It
wasn't as if he hadn't been warned. He got it straight,
with no beating around the mesquite.
"Mister,"
I said, "if you ain't any slicker with that pistol than
you were with that bottom deal, you'd better not have
at it." Trouble was, he wouldn't be content with one mistake,
he had to make two; so he had at it, and they buried him
out west of town where men were buried who die by the
gun.
And
me, William Tell Sackett, who came to Uvalde a stranger
and alone, I found myself a talked-about man. We Sacketts
had begun carrying rifles as soon as we stood tall enough
to keep both ends off the ground. When I was shy of nine
I fetched my first cougar . . . caught him getting at
our pigs. At thirteen I nicked the scalp of a Higgins
who was drawing a bead on Pa . . . we had us a fighting
feud going with the Higginses.
Pa
used to say a gun was a responsibility, not a toy, and
if he ever caught any of us playing fancy with a gun he'd
have our hide off with a bullwhip. None of us ever lost
any hide. A gun was to be used for hunting, or when a
man had a difficulty, but only a tender foot fired a gun
unless there was need. At hunting time Pa doled out the
ca'tridges and of an evening he would check our game,
and for every ca'tridge he'd given us we had to show game
or a might good reason for missing. Pa wasn't one to waste
a bullet. He has trapped the western lands with Kit Carson
and Old Bill Williams, and knew the value of ammunition.
General
Grant never counted ca'tridges on me, but he was a man
who noticed. One time he stopped close by when I was keeping
three Rebel guns out of action, picking off gunners like
a 'possum picking hazelnuts, and he stood by, a-watching.
"Sackett,"
he said finally, "how does it happen that a boy from Tennessee
is fighting for the Union?" "Well, sir," I said, "my country
is a thing to love, and I set store by being an American.
My great-grandpa was one of Dearborn's riflemen at the
second battle of Saratoga, and Grandpa sailed the seas
with Decatur and Bainbridge.
"Grandpa
was one of the boatmen who went in under the guns of the
Barbary pirates to burn the Philadelphia. My folks built
blood into foundations of this country and I don't aim
to see them torn down for no reason whatsoever."
Another
Rebel was fixing to load that cannon, so I drew a bead
on him, and the man who followed him in the chow line
could move up one place.
"Come
fighting time, General," I said, "there'll always be a
Sackett ready to bear arms for his country, although we
are peaceful folks, unless riled."
And
that was still true, but when they buried that gambling
man out west of Uvalde it marked me as a bad man. In those
days what they called a "bad man" was one who was a bad
man to have trouble with, and a lot of mighty good men
were known as bad men. The name was one I hadn't hankered
for, but Wes Bigelow left me no choice.
Fact
of the matter was, if it hadn't been me it would have
been somebody else, because Bigelow's bottom deal was
nothing like so good as I'd seen on the riverboats.
Nevertheless,
I had got a reputation in Uvalde, and this seemed a good
time to become a wandering man. Only I was fed up with
drifting ever since the war, and wanted a place to light.
Outside of town I fell in with a cow outfit. North from
Texas we rode, driving a herd to Montana grass, with never
a thought of anything but grief while riding the Bozeman
Trail. North of the Crazy Woman three men rode into camp
hunting beef to buy. The boss was not selling but they
stayed on, and when my name was mentioned one of them
looked at me.
"Are
you the Sackett who killed Bigelow?" "He wasn't much good
with a bottom deal." "Nor with a gun, I guess." "He was
advised." "Unless you're fit to handle his two brothers,
you'd best not ride to Montana. They come up by steamboat
and they're waiting for you." "I wasn't planning on staying
around," I said, "but if they find me before I leave,
they're welcome." "Somebody was wondering if you were
kin to Tyrel Sackett, the Mora gunfighter." "Tyrel Sackett
is my brother, but this is the first I've heard of him
gunfighting. Only, if he was put to it, he could." "He
cleaned up Mora. He's talked about in the same breath
with Hickok and Hardin." "He's a hand with any kind of
shooting iron. Back to home he used to outshoot me sometimes."
"Sometimes?" "Sometimes I outshot Tyrel . . . but I was
older than him, and had done more shooting."
We
drove our cattle to Gallatin Valley and scattered them
on the Montana grass, and Nelson Story, whose cattle they
were, rode out to camp with the mail. There was a letter
for me, the first I ever got. All through wartime I watched
folks getting letters and writing them, and it was a hard
thing, a-yearning to have mail and receiving none. Got
so when mail call came around that I used to walk away
and talk with the cook. He had lost his family to a war
party of Kiowas, out Texas way. This letter that Story
brought me from town looked mighty fine, and I turned
it in my hands several times, sizing it up and wishing
it could speak out. Printing I could read, but writing
was all which-ways and I could make nothing of it.
Mr.
Story, he stopped by, and noticed. "Maybe I can help you,"
he suggested. Shame was upon me. Here I was a grown man
and couldn't read enough to get the sense out of a letter.
My eyes could make sense of a Cheyenne or Comanche war
trail, but reading was something I couldn't handle.
Mr.
Story, he read that letter to me. Orrin and Tyrel each
had them a ranch, and Ma was living at Mora in New Mexico.
Tyrel was married to the daughter of a Don, one of those
rich Spanish men, and Orrin was in politics and walking
a wide path. All I had was a wore-out saddle, four pistols,
a Winchester carbine, and the clothes I stood up in. Yes,
and I had me a knife, an Arkansas toothpick, good for
hand-fighting or butchering meat. "Your brothers seem
to have done well," Mr. Story said. "I would learn to
read, if I were you, Tell. You're a good man, and you
could go far."
So
I went horse-hunting and wound up making a dicker with
an Indian. He had two appaloosa horses and he dearly wanted
a .36-calibre pistol I had, so we settled down to outwait
each other. Every boy in Tennessee grows up horse-trading
or watching horse trades, and no Red Indian was going
to outswap me. He was a long, tall Indian with a long,
sad face and he had eyes like an old wore-out houn' dog,
and I could only talk swap with him when I didn't look
him in the eye. Something about that Indian made me want
to give him everything I had. However, he had a thirst
on and I had me a jug of fighting whiskey.
So
I stalled and fixed grub and talked horse and talked hunting
and avoided the subject. Upshot of it as, I swapped the
.36 pistol, twenty- ca'tridges, an old blanket, and that
jug of whiskey for those two horses. Only when I took
another look at the pack horse I wasn't sure who had the
better of the swap.
That
letter from home stirred me to moving that way. There's
folks who don't hold with women-folks smoking, but I was
honing to see Ma, to smell her pipe a-going, and to hear
the creak of that old rocker that always spelled home
to me. When we boys were growing up that creak was the
sound of comfort to us. It meant home, and it meant Ma,
and it meant understanding . . . and time to time it meant
a belt with a strap. Somehow, Ma always contrived to put
a bait of grub on the table, despite drouth that often
lay upon the hills, or the poor soil of our side-hill
farm. And if we came home bear-scratched or with a bullet
under our skins, it was Ma who touched up the scratches
or probed for the bullet. So I lit a shuck for New Mexico,
and the folks.
That's
an expression common down Texas way, for when a man left
his camp to walk to a neighbor's, he would dip a corn
shuck into the flames to light his path, and he would
do the same when he started back. Folks came to speak
of anybody who was leaving for somewhere as "lighting
a shuck."
Well,
most of my life I'd been lighting a shuck. First, it was
a hungering for strange country, so I took off down the
Natchez Trace for New Orleans. Another time I rode a flatboat
down river to the same place. Had me a time aboard those
flatboats. Flatboat men had the name of being tough to
handle. Lean and gangling like I was, they taken me for
a greener, but away back of yonder in the hills boys take
to fighting the way they take to coon dogs or making 'shine,
so I clobbered them good. I'm named for William Tell,
whom Pa held in admiration for his arrow-shooting and
his standing on principle. Speaking of standing, I stand
six feet and three inches in my sock feet, when I have
socks, and weigh one hundred and eighty pounds, most of
it crowded into chest and shoulders, muscled arms, and
big hands. Back to home I stood butt of all the funning
because of my big hands and feet.
No
Sackett was ever much on the brag. We want folks to leave
us alone and we leave them alone, but when fighting time
comes, we stand ready. Back in the mountains, and in the
army, too, I threw every man I tackled at wrestling. Pa
raised us on Cornish-style wrestling and a good bit of
fist work he'd learned from an Englishman prizefighter.
"Boys," Pa used to say, "avoid conflict and trouble, for
enough of it fetches to a man without his asking, but
if you are attacked, smite them hip and thigh."
Pa
was a great man for Bible speaking, but I never could
see a mite of sense in striking them hip and thigh. When
I had to smite them I did it on the chin or in the belly.
It is a far piece from Montana to New Mexico astride of
a horse, but I put together a skimpy outfit and headed
west for Virginia City and Alder Gulch. A day or two I
worked there, and then pulled out for Jackson's Hole and
the Teton Mountains.
It
came over me I wanted to hear Orrin singing the old songs,
the songs our people brought from Wales, or the songs
we had from others like us traveling from Ireland, Scotland,
and England. Many happy thoughts of my boyhood time were
memories of singing around the fire at home. Orrin was
always the leader in that, a handsome, singing man, the
best liked of us all. We held no envy, being proud to
call him brother. When I started for New Mexico the last
thing I was hunting was gold or trouble, and usually they
come as a pair. Gold is hard-found thing, and when a man
finds it he's bound to fetch trouble a-keeping it. Seems
like a man finds gold only when he ain't hunting it. He
picks up a rock turns out to be mostly gold, or he trips
over a ledge and finds himself sitting astride the Mother
Lode.
This
whole shooting match of a thing started because I was
a curious man. There I was, dusting my tail down a south-going
trail with no troubles. A time or two I cut Indian sign,
but I fought shy of them. Back in my army days, I heard
folks tell of what a bad time the Indians were getting,
and some of them, like the Cherokee, who settled down
to farming and business, did get a raw deal; but most
Indians would ride a hundred miles any time to find a
good fight, or a chance to steal horses or take a scalp.
When
the war ended I joined up to fight the Sioux and Cheyenne
in Dakota after the Little Crow massacre in Minnesota.
The Sioux had moved off to the west so we chased them,
and a couple of times we caught them . . . or they caught
us. Down Texas way I'd trouble with the Kiowa, Comanche,
Arapahoe, and even the Apache, so I had respect for Indians.
It was a slow-riding time. Of a morning the air was brisk
and chill with a hint of frost in the higher altitudes,
but the days were warm and lazy, and by night the stars
were brighter than a body would believe. There's no grander
thing than to ride wild country with time on your hands,
so I walked my horses down the backbone of the Rockies,
through the Tetons and south to South Pass and on to Brown's
Hole. Following long grass slopes among the aspen groves,
camping in flowered meadows beside chuckling streams,
killing only when I needed grub, and listening then to
the long echo of my rifle shot--believe me, I was having
me a time. Nothing warned me of trouble to come.
Thinking
of Orrin's mellow Welsh voice a-singing, I came fresh
to hear my own voice, so I took a swallow from my canteen
and tipping my head back, I gave out with a song. It was
"Brennan on the Moor," about an Irish highwayman, a song
I dearly loved to hear Orrin sing. I didn't get far. A
man who plans to sing while he's riding had better reach
an understanding with his horse. He should have him a
good voice, or a horse with no ear for music.
When
my voice lifted in song I felt that cayuse bunch his muscles,
so I broke off short.
That
appaloosa and me had investigated the capabilities of
each other the first couple of times I got up in the saddle,
and I proved to him that I could ride. That horse knew
a thing or two about bucking and pitching, and I had no
notion of proving myself again on a rocky mountainside.
And then we came upon the ghost of a trail.
Excerpted
from Sackett by Louis L'Amour. Copyright renewed ©
1989 by Louis L'Amour Partners, Ltd. Excerpted by permission
of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All
rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced
or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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