Ride the Dark Trail (1972)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 18

  They did not know what to make of him. Dillon felt he should be angry but the stranger’s manner was mild and he did not seem in the least offensive. Yet there was something in his manner … and the fact that he was obviously a seasoned rider.

  “I don’t know what you’re gettin’ at,” Dillon said. “You’re talkin’ a lot but you ain’t sayin’ much.”

  “Then I shall put it more directly.” Milo spoke quietly. “You’ve been stirring up trouble with the Empty, and we don’t like it. So the fun’s over, and all you boys who depend on Mister Flanner for a living had better rattle your hocks out of here.”

  There was a moment of silence. Duckett looked into his glass and said nothing; Dillon was taken aback by the calmness of this stranger, and worried by it. A lot had been happening that he did not like. First there was that other stranger who had pulled in to bail Logan Sackett out of his trouble, and now this man. How many more would there be? When Jake Flanner hired him he had promised it would be an easy job … no trouble at all, nobody but an old lady.

  Dillon turned to Milo. “You’re takin’ in a lot of territory, mister. Just who might you be?”

  “Milo Talon. Em’s my ma, and you boys been makin’ trouble for her.”

  Chowse Dillon was worried. He was no gunfighter, although he’d had a hand in a half dozen shootings, and he had pushed his weight around here and there, mostly against nesters. But there was something about this he did not like at all.

  “There’s only one of you,” Chowse said, trying for a bluff. “You’re buckin’ a stacked deck.”

  “Stacked decks don’t always turn up the cards a body would expect,” Talon said mildly, “especially when I’ve got all the aces. I didn’t come in here to lose anything, and if you’ll recall, I opened the game. Of course,” he straightened from the bar, “if you boys want to see what I’m holding you’ll have to ante up, and the chips are bullets … forty-fives, to be exact.

  “I’m betting,” he said easily, “that I can deal them just a mite faster than you boys can, and without braggin’, boys, I can say I ain’t missed anything this close since who flunk the chunk.”

  The bartender was in the line of fire and the bartender had no stake in the game. He worked for Flanner, who paid him well and on time, but a corpse spends no wages. He cleared his throat “Chowse,” he said, “Milo Talon ain’t lyin’. What you do is your own affair, but this man is hell on wheels with a pistol. I’ve heard of him.”

  Chowse had made up his mind not to push. There were other times, and he could afford to wait. This might be a job for Johannes Duckett, and not for him or the others. Duckett could do it, and he would tell him as much.

  There was a coolness about the features of Milo Talon that Chowse did not care for, a coolness somehow belied by the recklessness of his eyes. Chowse Dillon was a stubborn man but he was not an overly brave one. He was dangerous enough when the advantage was his or when backed into a corner, but he had not survived this long without some knowledge of men, and if he read Milo Talon right he was not only a man who would be quick to shoot, but one who would look right into a man’s eyes, laugh at him, and shoot him dead.

  “I am not goin’ to call you,” Dillon said. “That’s Flanner’s affair, if he wants it. If he sends me against you, I’ll come, but nothing was said about you.”

  “He didn’t know about me,” Milo replied. “Jake Flanner made his bets without having any idea what Em was holding.” He chuckled. “Why, ma could whip the lot of you, guns or any other way. You boys just be glad she had that place to watch over and hadn’t a free hand to come after you. When I was knee high to a short sheep I saw ma send a bunch of Kiowas packin’ … and they carried their dead with them.”

  He stood back from the bar. “Sorry I can’t wait to meet Flanner right now, but I’ll be back.” He paused. “Any of you boys seen Logan Sackett?”

  “He’s dead.” Dillon said it with satisfaction. “Killed right out there in the street. He done tried to take the whole town by himself. And he’s dead.”

  “Where’s he buried?”

  Dillon’s smile faded. “Some other gent who came along helped him off to the hills, but he had lead enough in him to sink a battleship. Come to think of it, that other gent favored you, only he wore store-bought clothes, like a tenderfoot.”

  “He was no tenderfoot,” Milo replied as he backed toward the door. “That was my brother, Barnabas. I’ve seen him cut the earlobes from a man at two hundred yards with a Winchester.”

  He smiled again. “Well, well! Barney is back! Looks to me like you boys bought trouble wholesale! My advice was good,” he added from the door, “travel is downright healthy. You boys pull your freight or we’ll be back into town to hang everyone among you who isn’t killed by bullets.”

  And then he added, “And don’t you count no Sackett dead until you’ve thrown the dirt on him. I’ve seen Logan so ballasted with lead you’d never believe a man could carry it and live. But he’s alive, which is more than I can say for those who shot him up.”

  He stepped into the saddle, eyed the door, then gave a quick glance up and down the street. Con Wellington was standing up the street, watching. Con lifted a hand, and Milo waved in return, then rode swiftly from town.

  Milo Talon was no fool. He knew what Flanner was attempting, knew also some of the hatred that welled up within the man, and knew he would not easily call it quits. And sheer numbers were always an advantage. He could afford to lose men and still send more into the fight … men of that stamp were not hard to find, and there were always renegade Indians.

  If Logan Sackett was hurt and holed up in the hills, he must find him. Despite his claims to the contrary ma could not have held out alone for long. It was Logan who had saved her and saved the ranch as well.

  The road to the ranch had changed little. Longingly, he waited for his first glimpse of the old house, and when it came he sighed deeply, excited to see it, to find it still standing. He had heard his mother was dead and the land scattered among many owners, but now he knew that story must have been started by Flanner himself in an attempt to keep them away by offering no reason to come back.

  Johannes Duckett had stood very quietly at the bar, his beer resting on the polished surface, scarcely tasted. He had listened to Milo Talon, keeping his eyes averted after that first glance. When Milo backed to the door and went out he made no attempt to follow, for be was thinking back to his first days with Jake Flanner.

  Flanner had not hired Duckett, merely suggested they ride on together, and Duckett, essentially a lonely man, had done so. Flanner was a talker, an easy, gracious talker who won most of his battles with his smooth tongue. Somehow Flanner always had money, and Duckett, who had more often than not lived from hand to mouth, had found it easier to just ride along with Flanner. Soon Flanner was suggesting things he might do, and Duckett had done them. Occasionally Flanner had said, “Here, you must be short of cash,” and then had handed him a twenty, a half dozen twenties, or whatever. Johannes Duckett found himself living better than he had ever lived, and found himself with more ready cash than ever before.

  Flanner had not noticed, although he would not have cared, that Johannes Duckett had few needs, but he would have been surprised at the quiet little hoard Duckett had accumulated. A man with few or no wants and a fairly steady flow of cash can gather together a nice sum, and Johannes Duckett accumulated several thousand dollars of which nobody was aware. Neither did they know where Duckett kept it hidden.

  Duckett was a lean, quiet man whom some of the hands around Siwash did not consider overly smart. Others who knew him better did believe him smart, but the fact was that the thoughts of Johannes Duckett moved narrowly in only a few deeply grooved channels. He had no particular feelings about good and evil, but he had his own odd compulsions and beliefs. No amount of money or argument could have brought him to kill a child, yet he would have killed a woman without the slightest hesitation, and he had killed several. He had no moral or religi
ous feelings about this, nor could he have explained why he did any of the things he did. He simply had no more scruples about killing a human being than about shooting a snake or a coyote.

  He had no loyalty for Jake Flanner, although Flanner believed Duckett followed him from nothing but loyalty. Jake had provided a kind of traveling companion that Duckett liked. He liked Flanner’s smooth-talking ways and he liked that Flanner made his life easier. Also, Duckett had decided that Jake Flanner was shrewd … he was a winner. And Johannes wanted to be associated with a winner.

  Now for the first time he had doubts.

  The doubts began when he looked at the great house on the MT. To him it was awesome, astonishing. It seemed impregnable. Emily Talon had seemed the same. In the time before the shooting started he had seen her on the trail or in Siwash and there was something about the gaunt old woman that shook him. When she looked at him he averted his eyes, and had she reason for scolding him he would have stood quietly and accepted it.

  Yet he was not one to argue. Had Flanner been less full of his own plans he would have seen that Johannes Duckett was hesitant. Yet the battle had begun, and the time drew on with no decision in view. From time to time Duckett heard gossip around the town about Milo Talon and his brother. A vague feeling of unease worked itself into those deeply channeled furrows within his brain, and for the first tune he grew restless.

  “Ever been to the western slope?” he asked Flanner once.

  “What? No … I never have been.” Flanner was irritated. “What brought that up?”

  “It’s a good country, so they say. There’s a place named Animas City. Down in a big park around the Animas River.”

  “We’ve got enough to do right here,” Flanner replied. “Why ride away from a sure thing?”

  “Is it?”

  Jake Flanner was startled. He had become so accustomed to Duckett’s ready acceptance of any of his ideas that the comment startled him. “Of course, it is. Once that old woman is out of there we’ve got the finest setup ever. We’ll just move in, and - “

  “There’s more of them now. There’s that girl, and there’s Logan Sackett, and now there’s that one with the rifle who helped Logan, and some of the boys say there’s another man out there.”

  “Look, Duck, I wouldn’t be in this if I didn’t know we can win and win big. When the time comes that girl will just go off by herself or one of the boys will take her. And Logan Sackett’s dead. No man can soak up the lead he caught without dying. Why, he must have been hit seven or eight times, and as for that other one, I think he caught some lead, too.”

  “You want to kill that old lady because she busted your knees.”

  Flanner’s face grew red with anger. He stared at Duckett. “All right,” he said softly, “I do … and I will. But that’s beside the case. It is the place we want.”

  Duckett listened but his thoughts were on this other man … Milo Talon. Duckett talked little but he listened a lot, and he knew more about Milo Talon than any other person in Siwash. He knew, for example, that Milo was a lone wolf, that he was amazingly swift and accurate, and that even men known as dangerous avoided him.

  The odds were piling up. From now on every shot fired would increase the risk, as there were more people to fire back. Johannes Duckett’s thinking was simple. He knew that two and two made four. He also knew that where there had been one old woman on the place in the beginning, although even then some suspected there were more, there were now two women and probably four men, for he had not for a moment accepted Logan Sackett’s death. Hurt, maybe, but not dead. Johannes Duckett counted the dead when he saw the bodies.

  The odds had risen, and who was to say they would not continue to rise? Sackett was one of the feudal clans from Tennessee … who was to say the others might not ride in?

  For the first time Duckett doubted the sagacity of Jake Flanner. For the first time he began to think of that money he had put away. He had enough to live as he lived for a year, perhaps two … and two years was an almost immeasurable distance in the day-to-day living of Johannes Duckett.

  “I’m going to ride,” he told himself.

  Once formulated, the idea established itself in its own groove and began to develop.

  Jake Flanner would have been surprised to discover that to Johannes Duckett he, Jake Flanner, meant no more than a horse Duckett might have ridden for a time. He had been a convenience over the last few years, but no more than that.

  Flanner believed Duckett to be loyal to the death. Duckett considered Flanner a source of income … and now that source of income was endangered.

  And, of course, there was the western slope of the Rockies.

  Chapter 17

  My mouth was dry and my head was hot - the trip down the mountain had taken a lot out of me. I crouched there among the rocks and brush and studied the layout below. I still couldn’t make it out.

  That spot on the back step was blood, sure as shootin’. Somebody had caught one there, and I was praying it wasn’t the old woman or Pennywell. Search as I might I couldn’t find anybody hid out, but they’d be hard to find until they moved … if they were there.

  I’d lost a lot of blood and from the way I felt I knew I was worse off than I’d thought A couple of times there my eyes kind of glazed over until I couldn’t see except through a mist. Leaning over I rested my arm on a boulder and my head on my arm. My breathing was hoarse and rasping and I was sick.

  Nothing moved down below, and I must have passed out there for a few minutes. When I came out of it I was still there, my head resting on that rock, but I felt like I was dying. That made me mad.

  Die? With that old lady in trouble? With that girl I’d brought to the house in danger because of me? With my friend’s ma down there, maybe about to get killed? And yes, I’ll sure be honest with myself - a whole lot of the reason I was mad and surely determined to live was Jake Flanner. I could hear his voice again, tellin’ them to do me in. All right, Jake, I said to myself. You want Logan Sackett dead. You want him dead but you’re going to have to go all the way to make it happen.

  So I forced my head up and slid down to a better way of sittin’; through that brush, I watched the house. Below me I could see a sort of slide through the rocks. It was too steep to walk down, but a man lyin’ flat on his back could maybe drop down fifteen or twenty feet lower, if he was careful.

  Easing myself around, I got my legs stretched out. With a rifle in one hand and the crutch in the other I moved myself between two bushes and under the edge of a boulder and slid, using the crutch and rifle to keep me from going too fast. As it was I stopped with a hard jolt against a slab of rock and, worst of all, I’d made some dust

  Now I was closer down. I checked my guns to be sure I had them loaded, then I felt of my cartridge belt and didn’t like what I found. I had eleven cartridges left for my pistol, and in my pockets I had a couple more rounds for the rifle. This here was not going to be any long fight.

  Fogged though my thinkin’ was, the more I studied that layout, the more sure I was that there was somebody inside who shouldn’t be, that ma and them were dead or prisoners. Surely somebody would have come out that door otherwise.

  Or else there was somebody on the hill behind me.

  Now that was a thought. Maybe somebody back yonder had me right in their sights. Turning my head, I peered back up the mountain, but if they were right above me they couldn’t see me at all. Suddenly I saw something I couldn’t have seen from where I’d been until I slid.

  There was a man’s body - alive or dead there was no way of knowing - sprawled in front of the bunkhouse. I couldn’t see it well but it surely looked like Al Fulbric. Regardless of who it was, there’d obviously been a fight. If that was Al, and I was sure it was, then somebody would have come for him.

  The day had drawn on, and the sun was warm on my shoulders, but I wasn’t feeling much but the warmth and the sickness that was in me. The house and the corrals down there seemed to waver, like there was
heat waves between us. From time to time I ran my hands over the rifle. It was reality, it was something tangible, something I knew. Squinting my eyes I peered down there. Somebody had to come down, somebody had to come out of the house. Then I’d know.

  Suddenly my eyes caught movement, something out there on the road. Turning my head stiffly I peered, scowling, trying to see through the delirium that was in me.

  It was a horse. It was a black appaloosa.

  Only one man sat a horse like that, only one horse I’d ever seen looked like that. Far enough off so’s I could just make him out, Milo Talon was riding up to a trap. Riding to his death from the guns that waited inside. Somehow he had to be warned, somehow he had to be told. I had no idea who was inside or how many there were, but I was sure there were too many. There’d been eight men including Flanner in the group that jumped me. Eight men in there with guns, just waiting for Milo or me.

  If I fired a shot the chances were I’d never get off that slope alive. The only reason I’d made it so far was that they didn’t know I was there, and if I moved they’d nail me instantly. But I knew I was surely going to do it because Milo was my friend and I wasn’t about to see him shot down as he rode up, unsuspecting.

  Unsuspecting? Well, maybe not. Milo never rode anywhere without being alert. He was like me, like a wild animal. He was always ready to cut and run or to fight.

  He was only some three hundred yards off now, and you could bet they had him in their sights. My rifle tilted and I fired into the air. He slapped spurs to his horse, went down on the far side, and left there with bullets kicking all around him. And me, I went down off that mountain.

  Nobody needed to tell me that I was walking into hell, nobody needed one word to tell me that ridge where I’d been holed up was going to be split wide open with rifle fire. If I died it was going to be gun in hand, boots on and walking, so I half ran, half slid off that hill, coming down like a madman.