I was going back to look, to give her a decent burial. And then I was going to hunt a man.
It was a long time before I knew what happened inside that building after I left it … a long, long time.
Captain Porter went to his table and took out a sheet of paper. He put down the place and the date, and then he wrote out a letter and addressed it, a letter that would be in the mail before I ever left the post.
And that letter was to make all the difference to me. Whether it was to be life or death for me was decided by that cavalry captain putting pen to paper in his quiet quarters that night at Camp Verde … but that is another story.
chapter five
One thing I’d learned a long time back. When traveling in enemy country, never return by the same trail you used in going out … they may be laying for you.
Al Seiber told me of an Indian trail that left the Verde at the big bend below Fossil Creek, so I took it and rode across the top of Hardscrabble Mesa and made camp at Oak Spring.
My hands were only partly healed. I could use a rifle well enough, but would hesitate to draw a Colt against anybody. It was two weeks since I’d taken my fall, and I was still in bad shape, but I could wait no longer. Right now I was no more than two miles from Buckhead Mesa and the canyon where the ruins of my wagon lay.
Two to three miles away to the north there was a Mormon settlement-not a town, just a bunch of folks settled in there who had come down from Utah … or so I supposed.
From all I’d heard they were God-fearing folk, and it was there I planned to go when I needed supplies, and it was also where I hoped to get information. For the present what I needed was rest, for I tired easily, and I was still in no condition for what lay ahead.
Oak Spring was a good hide-out. It lay in a canyon, and I’d seen no tracks on the Indian trail leading in here. My good treatment by Victorio, if that was who it was, would mean nothing if I met other Apaches, and the Tontos were some of the worst of the lot.
Over a hatful of fire I made coffee and a good meal, for I had a feeling the meals ahead would be few and far between. At daybreak, back in the saddle, I rode over the mesa, crossed Pine Creek above the canyon and rode back onto Buckhead Mesa.
There were plenty of tracks, most of them at best a week old, all well-shod horses like you’d find on a well-run cow outfit. Nowhere was there the slightest sign there had ever been a wagon on this mesa.
When I reached the site of the burned wagon I got a surprise. Aside from some blackened brush there was no sign there had ever been a wagon here, or a fire. Somebody had done a piece of hard work, doing away with all trace of what had happened. Even the hubs were gone, dragged off somewhere and buried, I figured.
After scouting around and finding nothing, I rode back to where the wagon had been. All the time I was riding with the rifle across my saddle-bows, and keeping a wary eye for riders. I was alone, and how many enemies I had against me I didn’t know, but my life wasn’t worth a plugged two-bit piece if they found me.
Sitting there by that fire, I was a mighty lonesome man, my heart a-hurting something awful for thoughts of Ange. I’d long been a lonely man before I saw her, and nobody ever had a truer, finer wife.
Being the oldest of the Sacketts, I was first out of the nest when trouble came, and off I’d gone to the war. We were Tennessee folk from the high-up hills, but we had no truck with slavery or looking down the nose at any man. Many a man in my part of the country fought for the South, but while my heart was with her, my head was not, and I rode north to join the Union.
Leaving slavery aside, it was that I was fighting for-the Union. This was my country, and like Sacketts and their kinfolk for many a year, I was ready to take up my rifle and trail it off to the fightin’. Besides, none of us Sacketts were ever much on missing out on a fight. It was just in us to step in and let fly.
So I joined the Sixth Cavalry in Ohio and rode through the war with them, and then when it was over I started west to seek out my fortune, wherever it should take me.
Tyrel and Orrin had already gone, leaving about the time of the war’s end, or just after. They’d gone west seeking a home for Ma, and they found it, and meanwhile Tyrel had won him a name with his shooting and had become a lawman. Orrin, he studied law and had been elected to office.
Here I was with nothing. Ange and me, we had us a gold mine in the high-up Colorado mountains, but getting the gold out was not easy, and we’d have only a couple of months each year in which to work. I’d brought some out, but what I really wanted was a ranch of my own. With what gold I had, I bought some stock and my outfit and we headed west for the Tonto Basin. Now Ange was gone, and my outfit was wiped out, and me … I was a hunted man, sought after by Lord only knew how many. And not a friend to side me but my Colt and Winchester.
Not that there weren’t plenty of Sacketts around the country, and we were a feudin’ and a fightin’ family, but they were scattered wide and far, and no chance for any help to me. There was Lando, Falcon, Tyrel, Orrin, and many another of our name, and all good men.
After I’d put out my fire, I crawled into the place under the trees close to my horse, and there I stretched out my tired body and closed my eyes in sleep.
The sun was high when I rolled out and led the horse to water. Then I left him on a small patch of grass whilst I made coffee and chewed on some jerky. I had a restless, irritable feeling, and I knew what it was. Being a man slow to anger, and one who can fight his anger back for a while, I knew it was working up to a point where all hell would tear loose … and that’s no good.
That was the morning I found Ange.
It was only a few rods from where the wagon had been left, and I was scouting around when I saw that crack in the rock. For a moment I stood there, fear climbing up inside me, for all the while my feelings had been fighting against reason, telling me that Ange was still alive, that Ange had somehow gotten away, and that I’d find her.
That crack was no different from others. It was a place where the rocky edge of the mesa had started to break off, and this crack had broken far back into the table rock of the mesa. After a minute I walked over there. Somebody had scooped dirt in there and heaped rock and brush around it. The job had been done in a tearing hurry. Under the brush and the debris, I found Ange.
She had been strangled, but not before she had put up a terrific fight. Her fingernails were stained dark with blood, and there was flesh under them. She had fought, and she had gouged deep.
The bitter cold had left her just as she had been, but I could not bear to look at her face. After what seemed a long time, I got my blanket and wrapped her in it. Then I rode down to where the fire had been; for one thing I’d seen left behind was my shovel. The killer had used it in controlling the fire, and thrown it aside and forgotten it.
Up on the mesa I found a place where the earth was deep and I dug a grave for her, and I buried her there. When it was over I covered the grave with rocks, and then went to work with my new bowie knife and cut a cross for her. Using the heated edge of the shovel, I burned words into this crude cross.
HERE LIES
ANGE SACKETT
MURDERED NEAR THIS SPOT
APRIL 25, 1877
Now whoever had done this would have no doubts. They would know I was alive. But those others, the ones who were hunting me who might not know the truth, they would know it now.