Mustang Man (1966)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 15

  “There was a pool of water there, covered with a green moss or scum, and beyond the pool a hole under a boulder. The gold was hidden in the hole, rocks tumbled over it, and with a broken gun Nathan Hume chipped a cross on the boulder. You should find it.”

  The next morning we parted, and once in the saddle he held out his hand to me and we shook hands. “Be careful, senor, and ask no questions. The Mexicans who mined the gold had sons and grandsons, and they know that Nathan Hume’s mule train did not get to Missouri … they might even have spoken to the Indians.”

  It was not the first trailside story I’d heard of buried gold or lost mines.

  Such stories were told and retold all up and down the country, although this was the first time I’d heard this one. But I kept it in mind, and planned to take a look for myself sometime. Only things kept happening.

  In Serbin, a town of Wendish folk in Texas where I’d had friends, I killed a carpetbagger and was thrown in jail for it. But my Wendish friends found a way to help me escape and left my horse where I could find it. I joined up with a trail herd headed for the Kansas towns, but I was a man wanted by the law.

  In Abilene, which was new, raw, and wild, I found my name was known. There’d been a cousin of mine there named Tyrel and he’d killed a man in the streets, somebody said, but then I got the straight of it. He had faced down Reed Carney, walked up to him, and made him drop his gun belt into the street.

  Tyrel and Orrin Sackett—I’d heard tell of them, although they came from the Cumberland Gap country; but it gave me a rarely good feeling to know the Sackett blood ran true.

  That was long ago, and now I was here, riding north in the Panhandle of Texas, riding over the Staked Plains and heading north toward Borregos Plaza, Adobe Walls, and the buffalo camps. I was riding a lineback dun across the plains where a man could stand in his stirrups and look straight away for three days, it was that level.

  So I shoved my rifle down in the boot, I canted my hat back on my head, and I looked off across the country and opened my mouth in song. At least, I felt it was song, and tried to make it that way, although the dun wasn’t sure. The sky was blue and the plains were wide, and there was land around to stretch in.

  Maybe I’d only a few dollars in my jeans and a hanging party left behind, but the wind smelled good and the sun was warm, and it was a great time to be alive.

  The country around me began to break up again into softly rolling hills, with a few ridges and some hollows where there were trees.

  “Oh, I left my girl in San Antone, Away down near the border, I …”

  A tuft of feathers showed over the crest of a low hill, and a dozen yards away an Indian appeared, and then another and another. A broken line of Kiowas stretched out for two hundred yards. They were riding slowly toward me, their lances pointed skyward. I glanced around quickly, and across the valley there were half a dozen more riding toward me, walking their horses.

  At least a dozen of them had rifles, and they seemed in no hurry. Down the valley the way lay open, but several of the Indians were further along than I was, and they had only to cut over and head me off. There were at least thirty Indians in the whole party, and they had me boxed.

  Sweat broke out on my forehead, but my mouth was dry. I had seen what Kiowas could do to a prisoner, for I had come upon what was left when they had finished, and it was no sight for a man with a weak stomach.

  If I tried to make a run for it I would be dead within a minute.

  Turning my horse at right angles, I rode straight for them, still singing.

  Chapter 4

  My rifle was in the boot, and to reach for it would mean death. My pistol, in its holster, was held down by the thong hooked over the hammer, a necessity when riding rough country.

  So I rode straight for them, pointing the dun to ride right between two of them who rode some thirty yards apart, and singing as I rode.

  Nobody ever figured a way to account for the thinking of an Indian. They were curious as any wild animal, and at times as temperamental, but the thing they admired most was courage, because you needed courage to be a good Indian. I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere now trying to run; and when it comes to that, I am not a man who cares to run, unless it’s toward something.

  That dun pricked up his ears. He knew we were in trouble, and he didn’t like the smell of Indians; I could feel every muscle in him poised with eagerness to take out and run.

  These braves weren’t hunting me. They were a war party all right, and they were out for bigger game. But if they were fixing for trouble with me they were going to get it. As I walked my horse toward them I made up my mind what to do. The big Indian on the right was my meat. If they made a hostile move I’d jump my horse into him, and grab for my pistol. I went through the motions in my mind, and all the while I was singing about that girl I left in San Antone.

  Behind me I could hear the riders closing in, and in front of me they had slowed their horses a little, but I kept right on riding. My right hand was on my thigh, where it had been all along, only inches from the butt of my gun. I knew that if I got my gun out before they killed me I wouldn’t go alone. If there was one thing I could do well in this world it was shoot a pistol.

  Back in the Clinch Mountains in the fifties and sixties a boy just naturally cut his teeth on guns, and before I was twelve years old I’d been out in the woods feeding the family with a rifle, and with little time for anything else.

  My eyes held straight ahead, yet I was watching the Indian on either side of me.

  There were a-plenty of others there, but it was those two who would bring on the trouble and they were coming closer and closer. My spur was just caressing that bronc’s flank, ready to nudge him into action.

  Those Indians came right on and I rode right toward them. Of a sudden the one on my left brought his lance down slowly, pointing it at me, but I never flinched.

  Had I showed one sign of the scare that was in me, he’d have run me through, or tried it.

  He put the point of that lance right against my chest, and I looked over it and right into his eyes. I put my left hand up, still holding the reins, and pushed the point aside, just nice and easy, and then I walked my horse right on past.

  Believe me, the skin was crawling up my back and the hair on the back of my neck was prickling, but I didn’t dare take a look back. Suddenly there was a rustle of hoofs in the grass, but a sharp command stopped them. One of those Indians, probably an old chief, had saved my bacon. I kept right on, walking my horse, the sweat dripping off my face as if I’d dipped my head under a pump.

  I went right on until I had the low ridge behind me, and then I touched the dun with the spur and we lit out of there like the fires of hell were behind us.

  Then I slowed, turned at right angles to my route and rode down into the bed of a small stream and followed it west for a couple of miles.

  Riding in water is far from a foolproof way to hide a trail. My horses’s tracks would remain in the bottom for maybe an hour or more with the stream running at that slow rate, and the water being clear as it was, so when I got upstream I caved dirt into the water at several points to muddy the stream so the tracks couldn’t be seen, and also to give the stream more silt to fill in the tracks.

  It would take some time for the water to become clear again.

  They’d let me go on, more than likely, because they respected me, or because they were hunting bigger game, but some of the young braves might change their minds and trail off after me, liking the looks of my horse or my guns.

  Alternately walking or trotting my horse, I worked my way across country, keeping an eye out for any movement, and all the time wary of my back trail.

  Antelope were nearly always in sight, and from time to time I saw buffalo, scattered bunches of them, them, growing more frequent as I moved north. But I saw no more Indians.

  Once I found wheel tracks, but they were months old. I took in after them and followed their trail, camping near water every
night, occasionally laying over until noontime to give the dun a rest and a chance to graze.

  The country grew rougher as I went on. The stubble on my face grew thicker, and my bones and muscles grew weary of riding. Sometimes it seemed as if there must be dust and sand all through me, and half the water I drank was gyp water. But every night I checked my guns, keeping tnem clean and ready for trouble.

  Somewhere to the north, I knew, was the Mexican town of Romero. It was a little place, and had been there quite a spell. The folks there were friendly to the Indians, and some said had been Comancheros, who traded with the Indians, selling them guns in exchange for whatever the Indians had taken from the white men moving west. Nobody liked the Comancheros much, not even their own people.

  But I never put my stock in that story about the folks at Romero being Comancheros.

  But Borregos Plaza was the first place I would come to, and I was drawing close to it—at least, the way distances go in that country.

  At daybreak I dipped into the Palo Duro, feeling uneasy because this was the heart of the Comanche country; but I rested in a clump of willows until nigh on to sundown, letting the dun eat that rich green bottom grass, and drink the water there. When the shadows started reaching out, I saddled up and scouted a way out of the canyon I was in, and I breathed easier when I was back on the plains.

  The tiny cantina at Borregos Plaza was bright with lights when I walked my horse up the trail to the settlement. Dogs barked, and here and there I glimpsed movement in a darkened doorway. Strangers were welcome at Borregos Plaza, but the Mexicans who lived there had learned to be wary of them, too. It was a wild, rough land, and the few men who rode there were often wild, rough men.

  Swinging down in front of the cantina I tied the dun and, ducking my head, went through the door. There was a bar about twenty feet long, and four tables with chairs around them. A fat Mexican in a white shirt stood behind the bar, his forearms on the bar. Two leather-chapped vaqueros stood near him, drinking. At one of the tables sat two older men, one with white hair.

  The room was small, immaculate, and cool, with that sense of spaciousness one gets from Mexican building. All eyes turned on me, a big, dusty, travel-stained man. I went up to the bar, and ordered a drink.

  “You have come far, senor?”

  “Too far … ran into a war party of Kiowas.”

  “You were fortunate. You are still alive.”

  “No figuring on Indians. I rode right through them. Nobody lifted a hand.”

  They exchanged glances. It took nerve to ride through a bunch of Kiowas, and they knew that if I’d shown any weakness I would be dead now. But nobody knew how scared I’d been, and I wasn’t planning on telling them.

  “You will be hungry, senor? If you will sit down my wife will bring food to you.”

  “Gracias.” I walked over to a table and dropped wearily into a chair, then I removed my hat and ran my fingers through my hair. I could have fallen asleep right there.

  The senora brought a plate of beans, beef, and tortillas to the table, and a pot of coffee. It was late, and the others drifted out to go home. The Mexican came out from behind the bar and sat down and filled a cup with fresh coffee.

  “I am called Pio…. You want a place to stay?”

  “No … I’ve slept out so long I’d never be able to sleep inside. I’ll go out under the trees.”

  “You won’t have trouble. Those who live here are good people.”

  “Are there any other strangers around?”

  “There was a man … he rode through here yesterday but he wasn’t around long.

  He acted as if somebody was following him.”

  He looked up into my eyes but I grinned at him. “You got me wrong. I ain’t after anybody. I’m just riding north, going up to Romero, and then if things look good, maybe over to the Colorado mines.”

  He was skeptical, I could see that, but he was a good man, and he was willing to wait for any further information.

  Me, I knew better than to start anything in these quiet little places. They were quiet because they were left alone. The men here, each man in each house, had a buffalo gun and he could shoot. Each man in this town had fought Indians, renegades, and whoever wanted a fight. If a man started trouble in one of these little western towns he was setting himself up at the end of a shooting gallery.

  Moreover, it was an even-money bet that Pio knew about the shooting down country. News like that travels fast.

  After I’d eaten and had drunk a quart of coffee, I went outside and led my horse into the trees and beyond them to the meadow. Then, stripping off the saddle, I gave him a careful rubdown while he fed on a bait of corn I’d gotten from Pio.

  Western horses got mighty little corn, but that dun had it coming; and thinking of him made me think kindly of that old man back there who had given him to me.

  Before this, I hadn’t dared to strip the saddle from him for fear I might have to light out again, to light a shuck, as the saying was.

  It was a quiet night. I could hear the rustle of the cottonwood leaves, and sometimes heard subdued sounds from the plaza. There was a coyote out on the knoll making music at the stars. Rolled up in my blankets, two of them, atop my poncho, I slept like a baby … a baby who’d never known a night in his life when there mightn’t be trouble.

  Sunup was a rare fine thing. Washing my face in the water that poured into the horse trough, I glanced over at the buckboard standing in front of the cantina.

  A Mexican was hitching a fresh team to the buckboard, and the rattle of the trace chains was the only sound in the little street, shaded by the huge old cottonwoods.

  My fingers had to do for a comb, something I’d not owned in more than a year, but I saddled up before I went into my saddlebags for my razor, which I stropped on my belt. Then I shaved, using the still end of the horse trough for a mirror.

  It made me look some better, although I’d never win no prizes for looks, not with that broken nose of mine.

  When I’d finished shaving, I dabbed whiskey on my jaws for a shaving lotion and then led my dun across to the hitch rail. A man living my land of life never would let himself get caught without a gun or a saddle horse.

  I went inside, where Pio was standing over a table at which three people were sitting, but the first one I saw was the girl.

  She was young … maybe seventeen. Most girls were married at her age, or soon after. She had kind of dark red hair and brown eyes. … She was beautiful … taller than most girls … and shaped like music.

  The old man with her was rail-thin and waspish, with hard gray eyes and a gray mustache mixed with red. You could see at a glance that he was a man with no give to him, and a man that no man in his right mind would try to cross. The third man was a breed … I’d say half Indian, anyway. A slight-built man, he was, and past middle age.

  When I sat down at a table Pio’s wife came in with a plate of food, a heaping plate, for she had noticed the night before that I was a good feeder. She was one of those women who like nothing better than to see a man sit up to table and put away the food.

  A couple of times the old man glanced my way, and once the girl did. I heard Pio say something about “Romero …” but his voice trailed off.

  Pretty soon he came over to my table and dropped into a chair. He motioned to his wife for a fresh pot of coffee and we started in on it, Pio being as good a hand at putting it away as I was myself.

  “Those people,” Pio said, “they go north.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I fear for them. She is young, the senorita. And the men … good men, but not plainsmen.”

  “What are they doin’ out here then? No man in his right mind brings a woman like that into this country.”

  Pio shrugged. “I brought mine. What must be done must be done. Perhaps there was no other place.”

  There were questions I could have asked, but it was none of my business. I was lighting out of here right soon, and more than likely I wouldn’t
be back this way again.

  Only that pack train of Nathan Hume’s kept sticking in my mind. If all that gold was up there in those mountains, maybe I should just look around. I wanted no part of that outfit I’d left behind, but it was likely I’d be there before them.

  “It is said you are an outlaw, senor?”

  I looked up at him, but I did not speak. It was said, but I didn’t much like it.

  “I think, myself, you are an honest man, and a caballero. I think you are one to be trusted.”

  “You think whatever you like.”

  “Those three … they need help.”

  My hand was reaching for the bean pot, but it stopped halfway.

  “No, you don’t,” I said. “Not me. I’m not being saddled with no pilgrims. Not crossing that country.”

  “It was a thought.”

  “You better give it another think. I’m a fast-travelin’ man in Injun country. I want it so’s I can run or hide, and you’d play hell hidin’ a buckboard or its tracks. It’s a far stretch from here to wherever they’re headed, and I’ve got business up country.”

  “She is a pretty girl. The Comanches …”

  “Too bad.”

  Pio was silent. Maybe he knew more about me than I wanted to admit to myself, but he just sat there and waited, and like a damned fool I looked over at that girl setting there with her pa, if that was what he was, and that breed.

  She was so fresh and young and pretty that I had to look away fast or soon I’d be doing just what Pio wanted, and making a fool of myself. Yet a body couldn’t see her setting there looking so young and lovely without thinking what would happen to her if the Comanches got her.

  Now, back east where the Indians are tame and mighty few, a lot of folks have started talking about the poor red man, but believe me, when you saw an Indian out on the plains settin’ up on a pony with a Winchester in his hand or a lance, there was nothing poor about him. He was a fighting man from way back, and he was a savage … a stranger was an enemy, and an enemy was to be killed or, if captured, tortured to see how brave he was.