Mojave Crossing (1964) (16 page)

In my mind, I counted the steps to the door, and it was far, much too far ... and once I was out in the open room he'd have a clear shot at me.

Suddenly, I realized something else. The afternoon sunlight was falling through the window over our heads, and when I reached that place in the center of the room or a bit beyond and turned, I'd have the sun's glare in my eyes.

Oh, I'll not say he'd seen it that way from the beginning, although with him you never knew. All this talk, when I thought I was getting him to relax and ease off the tension a mite, all that might have been just waiting until the sun was right.

For Sandeman Dyer knew I could shoot.

He had not spoken loudly, and few had heard him except those standing close by. The idle talk on the other side of the room continued, and I heard Joe close the door of the safe and walk back across the room. He put the gold down in front of Dyer and went back to his bar.

There was no sense in wasting time now. Reaching across the table, I said, "Thanks, Sandy," and picked up the gold ... with my left hand.

He was smiling, his eyes dancing with that odd light I remembered so well, and I knew he had not missed the left hand ... or my right hand on the edge of the table.

And then I stood up.

All of them were waiting, expecting some word from him. One word, one move from him, and they'd fill me so full of lead folks would be staking my grave for a lead mine.

Suddenly, turning, I thrust out my hand to him.

Instantly, I knew I'd done the wrong thing.

I'd had it in mind to hang onto him and walk him to the door with me, but the moment my hand went out, I knew this was when he would want to shoot me. It would please that mocking devil of insanity in him to shoot me with my hand thrust out to shake hands.

He had come to his feet, smooth and easy, and he half reached to take my hand, then dropped it for his gun.

My hand was outstretched ... too far from my gun, so I just lunged with it to stiff-arm him in the chest, but he stepped back quickly, backing into his chair.

For just an instant it had him off-balance, and I threw my left arm across my face and went crash -comthrough the window into the alley.

Believe me, it was a wild gamble, but I hit the window with a shoulder and went through, falling full length in the alley. As I fell, my hand had grasped my gun butt, so when I hit ground my gun came up with the hammer eared back.

And there he was, broad against the window's light. His gun flamed, but he had expected me to be on my feet and he was geared to shoot high. In almost the same instant that his gun flamed, I let the hammer fall, brought it back and fired again, so fast the two shots had but one thundering sound.

He buckled as if somebody had slugged him in the wind, and his gun went off again, harmlessly, in the air, as his finger tightened convulsively on the trigger.

Leaping to my feet, I spread my legs and shot twice more into his body as he fell back.

This was one man I wanted dead.

There was a rush of feet from inside, and then a voice spoke out, stopping them.

"Leave him be." It was Nolan Sackett.

"You boys just stand hitched."

Stooping down, I felt around for my sack of gold, and picked it up. Then I went up to the window. Dyer was sprawled dead on the floor, and they were just beginning to realize there was nothing to fight for.

"Any of you boys want a buy into th game?"

I said. "The pot's open, and bullets are chips!"

Nobody seemed to be holding high cards, so they stood pat. I said to Nolan, "I'm riding out of here. Want to come along?"

"You go to hell," he said politely.

Chapter
Nine.

Sometimes the damned fool things a man does are the ones that save his bacon.

When I had my horses all together I tied lead ropes on them and started out of town, and I wasn't sorry to go. Only one thing bothered me, I'd come this far and hadn't seen the ocean sea.

It was over yonder, not too far out of my trail, so when I was heading west across La Nopalera, the big cactus patch that lay north of the brea road, I made up my mind of a sudden. I'd no wish to sleep the night at the Mandrin ranch, so what better than a ride down toward Santa Monica and the sea?

Of a sudden I decided to do it, for I might not come this way again. By such whims can a man's life be saved, as mine was saved that evening.

Turning off, I taken the trail for San Vincente Spring, from which Santa Monica, both the old town and the new, so I'd heard, took their water. It was a long ride, and despite the fact that I kept moving right along, it was nigh to midnight before I got where I could hear the sea.

There was a ranch house on the bluff, about a half mile back from the sea, but I was shy of folks and rode clear of it, although I was near enough that their dog barked at me.

The stars were out and a fresh wind from off the sea felt good against my face. Down at the end of the arroyo was a clump of trees, great big old sycamores, and some brush, but there were too many squatters, to judge by the campfires still going.

So I turned north along the shore until I found another canyon. Up that canyon about a quarter of a mile I found a clump of trees with nobody around, and I rode in, unsaddled, and bedded down.

It was sure lucky that nobody followed me all the way out there, for I slept like a hibernating bear until the sun found my face through the leaves.

My stock had made a good thing of it on the grass in the clearing, so I taken my time getting around. My saddlebags were empty of grub, and after a bit I saddled up and rode along the shore to the town.

After stabling my horses, I got me a room at the Santa Monica Hotel, and made a dicker with the manager, a man name of Johnson, to take my gold off my hands for cash money.

When he paid it over to me he gave me a sharp look and said, "You seem to be a nice young man.

If I were you I should be very careful, carrying that much money. There are thieves hereabouts."

"You don't say!" I said with astonishment.

"Well, thank you kindly. I shall be wary of strangers."

They had a bath house there where folks came to take the baths, and it seemed to me a good soaking couldn't but do me good. Whilst I was in the bath I laid my saddlebags close by and my pistol belt atop them where I could lay hand on the gun mighty easy. Several folks came by and looked at me and then at that gun, and they fought shy of me.

They were mostly older men, taking the baths for their rheumatism.

After a good meal I walked around town a little, looking at the schoolhouse, the churches, and the railroad, which had been built out there just a year or so earlier. Some folks were saying this would be the biggest seaport on the west coast ... at least, the biggest south of San Francisco.

A couple of times I went around to check my horses, and from the livery stable door I studied the town to make sure that nobody was following me, or that any of that Dyer outfit had showed up hunting me.

That night I slept, and slept well, in a hotel bed. I mean I just stretched out and didn't mind it a whole lot when my feet pushed out below the covers. I was sure enough in a bed, and nobody knew where I was. However, I slept with those saddlebags under the covers with me, and a six-shooter too. You might say I was not a trusting man.

Most folks can be trusted up to a point, but it always seemed to me the best thing was not to put temptation in their way. Now that black-eyed witch girl ... she made a business of temptation.

When she was around, temptation was always in the way.

It was noontime when I showed up at that Mandrin ranch.

The way I figured, they'd be expecting me at most any other time, and I'd noticed that during dinnertime when they were inside eating, and right after when they took their siesta, the place was quiet as death.

After I thought that word, I tried to unthink it.

Death was riding at my heels these days, and I didn't want to charm it to me by thinking of it.

When a man rides as much country as I have, he gets a feeling for it, and wherever he rides, he looks around to get to know it. So it was that I knew just how to come up to the ranch unseen, and I was in the ranch yard and putting ropes on my mules before anybody came out of the house.

The one who appeared was a dark-eyed man wearing a white hat.

"Howdy," he said. "You'd be Tell Sackett."

"Seems like."

"You stirred a lot of talk yonder in the pueblo. Everybody's been wonderin' what became of you."

"I'm a driftin' man, so I drifted."

He stood there trying to size me up, and as I roped my mules together for better handling, I managed not to turn my back on him, nor to seem like I was thinking of such a thing. With mules fidgeting around the way they do, that was simple enough. All the time I was debating whether I should go inside and say good-bye to the old man.

This man with the white hat had a hurt arm, and he limped a mite, too. There was a cut on his face that might have come from broken glass. He looked like a man who might have been thrown out of a window and rolled down a porch roof before falling off into the street.

When I was ready to go I led my stock around in front of the house and looked over at White Hat.

"You," I said, "let's go in and see Old Ben."

"I seen him," he said, mighty sullen.

"He knows me."

"You walk in there," I advised him, "and you walk in ahead of me. Looks to me like you tripped over something too big for you already, so don't take chances on it happening again."

It didn't seem he liked that very much, but he walked in ahead of me. It might have been my suspicious mind that prompted it, but it seemed to me Old Ben was doing a lot of fussing with his blanket when I came through the door.

That black-eyed girl came down from her room, dressed for riding, an Indian girl following her with some bags and suchlike that a woman feels called upon to tote around.

"Well, Ben," I said, "this here's good-bye.

It's adios. If you plan to see me again, you'll have to come to Arizona."

His hard old eyes studied me, and they glinted with a touch of humor mixed with what might have been respect. "You killed Sandeman Dyer," he said. "Everybody allowed it couldn't be done."

"Every man is born with death in him," I said.

"It's only a matter of time."

Dorinda was standing there, and when I looked at her I saw her eyes were wider than usual, her cheeks kind of pale. I wondered about that, for she was a composed sort of girl, who didn't get wrought up by trifles.

"All right, boy!" Old Ben said. "You have a nice trip. And thanks ... thanks for everything.

Not many men would have done what you did, and without pay."

"Those mules look pretty good," I said, "that's pay enough for a lot of trouble."

Glancing over at Dorinda, I said, "You ready?"

"Go ahead ... I want to say good-bye to Ben."

"All right," I said, and turned toward the door.

He was too anxious, that old man was. He had me dead to rights, but he was too anxious. Here I'd been ready for trouble for weeks, and expecting it from everywhere, but in that moment I forgot.

But he was in too much of a hurry.

First thing I knew, there was a whap of something past my ear, the heavy tunk as it hit the door jamb, and the bellow of a gun. Me, I was headed for the outside and there was nothing keeping me. I went out that door like I had fire in my hip pockets, and I'm not ashamed to confess it.

He fired again, and the bullet just fanned air where I'd been, and then I heard the damnedest job of cussing I've heard in my born days.

Around the corner of the house came White Hat, running full tilt with a rifle in his hands. But when he got where he wanted to be, my six-shooter was looking right down his throat, and I said, "You going to drop that rifle, or am I going to drag what's left of you out in the brush for the buzzards to pick over?"

He was a man of decision who recognized the logic of my argument, and he let go of that rifle as if it was hot.

"Los Angeles is quite a ways off," I told him, "and if you're going to walk it, you'd best get started."

About that time Dorinda came out the door just like nothing had happened, and I helped her into the saddle, keeping those horses between the door and me.

That was a mighty sour old man in there, and he was remembering that if anybody in the world knew where his cache of pirate gold was, it was a man named William Tell Sackett.

When we rode off I could hear him yelling for White Hat or somebody, only nobody was coming. They would, after a while, but they were bright folks, and kind of shy of shooting.

Once we were on the trail, it was pleasant to ride beside Dorinda, keeping the mules down the trail ahead of us, talking easy-like with that dark-eyed witch girl.

Not that I was ever much of a hand to talk to women.

Back in the mountains where I came from I never was much on talk, and my feet were too big for dancing; but along about midnight when the girls started walking out with their friends, I was usually around and about.