Text Leveling System

Sackett

RDQ:	3046	Max Word/Sent	62	Total Words	3453		Diff Words	1037
Lex	1080	Ave Word/.Sent	17	Hi Freq occurs	2543	73.6%	Hi freq	405	39.1%
AR	9.0	Long Sentences	34.8	Low Freq occurs	267	7.7%	Low freq	206	19.9%

It wasn't as if he hadn't been warned. He got it
straight with no beating around the mesquite.
"Mister" I said "if you ain't any slicker with that 
pistol than you were with that bottom deal you'd 
better not have at it."
Trouble was he wouldn't be content with one 
mistake he had to make two; so he had at it and 
they buried him out west of town where men were 
buried who die by the gun.
And me William Tell Sackett who came to 
Uvalde a stranger and alone I found myself a 
talked-about man.
We Sacketts had begun carrying rifles as soon as 
we stood tall enough to keep both ends off the 
ground. When I was shy of nine I fetched my first 
cougar. . caught him getting at our pigs. At Thirteen 
I nicked the scalp of a Higgins who was drawing 
a bead on Pa . . we had us a fighting feud 
going with the Higginses.
Pa used to say a gun was a responsibility not 
a toy and if he ever caught any of us playing fancy]] 
with a gun he'd have our hide off with a bullwhip. 
None of us ever lost any hide.
A gun was to be used for hunting or when a 
man had a difficulty but only a tenderfoot fired a 
gun unless there was need. At hunting time Pa 
doled out the ca'tridges and of an evening he would 
check our game and for every ca'tridge he'd given 
us we had to show game or a mighty good reason 
for missing. Pa wasn't one to waste a bullet. He 
had trapped the western lands with Kit Carson and 
Old Bill Williams and knew the value of ammunition.
General Grant never counted ca'tridges on me
but he was a man who noticed. One time he 
stopped close by when I was keeping three Rebel 
guns out of action picking off gunners like a 
'possum picking hazelnuts and he stood by a-
watching.
"Sackett" he said finally "how does It happen 
that a boy from Tennessee is fighting for the 
Union?'
"Well sir" I said "my country is a thing to love 
and I set store by being an American. My great
grandpa was one of Dearborn's riflemen at the 
second battle of Saratoga and Grandpa sailed the 
seas with Decatur and Bainbridge.
"Grandpa was one of the boatmen who went in 
under the guns of the Barbary pirates to burn the 
Philadelphia. My folks built blood Into the foundations 
of this country and I don't aim to see them 
torn down for no reason whatsoever."
Another Rebel was fixing to load that cannon so 
I drew a bead on him and the man who followed 
him in the chow line could move up one place.
"'Come fighting time General" I said "there'll 
always be a Sackett ready to bear arms for his]] 
country although we are peaceful folks unless
riled."
And that was still true but when they buried that 
gambling man out west of Uvalde it marked me 
as a bad man.
In those days what they called a "bad man" was 
one who was a bad man to have trouble with, and
a lot of mighty good men were known as bad men. 
The name was one I hadn't hankered for but Wes 
Bigelow left me no choice.
Fact of the matter was if It hadn't been me it 
would have been somebody else because Bigelow's
bottom deal was nothing like so good as I'd seen
on the river-boats.
Nevertheless I had got a reputation in Uvalde 
and this seemed a good time to become a wandering 
man. Only I was fed up with drifting ever since 
the war and wanted a place to light.
Outside of town I fell In with a cow outfit. North 
from Texas we rode driving a herd to Montana 
grass with never a thought of anything but grief 
while riding the Bozeman Trail
North of the Crazy Woman three men rode Into 
camp hunting beef to buy. The boss was not selling 
but they stayed on and when my name was 
mentioned one of them looked at me.
"Are you the Sackett who killed Bigelow?'
"He wasn't much good with a bottom deal." 
"Nor with a gun I guess."
"He was advised."
"Unless you're fit to handle his two brothers 
you'd best not ride Into Montana. They come up 
by steamboat and they're waiting for you."
"I wasn't planning on staying around" I said
"but if they find me before I leave they're 
welcome."]] 
"Somebody was wondering if you were kin to 
Tyrel Sackett the Mora gunfighter."
"Tyrel Sackett Is my brother but this Is the first 
I've heard of him gunfighting. Only if he was put 
to it he could."
"He cleaned up Mora. He's talked about in the 
same breath with Hickok and Hardin."
"He's a hand wIth any kind of shooting Iron. Back 
to home he used to outshoot me sometimes."
"Sometimes?'
"Sometimes I outshot Tyrel .. . but I was older 
than him and had done more shooting."
We drove our cattle to Gallatin Valley and scattered 
them on Montana grass and Nelson Storey 
whose cattle they were rode out to camp with the 
mail. There was a letter for me the first one I ever 
got.
All through wartime I watched folks getting letters 
and writing them and it was a hard thing 
a-yearning to have mail and receiving none. Got so 
when mail call came around that I used to walk 
away and talk with the cook. He had lost his family 
to a war party of Kiowas out Texas way.
This letter that Storey brought me from town 
looked mighty fine and I turned it in my hands 
several times sizing it up and wishing it could 
speak out. Printing I could read but writing was 
all which-ways and I could make nothing of It.
Mr. Storey he stopped by and noticed. "Maybe 
I can help you" he suggested.
Shame was upon me. Here I was a grown man
and couldn't read enough to get the sense out of
a letter. My eyes could make sense of a Cheyenne
or Comanche war trail but reading was something
I couldn't handle.
Mr. Storey he read that letter to me. Orrin and]] 
Tyrel each had them a ranch and Ma was living 
at Mora In New Mexico. Tyrel was married to the 
daughter of a Don one of those rich Spanish men 
and Orrin was In politics and walking a wide path. 
All I had was a wore-out saddIe four pistols a 
Winchester carbine and the clothes I stood up in. 
Yes and I had me a knife an Arkansas toothpick 
good for hand-fighting and butchering meat.
"Your brothers seem to have done well" Mr.
Storey said. "I would learn to read if I were you 
Tell. You're a good man and you could go far."
So I went horse-hunting and wound up making 
a dicker with an Indian. He had two appaloosa 
horses and he dearly wanted a .36-calibre pistol I 
had so we settled down to outwait each other.
Every boy in Tennessee grows up horse-trading or 
watching horse trades and no Red Indian was 
going to outswap me.
He was a long tall Indian with a long sad face 
and he had eyes like an old wore-out houn' dog 
and I could only talk swap with him when I didn't 
look him In the eye. Something about that Indian 
made me want to give him everything I had. 
However he had a thirst on and I had me a jug of 
fighting whiskey.
So I stalled and fixed grub and talked horse and 
talked hunting and avoided the subject. Upshot of 
it was I swapped the .36 pistol twenty ca'tridges 
an old blanket and that jug of whiskey for 
those two horses.
Only when I took another look at the pack horse 
I wasn't sure who had the better of the swap.
That letter from home stirred me to moving that 
way. There's folks who don't hold with women-folks 
smoking but I was honing to see Ma to smell her 
old pipe a-going and to hear the creak of that old]] 
rocker that always spelled home to me. When we 
boys were growing up that creak was the sound of 
comfort to us. It meant home and it meant Ma 
and it meant  understanding. . and time to time 
It meant a belt with a strap.
Somehow Ma always contrived to put a bait of 
grub on the table despite drouth that often lay 
upon the hills or the poor soil of our side-hill farm.
And If we came home bear-scratched or with a 
bullet under our skins It was Ma who touched up the 
scratches or probed for the bullet
So I lit a shuck for New Mexico and the folks.
That's an expression common down Texas way 
for when a man left his camp to walk to a neighbor's 
he would dip a corn shuck into the flames 
to light his path. and he would do the same when 
he started back. Folks came to speak of anybody 
who was leaving for somewhere as lighting a shuck."
Well most of my life I'd been lighting a shuck 
First It was hungering for strange country so I 
took off down the Natchez Trace for New Orleans. 
Another time I rode a flatboat down river to the 
same place.
Had me a time aboard those flatboats. Flatboat 
men had the name of being tough to handle. Lean 
and gangling like I was they taken me for a 
greener but away back of yonder in the hills boys 
take to fighting the way they take to coon dogs or 
making 'shine so I clobbered them good.
I'm named for William Tell whom Pa held in 
admiration for his arrow-shooting and his standing 
on principle. Speaking of standing I stand six feet 
and three inches in my sock feet when I have socks 
and weigh one hundred and eighty pounds most 
of It crowded Into chest and shoulders muscled]]
arms and big hands. Back to home I stood butt of all the funning because of my big hands and feet.
No Sackett was ever much on the brag. We want folks to leave us alone and we leave them alone but when fighting time comes we stand ready.
Back in the mountains and in the army too I threw every man I tackled at wrestling. Pa raised us on Cornish-style wrestling and a good bit of fist work he'd learned from an Englishman prizefighter.
"Boys" Pa used to say 'avoid conflict and troubles for enough of it fetches to a man without his asking but if you are attacked smite them hip and thigh."
Pa was a great man for Bible speaking but I never could see a mite of sense in striking them hip and thigh. When I had to smite them I did it on the chin or in the belly.
It is a far piece from Montana to New Mexico astride of a horse but I put together a skimpy outfit and headed west for Virginia City and Alder Gulch. A day or two I worked there and then pulled out for Jackson's Hole and the Teton Mountains.
It came over me I wanted to hear Orrin singing the old songs the songs our people brought from Wales or the songs we had from others like us traveling from Ireland Scotland and England. Many happy thoughts of my boyhood time were memories of singing around the fire at home. Orrin was always the leader in that a handsome singing man the best liked of us all. We held no envy being proud to call him brother.
When I started for New Mexico the last thing I was hunting was gold or trouble and usually they come as a pair. Gold is a hard-found thing and
when a man finds it he's bound to fetch trouble a-keeping it.
Seems like a man finds gold only when he ain't hunting it. He picks up a rock to throw at something and that rock turns out to be mostly gold or he trips over a ledge and finds himself sitting astride the Mother Lode.
This whole shooting match of a thing started because I was a curious man. There I was dusting my tail down a south-going trail with no troubles. A time or two I cut Indian sign but I fought shy of them.
Back in my army days I heard folks tell of what a bad time the Indians were getting and some of them like the Cherokee who settled down to farming and business did get a raw deal; but most Indians would ride a hundred miles any time to find a good fight or a chance to steal horses or take a scalp._
When the war ended I joined up to fight the Sioux and Cheyenne in Dakota after the Little Crow massacre in Minnesota. The Sioux had moved off to the west so we chased them and a couple of times we caught them ... or they caught us. Down Texas way rd had trouble with the Kiowa Comanche. Arapahoe and even the Apache so I had respect for Indians.
It was a slow-riding time. Of a morning the air was brisk and chill with a hint of frost in the higher altitudes but the days were warm and lazy and by night the stars were brighter than a body would believe.
There's no grander thing than to ride wild country with time on your hands so I walked my horses down the backbone of the Rockies through the Tetons and south to South Pass and on to Brown's
Hole. Following long grass slopes among the aspen groves camping in flowered meadows beside chuckling streams killing only when I needed grub and listening then to the long echo of my rifle shot believe me I was having me a time.
Nothing warned me of trouble to come.
Thinking of Orrin's mellow Welsh voice a-sing ing I came fresh to hear my own voice so I took a swallow from my canteen and tipping my head back I gave out with song.
It was Brennan on the Moor" about an Irish highwayman a song I dearly loved to hear Orrin sing.
I didn't get far. A man who plans to sing while he's riding had better reach an understanding with his horse. He should have him a good voice or a horse with no ear for music.
When my voice lifted in song I felt that cayuse bunch his muscles so I broke off short.
That appaloosa and me had investigated the capabilities of each other the first couple of times I got up in the saddle and I proved to him that I could ride. That horse knew a thing or two about bucking and pitching and I had no notion of Proving myself again on a rocky mountainside.
And then we came upon the ghost of a trail.
I t was a sliver of white quartz thrust into a crack in a wall of red sandstone.
Riding wild country a man who wants to keep his hair will be wary for anything out of the ordinary. He learns to notice the bent-down grass the broken twig the muddied water of a stream.
Nature has a way that is simple direct and familiar. Animals accept nature pretty much as they . find it. Although they build lairs and nests for themselves they disturb their surroundings mighty little. Only the beaver who wants to make his home in water and so builds his dams will try to alter nature. If anything is disturbed the chances are a man did it.
This was lonesome country and that quartz had not come there by accident. It had to be put there by hand.
The last settlement rd seen was South Pass City far away to the north and the last human had been a greasy trapper who was mostly hair and wore-out buckskins. He and his pack asses went by me like
a pay wagon passing a tramp. They simply paid me no mind.
That was two weeks ago. Since then rd seen neither men nor the tracks of men although rd passed up lots of game including one old silver-tip grizzly that was scooping honey out of a hollow tree.
That bear was minding his business so I minded mine. We Sackett boys never killed anything we didn't need to eat unless it was coming at us. A mountain man tries to live with the country instead of against it.
However this quartz being where it was struck me as an interesting thing. If it was to mark a trail of some kind there was no indication of that trail on the ground and some kinds of soil will hold trail marks for years.
Prying that sliver of quartz from its crack I gave it study. It seemed to have been there for years and years.
I put it back where rd found it and unlimbered my field glasses. These were war booty taken from the body of a Rebel colonel down near Vicksburg he being in no shape to object. Sure enough some distance off I saw another gleam of white in the face of a rock.
Homesickness had started me south but it was plain old-fashioned curiosity that led me to follow that white-quartz trail.
No doubt about it rd stumbled upon a trail the like of which rd never seen before and whoever conceived the idea must have been mighty knowing for it was unlikely to be noticed. Yet it could easily be followed for even in the almost dark those white fragments would catch the light.
For more than an hour I followed the strange
trail up the mountainside through the trees. The pines thinned out and I rode around groves of aspen and soon I was close to timberline in the wildest loneliest country a man was likely to see.
Above me were gray granite shoulders of bare rock streaked with occasional snow. There were stunted trees more often than not lightning blasted and dead and many fallen ones. The air was so fresh it was like drinking cold water to breathe it and there was a touch of chill. It was very clear and a body could see for miles.
Nowhere did I see a track nor horse-droppings. nor any sign of an old campfire or of wood cutting. From time to time where there was no place to put the quarts a cairn of stones had been set up.
It began to look as If rd stumbled on an old an awfully old trail older than any I had followed or even heard tell of.
Pa had wintered south of here on the Dolores River one time with a party of trappers. Many a time he had told us boys about that and over a campfire in Texas rd been told of Father Escalante's trip through this region hunting a trail to the California missions from Santa Fe. But he never would have come as high as this.
Only riches of some kind would have brought men this far into the back country unless they were hiding. Nobody needed to tell me that the trail I had taken might lead to blood and death for when gold comes into a man's thinking common sense goes out.
It was getting close to sundown when I fetched through a keyhole pass into a high mountain valley without growth of any kind. Bleak and lonely under the sky it was like a granite dish streaked
here and there with snow or ice that lay in the cracks.
Timberline was a thousand feet below me and I was close under the might-coming sky with a shivering wind scarcely more than a breath for strength blowing along the valley. All I could hear was the sound of my horses' hoofs and the creak of my saddle. There was a spooky feeling to the air and my horse walked with ears pricked to the stillness.
Off to the left lay a sheet of ghost water a high cold lake fed by melting snow scarcely stirred by that breath of wind. It lay flat and still and that lake worried me for I had heard stories of ghost water lakes in the high-up mountains.]]

Subjective Criteria

Illustrations: No support

Dialog: Multiple speakers

Dialog: Broken dialogue

Dialog: Unlabeled Speaker

Vocabulary: Many difficult words

Language: Many descriptive words

Sentences: Many Long Complex

Text structure: Difficult

Inferences: Several Implications

Complexity: Several unrelated ideas

Concepts: Abstract/Complex Social

Chapters

Sequence of Events: Mostly chronological

Features

Character traits

Integral Setting - Historical

Simple Plot

Flashback

Excessive use of detail - not story line

Dialect/Accents

Idioms

Metaphors

Unusual use of vocabulary

Topic

Travel/Traveling

Cultures

*History

Cowboys

Gold

Horses

*Life Styles

*Family & Friends

Low Frequency Words

aboard	admiration	advised	alter	altitudes
ammunition	apache	appaloosa	arapahoe	arkansas
aspen	asses	astride	booty	boyhood
buckskins	bullwhip	butchering	ca'tridge	ca'tridges
cairn	calibre	capabilities	carbine	clobbered
colonel	conceived	conflict	content	contrived
cornish	cougar	curiosity	curious	dearborn's
decatur	despite	dicker	disturbed	doled
doubt	drouth	echo	escalante's	familiar
fashioned	fetched	fetches	feud	flatboat
flatboats	flowered	funning	gallatin	gambling
gangling	general	grander	granite	grant
greener	grief	grizzly	groves	growth
gulch	gunfighter	gunfighting	gunners	handsome
hankered	hardin	hazelnuts	herd	hickok
higgins	higginses	highwayman	hollow	homesickness
honing	houn	hungering	indication	investigated
irish	kin	kiowa	kiowas	knowing
lairs	ledge	lighting	likely	lode
loneliest	lonesome	massacre	meadows	mellow
memories	mentioned	mesquite	minded	minding
minnesota	missions	mite	montana	moor
mora	mountainside	muddied	muscled	natchez
nature	neighbor's	nevertheless	nicked	notion
nowhere	object	occasional	ordinary	orrin
orrin's	outshoot	outshot	outswap	outwait
peaceful	philadelphia	pistol	pistols	pitching
politics	possum	pricked	principle	prizefighter
probed	proved	proving	prying	quarts
quartz	rd	rebel	region	reputation
respect	responsibility	riflemen	rifles	riled
sackett	sacketts	saddie	sandstone	saratoga
scarcely	scotland	settlement	shuck	sioux
skimpy	sliver	smite	stalled	steamboat
stillness	stirred	streaked	stunted	surroundings
swallow	swap	swapped	tenderfoot	tennessee
teton	tetons	thrust	timberline	trades
trappers	tyrel	understanding	union	unlimbered
upshot	uvalde	vicksburg	wales	wandering
warned	wartime	wary	whatsoever	whiskey
wildest	winchester	wintered	wrestling	yearning
yonder