The Lonely Men s-14

by Louis L'Amour

  Hadden rested his palms on the saddle horn and chewed on his mustache. He had heard that Sackett had ridden south, but he also knew that Spanish Murphy, who had ridden with him, had told some friends in Mex town that he would be back in a few weeks.

  Arch Hadden was a hard, tough man, and a bitter one. He had ridden into Tucson hunting John J. Battles, an old enemy. He had decided to kill Tampico Rocca, knowing nothing about him, because Rocca was Battles' friend and it would bring Battles out of hiding. Tell Sackett had simply been a stranger of whom he had known nothing. Since the gun battle in which Arch Hadden had been so roughly treated and one of his men had been killed, another seriously wounded, he had heard a lot about the Sacketts. He wanted to kill Tell Sackett, but he was no longer at all sure he could kill him in a stand-up gun fight. On the other hand, here was an offer of two hundred dollars, representing six months' hard work on the cattle ranges, for killing him, money it would be a pleasure to earn.

  Slowly, he dug out the makings and rolled a smoke. Laura Sackett seemed in no hurry, and Arch wanted to think this thing through.

  "There would be no trouble for you, Hadden," she persisted. "You have already had a fight with him. If there is another fight and you kill him, nobody would be surprised."

  "Why'd you pick on me?"

  "You're the obvious one. He bested you. You want him beaten or dead. You are the one who can do it and no questions asked."

  "How you figure to pay me?"

  "I will give you one hundred dollars now, and the other hundred will be left at the Wells-Fargo office to be delivered to you by my order."

  "Won't folks wonder why you're payin' me money?"

  "No. You will be rounding up and breaking four horses for me, to be delivered in El Paso. The money would be in payment for that."

  Grimly, he stared at her. The derringer was still in her hand, and now he knew she would shoot if need be. Not that there would be any cause for it, but this was a dangerous woman.

  "Supposin' I was to take your hundred dollars an' ride off?" he suggested.

  She smiled. "Hadden, my father and I were in the land grant wars in New Mexico.

  We had occasion to hire men who could use their guns. I have told you there are plenty of men along the border who would kill for fifty dollars. If you took my money without trying to make good on it, I would hire four separate killers and send them out with good rifles to get you -- and they would, Hadden."

  He chuckled. "I just wondered. All right, ma'am, I'll take the hundred. I been figurin' on killin' Sackett, an' this here will pay expenses while I do it."

  She rode back to town with Hadden trailing behind, and at the livery stable, before witnesses, she said, "I do not like the sorrel, Hadden, but I do want four horses delivered to me in El Paso. I will pay you one hundred dollars now, the other hundred to be paid by Wells Fargo on my authorization when the horses are delivered."

  Arch Hadden stabled his horses and went outside. He rolled another smoke, lit the cigarette, and drew deeply. This was money he was going to enjoy earning. He looked around and saw Wolf approaching. "Wolf, we got us a job," he said. "We got us a good job."

  Chapter 11

  We passed a quiet night. Until the last of the twilight was gone I could still hear the quail. These were the Mexican blue quail that run along the ground more than they fly, oft times thirty or forty of them in a covey. Around a small fire, we talked it over. We had invaded Apache country and taken prisoners from them, so they would be on our trail, they would never let up. The horses needed rest. The deserted ranch had water and plenty of good grass, and there was a good field of fire. We decided to stay put, and that was all right with me. I'd seen no such beautiful place in all my life, and I said as much to Dorset.

  "It is beautiful," she agreed, "and peaceful. I wonder they ever left ... the people who lived here."

  "Apaches. They devastated this whole stretch of country. Folks tried again and again to build homes here, but they couldn't make it.

  "When we leave here," I went on, "we're going to have to run. It is going to be pure hell betwixt here and the border towns."

  "Why did she do it, Tell?" Dorset asked suddenly. "Why did she want you killed?"

  "I don't know that she did."

  "There was no Orry Sackett, Tell. Can't you see that? She lied to you. All the children are accounted for. There were the Creed youngsters and my sister. Harry had been taken long before, and there simply were no others."

  This idea about Orry worried me. It was something that needed contemplating, but there was another worry in what Dorset said, for if there was no child, why send me skyhootin' into such dangerous country? Unless she did want me dead? And if she wanted me dead, would she stop with this? Suppose she tried again to kill me when I showed up alive ... if I did?

  I never was much good at thinking complicated things out. Mostly I studied on situations and then went ahead and did what I would have done, anyway. When it comes to work and travel or a fighting situation, I can come up with answers, but I never was any good at figuring out why folks turned to evil.

  "Dorset," I said, "I can't think of a reason why anybody should want me killed like that. Why, she might be the death of these men with me, too."

  "Maybe she wants to get back at your brother. Maybe she hates the name of Sackett."

  It made no kind of sense, but I had one thought a body couldn't get around. And that was that she had sent me off to Mexico after a child who I now felt sure never existed.

  You might figure I could have looked around more, but not if you knew Apaches.

  If any Apaches had a white prisoner it would be known to all of them. They had few secrets among themselves. So I was left with the almost certain knowledge that I'd been sent down here on a wild-goose chase that would be almost sure to get me killed.

  Nor was there much I could do about it if I got back. She would simply say that I lied, that she had told me no such thing -- if she was even around to be accused.

  And she would know I wasn't going to beat up a woman or shoot her. We Sacketts treated womenfolk gentle, even when they didn't deserve it.

  Had it been only me, I'd have figured I'd been played for a sucker and I'd have let it go at that, though it wouldn't have been a pretty thought. But she had risked the lives of my friends.

  We laid up at that deserted ranch for three days. It wasn't only that we needed the rest, or that our horses did. It was because a man who doesn't travel doesn't leave any trail. And those Apaches would be looking for a trail. They would figure that we would naturally high-tail it for the border, and when the trail was lost they'd head for the border by several trails, exchanging smokes to talk across the country. So by laying low at this ranch we left them with no trail to see, and the feeling that we had taken some other, unknown route. On the morning of the fourth day we moved out Tampico Rocca knew of a ranch twenty-odd miles west, and we headed for that, keeping off the ridges and using every trick we knew to cover our sign.

  But we weren't trusting to that. We rode with our eyes looking all around all the time, and our rifles across our saddles. We rode loose and we made pretty good time all the first day, wanting distance behind us.

  It was rough country. You've got to see some of that country to believe it.

  Water was growing scarcer, there were fewer trees except along the river bottoms, and there was more cactus. We saw antelope now and again, and once, passing through a rugged stretch of bare rock mountains, we saw some desert bighorns. They're pretty near the finest meat the country offered, but we weren't about to shoot a rifle.

  When we reached the ranch we found that it was a big one, and it lay right out in the open country, with a small stream winding past. There was a dam across the stream and a fair-sized pond had backed up behind it. Cottonwoods and other trees grew around, and a big Spanish-style ranch house was set amongst them. And it was occupied.

  We drew up on the crest of a low ridge among some ocotillo and other growth and studi
ed the layout. We weren't going to ride up to any place without giving thought to what lay before us.

  Slow smoke was rising from the chimney, and we could hear the squeak of a windlass as somebody pulled water at a welL We could see a couple of vaqueros riding out of the back gate, heading for the hills to the southeast of us. They were riding relaxed and easy, sitting lazy in the saddle as if neither of them had ever known a care or the name of trouble.

  We came down off the slope, riding scattered out a little until we were channeled by a lane through wide fields of planting.

  "Somebody watches us." Rocca indicated a low tower, and we could see sunlight gleam on a fieldglass or telescope.

  Whoever it was must have seen the children and decided we could be trusted, because the big wooden gates opened, although nobody was in sight. But as we drew closer we could see the black muzzles of the rifles that covered our approach.

  We rode in through the gates and they closed behind us. At least six vaqueros were now in sight, and standing on the wide veranda, a thin Cuban cigar in his teeth, was a tall old man with white hair and an erect, proud figure.

  He came down two steps to greet us, his sharp eyes taking us in with quick intelligence. I think he knew our story before I spoke, for the hard-ridden horses, and the children, one of them dressed like an Apache boy, told it.

  "Buenos dias, senores," he said, and then added in English, "My house is yours."

  "You may not wish us to stay, senor," I said. "We have taken these children from the Apaches, and they will be looking for us."

  "They have visited us before, and with less reason. You are my guests, gentlemen. I am Don Louis Cis-neros."

  "I am Tell Sackett," I said, and introduced the others.

  He greeted them and then turned his eyes to me. "Yours is a familiar name," he said. "There was a Sackett who married the granddaughter of an old friend."

  "That would be my younger brother, Tyrel. He married into the Alvarado family."

  "Come in," he said, and as we walked into the dim coolness of the interior, he added, "We are old friends, my family and the Alvarados. I have heard much of your family, amigo. Your brother stood between Alvarado and his enemies."

  Hours later, when we had bathed and eaten a good dinner at his table, we sat about smoking the Don's Cuban cigars. I was never much of a hand to smoke, but did from time to time, and this was one time I joined in.

  Dorset and the children had gone off with the Don's daughters, and the boys and me we stayed with our host.

  "You have a dangerous road before you. I can let you have a dozen riders," he said.

  "No. You may need them. We've come this far, and we'll ride on." Sitting back in the big cowhide chair, I told him the whole story, and he listened without comment. At the end he said nothing for several minutes. "I have news of your family. I wish you could have known it sooner. The woman you speak of was married to your brother Orrin, but they have separated. She was the daughter of Jonathan Pritts, the man who led the men who tried to seize the Alvarado Grant.

  It was your brother Tyrel who led the fight that defeated him, and when Orrin found his wife was involved, he left her. She has hatred for all who bear the name of Sackett. You were to be killed, amigo."

  It seemed unreasonable that a woman would go to such lengths to get a man killed, a man who had done her no harm, but it all tied up into a neat package.

  And there wasn't much I could do about it. Maybe the best way to get even would be just to get back alive, so all her plotting would come to nothing.

  In the quiet of the lovely old hacienda, all that lay outside seemed far away, not something that lurked just beyond the adobe walls. But deep in our hearts not one of us thought himself free of what was to come.

  The miles of the desert that lay between us and the relative safety of Tucson could be nightmare miles. They were ever-present in our minds, but they were a fact of our lives to be taken in stride.

  Old Don Luis talked quietly and easily of the problems of living among the Apaches. As Pete Kitchen had survived north of the border, so had he survived south of it. He had his own small army of tough, seasoned vaqueros, fighters every one of them.

  As he talked he glanced over at Rocca. "If you ever want a job, senor," he said, "come to me here. There is a place for you. I have two vaqueros here who grew up with the Apaches."

  "It is a good place," Rocca said. "It may be that one day I shall come riding here."

  Long after the others had turned in, I sat in the quiet of the old Don's study and talked with him. The walls of the room were lined with shelves of leather-bound books, more than I had ever seen, and he talked of them and of what they had told him, and of what they meant to him.

  "These are my world," he said. "Had I been born in another time or to another way of life I should have been a scholar. My father had this place and he needed sons to carry on, so I came back from Spain to this place. It has been good to me. I have seen my crops grow and my herds increase, and if I have not written words upon paper as I should like to have done, I have written large upon the page of life that was left open for me.

  "There is tonic in this." He gestured toward the out-of-doors. "I have used the plow and the Winchester instead of the pen and the inkstand. There is tonic in the riding, in the living dangerously, in the building of something.

  "I know how the Apache feels. He loves his land as I do, and now he sees another way of life supplanting his. The wise ones know they can neither win nor last, but it is not we who destroy them, but the times.

  "All things change. One species gives way to another better equipped to survive.

  Their world is going, but they brought destruction to another when they came, and just so will we one day be forced out by others who will come. It is the way of the world, the one thing we know is that all things change.

  "Each of us in his own way wars against change. Even those who fancy themselves the most progressive will fight against other kinds of progress, for each of us is convinced that our way is the best way.

  "I have lived well here. I should like to see this last because I have built it strong and made it good, but I know it will not. Even my books may not last, but the ideas will endure. It is easy to destroy a book, but an idea once implanted has roots no man can utterly destroy."

  He paused and looked at me. "You are bored with an old man talking."

  "No, sir. I am learning. We are a people who have hungered after learning, Don Luis, and who have had too little of it. I mean we Sacketts. Our mountain lands had thin soil, and they gave us nothing more than just a living until we came west."

  I looked at him and felt ashamed. "I can barely read, sir. It is a struggle to make out the words, and what they mean. Some I hunt down like a coyote after a rabbit. I look at those books with longing, sir, and think of all the things they might say to me."

  I got up, for of a sudden there was a heavy weariness upon me. "My books have been the mountains," I said. "The desert, the forest, and the wide places where the grass grows. I must learn what I can from the reading I can do."

  Don Luis got up also, holding out his hand. "Each of us must find wisdom in his own way. Mine is one way, yours another. Perhaps we each need more of what the other knows.... Good night, senor."

  When I went outside I walked through the gate to smell the wind, to test the night. By the wall near me a cigarette glowed, cupped in a hand. "How goes the watch?" I asked in Spanish.

  "Well, senor." He held the cigarette behind the wall in the darkness. He bowed his head and drew deep, the small red fire glowed and faded again. "We are not alone, senor. Your friends and ours, they are out there ... waiting."

  So they had caught up with us. Now there would be hell to pay in Sonora.

  Turning on my heel, I went back into the house. The old Don was just leaving his study.

  "You have many horses?" I asked.

  "All you need," he assured me.

  "Can you give us three apiece? I can't
pay you now, but -- "

  "Do not speak of pay," he interrupted. "Your brother is the husband of my old friend's granddaughter. You may have the horses." He looked closely at me. "What will you do?"

  "Your vaquero says they are waiting out there now. I think he is right. And so I think we will take our chances and run for it. We'll switch horses without stopping ... maybe we can outdistance them."

  Don Luis Gsneros shrugged. "You might," he said. "I will have the horses ready at daybreak."

  "An hour before," I said. "And gracias."

  Chapter 12

  The horses were ready and we were mounted, the children with us. The Don's men were posted on the walls to cover our going. My horse was restive, eager to be away, but I glanced around at Dorset. In the vague light her face seemed pale, her eyes unusually large. I suspected mine were the same.

  "The tall pine yonder," I said, and pointed in the direction. "Ride for it, ride hard. They will be close around, with their horses well back from where. They wait. With luck, we can ride through them and be away before they can get off more than a shot or two."

  Sixteen men were on the walls, rifles ready for firing. Other men stood by the gates, prepared to swing them open.

  Don Luis walked over to me and held up his hand, and I took it. "Vaya con dios, amigo," he said gravely, and then he lifted a hand to the men at the gates and they swung them wide.

  We went through the gates with a rush at the same instant as all sixteen men fired. Some had targets chosen, having spotted lurking Apaches, others fired at bits of likely cover.

  We hit the trail running, with Spanish Murphy and myself in the lead. I saw the dark form of an Apache rise up almost directly before me and chopped down to fire with my pistol, but the horse struck him and knocked him rolling. A hoof spurned his body, and then we were past and running, with the vaqueros on the wall picking targets from those we drove from hiding.

  The tall pine was a mile off, and we rode directly for it through the half-light of the early dawn. We covered that mile at a dead run, slowing to a trot as we neared the tree. I glanced around swiftly.