Ride the Dark Trail s-18 Read online

  "Lots of outfits east of here," Hayes commented. "Any pa'tic'lar one?"

  I decided I did not like Mr. Hayes. "The Empty," I said. "I ride for Em Talon."

  "Talon?" Benton Hayes frowned. "I've heard that name. Oh, yes! Milo Talon. He's on the list."

  "List?" I acted mighty innocent.

  "He's a wanted man," Hayes replied.

  "Milo? He'd never break no law."

  "He's on my list, anyways. Somebody wants him and wants him dead."

  "Well," I said, smiling friendly-like, "don't try to collect it. Seems to me Milo Talon was kind of quick on the shoot."

  "Makes no dif'rence," Hayes said. "They can be had. All of them."

  "I'm sure he's not the kind to break the law," I said, still smiling. "Milo was a nice boy. Could it be somebody else wants him?"

  "How do I know? He's wanted, somewhere. There's five hundred dollars on him." He shuffled through some notes from an inside pocket. "There it is ... Jake Flanner, mayor of Siwash. He'll pay it for him or his brother, Barnabas."

  "What do you know about that?" I said. Then I yawned. "I'll bunk in the barn," I said, "no use to bother you gents."

  "You can sleep here." Scanlan had shot a quick look at the others before he made that offer, and he seemed a mite anxious.

  "Zelda, fix Mister Logan a bed in the other room, there." He glanced at me. "You can get to sleep without us botherin' you with our talk."

  I taken up my rifle and followed the young lady into the next room where there was a better than usual bed. There was no window in the room, only the door I come through.

  Zelda put the light down on a table, then looked at me quickly and whispered, "You watch it, mister. I don't like that Mister Hayes. I don't trust him."

  "Neither do I." I grinned at her. "But I do like you, and if I get things straightened around a mite I may just come around this way again."

  She looked at me seriously. "Mister," she said quietly, "I favor a man who is willin' to settle down. I don't want to marry up with no man who rides trails by night"

  "You're a hundred percent right."' I said. "Can you make bearsign?"

  "Doughnuts? Of course, I can."

  "Make some," I said, "and keep them handy. When I come courtin' I'll expect a plate full of doughnuts."

  She went out and I taken a quick look around. The man who built this cabin built it to last. He also put in a trapdoor leading to an attic.

  Chapter 8

  I put a knee on the bed so's it would creak some, and then I dropped a book on the floor, hoping it would sound like a boot. After a moment, I dropped it again.

  Taking the chair I tiptoed over to that trapdoor, put the chair down, and got up on it. Very carefully I put both palms under the door and lifted the least bit. Dust sifted down, and the door moved. Hadn't been opened in a long time. More than likely they no longer thought of it being there.

  Easing it aside I grasped the timber with one hand, laid my rifle up with the other, then chinned myself on the edge, hoisting myself up until I could wiggle over onto the floor.

  The attic was dark and still and smelled of dust. There was a faint square of light across the room that looked to be a window. Very carefully, I eased myself that way. Near to the chimney I was stopped by a voice.

  "He's riding an MT horse, all right. And that's the Talon brand."

  "I'm tellin' you," Jerk-Line was sayin', "That's got to be him Brannenburg is huntin'. I talked to that posse when they came to the Hoy place, an' they were sore as hell. This here gent had really run their legs off, an' then they lost him."

  "Will Brannenburg pay? I hear he's a tough man to deal with." Hayes was talking now.

  "We'd better ride over an' see," Scanlan said. "You surely ain't goin' to bluff him into payin' for something he never asked to pay for."

  "Jerk-Line," Hayes said. "You ride over. He's at the McNary place tonight. Find out what he'll give for this man's hide. You get him to offer a good sum and we'll split fifty for me, twenty-five each for you."

  "Why not in thirds?" Jerk-Line wanted to know. Benton Hayes's voice was cool. "Because I'm goin' to kill him. All you boys got to do is wait an' watch."

  Well, I nearly went back down that trapdoor to give him his chance, but there was three now, and if Dutch did what he'd be likely to do he'd let this man take off on his return trip, then he'd follow. Dutch liked to do his own killing ... or see it done.

  After some more talk Jerk-Line went to the door and went out. I heard him slosh through the mud to the barn, and a moment later I heard his horse pounding off down the road.

  I didn't know how far he'd have to go to this McNary place, but I didn't figure to wait. I tried to slip that window at the end of the loft up or down or sideways, but she was fixed in place. Taking out my Tinker-made knife I put the point into the frame and cut deep. That there knife was sharper than a razor. It cut deep, a sliver several inches long, then another. In maybe two shakes of a dog's tail I had cut that window loose from its frame. Easing myself out I dropped to the ground and stood flat against the wall for a minute. Then I crossed to the barn and saddled my roan. Leading her out I put her in the edge of those aspen, and then I stopped.

  That Benton Hayes back there. He was bound and determined to kill me if there was money in it. Well, I wasn't near so greedy.

  I walked back to the house and up to the back door. Easing it open, I saw Zelda staring at me wide-eyed. "Get your brother out here," I said.

  She hesitated only a moment, then went to the door and said, "Will? Can I talk to you for a minute?"

  Scanlan came to the door and stepped in, closing it behind him. "Zel? Can't you see I'm busy? Couldn't this wait?"

  "Not if you want to live," I whispered.

  He looked at me and that pistol in my hand, and he swallowed. "Mister Scanlan," I said softly, "you got you a fine sister here, but you're trailin' your spurs in mighty poor company. You give me that gun you got, and then you set down yonder, and don't neither of you make a move until I'm gone ... you hear?"

  He nodded, handed me his gun, and edged to the chair. I shoved his gun behind my belt and dropped mine into my holster.

  "He figures to hang my hide," I said. "I'm going to see can he do it."

  I opened the door and stepped through. Benton Hayes looked up. His expression was kinda sour as he spied me standing there in the doorway.

  "Mister Hayes," I said, "you was talkin' a minute ago about selling my hide for a few dollars. You said you would do the killin'. Well, you got you a gun there, let's see you do it"

  He got up slowly. He was surprised and scared at first, then the scare left him. "Why, sure. One way is as easy as another, Logan."

  "Sackett's the name," I said, "Logan Sackett."

  I might as well have kicked him in the belly. His face went taut with a kind of shock, then sick. He was a sure-thing killer who figured he was better than most he'd meet, but I could see he didn't think he was better than Logan Sackett.

  Trouble was, he'd already started to draw.

  Well, he'd started. So I shucked my old hog-leg and let 'er bang. He taken two of them through the middle button on his vest and just for luck I put another through his Bull Durham tag, where it hung from his left vest pocket.

  Then I taken Scanlan's gun from my belt and throwed it free of shells. I left it there on the table when I went down the steps.

  The roan was waiting and I swung into the saddle and taken out. I mean, I left there. If Dutch was going to come hunting he'd have to find his game elsewhere. My old pa was never one to let his enemy choose the ground for a difficulty. "Boy," he used to say, "don't you never sidestep no fight, not permanent, that is. Just you pick the time and the place."

  I taken out and rode over the mountains to where the Empty lay, and I came on her in the fresh light of morning after a night in the saddle. The roan was ga'nted and tired, but he was ready to keep going, knowing the home place was yonder.

  We rode in by the back way again, and I ste
pped down and leaned against the door there for a minute, dead beat.

  That girl, she came out the door, looking perky as all get-out, but scared too when she seen me leaning.

  "Oh! Logan, are you hurt?" She ran to me, and caught me by the hand to look at me the better, and I was ashamed to see her stare at me so with old Em looking down from the doorway.

  "I ain't hurt." Maybe my voice was a mite rough. "I've come a fur piece."

  "There's coffee on," Em said, her being the practical one, "come in an' set."

  When I'd stripped the gear from the roan and cared for it, I went into the house. First off, I walked through and looked out front.

  Nothing.

  And that scared me. Jake Flanner wasn't a forgetting man.

  We set about the table and I told them about my ride, my meeting with Brannenburg, and that Flanner had put a price on her sons' heads.

  She was furious. Her old eyes turned hard and she asked, "Where'd you hear that?"

  "A man named Benton Hayes ... a bounty hunter."

  "Is he hunting my boys? Is he?"

  "No ma'am, he ain't huntin' nobody. He give it up."

  She looked me through. "Ah? You read him from the Book, then?"

  "Well, ma'am, he had him a sheaf of papers, names of men to be hunted and the money to be paid for them, and I heard him tell those other men that Brannenburg wanted me enough to pay money for it.

  "You see, ma'am, he might have come huntin' me, layin' for me like, when I was breakin' a horse or mendin' fence or somewhat. I decided if he wanted my hair he should have his chance without wastin' no more time."

  "And?"

  "He wasn't up to it, ma'am. He just wasn't up to it." I emptied my cup and reached for the pot. "Seems like in a new country like this, ma'am, so many men choose the wrong profession. You can't tell. In something else he might have made good."

  Three days went by like they'd never been. I was busy workin' around the place from can-see to cain't-see. I even ploughed a vegetable garden with some half-broke broncs who'd no notion of ploughin' anything. I harrowed that same ground and planted Indian corn, pumpkins, onions, radishes, melons, beans, peas, and what-not. And I surely ain't no farmer.

  Why, I hadn't done the like since I left that side-hill farm in the Clinch Mountains. Up there in those Tennessee hills we had land so rocky the plants had to push rocks away to find room to grow in. We used to have to put pegs alongside our melons to keep 'em from rolling down into the next farm. I heard tell of a Tennessee farm where there was two brothers each having a short leg. One had a left leg short, the other a right leg, but they worked out the ploughin' just fine. One would take the plough goin' out where his long leg would be downhill, then his brother'd be waitin' for him to plough back the same way.

  On the third night we sat about the table, Em Talon, Pennywell, an' me, rememberin' the pie suppers, barn-raisin's, and such-like back to home. We were poor folks in the hills, but we had us a right good time. Somebody always brung along a jug or two of mountain lightning, and toward morning there'd be some real old hoedown and stick-your-thumb-in-their-eyes fightin'. A time or two it would get serious and the boys would have at each other with blades.

  Mostly it was just good old-fashioned fun and yarnin' around the pump out back of the house between dances.

  All we needed was a mountain fiddler. Come to think of it we didn't even need him. Sometimes we'd just sing our own tunes to dance by, such as "Hello, Susan Brown!" or "Green Coffee Grows on High Oak Trees."

  With moonrise I taken my Winchester and went outside to feel of the wind. Wandering off toward the gate I listened. For a long time there I heard nothing but the wind in the grass and then I thought I heard something, so I lay down and put an ear to the ground.

  Riders coming up the trail, several of them. I checked the lock on the gate, then faded back into the darkness toward the house.

  They came on, quite a bunch of them. They stopped by the gate and there was sort of an argument there.

  Suddenly a board in the floor creaked and I turned my head. Em Talon was standing there with her Sharps Fifty and she said, "Logan, you better go inside. Those men aren't Flanner's outfit."

  "How do you know that?"

  She ignored that, but simply said, "I think it's Dutch Brannenburg, huntin' you."

  We heard a faint rattle from the gate, which was locked, and Em up with her Sharps and put a bullet toward the gate. Somebody swore and we heard them moving off a bit.

  "You go to sleep, Logan," Em said. "I'm an old woman and it don't take much. You've had a hard time of it these past days."

  "This here is my trouble," I protested.

  "No, it ain't. You're ridin' for me, now. I knew Dutch when he first came into this country, singin' mighty small. He hadn't any of those biggety notions he's got now. A man's only king as long as folks let him be. You leave him to me."

  Em Talon was not a woman you argued with, so I turned around, went inside, and bedded down. Besides, I had a good notion they'd wait until morning. Hanging a drifter was one thing, attacking a ranch with the reputation the MT had was another.

  For the first time in a long while I slept sound the night through and only awoke when the sunlight filtered through the shutters. Opening my eyes, I listened but heard nothing. Then I got out of bed, put on my hat, and got dressed. What I saw in the mirror looked pretty sorry, so I stropped my razor on a leather belt, then shaved.

  Somebody tapped on the door. It was Pennywell. "You'd better come," she said, "there's trouble."

  Picking up my gun belt I slung it around my hips and cinched up, then I slipped the thong from my pistol and went into the hall.

  "What's happening?"

  Pennywell pointed and held up a finger for silence.

  The door was open and Emily Talon was on the porch. There were a bunch of riders settin' their horses at the door, and I heard Em's voice.

  "Dutch Brannenburg, what do you mean ridin' in here like this? You never were very bright, but just what do you think you're doing? Riding in here, hunting one of my men?"

  "I want that Logan, Missus Talon, an' I want him now."

  "What do you want him for?"

  "He's a damn' thief, Missus Talon. He deserves hangin'."

  "What did he steal? Any of your horses?"

  Brannenburg hesitated. "He was one of them stole my horses. We trailed two thieves an' we come on him, he - "

  "When were your horses stolen?"

  "About ten days back, an' - "

  "Logan has been working for me for several weeks, and he hasn't been off the place until he rode over to Brown's Hole."

  "He killed a man," Dutch protested. "He shot a man over west of here."

  "You damned right he did." Em Talon's voice was cold. "I know all about Benton Hayes, a dry-gulching, back-shootin' murderer who has had it coming for years. If he hadn't shot him, I might have.

  "Now, Dutch, you turn your horses around and you ride out of here. You ever bother an Empty hand again and I'll nail your hide to the fence.

  "I recall when you first come into this country, Dutch, and I recall when you branded your first stock. You've become high an' mighty here these past few years, but if you want to rake up the past, Dutch, I can tell some stories."

  Brannenburg's face flushed. "Now, see here, Missus Talon, I - "

  "You ride out of here, Dutch, or I'll shoot you my ownself."

  Dutch was angry. He did not like being faced down by a woman, but he remembered this one, and she could be a holy terror when she got started.

  "I want Logan," Dutch insisted. "That man's a thief. Why else did he run when chased?"

  "You'd run from a lynch party, too, Dutch." She looked down at him from the porch, and then suddenly she said, "Dutch, do you really want him? Do you just have to have Logan?"

  Suddenly wary, Dutch peered at her, trying to read what was in her mind.

  "That's what we come for," he said sullenly. "We come after him."

  "I'v
e heard all about your lynching cow thieves, or them you thought were thieves, and I heard you set fire to a couple of them. All right, Dutch, you want Logan, I'll give him to you."

  "What?" Dutch peered at her. "What's that mean?"

  "Logan Sackett," she said quietly, "is kin of mine. We come of the same blood. I'm a Sackett, same as him, and I know my kinfolk. Now you boys believe in fair play, don't you?" she spoke to Brannenburg's riders.

  "Yes, ma'am, we surely do. Yes, ma'am."

  "All right, Dutch. You want Logan Sackett. I hear tell you shape yourself around as something of a fighter. You been walking hard-heeled around this country for several years now because most of these folks hadn't lived here long enough to know you when you walked almighty soft. You just get down off your horse, Dutch. You want Logan, you can have him. You can have him fist and skull right here in front of my stoop, and the first one of your boys who tries to help you will get a bullet through his brisket."

  Well, I just walked out on the porch and stopped on the steps. "How about it, Dutch? You want to take me, it's like Em says. You got to do it yourself, with your own hands an' without help."

  Chapter 9

  Well, his face was a study, believe me. He was mad clean through but there just wasn't anything he could do but fight. Dutch sat up there on his horse and he knew he had it to do. Em Talon had laid it out for him and there was no way out short of looking small before his men, and no ranch boss of a tough outfit dares do that.

  He got down off his horse and trailed his reins. He taken off his gun belt and slung it around the horn, and then he hung his hat over it.

  Meanwhile I'd unslung my gun and knife and come down off the porch. When he turned around I knew I was in for trouble. I was taller than him, but he was broad and thick and would outweigh me by fifteen pounds or so. He was shorter, but he was powerful and he moved in, hands working back and forth.

  I moved out toward him, a little too confident maybe. He taken that out of me but quick. Suddenly he charged, and he was close in before he did, and he went low into a crouch, swinging both hands high. One of them crossed my left shoulder and connected like a thrown brick.

  Right away I knew that whatever else Dutch was, he was a scrapper. Somewhere along the line of years behind him he'd learned how to fight. He came up inside, butting his head, then back-heeling me so I fell to the ground. I rolled over and he put the toe of a boot into my ribs before I could get up and raked me with his spur as his foot swung back from the kick. He raked back and he raked deep, ripping my shirt and leaving a trail of blood across my chest. I was up then, but he came at me, and I knew this wasn't just a fight. He was out to kill me.