Ride the Dark Trail (1972) (9 page)

Before daybreak I was off and riding, heading right off down the valley and paying no mind to my trail. It was rolling up clouds for a heavy rain and whatever tracks I made would soon be gone.

My grub was gone and I was dearly wanting a cup of coffee when I sighted a ranch house trailing smoke into the rain. First off I pulled up near some trees and gave study to the place. I was a half mile off and five hundred feet higher, and the place lay in a meadow with a trail running past the gate and aspen spilling down the mountainside opposite. Circling around, I came up through the aspen and sat there five minutes or so, studying the house. Finally I decided whoever was there it certainly wasn't the posse. So I rode on in.

I walked my horse up to the house and gave a call and after a bit a door opened. The man in the door had a gun on, and he yelled, "Put up your horse and come in."

I took my horse to the stables and stepped inside. There were four horses there, three of them dry, one wet. I took the roan to a stall and rubbed him down with a handful of hay, then forked some hay into the manger for him. Prying around with a lighted lantern, I found a sack of oats and put a good bait of that in the bin for my horse.

Studying on the situation, I commenced to feel uneasy, but my roan surely needed the grub, and so did I. Slipping the thong from my pistol butt, I went inside the house. The door opened as I walked up.

There was a red-haired girl there, of maybe seventeen years. She had a sprinkling of freckles over her nose and I grinned at her. She looked shy, but she smiled back.

There were three men in the place, all of them armed. One of them, a tall, thin galoot, stooped in the shoulders, had wet boots and the knees of his pants above the boots were wet. He'd been riding in the rain under a slicker.

"Travelin'," I said. "I ran short of grub."

"Set up to the table. There's beef and there's coffee."

The other men bobbed their heads at me, the man with the wet boots slowest of all.

Now excepting that red-headed girl there was nothing about this here setup that I liked. Of course, any man might have been riding this day, but it was uncommon for men to be wearin' guns in the house with a woman - I mean, unless they were fixing to go out again.

The man who seemed to own the place was a stocky gent with rusty hair, darker than the girl's, but they favored and were likely some kin. There was that tall galoot with the wet boots whom the others called Jerk-Line.

"I'm Will Scanlan," the rusty-haired one said. "This here's Jerk-Line Miller and that gent over yonder with the seegar is Benton Hayes."

Scanlan nor Miller I'd not heard tell of. Benton Hayes a man in my line of business would know. He was a scalp-hunter ... a bounty hunter, if you will. He had a reputation for being good with a gun and not being very particular on how he used it.

"And the lady?" I asked.

"Her?" Scanlan seemed surprised. "Oh, that there's Zelda. She's my sister."

"Favors you," I said. And then added, "My name's Logan. I ride for an outfit over east of here."

The coffee tasted almighty good, but already I was thinking of an excuse for getting out. No traveler in his right mind is going to pick up and leave a warm, dry place for the out-of-doors on a rainy night, and if I did that they'd been bound to get suspicious.

Meanwhile I was putting that beef where it would do the most good. Zelda brought me a healthy chunk of corn pone and a glass of milk to go with it.

"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 stepped 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."