Louis L'Amour - Ride the Dark Trail

Dillon turned to Milo. "You're takin' in a lot of territory, mister. Just who might you be?"

"Milo Talon. Em's my ma, and you boys been makin' trouble for her."

Chowse Dillon was worried. He was no gunfighter, although he'd had a hand in a half dozen shootings, and he had pushed his weight around here and there, mostly against nesters. But there was something about this he did not like at all.

"There's only one of you," Chowse said, trying for a bluff. "You're buckin' a stacked deck."

"Stacked decks don't always turn up the cards a body would expect," Talon said mildly, "especially when I've got all the aces. I didn't come in here to lose anything, and if you'll recall, I opened the game. Of course," he straightened from the bar, "if you boys want to see what I'm holding you'll have to ante up, and the chips are bullets ... forty-fives, to be exact.

"I'm betting," he said easily, "that I can deal them just a mite faster than you boys can, and without braggin', boys, I can say I ain't missed anything this close since who flunk the chunk."

The bartender was in the line of fire and the bartender had no stake in the game. He worked for Flanner, who paid him well and on time, but a corpse spends no wages. He cleared his throat "Chowse," he said, "Milo Talon ain't lyin'. What you do is your own affair, but this man is hell on wheels with a pistol. I've heard of him."

Chowse had made up his mind not to push. There were other times, and he could afford to wait. This might be a job for Johannes Duckett, and not for him or the others. Duckett could do it, and he would tell him as much.

There was a coolness about the features of Milo Talon that Chowse did not care for, a coolness somehow belied by the recklessness of his eyes. Chowse Dillon was a stubborn man but he was not an overly brave one. He was dangerous enough when the advantage was his or when backed into a corner, but he had not survived this long without some knowledge of men, and if he read Milo Talon right he was not only a man who would be quick to shoot, but one who would look right into a man's eyes, laugh at him, and shoot him dead.

"I am not goin' to call you," Dillon said. "That's Flanner's affair, if he wants it. If he sends me against you, I'll come, but nothing was said about you."

"He didn't know about me," Milo replied. "Jake Flanner made his bets without having any idea what Em was holding." He chuckled. "Why, ma could whip the lot of you, guns or any other way. You boys just be glad she had that place to watch over and hadn't a free hand to come after you. When I was knee high to a short sheep I saw ma send a bunch of Kiowas packin' ... and they carried their dead with them."

He stood back from the bar. "Sorry I can't wait to meet Flanner right now, but I'll be back." He paused. "Any of you boys seen Logan Sackett?"

"He's dead." Dillon said it with satisfaction. "Killed right out there in the street. He done tried to take the whole town by himself. And he's dead."

"Where's he buried?"

Dillon's smile faded. "Some other gent who came along helped him off to the hills, but he had lead enough in him to sink a battleship. Come to think of it, that other gent favored you, only he wore store-bought clothes, like a tenderfoot."

"He was no tenderfoot," Milo replied as he backed toward the door. "That was my brother, Barnabas. I've seen him cut the earlobes from a man at two hundred yards with a Winchester."

He smiled again. "Well, well! Barney is back! Looks to me like you boys bought trouble wholesale! My advice was good," he added from the door, "travel is downright healthy. You boys pull your freight or we'll be back into town to hang everyone among you who isn't killed by bullets."

And then he added, "And don't you count no Sackett dead until you've thrown the dirt on him. I've seen Logan so ballasted with lead you'd never believe a man could carry it and live. But he's alive, which is more than I can say for those who shot him up."

He stepped into the saddle, eyed the door, then gave a quick glance up and down the street. Con Wellington was standing up the street, watching. Con lifted a hand, and Milo waved in return, then rode swiftly from town.

Milo Talon was no fool. He knew what Flanner was attempting, knew also some of the hatred that welled up within the man, and knew he would not easily call it quits. And sheer numbers were always an advantage. He could afford to lose men and still send more into the fight ... men of that stamp were not hard to find, and there were always renegade Indians.

If Logan Sackett was hurt and holed up in the hills, he must find him. Despite his claims to the contrary ma could not have held out alone for long. It was Logan who had saved her and saved the ranch as well.

The road to the ranch had changed little. Longingly, he waited for his first glimpse of the old house, and when it came he sighed deeply, excited to see it, to find it still standing. He had heard his mother was dead and the land scattered among many owners, but now he knew that story must have been started by Flanner himself in an attempt to keep them away by offering no reason to come back.

Johannes Duckett had stood very quietly at the bar, his beer resting on the polished surface, scarcely tasted. He had listened to Milo Talon, keeping his eyes averted after that first glance. When Milo backed to the door and went out he made no attempt to follow, for be was thinking back to his first days with Jake Flanner.

Flanner had not hired Duckett, merely suggested they ride on together, and Duckett, essentially a lonely man, had done so. Flanner was a talker, an easy, gracious talker who won most of his battles with his smooth tongue. Somehow Flanner always had money, and Duckett, who had more often than not lived from hand to mouth, had found it easier to just ride along with Flanner. Soon Flanner was suggesting things he might do, and Duckett had done them. Occasionally Flanner had said, "Here, you must be short of cash," and then had handed him a twenty, a half dozen twenties, or whatever. Johannes Duckett found himself living better than he had ever lived, and found himself with more ready cash than ever before.

Flanner had not noticed, although he would not have cared, that Johannes Duckett had few needs, but he would have been surprised at the quiet little hoard Duckett had accumulated. A man with few or no wants and a fairly steady flow of cash can gather together a nice sum, and Johannes Duckett accumulated several thousand dollars of which nobody was aware. Neither did they know where Duckett kept it hidden.

Duckett was a lean, quiet man whom some of the hands around Siwash did not consider overly smart. Others who knew him better did believe him smart, but the fact was that the thoughts of Johannes Duckett moved narrowly in only a few deeply grooved channels. He had no particular feelings about good and evil, but he had his own odd compulsions and beliefs. No amount of money or argument could have brought him to kill a child, yet he would have killed a woman without the slightest hesitation, and he had killed several. He had no moral or religious feelings about this, nor could he have explained why he did any of the things he did. He simply had no more scruples about killing a human being than about shooting a snake or a coyote.

He had no loyalty for Jake Flanner, although Flanner believed Duckett followed him from nothing but loyalty. Jake had provided a kind of traveling companion that Duckett liked. He liked Flanner's smooth-talking ways and he liked that Flanner made his life easier. Also, Duckett had decided that Jake Flanner was shrewd ... he was a winner. And Johannes wanted to be associated with a winner.

Now for the first time he had doubts.

The doubts began when he looked at the great house on the MT. To him it was awesome, astonishing. It seemed impregnable. Emily Talon had seemed the same. In the time before the shooting started he had seen her on the trail or in Siwash and there was something about the gaunt old woman that shook him. When she looked at him he averted his eyes, and had she reason for scolding him he would have stood quietly and accepted it.