'We got other ways of collecting,' one of them said.
Parmalee Sackett nodded. 'Of course.
You are wearing a gun, so how about now?'
Barney Mifflin, faced with the situation, decided he did not care for it. There was a good chance he would collect nothing for all the riding and shooting he had already done, and only minutes before he had had a demonstration of the brand of shooting at least one Sackett could deliver.
'How about him?' Barney indicated Nolan.
'If it is going to be one at a time, he's out of it. Come on, gentlemen, the line forms on the right. Put up or shut up.'
Barney hesitated, then shrugged. 'The stakes are too high for what's in the pot. We'll ride out.'
Deliberately, Parmalee turned his back to them. But Barney, an observant young man, noticed that he watched them in the mirror.
Outside in the street he said, 'I wished I was riding for them. That's an outfit.'
'Hell!' one of the others said, and he spat into the dust. 'They don't need any help. Just the same,' he added, 'I'd like to be a little bird a-settin' in a tree when the show does come off.'
Parmalee turned to the bar. 'Nolan, how about that drink?' Then he looked at Orlando and the Tinker. 'And you, too, if you will honor me?'
His eyes studied Lando's tremendous physique. 'You're a Sackett, I take it?'
'Orlando. And this here is the Tinker. He was a pack-peddler and tinker back in the hills.'
'Oh, yes, I have heard of you, Tinker.'
Parmalee indicated the bottle. 'Help yourself.' And then he added, 'You're the tinker who makes the knives ... the Tinker-made knives that are the finest anywhere.'
'We'd better move,' Lando said. 'Tyrel and them, they left at daybreak.'
'Of course. Bartender, the bill please.
Al,' he said, speaking to O'Leary, 'you might pass the ^w. I am now a full partner, and no gun wages will be paid to anyone.'
Nolan emptied his glass. 'When that ^w gets about,' he said, 'that Allen is goin' to be a mighty lonesome man.'
Nolan, Lando, and Parmalee Sackett walked to the door, followed by the Tinker.
When the door had closed behind them, O'Leary turned to a couple of the loafers that were still in the room. 'You boys cart those bodies to the stable, and I'll buy the drinks.'
When they had gone out, Briscoe got up slowly from his chair and walked over to the bar.
'I'll buy one,' he said.
'Forget it. This one's on the house.'
Briscoe picked up the glass and looked across the bar at the Irishman. 'You think I was scared, don't you?'
O'Leary shrugged.
'You want to know something, Bob?' Briscoe said. 'I . Was scared. I was scared plumb to death ... and I never thought I'd admit that to anybody.'
'He gave you good advice. You leave those guns off, and you ride out of here.'
Briscoe nodded. He tried his drink, put the glass down, and took off his guns and placed them, rolled in their belts, on the bar. 'You keep those,' he said. 'I never want to feel like that again ... not never.'
When he had left, O'Leary took the gun belts and the guns and hung them on a hook back of the bar.
After a few minutes, while rinsing a glass, he looked at them. He could remember the day when he had done the same thing. That was twenty years ago. 'And I'm still alive,' he said to himself.
The saloon was empty when the door opened and the girl walked in.
'I am Lorna.' she said.
'Sorry. We don't serve ladies.'
'Oh, come off it! I'm no lady, and you're going to serve me.' She put both hands on the bar and looked straight at Bob O'Leary. 'Have they caught him yet?'
'No.'
'I hope they don't. I hope they never do.'
Far down the trail toward the Mogollon country four riders were making dust.
Chapter fifteen.
They called it Wild Rye, and when opportunity offered, it lived up to the name.
Ogletree, who owned what passed for a general store and saloon, had first seen the spot when he was a packer with General Crook in the expedition of 1872-73. He returned, put up a crude one-roomed, low-ceilinged log cabin, and went into business with seventy dollars' worth of stock.
Passers-by were few. Occasional Mormons from the settlement at Pine came down looking for drifted cattle or stolen horses, and once in a while there were prospectors or outlaws.
Always, of course, there were Indians.
Ogletree was a tough man and a patient one, and he got along well with the Apaches. Usually they traded him fresh meat or skins, but from time to time there was a nugget. He had come into the Tonto prepared to live out his days there. But in less than two years he was setting out to find the source of the Apache gold, for he had learned there was a hidden valley somewhere in the Four Peaks region, only a few miles from his cabin, so one morning he rode away with a pack horse and following a hunch. Several weeks later the horse returned minus the pack and without Ogletree, nor was anything seen of them again.
But at the present time he was finishing his first year in the Tonto, and when the Lazy A riders came into the country Wild Rye had a population of five, including a squaw. From time to time some of the men hunting Tell Sackett stopped by for tobacco, remaining for a drink, and there had been talk.
Ogletree was a bald, stoop-shouldered man, usually seen in undershirt, suspenders, and pants, and carrying a rifle. He was standing in the doorway smoking his pipe when he saw the two riders come up the creek. Both were tall, lean, and young. Each carried a rifle, each wore a gun. Their clothes were shabby, their hair uncut.
When they had dismounted they walked up to his store, still carrying their rifles. They appraised him out of cold gray-green eyes and told him they wanted to eat.
'Drink?' he suggested.
'Eat,' the taller one replied. And then he added, 'I'm Flagan Sackett. This here's Galloway.'
Ogletree led the way back into the low room, which was a step down from the level of the ground outside. As he dished up stew for them, he asked, 'You any kin to Tell Sackett?'
'I reckon.'
'They're huntin' him.'
The two men made no response to this, and they ate without comment. When they had finished, Flagan laid two quarters on the counter.
'You tell those fellers they can stop huntin'.
We come up to he'p him.'
'There's been shootin' over on the East Fork ... northwest of here, maybe fourteen, fifteen mile.'
'Come on, Galloway. That's where we're goin'.'
Only a few minutes had passed when Van Allen rode up to the store, accompanied by Sonora Macon and Rafe Romero, and two others whom Ogletree did not know. The storekeeper had seen Allen only once before, shortly after he himself arrived in Tonto. He would not have known him as the same man.
Vancouter Allen was forty years old, a big, strongly built man with thick arms and hands, good-looking in a hard, rough way. There was a tightness around his mouth and eyes that Ogletree had noticed before and had not liked, but now the lines there were sharply defined. Allen's cheeks were gaunt, his eyes hollow.
He carried himself with that impatient arrogance toward others that is often possessed by men who have succeeded by their own efforts, and too easily. A ruthless man, Allen had carried all before him, and had come to believe himself right in whatever he did, simply because he had always been successful. Yet he showed now that he was a frightened man. His own arrogance and an innate brutality had trapped him in the ugliest of situations, and he had been driven wild by fear of discovery. Through a crazy obsession, he found himself faced with ruin, and
