Free Sackett (1961) by Louis - Sackett's 09 L'amour Page A

worry about dying and leaving me with nothing. Grandfather had an old map that had been in our family for years, telling of gold in the San Juans, so he decided to find it for me. I insisted on coming with him.
    "He was very strong, Tell. It seemed nothing was too much for him. But we couldn't follow the map, and we got lost in the mountains. We were short of ammunition. Some of it we lost in a rock slide that injured his shoulder.
    "We found this place, and he was sure it was close by--the gold, I mean. He never told me why he believed it, but there was some position in relation to two mountain peaks. One was slightly west of north, the other due west.
    "Grandfather must have been hurt worse in the slide than he let me know. He never got better. One of his shoulders was very bad, and he limped after that, and worried about me. He said we must forget the gold and get out as best we could.
    "Then he became ill... that was when you came into the valley, and when I took some venison from you at night."
    "You should have awakened me."
    "I--I was afraid."
    "Then when you came back and found the venison I left for you . . . you knew I was all right then?
    "I thought--oh, I don't know what I thought! When I came back here after getting that first piece of meat, that was when grandfather died. I told him about you."
    "He died then?"
    "He told me to go to you, that you would take me out of here, and that most men were good to women."
    "When I saw the grave I thought he'd been dead longer than that."
    "I wasn't sure of the date. We lost track of time, up here."
    She must have had a rough time of it. I thought of that while I went to work and made some more broth, only this time with chunks of meat in it.
    "How did you get into this place?"
    "We came up a trail from the north--an ancient trail, very steep, or perhaps it was a game trail."
    From the north, again. What I wanted was a way down on the west The way I figured, we couldn't be much more than a mile from Cap right now, but the trouble was that mile was almost straight down.
    Ange Kerry was in no shape to leave, and with all the men hunting me that had a figuring to fill me full up with lead, I wasn't planning to go down until I could take Ange along. Suppose I was killed before anybody knew where she was?
    Just in case, I told her how things were. "We got us a camp, Cap Rountree and me, down on the Vallecitos, west of here. If something happens to me, you get to him. He'll take you to my folks down to Mora."
    Seemed likely that with another few days of rest she might be ready to try coming down off that mountain. Mostly she was starved from eating poorly. I went out and went across the canyon. There I looked back, taking time to study that cliff. A man might climb that slope of talus and work his way to the top of the cliff through the crack that lay behind it. A man on foot might.
    Chances were that right down the other side was camp. Studying it out, I decided to have a try at it. Down by the stream I had seen an outcropping of talc, so I broke off a piece and scratched out Back Soon on a slab of rock.
    Taking my rifle, I rigged myself a sling from a rawhide strip, and headed for that slope. Climbing the steep talus slope was work, believe me. That rock slid under my feet and every time I took three steps I lost one, but soon I got up to that crack.
    Standing there looking up, I was of a mind to quit, though quitting comes hard to me. That crack was like a three-sided chimney, narrow at the bottom, widening toward the top. The slope above the chimney looked like it was just hanging there waiting for a good reason to fall. Yet by holding to the right side a man might make it.
    I hung my rifle over my back to have my hands free, and started up that chimney and made it out on the slope. Holding on to catch my breath, I looked down into the canyon.
    It made a man catch his breath. I swear, I had no idea I'd climbed so high up. The creek was a thread, the cave mouth looked no bigger