Mojave Crossing (1964)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 11

  It seemed a long time that I lay there, letting that one gulp of water ease down my raw throat. And then after a bit I tried again.

  The sun was blistering hot on the granite where I lay, so I crawled into the shade alongside the water. There was room to stretch out there. Several times I drank … once my stomach tried to retch.

  When perhaps an hour had passed, I began to think.

  The girl was back there … Dorinda. She and the horses …

  But there had been a man who shot at me. Or had that been delirium?

  Weakly, I struggled to sit up, and then I filled the canteen. I was going back. I had to go back. I had to know.

  Chapter Four.

  My old tracks were on the sand to guide me, and I found the place where I had fallen in attempting to draw and return the fire of the man with the rifle. There was a rock where such a man might have stood, some distance off, but in plain sight. Around where I had fallen there were no tracks but my own.

  More carefully now—for it might not be delirium that the man had shot at me—I moved among the rocks of white granite toward the place. …

  Gone …

  Dorinda was gone, my horses were gone, my packs and my gold were gone. Nothing was left.

  There had been four or five riders, and they had approached from the west. They had taken Dorinda, my Winchester, my horses—and they had vanished.

  They must have believed me dead. Here I was, alone, on foot, and miles from any possible help.

  Standing there in the partial shade of that rock, I knew that I was in more trouble than I had ever been in my life. I had a canteen of water and a pistol with a belt of ammunition. But I had no horse, no food, and no blanket. The nearest settlement of which I knew was maybe a hundred miles away to the west—a Mormon town called San Bernardino.

  For the moment my canteen was filled with water, and I had recently drunk. The tank that I had found in the rocks was a half-mile back up the draw; if I retraced my steps and camped there for the night I should have walked a mile to no purpose.

  Pa, he always taught us boys to make up our minds, and once made up, to act on what we decided, and not waste time quibbling about. So I taken up my left foot and stepped out toward the west and followed it with my right, and I was on my way.

  But I wasn’t going far at midday, which it was by now. So I walked on from one of those islands of rock to another, sometimes resting in the shade a mite, then going on to another one, but always holding to the west. And away down inside me I began to get mad.

  Until then I hadn’t been mad, for we Sacketts, man and boy, are slow to anger, but when we come to it we are a fierce and awful people.

  Another thing Pa had taught us boys was that anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before—it takes something from him.

  When that black-eyed girl back there at Hardyville asked me to help her get on to Los Angeles, I suspicioned trouble, but woman-made trouble, nothing like this. Now those men who chased after her had got her, and they had shot at me, left me for dead. They had taken my outfit and my gold.

  Well, now, that was enough to make a body upset.

  Seemed to me this was a time for anger, and it came upon me. It was no wild, fly-off-the-handle rage, but a cold, deep-burning anger that pointed me at them like a pistol.

  They would have gone to Los Angeles, but no matter. Wherever they had gone, I would find them.

  A journey, somebody said, begins with one step, so I taken that step. I was started, and before I set my foot down for the last time on that journey there would be blood on the moon.

  At sundown I struck out, headed westward.

  My life depended on getting to water before my canteen emptied. By now they had probably left the Palms, but that was away off to the north and beyond my direction now. I was going to hold westward, and hope.

  A man afoot can walk a horse down. It has been done many a time, and while I had no idea of walking them down, if I could come up to water and find food I’d not be far behind them when they reached Los Angeles.

  Food …

  My stomach was already chafing my backbone from hunger, and my belly sure was thinking my throat must be cut, it had been so long since I’d eaten. Nonetheless, I just kept picking my feet up and putting them down.

  We mountain boys were all walkers. Mostly it was the fastest way to get any place back in the hills, for often a boy could cross a mountain afoot where no horse could go … if he owned a horse, or even a mule.

  Westward the mountains lifted up maybe a thousand feet above the desert, but I’d crossed higher mountains, and if I couldn’t go through, I’d go over.

  Due west I walked, keeping a steady pace for upwards of an hour, then resting a few minutes and going on again. Two, three times I found rough going that held me up, but by moonrise I was close to the mountains and I picked out a narrow Indian trail or sheep trail. It showed white against the desert and between the rocks;

  I’d followed many such, and recognized it for what it was.

  Most such trails are narrow, maybe four to eight inches wide, and usually easier to see from a distance than close up. I mean, from a cliff or ridge you can pick them out at quite a distance; but on the ground and close up they are hard to find, unless in regular use. But a body gets a knack for seeing them after a bit.

  This one went south along the mountains, and I followed it for about a half-mile until it joined up with a westbound trail that cut into the mountains.

  Following it over and through the hills I found another spring at the foot of a granite spur that stretched out into a high mountain valley. The spring was marked by two patches of white granite, easy to see against the dark rock of the mountain.

  In drift sand close by, I bedded down and made some sleep, after a long pull at the water in my canteen. Come daybreak, I drank from the spring, refilled my canteen, and took off to the westward while the sun was still below the horizon.

  It came on me then if I was to eat I’d have to look sharp, or maybe lay out near a water hole of a night and try to kill something that came for water. A sheep would be best, but one more day without grub and I’d tackle a desert wolf or most anything that walked or flew—or crawled, for that matter.

  It was about then that I came up to the horse tracks.

  There must have been fifty in the lot, maybe more, and they were pretty well strung out. These were not wild stuff, but shod horses, most of them, and they were driven. As near as I could tell, they were driven by two men.

  Right away I took to the rocks to study it out.

  The way it seemed to me, this was no country for an honest man to be driving horses. There were no ranches anywhere within miles, and no occasion for anybody to be moving a herd through here that I could grasp hold of. Anybody moving horses would be likely to keep to well-traveled trails and known water holes.

  Then I recalled Old Bill Williams, and what Joe Walker had told me about the characters from Arizona who used to steal horses in California and drive them across the desert to sell in Arizona … or the other way around. Maybe somebody was still doing it.

  Horses meant water; and wherever these horses were going, it was a place known to the drovers, who were heading them right across country toward something.

  That something must mean a hide-out, a camp. And that meant grub. It also could mean a horse for me.

  Hunkered down among those big old rocks, I gave study to the problem. If the men driving the horses were thieves, they wouldn’t take it kindly of me to come upon them, and they might start blasting at me with firearms. Nevertheless, they would have grub, which I needed, and they would have horses.

  For maybe a half-hour I held my place, and gave the time to studying the country around.

  You never saw such a jumble of boulders, heaped-up rock, and cactus in your life.

  And then of a sudden I recalled what I’d been told about a balanced rock near a Hidden Valley, a rock
like a huge potato.

  For there, not more than a few hundred yards off, was just such a rock.

  The trouble was, in a jumble of rocks such as that a man might look for years and not find the entrance to the valley unless he was mighty lucky, or found some tracks. And there was likely a lookout somewhere up among the rocks. No matter—I had to take my look.

  Right at that moment I didn’t much care. I was hungry, and I was dead tired, and I had been put upon by the men hunting that woman. They had taken my outfit and they had left me for dead, and before this thing was over they would pay through their hides.

  So I started to follow those tracks.

  “You huntin’ something?”

  The voice came out of nowhere. I was smart enough to freeze right in my tracks, and when I looked up I saw a man standing there with a Winchester aimed at my belt buckle. He was a rough-looking character wearing a flat-brimmed hat and beat-up chaps.

  “You’re damned right I am,” I said irritably. “I’m hunting three square meals and a horse.”

  He chuckled at me. “Now you don’t tell me you come all this way afoot?”

  “No,” I said, “I been set afoot. And when I get up in the middle of a horse I’m headed for Los Angeles to find those who left me.”

  “You a Los Angeles hombre?”

  “Arizona,” I said. “I started over here to buy horses and goods to take back, and in Hardyville I ran into th woman.”

  He lowered his rifle. “You don’t look like the law,” he said, “so come along. We can feed you, anyway.”

  He walked over to some rocks and he said, “You’ve got to crawl.” He indicated a hole where two rocks sort of leaned together, and I got down and crawled through the hole. When I stood up, I was inside of Hidden Valley.

  From where I could see, it looked to be at least a half-mile long, although some of it may have been out of sight. The two walls of rock, mostly heaped-up boulders, were only a few hundred feet apart. Scattered over the bottom of the valley, there must have been sixty or seventy head of good horses.

  This gent who showed me in pointed with his Winchester and we walked along the wall of rock where there were some caves and a spring … and lots of bees buzzing about.

  There was a smidgin of fire going, and three or four gents sprawled around. They sat up when we came into sight.

  “What you got there, Willie?” It was a tall man with some teeth missing. “You caught you a pigeon?”

  “You think I’m a pigeon,” I said, “you just stack your duds and grease your skids and I’ll whup you down to a frazzle. … After I’ve been fed.”

  So they asked me about it, and I laid it on the line for them, having no cause to lie, and they listened. Only thing I didn’t tell them was that last shot fired at me. Seemed to me they’d be more sympathetic if they figured I’d been left afoot a-purpose.

  Willie put down his rifle and shook out a cup and filled it with coffee. “Start on that.

  Even if we decide to shoot you, you’ll take it better on a full stomach.”

  “They’d no cause to set you afoot,” the tall man said irritably.

  Like the Good Book said, I had fallen among thieves, but they were a rough and ready lot, having no bones to pick with me, and no man likes it to be set afoot.

  When I’d eaten a mess of beans, some sourdough bread with honey, and about two pounds of good bacon, I pushed back and relaxed with another cup of coffee.

  “We’d better give him a horse, Charlie,” Willie said. “If he eats like that we can’t pack grub enough to feed him.”

  Charlie rolled a smoke, and when he had lit up he said, “Did you get a good look at any of those men?”

  When I had given a description of them—and I’d not found it necessary to tell about the men killed in the gun battle further north—Charlie looked over at Willie and said, “This here friend of yours has bought himself a packet. I figure we should let him have a horse.”

  Willie and Charlie Button they were, and known men. Somehow they had come upon this Hidden Valley and were using it to hide stolen stock …

  I had my own hunch about that, believing they had learned of it from Peg-Leg Smith, who devoted more time to horse stealing than to losing mines.

  “What I can’t figure,” I said, “is how you get those horses in here in the first place.

  That’s a mighty small hole for a horse.”

  I didn’t get an answer to this.

  “You tell me you like to travel by dark,”

  Willie said. “All right, you rest up today. When dark comes we’ll give you a horse and point you right. The rest is up to you.”

  “I’ll be obliged.”

  They never said ary a word about me saying nothing about their hide-out, nor did they need to.

  Sure enough, Willie showed me out through the same hole by which I crawled in, and when we got outside there was Charlie and a couple of others with a fine-looking sorrel horse.

  “The horse is yours,” Charlie said. “You ride him on out of here.”

  Well, I couldn’t avoid it somehow. I just looked at Charlie and said, “How good is my title to this horse?”

  Charlie grinned at me. “If you’re ridin’ west your title is good; if you’re ridin’ toward Arizona, it ain’t good.”

  Title or not, those boys loaned me a good horse. He just reached out those long legs of his and went away from there, and with the bait of grub they packed for me, I made an easy ride of it.

  The hotel of Mr. Gabriel Allen was the place to put up, and when I’d paid my bit from the few dollars of gold in my pockets, I arranged for a bath and bought a razor and soap.

  Nobody had got at the money in my pockets, carried for day-to-day expense, so now I went the whole hog and spent twelve dollars for a new suit of clothes. Things seemed almighty high here in the city, for I could have bought the same suit in Prescott for ten dollars.

  Of course, this wasn’t actually the city—Los Angeles was still thirteen or fourteen miles off -comb prices were the same. I spent another dollar and a half for a white shirt, and when the man offered to throw in a necktie if I bought two more, I did so.

  A boy on the corner blacked my boots for a nickel, so when I finally mounted up to ride into Los Angeles I was dressed for the city, and looked elegant enough for any of those fine homes along San Pedro or Main streets.

  So I rode into town and put up at the Pico House, which was the biggest, finest-looking building I ever did see. It had been opened in 1870, and was all of three stories high and built of blue granite. It stood right on the corner of Main Street and the Plaza.

  The room they gave me was almost as large as our whole cabin back in the mountains, and when I had brushed up and combed my hair again, I checked my gun. Somebody owed me some horses, thirty pounds of gold, and a couple of good saddles, and I was going to have them back.

  Little was my worry over that black-eyed witch girl, for once free of the desert I’d an idea she could care for herself. And so far as she knew, I was dead back there on the sand of the Mojave.

  Nonetheless, it was up to me to find out if she was getting a fair shake, and in the way of doing that I would have my gold back, and my horses.

  This was the biggest town I ever did see, and I’d suspect there were all of ten thousand people in it.

  I’ve heard tell of bigger towns … come to think of it, New Orleans was bigger; but that had been long ago, and far away.

  It seemed to me no town was large enough to hide that black-eyed woman, and I was right.

  First person I saw when I came down stairs into the main lobby of the Pico House was Dorinda Robiseau.

  She was across the room from me and she was talking to two men, dressed-up city folks. One of them was a big young man, handsome as all get out, but somehow he looked to me like a shorthorn. Although that slight bulge on the right side of his waist in front gave me to wonder. The other man, maybe fifty-odd years old, was shorter and square-shouldered.

 
; Walking up to them, I said, “Ma’am, I’m glad to see you made it all right.”

  Her back had been toward me and there was an instant when it stayed toward me. Then she turned and looked me right in the eye and said, “I beg your pardon? were you speaking to me?”

  The two men who stood with her both looked at me as if I had crawled out from under a log. The big young man started to speak, but I said, “When I got back and found you gone, I was some worried.”

  “I am afraid,” she spoke coolly, “you have made a mistake. I have no idea who or what you are talking about.”

  Well, I started to explain. “Why, out there in the Mojave, ma’am, I—was The young man broke in on me. “You heard the lady. She doesn’t know you.”

  He turned his back to me and took her by the arm, and they walked off and left me standing there.

  Felt like a country fool, I did, them turning from me like that, and when I glanced around several people were looking at me and smiling with amusement. Made me mad, deep down. And me, traipsing over the desert, fighting and all to get her to safety, and then turned down like some stranger!

  The more I thought of it the more it irritated me, and then it came over me that whilst I’d found her, I still hadn’t my outfit back. I started to follow after them, but they were gone, clean out of sight.

  There was a black carriage going away from the hotel, and mayhap they’d stepped into t.

  Anyway, I was going to get my gold.

  There were a hundred and ten saloons in Los Angeles about that time, but the one I’d been told to head for was Buffum’s. It was the place to hear things, and was the most elegant in town. Buffum’s … that was the place.

  Putting on my hat I stepped outside, and as I did so a man moved up beside me. He was a slender, dark young man. A Mexican … or a Californian.

  He spoke to me quietly. “It is of a possibility, se@nor, that we have interests in common.”

  “You’re doing the talking.”

  “It is said the dark-eyed se@norita has been ill, and confined to her room. I think this is untrue. I believe she left Los Angeles and was brought back.”

  “Mister,” I said, and I stopped and looked at him with no pleasant thoughts in my mind, “I expect what the lady does is her business.”