Louis L'Amour (21 page)

“You know,” Finerty said, “they are accusing you of killing Johnny Ward too.”

Well, why not? I was being accused of everything else. Why not throw all the crimes in a basket and hang me for the lot?

“Did Bohlen do that?” Finerty asked. He studied me with those steely gray eyes of his and chewed on his cigar, waiting for my answer.

“Funny thing, about that. I never have figured it out.” I explained about the leather-shod hoofs, and even about finding those same tracks near Farley’s place.

“One time there I thought it might be that strange woman, but her mule didn’t wear leather shoes—though he did have mighty small feet.”

“What woman was that?”

So I told him about the woman I’d seen, and what Ann had told me about her spilling a pot of beans at Farley’s place when she saw Ann there.

“This woman—what did she look like?”

“A big woman, big frame anyway, and kind of stupid-looking. Dressed in a man’s rough cast-off clothes—clothes for a much bigger person than she was. I’ll admit she worried me some, spooking around like that.”

“Pike, when did you first come into this country?”

“Me? Around ‘74, I guess, but I didn’t stay long. I was back in ‘79, and a couple of times after that. Those times when I came back I worked around over the country.”

“You weren’t here when Clyde Orum was around, were you?”

“Hell, the way I hear it, not even Miles City was here.”

Doc Finerty took a cigar from his pocket and handed it to me. “Clyde had quite a family. I was reared over west of here, Pike, over south of Butte, near Virginia City. I knew the Orums.”

“Yeah?”

“Clyde Orum had a sister, much younger than he was, and she worshiped the ground he walked on. I don’t think she was quite right mentally.”

“What I hear,” I said, “Clyde was kind of an odd one himself.”

“Do you see what I’m getting at, Pike? If that was Lottie Orum out there, she would have had reason to kill Johnny Ward. He was in the posse that rounded up Clyde, and he testified in court against him.”

“What about Shorty Cones?”

Finerty shrugged. “I don’t know about that, although she might have had a reason there too.”

“Doc, can you get word up to the Elwins? I mean, no matter what anybody says, Ann Farley is still alive. That Orum woman now, her seeing Ann there like that, she probably thought Ann was Farley’s woman, and I think the Orum woman was sweet on Farley her ownself.”

“So?”

“So she might try to kill Ann. Thing is, not one of those folks she killed was expecting it.”

After Finerty had gone I lay back on my bunk and stared up at the ceiling. No matter whether he had said anything that helped, I surely did feel better. I felt a lot better. Now if I could only get out of here.

Rubbing out the cigar, I laid it on the window sill for future use. My hand felt better already. Doc had told me it should be soaked twice a day in hot water and Epsom salts. I’d heard him tell the jailer that.

A
BOUT AN HOUR after Doc Finerty left, the jailer came with a cup of coffee, which he passed through the bars.

“Doc thinks you got a bad deal,” he said.

“He’s got company,” I said.

When darkness came again I went to the window and got my cigar. I lit up and smoked a couple of minutes, then I rubbed out the cigar again, went to my bunk, and went to sleep.

About midnight I suddenly woke up, startled out of a sound sleep by a lot of banging around. The cell next to mine was opened and a man was shoved in, the door closed, and the jailer went away.

For a while there was silence, but when I turned over the bunk creaked and a voice said, “Who’s in there?”

“It’s me,” I said, “Pike. What did they get you for?”

“Hell, what d’you think? Rustling. I stole all the damn cows in the country, and then that Jim Fargo showed up. Won’t do him no good. I got those cows clean out of the country, and when this trial is over and I go free, I’ve got me a stake.”

I knew the voice, knew the familiar sound of the bragging. It was Van Bokkelen, and I might have guessed he had moved into rustling. It was about the
only big crooked operation around, and just the sort of thing he would seek out.

“You think you’ll go clear?” I asked.

He laughed. “Why, you damn fool, this country has the best judges that money can buy, and believe me, they can be bought. If this case ever comes to trial, I’ll go free. I’ll have me a good lawyer, and I’ll prove it was all a mistake.

“Anyway, they could only get me for rustling, and I could do the years I’d get for that standing on my head.”

“You talk a good show.”

“I’m better off than you,” he said contemptuously. “At least, I’m in here for something I did.”

He had me there, so I turned over and tried to go to sleep again.

But after maybe half an hour had passed and I was still lying there thinking, he said, “Hell, I got a good notion to bust out. You want to try it?”

“No.”

“The hell with you!”

That ended our conversation.

M
Y HAND WAS getting better, but it needed to, with what I had planned for it.

At noon on my sixth day in jail the door from the office opened suddenly and Jim Fargo appeared. He had the keys in his hand, and he unlocked the door of my cell. “Come on out, Pike,” he said. “You don’t belong in there.”

“Am I free?”

“No, there’s a preliminary hearing this morning. That’s where we’re going now.”

“Will Roman Bohlen be there?”

“He had better be.”

The room was crowded when Fargo walked me to the front of the room, and I could hear the muttering as I passed. Butch Hogan and Charley Brown were there, and at the back of the room there was a row of soldiers wearing side arms.

Roman Bohlen and his outfit were there, and Red Hardeman was with them. When they brought me in Bohlen shot an ugly look at Hardeman, but the gunman never flickered his eyelids.

Bohlen testified, telling how I’d stolen stock from Justin and himself, how I’d been fired, and how I’d gone crazy and killed the Farleys, then attacked his outfit when Eddie Holt was killed by them.

“The Farleys were both killed?” the judge asked.

“Both of them. I saw her body, too. I don’t know what he did with it.”

At that moment the door opened and Ann walked in on crutches. She was pale, but she looked better than when I’d last seen her, and she walked right up to me and held out her hand.

“I am very sorry, Barney,” she said, “but I’ve been ill. I didn’t know.”

She looked wonderful to me. “Forget it,” I said.

All the while there was a hush in the room, everybody looking at Roman Bohlen. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, and once he moved as if to rise, but those soldiers were all standing now, right across the back of the room, and he stayed where he was.

Ann took the stand and told her story simply and directly. Then she took from her purse a sheet of folded paper. “Your honor, this was written before my brother died. Surely, if Mr. Pike had been involved in any way at all, my brother would not have done this.”

The judge glanced at it. “I know that signature,” he said.

Then Doc Finerty testified that he became doubtful of Bohlen’s story when he examined the wounds on the dead men. They didn’t fit with the circumstances of Bohlen’s story, for both Farley and Holt had wounds older than the recital of events given by Bohlen.

Then the judge asked me to identify the men with Bohlen, and I did so, until I came to Red Hardeman. He was looking at me out of those steely eyes and showed no emotion whatsoever.

“Your honor,” I said, “I never saw this man in that bunch—he wasn’t among them. Anyway, I know this man, and he wouldn’t be involved in anything of the kind. There’s been a mistake.”

Roman Bohlen’s face was ugly. “By the—”

“Shut up!” Fargo snapped. Then he said to the sheriff, “These men are in your custody. Leave Hardeman here. I want to speak to him.”

Ann waited at the back of the room. Jim Fargo, Red Hardeman, and me, we stood together by ourselves.

“Red,” Fargo said, “you know and I know that you were there. What Pike did that for, I don’t know; but if he did it he had a good reason. Do you know anybody in Texas?”

“I got kin there.”

“Have you got a fast horse?”

“I have.”

“Then go visit your kin … and stay out of Montana.”

Ann and me, we walked back up the street together, and I was some embarrassed to see the way some of those no-account cowhands stared at us, to say nothing about those bull-whackers from the Diamond R.

“That was Philo’s will that I gave to the judge. He left his stock to you, all his cattle and his horses.”

“Why me?”

“Why not? You helped us, when nobody else would. Just you and that Negro.”

“He was a good man, Eddie was.” I looked down at my hand and doubled my fist. “He taught me to fight.”

“Philo had almost three hundred head of fine beef cattle and at least fifty horses. We could start a ranch.”

Well, I didn’t know what to say. This was what I’d been dreaming of, but dreams are nothing to take seriously. Or maybe they are.… I only know that here it was, more chance than a tough-hided cowhand deserved.

“If you mean it,” I said, “I’ll try to make it so you won’t be sorry later.”

“Philo said you’d never marry me unless you had something of your own, and he said you’d earned it during all that terrible trip across country.”

“I’d be a fool to argue,” I said.

We stopped near the steps of the hotel and I didn’t know what to say. It was the first time I’d ever been engaged to a girl, and the first time I’d been in love since I was fourteen, and then the girl never knew it. I
stood there, wanting to kiss her, thinking I should, and feeling like a damned fool. And then she reached up and kissed me very gently on the lips and went inside, and I turned around quick, expecting somebody to laugh.

There were a few cowhands in sight, and a couple of bull-whackers, but all of them were very busy at whatever they were doing, which wasn’t much. So I walked over to Charley Brown’s, my feet scarcely touching the ground.

Some of the boys were there and I bought a drink, and looked off into a fine, friendly world, suddenly richer and better off than I’d ever expected to be, and engaged to an Irish girl who would soon be my wife.

Looking at myself in the mirror, my face still ugly from the beating I’d taken from Bohlen, I couldn’t figure what she saw in me. But a man’s life is much in his own hands, and what I was did not have to be the measure of what I would be. Sure, I wasn’t brilliant, but I’ve seen a few of all kinds, and in the long drive give me a man who is persistent rather than brilliant. Too often the brilliant ones are flashes in the pan, no more.

I finished my drink and stepped out on the walk and stood there, breathing in that good Montana air and figuring I had the world laid out before me like a banquet.

Sure … it would take a lot of work. Philo had left me whatever he had here in Montana, and though it wasn’t such a lot as wealth goes, it was a good start, and with my know-how and savvy I should make a go of it.

First things first. I must walk down to the livery
stable and check on that horse of Ann’s. He’d been badly beat when I took him in, and while they took good care of horses, I’d better have a look.

The horse turned his head and nickered when I came up to the stall and spoke to him. I expect he was lonesome, for once a horse becomes addicted to people he likes them about, and he likes people he knows. So I stood there, telling him about Ann and me, and what he could look forward to in that ranch over against the Big Horns. Then I slapped him on the hip and stepped out of the stall, and looked right into a gun.

Van Bokkelen was holding it, and he was looking across that gun and grinning at me. Roman Bohlen was right there beside him.

I wasn’t wearing a gun and it wouldn’t have done me any good if I had been.

“You wouldn’t bust out with me,” Van Bokkelen said, “so I brought Bohlen along.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Bohlen said, “with my bare hands.”