Czytaj książkę: «Louisiana Lou. A Western Story»

PROLOGUE

The sun was westering over Ike Brandon’s ranch at Twin Forks. It was the first year of a new century when the old order was giving place to the new. Yet there was little to show the change that had already begun to take place in the old West. The desert still stretched away drearily to the south where it ended against the faint, dim line of the Esmeralda Mountains. To the north it stretched again, unpopulated and unmarked until it merged into prairie grass and again into mountains. To west and east it stretched, brown and dusty. To the south was the State of Nevada and to the north the State of Idaho. But it was all alike; bare, brown rolling plain, with naught of greenness except at the ranch where the creek watered the fields and, stretching back to the north, the thread of bushy willows and cottonwoods that lined it from its source in the mountains.

Ike Brandon was, himself, a sign of change and of new conditions, though he did not know it. A sheepman, grazing large herds of woolly pests in a country which, until recently, had been the habitat of cattlemen exclusively, he was a symbol of conquest. He remembered the petty warfare that had marked the coming of his kind, a warfare that he had survived and which had ended in a sort of sullen tolerance of his presence. A few years ago he had gone armed with rifle and pistol, and his herders had been weaponed against attack. Now he strode his acres unafraid and unthreatened, and his employees carried rifle or six-shooter only for protection against prowling coyotes or “loafer” wolves. Although the cow hands of his erstwhile enemies still belted themselves with death, they no longer made war. The sheep had come to stay.

The worst that he and his had to expect was a certain coldness toward himself on the part of the cattle aristocracy, and a measure of contempt and dislike toward his “Basco” herders on the part of the rough-riding and gentle-speaking cow hands.

These things troubled him little. He had no near neighbors. To the north, across the Idaho border, there was none nearer than Sulphur Falls, where the Serpentine, rushing tumultuously from the mountains, twisted in its cañon bed and squirmed away to westward and northward after making a gigantic loop that took it almost to the Line. To the south, a ranch at Willow Spring, where a stubborn cattleman hung on in spite of growing barrenness due to the hated sheep, was forty miles away. To east and west was no one within calling distance.

At Sulphur Falls were two or three “nesters,” irrigating land from the river, a store or two and a road house run by an unsavory holdover of the old days named “Snake” Murphy. For a hundred and twenty-five miles to southward was unbroken land. The cattle were mostly gone – though in days to come they were to return again in some measure. Even the Esmeralda Mountains were no longer roamed by populous herds. They were bare and forbidding, except where the timber was heavy, for the sheep of Brandon and others, rushing in behind the melting snow in the spring, had cropped the tender young grass before it had a chance to grow strong.

Brandon’s ranch was an idyllic spot, however. His dead wife and, after her, her daughter, also dead, had given it the touch of feminine hands. Vines and creepers half hid the dingy house behind a festoon of green and blossoms. Around it the lush fields of clover were brilliant and cool in the expanse of brown sultriness. And here, Ike, now growing old, lived in content with his idolized granddaughter, Marian, who was about six years old.

Brandon, at peace with the world, awaited the return from the summer range of “French Pete,” his herder, who was to bring in one of the largest flocks for an experiment in winter feeding at and in the vicinity of the ranch. The other flocks and herders would, as usual, feed down from the mountains out into the desert, where they would winter.

Little Marian hung on the swinging gate which opened onto the apology for a wagon road. She liked quaint French Pete and looked forward to his return with eagerness. Like her grandfather, he always spoiled her, slavishly submitting to her every whim because she reminded him of his own p’tit bébé, in his far-away, Pyrenean home. Marian was used to being spoiled. She was as beautiful as a flower and, already, a veritable tyrant over men.

But now she saw no sign of French Pete and, being too young for concentration, she let her glance rove to other points of the compass. So she was first to become aware that a rider came from the north, the direction of Sulphur Falls, and she called her grandfather to come and see.

The horseman loped easily into sight through the brown dust that rose about him. His horse was slim and clean limbed and ran steadily, but Brandon noted that it was showing signs of a long journey made too fast. It was a good horse, but it would not go much farther at the pace it was keeping.

And then he frowned as he recognized the rider. It was a young man, or rather, boy, about nineteen or twenty years old, rather dandified after the cow-puncher fashion, sporting goatskin chaps and silver-mounted bridle and spurs, silk neckerchief, and flat-brimmed hat of the style now made common by the Boy Scouts. His shirt was flannel, and his heavy roping saddle studded with silver conchas. He was belted with heavy cartridges, and a holster strapped down to his leg showed the butt of a six-shooter polished by constant handling.

“It’s that damned Louisiana!” said Brandon, with disgust.

The rider trotted through the gate which he swung open and dropped to the ground before the little veranda. Marian had run back behind the vines whence she peered at him half curiously and half afraid. The young fellow, teetering on his high heels, reached for her and, smiling from pleasant eyes, swung her into the air and lifted her high, bringing her down to his face and kissing her.

“Howdy, little Lily Bud!” he said, in a voice which was a soft blend of accents, the slurred Southern, the drawled Southwestern, and something subtly foreign.

He was a handsome, slender, dashing figure, and Marian’s gleeful echo to his laughter claimed him as her own. Even Ike Brandon relaxed and grinned. If the little lady of his heart adopted the stranger, Ike would put aside his prejudice. True, the man was that vanishing rarity, a reputed gunman, uncannily skilled with six-shooter and frowned on by a Western sentiment, new grown, for law and order, which had determined to have peace if it had to wage war to accomplish it.

After all, reflected Ike, the boy, though noted for skill and a certain arrogance which accompanied it, was not yet a killer. The younger element among the cowmen, reckless enough though it was, boasted no such skill as had been common with its fathers. They carried weapons, but they recognized their limitations and there were few of them who would care to test the skill that this young man was supposed to possess. He might, and probably would, go through life peaceably enough, though he was, potentially, as dangerous as a rattlesnake.

“I reckon you could eat,” he remarked, and Louisiana agreed.

“I reckon I can,” he said. “And my old hoss can wrastle a bag of oats, too. He’s got a ride in front of him and he’d appreciate a chance to rest and limber up.”

“You’ll stay the night?”

“No, thanks, seh! An hour or two’s all I can spare. Got business somewhere else.”

Brandon did not urge nor show curiosity. That was not etiquette. But little Marian, taken with the new acquaintance, broke into a wail.

“I want you should stay while I show you my dolly that Pete made me!” she cried, imperiously. Louisiana laughed and ruffled her curls.

“You show me while I eat,” he said. Then he followed Ike into the cabin, debonair and apparently unconcerned. The little girl came too, and, as the Mexican servant set the table, the stranger talked and laughed with her, telling her stories which he made up as he went along, tying his neckerchief into strange shapes of dolls and animals for her, fascinating her with a ready charm that won, not only her, but Ike himself.

He had seen that his horse was fed, and, after he had eaten, he sat unconcerned on the veranda and played with the little girl who, by now, was fairly doting on him. But at last he rose to go and she voiced her sorrow by wails and commands to stay, which he sorrowfully defied.

“I’ve got to ramble, little Lily Bud,” he told her as he led his resaddled and refreshed horse from the stable. “But don’t you fret. I’ll come roamin’ back hereaways some o’ these days when you’ve done married you a prince.”

“Don’t want to marry a prince!” screamed Marian. “Don’t want to marry no one but you-ou! You got to stay!”

“When I come back I sure will stay a whole lot, sweetheart. See here, now, you-all don’t cry no more and when I come back I’ll sure come a-ridin’ like this Lochinvar sport and marry you-all a whole lot. That’s whatever! How’d you like that!”

“When will you come?” demanded Marian.

“Oh, right soon, honey! And you’ll sure have a tame and dotin’ husband, I can tell you. But now, good-by!”

“You’ll come back?”

“You’re shoutin’, I will! With a preacher and a license and all the trimmin’s. We’ll certainly have one all-whoopin’ weddin’ when I come rackin’ in, Petty! Kiss me good-by, like a nice sweetheart and just dream once in a while of Louisiana, won’t you?”

“I’ll say your name in my prayers,” she assured him, watching him doubtfully and hopefully as he wheeled his horse, striving to keep back the tears.

And then he was gone, riding at a mile-eating pace toward the south and the Esmeralda Mountains.

Two hours later a tired group of men and horses loped in and wanted to know where he had gone. They were on his trail for, it seemed, he had shot “Snake” Murphy in his own road house in a quarrel over some drab of the place who was known as Lizzie Lewis.

Ike was cautious. It was not a regularly deputized posse and the members were rather tough friends of Murphy. Between the two, he preferred Louisiana. He remembered how unconcernedly that young man had waited until he and his horse were fed and rested, though he must have known that Death was on his trail. And how he had laughed and petted Marian. There was good in the boy, he decided, though, now he had started on his career as a killer, his end would probably be tragic. Ike had no desire at any rate to hasten it.

Nor, as a matter of fact, had the posse. Their courage had cooled during the long ride from Sulphur Falls as the whisky had evaporated from their systems. They were by no means exceedingly anxious to catch up with and encounter what was reputed to be the fastest gun in southern Idaho.

“Whatever starts this hostile play?” asked Ike of the leader of the posse.

“This here Louisiana, I gather, gets in a mix-up with Snake,” the officer explained rather languidly. “I ain’t there and I don’t know the rights of it myself. As near as I can figure it Lizzie takes a shine to him which he don’t reciprocate none. There is some words between them and Liz sets up a holler to Snake about this hombre insultin’ of her.”

“Insultin’ Lizzie Lewis?” said Ike, mildly surprised. “I’d sure admire to hear how he done it.”

“Well, Liz is a female, nohow, and in any case Snake allows it’s his play to horn in. Which he does with a derringer. He’s just givin’ it a preliminary wave or two and preparin’ his war song according to Hoyle when Louisiana smokes him up a plenty.”

“I reckon Snake starts it, then,” remarked Ike.

“You might say so. But rightfully speakin’ he don’t never actually get started, Snake don’t. He is just informin’ the assembly what his war plans are when Louisiana cracks down on him and busts his shootin’ arm. But this Louisiana has done frightened a lady a whole lot and that’s as good an excuse to get him as any.”

“Well,” said Ike, dryly, “the gent went by here maybe two hours gone headin’ south. He was goin’ steady but he don’t seem worried none as I noticed. If you want him right bad I reckon you can run him down. As for me I’m plumb neutral in this combat. I ain’t lost no Louisiana.”

Members of the posse looked at each other, glanced to the south where the gray expanse of sage presented an uninviting vista, fidgeted a little and, one by one, swung down from their saddles. The officer observed his deputies and finally followed them in dismounting.

“I reckon you’re about right,” he said. “This here buckaroo has got a good start and we ain’t none too fresh. You got a bunk house here where we can hole up for the night?”

Ike nodded his assent, noting that the posse seemed relieved at the prospect of abandoning the chase. In the morning they headed back the way they had come.

French Pete had not appeared on the following day, although he was due, and Brandon decided that he would ride south and meet him. Leaving Marian in charge of the Mexican woman, he took a pack horse and rode away, making the Wallace Ranch at Willow Spring that evening. Although Wallace was a cattleman with an enmity toward Brandon’s fraternity, it did not extend to Ike himself, and he was made welcome by the rancher and his wife. Wallace’s freckle-faced son, a lad of five years, who was known among his vaqueros as “Sucatash,” was the other member of the family. Ike, who was fond of children, entertained this youngster and made a rather strong impression on him.

On the following morning the sheepman saddled up and packed and got away at a fairly early hour. He headed toward the Esmeraldas, pointing at the break in the mountain wall where Shoestring Cañon flared out on the plains, affording an entry to the range. This was the logical path that the sheep-herders followed in crossing the range and, indeed, the only feasible one for many miles in either direction, though there was a fair wagon road that ran eastward and flanked that end of the range, leading to Maryville on the other side of the mountains, where the county seat was located.

But Ike rode until noon without seeing a sign of his missing herder and his sheep. French Pete should have entered the plains long before this, but, as yet, Ike was not alarmed. Many things might occur to delay the flock, and it was impossible to herd sheep on hard and fast schedules.

As he rode Ike looked at the trail for signs of passing horsemen, but he noted no tracks that resembled those of Louisiana, which he had observed for some distance after he had left the ranch at Twin Forks. Just where they had left the trail and disappeared he had not noted, having but an idle interest in them after all. He had not seen them for many miles before reaching Willow Spring, he remembered. This fact gave no clew to the direction the man had taken, of course, since, being pursued, he would naturally leave the trail at some point and endeavor to cover his sign. He might have continued south as he had started or he might have doubled back.

At about one o’clock in the afternoon, as he was approaching the gap that opened into Shoestring, Ike saw, far ahead, a group on the trail. There seemed to be a wagon around which several men were standing. The wagon resembled one of his own camp equipages, and he spurred up his horse and hastened forward with some idea that the cow-punchers might be attacking it.

As he came nearer, however, one of the men swung into his saddle and headed back toward him at a gallop. Ike drew the rifle from its scabbard under his knee and went more cautiously. The man came on at a hard run, but made no hostile move, and when he was near enough Ike saw that he was not armed. He shoved the rifle back beneath his knee, as the rider set his horse on its haunches beside him.

“Ike Brandon?” the man asked, excitedly, as he reined in. “Say, Ike, that Basco ewe-whacker o’ yours is back there a ways and plumb perforated. Some one shore up and busted him a plenty with a soft-nose thirty. We’re ridin’ for Wallace, and we found him driftin’ along in the wagon a while back. I’m ridin’ for a medicine man, but I reckon we don’t get one in time.”

“Who done it?” asked Ike, grimly. The cow-puncher shook his head.

“None of us,” he said, soberly. “We ain’t any too lovin’ with sheep-herders, but we ain’t aimin’ to butcher ’em with soft-nose slugs from behind a rock, neither. We picks him up a mile or two out of Shoestring and his hoss is just driftin’ along no’th with him while he’s slumped up on the seat. There ain’t no sheep with him.”

Ike nodded thoughtfully. “None o’ you-all seen anythin’ of Louisiana driftin’ up this a way?” he asked.

“Gosh, no!” said the rider. “You pickin’ Louisiana? He’s a bad hombre, but this here don’t look like his work.”

“Pete’s rifle with him?” asked Ike.

The man nodded. “It ain’t been fouled. Looks like he was bushwacked and didn’t have no chance to shoot.”

Ike picked up his reins, and the man spurred his horse off on his errand. The sheepman rode on and soon met the wagon being escorted by two more cowboys while a third rode at the side of the horses, leading them. They stopped as Ike rode up, eying him uncomfortably. But he merely nodded, with grim, set face, swung out of his saddle as they pulled up, and strode to the covered vehicle, drawing the canvas door open at the back.

On the side bunk of the wagon where the cowboys had stretched him, wrapped in one of his blankets, lay the wounded man, his face, under the black beard, pale and writhen, the eyes staring glassily and the lips moving in the mutterings of what seemed to be delirium. Ike climbed into the wagon and bent over his employee, whose mutterings, as his glazing eyes fell on his master’s face, became more rapid. But he talked in a language that neither Ike nor any of the men could understand.

With a soothing word or two, Ike drew the blanket down from Pete’s chest and looked at the great stain about the rude bandage which had been applied by the men who had found him. One glance was enough to show that Pete was in a bad way.

“Lie still!” said Ike, kindly. “Keep your shirt on, Pete, and we’ll git you outa this pretty soon.”

But Pete was excited about something and insisted on trying to talk, though the froth of blood on his lips indicated the folly of it. In vain Ike soothed him and implored him to rest. His black eyes snapped and his right hand made feeble motions toward the floor of the wagon where, on a pile of supplies and camp equipment, lay a burlap sack containing something lumpy and rough.

“Zose sheep – and zose r-rock!” he whispered, shifting to English mixed with accented French. “Pour vous – et le bébé! Le p’tit bébé an’ she’s mère– France —or– ”

“Never mind the sheep,” said Ike. “You rough-lock your jaw, Pete, an’ we’ll take care o’ the sheep. Lie still, now!”

But Pete moaned and turned his head from side to side with his last strength.

“Mais – mais oui! ze sheep!” He again stuttered words meaningless to his hearers who, of course, had no Basque at command. But here and there were words of English and French, and even some Spanish, which most of them understood a little.

“Ze r-rock —pierre – or! Eet eez to you et le bébé one half. Ze res’ you send – you send heem – France —pour ma femme – mi esposa an’ ze leet-leetla one? Mi padron– you do heem?”

“What’s he drivin’ at?” muttered one of the cowboys. But Ike motioned them to proceed and drive as fast as possible toward Willow Spring. He bent toward the agitated herder again.

“I’ll take care of it, Pete,” he assured him. “Don’t worry none.”

But Pete had more on his mind. He groped feebly about and whined a request which Ike finally understood to be for paper and a pencil. He looked about but found nothing except a paper bag in which were some candles. These he dumped out and, to pacify the man, handed the paper to him with his own pencil. It was evident that Pete would not rest until he had had his way, and if he was crossed further his excitement was bound to kill him almost at once. In obedience to Pete’s wishes Ike lifted him slightly and held him up while he wrote a few scrawling, ragged characters on the sack. Almost illegible, they were written in some language which Ike knew nothing about but, at the bottom of the bag Pete laboriously wrote a name and address which Ike guessed was that of his wife, in the far-off Basse Pyrenean province of France.

“I’ll see it gits to her,” said Ike, reassuringly. But Pete was not satisfied.

“Zose or,” he repeated, chokingly. “I find heem – on ze Lunch R-rock, where I step. Eet ees half to you an’ lettl’ Marian – half to ma femme an’ ze bébé. You weel find heem?”

“Ore?” repeated Ike, doubtingly. “You talking French or English?”

“Or! Oui! Een Englees eet ees gol’, you say! I find heem – back zere by ze Lunch R-rock. Zen some one shoot – I no see heem! I not know w’y. One ‘bang!’ I hear an’ zat ees all. Ze wagon run away, ze sheep are los’, an’ I lose ze head!”

“Ore!” repeated Ike, blankly. “You found gold, is that what you’re telling me? Where?”

“Back – back zere – by ze Lunch Rock where I eat! Much or– gold! I find heem an’ half is yours!”

“That’s all right,” soothed Ike, thinking the man was crazy. “You found a lot of gold and half is mine and Marian’s, while the rest goes to your folks? That’s it, ain’t it?”

Pete nodded as well as he could and even tried to grin his satisfaction at being understood, waving a feeble hand again in the direction of the burlap sack. But his strength was gone and he could not articulate any more. Pretty soon, as the wagon jolted onward, he relapsed into a coma, broken only by mutterings in his native and incomprehensible tongue. By his side Ike sat, vainly wondering who had shot the man and why. But Pete, if he knew, was past telling. To the story of gold, Ike paid hardly any heed, not even taking the trouble to look into the sack.

After a while the mutterings ceased, while his breathing grew more labored and uneven. Then, while Willow Spring was still miles away, he suddenly gasped, choked, and writhed beneath the blanket. The blood welled up to his lips, and he fell back and lay still.

Ike, with face twisted into lines of sorrow, drew the blanket over the man’s head and sat beside his body with bowed face.

As they rode he pondered, endeavoring to search out a clew to the perpetrator of the murder, certainly a cold-blooded one, without any provocation. Pete’s rifle, the cowboys had said, was clean and therefore had not been fired. Furthermore, the wound was in the back. It had been made by a mushrooming bullet, and the wonder was that the man had lived at all after receiving it.

He questioned the cowboys. They knew nothing except that Pete had been found about two miles down on the plain from Shoestring and that his sheep were, presumably, somewhere up the cañon. When Ike sought to know who was in the Esmeraldas, they told him that they had been riding the range for a week and had encountered no one but Pete himself, who, about five days back, had driven into the cañon on his way through the mountains. They had seen nothing of Louisiana, nor had they cut his trail at any time.

The wound showed that it had been recently made; within twelve hours, certainly. But the horses had traveled far in the time given them. One of Wallace’s riders had ridden back up the cañon to search for possible clews and would, perhaps, have something to say when he returned.

They finally arrived at Wallace’s ranch, and found there a doctor who had come from a little hamlet situated to the east. His services were no longer of avail, but Ike asked him to extract the bullet, which he did, finding it to be an ordinary mushroomed ball, to all appearance such as was shot from half the rifles used in that country. There was no clew there, and yet Ike kept it, with a grim idea in the back of his mind suggested by tales which Pete had often told of smuggling and vendettas among the Basques of the border between Spain and France.

It was when the sack was opened, however, that the real sensation appeared to dwarf the excitement over the murder of the sheep-herder. It was found to contain a number of samples of rock in which appeared speckles and nuggets of free gold, or what certainly looked like it. On that point the doubt was settled by sending the samples to an assayer, and his report left nothing to be desired. He estimated the gold content of the ore to be worth from fifty to eighty thousand dollars a ton.

The coroner’s inquest, at Maryville, was attended by swarms, who hoped to get from the testimony some clew to the whereabouts of the mine. But many did not wait for that. Before the assayer’s report had been received there were prospectors hurrying into the Esmeraldas and raking Shoestring Cañon and the environs. It was generally thought that the Bonanza lay on the southern side of the range, however, and on that side there were many places to search. Pete might have taken almost any route to the top of the divide, and there were very few clews as to just where he had entered the mountains and how he had reached the cañon.

Nor did the inquest develop anything further except the fact that Wallace’s cow-puncher, who had ridden back up the cañon after finding Pete, had found the spot where he had been shot, about five miles from the exit on the plain, but had failed to discover anything indicating who had done it. Other searchers also reported failure. There had been burro tracks of some prospector seen at a point about six miles from the cañon, but nothing to show that the owner of them had been in that direction.

The verdict was characteristic. Louisiana’s exploit had been noised about; it was known that he was heading for the Esmeraldas when last seen, and the fact that he was a gunman, or reputed to be one, furnished the last bit of evidence to the jurors. No one else had done it, and therefore Louisiana, who had quit the country, must have been the culprit. In any event, he was a bad man and, even if innocent of this, was probably guilty of things just as bad. Therefore a verdict was returned against Louisiana, as the only available suspect.

Ike Brandon, after all, was the only person who cared much about the fate of a sheep-herder, who was also a foreigner. Every one else was chiefly interested in the gold mine. Ike offered a reward of five hundred dollars, and the obliging sheriff of the county had handbills printed in which, with characteristic directness, Louisiana was named as the suspect.

The mountains swarmed for a time with searchers who sought the gold Pete had found. It remained hidden, however, and, as time passed, interest died out and the “Lunch Rock” was added to the long list of “lost mines,” taking its place by the side of the Peg Leg and others.

Ike wrote to Pete’s wife in France and sent her his last message. With it went a sample of the ore and the bullet that had killed Pete. Ike reasoned that some of his relatives might wish to take up the hunt and would be fortified by the smashed and distorted bullet.