I'd get a full stomach all right ... full of lead.
Just after full dark a rider came in. I heard their greetings. Heard him say his... one hell of a fight. I don't know where those two came from, but when they were called on they delivered."
"Where was it?"
"Solomonville. Dodie Allen went into this place with Pete Ryland and Collins. They weren't hunting trouble, but you know how Dodie is.
Just because his uncle's a big cattleman, he thinks he is too. Or he thought he was."
"Dead?"
"You ain't a-woofin'. Why, he no more'n picked trouble with those two than he was dead."
"What started it?"
"Dodie. He started it. He had two tough men with him, and I guess he figured he was safe. Or maybe he figured he'd been growin' more hair on his chest. Anyway, he said those two looked like they come right out of the hills.
"One of them fellers, he just looked over at him an' said "Mebbe."'
"Then Dodie said this here was a rough country on folks from Tennessee--t they had one cornered up in the hills, and they were going to stretch rope with his neck come daylight.
"This here tallest one, he said, "ally-all huntin' a man name of Sackett?"' And Dodie, he said he sure was. Collins, he was nudgin' Dodie to shut up, but you know that kid.
He's bull-headed as an ornery calf.
Dodie said he sure was, and this feller just pulled back an' said, "ally found yourselves two of 'em. You goin' to draw that gun, or suck aigs?"'
"Well, sir, Dodie he didn't know what to do. All of a sudden his loud mouth had talked him right into it, and he showed what he was made of. He just stood there swallowin' air and turnin' greener by the minute.
"Ryland, he cut in and said Dodie meant nothin' by it, but they wouldn't let him be.
""He said y-all was huntin'
Sackettsea"' the tall one said. "Well, you found two. I'm Flagan Sackett, and this here's Galloway. You goin' to start shootin', or runnin'?"' So they started shootin."
"Dead?"
"All three of them ... four shots fired.
Four shots killed those boys. Dodie took two of them."
There was silence, and then some murmuring talk I couldn't hear, and then somebody said, "What'll the boss say about that? He set store by Dodie."
"He's fit to be tied. You know how Van is. He's got a temper and he really flew off the handle when he heard it. And Skeeter, too."
"I wouldn't want to be those Sacketts when Skeeter Allen catches up with them."
"I wouldn't want to be Skeeter. You never saw them two work."
It was quiet for a few minutes, and then a voice said, "How about some of that coffee?"
It was time to start moving if I was ever going to try getting out of there. All the shells I had, I loaded in my pockets or the loops of my cartridge belt. Another beltful I slung across my shoulder like a bandolier. Then I taken my own rifle and a spare, and eased down among the rocks.
My mind was a-puzzling over those two Sacketts. There weren't any Sacketts closer than Mora, over in New Mexico, or none that I knew of. It came to mind, though, that there had been a man named Flagan Sackett who lived over at Denney's Gap. This here might be a grandson, or some other relation.
If that tale I'd just heard was true, they sure sounded like Sacketts to me. It was a comfort to feel that maybe I wasn't all alone after all.
Well, I sort of seeped down through those rocks onto the flat land near the river. Those boys had them a big fire, and it threw a lot of light around. If they had been talking around that fire for long they wouldn't be able to see good in the dark, and ...
All at once an Indian came up off the ground right at my feet. My eyes took the flash of light against a knife blade and I shot my rifle as if it was a pistol, jamming the muzzle against the body and squeezing her off.
As the Indian went down, I lifted the rifle to my shoulder and emptied it into the crowd around the fire, and you never saw such a scattering.
A horse dashed near me, and I dropped the empty rifle and grabbed at him.
I laid hold, but he jerked me off my feet and I hit ground, luckily hanging onto my rifle. Bullets were dusting sand all about me and I made a scramble for the rocks. And so there I was, fairly trapped again.
Well, I'd dealt them some misery. They would have that to remember. I crawled back into the rocks, working my way back toward the cliff.
Van Allen ... for the first time I had the name of the man I wanted, but where was he, and how could I get to him? I laid up there in the rocks, hungry as all get-out, parched for a drink, trying to figure a way out. If it was going to happen, it would have to be at night. When daylight came they were sure as shootin' going to get me. But give me a horse and I'd light out as if the heel flies were after me.
All of a sudden a fire sprang up ... I could hear the dry branches crackling clear back where I was. The fire was off to my left a little.
Then another one came alive off to my right. First thing I knew they had five fires going down there, and it lit up the shore of the Verde all the way along in front of me. Somewhere behind those fires were men with rifles, and beyond them the horses I'd need.
It began to look as if they had me now.
Chapter thirteen.
It was a bitter end that faced me, surrounded by enemies and my back to the wall, but it was not death I was thinking of, but only that I'd let the man live who had killed Ange. She whom life had given so little, to be murdered at the end of it and thrown aside like a used-up thing.
Somewhere out there was Van Allen, always safely out of danger's way, always in the background so that I'd not even know his face if we met. The fires out there were lighting the only way I had of escape, unless I could scale the cliffso behind me. But their light touched upon the cliff too, and I did not wish to pin myself against a wall as a target for their rifles.
Well, if their story was true, there were other Sacketts in the country, and it would not end with me.
Where my body lay, others would lie, for Van Allen had no idea when he followed us from Globe that day what hell he was inviting.
A faint stirring in the night warned me, and I moved from where I was. They were creeping up along the cliff, creeping through the rocks to meet me.
It would not be a rifle's work when they came close, but work for a pistol.
Then I thought of a long-dead branch I'd seen among the rocks, and I felt for it. Carefully I lifted it up, and stirred the brush eight or ten feet from where I waited. After a moment, I dragged it ever so lightly along the leaves, hoping they would hear it.
Hear they must have, for suddenly they closed in with a rush on the spot just in front of me, and I think it was in their minds to have me alive. I emptied my Colt with one continuous sound like a roll of thunder, then slipped off to one side, grasping my rifle and crouching low. Gun fire stabbed the night, and laced a criss-cross above my head and over to the side where I had been. Putting my rifle down, I thumbed shells into my gun again ... six of them, and waited.
There was a thrashing around in the brush, and a man cried out in pain. Somebody else was moaning-- terrible, shuddering moans. Well, they had asked for it.
Ever so carefully, I eased back from where I was, going around a boulder, and then my boot came down on a dry branch. In an instant the night was whipped by streaking fire. Something slugged me in the wind, and I felt my knees buckle, and I shot and shot again.
Falling, I went down on a man, his face slippery with blood. Gasping for breath and clutching my empty pistol, I ran my hand out along his arm to his hand and twisted the gun free.
He was beyond resisting.
In the darkness I crouched there, feeling the slow sickness of a wound coming over me. I put the captured gun down and reloaded the other and leathered it. Rifle in one hand, six-gun in the other, I backed away from the man ... dead or fatally wounded, I did not know which.