Galloway (1970) (10 page)

"It was too much to carry and now that he knew where it was he could come back any time. He took one sack of dust and dropped a couple of the diamonds in it and thrust it into his pack. Then he recovered the gold and started back.

"There had been no more shooting, but when he came near the bottom of the hill he took great care, studying out his trail in advance. He was still some distance from the beaver pond when he saw Mohler. He was lying face down in the grass with five arrows in his back, a golden carpet of dandelions all about him.

"Arnaud watched for several minutes but there was no movement from the body, no sign of life. From where he lay he could see the dead man still had his rifle and tomahawk, so the body had not been looted.

"Easing back into the brush he worked his way around toward the pond, and there near a fallen log he saw another one. He couldn't make out who it was, but this body had been stripped, scalped, and mutilated.

"The fact that the one body had been stripped and the other had not implied the Indians were still around, so he moved back into the brush and lay quiet, listening.

"He stayed there all day without moving on the theory that if he did not move he would make no sound and leave no tracks. Several times he saw Indians, but each time they passed some distance away, and finally they mounted up and rode away.

"When it was dark he went down to Mohler, but the man was cold in death and had been stripped and robbed in the meantime. The others, if any remained alive, were busy getting away from there, and that was what he decided to do. The Utes had gone downstream, so he went upstream with the idea of striking the highline trail. He did, found one of the others of his party still alive, and together they got out of the country."

"But the gold is still there?"

"The gold and the diamonds. Of the two he got out with, one was worthless. The other was an excellent stone, however, and with the results he bought a small farm in French Canada."

"He never came back?"

"He decided to let well enough alone. He married, had children, but none of them were inclined toward adventure. I gathered they did not have much faith in their father's stories. Their own lives were rather prosaic and his stories were unbelievable to them ... but not to me."

"Well," I said, "it won't do any harm to look. You say the place is close by?"

"Right back of that peak yonder. The start of that trail can't be three miles from here." He glanced over at Galloway. "Now you know why I was so willing to come along. I've been up here before, but these rivers were named when Arnaud was in here, and I wasted time on the Florida and the Animas before I realized they had to be wrong."

We brought our horses in from their picket-ropes and after watering them, turned them into the corral. Then we bedded down and went to sleep.

There for a few minutes I lay awake, considering that gold. If we had it we could buy more cattle, fix our place up better, but I wasn't counting any gold we didn't have. A lot of folks had their hands on that gold and it hadn't done any of them much good.

The fire died down to coals, and I could hear the rustling of the aspens and the faint sounds the horses made in the corral.

I wondered, suddenly, what had become of that wolf.

Chapter
X

Many a campfire dies down with talk that doesn't count up to much in the sunlight.

Around the fire is the time to talk of treasure, and ha'nts and witches and such, but come broad day there's work to be done. Somewhere back down the line Parmalee Sackett should be starting north with a herd, and it was time for Nick Shadow to ride down to meet him.

It was also time for somebody to ride down to Shalako and burden themselves with grub for the next two weeks of work, and it spelled out to be me for that job.

The past few days had helped a sight when it came to my strength catching up to itself, and I felt a whole lot better. Still, we didn't want to leave our place alone too long. Not that we had anything there. Galloway, he said to me, "Flagan, let's ride this out for awhile. Let's sleep out and see what they do.

If there's to be a fraction over this let's not have anything they can bum." ...

So we hadn't.

Nevertheless the thought of that gold was in all our minds, and it was in our thoughts to ride up there someday and have a look for it. Right now we had to pin down the things that were sure or that we were trying to make sure.

Shalako lay still under the afternoon sun when I rode into town. I was still wearing the moccasins because my feet were not quite well, and they were almighty tender around the edges where the flesh had been broken and torn and mashed by rocks, but otherwise I was dressed pretty well for the time, and for a working cowhand.

The first thing I saw was the buckboard from the Rossiter outfit, and Meg about to get down, so I swung my horse alongside and stepped down in time to take her hand and help her down.

She smiled, but I'd say it was a might cool, but when she taken my hand to step down she done it like a real lady, and I could see she set store by such things.

Fact is, I set store by them myself. It pleasures a man to do graceful things for a lady, and if she's pretty, so much the better. We'd be a sorry world without the courtesies, as Ma used to say.

"My!" Meg said. "I would scarcely know you!"

Me, I blushed like a fool, which I have a way of doing whenever a woman says "I, yes, or no" to me. And the blushing makes me mad at myself, which makes me blush all the more. So I stood there, all red around the ears like a dirt-kicking country boy.

"I got me an outfit," I said finally. And then I added, "We're fixing to go ranching, me and Galloway and Nick Shadow."

"How nice!" she said primly, and then with a little edge to her voice she said, "I'm surprised you have the nerve after the way you backed down for Curly Dunn."

Now I never backed down for no man, and she knew it, but girls like to put a man in a bad place and she had done it to me. Like a fool I started in to argue the question, which I shouldn't have done. "I never backed down for him," I said, "or any man."

She turned away from me. "If I were you," she said, "I'd leave while I could.

Curly is going to meet me here."

Well, now. Common sense told me that I should go, but her throwing it up to me like that ... well, I couldn't go then. So I just turned and walked off feeling like I'd come off a pretty poor hand, but then I never was much at talking to women.

In the store I laid out to get the things we needed--flour, salt, coffee, and whatever. They had dried apples, so I laid in a stock of them, and this time I was able to pay. I'd lost whatever I had when the Indians taken me, but Galloway was carrying a good bit right then, as I had been, and whatever either one of us had the other could have. But these supplies were for all of us.

Adding to the list I bought four hundred rounds of .44-calibre ammunition.

The storekeeper, he looked up at me. "You planning a war?"

"No, sir, I ain't. But if anybody comes a-looking I wouldn't want them to go away disappointed. It ain't in my nature to leave folks a-wanting. Meanwhile we have to hunt our meat."

"The Dunns have been around. They've been talking against you."

"Talk never scratched any hides," I said. "They've got to do more than talk."

"That's what we came to town for," Curly's voice said from behind me. "I'm going to whip you right down to your socks."

"You'd have trouble," I said, "because I ain't wearing any."

And then he hit me.

He caught me as I was turning but he'd not been set proper and the punch never staggered me. I just unbuckled my gun and handed it to Berglund, who had just come in.

I think Curly was kind of surprised that I was so ready, and that I didn't get flustered and mad. So he was a mite slow with that second punch and I saw it a-coming. Now I never did want to tear up any man's store, so when that punch came at me I just ducked under it and taken him in the belly with my shoulder, wrapping one arm around his legs and rushing him right out the door.

At the edge of the porch I dropped him and he staggered so I hit him.

Now we Sackett boys grew up a-sweating with an axe, shovel, and plow. We'd worked hard all our lives and my fists were big and hard and backed by an uncommon lot of muscle, so when I fetched him a clout he went back into the middle of the street and fell down.

Stepping off the walk I walked toward him and he got up. He was big, maybe twenty pounds heavier than me, and he was in a whole lot better shape because he'd not been through what I had, but also he was a drinker, and drinking whiskey isn't what you'd call proper for a fighting man.

He came at me, a little wiser now, because that clout he'd caught had carried some power. But he wasn't worried. He'd won a lot of fights and saw no reason why he shouldn't win this one.

Me and Galloway had grown up fighting in the mountains and then we'd knocked around on riverboats and freight outfits and most of what we knew we'd learned by applying it that way.

He came in and he taken a swing at me which I pulled aside from, and when I pulled over I smashed my fist into his belly. It taken him good--right where he lived. I saw his face go kind of white and sick and then I hit him again.

He went down hard into the dust, and the next thing I know there's a crowd around yelling at him to get up. Without them I don't think he would have done it. Meg was there, too, her face all kind of white and funny, staring at him like she had never seen him before, but she didn't look scared, nor did she look altogether displeased.

What I didn't know until later was that both Ollie Hammer and Tin-Cup were in that crowd, just a-watching.

Curly had his friends behind him and he'd made a lot of brags no doubt, so he had it to do. His first punch missed but the second caught me a rap alongside of the face and I staggered. He came on in, swinging with both hands and hit me again. We clinched and I threw him with a rolling hip-lock, and stepped back.

I was just learning how much that time in the woods had taken out of me, for I'd no staying power at all. He came at me, swinging. Again I made him miss one but caught the other one on the chin, and it hurt. So I bowed my neck and went to punching with both hands. I missed a few but some of them landed, and when they landed he gave ground.

We fought up and down in the dust for maybe three or four minutes, and then he remembered about my feet, and he stomped on my toes with his boot heel.

It hurt. It hurt me so bad I thought I'd go down, but I stayed up and seeing it had hurt, he came at me again. This time when he tried to stomp I hooked my toe under his ankle and kicked it up and around and he fell into the dust. When he did that I ran in and grabbed him by the collar and the belt, whirled him around and let go, and he hit the water trough all spraddled out.