“Heard of him,” Cap said. “I didn’t know he was kin.”
“He’s been asking questions about his brothers. They haven’t come back out of the mountains, and he says you murdered them.”
“Them and three more? That’s quite a lot to take on. Believe me, they haven’t come out of the mountains, and it will surprise me if they ever do.”
The warmth of the room felt good and after a while I stretched out and slept some more.
When I opened my eyes Ange was fixing something at the stove. I got up and pulled on my boots. I spilled some water in the basin and washed my face and hands. The water felt good on my face, and I decided I needed a shave.
Cap was off somewhere, and just the two of us were there. The doctor had taken the Kid away. It was nice, shaving, with Ange fussing over something at the fire. Finally she called me to dinner and I was ready. Cap came in, stomping the snow from his boots on the stoop.
“Snowing,” he said. “You were lucky. A few hours more, and you might never have made it.”
Ange brought me a cup of coffee and I held it in my hands, thinking about those men up there. They brought it on themselves, and despite their ill feeling for me, I was wishing they would make it.
They never did.
Cap accepted coffee too, and he looked over at me. “That Benson Bigelow is telling it around that you’re yellow, afraid to meet him.”
Some folks are bound and determined to make fools of themselves.
All I wanted was a ranch of my own, some cattle, and a little land I could crop. Only when I looked up there at Ange I knew that wasn’t all I wanted.
I had no idea how to put it, and hated to risk it, knowing how little I had to offer. Here I was a grown man, just learning to read proper, and although I’d found some gold there was no telling how deep that vein would run. In fact, it acted to me like a pocket. That was why as soon as spring came I was going to light out for Mora to see the boys.
I said as much to Cap.
“You needn’t worry,” he said. “Tyrel and Orrin, they’re riding up here. Them and Ollie Shaddock.”
Ollie was from the Cumberland too. Sheriff back there one time, and some kin of ours. He was the one who got Orrin into politics, although Tennessee boys take to politics like they do to coon hunting.
“When do you expect them?”
“Tonight or tomorrow, if all goes well. They heard you were fetching trouble and they sent word they were coming up.”
They would ride into town and, unknown to them, that Bigelow would be there, and he might hear one of them called Sackett and just open up and start shooting.
If he faced them, I wasn’t worried. Tyrel now, Tyrel was hell on wheels with a pistol.
I finished my coffee and got up. Then I took down my gun belt and slung it around my hips and took down my coat and hat. “Riding up to town,” I said. “A little fresh air.”
“Kind of stuffy in here,” Cap Rountree said. “Mind if I ride along?”
Ange had turned from the fire with a big spoon in her hand.
“What about supper? After I’ve gone to all this trouble?”
“We’ll be back,” I said. “You keep it warm, Ange.”
I shrugged into my coat and put on my hat. I was going to have to get me a coonskin for this weather. “Anyway,” I said, “the way I figure, I shouldn’t get used to your cooking, nohow. A man can form a habit.”
She was looking me right in the eye, her face flushed a mite from the fire, looking pretty as all get-out.
“Trouble is, no woman in her right mind would marry a fool, and I’m certainly one.”
“A lot you know about women!” she scoffed. “Did you ever see a fool who didn’t have a wife?”
Come to that, I hadn’t.
“Keep it warm,” I said.
She didn’t say a word about shooting or Benson Bigelow. She just said, “You come back, Tell Sackett, I won’t have my supper wasted. Not after all this trouble.”
It was cool in the outside air, and Cap led the horses out. He had them saddled. “Figured you wouldn’t want the boys to come up against it, unexpected,” he said.
The saloon was hot and crowded, and up at the bar a big man was standing. He had a broad, hard-boned face and it took only one look to see this was no ordinary Bigelow, this was the Old Man of the Woods, right from Bitter Creek, tough and mean and not all talk.
He turned around and looked at me and I walked over and leaned on the bar alongside him.
You never saw a saloon lose customers so fast. Must have been fifty, sixty men in there when I leaned on that bar, and a half-minute later there weren’t but five or six, the kind who just have to stay and see what happens, men determined to be innocent bystanders.
This Bigelow sized me up and I looked back at him kind of mild and round-eyed, and I said, “Nice mustache you have there, Mr. Bigelow.”
“What’s wrong with my mustache?”
“Why, nothing … exactly.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Buy you a drink?”
“What’s wrong with my mustache? No, I’ll buy my own drinks!”
For the first time he realized the crowd was gone. The skin under his eyes seemed to tighten.
Outside I thought I could hear horses coming. It was late for travel in this weather, which made me wonder if it wasn’t Tyrel and Orrin.
Those brothers of mine . . . ride hundreds of miles—well, maybe a couple hundred—through rough country because they figured I was standing alone against trouble.
“Are you Tell Sackett?”
“That brother of yours, Wes, he never was no hand with cards. Nor a pistol, either.”
“What happened to Tom and Ira?”
“You look long enough, you’ll find them in the spring,” I told him. “They had no more sense than to come chasing me back into the hills, with winter coming on and snow in the air.”
“Did you see them?”
“They tried to kill me a couple of times. They weren’t any better shots than Wes. Tom, he lost his gun up there.”
Bigelow was quiet, and I could see him studying things out in his mind.
“Hear you came up here hunting me,” I said mildly. “It’s a long ride for the trouble.”
He couldn’t quite make me out. Nothing I had said showed I was troubled about anything, just talking like to any passer-by.
“You know something, Bigelow? You better just straddle your horse and ride out of here. What happened to your brothers was brought on them by their own actions.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. I’ll buy the drink.”
So we had a drink together, and then I ordered one. When I got rid of that I drew back. “Well, I’ve got a good supper waiting for me. See you around, Bigelow.”
Turning, I started for the door and then he said, “Sackett
His gun cocked when it cleared leather and a sound like that is plain to hear in an empty room. I drew as I turned and his first bullet whiffed by my ear. Steadying down, I shot him through the belly, and it slammed him against the bar. But he caught the edge with his left hand and pulled himself around. I did not hear the report, but I felt the slug take me low and hard. I braced myself and shot him again.
He did not go down … .44 or not, you have to hit a man right through the heart, through the head, or on a big bone to stop him if he’s mad, and Bigelow was killing mad. He was a big bear of a man and he looked tough as a winter on the cap-rock of west Texas.
For what seemed like minutes he stood there, and I could see the blood soaking his shirt front and pants, and then great red drops of it began to hit the floor between his feet.
He lifted his gun, taking his time, his left hand still clinging to the bar, and he took dead aim at me. He started to cock the gun, and I shot him again. He jolted the bar when he slammed against it. A bottle tipped over and rolled down the bar, spilling whiskey. He reached over and took up the bottle and drank out of it, holding it in his left hand, never taking his eyes off me.
He put the bottle down, and I said, “That drink was on me.”