Chapter 1 The winter snows were melting in the forests of the Kaibab, and the red-orange Vermilion Cliffs were streaked with melting frost. Deer were feeding in the forest glades among the stands of ponderosa and fir, and trout were leaping in the sun-sparkled streams. A shadow moved under the ponderosa, then was gone.
Five deer fed on the grass along the bank of a mountain stream back of Finger Butte, their coats mottled with the light and shadow of sunlight through the leaves.
It was very still. Water rippled around the roots of a tree where the soil had washed away, and gurgled cheerfully among the rocks. A buck’s tail twitched, twitched again, and the regal head lifted, turning its nostrils to the wind, reading it cautiously, but the reading was betrayal, for the shadow under the pines was downwind of him.
A faint breeze sifted through the grass and stirred the leaves, and with the breeze the shadow moved into the sunlight and became a man, standing motionless not twenty feet from the nearest deer.
Straight and tall he stood in gray buckskins. He wore no hat, and his hair long. Lean and brown, his black hair loose, he waited until the buck’s head lifted again, looking right at him.
A startled snort and the buck sprang away. The others followed. Mike Bastian stood with his hands on his hips, watching them go.
Another man came through the trees behind him, a lean, wiry old man with a gray mustache and blue eyes alive with humor.
“What do you think of that, Roundy?” Bastian asked. “Could your Apache beat that? Another step and I could have touched him.”
Roundy spat into the grass. “No Apache I ever knowed could do better, son. An’ I never seen the day I could do as well. You’re good, Mike, really good. I am surely glad you’re not huntin’ my hair!” He drew his pipe from his pocket and began stoking it. “We’re headin’ back for Toadstool Canyon, Mike. Your pa sent for us.”
“No trouble, is there?”
“None I know of, although things don’t look good. They don’t look good at all. No, I think your pa figures it’s time you rode out with the bunch.”
Mike Bastian squatted on his heels, glancing around the glade. This was what he liked, and he did not want to leave. Nor did he like what he was going back to face. “I believe you’re right, Roundy. Pa said I was to ride out in the spring when the boys went, and it is about time.”
He tugged a blade of grass and chewed on it. “I wonder where they will go this time?”
“Whatever it is, and wherever it is, it will be well planned. Your pa would have made a fine general, boy. He’s got the head for it. He never forgets a thing.”
“You’ve been with him a long time, haven’t you?”
“Mighty long. I was with him before he found you. I met him in Mexico during the War, longer ago than I care to remember. I was just a youngster then, myself.”
From the grass he took up a fallen pine cone. “Son!
Look!” He tossed the pine cone into the air.
Mike Bastian palmed his gun and it belched flame, then again. The second shot spattered the pine cone into flying brown chips.
“Not bad,” Roundy said, “but you shot too quick. You’ve got to get over that, Mike. Most times one shot is all you’ll get.”
Side by side they started back through the woods. The earth was spongy with a thick bed of pine needles. An occasional break in the trees offered a glimpse of the far-off San Francisco peaks, with clouds shrouding their summits. Roundy was not as tall as the younger man, but he walked with the long, easy stride of the woodsman. Coming to a break in the forest that permitted them a long view of the wild, broken canyon country to the east, Roundy spoke. “Your pa picked mighty well. Nobody in God’s world could find him in all that.”
“There’s Indians,” Bastian reminded, “and some of the Mormons know that country.”
“He doesn’t bother them and they don’t bother him,” Roundy said. “That’s why his outfit needs a tight rein.”
They walked on, in silence. Several times Bastian paused to study the ground, reading the tracks to see who or what had passed since they had passed. “This here is somethin’ you better not do again,” Roundy suggested, “comin’ back the way we went out. Somebody could be layin’ for us.”
“Who?”
“Ah, now. That’s the question. Nobody is supposed to know your pa’s plans for you, but there’s always the chance somebody might. Believe me, son, nothin’ is a secret for long, an’ you can just bet some of the boys have been doin’ some thinkin’ about you.”
They paused again, studying the country around, and Roundy put the question that had been bothering him for months. “Mike? If Ben’s ready for you to go out, what will you do?”
“Go, I guess. What choice do I have?”
“You’re sure? You’re sure you want to be an outlaw?”
“Wasn’t that why he raised me? To take over from him?” There was an edge of bitterness in Mike’s tone. “Wasn’t I to take over when Ben Curry stepped aside?”
“That’s what you were raised for, all right.” Roundy poked at the pine needles with his toe. “But it’s your life you have to live. Ben Curry can’t live it for you, and you can’t live his life for him, no matter how much he wants it.
“The thing to remember, Mike, is that things have changed since Ben an’ me rode into this country together. It’s no longer wild and free like it was. Folks are movin’ in, settlin’ the country, buildin’ homes.
“Getaways won’t be so easy no more, and the kind of men you ride with will change. Fact is, they have already changed.
“When Ben an’ me rode into this country it was wide open. Most banks had been mighty hard on a poor man, ready to foreclose at the slightest chance, and the railroads gave all the breaks to the big cattle shippers, so nobody cared too much if a train was robbed or a bank. If you killed somebody, especially a man with a wife and kids—well, that was something else. If you just robbed a bank or train the posses would chase you more for fun than actually to catch you. It was a break in the work they were doin’. They’d get out, run an outlaw for a while but not too serious about it.
“Kill a man? That was different. They’d chase you for keeps then, and they’d catch you. That’s why Ben Curry wouldn’t stand for killin’, an’ he’s been known to personally kill a man who disobeyed that order.”
“He actually did?”
“Seen it myself. It was Dan Peeples, and Dan was a high hand with a gun. They’d robbed a bank in Wyoming an’ as they were ridin’ out of town this young feller came out of an alley, blundered right in the way, and Dan Peeples shot him.
“Folks seen it. Folks knew it was deliberate. Well, we rode on three, four miles an’ Ben pulled up. He turned to Dan Peeples an’ he said, ‘I said no killin’, Dan.’
“Dan, he just grinned an’ said, ‘Well, he got in the way. Anyway, what’s one farm kid, more or less?’
“Ben Curry said, ‘When I say no killin’, I mean it.’
“Dan, he says, ‘So?’ And Ben shot him. Dan saw it comin’ and reached but he was too slow, so Ben left him layin’ there for the posse to find.”
“What if they got cornered?”
“That was different. If they had to fight their way out, well an’ good, an’ a time or two that happened. Your pa was against needless killin’, an’ the word got around. The outlaws knew it, but the townsfolk, ranchers, an’ lawmen knew it, too.”
“I’ve heard some of the stories.”
“No way you could miss. Ben Curry’s kind breed stories. In them old days many a man rustled a few head to get started, and sometimes a broke cowhand would stand up a stage and nobody took it too serious, but it isn’t like that anymore. The country is growin’ up and changing viewpoints. More than that, it is Ben himself.”
“You think he’s too big?”
“What else? Your pa controls more country than there is in New York State! Right under his thumb! And he’s feared over much of the west by those who really know about him, but not many do.
“Outside of his own crowd nobody has seen Ben Curry in years, at least, not to know who he was. Mighty few know his power, although there’s a rumor around that somewhere there lives a man who rides herd on more than a hundred outlaws. Much of his success lies in the fact that nobody believes it.
Copyright © 2024 by Louis L'Amour. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
