Lando (1962)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 08

  Maybe I’d been plain tired out by the story.

  Maybe it hadn’t seemed to have much point, but the fact was that he must have told me where the treasure was, and all I had to do was let my memory take me there.

  Thing was, suppose it didn’t come to me right off? I’d have to stay, and I’d need explanation for that. The fast drive we’d made would help. I could let on I didn’t know much about cattle; and if anybody who talked cows to me did so more than a few minutes, they’d know I didn’t know anything about them.

  So I’d let on like I’d driven the legs off the cattle, to say nothing of our horses, and we were laying up alongside this water to recuperate.

  That much decided, the next thing was to get my memory to operating. But the difficulty with a memory is that it doesn’t always operate the way a body wants. Seems contrary as all get out, and when you want to remember a particular thing, that idea is shunted off to one side.

  Rousting around, I got some sticks, some dead brush, and a few pieces of driftwood left from storms, and I made a fire. Then I put water on for coffee.

  All of a sudden I felt my skin prickle, and I looked over at the dun. Tired as he was, he had his head up and his ears pricked. His nostrils were spreading and narrowing as he tried the air to see what it was out there.

  That old Walch Navy was right there in my belt, and I eased it out a mite so’s it was ready to hand.

  Something was out there.

  Me, I never was one to believe in ha’nts.

  Not very much, that is. Fact is, I never believed in them at all, only passing a graveyard like—well, I always walked pretty fast and felt like something was closing in on me.

  No, I don’t believe in ha’nts, but this here was a coast where dead men lay. Why, the crew of the gold ship must have been forty, fifty men, and all of them dead and gone.

  Something was sure enough out there. That line-back dun knew it and I knew it. Trouble was, he had the best idea of what it was, and he wasn’t talking. He was just scenting the air and trying to figure out for sure. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it—I could tell that much. And I didn’t either.

  I felt like reaching over and shaking Miguel awake, only he’d think I was spooked. And you know something? I was.

  This here was country where folks didn’t come of a night, if at any time. It was a wild, lonely place, and there was nothing to call them.

  I taken out that Walch Navy and, gripping it solid, I held it right there in my lap with the firelight shining on it. And you can just bet I felt better.

  Out there beyond the fire I suddenly heard the sand scrooch. You know how sand goes under foot sometimes. Kind of a crunch, yet not quite that.

  Heard it plain as day, and I lifted that .36 and waited.

  Quite a spell passed by, and all of a sudden the dun, who’d gone back to feeding, upped with his head again. Only this time he was looking off toward the trail from the north, and he was all perked up like something interesting was coming. Not like before.

  He had his ears up and all of a sudden he whinnied—and sure enough, from out of the darkness there came another whinny. And then I heard the sound of a horse coming, and Miguel, he sat up.

  We both stayed there listening and, like fools, neither of us had sense enough to get back out of the firelight—like the Tinker had done that night when Baker, Lee, and Longley paid us the visit … and a few dozen other times along the trail.

  We both just sat there and let whoever it was ride right up to the fire.

  And when that slim-legged, long-bodied horse came into the firelight and I saw who it was, I couldn’t believe it. Nor could Miguel.

  If we’d seen the ghost I’d been expecting, we wouldn’t have been more surprised.

  It was Gin Locklear.

  Chapter Six.

  She rode side-saddle, of course, her skirt draped in graceful folds along the side of the horse, her gloved hand holding the bridle reins just as if she hadn’t ridden miles through bandit-infested country to get here. She was just as lovely as when I last saw her.

  She taken my breath. Coming up on us out of the night so unexpected-like, and after all the goings-on outside of camp … I hadn’t a thought in my head, I was that rattled.

  It came on me that I’d best help her from the saddle and I crossed over and took her hand, but it was not until she was actually on the ground that I saw the dark shadows under her eyes and the weariness in her face.

  “Miguel,” I said, “you handle the horse.

  I’ll shake up some fresh coffee.”

  I dumped the pot and rinsed it, and put in fresh water from the spring. Then I stirred up the fire.

  “I had to shoot a man,” Gin said suddenly.

  Those big eyes of hers handed me a jolt when I looked into them. “Did you kill him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Miguel turned toward us. “It would have been better had he been killed. Now he will speak of a beautiful se@norita riding alone to the south, and others will come.”

  “There were two men with him,” she said, “but this one held my bridle when they ordered me from the saddle. They were shouting and drinking and telling me what they were going to do.

  “Of course, they did not see my gun and did not expect me to shoot, but I did shoot the man holding the horse, and then I got away. One of them had hold of my saddle and he tried to grab me. He fell, I think.”

  “Where was this?”

  “Outside of Matamoras. Only a few miles out.”

  Then she said, “I came to help. Jonas and the Tinker have been arrested—Jonas, at least. He was recognized.”

  “Recognized? By whom?”

  “They came looking for him, just as if they knew he would be there.”

  My first thought was of Franklyn Deckrow. He was the one with the most to gain if Jonas was not permitted to return. Of course, he might have been seen by someone who remembered him from prison.

  It was little enough I knew of the Deckrow deal, but from all I’d gathered Deckrow had run the plantation into debt and Jonas believed it had been done deliberately so Deckrow could later buy up the mortgages and gain possession. If so, he could have sent a rider on a fast horse to Matamoras.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” I said. “This is no place for a woman.”

  “The place for a woman,” she said, smiling at me, “is where she is needed. I ride as well as most men, and I have a fine horse. Also, I’ve lived on a ranch most of my life.”

  “Did you see anybody as you came along the trail?”

  She looked at me curiously. “Not for miles. I’ve never seen a more deserted road, and if I hadn’t seen a reflection of your campfire I might have gone right on by.”

  “You didn’t circle the camp?”

  “No.”

  Miguel was looking at me now, and I noticed he had his rifle in hand.

  “There was somebody around the camp. Somebody or some thing.”

  Miguel stared uneasily at the blackness beyond the fire. Neither of us liked to think there was somebody or something out there whom we could not see.

  “Maybe we should go, se@nor?”

  “No, we’ll sit right here and let the stock rest up.” That was my plan, but the arrival of Gin had put a crimp in it. If outlaws were going to come hunting her, we’d be in trouble a-plenty.

  “Come daybreak,” I said, “we’ll move the herd.”

  “Where, se@nor?”

  “Yonder, I think we can find a place to hold the cattle. Maybe some of the other men will get through. That Tinker—he’s a sly one. If he had any warning, no law is going to latch onto him.”

  Gin made herself comfortable on my bed. I stirred up the fire and finished off what coffee the three of us hadn’t drank, and ate a couple of cold tortillas.

  At daybreak the wind was off the sea, and you could feel the freshness of it, with a taste like no other wind.

  Wide awake, I thought of those initials of pa’s. Pa had left that
sign, and he’d left it for himself, or mayhap for me. He was a planning man, pa was, and one likely to foresee. … I think he taken time deliberately to teach me where that gold was. The trouble was, I’d gone ahead and forgotten.

  Some things I did remember. He’d taught me to mark a trail, Indian fashion. Now, suppose he had marked this one? If he had, he would have added his own particular ways to it, but meanwhile, I planned to look around. If I found no sign I was going to drive that herd where I felt it should go, with no scouting for grass, or anything. Maybe out of my hidden thoughts would come the memory of what pa had taught me, to guide our way.

  I taken a circle around camp, and I found no sign—nothing left by pa that I could make out.

  That isn’t to say I didn’t find sign of another kind, and when I seen that track I felt a chill go right up my spine that stood every hair on end.

  What I found were wolf tracks, but wolf tracks bigger than any wolf that ever walked— any normal sort of wolf, that is. These wolf tracks were big as dinner plates.

  Well, I stopped right there, looking down at those tracks, and the other two came over to look.

  Miguel’s face turned white when he saw the tracks, and even Gin kind of caught at my arm.

  We had both heard tell of werewolves, and certainly Miguel knew the stories about them.

  Me, I was thinking of something else. I was thinking of where those tracks were. Soon I scouted around, and a far piece away, like whatever it was had been taking giant strides, I found another track, this one set deep in the sod.

  The tracks circled about the water hole at the spring. Whatever it was, it was trying to get to water, but the water had been lighted by our fire, with one of us setting awake.

  All of a sudden I saw something that made me forget all about werewolves and ha’nts and such.

  Far as that goes, I’d never heard tell of a thirsty ghost.

  What I saw was something back in the brush, and at first it didn’t look like much of a find, except that there was no reason for it being where it was. It was a broken reed, and it lay right on the edge of a bunch of mesquite.

  Taking up the reed, I drew it out, and you know, there were several pieces of reed stuck one into another until they were all of eight or nine feet long. Stretched out, they reached from the spring’s pool to the brush nearby.

  “What is it?” Gin asked.

  “Somebody wanted a drink, and wanted it bad, so he made a tube of these reeds, breaking them off to be rid of the joints and putting them together so he could suck water through them. He must have siphoned water right out of the pool into his mouth while I was just a-setting there.”

  Nobody said anything, and I nosed around a mite, studying the brush, and finally finding where the man or whatever it was had knelt.

  There, too, I found the wolf tracks.

  “Two-legged wolf,” I said, “wearing some kind of coarse-woven jeans or pants. See here?” I showed them the place in the brush. “That’s where he knelt whilst siphoning the water.”

  Following the tracks back from the brush, I said, “He’s big—look at the length of that stride. I can’t match it without running.”

  I studied the reed tube again. “Canny,” I said. “Like something the Tinker might do.”

  “We should go,” Gin suggested.

  “No,” I said, “not without what we came after.

  We have come too far and risked too much.”

  “But how can you hope to find it?” Gin said.

  “You’ve no idea where to look.”

  “Maybe I have. Maybe I am just beginning to recollect some things pa told me.”

  The wind was blowing harder and the sky was gray and overcast. The cattle wandered to the water in small groups, then returned to the bedding ground to graze or rest. They showed no restlessness, and seemed content to hold to the low spots out of the wind.

  I cut some sod with a machete, and made a wall to protect our fire from the wind, adding just enough fuel to keep some coals. Miguel was worried, which I could see plain enough, and so was Gin.

  Meanwhile I was doing some figuring. Jonas was in prison, and the Tinker might well be, so that left whatever was to be done up to me. Gin was with us, which she hadn’t ought to be, the country being torn up with trouble the way it was, and somewhere close by was that ship filled with gold.

  Jonas needed his share to get his mortgage paid off, and the Tinker wanted his. As far as that goes, I wasn’t going to buck or kick if somebody handed me some of that there gold.

  Around the fire at breakfast, Miguel told me a mite about Herrara. He was a lieutenant of General Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, usually called Cheno, and part of the time he was a soldier with a legitimate rank, and part of the time an outlaw, depending on who was in power in Mexico and on his own disposition at the moment.

  Of good family, Cortina had become a renegade, but one with a lot of followers. He was a shrewd fighter, risking battle only when it suited him, and running when it didn’t. He was a man of uncertain temperament, but dangerous enough and strong enough to handle the pack of wolves that followed him.

  Frequently, they raided across the border into Texas and had run off thousands of head of Texas cattle. Yet he had good men following him, too, and on occasion he could be both gallant and generous. But generally speaking, he was a man to fight shy of.

  As for Herrara, he was one of the wolves, fierce as an Apache, and by all accounts treacherous.

  Leaving Miguel by the fire, with his horse saddled, to keep an eye on the cows, Gin and I rode off through the brush, hunting the water’s edge.

  We hadn’t far to go. A long gray finger of water came twisting through the grass, leading some distance away to a larger body of water like a bay.

  There we could see the white, bare bones of an ancient boat, much too small for what we were looking for … which, anyway, was by all accounts down under water.

  My Henry was in the saddle boot, and Gin carried one also. But what I kept ready to hand was that Walch Navy. I liked the feel of that gun.

  As we rode we saw nothing—only a low shore of gray-green grass, the gray water looking like a sheet of steel, the reeds bending under the wind, gulls wheeling and crying overhead.

  Whitecaps were showing on the water.

  It might have been a world never seen by man. No tracks, no ashes of old fires, nothing man had built but the stark white ribs of that old boat.

  “It’s cold,” Gin said.

  Her face looked pinched, and the place was depressing her, as it did me.

  Yet, wild and lonely as it was, the country had an eerie sort of charm like nowhere I’d ever seen. Toward the Gulf I could see the dunes of sand heaped by wind and wave, and somewhere out there was a long bar that stretched miles away to the south.

  A barren desolate land. In spite of this, the place seemed to be working a charm on me.

  “Let’s go back,” Gin said.

  We turned and made our start, riding along the shore. The wind was blowing stronger, the brush and reeds bending before it. A few cold, spitting drops of rain began to fall.

  The place to which we had driven the herd was in a cul-de-sac, with the sea on three sides—long arms of the sea where the water had flowed in over low ground or the working of the waves had hollowed it out.

  To the east was a long, snake-like arm of the sea that nowhere was over a quarter of a mile wide. South and southwest the coves were wider.

  The grass was good, and the cattle were protected by thick brush from the worst of the wind. Most of these cattle had at one time or another grazed along the shore, and like Shanghai Pierce and his “sea lions,” as he called the longhorns that swam back and forth from the coast to Padre Island, they were used to the sea and were good swimmers.

  “I like it,” I said suddenly, gesturing toward the country around us. “It’s almighty wild and lonely, but I take to it.”

  We drew up and looked back. The sweep of the shore had an oddly familiar look to
it that started excitement in me. I frowned and tried to remember, but nothing came.

  “Pa must have told me about this place,” I said. “I can feel it. This here’s where the gold is, somewhere about here.”

  “Your father must have been an interesting man.”

  So, a-setting there in the chill wind, I talked about him as I recalled him, big, powerful and dark, straight and tall. An easy-moving man who never seemed in a hurry, and yet could move swift as any striking snake when need be.

  “He’d never let be,” I said, “not with him knowing where that gold is. He’d come back for it.

  Ma never wanted him to go back.

  “You see, before pa and ma met, he had trouble with her brothers, the Kurbishaws, and over this gold. There were three of them, led by Captain Elam. The other two were Gideon and Eli.

  “I never got the straight of it, although from time to time I’d hear talk around the house, but they were after the gold the same time pa was, and they tried to run him off. Pa never was much on running, as I gather.

  “Later on, with some of this gold in his jeans, he went to Charleston and cut quite a swath about town. And there he met ma. They taken to each other, and it wasn’t until she invited him home that he met her brothers face to face and knew who they were.”

  “It sounds very dramatic.”

  “Must have been, pa being what he was and those Kurbishaws hating him like they did. I knew little about it, but I gathered more from talking with the Tinker and Jonas … that helped me to piece together things I’d heard as a child.”

  We walked our horses on, the dun’s mane blown by the wind. It gave me an odd feeling to know that pa had more than likely watched and walked this same shore, maybe many times, a-hunting that gold.

  Odd thing, I’d never thought of my pa as a person. I expect a child rarely does think of his parents that way. They are a father and a mother, but a body rarely thinks of them as having hopes, dreams, ambitions and desires and loves. Yet day by day pa was now becoming more real to me than he had ever been, and I got to wondering if he ever doubted himself like I did, if he ever felt short of what he wished to be, if he ever longed for things beyond him that he couldn’t quite put into ^ws.