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and the West they had heard about was, for the most of it, already gone.
For instance, out around Denver a man named Dave Cook had gotten a lot of the
law officers to working together, so that a man could no longer just run off
to a nearby town to be safe. And the men who rode for the law in most of the
western towns were men who weren't scared easy.
James Black Fetchen was accounted a mighty mean man, and that passel of
no-goods who rode with him could have been no better. I had an idea they were
riding rough-shod for grief, because folks in Wyoming and Colorado didn't take
much pushing. It's in their nature to dig in their heels and push back.
This was an uncomplicated country, as a new country usually is. Folks had
feelings and ideas that were pretty basic, pretty down to earth, and they had
no time to worry about themselves or their motives. It was a big, wide, empty
country and a man couldn't hide easy. There were few people, and those few
soon came to know about each other. Folks who have something to hide usually
head for big cities, crowded places where they can lose themselves among the
many. In open western country a man stood out too much.
If he was a dangerous man, everybody knew it sooner or later; and if he was a
liar or a coward that soon was known and he couldn't do much of anything. If
he was honest and nervy, it didn't take long for him to have friends and a
reputation for square-dealing; he could step into some big deals with no more
capital than his reputation. Everybody banked on the man himself.
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Once away from a town, a man rode with a gun at hand. There were Indians
about, some of them always ready to take a scalp, and even the Indians
accounted friendly might not be if they found a white man alone and some young
buck was building a reputation to sing about when he went courting or stood
tall in the tribal councils.
A rustler, if caught in the act, was usually hung to the nearest tree. Nobody
had time to ride a hundred miles to a court house or to go back for the trial,
and there were many officers who preferred it that way.
Now, me and Galloway were poor folks. We had come west the first time to earn
money to pay off Pa's debts, and now we were back again, trying to make our
own way. And the telegram from Tennessee had changed everything.
We had made no fight when Black Fetchen claimed Judith, because she had said
she was going to marry him, and we had no legal standing in the matter. But
the fact that he had killed her grandpa changed everything, and we knew she'd
never marry him now, not of her own free will.
"We got to get her away from them, Flagan," Galloway said, "and time's
a-wasting."
But things weren't the way we would like to have them around the outfit,
either. That Larnie Cagle was edgy around us. He had heard of the Sackett
reputation, and he reckoned himself as good with a gun as any man; we both
could see he was fairly itching to prove it.
Kyle Shore tried to slow him down, for Kyle was a salty customer and he could
read the sign right. He knew that anybody who called a showdown to a Sackett
was bound to get it, and Shore being a saddle partner of Cagle's, he wanted no
trouble.
Half a dozen times around camp Larnie had made comments that we didn't take
to, but we weren't quarrelsome folks. Maybe I was more so than Galloway, but
so far I'd sat tight and kept my mouth shut. Larnie was a man with swagger. He
wanted to make big tracks, and now he had a feeling that he wasn't making
quite the impression he wanted. A body could see him working up to a killing.
The only question was who it would be.
Like a lot of things in this world, it was patience that finally did it for
us. Galloway and me were riding out with Moss Reardon. We had followed a faint
trail, picking up where we'd left off the day before, as it had run along in
the same direction we were taking. On that morning, though, it veered off,
doubled back, turned at right angles, switching so often it kept Galloway and
me a-working at it.
All of a sudden we noticed Moss. He was off some distance across the country
but we recognized that paint pony he was riding; we hung to our trail, though,
and so did he. And then pretty soon we found ourselves riding together again.
"I think we've got 'em," Moss said. "As I recall, there's a hole in the river
yonder where water stays on after the rest dries up. There'd be enough after a
rain to water the herd."
We left the trail and took to low ground, keeping off the sky line but
staying in the same direction the trail was taking. Every now and again one of
us would ride out to see if we could pick up track, and sure enough, we could.
Moss Reardon's bronc began to act up. "Smells water," he said grimly. "We
better ride easy."
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We began to see where the grass was grazed off in the bottoms along the
river. Somebody had moved a big bunch of cattle, keeping them strung out in
the bottoms, which no real cattleman would do because of the trouble of
working them out of the brush all the while. Only a man whose main idea was to
keep a herd from view might try that.
We found a place in the river bed where there had been water, all trampled to
mud by the herd, but now the water had started to seep back. We pulled up and
watered our horses.
"How far do you figure?" Galloway asked.
Reardon thought a minute or two. "Not far ... maybe three, four miles."
"Maybe one of us ought to go back and warn Hawkes."
It was coming on to sundown, and our outfit was a good ten miles back. Nobody
moved. After the horses had satisfied themselves we pulled out.
"Well" - I hooked a leg around the saddlehorn - "I figure to Injun up to that
layout and see how Judith is getting along. If she's in trouble, I calculate
it would be time to snake her out of there."
"Wouldn't do any harm to shake 'em up a mite," Moss suggested, his hard old
eyes sharpening. "Might even run off a few head."
We swung down right there and unsaddled to rest our horses giving them a
chance to graze a little.
Meanwhile we sort of talked about what we might do, always realizing we would
have to look the situation over before we could decide. The general idea was [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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