Louis L'Amour (28 page)

There was no nonsense about him now. He was coming in for the kill, and I had only my bare hands with which to face him. He worked me into a corner, and there was no chance to elude him, although I had brought him away from Diana.

One thing I knew. Somehow I had to kill him, for if he killed me, Diana would did in the next moment. From outside there was a confused sound of fighting, shouts, and the clash of arms. There were several shots. They needed me out there, too.

Bauer took a wicked slash at my stomach, which I evaded by a leap backward that brought me up hard against the wall. He lunged with the knife, but I sidestepped away along the wall and got into the open again. I feinted a rush, but he merely smiled. He moved quickly, cutting left and right. He ripped a gash in my hunting jacket and scratched my arm. The numbness was almost gone now. I backed away again, and he came on and thrust hard.

Slapping his knife hand aside with my left hand, I grasped his wrist with my right and threw my left leg across in front of him and spilled him over that leg to the floor. Desperately I tried to wrench the knife from him, but his grip was strong. We rolled over on the floor, and I was up first. He was too strong and too heavy on the floor. To fight him, I had to be on my feet.

He came up fast, and my kick missed his head. My heel hit solidly against his shoulder, but he only missed a step and came on.

He slashed at me, and I hit him across the mouth, throwing a kick at his kneecap that missed, and then he was on me. I went down before his attack, and then he was atop me and holding my throat with one hand and coming down with the knife. Somewhere he had lost his grip upon his pistol.

The knife came down hard, and I twisted my head only in time. The knife hit the floor, and I hit him with my fist with a blow that turned his head and momentarily stunned him.

Throwing him off, I leaped to my feet, and he came up, knife in hand. Diana suddenly called “Kin!” and tossed me the poker from the fireplace.

I caught it deftly. It was two and a half feet long with a point and a hook, also sharply pointed. Holding it ready, I moved in. He leaped at me with the knife, and I thrust hard with the point of the poker. It caught him coming in, and the point went in all of two inches low on his right side.

He jerked back, but twisting the poker, I caught the hook in his clothing and jerked hard. His shirt ripped, and the hook tore a bloody gash—not deep—across his belly.

From outside the noise of fighting had ceased. His smile was cool. “It is too late now,” he said. “My men have won. Give her to me and that letter and you shall go free and we'll not burn your fort. After all, there are other women.”

My poker held ready, I made no reply. His knife was not a small one but a fifteen-inch blade, thick and heavy. Blood was staining his shirt from the wound on his right side, and there was an angry streak of blood along the thin cut on his belly.

The poker, for all its usefulness, was unwieldy, and if his wounds bothered him, there was no evidence of it. He was an unusually strong, agile man and obviously was no stranger to hand-to-hand fighting.

Suddenly Diana screamed,
“Kin!”

Lashan was in the doorway, pistol in hand. As my eyes caught him, his pistol was lifting to take dead aim at me. I could not hesitate nor even take the time to think, I simply tossed up the poker, caught it by the middle, and threw it as a spear.

The poker struck him even as he fired, deflecting his shot by only a hair. The ball struck behind me, and I saw Lashan fall, and the next instant Bauer was on me, thrusting and stabbing. Whether he had hit me, I did not know, but his blade was bloody. Back hard against the wall, I grabbed his head by both ears and jerked his face down as I butted up with my skull. I felt his nose crunch, and then I shoved him off and swung a right fist at the point of his jaw. It caught him off balance, and he fell backward to the floor.

He had lost his grip on the knife, but he lunged up from the floor and came at me. I struck straight and hard to his already broken nose. Both of us were bloody, but neither had time to realize whether we were hurt or not. I struck him again, and he grabbed at my throat with both hands.

Stepping aside, I hit him again. He closed with me and got a hand up, clawing for my eyes. Twisting my head, I got my shoulder under his chin and jerked up hard. Again I shook him off. He was weaving now, exhausted as I was, but I gave him no chance. I struck hard with my right, and as he staggered, I knocked him back against the doorjamb.

Lashan was up, his face bloody from where the thrown poker had struck him, but before he could join Bauer against me, Yance loomed in the door. Lashan turned, and Yance, gripping a pistol, shot him.

He fell backward, turning as he fell, and Bauer broke off the fight and plunged past Yance through the open door. The gate yawned opposite.

Some of his men lay dead; others were fleeing across the open ground toward the forest. He was running toward the gate, blood flying from his wounds,
when Diana tossed my knife. I grasped it by the point and threw—

The knife struck him in the middle of the back, and he took one last leap forward, then sprawled on the ground just outside the gate.

For a long moment I simply stood there, staring at his fallen body, hands hanging empty at my sides. There was no more fighting. Our Catawbas had scattered into the woods, and I knew there would be no stragglers reaching the coast, not even to report what had happened. I could only stand, exhausted and empty, staring at the man who had brought so much trouble to so many. That he was dead I had no doubt, for my knife must have severed his spine, and it had been thrown hard.

A bad man but a damned good fighting man. Almost too good.

“Kin?” It was Diana. “Come, you're hurt. Let me see to you.”

Dumbly I let her lead me inside and to a seat. Now, of a sudden, I began to hurt. My bruised leg, oddly enough, hurt the most.

Outside I could hear the mumble of talk as our people cleared up, carried away the bodies of the dead, and once more closed our gates against the world.

Yance came in. He looked at me, worried. “You all right there, big Injun?”

“All right. How about the others?”

“Wounds—mostly scratches. We were lucky. And waiting for them.”

Lila came in and watched Diana's skillful fingers.

“You're like your pa,” she said. “You fight well.”

“And Jeremy,” I said.

One of the candles had been knocked over during the fighting but had luckily gone out. Lila lighted it again, adding more light to the room. Outside, the lighted bundles of brush that had given light in the yard were slowly burning down.

Leaning my head against the back of the chair, I
closed my eyes. Diana was putting something cooling on the places where I had been cut and stabbed. She was using some concoction made from herbs that she kept ready for such things, and Lila was beside her.

Apparently I had been stabbed at least twice and had several bad scratches, yet at the moment I wanted only to rest.

Yance and Jeremy came in. Then, as they talked, Kane O'Hara joined them. Three men, they said, had been killed from Bauer's party. There might have been more who got away into the shelter of the forest. If so, I did not envy them, for the Catawbas were great hunters, and we had long been their friends. The most hospitable of people to friends, against enemies they were ruthless.

“We will go for your father,” I said, “or send someone.”

“I know,” Diana replied. “Don't think of it now. Just get some rest.”

My eyes closed again. Something was cooking at the fireplace, and it smelled good. Warm, friendly smells were all about me.

Tired as I was, I did not want to sleep. I wanted simply to enjoy.

I was home again.

I
t is doubtful that any author could be as at home in the world re-created 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 a 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, miner, and officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked 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.