Free Talon & Chantry 07 - North To The Rails (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page A

hour later he came up to it, a wide slough boggy along the sides, but with water a-plenty. Skirting it, he found it had a gravelly shore, and turned back to guide the herd.
    “Water?” French was skeptical. “I don’t know of any water around here.”
    “You do now,” Chantry said. “Hay, turn the herd.”
    Hay Gent glanced at Williams, who merely shrugged, so the herd swung. By the time the cattle had watered and a few head had been snaked out of the mud it was coming on to sundown, and over by the chuck wagon there was a fire going.
    There was little talk around the fire. The men were dog-tired, and when they had eaten they hunted their bedrolls. French alone loitered at the fire, smoking. From time to time he glanced across at Tom Chantry.
    “You are a difficult man, my friend,” he said at last. “Whatever else you may be, you are not a coward.”
    “Thanks.”
    “I will win, however. It’s a long way to Dodge.”
    “It is that.” Chantry looked up from his coffee. “And when you get there, I’ll be with you.”
    French’s gaze hardened, then he laughed. “You might be at that,” he replied cheerfully, “and if you are, I’ll give you credit for it.”
    “You’ll need the credit,” Chantry replied. “I’ll have the cash.”
    He got a plate and his food, and sat down a bit away from the fire. If they didn’t accept him, the hell with them—he could go his own way. But there was something in him that was different now; he had grown harder, tougher. The wide plains and the long winds of morning were having their effect; but French Williams the Talrim boys, and Koch had contributed…yes, and Sparrow back there at Las Vegas, and Bone McCarthy at Clifton’s. These men had experienced far more living in the West than he had. Perhaps, he thought reluctantly, perhaps his thinking needed a bit of revision.
    How much of what he believed about not using guns was left over from that bitter day when they brought his father home on a shutter? Or was it what his mother had taught him? Deep in grief over the death of his father, she had shrunk from the possibility of such an end for her son.
    Killing was wrong—on that score he could not change. However, there was no law here except the law enforced by men with guns, and did such men as the Talrims, and even such men as Williams himself, understand any other law?
    If a man would not put restrictions upon himself, if he would not conform to the necessary limits that allow people to live together in peace, then he must not be allowed to infringe on the liberties of those who wanted to live in peace. And that might lead to violence, even to killing.
    The trouble was that back east men had lived so long in a society that demanded order and conformity that they failed to understand that there were societies where violence was the rule, and where there were men to whom only the fear of retribution placed a bridle on their license.
    But Tom Chantry knew there was more than his father behind him, for the fighting tradition of the Chantrys did not begin with him, nor with his grandfather, who had stood with LaFitte and Jackson at the battle of New Orleans. There were generations before that, who had crossed over from Ireland.
    The principal thing he had learned was that simply because he himself did not believe in violence was no reason that others would feel the same. In the future he must be more wary. But what if the Talrim boys’ presence was not coincidence? What if French
had
arranged for them to be near? What if French intended the Talrim boys to eliminate him?
    At daybreak he was out riding the drag, and when he broke off he caught up another horse from the remuda. This was a
grulla
mustang, small but wiry.
    “Watch him,
amigo,
” Dutch Akin whispered. “That one is mean.”
    The little mouse-colored horse stood quiet until saddled, but just as Chantry put his foot in the stirrup and rested his weight on it to swing to the saddle, the little horse folded