The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 2 Read Free Page A

earth remained.
    He couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be! It couldn’t …! Marone came to his feet, glaring wildly about. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face heat-flushed above the black whiskers, now filmed with gray dust.
    He tried to laugh. Lopez dying down below there, he dying up here! The hard men of the West, the tough men! He sneered at himself. Both of them now would die, he at the water hole, Lopez down there in the cloying, clogging dust!
    He shook his head. Through the flame-sheathed torment of his brain, there came a cool ray of sanity.
    There had been water here. The Indian had been right. The cracked earth showed that. But where?
    Perhaps a dry season.… But no; it had not been a dry season. Certainly no dryer than any other year at this time.
    He stared across the place where the pool had been. Rocks and a few rock cedar and some heaped-up rocks from a small slide. He stumbled across and began clawing at the rocks, pulling, tearing. Suddenly, a trickle of water burst through! He got hold of one big rock and in a mad frenzy, tore it from its place. The water shot through then, so suddenly he was knocked to his knees.
    He scrambled out of the depression, splashing in the water. Then, lying on his face, he drank, long and greedily.
    Finally, he rolled away and lay still, panting. Dimly, he was conscious of the wind blowing. He crawled to the water again and bathed his face, washing away the dirt and grime. Then, careful as always, he filled his canteen from the fresh water bubbling up from the spring.
    If he only had some coffee.… But he’d left his food in his saddlebags.
    Well, Madge would be all right now. He could go back to her. After this, they wouldn’t bother him. He would take her away. They would go to the Blue Mountains in Oregon. He had always liked that country.
    The wind was blowing more heavily now, and he could smell the dust. That Navajo hadn’t lied. It would be hell down in the Sink. He was above it now and almost a mile away.
    He stared down into the darkness, wondering how far Lopez had been able to get. The others didn’t matter; they were weak sisters who lived on the strength of better men. If they didn’t die there, they would die elsewhere, and the West could spare them. He got to his feet.
    Lopez would hate to die. The ranch he had built so carefully in a piece of the wildest, roughest country was going good. It took a man with guts to settle where he had and make it pay. Shad Marone rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “That last thirty head of his cows I rustled for him brought the best price I ever got!” he remembered thoughtfully. “Too bad there ain’t more like him!”
    Well, after this night, there would be one less. There wouldn’t be anything to guide Lopez down there now. A man caught in a thick whirlpool of dust would have no landmarks; there would be nothing to get him out except blind instinct. The Navajos had been clever, leading the Apaches into a trap like that. Odd, that Lopez’s mother had been an Apache, too.
    Just the same, Marone thought, he had nerve. He’d shot his way up from the bottom until he had one of the best ranches.
    Shad Marone began to pick up some dead cedar. He gathered some needles for kindling and in a few minutes had a fire going.
    Marone took another drink. Somehow, he felt restless. He got up and walked to the edge of the Nest. How far had Lopez come? Suppose … Marone gripped his pistol.
    Suddenly, he started down the mountain. “The hell with it!” he muttered.
    A stone rattled.
    Shad Marone froze, gun in hand.
    Lopez, a gray shadow, weaving in the vague light from the cliff, had a gun in his hand. For a full minute, they stared at each other.
    Marone spoke first. “Looks like a dead heat,” he said.
    Lopez said, “How’d you know about that water hole?”
    â€œNavajo told me,” Shad replied, watching Lopez like a cat. “You