Where the Long Grass Blows (1976) (23 page)

Once. ... Again. He walked in on the big man intent only upon getting as much lead into him as possible. A bullet creased his arm and, involuntarily, he dropped his gun. Instantly he drew with his left hand. ... He wasn't quite as good with the left, but at this range. ...

Levitt's shirt was red with blood, and he fired into the red patch. Then he tilted the muzzle a fraction and put a round, blue hole at the base of Levitt's throat.

Yet the man wouldn't go down. He staggered, caught himself, started to bring his gun in line with Canavan's body. Cooly, Canavan took a step to the left, planted his foot solidly, and fired again and again.

Slowly, Levitt crumpled. He fell back on his left hand, staring up at Canavan with those magnificent eyes. "Next time I'll." The hand crumpled under him and he lay face up to the rain, eyes wide, unblinking.

Canavan turned sharply. "Get into that slicker.

We've got to get out of here!"

The echoing of the gunfire died away and there was only the rain. He did not look at Levitt, simply turning away and picking up his dropped gun.

Dixie caught at him. "You're hurt. You're bleeding!"

"No time for that now." Surprisingly, he did not seem to be hurting, and felt no weakness. If he was hit. ... Of course, he had been hit on the arm ... but it wasn't bothering him much. Something else was.

He was thinking of the crevasse through which they must ride, and those great, hanging slabs.

Fighting his way into his slicker, he saw Dixie swing to the saddle and gallop out to make a swing around the cattle and start them toward the opening.

Surprisingly, the big steer who took the lead headed into the crack as if it had done so before, and in fact many of the cattle must have fed both in and outside the crater.

Waving Dixie ahead of him, he followed her into the cleft, casting scared glances aloft. He grabbed a stone off a small ledge and hurled it at a laggard cow.

"Get going!" he yelled, and pushed hard. The cattle were moving, moving too slowly.

Suddenly, something ... somewhere, started them moving faster, then faster. Now they were running, and Dixie's horse was scrambling at the rocks right behind them.

He glanced up as they neared the narrowest part. Horror filled him, for that great, hanging slab had seemed to move.

"Hum. he yelled. "Use your rope!

Keep them running!"

Dixie glanced up and he saw her face as a white, scared blotch in the driving rain. A thin trickle of stones fell, splashing into the cleft, and pools of water were gathering here and there. Canavan looked up again, and this time there was no doubt. The great slab moved, grated horribly against the rock beneath, and sent another trickle of stones ahead to scout the path. The rock started to move again, hesitated, then its great table-top inclined almost majestically. And with gathering speed, it started to slide!

Shale and gravel rattled down the cliff, and his horse leaped forward, pushing against Flame. And Flame in turn pushed against the laggard steer. It leaped ahead, and Flame scrambled after. With shouts and yells he urged the cattle on, andwitha coiled rope Dixie lashed out at the nearest. They began to trot again, then to run. From behind them came a great reverberating roar and, turning in the saddle, he glanced back.

He was somewhat higher now, out of the worst of the cleft, and he could see the great rock slide the last of its distance to the sheer edge, pushing rocks and boulders before it. Then, on the very lip, it held itself, balanced for a breathless instant and then it fell.

It struck somewhere far below, and there was a great rush of air up the cleft in the rock. Rio leaped nervously, and tugged at the bit to get on. Now the whole side seemed to be sliding down into the crevasse.

On a small open space where the cleft widened at a somewhat higher level, they drew up and sat their saddles in the rain, looking back. "It's a tomb," she said, "a tomb wide open to the sky. Nobody will ever find him now."

The wolves will," he said, "and the cougars."

She shuddered. "What an awful thing! Do you suppose it is really closed?"

Canavan shrugged. "There may have been some other way. I never had the time to look. Or maybe a man who was a good rock climber could get in ... or out. I wouldn't try it."

The pounding rain beat upon their hats and their shoulders, and they drove the cattle slowly out upon the widening plain, then left them and started for the mesa.

Canavan thought of his guns, and one by one he reloaded them, returning them to their holsters. He had started packing two six-shooters when he rode shotgun on the stage. For a man might need firepower against a sudden attack by Indians or outlaws, yet it was the first time since those days that he had had any use for that second gun.

Burt ran from the cabin as they rode up, taking their bridles. "Get inside an' get dry!" he yelled.

"We've been worried about you two!"

When they were inside with their slickers off and hot coffee in their cups, Burt said, "Mabry thought he saw Chubb earlier today. We were worried about you."

"You haven't seen them?" Canavan paused with his cup halfway to his lips.

Burt had come in, hearing the question. He took off his slicker and hung it on a peg. "No, an'

I'll be just as pleased if I never see them again."

He took a cup and filled it from the blackened pot. "This here rain must be playing tricks with that geyser. I was over thataway when she boiled up, and I'd of sworn it sounded like a human, screeching down in there. Made the hair stand on my neck! You know," He paused. "What's the matter? What did I say?"

Dixie had turned quickly away, going into the inner room. Roily looked after her, puzzled.

"What's wrong? I mean-was "Forget it, Roily. And don't mention that geyser again."

Slowly, he related the events of the day. The ride into the lava beds, the end of Star Levitt, and the slide that closed ... or apparently closed ... the cleft.

"Was he sure-enough dead?"'" Mabry asked. "You real sure?"

"I'm sure. Rain was falling into his wide-open eyes."

Dixie returned to the room. "Bill, those poor men!

Trapped in that awful place! They were cruel, vindictive men, but I'd wish that on nobody."

"Forget about it. They were hiding there to kill us." He put his hand on her arm. "Look, honey, at the fire. It is our fire, in our home! Smell that coffee Mabry has on? And listen to the rain! That rain means that the grass will be tall and green when spring comes again to the Valley, green on our hills, and for our cattle!"

They stood together watching the dance of the flames and listening to the thunder of the rain on the roof, hearing the great drops that fell down the chimney hiss out their anguish in the coals. A stick fell, a blaze crept along it, feeling hungrily for places to burn.

Dishes rattled in the kitchen, and Roily was pouring coffee.

I think of myself in the oral tradition as a troubadour, a village tdetetter, the man in the shadows of the campfire.

That's the way I'd like to be remembered, as a storyteller. A good storyteller."

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr.

L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600's and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr.

L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, assessment miner, and officer on tank destroyers during World War II. bar During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books.

His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr.

L'Amour published his first full: length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 100 books is in print; there are nearly 230 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern : literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel) Jubal Sackett, Last of the backslash Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L'Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio Publishing.

The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988.

His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the nineties; among them, an additional Hopalong Cassidy novel, Trouble Shooter and the short story collections Valley of the Sun and West of Dodge.