The Man Called Noon (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Read online

  Suddenly it was crystal-clear in his mind. He had not agreed to kill any of them. He had agreed to free the ranch of outlaws by his own means, and he had been warned to be careful of four men and a woman. Careful, and only that. And the woman would be Peg Cullane.

  So Tom Davidge had known something about her, too. Now they might never know what it was, but Tom Davidge had known very well who his enemies were, and who they might be.

  Cristobal now…As dangerous a gunman as ever came down the pike. And there he was, with Manly and Lang….Was nothing ever going to be easy?

  “You can leave it right there, or you can die,” Manly said. “You’re lucky—you’ve got a choice.”

  “The gold’s gone,” Ruble Noon lied. “All we have here is some lead shot. We got the gold away, and used this to keep you off the regular shipment, which is halfway to Denver by now.”

  “You can’t give us that,” Manly said, “so don’t try.”

  Fan Davidge had a piece of the black-painted gold in her pocket and she held it up. “See?”

  They did not want to believe it, they could not, but it worried them.

  The train whistled again, and the sullen thunder rumbled. Big drops of rain spattered on the platform.

  Lebo released the pack horses, and they walked away to join the other horses grazing under the trees.

  Ruble Noon knew when a time had come. He could feel it deep within himself, and he took a step to the side so as to pull the shooting away from Fan’s position.

  “The train’s coming,” he said quietly, “and when that train comes in, we’re loading the sacks on it. Maybe we’re lying about what’s in them, maybe we’re not; but if you want to die to find out, you can have a try…any time.”

  “The great Ruble Noon,” Cristobal said. His black eyes showed contempt. “I do not believe he is that great. Always he shoots from nowhere…can he shoot from somewhere at men with guns?”

  The moment was here, and there was no time to waste in talk. When a fight is inevitable, it is foolish to waste time in words.

  “Now?” he said gently, and then he drew.

  All three of them moved as one man, but Ruble Noon shot at Lang first. Lang, the cool, the quiet, the man who did not talk…Lang he wanted out of there, and Lang knew it and was smiling. He saw Lang’s gun coming up, rising too high…he was being too careful.

  The report of his own gun was lost in a crash of thunder. He was moving ahead, a careful step at a time, firing with precision, but with speed.

  Lang, then Lang again, then Cristobal. Manly was down, too…Lebo must have got him.

  From behind him somebody was shooting with a rifle, and that worried him, but he did not turn.

  Two for Lang…another for Cristobal, and a third one for Lang as the man started to rise, his face and shirt bloody.

  Lang was down, though for a moment he was trying to get back up. Cristobal was still up, his fine white teeth flashing in a smile…easy, taunting—and dead. He was falling forward, the gun going from his hand.

  The rifle behind them thundered again, and then the train came rushing along the track. The shooting was over, and the rain had turned into a downpour.

  The bodies lay on the platform like old sacks. Lebo was down, and Ruble Noon was thumbing shells from his gun, and feeding cartridges into it. He had stopped shooting when Lang went down, and he stood there in the rain, watching Lang for signs of life.

  People were staring from the train windows. Fan was bending over Miguel Lebo, and beside her was another man with a rifle in his hand. He was pointing with it to a window of the station.

  A rifle lay on the platform underneath the window, and hanging over the broken glass was Judge Niland, as dead as a man could be.

  The man who was pointing his rifle toward the Judge was J. B. Rimes.

  “Mr. Mandrin,” he was saying, “I’m a Pinkerton man.”

  “Not an outlaw at all?” Ruble Noon asked mildly.

  “I was…once. They recruited me to run down some train robbers. We had looked for you until the reward was called off, but I had a guess at who you were when you said your name was Jonas.”

  The rain continued to fall.

  Fan tugged at Noon’s sleeve. “Jonas…the train!”

  He picked up a couple of the sacks. Rimes did likewise, and the express messenger took the others.

  When they had reached the express car and loaded the gold inside, he looked back at Lebo. The Mexican was on his feet and was coming toward them, limping. His shirt was bloody.

  “Is it bad?” Noon asked.

  Lebo shook his head. “No…I think no.”

  “Get on. You’re better off on the train than here. Let’s go.”

  It was a three-car train—just the express car and two coaches. There were four passengers in the first coach—two men together, obviously easterners, and a slender, aristocratic-looking woman accompanied by a squarely built man. The woman wore a gray traveling suit; her hair was gray, her eyes a startling blue.

  One of the easterners smiled tolerantly as they entered the coach. “That was quite a performance,” he said. “Does the railroad pay you to stage these little shows?”

  “I thought it was a bit overdone,” the other man commented. “Too much, don’t you know?”

  Ruble Noon and J. B. Rimes helped Lebo to a seat. All of them were soaking wet.

  “Too bad you had to get caught in the rain,” the first easterner said. “It kind of broke up the show.”

  “What do you do for an encore?” the other asked.

  Fan was helping Lebo off with his buckskin jacket. His shirt was soaked with blood.

  The gray-haired woman got up from her seat and put down the fancy work in which she had been engaged. “Perhaps I can help?” she suggested. “I’ve had some experience in this line of work.”

  “Would you, please?” Fan asked. “I…I’ve lived in the East until recently, and I’m afraid I…”

  “Get me some water, young man,” the woman said, turning to Ruble Noon. “There’s a pan on the stove at the end of the car. My husband was heating it to shave.”

  The man riding with her opened his valise. He handed Ruble a towel. “It’s the only one I’ve got. We’ll have to share it.”

  Ruble Noon dried his face and hands, then took off his wet coat. He checked his gun, drying it carefully with his handkerchief.

  The two easterners were silent while they looked on unbelievingly. As they watched, the older woman bathed and cleansed the gunshot wound. Lebo had been hit in the side, the bullet ripping the skin along his left ribs and cutting through the muscle. It was a bloody wound, but not a dangerous one.

  Lebo looked up at Ruble Noon. “I got Cristobal,” he said.

  “You knew him?”

  “He was my brother-in-law.”

  “Your brother-in-law!”

  Lebo tried to shrug, wincing from the pain. “Por nada….He married my sister, and he left her. He was no good. He was a loudmouth. But he could shoot—he always could shoot.”

  Ruble Noon sat down beside Rimes. The train was rolling south. Soon it would turn east, running along the border briefly. He put his head back against the red plush upholstery and closed his eyes.

  There was only the rumbling of the train, the creaking of the car as it rounded a small curve, the occasional sound of the engine’s whistle, the pound of its drivers, and the clicking of the wheels crossing the rail-ends. He could hear the quiet talk of Fan and the older woman while they bandaged Lebo’s wound.

  For the first time in weeks he could relax. Rimes was talking to the older woman’s husband, who said he operated a mine near Central City, and had come west to look over some properties.

  “…deserved killing,” the mining man was saying. “Manly was involved in claim-jumping in Nevada. He always was a
troublemaker.”

  The train slowed, and Ruble Noon opened his eyes. “Are we stopping?”

  “La Boca,” Rimes said. “Just a station. We take a big bend and go east now.”

  Noon heard someone drop to the roadbed from the rear car. He listened to the sound of boots along the cinders—more than one person.

  Lebo was leaning back, his eyes closed, his face pale. Fan was sitting opposite him. The older woman had gone back to the seat by Rimes and her husband.

  There was a faint sound from the front of the car, a sound so faint that Ruble Noon doubted if he had heard it—it sounded rather like the rattle of a brake pin.

  Suddenly he heard the sound of the engine moving again, but their car was standing still.

  He spun around and hit the aisle running. He reached the end of the car in three long strides, just in time to see the express car and the engine moving away—too far to jump.

  He dropped to the roadbed, and the first person he saw was Peg Cullane. She had a rifle in her hands, and she was lifting it to shoot. The second person he saw was Finn Cagle.

  The gunman fired, his bullet clanging against the back of the car, within inches of Ruble Noon’s head. Noon stepped back for partial protection from the rifle, and then as Peg fired he ran forward three quick, short steps, stopped, and shot from the hip. The bullet spun Cagle around, throwing him off balance. Dropping to one knee, Noon laid the barrel of his gun across his left forearm and shot again, and Cagle backed up and fell.

  Two rifle shots spat sand and dirt in front of Noon, and then a shot came from the train.

  The engine and express car had stopped. He saw that Finn Cagle was getting up, and shot into him again. Somebody shot from the car behind him, and he saw Peg Cullane drop her rifle.

  Ruble Noon ran forward. Suddenly he heard the drivers spin as the power was thrown to the engine and he jumped for the rear of the express car.

  He grabbed the door and ripped it open. The express messenger lay sprawled on the floor, his scalp laid open from a blow. The gold was still there in its neat sacks. He ran the length of the car, loading three chambers as he ran, and scrambled up on the tender.

  Bayles, the one who ran with Cagle, turned sharply as the coal rattled and threw up his gun for a shot. The engineer lunged into him, and Bayles fell from the train, hitting the edge of the roadbed and rolling over into the grass and pine needles alongside the track.

  He sprang to his feet, staggered, and the stagger made Noon miss his first shot. He swung to the ground and they faced each other.

  Bayles was badly shaken, and the side of his face was bleeding from hitting the ground, but he still gripped his gun.

  “Ruble Noon, is it?” he said. “I’ve heard of you. Now it’s you an’ me.”

  “You can drop it and ride out,” Noon said, “and it can end here.”

  “You joke. You think I will end it so? I am not afraid of you, Ruble Noon. German Bayles has killed his men, too.”

  “We’d both be better off at some other occupation,” Ruble Noon replied calmly. “Enough men have died.”

  “Sooner or later we all die. I think it is your time now, Ruble Noon. I think tomorrow in the saloons they will be telling how German Bayles killed you…face to face beside the railroad tracks.”

  “Cagle’s had it,” Noon said. “He’s dead, or close to it.”

  “And now—” Bayles’s gun was in his hand, and so was Ruble Noon’s. Both men fired at the same instant. Noon felt the bullet strike him, felt his leg buckle under him, and he went down.

  He was still shooting, but Bayles was walking in, smiling, confident. “Tomorrow in the saloons they will be talking,” he said, “talking of how…” He fired again as he spoke, and Ruble Noon’s body jerked with the shock of the bullet. “…of how German Bayles killed Ruble Noon…the great Ruble Noon.” The words came out slowly.

  Ruble Noon was down, his brain a dizzy buzzing, his body numb. He tried to rise as German Bayles came toward him, but his leg refused to function.

  Bayles was lifting his pistol for a final shot. The sun was hot on his face, a white cloud was drifting behind Bayles’s head; Noon could hear the crunch of gravel and the whisper of the coarse weeds as Bayles came on.

  He noticed with surprise that there was blood on Bayles’s shirt…he did not remember hitting him…and the German’s face was beginning to streak with blood from a scalp wound. He was coming in close, still smiling. He stopped and spread his legs, seeming to waver just a little.

  Ruble Noon saw the dirty blue of Bayles’s shirt, saw the gun coming level, and then he fired twice, and heard the gun click on an empty chamber.

  He flicked open the loading gate with his thumb, but he was lying on his elbow and he could not bring the other hand into play, so he tried to sit up, and failed. Bayles fell heavily beside him.

  Ruble Noon rolled over on the hot gravel, smelling the dusty smell of the weeds, and he worked the ejector rod and thrust out a shell, loading the cartridge in its place.

  He spun the cylinder and looked over at Bayles. The German was staring at him, smiling. “Tomorrow in the saloons…they will be saying…” His voice trailed off, but he still looked at Ruble Noon.

  “You are a good man, Ruble Noon,” he was saying, “…a good man…with a gun….”

  He was still smiling—and he was dead.

  Ruble Noon tried to get up. He heard running feet, and then hands caught him and he felt himself eased back to the ground.

  “He’s hit hard,” someone said, a cool, woman’s voice, “I used to help my father—he was an Army surgeon. I think he knew more about bullet wounds than any man alive.”

  * * *

  WIND BRUSHED HIS face. His eyes opened and he looked at a curtain, a white, lacy curtain at a window that looked out on green grass. Everything was peaceful and still.

  He lifted his hand to his face. Just then someone came in the door. It was Fan.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “In Alamosa. You’ve had a hard time of it, Jonas.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Two weeks. Mrs. McClain stayed on to help you through the worst of it. She said the doctor was incompetent. She left just last night.”

  “I’d like to thank her.”

  “You did, a number of times.”

  He was silent for a while, and then he said, “Who shot Peg Cullane? You?”

  “Rimes. He shot at her gun, and he was not far off. He was using a rifle, you know. She lost two fingers.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not. She was asking for trouble.”

  The curtain blew a little in the wind. The air was cool and pleasant. He felt tired, but at the same time he felt good.

  “I want to go back,” he said.

  “Back East?”

  “Back to the Rafter D. That’s a good outfit—and run the right way…”

  He closed his eyes, and in his mind he could see the late snow on the ridge near the high cabin, and the way the grass bent before the wind in the meadows back of the ranch house.

  “All right,” she said.

  WHAT IS LOUIS L’AMOUR’S LOST TREASURES?

  Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures is a project created to release some of the author’s more unconventional manuscripts from the family archives.

  Currently included in the project are Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 1, published in the fall of 2017, and Volume 2, which will be published in the fall of 2019. These books contain both finished and unfinished short stories, unfinished novels, literary and motion picture treatments, notes, and outlines. They are a wide selection of the many works Louis was never able to publish during his lifetime.

  In 2018 we released No Traveller Returns, L’Amour’s never-before-seen first novel, which was written between 1938 an
d 1942. In the future, there may be a selection of even more L’Amour titles.

  Additionally, many notes and alternate drafts to Louis’s well-known and previously published novels and short stories will now be included as “bonus feature” postscripts within the books that they relate to. For example, the Lost Treasures postscript to Last of the Breed will contain early notes on the story, the short story that was discovered to be a missing piece of the novel, the history of the novel’s inspiration and creation, and information about unproduced motion picture and comic book versions.

  An even more complete description of the Lost Treasures project, along with a number of examples of what is in the books, can be found at louislamourslosttreasures.com. The website also contains a good deal of exclusive material, such as even more pieces of unknown stories that were too short or too incomplete to include in the Lost Treasures books, plus personal photos, scans of original documents, and notes.

  All of the works that contain Lost Treasures project materials will display the Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures banner and logo.

  POSTSCRIPT

  By Beau L’Amour

  I’ve always enjoyed the noir aspects of The Man Called Noon. The lost memories and the puzzle box of identities make the novel feel almost as if Cornell Woolrich had written a western. Resembling an unfinished painting, the original cover was a classic. A nearly silhouetted gunman stands over the body of his adversary; in the background, several people look on from the platform of a railroad car. The painting presents only the important details, with the strokes of the artist’s brush fading off into the white void of the canvas. Totally iconic.

  When I first read Noon as a kid, I was completely enamored of the hideout house with the cave in back. According to Dad, that was a real place, though nowhere near as well constructed as the location in the story. Supposedly it was on the Ute reservation, and Louis saw it as he was driving to Durango in the 1920s on the same trip that may have inspired him to write Haunted Mesa. Here’s what he had to say about it in a 1975 letter: