the Daybreakers (1960) Read Online Free PDF Page B

you going to Santa Fe?"
    "No, ma'am, we're going wild-cow hunting along the Purgatoire."
    Her name it turned out was Drusilla, and her grandmother had been Irish. The vaqueros were not Mexicans but Basques, and like I'd figured, they were picked fighting men. There was always a vaquero close by as we rode in case of trouble.
    After that first time Drusilla often rode with me, and I noticed the vaqueros were watching their back trail as carefully as they watched out for Indians, and some times five or six of them would take off and ride back along the way we had come.
    "Grandfather thinks we may be followed and attacked. He has been warned."
    That made me think of what Jonathan Pritts had told Orrin, and not knowing if it mattered or not, I told her to tell the don. It seemed to me that land that had been granted a family long ago belonged to that family, and no latecomer like Pritts had a right to move in and drive them off.
    The next day she thanked me for her grandfather. Jonathan Pritts had been to Santa Fe before this, and he was working through political means to get their grant revoked so the land could be thrown open to settlement.
    Rountree was restless. "By this time we should have met up with Injuns. Keep those rides closer in, Tye, d' you hear?"
    He rode in silence for a few minutes, then he said, "Folks back east do a sight of talkin' about the noble red man. Well, he's a mighty fine fighter, I give him that, but ain't no Indian, unless a Nez Perce, who wouldn't ride a couple hundred miles for a fight. Folks talk about takin' land from the Indians. No Indian ever owned land, no way. He hunted over the country and he was always fightin' other Indians just for the right to hunt there.
    "I fought Injuns and I lived with Injuns. If you walked into an Injun village of your own will they'd feed you an' let you be as long as you stayed ... that was their way, but the same Injun in whose tipi you slept might follow you when you left an' murder you.
    "They hadn't the same upbringin' a white man has. There was none of this talk of mercy, kindness and suchlike which we get from the time we're youngsters. We get it even though most folks don't foller the teachin'. An Injun is loyal to nobody but his own tribe ... an' any stranger is apt to be an enemy.
    "You fight an Injun an' whup him, after that maybe you can trade with him. He'll deal with a fightin' man, but a man who can't protect hisself, well, most Injuns have no respect for him, so they just kill him an' forget him."
    Around the fires at night there was talk and laughter. Orrin sang his old Welsh and Irish ballads for them. From Pa he'd picked up some Spanish songs, and when he sang them you should have heard them Spanish men yell! And from the far hills the coyotes answered.
    Old Rountree would find a spot well back from the flames and set there watching the outer darkness and listening. A man who stares into flames is blind when he looks into outer darkness, and he won't shoot straight ... Pa had taught us that, back in Tennessee.
    This was Indian country and you have to figure, understanding Indians, that his whole standing in this tribe comes from how many coups he's counted, which means to strike an enemy, a living enemy, or to be the first one to strike a man who has fallen ... they figure that mighty daring because the fallen man may be playing possum.
    An Indian who was a good horse thief, he could have the pick of the girls in the tribe. Mostly because marriage was on the barter system, and an Indian could have all the wives he could afford to buy ... usually that wasn't more than two or three, and mostly one.
    Orrin hadn't forgotten that Laura girl. He was upset with me, too, for leading him off again when he was half a mind to tie up with Pritts.
    "He's paying top wages," Orrin said, one night.
    "Fighting wages," I said.
    "Could be, Tyrel," Orrin said, and no friendly sound to his voice, "that you're holding something against Mr. Pritts. And against Laura,