Bell stopped, staring at her. “Put that gun down!” he snapped.
“Couple of ’em over here, too,” Bill Honeycutt said mildly. “Be quite a contest to see who gets lead into you first, and how much. I figure I can, but Lark here, he always did figure he could shoot faster than me, so maybe it would be him. As for the Señora there, I don’t know whether you ever seen her shoot or not. I seen her drop a runnin’ antelope seventy yards off with a quick shot. You’re closer an’ a bigger target.”
Bell sat very still. He knew all about those Texans from El Monte. There were quite a few of them, a wild, roistering, hell-for-leather lot who respected courage and little else. They were hard workers, but troublemakers. And he had no doubt at all about their shooting.
Several years before a small colony of them had moved in and settled there, and since then they had run cattle, a few had become farmers, and a few were in business. They were good people to leave alone.
He was wary now. “All right,” he said crisply, “see to your business.”
“Bring the man here,” Sean repeated, and Montero turned and walked away.
For a few minutes they stood in uneasy silence. The music and the dancing had stopped. A few of the visitors had seated themselves and were drinking at the tables under the awning.
Montero came back around the corner of the house and he was walking beside an Indian who led a burro. Upon the burro’s back there was a man…an old, old man.
They stared. Zeke Wooston suddenly dismounted and walked to the burro. He caught the old man by the arm, staring into his face. Then he dropped the arm as if burned and stepped sharply back.
“Russell!” he said, almost choking on the name. “By God, it’s King-Pin!”
They crowded around, helping the old man from the saddle. His clothing was ragged and old, and the man who wore them was only a shadow of the powerful King-Pin.
He leaned against the burro, jaws agape, drooling a little, his eyes vacant and empty. “Zeke,” he muttered, “Zeke, I—”
His voice trailed off and he stopped.
They drew back from him, backing slowly away. Wooston’s pallor was that of a man who has seen a ghost.
“That’s not Russell!” Bell said sharply. “Russell was a young man. He couldn’t have been more than thirty! This man…why he must be seventy or eighty years old!”
“That’s him,” somebody said. “Look at the notches on the gun! Not more’n three weeks ago he was showin’ me them notches an’ that pistol. Ain’t many of them around, anyway.”
Carlotta, the housekeeper, came from the house with a glass of wine. She handed it to the old man and he took it in fingers that trembled.
“King-Pin,” Honeycutt said, “what happened to you?”
“Lost…lost,” Russell muttered. “I was lost. Trail disap…peared. There was an altar…I climbed on it to see…fell. Fell for a long time. Injuns got me…they taken me.”
“Where did they take you?”
He raised his head and looked slowly around, his eyes staring and empty. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“Those Injuns,” somebody said, “they didn’t take your gun?”
“Paid it no mind,” Russell said.
Bell’s horse stepped forward. “Are you Russell?” he asked.
“Walter Pendleton Russell. They call me King-Pin. I come from Lancashire to Carolina. I handled a freight team on the Santa Fe Trail. I come west. I—” his voice trailed off and he drank the wine, then dropped the glass, staring as it lay in the dust.
“What about those Injuns?” Somebody asked from the crowd. “Was they Mohaves’ Paiutes?”
“Injuns…never seen the like…carried me off, dropped me…just lef’ me.”
Tomas Alexander edged closer. “The Old One? Did you see him?”
“Dead…dead on the sand.” The old man was silent for a few moments and then he said, “Cave…he was lyin’ there. I was huntin’ gold…turned around…he was gone.”
“Got up an’ walked out,” Wooston said.
“Dead,” Russell muttered. “That was years…years back. I recall—”
“King,” Wooston interrupted. “It was only a few days ago! Just up in the mountains!”
The old man stared at him with weak, watery eyes. “Years…years back. I seen—” his voice trailed off.
“Better let him sit down,” Sean suggested quietly. “The man is old, he is very tired. Lord knows what he’s been through.”
Eileen Mulkerin lowered her rifle. “Carlotta, take him inside. Give him some wine. Maybe he will eat something.”
The Californios had withdrawn and were gathered in groups, talking. The music started again, and the dancing, but there was no heart in it.
“That was King-Pin Russell,” Sean said quietly, to Nick Bell. “He’s alive, as you can see. You still want to take me in.”
Bell shrugged. “He’s alive…if that’s him.” He looked curiously at Sean Mulkerin. “You were up there. What happened, anyway?”
“Who knows? Looks like he’s aged fifty years.”
“That isn’t reasonable.”
“No, Captain, it isn’t.”
Bell stared at him. “Mulkerin, you don’t believe all that damned nonsense, do you? I mean, all that talk about what happens in the mountains?”
Sean shrugged. “Captain, what happens to one man in the mountains need never happen to another. The Indians lived here long before we came. Do you think it wise to dismiss all they know as superstition? I do not.
“We live in a world, Captain, that none of us know too well, and none of us know it all. I can only say this. My mother went up there with the Old One. The Old One went to sleep on the floor of a cave, and when she called to him to leave, he was dead.”
“And Russell found him there?”
“It sounds like it.”
“He says the old man was carried off while his back was turned?”
“You heard him, so did I. Captain, there are places up there where the heat waves seem close up, everything is kind of indistinct and unreal. You can’t judge distance properly, nor time either.”
“What do you suppose happened to him?” Bell mused.
Sean shrugged again. “He says he fell. Maybe shock can do that to a man. Maybe he was carried off, taken somewhere we don’t even know about for…he says it was for years.”
“And we know it was only a few days.”
“Do we? A few days to us, maybe years to him. I am not going to try to explain it. I only know the Old One warned my mother about wandering around. When she left, the trail was plain, but when Russell looked for it he could not find it.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Bell said irritably. He turned his horse and rode away, followed by his troopers.
Zeke Wooston was at the door of the house, talking to the Señora. “But he’s one of my men!” he protested. “I’ll take what care of him he needs.”
“Let him have him, Señora,” Sean suggested. “We have no right to hold him.”
“But he’s an old man! He needs care!”
“Let them care for him,” Sean replied. “I do not think he will be around for long.”
“What do you mean by that?” Wooston protested.
“Look at him,” Sean replied. “Have you really looked at him?”
They turned. Russell sat at the table, his head hanging, his hands lax upon his knees. He seemed to have shrunken visibly. His face was seamed and old. Sean spoke, and after a moment the old man’s head lifted, but his eyes were unseeing and after a minute, they dropped.
Wooston stared at the old man, then thought rapidly. Russell had found where the gold came from. He had actually seen the Old One, and if the old man had died there, it must have been the farthest they had gone. Surely, dying, he could have shown them no further along a trail.
Russell, then, knew where the gold came from. Dying or not, he knew. And he could tell Wooston. The big man touched his lips with his tongue, then he sm
iled. “He was my friend. I will not leave him alone and helpless now. If you will lend us a carreta?”
“Of course,” Sean said. “He will need care.”
Wooston hurried out, and for a moment Sean, the Señora and Russell were alone.
“Russell?”
The old man looked up, if old man he could be called.
“I was never your enemy. This…whatever happened…I am sorry.”
“I fell,” Russell muttered, talking as if to himself. “It was the altar…I should not have touched it. I…I felt it…I felt I should not, but…but I had to see!”
“It is all right, Mr. Russell,” Eileen said quietly. “We hold no grudge against you. You have suffered enough.”
His body shook. “I was lost…lost! I could not find…there was no way! Shimmering, Shimmering, shimmering! I got through…into something, somewhere. I tried to find my way back. I was lost…lost.
“Everywhere there were bushes, bushes that clawed and tore at me, I fell again, and I do not know for how long I lay, I got up and suddenly I was back. I was on the hills above the sea, and the air was fresh and cool. I was back. I do not know how but I was back.”
“He has lost his wits,” Wooston had come back into the room. “His mind is wandering.”
“Whatever happened to him,” Eileen Mulkerin said, “should not happen to any man.”
Wooston helped Russell to his feet and they started outside. Sean watched them go, then said to his mother, “I’ve got to go back, you know. I’ve got to be sure the Old One was buried.”
“Russell said his body vanished.”
“Perhaps…he might have been delirious even then. His mind does seem to wander. It is not coherent.”
“You do not believe that, Sean.”
“No, I don’t,” he replied honestly. “We’ll never know what happened to him. Some terrible shock, or maybe some injury did this to him…or some experience. I’ve heard of men’s hair turning white in a single night.”
The musicians were playing again, and the mood of depression brought on by Russell’s unexpected return and the coming of Nick Bell had vanished. Suddenly it was a fiesta again.
Sean looked quickly around, caught the flashing black eyes of Mariana and moved through the crowd toward her. She looked up laughing, and together they moved off to the dancing.
“It is over then?” she asked, during a pause.
“No,” he said quietly, “it is not over. Wooston has gone away, but when the crowd is gone, he will come back, and he still has men hidden up in the hills.”
“There will be trouble?”
Sean shrugged. “Who knows? I think there will be. There will be trouble with Zeke Wooston and there will be trouble with Machado…he is not finished.”
“I danced with him.”
“I saw.”
“He came and it was a challenge.”
“So? Do you want to go back with him? You can, you know.”
“With him? No!” Her eyes flashed at him. “I will stay…with you.”
“And my mother,” he said, smiling.
“I like her…your mother. She is a woman.”
“Nobody could argue that point. Sometimes I wish—”
“That she would marry again?”
“How did you guess?” He paused. “Yes, I think so, but it would take a strong man, a very strong man, sure of himself…and calm. She has fire enough for two.”
“And you, Señor?” Her eyes were impudent, challenging. “Will you marry?”
“Someday,” he grinned, “someday when I can find a woman who will walk beside me…not behind me.”
“I think she is not hard to find, this woman. I think you will find her.”
Polanco was suddenly beside him. “Señor? There are men upon the hills…more men. They have camped, and they wait.”
“So?”
“Señor Wooston is among them…and Machado.”
He glanced at her. “You see? It is never over. I think someone must die first.”
Johnny Mims had been listening to Polanco. “You know somethin’, Sean? I’m powerful tired. Boney weary, I am. I think I’ll just sort of settle down an’ rest up…me an’ the boys.”
Sean glanced toward the hills. There was a reflection of fire at one point among the dark and lonely hills. A breeze from the sea stirred the leaves of the chaparral.
“Polanco,” he suggested, “ride down to the Lady Luck and tell Tennison to send me two good men, will you? Send them before daylight. I think we’ll have visitors.”
Chapter 19
*
NOBODY NEEDED TO tell Ruiz Beltran how to do the job to which he had been assigned. Nor did Velasco need any instruction.
Beltran had been a hunter of jaguars and wolves for stockmen south of the border. When the government of his state offered a bounty for the scalps of Apaches he had done well, and who was to say whether the scalps on which he collected bounty were not all those of Apaches?
Velasco had been a bandit, a farmer, a vaquero, and, briefly, a soldier.
To kill such a man as Sean Mulkerin was easy. He rode often into the mountains, occasionally to town. The mountains would be better, for many a man went to the mountains who did not return.
As for the Señora, she had hair like a flame. It was easy to see, and there was no chance of a mistake. Nobody else had such hair…he had never seen such hair. Nor such a woman.
They had found a seep on a small, out-of-the-way mesa near Saddle Peak, and there they camped among some boulders. The seep was a mere trickle, and apparently known to none but the few birds, and small animals for whom the water was sufficient. Enlarging the basin somewhat they soon had enough water for what was needed. Secure from discovery, they could hide themselves and their horses while studying the land around them. From not far off there was a good position to observe the comings and goings of the ranch.
On the day following their arrival, the fiesta ended with a stream of carretas and riders leaving. All did not depart at once, so they waited. They ate, slept, drank a little wine, and waited.
“One thing at a time, you see?” Beltran suggested. “One day he will ride out alone, and when he does, the time will come.”
“And when they come for his body?” Velasco suggested.
“Perhaps. I think maybe when first they take his body to the ranch. She will come out. She with the red hair. How can one make a mistake? But we will shoot…both of us.”
“And then?”
“We will arrange a meeting with Señor Wooston. We will tell him to bring the money.”
“And if he does not?”
“We will kill him. I think maybe we will kill him anyway, when he brings the money. I do not like Señor Wooston too much…and he will have more money. Besides, nobody will know what we did if he is killed, also. You see?”
The idea appealed to Velasco. He did not like Wooston, either, and the idea of killing him was appealing. How could you trust such a man?
*
IN TOPANGA CANYON there was a cantina, a very small place run by a very big woman. Tia Angelena was taller than most men and weighed, it was guessed, some two hundred and fifty pounds, only a few of them fat, and she administered her place of business with a firm and muscular hand. Yet she cared not in the least who they might be or where they came from.
Tia Angelena was a woman of no scruples to speak of but considerable loyalty, and one of these loyalties was to Eileen Mulkerin.
Angelena had upon one occasion some years before been taken ill, and believing it to be cholera, which had appeared briefly in the area, both customers and her few neighbors fled. In that extremity Eileen Mulkerin came riding by, saw no smoke from the chimney and the door standing open. Sensing distress, the Señora dismounted and went in to find Angelena in a coma, the place a mess, the animals starving.
Being a woman of anger and determination, Eileen Mulkerin took charge. Within a matter of minutes she had straightened the bed, the room, and was preparin
g treatment for Tia Angelena, who did not have cholera but was, nonetheless, very ill.
For three days she stayed and administered to the sick woman until finally she was able to get up and care for herself.
Tia Angelena was shocked and appalled that such a lady should have seen her in such a situation, and that she, of all people, would take it upon herself to nurse her back to health.
Nothing much was said, but the two always spoke in passing, and Tia Angelena did not forget.
Del Campo and Polanco had stopped by for a glass of wine, and Tia leaned her great forearms upon the bar and looked at them. She took the cigar from her teeth and said, “You work for the Malibu?”
“We do.”
“It is between us, this.”
“Si?”
“The Señora is my friend.”
She sensed their doubt, recognized their politeness, and said, “No matter…when I was dying, she cared for me. I have not forgotten.”
Del Campo nodded. Who could forget such a thing? And the Señora had cared for this one? It was another good mark for her.
“She is our friend also,” Del Campo said gently. “She is a woman, that one.”
“Two men come here.”
Polanco shrugged. “It is possible.”
“Two men…they come, they go. I think they hide in the chaparral. They come when no one is near. When someone comes, they go.”
“These men have names?”
She shrugged. “One is called Beltran.”
“Ah?” Del Campo scratched his jaw. “I know this one. You are right, Tia, he is a bad man, a very bad man. When he comes, someone dies.”
He paused for a moment. “And the other one? He is thin, hard? With greasy eyes that slide but never look at one?”
“Si.”
“It is Velasco.”
“You know them?” Polanco asked.
“From Chihuahua I know them, from Sonora I hear of them. I think it is very good you tell us, Tia.”
“Why not? If they are proper bandits they will come here to drink, to laugh, to dance, to play at cards, and then vanish when the soldados come. But these? I think it is something they plan to do, you see? Something for which they must not be seen.
“I ask myself why this is so? I think of the Señora and Wooston, and I wonder.”
Novel 1974 - The Californios (v5.0) Page 14