The Sacket Brand (1965) s-12

by Louis L'Amour

  The day was almost gone. Every move I made was hurting me, and I had to move almighty slow.

  I wanted to get back to that cave under the stone bridge, but before I'd gone a dozen yards I realized I just didn't have it in me. Like it or not, I was going to have to find somewhere close by, and go without a fire.

  The ground was hard and my foot slipped on an icy rock, and I went down. The fall shook me up. It took me a minute or two to get up again. I realized that the cold was growing worse. The river, which had been open water when I'd taken my fall off that lookout point, would be frozen over by now.

  Finally, when I was only a hundred yards or so from the ruins of my outfit, I found a place where some slabs of rock had tumbled off the mesa's edge, high above, and in falling had formed a low cave, not over five feet deep and just about large enough for me to curl up inside. There was dead brown grass near the cave, so I tugged on it and pulled enough for ground cover, and I crawled in.

  And then I just passed out.

  In the night, I awakened. My first thought was that of course I knew the names of two of my pursuers. The man who shot me had been called Macon, and then there was Dance, or Dancer. That name had been put to one of the men I'd overheard talking.

  I was lying there shivering, when I heard them come back. Only it was not several men, it was only one. The horse came walking along, passing within a few yards of where I lay ... I could hear the creak of the saddle, and a faint jingle of spurs.

  I was too cold and stiff to move, too badly hurt to be of any use to myself. I heard him rousting around in the dark, and once I heard him swear. Then there was a faint glow, and I thought I could detect the crackle of flames. Some little time went by, and finally I must have dozed off again, because when my eyes opened it was daylight.

  For a while I just lay still, and then I half-crawled half-rolled out of my hideaway and, using my staff, pushed myself to my feet. It was not until then that I remembered the rider in the nighttime.

  Going down to the dim trail, I found his horse's tracks, coming and going. They were sharp, well-defined tracks, made by a horse whose shoes were in good shape. I studied those tracks for a while, and I was not likely to forget them. Then I want back to the wagon.

  I saw that he had piled on more brush and lighted it again. Everything was gone now except those black gum hubs for the wheels. They burn mighty hard, and these had only charrred over. The fire still smoldered, so I stayed there a few minutes, warming myself.

  I didn't need anybody to tell me that I was in bad shape. Somehow I had to get out of that country and get to where I could be cared for, and where I could get a horse and some guns. And then I recalled talk I'd heard of Camp Verde.

  Judging by what I'd heard, it could be not much more than thirty miles or so as a crow would fly; but to get there by covering no more than thirty miles a body would surely have to have wings, just like the crow.

  None of us Sacketts ever came equipped with wings, and weren't likely to acquire any, judging by the way we lived or the company we kept. The least likely was me, William Tell Sackett, born in the high Cumberland country of Tennessee.

  One thing I did know. I wasn't likely to get to Camp Verde by sitting here thinking about it.

  So I heated that can of beans over what was left of my own wagon's fire, and split the can open with my stone axe. Then I made shift to eat that whole can. After that I took out, walking.

  Starved, half-frozen, and sick from the fever of my wounds and lost blood, I made a start.

  Pa taught us boys there was never to be any quit in us. "You just get goin' an' try!" That was what he used to say, and that was all I could do.

  Somehow or other I had to keep myself alive and cover the forty or more miles it would be to Camp Verde, over the roughest kind of country. I was going as direct as a body could, for I knew the direction, and I didn't have a horse to hunt trails for.

  Somehow I got out of Buckhead Canyon, and then I made myself another pair of bark moccasins--I'd already worn through two pair--and crossed over the ridge.

  From the top I could see a dim trail going up the hogback leading to the mesa northwest of Buckhead, and that was my direction. It must have been almost a thousand feet from the top of the ridge to the bottom of Pine Canyon, and I did most of it sitting down, sliding or hitching my way along with my hands and one good leg.

  The sun was in mid-sky by the time I got down to the bottom of the canyon. And then by crawling up the other ridge I found that trail.

  My hands were bleeding again, and I was light-headed. One side of my brain recognized that fact, just as if it was standing off to one side watching the whole show. But I kept on going, because I hadn't sense enough to lie down and die.

  This was an Indian trail, and in this country that meant Apaches, and I knew a good bit about them. Not as much as my brother Tyrel, but I knew a-plenty. I knew if they found me I might as well throw in my hand.

  The Apache was a fighting man. He was a warrior, and that was his pride. His reputation was based on how many horses he could steal and how many coups he could count. By the white man's standards this was all wrong, but the Indian had a different way of looking at it. Mercy to your enemy would be evidence of weakness and fear, and the Indian respected only bravery.

  He himself had courage, and he had his own viewpoint of honor. I had respect for the Indians. I'd swapped horses with them, fought with them, hunted with them ... but the last thing I wanted to see now was an Indian.

  On top of the mesa, I drank deep and long at Clover Spring, and then I set out again. Time and again I fell down, and each time it was harder to get up, yet each time, somehow, I managed it. Camp Verde, I knew, was off there to the northwest, and it was on the Verde River, or close to it. The only thing I had in mind was to get to the East Verde River--the same one that saved my neck when I fell--and follow it along to the Verde, then follow that north to the Camp.

  All my sense of time was gone. Several times I heard myself talking, and once or twice even singing. My feet didn't seem to work the way they should, and walking seemed to mean stumbling and falling and getting up again.

  And then all of a sudden I was no longer alone.

  There was an Apache riding on either side of me.

  They rode on past and two more came up. They slowed down, walking their horses. They were lithe, bronzed men, dusty from travel, and some of them carried fresh scalps. They did not speak, they did not make any move toward me, they simply watched me out of their flat black eyes. When I fell down they watched me get up. One Apache laughed when I fell and tried to get up, but that was all.

  A mile went behind us. I don't know how many times I fell in that mile, maybe nine or ten times. Each time they waited and let me get up, and I just kept on a-going. The trail finally left the mesa for the East Verde, and the Apaches stayed with me.

  When the trail reached the end of Polles Mesa they turned, and one of them rode a horse across in front of me. When I tried to go around him, he backed the horse in front of me again and, sick as I was, delirious as I was, I understood I was a prisoner. One of them pointed with a lance, and I turned north up the gorge.

  After maybe a mile we came to a rancheria.

  All the Apaches came out, women and children, staring at me. I saw them standing there, and then I took another step and my knee just bent over and threw me on my face.

  Something in my mind was for an instant clear and sharp, and something said, "Tell, you're through. They will kill you."

  And then I passed out. I just faded into a black, pain-filled world that softened around the edges until there was no pain, nothing.

  Chapter four.

  My eyes had been open for some time before my thoughts fell into place and realization came to me.

  Over my head was some sort of a brush shelter and I was lying on a couple of deerskins.

  Turning my head, I looked down the gentle slope and saw the Apaches. There were six or seven men and twice that many wom
en gathered around a small fire, eating and talking.

  It all came back to me then, the Apaches moving up on either side of me, the falling down, the getting up. How long, I wondered, had they followed me?

  One of the squaws said something, and a squat, powerfully built Indian got to his feet.

  He came up the slope, wearing only a headband, breechclout, and the knee-high moccasins favored by the Apache.

  He squatted beside me, gesturing toward my leg, the wound on my skull, and my other injuries. And he made the sign for brave man, holding the left fist in front of the body and striking down past it with the right.

  "Friend," I said, "amigo."

  He touched the bullet scar on my skull.

  "Apache?"

  "White-eye," I replied, using the term they gave to the white man. And I added, "I will find him."

  He nodded, and then said, "You hungry?"

  "Yes," I said, and after a moment asked, "How long have I been here?"

  He held up three fingers, and added, "We go now."

  "To Camp Verde?"

  For a minute there I thought he was going to smile.

  There was a kind of grim humor in his eyes as he shook his head. "No Camp Verde." He waved his hand toward the Mogollons. He studied me carefully. "Soldier at Camp Verde."

  He paused while I lay there wondering what was going to happen to me. Would they take me along as a prisoner? Or let me go?

  "I need guns," I said, "and a horse. I can get them at Verde."

  "You very bad," he said. "You all right now?"

  Now that there was a question. To tell the truth, I felt as weak as a cat, but I wasn't telling him that, so I told him I was all right. He stood up suddenly and dropped a buckskin sack beside me and then walked away. What would come now I didn't know, and I was too weak to care. So I closed my eyes for a moment and must have passed right out, because when I opened them again it was cold and dark, and there was no smell of fire, no sound or movement.

  Crawling from the deerskin bed where I had been lying, I looked all around. I was alone.

  They had cared for me, left me, and gone on about their business. I remembered something Cap Rountree had told me once up in Colorado--t there was no accounting for Indians.

  Most times, finding a white man alone and helpless as I was, they would have killed him without hesitation, unless he was worth torturing first. It was a good chance that they had followed my trail for miles before they caught up, and they were curious about me. There's nothing an Indian respects more than endurance and courage, and to them that was what I was showing on that trail.

  Then I thought of the buckskin sack, and I opened it. My hand, and then a taste, told me it was pinole, so I ate a handful of it and hobbled to the spring to wash it down. When I had eaten another handful or two, I crawled back in my lean-to and went to sleep. When I woke I was ready to go on.

  Weak I might be, but I was better off than I had been, and on the fourth day after leaving the Apache rancheria, I made Camp Verde. That day I was on the last of my pinole.

  The camp was on the mesa some distance back from the river, and the valley right there was six to seven miles wide. They had a few acres of vegetable garden cultivated, and the place looked almighty good. There was a company of cavalry there, two companies of the Eighth Infantry, and forty Indian scouts under a man named Also Seiber, a powerfully muscled scout who was as much Indian as white man in his thinking.

  Well, I was in bad shape, but I made out to walk straight coming up to those soldiers. After all, I'd served through the War Between the States myself, and I didn't figure to shame my service.

  Folks came out of tents and stores to look at me as I came in, and I must have looked a sight. I'd thrown away my pine-branch coat, and was wearing those deerskins around my shoulders. What I'd left of my pants wouldn't do to keep a ten-year-old boy from shame.

  As I came up, there was a man wearing captain's insignia coming out of the trading post.

  He was walking with a bull-shouldered man in a buckskin shirt. When the captain saw me he pulled up short.

  "Captain," I began, "I--"

  "Mr. Seiber," the captain interrupted, and he turned to the man by his side, "see that this man is fed, then bring him to my quarters." After a second glance, he added, "You might find him a shirt and a pair of pants, too."

  All of a sudden I felt faint. I half fell against the corner of the building and stayed there a moment. I was like that when a sergeant came out of the store, and I never saw a man look more surprised. "Tell Sackett! I'll be damned!"

  "Hello, Riley," I said, and then I straightened up and followed off after Also Seiber.

  Behind me I heard the captain speak.

  "Sergeant, do you know that man?"

  "Yes, sir. He was in the Sixth Cavalry during the war, and he was a sergeant there at the end, acting in command through several engagements. A sharp-shooter, sir, and as fine a horseman as you will be likely to find."

  Seiber made me sit down, and he poured a tin cup half full of whiskey.

  "Drink this, man. You need it."

  He rustled around, finding some grub and clothes for me. "Apaches?" he asked.

  "White men," I said, and then added, "The only Apaches I saw treated me decent."

  "They found you?"

  So I told him about it as I ate the food he dished up, and he had me describe the Indian.

  "You must be shot with luck," he said. "That sounds like Victorio. He's a coming man among them."

  Captain Porter was waiting for me when I walked in, and he waved me to a chair. Beat as I was from the days of travel, my hands just beginning to heal, my head in bad shape, I was still too keyed-up for sleep. The Apaches had treated my wounds, how andwith what I had no idea.

  Taking as little time as I could, I told him about Ange, the unexpected shot, the burned wagon, and the mules.

  "If I can buy a horse," I said, "and maybe a pack mule, I'd like to get myself some guns and go back."

  "You must feel that way, I suppose," he said, "but your wife must have been killed ... murdered, if you will. I understand how you feel; nevertheless, if there are several men against you, as you seem to believe, I am afraid you'll have no success."

  He paused. "And that brings me to my problem.

  I need men. All units here are in need of recruits, and I am allowed six officers.

  We have only four."

  "I was never an officer."

  "But you acted in command ... for how long?"

  "It was two or three times. Maybe four or five months in all."

  "And the Sixth Cavalry participated in fifty-seven actions during the war, am I right?

  You must have been in command during some of those actions."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I could use you, Mr. Sackett. In fact, I need experienced men very badly, particularly those who have done some Indian fighting.

  You have, I presume?"

  "Yes, sir. But I have to go back to the Tonto. My wife is back there, Captain."

  We talked for almost an hour, and by then I was beginning to feel everything that had happened to me. The three days in the Apache rancheria had helped to bring me out of it, but sitting there listening to the captain talking of old wars and far-off places, I suddenly knew I was a long way from being ready for a fight. And yet there could be no delay. Even now Ange might be somewhere needing help, needing me.

  "Are there any new outfits in the country?"

  I asked him abruptly.

  He looked at me sharply, and I thought his face stiffened a little. "Yes, Mr. Sackett, there are. Three or four, I think. All of them big, all of them recently come into the Territory." He paused. "And all of them owned by honorable men."

  "That may be, Captain Porter, but one of them saw fit to burn my outfit and try to murder me."

  "Perhaps."

  "Perhaps? I was there ... I lived through it."

  "Of course. But what can you prove against anyone? You would ha
ve to have proof, Mr.

  Sackett." He hesitated again. "In a court of law--"

  "Captain, I'll find the man. I'll find proof before I act, but when I act I'll be my own law." I stopped him before he could interrupt.

  "Captain, nobody has more respect for the law than i. We boys were raised up to respect it, but there's no law in the Territory that can reach a big cattleman, and you know it. Not even the Army."

  "Mr. Sackett, I must warn you not to take the law into your own hands."

  "What would you do, sir?"

  He shot me a quick, hard look. "You must do as I say, Mr. Sackett, not as I might if I were in your place." And then he asked, "Why do you suppose they tried to kill you? Why do you suppose your outfit was destroyed?"

  "That's what puzzles me, Captain. I just don't know."

  He walked to the window and stood there with his hands clasped behind his back. "Was your wife a pretty woman, Mr. Sackett?"

  There it was, what had been worrying me all the time, but it was the thing I wouldn't let myself face.

  "She was beautiful, Captain, and this isn't just what a man in love would say. She was really, genuinely beautiful. All my brothers would tell you the same. Tyrel, he--"

  Porter turned around sharply. "Tyrel Sackett?" he was startled. "Tyrel Sackett, the Mora gunfighter, is your brother?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "That would mean that Orrin Sackett is your brother too."

  "Yes."

  "Orrin Sackett," Captain Porter said, "helped us get a bill introduced in the House. He is a very able man, and a good friend of mine."

  "And mighty near as good with a gun as Tyrel, when he wants to be."

  He returned to Ange. "Mr. Sackett, I do not wish to offend, but how were things between you and Mrs. Sackett?"

  "Couldn't be better, sir. We were very much in love." Right there I told him something of how we met, high in the mountains of Colorado. "If you are suggesting she might have left me, you can think again."