Ride the Dark Trail (1972) by Louis - Sackett's 18 L'amour Page B

being destroyed.
    I was going to ride into Siwash and open the place up. I was going in there and drive Len Spivey and his kind clear out of the country.
    I'd go tonight.

    Chapter 10
    Now I never laid claim to having no corner on brains, and most of what I picked up in the way of knowledge was knocked into my head one way or the other. What I've learned, or most of it, has been concerned with just staying alive.
    Guns, horses, hitches, and half-nelson's are more in line with my thinking, but here and there just plain looking and seeing what you look at has taught me something. Also, whilst never much of a hand to go to the mat with a book, I'm a good listener.
    Folks who have lived the cornered sort of life most scholars, teachers, and storekeepers live seldom realize what they've missed in the way of conversation. Some of the best talk and the wisest talk I've ever heard was around campfires, in saloons, bunkhouses, and the like. The idea that all the knowledge of the world is bound up in schools and schoolteachers is a mistaken one.
    There have been a lot of men who just didn't give a damn about tending store or keeping school but who just cut loose their moorings and went adrift.
    Wandering men see a lot, and all knowledge is a matter of comparison and the deductions made from it. Moreover, in any crowd of drifters you'll find men of the finest scholastic education as well as men who have just seen a lot and have been putting two and two together.
    One time or another I've heard a lot of campfire talk about towns and how they came to be, and a good many sprang up from river crossings. Folks like to camp close to streams for the sake of water, but crossing a big river was quite an operation, so they'd go into camp after they'd crossed over. That is, the smart ones would. Those who went into camp to cross over in the morning often found the water so high come morning they were stuck for several days.
    Rome, London, Paris ... all of them sprang from river crossings, and usually there was some bright gent around who was charging toll to cross over. Any time you find a lot of people who have to have something or do something you'll also find somebody there charging them for doing it.
    When people stop at a stream crossing they camp and look around, and you can bet somebody has set up store with things for them to want.
    The town of Siwash came to be in just that way. The stream was no great shakes, but there was a good flowing spring, and a man came in, stopped his travels, and began raising sheep. A few months later a man came along headed for the Colorado gold fields, he seen that spring and knowing that water was sometimes more precious than gold, waited until the sheepman's back was turned and then split his skull with an ax, buried him deep, and planted a crop of corn and melons over the ground where he buried the sheepman.
    It was the age-old conflict between the farmer and the stock raiser that probably began when Cain killed Abel. Cain was not only the first farmer according to the Good Book, but he built the first city mentioned in the Bible, and this farmer, seeing that lots of people stopped at his spring for fresh water, set up store and began selling vegetables and corn.
    He would probably have done all right in the fullness of time but for a gambler with rheumatism in his hands. The gambler rode into town and stopped to watch the business. He listened to the rustle of the cottonwood leaves and the lovely sound of flowing water from the spring, and that night he brought out a greasy deck of cards. Rheumatism in the hands was spelling his finish as a gambler, but those hands still were good enough to deal three queens to Cain.
    Cain hadn't seen a woman for a long time so when those three queens showed up together he overrated their value, and when the rheumatic gambler showed his four aces Cain discovered he was no longer a farmer and keeper of a store but a wanderer. The gambler wanted him out of there so he made