by Galloway
his silence.
"The Sacketts aren't nesters," Rocker continued. "They aren't just cow ranchers.
Every one of them is a woodsman. They grew up feuding and fighting and they know
all the tricks. I've heard about them for years. Tyrel and Tell are probably the
best hands with guns, although Logan may be as fast.
"Flagan, Galloway, and Orlando are all good. I don't know about Parm Sackett,
the one who bought those cattle they are bringing in."
"Rocker," Bull said impatiently, "that's fool talk."
"Maybe. But why buck a stacked deck? I think our luck's run out."
Bull glared at Rocker, but he made no reply. He gulped whiskey, took the coffee
chaser, and waited. Something would come to him. It always had.
This country was too good to leave. He had hated the flat plains of Kansas,
although he knew it was great cattle and wheat country. He liked eastern
Colorado and Texas no better. He had wanted to stop nowhere until he rode into
the valley of the La Plata.
It had looked easy. The country was wide open to settlement. The town of Shalako
was small enough to be comfortable, and there weren't too many people around.
They could move in, take what they wanted, and settle down to raise cattle and
families. Controlling the largest number of voters he would be able to elect his
own sheriff or marshal.
In just a few years they'd have some herds built up, stealing them down in New
Mexico or Arizona if necessary, and they could hold this valley like a private
place.
Then the Sacketts came in. They were warned, only they did not go. Curly had
gone and picked himself a fight and gotten whipped, and that had been a blow.
Bull Dunn knew how important is the reputation for invincibility, and the defeat
of Curly by a man in bad physical condition threw a shadow over that reputation.
Suddenly everything had gone wrong.
Worst of all, Rocker was failing him, and Rocker had always been the smartest in
the lot, the smartest and the quietest. The rest of them, well they were a wild
lot, obeying nobody but him, listening to nobody but him. And until now they had
believed nothing could whip them. Bull Dunn was not that kind of a fool. It was
good for them to believe that as long as he, who was the boss, knew better. Bull
Dunn had seen quiet communities suddenly rise up in anger, and suddenly the
trees began blossoming with hanged men.
He knew all about that. He had left Virginia City, up in Montana Territory, just
before the hanging started. Just a hunch that he had, a sudden waking up in the
morning with an urge to ride ... and he had ridden.
When the news reached him that Henry Plummer and the rest of them were left
dancing at the end of a rope he had known he was right.
Had his senses dulled over the years? Was that what Rocker was feeling now? The
Rocker had always been cautious, however. He was good with the six-shooter,
probably the best Bull ever had seen, but he had a tendency to caution the
others scoffed at, but not in front of the Rocker.
"All right, Rocker, you've been right before. We'll make one more try ... just
one. If that doesn't work we'll ride north out of here, head for Brown's Hole."
Rocker Dunn was uneasy, but he knew there was no use arguing, as even this
concession was more than he had hoped for. And of course, the old Bull might
know what he was talking about.
Yet he could not but remember the broken, bleeding body of Curly ... he had
never liked Curly, brother or no. There was something unhealthy about him.
Nonetheless, to see him come in like that... what was it about those Sacketts?
There was that Texas Ranger, McDonald, who said, "There's no stopping a man who
knows he's in the right and keeps a-coming."
Maybe that was it.
Chapter XV
The cattle came in before noon of the day following the fight in the streets of
Shalako. They came in bunched nicely and moving well. Parmalee had brought them
over the trail losing no flesh and ready for a final polish before cold weather
set in.
Yet the work had just begun with the bringing of the cattle, and while the
Indians rode herd, I taken Galloway, Nick, and Charlie Farnum out to make hay.
There were high meadows where the hay was good, and we bought extra scythes at
the store in town and went to work. Galloway and me, we'd had a spell of this as
boys, and we went down the line cutting a wide swath, swinging the blades to a
fine rhythm. Nick and Charlie were new at it and made more work of it.
We kept our guns handy, and usually one or two of the Indians were on lookout.
We used the boys for this. They were sharp-eyed and eager to be helping, and
lookout was warriors' work, so they loved it.
We saw nothing of the Dunns.
My thoughts kept a-turning toward Cherry Creek and the Rossiter place but there
was just too much work for any one of us to shake loose. Anybody who thinks that
ranching is just sitting and watching cows grow fat has got another guess
a-coming. Ranching is mostly hard work, can-see to can't-see, as we used to say.
Daylight to dark, for pilgrims.
Parmalee came out with a scythe on the third morning and threw us all a
surprise. He was maybe the best of the lot at mowing hay. When it came to that,
a body could see why. Down there in the flatlands they had more hay to mow than
we folks on the uplands. Why, where I came from even the cows had legs shorter
on one side than the other from walking on the sidehills!
The peaches and apples we grew on those mountains were so accustomed to the
downhill pull you could only make half a pie with them because they insisted on
slipping over to one side.
Bats and birds taken from those mountains down to the flatlands used to have to
set down in the grass, they'd get so disoriented. They were used to flying
alongside the land instead of over it.
If a man took a wrong step when plowing he was apt to fall into his neighbor's
pasture or maybe his watermelon patch, which led to misunderstandings.
Church was down in the valley, so we never walked to church in the morning, we
slid. We had the name of being good Christian folk in our part of the Cumberland
because we just couldn't be backsliders.
Even Logan came out from town and took a hand at the haying. He was a powerful
big man and he cut a wider swath than any of us. He'd put in a full day's work
by morning and then he'd set by the fire and make comments about us being so
slow. But we got the hay down and we got it stacked, and Logan proved a hand at
that, too, but nobody could top off a stack as well as Parmalee.
Parmalee was a great one for reading, too, and he went nowhere without his
books. I never could see why he needed them for he could remember nigh all he
read, and it was a-plenty. Of a night by the fireside when somebody would start
to tellin' stories of ha'nts and such, he would recite poetry to us. He'd set
there like he was telling a story and it would just come a-rolling out.
He'd read poetry by Greeks even, and some by the Frenchies, and he had a way of
saying it that was a caution. He and Nick Shadow would sit there spoutin' poetry
at each other,
sometimes for hours. Whenever one of them didn't start it, Logan
would. Where he picked up book knowledge I don't know, and he always pleaded
that he knew nothing, but he did know a surprising lot. One time he admitted
that he was snowed in one winter with five books of which he read them all, over
and over. One of them was the Bible. He knew all the stories but didn't seem to
have picked up much of the morals.
Logan Sackett was from Clinch Mountain, and those Clinch Mountain Sacketts were
rough, lawless boys. They were fierce feuders and fighters and they went their
own way, most of them lone-wolfing it until trouble showed to another Sackett.
He was a story-teller when it came to that, and could yarn on for hours about
country he'd seen or about bad men. Mostly in those days our world was small.
Folks got around a good bit and so we exchanged information backwards and
forwards of the country. We knew about trails, marshals, bad men, bad horses,
tough bartenders and the like in countries we'd never seen because word was sort
of passed around.
Guns, riding, and cattle were our business, so we heard plenty of stories about
tough old mossy-horn steers, about bad horses and men who could top them off.
Every outfit had at least one man who was salty with a gun, and each one had a
bronc rider. We bragged on our roping or cutting horses, not often the same
ones, and how tough were the drives we made. We ate beans, beef, and sourdough
bread, and we had molasses for sweetening. We slept out in the open, rain or
shine, and we rode half-broke horses that could shake the kinks out of a snake.
It was a rough, hard, wonderful life and it took men with the bark on to live
it. We didn't ask anything of anybody and as long as a man did his work nobody
cared what else he was or did.
Logan Sackett wasn't a bad man in the eastern sense. Out west he was. In the
west a bad man was not necessarily an evil man or an outlaw ... he was a bad man
to tangle with. He was a man to leave alone, and such a one was Logan. He was
mighty abrupt with a six-shooter, and if you spoke rough to him you had better
start reaching when you started speaking, and even then you'd be too slow with
it.
Logan had the name of being an outlaw. I suspect he'd rustled a few head of
steers in his time, and maybe his stock didn't always wear the brands they'd
started out with. I wouldn't be surprised if here and there he hadn't stood some
stagecoach up while he shook the passengers down. About that side of his life I
asked no questions. However, I'll bank on one thing. He never done anything mean
or small in his life.
We'd all heard about Vern Huddy, but like everybody after awhile, you get
careless. We'd been keeping an eye on the hills and the Indians were looking
around for us, but all of a sudden one day there was a rifle shot and one of our
Indians was down in the dirt and dead.
He was standing not three feet from me at the time and I had just moved over to
dip up some beans from the pot and he had stepped up where I had been and was
waiting with his plate. I was sure that shot had been meant for me, and Vern
Huddy had sighted in, then maybe had taken his eyes away when he cocked his
rifle and had squeezed off his shot before he realized there'd been a change. At
least, that was how I figured it. I was sorry for that Indian, but glad for me.
We moved our camp deeper into the brush and all of us stayed clear of clearings.
"Somebody's got to go up there after him," Logan said.
"I'll go. I'm the best Indian. Every man has a pattern, I don't care who he is.
Rifle shots are among the worst for that sort of thing. He's developed himself a
style. If I study the places where he has been I can find the sort of places he
likes to shoot from."
It made a kind of sense, so from that day on, I took to the hills.
Stalking a killer is no job for the weak-nerved. Sooner or later your killer is
going to know he is being hunted and then he becomes the hunter.
If I found him soon I'd be lucky or unlucky, depending on who saw who first. The
chances are it would only be after a painstaking search. So I taken a sight on
the hills after dark. I set up a forked stick out there and a prop for the butt
of my rule and I figured the height of that Indian who was shot and where the
bullet hit, then I sighted right back along my own rifle and pinpointed the area
from which that bullet must have come.
Now I was sure Vern Huddy wouldn't be in that spot. He'd have moved, found
himself a new location. Maybe he did not know he hadn't killed me, and maybe he
did. By day I borrowed Logan's spyglass and studied the mountainside where the
bullet had come from.
Only one thing I did do before I took to the woods. I went to Shalako to pick up
a few things and ran smack-dab into Meg Rossiter.
She had come to town with her pa for supplies and the like. Town was town, even
when it was so small, and a girl like Meg simply had to come in.
She had come up the steps to the store just as I rode up, and we stopped there
for just a minute, she holding her skirt up just a trifle to clear it from the
dust, and me just about to get off my horse. Finally I said, "Howdy, ma'am!"
"How do you do?" she said cool as you please. And when I swung down and stepped
up on the porch she said, "I suppose that brother of yours is proud of himself."
"Galloway? What for?"
"For nearly killing poor Curly Dunn. That was just awful! He should be ashamed!"
Astonished, I said, "Ma'am, you don't have the right of it. Curly got the rope
around Galloway unexpected, and was taking him into the woods. Curly was talking
torture and the like. Galloway got free of him and Curly's horse dragged him,
that's all."
"Galloway got free of him! That's likely, isn't it? Who helped him?"
"He was alone, ma'am. The rest of us was miles away with the herd."
Her eyes were scornful. "That's your brother's story. I don't believe any of it.
Curly was not that kind of boy."
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but that's just the way it happened." Getting kind of
irritated, I said, "Curly ain't much. He hasn't the nerve that Alf had or any of
them, and he wouldn't be a patch on his old man. He's just kind of pretty and he
has a real mean streak in him."
She just glared at me and turned away and flounced into the store. Well, I just
stood there mentally cussing myself and all the luck. Here I'd been setting
myself up, shaping up all kinds of meetings with her in my mind, but none of
them like that. I never figured that Galloway's fracas with Curly would bother
her none, least ways where I was concerned.
I guessed she was just fixed on Curly. She'd set her cap for him and she wasn't
giving any thought to anybody but him. Well, she could have him. I told myself
that and stood there on the porch, wanting to go in the store and afraid she'd
think I was following her, and wanting to follow her all at the same time. But I
had to go in. That was what I'd come to town for.
Finally, I gave my hat brim a tug and ducked my head and went on in. Johnny
Kyme, the storekeeper came over to me and said, "What can I do you for,
Sack
ett?"
"About thirty feet of rawhide string," I said, "and a couple of those
thin-bladed hunting knives." I also bought an extra hatchet and a few nails,
with a few other odds and ends. I also bought me a pair of homespun pants (the
brush doesn't make any sound when it rubs on them like it does on jeans, or even
like on buckskin) I also bought a woolen cap with earflaps, although I wouldn't
be using them. Where I was going a hat would be falling off, and I needed the
bill of the cap to shade my eyes for good seeing.
Meg was coming right past me although she could just as well have gone the other
way. She had her chin up and she was flouncing along, and suddenly I taken nerve
and turned on her. "Ma'am, I'd admire to buy you a coffee over to the saloo---I
mean, the restaurant, if you'll be so kind."
For a moment there she appeared about to turn me down, but I had something going
for me that wasn't me. It was that she was in Town with a capital T, and a girl
when she came to Town ought to see a boy. To sit and have coffee would be nice
and she could think of herself as a great lady in Delmonico's or some such
place.
She looked right at me, cool as you please. "Thank you, Mister Sackett. If you
will give me your arm."
"I'll be back for all that," I said to Slim over my shoulder, and walked out of
there, proud as could be, with that girl on my arm like we were going to a ball
or something.
Now you have to understand about that saloon. It was a saloon, but one side of
it was set up for an eating place where ladies could come if they wished, and
when, they were present the men kind of toned down the loud talk and the rough
talk. Fact is, most of the men liked to see them there, added a touch of home or
something, and most of us were a long way from womenfolks.
We went up those steps with me all red around the gills from not being used to
it, and trying not to look like this was the first time or almost.
Berglund, he came over with a napkin across his arm like he was one of them
high-class waiters and he said, "What's your pleasure?" So we both ordered
coffee, and he brought it to us, and then I'll be damned if he didn't fetch some
cupcakes with chocolate high-grade all over the top. I never even knew he had
such stuff.
When I said as much he replied, "Why, surely you understand that we only cater
