Off the Mangrove Coast (Ss) (2000)

by L'amour, Louis

  Jeru crouched in surprise and I stepped in and before” the boy could pull the rifle’s trigger I slapped the barrel aside and kicked him in the groin. He went down, leaving me with the gun, and I saw two of Jeru’s men racing away down the ridge, their tattooed backs glistening with the sweat of exertion and fear.

  I turned to the old man and with a whining growl he , drew his parang. He cut at me with such speed that I barely could move in time, shoving the rifle sideways into the blade. There was a ringing of steel and Lacklan’s gun was torn from my grasp, falling to the rocks at my feet. Jeru reversed and I leaped back, the blade slicing air near my belly. He was fast; for an old man he was awfully fast. I got my knife out and took a cut at him but he thrust along my arm, his blade leaving a trace of fire and a line of blood … he was better at this than I was. Better by a long shot.

  He stabbed and cut. We fought back and forth there on that high ridge with a clear sweep of forest below us on one side and the white glare of the clouds beneath us on the other. And then he cut me, the knife grazing my chest, the blade momentarily catching on the Mauser’s leather strap, and it was all over. His blade snagged and I caught his arm and was behind him in one movement. It was my fight then and for him it was hopeless. As good as he was with a knife, he was an old man. I was stronger than he was and I was heavier too. I broke his arm but there was no give in him so I clipped him on the jaw, a punch that would have put away a much bigger man, and I’m not proud to say that I broke that too.

  He was unconscious. I was down, the world spinning around me, my chest bloody, my arm bloody, too bloody. The boy scrambled away, sobbing. There was the sound of gunfire. Helen was standing over me working the bolt on John’s fancy rifle. Brass flew, bright against the sky. Men fled downhill, disappearing into the trees.

  They broke open the first-aid kit, poured something in my wounds that hurt more than the knife had. Raj was getting me on my feet and my head was clearing; I had never really been out, just gray for a while, like I’d held my breath too long.

  We were at the edge of the slope when I remembered. I pulled away from Raj’s hands and went back. Jeru moaned when I turned him on his back. He looked at me, eyes no longer full of anger but neither was there fear. He waited for me to do whatever I had to do. It took only a moment.

  “Thank you, Tuan Jeru,” I told him. “Go to a village where no one knows you, live your days as an old man should. Cross my path again and I’ll take your head and hang it on my porch.”

  I left him there, bats circling above, and I staggered off after the others. We went down past the cave where the fire still burned but was now low and dying. Then we were in the jungle and soon it was darker and hotter.

  It was two days back to the boats. Two days of struggle and pain. John Lacklan and I setting our pitiful pace. His* leg was swollen and my cuts and the places where the buckshot hit me had become infected. As much as I disliked the man he had a certain kind of toughness. It was the toughness of the littlest kid on the team or perhaps the brainy child that nobody liked … but he wasn’t going to let that leg stop us. I had to make myself keep pace , with him.

  The boats were intact. In this I was surprised for I was sure that even if we got to the river without another fight I thought they would have stolen or destroyed the boats. I guess with their burned long house several dead, and wounded leader they had enough to deal with. Raj took us downriver in the bigger dugout with Fairchild’s motor jury-rigged to the stern. On the trip downriver I got sicker and they tell me when I arrived in Marudi I was unconscious and running a high fever. For the second time in two years I had returned from upriver barely alive. But this time I had the difference.

  I lay in bed and got better. Vandover came down and brought the doctor. He shot me with penicillin, cleaned my wounds and dusted them with sulfa, then they sat on the verandah and drank the last of my scotch. I stared at the peeling paint on the ceiling.

  She came to visit me an hour before the mail boat left for Singapore. The room was closed and dark but sunlight blazed through every crack in the shutters. She was dressed in a white traveling outfit and as she stood in the doorway she was a vague figure beyond the patched mosquito netting. I sat up.

  “Mr. Kardec?” She came into the room, taking off a large pair of dark glasses. “I just came to thank you. You saved our lives.” I could see that the wedding ring, with its empty socket, was missing from her finger.

  I wanted to make some kind of smart comment but I didn’t really know what it would be. “How’s your husband?” I asked.

  “He’s got a bad sprain. All that walking we did made it worse. We’re leaving today …” She stopped for a moment, holding on to some kind of feeling, I couldn’t tell what.

  “He won’t talk to me,” she said. “It’s like I did some thing unforgivable back there but I don’t see that I really had a choice.”

  “I think he’s trying too hard to be a strong man.” I thought this was right, it felt right. “Something inside of him is desperate. He’s barely holding on to something but I don’t know what it is. He’d of rather died back there than be saved by you.”

  “John was so brilliant. You should have seen him when we met. They all listened when he spoke, Dr. Teller, even General LeMay.”

  “This is a different world, Helen. You knew that, I could see it. Sometimes when there is nothing between you and nature you find out things you wish you didn’t know … sometimes when you look at yourself you are smaller in the scheme of things than you thought you Were.” I * shifted, sitting up a little farther, leaning back against the headboard. “There’s been a time or two when I found myself in the middle of a dark forest praying for God to save me. You have to accept your fear and survive. It’s not about your image of yourself, it’s just about getting back in one piece.”

  “I guess so,” she said.

  We were both silent for a moment. Then she straightened up, all business.

  “We should pay you, at least what we were going to for guiding us. We owe you that, and more.”

  I carefully moved the mosquito net aside and swung my feet to the floor. The cut under my bandages pulled tightly and it burned, but it was a healing pain.

  “I don’t want any money,” and then before I could take it back, I said, “I did it for you. I don’t want to lose that.”

  She crossed the room and bending down, she kissed me. For just a moment she held my face in her hand. “What will you do?” she asked. “How will you ever get home?”

  I didn’t really wonder how she knew this, I expect I Vandover or Fairchild must have told her … it didn’t matter I sat straighter, trying to feel the strength in my body. It was there, not much, but coming back. I opened the nightstand drawer.

  “Never underrate a man who has lived as I have, I Helen. Just as a man who has lived as I have would never underrate a woman like you.” I grinned. “I’m not proud and I do what it takes to survive.” I held out my hand and opened it to show her. It was ironic, when I had gone into j the forest for personal gain I had returned with nothing,! but when I had gone intending to help others somehow ij had been rewarded.

  On my palm lay, in a setting of woven leather, the thong I broken from when I had torn it from his neck … the diamond of Peru!

  *

  SECRET OF SILVER SPRINGS

  It was an hour after sunup when Dud Shafter rode the roan gelding up to the water hole at Pistol Rock. The roan had come up the basin at a shuffling trot, but the man who waited there knew that both horse and man had come far and fast over rough trails.

  The waiting man, Navarro, could understand that. The trail this rider had left behind him lay through some of the roughest country in the Southwest, a journey made no easier by the fact that several Apache bands were raiding and their exact location was anyone’s guess. He glanced appraisingly at the sweat-stained, sun-faded blue shirt the red-haired man wore, noted the haggard lines of the big-boned, freckled face, and the two walnut-butted guns in their wo
rn holsters.

  As the man drew up, Navarro indicated the fire. “Coffee, senor? There is plenty.”

  Shafter stared down at the Mexican with hard blue eyes, and when he swung down he kept the horse between them. He stripped the saddle from the horse and rubbed it down briskly with a handful of desert grass, then walked toward the fire. He had not even for an instant turned his back on the Mexican.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” he said at last.

  Squatting, he placed his cup on a flat rock, then lifting the pot with his left hand, he poured the cup full of scalding black coffee. Replacing the pot alongside the coals, he glanced across the fire at Navarro and lifted the cup.

  “Luck!” he said.

  After a moment, he put the cup down and dug in his pocket for the makings.

  “You make a good cup of coffee,” he said.

  Navarro lifted a deprecating shoulder and one eyebrow. His eyes had never left the big man’s carefully moving hands. It was simply something to say; Navarro was a good cook, coffee was the least of his achievements … and he had other abilities as well.

  The Mexican wore buckskin breeches, hand-tooled boots, and one ivory-butted gun. His felt sombrero was fastened under his chin with a rawhide thong.

  The sound of another horse approaching brought the heads of both men up sharply. Navarro touched his lips with his tongue, and Dud Shafter shifted his weight to face the opening into the basin.

  A buckskin horse came through the opening at a walk, and a man sat that horse with a double-barreled express shotgun across his saddle bows. The man was a Negro.

  “Howdy!” Shafter said.

  “Join us,” Navarro added.

  The Negro grinned and swung to the ground. He was shorter than either of the others, but of such powerful build that his weight would have equaled that of Shafter, who was a big man in any company.

  He wore a six-shooter in an open-toed holster, but as he dismounted and moved up to the fire, he kept his shotgun in his hand. He carried his own cup, as did the others, and when he squatted to pour the coffee, the shotgun was ready to his hand.

  Navarro smiled, revealing even white teeth under the black of his mustache. These were men of his own kind. After a moment or two, he took a burlap sack off his saddle and began to cook. Slowly he assembled a meal, such a meal as the two strangers had certainly not seen in many weeks. Tortillas were heated on a flat rock, lean shredded beef was cooked with peppers and onions, frijoles that he had soaked since he had camped the previous night were split into three portions. As Navarro worked his magic he carefully watched his new companions.

  “It takes money,” he suggested, “to travel far. I know where there is money!”

  Dud Shaffer’s chill blue eyes lifted in a curious, speculative glance. “It takes money. That’s the truth.”

  “If you’re travelin’” the other man wiped off his seamed black hands “and you know where there is money for the takin’, you’re a lucky man.”

  “One man cannot get this money,” Navarro hinted. “Three men might.”

  Dud Shafter let the idea soak in, staring into the fire. He picked up a mesquite stick and thrust it into the coals, watching a tongue of flame lick greedily at the dry wood.

  He looked around casually. “Would this money be nearby?” he asked.

  “Sixty miles by this road, but by a way I and only a few others know, it is but twenty. There is an Apache path through the mountains. We could ride over this trail, make our collection, and return. We could get water and some rest here, then head for the Blues.”

  “You don’t think others know this trail … others we might have to worry about?” Dud asked.

  Navarro shrugged. “Who knows. But we will be careful. At the right moment we will hide our tracks. Also, in going there we will learn the path well. It is a chance that I believe in.”

  Dud Shafter rolled the idea over in his mind. He was not above driving off a few steers, especially if he didn’t know whose they were. But this sounded like crime, straight from the shoulder, out and out theft. Not his style, but he was going to need money. There was trouble down his back trail and a winter with no work in his future.

  “There is an express box,” Navarro informed him, “on a stage. In that box are two small payrolls … small for pay rolls, but good money for us. More than seven thousand dollars. Before the stage arrives at Lobo station, it passes through Cienaga Pass. That is the place.”

  After a moment Shafter nodded and then the Negro did too. He didn’t really like the idea but he was willing to go along. What he did like, however, was the Mexican’s food.

  Navarro led off because he knew the route. Dud Shafter and the Negro, who had said his name was Benzie, followed. Navarro led them into the cedars along the mountainside back of Pistol Rock, then crossed the hill and cut down its side into a sandy wash. Seven miles farther, he led them into a tangle of mesquite, cat-claw, and yeso. Steadily, their trail tended toward the blank face’ of the cliff, yet when they reached it, Navarro turned south for two miles, then entered a canyon. The canyon ended in a jumble of rocks, and beyond the tumbled pile of boulders was the cliff.

  “Looks like you miscalculated,” Dud said. “There ain’t no way through there.”

  “Wait, compadre.” Navarro chuckled. “Just wait!”

  They rode on into the gathering dark, weaving a way among the boulders toward the face of the cliff.

  The walls to right and left closed in, and the darkness shouldered its shadows toward their horses. Then a boulder-strewn, cedar-cloaked hillside lifted toward the sheer wall of rock, and the Mexican started up. Within only a few feet of the cliff, he turned his horse at right angles and started down a steep slope that led right up to the face. Concealed by the boulder-strewn hill was a path that slanted steeply down, then turned to a crevasse between two walls of rock. It was a trail that no man would ever suspect was there.

  Between the walls, so close together their stirrups grazed the rock on either side, it was dark and cool. There was dampness in the air.

  “It is like this for miles,” Navarro said. “No danger of going astray.”

  They rode on and Dud nodded in the saddle, his horse plodding steadily forward. Finally, after nearly an hour’s ride, the crevasse widened into a canyon, and they still rode on. Then the canyon narrowed to a crevasse again, and they passed by a trickle of water. When they had gone only a little way farther, Navarro halted.

  Dud Shafter, startled from a half sleep, slid a gun into his hand. He glared around in the darkness.

  “There is no trouble,” Navarro said. “The trail is there.” He pointed toward the black mouth of a cave. “We will enter the cave and each of you will go exactly seventy-seven steps from the time your horse starts onto the rock floor, it will be very dark. Then you must turn left. You will see an opening covered with vines, push them aside and ride through.”

  Navarro led the way and they rode into darkness. The echoes from the other horses’ hooves made it hard for Dud to count and he discovered it was better to plug his ears with his fingertips and feel the footsteps of his horse than to try to follow the confusing sounds in the cave. At seventy-seven he reined over and momentarily dragged his left knee against the rock.

  “Guess that Mex has got a bigger horse than mine,” he grumbled.

  Now the footfalls of their horses splashed in shallow water, then there was a dim light ahead and they pushed the vines aside and emerged into the evening air. A small trickle of water ran out from under the cover of vines and soaked the ground around their horses’ hooves.

  Navarro turned to face them. “We will stop here,” Navarro said. “And I will tell you the way back in case I should be killed. You must follow the streambed in the cave and let your horse take thirty steps no more.

  “Turn your horse sharply right and ride straight ‘ahead, and after you have been riding into darkness for a few minutes, you will see the trail down which we have come.” “Suppose I take more than thirty ste
ps?” Shafter asked. Navarro shrugged. “You will find yourself in a great cavern, the floor is crumbling and filled with many holes. One man I knew made that mistake, and his horse and he went through the floor. We heard him scream as he fell. He fell a long way, senor.”

  “I’ll count the thirty steps,” Shafter said dryly. They bedded down and slept until dawn, then rolled out. Dud was the first one up, collecting greasewood and a few pieces of dead cedar for a fire. When he had the fire going he looked around and took stock of their position. They had camped in what appeared to be a box canyon, and they were in the upper end of the canyon with a lovely green meadow of some thirty acres spread out before them. Not far away was a ruined adobe house and a pole corral.

  When they had rested and eaten another of Navarro’s meals, they mounted and the Mexican rode into the meadow. The ruined adobe stood among ancient trees and beside a pool, crystal clear. Dud glanced around with appreciation.

  “It’s a nice place,” he said thoughtfully. “A right nice place!”

  In a wooden beam over the adobe’s door was carved a brand. “PV9” it read.

  Benzie nodded, and shifted his shotgun. He carried it like part of himself, like an extension of his arm. He spoke little but never seemed to miss a trick.

  Later, they swung down behind a clump of juniper on the crest of a low hill just off the stage road. Here the team would be slowed to a walk. It would be the best place.

  They rode back into the juniper and dismounted. There was plenty of time. Benzie sat on the dead trunk of a tree a smoke, staring bleakly off across the blue-misted end of desert that stretched away toward purple had never stolen anything before.

  Navai Jhat over stretched at full length on the sparse grass, his his face. Dud Shafter idly flipped his knife into the end of the log. Shafter wondered about his Mexican and Negro companions, but asked no questions and they volunteered no information.

  Shafter swore softly and stared down the road. There was a warrant out for his arrest back along the trail. He hadn’t stolen that bunch of cattle but he’d been with the men who did. He might as well stick up the stage; might as well have the pay as well as the blame. Still, this was a point, a branching road where a man turned toward the owl hoot or along a trail with honest men. Warrant or not, he was sitting in a fork of that road right now.