Free The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 1 by Louis L’Amour Page A

Hardin stared. “I never knowed about this spring afore. Might’s well have a drink.” He swung down.
    They all got down and Neill rolled a smoke.
    â€œSomebody sure fixed her up nice,” he said. “That wall of stone makin’ that basin ain’t so old.”
    â€œNo, it ain’t.”
    Short watched them drink and grinned.
    â€œHe’s a fox, right enough. He’s an old ladino, this one. A reg’lar mossy horn. It don’t take no time for one man to drink, an’ one hoss. But here we got six men an’ six horses to drink an’ we lose more time.”
    â€œYou really think he planned it that way?” Neill was skeptical.
    Hardin looked around at him. “Sure. This Lock knows his way around.”
    When they were riding on, Neill thought about that. Lock
was
shrewd. He was desert-wise. And he was leading them a chase. If not even Hardin knew of this spring, and he had been twenty years in the Spring Valley country, then Lock must know a good deal about the country. Of course, this range of mountains was singularly desolate, and there was nothing in them to draw a man.
    Â 
    So they knew this about their quarry. He was a man wise in the ways of desert and trail, and one who knew the country. Also, Neill reflected, it was probable he had built that basin himself. Nobody lived over this way but Lock, for now it was not far to the Sorenson place.
    Now they climbed a single horse trail across the starkly eroded foothills, sprinkled with clumps of Joshua and Spanish bayonet. It was a weird and broken land, where long fingers of black lava stretched down the hills and out into the desert as though clawing toward the alkali lake they had left behind. The trail mounted steadily and a little breeze touched their cheeks. Neill lifted his hand and wiped dust from his brow and it came away in flakes, plastered by sweat.
    The trail doubled and changed, now across the rock face of the burnt red sandstone, then into the lava itself, skirting hills where the exposed ledges mounted in layers like a vast cake of many colors. Then the way dipped down, and they wound among huge boulders, smooth as so many waterworn pebbles. Neill sagged in the saddle, for the hours were growing long, and the trail showed no sign of ending.
    â€œLucky he ain’t waitin’ to shoot,” Kimmel commented, voicing the first remark in over an hour. “He could pick us off like flies.”
    As if in reply to his comment, there was an angry whine above them and then the crack of a rifle.
    As one man they scattered for shelter, whipping rifles from their scabbards, for all but two had replaced them when they reached the lake. Hardin swore, and Kimmel wormed his way to a better view of the country ahead.
    Short had left the saddle in his scramble for shelter, and his horse stood in the open, the canteen making a large lump behind the saddle. Suddenly the horse leaped to the solid thud of a striking bullet, and then followed the crack of the rifle, echoing over the mountainside.
    Short swore viciously. “If he killed that horse …!” But the horse, while shifting nervously, seemed uninjured.
    â€œHey!” Kesney yelled. “He shot your canteen!”
    It was true enough. Water was pouring onto the ground, and swearing, Short started to get up. Sutter grabbed his arm.
    â€œHold it! If he could get that canteen, he could get you!”
    They waited, and the trickle of water slowed, then faded to a drip. All of them stared angrily at the unrewarding rocks ahead of them. One canteen the less. Still they had all filled up at the spring and should have enough. Uncomfortably, however, they realized that the object of their chase, the man called Chat Lock, knew where he was taking them, and he had not emptied that canteen by chance. Now they understood the nature of the man they followed. He did nothing without object.
    Lying on the sand or rocks they waited, peering