Galloway (1970) by Louis - Sackett's 16 L'amour

sense enough to realize they might not feel the same way. A man who starts imagining that others think good because he does is simply out of his mind. I've helped bury a few who did think that way ... nice, peaceful men who wanted no trouble and made none. When feeding time comes around there's nothing a hawk likes better than a nice, fat, peaceful dove.
    "We can lay claim to land," I said, "but we'll have to have cattle on it. I've written to Parmalee."
    "I've got a few head," Shadow said. "We might include them in the drive."
    We spent the evening talking about the ranch we wanted, the cattle drive to come, and the future of the country. There was or had been a fort over on the Animas, and Berglund told us there was a house over there if you wanted to call it that. So we were not alone in the country. There was an Irishman named Tun McCluer who had moved into the country and he was getting along with the Utes ... which showed that it could be done.
    McCluer told Berglund that the Utes and the Jicarillas usually got along, so the bunch who had been hunting me were likely to have been renegades, prepared to plunder anyone who crossed their trail. The Indians had men like that as well as the whites.
    We stabled our horses in the livery barn and camped in the loft. Falling asleep that night I dreamed of my own outfit, and slept with the smell of fresh hay in my nostrils.
    We moved over west of the town, and west of the La Plata, and we made camp there in a grove of aspen, a splendid country spread out before us. We decided we'd all spend some days working on the beginnings of a spread, and after that Nick Shadow would take off for the south to meet Parmalee and to round up his own cattle to join the herd.
    "I don't need to tell you boys," he said, "but keep the Dunns in mind. They're a tough, lawless outfit and they won't take lightly to our being here. Especially after both of you have had words with Curly."
    First off, we built a corral, and then a lean-to. We built them back into the woods with a screen of trees between us and the open flat. Then we went back into the trees and cut some limbs here and there, and a whole tree yonder to scatter amongst the other trees and make a sort of crude barrier for anybody who tried to come up behind us. There was nothing that would stop anyone, but nobody could come up through those trees without arousing us.
    Galloway and me, we weren't like the usual cowhand, who'd rather take a whipping than do any work that can't be done on a horse. We were both planting boys from the hills, who could plow as straight a furrow as the next man, if need be, so we spaded up a corner of ground, worked over the sod and went down to the store to buy seed. We planted potatoes, carrots, pumpkins and corn, to start. We had no idea how they'd grow, but if they did they'd be a help. Starting a home in a new land is never a bed of roses, but then we didn't come looking for it to be easy.
    Work pleasures me no more than the next man, but if a body is to have anything there's no other way, although we found excuses enough to get up in the saddle and go perambulating around the country. Of course, that was necessary, too.
    We'd chosen to locate near the opening of Deadwood Creek, with a mighty big ridge rising to the west of us, and Baldy Mountain to the east.
    We had to hunt or gather for our grub, and we Sacketts were born to it. And that Nick Shadow--he might have been born in a castle, but he knew his way around with an axe, and took mighty fast to what we showed him about rustling up grub in the forest.
    Working about the place and rustling for grub as we did, we kept out of sight.
    We didn't see anybody or even their tracks. Each of us would take a ride sometime during the day, and at night over the fire we'd tell of what we'd seen, so within a few days we were getting a fair picture of the country around.
    Sometimes of a night we'd set about the fire and talk. Nick Shadow had education, but he never tired to