“All the Talons had a gift for working with their hands, they had the love of good wood in their fingers, an’ when a Talon taken wood into his hands he felt of it like he loved it.”
She looked over at me. “It’s like you Sacketts with your guns.”
“From what they tell me you’re pretty good your own self.”
“Had to be. Pa wasn’t always home, and there were Injuns. I was never like some. Lots of folks lost relatives to Injuns, and hated ’em because. Me, I never did. They was just something else to contend against, like the storms, the stampedes, the drought, and the grasshoppers. A time or two I seen grasshoppers come in clouds that would darken the sun and strip bare the land like a plague.” She stared off, as if calling up her memories.
“Shoot? Well, I guess yes. Gun loads was mighty scarce back yonder in the hills, and when somebody went out for meat for our family he or she was expected to come back with meat for every load taken.”
She refilled my cup and hers. “Logan, I got to find Milo. This here place belongs to the boys, him and Barnabas. I’m not so young as I used to be, an’ one night I’ll fall asleep and those out there, they’ll close in an’ finish me off. I need he’p, Logan.”
I shifted in my chair, feeling guilty-like. I’d lost no ponies around here. Californy was where I’d be fixing to be, and then I had to put my oar into that squabble down in town.
“I could stay on a few days,” I said. “There’s nobody waitin’ for me yonder. Or anywheres else,” I added, thinking on it. I guess since my folks died nobody had ever waited on my coming or cared what happened.
“That Planner,” I said, “he carries a gun in a shoulder holster.”
“He does? Well, I reckon he carries one someplace. He’s killed a few. Nobody braces him.” She looked up at me, real sharp. “You seen Johannes?”
“Not to know him. There were several men a-settin’ in the saloon, in the Bon Ton. But I don’t know—”
“Wouldn’t have been him. Johannes Duckett. He’s some kin to Planner, and he’s not quite right in the head, I think. Or maybe he’s just strange. But he’s a dead shot with a gun of any kind and he’s a back-shooter … he’ll shoot you front, back, or sideways. Mostly he cares for the livery stable.”
“I didn’t see anybody.”
“Well, he was around there, then. Whenever he ain’t there, somebody else is, and when Johannes is about you just don’t see him unless he’s of a mind to let you.”
After a time she went off to bed and I fussed around a mite, and taken a turn outside. Pretty soon Pennywell came down to spell me and I curled up on a mattress to take five.
Daylight was coming through the shutters when I awakened, and I could hear folks stirring around out in the kitchen. From the porch I could look over that layout there by the gate, and of a sudden I started gettin’ sore.
Holding an old lady like that! And shooting at her so’s she didn’t dare stir out in front of her own house.
Setting there on the porch in the shadows I studied the layout and made up my mind that come sundown I was going to do some moving around of my own. Californy looked bright and pretty to me and I wasn’t going to leave here with those fellers out there makin’ trouble for Aunt Em.
Out back I fetched a bait of corn from the bin for my horse—I guess he’d never had it so good.
Em Talon was right. They had some mighty fine stock out yonder in the fenced pasture behind the barn, so I saddled up, roped myself a half dozen horses, and brought them up to the corral one at a time. Then I stripped the gear from the borrowed horse and turned it loose.
It ran off a ways, then commenced to graze out there betwixt those boys and the house. Finally as if it taken a notion to travel, it moved off.
Leaning on the corral I studied those horses. The ones I’d picked were mighty fine stock, all wearing the Empty brand. There was a tough-looking strawberry roan that I liked right off, and a steeldust gelding with a wise look about him.
Those were good horses but they hadn’t been under a saddle for months, maybe. They’d take some riding, so I made up my mind to do it.
Whilst I was puttering around I got to studying on where Milo Talon might be. If I was to get shut of this job I’d better find him … and that wasn’t easy to do.
Milo was a man who covered country. There’d be folks in Brown’s Hole might know where he was, or up in the Hole-in-the-Wall country. What I had to do was start the word moving along the trails. It might take time, but if Milo was alive, he’d hear it.
Meanwhile there was a lot to be done. I topped off those broncs, and they showed me plenty of action, but they were good stock. To make sure we’d have plenty of riding stock in case of trouble, I topped off a few others, too.
The gate to the corral was sagging and a board on the back step had come loose, so I made out to fix them up. I never cared much for such work, liking to do nothing I couldn’t do from a saddle, but it had to be done.
Working around, I gave the place some study. Old Talon, who had moved in here when the Injuns were on the warpath often as not, had built with cunning. And that was what had Planner’s boys in a bind … he’d built so there was no way he could be got at.
Moreover, each building was like a fort, and it was easy to move from one to the other without exposing yourself to rifle fire from the outside.
There are a lot of places in the mountains where small valleys or ravines open out into the plains. Talon had found such a place and built so that there was no access except right through his ranch. Which allowed him to control the grazing in a succession of small but pleasant valleys that cut deep into the mountains.
He had located most of the possibilities for trails into the area and had blasted rock to block them off, or had felled trees across them. It was a rugged area of deep canyons, rushing streams, and wild, broken ridges.
There isn’t any place that I ever saw that couldn’t be got into or out of, but often it isn’t easy, and nobody wants to go scouting in rough country, scrambling up rock slides and the like when he is apt to get his skull opened up for trying.
Talon had been thinking about Injuns, I figure, but maybe he’d had the foresight to know that a lot of the savages wear store-bought clothes. Anyway, he was ready … else his widow would have been buried deep and this place would have been cut up and divided, or taken over by Planner.
Meanwhile night was coming on. Just to see what would happen I taken a blanket on a stick and moved it in the shadows of the porch, standing well inside.
Sure enough, a rifle blasted and a bullet went right through that blanket. Now out where they were all they’d be able to see was something moving. They wouldn’t know but what it was Em Talon.
Come evening time when the shadows are long and it begins to get hard to see, I taken my Winchester and went out through the kitchen.
Pennywell stopped me. “Where you going?”
Em turned from the stove. “I just fixed supper,” she said, “you set down.”
“Keep it warmed up. I’ll be back.” I hesitated in the back door. “Those boys out there can spread it around. I want to see what they do when it’s all gathered up.”
Outside I moved into the shadows. Nobody ever said no Clinch Mountain Sackett was anything but mean, and me and my brother Nolan, we shaped up to be the meanest. I never asked no favors and never gave none that I can recall, not when it came to fighting.
We Sackett boys had grown up among the Indians. Cherokees mostly, but we’d known and hunted with Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Shawnees. What I done right then any one of those Injuns could have done, but I figure I did it as well as most. Anyway, I moved across that open ground, sort of filtering through the shadows, like.
There were three men settin’ by that fire and I stood up and walked amongst them. I was right on them before they saw me and I kicked the boiling coffeepot into the lap of the nearest one.