Red brought his beer over and sat down opposite me. “Truth to tell,” he said, “Tyrel could have pinned my ears back, and he didn’t. I was tied in with a rough crowd and I was feeling my weight. I never did get nowhere bucking Sacketts.”
“Then it’s about time you either stayed out of the fights or got in on the right side.”
“Which side is yours?”
“One not hunting trouble. We came into this country hunting land. We figure to settle down and raise cows and families. You got anything against that?”
“No … but the Dunns might.”
Well, I didn’t want to talk about it. Seemed to me there’d been too much talk already. What I wanted was some shuteye, now that I was stowing away this grub. I wanted a rest and then an outfit. I’d need blankets, a poncho, saddlebags, a rifle, and some grub. It was a lot to ask, but no more than I could pay for, given time.
The saloonkeeper left his bar and crossed over to my table with a beer. “Mind if I join you? Name’s Berglund.”
He was a big, tough-looking man with yellow hair, a wide, battle-scarred face, and massive shoulders, arms and fists. “Glad to have company,” I said. “You been here long?”
“Nobody has. I was driftin’ through the country, headed west. I suppose I was huntin’ gold, and did make a pass at it now and again, but then I came up on this bench and I decided this was there I wanted to stay. The fishing was great and the hunting was even better, so I bought an axe and an adze and built myself a saloon. I figured that was the easiest way to find company.
“In the good months I fish and hunt, and in the winter I sit by the fire and read or talk. I’m a talkative man, Sackett. I like people, and enjoy their company. Nothing like a warm fire when the weather’s turning bad to get folks to sit up and talk.”
“It’s a risk meeting folks,” I said. “You never know which one is a danger to you. It’s like coming to a crossroads where you pull up and look both ways and your whole life may change if you take the wrong direction. One thing you can be sure of … your life wouldn’t be the same.”
“I don’t know,” Berglund argued, “I think a man takes trouble with him.”
“Well,” I said, “I surely didn’t want trouble when Curly Dunn first came up on me. He brought it to me. And I’d no idea I’d ever see him again, but when Meg Rossiter taken me home she taken me right into the middle of the target.”
When I finished that meal I just sat there for a moment, enjoying the contented feeling that was settling me down. I sorely needed an outfit, but right now I’d no desire to get my feet under me and walk over there. Nor was there pleasure in the thought of pushing my sore feet down into new boots.
“There’s folks a-coming in,” Berglund said, “most of them prospectors, but there’s a few farmers and cattlemen coming, too. This here’s a growing land.”
“The Dunns come in often?”
“Nearly every day. They spend money, but I don’t care for them. And the worst of them isn’t Curly, either. He’s small calibre compared to Ollie Hammer or Tin-Cup Hone. Tin-Cup got his name from the mining camp they call Tin-Cup. They had a way of running marshals out of town or killing them, and Tin was one of the worst of the lot. Then he ran into Ollie and they teamed up and came down here and signed on to punch cows for Old Man Dunn and his boys. That’s a mean lot.”
Getting to my feet I thanked him and walked outside. The sun was still bright on the mountains although it would soon be hidden behind them. I walked across the street, limping some, and went into the store.
Galloway had been there before me and told them I might show up, so I outfitted myself with new pants, shirts, underwear, and socks. I looked at the guns but decided to hang onto the old Dance & Park six-shooter. That gun felt lucky to my hand.
When I walked back to the saloon I was toting a full outfit, right down to a brand spanking new Winchester. And you know something? That was the first new gun I’d ever owned. Always before it was some hand-me-down, owned by a half-dozen before me.
Berglund had him a back room and I changed there and got into my new outfit, all but the boots. I set them aside for a time when my feet would be well enough. Then I taken that Winchester and loaded her to the guards. She was a ’73, and carried seventeen bullets in the magazine and chamber.
When I came back into the saloon Berglund looked at me and said, “You’re all slicked up to go courtin’. Who’ll it be? Meg Rossiter?”
“She’d never look twice at me,” I said. “But I’ll tell you what I want to do. I want to write a letter. You got the makin’s?”
So Bergland fixed me up with paper and pen, and then went to stirring up a fire. Fine as it was in the daytime a body could always sleep under a blanket there at Shalako, which suited me.
The letter I wrote was to Parmalee. He was a flat-land Sackett, folks of which we’d heard tell but had never met up with until that trouble down in the Tonto Basin when Tyrel and Parmalee Sackett showed up.
He was an educated man. Those flatland Sacketts had money. They were well-off, and Parmalee had been to school and all. It never affected his shooting, though, so I reckon school is a thing to be wished for. Wishing never done me any good.
Parmalee had cattle, and this here was fine grazing land, and Parmalee had something else he’d need. He had nerve. When I’d finished the letter to Parmalee, telling him of the range, I suddenly had a thought. We were shaping up for trouble with the Dunns, and that was excuse enough to write to Logan.
Now Logan was a Clinch Mountain Sackett, and those boys from Clinch Mountain are rougher than a cob. There were those who called Logan an outlaw, but he was family, and he was handy with a shooting iron.
I wrote to him, too.
Trouble was, the shooting was likely to be over and done with before any of those boys ever got here, unless it was Parmalee, who was down in New Mexico, not far south of the line.
He might make it in time. And of a sudden I had a hunch we’d need him.
This country was shaping up for war.
Chapter IX
Leaving my gear at Berglund’s place, I mounted that grulla and rode down off the bench into the river bottom of the La Plata. It was very still. There was grass, and everywhere a body looked there were the tall white trunks of the aspen. Stopping at the river I let the mustang drink from the cold water that ran down froin the melting snows on the mountains.
Across the stream I went up through the trees beyond. There was a plateau over there with good grass, a few clumps of oak brush here and there, but a fresh, green country lying at the foot of the mountains.
There were pines along the mountain slopes with thick-standing clumps of aspens of a lighter green. The aspen was usually the first tree to grow up after a burn, and the aspen groves provided a lot of food for wildlife.
Riding slowly along the edge of the mountain and up under the trees along the slope, I knew this was my country, this was where I wanted to be. This was the land I’d been looking for and no amount of Dunns would keep me off of it.
I headed back to Shalako.
The first person I saw when I walked into the saloon was old Galloway, and I never laid eyes on anybody that looked better.
“You look kind of peaked,” he said, grinning at me. “I declare, the first time I leave you alone you make out to get yourself killed, or nigh onto it.
“Flagan, this here’s Nick Shadow … a good friend.”
“Howdy.”
“My pleasure.”
We all sat down together at a table and went over what had taken place, and we came to agreement on Curly Dunn. Galloway looked me over mighty curious when I talked about Meg Rossiter, and I felt myself flushing. More because he was looking at me than anything else. It was no use him thinking there was ought between us, nor me thinking it either.
The only thing she wanted from me was distance, and I had no ache to a shoot-out with Curly Dunn over a girl that couldn’t see me for dust. What I had to tell them then was about the land I’d seen, and they agreed.