Collection 1980 - Yondering (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page B
Authors: Louis L’Amour
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pushed him away from the gun and swung it toward the front of the house. In the distance, against the pale-blue sky, above the heat waves dancing, a vulture swung in slow circles against the sky. Slim was down, all sprawled out, and the enemy was closing in.
He pointed the gun toward them and opened up, singing in a hoarse, toneless voice.
Glorious! Glorious!
One keg o’ beer for the four of us!
Glory be to heaven that there isn’t
Ten or ’leven,
For the four of us can drink it all alone!
His belt went empty, and the hill was bare of all but the bodies. He got up and closed the heavy plank door.
He caught up a bandoleer and another pistol. Then he dropped through the trapdoor.
All was still. He stepped over the dead Moor and went out into the shadowed stillness of the ditch.
And then he began to run.
D EAD- E ND D RIFT
----
Most of these stories were written in retrospect, when the events that led to them were already far behind. Fortunately I never experienced what happened in this story but thought of it from time to time. Such things were not much talked about, but I worked with miners who had survived them .
I never worked in a coal mine, only in hard-rock mines in the West, in one copper mine, in several silver, lead, and zinc or gold mines. Often several minerals were found in the same mine. In some silver or copper mines enough gold is found to pay the expense of mining. I was never an expert miner, although I’ve worked with a stopper. Usually they had me tramming or on the business end of a muck stick (shovel), and at the latter, I always felt I need take second place to no man. (I was probably wrong.) I was also a better than fair hand with a double jack (sledgehammer) .
In the larger mines we usually came out to the station to eat our lunches and to wait when the shift was over to let the miners count their shots. Those were great times for me, as many of the older miners had worked the boom camps such as Tonopah, Goldfield, Rawhide, Cripple Creek, Leadville, Central City, and Virginia City. Resting time was also a time when they told stories or talked about characters they had known such as Ten-Day Murphy, Slasher Harrington, and Shorty Harris .
Shorty was always a favorite character of mine because of the rare sort of character he was. He made big mining discoveries but never cashed in on any of them, but at the end he was buried standing up at the bottom of Death Valley, and he would have liked that .
Boxing had always been a major interest of mine, and we had a tough old Irish miner there who had boxed a four-round exhibition with John L. Sullivan and several who had known Jack Dempsey when he was a saloon bouncer or worked in the mines. They had also seen him fight. And Malloy, Johnny Sudenberg, and some of the early fighters .
I met Jack briefly once when eating lunch in his New York restaurant but, never told him I’d fought in some of the same places or worked in the same mining camps .
There were miners there who had seen Joe Gans fight Battling Nelson for the world’s lightweight title in Goldfield. Joe Gans won on a foul in forty-two rounds .
There are still stories from those days that I must write and will write. There are ghost stories, fight stories, and even the story of a man who was going to raise the dead. He even invited everybody to come and see him do it .
----
T HE TRICKLE OF sand ceased, and there was silence. Then a small rock dropped from overhead into the rubble beneath, and the flat finality of the sound put a period to the moment.
There was a heavy odor of dust, and one of the men coughed, the dry, hacking cough of miner’s consumption. Silence hung heavily in the thick, dead air.
“Better sit still.” Bert’s voice was quiet and unexcited. “I’ll make a light.” They waited, listening to the miner fumbling with his hand lamp. “We might dislodge something,” he added, “and start it again.”
They heard his palm
He pointed the gun toward them and opened up, singing in a hoarse, toneless voice.
Glorious! Glorious!
One keg o’ beer for the four of us!
Glory be to heaven that there isn’t
Ten or ’leven,
For the four of us can drink it all alone!
His belt went empty, and the hill was bare of all but the bodies. He got up and closed the heavy plank door.
He caught up a bandoleer and another pistol. Then he dropped through the trapdoor.
All was still. He stepped over the dead Moor and went out into the shadowed stillness of the ditch.
And then he began to run.
D EAD- E ND D RIFT
----
Most of these stories were written in retrospect, when the events that led to them were already far behind. Fortunately I never experienced what happened in this story but thought of it from time to time. Such things were not much talked about, but I worked with miners who had survived them .
I never worked in a coal mine, only in hard-rock mines in the West, in one copper mine, in several silver, lead, and zinc or gold mines. Often several minerals were found in the same mine. In some silver or copper mines enough gold is found to pay the expense of mining. I was never an expert miner, although I’ve worked with a stopper. Usually they had me tramming or on the business end of a muck stick (shovel), and at the latter, I always felt I need take second place to no man. (I was probably wrong.) I was also a better than fair hand with a double jack (sledgehammer) .
In the larger mines we usually came out to the station to eat our lunches and to wait when the shift was over to let the miners count their shots. Those were great times for me, as many of the older miners had worked the boom camps such as Tonopah, Goldfield, Rawhide, Cripple Creek, Leadville, Central City, and Virginia City. Resting time was also a time when they told stories or talked about characters they had known such as Ten-Day Murphy, Slasher Harrington, and Shorty Harris .
Shorty was always a favorite character of mine because of the rare sort of character he was. He made big mining discoveries but never cashed in on any of them, but at the end he was buried standing up at the bottom of Death Valley, and he would have liked that .
Boxing had always been a major interest of mine, and we had a tough old Irish miner there who had boxed a four-round exhibition with John L. Sullivan and several who had known Jack Dempsey when he was a saloon bouncer or worked in the mines. They had also seen him fight. And Malloy, Johnny Sudenberg, and some of the early fighters .
I met Jack briefly once when eating lunch in his New York restaurant but, never told him I’d fought in some of the same places or worked in the same mining camps .
There were miners there who had seen Joe Gans fight Battling Nelson for the world’s lightweight title in Goldfield. Joe Gans won on a foul in forty-two rounds .
There are still stories from those days that I must write and will write. There are ghost stories, fight stories, and even the story of a man who was going to raise the dead. He even invited everybody to come and see him do it .
----
T HE TRICKLE OF sand ceased, and there was silence. Then a small rock dropped from overhead into the rubble beneath, and the flat finality of the sound put a period to the moment.
There was a heavy odor of dust, and one of the men coughed, the dry, hacking cough of miner’s consumption. Silence hung heavily in the thick, dead air.
“Better sit still.” Bert’s voice was quiet and unexcited. “I’ll make a light.” They waited, listening to the miner fumbling with his hand lamp. “We might dislodge something,” he added, “and start it again.”
They heard his palm
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