Novel 1956 - Silver Canyon (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Read Free Book Online Page A

never seen him. It was Rollie Pinder.
    â€œYou gave them boys hell.”
    â€œThey asked for it.”
    As I spoke he smiled slowly and dropped his hand for his gun.
    His easy smile and casual voice were nicely calculated to throw me off guard, but my left hand held the barrel of my rifle a few inches forward of the trigger guard, the butt in front of me.
    As his hand dropped I tilted the gun hard and the stock struck my hip as my hand slapped the trigger guard.
    Rollie was fast and his gun came up smoking. His slug struck me a split second after my finger squeezed off its shot. It felt as if I had been kicked in the side and I took a staggering step back, a rolling rock under my foot throwing me out of line of his second shot.
    Then I fired again. I’d worked the lever unconsciously, and my aim was true.
    Rollie fell back against the rocks. He was still smiling that casual smile. Only now it seemed frozen into his features. He started to bring his gun up and I heard the report. But I was firing…I shot three times as fast as I could work the lever.
    Weaving on my feet, I stared down at his body. Great holes had been torn into him by the .44 slugs.
    I scrambled back to my former position, and was only just in time. The men below, alerted by my shots, had made a break to get away. My head was spinning and my eyes refused to focus. If they started after me now, I was through.
    The ground seemed to dip under me, but I raised my rifle and got off a shot, then another. One man went down and the others scrambled for cover.
    My legs went out from under me and I sat down hard. My breath coming in ragged gasps, I ripped my shirt and plugged my wounds. I had to get away now. But even if the way were open, I could never climb to the cliff house.
    Rifle dragging, I crawled and slid back to the buck-skin. Twice I almost fainted from weakness. Pain gripped at my vitals, squeezing and knotting them. Then I got hold of the saddlehorn and pulled myself into the saddle. When I finally got my rifle into its scabbard I took some piggin strings and tied my hands to the saddlehorn, then across my thighs to hold me on.
    The buckskin was already walking, as if sensing the need to be away. I pointed him into the wilderness of canyons.
    â€œGo, boy. Keep goin’.”
    Sometime after that I fainted.…Twice during the long hours that followed I awakened to find the horse still walking westward. Each time I muttered to him, and he walked on into the darkness, finding his own way.
    They would be coming after me. This remained in my mind. Wracked with pain, I had only the driving urge to get away. I pushed on, deeper and deeper into that lonely, trackless land made even stranger by the darkness.
    Day was near when at last my eyes opened again. When I lifted my head the effort made it swim dizzily, but I stared around, seeing nothing familiar.
    Buck had stopped beside a small spring in a canyon. There was plenty of grass, a few trees, and not far away the ruin of a rock house On the sand near the spring were the tracks of a mountain lion and of deer, but no sign of men, horses, or cattle. The canyon here was fifty yards wide, with walls that towered hundreds of feet into the sky.
    Fumbling at the strings with swollen fingers, I untied my hands, then the strings that bound my thighs. Sliding to the ground, I fell. Buck snorted and stepped away, then returned to sniff curiously at me. He drew back from the smell of stale clothes and dried blood, and I lay staring up at him, a crumpled human thing, my body raw with pain and faint with weakness.
    â€œIt’s all right, Buck.” I whispered the words. “All right.”
    I lay very still, staring at the sky, watching the changing light. I wanted only to lie there, to make no effort…to die.
    To die?
    No.…
    There had been a promise made. A promise to Moira, and a promise to a tired old man who had been killed.
    Yet if I would live I must move. For they would not let me