Read Online Ride the Dark Trail (1972) by Louis - Sackett's 18 L'amour - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Louis - Sackett's 18 L'amour
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Boone Draw.
Most of the time I was riding in cedar or brush or following draws so that I could keep out of sight. I saw nobody, heard nothing, yet I had a spooky feeling.
There are times riding in the hills when you know you are alone and yet you are sure you are watched. Sometimes I think the ghosts of the old ones, the ones who came before the Indians, sometimes I think they still follow the old trails, sit under the ancient trees, or listen to the wind in the high places, for surely not even paradise could be more lonely, more beautiful, more grand than the high peaks of the San Juans or the Tetons or this land through which I rode.
There's more of me in the granite shoulders of the mountain or in the trunks of the gnarled cedars than there is in other men. Ma always said I was made to be a loner, and Nolan like me. We were twins, him and me, but once we moved we rode our separate ways and never seemed to come together again, nor want to. There'd been no bad feeling between us, it was as if we sensed that one of us was enough at one time in one place.
Riding out of the brush I looked across the country toward East Boone Draw. I just sat there for a while, feeling the country and not liking what I felt.
There was something spooky about Brown's Hole. Maybe it was that I couldn't get Brannenburg out of my mind. The Dutchman was hard ... he was stone. His brain was eroded granite where the few ideas he had carved deep their ruts of opinion. There was no way for another idea to seep in, no place for imagination, no place for dreams, none for compassion or mercy or even fear.
He knew no shadings of emotion, he knew no half-rights or half-wrongs or pity or excuse, nor had he any sense of pardon. The more I thought of him the more I knew he was not evil in himself, and he would have been shocked that anybody thought of him as evil. Shocked for a moment only, then he'd have shut the idea from his mind as nonsense. For the deepest groove worn into that granite brain was the one of his own rightness.
And that scared me.
A man like that can be dangerous, and it made me uneasy to be riding in the same country with him. Maybe it was that I'd a sense of guilt around him and he smelled it.
Here and there I'd run off a few cattle from the big outfits. They branded anything they found running free without a brand, but let a nester or cowhand do the same and he was a rustler.
I'd never blotted any brands. I'd never used a cinch ring or a coiled wire or anything to rewrite a brand. Here and there I'd slapped my brand on mavericks I'd come across on the plains. By now there must be several thousand head of stock running loose on the plains that I'd branded.
Suddenly I'd had enough of Brown's Hole. I was going to get out and get out fast.
And that was when I realized somebody was coming down my back trail, somebody hunting me.
Chapter 7
When I was a small boy I often went to the woods to lie on the grass in the shade. Somehow I had come to believe the earth could give me wisdom, but it did not. Yet I learned a little about animals and learned it is not always brave to make a stand. It is often foolish. There is a time for courage and a time for flight.
There is no man more dangerous than one who does not doubt his own rightness. Long ago I heard a man in the country store near my home say that a just man always had doubts. Dutch Brannenburg had no doubts. And he had gathered about him men who had no doubts. They were not outlaws, they were just hard, cold men who rode for the brand and believed every nester or drifting cowhand if not a thief was at least a potential thief.
They had decided, when they lost the trail of the men they followed, that I must have aided them, and so intended to hang me in their place.
Had I remained on the trail they would have had me now, and as it was they were coming.
Nine hard men with a noose ready for hanging, and me alone with womenfolks over the mountain who waited for my coming.
A draw
Most of the time I was riding in cedar or brush or following draws so that I could keep out of sight. I saw nobody, heard nothing, yet I had a spooky feeling.
There are times riding in the hills when you know you are alone and yet you are sure you are watched. Sometimes I think the ghosts of the old ones, the ones who came before the Indians, sometimes I think they still follow the old trails, sit under the ancient trees, or listen to the wind in the high places, for surely not even paradise could be more lonely, more beautiful, more grand than the high peaks of the San Juans or the Tetons or this land through which I rode.
There's more of me in the granite shoulders of the mountain or in the trunks of the gnarled cedars than there is in other men. Ma always said I was made to be a loner, and Nolan like me. We were twins, him and me, but once we moved we rode our separate ways and never seemed to come together again, nor want to. There'd been no bad feeling between us, it was as if we sensed that one of us was enough at one time in one place.
Riding out of the brush I looked across the country toward East Boone Draw. I just sat there for a while, feeling the country and not liking what I felt.
There was something spooky about Brown's Hole. Maybe it was that I couldn't get Brannenburg out of my mind. The Dutchman was hard ... he was stone. His brain was eroded granite where the few ideas he had carved deep their ruts of opinion. There was no way for another idea to seep in, no place for imagination, no place for dreams, none for compassion or mercy or even fear.
He knew no shadings of emotion, he knew no half-rights or half-wrongs or pity or excuse, nor had he any sense of pardon. The more I thought of him the more I knew he was not evil in himself, and he would have been shocked that anybody thought of him as evil. Shocked for a moment only, then he'd have shut the idea from his mind as nonsense. For the deepest groove worn into that granite brain was the one of his own rightness.
And that scared me.
A man like that can be dangerous, and it made me uneasy to be riding in the same country with him. Maybe it was that I'd a sense of guilt around him and he smelled it.
Here and there I'd run off a few cattle from the big outfits. They branded anything they found running free without a brand, but let a nester or cowhand do the same and he was a rustler.
I'd never blotted any brands. I'd never used a cinch ring or a coiled wire or anything to rewrite a brand. Here and there I'd slapped my brand on mavericks I'd come across on the plains. By now there must be several thousand head of stock running loose on the plains that I'd branded.
Suddenly I'd had enough of Brown's Hole. I was going to get out and get out fast.
And that was when I realized somebody was coming down my back trail, somebody hunting me.
Chapter 7
When I was a small boy I often went to the woods to lie on the grass in the shade. Somehow I had come to believe the earth could give me wisdom, but it did not. Yet I learned a little about animals and learned it is not always brave to make a stand. It is often foolish. There is a time for courage and a time for flight.
There is no man more dangerous than one who does not doubt his own rightness. Long ago I heard a man in the country store near my home say that a just man always had doubts. Dutch Brannenburg had no doubts. And he had gathered about him men who had no doubts. They were not outlaws, they were just hard, cold men who rode for the brand and believed every nester or drifting cowhand if not a thief was at least a potential thief.
They had decided, when they lost the trail of the men they followed, that I must have aided them, and so intended to hang me in their place.
Had I remained on the trail they would have had me now, and as it was they were coming.
Nine hard men with a noose ready for hanging, and me alone with womenfolks over the mountain who waited for my coming.
A draw
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