How The West Was Won Part 20

The b.u.t.t end of the trailing log fell between two boulders as the train started to round a bigger curve. It ripped loose with a terrific wrench, almost derailing the flatcar and pulling loose the coupling pin, which had been poorly seated.

The train plowed into the curve at high speed and logs spilled off the side. Zeb felt logs falling away from him, and as he was exposed a bullet tore a deep gouge in a log at his right. Rocking with the force of the falling logs, the coupling came loose, and the locomotive, followed by the express car and coach, went rolling on around the curve.

The flatcars and caboose slowed, almost stopped, and then slowly began to roll backward down the grade.

Zeb heard a wild shout behind him, then Ramsey yelling, "Stop the train! Back her up!"

Another bullet struck within inches of Zeb's face and he crouched low beside the log, s.h.i.+fting his gun to his left hand to expose himself as little as possible. Suddenly, Gant saw his chance. Zeb Rawlings was trapped on the log car. Now, if ever, he could get him. Quickly, he scrambled to cover behind the donkey-engine. Lifting his gun, he waited, watching his chance. Zeb was crouched among the fanned-out logs, with only partial protection. Gant was out there somewhere, on the caboose or the wire car, but he dared not lift his head to look. The flatcars and caboose were rolling back down the grade, but the grade would not last forever. With Gant back there, there was at least one other outlaw whom he'd seen leap back inside the caboose. He waited, holding his gun, ready to chance a shot. Suddenly he heard the train whistle more loudly, and a shot struck the donkey engine with a bang.

The train ... it was backing up. Ramsey was bringing it back to help. Behind the donkey engine, Gant waited. Slowly, his panic left him. There was still a chance. Even if he did not get the gold, he could get Rawlings, and within minutes they would be back where Frenchy Fillmore was holding the horses. Incongruously, the thought came into his mind: How did a man named Isaac Fillmore come to be called Frenchy?

A bullet struck the donkey engine, then another. Gant chuckled. Let them try. Nothing could shoot through that engine, and all he had to do was wait. He would get his shot at Rawlings ... and then he would get to the horses, and they'd be off and away.

Ramsey would have no horses, and by the time he got some Gant would be across the Colorado and headed into the desert where no one dared follow. In his ears sounded a clack-clackety-clack of the wheels of the slowing cars. Now he would get his chance. The fear had gone, the panic had gone. Zeb Rawlings was a sitting duck.

Lou Ramsey stood in the pa.s.senger car and looked out. Beside him was Stover. Clay, nursing two bullet wounds, lay, half-sitting, in a seat behind him, still holding his gun and hoping for a shot.

Ramsey pointed at the donkey engine. Four parallel lines of rope held it to the flatcar. Lifting his pistol, he took careful aim and fired. One of the ropes parted. He fired again and cut a slice in another of the ropes. Stover lifted his rifle and settled down for careful firing. Slowly, the two sections of the train drew together. Only a few yards separated them. Zeb Rawlings tasted blood. Somehow he had split his lip in scrambling over the logs. He saw another of the logs go and s.h.i.+fted his pistol to his right hand. From his belt he extracted several sh.e.l.ls and, holding back the loading gate, shoved them into the cylinders.

The flatcars had almost ceased to roll, and as they dipped around a shallow curve, a bullet parted the last rope and the donkey engine slid over the side of the car.

Gant saw himself caught in the open as Zeb reared up from behind a log. Gant fired quickly, desperately, then dropped to the roadbed beyond the car. Zeb jumped, his leg giving way under him as Gant fired. He came up, and for an instant they faced each other beside the track. For an instant only they stared across their guns at each other, and then both fired simultaneously. Zeb felt the shock of a bullet, but steadied himself and fired again.

Gant seemed to jerk, and then as his eyes met Zeb's over the gun, he turned and fled, leaping into the rocks, falling, rolling over. He scrambled among the rocks, and Zeb stalked him, and when Gant came up firing, Zeb fired again. Gant went down.

Coolly, Zeb ejected sh.e.l.ls from his pistol and loaded up, standing bare-headed under the blazing sun. He smelled the acrid smell of powder smoke, tasted the blood in his mouth, felt the terrible weakness from his wounds begin to take over as the first shock of injury left him. He was hurt, he knew, badly hurt, but he had a job to do that must be done now.

He started forward and fell. Something was wrong with his leg. He caught hold of a boulder and held himself there an instant. Gant seemed to have disappeared. No ... there he was, off to the left.

Zeb Rawlings turned with great effort, felt a bullet splash rock near him, lifted his gun, and squeezed the trigger. The gun leaped in his hand, and he saw Gant's s.h.i.+rt flower with crimson.

Zeb hobbled a step nearer, and brought the gun up again. Gant disappeared among the rocks, not twenty feet away. Zeb started forward again, and then everything seemed to blaze with a hot bright light, and he fell forward, striking the sand with his mouth open. He tried to close his mouth, but it was half filled with sand. He gripped his pistol and rolled over on his back, spitting sand. The blazing sun was on his face, in his eyes.

Suddenly a figure loomed over him. It was Charlie Gant, b.l.o.o.d.y, wild, desperate ... but on his feet.

He looked down at Rawlings, and a queer light came into his eyes.

"Bad luck," he muttered. "You always were bad luck for me. Every time ..." His words trailed off, and Zeb Rawlings with a tremendous effort of will brought his gunhand around as Gant started to bring his gun up. Rawlings pointed the gun up at Gant and fired and fired, and fired again. He felt the gun blasting in his hand, rather than heard it, for there was a fast roaring in his ears. He felt something fall against him, and then his gun was empty and a terrible weight seemed pressing him down. "Is he dead?" He heard someone ask the question, and someone else replied: "I don't know ... but Charlie Gant is."

Chapter 25.

The wagon and the horse were standing in front of the hotel when Zeb Rawlings came downstairs. He walked very slowly, because he still felt shaky, but it was good to step outside into the early morning sun. He stood very still, just soaking the warmth into his body.

Aunt Lilith came down with Julie, both of them elegant in traveling costumesa"Aunt Lilith in her tailored gray, and Julie in one made over from one of Lilith's. Zeb watched them with admiration. Two handsomer women a man never saw. Julie stepped aside to hold the door open for Stover, who came out with Aunt Lil's trunk on his back. He lowered it carefully into the wagon bed, and pushed it along to a good spot, then returned for the rest of her luggage. Aunt Lil might be far from a girl, but men still put themselves out to do things for her.

"Thanks, Stover," Zeb said. "Nice of you to lend a hand." "If you'd tried to handle that trunk," Stover said, "you'd probably have opened those wounds again."

"Why we leavin' so early, pa?" Linus asked.

"We've a long way to go, Linus, but we're making the best trip a man can ever make."

"How's that?"

"Why, we're going home! When you've lived without one as long as I have, son, you'll know what music there is in the word."

Zeb helped Julie to the wagon seat, and then Lilith. The boys scrambled in the back with their sister, close behind the seat on a pile of hay and blankets. Zeb hesitated just a moment before stepping up into the wagon, and Julie affected not to notice. His wounds had left him drained of strength and weaker than he liked to admit, but once on the ranch, with plenty of suns.h.i.+ne, fresh air, and brown beans, he'd come out of it. Zeb spoke to the horse and turned the wagon around in the street.

Stover lifted his hat. *"Bye, folks! Come up your ways I'll sure enough drop in."

"You do that," Julie said.

The wagon rolled down the dusty street, past the sleeping buildings, and then began the long S curve of the trail out of town. Sam moved ahead easily, undisturbed by the wagon behind him. At the brow of the hill Zeb drew rein to let Sam catch his wind, and looked back. Smoke trailed up from a few chimneys, and in front of the hotel there seemed to be some kind of confusion. Several riders were in the street, others gathering. "Wonder what's going on down there?" he said thoughtfully. "Now, Ia"" "Whatever it is," Julie said firmly, "it's none of our business!" Zeb glanced back once more, then spoke to Sam and the horse started on, walking with easy strides.

Suddenly from behind there was a rush of horses' hoofs and Zeb, reaching for his Winchester, turned so sharply it brought a twinge to his face. A good two dozen riders rushed up, surrounding the wagon. "Might have told us you were pullin' out," Ramsey said, smiling at him. "What's the matter?"

"Why, folks around town figured you'd brought the only excitement into town in months. You've given us something to celebrate, something to shout about! You wiped out the Charlie Gant gang and we're shut of outlaws, now, for a while, anyhowa"You done it!"

"Now, just a minute, Lou! I didn'ta""

"Brought you a present, Zeb. Something to take along. The boys took up a collection."

He took a rifle boot from his saddle, a new, hand-tooled leather boot, and from it he drew a Winchester *76, the action engraved and inlaid with gold. On it were the words, Compliments of the Gold City Mining Company & Citizens. It was a beautiful firearm. Taking it, Zeb turned it over and over in his hands, lifted the b.u.t.t to his shoulder.

"Thanks, boys," he said quietly. "Many thanks."

Long after the riders had turned hack, the spell of their presence remained.

"Does a man good," Zeb said finally.

"You're respected," Julie replied quietly. "We may not have much, but you're a respected man."

"How much farther to the ranch, pa?" Linus asked.

"The next bend and across the valley beyond. You just keep watching for it." Linus started to hum the tune of "A Home in the Meadow," and Lilith, caught by the memory of it, began to sing with him, and the others joined in. "Come! Come! Through a wondrous land! For the hopeful heart! For the willing hand!"

Her voice rang loud, as old Zebulon's had back at the Erie Ca.n.a.l. Zeb chuckled. "You boys will have to sing louder to keep up with your Aunt Lilith."

"I sang that song a good many years ago when leaving the Erie Ca.n.a.l ... or leave on the Erie Ca.n.a.l, I should say. Folks all along the ca.n.a.l joined in."

"Away, away, come away with me, Where the gra.s.s grows wild, Where the winds blow free.

Away, away, come away with me, And I'll build you a home in the meadow."

"Giddap, Sam," Zeb Rawlings said. "We're goin' home."

About the Author.

"I think of myself in the oral tradition a" of a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered a" as a storyteller. A good storyteller."

It is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world recreated in his novels as Louis Dearborn L'Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally "walked the land my characters walk." His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L'Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.

Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L'Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, "always on the frontier." As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family's frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors. Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L'Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, a.s.sessment miner, and officer on tank destroyers during World War II. During his "yondering" days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was s.h.i.+pwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.

Mr. L'Amour "wanted to write almost from the time I could talk." After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 100 books is in print; there are nearly 230 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome G.o.ds, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel) Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L'Amour stories are available on ca.s.sette tapes from Bantam Audio Publis.h.i.+ng. The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam well into the nineties a" among them, four Hopalong Ca.s.sidy novels: The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, The Riders of High Rock, and Trouble Shooter.

end.