Ride the Dark Trail (1972) (13 page)

He reached for the beef. "Now you take my name. My folks, both sides of them, come over from Normandy with William the Conqueror. One of them was squire to Sir Hugh de Malebisse and the other rode with Robert de Brus.

"Neither one of them had anything but strong arms and the willingness to use them. One was an Albani, one a Fulbric, and you will find their names in the Doomsday Book. Bold men they were and we who follow their steps are proud to bring no shame to the names they left us."

"They were knights?" Pennywell asked.

"They were not. They were simple men, smiths and the like, between wars. One of them settled in Yorkshire with Sir Hugh, and the other went off to Scotland, hard by. And one of the family later helped to put a Bruce on the throne of Scotland, although a lot of good it did either of them."

I knew nothing of foreign wars or foreign parts, and the talk when not of horses and cattle or buffalo or guns was scarcely easy for me to follow, but there was a lilt to his voice like he was speaking of magic, and I liked to hear what he was saying. The names meant nothing to me, nothing at all.

"I've heard those names," Em Talon said. "Talon spoke of them. His family came from France, and by all accounts a roistering lot they were, building ships and sailing them to foreign parts, and more often than not on voyages of piracy. It's a wonder they weren't hanged."

"Are you a hand with cattle?" I asked him.

"I am that. I'll handle a rope with any man, and my horse is good with cattle. I'll earn my keep and whatever it is you'll pay."

"That horse you see me riding has been hard used, but don't look down upon him. He's carried me into and out of much trouble, and time and again we've been to the wars. Let me put a loop over anything that walks, and that buckskin will hold it, whatever it is."

"In the saddle of that horse I'd not be afraid to rope a Texas cyclone, rope and hog-tie it, too. He'll climb where it would put scare into a mountain goat, and one time when a man holed me with a Winchester slug, he carried me fifteen miles through the snow, then pawed on the stoop until folks came to the door to take me down."

"You can call me a dog if you will, sir, but you speak ill of my horse and I'll put lead into you."

"I'd never speak ill of any man's horse," I said sincerely. "I've ridden his kind, and we've a few fit to run with him right here on the Empty."

If Albani was a fair hand at the table he was a better one in the field. We turned to and roped and branded fourteen head the following morning, cleaned out a waterhole where there'd been a slide, and checked out the grass on the upper meadows. He was a handy man with tools and not backward about using them, but I was wary. He'd not said much about himself beyond running off at the head about those old ancestors of his who came over ... from where I wasn't sure. I'd never heard of Normandy until Pennywell, who reads a lot of books, told me it was in France and that the Normans were originally called Northmen or Vikings, and they'd settled in there where the country looked good. Well, that made sense. Most of us who came west were wishful of the same thing.

Al - as we came to call him - was as good at working on fences, too, and we tightened up the wire where it was needed, replaced a few rotting posts, and branded more cattle in the next few days. He'd been working up Montana way and in the Dakotas and had first come west from Illinois, working on the railroad, building at first, then as a switchman.

It was the sort of story every man had to tell them days. Men moved often and turned their hand to almost anything, developing the knacks for doing things. Most men were handy with tools - their lives demanded it of them - and most men worked at a variety of jobs, usually heading toward a piece of land of their own. Some made it, some never did. In any bunkhouse you'd find men from a dozen states or territories, and men who had worked at dozens of jobs, doing whatever was needed to earn a living.

Most of them were young, and the younger they were the harder they worked to be accepted as men. No boy over fourteen wanted to be thought of as a boy ... he wanted to be considered a man and a top hand at whatever he was doing.

The first thing he learned was to do his part. Nobody had any use for a shirker or a lay-around ... it just made more work for the others, and such a one became almighty unwelcome awful fast. On the other hand, nobody asked who you were or where you came from, only that you stood up when there was something to be done.

Nobody thought of horses except as companions and working partners. The value of a horse in terms of money wasn't often mentioned. You'd hear a man say, "He's a damn' fine cuttin' horse." Or maybe, "He'll go all night an' the next day. Stays right in there." Or, "That's the horse I rode when I tied onto that brindle steer that time, an' ..."

You hear folks say how horses were rough used on old-time ranches, but it ain't so. At least, they used them no worse than they used themselves, and usually a whole sight better. You'll hear folks say that horses are stupid, but they ain't if you give them a chance. A horse is like a dog ... he needs to belong to somebody, to be trusted by somebody. Once they know what's expected of them they'll come through.

There was no word from Milo Talon, and I lay awake nights wondering what Flanner would do next. Me an' Em talked it over at breakfast, with Al Fulbric putting in his two cents' worth. The result was that I got out a team that had once been broke to harness, hitched them to a plough, and then went out and ploughed a firebreak twelve furrows wide just below the crest of the hill that divided us from town. It taken several days, but I got it done, and Al ploughed some on the other side.

Back up into the woods we scouted the country, and here and there tied onto a dead fall and dragged it into place. In other places we cut trees and felled them so they'd form a barrier to riders or even men on foot. We laid out trails through these barriers with certain logs to be lifted to let us by. It was like one of these mazes you hear tell of. If a man knew his way as we did he could ride through almighty fast, but if he didn't know the key entrance and exit he played hob gettin' through.

Fire was what we feared most. We set out barrels and filled them with water near the barns and bunkhouse, and we shot more meat and jerked it against a long fight.

Two nights later I woke up with a yell ringing in my ears. Somebody was pounding on the door and yellin' "Fire!" I grabbed for my hat and my pants, slamming the first on my head and scrambling into the others. I stamped my feet into boots, grabbed my gun belt, and ran for the door.

The whole horizon was lit by flames. They were coming right at us with a good beat of wind behind them. As I ran for the corral I heard the beat of hoofs and Al Fulbric came out on the dead run. He was in his long Johns with a gun belted on, waving his rifle and yellin' like a Comanche. But across his horse in front of him he had a bunch of old sacks and a spade.

It taken me a moment to throw the leather on the roan and get into the saddle. There were sacks laid out and ready and I grabbed a bundle along with a shovel and raced after him.

We reached our firebreak just ahead of the flames. Believe me, had it not been there we'd have been wiped out, but because it was lyin' like it was, on our side of the hill, Flanner hadn't even guessed it was there.

We hit the dirt, and leaving our horses on the ranch side of the break, we ran across and went to whipping out the first inroads of flame with our sacks. We managed to fight it for a bit, then fell back after starting backfires. The backfires burned right up to our firebreak and gave us about fifty more feet of leeway. Only a few sparks managed to blow across to the ranch side and we whipped those out or buried them with earth before they got started.

Pennywell was right there with us, and so was Em. Suddenly I turned sharp around. "The house!" I said. "They've gotten into the house by now!"

We hit our saddles on the run, Em no slower than the rest of us, and we went down the slope on the run.

As we came into the back door, a bunch of men were crowdin' into the front door and Em ran through, me behind her. Al cut around through another room.

Len Spivey was there, and Matthews, and some others, Len was grinning. "Looks like we got you! Jake thought that fire would do it"

They all had guns in their hands and there were eight of them and only two of us in sight.

They guessed right on some things, they guessed wrong on Emily Talon.

"You got nothing," she said, and she cut loose her dogs ... only they were slugs from a big Dragoon Colt.

They couldn't believe it. They'd been sure if there was trouble it would come from me, and they paid no mind to the womenfolks, or mighty little. And they didn't even know about Al.

Em just tilted her old pistol and cut loose, and just as she fired, Al Fulbric jumped from the bedroom door with a shotgun in his hands, and somehow my old six-shooter was speaking its piece right along with them.

It was shock that won for us. They'd not expected shooting with the women there, not really knowing what kind of a woman Em was. It was shock and the time it takes a man to react Em's first shot caught Matthews, who was closest to her, and turned him halfway around. His own gun went off into the floor just as Al cut loose with a double-barreled shotgun.

Matthews was falling, shot through the body. Another man grabbed at the doorjamb and slid down it to the floor, and Len Spivey threw himself at the door and damn near broke his neck getting out of there.

We ran to the door after them. One man turned to fire and my bullet cut him right across the collarbone from side to side. I saw him stagger and cry out, seen his shirt flop where the bullet cut it, and then I put a second one into his brisket. And then they were gone.

They left three behind. Matthews was down and dying. The man who slid down the doorjamb had taken a load of buckshot at twelve-foot range, and he was dead. A third man lay on the grass outside the front door.

They'd drawn us off with the fire as they figured, but they had guessed wrong on Emily Talon.