The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1 by Louis L’Amour

leading them into a trap?
    â€œThe devil with it!” Hardin exclaimed impatiently. He wheeled his horse and, pistol in hand, started down into the narrow rift in the dark. One by one, they followed. The darkness closed around them, and the air was damp and chill. They rode on, and then the trail mounted steeply toward a grayness ahead of them, and they came out in a small basin. Ahead of them they heard a trickle of running water and saw the darkness of trees.
    Cautiously they approached. Suddenly, they saw the light of a fire. Hardin drew up sharply and slid from his horse. The others followed. In a widening circle, they crept toward the fire. Kesney was the first to reach it, and the sound of his swearing rent the stillness and shattered it like thin glass. They swarmed in around him.
    The fire was built close beside a small running stream, and nearby was a neat pile of dry sticks. On a paper, laid out carefully on a rock, was a small mound of coffee, and another of sugar. Nobody said anything for a minute, staring at the fire and the coffee. The taunt was obvious, and they were bitter men. It was bad enough to have a stranger make such fools of them on a trail, to treat them like tenderfeet, but to prepare a camp for them …
    â€œI’ll be cussed if I will!” Short said violently. “I’ll go sleep on the desert first!”
    â€œWell—” Hardin was philosophical. “Might’s well make the most of it. We can’t trail him at night, no way.”
    Kimmel had dug a coffeepot out of his pack and was getting water from the stream which flowed from a basin just above their camp. Several of the others began to dig out grub, and Kesney sat down glumly, staring into the fire. He started to pick a stick off the pile left for them and then jerked his hand as though he had seen a snake. Getting up, he stalked back into the trees, and after a minute, he returned.
    Sutter was looking around, and suddenly he spoke. “Boys, I know this place! Only I never knew about that crack in the wall. This here’s the Mormon Well!”
    Hardin sat up and looked around. “Durned if it ain’t,” he said. “I ain’t been in here for six or seven years.”
    Sutter squatted on his haunches. “Look!” He was excited and eager, sketching with a stick in the sand. “Here’s Mormon Well, where we are. Right over here to the northwest there’s an old sawmill an’ a tank just above it. I’ll bet a side of beef that durned killer is holed up for the night in that sawmill!”
    Kesney, who had taken most to heart the taunting of the man they pursued, was on his knees staring at the diagram drawn in the damp sand. He was nodding thoughtfully.
    â€œHe’s right! He sure is. I remember that old mill! I holed up there one time in a bad storm. Spent two days in it. If that sidewinder stays there tonight, we can get him!”
    As they ate, they talked over their plan. Traveling over the rugged mountains ahead of them was almost impossible in the darkness, and besides, even if Lock could go the night without stopping, his horse could not. The buckskin must have a rest. Moreover, with all the time Lock had been losing along the trail, he could not be far ahead. It stood to reason that he must have planned just this, for them to stop here, and to hole up in the sawmill himself.
    â€œWe’d better surprise him,” Hardin suggested. “That sawmill is heavy timber, an’ a man in there with a rifle an’ plenty of ammunition could stand us off for a week.”
    â€œHas he got plenty?”
    â€œSure he has,” Neill told them. “I was in the Bon Ton when he bought his stuff. He’s got grub and he’s got plenty of forty-fours. They do for either his Colt or his Winchester.”
    Unspoken as yet, but present in the mind of each man, was a growing respect for their quarry, a respect and an element of doubt. Would such a man