Narrator: Logan Sackett
Time Period: c. 1875–1879
Reed Talon knew good land when he saw it and this place had prairie, mountain meadow, timber, and water. Reed Talon was a builder and it was to the timber he looked first because he planned to build not a house but a home.
This was to be the place where he took off his boots and hung up his hat, and riding over the land he looked at it with pleasure. This place had everything. Most important, the mountain meadows were bordered by cliffs and protected from invasion, and the open prairie below was useless without water.
Reed did not have a woman but he had one in mind. She lived away back in Tennessee and he had never so much as glimpsed her but he had a working partner who was forever talking about this tall mountain girl who could shoot better than any man he knew, but who could also bake a cake and sew a fine seam. The more his partner talked, the more Reed knew she was the girl for him.
He had worked with heavy timber most of his life, joining and fitting and working with broadaxe and adze. He had built bridges, barns, churches, school buildings, and silos, so when he built for himself he built carefully and well.
When he told Colly Sackett he was going east to propose to that mountain girl he’d been talking about Colly looked him over afresh. “I’ve had it in mind. She’s some kind of cousin to me but a Clinch Mountain Sackett and I don’t hold with their ways, although they be kin.
“A year or so back I come through her country and stopped a night thereabouts, and thinks I, there’s a woman who needs a man, but an almighty good man. We’d trapped a spell in the Wind Rivers, you an’ me, and thinks I, ‘that’s the man for her.’ ”
Colly paused, then added, “She’s a mite taller than you, but don’t you ever let her know it. She’s all woman. Not beautiful, but a fine-lookin’ girl, an’ she could take her pick of the mountain boys, but she’s held off. I don’t know what she wants but she surely does, and I’ve a hunch it might be you.”
Colly stayed on at the ranch so Reed could go a-courtin’, and he took off for the eastern lands. When Reed rode up to Emily Sackett’s door he didn’t waste around. He told her what he had come for and she told him to get down and come in, that he couldn’t do much courtin’ settin’ upon a horse, thataway.
He was shorter than Em but broad in the shoulders and strong from a lifetime of lifting heavy timbers. He bedded himself down under a big oak tree and helped with the chores. That night they went to a church social and a few days later to a barn-raisin’, then a box supper. The womenfolks talked him over at a quiltin’ bee and on the third Sunday they stood up before the gospel-shouter and were married. Trulove came down from the high-up hills to give the bride away and Macon stood in for best man. The church was crowded because everybody liked Em and most of the womenfolks had ’lowed she’d probably never marry. There was nigh onto a hundred folks there and thirty-two of them were Sacketts. On the other side of the church, the bridegroom having no family present, there were twenty or so of the Higginses.
The Sacketts and the Higginses had a feud going but it was considered right sinful to shoot a man on a Sunday, all forms of entertainment being left for weekdays except for funerals or weddings.
Reed Talon had brought a black broadcloth suit with him and Em had hand-stitched her own wedding gown, having it laid away and ready. They made a handsome couple, folks said. Even a couple of Higginses said it.
After the ceremony one of them said, “Mr. Talon, you all are a Sackett now, so come daylight when you take out of here you be sure you will be follered and shot.”
Reed Talon just looked him over and said, “Boy, if you foller us you be durned sure you can’t catch up.”
Colly Sackett had furs to trap and wanted no part of ranching so he left them to handle it and went off to meet Jim Bridger or Kit Carson or some such person, and Reed went to cutting poles for corrals, cleaning out waterholes and fixing up the barn to handle hay cut for winter days.
When spring came, Reed Talon hired hands. He bought cattle to stock the range, and a milk cow for the house. He built an icehouse near the spring and when winter came next he cut ice from a nearby river and bedded it down with sawdust to keep meat and vegetables fresh.
Reed Talon was a knowing man and a careful man and he killed only what wild meat he needed and put out hay and salt for game as well as for his cattle. There were always elk and deer around and he made it comfortable for them to stay.
By the time he passed on, there was money in the bank and cattle on the range, and Barnabas Talon went to school in England. Milo, who took after the Sacketts, rode the wild country, working here and there, breaking broncs and cutting a wide swath wherever the girls were.
Reed Talon died under strange circumstances, and Em Sackett had her own idea how.
JAKE FLANNER: A man who wanted wealth and power. The trouble was that the best ranch was owned by the Talons, who wouldn’t sell and wouldn’t scare. He arranged the murder of Reed Talon but Em Talon broke both his knees and left him a cripple, and all his efforts to dislodge her failed. The country was changing and Jake Flanner could see the handwriting on the wall clearly enough. When the change took place he wanted to be sitting on the Empty, the Talon ranch, in complete command. How he acquired the property was his business, and afterward he would be a smiling, affable rancher and businessman, such a one as might be considered for governor or the senate. The only trouble was, he could not move Em Talon.
One by one he eliminated her hands and restricted her movements. He controlled the town but he could not reach Em. It was frustrating, irritating, and a challenge.
At first sight his conclusion was that the man who called himself Logan was a trouble-hunting drifter, a man both useful and expendable. Undoubtedly if he approached the Empty he would be shot at and he would return the fire, hopefully with effect. In any event, nothing would be lost and much might be gained.
EMILY TALON: A Clinch Mountain Sackett, and none of her life had been easy until she married Reed Talon. After that it was hard, hard work but she knew what she was working for and for whom. She and Reed had settled the land when the West was young and she had seen her boys grow tall and strong and each take to his own particular trail. The ranch was theirs, and she would hold it for them until they came to claim it, as someday they would.
The West was built by the strong, men and women, each with a role to play. Often a man was gone on a trail drive or working away from home and his wife ran the ranch or the homestead. It was not only the men who knew how and when to use a gun. Annie Oakley did not become one of best rifle shots who ever lived by doing the dishes, and she was only one of many such.
Em Talon also appears, briefly, in THE MAN FROM THE BROKEN HILLS.
BARNABAS TALON: Named for Barnabas Sackett, the first of the Sackett clan to come to America. Barnabas studied in France and England and fought as an officer in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Excellent rifle shot, middling good with a pistol. A young man with a future.
MILO TALON: Brother to Barnabas, some years younger. Takes after the Clinch Mountain Sacketts, a bit on the wild side but a rover and a gunfighter. Also appears in THE MAN FROM THE BROKEN HILLS and MILO TALON. A man who knows his way around wild country but who knows the cities, too. Well-educated for his time although not a college man like his brother.
LEN SPIVEY: He walked a very wide path in a very small town until he met Logan Sackett. The meeting could have been educational for Spivey but he was a slow learner. He flunked the six-shooter course and wound up in a shallow grave, wrapped in his own blanket.
ISOM DART: An historical character, known in Brown’s Hole. A black man, an outlaw, but well-liked along the trail.
Isom Dart was murdered by Tom Horn, who shot him down from ambush. Tom Horn, using the name Tom Hicks, had been stopping over with Matt Rash, according to the Brown’s Hole stories, and it was Matt whom he killed first.
SPUD TAVIS: When he asked Pennywell Farman to care for his children, h
e had more than that in mind. But Pennywell was a girl who knew her own mind and she took the buckboard and ran away. He had no idea anybody would take up for a no-account nester’s kid, but the big, rough-looking stranger did, and after a brief discussion of the situation Spud Tavis decided to take his buckboard and go home.
PENNYWELL FARMAN: Not quite sixteen, thin but growing up to be pretty, she had small chance in life with a no-account father and no home to speak of. But she had her own standards of behavior and was prepared to fight for them.
DEKE FARMAN: A natural-born loser who accepted his role too willingly. His daughter had all the backbone he lacked.
CON WELLINGTON: A gambler with rheumatic hands; he could no longer deal them from the bottom so he opened a store, and when a stronger, more desperate man came along he drew in his horns and took to playing soft music until the situation changed. Con Wellington had lived long enough on the frontier to know that nothing was forever.
DUTCH BRANNENBERG: Success had given him confidence and the name of being a tough, dangerous man. The trouble with having such a name is that the time always comes when you have to live up to it, and Dutch didn’t choose the time or the man, they chose him.
JOHANNES DUCKETT: A young man who was good with a rifle and had no hesitation about shooting from ambush when the price was right, and Jake Flanner had the price. Flanner trusted in what he believed was Duckett’s loyalty and Duckett trusted in what was left of Flanner’s bankroll. Johannes Duckett had saved more than a thousand dollars, more money than he could imagine, so when the odds mounted his supposed loyalty disappeared with the morning mist.
JOE HERRARA: Known as Mexican Joe Herrara. A dangerous man, but he left Chihuahua because some quiet but honest men thought he was too much trouble and suggested travel might be softening to his nature. The people at South Pass City thought the same but Brown’s Hole was tolerant, up to a point. But they all knew that when Joe Herrara started sharpening his knife it meant trouble. He had a very cutting way about him.
THE OUTLAW TRAIL: Led down the backbone of the Rockies from Canada to Mexico with hideouts along the way, either on the trail or close to it—the Crazy Mountains in Montana; Jackson’s Hole and the Hole-in-the-Wall country in Wyoming; Brown’s Hole, largely in Colorado but edging over into Wyoming and Utah; Robbers’ Roost on the San Rafael Swell in Utah; a ranch near Alma, New Mexico; and Horse-Thief Valley in Arizona. All of these were spots where an outlaw could find a place to stop, no questions asked, and none answered if he was followed. There were towns a bit off the route, too, such as Baggs, Wyoming, where Butch Cassidy once owned a house (it is still there, owned by one of the family who bought it from Butch on condition they keep a room where he might sleep), as well as a half dozen other such towns.
BROWN’S HOLE: An area in northwestern Colorado and bordering sections of Utah and Wyoming that was a main stop on the Outlaw Trail. Also a rendezvous for trappers in earlier days, it was home to a number of colorful, exciting characters. Tom Horn pulled off at least one of his killings here, that of Matt Rash.
The Hole was well-sheltered from the worst winds, and had water, fuel, and good range.
BENTON HAYES: A man who found hunting wanted men paid better than hunting buffalo or bear. Only trouble was, sometimes you believed you were trailing a small black bear but at the end of the trail you discovered you had cornered a grizzly. Up to this point Benton Hayes had tracked down a number of small black bears. He wasn’t prepared for what he found in his trap this time.
ALBANI FULBRIC: A man with a sense of history, and a memory of his own family’s story. Like many of his generation he had grown up reading Sir Walter Scott.
DOLORES ARRIBAS: A lady of Spanish-Indian ancestry, a lady who was quite a woman and she had it where it could be seen. Wherever she went she turned heads. She took in washing and it was said she entertained a little on the side, but it was very selective entertainment and she did the selecting. A woman of independence and courage, as well as beauty.
CHOWSE DILLON: An occasional outlaw of small calibre; a good hand with stock, not so good at choosing the right companions.
WILL SCANLAN: He had a sister named Zelda and a house by the side of the road where travelers sometimes stopped. He ran a few head of cattle, owned a few moth-eaten broncs, and Zelda could cook, so he made out.
JERK-LINE MILLER: A teamster, a passerby, a man not unwilling to pick up a few dollars of blood money as long as he was out of shooting range.
SIWASH: A crossroads with a store, a saloon, and a half dozen houses, a place born to die, and like many another it did. The new highway passed it by and when I last saw the place there was nothing left but a stretch of concrete floor and a rusted gas-pump, a few charred timbers and a stone foundation.
Dolores Arribas? One of the gentlemen she entertained passed on, leaving her a house in the city and considerable wealth. When we last talked she was a quiet, elderly lady with gray hair who sponsored the ballet, the opera, and a few aspiring young people who never knew their fairy godmother.
THE SACKETT BRAND
First publication: Bantam Books paperback, June 1965
Narrator: William Tell Sackett
Time Period: c. 1875–1879
News had a way of traveling in western country. Somebody told a stage driver and he told a bartender and the bartender passed the news to some friend over the bar, and the story was on the grapevine.
When the Lazy A riders started hunting Tell Sackett in the Mogollon Rim country the story started from Camp Verde and Globe, but within the week they were talking about it in Fort Worth and Ogalalla, in Dodge and Tombstone. And wherever the story reached a Sackett, that Sackett headed for the Mogollon on the run.
When Tell found Ange in the mountains of Colorado he found a girl as lonely as he himself. Long ago, back during the Civil War, there had been another girl, but that had come to nothing, and when he found Ange they knew it was forever. With gold from their mining claim they bought cattle and headed for the Tonto Basin. Trails were few and they were finding their way, with Tell scouting ahead, and then he was attacked without warning and Ange murdered.
It was a wild and broken country known only to the Apache, miles and miles of forest and running streams bordering on the half-desert lying to the west and south, a country in which a man could both run and hide.
What chance did one man have against forty? One man, already badly hurt and without weapons?
Then the Sacketts began to come from wherever they heard the news. Some were near, some far, but a Sackett was in trouble so they asked no questions. They came running: Nolan, Orlando, Flagan, Galloway, Tyrel, Orrin, and Falcon. Even parmalee, the Flatland Sackett. Riding for the Mogollon from wherever the news found them, and as has been said, even one Sackett was quite a few.
Van Allen treated all women with contempt but this time he had gone too far. His own men deserted him, and what he hired to replace them was, by and large, the riffraff of western saloons. Even some of those refused to follow when they discovered the truth, that he had attacked and murdered a decent woman.
SWANDLE: A cattleman whose investment entangled him in a web in which he had no part. All he wanted was out, hopefully without losing his shirt.
ANGE SACKETT: Born Ange Kerry. Her story is told in SACKETT, of how Tell Sackett followed a strange trail to a hanging valley in the Colorado mountains and found not only a lost mine of the Spaniards but a lovely girl, left alone after her grandfather died, a girl he subsequently married.
BOB O’LEARY: A bartender who found himself in the middle. He had seen it all in bars from Dodge to Deadwood and wanted no part of a fight in which he had no stake.
There were many such bartenders. Like the gamblers and the gunfighting marshals, they followed the boom camps, drawn not only by the ready money but by the flavor and color of the camps themselves. You found them in the end-of-track towns, places that were born and died within weeks or months as the railroad moved on. You found them in the sudden cattl
e and mining towns until half the faces in any boom camp were faces you remembered even if you did not know the people.
New ones appeared, lasted a camp or two, and disappeared, but by and large they knew each other, talked over the other camps, and went their ways.
Not only the gamblers, saloon-keepers, bartenders, and gunfighting marshals but the women as well followed the excitement and the promise of easy money from El Paso to the Yukon. Bat Masterson, for example, who ended his days as a sportswriter for a New York newspaper, was at the Battle of Adobe Walls; he was sheriff of Ford County where Dodge City was; and he showed up in Denver, Leadville, Tombstone, and Trinidad. And they included Luke Short, Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Doc Holliday, Dave Rudabaugh, Mysterious Dave Mathers, Rowdy Joe Lowe, John Wesley Hardin, Silver Heels, Poker Alice, Calamity Jane, and dozens of others, names forgotten now but known to all that crowd in the rough old days before the country began to settle down.
DANCER: A good man riding for the wrong brand.
AL SEIBER: 1844–1907. A German who scouted Apache country for the army. A Union soldier, he fought at Gettysburg, among other battles, and was wounded twice. That was only the beginning, as he was wounded many times by bullet, arrow, and knife in his fights with the Apache.
The scouts he led were also Apache, and he was respected both by the Indians he led and those with whom he fought as a decent, honorable man whose word was good.
He was one of the many men, referred to in my stories, that the gunfighters left alone, if they were smart. As I have written elsewhere, for every gunfighter of whom one heard there were a dozen just as capable of whom you heard little or nothing at all. Al Seiber and Major Frank North were two such.
AL ZABRISKY: A gunman for hire; a warrior to handle gun trouble who did not ask too many questions.
SONORA MACON: Another such, and the man who shot Tell Sackett off the cliff, a man with a gun for hire, but one who had his own standards. He was a fighting man who fought for fighting men, not for the killers of women. Badly shot up, he survived.
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