His gun exploded, but the muzzle had been turned aside, and the roar was lost in the concussions of the shots outside. I smashed him back bodily against the stone wall with stunning force. My right hand gripping his throat held him on tip-toes against the stone, and my other hand gripping his gun-wrist ground his knuckles against the roughness of the stone wall.
Brutally, I ground the flesh against the stone, rasping it back and forth until he struggled to scream and his fingers could no longer grip the gun.
I released my hold upon his throat and stepped back. He struck weakly at me with the cat, but then, my feet wide, I hit with my left fist, then with my right, rolling my shoulders for the power it gave. One fist struck his ribs, crushing them; the other his face.
His head bounced against the wall, and glassy-eyed he started to fall toward me. I struck him again, and when he fell forward that time I knew that he was dead.
Quickly, I stripped off his gun belt and picked his pistol from the floor.
The passage outside the door was empty, and I ran along it, turned down another, and was in the living quarters of the ranch house. A door stood open, as it had been left when the shooting called the men out, and I smashed through it.
The room was empty and still. My footsteps padded on the bare floor as I crossed to the gun case. Picking up a chair with one hand, I swung it and smashed the glass. I reached in for a shotgun and filled my pockets with shells.
A Henry rifle was there, and I took that also, and two belts of cartridges that hung from a chair. And then as I turned away I saw a familiar sight. In the corner of the gun cabinet was my old Walch Navy .36 with the initials C. B. scratched on it. Quickly, I took it up and thrust it into my waistband with another pistol that lay there.
No one appeared in the passage as I ran, and I went through the door to the long veranda outside.
There I stopped in the shadows.
Mounted men were racing back and forth, and the red lances of gunfire stabbed the darkness. A Texas yell broke out, and a shot caught a Mexican upon a balcony. He fell head-long from it and landed nearby. The rider wheeled his horse, and in that instant he saw me.
The pistol swung at me to fire and I shouted, "ationo! I'm an American!"
He held his pistol on me. "Who are you?"
His voice rang with authority.
"A prisoner. They've held me six years."
"Six years?"
A horse was tied to the hitch-rail and he jerked loose the tie-rope. Heavier firing sounded outside the court. "Come! And be quick!"
He raced from the court to where other Texas riders were milling. "Wrong place!" A man shouted at the rider beside me. "Flores' place is half a mile up the road!"
"There are two hundred men there!" I yelled at them.
The man beside me said, "Let's go!" And he led the racing retreat at a dead run down the valley.
After a mile or two they slowed to a canter, then to a walk. I glanced at the stars, and there was the North Star, beckoning us on.
"They'll be after us," the man beside me said, and there was no time for questions.
Closely we rode on, and fast, for the Rio Grande lay miles to the north. The night was cool, and the air fresh on my face. Sometimes when we passed close to a rock face we could feel the heat still held from the day's hot sun.
We slowed to a walk again, and the man I rode beside turned in his saddle and looked at me.
"Six years, you say?"
As briefly as possible, I explained. Not about the gold, exactly, but enough to let him know they had wanted to learn a secret I alone knew.
When I mentioned Herrara, he nodded grimly.
"He's one I'd like to find myself."
"Do not waste your time," I said. "From now on you need pay him no mind."
He glanced at me and I said, "He was using a whip on me when you came shooting into the patio, and his men rushed away."
"He is dead, you think?"
"He is dead. Without a doubt, he is dead."
"My name is Mcationelly," the rider said then.
"These are Texas Rangers."
Thirty of them had crossed the river to strike a blow at the outlaws who were raiding ranches and stealing cattle north of the border--and sometimes south of it, as well.
Las Cuevas had long been the outlaws' headquarters, and it was Las Cuevas for which the Rangers had aimed. But mistakenly they were led to a ranch that belonged to the Las Cuevas owner, only a short distance away from the main ranch buildings. It was that mistake that had saved my life.
At the Rio Grande the riders turned on command. The outlaws were not far behind. "You, Sackett," the captain said, "go on across the border. You've had trouble enough."
"If you'll grant me the pleasure, Cap'n," I said, "I'll stay. There's men in that crowd who have struck me and beaten me, and I owe them a little. Bess," I added, "I carried off their shotgun. It is only fair that I return the loads from the shells."
Here at the river the air was still cooler because of the dampness rising from the water--and it was free air.
For the first time in years I was out in the night, with free air all about me.
The outlaws came with a rush, sure they would catch the Rangers at the border before they got across the river, but they were met with a blast of gunfire that lanced the night with darting flame.
One rider toppled from his saddle, and his fall as much as our fire turned their retreat into a rout.
They vanished into the mesquite.
Several Rangers rode out to look at the body, and I followed Mcationelly. "Well,"
I said, "seems to me if you had to kill only one, you got the right one. That there is Flores himself."
We swam the river back to the Texas side and I followed on to their camp, which was on the bank of a creek a few miles back from the river.
Reckon I looked a sight. My shirt was in rags and the only pants I had were some castoffs they'd given me when my own played out. There I stood, bare-footed and loaded down with guns.
"You'd better let us stand you an outfit,"
Mcationelly commented dryly. "You're in no shape to go anywhere in that outfit."
They were good boys, those Rangers were, and they rigged me out. Then, to raise some cash, I sold one of them my pistol for six dollars--it was the spare I'd picked up (i'd come away with three); and I sold the shotgun for twelve to Mcationelly himself. The Captain had taken Flores' gold- and silver-plated pistol off the body--it was a rarely beautiful weapon.
The horse I'd ridden across the border was a handsome, upstanding roan.
"Anybody asks you for the bill of sale for that horse," Mcationelly commented, "you refer them to me."
The first thing I did was to head for the creek and take a long bath, getting shut of my old clothes at the time. When I lit out for Rio Grande City, come daybreak, I felt like a different man.
Yet being free wasn't what it might have been. First off, I didn't know where to go.
Mcationelly had heard nothing of my pa, and only remembered some talk of Jonas Locklear being dead several years back. What had become of his land, he didn't know.
So there I was, a free man with no place to go, with a rightful share in the gold that might have already been spent. But something I did own, if I could find them. I owned a mare and a mule colt.
I showed up in Brownsville wearing shirt and jeans that didn't fit, a pair of boots that hurt my feet, and a worn-out Mexican sombrero. Dark as I was and wearing cartridge belts crossed over my chest, I even looked like a Mexican.
I walked into a cantina and leaned on the bar, and when the bartender ignored me I reached out my Henry and laid it across to touch the back bar.
"I want a whiskey," I said, "and I want it now. You going to give it to me, or do I take it after I put a knot on your head?"
He looked at me and then he looked at that rifle and he set the bottle out on the bar.
"We don't cater to Mexicans in here," he said.
"You do wrong," I told him. "I'm no Mex, but I've known some mighty fine ones.
They run about true to form with us north of the border --some good and some bad."
"Sorry," he said. "I thought you were a Mexican."
"Pour me a drink," I said, "and then go back and shut up."
He poured me the drink and walked away down the bar. Two tough-looking cowhands were sizing me up, considering how much opposition I'd offer if trouble started, but I wasn't interested in a row. So I just plain ignored them. Anyway, I was listening to talk at a table behind me.
"He's wise," one man was saying. "He hasn't squatted on range the way most have done. Captain King clears title on every piece he buys. That's why he's held off on that Locklear outfit--there's a dispute over the title. Deckrow claims it, but his sister-in-law disputes the claim."
"Bad blood between Deckrow and her husband, too. It'll come to a shooting."
"Not unless Deckrow shoots him in the back,"
I said, "that's the way he killed Jonas Locklear."
Well, now. I'd turned and spoken aloud without really meaning to, and every face in the room turned toward me.
One of the men at the table looked at me coldly. "That's poor talk. Deckrow's a respected man in Texas."
"He wouldn't be the first who didn't deserve it," I said. "You see him, you tell him I said he was a back-shooter. Tell him I said he shot Jonas Locklear in the back, and Deckrow was riding with Mexican outlaws at the time."
There wasn't a friendly face in the cantina, except maybe for the other man at that table.
"And who might you be?" he asked quietly.
"We'd like to tell him who spoke against him."
"The name is Orlando Sackett," I said, "and I'll speak against him any time I get the chance. ... Jonas," I added, "was a friend of mine."
"Orlando Sackett," the man said thoughtfully.
"The only other Sackett I know besides Falcon was killed down in Mexico, five or six years ago."
"You heard wrong. I ain't dead, nor about to be."
Finishing my drink, I turned and walked out of the place and went across the street to a restaurant.
A few minutes after, a slender blue-eyed man came in and sat down not far from me. He didn't look at me at all, and that was an odd thing, because almost everybody else at least glanced my way.
In Rio Grande City I'd gotten myself a haircut and had my beard shaved off.
I still held to a mustache, like most men those days, but it was trimmed careful. In the six years below the border I'd taken on weight, and while I was no taller than five-ten, I now weighed two hundred and ten pounds, most of it in my chest and shoulders. Folks looked at me, all right.
As I ate, I kept an eye on that blue-eyed man, who was young and lean-faced and wore a tied-down gun. Presently another man came in and sat down beside him, his back to me. When he turned around a few minutes later and he looked at me, I saw he was Duncan Caffrey.
He'd changed some. His face looked like it always did, but he was big and strong-looking. His eyes were a lot harder than I recalled, and when he put his hand on the back of the other man's chair I noticed the knuckles were scarred and broken. He'd been doing a lot of fighting.
Reminded me of what the Tinker had said about the knuckles of Jem Mace, that champion fighter who'd trained him.
Caffrey looked hard at me, and he sort of frowned and looked away, and suddenly it came on me that he wasn't sure. True, I was a whole lot heavier than when he'd last seen me, and a lot darker except where the beard was shaved off, and even that had caught some sun riding down from Rio Grande City.
When I stood up and paid for my supper I saw in the mirror what was wrong. The mustache changed me a good bit, and the scars even more. I had forgotten the scars. There were three of them, two along my cheek and one on my chin, all made from the cuts of that quirt, which had cut like a knife into my flesh, and no stitches taken in the cuts.
Outside on the street a sudden thought came to me. If that blue-eyed man was a killer, and if Caffrey was pointing me out to him, then I'd better dust out. With my hands I was all right, but I hadn't shot a six-shooter, except for the other day, not in six years.
Riding out of town, I headed east, then circled and took the north road. A few days after, I pulled up at the jacal where I'd left the mare.
A young woman came to the door, shading her eyes at me. She looked shabby and tired. The little boy who stood beside her stared at me boldly, but I thought they were both frightened.
"Do you not remember me, se@nora? I rode from here many years ago--with Miguel and Se@nor Locklear."
There seemed to be a flicker of recognition in her eyes then, but all she said was, "Go away.
Miguel is dead."
"Dead, se@nora?"
"Si." Her eyes flickered around as if she were afraid of being observed. "He returned from Mexico, and then one day he did not come back to me. He was shot out on the plains-- by bandidos."
"Ah?" I wondered about those bandidos and about Franklyn Deckrow. Then I changed the subject. "When I was here I left a mare that was to have a colt. You promised to see to the birth and care for it."
Her eyes warmed. "I remember, se@nor."
"The colt ... is it here?"
The boy started to interrupt, but she spoke quickly to him in Spanish. I now spoke the tongue well, but they were not close to me and I missed the ^ws.
"It is here, se@nor. Manuel will get it."
"Wait." I looked at the boy. "You have ridden the colt?"
"The mule, se@nor? Si, I have ridden him." There was no frliness in his eyes. He was all of eleven or twelve, but slight of build.
"Does he run, then? Like the wind?"
Excitement came into his eyes and he spoke with enthusiasm. "Si, se@nor. He runs."
Juana came a step from the jacal. "He loves the mule," she said. "I am afraid he loves it too much. I always told him you would come back for it."
"You told him I would come back?"
"Si, se@nor. Miguel did not believe you were dead. He never believed it. But he was the only one. Although the se@nora--Se@nora Sackett--she sometimes thought you were alive."
"Se@nora Sackett?"
"Your father's wife, se@nor. The sister of Se@nor Locklear."
So Gin had married my father. She was my stepmother now. Well, thinking back, I could not be surprised. From the first, there had been something between them.
Juana came out to my horse as the boy walked reluctantly away to get the mule. "There has been much trouble," she said.
"Se@nor Deckrow lets us to live here, but he warned us never to talk to strangers, and he said if you ever came back, to send Manuel at once to tell him."
Just then my horse's head came up and I looked around, and there stood the mule colt.
No question but what it was a mule. It was tall, longer in the body than most mules, it seemed, andwith long, slim legs. But it was a mule, almost a buckskin in color, and like enough to any mule I'd ever seen.
You could tell by the way he followed that boy that there was a good feeling between them. But when I walked over, he stretched his nose to me.
"And the mare?"
"Wolves, se@nor, when this one was small.
If I had not come upon them, he would be dead also."
Rubbing the mule's neck, I considered the situation. "Manuel," I said, "I think you and Juana should come away from here. I think you should go to San Antonio, or somewhere. You'll need to have schooling."
"How? We have no money. We have no way to go. We have only our goats and a few chickens."
"You have horses?"
"No, se@nor. The horses belong to Se@nor Deckrow."
"Ride them, anyway, and you two come away to San Antonio." I paused. "If Deckrow hears you have talked to me, there may be trouble. Besides, I want a boy who can ride the mule ... I mean who can race him. Could you do that, Manuel?"
His eyes sparkled, but he said seriously, "Si, I could do it. He runs
very fast, se@nor."
"He's bred for it," I said. "Can you go tonight?"
"What of the goats?"
"Goats," I said, "can get along. Leave them."
We didn't waste time. They'd little enough to take, and Manuel taken my horse and went out and caught up a couple of ponies in no time.
He was a hand with a rope, which I wasn't.
Lately I'd begun to think I wasn't a hand with anything, although all the way from Brownsville to the ranch I practiced with that Walch Navy, which I fancied beyond other guns.
The trail we chose was made by Kansas-bound cattle. Seemed to me I owed Miguel something, and I did not trust that Deckrow. So I'd be killing two birds with one stone by escorting Manuel and his mother to San Antone and getting Manuel to ride my mule for me.
"You think that mule can beat this horse?" I asked Manuel.
"Of a certainty," he replied coolly.
"He can run, this mule."
So we laid it out between us to race to a big old cottonwood we could see away up ahead, maybe three-quarters of a mile off. On signal, we taken off.
Now that Mexican horse was a good cutting horse and trained to start fast. Moreover, it was an outlaw's horse, and an outlaw can't afford not to have the best horse under him that he can lay hands on. That roan took off with a bound and within fifty yards he was leading by two lengths, and widening the distance fast. We were halfway to that cottonwood before that mule got the idea into his head that he was in a race.
By the time we'd covered two-thirds of the distance we were running neck-and-neck, and then that mule just took off and left us.
Oakville was the town where I decided to make my play, and by the size of my bankroll it was going to be a small one.
When you came to sizing it up, Oakville wasn't a lot of town, there being less than a hundred people in it, but it had the name of being a contentious sort of place. Forty men were killed there in the ten years following the War Between the States. It lay right on the trail up from the border and a lot of Kansas cattle went through there, time to time.
When we came riding into town I told Manuel and his ma to find a place to put up, and I gave them a dollar.
It was a quiet day in town. A couple of buckboards stood on the street, and four or five horses stood three-legged at the hitch-rails. When I pushed through the bat-wing doors and went up to the bar, there was only one man in the place aside from the bartender. He was a long, thin man with a reddish mustache and a droll, quizzical expression to his eyes.
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