Louis LAmour - The First Fast Draw

Contents

QUICK DRAW, QUICK DEATH

I M GONNA KILL you, Cullen!

All movement stopped and I knew without turning that his gun was ready to kill me as I turned. Only I was already turning.

There was no thinking, no thought and response, just that challenge and the months of training Id given myself and before he was through talking I was shooting.

The report of that Dragoon Colt cut a hard line across the silence of the square.

Dud lifted on his tiptoes, took one teetering step foreward and fell flat, and he was dead before he touched the ground.

He had never known anything but a flash of flame and a stunning blow over the heart.

I say it was a fair shootin, a tall man said positively, but I never did see a man shuck a gun so quick.

Chapter 1

W HEN THE SHELTER was finished, thatched heavy with pine boughs, I went inside and built myself a hatful of fire. It was a cold, wet, miserable time, and nowhere around any roof for me, although here I was, back in my own country.

Hungry I was, and soaked to the hide from a fall my mule had taken in the swamp, but I kept my fire small, for Id come home by the back trails, figuring to attract no notice until I could look around and take stock.

Theyd given me nothing here in the old days, and Id given them a sight less, and the only memory they would have of me would be one of violence and anger. Yet hereabouts was all I had ever known of home, or was likely to know.

The woods dripped with rain. Sometimes a big drop would fall from the thatch overhead and hiss in the fire, but other than that and the soft fall of rain in the twilight forest, there was no sound. Not at first.

When a sound did come it was faint. But it was not a sound of the forest, nor of the rain, nor of any wild animal or bird, for these were sounds I knew and had known since childhood.

It was a rider coming, maybe two, and nobody I wanted to see, but that was why Id put together my lean-to back over the knoll and hid down deep among the rain-wet trees.

This was a rider coming and I could only hope the rain had left no trail they could find, for if trouble was to come to me here, I wanted it to wait, at least until I had walked the old path to the well again, and seen where Pa was buried.

Standing there like that with the rain dripping down, me in my shabby homespun, wore-out clothes, I tried to figure if there was anybody hereabouts beyond a few Caddos whom I could call friend. I couldnt think of anybody.

For a long time then there was no other sound but the rain, a whisper of rain falling among the leaves, and a far-off stirring of wind. And then I heard that sound again.

Behind me the raw-boned mule lifted his head and pricked his ears against the sound, so it wasnt only me heard the sound. No matter, the buckskin mule was ganted some and it would be a few days of rest hed need before I could move on anyway, and maybe I just wasnt feeling right to move at all. Maybe I had come home to staywhether they liked it or not.

Rising, I could just see across the top of the knoll in the forest, and the place Id chosen to camp commanded a view of the trail at intervals along its course through the swamp woods.

When at last they came in sight there were two riders and they rode as tired men ride, and there was that about them that was somehow familiar. Maybe it was only that they were mighty near as shabby as me, unkempt and lonely as me.

Two riders walking their horses, two riders hunting something. That something could be me.

My Spencer carbine was behind me and so I reached a hand back for it and pulled it close against my side for shelter from the rain. It was a new Spencer, caliber .56 and she carried seven shotsId picked it off a dead man up in the Nation. A brand-new, spanking-new, mighty slick piece of shooting iron.

Right there I stood with no notion of moving. Place I stood was a hidden place where a body might pass within six feet and never see it was there. Man like me, in unfriendly country, he cant be too careful. These past years I had seen almost nothing but unfriendly country. Maybe it was my own fault, for I was a man rode careful and who kept a gun to hand.

When I saw them first through the farthest gap in the trees, Id seen nothing but a couple of men hunched in their saddles, one wearing a ragged poncho, the other a gray Confederate greatcoat.

A moment only, a glimpse, and then they were gone from sight among the trees that lined the trail below, but at the nearest point they would be no more than thirty yards away. So I waited where I was, trusting not to be seen, but keeping the Spencer to hand in case of trouble.

This was a place I knew, an arm of the swamp to protect my right flank, an almost impassable thicket of brush on my left, and the main swamp close in behind me. There was a trail came from the swamp into the trees behind me, but anyone using that trail was likely to be a Caddo or someone as averse to trouble as myself.

The brush on my left could be got through, no question of that, but not without a sight more noise than anybody was likely to make, coming easy to a strange camp.

The people of this northeast corner of Texas had not liked me before, and with times what they were they had no reason to be friendly. The War between the States was just over a few days past, and it was a wary time for strangers.

In the old days when a boy Id taken nothing from them, nor given them anything they could lay hold on, they disliked me from the start because I wouldnt knuckle under to the town boys, and Id met dislike with dislike, anger with anger, fist with fist. Despite the war that intervened they would not have forgotten.

Yet it was to this land that Id come home, for it was as much of a home as I could claim, and despite the hard ways of the people toward me, it was a land I loved. From the deep silences of the forgotten swamp lagoons to the stillness of the fields at evening with the mist of night laying low along the fences, it was a place that belonged to me. There was a feel of things growing here, of a rich, dark soil bursting with eagerness to grow beneath my feet.

Those riders came alongthere was something seemed familiar about them, but this corner of Texas had been a bloody country filled with black angers and feuding families, and now to the old hatreds there would be added the feeling left by the war just now ended. It was no country for a man to step out and go hailing strangersleast of all for me.

My tiny fire was over the top of the knoll from them and behind a great dead log, the side of the log serving as a reflector to throw heat back into the lean-to. It was snug and tight, and should have been, for Id lived most of my life like this, and it was most two years since Id slept beneath a roof of any decent kind. What little smoke the fire gave off lost itself among the leaves overhead, yet a knowing man with a keen nose might catch a whiff if the wind was right.

They drew up in the trail below, in plain sight and an easy shot for my rifle, and they talked there, and one of their voices had an old, familiar ring. So I stepped out of my shelter and strolled down the slope of the knoll toward them, walking soft on the dead wet leaves underfoot. The carbine was in my right hand and in my belt was a Dragoon Colt, within easy grasping.

Bob Lee, I said aloud, and no louder than needed.

They turned sharp around, but it was to the more slender of the two whom I spoke. He looked at me, measuring me, then making up his mind.