The Californios

by Louis L'Amour

  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 preparing 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, T
ia.”

  “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.”

  “Gracias, Tia.” Del Campo drew on his gauntlets. “Finish your wine, Polanco. I think we will ride.”

  A cool breeze came in off the blue water, a breeze that stirred the leaves of the old sycamore, lingered among the stiffer leaves of the oaks. The breeze cooled the water in the ollas that hung from the porch beams, stirred the lines of peppers hanging from strings along the porch.

  A horse stamped in the corral, then blew dust from his nostrils. In the chaparral, a dove called.

  The two vaqueros rode into the ranchyard on lathered horses. They swung down and Del Campo went to the door. “Señora?”

  She came from within the cool house, and they explained. She listened, then shook her head. “He is gone. He rode out this morning to find the body of the Old One, to bury it. He is miles away by now.”

  “We must follow, then.”

  Montero came from the corral. “Stay,” he said. “He wished to ride alone. He spoke to me of this.” He hesitated. “I think it is something between the Old One and him.”

  “But if they come?”

  “There is the Señora. We must think of her.”

  Johnny Mims came up from the bunkhouse they had built from the poles and tules left from the fandango. “He told us he wanted to ride alone.”

  Mims took tobacco from his pocket and filled his pipe. “You boys stay here. Won’t do no good to kill him ’less they get her, too. Me an’ my friends, we’ll sort of trail over to Auntie’s place and scout for some sign. If they been comin’ down, they been leavin’ signs. We’ll scatter around and find them…or wait for them.”

  “But if they follow him?” Polanco protested.

  “They take their own chances,” Larkin Campbell said. “I rode with him a time or two. Ain’t nobody comin’ up on him.”

  Saddling up, the three rode down the trail. After all, a visit to a cantina was in order. And if those two showed up?

  Johnny Mims had no doubts about that. If they showed up.

  * * *

  SEAN MULKERIN RODE easy in the saddle. This route was not the one he had followed before. Riding rough country where a man had enemies, it wasn’t a good idea to become too familiar along the same trail. This time he crossed over the eastern flank of the Topatopa Mountains, watered his horse and made camp at Ten Sycamore Flat, and thought out his route. Riding alone toward a known destination was easier than scouting a doubtful trail for the first time.

  He let his horse graze, watered it again, and then went back into the rocks of Red Reef Canyon and holed up in a hollow with an overhang of rocks. If anybody was following him, he could see them first from there.

  Nothing in his life had given him confidence in his hold upon the future. All he had learned indicated that one lived by avoiding trouble, or if it could not be avoided, seeing it first.

  To a wandering man in the wilderness a back trail must be as important as that ahead, for it might be the direction to be taken tomorrow, and when one faced around the trail looked far, far different. Gigantic boulders seen from one direction might be low, flat rocks seen from another…all things were different. Studying trails had taught him much about life, that much depends on the viewpoint.

  They had been followed before, so why not again?

  A deer came to the water to drink, then another and another. Sean Mulkerin lay quiet and watched. He had meat enough, and no desire to kill or to fire a shot, and if somebody was coming they would be apt to hear it before he did, although he was a man who watched his horse. A mustang was like any other wild creature and alert to sounds and sights, as wary as a deer and even more difficult to approach.

  He slept, awakened, slept again. All was quiet. Only the rustling leaves of the sycamore, their mottled trunks ghostly in the night. At daybreak, after a brief scouting around, he moved out.

  He rode no trail, but scouted his own way through the brush, studying the terrain before him for obstacles that must be skirted. As always there were canyons cut by runoff water, and these must be skirted or a way found into and out of them. The sky was cloudless, so entering them disturbed him not at all. What runoff there was came from the mountain right above him, so there could be no surprises. Often distant rains would start flash floods down canyons that would suddenly appear out of nowhere in the desert, miles from there, with a hot sun overhead. The wilderness delighted in surprises.

  The sun was high in the sky when he topped out on the mesa above Beartrap Creek. From that vantage point he could look right into the open mouth of the great horseshoe of mountain that his mother had described.

  From this distance it resembled any other mountain, dry, pine-clad, and rocky. He studied it for sometime with the telescope brought from the Lady Luck, but it told him nothing.

  He walked his horse forward, and drawing up in the shade of some pines where the outline of his horse was lost in the shadows, he took a long time to survey the area before him. He would camp down there tonight, somewhere between Beartrap and Reyes creeks and tomorrow morning he would go into the horseshoe, find the cave, and if the Old One still lay there, he would bury him.

  Sean put his hand to the butt of the Paterson. It was still there. And the Colt revolving rifle was also. He started his horse down a steep slide among the pines and within the hour had discovered what he wanted, a level place among the pines with a view into the hollow beyond. It was above Reyes Creek and in a small cove of about two acres.

  He watered his horse in the creek, then rode back up and picketed it on the grass. Building his fire under a tree where the rising smoke would be dissipated by the branches and leaves, he prepared a small meal of broiled beef, the last of his tortillas, and coffee.

  When he had eaten he put out his fire and moved back against the rock face where some trees offered shelter. After a glance at the sky he rigged a lean-to of branches and bark from a dead tree.

  * * *

  LOST HIM,” BELTRAN swore in short, bitter words. “We clean lost him.”

  Velasco shrugged. “What of it? He must go to the place of which Francisco spoke. There will be tracks. If he has taken another way, he still must come there. We will go there and wait.”

  “All right,” Beltran said grudgingly, “only I don’t see how he got away from us.”

  “He is a bad one, this,” Velasco said. “I think it is better we ride carefully.”

  Beltran had been thinking the same thing. Of course, they had taken too much for granted. They knew where the man was going, so they had ignored tracks until suddenly realizing that there were none. Already they had been out longer than expected. Beltran was hoping Mulkerin carried enough grub. Then they would not have to go hungry on the way back.

  When they found the place where the Señora had left her horse, they scouted carefully around. No one had been there for days.

  Francisco had ridden away, and returned to see King-Pin go into the hollow. It must be that one they now looked at. “So?” Beltran said. “What is it? Just some other hills?”

  “I heard something,” Velasco said suddenly. “It was when we drank wine at the cantina. I heard the woman speak of this Russell. He was a young man when he rode out, but an old, old man when they found him again.”

  “Bah! It is foolishness! Woman’s stories!”

  “Perhaps. It is a thing to think of.”

  “Run out of water…thirst will do that to a man.”

  “Not as this one. He was truly old…in the space of one week, or less. I do not know how long.”

  “Forget it.”

  Beltran did not like to talk of such things, nor to think of them. It was all nonsense, of course.

  With rifles in their hands t
hey settled down to wait.

  It was just before nightfall when they moved into position, and Sean Mulkerin had just gone to sleep. His camp was above and behind them but not over six hundred yards away.

  Sean was awakened by the restlessness of his horse. His eyes opened, and he listened, watching the gray gelding he had ridden on this ride. Its head was up, ears pointed. Nostrils flaring, it looked off to the south.