“Mighty pretty country,” I ventured after a bit.
“It is, isn’t it? I just can’t wait to see Pa’s ranch.” She sobered down then. “I hope he’s all right”
“You worried about the Fetchens?”
“Yes, I am. You’ve no idea what they are like. I just never imagined men could be like that.” She looked quickly at me. “Oh, they were all right to me. James saw to that. But I heard talk when they didn’t think I was listening.” She turned toward me again. “The happiest moment in my life was when you came from behind that tree trunk. And you might have been killed!”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s a common might-have-been out here. There’s few things a man can do that might not get him killed. It’s a rough land, but a man is better off if he rides his trail knowing there may be trouble about. It simply won’t do to get careless … And you be careful, too.”
A pretty little stream, not over eight or ten inches deep, but running at a lively pace, and kind of curving around a flat meadow with low hills offered shelter from the north, and a cluster of cottonwoods and willows where we could camp … it was just what we needed.
“We’ll just sort of camp here,” I said. “I’ll ride over and get a cooking fire started.”
“Flagan!” Judith screamed, and I wheeled and saw three of them come up out of the grass near that stream where they’d been laying for me.
Three of them rising right up out of the ground, like, with their horses nowhere near them, and all three had their rifles on me.
Instinctively, I swung my horse. He was a good cutting horse who could turn on a dime and have six cents left, and he turned now. When he wheeled about I charged right at them. My six-shooter was in my hand, I don’t know how come, and I chopped down with it, blasting a shot at the nearest one while keeping him between the others and me.
Swinging my horse again, I doubled right back on my heels in charging down on the others. I heard a bullet nip by me, felt a jolt somewhere, and then I was firing again and the last man was legging it for the cottonwoods. I taken in after him as he ran, and I came up alongside him and nudged him with the horse to knock him rolling.
I turned my horse again and came back on him as he was staggering to his feet. I let the horse come alongside him again, and this time I lifted a stirrup and caught him right in the middle with my heel. It knocked him all sprawled out.
One of the others was getting up and was halfway to his horse by the time I could get around to him, but I started after him too. He made it almost to the brush before I gave him my heel, knocking him face down into the broken branches of the willows.
Judith had now ridden up to me. “Are you hurt?” she asked.
“Not me. Those boys are some upset, I figure.” I looked at her. “You warned me,” I said. “You yelled just in time.”
Three riders had come over the hill, riding hell bent for election. They were Galloway, Kyle Shore, and Hawkes himself, all of them with rifles ready for whatever trouble there was.
There was only blood on the grass where the first man had fallen. He had slipped off into the tall grass and brush, and had no doubt got to his horse and away. One of the others was also gone, but he was hurting – I’d lay a bit of money on that. The last man I’d kicked into the brush looked as if he’d been fighting a couple of porcupines. His face was a sight, scratched and bloody like nothing a body ever saw.
“You near broke my back!” he complained. “What sort of way is that to do a man up?”
“You’d rather get shot?”
He looked at me. “I reckon not,” he said dryly, “if given the choice.”
“You’re a Burshill by the look of you,” I said.
“I’m Trent Burshill, cousin to the Fetchens.”
“You might be in better comp’ny. But I know your outfit. You folks have been making ‘shine back in the hills since before Noah.”
“Nigh to a hunert years,” he said proudly. “No Burshill of my line never paid no tax on whiskey.”
“You should have stayed back there. You aren’t going to cut the mustard in these western lands. Now you’ve mixed up in rustling.”
“You got it to prove.”
Kyle Shore looked hard at him. “Friend, you’d best learn. Out here they hold court in the saddle and execute the sentence with a saddle rope.”
“You fixin’ to hang me?”
“Dunno,” Shore said, straight-faced. “It depends on Mr. Hawkes. If he sees fit to hang you, that’s what we’ll do.”
Trent Burshill looked pretty unhappy. “I never counted on that,” he said. “Seemed like this was wide-open land where a man could do as he liked.”
“As long as you don’t interfere with no other man,” Shore said. “Western folks look down on that. And they’ve got no time to be ridin’ to court, maybe a hundred miles, just to hang a cow thief. A cottonwood limb works better.”
Trent Burshill looked thoughtful. “Should be a way of settling this,” he said. “Sure, I lined up with Black, him being my cousin an’ all.”
“Where’s Black headed for?” I asked.
He glanced around at me. “You’re one of them Tennessee Sacketts. I heard tell of you. Why, he’s headed for the Greenhorns – some mountains westward. He’s got him some idea about them.”
Burshill looked at me straight. “He aims to do you in, Sackett. Was I you, I’d be travelin’ east, not west.”
The rest of the outfit were trailing into the bottom now with the herd. I spotted a thick limb overhead. “There’s a proper branch,” I said. “Maybe we ought to tie his hands, put the noose over his neck, and leave him in his saddle. Give him a chance to see how long his horse would stand without moving.”
Trent Burshill looked up at the limb over his head. “If you boys was to reconsider,” he said, “I’d like to ride for Tennessee. These last few minutes,” he added, “Tennessee never looked so good.”
“That puncher with the scar on his face,” I said to him, “that newcomer. Now, who would he be?”
Burshill shrugged. “You can have him. I figure he deserves the rope more than me. Personal, I don’t cotton to him. He’s snake-mean. That there is Russ Menard.”
Kyle Shore looked at me. “Sackett, you’ve bought yourself trouble. Russ Menard is reckoned by some to be the fastest man with a gun and the most dangerous anywhere about”
“I knew a man like that once,” I said.
“Where is he?”
“Why, he’s dead. He proved to be not so fast as another man, and not so dangerous with three bullets in him.”
“Russ Menard,” Shore said, “comes from down in the Nation. He killed one of Judge Parker’s marshals and figured it was healthier out of his jurisdiction. He was in a gun battle in Tascosa, and some say he was in the big fight in Lincoln, New Mexico.”
Evan Hawkes, who had ridden over to locate his chuck wagon and crew, now came back. Judith Costello rode beside bin. Harry Briggs and Ladder Walker drifted along, leading a horse.
“Found his horse,” Hawkes said.
‘Tie him on it,” Walker said, “backwards in the saddle, and turn him loose.”
“Now, see here!” Burshill protested.
“Then take his boots off and let him walk back. I heard about a man walked a hundred miles once, in his bare feet!”
“Way I heard it,” Burshill said, “was there would be land and cattle and horses for the taking. A man could get rich, that’s what Black said. I never figured on no rope.”
“The land’s for the taking,” Hawkes said, “but the cattle and the horses belong to somebody. You have helped in rustling, and you were about to dry-gulch my men. What have you to say for yourself?”
“I made good whiskey. It was ‘shine, but it was good whiskey,” Burshill said. “I wouldn’t want to grieve my kinfolk back in Tennessee.”
“I’ll let you have your horse,” Evan Hawkes said, “but if we see you west of here we’ll hang you.”
“Mister, you let me go now, and you’ll have to burn the stump and sift the ashes before you find me again.”
“All right,” Hawkes said, “let him go.”
Trent Burshill let out of there as if his tail was afire, and that was just as well. I wasn’t strong on hanging, anyway.
When the night fire was burning and there was the smell of coffee in the air, I went to Evan Hawkes.