Chancy (1968) by Louis L'amour

with us again. They had missed our trail, but they would pick it up somewhere ahead. Over noon coffee I drew myself a rough map in the dirt. Northwest was Cheyenne, further north was Fort Laramie.
    "We'll try to cross the Platte somewhere near Horsetail Creek," I told the men. "If anything happens to me, Hacker will take charge and you locate on the best grass you can find and wait for word from Tarlton."
    Some folks think they'll live forever, but I wasn't one of them. How long a man lasts depends on how careful he is, and on the breaks of the game. Out here in this country a bullet or an arrow was only one way to go; there were many other ways--your horse could step in a prairie-dog hole when running; you could be gored by an outlaw steer, thrown by a horse, drowned in a river-crossing, caught in quicksand, or trampled in a stampede. To say nothing of rattlers or hydrophobia skunks--those skunks sometimes bit a man on the face when he was sleeping on the prairies. It was a rough, hard land, and we learned to walk careful and keep our eyes open, trusting in the Lord and a fast gun-hand.
    We drove northwest while the sun blazed down and the dust clouds hung over our march, northwest across the sand dunes, over the swollen streams, up the long hills. Where water was scarce we lost some cattle, and the buzzards hung above us in the hot, empty sky. We sweated and swore and worked our horses to a frazzle, and slept when we had a chance.
    And then the rains came, saving the herd and possibly ourselves, but turning the ground into a sea of mud, sometimes dimpled with the hard-striking hailstones. Tom Hacker's horse fell with him, and Tom's leg was scraped from hip to knee, his right arm badly wrenched.
    Julesburg lay somewhere nearby, and we thought of it and longed for the food we could eat there that was not cooked by ourselves. We longed, too, to see other faces than those we saw every day. We drove the cattle into a hollow in the hills, rimmed by rocky cliffs. Tom, who was not able to ride with his bad leg, volunteered to stay with the herd while we rode into town. Jim offered to stay with him.
    There was something inside me that warned me against Julesburg, and against leaving the herd with only two men. The town had a bad reputation, and the vicinity around was no better. But we needed supplies, and we needed the change, so Cotton, Corbin, and I rode into town.
    This was the third town named Julesburg in the vicinity, and it was said by some to be the wickedest town in the country; from the beginning its history had been a bloody one.
    We tied our horses at the hitching rail, but we led the pack animals around into the alley at the rear of the emporium where we expected to do our business. There we bought flour, sugar, dried fruit, coffee, and a dozen slabs of bacon, and I laid in a stock of papers and tobacco for those who smoked, and a big sack of hard candy. I also bought beans and rice, and a few cans of tomatoes. We packed it all on our pack animals, and had them ready to move out.
    "Do you suppose they're in town?" Cotton asked.
    "Who cares?" Corbin responded shortly. "If they come asking for it, they can have it."
    "We're hunting no trouble," I said. "We'll eat, and then we'll ride out of town. Unless they come hunting us, we'll leave them alone."
    Corbin stared at me. "What's the matter? You--"
    "Don't say it." I was facing him. "I like you, Handy, and you're a good man, so don't say anything we'd both be sorry for. My first duty is to my partner and to those cattle, and I'm not getting myself or my men into a gun battle just to prove something to some no-accounts."
    "Kelsey wouldn't like that," Corbin said with a grin. "You cauin' him a no-account."
    "What else is he?" was my answer to that.
    The streets were crowded with rigs and wagons, and it looked as if the hitching rail was lined with saddle stock wearing every brand west of the Mississippi. We joined the crowd along the boardwalk and worked our way to the Bon