“I’ll tell you,” I said, though I knew I might be lying in my teeth, for I figured she’d guessed right. That man had something to relate, and it was likely something he didn’t want Judith to hear.
She turned and went to her room, and we stayed a minute, Galloway and me, hesitating to go back.
Chapter 9
We stood there together, having it in our heads that what we would hear would bring us no pleasure. The night was closing in around us, and no telling what would come to Greenhorn whilst we were abed. Whatever it was, we could expect nothing but grief.
“Before we go to bed,” Galloway suggested, “we’d better take a turn around outside.”
“You sleep under cover,” I said. “I’ll make out where I can listen well. I’d not sleep easy otherwise.”
“I ain’t slept in a bed for some time,'” Galloway said, “but I’m pining to.”
“You have at it. I’ll find a place where my ears can pick up sound whilst I sleep.”
We walked back into the saloon, two mountain boys from Tennessee. The old man still sat at his table, staying long over his coffee. He shot a hard glance at us, but we trailed on up to the bar.
The bartender poured each of us a drink, then gestured toward a table. “We might as well sit down. There’ll be nobody else along tonight, and there’s no sense in standing when you can sit.”
“That’s a fine-looking young lady,” he said after we were seated. “I’d want no harm to come to her, but there’s talk of trouble over there, and Costello is right in the midst of it.”
We waited, and there was no sound in the room. Finally he spoke again, his face oddly lighted by the light from the coal-oil lamp with the reflector behind it. “There’s something wrong up there – I don’t know what it is. Costello used to come down here once in a while … the last time was a year ago. I was over that way, but he wouldn’t see me. Ordered me off the place.”
“Why?”
“Well, it was his place. I suppose he had his reasons.” The bartender refilled the glasses from the bottle. “Nevertheless it worried me, because it wasn’t like him … He lives alone, you know, back over on the ridge.”
He paused again, then went on, “He fired his hands, all of them.”
“He’s alone up there now?”
“I don’t think so. A few days back there were some men came riding up here, asked where Costello’s layout was.”
“Like we did,” I said.
“I told them. I had no reason not to, although I didn’t like their looks, but I also warned them they wouldn’t be welcome. They laughed at me. One of them spoke up and said that they’d be welcome, all right, that Costello was expecting them.”
“They beat us to it, Flagan,” Galloway said. “They’re here.”
The bartender glanced from one to the other of us. “You know those men?”
“We know them, and if any of them show up again, be careful. They’ll kill you as soon as look at you … maybe sooner.”
“What are you two going to do?”
“Go up there. We gave a fair promise to see the young lady to her pa. So we’ll go up there.”
“And those men?”
Galloway grinned at him, then at me. “Why, they’d better light a shuck for Texas before we tie cans to their tails.”
“Those men, now,” I said, “did they have any cattle?”
“Not with them. But they said they had a herd following.” He paused. “Is there anything I can do? There’s good folks in this country, and Costello was a good neighbor, although a man who kept to himself except when needed. If it comes to that, we could round up a goodly lot who would ride to help him.”
“You leave it to us. We Sacketts favor skinning our own cats.”
The old man seated alone at the table spoke up then. “I knowed it. I knowed you two was Sacketts. I’m Cap Rountree, an’ I was with Tyrel and them down on the Mogollon that time.”
“Heard you spoken of,” Galloway said. “Come on over and set.”
“If you boys are ridin’ into trouble,” Rountree said, “I’d admire to ride along. I been sharin’ Sackett trouble a good few years now, and I don’t feel comfortable without it.”
We talked a spell, watching the night hours pass, and listening for the sounds of riders who did not come.
Black Fetchen must have sent riders on ahead, and those riders must have moved in fast and hard. He might even have gone on ahead himself, letting the herd follow. We would have ridden right into a trap had we just gone on ahead without making inquiries, or being a mite suspicious.
“Hope he’s all right,” I said. “Costello, I mean. It would go hard with Judith to lose her pa as well as her grandpa all to once, like that”
“Well, I’ll see you boys, come daylight,” Rountree said. “I’m holed up in the stable should you need me.”
“I’ll be around off and on all night,” I told him. “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of my eyes.”
Cap walked outside, stood there a moment, and then went off into the darkness.
“I like that old man,” Galloway said. “Seems to me Tyrel set store by him.”
“One of his oldest friends. Came west with him from eastern Kansas, where they tied up on a trail herd.”*
*The Daybreakers
“Well need him,” Galloway added. “We’re facing up to trouble, Flagan.”
“You get some sleep,” I advised. “I’ll do the same.”
Outside it was still. Off to the west I thought I could see the gleam of snow on the mountains. I liked the smell of the wind off those peaks, but after a minute I walked tiredly across the road, picked up my blanket and poncho, and bedded down under a cottonwood where I could hear the trail sounds in the night. If any riders came up to the Greenhorn Inn I wanted to be the first to know.
Tired as I was, I didn’t sleep, my thoughts wandering, just thinking of Galloway and me, homeless as tumbleweeds, drifting loose around the country. It was time we found land, time we put down some roots. It did a man no good to ride about always feathered for trouble. Sooner or later he would wind up dead, back in some draw or on some windy slope, leaving his carcass for the coyotes and buzzards to fight over. It doesn’t matter how tough a man becomes, or how good he is with a gun, there comes the time when his draw is a little too slow, or something gets in the way of his bullet.
We were rougher than cobs, Galloway and me, but in this country many a tough man had cashed in his chips. It wasn’t in me to think lightly of Black Fetchen. He was known throughout the mountains for his fist fighting and shooting, a man of terrible rages and fierce hatreds … we weren’t going to come it over him without grief.
Suddenly, I came wide awake. I had no idea just when I’d dozed off, but my eyes came wide open and I was listening. What I heard was a horse walking … two horses.
My hand closed on my gun butt.
There was no light showing anywhere in any of the four or five buildings that made up Greenhorn. The inn was dark and still.
The first thing I made out was the shine of a horse’s hip, then the glisten of starlight on a rifle barrel. Two riders had pulled up in the road right in front of the inn. A saddle creaked … one man was getting down.
Our horses were out back, picketed on a stretch of meadow. Unless those riders scouted around some they’d not be likely to find them, for the meadow was back beyond the corral and stable.
Noiselessly I sat up, keeping the blanket hunched around my shoulders, for the night was chill. I held my .45 in my hand, the barrel across my thigh.
After a bit I heard boots crunching and the rider came back. By now I could almost make him out – a big man with a kind of rolling walk. “Ain’t there,” I heard him whisper. “At least, their horses aren’t in the stalls or the corral.”
He stepped into the saddle again and I listened as they walked their horses down the road. Beyond the buildings they stepped them up to a trot, and I wondered where they figured to lay up for the night. It seemed to me they might have a place in mind. Come daylight, if they didn’t find our tracks on the trail, they might just hole up and wait for us.