You murdered my wife, and burned everything I had. Now you want to kill me so there won't be anybody to ask questions. That wraps it up, all nice and pretty.' I looked up at them.
'Except you yellow-bellies will have to live with it the rest of your days.'
One of them jerked his rifle up to smash the butt into my face, and if he tried that they were going to have to kill me quick. One of the others held up a hand to stop him ... and me, for he saw what was coming.
From the way the others reacted I knew I'd hit a nerve, and I waited.
'What's all this about a murdered woman?'
'Who you tryin' to buffalo?' I put all the contempt I had into it. 'You know damn' well there ain't five men within a hundred miles, leaving your outfit out of it, who wouldn't pull the rope on a woman-killer. And this was my wife, one of the prettiest, finest women alive.'
Well, sir, they just looked at me, but I had them. They were learning something they hadn't known, but maybe what I was saying was answering questions they had been asking themselves.
'I'm Tell Sackett,' I said, 'and there's places where the name carries weight. I drove in here with a wagon and some fine mules. I drove in with a few head of cattle and a herd following after, and I drove with my wife beside me.
'We hadn't been married but a few months.
Sort of a honeymoon, it was. I left her a-setting in our wagon atop Buckhead Mesa and rode off to find a way into Tonto Basin.
'When I was standing on the rim of the mesa above the river, somebody shot me off that mesa and I bounced off rocks and brush all the way down.
'You can see where the bullet struck.' I touched the scar on my skull. 'I was some stove up, and when I finally got back to where I'd left my outfit it was gone ... and so were all the tracks.'
Lying there smoking, I talked as I never talked before. I told them of finding my wagon, finding the mules, and afws finding Ange. Of the burning, too, and how when I came back again there had been more burning, and even most of the ashes gone.
It hurt, talking of Ange, but I kept on.
'Somebody, the man who started you boys on the hunt for me, he killed my wife. And he carries her marks on him ... I saw the blood and flesh under her nails. That somebody is purely scared right now. He's got to have me dead, or folks will find out what happened.
'I don't figure,' I added, 'that he ever expected you to talk to me. I'm laying five to one you were told to shoot me on sight.'
Right then I pushed my luck. I knew I had them off balance and trying to figure it out, so I just naturally got up, put on my hat, and then reached for my gun belt.
'Lay off that!' It was that blocky-built puncher again, but I just paid him no mind.
'Go ahead,' I said. 'A shot at an unarmed man is just what I'd expect of a woman-killer's outfit.'
He was white-mad, but like I figured, these men were decent enough. I'd punched cows with a lot like them--gd, hard-working men ready for a wild time in town or a shooting fight, but decent men. He didn't shoot, and I slung that belt around me and stood there an armed man, prepared to take my chances with whatever happened.
I'd pushed my luck right out of a corner and into a place where I had a break, anyway. But I wasn't about to stand back and wait.
'You boys were set on me, and you been hunting me high and low. Up to now I don't hold it against you, because you were told some tale to start you. Now you know the truth, and if you keep on a-chasing me, I'm going to start chasing back.'
They weren't even listening to what I was saying.
One of them turned right around on me. 'Was what you said about your wife true?'
'I raised a marker over her grave, and if we were to hunt long enough we could find pieces of that wagon. And I can take you to folks in Globe and away east who knew us and saw us headed west.'
'You were in Globe?'
'My wife and me, we spent two days and nights in that town just three weeks ago come Sunday.'
They swapped looks, and I could see that meant something to them, but I wasn't sure what. That tough young puncher, he all of a sudden stood his rifle down and dug into his shirt pocket for the makings.
'I don't know about you fellers,' he said, 'but I've got a feelin' I'd be better off in Texas.'
A thought came to me. 'About Globe, now. [ you boys in that town three weeks ago?'
'Yeah ... the whole shootin' outfit. We spent several days there. Fact is, we were supposed to stay longer, but then we got orders to move out, sudden-like, on Monday morning.'
That had been the morning we left. ...
Suddenly I was remembering three men who had ridden past our wagon, and one of them had turned to look back at Ange.
The same man had been buying supplies at the same time we were. I tried to place him, but all I could remember was that he was a big man.
Well, I was hungry, and a man isn't going to go far on an empty stomach. Not that I hadn't put miles behind me without food, but right now I had it with me to cook, and I was hungry as a Panhandle coyote. So I put coffee water on the fire and said, 'You boys might as well set up. You got something to think about, and this here's as good a place as any.'
They moved up to the fire, and I went rousting through my duffle, getting out the bacon and the rest. Then I looked around at them and asked, innocent-like, 'Who do' you boys ride for?'
They just looked at me. They might not like what I'd told them, but they weren't going to sell out their boss. They were good men. Only they didn't need to tell me, and maybe they thought of that, too.
All I had to do was look past them at the brands on their horses--a capital A lying on its side ... Lazy A.
There had been cattle with that brand in some of the country I'd ridden through, and there had been a horse of that brand at the hitch rail of the saloon when I first rode up to Globe after leaving Camp Verde.
A cattleman or any rider in range country just naturally notices any brand he sees on the stock along the way. He has cattle on his mind, and brands are one of the biggest parts of his job.
Over coffee one of these gents suddenly said, 'We got no call to believe what you said, only something about this here has a smell we don't like. You don't size up like any dry-gulching killer. I got a feelin' you been talking truth.'
'All I ask,' I said, 'is not to stand in my way.'
'There's some that will.'
Evidently they had no news from Globe, so I decided to let them have it, and now. 'One tried,' I said, 'last night down to Globe.'
I told them about it, and when I finished they sat still for a moment or two, and then one of them said, 'I mind that gully.'
'Andersen,' another said, 'Curley Andersen.'
'He was close on to bald.'
'I know. That's why we called him Curly.
Well, maybe he would try it that way. You beat him to the draw?'
'Mister,' I said, 'when it comes to fighting, a body makes up his own rules with me. I'll fight him fair as long as he shows himself of a like mind. This Curly Andersen tried to ambush me, so he laid out the rules and I played according.'
Reaching for the pot, I filled my cup, then the cups of the others.
'Only maybe he figured I'd made the rules. He said I'd tried to ambush his boss back in the Mogollons. Anyway, he drew cards in a tough game.'
When they had gone, I saddled up and rode out of there, making it a policy never to stay too long in one place when I knew I had enemies, and especially when they had me located.
All the time I was keeping my thoughts away from Ange. Whenever she came to mind I felt a vast, aching emptiness inside me, and a loneliness such as not even I had ever known.
Three days passed, three days of riding and resting, three days of prowling like a lonely wolf, pushing my horse down old trails and finding new ones through rock and brush and butte. And all the while I was working out
