When he went in he could not get a shot at that man. That fellow would be too far over on his right, unless he managed to swing close enough and fire from against his body. But if he figured right, the prisoners would be in the corner behind Barker, and if he shot Barker the bullet might go all the way through and kill one of them.
He would have to take the other man first. He would have to nail him quick and fast, then drop and fire at Barker.
“You can't make it, King!” Barker shouted suddenly. “We've got you! Come out and drop your gun or we start killing!”
They didn't know where he was, then. Not from the sound of that order. They didn't know he was so close. Or he did not think they did.
Throwing down his gun would be no use at all. They were out to clean the slate by killing them all. But there was that item of reaction time. And it was always better to attack than to wait.
His mouth was dry and his heart pounding. He wiped his palm dry on his shirt front, then gripped his gun. And then with a lunge he went around the corner and into the barn.
Outside a rifle smashed sound into the morning an instant before a bullet whipped past him.
He sprang through the door and into the barn. He saw Joe Noss first and fired as his feet flattened out. Noss had his gun up, but Mabry had calculated every move of his turn, and as his left foot landed solidly, he fired from directly in front of his body.
Mabry's bullet caught Noss alongside the second button up from his belt, and Mabry had a confused realization that Healy had lunged forward, knocking Barker off balance. Noss's shot went into the roof as he fell backward into a sitting position.
Barker had grabbed Janice for a shield and she was struggling to free herself. Suddenly Barker thrust her hard against Mabry and sprang through the door as Healy missed a wild grab at him.
Healy swung and grasped the gun from Noss's hand as Barker tore free, but before Healy could get through the door, Mabry grabbed him.
“Hold it! There's a man outside who'll cut you down!”
King Mabry motioned Healy back. There were two desperate men out there who knew that not only fifteen thousand dollars, but their own lives turned on the issue of the next few minutes.
He grabbed the tie rope of the black and swung the big horse. The smell of blood had excited the animal, and he was trembling. Throwing a leg over his back, Indian style, Mabry gave a piercing yell and Healy slapped the horse across the haunches with his hat.
With a lunge, the black horse broke from the barn. A shot rang out, and then Mabry fired, shooting under the horse's neck. Then he pulled himself to a sitting position on the horse as he saw Barker break for cover.
Slamming his heels into the black and yelling like a Comanche, Mabry started after him. Something jerked hard at his shirt collar and a gunshot slammed from somewhere near. He saw from the tail of his eye a man spring from cover near the corral and run for his horse. Bullets from Healy's gun were dusting the ground around him.
Barker turned as he ran and tried to brake himself to a stop. He tried to bring his gun up fast, but it went off into the ground as the black hit him with a shoulder that knocked him reeling.
Mabry swung the horse so short the animal reared as he turned and Barker fired from his knee. The bullet laid a hot lash along Mabry's cheek, and then King Mabry fired three times as fast as he could slip the hammer off his thumb.
Barker backed up, swearing. He swung his gun around as Mabry dropped from the horse to the ground. There was a spreading stain on Barker's shirt.
Mabry held his fire, waiting in cold silence as the wounded man struggled to lift his gun. Outside the barn Healy and Janice stood, frozen in silence. On the steps of the house Dodie held her Winchester, halfway to her shoulder.
Barker's gun came up, then the muzzle tilted down and Barker's eyes glazed over. He took two bent-kneed strides on legs no longer able to hold his weight. Then he crumpled to the hard-packed earth and the gun slid from his hand.
King Mabry waited, his eyes cold, taking no chances. Barker's body heaved at the waist, then slowly relaxed.
Mabry began to eject shells from his gun and to reload. Only a solitary bullet had remained in his gun. As he loaded up there was absolute silence. He was conscious then of the cottonwood leaves whispering in the cool morning air. He was conscious that his cheek stung and that otherwise he was unwounded.
Once more he had come through. How many breaks could a man get?
He walked to where his other gun had fallen from his waistband when he hit the ground. He picked it up, remembering to be glad that he always carried six shells in his gunsâ¦no problem in the Smith and Wesson. There was a faint trickle of blood down his cheek.
The wind rattled the cottonwood leaves and his hair blew in the wind.
Janice was staring at him, her eyes wide, her face white. He started toward her, but when he was within three strides of her she turned suddenly and walked away toward the house.
“She's upset,” Healy said. “It's been a tryin' thing.”
“She'll be all right, King.” Maggie had come out to them, walking carefully. “She owes you plenty. We all do.”
King Mabry's eyes were gray and cold. “Nobody owes me anything, Maggie. You'll be all right now. You go on to Fort Custer.”
“Aren't you coming?”
“Maybe later.”
Dodie grounded the butt of her Winchester. “Give her time, King. She's Eastern.”
Bleakly he looked at her, then turned away. He walked to the black horse and caught up the halter rope.
Chapter 19
L
IGHTS FROM WINDOWS cut into the darkness of Wallace Street, where dwindling crowds drifted homeward.
Here and there the boardwalks echoed to the boots of walking men, or they splashed through the mud in the streets toward the few spots that remained open. Down by the eating house several horses stood three-legged at the hitch rails and somewhere a pump rattled and water gushed into a tin pail.
Tom Healy lighted his pipe and looked down the street. Janice should be dressed by now. They would get something to eat and return to the Five Story Hotel, which was their home in Virginia City.
This had been their last day in town, the last of a successful week.
He drew on his pipe, walked a few steps, and came back to lean against an awning post. A drunken miner stared at him, muttered something under his breath, and went on by, steering an erratic course down the muddy street. Healy glanced up the street, hearing the sound of a horse's hoofs, some late rider coming in off the trail.
He looked, then slowly straightened away from the post, his breath going out of him. The big man on the black horse wore a black hat, pulled low, and a short sheepskin coat, and there was no mistaking him. It was King Mabry.
Healy took the pipe from his mouth, feeling sick and empty. He stared at the pipe.
So Mabry was back. This he had feared.
King Mabry had mounted and ridden away from Windy Stuart's ranch without a backward glance. And later that day they had started on for Fort Custer.
At Fort Custer they had found Maguire. He was putting on a show there, and when he had accepted his money and heard their story, he quickly offered to stake them to a fresh start. They had played Fort Custer themselves, then Butte, and now here. It had been but three weeks since the gun battle at the horse ranch.
Yet that gun battle was already the stuff of legend. Windy Stuart's name was no accident, and he had returned in time to help bury the bodies. He looked over the ground and heard the account of the fight, and rode with them to Fort Custer, refusing to allow this, the best of all stories, to be told only by others.
Nobody had seen Mabry. Where he had gone nobody knew. He had ridden from the horse ranch into oblivion, vanishing until now. Yet no night had come that Healy had not thought of what would happen when he did come.
Janice said nothing at all. She played her parts and sang as always. She was quiet, even less inclined to talk, always anxious to get back to the hotel after the theatre. Nothing in her manner or in what she said gave Healy any clue to what she was thinking or feeling.
King Mabry walked his horse to the tie rail before a saloon, dismounted, tied the horse, and went inside. If he had seen Healy, he gave no sign. He was wearing a gun.
Tom Healy knocked out his pipe against an awning post. The theatre was across the street from the saloon, and from the window Mabry would be able to watch the door of the theatre. Tom Healy put his pipe in his pocket. A man had to know. He had to know these things, once and for all.
During the past week he and Janice had drawn closer together. Nothing had been said, but there seemed to be an understanding between them.
Healy crossed the street and pushed open the door of the saloon. King Mabry was standing at the bar, his hat shoved back on his head, a glass in his hand. He looked bigger and tougher than ever.
Four men played cards nearby. Two men stood at the bar. Healy stepped up to the bar near Mabry.
“A little o' the Irish,” he said.
Mabry glanced at him as Healy took the bottle and filled his glass. Then Healy shoved the bottle along the bar. “Has the smell o' the bogs,” he said. “Try it.”
“Thanks.”
Mabry filled his glass. “Luck,” he said, lifting it.
Healy hesitated, then smiled slightly. “Why, yes. Luck to you!”
They drank and Healy put his glass carefully on the bar. “She's across the street, King. She'll be coming out any minute.”
Mabry turned toward him. “You love her, don't you?”
“I'd be a liar if I said no.”
“Then why tell me?”
“You're a good man, King. A mighty good man. Maybe your luck is better than mine. But a man has to know, doesn't he, now?”
“He does.”
The door across the street opened and Janice came out, looking up and down the street.
“She's looking for you, Tom.”
“But maybe she hopes to see you.”
“No,” King Mabry said, “it's you, Tom. It's you she's looking for.”
Tom Healy stood very still and straight, looking at Mabry. Then he held out his hand. “Good-by, King.”
“Adiós.”
They shook hands and Tom Healy went out the door and across the street.
Janice's hands went out to him. “Tom!” She kissed him lightly. “I was afraid you had run off with some other girl.”
“In this town?” He tucked her hand under his arm. “Wait until we get to San Francisco.”
“Can we get some soup? I'm hungry!”
“Sure.”
Behind them a door closed. Healy heard boot heels on the boardwalk. Then he heard the sound of saddle leather creaking as a stirrup took weight, and a horse turning in the muddy street.
He opened the door of the café and Janice went in ahead of him. Healy glanced back up the street. The big man on the black horse, vaguely outlined in the shadowed street, was watching them. As they stepped inside, Healy thought the horse started forward.
They sat down, Janice's back to the window. As Tom seated himself, he saw a rider pass the window, walking his horse. For an instant the light caught him, showing only a bit of the saddle, a man's leg with a gun tied down, and the glistening black flank of a horse. Then he heard the horse break into a trot and he sat holding the menu, his heart beating heavily as he listened to the retreating sound.
He glanced at the grease-stained menu. And then the door opened. Healy felt his stomach go hollow and he looked up.
It was Dodie.
She glanced quickly around the café. “Which of you owns that sorrel outside?”
A cow hand looked up. “I do, ma'am.”
“What's your price?”
He hesitated, then grinned. “For you, only thirty dollars.”
Swiftly she counted out the money. Then she turned to Healy. She glanced from Janice back to him. “Tom, Iâ”
“I know,” he said.
She turned quickly and went out the door, and a moment later a second rider passed the window, and the horse broke into a run, a dead run from a standing start.
Light showed on the saddle and a shapely leg, the horse's flank glistened, and then the sound of pounding hoofs faded gradually away.
“Hey!” The cowpuncher turned a startled face. “She took my saddle!”
“It's all right,” Healy said. “I'll buy you a new one.”
Then Tom Healy looked down at the menu. “It's onion soup,” he said. “They only have one kind.”
About Louis L'Amour
“I think of myself in the oral traditionâ
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.”
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 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling 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),
Heller with a Gun, 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 publishing tradition forward.