Louis L'Amour: Ride the Dark Trail

Em had been to town, bought herself dress material, and was sewing up some new duds for herself. The boys shaped up the place and the cattle were loosed on the open range to get the best of the grass that was left.

I lay back in bed and stared up there at the ceiling wondering what was next for me. I never gave thought to it before, taking things as they came, but here I was laid up, mending slowly but surely, but seeing this big house around me and those folks. There was a strong feeling between Milo and Barnabas ... brothers they were, and different as two men can be, and as boys they'd fought like cats and dogs, or so they said, but it was good to see them now. They made a team, the two of them, and between them the old Empty began to shape up.

Maybe I lay abed a mite longer than needful. It was simply that I hated to leave that old house, Pennywell and Em and all of them. My own family busted up early, going off in different directions. We had a strong feeling for kinfolk in trouble, but my own family had scattered to the winds. Even Nolan, who was my twin brother, I'd not seen in a coon's age.

But the time had come for ridin' and one morning I rolled out of bed and put on my hat. Seems like in cow country a man always puts on his hat first. I slid into my jeans, and pretty raunchy they were, although Em and Pennywell had each taken a hand at putting them in shape. My shirt was patched up - Em had wanted to give me one of the boys' shirts but it wouldn't fit no way. I was too big in the shoulders and chest for either of them.

I was on my feet and slinging my gun belt around my hips when Pennywell came in. She taken one look and called out, "Em! Mrs. Talon! Logan is up!"

Em Talon came in and taken a long look at me. "Well, I knew I wasn't going to keep no Sackett in bed for long. Come on down, son, and have you some breakfast. You need to get some red meat into you, for blood. You lost a-plenty."

"Yes, ma'am," I said, and went.

Chapter 18

For three days I did nothing but sit on the porch and look down the road toward Siwash. Everything was moving along on the Empty - the cattle were grazing on the prairie grass where they had not been able to graze freely since Flanner came into the country. The place was getting fixed up, and Em was for the first time looking kind of easy in the mind. She was sleeping all night, and so was Pennywell.

The Talon boys were out on the range most of the time, branding calves and picking up what mavericks they could find left over from the years since the Empty had been properly worked.

Me, I sat there on the porch and tried to think out what was in the thoughts of Jake Flanner and Johannes Duckett. Yet my mind kept straying down the trail to California. Soon I'd be well enough to go there. There was nothing to keep me longer. The boys were back, Em Talon was in good shape, and nobody would try to take the Empty with even Milo around. I'd seen Milo in action a time or two and knew he could handle whatever came his way.

In the three days of sitting on the porch I saw nothing to worry a man. In fact I saw nothing but grass and cows, with a few white clouds lazing it across a blue sky. On the fourth day I went out to the corral when the boys were topping off their horses. I was getting restless. Soon I'd be getting hog-fat with just setting by.

I taken up a rope, shook out a loop, and caught up that roan horse. He dodged around a bit but once the loop settled over his neck he stood by. I petted him a mite and talked to him, fed him a carrot, and slapped the saddle on him. He humped his back a mite, but by this time we'd become right friendly and he didn't feel like offering much of an argument. Anyway, I'd had it out with him before this and he knew who was boss.

Pennywell came to the door, drying her hands on a dish towel. "Logan Sackett, you must be a great big fool to try to ride in your condition. You tie that horse up and come in here!"

"Time for me to be headin' down the trail, ma'am. I never stay long in one place, and I've been around here a sight too long."

" 'Rolling stones gather no moss,'" she said pertly.

"I never saw moss grow on anything but dead wood and half-buried rocks," I said, "and anyway, a wandering bee gets the honey."

"A lot of honey you've had!"

"That's because you kept your eyes on Milo," I said, grinning at her. "An' I don't blame you. He's a sight prettier than me!"

"Depends on who's looking," she said. She watched me swing the horse around. "Where you all goin'? Em's in town. She's goin' to be mighty upset."

"Who rode with her?" Suddenly I was scared. "She wasn't alone, was she?"

"Who is there? Barnabas went to the mountains after a deer, an' Milo, him and Al, they went scouting the grass in the high meadows. Anyway, Em can take care of herself."

I taken up my saddlebags and slapped them over the saddle, then my rifle. "You tell the boys I said so long," I said. "I'll see Em in Siwash."

Swinging into the saddle I taken off down the trail to Siwash. Maybe it was because I'd been sick, but I was scared. Em had gone off alone, and that was what Flanner would be waitin' for. The boys figured he'd left the country, but not me. He was a vengeful man, and she'd crippled him bad. But he'd been whipped in what he'd tried against her. Maybe he had left the country but I didn't believe it.

The roan had been in the corral for a while and he was ready to go, so we taken the trail to Siwash and I scouted for sign of Em. Most of the time I'd been watching that trail, but a time or two I'd gone inside or out back and on one of those times she had taken out for town.

In no time at all I picked up mule tracks. She was walking him along, paying no mind to anything it seemed like. Anyway, from the steps of that mule she'd been letting him make his own speed, which was a bit slower than slow. That mule had no business anywhere and he was in no hurry to get there.

Meanwhile I swept the country toward Siwash, studying for sign. Nothing and nobody. Not even a dust cloud. Overhead the sky was still a clear blue dotted with fleecy clouds like lambs on a blue pasture. The roan taken me down into a hollow, then up the other side, and I'd gone several hundred yards when it came to me that the tracks were gone ... played out.

I rode on a mite farther, still studying for sign, but there was nothing. That old woman and her mule were suddenly leaving no tracks at all. Town was only a half mile farther so I booted that roan and we went into town a-flyin'.

The first person I saw was Dolores Arribas. "You seen Em Talon?" I asked her.

"She ain't in town. If she was she'd have come to see me."

Con Wellington came to the door, his store apron on. "She hasn't been in," he said. "I've been expectin' her."

"You," I said to them, "you find her if she's in town, I mean you go to every door. You be mighty damn sure she ain't here, because when I come back I'll be hunting mean."

Swinging the roan around I hightailed it back down the trail to where her trail wiped out. I found tracks before she reached the shallow bottom I'd crossed when her tracks disappeared, but I found none on the other side. She was gone.

She'd disappeared like she'd turned ghost or something. I could believe that of her, but not of her mule. A mule is a notional sort of critter and that mule wasn't going to vanish ... not before dinner time, anyway.

A quick swing up the draw, scouting for tracks, showed nothing at all. Not a turned grass blade, nothing. Then I went back to the trail and set my horse a-studying the premises. Folks just don't vanish; so somehow, some way, she'd been made to disappear ... but how? This time when I gave study I wasn't looking for her tracks, I was looking for any kind of sign, anything at all.

I'd gone over that ground two or three times before I seen it, a straight line in the dust almost under the edge of some prickly pear and right in the bottom of the draw.