to Tame a Land (1955) (11 page)
Read to Tame a Land (1955) Online
Authors: Louis L'amour
"Maybe I'll ride along."
"Welcome."
In Wichita Bennett decided to hold his herd for a better price, and advised me to do the same. "It's dow n from what it's been, but there's only a few cows aroun d and no herd within miles. The price will go up."
"I'm selling," I told him. "I want to go to Colorado."
He nodded, chewing on an unlighted cigar. Then h e took the cigar from his lips and looked at it. "You sta y with me," he said. "We'll make a good thing of this, the n bring another herd from Texas. A few years and you'll b e a rich man."
"Maybe. . . . I don't want to kill a man for every herd , though."
"Won't have to." He gestured south. "By now ever y herd cutter on the trail knows what happened to Lee t Bowers. There'll be no more trouble."
It was there for me. And I liked cattle drives. It wa s hard, brutal work, but it was strong work, good work, an d a man was doing things. There was talk of taking cattl e to Wyoming and Montana, and there was open countr y up there. New country, fresh country.
But there was a girl in Colorado I kept thinking about.
She had been only a youngster then, but by now . .
"No," I told him. "Thanks anyway. I'm going back."
"Burdette?"
"No. I hope I never see him. It's .
. well, there's somebody there I want to see. And there's that ranch I want."
Two days later I sold for a nice price and left there wit h more than seven thousand dollars. Some I carried in gold , some in a draft on a St. Louis bank. Mustang Robert s rode along with me.
It was late fall, the air turning crisp and sharp. I like d the feel of it because it reminded me of the high country.
We rode west, heading for Dodge.
The new town was at the end of the tracks, and crowded with hide hunters, the buffalo men of the plains country. We crowded up to the bar for a drink, something I r arely did, but I wanted to see how things went in thi s wild town.
The first person I saw was Billy Dixon, whom I'
d known in Kansas City.
"Come with me," he argued. "I'm going out west o f here and shoot in the big herd. We can make a fortun e in a few months."
"Not me. I don't like to kill."
Dixon glanced at me. I guess Mustang Roberts did, too.
My face started getting red, and I told them, "I mea n that. I kill for food or if somebody pushes me. Not otherwise."
"Reminds me," Dixon said. "Billy Ogg told me tha t gambler we knew, that Charley Woods Billy said he wa s killed."
"That so?"
"Must have happened when you were in New Orleans.
Chris Lillie was telling the story around that Woods trie d to murder some Western man."
"Probably deserved what he got."
I wasn't telling anybody anything. Four men I'd kille d now, not counting Indians. It was nothing to be proud o f Nobody but a tinhorn ever scratched notches on his gun , and I never would.
Nor was I wanting to be known as a killer. So far nobody knew about Jack McGarry. That is, it was known i n California, but there wasn't too much traffic between th e cow and mining camps. The bad men of one grou p weren't much known to the other.
So far as the public was concerned, I had killed bu t two men Rice Wheeler and Leet Bowers. So far, no t so many knew about me, although the reputation of th e two I'd killed had been such as to make folks believe m e a dangerous man.
No man in his right mind wanted such a reputation , which immediately made a man a target for half th e would-be gun slingers in the country. And if I were to b e known for something, I wanted it to be something o f which I could be proud.
"Thinking about you the other day," Dixon continued.
"Didn't you tell me you worked for a man named Hetrick? Out in Mason Crossing, Colorado?"
"Uh-huh. Fine man."
"Then you'll be sorry to hear this, but you'd better kno w it now. He's dead.
O
ll ie Burdette killed him."
Chapter
10
IT TOO
K
A WHILE for it to sink in. Hetrick almost neve r carried a gun, and he was a man who never got angr y with anybody. He did not believe in killing. He was a stern but gentle man. Yet he was also a man who woul d not compromise his principles.
Even so, there seemed no way he could have come t o trouble with Burdette. He was rarely in town, and he di d not loaf when he was there, or drink. He did what business brought him there and left. He was a man who preferred his own family, his own home.
Then I began to think. Hetrick had stood beside m e when I made Burdette take water.
To Burdette it would be a galling thing to know tha t even one man lived who had seen him back down, wh o had seen him refuse an issue.
That most have been it. Burdette could not rest eas y as long as one man knew. And it might even be that Hetric k had heard Burdette's story of running me out of the stat e and had told the true version of what happened that da y on the street.
A thing like that would ride Burdette. His reputatio n as a dangerous man was all he had. He was an empt y man. But he was a killer.
"When did it happen?"
"Four, five months ago."
"I see."
The glass in my fingers still held whisky. I had neve r cared for it, and suddenly I cared less for it now. Righ t now I had only one idea: I was going back to Maso n Crossing.
Yet it was not
Ollie Burdette that I thought of, it wa s Liza. What about Liza? Where would that leave her?
"You like this town?" I asked Mustang.
"I lost nothing here."
"All right. We're riding."
Billy Dixon went out on the walk and watched us ge t in the saddle. "You take care of yourself," he warned.
"That Burdette's a bad man."
Me, I just waved a hand.
Country slid away behind us. Big, open, grassy, wonderful country. Two days out we saw the big herd, blac k sea of shifting buffalo as far as the eye could reach. Neve r saw anything like it. Made my gray plumb skittish, bu t we circled and come sundown we followed a stream be d through the herd and away.
Country began to get rougher, all cut up with ravine s and some high mesas. I was getting so I liked the smel l of buffalo-chip fires, although it brough t back memorie s of Pap and the wagon train.
Someday I wanted to go back and find his grave an d put a stone marker on it. He would have liked that. Bu t I wouldn't move him. He was always one to say. "Let th e chips fall where they may." He had fallen there, and h e would like to lie there, right in the middle of the West.
He could have built himself a good life, Pap could. Sometimes I wondered what would have become of me if h e had lived. Probably I'd never have used a gun. I'd hav e gone to school to be a lawyer or something. A man neve r knows.
Bennett had tried to tell me one night before I lef t Wichita that men like me were needed, that the countr y had to grow up, and it had growing pains, and that al l the guns must not be on the bad side. There had to b e guns for the right, too.
That I knew. Yet it was a hard thing to be sure on e was always on the right, and sometimes there wasn't a chance for figuring out the right and wrong of it whe n guns started smoking.
We rode on, into rougher, wilder country. One tim e we had a brush with Comanches. Nobody killed. Mustan g downed one of their homes a quarter of a mile away wit h his Sharps. They didn't figure to like that sort of shootin' and they went to hellin' across the country.
"Never forget you saved my bacon that time," Mustan g said, shoving a shell into the breech.
"What time?"
"Them Kiowas. They had me, cold turkey. Horse dead , bullet in my leg, and just three rounds of ammunitio n left. Then you come arunnin'. Mighty fine sight yo u made."
"You was late for supper."
Mite of snow came time and again. The country wa s high now, the weather crisp, the nights cold. There wa s more brown than green in the grass now, and the cottonwoods looked like tall feathers of gold with their yello w leaves. In the morning there was fog in the low ground , and sometimes it was noon before a man rightly bega n to feel warmth in the air.
The gray was growing his winter coat. He didn't loo k so pretty any more, but mighty ragged and tough. He wa s all horse, that one.
This was a man's country-wide open, big as all creation, and as far as you could look, nothing but rollin g miles. Antelope bounded up and away, giving quee r jumps. Sometimes a rabbit scurried out of the way, and a t night there were coyotes calling the moon.
Once we sighted an Army patrol and went out of ou r way to get some tobacco and talk a bit. It was a routin e patrol. Somebody had seen some Cheyennes, but the y turned out to be Shawnees, peaceful, hunting buffalo fro m the fringe of a small herd.
"We goin' to Denver?" Mustang wanted to know.
"Uh-huh."
"I want, to get me a sheep coat. This here wind cut s a man."
All I could think of was Burdette, shooting Hetrick.
Time a man like that was sent packing.
I wasn't going to kill him. I was going to do worse. I w as going to break him. I was going to bust him right i n front of people. I was going to ruin him as a gunman.
The one thing a gunman can't stand is to lose face.
Too many men hunting them. Too many men wantin g to make a cheap kill. Once they get shown up, it's onl y a matter of time until they are killed . . . unless the y leave the country.
We reached Denver in late September with snow sifting out of a lead-gray sky. We reached Denver and headed for a hotel. I had money, so we went to the best.
That night I lay in bed thinking, staring wide awake a t the ceiling. What did a man come to? Where could a ma n get, drifting like this? I had a little stake now, and th e thing to do was to go someplace and light. Get som e roots down. Maybe I should marry.
That thought stopped me a bit. I didn't like to thin k of being tied down. Not when I might have to ride on a t any time. But Logan Pollard had stopped. Good ol d Logan! I'd sure like to see him. I told myself that and i t was true. By now they probably had a family. No time a t all since I'd seen them, but it seemed a long while. I wa s going to be twenty soon, and I'd been through the mill.
Getting up, I went to the washbowl and poured som e water and bathed my face. I picked up a towel and drie d it and looked at myself in the mirror.
Ryan Tyler, I told myself, there you are. What looke d at me was a smooth brown face without any mustache , curly hair brushed back from the forehead, but alway s inclined to fall over it. A brown face that had stron g cheekbones,, and a strong jaw, but the eyes were sort o f green and there wasn't any smile around the mouth.
That wasn't good. A man should smile. And there wa s something a little cold around the eyes. Was I cold? I d idn't feel cold inside. Not a bit.
Never had many friends, but then, I'd drifted to o much, and the few friends I'd had were good ones. Loga n Pollard, Hetrick, and now Mustang Roberts. Yes, an d Billy Dixon, Ogg, and Bennett. Good men they were, al l of them.
But where did that leave me? The one thing I coul d do better than most men was the one thing I did not wan t to do. Maybe, as Bennett had said, the West needed its gu n fighters. Maybe in a land where there was no law, som e restraint was needed for the lawless. But I didn't want t o be one of them.
What did it get a man, twenty years old and no smile?
Twenty years, and four dead men behind him, and eye s that were always a little cool, a little remote, a littl e watchful. I wanted no more of it. I wanted to get away , to make an end of it.
But a man does what he has to do. That's why a ma n is a man.
I walked back and got into bed and tried to sleep. Whe n it was daybreak I did sleep for an hour or so.
Outside the ground was two feet deep in snow. In th e streets men were shoveling walks, their breath smoky i n the cold air. It was no time to travel, but it was no tim e to stop, either.
"Hetrick's been dead a few months," Roberts argued.
"Take your time. Burdette ain't going nowhere. If h e does, maybe so much the better."
That made sense, and crossing those mountains in th e winter would be no picnic. Even if a man made it, an d the old-timers were smart enough not to try.
Denver was booming those days and gambling wa s booming right along with it. Maybe I'd played poker a mite, but I was no gambling man. Just the same, thos e places were wide open and mighty exciting. Maybe, too , it was because I was still just a boy, although I'd bee n caring for myself for a long time now.
So Mustang and me, we made them all. The Morgue , the Bucket of Blood, the Palace, the Chicken Coop, an d Murphy's Exchange. All of them wide open. Crowded , too.
Soapy Smith was there, a fellow we were to hear a lo t about later. Young Bat Masterson was in town, and Do c Halliday drifted through, bound for Texas. Kit Carso n was there for some time, and one of the Bents from dow n New Mexico way.