Louis L'Amour (15 page)

“I knew you would come, Mr. Pike. I knew you would,” she said.

“My name is Barnabas. But everybody calls me Pronto.”

“I’ll call you Barney.” She paused. “I told Philo you would come.”

“We’ve got to get him into Miles City,” I said. “We can rig a travois, and in the snow the trip won’t be too rough.”

We talked there for a few minutes, and then she went back inside, and I walked off a few steps and
stood under the trees, where I could watch both up and down the canyon. As I stood there, I tried to figure things out.

There was a party of would-be vigilantes out … maybe only Bohlen’s outfit. They would be hunting Farley, and they would be hunting me.

There was also the bunch that shot up Gatty’s rustlers, and I was sure they were a different crowd altogether.

And there was the rider who rode the horse with the leather shoes. And that rider was a cold-blooded killer who didn’t seem to fit in anywhere.

All of those people were our enemies, all of them a danger to us. Under the circumstances, our only hope was to get into Miles City or some good-sized community where we could at least have the benefit of public opinion. Out here we could all be killed, buried, and after a short time forgotten. In town, right among folks, it would be an almighty great risk to try killing us. At least, it would be a big risk to try killing the Farleys.

But it was a long hard trip into Miles City, which lay a good many miles off to the north and east, and every mile of it a danger. We couldn’t move as fast as a man riding free, but we could make fair time in the snow if we could rig a sled.

All the while I was standing there in the cold, I was watching for anyone coming our way, but the canyon was empty. And I knew the little smoke we made could not be seen outside the canyon, for by the time it had lifted that high it had faded out to nothing.

Eddie came out and stood beside me. “He’s hurt bad, Pronto. Real bad.”

“Could he stand a two-, three-day trip into Miles City?”

Eddie shrugged. “Maybe. I’d guess he couldn’t, but that’s a tough man in there.”

He paused, then took out a couple of cigars. “Mr. Farley gave me these … have one.” He lit up, and then asked, “Couldn’t we make it no faster?”

When I shook my head, he asked, “Who is Lottie?”

“Lottie?”

“He talked about her some. I mean when he was delirious … he had a spell of it for a while.”

“Somebody he knew back home, I reckon. I don’t know of any Lottie around here.”

While Eddie took a spell on watch, I went inside to drink some coffee and warm up. Also, I wanted my rifle, which I’d left inside, although I had the six-shooter belted to me.

Ann poured out coffee and handed it to me, along with a sandwich of bread and warmed-up meat.

“What are you going to do when this is over?” she asked.

“Homestead.”

My answer came out so quick it surprised even me, but when I thought about it I knew that was what I was going to do. I was going to homestead on some good water and start my own outfit, and if they wanted to trouble me about it they could try. They wouldn’t be picking on any amateur. I had been there before when it came to trouble.

“I want a place of my own,” I said; “a ranch with some cattle and some good horses.”

Now that I’d said it out in words, I knew the idea had been there all along. I even knew the place, and
I’d only seen it one time, and that quite a while back. It was over against the Big Horns where the Lodge Grass headed up. It was rough country, but there was water, and I liked it.

We talked about it for a while, and Ann Farley surprised me by knowing quite a lot about range life. Of course, as she explained, Philo had written her of his own troubles and plans, as well as what was going on around him. But she knew more than that, and she told me she had talked to some of the Englishmen who had invested in Wyoming and Montana cattle, and had read something about it in the papers.

“There were some very good articles in the
Fortnightly Review
,” she added, “written by men who had been over here. I was curious about what Philo was doing in Montana, so I tried to learn everything I could about it.”

“You did a job,” I admitted, surprised that anybody could learn that much about range conditions and cattle from books or magazines.

Later, when I went outside to relieve Eddie and to check on the horses, I thought about it a good deal. If a girl like that could learn something about such things by reading, I might learn something myself by studying. And if I was going to make something of myself, I’d better get down to brass tacks and do something about it.

“Nothing to see,” Eddie said, “but man, I don’t like the feel of it. I think we should get out.”

“Tonight?”

Eddie was reluctant, but finally he said, “Better wait until almost daybreak. He’s resting well in there, or was when I came out.”

“He still is.”

“He can use it.” He looked at me. “Why don’t we make a sled? I brought an axe along and I noticed an adze there in the cabin. She ain’t much account, but I could sharpen it up a mite.”

“Are you any good with an axe?”

“I’m a fair hand,” Eddie admitted, “but I’ve noticed you cutting wood. You’ll do.”

“I grew up with an axe in my hand,” I said. “All right, sled it is. I’ll take the axe and go hunt some runners.”

Taking the rifle and the axe, I went up the hill into a young stand of lodge-pole pine, and picked a couple of slim young trees and cut them down. Back at the cabin we smoothed off the bark and with the adze cut a flat surface to slide on.

Eddie was a better hand than me. He showed he had some knowledge of such things, and he had skill with his hands. Like I’ve always said, I could do any work that could be done from the back of a cow pony. Otherwise, I wasn’t much account.

Yet if I decided to homestead I’d have to do all kinds of work, I’d have to build my own cabin, even plow a mite to put in a home garden. But first off, I’d need some cattle and a couple of horses.

Every few minutes while I was working I looked around and studied the country, and I was getting the same feeling Eddie had, the itch to be away from here. The place had an eerie feel to it, added to by the ghostly white of everything under the new fall of snow.

Maybe it was because I was expecting trouble, expecting Roman Bohlen and his outfit to catch up
with us, or even that other crowd, the bunch who had shot up Tom Gatty’s rustlers … these things going on in that country made a man uneasy.

All the while in the back of my mind was the nagging thought that I had a showdown coming with Bohlen. It had to come, but I couldn’t see how I could win. He had the money, the influence, the men back of him; and in a fight he was a whole lot bigger than me.

“I wish we could have boxed more,” I told Eddie. “I surely wish we had.”

“You learned a lot,” Eddie said. “You took to it. You just remember what you learned and you won’t have any trouble. You’re a natural. Believe me, if you’d started younger you could have made it; but a man should start boxing when he’s young.”

Philo Farley slept the day through, and most of the night. Toward daylight, when I was in the cabin drinking coffee, he woke up and lay with his eyes open. Ann was wrapped up in her blankets, fast asleep.

“Pike? Is that you?” Farley said.

I walked over and sat down on the edge of the bunk. “You want some soup or something?” I asked. “We’ve got some ready.”

“Not just yet.” He stayed quiet for a minute. “Pike, is Ann asleep?”

When I nodded, he said, “She should never have come out here, but she was always like that. She loved to climb in the mountains back home, and to ride the wildest horses. Ann should have been born in Montana, not Ireland.”

He was quiet again, and I told him of our plans to get him into Miles City. He listened, then nodded slightly. “You can try. It will get Ann there, anyway. But I won’t make it, Pike, I am sure I won’t.”

“That’s a fool way to talk!”

“I’ve got the feeling, Pike.” He looked at me curiously. “You take good care of Ann. She belongs in this country.”

“She’ll be going home.”

He turned his head slowly from side to side. “She might, but I don’t believe it. She’s very like me, Pike. She’s seen those Big Horns against the sky, and she has ridden over the range. I think she’ll stay.”

He gave me a sudden sharp look. “You know, Pike, living out here gives a man different standards. Over there, education and position seem the most important things, but out here … well, it’s the way it should be everywhere—character comes first. Not that a man should underrate either education or position. But it is the man that matters, not where he came from or where he went to school.

“Take you, Pike. I don’t know anything about your blood lines and I care less, but you’ve got what this country needs—what it will always need. You’ve got stamina, courage, and a strong sense of justice.”

I was kind of surprised and embarrassed. I went over and knelt beside the fire, where I dished up a cup of soup for him, and I helped him to it.

He looked up at me. “I’d like to make it to Miles City. I’d like to recover, Pike. If I do, I’ll kill Roman Bohlen.”

“He needs it,” I agreed, “but this country is outgrowing that way. Maybe that time is already past
and Bohlen himself didn’t know. He’s gone too far this time.”

Just short of daybreak I went up into the woods to get their horses, and led them back down. We hitched our pack horse to the sled, and the rest of our gear we put on their extra horses. Eddie got up in the saddle to lead off.

It wasn’t until I was helping Ann into her saddle that I noticed the tracks of her horse.

When I looked at its hoofs I saw that it wore leather Indian-style shoes.

B
Y THE TIME the sun came up we were crossing a shoulder of the mountain near Padget Creek, and when we actually caught sight of the sun we were already down in the valley of the Otter. It wasn’t easy going, but by taking turns at scouting ahead and breaking trail, Eddie and me found our way. We took our nooning on Ten Mile Creek, and since then we had come a mite further.

“How’s it going?” I asked Philo.

“All right,” he said quietly.

He looked drawn and pale, and I knew he was taking a beating on this trip. If he lived through this, he’d be almighty lucky; but he would have died anyway without proper care. Or he would have been hung or murdered if he was found. We had no choice but to make the try.

We poured him a cup of coffee, and I squatted alongside him while he drank it. It was strong enough to peel paint off a barn, and it seemed to do him good.

But there was something troubling me, and I could not ride easy without trying to learn what I could.

“Too bad,” I said, “about Johnny Ward.”

He was looking right at me when I said it, and there wasn’t so much as a flicker in his eyes. “Johnny Ward? Who was he?”

“Cowpoke,” I said. “Nice kid.” I sipped my coffee. “Somebody shot him. Somebody he knew well enough not to be scared. Shot him in the back at close range.”

“That’s rotten,” he said. “It’s a miserable way to go.”

He tried to stretch out a little more and a spasm of pain crossed his face.

“Shorty Cones is dead, too. He got to us before he died. He was shot the same way.”

“Cones? Wasn’t he a kind of bad one? I believe he used to be around John Chinnick’s place with that outfit.”

“Uh-huh.”

If Philo Farley knew anything at all about the death of either man, he was better at hiding it than I would have believed. It worried me, for of one thing I was very sure. Philo Farley knew the murderer, and Philo must have been friendly to him or those tracks would not have been seen at his place—not so many, from so many different occasions. And whoever the murderer was, he was dangerous to know.

Who could it be who had known all three—Johnny Ward, Cones, and Farley? Who was accepted on familiar terms by all of them?

“Had many visitors lately?” I asked.

Farley had closed his eyes. “No … very few.”

He looked bad, so I stopped bothering him.

We mounted up again and I led off. The trail along Otter Creek was good, for some cattle had used it, and at least one rider—I could not make out the tracks.

“Will they follow us?” Ann asked. “Bohlen, I mean?”

“Yes.”

“And if they catch us they will kill you too?”

“They’ll try.”

Both Eddie and me kept our heads turning, not only to look back, but around us and ahead too. That mysterious killer was worrying both of us, for nothing about it fitted in, anywhere.

“It’s got to be somebody we don’t know,” I had told him during a moment together, “somebody we don’t even suspect.”

“Somebody nobody suspected,” he said, “looking at the way they were killed.”

The day was cold, but it had cleared off and the sky was bright, the snow sparkled in the sunlight, the pines even seemed green instead of black. The going was hard on Farley, but there was no help for it. Part of the time, when the trail was good, we moved at a trot. Actually, there were fewer bumps than one would have expected, and he rode well.