Mojave Crossing s-11 Read online

  As we talked he kept his eyes on me, or looked off and seemed to be listening to the sound of my voice, although it was rare indeed that I had chance to speak. But it seemed to me there was something on his mind, something dark and secret that he held within himself.

  Dorinda listened, and occasionally she went from the room and returned. I noticed she drank no wine ... was there purpose in that? Or did she simply not drink at all? Sometimes she seemed impatient, wishing me to be off, no doubt, for all of our talk was taking us no place.

  It was in my own mind to leave, until suddenly Old Ben said, "You must stay the night, Sackett. You can snug down here--there's room enough and more. It will be time enough to go off hunting your gold in the morning."

  He looked at me sharply as he replaced his glass on the table. "Roderigo said you had planned to buy mules or horses and pack goods back to the mines to sell. Is that still in your mind?"

  "When I have my gold."

  He waved his hand at the broad acres around me. "They plan to take all this from me, but there's mules enough, and I could let you have some ... for a small price. I'll have some run up for you to look upon."

  He caught hold of his cane suddenly as if to get up, then stopped and said to Dorinda, "Tell them to come for me, and show Mr. Sackett to a room." He paused again as if thinking.

  "To Pio's room," he added.

  She looked surprised, but left the room, and when she came back two vaqueros came with her.

  They picked Old Ben up, chair and all, and carried him from the room. When they had gone I finished my wine and put down the glass.

  "I have never seen him like this," Dorinda said, puzzled and disturbed. "He has never talked so much to any stranger."

  "It was because of the old times," I said. "My mention of the fight off Hatteras brought it all back to him."

  Some of her puzzlement seemed to go away.

  "Yes, yes, that must be it," she said.

  She was a beautiful woman, but now I could see a coldness there that I had not noticed so much before, although I was ever wary of her.

  "But in Pio's room!" she went on. "He has never allowed anyone in that room but the old governor."

  "Pio Pico?"

  "They were friends ... are still friends, I think, although he comes out but rarely now." And she said no more.

  There were four of us at supper, Old Ben, Roderigo, Dorinda, and myself, but now Old Ben talked little. He broke in once to say, "There was some shooting around Mora, in New Mexico, in which some Sacketts were involved.

  One of them married a Mexican girl."

  "They are my brothers," I said.

  He ate with good appetite, I noticed, but drank no more wine--only several cups of the blackest coffee this side of Hell itself. I drank my own share, but I was used to cow-camp coffee which will float a horseshoe.

  Tired, I was, and ready for the bed, and we sat about very little after supper was over.

  In my room was a huge old four-poster bed, the finest bed I had ever seen, and on a marble-topped table were a bowl and a pitcher of water.

  There was a chair and a thick carpet on the stone-flagged floor. The room had one window, and an inner door that evidently connected with Old Ben's room.

  Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I considered the situation, and none of it made sense. All I wanted was to get my gold back and get out on the trail back to the mines, yet here I was, a guest in an old Spanish hacienda, the guest of a former pirate.

  True, I had my outfit back, but the country was filled with my enemies--and all through no fault of mine. Only trying to help a girl who, it now seemed, was tied in with my enemies ... enemies I'd made because of her.

  Tired of trying to figure it out, and deciding I was pretty much of a fool, I pulled off my boots, washed my face and hands, and started to undress.

  And then the door from Old Ben Mandrin's room opened and he stood there, hanging on a pair of crutches, and looking at me with devil's laughter in his eyes.

  He swung himself around and lowered himself into the chair. "I need help, boy. I need your help."

  Me, I just stood looking at him. He was dressed for riding, in an outfit that had once fitted him, but did so no longer.

  "We've got to ride nearly twenty miles before daybreak," he said. "Pull your boots on."

  It looked like I was never going to sleep in a bed.

  "You in shape for a twenty-mile ride?" I said.

  "No ... but I'll ride it. Leave that to me."

  I could only stare at him. "Why me?" I said. "You've got men around. You've got Roderigo." And then I grinned at him. "And you've got Dorinda."

  He brushed the suggestion away. "An old man's fancy. Look, son, you're young.

  You're strong. There will be many women for you, but for me she may be the last. I'll not be saying she's mine, for she isn't, and I am sure she has nothing of the kind in mind.

  "She looks like a passionate woman, but she isn't, son. Take it from me, the great courtesans of the past--and Dorinda is like them-- were never passionate, loving women. They were cold, calculating. They used the emotions of men for their own purposes, they were all show, all promises. A passionate woman gets too involved for straight thinking, she becomes too emotional ... not Dorinda. She's thinking all the time."

  "Then why not be rid of her?"

  "Like I say, she may be the last beautiful woman to pay me attention. Most of us pay for love in one way or another, and I paid for her attentions by signing that note." A wolfish gleam came into ^th hard old eyes. "Now with your help, I'm going to serve them what they have coming."

  "It don't sound right to me."

  "That's why I chose you. You're honest."

  I just kept looking at him. I'd grown up on stories of him, and I could see they were true.

  He was an old devil, but I found myself liking him. And sympathizing with him, too.

  "What you got in mind?" I asked cautiously.

  "A ride to the west ... to a place out in the mountains."

  "You're in no shape. Tell me what you want done, and I'll do it."

  The wolf in him showed his teeth. His eyes danced wickedly. "This I shall do myself." The smile disappeared. "All I am going to do is save my ranch, and injure no man."

  A moment I thought about it, but I was getting nowhere. I was no hand to ferret out the plans of other folks. Maybe I just ain't smart, maybe there ain't enough wolf in me ... I don't know. I can face up to guns or fists, but believe me, I can't plot and figure out ways to deceive.

  No use my trying to study out what he had in mind. I knew I was going to help him, because if an old man in his kind of shape had the guts to try to ride twenty miles, I was going to help him. And I knew I wanted to see the old devil outsmart those who would rob him of what was his.

  "All right," I said.

  "Get horses," he said, "and hurry.

  We've far to go."

  When I started for the door, he hooked my arm with a crutch. "The window," he said. "Our doors will be watched."

  The window went up soundlessly, and I eased out into the still night. Stars were out, and somewhere an owl talked in a treetop. Moving on cat feet, I made the corral where my horses were. It taken only minutes to get them out and saddled, the two best of them. Then I led them back in the darkness close to the house.

  I managed to get Old Ben through the window, but he helped me some. When I lifted him to the saddle, I was sure surprised. He was light, but there was power in his arms and shoulders and hands ...

  I could feel that.

  Mounting up, I led off into the night, and then he took over. He could ride, all right. He put his horse westward into the mountains, and I trailed behind, fearful all the time that he might fall off and hurt himself.

  The wind was cool on our faces. The black of the mountains loomed above us. We rode steadily westward, and there was no talk between us, although, worried as I was about him, my eyes kept straying his way. But he rode steadily, although
with his weakened, crippled legs, I could not guess how he managed it.

  These were dark and silent hills. There were cattle here, and horses, but they slept their own sleep and we saw none of them. Once, we saw distant lights ... we slowed our pace and walked our horses carefully through the dust so as not to awaken the sleepers in the village surrounding a ranch. In those years much of the population clustered in such tiny villages gathered about the ranches.

  We turned suddenly into the mountains, mounting by a narrow trail only faintly seen. The ground was lighter in shade where it was worn by the passing of men or cattle. As we climbed I fancied I could smell the sea; and suddenly, when we topped out upon a ridge, I knew it for truth. There it lay, broad upon our right, the great ocean of the Pacific.

  He drew up then and looked seaward. I could not see his eyes in the darkness, but it seemed to me there was a longing in him, a longing for the deep waters.

  It was in me to understand this, for I knew my own bit of longing for the wild places. I am a man not given to cities, nor the crowded walks of men. I like the long winds upon my face, the stirring of miles of grass bending before the wind, the cloud shadows upon the plain, the lure and lift of far hills.

  Below us and a little behind us, dark against the moonlit sea, a point thrust into the waters. He swept a hand toward it, and along the shore. "Malibu," he said, "Rancho Malibu."

  He glanced at the stars, and pushed on, although the trail was rough. By the feel of it, it was one rarely traveled. We dipped into hollows and emerged from them, and now he seemed to be doing his best to lose me, to prevent me from ever retracing my steps.

  Suddenly he turned at right angles and dipped into a gap or pass in the mountains, and when he had gone but a short distance, he drew up.

  "Help me down," he said, as I dismounted.

  Reaching up, I lifted him from the saddle, and he sagged in my arms, then drew back.

  "No crutches," he said. "They'd be no use to me here." Iron came into his voice.

  "Wait for me here ... I shall be a while."

  He could not walk, but crawled away into the black darkness where no moonlight fell. I lighted a cigar, cupping my hands well to conceal the point of flame, and prepared to wait.

  To what strange place had he brought me? And why had he crawled off in the darkness alone?

  Once, a long while after he had left me, I heard a stone rattle distantly in the night, and I knew that it fell off into space, for a long time later I heard it strike.

  I was thinking that old Ben Mandrin was no fool, and I knew that whatever he did, it was something he wished desperately to do. But he was no man to be either questioned or doubted, so I just stayed there and listened into the night ... listening both for him, and for trouble that might come.

  Several times I glanced at the stars to check the time that passed, and they gave me no comfort. It was a far ride back to the ranch for a tired old man, and daylight might find us on the trail.

  What then? What if they carried his breakfast to his room and found him not there? Or what if his heart failed, on this ride and he died with me?

  Would anyone believe my story?

  Restlessly, I tramped up and down, impatient for his return. Was he only a few yards off, listening, perhaps with amusement, to my restless pacing? Or had he gone far away and fallen, injuring himself? But I heard no call for help, and the night was clear and cool.

  Finally, I sat down, lighted a fresh cigar with caution, and waited. I thought of what odd turns there are in the life of a man. It was strange that I should be here with this old pirate of whom I had only heard as a boy, and had known now only a matter of hours.

  There were no trees here, only the black chapparal. Some of the bushes were almost as tall as a man, but most no more than waist high, yet there were game tunnels beneath them, trails long used by lion or coyote or bobcat. They formed a maze that covered all this chaparral country with hidden trails, to be followed by wild creatures or by a man, if he chose to crawl. Here, atop this ridge, the chaparral was thin, for the ridge was broken by jagged rock outcroppings or by gigantic boulders, bare and time-eroded.

  The stars waned. Impatiently, I ground out the stub of my cigar and got to my feet.

  The horses, heads up, ears pointed, were looking off into the night, toward the direction in which Ben Mandrin had crawled. Nostrils dilated, they looked along the ridge.

  Stepping out away from them, I spoke softly, "Ben?"

  No answer came.

  It was too dark to see tracks, and although I had risked lighting the cigars, to hold a light while trying to make out tracks seemed too chancy. This was a high ridge, and the country was alive with outlaws. If I started out to search for him, I might miss him in the darkness. I had no idea how far he had gone, nor even if he had persisted in the direction in which he started, for that might have been only to give me a false idea.

  My head was aching, for the riding had set that wound on my skull to throbbing. It hadn't amounted to much ... a bullet that cut a furrow in my scalp and skinned away some hair, but it also left a lump there big as a hen's egg.

  Waiting had given me time to think, and precious little time I'd had before for pondering. But I still didn't know who had been chasing Dorinda when I first met up with her, or why, although it began to look like she might have wanted to get out of this deal with Old Ben. But why?

  What was her stake in all this? And who had got her into x? There must have been something promised to her.

  ... And where was Nolan Sackett?

  Most of all, where was my gold?

  Again I looked at the stars. The hour was late, and there was but little time left to us. I got to my feet and walked off into the darkness, listening.

  There was no sound.

  He was out there alone, and something had gone wrong, I was sure of it now. It wasn't in me to abide longer with that crippled-up old man out there on the rocks and in the dark of night.

  So I started out after him.

  We were high up on a hog-backed ridge, with the mountains falling away toward the sea on one side and on the other a deep hollow, * what in this country they call a potrero, because usually those hollows are good pastureland. There wasn't much chance of getting lost up here because a man had mighty little room to move around in.

  * Where Lake Sherwood now lies, and the valley beyond.

  It was the dark hour that comes before daylight, and I worked my way along carefully, straining my eyes to see if he lay on the ground, passed out. A couple of times I called softly, but nobody gave back reply.

  Suddenly I came to where the trail, if you could call it so, broke in two, with one way going on along the hogback, the other seeming to go out along the shoulder of an even higher ridge. That last looked a mighty bad place to go.

  Here I must take a chance, for there was no time to search out both ways. The ridge would shield any light that showed from the land side, and as for the sea, I'd have to chance it. So, kneeling down, I struck a match, held it cupped in my hands, and checked the ground.

  It was there, plain as a skunk on a log. The old man had dragged himself along here and taken that higher ridge trail.

  Only it wasn't a trail. It was a thread of rock hung in space over several hundred feet of steep fall. Dark as it was, I couldn't see how far it was, but it was a-plenty.

  So I started out along that shoulder. After a while the trail widened out, then narrowed down.

  I'd walked a couple of hundred yards from my horse before I stopped to call out again. And this time I heard a faint stirring up ahead of me. Whether it was game animal or man, I couldn't tell, but I moved on, and suddenly there he lay in the trail ahead of me, face down on the rock and sparse grass where he'd been crawling.

  His hands were skinned and chewed up from the rocks.

  Beside him in the trail was a big sack full of something. I wished for the moon, which had gone from the sky a long while back. Well, there was mighty little time, so I scooped
him up in my arms, and then reached down and got a hold of that sack, which was fearful heavy. Somehow, sweating and panting, I got them both back to our horses, and loaded up.

  He came out of his faint when I was hoisting him up. "Can you hang on, or should I lash you up?"

  "You start, boy, and you ride like hell. I'll stay with you."

  He grabbed my wrist, and believe me, that old devil still had the power to hurt in that grip of his. "Boy," he said, "I've got to be stretched out in bed before there's anybody afoot at the ranch. Don't you worry about me. You just get me there."

  I taken him at his word. Those horses were fixed up and a-raring to go, and we lit out of there fast, high-tailing it down off that mountain.

  We hit that little village at a dead run, and a moment after we raced through, somebody ran into the trail and yelled after us, but we headed across the plains toward the ranch. And he stayed with me.

  Old and weak he might seem, but there was grit in him, and we almost ran the legs off those horses until we were within a hundred yards or so of the ranch.

  There was gray in the sky and a light was going in one of the vaquero shacks, but we slipped in, and I got him back through my window. Then I got him into his own bedroom, and he locked the heavy bag in a closet at the head of his bed.

  Outside, I hurriedly stripped the gear from the horses and turned them into the corral.

  Nobody was around, so I rubbed them down, and was working over them when a vaquero came out.

  Well, he pulled up short when he saw me there working, but I just raised up and said, "Buenos dias, amigo." Then I added in English, "When do we eat around here?"

  "Poco tiempo," he grunted, and went inside. So I kept on working over my horses, rubbing them down carefully, then forking hay into the corral, and going to the bin for a healthy bait of corn for each. They'd earned it.

  When I walked to the house and stepped up on the veranda, Dorinda was standing there. She gave me a sharp glance and said, "You're up early."

  "Now, ma'am," I said gently, "no such thing. You take any mountain boy ... he'd be apt to be up this early. Why, back to home we'd had the cows milked by this time, or if 'twas winter, we'd be out runnin' a trap line."