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.
In my time I'd had my share of troubles with Comanches, Kiowas, Arapahos, Utes, Cheyennes, Sioux, and about every land of redskin there was. With some I got alone fine; but when he's fighting no Indian needs take a back seat for any man.
They'd been called, by one of Europe's greatest generals, "the finest light cavalry under the sun."
When a man traveled in Indian country he sort of sifted through, gentle-like and taking up no more room than need be. He kept out of sight, and slept without a fire at night unless he could hide it well. And on top of that he prayed, if he was a praying man, and the deeper you got into Indian country the more of a praying man you got to be. You just couldn't afford to miss any bets.
Pio talked about the sheep. He talked about cattle. It would be no time at all, he was saying, until the Texas cattlemen started bringing their herds into the Panhandle. The buffalo was going, the Indian would be driven out, and the cattle would come.
"And then the farmers," I said, with disgust. My own folks had farmed, if you could call it that, on the thin soil of the Clinch Mountain slopes, but I wanted no farmers cutting up this country.
"No, this country is no good for farm," Pio said. "We try it. The wind blows too much. Only the grass ties it down."
"I know," I agreed, finishing off the last of the food on my plate "That last dust storm we had, I could taste some Kansas dust in it. I knew a man one time in the Brazos country who could tell what county he was in by the taste of the dust."
Well, right then I made a big mistake. I looked over at that girl again. Of course, you've got to realize that I hadn't seen a white woman for a good long time, and this one was kind of special.
"All right, Pio," I said, "pick up the chips. You go tell them I'll try to get them through to Romero, anyway."
"Bueno!" Pio smiled at me. "I knew this was what you would do. I tell them so. I tell them just to wait, that you're a good man."
Me? It was the first time in a long while anybody had said that about Nolan Sackett. Oh, they say 'He's a good man with a gun,' or 'He's a fair hand with a rope,' or 'He can ride anything wears hair,' but nobody just out and said I was a good man.
A man had to avoid that sort of thing. First thing a man knows he's tryin' to live up to it. And then what kind of an outlaw is he?
So I glanced over there again and the girl smiled at me. Well, that was all right. And as for the breed, I always got along with breeds all right. Only that old man had too stiff a neck to suit me. He would be bull-headed as an old mossy-horn range cow.
Anyway, I was in for it. Least I could do was have another cup of coffee.
Chapter 5
Sitting at the table, I could look out the open door and into the street. The sun was bright on the street, but the doorway of the cantina was shadowed by huge old trees that stood nearby. Across the street were the cottonwoods and willows beyond which I had slept the night before.
It was pleasant, sitting there and looking out on that sunlit street, and I wished I had such a place of my own, a little cantina somewhere along a trail where folks would stop off from time to time. You never saw anything more peaceful.
On the other side of the street and down a bit, just where I could see just one window and a corner of a building, stood an adobe that was partly fallen to ruin. It was small, and was likely among the first houses built here.
Pio came back to my table with those three people, and they all sat down around the table, leaving me only a partial view out of the door.
"Senor Nolan Sackett." Pio said, "I wish you to meet Senor Jacob Loomis and Senorita Penelope Hume, and this here is Flinch."
Now, when I heard that name Hume I kept a straight face. My muscles never even twitched, me being a poker player of some experience. It seemed to me, all of a sudden, that the Llano Estacado was being invaded by folks all with the same idea.
"Howdy," I said, and just let it lay there. From now on until I got the lay of the land they could do the talking.
The man called Loomis spoke. "We understand you are riding toward Romero, and that you might guide us there. We would pay, of course."
Nobody had said anything about paying me until now, but for a man with no more money in his jeans than I was packing that was welcome news.
"It's risky," I said, knowing that committed me to nothing at all. "It's almighty risky. The Comanches and Kiowas are riding, and they're upset by the buffalo hunters coming south. You'd be better off to stay right where you are."
"In the middle of nowhere?" Loomis responded in a tone of disgust. "Young man, we'll give you fifty dollars to guide us, and to fight for us if there's trouble."
"For fifty dollars," I said, honestly enough, "I'd fight the whole Comanche tribe."
A flicker of shadow caught my eye, something in the background. Looking past Loomis, I could see nothing but the sunlight on the road and a lone hen pecking at something in the dust.
"Were you figuring on stopping in Romero?"
Now, I needn't have asked that question, because nobody stopped in Romero except the Mexicans who lived there. Romero was a nice, pleasant little place at the end of several trials, none of them traveled very much.
"We will decide about that when the time comes," he replied, and his voice was testy, as if he didn't care much for questions.
"All right," I said, "you be ready to pull out come daybreak ... and I mean first light, not a mite later."
"I will decide about that." Loomis was brusque. "You will get your orders from me."
"No," I said, "not if I am to take you through. If you want me for a guide, you'll go when I say, stop when I say, and make as little noise as ever you can." I got up. That shadow movement I'd seen was itching at me. "You make up your mind, Mr. Loomis. I am leaving out of here when there's a streak of gray in the sky. You want to go along, you all be ready, because that's when I'm going."
Oh, he didn't like it. He wasn't even one bit happy with me, and I didn't care.
Fifty dollars was a lot of money, but a whole hide counted pretty high with me.
Besides, I had a few dollars when I rode in, and I'd have most of it riding out.
Now, I hadn't missed the girl's name ... Hume. And the man who supposedly hid that treasure in the Rabbit Ears was Nathan Hume. Some folks might consider that was just a coincidence, but not me.
Loomis pushed back from the table and was about to get up, so I put my coffee cup down and said, "Seen some folks headed that way. City folks ... young fellow and a girl."
You'd of thought I'd slapped him. "Didn't get their name," I said, "but the girl was called Sylvie. Matter of fact, there were three of them. I didn't cotton to 'em very much."
Penelope's eyes just got bigger and darker, it seemed like, but that old man went white as death. He sat down again, sat down hard, and for a minute or two he didn't say anything.
"You saw them?"
"Uh-huh ... unpleasant folks, I'd say." I looked up at Loomis from under my eyebrows. "You know them?"
He said nothing for a moment, then shrugged. "Not with favor, sir, not with favor. A most untrustworthy lot."
He got up again. "Come, Penelope. Daybreak will come all too soon."
After they had gone I saw Pio watching me. "What is it, senor? Who are those people you spoke of? He was afraid of them, I think."
So I told him a little about Sylvie and her brother, enough to put him on his guard against them. "I'd say they were touched ... off the trail somewhere in their heads, but what makes them dangerous is that they don't look it."
Whether he believed me I could not guess, but I left him to think about it and wandered outside. It was cool and pleasant under the old cottonwoods. The dun was living it up on that fresh green grass, with plenty of water close at hand.
But I wasn't looking forward to playing shepherd to that buckboard.
With my back to a tree where I could look down the street, I considered what lay ahead ... and kept an eye on that empty building across the street from the cantina. Had the flicker of movement come from there?
Time dragged slowly by, and I watched, half-dozing, yet my eyes were ready to catch any movement. Shadows fell around me, and I didn't think anybody could see me clearly--not to be sure, anyway. The dun was feeding right behind me, so nobody was going to come up on my blind side.
While I waited there I thought of tomorrow. Leaving town, we would go northwest along Punta de Aguas Creek, which emptied into the Canadian only a few miles off. Holding south of the creek, we could make Romero in three to four days, depending on how game they were to travel and how much trouble we had. With luck we could make ten, twelve miles in a day.
After a while I shifted the dun's picket pin to fresh grass, then, spurs jingling, strolled hack to the cantina and sat down inside. Pio was gone, but the senora came out and brought me a meal of buffalo steak, eggs, and beans. I sat where I could keep an eye on the adobe on the other side of the street. When I'd been there only a few minutes, Penelope Hume came in.
Now, I'm no hand with womenfolks. I'm a rough, hardhanded man, doing most any kind of work or getting into any kind of a fighting shindig. Womenfolks, especially the young, pretty kind, put a loop on my tongue to where it can scarce wiggle. And this Penelope, she was fresh and lovely, and land of sparkly when she laughed. Like I've said, she was a tall girl and well made. She was put together so that when she moved it had a way of making a man mighty restless.
"Mr. Sackett, may I sit down?"
Now there's things we don't know back in the Clinch Mountains, but a man knows enough to stand when a lady comes up to him, so I got up quick, almost spilling my coffee, and sat down only after she had been helped into her chair.
She looked across the table at me. "Mr. Sackett, I am glad you are going to show us the way to Romero, but I thought you should be warned. There's going to be trouble."
"I was born to it."
"I know. But you weren't born around Sylvie, Ralph, and Andrew."
"So you know them. Do they have another name?"
"Their name is Karnes. They are kinfolk, in a way ... there's no blood relation between us. But they knew ... well, they pried. They learned something only I was supposed to know; and now they are trying to get where we are going before we do."
I didn't ask any questions about that. The trouble was, these folks probably believed the secret of Nathan Hume's treasure was something only they knew. As far as the hiding place was concerned, if they knew that, it was something nobody else knew. But I was pretty sure I wasn't the only one who knew about that gold. Only most of the others didn't know as much as I did.
"What started you folks out here all to once?"
"My grandmother died, and when she died she mentioned a packet of letters in her will, and they were to come to me, as my father and mother were both dead.
Sylvie and Ralph were there, although they had no right to be. There was little enough to leave and, as I said, they were no blood relation. But they heard the reading of the will, and in it grandmother mentioned that in the packet of letters was an account of where Nathan Hume's gold was buried."
"Somebody must've got away and told about it. I mean, when Nathan Hume was killed."
"You knew about that?"
"He was a known man. He'd been taking pack trains from Missiouri to Santa Fe for years."
"Grandfather drew a picture, wrote a few lines, and gave it to an Indian boy. He thought the boy might get away, and if he did he was to mail this to grandmother. The letter was all addressed, everything. Well, the Indian boy did get away, and he sent the message."
"How about Sylvie?"
"After the reading of the will she was just too nice, and so was Ralph. Sylvie made some tea--What's the matter?"
"Sylvie offered me some coffee, one time."
"It may have been the same sort of thing. She made some tea, and I took it to my room, only I got busy writing letters and forgot to drink it. In the middle of the night I woke up and Sylvie was standing there reading the letters by candlelight.
"I got them away from her, but she was furious--she threatened me, laughed at me, said there was no gold, and even if there was I could never get it."
The sun had moved beyond the cottonwoods, throwing a shadow across the street and across our door. A dog trotted up the street and paused outside, and I watched him, for something worried him. He sniffed, trying to catch some scent that kept getting away from him.
It was a nice thing, setting here in this cool, pleasant room talking to Penelope Hume. "You said your folks were dead. What about Loomis--who is he?"
"He was a friend of my father, and of my grandfather too. He offered to help.
Flinch found us, or we found him, at Fort Griffin. He has been very loyal."
That answered one question for me. If I could answer the one about the adobe across the street I'd be happier, but I had a good idea about that, too. And I was watching the dog. He was a big dog, and part wolf by the look of him, with all a wolf's suspicion.
We talked of other things, Penelope and me. She told me of her home back in New York state, and I talked a bit about Tennessee, but more about the country we were in.
"Folks out here are a rough lot, ma'am. There's the good and the bad, and there's many a man who has come west to get away from something, some trouble he's had. You'll find men from the oldest families and with the best education working right alongside a cowhand who can't read or write.
"The trouble is, too many folks come just to get rich and then get out. They don't care what they leave behind as long as they can take riches with them."
All the time I talked I thought of how it seemed to set across the table from such a girl, me who owned nothing but a pistol, a Winchester, a beat-up blanket or two, and a borrowed horse. And likely would never have anything more.
"I'd better go," she said. "Mr. Loomis wouldn't like it at all if he knew where I was."
"You're all right with me," I said, "but ma'am, I'd not be trusting of folks.
There are some would murder you for what you know about Nathan Hume."
"My dear cousins? I know."
"Not only them," I said. "When it comes to money or a pretty woman, there's not many who can be trusted."
"Not you, Mr. Sackett?"
"I've the name of being an outlaw," I said.
A spatter of rain was falling when Flinch led out the horses in the morning. It was dark, with only a faint suggestion of light showing beyond the cottonwoods.
Underneath them it was still like night. I tethered the dun near the buckboard and, rifle in hand, went across to Pio's.
The room was lighted by candles. It was warm and pleasant, with the smell of breakfast cooking. Loomis was already at the table, his face stiff with sleep; only the eyes seemed awake. Drawing up a chair, I sat down opposite him, and was scarcely seated when Penelope came in, hurrying to her chair. I rose and seated her, and Loomis gave me a dark, angry look.
Whether he was irritated with me because he believed I was making up to her, I don't know, and cared less. Flinch came in, walking quite as a ghost, and sat down at the end of the table.
The senora came from the kitchen with a platter of food, and then brought a steaming pot of coffee. We ate in silence, all of us heavy with sleep. As for me, I knew I should be thinking of the trail ahead, and the da
y before us. But I could not keep my thoughts from going back to yesterday, and the dog.
Whoever had been in the adobe house across the way had gone before the dog could find him. I remembered how the dog, hackles stiff, had walked toward the adobe, growling. Nobody else had seemed to be watching him.
He went inside the open doorway, and I got up and strolled across the street and followed him. He knew me, had been smelling around when I picketed my horse the night before, and had seen me that day around Pio's house. He looked up at me, then smelled around the empty room.
The lean-to behind the adobe showed where a man had slept and smoked cigarettes, a lot of them. The big dog sniffed curiously, then wandered out to the low back wall where the man had evidently gone ...
Steve Hooker? I wondered.
It was still dark when we went outside. The air was cool and the spatter of raindrops had begun again. The old buckboard creaked when they climbed into it.
Flinch gathered the reins, and they moved off.
Pio came out as I stepped into the saddle. "I do not like it, amigo," he said.
"The senorita will have trouble, I think. We like her very much, my wife and I."
"Her worst enemies are behind us. The ones of whom I spoke. Tell them nothing."
"Adios," he said, and I left him there, and moved out after the buckboard.
We crossed the Canadian, which was mostly a wide bed of sand, and then went west on the farther side, keeping well back from the bank to avoid the numerous creeks. But occasionally we traveled in the dry river bed itself, the narrow stream of the river shifting from one side to the other as we moved along. By daylight we were well on our way.
Riding ahead, I scouted the country for Indians or for anybody else who might be around. As it grew light, I swung right and left now and again to cut for sign.
Most of the tracks I found were those of sheep from Borregos Plaza, or of buffalo.
The light rain increased, and I led the way out of the river bed. It never took long in this country for a flash flood to come, and I didn't know how much it had been raining up the country.
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