the Man from Skibbereen (1973) Page 18

  He turned sharply to stare at the man who had fallen ahead of him. The fellow lay on the ground, all sprawled out, his head cocked at an impossible angle. Cris stripped the body of its six--gun and slung the belt about his own waist. Then the body rolled over and groaned, feeling for its neck. Cris could have sworn that neck had been broken.

  The train was disappearing in the distance.

  He was alone, and somewhere across the tracks were the outlaws and their horses. The first thing was to get out of sight.

  The train might come back for him. Yet no sooner had the thought occurred than he dismissed it. Not with a carload of renegades waiting to strike, and all of them aware that their plan had again gone wrong.

  He glanced quickly around, then ran for the nearest rocks. It was a nest of boulders, but offered little in the way of shelter. Using it to conceal his movements from the sight of the outlaw he had left behind on the ground, he ran on toward a similar group of stones.

  Here were a few low trees and surprisingly enough, a ravine. He went down into it and hiked along, heading for higher ground. Cris had no idea of leaving the railroad where lay his one chance for help, but merely wished to be away when the enemy returned... if they did.

  He found a crack in the rocks and climbed inside it to the top, where he lay down in the brown grass and peered out over the country below.

  The outlaw was on his feet, looking around. How conscious had he been? Would he remember that somebody else had fallen with him? Or assume that he was alone?

  The man felt at his waist... his gun and belt were gone.

  That would give him away, Cris thought. But he had needed the cartridges.

  The outlaw started across the tracks, found the prints of the horses, and stood there, hands on hips, probably swearing. Cris Mayo was too far off to hear any words, but he knew the attitude. Soon the man started off, following the tracks of the horses. From time to time he paused and looked around carefully.

  Cris Mayo settled his square--cut derby on his head and watched the outlaw. The fellow would try to track down his friends, but he'd better hurry or they would be gone. After the failure of this final attempt there would certainly be no more, and it was likely that within a short time the whole lot would be prisoners.

  Yet his own situation was desperate. He was alone, without a horse, and in wild country. He was a long way from Fort Sanders, and perhaps even farther from the next station to the west.

  From his vantage point he began to examine the country along the tracks. He was well up on the side of a hill, and in such a position that his view extended for miles.

  Removing his coat with its heavy sack of coins, he slung it over his shoulder and plodded down the hillside to the tracks.

  There was nothing for it but to follow them.

  The sun was hot. He walked steadily, avoiding the unevenly spaced ties. He removed his collar and thrust it into his coat pocket, and, folding his tie, did the same with it. His eyes swept the country. They were much better eyes now than they had ever been, more accustomed to looking at the wide western lands and selecting what was important. He mopped his brow and marched forward.

  He was carrying two pistols, the one "inherited" from the dead telegrapher and the one taken from the unconscious outlaw. He had ammunition enough but it was heavy, as the guns were heavy. From time to time he paused, swiped at the sweat on his face, looked all around, then started on.

  He was thirsty, but there was no water. The earth was a powdery dust studded with sagebrush wherever his eyes went.

  The sun was past the nooning by more than two hours when he saw the cabin. It was built of native stone and it stood back from the right--of--way beside what seemed to be an old road. When he got closer he could see the remains of a pole corral.

  He put his ear down on a steel rail to listen for a train, but heard nothing. Seated on the railroad embankment, he gazed toward the stone cabin. It looked innocent enough, and there was a touch of green behind it... perhaps there was a spring.

  He rested, watching the cabin. He checked the pistol taken from the outlaw... it was loaded with five cartridges.

  He returned it to the holster, which was on his left hip with the butt facing forward. When he carried his coat over his left arm this gun was concealed, while his right--hand gun was fully in sight.

  The stone cabin was probably empty, and there was a chance of water. It was unlikely that anybody would have built here without it, and the green seemed an indication. He got to his feet, the coat over his left forearm, the second gun hidden behind it.

  Cris plodded on. His feet were sore and he was tired. Some of yesterday's pains had awakened to plague him. He looked along the tracks, and saw nothing. In the distance he glimpsed a small herd of antelope. He kept his face turned down the track but from the corners of his eyes he watched the cabin for movement.

  This was Indian country, but there were outlaws around too, and they might be anywhere.

  Opposite the cabin he halted, then turned down a dim path that led from the right--of--way to the door. Still he saw no movement there.

  The door sagged on leather hinges, one window gaped emptily at him. He walked around the cabin and followed a path evidently used by men as well as animals to a few willows and a small cottonwood. The latter grew in a slight hollow and was invisible from the track. At its base was a ring of rocks forming a tank, and the tank was filled with clear water, which trickled from a pipe above it.

  He bent his head and drank, waited, then drank again. The water was cold, a little brackish but good. He straightened up and glancing down saw some crushed shells under his feet. Idly, he stooped to pick one up and as his fingers touched it he saw a fresh boot track, in which a blade of grass was just springing erect.

  Slowly, his heart pounding, he straightened up. Whoever had made that track was close by, within yards of him, no doubt.

  A sharply cut boot track... no moccasin.

  He appeared to be studying the shell, while his mind raced. The path he followed had gone on from the tank, dimmer, but still there. Willows stood on the far side of the tank, and there was something behind them... a dugout or a cave, he believed, where horses had been kept.

  "Well, now!" He knew the voice. "What could be purtier than this? You come walkin' right up to me, just like you'd been sent for!"

  He started to turn, and the voice hardened. "Hold it!" It was Murray. Murray, who had been after Barda, and who had been given a beating by Cris. Murray, who wanted and intended to kill him.

  "Now you take hold of the butt of that six--shooter, just thumb and finger now! You lift it clear and drop it. Then you can turn around. I want you to see me and this here gun. I want the last sight you have to be me, standing here shootin' you down!"

  "Can't we talk about this?" Gently, careful to make no mistake, he lifted the gun and dropped it. It thudded on the earth.

  "Now you step back one good step... that's it. Now you can turn around."

  Murray would have a gun held steady on him, Cris was sure. Murray was set to kill him, and Murray wanted him to see it coming. And Murray would not talk long before he shot... he was too full of hate.

  Crispin Mayo knew that the movement might be his last, but he turned his left shoulder and side toward Murray and as he did so his right hand came up under cover of the movement and the coat. The six--gun slid easily into his hand, rested on his forearm.

  The time for talking, for thinking, for mercy, was past. The gun cleared his arm, and his finger closed easy on the trigger, the barrel pointed straight at Murray.

  The first thing Murray could have seen was the blossom of flame at the gun's muzzle, and it was almost the last thing.

  His own six--shooter dropped from fingers gone suddenly dead, and Murray went to his knees. "You damn Irish tenderfoot! You--!"

  "I am no tenderfoot, Mr. Murray. Not any longer."

  Murray sagged back, half--falling over. "I guess you ain't," he muttered. "Damn you, Irish! I shoulda
left you alone! Your medicine's bad for me, you--" Then he crumpled.

  Crispin Mayo, of County Cork and the great plains of the West, stood watching him for several minutes. The man was dead.

  Picking up the gun he had been forced to drop, he wiped the dirt away and then walked back into the willows. Murray's dapple gray horse was there, with a freshly filled canteen on the saddle. He led the beast outside, let it water again, and then swung into the saddle and rode down the trail to the railroad.

  He was there beside the track when he heard the train whistle, no more than a minute later. He stepped down, removed the canteen, then held the reins until he saw that the train was slowing down for him. He threw the reins over the saddle and slapped the horse on the hip. "You've got a home somewhere. Go!"

  When the train stopped and a conductor stepped down, it was Sam Calkins. A dozen soldiers peered from the windows.

  "You'd better get aboard," Calkins said sourly, "Colonel McCIean and his daughter are waitin' for you at Medicine Bow."

  Crispin Mayo climbed into the car, lifted a hand to the soldiers and dropped into a seat.

  "Thought I heard shootin'." Calkins was reluctantly curious. "We were comin' along slow, had no idea where you'd be."

  Cris opened his eyes. "Murray was up there at the spring. That was his horse I turned loose."

  He closed his eyes again. He had no idea how far it was to Medicine Bow.

  Barda would be there--

  Cris Mayo slept without dreams.

  The train whistle called again, losing itself against the silent hills, calling to the empty ghosts that watched there wide--eyed. The drivers threshed at the rails, and the train started along the track. Again the whistle called, and the sound seemed to hang in the stillness.

  The following night, Justin Parley, aware that ten of his men had been taken from the train in Medicine Bow and the rest killed or scattered, rode boldly into Laramie. At the edge of the town Silver Dick suddenly pulled up. "Major," he said, "I cached some coin about a month ago, right back there by the barn. You go ahead. I'll join you at the Belle."

  "Of course," Parley said, and rode on alone. Silver Dick Contego paused on the hill. "Good--bye, Justin," he said quietly. "You believe in your star, I believe in a fast horse."

  The night was cool, clear, splendid to see. Tonight was the 29th of October, 1868, a date never to be forgotten in Fort Sanders and Laramie. It was the night when the vigilantes cleaned up the town, concentrating their energies on the Belle of the West. Five men were killed, many were wounded, a good deal of lead was thrown; and Justin Parley, who never used his own name in Laramie, was dropped next morning into an unmarked grave.

  About Louis L'Amour

  "I think of myself in the oral tradition--as a troubadour, a village taleteller, 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 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, assessment miner, and officer on tank destroyers 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 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 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.

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