“One thing,” he said, “we must ride with great care, for there was ^w that a prisoner escaped from prison and is at large to the south of here. They believe he will come to the border, and the soldiers search for him.”
It was past midnight when we walked through the circle of lemon light under the livery-stable lantern. The hostler sat asleep against the wall, his serape about his shoulders. Music tinkled from the cantina … there was a smell of hay, andof fresh manure, of leather harness, andof horses.
As we walked our horses from the stable I leaned over and dropped a peso in the lap of the hostler.
Riding past the cantina, I glanced back.
I thought I saw, in a dark doorway next to the cantina, the boot-toes and the tip of a hat belonging to a very tall man. I could have been mistaken.
We rode swiftly from the town. The night was quiet except for the insects that sang in the brush. A long ride lay before us. The cattle about which we had inquired were at a ranch southwest of Santa Teresa … the gold lay somewhere off the coast we would parallel.
So far as we knew, pa was the only man who knew exactly where that sunken ship lay. The Kurbishaws had killed the man who told them of it, thinking they could find it from the description.
Captain Elam Kurbishaw’s only map that showed the coast was vague, and had indicated only one inlet on that stretch of coast, where actually there were several. More to the point, there was a long stretch of coast that lay behind an outlying sand bar.
If the ship had succeeded in getting through one of the openings in the shore line, it would be lost in a maze of inlets, channels, and bays. Looking for it would be like looking for one cow that bawled in a herd of five thousand.
“Soldiers may stop us,” Miguel warned. “It is well to give them no displeasure, for the soldiers can be worse than bandidos.”
As we rode along, my mind kept thinking back to Gin Locklear and that snippy little Marsha.
Marsha was fourteen … she’d be up to marrying in maybe two years, and I pitied the man who got her. As for Gin, she was older than me, but she was a woman to take a man’s eye, and to talk a man’s tongue, too. It was no wonder Jonas set such store by her.
It lacked only a little of daybreak when we turned off the trail into the brush. We went maybe half a mile off the traveled way before we found a hollow where there was grass and a trickle of water. We staked out the horses and bedded down for sleep. Miguel took no time about it, but sleep was long in coming to me.
Thoughts kept going round in my mind, and pa was in the middle of them. I thought how pa was always teaching me things. Had he maybe taught me where that gold was, and me not knowing?
And then my mind was sorting out memories and feeling the sadness they brought.
Ma was gone. … Pa? Who could ever know about pa? Those were bad days for travelers and folks who went a-yondering. Chances were the Bald Knobbers had got him … or somebody from ambush.
I’d never believe it was the Kurbishaws.
Chapter Five.
We saw no more of the Bishop or the Kurbishaws on the trail in the next few days.
We found Santa Teresa a sleepy, pleasant Mexican village, with hens scratching in the street, and the best tortillas I’d eaten up to then, or for a long time after.
The hacienda where I bargained forand bought three hundred head of cattle was another pleasant place, and when we started the cattle back toward the border they loaned me three vaqueros to help until my own hands joined us—they were to meet us in camp just north of Santa Teresa.
The range from which we bought our cattle had been overstocked and the cattle were thin, but they showed an immediate liking for the grass of the coast land and its plentiful salt. We were four days driving from the hacienda to the camp north of Santa Teresa, but when we reached the camp there was no one there.
Here the vaqueros were to leave us, and here we must hold our stock until help came from the north. Five men could handle three hundred head without too much trouble when they were intent upon stuff+ their lean bellies with good grass, but from there on it would be more difficult.
Scarcely were we camped, with a fire going, when we heard a rush of horses and suddenly our camp was surrounded by soldiers, their rifles leveled on us.
Their officer was a lean and savage man. He rode around the herd, inspecting the brands, then he wheeled up to the fire.
“Who is in charge here?” he asked in Spanish.
Miguel gestured to me. “The Americano.
We have bought the cattle from Se@nor Ulloa.
We drive them to Texas.”
“You are lying!”
“No, se@nor,” one of the vaqueros spoke up quickly. “I am of the hacienda of Ulloa.
Three of us have ridden with the cattle to this point.
Here their own riders join them. It is of truth, se@nor.”
The officer looked at me, his eyes cold and unfriendly. “Your name?”
“Orlando, se@nor.” It seemed possible he might have heard the name Sackett, although it would have been long ago.
He studied me without pleasure. “Do you know Se@nor King?”
“We spoke with him two days ago. He was driving to Brownsville with the se@nora.”
King was well thought of on both sides of the border, and to know him seemed the wise thing.
He considered the situation a bit, then said:
“One thing, se@nor. A prisoner has escaped. We want him. If you should come upon him, seize him at once and send a rider for me. Anyone rendering assistance to him will be shot.”
Without further ^ws, he wheeled his horse.
When they had ridden away, the vaquero turned to me, his expression grave. “Se@nor, that was Antonio Herrara—a very bad man.
Avoid him if you can.”
They were packing to leave, and seemed more than anxious to get away, and I couldn’t find it in my heart to go a-blaming them. Surely, this was no trouble of theirs.
After they had gone there was nothing we could do but ride herd on our cattle, and wait.
Sometimes a man is a fool, and I had a feeling that when I left my mare to go traipsing after gold money I’d been more of a fool than most. I’d sure enough be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, for that Herrara shaped up like a mean man, and we were in his country where he was the law.
Miguel took the first ride around, bunching the cattle for night. They seemed willing enough to rest, being chock full of good grass like they were. Me, I kept looking up trail toward the border and a-hoping for those riders.
What if Jonas and the Tinker couldn’t make it? What if Herrara spotted them as escaped prisoners themselves?
“Miguel,” I said, when he stopped by on his circling, “come daybreak we’re pushing on, riders or no riders. We’re going to head for the border.”
He nodded seriously. “It is wise, amigo. That Herrara, he is a bad man.”
The place where we were was a meadow four, five miles out of Santa Teresa and on an arm of the sea. There was brush around, and some marshy land.
“That prisoner,” Miguel said, “he will not be taken easily. He killed a guard in escaping, and he has been much tortured. It is said, se@nor”—Miguel paused expressively—?t he was believed to know something of a treasure.”
“A treasure?” I asked mildly.
“Si, se@nor. It is a treasure much talked of, a treasure of the pirate, LaFitte. For thirty years and more men have sought it along the shore to the north. Most of all, Antonio Herrara and his father, the commandant of this area.”
What could a man say to that? Only it made me itch all the more to get that herd moving.
“Miguel, an hour before daylight we will start the herd. Twenty miles tomorrow.”
“It is a long drive, se@nor,” he said doubtfully.
“Twenty miles—no less.”
When the moon lifted, the cattle rose to stretch their legs and move around. Far off, there was a sound of coyotes, and closer by we could
hear the rustle of the surf. The waters of the Laguna Madre were close by, the sea itself lay out beyond the bar, at least twenty-five miles away.
Miguel came in and, after coffee, turned in. Mounting the dun, I circled the cattle, singing softly to let them know that they were not alone, and that the shadow they saw moving was me. Nevertheless, there was a restlessness in them I could not explain, but I put it down to my ignorance of cattle.
With the first gray of dawn I stopped by to wake up Miguel.
He sat up and put on his hat, then pulled on his boots. He reached for the big, fire-blackened coffee pot, and shook it in surprise. “You drink much coffee, se@nor.”
“One cup,” I said. “I was afraid to stop for more. Something was bothering the cattle.”
He emptied out the pot into his cup. “There were at least five cups in this, amigo. No less, certainly. I made the coffee myself, and know what we drank. It is a pot for ten men.”
“Pack up,” I said, “let’s move ‘em.”
They seemed willing enough to go, and an old blue-roan steer moved out and took the lead, as he had done all the way from the hacienda.
As they moved, they fed; and we let them for the first two or three hours. Then we stepped up the speed a bit, because both of us wanted distance between us and last night’s camp.
Most of the time I rode with a hand ready to grab a gun. From time to time I reached for that Walch Navy, and the butt had a mighty friendly feeling.
Nothing feels better when trouble shapes than the butt of a good pistol.
We kept scanning the trail ahead, hoping for a sign of our riders. Lucky for us the cattle seemed to want to get away from that place as much as we did.
There were no trees. Meadows of grass appeared here and there, and sometimes there’d be grass for miles, but between the trail and the sea there was a regular forest of brush. Here and there were signs that the sea had on occasion even come this far. The last time must have been the great hurricane of 1844.
If there had been another of such power since, we hadn’t heard of it, but the one of #‘dd was well known.
The cattle drifted steadily. The heat rising from their bunched bodies was as stifling as the dust.
Only once in a while did one of the steers cut loose and try to stray from the column. But for two riders it was too many cattle, and our horses would soon be worn to nothing.
Off to the right was the sea … that was east. As far as we were from it, I turned again and again to look that way, for though we had been close a time or two, I had never yet seen the ocean. It gave a man an odd feeling to known all the miles upon miles of water that lay off there.
Somewhere out there, lying on the bottom close in to shore, was a ship loaded with gold and silver, with gems maybe, and schlike. Pa had found it and brought gold from it, and pa must have come back again after he left me. It would be like him to let on he was going for fur, then to trail south where the gold was. Why trap for skins, when the price of thousands of them lay off that coast in shallow water?
It set a man to sweating, just to think of that much gold. It had never really got to me until now.
And after all, that was what we’d come for. We hadn’t really come for a few hundred scrawny Mexican steers. … I wondered how long it would take that Herrara to figure that out.
Not that a few folks weren’t buying Mexican stock. With the prices offered in the railhead towns, it was a caution what folks would do to lay hands on a few steers.
But this gold, now. LaFitte, he wasn’t only a pirate and slave trader, he was a blacksmith in New Orleans with a shop where slaves did the work, and he and his brother … now how did I know that?
Had the Tinker mentioned it? Or Jonas?
Jonas, probably, when we were talking. Yet the notion stayed with me that I’d heard it before.
Now I was imagining things. I couldn’t call to mind any mention of Jean LaFitte—not before we came up to that plantation house after leaving San Augustine. Not before we met Jonas.
The dun was streaked with sweat and I could tell by the way he moved that he was all in. We hadn’t come twenty miles, either. Not by a long shot.
Miguel dropped back beside me, and that horse of his looked worse than mine.
“Se@nor,” he said, “we must stop.”
“All right,” I said, “but not for the night. We’ll take ourselves a rest and then push on.”
He looked at me, then shrugged. I knew what he was thinking. If we kept on like this we’d be driving those cattle afoot. We should have a remuda, and Jonas was supposed to be bringing one south. We weren’t supposed to drive these cattle not even a foot after the vaqueros left us.
We turned the herd into a circle and stopped them where the grass was long and a trickle of water made a slow way, winding across the flatland toward the dunes that marked the lagoon’s edge.
We found a few sticks and nursed a fire into boiling water for coffee. Miguel hadn’t anything to say. Like me, he was dead beat. But I noticed something: like me, he had wiped his guns free of dust and checked the working mechanism.
“I ain’t going to no prison,” I said suddenly. “I just ain’t a-honing for no cell.
That there Herrara wants me, he’s got to get me the hard way.”
“We have no chance,” Miguel said.
“You call it then,” I said. “Do we fight?”
“We try to run. We try to dodge. When we can no longer do either, we shoot.” He grinned at me, and suddenly the coffee tasted better.
I don’t know why I was so much on the shoot all to once, but lately I’d heard so many stories of what happened in those prisons that I just figured dying all to once would be better.
Besides, I didn’t like that Herrara, and I might get him in my sights. Why, a man who could bark a squirrel could let wind through his skull.
That’s what I told myself.
Besides, I hadn’t shot that Henry .44 at anything. Nor the Walch Navy, as far as that went.
We lay by the trail for three, four hours.
We rubbed our horses down good, we led them to water, we let them eat that good grass. And afws we saddled again, and mounted up.
The steers were against it. They’d had enough for the day, and were showing no sign of wanting to go further. We cut this one and that one a slap with our riatas, and finally they lined out for Texas.
You don’t take a herd nowhere in a hurry.
Not unless they take a notion to stampede. Maybe eight to ten miles is a good day, with a few running longer than that. We’d been dusting along since four o’clock in the morning and it was past four in the evening now. When they first started, they fed along the way, so we’d made slow time.
All I wanted was a little more distance. If we could get where I wanted to hold up, we’d be about twenty-five miles or so from the border.
If a difficulty developed, I figured I could run that far afoot with enough folks a-shooting after me. Anyway, I’d be ready to give it a try. I kept in mind that I’d no particular want to see the inside of one of Mr. Herrara’s jail cells.
I was a lover, not a fighter. That’s what I said to myself, though I’d no call to claim either.
I was only judging where my interest lay.
My thoughts went to Gin Locklear—what a woman! I’d blame no man setting his cap for her, although the way I figured, it would take some stand-up sort of man to lay a rope on her.
That Marsha now … she was only a youngster, and a snippy one, but if she went on the way she’d started she might take after Gin … and I could think of nothing in woman’s clothes it would be better for a girl to take after.
Shy of midnight we held up near salt water, with high brush growing around, and not more than four miles or so off was the tiny village of Guadalupe. Right close was a long arm of the Gulf.
“We will camp here,” I said. “There is fresh water from a spring near the knoll over there.”
Miguel looked at me strangely. “Ho
w does it happen that you know this?” he asked.
“Se@nor Locklear said you had never been to Mexico.”
“I—” I started to answer him, to say I know not what, perhaps to deny that I had been here or knew anything about it. Yet I did know.
Or did I? Supposing there was no spring there? How much had Locklear said?
The spring was there, and Locklear had said nothing about it. I knew that when I looked at the spring, for there, in a huge old timber that was down, there were initials carved. And carved in a way I’d seen only once before, that being in the mountains of Tennessee.
FSct Just like that … carved there plain as day, like pa had carved them on that old pine near the house.
He had been here, all right. Miguel did not notice the initials, or if he did he paid them no mind. I doubt if he would have connected them with Falcon Sackett, and I was not sure how much had been told him. Something, of course … but not all.
Believe me, those steers were ready to bed down.
We bunched them close for easy holding, and they scarcely took time to crop a bait of grass before they tucked their legs under them and went to chewing cud and sleeping.
Miguel wasn’t much behind them. “Turn in,”
I said, “and catch yourself some shut-eye. I’ll stand watch.”
It wasn’t in him to argue, he was that worn-out.
Me, I was perked up, and I knew why. Pa had told me of this place, and I’d forgotten.
Yet it had been lying back there in memory, and probably I’d been driving right for this place without giving it thought.
Now the necessary thing was to recollect just what it was pa had told me. He surely wouldn’t tell me the part of it without he told me all.
When had he told me? Well, that went back a mite. Had to be before I was ten, the way I figured. He rode off when I was eleven and ma had been sick for some time before that, and he was doing mighty little talking to me aside from what was right up necessary.
It wasn’t as if he’d told me one or two stories. He was forever yarning to me, and probably when he told me this one he’d stressed detail, he’d told it over and over again to make me remember. Somehow I was sure of that now.
Lando (1962) Page 7
