Ride the Dark Trail (1972) (11 page)

"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 Flanner 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 Rockies. 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 been up shy of daylight, peering out through the shutters, 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, raised back yonder in the hills, and all that flat land worried me, nothing moving but the grass before the wind and maybe an antelope far away or a herd of buffalo.

"Then we seen this place. We seen it from afar off, 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 walk atop the house to the loopholes from which shots could be fired while the shooter was safe within.

"He knew the story would be told, and he wanted them to know they could be seen a long time before they reached the house, and that an attacker could be fired upon from any place within the house."

"But you've so much furniture!" Pennywell exclaimed. "How ever did you get it out here?"

"Talon made some of it. Like I said, he was handy. The rest of it we brought out. Talon had trapped for fur, and he kept on trapping. He found some gold here and yon in the mountain streams, and he ordered what he had a mind to. We brought us a whole wagon train of things out from the east, for Talon liked to live well, and that's the sort of thing you break into mighty easy."

Sittin' back in that big hidebound chair I could see behind her words. Seeing the Indians filtering back from their hunt, riding through an area they probably only saw once or twice a year, anyway, to find this great house reared up, staring out over the plains with the great, empty eyes of its windows.

To them it must have been a kind of magic. It had been built quickly. Talon was a driving man, by all accounts, and the mountain men he had helping him were not the kind to stay in one place for long. How many he had to help Em never said, but there were four who had lived in a cabin on the place while Talon rode east to find his bride. There might have been more.

Probably Talon and Sackett had framed much of the structure before their help arrived, and certainly the plan must have been put together in his mind whilst working on the rivers or building for other men.

Sitting there, eyes half closed, listening to her tell it in that old Tennessee mountain tone of hers, I found myself getting restless again. Nobody had the right to take from them what they had built.

Me, I was never likely to build anything. A no-account drifter like me leaves no more mark behind him then you leave a hole in the water when you pull your finger out. Every man could leave something, or should.

Well, maybe it wasn't in me to build much, but I surely could keep the work of other men from being destroyed.

I was going to ride into Siwash and open the place up. I was going in there and drive Len Spivey and his kind clear out of the country.

I'd go tonight.

Chapter
10

Now I never laid claim to having no corner on brains, and most of what I picked up in the way of knowledge was knocked into my head one way or the other. What I've learned, or most of it, has been concerned with just staying alive.

Guns, horses, hitches, and half-nelson's are more in line with my thinking, but here and there just plain looking and seeing what you look at has taught me something. Also, whilst never much of a hand to go to the mat with a book, I'm a good listener.

Folks who have lived the cornered sort of life most scholars, teachers, and storekeepers live seldom realize what they've missed in the way of conversation. Some of the best talk and the wisest talk I've ever heard was around campfires, in saloons, bunkhouses, and the like. The idea that all the knowledge of the world is bound up in schools and schoolteachers is a mistaken one.

There have been a lot of men who just didn't give a damn about tending store or keeping school but who just cut loose their moorings and went adrift.

Wandering men see a lot, and all knowledge is a matter of comparison and the deductions made from it. Moreover, in any crowd of drifters you'll find men of the finest scholastic education as well as men who have just seen a lot and have been putting two and two together.

One time or another I've heard a lot of campfire talk about towns and how they came to be, and a good many sprang up from river crossings. Folks like to camp close to streams for the sake of water, but crossing a big river was quite an operation, so they'd go into camp after they'd crossed over. That is, the smart ones would. Those who went into camp to cross over in the morning often found the water so high come morning they were stuck for several days.

Rome, London, Paris ... all of them sprang from river crossings, and usually there was some bright gent around who was charging toll to cross over. Any time you find a lot of people who have to have something or do something you'll also find somebody there charging them for doing it.

When people stop at a stream crossing they camp and look around, and you can bet somebody has set up store with things for them to want.

The town of Siwash came to be in just that way. The stream was no great shakes, but there was a good flowing spring, and a man came in, stopped his travels, and began raising sheep. A few months later a man came along headed for the Colorado gold fields, he seen that spring and knowing that water was sometimes more precious than gold, waited until the sheepman's back was turned and then split his skull with an ax, buried him deep, and planted a crop of corn and melons over the ground where he buried the sheepman.

It was the age-old conflict between the farmer and the stock raiser that probably began when Cain killed Abel. Cain was not only the first farmer according to the Good Book, but he built the first city mentioned in the Bible, and this farmer, seeing that lots of people stopped at his spring for fresh water, set up store and began selling vegetables and corn.

He would probably have done all right in the fullness of time but for a gambler with rheumatism in his hands. The gambler rode into town and stopped to watch the business. He listened to the rustle of the cottonwood leaves and the lovely sound of flowing water from the spring, and that night he brought out a greasy deck of cards. Rheumatism in the hands was spelling his finish as a gambler, but those hands still were good enough to deal three queens to Cain.

Cain hadn't seen a woman for a long time so when those three queens showed up together he overrated their value, and when the rheumatic gambler showed his four aces Cain discovered he was no longer a farmer and keeper of a store but a wanderer. The gambler wanted him out of there so he made him a present of his horse ... and perhaps with a warning from a friendly ghost, he didn't turn his back when Cain picked up his ax. So Cain rode out into the world again, and the gambler became a storekeeper and a tiller of the fields.