17

My mouth was dry and my head was hot—the trip down the mountain had taken a lot out of me. I crouched there among the rocks and brush and studied the layout below. I still couldn’t make it out.

That spot on the back step was blood, sure as shootin’. Somebody had caught one there, and I was praying it wasn’t the old woman or Pennywell. Search as I might I couldn’t find anybody hid out, but they’d be hard to find until they moved ...  if they were there.

I’d lost a lot of blood and from the way I felt I knew I was worse off than I’d thought. A couple of times there my eyes kind of glazed over until I couldn’t see except through a mist. Leaning over I rested my arm on a boulder and my head on my arm. My breathing was hoarse and rasping and I was sick.  Nothing moved down below, and I must have passed out there for a few minutes.  When I came out of it I was still there, my head resting on that rock, but I felt like I was dying. That made me mad.

Die? With that old lady in trouble? With that girl I’d brought to the house in danger because of me? With my friend’s ma down there, maybe about to get killed?  And yes, I’ll sure be honest with myself—a whole lot of the reason I was mad and surely determined to live was Jake Planner. I could hear his voice again, tellin’ them to do me in. All right, Jake, I said to myself. You want Logan Sackett dead. You want him dead but you’re going to have to go all the way to make it happen. So I forced my head up and slid down to a better way of sittin’ through that brush, I watched the house. Below me I could see a sort of slide through the rocks. It was too steep to walk down, but a man lyin’ flat on his back could maybe drop down fifteen or twenty feet lower, if he was careful.  Easing myself around, I got my legs stretched out. With a rifle in one hand and the crutch in the other I moved myself between two bushes and under the edge of a boulder and slid, using the crutch and rifle to keep me from going too fast.  As it was I stopped with a hard jolt against a slab of rock and, worst of all, I’d made some dust.

Now I was closer down. I checked my guns to be sure I had them loaded, then I felt of my cartridge belt and didn’t like what I found. I had eleven cartridges left for my pistol, and in my pockets I had a couple more rounds for the rifle.  This here was not going to be any long fight.

Fogged though my thinkin’ was, the more I studied that layout, the more sure I was that there was somebody inside who shouldn’t be, that ma and them were dead or prisoners. Surely somebody would have come out that door otherwise.  Or else there was somebody on the hill behind me.

Now that was a thought. Maybe somebody back yonder had me right in their sights.  Turning my head, I peered back up the mountain, but if they were right above me they couldn’t see me at all. Suddenly I saw something I couldn’t have seen from where I’d been until I slid.

There was a man’s body—alive or dead there was no way of knowing—sprawled in front of the bunkhouse. I couldn’t see it well but it surely looked like Al Fulbric. Regardless of who it was, there’d obviously been a fight. If that was Al, and I was sure it was, then somebody would have come for him.  The day had drawn on, and the sun was warm on my shoulders, but I wasn’t feeling much but the warmth and the sickness that was in me. The house and the corrals down there seemed to waver, like there was heat waves between us. From time to time I ran my hands over the rifle. It was reality, it was something tangible, something I knew. Squinting my eyes I peered down there. Somebody had to come down, somebody had to come out of the house. Then I’d know.  Suddenly my eyes caught movement, something out there on the road. Turning my head stiffly I peered, scowling, trying to see through the delirium that was in me. It was a horse. It was a black appaloosa. Only one man sat a horse like that, only one horse I’d ever seen looked like that. Far enough off so’s I could just make him out, Milo Talon was riding up to a trap. Riding to his death from the guns that waited inside. Somehow he had to be warned, somehow he had to be told. I had no idea who was inside or how many there were, but I was sure there were too many. There’d been eight men including Planner in the group that jumped me. Eight men in there with guns, just waiting for Milo or me.  If I fired a shot the chances were I’d never get off that slope alive. The only reason I’d made it so far was that they didn’t know I was there, and if I moved they’d nail me instantly. But I knew I was surely going to do it because Milo was my friend and I wasn’t about to see him shot down as he rode up, unsuspecting.

Unsuspecting? Well, maybe not. Milo never rode anywhere without being alert. He was like me, like a wild animal. He was always ready to cut and run or to fight.  He was only some three hundred yards off now, and you could bet they had him in their sights. My rifle tilted and I fired into the air. He slapped spurs to his horse, went down on the far side, and left there with bullets kicking all around him. And me, I went down off that mountain.

Nobody needed to tell me that I was walking into hell, nobody needed one word to tell me that ridge where I’d been holed up was going to be split wide open with rifle fire. If I died it was going to be gun in hand, boots on and walking, so I half ran, half slid off that hill, coming down like a madman.  I hit ground knees bent, heels dug in, with bullets kicking dust all around me.  My mind was a blur but I went for that door and hit it with my shoulder. Like I said, I’m a big man and strong, and even weak as I was I tore that door loose and plunged into the kitchen. A sandy-haired man with a double-barrel shotgun was right square in front of me and I banged a shot at him, then lunged on in, jerking up the muzzle of my rifle. It missed his throat and tore his nose wide open and he screamed like a scared woman. I came around with the butt and there was a dull thunk as he hit the floor under my feet.  In the next room there was a sudden explosion, a yell, and I shifted the rifle to my left hand, grabbed up the shotgun, and plunged into the living room.  There were four men there and Em Talon and Pennywell lying in a corner.  Pennywell seemed to have a bloody lip. I swung that shotgun around and let go with both triggers at twelve-foot range. She boomed like a cannon and the room was so full of smoke that my eyes stung with it. My head was buzzing and my knees felt like they were going to go any minute but I levered shot after shot into the smoke where those men were.

A man rushed through the smoke, six-gun in hand, his hat gone, hair wild, his blue eyes staring. I was to his right and he looked at me and swung the gun at me. I threw the shotgun at his face and followed it in. I had the rifle but I forgot it. I just taken a swing with my big right fist and clobbered him right over one of those blue eyes. His knees started to go and I taken that rifle in both hands and took a full swing at his belly with the butt. He folded like a wet sack and when he hit the floor on his knees I booted him in the face.  Staggering, I went down. My knees hit, and I lunged to get up and fell down. I tried to get up and rolled over in time to see a man come busting in from the front door.

He was a square-built man in a red-checkered shirt and he had a gun. He seen me and he throwed down on me. I figured he had me dead to rights. I looked square into that pistol and knew I’d bought it, but my whole life didn’t pass in front of me. All I could think of was getting up and at him, knowing I’d never make it in time.

Behind me a gun boomed, then boomed again. That man stood up on his tiptoes, his gun dribbled from fingers gone rubber, and he fell all in one piece. As I turned my head, there was Em Talon holding a big Dragoon Colt she’d had hid somewhere in the folds of her dress.

Next thing I knew Pennywell was beside me, hauling me over to the wall, and the room was quiet. After a bit there was a moan ... and it was me. Then somebody said, “Don’t shoot! For God’s sake, don’t shoot!” And a man, bloody and dying, staggered past me to the door.

A window opened and the smoke started to suck out and the air cleared up. Three men were on the floor, but what shape they were in I don’t know. They just laid there as Em knelt alongside of me and stared down at me. “You come just right, boy, you surely did. They got Barnabas tied up and they’ve shot Al.” “Milo’s here. I shot to warn him.”

“Milo? Then they better hunt cover.”

They never tried to move me. They fetched a pillow for my head and they bathed my wounds that had tore loose and after a while they fed me some broth. Part of my weakness was just sheer hunger, but the blood I’d lost had done me no good.  Of the three men on the floor two of them were dead. One of them had caught most of the shotgun blast and the other had taken two forty-fours from Em’s Dragoon Colt.

The man I’d hit in the belly with the rifle butt was still alive although he was in bad shape. The others, one way or another, got out of the house and we never did know what became of them. Anyway, they were gone and there was no sign of Planner. He’d been there, but crippled or not, he was gone before the shooting was over.

Em told me three of them had been down on their knees at loopholes letting Milo ride up. Somebody among them knew who he was and Planner wanted him dead. With Em and Barnabas prisoners they expected to force one or the other to sign over the MT to them.

Three weeks I lay abed, waited on by Pennywell and Em. Three weeks when I lay mighty weak and came close to cashing in. Barnabas, Milo, and Al Fulbric rode into town but the Planner outfit had scattered.  Albani Fulbric had been shot, all right, and had him a concussion, but no more than that and a minor flesh wound that gave him no trouble.  With Barnabas and Milo around things were back to normal. Al taken it easy a few days and then he set to and worked like the hand he was. I was the only one laid up, and I was sick enough so I scarcely knew where I was or what was keeping for the first ten days.

With the return of the Talon boys the house took on a new air. It surely didn’t seem like that house was too big for them. They sang and roughhoused and told stories of the years between when they had been apart. Barnabas had traveled in Europe, had served in the army of France, and he was an educated man. Lyin’ there in bed I listened to the easy flow of his talk and for the first time felt envy of another man.

When I was a boy yonder in the mountains we had to walk or ride miles to the nearest school, and often enough there was work to keep us from it, and nobody to make us go when there wasn’t. We youngsters tried to duck out of school whenever possible, and it shamed me to think there were now youngsters who knew more than me, who could write better and read better.  I had never given thought to it before, and I could work as well as any man, but then I began to notice men like me ending up setting by with nothing to live on while others had a-plenty. Barnabas had plenty of schooling, and even Milo had a good bit. I didn’t know nothing but how to use a gun, ride a horse, and track game ... or men.

Jake Planner had disappeared. So had Johannes Duckett. Nobody had seen either one, and that tough lot who were hired by Planner had all shaken the dust of the country from their hocks. The Planner saloon and hotel had been taken over by Dorothy Arribas, while Con Wellington had opened his store full blast and was doing a good business.

But lyin’ up like I was I done some thinking, and I wasn’t at all sure those two were gone. A man as anxious to get even as Planner, who’d done as much and spent as much, wasn’t about to quit while losing. As for Duckett, he seemed ready to do whatever Planner wanted.

Pennywell, she was around and about. She’d put up her hair and she was making eyes at all three of us, although the Talon boys the most. Em watched it and she was amused more than anything else. Barnabas didn’t seem to be aware of her as more than just another person around, but Milo, I seen him looking her over once or twice.

Em had been to town, bought herself dress material, and was sewing up some new duds for herself. The boys shaped up the place and the cattle were loosed on the open range to get the best of the grass that was left.  I lay back in bed and stared up there at the ceiling wondering what was next for me. I never gave thought to it before, taking things as they came, but here I was laid up, mending slowly but surely, but seeing this big house around me and those folks. There was a strong feeling between Milo and Barnabas ... brothers they were, and different as two men can be, and as boys they’d fought like cats and dogs, or so they said, but it was good to see them now. They made a team, the two of them, and between them the old Empty began to shape up.  Maybe I lay abed a mite longer than needful. It was simply that I hated to leave that old house, Pennywell and Em and all of them. My own family busted up early, going off in different directions. We had a strong feeling for kinfolk in trouble, but my own family had scattered to the winds. Even Nolan, who was my twin brother, Td not seen in a coon’s age.

But the time had come for ridin’ and one morning I rolled out of bed and put on my hat. Seems like in cow country a man always puts on his hat first I slid into my jeans, and pretty raunchy they were, although Em and Pennywell had each taken a hand at putting them in shape. My shirt was patched up—Em had wanted to give me one of the boys’ shirts but it wouldn’t fit no way. I was too big in the shoulders and chest for either of them.

I was on my feet and slinging my gun belt around my hips when Pennywell came in.

She taken one look and called out, “Em! Mrs. Talon! Logan is up!” Em Talon came in and taken a long look at me. “Well, I knew I wasn’t going to keep no Sackett in bed for long. Come on down, son, and have you some breakfast.  You need to get some red meat into you, for blood. You lost a-plenty.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and went.