The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 2 (49 page)

“Yeah. The place was cold an' empty. I knew nothing about no back room. I just broke up some kindling an' got a fire goin'. Once she was burnin' pretty good, I put some chunks on the fire an' laid down. I was played out.”

“You were next, Stadelmann?”

“Uh-huh. Roper there, he was asleep or pretendin' to be when I come in. I put more wood on the fire an' set down at the table. About that time other folks started arrivin'.”

Bowdrie picked up his cup and Nelly filled it from the pot. He sat down in an empty chair with his back to the wall. Right from the start this had been a tough one. He had been searching for a man he had never seen and of whom he had no description. He had found himself among a group of people, any one of whom might be guilty. Now the least likely of them all seemed to be the man he must find. And that man was gone. Or was he?

“Roper? The way I understand it, you an' Miss Craig were in here all the time?”

“Uh-huh, only Baker never did go clear out. Just his head an' shoulders.”

DeVant's yellow eyes followed Bowdrie with that same malicious gleam as his fingers riffled the pasteboards.

Nelly and Roper were near the fire. Judd, his face drawn and bitter with the loss of his life savings, stood nearby. Baker and Stadelmann were at the table with DeVant.

Finishing his coffee, Bowdrie took off his wet slicker and hung it on a nail. Then he dried his hands with infinite care, his dark Apache features inscrutable as he carefully thought out every move. What he would now attempt to do was fraught with danger.

He turned suddenly. “Stadelmann! Baker! Get up, will you, please?”

Puzzled, they got to their feet. Baker was on the verge of a sarcastic comment when Bowdrie said, “Now, if you will go into the back room and take the body of Ed Colson down from the rafters.”

“What?”
Stadelmann exclaimed.

Judd was staring, jaw hanging.

“Don't bring the body in here, just take it down.”

DeVant was watching him, alert and curious. Lew Judd passed a shaking hand over his chin. “You … you mean he's
dead
?”

“Murdered and robbed after he had robbed you, Judd, by the only man who could have done it.

“What? What do you mean?” Baker demanded.

“Why, DeVant did it,” Bowdrie said, and the two guns thundered at once.

Bowdrie stood still, his .44 Colt balanced easy in his hand, while DeVant sat perfectly still, a round hole over his right eye. Slowly he started to rise, then toppled across the table. Nelly Craig screamed.

White-faced, Baker stared from one to the other, unable to grasp what had happened. Bowdrie stepped over to the dead man, and unfastening his shirt, removed Lew Judd's money belt and passed it to him.

Judd grasped it eagerly. “Thank God!” His voice trembled. “I slaved half my life for that!”

Peg Roper stared at Bowdrie, and exclaimed, “Did you see him throw that gun? DeVant had his in his lap with his hand on it, an' Bowdrie beat him!”

“How could you know?” Baker asked. “How could you possibly know?”

Bowdrie fed a cartridge into his pistol and holstered it. “I should have known from the beginning. Ed Colson killed that prospector, and he probably killed the stage driver.

“Somehow, DeVant got wise. Maybe he actually heard or saw something back there on the grade. Maybe he was following Judd himself.

“Judd an' Stadelmann went after wood and I followed them. Colson had been to the back of the dugout before, and he went there again. He slipped out, tried to kill me, and robbed Judd's cache almost as soon as Judd hid it. He thought he pulled it off, but DeVant had seen him go.

“Probably DeVant knew who to watch. Naturally, Roper and Nelly were looking toward the dugout door where Baker had gone. DeVant was a quiet-moving man, anyway, who knew from card-cheating the value of doing things by misdirection. He got back there, knifed Colson when he came back with the money, and shoved the body across the rafters. Then he just quietly came back into the room. I doubt if the whole operation took him more than two or three minutes.

“Remember, nobody knew there was another room then. All he would seem to have done was to get up and move around.”

“What about Colson's horse?”

“Turned it loose with a slap on the rump. DeVant had no reason to be suspected. He planned to ride out on the stage with the rest of you. It was cold, unadulterated gall, but he might have gotten away with it. Only when I was in that back room a drop of blood hit my hand.

“Figure it out. Who was missing? Only Colson. Where could that drop have come from except overhead? It had to be those low rafters. Who had the opportunity? DeVant.

“Baker said DeVant was outside, but he wasn't. That indicated to me that DeVant was moving around. Probably Baker
thought
he had gone out because he was not in sight, but he wasn't paying that much attention.”

“I wasn't,” Baker said. “I was expecting gunfire out there.”

Nobody said anything for several minutes; then Lew Judd sat down and looked at his niece, smiling. “We're going to make it now, honey,” he said.

Stadelmann crossed to the bunk and stretched out on the hard boards. He was soon asleep. Roper hunkered down near the fire.

“It is almost morning,” Baker said. “Maybe the stage will get through.”

“I hope so,” Judd said sincerely.

Chick Bowdrie said nothing at all. He was sitting against the wall, almost asleep.

Down Sonora Way

Down on his stomach in the sand behind his dead horse, Chick Bowdrie waited for the sun to go down. It was a hot Sonora sun and the nearest shade was sixty yards away in a notch of the Sierra de Espuelas, where Tensleep Mooney waited with a Winchester.

Bowdrie had scooped out sand to dig himself a few inches deeper below the surface, but a bullet burn across the top of his shoulder and two double holes in his black flat-crowned hat demonstrated both the accuracy and the intent behind Tensleep's shooting.

Five hundred miles behind them in Texas were two dead men, the seventh and eighth on the list of Mooney's killings, and Bowdrie was showing an understandable reluctance to become number nine.

The sun was hot, Bowdrie's lips were cracked and dry, his canteen was empty. A patient buzzard circled overhead and a tiny lizard stared at the Ranger with wide, wondering eyes. It was twenty miles to water unless some remained in the
tinaja
where Mooney was holed up, and twenty miles in the desert can be an immeasurable distance.

Neither man held any illusions about the other. Tensleep Mooney was a fast hand with a six-shooter and an excellent rifle shot. His courage was without question. His feud with the gunslinging Baggs outfit was a legend in Texas. Al Baggs had stolen Mooney's horse. Mooney trailed him down, and in the gun battle that followed, killed him, recovering his horse. The Baggs family were Tennessee feudal stock and despite the fact that killing a horse thief was considered justifiable homicide, a brother and a cousin came hunting Tensleep. Mooney took two Baggs bullets and survived. The Baggs boys took three of Mooney's slugs and didn't.

From time to time a Baggs or two took a shot at Mooney, and at least two attempts were made to trap him. Others were killed and the last attempt resulted in a woman being shot. Then Tensleep unlimbered his guns and went to work. Until then he had been rolling with the punches but now he decided if the Baggs clan wanted war, they should have it.

Gene Baggs, the most noted gunslinger of the outfit, was in San Antonio. One Tuesday night Mooney showed up and gave Gene Baggs his chance. The Variety Theater rang with gunshots and Gene died of acute indigestion caused by absorbing too much lead on an empty stomach.

Killings seven and eight had taken place near Big Spring, one of them a Baggs, the other an itinerant gunfighting cattleman named Caspar Hanna. Settling disputes with guns was beginning to be frowned on in Texas, so the Rangers got their orders and Bowdrie got his.

Mooney was tricky and adept at covering his trail. Cunning as a wolf, he shook off his trailers and even lost Bowdrie on two occasions. Irritated, Bowdrie followed him to the Mexican border and kept on going. Out of his bailiwick though it was, the chase had now become a matter of professional and personal pride.

So now they were in the dead heart of Apache country, stalemated until darkness. If Mooney escaped in the dark, Bowdrie was scheduled to walk home, the odds against his survival a thousand to one. If one left out the heat and lack of water, even the miles of walking in boots meant for riding, there were always the Apaches.

“Thirsty, Ranger?” Mooney called.

“I'll drink when I'm ready,” Bowdrie replied. “You want to come out with your hands up? You'll get a fair trial.”

“I'd never live for the trial. Without my guns in Baggs country? I wouldn't last three days.”

“Leave that to the Rangers.”

“Much obliged. I'll leave it to Mooney.”

Neither man spoke again and the hour dragged on. Bowdrie tried licking dry lips with a dry tongue. The heat where he lay was not less than one hundred and twenty degrees. Shifting his position drew a quick bullet. Carefully he began to dig again, trying to get at the rifle scabbard on the underside of his horse.

Bowdrie had nothing but respect for Mooney. Under any circumstances but the present the two might have worked a roundup together. Tensleep was a tough cowhand from the Wyoming country that gave him his name, a man who had started ranching on his own, a man who had been over the cow trails to Montana from Texas, who had fought Indians and rustlers.

Bowdrie continued to dig, finally loosening the girth on the dead horse.

“Somethin' out there.” Mooney spoke suddenly, and Chick almost looked up, then cursed himself for a fool. It was a trap.

“Somebody travelin' north.” Mooney's voice was just loud enough for Bowdrie to hear.

“In this country? You've got to be crazy.”

He lay quiet, thinking. There had been no faking in Mooney's tone, and travelers in this country meant, nine times out of ten, Apaches. They were in the middle of an area controlled by Cochise, with his stronghold just to the north in New Mexico. If those were Apaches out there, they were in trouble.

Silence, and then Mooney spoke again, just loud enough for him to hear. “Somebody out there, all right. Can't quite make 'em out. Three or four riders, an' I'd say one was a woman.”

A woman in this country?
Now?
Bowdrie wanted to chance a look, but if he lifted his head, Mooney might kill him.

“Walkin' their horses.” Mooney was a trifle higher than Bowdrie and could see better.

Both men were hidden, Bowdrie by cactus and rock, Mooney by a notch of rocks that hid both himself and his horse.

“The man's hurt, got his arm in a sling, bandage on his head. Looks like the woman is holdin' him on his horse.”

Bowdrie had dug deep enough to pull the girth loose, and now he pulled the saddle off and got at his Winchester. As he lifted the Winchester clear, it showed above the rocks.

“That won't do you no good, Bowdrie,” Mooney said. “You lift your head to shoot an' I'll ventilate it.”

“Leave that to me,” Bowdrie replied cheerfully. “I'd rather take you in alive, because you'd keep better in this heat, but if I have to, I'll start shootin' at the rocks in back of you. The ricochets will chop you to mincemeat.”

That, Mooney realized unhappily, was the plain, unvarnished truth. He rubbed a hand over his leather-brown face and narrowed his blue eyes against the sun's glare. He knew that Ranger out there, knew that behind that Apache-like face was as shrewd a fighting brain as he had ever known. No other man could have followed him this far. He peered through the rocks once more.

“Dust cloud.” There was a silence while Bowdrie waited, listening. “Somebody chasin' the first bunch, I reckon. Quite a passel of 'em. The first bunch is comin' right close. Three horses, a man wounded bad, a woman an' two youngsters. The kids are ridin' double.”

After a moment Mooney added, “Horses about all in. They've come fast an' hard.”

“Comin' this way?”

“No, they'll pass us up.”

A fly buzzed lazily in the hot afternoon sun and Bowdrie could hear the sound of the approaching horses. Hidden as he and Mooney were, there was not a chance they'd be seen.

“Should be water at Ojo de Monte.” The man's voice was ragged with exhaustion. “But that's twenty miles off.”

“After that?”

“Los Mosquitos, or the Casa de Madera, another thirty miles as the crow flies. You'll have to keep to low ground. I'll try to hold 'em off from those rocks up ahead.”

“No!” The woman's voice was strong. “No, George. If we're going to die, let it be together!”

“Don't be a fool, Hannah! Think of the children! You might get through, you might save them and yourself.”

Chick Bowdrie shifted his body in the sand. A cloud of dust meant a good-sized bunch of Apaches. A small bunch would make no dust. And they were sure of their prey, for this was their country, far from any aid.

If they kept on after the man and his family, they would never see Mooney or Bowdrie. Bowdrie was realist enough to realize all they had to do was lie quiet. The Indians would not see their tracks, as they had come in from the north and the Apaches were coming from the west. Moreover, they would be too intent on their prey to look for other tracks.

“Mooney?” He spoke just loud enough for the outlaw to hear. “Are we goin' to stand for this? I say we call off our fight and move into this play.”

“Just about to suggest the same thing, Ranger. Call 'em back.”

Chick Bowdrie got to his feet. The family were moving away, but within easy hailing distance.

“Hey! Come back here! We'll help you!”

Startled, they drew up and turned to stare. “Come over here! I'm a Texas Ranger. You'd never make it the way you're headin'!”

They rounded their horses and walked them closer. The man's face was haggard, the bandage on his head was bloody. The youngsters, hollow-eyed and frightened, stared at them. The woman, not yet thirty, had a flicker of hope in her eyes.

“What we can offer ain't much better,” Bowdrie said, “but two more rifles can help. If he tried to hold 'em off, they'd just cut around him an' have you all with no trouble.”

“They'd get you before you could say Sam Houston. You get down an' come into the rocks.” Tensleep paused, grinning at Bowdrie. “But not where that in-curvin' rock is.” He rolled his quid of chewing tobacco in his wide jaws. “The Ranger tells me that ain't safe.”

The dust cloud was nearer now, and the Apaches, aware their quarry had elected to stop, were fanning out. Tensleep spat. “This here's goin' to surprise 'em some. They reckon they're only comin' up on a hurt man an' a woman with kids.”

It was cooler in the shade of the big rocks, and a glance at the
tinaja
showed a couple of barrels of water, at least. There was shelter for their horses and it was a good place to make a stand. Trust Tensleep to choose the right spot to fight a battle.

The desert before them was suddenly empty. The dust cloud had settled. The buzzard overhead had been joined by a hopeful relative. The buzzards were neutral. No matter who won down there, they would win. They had but to wait. The lizard had vanished. Bowdrie had dragged his saddle and bridle back into the rocks. He worked himself into a hollow in the sand, found a place for his elbows, and waited.

Nothing.

That was expected. It was when you never saw Apaches that you could worry. They were confident but did not wish to risk a death to get the four they pursued.

The woman was washing the man's arm now, replacing the bandage. Tensleep rolled his quid in his jaws and spat upon an itinerant scorpion. The scorpion backed off, unhappy at the unexpected deluge of trouble.

“How many would you say?”

Mooney thought it over. “Maybe ten. No less'n that. Could be twice as many.”

“Tough.”

“Yeah.”

Mooney shoved his canteen at Bowdrie. “What are you? A camel? Don't you ever drink?”

“Forgot how.” Bowdrie took a mouthful and let it soak the dry tissues, then swallowed.

Both men understood their chances of getting out alive were so slim they weren't worth counting on. The children stared at them, wide-eyed. The girl might have been ten, the boy two or three years younger. Their clothes were ragged but clean as could be expected after a hard ride. Bowdrie dug into his saddlebag and handed each child a piece of jerky. He grinned at them and winked. The girl smiled warily but the boy was fascinated by Bowdrie's guns. “Can I hold one?” he asked.

“I need 'em, son. Guns are dangerous things. You use 'em when need be, but nobody plays with a gun unless he's a fool.” He indicated the area out in front of them. “This is one time they're needed.”

Nothing moved out there; there was only sun, sand, and sky, low brush, occasional cactus, and the buzzards who seemed to simply hang in the sky, scarcely moving their wings. A shoulder showed, and Bowdrie held his fire.

Mooney glanced at him. “You're no tenderfoot.”

“I grew up with 'em,” Bowdrie commented. “Them an' Comanches.”

That exposed shoulder had been an invitation, a test to see where they were, and how many. Yet they believed they knew. They had been chasing a man, a woman, and children.

A half-dozen Indians came off the ground at once. It was as if they were born suddenly from the sand. Where they appeared there had been nothing an instant before.

The thunder of suddenly firing rifles smashed echoes against the rocks and the whine of ricocheting bullets sent shuddering sounds through the clear desert air. An instant, a smell of gunpowder, and they were gone. Heat waves danced in the still air.

An Apache lay on his face not ten feet away. Another was sprawled near a clump of greasewood. As Bowdrie looked, that Indian rolled over and vanished before Bowdrie could bring his rifle to bear. There was blood on the sand where he had fallen.

“How'd you make out?”

“One down an' a possible,” Bowdrie replied.

“Two down here, an' a possible. What's the matter? Can't you Rangers shoot no better than that?”

“You light a shuck,” Bowdrie replied complacently. “I can outshoot you any day and twice on Sunday.”

“Huh,” Mooney grunted, then glanced at the scorpion, who was getting ready to move again. He spat, deluging it anew. Then suddenly he fired.

“Scratch another redskin,” he said.

Bowdrie lay still, watching the desert. They were doing some thinking out there now. The two rifles had surprised them, and an Apache does not like to be surprised. Their attack had seemed so easy. The Apache is an efficient, able fighting man who rarely makes a useless move, and even more rarely miscalculates. This easy attack had now cost them three or four men and some wounds.

The sky was a white-hot bowl above them, the desert a reflector, yet the sun had already started its slide toward the far-off mountains.

An Apache moved suddenly, darting to the right. Bowdrie had his rifle on the spot where he had seen him drop from sight. He was a young warrior, and reckless. As he arose and moved, Bowdrie squeezed off his shot and the warrior stumbled.