the Daybreakers (1960)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 06

  "I can recommend the barrel whiskey."

  "I bet you can. Give it to us from the bottle."

  "My own whiskey. I don't usually sell it."

  There were two men sitting at a back table and they were sizing us up. One thing I'd noticed about those men. They got their service without paying. I had a hunch they worked for the firm, and if they did, what did they do?

  "My name is Brady," the red-haired man said, "Martin Brady."

  "Good," I said, "a man should have a name." We put our money on the bar and turned to go. "You keep that bottle handy. We tried that river whiskey before."

  After three days we had only a spot or two of color. Straightening up from my pick I said, "Cap, the way I hear it we should have a burro, and when the burro strays, we follow him, and when we find that burro he's pawing pay dirt right out of the ground, or you pick up a chunk to chunk at the burro and it turns out to be pure-dee gold."

  "Don't you believe all you hear." He pushed his hat back. "I been lookin' the ground over. Over there," he indicated what looked like an old stream bed, "that crick flowed for centuries. If there's gold in the crick there's more of it under that bench there."

  Up on the bench we cut timber and built a flume to carry water and a sluice box.

  Placer mining isn't just a matter of scooping up sand and washing it out in a pan. The amount of gold a man can get that way is mighty little, and most places he can do as well punching cows or riding shotgun on a stage.

  The thing to do is locate some color and then choose a likely spot like this bench and sink a shaft down to bedrock, panning out that gravel that comes off the bedrock, working down to get all the cracks and to peel off any loose slabs and work the gravel gathered beneath them. Gold is heavy, and over the years it works deeper and deeper through loose earth or gravel until it reaches bedrock and can go no further.

  When we started to get down beyond six feet we commenced getting some good color, and we worked all the ground we removed from there on down. Of a night I'd often sit up late reading whatever came to hand, and gradually I was learning a good bit about a lot of things.

  On the next claim there was a man named Clark who loaned me several books. Most of the reading a man could get was pretty good stuff ... nobody wanted to carry anything else that far.

  Clark came to our fire one night. "Cap, you make the best sourdough bread I ever ate. I'm going to miss it."

  "You taking out?"

  "She's deep enough, Cap, I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm going back to the States, to my wife and family. I worked in a store for six, seven years and always wanted one of my own."

  "You be careful," Cap said.

  Clark glanced around, then lowered his voice. "Have you heard those yarns, too?

  About the killings?"

  "They found Wilton's body last week," I said, "he'd been buried in a shallow grave but the coyotes dug him out."

  "I knew him." Clark accepted another plate of beans and beef and then he said, "I believe those stories. Wilton was carrying a heavy poke, and he wasn't a man to talk it around."

  He forked up some more beans, then paused. "Sackett, you've been talked up as a man who's good with a gun."

  "It's exaggerated."

  "If you'll ride out with me I'll pay you a hundred dollars each."

  "That's good money, but what about our claim?"

  "This means everything to me, boys. I talked to Dickey and Wells, and they're reliable men who will watch your claim."

  Cap lit up his pipe and I poured coffee for all of us. Clark just wasn't a-woofin'. Most of the miners who gambled their money away at the Rose-Marie in town had no trouble leaving. It was only those who tried to leave with their money. At least three were sitting a-top some fat pokes of gold wondering how to get out alive and still keep what they'd worked for.

  "Clark," I said, "Cap and me, we need the money. We'd help even if you couldn't afford to pay."

  "Believe me, it's worth it."

  So I got up off the ground. "Cap, I'll just go in and have a little talk with Martin Brady."

  Clark got up. "You're crazy!"

  "Why, I wouldn't want him to think us deceitful, Clark, so I'll just go tell him we're riding out tomorrow. I'll also tell him what will happen if anybody bothers us."

  There were thirty or forty men in the Rose-Marie when I came in. Brady came to me, drying his big hands on his apron. "We're fresh out of bourbon," he said, "you'll have to take bar whiskey."

  "I just came to tell you Jim Clark is riding out of the country tomorrow and he's taking all that gold he didn't spend in here."

  You could have heard a pin drop. When I spoke those words I said them out loud so everybody could hear. Brady's cigar rolled between his teeth and he got white around the eyes, but I had an eye on the two loafers at the end of the bar.

  "Why tell me?" He didn't know what was coming but he knew he wouldn't like it.

  "Somebody might think Clark was going alone," I said "and they might try to kill him the way Wilton and Jacks and Thompson were killed, but I figured it would be deceitful of me to ride along with Clark and let somebody get killed trying to get his gold. You see, Clark is going to make it."

  "I hope he does," Brady rolled that cigar again, those cold little eyes telling me they hated me. "He's a good man."

  He started to walk away but I wasn't through with him.

  "Brady?"

  He turned slowly.

  "Clark is going through because I'm going to see that he gets through, and when he's gone, I'm coming back."

  "So?" He put his big hands on the edge of the bar. "What does that mean?"

  "It means that if we have any trouble at all, I'm going to come back here and either run you out of town or bury you."

  Somebody gasped and Martin Brady's face turned a kind of sick white, he was that mad. "It sounds like you're calling me a thief." He kept both hands in plain sight. "You'd have to prove that."

  "Prove it? Who to? Everybody knows what killing and robbery there has been was engineered by you. There's no court here but a six-shooter court and I'm presiding."

  So nothing happened. It was like I figured and it was out in the open now, and Martin Brady had to have me killed, but he didn't dare do it right then. We put Clark on the stage and started back to our own claims.

  We were almost to bedrock now and we wanted to clean up and get out. We were getting the itch to go back to Santa Fe and back to Mora. Besides, I kept thinking of Dursilla.

  Bob Wells was sitting on our claim with a rifle across his knees when we came in. "I was gettin' spooked," he said, "it don't seem like Brady to take this layin' down."

  Dickey came over from his claim and several others, two of whom I remembered from the Rose-Marie Saloon the night I told off Martin Brady.

  "We been talking it around," Dickey said, "and we figure you should be marshal."

  "No."

  "Can you name anybody else?" Wells asked reasonably. "This gold strike is going to play out, but a few of the mines will continue to work, and I plan to stay on here. I want to open a business, and I want this to be a clean town."

  The others all pitched in, and finally Dickey said, "Sackett, with all respect, I believe it's your public duty."

  Now I was beginning to see where reading can make a man trouble. Reading Locke, Hume, Jefferson, and Madison, had made me begin to think mighty high of a man's public duty.

  Violence is an evil thing, but when the guns are all in the hands of the men without respect for human rights, then men are really in trouble.

  It was all right for folks back east to give reasons why trouble should be handled without violence. Folks who talk about no violence are always the ones who are first to call a policeman, and usually they are sure there's one handy.

  "All right," I said, "on two conditions: first, that somebody else takes over when the town is cleaned up. Second, that you raise money enough to buy out Martin Brady."

  "Buy him out? I say, run him out!"
<
br />   Who it was yelled, I don't know, but I spoke right up in meeting. "All right, whoever you are. You run him out."

  There was a silence then, and when they had gathered the fact that the speaker wasn't going to offer I said, "We run him out and we're no better than he is."

  "All right," Wells agreed, "buy him out."

  "Well, now," I said, "we can be too hasty. I didn't say we should buy him out, what I say is we should offer. We make him a cash offer and whatever he does then is up to him."

  Next day in town I got down from my horse in front of the store. Wind blew dust along the street and skittered dry leaves along the boardwalk. It gave me a lonesome feeling. Looking down the street I had a feeling the town would die.

  No matter what happened here, what I was going to do was important. Maybe not for this town, but for men everywhere, for there must be right. Strength never made right, and it is an indecency when it is allowed to breed corruption. The west was changing. One time they would have organized vigilantes and had some necktie parties, but now they were hiring a marshal, and the next step would be a town meeting and a judge or a mayor.

  Martin Brady saw me come in. His two men standing at the bar saw me too, and one of them moved a mite so his gun could be right under his hand and not under the edge of the bar.

  There was nothing jumpy inside me, just a slow, measured, waiting feeling.

  Around me everything seemed clearer, sharper in detail, the shadows and lights, the grain of wood on the bar, the stains left by the glasses, a slight tic on the cheek of one of Brady's men, and he was forty feet away.

  "Brady, this country is growing up. Folks are moving in and they want schools, churches, and quiet towns where they can walk in the streets of an evening."

  He never took his eyes from me, and I had a feeling he knew what was coming.

  Right then I felt sorry for Martin Brady, although his kind would outlast my kind because people have a greater tolerance for evil than for violence. If crooked gambling, thieving, and robbing are covered over, folks will tolerate it longer than outright violence, even when the violence may be cleansing.

  Folks had much to say about the evil of those years, yet it took hard men to live the life, and their pleasures were apt to be rough and violent. They came from the world around, the younger sons of fine families, the ne'er-do-wells, the soldiers of fortune, the drifters, the always-broke, the promoters, the con men, the thieves. The frontier asked no questions and gave its rewards to the strong.

  Maybe it needed men like Martin Brady, even the kind who lived on murder and robbery, to plant a town here at such a jumping-off place to nowhere. An odd thought occurred to me. Why had he called the saloon and the town Rose-Marie?

  "Like I said, the country is growing up, Martin. You've been selling people rot-gut liquor, you've been cheating them out of hide an' hair, you've been robbing and murdering them. Murdering them was going too far, Martin, because when you start killing men, they fight back."

  "What are you gettin' at, Sackett?"

  "They elected me marshal."

  "So?"

  "You sell out, Martin Brady, they'll pay you a fair price. You sell out, and you get out."

  He took the cigar from his teeth with his left hand and rested that hand on the bar. "And if I don't want to sell?"

  "You have no choice."

  He smiled and leaned toward me as if to say something in a low tone and when he did he touched that burning cigar to my hand.

  My hand jerked and I realized the trick too late and those gunmen down the bar, who had evidently seen it done before, shot me full of holes.

  My hand jerked and then guns were hammering. A slug hit me and turned me away from the bar, and two more bullets grooved the edge of the bar where I'd been standing.

  Another slug hit me and I started to fall but my gun was out and I rolled over on the floor with bullets kicking splinters at my eyes and shot the big one with the dark eyes.

  He was coming up to me for a finishing shot and I put a bullet into his brisket and saw him stop dead still, turn half around and fall.

  Then I was rolling over and on my feet and out of the corner of my eye I saw Martin Brady standing with both hands on the bar and his cigar in his teeth, watching me. My shirt was smoldering where it had caught fire from that black powder, but I shot the other man, taking my time, and my second bullet drove teeth back into his mouth and I saw the blood dribble from the corner of his mouth.

  They were both down and they weren't getting up and I looked at Martin Brady and I said, "You haven't a choice, Martin."

  His face turned strange and shapeless and I felt myself falling and remembered Ma asking me about Long Higgins.

  There were cracks in the ceiling. It seemed I lay there staring at them for a dozen years, and remembered that it had been a long time since I'd been in a house and wondered if I was delirious.

  Cap Rountree came into the room and I turned my head and looked at him. "If this here is hell, they sure picked the right people for it."

  "Never knew a man to find so many excuses to get out of his work," Cap grumbled.

  "How much longer do I do the work in this shebang?"

  "You're an old pirate," I said, "who never did an honest day's work in his life."

  Cap came back in with a bowl of soup which he started spooning into me. "Last time I recollect they were shooting holes in me. Did you plug them up?"

  "You'll hold soup. Only maybe all your sand run out."

  On my hand I could see the scar of that cigar burn, almost healed now. That was one time I was sure enough outsmarted. It was one trick Pa never told me about, and I'd had to learn it the hard way.

  "You took four bullets," Cap said, "an' lost a sight more blood than a man can afford."

  "What about Brady?"

  "He lit a shuck whilst they were huntin' a rope to hang him." Cap sat down.

  "Funny thing. He showed up here the next night."

  "Here?"

  "Stopped by to see how you was. Said you were too good a man to die like that--both of you were damned fools but a man got into a way of livin' and there was no way but to go on."

  "The others?"

  "Those boys of his were shot to doll rags."

  Outside the door I could see the sunshine on the creek and I could hear the water chuckling over the rocks, and I got to thinking of Ma and Drusilla, and one day when I could sit up I looked over at Cap.

  "Anything left out there?"

  "Ain't been a day's wages in weeks. If you figure to do any more minin' you better find yourself another crick."

  "We'll go home. Come morning you saddle up."

  He looked at me skeptically. "Can you set a saddle?"

  "If I'm going home. I can sit a saddle if I'm headed for Santa Fe."

  Next morning, Cap and me headed as due south as the country would allow, but it is a long way in the saddle from Idaho to New Mexico. From time to time we heard news about Sacketts. Men on the trail carried news along with them and everybody was on the prod to know all that was going on. The Sackett news was all Orrin ... it would take awhile for the story of what happened at Rose-Marie to get around and I'd as soon it never did. But Orrin was making a name for himself.

  Only there was a rumor that he was to be married.

  Cap told me that because he heard it before I did and neither of us made comments. Cap felt as I did about Laura Pritts and we were afraid it was her.

  We rode right to the ranch.

  Bob came out to meet us, and Joe was right behind him. Ma had seen us coming up the road. She came to the steps to meet me. Ma was better than she had been in years, a credit to few worries and a better climate, I suppose. There was a Navajo woman helping with the housework now, and for the first time Ma had it easier.

  There were bookshelves in the parlor and both the boys had taken to reading.

  There was other news. Don Luis was dead ... had been buried only two days ago, but already the Settlement crowd had move
d in. Torres was in bad shape ... he had been ambushed months ago and from what I was told there was small chance he'd be himself again.

  Drusilla was in town.

  And Orrin was married to Laura Pritts.

  Chapter XIV

  Orrin came out to the ranch in the morning, driving a buckboard. He got down and came to me with his hand out, a handsome man by any standards, wearing black broadcloth now like he was born to it.

  He was older, more sure of himself, and there was a tone of authority in his voice. Orrin had done all right, no doubt of that, and beneath it all he was the same man he had always been, only a better man because of the education he had given himself and the experience behind him.

  "It's good to see you, boy." He was sizing me up as he talked, and I had to grin, for I knew his way.

  "You've had trouble," he said suddenly, "you've been hurt."

  So I told him about Martin Brady and the Rose-Marie, my brief term as marshal, and the showdown. When he realized how close I'd come to cashing in my chips he grew a little pale. "Tyrel," he said slowly, "I know what you've been through, but they need a man right here. They need a deputy sheriff who is honest and I sure know you'd never draw on anybody without cause."

  "Has somebody been saying the contrary?" I asked him quietly.

  "No ... no, of course not." He spoke hastily, and I knew he didn't want to say who, which was all the answer I needed.

  "Of course, there's always talk about a man who has to use a gun. Folks don't understand."

  He paused. "I suppose you know I'm married?"

  "Heard about it. Has Laura been out to see Ma?"

  Orrin flushed. "Laura doesn't take to Ma. Says a woman smoking is indecent, and smoking a pipe is worse."

  "That may be true," I replied carefully. "Out here you don't see it much, but that's Ma."

  He kicked at the earth, his face gloomy. "You may think I did wrong, Tyrel, but I love that girl. She's ... she's different, Tyrel, she's so pretty, so delicate, so refined and everything. A man in politics, he needs a wife like that. And whatever else you can say about Jonathan, he's done everything he could to help me."