Ride the Dark Trail (1972)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 18

  Chapter 10

  Now I never laid claim to having no corner on brains, and most of what I picked up in the way of knowledge was knocked into my head one way or the other. What I’ve learned, or most of it, has been concerned with just staying alive.

  Guns, horses, hitches, and half-nelson’s are more in line with my thinking, but here and there just plain looking and seeing what you look at has taught me something. Also, whilst never much of a hand to go to the mat with a book, I’m a good listener.

  Folks who have lived the cornered sort of life most scholars, teachers, and storekeepers live seldom realize what they’ve missed in the way of conversation. Some of the best talk and the wisest talk I’ve ever heard was around campfires, in saloons, bunkhouses, and the like. The idea that all the knowledge of the world is bound up in schools and schoolteachers is a mistaken one.

  There have been a lot of men who just didn’t give a damn about tending store or keeping school but who just cut loose their moorings and went adrift.

  Wandering men see a lot, and all knowledge is a matter of comparison and the deductions made from it. Moreover, in any crowd of drifters you’ll find men of the finest scholastic education as well as men who have just seen a lot and have been putting two and two together.

  One time or another I’ve heard a lot of campfire talk about towns and how they came to be, and a good many sprang up from river crossings. Folks like to camp close to streams for the sake of water, but crossing a big river was quite an operation, so they’d go into camp after they’d crossed over. That is, the smart ones would. Those who went into camp to cross over in the morning often found the water so high come morning they were stuck for several days.

  Rome, London, Paris … all of them sprang from river crossings, and usually there was some bright gent around who was charging toll to cross over. Any time you find a lot of people who have to have something or do something you’ll also find somebody there charging them for doing it.

  When people stop at a stream crossing they camp and look around, and you can bet somebody has set up store with things for them to want.

  The town of Siwash came to be in just that way. The stream was no great shakes, but there was a good flowing spring, and a man came in, stopped his travels, and began raising sheep. A few months later a man came along headed for the Colorado gold fields, he seen that spring and knowing that water was sometimes more precious than gold, waited until the sheepman’s back was turned and then split his skull with an ax, buried him deep, and planted a crop of corn and melons over the ground where he buried the sheepman.

  It was the age-old conflict between the farmer and the stock raiser that probably began when Cain killed Abel. Cain was not only the first farmer according to the Good Book, but he built the first city mentioned in the Bible, and this farmer, seeing that lots of people stopped at his spring for fresh water, set up store and began selling vegetables and corn.

  He would probably have done all right in the fullness of time but for a gambler with rheumatism in his hands. The gambler rode into town and stopped to watch the business. He listened to the rustle of the cottonwood leaves and the lovely sound of flowing water from the spring, and that night he brought out a greasy deck of cards. Rheumatism in the hands was spelling his finish as a gambler, but those hands still were good enough to deal three queens to Cain.

  Cain hadn’t seen a woman for a long time so when those three queens showed up together he overrated their value, and when the rheumatic gambler showed his four aces Cain discovered he was no longer a farmer and keeper of a store but a wanderer. The gambler wanted him out of there so he made him a present of his horse … and perhaps with a warning from a friendly ghost, he didn’t turn his back when Cain picked up his ax. So Cain rode out into the world again, and the gambler became a storekeeper and a tiller of the fields.

  He called the place Siwash. Nobody knew why, including him. The name came to him, and he used it. By that time he was selling supplies to the MT ranch, and to several others in the vicinity.

  Siwash wasn’t a big town. A man with good legs could walk all around it in five minutes, but you could have done the same thing with the first settlement of Troy, which also was built around a spring and on a trade route.

  The gambler with the rheumatic hands was still there, and his hands were in even worse shape. The hands that could no longer deal one off the bottom or build up a bottom stock couldn’t handle a gun either, so the oldest citizen in Siwash was also the most peaceful.

  When Jake Flanner showed up and began quietly taking over the gambler considered shooting him until he saw what happened to several others with the same idea. So he smiled at Jake’s stories and kept a gun handy just in case.

  Nevertheless, he harbored no good wishes for Flanner; he wished the man out of there, and not merely because he wanted to be top dog. The gambler’s name was Con Wellington, and his hands being what they were he wanted peace. It took no wise man to see that there would never be peace where Jake Flanner was. So Con Wellington waited, listened, and bided his time, and as all things eventually came to him, he knew Flanner had been stopped cold by Emily Talon and Logan Sackett.

  Logan was no stranger. They’d never been friends, had scarcely met, in fact. Logan had once sat in a poker game with Wellington, whose hands were not rheumatic at the time, but Con knew a good deal about Logan Sackett and he dealt his cards with extreme care.

  He was considering some way of getting word to Logan without Flanner’s spies telling of it when there was a tap on his window.

  Con’s mind worked swiftly. Jake Flanner or his men would come to the front door, hence if somebody came to the window it had to be an enemy of Flanner’s, and an enemy of Flanner’s was always welcome … so long as Flanner didn’t know about it.

  He opened the window a bare inch. “Who is it?” He was studying the background as he asked the question. It was unlikely anybody would be hiding and watching the back of his store, which was also his dwelling, but he was not a trusting man.

  “Open your door,” I said, and heard him mutter something from within. I’d left my horse under the cottonwoods beside the stream and had come on foot to the Wellington store.

  There was a moment of movement within, and then after a bit, a door opened into darkness. “Come in then, and make it quick.”

  Once inside, Con Wellington uncovered a lantern. “I had an idea it would be you,” he said. “There’s nobody else would come to me in the night.”

  He sat down on his bed. It was an old four-poster and the springs creaked heavily as Wellington seated himself, leaving the chair for me.

  “It’s about Flanner you’ve come,” he said abruptly. “Well, understand me. I don’t like the man but he’s left me alone. Granted, my business is less than half what it was, but I’m alive, and some are not.”

  He opened a cigar box and took one himself before pushing it over to me. He lifted his hands, gnarled and twisted from rheumatism. “I’ve as much nerve as the next man, I think, but with these nerve doesn’t matter. I can pull a trigger if I’ve plenty of time … I could still hunt buffalo. But to pull a gun against another man? I’d not have a chance.”

  “It isn’t a gun you’ll need. It’s another thing I have in mind.”

  Wellington looked at me sharply. “Logan, you’ve tied in with Em Talon … what’s in that for you?”

  “We’re kinfolk. She was a Clinch Mountain Sackett before she married Talon.”

  “A Clinch Mountain Sackett may mean something to you. It doesn’t to me.”

  “It means little to anybody but us,” I told him. “We set store by kinfolk. We’ve our troubles, time to time, but when one of us is in danger, there’ll be help from any who are around.”

  Wellington lit his cigar. “I wish my folks were like that. They were glad to be rid of me. My family had money, education, pride of family. So when I lost my money and got into difficulties they threw me out.”

  “It happens.” I lit my cigar,
too. It was a good one. “I had a hunch,” I said, “that you didn’t care for Flanner. Now I want you to stand aside.”

  “No more?”

  “I’m gettin’ tired of him. So’s Em. Her son’s comin’ home but he may take a time gettin’ here and I want action. I’m goin’ to run him out.”

  “You? And who else?”

  “I don’t need nobody else. I figured you would know who his friends were. I don’t aim to hurt innocent bystanders if it can be helped.”

  He looked at me, long and thoughtful, and then he said, “You know, I think you might do it.” He looked at the long ash on his cigar, then very carefully knocked it off on the edge of his saucer. “Most of the people here don’t like him, but right now there’s not more than twenty to twenty-five people in town aside from Flanner and his men.”

  He named them for me, told me where they were likely to be, described a few of them. “The hotel, saloon, and livery stable, and the bunkhouse back of the stable, that’s where most of his boys will be. Flanner sticks close to the hotel.”

  “How about that other one?”

  “Johannes Duckett?” Wellington squinted his eyes. “He might be anywhere. He might be outside this minute. He moves around like a ghost.”

  He paused a moment. “Don’t belittle the folks here in town. Jake swings a wide loop but he’s left them strictly alone. He shows up at the dances, pie suppers, and the like, and he contributes to get the minister to come to town. They don’t like him much, but they’ve little to complain about.

  “They figure his business with the MT is his business. Not many folks around here knew the Talons. They kept to themselves pretty much, and then after the old man was killed Em came to town mighty seldom … and after a while, not at all.

  “Some of them are jealous. After all, the Talon outfit is big. Most of these folks were latecomers, and none of them realize what it takes to put a big outfit together, especially when the Talons came here.”

  “They’ll stay out of it then?”

  “I expect so. Naturally, I can promise nothing except for myself.”

  What my next step would be I simply did not know. Like I said, I’m not long on planning. I just start moving and let things happen. The only planning I do, you might say, is to see that I don’t hurt any innocent bystanders. And that was why I risked my neck to come in and talk to Con Wellington.

  Suddenly I had a hunch. I wasn’t going back the way I came in. If this here Johannes Duckett was laying for me it would be out back, so I’d go right out the front door.

  Wellington didn’t like it much, but he agreed Duckett might be lying in wait out yonder in the dark, so I went to the front door of the store.

  “If they see me and ask about it, tell them I’m running scared but wanted tobacco. I’m not that much of a smoker, but they don’t know that. I’ve seen men risk their necks for a smoke.”

  Wellington took down a couple of sacks of tobacco. “Just in case,” he said.

  The door was well oiled, and I slipped out to the boardwalk without a sound. Four long strides and I was across the street, ducking into the space between two buildings. Carefully I worked my way back to my horse.

  When I was crouched down near some stumps, looking through the brush at my horse, I saw a man come out of the trees near the road. He looked left and right, then came on. He saw the horse and I heard him give a muttered exclamation, then he reached over and pulled the slip knot I’d tied in the bridle reins. He gathered the reins and was just throwing a leg over the saddle when I heard a shot.

  The roan jumped and the strange rider toppled from its back into the grass. The roan ran out of there, head high, reins trailing.

  From behind me and to my left there was movement

  I waited, and then a tall, thin man came out of the trees and walked down to the dead man. He struck a match, then swore.

  “Wrong man again, Duckett?” I yelled into the darkness.

  He turned and shot. It was one move, only I had already fired. He had shot at sound and he missed by a hair. My bullet smacked hard against something metallic, then ricocheted off into the night.

  Moving swiftly, I went through the trees, angling toward the road to try to head off my horse.

  There were no more shots, no sound. The moon was just showing on the trail and there was a smell of dust in the air. I walked along holding to the shadowed side of the trail, and sure enough, about of a quarter of a mile up the road I found the roan. The horse came to me when I spoke, and I petted it and talked to it for a while before stepping into the saddle.

  It was near daybreak when I got back to the ranch.

  Chapter 11

  Pennywell was on the lookout when I came in, and when I got inside she brought me a cup of coffee. “Em’s asleep,” she said, “catching up on some of that lost time.”

  She studied me critically. I looked beat. After I’d caught my horse I’d had to hightail it for the MT, careful to leave no sign they could use, so I’d come right down the trail and through the main gate.

  “Looks like you been out among ‘em,” she commented. “I frown on that as Em would say.”

  Explaining what happened, I added, “The way I figure it, Duckett spotted me when I came in and laid for me near my horse. Meanwhile some other of Flanner’s men saw me in town, saw me go into or come out of the store, and got ahead of me, planning to get my horse and then me.”

  “But you shot Duckett?”

  “Shot at him. From the sound I must have hit his rifle or a tree near him. I doubt if I did him any harm, but he came within an inch or less of nailing me. That man can shoot, an’ Lordy, is he quick!”

  “Teach you to go gallivanting around in the middle of the night. Wait for them to come to you.”

  “I’m a poor hand at waitin’. My style is to carry it to them, show them a fight has two sides.”

  “Do you think this will do it?”

  “Well,” I commented, “I’ve an idea they’ll think twice before they open a door. They know I’m huntin’ them, too, and that can be a worrisome thing.”

  Two slow days went by while I worked around the place. One day I rode to the hills and shot an elk, bringing the meat down to the place. I also taken my iron out to the meadows, roped and branded a couple of yearlings.

  No work had been done around there for some time and it would be a rustler’s dream to get back in there and find all that fine stock wearing no brands. After that I decided to carry an iron with me wherever I went on MT range.

  Johannes Duckett didn’t shape up like the kind of man who would sit by and let me get away with shooting at him. I knew I’d be hearing from him, with or without Flanner, and I also figured Duckett would go a-prowling for me. He was the kind who would be apt to shoot from anywhere, so I kept off the skyline, rode through the edge of the trees, kept myself out of range as well as I could when I’d no idea where the attack would come from or when.

  Nonetheless I still had an idea of riding into Siwash and making myself known.

  Em was on the lookout when she seen a rider coming. She turned to me. “Logan? What do you make of him?”

  He was coming down the road at a walk, heading for the main gate. Through the glasses I could see he was riding a beat-up buckskin. He was a small-sized man with a narrow-brimmed hat, a speckled shirt and vest. Light glinted from his eyes so I reckoned him for glasses. He was wearing a six-shooter and he had him a rifle shoved down into a boot

  As he rode up to the gate he suddenly touched a spur to his buckskin and I’ll be damned if that horse didn’t just sail right over a six-bar gate that was all of five feet tall, and did it with no particular mind, sort of offhand and easy.

  Em, she taken up her Sharps and that ol’ gun boomed as she put a bullet right into the dust ahead of him.

  The rider he just taken off his hat, held it high, and waved it down in a low bow. But he kept comin’.

  I hitched my Colt into a better position and walked out front. Nobody else was
in sight, and I figured to be all ready for this man, whoever he was.

  He came on up, walking his horse, and about fifty feet off he drew rein and looked at the house. For a long time he looked, then he dropped his eyes to me. One eye was covered with a kind of white film … I reckon he could only see from one.

  “You’ll be Logan Sackett, I expect? I’ve come here to join you.”

  “What for?”

  The man did not smile. “The word is that you are about to be run off. Flanner is recruiting fighters. I am Albani Fulbric, and my people have been fighting on the wrong side for a thousand years. I see no reason to change now.”

  “Can you fight?”

  “With any weapon … any one at all.”

  “Well, it’s gettin’ on to supper time. Come in an’ set and we’ll talk it over.”

  He was an odd man with an odd name, but somehow I liked the cut of him. At table he showed himself a fair hand at putting away grub, although in size he wasn’t more than two-thirds of me.

  “Where’d you get a name like that?” I asked him.

  “Names are how you look at ‘em. My name is funny to you, yours is funny to me. Sackett - ever listen to the sound of that? Think on it, my friend.”

  He reached for the beef. “Now you take my name. My folks, both sides of them, come over from Normandy with William the Conqueror. One of them was squire to Sir Hugh de Malebisse and the other rode with Robert de Brus.

  “Neither one of them had anything but strong arms and the willingness to use them. One was an Albani, one a Fulbric, and you will find their names in the Doomsday Book. Bold men they were and we who follow their steps are proud to bring no shame to the names they left us.”

  “They were knights?” Pennywell asked.

  “They were not. They were simple men, smiths and the like, between wars. One of them settled in Yorkshire with Sir Hugh, and the other went off to Scotland, hard by. And one of the family later helped to put a Bruce on the throne of Scotland, although a lot of good it did either of them.”

  I knew nothing of foreign wars or foreign parts, and the talk when not of horses and cattle or buffalo or guns was scarcely easy for me to follow, but there was a lilt to his voice like he was speaking of magic, and I liked to hear what he was saying. The names meant nothing to me, nothing at all.