Free The Lawless West by Louis L’Amour Page A

bitter storm as this, while the wind plucked at them and swung them back and forth?
    After that a longer sleep ensued, and it was broken, at length, with a sense of burning in his throat and burning, also, of his feet and his face and his hands. He opened his eyes and looked up. Brandy had been poured down his throat. He was swathed in hot blankets. He was lying beside a red-hot stove. Then, as his senses cleared still further, he saw above him the strange giant of the storm, black-bearded, with bright, bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and a tangle of uncombed hair. Out of his throat issued a great roar, that familiar voice of his dreams: “Hello…hello…hello!”
    The voice fairly drowned the mind of Jack Trainor, but he managed to smile faintly. “I’m here, right enough,” he said.
    At that, the big man slumped into a chair and heaved a great sigh. Jack saw that the other was on the point of collapse from exhaustion. Sweat was running down his face. The rosy cheeks were veined with purple from overexertion.
    “Lord, Lord,” groaned the big man. “I thought that you’d never come ’round. I thought you was going…”
    He did not finish his suggestion, but lolled back more heavily in his chair, laughing weakly and making a gesture to Jack to signify that all was well.
    The man of the cattle ranges of the southland heaved himself up on his elbow and looked about him. He found that he was in a small cabin, the walls of which were of massive logs, with a small stove in the center, a bunk on one side, and guns,traps, and fishing tackle covering the walls. Plainly it was a trapper who had blundered upon him. Then it occurred to him with a start that he weighed a full 180 pounds.
    “How far did you carry me?” he asked.
    “Three miles…I guess,” gasped the other.
    “Three miles?” echoed Jack, and then, looking more closely at his companion, he saw that it was indeed possible. The man was a giant, standing several inches above six feet, and weighing twenty or thirty pounds above 200—and all of this solid muscle.
    But now the prostrate giant recovered himself. He rose from his chair and staggered to a corner from which he began to produce bacon and flour, and in a few minutes he had the beginnings of a meal smoking on top of the stove. As for Jack, he felt that, had he been 100 miles away and soundly asleep, his nose would have brought him these tidings of food and roused him.
    Sitting up to throw back his covers, he found that he was astonishingly weak. He had to lean back against the side of the cabin again, and the big man, reeling with weakness as though from liquor, laughed joyously at him.
    “The last mile pretty near finished me,” he declared. “I thought I was gone, my friend, I promise you. But I prayed to the good Lord. He gave me strength. And so here we are, both of us!” And he laughed again.
    There was something at once so kindly and so childishly simple in what he said, and in his manner of saying it, that Jack felt his very heart warmed by the big man.
    “Partner,” he said, and found that his voice was strangely small and husky, “you’ve saved my life.Nobody else that I know of could’ve carried me the way you carried me.”
    “I?” said the other, shaking his head violently. “What I have done is nothing…nothing. But only think of the luck…that I saw the toe of your boot sticking up through the surface of the snow, and that I knew it was not a branch showing.”
    Jack Trainor shuddered and caught his breath. Had he been as near to death as that? Had the snow entirely drifted over him?
    He held out his hand to the big man. “What’s your name? I’m Jack Trainor.”
    “And I, Joseph Bigot.”
    “Joseph, before I come to the end of my life, I’ll show you how I appreciate what you’ve done for me.”
    “Tush,” said the other, flushing a brighter red. “You talk about such things later. Now I got no time!”
    And he resolutely turned his back upon his guest and went ahead