“Whoever had such intentions would not be pleased if I returned, so I came quietly, and when I reached Denver, I made inquiries. Nobody knew anything until I consulted a former deputy sheriff whom I knew. He told me that a man named Jake Flanner, who had lived in Siwash, was hiring fighting men … the worst kind.
“There had been a mention of a man named Flanner in ma’s last letter to me, so I came along through the country passing myself off as a mining engineer. I was warned a couple of times I’d better go somewhere else, that the area around Siwash was headed for trouble.
“Just as I was riding into town you fellows cut loose in there, and when you came out I got a good look at you in the light over the door. I could see you’d been hit and you were favoring one leg, but you were still in there with that six-shooter. Then Brewer came out and he started to pull down on you so I shot him, then flipped a quick one at that crippled man.”
“How’d you get my horse?”
“You told me where it was.”
Well, I remembered none of that. Seems I told him some other things, too.
“You’d better keep an eye on our back trail,” I warned him. “They won’t give up.”
“You forget that I grew up around here. I know hiding places in these hills they’d take years to find. I knew places that even pa never knew. Only Milo and me.”
“I put out word for him. If he hits the outlaw trail they’ll tell him.”
He looked at me. “Milo? An outlaw?”
“Not really, I guess. It’s just that they all know him. And he’s got a way with that gun of his.”
Lying there alongside the fire I told him about Em, Pennywell, and the place. I also told him about Albani Fulbric, bringing him up to date on the situation.
By the time I’d finished I was all in. I drank a swallow more of coffee and eased myself back on the blankets. It was broad daylight and I could see Barnabas was worried.
“You better mount up and head for the Empty,” I said. “They’ll know they put lead into me and they’ll try to get to the ranch.”
“I can’t leave you,” he said. He squatted on his heels. “Logan, I got to tell you. You’re hit very hard. You took three slugs. One went through the muscles on your upper leg, and you got another one in the upper arm, but the bad one is through the body. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” He paused a moment. “I am not a physician, but I do know a good deal about bullet wounds. I was an officer in the army of France for a while during the war with Prussia. I can’t leave you.”
“You’d better. Em will need you. As for me, it’s going to be a long, hard pull.”
He looked at me for a long time, then he went to his pack and got out some coffee and other grab which he stashed near me. He refilled my cartridge belt, and broke out a box of forty-fours. “Lucky I had these. I bought them in case they were needed on the ranch.”
He squatted on his heels again. “You’re about six or seven miles back of the ranch, but there’s no short way across. It will take me most of the day to get there.
“Right down there is the spring. Your canteen is full and I’m leaving mine also. There’s a big pot of coffee, and I’ll try and get some help to you as soon as I see how it is on the ranch.”
I looked around at the hills. It looked like a cirque, or maybe a hanging valley. It was a great big hollow that was walled in on three sides, or seemed to be, and maybe three hundred acres in the bottom of it. There were a lot of trees, and there probably was a lake … in such formations they were frequently found.
Barnabas saddled up, looked down at me once more, then rode off. And I was alone.
For a while I just lay there. The sun was in the hollow and the shadows of the aspen leaves dappled the grass with shadow. I was weak as a cat, and I just lay there resting.
How much of a trail had Barnabas Talon left? He might be a good man on a horse and with a gun, yet he could have left sign a child could read. Covering a trail is an art, and far from a simple one. I’ve heard of folks brushing out tracks with a branch. That’s ridiculous - the marks of the branch are a sign themselves. Anything like that must be done with great care to make it seem the ground has not been disturbed by anything. A tracker rarely finds a complete track of man or beast on a trail he’s following. Only indications of passage.
The spring was all of thirty yards off, but there was no flat ground nearer on which a man could sleep. It was all rocks down there. With my rifle close at hand and my horse nibbling grass a few yards away, I dozed the long day through. Come evening I added a few sticks to the fire, poured some water into a pot Barnabas left, shaved some jerky into it, added some odds and ends, and set it on the fire. Then I just lay back and rested.
You want to know something? I was scared. I never feared man nor beast when I was on my feet with two good hands, but now I was down, weak as could be, and my right arm was useless.
Later, I ate my stew and contemplated. I had no idea Barnabas Talon would get back. He would intend to, but there’d be need of him there and his first duty was to his ma. As for me it would be root hog or die, so I settled to figuring what I could do.
My chances were slim if Flanner’s men trailed me down, as they would surely try to do. Despite what Talon said, I’d no doubt they could find this place, so I must find a better one … somewhere I could really hide.
My need for water tied me to the spring, so I commenced to study the ground, looking for someplace I could hide. There were tumbled boulders down the stream bed below the spring, and scattered branches of dead trees, piled-up rubble, and debris.
When I finished my stew, and mighty good it tasted, I took a long pull at a canteen and felt better.
Yet worry was upon me. There was weakness in me, and I’d an idea the worst was yet to come, that I might become so weak I could not move, even delirious. I’d seen men gunshot before this and knew my chances were slight if caught in a sudden shower with a fever upon me. And showers in the high peaks are a thing that happens almost every day.
I saw nothing that would help. No caves, no corners hidden from the wind … nothing.
Suppose I crawled into the saddle and made a try for the ranch? I’d never make it, of course. And my horse was not saddled now, and there was no way I could get a saddle on it. Yet there had to be a way.
Gathering my gear together, I rolled my bed, drank the last of the coffee, and using my rifle pulled and pushed myself up until I stood on one foot, clinging to an aspen. Inch by careful inch I searched the terrain. There was little I’d not seen in my few years and I knew about all that could happen to trees, brush, and rocks that would provide a place to hide, and I found none of it here.
Yet there was something nagging at me, something I should notice, something that worried at my mind like a ghost finger poking me. No way my thoughts took brought any clue to mind, and one by one I climbed the trees of my ideas and looked over the country around each of them. But I came upon nothing.
It came to me at last as I was hitching myself along from tree to tree toward the roan.
What I heard was a waterfall.
Chapter 13
Em Talon peered through the slats of the shutter toward the gate. Nothing in sight.
Logan should have returned by now. It was foolish of him to ride off as he had done, yet she knew how he felt, and she also subscribed to the theory that once you have an enemy backing up you must stay on top of him. “Never let them get set,” she muttered.
The sky was overcast, the air still. Sullen clouds gave a hint of rain.
She went from window to window, checking the fastenings on the shutters. Pennywell had been up on the lookout atop the house and now she returned. “There’s nobody, Aunt Em. The road’s empty all the way to town.”
“He should be back.” She was talking half to herself. What would he have done? Riding in like that? She knew exactly, because it was what she would do. He had tackled them head on, horn to horn. Logan might not be the smartest Sackett there was but he wa
s meaner than a cornered wolf, and he wasn’t a back-shooter.
She pictured the town, tried to think out what he would do. And if wounded? He’d run for the hills. He would try to lead them off, like a wounded quail would do, anything to keep the enemy away from the nest. It was the instinctive response of a wild thing.
He would ride into the mountains, hunt him a hole, and wait until the time was right to come home. If he could get home.
That was the worrisome part, for he might be holed up yonder in the mountains, needing help, needing it the worst way. And the trouble was to pick up his trail a body would about have to pick it up from town, from Siwash.
Pennywell would be no good on a trail of that kind; besides, she was vulnerable. She was a young thing, and it would not do for her to be traipsing around the hills with the land of men around that Flanner had brought into the country.
Al? She hesitated. He might be a good man on the trail, but he was new to this country, and trailing was more than a matter of following the sign a body found.
She did know the country, and she could read sign as good as any Sackett she knew of, which was better than most.
Em Talon made up her mind, and she made up her mind there was nothing to do but get ready. There was also a matter of time. She’d have to cut out from the ranch at a time when she’d not be seen, she’d have to get up there in the hills and find Logan.
She told them over breakfast. “I’ll be gone a day or two. Al, you stay here an’ take care of the place an’ you watch over Pennywell.”
“Ma’am,” Al Fulbric protested, “you just cain’t do that! You ain’t a young woman, and those are mighty rough mountains.”
“Of course, they’re rough! That’s why I like ‘em. Son, I’m mountain born an’ bred. I growed up walkin’ the hills. I run a trap line before your mammy was born. As for these here hills, I’ve dodged Injuns all over them. I know the hideouts, and I know the mind of a dodging Sackett.
“We don’t run just like other folks do, an’ I know what Logan’ll do, more than likely. You leave him to me. Just ketch me up that grulla mule out yonder - “
“Mule?”
“That’s right. Him an’ me been to the wars together, an’ we can go again.”
“If you say so, ma’am. A mule’s not very fast.”
“Neither am I. But I know that there mule and he’ll take me there and bring me back, and that’s what counts at my age, mister.”
“Yes, ma’am. At any age.”
Al walked out the back door and to the corral. He looked at the mule doubtfully and the mule looked at him. “I’d like to have this friendly,” Al said. “It’s the old lady’s idea, not mine.”
The mule put his ears back, and Al shook out a loop. He had tried to rope mules a few times, and had done it too … after a while. Most of them had a gift for ducking a rope. He walked out into the corral trailing his loop and studying the situation.
Behind him he heard Emily Talon. “You won’t need that rope. Coley, come here!”
Without hesitation, the mule walked right to her. She fed him a carrot and slipped the halter on him while Al Fulbric gathered his rope.
“What was that you called him?”
“Coley … it’s short for his name. Coleus. Talon named him, and Talon was a reader of the classics. The way he tells it, Coleus of Samos was the first Greek to sail out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic.”
“Well, I’ll be! What did he want to do that for?”
“Seems some other folks - the Phoenicians, it was, who were some kin to the Philistines of the Bible - they had that whole end of the Mediterranean sewed up. They had laid claim to all that range, and they let nobody sail that way.
“This Coleus, he told them he got blown that way by a storm, and anyway he got through the Gates of Hercules and out into the Atlantic. And then he sailed up to Tartessus and loaded his ship with silver. That one trip made him a rich man.
“Talon favored him because he done the same. Folks said he was crazy to ride out here and start ranching in country only the Indians wanted. Anyway, Coley here, he had a way of straying into new pastures hisself, so Talon named him.”
“I like it.” Al Fulbric spat into the dust. “A man like that deserves credit”
“After that trip he never needed credit. He could afford to pay cash. Anyway, that’s how Coley come by his name, and we’ve come a fur piece together, Coley an’ me. We’ve been up the crick and over the mountain, and he’ll fight anything that walks.”
“That mule?”
“That mule, as you call him, was a jack once. They cut him, but they done forgot to tell him about it. He still figures he’s a jack, and don’t you borrow no trouble from him or he’ll take a piece out of you.”
Em Talon picked up her saddle and before Al could move to help her, had slung it in place and was cinching up. She slid her Spencer into the boot, then turned on him.
“Al, you go about your business now. I’m goin’ to ride him astride, which no decent woman ought to do, but I’ll have no man standin’ by when I do it. You get to the house and keep a sharp lookout. They’ll be a-comin’, especially if they got Logan.”
Al swore, spat into the dust, and walked off toward the house. When he reached the steps he turned to look back.
Em was riding out toward the gate, and sure enough, she was sitting astride, and he could see a short stretch of her long-Johns where they disappeared into her boot tops.
He blushed a little and turned his head away, ashamed for what he had seen. Pennywell was pouring coffee when he entered the house.
“She beats me,” he said, “she really does. I’d have gone - “
“She’d not let you, and one thing I’ve learned about Em Talon, Al Fulbric, and that is that you get no place arguing with her. She’s a notional woman, but the only notion she pays mind to is her own. When she sets her mind to something, you just stand clear.”
Emily Talon was no longer young, but there was a toughness in her hard, lean body that belied its age. She had never been one to think in terms of years, anyway. A person was what they were, and many a man at forty was sixty in his ways and many another was twenty and would never grow past it.
As a small girl she had helped her father and brothers with their trap lines, and when she was ten she had one of her own. She was more familiar with the life of the forest than of the settlement, and riding away from the ranch she suddenly felt free, freer than she had felt in many a year.
She scouted back of the town, between Siwash and the hills. A Sackett hurt and hunted was a Sackett heading for the high up yonder. She knew their nature well for she was one of them … he would ride out and he would ride far.
As it was getting dark she came upon a trail, only it was two horses rather than one. Puzzled, she studied the tracks again. One of them had to be the roan … and the roan seemed to be led.
She squinted at the tracks warily, then looked all around. Nobody seemed to be watching, nobody seemed to have followed them, yet all hell must have torn loose down mere in town.
Scouting farther she saw bunched tracks … seven or eight riders, not on the trail of the two, but hunting it.
She had to have more information, so she rode toward town. It was dark, and she was unlikely to be seen, but she knew where to go.
There had been a time when men had killed over Dolores Arribas, but the years had gone by and somehow she had found herself at the end of a trail in Siwash.
In her veins was the blood of Andalusia, but there was Indian blood, too, the blood of a people who built grandly in stone when Spain was only the hinterland of Tarshish.
She washed the clothes of the gringo but took no nonsense from him. Fiercely proud, she walked her own way in the town, unmolested, even feared.
Emily Talon knew that of all the people in Siwash, Dolores would know what had happened and that she would be willing to tell what she knew.
The mule picked his way delicately up the alleyway and a
round to the dark side of the stable. Em did not dismount, for Dolores Arribas was sitting on her steps in the cool of the evening, watching the clouds.
“You ride very late, Mrs. Talon.” She spoke with only the trace of an accent.
“There was a shooting in town?”
“Yes. Two men are dead, two are wounded. One win die, I think.” She spoke matter-of-factly, and then added, “They were Flanner’s men.”
“And he who done the shootin’?”
“There were two … one of them was Logan Sackett, but Jim Brewer was killed by another man, a stranger with a rifle, a tall, elegant man.”
“Logan was hurt?”
“Yes … he was hit very hard … more than once. The other man took him away.”
“I got to find them.”
“You think you are the only one? Flanner looks for them, too. At least, his men look for him.”
They were silent, and then Dolores suggested, “You would like a cup of tea? It is long, the way you will ride.”
“I reckon. Yes, I’ll take that tea.”
She got down from the mule, spoke gently to it, and followed Dolores into the house. It was a small house, and even in the darkness she could feel its neatness.
“I will not make a light The water is hot.”
“Thank you.”
They sat in the vague light, and Dolores poured the tea.
“Where are your sons?”
“I wish I knew. Milo, he’s ridin’ somewheres, but Barnabas, he went off to Europe, lived right fancy the way I hear tell. I always figured him for that, but wondered why he never wrote. Then I heard. Somebody passed word that I was dead and the place broken up.”
“He would do that. It is like him.”
“Flanner?”
“Of course. That way they might not bother to come back. What is there for anyone in Siwash? Except those of us who have no money with which to leave.”
For a while they sat in silence, then Emily said, “If it’s just money - “
Ride the Dark Trail (1972) Page 11
