Sackett (1961) s-9

by Louis L'Amour

  Whoever had cut it off had made work of it with a dull blade, and to take the risk of approaching a man's camp whoever it was must have been hungry.

  Hanging the meat up again, I went out and killed and dressed another buck. I hung it in a tree also, and rode away, I wanted nobody going hungry where I could lend a hand. Whoever or whatever it was would have meat as long as that buck lasted.

  The trail going out was worse than coming in, but with some scrambling and slipping we reached the high basin. We rode past that lake of ghost water and headed for the lowlands once more. But once through the keyhole pass I did not follow the same trail, taking a rough, unlikely way that nobody was apt to find, unless maybe a mountain goat.

  Turning in my saddle, I looked back at the peaks. "Whoever you are," I said aloud, "expect me back, for I'll be riding the high trails again, a-hunting for gold"

  Chapter IV

  I sighted the ranch, I drew up on the trail and looked across the bottom. There was a rocky ridge where the Mora River cut through, and the ranch was there beside it. That light over there was home, for home is where the heart is, and my heart was wherever Ma was, and the boys.

  Walking the appaloosa down the trail, I could smell the coolness rising from the willows along the Mora, and the hayfields over in the big valley called La Cueva.

  A horse whinnied, and a dog started to bark, and then another dog. Yet no door opened and the light continued to burn. Chuckling, I walked my horse along and kept my eyes open. Unless I was mistaken, one of the boys or somebody would be out in the dark watching me come up, maybe keeping me covered from the darkness until my intentions were clear.

  Getting down from the saddle, I walked up the steps to the porch. I didn't knock, I just opened the door and stepped in.

  Tyrel was sitting at a table with an oil lamp on it, and Ma was there, and a girl who had to be Tyrel's wife.

  The table was set for four, and I stood there, long and tall in the door, feeling my heart inside me so big I felt choked and awkward. My clothes were stiff and I knew I was trail-dusty and mighty mean-looking.

  "Howdy, Ma. Tyrel, if you'll tell that man behind me to take his gun off my back, I'll come in and set."

  Tyrel got up. "Tell... I'll be damned."

  "Likely," I said, "but don't blame it on me. When I rode off to the wars I left you in good hands."

  Turning toward Tyrel's wife, a lovely, dark-eyed, dark-haired girl who looked like a princess out of a book. I said, "Ma'am, I'm William Tell Sackett, and you'll be Drusilla, my brother's wife."

  She put her hands on mine and stood on tiptoe and kissed me, and my face colored up and I went hot clean to my boots. Tyrel laughed, and then he looked past me into the darkness and said, "It's all right, Cap. This is my brother Tell"

  He came in out of the darkness then, a thin old man with cold gray eyes and a gray mustache above a hard mouth. There was no give to this man, I figured. Had I been a wrong one I would have been killed.

  We shook hands and neither of us said anything. Cap was not a talkative man, and I am only at times.

  Ma turned her head. "Juana, come get my son his supper."

  I couldn't believe it--Ma with household help. Long as I could recall, nobody had done for us boys but Ma herself, working early and late and never complaining.

  Juana was a Mexican-Indian girl and she brought the food in fancy plates. I looked at it and commenced to feel mighty uncomfortable. I'd not eaten a meal in the presence of a woman for a long time, and was embarrassed and worried. I'd no idea how to eat proper. In a trail camp a body eats because he's hungry and doesn't think much of the way he does it.

  "If it's all the same to you," I said, "I'll go outside. Under a roof like this I'm mighty skittish."

  Brasilia took my sleeve and led me to the chair. "You sit down, Tell. And don't you worry. We want you to eat with us and we want you to tell us what you've been doing."

  First I thought of that gold.

  I went out and fetched it. Putting my saddlebags down on the table, I took out a chunk of the gold, still grainy with quartz fragments, but gold.

  It shook them. Nothing, I'd figured, would ever shake Tyrel, but this did.

  While they looked at the gold I went to the kitchen and washed my hands in a big basin and dried them on a white towel.

  Everything was spotless and clean. The floor was like the deck of a steamboat I traveled on one time on the Mississippi. It was the kind of living I'd always wanted for Ma, but I'd had no hand in this. Orrin and Tyrel had done it.

  While I ate, I told them about the gold. I'd taken a big slab of bread and buttered it liberal, and I ate it in two bites, while talking and drinking coffee. First real butter I'd tasted in more than a year, and the first real coffee in longer than that.

  Through the open door into the parlor I could see furniture made of some dark wood, and shelves with books. While they talked, I got up and went in there, taking the lamp along. I squatted on my heels to look at the books, fair hungering for them. I taken one down and turned the leaves real slow, careful not to dirty them, and tested the weight of the book in my hand. A book as heavy as one of these, I figured, must make a lot of sense.

  I rested a finger on a line of print and tried to get the way of it, but there were words I'd never seen before. Back to home we'd had no books but an almanac and the Bible.

  There was a book there by a man named Blackstone, seemed to be about the law, and several others. I felt a longing in me to read them all, to know them, to have them always at my hand. I looked through book after book, and sometimes I would find a word I could recognize, or even a sentence I could make out.

  Such words would catch my eye like a deer taking off into the woods or the sudden lift of a gun barrel in the sun. One place I found something I puzzled out, and I do not know why it was this I chose. It was from Blackstone.

  ". . . that the whole should protect all its parts, and that every part should pay obedience to the will of the whole; or, in other words, that the community should guard the rights of each individual member, and that (in return for this protection) each individual should submit to the laws of the community; without which submission of all it was impossible that protection could be extended to any."

  It took me a spell, working that out in my mind, to get the sense of it. Yet somehow it stayed with me, and in the days to come I thought it over a good bit.

  Returning the books to their places, I stood up, and I looked around very carefully. This was Ma's home, and it was Tyrel's and Orrin's. It was not mine. They had earned it with their hands and with their knowing ways, and they had given this place to Ma.

  Tyrel was no longer the lean, hungry mountain boy. He stood tall now, and carried himself very straight and with a kind of style. He wore a black broadcloth coat and a white shirt like a man born to them and, come to think of it, he was even better-looking than Orrin.

  I stared at myself in the mirror. No getting around it, I was a homely man. Over-tall and mighty little meat, with a big-boned face like a wedge. There was an old scar on my cheekbone from a cutting scrape in New Orleans. My shoulders were heavy with muscle, but a mite stooped. In my wore-out army shirt and cow-country jeans I didn't come to much.

  My brothers were younger than me, and probably brighter. Hands and a strong back were all I had. I could move almost anything I put a hand to, and I could ride and rope, but what was that?

  My mind turned back to that passage in the book. There was the kind of rule for men to live by. I'd no idea such things were written down in books.

  Orrin had come while I was inside, and he'd taken his gee-tar and was singing. He sang "Black, Black, Black," "Barb'ry Alien," and "The Golden Vanity."

  It was like old times . . . only it wasn't old times and the boys had left me far, far behind. Twenty-eight years old in a few days--with years of brute hard living behind me--but if Orrin and Tyrel could do it, I was going to try.

  Come daylight, I was going to shape my way for the m
ountains, for the high far valley, and the stream. First I must sell my gold and buy an outfit. Then I would light out. And it was best I go soon, for the Bigelows might come hunting me. Turned out less simple than that.

  Las Vegas was the nearest place I could get the land of outfit I wanted. We hitched up, Tyrel and me, and we drove down to Las Vegas with Cap riding horseback along with us. That old coot was a man to ride the river with, believe me.

  "Wherever you go," Cap told me, "if you show that gold you'll empty the town. They'll foller you . . . they'll track you down, and if they get a chance, they'll kill you. That's the strike of a lifetime."

  Riding to Las Vegas I got an idea. Somewhere on that stream that ran down from the mountains I would stake a claim, and folks would think the gold came from that claim and never look for the other.

  "You do that," Cap's old eyes twinkled a mite, "and I'll give you a name for it. You can call it the Red Herring."

  When I showed my gold in the bank at Las Vegas the man behind the wicket turned a little pale around the eyes, and I knew what Cap Rountree had said was truth. If ever there was greed in a man's eyes, it was in his. "Where did you get this gold?" he demanded.

  "Mister," I said, "if you want to buy it, quote me a price. Otherwise I'll go elsewhere." He was a tall, thin man with sharp gray eyes that seemed to have only a black speck for a pupil. He had a thin face and a carefully trimmed mustache.

  He touched his tongue to his lips and lifted those eyes to me. "It might be st----"

  When he saw the look in my eyes he stopped, and just at that moment, Tyrel and Orrin came in. Orrin had come down earlier than we had for some business. They walked over. "Is anything wrong, Tell?" "Not yet," I said.

  "Oh, Orrin." The banker's eyes flickered to Tyrel and back to me. The family resemblance was strong.

  "I was about to buy some gold. A brother of yours?"

  Tell, this is John Tuthill."

  "It is always a pleasure to meet one of the Sackett family," Tuthill said, but when our eyes met we both knew it was no pleasure at all. For either of us.

  "My brother has just come down from Montana," Orrin said smoothly. "He's been mining up there." "He looks like a cattleman." I have been, and will be again." After that we shopped around, buying me an outfit. There was no gainsaying the fact that I'd need a pick and a shovel, a single-jack, and some drills. That is mining equipment in any man's figuring, and there was no way of sidestepping it. I'm not overly suspicious, but no man ever lost his hair by being careful, and I kept an eye on my back trail as we roamed about town.

  After a while Tyrel and Orrin went about their business and I finished getting my outfit together. Cap was nowhere to be seen, but he needed no keeper. Cap had been up the creek and over the mountain in his time. Anybody who latched onto that old man latched onto trouble.

  Dark came on. I left my gear at the livery stable and started up the street. I paused to look over toward the mountains and I got a look behind me. Sure enough, I'd picked up an Indian.

  Only he was no Indian, he was a slick-looking party who seemed to have nothing to do but keep an eye on me. Right away it came to mind that he might be a Bigelow, so I just turned down an alley and walked slow.

  He must have been afraid I would get away from him, for he came running, and I did a boxer's sidestep into the shadows. My sudden disappearance must have surprised him. He skidded to a stop, and when he stopped I hit him. My fists are big, and my hands are work-hardened. When I connected with his jaw it sounded like the butt end of an axe hitting a log. Anybody who figures to climb my frame is somebody I wish to know better, so I took him by the shirt front with my left hand and dragged him into the saloon where I was to meet the boys.

  Folks looked up, always interested in something coming off, so I taken a better grip and one-handed him to a seat on the bar.

  "I hadn't baited no hook, but this gent's been bobbin' my cork," I said. "Any of you know him? He just tried to jump me in the alley."

  "That's Will Boyd. He's a gambler."

  "He put his money on the wrong card," I said. "I don't like being followed down alleys."

  Boyd was coming out of it, and when he realized where he was he started to slide down off the bar, only I held him fast. From my belt scabbard I took that Arkansas toothpick of mine, which I use for any manner of things.

  "You have been led upon evil ways," I explained, "and the way of the transgressor is hard. Seems to me the thing led you down the wrong road is that mustache."

  He was looking at me with no favor, and I knew he was one man would try to kill me first chance he had. He was a man with a lot to learn, and he wouldn't learn it any younger.

  Balancing that razor-sharp knife in my hand I said, "You take this knife, and you shave off that mustache."

  He didn't believe me. You could see he just couldn't believe this could be happening to him. He didn't even want to believe it, so I explained.

  "You come hunting me," I said, "and I'm a mild man who likes to be left alone. You need something to remind you of the error of your ways."

  So I held out the knife to him, haft first, and I could see him wondering if he dared try to run it into me. "Mister, don't make me lose my patience. If I do I'll whup you."

  He took the knife, carefully, because he didn't feel lucky, and he started on that mustache. It was a stiff mustache and he had no water and no soap and, mister, it hurt.

  "Next time you start down an alley after a man, you stop and think about it."

  I heard the saloon door close. Boyd's eyes flickered. He started to speak, then shut up. The man was John Tuthill.

  "Here!" His voice had authority. "What's going on?"

  "Man shaving a mustache," I said. "He decided he'd rather shave it than otherwise." Turning my eyes momentarily, I said, "How about you? You want to shave, Mr. Tuthill?"

  His face turned pink as a baby's, then he said, "If that man did something unlawful, have him arrested."

  "You'd send a man to prison?" Seemed like I was mighty upset. "That's awful! You'd imprison a fellowman?"

  Nobody around seemed likely to side him and he shut up, but he didn't like it. Seemed likely he was the man who set Boyd to following me, but I had no proof.

  Boyd was making rough work of the shaving, hacking away at it, and in places his lip was raw. "When he gets through," I said, "he's leaving town. If he ever finds himself in another town where I am, he'll ride out of that one too."

  By sun-up the story was all over town, or so I heard--I wasn't there. I was on my way back to Mora, riding with Tyrel and Cap.

  Orrin followed us by several hours, and when he came into the yard in the buckboard Cap was watching me arrange my gear in bundles.

  "If you're a man who likes company," Cap said, I'm a man to ride the hills. I'm getting cabin fever."

  "Pleased," I said. "Pleased to have you." Orrin got down from the buckboard and walked over. "By the way, Tell. There was a man in Las Vegas inquiring for you. Said his name was Bigelow."

  Chapter V

  We started up Coyote Creek in the late hours of night, with the stars hanging their bright lanterns over the mountains. Cap was riding point, our six pack horses trailing him, and me riding drag. A chill wind came down off the Sangre de Cristos, and somewhere out over the bottom a quail was calling.

  Cap had a sour, dry-mouthed look to him. He was the kind if you got in trouble you didn't look to see if he was still with you--you knew damned well he was.

  Not wishing to be seen leaving, we avoided Mora, and unless somebody was lying atop that rocky ridge near the ranch it was unlikely that we were seen.

  The Mora river flowed through a narrow gap at the ranch and out into the flatlands beyond, and we had only to follow the Mora until it was joined by Coyote Creek, then turned up Coyote and across the wide valley of La Cueva.

  We circled around the sleeping village of Golondrinos, and pointed north, shivering in the morning cold. The sky was stark and clear, the ridges sharply cut again
st the faintly lightening sky. Grass swished about our horses' hoofs, our saddles creaked, and over at Golondrinos a dog barked inquiringly into the morning.

  Cap Rountree hunched his shoulders in his wore-out homespun coat and never once looked back to see if we were coming along. He did his part and expected others to do theirs.

  I had a lot to think about, and there's no better time for thinking than a day in the saddle. There'd been many changes in life for Orrin and Tyrel and Ma, and my mind was full of them.

  I had rolled out of my soogan at three o'clock that morning. It was cold, believe me. Any time you think summer is an always warm time, you try a high country in the Southwest with mountains close by.

  After rolling my bed for travel, I went down to the corral, shook out a loop, and caught up the horses. They were frosty and wild-eyed and suspected my notions, liking their corral.

  Before there was a light in the house I had those horses out and tied to the corral with their pack saddles on them. Then I stepped into the leather on my appaloosa to top him off and get the kinks out of him. By the time I had him stopped pitching and bucking, Cap was around.

  The door opened, throwing a rectangle of light into the yard. It was Brasilia, Tyrel's wife. "Come and get it," she said, and I never heard a prettier sound.

  Cap and me, we came in out of the dark, our guns belted on, and wearing jackets. We hung our hats on pegs and rinsed our hands off in the wash basin. Cap had a face on that would sour milk.

  Tyrel was at table, fresh-shaved and looking fit as a man could. How he found the time, I didn't know, but sizing him up, I decided it was mighty becoming in a man to be fresh-shaved at breakfast. Seemed like if I was going to fit myself for living with a woman I'd have to tone up my manners.

  Women-folks were something I'd seen little of, and having them around was unsettling, sort of. But I could see the advantages. It's a comforting feeling to hear a woman about tinkling dishes, and stepping light, and looking pretty.

  Ma was up, too. She was no youngster any more, and some crippled by rheumatism, but Ma would never be abed when one of us boys was taking off. The room was warm from the fire and there was a fine smell of bacon frying and coffee steaming. Drusilla had been raised right. She had a mug of steaming coffee before Cap and me as soon as we set down to table.