RADIGAN
Bantam rack size edition / October
Louis L'Amour Hardcover Collection / December 1981
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0 9 8 7 6 5
1
 RADIGAN
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IP~l
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Mountain
Santa
NORTH CENTRAL
NEW MEXICO
SCALE OF MILES
Ranch
4
5
 ONE
The driving rain drew a sullen, metallic curtain across the fading afternoon, and
beneath his horse's hoofs the earth
was soggy with this rain and that of the rains that had gone before. Hunching his
big shoulders under the slicker, Tom Radigan was thinking of the warm cabin and the
hot coffee that awaited him when he glimpsed the trail across the meadow.
A walking man will kick the grass down in the direction of travel, but a horse with
the swinging movements of its hoofs will knock the grass down so it points in the
direction from which it has come. What Tom Radigan saw was the trail of a ridden
horse that had come down from the lonely hills to the southwest and headed into even
lonelier hills beyond his ranch house.
Squinting from under his dripping hat brim in the direction the trail pointed he
saw nothing-only a trail that crossed the knee-high grass of the meadow and disappeared
into the hills beyond.
"Now what in thunderation," he said aloud, "would anybody want back in there on a
day like this?"
Or on any other day, for that matter.
In a world in which most things have a reason, Radigan was disturbed. Northern New
Mexico in the 1870s was not a place where men rode for pleasure, and especially not
in a driving rain on the heels of several days of driving rain; nor was there anywhere
to go in that direction other than the bluff back of the ranch.
Nor was it a riderless horse, for a wandering horse does not move in a straight line
nor at the pace this horse had traveled. Ordinarily, Radigan would not have seen
the trail for this
was not a route he usually chose, but for the past months he had been moving stock
into a remote area known locally as the
6
 2 LOUIS L AMOUR
Valle de San Antonio, a well-watered valley nearly twenty miles from his home ranch.
Three days ago he had driven a dozen head of cattle to augment the herd already there,
and had remained long enough to trap and kill two mountain lions who had begun poaching
on his herd-and he had also killed a cinnamon bear. There were now three hundred
and some head of cattle in the upper valley.
Returning, he found this trail, which could scarcely be more than an hour old.
Whoever had made the trail had chosen a route that could not have been accidental;
no casual rider would have come that way, but only someone who did not wish to be
seen. There were easier ways and more direct routes.
Tom Radigan's R-Bar outfit was remote, hidden back in the hills far from any accepted
route of travel. He worked his range alone but for one hand, a half-breed Delaware
who had once scouted for the Army and was known as John Child.
Nothing about that trail or the direction of travel made sense, and Tom Radigan was
a man who was disturbed by the illogical.
Coming out of the draw where the meadow lay he looked across the fairly wide sweep
of Canyon Guadalupe and over the gradually rising bench beyond it toward the ranch.
During a momentary lull in the rain the ranch buildings and the trees around them
were plainly visible, for the ranch was almost three miles away but a thousand feet
higher than his present position.
Uneasily, he studied the ranch, and then bit by bit he surveyed the intervening country.
The route of the strange rider led across the hills to the north and west, but mostly
to the west.
Nothing in his life gave him reason for a sense of security, nor had he ever been
a reckless man, nor one given to taking unnecessary chances. He had, even as a boy,
often been accused by the more foolhardy of being afraid to take chances, and the
very idea of taking a risk that was not demanded by circum stances was repugnant
to him. Yet much of his life had been lived where caution was the price of survival,
and being the man he was, he had survived. He did not take chances, but had helped
to bury men who did.
7
 RADIGAN 3 So now he took none. He rode slowly, utilizing every bit of
terrain that offered cover or concealment, and avoiding his usual route by swinging
south of a rocky promontory by a way that ran parallel to the trail.
The problem of the strange rider was disturbing, yet approach ing the ranch with
care he saw no one. A thin trail of smoke lifted from the chimney, but there was
no other movement, and there should have been. Riding in from behind the stables
and corrals, Radigan drew up and surveyed the situation with care.
Behind the ranch house which faced him across the clearing, the mesa towered five
hundred feet above the low buildings and their surrounding trees. At the base of
the mesa Tom Radigan had found that most precious of ranching commodities water.
And he had found plenty of it.
A dozen springs flowed from cracks and caves in the lower walls of the mesa to gather
in a pool at its base, and from the pool a small stream trickled off down the mountain
to lose itself in Vache Creek some distance from the ranch. Before the water left
his own immediate ranch yard Radigan turned it aside to irrigate a small home garden
as well as several acres of alfalfa, the first planted anywhere around of which he
knew. Leaving the garden and the alfalfa the remaining water trickled into a series
of small pools where his stock came to water.
A wanderer and a prowler of the back country, Radigan had come upon an ancient Indian
trail that led him to this place. There were no signs of life but wild animals, and
a few arrow heads of a kind used by no Indians of the time. There had been no tracks,
no evidence of any human visit, so here Tom Radigan built his cabin and corrals.
Later, he drove in a small herd of cattle, forty head of cows and two good bulls.
He brought with him four mules and three saddle ponies, a small remuda which he augmented
by capturing wild horses in the breaks of the mountains to the north where all was
utter wilderness for many miles.
It was knowledge of that wilderness which now made him cautious. A man on the dodge
running to one of the three or four outlaw settlements reported to exist up there
would not have chosen this route, either. Nothing about that rider made any kind
of sense-unless he had an enemy of whom he was not aware.
8
 4 LOUIS L AMOUR
Tom Radigan was a tall, quiet man who rarely smiled except around the eyes, and who
talked little but listened well. His was a disconcertingly direct gaze in times of
trouble, and men who faced him at such times found that gaze unnerving and upsetting
to sudden action. At least such reports had come from three men . . . two others
had been in no condition to volunteer any information.
Under the slicker he wore a blue Army shirt faded from many washings and wool pants
tucked into Spanish boots. Belted low he wore a Colt six-shooter, and there was enough
ammunition in his belt.
Out of Illinois by way of Texas, Tom Radigan was one with those others from Illinois
who were to make their mark in the Western country such as Wild Bill Hickok and Long-Hair
Jim Courtright. A man with a liking for solitude and a desire to build something
stronger than a stack of chips, Radigan had looked for just such a place as he had
found here, and he had been careful to choose an area where he was not likely to
be disturbed by neighbors.
In the four years at the ranch under the mesa his herds had increased by breeding
and purchase. He sold none of his original stock but managed a living and some buying
money by trapping and washing gold. The trapping was good in the winters, and the
deposits of gold were thin, but the gold was nearly all pure profit for a man with
a rifle and a steady hand could live well on the upper range of the Nacimientos and
Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Tom Radigan was a considering man. He took his time to study things out, and he was
never one to come to quick decisions or solutions. He took his time now.
Four years of comparative quiet had not lulled his sharpness of sense-his hunting
alone would have kept that alive-nor had it made him less wary. There were many reasons
why a strange rider might come up the Canyon Guadalupe, but none of which he could
think for coming over the rugged mountains to the east of it ... unless he wanted
to approach without being seen. And if he wanted not to be seen he wanted not to
be seen by Tom Radigan or his one ranch hand.
A welcoming man, Tom Radigan could think of no reason why anybody should avoid him
unless it was an enemy or someone who planned to do him harm.
9
 RADIGAN 5 He sat his saddle for fifteen minutes in partial concealment, his every
sense warning him of trouble.
The rain had begun again, but a slower rain now, blotting out the landscape and bringing
a chill to the evening. The altitude was 8,700 feet and winter was closing in.
The rain could turn to snow at any time, and the forest to the north would be closed
to any traveler. His route to the settle ments below was only occasionally closed,
and it was downhill all the way, yet most travel would be ended with the first good
fall of snow.
He scowled, watching the house, the hills, the forest and the mesa rim.
If an enemy or some chance thief who needed supplies and a fresh horse wanted to
kill him that thief would be watching the trail up which he had not come. The yard
before the barn was visible only from the rim of the mesa and the talus slope behind
the house. But his approach was safe until within a step or two of the barn door,
and if he moved with care .. .
The gelding stamped impatiently and Tom Radigan swung down and opened his slicker,
moving his Colt into an easier position. Then, remaining on the side of the gelding
that kept the horse between himself and any marksman on the talus slope, he went
around and into the stable.
His first thought was for the horse. Stripping off the saddle and bridle, he rubbed
the animal down with a piece of sacking, his mind turning over all the possible facets
of the situation. He was probably being a fool; the rider might have been someone
lost and searching for shelter.
Yet there was no sound from the house, and John Child did not appear, as he usually
did. It was the half-breed's custom to stroll out from the house, help him with the
horse and exchange gossip about the activities of the day.
Through the partly opened door he studied the house. By this time it would be dark
inside and John would have lighted a lamp . . . you'd never catch John Child moving
around in a dark house of his own free will.
Yet John's horse was in his stall, and his saddle in its proper place. So why had
not John come to greet him, and why wasn't the light lit?
He might have walked away afoot, but that was unlike John who never walked farther
than from the house to the corral or
10
 6 Louis L'AMOUR
stable. He might be inside the house and sick or injured ... the only alternative
was that John was trying to warn him of something.
A warning of what?
The situation at the ranch now seemed part of the sequence of affairs begun with
the strange trail across the meadow. Never a trusting man, Tom Radigan had lived
by taking care, and if someone were in the house waiting for him they would be apt
to have the light going to make the situation as normal as possible. And the mud
around the door had few tracks ... he studied those tracks again.
Somebody had come out and gone back. The steps from the house were even and regular
until the fourth step which was skidded sharply in the slippery mud, and the returning
steps were longer. Whoever had come out of the door had started toward the barn,
had wheeled and sprang back for the house.
It was very quiet. There was no sound but the falling rain. Nothing in the house
could have made John Child turn and rush back so suddenly so it had to be something
outside.
So then: there was nothing in the barn to frighten John, nor was there cover for
an enemy to the east and northeast. There was cover from the southwest, the way Radigan
had come, but Radigan had seen no tracks there.
That left two possible places and one so remote as to be out of the question, but
the second place tied in with that unknown rider.
Nobody could have shot at John from the rim of the mesa because nobody knew the way
up there but John and himself, but a shot fired from the talus slope back of the
house would have found a target at just about the point where John had wheeled and
dashed back into the house.
All right, that was it, then. Somebody was or had been on that talus slope behind
the house, and that somebody might still be there waiting for a shot at John or himself
the instant one of them appeared in the open yard. Approaching from the southwest
as he, had, Radigan would not have been visible from the slope, not until he had
been right by the barn door. Nor would he be visible again until his second or third
step out of the barn.
Radigan could wait where he was until it was full dark, which
11
 RADIGAN 7 might be no more than a half hour, or he could go now and risk a shot.
Whoever had fired that shot-if there had been a shot undoubtedly wanted to kill him
and not John Child, or he wanted both of them.
Yet this was purely supposition. Nothing at all might be wrong.
Nothing in his life had given him reason to take chances. From Illinois he had gone
to Kansas where he served his apprenticeship as a military man with General Lane
during the bloody fighting in that border state, and from there he had gone to Saute
Fe as a freighter, surviving two savage Indian attacks. For two bloody years he had
fought Comanches in Texas. It was the sort of conditioning to make a man careful.
He was reasonably sure there had been trouble, and even at this moment John might
be lying inside the house badly hurt. It would do John no good to get himself killed
trying to help him, and the surest way to help John was to eliminate the danger.
Drawing back inside the barn he squatted on his heels and lighted a cigarette. If
a man were to hide on that slope there were a dozen possible places, but none of
them would conceal a horse.
So the sniper's horse would be hidden down in the trees on the lower hill, and somewhere
east of the ranch. There was no cover directly east of the ranch yard, but around
the corner of the hill there were scattered clumps of trees and brush, and then lower
down, thick forest. The rifleman had hidden his horse somewhere down the slope and
then had crawled up in the talus where he could cover the ranch yard.
Within the hour it would be completely dark.
After dark there would be no reason for anyone to wait up on that slope for there
would be nothing to see. Therefore the hidden man would return to his horse and ride
off somewhere to give up or await a better chance the following day.
Not even a mouse trusts himself to one hole only, and Radigan was no mouse. In the
side of the barn that formed one wall of the corral there was another door made of
sawed logs that was perfectly fitted and left for emergencies. He had never used
that door since it had been built, but now he did.
Easing himself out that door, which was invisible from any
12
 8 Louis L"AMOUR
place the watcher could be, he went down the slope behind the barn and into the trees.
On the run, he began to circle the ranch area to get where a horse might be concealed.
Pausing for breath in a clump of trees he told himself he was a fool-the half-breed
had probably gone off somewhere.
But where? His horse was in the barn, it was raining, there was no reason of which
he could think for Child to leave the house . . . and where had that strange rider
disappeared to?
A watcher on that slope, if he wished to kill from ambush, must have his horse close
in case something went wrong, which left four possible places of concealment. One
was a wash where the runoff from the slope had cut a deep gash in the earth, another
was a nest of boulders, the third a patch of brush, and the fourth a notch in the
rocky face a hundred feet down from the bench on which the ranch stood. That notch
could give easy access to the talus slope, and a horse waiting below it would provide
a fast escape.
Rain fell steadily, and slight wind stirred the leaves, whip ping cold rain down
his neck. He held his rifle muzzle down beneath his slicker, from which he had slipped
an arm to hold the Winchester, as he worked his way to a new vantage point.
It was almost dark and at any moment the man might be returning to his horse. Every
step Radigan took was now a danger, and he made no move without checking the terrain
before it.
Far up the slope, a stone rattled.
Darting across a small open space he reached the nest of boulders, but there was
no horse, no tracks. There was little time, and as the crack in the rock seemed the
most likely place, he tried it next.
Rain whispered on the leaves, the world was gray and black now, shaded by rain and
the coming of night.
He paused in the shadow of a boulder, his feet on the sand of a gradual slope. He
worked his way through the trees, and the ground was soggy beneath his boots. Raindrops
felt his cheeks with blind, questing fingers ... the black trunks of the trees were
like iron bars against the gray of gathering pools.
Alert, nostrils distended, every sense reaching into the night, testing the air for
what it held, he waited, and there was no sound. Walking on, he rounded the corner
of a rocky promon tory and saw the horse.
13
 RADIGAN 9 Standing head down, partly sheltered by the overhang, it waited.
He had been right, then.
He stood close beside a sentinel pine, holding his body to merge with the blackness
of the trunk. It was dark now.
Rain talked to the leaves. No bird moved-birds and rabbits were wise enough to take
shelter when it rained. The horse stood disconsolate in the rain, and the rocks were
black and wet.
It was cold . . . he relaxed his grip on the gun action and shifted his hold. The
crack in the rock merged its blackness with the surrounding dark so he could scarcely
distinguish the opening, but the horse shifted its feet and the saddle glistened
wetly.
A boot scraped on stone, a pebble cascaded among the rocks. Delicately, Radigan tilted
the Winchester barrel up to meet his left hand. He held the gun at hip level, ready
to lift it for a quick shot.
There was a moment of silence, then a boot crunched on sand. A dark figure moved
the shadows in the mouth of rock, and in the moment before the man reached the horse,
Radigan said, "You looking for somebody?"
The man twisted and the flat stab of fire thrust toward him from the darkness and
the rain, crossing the heavier sound of his Winchester, firing almost of its own
volition, an instant late. He felt the shock of the bullet as it hit the tree beside
him and spattered his face with tiny fragments of bark.
He fired a second time, realizing as he did so that the other man was fast, and a
dead shot. Without warning more than his words the man had wheeled and fired . .
. he saw the man's body crumpling to the sand and the horse shy back, snorting. Tom
Radigan moved a bit more behind the tree and waited.
He was not about to run up to a man shot down, or seem ingly shot down. He waited
without movement, listening to the slow whisper of falling rain: there was no other
sound.
The horse New through his nostrils, not liking the smell of gunsmoke. A wind stirred
the corner of Radigan's slicker.
The shot was a dart of red flame and a smashing concussion. A finger tugged at the
slicker and Radigan fired, levered the Winchester and fired again into the dark bulk
of the body.
Silence again, and rain. It was dark, but his eyes were
14
 10 LOUIS L'Ati1OUR
accustomed and he could make out the body against the gray sand.
He waited, feeling sure the man was dead ... this time he was dead.
Who had he killed? What was the man doing here, far from any other ranch or town?
How had he even known about this place? In the four years since Radigan came to the
bench above the Vache there had been no more than a half-dozen visitors.
The man had come to kill, or else he would not have fired so suddenly at a strange
voice speaking from the darkness. And he had been a man skilled in the use of arms,
arriving by a route he must have known or to which he must have been well guided.
The minutes dragged, and Radigan waited. Many times the first man to move was the
first to die, and he had learned patience. After awhile there was a short, convulsive
sigh and a boot toe scraping in the sand. The man was dead.
Radigan moved to another tree, his rifle held ready for another shot.
Near the white palm of an outflung hand Radigan saw the wet shine of a pistol barrel.
He came from behind the tree and walked toward the body. The tied horse, not liking
the mingled smell of powder smoke and blood, backed off, snorting softly. "Easy,
boy. Easy now."
The horse quieted, reassured by the calm voice. Radigan had a way with animals-they
trusted him. Even the bad ones seemed to buck under him merely to uphold their reputations,
but with no heart in it.
Radigan prodded the body with his toe, rifle held for a shot, and when there was
no move he turned the body so the face lay white under the dripping sky.
Squatting near the body, Radigan felt for a pulse and found none. Spreading his slicker,
he struck a match under its shel ter, and looked at the dead face, mouth slightly
open, eyes wide to the rain.
Young-not more than twenty-one or -two. A narrow face with a large mouth and thin
lips, a forehead too high. The holster was slung low and tied fast.
Lifting the body, Radigan draped him over his saddle, then retrieved the rifle and
pistol and leading the horse he walked back to the barn.
15
 RADIGAN 11 As he entered the yard the door opened and John Child stepped out with
a lantern.
Child took the dead man's head in his grip and turned the face to the light. "Know
him?"
"No ... do you?"
"No, I don't. Something familiar there, though."
Radigan noticed a small patch of bandage on Child's skull and indicated it with his
eyes. "He hit you?"
"Burned me. I had your coat on." He looked at Radigan across the darkness. "What's
the matter, Tom? What's wrong?" "Damned if I know." He explained about the tracks
that
came over the hills far from any trail, indicating the man had come with purpose
in mind, using a way that would avoid the chance of being seen. "Somebody hunting
me, John. Or you."
Child considered that. "You," he said finally. "My enemies are dead." He looked at
the body. "Bury him in the morning?" "No. I'm a curious man, John. A wanting-to-know
sort of
man. I'm going to leave him tied across that saddle and turn the horse loose."
There was a moment of silence while the rain fell, and then Child muttered, "Damn!"
There was wonder and satisfaction in his tone. "I'd not have thought of that."
"Maybe, just maybe it'll work. The horse might be borrowed or rented, but it might
be his own. In any case, that horse is likely to go home. Or maybe to where it was
fed and stabled last. "
"You'll do," Child said. "You'd have made a fine Indian, Tom."
He studied the body, noting the three bullet holes. "He was a tough man."
"And fast," Radigan said. "He was fast and he was good. He was awful good. Two shots
in the dark, one hit the tree I stood against, the other nicked my raincoat. This
was a man knew his business, John. He was a man hired for the job, I'm guessing."
"Who?"
That was the question, of course. From time to time a wan dering man made enemies,
but none that mattered and none who would come this far off their trail to hunt him
down. It made no kind of sense, just none at all.
He swore suddenly. "John, we're a couple of children. Give me that lantern."
16
 12 Louis L'AMOUR
He held the light up to the, brand. It was a Half-Circle T-no brand he had ever heard
of. Then he pulled the dead man's coat loose and searched the pockets, but there
was only a little money, no wallet, no letters. Yet the man had come from somewhere
and behind his coming there was a reason.
"Tom." Child waited a moment while the time ran and the rain, fell. His voice was
very serious. "Tom, you be careful. Whoever wants you took no chances on leaving
evidence. He's clean. No identification. They took no chances of him being caught
or killed."
"They didn't think about the horse."
"No, but the horse is strange around here. That's no brand
we know."
"No, but this horse was fed somewhere, watered somewhere. This here is a grain-kept
horse, and I'm gambling this man has been around a day or two, studying the lay of
the land, and his horse might go back to where he was fed."
"In the morning?"
"Now. We'll let him start now, and in the morning I'll trail him down." Radigan indicated
the sky. "Look-the rain is breaking. The tracks will still be there."
Leading the horse to the trail south he slapped him hard across the rump, and stood
while the horse jumped away and then trotted off down the trail, the dark bulk of
the dead man in the saddle. They watched him and listened until they could no longer
hear the slowing
clop-clop
of the horse's hoofs. Without words they turned and went into the house and Tom Radigan
suddenly realized he was tired, dead tired.
"Coffee's on. It'll be stronger than hell." "What else?"
"Beans, beef . .. what d'you expect?"
Child put down the lantern and lighted a coal-oil lamp. Radigan hung his hat and
slicker on wooden pegs driven into the wall and glanced toward the fire. He had been
thinking about that fire for a long time.
The room was long with a huge fireplace on one side, and a beamed, low ceiling that
cleared Tom Radigan's head by no more than a few inches. It was a frontier room,
but somehow more pleasant.
There had been a lot of years when he had thought of 'a place like this. It lacked
a woman's touch, but it was strongly built
17
 RADIGAN 13 and comfortable, built to last as Radigan had planned it during the long
nights on night herd. It had a view down the valley, and was built for strength and
a good defense, for there was always a chance of needing that in a strong new country
where men did not readily settle into the ways of law. But there were windows with
wide, deep sills, windows that would someday carry plants . . . geraniums, maybe.
And there was an inside pump, good for defense, of course, but good also for a woman.
It would save her steps and time. It was a rare thing in this country to have an
inside pump.
"Got myself a couple of cats," Radigan commented. "Lose any stock?"
"Over a time, maybe four or five head. These lions were latecomers, I figure. But
no lion ever had any sense. Got them both in the same trap, just reset it. Caught
them in the same place on successive nights. Never do that to a wolf."
John Child was a square-shouldered man, dark and strong boned, a man who looked as
if he were hewn from oak. The Indian in him was strong, but the white man in him
had made him painstaking in his work. He dished up the food, steaming from the fire,
and then poured coffee. "You set up to the table, Tom. You're about done in."
Radigan rolled up his sleeves revealing the white skin of powerful forearms, the
brown of his hands resembling gloves by comparison. He bathed carefully, working
up a good lather with the homemade soap. He washed his face, digging his soapy finger
into his ears, then dampened a towel and went behind his ears and finally combed
out his stiff brown-red hair. And all the while he was thinking, backtracking himself
across the days to find some clue to the unknown dead man and the why of his coming
to the ranch on the Vache.
He dropped into a chair almost too tired to eat. In the past few days he had ridden
more than a hundred miles, rounding up cattle, moving them to new range, cleaning
water holes, branding a few late calves, then trapping lions and killing a cinnamon
bear.
"Forgot," he said, "there's bear meat on the saddle." "It'll keep in this weather."
"Ever eat lion?"
"Sure, many a time. Best meat there is. First time I heard that from a white man
was from Kit Carson, down to Lucien
18
 14 Louis L'AN1ouR
Maxwell's place, but the mountain men favored it above any thing else."
Child filled his own cup and sat down. "Don't you gorge yourself. There's more."
"You make a pie?" "No."
Radigan lifted his head and scented the air. "Bear sign?" "Figured you'd smell 'em
first off. When you didn't I knew you were tired. Ma used to make doughnuts when
I was a youngster and when I'd come from school I'd catch that smell, even if it
had been hours old."
"You get me some, John. You ain't much for work, but I'd keep you on just for making
bear sign. I never saw your beat." "Time was I've been kept making bear sign for
three days
without letup, make 'em by the dishpan full, and none left at the end. Men ride miles
to get a handful of bear sign."
They were silent, busy with their food and thoughts. Only Radigan was eating, however.
After a few minutes he asked, "You eat?"
"Sure. I'd started out to feed the stock when that feller nicked me. First off I
was of a mind to go scalp huntin', but he had me nailed down so I ate ... first thing
I was taught was to sleep whenever there was time and to eat when there was food.
"
John Child went to the deep cupboard and brought back a plate of doughnuts. "Dig
in, boy. There's a plenty."
"John ... who d'you reckon he was?"
"Gunman, that's for sure. Trigger tied back on his gun. And a mighty fine rifle.
He's got to be a hired killer."
Tom Radigan took down his rifle and went to work cleaning it. As he worked he occasionally
ate bear sign and drank coffee. It had been too good to last. He owned seven hundred
head
of' cattle, and a nice bunch of' mustangs. He had spread his cattle around through
the mountain meadows where there was good water and good grass, and from time to
time he shifted his small herds to new areas where the grass was still long. The
winters were vicious, and the snow drifted deep in most of the canyons. It was a
brutal struggle to keep the herds alive but there were areas where the wind swept
the grass free of snow, and there were protected valleys where little snow gathered.
There had been natural increase, and several times he bought
19
 RADIGAN 15 cattle from movers. As there were no other ranches close by and the remote
valleys restricted the wandering, the task of handling the cattle was a small one.
Radigan's progress had been steady, and in another year he would make his first drive
to market. His income from trapping was sufficient to pay Child his wages and to
put by a little, and from the first he had taken time out occasionally to wash out
a little gold from the streams. None of them carried much, but to a man whose wants
were simple it was enough.
The ranch on the Vache had been no sudden thing. From the first he had made up his
mind to look for just the place he wanted, and when he found it his plans were well
made and he was ready for the hard work they demanded. Every step he must take had
been carefully planned, and he believed he had covered all the possible risks and
chances to be expected. From the beginning he had been aware that the days of free
range could not last, and he had never planned on the vast operations of the bigger
ranchers. He was content with a small outfit but one that paid well, and he had solved
the problem of making it pay.
At daybreak he was out of bed and into his socks and shirt. Then he stirred the coals
and laid on a few chunks of pitch pine to get a hot fire going, then he put on the
water for coffee.
When he had bathed and dressed he took time out to shave, the wiry stubble on his
jaws yielding reluctantly to the razor. He was usually clean-shaven except for his
mustache-his one vanity.
John Child came in. "Saddled that blaze-face sorrel for you. It's clearing up nicely."
"Thanks." "Want I should ride along?"
"Stick around. There's enough to do and I don't want the place left alone now. You
keep your guns close and don't get far from the place."
Child grinned at him. "I'm a Delaware . .. you forgettin' that?"
"It's the English in you worries me. The Delaware can take care of itself."
"I've put up a lunch . .. and some of them bear sign." Radigan shouldered into a
buckskin coat and went down to
20
 16 Louis L'AMOUR
the corral. The sorrel was a good trail horse, half-Morgan and half-mustang, with
lots of bottom and enough speed.
He stepped into the leather and Child put a hand on the saddle. "You watch yourself.
That dead man's face is something I remember and I remember it with trouble."
No need to worry, Child told himself. Radigan was a good man in woods or mountains,
and like an Apache on a trail. He had been a Texas Ranger for two years and built
a solid reputa tion, but he was not a man to shoot unless pushed into it.
The trail was plain enough, for there had been a hard rain that wiped out tracks
before the shooting and wind enough to dry the mud and set the tracks since the rain
stopped. The horse had galloped a short distance, settled to a canter and then to
a walk. Several times it had hesitated as if uncertain, then had set out down the
trail. The trail led right to the bottom of Guadalupe Canyon and after that there
was small chance to wander.
San Ysidro was nothing much as a town. Three stores, two saloons and a third saloon
that was called a hotel because they occasionally rented rooms, and a scattering
of houses, most of them adobe. It was just short of noon when Tom Radigan rode into
town.
There were four horses at the hitching rack and a buckboard, but nobody on the street.
Three of the horses were branded with a Running M-on-a Rail, a brand strange to him.
He tied his horse at the hitching rack and went into the saloon. Two of the men at
the bar were strangers, the third was Deputy Sheriff Jim Flynn and the fourth a man
in buckskins who trapped over in the Nacimientos. His name was Hickman.
They nodded to each other and Flynn asked, "Travelin', Tom? Didn't figure to see
you around here this late in the year. "
"Man has to get out, time to time." He glanced briefly at the two strange riders.
They looked to be tough, competent men. But why here? There was no Running M-on-a-Rail
in this part of the country and no open range. There should be a third rider . .
. where?
Deputy Sheriff Flynn was doing some thinking of his own. He had been marshal of'
two cowtowns, sheriff and deputy sheriff elsewhere, and as far as he was concerned
San Ysidro
21
 RADIGAN 17 was the end of the line. He was married now and the father of two children,
and he wanted no trouble here.
A handy man with a gun who knew his job thoroughly, he had always been worried by
Tom Radigan.
He had known such men before. Hickok and Courtright, of course, but Radigan was more
like Tilghman, Gillette or John Hughes. He was a dangerous man, but a man with quality,
tempered in harsher fires than San Ysidro could offer.
A quiet man, Radigan minded his own business and rarely drank, but Flynn understood
the potential. Knowing his busi ness as he did he also knew there was no logical
reason for Radigan's presence in town today. Radigan had bought supplies only two
weeks ago and they usually lasted him all of two months, but this had been an order
for the winter and unusu ally heavy. Nor did Radigan come to town for company or
to get drunk. The deputy sheriff took another look at Radigan's face and decided
this was a war party.
Toying with his glass, he estimated the situation. What had happened that was different
than usual? What could have hap pened to bring Torn Radigan into town right now?
The answer was obvious. The three strange cowhands and the stranger with the buckboard.
All were armed, all looked to be tough, capable men; and more than that, they were
better dressed, hence better paid. These were not simply cowpunch ers but fighting
punchers. And fighting men are not hired unless to fight.
"Stage is about due," Flynn commented.
"No rush this time of year," Downey the barman said as he leaned his thick elbows
on the mahogany. "Folks just naturally start avoiding this country just shy of first
snowfall, and they're
smart.
One of the strange riders looked around. "Does it get cold here?"
Flynn nodded, looking into his glass. "You're up high, man. You're right near a mile
above sea level here, and any place out of town it's higher." He indicated Radigan
with a jerk of his head. "Up at Tom's place it's a half mile higher. And
cold? Seen it forty below up there, many a time."
The door opened then and a big man came in. As tall as Radigan's six feet and two
inches, he was thirty pounds heavier than Radigan's one hundred and eighty-five.
His square, pow
22
 18 LOUIS L AMOUR
erful head sat on a wide thick neck and powerful shoulders, yet for all his beef
he moved easily, and he glanced sharply at Radigan, then again.
"I know you from somewhere," he said. "Maybe. "
"You live around here?"
The cowhands had straightened up at the bar and so had Flynn. "Could be."
The newcomer hesitated as if to say something further but a shrill yell from down
the street and the rattle of hoofs and harness brought the stage up to the door.
Flynn, Radigan thought, was relieved, but he made no move toward the door until the
three cowhands had gone out. The big man stood in frowning concentration, then called
after the last man through the door. "Coker," he said, "shake the snow off those
robes in the buckboard."
Radigan glanced out the window. It was snowing, not very seriously, but snowing nonetheless.
He felt relieved. A good snow now might close the country for all winter. His first
glance registered the snow, but the second caught the horse tied behind the stage.
Hickman stepped in the door. "Sheriff," he said, "we've a dead man out here."
Downey came from behind the bar. All of them went out but Tom Radigan. He refilled
his glass.
Hickman glanced at him curiously. "Ain't you curious?" "Me?" Radigan glanced at him.
"I've seen a dead man."
He tossed off his drink and stared at his glass, wondering why he ever touched the
stuff. He didn't really like it and he had discovered long ago that it took a lot
to have any effect on him and when he got the effect he didn't like it.
The door pushed open and men came in carrying a body which they stretched on the
pool table. The big man followed them in, his features a study in puzzled anger.
A man obvi ously the stage driver entered with Downey and Flynn.
"About ten mile out," the driver was saying, "we come around a bend and there was
this horse, walkin' toward us. We figured it was somethin' for you."
The deputy sheriff stared sourly at the dead man. Why didn't they let the horse keep
going? Clean out of the county? "Anybody know him?" he asked.
23
 RADIGAN 19 Nobody spoke up. In the silence Hickman glanced quizzi cally at Radigan.
Flynn noted the glance.
"He's some shot up," Downey commented, "and I'd say early last night." At Flynn's
questioning glance Downey flushed. "Worked with doctors durin' the war," he said.
"I know some thing about wounds."
"He could have come quite a ways," Flynn commented, "since early last night."
Torn Radigan was sure he knew what Flynn was thinking, that the unknown dead man
could have come from the ranch under the mesa. There were not too many places he
could have come from except maybe Jemez or Jemez Springs. Deputy Sheriff Flynn, Radigan
decided, was no fool.
"All the wounds are in front," Radigan commented.
"That's where you'd expect 'em to be," Hickman said. "That's Vin Cable."
Flynn turned sharply around. "Damn it, Hickman!" he demanded irritably. "What would
Vin Cable be doing up here? He's a warrior, a dollar-on-the-barrelhead fighting man."
Hickman shrugged. "How should I know what he was doin' here? Maybe somebody is startin'
a war?"
"Cable must've killed five or six men," Downey said.
"That folks can testify to," Hickman added. "No tellin' how many he dry gulched."
The big man turned sharply on Hickman. "You talk a lot," he said.
"You don't like it?" Hickman's voice was mild. He was idly whittling with a bowie
knife.
"Stop it," Flynn said, glaring at him. The deputy looked as sore as a hound dog with
a had tooth. He smelled trouble, Radigan surmised and, good officer that he was,
wanted to avoid it.
Coker came to the door and called to the big man, "Ross, Miss Foley is ready to go."
Radigan followed them to the street, and Flynn trailed after. A tall young man was
helping a girl in a gray traveling dress from the stage. She had dark-brown hair
and, as Radigan saw when she glanced up at him, green eyes. He escorted the girl
to the buckboard and paused there as Ross joined them. What ever he said caused the
young man to turn on him, startled and angry. The girl waited, listening.
24
 20 LOUIS L AMOUR
Flynn seemed to make up,his mind. "You folks planning to settle around here?"
Ross turned squarely around to face him. "We do. We've rented the Hansen place until
our cattle come in, and then we're moving up on Vache Creek."
Flynn started to speak but Radigan interrupted. "I wouldn't count on it," he said.
All eyes were on Radigan.
"And why not?" Ross demanded.
"Because he missed," Radigan said quietly.
25
 The wind skittered a dry leaf along the boardwalk and one of the stage mules, shifting
his weight, jangled the harness.
Radigan's three words hung in the still, cold air, a challenge issued and a line
drawn.
The man who was helping the girl into the buckboard turned his face toward them.
"What's that mean?" he demanded.
His was a lean, handsome face with a hint of repressed savagery behind it that Tom
Radigan had seen in faces before. There was impatience in such men, impatience that
could lead to trouble, impatience that might get them killed or lead to the killing
of others.
"My name is Radigan. The R-Bar is my outfit and the R-Bar is Vache Creek."
"I'm afraid you don't understand." It was the girl speaking, and her cool, cultured
voice seemed to be merely tolerating stupidity in one who knew no better. "We own
twenty-two sections along Vache Creek."
"Along Vache Creek," there was no yielding in his tone, "there is but one ranch and
room for but one. I own it."
She arranged her skirt with one casual hand, and the smile went no farther than her
lips, lips that were a shade too thin, eyes that were too cool and measuring. "You
are mistaken, sir. I am sorry for you, of course, but men who squat on land that
does not belong to them must expect to be moved off. That land has been in my family
since 1844."
"And you were so sure of your title that you sent your insurance on ahead?"
Ross Wall took a quick, belligerent step forward. "What's that mean?"
"Read it any way you like." Ross was the dangerous one at the moment and Radigan's
eyes held on him. The foreman was
21
26
 22 LOUIS L'AMOUR
a fighting man, and he looked a hardheaded man who would take some convincing. "An
outfit that sends a gunman ahead of them can't have too much confidence in their
title."
"You accusing us?"
"Vin Cable didn't come here for fun. He didn't take a shot at my segundo
for fun and, from all I hear, he was a man who commanded a high price. I think he
was paid insurance that there'd be no argument about titles."
Flynn interposed. "Tom, we'd better look into this. After all, if they have a title-"
"Any title they have isn't worth the paper it's written on." Radigan was brusque.
"Moreover, there isn't range enough in Guadalupe Canyon to winter a jack rabbit,
and the only range on Vache Creek is my range. There will be no cattle along that
creek whose brand does not read R-Bar."
Hickman stood with one foot against the wall, a lean man in soiled buckskins who
listened with cynical amusement.
The girl spoke again. "I am Angelina Foley. The land along Vache Creek is part of
my father's estate, and the terms of Governor Armijo's grant are clear. No doubt
you have made improvements on the land." She opened her purse. "I am prepared to
pay for those improvements, and to buy what stock you have."
"That's fair," Flynn said quickly. "How about that, Tom?" "The land is mine. It will
remain mine. If you had taken the trouble to inquire in Santa Fe you would know the
status of any grants by Armijo."
For the first time Ross Wall looked uncertain. He glanced at Angelina Foley, awaiting
her lead, for obviously this was some thing for which he had no reply.
"Would you fight a woman, Mr. Radigan? I thought Western men more gallant."
There was no yielding in Radigan. "When you opened the ball," he replied, "you called
the tune. Anybody, man or woman, who comes hunting a bullet title to my land is going
to have to prove title with more than conversation. And a woman who takes cards in
a man's game holds the status of a man and is entitled to no more respect."
"Now, see here!" Flynn said angrily. "You've no proof of connection between Vin Cable
and this lady! None at all! You just back up on that! Back up, d' you hear?"
27
 RADIGAN 23 Abruptly, Radigan turned and walked back into the saloon.
The body of Cable had been removed from the billiard table to a back room where it
was partly visible lying on another table. Jim Flynn followed Radigan into the saloon
and leaned on
the bar beside him. "Have a drink, Tom?" Flynn tried to speak casually.
"I have one. Thanks."
"Too bad ... tough time to lose a place, winter coming like this."
Radigan shot Flynn a hard glance, but made no reply.
"If I were you I'd talk to these people, and try to work out a deal. Their herd is
already on its way here."
"What's got into you, Jim? Are you deputy sheriff of the county or their lawyer?
That land is mine. I've lived on it and worked it and have an air-tight title. You
don't suppose I'm going to be pushed off my land with a bluff like that, do you?
You'd better decide where you stand, Jim."
Flynn's face flushed with dark blood. "I stand for the law, and I'll enforce the
law! You put that in your pipe and smoke it!"
"Seems to me," Hickman commented mildly, "that Radigan's case is the best one, Jim.
He's been in possession four years we know of. He says he's got an air-tight title.
Was I you, Jim, I'd give that some thought."
Hickman's interference angered him, yet there was sense in what he said. Still, Flynn
told himself, it was unreasonable that such people could be bluffing, or that such
a girl could be dishonest. These were quality ... he had seen it at first glance,
and he was a man who had been taught respect for decent women. The idea that an educated,
intelligent lady would have a hand in anything shady was beyond consider ation. Nor
would an outfit of this size have come here without having a clear title. Like many
another man he had respect for money and power, and these newcomers showed every
indica tion of both.
"A girl like that wouldn't lie," Flynn said.
Radigan had no humor in his smile. "If you can say that, Jim, you've been lucky in
the women you've known."
The door opened and Angelina Foley came in with Ross and the younger man.
28
 24 Louis L"AMOUR
"I am asking you again, Mr. Radigan, to vacate the premises on Vache Creek."
He turned to face her. "Somebody's misled you, ma'am. Have you ever seen this land
you claim? Have you any idea what you're getting into? Guadalupe Canyon runs north
of here, and rim to rim it'll vary from maybe a half-mile to a mile. In the bottom
it isn't anywhere more than a few hundred yards wide, and nowhere along that canyon
is there graze for a herd.
"North of there it narrows down and sometimes in the win ter we're snowed in for
a month at a time, one time it was three months. In the summer that country will
carry quite a few cows in the high meadows, but to winter cattle up there calls for
a special brand of know-how that no Plains country puncher will learn in a season.
Most places folks will tell you a man who tries to winter cattle a mile and half
above sea level is crazy.
"I'd say, ma'am, that you've been poorly advised to bring a herd up here at this
season. My advice would be to head out of here for the nearest fort or reservation
where they're buying cattle for the Indians and sell out. After you've spent a winter
here, if you still want a piece of this country, you can find a piece that's not
already taken."
"My land is on Vache Creek, Mr. Radigan," she replied coolly. "I am asking you to
vacate in the presence of witnesses. If you do not, well, I'm afraid my men won't
take kindly to your being in the way of ranch operations."
"Seems odd," Radigan said quietly, "that you'd come into a cold country in the late
fall knowing you'd built no buildings on the land. Looks like you knew about mine
and figured to have me out of them. Seems you should know you have to feed stock
part of the winter, and yet you bring a herd up here. Figuring to use my feed, too?
Was that why Vin Cable came first?"
Jim Flynn's brow puckered and he glanced at Angelina Foley, his eyes registering
doubt for the first time. It was a telling point, and any man who had grown up around
cattle would recognize the logic of it.
She turned toward the door, then glanced back. "You have heard what I said. You have
been notified to vacate. When my herd arrives, we will move onto the land."
The batwings swung to behind them, and there was silence in the saloon and stage
station.
29
 RADIGAN 25 "There's six men here," Hickman advised, "and there must
be a dozen or more with the herd. I'd say you'd chosen yourself a fight."
"I've one man worth a dozen of these, plenty of grub and more than a thousand rounds
of ammunition. If it's war they want they've come to the right place."
He downed his drink and turned to the door. It was time he started back. The few
flakes of falling snow had disappeared, but the suggestion remained in the air, and
the sky above was flat and cold.
At the door Hickman's voice stopped him. "Jim," the trapper suggested mildly, "there's
a thought behind this. Now these folks have a right smart outfit. Good horses, good
clothes, good rigs. Wonder why they left wherever they were? Folks that prosperous
don't usually pick up and move. Mostly, movers are poor folks."
Flynn turned around, ignoring Hickman. "Cable was shot in front," he said, "and any
man who can get lead into Vin Cable in front is entitled to it, but I'm a curious
man."
Briefly, Radigan explained, telling the story simply and with out embellishment from
the moment he saw the trail across the meadow. Despite himself, Flynn was fascinated.
A fighting man himself, he read between the lines. Most men would have gotten themselves
killed in such a situation, but Radigan had outthought, outtricked and outshot his
man.
"He have a grudge against you?"
"I never knew who he was until Hickman put a name to him." Radigan paused. "Jim,
I'd suggest you examine their papers before there's any trouble. They'll have some
sort of a trumped-up claim, I'm sure of that. But look them over."
"Papers?" "They'll have a deed or something. They wouldn't just come in here and
demand a ranch without something to show."
Jim Flynn felt like a fool. He had been ready to order a man off his ranch on the
mere say-so of a bunch of strangers. He must see those papers ... worst of it was,
he had a time with reading. He felt irritated and trapped. When he had taken this
job it had promised peace and quiet with only an occasional drunken Indian to make
trouble-and now this.
When Radigan rode his horse into the ranch yard John Child came out of the house
with a lantern. He watched Radigan
30
 26 Louis L"AMouR
dismount stiffly and within the warm stable he listened while Radigan stripped bridle
and saddle and related the events of the afternoon.
"It's a hard-case outfit," he said finally, "and my hunch is the man behind it is
that Harvey Thorpe, the girl's foster brother. He did little talking, but he did
a lot of looking and listening."
"And they're bringing cattle? If they get caught in the canyon by a heavy fall of
snow they won't have any more cattle than a jaybird."
"That's working for us . . . they don't know this country. I started small and built
carefully and most of the stock we have now was born right here, and they've learned
to rustle for their grass in rough country."
The R-Bar was almost twenty-eight miles north of San Ysidro. There were two Indian
villages closer, and a few white men in each, but none that concerned him. In the
time he had lived on Vache Creek there had been few visitors, and most of them riders
passing through, and not one that he could place as a possible scout for the Foley
outfit. Most of the riders, and he could count them on the fingers of his hands,
had been drifters heading for the breaks to the north to hide out from the law, heading
for Loma Coyote.
Did Angelina Foley know of what this range consisted? The rugged mountains, high
mesas, hidden valleys and hanging meadows? His cattle were scattered because of the
grass, and now were mostly held in proximity to stacks of cut hay, yet here and there
he had built fences, utilizing natural features of the terrain wherever possible.
During that first winter he had been constantly in the saddle, scouting the places
where the wind left grass exposed and where snow did not drift. Coming from Illinois
he had known something of cold weather before he came west, and during the drifting
years he learned more both from his own experiences and from ranchers he talked to
in Montana and Nebraska. It would require such knowledge for these newcomers to survive.
Child shivered. The wind off the mesa was cold, this time of night. "If you need
hands," he suggested, "there's some you could have."
"Look, John," Radigan said, "if this comes to a shooting fight, you don't have to
stay. It's my fight, and"
31
 RADIGAN 27 "Oh, shut up! You can't hold this down alone and you damn' well know
it. Nor would I let you if you could."
He led the way to the house. "How much do they claim?" "Twenty-two sections. Take
'em four or five years to find it
all.
"How much do you claim? I don't recall you ever told me." "Don't recall you asking.
I claim about twice that much, and
I need every bit of it. I was figuring on selling out next year and keeping only
the young stuff. I want to build to five or six thousand head."
"You'll need grass."
"I know where it is, lots of it."
Inside the house, Radigan glanced around with surprise. The place had been cleaned
thoroughly, the floors scrubbed, the windows washed, and all the pots were shining.
"You expecting visitors, John?"
Child shrugged, his face bland. "No tellin' when a bachelor goes to town. Time you
were married, anyway."
"Me?" Radigan was astonished. "Now where would you get an idea like that? And where
would I find a girl who would have me? I wouldn't know how to treat her unless she
had horns."
Radigan went prowling for bear sign and found a dishpan piled high with them. "You
stay out of them," Child admon ished. "Spoil your supper."
"Seems to me," Radigan said, "you're the one who should get married. You're getting
fussier all the time. Should have married years ago."
Child surprised him. "I was married, one time. Married a Cheyenne girl I stole from
the Utes who'd taken her prisoner one day. She was right pretty, and mighty scared
of those Utes, so I spoke her language and it was a comfort to her. Nighttime I cut
loose a couple of horses and the girl and took out. They chased me more'n a hundred
miles."
"What happened?"
"We lived north of here. Had one boy, but he was killed in a fall from a horse. Utes
again. We were travelin' when they came up on us. They got my wife, shot her through
the head first off. I made a run for it with the boy, and he was killed, too."
"Tough. "
32
 28 LOUIS L]AMOUR
"We had some good years , . . raised a girl, too. She lived with us four, five years
and then we put her in a convent in Mexico. She was thirteen then."
"She wasn't your daughter?"
"No. Comanches took her from a wagon train where they'd killed her family. I traded
four horses for her. She stayed at that convent a couple of years, then she lived
with some high-class Mexican woman and her husband until they decided to go to Spain.
She didn't want to go."
Radigan filled his plate and sat down at the table. He had not realized he was so
tired. Part of it was the warm room after the long, cold ride-he felt sleepy.
"Whatever happened to her?"
Child cleared his throat and Radigan glanced at him. "What's the matter?" Radigan
demanded. "Are you sick?"
"No. Well-she's coming here."
"What?"
Radigan was wide awake. "Are you crazy? What would we do with a girl here in the
middle of a fight?" "Where else can she go? And when I told her to come on,
well, this here fight wasn't heard of. She's eighteen now and she figures I'm the
only person she can come to."
Radigan got to his feet, exasperated and worried. "Damn it, John! What's got into
you? This is no place for a girl. Why, she's not even a blood relative!"
"Seems like she is. Wrote to me all the time. She always wanted to come back to the
mountains. I guess I was the only father she ever had, although I ain't fixed to
be much of a father. She always wanted to come back here, but I talked her into staying
on. Those were mighty fine folks she was with and I figured a girl should learn about
things like keepin' a fine house and such."
Radigan was exasperated. There was no use blaming John Child, but to have a girl
coming here at this time ... if one thing was needed to make matters worse, this
was it. Two men can go on the dodge in the hills no matter what the weather, but
they'd have trouble enough caring for themselves without carting a female along.
"Seems I might take her to Santa Fe," Child admitted reluc tantly, "but she wanted
to be with me, and well, she never really had a father."
Radigan looked at him, then his good humor got the better
33
 RADIGAN 29 of him and he laughed. "This is worse than the fight. That we could get
out of. What do we know about women?"
When supper was over he went outside, first lowering the light, to make a final round
of the ranch. The news meant that John Child must go and he would have to stay on
alone. With only two men it would be bad enough, but one man alone?
Not for an instant did he consider allowing the girl to remain. It was no place for
even an Indian girl to be, let alone a girl who had grown up in a convent. The house
was a position that could not be held throughout a long fight. If they could make
a brief stand there it would be fortunate, but they must plan to get away, to move,
to keep themselves alive.
The object of battle was the destruction of the enemy's capacity to resist. And as
long as they were mobile they were free and able to fight back. If they were tied
down they would be destroyed.
The principle of warfare, so far as Tom Radigan was con cerned, was attack, always
attack. It did not matter that he would be alone, or outnumbered at best, he must
attack. Even a stronger enemy could be put on the defensive and kept there.
This was the reason behind the secret caches of food and ammunition, and every move
was being made with the idea of retreat to the forest and mountains. And tomorrow
they would begin pushing stock back farther into the remote valleys.
Two days they worked, and it was hard, driving work from morning until night, with
the late hours before bedtime devoted to planning. And then Jim Flynn showed up.
"They've got the papers," he said. "They've got a deed. It was a grant from Governor
Armijo giving them title to the old Villasur grant."
"He didn't have it to give. That grant isn't worth the paper it's written on, Jim."
"I don't know about that, but you've got to get off."
"No court has ordered me off. My title hasn't been disputed in court. These people
are trying to run a bluff. Armijo didn't own that land, the state didn't own it.
He had no title to give anyone, and believe me it will take a lot more than they
have to get me off."
"We've got to settle this thing," Flynn protested irritably. "I won't have a cattle
war."
34
 30 Louis L'AMOUR
"Then please remember I'm in possession. Let them go to court. That's the proper
way to advance a claim, not by hiring a gunman and trying to kill the man in possession."
"You don't know they did that."
"Who else?" Radigan turned toward the door. "Come on in, Jim. Let's talk about this.
Anyway," he added, "what are they going to do if I don't move? Use force? You talk
to them, Jim. Believe me, they haven't a leg to stand on."
Flynn sat his saddle stubbornly. He could not believe that such people as Angelina
Foley and Harvey Thorpe would try to push a claim to which they had no legal right.
He was sure that Radigan was wrong and his persistence was irritating. Never had
he had any business with land titles or courts. His experi ence with the law was
simply the enforcement of it against toughs and gunmen.
Radigan turned around. "Jim, tell them to take their claim to court. I'm staying
on."
"You're almighty sure," Flynn said angrily. "What are you-a lawyer?"
Radigan walked back to the horse. "Jim, between 1825 and 1828 there were three temporary
governors here in New Mexi co, and one of them was Armijo. In 1837 there was a rebellion
at Taos and a mob of rebels killed Governor Perez. Armijo managed to become commander
of the counterattack and when it was successful had himself proclaimed governor.
"There's a lot of stories and at this late date a man can't get at the truth of it
all, but there's folks that say he murdered a lot of people including the rebel governor
as well as some of his own supporters and friends. He managed to bribe himself into
favor with the government of Mexico and his appointment was confirmed.
"He was replaced in 1844 by Lejana, but after a year he was back in office, and making
a mint of money by holding up traders on the Saute Fe Trail for a heavy tax on each
wagon.
"Moreover, he finagled around with some of the old land grants and rewarded friends
with grants of land to which he had no legal title. My guess is that this Foley girl
got hold of one of those old grants and she's trying to make it work for her. "
Flynn was out of his depth and knew it. He could handle a drunk or a lynch mob, and
on two occasions had shot it out
35
 RADIGAN 31 with gunmen who wanted to prove themselves. The only legal paper he knew
anything about was a warrant.
"You got as much?" Flynn demanded belligerently. "What's your claim? Squatter's right?"
Radigan shook his head patiently. "Jim, I have legal title to all the land I need,
including water rights, and more than that, I'm in possession. My title will stand
investigation. These people are deliberately trying to put me off land that I own."
"Don't blame me!" Flynn said angrily. "Don't blame me if the lid blows off'!"
Tom Radigan put his big hands on his hips. "I won't blame you, Jim, but I suggest
you go to them and order them to stay out of this part of the country. You're the
deputy sheriff, and these people will be breaking the law."
Flynn's face darkened. "You don't tell me my job! I know my job, and I'll do it!"
"You seem ready to enforce the law against me," Radigan replied. "And I'm the only
one who is in the clear."
"I ain't so sure about that!" Flynn swung his horse. Without a backward glance he
started down the trail toward town. It was going to be a long, dark ride.
Two miles below the ranch and overlooking the canyon of Vache Creek was a huge promontory
that thrust itself out from the canyon wall like a great watch tower, and there Tom
Radigan took up his post. By day a man could see for miles down the canyon, and by
night he could hear. The still, cold air let sound travel for miles.
Leaving his horse picketed near a clump of aspen he walked out on the broad brow
of the promontory and seated himself beside a rough wall of stone that gave partial
shelter from the cold wind.
There were other trails. One led over the Nacimientos behind him from the Rio Puerco,
but it was a dim trail known to few besides the Indians and difficult to follow.
There was another from the east that led from the Springs to Cebolla and then the
mesa to a point just opposite his present position. The chance that they would know
of either of the trails was slight.
At midnight he turned over the watch to John Child and at daybreak, after a quick
breakfast, he was in the saddle. "She should be there," Child told him. "The way
I figure she should be coming in on today's stage, but you'd be better off to let
me
36
 32 Louis L'AMOUR
go. I d'clare, Tom, sometimes I don't figure you're in your right mind ... they don't
even know me."
"They'd know. They'd have you spotted in no time. The risk is mine, so you just sit
tight and be sure nobody moves in while I'm gone."
"Tom," Child hesitated, "want I should ride up to Loma Coyote? Or I could send up
a smoke? There's some good men up there, fighting men."
"Forget it." Radigan started his horse and then looked back. "If you see any of them,
find out who's around."
"Stark is there." Child walked after the horse. "You remem ber Adam Stark. He was
a Ranger the same time you were, killed a man in El Paso and went up the trail. Best
rifle shot I ever saw."
"Good man."
San Ysidro was quiet under the late autumn sun. It was just short of noon when he
rode the buckskin down the street and almost the first man he saw was Sam Coker.
They tied up at the rail only a few feet apart, but Radigan was not worried. Coker
was a trouble hunter, but it was rare that a trouble hunter would start something
without an audience.
Hickman was seated at a table in his soiled buckskins, his feet on the table and
a bottle at hand. Hickman, Radigan had noticed, always had a bottle but the level
of it rarely diminished.
The room was long and low, the building was adobe. The bar was half its length, and
there were only a few tables, it was a shabby, down-at-heel room bare of any decoration
aside from the fly-specked mirror behind the bar. Downey was at once the stage agent
and saloon-keeper, a lonely, hard-faced man who had tended bar in a dozen boom mining
towns and who retained few illusions.
"Stage be in about one o'clock?" Radigan asked.
"Should be." Downey pushed a bottle at him. Downey liked him, Radigan believed, as
much as he liked any man, but he must be getting a lot of business from the newcomers.
"Join me?" Hickman suggested, pulling his feet off the table. He glanced past Radigan
at Sam Coker who had come up to the bar.
Radigan carried his own bottle to the table. "The sign doesn't read for peace," he
commented.
Hickman grinned. "I can read the smoke." The door had
37
 RADIGAN 33 opened and two other men came in. "The big one is Barbeau. He fancies
himself in a brawl. He picked a fight with a drifter the other night and gave him
a wicked beatin'. The other one is Bitner."
Downey brought them a tray of food and Barbeau turned to watch. "And the condemned
man ate a hearty meal," he said. "And Balaam's ass spoke," Radigan said.
Barbeau turned sharply around and stared at him, while Downey chuckled and Hickman
grinned widely. Two other men at another table were both grinning.
"What was that?" Barbeau asked.
But the moment had passed, and Radigan was eating, ignor ing him. Barbeau stared
at him, then looked around truculent ly, hoping for some false move. He was ignored
and after a minute he turned his attention again to Radigan. "I wonder if he can
fight like he can eat," he asked.
"Maybe somebody should find out," Coker suggested. Radigan was enjoying the meal,
as he had not realized how hungry he was. "Hadn't figured I was this hungry," he
said, "hut John made some bear sign the other day and I've eaten nothing else for
the last two days."
"You want warriors," Hickman said. "You let that get out. You could get more fighting
men with bear sign than you could with money, grub being what it is in this country."
He filled his glass. "I've seen cowhands ride sixty, seventy mile for chance at bear
sign."
Barbeau took another drink and then turned with his back to the bar. He was spoiling
for a fight and did not like being ignored, and the drinks had fired his blood and
convinced him he was ready.
At the table Radigan had missed nothing. An old campaigner when it came to brawls,
he knew every move that was being made. He glimpsed Coker moving a little toward
the door to cut off any retreat, and Bitner had moved toward the rear. Barbeau was
a broad, thick man with a coarse beard and the thick hands of' a really powerful
man. He had heavy features and a hard jaw set above a short, thick neck.
Low-voiced, Radigan told Hickman, "Stay out of it. This is my fight."
Hickman studied him quizzically. "Three's quite a handful,"
38
 34 Louis L'AMOUR
he commented. Then he added, "He comes right in, slamming with both hands. And he's
hard to stop."
Barbeau was getting set. Radigan needed no map to see how the trail lay, and he sat
very still, looking into his cup and mentally cataloguing the room around him and
its tactical possi bilities. And then the door opened and Angelina Foley came
in.
She came directly to Radigan's table and he got to his feet politely.
"Now look at that!" Barbeau sneered. "A real gent!"
"Mr. Radigan?" Her eyes were even greener than he had remembered. "I heard you were
in town and hoped to see you before you left. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was
that we are putting you off the land. If we could pay you for your trouble . . .
? The offer is still open."
"You're mistaken, Miss Foley. Someone has given you some wrong information again.
I'm not moving."
"Please!" Her finger touched his sleeve and her eyes were very large. "We own the
land, and you must go. I am afraid that if you do not go some of my men will want
to force you to move. I thought ... well, when I heard you were in town I hoped we
might reach an agreement."
"Will you sit down?"
She hesitated an instant, then seated herself. Radigan sat down and as he did so
he heard Coker say, "Any minute now, they'll serve tea."
Radigan turned to Downey. "Do you have any tea?" "Tea? Tea! ... Well ... sure, but-"
"Make some, and serve it to us here, will you? But make a lot ... make a gallon of
it."
"A gallon? Of tea?" "That's right."
Hickman leaned back in his chair studying Radigan with a curious glint in his eyes,
but Radigan turned to Angelina. "You were about to say-?"
"I wish you'd reconsider ... I mean, about moving. And I meant what I said about
paying for your improvements. Natu rally, we are as sorry about this as you."
But I'm not sorry." Radigan smiled at her. "I'm not sorry at all. I do regret that
you have come so far without checking,
39
 RADIGAN 35 without knowing what you were getting into. If you really wish to see
how little you have in your favor, just take it to court."
"But the courts are so far away, Mr. Radigan!" Her eyes opened wide. "And they take
far too much time! I am sorry, indeed, but Mr. Thorpe and I have more than three
thousand head of cattle coming up, and if you won't move, we'll have to move you."
"Know anything about that land, ma'am?"
"I haven't seen it, of course, but Mr. Thorpe has. Why do you ask?"
"Simply this. If I were to move off that ranch and let you have it, you couldn't
winter three thousand head of cows up there ... if you had a free hand and no trouble
at all, you still couldn't do it. There isn't range enough, there isn't feed enough.
If a man had a good winter he might get through with a thousand head."
She stared at him, taken by his obvious sincerity, but not wanting to believe him.
"But I heard it was the finest grass in the world, and that there was plenty of water."
"It is all of that, but there isn't enough of it. I've hoped to open trails to other
valleys where cattle could be kept, but as it is, that's mostly timber country, over
half of it stands on edge, and probably the easiest way to be rid of you would be
to step out and let you try it. You'd lose cattle, men and horses."
"You seem to have done all right. I can scarcely believe you, Mr. Radigan."
He nodded to indicate the men at the bar, aware they were listening. "Above all,
what will you do with your hands?" It was a chance to inject some doubt into their
minds. "There isn't work up there for more than two or three men on the few acres
you'll have."
"Acres?" she protested. "There are miles, twenty-two square miles, to be exact."
Downey came in with the tea. "Had to use two pots," he explained. "Never had such
a big order before."
Radigan took the smallest pot and filled their two cups and then he quietly drew
his gun. "Serve the rest of it to them." Radigan indicated the three men at the bar
with his gun barrel. "I'll see that they drink it."
Coker's features stiffened and his hand started for his gun
40
 36 Louis L'AMOUR
but stopped as Radigan's gun muzzle swung to cover him. "Start drinking. You, too,
Barbeau."
"I'll be damned if I do!"
Radigan's gun tilted a little. "You asked for a tea party and now you've got it.
Start drinking or I start shooting."
Hickman was grinning widely. Startled, Angelina Foley could only stare from Radigan
to her men, astonished and unbelieving. "If you aren't drinking by the time I count
three," Radigan said casually, "I'll break an arm for each of you."
He came easily to his feet and moved across the floor toward them, keeping Angelina
and the door in his line of vision.
"I'll kill you for this!" Barbeau shouted.
"Maybe-but I can start shortening the odds right here. You wanted tea, now get on
with it."
Coker slammed down his cup. "I'll be damned if I will!" he shouted and grabbed at
his gun butt.
Radigan's gun barrel slashed right and left and Coker hit the floor as if dropped
from a roof. "Get on with the tea drinking," Radigan said calmly, "or I'll pile you
three deep."
Angelina Foley was white with anger. "See here!" she pro tested. "You can't do that!"
"I'd hate to hit a woman," he said.
Involuntarily, she sat down. "You ... you wouldn't dare!" "If you play games with
men," he replied, "you'll play by men's rules."
He handed his six-gun to Hickman. "Barbeau was hunting a fight," he said. "You just
keep them off my back."
Barbeau slammed down his cup and turned sharply around. "Fight?" he yelled. "You'd
fight me?"
Radigan hit him.
Barbeau staggered and Radigan stepped in, watching Barbeau's fists, and whipped a
wicked left into Barbeau's belly. Barbeau was a talker as well as a fighter-he had
expected to do some talking about what he was going to do, and he had been startled
by Radigan's willingness to fight, and the savagery of Radigan's attack confused
him. He backed away, but Radigan gave him no chance to get set. A left and right
to the face shook him up, and desperately he put his head down and charged, swinging.
A wild right staggered Radigan, but the rancher stepped outside of a left and brought
his fist down on Barbeau's kidney.
41
 RADIGAN 37 The heavier man gasped and plunged in, grabbing for a clinch. Radigan
hit him flush on the chin with a short right that stopped him in his tracks.
Barbeau stared through his raised fists at Radigan. This fight was not going as his
fights usually went. The right he had taken was a stunning blow, and Radigan looked
cool and easy, not even breathing hard. For the first time Barbeau realized he might
be whipped and the thought was maddening. Recklessly he charged, swinging powerful
blows with both hands. For a few minutes they fought hard, and Barbeau drove Radigan
back across the room. Bitner was cheering, and Barbeau was sure he had Radigan going.
He felt his right land solidly, and automatically he slowed to let Radigan fall.
In the instant he slowed, Radigan struck him in the mouth, splitting his lip and
spilling blood over his shirt front. Aston ished, Barbeau saw Radigan standing before
him . . . the rancher had taken his best punch and had struck back at almost the
same instant.
Barbeau rushed, but the heart was out of him. Wildly, he knew he was not going to
win. Never before had he hit a man solidly with his right hand when that man had
not fallen, but the punch apparently had left Radigan undisturbed. Radigan had grown
up around the camps of Michigan loggers before coming west to Texas, and he had served
a postgraduate course in fist-fighting among the freighters and the riverboatmen.
Few cowhands of the seventies knew anything about fist-fighting. Arguments were settled
with guns and fists rarely used, hence Barbeau's victories had been won over men
to whom fist-fighting was completely foreign. To Radigan fist- and skull-fighting
had been a way of life from boyhood into young manhood. He had lost fights, but he
had won many more, and Barbeau had none of the rough skill to which he was accustomed.
Barbeau rushed again, trying to grapple with Radigan, but the rancher gave ground
suddenly and the overbalanced Barbeau fell forward. Grabbing Barbeau by the collar,
Radigan jerked him forward over his own extended leg and hurled him to the floor.
Barbeau lay on his back, staring up at Radigan from dull eyes.
Then slowly lie started to get up, and Radigan backed off to give him room. When
Barbeau was on his feet, Radigan walked
42
 38 Louts L'ANIOUR
in, feinted, and hit the heavier man in the belly. Filled with tea, Barbeau backed
up, gasping and gulping, overcome with nausea. He backed away, lifting a hand to
ward Radigan off. He was battered, bloody and beaten, and he knew it.
Radigan picked up his gun and dropped it into his holster. Coker was sitting on the
floor holding his head in both hands. "I don't want trouble," Radigan said, "but
I won't run from
it.
He turned to face Angelina Foley. Her face was white, her eyes hard with anger.
"I doubt if you realize what that Vache Creek country is like," he said, "but if
you want to come up with one man, and I'd suggest Ross Wall, who is a cowman, I'll
show it to you. Most of it is over seventy-five hundred feet above sea level, and
it is the most beautiful mountain country in the world. It is also one of the roughest,
coldest and has the most snow."
Downey was standing near the window. "Stage coming," he said.
Radigan put on his hat and walked outside. His knuckles were split and sore but he
felt good. It had been his first fist fight in a long time, and he was suddenly glad
he had put in much of the summer splitting rails for fences and cutting wood for
winter. Nothing like an ax or a crosscut saw to put a man in shape.
He remembered Thorpe. With him such a fight might be different, for Thorpe was no
Barbeau, and despite the fact that he looked the fashionable young man there were
shoulders on him, and there was something about the lean savagery of his face that
was a warning. Also, when they had first met he had noticed scars on the man's knuckles.
The door closed behind him and he turned to see Angelina Foley looking at him. Her
gaze was cool, curious, and, for the first time, almost respectful. "Would you have
struck me?" she asked curiously.
He had never struck a woman in his life, but he looked at her as if surprised by
the question. "Why, of course," he said. "I meant what I said."
"You're no gentleman, Mr. Radigan!"
He grinned at her. "No gentleman would have a chance, dealing with you. You'd tease,
flatter, maybe cry. You'd pet him, lie to him, cheat him. Well, you can cry for me
or pet me,
43
 RADIGAN 39 but you'll never do the rest. Try cheating me and I'll spank your little
bustle."
Her eyes held a challenge. "We may be on opposite sides, but you're a man, and I
like you. You may call me Gelina." "You're a beautiful, desirable woman," he said,
"but I wouldn't
trust you across the street. Before this is over you'll hate me more than you ever
hated any man, but seriously, take my advice and leave now. This fight will exhaust
everything you've got and leave you nothing."
She smiled. "You have one man working for you, Mr. Radigan. I have thirty. I think
I'll win."
He nodded seriously. "But I have something else working for me. The most dangerous
ally a man could have-the weather. What will you do with your cattle when the ground
is three to six feet deep in snow and no feed anywhere?"
The stage rolled to a stop and the cloud of dust that had pursued it now caught up
and drifted over it, settling on the horses and around them.
Radigan watched the driver climb stiffly down from the box, his face red from the
chill wind. Hickman had followed him out, and Downey was opening the door to help
the passengers down. Radigan shifted his weight and a board creaked under his feet.
Looking across the stage he gazed toward the distant mountains, and then a girl got
out of the stage and the easy banter stopped as if cut with a knife. Whatever Tom
Radigan had expected it was not this.
Under a perky little bonnet her eyes were guileless and blue, her face was that of
an innocent child but her body was such that no clothing could conceal the lines
of her figure. He caught his breath, half-hypnotized as she came up the steps. He
was aware that everyone on the walk was staring, and aware she was thoroughly enjoying
it.
She turned to Downey and said, "I am looking for Mr. Child or Mr. Radigan, of the
R-Bar."
Downey started to speak but his lips found no words. In this land of few women there
was nothing in his experience that prepared him to cope with this emergency. He stared
and his lips parted and then he dumbly indicated Radigan.
She turned to him and surveyed him gravely out of large blue eyes. "You're not my
father," she said, "so you must be Mr. Radigan."
44
 40 LOUIS L"AMOUR
Her eyes went past him to Gelina Foley. "Is this your wife?" Radigan chuckled. "No,
ma'am, this is my enemy, Miss Gelina Foley."
She looked at Gelina with a thoughtful expression. "I think she's my enemy," she
said. "She likes you."
Hastily, Radigan said, "Gretchen-that is your name isn't it?-can you ride?"
"I can ride anything that wears hair," she said, "but I'll have to change my dress."
She glanced quickly at Gelina. "Do you like her?" she whispered audibly.
Gelina's face flushed and deliberately she gathered her skirt and descended to her
buckboard where Bitner was waiting to help her in. Without a backward glance, they
drove away. Inwardly she was fuming. Why! That ... that baggage!
Angrily, Gelina flounced in her seat. The very idea! Why, that girl was no more than
a child! And with a body like that! Accustomed to the attention of men, she realized
jealously that from the moment that girl had gotten out of the stage nobody had so
much as looked at her.
Her anger, she realized, was unreasonable. She sat back in the buckboard and began
to plan. They must move at once, and she would run them out of the country. They
would not wait any longer. After all, there were but two men there, and they could
not be on watch all the time and still do the things that had to be done.
Her brows gathered. He had spoken of snow. Involuntarily she glanced at the dull
sky. But that was nonsense. It never grew very cold here, this was New Mexico. Nonetheless
the leaden sky depressed her, and without knowing why she was increasingly worried.
Remembering what Radigan had said, she began to wonder just what it was Harvey Thorpe
had in mind-it was he who had insisted they come here. But leaving Texas was imperative,
and this was the only property to which they had claim. And it should take only a
few days to be rid of Radigan.
Yet even as she thought that she remembered the cool, masterful, almost easy way
in which he had beaten Barbeau. She had rarely seen a man whipped more thoroughly.
And Vin Cable was dead-there had been four bullet holes in his body.
It was not going to be as easy as Harvey believed. Suddenly, she was glad Ross was
along.
45
 RADIGAN 41
Gretchen Child returned from Downey's home where she had met Mrs. Downey, a buxom,
motherly Irish woman, and where she changed her clothes. She now' wore a neat gray
riding habit and whatever the dress had left to imagination the habit revealed. Uncomfortably,
Radigan was aware that she would be unlikely to find anything that would make her
look less exciting than she was.
As if, he reflected grimly, the Thorpe-Foley trouble was not enough!
He helped her into the saddle but she really needed no help. He saw at a glance that
whatever else she might be she was at home in a saddle.
"You'll not be able to stay at the ranch," he warned. "It won't be safe."
"I trust you," she said.
Hastily, he explained. "I didn't mean that. We've a range war on with those people
back there. A shooting war, I think." "I saw your knuckles. Has the war started?"
She looked at
him seriously. "I'm strong. I can work, and I can use a gun. I'm really strong."
She held out her arm, doubled to make a muscle. "Just feel of that."
46
 I
THREE
The cattle came first. They came up the canyon on the third day after Radigan's return
with Gretchen Child, and they
came in a solid mass, hurried on by a dozen cowhands. Obvi ously they had been driven
up the canyon earlier and held at the cienaga
during the night.
The cattle came first and they came fast. Radigan was putting a little feed in the
makeshift corral hidden among the fallen rocks from the weathering of the mesa when
he heard Child yell.
He heard him yell, heard a shot, and he dropped the pitch fork and came running.
He shot the first steer into the yard, but a glance told him there was no stemming
that tide of beef and he ducked into the house after John and slammed the door, dropping
the bar into place. Almost before he could reach the window the yard was crowded
with cattle.
Child rested the muzzle of his Winchester on the sill of the window beyond the door
and glanced over at Radigan. "Smart," he said, "mighty smart. We're not supposed
to get out."
A big steer was pressed tight against the door, and others were so close to the windows
that Radigan could have reached out and scratched their backs. The ranch yard was
jammed full of steers pressed in a compact mass. Beyond them, to left and right,
the herd was spreading out in loose formation, but those in the yard were held tight
by a circle of cowhands and tight drawn ropes. The cowhands were out of sight behind
the barn or in other concealment.
"Hi, the house!" The voice was the booming one of Ross Wall. "You want to get out,
toss your guns out the window!" Child glanced at Radigan but he motioned for silence.
Sev
eral minutes passed. After the first few minutes of realization Gretchen had calmly
returned to her housework, putting a 42
47
 RADIGAN 43 meal on the table as though there was no enemy within miles. Yet Radigan
noted she wore riding boots and a rough skirt she was ready to go.
Wall did not know about the tunnel, and that was what would save them. Nobody knew
about that but John Child, and obviously somebody in town had told Wall or Thorpe
or both of the fact that the ranch house had but one entrance.
And without the tunnel they would have been helpless, for there was no escape from
the house except by the tunnel, for driving the beef into the yard had imprisoned
them just as surely as if walled with stone. They could kill the beef, but if they
did they would then be killed themselves and no one would say they were killed without
cause.
"If you want to eat," Gretchen said, "it's ready."
"Go ahead, John. You sit down. I'll take mine here at the window. "
"Hello, the house!" It was Wall again. "Radigan, I know you're in there, and you
haven't a prayer! Throw us your guns and we'll let you out!"
They would get the house, but at this time of year hoping to move in themselves,
they would not burn it. Living in the hills would be rough but they could stand it
for a short time, at least. Keeping well back away from the window, Radigan con sidered
the situation.
Long ago he had planned for just such an emergency, but he had expected the trouble
from the Utes. He had built for defense, but had planned for abandoning the place
if it became necessary. Here, as at the barn, there was another way out, but the
way out of the house was through a tunnel that opened in thick brush at the foot
of the mesa near where the horses were picketed. It was not far behind the house,
and it was unlikely anyone would examine the talus slope at the mesa's foot. To the
casual eye it looked like a thousand other such slopes at the base of a thousand
such mesas.
There was no way they could get at the house from the rear so it was unlikely anyone
would find reason for checking that slope.
He could hear the murmur of voices from beyond the cattle. Obviously, the fact that
no reply came from the house was disturbing to them, for there is no bargaining with
a man who won't talk.
48
 44 Louis L'AMOUR
Gretchen brought coffee to the window, keeping well out of line. Radigan smiled at
her. "You walked right into trouble. I'm sorry."
"Will we have to leave here?" "Yes. "
"We will need blankets and warm clothes," she said. "I'll get them ready."
He watched her as she walked away, amazed anew at the calm with which she accepted
the situation. He glanced out the window again ... they had to stall until after
dark, for the chance of escape in daylight was less ... all was quiet. The cattle
were jammed tight and held there, pressing against the door.
Ross Wall hunkered down beside the fire, spreading his cold hands to the flames.
"He's there, all right. No way he could get out. I talked to a man down to San Ysidro,
man helped build this place and he swears there was only one door. Small house like
that, there's no need for another."
Thorpe squatted beside the fire and rolled a cigarette. "We've got to get him out
of there. If he's got grub he could spend the winter there. "
Wall looked around gloomily. "He sure didn't tell no lies about grass. If this is
all there is we can't hold the herd on it for a week."
"There's more."
Wall hunched his heavy shoulders under his coat. The more he saw of the situation
the less he liked it, and from all he could see the' ranch looked like a two-man
operation, and if it started to snow ...
"I better start some of the men scouting for grass. If we don't find some we'll have
to drive out of here."
"Are you questioning my judgment?"
Ross Wall rolled his quid in his big jaws. "You said the grass was here, an' Miss
Foley took your word for it. I hope you're right."
"It's here. "
Harvey Thorpe looked around slowly. The open space before the mesa did not look as
large now as it had when empty of cattle, and despite himself he was worried. There
was other grass back in the hills, but where was it? He had expected to find well-marked
trails and he could find no trails at all. From
49
 RADIGAN 45 the appearance of things this was all there was to the R-Bar, yet people
at San Ysidro and others at Santa Fe had said Radigan ran several hundred head on
land that would support several thousand.
"All right," Thorpe said finally, "send out a couple of men." He studied the house.
"There's smoke from the chimney, but it looks like a dying fire. "
"Well-built house. They would need little fire."
It was growing colder. Ross Wall looked at the sky. He was a tough, hardheaded man
who rode for the brand; an order from Angelina Foley was all he asked from anyone.
He was the perfect feudal henchman, and as he had served her father so he now served
her, and she was, he thought with satisfaction, a whole lot smarter than her father.
Her father would have stayed in Texas and fought it out when there wasn't a chance
of winning, but Angelina knew when to cut and run, and what to take with her when
she did. They had rustled her herds so when she left she simply drove off everything
in sight.
Personally, he thought Radigan correct in his suggestion to sell off the cattle,
especially the doctored brands, of which there were too many for comfort. Holding
the herd was proba bly Thorpe's idea, but a man did not always know where the ideas
originated, for Angelina had a way of attributing ideas that were actually hers to
someone else.
He poked a stick into the fire. There was not much time. They had to get Radigan
out of there, but without a killing if possible. Ross Wall held no objections to
killing when every other way had been tried, or when necessity demanded, but killings
had a way of stirring things up, and a man like Radigan might have many friends.
He had not seen the beating Radigan had given Barbeau, but he had seen Barbeau afterwards
and from all accounts it had been a thorough and artistic job, and it had left Barbeau
a silent, hard-working man with all the bully knocked out of him for the time. Nothing
he had seen of Radigan allowed him to believe that moving the man would be a simple
task. He did not believe with Coker that one fast, hard-shooting rush would do it-the
man inside the house was intelligent and a fighter.
Wall had been impressed with Radigan's manner-he did not seem to believe himself
outnumbered, nor did he hesitate to handle a fight when it came to him. A hard man
and a
50
 46 Louis L'AMoUR
fighter himself, Wall recognized the same traits in his antago nist and respected
them. Nonetheless, he had a job to do and the look of the sky bothered him.
Born in Vermont he had come west as a child, but there lingered a memory of mornings
at home when his father would come in from the barn coated with snow, and when long
icicles hung from the eaves. Those winters had been cold, with a deep, penetrating
cold, and men had been frozen to death in some of those winters. This was New Mexico,
and he had always thought of it as a warm and pleasant place, which it was, but they
were high now and the chill in the air worried him.
Everything either Thorpe or Angelina had was tied up in that herd. Behind there was
nothing but enmity and shambles, and the rustled cattle forbade their ever returning
to Texas. Their only chance for survival lay right there, digging in fast. Yet he
wished they would sell the herd and not gamble.
He looked down at the thick, hard-knuckled hands he held over the fire. He was forty
now, no youngster by Plains stan dards, and he had worked twenty years for the Foley
outfit. The Old Man had been a pirate, but a genial one, and in a period of ranching
and free branding he had become rich, but he made enemies along the way, and tried
to take in more territory than he'd a right to.
Angelina was smarter than her father, and cooler. When he thought about Angelina,
Ross Wall worried. She was too cold, too shrewd, and she used her beauty as some
men use a gun. Harvey Thorpe now . . . Ross had never made up his rind about Harvey.
The Old Man married Harvey's aunt and Har vey had always lived with her, and for
a few years Harvey had been the Old Man's shadow. Then he drifted away, and not much
was known about those years, but when he returned he played a smart hand of poker,
and he could use a gun, and once, when Ross happened on Harvey when he was changing
his shirt, Ross saw bullet scars on his side-but Harvey had said nothing about them.
The feud broke and the Old Man was killed. Harvey had acted fast. Ross never knew
exactly what happened but the man that killed the Old Man was shot to death at close
range in his own doorway, and when his son ran around the house, Harvey had killed
him, too.
The fighting had been sporadic for several years, but the
51
 RADIGAN 47 men Harvey gathered around him were fighters rather than punchers and
the ranch deteriorated while attention was given to fighting a feud they could not
win, and along with it came lawless acts perpetrated by some of the men Harvey brought
in. There came a time when it had ceased to be a feud with other families and had
become a community matter, and word came to the ranch that vigilantes were being
organized by the solid people of the community to act if the Rangers failed-and they
had been sent for.
Flight followed, and a wholesale sweep of all the cattle they encountered in moving.
Ross liked none of it, but about some of those cattle there was a question of title
so he had gone along. And now they were here, and inside that house was a tough man
who had to be dislodged and they could not burn him out.
He drew back his warmed hands and rolled a smoke. All through the Texas trouble he
had left the fighting to Thorpe and had worked to preserve the ranch, without hands
enough and without money enough. While gunhands loitered about the ranch or swaggered
it in saloons, the water holes were trampled into mud, cattle died bogged down in
swamps and fences torn down that allowed cattle to stray into the breaks when not
actually rustled.
Of the hands he now had only six or seven were good punchers. The others were fighting
men, gunhands like Barbeau and Coker or men he suspected of cold-blooded murder like
Leach.
One thing Radigan said had stuck in his mind. The remark had been passed on to him
by one of the hands. By Bitner, in fact. Radigan had said cattle could be handled
on this range with few men: if that were so he might get rid of this lot they now
had. Huddled near the fire, he considered that, and wondered how far he might go
without trouble with Thorpe, for it was he who wanted such men about. He wanted to
be rid of Coker, most of all. And after him, that troublemaker Barbeau who had driven
two of his best hands to quit.
Ross Wall got to his feet. "Going to look around," he said, to no one in particular.
Thorpe did not even look up as Wall walked away, but in his mind Wall was thinking
of something that had just come to him. He could be rid of Coker, and be rid of him
without
52
 48 LOUIS L AMOUR
trouble with Thorpe. The men inside that house were good men with guns, and if Coker
happened to get into an exposed position when the shooting started ...
Angelina Foley came up the canyon at daybreak in the buckboard and left her rig at
the foot of the promontory. From there she rode on up the trail on a horse provided
by Wall. The cattle were still jammed tight against the door and the chimney trailed
a smoke into the still morning sky. Both Wall and Thorpe sat beside her and looked
at the bunched cattle. Few of them had been able to reach water or grass and they
were bawling and restless.
She shivered in the early morning air and looked enviously at the trail of smoke
coming from the warm, well-built house. Then she turned her eyes from the house and
surveyed the area with puzzled eyes. "Harvey," she said, "you told me there was grass
here, grass for thousands of cattle."
"He's got several hundred head somewhere," Thorpe replied. "There are valleys around.
We'll find them."
"Have you looked?"
"No luck so far," Wall told her. "I've had two men scouting the country but so far
not even a trail has turned up."
She looked at the house. "Can't we get them out of there?" "We can," Wall said reluctantly,
"but we'd have to kill Radigan. Might stir up more trouble than we want."
"Those cattle need water," she told them. "Drive them off. I'm going up to the house."
From inside the house Radigan watched the riders come down and watched them move
the cattle away. When they were gone, Angelina Foley started for the house. Cautiously,
Radigan opened the door. "Always nice to have guests," he said, "get down and come
in."
As she entered the door Ross Wall and Thorpe started for ward, and Radigan put a
bullet into the dirt at their horses' feet. "You stay back," he said, loud enough
for them to hear, we don't want to hurt anybody."
He glanced at John Child who moved to the window with his Winchester.
She stopped inside the doorway and glanced around, sur prised at the neatness of
the small but compact house, the shining copper kettles, the swept floor, and the
inside pump, a rarity anywhere in the West of the period. It was a warm,
53
 RADIGAN 49 friendly, comfortable house, and for an instant her eyes met those of
Gretchen.
This was the girl she had seen arrive on the stage, the one who had so angered her.
She looked like a lovely young girl now in her simple cotton dress, standing beside
the wide fireplace.
"Will you sit down?" Gretchen suggested. "The coffee is hot."
Radigan seated her with all the formality of a gentleman at a fashionable dinner,
and Gretchen brought a steaming cup of coffee to the table and a plate of doughnuts.
"You live well here," she said to Radigan. "I'm sorry you have to move."
"We like it here," he commented, ignoring her remark, "and we've learned how to live
with the country."
"I don't see much grass," she said. "I confess I believed it to be range country."
"You'll find much that you don't expect," he assured her. "I've seen snow to the
eaves of this house. Sometimes in the winter we have to open a tunnel to the barn
so we can feed the stock."
She was frankly incredulous, but he continued. "It makes me wonder who could convince
you that you wanted to live here, or that you could ranch here. I think there is
more behind this than appears on the surface."
"The land is mine," she said, "and that is the only reason we came. "
"About that," he tried his coffee and put it down hurriedly. It was much too hot.
"Your claim is based on an Armijo grant, and he had no authority to grant land to
anyone, nor did he ever have title to this land. This was part of an original grant
by the King of Spain, ratified later by the government of Mexico, and still later
by the government of the United States.
"It was for years considered useless land, too far from any thing and of no immediate
use, so I moved in, looked it over, and bought out the original grant. You could
have learned in Santa Fe that I have legal title to thirty-six sections in this area.
Your grant is not and never was worth anything at all, and whatever your father gave
for it has been lost. I am sorry, but those are the facts. In court you would never
have a chance."
54
 50 Louis L"AMOUR
She was coldly furious but her expression did not change, yet within her there was
a sudden emptiness. Had her father never managed one successful thing? And why had
Harvey not discovered this? Why had he not known about the scarcity of grazing land?
Yet there was no turning back. There was no way back at all. She could sell her herd-yes.
But the cattle were a strong argument in her favor, and an outfit moving into a country
with a herd automatically garnered some degree of respect. There was no turning back.
She looked up at him and smiled. "I wish we could settle this peacefully, Mr. Radigan,
but you may be sure the case will never go to court. It will be settled right here-now."
She had finished her coffee. Abruptly, he got to his feet. "If that is the case,
we're wasting time," he replied brusquely. "We've nothing further to discuss. I am
giving you one hour to get your cattle and outfit off my land."
Angelina did not move. She lifted her cup and smiled at him, a radiant smile. "I
am sorry we are enemies," she said. "I'd hoped we could be friends."
"We can still be friends," Gretchen suggested. "Move your cattle away and find a
ranch of your own and then come back and see us. "
11 'Us?' " she quoted. "Well!" Angelina got to her feet. "I was not aware that you
had become a partner in Mr. Radigan's ranch. Or," she glanced meaningly from one
to the other, "have you already established a claim?"
Gretchen's face grew pale, then flooded with color. "I have no claim," she replied,
"only my father is loyal to Tom Radigan and I hope I shall be."
Angelina walked to the door. "You will be," she said. "I have no doubt of it."
She went outside into the cold air and for a minute she stood still, fuming inwardly.
That-that little! Then she swung into the saddle. All right then, Harvey knew how
to do it. Yet even as her decision was made she kept seeing the way Radigan's dark
hair curled around his ears, and the grave thoughtful expression of his eyes.
And soon he would be dead .. . killed.
No matter. He had had his chance. And there was no other way. She kept telling herself
that.
Harvey Thorpe hunched his shoulders against the cold, and
55
 RADIGAN 51 glanced irritably at the gray sky. "You're sure there isn't another door?"
"I looked. There was only the one." "What do you think, Ross?"
Wall shifted his weight in the saddle. "We can do it, but we're going to lose men.
No use trying it from behind. A man coming off that rock slope would get himself
shot to doll rags."
Thorpe looked at the house. They could move into the barn and shoot into the house
through the windows, but it wasn't going to be easy. Radigan was apparently set for
a siege. "We've got it to do," he said.
"Coker's a good man with a gun," Wall suggested. "If we could get Coker and Barbeau
where they could cover the windows, we might make it too hot for them to stay in
there." "All right," Thorpe swung his horse, "let's take it."
Ross Wall moved swiftly. The cattle were driven into the bottoms and held in a loose
herd by four men, and the others climbed into position where they could fire upon
the house. Three men occupied the barn and two moved into the corrals, and there
was no firing. Coker he placed among the trees to the right of the house, Barbeau
to the left.
Angelina rode back down the hill and dismounted near the fire. She extended her hands
toward the flames, watching Bitner, who had remained by the fire for the time being.
"You've seen him. What do you think about him?" she asked.
Bitner glanced at her out of his tough, cynical eyes. "You never seen a cattle war,
ma'am," he said. "This here shapes up like a first-rate one. Man never knows when
one starts as to how it will end, or where. Yes, I've seen him close up, and he ain't
no bargain. That there Radigan is a grizzly bear from way back in the up hills. He'll
take some killin' an' when he dies he won't go by himself. I hired on for fightin'
wages. Ma'am, I reckon we'll earn 'em."
"There's only two men."
"Two. Ain't many, is it? But they're forted up, an' they know how to fight." He stirred
the fire and piled on some dried wood. "Two men can make a fight of it, and that
Radigan's a fighter from who flung the chunk."
A rifle shot came to them. It was Coker who had fired, and they could see the smoke
from his position, although they could not see the house. "Coker," Bitner said. "He's
quick on the shoot."
56
 52 LOUIS L'AMOUR
There was no other sound for several minutes and Angelina listened the echo away,
thinking of what it might mean. Men might die-but men had died before. A dozen had
died in the feud from which they had just come, and several more disap peared or
wounded.
The shot fired by Coker struck the window sill and ripped a gash. It was a wooden
sill laid on the rock of the house. Radigan glanced at it and waited. He was in no
hurry. There was no sense shooting until somebody gave him something to shoot at.
Gretchen, under his orders, was making up three packs of food. Blankets had already
been cached, but each would take one along and a ground sheet. No telling where all
they would camp.
A bullet shattered glass and imbedded itself in the ceiling. John Child shifted a
little, then fired suddenly. Barbeau jerked back, swearing. There was a burn across
his shoulder that stung like fire and he felt a trickle of blood down his back. It
was only a break in the skin, but he felt a sudden chill. These men could shoot.
All afternoon there was sporadic fire with no harm on either side. Harvey Thorpe,
nested down among some boulders, stud ied the house irritably. Not more than four
shots had come from the house ... either they had little ammunition or they were
careful. Barbeau had been scratched, and Coker had a boot heel shot off. Twice shots
had come dangerously close to Wall.
The packs were completed and placed near the tunnel door. Child had been out through
the tunnel and had fed corn to the hidden horses. He was worried, and stayed with
them for some time. Sooner or later somebody was going to try circling behind the
house and if they did they would be sure to find the horses. There was little concealment
back there, and on much of the talus slope a man would be exposed to fire from below
with no cover at all.
When darkness came Radigan slipped outside and waited against the wall of the house
with a six-gun. He was sure an attempt would be made to creep under the windows and
lie against the wall for quick shots through the windows. He wanted to be ready.
Seated with his back against the wall, Radian waited.
57
 RADIGAN 53 The air was cool, not as cold as it had been, and the dryness
seemed gone from the night. A faint wind stirred the pines and out in the stable
a horse stomped.
He saw a faint movement near the wall of the barn and the corral corner. And then
the man came, bent low and running in his sock feet. Radigan stood up, the darkness
of his body merging with the darkness under the wide eaves of the house. The man
came up, running quietly, and failed to see Radigan until too late. The gun barrel
swept down in an arc and caught the man behind the ear. He slumped, tried to straighten,
and Radigan hit him again. He went down then, and lay still. Using some rawhide piggin
strings, carried by every cowhand for the purpose of tying a calf's hoofs together
after it had been roped and thrown, Radigan tied the man up nicely, and then gagged
him with a chunk of old sacking.
The man on the ground groaned, and tried to move. "You take it easy," Radigan advised
in a whisper. "It won't do you any good to wear yourself out. You lie still and maybe
I won't slug you again."
A slow hour passed and nothing happened. Then a second man started from the barn,
and Radigan saw him coming. He came with a rush, and evidently the prisoner heard
him for he grunted loudly and tried to call out. The oncoming man slid to a halt
and his gun came up. Radigan dropped to one knee and when the man fired, he replied
instantly, and just as quickly, hit the ground and rolled. Over his head bullets
thudded and smacked into the house and the bench at the door.
"You try that again," Radigan said to the prisoner, "and you'll get yourself killed
by your own outfit."
An hour went slowly by, and Radigan crawled to the door and scratched his signal
to come in.
Gretchen was beside him instantly. "Tom, Tom, are you hurt?"
"Just hungry."
"You got one," Child said. "I saw him get it." "And a prisoner."
Radigan sat at the table and drank coffee in the dark. There was food on the table,
and when he had eaten he carried a cup of coffee to the window and drank it while
eating a doughnut. "All right," he said finally. "It's time."
The stars were out when they reached the horses. It took
58
 54 Louis L'AmOUR
them only a minute or two to saddle up. Child strapped on the packs and they led
the horses off the slope into the trees. In the next few minutes they would know
if they were going to make it without being discovered.
The trail led close along the mesa and with Child in the lead and Radigan as rear
guard, they worked their way along under the trees and away from the house. When
they had gone a quarter of a mile they got into their saddles and rode away.
Nobody talked, nor felt like talking. Behind them was the warm comfort of the ranch
house and before them lay the forest, the night and the cold. No telling how long
it would be before any of them slept under a roof again-if they ever did.
They rode west ... and there was no trail. They rode west into the somber darkness
of' the forest, and only occasionally could they see the stars. It was cold . . .
a wind from off the high peaks whispered the pines, moved restlessly, making violins
of the pine needles, moaning low among the rocks and across the waste spaces above
the timberline.
Tom Radigan moved into the lead, for only he knew where they now went, and in the
darkness where there was no trail, and where all landmarks had mysteriously disappeared
into a common darkness, he led on, knowing his way along the slope of the mountain
and finding the openings among the trees as if guided by some mysterious thread.
From behind there came no sound as the besiegers waited for daylight. Two men had
advanced to attack, and two men had disappeared, one surely dead and the other vanished.
In silence they would be watching the dark house, worried, uncer tain, angry.
How long would it be before they knew the house to be empty? Hours, perhaps. And
every minute a minute of advan tage. In these hills Tom Radigan knew it would take
a lot of searching to find him-or an accident. It was like him that he did not discount
the possibility of accident.
They might have held out at the house, yet if' their horses were discovered there
would be no escape at all, and it was always better to be mobile than to be pinned
down by the enemy. Yet he did not retreat to escape, he retreated to be able to choose
his own time for attack. The battle had been joined now and the time for negotiation
was past. Whatever might have been done to avert the fight was now in the past. A
man was dead ... .
59
 RADIGAN 55 An hour they rode, and then they emerged from the trees on
a vast slope, dotted here and there with the night black clumps of aspen, and they
still rode west with the vast black bulk of the mesa on their right, towering five
hundred feet into the sky above them. They rode in silence with only the wind for
company and the ragged shadows of sentinel pines for lookouts. Radigan paused once
and let the other two ride up beside him. "How're you coming?" he asked Gretchen.
"All right, Tom. I can ride all night and all day if you like." "Good girl."
John Child was silent. The moon was up now and the stars faded into its greater light.
Only on the horizon were there clouds.
"We're turning north." Radigan pointed west and, south with a sweep of his hand.
"See that line of mesas? They look like a fleet in battle formation. Well, they point
our way north. I think we'll bed down somewhere in the breaks south of Nacimiento
Peak."
As the crow flies they had covered no more than three or four miles, although the
ground distance was twice that. Now, turning north with the distant, towering peak
as guide, they rode again without a trail, riding in single file. Occasionally they
were in forest, but much of the distance on long slopes with clumps of aspen and
brush.
They traveled slowly for the terrain was unfamiliar even to Child and Radigan. Both
men had ridden over it by day, but at night nothing looks the same, and there were
no landmarks they remembered. Moreover, their activities had largely cen tered on
the other side of the mountain, east of the ranch. On their left the land fell away
in a long slope toward the valley of the Rio Puerco, but this was offthe R-Bar range,
and out of the territory where their cattle usually strayed.
The night was still. Several times Radigan drew up and listened for any sound of
pursuit, but there was no sound but the sound of the wind, always the wind.
Riding along the slope the ground suddenly fell away into a small basin almost filled
with a grove of aspen. In the midst of 'a horseshoe formation of aspen and boulders
there was a hollow away from the wind and a faint sound of trickling water. Radigan
pulled up. "We'll take a break. Have some coffee."
Child's saddle creaked as he swung down, and Radigan dis
60
 56 Louis L'AMOUR
mounted, reaching a hand up for Gretchen. Her hand was surprisingly strong as she
swung down.
"Tired?" "We've only started."
Despite the rain they found bark from the underside of a deadfall, and leaves in
the same place. There were dry branches under the trees, and in a minute or two a
small blaze was going. It was very small-a man could cover that fire with his hat-but
it was enough for coffee, and small enough to be unseen, sheltered as it was by the
low ground and the aspen.
Radigan went back into the darkness and located the spring. An owl went up out of
the brush with a whoosh
of sound and he dropped his hand to his gun, then grinned into the dark. He squatted
on his haunches and filled the coffeepot after tasting the water. It was cold and
fresh.
Only a trickle, it came out of some rocks and fell into a small basin before trickling
off down the slope.
Firelight flickered on the flanks of the horses and reflected from polished saddle
leather. Overhead a few stars sparkled, and Tom Radigan squatted on his heels and
looked across the fire at Gretchen. There was no sign of weariness in her, and she
looked excited and alive. Child caught his eye and grinned. "On the trail again,"
he said, "I wonder if 'a man ever gets away from it. "
It was cool and damp in the hollow, but the coffee was hot and tasted good. Suddenly
he felt exhilarated. All right, so they were in a fight, that Foley outfit weren't
getting any virgins if it was fight they wanted. He'd been through the mill and,
as for Child, that breed was as tough as they came. He'd been around and over the
country, and he'd be in there fighting when that bunch of flat-land punchers were
hunting them selves a hole.
Firelight danced with the shadows among the slender trunks of aspen. The leaves pattered
daintily in the brief' wind, and Radigan huddled his second cup of' coffee in his
hands and thought about what was coming, but when he thought of that he thought of
Angelina Foley. What was the relationship there? Foster brother? Or something more?
And why had they come here?
True, she had a claim on this land, even if one that would hold water in no court,
anywhere. But people who are doing
61
 RADIGAN 57 well do not often leave the place where they are. She had an outfit of
fighting men, and a foreman who was by all the signs a competent man, if 'a hard
one. So then, why would they leave? An outfit with as mans' cattle as they had was
in no trouble . . . unless they themselves had been driven off their range, or had
other trouble.
That might stand some looking into. But none of this need have happened if Deputy
Sheriff Flynn had taken a strong stand at the beginning, but now that it had begun
there was no telling when it would end. Many such a fight went on for years: like
that Sutton-Taylor fight, in Texas; it was not over even now.
When he had carefully put out their fire and smothered any coals remaining he did
what could be done to wipe out any evidence of it, placing an old branch over the
spot and holding up a handful of leaves to let them fall as they would over the ground
below. It would stand no careful check by a tracker, but to the casual eye, if they
came this way, it would offer nothing. Mounting up they rode on, pointing toward
the dark bulk of Nacimiento Peak. They made camp just after daylight at the fork
of Clear Creek back of Eureka Mesa.
They had ridden nearly twenty miles describing a rough half-circle around the ranch
area. At their camp they were a mere eight miles from the R-Bar ranch, but the trail
they had left would be difficult to follow. For several miles they had ridden across
bare rock, and Radigan had used several tricks, such as doubling back on their own
trail, following creek beds and the like, and twice he had them separate and make
sepa rate trails, later meeting at a chosen rendezvous up ahead.
Their camp was in a rocky gorge where water had hollowed caves from the canyon walls
and then had cut lower into the rock leaving the cave levels well above any possible
water. In one of these caves, screened by bushes and trees, they made their camp.
"You think they'll trail us? Or just settle down and enjoy themselves?"
"They won't enjoy themselves because we're going back. We're going to see what we
can do to make them want to be some place else."
Radigan got up and took his rifle. "I'll take first watch, John. And I'm going to
scout around a mite."
62
 58 Louis L'AvMOUR
It was growing light. Radigan took his Winchester and walked down through the rocks
to the mouth of the gorge. Ordinarily he would not have stopped in such a place,
but the canyon looked like a good hideout, and there was a chance that before the
night was over they would need the shelter the cave afforded. There was also an abundance
of driftwood for fuel. And small chance of the place being found. The brush growing
before the water-hollowed cave screened it so there could be no reflection on the
opposite wall of the canyon. Once away from the cave, it could scarcely be seen.
What about up the canyon? He glanced up thoughtfully, but took a way down the canyon
to see how much of the country could be seen.
The ranch was about eight miles due south and some of his cattle were not far from
here on the Penas Negras. In this area he knew every bit of the country south, and
much of it to the east. He remembered again some of the stories he had heard of those
canyons to the north. There were outlaws there, and renegade Indians, bronco Utes
mostly.
How long would they be stalled before they realized the house was empty? Had they
discovered it yet?
He walked down to the mouth of the canyon which ended in a great jumble of boulders,
many of them bigger than houses, solid chunks of rock tumbled together in grotesque
shapes. And there were cliffs and a thick pine forest.
With his field glass he searched the terrain to the south, studying it with extreme
care from the greatest distance to the closest. He picked up several deer, and once
a black bear, but nothing human. The view to the west was good, but there, too, he
could see nothing.
They would rest for a few hours, and he would make some plans. Despite their long
ride they were again within striking distance of the ranch, and he had no intention
of allowing the Foley outfit to get settled on the place. Fortunately, the horses
he had on pasture were not far from here, held in a small valley that served as a
corral with its sheer walls, plentiful grass and water. There were twenty-two head
of horses there, most of them wild horses Radigan had himself broken to the saddle.
Throughout the early part of the day they loafed and slept, and meanwhile Radigan
did some serious thinking. He was a tena cious thinker, who wrestled with an idea
until every detail was worked out, and now he realized that with the winter staring
63
 RADIGAN 59 them in the face the first thing they needed was a base of operations
that was warm, comfortable, and hidden from discovery.
Moreover, he had a few moves to make to render his own position secure. He anticipated
no assistance from Flynn, nor would there be any forthcoming from the authorities
in Santa Fe, although they would appreciate that right was on his side. But he intended
to appeal to both, and to get his case on record. These steps were merely to secure
his own position from attack by the law; the counterattacks he would make on his
own. He neither expected nor wanted the help of the law.
He finally dropped off to sleep and awakened suddenly to find the canyon filling
with shadows. The fire crackled and there was a pleasant aroma of coffee. Gretchen
sat by the fire watching him. John Child was still asleep.
Radigan sat up and scratched his head. "Have you slept at all?"
"I'll sleep later. Everything is all right. I took a walk around down the canyon,
but there was nothing in sight."
"You, 11 do to ride the river with," he said. "Did you learn that in a convent?"
"I learned that from Uncle John," she said, indicating Child. "He's as careful as
you."
"It's a way of life. And there's times when it is the only way if you want to live."
He rolled a smoke and lighted it with a twig from the fire. It was going to be a
cold night. "John told me the Indians wiped out your family."
"I remember so little . .. we seemed forever coming west that we lost track of time.
At least I did. Sometimes I thought the rumble of wagon wheels was the only sound
in the world, that and the wind; there was always the wind in the grass.
"There was my father and mother, and I believe there was an uncle . . . it's so hard
to remember. I had gone to the creek after some water with my father, and suddenly
we heard shoot ing and yelling. Oh, I was frightened! Father made me hide in some
willows and then he went to see what was happening, and I waited a long time and
then went to find him and the Indians saw me."
"They treat you all right?"
"Oh, yes! They were excited about any yellow hair, and they were kind. But they smelled
so funny, and I tried not to cry.
64
 60 Louis L'AMOUR
After that they made me work but they were nice to me and the Indian who found me
treated me like his own child." Radigan walked out into the canyon and, catching
a deadfall,
dragged it to within easy reach of the cave mouth. It would provide fuel for the
night. He walked up the canyon and gathered several large chunks and brought them
back to the fire. The rim of San Pedro Mountain was crested with gold from the setting
sun, and a deep rose lay along the flank of Nacimiento Peak. The sky was clear.
When he had saddled up he returned to the cave and accepted a cup of coffee. "No
time to waste," he said. "I want to get started before the light goes."
"Be careful." "That I'll be."
He went out to his horse and slid his rifle into the saddle scabbard. Gretchen had
followed him out. "Tom-be careful." A lost ray of sunshine caught her golden hair
in a web of gold light.
"Sure," he said, and reining the horse around he cantered down the canyon.
An hour later he was seated on the side of a rugged peak something over a mile from
the ranch, studying it with his field glasses. The cattle were standing about, and
a horse was tied at the corral. After a moment he saw a man come from the house with
a rifle. There was no other movement.
Then when some of the cattle moved he saw the faint flicker of a campfire at the
base of the promontory. Several dark figures moved about. Some of the cattle had
strayed up almost as far as his own position and he studied them thoughtfully. If
a stampede started . . . it was just a thought.
Darkness came suddenly and he came down off the slope and rode down among the cattle.
Drifting back and forth across the valley, which was narrow, he started the cattle
moving south. He worked slowly and with care, and a cold north wind helped. The cattle
turned their tails to the wind and drifted. By the time he was a quarter of a mile
from the fire he had at least two hundred head moving south. Suddenly he drew his
pistol. For an instant it lay across the pommel of his saddle as he watched the dark
figures of the plodding cattle, and then he fired and at the same time let go with
a wild Texas yell and spurred his horse into the cattle. They broke and ran with
two more shots and his wild yells to urge them on.
65
 RADIGAN 61 More than four hundred head were between his own group and the fire,
and they started with a lunge.
There was a wild yell and a shot from the fire and then it was blotted out by a surge
of bodies. The stampeding cattle swept over and beyond the fire and went charging
off down the canyon. From the house there was a shout and the slam of a door, and
then a pound of hoofs. Tom Radigan turned his gelding and walked it across the valley
and lost himself against the blackness of the trees.
Skirting the marsh, Radigan found the Cebolla Trail and followed it over the mesa
to the cluster of houses that marked the village.
At a house on the edge of town he drew up amid the yapping of dogs and when the house
door opened he said, "Pedro, it is Radigan."
The door closed and he heard the pad of bare feet coming toward him. "What is it
I can do, senor?"
"That black horse! I'll leave mine here." "Come!"
Pedro led the way to the corral and roped the black. When the saddle was shifted,
Radigan said, "Better hide my horse. These are not good men."
"Do you need help, Senor Tom?" "No, no help."
"There are men. At Loma Coyote there are men. Good men for the fight. If you wish
it I will ride there and they will come to you."
"No, not yet."
He rode south and camped that morning at a spot above San Ysidro. When he had slept
an hour the sun was up and he saddled up again and rode down into the town.
Downey was sweeping off the boardwalk in front of the stage station. Slowly, he straightened
up. "You're in trouble, Tom," he said. "I heard they ran you off."
"Did you?" Radigan tied the black to the hitching rail and straightened. He needed
a bath and a shave, and a good meal. Suddenly he realized how hungry he was. "I left
because I didn't want to be pinned down."
Flynn came around the building and stopped when he saw Radigan. The deputy sheriff
measured him carefully, and then said, "You leavin' the country?"
66
 62 LOUIS LAMMOUR "This is my home."
"I'd advise you to leave. You've lost your place, which means there's nothing to
keep you here."
"You've made up your mind then?" "What d' you mean?"
"You've chosen your side, is that it?"
Flynn's face seemed to flatten out and grow hard. "I've told you. You start anything
and I'll take you in."
Radigan measured Flynn carefully. "Don't try it, Jim. You've a wife and family. You
don't want trouble because you're afraid you'll lose all that. The day you try to
take me in, you've lost it."
Jim Flynn's jaw set, and slowly his feet shifted. And then he looked into Radigan's
eyes and suddenly everything within him
seemed to go still and cold. Radigan was not bluffing.
"Don't push me, Torn," he said, but even as he spoke there was certainty in him that
if he attempted to arrest Radigan he would be killed.
"The day you try to arrest me without cause, Jim," Radigan replied shortly, "that
day you'll die. I am in the right here, and it is you who've followed off a pretty
red wagon because it's new. I'm going over your head, Jim."
"What's that mean?"
"I've written to the governor, and to the sheriff. I have notified them of the situation
here. My certificates of title are registered in Santa Fe, and if you interfere in
this, except to run that Foley outfit off, you are an accessory after the fact of
a crime. "
Jim Flynn suddenly found himself with nothing to say. If Radigan had written to the
sheriff and the governor, and if Radigan was in the right, then his own job was not
worth a tinker's damn. At the same time he suddenly realized he had a strong distaste
for a gun battle with the man who had killed Vin Cable.
At the same time the letter gave him an out and he was quick to accept it. "All right,
I'll wait. I'll wait until I hear from the sheriff, and then I'll act, and if it's
you I come after, I'll take you."
Tom Radigan made no reply. He knew what had happened to Flynn and he sympathized
with him. What was it Sir Francis
67
 RADIGAN 63 Bacon had said, "He who hath wife and children hath given hostages to
fortune, for they are impediments to great enter prise."
Well, at least they made a man think.
Radigan went inside and accepted the drink that Downey poured for him.
"Breakfast?" "Sure." "You killed one of them?" "I think so."
"You did. They'll be in this morning, Tom. Some of them will be in."
"I'll think of that after breakfast."
He had written no letters, but now he did. He wrote the letters of which he had told
Flynn and he wrote one other. To a Ranger captain in Tascosa, and it was an inquiry
about the Foley-Thorpe outfit and their cattle.
He was on his second cup of coffee when Flynn pushed through the door. He walked
immediately to Radigan's table. "You want to fight the Foley outfit?"
"Are they coming?"
"They sure are, four or five of them."
He nodded briefly. "Thanks, Jim." He had started to get up and then heard the pound
of horses' hoofs and looking out the window saw the riders pulled up at the rail-five
of them.
"Too late!" Flynn said angrily. "Damn it, you're too late!" "I wanted some more coffee,
anyway," he said, and sat back down.
Flynn turned sharply around. "You can get out the back door! Quick!"
"I like it here."
Flynn stared at him, then started to speak. His mouth opened and then snapped shut
and he walked to the bar. "Give me a drink," he said hoarsely.
Radigan picked up the pot and filled his cup. Then he leaned back in his chair and
relaxed, watching the door.
Boots sounded on the boardwalk and somebody laughed. Then the door swung wide.
68
 FOUR
T he three cowhands who entered first were strangers to him, but the last two were
Barbeau and Bitner.
They bellied up to the bar laughing and talking loudly, and obviously unaware of
his presence. Whatever else the death of one of their number had done, it had not
depressed them to any appreciable extent. Radigan made no move, remaining at the
table, and watching them.
His trip into San Ysidro had been necessary. He wanted a final understanding with
Flynn, and that unavailing, to write letters to the governor and to the county sheriff.
Whatever was to come his own position must be legally secure. He anticipated no help
as a result of' the letters, but they did officially notify the authorities of what
was transpiring and that no help was forthcoming from Flynn. After that it would
be up to him, but they would have been notified of the situation and that he must
take steps to preserve his property.
Flynn remained at the bar, but the cowhands appeared not to notice him. Barbeau was
regaining some of his old truculence, and Bitner was, as always, a silent, morose
man; but, Radigan guessed, far more dangerous than Barbeau.
Where Radigan sat the room was in partial shadow, and from the bar his face would
not be readily visible. Even as he considered that, one of the cowhands glanced his
way, looked off, then taken by something threatening in the silent figure at the
table, he looked back. After a moment he whispered to the man next to him, and they
all looked around. The cheerful conversation at the bar was suddenly stilled. Flynn
straightened up and turned slightly toward them, and Bitner's attention was suddenly
on Flynn.
"Where d' you stand?" Bitner's tone was casual. "I'm the law. There'll be no trouble
here."
64
69
 RADIGAN 65
Barbeau laughed.
Tom Radigan had not moved. Now he slowly took up the makings that lay on the table
near his coffee cup and began to roll a smoke. He was waiting to see what Flynn was
going to do, but if trouble came, he knew he was going to kill Bitner first ... Bitner
was the most dangerous of the lot, but the three strange punchers all looked to be
tough, confident men.
Flynn persisted. "You boys have your drinks, then move along. You start any trouble
in town and I'll come for you." "He killed a man of ours."
"Maybe, but you heard what I said."
"And it don't make a bit of difference," Barbeau declared. "You can walk out of here,
Sheriff, or you can keep out of it. Don't make us no difference."
"I'm staying. You start trouble and you'll go to jail." "You'll take us?" Barbeau
scoffed.
"I'll take you," Flynn replied. "Now you, Barbeau, you want to make a fight of it?"
Barbeau hesitated. He was a fair hand with a gun, but Flynn had not become a deputy
sheriff for nothing, and he was not at all sure he wanted to gamble. Moreover, they
had orders to stay out of trouble in town.
Flynn walked in on Barbeau. "I've told you, Barbeau. Have a drink if you want it
and get out of town, but you'll start nothing here."
Barbeau hesitated and Bitner spoke up. "Let it go, Barb. Our time will come."
Shrugging, Barbeau turned toward the bar and Downey filled his glass. Radigan had
been watching Downey with interest. His right hand had remained below the edge of
the bar, and it was Radigan's hunch the shotgun was there. Radigan picked up the
pot and filled his cup.
He was in a dangerous position. Outside of town he would be fair game. Flynn, despite
the fact that he was deputy sheriff of the county, had practically said as much.
He would keep the peace here, but outside of town a man would have to fight his own
battles.
Yet the black horse bore no brand they knew, and they might suspect his horse was
stabled elsewhere. Radigan had a hunch they would go outside, check both ways out
of town, and wait for him, and common sense told him he had no reason
70
 66 Louis L'AMOUR
to buck the kind of a deck they would stack against him. He pondered the question
while he waited.
Downey came around the bar. "More coffee, Tom?" "Please."
They would be expecting him north of town, on the route back toward the ranch, yet
they would have a man or men at the trail that ran southwest out of town, too. There
was a point of rocks that came down to the trail a bit over a mile out of town, but
just this side of that point a dim trail, scarcely visible any more, left the main
road and went up through the rocks and cut back, climbing higher and higher toward
Pajarito Peak, but well this side of the peak there was a break in the long ridge
that divided that trail from the valley where San Ysidro lay.
If he could get out of town-if he could get to that trail-and if they let him leave
town, he'd have a chance, because the logical waiting point was at the point of rocks.
He finished his cigarette and drank the remaining coffee, and then the men walked
out of the saloon, and he was alone. "Thanks, Jim," he said.
"Don't thank me. I just don't want any trouble." "All right."
Radigan got up and walked to the bar and paid Downey, who dropped the money into
the cash drawer without glancing at it. "Watch yourself, Tom. They'll be waiting."
Radigan glanced out the window. Their horses were gone, but there was a man loitering
across the street and up a short distance.
Radigan grinned. "God have pity on the poor sailors on such a night as this!"
Downey said, "You'll do, Torn- only those boys want you." "Pack me a bait of grub,
will you? I may be in the hills a couple of days."
"That girl didn't get hurt, did she?" Downey asked.
"No. Lot of iron in that girl, Pat. She'll be around when the chips are cashed in."
He shrugged into his coat while Downey put the last of the bundle together. Radigan
was thinking of' all the buildings down the street. There were four on the right
side of the road, three on the left, and scattered houses back of that, lanes,
71
 RADIGAN 67 barnyards, stables. The Hansen house was on the left but back from the
road, and the idea came to him suddenly.
"See you." He walked out the door and closed it carefully behind him. He crossed
the walk as if going away from the saloon, then turned and stepped quickly into the
saddle on the black horse, swung abruptly around the saloon and behind it.
The action was swift and unexpected. The watcher across the street was caught flat-footed,
but instantly he dashed across the street. Before he could round the saloon, Radigan
rode from behind it and was across the street and behind a building there. He rode
down into the wash, came up through the trees, walking the black in soft sand to
make no noise. And then he rode directly for the Hansen place.
It was a big, old adobe with an upstairs gallery and it stood among some cottonwoods
with corrals and a barn behind it. The sun was high, and Radigan walked the black
along the trail, knowing the horse was unfamiliar and gambling nobody was apt to
be there who would know him. He walked the horse past the house and tied in among
some brush under the cot tonwoods beyond the house.
From inside the house he heard a pleasant soprano voice singing an old love song.
He listened for a moment, then rapped on the door. A breeze stirred the cottonwoods
and they chafed their leaves with soft whispering. The singing stopped and he heard
footsteps within. He shifted his weight and the floor boards creaked slightly, and
the door swung open.
Angelina Foley was quite obviously astonished. He removed his hat. "How do you do,
Miss Gelina? Are you receiving callers?"
Momentarily she hesitated, then she stepped back. "Come in. You startled me."
"Some of your men seemed to be in a fighting mood," he commented casually, "and I
thought I'd let them cool off a bit." He smiled. "And I thought it might he a good
time to get better acquainted."
"You're assuming that I wish to know you better?" "Don't you?"
"I'm not sure." She motioned to a divan. "You have your nerve, coming here."
"Can you think of a better place?" He relaxed on the divan. From where he sat he
could see the trail leading up to the
72
 68 LOUIS L AMOUR
ranch. "If one has to wait, why not where a man can talk to a beautiful girl?"
She waited, and he looked around the house. It was a roomy old place, cool, comfortable
and quiet, yet much had been done to change it. There were curtains in the windows
tonight, and a piano-how long since he had seen a piano outside of a barroom?
"You sing very well. Do you play?" "Of course."
"Will you?"
"Mr. Radigan, if you have any business with me, please state it. I have no intention
of playing for you, and I think it impudent of you to suggest it."
"It is all too rare when we hear music out here," he replied, his manner reflecting
no reaction to her evident impatience. "Especially old Italian folk songs."
"You know that song?" Her surprise was evident.
"We come from many places," he replied. "You'll find among Western men some who know
many things beside cows and range conditions." He paused. "Miss Gelina, I'm curious.
Why did you come here?"
"Because of the land I own," she replied coldly. "What other reason could there be?"
He shrugged, turning his hat in his hand. "I was wondering. Usually folks who have
a good working ranch and a herd the size of yours don't leave the place where they
are. I'm wonder ing why you left, and why you work a bunch of hands who handle guns
better than they do cows."
Angelina Foley glanced toward the door. She was alone here, with only the Mexican
woman cook for company, but she was thinking rapidly, trying to discover some method
of attract ing some of her hands back to this ranch. Radigan had guessed shrewdly
that this would be the last place they would think of looking, and moreover, every
remark he made gave greater reason for worry. This was no ordinary cowhand or cattleman.
"I wrote to the governor," he said.
She stiffened. "You what?"
"I wrote to the governor," he repeated. "They know me in Santa Fe, and I wanted them
to know what was happening here."
She was frightened, but she knew at once that they were in
73
 RADIGAN 69 real trouble. This was the last thing they had expected. When they prepared
to drive west out of Texas, Harvey had assured her there would be no trouble as they
not only had claim to the land to which they were going but the man squatted on it
would be eliminated before they arrived. She had suspected for some time that Harvey
had some further idea in the back of his head, some idea for going to the New Mexico
ranch. She had not inquired too much about that.
The move was essential. Her father had managed the ranch poorly, had spent too much
money, and had become involved in hopeless quarrels. It was due to her own quick
action and positive thinking as much as to Harvey that they had aban doned the hopeless
fight and moved to New Mexico. The trail they had left behind them was not a pretty
one, but due to Ross Wall they had brought the herd safely across the long, dry drive
and had left behind all pursuers-left them dead.
Now, if an inquiry began there would be immediate reper cussions from Texas.
Instantly she knew he must not guess her panic, and she saw that somehow she must
win him over or he must be killed. Or better yet, made to disappear. If he merely
disappeared there would be a period of waiting to see if he reappeared, and by that
time they would be settled on the ranch with friends of their own.
"It's too bad there is trouble between us." She got up and walked to the window,
and as she spoke her thoughts raced swiftly ahead, searching out a way through all
the nooks and crannies of possible solutions. "You're a strong man, Tom." "Just a
cattleman."
"No, far more than that. I wish we could have met under other circumstances. A girl
in my position, who has to run a ranch like a man, doesn't meet many men who are
of interest to her."
She was not, she reflected, just talking. Every word was the truth. She turned suddenly
and looked at him, seeing for the first time through the implication of her own words,
and realiz ing it was true: this was the man she should have met before this.
He was a handsome man. And without doubt a courageous one. There was nothing of Harvey
in him, Harvey who had an
74
 70 LOUIS L AMOUR
ulterior motive for everything, and who was always searching for some way to make
money without work.
She crossed the room to him. Over her shoulder he saw that the road was still empty.
"Tom, what do you want out of life? I mean, what are you working for?"
"I want to make that ranch pay. You have no idea what a job that is. I mean, you've
come here from a Plains state where the problems are tough enough, but you know the
answers to them, as I did. Up here one has to learn new answers, new ways. I'm cautious,
so I came with few cattle, and I worked particularly hard to keep them alive. By
the time I found the answers I'd managed to wet-nurse a small herd through two winters,
and by then I could branch out a little."
"Is it that hard?"
"Worse! You're welcome to come and see for yourself if you like." He gestured with
a quick dismissing wave of his hand. "Your folks probably think they've won, but
we left the ranch because we didn't want to be pinned down, and we aren't worried
because we know what will happen this winter. You'll lose that herd, lose everything
you've got. Your hands will quit because you have easy money hands, except for Wall,
and maybe a few others. Of course," he added, "you might be lucky. We might have
a good winter."
His words had the ring of truth and she was worried. The herd was all she had, and
if they lost it they would have nothing.
Sensing her doubt, he said, "Have you looked at that valley lately? You've had the
cattle on it for several days, and the grass is about gone. You've too many cows
for the range you can get."
He was the one they must be rid of, for once he was gone there would be no trouble
from John Child or that girl. The girl they could destroy by implication, and Child
would proba bly go down with her, or he could be tracked down and killed.
How to get Radigan? His appeal to the authorities frightened her, for it was the
one thing they had never expected and the one thing that could destroy them. Yet
if he disappeared, seemed to ride away on his own, then it would be a simple thing.
The whole affair would die down and their seizure of the ranch would be an accomplished
fact which a visit to Santa Fe by Harvey and herself would cement into finality.
Harvey
75
 RADIGAN 71 could be polished and ingratiating, and she knew what a beau tiful woman
could do to most men. With Radigan out of the way.
"Do we have to fight?" she protested. "I mean, do we have to be enemies?"
She came close to him. "Tom, I am sorry, I really am. Can't we end all this? You
must understand how I feel? After all, my father left the land to me, and it is all
I have of his."
"I'm sorry."
She looked up at him, making her eyes wide, her lips parted a little. "Tom, please!
We mustn't be enemies!"
He looked down at her and suddenly she felt he was laugh ing at her. He made no move
to take her into his arms, although the invitation was there, nor did he move away.
He just looked down into her eyes and said quietly, "We need not be enemies. I wish
it wasn't that way, so why don't you give up this notion and move away?"
She was furious. Her anger flashed wickedly for an instant, and then she drew back,
and smiled quickly, almost sharply at him. "No! I couldn't do that. It-it would be
almost a betrayal. Of my father, I mean."
She turned away from him and walked to the window. Glanc ing past her he saw the
road was still empty. Suddenly he was aware that she, too, was watching that road,
which meant she was either expecting or hoping for someone.
She knew she must stall, she must find some way to keep him from leaving until someone
came. She knew now there was no other way: he must be killed. Either killed here
or trailed until he could be killed elsewhere.
There was no doubt in her now, no hesitation. She was startled at that. It had been
one thing to agree to the killing of an unknown squatter, quite another to order
the slaying of a man she knew and with whom she had talked. Yet there was no desire
to wait, to think it out. If she was to own that ranch, Tom Radigan must be killed.
It was simple as that.
Her father had been the weak one. He got them into fights but always hesitated, moved
too slow, or talked too much. Those were mistakes she did not intend to make. This
was her land, and without it she was no one, and she had nothing. With it she could
hide the stolen cattle far back in those hard-to-find valleys where Ross Wall said
Radigan's cattle were, and if they
76
 I
72 Louis L"AMOUR
were trailed here, they could assume utter innocence and there would be no evidence.
Radigan picked up his hat. "I'll be going now." He was growing increasingly nervous.
There was no telling what a woman would do, and her men might be coming at any time,
and by now they would have given up the search close to town. He might make it to
the trail he wanted without being seen.
Desperately she tried to think of something to keep him, but he moved to the door
and stepped out onto the porch. As he did so she saw Barbeau, gun in hand, standing
by the porch, and she reached out quickly and grabbed Radigan's gun arm with both
hands, just as Barbeau's pistol came to bear on him. She grasped his arm with desperate
energy and fearful that he would draw a gun, she jerked him off balance just as Barbeau
fired.
The bullet smashed into the doorjamb, missing Radigan by inches, and he reached across
with his left hand and drew the Colt, flipping it around and firing just as Barbeau
got off his second shot.
Barbeau, worried for fear of hitting Angelina, and frightened because of his miss,
missed again by an even wider margin. And then Radigan's bullet slammed into him,
knocking him sidewise. Jerking free, Radigan sent Angelina staggering and sprang
off the porch.
Barbeau, shot through the shoulder, had dropped his gun. He was reaching for it with
his left hand when Radigan fired again. He had fired into Barbeau's body, but the
bullet hit the heavy buckle at an angle and glanced off, knocking the wind out of
Barbeau and tearing a wicked gash in his forearm, and then Radigan was around the
house and running for his horse.
A rifle fired from the house and he dove for the brush, falling on his hands as a
second bullet clipped brush ahead of him. He rolled over, catching a quick glimpse
of Angelina herself stand ing near the porch working the lever on the Winchester.
His roll had put him on hands and feet and he dove forward in a plunging run that
crashed him into the brush. Dodging quickly to change his line of travel he reached
the black. The horse was frightened and it was a wild minute before he could get
a foot into stirrup and swing to the saddle. Behind him another rifle shot cut the
brush and he heard running feet. Then the black
77
 RADIGAN 73 was running, heading toward the San Ysidro Trail, yet an instant later,
when the horse swung up on a slight rise he saw a dozen horsemen fanned out between
him and the trail, coming fast.
There was no hope for it. He swung the black on his hind feet and headed east at
a dead run.
There was another rifle shot as he swung past the ranch. And dead ahead of him, barring
his escape to the northeast, was the gigantic wall of rock that towered up in cliffs
fifteen hundred feet high: the cliffs themselves, he knew, were not that high, but
it was a climb up to them and hopeless when he got there. There were many convolutions
in those cliffs, but he knew there was no way up or through them.
The black was a fast horse and was running all out, but the black was not grain-fed
like his own horses and how much it could take he could not begin to guess. Behind
him the fanned out riders were bunching except for a couple who had contin ued to
ride due east, evidently to prevent any attempt at escape to the south, and to eventually
cut him off in the east.
Ahead of him a great promontory of the escarpment reached out into the flatlands
as if to cut off his escape. If those riders who continued to ride east encountered
no ravines they would be riding a trail that would meet that promontory and so cut
him off, completely. Past it he seemed to remember the mouth of Hondo Canyon opened
wide, offering access to the hills to the north. If he reached that point of rocks
first, he might escape, and if he did not, then it was a hack-to-the-wall fight until
his ammunition gave out and they closed in on him. All he could then hope for was
to take some of them with him.
Using his spurs, he raced the black for the point. The wind whipped his face, and
his hat blew off and hung to the back of his neck by the chin strap. The black was
lathering, but run ning freely and with no break in its stride. Behind him there
were occasional shots, but it would be merest chance if one hit him at this pace.
He did not look back, but his glance went again and again to the riders who were
running only a little behind him and on his right. On his left the wall of the mountain
closed in nearer and nearer. The black horse ran like a frightened rabbit, duck ing
and dodging or jumping mesquite clumps, running as if it knew that death ran close
behind.
78
 74 LOUIS L'A,,iOUR
A bullet whipped by so close it frightened him and he jerked his head as if from
an angry bee. The point of rock loomed up ahead of him, the black's feet spurned
the sand beneath and the cold wind cut through his shirt. Now the riders on his right
were angling toward him: within the next few minutes he would know.
And then he did know. They were going to meet him right there. They had to.
It was then he drew his gun. He palmed the Colt and tried a fast shot at the nearest
man's horse. He fired three times as rapidly as he could trigger the Colt, and suddenly
the horse shied, slowed an instant. It was not a hit, just a disconcertingly close
bullet, but the startled horse slowed and the rider follow ing plunged into him,
and in that instant of confusion and plunging horses, Radigan went around the point
on a dead run.
Hondo Canyon opened wide before him, a mile wide at the mouth but rapidly narrowing
into a mere cleft in the rocks. The only trails he knew ended in dead ends at the
head of the canyons, but there might be a chance on the left, or western canyon.
He ran the black up the canyon, then sighting split in the wall on his right he put
the horse up the steep slope. It plunged desperately and then, nearly to the top,
staggered and almost fell. Radigan swung from the saddle and holding the reins scrambled
toward the top. Behind him a shot exploded and a bullet clipped a fragment of rock
within inches of him. Stung by fragments, the black lunged ahead and they were over
the rim.
Sliding his Winchester from the scabbard, Radigan dropped near a fallen log and snapped
a quick shot into the plunging horses below. A man screamed and he levered shots
into the group as swiftly as lie could get off the shots.
A horse went down, kicking and fighting, and the riders scattered for shelter. A
bullet from his Winchester kicked sand at the heels of one, knocked another loose
from his saddle. The man fell, his boot caught in the stirrup and the horse ran with
him, dragging the fallen man by his caught foot.
Crawling back, Radigan got slowly to his feet. Despite the chill he was bathed in
sweat and the black was streaked with lather and trembling. Catching up the reins,
Radigan walked slowly away under the trees. It was just past noon.
He walked steadily, leading the horse, knowing they would
79
 RADIGAN 75 first catch the horse that was dragging the rider, and then they would
try to find another way up. They would suspect him of having left, but they would
not be sure, and they would be delayed. They might, although he scarcely hoped it
would be so, break off the chase for the time. He had hit a man and a horse, perhaps
two men. And the dragged man, if still alive, would be in no condition to fight.
It was a good day's work. Three to four of them out of action at least, and a lot
of luck.
On his right there was a great ridge of rock shaped like a great ship. Keeping to
shelving sheets of rock he left no trail to speak of, and moved steadily along. After
awhile he mounted up.
This was wild, relatively unknown country to him, although John Child had told him
there was a spring up in these moun tains called Ojo del Oso. With luck he would
find it.
Scarcely a half-hour later he did find it. He refilled his canteen there, and watered
the black, rubbing him down with a handful of mesquite. He could not see his back
trail, and in these rocks there would be no dust plume to indicate pursuit, nonetheless
he must act as if there was pursuit. To the north the mountains towered high, and
west of him there were steep cliffs and canyons to cut him off. His only route lay
to the east or northeast, but by riding northeast he might swing around to the hideout
where John Child and Gretchen waited.
Far off, perhaps twenty to twenty-five miles east, was the canyon of the Rio Grande,
and the finger canyons of Frijole and Pajarito Creeks pointed the way to the mother
river.
North he rode, ever higher and ever rougher the country, and colder the wind. It
was a wild and lonely land. Several times he startled deer, and once saw a grizzly.
It stood on its hind legs for a better view of' him, and watched him from a hundred
yards away as he rode by.
He reloaded his six-gun-the first time since he could remem ber that he had waited
so long to load up after firing. It had become an almost automatic reaction, yet
back there he had had no time. The afternoon lost itself against the mountains and
inquiring shadows crept down from the hidden canyons, and peered at him from under
the towering trees. A searching wind found him with its cold fingers, and he patted
the black
80
 76 LOUIS L'AMOUR
and talked softly to it, and the black twitched a responsive ear to his words.
It was cold, so very cold, and the only way lay up into the still colder regions
among the high peaks and across the lonely, wind-swept plateaus where no man rode
willingly. He sagged in the saddle, and the black plodded on, all the splendid fire
gone from its muscles.
Under a ghostly, lightning-struck pine, he swung down. But he did not stop, walking
on, responding to the resentful tug on the bridle by a harder tug. He followed the
contour of the hills, working steadily north. A few flakes of snow fell.
Before him the view opened out showing a mighty panorama of rugged mountains and
canyons lost in darkness, of forests blasted by lightning and the gray, bleached
bones of long dead trees. Under the low gray clouds the scene was weirdly somber
and majestic. The higher ridges and peaks vanished in the low clouds and before him
the wide shelf upon which he rode stretched out, bare and unpromising.
From behind his saddle he took his sheepskin coat and shrugged into it. Fortunately
it was split high in the back so he could wear it while riding: only he did not ride
now, but strode out at a fast pace, heading along the vast shoulder of the mountain.
On his right a canyon dropped away, probably hun dreds of feet to a stream at the
bottom, but he walked on, looking ahead for some place that promised a camp for the
night.
Darkness crept out from the icy peaks and night fell. Still he stumbled on, the horse
plodding along behind him, and when he came at last to a place for camping, it was
only a corner among the rocks and trees but it offered shelter from the wind.
In a V where two huge boulders came together he built his fire, and facing it he
built a lean-to of evergreen boughs where the faces of the rocks would reflect the
heat of the fire into the shelter. By weaving boughs among the living boughs of the
trees he made a crude shelter for the black horse, and some of the heat would reach
it there. Of dead wood there was more than sufficient, and he made a good fire to
warm the rocks, then carried his saddle and gear into the lean-to.
With a handful of evergreen needles he rubbed down the black horse and gathered snow
to melt for coffee, preferring to keen what water he had in the canteen. It was very
cold. He
81
 RADIGAN 77 unwrapped the food packed for him by Downey at the saloon, and then hung
a feedbag on the black with a little corn he had carried behind the saddle.
He had a ground sheet and two blankets which he unrolled on a bed made of boughs.
He sat within the lean-to and ate, drinking his coffee and wondering about John Child
and Gretch en. Had they been discovered? It was unlikely.
Snow began to fall. Not the intermittent flakes but fine, icy particles, and it did
not stop but continued. A wolf howled somewhere out in the forest and the black horse
shifted his feet uneasily. Radigan spoke to the horse and stretched his hands toward
the eager flames. From time to time he added a stick, and it was very cold, the wind
coming around the boulders and plucking at the fire, stirring it with irritable fingers.
The icy snow rattled on the rocks and the dried branches or fell whispering into
the evergreens. He was high on the moun tainside, perhaps 8,500 feet. Finally he
drank another cup of coffee laced with whisky and then crawled into the bed.
Twice during the night he crawled out, shivering with cold, to replenish the fire,
and the last time it was so cold and so near to dawn that he stayed up, huddling
over the fire. He brought the black in closer and built up the fire. Outside a heavy
blanket of snow lay over everything, and it would have covered any trail he might
have left. Up to this point, anyway. If they came this far they were going to have
a cinch following him.
Day came reluctantly, and Radigan tugged on his boots again and stirred about, making
coffee and warming water for the horse. He ate some cold beef and drank scalding
coffee, and finally, after warming the blanket over the fire, he saddled up and packed
his bed.
In the cold, white light of early dawn he moved out into a world where everything
had changed during the night. The black was a good mountain horse and he walked delicately,
not trusting the snow. He rode what he estimated to be six miles, riding north but
pushed farther east by the terrain, and sud denly he came out of the trees and drew
up looking over a magnificent bowl among the hills.
It was obviously what remained of 'a magnificent and gigantic volcanic crater. The
floor of the valley was at least five hundred feet below the point where he sat his
horse, and was sur
82
 I
78 Louis L'AMOUR
rounded by clumps of spruce and aspen that gave way to a thick growth of these trees
mingled with stands of pine. In the summer this would be an enormous meadow, and
looking away into the distance he could see it was at least twenty miles in length,
or close to it. Within the crater there must be more than one hundred and fifty square
miles of territory.
The black horse seemed as surprised as he himself, pricking its ears at the vast
valley that lay below them. This was without doubt the same valley of which the Indians
had told stories long ago.
Skirting the valley he found a way down to the bottom, and when he reached it he
moved out across the snow. Near the cliffs the snow had drifted in spots, but for
the most part the vast plain was but thinly covered. He scuffed the snow away and
found the grass below was thick, cured on the stem, and good hay. While he looked
around the black began to crop the brown grass.
Suddenly he realized this was the place he had been seek ing. Here he could graze
a lot of cattle, and this rich grass would provide better feed than any of the lower
prairies. Undoubtedly his own ranch lay only a few miles to the west ward, and within
an easy drive of this place. There was a small stream that ran through the bottom
of the valley, so water was no problem. He knew suddenly that this was where he would
drift his own cattle if the fight became worse.
At the valley where their remuda was corralled he roped a fresh horse. John Child
had been there since the snow, and Radigan trailed him back to their hideout through
the darken ing hours of the third day. He was within a short distance of the place
when he heard a shell jacked into a chamber and he froze in place. "It's all right!"
he yelled. "It's me!"
"I see you." It was Coker. He stepped down into the trail, a wide grin on his face.
"Come on up. You got comp'ny."
For an instant he felt like reining around and running for it, but there wasn't a
chance. He was fairly caught between the walls of the canyon, plain to see against
the new-fallen snow, and he knew that Coker would like nothing better than an excuse
to kill him.
His hands were numb with cold or he might have tried for a gun. He put his right
hand under his armpit to warm the
83
 RADIGAN 79 fingers. There was yet time. And there was a chance. As long as he had
a gun, there was a chance.
They were at the cave. He recognized the bulky body of Ross Wall, and a squat puncher
named Jones who had been in the saloon at San Ysidro when Flynn had backed them down.
He was fairly caught.
John Child was there, seated against a wall, his hands tied behind him. And Gretchen
was there, but her hands were untied and she was cooking.
"I was hopin' you wouldn't come back," Child commented. "Cold out there." He swung
down stiffly. "We've had a snow. "
"Radigan." Ross Wall was brusque. "You've got feed stacked somewhere. We want to
know where."
"Sorry." Coker grinned at him. "Ross, let me have him. I can get it from him."
Radigan merely glanced at him. "You couldn't get anything from me," he said. "I wouldn't
give you the time of day." Wall interrupted Coker's reply with an impatient gesture.
"You've had it, Radigan. I can't do a thing for you. Maybe if you talk I can get
these others off, but I'll tell you right now that we have orders to lose your body
in one of those canyons north of here where nobody will find it."
"We had a visitor," Child commented. "Shut up!" Coker turned sharply around.
Gretchen sensed it was something Radigan should know. She looked up from the fire.
"He said he'd be back," she said. Coker turned on her angrily. "You, too! Shut your
mouth!" Ross Wall glanced at Coker. "That'll do," he said. "You'll not talk to a
lady that way."
"She's no lady," Coker retorted. "She's-!"
Gretchen grabbed a stick from the fire and swung the burn ing end at Coker's face.
He sprang back, but not fast enough and the stick caught him across the mouth. He
staggered off balance and fell, crying out with pain and grasping his burned lips.
Gretchen stood up. "I'll cook for you," she said to Wall, "because you're hungry
men, but I won't take any slander from such as he is."
84
 80 Louis L'AMOUR
Coker was moaning and holding his mouth. Wall merely glanced at him. "Go back to
your cooking," he said.
She went back to the fire, and moved a pot more firmly into position on some stones
in the fire. Then she said, "The man was Loren Pike. He said he and Charlie Cade
were at Loma Coyote. "
Wall's eyes showed his sudden attention. "Did you say Loren Pike? The Ranger?"
"He was a Ranger," Radigan explained. "About the time I was. He left the outfit to
settle a personal quarrel."
"What are they doing here?"
"Friends of mine. I told you I was a Ranger, too. Fact is, I wrote to the Rangers
in Tascosa just the other day."
Radigan could see the idea did not please Ross Wall. The foreman walked to the mouth
of' the cave where Radigan's horse still stood. For several minutes he stood there,
staring down the darkening canyon, and Radigan watched him while Coker moaned and
swore in a corner of the cave, holding his mouth with both hands.
Wall knew very well that many of the Rangers stuck together through thick and thin,
and often after they had left the service they returned to help one another, and
the thought gave him no pleasure. More than that, Loren Pike was a known man, a good
man with a gun who had been active in running down cattle thieves. Moreover, he had
been cousin to the Bannings with whom the Foley outfit had been feuding. Had he followed
them?
"Who's Cade?" he asked.
"Friend of mine. We rode together, a year or two. If he don't find me here he's going
to be mighty unhappy."
"What are two men?" It was the stocky puncher who spoke. "Either one of them would
take your pelt and tack it on the barn door without raising a sweat," Radigan told
him.
The more Ross Wall considered the situation the less he liked it. Handling Angelina
Foley was bad enough, but after that slick-talking Harvey Thorpe came home there
was no holding her, and the outfit had gone from one trouble to another. He knew
little about her claim to the present land except that her father had always talked
of a ranch he owned in New Mexico.
The snow would make feed a real problem, and unless they
85
 RADIGAN 81 found the feed that Radigan had stacked against the bad months they were
going to lose a lot of cattle. Matter of fact, they were going to lose some anyway.
Now this.
If those men were coming back they would have to be killed too, for they would ask
questions that must not be asked. And they would know too much. Maybe they already
knew.
"They know about this fight?" lie asked Child. "What d' you suppose we talked about?"
He might have guessed it. Still, it might be some time before they came back, and
lie had heard of Loma Coyote. Suppose he detached four or five men to ride up there
and ambush the two? But where would it end? When a man tried to solve his problems
with a killing it always led to still anoth er. He swore softly, looking out at the
gathering night, know ing there would have to be a showdown with Thorpe, and not
relishing the thought.
Wall had his orders. Find Tom Radigan and get rid of him. Get rid of him so he could
never be found again. And that was all very well, but with such men as Pike and Cade
involved, the disappearance of Radigan might easily begin another blood feud. How
could a man make a ranch pay under such circum stances? He stared downcanyon gloomily.
For that matter, how could anyone make a ranch pay in this country? Radigan said
he knew how, but Ross Wall had heard men talk big before.
Gretchen took the first plate of food to Radigan, and the second to John Child, placing
it on the ground and then coolly untying his hands.
Child chafed his hands and wrists, glancing over at Radigan who sat quietly. The
squat puncher was watching them with a rifle across his knees. Ross Wall turned and
walked back into the cave, accepting his food with a quiet thanks, and staring at
it somberly before he started to eat.
Radigan had been disarmed, but his weapons lay across from him within easy reach,
almost as if lie were being tempted to try for them. From Coker's earlier attitude
and the manner of the others now, Radigan was sure lie was marked for death and,
in fact, could see no other alternative for the Foley outfit. He moved with great
care, always keeping his hands in view, and while he ate lie was thinking, working
around the herd of' his thoughts trying to get it rope on the one he needed . . .
a way out.
86
 82 LOUIS L AMOUR
So far they had come off second best in the fighting, but that was pure unadulterated
luck, as he would have been the first to admit. He had thrown his shots at the horses
with only hope that they would land and that they had done what he hoped had been
the purest chance.
Flynn had kept him out of a bad spot in San Ysidro, and his flight into the mountains
and the subsequent snow had helped to get him away from the fight scot-free. He was
under no illusions as to the outcome of such a fight if everything else went as it
usually did.
A cold wind was blowing from the north. "This wind holds, you'll have a drift, your
cattle will drift clean out of the country." Wall shot him a sullen glance and made
no reply. Trust a cattleman to be thinking of that.
Radigan finished his meal, accepted more coffee, and began to roll a smoke. He wanted
to keep his hands free, and wanted Child's free, so he tried to keep Wall thinking,
worrying. "Look, Ross," he said conversationally, "why not let the herd drift? Why
don't you boys follow it out of the country? This is a fight you can't win, and if
you kill us, how will you find the feed? Believe me, you can look for a long time,
and unless you're mighty lucky, you'd not find it, and you know as well as I do that
you're working on a mighty slim margin."
He paused and, lifting the cigarette to his lips, shot a glance at the nearest gun,
and knew it was too far. But the cowhand named Coker was close. He was not eating,
but had rubbed some grease on his burned and swollen lips. If he could drop on his
side and grab Coker, reaching around him for his gun, he might manage it. But the
chance was too great.
"Take it from me, Loren Pike and Charlie Cade will be back, and Cade owes a lot to
me. So does Pike. They won't come riding into a trap, either. They'll come riding
down here expect ing a full-scale war, and they'll be loaded for bear.
"Why, Ross, up there at Loma Coyote there's eight or ten of the toughest fighting
men in the country, and all they need to know is there's some cattle down here they
can have for the taking, and they'll trail along with Loren Pike.
"You ever hear of Adam Stark? He's the best rifle shot in this part of the country.
Out of Tennessee by way of Texas, and a good man anywhere. Well, Adam is up there
at Loma Coyote, and he's been itching to get into this fight. Ask John Child
87
 RADIGAN 83 there-he's a close friend of John's-and he's been wanting to come down.
Figure it out for yourself. These boys know the terrain, they know cattle, and you
can just bet that whatever cattle get through the winter will be driven off.
"You know something, Ross? All those brands don't look so good, and I've been wondering
how they'd look if a man skinned one of those steers and checked that brand from
the back of the hide. I'm wondering what brand would show up."
"Shut up!" Ross Wall turned angrily. "You talk too damn' much!"
"I'll shut him up," Coker said. "You just give me the word, and I'll shut him up!"
He mumbled the words through puffed lips. "I'll kill him!"
The fire crackled, and outside the snow fell steadily. No use trying a break now,
for a man could be tracked easily unless he had a good enough start for the snow
to fill his tracks. There was nothing to do but to wait, and Radigan settled back.
He was good at waiting, better than any Indian, as John Child had often said. Well,
this was a time to see just how good he was. Moreover, he was beginning to get an
idea of how he could handle the situation, just a glimmer of an idea.
Firelight flickered on their faces, gleamed on gun barrels and buckles, and outside
the snow fell softly into the cushiony silence. The opening of the overhang was a
black wall streaked with the slow fall of snow. Ross Wall stared gloomily into the
fire and Radigan had noted the habit before and filed it for future reference. A
man who stares into a fire is blind when he looks into the darkness, for a moment
at least. And who needed more?
If they hadn't found his feed by now there was small chance they would find it with
this snow in the passes. He knew where the snow drifted, and the few routes there
were that might be used. During the four years of residence on the ranch he had learned
to plan his campaigns against the elements as a good general plans his strategy during
a war. It was the price of survival.
Yet sometimes these first falls of snow did not last, but were swept away by the
first change in the weather, and such might be the case with this one, and even a
brief thaw might open up the passes, even if not for long.
The squat cowpuncher had leaned back against the wall,
88
 84 Louis L"AmouR
partly pillowed on his own saddle, and was snoring gently. Coker stared sullenly
at Gretchen, and said nothing at all, and there was no light anywhere but the light
from the flickering fire. Radigan poked a stick into the coals and watched it ignite,
and he had a hunch that Wall had been told to find him and finish him off, and that
Wall had no stomach for it. The big foreman was a cattleman, and in fighting he might
kill a man, but he was no murderer.
Under the circumstances to attempt an escape could result only in death?and in the
close quarters of the cave, a wild bullet might kill anyone. So could a ricochet.
Gretchen would be in as great danger as any of them, perhaps more so, consid ering
the cold hatred obvious in Coker.
The snow fell steadily, and Radigan knew if it continued through the night it would
be extremely difficult if not impos sible to get out of the canyon. And three additional
mouths would make great inroads on their food supply.
A flurry of wind blew into the cave mouth and danced the flames. A spark flew near
the sack of corn for the horses, and Child reached over and put it out. It was very
late.
Ross Wall got up and walked to the cave mouth and looked out, and when he came back
his face was lined with worry. "How deep can it get in these canyons?"
"Here?" Radigan shrugged. "In a snow like this, counting for snow drifted by the
wind, it might get eight to ten feet deep, and probably much less. But it often gets
twenty feet deep in these canyons in the winter. Always danger of slides off the
peaks, too."
His body was tired and he Maned back against the wall, yet the fatigue had not spread
to his mind and he knew, whatever happened, he must remain alert. Yet if John Child
was awake .. . He glanced over at the Indian and indicated by sign lan guage that
he must rest. Child nodded and Radigan settled himself more carefully, and as he
did so he marked in his mind the position of the guns.
Despite the fire it was cold in the cave for there was no great depth to the overhang,
and although the space was partly shielded by trees and undergrowth these were scant
protection from the wind. Huddled under his blanket, Radigan slept fitfully, awakening
at times to listen to the rising wind, the crackle of the fire, or the breaking of
sticks as John Child
89
 RADIGAN 85 replenished the flames. Without the necessity for conversation they had
accepted the task of keeping the fire going, and nobody had offered any argument
against their doing it, yet each understood the reason was not one of being helpful,
but merely to offer them a little freedom of movement that might, in time, be utilized.
Ross Wall did not sleep. He sat staring at the flames or got to his feet and paced
back and forth. Radigan could appreciate his concern, for downcountry there were
nearly three thousand cattle, poorly fed these last few days, and only too ready
to drift. Moreover, nobody was with those cattle who felt suffi cient responsibility.
They might, if sheltered from the wind, remain close against the canyon walls throughout
the storm, and they might again begin to drift.
Radigan glanced nearby at the huddled, sleeping form of Gretchen. Only she was not
sleeping. She was looking at him from wide blue eyes and, as she looked, she moved
something under the covers and he saw the butt of 'a pistol, momentarily revealed,
then hidden away beneath the blanket.
A pistol.
He considered it with care. How Gretchen had managed to secure it, he could not guess,
but it was further evidence that she was thinking all the time. He had to have that
gun, but he had to have it only at the right time and the right place. For the time
being it was safer with Gretchen, who was less likely to be searched.
Attempting to return to sleep he found it impossible, for now that he was fully awake
the cold of the rock floor of the cave was such as to permit no sleep. He threw off
the blanket and shrugged into his sheepskin coat. "Get some sleep, John," he advised.
"I'll tend the fire."
Coker watched him from under heavy lids. The gunman's lips were in frightful condition,
swollen and inflamed with great blisters where the burn had left its mark. He dared
not change expression, and occasionally when some involuntary movement caused his
face to twitch he gasped with pain.
The fuel supply was growing small, so drawing on his gloves, Radigan walked to the
edge of the overhang and stepped out into the snow. He heard sharp movement behind
him, and the click of 'a back-drawn gun hammer but he coolly began break
90
 86 Loins L'AMouR
ing branches from one of the deadfalls he had brought near for fuel.
This, he reflected, was one way it might be done. If one man was asleep and he could
get the other to turn his back on the cave-it was a chance. Also, he thought, he
might make a break for it in the snow, even without a gun. There was a rifle and
three pistols at the cache on the mesa back of the ranch, and there was another rifle
and a shotgun in the cache near San Antonio Valley. There was food in both places.
That was one way it could be done, but he could not go alone. He trusted Wall to
prevent any attack upon Gretchen, but suppose Ross Wall had to leave her alone with
Coker and the other man? Coker was filled with a hatred only held in check by Wall's
presence.
For the first time he began to think seriously of the problem of escape. Until now
he had needed rest, until now he had wanted to learn more of their position, but
now he knew the time was drawing near when they must escape. Wall, he was sure, had
been told to kill them, and while he might delay, he might just ride off and leave
them to Coker. He brought an armful of wood close to the fire, but he did not bring
in too much.
It would soon be day, and the snow was still falling. There would be no chance to
get the horses, no chance to get food. They must rely upon their chance of getting
to the nearest cache, but in this snow a man on snowshoes could move faster than
a horse.
Snowshoes. A man could contrive snowshoes. Long ago, he had been shown how to do
it by an Indian. Not snowshoes for fast going, but shoes that would at least help
keep a man on the surface.
At first they would have to move fast, and that meant they must get out of the canyon
they were in. Glancing downcanyon he studied the walls and the trees. The snow here
must be at least four feet deep, and in places deeper. Wind flurries whipped snow
into the canyon that drifted there and remained. When the time came to move, it would
have to be a quick move. Quick and decisive.
Radigan walked in and seated himself close to the fire. He held his hands out to
the fire, but as he moved them out he moved his left hand, palm down, in a slight
downward move
91
 RADIGAN 87 ment, then did the same, only farther out, with his right and repeated
with his left. To a casual observer he might only be stretching his arms in a way
to draw his sleeves back, but Radigan knew that John Child had caught the Indian
sign language for "walk."
A moment later he turned his hand up and drew the sleeve back a little, and managed
to hold three fingers alone as he did so.
Child, sitting across the fire, appeared half-asleep. Radigan glanced at Gretchen
who was watching him, and as she caught his eye she nodded slightly, indicating she
understood. He had not expected her to know sign language but it was the sort of
thing John Child would be apt to teach a youngster, and which a youngster would want
to know.
Suddenly Ross Wall got up and walked to the mouth of the overhang. "This ain't going
to ease up," he said, "and there's not enough grub to last out a bad storm."
He turned to Radigan. "How far is it to the ranch from here?"
"Might be eight miles, almost due south."
"It's colder, and we've not grub enough to last out the day. We could all die here."
"That's right. And you wait much longer and that snow will be so deep you can't get
out. Fact is, you may not make it now. "
"Eight miles ain't far," Coker scoffed. "I could walk it on my hands."
Radigan ignored him and addressed his remarks to Wall. "In places this snow will
be drifted up to the lower limbs of the trees, sometimes eight feet deep. Believe
one, it doesn't take long in this country with no wind to sweep much of it clear."
Not long, he told himself, but still there are places. He was thinking of them now,
and knew that if the right break came they would take one of them for the first brief
distance, then right into the deep woods and make some snowshoes.
"I'll go," Wall said suddenly. "Mine's the best horse, and I've got a chance to get
through'."
Coker was staring at Gretchen, a hard satisfaction in his eyes. He would be left
in charge. Or he could take charge. After that he would kill Child and Radigan. Radigan
could almost see his mind working, and lie could tell from the way
92
 88 Louis L'AMOUR
Wall averted his eyes from them that he was thinking the same thing.
"Something else you boys didn't know about this country that you're going to find
out mighty fast," Radigan commented. "Those light cow ponies you use in Texas are
no good in heavy snow. It takes a horse with muscle and bone to handle it, the Montana
kind of horses."
"We'll make out." Wall gathered his gear, then plunged out into the snow.
When he came back he was leading his horse, and he stood it inside the overhang while
he brushed off the snow and put a blanket on, then he saddled up. Radigan watched
him critical ly. Wall did not think of warming the bit, and the horse fought it until
Wall finally bridled the horse with the help of Coker.
"You should have warmed that bit," Radigan told them, and Wall turned angrily.
"You talk too damn' much!" he flared. "There's other men handled stock besides you."
"Some people never learn," Radigan replied, grinning.
For a moment he thought Wall would strike him. The big foreman took an angry step
forward, and Radigan merely looked up at him, smiling. Wall stared at him for a moment,
then turned sharply away.
"You know, Ross," Radigan said, "if we'd worked for the same outfit we'd have gotten
along all right."
Wall said nothing nor did he face around, and Radigan said quietly, "I wonder how
you'll face yourself after this? I wonder how you'll sleep at night?"
For an instant Wall stopped gathering his gear, standing absolutely still. When Radigan
next saw his face it was white, but he did not look at any of them. Merely stepping
into the saddle, and then he said, "Coker, you and Gorman stay here. I'll send some
grub back up right away, and some of the boys will break trail for you to come out.
You take care of the prisoners. "
"Sure." Coker was grinning. "I'll take care of them. Harvey told me just how to take
care of them."
Without a word Ross Wall rode out into the snow. There was a narrow ledge along the
wall that he could ride downcanyon for a short distance, and below the canyon there
was some flat ground where the snow would not be so deep. Yet he had gone
93
 RADIGAN 89 no more than a hundred yards before he knew he was in trouble.
The.horse stepped off the ledge and went belly-deep in the snow, then deeper. Floundering
desperately, the gelding fought his way down the canyon to the open ground, jumping
and plunging. Ross Wall reined in and looked south, scowling at the rough, broken
country, much of it heavily forested, and for the first time he was afraid.
It was cold. In the cave he had not realized how cold. It was very still, yet there
was already frost on the horse, and he realized anew that Radigan had been right.
His horse was light and fast, an excellent cow horse, but lacked the sheer power
for bucking heavy drifts. It was bitterly cold, and the snow still fell. A man could
die in this country.
He was not going back. He had no desire to face what was to happen in that cave.
Thorpe wanted it to happen, and maybe even Angelina Foley wanted it, but he was no
killer, no mur derer. As for Coker, he would be in no hurry to send men back. Let
the man live with himself a little. It would do him good, and there was food enough
for another couple of days for two men, if they were careful.
Suddenly, from behind him he heard a shot. It was faint. It was far away, but it
was a gunshot. Coker had wasted no time.
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 FIVE
C oker simply turned and fired. But he turned too fast and shot too quick, and his
bullet went where Radigan had just been.
For Radigan had been completely fooled. He expected Coker to talk because Coker was
that sort of man. It was his pattern to play the big man for a few minutes before
he killed, but Coker simply spun around and fired, throwing his bullet fast and considering
the turn, with amazing accuracy.
Only the fire was sinking and Radigan had dropped to a squatting position to add
fuel, and the bullet cut the air right over his head.
Yet as he spun and fired, Radigan threw himself forward and grabbing the gun that
Gretchen thrust at him he rolled com pletely over and fired.
And missed.
It was point-blank range but he was moving and made the same mistake Coker had made
by firing too quickly. But his second shot was faster, and it ripped upward into
Coker's throat, ranging upward and outward to emerge just above the gunman's ear.
Coker had been so sure-and he was eager to make Gretchen suffer for his swollen and
burned lips-he had turned and fired and then he was dying on his feet with blood
gushing from his mouth and a puzzled expression as if he could not comprehend what
had happened.
He had automatically fired a second time and the bullet had smashed into the fire,
scattering sparks, but then the gun slid from his fingers and he tried to speak,
staring at Radigan with dawning horror in his eyes, realizing in that last awful
moment that he was dying.
His knees sagged then and he fell face forward with his feet 90
95
 RADIGAN 91 in the snow at the entrance and his head toward the fire, and Radigan
turned with his gun ready and saw Gorman stretched out on the floor with blood trickling
from a split scalp where Child had clubbed him with a chuck of firewood.
Gretchen was a sickly pale, and she turned quickly from the dead man at the cave
mouth and said, "We'll need a hot meal." She paused then and seemed to stiffen herself.
"I've got to"
Radigan caught her as she started to faint and she clung to him an instant, fighting
it off. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'll be all right. "
Child had picked up a Winchester. "D' you suppose Wall heard those shots?"
"He heard them. But he won't be back."
Child walked to the opening and caught Coker by the foot, dragging him out into the
snow where he lay face down. Then he walked back and began methodically to sort the
gear in the cave and pack for a leave-taking.
Radigan indicated Gorman. "Leave him some grub. We'll soon be at the cache, and he's
done us no harm."
Radigan went to Coker's body and pulled off the cartridge belt and shucked the shells
from the loops. The gun Gretchen had tossed him had been his own, and now he retrieved
his belt and holstered the gun after reloading. He found his Winchester, checked
the barrel and the loads, and then took his bowie knife and went to the trees to
cut some branches.
He cut four of them, then went to another tree for two more. Each of these was about
seven feet long and slender, whiplike. Over the fire he warmed them after stripping
away the shorter branches that held the needles. When he had warmed them carefully
he took one and working with it carefully he bent the whiplike end around and lashed
it to its own base in a rough oval.
With strips of rawhide he made a web back and forth across the oval, and John Child
began working on a second shoe. When Gretchen had their food ready, they ate in silence,
then returned to their work. It was at this point that Gorman came
to.
He opened his eyes and stared up at the hanging roof, then sat up abruptly, catching
his head in both hands from a sudden throb of pain. Stupidly, he looked around.
His eyes found the body of Coker, then looked quickly
96
 92 LOUIS L AMOUR
around for Wall, who had left when he was half-asleep. Finally they came to rest
on Radigan.
"You start anything and you join your friend out there. Sit tight and we'll leave
you grub enough to last a couple of days. There's fuel enough for weeks, and if you
leave here, you're crazy."
Gorman nodded to indicate Coker. "I had no use for the man."
"All right." Radigan was brusque. "You stay out of this and we've no quarrel with
you, get into it and you can follow Coker."
Gorman made no reply, but lay down and turned his face to the wall.
It was afternoon before they got away. Radigan took the lead and headed south at
a good clip. All he asked the snowshoes was that they see them through to the food
cache on the mesa near the ranch.
He set an easy pace. There are things a man learns about the cold, and the first
is never to work up a sweat, for when a sweating man slows down or stops the sweat
freezes inside his clothing, forming a thin coating of ice near the skin. After that,
unless one finds shelter quickly, it is only a matter of time.
He had also learned not to dress too heavily, but to wear the garments loose so they
form a cushion of warm air next to the body. The Eskimos knew these things long ago,
and so did the northern Indians, and a man can live long in any kind of country if
he will use his common sense and learn what he can.
It was very cold but the air was clear. They were above eight thousand feet, and
at this low temperature and in the clear air sounds could be heard for miles. But
Radigan knew the time had now come to push the fight if ever they were to push it.
The cold was their greatest asset for they understood cold and he doubted if any
of the Foley-Thorpe outfit did.
Somewhere below them and to the east Ross Wall would be working his way through the
deep snow to the ranch, and by this time he would begin to realize some of the things
Radigan had told him. That light horse would not be able to carry a heavy man far
in this deep snow, and Wall would be lucky if he was not afoot by another hour, or
even by now.
In good weather he could have covered that eight to ten miles in a couple of hours,
but now he would have to seek out
97
 RADIGAN 93 places where the earth had blown clear of snow, and he might be miles
out of his way. If he made it by dark he would be lucky. Radigan said as much.
"If he makes it at all, he'll be lucky," Child said grimly. They walked on. The going
was slow, but after their muscles warmed up they moved more easily, and Radigan paused
often to conserve their strength. He knew the country well and kept to high ridges
where the travel was easier, always pointing toward the mesa back of the ranch.
The wind picked up and blew cold, whining among the tall pines like lost banshees,
or moaning low among the icy brush and around the strange rock formations. The sky
became a flat gray, unbroken expanse that told them nothing, and they came down off
the ridge into the lower country, into the thick forest, and the wind began to blow
harder.
How far had they come? Five, six miles? The days were short and darkness was not
far off, and they had been traveling at least three hours.
"We're in for trouble, Torn." John Child was breaking trail and he had stopped abruptly
and turned. "She's picking up to blow. "
"No use to wear ourselves out," Radigan said. "We'll find a place to dig in."
They started on.
The wind was raw against their faces which grew stiff from cold, so numb it was difficult
to speak, and the wind prevented hearing.
Suddenly John Child turned into the woods again and he stopped at the base of a huge
deadfall. Here some great wind or other cause had uprooted a giant spruce and thrown
it down with a mass of earth clinging to the root pattern. The roots and earth stood
up in a solid wall seven or eight feet in diameter.
Without words, Radigan and Child moved into the forest and were busy with their knives,
building a lean-to with the open face toward the root mass. The lean-to was covered
with a thick thatching of spruce boughs, and inside a bed was made thick with other
boughs. On the snow close to the root mass Radigan laid several heavy chunks of wood
side by side on the snow to make a bed for the fire, then built a fire whose heat
could be reflected by the root mass into the lean-to.
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 94 Louis L"AMOUR
"Couldn't we have gone on?" Gretchen asked. "I mean, it's only a few miles farther."
"We'd still be sleeping in the cold, and by then we'd be more tired. When you travel
in the cold, never exhaust your self Only exhausted people need freeze, believe me.
If all travelers in the snow and cold would think of that, few of them would freeze.
Just find some shelter or build some and curl up and sleep it out."
"But if you sleep, won't you freeze?"
"Not unless you're already exhausted. If all the heat inside your body is gone, used
up in struggling, then you'll freeze, so just stop in plenty of time. I've slept
out many a time when it was forty, fifty below."
The shelter was in a little hollow, and the still-falling snow added to the warmth
by covering the spruce boughs with a thick cushion of snow. Wind whipped around the
corner of the shelter into the space, so they built an added windbreak of spruce
boughs.
They huddled over the fire and drank scalding coffee and chewed on jerked meat. Nobody
felt like talking. Outside their shelter the wind whipped snow into the air and by
the time they had finished their coffee it was blowing a gale. They had gone into
camp none too soon.
Angelina Foley stood by the window of Radigan's ranch house and looked down the trail.
She was frightened, and she was cold. But the cold was inside, not outside, for the
room was warm and comfortable. The cold inside was the cold of fear, and of a kind
of hatred such as she had never dreamed possible of herself.
Harvey Thorpe was at the table behind her, and across from him was Ross Wall. The
big foreman had come in only minutes ago, and was sagging over the table, his face
drawn with exhaustion. He had been lost most of the night, and his horse was dead-it
had collapsed from exhaustion after bucking the deep snow for hours-and it was pure
luck that Wall had found a cluster of trees and brush that offered partial shelter
where he could build a fire. He had come into the ranch, staggering and falling.
How he had lived through the blizzard of the night before he would never know, nor
how he had gotten here. Fortunately, he could have been scarcely two miles from the
99
 RADIGAN 95 ranch when he found his shelter, but he must have traveled twice the
distance from the cave to the ranch to get here.
"He's dead then." Gelina heard the satisfaction in Harvey's voice and for some reason
it angered her.
She turned on them. "I'll believe him dead when I see him dead."
"Don't be foolish." Harvey looked up at her, his pale blue eyes almost white in the
reflection from the window. "Coker wanted to kill him, and he had his chance."
He got to his feet and crossed to the window. "All you have to do, Ross, is ranch-run
the cattle and do the best you can. You'll have four men."
He looked up. "And the rest?"
"I'll take care of them. You don't see anything. You don't
know anything.
Ross turned the idea over in his mind, studying it reluctantly. He needed no blueprints,
and he should have guessed, knowing Thorpe as he did, and the crew he had around
him.
"It's the wrong time," he said patiently. "It won't work, Harvey. "
Thorpe smiled. He was feeling expansive. He tucked his thumbs in his vest pockets.
"Ross, you've no imagination. This is one of the most remote ranches in the country,
but a ranch where dozens of trails come down from the north, old Indian trails, no
longer traveled, trails that can take a man quickly to Denver, Leadville, or a dozen
other places.
"I tell you it's perfect! A quick move into one of those towns, or to a mining camp
where they're shipping gold, then back here by a roundabout route, using the trails
we know. I knew when I saw it this was the place, a legitimate ranch with no close
neighbors, easy access to the places where gold is, and easy escape."
"It won't work," Ross insisted. "If what Miss Foley says is true, there's liable
to be an investigation, anyway."
Thorpe shrugged. "Believe me, it's a fait accompli
now, and nobody will be anxious to cause trouble for us. Radigan will have disappeared,
and we are quiet, honest ranchers who pay our bills and preserve the peace. We'll
keep ourselves clean around here, you see, and nobody will ever be the wiser." "No."
100
 96 Louis L`AMouR
They both turned at the sound of Angelina's voice, and Thorpe started to speak, but
she interrupted.
"No, Harvey, we won't do it."
"You want to go to work in a saloon?" he asked mildly. "Or start a restaurant? That's
all that's left."
She was silent. During the days of snow the herd had scat tered and drifted, and
without doubt many of them were dead, just as Radigan had warned her-he had been
so right, and she hated him for it.
She hated him and now she hated Harvey, for now she saw how she had been duped, not
that she hadn't agreed to much that had been done, including the theft of cattle
and the arrangements for the killing of the supposed squatter on the ranch they believed
belonged to them, but it was obvious now that from the first Harvey had had his own
plans and had acquiesced in hers only to forward his own, and he had maneu vered
her into a position from which no escape seemed possible.
More than once she had suspected Harvey Thorpe's activi ties during those absent
years, and now she was sure. But had she a choice? And after all, might it not work?
It was true there was money in the mining camps of Colorado and Nevada, and it was
true this was a relatively foolproof hideaway. Anybody approaching could be seen
for some distance before arriving at the ranch. Yes, it might work.
And mining the stages and the gold shipments was quicker, easier, and scarcely more
risky than ranching.
Radigan was dead. She had hated and feared him but he was dead, and now she felt
a curious emptiness, a sense of loss.
It was an unfamiliar feeling, and it disturbed her, for never before had she given
much thought to anyone, and in the case of Radigan, she herself had been first to
order his death. Yet now that he was dead she felt uncertain and lost, as if some
thing she valued had gone out of her life.
Standing by the window, listening to the talk behind her, she sensed Wall's reluctance,
and remembered what she had often said to Harvey, that they must be careful with
Ross, for there was a point beyond which he would not go. Now she was aware of that
more keenly than ever, yet he said nothing, and if left to handle only the honest
work of handling cattle, he might stand aside and remain quiet.
What about her? Somehow in the last few days control had
101
 RADIGAN 97 slipped from her fingers, leaving Harvey in command. He had taken the
reins so quietly and skillfully that she was confused, for until now she had despised
him and been sure he would run her errands for her, and listen to her. Now she knew
she was mistaken, and she knew she did not like the thought. Something had to be
done!
Yet, why do anything?
Why not sit back and let him engineer the robberies, and when there was enough to
warrant it, find one man who would use a gun for her. And then San Francisco, New
York, Paris, Vienna-and lots of money.
This way she was free. If they were caught, it was all his action. She had no idea
... why, she was just ranching ... Wall was her foreman, and see what they had done.
Naturally, she could not control Harvey Thorpe. Yes, it would work, and just that
way.
"Ross," she would begin now, "as soon as the storm is over, take two men and try
to find an estimate of what we have left. Then we'll start building back."
When Ross Wall had gone she walked to the table and sat down. Harvey rolled his cigar
in his teeth and smiled at her. He was feeling good, for now, after a long wait and
a lot of submission to her will, he had won. From here on he was in the driver's
seat, and he liked the feeling. Moreover, he could see that Angelina was aware of
the shift of leadership. "On the fifth of next month," he said, "there is a shipment
of gold leaving Leadville for Denver. It will never arrive."
The bullet smashed into the table between them and she heard the tinkle of glass.
She stared at the deep furrow plowed into the wood of the table, shocked by its suddenness.
The second bullet shattered the lamp and spilled flame over the room, but Thorpe,
acting swiftly, beat out the flames with a blanket before they had time to take hold.
They crouched near the floor in the darkness, frightened and breathing heavily, smelling
the smoke, the spilled oil, and the singed wool of the blanket.
"You're so clever," Angelina said wickedly, "so very clever! He's still alive, Harvey,
and you've failed again. Radigan is alive!"
Harvey Thorpe made no reply. Crouching in the darkness he was suddenly swept by a
wave of blind, unreasoning fury. He
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wanted to leap out into the open, to kill, to cripple, to beat down. But the enemy
was beyond him, somewhere out there, elusive in the dark.
"It can't be!" he protested. "It's somebody else! It simply can't be!"
"Your plans, they're so complete, Harvey. So thorough. I don't know how you do it."
"Shut up!" His tone was low and vicious, never before had she heard him sound so
murderous. "He's dead, I tell you. It's that breed, or somebody."
Crouched in the darkness, waiting for further shots, she tried to examine her own
position clearly. For the first time she realized that she felt active dislike for
Harvey Thorpe. That she had not realized this before was due in part to their respective
positions, for the ranch had been left to her, the cattle were in her name, everything
was hers and she felt in no way obligated to him, while hers was definitely the superior
position. Yet this move had been advised and instigated by him. It had seemed a good
move, and she had been prepared for it, yet now she could see where she had played
into his hands, and with the herd gone, or at least badly hurt by the storm, their
positions were reversed. All this she had thought of earlier, but now she was wondering
what her next move would be. That Ross Wall was loyal to her and to her alone, she
knew. Also that their economic position was very bad: perhaps it would be better,
if they eliminated the present danger, to go along with Harvey until he had acquired
the gold, then take it for herself. She was sure she would never be suspected of
conspiring with him to rob stages, and even if they suspected her, she naturally
would have had no demonstrable hand in the robberies.
They waited in the darkness. Harvey sat with his back against the strong wall of
the house in the direction from which the fire had come, and now he rolled a smoke
in the dark, and lighted up.
"There's nothing he can do," Harvey said, finally. "He can't live out there in the
cold forever-look what shape Ross was in-and we can bottle him up and keep him in
this country until we can hunt hint down."
"What if he knows of those Indian trails you talk of?" "Mostly, they're snowed in
now."
"Won't that affect your plans to get away after the holdups?"
103
 KADIGAN 99 He was silent for several minutes and then he said irritably, "No-we'll
make provision for that."
Harvey Thorpe, she recalled, was a man who planned care fully, but did not like objections
to his plans. He did not like to admit that he might be in error, and he was also
an optimistic planner: he expected the breaks to go his way. This, she remembered
having heard, was true of the criminal mind; few of them were ever willing to assess
the full weight of the forces against them.
Yet he might win, for a time, at least. Getting to her feet she went into the other
room and brought back a blanket which she hung over the window, and after that she
lighted a candle taken from a box in the kitchen. With a broom she swept up the broken
glass and threw it out, along with the ruined lamp.
When she returned to the living room Harvey had gone. Her thoughts returned to Tom
Radigan.
Was he actually dead? The more she thought of that, the less she believed it. He
was a shrewd fighter, one who missed few chances, and no matter how strongly Wall
might believe him dead, she was unconvinced. Coker was not the man to kill Tom Radigan.
For several days nothing happened. The sun came out and melted the snow in exposed
places, and Ross Wall, working tirelessly, checked their losses, and the reports
he brought to her were not as bad as she had first expected. True, they had lost
several hundred head, but it was mostly the weakest stock that would scarcely last
out such a winter in any event. If the bad weather had remained they could have lost
the entire herd, but now they had a respite.
The activities of the few riders Harvey had left her were limited by the snow-filled
passes and trails blocked with snow. As most of her life had been spent in Western
country she knew how difficult it was to search every corner of any range. And in
this broken, tumbled and forested country it was virtu ally impossible. She had known
of cowhands who had worked a range for years, and then discovered canyons they had
never known to exist. Yet somewhere near Radigan had his own cattle and where they
were there was feed.
Harvey was busy with his plans. He had divided the remain ing force into three groups
of six men each, and each had been given a project. Each group was to strike at the
same time and
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 100 Louis L'AMOUR
then each was to get out of the country, fast. The country they were to cover was
far to the north, but there were at least two ranches where they could get fresh
horses, ranches owned by men who were themselves outlaws. Scouting north, they found
the trails open as far as they rode, and there was a good chance they could make
their strikes and escape before another snow fell.
Wall had been working with only four cowhands, and he came to Gelina as she was saddling
for a ride. "I declare, Miss Gelina," he said, "we've covered a sight of country,
but not one brand of his stock have we found, nor a single stack of hay."
"Maybe you've worked too close to the place," she suggest ed. "It must be a valley,
or a plateau."
"We've been working west and south," he said, "but we'll try east and north, across
the river."
She drew the girth tighter. "Ross, are there any tracks? Of people, I mean."
He hesitated. "I know what you mean," he said, after a moment, "but I've hesitated
to say. Bitner found the tracks of the man who shot into the cabin."
She turned to face him, waiting. Yet even before he told her, she knew what was coming.
"It was Radigan, all right. He was on that pinnacle south of the place, although
how he got there without being seen beats me. We found his tracks, and I know his
tracks, and we backtrailed him to a camp in the hills a couple of miles over west.
Mighty nice place, and they had a-plenty to eat."
"They?" "Yes, ma'am. There was three of them. Radigan, John Child and the girl."
So Coker had failed after all? And what of Gorman? Suddenly, she realized she was
glad. She wanted Radigan alive. Yet was it that? Or was she pleased that Harvey had
failed?
"Ross," she said, "you told me you'd found some grazing on a mesa over that way.
I want you to cull what is left of the herd, and pick out about five hundred head
of the best stock, and I want you to scout around and find the best grass you can,
and get them on it."
He looked up at her, and she knew he understood exactly
105
 RADIGAN 101 what she was thinking. "We may not be able to save them all," she said,
"but I want to save enough to start again-elsewhere."
"All right." He shifted his feet and got out the makings, beginning to build a smoke.
"I take it we're to make no talk about this?"
"No, no talk. Just do it."
"That Flynn," Wall said. "Harvey shouldn't think too little of him. He's no fool."
"Harvey's the fool." It was the first time she had let her feelings be known. "Radigan
will beat him. Harvey's too reckless."
I'll start working those cattle," Wall said. "You can depend on me."
That she could. She watched his broad back as he rode away and wondered whom, if
anyone else, she could depend on. Yet as he disappeared she was wondering if she
would not do best to depend only on herself, and to keep her thoughts to herself.
There might be a way to win out of this yet. If Radigan and Harvey destroyed each
other, then she would remain in command of the situation.
And then Gorman showed up. He rode in on a gaunted horse, his face drawn and pale,
his eyes fever-bright. She was alone on the ranch when he came in and she got the
story first. It was brief and to the point, the story of Coker's death, and he added,
"I found a deer in the deep snow and killed it. I've been eating meat without salt
for the past three or four days, and not much of that."
After he had eaten and, drunk coffee he rolled a smoke. "Ma'am, one thing I got to
tell you. That Radigan! He wasn't worried. I mean not even a little. I never saw
a man take things so easy-like, and I think there is reason for it. I think they
knew exactly where they were going, and I think they went to Loma Coyote for help."
Gorman told her then what she had already heard from Ross, about the men at Loma
Coyote, about Loren Pike, Charlie Cade, and Adam Stark.
Tom Radigan rolled out of his blankets and stirred the few coals that remained from
the night's fire. To these he added some fragments of bark and pitch pine he had
split the previous evening. Shivering with cold, he moved swiftly to get the
106
 102 Louis L'AMouR
fire going, then dived back under his blankets. Glancing across, he saw Gretchen
laughing at him from her bed.
"It's cold!" he said defensively.
"Naturally! But you should have seen yourself, jumping around like a cricket on a
hot skillet."
"Tomorrow morning," he said grimly, "you build the fire!" "All right! But IT put
the materials close by my bed so all I have to do is reach out with one hand and
get the fire going."
"Anybody who'd make a fire like that," he said, "would steal sheep."
They waited, watching the hungry flames reach out with red tongues and caress the
cold sticks. The fire grew and crackled, warming the cave on the mesa.
Actually, as to distance they were not more than a mile from the ranch itself, and
the cave they occupied was one of a series atop the mesa that backed up the ranch,
but they were on the northwest side of the mesa and the cave could only be entered
from the top, so far as anyone knew. The room they occupied was a small one that
was an offshoot of a much larger room, and one that Radigan had prepared long ago.
His own preparations had only followed those of some other man who had preceded him
by many years, for he had found an artificially hollowed basin there in the outer
cave into which water flowed, and he had found a rusted halberd and part of a breastplate.
Here, sometime in the bygone years, some lost adventurer, perhaps from the army of
Coronado, had taken a last refuge from the Indians. And from all the signs here he
had lived for some time, years, perhaps. Cut off by the Indians, he must have fled
ever farther into the wilds until finally as a last extremity he had found this place,
and remained here. Grad ually, over the years, he had fitted it out as a combination
fortress and home.
Into the rock walls he had cut shelves, and in the outer wall he had cut two windows,
or portholes, perhaps, that allowed him a means of covering the approach to the cave.
And here he had lived.
Coming upon the place quite by accident, Radigan had imme diately seen its value
as a haven of refuge if the Utes caused trouble, and had supplied it with utensils,
stored food and ammunition, and had, over the years, brought in a plentiful
107
 RADIGAN 103 supply of firewood. The smokehole used by the previous occu pant he
had improved by a chimney from the crude fireplace, and the smoke issued from the
top of the mesa through the roots and then the branches of a gnarled and ancient
cedar. These served to dispel the smoke until it was scarcely visible a few yards
away.
This was the first and best of the caches of supplies he had planted.
As the fire grew, the cave warmed up and Radigan rolled out of bed and dressed swiftly.
Child followed.
"How about that trail north?" Radigan asked suddenly. "Fig ure a man could get through
to Loma Coyote?"
"When do you want me to start?"
"Not you-me." Radigan walked to the deep-set window and peered out. The approach
to the cave was up a winding slide that was just short of being too steep for a horse
to make it, and from below gave no hint of a means of access to the mesa's top. The
window allowed a view down the slide for much of the distance. "You stay here, and
I'll go," Radigan said.
"Those boys know me," Child protested.
"Pike knows me. So does Cade. The others can get acquaint ed. Anyway, it wouldn't
do for me to stay here with Gretchen." "Afraid?"
"Me?" Radigan stared at her, then grinned. "No, I'm not afraid, but you ought to
be. There's no telling what might happen if we were left here alone."
"Nothing would happen," she replied, "unless I wanted it
to.
Radigan measured her with cool eyes. "Now maybe that's so, and again maybe it isn't.
Don't offer me any challenges."
He went into the outer cave where the horses were and fed them. He glanced at the
hay-not much left, but there was a good bait of corn left, and there was a chance
they could ride it out on what they had. There was food enough, that was sure. And
ammunition enough to wage the Battle of Gettysburg all over again.
He saddled up, and went back for his blanket roll and saddlebags. Gretchen was up
and had coffee on, and they sat down around the fire.
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 104 Louis L'A louR
"About time somebody had a look at those cattle for San Antonio way," Child suggested.
"I could do that."
Radigan looked over at Gretchen. "That means you'd be here alone. Could you make
out?"
"I could." She added a slice of beef to his plate. "I would be all right, and if
anybody found the place, I'd be able to stand them off."
"The snow's gone from the slide," Child said, "and we can get out without leaving
any trail, so you'll be all right. I can't figure any way they could find you up
here."
When he had led the horse to the opening of the cave, Radigan walked back to meet
Gretchen. He took the last packet of food she gave him and thrust it down in his
saddle bags. "You be careful," she warned.
He turned and looked down at her. Somehow, despite the cold and discomfort of their
days, she had continued to keep herself attractive, and now looking down into her
eyes, he felt her concern. "You do the same," he said, "and don't you go out of the
cave unless you go on top of the mesa, and if you do that, keep well back from the
sides. And whatever you do, don't cook at night."
"You told me that. At night you can smell the food cooking." "That's right. A wood
fire don't matter so much because it could come from their own fireplace, but the
smell of food is going to make them mighty curious."
I won't."
He stepped into the saddle. Her fingers lingered on his sleeve. "You be careful,"
she repeated.
He glanced at her again, and was startled to see tears in her eyes. He looked hastily
away. Now why would she be crying? There was no accounting for women, and it wasn't
as if he was a relative or anything. He walked the horse the last few steps out of
the cave and then started down the slide. It was steep, but a horse could make it.
At the end he drew up and listened, but there was no sound.
He reached the bottom, glanced each way, then put his horse across the open and into
the trees. He was visible for no more than two minutes and, once under cover of the
pines, he turned in his saddle and watched John Child across the open. Then they
both waited, unmoving, watching all around them for several minutes. Finally, Child
said, "I guess we made it."
109
 RADIGAN 105 Radigan nodded. Reluctantly, he turned his horse and headed
down through the trees. It was not right to leave a girl alone like that, alone for
days on end, and probably scared. Although Gretchen was less afraid than any woman
he had ever known ... not one word of complaint through all of this, and never once
when she shirked her work. In cold and snow, everywhere, she had held up her end
of the work and the riding.
Where the Cache Creek trail met with the easy way to Valle San Antonio, they parted.
John Child looked twice his size in the heavy buffalo coat. He drew up, the steam
from his breath making a plume in the still, cold air. "You be careful, Toni," Child
said. "All those boys up there aren't friendly."
"All right."
"You watch especial for Swiss Jack Burns. He's a gunman from over Kansas way. Fancies
himself."
"Yeah?" Radigan grinned. "With Loren Pike over there he's probably dead by now."
He gathered his reins. "Loren, he never was much given to let be. Fact is, he's a
right impatient man, sometimes."
Radigan picked out the broad shoulder of Cerro Jarocito to the north. East of there
was a spring and it was only about six miles to that spring. Call it seven to be
sure. Then three or four miles over to Coyote Creek and about six or seven miles
north to Loma Coyote. It was a good eighteen miles, any way you looked at it, and
cold riding. Five or six hours if he was lucky, and no telling how much if lie was
not lucky.
He was riding a dapple gray, a good horse that would weigh all of twelve hundred
pounds and one who knew how to travel in snow and over icy trails.
The wind was from the north, the sky was slate gray and promising snow, a promise
Radigan did not want fulfilled. The trail had not been traveled since the storm,
and at places the snow had crusted hard. By noon, when lie should have had ten miles
behind him he doubted if he had come more than six, for several times he had gone
out of his way to skirt drifts of snow, and once had gotten himself tangled in a
thick growth of lodgepole, and had to ride more than a mile to get out of it, and
two more miles before lie found his way back to the trail. He was swearing when he
found it and the dapple was agreeing with him, shaking its head with disgust.
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 106 Louis L'AMOUR
He had watered the horse at the spring, and when they reached Coyote Creek the water
was frozen over at several places, which made crossing difficult, for the ice was
not strong enough to bear the weight. The wind blew cold down the canyon from the
north, stiffening Radigan's face and making his hands numb.
It was late dusk when he came down out of the canyon and rode across the bench and
into the town.
The narrow street was as still as the day the earth was born, still and cold in the
last light of day, with lights showing in the Ramble House, and across the street
at the Utah Saloon. The only other light showed at an eating place, a light that
showed from beyond a fly-specked window.
Loma Coyote was not much as towns went, and as towns went, Loma Coyote would someday
go. It was a stopping place for drifters, a cooling-off place for men wanted by the
law and who had found other places too hot for comfort. There was nothing going on
at Loma Coyote that anybody could mention, a couple of miners who worked dismal prospect
holes in the nearby mountains but did most of their drilling without a single-jack
at the walnut bar of the Utah Saloon.
The population rarely exceeded thirty persons, all but three or four of them male.
Once the population had leaped overnight to a surprising fifty-six, but that was
during a Ute war when prospectors and trappers fled the hills for the doubtful security
of Loma Coyote.
They were silent men, accustomed to loneliness, and the combination of too much company
and too much of Loma Coyote's own brand of whisky had led to results somewhat less
than surprising. By daybreak of the second day the population had decreased to fifty-three,
and there were three bodies lying in an empty shed awaiting a spring thaw for burial.
By the sixth morning the population was almost back to normal, for one by one the
newcomers decided the Utes were less to be feared than the population and whisky
of Loma Coyote.
At the far end of the street was a huge, drafty old structure that could only be
a barn, and a lantern hung outside over a scarcely legible sign that indicated the
premises were a livery stable.
111
 RADIGAN 107 In the front of the building was a dark little room in which a stove
glowed cherry-red but there was no other light.
Out of the gloom a voice called. "Hay a-plenty, an' he'p yourself. Corn if you're
a might to, but that'll be four-bits extrv."
"That's a lot of money."
"Take it or leave it, but you stick your lunch-hooks into my corn bin without I say
and you'll catch yourself a death of cold, because I'll open your belly with a shotgun."
The old man came out of the "office" carrying a sawed-off shotgun, and he held up
a lantern, peering at Radigan. "Man can't be too careful, that's what I always say.
You're un-titled to feed your hoss here, but them as wants corn I figure can pay
for corn, because most likely they're running from something."
"I'm not running, old man. I'm looking for a friend of mine. His name is Loren Pike."
"Never heard of him. No memory for names. I figger names don't cut much ice, this
here country. Man changes his name 'bout as often as he changes his address, and
with most folks hereabout, that's mighty often."
"I own a ranch south of here. The name's Radigan."
He peered at Radigan again. "Maybe you own a ranch, maybe you don't, an' iffen you
do, maybe you won't own it long. Not what I hear folks say."
"I own it, and a year from now, ten years from now I'll still own it." Radigan stripped
the saddle from the dapple. "And if I have any trouble from you I'll ride back up
here and burn this flea cage around your dirty ears."
The old man drew back. "Now what kind of talk is that? Ain't I puttin' your hoss
up for you? Didn't I say he'p yourself to corn? Didn't IF The old man looked at him
shrewdly. "Why, you might be the man John Child works for?"
"Child works for me."
"All right. I'll rub your horse down, and I'll give him a bait of corn. And if you're
lookin' for any newcomer you might try the Utah or the Ramble. Most folks favor one
or the other. On'y my advice to you is to get out of town. Sleep in the haymow if
you're a might to, but stay shut of those places. Swiss Jack is full of trouble tonight."
Tom Radigan walked to the door, ducked his head against the cold wind and walked
down to the eating house. He
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 108 LOUIS L'AMOUR
opened the door and stepped in, accompanied by a few blown flakes. A big, hard-faced
woman stood behind the counter and shoved coffee over to him. "You can eat," she
said, "but if you're lookin' for anything else, it ain't to be had. Not tonight,
anyway. "
"I want to eat. "
She looked at him. "Yes, I reckon you would. Be an hour for you get any notions,
I'd say, get the cold out of you then, and you'll be looking for something else.
Takes a while for the cold to get out of a man's muscles. I've got three girls here,
one sixteen and two nineteen, and I can handle more business than the three of them-and
better."
"I'll settle for a thick steak."
"You'll take b'ar meat, an' like it. We ain't had any cow meat around here since
the storm. Fellers drive it up from the south of here, but the trails are closed."
Radigan ate in silence while the big woman talked on, appar ently neither listening
to his occasional comments nor caring if he listened to her stream of conversation.
When he had eaten he tossed a dollar on the counter and she handed him three quarters
in change. He took a last gulp of scalding coffee and got up, shoving out into the
cold. "Don't you come the high and mighty on me!" she called after him. "You'll be
back!"
He crossed the street, following a beaten path, to the Utah Saloon.
It was a bar no more than ten feet long and of hand-hewn planks, and the man behind
it was nearly as tall as the bar was long. Two men leaned on the bar and several
others sat around at tables. They all looked up when he came in, and, seeing he was
a stranger, looked again.
"Whisky," he said, "or whatever you serve by that name." The big man leaned over
the bar. "You don't like our drinkin'? Then you can do without."
"Give it to me. I don't know whether I like it or not." "You'll decide or you won't
get it."
"All right! I like it." Radigan glanced around at the others. They returned his gaze
solemnly, and he said, "If these gen tlemen like the whisky, I'll buy."
The big bartender turned again. "Now see here, stranger.
113
 RADIGAN 109 That's again you've throwed a doubt on my liquor. I don't like
it.
"See?" Radigan grinned at the others. "He admits he doesn't like it himself."
The big man interrupted angrily. "I said no such thing. I meant-"
"Trying to weasel out of it," Radigan said. "Well, fill a glass and I'll see if I
like it."
The big man stared at him for an instant, then went behind the bar and poured a drink.
Nobody else moved. "The offer stands," Radigan invited.
Nobody moved.
"See. Nobody likes it."
He tasted it. For an instant he thought his throat was on fire, then he backed off
and looked at the glass. "A barrel of branch water, two plugs of tobacco, a bar of
soap to give it a bead, and a couple of ounces of strychnine, and maybe three gallons
of alcohol. Color the whole thing with greasewood, and that's about the formula.
No wonder nobody drinks it."
He tasted it again. "Started by selling to the Utes, I'll bet. No wonder they went
on the warpath so much."
"You're breedin' trouble," the big man warned.
"No I'm not, and I don't want trouble. Now you haul out that jug from under the bar
and I'll have a decent drink."
The bartender muttered gloomily and reached under the bar. Immediately the others
got up and walked over to join Radigan.
When the glasses were set up and the drinks poured, Radigan said, "I'm Radigan of
the R-Bar outfit. You should know the brand. You've eaten R-Bar beef, time to time."
A round-faced man with a sour face looked at the whisky in his glass, then tossed
off half of it. "You accusin' us of rustlin'?" "Stating a fact," Radigan said. "And
I'm not the man to
begrudge a beef now and again, although why you waste time on my little herd when
there's nearly three thousand head in the country that don't belong there."
"You invitin' us?"
"Telling you. What you do is your own affair, only they're no friends of mine. Fact
is, I'm right in the middle of a first-class cow war. "
The door opened behind them and in a gust of cold wind a
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 110 Louis L'AMOUR
slender blond man came in. He was tall, wiry, and his face was narrow with straight
brows above long, deep-set eyes. He wore a short sheepskin coat that gave his gun
hand plenty of room and a round beaver cap that fitted his narrow skull tightly.
At the same moment there was a clatter of horses' hoofs in the outer street, and
Radigan glanced out the window. In the narrow shaft of light he saw Harvey Thorpe,
and the men around him were Thorpe's men.
Radigan tossed off his drink and shrugged into his coat. The newcomer was watching
him. "I don't know you," he was saying. "I'm Swiss Jack."
Radigan grinned at him. "My name is Will Haftowate. And that's what you'll have to
do."
"What?" Swiss Jack looked inquiringly.
"You'll have to wait," Radigan said. "I spoke of a cattle war: that's it, out front."
Swiss Jack glanced over his shoulder. The group of riders were dismounting outside.
"That's no cattle war. That's Bob Harvey, and if he wants to see you, I'm going to
keep you for him."
"Let him alone." The big bartender had leaned across the bar. "We don't hold anybody
for anybody here."
"Now, see here-"
The back door closed softly, and Swiss Jack turned sharply around. Radigan was gone.
115
 T he wind blew cold off the mountain as Radigan paused on the icy back step, listening
for sounds within. He could
hear the murmur of voices but could distinguish no words, and he waited only until
he heard the front door open and then he walked swiftly along the well-beaten path
to the outhouse and went past it to the barn.
He paused there, his shadow merging with the heavier shadow alongside the barn wall,
and he calculated swiftly. There were only a few buildings in town and all would
be searched at once, therefore shelter within any of them was out of the question.
The arrival of Thorpe and his riders was a puzzle, for it was impossible they could
have known of his coming here. They might be looking for Pike and Cade, but that
was doubtful as thus far they had no argument with them. Hence it was logical to
assume they had come here for some other reason and their arrival at this time was
purely coincidental. But why would they come here?
And Thorpe had at least a dozen riders with him, and perhaps even more.
Swiss Jack had called him Bob Harvey. Was that a mistake? Or another name Thorpe
had used? Radigan recalled his own first impression, that Thorpe was a tough man,
one who had been known somewhere before this. But Bob Harvey? He turned the name
over in his mind, but it meant nothing to him.
No use standing where he was. He went around the corner of the barn, his feet crunching
on the frozen snow under the eaves. Back of the barn, and perhaps thirty yards off
was the creek bed. He started for it, moving swiftly, not wanting to be caught outlined
against the snow, and when he reached the blackness he stopped to catch his breath
and to listen.
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 112 Louis L'AMOUR
The back door had slammed. Was the search starting? If there was a search he was
sure it would be Swiss Jack who started it: the others, whatever else they might
be, were men who kept their own counsel.
He moved back into the brush along the creek, then went down along the icy rocks.
His Winchester was with his saddle and gear back in the livery stable, but to go
for it now was fatal.
He saw men fanning out from the barn, going from building to building. Obviously,
the idea that he might have remained outside on such a cold night had not occurred
to them, but it would soon come to mind. Yet only a few minutes had passed when he
heard a call. It was Thorpe's voice. "All right! No time for that! Come on in! We'll
take care of him on the way back!" The way back from where?
He saw them straggle back and mount up, and then they rode out of town in a tight
cavalcade as if bunching against the cold.
If men traveled on such a night there, haste was imperative and they must have far
to go.
Nobody commented when he came back into the saloon and this time the bartender reached
under the bar for the good jug and poured a drink. "On the house," he said.
"Cold out there," Radigan commented.
"Especially," it was Swiss Jack, "if you have cold feet to begin."
Radigan took his drink and his time. Then he turned slowly around and looked at Swiss
Jack. He looked at him for a full minute while the room was silent. The fire crackled
and inside the pot-bellied stove a stick fell. A man shifted his feet and poured
a glass full and the trickling of the whisky could be heard plainly in the room.
"Yes," Radigan said quietly, "I had cold feet from a long ride, and cold hands, and
there were a few more outside than I was in any mood to tackle. There must have been
a dozen of them."
"So?" Swiss Jack was sitting back in his chair, smiling. "There's only one of you."
Swiss Jack was surprised. He had expected everything but that and for an instant
it caught him unawares, and also, he instantly realized, he was in no position to
draw a gun and any slightest move on his part could be construed as a move to
117
 RADIGAN 113 draw. If the big man at the bar was any hand at all with a gun, then
Swiss Jack himself was as good as dead. And he was not ready to die.
For a long moment he sat very still, wondering if he dared move from his slouched
position without feeling the tear of hot lead in his guts.
Radigan knew exactly how Swiss Jack was feeling and he was in no hurry to let him
off the hook. "I said just any time," he said, "but if you reach for a gun, I'll
kill you."
Swiss Jack's mouth was dry and he could feel his pulse throbbing heavily. He dearly
wanted to move, his position had become cramped, but he was quite sure now that the
big man was not fooling.
Radigan watched him, his eyes cold but his lips smiling slightly. He did not want
to kill this man, yet he knew that if it became necessary he was not going to lose
any time doing it or any sleep afterwards. He did not want to brag but he knew that
sometimes even a dangerous man will hesitate before tackling an equally dangerous
one.
"You called that man Bob Harvey. I don't know the name." "Your hard luck."
"Not mine. He's yellow enough to hire his killing."
Swiss Jack laughed. "Bob Harvey? You've the wrong man. Bob can kill his own cats."
"He hired Vin Cable to kill me."
He saw the sudden awareness in Swiss Jack's eyes and knew now that whatever else
Swiss Jack might do he was not going to begin a fight under any misapprehensions.
"You're Radigan?" There was a slight note of incredulity. "I'm Radigan."
By now he knew the story of the killing of Vin Cable would be known wherever Western
men gathered, for such stories were quickly passed on from campfire to card table
across the country. And especially were such stories the gossip of such places as
this, where they were meat and drink to the lonely man who lived by the gun.
The door opened then and three men came into the room. The first was a tall, square-shouldered
man with auburn mus taches and auburn hair that touched his shoulders. The second
was shorter, a man with a square face and a square build who carried himself very
erect, a man whose features were swarthy
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 114 Louis L"AMOUR
and handsome in a hard-bitten way. The third was even taller, very narrow across
his rounded shoulders and with a small head atop a long neck, and a great beak of
a nose.
Radigan said, "Howdy, boys." He did not remove his eyes from Swiss Jack. "I'm selling
tickets for a ball. You boys want to choose your partners?"
"If it's your fight, Tom," Loren Pike had grasped the situa tion at once, "we're
already tuning our fiddles."
Charlie Cade and Adam Stark walked around Radigan to the bar and leaned their backs
against it, looking at Swiss Jack. "You really call this a fight?" Pike asked gently,
indicating Swiss Jack.
"This is the soup. The main course is being served when Harvey Thorpe or Bob Harvey
or whatever he calls himself comes back down the trail."
Swiss Jack was getting stiff. He knew he was going to try moving soon, and he was
glad there was only one man to reckon with for the men who stood before him were
all very tough men.
Radigan walked slowly over to the table. "Your hands aren't tied, Jack," he said
conversationally, "and I think you said something about holding me for Harvey. You
want to make a start?"
Swiss Jack was looking up, his eyes on Radigan's chest. If he did draw, would his
gun clear the table? Could he jerk free of the table and get his gun up before he
died?
"Seems to me you're in a bind," Radigan said. "Just get up out of the chair. You'll
get an even break. Just get up mighty easy and don't make any sudden moves."
Swiss Jack could not make himself believe it. He was going to have his chance. Slowly,
he eased sideways out of his chair and straightened up and his eyes lifted to Radigan's
and Radigan hit him.
Swiss Jack never saw the blow coming. He was not set to take a punch and he was not
yet on balance. The blow caught him alongside the jaw and lights exploded in his
skull and the next instant he was seated on the floor and his skull was ringing.
There was a smoky taste in his mouth and he started to get up but a big hand caught
him by the scruff of the neck and slammed him back into the wall with such violence
that a bottle on the bar tipped over. His skull hit the wall with a
119
 RADIGAN 115 vicious rap and his eyes tried to focus and he tried to reach for a
gun.
He had never been in a fist fight in his life. Guns were a gentleman's weapon, and
he had always relied on a gun. A hard fist caught him in the mouth and he tasted
blood. He came off the wall swinging, but a wicked blow in his belly took his wind
and doubled him up for the lifting knee that broke his nose.
"Swiss Jack," Radigan spoke without anger, "I came in here a stranger, minding my
own affairs, and you decided to take a hand.
"Now," Radigan continued, "I'd suggest you settle down for the winter here, or you
ride out to the north. But don't come south of here because if I see you south of
Loma Coyote and west of Santa Fe I'll take it to mean you're looking for me."
He turned and walked to the bar. "I need some top hands," he said to Loren, "who
aren't gun-shy."
Gretchen spent the first day cleaning up the cave, checking the trail regularly,
and during that first day she cooked not at all, only making coffee to go with the
jerked beef and the cans of tomatoes she opened. She was, she admitted to herself,
frightened.
On the second day the wind was blowing hard into the west, and so away from the ranch,
and on that day she got out some dried apples and baked three apple pies. She had
already decided on a party for them when they returned, and she had begun preparing.
What she did not know was that Bitner, scouting wide for the R-Bar cows, had swung
even farther west than usual on what was to be the last venture in that direction
before they started sweeping the mountains to the east of Vache Creek. And returning
from that ride he caught a whiff of fresh baking.
It was impossible, he knew it was impossible, yet he knew that smell, and his stomach
growled in response. He drew up and sat his horse in the face of the wind, trying
to get another whiff of it, but none came. Just as he was deciding it was all imagination
and wishful thinking, it came again.
For an hour he cut back and forth across the wind, trying to trace that vagrant aroma,
but without success, although he did catch the scent several times, and by that time
he was closer to the ranch by several miles.
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 116 Louis L'AMOUR
When it was almost dusk he gave it up. It was nonsense. Probably they were baking
at the ranch, and even if Radigan was holed up out here somewhere, they would hardly
be baking pies or cake. Although, come to think of it, there had been some doughnuts
left in a pan when they took over the ranch.
They had turned the barn into a bunkhouse and there were several men there when he
rode in. After a few minutes he went up to the house to report to Ross Wall, who
was talking to Angelina Foley.
When he opened the door he expected the odor of fresh baking to hit him with a wave,
but it did not. His nostrils found no expected odors there, nothing but that of a
wood fire and fresh coffee.
Bitner was a cautious man, and after a moment he merely reported what he had seen
and found, which was nothing but empty country. He kept the smell of baking to himself.
After all, it was probably his imagination.
The cattle were in bad shape. The grass they had found was eaten down to the grass
roots and the cattle were not used to pawing snow away from grass to eat it and were
poor rustlers. That Wall was worried, he could plainly see, and Miss Foley's face
looked drawn and worried.
And then a man rode in from Loma Coyote with the news that Radigan had been seen
there, and Gorman told him while they were having a smoke, "I saw tracks over east
of here. I'd swear they were the tracks of that big roan that the halfbreed rides."
"Fresh?" "Yesterday or the day before. And if he went he's still out there. I cut
for sign all the way back and up and down along the creek. He hasn't crossed back."
Suppose, Bitner told himself, they have a hideout near the ranch? And suppose both
men are gone? Then that girl will be there alone.
The girl alone.
She was a lot of woman, that one. Bitner's narrow eyes closed over his thoughts.
He was no chaser, but when a man was away from women for months he got to feeling
it.
Bitner was out at daybreak and he rode west along a faint trail with the mesa towering
over him on his right, and he had
121
RADIGAN 117 no idea in mind except to find where that smell of baking had come from.
Not that the girl was not in the back of his mind, clinging there like some noxious
vine, working its feelers into his thoughts with memories of the girl, her high-breasted
figure and the way she walked.
Damn! That was a woman! And living with two men like that! No decent girl would think
of it. Claimed Child was her father! Why, that breed couldn't father a blonde like
that out of-anything. Bitner knew what trouble could come to a man from fooling around
with a woman in the West. He knew it, but he was not thinking about it. He knew a
man could steal cows, commit a murder and even steal a horse and get away with it,
but to fool around with a woman, especially a decent woman. The least he could get
was a hanging.
He knew all that but he could not get the girl out of his thoughts. She was there,
like a cocklebur in a horse's tail, and nothing was going to get it out in any easy
way.
He walked his horse along the slope, working his way west, and thinking it out. If
they had a hideout close to the ranch the chances were it was somewhere around that
mesa. It loomed up there, hundreds of feet above them, and no man could see what
was on top, and so obvious nobody would ever think of looking there.
Radigan, he was a cagey one. Thorpe should have measured his man more carefully before
trying to move in as he had, but Bitner, being no fool, could see a lot of things
Thorpe had not considered. There was a good chance he would never get back from this
trip, and as far as that went, that Foley girl was mighty handsome ... do her good,
too. She was too high and mighty and too free with the orders to suit him. Bitner
took a hefty bite from his chewing tobacco and rolled it into the corner of his jaws.
Do her good, that's what it would, but alongside this Child woman she was nothing.
No wonder Radigan wouldn't fall for the Foley girl. Bitner knew about that, for he
had seen the gleam in her eye when she went after him. She made like she was an enemy,
but if Radigan so much as showed a sign of interest she was ready.
The dim trail, ancient as time itself, played out somewhere near the mesa, but trending
away from the wall. Bitner drew up and spat a blob of brown juice into the remains
of a snowdrift. He tested the air for the smell of cooking but found
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 118 Louis L"AMOUR
nothing but good, clean pine forest. He sat his horse, waiting patiently, for Bitner
was a man who knew patience.
He worked at it the rest of the day and came in at night without saying anything
except that he had been hunting. He was tired and so was his horse, and knowing the
man for a top hand, Wall asked no questions.
Half the night Bitner lay awake thinking of Gretchen Child, and turning over in his
mind every possible approach with the slow patience of the confirmed hunter. Nobody,
he remem bered, had examined that mesa, and certainly nobody had ridden around it,
and it was a good long ride and one he decided to make. After all, he might be in
this country a good while and he might as well get acquainted. He settled down into
his worn blankets and slept, and far to the north a small column of riders was filing
into place beside the road where they would camp, and their goal was not far off.
Harvey Thorpe was feeling good. Suppose they had missed Radigan. The man was on the
dodge now and eventually they would kill him or run him out. A few more miles of
riding and they would be in position to make their strike: the word he had from Leadville
was that the stage might carry seventy thousand in gold. It was better than the cattle
business.
Sure, he would come out of it with a third, but it was enough for now. And he might
do a lot of things with a fast count; he had handled a lot of money and knew how
to make a count look better than it was.
Radigan was beat. The long ride atop the other rides and he was tired. He holed up
at Loma Coyote to wait out the weather a little, and to recuperate. John Child would
be back at the hideout on the mesa by this night, and he was not worried.
The trouble was, John Child was lying unconscious beside the trail twelve miles east
of the ranch where he had been thrown when his horse was startled by a sudden flushing
of birds from the brush. Child had been tired, too, riding half asleep in the saddle,
and now he was out cold and had been for an hour. And his horse was just slowing
to a walk, a couple of miles farther on.
Gretchen awakened on her third morning alone with a dis tinct feeling of uneasiness.
She dressed hurriedly and went to the window and peered out. She could see nothing.
Her range of vision was better from one of the inner windows, which was,
123
 r
RADIGAN 119 like the first, concealed by a break in the rock, so she went back into
the cave and looked out. And she saw a rider.
He was not passing by, he was cutting for sign, and he was working the ground as
carefully as an Apache. Gretchen had not grown up with Indians not to know when a
man was hunting a trail and close to what he wanted to find. She watched him, frightened
and fascinated. Yet her first thought was for John Child and Radigan. What if they
returned and he saw them first?
She went back into the cave and fed the horses. She got a pistol and belted it on,
then picked up a rifle. She was a good shot, and if she got the chance: she had no
occasion to kill any man, but this one was a danger to those she loved. When everything
was arranged she went to the entrance and looked down. No sign of him there.
Radigan had showed her a rock she could push down. It might not kill a man but it
could give him some uncomfortable moments and might make him think again before he
tried to come up the slide a second time. She tested that and it moved under her
hand. Yes, she could roll it. She checked the win dows, and the man was no longer
in sight. That frightened her more than ever, because not being able to see where
he was she could imagine all sorts of things. And the worst of it was, Radigan and
her father were due back at any moment.
She looked out again, and saw the man farther down the slope, working through the
trees. Had he failed to find any tracks? Or was he aware he was being watched? Suppose
he waited until dark and then came up?
The day wore on slowly, and she went ahead with her plans for the party she had promised
herself she would provide for their homecoming. Into her small pack she had hidden
one very nice dress. It was right for a party, and she got it out hoping some of
the wrinkles would hang out. She hung it up and looked at it, then went back to the
window. There was no sign of the man.
Taking the rifle she went up to the top of the mesa and worked her way close to the
edge, keeping off the skyline. He was there, riding back toward the ranch and some
distance off. That did not mean he could not come back.
Gretchen had never thought of herself as brave or lacking in bravery. As a child
she knew the Indians had thought her
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courageous. But bravery, she realized, was not a simple thing. Anyone could be brave
under familiar circumstances, but put that same person in a strange place, among
strange people and subjected to a different brand of fear and he might not be so
brave. Many a man who was afraid of high places could walk into gunfire without hesitation,
and a man who might ride any dangerous, man-killing horse might hesitate to rush
into a fire to save someone. Usually a man was brave in a situation where he understood
the risks, and what she thought of now was not in her estimation a matter of bravery
or lack of it. She had a job to do and she decided she would do it.
If that man returned she must stalk and kill him. She could not run the risk of him
lying in wait for Radigan and her father. She covered several miles along the other
side of the mesa,
staring off into the gathering dusk, looking into the trees and over the bare hillsides,
hoping they would return. She returned to the cave and built a small fire to make
coffee, and she knew she was afraid.
It was very dark in the cave. The only comfortable feeling was the sound of the horses
chomping on their grain in the stalls in the main cave.
She took straw from the pile near the horses and scattered some of it in the opening,
hoping the rustle of it would arouse her if anyone walked over it. Farther inside
she placed several little rows of stones that a man might kick in walking, and these
would rattle on the bare floor of the cave. Yet she was fright ened, and she lay
awake for long hours, listening into the dark.
At daybreak she awakened suddenly, conscious that she had overslept. For a long time
she lay absolutely still, listening, straining her ears for the slightest sound,
and heard nothing. She got quickly to her feet and, taking the rifle, went to the
windows, then the cave opening. There was nothing, no one in sight anywhere. Perhaps
she was being foolish, the man might have lost something or- But she knew she was
not. She knew the man had been looking for her, for them.
She made coffee and ate more of the jerked beef and some cold corn bread, and at
intervals she went to look and saw nothing. She fed the horse only a little for the
hay was all but gone and the corn was precious.
Her dress was hanging out surprisingly well and she longed to put it on. She had
planned to wear it when they arrived and
125
 RADIGAN 121 she was sure that would be soon. Again she checked the openings, but
nothing was in sight. Taking her rifle she went to the top of the mesa and worked
close to the edge, but there, too, she saw nothing.
From the other side of the mesa she studied the country to the north from which either
Radigan or her father must come, but she saw nothing. She was sure once, that she
did, but then there was no further movement so she gave up and went back.
Suppose they never came back? Suppose both of them had been ambushed and killed?
Suppose once more she was to be an orphan with no one to turn to, no place to go,
and no money?
She shook her head, refusing to accept the idea, and then she went back to the cave,
and suddenly determined, she changed into her dress. Excitedly, she looked in the
small mirror she had but could see only a little of herself at a time. She had put
her hair up the night before, but now she let it down and combed it out. When her
hair was put up properly she looked at herself in the mirror and knew she was beautiful,
and it was the way she wished to look when Tom Radigan returned home. The dress was
white, with only a little color. "I ... I look like a bride!" she said aloud.
The voice came from behind her: "You sure do, lady!" Suddenly she was cold, utterly
cold. For a long moment she did not move, her mind working swiftly and with astonishing
clarity. She knew she was in dire trouble and there was no help to be expected unless-unless-but
their coming now was too much to hope for.
She turned slowly to see Bitner standing in the opening from the larger cave, and
she recognized him at once. His face and name were familiar for when she arrived
on the stage she had seen him and heard him called by name.
He was a lean, tall, sour-smelling man, unshaven and dirty, the juice from his tobacco
staining the whiskers about his mouth.
"I was wondering when you'd get here," she said. "You certainly took long enough."
Bitner blinked. He had expected fear, screams, protests, anything but her present
calm. And her appearance. Her very beauty left him awkward and uncertain as to his
next move, for he was unused to women of such beauty and they robbed him
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 122 Louis L'AMOUR
of self-possession. But her shoulders were very white, and he stared at her, his
mouth growing dry with eagerness. At the same time her attitude and appearance confused
him and the fact left him angry. She was only a girl, and she was alone.
"I'm here now," he said crossly, "and I guess you know what I've come for."
"I saw you searching for the trail," .she said. "I've watched you for several days.
I could," she looked at him steadily, "have killed you."
He looked at her, disturbed by her coolness and the uncom fortable feeling that he
might have been, for days, right under her rifle.
"Won't do you no good," he said. "You missed your chance." "I was making some coffee,"
Gretchen replied. "Would you like some?"
Every delay was a victory, every moment she could keep him talking increased her
chances of something happening, of some opportunity, some chance to do something,
anything. But whatever she did must be right the first time: there would be no second.
"Well ... I could do with some coffee," he agreed.
Why not? Warm him up. It was mighty cold out there. He glanced around with new respect
for Radigan. Had it mighty nice up here. Plenty of grub, warm shelter, feed for the
horses and firewood; why, he could last out the winter here.
She walked right by him. She would never have believed, a moment before, that she
could walk so close to him, but although her flesh crawled with fear, she did it.
"Pretty fancy," Bitner said, indicating the dress. "You wear that in some dance hall?"
"It is a party dress, Mr. Bitner," she said. "I wore it at parties in Mexico. I attended
a convent there."
He accepted the coffee. "You," he was incredulous, "in a convent?"
"Why not?" She looked around at him. "I am seventeen, Mr. Bitner, and although you
seem to doubt it, I am a lady."
He sneered, yet he felt a rising doubt. "Likely story! Livin' with two men!"
"John Child is my foster father. He and his wife were the only parents I ever had."
She had located the bowie knife they
127
 HADIGAN 123 used to slice meat. "He is a very good man, and Mr. Radigan has been
nothing but a gentleman."
Bitner stared at her sourly. This was not going as he had planned, but somehow the
right moment had not come. Mean while a cup of coffee would taste mighty good. He
peered at her, trying to make out whether she was like she said, or like he had suspected.
His opinion of her was convinced, however, and he decided she must be lying.
She stirred the coals under the coffee and got out two cups. The knife was just visible
under the edge of an old coat she had used when she first got up in the morning,
and she purposely avoided the area, not wishing to attract attention to it that might
lead him to discover the knife. Bitner had seated himself close to her guns, which
were useless under the circumstances.
When she handed him the cup he touched her hand with his and grinned at her meaningfully.
Gretchen seemed not to notice but inwardly she cringed.
"Ain't nobody comin' back here," Bitner said suddenly. "If you're expectin' it, you're
wrong. We ain't seen nothing of Radigan since he rode north."
They knew that, then?
"He won't live long up there. Not with Swiss Jack Burns around. And if he does the
boss will take care of him on the way back."
"He's been away?"
"He's away all right." Bitner gulped the hot coffee and muttered a little, looking
around the cave at the few sparse articles of clothing and the beds. "That breed
is good as dead, too." He puckered his brow. "We don't know what happened to him,
but he's afoot out there in the cold, and he's hurt. We found blood on the snow and
his horse came in to the ranch, so we back-trailed the horse. No sign of Child, but
blood on the snow. "
Sardonic humor glinted in his hard eyes. "No use gettin' your hopes up. Nobody ain't
going to come to help you out." He crossed one leg over the other. "Best thing you
can do is make up to me. A woman can't live in this country without a man."
She dropped her hand to the haft of the bowie knife and swung it in a wide are. It
was her chance and he was warm, relaxed, momentarily off guard. She swung the wide
blade and
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 124 Louis L'A)toux
turned with it, swinging it almost at arm's length, and she was just short. The tip
of the blade slashed across his biceps and he dropped the cup and toppled over backwards
as the blade slit his shirt and left a long, red scratch across his abdomen. Instantly,
Gretchen knew she had failed, and that now there would be no respite, no further
chance at delay, and she had no doubt that after he had stayed with her as much as
he wanted that he would kill her: he must kill her.
Gretchen did not think, she ran. But as she ran she caught up her rifle and ran into
the outer cave, then scrambled on up the slide to the top of the mesa. The wind was
piercing, but she ran. She ran wildly, desperately, conscious of the clamber ing,
stumbling footsteps of the man behind her.
Yet almost at once she was out of sight among the scattered pinons.
She had not lived among Indians for nothing, and quickly she fell to the ground among
some scattered rocks and low brush, and she lay still, the rifle forgotten in one
hand, the knife in the other.
She had failed, and now he would hunt her down. She had drawn blood, and the cut
across his biceps might be deep, and if it was he would not devote much time to a
search until he had done something to treat the wound. And after that he would come
for her.
She checked the rifle. There was a shell in the chamber and three more in the magazine:
four shots.
It was not enough.
She was not that good a shot, and unless she let him come close she would probably
miss, and she could not afford to miss often.
Yet, a moment later when she saw him moving some dis tance off, she tried her first
shot. It was a warning, to remind him she had the rifle, and he dropped from sight
among some rocks, and being Indian in that part of her thinking at least, she moved
at once. She retreated to a safer shelter, farther back on the mesa, and settled
down there to wait for whatever move Bitner might make, and for a time he made none
at all.
The day was drawing on and the air was cold. With night it would be piercing cold
and windy atop the mesa and she dared not have a fire, nor was there any shelter
she could find, nor a blanket anywhere.
129
 RADIGAN 125 She knew then it was well she had been an Indian, if only for
a few years, for an Indian knows how to endure without crying to the sky, he knows
how to withstand cold, hunger and the wind, and she would withstand them.
She knew then the dress she had on was the last thing she should be wearing; it was
white, and too easy to see on the mesa's top, or anywhere. But it was a woman's dress,
a dress for a woman to wear to meet her man, the last feminine thing she owned, and
she was going to live with it or die with it, but dressed as a woman should be.
Gretchen remembered the cabin under the mesa and the warm fire, she remembered listening
for Tom Radigan's step, and knew she was in love with him, knew it deep in every
throbbing corpuscle, knew it in her muscles and bones and in the crying need of her
body, her loins yearning for the man he was. And she knew then she was not going
to die alone on the mesa top, she was not going to be killed and raped by such as
Bitner. She belonged in her heart to Radigan, and she would belong to him in the
flesh or to no man. She was not going to save that last bullet for herself, she was
going to save it for him, for Bitner, and she was going to give it to him, right
in the belly at point-blank range.
She had never felt like this before, but right now she was backed up against death
with all the nonsense and the fancy words trimmed away. The hide of truth was peeled
back to expose the bare, quivering raw flesh of itself, and there was no nonsense
about it. She had been taught the way a lady should live, and how a lady should act,
and it was all good and right and true and the way a pretty girl should be taught,
but out here on the mesa top with a man hunting her to put her back on the grass
it was no longer the same. Save the manners for the parlor and the ball room, and
save the womanly tricks for courting, but this was something else and there was no
fooling about it. She was going to kill a man and when lie died she was not going
to be sorry.
There are times in life when the fancy words and pretty actions don't count for much,
when it's blood and dust and death and a cold wind blowing and a gun in the hand
and you know suddenly you're just an animal with guts and blood that wants to live,
love and mate, and die in your own good time.
Gretchen Child had the feel of' the Indian in her, and she
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 126 Louis L'AMOUR
settled down behind the rocks and brush partly sheltered from the raw cold wind off
the snow peaks, and she waited there, as ready to kill as any trapped lioness, and
almost eager for it.
She was only a few months from a convent and a graceful house where ladies were gentle,
fragile and delicate, but there was none of that here. She only knew in her guts
that she wanted to live and that out there over those snow-dressed mountains her
man was coming nearer, and she wanted to be waiting for him as a woman should.
Suddenly something fierce and wild came up in her and she jacked a shell into the
chamber and made the sound ring, and then she called out, hoarse and wild, "Come
on, Bitner! You want a woman, so come and get me, and if I don't kill you, Radigan
will!"
Bitner, two hundred yards off, caught her voice coming downwind, and settled down
behind his rocks, not liking the sound of it. He heard the sound of the Winchester,
too, and said to himself, "Why, she's crazy! She's gone loco!"
But the need for her was in him and he settled down to see what a cold night on the
mesa could do.
She was dressed flimsy, with shoulders bare to the wind, and not much body to the
cloth in her dress. Right now she was full of beans, but a cold night might do a
lot to her, and he could wait. He had waited this long.
Tom Radigan had come out of the trees to the north of the mesa, riding with the wind
at his back and his eyes busy, sure he had heard a shot, although the wind was away
from him.
To the east a few miles Charlie Cade, Loren Pike and Adam Stark were flanking it
down through the trees in a thin skirmish line, hunting for Foley riders and studying
out the country. Come hell or snow blowing there was going to be a fight before the
sun lifted to noon tomorrow, and Radigan had an idea there'd be blood on the mountains
before Pike, Cade and Stark turned tail.
He circled warily to the west, not liking the faint sound that had seemed to be a
shot. The day was far along, but light enough for clear seeing, and once he thought
he'd glimpsed something white on the rim. Two hours later he had circled and was
coming up on the south side, and there he found
131
 RADIGAN 127 tracks in the snow, searching tracks of a horseman cutting for sign.
There was a cold feeling in him then, and he turned the black horse he was now riding
and started up the slope toward the mesa, and he rode right out in the open. He rode
up to the steep rock slide and drew up, not liking the thought of bracing that slide
with God knows what at the top.
Once he thought he heard a voice cry out in the late after noon, but the sound whipped
away and he knew he must be mistaken. Everything seemed all right. He could see the
edge of the boulder placed for rolling down, sitting right where he'd left it. He
stepped back and sat down to pull off his boots, and then slipped his feet into the
Blackfoot moccasins he always carried for woods work, and then he took his rifle
and started up the slide.
He had taken only one step when he heard the shot. It came clear on the wind, but
caught by echoes and slapped around among the rocks. A shot right enough, and from
somewhere above, but somewhere. There was no pinning down the sound.
He put out a moccasined foot and tested the rock, then swung his weight up. He wanted
no rattling stones to warn of his coming, no sound, anywhere.
On top of the mesa Bitner chewed at the ends of his mus tache and grinned into the
wind. The little fool had grabbed a rifle and it was his she had taken, not her own,
and he knew how many cartridges were left. It was a thing a man always knew, if he
wanted to stay alive.
That last shot was number three. One bullet left. She had tried to get him, and once
she had been close. He had taken a chance this last time, allowing her to see him
plain enough to make her eager. He knew she was not too good with a rifle, although
she could shoot. And she shot a split second too late and missed by a narrow margin,
but enough. He milked the rifle down to one shot, and he had an idea he was going
to have to gamble on that one if he wanted the woman, and he did, more than ever
now.
It would be a fight, but he liked his women full of fight. He bit off another chew
and thought about it, taking his time. And she was a lot to think about. The wind
blew cold, moaning around the evergreens and stirring icy snow around the rock where
he sat.
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 128 Louis L'AmOUR
Bitner rolled the tobacco in his jaws and decided she was a pretty canny woman. Small
chance of her trying her last shot at a distance, so he could get close without too
much risk. And when he got close he'd have to get hold of that rifle or chance a
shot of his own to get the rifle away from her.
He moved out from the rocks and ran twenty feet to a tree. Nothing happened. He dashed
thirty feet farther to a slab of rock, and waited an instant. Any time now, she was
only over there a little way.
He Indianed it around the rock, and caught a glimpse of white at the edge of a rock.
If she was there, he had her. He stepped out quickly, watching that edge of cloth,
and just as he stepped into the open a rifle blasted.
He felt the hot burn of the bullet and sprang back, to see the girl standing there,
fifty feet off in another direction.
Why, the dirty little-! Fooled him, fooled him like he was a youngster with an edge
torn from her skirt.
And then he lowered his rifle.
She'd fooled him, all right, but she had missed, missed a clean shot. Sure, he'd
burned his neck with the bullet and it would be raw and sore, but he'd have a woman
to .. . "Bitner!"
It was a man's voice, conversational in tone, and it was behind him. He sprang like
a cat, turning as he leaped, and when he hit the ground, his rifle-hers actually-was
hosing flame. He staggered and something hit his wind a wicked blow, and he settled
on his feet, flat on the rocks, and saw Radigan standing there, standing straight,
his right side toward him like a blasted soldier at attention on the parade ground;
like a man in a duel.
Bitner got his Winchester up and squeezed shut on the trigger and felt the rifle
jump in his hand, but the recoil or something staggered him and, puzzled, he saw
his bullet kick dust from the rocks between them. Well, by God, he'd . . . he was
lying on his face on the cold rock, and the snow was blowing away from his face because
he was breathing hard. He heard the dying echo of his shot. It sounded like two shots,
and he got his knees under him and started to get up.
It was the blood on the mesa top that bothered him. Some body was shot almighty bad,
somebody was really bleeding like a stuck hog, somebody-the blood was there, around
his knees
133
 RADICAN 129 and on the rock where he had been lying. His eyes had refused to focus
but now they did and he saw it was his blood and he had been gutshot.
He had gutshot a man once and it had taken the fellow a long time to die.
Bitner used the rifle for a crutch and got to his feet. He could see the girl, looking
like an angel in her white gown, walking from behind the rocks toward Radigan. It
was that dress that had thrown him, right there at the beginning; in a place like
that he had not expected to see anybody in a white dress, and before he got himself
adjusted to it she had taken a cut at him and gotten away.
It was a hell of a way to die, over a woman he had only seen a time or two and who
didn't want any part of him, anyway. He was swaying on his feet, and wanting a shot
at Radigan,
but more than anything he wanted a bullet through the skull. He had always had guts
enough, but did he have guts enough to die from a belly shot without crying like
a baby? That man he had shot, he'd cried and screamed.
Something raw and horrible tore from his own throat, and he lifted the rifle and
felt the slam of the bullet and knew he had won. He had won because he was dying,
going, dead.
The last thing he remembered was lying with his cheek against the rock and remembering
how he had helped his ma shave his pa after he had been killed. "A man shouldn't
be buried like that," his ma had said. "He should face up to the Gates like a man,
with his beard trimmed."
He had no son, so who was going to shave him? Who would fix his body for burial?
A man should have a son.
He saw his bloody hand lying inches before his eyes, the cold wind drying the blood
on it, and he tried to open his mouth to tell Radigan that a man should have a son,
and beyond that there was nothing further.
Gretchen had come to Radigan quickly. "You all right?" he asked. He asked it without
looking at her, for he was watching Bitner. She knew the man was dying and Radigan
knew it but he did not move his eyes from Bitner for even an instant.
"I'm all right," she said, "I was hoping you'd come." "Sorry I was late."
"You weren't late. You were right on time."
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 130 Louis
Ross Wall came up to the house from the barn in the first bleak morning light. He
stamped the snow from his boots and came in at Angelina's call. He held his hat in
his hand, his blocky head looking like the head of a big grizzly in the shadow cast
by the lamp.
"Ma'am, I want we should saddle up and ride out of here, right away this morning."
Angelina Foley felt something seem to turn over inside her. "What's happened?"
"Nothing yet. Nothing I know of, only Bitner didn't come back, and if Bitner doesn't
come back, he's dead. It's another man gone, and one of the best."
"Is that all?"
"No," he said bluntly, "it ain't all. Not by a damn' sight."
If his other words had not impressed her, these did. It was the first time Ross Wall
had ever sworn in her presence.
"It ain't all. There's strangers around, three or four of them. Mighty salty looking
men, Gorman says. He came on three of them up in the trees last night; they just
sat their saddles with Winchesters in their hands and looked at him. They didn't
say I, yes or no, they just looked, and he looked back. Then Gorman rode back here
and asked for his time."
"Is there more?"
"Yes. I never did cotton to what Harvey wanted to do. I never liked him nor trusted
him, nor saw what you and your pa saw in him. He's brought you to trouble, and I'd
like to see you out of it.
"Those men out there," he pointed. "I think they're waiting for him. I think he'll
come back through the snow and he'll ride right up to here and they'll shoot him
right out of his saddle.
"And that isn't all. The sheriff is down at San Ysidro. I don't mean Flynn, but Flynn's
boss. Name is Enright, or something. He rode in yesterday with three deputies and
he has been asking questions around, and one of those deputies has a horse with a
Texas band."
Angelina Foley walked to the fire and picked up the coffee pot. It was always a woman's
way to turn to food in an emer gency. Fix a hot meal, make coffee; it was a sensible
way. And that was what she should be doing, making a hot meal for some man rather
than trying to prove how smart she was and how
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 RADIGAN 131 she could run a cow outfit as well as any man. She had not even managed
to run a home, not anywhere.
So all their fancy dreams of wealth were empty. All Harvey's confident talk, his
striding up and down, his gestures-they were as empty as he was-all those big ideas
from men who would rather steal than do an honest day's work with their fine contempt
for men who did work. Fools, Harvey called them, hayshakers, so now where was he?
"Can we get out of here?"
For the first time she saw hope in Wall's eyes. "I think so. I think they'd be glad
to be shut of us. We couldn't take any thing, of course. Just personal stuff. But
we could ride out, ma'am. ...
"Don't call me ma'am," she said irritably. "My name is Gelina. "
They were coming down Vache Creek now, six of them, one with his skull tied in a
bloody bandage, one with a broken arm, now in a sling. Their horses' hoofs dragged
and the men slumped wearily in the saddle.
Harvey Thorpe was numb as well as exhausted. They were all numb.
The ride had been cold and they had been anxious to get on with the holdup. The stage
showed up on time and they had ridden out and stopped it, confident of their numbers,
confi dent of their guns.
Only the man on the box had a shotgun and he didn't drop it, he didn't hold up his
hands. His first charge of buckshot had torn a man's face off and the second dropped
a man, screaming. Amid plunging horses and wild shots he had coolly picked up a Winchester
and opened fire. Other men were shooting from the stage itself and horses were down,
men screaming, and Harvey Thorpe had been among the first to break into flight. A
few miles away they had come together, and they had kept on going. And nobody had
anything at all to say.
The thing none of them wanted to say was that the men they had called hayshakers,
the men who worked for their money, had been ready for them.
What happened to the others Harvey never was to know. All he did know was that one
man sitting up on the box of that
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 132 Louis L"AMOUR
stage had not thrown up his hands: he had simply opened fire. From then on it had
been nightmare, pure nightmare.
It was not supposed to happen. Their guns were supposed to frighten the stage driver
and express messenger into immobil ity while they were robbed. That was the way it
was supposed to happen.
Harvey knew but one thing, and he knew deep within him self that when he heard that
shotgun blast and saw that man's face vanish in a mask of blood, his own guts had
turned to water.
They rode into the ranch yard and somebody said, "Harvey!" And it wasn't one of his
own men.
The exclamation made him look up and he saw Radigan standing there in the middle
of the ranch yard.
He was standing there with his hands empty, just waiting. And then Harvey saw Loren
Pike in the barn door, and Charlie Cade at the corner of the corral, and lean, round-shouldered
Adam Stark leaning against the doorpost of the house. And beside the corral and still
farther away was John Child. And even a less wary man than himself would have read
the story in their presence here, in their manner.
A man behind him said, "Count me out, Harvey," and Harvey Thorpe heard a gun drop
into the dust. And behind him other guns dropped.
Harvey looked at Radigan and felt the hatred inside himself like something raw and
sore. Radigan had been nowhere near that stage, but suddenly it seemed as if Radigan
had been the man on the box who lifted that shotgun. Without him every thing would
have been all right.
Out of the welter of thoughts left in his brain came a slow, cool knowledge that
he could not win but he could still defeat Radigan. Alive, Radigan was the victor,
but dead he was noth ing at all, simply nothing.
"Gelina let you come here?"
"She's gone," Radigan said. "She rode out with Wall and a pack horse. Heading for
California, I think."
So that was over, too.
Behind him he heard horses walking away, getting clear of him, and Radigan stood
there, waiting. Nobody had asked him to drop his gun, nobody suggested he surrender.
Of course, within a few days they would know all about what
137
 RADIGAN 133 happened in Colorado, and he would be a wanted man. It was strange he
had not considered that, but all his plans had been predicated on success.
Why, they could hang him! And they might.
And Radigan, standing there with his feet apart, just waiting for him to draw and
die.
"I'll be damned if I will!" Harvey said angrily. "You're all just waiting for me
to make a move so you can kill me! I'll surrender! You think I'll hang, but I won't!
I'll beat it! I can still win! I tell you-!"
He meant every word of it, believed it all. Why, so many things could happen in a
trial, and he still had friends, he could still dig up some money, he'd show them,
he'd ...
Harvey Thorpe had no intention of drawing, but he did. He felt his hand dropping
for the gun and something in his brain screamed that it was madness, he could not
win, but he could kill Radigan, he could. . . .
"I didn't think he was going to, there at the end," Pike said. "I thought he was
throwing in his hand."
"Even a coyote in a trap," somebody else said, "he'll snap at anything, just to hurt,
to kill."
"How'd you guess, Tom?" Cade said. "Because you had to guess, it was that fast."
"Can we do anything for him?" That was John Child. "I mean, is it too late?"
"Sure," Pike replied, "the man's dead." And he was.
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