Conagher (1969)

Conagher Louis L'amour *

Chapter
I T
HE land lay empty around them , lonely and still. On their right a ridge of hills with scattered cedars , on their left an open plain sweeping to a far horizon that offered a purple hint o f hills. In all that vastness there was nothin g but the creak and groan of the wagon, an d overhead the sky, brassy with sunlight.

It's only a couple of miles now, Jaco b told her. Just around that point o f rocks.
He pointed with his whipstock.

She felt her heart shriveling within her.

It's awfully dry, isn't it?

It's dry
, Jacob's tone was abrupt.

It's been a bad year .

The team plodded, heads bobbing wit h weariness. The last town was fifty mile s behind them, the last ranch almost as far.

In all that distance they had seen not a ranch, a claim shack, or a fence . . . not a horse, a cow, or even a track.

At last he said , I did not promise yo u much, and it is not much, but the land i s ours, and what the land becomes will b e ours, too. The land is not only what it is, i t is what we make it .

The heavy wagon rumbled on, endlessly , monotonously. The heat wa s stifling, their pace so slow they could no t escape the dust. It settled over thei r clothing, their eyebrows, in the folds o f their skin. The children, weary with th e heat, had fallen asleep, and for that sh e was thankful.

The wagon reached the point of rocks , bumped over a flat rock, then rounded th e point.

Her heart sank. Before them, and clos e under the shoulder of a hill, was a cabin, a solitary building, square and bare, withou t shed or corral, without shrubs, without a tree.

There it is
!
There was pride i n Jacob's tone .
There's our house, Evie .

She knew how he felt, for in the thre e years of their life together she had learne d this about him: that he had never known a home, had never possessed anything of hi s own beyond the clothes he wore, and hi s tools. He had worked hard to save th e money for this move.

Drab it might be, barren it was, but t o Jacob, a middle-aged man with years o f hard work behind him, it was home. Sh e warned herself that she must never forge t that, and that she must do what she coul d to help him.

We will plant trees, we will drill a wel l . . . you wait and see. First, I must bu y some stock. We must have cattle .

The wagon rolled down a slight grade , and at long last they drew up at the door.

The cabin was small, but it was well-built.

The cloud of dust settled down over their s settled at last.

Laban awoke and sat up groggily .
Pa , are we there? Are we home ?
h e asked.

Get down, son. We are here .

Jacob walked to the door, fiddled with i t a moment, then swung it wide .
Come , Evie, we have much to do. I must ride ou t when morning comes. There is no time t o waste .

Evie hesitated, hoping that this once h e might help her down. He need not carr y her across the threshold . . . after all, sh e was no new bride.

Still, it was their first home, and he ha d forgotten her, his mind already busy wit h the problems of the place. He was lettin g down the tail gate, while Laban and Rut h ran to the door to peek inside.

Pa
!
Ruth called .
There's no floor!

It's just dirt !

It will have to do , he said testily.

Evie got down and removed her hat , fluffed a little dust from her hair and wen t into the cabin. She knew just what to do , and knew what had to come into the hous e first. Hers was an orderly mind when i t came to such things, and she had planne d for this when they packed the wagon.

There was little to move. Befor e nightfall a meal was on the table, bed s were made, a breakfast fire was laid, an d the little world that revolved around Evi e was once more established and ready fo r the morrow.

The cabin was built of native ston e taken from the ridge back of the house , and it consisted of one large room. It had a peaked roof, with a loft and a ladder tha t reached to it. There was a large fireplace, a square table, a double bed, two chairs an d a bench. The floor was of hard-packe d earth. The water had to be carried from a water hole about twenty-five yards back o f the house, and about twenty feet higher u p the slope.

The children would sit on the bench a t meals, and they would sleep in the loft, o n pallets. The loft would be, as she wel l knew, the warmest part of the cabin.

The first cattle we sell , Jacob said , we will put in a board floor .

The first cattle they sold . . . would tha t be two years away? Or maybe three?

Three years on a dirt floor? She ha d always been poor, but not that poor. Bu t she said nothing, for she had neve r complained; she never would complain.

Jacob had thought of this too long, and h e would need help, not complaints o r arguments.

They were here, and he still had fou r hundred dollars with which to buy cattle.

He had dreamed of this, as he had told her , long before they were marriedeve n before he had married the first time , before the children were born. . . . On e hundred and sixty acres and a cabin buil t with his own hands.

He had built well, for that was his trade.

He was a steady, hard-working man , skilled at both the carpenter's and th e mason's trade, but he had managed to sav e little during the hard years of depressio n and struggle, during his first wife's lon g illness, and the constant loans to hi s brother-in-law, torn Evers.

That, at least, was one thing they ha d left behind. torn Evers had been gone o n one of his forays when they left Ohio, an d was safely behind them.

At daybreak, after a quick breakfast , Jacob stood with her a few minutes , looking toward the east .
I shall be gon e several weeks. You have supplies enough , and you will have no need for money, but I have put aside fifty dollars that I do no t need for cattle. Use it only if there i s need .

It was not much, but it was the firs t money she had held in her hands since he r father had died and left her two hundre d dollars. When only five dollars was lef t of that money she had married Jaco b Teale, a widower with two children. H
e was a stern but kind man, but bad luck ha d dogged him as if it owned him, an d after three years they had this ... n o more.

You will have the shotgun , he said , and Laban is a good hunter. There ar e quail here, and sage hens. He might get a close-up shot at a deer. And you hav e supplies for at least a month, if you ar e careful .

They stood in the doorway, Evie an d the children, and watched him ride awa y on the sorrel, a straight, stiff-backed man , filled with plans and determination, wh o gave no thought to the imponderables, th e little things upon which fortunes are mad e or broken.

Evie went back into the cabin and sa t down at the table.

Her father had been a dreamer and a drifter, filled with excellent advice whic h he never applied to himself .
Evie , h e would say , when in doubt, sit down an d think. It is only the mind of man that ha s lifted him above the animals .

She must consider now. This was a tim e of drouth. The heat had parched an d baked the land, sucking away the moistur e from the grass, leaving the trees lik e tinder.

Jacob would be gone for weeks. Ther e must be something to show when h e returned, some things accomplished o f which she could say , There . . . this I have done .

But there was something else t o consider. For there was the sky, and ther e was the vast and lonely land, and there wa s little in either on which the mind coul d feed, not her eager mind, restless, probing , seeking.

She must be busy, and the childre n must be busy. There were the three horse s to be cared for. They must be fed , watered, ridden occasionally or worked.

Laban was eleven, but he had worke d beside his father, and for neighbors. H
e had milked cows, chopped wood, helpe d with the harvest. He was a strong, hones t boy, and she thought he liked her.

Ruth was quick, imaginative, outgoing.

She, perhaps more than any of them , needed people.

So she formed her plans.

They must explore the country around.

They must spade up a kitchen garden an d ditch it for irrigation from the spring.

They must find what grass there was, an d wood must be cut for the fires now an d those of the winter to come. There woul d be much hard work, but there must b e other things, too. There must be amusemen t . . . something to do after work, an d above all she must remember that Laba n must be given more freedom, mor e responsibility, without forgetting that h e was still a boy, a very young boy.

The land that lay before them was s o empty. It was brown where it was no t gray. Once this land had been a lake bed , but that was long ago, in some vanishe d time. Now there was before them just dr y grass stretching away into the distance.

Back of them lay the brown, cedar-cla d hills.

Laban
, she said , we must explore.

We will need more water for the stock, and*
t here may be another water hole. We shal l look for it .

He looked at her .
Yes, ma'am, but . . .
b ut maybe there's Indians .

Her eyes searched his face .
Wha t makes you say that ?

I heard them talking at Socorro.

There's 'Paches in the mountains, an d sometimes there's others, wild ones wh o come up from the border .

She did not know whether to believ e him or not. Jacob had said nothing abou t Indians, and she had heard no such talk.

But Laban was a straightforward, trustworth y boy. If he said he had heard suc h talk, he had heard it ... or what h e thought was that.

They made a slow half-circle throug h the hills behind the cabin. There was a good deal of wood lying around among th e cedars, deadfalls, or lightning-struck o r fallen limbs. For a season at least the y would have no worries about fuel. She als o saw several good-sized logs lying about.

If we could only get them up to th e cabin , she said.

We could snake 'em up , Laban said.

Hitch to 'em with a chain or a rope an d hau l them right up. We could use o l Black. He's steady .

By sundown Jacob Teale was twenty mile s east and turning up a draw to find a plac e to camp for the night. A small arroyo la y just over the crest, he recalled, and beyon d it was a thick clump of cedar. There was a hollow there among the rocks where wate r often collected. He turned up the bank o f the draw, rode over the ridge and into th e arroyo. His horse slid down the stee p bank, and started up the opposite side.

A hoof came down on a loose slab o f rock which gave way., and the horse fell , struggling for a foothold, then rolled over.

Jacob's boot caught in the stirrup an d when the horse rolled the pommel cam e down hard on his chest.

Something snapped inside. He felt n o pain, no shock, only a kind of surprise.

Death, he had imagined, was dramatic , and filled with pain; or one died in be d with friends around, slowly, of an illness.

The horse struggled, lunged, tried to rise , and fell back. And this time there was pai n ... a crushing, terrible, strangling pain.

But he was free of the horse's weight , even though his foot was still trappe d beneath it. Somehow he rolled to an elbo w and looked down at himself. His shirt an d coat were red with blood. He felt faint an d sick. Then he looked at the horse.

One leg was broken, an ugly compoun d fracture with the naked bone exposed.

He felt for his gun, drew it slowly an d carefully .
Sorry, Ben , he said, and sho t the horse in the head.

It stiffened sharply, then lay still.

A moment longer he remained on hi s elbow. He looked at the evening sky , where a star had appeared; he looked at th e dusty arroyo, the bloody saddle. He coul d not live; even had there been a doctor, h e knew that nothing could be done for him.

The gun stayed in his hand, but it was no t in him to use it.

He lay back, feeling a tearing within hi s chest. He looked up at the sky and said , Evie . . . Evie, what have I done to you?

. . . Laban . . . Ruthie . . . Lab . .
.

He tried to get up then. If he could dra g himself back into the trail. If he could ge t back where somebody could find him. I f he could . . .

He died then, and lay still, and the ligh t wind of evening worried his hair, sifted a little dust into the creases of his clothing.

He died alone, as men in the West s o often died, died trying to accomplis h something, to build something, to g o somewhere. Sometimes the sand burie d those men's bodies, sometimes the coyote s scattered their bones, leaving a fe w buttons, a sun-dried boot heel, a ruste d pistol.

Some of them were found and buried , but some dried up and turned to dust an d the wind took the dust away. One of thes e was Jacob Teale.