The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 5 by Louis L'Amour

Author:Louis L'Amour [L'Amour, Louis]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780553904338
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

The Sixth Shotgun

They were hanging Leo Carver on Tuesday afternoon, and the loafers were watching the gallows go up. This was the first official hanging in the history of Canyon Gap, and the first gallows ever built in the Territory. But then, the citizens at the Gap were always the kind to go in for style.

The boys from the ranches were coming in, and the hard-booted men from the mines, and the nine saloons were closing up, but only for the hour of the hanging. On the street behind the Palace where the cottonwoods lined the creek, Fat Marie had given three hours off to the girls. One for the hanging and one for mourning and the third for drinking their tears away.

For Leo had been a spending man who would be missed along the street, and Leo had been a singing man with a voice as clear as a mountain echo and fresh as a long wind through the sage. And Leo was a handsome man, with a gun too quick to his hand. So they were hanging Leo Carver on the gallows in Canyon Gap, and the folks were coming in from the forks of every creek.

From behind the barred window Leo watched them working. “Build it high!” he yelled at them. “And build it strong, for you’re hanging the best man in Canyon Gap when tomorrow comes!”

Old Pap, who had prospected in the Broken Hills before the first foundation was laid at the Gap, took his pipe from his mouth and spat into the dust. “He’s right, at that,” he said, “and no lie. If the ’Paches were coming over that hill right now, it’s Leo Carver I’d rather have beside me than any man jack in this town.”

Editor Chafee nodded his head. “Nobody will deny that he’s a fighting man,” he agreed. “Leo was all right until civilization caught up with him.”

And there it was said, a fit epitaph for him, if epitaph he’d have, and in their hearts not a man who heard it but agreed that what Chafee said was right.

“There’ll be some,” Old Pap added, “who’ll feel a sigh of relief when they spring that trap. When Leo’s neck is stretched and the sawbones says the dead word over him, many a man will stop sweating, you can bet on that.”

“Better be careful what you say.” Jase Ford shifted uneasily. “It ain’t healthy to be hintin’.”

“Not since they put Leo away, it ain’t,” Old Pap agreed, “but truth’s a luxury the old can afford. There’s nothing they can take from me but my life, and that’s no use to me. And to do that they’d have to shoot me down from behind, and that’s the sort of thing they’d do unless they could hang me legal, like Leo Carver’s to be hung.”

Nobody said anything, but Chafee looked gloomy as he stared at the gallows. There was no living doubt that Leo Carver was an outlaw. No doubt that he had rustled a few

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