The Sacket Brand (1965) s-12

by Louis L'Amour

  Only a few lights remained, the lights of folks I did not know.

  How many such towns had I been in? A lone-riding man is a stranger wherever he goes, and so it had been for me until I met Ange, and so it was again.

  There was a bit of a gully where run-off water had cut into the ground, and three times I'd taken care to step over it; but now, so filled I was by my own sorrow, I forgot it. Starting back toward the town I stepped off quickly, put a foot into that ditch, and fell flat on my face ... and it saved my life.

  When I hit the ground there was the roar of a shot in my ears, and then silence. Me, I just never moved. I lay there quiet, waiting and listening.

  Whoever had shot at me must have figured I was a dead duck, because he just let me lay. After several minutes had passed and I heard no further sound, I eased myself past the corner of the corral and crouched there, waiting. If anybody was going to risk a first move, it was not going to be me.

  After some more time I began to feel sure that my unseen attacker had slipped away quietly and was no longer around. But that was a risk I was not prepared to chance. I backed up and got into some brush at the edge of town and circled wide around until I got back to the saloon. No other place in town had a light.

  I pushed open the door and stepped in. There were three men inside.

  The bartender looked up at me, and then his eyes sort of slipped over to the man at the end of the bar. Not that I mean that bartender was telling me anything, just that he naturally looked toward that man --probably because that man had come in last.

  He was a tall man, but on the slender side, with a narrow, tough face.

  Walking up to the bar, I held my Winchester in my right hand, and put my left on the bar.

  "I'll have rye," I said, and then under cover of the bar, I tilted my rifle muzzle past the corner of the bar and within inches of the tall man's heart. And I held it there.

  Nobody could see what my gun hand was doing, but when I took up my drink I looked over at this gent and said, "Somebody took a shot at me out by the corral."

  Now, I didn't make a thing of it, I just said it mildly, looking at him. But there was another thing I'd noticed. That man had mud on his boot heels, and the only mud I knew of was alongside the corral where the water trough stood.

  He looked right at me. "Wasn't me," he said, "or I'd have killed you."

  "I think it was you," I said. "You've got mud on your heels."

  His fingers had been resting on the edge of the bar and when his hand dropped for his gun, I squeezed the trigger on my rifle.

  That .44 slug knocked him back and turned him half around. I jacked another shell into the chamber and stepped around after him.

  He was still standing, but he sort of backed up, going to the wall, and I cat-footed it after him.

  "Were you one of them that killed my wife?"

  He stared at me, looking genuinely puzzled.

  "Wife? Hell, no. I ... I ... you tried to kill the boss. Back in the ...

  Mogollons." His ^ws came slowly, and his eyes were glazing.

  "He lied to you. You're dying for nothing. Who is your boss?"

  He just looked at me, but he never answered, nor tried to answer.

  When I faced around to the others, the bartender had both hands resting on the bar in plain sight, and the others the same.

  "You took advantage," one of them said.

  "Mister," I replied, "my wife was murdered. She was strangled trying to defend herself. My wagon was burned, my mules killed, and forty men spent a week or more combing the mountains to kill me. One of them shot me in the back of the head. I'll play this the way they started it. Wherever they are, whoever they are, they got to kill me, light out of the country, or they'll die--wherever and whenever I find them."

  The man gave me a cynical look.

  "I've heard talkers before."

  "Mister, the last feud my family taken part in lasted seventy years. The last Higgins died with his gun in his hand, but he died."

  Nobody said anything, so I asked, "Who did he work for?"

  They just looked at me. My troubles were my own, and they wanted no part of them, nor could I lay blame to them for it. They were family men and townies, and I had come in out of wild country, and was a stranger to them.

  "You might take a look at his horse," the bartender said. "There's likely to be only two at the hitch rail, yours and his."

  There had been another horse at the rail when I tied mine, so I turned to the door and started through. A rifle bullet smashed splinters from the door jamb within inches of my face, and I threw myself out and down, rolling swiftly into the shadows with a second bullet furrowing the boardwalk right at my side.

  In the darkness I rolled back and up to one knee, and I settled myself for a good shot. But nothing happened, nor was there any movement out in the darkness. Two frame buildings and a tent with a floor were just across the street from me; there was also a lot of brush close by, and another corral.

  I stayed still for several minutes, and then I suddenly thought of that other horse. I went to look, but he was gone.

  The horse had been taken away before I came out to the street, but after I had killed the rider in the saloon. And then somebody had waited for me, shooting from the darkness across the street.

  Back inside the saloon, the two townsmen were gone ... through the back door, no doubt. The bartender was wiping off the bar, taking a lot of time at it.

  A pot of coffee stood on the stove and a rack of cups was behind the bar. I picked up a cup, and filled it from the pot on the stove. The place I selected to stand was out of line of any doors and windows.

  "I got to do some contemplating about you," I said to the bartender.

  He straightened up and gave me a slow, careful look. "About me?"

  "You mentioned that horse in the corral. When I stepped to the door I nearly got myself killed."

  "If you think I'd set you up--" he began.

  "I do think you might if you had reason enough.

  Now I got to decide what stake you have in this."

  He came across to me. "Mister, my name is Bob O'Leary, and I've tended bar from Dodge to Deadwood, from Tombstone to San Antone. You ask anybody, and they'll tell you I'm a man of my ^w. I've done a few things here and there, and I ain't sayin' what they might be, but I never murdered no woman, nor had anything to do with those that would. Like I told you, you find your man, or men, and I'll lend a hand with the rope ... no matter who they be."

  "All right, Mr. Bob O'Leary, for the time being I'll take your ^w for it. All I'll say is your timing was right."

  "Nobody needs timing for you, Sackett. You give it some thought, and you'll see your number is up. You stand to be somebody's favorite target.

  "Put yourself in his place. Suppose somebody who can command a lot of men did murder your wife.

  What's he doin' now? I'll tell you. He's scared ... he's scared to death. He's not only scared of you, he's scared of what his own men will believe.

  "He's told them a story. He's told them, judging by what that puncher said this evening, that you tried to kill him. They accepted that story. They are all trying to kill you, and you'll have to admit it's more exciting than punching cows.

  "Only now you're talking. You're telling a different story, and he's got to shut you up fast.

  "Look at it this way," he went on. "That man is riding through the rough country alone. He sees your wife waiting in that wagon. She's a young, pretty woman. Maybe he hasn't seen any kind of a woman in weeks ... maybe months. He talks to her, he makes advances and she turns him down. He gets too brassy about it and they start to fight. Upshot is, he kills her. Chances are he had no mind to do such a thing when it all started, but now where is he?

  "Mr. Sackett, you got you a scared man. He knows how western folks feel about women. He knows some of his own men would pull on the rope if they knew what he had done. He's sweating with being scared, so he dumps your wagon off a cliff into a place
where he doesn't think it will ever be found.

  "He's all scratched up, so he calls in some of his hands and tells them you tried to kill him, and he wants you dead. He probably offers a good price, but he wouldn't need to, for riders are loyal--they ride for the brand."

  Well, I was listening to all he said. This O'Leary seemed to have it pegged right.

  Now he was saying, "He hurries back, he wipes out all the tracks, he goes down and sets fire to your outfit, making sure the wind will take the smoke away from the hunting party. He not only has to wipe out any trace of your outfit, he has to be able to convince anybody that you were just a drifter."

  He refilled my cup. "Sackett, let me tell you something. I don't know who he rides for, but I know this Dancer. He used to come up the trail to Dodge, and he's square.

  He's a tough man, but he's one to ride the river with."

  O'Leary stood there, holding the coffeepot.

  All the lights in the room were out but one. There was a lamp burning with a reflector behind it, just back of the bar. The light threw dark shadows into the hollows of O'Leary's cheeks.

  "I'll tell you something else. He's got Sonora Macon, who is as fast with a gun as any of them, and he's got Also Zabrisky and Rafe Romero ... and any one of them would just as soon kill you as not, no matter who you are or what you've done or not done."

  I got up and taken my rifle from the table beside me. O'Leary, he went over to the light, cupped one hand at the top of the globe, and then blew into it. The light went out, and the room was in darkness.

  "All right, Sackett," he said, "you can go when you are ready."

  At the door I stopped. "Thanks," I said, and then I asked, "You don't think I've got a chance, do you?"

  "I was always a sucker for lost causes,"

  O'Leary said. "But no--ffbe honest, I don't think you've got a Chinaman's chance ... not with all that outfit against you."

  The wind was making up, and dust skittered down the street. It was long past midnight, and the town was dark and silent. When I stepped to the saddle, my horse turned willingly away.

  There was no sound but the clop-clop of my horse's hoofs as I rode past the last building and away from town toward the mountains.

  Avoiding the trails, I took to the mountain slopes and rode away up under the trees. When I was a few miles out, I unsaddled, picketed my horse, and pulled off my boots.

  Sitting there on my blanket, I rubbed my tired feet and wondered how a man's life could get him into such a spot.

  Three weeks back I had me a lovely wife, a brand-new outfit, and I was driving west to settle. Now I had nothing, and was a hunted man.

  With my head against my saddle, I leaned back and looked up at the stars I could make out through the pine tops. Right then I found myself wishing I wasn't alone. I kept thinking back to Tyrel and Orrin, wishing for them to be here with me. With those two brothers to side me, I'd tackle hell with a bucket of water.

  Sometime about there I dozed off, and in my dreams I was wandering the Tennessee hills again, just as when a boy I had gone picking pods from the honey-locust trees for the making of metheglin, or hunting the wild hogs that ran free along the ridges. In my dreams, there was Ma in her old rocker, a-watching us boys as we worked in the fields, thinking of Pa, she probably was, who had gone off to the westward many a year before.

  Gone with the mountain men, with Carson, Bridger, Joe Meek, Isaac Rose, and John Coulter.

  The long riding had taken it out of me and left my bones with an ache and my muscles sagging with weariness. I was so tired that I slept sound ... and then a boot toe took me in the ribs and I was awake, and knew I had awakened too late.

  When I looked up, I looked into the blackness of three rifle muzzles, aimed at my head. Three hard men stood over me, no mercy in their eyes.

  Chapter seven.

  Oh, they had me all right! Dead to rights, and not a chance to fight back, for even if I could knock one rifle aside, the others would kill me for sure. Yet there was no give in me, for I'd nothing left to lose.

  So I lay there without moving or giving them excuse to shoot, and then when I did move it was to lift my hands slowly and clasp them behind my head.

  "Cigar in my vest pocket. I'd like to light it," I said.

  "Have at it." The speaker was a square-shouldered, well-set-up man of twenty-four or comfive. "I'd give any dog a chance for a last smoke."

  "If you didn't have that gun on me you'd not call me that. Courage comes cheap when you've got a man hog-tied."

  He started to reply, then shut up, but he was mad, I could see that. So I taken my time with the cigar, thinking hard all the while. They looked to be good, solid men.

  "You don't look like men who'd murder a woman," I said.

  You would have thought I'd laid across them with a whip.

  "What's that? What do'you mean ... who murdered a woman?"

  "Your outfit," I said, "maybe some of you.

  You murdered my wife, and burned everything I had. Now you want to kill me so there won't be anybody to ask questions. That wraps it up, all nice and pretty." I looked up at them.

  "Except you yellow-bellies will have to live with it the rest of your days."

  One of them jerked his rifle up to smash the butt into my face, and if he tried that they were going to have to kill me quick. One of the others held up a hand to stop him ... and me, for he saw what was coming.

  From the way the others reacted I knew I'd hit a nerve, and I waited.

  "What's all this about a murdered woman?"

  "Who you tryin' to buffalo?" I put all the contempt I had into it. "You know damn' well there ain't five men within a hundred miles, leaving your outfit out of it, who wouldn't pull the rope on a woman-killer. And this was my wife, one of the prettiest, finest women alive."

  Well, sir, they just looked at me, but I had them. They were learning something they hadn't known, but maybe what I was saying was answering questions they had been asking themselves.

  "I'm Tell Sackett," I said, "and there's places where the name carries weight. I drove in here with a wagon and some fine mules. I drove in with a few head of cattle and a herd following after, and I drove with my wife beside me.

  "We hadn't been married but a few months.

  Sort of a honeymoon, it was. I left her a-setting in our wagon atop Buckhead Mesa and rode off to find a way into Tonto Basin.

  "When I was standing on the rim of the mesa above the river, somebody shot me off that mesa and I bounced off rocks and brush all the way down.

  "You can see where the bullet struck." I touched the scar on my skull. "I was some stove up, and when I finally got back to where I'd left my outfit it was gone ... and so were all the tracks."

  Lying there smoking, I talked as I never talked before. I told them of finding my wagon, finding the mules, and afws finding Ange. Of the burning, too, and how when I came back again there had been more burning, and even most of the ashes gone.

  It hurt, talking of Ange, but I kept on.

  "Somebody, the man who started you boys on the hunt for me, he killed my wife. And he carries her marks on him ... I saw the blood and flesh under her nails. That somebody is purely scared right now. He's got to have me dead, or folks will find out what happened.

  "I don't figure," I added, "that he ever expected you to talk to me. I'm laying five to one you were told to shoot me on sight."

  Right then I pushed my luck. I knew I had them off balance and trying to figure it out, so I just naturally got up, put on my hat, and then reached for my gun belt.

  "Lay off that!" It was that blocky-built puncher again, but I just paid him no mind.

  "Go ahead," I said. "A shot at an unarmed man is just what I'd expect of a woman-killer's outfit."

  He was white-mad, but like I figured, these men were decent enough. I'd punched cows with a lot like them--gd, hard-working men ready for a wild time in town or a shooting fight, but decent men. He didn't shoot, and I slung that belt around me and
stood there an armed man, prepared to take my chances with whatever happened.

  I'd pushed my luck right out of a corner and into a place where I had a break, anyway. But I wasn't about to stand back and wait.

  "You boys were set on me, and you been hunting me high and low. Up to now I don't hold it against you, because you were told some tale to start you. Now you know the truth, and if you keep on a-chasing me, I'm going to start chasing back."

  They weren't even listening to what I was saying.

  One of them turned right around on me. "Was what you said about your wife true?"

  "I raised a marker over her grave, and if we were to hunt long enough we could find pieces of that wagon. And I can take you to folks in Globe and away east who knew us and saw us headed west."

  "You were in Globe?"

  "My wife and me, we spent two days and nights in that town just three weeks ago come Sunday."

  They swapped looks, and I could see that meant something to them, but I wasn't sure what. That tough young puncher, he all of a sudden stood his rifle down and dug into his shirt pocket for the makings.

  "I don't know about you fellers," he said, "but I've got a feelin' I'd be better off in Texas."

  A thought came to me. "About Globe, now. [ you boys in that town three weeks ago?"

  "Yeah ... the whole shootin' outfit. We spent several days there. Fact is, we were supposed to stay longer, but then we got orders to move out, sudden-like, on Monday morning."

  That had been the morning we left. ...

  Suddenly I was remembering three men who had ridden past our wagon, and one of them had turned to look back at Ange.

  The same man had been buying supplies at the same time we were. I tried to place him, but all I could remember was that he was a big man.

  Well, I was hungry, and a man isn't going to go far on an empty stomach. Not that I hadn't put miles behind me without food, but right now I had it with me to cook, and I was hungry as a Panhandle coyote. So I put coffee water on the fire and said, "You boys might as well set up. You got something to think about, and this here's as good a place as any."

  They moved up to the fire, and I went rousting through my duffle, getting out the bacon and the rest. Then I looked around at them and asked, innocent-like, "Who do' you boys ride for?"