tell you there were at least two other trails out of the hollow and into the badlands. One led through a crevice in the rock wall, invisible until close up, an opening that barely allowed room for a man on a horse. If it were a heavy horse, the rider might have to push one stirrup well forward to slip through.

Across the wide spread of Poplar Creek the rock wall reared up for about three hundred feet, but downstream there was a gravel beach perhaps ten feet long.

Moby had often wondered about that beach. He was an old Indian fighter with an eye for terrain, and it looked like water had been running down through some crack in the wall after heavy rains, but no opening could be seen.

Moby planned to someday build a boat and have a look over there. If there was an opening it would be another way out. Busy around the place and with occasional customers, he just never found the time, but it lingered there, in the back of his mind.

The second of the unseen paths was up the face of the cliff itself, the trail beginning among some poplars across the hollow and maybe a half-mile from the post. It wound up the cliff, always hidden behind juniper and ponderosa pine.

Fosdick knew the trails, and the wild bunch knew them. At the head of the cliff trail on a little plateau there was a cave. Once, during an Indian attack when Jerry and Lily Fosdick were youngsters, they had holed up there with Moby and two other men until the attack was over.

Moby had windows overlooking the trail from either side, and nobody could enter the hollow without being seen. So when the rider on the strawberry roan topped the rise from Del Rio, he saw him.

His hard old eyes narrowed with speculation as they watched the shambling, loose-gaited stride of the roan. The rider was a stranger.

Few travelers came by way of Lee's Canyon, and most sought to avoid it. Nobody knew where the Tucker gang holed up, but there were rumors. Fosdick knew the wild bunch but he also knew most of the hands who worked on ranches west of him. The rider wearing the black flat-crowned hat was nobody he remembered seeing before.

Fosdick strode to the door and shaded his eyes against the setting sun. The trail was empty. He looked off to the south and the hidden road. Nobody there, either. The stranger was drawing near.

Moby took in the dark, Indian-like face and the two guns. Not many men carried two guns in sight. A lot of them had a hideout. He glanced at the rider's face as he stepped down from the saddle. There was something about that still, emotionless face that gave him a little chill.

He had known this time would come and now he had a decision to make. He had expected it would come with a dozen hard-riding men, not a lone horseman on a wicked-looking hammerhead roan. He looked again. That was probably the ugliest, meanest-looking horse he had ever seen.

“Howdy! How about some grub?”

“Come in! Come in! Lily, set another place. We've got company!”

Fosdick turned back to the rider. “You can wash up right outside the door there. Fresh towel an' soap. Put it out m'self, not an hour ago.” He glanced at the roan. “I'll take your hoss around an' give him some hay.” He paused. “Shall I take the hull off him or will you be ridin' on?”

“If you've room, I'll stay the night.” The rider looked at Moby. “Treat that horse gentle-like, and be careful. He both kicks and bites on occasion. Give him the hay first so he'll know you're friendly.”

Fosdick walked to the barn with the roan. Well, that settled it. Hell would break loose now and Jerry would be caught right in the middle. To protect his son he would have to warn the whole Tucker gang.

Jake Rasch was standing in the shadows of the stable. His greasy, unshaved face was suspicious. “Who's that in yonder? I seen him ride up an' figured I'd better play possum.”

“Hit the trail, Jake. You get to Shad Tucker as quick as you can make it. Tell him there's a traveler down here who looks like a Ranger, and he looks pretty salty.”

“One man?” Rasch sneered. “What's one Ranger goin' to do with all of us? Even with one of us?”

“You ain't seen him,” Fosdick said dryly. “This gent's got the bark on! Rough! I can tell! You look into those black eyes and it's like lookin' into two six-shooters with the hammers drawed back.”

Jake's expression changed. He grabbed Fosdick's arm. “Black eyes! Looks like an Apache?”

“That's him.” Fosdick lifted the saddle from the roan's back and set it astride a rail. “What's the matter?”

“Chick Bowdrie!”
Jake's face paled with excitement. “He's the one cleaned up the Ballard outfit!”

Resolution came to Fosdick. “Jake, you tell Jerry to meet Lily at the cave at sunup tomorrow. I've got word for him. Now, don't forget!”

“All right,” Rasch said. “Bowdrie, huh? If I could only git him!”

“Are you crazy?” Fosdick's contempt was poorly concealed. “If you're smart you'll just forget that. You never saw the day you could match Clyde Ballard, and he wasn't good enough.”

“I wasn't thinkin' of givin' him no even break. He's after us, ain't he?”

To kill Chick Bowdrie! As Rasch rode up the cliff trail, he sat hunched in the saddle dreaming of what it would mean. Why, he'd become one of the most famous men in the border country! In all of Texas! And to Jake Rasch, Texas was the world.

There'd be nobody to say how it was done. That girl in El Paso, she'd sure set up an' take notice of him if he got Bowdrie.

Three men lay about the fire at Cedar Springs when Jake Rasch returned to camp. Shad Tucker was a big, rawboned young man with features that betrayed the ugly savagery that lay beneath the surface. In a dozen years of outlawry he had come off scot-free in his brushes with the law. He claimed to have killed twenty men. Actually he had killed twelve, only three of whom had had an even break.

He was brutal, ignorant, and disdainful of the law.

“What's up?” he demanded, recognizing the excitement in Jake Rasch.

“Chick Bowdrie's down at the post. He's stayin' the night.”

“Bowdrie?” His eyes turned mean as he saw the sudden apprehension in Buckeye Thomas's face. “If 'n he's huntin' us, he's askin' for it!”

“Stay shy of him,” Frank Crowley advised.

Tucker spat. “He ain't so much! It's time somebody showed this Bowdrie a thing or two.”

“Whar-at is Jerry Fosdick? I got word from the old man. He wants Jerry to meet Lily at the cave tomorrow at sunup.”

Shad Tucker looked around at him. “You don't need to tell Jerry nothin'. I'll go to the cave.”

Buckeye laughed coarsely and Jake's eyes showed his envy. Crowley looked up.

“You think that's wise, Shad? The old man's been a help, time an' again.”

“He won't be no more. I been suspicious of him, an' he never wanted Jerry to tie up with us. I reckon it's time we cleaned up Fosdick. We'll take his money and the gal and we'll git all he has in that store. He's got a rifle or two I've had my eyes on for months.”

Crowley knew Shad Tucker hated Fosdick because he sensed the contempt Fosdick had for him.

“We'll send Jerry off somewheres an' tell him the Rangers done it.”

They all knew about the iron box under the floor.

“Might as well git on with it. Jake, you go down there an' kill Fosdick. You can git him through a window. Then git back here. We'll handle that Bowdrie when he trails after you.”

Jake Rasch's face was sweaty. He was chewing on a chunk of beef. “Better wait until mornin',” he advised. “Give Lily a chance to start for the cave.”

         

Back in Lee's Canyon Bowdrie accepted another plate of
frijoles
and cornbread. Lily, a slender, pretty blond girl, filled his cup with fresh coffee. “You're not very talkative, Mr. Bowdrie,” she said, smiling.

“No, ma'am, I guess I'm not rightly a talking man. I've got lots of figurin' to do. Anyway,” he added, “I know more about horses than folks, and the folks I know are mostly the bad ones. Gives a man a jaundiced opinion, I'm afraid.”

“Don't you have a family?”

“No, ma'am. Once, when I was a youngster, but that's a long time ago. I went to work soon's I was able. Never had much time to get acquainted, me bein' out with stock all the time.”

“Don't you have a girl?”

“No, ma'am. I've knowed a few here an' there, but there's not been many where I was. I don't even have one to dream about. There was a girl out in Tascosa, she was married to an Irish gambler, an' many's the cowpuncher rode miles just to look at her, she was that beautiful. I never rode that way when she was around.”

He did have figuring to do. Fosdick had been too long taking care of the roan. Had there been somebody else out there? And where was young Jerry? At this time of night he should have been around.

Fosdick had looked anxious and irritated about something, and then Bowdrie heard somebody riding away. The horse did not go east or west or he would have heard the hoofbeats on the hard trail. He had heard three, maybe four hoofbeats, which meant the rider had crossed the trail, not ridden along it. The rider had ridden toward that apparently impassable wall of cliffs.

His deductions were wrong in one instance. Knowing Fosdick had a son, he assumed the rider was Jerry. Obviously he would be riding to warn the Tuckers, which implied a friendly relationship. Yet when Fosdick returned to the table Bowdrie could not reconcile the man's manner or his personality with what he knew of the Tuckers.

Chick Bowdrie's arrival was no accident. Tucker's gang had made a brief foray into Mexico, killing three people, one of them a woman, and stealing a bunch of horses. The Mexican government complained and McNelly sent Bowdrie to investigate.

So far the Tucker outfit had been confining their activities to the wilder, less-known areas, but emboldened by success, they had been striking at larger, richer places.

Getting a map of Texas, Bowdrie made ink marks to indicate the locations of the various raids. Then he calculated a probable location of their hideout as the various robberies seemed to radiate out from a given center, which could be Lee's Canyon. He had checked out several badland locations before coming to Fosdick's trading post.

Nobody had wanted to talk about the rough country south of Poplar Creek, although willing enough to talk of other places, so he deduced his search must begin there.

He took it for granted there was some kind of a working agreement or truce between the Tucker outfit and Fosdick. Otherwise he could not have existed there.

Obviously both Fosdick and Lily were disturbed by his presence. Shad Tucker would know Bowdrie was here and would resent his presence. So while he ate, he listened, every sense alert. Outside a coyote was howling.

Bowdrie was finishing his coffee when the coyote stopped howling. No coyote stopped howling suddenly on a moonlit night without reason. Somebody or something had disturbed that coyote. Chick lifted a forkful of beans, his dark eyes intent and aware. Lily's eyes were large and her lower lip was caught under her teeth.

Her brother? Or someone else? Chick's eyes sought her face, watching her expression. She had lived here, she knew the night sounds better than he. In that instant Jake Rasch's face appeared at the window. Neither Bowdrie nor Lily saw him, but Jake glimpsed the room, seeing what he wished to see.

Chick Bowdrie sat with his back to the door. Opposite him sat Moby Fosdick, and with luck Jake could get them both. His footsteps were catlike as he approached the door.

His heart was jumping like mad. It was the chance of a lifetime! To the devil with Tucker. If he could kill Bowdrie he'd be a big man, bigger than Tucker, and he could always tell Shad he just had to kill him. Yet Bowdrie's reputation was such that when Jake's hand touched the latch, it was trembling.

Six-gun gripped in his hand, he gripped the door latch with his left, and slamming the door back, he fired two quick shots into
an empty space
!

In the moment when Jake was rounding the corner of the house, Bowdrie got up and stepped to the corner for his saddlebags and Fosdick leaned over to get a light from the fire for his pipe.

Tense, every nerve on edge, Jake had fired at the place where the two men had been sitting. Only then did he realize they were gone. Pale with shock and sudden fear, he swung the gun, looking for Bowdrie.

Chick was standing, his saddlebags in his left hand, his gun in his right. He was standing casually, eyes alert, staring at Rasch.

The outlaw gulped, the sound loud in the room. The old clock ticked twice while horror mounted in Jake's breast. He found himself in the last situation he wanted to be in, facing Chick Bowdrie with an even break.

“Well”—Bowdrie was cool—“you came to kill me. Why don't you shoot?”

Transfixed with fear, Rasch forgot the girl in El Paso. He forgot about the important man he wanted to be. Suddenly the cost was enormously large. His mouth opened and closed. He tried to swallow. “You … you'd kill me! I wouldn't have a chance!”