One of his riders spoke up. “When he comes, Sackett, he won’t be alone. We’ll all come with him. And we’ll bring a rope.”
“You do that,” I said, “he’ll need all the help he can get.”
They turned their horses and rode away. At the gate one of them got down and opened the gate, then fastened it again. That was cattle country … nobody left a gate down when it was there to close.
“Thanks, Em,” I said. “That could have been rough.”
“It was rough. But it ain’t the first time. It used to be Injuns when pa was away.”
“Logan?” Pennywell tugged at my sleeve. “Let me fix up your face.”
My face was bruised and battered some, although I’d no bad cuts. Dutch had been a lot more of a fighter than I figured him for and he’d battered my ribs something awful. I never said nothing even when Pennywell hurt my face, fixing it up.
Late that night, stretched on my bed, I swore softly. As if Em Talon hadn’t enough trouble! I’d brought more upon her in the shape of Brannenburg. He was a vindictive man, and those who rode for him were a rougher crowd then you’d usually find on a cow outfit. Cowhands could be almighty rough, but this bunch were trouble hunters. Many of them had taken a turn at being outlaws, gun hands and whatever the occasion demanded … like me.
The trouble was, I’d brought them down on Em Talon.
I never was no hand for figurin’. I’ve seen folks set down an’ ponder on things until they saw their way clear, but me, I was never no hand at that. I’m strong and mean, but I never found no way of doing things except to walk right out and take the bull by the horns. Settin’ an’ waitin’ rankled. I wasn’t geared for it. I needed a problem where I could walk out swinging both fists. Nolan was more inclined to study on things. Me, it was always root hog or die, and that was what I needed right now.
Troubles were bunching around us. Everywhere I looked I could see it shaping up like thunderheads gathering over the high peaks. Jake Planner was cooking up something, and now Dutch would be also.
It was right about then that I decided I’d better go right after them instead of settin’, waitin’, and finally getting clobbered.
Some folks take to running. Some folks hope that by backing up far enough they’ll not have trouble, but it surely doesn’t work. I’d ridden all over the Rio Grande, Mogollon, Mimbres, La Plata, and Mesa Verde country and what I saw was a lesson.
The Indians there were good Indians, planting Indians. For a long time they lived in peace and bothered nobody, and then Navajo-Apache tribes came migrating down the east side of the Rookies. They found a way west without climbing over mountains. Those nice, peaceful tribes along the Rio Grande were shoved right off the map. Some were killed, some fled to western lands and built cliff houses, but you couldn’t escape by running. The Navajo followed them right along, killing and destroying. Had they banded together under a good leader and waited they might have held the Navajo off, but when danger showed, a family or group of families would slip away to avoid trouble, and those left would be too few to hold off the enemy.
Finally most of them were killed, the cliff houses fell into ruins, the irrigation projects they’d started fell apart. The wild tribes from out of the wilderness had again won a battle over the planting peoples … so it had always been.
I’d ridden through that country, I’d seen the broken pottery and the deserted villages. Farther west I’d find more of the pottery and more ruins. Sometimes you’d find where groups of Indians had merged, but it was always the same. They’d pull out rather than make a stand, and they saw all they’d built fall apart, saw their people cut down, saw their world fall apart.
A couple of times hiding out in canyons I’d come on some of those cliff dwellings. I never told nobody about them because I wouldn’t have been believed. To most white men all Indians were blanket Indians. Several times I’d holed up in a cliff dwelling, drinking water from their springs, sometimes finding remnants of their corn fields where volunteer corn stalks had grown up after constant reseeding of itself.
I had a warm feeling for those folks, and sometimes of a night I’d lie there where they slept. One night I awakened filled with terror. I got up and looked out the window over the moonlit canyons and I fancied I could hear them coming, hear the wild Navajo coming out of the wilderness to attack the peaceful villages. The terror I felt was the terror they must have felt, even when they moved on they’d know it was only a matter of time.
Sometimes only a few warriors would come filtering through the canyons, killing a farmer at work or shooting his wife off a ladder where she climbed with her child. A few would come, but they’d wait around until more came, and more. Up in the cliff dwellings the people would wait, looking down, seeing their crops reaped by others or destroyed, seeing them gather there, knowing someday they would come in sufficient numbers and the floors of the cliff houses would be dark with blood. Some of the people would climb out over the tops of the cliffs and escape, some would try and be killed in the process.
It was like Em Talon. Her husband had been murdered, her hands killed or driven off. Little by little they had gone until she had stood alone against them, a tall old woman, alone in her bleak mansion, waiting for the day when she could no longer lift the Sharps or see to fire it.
I’d come drifting along, a man with no good reputation behind him. I was one of the savages, one of the wanderers. I was no planting Indian, no planter at all. I was a drifter, a man who lived by the gun. But I’d dug in here and stayed … now the time had come to carry it to them.
I’d had enough of waiting. I wasn’t going to sit and let them bring death to me and to this old woman. I was going after them. I was going to root them out, throw them out, burn them out, or die trying. It just wasn’t in me to set and wait.
Like I said, I’m no hand at figuring. It’s my way to just bull in and let the chips fall where they will, but I did give thought to getting into the town unseen, and to getting away when it was over … if there was anything of me left.
Not even a mouse will trust himself to only one hole, so I sat back and recalled the town, thinking out where the buildings and the corrals were situated. Somewhere along the line, sleep fetched itself to me.
At breakfast Em was in a talking mood. She had heel up shy of daylight, peering out through the shutter studying out the land.
“You should have seen it when me an’ Talon came west,” she said. “There was nobody out thisaway, just nobody at all. Talon had been far up the Missouri before this, on a steamboat, and he’d been up the Platte as far as a boat could go. He’d seen his buffalo and killed a grizzly or two, and he’d lived and traveled among Injuns and fit with them a time or two.
“We come west and he kept a-tellin’ me of this place and me, I was ready for it. I was a mountain gal, raise back yonder in the hills, and all that flat land worried me nothing moving but the grass before the wind and mayb an antelope far away or a herd of buffalo.
“Then we seen this place. We seen it from afar of standing out on the grassland with the mountains behind. Talon had left four mountain men in a cabin on the land but they weren’t needed.
“At first the Injuns just came to look, to stare at the three-story house looming above the country around. They called it the wooden tepee and sat their horses in astonishment, gaping at the house that had appeared like a miracle, for the Indians had been gone on the annual buffalo hunt when the house was built.
“When the Cheyennes rode up to see, Talon went out to meet them. He took them, four at a time, through the house, showing them everything, from the enormous stretch of country that could be seen from the railed wall atop the house to the loopholes from which shots could be fired while the shooter was safe within.