“If I hadn’t been armed last night, he’d have killed me.”
“What kind of talk is that? You mean he’d have tried to kill you right in my own house, with Pa and me close by? That’s ridiculous!”
“Maybe. He said it would look like suicide. Ma’am, you may hate me for this, but I’d be less than a man if I hadn’t told you. That Curly is sick. He’s sick in the head. You’d better understand that while there’s still time.”
Scornfully, she turned from me. “Go away. And I don’t care if I ever see you again! Just go away!”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s why I told you. Because I am going away and I don’t figure to see you again too much, and you and your pa have been almighty kind. I’ve warned you just like I’d warn folks if there was a hydrophoby wolf in the neighborhood.”
I limped to the corral and roped the grulla mustang Rossiter had agreed to loan me. I saddled up with the borrowed gear, then went to the house.
Rossiter met me at the door. “Sorry to see you go, boy. If you come back this way, drop in.”
“I’ll return the outfit soon as I can rustle one. Galloway has a little money. I lost all mine back yonder.”
“No hurry.” Rossiter stepped down off the porch and lowered his tone. “Sackett, you be careful, riding out of here. I think you have made an enemy.”
“If he stays out of my way, I’ll stay shut of him. I’m not one to hunt trouble. An’ Mr. Rossiter, if you ever need help, you just put your call on a Sackett. You’ll get all the help you need, an’ quick. You help one of us and you’ve helped us all. That’s the way we figure it.”
The grulla was a good horse, mountain-bred and tough. He was a mite feisty there at first but as soon as he found that I intended to stay in the saddle and take no nonsense he headed off down the trail happily enough. He just wanted to settle as to who was boss.
Shalako wasn’t far down the road. I kept to the trees, avoiding the trail, and at noontime I watered in the La Plata River a few miles below the town. When the grulla was watered I taken it back under the trees and found a place there with sunshine and shadow, with grass around, and a place for me to rest, and I rested while the grulla cropped grass.
Fact is, I wasn’t up to much, and what lay beyond I did not know. There might be folks at the town that I wanted to see, and some I’d rather fight shy of.
Somehow the thought was in my mind that I was coming home … this country felt right to me, and I even liked the name of that town.
Shalako … some Indian name, it sounded like.
Then, for awhile, listening to the cropping of grass and the running water, I slept.
Chapter VIII
The town lay off the road with the most beautiful backdrop of mountains you ever did see, and the La Plata was down off the bench and under the trees, hidden from the town, but close by.
Now when I say “town” I mean it western style. In this country we folks call anything a town where people stop. First off there’s a stage stop or a store or maybe only a saloon. Out California way there was a town started because a man’s wagon broke down and he just started selling whiskey off the tailgate.
Generally towns in this country, like in the old country, began at river crossings or places where the trails crossed. Folks like to stop at rivers, but the smart ones always cross the river first, and then camp. The river might rise up during the night and hold them for days.
London, folks tells me, began at the only good crossing of the river in many miles. At that place there was a gravel bottom. The same thing folks tell me was true of other cities about the world, but how Shalako came to be, I had no idea.
It was mid-afternoon when my mustang ambled up the one street of the town. With the mountains reared up against the sky in the background there were three buildings, two on one side of the street, one on the other. I swung down in front of the saloon and tied my horse, sizing up the place.
Across the street was a general store and as soon as I could round up some cash I figured to go over there and buy myself an outfit, including boots. Meanwhile I’d tackle the saloon.
Now a western saloon wasn’t just a place to belt a few. It was a clubroom for the men, a clearing house for information, and often as not more business was done at the bar than anywhere else around. A man could go into a saloon and find out how the trails were, whether the Indians were on the warpath, or just about anything he needed to know. And I needed to know plenty. Mostly where I could find Galloway.
So I pushed past the swinging doors and went in. It was cool and quiet inside. The bar ran across about two-thirds of the end of the room, and by the end of the bar there was a door. That bar was polished and in mighty fine shape. There were a dozen tables, a beat-up music box, and a man leaning over the bar.
“Howdy,” I said, “I’m Flagan Sackett. I’m hunting a brother of mine and somebody who’ll stake me to a bait of grub.”
“Your brother Galloway Sackett?”
“That’s the one.”
“He and his partner rode off up country. They said to give you whatever you needed, so the grub will be ready. You want a drink?”
“Thanks. I don’t shape up to be much of a drinking man, but I’ll have it.”
Now I didn’t shape up to be much of anything right then. Like I said, those clothes I had on fit me a mite too soon. The pants ended above my ankles and the shirt sleeves only came down below my elbows. The shirt was tight across the chest and back, and of course, thin like I was from lack of eating, I looked like the skeleton had come out of the cupboard.
Just then the doors swung open and two men came in—cowhands from somebody’s outfit. They wore chaps and they bellied up to the bar and then one of them saw me.
“Look, what the cat dragged in,” he said. “Mister, next time you swipe somebody’s pants you better make sure they fit.”
“That would be hard to do,” I said, “judging by what I see around. I don’t think there’s a man-sized pair of pants in the outfit, letting alone the bartender.”
One of those gents was a stocky, redheaded gent with square shoulders and freckled hands … fists right now. He taken a step toward me and said, “Let’s see who fills the biggest pants around here.”
“Mister Red,” I said, “I’m in no shape for a fight. I’ve come off the mountain after a most difficult time with Indians and such. You just hold that head of steam for a week or so and I’ll take you out and punch your head into shape.”
“I think you’re yella,” he said.
“No,” I said, “although I can understand your viewpoint. But I don’t aim to give myself none the worst of it and I’m in no shape to fight. Right at this moment I couldn’t whip a sick kitten.”
The bartender came through the door from the kitchen pushing a tray loaded with grub ahead of him. “Here you go, Sackett,” he said. “This’ll put meat on your ribs.”
That redhead stared at me. “Is your name Sackett? You related to Tyrel?”
“Cousins,” I said, “although the only time we ever met was down in the Tonto Basin awhile back. Do you know Tyrel?”
“I know him. He’s hell-on-wheels with a gun.”
“Runs in the family,” I said. “We all take to shooting like we do to girling or eating. Comes natural. I cut my teeth on the butt of a six-gun.”
“We had trouble, Tyrel an’ me.”
“Must not have amounted to much,” I said, “that trouble you speak of.”
“Why?”
“You’re still alive, ain’t you? The way I heard it Tyrel don’t waste around. When he has a job to do he does it. If I were you I’d forget all about that trouble. And whatever you had in mind here, too. I don’t want nothing to take my mind off this grub.”
So saying I straddled a chair and cut into that meat. Hungry as I was it could have been an old saddle and I’d have eaten it, stirrups and all.