Free Novel 1971 - Tucker (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page A

to escape, to escape and to hide. At the canyon’s entrance I turned and brushed the grass upright where I had stepped. Just the bending over almost caused me to fall, and my hip hurt bad. Turning, I went into the canyon, ducked under one deadfall and half fell over another. I sat down there and swung my legs over a moss-grown boulder and went on. When at last I looked back toward the mouth of the canyon, it could no longer be seen.
    Here it was shadowed and still. The whisper of the rain was the only sound, except once in a while the rubbing of one branch against another in some slight stirring of the wind.
    Sometimes I fell. My hands were scraped by rough bark when I tried to catch myself. My pack and my rifle caught again and again on branches into which I blundered. But somehow I kept moving because it was in me that I had to move.
    I could not let them beat me. I had to get out of here. I had to make them pay for what they had done, but most important, I had to get that money back. I had to get it back for those neighbors of ours in Texas.
    Sometimes I passed out and lay still against the wet grass. I wanted to stay and just rest…but always I started crawling again. My wound opened and bled, and it hurt, too.
    Once when I opened my eyes I found I wasn’t among pines any more, but among aspens, so that meant I was getting higher up. Grasping the slender trunk of the nearest tree, I tugged myself up and leaned against it.
    The rain had stopped, but there was drifting mist around me. Looking back, I could see nothing of the canyon, for now it was thick with cloud. But on one of the bare, rain-wet peaks above me I could see the reflection of sunlight. Using the trees to help, I pulled myself on, from one to the other.
    Aspens are the forest’s effort to recover itself, the first trees to spring up after there has been fire, and often they grow on the steep mountainsides below a ridge. They give shelter to wildlife, and to the young evergreens until they are strong enough to stand alone. As the evergreens grow tall, the aspens die out, for they need sunlight and open ground.
    This idea worked its way through my fuzzy, wandering thoughts as I struggled along, but a spasm of pain went through me and I fell. I lay gasping, too weak to get up. After a long time I slowly pulled myself up again.
    I did not want to go on…I wanted to quit. Just to lie down, close my eyes, and not try any more.
    That was the way I felt, and that was what I thought I wanted, but something kept urging me on. And suddenly I was at the top. I came out of the trees into a mountain meadow. The far side of the meadow was in sunlight, and when I reached it I stood still, soaking up the warmth.
    My eyes had been on it for several minutes before the realization of what I saw reached me.
    It was a chimney. A chimney of stone…of native stone.
    Where there was a chimney there must be a house or cabin. A house or cabin sometimes meant people.
    Walking very carefully so that I would not fall, I went through the trees and brush toward the building, which was a cabin. From behind an aspen I studied the layout.
    The cabin was small. There was no sign of life anywhere around, but there were some horse droppings in the yard that might not be old. With the recent rain it was hard to tell. There was a corral and an open-faced shed.
    Walking slowly, my rifle ready in my hands, I went around to the front. No tracks since the rain. A path led away from the cabin and down into the trees.
    The door opened easily under my hand. Inside, the cabin was spotless. There was a neatly made bed, a fireplace with the fire laid, and a floor that had been scrubbed…something unusual in the mountains.
    A blanket hung over a door to a room beyond. Pushing it aside, I saw another bedroom, this one with curtains. In a crudely made wardrobe were some women’s fixings.
    I put my gun down and laid my blanket roll on a bench, and then I lit the fire and put on a kettle. I knew that I was