Ernest Haycox - Action by Night

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This edition is published by BORODINO BOOKS www.pp-publishing.com

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Text originally published in 1942 under the same title.

Borodino Books 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

ACTION BY NIGHT

by

Ernest Haycox

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 MOUTH OF THE CANYON

HE TRAVELED steadily northward over a land of grass that ran ever onward and faded at last into a farther flatness his eyes could not see; and distance and openness and emptiness were all around him. He crossed rivers turned to dust by the heat of summer and fall and he slept where starlight found him, in buffalo-rutted depressions, in willow coverts where the mourning dove hovered, in endless acres of spice-strong sage whose dry branches rustled before little winds; and sometimes through the night came the wild and far-out murmur of an antelope band running free.

He first saw the mountains as a darkness behind the horizons haze, three hundred miles away. They grew before him, bold and black and high, and one day the trail which had carried him all the way from Texas entered a canyon and suddenly near sundown he looked behind and saw that the fair and open plain was gone.

The jaws of the mountains had closed upon him and the mountains were around him, rough and old and massively somber from their million centuries of survival. A river ran in its canyon beside the road, and in the canyon was a wind freighted with the coolness of high peaks, with the raw sharp smell of the mountains themselves; and twilights shadows broke and swirled like fog on the giant knees of the mountains and the echoes of the river ran back through a hollow stillness to re-echo on the sounding boards of unseen canyon walls.

In all this there was a strangeness that stopped him and sent its thready feeling into those places a man keeps his ancient instincts, and his guard rose at once so that he was like a dog bristling at things not known, yet very real. The pressure of the mountain country, its secrecy, its hint of dark-hidden glens, its massive indifference, was upon him. The horizons were gone and the safety of the open land was gone and only the stars above remained familiar. He sat still, keening the smells which were new and the sounds which were different and watching shadows that had a thickness and a motion like nothing in his experienceand then he smiled a small, tight smile and rode on.

A steady growing sound was before him. Half an hour onward he turned a bend and found that the canyon stopped sharp against the barrier of a cliff two hundred feet high. Centered in the cliff was a clear break perhaps forty feet wide out of which came the river with a white turbulence that sparkled through the dark; and into that same break ran the road, upward-climbing. There was a small meadow here, and a roadhouse and a barn and a corral and a man standing in the houses doorway. Above that doorway, on the second floor, was a window at which a womans face momentarily showed, framed by lamplight. He looked up at her and saw the half-expectant smile on her face just before she drew back.

The man in the doorway said: If youre lookin for supper, get down.

Tracy Coleman remained in the saddle. A lamp moved through the lower part of the house so that the man in the doorway was silhouetted, his tub-like fatness, his huge bald head, his round and smooth and sly face. This Gateway? asked Coleman.

Gateway, said the man. And this. he added, tapping his chest, is Luke Wall. Youre lookin at the Four-Bit House. A meal is four bits. Lodgin is four bits. It is a fancy of mine. When I came here, climbin out of that river like a man would climb out of hells own fiery pit, I had four bits! in my pocket.

He was a talker and talkers were usually fools. But Coleman reserved his judgment, for Luke Walls conversation was like a screen thrown quickly around other things. As he spoke idly on his eyes searched Coleman.

Out of that river? murmured Coleman. From where?

From the same place those fellows started from, said Luke Wall, and pointed into the meadow. Turning, Coleman saw a row of white headboards in the darkness, marking graves side by side. They came down the river, too. Waters life most anywhere except here. This water is death if it gets at you and it is always tryin to get at you. Im the only man that ever ran the Cloud River gorge and lived. Me and my four-bit piece. I was crossin from Dan Stuarts range to the Horsehead side and the current got me. Im a thousand years older than I look.

Horsehead, said Coleman in his same soft and murmuring voice. How fars that?

A day by the road, said Luke Wall. Then a woman called from the house, Suppers ready, and Luke Wall ceased talking and turned in the doorway to show a big Roman nose and heavy lips against a moon-shaped face.

Down on the plain falls warm air would be still clinging to the earth; but here a mountain-damp wind blew steadily from the gorge. Stepping from the saddle Coleman noted the three horses already at the racka big roan, a little roan with a white star in its forehead, and a buckskin; by habit he put their descriptions in the back of his head. He took his own horse around to a watering trough at the corner of the roadhouse and gave it a short drink and loosened the cinches, meanwhile feeling the presence of some other man or person in the shadows to the rear of the house. That made two people who seemed anxious to see but not to be seen. It was part of some kind of story. Coleman took his horse back to the rack and stepped into the roadhouse.

Luke Wall sat with one other man at a table in the center of the room; the other man lifted a rust-colored head and placed pale-blue eyes on Coleman with a brief interest. An elderly woman came in with a coffee pot and put it on the table and went away; there was a fireplace at the end of the room and a bright fire burning. Coleman sat down to eat.

The red-haired young man said: You got the room fixed up, Luke?

The roadhouse keepers face was yellow, his eyes round and thick-lidded. He nodded. But if shes going on through to War Bonnet she wont want to stay overnight here, Ben.

Maybemaybe not. When she comes off the stage show her to a room. Then Ill go up and talk to her.

Show her to the room yourself.

Never met her before, said Ben.

Luke Wall made a motion with his chin; he was an indifferent spirit buried comfortably within broad layers of flesh. Boots scraped by the front of the house and for a moment Coleman saw a man pause near enough the doorway to be touched by the out-reaching lamplight His face came around, ruddy and self-content; he took his measure of the three within the room and strolled casually on. Two of the horses, Coleman heard, moved away with him.

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