'If you say so, ma'am. A mule's not very fast.'
'Neither am I. But I know that there mule and he'll take me there and bring me back, and that's what counts at my age, mister.'
'Yes, ma'am. At any age.'
Al walked out the back door and to the corral. He looked at the mule doubtfully and the mule looked at him. 'I'd like to have this friendly,' Al said. 'It's the old lady's idea, not mine.'
The mule put his ears back, and Al shook out a loop. He had tried to rope mules a few times, and had done it too ... after a while. Most of them had a gift for ducking a rope. He walked out into the corral trailing his loop and studying the situation.
Behind him he heard Emily Talon. 'You won't need that rope. Coley, come here!'
Without hesitation, the mule walked right to her. She fed him a carrot and slipped the halter on him while Al Fulbric gathered his rope.
'What was that you called him?'
'Coley ... it's short for his name. Coleus. Talon named him, and Talon was a reader of the classics. The way he tells it, Coleus of Samos was the first Greek to sail out of the Mediterranean into the Atlantic.'
'Well, I'll be! What did he want to do that for?'
'Seems some other folks - the Phoenicians, it was, who were some kin to the Philistines of the Bible - they had that whole end of the Mediterranean sewed up. They had laid claim to all that range, and they let nobody sail that way.
'This Coleus, he told them he got blown that way by a storm, and anyway he got through the Gates of Hercules and out into the Atlantic. And then he sailed up to Tartessus and loaded his ship with silver. That one trip made him a rich man.
'Talon favored him because he done the same. Folks said he was crazy to ride out here and start ranching in country only the Indians wanted. Anyway, Coley here, he had a way of straying into new pastures hisself, so Talon named him.'
'I like it.' Al Fulbric spat into the dust. 'A man like that deserves credit'
'After that trip he never needed credit. He could afford to pay cash. Anyway, that's how Coley come by his name, and we've come a fur piece together, Coley an' me. We've been up the crick and over the mountain, and he'll fight anything that walks.'
'That mule?'
'That mule, as you call him, was a jack once. They cut him, but they done forgot to tell him about it. He still figures he's a jack, and don't you borrow no trouble from him or he'll take a piece out of you.'
Em Talon picked up her saddle and before Al could move to help her, had slung it in place and was cinching up. She slid her Spencer into the boot, then turned on him.
'Al, you go about your business now. I'm goin' to ride him astride, which no decent woman ought to do, but I'll have no man standin' by when I do it. You get to the house and keep a sharp lookout. They'll be a-comin', especially if they got Logan.'
Al swore, spat into the dust, and walked off toward the house. When he reached the steps he turned to look back.
Em was riding out toward the gate, and sure enough, she was sitting astride, and he could see a short stretch of her long-Johns where they disappeared into her boot tops.
He blushed a little and turned his head away, ashamed for what he had seen. Pennywell was pouring coffee when he entered the house.
'She beats me,' he said, 'she really does. I'd have gone - '
'She'd not let you, and one thing I've learned about Em Talon, Al Fulbric, and that is that you get no place arguing with her. She's a notional woman, but the only notion she pays mind to is her own. When she sets her mind to something, you just stand clear.'
Emily Talon was no longer young, but there was a toughness in her hard, lean body that belied its age. She had never been one to think in terms of years, anyway. A person was what they were, and many a man at forty was sixty in his ways and many another was twenty and would never grow past it.
As a small girl she had helped her father and brothers with their trap lines, and when she was ten she had one of her own. She was more familiar with the life of the forest than of the settlement, and riding away from the ranch she suddenly felt free, freer than she had felt in many a year.
She scouted back of the town, between Siwash and the hills. A Sackett hurt and hunted was a Sackett heading for the high up yonder. She knew their nature well for she was one of them ... he would ride out and he would ride far.
As it was getting dark she came upon a trail, only it was two horses rather than one. Puzzled, she studied the tracks again. One of them had to be the roan ... and the roan seemed to be led.
She squinted at the tracks warily, then looked all around. Nobody seemed to be watching, nobody seemed to have followed them, yet all hell must have torn loose down mere in town.
Scouting farther she saw bunched tracks ... seven or eight riders, not on the trail of the two, but hunting it.
She had to have more information, so she rode toward town. It was dark, and she was unlikely to be seen, but she knew where to go.
There had been a time when men had killed over Dolores Arribas, but the years had gone by and somehow she had found herself at the end of a trail in Siwash.
In her veins was the blood of Andalusia, but there was Indian blood, too, the blood of a people who built grandly in stone when Spain was only the hinterland of Tarshish.
She washed the clothes of the gringo but took no nonsense from him. Fiercely proud, she walked her own way in the town, unmolested, even feared.
Emily Talon knew that of all the people in Siwash, Dolores would know what had happened and that she would be willing to tell what she knew.
The mule picked his way delicately up the alleyway and around to the dark side of the stable. Em did not dismount, for Dolores Arribas was sitting on her steps in the cool of the evening, watching the clouds.
'You ride very late, Mrs. Talon.' She spoke with only the trace of an accent.
'There was a shooting in town?'
'Yes. Two men are dead, two are wounded. One win die, I think.' She spoke matter-of-factly, and then added, 'They were Flanner's men.'
'And he who done the shootin'?'
'There were two ... one of them was Logan Sackett, but Jim Brewer was killed by another man, a stranger with a rifle, a tall, elegant man.'
'Logan was hurt?'
'Yes ... he was hit very hard ... more than once. The other man took him away.'
'I got to find them.'
'You think you are the only one? Flanner looks for them, too. At least, his men look for him.'
They were silent, and then Dolores suggested, 'You would like a cup of tea? It is long, the way you will ride.'
'I reckon. Yes, I'll take that tea.'
She got down from the mule, spoke gently to it, and followed Dolores into the house. It was a small house, and even in the darkness she could feel its neatness.
'I will not make a light The water is hot.'
'Thank you.'
They sat in the vague light, and Dolores poured the tea.
'Where are your sons?'
'I wish I knew. Milo, he's ridin' somewheres, but Barnabas, he went off to Europe, lived right fancy the way I hear tell. I always figured him for that, but wondered why he never wrote. Then I heard. Somebody passed word that I was dead and the place broken up.'
'He would do that. It is like him.'
'Flanner?'
