the Sky-Liners (1967) (3 page)

We bought our meals from farms along the way, or fixed our own. We crossed the Mississippi a few miles south of St. Louis.

No horses could have been better than those we had. They were fast walkers, good travelers, and always ready for a burst of speed when called upon.

Judith was quiet. Her eyes got bigger and rounder, it seemed to me, and she watched our back trail. She was quick to do what she ought and never complained, which should have been a warning. When she did talk it was to Galloway. To me she never said aye, yes, or no.

"What is it like out there?" she asked him.

"Colorado? It's a pure and lovely land beyond the buffalo grass where the mountains r'ar up to the sky. Snow on 'em the year 'round, and the mountains yonder make our Tennessee hills look like dirt thrown up by a gopher.

"It's a far, wide land with the long grass rippling in the wind like a sea with the sun upon it. A body can ride for weeks and see nothing but prairie and sky ... unless it's wild horses or buffalo."

"Are the women pretty?"

"Women? Ma'am, out in that country a body won't see a woman in months, less it's some old squaw or an oldish white woman ... or maybe a dancing girl in some saloon. Mostly a man just thinks about women, and they all get to look mighty fine after a while. A body forgets how mean and contrary they can be, and he just thinks of them as if they were angels or something."

We saw no sign of Black Fetchen nor any of his lot, yet I'd a notion they were closing in behind us. He didn't look like a man to be beaten, and we had stood him up in his own street, making him lose face where folks would tell of it, and we had taken his girl and the horses he wanted.

There was more to it than that, but we did not know it until later.

From time to time Judith talked some to Galloway, and we heard about her pa and his place in Colorado. Seems he'd left the horse-trading for mustanging, and then drifted west and found himself a ranch in the wildest kind of country. He started breeding horses, but kept on with the mustanging. Judith he'd sent back to be with his family and get some education. Only now he wanted her out there with him.

Now and again some of the family went west and often they drove horses back from his ranch to trade through the South. But now he wanted his daughter, and the stock she would bring with her.

Back of it all there was a thread of something that worried me. Sizing it up, I couldn't find anything that didn't sound just right, but there it was. Call it a hunch if you like, but I had a feeling there was something wrong in Colorado. Galloway maybe felt the same, but he didn't speak of it any more than me.

We camped out on the prairie. It was Indian country, only most of the Indians were quiet about that time. Farmers were moving out on the land, but there were still too many loose riders, outlaws from down in the Nation, and others no better than they should be. This was a stretch of country I never did cotton to, this area between the Mississippi and the real West. It was in these parts that the thieves and outlaws got together.

Not that Galloway or me was worried. We figured to handle most kinds of trouble. Only thing was, we had us a girl to care for ... one who would grab hold of a horse any time she saw a chance and head for home ... and Black Fetchen.

One night we camped on the Kansas prairie with a moon rising over the far edge of the world and stars a-plenty. We could hear the sound of the wind in the grass and stirring leaves of the cottonwoods under which we had camped. It was a corner maybe half an acre in extent, at a place where a stream curled around a big boulder. There was a flat place behind that boulder where we shaped our camp; here there was a fallen tree, and firewood from dead limbs.

We built up a small fire, and after we'd eaten our beef and beans we sat about and sang a few of the old songs, the mountain songs, some of them reaching back to the time when our folks came across the water from Wales.

Judith was singing, too, and a clear, fine voice she had, better than either of us. We liked to sing, but weren't much account.

The horses moved in close, liking the fire and the voices. It was a mighty fine evening. After Judith turned in, Galloway did likewise. I had the first watch. Taking up my rifle, I prowled around outside the trees of the small woods.

Second time around I pulled up short over on the west side. Something was moving out yonder in the dark, and I squatted down to listen, closer to the ground, to hear the rustle of the grass.

Something was coming slow ... something hurt, by the sound of it. The sound was a slow, dragging movement, and a time or two I heard a faint groan. But I made no move, for I was trusting no such sound.

After a bit, I made him out, a crawling man, not many yards off. Carefully, I looked all around at the night, but I saw nothing.

I slipped back to camp. "Galloway," I whispered "there's a man out yonder, sounds to be hurt bad. I'm going to bring him in."

"You go ahead. I'll stand by." If it was a trick, somebody would wish it wasn't. I walked out there, spotted the man again, and spoke to him quiet-like, so's my voice wouldn't carry. "What's the trouble, amigo?"

The crawling stopped, and for a moment there was silence. Then the voice came, low, conversational. "I've caught a bad one. Figured I glimpsed a fire."

"You bein' sought after?"

"Likely."

Well, I went up to him then and picked him up and packed him into camp. He was a man of forty or so, with a long narrow face and a black mustache streaked with gray. He had caught a bad one through the body and he looked mighty peaked. The slug had gone on through, for he was holed on both sides. Whilst I set to, plugging him up, Galloway he moved out to keep an eye on the prairie.

Judith, she woke up and set to making some hot broth, and by the time I'd patched him up she was about ready with it. I figured he'd lost blood, so I mixed up some salt water and had him drink that. We had been doing that for lost blood for years back, and it seemed to help.

He was game, I'll say that for him. Whilst Judith fed soup into him, I had a look at his foot.

"Wagon tongue fell on it," he said. "Rider jumped his horse into camp and knocked the wagon tongue over and she hit me on the instep."

His foot was badly swollen, and I had to cut the boot off. He stared at me between swallows of soup. "Look at that now!" he worried. "Best pair of boots I ever did have! Bought 'em a month back in Fort Worth."

"You a Texan?"

"Not reg'lar. I'm an Arkansawyer. I been cookin' for a cow outfit trailin' stock up from the Nueces country. Last evenin' a man stopped by our wagon for a bite of grub. He was a lean, dark, thin sort of man with narrow eyes. He was rough-dressed, but he didn't look western." He glanced up, suddenly wary. "Fact is, he talked somewhat like you boys."

"Don't be troubled. There's no kin of ours about here."

"He wore a sort of red sash and carried a rifle like he was born to it - "

"Colby Rafin!" Judith said.

"You called it, I didn't," I said.

"Anyway, he et and then rode off. About the time we'd been an hour abed, they come a-hellin' out of the night. Must've been a dozen of them or twenty. They come chargin' through camp, a-shootin' and a-yellin' and they drove off our herd, drove them to hell off down the country."

"You'd better catch some rest. You look done in."

He looked straight at me. "I aint a-gonna make it, amigo, an' you know it."

Judith, she looked at me, all white and funny, but I said to him, "You got anybody you want us to tell?"

"I got no kin. Bald-Knobbers killed them all, a long time back. Down Texas way my boss was Evan Hawkes, a fine man. He lost a sight out there this night - his herd, his outfit, and his boy."

"Boy?"

"Youngster ... mebbe thirteen. He had been beggin' the boss to let him ride north with us instead of on the cars. We were to meet Hawkes in Dodge."

"Are you sure about the boy?"

"Seen him fall. A man shot right into him, rode over him. If any of our outfit got away it was one of the boys on night herd."

He sat quiet for a while, and I stole a glance at Judith. She was looking almighty serious, and she had to realize that bunch of raiders that stole the herd and killed the boy had been the Fetchen outfit. Colby Rafin was never far from Black.

"They know they got you?"

"Figured it. They knew I was knocked down by the wagon tongue, and then one of them shot into me as he jumped his horse over."

As carefully as I could, I was easing the biggest sticks away from the fire so it would burn down fast. One thing was sure. That Fetchen outfit had followed us west. But this was no place or time to have a run-in with them.

The man opened his eyes after a bit and looked at Judith. "Ma'am? In my shirt pocket I got a gold locket. Ain't much, mebbe, but my ma wore it her life long, and her ma before her. I'd take it kindly, if you'd have it as a present."

"Yes ... thank you."

"You got tender hands, ma'am, mighty gentle hands. Been a long time since a woman touched me ... gentlelike. It's a fine thing to remember, ma'am."

I'd moved off to the edge of the darkness, listening for trouble riding our way, but I could faintly hear him still talking. "That tall man here," he said, "he carries the look of an eagle. He'll make tracks in the land, ma'am. You better latch onto him, ma'am, if you ain't spoke for. His kind run mighty scarce."

After a moment, he opened his eyes again. "You knowed that man come to my camp?"

"Colby Rafin." She was silent for a moment, and then she said, "They were looking for us, I think."

"For him?" he half-lifted a hand toward me. "They're crazy!"

Galloway came in out of the dark, and I whispered to him about Rafin and how the herd was lost.

"It's like them - outlaws always. Now they've turned cattle thieves."

Neither one of us had much to say, because we were both thinking the same thing. The Fetchens had come west, all right, and they had come a-hunting us. The trouble was they had us outnumbered by a good bit, and running off this herd showed they'd taken the full step from being rowdies and trouble makers to becoming genuine outlaws. From now on it would be a fight to the death against an outfit that would stop at nothing ... and us with a girl to watch out for.

That Colorado ranch began to look mighty far away, and I was cursing the hour when I first saw Costello or Judith.

Not that we minded a fight. We Sacketts never had much time for anything else. If we weren't fighting for our country we were fighting men who still believed in rule by the gun, and no Sackett I ever heard of had ever drawn a gun on a man except in self-defense, or in defense of his country or his honor.

Right then I was glad Galloway stood beside me. Nobody ever needed an army when they had Galloway, and maybe one other Sackett ... it didn't make much difference which one.

We hit trail before sunup, keeping off the skyline as much as possible, but always moving westward, riding sidewise in the saddle so as we could look all around, Galloway facing one way, me the other.

There was a look to the sky that spelled a weather change, but we didn't pay it no mind, figuring only to get distance behind us.

Short of noon a man came up from the south riding a paint pony and hazing about thirty head of cattle. When he put eyes on us he rode his pony around the cattle and came up to us, keeping his Winchester handy and studying us careful-like.

"You pass anybody back yonder? I'm huntin' my outfit."

The brand on his pony and those cattle spelled the story for me -a Half-Box H. "You got stampeded a while back," I said, "and one of your outfit died in our camp."

"Which one?"

"Said he was the cook. Come to think on it, he never did give us his name. Said he rode for Evan Hawkes, and he told us Hawkes's boy got killed in the stampede."

The man's face showed shock. "The boy's dead? That'll go hard on the boss. He set store by the lad."

Me, I curled one leg around the pommel and pushed my hat back. "Mister, looks to me like your herd was scattered hell to breakfast. We covered some miles back yonder and seen nobody. What you figure to do?"

"Drive these cattle into Dodge an' report to Evan Hawkes. All I can do."

He told me his name was Briggs. "Might as well ride with us," I said to him, "It's one more gun for each of us."

"What's that mean?"

"That was James Black Fetchen's outfit from Tennessee who jumped your herd. They're hunting us. If we meet up with them there'll be shooting, and you can lay to it that if they see you're alive they'll be after you, too "

"I'll ride along," he said.

During the next hour we picked up thirteen head of scattered cattle wearing the Hawkes brand. By nightfall we had close to fifty head more. We'd scarcely made camp when we were hailed out of the night ... in those days no man in his right mind rode up to a strange camp without giving them a call.

"That'll be Ladder Walker," Briggs said. "I know the voice."

Walker was an extra tall, extra lean man, which was why they called him Ladder. He was driving six head of steers, and he had a lump on his skull and a grouch over what happened. "You catch sight of any of that bunch?" he asked Briggs. "All I ask is a sight down a gun barrel at them."