Night Raid and Other Stories by Ernest Haycox

Book Details

Three stories of the Old West by Ernest Haycox, featuring cattle rustlers, Indian raids, gunfights and a love of independence.

Breed of the Frontier (1932) – In those days people earned their property rights!

The Revenge Of Florida Jack (1928) – Florida Jack Was A Sort The West Seldom Knew And Never Wanted To Know. But Florida Jack Knew How To Make Trouble—Trouble That Made Gun-Flaming History That Day In Woolville’s Dusty Street

Night Raid (1929) – “Mind your own business” was the Golden Rule of the rangeland—the code to which big Joe Breedlove and salty Indigo Bowers clung through thick and thin. Just once did they violate it—but when they did, pistol-fog rolled like night-mist across the Elkhorn range, and the roar of guns was like summer thunder.
Chapter I Indigo Foretells Sorrow
Chapter II A Night Raid
Chapter III On The Ledge
Chapter IV Trouble Breeds Trouble

Ernest Haycox (1899-1950) was born in Portland, Oregon. He enlisted in the United States Army in 1915 and was stationed along the Mexican border in 1916 where he witnessed some of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). During World War I he was sent to Europe, and after the war he spent a year at Reed College in Portland. In 1923, Haycox graduated from the University of Oregon with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism.

The most famous of Haycox’s stories, “Stage to Lordsburg” (Collier’s, April 1937), became the basis of the landmark Western film Stagecoach (1939), directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne.

Haycox died after unsuccessful cancer surgery in 1950, at the age of 51.

Night Raid and Other Stories contains 41 illustrations.

Files:

1. NightRaid.epub

Excerpt: Night Raid

Chapter I

Indigo Foretells Sorrow

NIGHT had come again, a soft desert night that damped the intolerable heat of day. In another half-hour the small campfire gleaming on the edge of the gravelly creek would be a grateful barrier against the sharp, still cold. Overhead swung the infinite canopy of heaven, its metal blue expanse shimmering with stars; far and low on the horizon the moon hung at a crazy angle, a thin-edged crescent that gave no light. A thousand miles of desert and mountain marched to this solitary outpost of man and seemed to stop, while the bark and whine of distant coyotes and the murmuring of the creek alone broke the spell of silence. Sage smell was in the air; the smell of bacon and coffee had not yet quite gone. Two horses browsed beyond the rim of light, picketed. Blankets were down, and upon them stretched two weary travelers who had ridden a good many leagues in search of rest and surcease from the carping cares of men. Indigo Bowers and Joe Breedlove camped again.

No two individuals could possibly have been more dissimilar. Indigo was short and thin; his pointed, saturnine face was homely beyond description. And as he sat humped over, staring into the flames, it appeared that he thought of all the sorrows and all the troubles the universe bequeathed its mortals. No ray of cheer broke the set pessimism of lips, no trace of humor leavened his faded blue eyes. Life, it appeared, was just one dirty trick after another. Which is to say that Indigo Bowers was in his usual frame of mind and in his usual state of health.

Joe Breedlove, on the other hand, was a tall and muscular man. The firelight gleamed along his corn-yellow hair and snapped in his hazel eyes. He was looking up—up to the stars, his body relaxed and his face mirroring the perfect serenity that was so much a part of him. Joe made friends easily, and once made these friends clove to him forever; there was a mellowness about him, a whimsicality that tempered all his acts and all his words. The world, according to Joe, was the only world available, therefore why fret?

HE DROPPED his attention to the gloomy Indigo, fine wrinkles sprang around his temples. “Providence,” said he in a voice that plucked the strings of melody, “sure thought about man’s comfort when it created night an’ shadows. Me, I like shadows. It’s all the same as takin’ a bath after a hard day’s work.”

Indigo emitted a rasping sound of dissent and his cigarette drooped from a corner of his thin lips. “Yeah? There you go again with that doggone romantic imagination o’ yours. Seems to me Providence made night because it’s ashamed o’ the ant-hill it created down here. Did you ever see anything more forlorn an’ useless as the country we been ridin’ through lately? I’m so cussed full o’ sand I grate every time I move. I’m scorched like a kernel o’ popcorn. Been lookin’ at sagebrush an’ distance so long I got a perpetual headache.”

“Well,” admitted Joe, mildly reluctant, “it’s a mite sparse at that, but it’s sure fine grazin’ land for cows.”

“A cow don’t know no better,” argued Indigo. “Personal, I don’t like this land. A self respectin’ buzzard wouldn’t lay an egg in it. How long we been on this so-called journey o’ rest anyhow?”

“Six weeks barrin’ two days,” said Joe.

“Yeah, an’ how much rest have we got?” Indigo grew querulous. “It’s funny how folks pick on us. Nothin’ but trouble, nothin’ but scraps. If ever we back-track we sure will have to pick another route. Six towns in a row is layin’ for our hides. Rest—huh!”

“I’m a man o’ peace,” drawled Joe “I don’t like to fight. If you didn’t pack a temper full o’ poison—”

Indigo stifled his partner with a gesture of a skinny arm and raised his somber countenance against the night. His nostrils dilated slightly, like a hound keening the wind. “They’s trouble somewhere out there. I know it. Sounds to me like them coyotes is japin’ us. I wish folks wouldn’t pick on me.”

Joe met this with a skeptical lift of eyebrows. His partner was like a bantam rooster strutting around the arena. Indigo’s past life consisted of successive chapters of violence. He claimed he wanted to be left alone yet it was always noticeable that when in the proximity of a fight he grew strangely restless. It only took one small word of invitation to bring him into the tangled affairs of other people. Many men had been deceived by Indigo’s wisp of a frame; when he moved, he moved like dynamite, leaving destruction in his wake. And no amount of logic ever could convince him that he was other than a mild and inoffensive creature who had been unjustly picked on. He stirred on his blanket, the washed-out blue eyes darting around the rim of light.

“Just the same, they’s somethin’ goin’ on around here I don’t like.”

JOE BREEDLOVE never moved, yet there was a slight tightening of his big frame. A sage bush rustled out beyond. Something stirred, the gravelly ground marked a body passing across the darkness, and the horses became uneasy. Both partners became unnaturally still. Out of the shadows marched a rawboned man with the russet beard of Judas and eyes that were brilliant black; a burly creature coated with dust and a general flavor about him that augured a shattering of the commandments. He squatted by the fire looking swiftly from partner to partner.

“Howdy, gents!”

“Huh,” grunted Indigo, visibly annoyed. The fellow’s approach violated all etiquette. Indigo believed in etiquette on the range.

“Nice evenin’,” stated Joe Breedlove, mildly. “Stir up the fire.”

“I ain’t cold,” said the newcomer and relapsed to a full silence.

It was up to him to announce himself and the partners waited, each staring into the flames. Joe Breedlove appeared to be in a deep and profound study; the placid benevolence of his face never changed. It was otherwise with Indigo and with each passing moment he grew more and more restive until it seemed he was about to suffer an acute attack of indigestion. Then there was another sound beyond the fire’s rim and a second newcomer hitched into the light and squatted by the blaze; he was built like a pole and his jaw was nearly as long as that of a horse. Once more the partners were inspected in a swift and sidling manner.

“Howdy, gents.”

“The same,” murmured Joe and casually draped himself in a manner that left his right arm free to swing. Indigo muttered and morosely held his peace. A moment later he flung up his head to find three other strangers marching out of the night. One by one they dropped to their haunches, none of them bothering to pass a greeting. Indigo looked across the flames to his partner, and Joe’s left lid fluttered. The five visitors were as grave as redmen; the one who owned the russet beard looked around the circle and announced succinctly, “It’s them all right.”

“Yeah, I reckon,” observed the gentleman with the horse jaw.”

Excerpt From: Ernest Haycox. “Night Raid and Other Stories.”