The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 2 (65 page)

“Can't,” he said. “But maybe Dan will. I'm busy here.”

He scratched his neck, palmed the paper, and when an opportunity offered, he got a glimpse of it. The paper was the brown wrapping paper upon which he had worked out his first map of the streams and the probable route into this valley, with his notes.

She had lied then. She had come from Eagle's Nest following his own map, and she knew exactly where she was! He looked at her in astonishment. How could she be so cool? So utterly innocent?

He began to roll a smoke, thinking this out. Lasker might take her out of here. He could be trusted with a woman, and the others could not. Out of the corners of his eyes, he measured the distance to the saddlebag. No good. They'd kill him before he got it open. Unless … He hesitated. Unless he was very careful about it—

         

Lasker, Calkins, and Hoyt had moved off to one side and were talking. Betty glanced at Johnny. “I was afraid I wouldn't find you,” she said, low-voiced.

Freck could hear them, but there were two meanings here.

“Won't Bart be worried?”

“Yes, he probably will. I”—she looked right at him—“left a note at the cabin.”
A note at the line cabin!
Then there was a chance!

Suddenly, Freck was speaking. “Hoyt,” he said, “we better look at our hole card. That gal's got red mud on her boot. Ain't no place got red mud but around the cabin at Eagle's Nest.”

Johnny felt his mouth go dry. He saw Betty's face change color, and he said quietly, “You don't know what you're sayin', Freck. There's red mud behind the cabin at Pocketpoint.”

Hoyt looked at Calkins. “Is there? You been there?”

“I been there. Dogged if I can recall!”

Hoyt's eyes were suddenly hard. He turned a little so his lank body was toward Lasker. Almost instinctively, Calkins drew back, but Freck's loyalty to Hoyt was obvious.

“Got a present for you, Betty.” Johnny spoke into the sudden silence. His voice seemed unusually loud. “Aimed to bring it down first chance I got. One of those agates I was tellin' you about.”

He walked to his saddlebag, and behind him he heard Hoyt say, “We can't let that girl leave here, Dan.”

“Don't be a fool!” Lasker's anger was plain. “You can steal cattle and get away with it. Harm a girl like this and the West isn't big enough to hide us!”

“I'll gamble. But if she goes out, we're finished. Our work done for nothin'. “

“Keep her,” Freck said. “She'd be company.” He winked at Lasker.

All eyes were watching Hoyt. It was there the trouble would start. Johnny ran his hand down into the saddlebag and came up with the .44 Colt. He turned, the gun concealed by his body.

“She goes,” Lasker said, “cattle or no cattle.”

“Over my dead body!” Hoyt snapped, and his hand dropped for his gun.

Freck grabbed iron, too, and Johnny yelled. The cook swung his head and Johnny's pistol came up. Johnny shot and swung his gun. Calkins backed away, hands high and his head shaking.

Guns were barking, and Johnny turned. Lasker was down and Hoyt was weaving on his feet. Hoyt stared at Lasker. “We had him, Freck an' me, just like we figured! Had him boxed, in a cross-fire! Then you—!” His gun came up and Johnny fired, then fired again. Hoyt went down and rolled over.

Johnny wheeled on Calkins. “Drop your belt!” His voice was hard. “Now get in there an' get some hot water!”

He moved swiftly to Betty. “Are you all right?”

Her face was pale, her eyes wide and shocked. “All right,” she whispered. “I'll be all right.”

Johnny ran to Lasker. The cowhand lay sprawled on the ground and he had been shot twice. Once through the chest, once through the side. But he was still alive …

         

Bart Gavin and four hands rode in an hour later. Gavin stopped abruptly when he saw the bodies, then came on in. Betty ran to him.

Johnny came to the door. “Me an' Dan,” he said, “we had us a run-in with some rustlers. In the shootout Dan was wounded. With luck, he'll make it.”

Bart Gavin had one arm around his niece. “Betty saw Hoyt take you out, but we thought she was imagining things, so when she couldn't make us believe, she took off on her own. Naturally, we trailed her … and found her note and your map, traced out.”

Gavin saw Calkins. His face grew stern. “What's he doin' here?”

Johnny said quietly, “He stayed out of it. He was rustlin', but when it came to Betty, he stayed out. I told him we'd let him go.”

Inside the cabin they stood over Lasker. He was conscious, and he looked up at them. “That was white, mighty white of you.”

“Need you,” Johnny said quietly. “Gavin just told me he fired Lamson. He said he'd been watchin' my work, an' I'm the new foreman. You're workin' for me now.”

“For us,” Betty said. “As long as he wants.”

Lasker grinned faintly. “Remember what I said, kid? That some of the high-toned gals were thoroughbreds?”

Bantam Books by Louis L'Amour
ASK YOUR BOOKSELLER FOR THE BOOKS YOU HAVE MISSED.

NOVELS

Bendigo Shafter

Borden Chantry

Brionne

The Broken Gun

The Burning Hills

The Californios

Callaghen

Catlow

Chancy

The Cherokee Trail

Comstock Lode

Conagher

Crossfire Trail

Dark Canyon

Down the Long Hills

The Empty Land

Fair Blows the Wind

Fallon

The Ferguson Rifle

The First Fast Draw

Flint

Guns of the Timberlands

Hanging Woman Creek

The Haunted Mesa

Heller with a Gun

The High Graders

High Lonesome

Hondo

How the West Was Won

The Iron Marshal

The Key-Lock Man

Kid Rodelo

Kilkenny

Killoe

Kilrone

Kiowa Trail

Last of the Breed

Last Stand at Papago Wells

The Lonesome Gods

The Man Called Noon

The Man from the Broken Hills

The Man from Skibbereen

Matagorda

Milo Talon

The Mountain Valley War

North to the Rails

Over on the Dry Side

Passin' Through

The Proving Trail

The Quick and the Dead

Radigan

Reilly's Luck

The Rider of Lost Creek

Rivers West

The Shadow Riders

Shalako

Showdown at Yellow Butte

Silver Canyon

Sitka

Son of a Wanted Man

Taggart

The Tall Stranger

To Tame a Land

Tucker

Under the Sweetwater Rim

Utah Blaine

The Walking Drum

Westward the Tide

Where the Long Grass Blows

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

Beyond the Great Snow Mountains

Bowdrie

Bowdrie's Law

Buckskin Run

The Collected Short Stories
of Louis L'Amour:The
Frontier Stories, Volume 1

Dutchman's Flat

End of the Drive

From the Listening Hills

The Hills of Homicide

Law of the Desert Born

Long Ride Home

Lonigan

May There Be a Road

Monument Rock

Night over the Solomons

Off the Mangrove Coast

The Outlaws of Mesquite

The Rider of the Ruby Hills

Riding for the Brand

The Strong Shall Live

The Trail to Crazy Man

Valley of the Sun

War Party

West from Singapore

West of Dodge

With These Hands

Yondering

SACKETT TITLES

Sackett's Land

To the Far Blue Mountains

The Warrior's Path

Jubal Sackett

Ride the River

The Daybreakers

Sackett

Lando

Mojave Crossing

Mustang Man

The Lonely Men

Galloway

Treasure Mountain

Lonely on the Mountain

Ride the Dark Trail

The Sackett Brand

The Sky-Liners

THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS

The Riders of the High Rock

The Rustlers of West Fork

The Trail to Seven Pines

Trouble Shooter

NONFICTION

Education of a Wandering Man

Frontier

THE S
ACKETT
C
OMPANION
:
A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels

A
TRAIL OF
M
EMORIES
:
The Quotations of Louis L'Amour,
compiled by Angelique L'Amour

POETRY

Smoke from This Altar

About Louis L'Amour

“I think of myself in the oral tradition—as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, 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 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, and miner, and was 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 120 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 cassette tapes from Random House Audio.

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 publishing tradition forward.