His eyes studied my face, and then he stepped back out of the tent and held the flap. Motioning Swandle to go ahead, I followed them out.
It was still out there, a warm, lazy day of early spring. We could hear the voices at the chuck wagon.
“I’m going to ride clear. I’ll tell you all just like I told the others … stay out of this. I’ll kill any man who gets in my way.”
“Everything I’ve got is in this outfit,” Swandle said, “Every dime. If it’s lost, then I’m broke.”
“You figure what it’s worth, mister. If they get me, there’s fifty, maybe a hundred more Sacketts. They’ll hear of it, and they will come ridin’, as many as needed, and they’ll keep comin’ as long as they’re needed. Maybe it don’t make sense, Swandle. I ain’t the one to say, but when somebody kills a Sackett he buys grief and death and disaster.
“You get shut of him or you’ll go down with him, because I’ll wipe him out. When I have to, I’ll run; when I can, I’ll fight, but whatever I do, I’ll not quit. It ain’t because I’ve got more nerve than the next man, it’s just that I’m not very smart. Nobody ever taught me when was the time to quit.”
I waved a hand around. “Mister, you get twelve dollars out of all you own, and you’ll still be alive. You figure it. I never knew of a bullet that had any sense of discrimination. I owe you no trouble, but you’ll show up mighty black against a skyline.”
“Do you want us to drop our belts?” Swandle asked.
“No … if shooting starts I never want it said I killed an unarmed man. You just stay clear.”
With that, I taken my Winchester in hand and I led my horses over to the chuck wagon. I balanced the rifle easy-like and I said to the cook, “I’ll have a gallon of coffee and that sandwich there. You like whiskey?”
“Hell, yes. What’s that to do with it?”
“You fetch me that grub and you stand back, or you’ll have so many holes in you, you’ll drain whiskey faster”n you can drink it”
So I stood there and ate the beef and bread, swallowed the coffee, and then ate three-quarters of a fresh-baked apple pie, picking it up a quarter at a time and eating each quarter in three juicy bites. When I had wiped off my face with the back of my hand and had drunk the last of the coffee, I swung into the leather and looked around, sizing it all up.
“Mr. Swandle,” I said, “Globe is a likely place. Why don’t you boys ride off down thataway?”
That wrangler had been standing there, eyes bulging at me, and it was plain that something was worrying him. He was thinking of how when he told of this around the fire somebody might ask what he did, and so instead of being smart, he decided to have something to tell them.
He was wearing a belt gun and it was likely he had been doing some practice out back of the trees. Anyway, as I started to swing my horse, he grabbed iron. He was a damned fool, for my rifle was gripped in my big right hand, and I’m tall and strong enough to use a rifle like a pistol, almost. So when he grabbed for it I tilted that Winchester and let him have it through the shoulder. It was no hard thing to do … he wasn’t eighteen feet from me at the time.
He hit ground and stared up at me, hurt and sick-looking, because this was never the way he’d imagined it.
I said to him, “You go to pitchin’ hay, son. You got the hands for it.” And then I walked my horses away from there, knowing that rifle shot would bring them a-running.
Out of sight of camp, I lit out a-riding hard. Me, I had talked a big show, but I had no liking for forty men all to once. Or even half that many.
Back there I was counting on good sense, and most western men have it. They know that when a man holds a gun he more than likely is willing to use it, so there’s no use to provoke him. That wrangler now, he’d live to get some sense. Most youngsters who want to pack a gun always see themselves winning. They never see themselves stretched out in the dirt and blood, with themselves shot open, and maybe crying from hurt and fear.
That night I camped in the cave under the natural bridge on Pine Creek, hard by Buckhead Mesa, and thought of Ange, lying cold in the ground not two miles off. I lay there awake into the small and lonely hours, a-thinking of her, and how little she’d had in her short years.
Nobody deserves to die like that, alone and in terror, hopeless with fear and pain. Had I not left her there, she might be alive now, but a dozen times before I’d gone ahead to scout trail, and a dozen times I’d hurried back to her side.
Tomorrow I was going to lay flowers on her grave. Tomorrow I would ride up Buckhead Mesa, and then I would ride to find my man.
A man named Allen …
chapter twelve
On the ride to the cave I had taken mighty good care to keep under cover of the trees and brush. Studying the rim and the peaks round about, anywhere at all where a watcher might be, I worked to keep myself hidden. It was likely I’d gotten to the cave unseen, but there had been other times when I thought I was safe, and was not. But the way up Pine Creek through the canyon was so hidden that a watcher would have had to ride right on my tail to see me at all.
If Allen was my man he had little time now. He knew as well as I that time was a-pressing.
This much I’ll say for Swandle. He had given me a mighty fine horse in trade, and with the bill of sale I had for it and for the pack horse, he would never get me on horse-stealing.
Al Zabrisky I had seen, but where were Romero, Sonora Macon, and the others? It taken me no time at all to find out.
Before daylight I was out of the cave and moving. Along the way I gathered some spring flowers and put them on Ange’s grave. Then I turned back to my horse and saw three riders coming up through the trees.
There was no chance to run, nor was I of a mind to. If they wanted it, they could have it. So right there I made my stand, in the open and with my Winchester to hand.
They didn’t see me right off. They came riding up, coming out of the trees maybe thirty yards off, all of them riding Lazy A horses.
“You hunting me?” I yelled at them.
They pulled up short. One of them grabbed for his gun and I shot him out of the saddle. Then I dropped to one knee and fired again, jacked another shell into the chamber, and was firing my third shot before the first one came in reply. It was a clean miss. The rider I’d got with my first shot was on the ground. His horse had shied as he fell, disturbing the aim of the others. I fired again and the two remaining riders lit out for the brush on a dead run, one of them hanging to the saddle horn with his left hand, his right dangling useless.
Keeping the fallen man covered, I walked up to him. He was hurt bad, shot through the chest. He was a big, bearded man with a scar on his face, and he stared up at me, fully conscious.
“Am I going to die?”
“You came hunting me. What d’you expect?”
Picking up his guns, I studied him for hide-outs, and then I walked over to where his horse had stopped. I took his Winchester and his saddlebags, although what they contained I had no idea.
“He’ll get you,” the wounded man said. “Allen will get you.”
When I did not answer, he said, “You ain’t got a chance. This time he’s got a plan.”
“What plan?”
“You’re already trapped. You couldn’t leave this country if you wanted. They’ve got you surrounded and now they’re going to move in.”
“He hasn’t got that many men.”
His face was white and he was sweating with the pain he was beginning to feel as the shock wore off. “He’s got maybe a hundred Apaches … He’s promised ’em … rifles and whiskey.” The words came with difficulty.
Apaches …
That would do it, all right. The White Mountain or Tonto Apaches would know this place inside and out. This was their country, and they would know every nook and cranny. The circle would tighten and tighten, with me in the middle. I’d seen wolves hunted on the prairie in just that way.