Ride the Dark Trail (1972)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 18

  For a while I just poked sticks into the blaze and tried to get some coals, then I put some coffee into the cup again and when it was brewed, I drank it down. Just having something hot inside me felt good.

  By now most of them must have figured me for dead. I guessed I had been holed up a couple of days and nights, although it could be longer. I had to get out of this place. I had to get out in the sunlight and the air, and I had to get myself some grub. Without a horse I was going to play hob gettin’ anywhere, but I could surely try. If I was to die I wanted to be out in the fresh sunlight and under the trees.

  It taken some time, but I rolled my blankets, taken up my guns, and crawled for the opening, dragging my gear along.

  When I first got into the air everything looked wrong-side to. It was morning time and I had been sure it was afternoon. Somewhere I’d lost some time … a day was it, or two days? By the way my stomach felt it might have been a week.

  I studied the trail that I crawled along and I found no tracks. It had rained since I’d come in, but that wasn’t surprising as in the high-up mountains it can rain every afternoon and often enough does just that. Whatever tracks there might have been were washed out, and I found the same thing on the regular trail when I got to it - that trail Em had followed showed nothing at all of her mule, those who chased her, or me.

  Using the low limbs of a tree I pulled myself up, favoring myself not to open my wounds, and I hitched along the trail, making no effort to hurry. I just wanted to move along. Where I was headed I surely had no idea, only I was going to come down off the mountain to where I could get some better grub.

  I taken rest a-plenty, but by the time an hour was passed I’d made more’n a half mile. The river was off to my left, and a mite of a stream was flowing in from the right to join it. I stopped, laying flat out on the grass, and drunk my fill. Then I hobbled on again.

  Once, afar off, I seen a deer. And a couple of times grouse flew up, or some bird resembling them. Marmots, of course, were there wherever I came up to a rock pile of some sort. After a while I just couldn’t make it any farther and I moved back into the trees and found a place at the edge of a small clearing where I could stretch out in the sun. When I’d rested there awhile, I started on, keeping off the trail and taking time a-plenty. Little by little I worked my way along the mountainside toward the higher meadows back of the ranch.

  The easiest way had been to follow along the steep side of the canyon and gradually work my way down. I couldn’t travel but a little way without stopping to rest, and nobody was going to see me unless they were looking over into the canyon. Pretty soon the sides grew steeper and I made my way down to the streambed.

  It was lucky I did so because the walls became sheer, white rock cut with many places where water had run off or with deep cracks. At the bottom the stream ran almost bank to bank, but there was an edge of sand or gravel that I could work my way along so that I only had to enter the water occasionally for a few steps.

  There was a lot of driftwood, logs and such, washed down by the flash floods that happen in mountain country. After a ways I commenced to get awful tired but there was no place to set down. Suddenly I came upon a kind of gap in the wall It was half filled with trees and such, but beyond it I could see a patch of green that had to be a meadow.

  Crawling over the brush in the mouth of the canyon I found myself with a meadow stretching away before me, but I had to wade through marsh to get to dry land. Ahead of me were a bunch of grass-grown hummocks that were old beaver ponds, and higher I could see the still water of beaver ponds that likely had beavers in them yet.

  Off to one side there was a grove of aspen, for the beaver never live very far from them. I sat down on a log just inside that aspen grove.

  I was beat. My side ached and there was a weakness on me like I’d never felt before. I needed a camp and place where I could lie down and be safe, but the shape I was in I wasn’t up to looking around. So I just sat there watching the light change. Huge billows of cloud lifted high above the mountains catching the last light. Slowly I began to peel flakes of thin, very dry bark from a long dead aspen; then I moved off the log with an effort and I began putting a little fire together.

  Leaning my rifle against a tree I started cutting evergreen boughs for a bed. The heavy six-shooter on my leg weighted me down, and after a bit I taken it off and hung it on a low branch. Then I went on cutting boughs, rigging me a halfway shelter there in the aspens. Limping back, and nearly played out, I bent over to replenish the fire. I added a few sticks, dropping to one knee to do it. My breath was coming short and my head was dull and heavy. I had started to rise when I heard the footfall on the moss. Just as I started to turn something hit me.

  I started to fall, grabbing for my six-shooter, but it was gone. Through a haze of pain I could see the legs of several horses. I tried to get up.

  “Hit him.” It was Jake Flanner’s voice. “Make a job of it.”

  Something did hit me again, and this time I fell flat out on the leaves and grass. And they hit me again and again, only there was no more pain, just the sodden brutality of the blows. The first blow had stunned me, leaving me only a shell.

  Somebody kicked me in the side and I felt the warm flow of blood where the wound was torn open. My hand reached out but there was nothing to lay hold of, and after a time I passed out.

  It was the rain brought me out of it. A drenching downpour that came down in buckets. The rain brought me to consciousness and to realization of pain, but I did not move. I simply laid there, unable to move, while the rain poured down, soaking me through and through. After a while I passed out again.

  They believed they’d killed me for sure this time. That was my first thought, and it stayed with me. Maybe they were right. Maybe I was already dead. Maybe I was dead and this was hell.

  I was wet, soaked through, but it was no longer night. It was coming up to morning although there was no sun as yet. As I lay there I began to remember other things. They had shot into me as I lay on the ground. I recalled the roar of the guns and remembered a burning stab of pain. There had been at least three shots … funny, how I remembered that.

  If they had done that, how was I even alive? How could I realize anything at all? How could I feel? And I did feel. I felt pain, I felt weariness, I felt like just lying there to be finished with my dying. Trouble was, I was mean. Too many folks wanted me dead for me to go out of my way to please them. I opened my eyes and lay there looking at some sodden green-brown leaves and the wet trunk of a tree.

  No matter what they’d done or tried to do I was still alive. I knew what was happening to me and a man who can feel is a man who can fight. It just wasn’t in me to die there like a dog in the brush without getting some of my own back. Jake Flanner had come after me himself. He’d brought help, but he’d come. And now I was going after him. I’d no idea what happened down there in the valley at the Empty. Nor right at this moment did I care much. I was an animal fighting for life and I tried to roll over to get my hands under me.

  I done it. It wasn’t easy. I couldn’t move at all on one side so I turned over, mighty careful, the other way. I got one hand under me and I pushed up until I could drag a knee up.

  As I got to one knee I realized my shirt was stuck to my side where I’d been shot before. I’d been kicked there, right where my wound was, and it had bled some. All right, so I’d lost blood. I’d lost it before this, and a-plenty. They wasn’t gettin’ no maiden when they tried to bleed me.

  I caught hold of an aspen and pulled myself up. By that time there was light enough for me to see what they’d done to me, and it was a-plenty. My shirt front was stiff with dried blood, and so was the side of it. On my left side I found a fresh bullet hole from front to back. The bullet had gone through a place where my shirt bagged out to one side, going clean through without so much as scratching me. I had a fresh scratch atop my shoulder, and I had bruises all over from the blows and kicks. On my skull I had a fresh cut and a coup
le of lumps.

  Oh, they’d laid it to me proper, only being down like I was, lying on soft ground and grass, some of the shock had been taken from the blows. Most of it I had taken, and so I was sore outside as well as inside.

  If they’d hunted for my guns in the dark they surely hadn’t found them, for there they were - the rifle had fallen from the tree where I’d leaned it and was lying on the wet grass, but the pistol still hung from the stub of a branch where I’d hung it the night before when all weighted down.

  My head was throbbing like a big drum, my stomach was hollow and I was weak, but there was a mad on me like nothing I’d ever felt before. Looking around I saw some broken branches, all seasoned and gray from exposure, and out of one of them and a crosspiece of green aspen I fashioned myself a crutch to spare my wounded leg. Then with my six-gun belted on and my Winchester in my good hand, I started off along that trail those riders had left.

  It was plain to see where they were going. They were riding down on the back of the Empty, and they were going in for a kill. They had a lead on me, but it wasn’t so much. Where they went, I could follow.

  My clothes was torn and I looked a sight, but nobody offered me no beauty prizes at any time, so I kept on. My jaw had a healthy growth of whiskers, caked with mud and blood. My hair likewise. Somewhere back along the way I’d lost my hat, and my bloody shirt was ripped in a couple of places, but I was mean as a cornered razor-back hog and I was hunting blood.

  Here and there at a place where they had to do a switch-back descent, being a-horseback, I just sat down and slid, saving myself some time a-travelin’.

  By noontime I could read their sign enough to see I was closing in. They’d stopped a while to wait for sunup, not knowing the trail or what they faced, so I’d gained a mite. As I edged up to the back meadows I expected to hear gunshots, but I heard nothing at all, and that worried me. I didn’t want them killing Em Talon, and I knowed that was what they had in mind. And if they killed her there must be no witnesses so they’d kill that girl I’d taken there for shelter. And that was my affair, all mine.

  That crutch was sawing into my armpit, making it sore, but I’d no choice. When I slid and crawled down through the rocks near the ranch, I still heard no sound. I could see the horses down in the corral and mine was there. So he’d found his way home, all right. The horse Barnabas rode was there also. He’d gotten into the place alive … or at least his horse had.

  I’d come to that point of rocks up behind the place and to one side. It was a raw-backed ridge, covered with broken slabs of tilted rocks, a lot of brush, and some scattered pines. There were a thousand hiding places or shelters on that ridge and I could look right into the corrals and yard without being seen … I hoped.

  The sunlight lay easy upon the yard. The shadows lay where they ought to lie, and the horses lazed in the corrals. There was no sign of horses that shouldn’t be there.

  I couldn’t make it out.

  By rights Flanner and his men should have arrived and should have attacked the place. Right now there should be a fight … or else Flanner had already taken over. But where were their horses?

  It was almost midafternoon and there should be some sign of life around the place. But still nobody showed. With four people on the place somebody should be moving around.

  I lay quiet in the brush and studied all the cover around. Maybe the Flanner outfit had moved in, opened fire, and now were waiting, just as I was, for somebody to make a move.

  Then I saw something that didn’t figure. On the back steps there was a dark patch where no shadow fell. Water would have evaporated in the time I’d been lying there, at least enough of it so’s I couldn’t see the stain. Water would, but blood wouldn’t

  That there was a blood stain.

  My side was throbbing so I wrinkled my forehead against it, scowling and squinting. My side was stiff and my whole body was sore. I eased myself down among the rocks, taking a look back and up from time to time. A body can’t be too careful, I told myself. Meanwhile I kept my rifle up and ready. Still no move.

  Were they all dead? Every last one of them? It didn’t seem likely. But maybe the men were inside now, abusing Em and the rest. That started me worrying, and I figured I had to get down there. Yet suppose they were deliberately keeping quiet, expecting an arrival?

  Me?

  They’d left me for dead, and if they hadn’t believed me dead they’d not have left me at all.

  Who, then?

  Or was I figurin’ it wrong, all wrong?

  And while I waited somebody down there might be dead or dying, somebody who depended upon me.

  Chapter 16

  The black appaloosa with the splash of white over the right hip had a dainty, dancing step. Even the miles that lay behind had taken none of the spirit from the gelding and he tossed his head at the restraint of the bit, eager to be off and running.

  The rider sat erect, holding the reins easy in his hand, a dark and handsome young man whose what-the-hell sort of smile was in odd contrast to the coolness of his eyes.

  There had been changes made. Siwash had grown a little, as he could see even from a distance, and despite his seeming ease he rode with cautious eyes on the country. It was unlikely he would be remembered by many … quite a few years had passed.

  How had Logan Sackett ever gotten into this country? He was a drifter, of course, and his kind might light anywhere. It was odd, now that he thought of it, that he and Logan, who had been friends, might also be kin. He always thought of ma as Em or Mrs. Talon. Somehow he had forgotten she was also a Sackett.

  The word had been to avoid Siwash and come right to the ranch, but if trouble lay in Siwash he’d be damned if he’d ride around it.

  He stopped in a hollow where the trail passed through an arroyo, and dismounting, brushed off his clothes with care. He combed his hair by running his fingers through it, whipped the dust from his hat, then stepped back into the saddle and rode into Siwash.

  Several people saw him ride into Siwash, and one of them was Dolores Arribas. Another was Con Wellington.

  Dolores looked once and knew him; Con looked, then looked again. Con swore softly to himself. Logan Sackett and now Milo Talon. Things were looking up around town and he might soon be back in business. One of them - even if Logan was dead, as they believed - would be bad enough, but there was that slim young fellow with the rifle who pulled Sackett out of the soup, and now this one.

  Jake Flanner should have left the Empty alone.

  Johannes Duckett saw Milo Talon ride in, ride past his livery stable, and tie his horse at the hitch rail. Duckett looked long at that horse. No cowhand could afford a horse like that. Even in this country where there were many horses, such a horse could not be had for love or money.

  The rider stepped down and went into the saloon, opening the door with his left hand. Johannes, who knew most of the riders along the outlaw trail at least by name, furrowed his brow with thought. Who was this man? And why was he here? Any outsider might be somebody Jake had sent for, like he had sent for others. The fact that he had gone right to the saloon without putting up his horse might be an indication. Yet it might be otherwise, and Johannes Duckett took up his rifle and walked across the street to the saloon. He entered and went to the bar, keeping the stranger on his left. In his right hand he held his rifle. Johannes Duckett had big, strong hands and he could handle a rifle as easily as a pistol, and often had.

  Milo Talon walked right to the bar. “Rye,” he said gently, “an honest rye, from the good bottle.”

  The bartender glanced at him and switched from one bottle to the other under the bar. “Yes, sir,” he said. “The good rye. Ain’t no better drink,” he added.

  He waited a minute, let Milo Talon taste his drink, and then said, “Travelin’?”

  “Passin’ through,” Milo said politely. “Ridin’ down to Brown’s Hole.”

  “Know the place.” The bartender was thoughtful. “Late in the season for much ridin’
down thataway. The boys will be pullin’ their freight or settlin’ down for the winter.”

  “Maybe I’ll do the same,” Milo said. He downed the rye, then pointed with his middle finger to a table. “Whatever you have to eat, set it up for me over there … the best you have.”

  “Yes, sir.” The bartender looked at him, hesitated, and glanced at the bar. He had seen no money. “These times, when I don’t know a man the boss expects cash on the barrel head.”

  “And rightly so.” Milo pointed again with his middle finger. “Over there, and I’m right hungry.”

  He went outside the door where there was a barrel of water, a wash basin, and soap and towel and washed his hands. When he came in again the bartender was putting food on the table.

  Milo sat down, glanced briefly at the long, quiet man at the bar and at the rifle he carried. The man had not ordered a drink. He just stood there, seemingly looking at nothing.

  The door opened and two dusty riders walked in and to the bar. “The boss wants you to fix him a hamper of grub. Make it for two days.”

  “All right.” The bartender glanced at Milo, who was eating quietly, showing no interest in the proceedings.

  Milo glanced up. “Better make it a week’s supply,” he said gently. “When a man’s travelin’ an’ used to good grub he’ll miss it. And he’s got a long way to go.”

  There was a momentary pause, then all eyes turned toward Milo, who continued to eat.

  “What’s that?” Chowse Dillon turned around. “Who put a nickel in you?”

  Milo Talon smiled. “Free advice, offered freely. When a man starts on a long trip he’d better go provided for it. I’ve always heard that Jake Flanner liked the good things of life. Pack that hamper, bartender, and pack a little grub for those boys, too.”

  “You tryin’ to be funny?”

  Milo smiled again. “Of course not, but on a long trip - “

  “Nobody said anything about a long trip!” Dillon said irritably.

  “Oh, yes, they did. You weren’t listening. I mentioned a long trip.” Milo finished his coffee and put the cup down gently. “Free advice, freely given. Travel is broadening, gentlemen, and my advice is for you, Mister Flanner, and all concerned to broaden themselves considerably, starting as soon as possible.”