Louis LAmour - The Man from Skibbereen

Contents

H OSTAGE

A NGER MADE BARDA bold, and the knowledge that this man, this bully, was trying to frighten her. If you lift a hand against me, Ill see you turned over to the troopers. Theyve known me since I was a child. Ive been daughter and sister to them all! If you

Pete Noble stepped back, staring at her. You think that scares me? His voice was harsh. I dont give a damn about them soldiers! Suddenly his eyes lighted, they looked odd, almost insane. Howd they know I done anything? Ill do what I want an when they find you theyll think it was Injuns done it.

He stepped toward her then, one hand reaching for her left wrist, the other for her waist.

And she swung the rock.

Barda McClean had been swimming and riding horses since she was a child, spirited horses that needed a strong hand. She swung the rock and she swung it hard. Too late he saw her arm come around; he threw up his arm as the rock hit just back of the temple. He staggered, and she swung it again, quickly, against the side of his head....

Chapter 1

C RISPIN MAYO HAD a wish to walk the high land with the company of eagles and the shadow of clouds, so he strode away to Bantry Bay and shipped aboard a windjammer as an able-bodied seaman. It was his first voyage on such a vessel, although he had fished upon deep water since childhood, and knew a marlinspike from a hickory fid before he was six.

He jumped his ship in Boston Town and hied himself off along the dark streets, trusting no man and steering a course sheer of grog shops and the painted girls who lay traps for trusting sailormen.

When the dawning came upon him he was beyond the citys streets and walking along country lanes with stone walls to left and right like thered been at home in County Cork. He stayed shy of main-travelled roads for fear that if they found him theyd ship him home again, and hed yet to see a mountain. So he begged a meal here, chopped wood for one there, and slept by the night in a haystack or a farmers barn. And after sleeping in the barn, if he had an egg or two of the farmers chickens, who is to blame him for that? After all, a large-shouldered Irish lad comes easy upon hunger.

He had no blackthorn stick, so he cut one of oak from a fallen branch with a fine heft to it that lay handy to the road. If only one man came for him, or even two, hed be after tearin down their meathouse with his fists, but if they came against him in numbers the stick might be handy. Crossing a pasture once a bull came upon him, a bull with no taste for the singing of Ballinascarty songs, but he laid the bull flat with a blow between the horns and went his way a-singing.

Somebody said while he listened that in a westward land they were building a railroad, and paying strong lads for the driving of steel, so he went that way and a hiring-man put him on a train. He sat royally upon the cushions then, and west he went with Paddy Gallagher, Tommy OBrien and Mick Shannon riding beside him, bound for the end of track, wherever that might be, and nobody caring the least.

The houses thinned out and the villages disappeared and when they had ridden the night through and day was come they were crossing a vast plain of grass, with the blue sky above and the train chugging down a fresh-laid track into a newborn land.

All day they rode, and through the night and the day again, seeing only the grass, the sky, and far in the distance some woolly black cows, until a time came when the train clanked and squealed to a stop. The man in the blue suit and cap got down and walked slowly forward along the track toward a small building painted a dull red.

It was very hot, very still, and the black flies buzzed about. Cris Mayo stepped down to stretch his legs and saw shade, so he walked yonder and sat beneath a cottonwood; and there the leaves brushed together, whispering stories to the wind, and Cris Mayo closed his eyes, liking the smell of the sun upon the grass and the sound of a trickle of water from somewhere close. He would get a drink before he boarded the train again, but first he would sit quiet for a moment. Far off he could hear voices calling in the shack, he heard the conductor swear, and sometime along there he closed his eyes, just for a bit.

He opened them suddenly to a shrill whistle blowing, heard the grind of the train starting and came swiftly to his feet, sprinting for the track. He went up the slight bank, his feet slipped on the gravel, and he fell. The train was gathering speed. Swearing, he ran, but a fast forty rods only left him panting and the train disappearing, slowly drawing into itself with distance and the narrowing track.

He stood staring and alone. Only the twin rails before and behind him, and the sky and grass large all about. He trudged down the track, walking back to the small station, a box of a place with a signal pole before it and a sidetrack alongside the main line.

He wondered why they laid the ties so that a man could not walk upon them decently, but had to go a step and a half and then a step or so... arrah, a bothersome thing!

It was hot, and there was nothing about but a bird, a meadow lark somebody had said; but with a fine sound to it, not like any lark he had heard, yet lovely still.

The station was there, two windows facing him with blank eyes and a closed doorwhy, in Gods name, on such a hot day? He called out, but no one answered, his voice falling empty away from the dull red wall.

Under his hand the door opened, and he spoke inquiringly into the room. A telegraph key chattered, chattered like the teeth of a frightened banshee. He walked in, leaving the door standing, but nobody was there, the room was empty. It looked empty, it felt empty, it was empty. The second room, for sleeping: also empty.

The bed was unmade. How his old grandmother would have gone on about that, the middle of the day and the bed not made! A shocking thing, not to be believed.

There was the station room with a bench for sitting, there was the bedroom with the unmade bed and a homemade washstand, and some old clothes on pegs. He stepped through the back door and stopped of a sudden, for there was the darkness of a stain on the stoop there, a stain of blood.

Blood looks much the same when spilled in Skibbereen or in Boston or on the western plains, and Cris Mayo had seen a bit of blood in his time. Something or somebody had bled here, bled a sight more than was good for him. Yet when his eyes looked beyond there was nothing but the wide waving grass and the sky over it, with them meeting yonder, far off.

All that empty land, he thought, and not a potato planted. A dreadful waste of soil. He went back within: a snug place for all it was only a shack, and built well against the winter to come. The instrument clicked angrily but he knew nothing of its operation. There was a chair beside it, and papers strewn all about the tiny desk with a pencil laid down as if the owner had just stepped away.

Was there anybody here at all, then? Or had they found him injured and taken him aboard the train? What had happened to the man? Had he hurt himself, or been attacked? This was not Ireland, and Cris was a far piece from Clonakilty. There might be things here, deadly things, of which he did not know.

The key was chattering, so he went to it and put his finger on it and chattered right back at them, a wild burst and then another.

Silenceutter, astonished silence.