Strat Spooner sat down and picked up the coffee cup. His ears were alert to the slightest sound from the other part of the house, and he was sure only one person was there—at least, only one who moved about.
The kitchen was a spacious room; the adjoining room was the dining room where the crew ate, and Shattuck and his niece as well when they were not entertaining guests. Suddenly, he heard the sound of quick, light steps in the hall, and Marie came into the kitchen.
She stopped abruptly, chilled by fear. Strat Spooner, after what had happened upon the trail, would never dare come here unless certain she was alone.
“Howdy, ma’am,” he said easily. “Glad to see you lookin’ so well.”
Fighting a desire to turn and run, she said “Ned, Uncle Dan will be back soon. You’d best prepare dinner for Pico, too.”
“That Riley feller had fighting friends,” Spooner commented. “I never figured he was so much himself.”
“Don’t ever be foolish enough to try him,” she replied coldly.
“Glad Shattuck and that Mexican ain’t to home. That was the one thing had me puzzled.”
Ned Baldwin regretted for the first time that he kept no gun in the kitchen. There never had been need for one, and he was not a man who liked guns, although he knew how to use one.
Marie turned as if to walk into the other part of the house, but Strat’s voice stopped her. “Don’t be in a hurry, Marie,” he said. “I ain’t through talking.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” she replied.
“Set down,” he said, indicating the seat opposite him. “Might as well join me.”
Baldwin cleared his throat. “You finish your coffee, Spooner,” he said, “and get out of here.”
A large butcher knife lay on the cutting board and he turned sharply toward it.
Without rising, Strat Spooner swung a backhand blow with the heavy white crockery cup and struck the old Negro on the temple. He dropped as if shot.
Marie ran to the old man, her face stricken. “You—you’ve killed him!”
“I doubt it.” Spooner took out the makings and began to build a cigarette while he watched them.
Then reaching out swiftly, he caught her arm and jerked her to her feet, and thrust her into the hall that led to the living room. Spurs jingling, he pushed her ahead of him, then threw her from him to a divan.
“No use to make any fuss,” he said, drawing on his cigarette. “It ain’t going to do you a mite of good.” He flicked the ash from his cigarette and grinned insolently. “An’ you’d better hope nobody comes. I’d only have to kill them.”
“Pico will be coming!”
“That Mex don’t worry me none.” He crossed the room and took a bottle of whiskey from the sideboard, and two glasses. He filled the glasses, put down the bottle, and handed a glass to her. “Here, have a drink. An’ don’t say I ain’t generous.”
“I don’t drink.”
Spooner was enjoying himself, but his eyes kept straying toward the windows. He was not going to hurry this, nor was he going to be surprised.
“Have one anyway.”
“No!”
The amused smile left his lips. “You take it, and you drink! Otherwise I’ll force it down you.”
She took the glass, then deliberately she threw the whiskey at his eyes; but he had been expecting some such move and struck her hand. She would not have believed a big man could move so swiftly. He knocked the glass from her hand, then slapped her with his open palm.
The blow brought her to her knees, but almost instantly she was on her feet, her head ringing with the force of the blow. Quickly, she put the table between them. Picking up the bottle he took another drink; then, smiling, he reached over to the table and pushed it slowly toward the wall. There was no place to go, and there was no weapon in the room.
And then they both heard a walking horse outside.
Spooner swore and, drawing his gun, stepped quickly to the side of a window. Then he laughed. A riderless horse stood in the yard, and it was Dan Shattuck’s horse.
Pico, in taking Shattuck to the Riley ranch, had caught the nearest horse, which happened to be Hardcastle’s. Left alone, Shattuck’s horse had returned home.
Spooner turned back to the room. “Honey, you’d better be nice to Strat. Your uncle ain’t comin’ home. That was his horse, and there’s blood on the saddle.”
Unmindful of Spooner, she ran to the window and caught back the curtain. One rein was hung around the pommel, the other dragged on the ground. There was blood on the saddle, and some across the side of the horse.
A floorboard creaked and she dodged away just in time, for Spooner was almost upon her. Swiftly she moved away, turning a chair into his path. He stopped for another drink, took it while watching her with an amused smile, and came on… .
GAYLORD RILEY HAD also seen the riderless horse, and recognized it. He slowed up, wondering what to tell Marie about her uncle. His horse was walking in from the woods, and not on the main trail, and an instant before he entered the yard he saw Strat Spooner’s horse.
He remembered the horse clearly from the attack that morning, and Kehoe had told him about the scene he had interrupted at the creek.
In an instant he was on the ground and was walking swiftly toward the kitchen door, his eyes shifting from window to window. The door was closed, but easing it gently open, he saw the cook lying on the floor, his head bloody from a lacerated scalp.
From the living room he heard a man’s low chuckle, and then a sudden scurry of movement. Tiptoeing to the door, he saw Spooner standing facing Marie, half turned toward him.
There was fear in Marie’s eyes, the fear of a trapped animal. Seeing it, Riley felt something rise inside him, a feeling he had felt to that same degree since the night those men had killed his father.
“Hello, Strat,” he said.
Marie gasped, and Strat’s shoulders bunched as if he had been struck. The big gunman turned slowly, looking at Riley, then beyond him. Riley was alone.
“Hello, kid.” Spooner knew what he was going to do, and he was completely at ease. “Ready to die?”
Taking a quick step, Spooner put himself behind Marie, with the girl directly in Riley’s line of fire. But even as he stepped, she divined his purpose. As Spooner’s hand swept down for his gun, she dropped to the floor.
Gaylord Riley felt a coldness within him, an utter stillness. He took a quick, light step to the left, putting Marie still more out of the line of fire, and as he moved, he palmed his gun and fired.
Spooner’s bullet burned his neck. He felt the sharp lash of it as he fired. Hip high, his elbow at the hip, the muzzle of his gun ever so slightly turned inward toward the center of Spooner’s body, he fired again.
He felt a wicked blow on his leg and it started to buckle as he fired his third shot. The bullet struck Spooner’s gun, glancing upward, ripping a wide gash in his throat under his chin and ear.
Strat Spooner backed up slowly, blinking his eyes. He was hurt, but he had no idea how badly. Eyes wild and terrible, he tried to steady his gun for a final shot.
Riley crumpled to the floor, felt the whip of a bullet by his face and, rolling back on his elbow, he triggered his gun as fast as he could draw back the hammer. The roar of the concussions filled the room, then the hammer clicked on an empty shell. Splinters stung Riley’s cheek and his eardrums went dead with the crash of a bullet into the floor alongside him.
Hurling his gun, Riley dove for Spooner’s legs and brought him down in a heap. Rolling over, he saw Spooner, his face and throat covered with blood, grabbing for his eyes with rigid fingers. Striking the hands aside, Riley struck the gunman in the face with his fist, but he seemed invulnerable.
He lunged at Riley, and Riley rolled away from him, then came up to his knees. His hand swept back and grabbed the neck of the bottle behind him. He swung the bottle, a wide-arm swing with all his force, and it smashed against Spooner’s skull, shattering glass.
Sp
He got to his feet then, took two long strides, and smashed into the wall. He fell face down and rolled over and was dead.
Marie rushed to Riley and they clung to each other until a groan from the kitchen startled them. Riley attempted a step, but his leg buckled under him, and then the shock was gone and for the first time he felt weakness and pain.
Much later, when he was stretched on a bed, and Doc Beaman had come and gone, she asked him, “What did he mean … about a two-by-four kid from the Brazos?”
“That’s where I grew up. All of a sudden he must have remembered me from there. Seems a long time ago.”
IF YOU SHOULD come, after the passing of years, across the sagebrush levels where the lupine grows, and if by winding trails you should come to the slopes of aspen and pine, you might draw rein for a while among the columbine and mariposa lilies, and listen to the wind.
Do not look there, at the foot of the Sweet Alice Hills, for the house of Riley, for it is gone. Over the changing seasons only the hills remain the same. Yet if you should ride across the broken red lands to where the Colorado rolls, beyond Dandy Crossing you will find the trail they followed from Spanish Fork no easier.
Rimrock is gone. After the flash floods that destroyed it, only the foundations and a couple of old frame buildings remain, but higher up the hillside Ira Weaver is buried beside Dan Shattuck, who lived to see his second grandchild … and Sheriff Larsen, who died at ninety-two.
Kehoe married Peg Oliver, and one of their four great-grandchildren was killed in Korea on a bleak November day when, wounded and cut off from his detachment of the 27th Regiment, he settled down to show the Reds what the old breed was made of. He had eight grenades and a BAR, and twenty-three dead Chinese when he ran out of ammo.
Kehoe had been elected sheriff after Larsen retired, and Parrish had become his deputy. Parrish was killed when he interrupted a bank holdup and shot it out with two eastern gangsters. He took both of them with him when he went down shooting, and when Sampson McCarty bent over to hear his last words, Parrish said, “Jim Colburn planned ‘em better!”
Colburn stayed on at the ranch as long as it operated, and then moved to Arizona. From time to time people looked him up to ask if the bad old days were really that bad, but few thought to ask about his own life. He was such a quiet-seeming man, with a shock of unruly white hair and mild blue eyes.
Gaylord Riley and Marie moved to California when the children were old enough to attend school, but the years they spent on the ranch were happy, prosperous ones.
When Senator James Colburn Riley married Blanche Kehoe they spent their honeymoon camping at the foot of the Sweet Alice Hills.
On their first night in camp their guide and packer brought a flat stone to the fireside, and Riley commented, “Looks like an old foundation stone.”
“Indian, maybe,” the guide said. “Nobody else in this country until around 1900. Why, outlaws didn’t start usin’ the Roost until about ‘85!”
Riley glanced at Blanche, but neither made any comment. Later, when Riley accidentally kicked an old cartridge shell out of the earth near the fire, the guide glanced at it.
“Better keep that,” he said, “they don’t make that kind anymore.”
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, 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 100 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 cassettes and CDs from Random House 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.
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 Skibbereen
The Man from the Broken Hills
Mata
gorda
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 One
Dutchman’s Flat
End of the Drive
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 Rustlers of West Fork