Read Online Novel 1959 - The First Fast Draw (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Louis L’Amour
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the swamp, but Sam Barlow was a dangerous man to us, for if people began to believe we were doing the things he did we’d have no more friends among the folks out there. It was Reconstruction law wanted us, and none of us had done any harm to the folks who lived hereabouts.
Next day I saddled up that buckskin mule and rode down the island. There was only one place where a man might walk a horse or mule to the mainland and it took sharp attention and the right knowledge of just where to turn. There was an underwater ridge a man could ride, but well out from shore a man had to make a turn. It was a Caddo who showed me the way, and the first of the others had learned it from me…if a man made to ride on he’d be off in mighty deep water or in places, in mud that was like quicksand.
It was to Fairlea I rode. The distance was short, and I wanted to look about and see what my chances were to make something of the place. Actually, it was a better place than our home place, and one which Pa had picked up while land was cheap—for that matter it was still worth nothing. There were men with thousands of acres and no money at all, nor chance to get any. Crops brought nothing but a mere living, and cattle were killed for their hides and tallow.
The point of land I’d been considering was separated even from Fairlea except by a narrow lane along the bayou. There was some three hundred acres in the piece, but it lay in a half-dozen small fields, each walled by trees and bayous, the land lying like a letter S with an extra turn to it, and the bayous bordering it until it was all but an island. The lane along the trees ended in a gate on another lane, rarely used now, and by going through the gate and crossing the land one was on Fairlea proper.
There had once been a fine mansion house on the place, but it had burned to the ground one night before we ever came to the place, and the owner lost his family there, and after that sold to my father and went off to New Orleans. I believe part of the selling price was money owed to Pa for work done, and that during the spell when the owner had thoughts of rebuilding and going on, but the memories were too strong, and he finally would have none of it. So Fairlea fell to us for labor done and a little money.
The soil was good, and it would not be difficult to get in here, plow a field and seed it without anyone being the wiser.
The sound of the oncoming riders had been in my ears for a minute or more before I realized what it meant. Somebody was coming along the unused lane at the end of the property…now in the old days it had been a rare thing for anyone to ride that way, and by the looks of the lane, all grown to grass, it was a rarer thing even now.
If riders came this way it would be a good thing to know who they were and if they came often, but I’d more than an idea they were themselves not eager to be seen, choosing such a route as this, out of the way as it was.
It was a fine spring morning, and the sun was warm and lazy. Off in the bayous behind me somewhere a loon called, a mighty far and lonesome sound, at any time. Walking right up to the fence I lay that Spencer across the top rail with my hand over the action in such a way I could cock and fire almost in the same motion. And it was well I did just that because the man on the first horse was Sam Barlow.
He was a wide, thick-set man with a sight of hair on his chest, revealed by an open shirt. Barlow had the name of being a mighty dangerous man to come up against. He had fought as a guerrilla in the war, and had been a renegade since. Under the cover of fighting Reconstruction he was raiding, looting and murdering up and down the state, and into Louisiana and Arkansas. Folks had laid much of what he’d done on Bickerstaff, Bob Lee and some of the others, but Sam Barlow was a man known for cunning as well as being mighty mean, and he seemed always to know right where the Army was so he never did come up against them. Behind
Next day I saddled up that buckskin mule and rode down the island. There was only one place where a man might walk a horse or mule to the mainland and it took sharp attention and the right knowledge of just where to turn. There was an underwater ridge a man could ride, but well out from shore a man had to make a turn. It was a Caddo who showed me the way, and the first of the others had learned it from me…if a man made to ride on he’d be off in mighty deep water or in places, in mud that was like quicksand.
It was to Fairlea I rode. The distance was short, and I wanted to look about and see what my chances were to make something of the place. Actually, it was a better place than our home place, and one which Pa had picked up while land was cheap—for that matter it was still worth nothing. There were men with thousands of acres and no money at all, nor chance to get any. Crops brought nothing but a mere living, and cattle were killed for their hides and tallow.
The point of land I’d been considering was separated even from Fairlea except by a narrow lane along the bayou. There was some three hundred acres in the piece, but it lay in a half-dozen small fields, each walled by trees and bayous, the land lying like a letter S with an extra turn to it, and the bayous bordering it until it was all but an island. The lane along the trees ended in a gate on another lane, rarely used now, and by going through the gate and crossing the land one was on Fairlea proper.
There had once been a fine mansion house on the place, but it had burned to the ground one night before we ever came to the place, and the owner lost his family there, and after that sold to my father and went off to New Orleans. I believe part of the selling price was money owed to Pa for work done, and that during the spell when the owner had thoughts of rebuilding and going on, but the memories were too strong, and he finally would have none of it. So Fairlea fell to us for labor done and a little money.
The soil was good, and it would not be difficult to get in here, plow a field and seed it without anyone being the wiser.
The sound of the oncoming riders had been in my ears for a minute or more before I realized what it meant. Somebody was coming along the unused lane at the end of the property…now in the old days it had been a rare thing for anyone to ride that way, and by the looks of the lane, all grown to grass, it was a rarer thing even now.
If riders came this way it would be a good thing to know who they were and if they came often, but I’d more than an idea they were themselves not eager to be seen, choosing such a route as this, out of the way as it was.
It was a fine spring morning, and the sun was warm and lazy. Off in the bayous behind me somewhere a loon called, a mighty far and lonesome sound, at any time. Walking right up to the fence I lay that Spencer across the top rail with my hand over the action in such a way I could cock and fire almost in the same motion. And it was well I did just that because the man on the first horse was Sam Barlow.
He was a wide, thick-set man with a sight of hair on his chest, revealed by an open shirt. Barlow had the name of being a mighty dangerous man to come up against. He had fought as a guerrilla in the war, and had been a renegade since. Under the cover of fighting Reconstruction he was raiding, looting and murdering up and down the state, and into Louisiana and Arkansas. Folks had laid much of what he’d done on Bickerstaff, Bob Lee and some of the others, but Sam Barlow was a man known for cunning as well as being mighty mean, and he seemed always to know right where the Army was so he never did come up against them. Behind
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