Mojave Crossing s-11 Page 9

  "I had no idea you were from the mountains," she said, and I don't know why, but suddenly I knew she lied.

  "Have you seen Mr. Mandrin?" she asked.

  "Me? Is he up and about?"

  She came up close to me. "Tell," she put a hand on my sleeve, "please don't think me ungrateful. I've wanted to thank you for all you did and tried to do, but it wasn't possible. You see, those men would not have understood.

  Someday I'll explain--was "Don't bother," I said. "Anybody who'd try to take an old man's ranch away from him doesn't owe me anything, least of all, explanations."

  She stiffened up, her face went white, and those black eyes turned to poison, quick as that. "You are a stupid fool!" she said contemptuously.

  "I shall explain nothing!"

  She turned away from me, and I was just as pleased. I wanted no truck with that black-eyed woman, but the way I saw it, my troubles had only just begun.

  About a half-hour later, when I was hungry enough to chew my own boots, they called us to breakfast, and about that time there were horses riding up outside.

  One glance through the window sent me stepping back to my room to pick up a gun. It wasn't in me to wear a gun to any man's table, but this here was different. So I taken up a pistol and shoved it down behind my waistband within easy grasp.

  Outside there I'd seen Dayton and Oliphant, that city man I'd first seen with Dayton and Dorinda. With them was Nolan Sackett. It was the first time I ever laid eyes on kinfolk of mine when I wasn't pleased.

  There were some others, too, and one of them was a wiry, sallow-faced man with the snakiest black eyes you ever did see. He had a tied-down gun which some gunfighters favor, and a way about him that told me he figured himself a handy man with a gun.

  When I walked into the dining room Old Ben Mandrin was already settin' up to table, and he looked at me just as perky as could be. "You're walking into trouble, boy," he said. "Are you with me?"

  "I reckon we share enemies," I said.

  Roderigo came in suddenly, and he glanced quickly at me--doubtfully, I thought, like maybe of a sudden I wasn't to be trusted.

  The others showed up at the door.

  "Come in! Come in!" Old Ben was smiling and easy, and it throwed them. I mean they didn't know what to make of him, for without doubt they had come to lay it on the line and tell him the ranch was theirs and he'd have to get off. You could see it in their eyes.

  We all sat down to table, and me, I couldn't figure where I stood in all this. Seemed to me I wasn't getting any nearer the gold I'd lost, nor had I any clue as to where it was.

  And Dorinda wasn't about to tell me, if she knew.

  All my life I've been getting myself tangled up where it was none of my affair, and never could figure out why. Maybe it was just that I followed the easiest line, maybe I wanted too much to do things for folks, maybe I was just easily persuaded. Anyway, I was tangled up now.

  Right from the start when I saw the black-eyed woman a-settin' there looking at me, a homely man, I knew I was shaping up for trouble. Yet no sooner am I shut of her than I get tangled up with this old man, and from what I'd seen of him he was fit to care for himself. ...

  Well, maybe not that night up on the mountain.

  If I hadn't carried him out of there he'd be waitin' for buzzards by now. But with a tough old man like that, you can't be sure.

  This Dayton was a rugged man in his own way, but all polish and surface. I didn't take to him. But now he'd brought me face to face with my kin.

  Nolan Sackett came in a step or two behind him, and we looked at each other across the room.

  "You could be in better company," I said, right off.

  He grinned at me. "Show's on you," he said. "You're one of those preachin' Sacketts."

  He was as broad in the shoulders as I, and a right powerful man, maybe twenty pounds heavier, with a big chest and thick arms that swelled out his shirt sleeves until they were like to bust. His face was wider than mine, with a blunt jaw and a nose that had been broken sometime back, but he had the Sackett look to him, all right, and all we Sacketts favor, more or less.

  "I never drew a gun on no Sackett,"

  I said, "and I hope you don't fix it so's I have to."

  "You could leave out of here," he said. He had a tough, insolent way about him, but he was curious, too, for here we kinfolk had met up away out in California, a far piece from the Tennessee mountains.

  "You finally clean out them Higginses?" he asked.

  "Tyrel fetched the last one."

  "They were fighters. I mind the time two of them had me cornered up on McLean Rock, and me with a bullet in me."

  "Was that you? My brother Orrin told me of it. He toted you down off the mountain, piggy-back. Ten, twelve miles."

  Dayton was irritated. "We came on business, Nolan. In case you've forgotten."

  Nolan ignored him. "Rose Marie Higgins came around on mule back ... one of the Trelawney girls with her. She came to find where those Higginses were so's they could have Christian burial."

  "Orrin, he went back up and dug for them both," I said, "and he spoke words over them, and read from the Book. Then he wrote them--their people, that is. He wrote them to tell where the graves were.

  "Given time," I said, "we Smoky Mountain and Cumberland Sacketts always bury our dead, we bury them Christian."

  "Like out on the Mojave?" Nolan said, wicked-like.

  "Wasn't much time," I explained, "and I had a woman with me. Had there been time, I'd have read over them."

  "Nolan ..." Dayton was getting almight upset over our talk.

  "You came on business," Nolan said, "so get on with it."

  "It concerns you!" Dayton declared angrily.

  "If anything goes wrong ..."

  "I know," Nolan said patiently, "if anything goes wrong I've got to do the fightin'.

  That's what I'm paid for. All right, you settle your affairs, and when fightin' time comes around, I'll be there."

  "I hope you ain't," I said. "I never read over no Sackett, and I ain't honin' to."

  "You tell me where at you keep the Book,"

  Nolan said. "I'll be doin' the readin'."

  "Come, come, gentlemen!" Old Ben, he looked as cheerful as a 'possum eatin' persimmons. "No business until after we've eaten."

  "I hate to spoil your appetite, old man," Dayton said, in that nasty way he had, "but I came to foreclose. I own this ranch."

  Glancing across the table, I happened to notice Dorinda. She was looking at those raw, chewed-out hands of Old Ben's like she couldn't believe what she saw.

  "Your hands, Mr. Mandrin! You've hurt your hands!"

  Chapter Seven.

  For a minute there, the roam was as empty of sound as if everybody had suddenly lost their voices, even their power to breathe. Old Ben Mandrin, supposedly moving only from his bed to a chair and back again, had the palms of his hands raked and lacerated like nothing you ever saw. They weren't bandaged ... there was no real need of that, but they were raw and plenty sore.

  The question in everybody's mind but mine was, how did they get that way? And the old coot was enjoying it. Why, I don't think he'd had so much fun since the last time he made somebody walk the plank ... if he ever did.

  Dayton was studying him, his eyes hot with suspicion, and Oliphant was almighty worried. Nolan Sackett, he just threw a hard look at Old Ben's hands, then at his face, and then Nolan went to eating.

  Old Ben gestured carelessly. "It's nothing, Dorinda, don't worry your mind about it."

  He looked too self-satisfied to please Dayton. By all Dayton's figuring, the old man should be worried sick and begging for a way out, but there he sat, all smug and smart, those old devil eyes of his brighter than a raccoon's.

  Old Ben tied into his food like he'd earned it, and there for a while nobody had anything to say.

  Me, I was fair-to-middlin' hungry, but most of all what I needed was sleep. There'd been none the night before, and very little for some time pas
t, and it was going to do my eye and my shooting no good, if it came to that.

  When Old Ben sat back to enjoy his coffee he said, "Old man my age doesn't have many pleasures, and what he has he figures to pay for.

  "When Dorinda here started being nice to me, and seemed to set her cap for me, I knew something was in the wind. Turner had introduced her to me as his niece, but Turner had never mentioned a niece before, and when she started offering to care for me and the like, I was suspicious.

  "Then when Turner asked me for a loan to keep his bank afloat, I gave some thought to it.

  He'd loaned me cash a time or two a long while back ... or rather, his father had, and I owed the bank some help.

  "Meanwhile, Dorinda was still around the place, fetching and carrying for me of her own free will, making me more comfortable, fixing the blanket over my knees, puffing a pillow back of my head, and moving about the place, swishing her skirts.

  "Think that doesn't do a lot for an old man? It did for me. Now, I had no fancy in my mind that she was starting to care for me. Maybe when I was fifty, or even a mite later, but not now; but I could still enjoy her being there and watching her move around.

  "You've got to admit she's pretty much of a woman, and she was always the lady. But you've got to admit she keeps what she's got so you know it's there."

  He chuckled. "I reckon I'll miss her."

  "Get to the point," Dayton said. "I want you out of here ... today."

  That Dayton now ... he was a man I could come to dislike.

  Old Ben's eyes turned on Dayton like a pair of six-shooters, and he said, "You are to be disappointed, Mr. Dayton. I am not leaving.

  You are not taking my property, which is worth fifty times that note I signed for Turner, and which you now hold. You are not taking my property now ... or ever."

  He had changed so sudden it startled a body.

  Here he was--or seemed to be--a doddering old man talking about a young woman ... and then his tone changed and those old eyes of his changed, and Dayton knew right away that he was facing into trouble.

  "What do you mean?" Dayton leaned forward.

  "Why, you damned old fool! That note's due and you know it, and I'm granting you no time. Every friend you have who might lend you money is in as bad shape as you are because of this drought! Now you get off this ranch, and get off now!"

  That Ben Mandrin was a hard old man. He chuckled, one of the meanest chuckles you ever heard, and he said, "Why, Mr. Dayton, I'm going to surprise you. I'm going to pay you your petty little note ... with interest!"

  He reached down under the table, and from between his knees, which had been covered by his blanket, he took a sack that he set out on the table in front of all of us.

  "There it is, Mr. Dayton, figured down to the last penny ... and in gold."

  When he set that sack down there in the middle of the table we all heard the chink of coins, but Dayton couldn't believe it. He grabbed that sack and jerked it open, spilling those gold coins out on the cloth.

  They were gold, all right, and enough to pay off that note, that paltry little sum for which Dayton and Oliphant planned to steal more than a hundred thousand acres of land in one of the loveliest places a body could find.

  No, Dayton couldn't believe it. He wouldn't believe it. He knew Old Ben was out of cash. He knew nobody around could afford to loan him money, in his own mind he had already owned the ranch and was thinking of how he could advertise back east and start selling it off, as others were doing.

  That black-eyed witch woman looked at the gold, and then she looked across the table at Dayton, and those black eyes were pure poison. "So now, Mr. Dayton," she said coldly, "where do we go from here?"

  Roderigo looked as surprised as any of them; only Nolan Sackett seemed to take it without any excitement. He just looked over at Old Ben and said, "All right if I finish eatin' before I go?"

  "By all means," the old devil said.

  "Please enjoy yourvs. After all"--and he sounded mighty sarcastic--"y are my guests."

  The gold lay right there on the table where it had spilled, and Roderigo couldn't seem to take his eyes from it. Nolan Sackett ate with good appetite, but the others, including that sallow devil with the black eyes, hadn't much taste for eating. Dayton started several times to speak, but each time he gave it up, for there was just nothing he could say.

  Finally, Old Ben spoke up. "You have tasted my hospitality"--his voice was dry, but there was a cutting edge to it--"now get out! And you, Dayton ... if you ever show up on my property again, for any reason whatsoever, I shall have you horsewhipped!"

  Dayton almost staggered when he got to his feet, for he was a whipped man already, and it showed.

  Oliphant got up and, more leisurely, so did the black-eyed gunman and Nolan himself.

  Dayton looked over at Dorinda. "You coming?"

  "Do you take me for a fool?" Oh, she was beautiful, all right, but she had a wicked tongue. "I left you before because I knew you were a tin-horn, and you brought me back by force. If you ever try it again, I'll kill you myself!"

  Old Ben chuckled, and Dayton went white as a man can get and still live, then he ducked out of the door.

  Nolan Sackett leaned over the table and scooped up the gold and swept it into the sack.

  "Dayton," he called, "you forgot somethin'!"

  Nolan paused, filling the door with his bulk.

  He hefted the sack in his hand, and then he turned back and looked at Old Ben. "Now, I wonder," he said, kind of musing out loud, "where would a man get this kind of gold? Minted gold, and quite a lot of it, some of it old, mighty old."

  He put on his hat. "This I got to contemplate ... I got to contemplate." And he stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

  Old Ben was clutching the edge of the table with both hands. Some of the abrasions and cuts had opened and there was blood on the edge of the white cloth.

  "Kill him!" he said. "Sackett ...

  =ill him!"

  I stared at him, and then I said, "I've got no call to kill him."

  "You damned fool!" Old Ben shouted.

  "Kill him. I say!"

  Nobody moved, and Old Ben's face turned dark with angry blood, his eyes glared, andfora minute there I thought he'd have a stroke.

  "That man," he said, "will be the death of some of us. Remember what I say."

  "Not me," I replied. "I've nothing at stake here."

  He looked at me as if he had seen me for the first time. "Yes ... of course. I had forgotten that."

  Nobody made any comment, but I guess we were all figuring on the amount of unfinished business there was at that table. Dorinda Robiseau was suddenly on her own, but with no expectations of money like she'd had, having been promised part of this deal.

  Old Ben Mandrin, whom I'd admired for his guts, suddenly began to look like a mighty mean, cantankerous, evil old man. He had saved his ranch, but he had Nolan Sackett to worry about; for however you looked at it, there had been a pretty definite threat in what Nolan said.

  Nolan Sackett knew, as anybody would, that such gold had to come from somewhere. Old Ben had apparently been broke. Turner had assured Dayton that this was so. Roderigo, his own grandson, had believed him broke. Then Old Ben shows up with a sack full of minted gold and pays off his debt.

  Where had the gold come from?

  About that time I suddenly began to look at my hole card. And it was well that I did.

  The old man had gotten that gold--of which the amount he'd paid to Dayton was only a small part -comon his middle-of-the-night ride with me. When he left me on that pass and turned off along the ridge, he had gone to that gold.

  Was this all of it? Or was there more?

  Pushing back from the table, I got up and went to my room where, I got out my gear.

  Something told me to get out of this house, and I wanted to ... badly.

  Roderigo followed me as I carried my gear out and dumped it on the edge of the veranda. "You're leaving?" he
asked.

  "Yes."

  "My grandfather wishes to see you. He said he had promised you mules."

  So he had ... and I was going to need those mules. "All right," I said, and we walked back inside.

  He still sat at the table, although in just the few minutes I had been gone it had been cleared.

  He looked tired now, and I couldn't wonder at it after all he had gone through. He had let down now, and the weariness of that long ride and the crawling among the rocks was getting to him. For the first time since I had met him, he looked his years.

  "You helped me," he said when Roderigo had gone from the room, "when there was nobody else I dared call on. I'm having them drive in some mules, and I shall make you a present of twenty."

  "That's a lot of mules."

  He shrugged. "There are several hundred on the place. There are over six thousand head of cattle here or elsewhere that I own, and nearly a thousand horses. It is a small payment for what I owe you. Besides"--and a little of the Old Ben flashed into his eyes--"x will lighten the load on my range. Unless it rains, and rains well before summer sets in, I'll lose a good many head of stock."

  He scratched out a bill of sale for the mules and passed it across the table. "Roderigo knows of this. It will be all right."

  Then he hitched around in his chair and looked up at me. "Did the sight of that gold make you less of an honest man?"

  "I can't see that having gold has bought you very much."

  He grunted. "All this? What do you call this?"

  "How many people can you trust? When you were in trouble you had to reach out for a stranger to help you."

  "Maybe I was a fool to do that."

  "That's your problem." I folded the bill of sale and put it in my shirt pocket. "What are you going to do about her?"

  "Can't cage an eagle, boy.

  She'll have to go. I could keep her here and give her anything she wanted, and soon she'd start to hate me because she'd be tied to me. You make bars of gold and an eagle will bite at them, frying to get out."

  "You can see she doesn't leave here broke.