the Sky-Liners (1967) (2 page)

"She's been west?"

"Her father is a mustanger, and she traveled with him."

"Hasn't she some folks who could take her west?" I asked. Last thing I wanted was to have a girl-child along, making trouble, always in the way, and wanting special treatment.

"At any other time there would be plenty, but now there is no time to waste. You see Black Fetchen had put his mind to her."

"Her?" I was kind of contemptuous. "Why, she ain't out of pigtails yet!"

She stuck out her tongue at me, but I paid her no mind. What worried me was that Galloway wasn't speaking up. He was just listening, and every once in a while he'd look at that snip of a girl.

"She will be sixteen next month, and many a girl is wed before the time. Black Fetchen has seen her and has told me he means to have her ... in fact, he had come tonight to take her, but you stopped him before he reached us."

"Sorry," I told him, "but we've got to travel fast, and we may have a shooting fight with those Fetchens before we get out of Tennessee. They don't shape up to be a forgiving lot."

"You have horses?"

"Well, no. We sold them back in Missouri to pay up what Pa owed hereabouts. We figured to join up with a freight outfit we once worked with, and get west to New Mexico. There's Sacketts out there where we could get some horses until time we could pay for them."

"Suppose I provide the horses? Or rather, suppose Judith does? She owns six head of mighty fine horses, and where she goes, they go."

"No," I said.

"You have seen Fetchen. Would you leave a young girl to him?"

He had me there. I wouldn't leave a yeller hound dog to that man. He was big, and fierce-looking for all he was so handsome, but he looked to me like a horse-and wife-beater, and I'd met up with a few.

"The townsfolk wouldn't stand for that," I said.

"They are afraid of him. As for that, he says he wishes to marry Judith. As far as the town goes, we are movers. We don't belong to the town."

It wasn't going to be easy for us, even without a girl to care for. We would have to hunt for what we ate, sleep out in the open, dodge Indians, and make our way through some of the worst possible country. If we tied on with a freight outfit we would be with rough men, in a rough life. Traveling like that, a girl would invite trouble, and it appeared we would have a-plenty without that.

"Sorry," I said.

"There is one other thing," Costello said. "I am prepared to give each of you a fine saddle horse and a hundred dollars each to defray expenses on the way west."

"We'll do it," Galloway said.

"Now, see here," I started to protest, but they were no longer listening. I have to admit that he'd knocked my arguments into a cocked hat by putting up horses and money. With horses, we could ride right on through, not having to tie up with anybody, and the money would pay for what we needed. Rustling grub for ourselves wouldn't amount to much. But I still didn't like it. I didn't figure to play nursemaid to any girl.

"The horses are saddled and ready. Judith will ride one of her own, and her gear will be on another. And there will be four pack horses if you want to use them as such."

"Look," I said. "That girl will be trouble enough, but you said those horses of hers were breeding stock. Aside from the geldings you'll be giving us, we'll have a stallion and five mares, and that's trouble in anybody's country."

"The stallion is a pet. Judith has almost hand-fed it since it was a colt."

"Ma'am," I turned on her. "That stallion will get itself killed out yonder. Stallions, wild stock, will come for miles to fight him, and some of them are holy terrors."

"You don't have to worry about Ram," she replied. "He can take care of himself."

"This here girl," I argued, "she couldn't stand up to it. West of the river there ain't a hotel this side of the Rockies fit for a lady, and we figure to sleep under the stars. There'll be dust storms and rainstorms, hail the like of which you never saw; and talk about thunder and lightning ... "

Costello was smiling at me. "Mr. Sackett, you seem to forget to whom you are talking. We are of the Irish horse-traders. I doubt if Judith has slept under a roof a dozen times in her life, other than the roof of a caravan. She has lived in the saddle since she could walk, and will ride as well as either of you."

Well, that finished me off. Ride as well as me? Or Galloway? That was crazy.

"Look," I said to Galloway, "we can't take no girl?"

"Where else are we going to get horses and an outfit?" he interrupted.

He was following Costello out the back way, and there were eight horses, saddled, packed and ready, standing under the poplars. And eight finer animals you never did see. Nobody ever lived who was a finer judge of horseflesh than those Irish traders, and these were their own stock, not for trading purposes.

Right off I guessed them to be Irish hunters with a mite of some other blood. Not one of them was under sixteen hands, and all were splendidly built. The sight of those horses started me weakening almighty fast. I'd never seen such horses, and had never owned anything close to the one he'd picked for me.

"Irish hunters," he said, "with a judicious mixture of mustang blood. We did the mustanging ourselves, or rather, Judith and her father and his brother did. They kept the best of the mustangs for breeding, because we wanted horses with stamina as well as speed, and horses that could live off the country. Believe me, these horses are just what we wanted."

"I'd like to," I said, "but - "

'Fetchen wants these horses," Costello added, "and as they belong to Judith and her father, they would go with her."

"That makes sense," I said. "Now I can see why Fetchen wanted her."

She was standing close by and she hauled off and kicked me on the shin. I yelped, and they all turned to look to me. "Nothing," I said. "It wasn't anything."

"Then you had better ride out of here," Costello said; "but make no mistake. Black Fetchen will come after you. Today was the day Fetchen was coming after Judith."

When I threw a leg over that black horse and settled down into the leather I almost forgave that Judith. This was more horse than I'd ever sat atop of. It made a man proud. No wonder Fetchen wanted that fool girl, if he could get these horses along with her.

We taken out.

Galloway led the way, keeping off the road and following a cow path along the stream.

When we were a mile or so out of town, Galloway edged over close to me. "Flagan, there's one thing you don't know. We got to watch that girl. Her grandpa whispered it to me. She thinks highly of Black Fetchen. She figures he's romantic - dashing and all that. We've got to watch her, or she'll slip off and go back."

Serve her right, I thought.

Now, there's no accounting for the notions of womenfolks, particularly when they are sixteen. She came of good people. We Sacketts had dealt with several generations of Irish horse-traders, and found them sharp dealers, but so were we all when it came to swapping horseflesh. There were several thousand of them, stemming from the eight original families, and it was a rare thing when one married outside the clans.

I thought about Black Fetchen. To give the devil his due, I had to admit he was a bold and handsome man, and a fine horseman. He was hell on wheels in any kind of a fight, and his kinfolk were known for their rowdy, bullying ways. Judith had seen Fetchen ride into town, all dressed up and flashy, with a lot of push and swagger to him. She knew nothing of the killings behind him.

We rode a goodly distance, holding to mountain trails. Judith rode along meek as a lamb, and when we stopped I figured she was plumb wore out. She ate like a hungry youngster, but she was polite as all get out, and that should have warned me. After I banked the fire I followed Galloway in going to sleep. Judith curled up in a blanket close by.

The thing is, when a man hunts out on the buffalo grass he gets scary. If he sleeps too sound he can lose his hair, so a body gets fidgety in his sleep, waking up every little while, and ready to come sharp awake if anything goes wrong.

Of a sudden, I woke up. A thin tendril of smoke lifted from the banked fire, and I saw that Judith was gone. I came off the ground, stamped into my boots, and grabbed my pistol belt.

It took me a minute to throw on a saddle and cinch up, then I lit out of there as if the devil was after me. The tracks were plain to see. There was no need to even tell Galloway, because when he awakened he could read the sign as easy as some folks would read a book.

She had led her horse a good hundred yards away from camp, and then she had mounted up, held her pace down for a little bit further, and then started to canter.

At the crossing of the stream the tracks turned toward the highroad, and I went after her. For half a mile I let that black horse run, and he had it in him to go. Then I eased down and took my rope off the saddle and shook out a loop.

She heard me coming and slapped her heels to her horse, and for about two miles we had us the prettiest horse race you ever did see.

The black was too fast for her, and as we closed in I shook out a loop and dabbed it over her shoulders. The black was no roping horse, but when I pulled him in that girl left her horse a-flyin' and busted a pretty little dent in the ground when she hit stern first.

She came off the ground fighting mad, but I'd handled too many fractious steers to be bothered by that, so before she knew what was happening I had her hog-tied and helpless.

For a female youngster, she had quite a surprising flow of language, shocking to a man of my sensibilities, and no doubt to her under other circumstances. She'd been around horse-trading men since she was a baby, and she knew all the words and the right emphasis.

Me, I just sat there a-waiting while she fussed at me. I taken off my hat, pushed back my hair, settled my hat on my head again, all the time seeming to pay her no mind. Then I swung down from the saddle and picked her up and slung her across her horse, head and heels hanging. And then we trotted back to camp.

Galloway was saddled up and ready to ride. "What all you got there, boy?" he called to me.

"Varmint. I ketched it down the road a piece. Better stand shy of it because I figure it'll bite, and might have a touch of hydrophoby, judgin' by sound."

Wary of heels and teeth, I unslung her from the saddle. "Ma'am, I'm of no mind to treat anybody thisaway, but you brought it on yourself. Now, if you'll set easy in the saddle I'll unloose you."

Well, she spoke her piece for a few minutes and then she started to cry, and that done it. I unloosed her, helped her into the saddle, and we started off again, with her riding peaceable enough.

"You just wait," she said. "Black Fetchen will come. He will come riding to rescue me."

"You or the horses," I said. "I hear he's a man sets store by good horseflesh."

"He will come."

"You'd best hope he doesn't, ma'am," Galloway suggested. "We promised to deliver you to your pa in Colorado, and that's what we aim to do."

"If he really loves you," I said, "he'd think nothing of riding to Colorado. Was I in love with a girl, that would seem a short way to go."

"You!" she said scornfully. "Who would ever love you?"

Could be she was totally right, but I didn't like to think it. Nobody ever did love me that I could remember of, except Ma. Galloway, he was a rare hand with the girls, but not me. I never knew how to sit up and carry on with them, and likely they thought me kind of stupid. Hard to find two brothers more alike and more different than Galloway and me.

Both of us were tall and raw-boned, only he was a right handsome man with a lot of laughter in him, and easy-talking except in times of trouble. Me, I was quieter, and I never smiled much. I was taller than Galloway by an inch, and there was an arrow scar on my cheekbone, picked up on the Staked Plains from a Comanche brave.

We grew up on a sidehill farm in the mountains, fourteen miles from a crossroads store and twenty miles from a town - or what passed as such. We never had much, but there was always meat on the table. Galloway and me, we shot most of our eatin' from the time I was six and him five, and many a time we wouldn't have eaten at all if we couldn't shoot.

Ma, she was a flatland schoolma'am until she up and married Pa and came to live in the mountains, and when we were growing up she tried to teach us how to talk proper. We both came to writing and figuring easy enough, but we talked like the boys around us. Although when it came right down to it, both of us could talk a mite of language, Galloway more than me.

Mostly Ma was teaching us history. In the South in those days everybody read Sir Walter Scott, and we grew up on Ivanhoe and the like. She had a sight of other books, maybe twenty all told, and one time or another we read most of them. After Ma died, me and Galloway batched it alone until we went west.

Galloway and me were Injun enough to leave mighty little trail behind us. We held to high country when possible, and we fought shy of traveled roads. Nor did we head for Independence, which was what might have been expected.

We cut across country, leaving the Kentucky border behind, and along Scaggs' Creek to Barren River, but just before the Barren joined the Green we cut back, west by a mite south, for Smithland, where the Cumberland joined the Ohio. It did me good to ride along Scaggs' Creek, because the Scaggs it was named for had been a Long Hunter in the same outfit with one of the first of my family to come over the mountains.