Lando (1962) (8 page)

Arrangements could be made by letter for me to pick up the herd, and then I would start north, holding them near the coast. Jonas and the Tinker would join me as cowhands, riding with other cowhands. When we had the herd close by where the treasure was believed to be, we would camp ... and find our gold.

It was simple as that. Nobody, we believed, would suspect a cattleman of hunting for gold.

It was a good cover, and we could find no flaws in it. There was water for cattle in brackish pools, there was good grass, so the route was logical.

"Are you sure," the Tinker asked me, "that your father left nothing to guide you to the ship?

No map? No directions?"

"He gave me nothing when he left, and if there was a map he may have wanted it himself."

Jonas rose. "My brother-in-law may question you. You have hired to work on my ranch, that is all."

"It is settled then?" the Tinker asked.

"To Mexico?"

"How about it, Sackett?"

"Well," I said, "I never saw much gold, and always allowed as how I'd like to. This seems to be a likely chance." I shook hands with them.

"I only hope," I added, "that I'm half the man my father must have been."

Chapter
Four.

We fetched up to the ranch house shy of sundown. We'd been riding quite a spell of days, and while never much on riding, I had been doing a fair country job of it by the time we hauled rein in front of that soddy.

For that was what it was, a sod house and no more.

Jonas Locklear had cut himself a cave out of a hillside and shored it up with squared timbers.

Then he had built a sod house right up against it, built in some bunks, and there it was.

Only Locklear had been gone for some time, and when we fetched up in front of that soddy the door opened and a man came out.

He was no taller than me, but black-jawed and sour-looking. He wore a tied-down gun, and some folks would have decided from that he was a gunman. Me, I'd seen a few gunfighters, and they wore their guns every which way.

"I'm Locklear. I own this place. Who are you?"

The man just looked at him, and then as a second man emerged, the first one said, "Says he owns this place. Shall we tell it to him quick?"

"Might's well."

"All right." His eyes went from Locklear to the Tinker, and he said, "You don't own this place no more, Mr. Locklear. We do. We found it abandoned, we moved in. It's ours, we're givin' you until full dark to get off the place. The ranch stretches for ten miles thataway, so you'd best make a fast start."

Before Jonas could make reply, I broke in. Something about this man got in my craw and stuck there, and so I said, "You heard Jonas Locklear speak. This here ranch is deeded and proper, and not open to squatters. You gave us till full dark. Well, we ain't givin' you that much time. You got just two minutes to make a start."

His gun showed up. I declare, he got that thing out before I could so much as have it in mind.

"You draw fast," I said, "but you still got to shoot it, and before you kill me dead, I'll have lead in you. I'll shoot some holes in you, believe me. Now you take Cullen. When he was teaching me, he said--"

"Who? Who did you say?"

"Cullen"--I kept my face bland--

"Cullen Baker. Now, when he was teaching me to draw, he said to--"

"Cullen Baker taught you to draw?" He looked around warily. "He ridin' with you?"

"He camps with us," I said. "What he does meanwhile I've no idea. Him an'

Longley an' Lee, they traipse around the country a good deal. Davis police, they've been hustling Cullen some, so he said to me, "South, that's the place. We'll go south."'"

This black-jawed man looked from me to the Tinker, and then he sort of backed up and said, "I'd no idea you was with Cullen Baker. I want no trouble with him, or any outfit he trails with."

"You've got a choice," I said, "Brownsville or Corpus Christi. When the rest of them get here, I figure to have coffee on. Cullen sets store by fresh black coffee."

They lit out, and after they had gone, the Tinker looked over at Jonas. "Did you ever see the like? Looks right down a gun barrel and talks them out of it."

"Cullen did camp with us," I said, "and there's no question that he liked our coffee."

Took us until midnight to clean that place out, but we did it. And then we turned in to sleep.

Sunup found us scouting around the range.

Seemed like there was grass everywhere but no cattle, and then we did come on some cows and bulls in a draw, maybe twenty-five or thirty of them lazing in the morning sun. These were wild cattle. Owned cattle, mind you, but they'd run wild all their lives and were of no mind to be trifled with.

A longhorn is like nothing else you ever saw.

If a man thinks he knows cattle, he should look over a longhorn first of all. The longhorn developed from cattle turned loose on the plains of Texas, growing up wild and caring for themselves; andforthe country they were in, no finer or fiercer creature ever lived. There were some tough old mossy-horns in that outfit that would weigh sixteen hundred pounds or better, and when they held their heads up they were taller than our horses. They were mean as all get out, and ready to take after you if they caught you afoot.

Believe me, a man needed a six-shooter and needed to get it into action fast if one of those big steers came for him.

Times had changed in Texas. When the Tinker and Locklear had been here before, cattle were worth about two dollars a head, and no takers, but now they were driving herds up the Shawnee Trail to the Kansas railheads and paying five and six dollars a head, selling them in Kansas at anywhere from eighteen to thirty dollars each. A trail drive was a money-making operation, if a man got through.

"Tinker," I said, "if we want to get rich in these western lands we should round up a few head and start to Kansas."

He grunted at me, that was all. Treasure was on his mind--bright, yellow gold with jewels and ivory and schlike. I'll not claim it didn't set me to dreaming myself, but I am a practical man and there's nothing more practical than beef on the hoof when folks are begging for it on the fire.

We rode down into a little draw and there was a jacal, a Mexican hut. Around it was fenced garden space and a corral. As we rode up, I sighted a rifle barrel looking at us over a window sill, and the man who appeared in the doorway wore a belt gun. He was a tall, wiry Mexican, handsome but for a scar on his jaw.

The instant his eyes touched Locklear he broke into a smile.

"Se@nor! Juana, the se@nor is back!"

The gun muzzle disappeared and a very pretty girl came to the door, shading her eyes at us.

"Tinker, Sackett ... this is Miguel," Locklear said. "We are old friends."

They shook hands, and when Miguel offered his to me I took it and looked into the eyes of a man.

I knew it would be good to have Miguel with us. There was pride and courage there, and something that told me that when trouble came, this man would stand.

This I respected, forof myself I was not sure.

Every man wishes to believe that when trouble appears he will stand up to it, yet no man knows it indeed before it happens.

When trouble came at the river's crossing, I had faced up to it with the Tinker beside me, but it had happened too quickly for me to be frightened. And what if I had been alone?

Jonas and the Tinker were impressed by the bluff I worked on the man at the sod house, but I was not. To talk is easy, but what would I have done if he had fired? Would I indeed have been able to draw and return the fire?

My uncertainty was growing as I looked upon the fierce men about me, tough, experienced men who must many times have faced trouble. They knew themselves and what they would do, and I did not.

Would I stand when trouble came? Would I fight, or would I freeze and do nothing? I had heard tales of men who did just that, men spoken ofwith contempt, and these very tales helped to temper me against the time of danger.

Another thing was in my mind when I was lying ready for sleep, or was otherwise alone.

After the meeting with the man at the sod house I had known, deep down within me, that I would never be fast with a gun--at least, not fast enough.

Despite all my practice, I had come to a point beyond which I could not seem to go.

This was something I could not and dared not speak of. But at night, or after we started the ride south for Matamoras, I tried to think it out.

Practice must continue, but now I must think always of just getting my gun level and getting off that first shot. That first shot must score, and I must shape my mind to accept the fact that I must fire looking into a blazing gun. I must return that fire even though I was hit.

South we rode, morning, noon, and night.

South down the Shawnee Trail in moonlight and in sun, and all along the trail were herds of cattle--a few hundred, a few thousand, moving north for Kansas with their dust clouds to mark the way. We heard the prairie wind and the cowboy yells, and at night the prairie wolves that sang the moon out of the sky.

We smelled the smoke of the fires, endured the heat of the crowded bodies of the herd, and often of a night we stopped and yarned with the cowboys, sharing their fires and their food and exchanging fragments of news, or of stories heard.

There were freight teams, too. These were jerk-line outfits with their oxen or horses stretched out ahead of them hauling freight from Mexico or taking it back.

And there were free riders, plenty of them.

Tough, hard-bitten men, armed and ready for trouble.

Cow outfits returning home from Kansas, bands of unreconstructed renegades left over from the war, occasional cow thieves and robbers.

Believe me, riding in Texas had taught me there was more to the West than just wagon trains and cattle drives. Folks were up to all sorts of things, legal and otherwise, and some of them forking the principle. That is, they sat astraddle of it, one foot on the legal side, the other on the illegal, and taking in money with both hands from both sides. Such business led to shooting sooner or later.

South we rode, toward the borderlands.

Our second day we overtook a fine coach and six elegant horses, with six outriders, tough men in sombreros, with Winchesters ready to use.

"Only one man would have such a carriage,"

Jonas said. "It will be Captain Richard King, owner of the ranch on Santa Gertrudis."

An outrider recognized Jonas and called out to him, and when King saw Jonas he had the carriage draw up. It was a hot, still morning and the trailing dust cloud slowly closed in and sifted fine red dust over us all.

"Jonas," King said, "my wife, Henrietta. Henrietta, this is Jonas Locklear."

Richard King was a square-shouldered, strongly built man with a determined face. It was a good face, the face of a man who had no doubts. I envied him.

"King was a steamboat captain on the Rio Grande," the Tinker explained to me in a low voice, "and after the Mexican War he bought land from Mexicans who now lived south of the border and could no longer ranch north of the line."

Later the Tinker told me more: how King had bought land from others who saw no value in grassland where Indians and outlaws roamed. One piece he bought was fifteen thousand acres, at two cents an acre.

Instead of squatting on land like most of them were doing, King had cleared title to every piece he bought. There was a lot of land to be had for cash, but you had to be ready to fight for anything you claimed, and not many wanted to chance it.

Brownsville was the place where we were to separate. At that time it was a town of maybe three thousand people, but busy as all get out. From here Miguel and I would go on alone.

Looking across toward Mexico, I asked myself what sort of fool thing I was getting into.

Everybody who had anything to do with that gold had come to grief.

Nevertheless, I was going. Pa had a better claim to that gold than any man, and I aimed to have a try at it. And while I was going primed for trouble, I wasn't hunting it.

First off, I'd bought a new black suit and hat, as well as rougher clothes for riding. I picked out a pair of fringed shotgun chaps and a dark blue shirt. Then I bought shells for a new Henry rifle. The rifle itself cost me $43, and I bought a thousand rounds of .44's for $21.

That same place I picked up a box of .36-31liber bullets for my pistol at $1.20 per hundred.

That Henry was a proud rifle. I mean it could really shoot. Men I'd swear by said it was accurate at one thousand yards, and I believed them. It carried eighteen bullets fully loaded.

My mare I'd left back at Miguel's place. Her time was close and she would need care.

Miguel's woman was knowing thataway, so the mare was in good hands.

About noontime Miguel and me shook hands with the Tinker and Jonas, and then we crossed over the river and went into Matamoras.

My horse was a line-back dun, tough and trail wise. Miguel was riding a sorrel, and we led one pack horse, a bald-faced bay.