Ride the Dark Trail (1972) (2 page)

She was old now, and tired. The long, wakeful nights left her trembling, yet she was not afraid. When they came after her in the end she hoped but for one thing, that she would awaken in time to get off a shot.

Nothing had frightened her in the old days, but then pa had always been close by, and now pa was gone.

Slowly her tired muscles relaxed. Thunder rumbled out there, and the heat lightning showed brief flashes through the cracks of the shutters. She must take another look soon. In a little while.

Her eyes closed ... only for a minute, she told herself, only for one brief, wonderful minute.

Chapter
2

Nobody needed to tell me what I needed was a place out of the rain and a good, hot meal. Maybe a drink. The long-geared, raw-boned roan I was riding had run himself into the ground and was starting to flounder. We'd come a fur piece together, and we'd come fast It began to look like I'd out-run trouble for the time, but then I wasn't going to make any bets until I'd seen the cards.

Lightning flashed and there looked to be rain-wet roofs off there. A cold drop of ram slipped down the back of my neck and down my spine, and I swore.

I'd no idea whose slicker I was wearing, but I was surely pleased to have it instead of leaving it with him. Anyway, he would be nursing a headache for the next few days and should ought to stay in bed.

It was a town off there, sure enough. Or what passed for a town in this country.

There were six or eight buildings that might be stores or saloons and a scattering of shacks folks might live in. Lights shone from a set of four windows. There was a "Hotel" sign over two of them, so I turned in at the livery stable.

Seemed to be nobody around so I found myself an empty stall, stripped the gear from the roan, rubbed him dry with a few handfuls of hay, and then taking rifle and saddlebags I walked up front.

Of a sudden there was a pounding of hoofs and a team came tearing around the corner and into the street, coming at a belly-to-the-ground dead run. Me, I'd started for the saloon in that hotel building and I jumped clear just in time to keep from being run over.

The driver pulled up in front of the hotel and got down, a wisp of a girl in a rain-wet dress that clung to a mighty cute shape. She tied the team and went inside.

When I fetched open the door and came in quiet she was the center of attention, all wet and bedraggled in the middle of the floor.

There weren't more than five or six men in the place. A big, blond man wearing a red shirt and a nasty kind of smile stood at the bar.

"It's that waif-girl who taken up workin' for Spud Tavis," he was saying. "Looks like she run off an' lef' ol' Spud, an' him expectin' so much of her, too."

"I would like to talk to the owner of this place," the girl said. "Please, will somebody tell me where he is? I want a job."

"Not fat enough for my taste." The speaker was a short, thick-set man with black hair. "I like 'em plump so's you can get hold of something. This one's too skinny."

Me, I closed the door soft and just stood there, liking nothing I saw, but wishing for no trouble. Three of the men in that saloon were trying to pay no mind to what was happening, but a body could see they didn't hold with it. Neither did I.

Nobody ever held Logan Sackett up to be no hero. Me, I've run the wild trails since who flung the chunk, and I've picked up a few horses here and yon, and some cattle, too. I've ridden the back trails with the wild bunch and from time to time I've had folks comin' down my trail with a noose hung out for hangin', but I never bothered no womenfolk.

"You, there," the big blond man said to her, "you come here to me."

"I'll do no such thing." She was scared but she had spunk. "I'm a good girl, Len Spivey, and you know it!"

He chuckled, then straightened slowly from the bar. "You comin', or do I come after you?"

"Leave her alone," I said.

For a moment, nothing moved. It was like I'd busted a window or something the way everybody stopped and turned to look at me.

Well, they hadn't much to see. I'm a big man, weighing around two-fifteen most of the time and most of it in my chest and shoulders. I was wearing a handlebar mustache and a three-day growth of beard. My hair hadn't been trimmed in a coon's age and that beat up old hat was showing a bullet hole picked up back of yonder. My slicker was hanging open, my leather chaps was wet, and my boots rundown at heel so's those big-roweled California spurs were draggin' a mite.

"What did you say?" That blond man was staring at me like he couldn't believe it. Seemed like nobody ever stopped him doing what he had a mind to.

"I said leave her alone. Can't you see the lady is wet, tired, an' lookin' for a room for herself?"

"You stay the hell out of this, mister. If she wants a room she can have mine, and me with it."

I turned to her. "Ma'am, you pay no mind to such talk. You just set down yonder and I'll see you have something warm to eat an' drink."

That blond man wasn't fixed to like me very much. "Stranger," he said, "you'd better back off an' take another look. This here ain't your town. If I was you I'd straddle whatever I rode in here and git off down the road before I lose patience."

Now we Clinch Mountain Sacketts ain't noted for gentle ways. The way I figure it is if a man is big enough to open his mouth he's big enough to take the consequences, and I was getting tired of talk.

Stepping over to an empty table I drawed back a chair. "Ma'am, you just set here." I walked over to the bar, and, turning to the man behind it, I said, "Fix the lady a bowl of hot soup and some coffee."

"Mister," he rested both hands on the bar, his expression as unpleasant as that other gent's, "I wouldn't fix that - "

A man can lose patience. I reached across that bar and grabbed myself a handful of shirt and jerked that bartender hall over his bar.

The grip I'd taken was well up at his throat and I held him there and shook him real good a time or two and when his face started to turn blue, I slammed him back so's he hit that back bar like he'd been throwed by a bronco. He slammed into it and a couple of bottles toppled off and busted. "Fix that soup," I said matter-of-factly, "and be careful what tone you use around a lady." That Len Spivey, he just stood there, kind of surprised, I take it. I'd been keeping him in mind, and the others, too. Nothing in my life had left me trusting of folks.

"I don't think you understand," the blond man said, "I'm Len Spivey!"

Seems like every cow town has some two-by-twice would-be bad man.

"You forget about it, son," I said, "and I'll promise not to tell nobody!"

Well, he didn't know what to do. He dearly wanted to stretch my hide but suddenly he wasn't so awful sure. It's easy to strut around playing the bad man with local folks when you know just what you can do and what they can do. But when a stranger comes into town it begins to shade off into another pattern.

"Len Spivey," the black-haired man said, "is the fastest man in this country."

"It's a small country," I said.

The bartender came with the soup and placed it on the table very carefully, then stepped back.

"Eat that," I told the girl, who looked to be no more than sixteen, and maybe less. "I'll drink the coffee."

Talk began and ever'body ignored us, only they didn't really. I'd been in strange towns before and knew the drill. Sooner or later one of them would make up his mind to see how tough I really was. I'd looked them over and didn't care which. They all sized up like a bunch of no-account mavericks.

"Are there any decent womenfolk around here?" I asked her. "I mean folks who aren't scared of this crowd?"

"There's only Em Talon. She ain't feered of nobody or nothing."

"Eat up," I said, "and I'll take you to her."

"Mister, you don't know what you're sayin'. That ol' woman would shoot you dead before you got the gate open. She's nailed a few, she has!"

She spooned some soup, then looked up. "Why, she shot up Jake Flanner, who owns this place! Busted both his knees!"

"Somebody mention my name?" He stood in the door behind the corner of the bar, leaning on two crutches. He was a huge man, big but not very fat. His arms were heavy with muscle and he had big hands.

He swung around the bar, favoring one crutch a mite more than the other. A good-looking man of forty or so, he was wearing a holstered gun, and he had another, I was sure, in a shoulder holster under his coat.

"I'm Jake Flanner. I think we should have a talk." Nobody was supposed to know he had that shoulder holster. There were mighty few of them around, and this one was set well back under his arm, and as the gun was small it could go unnoticed on a big-chested man like Jake Flanner.

A crippled man is smart to leave off wearing a gun. There's few men who would jump a cripple, and in most western towns there'd be no surer way of getting yourself nominated for a necktie party. So if this man was all loaded down with iron there had to be a reason.

Something about those crutches worried me, too, and how he favored one side. To use a gun he'd have to let go of a crutch.

"May I seat myself?"

"Go ahead ... only stay out of line in case somebody decides to open the ball. I wouldn't want to kill any innocent bysitters."

"You're new around here," he said, easing himself in his chair. "Riding through?"

"More'n likely."

"Unusual for a man passing through to take up for a lady. Very gallant ... very gallant, indeed."

"I know nothing about gallant," I said, "but a lady should be allowed to choose her comp'ny, an' should be treated like a lady until she shows she prefers different"

"Of course. I'm sure the boys meant nothing disrespectful." He taken a long look at me. "You seem to have traveled far," he said, "and judging by the looks of your horse, you've traveled fast."

"When I get shut of a place, I'm shut of it"

"Of course." He paused, stoking a pipe. "I might use a good man right here. A man," he added, "who can use a gun." He paused again. "I would surmise you are a man who has seen trouble."

"I've come a ways. And I've been up the creek an' over the ridge, if that's what you mean. I've busted broncs, roped steers, an' fit the heel flies. I've skinned buffalo and laid track an' lived with Indians, so I don't figure to be no pilgrim."

"You're just the man I've needed."

"Maybe, maybe not. You trot out your argument an' run her around the corral an' we'll see how the brand reads."

There was nothing much about this Flanner that I took to, but when a man is on the dodge with a lot of country he can't go back to right away he's in no position to be picky about folks he works for.

"I heard the young lady here mention Emily Talon. She runs the Empty outfit over against the mountain, and she owes me money. Now she's a mean old woman and she's got some mean cowhands and I'd like to hire you to go out there and collect for me."

"What's the matter with Spivey there? He looks like a man who's bit into a sour pickle with a sore tooth. He'd be just the man to tackle an old woman."

Spivey slammed his bottle on the bar. "Look, you!" He was so mad he spluttered.

"Spivey," I said, "you got to wait your turn. I'm in a coffee-drinkin' mood now, an' right contented to be in out of the rain. I'll take care of you when I get around to it an' not a moment sooner."

"There's fifty dollars in it," Flanner added, "and you don't have to shoot unless shot at. I'll even give you a badge to wear, so's it's official."

"Right now I need some sleep," I said, "and I ain't about to crawl back in a saddle until daybreak. How far's it out there?"

"About seven miles. It's a big, old house. The biggest an' the oldest around here." Flanner's eyes were bland. "It is an easy fifty, if you want it" He paused. "By the way ... what shall I call you?"

"Logan ... Logan will do."

"All right, Logan, I'll see you in the morning. Boys," he struggled to his feet, getting the crutches under his shoulders, "lay off Mister Logan. I want him around to talk to in the morning."

He swung away, moving easily on those crutches. He was a big man but he handled himself easily. Crippled or not, if'n I ever saw a dangerous man, this one was. Dangerous but smooth, mighty, mighty smooth!

"Don't you do it," the girl whispered. "Don't you help them bully that old woman."

"Thought you was scared of her. Scared to go out there?"

"She shoots. She's got herself a Sharps Fifty an' she will hit anything she shoots at. They're trying to take her ranch away. It's him an' them nesters. They were Johnny-come-latelies, all trying to move in on that old lady just because she's old, alone, and got the best land anywhere around."

"Are you from here?"

"Not really. My pa was one of the nesters. Pa was an honest man but he never done well. Everything he put a hand to seemed to turn sour. He wasn't much of a manager when it came to money, and he never worked no harder than the law allowed."

"There was just the two of us. Pa picked himself a piece of prairie land and tried to prove up, but the land he plowed mostly blew away and no rain came and pa took to hitting the bottle. One night coming home he fell off his horse and come morning he had pneumonia."