The Key-Lock Man (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

Chapter 1

The man called Key-­Lock was a man alone, and before him lay wilderness. Behind him were searching men, and each was armed, each carried a rope. Each rope was noosed for hanging, and each man was intent on the purpose of the chase.

The solitary rider did not fear his aloneness, for he had the companionship of the mind. He had strength also, patience beyond that of most men, and some knowledge of the wild lands into which he rode. If the men who pursued knew nothing of him, he at least knew their kind, and was stronger because of this.

They were men shaped and tempered to the harsh ways of a harsh land, strong in their sense of justice, ruthless in their demand for punishment, relentless in pursuit. In the desert and the wilderness they had built their homes, and from the desert and the wilderness they drew their courage and their code. And the desert knows no mercy, the wilderness shows no kindness.

Before the man called Key-­Lock lay a land fragmented and torn, a magnificent land, gnarled and ancient. It was a land of shattered battlements, broken towers, and the headless figures of vast and shapeless gods. An empty land, yet crowded with epics in stone, harried by wind and thunderstorm, ripped by flash floods, blistered by summer’s heat, frozen by winter’s cold.

He rode now in Arizona, but beyond the horizon to the north lay Utah, and between himself and the border, a desert. Between himself and escape—­if he chose to escape—­lay an almost waterless waste in which he must trust to his ingenuity to keep him free.

The border lay ahead, but the border was merely a line on a map, and did not exist in the minds of the men who pursued him. If they knew of this border, it would have no place in their thinking, for to them he had already crossed another border, a border between the law and the lawless, between the right and the wrong, between what was done and what was not done.

To kill a man who faced you with a gun was in their minds no crime, nor was it a crime in the customs of their period. In the East and in Europe men settled affairs of honor with pistols, but according to plan and ritual. In the West, in what was a new world, where men were often strangers to each other, the settling of such an affair was immediate, and without ritual.

To shoot a man in the back, however, was a crime, and this they believed he had done, and for this he must be hung.

But it was not enough for the man called Key-­Lock to understand the philosophy of the hunters; the important thing for him was to escape them.

Though he knew none of the men back there personally, he knew there must be good men among them, and on a different occasion he might have been riding as one of them, the pursuer instead of the pursued. For he had worked beside such men, fought beside them, and he knew that they were hardworking men, stern but just, according to their code. When such men come to a new land the law comes with them, for they are builders of homes, builders of towns, layers of foundations.

And now he must escape or fight. If he fought, he must be prepared to kill, and he had no enmity for these men . . . not yet.

“Where’s he bound?”

“Home, more’n likely. He’ll need an outfit if he aims to run far . . . if we don’t get to him first.”

“Where’s he live?”

“He was a stranger, and had no trail outfit with him. Over to the store they said that when he taken out to get away, the one thing he latched onto was a woman’s comb.”

“A comb?”

“Seems daft, but that’s what was told us. One of those fancy combs like Spanish women wear in their hair. He rummaged through all that grub and truck in the store just for that.”

Kimmel’s eyes narrowed against the sun’s hard glare. “He’s got him a good horse. Moves right along.”

“Big buckskin,” Chesney said. “I seen the horse. Wears a Key-­Lock brand. A key alongside a keyhole—­never seen it before.”

For a few minutes silence rode among them, except for the beat of their horses’ hoofs and the creak of saddle leather.

“He’s covering ground, all right.” Neill was the youngest of them, and he felt the need of words. He was also the latest to arrive in this part of the country—­only four years ago.

Hardin was the best of them at reading sign, and from the first he had been disturbed that the rider had not put his horse to the run. He held him to a steady, distance-­eating gait, but showed no inclination to make a sudden dash to get away. Studying those tracks, and reading what they indicated, Hardin had an uneasy feeling that they had brought themselves a packet of trouble.

“He’s no tenderfoot.” Chesney expressed the thought Hardin held. “He’s covering ground, but he knows how to save a horse, and he knows wild country.”

Dust lifted from the hoofs of their horses. The sun was hot upon their shoulders. The land was parched and baked. Dancing heat-­waves promised water that was not there, and the distant blue of mountains a coolness they would not provide.

The trail lay straight before them. Only at clumps of rock or thorny brush did it swerve. Like a thrown lance, it seemed to thrust at the distant heart of the hills. The six men of the posse rode warily, their thoughts uneasy about what lay in the mind of the man they pursued.

You can know a man if you follow his trail, if you follow long enough. By his tracks on the land the ways of a man are made plain—­his kindness or his cruelty, his ignorance or his cunning, his strength or his weakness. Many a man who could read not a word of print could read character, story, and plot from a pattern of tracks, and from the building of fires.

In the hours of riding since leaving the town of Freedom, these men had learned much, but they had much still to learn.

“What started it?” one of them asked now.

In the vast hollow of silence the words hung empty and alone.

Hardin turned his head in the manner of a man who rides much in the wind, and let the words drift back. As he spoke he shifted the rifle from one hand to the other to dry his sweaty palms upon his shirt front.

“Loose talk. He was buyin’ grub in the Bon Ton an’ took offense at something Johnny said. Johnny was wearin’ a gun, an’ the Key-­Lock man wasn’t, so Johnny told him to go fill his hand or he’d hunt him down anyway.

“Johnny was in the saloon when he came back an’ pushed the door open an’ shot Johnny twice in the back whilst he stood drinkin’ at the bar. Third shot busted a bottle of whiskey.”

After a moment’s silence, Neill asked slyly, “We hanging him for killing Johnny, or for busting the whiskey?”

It was a fair question, but the dignity of the riders and their mission was not to be lightened by humor. They offered no reply, nor any acknowledgment that he had spoken.

Neill’s eyes wandered over the white and copper land, cut here and there by deep arroyos or ridged by the raw backs of ancient lava flows. He held no liking for the lynching of any man, and he knew nothing of the one for whom they hunted, beyond what had been told him. The men he rode with were his friends and neighbors, the men with whom he shared work and their few pleasures.

Like himself, they had come to this wild land bringing the potential of home, and homes demanded order and consideration for the rights of others, a recognition of the necessities of regulations and law. Their women folk came with them or followed after, bringing their own desires, among them the need for church and school, for human association.

The town of Freedom had only such law as its citizens chose to provide. If lawlessness was wary of Freedom, it was due to the fact that, as in most western towns, the butcher, the baker, and the banker were veterans of the War Between the States and the Indian wars. Every citizen had grown to manhood handling guns, and all were prepared to use such weapons when need be. The idea of some gunman or band of outlaws “treeing” a western town was known, but here it had never happened.

The James-­Younger band tried it at Northfield and they were run out of town, shot to doll rags and leaving their dead behind; the Daltons tried it at Coffeyville, and the one man who survived had sixteen buckshot in him. There were a few other attempts, no more successful—­often to the regret of the townspeople, for such attempts came under the head of entertainment in towns where there was not much of any other kind.

The gunman stayed to his side of town, like the gambler and the lady of light company, and was tolerated as long as he offered no trouble to the established citizenry.

Freedom was scarcely old enough to have the need to draw such a line, and as yet there was no law except such as was administered by themselves. However, they had all known Johnny, and Johnny had been shot in the back.