Louis L'Amour (22 page)

Deliberately, Van Bokkelen holstered his gun. “You do what you are of a mind to,” he said. “I’ll saddle the horses.”

Roman Bohlen was big, and he was fast and mean. He had whipped Hogan, who had whipped me twice. He stood between me and the door as if he thought I would try to get away. The only way I was going out of here was through him or over him.

He didn’t say a word, he just cut loose and swung, and I hit him in the belly with my right fist. The blow was perfectly timed and it caught him coming in, just like Eddie had showed me. It stopped him dead in his
tracks, leaving him wide open for the left I smashed into his mouth.

That was my sore hand, and it hurt, but it also plastered Bohlen’s mouth. And then he went berserk.

He came at me swinging and all I could do was slip inside of one punch and grab hold with both hands. He backheeled me, but when we hit ground I jerked my knee up, and while it didn’t hurt him it threw him on over me and I whirled around and slid from under.

We both came up punching. Over the saddle he was cinching on a horse, Van Bokkelen was watching, unconcerned as though he was at the ringside of a fight.

After those first two good punches I must have got hit a dozen times, but they were mostly mauling, bruising punches that battered at my shoulders and chest without doing me much harm. The one or two that did get through shook me to my heels.

My face was already sore, and his punches there really hurt. But I got in another good smash to the body.

He knocked me down twice, but both times I got out of the way before he could kick me, and then we tied into each other again, and he threw me with a rolling hip-lock. I dove into his knees and he came down half on top of me, and I squirmed from under and was the first man on his feet. When he was halfway up I caught him on the nose with a full swing, and the blood gushed.

He charged at me and I stood my ground, swinging in with both hands. He hurt me with a right hand, and then tried it again, but that time I hit him with another right to the body, then a left and another
right to the same place. He backed up, a sick look on his face, and I walked into him, suddenly confident that I could take him.

All the time I could hear Eddie’s words. “Make him miss, then hit him. He’ll be a head-hunter, always punching for the face and jaw, so make him miss and hit him where he lives. No matter how tough they are, that’ll bring ‘em down.”

I feinted, and when he lunged at me I belted him with an uppercut in the wind. He gasped and his jaw fell slack, and I moved on into him.

“Looks like you need some help,” Van Bokkelen said then, and he stepped in, balancing that six-shooter for a chop at my neck. “You ain’t doing so good, Roman.”

Bohlen, getting a moment’s breath, lifted a hand to wipe the blood off his mouth, and I threw the works into a right-hand punch to the belly. As he fell I stepped around him to face Van Bokkelen.

“You’re a damn fool,” I said to him. “You’d have to shoot that to stop me, and that would bring the town. If you’re going out of here, you’d better ride.”

He hesitated, then he laughed. “Why, sure! I never expected you to make so much sense, Pike. You were always such a lily-livered fink.”

“Van Bokkelen,” I said, “one of these days, when they have that rope around your neck, you think back to this moment. I may never have an awful lot, but I’ll live my life out, eating good food, breathing the fresh air, taking a drink now and then, being married to a fine woman, and seeing my youngsters grow up.

“And you? You’ll have a fat roll of greenbacks from time to time, and years in prison to pay for it,
and always the fear that the next step you make will be the wrong one.

“Back there in jail you said they only wanted you for rustling. Fargo told me they wanted you for murder … somewhere back east.

“You can run out of here, and out of the next place, and after a while, even if you’re lucky, you’re going to run out of places to run to. And then the law will catch up to you.”

“The law?” Van Bokkelen said contemptuously. “I never saw a lawman I couldn’t out-figure, Pike. Not one. I’m smarter than any one of them.”

“Maybe … but are you smarter than a hundred of them? A thousand of them? They’ve got numbers, and they’ve got time. You haven’t got either.”

Bohlen started to get up and I moved into position where I could slug him if he tried it.

“I’m keepin’ him,” I said. “You goin’ to argue about it?”

Van Bokkelen looked at me oddly. “You damn fool,” he said. “I’m holdin’ a gun.”

Bohlen hadn’t the strength to make it, and he sagged back on the floor.

“That’s right, you’ve got the gun,” I said, “and you’ve got time for one shot before I get to you. Your kind always has the idea that a gun makes the difference. I saw a man take four slugs from a gun like that, and kill the man who was shooting it. Want to gamble?”

“No,” he said frankly, “I’ll be damned if I do. Here I stand wasting time when I should be riding.” He paused. “You going to set the law on me? You going to tell them now?”

“Why should I? You’re behind the eight-ball, Van Bokkelen. You’re running down a blind trail. No, I’m not going to tell them any sooner than I have to. You make your run—you ain’t going any place.”

He led the horse to the door and stepped into the saddle. For a minute he looked back at me. “You beat the devil, Pike. I never saw anybody of your kind.”

He rode off and I watched him go, and then I went back to where Bohlen was trying again to get up.

He looked up at me like a whipped dog, all the bombast and bluff gone out of him. “You busted my ribs!” he moaned.

“I figured on it.”

When the jail door shut on him, the jailer said, “Did you see the other one? The big blond man?”

“He’s gone.”

The jailer looked at me, saw the fresh blood on me and the bruises. “He gave you no trouble?”

“Only this one. Van Bokkelen … him and me, we talked some.”

Tired, I walked slowly up the empty street, my footsteps sounding on the boardwalk. But for the first time I walked without being alone. Seemed strange, looking back on the past, that all my life I’d been riding alone and walking alone. The reason was, I’d nobody to do for. What a man needs in this world, if he’s any kind of man, is somebody to do for, to take care of. Otherwise there’s not much sense in working.

A few lights glowed from windows. Here and there dark, empty windows looked lonesomely at a man. But I had girl, I had a place to go, and I never was going to be quite so alone again, no matter what happened.

I’d been walking toward the hotel, and just as I neared it I saw a dark figure standing there in the shadows—a strange, bulky figure, looking up at a hotel window. My eyes were used to the darkness, and I could make out the mule, standing there waiting.

“Hello, Lottie,” I said. “This is Pike. We talked back on the trail.”

“I recall.”

“Lottie, that was Philo’s sister out there, his sister Ann.”

She didn’t speak for a few minutes, and then she said, “He was a kind man. Do you suppose he liked me?”

“I’m sure he did, Lottie. You’re a nice girl.”

She moved out onto the walk, facing me. She was as tall as I was, and looked heavier in her bulky man’s clothes.

“What am I goin’ to do, Mr. Pike?” Her voice was puzzled, wondering. “Clyde, he used to always tell me what I should do, but he’s been dead a long time, and then Mr. Farley, he told me.” She peered at me. “I never had no case on him, Mr. Pike, only he talked nice to me, like I was a lady. Nobody ever done that before, not even Clyde. What am I goin’ to do, Mr. Pike? I got nobody.”

“Lottie,” I said, “I’m not the one to ask, but if I was you I’d ride clear away from here, ride some place where they’ve never heard of Clyde Orum. Then I’d get myself some proper woman’s clothes and get myself a job.”

She sighed deeply. “I reckon … but what could I do?”

“Can you cook?”

“Yes, Mr. Pike, Clyde always said I was the best
cook he ever knew. Mr. Farley liked my things too, so I taken them to him. Only when I saw her there, well, I hated her. When a man has his own woman around he don’t have time for no big old girl like me.”

“Ride out of here, Lottie, get some clothes, and hunt a job as a cook. Don’t tell anybody anything about yourself. If you can cook well enough, they won’t ask anything else.”

“Thank you, Mr. Pike.” She turned toward the mule.

“Have you got any money, Lottie?”

“No, Mr. Pike. I ain’t had no cash money in a long time.”

There wasn’t much in my pocket. I never had much my ownself, but Justin had paid me off out there, and a man in jail has no chance to blow it in. And I hadn’t spent much since, except to pay Charley Brown what I owed him.

“Lottie, here’s twenty-eight dollars. You get yourself out of here. It ain’t much, but it’s all I’ve got.”

She took the money and stood silent, and then she said, “Mr. Pike, I was goin’ to kill that girl. I was fixin’ to shoot her.”

“I know you were.” I paused. “I’m going to marry her, Lottie. Philo wanted it that way.”

She stood there for a moment, then walked heavily to her mule and I heard the saddle creak as she got up.

“Lottie,” I said, “did you put Indian shoes on your mule?”

“Yes, Mr. Pike. I done that.”

“Don’t do it again, Lottie. That’s all over now. You ride out of here, Lottie, and you be a good girl. There’s lots of men who like a big girl who can cook
real fine. Especially,” I added, “if she keeps herself nice. Neat like, and clean. And keeps her hair combed. You’d best do that, Lottie.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Pike. I’ll do that.”

She rode away then, and it seemed to me she sat up a little straighter. Or maybe that was just what I hoped.

Standing there, listening to the hoof-falls as she rode away, I thought there wasn’t much difference between the two of us after all. Only I’d found the way I was going, and now maybe she had, too.

I turned around and started toward the hotel, where I’d be sleeping that night.

Well, now, let’s see. I’d have to make a deal with the Crows about that land back up against the mountain, or find a place just out of their country. A place with plenty of good water, some high meadows where there’d be hay to cut or late summer grazing. Then I’d need a hand to help me round up those cows.

But that could wait. I was a rancher now, a man with stock, and my credit had always been good. First off, I was going to get myself a new outfit of clothes, some that really fit me proper.

What was it Eddie called it? … A front.

I
T IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created 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 1600s 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, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. 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 more than 270 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 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 cassettes and CDs from Random House Audio publishing.