When spring came, Reed Talon hired hands. He bought cattle to stock the range, and a milk cow for the house. He built an icehouse near the spring and when winter came next he cut ice from a nearby river and bedded it down with sawdust to keep meat and vegetables fresh.
Reed Talon was a knowing man and a careful man and he killed only what wild meat he needed and put out hay and salt for game as well as for his cattle. There were always elk and deer around and he made it comfortable for them to stay.
By the time he passed on, there was money in the bank and cattle on the range, and Barnabas Talon went to school in England. Milo, who took after the Sacketts, rode the wild country, working here and there, breaking broncs and cutting a wide swath wherever the girls were.
Reed Talon died under strange circumstances, and Em Sackett had her own idea how.
JAKE FLANNER: A man who wanted wealth and power. The trouble was that the best ranch was owned by the Talons, who wouldn't sell and wouldn't scare. He arranged the murder of Reed Talon but Em Talon broke both his knees and left him a cripple, and all his efforts to dislodge her failed. The country was changing and Jake Flanner could see the handwriting on the wall clearly enough. When the change took place he wanted to be sitting on the Empty, the Talon ranch, in complete command. How he acquired the property was his business, and afterward he would be a smiling, affable rancher and businessman, such a one as might be considered for governor or the senate. The only trouble was, he could not move Em Talon.
One by one he eliminated her hands and restricted her movements. He controlled the town but he could not reach Em. It was frustrating, irritating, and a challenge.
At first sight his conclusion was that the man who called himself Logan was a trouble-hunting drifter, a man both useful and expendable. Undoubtedly if he approached the Empty he would be shot at and he would return the fire, hopefully with effect. In any event, nothing would be lost and much might be gained.
EMILY TALON: A Clinch Mountain Sackett, and none of her life had been easy until she married Reed Talon. After that it was hard, hard work but she knew what she was working for and for whom. She and Reed had settled the land when the West was young and she had seen her boys grow tall and strong and each take to his own particular trail. The ranch was theirs, and she would hold it for them until they came to claim it, as someday they would.
The West was built by the strong, men and women, each with a role to play. Often a man was gone on a trail drive or working away from home and his wife ran the ranch or the homestead. It was not only the men who knew how and when to use a gun. Annie Oakley did not become one of best rifle shots who ever lived by doing the dishes, and she was only one of many such.
Em Talon also appears, briefly, in THE MAN FROM THE BROKEN HILLS.
BARNABAS TALON: Named for Barnabas Sackett, the first of the Sackett clan to come to America. Barnabas studied in France and England and fought as an officer in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Excellent rifle shot, middling good with a pistol. A young man with a future.
MILO TALON: Brother to Barnabas, some years younger. Takes after the Clinch Mountain Sacketts, a bit on the wild side but a rover and a gunfighter. Also appears in THE MAN FROM THE BROKEN HILLS and MILO TALON. A man who knows his way around wild country but who knows the cities, too. Well-educated for his time although not a college man like his brother.
LEN SPIVEY: He walked a very wide path in a very small town until he met Logan Sackett. The meeting could have been educational for Spivey but he was a slow learner. He flunked the six-shooter course and wound up in a shallow grave, wrapped in his own blanket.
ISOM DART: An historical character, known in Brown's Hole. A black man, an outlaw, but well-liked along the trail.
Isom Dart was murdered by Tom Horn, who shot him down from ambush. Tom Horn, using the name Tom Hicks, had been stopping over with Matt Rash, according to the Browns Hole stories, and it was Matt whom he killed first.
SPUD TAVIS: When he asked Pennywell Farman to care for his children, he had more than that in mind. But Pennywell was a girl who knew her own mind and she took the buck-board and ran away. He had no idea anybody would take up for a no-account nester's kid, but the big, rough-looking stranger did, and after a brief discussion of the situation Spud Tavis decided to take his buckboard and go home.
PENNYWELL FARMAN: Not quite sixteen, thin but growing up to be pretty, she had small chance in life with a no-account father and no home to speak of. But she had her own standards of behavior and was prepared to fight for them.
DEKE FARMAN: A natural-born loser who accepted his role too willingly. His daughter had all the backbone he lacked.
CON WELLINGTON: A gambler with rheumatic hands; he could no longer deal them from the bottom so he opened a store, and when a stronger, more desperate man came along he drew in his horns and took to playing soft music until the situation changed. Con Wellington had lived long enough on the frontier to know that nothing was forever.
DUTCH BRANNENBERG: Success had given him confidence and the name of being a tough, dangerous man. The trouble with having such a name is that the time always comes when you have to live up to it, and Dutch didn't choose the time or the man, they chose him.
JOHANNES DUCKETT: A young man who was good with a rifle and had no hesitation about shooting from ambush when the price was right, and Jake Flanner had the price. Flanner trusted in what he believed was Duckett's loyalty and Duckett trusted in what was left of Flanner's bankroll. Johannes Duckett had saved more than a thousand dollars, more money than he could imagine, so when the odds mounted his supposed loyalty disappeared with the morning mist.
JOE HERRARA: Known as Mexican Joe Herrara. A dangerous man, but he left Chihuahua because some quiet but honest men thought he was too much trouble and suggested travel might be softening to his nature. The people at South Pass City thought the same but Brown's Hole was tolerant, up to a point. But they all knew that when Joe Herrara started sharpening his knife it meant trouble. He had a very cutting way about him.
THE OUTLAW TRAIL: Led down the backbone of the Rockies from Canada to Mexico with hide-outs along the way, either on the trail or close to it--the Crazy Mountains in Montana; Jackson's Hole and the Hole-in-the-Wall country in Wyoming; Brown's Hole, largely in Colorado but edging over into Wyoming and Utah; Robbers' Roost on the San Rafael Swell in Utah; a ranch near Alma, New Mexico; and Horse-Thief Valley in Arizona. All of these were spots where an outlaw could find a place to stop, no questions asked, and none answered if he was followed. There were towns a bit off the route, too, such as Baggs, Wyoming, where Butch Cassidy once owned a house (it is still there, owned by one of the family who bought it from Butch on condition they keep a room where he might sleep), as well as a half dozen other such towns.
BROWN'S HOLE: An area in northwestern Colorado and bordering sections of Utah and Wyoming that was a main stop on the Outlaw Trail. Also a rendezvous for trappers in earlier days, it was home to a number of colorful, exciting characters. Tom Horn pulled off at least one of his killings here, that of Matt Rash.
The Hole was well-sheltered from the worst winds, and had water, fuel, and good range.
BENTON HAYES: A man who found hunting wanted men paid better than hunting buffalo or bear. Only trouble was, sometimes you believed you were trailing a small black bear but at the end of the trail you discovered you had cornered a grizzly. Up to this point Benton Hayes had tracked down a number of small black bears. He wasn't prepared for what he found in his trap this time.
ALBANI FULBRIC: A man with a sense of history, and a memory of his own family's story. Like many of his generation he had grown up reading Sir Walter Scott.
DOLORES ARRIBAS: A lady of Spanish-Indian ancestry, a lady who was quite a woman and she had it where it could be seen. Wherever she went she turned heads. She took in washing and it was said she entertained a little on the side, but it was very selective entertainment and she did the selecting. A woman of independence and courage, as well as beauty.
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CHOWSE DILLON: An occasional outlaw of small calibre; a good hand with stock, not so good at choosing the right companions.
WILL SCANLAN: He had a sister named Zelda and a house by the side of the road where travelers sometimes stopped. He ran a few head of cattle, owned a few moth-eaten broncs, and Zelda could cook, so he made out.
JERK-LINE MILLER: A teamster, a passerby, a man not unwilling to pick up a few dollars of blood money as long as he was out of shooting range.
SIWASH: A crossroads with a store, a saloon, and a half dozen houses, a place born to die, and like many another it did. The new highway passed it by and when I last saw the place there was nothing left but a stretch of concrete floor and a rusted gas-pump, a few charred timbers and a stone foundation.
Dolores Arribas? One of the gentlemen she entertained passed on, leaving her a house in the city and considerable wealth. When we last talked she was a quiet, elderly lady with gray hair who sponsored the ballet, the opera, and a few aspiring young people who never knew their fairy godmother.
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THE SACKETT BRAND
First publication: Bantam Books paperback, June 1965 Narrator: William Tell Sackett Time Period: c. 1875--1879
News had a way of traveling in western country. Somebody told a stage driver and he told a bartender and the bartender passed the news to some friend over the bar, and the story was on the grapevine.
When the Lazy A riders started hunting Tell Sackett in the Mogollon Rim country the story started from Camp Verde and Globe, but within the week they were talking about it in Fort Worth and Ogalalla, in Dodge and Tombstone. And wherever the story reached a Sackett, that Sackett headed for the Mogollon on the run.
When Tell found Ange in the mountains of Colorado he found a girl as lonely as he himself. Long ago, back during the Civil War, there had been another girl, but that had come to nothing, and when he found Ange they knew it was forever. With gold from their mining claim they bought cattle and headed for the Tonto Basin. Trails were few and they were finding their way, with Tell scouting ahead, and then he was attacked without warning and Ange murdered.
It was a wild and broken country known only to the Apache, miles and miles of forest and running streams bordering on the half-desert lying to the west and south, a country in which a man could both run and hide.
What chance did one man have against forty? One man, already badly hurt and without weapons?
Then the Sacketts began to come from wherever they heard the news. Some were near, some far, but a Sackett was in trouble so they asked no questions. They came running: Nolan, Orlando, Flagan, Galloway, Tyrel, Orrin, and Falcon. Even Parmalee, the Flatland Sackett. Riding for the Mogollon from wherever the news found them, and as has been said, even one Sackett was quite a few.
Van Allen treated all women with contempt but this time he had gone too far. His own men deserted him, and what he hired to replace them was, by and large, the riffraff of western saloons. Even some of those refused to follow when they discovered the truth, that he had attacked and murdered a decent woman.
SWANDLE: A cattleman whose investment entangled him in a web in which he had no part. All he wanted was out, hopefully without losing his shirt.
ANGE SACKETT: Born Ange Kerry. Her story is told in SACKETT, of how Tell Sackett followed a strange trail to a hanging valley in the Colorado mountains and found not only a lost mine of the Spaniards but a lovely girl, left alone after her grandfather died, a girl he subsequently married.
BOB O'LEARY: A bartender who found himself in the middle. He had seen it all in bars from Dodge to Deadwood and wanted no part of a fight in which he had no stake.
There were many such bartenders. Like the gamblers and the gunfighting marshals, they followed the boom camps, drawn not only by the ready money but by the flavor and color of the camps themselves. You found them in the end-of-track towns, places that were born and died within weeks or months as the railroad moved on. You found them in the sudden cattle and mining towns until half the faces in any boom camp were faces you remembered even if you did not know the people.
New ones appeared, lasted a camp or two, and disappeared, but by and large they knew each other, talked over the other camps, and went their ways.
Not only the gamblers, saloon-keepers, bartenders, and gunfighting marshals but the women as well followed the excitement and the promise of easy money from El Paso to the Yukon. Bat Masterson, for example, who ended his days as a sportswriter for a New York newspaper, was at the Battle of Adobe Walls; he was sheriff of Ford County where Dodge City was; and he showed up in Denver, Leadville, Tombstone, and Trinidad. And they included Luke Short, Wyatt Earp and his brothers, Doc Holliday, Dave Rudabaugh, Mysterious Dave Mathers, Rowdy Joe Lowe, John Wesley Hardin, Silver Heels, Poker Alice, Calamity Jane, and dozens of others, names forgotten now but known to all that crowd in the rough old days before the country began to settle down.
DANCER: A good man riding for the wrong brand.
AL SEIBER: 1844--1907. A German who scouted Apache country for the army. A Union soldier, he fought at Gettysburg, among other battles, and was wounded twice. That was only the beginning, as he was wounded many times by bullet, arrow, and knife in his fights with the Apache.
The scouts he led were also Apache, and he was respected both by the Indians he led and those with whom he fought as a decent, honorable man whose word was good.
He was one of the many men, referred to in my stories, that the gunfighters left alone, if they were smart. As I have written elsewhere, for every gunfighter of whom one heard there were a dozen just as capable of whom you heard little or nothing at all. Al Seiber and Major Frank North were two such.
AL ZABRISKY: A gunman for hire; a warrior to handle gun trouble who did not ask too many questions.
SONORA MACON: Another such, and the man who shot Tell Sackett off the cliff, a man with a gun for hire, but one who had his own standards. He was a fighting man who fought for fighting men, not for the killers of women. Badly shot up, he survived.
LORNA: A lady of uneasy virtue who was sent to lure a man to his death for money. Her first thought was for what the money would buy in San Francisco, but she had second thoughts.
BRISCOE: A young man who was suddenly scared, suddenly realized he could die, so he got on his horse and rode away into many sunsets and sunrises, and with every one of them he remembered how easy it would have been to lose them all in exchange for a little piece of lead near his heart.
WILLIAM TELL SACKETT: A tall mountain boy who lived out the Civil War fighting for the Union; who found the great love of his life during that war and lost her almost as soon as he found her. Who rode away to the West when the war ended and drove cattle over the Bozeman Trail to Montana, a lonely man with a lost dream who found a girl alone in a cave and married her. Part of it was love and part of it was because she was lost and alone and needed taking care of, just as he was lost and alone and needed someone to watch over and care for. All he had was a horse, a saddle, and a gun and with it all a wistful longing for something more, something he had known briefly, then lost forever.
NOLAN SACKETT: One of the so-called outlaw Sacketts from the Clinch Mountains. It was said those Clinch Mountain Sacketts were so rough they wore their clothes out from the inside first and Nolan was one of the roughest. When he heard a Sackett was up against long odds he got up in the middle of a horse and started west.
FALCON SACKETT: One-time sea captain, adventurer, father of Orlando, and married to Gin, formerly Virginia Locklear. He was traveling by stage when he heard the news. Somebody had a Sackett treed up in the Tonto Basin country so he didn't waste around.
ORRIN SACKETT: Politician, singer of Welsh songs, peace officer, cattleman. A handsome, smooth-talking man who was good with a gun when the situation demanded.
FLAGAN AND GALLOWAY: Brothers, cousins to Orrin, Tyrel, and Tell, cowhands, cattlemen. Two long-tall mountain boys who come when needed.
PARMALEE S
ACKETT: A Flatland Sackett whose home was in Grassy Cove; a Sackett with money, a sometime actor, cattleman, gambler, a man good with a gun but who preferred other methods when possible. Has property near the Highland Rim, as well.
VANCOUTER ALLEN: Forty years old, a strong, arrogant man who rode roughshod over anything that got in his way. Brutal and uncaring with women, he suddenly found himself guilty of an ugly murder and in a panic tried to cover it up and destroy the evidence. Tell Sackett was a part of that evidence and he wasn't easy to get rid of.
CAP ROUNTREE: A salty old customer, a mountain man, trapper, cowboy, all-around western man. Dry as alkali dust and twice as bitter. A tough old mountain man who had hunted gold and fought Indians and had the scars to prove it. You will find him in THE DAYBREAKERS, SACKETT, LONELY ON THE MOUNTAIN, and others. A man to ride any river with.
DODIE ALLEN: Cut from the same pattern as Vancouter, only younger. The pattern was wrong and the time was wrong so Dodie would never get any older.
the Sackett Companion (1992) Page 16
