Rivers West (18 page)

Suddenly, through an open porthole, Tabitha's voice came clearly. I felt weak with relief. Pausing, I listened.

“Of course not. Captain Macklem, what you suggest is impossible, and what you plan absurd.”

“Absurd, is it?” I could sense under the casualness, the irritation in his voice. “We know what we are doing, Tabitha, our plans are made and are going forward. Even as we talk, some of our men are encamped not only here, but also near Fort Atkinson and near St. Louis.

“Our men are in Natchez and in New Orleans. We are ready to move against Fort Armstrong when I give the word. We have planned carefully. Within the next forty-eight hours, certain officials in New Orleans, Natchez, and St. Louis will be killed…in one way or another.

“With resistance paralyzed and communications cut off, we shall be in complete control. Once that happens, additional forces will move to join us.”

“Captain Macklem,” Tabitha's tone was assured. “You still have time to bring this farce to a close, to end your plots without being tried for treason. You see, Captain, you have been so confident you were moving in secrecy that you've failed to realize how obvious you've become.”

“Obvious?”

“Of course. My office has had reports from New Orleans for years that something was in the wind. We knew of Torville's connection with it two years ago. My father's correspondents kept him advised of your efforts to recruit men in Mexico as well as New Orleans, and a year ago my father informed the general commanding the western districts.

“When you reentered the country from Quebec and murdered that poor Captain Foulsham, Talon made sure his murder was reported to the authorities. He did not say as much, but I believe he was quite sure who the murderer was.”

“Yes,” Macklem admitted, “that was a mistake. I should have killed him at once.”

“You tried, didn't you? You see, Captain, you really haven't fooled anyone…not for a minute. Had you put the whole show upon the stage of the biggest theater in New York or Paris, you could not have had a more knowing audience.”

“You talk very well, Tabitha.” He was trying to maintain his calm, but his desperation was breaking through. “However, even if what you say is true, I still have you, and I have Charles.”

She was silent for a moment, during which time I marveled at her self-possession. “Do you, Captain? Do you have us? How many of those men out there will remain loyal when they realize what has happened?”

Under my feet I felt the deck tilt ever so lightly. The boat was adrift! Surely, Macklem would notice it!”

“To be guilty of such a plot as this,” Tabitha said, “a man must be both a great egotist and an optimist. He must believe himself more shrewd and intelligent than anyone else. My father would never have put money in such an operation as this, Captain. It has too many loopholes. You must need, very desperately, to believe in it.”

I was watching them now.

“One need not be shrewd to outwit a pack of fools. And those who are not fools are asleep. This land lies ready for the taking.”

She smiled. “Every crackpot adventurer in the Western Hemisphere has believed that.”

“Within forty-eight hours, it will be mine,” he said complacently. But I knew her talk was reaching him.

“No,” she replied, “you are wrong. You cannot win.”

He got to his feet. “You are very sure of yourself, Tabitha,” he said gently. “All of which makes bringing you to your knees more pleasant.” He turned toward the door, then glanced back. “Tabitha, do you know where Charles is now?”

She turned sharply toward him, and he laughed.

“Amusing how tender a woman can feel toward her brother. We've decided to use Charles as an example, especially for you. We—”

Suddenly, he felt the movement in the deck and lunged for the door. At the same instant, there was a yell of alarm from aft, then a shot, followed by the rush of feet and the sound of clashing arms.

As Macklem reached the cabin door, I stepped into it.

He reacted instantaneously and struck out hard. I took the punch coming in. It struck with numbing force, but I'd driven hard, and we both staggered back into the cabin.

His left fist caught me over the eye with a blow like a club, and he threw a high right that I instinctively ducked, hitting him under the heart. Piling in close, I smashed away with both fists at his body, but was shoved off and hit again over my eye. I felt a trickle of blood from a cut, slipped inside his next punch and slammed home two more.

His body was like iron, and he neatly turned aside, throwing me off balance. Before I could turn, he hit me just below the ear, but I took the punch standing and turned on him. I think he was shocked. He had expected me to fall. Instead, I looked at him and laughed.

I was hurt. I was badly shaken—had he known how badly, he could have killed me. We came together then, punching with both hands, and every blow he struck shook me to my heels.

He jerked his knee toward my crotch, but I brought a knee up across my other leg to block it. He shook me with a right to the head and stepped in, his fingers clawing for my eyes. I sank my face against his shoulder and ripped short, brutal punches to his gut.

He shoved me off, and for an instant we faced each other.

“You can fight,” he said contemptuously, breathing hard. “You can fight just a little. Now I am going to kill you!”

He came in fast, and I threw a righthand punch at his face. He went under it and grabbed my left leg, lifting it high as he jammed his palm against my face. As he did so, he slid his leg behind mine, and I went over it backward to the floor. He followed in immediately, but he had not figured on my coming up fast. I had hit the deck hard, but hit it rolling, and was quickly on my feet moving into him.

He slipped on the rolling deck, and I caught his left arm in a hammerlock, pushing it toward his shoulder. He turned, throwing his right across my two arms, locking them behind his back. Then he threw me over his leg to the deck.

This time I was slower getting up, and he caught me in the wind with a vicious kick. I felt a stab of pain and gasped for breath, on my knees. He tried to step back to get distance, but I threw myself forward, grabbing his legs.

They were like iron, and he stood over me, laughing. Then he smashed his knee against the side of my face and knocked me sprawling under a table. He kicked me twice before I could get out, the second kick on the side of the neck and shoulder as I was coming up.

My right caught him on the chin, a short, wicked hook from close in, and it shook him. He stepped off, measured me with a left, missed a right as I came in close, and he tried to rabbit-punch me behind the neck. Strong as he was, I began to realize I was stronger still, and I bulled him back against the bulkhead, where I hit him twice in the body.

Suddenly, there was a terrible concussion from above as a gun was fired, then a second and a third. From Bonhomme Island there were wild yells…another shot.

My face was bloody. There was blood running into my eyes. His own face was smooth and hard as iron, unblemished. Yet, I could see there was no longer the same supreme self-confidence. I had him fighting for his life…as I was.

He sparred a moment. He jabbed at my face, and I went under it. He had half stepped back and was waiting with his right cocked for me to come in. Instead, I feinted, then smashed him on the chin with a right. His eyes blinked, and I hit him again.

Now he circled warily. For the first time, I think, he fully realized he might not win. In the narrow confines of the cabin, we moved toward each other.

Tabitha, who had drawn back into a corner, was watching wide eyed. My pistols lay near her, where they had slipped from my belt as I'd gone to the floor.

There was the pound of rushing feet on the deck outside. A cannon roared again. By the feel of the boat, we were now well into the current. Suddenly, Macklem half crouched, his hand went to his boot and came up with a knife. “Sorry!” he said. “But I've business aloft!”

He lunged with the blade, not slashing as he should have, but using his knife like a sword.

Slapping his knife hand with my left to push it away from my body, I grabbed his wrist with my right and, stepping across in front of him, punched him to the deck. Yet a sudden lurch of the vessel threw me, and I fell along side and facing him.

My two pistols were there. He grabbed for one, I for the other. We both fired.

I felt a sudden burn as from a red-hot iron across my shoulder, and he was staring at me, his mouth open and his lower jaw gone. I fired again, and he slumped on the deck. I got slowly to my feet and fell back against the bulkhead.

Somebody loomed in the doorway, and I turned, half blind with blood and sweat.

“Don't shoot!” It was Jambe-de-Bois. “It's all right. It's all over.”

I was gasping for breath as though I'd never get enough in my lungs. I tilted my head back against the bulkhead.

McQuarrie came over and began to wipe the blood from my face. “We found Charlie. Butlin got him loose and brought him to us. Then we opened fire on their camp. We shot into their campfire. It scattered them.”

“Is anybody hurt?”

“A few scratches. We've been very lucky.”

“Macklem is dead,” Macaire was saying, and there was a lot of confused talk. LeBrun and Yvette were safe. So were Mrs. Higgs and Edwin Hale.

Tabitha was standing where she'd stood during the fight. She was still staring at me, only now she was trembling.

“You'd better sit down,” I suggested, and she crossed over and sat down beside me.

“Macklem was Torville?” I asked, and she nodded.

“Where to?” asked Jambe-de-Bois.

“Pittsburgh,” I said. “I've got a boat to build.” I looked around at Tabitha. “Want to come along?”

“Yes,” she said, “I've never built a boat.”

About Louis L'Amour

“I think of myself in the oral tradition—

as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man

in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way

I'd like to be remembered as a storyteller.

A good storyteller.”

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 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 an 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.

Mr. L'Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L'Amour published his first full-length novel,
Hondo
, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 120 books is in print; there are nearly 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the best-selling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.

His hardcover bestsellers include
The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum
(his twelfth-century historical novel),
Rivers West, Last of the Breed
, and
The Haunted Mesa
. His memoir,
Education of a Wandering Man
, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L'Amour stories are available on cassette tapes from Bantam Audio publishing.

The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L'Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life's work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L'Amour publishing tradition forward.

Bantam Books by Louis L'Amour

NOVELS

Bendigo Shafter

Borden Chantry

Brionne

The Broken Gun

The Burning Hills

The Californios

Callaghen

Catlow

Chancy

The Cherokee Trail

Comstock Lode

Conagher

Crossfire Trail

Dark Canyon

Down the Long Hills

The Empty Land

Fair Blows the Wind

Fallon

The Ferguson Rifle

The First Fast Draw

Flint

Guns of the Timberlands

Hanging Woman Creek

The Haunted Mesa

Heller with a Gun

The High Graders

High Lonesome

Hondo

How the West Was Won

The Iron Marshal

The Key-Lock Man

Kid Rodelo

Kilkenny

Killoe

Kilrone

Kiowa Trail

Last of the Breed

Last Stand at Papago Wells

The Lonesome Gods

The Man Called Noon

The Man from Skibbereen

The Man from the Broken Hills

Matagorda

Milo Talon

The Mountain Valley War

North to the Rails

Over on the Dry Side

Passin' Through

The Proving Trail

The Quick and the Dead

Radigan

Reilly's Luck

The Rider of Lost Creek

Rivers West

The Shadow Riders

Shalako

Showdown at Yellow Butte

Silver Canyon

Sitka

Son of a Wanted Man

Taggart

The Tall Stranger

To Tame a Land

Tucker

Under the Sweetwater Rim

Utah Blaine

The Walking Drum

Westward the Tide

Where the Long Grass Blows

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

Beyond the Great Snow Mountains

Bowdrie

Bowdrie's Law

Buckskin Run

Dutchman's Flat

End of the Drive

From the Listening Hills

The Hills of Homicide

Law of the Desert Born

Long Ride Home

Lonigan

May There Be a Road

Monument Rock

Night over the Solomons

Off the Mangrove Coast

The Outlaws of Mesquite

The Rider of the Ruby Hills

Riding for the Brand

The Strong Shall Live

The Trail to Crazy Man

Valley of the Sun

War Party

West from Singapore

West of Dodge

With These Hands

Yondering

SACKETT TITLES

Sackett's Land

To the Far Blue Mountains

The Warrior's Path

Jubal Sackett

Ride the River

The Daybreakers

Sackett

Lando

Mojave Crossing

Mustang Man

The Lonely Men

Galloway

Treasure Mountain

Lonely on the Mountain

Ride the Dark Trail

The Sackett Brand

The Sky-Liners

THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS

The Riders of the High Rock

The Rustlers of West Fork

The Trail to Seven Pines

Trouble Shooter

NONFICTION

Education of a Wandering Man

Frontier

The Sackett Companion: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels

A Trail of Memories: The Quotations of Louis L'Amour, compiled by Angelique L'Amour

POETRY

Smoke from This Altar