Galloway (1970)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 16

  Deliberately I chose the steeper, less likely ways. Climbing steps were no more painful than those on the level, yet they would take me to places the Indians could not follow on their ponies.

  Pulling myself up through a narrow space between two boulders I edged along a rim of rock and then climbed a dry waterfall to the level above. My feet were bleeding again, but I found some red clay that I could mix with pinon gum and tallow from the elk fat to make a salve often used by the Navajo to promote healing. Yet when I looked back and down I could see eight Apaches, close enough to see the color of their horses.

  The Apache fights on his feet, and climbing that mountain after me would be no trick. They hadn’t seen me yet but when they did, they’d come. Maybe I was a damned fool, my feet hurting the way they were. Maybe I should just quit and let them kill me. But there was no give-up in me. We boys in the backwoods weren’t raised thataway. By the time I was fourteen I knew how to shoot, trap and skin, how to rustle my grub in the woods, and if need be to get along on less than a jackrabbit.

  Mostly the boys I ran the hills with were Cherokee, and I learned as much from their folks as my own. We had only two books in our family, so Ma taught us to read from the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress.

  One thing we learned. To make a start and keep plugging. When I had fights at school, the little while I went, I just bowed my neck and kept swinging until something hit the dirt. Sometimes it was me, but I always got up.

  Right now I made a decision. Those Apaches weren’t going to take kindly to leaving their ponies behind them in Ute country, so if they killed me they were going to have to do it on top of the mountain. That was where I headed.

  Turning crossways of the trail I started climbing, using my hands as much as my feet. Stopping near a clump of aspen I looked back down. Far below I could see them and they could see me, and they were drawn up, staring at me.

  There was no sense to shooting. Up hill thataway a body ain’t going to hit much and I was a far piece off from them. I could almost hear them talking it over.

  My hope was they’d decide I wasn’t worth the trouble. But it was a slim hope, so I continued on up the mountain. It was a heartbreaker, almost straight up in places, although there were plenty of hand and foot holds. Then I crawled up on the ledge where lay a dead coyote, and I knew that Apaches wouldn’t touch one.

  Taking it by the tail I gave it a good swing and let it fall toward the trail below, right across the path they would have to follow.

  I doubted if it would more than make them uneasy, but it did give me an idea. To an Apache the hoot of an owl is a sign of death, and since boyhood I’d been able to hoot well enough to get answers from owls. Knowing sound would carry in those high canyons, I tried it.

  They could no longer see me but I could see them, and at the first hoot they pulled up short, and when they reached the dead coyote they stopped again. So I started a couple of boulders rolling down the mountain. I wasn’t likely to hit one of them, but it might worry them a little.

  Of a sudden I came into a kind of scooped-out hollow in the side of the mountain. Some of it was meadow, but at the back leading up into the notch that led toward the crest it was mostly filled with aspen. And I knew that was it.

  I just wasn’t going any further. Crawling back into those aspens where they grew tight and close together I covered my way as well as possible and just lay down.

  My feet felt like fire, and my legs hurt all the way up. Below the knees, from favoring the soles, the muscles were giving me hell. I just stretched out under the leaves and lay there.

  They could find me, all right, but they’d have to hunt.

  My club clutched in my hand, I waited, listened for the slightest sound. The aspens whispered and somewhere a bird or small animal rustled in the leaves, but they did not come. Finally I just fell asleep. I had no idea how or when … I just did.

  Hours later the cold awakened me. All was still. I lay there for awhile, then slowly sat up. It brought kind of a groan from me, which I swallowed before it got too loud. I couldn’t see anything or hear anything, so I just naturally lay back down, dug deeper into the leaves, and went to sleep again.

  When next I awakened it was morning, and I was stiff with cold. Crawling out of the aspens I looked around, but saw nothing of the Apaches.

  Gathering up my pack I limped out through the groves of aspen and began to work my way down into an interior canyon. After an hour, in a hollow under some trees and boulders I stopped, built a small fire of dry, smokeless wood and broiled an elk steak. Hearing a faint rustling among the trees I dropped a couple of bones near the remains of my fire, then went on down. Later in the day I again bathed my feet in a concoction of snakeweed. Whether it was actually helping I did not know, but it felt good and eased the hurt.

  For an hour I rested, then started down the stream. Later I found some bee weed, sometimes called stinkweed. The Navajo used it to start fires by friction as the brittle stalks, whirled between the palms, will start a fire in two minutes or less, especially if a little sand is added to increase the friction.

  All the time I kept watch on the slope down which I’d come, but I saw nothing of the Apaches. Maybe the owl-hoot death signal had scared them off, or maybe it was the owl-hoot and the dead coyote together or the feeling they were getting into Ute country. Anyway, there was no sign of them.

  Not that I was alone. There was something out there in the brush that was a-watching me, and it might be that wolf. A wolf has been known to stalk a man or an animal for miles, and this wolf needed nobody to tell him that I was in a bad way. He could smell the blood and the festering of some of the cuts on my feet. While I was wary of him and trusted him none at all, I still had no blame for him. He was a wild thing that had to rustle its grub as best it could, and I felt sympathy for it, which was the reason I tossed out those fragments of meat or bone.

  Yet that night was the worst. The cold was cruel and my naked body could take no warmth from the remains of the elk hide. All night long I shivered, teeth chattering beside the fire that ate fuel like a famished beast so that I almost never ceased from the hunting of it.

  Wild and weird were the snow-covered peaks around me, dark the gorge where I shuddered over my fire, the cold seeping through my bones, stiffening my muscles. A wind, cold and raw, came down the canyon, blowing my fire and robbing my body of the little warmth it had.

  The night seemed to stretch on forever. Once I slept, awakening to find the wind gone but my fire down to a few tiny coals, and with effort I nursed it back into flame. Something padded in the brush out there so I built my fire higher and kept my club and my stone knife closer.

  How many men had crouched beside such fires in the years gone by? With no more weapons than I had?

  At last the dawn came, cold and bleak, and I could see where wood lay without blundering through the brush. I built up my fire, then took the hide and cut a piece big enough for fresh moccasins. I buried the piece in the ground nearby to make it soft and pliable for the work to come.

  I found some duckweed tubers and ate them and ate the last of the elk meat, throwing the few bones into the brush. Hobbling up on the slope, I looked the country over with care. Now in most places a man can live if he knows something of plants and animals, and if he will take time enough to think things out. It is a man’s brain that has removed him from the animals, and it is man’s brain that will let him survive, if he takes time to think.

  First, I needed a weapon. Second, I must have shelter and clothing. So I stood there, studying the land to see what it offered.

  The canyon had high, rocky sides with forest climbing to the crest. There was a stream in the bottom of the gorge with willows around it, and a good bit of grass and some brush. On the ground not twenty feet away lay a well-seasoned branch fallen from a tree. By breaking off the small branches I could fix an obsidian point on it and have a lance.

  The bushy-looking trees with scaly twigs and leaves, kind of silvery in the sunli
ght, were buffalo-berry. The Indians used to collect them to flavor buffalo or antelope meat. There were some wild roses there, too, and I could see the red of some rose hips. There was plenty of deer sign along the stream, and I might have time to make a bow and some arrows.

  Limping down to the buffalo-berry bushes I started eating them, pits and all. I topped them off with some rose hips. They weren’t any banquet but they would keep me alive. If no Indians found me.

  This was Ute country, but both the Navajo and the Apache came here also.

  And, of course, there was the wolf.

  Chapter III

  There was a pole corral and two lights shining from square windows in the long, low log building. Galloway Sackett swung from the saddle and stood looking into the window for a full minute before he tied his horse.

  It was little enough he could see. The window was fly-specked and dirty, but there was a bar inside, and several men. A half dozen horses stood at the hitching rail.

  Four of the horses wore a brand strange to him, a Clover Three … three figure 3’s arranged like a three-leaf clover.

  Galloway whipped the dust from his clothes with his hat, then started for the door. A glance at a powerful black horse stopped him. He looked at the brand and whistled softly.

  Originally the brand must have been a Clover Three, but now it was a Flower. A reverse 3 had been faced to each of the other 3’s, then another set had been added, a stem and tendrils to join the petals to the stem. The job was beautifully done, obviously by a rewrite man who knew his business and enjoyed it.

  “That’s a man I’ve got to see,” Galloway muttered. “He’d wear a Sherman button to a Georgia picnic!”

  He pushed open the door and stepped in, then walked to the bar. As he crossed the floor he saw four men sitting at a table together, obviously the Clover Three men. In a corner not far from the bar sat another man, alone.

  He wore a fringed buckskin hunting shirt, under it a blue shirt, obviously either new or fresh. He wore a low-crowned black hat, and was smooth-shaved except for a reddish mustache, neatly trimmed and waxed.

  The man in the buckskin shirt wore two pistols, one butt forward, one butt to the rear … a tricky thing, for a man might draw with either hand or both guns at once. On the table were a bottle of wine, a glass, and a pack of cards.

  Aside from the scruffy-looking man behind the bar there were two others in the room, a man in a dirty white shirt with sleeve garters, and a hairy old man in soiled buckskins.

  Galloway Sackett, who had as much appreciation for situations as the next man, ordered rye and edged around the corner of the bar so he could watch what was happening … if anything.

  The four riders from the Clover Three looked embarrassed, while the lone man in the buckskin shirt drank his wine calmly, shuffled the cards and laid them out for solitaire, seemingly unconcerned.

  Finally one of the Clover Three riders cleared his throat. “Quite a brand you got there, Mister.”

  Without lifting his eyes from the cards, the other man replied: “You are speaking to me, I presume? Yes, I rather fancy that brand.” He glanced up, smiling pleasantly. “Covers yours like a blanket, doesn’t it?”

  Galloway was astonished, but the four riders only fidgeted, and then the same man said, “The boss wants to talk to you.”

  “Does he now? Well, you tell him to ride right on in … if he has any horses left.”

  “I mean … he’s got a proposition for you. After all, it wasn’t him—”

  “Of course it wasn’t. How could he be expected to account for all the stock on his ranches? You tell your boss to come right on into town. Tell him that I’ll be waiting for him. Tell him I’ve been looking forward to our meeting. Tell him I’ve been wanting to say hello and goodbye.”

  “Look, Shadow,” the Clover Three man protested, “the boss just doesn’t have the time—”

  “That’s right, Will. Your boss doesn’t have the time. In fact he is completely out of time.” The man called Shadow placed a card, then glanced up. “You tell Fasten for me that if he will turn his remuda loose, fire his hands and ride off the range with what he can carry on his saddle he can go.

  “Otherwise,” Shadow added, “I will kill him.”

  Nobody said anything. Galloway Sackett tasted his rye and waited, as they all waited.

  Then Will said, “Aw, give him a chance! You know he can’t do that!”

  “Fasten robbed a lot of people to build his herd. Some of the cattle were my cattle, some of the cattle had belonged to friends of mine. Some of those people are no longer alive to collect what he owes them, but I intend to see that he does not profit from it. You tell him he’s got twenty-four hours … no longer.”

  “Look here.” One of the punchers started to rise. “You can’t get away with that!

  You—!”

  “Twenty-four hours, gentlemen. You ride out and tell him that. I am through talking.” His head turned ever so slightly. “As for you, I would suggest you either sit down or draw a gun. The choice is yours.”

  He spoke mildly, as one might in a polite conversation, and without stress.

  Slowly, carefully, the puncher sat down.

  Galloway Sackett tasted his rye again and when the bartender came near he said, “I’m hunting a man who knows the San Juan country.”

  The bartender shrugged, then indicated Shadow with a gesture of his head. “He knows it, but I wouldn’t start any talk about it now. He’s got things on his mind.”

  “I also want a horse—a good horse and a couple of pack horses or mules.”

  “Talk to him.” Then the bartender added, “That’s a good country to stay out of.

  There’s talk of trouble with the Utes, and the Jicarillas been cutting loose up thataway.”

  The four men at the table got up quietly and went out of the door, walking carefully. Galloway Sackett finished his drink, then walked over to the other man’s table.

  “Mr. Shadow? I’m Galloway Sackett.”

  “It is a name not unknown to me. Sit down, will you? What will you have?”

  “I’m going to have some coffee and some grub, but what I really want is information. The bartender told me you knew the San Juan country.”

  “I do.”

  “About a week ago I ran into a bunch of Jicarillas and they had my brother.

  They’d started to work on him. I was alone, but figured if I could create a fuss he’d cut loose on his own. I did, and he did.”

  “He got away?”

  “He surely did. And dropped clean off the world. I hunted for him and they did.

  Those Jicarillas weren’t about to lose him so they taken in after him. He was stark naked and had his hands tied, but he got away.”

  “He’s dead, then.”

  “Not Flagan. We Sacketts don’t die easy, and Flagan is a tough man. He’s been up the creek and over the mountain. He’s fit Comanches and Arapahoes on the buffalo plains, and about ever’ kind of man or animal. He’s a tough man.”

  “That San Juan country is tough. It’s the most beautiful country in the world, but about two-thirds of it stands on end.”

  Shadow paused, waiting while the bartender placed coffee and food on the table.

  Then he asked, “What do you want me to do?”

  “Tell me about it. How the streams run, the best ways to get through the mountains, where I’m liable to run into Indians. I’m going in after him.”

  “You’re bucking a stacked deck, my friend. You’ll need an outfit.”

  “That’s another thing. The bartender said you had horses. I need a spare for Flagan to ride when I find him, and I’ll need a couple of pack horses for grub and the like.”

  Shadow took a thin cigar from his pocket and lighted it. He studied the end of it for a moment, then said, “If I didn’t have some business to attend to, I’d go with you.”

  “Twenty-four hours, you gave him. Do you think he’ll move?”

  “Yes.”

  G
alloway glanced at Shadow thoughtfully. “He must know you, this Fasten gent.”

  “He knows me. He stole cattle and killed men in the Mimbres country. He wiped out a lot of us, then pulled out and drove the cattle clear out of the country.

  I took in after him.”

  “I lost the trail, then found it again. Meanwhile he’d settled down here, hired a bunch of reasonably honest hands, and then he cooked up that Clover Three brand. Guess he had an idea it couldn’t be blotted, so I did it, just as a challenge. So he sent a hired man after me, but I remembered the man from Texas, and he did not remember me.”

  “How’d that happen?”

  Shadow shrugged. “I was a teacher at Waco University. Our paths did not cross in a way he would notice.”

  “You were a teacher?”

  He shrugged. “One does what one can. I needed the job, they needed the teacher.

  In fact, they wanted me to stay on, but the pay was small and I was restless. I had come to America to hunt for gold.”

  He glanced at Galloway again. “Are you related to Orrin Sackett?”

  “He’s kin.”

  “He defended me in a shooting case. My first one, in fact. It was a little matter of a horse. My horse was stolen. I hunted the man down and he drew a pistol and I shot him. Someone advised me to hire Orrin Sackett and I did … fortunately.”

  They finished their coffee, talked idly of various things, and then Shadow stood up. “I have a cabin down the road apiece. If you’d like you may join me. There’s an empty bunk, and you’re welcome.”

  The cabin was small but comfortable. There were Navajo rugs on the floors, curtains at the windows, and a couple of dozen books.

  “I envy you the books,” Galloway said. “School was a rare time thing for us.

  Mostly it was Ma teaching us from the Bible, and she read a couple of stories to us written by Walter Scott. Flagan an’ me, we got our learning in the woods with our Winchesters.”

  “Your brother is a woodsman? Not just a cowhand?”