"Twelve? It looks like a six-shooter."
"Weighs about the same. See? Two triggers, two hammers. She's a good pistol, but too complicated for me. Take it along."
She was a mite over twelve inches long and weighed just over two pounds, had checkered walnut grips, and was a beautiful weapon. Stamped 1859, it looked to be in mint condition.
"Thanks. I've been needing a weapon."
"Practice ... practice drawing and pointing a long time before you try firing. Don't try to aim. Just draw and point."
He put down his cup and got to his feet.
"And one thing more." He looked at me out of those hard green eyes. "You wear one of those and you'll be expected to use it. When a man starts packing a gun nobody figures he wears it just for show."
Come daybreak, they saddled and rode away, and the Tinker and me went west afoot. And as we walked, I tried my hand with that gun. I practiced and practiced. A body never knew when it would come in handy.
Somewhere behind me three Kurbishaws were riding to kill me.
Chapter Three.
We were six months out of the piney woods of Tennessee when we walked into San Augustine, Texas. It was an old, old town.
Seemed like we'd ever left home, for there were pines growing over the red clay hills, and everywhere we looked there were Cherokee roses.
We camped among the trees on the outskirts, and the Tinker set to work repairing a broken pistol I had taken in trade. An old man stopped by to watch. "Shy of gunsmiths hereabs," he said. "A man could make a living."
"The Tinker can fix anything. Even clocks and schlike."
"Old clock up at the Blount House--a fine piece. Ain't worked in some time."
The Tinker filled a cup and passed it across the fire to him, and the old man hunkered down to talk.
"Town settled by Spanish men back around 1717. Built themselves a mission, they did, and then fifty, sixty years later when it seemed the Frenchies were going to move in, they built a fort.
"Been a likely place ever since. The Blount and Cartwright homes are every bit of thirty year old, and up until the War Between the States broke out we has us a going university right here in town."
He was sizing us up, making up his mind about us, and after a while he said, "If I was you boys I'd keep myself a fancy lookout. You're being sought after."
"Three tall men who look alike?"
"Uh-huh. Rode through town yestiddy. Right handy men, I'd say, come a difficulty."
"They're his uncles," the Tinker explained, "and they're all laid out to kill him."
"No worse fights than kinfolk's." The old man finished his coffee and stood up.
"Notional man, more'self. Take to folks or I don't. You boys take care of yourselves."
The Tinker glanced over at me. "You wearing that gun?"
Pulling my coat back, I showed it to him, shoved down inside my pants behind my belt.
"I ain't much on the shoot," I said, "but come trouble I'll have at it."
San Augustine was further south in Texas than I'd any notion of coming, but the Tinker insisted on it. "The biggest cow ranches are south," he said, "down along the Gulf coast, and some of them are fixing to trail cattle west to fresh grass, or north to the Kansas towns."
Now we'd come south and here the Kurbishaws were, almost as if they known where we were coming.
"No use asking for it," I said, "we'd better dust off down the pike."
"Didn't figure you would run from trouble," the old man said. "Best way is to hunt it down and have it out."
"They're still my uncles, and I never set eye on them. If they're fixing for trouble they'll have to bring it on themselves."
The old man bit off a chew of tobacco, regarded the plug from which he had bitten, and said, "you ain't goin' to dodge it. Those fellers want you bad. They offered a hundred dollars cash money for you. And they want you dead."
That was more actual money than a man might see in a year's time, and enough to set half the no-gds in Texas on my trail. Those Kurbishaws were sure lacking in family feeling. Well, if they wanted me they'd have to burn the stump and sift the ashes before they found me.
San Augustine was a pleasant place, but I wasn't about to get rich there. The mare was far along, but it would be a few weeks before she dropped her colt.
The Tinker started putting that pistol together and I went to rolling up my bed, such as it was. The Tinker said to the old man, "Isn't far to the Gulf, is it?"
"South, down the river."
The Tinker put the pistol away and started putting gear in the cart while I went for the mare.
It was just as I was starting back that I heard him say, "This is the sort of place a man could retire ... say a seafaring man."
The old man spat, squinting his eyes at the Tinker. "You thinkin' or askin'?"
"Why"--the Tinker smiled at him--
"when it comes to that, I'm asking."
The old man indicated a road with a gesture of his head. "That road ... maybe thirteen, fourteen mile. The Deckrow place."
We taken out with our fat little mare, and the cart painted with signs to advise that we sharpened knives, saws, and whatever.
We walked alongside, the Tinker with his gold earrings, black hat, and black homespun clothes, and me with a black hat, red shirt, buckskin coat, and black pants tucked into boots. Him with his knives and me with my pistol. We made us a sight to see.
Ten miles lay behind us when we came up to this girl on horseback, or rather, she came up to us. She was fourteen, I'd say, and pert. Her auburn hair hung around her shoulders and she had freckles scattered over her nose and cheekbones. She was a pretty youngster, but like I say, pert.
She looked at the Tinker and then at the sign on the wagon, and last she looked to me, her eyes taking their time with me and seeming to find nothing of much account.
"We have a clock that needs fixing," she said.
"I am Marsha Deckrow."
The way she said it, you expected no less than a flourish of trumpets or a roll of drums, but until the old man mentioned them that morning I'd never heard tell of any Deckrows and wouldn't have paid it much mind if I had. But when we came to the house I figured that if means gave importance to a man, this one must cut some figure.
That was the biggest house I ever did see, setting back from the road with great old oaks and elms all about, and a plot of grass out front that must have been five or six acres. There was a winding drive up to the door, and there were orchards and fields, and stock grazing. The coachhouse was twice the size of the schoolhouse back at Clinch's.
"Are you a tinker?" she asked me.
"No, ma'am. I am Orlando Sackett, bound for the western lands."
"Oh?" Her nose tilted. "You're a mover!"
"Yes, ma'am," I said. "Most folks move at one time or another."
"A rolling stone gathers no moss," she said, nose in the air.
"Moss grows thickest on dead wood," I said, "and if you're repeating the thoughts of others, you might remember that "a wandering bee gets the honey."'"
"Movers!" she sniffed.
"Looks like an old house," I said. "Must be the finest around here."
"It is," she said proudly. "It is the oldest place anywhere around. The Deckrows," she added, "came from Virginia!"
"Movers?" I asked.
She flashed an angry look at me and then paid me no mind. "The servants' entrance," she said to the Tinker, "is around to the side."
"You're talking to the wrong folks," I said, speaking before the Tinker could. "We aren't servants, and we don't figure to go in by the side door. We go in by the front door, or your clock won't be fixed."
The Tinker gave me an odd look, but he made no objection to my speaking up thataway.
He said nothing at all, just waiting.
"I was addressing the Tinker," she replied coolly. "Just what is it that you do? Or do you do anything at all?"
One of the servants had come up to hold her stirrup and she
got down from the saddle. "Mr.
Tinker," she said sweetly, "will you come with me?"
Then, without so much as glancing my way, she said, "You can wait ... if you like."
When I looked up at that house I sobered down some. Here I was in a worn-out buckskin coat and homespun, dusty from too many roads, and my boots down at heel. I'd no business even talking to such a girl.
So I sat down on a rock beside the gravel drive and looked at my mare. "You hurry up," I said, "and have that colt. We'll show them."
Hearing footsteps on the travel, I looked up to see a tall man coming toward me. His hair and mustaches were white, his skin dark as that of a Spanish man, his eyes the blackest I'd ever seen.
He was thin, but he looked wiry and strong, and whatever his age might be it hadn't reached his eyes ... or his mind.
He paused when he saw me, frowning a little as if something about me disturbed him. "Are you waiting for someone?" His voice had a ring to it, a sound like I'd heard in the voices of army officers.
"I travel with the Tinker," I said, "who's come to fix a clock, and that Miss Deckrow who lives here, she wanted me to come in by the servants' entrance, I'll be damned if I will."
There was a shadow of a smile around his lips, though he had a hard mouth. He taken out a long black cigar and clipped the end, then he put it between his teeth. "I am Jonas Locklear, and Marsha's uncle. I can understand your feelings."
So I told him my name, and then for no reason I could think of, I told him about the mare and the colt she would have and some of my plans.
"Orlando Sackett ... the name has a familiar sound." He looked at me thoughtfully.
"There was a Sackett who married a Kurbishaw girl from Carolina."
"My father," I said.
"Oh? And where is he now?"
So I told him how ma died and pa taken off, leaving me with the Caffreys, and how I hadn't heard from pa since.
"I don't believe he's dead," I explained, "nor that those Kurbishaws killed him. He seemed to me a hard man to kill."
Jonas Locklear's mouth showed a wry smile. "I would say you judge well," he said. "Falcon Sackett was indeed a hard man to kill."
"You knew him?" I was surprised--and then right away I was no longer surprised. This was the Deckrow plantation, the place the Tinker had inquired about. At least, he had inquired about a seafaring man.
"I knew him well." He took the cigar from his mouth. "We were associated once, in a manner of speaking." He turned toward the door.
"Come in, Mr. Sackett. Please come in."
"I am not welcome here," I said stiffly.
The way his face tightened showed him a man of quick temper. "You are my guest," he replied sharply. "And I say you are welcome. Come in, please."
Almost the first person I laid eyes on when we stepped through the door was Marsha Deckrow.
"Uncle Jonas," she said quickly, "that boy is with the Tinker."
"Marsha, Mr. Sackett is my guest. Will you please tell Peter that he will be staying for dinner? And the Tinker also."
She started to say something, but whatever it was, Jonas Locklear gave her no time. "Peter must know at once, Marsha."
Nobody who ever heard that voice would doubt that it was accustomed to command--and to be obeyed.
"Yes, uncle."
Her backbone was ramrod stiff when she walked away, anger showing in every line of her slim figure. I wanted to smile, but I didn't.
I kept my face straight.
Locklear beckoned me to follow and led the way into a wing of the house. The moment we passed through the tall doors I knew I had entered the rooms of a man of a very different kind from any I had known.
We went into a small hallway where, just inside the door, there hung on the wall a strange shield made of some kind of thick hide, and behind it two crossed spears. "Zulu --f South Africa," he said.
The large square, high-ceilinged room beyond was lined with books. On a table was a stone head, beautifully carved and polished. He noticed my attention and said, "It is very ancient--f Libya. Beautiful, is it not?"
"It is. I wish the Tinker could see it."
"He is a lover of beautiful things?"
"I was thinking more of the craft that went into it. The Tinker can do anything with his hands, and you should see his knives. We--we both shave with them."
"Fine steel." He rubbed out his cigar on a stone of the fireplace. "This tinker of yours--where is he from?"
"We came together from the mountains. He was a tinker and a pack peddler there."
When I had washed up in the bathroom I borrowed a whisk broom to brush some of the dust from my clothing, and when I got back to the library he was sitting there with a chart in his hands. When he put it down it rolled up so that I had no more chance to look at it.
He crossed to a sideboard and filled two wine glasses from a bottle. One of them he handed to me. "Madeira," he said, "the wine upon which this country was built. Washington drank it, so did Jefferson. Every slave ship from Africa brought casks of it ordered by the planters."
When we were seated and had tasted our wine, he said, "What are your plans, Mr. Sackett?
You are going west, you said?"
"California, or somewhere west."
"It is a lovely land, this California.
Once I thought to spend my days there, but strange things happen to a man, Mr. Sackett, strange things, indeed."
He looked at me sharply. "So you are the son of Falcon Sackett. You're not so tall as he was, but you have the shoulders." He tasted his wine again. "Did he ever speak to you of me?"
"No, sir. My father rarely talked of himself or his doings. Not even to my mother, I think."
"A wise man ... a very wise man. Those who have not lived such a life could not be expected to understand it. He was not a tame man, your father.
He was no sit-by-the-fire man, no molly-coddle. His name was Falcon, and he was well named."
He lighted another cigar. "He never talked to you of the Mexican War, then? Or of the man he helped to bury in the dunes of Padre Island?"
"No."
"And when he went away ... did he leave anything with you? I mean, with you personally?"
"Nothing. A grip on the shoulder and some advice. I am afraid the grip lasted longer than the advice."
Locklear smiled, and then from somewhere in the house a bell sounded faintly. "Come, we will go in to dinner now, Mr. Sackett." He got to his feet. "I am afraid I must ask you to ignore any fancied slights--or intentional ones, Mr. Sackett.
"You see"--he paused--?th is my house.
This is my plantation. Everything here is mine, but I was long away and when I returned my health was bad. My brother-in-law, Franklyn Deckrow, seems to have made an attempt to take command during my absence. He is not alt pleased that I have returned."
He finished his wine and put down his glass.
"Mr. Sackett, face a man with a gun or a sword, but beware of bookkeepers. They will destroy you, Sackett. They will destroy you."
At the door of the dining room we paused, and there for a minute I was ready to high-tail it out of there, for I'd eaten in no such room before.
True, I'd heard ma speak of them, but I'd never imagined such a fine long table or such silver or glassware. Right then I blessed ma for teaching me to eat properly.
"Will the Tinker be here, sir?"
"It has been arranged."
Marsha swept into the library in a white gown, looking like a young princess. Her hair was all combed out and had a ribbon in it, and I declare, I never saw anything so pretty, or so mean.
She turned sharply away from me, her chin up, but that was nothing to the expression of distaste on her father's face when he looked up and down my shabby, trail-worn clothes.
He was short of medium height, with square shoulders and a thin nose. No man I had seen dressed more carefully than he, but there were lines of temper around his eyes and mouth, and a hollow look to his temples that I had
learned to distrust.
"Really, Jonas," he said, "we are familiar with your habits and ways of life, but I scarcely think you should bring them here, in your own home, with your sisters and my niece present."
Jonas ignored him, just turning slightly to say, "Orlando Sackett, my brother-in-law, Franklyn Deckrow. When he would destroy a man he does it with red ink, not red blood, with a bookkeeper's pen, not a sword."
Before Deckrow could reply, two women came into the room. They were beautifully gowned, and lovely. "Mr. Sackett, my sister ...
Lily Anne Deckrow."
"My pleasure," I said, bowing a little.
She looked her surprise, but offered her hand.
She was a slender, graceful young woman of not more than thirty, with a pleasant but rather drawn face.
"And my other sister ... Virginia Locklear."
She was dark, and a beauty. She might have been twenty-four, and had the kind of a figure that no dress can conceal, and well she knew it.
Her lips were full, but not too full. Her eyes were dark and warm; there was some of the tempered steel in her that I had recognized in Jonas.
"Mr. Sackett," she asked, "would you take me in to dinner?"
Gin Locklear--for that was how she was known--had a gift for making a man feel important.
Whether it was an art she had acquired, or something natural to her, I did not know, nor did it matter. She rested her hand upon my arm and no king could have felt better.
Then a Negro servant stepped to the door.
"Mr. Cosmo Lengroffwas he said, and I'll be damned if it wasn't the Tinker.
It was he, but a far different Tinker than any I had seen before this, for he wore a black tailored suit that was neatly pressed (he'd bribed a servant to attend to that for him) and a white ruffled shirt with a black string tie. His hair was combed carefully, his mustache trimmed. All in all, he was a dashing and romantic-looking man.
Jonas Locklear was within my range of vision when he turned and saw the Tinker. I swear he looked as if he'd been pin-stuck. He stiffened and his lips went tight, andfora moment I thought he was about to swear. And the Tinker wasn't looking at anybody but Jonas Locklear. I knew that stance ... instant he could pick a steel blade to kill whatever stood before him.
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