Then, when I was almost across, there came the sudden wicked whap of a bullet striking near me. Involuntarily I ducked and slipped, catching myself by my hands.
Down there in a clearing, maybe three hundred yards below, I saw the man taking sight on me. He had me dead to rights against that slope, but the light was none too good for him.
One foot braced below me, one knee pressed into a notch of the wall, I grasped my rifle by the barrel and swung it up, my left hand taking the barrel, my right hand going back to the action.
He was standing in the clearing, full in the light An instant I steadied the rifle, taking up slack on my trigger, and then my rifle jumped in my hands just as he fired. My bullet struck him the instant he shot, because I saw him throw up his rifle, the streak of fire from the muzzle clear in the growing shadows, and then he fell, and the sound of our shots went racketing off against the great crags, and then it was still. The shots had been so close together that they were almost one.
He didn’t move. He just lay there, and I held myself still and watched. Score one for me. Now they knew they weren’t in this for fun.
When a man takes up guns in fighting, somebody is going to get hurt. Somehow folks mostly think it will be somebody else, but we’re all vulnerable, and nobody has a free ride. With guns, you pay to learn, only sometimes you learn too late.
By the time I was on the other side among the trees nobody had come to him, but they would. They would find him there, and they would be able to read the future for some of them.
Just before dark I found a place where deer or other game had walked, a tiny path not over three or four inches wide, hanging above a black gulf. It gave me speed, and I followed it as long as it went straight ahead, but when it turned down slope, I gave it up.
That night I slept behind a log that had fallen along the face of the cliff and lay wedged in the rocks. There was a thin space between the face of the rock and the log, but it wasn’t wide enough for a man to fall through. So I just rolled my blanket around me and slept there until daybreak.
When I woke, my first thought was: They had hunted me – now they would see what it meant to be hunted.
chapter nine
There was a poker game going in Uncle Ben Dowell’s saloon in El Paso. The night was quiet and business was slow. The stage had pulled in and gone, and most of the loafers had departed for their beds. From somewhere down the street came the faint sound of a piano.
Nobody in the saloon was a stranger. The drummer who had just walked in and put down his valise could scarcely be called that … he had been in El Paso before.
The dark, powerfully built man with the mustache and three scars on his face was not exactly a stranger, either. He had been in El Paso for three days, and the way people were coming and going in this town that practically made him a resident.
That dark man was no kind of a talker, so nobody knew where he was from or where he was going. He had come into town riding a mule, which was strange enough, and riding beside him was the long-jawed, yellow-eyed man with the gold earrings in his ears who was tinkering now with Uncle Ben’s clock.
Nobody said anything until the drummer had a drink. “There’s hell to pay in the Mogollons,” he said when he had put his glass down. ‘The Lazy A outfit has forty men hunting a man in the wild country under the rim. They’ll get him, too.”
“Good outfit,” Uncle Ben commented. “I know them.”
“You knew them,” the drummer said. “All the old hands have quit, and they’ve taken on gunmen and man hunters. Only one man against them, and he’s running them ragged.”
“What started it?”
“Sackett claims his wife was murdered by someone in the Lazy A outfit, and he’s sworn to find the murderer. He’s – ”
The dark man with the scarred face turned his head. “Did you say Sackett?”
The drummer looked at him and nodded. “That’s right. They say he’s Tell Sackett, brother to that Mora gunfighter.”
The dark man pushed his chips to the center of the table. “Buy me out,” he said. “I’m leaving.”
“Look here,” a player protested, “you’re winning. You can’t leave now.”
The man stood up. “I’m leaving. You want a chance for your money, you follow me to Arizona.”
The tinkering man took up the clock and carried it to the bar. “There you are, Mr. Dowell. It ain’t working, but I’ll be back this way and do the job right for you.”
There was silence in the room when they left, and then somebody said, “Now what started all that?” Ben Dowell jerked his head to indicate the drummer. “He mentioned a Sackett in trouble. Well, that was Orlando Sackett and his saddle partner, the Tinker.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means the Lazy A better hire more men. Forty’s not going to be anywhere near enough.”
The lone sheepherder paused on the knoll to let the rest of the flock drift past him. He watched his dogs for a minute or two, then his eyes were drawn to the west. The sun was just below the horizon and the red rock cliffs were weirdly lit. Out of the west a tiny puff of dust lifted, grew, and became a fast-running horse.
The rider pulled up, his horse rearing with the sudden stop. “Howdy, Mex! You got any grub to spare? I’m a right hungry man.”
“Si, Señor.” He pointed toward his camp. “There are frijoles.”
The rider wheeled his horse and walked him toward the camp. As they came near the spring the horse tugged toward it, but his rider held him back. “You take it easy, boy. Cool off a mite.”
He dropped the reins and walked toward the fire where the blackened coffeepot stood.
The Mexican looked thoughtfully at the horseman. He was a big man, towering well above the Mexican, and he was strongly made. His nose had been broken in more than one fight, and there was a wild, reckless, uncurried look about him.
His black hair hung around his ears, there was a bullet hole in the crown of his hat. He wore two guns, and wore them tied down for action. His buckskin shirt was dark from dust and sweat. His boots were run down at the heel, but he wore jingling spurs with huge rowels, California spurs.
He glanced toward the sheep pens and the corral beyond where several horses stood “You own those horses?”
“No, Señor. The patron.”
“Who’s he?”
“Don Manuel Ochoa. He is in Santa Fe, Señor.”
“Tell him Nolan Sackett needed a horse. I’m taking the sorrel.”
The sheepherder looked again at the shaggy, unkempt rider and the guns. “Si, Señor. I will tell him.”
When Nolan Sackett went to catch up the sorrel and switch saddles, the sheepherder looked in the bean pot. It was empty. So was the coffeepot, and the tortillas were gone too.
Nolan Sackett walked the sorrel back to camp to make the change of saddles, and then dug down in his pocket and took out a four-bit piece. He glanced at the half-dollar.
“Mex,” he said, “that’s all I got, but I owe you for the grub. It was mighty tasty.”
“You owe me nothing, Señor. I am honored.” The Mexican hesitated, and then said, “You are a brother to Señor Tyrel, perhaps?”
“Cousin, you might say.” Nolan glanced quizzically at the sheepherder. “You know Tyrel?”
“No, Señor, but it is known that he is a good man, and a friend to Mexicans.” The sheepherder paused. “Señor, the half-dollar … it is not much” He hesitated again. “Would the señor . . . perhaps a loan?” He extended a gold eagle.
Nolan Sackett, whom not many things could astonish, was astonished now – astonished and touched. He looked at the old Mexican. “You don’t know me, old man. And I might never come this way again.”
The old man shrugged.
“I can’t lay claim to goodness, old man. I’m a Clinch Mountain Sackett, and we’ve the name of being rough folk. I never paid much mind to where money came from as long as I had it to hand, but nobody ever loaned me any, not as I recall. I’m obliged.”
He tightened the cinch, then swung to the saddle. “Thanks, old man. And if somebody comes by, you tell them to ride high-tail to Mora and tell Tyrel and them that a Sackett’s in trouble in the Mogollons.”