Taggart (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 5

  She was very still among the rocks, absorbing the cool beauty of the desert night. At the canyon’s mouth the sky’s breadth was enormous, vastly greater than in the narrow canyon. In the north the Big Dipper hung in the sky among its legion of accompanying stars. The dark outline of Rockinstraw Mountain shouldered against the sky, part of its top curiously flattened, looking like a turret, or perhaps a pulpit.

  There is no other night that has the stillness and the beauty of the desert night…the sea when it is quiet comes closest to that stillness that is not stillness, but the sea is always alive. The Arctic, too, has its own beauty, but the desert is still with a curious alert stillness, a sense of listening, of poised awareness. Standing alone in the desert at night one feels that all about one there is this listening, an alertness for movement, for life, for change.

  The weirdly shaped figures of stone, eroded by years, the serrated ridges, the white stillness of the playas and the challenging fingers of the sahuaro…these are there, or the clustered canes of the ocotillo. The desert is always, by day or night, but especially by night, a place of mystery.

  Standing against the rocks, Miriam looked out over the desert, and against the sky overhead she saw the swoop of a bat. After minutes she heard a rush of wings that might have been an owl. Sand trickled…something rustled in the sand nearby…all else was quiet.

  And then she heard another sound, a faint stir of movement not far off, a sound that was not of the night, and not of the desert. She knew the sound because she had heard it many times before when she herself rode in the desert…it was the brush of cedar against a saddle…a rustle of sound she recognized at once.

  The mysterious rider came up out of the lower draw and was for a moment or two outlined sharply against the night sky, and then the horse walked into the open not far from her.

  Poised…half-frightened, she waited, fearing to move because he might hear the slightest sound, but aware of something in the approaching figure that warned her of an equal awareness in him.

  The rider came toward her and then turned slightly to the right and stopped, not fifty feet away from her. From where she stood he was partially in silhouette, a big, fine figure of a man on a splendidly built horse.

  She knew she was invisible to him, for more than once she had stood where he stood and had been unable to see Adam standing where she now stood. Yet the rider had stopped.

  Did he guess her presence? How could he? He had seemed to be searching for something, coming on slowly as he had, and there was no trail he could be following here unless it was some intangible trail, some sense of things in the night that drew him on.

  It could not have been smoke from the evening fire, for that would be out now…unless some lingering aroma of it still hung in the air. The canyon had a way of drawing smoke back up along its length and up the flank of the mountain, and none of them had ever detected smoke in this place.

  Yet the rider made no move to ride on. She heard the faintest rustle of paper and knew he was rolling a smoke. She heard a match strike, and caught only a brief glimpse of a strongly cut face in the brief flare of the match cupped in his hands. He drew deep on the cigarette and she saw the end glow like a firefly in the night.

  Who was he? What was he? Why had he stopped at this place?

  He was without doubt the rider they had seen earlier when he crossed the Salt River north of them, but where had he been in the meantime, and why was he here?

  She dared not move, for she knew he would hear the slightest sound. Nor did she wish to leave, for there was some intangible awareness of each other that held her still, breathless and waiting in the night.

  She saw him remove his hat and run his fingers through his hair. His horse stamped impatiently, eager to be moving, and when he shifted his weight in the saddle, the leather creaked. Suddenly she felt a wild desire to speak out, to question him, to find who he was and where he was going, but most of all, why he had stopped here.

  Yet she was hesitant to speak or to move for fear that the slightest sound or movement would shatter the moment’s spell and leave her with nothing. As long as they both were silent, the intangible communion between them existed, and he remained for her the stuff of dreams.

  In the darkness, unknown as he was, she could clothe him with what personality she would. He could be anyone…the lover she had so long desired, the unknown rider that she had known would come sometime, the man who would see her for what she was, who would know her, and want her for his own.

  In reality, he might be an outlaw, a thief, a murderer. He might be a renegade white man living among Apaches; and if he was any of these things, to disclose her presence here would be to place herself in jeopardy, and not only herself but Consuelo and Adam.

  Yet in the night’s vast quiet there was between them this invisible link, forged by some mysterious bond of stars and stillness. They were drawn together by the silence, the loom of mountains, and the deep shadows where the cliffs stood tall. Was he feeling what she felt? Was he, too, sensing that this moment was the stuff of dreams? That here, for the moment at least, each belonged to the other?

  She put her hand to her hair in the darkness, feeling suddenly untidy. She had not prepared herself to meet a lover this night, even one who would in a moment touch his horse with a heel and ride on, moving out of her life and away from her consciousness, like all those other faceless, featureless men of whom she had dreamed in the past.

  He was there, close to her, a tall, still figure sitting his saddle, and a man who might be…anyone.

  He might ride on…Suddenly, desperately, she wished to say something, some magic word, some phrase that would make him stay, that would draw him to her and keep him close. She knew suddenly that he must not ride on…it was here he belonged, beside her.

  It was fantastic. The desert night had taken her good sense…was she a silly, romantic girl to be lured by shadows?

  She was.

  The dream gives its magic until the dream is realized, but even then something of the dream remains…the aura, the nostalgic, half-realized longing, that stays. And this silent rider, dark upon his horse, until a word was spoken he was hers, and hers alone.

  Moments passed, and she was motionless, and the rider sat his saddle. She saw him replace his hat and her throat tightened at the thought that he might now ride on, that replacing the hat was preliminary to a touch of the heel. His cigarette glowed briefly again like a campfire’s spark arrested in flight.

  “A night like this is like no other night. There is a beauty in it that is scarcely real.”

  It was a moment before Miriam realized the rider had spoken, and she was startled…for in this brief standing still of time he had become almost a creation of her fantasy.

  “It is the desert.”

  There was a silence then that neither broke for minutes. Then he said, “It is late for you to be out.”

  It was something that might have been said to a young girl in New England, in some village there, after midnight. In this place, under the circumstances it bordered on the ridiculous.

  “I am not a child, you know.”

  “You are a woman…an Apache would even brave the dark for a young woman.”

  “I am not afraid.”

  “Fear is not a bad thing. It is fear that saves men’s lives…it prepares a man for trouble.”

  “How do you come to be here? At this place, I mean? Why did you stop?”

  “My horse told me you were there. He also told me you were a woman.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “No. My horse does not like the smell of Indians, and he knows that smell, but he likes women because he was raised by a woman who made a pet of him.

  “When he stopped I knew it was for a reason, and I had been looking for you. My horse was curious but not afraid, and he looked toward you with his ears up, s
o I knew you were a white person. Had it been a lion or a wolf he would have indicated it by his fear or by his willingness to fight; and of an Indian he would have been afraid, and pulled away. But he was eager to go toward you, and from that I knew you were a woman.”

  “You said you had been looking for me?”

  “I found your wagon, and figured you would be close by.”

  “You must be hungry.”

  “Yes.”

  “We can offer food, but not much more.”

  “Wait…there will be time enough to eat, but who knows how long it will be again before I talk to a woman in the night?”

  Bats swirled in the cool night sky, and a few scattered clouds obscured the stars, and the man on horseback vanished in the greater darkness.

  “We saw you earlier today,” she said tentatively, as if to test his presence.

  “You were on the mountain then,” he said.

  “Yes…we saw Apaches, too.”

  He offered no explanation, and she valued him the more for this. It was enough that he was here, and must somehow have eluded them. The reason for his presence here at all remained unanswered, and her curiosity prodded her to ask, but she waited, feeling that he would explain in his own time.

  “We thought our trail was hidden.”

  “I have lived among the Shoshones and the Nez Percé.” He paused to inhale, then snuffed out his cigarette against a boot and dropped it into the sand. “It is well hidden, but there are trails that do not lie upon the ground.”

  Beyond the mountains there was a moon, and the sky across the saw-toothed ridges grew pale, long shadows reaching out toward them, darker by reason of the growing paleness from where the moon would be. A faint wind stirred among the mesquite and cedar, a faint testing push of wind that died away almost at once as if it was not worth the effort.

  “I may bring trouble,” he said then.

  “You are followed?”

  “Yes.”

  She accepted that…there could be no other reason for a lone man in this wild land. So he was an outlaw. But who would follow a man into such an area? The Army?

  He swung down from his horse and stood still beside the saddle for a moment, feeling a sudden faintness. Then he turned and led the horse toward her. “We had better go in,” he said. “I do not trust the night.”

  He was close to her, and she smelled the staleness of sweat, the smell of horse and old leather, of sage, cedar, and wood smoke. She sensed suddenly that this man was very near to collapse; she could almost feel the tiredness of him.

  The thought came to her suddenly as they started to walk inside the canyon. It was a startling, shocking thought but even while she knew it could not be true, she was afraid, and had to ask.

  “You aren’t…you aren’t Tom Sanifer?”

  “No,” he said. “Tom Sanifer is dead. He was killed at Fort Bowie by a man named Adam Stark.”

  CHAPTER 5

  When he had closed the door behind him he said, “I’m Swante Taggart.”

  “You’ll be wanting to wash,” Adam said. “There’s water in the bucket, and a basin beside it.”

  Taggart did not move, but stood, hat in hand, ashamed to invade this quiet place. “No aim to barge in,” he said, “only I played out of grub…three days back.”

  Adam noted the size of the man, the faded Army shirt and the worn shotgun chaps. He noted also the hang of the gun and the way the man carried a Winchester as if born with it.

  “You’ve come far.”

  “I’ve a man behind me.”

  “We’ve asked no questions,” Adam said. “You’re hungry. You’ll eat.”

  “I can go on…I’ve no right to bring you trouble. That man who’s behind me…he’s the Law.”

  “You didn’t have to tell me that,” Adam said quietly. “My sister will get you food.”

  Taggart dipped up water in the gourd dipper and poured it into the tin basin, liking the sound of it. The bucket was full, the water clear and dark in the shadows at the side of the room, but it was more water than he had seen since he left the Verde.

  Miriam put a plate of beef and beans on the table, with a small dish of squaw cabbage, and then brought the blackened pot from the fireplace. As she filled his cup he looked at her hands. They were not dainty, but slender, long-fingered woman’s hands, and somehow the seeing of them made him go all quiet inside.

  They were gentle hands, strong hands, capable hands; they were the hands of a woman, a mother, a woman to walk beside a man, not behind him.

  He looked down at the food before him with sudden helplessness. He bowed his head, not in prayer, but only to prevent their seeing his emotion, and when he picked up his fork he did it almost with reverence. He put a few of the beans into his mouth and began to chew slowly, savoring each taste.

  It is only those who have never been hungry who picture a starving man as gorging himself when he first finds food. Taggart was terribly hungry, but he had been so long without food that his stomach had shrunk, and for this first meal he would be able to eat very little. Tomorrow and the next day he would be unable to get enough, but now it was taste he wanted, and flavor. He ate slowly, pausing from time to time to drink great gulps of coffee.

  The beans had been baked over a fire of creosote wood and had that extraordinary flavor that only creosote smoke can give. The coffee was strong, hot, and black, and it seemed to bring new strength to him.

  After a dozen bites he sat back and rolled a smoke. He felt the eyes of the Mexican girl upon him, dark, magnificent eyes, and she was a woman who made a man conscious of his maleness.

  “This is Consuelo,” Adam Stark said, “my wife. And,” he gestured to Miriam, “my sister, Miriam. I am Adam Stark.”

  Swante Taggart’s head came up and Miriam was beside him with the coffee pot and she nudged him slightly. The question half-formed remained unasked.

  Adam Stark…the man who had killed Tom Sanifer.

  Stark had walked into a saloon where Sanifer stood at the bar, and had told him he did not fight before women, but if he wanted to die, to make his fight there. And Tom Sanifer had backed down.

  An hour later, when Stark left the saloon, Sanifer had been waiting for him in the dark, but he had missed his first shot. Adam Stark had not.

  Taggart put his cigarette on the edge of his coffee saucer and cut off a small bite of the beef. He chewed slowly, taking his time.

  “You’ve had a rough time,” Stark said.

  “Pete Shoyer is behind me.”

  “Ah…there’ll be shooting then.”

  Taggart emptied his cup. “I’ve never fired on a badge-wearing man,” he said, “but I’ll fight if it comes to that.”

  “Shoyer is a bounty hunter. You’ll fight or you’ll die.”

  The candle on the table held a steady light. Miriam filled his cup once more and sat down at the table near him.

  He ate a little more, feeling the tenseness leaving his muscles and the quietness come into him, a slow, pleasant, luxurious feeling, dangerous for a man with far to go; but tonight, for this one evening, he would relax.

  At the same time his awareness remained with him to the extent that he realized much of what went on here. There were six rifles on the rack in the room, and a shotgun as well; and several boxes covered over in a corner would be ammunition. These people had come to stay, and to defend themselves if attacked. The canyon itself was a little stronghold, and the chances of their being found were slight.

  Obviously, from their settled comfort here they had not just come, and they were planning to remain a while longer, and as no cattle were around it had to be mining. Globe was not far south and there was mining there…this man had found gold.

  He saw no samples in the room, so it must be that Stark was no longer looking for gold; he had found it. And if it was wo
rth staying in this country for, with two women, he had found plenty.

  That, then, was why the wagon remained where it had been left, because of the women, and because of the gold he hoped to take out. Gold can be heavy, and he must plan on taking out a lot.

  “You can bed down on the floor tonight,” Stark suggested. “It is the best we have to offer.”

  “There are other buildings. It would be best if I slept in one of them…in fact, I’d better. I believe Shoyer is far behind, but a man can’t know.”

  “He will not find you,” Consuelo said. “Nobody find this place.”

  “He will find it.” Taggart drew in his long legs and got up. “He’s a wolf.”

  “You will be safe here,” Consuelo said. “There is danger to go…there are Apaches.”

  He gathered his gear, avoiding the promise in her eyes. “I’m obliged.”

  Stark rose. “The stable is the place…there’s hay there. Although you might prefer the chapel.”

  “A chapel is no place for me,” Taggart replied dryly. “I’ll take the stable.”

  Outside, they crossed the narrow space under the stars and went into the darkness of the overhang that shelved above the stable. Taggart spread out a thin bed of hay in the light from the lantern. From where he would lie he could look down the canyon toward the entrance.

  “That’s scant hay you’re using.”

  Taggart said quietly, “A thin bed makes a light sleeper. I’ve learned a hard bed sleeps lightly, but safely.”

  Adam Stark knocked out his pipe on the outside of the door. “If you want to stay on, you’re welcome. It’s a trying thing to work and worry about this place, although the girls are both handy with guns.”

  “And Shoyer?”

  “Your problem. I’d be offering you nothing but shelter here, and a place to rest up. If you make no tracks, Shoyer can find none.”

  Taggart stepped outside and went to his horse, who stood near the pool of water. He had not cared for the horse until he knew he was staying on…a man might have to travel fast, and he knew the steeldust would drink. Now he stripped off the saddle and bridle and while the big gelding stood patiently, chewing at a bundle of hay Stark dropped for him, Taggart rubbed the horse down with handfuls of hay.