The Sacket Brand (1965) s-12

by Louis L'Amour

  They just looked at me. They might not like what I'd told them, but they weren't going to sell out their boss. They were good men. Only they didn't need to tell me, and maybe they thought of that, too.

  All I had to do was look past them at the brands on their horses--a capital A lying on its side ... Lazy A.

  There had been cattle with that brand in some of the country I'd ridden through, and there had been a horse of that brand at the hitch rail of the saloon when I first rode up to Globe after leaving Camp Verde.

  A cattleman or any rider in range country just naturally notices any brand he sees on the stock along the way. He has cattle on his mind, and brands are one of the biggest parts of his job.

  Over coffee one of these gents suddenly said, "We got no call to believe what you said, only something about this here has a smell we don't like. You don't size up like any dry-gulching killer. I got a feelin' you been talking truth."

  "All I ask," I said, "is not to stand in my way."

  "There's some that will."

  Evidently they had no news from Globe, so I decided to let them have it, and now. "One tried," I said, "last night down to Globe."

  I told them about it, and when I finished they sat still for a moment or two, and then one of them said, "I mind that gully."

  "Andersen," another said, "Curley Andersen."

  "He was close on to bald."

  "I know. That's why we called him Curly.

  Well, maybe he would try it that way. You beat him to the draw?"

  "Mister," I said, "when it comes to fighting, a body makes up his own rules with me. I'll fight him fair as long as he shows himself of a like mind. This Curly Andersen tried to ambush me, so he laid out the rules and I played according."

  Reaching for the pot, I filled my cup, then the cups of the others.

  "Only maybe he figured I'd made the rules. He said I'd tried to ambush his boss back in the Mogollons. Anyway, he drew cards in a tough game."

  When they had gone, I saddled up and rode out of there, making it a policy never to stay too long in one place when I knew I had enemies, and especially when they had me located.

  All the time I was keeping my thoughts away from Ange. Whenever she came to mind I felt a vast, aching emptiness inside me, and a loneliness such as not even I had ever known.

  Three days passed, three days of riding and resting, three days of prowling like a lonely wolf, pushing my horse down old trails and finding new ones through rock and brush and butte. And all the while I was working out the trails of those who hunted me, andofthe Lazy A cattle, slowly tracing out the maze they made to find my way to their headquarters.

  It was a high and lovely country. I rode through broken land crested and ridged with pines, with beautiful meadows and streams that rushed along over stones with a happy chuckling sound. Cold water it was, from fresh-melted snow.

  My strength was building back, and I took good care to give my horses rest and to stake them each night on good grass. Each time I made myself a fire I ate at that spot, and then moved on for a mile or two, camping in some unlikely place, and wiping away all traces of my camp when I left. And every day I varied my way of going, wanting to weave no pattern they could read.

  More and more I was finding horse tracks, and I knew I was getting closer. My enemy had men beside him, and I rode alone. My enemy had spare horses, and many eyes with which to seek me out, and I had only two. But there was Indian in my nature if not in my blood, and I hunted my way across country like a ghost, only the butt of that Colt was near my hand, and my rifle ready for use. Sometimes I made dry camp, chewing on jerky or a crust of bread, and always I avoided human beings.

  It was a month to the day of the time Ange had been killed when I saw the strange rider.

  The weather had turned bad, and I had found a deep hollow under an overhang near the top of the ridge that divided Cibecue Creek from Carrizo Creek. It was wild and lonely here, with only the ghost of an old trail along the ridge that showed no signs of travel, none at all. The trail might have been made a hundred years ago, judging by its vagueness. But in arid country, or even on the lonely ridges in forested country, such trails, used long ago by Indians, seem to last forever.

  Thunder rumbled above the rim, dark now with forest andwiththe impending storm, and a few scattering drops of cold rain fell. The shelter I had was good, although higher on the ridge than I liked, even though the rim towered almost a thousand feet higher three or four miles to the north.

  A man riding wild country never stops looking for camping spots. If he doesn't use them at the time, he may next week or next year, or five years later. It is one of those unconscious things a body takes to when riding free of towns and ranches.

  The place I'd found was deep under the overhang, masked by some brush, and I'd heaved a couple of rock slabs up to make added shelter.

  My horse couldn't get into it, but I found him a place under the trees where intersecting branches made cover of a kind.

  Before me the ground broke away into the canyon of the Carrizo, and as I looked down the canyon I saw the rider, who drew rein, turned in the saddle, and looked carefully around, like a man who is lost.

  I could guess what happened, and it didn't take a lot of figuring. That rider had mistaken the Carrizo for the Cibecue, for back up where the two canyons headed up they weren't more than a couple of miles apart, maybe even less. And there was one branch of the Cibecue that began only a couple of hundred yards from the Carrizo. Somebody not used to the country might easily mistake the one for the other.

  That rider was in trouble, for the two canyons ran parallel to each other for only a few miles, and the further down the canyon he rode ... no, she rode, for by that time I was positive the rider was a woman ... the further down the canyon she rode, the further she would get from where she was going.

  Suddenly lightning flashed and thunder crashed, and the rider's horse reared up and bolted. And then the rain came ... it came hard, and in a real old back-country gully-washer. The rider disappeared below the walls and out of my sight, her horse running wild and crazy in the kind of country where a horse would do well to walk.

  The rain drew a gray veil across the landscape, a veil like shimmering steel, that shut out the crags, shut out the darkness of the pines, and started big drops falling over the edge of my overhang.

  Here I was snug and dry, but I was unquiet in my mind, for I was thinking of that woman, her horse running away over wet rocks in a wild canyon. If she could stay with the horse and he didn't break his fool leg or her neck, they would be all right. Only I didn't think for a minute she would get through.

  I sat there maybe ten minutes, secure in my hideaway, with the rain falling outside. The canyon, I knew, was going to be running belly-deep for a tall horse within the next couple of hours ... maybe sooner. If anybody was down, but conscious, they might have a chance; unconscious, anybody down there on the ground would be dead.

  Finally I got up, cussing myself for being a damned fool to go off a-helping somebody in a country full of enemies.

  When I slung a saddle on my horse he gave me a hurt look. He was as tired of it all as I was, and I hadn't my strength back. I had figured to sit right where I was and rest up a couple of days while my enemies worried about where I was.

  I found her, and sure enough, she had fallen or been thrown from the saddle. She was lying among the rocks, her face white as all get-out, her black hair spilled around her on the wet sand.

  Her horse was fifty yards off, standing three-legged with the saddle under his belly. When I walked over to get the horse and fix the rig up, I saw that he'd gone lame. The leg wasn't broken, but it was hurt, and that horse wasn't going to carry anybody very far, not for a while.

  So I led him back to where the lady lay, and I picked her up and slung her over my shoulder and heaved her aboard my own horse. Holding her on the saddle in front of me, I returned to the overhang and my fire.

  When I put her down beside the fire she
opened a pair of the deepest, blackest eyes I had ever seen, and she said, "Thank you, Mr.

  Sackett. I was afraid I would never find you."

  Chapter eight.

  Now I was never no hand with womenfolks.

  Mostly when I went to dances back in the Tennessee hills I went for the fighting that went on between times or after. Orrin, that brother of mine who was a hand to sing and play the fiddle, he could talk to women. Those Trelawney gals back there were always a-taking after him, but he had a way that could charm the prissiest ones into walking out with him.

  Seemed like he knew every pretty girl from Cumberland Gap to the Highland Rim.

  Here was I, a long homely man and no hand to talk, rained into an overhang cave on a Tonto ridge with one of the prettiest little girls you ever did see, and the trails buried stirrup-deep under rushing water. The way she looked up at me, I was almighty sure she was less put out than me.

  "What do you mean, ma'am? And how did you know me?"

  She was lying there beside the fire, looking as cute as a cub 'coon in a hollow tree, and she seemed in no mind to sit up, although I was fairly a-sweating, wishing she would.

  "There's no man anywhere so tall," she said, "or so strong. My! You picked me up as if I was a baby!"

  Well, she wasn't any baby. She was little, but she was doing her share where it counted, judging by the way she shaped out her clothes.

  "Now see here. I'm not fixed to take care of any woman. I'm a foot-loose, long-riding man, and when this storm is over, you go back to your ma."

  "I don't have one."

  She gave me a woe-bbgone look that would have curled my socks, if I'd owned any. I just shoved my bare feet down into my boots.

  "And if you keep on I won't have any father, either," she said.

  That set me back. So I made up to work over the fire. Only thing wrong with it, that horse of hers wasn't wearing any Lazy A brand.

  The horse had followed along, limping up the mountain after us, and he was standing under the trees with my two horses.

  "How did you expect to find me?"

  She sat up and locked her hands around one knee. "By just riding. Only I got lost, somehow."

  That didn't make any impression on me.

  I went about fixing up a bite of something to eat, knowing nobody would smell smoke in all that rain, and probably nobody would be riding until it was over. Nonetheless, I kept an eye on the country around, not really believing this girl was out alone. But the rain was going to wash out any tracks, and anybody hunting me was going to have to wait until I started moving again, or until this girl told it around that she'd seen me.

  All the while I fussed over the fire, I was thinking over the business of this girl showing up.

  Now, this Mogollon country was wild. Over here where I was now, over half the country stood on end, and it was crags and boulders, brush and fallen trees. It was really rough, and no place a body would be likely to find a hot-house flower like this girl. She had soft hands and soft skin, and showed little sign of being out much in wind and sun. She could ride, all right, but she was no cow-country girl. Leastways, she hadn't been for some time. If such a girl was in this country at such a time, she was bait for something. And who was everybody fishing for? Me.

  The best thing I could do was get shut of this girl as fast as I could, but I surely couldn't drive her out in the rain. Yet the more I thought of it, the uneasier I became. From time to time I sneaked a look at her. She was in no way upset by being caught with a strange man in wild country. She was young, all right, maybe not more than seventeen or eighteen, but there was a kind of wise look about her eyes that made me think that, girl-wise, she'd been up the creek and over the mountain. I began to think that killing me wasn't enough. Now they were fixing to get me hanged.

  Making coffee and broiling a couple of venison steaks took little time. Whilst we ate that, and the last of my bread, I figured out what I was a-going to do.

  By the time we'd finished eating, the last of the light was going. Maybe I was wrong, but I wasn't going to chance it. I stowed away my eating gear and taken up my saddle. She sat up straight then and looked at me.

  "What are you going to do with that?" she asked.

  "Put it near my horse," I said, "case I have to light out fast before morning. I always stow my gear where I can lay hand to it."

  She couldn't see what I was doing back under the trees, and when I was saddled and packed, I walked back to the overhang. "Ma'am," I said, "you--"

  "My name is Lorna," she interrupted.

  "All right, ma'am." I stood a good country distance off from her. "I got to look off down the valley. If anything happens I don't get back, you just follow that creek." I indicated the Cibecue. "It will take you down to the flat land."

  "Mr. Sackett"--she looked so almighty lonesome-like I almost changed my mind ... almost--

  "Mr. Sackett, I am most afraid.

  Won't you stay with me?"

  Well, I swung a leg over my saddle.

  "Ma'am," I said, "you get scared, 'long about midnight you let out a scream and you'll have all kinds of company. You'll have those boys you got waiting back up there in the trees ... they'll come a-running."

  Then I grinned at her. "Miss Lorna, you scream. I'll bet they'll be mighty surprised when they find you alone."

  With that I touched a spur to my horse and went off down the trail toward the Cibecue. Then I doubled back and rode into still rougher country.

  It was graying toward light on a wet, still morning when I finally found a place to hole up.

  It was right under the Tonto Rim, soaring more than a thousand feet above me, near a spring that showed no human, horse, or cow tracks--a sort of natural shelter made by trees falling off the rim and piling up on the rocks. And right there I sat tight for three days.

  It was plain enough what they had tried to do. That girl's fall was more than likely the real thing, but the idea was to have her up there with me, and then during the night she would begin to scream and they would come down there and find us together. I'd be hanged right on the spot, and any story I'd told previous would be put down as so many lies. Or they'd claim I got rid of my own wife and tried to lay it to somebody else. I hadn't let her know what I was going to do until I was in the saddle, and if she started screaming then it wasn't going to do much good. I never did hear tell of a man attacking a woman a-horseback.

  There was reason to sit still here, for I had some studying to do. It was time to sit and contemplate.

  All the while I figured I'd lost them and was riding off scot-free, they had known where I was. They had known right where I stopped and they had that girl ready. For now it wasn't enough just to kill me--they had to scotch that story I'd told of my wife's murder.

  But how had they known where I was?

  The only way I could figure it, was that they had all the trails watched, and maybe some way of signaling, like the Army heliograph they were using against the Indians. As soon as I'd taken direction, they could begin to concentrate until they had me pegged right to a spot.

  And if that was so, they must know where I was now ... or just about where. They might be closing in on me, surrounding me even now.

  When I got to this point in my figuring, I came up off that ground fast. I taken up my rifle and a bag of extra shells and moved out to get my horses ... but the horses were gone!

  Slipping back into my shelter, I picked up what coffee and grub I could carry, took my blanket and poncho, made a quick bundle and a back pack, and then eased out into the open.

  What were they fixing to do? They had my horses, what were they waiting for? Maybe for the man who wanted me dead. Maybe he wanted to see me die.

  Standing close against a tree, I studied the lay of the ground about me. Right back of me a steep, brush-choked canyon led to the top of the rim. All around there were trees and brush, and the woods were silent ... too silent for a place where there were squirrels and birds.

  Every
instinct told me they were out there, that they had me where they wanted me, and this time they did not intend to fail. If I went forward they would be waiting and they would take me, and hang me or shoot me; but what if I moved back, up that brush-filled canyon to the rim?

  Then it came to me that that was just what they wanted me to do, that up there, others would be waiting for me.

  Cold sweat was on my body, cold fear in my heart. I was downright scared. There was nothing in me that was ready to die ... at least, not until I found the man or men who murdered Ange.

  But it had to be one of the two. There was no other way. To go down the slope into the trees was surely death; to go up the canyon was maybe death. Me, I chose the maybe. Like a ghost I slipped from tree to tree, working my way back and up. Here they had no lookouts, here they could see no further and no better than me, or maybe even less well, for I was like an Indian in the woods ... I'd spent time with them back in Tennessee.

  Once I got into the mouth of the canyon it meant climb, for this was a run-off canyon, cut by water falling from the Mogollon Rim. That rim was up, almost two thousand feet in places.

  Thick stands of pine grew along both walls, and among them it was a tangle of brush and fallen trees. The going was a nightmare, and sometimes it was easier to crawl. Down below me I heard a long call, as if somebody down there was signaling to someone up above. And after a while I heard a call from the right, but down below.

  It came to me that I didn't have to keep going up--I could go along the face of the canyon wall. Mostly it was covered with thick brush and trees, but in places it was bare rock. A wild, rugged place it was, home for rattlers, cougars, bobcats, and eagles, and no place at all for a man.

  Suddenly a branch ripped my shirt. I stopped, sweating and listening, but there was no sound.

  Yet I knew they were there. I changed direction, easing off toward the left.

  The mountain fell away below me and loomed up far above. Each step had to be taken with the greatest care, and each one seemed a dreadful hazard. It seemed almost certain that they were going to get me. I might kill one man, I might kill three or four, but there was an almighty slim chance that I could win out in the end.