The Ferguson Rifle (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 3

  It was an empty land, but I knew my people, and it would not be empty long. I had seen them back there with their simple wagons. I had seen them afoot, with wife and child riding, sometimes driving a cow, crossing the mountains, clearing the roads.

  Already they had cut paths into the dark forests of Pennsylvania and Ohio. Men had long been trapping west of the Mississippi as well as east of it, and the adventurous ones, such as this party, were pushing out into the plains.

  Those families crossing the mountains carried their axes and shovels…they would not be stopped. Where there was land to be taken, they would go, and then they would grow restless and rise up and move westward again and again.

  Turning back toward the fire I was stopped by Heath’s voice “…killed a man in a duel. The man said something about Chantry settin’ the fire himself, an’ Chantry challenged him. The fellow was a loudmouth, just blowing off with a lot of loose talk. He tried to back out, but Chantry wouldn’t let him. Told him to make his fight or he’d shoot him like the dog he was. The man fought. Chantry let him shoot first, and the bullet burned Chantry’s neck…drew blood. Then Chantry shot him.”

  “Kill him?”

  “That he did, and d’ you know where the bullet hit him?”

  “In the mouth,” Solomon Talley said. “He shot him in the mouth.”

  Heath turned on him. “You’ve heard the story, then?”

  “No,” Talley replied grimly, “but that’s a hard man yonder. Besides,” he added, “that’s what I’d o’ done.”

  For a few minutes I stood silent, letting the talk turn to other things, and then I started forward, making enough noise so they would know I was nearby.

  They knew then, and I wished they did not. There are times when to be just nobody at all is the best thing. All that was past I wanted to forget.

  For in a sense I was running away, not only from the scenes of love and happiness turned to grief, but from the whispered stories that implied I myself had started the fire that killed all I loved. Such a rumor starts easily, but how to put it down?

  Nor did I wish to be pitied or to find doors closing in my face that had once been open to me.

  My hands held the Ferguson rifle. In the months and years to come, it might be all there would ever be. It was mine. Not only that, but it reminded me of my mother, of our old cabin where we had been hungry yet rich in love, of my wife, who often rode to the hunt with me, and of my son whom I had taught to shoot with this very rifle.

  Walking up to the fire, I squatted beside it, wiping my hatband with my fingers. “The sky says it will be windy tomorrow,” I said.

  “Aye,” Ebitt agreed. “There’s stew, man. You’d best finish it off so’s we can clean the kettle. And you’ll be needin’ some coffee.”

  There was talk then by the campfire, the good talk of frontiersmen, and I listened for I had much to learn. I had studied at the Sorbonne and at Heidelberg and I had taught history at Cambridge and William and Mary but what I had to learn from these men could be found in no book. They had been early upon the land, hunting and trapping for their living, and they knew well the land to which I had but lately come.

  Firelight danced upon their faces. There was the good smell of a wood fire burning, of coffee freshly made, and the smell of meat broiling, and of the stew.

  Something had happened during the day, for I had killed game, brought meat to the fire. They knew now that I was no drone, and that in whatever came I would carry my weight.

  They were hard men living upon a hard land that demanded much, and the fact that I had killed an enemy in a face-to-face meeting meant something to them. It was a thing they understood. In the east, where duels occurred frequently, but were already looked upon with distaste in some quarters, this was not always the case.

  Solomon Talley accepted the first watch, and Isaac Heath volunteered for the second. As for me, I requested the final watch, knowing Indians preferred attacks by daybreak.

  Again I saw the Otoe’s eyes upon my rifle, and I smiled at him. He did not respond, but looked away. Already I was tired. My body had not accustomed itself to the long hours of riding, and I wished to be fresh for my guard duty, so I opened my small blanket roll and went to sleep.

  Hours later I was gently awakened. It was Heath. “Come, man, it’s three by the clock, and a night with stars.”

  Rolling out, I folded my bed, tugged on my boots, and slipped into my jacket. Heath looked at me and shook his head. “Those brass buttons now, they make a fair mark for shooting.”

  “I know that. I’ll risk it until I can make a shirt. Has it been quiet?”

  Heath shrugged. “Yes, if you can call it that. Frogs down below, and the usual coyotes, but the light is deceitful. You’ll have to keep a wary eye for trouble.”

  Taking my rifle, I went out to the perimeter of the knoll and looked down over the prairie below. All seemed to be empty and still. In the darkness a good bit was yet visible, and I walked slowly, halfway around the camp, then quickly doubled back and came around from the opposite direction.

  Heath added a few small chunks to the fire to keep the coals alive for morning, then turned in.

  The camp was still. If an attack was to come, the obvious place was from out of the creek bed where nothing could be seen. One by one I checked off the sleeping positions of my friends. Talley, Ebitt, Sandy, Kemble, Shanagan, Heath, and the Otoe.

  The time drew on, and my ears became attuned to the night. I moved off, never circling the same way twice, never completing a circle, for I wished to establish no pattern, no way I could be timed. In the far off east there seemed to be a lightening of the sky, but it was early for that.

  For several minutes I was conscious of something wrong before it occurred to me that the frogs had ceased their endless croaking. The night was suddenly silent.

  Near a boulder I squatted, one toe slightly behind the other, listening.

  Nothing…no sound.

  I turned my head. Should I awaken them? I did not want to make them lose their sleep because of my own foolishness. I could awaken one of them…Talley, perhaps.

  Talley…Ebitt…Sandy…Kemble…Davy Shanagan, Isaac Heath, and the—

  The Otoe was gone!

  Horses…first they would stampede the horses. That much I had learned. Swiftly, I ran to them. They were nervous, heads up, nostrils distended.

  “Shanagan,” I said.

  And a shadow moved…a horse snorted, and I sidestepped as a darker shadow lunged toward me. There was the gleam of firelight on a knifeblade, and I chopped, short and hard, with the butt of my rifle.

  He was coming low and fast and the butt thunked against his skull and he went down hard. Turning swiftly as another came in over the low mound, I fired.

  My shot was from the hip, for there was no chance to aim. It caught the Indian and turned him but my hands went automatically for bullet and powder.

  All was suddenly still. Unused to combat, I had expected the clash of arms, the scream of wounded, the stabbing flames of shooting…and there was nothing.

  Stepping back among the horses, I went from one to the other, whispering to quiet them down. From where I stood, I could see the beds of the others, all empty.

  Something stirred near me and I turned swiftly. Davy’s voice was scarcely breathed. “You all right?”

  “The Otoe was gone. I went to the horses, thinking they might try to stampede them.”

  “You done right.” He could see the body on the ground about a dozen feet away. “You got one?”

  “Two, I think. I shot one over there.”

  I started forward and Shanagan caught my arm. “Uh-uh. They’ll still be out there.”

  There was a faint lemon tinge to the far-off sky now. We stood waiting, listening.

  An owl hooted…inquiringly. After a bit, the same owl.<
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  Davy’s lips at my ear whispered, “Wonderin’ where this one is.”

  The sky lightened, red streaks shot up, and high in the heavens a cloud blushed faintly at the earth below.

  We waited, not moving, not knowing what might come. The Indians might press the attack, might draw away to wait for a better moment. The red man is under no compulsion to continue a fight. He does not insist upon victory at any cost, and he has time. He is under no compulsion to win now.

  Now the sky brightened quickly. We moved to the perimeter, seeking firing positions. The plain below was innocent of life.

  Degory Kemble moved over to us. “There’s nobody in sight,” he said. “My guess is they’ve pulled out.” He saw the Indian lying in the dust and moved over to him. With his toe he turned him over, holding his rifle ready for a shot if the warrior proved to be playing possum.

  He was quite dead. One side of his head was bloody, crushed by my blow. I turned away, and looked out over the prairie.

  “You want his hair?” Davy asked. “He’s yours.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s a barbaric custom.”

  “This here is a barbaric land. You get yourself a few scalps and the Injuns will respect you more.”

  “Take it if you wish.”

  “No. By rights it’s yours.”

  Kemble carefully broke the dead warrior’s arrows, then his bow. His knife he tossed to me and that I kept. “Trade it for something,” Kemble said. “It’s worth a good beaver pelt.”

  “I thought I shot one,” I said. “He came in right over there.”

  “They’re like prairie dogs,” Talley commented. “If you don’t kill them right dead, they’re gone into some hole.”

  We walked over to where I’d seen the Indian, and suddenly Talley pointed. “Hit him, all right. See yonder?”

  There was a spot of blood, very red, splashed upon a leaf. Just beyond we found two more.

  We followed no farther for the trail of blood vanished into thick brush, and he might be lying down there, waiting for us.

  “Lung shot, I’d say,” Kemble said. “You nailed him proper.” He looked at me. “For a pilgrim, you sure take hold. That’s as good shootin’ as a man can do.”

  “I didn’t want to kill him,” I said. Then I paused. That was not quite true, because I certainly had not wanted him to kill me, and it was one or the other.

  “If you’d not shot him, he’d have thought you a coward or a poor warrior. He’d despise you for it. You better think this through because there ain’t no two ways about it. You got to be ready to shoot to kill or you better go back home.”

  He was right, of course, and had not men always fought? We walked back to the fire where coffee was on. Bob Sandy came in. He had gone stalking and found nothing.

  “They pulled out,” he said regretfully. “They’re no fools. The Otoe probably figured with a tenderfoot on watch it would be easy.” He grinned at me. “You fooled ’em, you surely did.”

  “I was fortunate,” I said, “and scared.”

  “You bet you was,” Sandy said, “an’ you better stay scared. Time comes you stop bein’ scared, you better go back east, because you won’t last long after.”

  We sat around the fire and ate, and looking around at their faces, I thought of Homer and the Greeks camped on the shore waiting to advance on Troy.

  These were men of the same kind, men of action, fighting men, no better and no worse than those.

  CHAPTER 4

  Nothing anyone can say can tell you how it was upon that land of grass. Horizon to horizon, upon every side, it stretched to infinity, and overhead the enormous vault of the sky.

  We plodded westward, and the land unrolled before us. More and more, as we moved away from the settlements, there was wild game, the buffalo in increasing numbers, and antelope often in herds of sixty or seventy.

  At streams where we stopped for water, we often found the tracks of bear, occasionally of lion. Wolves and the small prairie wolf called the coyote lurked in the vicinity of the buffalo, watching for a chance to pick off a calf or one too old to put up much of a fight.

  We rode warily, for there was no security even upon the open plains, because such openness was only seeming and not a reality. My boyhood became important, for then my eye had developed a quickness that became useful once more, and I was swift to perceive any unexpected and unnatural motion. My attention soon became adjusted to wind movements in the grass so that I would quickly note any other. Yet I looked for other things as well, for the scholar in me would not yield.

  For some time, being a student of history, I had been excited by the influence of climate upon history, and especially upon the movements of peoples. The sudden appearance of the Huns or the Goths in Europe, for example, and the earlier migrations of Celtic peoples…what occasioned these moves? Was it the pressure of other tribes, increasing in numbers? Or was it drought? Or the ever-present movement toward the sun?

  Several times we saw the tracks of unshod ponies, and from their direction and purposeful movement, it was easy to see they were not wild ponies, but ridden by Indians. During this time, I began to see that in the Ferguson rifle I possessed a kind of insurance the others did not have.

  Also I was having second thoughts about my clothing. I must have something more fitting for travel, but instead of discarding the clothes I wore, I must keep them for use on ceremonial occasions. The American Indian, I recalled, was ever a man of dignity, with a love of formality, and it behooved me to approach him in a like manner.

  The Otoe was gone, departed with his friends whom he had invited to the raid. I was still astonished at the suddenness of it, and the equally abrupt end. I had expected more.

  Since the beginning of time, men have been moving into empty spaces, and we in America were no different than those others, the Goths, the Mongols, the Indo-Aryans. We were but the last of the great migrations, and I wondered as I rode…how much choice did we really have? Plants move rapidly into areas for which they are best adapted, and human migrations seem to follow the same principles.

  For three days we rode westward, and we left behind the long grasses. Not yet had we reached the shortgrass country that lay still farther west. The tall bluestem we had seen on previous days now disappeared except in the bottoms along the creeks. Judging by the grass, the climate was hotter, and much drier…wheatgrass, little bluestem and occasionally patches of buffalo grass and blue grama.

  This land must have seen few Indians until the arrival of the horse, for the distances were great and water was increasingly scarce.

  We rode to the Platte for water. The riverbed was wide and sandy, the river itself was shallow, and the water somewhat brackish. We drank, then rode back from the river and camped in a small cluster of trees on rising ground with a good field of fire in all directions.

  While the others made camp and Sandy went with Heath to graze the horses, I cut out my hunting jacket and a pair of leggings. The buckskin was not properly prepared, nearly impossible to do while on the march. At home there had been a smooth log over which to throw the skin when scraping away the fat and membrane. On the trail I had to make do as best I could with what offered. Nor could I soak the hide in water and wood ashes for three days or so. I did put the hide to soak each time we made camp, and then scraped the hair loose as best I could. We had kept the brains of the antelope and these had been dried. Now I stewed them with some fat and rubbed the mixture into the hide. When that was completed, I stretched the hide and then rolled it carefully to keep for a couple of days longer before I finished it with scraping and smoking.

  This was done by Indian women in the villages, but I must do it myself or go without, and I wished to save what clothing I had for those special occasions. The life of the Indian, whether man or woman, was never easy. To subsist in wild country called for much work, and for the
squaws at least it was an unceasing task.

  Degory Kemble rode into camp just as the sun had set, bringing with him the best cuts of meat from a buffalo calf.

  When he was squatted by the fire, gnawing on a bone, he glanced up. “I saw something yonder,” he said, “that shapes up for trouble.”

  We waited, looking at him. He chewed for a moment, then said, “Moccasin tracks…boots among ’em. Maybe three white men, Spanish men, I’d say.”

  “What’s that to us?” Heath asked.

  “They don’t look kindly on folks coming into their neighborhood,” Talley explained. “Bonaparte sort of took Louisiana from the Spanish, then sold it to us. The Spanish have a settlement or two down yonder and they throw anybody into prison who comes into their country.” He swept a hand in a wide arc. “They claim most of this here, an’ nobody ever did decide rightly where the boundary was. I heard of some French soldiers in Colorado…hunting gold. The Spanish set the Utes on them.”

  “Then we had best be careful,” I suggested. “Do you think they’ve seen us?”

  “Doubt it,” Kemble commented, “but there’s a big party, maybe forty in all. One of them might have hunted far enough east to see us.”

  We ate in silence, for there was much to think about. We were far from others of our kind, and could expect no help if trouble developed. The Spanish and the Indians had villages not too far off, but we were seven men alone, as if on another planet.

  Yet there is a strength implicit in such a situation, for having no one on which to rely, we relied upon no one. Our problem was our own, and what must be done we would do ourselves, and looking about me, I decided that had I selected each man, I could have done no better.

  These men were typical of what I had seen among those floating down the Ohio, crossing the Alleghenies or the Appalachians, coming west by whatever means…they were men who had chosen themselves. Each in his own mind had made the decision to go west. No king, no queen or general or president had said “Go west,” but each man in his own way had decided, and finding what they faced had not turned back.