Curly is going to meet me here.”
Well, now. Common sense told me that I should go, but her throwing it up to me like that … well, I couldn’t go then. So I just turned and walked off feeling like I’d come off a pretty poor hand, but then I never was much at talking to women.
In the store I laid out to get the things we needed—flour, salt, coffee, and whatever. They had dried apples, so I laid in a stock of them, and this time I was able to pay. I’d lost whatever I had when the Indians taken me, but Galloway was carrying a good bit right then, as I had been, and whatever either one of us had the other could have. But these supplies were for all of us.
Adding to the list I bought four hundred rounds of .44-calibre ammunition.
The storekeeper, he looked up at me. “You planning a war?”
“No, sir, I ain’t. But if anybody comes a-looking I wouldn’t want them to go away disappointed. It ain’t in my nature to leave folks a-wanting. Meanwhile we have to hunt our meat.”
“The Dunns have been around. They’ve been talking against you.”
“Talk never scratched any hides,” I said. “They’ve got to do more than talk.”
“That’s what we came to town for,” Curly’s voice said from behind me. “I’m going to whip you right down to your socks.”
“You’d have trouble,” I said, “because I ain’t wearing any.”
And then he hit me.
He caught me as I was turning but he’d not been set proper and the punch never staggered me. I just unbuckled my gun and handed it to Berglund, who had just come in.
I think Curly was kind of surprised that I was so ready, and that I didn’t get flustered and mad. So he was a mite slow with that second punch and I saw it a-coming. Now I never did want to tear up any man’s store, so when that punch came at me I just ducked under it and taken him in the belly with my shoulder, wrapping one arm around his legs and rushing him right out the door.
At the edge of the porch I dropped him and he staggered so I hit him.
Now we Sackett boys grew up a-sweating with an axe, shovel, and plow. We’d worked hard all our lives and my fists were big and hard and backed by an uncommon lot of muscle, so when I fetched him a clout he went back into the middle of the street and fell down.
Stepping off the walk I walked toward him and he got up. He was big, maybe twenty pounds heavier than me, and he was in a whole lot better shape because he’d not been through what I had, but also he was a drinker, and drinking whiskey isn’t what you’d call proper for a fighting man.
He came at me, a little wiser now, because that clout he’d caught had carried some power. But he wasn’t worried. He’d won a lot of fights and saw no reason why he shouldn’t win this one.
Me and Galloway had grown up fighting in the mountains and then we’d knocked around on riverboats and freight outfits and most of what we knew we’d learned by applying it that way.
He came in and he taken a swing at me which I pulled aside from, and when I pulled over I smashed my fist into his belly. It taken him good—right where he lived. I saw his face go kind of white and sick and then I hit him again.
He went down hard into the dust, and the next thing I know there’s a crowd around yelling at him to get up. Without them I don’t think he would have done it. Meg was there, too, her face all kind of white and funny, staring at him like she had never seen him before, but she didn’t look scared, nor did she look altogether displeased.
What I didn’t know until later was that both Ollie Hammer and Tin-Cup were in that crowd, just a-watching.
Curly had his friends behind him and he’d made a lot of brags no doubt, so he had it to do. His first punch missed but the second caught me a rap alongside of the face and I staggered. He came on in, swinging with both hands and hit me again. We clinched and I threw him with a rolling hip-lock, and stepped back.
I was just learning how much that time in the woods had taken out of me, for I’d no staying power at all. He came at me, swinging. Again I made him miss one but caught the other one on the chin, and it hurt. So I bowed my neck and went to punching with both hands. I missed a few but some of them landed, and when they landed he gave ground.
We fought up and down in the dust for maybe three or four minutes, and then he remembered about my feet, and he stomped on my toes with his boot heel.
It hurt. It hurt me so bad I thought I’d go down, but I stayed up and seeing it had hurt, he came at me again. This time when he tried to stomp I hooked my toe under his ankle and kicked it up and around and he fell into the dust. When he did that I ran in and grabbed him by the collar and the belt, whirled him around and let go, and he hit the water trough all spraddled out.
He got up though, his face bloody and him shaken. Me, I was all in. I had to get him now or never, so I walked in and swang on him. I threw it from the hips and it caught him in the mouth and pulverized his lips. My next one split his ear and then I threw one to his belly. He pawed at me, but I had it to do now or never, and I brushed it aside and hit him with an uppercut in the belly.
His knees buckled and I went in on him, got my forearm under his chin and forced his head back, and then I swung on his belly.
Somebody grabbed me from behind and then Berglund yelled, “Lay off, Hammer! Back up now, or I’ll drop you!”
He was up there on the porch with my old Dance & Park in his fist and they taken him serious.
Well, I stepped back and let Curly fall into the dust, and he just lay there, his shirt all tore up and his face bloody, as much as I could see of it.
I staggered some, and almost fell into the water trough, but splashed water on my face and chest. When I turned around nobody in that crowd looked friendly. I could see by their faces looking like Curly that two or three of them were Dunns. “He asked for it,” I said. “Now take him home.”
A powerful big older man sitting a bay horse spoke up. He had a shock of hair on a big square head and he looked like he’d been carved from granite, “Boy,” he said, “I’m Bull Dunn, and that’s my boy. You get out of this country as fast as you can ride and maybe you’ll get away. If you stay on here, I’ll kill you.”
“Mister Dunn,” I said, “I’m staying, and you’ve got it to do.”
He turned his eyes on me and for a moment our eyes held. I was in almighty bad shape and not wishing for any trouble with him right now. My fists were sore from the fight and I wasn’t sure if I could use a gun if I had one, and I was afraid I was going to have to try.
It was Red who walked out of the saloon and leaned against a post. “Mister Dunn,” he said, “you’d better give it some thought. I was with an outfit one time that tried to buck these Sackett boys and we came out at the small end of the horn.”
Bull Dunn did not even seem to notice him. He merely repeated, “Get out while you can ride.” Then he turned his horse and the others followed. Right there at the end Ollie Hammer turned and grinned at me, but it was not a pleasant grin.
And they rode on out of town.
The storekeeper he came out on the boardwalk. “You’d better get another hundred rounds,” he said. “It does look like war.”
Well, sir, I went on inside the saloon and dropped into a chair, and I was in bad shape. That fight had used me up. I was getting my strength back but I was a long way short of being the man I had been.
Berglund, he brought me a drink, and it did me good. Then he brought some coffee and he began to work on my face, patching up a couple of cuts. He had handed me back my gun when I came inside and I kept flexing my fingers, trying to get the stiffness out of them.
“You watch yourself, Sackett,” he said. “They’ve dry-gulched more than one man.”
After a long while I began to feel better, and the fresh, hot coffee helped.
They had probably been watching us, and they were sure that Nick Shadow was gone. Probably they had not guessed why he was going, but they certainly knew they had but two men to contend with, and to them that must seem like n
othing at all.
Right now Galloway was up there alone, and they might choose this time to cut the odds in half. Only my brother was no pilgrim, and coming up on him unexpected was not an easy thing to do.
“I’ve got to get back to camp.”
“You need rest,” Berglund protested.
He was right, of course, but his rightness did not help. Galloway was up there alone, and while he might choose to withdraw up the mountain or up Deadwood Gulch, it was more likely that he would refuse to be pushed.
Loading supplies on a borrowed packhorse, I prepared to start back. My body was stiff and sore, and I wanted nothing so much as sleep, yet I had to get back.
Even now they might be preparing an attack on Galloway, and they were a tough, mean, bitter lot.
It would be days, perhaps weeks before the others arrived, and until then we must somehow defend our position, or at least keep it open for the arrival of Parmalee Sackett and the return of Nick Shadow.
Mounting the grulla I rode into the bottom of the La Plata, then cautiously worked my way upstream. Several times I came upon the hoofprints of horses. They had been here then, no doubt studying what they must do. The tracks were several days old.
Galloway was nowhere in sight when I rode up the last few hundred yards to the corral, but he came out of the woods, Winchester over his arm. He glanced at my face.
“That must be quite a town,” he commented, affably. “Seems to me they hold out a welcome.”
“You should try it some time. I ain’t what you’d call mincy about towns but this here one is about to try my patience.”
“Who was it?”
“Curly … and but for that saloonkeeper in yonder they might have salted me away.”
“You whup him?”
“I ain’t sure. I feel like it was me got whupped, only when it was over he lay stretched out. I bruised him. I reckon I did.”
Well, I got down and like to fell off my horse. Galloway, he taken my horse back in the woods whilst I set by the fire, my head hanging. It was aching something awful and my mouth was cut inside, and my face sore.
“I didn’t think he had the sand,” Galloway commented.
“He didn’t. It was those fool friends of his, urgin’ him on. I think he wanted to quit but he was scared of what would be said, and I was scared he wouldn’t quit before I had to fall, I was that all in.”
Galloway was making soup. He got that from Ma. Anytime anybody had anything happen, birth, death, fight or wedding, Ma made soup.
Suddenly I saw something at the edge of the woods. There for a moment it looked like a wolf. He was looking back the way I had come, so I turned my head to look also.
A rider was coming up the draw. He was right out in the open but he was coming right on, walking his horse. He had a rifle in his hands.
Chapter XI
Even before the old man came close enough for us to make him out, I could see he was an Indian by the way he sat his horse. He came on slowly and when he drew up facing us he sat looking upon us thoughtfully.
He was the shadow of a man who had been great. I mean in a physical way. The bones were there, and the old muscles showed how once they had stretched the skin with power, and the look was there yet, in his eyes and in his carriage. He was a proud man.
“We’re fixing to have some soup,” I said. “Will you set up to the fire?”
He looked at me for a long minute, and then said, “Are you Sak-ut?”
The name came out short and blunt.
“We both are,” I said. “We’re brothers. In thinking as well as in blood. Will you get down?”
He put the rifle away and swung down. Maybe he was a mite stiff, but not enough to bother. He dropped his reins and walked to our fire with dignity. I held out my hand to him as he came up. “I am Flagan Sackett. This here is Galloway.”
“Howdy,” Galloway said.
He wasn’t missing a thing, his eyes going from my moccasins to my face. When he turned toward me again I saw there was a scar on the left side of his face from what seemed to be a powder burn.
After we had eaten, Galloway dug out the tobacco sack. Neither Galloway nor me ever taken to smoking but most Indians did and it was handy for trade. After he had puffed away for awhile he looked up and said, “I am Powder Face. I am Jicarilla.”
He let that set with us for a few minutes and then be said, looking right at me, “You are warrior. I am warrior. We can talk together.”
“I have heard of Powder Face,” I said, “and to talk to him is an honor.”
His eyes glinted, but after a few puffs at his pipe he said, “You escape from my people. You are good runner.”
“I am a good fighter, too,” I said, “but your folks left me without much to do with.”
“You are like Indian,” he said, “like Jicarilla.”
Well, that was all right with me. What all this was leading up to, I didn’t know, but I was willing to set and listen. Raised around the Cherokee like I was, I have some savvy for Indians and their ways, and all things considered they make out to be pretty fine folks. Their ways are different than ours, but the country was different, then.
“I come to you because you think like Indian. You fight like Indian. Maybe you will talk to Indian.”
“I’ll talk,” I said, “and I’ll listen.”
“I am called renegade,” he said. “My tribe is small. Some are Jicarillas, some are Tabeguache Ute. We fight, we do not surrender. Finally there are few of us, and we hide in high mountains.”
He paused for a long time, but finally he said, “Our people are few. There are many Indians south or north, but we wish to fight no more. We have watched from the peaks as the white men come. A long time ago I rode far to the east, and I have seen the towns of the white man. In the north I have seen the wagon that smokes. The white man has strong medicine.
“We are twenty people. We are six warriors, seven women, and seven children.
Soon there will be two more. The winter will come, and the game will come down from the peaks and we will starve.
“We do not wish to go with the Jicarillas. We do not wish to go with the Utes.
There may again be war and we do not want to fight.” He looked up suddenly and mighty proud. “We have been great warriors. For our lives we will fight, but we cannot leave our young ones to starve in the cold.
“You are white man. You are warrior. You are strong against pain and you know the Indian way. I come to you as to an elder brother. You will tell us what we should do.”
Well, now. He was an older and no doubt a wiser man than me and he had come to me for advice. One thing I had he did not have … at least, not quite so much.
I had knowledge of the white man. And all of what I knew wasn’t good, but that was true of his people, too. We all had our good and our bad. The white man had broken treaties and the Indian had killed innocent people, and without warning.
The white man had done his share of that, too.
There was no need to talk to Galloway. We two understood each other as if we were of the same mind. I didn’t know what Nick Shadow might think but that we’d have to work out as best we could. I just knew what I was going to do.
“We are going to ranch here.” I swept a wide gesture at the hills. “We are going to raise cattle and horses. We are going to need help. Can your young men ride?”
“Our old men can ride, too,” he said proudly.
“Suppose you bring your folks down and camp over yonder.” I indicated an area back against the mountain. “Your people can live here and your young men can ride for us.
“There’s one more thing: your people must stay close to here at first. There are some men around who will not like it that you are here. Stay close to the ranch or in the mountains until they get used to the idea.”
The old man bedded down not far from us that night, and in the morning he was gone. Galloway he looked over at me and chuckled. “You sure bought trouble,” he said. “I never
seen the like.”
“What would you have done?”
He grinned at me. “The same thing. Only I’d not have asked him if his young men could ride. That was like askin’ if a fish can swim.”
“I was really asking them if they would ride,” I said. “That there is what is called a rhetorical question. At least that’s what Nick Shadow would call it.”
“What’ll he think about this?”
“He’ll buy it. Nick will buy anything that’s contrary to the prejudices of people around him. He’s just like that. He’s just naturally contrary, and he don’t give a damn whether school keeps or not.”
There was plenty to do before the cattle came. We scouted the range we figured to use, and we gathered wood. Usually we would just throw a loop around a log and drag it to where we could use it come snow tune. There were a lot of deadfalls around, and we gathered a good many knowing a long winter was ahead and there wouldn’t always be time for hunting firewood. Then we set to notching the logs for a cabin, and we built a stoneboat for hauling stones for the fireplace. In between times one or the other of us would ride out afar from home to get an elk or a deer for meat. There were a good many beaver along the branches but we didn’t figure to worry them. The pools they make back of their beaver dams help to control floodwaters and keep the water where it’s needed, right on the land.
All the time we kept an eye open for that Dunn outfit, but none of them showed.
Galloway he rode down to Shalako after some extra grub and when he came back he said, “The Dunns are bringing in a boy that Berglund was telling about. He’s a youngster, about twenty-one or twenty-two, and he’s hell on wheels with a rifle.
“Seems that Red was in and dropped us the word, to be passed on by Berglund.
This youngster is a dead shot and he’s the kind that lays up in the country and watches for a good shot. He says the Dunns came into this country from a real mean fight, and this kid done half their killing for them. His name is Vern Huddy.”
Now there’s no safe way when a sharpshooter is coming against you. He’s only got to find himself a place and wait until he gets his shot and he usually needs only one. First off, all you can do is try to keep him from getting that one shot. Don’t set yourself up for him, don’t skyline yourself or stand still out in the open, and when you ride, keep your eyes open and watch your horse. He’ll usually know before you do if anybody is around. Always keep a good background for yourself, something that swallows you up, sort of.
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