Sackett 17 - The Sky-Liners

by The Sky-Liners

  We had made no plans for such a thing, but I figured that our boys would take it for granted that I'd gotten Judith, so they would start the stampede after a few minutes. The best thing I could do would be to slip around and get back of that tree trunk, so I eased back from where I was, and when deep enough into the woods I started to circle about the camp.

  But I was uneasy. It seemed to me there was something wrong, like maybe somebody was watching me, or laying for me. It was a bad feeling to have. I couldn't see anybody or hear anything, but at the same time I wasn't low-rating those Fetchen boys. I knew enough about them to be wary. They were such a tricky lot, and all of them had done their share of hunting and fighting.

  When I was halfway to where I was going I eased up and stayed quiet for a spell, just listening. After a while, hearing no sound that seemed wrong, I started circling again. It took me a while, and I was getting scared they'd start those cattle moving before I could get back of that tree trunk.

  Of a sudden, I heard a noise. Somebody had come into their camp. By that time I was right in line with the tree trunk, so I snaked along the ground under the brush and worked my way up behind it.

  I could see Black Fetchen standing by the fire, and Burr was there too. There were three or four others with them, and they were all talking together in low tones. Something had happened ... maybe they had seen the boys, or maybe some of their lot had seen our outfit off to the north.

  About that time I saw Judith. She was lying still; her eyes were wide open and her head was tilted back a mite and she was looking right at me.

  "Flagan Sackett," she whispered, "you go right away from here. If they find you they will kill you."

  "I came for you."

  "You're a fool. I am going to marry James Black Fetchen."

  "Over my dead body."

  "You stay here, and that's the way it will be. You go away."

  Was I mistaken, or did she sound less positive about that business of marrying Black? Anyway, it was now or never.

  I had no idea whether anything had gone wrong or not, but that stampede should have begun before this. It was unlikely I'd ever get this close again without getting myself killed, so I said, "Judith, you slip back here. Quiet now."

  "I will do no such thing!"

  "Judith," I said, for time was slipping away and I'd little of it left, "why do you think the whole Fetchen outfit came west?"

  "They came after me!" she said proudly.

  "Maybe ... but they had another reason, too. They ran because the law wants them for murder!"

  The Fetchen boys were still standing together, talking. Another man had gotten up from his blankets and gone over to join them. About that time one of the group happened to move and I saw why they were all so busy.

  Standing in the center was someone who didn't belong with them, but someone who looked familiar. He turned suddenly and walked off toward his horse. I couldn't see his face, but I knew that walk. It was Larnie Cagle.

  "I don't believe you!" Judith whispered.

  Me, I was almighty scared. If Cagle was talking to them he would have told them we were close by, for from the way they welcomed him you'd have thought he was one of the family.

  "I've got no more time to waste. Black Fetchen, Burr, and them killed your grandpa, and I've got a telegram from Tazewell to prove it"

  She gasped and started to speak; then suddenly she slipped out of her blankets, caught up her boots, and came into the brush. And I'll give her that much. When she decided to move she wasted no time, and she made no noise. She came off the ground with no more sound than a bird, and she slid between the leaves of the brush like a ghost.

  We scrambled, fear crawling into my throat at being scrooched down in that brush. Suddenly behind us somebody yelled, "Judith! ... Where's that fool girl?"

  Behind us I heard them coming, and we got to our feet and started to run. Just at that moment there was a thunder of hoofs, a wild yell, a shot; then a series of yells and shots and we heard the herd start.

  Glancing over my shoulder to get my direction from their fire, I could see the clearing where they were camped. Everybody had stopped dead in their tracks at those yells, and even as I looked they ran for their horses. And then the cattle hit the brush in a solid wall of plunging bodies, horns, and hoofs, ... maddened, smashing everything down before them.

  My horse was safely out of line, but we had no chance to reach him. I jumped, caught the low branch of a cottonwood and hauled myself up, then reached and grabbed Judith, pulling her up just as a huge brindle steer smashed through beneath me, flames from the fire lighting his side.

  Behind us at the camp there were shots and yells as they tried to turn the herd, then I heard a scream, torn right from the guts of somebody trampled down under churning hoofs. Then the cattle were sweeping by under us, and I could feel the heat of their bodies as they smashed through.

  It could have been only a few minutes, but it seemed a good deal longer than that.

  As the last ones went by, I dropped to the ground, caught Judith by the hand, and she jumped down beside me. We ran over the mashed-down brush where the cattle had passed. Running, it taken us no time at all to reach my horse, and he was almighty glad to see me. I swung up, and took Judith with me on the saddle. She clung to me, arms around my waist, as I hit out for our camp where we'd planned to meet.

  Yet all I could think of at the moment was Larnie Cagle. He had sold us out.

  It was nigh on to daylight when I met Moss and Galloway. They came riding up, leading one of the Costello mares and a pinto pony.

  Judith switched to the mare's saddle and we headed north for Hawkes's camp, rounding up what cattle we saw as we rode. By the time we reached the camp we had at least five hundred head ahead of us. The four of us had spread out, sweeping them together and into a tight bunch. Here and there as we rode, other cattle came out of the gray light of morning to join the herd.

  Kyle Shore was the first man out to meet us, and right behind him came Ladder Walker.

  I looked over at Shore, measuring him, and wondering if he had sold us out too. Or how far he would go to back his partner.

  We walked the cattle up to the camp. Evan Hawkes, in his shirtsleeves and riding bareback, came to meet us, too.

  He glanced from the cattle to Judith. What he said was, "You boys all right?"

  "Yeah," I said. "But the Fetchens may be hurting. The stampede went right through their camp."

  "Serves them right," Walker said.

  The cattle we'd brought moved in with our herd, and we swung our horses to the fire. When I got down I stood back from the fire where I could see them all. "Who's with the herd?" I asked.

  "Cagle, Bryan, and McKirdy. Briggs just rode in to build up the cook fire."

  "You sure?"

  They looked at me then, they all looked at me. "Anybody seen them?" I asked.

  Briggs looked around from the fire. "Everybody's all right, if that's what you mean."

  "Did you talk to any of them, Briggs?"

  "Sure. Dan McKirdy and me passed by several times. What are you getting at?"

  There was a sound of singing then, and Larnie Cagle rode in. "How about some coffee?" he said. "I'll never make no kind of a night hawk."

  I stepped forward, feeling all cold and empty inside. "I don't know about that," I said. "You did a lot of riding tonight."

  Of a sudden it was so still you could almost hear the clouds passing over.

  He came around on me, facing me across the fire. Nobody said anything for a moment, and when one of them spoke it was Kyle Shore.

  Even before he spoke I knew what he would say, for I knew other men who had ridden other trails, men like Shore who were true to what they believed, wrong-headed though it might be.

  "Larnie Cagle is a friend of mine," he said.

  "Ask him where he was tonight, and then decide if he is still your friend."

  "You're talking," Cagle said. "Better make it good."

  "Before w
e start talking," I said, "let every man hold a gun. The Fetchens are coming for us, and they know right where we are. They should be here almost any minute."

  Harry Briggs turned suddenly from the group. "I'll tell Dan and the boys," he said, and was gone.

  Kyle Shore had been looking at me, only now he was turning his eyes upon Cagle. "What's he mean, Larnie?"

  "He's talkin', let him finish it."

  "Go ahead, Sackett," Shore said. "I want to hear this."

  "Larnie Cagle slipped away from night-herding and rode over to the Fetchen camp. He told them all they wanted to know. He told them about Galloway, Moss, and me, and if we hadn't made it sooner than expected, we'd have been trapped and killed. They'd have followed with an attack on this camp."

  Cagle was watching me, expecting me to draw, but he was stalling, waiting for the edge.

  "Nobody is going to believe that," he said, almost carelessly.

  "They will believe it," Judith said suddenly. It was the first thing she had said since coming into camp. "Because I saw you, too. And that wasn't the first time. He had been there before."

  Suddenly all the smartness had gone out of him. Cagle stood there like a trapped animal. He had not seen Judith, and had no idea she was in camp.

  "What about it, Cagle?" Hawkes's tone was cold.

  "Mr. Hawkes," Kyle Shore said, "this here is my deal. I rode into camp with him, we hired on together."

  He turned to Cagle. "Larnie, when I ride, I ride for the brand. I may sell my gun, but it stays sold."

  Briggs rode up to the edge of the firelight. "They're comin', Mr. Hawkes. They're all around us."

  "You ain't got a chance!" Cagle said with a sneer in his voice. "You never had a chance."

  "You've got one," Kyle Shore said. "You've got just one, Larnie, but you got to kill me to get it."

  They looked at each other across the fire, and Shore said, "I never rode with no double-crosser, and never will. I figure you're my fault."

  Cagle gave a laugh, but the laugh was a little shrill. "You? Why, you damn' fool, you never saw the day you - "

  He dropped his hand, and he was fast. His gun cleared the holster and came up shooting. The first shot hit the dirt at Shore's feet and the second shot cut a notch from his hat brim.

  Kyle Shore had drawn almost as fast, but his gun came up smoothly, and taking his time he shot ... just once.

  Larnie Cagle took a teetering step forward, then fell on his face, dead before he touched the ground.

  "Damn' fool," Shore said. "He surely fancied that fast draw. I told him he should take time. Make the first shot count. He wouldn't listen."

  Out upon the plains there was a shot, then another. We ran for our horses, bunching them under the trees. Galloway dropped to one knee near a tree trunk and fired quickly at a racing horse, then again. Taking Judith by the hand, I pushed her down behind a big fallen tree. Then I knelt beside her, rifle up, hunting a target.

  There was a flurry of hammering shots and then the pound of racing hoofs, and they were gone. When Black saw there was no surprise, he just lit up the night with a little rifle fire and rode off, figuring there'd be another day ... as there generally is.

  Daylight took its time a-coming, and some of us waited by the fire nursing our coffee cups in chilly fingers, our shoulders hunched. Others dozed against a fallen log, and a few crawled back into their blankets and catnapped the last two hours away.

  Me, I moved restlessly around camp, picking up fuel for the fire, contemplating what we'd best do next.

  Evan Hawkes would be wanting to get the rest of his cattle back; but now that we had Judith again, it was our duty to carry her west to her pa.

  There was a sight of work to do, and some of the cattle would be scratched or battered from horns or brush, and unless they were cared for we'd have blowflies settling on them. A cowhand's work is never done. He ropes and rides before sunup and rarely gets in for chow before the sun is down.

  Judith, she slept - slept like a baby. But she worried me some, looking at her. She didn't look much like a little girl any more, and looking at a girl thataway can confuse a man's thinking.

  My fingers touched my jaw. It had been some time since I'd shaved, and I'd best be about it before we got to riding westward again.

  Kyle Shore wasn't talking. He was sitting there looking into the fire, his back to the long bundle we'd bury, come daybreak. I had Shore pegged now. He was a good, steady man, a fighter by trade, with no pretense to being a real gunman. He was no fast-draw artist, but his kind could kill a lot who thought they were.

  Thinking about that, I went for coffee. It was hot, blacker than sin, and strong enough to float a horseshoe. It was cowboy's coffee.

  Chapter 8

  Morning, noon, and night we worked our hearts out, rounding up the scattered herd, and when we had finished we still lacked a lot of having half of what Evan Hawkes had started with when he left Texas. The Fetchen outfit had made off with the rest of them.

  After a week of riding and rounding them up we started west once more.

  Judith was quiet. She pulled her weight around camp, helping the cook and generally making herself useful, and when she was on the range she showed that she not only could ride the rough string but that she could savvy cattle.

  Much as I wanted to pay her no mind, it was getting so I couldn't do that. She was around camp, stirring pots, bending over the fire, and looking so pretty I wondered whether I'd been right in the head when I first put eyes on her back yonder in Tazewell.

  Nonetheless, I kept my eyes off her as much as I could. I rode out from camp early, and avoided sitting nigh her when it was possible. Only it seemed we were always winding up sitting side by side. I never talked or said much. First off, I'm simply no hand with women. Galloway now, he had half the girls in the mountains breathing hard most of the time, but me, I was just big and quiet, and when I was seated by womenfolks all the words in me just lost themselves in the breaks of my mind. No matter how much I tried, I couldn't put a loop over even one sentence.

  Besides, there was the land. A big, grand, wide country with every glance lost in the distance. There was a special feeling on the wind when it blew across those miles of grass, a wind so cool, so deep down inside you that every breath of it was like a drink of cool water. And we saw the tumbleweeds far out ahead of us, hundreds of them rolling south ahead of the wind, like the skirmish line of an army.

  At first they made the cattle skittish, but they got used to them, as we did. I never knew where they came from, but for three days the wind blew cool out of the north and for three days they came in the hundreds, in the thousands.

  Trees grew thicker along the streams, and the grass was better. From time to time we saw scattered buffalo, three or four together, and once a big old bull, alone on a hilltop, watching us pass. He followed us for two days, keeping his distance - wanting company I suppose.

  Twice we saw burned-out wagons, places where Indians had rounded up some settlers. Nobody would ever know who they were, and folks back home would wonder about them for a while, and then time would make the memories become dimmer.

  Like Galloway and me. We had no close kinfolk, nobody keeping account of us. If we were to get killed out here nobody would ask who, why, or whatever. It made a body feel kind of lonesome down inside, and it set me to wondering where I was headed for.

  Once, far ahead of the herd, I heard a galloping behind me, and when I turned in the saddle I saw it was that Judith girl. She rode sidesaddle, of course, and looked mighty fetching as she came up to me.

  "You'd be a sight better off with the rest," I said. "If we met up with Indians, you might get taken."

  "I'm not afraid. Not with you to care for me."

  Now, that there remark just about threw me. I suppose nobody had ever said such a thing to me before, and it runs in the blood of a man that he should care for womenfolk. It's a need in him, deep as motherhood to a woman, and it's a thing folks are likely to forget. A man wi
th nobody to care for is as lonesome as a lost hound dog, and as useless. If he's to feel of any purpose to himself, he's got to feel he's needed, feel he stands between somebody and any trouble.

  I'd had nobody. Galloway was fit to care for himself and an army of others. He was a man built for action, and tempered to violence. Gentle, he was most times, but fierce when aroused. You might as well try to take care of a grizzly bear as of him. So I'd had nobody, nor had he.

  "I'd stand up for you," I said, "but it would be a worrisome thing to have to think of somebody else. I mean, whilst fighting, or whatever. Anyway, you'd take off after that Fetchen outfit if they showed up."

  "I would not!"

  She put her chin up at me, but stayed alongside, and said nothing more for a while.

  "Mighty pretty country," I ventured after a bit.

  "It is, isn't it? I just can't wait to see Pa's ranch." She sobered down then. "I hope he's all right"

  "You worried about the Fetchens?"

  "Yes, I am. You've no idea what they are like. I just never imagined men could be like that." She looked quickly at me. "Oh, they were all right to me. James saw to that. But I heard talk when they didn't think I was listening." She turned toward me again. "The happiest moment in my life was when you came from behind that tree trunk. And you might have been killed!"

  "Yes, ma'am. That's a common might-have-been out here. There's few things a man can do that might not get him killed. It's a rough land, but a man is better off if he rides his trail knowing there may be trouble about. It simply won't do to get careless ... And you be careful, too."

  A pretty little stream, not over eight or ten inches deep, but running at a lively pace, and kind of curving around a flat meadow with low hills offered shelter from the north, and a cluster of cottonwoods and willows where we could camp ... it was just what we needed.

  "We'll just sort of camp here," I said. "I'll ride over and get a cooking fire started."

  "Flagan!" Judith screamed, and I wheeled and saw three of them come up out of the grass near that stream where they'd been laying for me.