Mojave Crossing s-11 Page 12

  "You go to hell," he said politely.

  Chapter Nine.

  Sometimes the damned fool things a man does are the ones that save his bacon.

  When I had my horses all together I tied lead ropes on them and started out of town, and I wasn't sorry to go. Only one thing bothered me, I'd come this far and hadn't seen the ocean sea.

  It was over yonder, not too far out of my trail, so when I was heading west across La Nopalera, the big cactus patch that lay north of the brea road, I made up my mind of a sudden. I'd no wish to sleep the night at the Mandrin ranch, so what better than a ride down toward Santa Monica and the sea?

  Of a sudden I decided to do it, for I might not come this way again. By such whims can a man's life be saved, as mine was saved that evening.

  Turning off, I taken the trail for San Vincente Spring, from which Santa Monica, both the old town and the new, so I'd heard, took their water. It was a long ride, and despite the fact that I kept moving right along, it was nigh to midnight before I got where I could hear the sea.

  There was a ranch house on the bluff, about a half mile back from the sea, but I was shy of folks and rode clear of it, although I was near enough that their dog barked at me.

  The stars were out and a fresh wind from off the sea felt good against my face. Down at the end of the arroyo was a clump of trees, great big old sycamores, and some brush, but there were too many squatters, to judge by the campfires still going.

  So I turned north along the shore until I found another canyon. Up that canyon about a quarter of a mile I found a clump of trees with nobody around, and I rode in, unsaddled, and bedded down.

  It was sure lucky that nobody followed me all the way out there, for I slept like a hibernating bear until the sun found my face through the leaves.

  My stock had made a good thing of it on the grass in the clearing, so I taken my time getting around. My saddlebags were empty of grub, and after a bit I saddled up and rode along the shore to the town.

  After stabling my horses, I got me a room at the Santa Monica Hotel, and made a dicker with the manager, a man name of Johnson, to take my gold off my hands for cash money.

  When he paid it over to me he gave me a sharp look and said, "You seem to be a nice young man.

  If I were you I should be very careful, carrying that much money. There are thieves hereabouts."

  "You don't say!" I said with astonishment.

  "Well, thank you kindly. I shall be wary of strangers."

  They had a bath house there where folks came to take the baths, and it seemed to me a good soaking couldn't but do me good. Whilst I was in the bath I laid my saddlebags close by and my pistol belt atop them where I could lay hand on the gun mighty easy. Several folks came by and looked at me and then at that gun, and they fought shy of me.

  They were mostly older men, taking the baths for their rheumatism.

  After a good meal I walked around town a little, looking at the schoolhouse, the churches, and the railroad, which had been built out there just a year or so earlier. Some folks were saying this would be the biggest seaport on the west coast ... at least, the biggest south of San Francisco.

  A couple of times I went around to check my horses, and from the livery stable door I studied the town to make sure that nobody was following me, or that any of that Dyer outfit had showed up hunting me.

  That night I slept, and slept well, in a hotel bed. I mean I just stretched out and didn't mind it a whole lot when my feet pushed out below the covers. I was sure enough in a bed, and nobody knew where I was. However, I slept with those saddlebags under the covers with me, and a six-shooter too. You might say I was not a trusting man.

  Most folks can be trusted up to a point, but it always seemed to me the best thing was not to put temptation in their way. Now that black-eyed witch girl ... she made a business of temptation.

  When she was around, temptation was always in the way.

  It was noontime when I showed up at that Mandrin ranch.

  The way I figured, they'd be expecting me at most any other time, and I'd noticed that during dinnertime when they were inside eating, and right after when they took their siesta, the place was quiet as death.

  After I thought that word, I tried to unthink it.

  Death was riding at my heels these days, and I didn't want to charm it to me by thinking of it.

  When a man rides as much country as I have, he gets a feeling for it, and wherever he rides, he looks around to get to know it. So it was that I knew just how to come up to the ranch unseen, and I was in the ranch yard and putting ropes on my mules before anybody came out of the house.

  The one who appeared was a dark-eyed man wearing a white hat.

  "Howdy," he said. "You'd be Tell Sackett."

  "Seems like."

  "You stirred a lot of talk yonder in the pueblo. Everybody's been wonderin' what became of you."

  "I'm a driftin' man, so I drifted."

  He stood there trying to size me up, and as I roped my mules together for better handling, I managed not to turn my back on him, nor to seem like I was thinking of such a thing. With mules fidgeting around the way they do, that was simple enough. All the time I was debating whether I should go inside and say good-bye to the old man.

  This man with the white hat had a hurt arm, and he limped a mite, too. There was a cut on his face that might have come from broken glass. He looked like a man who might have been thrown out of a window and rolled down a porch roof before falling off into the street.

  When I was ready to go I led my stock around in front of the house and looked over at White Hat.

  "You," I said, "let's go in and see Old Ben."

  "I seen him," he said, mighty sullen.

  "He knows me."

  "You walk in there," I advised him, "and you walk in ahead of me. Looks to me like you tripped over something too big for you already, so don't take chances on it happening again."

  It didn't seem he liked that very much, but he walked in ahead of me. It might have been my suspicious mind that prompted it, but it seemed to me Old Ben was doing a lot of fussing with his blanket when I came through the door.

  That black-eyed girl came down from her room, dressed for riding, an Indian girl following her with some bags and suchlike that a woman feels called upon to tote around.

  "Well, Ben," I said, "this here's good-bye.

  It's adios. If you plan to see me again, you'll have to come to Arizona."

  His hard old eyes studied me, and they glinted with a touch of humor mixed with what might have been respect. "You killed Sandeman Dyer," he said. "Everybody allowed it couldn't be done."

  "Every man is born with death in him," I said.

  "It's only a matter of time."

  Dorinda was standing there, and when I looked at her I saw her eyes were wider than usual, her cheeks kind of pale. I wondered about that, for she was a composed sort of girl, who didn't get wrought up by trifles.

  "All right, boy!" Old Ben said. "You have a nice trip. And thanks ... thanks for everything.

  Not many men would have done what you did, and without pay."

  "Those mules look pretty good," I said, "that's pay enough for a lot of trouble."

  Glancing over at Dorinda, I said, "You ready?"

  "Go ahead ... I want to say good-bye to Ben."

  "All right," I said, and turned toward the door.

  He was too anxious, that old man was. He had me dead to rights, but he was too anxious. Here I'd been ready for trouble for weeks, and expecting it from everywhere, but in that moment I forgot.

  But he was in too much of a hurry.

  First thing I knew, there was a whap of something past my ear, the heavy tunk as it hit the door jamb, and the bellow of a gun. Me, I was headed for the outside and there was nothing keeping me. I went out that door like I had fire in my hip pockets, and I'm not ashamed to confess it.

  He fired again, and the bullet just fanned air where I'd been, and then I heard the damnedest jo
b of cussing I've heard in my born days.

  Around the corner of the house came White Hat, running full tilt with a rifle in his hands. But when he got where he wanted to be, my six-shooter was looking right down his throat, and I said, "You going to drop that rifle, or am I going to drag what's left of you out in the brush for the buzzards to pick over?"

  He was a man of decision who recognized the logic of my argument, and he let go of that rifle as if it was hot.

  "Los Angeles is quite a ways off," I told him, "and if you're going to walk it, you'd best get started."

  About that time Dorinda came out the door just like nothing had happened, and I helped her into the saddle, keeping those horses between the door and me.

  That was a mighty sour old man in there, and he was remembering that if anybody in the world knew where his cache of pirate gold was, it was a man named William Tell Sackett.

  When we rode off I could hear him yelling for White Hat or somebody, only nobody was coming. They would, after a while, but they were bright folks, and kind of shy of shooting.

  Once we were on the trail, it was pleasant to ride beside Dorinda, keeping the mules down the trail ahead of us, talking easy-like with that dark-eyed witch girl.

  Not that I was ever much of a hand to talk to women.

  Back in the mountains where I came from I never was much on talk, and my feet were too big for dancing; but along about midnight when the girls started walking out with their friends, I was usually around and about.

  Only Dorinda was easy to talk to. She knew how to lead a man on to talk of himself, and somehow she soon had me talking of the hills back home, of Ma, of Tyrel and Orrin, of the Higginses, and even of the Trelawney girls.

  Those Trelawney girls lived over the mountain from us, and they had the name of being a wild, harum-scarum lot, but they kept the dust rising on those mountain trails. There were eight Trelawney girls, all of them pretty, and whilst everybody else was feuding they had no feuds with anybody.

  Busy as I was now a-talking, I found time to check my back trail. A man who travels wild country gets to studying where he's coming from, because some day he might have to go back, and a trail looks a lot different when you ride over it in the opposite direction.

  Every tree, every mountain, has its own particular look, and each one has several appearances, so you look back over your shoulder if you want to know country. It also helps you to live a whole lot longer. Like now.

  Somebody was rising a dust back there. Not a big dust ... but a dust. It seemed to me there were four or five horses, and they were walking just to keep the dust down so as not to attract attention.

  Dorinda didn't look back none at all.

  She was thinking, though, as I might have expected.

  "It will serve him right," she said. "He tried to have you killed."

  "Who?"

  "Ben Mandrin. He knows you are the only one who could ride to where his gold came from. There must be a lot more of it there, or he wouldn't have wanted you dead."

  "Could be."

  "He had men waiting out in the cactus patch near the brea trail yesterday. They were out there all day, only you dodged them somehow."

  "You got to give him credit for tryin'."

  "I'd like to see his face when he finds the gold gone. It will be just what he deserves."

  Now I took a careful look at her. It seemed to me she was doing a lot of thinking, and I hoped my Bible was still in my saddlebags. When I turned in tonight I wanted it under my pillow.

  "There must be a lot of it," she said. "He told me about a ship he sank off the coast of Panama. It was loaded with gold from Peru. He told me how they had brought it ashore and up a canyon to the hiding place. It took them a week to get it all out of the ship and up to where they took it ... only working at night, of course."

  "Now that there," I said, "would be a lot of gold."

  "When we get it," she said, "we can go to New York, Paris, London ... everywhere. And you can buy the biggest, finest ranch you can find, and stock it with the finest horses and cattle."

  "I sure could ... if I had that much gold."

  "You know where it is ... and you have the mules to carry it away."

  "That old man is crippled up. No telling what will happen in the future, and he may need that gold. If he don't, Roderigo might."

  She turned in her saddle and stared at me like she figured me for crazy, and I expect she was right.

  "You mean you're not going after it?"

  "No, ma'am, I'm not. Maybe a few years from now when that old man is dead and gone, I'll come back and look around, and if he hasn't taken the last of it, I shall."

  "Why, he tried to kill you! And after all you did for him!"

  "That's his way. There's a mighty hard old man, Dorinda, a mighty hard old man. Right from the start I sort of half expected it. I don't think folks have ever been very friendly to him ... not unless they figured to get something for it."

  Her eyes got narrowed down and mean. "Do you intend that for me?"

  "Not necessarily. It's just the way it's been for him. But he owes me nothing. Look at the mules he gave me."

  "Mules! When you could have all that gold?"

  She took off her hat then, and the next thing I knew two Winchesters were looking over a rock at me, and I heard horses coming up from behind.

  Dorinda's hand dropped over mine as I reach for my six-shooter.

  "There you are, boys. Make him talk."

  She drew away from me, taking my gun with her. I took a careful look around, but they had me. They had me dead to rights, and there just wasn't anything I could do about it.

  There were six of them, and my Winchester was in the boot, and it might as well have been back in Prescott for all the good it would do me.

  "Take him, boys. He's all yours."

  Dorinda's black eyes showed all the witch in her now. I think she was ready to shoot me herself, only they still didn't know where all that gold was.

  One thing I did know. There was no way out of this one.

  Chapter Ten.

  The way I'd taken in leaving the ranch was north into the hills. It had been in my mind, for I'd still no stock of goods to sell at the Arizona mines, to cross over the mountains to San Francisco Ranch where Newhall was building a town. Folks said he already had the finest hotel south of San Francisco there, and the railroad and stage line passed through the town.

  Goods were reported to be as cheap there as in Los Angeles ... even cheaper, some said, because Fields, who ran the store, was trying to keep folks from riding all the way into Los Angeles to trade.

  We'd ridden westward a ways and were just about to cut back into the hills and head north when these men moved down on me. No question but what that black-eyed girl had planned it that way. If I'd gone to where the old man had hidden his gold, these men would have followed and taken it from me. Now that I hadn't gone that way, they were going to force me to tell them where it was.

  If I reached for my rifle I'd be dead before my hand fairly grasped the action, let alone got it clear of the scabbard. Yes, they had me dead to rights.

  The place they'd picked to stop me was near a big rock at one end of a small valley ... and I had a strong hunch this was the very potrero that lay below the ridge where all that gold was hidden.

  It was a pretty little valley, with some fine old oaks around, and we'd stopped almost in the shade of one of them. It was a still, warm afternoon, and I could hear the birds talking it up back in the trees and brush just off the trail.

  They moved in around me in a narrowing circle.

  I let my hands rest on the pommel and tried to see my way out, but my mind was a blank.

  "He took the old man out that night, boys,"

  Dorinda said, "so he's got to know where the gold is."

  "He wouldn't take me to it. Do you think he's crazy?"

  Nobody said anything, and then after a bit one of them spoke up. "How about that, ma'am?"

  "How
far can an old man crawl? It took them time to ride out and back, so if Old Ben left him up there, he can't have gone far. There's been no rain, so we should get a few indications of direction."

  The black-eyed gunman tilted his Winchester.

  "You going to tell us, mister? You going to take us there?"

  Well, why not? It wasn't my gold, and once they had it they'd have no further use for me.

  They might just let me go ... although they might figure it best to shoot me so's I couldn't come back at them.

  "Far's I know, he got it all. Else do you think I'd not be up there looking?"

  "If that was all there was," Dorinda said, "he'd not have cared in the least about you seeing the place. No, it took them several nights of work to take that treasure up there from the beach, so he couldn't possibly bring all of it away in one night."

  "We'd have to pack grub," I said. "It's far from here, and I'm carrying nothing. I was figuring to stock up at Newhall's place."

  "He's lying," Dorinda said. "I tracked them part of the way."

  Now I taken another look at her. This witch woman certainly knew a sight of things no city girl should know. She had tracked us, she said, and I had a hunch she wasn't lying about that.

  If she had tracked us, she must be pretty good.

  "It's not far from here," she said. "I tracked them for several miles in this direction, and they couldn't have ridden much further than this."

  They were all around me. There was no chance to make a move without getting killed, or at least badly hurt. My mules were over there feeding on the grass along with my spare horses.

  "My guess is that we aren't more than a mile or two from it right now," Dorinda said, "and if I'd not been along he'd have gone right to it."

  She turned toward a tall, tough-looking blond man. "Clymer, you and the Yaqui make him talk."

  The Yaqui was flat-featured, a half-breed by the look of him, and a man who would know how to make a man die slowly. The Yaquis were said to be as good at that as the Apaches.

  If I tried a run for it, there was no shelter close by. The trees were too scattered, and that big rock was almost sheer.

  Time and again I'd been in tight spots, and somehow I'd come out of them, and it seemed as if this here one ought to be so easy. It was such a pleasant day, the sun made leaf shadows on the ground around, and a few high, lazy clouds drifted in the sky. There was no violence around ... except in that ring of silent guns, aimed at me.