Then I taken Scanlan’s gun from my belt and throwed it free of shells. I left it there on the table when I went down the steps.
The roan was waiting and I swung into the saddle and taken out. I mean, I left there. If Dutch was going to come hunting he’d have to find his game elsewhere. My old pa was never one to let his enemy choose the ground for a difficulty. “Boy,” he used to say, “don’t you never sidestep no fight, not permanent, that is. Just you pick the time and the place.”
I taken out and rode over the mountains to where the Empty lay, and I came on her in the fresh light of morning after a night in the saddle. The roan was ga’nted and tired, but he was ready to keep going, knowing the home place was yonder.
We rode in by the back way again, and I stepped down and leaned against the door there for a minute, dead beat.
That girl, she came out the door, looking perky as all get-out, but scared too when she seen me leaning.
“Oh! Logan, are you hurt?” She ran to me, and caught me by the hand to look at me the better, and I was ashamed to see her stare at me so with old Em looking down from the doorway.
“I ain’t hurt.” Maybe my voice was a mite rough. ‘Tve come a fur piece.”
“There’s coffee on,” Em said, her being the practical one, “come in an’ set.”
When I’d stripped the gear from the roan and cared for it, I went into the house. First off, I walked through and looked out front.
Nothing.
And that scared me. Jake Planner wasn’t a forgetting man.
We set about the table and I told them about my ride, my meeting with Brannenburg, and that Planner had put a price on her sons’ heads.
She was furious. Her old eyes turned hard and she asked, “Where’d you hear that?”
“A man named Benton Hayes … a bounty hunter.”
“Is he hunting my boys? Is he?”
“No ma’am, he ain’t huntin’ nobody. He give it up.”
She looked me through. “Ah? You read him from the Book, then?”
“Well, ma’am, he had him a sheaf of papers, names of men to be hunted and the money to be paid for them, and I heard him tell those other men that Brannenburg wanted me enough to pay money for it.
“You see, ma’am, he might have come huntin’ me, layin’ for me like, when I was breakin’ a horse or mendin’ fence or somewhat. I decided if he wanted my hair he should have his chance without wastin’ no more time.”
“And?”
“He wasn’t up to it, ma’am. He just wasn’t up to it.” I emptied my cup and reached for the pot. “Seems like in a new country like this, ma’am, so many men choose the wrong profession. You can’t tell. In something else he might have made good.”
Three days went by like they’d never been. I was busy workin’ around the place from can-see to cain’t-see. I even ploughed a vegetable garden with some half-broke broncs who’d no notion of ploughin’ anything. I harrowed that same ground and planted Indian corn, pumpkins, onions, radishes, melons, beans, peas, and what-not. And I surely ain’t no farmer.
Why, I hadn’t done the like since I left that side-hill farm in the Clinch Mountains. Up there in those Tennessee hills we had land so rocky the plants had to push rocks away to find room to grow in. We used to have to put pegs alongside our melons to keep ’em from rolling down into the next farm. I heard tell of a Tennessee farm where there was two brothers each having a short leg. One had a left leg short, the other a right leg, but they worked out the ploughin’ just fine. One would take the plough goin’ out where his long leg would be downhill, then his brother’d be waitin’ for him to plough back the same way.
On the third night we sat about the table, Em Talon, Pennywell, an’ me, rememberin’ the pie suppers, barn-raisin’s, and such-like back to home. We were poor folks in the hills, but we had us a right good time. Somebody always brung along a jug or two of mountain lightning, and toward morning there’d be some real old hoedown and stick-your-thumb-in-their-eyes fightin’. A time or two it would get serious and the boys would have at each other with blades.
Mostly it was just good old-fashioned fun and yarnin’ around the pump out back of the house between dances.
All we needed was a mountain fiddler. Come to think of it we didn’t even need him. Sometimes we’d just sing our own tunes to dance by, such as “Hello, Susan Brown!” or “Green Coffee Grows on High Oak Trees.”
With moonrise I taken my Winchester and went outside to feel of the wind. Wandering off toward the gate I listened. For a long time there I heard nothing but the wind in the grass and then I thought I heard something, so I lay down and put an ear to the ground.
Riders coming up the trail, several of them. I checked the lock on the gate, then faded back into the darkness toward the house.
They came on, quite a bunch of them. They stopped by the gate and there was sort of an argument there.
Suddenly a board in the floor creaked and I turned my head. Em Talon was standing there with her Sharps Fifty and she said, “Logan, you better go inside. Those men aren’t Planner’s outfit.”
“How do you know that?”
She ignored that, but simply said, “I think it’s Dutch Brannenburg, huntin’ you.”
We heard a faint rattle from the gate, which was locked, and Em up with her Sharps and put a bullet toward the gate. Somebody swore and we heard them moving off a bit.
“You go to sleep, Logan,” Em said. “I’m an old woman and it don’t take much. You’ve had a hard time of it these past days.”
“This here is my trouble,” I protested.
“No, it ain’t. You’re ridin’ for me, now. I knew Dutch when he first came into this country, singin’ mighty small. He hadn’t any of those biggety notions he’s got now. A man’s only king as long as folks let him be. You leave him to me.”
Em Talon was not a woman you argued with, so I turned around, went inside, and bedded down. Besides, I had a good notion they’d wait until morning. Hanging a drifter was one thing, attacking a ranch with the reputation the MT had was another.
For the first time in a long while I slept sound the night through and only awoke when the sunlight filtered through the shutters. Opening my eyes, I listened but heard nothing. Then I got out of bed, put on my hat, and got dressed. What I saw in the mirror looked pretty sorry, so I stropped my razor on a leather belt, then shaved.
Somebody tapped on the door. It was Pennywell. “You’d better come,” she said, “there’s trouble.”
Picking up my gun belt I slung it around my hips and cinched up, then I slipped the thong from my pistol and went into the hall.
“What’s happening?”
Pennywell pointed and held up a finger for silence.
The door was open and Emily Talon was on the porch. There were a bunch of riders settin’ their horses at the door, and I heard Em’s voice.
“Dutch Brannenburg, what do you mean ridin’ in here like this? You never were very bright, but just what do you think you’re doing? Riding in here, hunting one of my men?”
“I want that Logan, Missus Talon, an’ I want him now.”
“What do you want him for?”
“He’s a damn’ thief, Missus Talon. He deserves hangin’.”
“What did he steal? Any of your horses?”
Brannenburg hesitated. “He was one of them stole my horses. We trailed two thieves an’ we come on him, he—”
“When were your horses stolen?”
“About ten days back, an’—”
“Logan has been working for me for several weeks, and he hasn’t been off the place until he rode over to Brown’s Hole.”
“He killed a man,” Dutch protested. “He shot a man over west of here.”
“You damned right he did.” Em Talon’s voice was cold. “I know all about Benton Hayes, a dry-gulching, back-shootin’ murderer who has had it coming for years. If he hadn’t shot him, I might have.
“Now, Dutch, you turn your horses around and you ride out of here. You ever bother an Empty hand again and I’ll nail your hide to the fence.
“I recall when you first come into this country, Dutch, and I recall when you branded your first stock. You’ve become high an’ mighty here these past few years, but if you want to rake up the past, Dutch, I can tell some stories.”