Louis L'Amour: The Lonely Men

Mrs. Wallen, who ran the place, remembered me from a while back. "How do you do, Mr. Sackett," she said. "Did you just get in?"

"Four of us did," I said dryly. "Two of us didn't."

Titus looked around at me. "Apaches?"

"Uh-huh ... I'd say about fifteen, twenty of them."

"Get any of them?"

"Some," I said, and took a seat at a table near the wall where I could see the door and could stand my rifle in a corner.

"If you got any," one of the Army officers said, "you were lucky."

"I was lucky," I said.

Mrs. Wallen, who knew hungry men, as any frontier woman would, was already at the table with a cup and a pot of coffee. Then she brought me a slab of beef and some chili and beans, regular fare for that country.

As I ate, my muscles relaxed. A man on the run or fighting can get himself all keyed up with muscle and nerve ready for trouble until he's tighter than a drumhead. This was a pleasant room, and while I was never much hand for mixing in society, I liked folks, and liked to be among them.

Orrin was the mixer of the family. He had him an easy way with folks, he liked to talk and to listen, and he played a guitar and sang like any good Welshman.

Give him ten minutes in a room and he'd be friends with everybody there.

Me, I was quiet. I guess I'm friendly enough, but I was never much hand at getting acquainted with folks.

I figure I was shaped to be a wallflower, but I don't mind. I sort of like to set back and listen to folks, to drink coffee, and contemplate.

When trouble shaped up, Orrin would try to talk a man out of it, although he was a hand at any kind of fighting when they decided not to listen. Tyrel, he was the mean one. I mean he was a fine man, but you couldn't push him. He just hadn't any give in him at all. If you come to Tyrel a-hunting after trouble he had plenty to offer. Me, I wasn't much of a talker, and no kind of a trouble-hunter. Folks had to bring it to me hard, but when they did that I just naturally reacted.

I'd roped and hogtied many a wild longhorn out on the plains of Texas, and I'd busted some mustangs in my time, and quite a few hard-to-get-along-with men, too. When it came to shooting, well, me and Tyrel could never figure which was best. We had both been shooting since we were big enough to lift a cartridge.

Sitting there in that quiet room, my muscles resting easy and the warmth of food stealing through me, I listened to the talk around and wondered if ever I would have a home of my own. Seemed as if every chance left me with less than before.

My home was wherever I hung my hat, but these here were mostly settled folks out for a bite to eat on a Sunday, which this was. Back in the mountains, come Sunday we used to dress in our go-to-meetin' clothes and drive down to church.

It was a fine old get-together in those days. We'd listen to the preacher expounding of our sins, most of us kind of prideful we'd managed to sin so much, but ashamed before his tongue-lashing, and some were kind of amazed that they were so sinful after all. Seemed like with farming and cussing the mules, a body didn't rightly find much time for sinning.

We'd sing the hymns in fine, rolling, and sometimes out-of-tune voices, and after church we'd set out under the trees with our picnic lunches and some of the womenfolks would swap food back and forth. Emmy Tatum, she made the best watermelon pickles any place around, and old Jeannie Bland from up at the forks of the creek, she could make apple cider that would grow bark on a mushroom.

That was long ago and far away, but sometimes I could set back and close my eyes and still hear those folks a-singing "On Jordan's Stormy Banks" or "Rock of Ages," or maybe the one about the church in the wildwood. Everything was homemade, even the clothes we wore. Why, I'd been nigh to sixteen before I ever saw a pair of store-bought pants, or shoes we hadn't cobbled ourselves out of our own tanned leather.

One of the Army officers was standing beside my table. "Mind if I sit down, sir?" he said.

"Welcome," I said. "My name is Sackett, William Tell Sackett."

He extended his hand. "Captain Lewiston, sir. You mentioned a difficulty with the Apaches. Did you get a good look at any of them?"

"Well, they weren't reservation Indians, if that's what you mean."

"How do you know that?"

Me, I just looked at him. "By the smell of them. They'd come out of the desert after a long ride. The droppings of their horses showed fibers of desert plants they'd eat only if there was nothing else."

"Did you say you got some of them?"

"Three ... and one I hurt but didn't kill." He looked at me, and so I told him.

"He was too good a fighting man to kill, Captain. I got two of them with my rifle, and then two jumped me in the hollow. One I killed, but the other was a tiger. He seemed to have been paralyzed so I let him lay."

"You weren't alone?"

"Three men along with me, but not right there. I think they might have killed some, too."

"You lost two men?"

"Taylor and Billy Higgins. I never knew Taylor's first name. We didn't get a chance to pick up their bodies. When we could pull out, we did."

"About the dead ones, now. Did one of them have a scar on his cheekbone? That would be just too much to expect, I suppose."

"No ... not the dead ones. I didn't notice any scars on the dead one. But that one I left alive, he had a scar on his cheekbone."

Chapter 3

Captain Lewiston sighed. "You may wish you had killed him, Mr. Sackett. That was Kahtenny, one of the most dangerous and elusive Apaches of them all."

"He was in pretty bad shape, Captain, and I'm no man to kill a fighter like that when he's down and helpless."

Lewiston smiled. "I feel the same, but I am afraid there are some who do not.

There are those who feel they all should be killed."

That there blonde girl across the room was sure enough listening, although she was making quite a show of doing nothing but sort of idling over her food.

"Captain, I fought those Indians because they attacked me. I don't blame them for that. The Apache has made fighting his way of living for as long as his oldest people can recall. Or as long as the oldest Pimas and Papagos recall.

"The way I figure it, they fight because it's their way, and we fight back because it's our way. Somebody wins, somebody loses. Nobody in this country, or anywhere that I know of, can live in peace unless he's got somebody somewhere, protecting him."

Mrs. Wallen brought the Captain some coffee, and we sat there a few minutes more, discussing the Apache and his ways.

"You've been a soldier, Mr. Sackett?"

"Yes, sir. I served four years during the War Between the States. I was at Shiloh and the Wilderness ... and a few other places."

"We could use you here. Ever thought of joining up again?"

"No. I did what I had to do when the time came to do it. Now I'll fight when somebody can't be persuaded to leave me alone. Seems to me I've done enough Indian fighting without joining up to hunt for it."

"Are you related to Congressman Sackett?"

"Brother. Fact is, I'm here to talk to his wife." I glanced across the room at the blonde girl, who was now looking right at me. "I figure to get their son back from the Apaches."

"Their son?" Lewiston looked puzzled, but before he could say more, Laura Sackett interrupted. "Tell? I am Laura Sackett. Will you join me?" So I got up.

"Excuse me, Captain," I said, and taking my coffee I walked over to her table.

"Howdy, ma'am. Seems strange, not knowing you, but when you and Orrin married I was clean across the country. Never heard much about it."

"Sit down, Tell. We must talk." She put her hand on mine and looked at me with those wide blue eyes. "Let's not talk about trouble now, Tell. I want to know about you. After all, we must get to know each other."