Fallon (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Read online

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  POSTSCRIPT

  By Beau L’Amour

  Of my father’s many novels, Fallon is one of my favorites. I love that Macon Fallon is not your typical hero. He’s more like Harold Hill in The Music Man, a con man who, despite his ill intentions, ends up helping the people he is trying to take advantage of. More lighthearted than some of his other novels, in Fallon I can feel the fun Dad was having when he wrote the book.

  Besides the playful use of prose, Fallon indulges in other whimsical details, like the names on many of the shop signs on the Buell’s Bluff street. They all refer to my mother’s friends and family: Susan Brown’s Hats was named after longtime General Hospital star Susan Brown, a friend of Mom’s from her days at USC. The Veitch Hotel relates to John Veitch, an executive production manager at Columbia Pictures, who was married to Carol Lee Ladd, stepdaughter of movie star Alan Ladd and my mother’s oldest friend. Deming’s Emporium was named for another of Mom’s friends, Millicent Deming, and Pearly Gates’ Saloon is a spoof on Phyllis Gates, briefly the wife of Rock Hudson. Mom Jelks is most definitely a nod to my great-grandmother, Belle Jelks.

  Here is an early, alternate beginning to the novel. It moves slightly faster than the final version and contains some additional history and characters:

  CHAPTER ONE

  Macon Fallon was a drifting man. He was also, at the moment, a man without money. To a man without money his problems are simple indeed. He must get money.

  The nearest advisable settlement was a hundred miles west, and the nearest inadvisable settlement was somewhat less than that distance to the east. The hospitality of that settlement had ceased abruptly and the population had escorted Fallon out of town. However, he had been discreet enough to start with a substantial lead, so the rope they carried went unused.

  There had been a minor altercation over two fours Fallon had drawn to fill out his hand. To at least one gambler the drawing of fours seemed too opportune to be accidental and led to the drawing of sixes. The local citizen lost that draw also. However, he was a popular citizen and Macon Fallon was a stranger.

  Keenly sensitive to the temper of crowds, Macon Fallon was not only a stranger. He was a stranger with a fast horse.

  He wasted no time gathering up the money, perfectly aware that life without money was possible, money without life, impossible.

  He had been two days without food when he saw the wagons, and several hours without water.

  Obviously, from the way the first wagon was canted to one side, it had a broken wheel, and as he drew closer he could see their stock was in bad shape. The oxen and horses were gaunt, the people themselves drawn and tired. There were two men, two women of mature years, a boy of sixteen or so, two young and pretty girls, and three smaller children.

  Macon Fallon was a cynic, but every cynic is a sentimentalist under the skin, and therein lay the chink in his armor of larceny. Aware of this, he avoided every contact that might betray him into thoughtfulness and consideration. People, he told himself, were suckers. The fact that he himself on occasion had been a sucker served only to prove his point.

  Aware of his softness, Macon Fallon chose to deal with only the most ruthless, relentless, and self-seeking. Because of this his conscience rarely suffered.

  Two assets had Macon Fallon aside from his glib tongue—the first a keen sense of observation, the second a mind filled to the over-flowing with an enormous variety of apparently useless information. As to observation, Fallon had noticed that while all people look, few really see. Therefore he had trained himself to notice, to observe quickly but miss nothing…as he did not now miss the sign.

  It lay among a mass of tumbleweed beside the trail, forgotten, almost weathered out of existence.

  Buell’s Bluff…Buell’s Bluff!

  Macon Fallon stiffened, and sat straight in the saddle, cocking his flat-brimmed, flat-crowned hat at a jauntier angle.

  He swept off his hat. “May I be of service?” His observant eye caught the glimmer of a fire, his nostrils caught the aroma of coffee and a fragrance that could be nothing but frying bacon. His stomach growled an angry warning that it would put up with this nonsense no longer. “You seem to be in some kind of trouble.”

  “Wheel broke.” The bigger man walked over to him. “We haven’t the tools to fix it.”

  Macon Fallon swung down from the saddle and dusted his clothes with his hat. “You were going to the mines?” he asked politely.

  “Figured to,” the other man said. “Not much chance of us making it unless we leave our wagons and strike out afoot.” He glanced at the heat-shimmering desert that lay ahead and to the south. “Kind of scared to try that.”

  “Rightly so, sir, rightly so.” Fallon glanced at the girls. One of them—he averted his eyes quickly. No time for sentimentality. These were good people, the kind he usually avoided, but this was neither the time nor the place for sentiment. Anyway, he was not planning to victimize them…well not exactly…just to use them. Their assistance and presence, at least.

  He allowed himself a wide, friendly smile. “Believe me, folks, your wheel chose the right place to break down. There’s no reason to go further. Have you heard”—he paused, and his eyes fell on the sorrel horse tied to the tail-gate of the wagon—“of the town of Red Horse?”

  They had not, but he expected that. Until a moment before he had not heard of it, either.

  “Red Horse,” he said, “was a mining town, born right out of the desert, and it started to be the richest strike among the mines. My uncle Joe, God rest his soul, was among the founders and the owner of the richest claims. Then the Piutes struck. They came suddenly, in the night, and every man-jack of the settlers wiped out. Killed…slaughtered.”

  He paused, glancing over the group that stood around him, open-mouthed. All but that girl, who looked at him with level eyes, direct, sincere, and discerning…altogether too discerning.

  “The town was lost. Nobody knew where it was; the claims were forgotten. It hadn’t the time to become widely known, and all who really knew where it was were dead. Only one thing kept it from being forever lost.”

  “What was that?”

  He had their attention all right. They had forgotten their troubles, gripped by his story. It was not so much what he was saying as what their imaginations were doing to his story. “There was a letter,” he said. “My uncle wrote a letter.” He placed a hand to his breast. “I have it…here.”

  “All very well, mister,” the first man objected, “but what’s that got to do with us?”

  Fallon smiled. “Do I smell coffee? And bacon? Perhaps we could discuss this further over our coffee?”

  It had taken him no longer to evolve his plan, but a glance or two told him these were not the lambs to be fleeced. Quite obviously they were lacking in fleece, and all that remained to them was their substantial supplies, their worn-out oxen, tired horses, and some remnant of hope.

  Hope they needed, however, for what they retained was thin, flimsy, exhausted by heat, dust, and miles. There was no hope in the name of Buell’s Bluff…a singular lack of it, in fact. So he’d invented the name of Red Horse.

  What’s in a name? A town by any other name can be as big a fraud.

  Their wagons had stopped, he told them, at an opportune time, for to have the gold they wanted, the land they wanted, th
e businesses they might want, they need go no further. He was the Moses who could lead them to the promised land…the papers were drawn up.

  Red Horse had been abandoned for years. They would all pitch in, rebuild, sweep out, and brush up. They would put their remaining stock of provisions on the market, sell them for extortionate prices…he did not use the adjective…and they would be in partnership.

  They were, he assured them, free to take up claims so long as they remained away from his own, but the real money might come from business. Men had to eat, sleep, and use tools, wear clothing even if they found no gold. They would outfit the businesses, handle the sales, and he would take thirty percent. Of the gold claims he would take only ten percent for guiding them to the area, advice, assistance, etc.

  “Is there gold there?” Tom Blaine asked.

  “My uncle said it was the biggest strike he had ever seen”—all the gold his uncle had seen was in his wedding ring—“but I can promise nothing.”

  “The point is,” he said confidentially, “we wouldn’t have to find gold to make money. We’ll be located just off the main migration route at an intermediate point between towns…we’re sure to do business.”

  “There’ll have to be a saloon,” Carter grumbled, “and I don’t hold with whiskey drinking.”

  “Leave that to me,” Fallon suggested dryly, “what they get won’t be whiskey.”

  With all the remaining oxen hitched to the one good wagon and young Tom Blaine left to guard the wagon with the broken wheel, they made their start. Once they arrived in Red Horse they could dismount a good wheel from this wagon and send back for the other.

  Macon Fallon was ashamed when he saw the hope in their faces, the sudden enthusiasm now that a decision had been made and they were near a destination. He rode off in the lead, but had gone only a short distance when Ginia Blaine rode up beside him.

  She was pretty, no getting around that, and she had a disturbing figure, but it was her eyes that worried him. She might be young, but Ginia Blaine had a cool, level way of looking at a man that seemed to see through all the blarney and soft soap he could hand out.

  “Mr. Fallon”—Ginia was not one to beat around the chaparral— “is this a wild goose chase?”

  Macon Fallon blushed, and hurriedly mopped his face with a handkerchief to cover his embarrassment. Buell’s Bluff had been a fraud, a gold-rush hurriedly promoted by a group of confidence men using salted claims, but before it was discovered men had thronged in, built stores and opened a bank. The bottom had fallen out with a thud so loud they had even heard about it back east. It had been written about in Boston, New York, and even in London.

  That had been seven years ago, and so far as Fallon was aware nobody had been near the place since.

  “Gold is where you find it,” Macon Fallon replied, with great originality, “and a man never knows. It was said to be a big strike”—he was on safe ground there—“but the town was deserted after the Piutes attacked.”

  There was even truth in that. The last nine people at Buell’s Bluff had been wiped out by Piutes.

  “I don’t trust you, Mr. Fallon,” Ginia replied coolly. “If you take advantage of us, you’ll be sorry. I’ll find a way to make you sorry.”

  He had been watching the trail. There were no tracks, either coming or going, nor any sign of recent travel at all. They wound up the old trail to the top of the ridge, taking time out to roll a few rocks out of the way, and started down the opposite side. The town lay only two miles ahead but was safely and securely hidden, situated on the bench above a frequently dry stream bed, but concealed by hills that withheld all view until one was actually inside the canyon itself.

  The town was there. Neither time nor dust or fire had blotted it out. Macon Fallon, following the flickering torch of fortune, had pursued it once before to this place. He had never been far behind any boom, and he had come into this one among the first, and had been among the last to leave. Pursuing the will o’ wisp of luck at the gaming tables instead of the pan and rocker, he had done rather well at Buell’s Bluff until, leaving town, he had been brutally and abruptly robbed of all he owned by one Red Chase.

  The fact was, Macon had been the last to leave…awakening in bed after a bad night to find the town deserted, only a coffee pot left on the stove, and a couple of eggs and some bacon beside it. Coffee Bob Buell had not had the heart to leave him totally without breakfast, so when the town deserted, Coffee Bob left behind the makings.

  It was after breakfast, with light heart and heavy pockets, Macon Fallon had started from town. Red Chase had been awaiting him beside the trail.

  Hours later Macon Fallon was walking and his wallet was empty. He had a knot on his head and a carefully stored memory of Red Chase, whom he had briefly glimpsed as he tumbled into oblivion.

  All this returned to him as he saw the town. A brief canter through the street told him nothing was changed. The mirror behind the bar was unbroken, the glasses stood in neat if dusty rows, the tools had remained where they had been left in the blacksmith shop.

  Two days later, the town of Red Horse was ready for customers. The saloon had been swept out, the glasses polished, and the bakery down the street, in the capable hands of Ma Carter, was baking…on the advice of Fallon…doughnuts. Or as they were known in the West…bear sign.

  The supply store had been opened with what extra provisions could be spared from the two wagons, on sale at three times the usual prices. The blacksmith shop was ready for business, and Macon Fallon had ridden back to the main route of the covered wagons to put up a sign…and to carefully break up and discard the old BUELL’S BLUFF sign he had seen earlier.

  He had just completed this destruction when he glanced around and saw Pop Foster watching him. The old prospector grinned. “Red Horse, hey? Good a name as any. What you got in mind, Macon? Ain’t no gold up there, an’ you know it.”

  “Where’d you come from, you old horse-thief?”

  “Horse-thief? Never stole a horse in my life…cows, maybe, but no horses.” Pop Foster moved closer. “Look here, boy, what ever it is you’re fixin’ to do, I could help. I really could!”

  “Who says I need help?”

  “You’ll need it. Red Chase is back in the hills. He’s back there and he’s got six or seven of the meanest outlaws you ever did see. If I remember right, you an’ Red didn’t take to each other.”

  There are a few details lurking in this first draft that I wish had made it into the novel, but that was Dad—he might occasionally rewrite, or restart, a story, but it was rare for him to do much analysis of the assets and liabilities of his various drafts. The newest one was always the best, in his mind.

  My father actually wrote two stories about the fictional town of Red Horse and its problems with confidence men. Though “Elisha Comes to Red Horse” is sort of a sequel, I believe Dad actually conceived of it before Fallon. Louis toyed briefly with the idea of expanding it into a novel in the mid-1970s, and at some point had hopes that he would be able to turn “Elisha” into a Broadway musical. Dad always loved the theater, and even invested in a show or two in the late 1950s. It was finally published in the collection End of the Drive in 1997.

  Elisha Comes to Red Horse

  There is a new church in the town of Red Horse. A clean white church of board and bat with a stained-glass window, a tall pointed steeple, and a bell that we’ve been told came all the way from Youngstown, Ohio. Nearby is a comfortable parsonage, a two-story house with a garreted roof, and fancy gingerbread under the eaves.

  Just down the hill from the church and across from the tailings of what was once the King James Mine is a carefully kept cemetery of white headstones and neatly fitted crosses. It is surrounded by a spiked iron fence six feet high, and the gate is always fastened with a heavy lock. We open it up only for funerals and when the groun
dskeeper makes his rounds. Outsiders standing at the barred gate may find that a bit odd…but the people of Red Horse wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Visitors come from as far away as Virginia City to see our church, and on Sundays when we pass the collection, why, quite a few of those strangers ante up with the rest of us. Now Red Horse has seen its times of boom and bust and our history is as rough as any other town in the West, but our new church has certainly become the pride of the county.

  And it is all thanks to the man that we called Brother Elisha.

  He was six feet five inches tall and he came into town a few years ago riding the afternoon stage. He wore a black broadcloth frock coat and carried a small valise. He stepped down from the stage, swept off his tall black hat, spread his arms, and lifted his eyes to the snowcapped ridges beyond the town. When he had won every eye on the street he said, “I come to bring deliverance, and eternal life!”

  And then he crossed the street to the hotel, leaving the sound of his magnificent voice echoing against the false-fronted, unpainted buildings of our street.

  In our town we’ve had our share of the odd ones, and many of the finest and best, but this was something new in Red Horse.

  “A sky pilot, Marshal.” Ralston spat into the dust. “We got ourselves another durned sky pilot!”

  “It’s a cinch he’s no cattleman,” I said, “and he doesn’t size up like a drummer.”

  “We’ve got a sky pilot,” Brace grumbled, “and one preacher ought to balance off six saloons, so we sure don’t need another.”

  “I say he’s a gambler,” Brennen argued. “That was just a grandstand play. Red Horse attracts gamblers like manure attracts flies. First time he gets in a game he’ll cold deck you in the most sanctified way you ever did see!”