Suddenly I heard footsteps and then the door opened. Curly stood there, looking across the room at me. I was setting up.
“They were fools to take you in,” he said. “They’ve no idea who you are.”
“Neither do you,” I said. “But they’re good folks, who’d help a man who was hurt … not ride him down.”
He chuckled, but it was a mean kind of humor. “You looked funny,” he said, “topplin’ over thataway. Like a rag doll.”
He started toward me, dropping his hand to his gun. “You’re the kind who might commit suicide,” he said thoughtfully, “a man as bad off as you are. It wouldn’t surprise anybody.”
“It would surprise my brother Galloway,” I said, “and the rest of the Sacketts. But don’t you worry none. I’m not figurin’ on it.”
“But with a little help?”
He meant it, too. There was a cruel streak in the man, a mean, cruel streak. He taken another step toward me and then almost by accident his eyes fell on the empty holster hanging to the bedpost.
It stopped him.
That and my right hand under the covers. Did I have the gun? He didn’t know, but I could see him begin to sweat. The beads just stepped out on his forehead like water had been thrown at him.
He looked at me, and toward the blanket where my right hand was hidden, and I could just see him wondering if I’d draw that gun from under the covers in time, so I said, “Now no man in his right mind draws a gun from under blankets when he can shoot right through them.”
He looked at me, his eyes all hot and bright, the sweat still on him, his fear fighting with his greed to kill or maim. “You’ve got a gun?”
“Have I?” I grinned at him. “It’s a good question, isn’t it? I didn’t have one out on the trail, bein’ stark naked as I was, but Mr. Rossiter might have given me one.”
“He wouldn’t be such a fool. You might murder them all.”
“Maybe he thinks they’re in less danger from me than from you.”
That hit him. He liked being what he was but he did not like having it known, or guessed.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Was it Rocker’s name that got to you? You probably decided you could kill more men than he could … only Rocker generally shoots them standing up. Or so I’ve heard.”
He kind of drew back. He had decided he did not like the odds. He might have tried it, at that, and then tried to convince the Rossiters it had been suicide. Such men often believe the impossible because it suits them to believe, or because they have big ideas of themselves.
Just then we heard the click of heels and then Meg was in the room, her pa right behind her. “Oh! Here you are! I went to put fudge on the dish and start some coffee and when I got back you were gone.”
“He came back to pay his respects, ma’am,” I said dryly. “It was the only polite thing to do.”
She shot him a quick glance, then looked hard at me. Curly Dunn looked as bland and innocent as a newborn baby, but I expect that was how he always looked. Only when he glanced at me his eyes took on that greasy look.
When they had gone Rossiter remained behind. “What happened?” he demanded.
I shrugged. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
Rossiter’s eyes went to the empty holster, then to my right hand under the covers. “You’re a careful man,” he said.
“My grandpa,” I said, “lived to be ninety-four. It was a caution to us all.”
We talked the evening away, mostly of cows and ranching, Indians and the like, and all the while I was learning about this country, the prettiest I’d ever seen.
“In the country north of Shalako,” he said, “there’s high mountain parks the like of which you’ve never seen. Running streams everywhere, waterfalls, lost canyons, and good feed for stock. I’ve seen outcrops of coal, and there are stories that the old Spanish men mined for gold up there.”
“I’ll be riding out,” I said, “but I’ll be coming back … with Galloway.”
He glanced at me. “Curly says he’s met your brother. That Galloway Sackett backed down from him.”
“Galloway,” I told him, “hasn’t any back-up in him. He probably didn’t figure it was the custom of the country to kill somebody that isn’t dry behind the ears yet.”
He left me finally, and I eased down into the bed and stretched out. It felt good, real good. I was warm, I had eaten, and I could rest. Yet I did not let myself fall asleep until I heard Curly Dunn ride off.
Rossiter had a small operation going for him, a herd of no more than three hundred head, mostly breeding stock, but he was a prosperous man and had come into the country with money. He had no need to sell stock, and could hold off and let the natural increase build his herd. Although I expect he had the notion of picking up a few head when buying was possible. A man with ready cash can often make some good buys of folks who just can’t cut the mustard.
He had built a strong five-room house of logs with three good fireplaces, one of them big enough to warm two rooms and which could be fed from both. He had a weather-tight stable and some pole corrals, and he had a dozen head of good horses and two cowhands. In the house he had a Mexican woman for a cook who looked strong enough to handle both of the cowhands in a rough-and-tumble fight. But she could really throw the grub together.
She brought me breakfast in the morning, and then she brought me some clothes. The pants were a might short in the leg as I am two niches above six feet, and the shirt was short in the arm, but it felt good to have civilized clothes on again. They hadn’t no spare boots but they did have hide, so I set to work and made myself a pair of moccasins.
Meg stopped by to watch. She set down on the porch beside me whilst I cut them out and shaped them to my feet. “You have done that before?”
“Often. I can make a fair pair of boots, too, given the time.”
“Have you?”
“In the Sackett family if a boy wanted boots he made ’em himself. That is, if he was over twelve. Before that we mostly went barefooted. I was sixteen year old before I had me a pair of store-bought shoes. I saved ’em for dancin’.”
She hugged her knees and looked at the line of trees beyond the ranchyard. “What were the dances like?”
“Well, most often they were at the schoolhouse. Sometimes they’d be in somebody’s yard. The word would go out and folks would tell each other, and each would fix up a basket and go. Other times it would just be sort of on the spur, and they’d come from all over.
“Most of the boys weren’t so much for dancin’ but if they couldn’t dance they could hold the girl whilst she did. There’d be a fiddle, sometimes some other instrument, but a fiddle was all anybody expected or needed.
“A lot of courtin’ was done at those dances, and a lot of fightin’. Mostly the boys came for the fightin’. Galloway always had some girl who’d set her cap for him, but he paid them no mind. Not serious, anyway.
“Sometimes there’d not be enough for dancin’ so we’d set about an’ sing. I liked that because I just plain like to sing.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Hunt us a piece of land and go to ranching. I reckon right now the thing to do is head for Shalako and team up with Galloway.”
“You’d better be careful. The Dunns will think you’re crowding them.”
“It’s open range, and there’s enough for all.”
“That isn’t what they think, Mr. Sackett. There are six of the Dunn boys, and there’s their pa, and they’ve a dozen or more men who ride for them.”
“Well, there’s two of us Sacketts. That should make it work out about right. Of course, if need be there’s a lot of us scattered around and we set store by our kinfolk.”
I completed the moccasins and tried them on. They felt good on my feet, which had healed over, although the skin was still tender.
I looked down at the girl. “Ma’am, you’re a right pretty girl, and the man that gets you will be lucky, but don’t you go wasting yourself on Curly Dunn. He’s as poisonous mean as a rattler.”
She sprang to her feet, her face stiff with anger. “Nobody can be nice to you! The first time I try to talk to you you end up by criticizing Curly!”