Sacketts 14 - Galloway

by Galloway

  scatter amongst the other trees and make a sort of crude barrier for anybody who

  tried to come up behind us. There was nothing that would stop anyone, but nobody

  could come up through those trees without arousing us.

  Galloway and me, we weren't like the usual cowhand, who'd rather take a whipping

  than do any work that can't be done on a horse. We were both planting boys from

  the hills, who could plow as straight a furrow as the next man, if need be, so

  we spaded up a corner of ground, worked over the sod and went down to the store

  to buy seed. We planted potatoes, carrots, pumpkins and corn, to start. We had

  no idea how they'd grow, but if they did they'd be a help. Starting a home in a

  new land is never a bed of roses, but then we didn't come looking for it to be

  easy.

  Work pleasures me no more than the next man, but if a body is to have anything

  there's no other way, although we found excuses enough to get up in the saddle

  and go perambulating around the country. Of course, that was necessary, too.

  We'd chosen to locate near the opening of Deadwood Creek, with a mighty big

  ridge rising to the west of us, and Baldy Mountain to the east.

  We had to hunt or gather for our grub, and we Sacketts were born to it. And that

  Nick Shadow—he might have been born in a castle, but he knew his way around with

  an axe, and took mighty fast to what we showed him about rustling up grub in the

  forest.

  Working about the place and rustling for grub as we did, we kept out of sight.

  We didn't see anybody or even their tracks. Each of us would take a ride

  sometime during the day, and at night over the fire we'd tell of what we'd seen,

  so within a few days we were getting a fair picture of the country around.

  Sometimes of a night we'd set about the fire and talk. Nick Shadow had

  education, but he never tired to hear our mountain expressions. We'd lost a few

  of them coming west, but an argument or a quarrel we still called an upscuddle,

  which seemed almighty funny to Nick.

  "We don't have so many words as you," I told him, "so we have to make those we

  have stand up and do tricks. I never figured language was any stone-cold thing

  anyway. It's to provide meaning, to tell other folks what you have in mind, and

  there's no reason why if a man is short a word he can't invent one. When we

  speak of beans that have been shelled out of the pod we call 'em shuckbeans,

  because they've been shucked. It's simple, if you look at it."

  "Learning," Galloway added, "isn't only schoolin'. It's looking, listening and

  making-do. If a man doesn't have much or if he's in wild country he'd better get

  himself to contemplate and contrive. Pa always taught us to set down and

  contemplate, take our problem and wrassel with it until there's an answer. And

  then we contrive. Back in the hills we couldn't buy much, and we didn't have any

  fancy fixin's, so we contrived. We put together what we could find and added it

  to something else."

  Nick, he knew a powerful lot of poetry, and like most lonesome, wandering men we

  liked it. Sometimes of a night he'd set by the fire and recite. He knew a lot of

  poetry by that fellow Poe who'd died about the time I was born. He used to live

  over the mountain in Virginia ... over the mountain from us, that is, who lived

  on the western slope of the hills.

  We'd never paid much mind to Nick Shadow's talk of gold. There'd been Spanish

  people in Colorado from the earliest times, and for awhile there'd been French

  folks coming west from New Orleans when Colorado was part of the Louisiana

  country. The story Nick told us about the gold he knew of was known to others,

  too. But treasure stories come by the dozen in gold mining country, and

  everybody you meet has got a mine worth a million dollars or many millions,

  depending on how many drinks the owner's had.

  One night he said, "Finding the big caches, where they hid the millions would be

  accident now, because nobody knows exactly where it was hidden, but there's

  another treasure that might be found, so I'm going to tell you about it.

  "My grandfather had a brother who trapped in this country nearly fifty years

  ago, and much of the sign left by those early French and Spanish miners was

  plainly visible when he arrived in the country.

  "The others had never heard the stories of the gold found in the La Platas, nor

  the less known stories of diamonds found there, and Arnaud was not the man to

  tell them of it, but he kept his eyes open, and he had an idea where to begin

  looking.

  "No need to go into all the details, but I figure we're not more than ten miles

  from that gold right now."

  "Ten miles is a lot of country," Galloway suggested.

  "They were headed up the La Plata, planning to take an old Indian trail that

  follows along the ridge of the mountains, and Arnaud was counting the streams

  that flowed into the river. Just past what he counted as the sixth one he saw

  what he was looking for ... a dim trail that led up into the peaks.

  "They continued on a mile or so further and then he suggested they stop and trap

  out a beaver pond they'd found. Arnaud volunteered to hunt meat for them and he

  took off along the river, and as soon as he was out of sight of the others he

  started back, found his trail and started up.

  "It was a steep trail, unused in a long time, and he figured that in the two

  miles or so of trail he climbed about three thousand feet ... he was judging in

  part by the change in vegetation. He reached a high saddle, crossed over and

  started down. He was looking for a creek that flowed out of the mountain, and he

  could see the canyon down which it flowed, but there was no longer a trail. That

  had played out when he reached the crest of the ridge.

  "It was very cold, and the going was difficult. He had to move slowly because of

  the altitude. He crossed over the saddle, as I've said, but he had no more than

  started down when he heard a shot where he had left his friends. A shot, and

  then several shots.

  "As you can imagine, he was in a quandary. If he went back to help his friends,

  it would take him the better part of an hour, moving as he would have to, and by

  then any fight would be over.

  "Or perhaps they had merely killed a deer. In the final event, he continued on,

  found the head of the creek and found the marker, a piece of a ramrod thrust

  into a crack in the rock. The gold was cached just below it and to the right,

  and when he removed the stones he found a dozen gold bars, several sacks of

  dust, and one small sack of diamonds.

  "It was too much to carry and now that he knew where it was he could come back

  any time. He took one sack of dust and dropped a couple of the diamonds in it

  and thrust it into his pack. Then he recovered the gold and started back.

  "There had been no more shooting, but when he came near the bottom of the hill

  he took great care, studying out his trail in advance. He was still some

  distance from the beaver pond when he saw Mohler. He was lying face down in the

  grass with five arrows in his back, a golden carpet of dandelions all about him.

  "Arnaud watched for several minutes but there was no movement from the body, no

>   sign of life. From where he lay he could see the dead man still had his rifle

  and tomahawk, so the body had not been looted.

  "Easing back into the brush he worked his way around toward the pond, and there

  near a fallen log he saw another one. He couldn't make out who it was, but this

  body had been stripped, scalped, and mutilated.

  "The fact that the one body had been stripped and the other had not implied the

  Indians were still around, so he moved back into the brush and lay quiet,

  listening.

  "He stayed there all day without moving on the theory that if he did not move he

  would make no sound and leave no tracks. Several times he saw Indians, but each

  time they passed some distance away, and finally they mounted up and rode away.

  "When it was dark he went down to Mohler, but the man was cold in death and had

  been stripped and robbed in the meantime. The others, if any remained alive,

  were busy getting away from there, and that was what he decided to do. The Utes

  had gone downstream, so he went upstream with the idea of striking the highline

  trail. He did, found one of the others of his party still alive, and together

  they got out of the country."

  "But the gold is still there?"

  "The gold and the diamonds. Of the two he got out with, one was worthless. The

  other was an excellent stone, however, and with the results he bought a small

  farm in French Canada."

  "He never came back?"

  "He decided to let well enough alone. He married, had children, but none of them

  were inclined toward adventure. I gathered they did not have much faith in their

  father's stories. Their own lives were rather prosaic and his stories were

  unbelievable to them ... but not to me."

  "Well," I said, "it won't do any harm to look. You say the place is close by?"

  "Right back of that peak yonder. The start of that trail can't be three miles

  from here." He glanced over at Galloway. "Now you know why I was so willing to

  come along. I've been up here before, but these rivers were named when Arnaud

  was in here, and I wasted time on the Florida and the Animas before I realized

  they had to be wrong."

  We brought our horses in from their picket-ropes and after watering them, turned

  them into the corral. Then we bedded down and went to sleep.

  There for a few minutes I lay awake, considering that gold. If we had it we

  could buy more cattle, fix our place up better, but I wasn't counting any gold

  we didn't have. A lot of folks had their hands on that gold and it hadn't done

  any of them much good.

  The fire died down to coals, and I could hear the rustling of the aspens and the

  faint sounds the horses made in the corral.

  I wondered, suddenly, what had become of that wolf.

  Chapter X

  Many a campfire dies down with talk that doesn't count up to much in the

  sunlight.

  Around the fire is the time to talk of treasure, and ha'nts and witches and

  such, but come broad day there's work to be done. Somewhere back down the line

  Parmalee Sackett should be starting north with a herd, and it was time for Nick

  Shadow to ride down to meet him.

  It was also time for somebody to ride down to Shalako and burden themselves with

  grub for the next two weeks of work, and it spelled out to be me for that job.

  The past few days had helped a sight when it came to my strength catching up to

  itself, and I felt a whole lot better. Still, we didn't want to leave our place

  alone too long. Not that we had anything there. Galloway, he said to me,

  "Flagan, let's ride this out for awhile. Let's sleep out and see what they do.

  If there's to be a fraction over this let's not have anything they can bum." ...

  So we hadn't.

  Nevertheless the thought of that gold was in all our minds, and it was in our

  thoughts to ride up there someday and have a look for it. Right now we had to

  pin down the things that were sure or that we were trying to make sure.

  Shalako lay still under the afternoon sun when I rode into town. I was still

  wearing the moccasins because my feet were not quite well, and they were

  almighty tender around the edges where the flesh had been broken and torn and

  mashed by rocks, but otherwise I was dressed pretty well for the time, and for a

  working cowhand.

  The first thing I saw was the buckboard from the Rossiter outfit, and Meg about

  to get down, so I swung my horse alongside and stepped down in time to take her

  hand and help her down.

  She smiled, but I'd say it was a might cool, but when she taken my hand to step

  down she done it like a real lady, and I could see she set store by such things.

  Fact is, I set store by them myself. It pleasures a man to do graceful things

  for a lady, and if she's pretty, so much the better. We'd be a sorry world

  without the courtesies, as Ma used to say.

  "My!" Meg said. "I would scarcely know you!"

  Me, I blushed like a fool, which I have a way of doing whenever a woman says "I,

  yes, or no" to me. And the blushing makes me mad at myself, which makes me blush

  all the more. So I stood there, all red around the ears like a dirt-kicking

  country boy.

  "I got me an outfit," I said finally. And then I added, "We're fixing to go

  ranching, me and Galloway and Nick Shadow."

  "How nice!" she said primly, and then with a little edge to her voice she said,

  "I'm surprised you have the nerve after the way you backed down for Curly Dunn."

  Now I never backed down for no man, and she knew it, but girls like to put a man

  in a bad place and she had done it to me. Like a fool I started in to argue the

  question, which I shouldn't have done. "I never backed down for him," I said,

  "or any man."

  She turned away from me. "If I were you," she said, "I'd leave while I could.

  Curly is going to meet me here."

  Well, now. Common sense told me that I should go, but her throwing it up to me

  like that ... well, I couldn't go then. So I just turned and walked off feeling

  like I'd come off a pretty poor hand, but then I never was much at talking to

  women.

  In the store I laid out to get the things we needed—flour, salt, coffee, and

  whatever. They had dried apples, so I laid in a stock of them, and this time I

  was able to pay. I'd lost whatever I had when the Indians taken me, but Galloway

  was carrying a good bit right then, as I had been, and whatever either one of us

  had the other could have. But these supplies were for all of us.

  Adding to the list I bought four hundred rounds of .44-calibre ammunition.

  The storekeeper, he looked up at me. "You planning a war?"

  "No, sir, I ain't. But if anybody comes a-looking I wouldn't want them to go

  away disappointed. It ain't in my nature to leave folks a-wanting. Meanwhile we

  have to hunt our meat."

  "The Dunns have been around. They've been talking against you."

  "Talk never scratched any hides," I said. "They've got to do more than talk."

  "That's what we came to town for," Curly's voice said from behind me. "I'm going

  to whip you right down to your socks."

  "You'd have trouble," I said, "because I ain't wearing any."

  And then he hit me.

  He caught me as I was turning but he'd
not been set proper and the punch never

  staggered me. I just unbuckled my gun and handed it to Berglund, who had just

  come in.

  I think Curly was kind of surprised that I was so ready, and that I didn't get

  flustered and mad. So he was a mite slow with that second punch and I saw it

  a-coming. Now I never did want to tear up any man's store, so when that punch

  came at me I just ducked under it and taken him in the belly with my shoulder,

  wrapping one arm around his legs and rushing him right out the door.

  At the edge of the porch I dropped him and he staggered so I hit him.

  Now we Sackett boys grew up a-sweating with an axe, shovel, and plow. We'd

  worked hard all our lives and my fists were big and hard and backed by an

  uncommon lot of muscle, so when I fetched him a clout he went back into the

  middle of the street and fell down.

  Stepping off the walk I walked toward him and he got up. He was big, maybe

  twenty pounds heavier than me, and he was in a whole lot better shape because

  he'd not been through what I had, but also he was a drinker, and drinking

  whiskey isn't what you'd call proper for a fighting man.

  He came at me, a little wiser now, because that clout he'd caught had carried

  some power. But he wasn't worried. He'd won a lot of fights and saw no reason

  why he shouldn't win this one.

  Me and Galloway had grown up fighting in the mountains and then we'd knocked

  around on riverboats and freight outfits and most of what we knew we'd learned

  by applying it that way.

  He came in and he taken a swing at me which I pulled aside from, and when I

  pulled over I smashed my fist into his belly. It taken him good—right where he

  lived. I saw his face go kind of white and sick and then I hit him again.

  He went down hard into the dust, and the next thing I know there's a crowd

  around yelling at him to get up. Without them I don't think he would have done

  it. Meg was there, too, her face all kind of white and funny, staring at him

  like she had never seen him before, but she didn't look scared, nor did she look

  altogether displeased.

  What I didn't know until later was that both Ollie Hammer and Tin-Cup were in

  that crowd, just a-watching.

  Curly had his friends behind him and he'd made a lot of brags no doubt, so he