Ride the Dark Trail (1972)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 18

  “I’ve heard those names,” Em Talon said. “Talon spoke of them. His family came from France, and by all accounts a roistering lot they were, building ships and sailing them to foreign parts, and more often than not on voyages of piracy. It’s a wonder they weren’t hanged.”

  “Are you a hand with cattle?” I asked him.

  “I am that. I’ll handle a rope with any man, and my horse is good with cattle. I’ll earn my keep and whatever it is you’ll pay.”

  “That horse you see me riding has been hard used, but don’t look down upon him. He’s carried me into and out of much trouble, and time and again we’ve been to the wars. Let me put a loop over anything that walks, and that buckskin will hold it, whatever it is.”

  “In the saddle of that horse I’d not be afraid to rope a Texas cyclone, rope and hog-tie it, too. He’ll climb where it would put scare into a mountain goat, and one time when a man holed me with a Winchester slug, he carried me fifteen miles through the snow, then pawed on the stoop until folks came to the door to take me down.”

  “You can call me a dog if you will, sir, but you speak ill of my horse and I’ll put lead into you.”

  “I’d never speak ill of any man’s horse,” I said sincerely. “I’ve ridden his kind, and we’ve a few fit to run with him right here on the Empty.”

  If Albani was a fair hand at the table he was a better one in the field. We turned to and roped and branded fourteen head the following morning, cleaned out a waterhole where there’d been a slide, and checked out the grass on the upper meadows. He was a handy man with tools and not backward about using them, but I was wary. He’d not said much about himself beyond running off at the head about those old ancestors of his who came over … from where I wasn’t sure. I’d never heard of Normandy until Pennywell, who reads a lot of books, told me it was in France and that the Normans were originally called Northmen or Vikings, and they’d settled in there where the country looked good. Well, that made sense. Most of us who came west were wishful of the same thing.

  Al - as we came to call him - was as good at working on fences, too, and we tightened up the wire where it was needed, replaced a few rotting posts, and branded more cattle in the next few days. He’d been working up Montana way and in the Dakotas and had first come west from Illinois, working on the railroad, building at first, then as a switchman.

  It was the sort of story every man had to tell them days. Men moved often and turned their hand to almost anything, developing the knacks for doing things. Most men were handy with tools - their lives demanded it of them - and most men worked at a variety of jobs, usually heading toward a piece of land of their own. Some made it, some never did. In any bunkhouse you’d find men from a dozen states or territories, and men who had worked at dozens of jobs, doing whatever was needed to earn a living.

  Most of them were young, and the younger they were the harder they worked to be accepted as men. No boy over fourteen wanted to be thought of as a boy … he wanted to be considered a man and a top hand at whatever he was doing.

  The first thing he learned was to do his part. Nobody had any use for a shirker or a lay-around … it just made more work for the others, and such a one became almighty unwelcome awful fast. On the other hand, nobody asked who you were or where you came from, only that you stood up when there was something to be done.

  Nobody thought of horses except as companions and working partners. The value of a horse in terms of money wasn’t often mentioned. You’d hear a man say, “He’s a damn’ fine cuttin’ horse.” Or maybe, “He’ll go all night an’ the next day. Stays right in there.” Or, “That’s the horse I rode when I tied onto that brindle steer that time, an’ …”

  You hear folks say how horses were rough used on old-time ranches, but it ain’t so. At least, they used them no worse than they used themselves, and usually a whole sight better. You’ll hear folks say that horses are stupid, but they ain’t if you give them a chance. A horse is like a dog … he needs to belong to somebody, to be trusted by somebody. Once they know what’s expected of them they’ll come through.

  There was no word from Milo Talon, and I lay awake nights wondering what Flanner would do next. Me an’ Em talked it over at breakfast, with Al Fulbric putting in his two cents’ worth. The result was that I got out a team that had once been broke to harness, hitched them to a plough, and then went out and ploughed a firebreak twelve furrows wide just below the crest of the hill that divided us from town. It taken several days, but I got it done, and Al ploughed some on the other side.

  Back up into the woods we scouted the country, and here and there tied onto a dead fall and dragged it into place. In other places we cut trees and felled them so they’d form a barrier to riders or even men on foot. We laid out trails through these barriers with certain logs to be lifted to let us by. It was like one of these mazes you hear tell of. If a man knew his way as we did he could ride through almighty fast, but if he didn’t know the key entrance and exit he played hob gettin’ through.

  Fire was what we feared most. We set out barrels and filled them with water near the barns and bunkhouse, and we shot more meat and jerked it against a long fight.

  Two nights later I woke up with a yell ringing in my ears. Somebody was pounding on the door and yellin’ “Fire!” I grabbed for my hat and my pants, slamming the first on my head and scrambling into the others. I stamped my feet into boots, grabbed my gun belt, and ran for the door.

  The whole horizon was lit by flames. They were coming right at us with a good beat of wind behind them. As I ran for the corral I heard the beat of hoofs and Al Fulbric came out on the dead run. He was in his long Johns with a gun belted on, waving his rifle and yellin’ like a Comanche. But across his horse in front of him he had a bunch of old sacks and a spade.

  It taken me a moment to throw the leather on the roan and get into the saddle. There were sacks laid out and ready and I grabbed a bundle along with a shovel and raced after him.

  We reached our firebreak just ahead of the flames. Believe me, had it not been there we’d have been wiped out, but because it was lyin’ like it was, on our side of the hill, Flanner hadn’t even guessed it was there.

  We hit the dirt, and leaving our horses on the ranch side of the break, we ran across and went to whipping out the first inroads of flame with our sacks. We managed to fight it for a bit, then fell back after starting backfires. The backfires burned right up to our firebreak and gave us about fifty more feet of leeway. Only a few sparks managed to blow across to the ranch side and we whipped those out or buried them with earth before they got started.

  Pennywell was right there with us, and so was Em. Suddenly I turned sharp around. “The house!” I said. “They’ve gotten into the house by now!”

  We hit our saddles on the run, Em no slower than the rest of us, and we went down the slope on the run.

  As we came into the back door, a bunch of men were crowdin’ into the front door and Em ran through, me behind her. Al cut around through another room.

  Len Spivey was there, and Matthews, and some others, Len was grinning. “Looks like we got you! Jake thought that fire would do it”

  They all had guns in their hands and there were eight of them and only two of us in sight.

  They guessed right on some things, they guessed wrong on Emily Talon.

  “You got nothing,” she said, and she cut loose her dogs … only they were slugs from a big Dragoon Colt.

  They couldn’t believe it. They’d been sure if there was trouble it would come from me, and they paid no mind to the womenfolks, or mighty little. And they didn’t even know about Al.

  Em just tilted her old pistol and cut loose, and just as she fired, Al Fulbric jumped from the bedroom door with a shotgun in his hands, and somehow my old six-shooter was speaking its piece right along with them.

  It was shock that won for us. They’d not expected shooting with the women there, not really knowing what kind of a woman Em was. It was shock and the time it takes
a man to react Em’s first shot caught Matthews, who was closest to her, and turned him halfway around. His own gun went off into the floor just as Al cut loose with a double-barreled shotgun.

  Matthews was falling, shot through the body. Another man grabbed at the doorjamb and slid down it to the floor, and Len Spivey threw himself at the door and damn near broke his neck getting out of there.

  We ran to the door after them. One man turned to fire and my bullet cut him right across the collarbone from side to side. I saw him stagger and cry out, seen his shirt flop where the bullet cut it, and then I put a second one into his brisket. And then they were gone.

  They left three behind. Matthews was down and dying. The man who slid down the doorjamb had taken a load of buckshot at twelve-foot range, and he was dead. A third man lay on the grass outside the front door.

  They’d drawn us off with the fire as they figured, but they had guessed wrong on Emily Talon.

  99

  I might have held back myself, for fear of the women getting shot, but there was no hold-back in Em.

  Nor in Pennywell.

  She had got off two shots. I saw her loading up again afterwards. She was pale as a ghost when it was over, but she was thumbing two cartridges back into her pistol, and she was ready.

  Man, those were women!

  Chapter 12

  There was a meanness in me. We’d come off lucky. Em had been burned by one bullet, but that was the only injury to any of us.

  We’d lost some grass, but spring rains and the winter snows would bring that back. The burning left us secure from that side at least, for now there was nothing left to burn.

  They’d busted through the front window. They’d tried to break down the door, but it just didn’t bust that easy. They’d pried off one of the shutters and had busted through the window to get in. That was what allowed us time to get down there.

  But it was not in me to sit by, so I went right outside, and saying nothing to anybody I hit the road for town. I pulled up in the shadow of a barn, saw their horses at the hitch rail of the hotel-saloon, and I walked across the street and up the steps. They were all inside, cursing and swearing and downing drinks when I came through the door, and they turned around thinking I was Flanner.

  I never said yes or no, I just cut loose. My first bullet taken Len Spivey just as he closed his fist over his gun butt. It slammed him into the bar and the second one opened a hole right in the hollow at the base of his throat.

  One other man went down before a slug hit me in the leg and I started to fall. I braced myself against the wall, hammered the rest of my shells into them, and then commenced pushing the empties out.

  The room was full of smoke from that old black powder, and from somewhere near the bar flame stabbed at me and I was hit again.

  I didn’t fall. I just kept plugging fresh cartridges into those empty chambers and then lifted my six-gun for another have at them. Sliding down the wall to one knee I peered under the smoke that filled the room. I saw some boots, stabbed two shots about four feet above them, and saw a man fall.

  I crawled toward the door and managed to push it open and get outside. Nobody needed to tell me I was hard hit, and nobody needed to tell me I’d done a damn fool thing to ride into the enemy camp and go to blasting.

  My horse was yonder, and I crawled for him. A door opened in the side of the hotel, then closed easy like. I hitched myself down the steps into the street and using the hitch rail, pulled myself to my feet.

  I was backing across the street, gun in hand, when Jake Flanner stepped around the corner of the hotel on those crutches of his. He had a six-shooter in one hand, and he kind of eased his weight on the other crutch and lifted the gun. At the same moment I saw Brewer come out of the saloon door. He had a rifle in his hands and he was maneuvering himself into position for the kill.

  My gun came up. I took a step back and my boot came down on a rock that rolled under it. Weak as I was, it was all that was needed. The stone rolled, I staggered and fell just as two guns went off, followed quickly by a third.

  That last had a different sound. It was a sharper spang, not the dull report of the forty-four. I saw Brewer stagger and go down, then crawl around the corner and out of sight.

  Flanner was gone. An instant ago he was there and then he was gone.

  I started to get up and felt a hand under my arm. “Easy now!” The voice was strange, but my eyes were fogging over and when I started to look around he said, “You’ll have to walk. I can’t carry you and shoot. Let’s go.”

  Somewhere along in the next few minutes I felt myself getting into a saddle, and I felt the movement of a horse because every time he set a hoof down it hurt like hell.

  There was a fire burning. I liked the pinewood smell. It was night and there was a roundup of stars right overhead. I could see them through the branches of a tree. My head ached and I didn’t feel like moving, so for a long time I just lay there looking up at the stars.

  After a while I must have passed out again because when my eyes opened the sky was gray and there was only one star left on the range of the sky. For a time I lay there looking at it and then my eyes located the fire. It was down to coals and gray ash, and over beyond it I could hear that wonderful sound of horses munching grass.

  Nothing moved so I just lay there, not even wondering what had happened to me or where I was. Then I smelled something else and my eyes located it, a blackened coffeepot on the coals.

  I wanted coffee. I wanted it bad but I wasn’t so sure I could get to it or what I’d drink it out of. For a while I lay there, listening to the wind in the pines, and finally it began to come over me that I’d been shot … I’d been hit at least once, probably twice or more. Somehow I’d gotten out of town. Vaguely, I recalled a gentle voice and a hand on my arm. I recalled riding, and a hand on me much of the time. Finally I’d been tied into the saddle … but where was I now?

  When I made a try at moving my right arm I found it was tied up somehow. My left was free.

  Reaching out, my hand encountered something … my pistol! Well, I’d been left a gun, anyway. I could see the horses now, right yonder beyond a few scattered aspen. They were picketed and eating grass. Turning my head I saw somebody sleeping off on my left. His head was on a saddle, and he was bundled up in blankets with part of a ground sheet over him … but it was no type of ground sheet I’d ever known.

  My right arm was hurt. Rolling to my left side a little I pushed into a sitting position. The horses looked over at me. There were two horses, one of them my roan.

  Some gear was stacked on the grass near us, and two packsaddles. So this gent was a drifter. His gear looked a whole lot better than any drifter I’d ever come across, and he hadn’t much in the way of spurs on his boots … and they weren’t western boots.

  When I started to twist a little I got a shot of pain through me that made me gasp, and when I gasped this sleeping man came awake sudden-like.

  He was a tall man, not more than thirty, and handsome. He was one of the best dispositioned men I ever met, and he dressed neat. His outfit was all of the best, and while I couldn’t make out his rifle, it was a handsome weapon.

  He sat up and looked over at me. “Don’t try moving,” he said, “you’ll start bleeding again. I had a hard time getting it stopped.”

  “Where’d you come from?”

  He chuckled dryly. “What does it matter? I came at the right time, didn’t I?” He shot me a look. “What happened in there, anyway?”

  “We had us a fight They were pushing us hard so I decided to push back. I done it”

  “Did you get any of them?”

  “I got two inside. I thought I got another outside, or somebody did.”

  “That was me. I took a shot at the man with the crutches but missed. Probably it was just as well. I’d hate to shoot a crippled man.”

  “Just because a man’s got game legs doesn’t say he’s got a good disposition. That was the worst of the lot. That was Jake
Flanner.”

  “What was the fight about?”

  “Ranch out yonder,” I said, “called the Empty .. for MT. There’s an old lady runnin’ it … salt of the earth … named Emily Talon. Those back in Siwash were tryin’ to run her out, and I got myself into the fight … I don’t exactly know how. They hit us, tried to burn us out, and we saved the ranch, then whipped them in a fight at the house. But they’d be coming again and I got sore, them pushing an old lady that way … so I rode into town.”

  “Alone?”

  “Why not? There wasn’t all that many of them. And I couldn’t take from them the only hand they’ve got.”

  “You look familiar.”

  “There’s a few posters around. My name is Sackett. Logan Sackett”

  “Hello, cousin. I am Barnabas Talon. Em is my mother.”

  Lying back on my blankets, I looked him over. He had the look, all right He reminded me of Em, and a little more of Milo. “Heard you were in England.”

  “I came back. We’d received word a few years ago that ma was dead and buried. We were notified of it, and that the estate had been settled. There seemed no reason to return, so I kept on with what I was doing.

  “A few months ago I was talking about Colorado with some English friends, and they commented on seeing the house, our house, and they had heard about an old woman who lived there alone.

  “At first I thought it was nonsense, but it worried me, so I caught a ship and came over. In New Orleans I went to an old man who had been pa’s attorney, and he told me there had been no settlement of the estate and that he had a letter from ma not two months before. So I started home.”

  He filled a cup with coffee and handed it to me. “My father taught me caution. I had been formally notified that the estate had been settled and ma was dead. Obviously someone had done so for a reason. Apparently the reason was to cause me to forget Colorado and whatever property we had there.