Berglund, he brought me a drink, and it did me good. Then he brought some coffee and he began to work on my face, patching up a couple of cuts. He had handed me back my gun when I came inside and I kept flexing my fingers, trying to get the stiffness out of them.
“You watch yourself, Sackett,” he said. “They’ve dry-gulched more than one man.”
After a long while I began to feel better, and the fresh, hot coffee helped.
They had probably been watching us, and they were sure that Nick Shadow was gone. Probably they had not guessed why he was going, but they certainly knew they had but two men to contend with, and to them that must seem like nothing at all.
Right now Galloway was up there alone, and they might choose this time to cut the odds in half. Only my brother was no pilgrim, and coming up on him unexpected was not an easy thing to do.
“I’ve got to get back to camp.”
“You need rest,” Berglund protested.
He was right, of course, but his rightness did not help. Galloway was up there alone, and while he might choose to withdraw up the mountain or up Deadwood Gulch, it was more likely that he would refuse to be pushed.
Loading supplies on a borrowed packhorse, I prepared to start back. My body was stiff and sore, and I wanted nothing so much as sleep, yet I had to get back. Even now they might be preparing an attack on Galloway, and they were a tough, mean, bitter lot.
It would be days, perhaps weeks before the others arrived, and until then we must somehow defend our position, or at least keep it open for the arrival of Parmalee Sackett and the return of Nick Shadow.
Mounting the grulla I rode into the bottom of the La Plata, then cautiously worked my way upstream. Several times I came upon the hoofprints of horses. They had been here then, no doubt studying what they must do. The tracks were several days old.
Galloway was nowhere in sight when I rode up the last few hundred yards to the corral, but he came out of the woods, Winchester over his arm. He glanced at my face.
“That must be quite a town,” he commented, affably. “Seems to me they hold out a welcome.”
“You should try it some time. I ain’t what you’d call mincy about towns but this here one is about to try my patience.”
“Who was it?”
“Curly … and but for that saloonkeeper in yonder they might have salted me away.”
“You whup him?”
“I ain’t sure. I feel like it was me got whupped, only when it was over he lay stretched out. I bruised him. I reckon I did.”
Well, I got down and like to fell off my horse. Galloway, he taken my horse back in the woods whilst I set by the fire, my head hanging. It was aching something awful and my mouth was cut inside, and my face sore.
“I didn’t think he had the sand,” Galloway commented.
“He didn’t. It was those fool friends of his, urgin’ him on. I think he wanted to quit but he was scared of what would be said, and I was scared he wouldn’t quit before I had to fall, I was that all in.”
Galloway was making soup. He got that from Ma. Anytime anybody had anything happen, birth, death, fight or wedding, Ma made soup.
Suddenly I saw something at the edge of the woods. There for a moment it looked like a wolf. He was looking back the way I had come, so I turned my head to look also.
A rider was coming up the draw. He was right out in the open but he was coming right on, walking his horse. He had a rifle in his hands.
Chapter XI
Even before the old man came close enough for us to make him out, I could see he was an Indian by the way he sat his horse. He came on slowly and when he drew up facing us he sat looking upon us thoughtfully.
He was the shadow of a man who had been great. I mean in a physical way. The bones were there, and the old muscles showed how once they had stretched the skin with power, and the look was there yet, in his eyes and in his carriage. He was a proud man.
“We’re fixing to have some soup,” I said. “Will you set up to the fire?”
He looked at me for a long minute, and then said, “Are you Sak-ut?”
The name came out short and blunt.
“We both are,” I said. “We’re brothers. In thinking as well as in blood. Will you get down?”
He put the rifle away and swung down. Maybe he was a mite stiff, but not enough to bother. He dropped his reins and walked to our fire with dignity. I held out my hand to him as he came up. “I am Flagan Sackett. This here is Galloway.”
“Howdy,” Galloway said.
He wasn’t missing a thing, his eyes going from my moccasins to my face. When he turned toward me again I saw there was a scar on the left side of his face from what seemed to be a powder burn.
After we had eaten, Galloway dug out the tobacco sack. Neither Galloway nor me ever taken to smoking but most Indians did and it was handy for trade. After he had puffed away for awhile he looked up and said, “I am Powder Face. I am Jicarilla.”
He let that set with us for a few minutes and then be said, looking right at me, “You are warrior. I am warrior. We can talk together.”
“I have heard of Powder Face,” I said, “and to talk to him is an honor.”
His eyes glinted, but after a few puffs at his pipe he said, “You escape from my people. You are good runner.”
“I am a good fighter, too,” I said, “but your folks left me without much to do with.”
“You are like Indian,” he said, “like Jicarilla.”
Well, that was all right with me. What all this was leading up to, I didn’t know, but I was willing to set and listen. Raised around the Cherokee like I was, I have some savvy for Indians and their ways, and all things considered they make out to be pretty fine folks. Their ways are different than ours, but the country was different, then.
“I come to you because you think like Indian. You fight like Indian. Maybe you will talk to Indian.”
“I’ll talk,” I said, “and I’ll listen.”
“I am called renegade,” he said. “My tribe is small. Some are Jicarillas, some are Tabeguache Ute. We fight, we do not surrender. Finally there are few of us, and we hide in high mountains.”
He paused for a long time, but finally he said, “Our people are few. There are many Indians south or north, but we wish to fight no more. We have watched from the peaks as the white men come. A long time ago I rode far to the east, and I have seen the towns of the white man. In the north I have seen the wagon that smokes. The white man has strong medicine.
“We are twenty people. We are six warriors, seven women, and seven children. Soon there will be two more. The winter will come, and the game will come down from the peaks and we will starve.
“We do not wish to go with the Jicarillas. We do not wish to go with the Utes. There may again be war and we do not want to fight.” He looked up suddenly and mighty proud. “We have been great warriors. For our lives we will fight, but we cannot leave our young ones to starve in the cold.
“You are white man. You are warrior. You are strong against pain and you know the Indian way. I come to you as to an elder brother. You will tell us what we should do.”
Well, now. He was an older and no doubt a wiser man than me and he had come to me for advice. One thing I had he did not have … at least, not quite so much. I had knowledge of the white man. And all of what I knew wasn’t good, but that was true of his people, too. We all had our good and our bad. The white man had broken treaties and the Indian had killed innocent people, and without warning. The white man had done his share of that, too.
There was no need to talk to Galloway. We two understood each other as if we were of the same mind. I didn’t know what Nick Shadow might think but that we’d have to work out as best we could. I just knew what I was going to do.