Read Online Collection 1997 - End Of The Drive (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour - Free Book Online

himself and got up. Blood covered his face from a cut on his cheek. He stared at his empty gun, then clumsily began feeding shells into the chambers.
    Across the wavering sand the two men stared at each other, then Rodelo laughed hoarsely. “You look like hell!” he said, grinning from his heat-blasted face.
    Isager’s brain seemed to spin queerly and he blinked. What was the matter with him? A pain bit suddenly at his side, and he clasped the pain with his hand. His fingers felt damp and he drew them away, staring stupidly at the blood dripping from his fingers.
    â€œYou copped one,” Rodelo said. “You’re hit.”
    Isager swayed. Suddenly he knew this was it, right here on this dead-white beach washed by an ugly weedy sea. It was no way for a cowhand to cash in his chips. “Beat it,” he said hoarsely. “There’s more coming.”
    â€œHow do you know that?”
    â€œThat’s why they rushed. To get us an’ claim the reward. If they’d been alone they would have taken their time.” His knees felt buttery and queer. “There’s one good horse. Take the gold an’ beat it. I’m done in, so I’ll hold them off.”
    He went to his knees. “Only…” His voice trailed off and he waited, his eyes begging Rodelo to wait a minute longer, then he managed the words, “get some of that money to Tom Hopkins’s wife. He…he was that marshal. Funny thing, funny…Never meant to kill him. He came at me an’ it was just reflex…jus’…just drew an’ shot.”
    â€œAll right,” Rodelo said, and he meant it. He turned and disappeared into the blinding light.
    Isager lay down behind the fallen horse. He slid the rifle from its scabbard and waited.

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    S HERIFF BILL GARDEN and two Apache trackers found Isager a few hours later. Gunfire from the advance party of six Yaquis had led them to this desolate beach. The convict was curled up behind a dying horse, surrounded by bright brass shells ejected from his rifle. Two of the Apache horses were gone and only one of the horses ridden by the convicts was alive. He was standing head down on the hillside not far away.
    Horse tracks trailed away from the body of Isager, a faint trail toward the bluff to the south. Bill Garden glanced after them. The remaining scouts were still after the last man. He turned and looked down at Isager. “Lord a-mighty,” he said. “What a place to die!”
    Far off across the water there was a flash of white, a jib shaken out to catch the wind…a boat had left the fishing beds at Rocky Bay and was beating its way southward toward Guaymas.
    THE COURTING OF GRISELDA
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    W HEN IT CAME to Griselda Popley, I was down to bedrock and showing no color.
    What I mean is, I wasn’t getting anyplace. The only thing I’d learned since leaving the Cumberland in Tennessee was how to work a gold placer claim, but I was doing no better with that than I was with Griselda.
    Her pa, Frank Popley, had a claim just a whoop and a holler down canyon from me. He had put down a shaft on a flat bench at the bend of the creek and he was down a ways and making a fair clean-up.
    He was scraping rock down there and panning out sixty to seventy dollars a day, and one time he found a crack where the gold had seeped through and filled in a space under a layer of rock, and he cleaned out six hundred dollars in four or five minutes.
    It sure does beat all how prosperity makes a man critical of all who are less prosperous. Seems like some folks no sooner get two dollars they can rattle together than they start looking down their noses at folks who only have two bits.
    We were right friendly while Popley was sinking his shaft, but as soon as he began bringing up gold he started giving me advice and talking me down to Griselda. From the way he cut up, you’d have thought it was some ability or knowledge of his that put that gold there. I