Novel 1962 - High Lonesome (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page A

the tumbled forest of boulders. When well among the boulders he turned westward again.
    “A man like Considine,” Spanyer said suddenly, “is apt to be heedless of discipline, and every man needs discipline. If it isn’t given to him, he had better discipline himself. Somewhere Considine took a wrong turn, and it is up to him to take a right one. But he has to do it himself.”
    “You did.”
    “Without your Ma…well, without her maybe I’d never have done it.”
    “Considine could do it.” She spoke with confidence.
    “A man needs a push sometimes. He needs something outside of himself.”
    “Pa…the gray’s limping.”
    Dave Spanyer felt the cold hand of death touch him. He turned, almost afraid to look, and led the horse forward, watching it. The gray was limping, all right.
    He stopped briefly in the shade of a boulder and examined the hoof. The shoe was broken, and half of it had fallen away. He pried the other half loose, and then with his knife he pared the hoof flat.
    They moved on, dipping into a forest of Joshua trees. The sun was very hot, glaring into their faces, bathing them in impossible heat. Nothing moved. Not a dust devil…not a wisp of grass…nothing.
    Then suddenly a rabbit plunged into the trail, saw them, and veered sharply off.
    Instantly, Spanyer drew his gun and moved back into the rocks. He pressed Lennie down, drew the horse into shelter. He listened into the stillness and it gave back no sound. Holstering his pistol, he shifted his rifle to his right hand from the saddle scabbard.
    “Something up there,” he said. “A rabbit don’t jump like that in this heat unless he’s scared.”
    He squatted on his heels, his Winchester ready. He eased back the hammer, almost to full cock, then, grinding his heel into the sand to stifle the sound, to full cock.
    He started to turn his head when he heard the scrape of moccasins on rock. He turned swiftly on the ball of his right foot, slamming his back against the rocks just as the Indian sprang.
    The Winchester leaped in Spanyer’s hand, and the Apache’s throat vanished in a red smear as the bullet tore through, ripping the neck wide.
    The sound of the shot slapped against the rock walls, then echoed away and lost itself among the distant sands.
    Lennie shrank from the body, which had fallen within reach of them. He had been young, this Apache, and overeager—and the chance-takers never last.
    Silence followed.…Were there others near? Or had this one raced on ahead?
    The Indian had carried a Winchester and had a Mexican bandolier filled with cartridges. Spanyer shucked these from their loops one by one and filled his pockets. The Winchester was old. He took it in his hands and smashed it against a boulder, then threw it aside.
    Lennie glanced at the Indian. “He looks very young,” she whispered.
    “Old as he’ll ever be,” Spanyer said dryly.
    Dave Spanyer knew patience. Somewhere out there were enemies, so for the time he would not move. He settled back, trying to think his way out.
    The horse must be saved. Food and water and a fresh shoe would put it in shape again, and they would need the horse when they got where they were going. And if they took a route out past that basaltic rock they would be in the sand, where their steps would make no sound.
    Only a mile farther and the entrance to High Lonesome began. It was no sanctuary, for there was no such place with Indians around, but it was a better place to make a stand. There was water, and they would be on familiar ground.
    He plotted every move they must make, once darkness came, and then he set back and rolled a smoke. Having done all that a man could do, he waited.
    The rest would do them good…tomorrow would be a long, long day.

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    A T SUNDOWN, WHEN the first shadows moved out from the cliff walls, Considine found the horse with its broken leg and cut throat. He drew rein, and the others came up and ranged alongside in a ragged line, looking down upon the dead