Treasure Mountain s-17 Page 8

  "There's some good stock there," the Tinker said. "Some of the best."

  When Orrin and the Tinker were in the saddle, I stepped down with Judas Priest.

  He drank, and then me, and as I got up from the water, Orrin said, "Watch it, boy," to me.

  They were coming toward us.

  I waited for them. They didn't know who we were, but they had an eye for our horses, all fine stock although ganted down from hard riding over rough country.

  "Where you from?" asked the sandy-haired man.

  "Passin' through," I replied mildly, "just passin' through."

  "We'd like to swap horses," he said. "You've good stock. We'll swap two for one."

  "With a bill of sale?" I suggested.

  He turned sharp on me. He had a long neck, and when he turned like that he reminded me of a turkey buzzard. "What's that mean?"

  "Nothin'," I replied mildly. "On'y my brother here, he's a lawyer. Likes to see things done proper."

  He glanced at Orrin, wearing several days' growth of beard, his clothes dusty.

  "I'll bet!" he sneered.

  "Better fill your canteens," I told Judas. "We may make a dry camp tonight."

  "All right, Mr. Sackett," he said.

  The sandy-haired man jerked as if slapped. "What was that? What did you call him?"

  "Sackett," Judas said.

  The other men backed off now, spreading out a little. The sandy-haired man's face was pale. "Now, see here," he said. "I'm just drivin' these horses across country. Hired by a man," he said nervously. "We were hired to drive these horses."

  "Where's the man who hired you?"

  "He's comin' along. There's a bunch of them. They'll be along directly."

  "What's his name?" Orrin demanded suddenly.

  The man hesitated. "Charley McCaire," he said finally.

  Orrin glanced at me. McCaire was a gunfighter, a man with a reputation as a troublemaker, but one who so far had always kept on the good side of the law. He ranched in Arizona now, but he had several brothers who still lived in New Mexico and Texas.

  "Orrin," I said, "keep an eye on these boys. I'm going to ride over and have a better look at those horses."

  "Like hell you are!" the man said harshly. "You leave that herd alone!"

  "Sit quiet," Orrin advised. "We're just wondering why the name Sackett upset you so."

  Well, I trotted my appaloosa over to those horses and skirted around them a couple of times, then I bunched them a mite and rode back.

  "Blotted," I said, "and a poor job. They read 888 and they should read Slash SS."

  "Tyrel's road brand," Orrin said. "Well, I'll be damned!"

  Chapter XI

  The man's face was tight. "Now, you see here!" he said. "I--"

  "Shut up," Orrin said sternly. His eyes went from one face to the other. "As of this moment you are all under arrest. I am making a citizen's arrest. Under the circumstances, if you do not offer resistance, I may be able to save you from hanging."

  "We'll see about that!" the sandy-haired man yelled angrily. "You talk to Charley McCaire! And there he comes!"

  Judas and the Tinker had spread out a little, facing the cattle drivers. Orrin an' me, we just naturally turned around to face the riders coming up to us.

  There were seven in the group, and a salty-looking bunch they were.

  McCaire was a big man, rawboned and strong. Once you had a look at him you had no doubt who was in command. A weathered face, high cheekbones, and a great beak of a nose above a tight, hard mouth and a strong jaw.

  "What the hell's goin' on here?" he demanded.

  "Mr. McCaire? I am Orrin Sackett. I have just made an arrest of these men, found with stolen horses."

  "Stolen horses?" McCaire's voice was harsh. "Those horses carry my brand."

  "Every brand is blotted," I said calmly. "Three Eights over a Slash SS. That's Tyrel Sackett's road brand."

  Now a man expecting trouble had better not miss anything. To the right of McCaire, there was a younger man with lean, flashy good looks about him--one of those men you sometimes see who just doesn't seem to hang together, and he was acting a mite itchy and tight around the mouth.

  As I looked, his horse sort of fidgeted around, and I saw that gent's hand drop to his gun.

  "McCaire! You tell that man to get his hand off his gun! There needn't be any shooting here, but if he wants it, he can have it."

  McCaire's head swiveled around and his voice rapped like a gavel. "Get your hand off that gun, Boley!" He turned to the rest of his men. "Nobody starts shooting here until I do! Get that?"

  Then he turned his eyes back to me, and, brother, those eyes of his, cold gray against his dark, wind-burned features, looked into me like a couple of gun muzzles. "Who're you?"

  "William Tell Sackett's the name. Brother to Orrin here, and to Tyrel, whose horses these are."

  "Those ain't nobody's horses but Charley's," Boley said.

  Orrin ignored him. "Mr. McCaire, you're known as a hard man but a fair one. You can read brands as well as any man ... and those are raw brands, Mr. McCaire, and there isn't a horse in that lot under four years old, nor are they mustangs.

  Such horses would have been branded long since."

  McCaire turned in the saddle to an older man near him. "Tom, let's go have a look." He said to the others, "You boys just sit your saddles and don't start anything."

  Orrin started to ride off with them and glanced at me. I grinned at him. "I'll just sort of sit here, too, Orrin. No reason these boys should get lonesome."

  Boley looked past me at Judas, then at the Tinker. "Who are them?" he demanded.

  "What kinda people are you, anyhow?"

  The Tinker smiled, flashing his white teeth, his eyes faintly ironic. "I'm a gypsy, if you'd enjoy knowing, and they call me the Tinker. I fix things," he added. "I put things together to make them work, but I can take them apart, too." He took his knife from its scabbard. "Sometimes I take things apart so they never work again." He dropped the knife back to its sheath.

  Judas said nothing, merely looking at them, his eyes steady, his hands still.

  Charley McCaire was at the horses now, him and that segundo of his. He would be able to see those were blotted brands, but a whole lot depended on whether he wanted to see them or not. We could always shoot one of the horses and skin him to look at the back of the hide--they read right that way. Trouble was, I didn't want to shoot no horse and wanted nobody else to. Moreover, there was no reason.

  The brands had been blotted, all right. They hadn't taken the trouble to burn over the old brand, just added to it. So a blind man could see what had been done. But supposin' he didn't want to see? To recognize the fact would incriminate several of his own men and would also mean a respectable loss of the cash money such horses would bring.

  Charley McCaire was a strong-tempered man, and what happened depended on how that temper veered. Me, I meant to be ready. Horse stealing was a hanging matter anywhere west of the Mississippi and some places east of it. It was also a shooting matter, and I had an idea this Boley gent knew aplenty about how those brands were burned.

  Suddenly, McCaire reined around and came back on a lope.

  Orrin followed just behind Tom. When we were all together again, Charley turned to face us. "Ride off," he said. "We're through talkin'."

  "Charley," Tom said, "look here, man, I--"

  "Are you ridin' for the brand or agin it?" Charley's face was flushed and angry.

  "If you ain't with us, ride out of here."

  "Charley! Think! You've always been an honest man, and by the lord harry, you know those brands are--"

  Boley's hand dropped for his gun ... mine was covering him. "You draw that," I said, "and when she clears leather you'll be belly up to the sky."

  Nobody moved. "All right, Charley," Tom said, "I've rode for your brand for nigh onto twelve year now, but I'm quittin'. You just keep what you owe me because a man cheap enough to read those brands wrong is nobody wh
ose money I want."

  "Tom!" It was a protest.

  "No."

  "Go to hell, then!"

  "That's your route, Charley, not mine."

  Tom turned his horse and rode slowly away over the bunch grass.

  My gun was still in my hand. Boley was pale around the gills. He fancied himself with a six-gun, I could see that, but he wasn't up to it.

  "That's a mighty rough trail you're choosin' for yourself," I said casually.

  "This is a flat-out steal, McCaire, if you can bring it off."

  "Don't be a fool! We outnumber you three to one!"

  "You better look at your hole card, mister," I told him. "I'm already holding a gun. Now I don't know how the rest of your boys will make out, but I'll lay you five to one you an' Boley are dead."

  "Take 'em, Uncle Charley," Boley said. "There's only two of 'em. That nigger won't stand. Neither will the other one."

  "If you think I won't stand, suh," Judas said politely, "why don't you just step out to one side an' let just the two of us try it?"

  Boley started to move, then stopped, his eyes on Judas Priest's gun. It was a Colt revolving shotgun.

  "Finally got around to looking, did you? This here weapon holds four ca'tridges ... an' if I can hit a duck on the wing I believe I can hit a man in a saddle."

  Well, this Boley sort of backed off and flattened his hair down. A shotgun has that effect on a lot of folks. It seems somehow dampening to the spirits.

  "Mr. McCaire," Orrin suggested, "why not give this further thought? We've no desire for trouble. As a matter of fact, this man here and those with him have already been notified of their arrest for possession of stolen property and an apparent theft of horses."

  "You're no officer!"

  "I made a citizen's arrest, but even so, every lawyer is an officer of the court."

  Charley McCaire was simmering down a mite, but I had my doubts whether he'd changed his mind. My gun was one thing he could not sidestep. After Boley's move I had drawn without starting anything, and fast enough so that nobody had a chance to do much about it. A man could see that somebody was going to get shot, and Charley was smart enough to see he was first man up on the list.

  "How do I know you ain't bluffin'? I don't know what your brother's road brand is, or even that he's fixin' to move stock."

  "Unless I am mistaken about my brother, Mr. McCaire, he's on the trail of this missing stock right now, and unless I am again mistaken I would say you're a lot better off with us than with him.

  "Tyrel," he added, "doesn't have the patience that Tell and I have, and I think he's every bit as good with a gun as Tell, here. Back home we always figured him to be the mean one of the family."

  We didn't want any shooting. The incident had happened unexpectedly, and now a wrong word could turn that meadow into a bloodbath.

  The next thing we heard was a pound of hooves, and into the valley came Tyrel, riding straight up in the saddle, young and tall in a fitted buckskin jacket of the Spanish style.

  Behind him were half a dozen riders, all Mexicans, sporting big sombreros, bandoliers, and six-shooters as well as rifles. I knew those vaqueros of Tyrel's and they were a salty lot. He wouldn't have a man on the place who wasn't a fighter as well as a stockman.

  Believe me, they were a pretty sight to see. He always mounted his men well, and those vaqueros rode like nothing you ever saw. They were a bold, reckless lot of men, and they'd have followed Tyrel through the bottom layer of hell.

  "Looks like you boys found my horses," he said. He glanced over at Charley McCaire, then at the others. Tyrel looked better than I'd ever seen him. He was six feet two in his sock feet; he must've weighed a good one-ninety, and not an ounce of it was excess weight.

  "You'll find the brands altered," said Orrin.

  Tyrel glanced at him. Orrin said, "This is Charley McCaire, of the Three Eights.

  Some of his hands got a little ambitious, but it's all straight now."

  The vaqueros bunched the horses and started them toward the trail, then held up.

  The Tinker turned his horse and waited for Priest to come alongside. Then Tyrel turned to his men.

  "We're taking our horses back," he said, "and, at the request of my brother we're making no further move, but if any of you ever see one of these men near any of my stock, shoot him."

  The vaqueros sat their horses, rifles ready, while the rest of us bunched our stock and started moving. Then they rode to join us.

  Glancing back, I saw McCaire jerk his hat from his head and throw it to the ground, but that was all I saw, and I was too far away to hear what he said.

  Tyrel and Orrin rode point, and I guess Orrin was filling in the blank spaces on the horse stealing and then on pa. I trailed off to one side, away from the dust of the horses and riders. I needed to think, and a riding man is always better thinking off by himself. Leastways, that's the way I think best, if I think at all.

  Sometimes I wonder how much thinking anybody does, and if their life hasn't shaped every decision for them before they make it. But now I had to consider pa. I had to put myself in his place.

  The gold Pierre and the others were hunting seemed to be in the San Juans, and certainly, the last I heard, there was a lot of it. Also, that was a mighty bunch of mountains, some thundering deep canyons, and a lot of high, rough country no white man had ever ridden over.

  Galloway and Flagan Sackett had moved some stock there near the town of Shalako and set up camp. They'd established no proper ranch yet, as they were still kind of looking around, but from all they'd said in their letters it was our kind of country.

  I'd been to the San Juans before. It was in the mountains above Vallecitos where I'd found Ange and Tyrel as well as pa had been through Baker Park and the country around Durango. Pa had known that country pretty well--probably as well as anybody could know it without a good many years up there.

  The way I figured it, we'd take the same route north Cap Rountree an' me had taken when we went back up the Vallecitos to stake our claims. We'd ride north from Mora, go up through the Eagle's Nest country and E-town, then to the San Luis Valley and west on the trail into the San Juans.

  Suppose pa was still alive, like ma thought? Suppose he was busted up and back in a corner of the mountains he couldn't get out of? Or held by Indians? I hadn't a moment's thought that such could be true, but pa was a tough man, a hang-in-there-an'-fight sort of man, and a body would have to go all the way to salt him down.

  We camped that night by a spring of cold, clear water where there was grass for the horses. When everybody was around the fire, I took my Winchester and climbed to the rim of the mesa. There was an almighty fine view up there. The sun was gone, but she'd left gold in the sky and streaks of red, as well as a few pink puffballs of cloud.

  Up there on the rimrock I sat down and let my legs hang over and looked to the west.

  Tyrel had Drusilla, and Orrin had the law, at least, and most womenfolks catered to him, but what did I have? What would I ever have? Seemed like I just wasn't the kind to make out with womenfolks, and I was a lonesome man who was wishful of a home and a woman of my own.

  Folks had it down that I was a wanderin' man, but most wanderin' men I've known only wandered because of the home they expected to find ... hoped to find, I mean.

  Looking westward the way we were to ride, I wondered if I'd find what I was hunting. Flagan had said there were some other Sacketts out there. No kind of kin to us that we knowed of, but good folks by all accounts, and we'd fight shy of them and try to make them no trouble.

  Glancing back, as I stood up to go back down the cliff trail, I glimpsed a far-off campfire, a single red eye, winking, but with evil in it.

  Somebody back yonder the way we had come, somebody trailing us, maybe.

  Charley McCaire? Or Andre Baston?

  Or both?

  Chapter XII

  About noontime a few days later, we rode up to San Luis, and the first man I saw was Esteban Mendo
za. He'd married Tina, a girl Tyrel had helped out of a bad situation some years back during the settlement fight.

  "Ah, senor! When I see you far away I say to Tina it is you! No man sits a saddle as do you! What can I do for you?"

  "We want to get under cover, and we want a good bait for our stock."

  When he had shown us where to put our horses, he stopped to talk while I stripped the gear from my appaloosa. "Is it trouble, amigo?"

  I warned him about the kind of people who might be riding our trail, and then I asked him, "Esteban, you've been here awhile now. Who is the oldest man in town?

  I mean, somebody with a good memory that can reach back twenty years?"

  "Twenty years? It is a long time. A man remembers a woman, a fight, perhaps a very good horse for twenty years, but not much else."

  "This is a man--several men--who came through here headed for the San Juans and Wolf Creek Pass."

  He shrugged. "It is a long time, amigo."

  "One of them was my father, Esteban. He did not come back from that ride."

  "I see."

  Esteban started away, and I spoke after him. "These men who follow me. One of them was with my father then. You be careful, and warn your people. Start nothing, but be wary. They are hard men, Esteban, and they have killed before."

  He smiled, his teeth flashing under his mustache. "We have hard men, too, amigo, but I will pass the word. They will know. It is always better to know."

  We ate, but I was restless, and, good as the food was, I was uneasy. It seemed every time I came to San Luis there was trouble, not for the town or from the town, but for me. It was a pleasant little village, settled in 1851, some said.

  Stepping outside I stood for a moment, enjoying the stars and the cool air.

  Looming on the skyline to the west was the towering bulk of Mount Blanca. My father had been here, in this village. San Luis was a natural stop if you came from the south or the east.

  The wind was cool from off the mountains and I stood there, leaning against the bars of the old corral, smelling the good smells of the barnyard, the freshly mown hay, and the horses.

  Tyrel and his vaqueros came out. The men rounded up all their horses, and Tyrel said good-bye to me. They were headed back to Mora for the time being, and I told Tyrel that he would hear from us as soon as we knew anything.