Collection 1989 - Long Ride Home (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “Why, ma’am, that Cholo Baby was sired by old Dan Tucker, one of the finest quarter horse stallions of them all! He was a half brother to Peter McCue, who ran the quarter in twenty-one seconds!

  “Like I say, ma’am, a banker has to know what’s good collateral and what ain’t! Why, a man what knows horses could no more fail to back that strain than he could bet against his own mother!

  “And look,” he said grinning shrewdly. “Was it good collateral, or wasn’t it? Who won?”

  LONG RIDE HOME

  * * *

  BEFORE HIM ROLLED the red and salmon unknown, the vast, heat-waved unreality of the raw desert, broken only by the jagged crests of the broken bones of upthrust ledges. He saw the weird cacti and the tiny puffs of dust from the hooves of his grulla, but Tensleep Mooney saw no more.

  Three days behind him was the Mexican border, what lay ahead he had no idea. Three days behind him lay the Rangers of Texas and Arizona, and a row of graves, some new buried, of men he had killed. But Tensleep Mooney of the fast gun and the cold eye was southbound for peace, away from the fighting, the bitterness, the struggle. He was fleeing not the law alone, but the guns of his enemies and the replies his own must make if he stayed back there.

  Here not even the Apache rode. Here no peon came, and rarely even the Indians. This was a wild and lonely land, born of fire and tempered with endless sunlight, drifting dust-devils and the bald and brassy sky. Sweat streaked his dust-caked shirt, and there were spots flushed red beneath his squinted eyes, and pinkish desert dust in the dark stubble of his unshaven jaws.

  Grimly, he pointed south, riding toward something he knew not what. In his pocket, ten silver pesos; in his canteen, a pint of brackish water remaining; in the pack on the stolen burro, a little sowbelly, some beans, rice, and enough ammunition to fight.

  Behind him the Carrizal Mountains, behind him the green valleys of the Magdalena, and back along the line, a black horse dead of a rifle bullet, his own horse lying within a half minute’s buzzard flight of the owner of the horse he now rode, a bandit who had been too optimistic for his health. And behind him at Los Chinos, a puzzled peon who had sold a mule and beans to a hard-faced Yanqui headed south.

  Mooney had no destination before him. He was riding out of time, riding out of his world into any other world. What lay behind him was death wherever he rode, a land where the law sought him, and the feuding family of his enemies wanted vengeance for their horse-thieving relatives he had killed.

  The law, it seemed, would overlook the killing of a horse thief. It would even overlook the killing of a pair of his relatives if they came hunting you, but when it came to the point of either eliminating the males of a big family or being eliminated oneself, they were less happy. Tensleep Mooney had planted seven of them and had been five months ducking bullets before the Rangers closed in; and now, with discretion, Mooney took his valor south of the border.

  Two days had passed in which he saw but one lonely rancho; a day since he came across any living thing except buzzards and lizards and an occasional rattler. He swung eastward, toward the higher mountains, hunting a creek or a water hole where he could camp for the night, and with luck, for a couple of days rest. His stock was gaunt and he was lean in the ribs and hollow cheeked.

  The country grew rougher, the cacti thicker, the jagged ridges sloped up toward the heights of the mountains. And then the brush was scattered but head high, and then he saw a patch of greener brush ahead and went riding toward it, sensing water in the quickened pace of his grulla.

  Something darted through the brush, and he shucked his gun with an instinctive draw that would have done credit to Wes Hardin—but he pushed on. He wanted water and he was going to have it if he had to fight for it.

  The something was an Indian girl, ragged, thin and wide-eyed. She crouched above a man who lay on the sand, a chunk of rock in her hand, waiting at bay with teeth bared like some wild thing.

  Mooney drew his horse to a stop and holstered his gun. She was thin, emaciated. Her cheekbones were startling against the empty cheeks and sunken eyes. She was barefoot, and the rags she wore covered a body that no man would have looked at twice. On the sand at her feet lay an old Indian, breathing hoarsely. One leg was wrapped in gruesomely dirty rags, and showed blood.

  “What’s the matter, kid?” he said in hoarse English. “I won’t hurt you.”

  She did not relent, waiting, hopeless in her courage, ready to go down fighting. It was a feeling that touched a responsive chord in Tensleep, of the Wyoming Mooneys. He grinned and swung to the ground, holding a hand up, palm outward. “Amigo,” he said, hesitantly. His stay in Texas had not been long and he knew little Spanish and had no confidence in that. “Me amigo,” he said, and he walked up to the fallen man.

  The man’s face was gray with pain, but he was conscious. He was Indian, too. Tarahumara, Mooney believed, having heard of them. He dropped beside the old man and gently began to remove the bandage. The girl stared at him, then began to gasp words in some heathen, unbelievable language.

  Mooney winced when he saw the wound. A bullet through the thigh. And it looked as ugly as any wound he had seen in a long time. Turning to the trees, Mooney began to gather dry sticks. When he started to put them together for a fire the girl sprang at him wildly and began to babble shrill protest, pointing off to the west as she did so. “Somebody huntin’ you, is there?” Tensleep considered that, looked at the man, the girl, and considered himself, then he chuckled. “Don’t let it bother you, kid,” he said. “If we don’t fix this old man up fast, he’ll die. Maybe it’s too late now. An’,” here he chuckled again, “if they killed all of us, they wouldn’t accomplish much.”

  The fire was made of dry wood and there was little smoke. He put water on to get hot. Then when the water was boiling he went to a creosote bush and got leaves from it and threw them into the water. The girl squatted on her heels and watched him tensely. When he had allowed the leaves to boil for a while, he bathed the wound in the concoction. He knew that some Indians used it for an antiseptic for burns and wounds. The girl watched him, then darted into the brush and after several minutes came back with some leaves which she dampened and then began to crush into a paste. The old man lay very still, his face more calm, his eyes on Mooney’s face.

  Tensleep looked at the wide face, the large soft eyes that could no doubt be hard on occasion, and the firm mouth. This was a man—he had heard many stories of the endurance of these Tarahumara Indians. They would travel for fabulous miles without food, they possessed an unbelievable resistance to pain in any form. When the wound was thoroughly bathed, the girl moved forward with the paste and signified that it should be bound on the wound. He nodded, and with a tinge of regret he ripped up his last white shirt—the only one he had owned in three years—and bound the wound carefully. He was just finishing it when the girl caught his arm. Her eyes were wide with alarm, but he saw nothing. And then, as he listened, he heard horses drawing nearer and he got to his feet and slid his Winchester from its scabbard. His horse had stopped among the uptilted rocks that surrounded the water hole.

  There were three of them, a well-dressed man with a thin, cruel face and two hard-faced vaqueros. “Ah!” The leader drew up. He looked down at the old Indian and said, “Perro!” Then his hand dropped to his gun and Tensleep Mooney drew.

  The Mexican stopped, his hand on his own gun, looking with amazement into the black and steady muzzle of Tensleep’s Colt. A hard man himself he had seen many men draw a pistol, but never a draw like this. His eyes studied the man behind the gun and he did not like what he saw. Tensleep Mooney was honed down and hard, a man with wide shoulders, a once broken nose, and eyes like bits of gray slate.

  “You do not understand,” the Mexican said coolly. “This man is an Indio. He is nothing. He is a dog. He is a thief.”

  “Where I come from,” Mooney replied, “we don’t shoot helpless men. An’ we don’t run Injuns to rags when they’re afoot an’ helpless. We,” his
mouth twisted wryly, “been hard on our own Injuns, but mostly they had a fightin’ chance. I think this hombre deserves as much.”

  “You are far from other gringos,” the Mexican suggested, “and I am Don Pedro,” he waved a hand, “of the biggest hacienda in one hundred miles. The police, the soldiers, all of them come when I speak. You stop me now and there will not be room enough in this country for you to hide, and then we shall see how brave you are.”

  “That’s as may be,” Mooney shrugged, his eyes hard and casual. “You can see how big my feet are right now if you three want to have at it. I’ll holster my gun, an’ then you can try, all three of you. Of course,” Mooney smiled a pleasant, Irish smile, “you get my first shot, right through the belly.”

  Don Pedro was no fool. It was obvious to him that even if they did kill the gringo that it would do nothing for Don Pedro, for the scion of an ancient house would be cold clay upon the Sonora desert. It was a most uncomfortable thought, for Don Pedro had a most high opinion of the necessity for Don Pedro’s continued existence.

  “You are a fool,” he said coldly. He spoke to his men and swung his horse.

  “An’ you are not,” Mooney said, “if you keep ridin’.”

  Then they were gone and he turned to look at the Indians. They stared at him as, if he were a god, but he merely grinned and shrugged. Then his face darkened and he kicked the fire apart. “We got to move,” he said, waving a hand at the desert, “away.”

  He shifted the pack on the burro and loaded the old man on the burro’s back. “This may kill you, Old One,” he said, “but unless I miss my guess, that hombre will be back with friends.”

  The girl understood at once, but refused to mount with him, striking off at once into the brush. “I hope you know where you’re goin’,” he said, and followed on, trusting to her to take them to a place of safety.

  She headed south until suddenly they struck a long shelf of bare rock, then she looked up at him quickly, and gestured at the rock, then turned east into the deeper canyons. Darkness fell suddenly but the girl kept on weaving her way into a trackless country—and she herself seemed tireless.

  His canteen was full, and when the girl stopped it was at a good place for hiding, but the tinaja was dry. He made coffee and the old man managed to drink some, then drank more, greedily.

  He took out some of the meat and by signs indicated to the girl what he wanted. She was gone into the brush only a few minutes and then returned with green and yellow inflated stems. “Squaw cabbage!” he said. “I’ll be durned! I never knowed that was good to eat!” He gestured to indicate adding it to the stew and she nodded vigorously. He peeled his one lone potato and added it to the stew.

  All three ate, then rolled up and slept. The girl sleeping close to her father, but refusing to accept one of his blankets.

  They started early, heading farther east. “Water?” he questioned. “Agua?”

  She pointed ahead, and they kept moving. All day long they moved. His lips cracked, and the face of the old man was flushed. The girl still walked, plodding on ahead, although she looked in bad shape. It was late afternoon when she gestured excitedly and ran on ahead. When he caught up with her, she was staring at a water hole. It was brim full of water, but in the water floated a dead coyote.

  “How far?” he asked, gesturing.

  She shook her head, and gestured toward the sky. She meant either the next afternoon or the one following. In either case, there was no help for it. They could never last it out.

  “Well, here goes,” he said, and swinging down he stripped the saddle from the horse. Then while the girl made her father comfortable, he took the dead coyote from the water hole, and proceeded to build a fire, adding lots of dry wood. When he had a good pile of charcoal, he dipped up some of the water in a can, covered the surface to a depth of almost three inches with charcoal, and then put it on the fire. When it had boiled for a half hour, he skimmed impurities and the charcoal, and the water below looked pure and sweet. He dipped out enough to make coffee, then added charcoal to the remainder. When they rolled out in the morning the water looked pure and good. He poured it off into his canteen and they started on.

  Now the girl at last consented to climb up behind him, and they rode on into the heat of a long day. Later, he swung down and walked, and toward night the girl slipped to the ground. And then suddenly the vegetation grew thicker and greener. The country was impossibly wild and lonely. They had seen nothing, for even the buzzards seemed to have given up.

  Then the girl ran on ahead and paused. Tensleep walked on, then stopped dead still, staring in shocked amazement.

  Before him, blue with the haze of late evening, lay a vast gorge, miles wide, and apparently, also miles deep! It stretched off to the southwest in a winding splendor, a gorge as deep as the Canyon of the Colorado, and fully as magnificent.

  The girl led him to a steep path and unhesitatingly she walked down it. He followed. Darkness came and still she led on, and then suddenly he saw the winking eye of a fire! They walked on, and the girl suddenly called out, and after a minute there was an answering hail. And then they stopped on a ledge shaded by towering trees. Off to the left was the vast gorge; somewhere in its depths a river roared and thundered. Indians came out of the shadows, the firelight on their faces. Behind them was the black mouth of a cave, and something that looked like a wall with windows.

  The old man was helped down from the burro and made comfortable. An old woman brought him a gourd dish full of stew and he ate hungrily. The Tarahumaras gathered around, unspeaking but watching. They seemed to be waiting for something, and then it came.

  A man in a sombrero pushed his way through the Indians and stopped on the edge of the fire. Obviously an Indian also, he was dressed like a peon. “I speak,” he said. “This man an’ the girl say much thank you. You are good hombre.”

  “Thanks,” Mooney said, “I was glad to do it. How do I get out of here?”

  “No go.” The man shook his head. “This man, Don Pedro, he will seek you. Here you must wait…here.” He smiled. “He will not come. Here nobody will come.”

  Tensleep squatted beside the fire. That was all right, for awhile, but he had no desire to remain in this canyon for long. He could guess that the gorge would be highly unsafe for anyone who tried to enter without permission of the Tarahumaras. But to get out?

  “How about downstream?” He pointed to the southwest. “Is there a way?”

  “Si, but it is long an’ ver’ difficult. But you wait. Later will be time enough.”

  They brought him meat and beans, and he ate his fill for the first time in days. Squatting beside the fire he watched the Indians come and go, their dark, friendly eyes on his face, half-respectful, half-curious. The girl was telling them excitedly of all that happened, and from her excited gestures he could gather that the story of his facing down Don Pedro and his vaqueros was losing nothing in the telling.

  For two days Mooney loitered in the gorge. Here and there along the walls were ledges where crops had been planted. Otherwise the Indios hunted, fished in the river, and went into the desert to find plants. Deeper in the canyon the growth was tropical. There were strange birds, jaguars, and tropical fruit. Once he descended with them, clear to the water’s edge. It was a red and muddy stream, thinning down now as the rainy season ended, yet from marks on the walls he could see evidence that roaring torrents had raged through here, and he could understand why the Indios suggested waiting.

  “Indio,” he said suddenly on the third day, “I must go now. Ain’t no use my stayin’ here longer. I got to ride on.”

  The Indian squatted on his heels and nodded. “Where you go now?”

  “South.” He shrugged. “It ain’t healthy for me back to the north.”

  “I see.” Indio scratched under his arm. “You are bueno hombre, Senor.” From his shirt pocket he took a piece of paper on which an address had been crudely lettered. “Thees rancho,” he said, “you go to there. Thees woma
n, she is Indio, like me. She ver’…ver’…how you say? Rico?”

  “Yeah, I get you.” Mooney shrugged. “All I want is a chance to lay around out of sight an’ work a little for my grub. Enough to keep me goin’ until I go back north.” He rubbed his jaw. “Later, if I can get some cash I might go to Vera Cruz and take a boat for New Orleans, then back to Wyomin’. Yeah, that would be best.”

  Indio questioned him, and he explained, drawing a map in the dirt. The Indian nodded, grasping the idea quickly. He seemed one of the few who had been outside of the canyon for any length of time. He had, he said, worked for this woman to whom Mooney was to go. She was no longer young, but she was very wise, and her husband dead. Most of those who worked for her were Tarahumaras.

  They left at daybreak, and the girl came to the door of the house-cave to motion to him. When he entered, the old Indian lay on the floor on a heap of skins and blankets. He smiled and held up a hand whose grip was surprisingly strong, and he spoke rapidly, then said something to the girl. When she came up to Mooney she held in her hands a skin-wrapped object that was unusually heavy. It was, Mooney gathered, a present. Awkwardly, he thanked them, then came out and mounted.

  Once more his pack was rounded and full. Plenty of beans, some jerky, and some other things the Indians brought for him. All gathered together on the ledge to wave good-bye. Indio led him down a steep path, then into a branch canyon, and finally they started up.

  It was daylight again before they reached the rancho for which they had started, and they had travelled nearly all day and night. Lost in the chaparral, Tensleep was astonished to suddenly emerge into green fields of cotton, beyond them were other fields, and some extensive orchards. And then to the wall-enclosed rancho itself.

  The old woman had evidently been apprised of his coming, for she stood on the edge of the patio to receive him. She was short, like the other women of her people, but there was something regal in her bearing that impressed Mooney.