The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (22 page)

She sat there looking at me, and then she said, “I guess I made a mistake.”

“No,” I said, “you weren’t brave enough to take a chance.”

All the way back to the ranch I could hear Pop and Buck talking about how the G-men came in and picked Lanning up for some gyp deal on his income tax, an investigation stirred up by my stories from the West. But I wasn’t thinking of that.

I was thinking that in the morning I’d slip on some old brogans and a sweater to take a walk over the hills. I’d watch the grass shifting in the wind, see the brown specks of my cattle in the meadows, the blunt angles of my corrals and barns. I was thinking that after the frozen winters in Korea, the blood and sweat of the ring—choking down that smoky air…how I loved and hated it—I had a chance with something that was really mine. I had no one to fight anymore.

Fighters Should Be Hungry

I

A
brutal blow in the ribs jerked Tandy Moore from a sound sleep. Gasping, he rolled into a fetal position and looked up to see a brakeman standing over him with his foot drawn back for another kick. With a lunge Tandy was on his feet, his dark eyes blazing. Fists cocked, he started for the brakeman, who backed suddenly away. “Unload!” the man said harshly. “Get off! An’ be quick about it!”

Tandy was a big young man with wide shoulders and a sun-darkened face, darkened still further by a stubble of black beard. He chuckled with cold humor.

“Nope,” Tandy said grimly, and with relish. “If you want me off, you put me off! Come on, I’m going to like this!”

Instead of a meek and frightened tramp, the brakeman had uncovered a wolf with bared teeth. The brakeman backed away still farther.

“You get off!” he insisted. “If that bull down to the yards finds you here, he’ll report it an’ I’ll get chewed out!”

Tandy Moore relaxed a bit. “You watch yourself, mister! You can lose teeth walkin’ up an’ kickin’ a guy that way!” He grabbed the edge of the gondola and lifted himself to the top, then swung his feet over to the ladder. “Say, Jack? What town is this anyway? Not that it makes much difference.”

“Astoria, Oregon. End of the line.”

“Thanks.” Tandy climbed down the ladder, gauged the speed of the train, and dropped off, hitting the cinders on the run.

As though it had been planned for him, a path slanted down off the grade and into a dense jungle of brush that lined the sides and bottom of a shallow ditch. He slowed and started down the path.

Astoria was almost home, but he wasn’t going home. There was nothing there for him anymore. He trotted along near the foot of a steeply slanting hill. He could smell the sea and the gray sky was spitting a thin mist of rain.

At the bottom of the muddy path lay a mossy gray plank bridging a trickle of water, and beyond it the trail slanted up and finally entered a patch of woods surrounded by a wasteland of logged-off stumps.

Almost as soon as Moore entered the thicket, he smelled the smoke of a campfire. He stopped for a moment, brushing at his baggy, gray tweed trousers with his hand. He wore a wool shirt open at the neck, and a worn leather jacket. His razor, comb, and toothbrush lay in one pocket of the jacket. He had no other possessions. He wore no hat, and his black hair was a coarse mass of unruly curls. As presentable as a hobo could be, he started forward.

Of the four men who sat around the fire, only two commanded his attention. A short, square-shouldered, square-faced man with intelligent eyes reclined on the ground, leaning on an elbow. Nearby a big man with black hair freely sprinkled with gray stood over the fire.

There was something familiar about the big man’s face, but Tandy was sure he had never seen him before. His once-powerful build was apparently now overlaid with a layer of softness, and his eyes were blue and pleasant, almost mild.

The other two were typical of the road, a gray-faced man, old and leathery, and a younger man with dirty skin, white under the grime, and a weak chin and mouth.

“How’s for some coffee?” Tandy asked, his eyes shifting from one to the other.

“Ain’t ready yet, chum. Don’t know that we have enough, anyway.” The white-faced young man looked up at him. “They booted you off that drag, huh?”

Tensing, Tandy turned his head and looked down at the fellow, his eyes turning cold. It was an old song and this was how it always started.

“I got off on my own,” he said harshly. “Nobody makes me do nothin’!”

“Tough guy?” The fellow looked away. “Well, somebody’ll take all that out of you.”

Tandy reached down and collared him, jerking him to his tiptoes. They were of the same age, but there the resemblance ceased, for where there was bleak power in Tandy’s hard young face, there was only weakness in the tramp’s.

“It ain’t gonna be you, is it, sucker? You crack wise again and I’ll slap some sense into you!” Tandy said coolly.

“Put him down,” the big man said quietly. “You’ve scared the wits out of him now. No use to hit him.”

Tandy had no intention of hitting him unless he had to, but the remark irritated him more. He dropped the kid and turned.

“Maybe
you
want to start something?” he demanded.

The big man only smiled and shook his head. “No, kid, I don’t give a damn what you do. Just don’t make a fool of yourself.”

“Fool, huh?” Tandy could feel them backing him up, cornering him. “You listen to me, you yellow…” He reached for the big man.

A fist smashed into his mouth, and then another crossed to his jaw and he hit the dirt flat on his back.

Tandy Moore lay on the ground for an instant, more amazed at the power of that blow than hurt. The big man stood by the fire, calm and unruffled. Rage overcame Tandy, he came off the ground with a lunge and threw everything he had into a wicked right hand.

It caught only empty air, but a big, hard-knuckled fist slammed into his chest and stopped his rush, then a right crossed on his jaw and lights exploded in his brain. He went down again but threw himself over and up in one continuous movement. His head buzzing, he spat blood from broken lips and began to circle warily. This big fellow could punch.

Tandy lunged suddenly and swung, but the big man sidestepped smoothly and Tandy fell past him. He cringed, half expecting a blow before he could turn, but none came. He whirled, his fists ready, and the big man stood there calmly, his hands on his hips.

“Cut it out, kid,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to beat your skull in. You can’t fight a lick on earth!”

“Who says I can’t!” Tandy lunged and swung, only this time he was thinking and as he swung with his right, he shifted suddenly and brought up a short, wicked left into the big man’s liver.

The fellow’s face went gray, and the square-faced man on the ground sat up suddenly.

“Watch it, Gus!” he warned.

Gus backed away hastily, and seeing his advantage, Tandy moved in, more cautious but poised and ready. But he ran into something different, for the big man was moving now, strangely graceful. A left stiffened his mouth, a right smashed him on the chin, and another left dropped him to his knees.

Tandy got to his feet and licked his cut lips. The old guy was fast.

“You can punch, darn you!” he growled. “But this scrap ain’t over. I’ll fight until you drop!”

“Kid,” the man warned, “we’re fightin’ for no good reason. You’re carrying a chip but it’s not for us. If I put you down again, I’ll not let you get up. You know I’m not yellow, and I know you’ve got nerve enough to tackle all of us. What do you say we cut this out?”

Tandy hesitated, backing up. The man on the ground spoke, “Come on, son, have some coffee.”

Tandy dropped his hands with a shrug.

“Mister,” he said with a shamefaced grin, “I shouldn’t have gone off like I did. I asked for it.” He eyed Gus with respect. “You can sure use your dukes, though!”

“Don’t take it hard, kid.” The square-faced man smiled at him. “He used to be a prizefighter.”

Across the fire the white-faced kid kept his mouth shut, not looking at either of them.

Tandy Moore shrugged. “Well he got me, but that fancy stuff ain’t no good in a real scrap! Why, there’s plenty of men in the lumber camps and mines could beat Joe Louis’s head in if they had the chance.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Gus said quietly. “Fightin’ is like anything else. A professional fighter does his job better than a greenhorn because he knows how.

“That fancy stuff, as you call it, is nothin’ but a lot of things a lot of fighters learned over a thousand years or more. That’s how scientific boxing was born. You were using it when you feinted and hit me with the left.”

Tandy stared at him, then shrugged. “Ahhh, I figure you can either fight or you can’t!”

Gus smiled at Tandy. “How many times have you been licked, kid?”

“Me?” Tandy bristled. “Nobody never licked me!”

“That’s what I figured,” Gus said. “You are big enough, tough enough, and aggressive enough so you could fight every night around hobo jungles like this one and never lose. In the ring, almost any half-baked preliminary boy would cut you to ribbons.

“I was through as a fighter ten years ago. I haven’t trained since but right now I could chop you into pieces and never catch a punch. I was careless, or you wouldn’t have clipped me as you did.”

Tandy scoffed. “Maybe, but if I had a chance at one of those prelim boys you talk about, I’d show you!”

“Gus”—the square-faced man had seated himself on a log—“maybe this is the guy? What do you think?”

Gus stared at Tandy with a new expression in his eyes. He looked him over thoughtfully, nodded slowly. “Maybe…Kid, did you mean what you said? Would you want to try it?”

Tandy grinned. “I sure would! If there was a shot at some dough!”

T
HE GYMNASIUM
in Astoria was no polished and airy retreat for overstuffed businessmen. It was a dim and musty basement with a heavy canvas bag, darkened around the middle by countless punches thrown by sweat-soaked gloves, a ring slightly smaller than regulation, its ropes wound with gauze, three creaking speed bags, and a broken horse. In one corner there were barbells made from different sizes of car and truck brake drums. A wan light filtered through dirty windows set high in the walls.

It was there, in a borrowed pair of blue trunks that clung precariously to his lean hips, and under them a suit of winter underwear rescued from a basement table by Gus Coe, that Tandy Moore began the process of learning to be a fighter. Their sole capital was a ten-dollar advance from a bored promoter, and five dollars Gus wheedled from a poolroom proprietor. Briggs, Gus’s friend of the square face, leaned back against the wall with a watch in his hand, and Gus stood by while Tandy, bored and uncomfortable, looked at the heavy bag doubtfully.

“Now look,” Gus said patiently, “you got a left hand but you don’t use it right. Lift that left fist up to shoulder height an’ hold it well out. When you hit, punch straight from the shoulder and step in with that left foot. Not much, just a couple of inches, maybe. But step in. Now try it.”

Tandy tried it. His gloved fist smacked the bag solidly but without much force. Tandy looked unhappily at Gus.

“You mean like that? I couldn’t break an egg!”

“You keep trying it. Shoot it straight out, make it snap. An’ bring your fist back on the same line your punch traveled.” He stepped up to the bag. “Like this—”

The left shot out and the bag jumped with the explosive force of the blow. Tandy Moore looked thoughtful.

It worked when Gus threw it, no question about that. Well, the least he could do was humor the guy. He was beginning to like Gus Coe. The big, easygoing ex-fighter was shrewd and thoughtful. And Briggs…

Briggs puzzled Tandy. He was quiet, so quiet you almost forgot he was around, but somehow he always gave Tandy the feeling of being dangerous. He was a man you would never start anything with. Tandy also knew that Briggs carried a gun. He had seen him with it, a small Browning automatic in a shoulder holster.

This training was nonsense. The exercise was okay, it got your muscles in shape, but as for the rest of it, Tandy shrugged mentally. You could either fight or you couldn’t. Just let him get in the ring with one of those fancy Dans. He’d show them a thing or two!

II

That night Tandy stayed up late talking to his two new companions. He watched them closely, trying to figure out just what it was they were up to.

“What’s the angle?” Tandy finally demanded. “I mean, down there in the jungle, Briggs said something about maybe I was the guy?”

Gus dropped on the rooming-house bed opposite him. “It’s like this, kid. A guy gave me an awful jobbing a while back. The guy is a big-shot manager and he’s got money. The Portland and Seattle gamblers are with him, and that means a lot of muscle men, too. He got to one of my fighters, and one way and another, he broke me an’ got me run out of town. Briggs knows all about it.”

“But where do I come in?” Tandy asked.

“Both of us figured we might get a fighter and go back an’ try him again. The best way to get to him is to whip his scrapper…take his money on the bets.”

“Who’s his fighter?” Tandy asked.

Gus grinned at him. “A Portland boy, Stan Reiser,” he said.

“Reiser!”
Tandy Moore came off the chair with a jump.

“Sure.” Gus nodded. “He’s probably one of the three top men on the coast right now, but you don’t take him on your first fight.” He looked at Tandy. “I thought you wanted to fight those guys? That you figured you could run any of them out of the ring?”

“It ain’t that,” Moore said, quieter now. “It’s just that it isn’t what I expected.” His face turned grim and hard. “Yeah,” he agreed, “I’ll go along. I’d like to fight that guy. I’d like to lick him. I’d like to beat him until he couldn’t move!”

Turning abruptly, Tandy walked out of the room and they heard his feet going down the stairs. Briggs stared at the door.

“What do you make of that?” Gus asked.

Briggs shrugged. “That kid’s beyond me,” he said. “Sometimes he gives me cold chills.”

“You, too?” Gus looked understandingly at Briggs. “Funny, a kid like that making us feel this way.”

Briggs rubbed out his cigarette. “Something’s eatin’ him, Gus. Something deep inside. We saw it this morning an’ we may have just hit on it again, though what it has to do with Reiser or your situation I ain’t gonna guess.”

T
HEY WALKED
into a hotel restaurant the night of the fight. It was early, late afternoon really. The wind was whipping in off the Pacific in blasts that slammed the door closed as they came through. In these new surroundings, they looked shabby and out of place. This was blocks from the cheap rooming house where they lived, blocks from the beanery in which they had been eating.

They sat on stools at the restaurant counter, and a girl brought the menus. Tandy Moore looked up, looked into the eyes of the girl beyond the counter.