High Lonesome Part 1

High Lonesome.

Louis L'amour.

Chapter I.

After The Moon Lowered Itself Behind The Serrated Ridge Of The Gunsight Hills, two riders walked their horses from the breaks along the river.

The night was still. Only the crickets made their small music, and down by the livery stable a bay horse stamped restlessly, lifting his head, ears p.r.i.c.ked.

Another rider, a big man who sat easy in the saddle, rode up out of a draw and walked his horse along the alleyway leading to the town's main street. Only the blacksmith heard the walking horse.

His eyes opened, for he was a man who had known much of Indian fighting, and they remained open and aware during the slow seconds while the horse walked by. Casually, he wondered what rider would be on the street at that hour of the night, but sleep claimed him and the rider was forgotten.

This rider did not emerge upon the street, but drew rein in the deepest shadows beside the general store, hearing the approach of the two riders coming along the street.

There was no sign of Considine, but he expected none. Considine had a way of getting to where he wanted to be without being seen.

The two riders went by, turning at the last minute in a perfect column right to stop before the bank. Each dismounted at once, and each held a rifle. Only when they were in position did Dutch walk his mount across the street and swing down in the comparative shelter of the bank building.

As he dismounted he held one hand carefully about a fruit jar. It was a very small jar, but Dutch treated it with respect. Considine opened the bank door from within as Dutch brought his jar around the corner.

"It's an old box ... nothing to worry about."

Dutch moved past him in the darkness, walking with the cat-footedness given to some very heavy men, and squatted before the big iron safe.

Considine walked back to the door for one last look down the empty street. Behind him the man had gone to work.

Hardy lit a cigarette and glanced over his shoulder. He was younger than Considine, and just as tall, but thinnerua knife-edged young man with a face that showed reckless and tough in the faint glow of the cigarette.

The Kiowa neither moved nor spoke. A blocky, square-built young man, he was a half-breed known from Colorado to Sonora, wanted everywhere and nowhere.

Considine walked back to where Dutch was working on the safe. Sweat beaded the big man's face as the steel drill bit into the softer iron of the safe. The first hole, at the top corner of the safe door, was well started.

"Spell you?"

"No."

Dutch was a craftsman and proud of his work. He had done time in the Texas pen for being caught with the wrong cattle, and while in prison he had learned from an old peterman how to crack a safe. Now there was no better man west of the Mississippi, but there was no hurry in him, not even under fire.

Minutes pa.s.sed ... up the street somewhere a door slammed, a moment of quiet followed, and then a pump complained wearily, and after an interval they could hear the water gus.h.i.+ng into an empty tin bucket.

They waited, each man poised in position, Dutch resting the heavy drill on the floor. After a few minutes they heard a door close up the street, and then silence. Dutch replaced the drill in the hole and leaned into his job. Sweat trickled down his face, but he worked steadily, unhurried and confident.

Considine felt the pressure begin to mount. Every second they were here increased their danger. He knew these western towns only too well, and n.o.body got away with anything in any of them. He had heard gangs talk of taking towns, but it never happened. If a gunman or a pack of outlaws tried to tree a western town the population would vie to see who got the first shot.

Take the banker of flu's town, for example. He had been a colonel in the Union Army during the Civil War, and had been a lieutenant in the War with Mexico, and he had fought Indians and hunted buffalo ... The saloonkeeper across the street was a noted buffalo hunter ... The man who owned the general store had been the crack shot of his regiment during the Civil War, and had fought Indians in Wyoming and Nebraska.

The whole town was like that. Probably there weren't three men in town who had not used guns, and used them a lot. It was a time when every western town's population was made up of the daring, the adventurous, and the skilled. No tinhorn would ever tree a town like this, or any part of it. Gunmen and outlaws were left alone as long as they stayed with their kind, with the cheaper saloons and the girls of the bawdy houses.

An insect droned by in the darkness, and somewhere a quail called. Considine leaned against the door jamb and waited, listening to the sound of the drill.

He was a d.a.m.ned fool, he thought. Any man who tried to do anything like this was. How had he become a thief, anyway? He s.h.i.+ed at the word thief. At first it had seemed a big lark. They had been out of money and wanted enough for a few days in town, so they bunched some cattle, drove them to a man they knew of, and sold them.

After that it happened again. On the fourth time they had been seen and there was a running gun battle and the only answer to that was to leave town. He left ahead of a posse, and drifted to Kansas, and since then it had been just one thing after another until here he was, cracking the safe in a bank.

Four years of crime behind him, and he had made only a little more than he would have made working for wages on a cow outfit. With the difference that had he worked for wages, men would not be hunting him all over the country.

Dutch rested, mopping sweat from his forehead. The first hole was finished. Considine picked up a bar of home-made soap and began stopping up the crack around the safe door. Out in the street, one of the horses stamped and Dutch placed his drill in the new position and went to work. The iron showed white under the bite of the steel bit.

The quail called again, a lonely call, inquiring and plaintive. Considine slapped a mosquito on his neck and swore under his breath.

The pressure continued to mount. Hardy no longer leaned against the building. His nonchalance was gone. He was sweating, too. Only the Kiowa seemed unperturbed.

Hardy hissed suddenly and Considine touched Dutch on the shoulder. The drill ceased to move and there was silence, and in the stillness Considine could hear the slow ticking of the bank clock. On the cross street a few doors away they could hear two horses walking, two sleepy riders on sleepy horses. They crossed Main Street and vanished in the darkness, with the muzzles of two rifles on them all the way. When they had been gone a full minute, Considine spoke to Dutch and the big man returned to work. He had not so much as turned his head to look. Time dragged. Considine grew impatient. His mouth was dry and he was getting jittery. The trouble was, that when a man took the wrong side of the law, every man was his enemy. You became fair game for any chance pa.s.ser-by who felt like taking a shot at you. You became an enemy of the public; but what was worse, the public became your enemy.

In the street a horse stamped again impatiently, and Hardy lit another cigarette. Dutch was through with his drill job, and he finished soaping the crack around the door. Then he made a cup of soap around the lock. To this he attached a short fuse.

Considine picked up an old mattress he had brought through the back door, and placed it against the safe. He wrapped the safe carefully in ragged blankets taken from the stable out back, and then he and Dutch opened all the bank windows so the concussion would not break the gla.s.s. The fall of broken gla.s.s had been known to awaken people when the concussion itself had not.

Considine went to the door. He glanced from the Kiowa to Hardy. "Ready?"

Each lifted a hand in a.s.sent. The Kiowa stepped out to stand with the horses, holding the reins of them all.

Considine glanced over his shoulder. "All right, Dutchman."

Outside, the watching men lifted their rifles, and the Kiowa murmured something to the horses. Dutch had lighted a cigarette, and now he touched it to the fuse. It hissed sharply and both men inside ducked out of the door and crouched close against the wall, waiting.

The quail called, its cry lost in the m.u.f.fled boom from within the bank.

Dutch and Considine rushed the safe. The acrid smell bit at their nostrils. The door, blasted open, was hanging by one hinge.

Considine raked the contents of the safe to the floor, then swore bitterly. The heavy sacks of gold were gone! There was only a tray full of coins. He dumped them into the sack Dutch held, ransacked a drawer and found a small package of billsuonly a few dollars.

Somewhere down the street a door slammed, and instantly Hardy fired. The report racketed against the false-fronted stores, slapping back and forth across the narrow street.

There was a shout, then the heavy bellow of a buffalo gun. The Kiowa replied with a shot from his Winchester.

Considine straightened to his feet. "Nothing! Let's get out of here!"

Dutch crossed the floor in three great strides and ducked swiftly around the corner to his horse. Considine went out the back door, almost tripping over the crowbar with which he had sprung the door lock to gain entrance. From the street there was now a steady sound of firing.

Hardy was already in the saddle when Considine rounded the building, and the Kiowa had his bridle looped over his arm and was firing methodically up the street.

"All right!" said Considine.

The Indian stepped into the leather and the four riders wheeled into the deeper shadows of an alley. A window went up and a rifle barrel was thrust through at them, but Dutch put a .44 through the window gla.s.s and there came a startled yelp and the rifle fell to the ground outside.

The four riders scattered through the willows, splashed across the stream, then turned south and away. They did not ride fast, holding their horses for the necessary drive of speed should pursuit be organized in time to worry them.

Behind them in the town a few wild shots sounded, but by vanis.h.i.+ng into the willows and crossing the stream they had taken themselves out of sight and out of range.

Considine held the steady pace for about two miles. Then he turned at right angles and rode into the stream, with the others following. They crossed it to a ledge of rock, then turned back into the stream and rode downstream for a quarter of a mile, and came out on the far side and into the mouth of a sandy draw.

Tracks left in that deep sand were only dimples, shapeless and impossible to identify, or even to estimate as to the time they were made.

"How'd we do?"

Hardy was the youngest, and he was eager. He still believed that every score was going to be a big one. He had yet to learn that even the most carefully planned robberies might net exactly nothing ... unless one counted the bullets fired.

"The gold was gone, all of it. There's maybe a couple of hundred in change and small bills."

"h.e.l.l!"

The opinion was scarcely open to debate, and n.o.body felt like talking. Even an empty bank does not like to have its safe blown up, and the citizenry would like the sport of the chase. In western townsuand Considine knew it all too welluthere is often little excitement, so a bank robbery gives everybody a chance to have a fast ride and do a lot of shooting. A posse would be formed, and every man in it would be a tough, trail-seasoned veteran.

Considine led the way up the canyon as if it were broad daylight. When he felt the sudden added coolness in the air he knew they were at the seep, and turned sharply left. When he saw the notch in the skyline above them, he started his horse up the steep slide of talus.

It was a hard scramble for the horses, but it left no tracks, and at the top of the mesa they drew up to let the horses catch their wind. Pursuit would be relatively impossible until daylight, a good four hours off.

They rode until the sky was turning gray, and then Considine led them into a narrow draw, and up to a pole corral containing four horses. There was a shack with the roof and one wall caved in.

While Dutch made coffee and started breakfast, the Kiowa stripped the saddles from the horses they had ridden and turned the animals loose with a slap on the rump. They had been borrowed without permission and would return to their home range. He saddled the horses waiting in the corral.

Over the small fire they smoked and drank their coffee. n.o.body felt like talking. The job had promised well and had failed, and now they were broke.

n.o.body was hurt, nor had they hurt anybody. Had their escape been a few seconds slower or less carefully organized, one or more of them might now be dead. Of this they had no doubt.

"Well," Hardy said reluctantly, "even Jesse James pulled a couple of stick-ups that netted him nothing." n.o.body offered any reply, so he added, "But they say he buried a million dollars in a cave in Missouri. I'd sure like to find that."

"Don't you believe it," Dutch said. "Anybody who wants to can get the figures. In sixteen years of outlawry the James gang took in less than four hundred thousand, and that was split among six to twelve men. h.e.l.l, they were down and out most of the time."

"That safe was too easy," Dutch said. "I couldn't believe it!"

They finished their coffee and got up. Dutch dumped out the coffee grounds and kicked dirt over the fire. They took a last careful look around to be sure nothing had been forgotten, and then mounted their own horses and rode out of the draw.

Considine was tired. His hard, spare body relaxed to the easy movements of his horse. His muscles ached with weariness and he desperately wanted to lie down somewhere under a tree and catch up on his sleep. That was always the trouble ... everything a man wanted to do lay ahead of him. Darkness retreated reluctantly into the hollows of the hills and hid under the spreading branches of the live oaks. The sun came up and grew hot.

Considine paused when they topped out on a ridge and surveyed the country before them, s.h.i.+mmering with heat waves.

When a man took the outlaw trail he only thought of whooping it up and spending his time in the cantinas. He never thought of the long rides without sleep, of the scarce food, and the fact that he was a preferred target for any man's gun.

There had been a time ... and it was then he thought of Obaro.

Considine never was far from thoughts of Obaro. The town was west and south, and was named for the ranch on whose range the town had begunuthe O Bar O. It was a ranch that became a stage stop, then a supply point, and finally a town.

Considine had been a puncher on that ranch, and in the years there he had a friend, a girl, and a dream.

Pete Runyon had been his friend, a top hand on any man's outfit; and together, full of h.e.l.l, they had ridden the range, working hard, playing hard, occasionally getting into brawls, sometimes with others, often with each other.

In those days there had been a lot of unbranded stock on the range, and occasionally when they wanted a night on the town they rounded up a few head of mavericks and drove them into town to sell. The trouble was that the big ranchers believed all stuff, unbranded or not, belonged to them.

Originally there had been a lot of cattle that were owned by n.o.body, and during the War between the States thousands of head had been left unbranded because the men were away at war. Afterward there was no way to trace t.i.tle to any of that stock, and the big outfits claimed them.

Considine and Runyon were fired for selling stock, and warned off the range.

During the winter that followed the two lived on rustled stock. They rounded up unbranded stock, but now they were no longer too particular, and occasionally they caught up a few wearing brands.

Then Pete Runyon filed for the sheriffs office and was elected ... and he married the girl.

Two nights later, Considine was waiting at a water tower for the Denver & Rio Grande train. He swung aboard, walked through the two pa.s.senger cars collecting from the pa.s.sengers, and dropped off the train where a horse was waiting. A week later he got the same train on the way back.

South of the border he killed a man in a fight over a poker game and joined the Kiowa and Dutch. Four months later, Hardy joined them.

There was a bank in the town of Obaro that was usually well supplied with gold, and it was the boast of the townspeople that it had never been robbed. Robbery had been attempted on three different occasions, and they had created a special Boot Hill graveyard, for the robbers. Seven men were buried there, and Considine knew all about that Boot Hill, for he had helped to bury the first man himself.

Every store and office in the town had its rifle or shotgun at hand, and any stranger was under suspicion if he approached the bank. It was the town's bank, and the people of the town intended to protect it. Anyone attempting to rob the Bank of Obaro must run a gauntlet of rifle fire ... in a town notorious for its marksmans.h.i.+p.

The four rode steadily. Dutch was doing his own thinking. There was one thing in particular he liked about working with Considine. You always made a smooth getaway. No breakneck rides. Somehow he always managed to outguess the pursuit, and most of it was due to careful preparation beforehand.

Considine always made the beginning of the pursuit so tough that it broke the horses of the posses. Pursuit rarely lasted beyond the point where Considine would have the spare horses waiting.

The ride up that sandy draw, for example, and then up the rocky slideuthat was enough to take the starch out of any horse. Nor could they ever be traced by their horses, for the horses used in the holdups were never their own mounts.

"Where to now?" Hardy asked.

"Honey's," Considine answered.

The Kiowa tilted his hat brim lower. Honey's place was not far from Obaro, and the Kiowa did not like Obaro. It was Pete Runyon's town, and Pete was a smart, tough sheriff. All the tougher because he had been an outlaw himself, and all the town knew it.

"Are you thinking of Obaro?" Hardy asked.

"Why not?"

Hardy grinned at the thought. "Never was a horse that couldn't be rode, an' there never was a rider who couldn't be throwed."

Dutch squinted his eyes into the heat waves.

The horse that couldn't be ridden might throw a lot of riders before the last one rode it. The trick was to be the one who made the ride ... only how did a man know?

And the town of Obaro, with Runyon for sheriff ... it was a tough horse for any rider to top off.