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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
In B.M. Bower's novel 'Points West', readers are transported to the rugged west through a tale that combines elements of adventure, romance, and personal growth. The book follows the journey of a young cowboy as he navigates the challenges of the wild frontier, from cattle rustlers to personal conflicts. Bower's writing style is characterized by vivid descriptions of the landscape and engaging dialogue, making the story come alive for readers. Set against the backdrop of the early 20th century, 'Points West' provides a glimpse into the unique literary context of western fiction during this time period. Bower's attention to detail and authenticity in depicting western life adds depth to the narrative, making it a compelling read for those interested in the genre. B.M. Bower, a prolific writer of western fiction, drew inspiration from her own experiences living in the American West. Her intimate knowledge of the region and its people shines through in 'Points West', giving the story an authentic and heartfelt quality. Readers who enjoy tales of adventure, self-discovery, and the American frontier are sure to appreciate Bower's masterful storytelling in this classic novel.
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Points West
Table of Contents
I. — BED ROCK AND UNDER
THE sheriff's right leg swung a leisurely arc over the wild-rose pattern stamped on the cantle of his saddle and dropped to the iron stirrup that dangled stiffly below the level of his horse's belly. The sheriff was a tall man, with wide shoulders and narrow hips, and blue eyes that sparkled rather startlingly in his leather-brown face. As his boot clicked into place, the horse moved forward, following the other riders and the herd, but the sheriff reined him back to the youth who stood leaning against the corral post, staring with expressionless face after the retreating group.
"Got any plans, Cole?" Then he hesitated. Sympathy is often a more ticklish sentiment to handle than is blame, and the sheriff found himself groping for words. "You don't want to take it to heart, kid; about the propitty, I mean. I'm goin' to get all I can outa the stock, and what's left over and above the debts, of course——"
"To hell with the stock!"
"Yeah, well, that's all right too. But it don't get yuh nowhere, kid. What I was goin' to say is, if you should want a job, why——"
"If I want a job I'll get it away from here."
The sheriff carefully selected a cigarette from the carton they were sold in; a "tailor-made," because rolling your own takes time when a man may not have it to spare from his business. While he drew his thumb nail across a match he eyed the young man covertly from under bushy eyebrows. The kid was taking it hard—which was to be expected—but it was a hardness that might lead him into trouble. The right word—but who can say just what is the right word to speak when youth stands in dazed, impotent fury while his world crashes around him?
"Look here, Cole. Don't get the idea that bad luck is a disgrace you've got to run away from. Your dad's layin' under-ground because he made that blunder and there wasn't nobody there to stop him. What if the market did go down just when he figured it would go up, and he loaded up with stock there wasn't no sale for? Hell, any man's liable to guess wrong! What if the banks did close in on him? He ain't the first feller that's been crowded to the wall. Most of 'em, kid, are able to start right at bed rock and make a comeback they can brag about afterwards. I ain't sayin' a word against your dad. He was a fine man, and what he done was on the spur of the moment before he had time to think it over. But don't you go and let your pride——"
"Pride!" Cole looked up at him then and grinned with his teeth clamped together and that same impotent fury in his eyes. "I've got a lot to be proud of, I must say! Don't you worry none about my pride, Mr. Carroll. That's been tramped into the ground for keeps! My pride—oh, damn the world and everything in it! All I ask of it is to leave me alone."
"And that's meant for me, I reckon. Well, have it your own way—you will anyhow. As I was saying, I'll get all I can outa the stock, and turn over what's left to you. And if you want a job you better get it with some of the outfits where you're known. You'll get a better break here than you will among strangers, kid. You never had to work for wages, and it's liable to come hard till you get used to it. You've got quite a little string of horses of your own—want to sell any of 'em, Cole?"
"No."
"Well, they ain't a vast herd, but it's better than being down to your bed roll and that wore out. Better come along in with me till I see what I can save outa the wreck for yuh."
"Thanks, no. I'm heading in the other direction."
"Any idee where?"
"To the devil, maybe."
"Wel-l, they say he works his men pretty hard, and he's damn poor pay. But I wish yuh luck, kid, and I hope——"
Whatever he hoped, the sheriff thought better of mentioning it and tilted his spurs against the smooth coat of the sorrel as a signal to be moving. He flung up a hand in wordless adieu and rode off after his men without once looking back. For when all was said that could be said, Cole Lawson, Junior, would have to live his life in his own way and solve his problems for himself.
With his teeth still clamped together so hard that afterward he found his jaws aching, Cole watched the receding dust cloud that hid the last of the Lawson herds. The cattle had gone on foreclosure of the bank when the ranch mortgage fell due, and that was the day before Cole Lawson, Senior, had taken the muzzle of his six-shooter between his teeth and pulled the trigger. Pride, the sheriff had called that impulse. Maybe it was; who knows?
"Thank the Lord Mother died before everything went to hell," Cole found himself saying aloud, and bit his underlip painfully when he realized where that thought would lead him. At any rate it was better than having to see her suffer for his father's last, mad impulse. An upward tilt of the old six-shooter, a crook of the trigger finger—so slight an effort as that, and the brain that had planned and schemed and loved and hated became scattered, spongy stuff.
And one was life, and that other, ugly thing was death! And the wealth that had been his—what was that, save words written upon paper? Thousands of cattle branded with the C Bar L—that had been wealth for Cole Lawson and his son and sole heir. Well, the cattle had not died; they still fed contentedly on the range that had always been their home, but they were not Lawson cattle now. Certain words written on a sheet of foolscap had changed all that, just as certain words on another piece of paper had taken the Lawson lands and given them to a bank.
"Bed rock and under!" Cole said to himself with a bitter twist of his lips. "They think I'm licked. They—hell, the whole darn bunch is sorry for me! Heir of the C Bar L—son of a suicide and heir to the disgrace of a quitter!"
He pulled his hot, rebellious stare away from the dust cloud now shrinking to the level of the ridge over which the last of the Lawson stock had been driven, and turned a long, calculating look upon the rambling old house where he had been born. The place looked as strange and unfamiliar to him now as though he had never seen it before in his life. Empty; a mere thing of boards and glass, half hidden under vines that were trying to conceal the stark desolation of the place. And that was the result of words written on a sheet of paper, and of a lump of lead no bigger than the end of his finger. His eyes narrowed appraisingly as he stared and wondered why it was that he felt so much a stranger here now, when a few days ago the place had been so deeply embedded in his thoughts and his plans that he had never dreamed of living his life apart from the C Bar L. Why, even a week ago he had taken it for granted that they were rich, and that his father would grow old in the customary activities of a prosperous cattleman. Boxed and buried in commiserating silence—even now Cole could not quite sense the enormity of the catastrophe that had come to his father.
A reckless impulse seized him to mount his horse and ride away with the clothes he stood in and what loose silver was in his pocket, but his practical common sense forbade that gesture of childish defiance of fate. Instead he walked deliberately to the empty house, entered rooms that had never before echoed so hollowly to his tread, and began to pack his most cherished—and portable—possessions. A stranger might have smiled at some of the things Cole considered of value: a quilt which his mother had pieced together from scraps of her own dresses and aprons, each one of which Cole remembered poignantly, though many of them had been worn years ago when he was a little boy who loved to sit in her lap and be rocked; a guitar, small and cheap but nevertheless prized because it was her gift, proudly presented to him on his twelfth birthday; a few books which she had also given him, and finally a buckskin bag of gold coins.
This, too, was the gift of his mother. A bag with his initials worked in beads on one side. On his fifteenth birthday it had been laid beside his plate at breakfast, with a ten-dollar gold piece inside, stamped with the year of his birth. She had laughed and said that it was the beginning of a nest egg which she expected him to save. The idea had pleased Cole, and he had declared that he would save a piece of gold money for every year of his life, and have the dates to match. Well, he had stuck to that notion closer than he had to some others, and while his mother lived she had helped and encouraged him in making the collection complete. Now he weighed the bag in his hands and thought of the gold as money that could be spent if ever he were pushed to that desperate point. A tragic awakening for the son of Lawson the cattle king, who was reputed to be well on his way to a quarter of a million in horses, cattle and land!
These things he packed in a weather-proof, sole-leather bag made to order after the pattern of a mail sack that could be strapped around the top and padlocked. He left the house then and carried the bag to the corral, where he saddled Johnnie, his own pet saddle horse. He considered that he was entitled to a roll of bedding, a small tepee tent and what food he would need for his journey into the unknown world where lay his future, and these things he assembled quickly, in haste to be gone from the place before sundown.
Such was the precision of his movements that the sheriff and his men had not driven the last of the C Bar L horse herd five miles down the trail before Cole himself was mounted and taking the less used trail to the eastward, two lightly packed saddle horses and the three-year-old colt, Hawk, following trustfully behind Johnnie. Cole did not know where he was going nor what he would do when he got there. He did not care. All he wanted was to put the C Bar L and its tragic downfall behind him, to outride the sympathy of those who had witnessed the crash, and to find some isolated neighborhood where he could look into men's eyes and read there no compassionate knowledge of his hurt.
II. — TO OUTRIDE TROUBLE
MANY a man has attempted to outride his troubles, and few have ever succeeded; but who has ever yet been able to outstrip his own thoughts and the ruthless memory that calls others trooping up to harry the fugitive?
In those first few days of flight Cole Lawson would have been no more miserable had he stayed on the ranch or ridden in with the sheriff, as he had been invited to do. He was trying, for one thing, to outride the memory of that horrible minute when he had stood aghast beside the still quivering body of his father. Cole had loved his dad in an inarticulate, shy way that never found open expression. He had never suspected him of being in any deep trouble, and he could not account for the instant chill of apprehension which flashed over him when he had heard the shot in the room his father had used for an office. Gunshots were not so infrequent on the ranch, where target shooting was a popular sport and there were always hawks sailing up in the hope of pouncing upon a chicken and making off undetected. His father always had an eye out for these pests and never failed to send a shot after any hawk he discovered within range. Yet this particular report had sent Cole racing to the house with his heart pounding heavily in his throat, and so he would carry a gruesome picture indelibly painted in his mind; and ride as he would it flashed before him at unexpected moments when he thought he was thinking of something altogether different.
He rode out of the Black Rim country by way of Thunder Pass which sloped steeply up between Gospel Peak and Sheepeater Mountain, and so came down the steep trail into Burroback Valley which seemed remote, sufficient unto itself, a world apart from the range land across the mountains. Cole had heard rumors of Burroback country. It was said to be tough. But then, Black Rim county was no saints' rest, so far as that went, and the toughness did not trouble him in the least, save that it put him a bit on guard.
Burroback Valley was long and deep, with a creek running the entire length of it and many little gulches and canyons twisting back into the hills so that a map of it in detail would somewhat resemble the back and ribs of a great fish. The nearest railroad was miles away, and it seemed to Cole that he might safely ride up to some ranch and ask for work.
The place he chanced upon first was the Muleshoe, a bachelor establishment which lay just down the valley from Thunder Pass and seemed to hug close to the ribbed side of Gospel Mountain. A secluded looking ranch which looked as though it held itself purposely aloof from the rest of the world; sinister too, if a man were old enough and experienced enough to read the signs. But Cole was neither, and the entire absence of normal activity around the squalid ranch buildings served only to impress him further with the idea that here would be a sanctuary from his tragic past. Folks wouldn't know anything about what happened outside the valley, and would care less.
A hard-faced, shifty-eyed man with a high beak of a nose came forward to the gate, as Cole rode up, and leaned over it with his arms folded upon the top rail, one hand drooping significantly toward his left side where the brown butt of a .45 stood loosely in its holster. Afterward, Cole heard the owner of the Muleshoe called Bart Nelson, but now in the soft light of the afterglow he never dreamed that so unsavory a character as Bart Nelson confronted him. He had not lived his life among killers, and the sag of Bart's right hand went unnoticed, and he thought the man was squinting against the light of the western sky and so looked at him innocently through half-closed lids.
Cole asked for work bluntly, without preface, because he did not know how to go about it and wanted the distasteful question out and done with.
Bart Nelson studied him, studied the four horses—good-looking mounts they were too—and spat tobacco juice expertly at a white rock near by.
"What you doin' over in Burroback?" he asked in a flat, grating voice. "You're Cole Lawson's kid, I bet. Heard he went broke and blowed his brains out. Tryin' to sneak some horses out away from the sheriff?"
"Why, you go to hell! That's none of your damned business!" Cole retorted with quiet viciousness, and turned Johnnie away from that gate, the other horses swinging to follow him with the docility which tells of days on the trail together.
Bart Nelson straightened his shoulders and fingered his .45. No man had ever slapped back at him in that fashion and turned his back and ridden off without answer of sharp words or shots. Other Muleshoe men mysteriously appeared and stared after the boy, who never once deigned to look back.
"Now, what d'yuh think of that for gall?" Bart Nelson inquired of no one in particular. "Somethin' behind that play, I betcha." He watched Cole out of sight, his narrowed eyes vigilant.
When nothing developed, the Muleshoe men shook their heads and decided that the kid had been sent to spy around, in hope of not being recognized, but had discovered that they were not such fools after all, and so gave up his plan, whatever it had been. Four C Bar L horses and a look like old Cole Lawson, and he thought he could pass unrecognized! The darned fool; did he think they were blind? They all agreed with Bart that there must be something behind it, and they were all especially wary for several days thereafter.
As we all know, their uneasiness was without cause, for Cole had none of that boldness which his manner indicated. He rode away sick at heart over the unexpected jab at his wound just when he had believed he had out-ridden all knowledge of it. If his retort to Bart had been brutally direct, he had never been taught to set a guard over his tongue, but had been permitted to say what he thought when he thought it. The men of the C Bar L had always liked him and humored him from the time he could string words together into a sentence, and Cole did not dream that he had spoken to Bart Nelson in a manner that might well have started gun play. The chief thing was that he had been recognized.
Of course it was the brand on his horses that had given him away at the ranch back there. There was nothing about himself or his outfit that would give any one a clue to his identity, and as for his name, he had meant to tell folks it was Colman, and let it go at that. No, it was the C Bar L, and he was a fool for not thinking of that brand as a dead give-away. The C Bar L must be known all over the country, and gossip rides fast, even in this big empty country. Well, he would have to do something about it, he supposed.
As he rode on down the valley, Cole cast frequent dissatisfied glances back at his horses. The pick of the C Bar L horses they were, most of them given to him when they were yearlings, all of them pets which he had broken and taught. One was a two-year-old colt, round-hipped, straight-limbed, giving promise of speed and strength and wind, and a gentle thing with a disposition for nuzzling confidence. Cole thought fleetingly of selling them here in the valley; but that would be useless, and besides, horses weren't worth much nowadays. They were worth so little, in fact, that Cole had turned in a small bunch of horses which he might justly have claimed as his own, to help swell the number for the sale and make certain that the herd would bring enough to cover the debts which had driven his father to take the six-gun route out of the muddle. It was because these four were particular pets that he had kept them. He couldn't sell them now. There was another way.
That night, in a secluded little meadow ringed round with thick bushes and quaking aspen thickets, Cole took that other way of removing the last clue to his past. He built a little fire, heated a cinch ring in the manner he had heard described by his father's punchers, when they spun tales of the range on winter evenings, and proceeded to wipe out the last clue to his past. One by one he roped and tied down his horses and with the white-hot ring held firmly in the fork of two green willow sticks he marked out the C Bar L with crisscross burns set deep with unconscious savageness. What he wanted was to make that brand forever undecipherable, and he succeeded so well that one would need to skin a horse and look on the wrong side of the hide to tell what the original brand had been.
Several days elapsed before he could bring himself to the ordeal of riding out again to face the world he hated with all the fierceness of unhappy youth. The little glade seemed remote from the business of the valley and his horses fed contentedly there, switching at the flies which buzzed tormentingly around the fresh burns. Cole fished a little, but most of the time he spent lying on the ground under a tree with his hat pulled low over his eyes, thinking round and round in circles which always brought him to the central fact that he was alone in the world and that his life must start from that secluded little meadow.
It would be life on the range, because he had never learned to do hard manual labor and he had refused to spend the years in school which were necessary if he would get an education; so he was not fitted for the competitive life of the towns, either as an office man or even as a common laborer. He had sense enough to know that, and he had pride enough to want to live where he could hold his own with the best of them. He could ride—the C Bar L maintained that Cole could ride anything that wore hair; he could bounce tin cans off the ground with bullets while he galloped past and shot as he rode, and he had an uncanny skill with a rope. Also, he had four good horses and a deep-rooted love of freedom and the outdoors.
The range, then—or what little of it was left—was his natural field of achievement. As he lay there, he sometimes dreamed of owning a ranch—and you could bet he'd never go in debt for a dime's worth of anything! There was still government land to be taken up, and he was of age. He'd call himself Colman, which was his mother's maiden name, and forget the Lawson. He could file on a homestead and work part of the time, say during round-up, and gradually get together a little bunch of stock. By the time he was thirty or so, he ought to be fairly independent.
It was the foundation upon which many a ragged lad has built castles in the air, and in the summer tranquillity of that small meadow Cole sometimes forgot his bitterness long enough to fence and cultivate an imaginary homestead, build cabin and corrals and a stable or two, and watch his small herd of cattle grow to sizable proportions.
But the time came when the bacon and flour ran alarmingly low and Cole could not swallow another trout, especially when he had nothing to fry it in. The blotted brands had reached the stage of scabbing, and would not, he hoped, attract too much attention. So one morning Cole broke camp and moved reluctantly out to the road again, to face the world of which he secretly felt a bit afraid. As the three loose horses took last mouthfuls of grass and trotted after him, Cole twisted his body in the saddle and looked back. The little meadow was sunlit and peaceful. He knew the shape of every tree and bush that rimmed the grassland; the gurgling murmur of the brook had made words for him as he lay staring down at it where it curled and twisted among the stones. Even the clouds that floated lazily across the opening seemed friendly and familiar. There were the pressed places in the grass where the horses had lain down to sleep, the trampled nook where he had made his camp, the ashes of his small fires.
He hated to leave that meadow which seemed saturated with his thoughts, made homey with his days and nights of eating and sleeping there. But the grass was cropped short and his food pack swung nearly empty—man and horses must eat.
Cole heaved a long sigh and faced about to ride where the trail led him and to meet whatever lay upon it.
III. — COLE FINDS A JOB
COLE heard one of his horses snort and looked up from turning bacon in the frying pan to see two men seated upon quiet horses in the shadow of the broken ledge of lava beside which he had made camp for the night. Cole lifted the frying pan off the fire to a flat rock close by and stood up, his thumbs hooked inside his belt in the fashion he had learned from certain of the C Bar L riders whom he especially admired for a certain quality of potential deadliness which appealed to him. The men eyed him, eyed the horses with a curious interest, muttered to each other and then started toward him slowly, with an air of caution which might be flattering or menacing, as one chose to interpret their manner.
"I guess there ain't anything much over this way you want," Cole said, when they had ridden ten feet nearer.
The two stopped, and the older of the two ostentatiously clasped his hands over the saddle horn; though that would not have slowed his reach for the gun stuck inside his chap belt on the left of the lacing, should he feel the need of his gun. He had a long upper lip, and when he smiled his mouth drew down into a pucker which might give one the impression of a dry humor, half reluctant to betray itself just then.
"Don't want to intrude on any one's privacy," he said gently. "We was just ridin' by and seen your smoke. No harm in swingin' this way on the chance of bein' invited to supper—in case it was some friend of ours camped here." He paused to clear his throat with a slight rasping sound, and then added apologetically, "Folks that are shy of meetin' anybody generally pick drier wood for their fire. Got any coffee to spare?"
Cole was on the point of snapping out "No!" But these two looked friendly, and it had been overlong since he had held any friendly conversation with men; talking to your horses will do for a while, but the time comes when one wants to hear new thoughts put into speech. Cole relaxed, stooped and replaced the frying pan on the fire.
"Guess I can split the grub three ways," he said gruffly, and lifted the coffeepot to see how heavy it was. "You live around here?" He looked up from adding more water and more coffee, and his cool glance went flicking over the two, by no means off his guard because of one humorously suppressed smile.
"Wel-l, hereabouts," the tall man drawled, swinging down from his horse. "You're a stranger in these parts, I guess. Where from?"
"Points west," Cole said briefly. "You'll have to eat with your fingers; I'm travelin' light."
"Fingers was made before forks," the stranger tritely replied, and seated himself with his back to the ledge. His companion got down and eased into place beside him. "We're travelin' kinda light ourselves."
Cole looked at the two, aware of a certain significance in the remark; but the other met his eyes with that same humorous smile drawn into a pucker of the lips. The younger man was staring furtively at Cole's horses, turning his eyes while his face did not move.
"Out huntin' stock, and we didn't expect to get up this far," the man further explained. "These draws and canyons are sure a fright for huntin' strayed stock in."
It was the old excuse, time-honored and always good because it could seldom be refuted. Stock did stray, and men did ride out to find them. Hunting stray horses was a plausible reason for appearing anywhere on the range at any time of the day or night. Cole knew that well enough and he wondered if it happened to be the truth this time; but there was nothing he could say to it, except to agree that the country sure was a fright. He had three cups—or more particularly he had two tin cups and a can—and he filled these with coffee, speared bacon from the frying pan and laid it across thick pieces of pan-baked bread, and told the two that supper was ready. They moved up and sat on their boot heels, eating and drinking with appetite.
"You don't happen to need another man, do you?" Cole asked at last, speaking to the older man with a carefully indifferent manner and tone.
"Well, I could use one—the right kind. Ever hear of John Roper?" He eyed Cole over his cup.
"No. Don't know anybody around here. Just travelin' through; but I wouldn't mind working for a while—right kind of a job."
The other chewed his bannock meditatively, watching the bay horse Johnnie, as he came nosing up for attention from his master. Cole had baked plenty of bannock because it was his habit to feed bits to his horses while he ate; now the horses all came poking along toward the camp fire, snatching at tufts of grass as they walked. Their freshly blotted brands would have caught the attention of the most ignorant tenderfoot. John Roper studied them, turned his eyes speculatively upon Cole.
"Them your horses, the hull four?"
"They're supposed to be," Cole snubbed his inquisitiveness.
Both men grinned involuntarily and sobered again, save that the humorous pucker remained in John Roper's lips.
"Well, I could use a man with a string of saddle horses like them. Seem to be gentle enough; fast too, by the looks of them legs. You can rope, I s'pose—how about shootin'? They's a pretty tough bunch rangin' in these canyons; we all go heeled and ready for a scrap. No use hirin' anybody that's gun-shy or that can't ride."
"I'll chance coming out all right," Cole said grimly and looked over his shoulder at the horses. "I'll guarantee these four to go anywhere a goat can, and finish at the head of the parade. That," he added for good measure, "is why I've got 'em."
Roper studied him again, peering squint-eyed through the firelight. Perhaps he saw the settled look of misery in the boy's face and mistook it for something less innocent; perhaps he read the moody set of the lips as something evil and hard. At any rate, he glanced sidelong at his companion, who gave a slight nod of approval, and cleared his throat with that dry, rasping sound which was not much more than a whisper of a cough and seemed to be a little mannerism of which he was unconscious; an habitual preliminary to speaking his decision.
"Well, I'll give yuh a job. For a while, anyway, till we finish up a kinda ticklish job we got on hand." He shot a keen glance at Cole who was staring moodily into the fire while he smoked. "Ticklish, because we're dealin' with a tough bunch and we want to handle it quiet as we kin. Got away with a bunch of horses I own, and I got reason to believe the brands has been worked and they're keepin' the horses right in this country. Me an' Pete has been scoutin' around to see what we could find out about it. What I want is to get 'em back on the quiet, without them knowin' just where they went to. Sabe?"
"I guess so. You're leaving the sheriff out of the deal?"
